Rex seemed pleased to see him at first. He suggested that they should go along and have a drink. After the coffee, Gerald didn’t want it. But he was very anxious to be friendly and nearly every deal in Great Portland Street, he remembered, was completed over a drink. Rex, for instance, had merely to walk into the Free House on the corner and say, “The usual,” for the barmaid to know exactly what to serve him.
He tried, of course, to dissuade Gerald altogether as soon as he found out what he had come about, and offered him a series of dazzling exchanges in return—a 1927 two and a half litre Bentley with a body shaped like a boat, an eight-cylinder Delage that had crossed mountains, an Invicta with a speedometer the size of a soup plate. The position, in brief, seemed to be that for so much hard cash paid over the table his present car was worth nothing; but for this worthless object plus a five-pound note he could have his pick from among a collection of breathless palaces on wheels. It seemed almost as though he had turned up in the very middle of a lean period, and that it was the five-pound note that Great Portland Street was waiting for. In the end, Rex reluctantly suggested that Gerald should bring the, car back on Thursday and he would see if he could get anybody to look at it. He spoke as though it was not the kind of deal that he altogether liked to be mixed up in.
They stayed on chatting for a few minutes longer. But Rex was definitely not so cordial. He was disappointed in Gerald; the man had been his friend once. They had stood at the same bars and smoked each other’s cigarettes and played around with the same girls and had evenings in town together. What was more, they had set themselves a certain standard. And now Gerald was showing the white feather and selling out. For a man, who had once known how to live, to exchange freedom and a car for marriage and a villa in an outer suburb seemed to Rex a pretty contemptible thing.
But all he allowed himself to say was: “Well, it’s your life, old boy.”
He tapped on the counter with a florin.
“Same again, please, miss,” he said.
When Mr. Biddle got back to Finchley it was about six o’clock. And after he had washed and changed his clothes into something less formal, he went round to see Alice. He took his dog with him—during the time he had been away he rather suspected Miss Wachett of having neglected her duties by the animal—and strolled round quietly at about three miles an hour.
The events of the morning now seemed curiously ancient and remote; it was not that he had forgotten his duty to Mrs. Sneyd; on the contrary he was coming round especially to see Gerald about her. It was simply that Tadford and everything about it—Mrs. Sneyd and young Violet and Lily and the self-made Fred—had receded; from Boleyn Avenue it was like thinking about an unhappy township on another planet.
Alice was glad to see him: he could tell that at once. He could tell also that she was far from recovered from the shock over the whole affair of Mr. Sneyd’s death. She looked worried and downcast, and he did his utmost to cheer her up again. Everything, he impressed on her, would work out all right in the end. But in the meantime he warned her that Gerald would be expected to do his bit.
“He’ll have to stump up, you know,” Mr. Biddle said.
“Yes, I suppose he will,” said Alice.
“Can’t just leave ’em like that.”
Alice shook her head.
“He won’t like it,” Mr. Biddle continued. “But it’s his duty.”
“All right,” said Alice. “Don’t go on about it. Gerald’ll do it if he said he will.”
“Yes,” Mr. Biddle answered. “But he hasn’t said he will yet. That’s the whole point.”
Alice got up and went over to the couch.
“Well, anyhow,” she said. “It’s Gerald’s affair whatever he does. I don’t think it’s anybody else’s business.”
Mr. Biddle looked at her in distress. It was the first time that he could ever remember her deliberately rude to him like that. It hurt—not because of the rudeness but because of what she must have been feeling. She wasn’t happy; anyone with half an eye could see that. Mr. Biddle got up and went over to sit on the couch beside her.
“Anything special worrying you?” he said.
She shook her head.
“Everything all right between you and Gerald?”
She gave a little laugh.
“Of course it is,” she said.
“No money worries.”
“No, none.”
She tried to laugh again, but, it wouldn’t come.
“Just a bit on edge?” he inquired understandingly.
