Doting

by Henry Green

  “I can’t always talk about the weather.”

  “Then I think it’s disgusting, that’s all,” he burst out. “There must be a sort of standard of loyalty in married life, when all’s said and done.”

  “Yet you take Charles out, unbeknownst to me?”

  “Why shouldn’t I?”

  “And you discuss with Charles who should and couldn’t be asked on a party for your son’s last night, without even a word to me before!”

  “It just happened that way,” Mr. Middleton admitted, wanly.

  “How could it have?”

  “What can you mean by that, Di?”

  “Show me how it’s possible to go over such a subject, with Charles, without meaning to!”

  “Now, look here . . .”

  “No,” she interrupted in a violent voice. “You did that on purpose, Arthur! After all, Charles is my friend!”

  “Of course,” he agreed, in evident distress. “But, before you came along I’d, in actual practice, known Charles a fair while.”

  “He’s loyal to me,” she cried out, on the verge of tears it seemed. “He’d never have allowed you, if you hadn’t forced the discussion on him!”

  “Oh, do let’s call it all off!” her husband begged.

  “What, in heaven’s name?”

  “This party, the people we know like Charles, Miss Belaine if you like, the whole bag of tricks.”

  “And Ann?”

  “I must be left with some of my friends,” Mr. Middleton objected. “We haven’t been married nineteen years just to look across a table at each other each night, you and I.”

  “Eighteen,” his wife corrected him.

  “Eighteen or nineteen, how does that make a difference?”

  “Then you are truly tired of me?” she wailed.

  “I do so wish you’d not speak such nonsense,” he said, in a flat voice.

  “And I could, where I’m concerned, put up with a bit more consideration from you in the expressions you use!”

  “But what is it, after all, that you need from me, Di? When all’s said and done, I work all day at the office, I come back tired out at night.”

  “When you aren’t taking your girls to luncheon.”

  “You know we have our arrangement.”

  “Damn our arrangement!”

  “Very well,” he said, in his weariest voice. “All this is simply wearing me out! I wouldn’t be surprised if I wasn’t ill. What say if we just didn’t see any of these people any more, even Ann?”

  “But that would mean utter defeat, dear.”

  “Now what’s this, Di?”

  “All I’m trying to say is,” the wife appeared to explain “if we turned our backs on these people, never saw them more, then we’d have failed in our married life. Paula would be able to say she was right.”

  “What has she said?”

  “Nothing to the point, yet, when has she ever?” Mrs. Middleton enquired. “But if we did that, she will. I know about these things, and you don’t,” she insisted. “I know, Arthur!”

  “Very well,” the husband said, as though exhausted. “So what’s the next step?”

  “You’ll see, my dear old darling,” the woman told him, kissing his mouth. “Now come to bed, do, you look so tired,” and they went.

  •

  The whole party, on the night, settled down to their table in an establishment which had just recently been opened in the West End of London and where, whilst having dinner, you could watch all-in wrestlers, dancing or a floor show, at one and the same time. This was made possible by the fact that supper tables had been placed on a balcony the walls of which were of plate glass. The corridor for service was on the wrestling side of their table but left a good view of that ring in which two men were to pretend to pull each other apart to the sound of a good dance band, for the diners were drenched, through open windows on the other side, with a great rhythm from two bands that played alternately, while the yells, the groans-to-be opposite would be totally unheard through plate glass which did not have one opening. This place was called “Rome.’

  “Oh heavens,” Mrs. Middleton announced, as she took her seat “but what if I feel giddy?”

  “I’m so sorry, my dear, yet I did think we might try something new, just once,” her husband answered.

  “Over there’s where they’ll gouge one another’s eyes out in precisely twenty minutes,” Mr. Addinsell informed Peter, nodding at the empty ring.

  Meanwhile both Ann and Claire were leaning out of an open window on the dancing side.

  “No Charles, or I shall feel quite sick,” Diana implored the man, plainly nervous at the sight.

