by Alec Waugh
‘I’d give it another five minutes,’ said Gerald Palmer, ‘if I were you.’
By the time those five minutes were at an end, there had ceased to be any question of worthwhile.
For it is a miracle, that first sight of Constantinople. One has been so often disappointed; there are so many places of which one has been led by pictures and photographs to expect too much, that one has grown disillusioned about the accepted beauties of the world. It is down the side streets of history that one looks now for the rare, the unpremeditated moment. And so, as that low line of mosques and minarets becomes distinct, you smile. ‘Ah, but this,’ you say, ‘is merely an effect of light and distance; in a minute or two the mean ugly little houses will grow plain, as they did at Rome and Athens, and we shall see antiquity drossed by its setting of modernity. It will pass, this moment, for it is illusory.’ The ship draws closer and the outline of domes and turrets grows more clear; but there are no mean houses, only green lawns and gardens running down to the city wall. And slowly the boat swings round into the harbour and high on your right is Galata, and before you, beyond the shipping through a faint lilac mist, the exquisite low-lying crescent of Stamboul; and with a gasp you realize that it is, in fact, the city that was loved of Loti, all that has been ever said in praise of it.
‘So this,’ said Olivia, ‘is the thing you’ve come for. Are you disappointed?’
‘Disappointed! It’s so much lovelier than anything I expected that I shan’t have the heart to go on shore. I couldn’t run the risk of being disillusioned.’
‘I trust, however,’ a voice at his elbow murmured, ‘that that will not prevent Miss Marshall from making a tour of it.’
‘My dear Wellaway, I was about to suggest that it would be a kind thought if you would squire her.’
Olivia blinked at them. A whole day in that boob’s company. Still, even for boobs there were uses in the world. For Olivia was an ardent student of the cinema, and had been instructed by films innumerable that if a man affected to ignore a woman she had only to display interest in another, to rouse the sluggard’s ardour. Than which, in point of fact, there are policies far less effective.
‘I need hardly say,’ she cooed, ‘how grateful I should be to Mr. Wellaway if he would.’
And in her eyes there was a look that made the boob draw breath extremely quickly. For though Gerald might have her guessing, she was on firm ground where Wellaway was concerned. ‘Fair game,’ that’s how he had summed her up. ‘One of those bachelor girls one heard so much about. One wouldn’t get such a bit of luck coming one’s way twice.’ That was his attitude to her, and she knew it.
So on the next morning it was with Wellaway that she drove through the winding, irregular, dog-infested streets; and very winding and very irregular they were, and the car was not well sprung, and every few yards they would find themselves jolted against each other, so that their shoulders were touching half the time, and their hands kept brushing and ‘I wonder,’ thought Olivia, ‘if men realize how we make use of them.’ And there was a smile fluttering on her lips as she lay back in the car, listening while James Wellaway said each in turn the things she had expected of him.
She wore that night the dress that had been bought for her at Naples, and all through dinner she cast about Wellaway’s enchanted neck the wreaths of her wit and elegance; without apparently, however, disturbing her host’s composure. He was so glad, he said, that they had had a jolly day. He had just sat on deck watching the city under its aureole of changing lights.
‘He doesn’t believe I’m serious,’ thought Olivia.
So it was with Wellaway that she danced the first three fox-trots, and it was beside Wellaway that she sat afterwards in a quiet but not too quiet part of the lower deck. And ‘It’s marvellous, too marvellous,’ he said to her; ‘never met any girl like you before, been looking for one like you all my life. Moment I saw you I knew. One always does, I think, don’t you? First sight and all that?’
And Olivia nodded her head and waited patiently till she heard along the deck a voice that she recognized as Gerald’s. Then she raised her voice.
‘Do come here, Gerald,’ she called out. ‘It’s so exciting. James has just asked me to marry him.’
‘And that,’ she added to herself, ‘leaves it up to Gerald.’ For Wellaway would, she knew quite well, be inadequate to the situation. And if this didn’t make Gerald give himself away, she did not quite see what would.
