“Harry, I don’t believe a word of it.”
“Even now, if I see a sheep in Hyde Park, I get the bush staggers.”
“I liked your Australian poetry.”
“You’re an angel in blue stockings.”
“What did you do when you came back from Australia?”
“This and that. Angels never ask questions.”
“When did you come back from Australia?”
“About four months ago.”
He stood up.
“Hester, I’ll have to go away. I want to tell you how I love you. I want to steal all the words of the poets and make a chain of them that will hold you for ever.”
She waited. He moved away from her, and for a minute they were poised in silence, with emotions swooping between them like birds.
“I can’t say anything, Hester. I was trying to write something when you came. Here it is. It’s on an envelope.”
He felt in his pocket, then gave her the envelope, and she read:
“Her strength’s a language that will not speak
To strength, or understand the strong who love and praise.
She’s marked to choose the man who’s weak,
Who’ll ruin all her later days.”
“You understand I haven’t finished it?” he asked anxiously. “A clumsy offering, but it means something. I’m not giving it to you as a love poem. It’s a warning. You think now your strength is enough for two. You’re making plans, you know. Soon you’ll feel you have no right to marry a man who is strong. Hester, you’ve the air of a woman who wants martyrdom. I’m the man to give it to you.”
“You don’t mean all this, Harry,” she said in distress.
“Be quiet. Goodness is as much a part of you as redness is of a cherry. I’m the worm that will eat the cherry away, redness and all. You think now you can change my character, tidy me up, get me a nine to five job, give me a room to work in, and watch the self-respecting income roll in one door while the works of genius roll out the other. But the cherry doesn’t change the worm. It’s the other way round. I’m an experienced worm. I know!”
Hester looked at him with the intensity of someone waiting for a miracle to be performed.
“You’re the fourth person to tell me today how worthless you are. I don’t believe it.”
“Well, I’ve tried,” he said gloomily. “I’ll not try again. Just describing myself makes me see I’m only half the man I was. I can’t reason any more. I met you two weeks ago, and I’ve been drowning ever since. My past life has come up before my eyes so often it’s beginning to look like a non-stop revue. Throw me a straw before I sink for ever. Are you in love with any other man?”
“I’ve never been in love—except with actors and people I haven’t met. That was when I was young. I’ve never wanted to marry anyone.”
He didn’t take up the offer to talk of marriage, but sat down again beside her.
“What made you come here now, Hester?”
“I came here to think, too,” she said, flushing. “I’d like to be buried here.”
“Now?” Harry asked. “You’re in a hurry, aren’t you?”
“Of course I didn’t mean now. It was only a mood.”
“Anyway, you couldn’t, unless they made a special place for you, like Napoleon or Lenin. Just tell me how you’d like it. What about a mortician’s dome in rose-coloured plastic?”
“It’s nothing to laugh about,” Hester said, beginning to laugh. “I was being perfectly serious. I’d like to be buried here. There are vaults at the other end. Prudence and I used to play here with the Peters boys, and they raised one of the stones and we all went down and sat beside the coffins and smoked Father’s cigars. He used always to have boxes of cigars, it was before we lost our money. Prudence was the youngest, much, but she was the only one who wasn’t sick.”
“You were all sick in the vault?” Harry enquired with interest.
“Oh, no,” Hester said in a shocked voice. “Even the Peters boys wouldn’t have done a thing like that.”
“Is this a roundabout way of telling me I have a rival called Peters?”
“I’ve told you. I’ve never been in love. I don’t know what it’s like to be in love,” she said stiffly.
“I don’t know what it’s like for a girl. It makes a man want to smoke. Have you a cigarette on you, Hester?”
“I bought some for Father this afternoon.” She took a packet of cigarettes from her bag, and gave it to him. He lit one, and absently put the packet, with his own matches, in his trouser pocket.
She considered the action.
“You can give me a cigarette case for my birthday next month. I like cigarette cases and watches—they give a man something to pawn in time of need,” he said easily. “Let’s get back and have some tea, shall we?”
They walked back together, without exchanging a word of love. They went quietly in by the back door to the kitchen.
Harry sat down, with a sigh.
“Put on the kettle, there’s a good girl,” he said. “Hester, you’ll do me a favour? If Morgan talks of changing his room, you’ll tell me?”
She stopped, with the teapot in her hand.
“But why?”
“One of my peculiar ideas. I’m always having them. I’ll offer you something in exchange. Don’t trust Maurice.”
“I thought it was Morgan who interested you,” Hester said.
“Morgan is a special case. Do you know something, Hester? Your father is a man who lures catastrophes. He’s what you might call accident-prone, but his accidents are all economic. I think Maurice is going to be one of them.”
Hester poured the tea. “I wish people just for one day would stop warning me against other people,” she said drearily. “If you want to know, I don’t believe anything you say about Maurice. He’s—he’s splendid. He’s the best friend we have.”
The door opened, and Morgan’s pale face, looking bonier than ever, appeared.
“Harry,” he said grimly, and came into the room. “Harry, I want a word with you.”
