by Henry Green
“And can’t you, then, ever talk over your own father?” she demanded suddenly with some petulance.
“On occasions,” he replied with calm. “At St. Olaf’s.”
“Why there?”
“Didn’t you go to school?”
“No.” she said. “I had governesses.”
“Wouldn’t you discuss your parents with them?”
“Heavens,” she cried with a shrill laugh. “You’ve never seen mine or you couldn’t say that.”
“No,” he agreed. “I’d be too young.”
“I don’t think you are, Peter. It wasn’t such ages ago. I say, in your own mind, would you consider your mother beautiful?”
“Yes,” he said, rather gruff, “as a matter of fact.”
“Me too,” she echoed, but in a sad little voice. “She has everything, Hair, teeth, skin, those wide apart eyes. By any standard your father’s a very lucky man.”
“Why?”
“To have such a wife of course. Would you say she liked me, Peter?”
“Fairly, yes. No reason not to, is there?”
“Oh none,” she agreed, casually.
“She was jolly pleased with you as a matter of fact for coming along again the other night, to the play and afterwards.”
“But I loved to, Peter.”
“Shouldn’t have thought it could have been much fun for you.”
“I adore them both, you see.”
“Well look out then, Ann! If you go on being so intense about it, you’ll get nerves or something.”
At which they began to giggle at themselves, then over the Indian waiter who was a melancholy looking man, at the hot curry and saffron coloured rice, and then over the sweet which looked like little dog’s turds, under the pink paper carnations in a dry, dusty vase.
•
The same evening Arthur Middleton worked as usual on the papers he’d brought home from the office. When he did come at last he found the fire lit, lights extinguished and Diana in bed, humped beneath the clothes, motionless, hardly breathing.
He undressed quietly, as usual, and climbed with stiff knees between the sheets. Mrs. Middleton again had her broad back towards him, the dark hill of her thigh was across his sight.
“Finished darling,” she murmured, when he had settled down.
“All done,” he mumbled.
There was a long pause.
“Gone off yet?” she asked in a low voice.
“No, my dear,” he replied.
“Wasn’t it sweet of darling Annabel,” she said.
“What’s the girl done now?”
“Taken Peter out to lunch.”
“Did she,” he murmured in an uninterested voice. “So good for him at his age,” Diana added.
Mr. Middleton gave a grunt.
“I daren’t think what they can have found to talk about, though,” Mrs. Middleton wondered. “Of course I chatter away to him and he’s so jolly with me always—that’s only natural, but wasn’t it generous of anyone in her generation to take the trouble?”
“Yes indeed,” he faintly assented.
They were lying back to back. Diana turned over, settled the sheets about his chin. He brought a hand up and put these back the way they were.
“Sleepy?” she murmured.
“A bit,” he admitted.
“Well you can talk just a few minutes more,” she said, in almost a brisk voice. “What d’you think they find to say to one another?”
“Discuss us?” he suggested.
“Oh we’d have no earthly interest for them, Arthur. Besides darling Peter would be too loyal.”
“Children do compare notes, you know.”
“Dig out things in common between me and Paula Paynton. Oh, no dear!”
He mumbled unintelligibly.
“What Arthur?”
“Only saying I’ve not much in common with Prior Paynton either.”
“Oh, that fool of a man,” she said. “There could be no earthly resemblance at all, darling.”
With a slow heave Arthur Middleton levered himself over on his back. Diana rearranged the sheets under her chin. Firelight whispered on the ceiling.
“Well I can’t say what the children discuss,” he admitted in quite a strong voice. “Anyway, it won’t be wine women and song, not at his age.”
“But d’you think she could be a little old for him, Arthur?”
“You just said . . .”
“Now I’m asking you, dear,” she interrupted.
“What exactly is it you mean, Di?”
“Of course it’s good for Peter to see life, but I was wondering if I liked his going out, quite so soon, with older girls.”
“Jealous of Annabel, darling?” Mr. Middleton enquired with a smile.
“Well yes, I suppose I am, perhaps, a bit.”
“But Di, this has got to come sooner or later with the boy.”
“I’m not sure, you see, if this is not too soon. I don’t mind your asking her out to lunch, of course, as you did when you ran into the child, but don’t you understand, she couldn’t have you back, she had to invite Peter instead. And those beastly, cheap curry places are dangerous with the food they serve. Besides he might get hashish there, or hemp, or whatever it is these Indians take.”
“Oh my love,” he said “no! I promise they’re most respectable.”
“All of them?”
“Certainly.”
“Every single one?”
“Well of course, Di, I couldn’t say.”
“There you are then . . .”
“So I mustn’t ask out anyone we’ve entertained here, to come to lunch, if I stumble into them on the street, for fear they may invite Peter to a meal in return? Is that it?”
She chuckled.
“Yes,” she said.
He laughed.
“I see,” he said.
“Do you, Arthur?”
“Well yes. In a way,” he answered.
“Which means you aren’t going to pay the slightest attention?” She laughed with great good humour. “Is that what you mean, my wicked old darling?”
His reply was to turn over and give her a light kiss on the nose.
