‘Don’t be very long with the drink, Clough.’
‘If convenient, might we say a week today, sir?’
‘What, for the drink?’
‘For my notice, sir.’
‘Capital.’ Clough had reached the door. ‘Er – Clough!’ said Aubrey, and Clough turned.
‘Sir?’
‘Go to hell.’
The door closed behind Clough.
Aubrey lay back on his pillow, chuckling softly. Long-nosed old snuffler! Aubrey wondered what scales had been over his eyes that he should even have taken on a fellow like that – him and his elastic-sided whiskers and pussyfoot boots! Anyway the scales had fallen now, thank the lord, and Aubrey had a keen and exhilarating sense that he saw things as they really were. The idea of his manservant going through his list of guests was the funniest thing he had heard for a long time; he shook with laughter at it. Then, as he sat up again with a sigh of contentment, wondering if it would startle Clough still further if he threw a boot at the door, his eyes fell on Helen’s letter. He opened it, gave it two flutters, back and forth, took in all there was in it, and laughed again.
Not sleeping very well, she! She had the nerve to tell him that! True, he had never seen Helen asleep, but if a dormouse slept more soundly he’d eat his pillow! A hundred-to-eight she just curled herself up and went off like a squirrel! So like these people who heard the clock strike once and then vowed they had never closed their eyes all night! And what was all this about there being something the matter with him? What should be the matter with him? He felt lighter and jollier than he had ever felt in his life! He could laugh at anything; above all he could laugh at himself. Lord, what a blind, blinkered life he had led! Those books of his filled from cover to cover with gestures and doings absolutely like nothing on earth! Those duds, those sticks, those mutts, Sir Hugh and Sir Guy and Sir Wilfred! Those posing wax dummies out of Swan and Edgar’s window, his Phyllises and Rosamonds and Joans! Not a breath of life in a single one of them – barring that one little skivvy in a shabby black frock, and re-soled shoes, who had begun as Annie Thompson, and had grown – and grown – and grown –
Aubrey was in the middle of a luxurious yawn when this particular thought occurred to him. The yawn was suddenly cut in two. He had remembered the noble gesture with which Rosamond had gathered her skirts about her and had stalked out of his book. She had taken herself off rather than be published between the same covers as this little grasper who had commandeered nine-tenths of the book. There had been too many parallel possibilities already for another of them to be ignored. What, then, of Helen? As Rosamond had disappeared from his book, was Helen going to disappear from his life? Was that the meaning of her letter?
He picked up the letter again, and re-read it in the light of this new intelligence. By Jove, he was right! Unerringly he seemed to read between the lines, with brilliant clearness to divine her thought. He had been late that day at Rumpelmayers’, and had pretended that he had made a mistake in the time. She had seen him alight at the door and lift his hat. From that moment on she had smelt a rat, and had resolved to know who his companion was. It all explained itself to Aubrey as he lay there in bed.
And then what? Aubrey’s own growing intimacy with Upwester – Marie (or, as he had taken it into his head to call her, Delia) lunching and teaing with him whenever she could make the opportunity – Clough dismissing himself rather than countenance this total reversal of his master’s life and habits – what did it all mean? People spoke of characters ‘living’ in a book. Certain of these non-existent people had undoubtedly more vitality than most of the so-called ‘real’ people about them. To have written a real book cannot possibly be without its reaction on the book’s writer. And what does it matter whether people in a book come to life or life comes to them? Life and fiction at the last interfuse, as the glitters come and go on a ventilating fan that turns on a wall. Already Upwester was what Sir Patrick Archdale should have been. Rosamond, the type of Helen, had left the stage. The little milliner he called Delia now occupied it exclusively. Physically and mentally she had bloomed since that first day in Pountney Place when the crimson daub on her mouth had seemed the only solid thing about her. She was acquiring an air and aplomb with marvellous rapidity. From stage to stage she had formed and built herself up, and now looked like becoming a piece of witchery indeed!