If he had, however, anything beyond general amiability to give away, he most emphatically did not give it.
‘Why, how idyllic!’ he cried. ‘I’ve no need, I’m sure, to ask you if you’ve said “Yes”.’
Eight stressful years had taught Olivia to take her cues up quickly.
‘I wanted you, Gerald dear,’ she said, ‘to be the first person to wish us luck.’
And as James Wellaway, the fingers of his left hand fluttering awkwardly at his tie, muttered inaudible acceptances of Gerald’s congratulations: ‘I suppose I’ve got to marry the creature now,’ Olivia thought.
Not that she had not one or two cards left to play. Nor, indeed, that she regarded marriage, should the worst arrive, as a necessary deterrent to her resolution. All the same it would be as well for Gerald to realize all that he was missing.
So the next day it was not Etrurian statuary but the duties of a wife that Olivia discussed with him.
‘The trouble about the modern wife,’ she explained to him, ‘is that she forgets that her first job is to make a home. That’s what a man marries for, a home. He expects it and should be given it.’
And she explained how she proposed to make James Wellaway’s house a model of domestic efficiency. To all of which Gerald Palmer agreed most heartily. ‘There’s nothing like a home,’ he said. And when they reached Smyrna he spent half a day ransacking that city of dust and ruins till he unearthed a dinner service that should be worthy of so noble a decision. And Olivia thanked him prettily and decided to play another card. ‘I’ll show him all he’s giving up.’
So the next day she explained to him that the mistake most good housewives made was that they forgot that an effort was needed if they were to retain their husband’s love. It was no good letting the ashes cool. Did not Balzac say that the ideal wife was always a mistress to her husband. And so that Gerald should have no doubt about what she meant, that evening when he was standing in a conveniently adjacent shadow she embraced her fiancé in such a way as to convince that young person that he was standing on the brink of a most shattering experience.
‘The strain of an engagement,’ she said to Gerald, ‘is terrible … when one loves … as I do.’
He nodded his head sympathetically. Yes, it was terrible, a long engagement and the propinquity of a ship. ‘Perhaps,’ he said, ‘I might be able to do something for you.’
And that was the last night that Olivia spent alone in the luxurious stateroom. For early on the following morning they reached Alexandria, a city in which Gerald Palmer was not without influence and position, and with influence and position it is possible to obtain even special licences in an incredibly short time.
‘So that’s that,’ thought Olivia, as she watched the cabin boy dispose of her husband’s trunks.
Olivia’s worst enemy could scarcely accuse her of the weakness of self-pity. From the start she had stood up to life and made the best of more than one bad job. Not, she realized as the Paul Verlaine steamed into Marseilles, that this was such a particularly bad one. Wellaway’s yearly income had transpired to be a five-figure one. Four days of marriage had converted her restive prey into a docile and adoring slave. Nor did she feel quite so uncertain now of Gerald Palmer. She had begun to make her mind up about him. He was afraid, like so many other men, of the responsibility of paying court to an unattached young woman. That was it. He had been afraid. Now, however, that she was married … For it must be remembered that Olivia Wellaway was in those days an extremely cynical young person over whose conduct
eyebrows were lifted and tea-cups rattled. And she had not been many days in London before she rang up Gerald to suggest that she should come and see his library. ‘I was so interested,’ she said, ‘in all you told me about Tuscan statuary.’
She bought a new frock the day before her visit. And the greater part of the afternoon she spent in one of those small establishments in Duke Street where they smooth your skin, and manicure your nails, and do things to your hair which have the effect, so its promoters say, of imparting gloss. And when she arrived at Gerald’s flat she said that her hat was too tight and flung it on a chair, and displayed so lively an interest in Etrurian pottery that she spent two hours in Gerald’s library, peering over his shoulder at volume after volume with the glossed and scented hair as near as hair well can be to a cheek; an interest so keen, in fact, that Gerald insisted when she left on lending her an immense volume on the subject which nearly broke her arm during the five minutes she spent looking for a taxi. ‘I wonder,’ she thought, as she sank sadly but gratefully back into its cushions, ‘if my looks are going off.’
