“The blighter’s looking worried,” she remarked to Sylvia. “Recognize the signs. When we were young, waiting for school report, knowing he’ll get a pasting—not that that sort of thing worried Mummy. She—” But she went no further.
Now she said, “You’re lucky Reggie’s such a good boy. With you always in bed like that, having babies. But he never looks at anyone else. Piffle it may be, but I think men are much more faithful than women.”
She said it in an offhand, deceptively friendly tone. And, Sylvia thought, she can hardly accuse me, safe in childbed, of carrying on with Claude or Sidney.
Neither of them had been to the house for some time, although doubtless Reggie went out to meet them. Occasionally at night, between sessions with the whiskey bottle, he became involved in long telephone calls. Sometimes after the ten o’clock feed, walking along the corridor, she would hear him.
She supposed that she should have seen it all coming.
He burst into her bedroom, white-faced, staggering almost.
She was in the armchair by the window, sewing. The baby in the organdie-trimmed cot by the bed was crying—she had been fretful all day. Sylvia thought it was worry affecting her milk. Nurse Matthews said it was pickled herring. (“Really I should have some control over the kitchen and what Mummy eats.”)
“Sylvie, there’s been a bit of an upset. We’ve—Sidney and I—not Claude —Claude’s all right, hasn’t played the game. Fact is Claude’s feathered his nest. Sylvie, old thing—take a deep breath. The hotel—whole thing, whole scheme. It’s napoo.”
“Look, Reggie, just tell me quietly. Are you in trouble with this?”
His hand was shaking. “No. No—it’s all right, old thing. Just shock— put a lot into it, you know. Sidney too. We’re both—bit shocked, you know. Claude—doing it on the quiet.” He raised his voice suddenly. “Stop that brat yelling, would you?”
“I’ll ring for Nurse—”
“No, leave it. Can’t think straight. All of a shake. Fact is there can’t be a hotel enterprise—money, capital, all that, not enough’s come through. We have to get out, sell up. You know the sort of thing. Belgies have made a proper mess of it—valued the place at something ridiculous—and say money can’t be raised as a result. Meantime old Claude’s done a deal behind our backs. Got some money off them in his name. Complicated thing—don’t think there’s a chance he’ll be got for it. It’s all through, over—”
“But us, Reggie, we’re all right?”
“Of course all right, never been better. And look, can’t stand that caterwauling—couldn’t you feed it, or whatever it is you do?” He got up. She saw that his hand holding a cigarette trembled still.
She was not surprised when she couldn’t sleep that night. She had anyway never been a good sleeper since the days of Geoffrey—and Willow. Perhaps it went back earlier, to her father’s illness, when she would worry that he might die if she did not stay awake to keep him alive. Certainly she worried tonight for Reggie, who had gone out earlier, leaving just a message with the maid that he wanted no dinner. She hadn’t heard him come in. She looked now in his dressing room, and in their bedroom, then, seeing a light on in the hall, went downstairs.
He was in the small morning room. The wireless, left on a wavelength without a program, crackled and wheezed. He sat head bowed. The usual empty glass and nearly empty bottle were beside him.
“Reggie—don’t you think—” She saw on his knees the Smith & Wesson.
“Whatever—Reggie, give it to me.” When he didn’t look up: “You’ve been drinking, that’s it, isn’t it? A revolver, I’ve said before—too dangerous. Give it to me.”
He let her take it. Head still bowed, hand hanging by his side. “Sorry old thing. Sorry, Sylvie.” He began to weep. A noisy choking sound. “Upset about everything. Children, haven’t had a son. Nothing gone right. And for you—I thought, best if I pipped out.”
“As if we hadn’t enough trouble, Reggie. How could your death help, how could it? And the children—think of them.” She didn’t feel pity, only anger at his thoughtlessness.
“At least Willow wasn’t a boy—couldn’t have stood that, you know. Another chap’s. Cad. A cad’s son. You’ll have to watch her. Blood will out. Women who can’t keep away from men, bitches in heat—usually the best lookers, sort you can’t say no to.” He was crying again.
