The Tumbled House

by Winston Graham

  “Invariably, after four gins.”

  “Yes, all right. But not just that.… How was this afternoon?”

  “You may well ask. On Thursday I got a good Daphnis and Chloe from the orchestra and a bad one from the stage. Today I got a good one from the stage and a bad one from the orchestra. Absolute hell. The conductor should be the point of fusion, the creator of the occasion. If becomes to grief, so does everyone else.”

  Food was brought, and conversation stopped until they were served. She said: “ I expect everyone told you how perfectly ghastly you were?”

  “No. But what they muttered into their beards God only knows.”

  “Daphnis and Chloe is no joy-ride. And who was it this afternoon? Carton and Trianon? Not exactly Fonteyn and Somes.”

  “You can’t blame them for my shortcomings.”

  “Don’t forget I watched them at rehearsal last week. I expect today their costumes made them half a beat slower even than when I saw them. What do you think that does to your tempo?”

  Don said reflectively: “ I like you like this. It’s another facet of perfection.”

  “Well, I’m drunk. It does help.”

  “No, you’re not remotely drunk. You’re excited.”

  “Let’s argue about it.… But did I hear the word perfection? Oh, oh … you’ve been warned.”

  “In what way are you imperfect?”

  “I wish I could tell you.”

  “Well, do.”

  “Putting me on a pedestal—terribly dangerous. I’ve no head for heights.”

  “Then come down for a change. Think I won’t be able to take it?”

  “I don’t know.”

  They looked at each other for several seconds. He saw that the extra brilliance in her eyes was caused by tears. It had never happened in their married life before, and the realisation set off a sudden communication of feeling between them that threatened to swallow them both.

  He said: “Darling, what is it?”

  “Nothing. But.…”

  “Go on.”

  She blinked suddenly and put a finger to the corner of her eye. “Nothing.… Think nothing of it.”

  He withdrew his hand from hers as the waiter approached. “Red currant jelly, madam?.… And horse-radish sauce for you, sir?”

  She said: “ Did you—did you go to the estate agents about the cottage?”

  Don tried to collect his thoughts. “ Yes, they advise against an auction—think we may get more if it’s put up privately. If there’s anything you want out of it we ought—ought to get it.”

  “Bennie might want something.”

  The waiter left them. Don stared at his food. “D’you know I’m not interested in this now?”

  “But you must be. Pay no attention to me, darling. It’s just a sort of breaking-up day at St Trinians.”

  There was a long silence while the emotional charge grew less. Rather uncertainly they began to eat. “How are you fixed I next week?” she said.

  “In what way?”

  “For going to the cottage.”

  “Hopeless, with Les Ambassadeurs on the carpet. And you?”

  “I’m free on Wednesday, after I’ve recommended some divinely new quick-drying paint. ‘Darling, did you do all this yourself, and all while I’ve been away, this one week-end?’ ‘Pet, it’s nothing, pet; you just buy the paint ready-mixed in these sleekly-styled colourful tins and brush it on.’ ‘ But, darling, isn’t it very expensive, darling?’ ‘Not a bit, pet, nine shillings and threepence a large tin, ready-mixed and subtly glowing. You’ll love to try it in the nursery, won’t you!’”

  “And Thursday and Friday?”

  “Beautifully, beautifully free as air.”

  “Thursday and Friday I shall be stewing all day at Colet Gardens.… D’you think you could take Bennie down to Sussex?”

  “I can if she wants to go.”

  Don made another effort to keep the conversation on an even keel. “ Did I tell you that Whitehouse is—is putting someone on to see if they can trace Narissa Delaney in Cairo?”

  “No.”

  “And I’ve got this. This is new.” He took out his pocket-book and handed her a dipping. “Mrs Delaney at the time of her divorce.”

  Joanna looked at the dark handsome face. “I’ve seen her somewhere. I know her face.”

  “Recently? When?”

  “I’m not sure. But I think so. I’ve certainly seen her before.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  Friday was the only day Bennie could manage in the following week, so Joanna called for her at nine.

