Doting

by Henry Green

  “Oh, poor Campbell,” she laughed.

  “Why, my dear, doesn’t he seem to be enjoying himself?” Mrs. Middleton indulgently enquired.

  The young lady smiled, then sighed.

  “It wouldn’t be fair to tell,” she said, straight at Arthur.

  “I enjoyed that dance,” Charles Addinsell informed the mother.

  “I truly love dancing with you, my dear,” she exclaimed, and then to all “Oh, darlings isn’t this becoming gay,” she cried out, in an exultant voice.

  “Certainly is, Di. Haven’t had an evening like it, not for ages,” Charles responded.

  “We’ll never have any wrestling,” Peter said, in despondent tones.

  “My dear boy, of course there will be,” his father told him.

  “But it’s all dark!”

  “What then? Don’t you know all wrestling audiences stay in the bar till the last minute?”

  “Do they?”

  “Don’t be tiresome, just when we’re beginning really to enjoy ourselves.”

  “Look Peter,” Miss Paynton suggested. “You’re way ahead of the others with your meal. Why don’t you and I go down and see what the form is? I’m not hungry.”

  “Not to dance.”

  “I didn’t even mean that. Let’s find this bar?”

  “You’re not to have a drink there, mind,” his mother said.

  “Come on, Peter,” Ann encouraged him, and they went.

  “Like a nursemaid when the kid’s crying and takes the sweet little creature behind a tree to wee-wee.”

  Mrs. Middleton laughed. “Now Arthur, don’t run the boy down. It’s natural he should be disappointed.”

  “Good champagne, this,” Charles announced.

  “Good heavens, your glass is empty. Here, fill up. Well, you know, Di, I’m wondering if there is to be any tonight, when all’s said and done.”

  “Oh no, Arthur! After you promised those wrestlers to Peter?”

  “But, if they are to show up, they’re being a bit slow about it, surely?”

  “In any case, he can’t have everything. Now should he, Charles?” the mother said, using a suddenly bored voice.

  “Got to learn to go without,” Mr. Addinsell agreed.

  “Charles, I believe you’re only a great humbug,” Claire Belaine announced.

  “How’s that?”

  “Well, I mean, you don’t yourself lack for much, do you?”

  Mr. and Mrs. Middleton exchanged a long look.

  “Quite right, my dear,” Arthur guffawed. “Go for the old hypocrite, why don’t you?”

  “I say, what’s this?” Addinsell cried, in what was possibly mock dismay.

  “Now, I can’t have my dearest old Charles teased,” Diana said with a smile towards her husband. “I just won’t stand for it.”

  “I wish I had the friends you seem to have,” Miss Belaine told the man.

  “Here’s how,” Middleton said, raising his glass to the girl.

  They each of them drained theirs, which were at once filled again. And then, for no apparent reason, they all burst out laughing.

  Giggling now, Mrs. Middleton announced,

  “And, oh my dears, I’d meant to say something to that young woman tonight!”

  “Who, Ann?” her husband protested. “Dearest, be careful. You’ll get yourself into dire trouble.”

  “Yes, I had. But knowing myself as I do, I don’t suppose I will.”

  “Did you?” Miss Belaine asked, with what was plainly intense interest. “Oh good! What was it going to be?”

  Mr. Addinsell emptied his glass and then, unbidden, refilled it from the nearest bottle.

  “I have my little plans at times,” Diana told the girl. “And then I so seldom carry them out, which I’m inclined to regret, always!”

  Addinsell hiccupped, almost pompously. “Very wise,” he said.

  “Charles!” Mrs. Middleton gaily protested.

  “Oh come on, now do!” Claire Belaine encouraged her.

  “No, Di. Enough,” her husband said. “Why, look who’s back so soon,” he went on, of Ann and Peter, as they came up to the table.

  “There isn’t going to be any!” the boy accused them all.

  “Any what?” his father demanded.

  “Wrestling, of course.”

  “But it’s advertised, Peter.”

  “I know! What can you do!”

  “Oh well,” Charles Addinsell commented, and hiccupped once more. “Bad luck, is all I say, bad luck!”

  “Now Di, what could I?” her husband asked, in a high voice. “With this in all the papers. And on the bills outside. Wasn’t it, Ann?”

  “I don’t know. Oh, all right!” the girl agreed.

  “Now you’re not to be tiresome,” his mother told the young man. “If there isn’t to be any, there just won’t be even one wrestler, that’s all! When you’ve been having such a divine time in Scotland after salmon, I do think it’s rather hard you should try and spoil our heavenly night out by wishing anyone, even anything, could be at all different.”

  “I wasn’t,” the son protested. “Only you said . . .”

  “Now Peter!” Mr. Middleton warned. “Don’t try and put the blame on your mother when it’s my fault.”

  “In what way yours, darling?” his wife wanted to be told.

  “There is a bar downstairs, but hardly a soul inside except for one or two old soaks,” Miss Paynton interrupted.

  “Sounds interesting,” Charles announced. “Come and dance, then you show me this place of yours.”

  The young lady made no move.

  “Why not take Claire, dear?” Mrs. Middleton put forward with obvious malice. “She’s been sitting out up here for ages.”

  “Come on then, somebody, for heaven’s sake,” Mr. Addinsell demanded, swaying on his feet.

  “Oh very well,” Claire said. They left.

  “He’s dead drunk,” the boy pronounced.

