by Alec Waugh
“Isn’t it worth it?”
She shook her head.
“I’m sorry, but it’s your fault,” she had retorted. “They’re your friends, not mine.”
At times they had come perilously near to quarrels. That was the worst of Deauville. It presented such an easy atmosphere to quarrel in. Your nerves got on edge. You were overtired and overwrought. You drank too much. You didn’t sleep enough. The jazz drums worked upon your brain. You grew fractious and irritable. As each day passed Jean felt that she was growing further away from Gavin instead of closer to him. She had hoped that out of this fortnight together would be built up a group of associations that would link them for ever. It seemed to her now that they shared nothing except passion: a strained and restless passion; no longer the deep sweet impetuous need for each other that clamoured for assuagement. “I’ll be glad to be out of this,” she thought. It was not that she had been unhappy, but that she felt she should have been far happier. She had felt that something worth while was being wasted. It would be better in London. They would have leisure there. She was glad that this was their last evening; that they had arranged to spend it quietly, dining together, and going back early afterwards.
It was as she was deciding this that her name was shouted by a voice, familiar, but unplacable for the moment.
“There you are, Jean. We’ve been looking for you everywhere. We’ve just come in by the afternoon train from Paris.”
She lifted herself upon an elbow and saw looking down at her the burly form of Fred Grant, one of her brother’s football friends, and, though in no sense a friend of hers, a frequent visitor at her parents’ house, accompanied by a variegated male and female retinue. At the sight of it Jean’s heart sank.
“It is luck, finding you,” Fred was saying. “Your people told us you were staying here. We’ve been round to your hotel to look you up, and they told us you were going back tomorrow. No end of a disappointment. Still, we’ve got this evening. We want you to show us all the sights. By the way, you don’t know all of us, do you?”
Jean was not conscious of knowing any of them. She listened perfunctorily to the list of names that was rattled off for her. This was just what she might have expected to happen. Only that morning she had congratulated her luck on not having met at Deauville a single person whom she had known at home, and now on her last day this rabble had arrived.
“You’ll be able to dine with us to-night, won’t you?” Fred Grant was saying.
“I’m afraid I’m already dining.”
“That’s too bad. Our one night, too. Is it a party?”
“Oh no, just two of us.”
“Well, if it isn’t anyone special, couldn’t you join on to us? Is it anyone special?”
There are times when the capacity to lie deserts one: when one is so flustered that the truth is the easiest answer.
“I’m dining with Gavin Todd,” said Jean.
“What, the golf man?”
“Yes.”
“Really! My, that would be fine. I’ld love to meet him. You bring him along now, and we’ll have a jolly beano. What’s the time now? Just on six; well, suppose you run and change. We’ll wait for you, then we can push along and have some cocktails.”
Back in her bathing hut Jean dried herself in slow and lugubrious dejection. What on earth had she done, what on earth had she let herself in for? She scarcely knew these people: they were not her sort. In London she would never have considered going out with Grant. Nor would he have asked her. Why would people think that a slight acquaintance at home was an excuse for genuine friendliness abroad? It would ruin her last night with Gavin. She knew him well enough to know he would be furious. She walked gloomily in the centre of the chatting party to the Casino.
“I expect Gavin Todd will be there already,” she said. “I’m meeting him at quarter past.”
He was. A look of surprise came into his face when he saw the nature and extent of Jean’s cohort.
“Gavin,” she said, “here are some friends of mine from London. They’ve been nice enough to ask us to dine with them.”
The look of surprise deepened on Gavin’s face, then disappeared. “I shall be delighted,” he said, “if they will dine with us. No, no, please,” he interrupted as Fred Grant attempted to expostulate. “Waiter,” he called. “Book me a table for eight this evening instead of two. And now what cocktails shall we have? I think that on the whole they make Baccardis best.”
