Giant's Bread (7 page)

‘At any rate, he married her.'

It was his father who flushed this time. He said, in a very low voice:

‘I can't understand you, Myra. You're a good woman – a kind, honourable, upright woman – and yet you can demean yourself to make a nasty mean taunt like that.'

‘That's right! Abuse me! I'm used to it. You don't mind what you say to me.'

‘That's not true. I try to be as courteous as I can.'

‘Yes. And that's partly why I hate you – you never do say right out. Always polite and sneering – your tongue in your cheek. All this keeping up appearances – why should one, I should like to know? Why should I care if everyone in the house knows what I feel?'

‘I've no doubt they do – thanks to the carrying power of your voice.'

‘There you are – sneering again. At any rate I've enjoyed telling you what I think of your precious sister. Running away with one man, going off with a second – and why can't the second man keep her, I should like to know? Or is he tired of her already?'

‘I've already told you, but you didn't listen. He's threatened with galloping consumption – has had to throw up his job. He's no private means.'

‘Ah! Nina brought her pigs to a bad market that time.'

‘There's one thing about Nina – she's never been actuated by motives of gain. She's a fool – a damned fool or she wouldn't have got herself into this mess. But it's always her affections that run away with her common sense. It's the deuce of a tangle. She won't touch a penny from Fred. Anstey wants to make her an allowance – she won't hear of it. And mind you, I agree with her. There are things one can't do. But I've certainly got to go and see to things. I'm sorry if it annoys you, but there it is.'

‘You never do anything I want! You hate me! You do this on purpose to make me miserable. But there's one thing. You don't bring this precious sister of yours under this roof while I'm here. I'm not accustomed to meeting that kind of woman. You understand?'

‘You make your meaning almost offensively clear.'

‘If you bring her here, I go back to Birmingham.'

There was a faint flicker in Walter Deyre's eyes, and suddenly Vernon realized something that his mother did not. He had understood very little of the actual words of the conversation though he had grasped the essentials. Aunt Nina was ill or unhappy somewhere and Mummy was angry about it. She had said that if Aunt Nina came to Abbots Puissants, she would go back to Uncle Sydney at Birmingham. She had meant that as a threat – but Vernon knew that his father would be very pleased if she did go back to Birmingham. He knew it quite certainly and uncomprehendingly. It was like some of Miss Robbins' punishments like not speaking for half an hour. She thought you minded that as much as not having jam for tea, and fortunately she had never discovered that you didn't really mind it at all – in fact rather enjoyed it.

Walter Deyre walked up and down the room. Vernon watched him, puzzled. That his father was fighting out a battle in his own mind, he knew. But he couldn't understand what it was all about.

‘Well?' said Myra.

She was rather beautiful just at that moment – a great big woman, magnificently proportioned, her head thrown back and the sunlight streaming in on her golden red hair. A fit mate for some Viking seafarer.

‘I made you the mistress of this house, Myra,' said Walter Deyre. ‘If you object to my sister coming to it, naturally she will not come.'

He moved towards the door. There he paused and looked back at her. ‘If Llewellyn dies – which seems almost certain, Nina must try to get some kind of a job. Then there will be the child to think of. Do your objections apply to her?'

‘Do you think I want a girl in my home who will turn out like her mother?'

His father said quietly: ‘Yes or no would have been quite sufficient answer.'

He went out. Myra stood staring after him. Tears stood in her eyes and began to fall. Vernon did not like tears. He edged towards the door – but not in time.

‘Darling – come to me.'

He had to come. He was enfolded – hugged. Fragments of phrases reiterated in his ears.

‘You'll make up to me – you, my own boy – you shan't be like them – horrid, sneering. You won't fail me – you'll never fail me – will you? Swear it – my boy, my own boy.'

He knew it all so well. He said what was wanted of him – yes and no in the right places. How he hated the whole business. It always happened so close to your ears.

That evening after tea, Myra was in quite another mood. She was writing a letter at her writing table and looked up gaily as Vernon entered.

‘I'm writing to Daddy. Perhaps, very soon, your Aunt Nina and your cousin Josephine will come to stay. Won't that be lovely?'

But they didn't come. Myra said to herself that really Walter was incomprehensible. Just because she'd said a few things she really didn't mean …

Vernon was not very surprised, somehow. He hadn't thought they would come.

Aunt Nina had said she wasn't a nice woman – but she was very pretty …

If Vernon had been capable of summing up the events of the next few years, he could best have done it in one word – Scenes! Everlasting and ever recurring scenes.

And he began to notice a curious phenomenon. After each scene his mother looked larger and his father looked smaller. Emotional storms of reproach and invective exhilarated Myra mentally and physically. She emerged from them refreshed, soothed – full of good will towards all the world.

With Walter Deyre it was the opposite. He shrank into himself, every sensitive fibre in his nature shrinking from the onslaught. The faint polite sarcasm that was his weapon of defence never failed to goad his wife to the utmost fury. His quiet weary self-control exasperated her as nothing else could have done.

