A Misalliance (16 page)

‘Oh, dishonest,’ said Sally. ‘I thought you might do it for Nellie, that’s all.’

‘Why don’t
you
do it for her?’ asked Blanche.

‘The Demuths would take more notice of someone like you,’ said Sally. ‘Someone older,’ she added.

There was a short silence. Do it now, Blanche thought. ‘I don’t think I can help you,’ she said, quite firmly. ‘If you want the advice of someone older, have you thought of asking Patrick? Although I’m sure, knowing him as I do, that he would say that Paul must be responsible.’

‘Well, Patrick’s trouble is that he doesn’t want to get involved. I’m speaking generally, of course. I haven’t asked
him about this. But I can see that he’s one of those frightened inhibited men who’re dreadfully hung up about sex.’

‘Sex doesn’t come into this,’ said Blanche.

‘No, I’m speaking generally. He’s fascinated by it and he runs a mile when he sees it coming. No, Patrick’s got his own problems. In fact, he’s a problem all on his own. He said he might look in this evening, by the way.’

Her features had begun to droop once more, giving her a look of distaste and fatigue. Elinor was fast asleep. It looked to Blanche as if they might both stay in this abandoned position until rescued. A fly, she saw, had settled on the cake.

‘Perhaps you could mention it to him then,’ she said, rising to go.

An air of dereliction settled over the room, which began to resemble the palace of the Sleeping Beauty. Sally and Elinor, both, in their different attitudes, quite motionless, ignored Blanche, as it would seem for ever. Dirty cups, Elinor’s little pile of coins, the hapless cake, spoke mutely of useless stratagems. At the door Blanche glanced back. Sally, shifting the sleeping child on her lap, lifted a languid hand in farewell.

This will not do, said Blanche to herself, striding fiercely along pavements made dusty by the sudden five o’clock sunshine, and, Something must be done. I cannot turn up at the Dorchester and confront these strangers, making an eloquent nineteenth-century plea on behalf of widows and orphans. Patrick will have to do it; maybe it will help him overcome his inhibitions. Maybe this is just what the doctor ordered. Where are all the social workers now that we need them? It cannot be that I am the only person in the world capable of performing this action, an action which is both dubious and duplicitous. At the Dorchester, of all places. Appealing to a man so remote that he has to hire someone to do his talking for him. Which is almost what Sally has done with me, of course. Appealing to Mrs Demuth to
release the impounded red fox coat. Making a fool of myself to save another woman’s fur coat. It is my own fault, of course. Did I really think she wanted me for my dull company? And was I entirely innocent in seeking hers? But I am afraid I rather admire her. In her way she is admirable. She is not even a bad mother; look how Elinor clung to her today. All this nonsensical thinking, dividing people into two categories, and my longing to know more about the one from which I am excluded, has driven me slightly mad. And Elinor’s hands were dirty; she is only a little girl, innocent of all this. But knowing about it, all the same.

‘Patrick,’ she said into the telephone. ‘I understand that you’re dropping in to see Sally this evening. I wonder if you could come on to me afterwards. I could give you an omelette. We ought to have a talk. Something must be done.’

And she thought my husband was a diplomat, indeed. As if I were used to gracing odd functions at his side, appeasing natives. As if I couldn’t do it on my
own
, she thought, turning on the taps for her bath.

After all, she thought, I did take an interest in them. They were of very great fascination to me. An object lesson. And what else would I have done with my time? I studied them as if they were a subject to which I could apply myself. And having studied them to such an extent I can hardly drop out now. Leave the story before it is finished. But I do think Patrick might have done something. This is much more a job for a man. Whatever they say, it is still a man’s world. And if the Demuths are such brutes, surely a man would make more of an impression on them?

She brushed her hair carefully and put on a dress of dark blue linen with a longish skirt. She took a bottle of Sauternes from the fridge and poured a glass, congratulating herself on her mastery of the situation. She would have a serious talk with Patrick and if necessary go with him to the Dorchester.
That way conscience would be appeased, honour and dignity saved. The hard blue sky outside the window slowly faded to white, which she supposed was the equivalent of dusk. With her second glass, Blanche quite looked forward to her evening.

