“Mm,” Oliver felt drowsy. He let John ramble on, catching desultory remarks here and there. Dimly, half listening to the wireless, he heard John say something three or four times, before his brain registered it as something worth paying attention to. “And she thinks I’m criticising her,” John kept saying. “Me, of all people. If she only knew, my God, if she only knew!”
“If she only knew what?” asked Oliver, opening his eyes.
“Oh, nothing. I wouldn’t bore you with it. It just”—John gave an unamused laugh—“it just seems so fantastic you telling me she thinks I’m too good for her, when all the time …”
“Spill it,” said Oliver, for John obviously wanted to be pressed into the luxury of confession. “What have you done? Robbed a bank?”
“Wish it were as simple as that. I could tell her that, but this—I could never make her understand. She’d be terribly hurt.”
Oliver turned off the wireless. “If you want to talk about it,” he said, “get on with it. If not, shut up.”
“I haven’t told a soul,” John said. “I could never tell Heather, yet I feel such a swine keeping it from her. It’s been preying on me ever since I got back.” Oliver could not see his face. His voice came disembodied from the armchair in the panelled dimness at the other side of the room. Up and down swung the heel of John’s slipper, while the other foot tapped on the floor, a tom-tom accompaniment to his words.
.…
“It was when I was in Australia, waiting to come home, after the cruiser had got us away from Burma. I hadn’t seen Heather for nearly two years; I’d never even seen Susan at all. There was a bit of a hold up about getting home. I knew I might have to wait an age for transport—well, that was understandable; there were sick and wounded to be thought of first. In any case, the Jap war wasn’t over then, and there was a chance I might be drafted to some other regiment out there. There wasn’t much left of mine. They gave me indefinite leave and a certain amount of back pay and told me to stick around and get myself fit. I was a bit moth-eaten.
I was dying to get home. We’d all talked of very little else since we were captured—that and food. And yet I was dreading it too, in a way, because when Heather and I had been together last we hadn’t been making much of a go of it. You weren’t at home, of course, so you wouldn’t know, but we had a holiday up in Scotland, a second honeymoon, it should have been, but I couldn’t do a thing right. Heather didn’t enjoy herself. I bored her—made an awful ass of myself.
You ever been to Melbourne? Pretty fine town. There’s something invigorating about the air of that country too; you feel you can tackle anything. That’s why I want to go back. Heather doesn’t want to, and I suppose it is asking rather a lot to make her uproot herself, especially when I bore her. She’d be even more bored with me if she hadn’t got her family and friends to fall back on. Of course she’d make new friends; Heather is pretty quick at making friends, I don’t know how she does it, but it would all be very strange at first.
When I first got there I wasn’t feeling too good—starvation mostly, I suppose, and I’d had the inevitable dysentery. Of course I made a beast of myself on the food, and got gastric trouble. I went to a doctor and he put me on a diet, gradually increasing—you know the kind of thing—and soon the boy began to feel pretty fit. They’ve got steaks out there as big as your head, and as much butter as you can eat, real farm butter, and cream with everything, thick, yellow cream. There was a place I often used to go to lunch, Charlie’s Buttery, it was called, where you sat up on stools and this chap Charlie would knock you up bacon and eggs and then sling you a great lump of pie with about half a pint of cream on it. He knew where I’d come from, so he always did me extra well.
It was there it started actually, in Charlie’s Buttery, at lunch-time—no, half a sec—or was it dinner? No, it was lunch, because I remember how dazzling the sun was when I went out into the street afterwards. The pavements there are very white, you know, and the sun just bounces off them and hits you smack in the eye. A hat doesn’t help much because the glare comes up underneath.
Well, this girl—but I haven’t told you about her yet, have I? She was on the stool next to me, and I’d noticed she’d done herself pretty well. You know what ridiculous little appetites most women have, always thinking about their figures. This girl had had a hamburger. I watched Charlie frying it on the griddle behind the counter; it always fascinated me to see him flip them over. She had fried potatoes with it and then she had two helpings of raisin pie and ice cream, and then she asked for a second cup of coffee. Then she put on some lipstick, like girls always do automatically after a meal, whether they need it or not, then she climbed down off her stool—she was only a little thing—and went to the door. Of course old Charlie called out to her, quite politely, to remind her she hadn’t paid. She turned round and smiled. She had a funny, crooked smile, with a dent in one corner of her top lip where she’d fallen off a bicycle when she was a kid.
