Doting

by Henry Green

  “Haven’t I already told you we needn’t worry?” the girl reminded him. He laughed. “Oh everyone eats too much,” he insisted.

  “But you can’t at Peter’s age. No boy can,” Diana announced gaily.

  “Oh Mother, now!”

  “And so who’s the greedy one?” Miss Paynton asked, delighted.

  “Once my soup’s gone, I’ll be happy to take on yours,” the boy proposed to Annabel, and winked.

  “Go ahead. You’re welcome,” she replied.

  “Oh Peter, no, you can’t,” his mother claimed in haste.

  “But, my dear, why not?” Mr. Middleton asked.

  “In front of all these other people, darling?”

  “Yet there’s hardly anyone here,” the husband pointed out, with truth.

  “Go on, you disgusting hog,” Annabel encouraged the boy with a fond smile. “And when you’ve your mouth full I’ll make you laugh so you’ll do the nose trick!”

  “No, but honestly,” Peter complained with what seemed great good humour, and leant across to take her soup plate.

  “Because I’ve just had a bad go of trench mouth,” she shyly added.

  “That’s done it,” the boy said, then pushed her portion finally away.

  “Oh you poor dear, you haven’t,” Mrs. Middleton cried.

  “And where did you learn about trench mouth?” the father demanded of the girl.

  “From a cracked cup in her office canteen,” his wife protested.

  “All in all, that was probably a close shave,” said Peter.

  “But you don’t really believe I’ve got it, really?” the girl wailed in mock despair.

  “I’d heard those Prefects have been raising hell about their crockery lately.”

  “Now, see here Peter, I’ll let you look into my mouth, if you wish. Why, only the other day, when I went to see him, my dentist said I had the most perfect gums.”

  “All right, let’s have a peek, then,” Mr. Middleton demanded.

  “Now Arthur, I’ve never heard such nonsense. No Annabel . . .!”

  But, in spite of Mrs. Middleton’s appeal, the girl, with a “here you are” leant over to the husband and opened wide the pearly gates. Her wet teeth were long and sharp, of an almost transparent whiteness. The tongue was pointed also and lay curled to a red tip against her lower jaw, to which the gums were a sterile pink. Way back behind, cavernous, in a deeper red, her uvula seemed to shrink from him. But it was the dampness, the cleanliness, the fresh-as-wet-paint must have made the man shut his lips tight, as, in his turn, he leant over hers and it was then, or so he, even, told his wife after, that he got, direct from her throat, a great whiff of flowers.

  He drew back. He sighed. He shrugged his shoulders.

  “Expect you’d pass in a crowd,” he said at last.

  “Here Peter,” Annabel went on, and bent her head his side so the boy could see inside.

  “God, thanks no,” he exclaimed, then held his nose.

  Annabel let out a peal of laughter. “You’re the absolute limit,” she complained.

  “Really, my dears, you shouldn’t,” Mr. Middleton said to all.

  “I’m sorry but I properly asked for that, didn’t I?” Miss Paynton exclaimed. “Look,” she interrupted herself, “there’s Campbell Anthony come in.”

  “And who may he be?” Mr. Middleton enquired.

  “Only the best poet we happen to have.”

  “My dear Annabel, how thrilling! Where?” Mrs. Middleton demanded.

  The girl pointed out a most carefully dressed and neat young man who had just settled down below with another of his own age.

  “Peter, let’s dance,” Miss Paynton quickly suggested.

  “Not on your life,” the boy said. “Besides my steak is due now, any minute.”

  “You’re just a greedy brute,” the girl laughed.

  “He’s no soul beyond his food, you’ll find,” Mr. Middleton agreed. “But I’ll try if you like, Annabel,” he added.

  “Why of course,” she replied, after just a glance at the wife, and then they were gone.

  Peter leant over the better to see them come out beneath, on the floor.

  Diana laughed. “She only wants to show herself off a little before her poet,” she translated.

  At which moment their steaks arrived. “I don’t think we need tell them to keep these hot,” she said. “Let’s eat ours and leave theirs get cold.”

