Doting

by Henry Green

  “Then you were the only one, is all I can say.”

  “Now Charles, what would you do if you were in my shoes?”

  “Run like a hare.”

  “There you go again,” Mr. Middleton laughed. “Can’t you ever be serious?”

  “I’d have to meet the sweet little thing first, Arthur.”

  “God forbid, where you’re concerned, old man. And yet, in the end, you’d simply make yourself scarce if you were me, is that it?”

  “You alarm me Arthur, that’s all. You’re losing sleep over this, you say?”

  “I am a bit.”

  “And you, so serious as you’ve always been about your damned work. No, you just listen. Run like a hare.”

  “I might, at that,” Mr. Middleton said. “But, somehow, I don’t think I can.”

  •

  Her day’s work done, Annabel Paynton had a drink in the pub outside the office with her confidante, Miss Claire Belaine. “Oh Claire,” she said. “Can you imagine, but it’s happened again!”

  “Another?”

  “Yes. Don’t laugh. He’s married and middle-aged.”

  “Well, that does make for a bit of variety!”

  “There! You are laughing. I knew you might,” Miss Paynton rather breathlessly exclaimed although her companion, who was short and fat and ever wore an expression of comfortable wisdom, did not even smile. “All right, then, just wait till this happens to you, Claire. Everyone has their turn.”

  “I will. What’s his name?”

  “I don’t think it would be fair to tell.”

  “Have I met him?” Miss Belaine demanded. “Shouldn’t think so,” Miss Paynton said, after which there was a pause. “So you say he’s married?”

  “Of course.”

  “So are you in love with the man?”

  “But Claire how can one tell, and when I’ve not described a thing about him yet?”

  “I’m sorry. Go on, darling.”

  “It’s simply I’m very much afraid the whole old rigmarole is about to start all over, once more.”

  “Like Terence, or like Campbell you mean?”

  “No. This one’s so much older, you see.”

  “Well, in that case, avoid getting tangled with the wife then, Ann.”

  “But sometimes I’m terribly sorry for him, darling.”

  “Why? Does he complain?”

  “Never! Arthur’s not that sort at all.”

  “Arthur?”

  “There I go! My dear darling, you’re to forget I ever once let the name slip. In any case you can’t know, can you? I mean there are so many middle-aged Arthurs. But should one stop oneself being sorry for people? I don’t see how one could, do you? Seriously, are we to go round, for ever, just being careful against our truly better feelings, or judgements?”

  “Well then, exactly what d’you expect to get out of this?” Miss Belaine asked judicially.

  “How should I know? Ought we to reckon on a profit?”

  “You might lose.”

  “But, Claire, I don’t think so; only why not, if it comes to that? Because these endless Campbells and Terences just don’t exist yet, they haven’t even any feelings still, they’re damp. All they do is to use you with their parents. One’s an excuse to borrow the car.”

  “Won’t this Arthur make use of you, whoever he is?”

  “I expect he will,” Miss Paynton laughed. “But Claire, look, at our age we must be fairly expendable.”

  “Why?”

  “Simply because we have our own lives to make and you just can’t prepare for that dressed in white muslin, a dummy in the shop window, the wonder bride-to-be.”

  “How serious are you, Ann? You wouldn’t invite me to meet him?”

  “The only thing is, we can’t see each other except where he has to pay.”

  “Hotels?”

  “Restaurants,” Miss Paynton replied with a kind of satisfied calm. “And that’s one thing in his favour. One does get the most delicious food. Not like sitting over a tired sandwich with poor Campbell, to listen to a cheap band, thanks very much.”

  “Well, everyone to her own taste, Ann.”

  “Then you do think it dreadful in me?”

  “All I say again is, what about his wife?”

  “Oh I know, I know,” Miss Paynton cried. “Yet why in the world should a thing go as far as that?”

  “Yes, but won’t it?”

  “I can’t help the gentleman falling in love with me, can I?”

  “You needn’t see him.”

