by Alec Waugh
She finished her cocktail, stubbed out her cigarette, rose to her feet, put on her coat again.
She held out her hand. “Tell me how it all turns out,” she said.
From the window he watched, as he had watched how many times during the last ten years, the grey-green Chevrolet swing out of sight. He turned back into the room. The stub of her red-tipped cigarette was in the ash-tray. The scent of tuberose was upon the air. “Damn her,” he thought. “Damn her.”
He was in a spot all right, and she had put him there. Everything that she had said was true. Eileen must have cared much more than he had dared suspect: it was heady knowledge. If he were to act as Renée had advised, speak as she had prompted, there would be no sailing on that French ship to-morrow. Yes, but if he were to stop that sailing to what would he not find himself committed? If Eileen had not felt strongly, she would not have refused to meet him, would not have booked that hurried passage. To break down her opposition he would have to use the big words that cannot be spoken lightly. It would be an electric scene, inevitably; a scene that could end in one way only, in a proposal that if not accepted, would not have been refused.
Yes, Renée had been right enough, she had made things easy, had clarified the issue. He was trapped; trapped damnably.
Impatiently he paced the room that was so full of Renée, the flat that he had taken on account of Renée, every article in which had its own association with her; not one fragment of which, not one chair or glass or lampshade he could bear to keep if he were to say good-bye to her. His eye fell on the copy of Notre Cœur that she had brought him as a house-warming gift. He had readily realized why she had brought it. It presented a situation parallel to their own; one night of love on a seaside holiday, then a man going back to Paris, to furnish a small pavilion as the stage and shelter of their loving. He could never read that book again: it was one of how many books that he could never read again: one of so many things that he could never do again.
How could he say good-bye to Renée? It was an issue he had not considered. He had never quite abandoned the hope that he would one day marry, but how could he essay so hazardous an adventure with a girl sixteen years younger than himself? How could he risk that at his age? How could he possibly?
Angrily, like a trapped animal, he paced the flat. He had had his hand forced. ‘I can’t, he thought, ‘how can I at such short notice?’
On the following morning he addressed a telegram to the French line office, ‘Bon Voyage and Good Luck. I shall never forget our times together. Think of me now and then.’
To Renée he sent yellow roses: on the accompanying card he wrote, ‘I did not follow your advice but perhaps it would be as well if we did not see each other for a little.’
18
Sometimes fate mercifully supplies the antidote of a counter-irritant.
Three days later Guy found in his morning’s post an envelope addressed in an unfamiliar hand with a French stamp and postmark. It was a short note signed ‘Daphne’.
‘Dear Guy, we are going to be a nuisance. I am to have an operation, major but not dangerous. One of those conventional feminine complications. So I’m coming back for it. I go into the London Clinic on 24 June; and expect to be there three weeks. Could you lunch with me that day, and could you find us a small house in the country where I can recuperate?’
So, he thought; less than three weeks back she had been recommending for Barbara the efficiency of foreign medicine; yet here she was, returning like the stricken deer to the covert where she had roused.
He rang her up on the evening of her arrival. Where would she like to lunch? In his flat, she told him. She would like it to be quiet; she didn’t want to be disturbed by acquaintances coming over. She knew too many people. “Any special menu?” No, not as long as they began with a martini; a dry martini: and strong, mind: like Franklin’s, five to one.
She closed her eyes as she sipped at it. “How often I’ve longed for one of these; how often I’ve envied Franklin.”
“You said you didn’t mind?”
“What else could I say? I couldn’t play the martyr: much better let you think that I was dieting. I told you I was under doctor’s orders. So I was. I didn’t let you know what for.”
“Have you been ill long? Or rather have you known that you were ill?”
“I’ve not been ill, but I knew that sooner or later I’d have to have this done. I wanted to put it off as long as possible.”
“But why? Wouldn’t it have been best to get it over?”
She shook her head. “Funny things happen to women after this kind of operation. I’ve seen it more than once. I’m not as young as perhaps you think I am. I owed it to Franklin to stay as long as possible the kind of woman that he married. I had to argue with my conscience, you know, before I married him.”
“You’ve made him very happy.”
“Up to now I have; he’s made me happy too. Over four years: that’s quite a time. But as I said, I had to argue with my conscience; I told myself it wasn’t fair to him, but the temptation was too great. Have you any idea quite how attractive your young brother is?”
“I’ve got eyes.”
“I know, but it’s not only that. There’s that female streak in him; you wouldn’t notice it; but sometimes when I’ve been out with him, when I’ve been shopping, say, I’ve felt I was with another woman, that I wasn’t with a man at all: in actual love making, oh yes, he was masculine all right; but with some men, there’s a kind of Lesbian streak. I felt I was getting it both ways. And then his looks: who says that a woman doesn’t care for looks. That’s a man’s canard if you like: the plain man’s canard. Oh, of course, I know a woman can fall in love with an old man, with an old and ugly man: there’s glamour about a general, there’s the prestige of royalty, the pride of wealth and power; there’s the woman’s need of security, not only for herself but for her children; yes, there’s all that; but if anyone pretends a woman’s not aware of looks ... I daresay I’d have put this operation off a little longer if Franklin hadn’t let himself get flabby. It’s gone now, the fine flower of his beauty. I tried to stop him, but you can’t go nagging at a man. In the end I got so exasperated that I encouraged him, piled mayonnaise upon his langouste.”