  “Why not?” the boy echoed, already digging a fork in his. Then, for a while, they discussed what he should do in the holidays.

  Arthur Middleton was dancing well, but not too close to Miss Paynton, over an almost empty floor.

  “Nice of you to come out with us again,” he said. “No great prize in all of this for you, I’m afraid.”

  “I wouldn’t know what you mean,” she replied. “Tell me, don’t you think he looks quite terribly tired tonight?”

  Mr. Middleton saw she watched the poet.

  “He could be not entirely fit,” he agreed.

  “Oh it’s not that,” she said. “Or, not always. Campbell will work so hard.”

  Arthur glanced down once more at the girl in his arms to catch her in a small nod of recognition sideways at the young man and also noticed that this Mr. Anthony, who was busy talking, had missed it.

  “How long hours does he labour then?”

  “You see it’s every day at the Ministry of Propaganda,” she explained. “And now he’s all taken up with this thing he’s got on dance music so he has to go out to listen almost every evening—oh things are so exhausting and expensive for Campbell!”

  “The writer’s day is never done, you mean?”

  “Why, quite,” she replied.

  They danced in silence through another few moments. Then Mr. Middleton saw the poet at last wave negligently in their direction. Upon which, with a happy smile, Annabel Paynton moved closer within her partner’s arms.

  “Now, how awful of me,” she exclaimed “I’ve just remembered! Peter says you simply slave at your business.”

  “Peter says?” he demanded, with some astonishment.

  “Oh you’ve someone really special there, all right,” she went on, enthusiastically bright. “He’s going to be terrific.”

  “Well, thanks,” Arthur Middleton said drily.

  “So here I go again,” she lamented. “I suppose nothing can be a greater bore than having virtual strangers talk to one about one’s own children.”

  “I wouldn’t have thought we were quite that, Ann.”

  “No more did I, but you seemed . . . Oh I don’t know, I expect I misunderstood. But I imagine people must be talking to you about Peter all the time.”

  “Not always,” Mr. Middleton smiled.

  “Then tell me,” she demanded. “D’you, yourself, get these awful depressions, too, from one day to the other?”

  “Peter’s never given me a moment’s anxiety,” he replied stoutly.

  “No, no,” she said “I thought you wanted to get off the topic of your son. I meant in yourself. Do you still have them?”

  “Of course.”

  “But why? What’s the purpose in one’s always being depressed?”

  “I should say it may have a lot to do with sex,” he replied, with a nervous laugh.

  She looked down her nose. “Would you?” she asked. “I wouldn’t know, especially about sex, of course. No, Campbell worries so terribly over his health.”

  “You don’t though, Ann. You look blooming.”

  “Yet I’m always in the dumps and there’s nothing wrong with me, is there?”

  “Not that I can see.”

  “And you say you do, as well? What is it, then?”

  “The times, perhaps.”

  “But at the time everything has always seemed awful. You’ve only to read those bits in the newspapers quoting what they said a hundred years back. Their one idea is, the end of the world’s in sight, even then!”

  “What does Peter thi
nk about this?”

  “But I mean he’s much too young isn’t he? Being a boy he’s got at least another full two years to go yet, surely?”

  “Oh, I was only curious to learn, if I could, whether he had these depressions too,” Mr. Middleton explained.

  “Is that how things are by the time you have grown children?” she enquired. “That you’re always more taken up with them than with other people?”

  “No,” he told her. “It’s embarrassment, pure and simple, inclines one to lead any conversation back on them, away from oneself.”

  “Why away from you?”

  “As they grow older they make you feel so aged.”

  “Oh I’m sure!” she obviously mocked. “But listen. Isn’t this quite your favourite tune?”

  “Well yes, rather,” he admitted.

  “I only wish everyone danced as well as you . . .” she said.

  Up on the balcony Peter turned to his mother.

  “Would you say she was having me on, when she made out she came down to St. Olaf’s to see Shone?”

  “But why should she, darling?”

  “That’s exactly it. Annabel can’t want to see him. He’s not her brother.”

  “Oh well, you know Peter . . .”