Harry put his cup down. “Is it going to be an ugly word?” he asked regretfully.
Morgan advanced. “Have you been in my room?”
“And what would I be doing there?”
“I told you he was no good, Hester,” Morgan shouted. “I don’t know what he was doing in my room. If he came to pilfer, he did a clumsy job.”
“You should know,” Harry said. He was beginning to grin in an excited way, like a nervous sniper marking down his target.
“You’ve been searching my room.”
“If you accuse me of searching your room, you’re accusing yourself of having something to hide,” Harry said in a reasonable voice.
“Get up and I’ll hit you,” Morgan invited.
“Then I’d better keep sitting.”
Morgan stepped forward and caught Harry by the back of the neck. He forced his head down, then stooped and caught the back legs of the chair and jerked them up. Harry sprawled on to the floor. Morgan stood over him, waiting. For a second he looked almost happy, like a ghost seeing a joke.
“Get out of this house,” he said.
“It’s not your house, Morgan. You can’t order him out of it,” Hester said.
Harry stood up slowly, and the other two watched him, waiting for the reprisals.
Harry stepped forward and sat down on the nearest chair.
“Shall we continue the conversation, Morgan?” he asked.
Morgan was walking forward when Hester stepped in front of Harry.
“No, Morgan,” she cried.
Wade came bristling through the door.
“What’s all this, what is it, Hester?”
“Shall I tell him?” Harry asked insolently.
“We’ll se
ttle this later,” Morgan said, muted and polite, like a hangman discussing business with the prison governor.
Harry looked quickly at Hester and her father.
“It’s only a little row in napkins and a blue bonnet,” he said airily. “It may never grow up at all. By dinner-time it will have shrunk back to an embryo.”
Wade coughed, and looked at his feet. He was a man of natural goodwill, who could have been very happy if everyone else had been the same. He could handle all the inhabitants of the ideal world, but reality often left him pained and confused.
“Harry, we can’t, honestly we can’t have that kind of row here.”
“Did I start it then?” Harry appealed to Hester.
“I don’t know,” she said angrily.
“You’ll see. By dinner-time Morgan and I will have our arms round each other’s necks, exchanging tips for tomorrow’s races, although it’s a strange thing I’ve never been able to care if a horse has three legs or runs on roller skates.”
Wade looked at him hopelessly.
“Harry, I hate to say it, but I haven’t asked you to dinner. Maurice is coming over tonight. I wanted to have a private talk with him.”
“Then I’ll go back and dine with Uncle Joe,” Harry said without embarrassment, “I’ve been neglecting him a bit, lately.” He turned to Hester with his face drooping into melancholy again. “Goodbye, Hester.”
“I’ll walk as far as the village with you,” Wade said. “I’ve run out of cigarettes.”
“Don’t bother to go down for a little thing like that,” Harry said quickly. “Here!” He felt in his pocket and brought out a packet of cigarettes. “Have these. You can give me them back some other day.”
Wednesday (5)
Harry found Moira lying in sulky idleness on a chaise longue by the sunny windows. Blue lights were shining in her black hair.
He sat down on the floor beside her.
“Would you like the curtains drawn, or is your hair guaranteed fadeless?” he asked her.
“Harry, where have you been all day?”
“At the Wades’.”
“It’s Hester,” she said sharply. “Oh, it’s so unfair, I’m absolutely excruciated with boredom here when you’re away. Just because she’s younger you’d stay with her all day for a single smile. But I’m left to smile alone.”
“I wouldn’t stay with anyone all day for a smile,” Harry said coldly. “I have to eat somewhere until I sell another poem. Uncle Joe’s making it difficult here.”
“If you’re in love with Hester, perhaps I’ll make it difficult too,” she said.
“Very well, I’ll go and stay with the Wades. They’ve done everything but ask me.”
“Oh, no, Harry. Everyone here is so boring. Apart from you and the Wades we don’t see anyone who isn’t disgustingly rich. They’re all so offensive about money, pretending it doesn’t matter, as if it had been conferred on them like a divine privilege. They don’t see any fun in having lapis lazuli dashboards on their cars, and that kind of thing, but Joe says some of them are just as shaky as we are, even the brewers. I mean the small brewers—we don’t know any of the old brewing aristocracy.” She lay back, sighing.
“You don’t happen to know a small brewer who’d want to finance me as a poet? They used to like that kind of thing.”
“I’m certain they don’t like it now. If you were a college you might get endowed. Harry, Joe’s being very queer.”
“In some new way?”
“He’s going to Ireland.”
“Why?”
“He says he wants to buy some new cinemas, but his real purpose is to get away from you. He says perhaps he’ll buy a farm in Ireland and stay there until you go away. He says you’re giving him a nervous breakdown and he can’t bear another week of it. He’s so keen to go that although Aer Lingus is booked up because of the Horse Show, he’s chartering a plane. He was taking a couple of directors with him, but now their wives are ill or they’re having alcoholic cures or something and they can’t go. He ought to cancel the plane, but he’s trying to find someone else to share it, and even if he can’t, he’s going alone. I think that’s extravagant. It has four seats.”
