The sunny day lasted only as far as Highgate. After that, the sky greyed over, so that by the time they had reached Kentish Town they were running through a sombre, sooty world. The buildings were dirty and discoloured. Even the faces of the people seemed to have changed a little as if they had lived amid the soot and the sombreness too long; they all looked as if they needed a holiday by the sea and half a pint of fresh milk every day.
When they reached Mornington Crescent they turned off towards Regent’s Park down the long, slanting perspective of a road of grey, brick houses to the faded rectangle of stucco mansions where Dr. da Leppo lived. East Square had been respectable once: now the front door bells were grouped together at the side with the occupants’ names hastily written underneath. Notices about bed-sitting-rooms for single gentlemen appeared in the windows.
Alice was trembling again when they stopped at Dr. da Leppo’s surgery at the corner. There still seemed time to turn back until they had actually rung the bell. Then, once she heard the jangle from somewhere down in the basement—it was one of the old-fashioned bells with a handle like a door-knob—she knew that there was no turning back. They waited there while an elderly woman in a long, grey overall slopped up the stairs and led them through to Dr. da Leppo’s waiting-room.
The room was worse even than Alice had expected. She took one glance at the tattered magazines on the table, the newspaper in the grate and the drooping folds of the lace curtains and closed her eyes. She wanted to shut everything out and remember only what Boleyn Avenue had been like.
Gerald looked across at her.
“You all right?” he asked anxiously.
She nodded. “I’m all right,” she said.
Dr. da Leppo was more spruce than ever when he came in. He was wearing a tight grey suit and a buttonhole. His little feet in patent leather shoes looked no larger than a woman’s. He danced forwards across the check oilcloth to meet them.
“Is this the young lady?” he said.
Then, before Gerald could answer, he went over and took hold of Alice’s hand in his two brown ones. He wanted her to think of him as her friend, he said; above all, he assured her, there was absolutely nothing to get upset about.
Dr. da Leppo led Alice through into the surgery and motioned Gerald to remain where he was. He wanted to have a few words with him in private, he explained. When he came back he was still smiling.
“Did you remember about the fee?” he asked.
Gerald produced it, all ready in an envelope. Dr. da Leppo counted the notes carefully, almost lovingly, and pocketed the two half-crowns. Then when he had put the notes into his wallet he patted Gerald confidingly on the shoulder.
“It’s really nothing,” he said. “Quite a simple affair.”
Gerald did not answer. His heart was pounding inside him. He wanted to rush in and take Alice in his arms for the last time. And Dr. da Leppo seemed to understand perfectly.
“Go in and sit with her,” he said. “I shall be just a few minutes getting ready.”
The surgery was a bleak cubicle of a room. There was a small sink in the corner and a picture of Dr. da Leppo as a young man over the fireplace. The ash-tray on Dr. da Leppo’s desk was full nearly, to the brim with cigarette ends.
There was one easy-chair and Alice was sitting in it. She looked young—startlingly young—and very pale. Even her lips had lost their colour. He went over and sat on the arm of her chair and put his arms round her.
“I love you, Alice,” he said.
“I know,” she answered.
She was shaking so much she could hardly speak and her teeth were chattering.
It was very quiet in the surgery. The street noises of the Square died before they got in there, and left the room in its original state of stale exhaustion. Gerald held Alice tighter and tried to forget where they were. The only disturbance was the everlasting plip-plop of the tap dripping into the sink and the sound of Dr. da Leppo moving about in the next room. After a moment, even these seemed to fade away as well and there were just the two of them sitting there in the grim terrifying silence. Gerald felt a thin mist of sweat break out along his forehead: he wondered if Dr. da Leppo were really as expert as people said he was. He wondered a lot of other things as well in those few minutes, and bit at the quick of his fingernail until he made it bleed.
In a sense, it was Alice who was the calmer of the two of them now. She was just sitting there shivering. Then he felt something wet on his hand and looked down and saw that Alice was crying. At the same moment he heard Dr. da Leppo open the door of the next room.
That was all he waited for. He jumped down off the arm of the chair and grabbed Alice by the arm.
“What’s the matter?” she asked.
“Come on,” he said. “We’re going.”
The last glimpse they had of Dr. da Leppo was as they drove away. He had come running down to the front door after them, shouting out an unintelligible stream of questions.
They left him, a small distracted figure in a long white surgical coat standing at the top of his steps not daring to call out from there for fear of summoning the police.
They didn’t say much on the ride back; somehow there didn’t seem very much that they could say. Alice still looked pale and frightened, and sat huddled up in the seat hugging her knees as they drove; and Gerald, his scarf knotted round his neck, stared straight ahead like a chauffeur. It wasn’t until, they got past Highgate and the road showed clear ahead of them that he made any movement towards her. Then he drove with one hand on the wheel and put his other arm round her shoulder for a moment. The contact seemed to wake her up. She came closer to him and thrust her hand into his pocket. It was uncomfortable for both of them that way, but they stayed like that until they got to Boleyn Avenue.