His manner could not have been more gracious. But Jean knew what he was feeling. He disliked having his plans changed. And he had already changed his plans so that they might be able to dine alone. She knew, too, that he did not approve of Grant. Unsnobbish with his own friends, he was extremely particular where those of others were concerned. Business had made him class conscious. He had made it a rule never to accept an invitation except in the way of business from anyone he did not like. She understood the import of that invitation. In unhappy silence she sat sipping at her cocktail. If only they would go, she thought, so that she could be alone with Gavin and explain. But they dawdled on over round after round of cocktails, every one of which, after the second, she and Gavin had refused. It was close on eight when Grant rose to his feet.
“Getting late,” he said. “Must be going back to change. We’re staying at the same hotel as you Jean. We’ll see you there.”
Twenty minutes Jean Ryland sat gazing in miserable dejection at the only evening frock she had with her in the hotel. It was a forlorn, dowdy little thing. She would be easily the worst dressed woman, if not in the restaurant, at any rate in their party. It was going to be a wretched evening. If only she had had a chance of explaining things to Gavin. But she had been rushed away before she could say a word to him. And her three attempts to get through to him on the telephone had failed. Her dejection was increased by the hilarity of the others. She looked with disrelish on the bright faces of the men and the women in their smart evening frocks. They were so blatantly out for a good time. And Gavin, when they arrived at the restaurant, was infuriatingly suave. The air of uneasy diffidence which was natural to him, and which he carried invariably among his friends, had been replaced by a bright courteous care-free manner, that concealed, she was well aware, the intensest irritation. No one realised this fact, however. Gavin was proving, as usual, a skilful and lavish host. The dinner had been admirably ordered. A Jeroboam of champagne emerged from a steaming bucket. The talk at his end of the table was lively and incessant.
“A first-class fellow,” Fred Grant was declaring at her side. “So little swank. So friendly. Jolly good of you to have introduced us. Must manage to see more of him when we get back to town. Must see more of you too, Jean. We don’t see nearly enough, you know, of one another.” He leant towards her as he spoke. His face was flushed. Across his forehead was a film of moisture. He would be drunkish, probably, before the evening’s end. Despairingly she looked across the table towards Gavin; but he was busy recounting an anecdote to the girl beside him. If only the dinner would end; if only they could start dancing, so that she would have a chance of making things right with Gavin.
But even when the dinner was over, it was a long while before she could dance with Gavin. He had his duty as a host to the other women. It was with unutterable relief that at last they edged their way through the crush of tables to the dancing floor. As she felt his hand against her shoulder, the weight of all her worry seemed to be taken from her.
“Darling,” she said. “I am so sorry.”
“Why did you do it?”
“Darlingest, I don’t know. I was taken off my guard. It happened so suddenly. And you see,” she added, finding an excuse for Gavin as for Grant she had been unable to, “I knew that I had to see them sometime. And I thought dinner would be best because then we can get away quickly from them afterwards.” Gavin smiled down at her affectionately.
“All right, my sweet,” he said. “Don’t worry.”
The business of getting away
quickly afterwards was obviously, however, not going to prove a simple matter. Fred Grant was clearly bent upon making a night of it. And a first-class rugby footballer, when slightly drunk, has a disconcerting capacity for persistence.
“This is your last night and our first,” he said. “We are not going to do things by halves.”
Before Jean had realised what was happening, she had found herself seated at a corner table in the bar, with an array of large bell-mouthed glasses and a bottle of’71 brandy set in front of her. “We’re going to make a real party of this,” said Grant.
A full hour had passed before Jean managed through a lull in the talk to say to Gavin,” I want to gamble; please take me to the card room.”
The moment they were out of earshot, she turned despairingly towards him.
“Darlingest,” she said, “I am so sorry but this is going to be an appalling evening.”
“I don’t need telling that.”
“Darling, don’t be cross, it’s not my fault.”
“They’re your friends.”
“Yes I know, but if you knew how I was hating it.”
“Let’s go then.”
