by Henry Green
“Well, why on earth not?”
“I might,” she conceded with a show of reluctance, and then Miss Paynton came into the room.
“Well, my dears,” she cried. “Why so glum? What have you two been up to?”
“Talking about you,” he said.
“Oh no, but how sweet!” Ann cried. “You shouldn’t.”
Then, for a time, they went on with indifferent subjects until, despite their joint protests, he made his way off.
“That’s that,” Miss Paynton said to Claire, when they heard the front door shut. “Mummy’s out, so I said I’d find myself a meal somewhere. How about you?”
“Darling I’d love it, but I can’t. They’ve changed the date of my club, and tonight’s the night, this week.”
“Oh well.” Miss Paynton yawned. “So what did you think of him, darling?”
“Definitely attractive.”
“So do I. Now I shall have to get going.”
They kissed, and Ann left.
•
That same evening, Addinsell greeted Miss Belaine at the bar of the very restaurant in which Middleton used to give Miss Paynton lunch.
“Well, well,” he said. “Nice of you.”
“It’s sweeter of you to ask me,” she replied.
“This is the place old Arthur brings Ann.”
“Does he?”
“Didn’t you know?”
The girl laughed. “Perhaps,” she said. “Is that why you think it suitable for me?”
“Not in the least. I come here because I consider the cooking’s best.”
“Goody!” Miss Belaine exclaimed. “Although I must watch my figure.”
“What on earth for?”
“Fat.”
“Good Lord, you aren’t.”
“Thanks,” she said. “But you see, if I didn’t pay attention I might be, even more so.”
“Never in the wide world!”
“D’you bring Ann here?”
“Now why should you ask?” he demanded.
“I suppose I’m curious.”
“May have done.”
“Oh, you are discreet!” she remarked, as she sipped her drink.
“Like the grave, Claire.”
“Heavens, you do sound sinister!”
“It’s not that,” he protested. “But it’s no great shakes, for you, to be seen here with me.”
“Why d’you say this?”
“Call me Charles, do,” he said. “Well, you can’t much enjoy yourself with a man old enough to be your father. You surely feel you must be polite to him all the time, like you’re being now.”
“Am I? Then how ought I to behave?”
“Laugh a bit.”
“I have. After which you suddenly went serious on me.”
“Here, I’m sorry, I do apologize. I didn’t mean anything, you know.”
“No more did I. There.”
“You ever met Diana Middleton?”
“Only the once.”
“What did you think?”
“Me? Why, I thought she was sweet.”
“I suppose I’ve known that woman all my life; since I was grown up, of course,” the man said.
“Lucky for you!”
“You think so. I don’t know. Anyway it’s very decent on your part to consent to come out with me.”
“Why on earth?”
“Well, isn’t it?”
“When I have to go without if I want to buy anything for myself!”
“How d’you mean?” the man demanded.
“Consider for a moment,” Claire begged him. “I have the room to pay for. I only earn a few measly pounds a week. It’s simply heaven to be asked out to a real, genuine meal.”
“Is it?”
“Well, wouldn’t it be?”
“I suppose. Yet, believe me, I’m still very grateful.”
“Then we both are, one to the other. Which is a reasonable basis to be on.”
“Yet you say you actually don’t get enough to eat?” Mr. Addinsell declaimed.
“Up to a point,” she admitted.
“Better order yourself a pretty decent dinner tonight, in that case,” he said.
She laughed. “I will!”
“But can’t you go round to your parents when you’re short of a square meal?”
“They’re dead.”
“I say, I am sorry! What time did that happen?”
“When I was twelve.”
“It’s a terrible object lesson, having a father and mother.”
“I’ve never thought so,” the girl complained.
“When they die.”
“I hadn’t seen it like that before.”
“Simply rotten on my little boy when his mother left him!”
“You mean she went so far as to run away?”
“No. She died. As yours did.”
“Oh I do apologize. Truly!”
“Quite all right,” he conceded. “Then who brought you up?”
“My aunt.”
“And you don’t care for her?”
“If I were you I’d marry again to save your son going through what I did if something should happen to you.”
“I’d never seen things in that light!” the father exclaimed. “You mean it might be selfish not to?”
“Yes. Judging by my experience.”
“Good Lord. You don’t know how interesting all this is to me.”
“Of course I may have been just plumb unlucky,” the girl explained. “I was a most tiresome, boring child, I shouldn’t wonder.”
“I’ll bet you weren’t!”
“But yes, Charles dear.”
“You mean you can’t go back to your aunt at any price, even for a square meal?”
“Of course I can!”
“Sorry, have I said the wrong thing again?”
“No, no,” she cried. “It was me. I suppose there was something in the way you put it!”
“I’m a clumsy old fool.”
“You aren’t old or clumsy. I don’t like it when you put on these airs, dear Charles! But what d’you suppose I left my aunt for, as soon as I felt I was old enough to get a job, with only a pound or two a week to my name, which Mummy left me.”
“Are you saying this relation of yours was actually cruel to you?”
“No, only that I got in her way.”
“A child! In your teens. Orphaned! How could you?”