“Well, you may be right, though I’m sure not,” she said. “I expect you think I’m just being silly!”
“I love you,” he murmured, shutting his eyes.
She put a lazy arm warm across his throat. He laid a heavy fist over her legs.
“There, sleep my darling,” she mumbled.
And in a moment or two he snored.
•
Some days later Mr. Middleton rang Annabel first thing, soon as he got to the office.
“Oh it’s you,” she answered in a neutral voice when he reached her.
“Look,” he continued. “I don’t know how you expect a man to pass his lunch hour, but I was wondering if you wouldn’t do me a favour and come out, for once, today?”
“To lunch?” she asked in an expiring voice. “Well, I might.”
“Same time and place?” he enquired in what seemed elaborately casual tones.
“Oh yes, very well. Yes, thanks a lot,” she said.
Yet, when they met in the restaurant, she was all smiles.
“This is sweet,” she said in her clear piping voice, and seemed to draw Arthur forward while shaking his hand. “And in this glamorous, expensive room again. You are kind!”
“Nice of you to turn up,” he answered.
“Why, I’m not late, am I?” she asked. “Oh, if you only knew,” she added without waiting for the reply, preceding him to the bar.
“What?”
“Simply no one invites me anywhere, any more,” she complained.
“Rot.”
“No longer now, it isn’t, alas,” Annabel insisted, then had three cocktails, one after the other.
So it was with sparkling eyes that she reached their corner table, in the end. This time they didn’t overlook the street.
“I’v
e been through such dire trouble with Mummy,” Miss Paynton began, as soon as they had ordered.
“Not the first or the last time I presume,” he smiled.
“No,” she said “but this is serious. Of course I’m really much closer to Mummy than I am to Dads but I can’t remember her ever being so cross with me, ever before.”
“What about?”
“You see I went down to visit someone in the country.”
“Shone?” he asked.
“Well yes,” she said. “For the first and only time, as a matter of fact. And Terry’s parents turned out to be really quite odious people. So rude, when I did go as a guest, after all!”
Miss Paynton made her eyes very large and round at Arthur.
“Oh quite,” he said with an encouraging smile.
She began to giggle.
“Terry didn’t altogether invite me,” she went on. “But when he phoned and wanted to know what I was doing with myself these days, I said, ‘why on earth don’t you just come up to London for an evening?’ and he said he simply hadn’t the money. Oh Arthur,” she cried, using his Christian name for the second time, “how squalid it can be to fall in love with a schoolboy! So then I had to journey to him! I made Bill Allen take me in his car.”
“Who’s he?”
“Nobody. He has a big car. I bet Mrs. Shone was surprised to see me in anything so terrific.”
“How old is this Allen?”
“About twenty-four. What’s that got to do with it?”
“Nothing,” Arthur said. “But you’ve this to consider; if you were both young then Mrs. Shone could have been seized with jealousy, Ann.”
“Well of course. She can’t expect to be any other way from now on, can she?”
“Unless she does you down, in the end.”
“Oh how beastly even to dare suggest such a thing,” Miss Paynton exclaimed while she smiled fondly on Arthur. “What’ll you bet?”
“No thanks,” he smiled back. “You can’t be serious, though, when you say you expected a warm welcome from this woman.”
“Did I say that?” she objected. “Because it turned out, in the end, Terry had been too frightened to tell his mother we were coming. So Bill and I couldn’t have done worse when we roared up the drive in good time for lunch. It’s a Dagonda. In addition to which, Sunday comes as a very quiet day for them down there. But you must agree, all in all, it was perfectly disgraceful on poor Terry’s part.”
“Well, I can’t entirely see that.”
“If you’d only heard him on the phone! He sounded so low, poor dear.”
“Which is the only one reason you felt you had to go?”
“Why else?” she asked.
“And the father then? What sort of a man is Mr. Shone? Didn’t he like you?”
“Oh, he’s much older than you.”
“I thought you once said you preferred older men!”
“Terry’s father would be too sweet if he wasn’t so dim with his wife,” Miss Paynton answered with a bright smile. “But although there wasn’t enough for his lunch because of Bill and me, I could tell he was quite thrilled. The worst of all this was, Sunday is a considerable day for them into the bargain, as I said before. They go to church and that.”
“Yes,” Arthur agreed. “Granted.”
“But I’m a bit off Terry at the moment,” she went on. “I was, already, if you remember, a week or two back, only for a different reason. Then when Bill had to lug me down halfway to the sea, all that distance and he can’t afford it any more than Terry can, coming up to London, well, I mean, I don’t see how I could be expected to stretch my loyalties between two boys as if I was a bit of wonderful elastic, do you?”
“I’m sure you gave joy to Shone, anyway.”
“That might be,” she agreed. “But if only he wasn’t so meek,” she answered. “He was struck dumb at not having told his mother about lunch. That’s what must have brought all the stuffiness out in her. Oh,” she said, and her eyes filled with bold tears, “isn’t everything really too terrible, sometimes? One goes down to the rescue of a fellow human being of whom one’s frightfully fond at the moment, he sends out an SOS for help, and they treat you like a thief, a baby snatcher.”