  “And she doesn’t, in the least, care what position he holds in the School, you must admit.”

  “Perhaps she finds the boy attractive, dear.”

  Peter burst into happy laughter. “Oh now, that’s absurd,” he crowed. “Sorry and all that, but she couldn’t. Why, she might even get him sacked!”

  “It’s no use going on at me!” his mother said equably. “Perhaps your Terence Shone is rich, has money.”

  “Oh d’you think?”

  “A girl’s got to look after herself, you know.”

  “I’ll bet!” he laughed. “Poor old Annabel! And to think she has to! Have you any idea when all this started?”

  “Not the least. But I expect it could be very recent or, darling, you would be bound to have heard!”

  “Yes I would,” he solemnly agreed. “Marvellous steak,” he added. At that moment the music stopped and the band filed out.

  “Are they going to have meat, too?” he asked.

  Arthur Middleton and Annabel came back gaily calling out for their own steaks, all laughter, and it was plain they were delighted. At which Peter asked the girl.

  “Is Campbell the Campbell Anthony that used to be at St. Olaf’s?”

  “Yes, the identical one!”

  “Oh he’s hopeless, then! He left at the end of my second term. Everyone breathed a huge sigh of relief.”

  “So what?” Miss Paynton demanded.

  “Nothing,” the boy replied.

  “Steak’s cold,” Mr. Middleton grumbled.

  “Darling, Peter was so hungry,” his wife explained.

  •

  An hour or two later Mrs. Middleton, who had lit the coal fire in her grate because it was chilly, waited in her double bed, waited for Arthur with the lights off. At last she heard him coming, undress in the bathroom and then, almost before she knew it she lay so comfortable and warm, he was climbing cautiously in between the sheets.

  “Finished darling?” she murmured when he had settled.

  “All finished,” he answered.

  There was a pause.

  “Asleep?” she asked in a low voice, without turning over towards him.

  “Not yet,” he said.

  “So wonderful,” she immediately went on, “really wonderful to have Peter back! I’m afraid of burglars, alone in the house by daytime.”

  “Stupid,” he said and sighed with sleep.

  “I know, darling,” she insisted. “But I can’t help myself. You don’t mind?”

  “Course not,” he muttered, then yawned.

  “Such numbers of them,” she continued in a reflective sort of murmur. “Running through the house all day whenever it creaks. You mustn’t think I’m stupid to be nervous.”

  “Go to sleep,” he whispered.

  “I will, oh I will,” she replied. “But I do love going out with you and Peter so!”

  “Me too,” he said.

  “Love it when he’s back and dear Annabel,” she continued.

  “Sweet,” he murmured.

  “Poor darling, are you very tired?” she asked. On which he turned over on his back, watched firelight whispering on the ceiling while she rolled herself to his side and put a lazy arm warm across his throat.

  “I’m so happy, dearest,” she said.

  “And so you ought,” he answered.

  “Just think of being her age again with this Terence Shone!”

  “Questioned me if she should go on seeing him,” he told her.

  “Why didn’t Ann ask me?” Diana wondered.

  “Don’t call her that. Annabel’s the name.”

  “What Peter uses is good enough,” the mother whispered.

  “She doesn’t like it.”

  “Who cares, darling?”

  “Oh yes,” he replied, mumbling agreement. “Who cares?”

  “But I adore her,” she went on. “The girl’s fun, they laugh together.”

  Mr. Middleton went “mm . . . mm.”

  “So good for Peter. And she’s got no airs.”

  “Not a great deal to her,” the man groaned.

  Diana stirred. “I don’t know how you can lie there and say that,” she sleepily complained. “Why Annabel’s sweet.”

  “I’ll say,” he agreed.

  “Then are you a little bit enamoured of her darling?” In reply he laid a heavy fist across her legs.

  “Stupid,” he mumbled.

  “Oh but I’m keeping you from your precious sleep,” she exclaimed, her breath now a balm upon his neck. “Still it does amuse me terribly to see them together since she’s almost grown up and he’s such a tremendous schoolboy yet. You know there’s lots of girls wouldn’t at all be nice to him once they were ‘out,’ in spite of having seen such a lot of each other when she was in the schoolroom.”