‘How wrong can you be,’ thought Guy.
He looked self-questioningly at Daphne. There was a new brightness in her eyes. It was the first time that he had seen her take a drink. But it was not alcohol that had given her that glow; she had an air of personal triumph, of suppressed excitement, as though she had achieved some private goal.
“I’ve had a curious feeling all this week,” she said, “as though I were doing everything for the last time: as though I were being myself for the last time.”
“But you told me that there wasn’t any danger.”
“There isn’t. I can say that truthfully. Yet something tells me that the person that’s been me so many years, is taking her last look at London.”
He remembered the dramatic irony of his father’s last few weeks, with his father knowing that he was seeing each friend for the last time, but the friend wholly unaware of it. He recalled how in the letters of condolence one friend after another had said, ‘How little I thought that last time we lunched that we should never meet again. It seemed at the time like a hundred other lunches, spread over all those years: yet now looking back at it, it seems somehow special. Your father was so very gracious. I’m glad that the last time should have been like that.’ There was a parallel between Daphne and his father.
“I couldn’t have borne to have had this last lunch with Franklin,” she was continuing. “Yes, you can fill up my glass. I thought quite a lot about this lunch. I had to make it special. I had an idea at first of lunching with one of the men I’d been in love with; but I saw that wouldn’t do. I’d be incomplete. We could only talk about the weeks or months we’d shared. That’s why I asked you to give me lunch. I don’t know you very well. Yet in a way we’re close. You’
ve thought about me. I can be open with you. Nothing that I say could hurt your feelings. I can be complete, let my thoughts flow; for the last time in my life, be my old self, that’s to say. And I know with you that anything I may say will have the secrecy of the confessional. That we’ll never, ever refer again to this last conversation: you won’t, at least: not unless I do. Yes, let’s have lunch. I’ll wager it’ll be a good one.”
It was the first time he had seen her eat with gusto; what a strain she must have placed upon herself. Had she resented what must have seemed the gluttony of her guests? Byron had hated seeing a pretty woman eat: not because he had thought eating unfeminine and indelicate, but because he had resented seeing a woman enjoy a physical sensation that was denied him owing to his diet.
Guy had chosen a white Burgundy, a Montrachet.
“How good this is,” she said. “How I’ve missed wine: not spirits, not cocktails much: only occasionally, but wine: a meal’s not a meal without it. There’s one thing I can thank heaven for about this business, I’ll never deprive myself of that again.”
She sipped it slowly, reverently; she talked easily, amusingly, of the world as she had known it, of the world as she found it now, of the changes social, political, moral, economic, that she had seen.
“A girl starts life before a man does; you’d had no adult life before the war. I had; enough to know what we’ve lost: it was smug, and complacent in many ways, selfish and self-assured; oh, and so self-indulgent; yet there were the young people coming through with fresh ideas. All that group from King’s, the men your friend Burton knew, Brooke and Keynes, Cannan and E. M. Forster; they planned to alter things, they would have altered things, in their own way, in their own time: there wasn’t any need for all that bloodletting.”
She paused. “I could never talk about those things to Franklin. There’s a whole generation between us; the loss of a whole generation. You know what I’m talking about. He wouldn’t.”
He had often wondered how old she was; had wondered what her life had been during those years of widowhood before she had met Franklin, remembering that remark of Renée’s: ‘What an innocent you are.’ He had often asked himself about her; but now when she would have been ready enough to answer anything, there seemed no point in asking: the actual details didn’t matter. The general framework of her life was plain. The day-to-day diaries of a dozen years, with all their facts, would not tell him as much about her as these two hours were doing.
“I’ve learnt so much about myself this last three weeks,” she said. “Last night for instance. It had to be unique. My life with Franklin has been rather strange that way. It was his looks I fell for. A physical temptation. Yet somehow always I held back. Franklin was rather innocent, you know. Haven’t you heard of a roué marrying an inexperienced girl and being, I won’t say shy with her, but restrained; nervous of converting her into the type of woman that he knew before; afraid of revealing himself to that shy bride of his: and paying for it in the long run, probably, when some other man comes along who does not restrain himself. That’s how I was with Franklin; until last night–––”
She paused, a reminiscent smile upon her lips. “Do you know your Daudet; remember his ’toute la Lyre’? That’s how it was last night; that doesn’t surprise you, does it? It’s what you’d have expected, isn’t it? And so’d I too. If I’d been told about this operation that’s how I’d have expected I’d behave, that I’d want to leave Franklin with such a memory that any woman who might come after me would seem tame; that’s what you’d have thought, and so’d have I. It wasn’t though. I wasn’t thinking of Franklin, but of myself. I was saying good-bye to myself; saying to myself ‘this is you. Remember this. Whatever happens now, this is what you were.’”
