Doting

by Henry Green

  “Might die again,” the man replied, with obvious distaste. “Oh, no!” she cried. “Not much use for poor little Joe if she did, after all?”

  “I suppose not, Charles. Yet there’s no reason she should, is there?”

  “Oh none,” he appeared to agree. “Still, that’s all a part of what life has in store for one.”

  “Now Charles!” she protested.

  “You’re young still,” he said, in a menacing sort of fashion.

  “But it’s so hideous!”

  “Yes,” he assented.

  “About your wife, I mean. How did she die, if I may ask?”

  “In childbirth.”

  “Yet that’s the finest sort of death for a woman, surely, or so they used to say, didn’t they?”

  “Don’t know.”

  “And you just blame her for it? Oh, Charles! Really, then, we can’t ever seem to do right in life, can we?”

  “Of course I never have blamed,” he said, with obvious petulance. “Poor darling, she couldn’t help going like that,” he explained. “Not her fault, good God! If anything, might have been mine, or equally the fault of each of us, in actual practice. No, what I have against living, is the dirty tricks fate has in store. No good blinking facts. Do better to realize, they probably will be coming to you. I couldn’t stand a second kick in the pants of the kind.”

  “But if you’ve already had one really terrible misfortune, aren’t the chances against another, Charles?”

  “Same as with roulette,” he answered. “When you’re at the tables, identical numbers will keep cropping up!”

  “Oh, surely that’s most terribly gloomy.”

  “Depends on how you play,” Mr. Addinsell replied. “If you’re on a number and there’s a run on zero, where are you then?”

  “I’ve never even seen the game.”

  “Well you can back any number up to thirty seven, and in combinations, but if the ball falls into a slot on the wheel which is marked nought, everyone loses who hasn’t betted on zero.”

  “I still can’t seem to see why a person should want to put their money on nothing.”

  “Because it’s precisely what they may get, Ann.”

  “Oh, I didn’t mean at your silly gambling game. In life, I was talking about.”

  “I’m no Omar Khayyam,” Mr. Addinsell gravely told this girl, “But the spin of the wheel is all any one of us can expect.”

  “So you say that I, for instance, oughtn’t to marry on account of what so tragically happened to you and yours?”

  “Of course not!” he protested with warmth. “Never in the world! Was speaking selfishly.”

  “Terribly sad for you, then,” she murmured, eyes downcast.

  “One gets used to it,” he said. “To anything.” Then he added with a sly smile “Can even have compensations, sometimes.”

  “That you do realize, once and for all, things for you can’t ever become worse?” she asked, looking at him again.

  “It could be better than that,” he dryly answered.

  “How then, Charles?”

  “Persistent, aren’t you!”

  “I’m sorry! I realize I become an awful bore, soon as ever I grow interested. I didn’t intend to be a nuisance!”

  “Hey, what are you saying?” Charles demanded. “Come off it! If I spoke out of turn, let me apologize.”

  “You didn’t.”

  “Pretty sure I did. Look, I take it all back! I’ve a mistaken sense of humour.”

  “Then you’re just laughing at me?”

  “Don’t follow what you mean, Ann.”

  “I can’t see your jokes, that’s all,” she announced, in a most dignified way.

  “My dear, I do apologize, I do really,” he said, in the nearest approach to the abject he could probably manage.

  “For what?” she enquired, and seemed mollified.

  “For anything and everything,” he handsomely replied. There was a pause.

  “So you don’t feel you can be happy ever again, is that it?” she asked.

  “Hardly.”

  “But it’s outrageous!” she protested. “Look at you! With so many years to see forward to, to live a full life in!”

  “Maybe you misunderstood,” he said, in a flat voice. “I told you before there could be consolations, Ann.”

  “D’you mean to sit and tell me to my face you’re referring to just squalid affairs?” she cried with a great show of indignation. “You, a man with a boy of eight!”