  “Now girls,” the husband called to those two young women. “Come back to your responsibilities.” Grave-faced, Claire and Ann then sat down to table.

  “Poor Campbell is here,” the first one said.

  “I wish I could do all my work in these places,” Arthur laughed.

  “My dear, if you did, with your health, you’d be dead in three weeks,” his wife told him.

  “Now look, Di,” Mr. Addinsell protested. “What’s this? I thought we were all out to have a jolly evening.”

  “You don’t know about Arthur, Charles darling!” was her reply.

  “Well I must say, there’s no call to bring my health into question right now, surely?” the husband countered.

  “Campbell has been very ill, too,” Miss Paynton told them, in a doleful voice.

  “Would you wonder at it, in this atmosphere!” Mr. Middleton demanded.

  “The doctors were very worried over him,” Miss Belaine volunteered.

  “Who was, and why?” Ann sarcastically asked.

  “You told me yourself,” her one time friend answered.

  “Now illness of whatever kind’s a serious thing,” Charles Addinsell pronounced. “My experience is, don’t ever laugh about it. Can always end in the tragic.”

  When Claire giggled, Miss Paynton followed suit.

  Upon which, Peter intervened. “I say,” he said “d’you think I could have a shandy?”

  “But of course, darling,” his mother told him. “Arthur, when will you just begin to look after your guests?”

  “You know what the help is like, in these places, my dear,” this man replied, and began to click with his fingers.

  “Oh God,” the son commented.

  “What’s wrong now?” his father asked.

  “Nothing.”

  “How have you been?” Miss Belaine enquired of Charles.

  “Are you all right?” the mother wished her son to tell her.

  “We shall never get a waiter!” Arthur wailed.

  “Steady the Buffs,” Mr. Addinsell said. “Di, you’ll feel a new woman once you’ve had a drink.”

  “Who’ll dance?” Miss Paynton demanded.

  “When does the wrestling start?” Peter wanted to be told.

  “This is a divine tune,” Miss Belaine assured Addinsell at the same time.

  And Mrs. Middleton put her own view forward.

  “Why shouldn’t we just leave?” she asked.

  “Go? But nothing’s even begun yet!” her son protested.

  “It is his evening, after all,” the father said.

  “I’d love to dance,” Charles told his girl. “Only, let me stoke up with a drink first.”

  “I’m doing all I can!” Arthur Middleton complained, and waved violently.

  “I know you are, old man. Forget it.”

  Upon which the near miracle occurred, an attendant came to take their order. Better still, he brought the drinks almost at once. Their host thereupon ordered another round, then champagne for all.

  As he raised the martini to his lips, Mr. Addinsell gave Claire Belaine a long slow wink, to which she replied by wrinkling her fat nose. Mrs. Middleton must have become aware of this, for she reached over and drove a thumbnail hard into her husband’s wrist.

  Possibly he took it as a love token, because he mu
rmured back to his wife two little words,

  “My darling!!”

  “Better now?” Charles Addinsell asked his girl.

  “Of course,” she said.

  “When you get down to a drink you seem to want to withdraw your funny nose right out of the glass,” he went on.

  “Now, Charles, don’t start being a bore,” Claire answered.

  “I’m still not sure I feel all right up here, Arthur,” Mrs. Middleton complained. “It must be what it’s like to be parachuted.”

  “Drink your cocktail up,” the husband urged her.

  The next lot of cocktails came, with shandy for Peter, and buckets of champagne.

  “Better now, I am,” Mr. Addinsell announced.

  “Oh Charles, you are being rude,” his girl informed him.

  “Arthur, I feel at last as if I were coming back to earth,” Mrs. Middleton told the husband, already at her second cocktail.

  “Splendid, my dear,” Arthur said in an enthusiastic voice. “Now, who’s going to dance?”

  Peter asked “When do the wrestlers start?”

  “Shall we?” Addinsell demanded of Claire Belaine, as he drained his second martini down.