  “Even when he doesn’t know he is in love with me? Oh, I don’t suppose he is. But Claire, he’s all right. Takes me out of myself. I’ve told the poor man all about Terence, even a good deal about Campbell, and he’s so truly sweet and understanding. I’ve actually been sleeping well, once again.”

  “There’s worse things than lying awake.”

  “Oh Claire, darling,” Miss Paynton called out in a bright delighted voice. “I knew you’d disapprove. You’re out to make my poor flesh creep is that it?”

  “Well of course, Ann.”

  “I suppose we must be the only two close friends in the whole world could sit here, utterly different from one another, and still not agree, yet remain the closest of close to each other.”

  “But, my dear, I don’t admit we are so very dissimilar,” Miss Belaine objected.

  “Why, how d’you mean?”

  “Of course you’re a hundred times prettier than me, naturally, yet I’d say quite likely we wanted the same things in the end, Ann.”

  “Without knowing what those were? Except the obvious ones, I mean?”

  “Well, darling, now you are talking in riddles.”

  “In what way? I’m being flippant, is that it?”

  “Not yet.”

  “I’m sorry Claire. You’ll have to forgive. The truth is, all this I’ve been telling you will probably come to nothing, of course, And will end in tears probably, anyway. That’s not the point. Oh dear, will you please look at the time. I must fly.”

  On which they kissed and left.

  •

  Arthur Middleton was giving Miss Paynton dinner in his flat. They were alone except for the cook who served them, and who was to go home as soon as she had washed up.

  “Why didn’t you say, when you asked me, that Diana and Peter weren’t to be here?” Annabel demanded, a trace perhaps of severity in her tone.

  “Didn’t I?” Mr. Middleton queried. “Possibly I forgot.”

  “I wouldn’t think one could forget a little thing like that!”

  “Really?” he enquired. “As a matter of fact, Peter gets most awfully hipped in London. After all there’s not much for a boy here, is there? So Diana’s taking him up for a spot of salmon fishing with her brother in Scotland.”

  “Oh dear,” the girl said. “I could do with a bit of that myself.”

  “Yes, he is lucky, isn’t he! But I didn’t know that you cared about fishing, Ann?”

  “I might if I ever had some,” Miss Paynton answered. “Anything to get away from London, anyway.”

  “Why, aren’t you happy here?”

  “Who is?”

  “What’s the matter then?” he asked. “Your young men giving you trouble?”

  “Oh I don’t allow them to bother me,” Miss Paynton replied with spirit. “No it’s simply that you’ve been everywhere and I’ve never got even as far as Scotland, all my young life.”

  “Well in that case Ann, you must come up with us some time.”

  “Fat chance there is, I’d say.”

  “Why on earth not?”

  “Peter’s a bit young for me, you know,” the girl propounded and gave Middleton a sad-seeming, long, low look.

  “All right if you won’t come with Peter you shall with us. One day,” he added, virtuously.

  “Oh I don’t think so, no,” she said and laughed.

  “I thought you said you wanted to see Scotland.”

  “I
did and I still do,” the girl assured him.

  “So we’d bore you?” he asked, with obvious petulance.

  “Who’s fishing for compliments now?” she demanded.

  “What on earth do you mean by that, Ann?”

  “You know perfectly well,” she said. “There’s no one in the whole wide world I’d rather go with than you,” she averred, “and darling Diana,” she added, with a limpid look.

  “Well then?”

  “But you can’t just cart me around as an extra daughter, can you?” Miss Paynton objected.

  “It wouldn’t be that sort of thing at all,” he said.

  “What else could it be then, Arthur?”

  “What could it be?” he echoed. “D’you know what you’re saying? As a matter of fact . . . Oh Lord . . . No, you’re out to make difficulties, aren’t you? If we wanted to take you along, we would because, because we wished.”

  “So I expect! But Arthur, how might it look?”

  “Well there, I’m afraid, I can’t follow,” he said, with a hard note in his voice.

  “Oh won’t you understand there’s nothing I’d like better, nothing,” the girl insisted in a sort of wail. Upon which the cook came in with two grilled cutlets.

