Before the Fact (10 page)

“Not – four thousand
pounds?
” It was eight years’ housekeeping.

“Four thousand
pounds,
” said Johnnie, with conscious pride. “Oh, if you prefer it in shillings, eighty thousand of them.”

“My sacred aunt,” muttered Janet, who dressed herself on forty-five pounds a year.

Lina’s breath had almost disappeared. “Johnnie!” she gasped. “I – can’t believe it.” Her practicality approached the incredible thing, slid off it, and finally gripped it. “What shall we do with it?”

“Do with it?” Johnnie echoed in surprise. “Why, blue it, of course.”

They were still discussing what to do with it.

Janet had gone, without the brooch, which she utterly refused to accept; there had been a couple of hours’ excited talk in the drawing room; they had gone upstairs to dress quite fifteen minutes after Lina’s usual time; and the discussion was being continued through the open door between Lina’s bedroom and Johnnie’s dressing room.

Johnnie wanted to blue his windfall: Lina did not think it ought to be blued.

Lina was hampered in the discussion by the lavishness of Johnnie’s generosity, and her own warm realization of it. His first thought when he got the news must have been for her. He had got straight into the car, it appeared, and driven madly into Bournemouth to buy her anything that came into his mind. The diamond in her ring was a magnificent one; Lina thought it must have cost two hundred pounds at least. The necklace had an emerald pendant; the brooch contained a fine pearl; the fur coat had proved to be mink; the car had been stuffed with hats and clothes for her to choose from. Lina was appalled, and at the same time intoxicated, by such recklessness on her behalf.

“But you haven’t paid for all these things?” she had asked, bemused.

“Every single one of them,” Johnnie had assured her.

“But where did you get the money? You said you wouldn’t get the cheque till next Monday.”

“Oh, I got the money all right.”

Lina had been too muddled with happiness and dismay to find out how Johnnie had got the money.

It was surprising too for her to realize, as she had not done for quite a long time, how completely she had overlooked the fact that Johnnie had broken his promise. But there is such a difference between winning and losing bets that even when she did remember that fact, her reproaches had been only perfunctory.

“Johnnie, you promised me you’d never bet again.”

“Oh, come, darling, you know you didn’t really mean that.”

“But I did. Of course I did.”

“Would you rather I hadn’t won this little packet?” Johnnie had grinned mischievously.

“I should have been very annoyed with you if you’d lost. What did you bet? At forty to one it must have ... Johnnie, you betted a hundred pounds. Johnnie – a hundred pounds!”

“It was an absolute certainty,” Johnnie pleaded. “I had it from the man who owns the animal. There wasn’t any possibility of losing. It wasn’t a bet at all; it was just dipping my hand into the bookie’s pocket.”

“Hum!” said Lina, trying hard to be severe.

“Besides,” Johnnie had added inconsequently, “you can’t count the Grand National. Everyone has a bit of a flutter on the National.”

“But, Johnnie, you do promise me you’ll never do anything like this again?”

“Of course, sweetheart,” Johnnie had said easily. “This really was a special occasion. And what an occasion!”

Lina had been quite content to leave it at that.

And now, what was to be done with the money?

In any case, there were no longer four thousand pounds.

Johnnie now divulged that he had debts.

Not racing debts: just debts. He could now get them all cleared off. What debts? Oh, just debts. Some of them quite old ones, that Lina did not know anything about; yes, dating right from before their marriage. What did they amount to? Oh, well, a couple of thousand would cover the lot easily.

“Two thousand?” Lina said, taken aback. “You owed two thousand pounds that I never knew about?”

“What the mind doesn’t know, the eyes don’t cry over,” Johnnie said gaily.

Lina had to laugh. “Johnnie, you’re incorrigible.”

In the end it appeared that, what with this and that, there would not be much more than eight hundred pounds to blue or not to blue.

“But you didn’t spend twelve hundred on
me
” Lina called out, after a hurried mathematical exercise while she fastened her suspenders.

“No, but there’s this.” Johnnie strolled into the room doing up his braces. In his hand was a cheque.

“What’s this, darling?”

“For those chairs. You remember?”

Lina looked at the cheque. It was for a sum exactly double that at which the chairs had been valued.

