The Jealous One

by Celia Fremlin

  It was well after nine when they reached home, and as the car drew up, Rosamund saw lights streaming from every one of the windows of Lindy’s house. There was the sound of music, voices; the party had evidently begun without her.

  ‘See?’ the errant hostess exclaimed happily. ‘There was no need to fuss! There never is. Parties just run themselves, if the hostess will only relax!’

  The remark could hardly have been aimed at Rosamund, who had not given any sort of a party, relaxed or otherwise, since Lindy had come to live here. Nevertheless, the words seemed somehow to have the quality of missiles, flung at random into the darkness at the back of the car: carelessly, as much as to say: With any luck some bit of this will hit and hurt her; but if not, why, there’s nothing lost, it was no bother. No trouble at all, dear; a pleasure….

  ‘Come on in—I’m longing to go to my own party!’ cried Lindy excitedly, as they left the car. ‘Both of you come along, at once.’

  ‘Well, just give us a few minutes,’ said Geoffrey. ‘I want to get changed….’

  ‘Yes. And I must see if Peter’s in, too,’ added Rosamund, though she couldn’t think why she must. It was a breathing space she wanted: a little bit of time in her own home, away from Lindy, away from the sight of her and Geoffrey together.

  ‘O.K. Don’t be long,’ Lindy called. She had reached her own front door by now, and across the two gardens Rosamund saw her feeling for her key in her handbag.

  But before she could find it the front door was flung open with a great blaze of light, and Rosamund could see Eileen framed in the brilliance; could hear her voice, low and frantic:

  ‘Lindy! How could you! Why have you been so long? How could you leave me to cope with everything on my own? And this time, of all times! You knew that Basil might be coming!’

  CHAPTER IX

  So that was the secret of all this relaxed hostess business! Lindy was simply leaving her sister to do everything, while claiming credit herself for superhuman light-heartedness and calm. If only Geoffrey was listening … was taking it in!

  But no. As ill luck would have it, he had hurried straight indoors, and hadn’t heard a word of the significant exchange on the other side of the fence. Rosamund followed him into the house slowly, trying to think of a way of reporting the incident without sounding catty. How it did cramp one’s style, this not being a jealous wife! How much less interesting it made one, too; for the anecdote, catty or not, would at least have been amusing and stimulating—could have triggered off the kind of conversation that Geoffrey and she had once enjoyed nearly all the time. As it was, there seemed nothing to talk about while they got ready for the party except whether to lock the back door; as to which Rosamund found herself disagreeing with Geoffrey simply for the sake of something to say. Never, ever had it been like this with them before….

  The party was in full swing when they arrived, and looking swiftly round Rosamund calculated that every single one of their neighbours must have been invited. How well Lindy had managed to get to know everyone in the three months she had lived here! Better than Rosamund had done in all the past ten years, to judge by all these familiar faces gathered together. Familiar in a sense, that is: in another sense quite unfamiliar, for faces that you are accustomed to meeting under hats or over garden walls look queer indoors, like the postman without his uniform. In a way, it was easier to talk to the total strangers; the bearded artistic men and the un-housewife-looking women who must have come out of Lindy’s former life. Letting herself be pushed unresisting by the surging movements of the crowd, Rosamund presently found herself wedged tête a tête in a corner with a wiry, pale young man who looked like a poet, but who said that he was a Shell Shelder, or something that sounded like that: indeed, for all Rosamund knew, there might really be such a job; anyway, you couldn’t go on asking him to repeat it, any more than you could ask him to go on repeating his name, also lost in the surrounding din.

  Gradually, as her ears became accustomed to the noise, she gathered that he was talking to her about modern marriage. Before much longer, she found that she could actually hear everything he was saying, and no longer had to reply with such smiles and platitudes as would be equally appropriate whether he was describing the faithlessness of his wife or the Darby and Joan happiness of his aged parents.