“But how can we while they’re there? We’ve got to say good-bye to them. And then one of them would insist on seeing me back to the hotel.”
“Oh.” It was a point that up till then had not occurred to Gavin.
“You mean that you’ll have to stay in the other hotel to-night?” he asked.
“I don’t see how I’m to avoid it with them here.”
“Do you mean that I’m not going to see you at all, then?”
“Silly one, of course. I’ll stay on here after they’ve gone, and then get back early to the hotel. It’s just a question of staying them out.”
“That’s enough of a question.”
Before she could reply Fred Grant was at their side.
“What, not in the card room yet? Was thinking of having a little flutter myself. Come along children.’ Before they could remonstrate they had been led, each of them by an arm, into the card room.
Twenty minutes later the poorer by eighteen hundred francs they returned to the bar, to the corner table, the bell-mouthed glasses and the emptying bottle of Gambetta brandy. And there recommenced the type of conversation that invariably occurs in bars to which women are admitted. When men are alone, drink improves conversation. When women join them, the avoidance of gross impropriety would seem the highest achievement of which the masculine intelligence is capable. Men are too busy restraining what they must not say, to say anything worth hearing. During the next hour the standard of talk descended from level to level of fatuity. Gavin, who disliked drink became more charming and affable every minute. Jean who was cautiously temperate and had been drinking lime-squash for the past ninety minutes sank deeper and deeper into gloom. She was tired, on edge and overwrought. She was angry with Fred Grant for having arranged this party: with herself for being enmeshed in it: with Gavin for making the worst of a bad job, for the situation that had forced on them the acceptance of it. Free love, indeed. What did free love do for you except involve you in a series of complications? Had they been husband and wife instead of lovers, she and Gavin would have been free to walk away from this party two hours back.
And there was the bottle emptying, the conversation getting sillier, Fred Grant’s face growing redder and Gavin’s manner more infuriatingly urbane. “Let’s go and dance,” he said at length. This time she waited for him to speak first, and when he spoke, all the urbanity had left his voice.
“This is preposterous!” he said. “Surely you can get rid of these people, they’re your friends.”
The fretfulness of his tone irritated her.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “It’s the first time that it has been friends of mine.”
“What does that mean?”
“It’s your friends who’ve made difficulties for us up till now.”
He made no reply. For a turn of the room they danced in silence. With his hand on her shoulder, with her feet following his rhythm, once again the illusion of harmony returned to her. If only she could be alone with him, she thought.
Something of the same feeling had come to him.
“Darling, surely you can manage to get away,” he whispered.
She shook her head wearily. “It’s too big a risk. It isn’t worth running that risk for one night.”
“Not even when that night’s our last night?”
In her nervous, highly strung condition she misunderstood him.
“What do you mean, our last night?” she flared. “Do you mean that we’re not going to see anything more of each other when we get back?”
“My dear, don’t be so silly.”
But she did not listen to his explanation. She was angry and upset, in a mood that saw all things out of focus. Again they danced in silence.
“Darling,” he said. “Couldn’t we slip away for an hour or so. They wouldn’t miss you. You could come back afterwards.”
His voice was husky with cigarette smoke. To Jean who could not see the expression of his eyes, it sounded casual. So that’s all he wants from me, she thought.
“No, of course I can’t,” she said.
They did not speak again till the music had stopped. As they walked back from the restaurant to the bar, he stopped abruptly. “Look here,” he said, “I’m not standing any more of this. If you can’t get away now, I’m going.”
“Then you’d better come and say good-bye to them all. I’ve got to stop.” They stood facing each other, too tired, too angry to make the first step to a reconciliation.
“What train are you catching tomorrow?” he asked.
“An early one. Half-past ten, I think.”
“I’ve got to be on the links at ten. I shan’t be able to see you off.”
“When will you be back in London?”
“The end of next week. I’ll ring you up. What’ll I do about your clothes?”
