by Henry Green
“That promise was forced out of me, Diana, when you were so upset.”
“But it’s only once one is truly miserable that one makes people make promises.”
“Oh, my dear, you aren’t!”
“What?”
“Miserable.”
“Could you be insane, all of a sudden? Of course I am!”
“And why?”
“For the simple reason you take out that little creature, Ann, the instant my back is turned, when you swore on your sacred oath you wouldn’t, ever again!”
“It seems to me Charles Addinsell is playing a very curious part in all this.”
“Now Arthur, I’ll not have you draw red herrings across your tracks.”
“The first person you see when you come back to London must be Charles? Before you’ve even said how d’you do to your husband!”
“Of course!”
“I can’t spot any ‘of course’ in this, Diana.”
“Really? But I had to find out what you’d been up to, you’ll at least grant me that?”
“To do which you were obliged to go to my best friend?”
“Naturally.”
“Then how did you get it out of him? By sitting on his knee, I suppose.”
Mrs. Middleton laughed. “Almost,” she said. “But that’s simply disgusting,” the man protested angrily. “And what’s more I don’t recognize my Diana in any of this!”
“Can’t you?” she asked, with great calm. “Oh, perhaps it wasn’t so bad as all that, though it wouldn’t do you any harm to get your imagination going some time. No, I did worm the story out of him, which is the important thing.”
“So you admit, Di, that what he told you was just a story?”
“He said the truth, my dear,” Mrs. Middleton announced with solemnity. “I could read it on his poor face.”
“I’m glad it’s poor.”
“Charles is to this day a very handsome man, Arthur.”
“Unlike me, I imagine.”
“He still takes trouble,” she told her husband, in a dreamy voice.
“What rot this is!” the man protested uneasily.
“How rot, when you’ve already confessed?”
“When on earth am I supposed to have done that?”
“Oh not often, I’ll agree, Arthur! No, you did just now, when you admitted you’d taken Ann Paynton out.”
“But, my dear, it was yourself asked me to.”
“Now don’t play the innocent, and when I’m so tired with the horrible journey. The sky is my witness you swore you would never invite her out at night, again.”
“Oh Lord, what have I done now?” he moaned.
“And, in addition,” she went on “I may be forced to do what I warned you I might have to. Reprisals!”
“Now, look here, Di . . .” he pleaded.
“Something with, say, Charles which I could afterwards regret.”
“With my best friend?” he burst out. “Why, you’d make me a laughing stock!”
“Oh, I expect you’d quite soon get over that.”
“How could I, Di? What d’you want? To torture me, or something?”
She smiled pleasantly. “How I wish I just could,” she said.
“Well then, everything’s hopeless then, isn’t it?” he muttered.
“It might not be, Arthur!”
“How’s that?”
“I don’t want to make you swear, or promise now, any more, but if you just come over here this minute and say faithfully you won’t ever again...”
He went to her at once. “Oh darling!” he said, it seemed almost in tears as he kissed her. She kissed the man back briefly. “There, that’s enough,” she murmured, pushing him off. “Now let me tell you about his last fish. It took all of three quarters of an hour to land . . .”
Mr. Middleton did not do any work that night. They went to bed soon after.
•
Miss Paynton had one of her sessions with Claire Belaine.
“Well, how’s everything going, Ann?”
“If you ask me I don’t think I’m getting anywhere, my dear. I haven’t seen Campbell in weeks.”
“Oh him!” Miss Belaine commented, with plain disgust.
“I won’t give anyone up, Claire, which has become a principle of mine.”
“In case they grow what you call expendable?”
“I forget what I meant by that silly phrase. I was miserable then, when I made it up, but now I’m just plain desperate.”
“Why? What’s happened?”
“Nothing. Simply nothing! Which is the whole point.”
“How much did you expect?”
“Why, to fall in love of course,” Miss Paynton protested. “Don’t you?”
“But there’s lots of time still, surely?”
“Is there, Claire? Can you be honest and say that?”
“You aren’t twenty yet.”
“I think there must be something the matter with me, you see.”
“Why on earth?”
“Because I can’t love anyone, and I don’t remember a soul I have. Not even once!”
“Everything comes with time.”
“No, look. There’s even the one who fell in love with me, or so he says, and I believe him, when I was eight and kneeling on a rabbit hutch at home.”
“Would he be this Arthur?”
“Yes.”
“And you don’t love him?”
“No, I simply can’t,” Miss Paynton muttered.
“Then how about Charles?”
“Oh, my dear, a hopeless neurotic.”
“But I’ve heard of people who go mad for love of those.”
“There you are, you see, Claire!”
“Well, I only wish I had the chance!”
“Why, d’you want to be introduced to him?”
“Me? Good heavens, no,” Miss Belaine protested, in a virtuous sounding voice.
“He’s quite nice looking, you know.”
“Maybe, Ann. But I don’t.”
“Have it your own way, darling. Then you do think I’m choosy not to fall in love with the first man I see, even if he’s old enough to be my father?”