Witchery? Indeed, yes! Aubrey now felt that he had known her poutings and tempers and cajoleries for years! If she took it into her head that she wanted anything, that thing she would have, by whatever means. She would promise or refuse, keep her word or break it, kiss him or not kiss him, but always to the same end – her own. Already her frocks and furs and other what-nots had cost Aubrey something like two hundred pounds. And he liked spending the money on her. At any rate this was life, and what was two hundred pounds compared with life? Hang the money! This was not Helen, with her files and receipts and housekeeping accounts, the corn and meal on one side of them and the eggs balancing them on the other! Aubrey wanted a change from all that. Helen’s letters frankly bored him. She met plenty of other eligible young men at her tennis-parties and so forth. Young Haverford, for example, would make an admirable husband for her. And from the very beginning, had not she and Aubrey always had the arrangement that if either of them ever thought differently about things the whole question was to be freely discussed?
Helen’s letter meant that there would soon be a breach. She did not know, but Aubrey knew, that no power on earth could now prevent it. And he lay there in bed, thinking it all over, and lightheartedly humming a tune.
11
Aubrey’s investments were nicely-settled ones, unspeculative, of the safe kind that left his mind free for other matters. Unless a tempting profit was to be taken he rarely thought of disturbing them. But one day not long after all this he rang up his broker and told him to sell a considerable block of stuff and to remit the proceeds to him. His current balance at the bank was never very large considering the comfortable way in which he lived.
Delia of course was at the bottom of it. She had come to Aubrey at his flat one morning in tears. The principal backer of the business in Pountney Place had announced that he must withdraw his support. Her distress moved Aubrey strangely as she asked him, her small gloved hands working at his lapels, whether he knew anybody who would take over the obligation.
Aubrey asked her this and that. He was no fool about money. He wanted details. But it was the wrong moment. It would drive her to distraction (she said) to have to go into all that now. He looked carefully at her, from her newest shoes to the little chocolate caramel of a hat on her head. The little anguished face that peeped through her furs was once more a pallor of white. Her eyes, frightened at the prospect of being thrown on her own resources again, seemed almost as he had first seen them – of the colour of the glass marble in the neck of a soda-water bottle.
‘You must, you must!’ she could only moan, the little hands clasped hard together. ‘Oh, I’m frightened, I’m frightened, I’m frightened!’
The only words in which he could have expressed his concern were that she seemed to be slipping back – back into the colourlessness of the little saleswoman who had first opened the door to him in Pountney Place. And a queer sense of urgency was strong upon him. If she, who had driven everything else out of his mind, went back, then he too would be helpless and alone. The thought filled him also with sudden dread. Not in order to comfort her, but for his own sake, he wanted to take her into his arms and to cover her face and neck and hair with kisses. She was standing at his desk with her hands before her face. He stepped forward.
But she pushed him almost violently back.
‘Oh, do leave me alone for once! That’s all you think of! Here am I at my wits’ end – I don’t want to be kissed! I wish you’d never kissed me! You took me out of all that beastly life – you let me see something
else –’
‘Come, darling, come! The skies haven’t fallen yet! We shall find something to do about it. These things have to be examined, you know.’
She broke into anger. ‘Yes, and while you’re examining them, as you call it, ruin’s staring me in the face! You needn’t bother. I shall go to somebody else! I don’t care where I go. I shall go to that friend of yours in the other flat! I must know where I stand, and I must know today!’
‘But be reasonable, darling! Of course I’ll help you! But who are your backers? Where are your books? Who are your auditors? I must know these things!’
But she was now furious. Her hand struck the edge of the table.
‘You see me in this state and ask me all those things! And you expect me to believe that you love me! What do I know about books? I come to you for help and you simply want to kiss me and make me do sums! Oh, I’m going!’ She took a stride to the door.
Her hand was on the knob. She was going to somebody else, perhaps to Upwester. He, too, sprang forward.
‘Little goose!’ he said softly, patting her shoulder.
‘Oh, it’s all very well for you!’ she stormed. ‘You buy me a few things and think that’s the end of it! You think more of your money than you do of me –’
‘Delia!’ he cried, hurt.