  “No you simply shouldn’t!” Miss Paynton protested. “Not your whole meat ration. Really it’s too sweet!”

  “Well they don’t bother with regulations, up where Diana and Peter are going, so I thought we might just as well eat theirs this evening. Isn’t that so, Mrs. Everett?”

  “Got to take what you can get these days,” the cook replied and left.

  “You are luxurious,” the young lady said softly, to the closed door. “Mummy has to cook for all of us now their wages have gone up so terribly. It’s awful not having even one servant sleeping on the premises. Mummy lives in terror of burglars when the house is left empty.”

  “We’re in the same boat,” Mr. Middleton explained with what seemed to be elaborate unconcern. “When Mrs. Everett packs up and goes home each evening, we’re completely on our own. We’ve only dailies, too.”

  “But why didn’t you say when you asked me?”

  “Tell you what Ann?”

  “That this was going to be like a Victorian melodrama. Me, all alone, with you, here!”

  “Don’t be so absurd, darling,” he protested in a hard sort of voice. “You can’t suppose, if you started screaming now, that someone like Mrs. Everett would rush in to help.”

  “What?” Miss Paynton wailed.

  “Nonsense, Ann. Of course she would. And I told Diana I’d asked you. In fact Diana ordered the meal herself.”

  “Oh I was just only thinking of Mummy,” the girl said in a petulant, dissatisfied tone of voice.

  “Then if Paula’s got any complaints she can take them to Mrs. Middleton,” the man said dryly.

  “Now you are really going all Victorian,” Miss Paynton cried, and laughed in almost a wanton fashion.

  “How so?” he demanded.

  “Why, when you talk of darling Diana with that absurdly formal voice.”

  “I like to show respect where respect is due,” the husband objected.

  “I know,” Miss Paynton said, with a sad smile.

  “What do you know?”

  “If I told, Arthur, you’d only say I was trying flattery.”

  “I can’t find out, my dear, until you consent to put whatever it is, into words.” In his turn he smiled gloomily at the girl.

  “It’s so difficult to express,” she at once informed the man. “Something people my age simply don’t seem to have for one another. Respect” she ended.

  “The only way to gain that, is to live with another person long enough.”

  “What an extraordinary idea, darling,” and she gave a disagreeable sort of laugh.

  “Why?” he demanded.

  “D’you honestly mean you would have to live with me for years before you could ever bring yourself to respect me.”

  “Oh I wasn’t being personal, Ann.”

  “I might have known you wouldn’t be, where I was concerned,” she said in a most petulant voice.

  “Here,” he protested. “Steady on! How could I have given you that idea?”

  “I know what you meant,” she insisted.

  “If I’ve been very tiresome, well then I apologize,” Mr. Middleton announced with a small smile.

  “Oh you haven’t! It’s all in me . . . in me,” she wailed at once.

  “I always seem to produce this effect,” he went on, still smiling as if to apologize.

  “Oh, do you?” she asked. “That makes everything much better.” She smiled mischievously at him now. “Then it isn’t just only me! Tell about the others you have here,” she continued. “How do they put up with it?”

  “Don’t be absurd, Ann,” he protested. “How often, after all, does Diana go away?”

  “How should I know?” she countered. “But do you have to get a girl alone then, do you, to have that effect on her?”

  “It wouldn’t be very amusing for Diana if I entertained girls here with her.”

  “So you don’t have ‘girls’ as you call them to dinner every night,” she said, it seemed almost in triumph.

  “Of course not, Ann.”

  “Then what did you mean when you said you always had that certain effect on the poor dears?”

  “I suppose it was just a figure of speech,” he said.

  “I bet,” she crowed. Her face was now alight with what was obviously amusement. “Because it’s only right that I should be very interested in marriage,” she went on. “Tell me, what does happen?”

  “In marriage? Pretty well everything you can imagine.”

  “No, now don’t be disgusting,” she demanded with a straight face. “I’m not like you, I really intend all I say. What I want to know is, can you take out the people you want, separately I mean.”

