Doting

by Henry Green

  “Yes, pretty few dances these days.”

  “It’s quite a problem for a girl, oh yes.”

  “Yet I suppose Prior and Paula still have young people in?”

  “Of course you know Mummy and Dads! But who can afford much of that nowadays?”

  “Your parents can’t be as expensive as you make out, surely?”

  She gaily giggled.

  “You are awful!” Miss Paynton protested. “Don’t dare to pretend my remark meant anything of the sort!”

  He smiled. “Sorry, and all,” he said.

  “And so you should be,” she commented, indulgently forgiving.

  “Have one more?”

  “What about you?” she temporized.

  “I’m going to.”

  “Well perhaps. Then I’ll simply have to fly.”

  They were silent while he ordered, and obtained, the drinks.

  “But you can’t tell me that a man like you, with all your friends, ever has a casual, empty moment?” she proposed, in what appeared to be genuine friendliness.

  “Oh, don’t I,” he objected. “What with the last show and all, many of ’em are dead by now.”

  “Yes, with two wars and everything in between, your generation’s had quite a pasting.”

  “Not quite so old as that, just yet,” he told her, with a smile. “Arthur and I were still at school in the first do.”

  “Oh, what can you think?” she cried. “How ridiculous!” She blushed.

  “Not at all. Most natural; forget it. Look, what about a spot of lunch. Do one very well at this place.”

  “Oh, I often come here,” she boasted. “But after what I said? I mean I don’t deserve . . .” she went on in a more natural way than previously. “And I did ought to be getting along. As a matter of fact we’ve rather a marvellous arrangement at our office about the lunch hour.” Talking hard now, she proceeded to tell Addinsell a good deal on the subject of her work. In the end they walked through to the restaurant without another mention of their lunch.

  “What would you like to have?” he enquired.

  “Oh no, I couldn’t.”

  “Not even lion’s drink?”

  “No, no, I’d be drunk!”

  “It’s water.”

  “Oh you are silly,” she giggled. “I never heard that one before. Yes, I think I’d better.”

  “All right far as I’m concerned.”

  “No, water really, please!”

  “Suit yourself,” he agreed, then proceeded to order an expensive meal.

  “Saw old Diana the other day,” he began once more, but this time without looking at the girl.

  “You did?”

  “Yes,” he agreed, eyes averted.

  “Well what’s strange about that?” she demanded, in rather a nervous voice.

  “Seemed a bit upset,” Mr. Addinsell pronounced, gravely regarding the young lady for once.

  “But how extraordinary,” Miss Paynton exclaimed. “She’s never said anything to me.”

  “Hasn’t she?”

  “What d’you mean?” Ann almost quavered, then seemed to recover. “Oh well she wouldn’t, you understand. Not a woman who is, after all, of another generation. Look,” she broke out. “Over there. No, there! Isn’t that the film star, Jack Cole?”

  “I wouldn’t know. Don’t go to ’em.”

  “Oh Mr. Addinsell, what you miss,” she almost cooed, and yet seemed alerted, defensive. “Now, why don’t you just call me Charles?”

  “May I?”

  “And can I reciprocate with Ann?”

  “Of course.” She spoke with complete unconcern. “Everyone uses Christian names nowadays, at least in my generation. It just doesn’t mean a thing,” she threw in. “D’you know, I think he is Jack Cole!”

  “Who’s he appeared with?”

  “Oh Jack Cole’s simply too terrific for words. He’s slaying!”

  “How d’you find Arthur’s been these last few days, Ann?”

  “Why just splendid, Mr. Addinsell.”

  “Charles.”

  “Charles!”

  “Thought he could have been a bit upset, I think myself.”

  “Oh, poor Arthur! And, now, is that Cicely Amor, can it be, he’s talking to?”

  “The blonde?” Charles demanded, with animation. He looked round at once. He saw this actor, whom he knew by sight, was talking to the cigarette girl, a negress.