‘You do! You waste money on things I could do without, just because you like me to look smart when I’m with you – it’s all you – just who you’re seen with – but as soon as I want it for something important –’
‘Oh, hush, darling! You know I’ll do anything for you!’
‘Yes, if I’ll kiss you!’ she cried unrestrainedly. ‘That’s what you think of me!’
‘I think you’re lovely and wonderful!’
‘Lovely and in the gutter! We know what that means!’ she said scornfully.
‘What is all this about the gutter? Who mentioned the gutter?’ he said, his arms outspread.
‘Oh, I’m tired of talking! I’m off!’ she cried.
Off – off to Upwester or somebody else! Suddenly he could not endure the thought of it. Lose her – now! He loved her, loved her! He might be a fool. He knew that she was petulant, avaricious, not to be trusted a yard, given to these outbursts of unbridled anger. He knew all this from his book. But he always forgot it all again the moment she crept into his arms, sobbing and penitent, making herself small against him, and then, in the very middle of her tears, looking up at him with a smile and the tiniest little movement of her carnation lips. He had to kiss them then. He must kiss them now. The money side of the matter could be settled later.
‘As if there was any need for all this!’ he comforted her. ‘I promise. Now come and sit down quietly by me.’
He led her to the sofa, where she sat down as if all her strings had been cut. He gathered her to his breast. She gave an exhausted sigh.
‘Oh, I feel so lonely!’
‘Poor little love!’
‘Keep your arms round me for a bit.’
‘Did you think I was going to take them away?’
‘Hold me close,’ she murmured brokenly. ‘I’m sure if she understood everything she wouldn’t mind.’
‘She? Who?’ said Aubrey, a little startled.
‘The girl you’re engaged to. Would she mind, do you think, if she knew?’
‘She wouldn’t have to,’ said Aubrey grimly.
‘Promise me you’ll tell her, though. I should hate to do anything behind her back.’
Something, some echo out of that strange little world into which authors peep, seemed to awake in Aubrey’s ears. A deep sense of inevitableness came over him; he had the memory of it all before. So it was appointed, so it must be, and the next step was already taken. He put her a little away from him and looked at her gravely.
‘But didn’t I tell you that was all off?’
‘What, Aubrey?’ she asked.
‘About Miss Boyd. She’s written to me breaking it off. Surely I told you!’
She gave a low cry of self-accusation. ‘Oh, that’s me!’
‘You?’ he said gently. ‘It’s nothing to do with you. At least, it’s only this to do with you, that ever since I saw you I’ve known you’ve been the woman I dreamed of all along!’
‘Oh, oh, what have I done!’ she moaned. Then she sprang to her feet. ‘Oh, Aubrey, I must go! Forget me, forget me! Forget everything about me! Never mind the business; I shall find somebody else. If I don’t it doesn’t matter. Let me go. Goodbye!’
But he was on his knees before her, his arms about her slender middle. He smelt the perfume of her clothing; he buried his face in it. Though it took every penny he had to keep her she should not go now. They could live there, in that King Street flat. It didn’t matter where they lived, so long as it was together.
‘Oh, Delia, Delia – marry me, marry me, marry me!’ he cried in anguish.
Only a mirror saw that infinitesimally small gleam of triumph in her eyes. It was gone before his own eyes, brimming with supplication, were lifted up to her. She smiled sadly down on him.
‘Do get up, Aubrey. You’re spoiling my frock,’ she said.
He kissed her knees and rose. He put on a cheerful, masterful manner.
‘So that’s all right, eh? We’ll consider that settled, what?’
‘Aubrey!’ she reproached him. ‘How can we, all in a moment like this? She’d be sure to say I’d taken you from her! Besides, look at you and look at me! No, it wouldn’t do. And you mustn’t kiss me again. You mustn’t see me again. It isn’t safe. I’ve got too fond of you. Aubrey, do help me to forget!’
‘No!’ he said resolutely. ‘I know what I want, and I know what I’m going to have! So that’s that!’