“Well, I’ve always been in love, Ann.”
“I know! You’ve told me.”
“And I haven’t even had to speak to them, thank goodness.”
“Oh, you are lucky!” Miss Paynton sighed.
“You see, I never meet anyone,” the other girl complained.
“Yet you do all day, in the office.”
“I know,” Claire wailed. “There must be something wrong with the both of us then, in that case. Only, of course, we’re at opposite poles.”
“And just what d’you mean, dear?”
“That they ask you out and you can’t fall in love with them, while they won’t invite me, and I do!”
At which the two girls fell into a fit of giggling. When they’d got over it, they talked of other things, then left.
•
“People can be so extraordinary,” Miss Paynton was saying as she sat to dinner with Charles Addinsell in his flat the same night. “There’s a girl I know, rather a friend of mine, who simply falls in love with everyone she sees.”
“Better bring her up here some time, then.”
“Why, would you like to meet Claire?”
“I was only joking. Shouldn’t know what to do with the girl.”
Ann laughed. “I’ll bet,” she commented. “There’s just one major snag. She can’t talk to the person she falls for.”
“I might prefer that.”
“Are you serious?”
“No.”
They both laughed.
“Isn’t it peculiar,” Miss Paynton began again. “But they say some odd things about you into the bargain.”
“Such as?”
“You won’t be cross, or offended?”
“Not me.”
“Well, they pretend you only like persons much older than you are.”
/> “Men or women, or both, Ann?” he asked, smiling.
“Well, ladies.”
This time Mr. Addinsell roared with laughter.
“What absolute bilge and bunkum,” he said at last, when he could.
“I don’t know so much, Charles.”
“You mean to say you believed that?”
“What do we ever really learn about other people?” she reasoned. “Not to trust the way they look, and that’s about all.” She paused.
“No, go on,” he said.
“But don’t you see, even if you made the most violent love to me the next moment, which you won’t,” she went on, although he had not risen from his seat “which you won’t because I shan’t let you, I’d never know?”
“Couldn’t you feel?” he asked.
“Do you trust your feelings then, Charles?”
“Of course.”
“And ought I to?”
“Yes.”
“Well, if I did, I’d have to admit there’s something horribly peculiar about me.” She paused.
“Which is?”
She gave a giggle that sounded embarrassed.
“It’s only I can’t fall in love at all, and never have yet.”
“Much better not,” he said, in a sombre voice.
“Oh, you can be so discouraging at times,” she cried. “Now Charles, just try not to head me away from the experiences my life must have in store. I’ve got to go on living. Don’t even attempt to put me off with all the fearful things that could happen.”
“All right. But why do you think it is so necessary to fall in love?”
“Well, mayn’t that be so?”
“No. If you wanted to marry, you could, and have a baby daughter, then get to love him much later.”
“Marry without love,” she said, in a shocked voice.
“My wife, who I adored, couldn’t make up her mind to marry me, poor dear, so I took her along to see my old grandmother, who was alive then, and she told Penelope it didn’t matter who you married in this life, you came to love them in the end.”
“Oh, but then she must have been one of those fearful Edwardian parents who never had children except by some other man than their husbands.”
“No, she was born in eighteen fifty.”
“Honest?”
“It’s true.”
“Well then, Charles, I think that’s the most extraordinary thing I’ve ever heard.”
“What’s odd about it?”
“Everything.”
“Why? Human nature’s much the same from one person to another. So long as you don’t expect to be happy, you can get to love anyone. Ours is still a very small proportion of the world that chooses their own wives.”
“What a man’s point of view!”
“You’ve got to take life as you find it, Ann.”
“Well, I don’t find that, anyway.”
“How d’you know you won’t, in time?”
“I’ll take the risk, thank you.”
As the meal was over now, he suggested they should have their coffee in the living room. When she had settled in an armchair and he was sitting six feet away, he asked,
“See much of Arthur these days?”
“He’s a friend of yours, isn’t he?”
“My oldest.”
“Then perhaps you’ll explain him. I think he’s really rather strange.”
“In which way?”
“Well, he seems so frightened of and yet so fond, about dear Diana, all at the same time.”
“Old Arthur’s not the divorcing sort.”
“I should hope not,” the girl said with some animation. “We weren’t discussing anything of the kind, not as far as I’m aware. No, I can’t see how love and terror can run together.”
“Fear of losing what he has, I suppose.”
“I’d only say this to you, Charles, but he doesn’t seem to have much, would you think?”
“Well, a home, a wife and child. After all . . .”
“Oh I realize that could be everything,” she rather quickly agreed. “Almost all one should ask of life. But would you say he was still in love with darling Diana?”
“Does he have to be?”
“Then, if he isn’t, why does he go on living with her?”
“I suppose he’s afraid of something worse,” Mr. Addinsell suggested.
She laughed.
“I expect I’ll understand some time,” she said.
“Well I hope you don’t learn the hard way, as I had to.”