When she got back she sat for a long while anxiously before the mirror. ‘No,’ she decided at length, ‘it can’t be that.’
And when her husband returned from golf and murmured something about getting some letters written before dinner, she drew close to him and placed her hands upon his shoulders and her eyes were languishing and he forgot all about his letters. ‘No! it can’t be that,’ she said, as she sat rearranging her hair afterwards.
Still, it must be something.
And then suddenly she understood. Why, of course, but how ridiculous of her, that she should not have thought of it before. What else could it be? He thought she was too easy. He was one of those men who were only attracted by what was difficult. Thought she was too easy, did he? Ah, very well, but she would show him.…
And that very evening at Mrs. Parchment’s dance she smacked loudly, so that every one who could not see might hear, the face of a young man who had every reason for believing that the display of a little fervour would be encouraged. And at Mabel Gillett’s she kept her face stonily calm when Archie Malcolm told a story that was only relatively advanced. And a friend who had become involved not over-creditably in a divorce suit had a vaguely general invitation ‘for any day next month’ declined in the third person. So that long before the time came for the readers of the Morning Post to be informed of Marjorie Wellaway’s arrival in the world, it had become universally understood that you had to be pretty careful what you said or did when Olivia Wellaway was about. And by the time Marjorie’s life had come to be gladdened by a brother, her mother’s rigid regard for the proprieties had become so accepted as to have ceased to be an occasion for limericks.
But Gerald Palmer has not noticed. And nothing is less likely than that he ever will. For we live in an age of amateur psychologists who dig deep for what lies upon the surface. And what it all amounted to was this: that Gerald Palmer, curious though it may sound, did not happen to be attracted to Olivia in what Edwardian heroines described as ‘just that way’. And having learnt in a stern school the amount of patience and ingenuity that was required to overcome the reluctance of those ladies by whom he was, he had never imagined that he could, as Wellaway would have put it, ignite where he was not ignited. He simply had not thought about Olivia like that.
And so that is how the matter stands. And in the meantime Mrs. James Wellaway is growing hourly more unapproachable. The conventions have no more staunch defender. And the decades will pass. In twenty years’ time she will be the terror of her nieces, and I am rather sorry for the young men who want to escort Marjorie to dances. And I can hear nephews cautioning each other: ‘For heaven’s sake don’t let Aunt Olivia know!’ and their parents whispering, ‘What will Olivia say if she finds out!’ And I can see a hard black pencil striking out the undesirable names upon a calling list.…
And by that time every one will have forgotten that she was once Olivia Marshall.
And I daresay that it always has been more or less like that.
1926
The Last Chukka
I Had no intention of visiting Siam when I started my world tour. It was one of those unexpected things that happen easily and quickly in the unhurrying East. I mentioned in the Penang Club that I had sponsored at Chapman & Hall’s a novel about the Siamese teak forests called Brown Wife or White. ‘In that case you ought to see the country,’ my host said. ‘A friend of mine is Forestry Adviser there. He’s starting on a jungle trip next month. Why don’t you join him?’ A telegram was despatched, and two weeks later I was trudging in an elephant train with a cohort of coolies through the heat and mud and rain of the forest areas that lie north of Chiengmai.
In those days the teak trade was highly prosperous; it was organized almost exclusively by the British with the co-operation of the Danes, whose links with the country have been always close—the Siamese have been called ‘The Danes of Asia’—and the atmosphere at Chiengmai, the H.Q. of the teak trade, was like that of a British Colony. I felt, after spending a month in the Federated Malay States, that I was still in the British Raj.
My jungle trip lasted for three weeks; we marched twelve to fourteen miles a day, striking camp at dawn, arriving at our next point early in the afternoon, an hour or so ahead of the elephants; to sleep sometimes under canvas, sometimes in one of the company’s compounds. The path led through rocky mountain paths and flooded rice-fields. I learnt then under what tough conditions the early pioneers had developed the areas where their companies had concessions.