‘Oh, you rush me off my feet – you don’t give me a chance!’ she quavered.
But even at lunch, which they took presently at Bellomo’s, she still refused to say Yes or No. They had plenty of time, she said. Helen’s feelings must be considered first. So she chatted about the food, the lunchers at the neighbouring tables, and how atrociously the manicuriste had done her nails.
12
The banking-account that Aubrey opened for Miss Delia Vane, in that name, was convenient for several reasons. If Aubrey was to finance some portion of the business in Pountney Place he would save a transaction by doing so out-and-out, and he and Delia could settle matters between them afterwards. For her personal expenses, which were not inconsiderable, it was hardly fitting that she should have to run to him every time she wanted a few pounds. And Aubrey himself was not a chartered accountant, but an author, whose royalties had, after all, to be earned, and who must presently be setting about another book unless his fortunes were to experience something like a slump.
He was getting more and more nervous about the book that was to appear in the autumn. It was a good book, but a good book and good business are not necessarily the same thing. And his fears grew on him when he took up his old press-cutting books and read how, in the opinion of the reviewer, his Sir Vivians and Lord Marmadukes gave not only a true and vivid picture of the highest type of English gentleman as he is, but provided all that a happy idealism demanded into the bargain. Aubrey shook his head. The reviewers might be right about the idealism, if by that they meant something that resembled nothing on earth; but – well, what about Upwester, for example. They say authors are touchy and vain. Aubrey might have been touchy and vain had somebody else pointed out these things. But the scales had fallen from Aubrey’s eyes, and now, if he wanted a really good cynical, hearty, wholesome laugh, he picked up his own most successful book, Loved I Not Honour More.
The funny thing was that Upwester, to whom he lent this work, and who kept it for a fortnight on the bedside table where the kippers had been cooked, was (as he put it) ‘all over it’. He liked it most
enormously – couldn’t imagine how Aubrey had done it, nor where he got his ideas from. There was a certain earnestness in his childish eyes as he explained all this to Aubrey.
‘You see, dear old bran-bag,’ he confided to Aubrey, helping himself to a whiskey-and-soda from the cupboard that had not been locked since Clough’s departure, ‘it’s so exactly what we ought to be, you know. That’s really my idea of a book, not that I know much about ’em, but if they’re simply what you see about you every day, well, where are you? I mean to say it makes you think. Makes you sort of overhaul yourself. The way you live kind-of-thing. Bee’s a jolly good sort, of course, and there’s the club, that’s all right in a way; but there’s something else, and that’s where you set us thinking, old boy. We might all of us be better. That the idea? Anyway, come and have a quick one at the club.’
Upwester had put Aubrey up for this club of which he spoke, and at first Aubrey had hardly known what to talk about to the fellows to whom his friend had introduced him. He was indifferent at golf, knew little about cars, less about horses, and had never heard of nine out of ten of the different cocktails that were served at the smoking-room bar. Neither was Aubrey skilled enough at poker to play that game for pound points, in absolute silence, for afternoon after afternoon. Sometimes he dropped out of the conversation altogether, and wandered about the rooms, looking at the rather surprising prints and pictures that paved the walls, with trophies of jockeys’ caps and sketches done by hilarious artists after midnight filling in the chinks between. But Upwester looked after the new member. ‘Kneller – writes books, you know – just read one of ’em – top hole’ – Aubrey and his job were inseparable on the peer’s lips. And when Aubrey, first swearing him to secrecy, confided to him the title of his forthcoming work, Upwester would stand at the bar, with a cocktail that looked like furniture-cream in his hand, and, with a jerk of his elbow, would say, ‘D.V., old chap – you know – hope she sells a million!’ and would drink. Heart of gold little Upwester had, Aubrey sometimes thought. He still sometimes came home with somebody else’s hat on and the visiting cards of people he didn’t remember in his pocket, but it is a poor heart that never rejoices. Aubrey had lately had to buy a new hat too.
The Dead of Night Page 57