Patrick, when he came, wore his habitual grave expression, although his cheeks were slightly, very slightly, flushed. He sat down and refused a glass of wine.

‘In a minute, Patrick,’ said Blanche, ‘I will make you an omelette. A small salad, some bread and butter, and some gooseberry fool. Will that do?’

‘This is very good of you, Blanche.’

‘It is only an omelette, Patrick.’

‘As a matter of fact I am not hungry. Sally gave me a cup of tea and some rather good cake.’

Blanche poured herself another glass. ‘It is about Sally that I wanted to talk to you, Patrick. Something must be done.’

‘She has told me.’

‘Told you?’

‘About your very kind offer.’

‘My offer?’

‘To go and talk to the Demuths.’

Blanche looked at him.

‘It is all very irregular, of course. But it might help.’

‘Patrick,’ said Blanche slowly. ‘What I suggested, or what I think I suggested, was that
you
should talk to the Demuths.’

‘Oh, no. That is quite out of the question. I could not undertake such a thing in my position. And anyway it would be unwise.’

‘Why would it be more unwise for you than for me? Neither of us knows them. They don’t know us. They are not going to take up references, you know.’

‘I assure you, Blanche, I have discussed the whole thing with my analyst and …’

‘With your
analyst
?’

‘Yes. I go twice a week. She, my analyst, that is, thinks that I must work through my feelings for Sally on my own. Or with her.’

‘How very convenient. And what are your feelings for Sally, if I may ask?’

‘I wouldn’t say this to anyone else, Blanche, but I look on you as an old friend. I am,’ he paused significantly, ‘emotionally involved.’

‘You mean you are in love with her?’

‘It is by no means as straightforward as that. Our worlds are very different. And she is a married woman. No, it is more of a …’ he paused again, ‘an emotional attraction.’

‘Come to the point, Patrick.’

‘It is simply the fact that she belongs to a different world. All the fun she seems to have.’ He looked wistful. ‘All those parties. I feel she was not made for the harsh realities, such as you and I must face.’

‘Life is not a night club, Patrick.’

He took no notice. ‘I feel very strongly that what I want to do is to spare her all that. I am, I think, committed to that.’

‘But your analyst says that you don’t have to do anything about it.’

‘Definitely. She is categorical about it. My entire emotional balance is at stake.’

‘And mine isn’t?’

He looked at her. ‘Why should it be? You are merely an observer, an onlooker. I know your ways, you see. You can be quite cold, you know.’

No doubt you have discussed me with your analyst too, thought Blanche. I wonder if your emotional balance was at stake then. On reflection, she thought not.

‘And when have you decided that I am to do this deed?’ she asked, placing a perfect omelette, crowned with a sprig of parsley, on a tray on his knees.

‘Well, they are away this weekend. It seems that Demuth wants to buy a house in the country and Paul is driving them around. But if you were to telephone, perhaps on Monday?’

Blanche laughed. ‘I wish I could have an analyst who would stop me doing things like this,’ she said. ‘Is she very expensive? She sounds as if she is worth every penny you pay her. By the way, what does Sally live on? No, don’t answer that. She is like Danae with the shower of gold. Money falls from the sky.’

‘This is a very good omelette, Blanche,’ said Patrick in a somewhat diminished tone.

Blanche looked at him kindly. ‘And am I to report to Sally or to you?’

‘To Sally. Of course. My place is in the background.’

‘As you wish, Patrick,’ said Blanche. ‘Coffee?’

Suddenly, as it were overnight, the weather became hot and sultry, and Blanche woke each morning in a prickle of heat, the tinny light from the uncurtained window hard on her eyes. These were the dog days, then. With everyone away, or, like Patrick, tactfully absent, she had no incentive to walk about the city, carefully dressed, carefully smiling, and her visits to the National Gallery were suspended. Moving slowly about her drawing-room, Blanche almost wished that it were winter again. With winter you knew where you were: a strict regime could be adhered to, exercise and food could be relied upon to do what they were best at. This summer, so unlike the summers that her memory cherished, was odd, enervating, weighed down by a strident but dusty light that would not go away. Every morning the noise of the last car in the street left an echo which died into emptiness; every evening the air thickened, birds fell silent, and it seemed as if the relieving storm must break. Every morning, when Blanche went out to buy her newspaper, there was an hour of spurious freshness; in the late afternoon, when she went out to buy her ever more desultory dinner, people in the shops would say, ‘We need a proper downpour. Clear the air.’ But somehow the downpour never came and the air remained uncleared.

