by Henry Green
“Now Diana . . .”
“I know,” she interrupted “but that’s only natural, isn’t it? This is the way things are, Charles!”
“I’m sure Arthur—”
“And we can’t change them,” she insisted. “There are moments I feel it would be almost presumptuous to try. One has to learn one can’t go against the laws of nature, and that can be a very painful experience, as I’ve just discovered, to my cost.”
“My dear,” he asked “what is this?”
“He’s found another girl,” she told him in a very small voice.
“But that’s preposterous,” Mr. Addinsell began, when she cut in with,
“Oh damn, I think I’m going to cry.”
Upon which he drew in to the side of the road, put his arm round her shoulder. While she turned her face away, he demanded,
“Now Diana what is all this?”
She held her breath while two tears came down each side of her nose. She did not answer.
“There are days I wonder,” he said in low tones “if we aren’t, every one of us, at our lowest, this time of the year.” He looked to his front, the windscreen wiper clicked and hissed to and fro. “Wet streets, rainclouds down to the tops of the houses, this awful damp, and if you get a cold you can’t seem to throw it off—there’s nothing worse than our English winter,” he concluded.
She blew her nose, seemed to get herself under control. Then he put his far hand over, under her chin, turned this towards him and gently kissed her wet mouth. She as quietly responded.
“I’m sorry I’m such a fool,” she said.
“You weren’t,” he replied. “Now we’d better get under way, again, before a policeman catches up.”
“Drive slowly, won’t you,” she begged. “While I repair the damage.” She got out her bag.
“Of course, and don’t talk of what’s bothering you, unless you want.”
She spoke in a smothered sort of voice from under her powder puff.
“I swore I wouldn’t, but now I can’t seem to help myself,” she said.
“Then come out with it,” he encouraged.
“Only that I came home and found him in bed with that horrible little Annabel Paynton,” she lied.
“It’s not possible, my dear!” Mr. Addinsell protested, in a shocked voice.
“Oh yes, and stark naked, of course. Oh whatever am I to say to Paula, if she should get to learn?”
“I can’t believe it,” Arthur’s best friend said. “The silly juggins!”
“And I, who’d come back to tell him his own son was unconscious in hospital!”
“Didn’t they say anything?”
“What was there to tell me?”
“No, quite. But he made out to me she’d spilt some coffee on her dress.”
“So he’s spoken to you?” she said, still working on her face. “Oh I expect they began like that, but it’s how this thing ended,” she lied and did not look at Addinsell. “You won’t mention this to a soul, of course?”
“Me?” he asked. “Rather cut my tongue off first!”
“So now I’ve told you,” she exclaimed. She put away her bag again. “You’re a great comfort, Charles,” she said and put her hand rather heavily on his arm. The car swerved. “Oh,” she cried. “Oh Charles, I’m sorry,” she added “all my own hysterical, silly fault!”
“That’s all right,” he reassured her. “No harm done at all.”
“Ah, but there might have been,” she responded. “That’s the way tragedies happen.”
“So how did all this end between you and Arthur?”
“Does anything ever end?” she objected. “I called him out, of course. I had to tell him about Peter. Then I went back to the hospital and didn’t show a thing to the boy, I can at least say that for myself.”
“Good for you Diana!”
“Now we must be somewhere near the restaurant you are taking me to and I absolutely refuse to talk about myself any more, or to allow you to.”
And she kept him to this. Once or twice in the evening she made him swear again he would not tell a soul, but, beyond that, she would not let him refer to what she said she had seen.
When he drove her back home she permitted him to stop the car a little distance from her door and kiss her quite hard. She cried a bit again, then, but said no more before she left him.
•
The next day, when Peter was discharged from hospital, his parents received the young man almost as though he were back from the dead.
“Well, my dear boy,” the father cried aloud “this really is something!” and shook him by the hand.
“But how are you, darling?” Diana insisted.
“Bloody awful,” the boy said.
“Sit down at once. Now tell me, quite calmly, are you still in pain?”
“God yes,” the young man answered. “And the nights are agony.”
“Really Arthur!” the wife, his mother, broke out in ringing tones “have they any right to let patients out in his condition?”
“I suppose they need the beds,” Mr. Middleton remarked in what was, probably, too casual a tone.
“Then they are murderers,” she said with firmness. “Arthur, should he go to a nursing home, d’you think?”
“Now, hang on a minute,” the boy protested. “It’s death in those places, they nearly kill you. You can’t want to send me in again?”
“But you don’t seem well at all, to me, darling.”
“Oh I suppose I’ve what they call recovered,” her son admitted with obvious reluctance. “But, d’you know, three people died in my, ward, while I was there?”
“Don’t, darling,” said his mother.
“I really think you might have put me in a private room.”
“Where was the money to come from?” his father asked.
“There you go again, Arthur,” Mrs. Middleton complained. “When Peter’s all we have!” Then, in a sinister voice, she added “Now!”
“Thirty guineas a week?” the husband queried.
“Three days,” she answered. “And how much in that time do you spend on gin?”
