by Henry Green
“I dote on him, and nothing you can say will alter that fact,” the woman promised.
“Wait till you hear,” he told her, almost with satisfaction.
“And why should I believe?” Mrs. Middleton demanded. “Because it was Ann, I recognized her hypocrite’s voice, didn’t I?”
“Ann rang up then, yes.”
“The nerve! So what did she pretend, dear?”
“Only, Diana, that Charles has been out with her best friend, Claire Belaine.”
“Which must be just an idle, lying tale,” his wife announced most indignantly. “Why, he doesn’t even know the little thing.”
“Ann says she introduced them.”
Mrs. Middleton gave a stricken cry.
“Oh but,” she announced “then this may indeed be serious.”
“Darling,” her husband reasoned, “I sensed it could provoke you, but hardly...”
“There’s no loyalty left in the wide world!” she yelled.
He came over. “Now darling, what’s upset things?”
Diana put the pink knitting down and closed her eyes. “So you get Ann back and everything’s perfect, then, isn’t it?” she said.
He laid a hand on her shoulder. “I don’t even begin to understand,” he told his wife in a patient tone of voice.
“I did what I had to with the best of all possible intentions,” Mrs. Middleton began again, shut-eyed still. “It was all for Peter.”
“But how, my love?”
“To keep a home together for the darling boy!”
“Now, Di, just you leave Peter right out of this nonsense?”
“I couldn’t be expected to go on seeing you make such an utter ass of yourself over Ann, surely?”
“So you brought Miss Belaine in?”
“Because of Charles! Aren’t I to have my friends too? Oh darling, I’m so truly miserable.”
He slid down the arm of her chair until, with a practised movement, she wriggled on to his knee.
“Still, if you are happy, that is all I care,” she murmured.
He kissed her closed eyes.
“You of all people have no cause to worry,” he said, with great conviction.
“Yes, Arthur, but I must lead my own life after all.”
“I always did think Charles a cad,” he muttered. “More than you could be, my dear?”
“Now, Di, what is all this?”
“When I loved you so!”
“And don’t you still?”
“Of course.”
“So why does what Charles has so wickedly done, affect you in this way, my dear?” Mr. Middleton asked.
“Are you then to have everything?” she demanded, and opened her eyes at last, in an accusing stare. “Ann Paynton, as well as Claire Belaine, if needs be, the whole time?”
“But I don’t even know the other girl!”
“My dear Arthur, your intentions were very evident when you met her over tea in this very room.”
“And what did I do or say to make you think so?”
“It was the way you looked, Arthur.”
“What nonsense, Di,” he protested vigorously. “You’re mad!”
“I’m saner than you know,” she said, and shut her eyes once more.
“Now have you been all right in yourself, lately?”
“Thank you, Arthur, I’m fairly well, I suppose.”
“I mean you aren’t in the middle of your change of life without knowing, are you?”
She opened her eyes very wide, looked away from him, and drew herself apart.
“Arthur,” she said, in a low voice “are you insane?”
“I only wondered, my dear.”
“Why do you do this to me?” she whispered.
“My dear darling, what am I doing?”
“You know I’m not!”
“Well, you’ve got to face things, Di. It will happen some day and I thought this may have started, that’s all.”
“But why, Arthur, is all I ask?”
“Because you’re so peculiar about this whole business.”
“How peculiar, when I’m naturally upset for you if your young mistress who has been trying to ensnare the one friend I still have, starts him off with another girl? What would you feel if you were me?”
“I admit none of this, but for purposes of argument I see your point,” the husband confessed.
“Oh fiddlesticks, Arthur! And I could think of a stronger word.”
“I see, dear,” this man said, in his driest voice.
“And you’re going to blame me for it?” Diana cried, seeming on the verge of tears.
“How could I, my darling?”
“You simply don’t know about yourself, any more,” she told him.
“Very well, then,” he said. “Let’s call this whole party off.”
“But with Peter down from Scotland tomorrow night!” Mrs. Middleton protested.
“Why not when you seem so frantic with each one of our guests?”
“Well, my dear, wouldn’t you be?”
“Quite possibly, Di,” he replied “if I was in your position.”
“Which is?” the wife indignantly demanded.
“Now darling,” he said, with a show of caution. “I just said what I did because you seemed fed up with the people you’d invited, perhaps with reason.”
“But how could I, when I’ve written to darling Peter who we’re to have!”
“There was no way I could have guessed that, is there?”
“You might.”
“How, then?”
“If you truly loved the boy!”
“Now, Diana, I promise you I simply won’t have this! We are not to enter into a competition as to who dotes on him most!”
“Oh, doting!” the mother cried, in tones of disgust.
“Whatever you care to call it, I don’t mind,” Mr. Middleton exclaimed. “Can’t I love my own son, even?”
“And do you?”
“Now, Di, I’m not excusing a single word of this! Kindly pull yourself together!”
“To call off the party we’ve told him about, and on his very last night! Oh, Arthur!!”
“I said not a word of the sort, I’m certain.”