  “Diana and I never felt we should sit down and mope when chance left either of us on our own.”

  “So you’re just not sitting down and moping now?”

  “Exactly.”

  She laughed a gay laugh, and looked at him.

  “And you?” he smiled back.

  “Oh me?” She replied, instantly serious. “Why, you’re simply saving my life!”

  “Now Annabel!” he protested. “What is this?”

  “But it’s true,” she insisted. “You can’t imagine what things can be like when one goes out with Campbell!”

  “Who can’t?” Mr. Middleton demanded. “I can.”

  “So you’re just going to be nasty,” she pouted. “No, he talks of himself, nearly all the time. And he’s so depressed, poor sweet! It’s not that I don’t love him, I do, I dote on him, but he’s a rainmaker, stay with Campbell a couple of hours and heavy clouds at once begin to gather.”

  “That doesn’t sound very gay.”

  “My dear, it isn’t,” she said, rather glum.

  “Well, shall we have our ice now?” he asked, and rang. “I’m afraid there’s nothing more. Hasn’t been much for you, has there, worse luck.”

  “Oh Mrs. Everett,” Miss Paynton cried, as this lady immediately came in “I’ve had such a delicious dinner. And now an ice! No, it’s too much!”

  “Not enough to keep my old parrot pecking,” the cook dryly replied, without a glance, and left again.

  Arthur Middleton went to the door.

  “Mrs. Everett,” he called “we’ll have our coffee in the sitting room.” Then he shut the door and sat down.

  “I can’t imagine why Diana ordered ices,” he complained. “She knows very well my teeth are too shaky to eat them.”

  “You ought to go to a dentist then.”

  “That’s just it, Annabel. You were asking a moment ago about marriage. Well, it consists in one’s having teeth too uncertain for certain foods and no attention paid at all, none in the least! In fact one seems to get those dishes all the more often.”

  “Poor yo
u.”

  “I say, Ann, that’s a very attractive dress you’ve got on this evening!”

  “D’you really think so?”

  “I do.”

  “You don’t think it’s too low?” she asked in a matter of fact voice.

  “Why not at all,” he protested. “Besides, it lets one see your shoulders.”

  “All the same I daren’t hardly laugh in it,” she said and giggled.

  “Go on, try,” he encouraged, with a sort of fixed grin.

  “Now that’s not nice,” she reproved Mr. Middleton.

  “You have the most lovely shoulders, Ann.”

  “I do! You promise?”

  “Yes.”

  “Oh how nice! And what very good ices your Mrs. Everett makes.”

  “They come from round the corner.”

  “They can’t!”

  “You can buy eatable ices anywhere over the way, but one doesn’t come across someone like you in a month of Sundays.”

  “I don’t think that’s very flattering,” she objected in a bored voice.

  “Well then, now you’ve finished, shall we go and have coffee Ann?”

  “Yes, let’s,” she said, rising to lead a way into the next room.

  Here they found a deep sofa drawn up to face the fire.

  “Arthur,” she almost accused him “you’ve been pulling the furniture about. I don’t remember this, here, before.”

  “I felt it was rather cold tonight. So I moved everything out from that bookcase because I thought we’d be more cosy.”

  “I see,” she said and sat down on it.

  “What d’you have, white or black?”

  “Oh black please. Don’t you remember?”

  The tray with their coffee things stood on rather a high trolley. When he had served Miss Paynton and sat down at her side, the pot stood almost at the level of his eyes.

  “I’ve never been out to dinner alone with you before,” he excused himself. “I know you take white at lunch, of course.” He gulped his down at one go.

  The young lady sipped hers. “You give one such a lot to drink,” she announced.

  “Nonsense” he said and then they both fell silent.

  But when she had drained her cup, she reached up to put this away on the trolley and as she leant back once more it was to find that he had put an arm along the back of the sofa and that she was, so to speak, sitting against it. His hand closed on the bare shoulder. Without looking at him she reached her far hand over and put it over his. Then, when she felt him pulling at her she said “Arthur,” expressionlessly, and half turned her head away.