“Forward them to my people’s address. I’ll say I lost them on the journey.”
“There’s nothing more?”
“No, nothing more.”
They turned and walked on into the bar. “I’m so terribly sorry,” Gavin said, “but I must say good-night now. I’ve got to be on the links tomorrow early. I shall feel like death if I don’t get some sleep.”
His manner had become in a second, light and charming. He was smiling affably, waving a hand in a graceful gesture of good-bye. A moment more and he had gone. Jean watched his slim figure pass round the corner of the corridor, then turned back to the smoke-laden atmosphere of the bar; its noise, its grubbiness, its silly chatter. Her spirits sank. “I wish I were a man,” she thought. “Then I’ld get beastly drunk.”
Chapter XX
At Last
Thirty hours later Jean Ryland walked into Lady Prew Catholic’s establishment, feeling that she would need a month’s sleep to recover from a fortnight’s holiday. Julia Terance was already there. She, too, was looking tired.
“Well, what sort of a time have you had?” she asked.
Jean shrugged her shoulders.
“It had its moments.”
“And the grand romance?”
Jean smiled, a little wistfully.
“It was lovely,” she said, “bits of it. But all that, you know. . . it’s putting too big a strain on love.”
Which was what Julia herself was thinking. Had been thinking for weeks, subconsciously: had known incontestably since she had heard Melanie’s laugh across the telephone. That was the way to love: to recognise that kinship in one another, that trust, that confidence that could say, “You’re mine, I’m yours, we can let the world slip safely.” That was the way to love. Love was too delicate a growth to be subjected to the strain of an intrigue.
It was all very well to talk about the romance and glamour of affairs. In the right setting they were no doubt well enough. In extreme youth, when everything was new, when you climbed by a ladde
r of lovers to self-knowledge: or when circumstance contrived to isolate a moment; when you met abroad, on some ship or at some hotel for a few days or a few hours, some one you would never meet again. To that there was a glamour. But an intrigue carried on in London by people who were no longer children, in the intervals of their private lives, had all the disadvantages and few of the advantages of marriage. It was not a question of right or wrong, but of the practical ordering of life. People talked of marriages going wrong. And in all conscience the obstacles that marriage raised in the path of love were high enough. To make a successful marriage was a high and rare achievement. But in spite of those difficulties love stood more chance of surviving within marriage than outside it. The obstacles that were raised by an affair were far higher than those that marriage raised. Two years was a long time for an affair to last. The only affairs that did last were those whose circumstances approximated most closely to those of marriage. No marriage, she felt, could ever make her more restive against the servitude it involved than did this long, exhausting intrigue with Leon Carstairs.
That evening when she returned to her flat after dining at her parents’ house, to find a letter from Leon Carstairs, she had scarcely the courage to break its seal. “What on earth does he want to write to me for?” she thought. “What new trouble is there?” As she unfolded the sheet of paper, she felt nervous. It was not usual for him to write to her. And the letter had been sent by express delivery.
“Darling,” it began. “The most marvellous news. You’ll hardly believe it. At first I couldn’t. But quite unexpectedly, that partnership’s come through. So now, so now. . .”
It was the letter she had waited for so long: the letter she had so often dreamed of reading. But now that it had come, she felt none of the exhilaration she had expected. She did not feel that the door of happiness was opening for her, but that the weight of an intolerable burden had been taken from her. She did not think, “Now I can be alone at last with Leon.” She thought, “Now I can give up working at Prew Catholic’s. I can give up the flat. There’ll be warm carpets and hot water and fires to welcome me at night. There’ll be no more early rising. When I feel tired I’ll laze in bed and ring for my breakfast when I want it. I’ll have the whole day in front of me to spend as I choose, idly, for my own amusement. I’ll never again have to meet people I don’t want: never let myself be put in a false position. That’s over, all of it, for ever.” And she felt tired, intolerably, as one does when the pressure of a long strain is suddenly removed.