  “Not guilty,” he replied, and seemed quietly amused. “All I tried to say was, one could still have friends.”

  “Oh friends!” she broke out. “I have tons of those, and yet what earthly use are they to me?”

  “The salt of life,” he suggested with a sly smile.

  “Are you honestly trying, after all your experiences, to propose that I’ve nothing more than friendships in the years I still have to live?”

  “My point was and is, stay chary of your commitments, Ann.”

  “Well, of course. Who isn’t?”

  “And don’t believe it’s to be a bed of roses.”

  “How could I? What sort of a person d’you suppose I am? Charles, I’m surely still all right in my head!”

  “You’re always getting away beyond me,” he mildly complained. “All I meant was, I suppose, just don’t expect too much.”

  “And mustn’t I even hope for the best?” she wailed.

  “Can’t stop people hoping,” he agreed. “Don’t advise you to, all the same.”

  “You are wonderfully cheering, aren’t you, Charles?”

  “Only speak to the truth as I know it,” he answered with a sort of dignity.

  There was another pause.

  “I’m sure I don’t know where I’m going to be, now, with my life,” Miss Paynton at last complained, in a child’s voice.

  “Never let anything get you down,” the man advised.

  “In which case, you can’t remember much of what you felt at my age.”

  “Not sure I do, at that.”

  “Weren’t you ever miserable then, Charles?”

  “I expect so. Tolerably.”

  “And so what has anyone to live for?”

  “Blessed if I know.”

  “But supposing you were a girl?” Miss Paynton demanded, with insistence.

  “I’m not.”

  “Well, I imagine I realized that,” she countered. “Yet, if you were, would you really warn a woman against looking forward to her own children?”

  “They can always die, too.”

  “In a bomb explosion, you mean?”

  “Not necessarily,” he said.

  “Oh but fifty years ago they died like flies, quite naturally!” Ann exploded. “Doctors have changed all that! I don’t suppose any number of bombs nowadays could kill the millions of people that used to go just from disease.”

  “People still die, all the same,” Mr. Addinsell objected.

  “Then am I not to love anyone because, like all of us, they’ve got to die some time?”

  “Don’t know.”

  “But, please, you do truly love your Joe, don’t you?”

  “Certainly.”

  “And he’s still alive and kicking, isn’t he?”

  “Well, yes.”

  “Then are you going to love him less for that?”

  “I am. You see, Ann, on account of if he died.”

  “But, Charles, are you saying I oughtn’t to have children because they might die?”

  “My point is, love no one too much, in case they do.”

  “No, no,” she protested. “I’d be bound to love my own children.”

  “Anyway,” he said, with a sort of finality “there’s very little anyone can do about things.”

  His face, which she was watching, took on a look of great sadness. She then changed the conversation adroitly and they talked of musical comedy until the time came for her to go back, late, to work.

&nbs
p; •

  Diana Middleton persuaded her husband to take her out to dinner, a thing he was usually unwilling to do.

  “I’m sorry to be disagreeable again, darling,” she said, as soon as they’d had a few drinks at the restaurant to which he’d taken Ann “but I’ve gone to see Paula myself, this time.”

  “You have?”

  “Yes, darling.”

  “Well, what on earth for?”

  “It’s simply this,” she told Arthur. “I felt I had to warn Paula that Charles was seeing too much of her Ann.”

  “And you got me out to tell that?” he asked, in level tones.

  “I did, darling.”

  “Well, what did you say to the woman?”

  “But I’ve just explained!”

  “I mean, how did you put it?” Mr. Middleton demanded, as if wearily, of his wife.

  “I thought you might be rather angry with me,” she admitted.

  “What have I said now?” he enquired.

  “You’re being a bit difficult, you know, darling,” Diana announced.

  The husband rubbed the palm of his hand all over his face, starting with the forehead.

  “In what way?” he asked.

  “Oh, am I being very tiresome?” she wanted to be told. “No, but I feel I do have a certain responsibility to the child.”