She laughed. “I’ve had a lovely life. I wouldn’t have any of it different. And now I suppose you must check me into that confounded Clinic. You’ll come and see me, won’t you? And keep an eye on Franklin. He may feel lost in London by himself. And if you were very Christian, you might take Julia to the Zoo or to the Tower. It’s been a lovely lunch. I’m lucky to have the kind of brother-in-law you are.”
It turned out the way she had foretold. There were no complications. She was never upon any danger list. “A perfectly straightforward operation,” the nurse said. “I can’t think why she didn’t have it months ago. She’ll feel ever so much better now.”
After the third day she was receiving visitors. Her room was like a greenhouse. Daphne gorged herself with grapes and peaches. “It really is fun being ill,” she said.
Franklin did not seem to need any particular cherishing. He stayed at Highgate, thoroughly well spoilt by his mother; Guy lunched him a couple of times; once they dined together.
“We might as well go to Lord’s next Friday for the Eton and Harrow match,” Guy said. “You can come on there from the London Clinic. If your morning coat’s out of mothballs, that’s to say.”
It was out of mothballs, but it had grown too tight. He had to leave it open and there was a strain upon his waistcoat buttons. It was a hot day and he felt uncomfortable. His discomfort made him petulant.
“This is the most ridiculous performance of the entire season. There are those boys, the flower of our aristocracy, selected specimens of a ruling class vying in the nation’s proudest sport with one another, yet none of the spectators can bother to watch them play: look at Britain’s bluest blood parading a hard asphalt roofed-in roadway, breathing an air contaminated by stale beer. As there’s only one hour of the day, at lunch and tea, when they can stroll across the grass and show off their dresses, they queue up for a ridiculously early lunch and miss the cricket. You can’t think how ridiculous it all seems to someone who’s lived out of the country as long as I have. I’m sorry but it’s more than I can stand. I’m going back to change into something cool.”
Guy watched him go: it was close on tea-time and he decided as soon as the play stopped to walk once across the field and then go home. His heart was heavy as he sauntered across the grass. It all looked so bright and gay, with the sky blue above the stands and the sun shining on the mound with all the fashionable ladies in their trailing dresses and parasols and floppy hats, with the young Etonians and Harrovians with their tall walking-sticks and their light blue and dark blue button holes, with the gaitered ecclesiastics and the Edwardian beaux with their heavy silver-headed canes. It was all so young and fresh. He felt himself drearily middle-aged in this atmosphere of youth, feeling that he had nothing in particular to look forward to, that nothing much mattered any longer; that one day was very like another; and then suddenly just as he was thinking that, a gloved hand fell upon his arm, the scent of tuberose was at his side, and in his ears a voice, New England with a slight French accent, said, “Still mad at me?”
He turned and there she was, a little breathless, a little flushed under her floppy hat.
“I saw you from the mound. I hurried over. I thought the game would have started. I was afraid I’d lose you and it’s been so long.”
“Over six weeks.”
“Forty-seven days.”
From the pavilion rang the five-minutes bell to clear the ground. The white-coated umpires were passing through the wicket gate. The spectators began to file back to their coaches and seats and tents.
“Shall we walk round the ground,” she said, “just once.”
Her hand was upon his arm as they moved towards the screen; they did not speak, but the soft pressure of her fingers was soothing little by little the malaise that had weighed on him. He half closed his eyes, feeling that at last after all these weeks he had come home, that he was back where he belonged. As they joined the slow-moving parade behind the stands, she began to speak.
“You shouldn’t be mad at me,” she said. “I was selfish I know, but for a purpose. My grandmother said once that in every marriage there was a point where the husband turned towards a younger woman, and that it was up to the wife to make it difficult rather than easy for
the husband to run away from her. There was another thing too, she said. If your husband really wants to go, there’s nothing to be done about it. It’s no good trying to hold him against his will. I thought of both those things when I saw you in that restaurant with that girl. I couldn’t see your face, but I could see hers. I knew what that look meant. I knew how she felt about you, or at least what she was on the brink of feeling.”
She paused and they walked on in silence. Out in the centre, the match was once more in progress. They could hear the crack of the bat against the ball and the burst of clapping that applauded a clever stroke or a good piece of fielding. The varying fortunes of the cricket match seemed to belong to happenings in another world.
“I didn’t want to be selfish,” she said. “I’ve often felt I’m standing in your way, that I’m ruining your life. No, darling, don’t interrupt. You’re nearly forty. You ought to marry soon if you’re going to, and most men want to after all. I’ve always told myself that when the time came for me to stand aside, I’d do it. . . But. . . Well, even so, I can’t say that my experience has taught me that marriage simply as marriage is something to be valued highly. I didn’t want to let you go into just any marriage. And if I’d stood aside right now you would have got yourself entangled. Before you knew where you were, you’d have found yourself under an obligation to that girl; I wanted to be quite sure that you really did want her before I stood aside. I said to myself, ‘If he’s in love with her, if she’s essential to his happiness, he won’t let anything stand in his way of getting her. He’ll take my advice. He’ll stop her sailing.’ As you could have stopped her, if you’d really wanted her. Only you didn’t want her quite enough. Don’t think too badly of me. Ten years is a long time. Longer than many marriages.”