As soon as they were inside Alice turned to him.
“What made you do it?” she asked.
Gerald shook his head.
“I dunno,” he said. “Just thought I would.”
“Was it because you loved me?”
“I guess so.”
“I’m so glad.”
Then without any warning she slipped forward onto him. He caught her as she fell and, taking her in his arms, he carried her up the creaking Tudor staircase into the bedroom.
At ten-thirty that night when he undressed he found Alice’s letter in his collar drawer, and read it. A little bomb of cold exploded in his stomach as he did so and he stood quite still where he was, the bit of paper in his hand. He looked across to the bed. She had been afraid that it was coming to that, and still she had said that she wanted to go through with it. Pushing the letter back into the drawer he went over to her. But she didn’t stir. She was sleeping as easily as a child, with her hand flat on the pillow under her face. He stood for a moment looking down at her.
Then putting out the light, he got into bed beside her and put his arm over her.
Chapter Eighteen
It was a letter from Tadford that set Mr. Biddle moving again.
Mrs. Sneyd thanked him for four and a half pages for the five pound that he had sent her and admitted that she didn’t know how she was ever going to get through the autumn. It was a wild, desperate kind of letter written in a series of breathless, disjointed sentences, and with it was enclosed a separate note from young Violet. This was a very different kind of document. It asked when Mr. Biddle would be in Tadford again and hinted shyly that if he couldn’t manage the journey she would be ready to come down to London herself whenever he asked her.
Mr. Biddle smiled as he read young Violet’s letter; it was all so girlish and innocent. Then he folded it and put it absent-mindedly into his pocket. It was Mrs. Sneyd’s letter that he was thinking about. For all its sprawling emotion and exaggeration, it was the real thing: it stated the plain truth that another human being didn’t know how she was going to go on living. In the face of it, his idea of teaching Gerald a lesson in responsibility seemed simply frivolous. It was, he realised, up to him to
do something, and do it quickly.
But it was not so easy. In the ordinary way he wasn’t living so close to the bone that he couldn’t put a pound a week aside if he wanted to. But this Dorset plan of his had upset everything. There wouldn’t be anything left over once he was there. The entire fruits of a lifetime would be expended in keeping Miss Wachett in comfort in Finchley and himself in something near it in Seacombe. It was only because he was a man of simple tastes that he could contemplate it. There wasn’t going to be any refrigerator, or radiogram, or small car in his future home.
Finally because the problem of Mrs. Sneyd seemed insoluble, he lit a pipe and put his cap on and went out for a walk to think things over. He, did a lot of thinking on that walk. He thought of having Mrs. Sneyd down to live with them as one of the family; but in the end the memory of those wide blue eyes and that trusting affectionate nature dissuaded him—he felt too old to stand the strain of them. He thought of having young Violet down alone and relieving Mrs. Sneyd of the burden of having to educate her. But he soon discarded that, too; young Violet was altogether too much like her mother and he knew that, if he had the child, it would be only a matter of months before he had the parent as well. He thought of making one last effort with the Order and writing personally to the Bon Marché. And he thought of dropping Gerald a note to the office and telling him precisely what he thought of him. Indeed, when he got back home again, the latter was the only thing he was really decided on.
The real solution came to him while he was having lunch, dutifully watched from the other end of the table by Miss Wachett. When it struck him, he laid down his spoon and fork and declined the rest of the rice-custard that Miss Wachett had prepared for him. For there was no doubt about the solution this time; it had all the authentic and least prepossessing marks of duty written large across it.
During the rest of the afternoon he was moody and preoccupied. He went and shut himself up in the office beside the house and pretended to be working. But the quotations for timber and silver sand went unattended. If anyone had looked in at the window they would have seen a plump, elderly man in his shirt sleeves with his feet up on the desk, smoking. It was nearly six o’clock when he sat up and shook himself and began to write a letter.
The letter was addressed to the Dorset Development Association and said that Mr. Biddle did not propose to exercise his option on plot 35a. He was not a sentimental man about his own affairs but he felt a little sad as he did so. Then, to put the whole thing out of his mind, he folded up the Seacombe Estate survey map and dropped it into the waste-paper basket.
The rest was comparatively simple now. It could all be got out of the way in another letter. The letter was to Mrs. Sneyd this time. He said quite frankly that the Order couldn’t see their way to accommodate her and he didn’t think it was going to be very much good to rely on Gerald. In the circumstances he said that he hoped she would accept the enclosed from himself; the cheque, he added, would continue to come weekly as long as he could manage it. It was for thirty shillings, and there was a weight off his mind as he wrote it. It did as much as ever could be done towards wiping out that fatal evening at St. Martin’s. But for the Life-line which he had run out, Mr. Sneyd would still have been there; there would have been a pound a week from the Drapery Trade’s Benevolent Fund and a ray of hope in the future. He couldn’t restore the hope but the pound a week was now his affair. The extra ten shillings which he had included was, he explained, in respect of young Violet.