  “Why?” he asked.

  “Well, Paula’s my oldest friend, although we aren’t quite that, perhaps any more, now, and you did, forgive me, seduce Ann, after all!” Diana sounded rather breathless.

  “You mean you’ve quarrelled with Paula?”

  “So you don’t deny it?”

  “With my last dying word!” Mr. Middleton informed his wife, in a voice which could have been called expiring.

  “I’m sorry, my dear,” his spouse brought out, with what, she obviously thought, was sweet reasonableness. “But I had to, didn’t I? One has certain duties, after all.”

  “I can’t make a word of this out, Diana.”

  “But you must understand how I did. I don’t want you upset, all the same.”

  “It would be so much easier if you consented not to talk in riddles, dear.”

  “Oh,” Mrs. Middleton commented in a gay, bright voice “I don’t wish, or choose, to go into the whole old business anew. Above all, I wouldn’t want you provoked, darling. Yet you should admit it was the only thing I could do.”

  “What, I’m getting almost hoarse with asking?”

  “Why, tell her, of course.”

  “In which way?”

  “How can that matter?” Mrs. Middleton demanded innocently of her husband. “I’m trying my best to keep calm, dearest. Oh, was it so very awful in me to drag you out like this?”

  “After nineteen years of married life,” he commented “I’ve learnt to let you take your time.”

  “Eighteen years,” she corrected him.

  “Yes, dear,” he replied with patience, and what seemed to be humility.

  “Well of course all I said was, it had come to my knowledge that Ann was going out so much with Charles, and that much as I dote on the man, I could only think the whole thing quite unsuitable, and although I’d resented her coming to me earlier about her girl and you, which I know to be true but how was I to admit that to Paula, what wife would—where am I?—oh well, all I said, was, and you must admit I couldn’t not, was simply that Ann would set all the old tongues wagging.”

  “And has she?”

  “Not perhaps yet. But she will.”

  “And how often does she really go out with Charles?” Mr. Middleton enquired, in obvious disquiet.

  “The whole time.”

  “Then she’s a little bitch,” the husband pronounced. “That’s all I can say, a little bitch,” he repeated, firmly.

  “Oh, I’m sorry about all of this,” the wife wailed.

  “Why?”

  “Well, of course, I wasn’t exactly heartbroken to be able to go to Paula after she’d been to me originally in that peculiarly reprehensible way, but how else can one prevent things turning out in quite such a revolting fashion?”

  “And I who imagined Charles Addinsell my dearest friend!” Mr. Middleton remarked in a grieving voice, it seemed almost at random.

  “D’you blame him, then?” his wife asked.

  “Who’d have ever believed it?”

  “So, Arthur, you openly confess you’re jealous, is that it?”

  “Hey, what’s this?” he demanded as though he’d had a rude awakening.

  “I don’t know yet,” she announced, with menace in her voice.

  “All I mean is,” her husband patiently explained “it must be an entirely different matter, my taking the girl out and a man like Charles to do so. I’m married, for one thing. Everyone knows I’m safe as houses. Whereas Charles, well, he’s just a voluptuary.”

  “What’s that, darling?”

  “Oh well, let it pass. I’m sorry I ever introduced them, now.”

  “You did! But how tiresomely stupid of you, Arthur. You should have known you’d lose her by so doing!”

  “You can’t lose what you haven’t got,” the husband objected.

  “We won’t go into that again. Not in this crowded place! Yet why are you still sorry?”

  “I am for little Ann, because Charles is the man he’s turned out to be.”

  “I see, Arthur. So you don’t meet Ann, now?”

  “No. And do you ever see Charles?”

  “No more, no more!” his wife wailed comically. At which they both laughed in a rather shamefaced way at each other.

  “In spite of all your tricks I love you, darling,” Mr. Middleton told his wife.

  “You’re a wicked old romantic,” she said, beaming back at him.

  “Enough of a one to put a spoke in your works every now and again.”