  It was neither, and the platitudes couldn’t have been in the least appropriate, but perhaps he hadn’t heard them:

  ‘The wonderful thing about just living with a girl,’ he was saying, ‘is the privacy and the dignity of it. People aren’t watching you all the time, the way they are when you’re married, to see how you’re making out. I mean, an affair is expected to break up, so people don’t get any kick out of watching for it to happen. And they don’t think it’s against the rules for you to go out separately sometimes, or for you to have different tastes, different friends. Stepping out of an affair into marriage is like stepping out of a civilised state into a goldfish bowl. Wherever you look, whichever way you turn, there are great eyes staring at you, hugely magnified, watching to see how you match up to the Perfect Husband. Or Perfect Wife, of course: it’s just as frightful for her, too I’m not saying it isn’t.’

  Rosamund laughed. ‘It sounds as if you have a heavy concentration of in-laws,’ she said. ‘And your wife, too. Are you both members of big, devoted families?’

  ‘On the contrary, we are both orphans. Were, I should say. My wife and I are separated.’

  ‘Oh! I’m sorry!’ Rosamund felt some embarrassment, but the young man hastened to dispel it, in his rather disconcerting way.

  ‘Don’t be silly! You don’t have to apologise. Hang it all, I brought up the subject. I wouldn’t have, would I, if I’d wanted it tactfully avoided?’

  ‘No, that’s true,’ said Rosamund. ‘It’s just that one is rather brought up to …’

  ‘There you are! That’s another thing!’ interrupted her engagingly indignant companion. ‘The way everyone feels they’ve got to be so bloody tactful about marriage, as if it was a fatal disease, or a deformity, or something. They stare, and they point, and they whisper, but they won’t talk to you about it. Nobody asks you how it’s going, whether you’re enjoying it, that sort of thing, the way they would if it was a new job, or a trip abroad, or any other exciting new venture in life. Your friends all get so remote and evasive, it’s like being stranded on a desert island; just you and this young woman. Not being a character in a film, I just couldn’t take it.’

  ‘Well, you’ve said you don’t like people to be tactful, so I won’t be,’ said Rosamund. ‘I must say, it does sound to me as if you must have given up rather soon. All that kind of thing—what you’ve been describing—subsides pretty soon, you know. People soon get tired of watching and speculating, and then you get forty or fifty years of peace and quiet. If that’s what you want.’

  ‘You don’t really believe that, do you? People never get tired of watching and speculating. Not ever. All you really mean is that you find compensation in all the chances you get to watch and criticise in your turn. I don’t mean you in particular,’ he added hastily, suddenly looking very young. ‘I mean “one”.’

  ‘Now who’s being tactful?’ smiled Rosamund. ‘You might very well mean “me in particular”, because I’m sure I’m terribly like that. No, what I mean is, people are curious at first, naturally, because they don’t know what this new personality, the-pair-of-you, is going to be like. As soon as they do know, they stop being inquisitive. It’s like getting to know any new person.’

  ‘Well, in the first place, I resent suddenly being counted as half of a new personality when I’ve spent twenty-six years being the whole of an old one, and enjoying it thoroughly, thank you very much! And in any case, none of this answers my second objection: the way people boycott the subject of your married state as a topic of conversation. And that doesn’t change. I daresay you’ve been married quite a few years, but if I were to ask you, quite simply and conversationally, how you’d enjoyed it,
you’d evade the question in horror, wouldn’t you?’

  ‘Yes, I would,’ said Rosamund; and began to consider why she would. Loyalty? Cowardice?—Or simply that it was none of this young man’s business?

  The last thought must have shown in her face, for he laughed a little defensively:

  ‘There you are, you see? Whereas if I’d asked you how you’d enjoyed living in this neighbourhood all these years—and that’s none of my business, either—then you’d tell me quite happily, and we could have an interesting discussion about it. And then I’d tell you where I lived, and you could ask how I felt about it, and it would all be quite interesting, probably….’

  ‘Well, where do you live?’ Rosamund was beginning obligingly, when Lindy suddenly appeared through the line of shoulders and backs cutting off their corner from the rest of the room.

