by Henry Green
“I simply imagined you had a plan, I’d an idea you knew what else you wished me to put over.”
“Well of course I do,” Mrs. Middleton admitted. “Only I find it so difficult to say in words.”
“Should I suggest I’d not be able to face old Prior, if he came after me with a horsewhip, for introducing his daughter to a man like Charles?”
“My dear,” she protested “please don’t be so ridiculous! How can you imagine she’d care two hoots even if poor Prior tarred and feathered you!”
“I see, darling,” he humbly admitted.
“At one time I thought you could say Charles was ill, had TB, or something. And then I saw, at once, that that would be no good, the desperate little thing would go like mad for a sick man, she’d think her chances even better. No, tell her Charles is only interested in women very much older than himself, that he had this passion when he was a boy, as so many of them do, and, of course, in those days, his women weren’t so very old yet. Then, Arthur, you must explain how he has never been able to grow out of this peculiar habit, that he’s been to all sorts and kinds of psycho-analysts, and the only advice they’ve any of them been able to give the poor man, was that he should, so to speak, try himself out, every now and again, on a girl who is very considerably, even absurdly, younger than he is, now.”
“Will Ann believe me?”
“Why not, if she has before, dear? In any case, who’s she got to check up with? She can’t go to Paula, at this late date.”
“I suppose not.”
“Besides, Arthur, think how ridiculous she would look going to any older woman to ask a question of that kind. It would give her whole squalid little game away.”
“She told me she only liked older men.”
“Oh she did, did she?” Mrs. Middleton snorted. “Then, if she’s said anything else of that sort, I’ll thank you kindly not to tell your own wife, which I still am! One has to keep certain standards in married life, after all.”
“Very well, darling.”
“You will, then?” she asked.
“I shall,” Mr. Middleton replied, without any show of enthusiasm. After which his wife changed the subject. She spoke at length, and with fervour, of Peter, and, afterwards, of their friends, in both of which topics Arthur Middleton joined wholeheartedly.
When they came home, it was plain the two of them had had, on the whole, a very pleasant evening.
•
The next day, therefore, Mr. Middleton directed the telephone girl, as soon as he was in his office, to ring Ann Paynton and ask if the young lady would speak with him.
When the instrument tinkled at his right hand, he raised its receiver rather slowly. He listened into a silence.
“Ann, this is me,” he said at last, in an almost panic-stricken way.
“Oh hullo!” her voice came loud and unattached, then broke into a carefree, boisterous little laugh.
“You’re different,” he announced.
“Am I?” she replied.
“Sound cheerful enough!”
“Good,” she said.
“What have you been doing with yourself, dear Ann?”
“Oh well, I’ve been up and about.”
“Had yourself a nice time?”
“As a matter of fact, quite, thanks.”
“Splendid,” the man said, soberly. “Seen anyone I know?”
“You’re a stranger these days,” Miss Paynton countered at once.
“You don’t mind my ringing up like this?” he then asked.
“Why no, how should I?”
“Perhaps I just thought you didn’t sound too pleased.”
“I’m always glad to hear from you, Arthur,” she said quietly.
“D’you think we could possibly take lunch together again?”
“I might.”
“You don’t, quite, seem what is called impatient, Ann.”
“It isn’t that at all,” she explained, with her far away voice. “I happen to be rather full, you see.”
“Could you manage Tuesday?”
“This week, or next?”
“Tomorrow.”
“Just let me look at my book. Yes, as a matter of fact, I find I can.”
“Fine. And same time and place?”
“That will be heaven,” she said, in a disinterested way. Then with a suggestion of laughter, she asked “Are you sure it will be all right?”
“Yes,” Mr. Middleton said.
When he put back the receiver he was frowning.
•
By the time they were seated at their usual table in the restaurant, Arthur Middleton was palpably nervous, while Ann behaved with what was, for her, an unusual calm.
“I never apologized for leaving like I did, the last time,” he began.
“No, you haven’t rung up, have you?” Miss Paynton replied.
“I’ve been rather rushed lately, Ann.”
“I envy the way you can telephone in your office, merely by telling the girl to get any person you want. Where I am, one has to go through a perfect rigmarole, over private calls.”
While she told him this, she was examining the other guests with a very languid eye.
“D’you do it much, then?” he enquired.
“Arthur,” she asked, and still did not seem to bother to look at the man, “would you advise me to move, change over into something better?”
“Hard to say. Most people get fed up with their jobs every so often. Haven’t you been out much lately?”
She gave him what appeared to be a reproachful glance.
“Well, I must say,” she said “you don’t seem very interested in my problems.”
“Why, I’d just asked, Ann, if you’d led a gay life of late!”
“Which might be a peculiar way of putting things, or isn’t it? Oh, if you mean have I been out,” she explained, back again now at her scrutiny of the people in this great room “if that’s what you’re trying to say, well yes, I have. No, as for a gay life I was referring to my career.”
“But for someone as beautiful as you, that must mean marriage.”
Miss Paynton turned her eyes on him, began to show a trifle more animation.