  “Oh don’t worry,” she announced. “I haven’t done with Charles yet, not by a long chalk!”

  “Steady on! You’re playing with fire there.”

  “I wouldn’t mind if it was hell’s own flames, dearest. It seems someone thinks they’re making a donkey out of me.”

  “But you can’t imagine I introduced an innocent little thing like Ann to Charles just so you should see less of him?”

  “Innocent? Ann! No, it’s she is at the back of all this.”

  “How, darling?”

  “How would you feel, if you were a woman, about the girl who was trying to take away your husband and your friend, all in the one go?”

  “Much as I do feel about Charles,” he answered reasonably. “With you,” he added, to make doubly clear, perhaps.

  “And Ann?” she demanded.

  “I was referring to Charles,” her husband countered.

  “But, my dear, we always had our great arrangement,” Diana said. “The one could go out when the other wasn’t asked.”

  “So what, my dear?”

  “Why, simply that you never kept to it, and I did, which is all!”

  “Now, my love,” he protested, with heat “you know this simply isn’t true! When did I ever take Ann out to lunch any time you and I were both invited?”

  “Have you once rung me up, before, to see if anyone had phoned?”

  “But I used to ring Ann first thing, soon as ever I got to the office after seeing you over breakfast.”

  “Oh Arthur, first thing! What can your telephone girl have thought? Just warm from our bed!”

  “She wasn’t.”

  “No please, don’t try to laugh this off, I’m serious! Didn’t you even open your letters first?”

  “When all’s said and done, it was only once a week. And I always used to read them while I was talking with Ann.”

  “You can’t have had such a lot to say to each other then?” Mrs. Middleton asked, in a doubtful voice.

  “Only to invite her out to lunch, Diana.”

  “And once, which is the only time I know about, to dinner, exactly when I was supposed to be on the train to S
cotland with your own son.”

  “So you maintain you’ve never been to dinner with Charles?”

  “That’s an entirely different kettle of fish.”

  “I’ll say it is,” the husband protested, almost with violence.

  “Now, darling,” she begged him. “Don’t let’s go into all this yet again. You’re entirely in the wrong, and it can be so painful.”

  “Oh very well, dear,” he said, as if in resignation.

  “Then what d’you propose to do about things?” she demanded.

  “After all that’s occurred I must say I obviously can’t take Ann out, even once more. If anyone can be said to have learnt a hard lesson, then it’s me,” the man said.

  “How, darling?”

  “But my dear,” he protested “your suspicions even over the ordinary accident Ann and I had, have simply made me ill!”

  “And so they ought! Yet you don’t intend to sit idly by under this, do you, Arthur?”

  “Then what do you propose?”

  “I don’t know,” she said.

  “Isn’t there something I could do, darling?” he pleaded.

  “I must think,” she answered, then immediately went on. “You should ask Ann out again,” Mrs. Middleton propounded. “Not at night, of course. Never that! You must promise me faithfully, Arthur, you’ll never again invite her on an evening?”

  “Certainly,” he said.

  “You promise?”

  “I swear.”

  “Very well then, you will have to give Ann lunch. And don’t enjoy it, mind! Because I shall simply have to go up to Dick’s for a few days to be with Peter, too unfair to leave the boy alone any longer. So let me tell you, dear. If, when I come back, I find any funny business, I shall just be distraught, darling, and you know from experience what that can mean! I might even try reprisals.”

  “Yes, dear.”

  “Then just remember! Yes, I feel you should take her out to lunch, once more. We owe as much, at least, to Paula.”

  “Yes, darling. And what do I say?” the husband asked.

  “Not too much,” Mrs. Middleton replied. “Of course, for a start, you should warn Ann against Charles.”

  “And then?”

  “Isn’t that simply enough, Arthur? What else could you wish?”

  “It wasn’t me,” he explained. “It happened to be you, I thought, wanted that I should do more.”

  “Do more? Please be careful what you’re saying!”