  “I’ll bet,” he mumbled.

  “It is so,” she insisted. “And frightfully good for Peter! Why I bless her. Believe me,” she ended.

  “Lucky young chap,” he agreed, and yawned again.

  “So well grown,” his wife added.

  “Wonderful,” he mumbled.

  “Oh I know you! I saw someone watching her!” she said. “And I do mean just a word of serious blame here, dear. It would be tiresome if Peter took it in his head to notice.”

  “Who’re you referrin’ to?”

  “No one but you, Arthur darling. My wicked old darling. You won’t too much, will you?”

  “Dunno what you mean.”

  “You must go to sleep now, you’re tired. Yes, you must. Go to sleep. Oh you’ll never know how much I love you.”

  He snored.

  “There, sleep darling,” she murmured, she yawned.

  •

  A few days later Arthur Middleton, who had begun not to take a midday meal because he was getting fat, went to a News Film at one p.m. and ran slap into Annabel when he came out an hour later.

  “I was just thinking of you,” she greeted him.

  “You were!”

  “And how hard you worked!” she laughed.

  “I skip lunch most days,” he explained. “So once a week I go off in desperation to one of these places.”

  “Oh but oughtn’t you to eat occasionally?” she cried. “You must be worn out by the time you get home.”

  “Well it seems to suit me. As someone once said—when you get to my age you can’t digest any more, you simply ferment your food.”

  She laughed again. “Oh, don’t you of all people start off by being disgusting!! And besides you aren’t old! Whoever said so?”

  “Diana for one.”

  “I’ll bet she never can have.”

  “Look,” he said. “We mustn’t stand here like this all day, and hold up the foot traffic. Where
are you bound for?”

  “Well mine, thank goodness’s as strong as an ostrich,” she replied. “What’s more I, for one, have to have food.”

  “Alone?”

  “I am so it happens, yes, as a matter of fact.”

  “Then let me provide.”

  “Oh all right,” she accepted without enthusiasm. “Yes, thanks.”

  He took Miss Paynton to the nearest expensive restaurant.

  “You don’t strictly need to spend all this amount of money,” she exclaimed with more animation, brightening. “Really and truly,” she added.

  “Not every day I take you out.”

  “Yes, it’s the first time alone,” she agreed. “Oh don’t allow them to put us anywhere but in the window! I might miss someone I know pass.”

  “I haven’t any pull in this place,” he warned her, but despite this modesty the headwaiter knew him by name, took a “Reserved” card away, and sat them down where she could overlook the pavement.

  “After anyone in particular?” he enquired.

  “Who?” she vaguely asked, as though she had not heard.

  “That you’re looking for?”

  “Why of course not,” she grumbled. “Oh, but you are nice and kind to bring me here!”

  “Because I’ve an idea that a certain Mr. Shone doesn’t live in London.”

  “You don’t say! Oh now promise, you must, you can’t think it awful of me to go down to see Terry,” she pleaded, making her eyes very large at Arthur.

  “My dear, it’s not for me to stick my ugly nose into your affairs.”

  “Because I do get so terribly depressed sometimes,” she explained.

  “You are now?” he demanded in rather a gallant manner.

  “But coming out as you did, you simply saved my life,” she cried. “It was the luckiest thing! Just when I was so low I could hardly see out of my own eyes.”

  “Everyone gets fed up now and again, Annabel.”

  “What reason could you possibly have?” she protested. “You’re married after all!”

  “Yes.”

  “Well then!”

  “Oh none, I suppose,” he said, with some vagueness.

  “Or do you think I shouldn’t have expressed that last bit,” Miss Paynton seemed to apologize. “I can’t explain, only something made me bring to mind my grandfather, just now. He used to go out hunting twice a week, Mondays and Fridays, and travel back to the office Monday nights. And towards the end of his life he simply made a duty out of following hounds! Now that’s absurd, isn’t it? I mean what can it all have been but one more of his hobbies?”