  Miss Paynton began to giggle, eyes brimming.

  “By Jove,” he said, and laughed.

  The young lady giggled still more.

  “Aren’t I a silly juggins?” he exclaimed, apparently delighted. “Well, we won’t talk about them any more, shall we?”

  “What d’you mean?” she asked, serious again at once.

  “That, dammit, that this fish is really rather good, though as host I say as shouldn’t.”

  After which they got along very well, talking on indifferent subjects.

  When she thanked him and was about to leave, Mr. Addinsell said,

  “Meet again?”

  “We’ll see,” she replied smiling.

  “Ring you up?”

  “How will you know my number?”

  “I could ask Arthur.”

  “No, don’t do that,” and she then and there gave it to him. “Now I must fly. So thanks so much! Goodbye,” she told him in expiring tones, and made off fast.

  •

  Her day’s work done, Annabel Paynton had a drink in the pub outside the office with her closest confidante, Miss Claire Belaine.

  “Well darling!” she said. “Only imagine, but I rather fancy it’s happened all over again!”

  “My dear, you’re impossible,” the girl replied, with calm.

  “Aren’t I? But you don’t really think I am, do you?”

  “Well, first tell me more.”

  “As a matter of fact, he’s a friend of the other.”

  “Of the middle-aged one?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Then are you being handed on, Ann?”

  “Nothing like it!” Miss Paynton laughed, with confidence. “No, Arthur—there I go once more—was called away to a sudden conference at the Ministry, you know how terribly high up he is, and this friend happened to look in at the bar of our restaurant and I was introduced, to this second one I mean, the one I’m telling you about.”

  “Married?”

  “I’ve made a few enquiries. No, as a matter of plain fact he’s a widower with a child, a boy of eight.”

  “And dark and handsome?”

  “Oh Claire,” Ann breathed “you’ve no conception!”

  “Have I met him?”

  “I’m almost certain you never have, but of course I can’t give you his name, not just yet!”

  “If he’s unmarried there’s no harm, surely?”

  “Why, I suppose so. Claire, I hadn’t thought! How odd,” she mused aloud. “But I keep this passion for secrecy. Mummy, I expect.” Then she whispered the name.

  “I’ve never even heard of him,” Claire announced.

  “Is there any reason why you should, darling?”

  “I don’t know, Ann. I didn’t mean to sound important. Then how d’you feel about this Arthur, now?”

  “I can’t be sure,” Miss Paynton replied with caution. “You see he hardly ever seems to talk about himself, which rather makes me weary, if you know what I mean.” She laughed selfconsciously.

  “Oh I like someone who can manage to listen.”

  “And so do I, of course. But he doesn’t so to speak tell one.”

  “Unlike Campbell?”

  “Most,” Ann laughed.

  “Perhaps it’s his age?”

  “But he isn’t really old, Claire.”

  “Possibly not. Still he may find that holds him in.”

  Miss Paynton glanced in a wary way at her companion.

  “No, as he’s talking, he compares everything with about twenty years ago,” she said, rathe
r fast.

  “Well, it may be he gave up being alive that long ago.”

  “When he married? Shall I find it in all my middle-aged men? How grim!”

  “I think they batten on one.”

  “Why, you dark horse, how d’you know?”

  “Don’t your parents batten on you?”

  “I seem to see what you mean, Claire dear. Oh, it’s not much of a prospect, then, or is it?”

  “Which has been my point all along!”

  “But one’s got to do something,” Miss Paynton protested and laughed. And they went on to discuss underclothes, with spirit.

  •

  That night, after Mr. Middleton, having dined, had retired to his own room with the briefcase, Diana several times approached the telephone without, however, actually taking the receiver off its cradle.

  She also moved around her room, picked up illustrated papers only to put them down again, opened two novels but to throw these away, and at last did something she seldom used to do, bearded her husband in his den before she went to bed. “I’m so bored, darling,” she said, entering without apology. “So flat, down!”