  ‘Oh, there you are, Basil!’ she exclaimed excitedly. ‘Come along, there’s a good boy, I’ve got someone over here dying to meet you—’ She seized his hand and dragged him, half laughing, half protesting, into the heart of the crowd, leaving Rosamund to assimilate this new bit of information.

  So this was Basil, Eileen’s one-time husband: the young man who, according to Lindy’s account, had left Eileen because she was always in a fluster of overwork, always making him feel guilty. Did this interpretation dovetail in any degree with the opinions that Basil himself had just been expressing to Rosamund about marriage—presumably based on his own experience? In all this noise and confusion it was difficult to think coherently, or at any length, but so far as she could collate her memories, it did not seem that there was much connection between the two versions—though she supposed they weren’t actually incompatible. You could, of course, object to the state of marriage as such and find your wife irritating…. Realising that by standing here speculating she was in danger of looking neglected—an unforgiveable sin at a party—Rosamund decided to worm her way through the crowd until she caught sight of someone she knew. The room, which at first had seemed full of neighbours, now seemed full of total strangers, more and more pouring in every moment, like refugees from some unimaginable disaster outside: the lucky ones, the survivors, gathering themselves into the shelter of Lindy’s charm….

  And now here was Lindy herself again, only a yard or two away. Over the intervening shoulders, Rosamund was able to witness the introduction of Basil to this person who was ‘dying to meet him’. It was Eileen. Rosamund could not hear what was being said; she could see only the expression of baffled dismay on Eileen’s face, of utter astonishment on Basil’s. And the smile, the warm, charming hostess smile on Lindy’s, and her mouth opening and shutting, pouring forth animated, inaudible words.

  What was she saying? Why was Eileen looking so appalled? And Basil so surprised? Had he not known that Eileen would be here? Did he perhaps not even know that Eileen lived here at all? Was Lindy trying to ‘bring them together’ by the childish ruse of a surprise meeting? No. Lindy would never be so silly—nor so simple. Whatever she was up to, it would be something complicated, and carefully planned. It would be like a card trick—all those simple, natural smiles and gestures would culminate—surprise! surprise!—in Lindy’s suddenly appearing to advantage in relation to someone else—presumably, in this case, Eileen.

  But there was no chance of filling in the details from this distance, so Rosamund continued on her difficult way until she reached the french windows which had been flung open to the September night, still almost as warm as summer. The lantern so carefully wired up by Geoffrey hung from the laburnum tree, and on the shadowy space of grass sat or stood little clusters of guests, in comparative quietness and freedom of movement.

  Among the groups Rosamund caught sight of the Dawsons, Mrs Dawson’s plump bare arms and careless frizz of grey-blonde hair shining palely through the darkness; and she could hear Mr Dawson’s elderly yet boyish voice holding forth about sparrow-hawks. Rosamund could not quite see who he was addressing, but at least he and his wife were well-known to her, so she unobtrusively sidled into the group, exchanging with Mrs Dawson the conspiratorial smiles of women tolerating good-naturedly the incomprehensible male passion for talking about facts, when there is so much else in the world so immeasurably more interesting.

  ‘And I know it wasn’t a pigeon!’ Mr Dawson was asserting forcefully, defending the opinion against some imaginary opponent. It must be imaginary, for surely he couldn’t have magnified into an opponent either his wife or the blonde, beautifully lacquered lady who was regarding him amiably but with a certain restlessness across her gin and lemon. ‘Sparrow-hawks don’t necessarily hover, you know. Everybody thinks they do, but they don’t. They dart about under the trees. It’s ridiculous to say that just because it wasn’t hovering it must have been a pigeon!’