I’m sorry,’ she said, ‘I haven’t any money.’ Just like that. Some nerve, you know. Charlie didn’t know what to do; in fact, he was much more embarrassed than she was. He was a softhearted chap who hated any trouble. If a drunk ever came in, he used to sweat blood in case they started any funny business and he’d have to call the police. I felt an awful ass. I mean, it was no good pretending I couldn’t hear what was going on because I was the only other person in the place. It was late for lunch. So then this girl tells him she’ll stay if he likes, while he calls the police. She didn’t look much more than a kid, you know, but full of spunk.
I thought I might as well have one good meal,’ she said, ‘before I was arrested for vagrancy!’
‘Are you sure you haven’t any money?’ Charlie asked her. She came back to the bar to show him inside her purse, and it was then I noticed how shabby all her things were. She gave the impression of being smart; you know how some women can wear any old clothes and make them look pretty good. She was very thin and pale too, and I saw then that she was older than I’d first thought her.
Well, what could I do? You’d have done the same, any mug would. Of course I paid for her lunch. She didn’t want me to, but, in a queer way, she didn’t seem interested enough to protest much, as if things like money weren’t important to her any more. It wasn’t a lot in all conscience; Charlie’s wasn’t the Ritz, where you pay for the furniture and the waiters’ laundry as well as your food. I was terrified she was going to be horribly grateful and cling to me or something, but she was grand. She just thanked me very prettily and walked out. Wouldn’t even let me see her home, though I’d have liked to.
I didn’t go back to Charlie’s for a week as it happened, and when I did I got a shock.
‘That girl’s been in every day looking for you,’ Charlie told me. ‘She’ll probably come in today.’ Lord, I’d have bolted if I hadn’t already ordered my food and could see it sizzling under the grill. Sausages, I was having, with tomatoes and spaghetti. Sure enough, I’d hardly got my teeth into it when in she came. People had kept coming in and out, but when she opened the door I could feel it all down my spine. You know how it is when you’re expecting someone. She simply came up to me, planked down on the counter the exact amount I’d paid for her lunch and went away without a word. Of course, I couldn’t let her get away with that. I mean, if she was so poor that she couldn’t pay for her own lunch, I couldn’t take any money from her, so I got my hat and dashed out after her. Perhaps it was that time I was thinking of when I said the sun was so dazzling. I know it was glaring hot as we stood arguing on the pavement with people bumping into us and prams having to go round.
No wonder she fainted. At least, I thought at first it was the heat, but it turned out afterwards she hadn’t had a thing to eat all day. I managed to get her into a taxi before a crowd collected. After what she’d said about being arrested, I didn’t want any policeman coming along. I told the man to drive into the Park where it was cooler, and when she came-to I got her to tell me
her story. It was the usual story; at least, one of them. You probably think I was a mug to fall for it, but honestly, Onions, I could tell she was genuine.
If you could have seen her … Stella, her name was, and she was so thin that her cheekbones went up into points. I thought I was thin enough when I came out of Burma, but there was nothing of her at all. She had T.B., you see. That’s why she couldn’t get a job. At least, she kept taking them on and not being able to stand up to it. That’s how she’d got the money to pay me back, by working all day in one of those dressmakers’ workrooms. She said it had just about finished her, and she wasn’t given to exaggerating—quite reverse, in fact. She made very light of her story. But I must tell it you in the right order. I’m afraid I’m telling this very badly, but the whole thing happened in such a short time that the sequence is a bit muddled.
She’d been in a sanatorium in England for two years and been discharged as cured. Her mother was a widow—did I tell you that? They hadn’t much money. She was engaged to a boy who hadn’t much money either, and while she was in the sanatorium he’d gone off to Australia to follow up some vague offer of a better job. So what does this ass of a girl do but dash after him as soon as she can. As she wasn’t strong, her mother didn’t want her to go all that way alone, but if you knew Stella you’d know that no one could ever tell her what to do. She’d put all her savings into paying her fare out, and when she got there she couldn’t find her boy. No wonder. She hadn’t told him she was coming, simply gone rushing off into the blue in the excitement of not being cooped up any more in the sanatorium, which she’d hated.