  “Hullo,” he greeted Diana quite warmly. “Now what does this mean? Servant troubles getting less?”

  “Don’t be absurd, my dear,” she answered. “Why does a wife, who copes, have to listen to such silliness? No, I’ve nothing to do. I’m bored stiff.”

  “Haven’t you a book?”

  “Arthur, I’m quite constipated with all the novels I read.”

  “Then why don’t you go out?”

  “Who with?”

  “Charles Addinsell not rung up of late?” he asked, keeping voice and face straight.

  “Don’t be ridiculous, darling,” she said, and sat down rather heavily opposite.

  “I see,” he answered, with a small show of irritation.

  “Well, if you do, I don’t,” she objected, in a flat tone. “Arthur, listen to me! Can we go on like this?”

  “Why, what is it now?” he cried irritably. “What on earth d’you mean?”

  “Oh I know I’m being vile,” Diana wailed. “But can all your terrific work be worth the candle?”

  “You don’t suppose I like slavery for its own sake, surely to goodness!”

  “Sometimes I simply wonder, Arthur.”

  “Is that all the thanks one gets?”

  “We’ve our own lives to live after all, still, haven’t we?”

  “And what about Peter? He has to be paid for, and educated; you know it as well as I do!”

  “Occasionally I ask myself if the darling wouldn’t be better off in a council school.”

  “Diana! Stop! He’d never in after life forgive us if I didn’t give him the start I got from my father.”

  “And where did that land you?”

  “No really, Diana,” her husband protested, but with some signs, at last, of unease “what are you trying to insinuate? That we’ve been failures?”

  “Not at all,” she protested. “Just, we might have gone somewhere further, that’s all!”

  “Where then?”

  “Don’t ask me. It’s for the man to choose his own job.”

  “And how much choice is there, nowadays?”

  “I couldn’t say, of course, Arthur,” she admitted with a certain show of reason. “Yet, d’you really think we are making the best of our lives?”

  “Darling,” he said “I’m doing all I can!”

  “I know,” she agreed. “But couldn’t you do something else?”

  “Such as?” he demanded, in a weak voice.

  “How can I tell?” she protested once more.

  He came over to sit on the arm of her chair.

  “Darling, what is this?” he asked gently.

  “Oh just nothing. I’m so bored,” she repeated, almost in a whisper.

  “Di, you don’t really mean all you’ve just said?”

  “Yes, darling, I do, but it doesn’t matter, you’re to pay no attention.”

  “On the contrary,” he protested “if that is so, then everything matters very much. What concerns me is your happiness, your welfare, my dear.”

  “Does it?”

  “How d’you feel in yourself?” he elaborated. “Every day!” he added.

  Picking up his hand from off her shoulder, she kissed the wrist.

  “Darling darling,” she said.

  “Of course that’s so,” he consented. “Have I ever given you cause to fear, or even doubt? You mustn’t be down like this. Why not go out? You know I’m stuck here.”

  “Who with?”

  “Well, after all, as I said before, there’s old Charles.”

  “He hasn’t rung up in a week, Arthur!”

  “Then just you ring him!”

  “Oh but Arthur, that’s to make oneself cheap!”

  “You cheap? My dear, you couldn’t, not with that man,” he protested.

  “Now you shan’t grow nasty once more about dear Charles,” she sadly told her husband. “No” she added “I must not get on to him. I still have my pride.”

  “Then what do you propose, dear?”

  “Arthur, couldn’t we have an early night tonight? Won’t you come along to bed, now? I get so hipped lying there, waiting for you!” She smiled up into his eyes. “Come on, then,” she said, and squeezed his hand.

  He kissed her with what seemed to be restraint.

  “Very well, for this once,” he agreed, upon which they went off arm in arm, immediately.

  •

  Some five days later the two girls met, by appointment, in their usual pub.

  “Then how are you going along, Ann?” Miss Belaine enquired.

  “How is who getting on?” she countered.