“Which I always think is a bit patronizing to say to a girl,” she complained, with a long-suffering air. “Don’t men get wed? Isn’t that just as important for them, too?”
“I’ll say it is! Ann, you misunderstood me.”
“How did I?”
There was a pause in which he gazed at the girl with obvious anxiety, and she looked down at her plate.
“Oh you do look so wonderful, I’d forgotten!” he said at last.
“Had you?”
“No, no, not that,” he corrected. “I don’t think it’s ever been out of my mind, not since the rabbit hutch. Ah, Ann, you’re ravishing, this afternoon!”
“Am I?”
She gave him a long look of some sweetness, and he seemed stricken.
“Am I always?” she went on.
“Yes,” he said.
“But I was only a child, then, the time you were speaking of.”
“Yes!”
“And you found me so, even at that age?”
“You were to me, Ann.”
“Then swear!”
He gave a heavy sigh. “Oh yes!” he affirmed.
“I’m beginning to like this better now,” she announced, and gave the man almost a warm smile.
“Oh Ann, I’ve been so distressed about it all!” he at once pleaded.
“About what, dear heaven?”
“Leaving you, like I did, with Charles Addinsell, of course.”
“Well I must say I do think you might have rung up, after, to find how I was!”
“But, good gracious, nothing happened, surely?”
“I don’t know what you mean,” and she began staring round the restaurant once more. “Still, you would have been polite if you had.”
“I most humbly apologize, Ann.”
&nbs
p; At which she gave Mr. Middleton a true, warm smile.
“Then you’re forgiven. There!” she said. “Arthur, tell me more about him.”
“Charles?”
“Of course.”
“Well, darling, it’s hard to know where to start.”
“Have you known him long?” she prompted.
“For years and years. Charles is a strange fellow.” Again Mr. Middleton fell silent.
“He said you’d been at school together?”
“Yes indeed. He was an odd sort of chap, even then.”
“In what way, Arthur?” Miss Paynton appeared quite intrigued.
“Well I don’t want to sound arch, and it’s really very difficult to explain . . .” he began once more, at which she let out a screech of amused interruption.
“You’re too shy to admit that when he was at school Charles used to look at other boys, like Terry does? Is that so?”
“Good God, no!” Mr. Middleton protested. “No, as a matter of fact, he always did on older women, very much older.”
“But that’s only natural, surely? Couldn’t you, then?”
“Now why should you think I’m that type?”
“I imagined all little boys were seduced by their aunties’ old girl friends.”
“Really Ann!” Arthur Middleton sounded quite shocked.
“Then how did it happen to you? Arthur; don’t be so puritanical, now please!”
“Well, I’ll save that up for another place, and a different time of day, if you like.”
She gave him a look and let out rather a deep laugh.
“All right! So go on, do, about Charles,” she commanded.
“You may be right when you say all boys start with an older woman,” he began once more. “I wouldn’t know and I can’t admit I myself did, but we aren’t talking about me now, we’re discussing Charles. And, in his case, it was that.” Mr. Middleton came to a full stop again.
“Oh, who was it, then? You must tell the name, Arthur.”
“I don’t know.”
“Are you just being horridly discreet?”
“Honest, I’m not.”
“Then how can you be sure about him?”
“I wouldn’t be certain if she’d told me herself, whoever she may have been.” He sighed. “People lie like troopers over these things,” he added. “Amazing to think she’s probably a grandmother, if she’s still alive today. Well, Ann, you can just take it from me, in his case, he always did prefer very much older women.”
“You’re talking about the first time he fell in love? All right, then. Perhaps.”
“I don’t know so much about the love part,” Arthur said, with a smile.
“Don’t laugh!” she commanded, sharply. “This is serious.”
“I’m sorry, Ann. But the odd thing is, it has always been older women with old Charles, ever since.”
Miss Paynton snorted, in evident amusement.
“Like me, then!” she announced.
“How on earth?” he demanded.
“I’ve always doted on older men.”
“Oh doting isn’t loving, at all, Ann!”
“I couldn’t say, of course,” the girl rejoined. “But this quite gives me a fellow feeling with Charles if all you tell is true. Yet, you know, I’m afraid, you’re wrong.”
“How am I?” he asked.
“I just do know, that’s all,” she announced in a dreamy sort of voice.
“You do, eh?” he demanded, accusingly.
“I can’t simply guess what you mean, Arthur!”
“Well, you see, I’ve been friends with the man all these years, and you haven’t, darling.”
“Ah, but how well have you watched him?”
“Did he ever tell you of Penelope, Ann?”
“Penelope, his wife?”
“Then he hasn’t.”
“What about her?” the young lady pleaded.
“I’ll leave Charles to speak for himself,” Mr. Middleton said with firmness. “No, it was just that I was able to help the chap a bit over Penelope. When he comes clean to you with the whole story, as he must in time, he always does, you’ll agree it bears out what I say.”
“Which doesn’t sound very nice, Arthur.”
“Oh that tale’s all old history, now.”
“I’m beginning to wonder how much you two are fast friends,” the young lady suggested, with a hint of laughter in her tone.