“He’ll be able to put his feet up. Have you any cigarettes in the house, Moira?”
“There’s a box somewhere. Oh no, there isn’t.”
Harry stood up and walked restlessly to the mantelpiece. “Would you like to ring for some?” he suggested.
“I can’t. I’m sorry, Harry, I can’t. Joe says as he only smokes cigars and would never let a cigarette touch his lips, and I don’t smoke at all, we’re not to keep cigarettes in the house. He says you smoke them all. Harry, he’s getting restless. He doesn’t want you to stay.”
“I’m getting restless, too,” Harry said. He sat down beside Moira and took her hand in his. “I’m getting worried about Joe. Suppose he had guests in the house who weren’t me, what’s he going to do about keeping up appearances? Shareholders won’t appreciate the rose garden when they want to smoke.”
Moira looked down thoughtfully. “You have wonderful hands, Harry. Lovely long fingers with the most exciting vibrations. But you should use a nail brush. He’s keeping some cigarettes in his bedroom for emergencies.”
Harry stood up. “What drawer?”
“I don’t know. I should try the top one, in the dressing-chest with the handkerchiefs.”
While Harry was upstairs, she lay back, frowning, then arranging the softly flowered dress over her knees.
He came down holding a box. “I like a handmade cigarette,” he said. “Good old Joe.” He leant against the mantelpiece, opening the box.
She stood up in a graceful, swirling movement, and walked towards him with short, rather plodding steps, as though she was crossing an expanse of suet pudding.
“Shall I get you a light?”
She stood beside him, and he put his arms round her and kissed her. When he let her go, he was grinning.
“Why have you gone so hard?” he asked.
“It’s from Paris. The corset’s built into the dress.”
“You feel like a piece of machinery. It’s like embracing a robot,” he said.
“These damned dress designers. They never think of practical details,” she said angrily.
“If you could think of a practical detail for a moment—is Joe really trying to get rid of me? Or is he trying to get rid of you?”
“Me? Joe trying to get rid of me. Harry, why should he?”
“Is he taking you to Ireland?”
“No.”
“Is he taking me to Ireland?”
“No.”
“So he’s going to leave us alone together, in this house. Do you suppose he’d be happy about that unless he wanted trouble? I can see the way it will be,” Harry said, his eyes beginning to shine. “He’ll only pretend to go away. He’ll come back suddenly, in the small hours. It’s the classic situation, except that he may come by helicopter. Is he a very jealous man? Do you think he wants a chance to kill me, or is he only after divorce?”
“Oh, Harry!”
“If he goes away, we’ll have to be very careful. The only safe thing would be to have nothing to do with each other. Unless you want to be divorced?”
“Do I?” she said. She stood and thought, until her face forecast all the lines and bitterness of middle-age. She saw herself less brutally than the observer, not for a moment imagining that the pool was already drying up and that the thirsty traveller would pass it without a glance. She knew that soon she might have to rise from the pool and clutch the traveller and hold him while his eyes turned away.
“Perhaps I don’t. I’m used to dear old Joe,” she said. “But, Harry, how awful if he’s really plotting against me!” She began to cry a little. He wiped her eyes with a pale blue silk handkerchief.
>
She stopped crying.
“That’s Joe’s handkerchief,” she said.
“I know. When I was getting the cigarettes, I remembered I was out of handkerchiefs. I did put some out for your old crab of a housekeeper to wash. But they never came back. I suppose she got them mixed up with Joe’s. So I took a couple of his. While we’re on the subject, Moira, I suppose you couldn’t trouble your feminine head about what happened to my other shirt?”
“She came to me—but we were talking about divorce.”
“Go on about the shirt.”
“She asked if she was to wash it or throw it out. Joe was there. He said, en passant, throw it out.” She laughed, a little nervously.
“Well, really, Moira!” Harry said in an outraged voice that made her laugh harder.
“But look at what I’m wearing!” he said, and took off his coat. She looked at the torn and dirty shirt underneath and laughed so much that she had to totter to the chaise longue and sink down, tortured by laughter.
Harry looked down at his shirt and laughed uncertainly.
“All right, then, let’s talk about divorce,” he said.
She made wild motions with her hands.
“Stop it, Harry, you’re killing me,” she said, choking.
There was a loud knocking at the door. She tried uselessly to control herself.
Joe walked into the room, looking fixedly at the floor.
“I knocked,” he said. “In my own house, I knocked.” He stood looking down with exaggerated meekness. “I was afraid of what I might see. You will be able to explain, Harry, what has been happening in this room?”
“I was talking about laundry,” Harry said, putting on his jacket. “It made Moira laugh.”
“It’s true, Joe,” Moira said. She was panting, and her face was streaked with tears of laughter.
“I haven’t laughed so much for years,” she said apologetically.
“Thank you, Moira, you have exposed the results of marriage. Harry, if you could make me laugh so much, I might keep you in this house for ever, but for me you are not a joke. You are so unamusing that I thought of hitting you. I have something to tell you. I am going to Dublin. I am going for a few days’ rest.”
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