“Go up to bed. Come on now.” She tried to keep the anger out of her voice.
“Chap who fucked you, pardon my French. The chap at a party—” “Don’t—” she began.
“Never was a chap at a party, was there? I guessed that. Told Reggie a fib, eh? Chap must have been a cad, getting you to open your legs like that. Then not caring about the bastard he’d made. Filthy cad, not caring about life—”
“Of course he cared. He was a doctor—” She stopped, horrified.
“What’s that? A doc, eh? Not—Doc Selby?”
She trembled. “I didn’t say—”
“Doc at Flaxthorpe. Selby. No, Selwood. Cad called Selwood. Left you in the lurch, didn’t he? Didn’t he, eh?”
Stung, not knowing what she was saying, she heard her own voice, shaky:
“He didn’t know. He would never have left me to manage. It was my choice.”
She realized suddenly that he wasn’t listening. Reaching now for more drink, slopping it into the glass. Geoffrey’s name, hanging in the whiskey-laden air. How could I have given it away?
“Sylvie,” he said, between gulps of drink, “it’s a bit worse than I told you. Everything—worse. It’s all gone. Finished. We’re done for. Napoo.”
But what was this?
“That’s why—wanted to end it all. Everything lost.”
“But the ten? Oh my God,” she said, “ten thousand—”
“No hope any of it. Shambles, nothing less. Sidney’s got his hotel of course—his job. Won’t lose that.”
“My money,” she said. “My money. I know I was a fool—but a woman in childbed—how could you? You’re a knave, Reggie, as well as a fool.”
When he didn’t answer, “A knave,” she repeated. Then: “But we have the house. And the children. We can, I suppose, pick up the bits.” She felt no confidence though, only shock, and a deep anger. She said coldly:
“You won’t be prosecuted or anything? You’re not in that sort of trouble?”
“No.” He stood up, turned away from her, hunched. “But—about the house, old thing. Our house. Don’t know what to say. That’s … collateral. Put it up, you know, before the ten thousand. Last-ditch stand, that ten. Felt pretty confident or wouldn’t have asked. No house now, though. Pretty serious, eh, Sylvie?”
Pretty serious! Inside her, fury warred with disgust, so that smelling the alcohol on his breath, she felt faint, nauseated. Helping, half pushing him up the stairs (and she should not, so soon after the baby), she thought with horror, This is the man I married, for better, for worse.
He stumbled against the banister. That she should have told him, however unintentionally, about Geoffrey … I must thank God, she thought, that drunk, maudlin as he is, he will remember little.
And what shall we do now?
8
Winter of ’33, through to winter of ’34—the year of Ferdy.
So many men, Teddy thought, in and out of my bed, since Saint left me. Yet, once over the shock, did I really mind? What sort of a married couple would we have made? It was only my longing for a child which led me to think, ever, of settling with him.
Who is the better off, Sylvia with all that brood, a hearty but boring husband (I know, we know, he drinks) whose business dealings we can none of us fathom? Nowadays she tells us nothing. Her address, changed from Surrey to North London, and a part of it we don’t know. She comes to us sometimes. We never go to her. Sylvia, who was so lovely once. It breaks Mother’s heart.
What must it be like to bed with the same man for over ten years? Certainly not like anything I’ve known: Teddy Nicolson, married 1
917, widowed January 1919. Mistress of Saint, 1922 to 1925. And after? I wouldn’t care to count the men.
Of course there is the other side of my life. I have the orphanage. It is the one certain thing in my life. I am proud of it—of the children and the way they are growing up, of myself for what I have put into it (and I don’t just mean money). Their concerns are my concerns. If I could only manage the private side of my life as well as I do the care of orphans!
But she could not. She seemed unable to settle. Nor were her men often “suitable,” in the old-fashioned sense. Many were married and intended to remain so. It wasn’t anything to do with the shortage of men either. She seemed able to attract as many as she wanted. Often she did not want them for very long.