  The lacquered lady hadn’t said so, and was beginning to look a little resentful as well as restless. But she was wrong to take it personally: she should have realised that she was only the stand-in for a dream-audience of attentive, admiring professional naturalists. ‘Some people think you don’t ever see them in towns—’ he was moving triumphantly to his peroration—‘but that’s quite untrue. And anyway, you can’t call this exactly “town”, can you? … All those great elms….’ He gestured vaguely, and stared out across the rooftops with the wistful intensity of imagination cultivated by so many suburbanites—they can at will raze to the ground acres of red brick and wooden fencing, and see in primeval splendour the rural remnants of their environment. ‘It’s practically woodland, you know, over there behind the tennis-club buildings. You could easily have a pair nesting there. Several pairs.’

  ‘Yes, I’m sure you could,’ said the blonde lady, rather helplessly. Rosamund could see that she was trying to make up for the blankness of her mind on the subject by a sudden look of bright attentiveness, and by sipping her drink continuously. Rosamund felt sorry for Mr Dawson, and tried to think of something encouraging to say about sparrow-hawks herself. It was nice to know they were there, and she wished them well, but that seemed rather a feeble thing to say.

  But Mr Dawson mercifully did not seem sensitive to the inadequacy of his audience. He was happily continuing: ‘But of course, people don’t look. They never see anything of the wild life here because they never look for it. They think that because they live in a street of houses and people, nothing else can exist there. Did you realise—’ he turned once more in fruitless challenge to the blonde lady—‘that there are more worms in London than there are people? Did you know that?’

  How had he found out? Or, rather, how had the writer of whatever article he had been reading found out? Did the L.C.C. pay somebody to count worms? Or did universities provide grants for it? What odd ways there were of spending your life, if you were so minded. But poor Mr Dawson was evidently waiting for a proper response to his dramatic announcement. ‘Really? You don’t say’ wasn’t enough.

  ‘Well, I think that’s perfectly splendid!’ contributed Rosamund. ‘I mean, when you look at all the crowds of people in Oxford Street, and read about the population explosion and everything, there’s something awfully consoling in thinking that worms are doing it too. You feel it’s all part of Nature after all.’

  Mr Dawson seemed a little non-plussed. Evidently, in spite of her good intentions, she had failed to strike quite the right note. At this point, Mrs Dawson intervened, in her comfortable voice: ‘Harold’s always been interested in the Country,’ she observed, as if in vague excuse for the whole conversation, including Rosamund’s contribution. ‘When he was younger, he used to toy with the idea of living there, didn’t you, dear?’

  ‘Toy with it! It was always my ambition. Alwavs. You know that. I wanted to be a farmer. But Life brought me other duties: I’ve had to face the fact that the buttercup fields are not for me.’ He sighed.

  ‘If you’d really been a farmer, you’d have learnt to hate buttercups long ago,’ remarked his wife comfortably. ‘Farmers always do.’ She seemed not at all put out by h
is little speech, though the ‘other duties’ which had frustrated his ambition could be none other than herself and the two sons with which she had presented him. ‘It’s beginning to be a little chilly, dear, don’t you think?’ she continued, shrugging up her bare shoulders expressively. ‘Don’t you think we should be getting indoors?’

  ‘Of course, dear!’ At once Mr Dawson was all solicitude, helping his wife from her chair, escorting her across the grass towards the bright indoors: and it was only then that Rosamund noticed that Lindy, from just by the open french window, seemed to be watching them. She might, of course, have just been looking out, with hospitable concern, to make sure that her guests in the garden were all enjoying themselves, and were well supplied with food and drink. But Rosamund chose to interpret it otherwise. There she is again, she told herself, watching like Big Brother to see if she can’t catch some wife nagging her husband, or being possessive about him, or something like that. She probably thinks that Mrs Dawson isn’t feeling cold at all, but is dragging her husband indoors to get him away from that dull blonde who can’t even talk intelligently about sparrow-hawks! She’s going to come over and tell us so tomorrow morning, I know she is: and I shall have to feed her coffee and biscuits while she goes on and on about it. And then she’s going to say how awful it is of her to have prevented him becoming a farmer: and when I say that he’s only too thankful to have been prevented, he much prefers a comfortable life really, then Lindy will say … she’ll say…