Love in Our Time

by Norman Collins

  At the corner he turned and looked back. Alice and Gerald were still there. They made a pleasant sight in the doorway of their home: Gerald had got his hand on Alice’s shoulder. Mr. Biddle waved affectionately and raised his cap; all the same he could not help wishing it had been anyone but Gerald.…

  As soon as Mr. Biddle had gone, Gerald felt easier. The house seemed somehow warmer and more intimate without him; it was their house again. When they got back into the drawing-room, he put his arms round Alice and kissed her. They had been married only three months and were still very much in love. It was what he wanted, to be able to shut the front door and for them to be left alone together. Alice willingly put her lips to his and closed her eyes. It was the antidote to everything, this kind of love. Fear, and discontent and anxiety were all defeated by it.

  “I love you, Alice,” he said.

  “I love you, Gerald.”

  Sunday evening was nearly over. They lay in bed beside each other on the patent spring mattress that had gone with the suite and watched the headlamps of passing cars make patterns on the ceiling. Gerald’s arm was round Alice. She had been crying.

  “I wish it didn’t have to be like that,” she said at last, “It spoils everything.”

  “I’m sorry,” he replied bitterly. “I’m sorry you feel like that.”

  “But it hasn’t got to be always, has it?” she asked. “Say that you don’t want it to be that way always.”

  “O.K.,” he said; he wanted to drop the conversation altogether.

  “But it’s only because we haven’t enough money, isn’t it?” she persisted. “It isn’t that you don’t ever want to have one.”

  “That’s all it is,” he answered. “It’s just because we can’t afford it.”

  He drew his arm away and sat up on his elbow: it seemed a poor sort of ending to their love.

  In the darkness beside him he could feel that Alice was still crying. She was quite silent about it, just lying there, sobbing. He put his arm round her again and tried to reason with her.

  “It isn’t that I don’t love you,” he said. “You know that. It’s simply that if we had a baby now it’d be the end of everything. We’d have to sell the car and cut down on holidays and God knows what else. It wouldn’t give us a chance.”

  “Other people do it,” she said.

  “Other people don’t have our expenses.”

  “I’d rather have a baby than a car.”

  “You try it and see,” he said.

  She moved out of his arms and turned her back on him.

  “It doesn’t matter,” she said. “Don’t let’s talk about it. I don’t want your baby.”

  He could feel that she was really crying this time.

  He lay for a moment without moving and then got up. He remembered now that he hadn’t seen to the windows. Downstairs in the drawing-room he paused and looked out into the garden. It was a pale moonlight night and everyone else on the estate seemed to be asleep; there wasn’t even a light in any of the windows. Half an hour ago Alice and he had been lovers, and now they were just two people who didn’t want the same thing and happened to sleep together. It was a queer business this being in love. It had been difficult in Eden. And ever since then every damn thing had conspired to make it more difficult still.

  Chapter Two

  It was Gerald’s idea that they should have a party. The idea came to him quite suddenly next morning. It struck him all at once that perhaps Alice was too much cut off from life. It must be very different, he realised, being shut away in Boleyn Avenue from being in the City. When he had first met her, Alice had been a typist in Faith Bros., the outfitters. There had always been plenty going on there. Simply being in an office like that with the phone ringing all day and letters flowing in with every post, gave a person the feeling of being right up to the ears in life.

  She didn’t see anybody now from the time he left in the mornings until he got back at night. Once or twice, to make something to do, she had, he knew, taken herself to the pictures in the afternoon. But it had been no fun sitting there in the ornate gloom of the local Arcadian with a staring wilderness of two thousand empty seats all round her; it had been as unsatisfactory as buying a box of chocolates and eating them all herself. The more he thought about it the more he realised that her present life wasn’t right for a girl. It was like being compulsorily retired at twenty-two.