Ferdy was different. How? Not for a second did she contemplate marriage with him. It was from the start lighthearted. “You are fun, Ferdy!” It never sounded foolish to say that. It was all fun—as long as they kept off politics.
He was Belgian, from Liège. They spoke French together always (he remarked on her slight Belgian accent from Berthe, which she’d never lost) although he could speak English adequately. His business was cardboard containers, and he expected to spend a year between the firm’s Paris and London offices. To her English friends she said, “Ferdy is in cardboard containers.” Because he didn’t know the idiom, he was, the first time, genuinely puzzled by their laughter. Afterward, he would pretend outrage.
They had such fun together. She had not been as silly since adolescent days with Amy (and we did not stay young or silly for long). She remembered her mother telling her of happy years, just being “foolish, giggling, childish” with a girl friend, back in her early acting days. It was something like that perhaps.
They met in the late autumn of ’33. She was just back from two months in Yorkshire, the result of one of her periodic fits of longing to be up there, which after a short time would end with her becoming restless again and wanting the orphanage. Although for the last nine years there had been the joy of being with Michael. She was as fond of him as she’d been that first memorable day. Michael, who had settled so well, who gave so much happiness to Mother. Already fourteen and just beginning his second year at Winchester. (The only pity that he and Willow did not get on, seemed to have loathed each other on sight.)
She and Ferdy met in the way she met so many of her men, through friends of friends, at a party. He told her at once that she talked too much. “However do you get a man?” Men didn’t mind, she said. They gave as good as they got, or were happy to sit back and listen. Either way …
His first political remark then, and easily his most harmless. He distrusted the glib of tongue, he commented. “Who was it said of Clemenceau, ‘Si je pourrais pisser comme il parle …”’
“I’d stop you midstream,” she said, in French.
That set the tone of their conversation. It seldom rose, often sank.
A week after that party meeting, he was her lover. Three weeks after that, she encountered his political views during a late supper at Ledoyen’s. The subject, Germany, who in the middle of that month had withdrawn from both the League of Nations and the Disarmament Conference. What were Germany’s intentions? The leopard doesn’t change its spots, someone said. A journalist whom Teddy knew slightly, Didier, had a tale out of Germany:
“The other week Adolf Hitler was laying the foundation stone of the German Art Gallery or some such—the idea being to show Germany has no military ambitions, just cultural ones. The hammer should have tapped three times. It broke on the first, and the handle stayed in his hand. He was furious, evidently. Reporting forbidden, all photos destroyed. A few press boys who managed to circulate pics got threatened with concentration camp. Personally, I saw it as I hope symbolic of the whole future of the insane Nazi movement.”
Ferdy said, “God knows I’ve no affection for Germans—I was brought up on a Boche for breakfast—but it’s communism we should be worrying about. Here in France, you’ve got a socialist ferment and a half. The Bolsheviks plan to rule the world, and I don’t care to be there when it happens. If, to stop it, a little bit fascist, who cares?”
“I do,” Teddy said, shocking him. She said afterward, “They’re both bad, both too extreme. Why do you have to approve of either?”
“Dear Teddy. If both are bad we must find which is the least evil and encourage that to crush the other. Anyway, enemies change. We Belgians, not a century old, what are we to think? As for you English, it was only yesterday you said Bonaparte ate babies for breakfast. Now look at you.”
She took him up. He argued again. To his other views he added, perhaps not surprisingly, anti-Semitism. She was reminded of Robert. They argued another half hour and then it was over. They scarcely raised the matter again. After all, they weren’t having an affair because of shared political views.
Quite a lot of her time was still spent at the orphanage. Ferdy affected to be amused. Occasionally he was impatient. “Don’t you take all this a bit too seriously? Orphanages manage to run without constant visits from well-meaning ladies. It’s your money they want and need.”
He talked little of himself. She found she knew almost nothing, other than that he’d lost an older brother in the war. (We have that in common, she told him.) Once he was rude about marriage. “Ah, marriage, pah. Spider’s web, you shouldn’t walk in.”