  “Now Peter,” Mr. Middleton objected. “Watch yourself before you cast adzpersions ’pon my guests!”

  “Yes certainly, darling,” the wife backed up her husband. “Since you’ve been out with that gillie you’ve simply become a bore, that’s all!”

  “I’m sorry. D’you think I could have some more shandy?”

  “Another one?” his father cried. “Won’t that be your fourth?”

  “No, I’ve only had two. And I took too much salt with this steak.”

  “Oh, go on, Arthur,” his wife commanded. “Why be so mean, on his last night?”

  “I’m not, darling! But we don’t want him drunk, do we?”

  “Poor Peter,” Ann said. “Not much fun for you, at this rate.”

  “Now, please keep out of this!” Mr. Middleton commanded Miss Paynton. “Or rather, come and dance?”

  “What!” his wife declaimed. “And leave me here all by myself? My dear,” she went on to the girl “I was just going to say something to your little friend she wouldn’t forget in a hurry.”

  “Oh good! What?”

  “But Diana . . .” her husband warned.

  “Yet, knowing myself as I do, I don’t suppose I ever shall,” Mrs. Middleton continued. Then she paused to drink deeply from her glass. And all, except Peter, did likewise. The mother actually gasped.

  “There’s been the most extraordinary change in Claire, lately,” Miss Paynton told them, in confidential tones. “I don’t know if I can describe it, but she’s become so ordinary, that’s the only word.”

  “You’re telling me!” Mrs. Middleton took the girl up, warmly. “Yet, don’t you think she always was a little bit, even?”

  “It’s my fault!” the young lady wailed. “Always has been. One gets so taken in!”

  “D’you think Charles is?” Mr. Middleton wanted to be told.

  “Would you say poor Charles could now be in a condition to tell his head from his toes?” Diana demanded.

  At this all, except Peter, drained their glasses. Mr. Middle
ton filled them up again.

  “Let live, and let live,” he pronounced.

  “Charles gets so tired,” the wife added.

  “But he doesn’t work, does he?” the girl asked.

  “It’s the boy of his,” Mr. Middleton explained. “Oh sorry, Peter. Of course he’s years younger than you! Nine, I believe, in fact.”

  “Oh God!” his son told him.

  Ann Paynton, unseen, reached across and took his hand. But Peter shook her off.

  “And Terence Shone?” he asked the girl.

  “No don’t mention him!” the young lady cried. “He’s out! I’ll never once again speak to that baby-in-arms, ever! No offence to you, Peter, of course.”

  “Yes, quite,” Middleton junior answered.

  “Oh really, Peter!” his mother objected. “When there isn’t anyone at this table wouldn’t give their eyes to be your age again.”

  “I couldn’t,” Miss Paynton told them.

  “Oh well, my dear, you’re different,” Mrs. Middleton admitted, in a grudging voice. “And long may you so be,” she added.

  Meantime, on the floor below, Claire managed to dance with Charles Addinsell by holding him safe in her arms.

  “Comin’ back to my place afterwards?” he thickly enquired.

  “You’re dead tight,” she answered.

  “Not so much so I can’t see that friend of Ann’s, the wet poet.”

  Miss Belaine laughed. “Good for you,” she said.

  “No, but sheriously, Claire,” the man went on. “There’s something in this whole evening, you know. Domesticity, what?”

  “How on earth d’you mean?”

  “Only I might’ve been wrong when I said I’ll never marry again, that’sh all.”

  The girl giggled. “And what’s brought you to this?” she asked.

  “Just being with old Arthur, and Di, out on this night out with their Peter. And you,” he added.

  “Why is it special?”

  “Don’t sh’you shee it the way I do?” the man demanded. “When I go out with my son we have to trail round the Zoo.”

  “Yes, but one day he’ll be older, Charles.”

  “I dunno but sometimes you dishappoint me,” Mr. Addinsell said. “Impersheptive!”

  “Now you are being rude, Charles darling,” the young lady answered in a glad tone of voice, which seemed to show she did not mind.

  “Oh, I feel miserable suddenly,” Miss Paynton told Peter upstairs, and his father overheard.

  “Why’s that, because you mustn’t be,” the man said.

  “Well, Claire and everything.”

  “You needn’t go on apologizing for the girl. After all you never invited her tonight.”

  “You mustn’t, my dear, cry over spilt milk,” Mrs. Middleton put in.

  “Will you have some brandy, or something?” the husband asked.

  “Oh, it’s getting so late. I ought to be on my way home,” the girl answered.

  “Now Arthur,” the wife and mother entreated. “Not another word! I’m sure we’ve all had quite enough, and I don’t want Charles to make any more of a fool of himself than he need.”

  “How about you, Peter?”

  “No thanks.”

  At this moment the dance music stopped, and the players walked off, except for a drummer. A curtain went up and on to the stage came the identical conjuror Peter had watched on the first night of his holidays.

  “Oh God!” he said.

  Claire reappeared with Charles Addinsell, holding the man tight by the arm. He did not say a word. While Arthur paid the bill, the girls thanked Mrs. Middleton. Ann announced that she thought she wouldn’t leave just yet, but sit below with Campbell for a bit. Then, while they awaited Claire and Diana outside the ladies’ cloakroom, Charles did speak to Arthur, swaying a little,

  “Will it be all right tomorrow, Arthur?”

  “Of course,” the husband answered.

  Soon after which, he left in a taxi with Miss Belaine, and the Middletons rode grumbling home.

  The next day they all went on very much the same.