“Oh come, Diana darling, you like your glass as well.”
“I need it,” she replied, emphatically.
“Yes, at least three people died,” Peter interjected.
“No, don’t,” was Mrs. Middleton’s earnest plea.
“What time of the day or night?” his father wanted to be told.
“Usually it seemed about four or five in the morning.”
“But weren’t you asleep then?”
“God, you don’t sleep in those places.”
“Curious,” Mr. Middleton remarked “it always seems that resistance is lowest at that hour of the night.”
“And this time of year,” his wife murmured.
“You wouldn’t joke about it if you’d just seen three people die before your very eyes!”
“I wasn’t joking, Peter,” Mr. Middleton explained. “What I can’t make out,” the boy went on “is why, at my age, you send me to a place like that.”
“Because I thought you’d been killed,” his mother told him in a great voice. “I had to get you somewhere at once,” she added.
“Well, it was absolute hell,” the boy said.
“But are you all right now?” Mr. Middleton demanded.
“Yes, fairly.”
“Does it hurt you still?”
“Of course.”
“Then are you enough all right to go up with your mother to Uncle Dick’s?”
“Oh I’d still like to get in some fishing.”
“It’s so dull for him in the holidays, this time of the year, Arthur.”
“Don’t I know,” the man exclaimed, almost with vexation. “But it would be unfair on your brother to send the boy up to him if he was going to be ill, even if you were there to nurse him.”
“But, darling Peter, you’d get along all right without me?”
“Aren’t you
going now, then?” her husband demanded.
“Well naturally I’ll travel if Peter needs me,” the mother promised. “Surely, darling, you’ll get along all right, alone with Uncle Dick?”
“Why, don’t you want to come up with me?”
“You see, my dear, I’ve had really rather a shock!”
“You were hurt in the smash?” her son asked her, with what seemed to be distaste.
“Well, perhaps,” she said, looking hard at the husband.
“And are you all right now?” the boy enquired.
“Yes and no,” she answered.
After which it was agreed they should get their doctor’s opinion on Peter’s travelling. When this turned out to be favourable he journeyed up alone next day.
•
On the Monday Mr. Middleton rang Ann Paynton. She blandly agreed to meet him that morning, at the usual time and place, for lunch.
She was first, and, when she shook him by the hand, “I thought I was never going to see you again,” she said.
“Oh now, hardly as bad as that,” he answered.
She laughed. “I don’t know, Arthur. At the time I thought things were pretty fierce.”
He simpered. “Nice of you to make a joke, Ann.”
“Though it wasn’t very funny, then, after all,” she countered, in what appeared to be disgust.
“Perfectly appalling for both of us,” he agreed.
“Oh, Arthur, I do so want to apologize,” she nervously said. “I can’t think what came over me to take off my skirt, except of course, panic.”
“And if I hadn’t been such a damn fool to spill coffee all over you, as though I, at my age, didn’t know how to kiss a girl, then none of this would have happened!”
“Don’t let’s talk of that,” she implored, examining her shoes. “But I have so few clothes. My one idea was to get the stain out. Honest!”
“Yes Ann, I know,” Mr. Middleton earnestly agreed.
“So there was trouble?”
“Yes.”
“Bad trouble, Arthur?”
“Pretty bad.”
“Oh dear. I think perhaps you’d better give me a drink.”
They went to the bar. After a moment or two she giggled.
“What’s that for?” he asked.
“Your face,” she replied.
“What’s wrong with it?” He twisted until he could see himself in a mirror.
“Not now,” she giggled. “Then.”
Mr. Middleton looked ruefully at himself. “When I was down on my knees?” he queried, watching his own reflection.
“Oh yes,” she said, in plain delight.
He turned back to the girl.
“Diana’s been giving me some of that,” he told her.
“Oh you poor dear,” Miss Paynton cried and patted his knee as he sat beside her, up at the bar. “What do I want to bring that up for, just when you have at last asked me out again? So Peter’s all right?”
“Yes, thank God.”
“And they’re both off to Scotland?”
“No. Diana wouldn’t go.”
“Is it serious then, Arthur? About Diana I mean?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “I can’t make out.”
“Why, whatever’s happened?”
“Well, we’ve been married eighteen years, Ann, and I’ve never known anything like this, ever.”
“Like what?”
“It’s hard to describe. You see, I love my wife,” he announced in a low voice, with unction. “We’ve always trusted one another. Now, all on one side, that seems to have evaporated, and in a night!”
The young lady said nothing. She watched him.
“I don’t know whether it wouldn’t be a good idea if you went to her and explained, Ann.” He did not look at Miss Paynton as he suggested this.
“I’d not be too keen,” she replied, still closely watching the man.
“D’you think?” he murmured.
“Mightn’t work out at all,” she said.
“Oh well, if you feel that way, Ann.”
“D’you mind?”
“No, it was just a thought. But I don’t fancy the idea of Diana going to Paula.”
“To Mummy?” the girl cried. “Oh things are really serious, then!” she wailed. “Why she couldn’t! That would be really the end!”