Most of the time was just—fun. He became part of her life. She went with him when he visited London for a week, prior to spending three or four months there in the spring of ’34. She did not bother to go up to Yorkshire.
Their last night in London, Ferdy had a slight fever, and she went alone to the Albert Hall for the Festival of Remembrance—and wished she had not. She had removed herself so much from her memories that to stir them was unbearable. And it was to begin all over again! From what she heard—sooner or later, probably sooner—there would be another war. The only possible justification for the sacrifice of Gib and Hal and the millions of others had been that it would not happen again.
They sang “There’s a Long Long Trail,” “Tipperary,” “Roses of Picardy.” She was back at The Towers Hospital—the twice weekly entertainments. Courage of the wounded and maimed, of the healed who went back. She thought, It is not the same for others who hear these songs. A million rose petals fell from the roof. The voice, boyish still, of the Prince of Wales recited, “They shall not grow old, as we that are left …”
They sang “Abide with Me, fast falls the eventide …” She thought of Flaxthorpe church, and Gib, always of Gib. That night, sleepless in the small hours, the idea took hold of her: if Gib came back, what would he think of me?
While Ferdy was based in Paris he went home to Belgium alternate weekends. She knew nothing at all about his life there. He spoke of his mother—the Boche hater—and of how he had to drive her out on Sundays. He never suggested that she should come with him, and she was glad he did not. “It’s boring duty weekend again,” he would say. Grandpère was alive still, aged eighty-eight. He too liked a drive in the country. …
Before Christmas, Ferdy spent two weeks at his firm’s Milan office. She could not resist joining him, although the weather was atrocious. She hardly knew Italy and felt it a bad introduction. He had a few days free and they visited Verona, and then Venice. While they were there the weather worsened. The tide rose steadily, reaching several feet in St. Mark’s Square, which had to be navigated by boat.
They found themselves talking one day about Gib. She mentioned him seldom, telling Ferdy as little as he told her about his past, or present. Sometimes just to speak Gib’s name to someone like Ferdy, she felt, was a betrayal. Once he said, “You’re always so solemn when you speak of your husband— yet you laugh, talking about your brother. Could he have been, this Gib, just a very little bit boring?” In answer—the ultimate betrayal—she said, lightly enough, “Might have been, Ferdy, might have been …” And felt his arm tighten about her as they danced.
How they danced! She
thought afterward, We danced across Europe.
London, February 1934. Henry Hall and his band playing a number called “Making Conversation (When We Ought to Be Making Love).” She and Ferdy slow fox-trotting. Occasionally his right hand, straying from her waist, would touch her elbow, lightly, beside the funny bone. Twisting it a little with his fingers. A secret signal of what would happen later. For him to touch her like that was as exciting sometimes as any direct advance. It said, later my fingers will do this, that. …
Making conversation, making love, making children. Gib and I never made a child. She had heard of people who chose men for eugenic reasons, to father their children. She could not imagine it, the calculating common sense of it all. She half smiled at the notion.
“We walk about together, ‘neath a magical moon above, Just making conversation … when we ought to be making love …”
“What about a child, Ferdy? One of those little things I see at the orphanage—but made by us …”
He was never easily ruffled. He said smoothly enough, but she thought him a little embarrassed, “Come along, Teddy—every little baby needs a father.”
“Precisely. And why not you?”
He must have taken her seriously, for he looked for a few seconds genuinely puzzled and uncertain. And a little angry? “Darling Ferdy—I’m only joking.”
“I must say, I thought for a moment—some accident perhaps …”
“Gawd, no. I was teasing”
“I should hope so.” He held her close, guiding her as they swung out onto the floor. He sang with the vocalist, his head close to hers. She felt his breath on her as he crooned:
“… We can’t go on forever, counting stars in the sky above, Just making conversation, when we ought to be making love …”
It became their song. He could always silence her with it. The beginnings of an argument, perhaps, or when tired after some hectic social round, before their arms went about each other: “Just making conversation,” one of them would say, casually, barely singing the words, “when we ought to be making love …”
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