  He wished now that he and Alice had made things up before he left. If it had been eight thirty-five or even eight-forty he could have gone back and said he was sorry; they could have kissed and forgiven and he wouldn’t have had her on his conscience all day. But at eight forty-five there was nothing for it but to take his place by the kerb alongside the other Tudor citizens who were waiting for the tram.

  They were amazing, those tramcars. They came swaying and grinding down the road, in an endless series, all identically painted and all identically packed. They were solid with people by the time they got to Finchley, jammed with barbarians from the outer North. The passengers themselves all had the fixed, permanent look of people who had been sleeping, sitting up all night in the depot waiting for the morning rush to begin.

  At the third attempt he got on: there was no standing back and waiting for ladies to get on first. It was every man for himself and the ladies knew it. With their short umbrellas and their little, sharp attaché-cases they fought for their rights, and got them. When the tram moved off again it was usually the men who had been left behind.

  By the time he had got to town he had worked out all the details of the party. He would get all the old bunch together. It would be like one of the old jolly mornings at The Spaniards, except that all the drinks would be on him. That was a point to consider, of course. Some of the bunch were able to put it away like anything. He would have to order at least a couple of dozen bottles of lager beer and hang back himself till he saw how things were going. And there was food to be considered: they would have to be given something. It was not until he had pondered for a moment that he saw that sausages were the only solution. There had been a paragraph in the paper only the other night about a peer’s daughter who gave beer-and-sausage parties in a mews in Belgravia; and if a peer’s daughter could get away with it, he reckoned that he and Alice could do the same.

  Of course, there were other expenses. There were cigarettes, for instance: they would need a hundred at least—it would look very bad running out of cigarettes half-way through. Quite clearly the whole thing wouldn’t be cheap by any means, but if it made Alice happy again it would have been worth it.

  He was still thinking about the party when he reached the office. The imposing marble and chromium staircase of Imperial Picture Papers was so familiar that he passed up almost without noticing it; the staircase was built to impress visitors, not the staff. His department lay at the end of a long corridor, like a tunnel. All the marble and chromium had given out by the time the architect had got as far as that. It was where the work was done and it was as plain as a barracks.

  He heard Mr. Hubbard’s voice before he was even in the room. The shrill tenor squeal reached him through the thin glass partition.

  “Where’s Sneyd?” Mr. Hubbard was asking irritably. “Tell him I’m waiting for him.”

  Boleyn Avenue and Alice, and Saturday-afternoon-till-Sunday-night all flickered for an instant, and then vanished. Only Monday morning remained. He was a family man in his own right no longer; Mr. Hubbard had raised his voice, and he was just a name, an impersonal, replaceable name, on the salary list of the I.P.P.

  He shot his hat and coat into a corner of the room and straightened his tie. Then he went through and knocked on Mr. Hubbard’s door.

  “You wanted me, sir?” he said.

  He managed all the same to do quite a lot of telephoning during the day; it was one of the advantages of an outside job that, provided you got through the calls, no one at the head office was any the wiser as to what, within reason, you did in between. If you wanted to ba
ck a horse or drink a cup of coffee you were able to do so. And so it was that, in between taking a lift up to the third floor of Regent House where Pluvene Raincoats lived and calling on Meteor Motors, he was able to get on to Rex at the showrooms.

  Rex was a car salesman in Great Portman Street and it was easy to talk to him on the phone any time of the day. Selling second-hand cars that their previous owners have discarded in desperation depends very largely on the personal touch; and his firm encouraged him in his phone calls. It was from Rex that Gerald had bought his own car.

  “That you, old boy?” Rex asked in his clipped, Sandhurst-sounding voice. “How’s the car?”

  “What I really phoned up about,” Gerald explained, “was to ask if you could come out and see us. Just a little beer-and-sausage party.”

  “Swell,” Rex answered. “When is it?”

  “Next Friday? Come along about half-past eight.”

  “Shall I bring the wife?”

  “Oh, yes, of course. Bring her. Bring the wife by all means.”