  “Yes,” she answered, getting up.

  They went, and the waiter uncorked their bottles in the buckets.

  “Just a minute and I expect they’ll be coming,” Mr. Middleton answered his son. “Darling, will you join me on the floor?”

  Diana gave him a sweet, loving smile. “Well, I might,” she said, and got up.

  Thus were Ann and Peter left alone.

  “I rather hate this place, don’t you?” she asked the boy.

  “I don’t know yet.”

  “I suppose it’s useless to invite you to dance, Peter?”

  “Good Lord, you surely don’t mean that, do you?”

  “All right,” she responded. “It’s your evening. Forget what I said.”

  “Isn’t it bad enough to see my parents making a sight of themselves in front of everybody?”

  “But Peter, they aren’t! They dance too sweetly.”

  Mr. Middleton junior laughed.

  “You’ll have to one day, you know,” Miss Paynton told him.

  “I’ll wait until I marry, then.”

  “What for?”

  “Well, my father did.”

  “I thought you were like me,” the girl complained. “Still everything my parents aren’t.”

  “You know I’d only make you look a fool, Ann. I’ve never even had lessons.”

  “I might just want to see Campbell for a minute. Please Peter!”

  “You’ll get plenty of chances later on,” this boy told the girl, and finished his second shandy.

  “Then how about some champagne?” Miss Paynton suggested, looking at her empty glass.

  “You can’t want to, before it’s cold!”

  “Now look, Peter. It’s me who’s going to drink the stuff, isn’t it?”

  “Oh all right! If you will wish to be different, I’ll get a waiter,” and the boy turned to look behind him.

  “No, you pour.”

  Which he proceeded to do. Because he had not dried the bottle with a napkin, iced water began to drip on his thighs. She saw this.

  “You’ll get all wet!” she objected.

  He laughed and said “But I quite like that.”

  “Yes, stuffy in here,” she agreed. Then she giggled. “Such a fisherman, you can’t do without cold water on your legs?” she asked, in a teasing voice.

  “Damn sight better on a river than at one of these places,” she was answered.

  At that, the tune having ended, the rest of their party returned.

  “Champagne, gracious heaven! Arthur, you are doing us proud!” Charles said.

  “All in darling Peter’s honour,” Diana told him with a meaning look.

  “And is he not going to be allowed any?” the man went on.

  “Now Charles, behave yourself,” Mrs. Middleton protested looking angrily at Claire.

  “Can’t stand the stuff, thank you,” Peter said.

  At this there was one of those short pauses, into which Claire’s voice soared.

  “Just one of those girls who make her young men take her to the same restaurant each night only to show the waiters how many men she has,” she was saying to Charles.

  “Oh, how people can change!” Ann moaned to Mr. Middleton.

  “Who? Me?” he demanded.

  “Yes, I expect,” she answered. “But I didn’t exactly mean you this time.” Then Miss Paynton whispered to the man. “No, it’s Claire. Why, she’s become absolutely revolting!”

  “When, in the end, are they going to start?” Peter asked his mother.

  “Who, darling?”

  “Why, the wrestlers of course.”

  “In their own good time, I suppose. Like everyone else.”

  “And what is that supposed to mean?” her son almost disapprovingly rejoined.

  “Oh, my dear!” Mrs. Middleton answered. “As you go on in life, I fear you’ll find people come more and more only to consult their own convenience.”

  “But if they’re paid to appear?” Peter wanted to be reassured.

  “Aren’t we all, in one way or another, darling, being paid, the whole of the time? Take tonight. Don’t we all have an obligation to your father because he is taking us out in this expensive place?”

  “I haven’t.”

  “And nor you should,” his mother laughed. “But these girls! D’you think they feel it?” Mrs. Middleton said this into a clamour of conversation, so that she would probably not be overheard. “D’you suppose anything means anything to them?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” her son told her in a bored voice. “Why don’t you ask Father?”

  “I will, at that. Darling!” she called across the table to her husband.