“You see she couldn’t have friends to the house.”
“My dear Claire, and why on earth not?”
“Men friends, Charles. I was always in the light.”
“Oh!!” he said, in a loud voice.
There was a pause.
“I didn’t mean to shock you,” the girl began again, in an apologetic voice. “But that’s how things turned out.”
“What a rotten time you must have had,” he said, in muted tones. “No, of course, you didn’t shock, I’ve seen a bit of the world. Tell you the truth, the more I do witness things, the less I like ’em, but then I’m a bit of a cynic, I imagine.”
“Does that go for the people you meet, Charles?”
“You mean, what I said about not liking persons? No, not for all of them, no.”
“Which is something, then,” she said, in a satisfied voice.
“And how d’you find most of those you run up against, Claire?”
“But I’ve already told you, I meet absolutely no one, ever,” she wailed.
“I see. And Ann?”
“Oh, she’s just a girl friend.”
“I understand, Claire. Yes, quite.”
“You can’t imagine how it can be for me at my age in a big town like this.”
“Then you must do me the great pleasure of coming out again some time.”
“Oh now,” Miss Belaine objected. “I haven’t been saying all I have, so as to get you to invite me.”
“It would be a privilege,” the older man insisted.
Upon which they arg
ued a bit, and eventually she agreed to sally forth with him once more, on Wednesday, the evening after next. After that, when the meal was over, he took her to a club to dance. They had a merry time.
He dropped her back in his car. Claire was quite passionate when she let him kiss her. But she did not ask him up, not on this occasion.
•
The next day Mrs. Middleton rang Charles Addinsell early in the morning.
“You doing much tomorrow night, Charles?”
“What’s tomorrow? Wednesday? No, I don’t think so. Let me look at my book.”
“You see, Arthur’s just told me he has to go to some agent’s dinner. So inconsiderate to leave it so late, but there! You know what I have to put up with.”
“Lord, I’d forgotten, but I’m afraid I can’t this time, Di. Here it is, written down,” he lied. “I swore I’d take old Edward Dallas to the club.”
“What’s ‘this time’ meant to mean?” she demanded disagreeably.
“Why, Wednesday, Diana, that’s all.”
“I see. Then why don’t you put him off?”
“Couldn’t do it. The man only comes up to Town once in a blue moon.”
“I think I’ll ring Barwood and check with Edward myself about this little trip of his.”
Mr. Addinsell laughed, in a tone of great good humour.
“You may,” he replied “but you know how terrified old Ed still is of girls. You won’t get the truth out of him.”
Diana giggled. “Is he still? After all these years?”
“Most certainly so!”
“And you swear you’re not taking out that little creature Annabel?”
“Ann Paynton? Never in the world!”
“Her real name is Annabel, as you’ll find if you try long enough. Very well, I suppose I’ll have to let you go, this time. Goodbye for now, dear.” And Mrs. Middleton rang off.
•
Wednesday night Charles took Claire out. After eating they visited another place to dance, where they drank, they danced, they laughed; and laughed, and danced and drank again until at last she said she must go. He squeezed her wrist. “Wait for me, please,” she begged as she disappeared into the cloakroom, and when, afterwards, they stood at the top of the stairs until they got a taxi, each soberly leant his or her weight against the other.
“I love you,” Mr. Addinsell murmured.
“You don’t,” she protested, in as low a voice.
“Oh but I do,” he said, and she sighed.
As soon as the doorman had a taxi, Charles gave his own address, in an undertone, while she climbed in. He tipped more than he need.
Once they were on their way, he put an arm round her waist and kissed the girl, at length, on the mouth. She was passive. And the moment he withdrew, he said,
“To go back to what you told me about going to bed . . .”
She responded with a “Sssh—” and set her lips on his, so that he might not talk.
As soon as he could, he went on,
“But you know you said Ann did?”
“I’ll bet she does with you,” the young lady answered.
Charles did not paw Miss Belaine. He kept an arm loose around her waist and occasionally kissed the soft, moist corner of her mouth.
“Never in the world,” he protested.
“Aren’t you discreet!” She seemed to mock.
“Just truthful, Claire.”
The girl laughed. She kissed him. “You’re all right,” she said.
“How much all right?”
“Just a teeny bit.”
He laughed. They had been laughing a lot. “That’s something, then,” he said, and gave her a long kiss.
Eventually she broke away.
“See here,” she exclaimed with calm. “This isn’t anywhere near my direction. Where on earth are we going?”
“I owe you an apology, I said the address of my flat,” Mr. Addinsell told her in a soothing voice. “Fact is, I just couldn’t see the last of you, all of a sudden.” He kissed her. “You’re so extremely sweet.” She kissed him back.
“We’ll have to see about this,” she dreamily announced.
At which moment they drew up outside where he lived. He kissed the girl at great length. The taxi driver looked to his front.
“Come up just for a minute,” Mr. Addinsell said at last.
“No, Charles darling.”
“Not even for a second?”
“I can’t, you see.”
“Why ever not? When I promise I’ll behave.”
She gently laughed.
“You know I can’t,” she said.