  No doubt Mrs. Beale was in the same sort of hole as Alice; they would be glad to know each other.

  “Righty-o. See you on Friday, then. So long, old man.” And Rex had rung off.

  Gerald envied him: he was the sort of man who went to parties every night.

  The rest of the morning was a mixture of Ridgewells’ Port and Bill Graham; M. Maurice, the Hair Specialist, and Ted Baker; Society Gowns Ltd., and Charley Woodman; Schwartzkopf and Himmelmayer, the jewellers, and Jimmy Watson.

  By twelve o’clock there were five of the bunch coming. Some of them admittedly sounded a bit surprised; and Jimmy Watson had to get Gerald to repeat his name twice before he caught it. But they all accepted.

  The only mistake Gerald made was to ring up Tony. He wasn’t really in the group at all. It was simply that he used to turn up at The Spaniards at about the same time on Sunday mornings and drove a Bentley. It was really his car that they had wanted to get to know, not him. But he was friendly enough. He was in Gerald’s line of business, too, except that he was at the top of it, and he seemed to have all the money he wanted. That was why he always said whisky when they asked him what he would have.

  “Do you want me to bring any girls along?” he asked when he learnt that it was a party.

  Gerald paused. He knew the kind of girls that Tony took about with him. They were all the same, all blonde, all obliging and all rather brassy.

  “It’s my wife’s party,” he explained.

  “I get you,” said Tony. “We’ll give the girls a rest.” There was a pause. “Are you dressing?” he asked.

  “Come as you are,” Gerald told him. “It’s only quite a small affair. Just some of the bunch.”

  “I’ll be there,” said Tony pleasantly. “Ta-ta for the present.”

  As Gerald put up the receiver he began for the first time to have misgivings about the party. It was Tony’s remark about dressing that worried him. He suddenly wondered if all the others were thinking of turning up in dinner-jackets and boiled shirts. The idea hadn’t occurred to him before, and it rather frightened him. Perhaps they would think it was a swell sort of do that they were coming to, and would feel pretty sore at having toiled out to Finchley for a couple of sausages and a glass of beer. He remembered, too, that Alice had only met Tony once or twice and hadn’t particularly liked him.

  In every other respect it was a good, almost a record morning. When he got back to the office he had orders for a full-page, two half-doubles and a six-inch single in his pocket. All that Mr. Potter, the redoubtable North-countryman, had brought in was one half-page and a two-inch stop. It was very handsomely Gerald’s day. Mr. Hubbard admitted it, and took it as an opportunity to blow up Mr. Potter …

  Gerald’s journey back home that night was as exciting as if he had been bringing back a present. He was thinking all the way how pleased she would be about the party he had got together for her. But Alice was not at all pleased. She seemed puzzled and rather resentful.

  “If you really want to see them all that badly,” she said, “why don’t you go along on Sunday morning like you used to? I wouldn’t mind.”

  “But I want them to come here” Gerald explained. “I want you to get to know them.”

  “You want me to get to know Tony?” Alice repeated.

  “Yes, why not? Tony’s all right, isn’t he?”

  “I suppose so.”

  “Well, what’s wrong with him?”

  “Oh, nothing. Nothing at all. Only I didn’t happen to know that he was a friend of yours.”

  Gerald crossed over and put his arm round her.

  “Don’t let Tony get you down,” he said. “There are plenty of others coming.”

  “Yes, I know there are. You told me.”

  “Well, don’t you want them? It’s your party.”

  “If I wanted to give a party,” Alice said quietly, “I should “ask some of my own friends.”

  So that was it! She was hurt because he hadn’t invited any of her friends.

  “Well, why not ask them now?” he said. “There’s plenty of time.” Then he remembered the cost, and added cautiously: “Ask some of them, at any rate. We can’t get too many people in here.”

  But Alice shook her head.