  “I’m sorry,” the confidante apologized. “What I meant was, have you heard any more of Arthur?”

  “He’s not quite the point he was, is he, darling?” Miss Paynton replied. “I believe I told you he has a friend who’s newly appeared on the scene.”

  “Well anyway, what’s your news?”

  Ann giggled. “I’ve been dropped,” she said. “Like a hot brick.”

  “By both of them?”

  “Oh, the other had me to tea at a hotel since I saw you last, and he, at least, does show signs of being able to talk about himself, but of Arthur, not a word!”

  “He may have the wind up.”

  “Of his wife?”

  “No, about himself.”

  “I only wish he could,” Annabel Paynton tiredly complained. “He’s nothing but a bore the way he is now, or was, because, of course I haven’t seen him.”

  “So he’s out, where you’re concerned?”

  “Out? I never said that! All I say is, we should have as many people round us as we can, to pretend to choose from. You always maintain one must keep oneself to oneself and I expect you skip a lot of pain and worry that way. My theory is, I’m expendable, up to a certain point, of course.”

  “So you’ve said before, Ann. But I argue that if you pursue this, you’ll make the men you go out with expendable, too.”

  “The moment they invite me, they let themselves in for that, don’t they?”

  “And what do they expect in return?” Miss Belaine enquired, with a small frown.

  “Why bed, of course.”

  “Do they get it?”

  Miss Paynton giggled. “Strictly confidentially, no,” she said. “At least, not yet, with me. You know that.”

  “Which is where we disagree,” Claire announced, but in rather a doubtful voice. “With precautions, of course, I don’t see what difference it can make.”

  “And you who always swore you never did!”

  “I don’t, Ann.”

  “So where are you, if you go out with a married man?”

  “I haven’t.”

  “Then d’you think one ought to pay them for the dinner by going to bed with them, supposing you accepted?”

  “Not necessarily, Ann. You’re too lite
ral. It might only make them miserable.”

  “Well, darling, I don’t believe things quite work out like you’ve just described.”

  “I dare say not,” Miss Belaine assented. “Yet, whichever way one goes about things, one makes the creatures expendable.”

  “Which I say we are, too. In any case, they ask for what they get by inviting us out, as I’ve just told you.”

  “For bed?”

  “Oh, I expect. No, what I meant is, they make themselves expendable the minute they ask one out.”

  “And supposing one falls in love with them?”

  “But, Claire, we mustn’t run away from life, not at our age! If we’ve got to fall in love, we just do.”

  “D’you think this Arthur’s in love with you?”

  “Doesn’t look like it, does he, and frankly, at the moment, I couldn’t care less.”

  “Oh well, let me know what happens in three weeks’ time, Ann.”

  “Three days, you mean! You don’t propose to suddenly stop listening, do you?”

  They laughed, finished their drinks, and went separate ways.

  •

  Miss Paynton had agreed to meet Charles Addinsell for lunch and somehow they, almost at once, got into a discussion. He’d been speaking against wives.

  “The whole thing’s no good,” he wound up, after being very vague.

  “But, Charles, I can’t follow at all,” she protested. “This might become very important for me, some time. Why not?”

  “You wait.”

  “What on earth for, Charles?”

  “Almost impossible to describe.”

  “Excuse me if this is personal,” she put forward “but did your wife leave you, or something?”

  “No.”

  “Then how?”

  “She died.”

  “Oh, good heavens, I do apologize. What was her name?”

  “Penelope.”

  “Now that’s an absolutely heavenly name! So well?”

  “She just died, Ann.”

  “Surely to goodness you can’t have it against her, Charles?”

  “You’ve never been left with a child on your hands, have you?”

  “Well, no, I suppose not.”

  “So there you are.”

  “But you mustn’t hold it against your wonderful Penelope.”

  “Don’t know what you mean. No one’s fault when they die in bed, is it? Can’t see how that could be?”

  “Then why not marry a second time?” Ann asked in a bewildered voice. “Another mother for your child?”