“That’s about it,” Alice agreed.
He leant over and placed his hand on her knee.
“Then do you know what’s the matter with you?” he asked.
“What?”
“It’s time you started a family,” he said. “That’s your trouble.”
“You really think so?”
“I’m sure of it.”
“Oh, you’re so clever, aren’t you?” said Alice suddenly. “You think you know everything.”
She got up and went out of the room without another word.
Mr. Biddle half-rose to follow her. But on second thoughts he decided that it would be better to stop where he was. The fact that she had taken his remark in that way showed how right he was. He felt sure, too, that very soon, almost immediately, in fact, she would be sorry and want to say so. So, picking up the evening paper, he removed the top sheet to put under his feet to save the cushions and settled down full length on the couch to read until Alice should decide to come back to him.
But quite soon he closed his eyes and got the rest of the nap that he had started in the railway carriage. Alice looked in once or twice to see if he was all right and then went back into the kitchen to go on getting Gerald’s dinner ready.
It was Gerald’s last call of the day.
He was not sitting in the office of an advertising manager this time but in the waiting-room of Dr. Xavier da Leppo in East Square, N.W.1. It was not a cheerful or encouraging kind of ante-chamber. Whatever daylight there was had been sifted through a pair of yellowish Nottingham lace curtains and fell dubiously on the circle of shiny leather chairs, the thumbed, dirty periodicals on the table, the wallpaper of birds and flowers, the crumpled fan of paper in the empty grate.
Then the green baize door that led into the consulting room opened and Dr. da Leppo himself came in. He was a small, brownish man with a neat round head of sleek black hair. There was more of Buenos Aires than of Harley Street about him. He wore a bright, professional smile on his face and perpetually showed a double row of strong white teeth as he talked. At first glance he was not unlike an amiable and encouraging otter. Gerald comforted himself by reflecting that at least he looked competent. But the handshake was a disappointment. The smooth little fist simply melted up as he grasped it. And now that he was near to the man he became aware that Dr. da Leppo had apparently soaked himself in scent; the sweet, sickly smell of it was stronger even than the disinfectant odour of the surgery.
He seemed very alert and businesslike, however, and came to the point at once.
“How long have you known the young lady?” he asked.
“We’ve been married about a year,” Gerald told him.
“Is this her first?”
Gerald nodded.
“Does anyone else know about it?”
“Not so far.”
“Quite sure?”
“Quite.”
Dr. da Leppo went over and stood in front of his gasfire.
“Is she the sort of young lady,” he said, “who can be relied on?”
“I’ve told you she’s my wife,” Gerald answered.
The information did not seem to impress Dr. da Leppo.
“Are you paying for this or is she?” he asked.
“I am,” Gerald replied.
Dr. da Leppo came nearer.
“Because in this kind of work,” he explained, “I always ask for my fee in advance.”
Gerald took a deep br
eath and sat back.
“How much is it?” he asked.
Dr. da Leppo’s eyes travelled up and down him: the doctor was a very good judge of income.
“Five guineas,” he said. “No cheques.”
Gerald did not reply for a moment and Dr. da Leppo went on.
“Hadn’t I better see the young lady?” he suggested.
“What’s the best time? ” Gerald asked.
Dr. da Leppo consulted his diary.
“Is next Saturday all right? ” he asked. “About tea time.”
Mr. Biddle was still there when Gerald got back. Alice and he had made it up again. She had finished what she was doing and was seated on the floor at his feet. Mr. Biddle was stroking her head. There was now a warm atmosphere of domestic complacency over the whole house; Gerald felt almost like an intruder as he went in. And somehow he had never been less pleased to see Mr. Biddle. To-night in particular he wanted to be alone with Alice.
But Mr. Biddle did not allow him any time for misgivings. No sooner had Gerald kissed Alice than he found himself enveloped in a cloud of vicarious hospitality.