“I just don’t, Claire.”
She laughed and pecked a kiss at the man. “Oh, very well,” Miss Belaine agreed. “But only on the condition you won’t be cross if it is only an instant.”
He kissed her. “I solemnly promise,” he affirmed.
Upstairs there was a sofa drawn up before the fire. He mixed the girl a drink, out of which she took one sip.
“Oh no, Charles, mine is too strong!”
“Give it to me,” he demanded, and watered the thing down.
Then he came to sit beside her, setting his own glass, the contents untasted, on a stool to the right.
“I must kiss you once more,” he said.
“Charles,” she gently replied, and held her mouth tilted.
Shortly afterwards, when she was half naked, with her eyes closed, Mr. Addinsell carried her to bed in the next room.
Two hours later, he ran the girl back in his car to her digs. She still seemed just as wordlessly contented.
•
The next morning, when she had telephoned her place of work to say she would not be in, Miss Belaine accepted the flowers which he had sent and which arrived about eleven, but, as soon as Mr. Addinsell rang her towards a quarter to twelve, she pretended to be someone else on the line, and, when the man had rung off, she phoned Ann at her office.
“Tell them anything,” she told her friend “say I’m ill, I leave it to you, but I must see you. Could we meet later in the pub?”
“You seem a bit wrought up, darling. Nothing dreadful, I hope?”
“No, rather the reverse. Only you may be cross with me, Ann!”
“I shall be? Oh, I don’t think so.”
“I’m not sure I’ll be able to tell you, even,” and, as she said this, Miss Belaine weakly giggled.
“Can’t you now, over the phone? All of a sudden it seems so long to wait, darling.”
“No, I couldn’t, not possibly!”
“All right then. At half past five, Claire.”
Upon which they rang off.
•
As they settled down to their drinks in the saloon bar that same evening, Claire began,
“Well I’ve news about Charles.”
“I might have known,” Miss Paynton said. “What can you know, Ann?”
“I guessed.”
“Is it obvious as that, then?”
“I’m not aware of what passed, of course! But everything was fated from the first, I’m sure.”
“D’you think?”
“Oh Claire it’s my fault for ever introducing you two. Yet I don’t know. D’you sometimes believe that nothing in the whole wide world matters?”
“Oh Ann, but surely simply everything has supreme importance, if it happens.”
“I’ve a feeling that everything is relative.”
“Between people?” Miss Belaine exclaimed. “Well of course!”
“No, as to what occurs between people,” Miss Paynton said in a doleful voice.
“But how can you evaluate what’s happened, Ann, when I haven’t even told you?”
“Thanks very much, I don’t think I want to know.”
“Then you seem very sure it must be on the dingy side, Ann.”
“Isn’t everything always?”
“Have we nothing to look forward to, at our age, in that case?”
“Just treachery, I sup
pose.”
“But, darling, what makes you talk like this?”
Miss Paynton laughed in a nervous way. “Oh, put it down to the weather,” she said.
“That’s not good enough, Ann.”
“Very well, then what d’you want?”
“Me?” Miss Belaine expostulated. “But I’m asking nothing.”
“So aren’t you, darling?”
“My dear Ann, what is all this?”
“Oh Claire I was such a fool to act like I did.”
A look of great patience came over Miss Belaine’s fat features.
“I blame myself entirely. I should never have done it,” the Paynton girl went on.
“But do what, dear?”
“For the most despicable of reasons, too! You see I was so dead jealous of Diana.”
“Yes?”
Miss Paynton beat a knee with her hand.
“When that horrible Diana asked you for Peter the other evening, I thought . . . I thought she was up to something—and when is it by the way, in three days’ time? I knew you wouldn’t mind, so I . . . Anyway, you both went out; oh you had my blessing, up to a point, of course, because it came to me Diana has some plan which I can’t possibly know, and it was only fair that you should get to meet him first in case he tried anything. And now you look radiant and I feel miserable.”
“I still can’t understand what this is, Ann, but I’m sorry, I truly am.”
“Oh well, as I was saying, nothing really matters.”
“But my dear, why not?”
“Or I suppose it doesn’t. I don’t say I put much money on Charles, but I did hope he’d turn out a friend.”
“He is, Ann.”
“I must go. We’ll see. Goodbye.”
She left without a smile, and had not even finished her drink. Miss Belaine sat on with a small, guilty and contented grin across her face.
•
That night the telephone rang in Arthur Middleton’s flat about nine o’clock, just when he had started work on the contents of the briefcase. His wife answered, as a matter of course.
“It’s for you, Arthur, and I’m sorry to say it sounds like that little Ann Paynton, though of course she won’t give her name.”
Mr. Middleton groaned.
“Hullo there,” he said into the phone. “No. Yes.” Then after a pause “What? When, last night? I can’t believe you.” After which he had another bout of listening. “And to think I used to call that man my friend,” he said at last. “Yes, thanks, this is very bad,” he ended, and rang off.
“To think of it,” he said to his wife, in a rather excited voice, as he came back from the instrument. “I’m afraid you’re not going to like this. There’s more about Charles now.”