“Oh Arthur!”
“Did I? Well, all right then, I take it back, that’s all. And you can’t stop me!”
“When have I ever said I could?” Mrs. Middleton murmured.
“You’re hounding me, trying to drive me off the face of the earth!” he cried.
“I don’t know what you’re speaking of,” his wife answered.
“But when all’s said and done, how will it be when I go out with you, and those two girls, and with Charles?”
“That must come down to a matter between you and your own low conscience,” Mrs. Middleton told the man. Shortly after which they went to bed, where they made love apologetically.
•
Next morning, Arthur Middleton arranged to meet Addinsell at lunch.
“So you went out with this friend of Ann’s?” he began as soon as they were settled.
“Yes,” Charles replied.
“At night?”
“Yes.”
“And you went to bed with her, after?”
“As a matter of fact, I did.”
“You didn’t!” Mr. Middleton accused, in obvious agitation. “You can’t have!”
“But of course I got her into there. It was what she was asking for, surely?”
“And yet, Charles, she’s only eighteen?”
“Well, they’ve got this coming to them, sooner rather than later, haven’t they?”
“Why her, after all?” Mr. Middleton demanded, as though he was a loss.
“You’d prefer I’d pick on Ann, and not on Claire?”
“Oh I suppose Ann’s old history by now to you, Charles!”
“No, and not by want of trying, let me tell you, either.”
“So how about Di?” the husband hazarded.
“Now look here, Arthur, you must take a hold on yourself,” Mr. Addinsell firmly told him. “Try not to go on like this. I’m saying, you’ll get ill! There’s not a thing to any of it. My own tragedy is, I wish there could be something. And you sit here, and make mountains out of soft molehills!”
“A little girl like Claire!” Mr. Middleton groaned.
“She’s not little, she’s a great big creature,” Charles objected. “Come off it now, Arthur!”
“I wish I could.”
“Then you blame me, old man?”
“I? Not the least bit in the world,” Middleton said, with evident sincerity. “No, if you want me to put my finger on the spot, I’d say it was taxation.”
“By making everything more expensive?”
“Precisely, Charles. They don’t get asked out any more.”
“Except for the old, old reason?”
Mr. Middleton laughed. “How then are they to meet anyone nowadays?” he demanded.
“Arthur, my dear, I dine out on that, and I can’t afford to, either. One should be able to put the little things down to expenses.”
“Well, Charles, all I can say is, you’re hopeless!” Mr. Middleton announced in a most genial voice.
“My dear boy, it’s me who thinks you are!”
“But look here, I’m still married.”
Charles Addinsell winced. “Don’t rub in about Penelope,” he asked.
“I apologize for that,” the husband said, with sincerity, and there was a pause.
“Then you want to call the whole evening party for Peter, off, is that it?”
“No, I don’t, at all.”
“Come clean, Arthur. You know that’s the sole reason you’ve asked me for lunch.”
“I’ll admit the idea had crossed my mind. But Di won’t hear of it.”
“Yes?” Mr. Addinsell asked guardedly.
“On account of Peter,” Middleton explained. “The boy’s liable to dry up if we put him with people his own age.”
Charles roared with laughter. “So that’s why you’re still asking me?”
“Yes,” Arthur Middleton admitted, and laughed, in his turn, with a shamefaced air.
“Well then, I’m very glad,” Mr. Addinsell said, with evident sincerity. “Because, for the life of me, I can’t see why this sort of absurd misunderstanding should be allowed to come between two people like us who’ve, in the past, been through so much together.”
“All right Charles, and I’m not trying to rake up old sores, but it’s plain you forget what it’s like to be married.”
“Maybe so,” Addinsell said, with an air of distaste.
“You don’t hold it against me that I said that?”
“No...”
“Or when I told you I’d thought to put you off for Thursday?”
“So Thursday’s the evening? Let me look at my book, Arthur.”
“No, see here old man, you shan’t cry off now, how can you? What would my wife say? She’d think I was at the back of it!”
“All is well, Arthur, I’m free.”
“You mean Di hasn’t asked you properly, yet? Oh, how careless of her! Honest, I don’t know what she does with her time, all day!”
“That’s all right. I was invited. Only Diana didn’t seem so very sure it was coming off, this party of yours, Arthur.”
“Not going to happen!” Mr. Middleton cried. “Why Peter would never speak to either of us again! Well no, as a matter of fact, to be entirely truthful, I don’t suppose he lays such great store. In a manner of speaking you could say it was mine, and my wife’s, show to show him off.”
“I only wish I could do the same, but Joe’s too young yet,” Mr. Addinsell said with great sincerity. Shortly afterwards they left, went their separate ways, without anything else of significance having passed.
•
That same evening Peter arrived home off the train from Scotland. While his mother laughed wildly as she kissed him and Arthur called “well, there you are” the boy, in a shy voice, said,
“Oh hullo.”
“And have you got another fish, darling?”
“Well, yes. As a matter of fact I did.”