“The best way,” Arthur said “is to give advice only over the telephone and then never find out if the advice has been taken. Above all, don’t follow up in person.”
“In that case how’s a girl ever to get married?”
“In what way, d’you mean?” he asked.
“I hope I never fall so low as to receive my proposals, if I should get any, on long distance, with women in every exchange between where he is and London comparing notes on how he pops the question.”
“Yes, I see,” Arthur admitted. “I suppose you must face the men concerned.”
“In the end I imagine the one thing will be to fall in love just with those one can meet naturally, without all this perfectly ruthless parent trouble.”
“Your men would need to be much older, then.”
“Yes, they would,” she agreed with a smile. “Arthur, you’re sweet. In fact I don’t know how I’d manage without you, and Diana, and dear Peter. But what made it worse was, when I told Mummy of the disastrous trip down to see, she turned quite cross and said I oughtn’t to have gone! Well I realize the way her mind works, how she looks at things through her generation’s spectacles, but you do understand, don’t you, I can’t sit at home and simply wait, can I? Not as things are now.”
“Why not?” he argued. “You’ve loads of time.”
“There never is,” she objected, and again her eyes filled with tears.
At this point the wine waiter came to take their order. Mr. Middleton laid knife and fork down.
“Will you have anything, Ann?” he asked.
“Oh no thanks,” she answered with a sad smile. “Just plain water, please.”
“D’you mind if I take a whisky and splash?”
“How could I when you’re being so perfect.”
Arthur ordered the drink.
“You are inclined to flatter one a bit, you know,” he said when they were alone once more.
“Me?” she cried. “All I can say is, I wish you were my parent!”
“What about your own father, then?”
“Dads?” she said. “Oh he’s sweet right enough. But Mummy and me don’t see such a lot of him just now.”
“I know,” he gravely agreed. “I’d heard something. Your parents are two of Diana’s oldest friends.”
“Are now, or used to be?” she asked.
“Yes,” he admitted “things can’t have been easy for you since Prior and Paula began not to get on. Unhappy people are apt to be bores, Annabel.”
“That’s exactly what so terrifies me about myself,” she exclaimed. “I can’t ever be sure, now, I’m not becoming one. Peter’s lucky to have you, believe you me. Because, as you’ve just hinted things are truly a bit grim for us at home at the moment, so I have to watch myself the whole time to guard against the utter bore I may become.”
“What absolute rot,” he protested. “Of course you aren’t.”
“Oh, but yes!”
“Yet you’ve two young men up your sleeve, ready and glad to propose tomorrow.”
“I told you,” she said. “They don’t mean a thing.”
“But, Annabel, they must prove to you that you’re liked.”
“I expect they only go to show I’m not entirely hideous,” she muttered.
“Don’t sit there across from me and say your generation of males want to marry just because a girl’s a good-looker, for I simply won’t believe that,” he pronounced.
“Well, what d’you know about it?” she asked politely.
“In my time people didn’t.”
“Of course you in particular never could,” she agreed at once. “But if what you say is true, then how lucky you both are, don’t you understand, I mean with the person you married.”
�
�No, honestly Annabel, if you’re trying to make out men of your own age can’t fall genuinely in love any longer, then I give up.”
“You see,” she replied “you were all so much more high principled in your day. From your own lips I had that story about a Mr. Humphrey . . . Humphrey what’s his name?”
“Byass. How does he come into this?”
“Yes Byass. Well those girls, as they were, just must have mobbed the man because they thought he wasn’t genuine.”
“Good Lord no! I don’t think that at all. They were only being objectionable and hearty. You can’t make them out to be more than they were.”
“What have you ever known about women?” she demanded with some petulance.
“Enough never to discuss ’em,” he dryly replied.
“Yet you do all the time, probably.”
“Perhaps it’s only when I’m with you,” he suggested, smiling.
“Now I’m boring you once more,” she exclaimed in obviously mock contrition. “But I do apologize,” she said with a sort of humble rage. Then Miss Paynton added, self pityingly, “What a way to entertain one’s host over luncheon!”
“Nonsense,” he said, in what, it seemed plain, was some alarm. “Exciting for a man my age to be out with anyone as pretty as you.”
She left her eyes on his face and looked sad.
“Care was taken in those days,” she said. “Girls were looked after, you yourself protect them still. I don’t mean only you, but your whole generation.”
“Perhaps it is girls won’t take the trouble, now,” he suggested.
“Don’t take trouble?” she echoed with indignation.
“Oh you mustn’t think I can’t realize how good you are to come out and bother with me,” he put in quickly “but I . . .”
“Please stop now, at once, being so modest,” she interrupted. “I’m sure you can’t mean that. I like to be invited by you. I dote on when you ask me. Now then!”
“All right, thanks. I’m sorry,” he said. “But you’ll ruin your whole life, believe me, if you insist that everything was better in the days you’re too young to remember. People don’t change much and if one wanted to find them distasteful then, it used to come quite easy.”
“How can I wish to dislike anyone?” she pouted.
“Well, if I may say so, you’re going the right way about it now.”