“Come and sit here,” Mr. Biddle said. “You’re tired. You’ve been working.” He got up and gave Gerald his own arm-chair with an air of having made him a present of something.
“Thanks,” said Gerald.
Mr. Biddle took the smaller chair and turned towards Alice.
“You get him something to eat, dear,” he said. “It’s always the hungry ones who leave home.”
Mr. Biddle watched Alice go. It was the moment he had been waiting for. Throughout his life he had always made it a rule that when there was an unpleasant duty to perform he should get on with it. So he began straight away, without waiting even for Gerald to take off his shoes.
“It’s about Mrs. Sneyd,” he said.
“Well, what about her?”
“Somebody ought to do something.”
“Meaning me?” Gerald asked.
Mr. Biddle paused. “It’s what your father would have wanted,” he said.
“How about Alice?” Gerald asked.
“She’d want it, too,” Mr. Biddle replied.
“But suppose there just isn’t enough to go round?”
“Then you’ll have to cut down on something.”
“Such as?”
“Oh, cars and refrigerators and wireless sets,” Mr. Biddle answered as though Gerald had several of everything.
Gerald took out his case and lit a cigarette.
“I can’t sell the frig. and the radio because they aren’t mine,” he said.
“There’s still the car,” Mr. Biddle reminded him.
Gerald blew out a thick cloud of smoke.
“I’ll think about it,” he said at last.
He added nothing about the supercilious young men in Great Portland Street; that was his affair, just as much as Dr. da Leppo was. It was at moments such as these that he wondered why he always found it so confoundedly difficult to be frank with his father-in-law.
But Mr. Biddle pretended not to notice. He leaned forward, knees wide apart, laboriously filling his pipe. He had said enough for the present and did not intend to labour the point. It was not, indeed, until they were all three sitting down together in the dining-room that he observed—as much to the room in general as to Gerald—that charity and self-sacrifice were the noblest attributes of mankind. Then having said so he took another mouthful and went on as though nothing had happened.
He did not stay late. Something told him that the young people would probably want to be together. He even wondered if perhaps he had not said too much already. So, before he left, he went over to Gerald to make things up a bit.
“Would you like to come along to a smoking concert?” he asked.
Gerald caught Alice’s eye: she was signalling that he was to accept.
“Thanks very much,” he said rather doubtfully. “When is it?”
“Next Saturday,” said Mr. Biddle. “At the Mariners’ Hall. Seven for seven-thirty.”
Gerald started.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “We’re going out on Saturday.”
“Where are we going?” Alice asked in surprise.
“You know,” said Gerald awkwardly. “You wanted to see somebody.”
Alice took a deep breath.
“Oh, yes, of course,” she said. “I remember.”
Mr. Biddle looked from one to the other and then said good-bye. He felt strangely hurt by the way they treated him. If Gerald hadn’t wanted to come to the smoking concert he could perfectly well have said so without inventing an engagement that Alice didn’t know anything about.
And he was really gravely disappointed by Gerald’s attitude towards Mrs. Sneyd. He had secretly promised himself that as soon as he had got Gerald to the point of promising her a definite allowance he would offer to share it with him. But not until. So long as he kept up his present behaviour he could face the future unaided.
If ever there was a young man, Mr. Biddle felt, who needed a lesson it was his son-in-law.
When Mr. Biddle had left them, Gerald went back into the drawing-room to find Alice.
“I saw him,” he said gloomily. “I saw him on the way home.”
Chapter Seventeen
It was Saturday, the day of Mr. Biddle’s smoking concert.
Alice and Gerald hadn’t slept much the previous night; they had kept on waking up and remembering the afternoon’s appointment. And when the morning came they were hot-eyed and unrested. They didn’t talk much either. During breakfast Gerald kept on leaning over and squeezing Alice’s hand but, in a sense, they avoided each other. Even when they kissed goodbye it was as though each was holding something back from the other.