Then, when he had stamped both envelopes, he put his feet up once more and went on drawing slowly at his pipe. A dreamy, far-away look came into his eyes. He was thinking out precisely what he was going to say to that precious son-in-law of his when he saw him.
As for Gerald, he had had a restless, anxious couple of days. The realisation of what he had done by taking Alice away from Dr. da Leppo’s kept coming back to him in little waves of terror. There could be no playing about with the future this time; they would just have to meet it. He was actually looking forward to Thursday now: he wanted to get rid of the car quickly before it cost him another penny.
The only trouble was that Rex’s partner seemed to think nothing at all of it. So far as he was concerned it was simply another old car that someone wanted him to buy; and he was there to sell cars, not buy them. He tried all Rex’s tricks of getting Gerald to buy another and more expensive one as a bargain and then fell to disprising the object in front of him.
“What’s the year?” he asked.
Gerald told him.
“Seen a bit of use, hasn’t it?” he remarked.
“Runs like a bird,” Gerald replied.
“Tyres aren’t much good.”
“Had the bearings taken up last year,” Gerald volunteered.
“Why do you want to sell it?”
“Domestic reasons,” said Gerald shortly. “Cutting down expenses.”
The dealer did not seem impressed. “Anything else wrong with it?” he asked.
“Not a thing,” said Gerald. “It’s a peach.”
The man got in and slammed the door harder than was necessary.
“Just going to take it round the block,” he said.
As Gerald waited, he felt resentful that Rex should not have troubled to be there himself. It wouldn’t have been like that in the old days. He mooched up and down wondering why with all the rest of mankind to choose from he should have been the one selected to be in this particular jam.
Then the dealer drew up again in front of the shop and got out.
“Gears are noisy,” he said.
Gerald ignored the comment.
“What is she worth?” he asked.
The man did not seem anxious to commit himself.
“These open cars are a drug on the market,” he said. “Everyone wants a saloon nowadays.”
“But she must be worth something,” Gerald pointed out.
The man picked his teeth and looked up at the sky.
“Give you twenty-five, quid,” he said at last.
Gerald whistled.
“I’ve been offered fifty for her,” he said.
“Then you’d better take it,” the dealer answered.
“It must be worth more than twenty-five,” Gerald persisted.
“Not to me.”
“Well, I’m not going to sell,” said Gerald. Apparently this was going to be his day of humiliation in the motor industry.
The dealer let him get back into the car.
“Give you twenty-seven ten,” he said.
Gerald shook his head.
“I’ll take thirty,” he said.
The dealer threw his hands up.
“No go,” he said.
Gerald started the engine and waited for a gap in the traffic. The dealer strolled down to the kerb and stared at the windscreen.
“How long’s she licensed?” he asked.
“Till the end of this year,” Gerald told him.
“All right,” said the man at last. “I’ll give you thirty. I can use the licence.”
He paid Gerald in notes. Five minutes later Gerald took a last look at the car and walked out of the shop. He felt pleased with himself. Simply by waiting there he had invented an extra five pounds for himself.
And it was the sum of five pounds or thereabouts, stupidly and criminally squandered, that had been galling him all the week.
The journey back from Great Portland Street to Finchley is of the kind that makes the motorist long for his car. Without it, it is a matter of getting a bus to Camden Town, taking the tube to Highgate and standing there at the point where five roads meet, waiting for a tramcar.
As Gerald took his place in the queue and saw the stream of cars go past him up the Archway Road, the depression which had descended on him in Great Portland Street returned. It returned once more, more strongly than ever, when, half an hour later, he opened his front door and saw from the hat stand that Mr. Biddle was there again.
To-night of all nights he
did not feel in the mood for hearing from Mr. Biddle what he should do for Mrs. Sneyd. Besides, he had already made up his mind on that matter. After calculating every penny of expenditure he had decided, not very easily, that he could allow her fifteen shillings a week; and it was no good Mr. Biddle trying to get him to make it a pound or even seventeen and six. He had decided.
But Mr. Biddle wasn’t in that kind of mood at all. He had just heard from Alice that she was going to have a baby; and the news had had a considerable and discernible effect on him. He was sitting over by the window, however, filling his pipe and trying to look as though he wasn’t in the least concerned.
He felt at that moment as though, ever since Alice had been born, this is what he had been waiting to hear. He was getting old himself and this was the chain of life going on, reaching out another link into the future. He was glad now that he had cancelled that plot; he couldn’t have borne to be shut away in Dorset while these tremendous events were taking place in Finchley. Then a sudden pang struck him: it was sad about Mrs. Biddle. She would have given a lot to have been spared to hear this; in a way, this chain of life business meant more even to women than it did to men.
But he didn’t let Gerald see that he was moved.
“Just been hearing Allus’s bit of news,” he said.
“About the baby, you mean?” asked Gerald stupidly.
“That’s it,” said Mr. Biddle. “And I hope you have a lot more.”
Love in Our Time Page 19