“I mean if you could somehow apologize?”
“But what for?” Miss Paynton demanded with spirit. “For being kissed by a person who then went and upset all the coffee over my dress? Oh Lord, now I shall really have to tell Mummy.”
“Now for heaven’s sake, Ann, don’t you go to Paula with this!”
She bit her pretty lip.
“I must get in first,” she explained.
“But listen, you can . . .”
“Has Diana actually said she was going?” the daughter interrupted.
“Not yet.”
“Oh, it’s a disaster,” Miss Paynton exclaimed, with extreme symptoms of disquiet, although she kept her voice down, and only an acute observer of this scene could have noticed the untoward. “Then my whole reputation’s at stake?”
“But this was all an accident, Ann.”
“Fat lot of difference that will make when Mummy hears,” the girl said, with what might be described as indignation.
“But has she actually said she was to go to Mummy?”
“No.”
“At the same time you think she will?”
“Not really.”
“Now look, Arthur. This could be vital to me. Is she, or isn’t she? If you’ve been married for eighteen years you ought to know! Will she go or not?”
“Probably not.”
“That’s no great comfort,” the young lady objected.
“I’m sorry I started this,” Mr. Middleton proclaimed. “Diana never said she had that in mind, even. I expect I have too vivid an imagination. I just wondered if it mightn’t be a good idea if you dropped in to see Di.”
“Has the same sort of happening happened before?”
“Ann, what is this?”
“Has she been to anyone else’s mother?”
“No, of course not.”
“Then I’ll tell you what. I won’t go to Mummy if you swear, swear mind, you’ll let me know in good time beforehand if she actually threatens to.”
“But of course, Ann. What d’you take me for?”
“I’m sorry. I got upset.”
“It’s I who ought to apologize,” he said with an air of considerable relief. “When all’s said and done, I started this.”
“Then what made you imagine Diana was going to?”
“She’s been in such a curious way lately,” he replied.
“How?”
“Well, by not travelling with Peter to Scotland, for one.”
“I expect she may wish to keep an eye on you, Arthur, just over the next week or two.”
“I’m not sure of that,” he said. “And there’s this whole business of Charles Addinsell.”
“I don’t know about him, do I?”
“Old friend of ours, Ann. But, dammit, she’s been out with Charles three times in five whole days.”
“You mean he’s a flame?”
“Of course not, Ann. Don’t be ridiculous, if you’ll excuse the expression. As a matter of fact he’s a very old friend of mine and I asked him myself, when this happened, to take her out.”
“Well then! Everything’s perfect, isn’t it?”
“That’s exactly what I don’t know.”
“Arthur!” she demanded. “Are you, yourself, jealous now?”
“I don’t know,” he dully repeated.
“You are!” she insisted.
“And if I am, why shouldn’t I be?” he asked, with some signs of irritation.
“Yet she hasn’t been caught with her skirt off too, has she?”
“Really, Ann,” he protested. “You go too far!”
“I’m sorry, truly I am,” she repl
ied with a show of great conviction. “But what makes you think, then, the way you do?”
“Well, you know, three times in five days! When they’d hardly before been out together more than once a week! What d’you suppose they’re saying all those hours?”
“I’ve simply no idea,” she answered, with a straight face.
Then their barman asked if they had any further orders and they realized that lunch must be almost over. Hurrying into the restaurant, they ate in haste and did not again refer to Mrs. Middleton. In fact they cheered up, teased each other, and became quite gay on lager beer.
The next evening Mr. Addinsell was driving Diana Middleton home after he had given her dinner.
“Come up to my rooms and have one for the road,” he suggested in a casual sort of voice. “Before I drop you back.”
“Oh I’ve had so much to drink already, Charles,” she said and giggled.
“Nonsense, Di. Do you good. Only just round this corner here.”
“Well then, if it’s only the one,” she agreed. She yawned. “You’re such a help to me,” she added.
“Got to get out of oneself, every once and again,” he said. “And you know, you’re a very, very attractive woman.”
“Now Charles,” she reproved with a kind of lazy indulgence. “If we have any more of that, I’ll take a taxi off the nearest rank. Besides, you don’t begin to mean it.”
“Have things your own way. Here we are,” he announced, drawing up.
Upstairs, as he poured gin into her glass, she called out, “Stop! That’s quite enough. D’you want to make me drunk?”
They sat side by side on a sofa. He took her hand. After squeezing his once, she removed hers.
“Let’s be serious a moment,” she suggested. “I’ve been awfully good this whole evening, haven’t I? Never even mentioned Arthur and my wretched affairs a single time. But just tell me this one thing. D’you think I should tell Paula?”
“Paula Paynton? What for?”
“Well, to warn her!”
“Would that help?”
“But Charles, in fairness to herself she ought to know her daughter’s going to bed with men old enough to be the little creature’s father.”
“If you do that,” he objected “you’ll have Prior Paynton round to horsewhip Arthur.”
She gave a delighted laugh.