The morning seemed almost suicidally long to Alice. Whenever she paused for an instant she found herself calculating the time till four o’clock. Even when she was doing the shopping her mind kept jumping into the future and back again. The baker’s—Dr. da Leppo—Woolworth’s—Dr. da Leppo—Boots—Dr. da Leppo—the dairy—Dr. da Leppo. The words made a pattern inside her mind and repeated themselves there. Dr. da Leppo at four o’clock, four o’clock at Dr. da Leppo’s
When she finally got back to the house at eleven-thirty she was trembling so much that she had to sit down and rest. And a sudden wave of panic came over her. Suppose that something went wrong, suppose that she were the one exception to Dr. da Leppo’s brilliant rule? She found that she could make herself cry simply by thinking about it; and she didn’t want to cry. Instead, she went over to the desk and wrote Gerald a note. In a way, it made it better, doing the matter-of-fact thing and leaving him something that he would find when he got back; but in a strange, foolish fashion it frightened her. It was as though, simply by the fact of writing, she was making that terrible possibility into a certainty.
The note was a short one. When she came to write it, she couldn’t put in half what she wanted to say.
“Dearest,” it ran, “ remember that if anything happens to me, I don’t want you to be miserable, ever. It wasn’t your fault and you couldn’t have helped it. It’s simply that we had to do the sensible thing—try to think of it that way. Please remember what I said about marrying again. I meant it. I shouldn’t ever want to think of my Gerald being lonely. Good-bye, dearest, if it is good-bye. Your ever loving Alice.
“P.S. You’ll find that I’ve left everything tidy and there aren’t any bills you don’t know about.”
She put three kisses after her name, as they had always done in their love letters to each other and then, because she was crying too much to get on with things, she went through into the little kitchenette with the No-Toil Boiler in the corner, and sat on the corner of the table while she ate an orange.
It seemed strange to be doing so when in two or three hours’ time she might be dead. But she felt calmer again now. And having tidied up a bit she went upstairs and put the note in Gerald’s collar drawer where he would find it if he came back alone.
It was nearly two o’clock when Gerald got back.
He looked rather pale and drawn, Alice thought. But he behaved in a very quiet, matter-of-fact fashion. And simply by being quiet he made Alice feel quieter, too. The first hint of what he was feeling was when half-way through lunch he paused for a moment and turned towards her.
“You’re sure you want to go through with it?” he asked.
Alice nodded.
“Quite sure,” she said.
“You’re not frightened?”
“Just a bit,” she admitted.
“Because you don’t have to do it, you know.”
But she wouldn’t listen to him.
“We’ve been into all that,” she said. “And we’ve decided. Don’t let’s begin again now.”
He went over and put his arm around her. He wanted to tell her that he loved her, and that he knew just what this meant to her, and that some day he would be able to repay her and that when they had got a little more money they would have the children she had been hoping for: he wanted to say just that.
But somehow when he came to say it all that he could manage was, “Good old Alice.”
At a quarter past three they began to get ready. Alice went upstairs and dressed as carefully as if they had been going out to tea somewhere. Then, just before they left, she went slowly from room to room as if she were trying to memorise everything. It wasn’t until Gerald had called her twice that she came through into the hall; she had been quietly going round the drawing-room putting the covers straight.
There was nothing about the departure that was agitated or hysterical. They might have been any one of the East Finchley couples setting off for a drive in the car. Everything about them looked ordinary and normal. But to Alice herself it was as though she was rediscovering Boleyn Avenue. She had noticed again how happy the houses looked, and how the sun, striking them, seemed to fill everything—the road, the houses, the gardens—with life. The whole business of living appeared to proceed more kindly in Boleyn Avenue than elsewhere. And then she remembered how it had looked in the previous September when she and Gerald had first gone there together. The road had been under water then, rutted with pot-holes and with planks and bricks lying about it. They had decided then that it looked happy—so happy that they had wanted to live there.
Love in Our Time Page 18