Nothing called Blanche from her home. No telephone call disrupted her silence. At times she felt as if she had grown
quite wordless, struck dumb by the knowledge of other activities going on elsewhere. As she sat in her dim drawing-room, curtained against the afternoon sun, and surrounded by opened and discarded books, the pictures in her mind took on a brilliance which she supposed was an accurate picture of reality. She thought of the world of holidays, to which others were admitted and from which she now seemed to be disbarred, and she saw everyone she had ever loved haloed with brightness, smiling at her as if in a photograph. ‘Why not join us, Blanche?’ they seemed to say. ‘We are out of reach, of course, and we cannot issue invitations; you will just have to try and imagine us. Everyone is here. We may send you a postcard now and then, and we shall certainly tell you all about it when we return. We shall look different then, tanned, younger than you remember us. We shall be so fit that you will look extremely pale in comparison, paler than you thought you looked. That is how you will feel when we show you our photographs. And what have you been doing with yourself? Anything interesting? Seen anyone? What you need is a holiday. Why don’t you plan something? Make an effort?’ But the efforts she made, habitually, were incommensurate with the sort of efforts that other people thought she should make. And she was too proud to tell them so.

Somewhere across this busy but emptying city were the Demuths, whom she must reach. For some reason she imagined them as a monstrous couple, overweight and bad tempered, tiresome as children, illogical, suspicious, unattractive, the sort of people one would rather avoid. She imagined them corroded by money yet tight-fisted, balked by their ignorance, raging, finding fault. She saw them as gross capitalists, figures from the Weimar Republic, wearing ill-judged jewellery. Somehow she must persuade them against their will, against their better judgment, and against her own, to retain the services of their unreliable factotum,
on whom they obviously depended for whatever civilized graces their money was able to command. Sally, of course, had furnished no information about them other than that they were rich and unfair. That this was a child’s view had hardly occurred to Blanche, although she herself had pictured them as more corrupt, more complicated, and above all more antagonistic. Whatever skills she had would be needed to counter their powerful and vindictive arguments, yet she felt herself to be weightless, insubstantial, without sufficient identity to justify herself, let alone anybody else. For several days she postponed her telephone call, until, at last, maddened by her own inactivity, she dialled the number and was put straight through to Mr Demuth’s suite. A light pleasant voice, with a faintly synthetic accent, answered: she supposed this to be Paul. She imagined Mr and Mrs Demuth sitting puffily in over-stuffed armchairs while their lithe assistant did anything that involved energy or movement. She made an appointment to see them at six o’clock that evening.

When she emerged from the house, from the shuttered drawing-room in which she felt that she had been sitting for a very long time, the heat was stifling. A yellowish light, not altogether healthy, hovered on the edges of her sight, although she fixed her eyes on the unfamiliar street. After so many days of reclusion the bus stop was an adventure, but the long wait made her feel as if everyone had gone away, and that she and Mr and Mrs Demuth were separated only by a snarl of meaningless and unpopulated traffic. The bus, when it came, was an enormous novelty, and, once seated, she felt her heart beating rather hard. In this unaccustomed heat her clothes felt burdensome. In Knightsbridge, crowds of tourists swirled around Harrods; a pneumatic drill sent out urgent and peremptory messages. This, obviously, was where everyone was. She had forgotten that people were still working. They stood at home-going bus
stops with slack and uncomplaining faces, their bags at their feet. Again she envied them, those tired women and girls, for the context in which they lived, for the homes to which they were wearily going. The contrast between her quiet backwater and the noisy centre was strident, overwhelming. She began to look forward to getting back, to her own modest evening ritual which began earlier and earlier these days. Sometimes she went to bed when it was still light. This nervous yellowish glare made her feel threatened, as did the press of traffic in Park Lane. She summoned up her most urbane smile and wished she had had a drink before leaving home.