  “My dear,” he almost shouted back. “Ann here’s just been telling me the most extraordinary piece of gossip.”

  “I’m sure,” his wife dryly said. “Come on then, let’s have it.”

  “You remember Charlie So and So,” the man went on delightedly. “Who got rid of Dorothy in order to marry one of Ann’s contemporaries? Well, now he’s reduced to this . . .” and Mr. Middleton retailed aloud some really quite scabrous details of the jealous life this couple led.

  Diana beamed with obvious pleasure.

  “Aren’t some people utter idiots,” she cried.

  “Charlie’d better look out for his health, then,” Mr. Addinsell commented.

  “Oh Arthur, you are a bore! After all, I told you not to say,” Ann grumbled.

  “Darling, this is very nice champagne,” the wife told her husband.

  “But I don’t see this story of yours,” Claire expostulated to Miss Paynton “I mean, does it get anywhere?”

  “Only as far as one wants to, I suppose.”

  Arthur Middleton laughed exaggeratedly.

  “Good for you, Ann,” he crowed.

  “Now, dear, there’s quite enough of that,” his wife checked him.

  “Can’t one ever tell anything private any more?” Miss Paynton demanded, smiling.

  “Oh I’m beginning to enjoy this!” Diana said, with an enchanted expression. She raised her glass again.

  “Wonderful champagne,” Mr. Addinsell announced, as he followed suit.

  “No, just watch yourself, then! You know how terribly acid it can be for you,” Mrs. Middleton warned.

  “Oh surely,” the man complained. “Just once in every so often?”

  “I’m threatening you for your own good.”

  “But, Di, no one can say I drink!”

  “Who has?” she replied, taking another gulp.

  At which all the lights were lowered, their table was lit by one small yellow cone aimed at them through a hole in the ceiling and below, on one side, the dance hall was turned, by more switches, to a deep, glowing violet. The wrestling arena was dead empt
y, darkened.

  Charles Addinsell asked Diana “Will you waltz?” She rose and the extremely soft expression on her face was lost as, in sailing to her feet, she escaped the faint light which was directed on their table.

  “Ann?” Mr. Middleton appealed.

  So, in no time, Claire and Peter were left alone, which was the moment the waiters chose to serve melon all round.

  “You never dance?” Miss Belaine enquired of the boy.

  “No, I don’t,” he rather nervously answered.

  “Well, why should you, if you don’t want.”

  “That’s exactly what I say.”

  “Because if I keep to that, not being critical, if you understand me, it means I can do what I wish when I want, and no one can say a word of blame.”

  “It kills me to dance,” Peter said in an indistinct voice.

  “Why not,” Miss Belaine murmured, as she watched the dancers.

  The cornices, the window embrasures had been decorated with what seemed to be rope fixed to the wall. This feature had, of course, disappeared in this new darkness. But then, just as Peter was starting on his melon, someone, obviously very late, turned another switch and all this, which had looked like rope, broke into colour from within, a pale rose, which framed everything.

  “Oh God,” young Mr. Middleton exclaimed.

  “Would you like some of my champagne?”

  He nodded, and drained her glass.

  “Let me pour you some more,” he suggested.

  “All right,” Miss Belaine agreed. “There’s a clean one on the next-door table and no one will notice your dirty glass in this light, even if somebody comes.”

  This Peter did, and came back to what was now his goblet several times, when unobserved, later in the evening. This time he managed not to wet himself with iced water.

  “Thanks a lot,” the girl said. They both watched the dancers circling below. No more was uttered for a time. Then hardly turning her head, she added,

  “You might do one thing for me, though, Peter. I fancy I’m in Ann’s bad books. If you see her beginning to start in on me try and head her off, will you? You know her so well.”

  “All right, but why?”

  Miss Belaine, however, did not explain, and, soon after this, the music stopped. Diana came back to the table with Charles much noisier than she had been when she was her husband’s partner. And Ann was exuberant on Arthur’s arm.