“Oh, Johnnie!”

She hugged him in a tempest of adoration. Johnnie did know how to make amends. Everything was wiped out now.

“There’s the gong,” said Johnnie. “Hurry up with your frock, monkeyface; I hate cold soup. What are you going to put on?”

“My blue georgette? I was going to.”

“Put on your black velvet. You look more adorable in that than anything.”

“Do I, darling?”

Lina sang with happiness as she put on her black velvet.

Three days later they split the difference. Four hundred pounds was handed over to Lina, to do precisely what she liked with; and four hundred pounds was left for Johnnie to blue.

They went to the south of France on it, to Antibes.

Under Lina’s guidance, a hundred pounds took and kept them there for three whole blissful weeks. Then Johnnie escaped from her, went over to Monte Carlo, and lost the rest in three hours.

“My poor idiot boy,” Lina said comfortably as she shepherded a rueful Johnnie into the Paris train. “I only hope it will teach you not to gamble any more, that’s all. If it does, I dare say it’ll be cheap at the price.” For, after all, it was Johnnie’s money, for him to spend as he liked; and the three weeks had been utter bliss, with Johnnie sweeter to her than even he had ever been before; and it is tempting fate to draw out bliss too long.

“No more Monte Carlo for me,” Johnnie replied with conviction.

Lina went back to England invigorated, expectant, and more in love with Johnnie than ever.

Mrs. Newsham was a small, eager woman of Lina’s own age, with a vivacity which she mistook for wit, just as she mistook her commonplace prettiness for beauty. As Janet, who did not like her, had once said, Freda Newsham never made the fatal mistake of underrating herself.

Lina did not like her very much either, but she was compelled to a grudging admiration. Freda Newsham had all the qualities which she herself would have liked to possess and knew she did not; though it is true that their possession did not seem to make Freda a really nice person. She was intensely sure of herself, she had unlimited aplomb, and she dominated her magnificent husband as the jockey dominates a race horse. Lina, however, would never have liked that.

The Newshams had arrived in Upcottery just a few months before the Aysgarths. As two newcomers, Lina and Freda had naturally gravitated together four years ago; and though, since Lina became really intimate with Janet, she had not seen so much of Freda, who also had other fish to fry, they dined in each other’s houses three or four times in the half year.

The Aysgarths were dining with the Newshams one evening in the October that followed Lina’s and Johnnie’s truncated visit to the Riviera.

And Harry Newsham had boiled the port.

And Johnnie laughed.

And Freda, who could not bear to be laughed at, even vicariously through her husband, lost her temper.

“You idiot, Harry! Anyone would think we’d never had port before. What on earth did you want to put it in front of the fire at all for?”

“Take the chill off, you know,” mumbled Harry Newsham, feeling his cavalry moustache as he looked unhappily at the steaming contents of the glasses. “Right thing to do with port, isn’t it, Johnnie?”

“Absolutely,” said Johnnie, with a far too obvious wink across the table at Lina. “Never ice the port.”

“It’ll be quite all right in a few minutes,” Lina suggested, deprecating the wink but deprecating far more Freda’s anger.

“Nonsense!” Freda snapped. “Get another bottle up, Harry. Thank goodness there are plenty in the cellar.”

“All right, dear.”

“And after Lina and I have left you,” added Freda nastily, “you’d better get Johnnie to give you a few hints on how to deal with wines.”

Harry edged apologetically out of the room.

He was a tall, well made man, who looked exactly like a cavalry officer. Actually he had inherited a cotton mill in Lancashire, sold out in the boom period after the war, and settled down on the proceeds (on the instructions of his wife) as a country gentleman. Having failed in this respect in the Midlands, he had caused himself (on the instructions of his wife) to be adopted as Liberal candidate for the constituency in which Upcottery was situated and had settled down there to try again (on the now somewhat acrimonious instructions of his wife).

The fresh bottle of port was opened and consumed, and Harry, with accentuated magnanimity, forgiven.

Lina and her hostess retired conventionally to the drawing room. Neither of them wanted in the least to go, but to go was the right thing; and in Freda’s house the right thing was invariably done – by Freda, if not, it would appear, by Harry. Freda in her tweeds following hounds on foot was more absolutely right than any ladies’ tailor-and-outfitter could have conceived.