“Now Charles, you’re not to go gloomy on me again,” the young lady rallied him. “In any case I’m rather cross with Mr. Middleton, let me tell you.”
“Oh?”
“Yes. I never seem to even see him any more.”
“Why’s that?”
“Which is what I was hoping you’d be able to explain.”
“Perhaps he’s had the red light.”
“Of course not. Be serious. I don’t think people ought to drop you suddenly after taking one up, do you?”
“Diana may have read him the riot act.”
“Over me?” Miss Paynton giggled. “Oh I don’t think so. As a matter of fact she’s been round to Mummy and said it was you was seeing too much of me.”
The man seemed astounded.
“I? Diana?” he asked, in what could have been an offended voice. “Who told you?”
“Mummy.”
“When was this?”
“A fortnight ago.”
“But, Good Lord, I’d hardly known you then!”
“Arthur first introduced us, Charles, three weeks and two days back.”
“Diana? I can’t believe it!”
“Yes, she did. But you don’t appear to be very interested in what Mummy thinks.”
“What does she think?”
“She didn’t believe, either, after I’d talked to her for quite a bit. But in the course of our conversation she said a curious thing. Oh, heavens, there I go again! I’d sworn to myself I’d never mention this.”
“Go on, I’m like the grave, I don’t talk.”
“Oh no, I couldn’t. Why you’d never speak to me for ages.”
“Come on, Ann. You can’t avoid telling me, now.”
“Well then, if you swear you won’t be cross, and since you’re practically forcing me on, you see, she said you’d actually been having an affair for months and years with Diana.”
“Damn the woman!” he exclaimed, with obvious irritation.
She gathered up her bag, made as if to rise. “If you’re speaking of Mummy. . .” she began.
“No, it’s Di I meant,” he assured the girl. “Who else?”
Miss Paynton settled down again.
“Yes, I thought it was pretty good cheek,” she said.
“More than that! She’s been outright nasty. And I’d never have expected it of her.”
“Wouldn’t you, Charles?”
“No. Imagine knowing a woman all these years and then to come on a piece of nastiness like that!”
Miss Paynton kept very quiet.
“Oh, I suppose Diana was just jealous,” she said, in a satisfied sort of voice.
“Jealous, what of?” Mr. Addinsell demanded. “When nothing’s happened to make her jealous?”
“How would she know? Perhaps she just imagined.”
“I’m always imagining,” he objected violently. “We all are. But that doesn’t make me into a snake in the grass!”
“No, of course,” Miss Paynton sweetly agreed.
“I’m glad you see it,” he said, in a pompous voice.
“All the same I wasn’t exactly delighted to have all that told me, Charles.”
“I’ll bet you weren’t. Perfectly rotten for you, I agree.”
“Oh, I got over it.”
“Jolly decent of you,” he responded with sincerity. “What hell everything is!”
“Don’t take things too seriously, dear Charles. I’m pretty sure no g
reat harm has been done.”
“Oh, I’m all right. It was you I was thinking of.”
“You are sweet!”
“And so are you, good heavens! I wish to God, now, we had done something to give them a bit to gossip over.”
“Charles,” she exclaimed, in an unsurprised voice.
He got up. He came across. He sat on the arm of her chair. He put a hand into her far armpit.
She shrugged. “It tickles,” she complained.
He dropped a leg over the side of the chair, began sliding down towards and underneath her.
Miss Paynton let out a small cry. “You’re squeezing me up,” she said.
“Come, sit on my knee a minute,” he demanded, in a small, authoritative voice.
As she settled on his lap, she asked “But aren’t I an awful weight?”
“I want to kiss you,” he answered, which he did.
“Oh Charles,” she said in the expiring breath she used to sign off telephone conversations.
He slid a hand down along her leg, where the skirt ended. She put her free hand to meet it, and laced the fingers into his. Her arm was rigid.
She snapped a kiss at his mouth. “Oh Charles,” she repeated once more, into his silence.
“Might as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb,” he whispered to the girl.
“No, Charles.” She moved away.
“What’s the matter with me, then?”
“Why you’re perfect, you’re sweet,” she announced, rather loud, and fetched the mirror out of her bag. “Oh God,” she said, once she had had a look. “No, Charles,” when he tried to kiss her again. And within twenty minutes, she’d got out of that flat, and left him behind, as though she’d done Mr. Addinsell the greatest imaginable favour. Indeed, from the expression on his face, while he handed her into the taxi for which he’d phoned, it seemed he was fully conscious of his merit. He looked old and sad.
The same night Mrs. Middleton was saying to her husband,
“Arthur, I thought I’d ask Ann to tea.”
“Who?”
“Ann Paynton.”
“What for?”
“And her friend Claire what’s-her-name.”
Mr. Middleton went back to his papers, even hid his face inside the dispatch case.
“Belaine,” he faintly said.
“It would be so much easier if you asked them, darling,” Diana propounded.
“Oh?” he echoed, in a muffled voice.
“Yes, and then didn’t turn up, so I could have both alone for a change.”
“But I’ve never even met Claire.”