“Wonderful!” his father cried. “Any size?”
“Ten pounds two ounces.”
“That makes eleven you caught, then?”
“Don’t be so silly, Arthur! If he’s had one more, that makes twelve in all. I must write to Dick. He’s been too kind! And did you remember to tip the gillie?”
“Angus? Of course. Actually, because I’d brought in really rather a lot I thought I ought to give him a bit more.”
“And how much was that?”
“Stop it, Arthur! D’you suppose Dick won’t ask the boy again if he doesn’t tip properly.”
“Yes, my dear, I do.”
“In any case, when you talked over the original amount with me, I thought that was much too small.”
“Oh, let it pass!” Mr. Middleton begged of his wife.
“Who’s coming to the party?” the son demanded.
“Well, darling, we’ve got Ann, of course. I wrote you.”
“Oh yes,” he said, as if bored.
“And this time,” the mother went on “we’ve asked a friend of hers, Claire Belaine.”
“Who’s she?”
Mrs. Middleton laughed. “You well may ask!” she agreed. “Then I’ve invited Charles Addinsell, for myself.”
“Oh God,” the boy commented.
“But didn’t you get my letter?”
“Which one?”
“Telling you who we were to have?”
“No.”
“Wasn’t that the one I told you to post, Arthur?”
“How should I know, my dear?”
“I truly believe it’s becoming impossible to call on you for anything, these days!”
“I’m sure I put every single one you told me into the box, Diana.”
“You can’t have done, dear, if Peter never got it.”
“Did you see anyone besides Dick when you were up there?” the father asked his son, perhaps to change the subject.
“Yes, there was a chap from school.”
“Oh, what a bore for you!” Mr. Middleton sympathized.
“As a matter of fact I rather liked it.”
The parents exchanged a glance.
“Who is he? Shall we invite him to stay the next holidays?” his mother demanded.
“Oh God, no! Not that.”
“I see, darling.”
“What’s Ann up to these days?” the boy asked.
“Much the same as usual,” Arthur answered.
“Not engaged to be married yet?”
“So far as we know, darling,” Diana said, in a most peculiar voice. “Are you off her too, then?”
“No. Why?”
“You sounded as though you might be.”
“Why should I?”
“I never liked the woman,” he told his mother.
“Oh but Peter, you know you’ve always doted on Ann! For Heaven knows how long you’ve simply insisted she should come out on our last evening of the holidays.”
“Not me.”
“I sometimes say we go through this rigmarole of the first and last nights for our own and not Peter’s benefit,” Mr. Middleton diffidently suggested.
“Who to?” his wife at once asked.
“Oh, I think Charles.”
“Have you been seeing him again, Arthur? What for, this time?”
“Well, he’s a friend of both of us, isn’t he?”
“You never told me!”
“Is there any reason why I should?”
“No, about your taking him out, I mean,” she said.
“Who is, after all, this Belaine woman?” Peter wanted to be told.
Both parents began to speak at one and the same time, then each broke into gay laughter.
“She’s just a hussy,” his mother told the boy at last.
“What’s that
?”
“Something almost unmentionable, my darling.”
“Then why do you choose her as suitable to meet me?” Peter laughingly asked.
“Look, Diana, can’t we call the whole thing off?” Arthur Middleton demanded.
“And how would we look if we did, at this late date?”
“Not go out at all! On my last night? That would be pretty grim.”
“No, of course we’re going, darling. Pay no attention to your father. Now tell me more about your fishing. Did you get your last salmon in the Uil pool?”
•
After Peter had gone to bed, Mr. Middleton returned to the charge.
“No, but seriously Di, why should we have this evening which no one is going to enjoy.”
“When it’s tomorrow night?”
“What’s that got to do with things?”
“I certainly hope you’re not going to be disagreeable even over this!” his wife told him. “Just kindly indicate to me how we’re supposed to put them all off now?”
“We could say he had ’flu.”
“Well, Arthur, I for one am not going to lend the boy’s name to a low lie.”
“There’s that, of course,” her husband seemed to agree.
“And I should hope so too, Arthur!”
“Yet if Peter doesn’t seem to be looking forward to it, as he so obviously isn’t?”
“You heard him, only half an hour ago, my dear, say with his own lips it would be pretty grim if we didn’t.”
“I know but it’s borne in upon me we may have asked the wrong people.”
“Oh, darling, can one ever do right with children?” Diana declaimed, in a sad voice.
“I agree, Di. This is all a question of numbers, surely?”
“And what d’you mean by that?”
“Simply a matter of how many people come that Peter doesn’t want ever to meet.”
“Are you sure all this isn’t a fear, on your part, of being in the same room as me with certain members of our party, Arthur?”
“You mean I’m capable of anything?”
“Yes.”
He laughed, with good humour.
“You may be right at that,” he said.
“Darling,” she announced “whatever they may say against you, you’re in a way a reasonable sort of husband.”
“Who does?”
“Oh, not many people!”
“You’re telling me you’ve been at your old game of discussing me again?”