She followed up various addresses and eventually heard he was in New Zealand. She decided to wait until she could earn enough money to follow him, and got some dressmaking jobs; she was very good at sewing. But while she was waiting she got a letter from him, sent out again from England, to say he thought they’d better call the whole thing off—they’d been too young—he didn’t want to tie her down while he had no prospects—you know the old excuses. It was pretty obvious he’d found someone else. I’d like to get my hands on the young swine. Still, he’ll be feeling pretty bad now if he’s got my letter.
It was then that Stella realised she wasn’t cured at all. She went phut—partly from shock, of course, and had to give up her job. Her landlady found her coughing her heart up one morning and took her to the hospital, and of course, when they’d taken an X-ray, they told her she’d have to go to another sanatorium. Marvellous ones they have out there too, but she wouldn’t go. Not Stella. She had hated the other one and couldn’t face it again. She was so unhappy, anyway, that she didn’t care if she did die. She told the doctor she’d go home and get her things and told the landlady she was going to the sanatorium, but of course she never went back to the hospital. She went and hid in some awful little room in a slum. Oh yes, they have slums all right, even in Melbourne. She’d spent most of what was left of her money paying off her landlady, so she had to get a job; but, as I said, she couldn’t do it.
What would you have done, Onions? Would you have handed her over to the hospital? I know that would have been the sensible and the right thing to do, but I didn’t do it. Perhaps the sun had gone to my head. I took her back to my room at the hotel, and then d’you know what I did—me, the respectable married man, the stooge that Heather thinks is too virtuous? I went out and found a flat and rented it.
I won’t bore you with details, old boy. We lived in that flat for two months. I suppose I shouldn’t say it, but I was jolly happy. I’d been pretty lonely drifting round Melbourne with food as my only interest. Stella was happy too. She was sweet. You’d never have thought she was so ill; she was always so gay and lively—too lively, of course; it didn’t do her any good. We had awful fun. I hadn’t a lot of money, but we used to poke around and find the funny little restaurants. Sometimes we’d go dancing. I know Heather always says I can’t dance, but I could all right with Stella. She was so pathetically light, you could hardly feel her. It seems like a dream now; I can’t imagine myself being the hero of anything so romantic, and honestly, Onions, it was romantic. There was a tune they were playing a lot: ‘Call Me Back’… I suppose it all sounds terribly common or garden to you, just anyone else’s affair, but it didn’t, to us. Did I feel guilty? No. I was so far away, it was like being in a different world. The ties weren’t very strong. And I’d just had Heather’s letter about becoming a Catholic. I was very sore about it.
Stella knew I was married, of course, but we hardly ever talked about it. If ever two people lived in the present, it was us. Good thing we did, because it only lasted two months.
She’d kept going for so long at a pitch beyond her strength that when she got ill she just went pouff—like a candle. I took her to the same hospital where she’d been before, and the doctor told me off for not making her go to the sanatorium. Of course I should have, but—I wonder. She could never have been really strong again, and at least we had our two months in that silly little basement flat—quite the worst sort of place for her. She didn’t live the life of an invalid. We never talked about it, just as we didn’t talk about my being married. We shut everything out, like we’d draw the curtains after tea when the weather got colder and shut out the feet going by in the street.
It was after she died that I wrote that letter to her boy. I wish now I hadn’t, but I needed an outlet for my feelings. I drifted about after that, not doing anything very much, and pretty soon I got my passage home.
You do see, don’t you, that I could never tell Heather? It wouldn’t be fair. She’s been so good all through the war, and it can’t have been much of a picnic for her, with all the work she’s had to do. People like Stanford—there’s nothing in that. Why shouldn’t she have some fun? I never seem able to give her any.
Stella and I had more fun in two months than Heather and I in all the time we’ve been married.”
.…
John got up. “I say, could I have another drink?” he asked. “All that talk’s just about dried me up. You asleep? I hope you are, because I never meant to tell anyone, but it’s been rather a relief, you know, to get it off my chest.”