  They had never been much alone together except for the enforced meetings after John Marlowe’s death. There was no particular coolness between them— only an absence of perfect ease, such as can exist when one man is the link between women of quite different temper and outlook. Both were aware of Joanna’s greater sophistication, Bennie a little shy of it, Joanna afraid to seem to condescend.

  Bennie apologised for getting her sister-in-law up so early but her next flight was at four that afternoon. Then they talked of Don’s work: it was the first night of Les Ambassadeurs, but Don would be with Joanna in the audience; Sargent was conducting the first three performances, Don taking over next Friday. While they were waiting at a traffic light Bennie said:

  “I feel guilty over this lawsuit, Joanna. I’m not pulling my weight.”

  “You support what Don does, and I imagine that’s all anyone can do.”

  “I still see Michael.”

  “Did you read the evening paper on Monday?”

  “No.”

  “Oh. Only from that you would have gathered that I still see Roger.”

  Bennie said: “Oh?”

  “There was a cocktail party last Saturday given by a TV circuit. I had to go and Roger was there. He spoke to me and I answered. While I was speaking—and I seemed to be smiling—the Press took a snap. It came out over the caption: ‘ Friendly Lawsuit. Mr Roger Shorn sees no cause for litigation in Mrs Don Marlowe’s party quip.’

  Bennie whistled soundlessly. “ Was Don annexed?”

  “Mildly, yes. Chiefly because I hadn’t told him Roger was there.”

  “For any reason?”

  Joanna shrugged her well-tailored shoulders. She was her collected self again today, quite a long way removed from the excited and exciting person of last Saturday. “There didn’t seem any point.”

  Presently Bennie said: “We came past here on Sunday.”

  “Who did?”

  “Michael and I. We went out for the day.”

  “It was fine too.”

  “Glorious.… We went first to a swimming pool at a hotel about ten miles from here. We swam and had lunch and then went to Cowdray Park to watch the polo. Afterwards Michael said he’d seen so many horses he felt like riding one, so luckily I was able to find him one of my old riding schools near Midhurst and we hired a couple of hacks. Then we had dinner in Brighton and got home about midnight.”

  Joanna raised an eyebrow. “ Quite a day. Did you go in that old car?”

  “No. I expected to but he turned up in an M. G. Apparently he’d changed it during the week.”

  “Roger’s very generous.”

  “Well, I said that, but he said it wasn’t Roger’s doing at all. He’d had a windfall from his mother. Some insurance or other. He seemed rather vague about it.”

  “Does Don know you’re seeing him? Not that it matters.”

  “Yes, I told him. He didn’t seem to mind. Except he said he wouldn’t specially welcome a Shorn as a brother-in-law.”

  “Any likelihood?”

  “… No.”

  They reached the cottage about eleven. They only had to go over the place for the last time and earmark one or two things that Bennie thought she would like. It was a melancholy business with peculiar memories for them both, and they were through it by noon. Bennie lingered for a few minutes by herself taking her last look, then she pulled the front door to behind
her and followed Joanna to the car.

  They had a snack lunch in Midhurst and got into the car again at a quarter past one

  Bennie said: “ On Sunday Michael was telling me about Roger. It can’t have been a particularly rock-solid household he grew up in. I feel sorry for him.”

  “I always did.”

  “Oh, of course you’ve known them longer than we have.… But I didn’t realise before that he felt himself so much in the wrong groove.”

  “Who, Michael?”

  “Yes. I happened to mention engineering and he at once began to talk about it, and talk well, using names I’d never heard, like “Rankine and Lindenthal and Freyssinet. Apparently … does this bore you?”

  “No, of course not.”

  “Apparently he did classics at school but from about sixteen desperately wanted to switch to science or engineering, but Roger persuaded him not to—said there was nothing duller than to become a third-rate scientist and that he could do nothing for him in that world but any amount for him in arts or literature. After a time I think Michael began to feel trapped. He said he made one or two half-hearted attempts to change over while he was at Cambridge, but they all went wrong and in the end he came not to care what happened.” Bennie stirred in her seat. “ Of course it’s easy to say he should have tried harder. I don’t know. He says his father is terrifically persuasive.”

  “He is.”