I spent a night in the compound of a young manager who seemed, in his health and cheerfulness, his efficiency, his sense of duty and responsibility, his friendly but firm treatment of his staff, to typify all that was most admirable in the type of Briton who went overseas. On my return a week later, I found him pale, sweating, shivering, stretched out on a long chair under blankets, struck down by malaria.
From the veranda of his bungalow I could see across the brown waters of the Menam down which the logs were drifting on their slow five years’ journey towards Bangkok, the towering splendour of the jungle. There it stood, lovely and cool and green in the October sunlight. It was so beautiful. You could not believe that anything so beautiful could be so full of poison, that those green recesses concealed not peace and quiet but disease and misery and decay; that the very depths of that luxuriant greenery betrayed the malice of its heart, that the measure of its beauty was the measure of its hate, that the very creepers that festooned the trees, heightening their grandeur, making them lovelier than any trees in the West could be, were in fact slowly crushing them to death, eating away their strength, replenished with it, as the fever that fed upon this young man’s strength.
In recent months I have often wished that rather more of the busy bureaucrats whom I have watched in Bangkok and Singapore, bustling about with their brief-cases repairing the ravages of ‘colonial exploitation’, had experienced the realities of ‘the bad old days’ before the age of antibiotics and air-conditioning.
After my trip on my return to Chiengmai I was taken round the leper hospital by the Senior Padre.
We went first to the men’s part; and to that part of it which had been set out as the plan on which ultimately the rest of the hospital was to be rebuilt. It had been arranged like a garden suburb, in a series of small crescents; with neat, brightly painted bungalows each with its carefully ordered plot of ground in front. The gravel paths were trim and closely weeded. In the centre of each crescent blazed gorgeously an immense bed of flowers, and on the steps and on the verandas of the bungalows the patients lounged lazily in the heavy sunlight, gossiping and chewing betel-nut. It was very home-like.
‘To begin with we used to let them marry,’ the Padre told me.
‘Leprosy is not the contagious thing it was once taken for. With proper precautions there is no reason why the children of lepers should be infected. But we found it involved us in too many compl
ications. To carry on at all it was essential to separate the men and women.’
We were crossing, as we talked, the waste part of ground dividing the men’s quarters from the women’s, which a collection of patients, in whose systems the disease had made inconsiderable progress, were converting into a further series of paths and gardens.
Midway between the two sections was the chapel. And as we drew close to it, the Padre’s pace slackened. It had been built only a couple of years back, and he could never pass it without a feeling of profound thankfulness that life should have been granted him long enough to see the completion of it. He was an old man, past sixty, weakened by fever and overwork. To build such a chapel had been one of his life’s ambitions.
For thirty-seven years he had had to wait.
When he had come to Siam as a young man from Washington, there had been nothing at Chiengmai—nothing: no mission, no school, no hospital. There had not even been a railway beyond Bangkok, and with funds scanty and supplies five weeks away, he had realized that till the schools and hospital were established, every consideration but those of the most bare necessities must be denied. He had waited for thirty-seven years, till the time had come when he could build according to his dreams. There it stood now, a high, white building, very bare and open, as was inevitable from the conditions of the place, but possessed of genuine beauty in its austere dignity of naked line.
‘We have two services a week,’ he said, ‘and though there is no compulsion, there are very few of the patients who do not attend. They are all Christians; within a week of their joining us, they come of their own accord to be baptized. It is only natural after all. They were brought up as Buddhists, but Buddhism, for all its beauties, is not a religion that holds its hand out to the pariah. When the Buddha saw a leper, he was filled with disgust and turned away; the Buddhists have allowed their lepers to lie unwanted about their streets. But Jesus, when He saw a leper, was moved, stretched out His hand and told His disciples that they should have care for lepers, so that the leper, who all his life has held himself to be an outcast, discovers that after all there is a God who cares for him. He turns naturally to the God whose heart is so great that it has room in it even for the poor leper.’