Lina did not, however, think they would be alone long. It was Harry Newsham’s habit to entertain his male guests, and indeed anyone else whom he could lure at any time into any secluded place, with a discourse upon Free Trade and, as a corollary, the dishonest iniquities of Tariff Reform: a subject in which he was distressingly interested. Harry really took politics seriously.

In her just overfurnished, or, as she herself called it, cosy, drawing room, Freda settled herself down on the big settee and lifted her feet onto the seat.

“Now, my dear,” she said to Lina, in an easy chair on the other side of the fireplace. “Now we can have a really good gossip.” Freda was very fond of the phrase. Her really good gossips consisted in talking as hard and as fast about nothing at all as she could possibly manage, while her presumed fellow gossiper put in a bare affirmative or negative in any vacant space she could find.

“Yes,” said Lina, who did not like really good gossips but knew from experience that she was a good listener.

In deference to Lina’s notorious tastes Freda at once began to talk brightly, and with an effect of inside knowledge, about books.

Freda, on her own statement, read simply everything. Naturally, therefore, she considered herself well read. She was most devastating about any author who came above her standards.

Lina listened, and agreed. It was always less trouble to agree with Freda than not.

Lina went on listening.

Often and often there fell from her hostess’s lips some emphatic statement with which, had it been Janet who had made it, Lina would have at once joined argument. But of course one could not argue with Freda. Freda was one of those women to whom the word “argument” is exactly synonymous with the word “quarrel.” “Oh, well, my dear, don’t let’s
argue
about it, for heaven’s sake,” Freda would say; and Lina would long to box her ears.

She agreed now that neither of their husbands could be credited with any really fine literary perceptions.

“Though of course,” said Freda, “I make Harry read anything I get from the library that’s
really
good. The first-rate novelists, I mean: Wells, and Warwick Deeping, and so on. But I’m afraid they’re rather lost on him, poor dear.”

“Johnnie reads nothing but detective stories,” said Lina.

“I know. Of course
I
never read detective stories.”

“Oh, don’t you?” It was not the first time Lina had heard this inept remark. She wondered why people who never read detective stories are so proud of the fact. “I love a good detective story.”

“Oh, yes, my dear. I know you say that.” Freda gave her a knowing smile. “How is your brother-in-law getting on with his new novel? Oh, my dear, I must tell you. I was talking to some people at the meet the other day – the Longthwaites; do you know them? Lady Longthwaite, it was, as a matter of fact – and of course she didn’t know I knew your brother-in-law.” Freda detailed at considerable length the incident and left Lady Longthwaite wallowing in her literary inferiority.

“Ha, ha,” said Lina dutifully.

“By the way, talking of meets, how did Johnnie get on at Merchester last Tuesday?”

“Merchester?” Lina echoed stupidly.

“Yes, the races. We saw him there, but we didn’t speak to him. I waved, but he was looking far too busy to wave back. I don’t know whether he even saw us. Didn’t he tell you? Then I suppose he didn’t see us. My dear, we had a terrible day: lost simply
pounds.
I hope Johnnie came out of it better?”

Lina kept her head. “Oh,” she said lightly, “I don’t think he did so badly.”

“Janet must have brought him luck.” Freda could not keep a slightly malicious note out of her voice.

“Janet?” Just as Lina had never suspected that Janet might be jealous of Johnnie, so it had never occurred to her that Freda might be jealous of Janet. All she knew was that the two disliked each other, and rather more intensely than the difference between their temperaments seemed quite to warrant. “Janet? Oh, yes, I believe he did say she had.”

Johnnie’s indifference to Free Trade saved her. On a hint too open to be disregarded Harry had been forced to bring it with him to the drawing room.

“If we could only get the Tories to understand that simple fact,” he was saying, as he opened the drawing-room door, “we might be able to—”

“Rather!” said Johnnie with enthusiasm. “I expect you’re absolutely right, Harry. Anything on the wireless, Freda? My goodness, I envy you your set. We can’t get anything but Daventry on our rotten little portable.”