  “Anyway, you can’t doubt that Michael is sincere. When he talk about engineering his face lights up, fairly glows. It was quite an eye-opener to me.”

  After a minute Joanna said: “ Did you mean what you said before lunch? About there being no likelihood that you and he.…”

  “I was certain when I told Don about it. Now I’m not quite so sure.”

  Joanna waited for her to say more but she did not. Joanna started the car.

  Bennie was wrestling with the need to talk to someone, and couldn’t decide whether her sister-in-law was the most suitable person possible or the most unsuitable. It depended on one’s estimate of her association with the family of Shorn.…

  Her mind went back to Sunday, to them sitting on the grass by the swimming pool, their skins drying in the sun, his wide friendly admiring dark eyes. Then squatting beside the, pitch at Cowdray Park, listening to the thud of hooves and watching the players gallop, turn and race, swing sticks, the ball flying, turn and race again. For a few minutes, for no reason that she knew, a great depression had come over him there: you could see it fairly fall upon his face as if he were remembering something he badly wanted to forget; the muscles of his neck and jaw tensed; he was suddenly, potentially, darkly strong.

  Later when they rode together the sun was slanting, and a breeze that came up from the sea had made the young leaves turn and glint like wild silk. It was while they had ambled through the sunshot lanes that they had talked about engineering, and he had talked of the possibility that enough money might come to him for him to be able to throw up his job with Bartlett & Leak and take a course in civil engineering. Somehow that had not seemed clear to her; there was a hint of ambiguity about the way he spoke——

  A car turned out of a side road and Joanna had to brake suddenly. She swore gently but explicitly under her breath.

  “Joanna,” Bennie said. “ What do you really think of Michael?”

  “I? I don’t know him very well. I suppose I ought to know him. Certainly I like him as far as it goes.”

  “I think—in spite of what I’ve said—I think I’m in rather deep water just now.”

  “About him?”

  “Yes.… Last month he asked me to marry him. I said no. He took it rather badly. We haven’t stopped seeing each other, because he didn’t want to. It seems to mean a lot to him, and I’m not keen to hurt him more. We—we get on well together—argue sometimes but have fun. There’s so much that I like about him. But I don’t think I’m really in love with him.”

  Joanna said quietly: “And what’s the particular deep water?”

  “Not knowing which way we’re heading.”

  “That all?”

  “It could be enough.”

  “Yes, it could be enough.”

  “This must all seem frightfully juvenile to you.”

  “Why should it?”

  “Other people have fine strong emotions urging them this way or that. I stand shivering on the edge not knowing what to do.”

  “Doesn’t it answer your question—the fact that you don’t know what to do?”

  Bennie said: “ Most things I know. But not this. Sometimes what I feel seems to be on the verge of love. Maybe it’s all I can feel. Emotion’s a personal thing, isn’t it? Nobody can relate it except to what they’ve felt before. What have I felt before? Calf-love when I was sixteen.… Michael’s intelligent, good looking, kind, and—devoted. What am I waiting for? A signal from the port officer to land?”

  There was a long silence.”

  “I had a man when I was your age,” said Joanna quietly, “ Don knows, so it’s no secret. It didn’t last. I didn’t marry him. But I felt a lot for him—did for a long time. It works its way into the system. You feel it in the knees, the pit of the stomach, the throat. I didn’t go with him because I felt sorry for him, as apparently you’re considering——”

  “Oh, it’s more than that. But your thing didn’t work?”

  “Not after a time. Darling, are you asking me for advice or what?”

  “Maybe.”

  “What sort of advice do you want—as your sister-in-law or as a girl with a few of the corners rubbed off?”

  “Not as a sister-in-law.”

  Joanna hesitated, her tawny eyes narrowed under straightened brows as she stared at the road. “Personally I hate advice—it always comes either from people who think they’ve done everything or from people you know have done nothing. If I say, yes of course you must go and live with him, I may be pushing you into a hole you’ll never properly get out of—it takes getting out of, you know: If I say no, of course you mustn’t, I’m trying to deny you the line I took.” She stopped. “ But perhaps you hadn’t thought of anything but marriage. Is that it?”