“You ask him. Very grateful to me, Charles is.”
“Of course, you did introduce us. He’s got that to thank you for, Arthur dear.”
“He certainly has,” the man agreed, seemingly without much conviction.
“Oh, Charles may have been like that, once,” she went on in a cheerful voice. “But he’s not any more, believe you me.”
“I’ve known him a long time, remember.”
“We won’t argue,” Miss Paynton commented. “Now tell me your news. How’s Diana?”
“Well, she hasn’t been too well the past two weeks.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Yes. But there’s been a distinct improvement. To tell you the truth, she’s going up to Scotland tonight to be with Peter a few days. He’s caught three fish.”
“Good for him! Big ones?”
“The biggest was a fifteen pounder. But, I say, Ann, I’m going to be very lonely the next day or so!”
“I expect so.”
“I was wondering whether you’d consider dining with me tomorrow?”
“Not if it’s going to be like the last time!”
“Well within the next eighteen hours Diana really will be at her brother’s.”
“If you are going to be horrid like it, I certainly won’t come,” the girl told him, and made her eyes large with what looked to be reproof.
“I say, I am sorry, Ann! I meant nothing.”
“Perhaps you didn’t, at that. All right.”
“You will, then?”
“Let me look in my book first, please.” She did this. “Oh, I’m sorry, I can’t.”
“And not the night after, either?” Mr. Middleton pleaded, with a very hurt expression.
“Yes, I could then,” she said, quite gay. And more seriously “But, I’m sorry, we’ll have to go out somewhere. I shan’t dine in your flat.”
“Very well,” he agreed. A few minutes later they parted. As he walked away he seemed, from his expression, to be quite pleased with himself.
•
That same evening, as soon as Mr. Middleton got back from work, his wife arose from her packing to ask:
“And so have you seen her?”
“Yes.”
“You are good, darling! I was afraid I was laying too much on to you. What did she say?”
“Not much.”
“Then how could you have put it?”
“Well, I told the girl I had known Charles a long time, ever since school days, in fact. That he was a peculiar fellow, always had been.”
“And what did Ann say?” his wife enquired when Arthur came to a full stop.
“She laughed.”
“She would,” Mrs. Middleton commented. “But it’s one of the last jokes that little thing will get out of this whole affair, I can promise her that,” she said.
“How shall I give you the picture?” her husband complained. “It seemed to me her laugh came from sheer disbelief even, darling. That generation simply prides itself on knowing better than ours, don’t they? Look at Peter.”
“We mustn’t mention him in the same breath,” the mother objected. “There are certain standards, after all!”
“Oh, quite. Yes, Ann laughed out loud. So I can’t quite tell how far this all sank in.”
“It will in time, no fear,” his wife announced, and went back to her packing. Mr. Middleton sat down on a hard chair.
“And did you make an appointment to meet Ann, once more?” the wife enquired, without looking at her husband.
“Of course not.”
/> “Are you sure, Arthur?”
“Darling, what is this? Are you in one of your moods when you’re about to claim second sight again?”
“I might be. Yes.”
“Well, Diana, you’re wrong, that’s all.”
“Am I? Because I might only be going to the nearest hotel, you know, instead of Scotland.”
“Now really! What are you saying, dear?”
“And don’t you forget it!”
“Yes, darling.”
“That’s better,” she said in an approving tone. She dropped a nightgown into her valise, straightened up, came over, and gave him a deep kiss right into his mouth, where he sat on the hard chair.
“Yum-yum” he remarked, as soon as he could.
“I do rather love you,” she announced, lowering her bulk on to his knees. “Fancy remembering, and keeping up that word all the way from when we were engaged.”
“How could I forget?” he demanded, as she kissed his eyes.
“Now, you’re not to laugh at me! Particularly not just when I’m being so heavenly with you.”
“I’m not,” Mr. Middleton protested, in a most virtuous voice.
“Oh heavens, how I love you, God help me,” the wife said. While she kissed his mouth with repeated little kisses, she undid a button on his shirt and slid a hand on to his naked chest.
He moaned.
“And you promise?” she murmured, then kissed him again. “No, don’t do that!” She kissed him. “You do promise?” And she went on kissing him. “No, Arthur, I told you, no.” She kissed him still. “Oh Arthur!” she whispered, in tones of love.
“Let’s go to bed,” he said.
“But there’s no time, oh darling!”
“Two hours.”
“I do love you so,” she told him, and let her lovely body be undressed.
•
The next night Arthur Middleton took Miss Paynton to a restaurant they had never yet visited, where they ate, they danced, they drank, they danced and drank again until he told the girl he was not like her, no longer her age, that he must go home. He asked Ann back for another drink. She neither accepted nor refused the invitation, even when he’d given their driver his address. And, in the taxi, she let him kiss her with abandon.
Once they were in his flat, he asked “What will you have? A gin and lime?”
“Just the one,” she replied. And when he’d mixed this, she said “You know, Arthur, you dance divinely, you really do! And I’m sorry to say you’ve my lipstick round your mouth. You must hurry and wash it off while I repair my damage.”