  “It doesn’t matter,” she assured him. “You’ve got enough as it is.” She got up and went towards the door. “We might as well go into the dining-room,” she said. “I had everything ready when you came in.”

  The dining-room was not a success. Even in summer, it chilled. They had told themselves, at first, it would look better when it was finished. But they admitted now that they had been wrong. There was too much wood in it already—too much solid, expressionless, un-exhilarating wood. It had been Gerald’s idea to keep the furnishing in period; and it was a Refectory Suite that they had bought. It comprised a massive, trestle dining-table with synthetic marks of age cunningly gouged out of it; an imitation linen-fold sideboard, with a built-in knife-tray, similarly scored; and six medieval-looking chairs. The effect at first sight was overpowering: it was like a little historical tableau from Chartres or Nantes.

  It was only afterwards that the concealed screw holes became apparent and the trade-mark of the patented leather substitute on the chairs showed through. Then the whole suite looked a degree less than genuine. Examined closely it had the air of something primitive and hasty; something that might have been hacked out and knocked together by a romantic and historically-minded schoolboy. Even the pictures round the walls—reproductions of Franz Hals’s “Laughing Cavalier” and Vermeer’s “Head of a Girl,” that actually showed the brush marks—did nothing to mitigate the gloom.

  They had been eating in silence for some time—it was a cold meal with a formidable, china wedding present full of salad on the table—when Alice spoke.

  “There’s Willie,” she said suddenly. “We must have Willie.”

  At the name of Willie, Gerald put down his knife and fork. If there was one man more than another that he felt they could usefully drop it was Willie Marsh. No doubt he was genuine and warm hearted enough; and he and Alice had played together as children. But he was really unthinkable; there was something about him that was like a plump dummy out of a second-rate tailor’s. Even the way he did his hair was wrong. It was curly hair and he left it to grow into a high, fluffy peak in front. In the result, it gave him a bantam-cock air of jauntiness. The trouble about him was that he had no feeling at all about keeping up appearances: in summer he even used to walk round to tennis with his shoes strung round his racket. Every time Gerald looked at him he wondered why no one had ever explained things to him. With that presence he was condemned to the least of clerkships all his life. The wheels of the City were greased with the blood of impossible, unpromotable Willies.

  “What do you want to invite Willie for?” he asked.

  “I like Willie.”

  “Yes, I know, but … ” Then he stopped himself. After all, if it was Ali
ce’s party he supposed that she had a right to ask whom she wanted. “All right,” he said. “You ask Willie. I hardly know him.”

  “You’ll like him,” Alice assured him. “I know you will. Willie’s ever so nice really.”

  The thought of having Willie served to cheer her: it made it all seem so much more like one of the parties she was used to. So far back as she could remember, Willie had come to every party; she had a series of impressions of him as a small boy always red and hot looking and a little awkward, and always in a dark suit that was too small for him—they were the forerunners of the whole range of suits that he bought later on.

  When she had cleared away, it was Alice who was the first to mention the party again.

  “What are we going to give them to eat?” she asked.

  “Sausages,” he told her.

  “But there’s got to be something else.”

  “No, there hasn’t,” he said. “Just sausages.”

  “But supposing one of them doesn’t like sausages?”

  “Well, he goes without,” Gerald replied. It was a point that he hadn’t considered before; the newspaper paragraph hadn’t said anything about people not liking sausages. It just took it for granted that all Belgravia adored them.

  “I’m going to make some sandwiches as well,” Alice exclaimed suddenly. “Then they can all have what they like.”

  “O.K.,” said Gerald.

  “And I’ll make some fruit salad. They’ll want something like that after eating sausages.”

  “O.K.,” said Gerald again. It seemed useless to argue. She was just beginning to enter into the spirit of the thing, and already she had left him far behind. He had begun by telling himself that they would just have a few friends in, and now he kept consoling himself by reflecting that, as they didn’t do it often, they might as well do it properly.