  “No … either’s a possibility—I think.”

  “If it’s marriage or nothing, then definitely nothing, darling. If you want to try what living with a man’s like, it’s not so awfully important being sure you’re whole-hearted about it. You may think it will give you better know-how later on. You may want to see what it’s like. I wouldn’t at all blame you for that. You may like the thought of the excitement. You may feel enough for Michael to want him for his own sake—as I did for this other man. But marriage … if you’re not perfectly sure in your own mind about every slant of it, you’d be crazy even to have it on the agenda. In spite of easy divorce, a broken marriage is a mess like no other.”

  Bennie flipped her gloves. “ I like hearing you talk.”

  “Light me a cigarette, will you? After that I need one.”

  Bennie laughed. “ Sorry.”

  “The difficulty is.… Thank you. That’s better.… The difficulty with you, Bennie, is you’re much more stable than I am, and this very stability is a bit of a decoy duck for you at the moment. Isn’t it? I’d guess that, although you think you accept either way out, something—the way you were brought up or what you believe or something in your nature is going to make you awfully reluctant to take the easier one. You’re not the mistress type, Bennie—and I don’t mean that bitchily: any man would get his money’s worth in you—but although I could maybe see you as the mistress of a married man if you felt that way for him and he couldn’t get a divorce, I can’t quite get the picture of you living with someone for six months for fun or for the experiment.…”

  “Go on.”

  “When this lorry’s out of the way.… Well, what I mean is that I should think there is a certain amount of danger of your marrying Michael rather as an experiment and coming badly to grief in the process.”

  “After la
st Sunday I think perhaps it would be all right.”

  “What particularly happened last Sunday?”

  “Nothing, except that everything went so well. There was a warmth—in me—that hadn’t been there before.”

  “Let me see, do we turn here? Straight on? What’s the hurry, Bennie? Have you got to make up your mind by Wednesday or lose your stake money?”

  “No.… I’d gladly delay. But there’s an urgency in him that I can’t quite explain—not just sex. He’s communicated it to me I feel that I can perhaps help him more now than at any other time—that if he gets me now it will—stabilise him. Put him right with himself and so help him to put himself right with the world.”

  Joanna raised a delicate eyebrow. “There we are getting a little fancy, aren’t we? If you’re going to bring in the crazy mixed-up kid element, then I gracefully retire. If this is all tied up in your mind with Florence Nightingale and Sigmund Freud, then I——”

  “No, it’s not. Really it’s not——”

  “And it shouldn’t be, darling. I don’t believe a word. Michael’s not so frustrated, so short of reserves that he can’t last the course if he really wants you. Take your time. Waiting will do him more good than harm. His trouble all his life has been having too much too soon.”

  “Except perhaps love.”

  “And take care of that. I don’t get the idea that you want to be a mother substitute?”

  “No.…” Bennie laughed. “I try to see the obvious pitfalls.”

  Joanna said: “I think I’ve done what I tried not to do—come the heavy sister-in-law. I’m only thankful to feel that nobody ever takes notice of advice they ask for.”

  Bennie said: “What d’you think of Roger Shorn? You know him better than any of us.”

  They went through Guildford and turned off on the road for Woking and Chertsey. They were both exploring the further implications of the question. At length Joanna, having left it too long to make her intended rejoinder, said: “ D’you mean as a father?”

  “No, just as a person.”

  “Do you think it would throw light on Michael’s problems?”

  “All our problems.”

  “Well … he can be the most enchanting company when he sets out to be. I know no man with more charm.” Joanna pressed out her cigarette in the ash-tray. “He’s madly fond of women, and they’re fond of him. I think at the end they turn away from him—some even before he turns from them—because they discover that they only exist to fill in his picture. Deep in him, carefully kept under lock and key, is the most enormous egoism on earth. All experience, all pleasure, all love—so called—all interest, centres on that. There’s no give—only the appearance of give, the appearance of consideration, the appearance of generosity, the appearance of sympathy and understanding, because they build up in someone else the mood he wants to build up. So all his acts—no matter what they appear to be— are really votive offerings to himself.”