“D’you know what?” said Oliver, coming out of a reverie. “I think you should tell Heather.”
“God, no, I couldn’t. How could I ever make her understand that it was something entirely separate, that doesn’t affect our relationship at all? You know what women are; it would upset her dreadfully. And she’s upset enough with me already as it is. It would be fatal. Besides, I wouldn’t have the guts.”
“That’s just it,” said Oliver vehemently. “She’s always complaining you haven’t any guts. She even makes a grievance of the fact that you never look at another woman, and says it’s not much of a compliment to her that you’re simply faithful from lack of temptation. Go on, be a man. Tell her. At least it would bring you off the saintly pedestal to which she so objects.”
“It’s easy for you to talk,” said John, standing before the fireplace with his drink, his head dropped forward between the yoke of his shoulders. “Shut away here, you’ve forgotten what life is really like; you’re all theory.”
“All I know is, I get more ideas about life than ever I did when I was so busy living it. My advice is pretty good, I advised Vi to marry Fred, and look what a success it was. I believe it’s my mission in life now to lie here and hand out sage counsel. John, don’t be a mug. Oh Lord, there’s Heather coming back now. Why don’t you tell her tonight? Stage a terrific scene up in your room while she’s mellow with the free drinks of Stanford’s friends.”
“I couldn’t face her,” John said. “I’ll fly up and pretend to be asleep when she comes up. Call her in and keep her talking a bit, there’s a good chap. I couldn’t face her tonight. I feel too muddled.”
It was Elizabeth, being brought back in the doctor’s car. Oliver called her in and she came, looking very tired. She looked as if she had been sleeping in the car; her eyes were as hazy as a waking child�
�s and a strand of corn-coloured hair had escaped from the neat roll. She put up her hand and tucked it in.
She told Oliver that she had seen Lady Sandys safely into a comfortable room. She had been very quiet during the drive, net knowing her, of course, but amenable.
“She thought it was an hotel we had taken her to. She kept wanting to ring down to the restaurant to ask them to send up a nice little dinner for two. Then she was upset because there was a draw-sheet on the bed, kept threatening to send for the manager, and called the nurses chambermaids. I heard two of the nurses who’d helped me put her to bed laughing afterwards in the corridor, so I saw the Sister and told her we didn’t want any of that. I think she’ll be all right there. How’s John? Has he been very worried?”
“Oh, dreadfully,” said Oliver. “He’s talked of nothing else.”
Chapter 10
Before she left, Miss Smutts, always the soul of tact, said to Heather: “Cheer up, misery. Worrying won’t make it’ any better, though there’s no doubt it was your fault, and you can’t deny I warned you. But I never was one to say: I told you so.’ What’s done’s done, I say, and it may all be part of some higher plan we puny mortals aren’t meant to understand.”
“Take her away, John,” muttered Heather, whose eyes were still suffused with sleepiness and hangover. “And for God’s sake don’t miss the train and bring her back again.” Miss Smutts, whose luggage all seemed to be in brown-paper parcels and knitting-bags, drove away quite perkily with John, taking leave of Oliver with a “Toodle-oo”. She was looking forward to her holiday at Malden, where there was a good cinema and a café that sometimes had lemon-curd tarts, and where her sister’s credit with the trades-people was good. It would be a nice change.
It was true what John had told Oliver, that Heather would hardly speak to him. Indeed, she would hardly speak to anyone; she wallowed in her imagined position as an outcast. John said that at meals she was silent and picked at her food with a fork, and when Toby came over on Sunday morning to play chess with Oliver and stayed to lunch, Heather went straight to her room when she returned from her second Mass of the day and sent a message by David to say she was not hungry and would not come down. She became ostentatiously wrapped up in the children and mothered them jealously, even advancing their bath time so that John was deprived of his half-hour with them after tea. Never had Susan and David been taken for so many walks. Mrs. North said it was a mercy the weather was fine, or she would have wheeled them to death from over-exposure in her anxiety to be out of the house as much as possible. She went out quite often in the evenings, not saying where she was going, and taking the car without asking whether anyone else wanted it.
The Happy Prisoner Page 29