Not that she was lacking for very real grounds of complaint. Walter Deyre spent less and less time at Abbots Puissants. When he did return his eyes had baggy pouches under them and his hand shook. He took little notice of Vernon, and yet the child was always conscious of an underlying sympathy. It was tacitly understood that Walter should not ‘interfere' with the child. A mother was the person who should have the say. Apart from supervising the boy's riding, Walter stood aside. Not to do so would have roused fresh matter for discussion and reproach. He was ready to admit that Myra had all the virtues and was a most careful and attentive mother.

And yet he sometimes had the feeling that he could give the boy something that she could not. The trouble was that they were both shy of each other. To neither of them was it easy to express their feelings – a thing Myra would have found incomprehensible. They remained gravely polite to each other.

But when a ‘scene' was in progress, Vernon was full of silent sympathy. He knew exactly how his father was feeling – knew how that loud angry voice hurt the ears and the head. He knew, of course, that Mummy must be right – Mummy was always right, that was an article of belief not to be questioned – but all the same, he was unconsciously on his father's side.

Things went from bad to worse – came to a crisis. Mummy remained locked in her room for two days – servants whispered delightedly in corners – and Uncle Sydney arrived on the scene to see what he could do.

Uncle Sydney undoubtedly had a soothing influence over Myra. He walked up and down the room, jingling his money as of old, and looking stouter and more rubicund than ever.

Myra poured out her woes.

‘Yes, yes, I know,' said Uncle Sydney, jingling hard. ‘I know, my dear girl. I'm not saying you haven't had a lot to put up with. You have. Nobody knows that better than I do. But there's give and take, you know. Give and take. That's married life in a nutshell – give and take.'

There was a fresh outburst from Myra.

‘I'm not sticking up for Deyre,' said Uncle Sydney. ‘Not at all. I'm just looking at the whole thing as a man of the world. Women lead sheltered lives and they don't look at these things as men do – quite right that they shouldn't. You're a good woman, Myra, and it's always hard for a good woman to understand these things. Carrie's just the same.'

‘What has Carrie got to put up with, I should like to know?' cried Myra. ‘
You
don't go off racketing round with disgusting women.
You
don't make love to the servants.'

‘N-no,' said her brother. ‘No, of course not. It's the principle of the thing I'm talking about. And mind you, Carrie and I don't see eye to eye over everything. We have our tiffs – why sometimes we don't speak to each other for two days on end. But bless you, we make it up again, and things go on better than before. A good row clears the air – that's what I say. But there must be give and take. And no nagging afterwards. The best man in the world won't stand nagging.'

‘I never nag,' said Myra tearfully, and believed it. ‘How can you say such a thing?'

‘Now don't get the wind up, old girl. I'm not saying you do. I'm just laying down general principles. And remember, Deyre's not our sort. He's kittle cattle – the touchy sensitive kind. A mere trifle sets them off.'

‘Don't I know it,' said Myra bitterly. ‘He's impossible. Why did I ever marry him?'

‘Well, you know, Sis, you can't have it both ways. It was a good match. I'm bound to admit it was a good match. Here you are, living in a swell place, knowing all the County, as good as anybody short of Royalty. My word, if poor old Dad had lived, how proud he'd have been! And what I'm getting at is this – everything's got its seamy side. You can't have the halfpence without one or two of the kicks as well. They're decadent, these old families, that's what they are – decadent, and you've just got to face the fact. You've just got to sum up the situation in a businesslike way – advantages, so and so. Disadvantages ditto. It's the only way. Take my word for it, it's the only way.'

‘I didn't marry him for the sake of “advantages” as you call it,' said Myra. ‘I hate this place. I always have. It's because of Abbots Puissants he married me – not for myself.'

‘Nonsense, Sis, you were a jolly pretty girl – and still are,' he added gallantly.

‘Walter married me for the sake of Abbots Puissants,' said Myra obstinately. ‘I tell you I know it.'

‘Well, well,' said her brother. ‘Let's leave the past alone.'

‘You wouldn't be so calm and cold-blooded about it if you were me,' said Myra bitterly. ‘Not if you had to live with him. I do everything I can think of to please him – and he only sneers and treats me like this.'

‘You nag him,' said Sydney. ‘Oh, yes, you do. You can't help it.'

‘If only he'd answer back! If he'd say something – instead of just sitting there.'

‘Yes, but that's the kind of fellow he is. You can't alter people in this world to suit your fancy. I can't say I care for the chap myself – too la-di-da for me. Why, if you put him in to run a concern it would be bankrupt in a fortnight! But I'm bound to say he's always been very polite and decent to me. Quite the gentleman. When I've run across him in London he's taken me to lunch at that swell club of his and if I didn't feel too comfortable there that wasn't his fault. He's got his good points.'

‘You're so like a man,' said Myra. ‘Carrie would understand! He's been unfaithful to me, I tell you. Unfaithful!'

‘Well, well,' said Uncle Sydney with a great deal of jingling and his eyes on the ceiling. ‘Men will be men.'

‘But Syd, you never –'

‘Of course not,' said Uncle Sydney hastily. ‘Of course not – of course not. I'm speaking generally, Myra – generally, you understand.'

‘It's all finished,' said Myra. ‘No woman could stand more than I've stood. And now it's the end. I never want to see him again.'

‘Ah!' said Uncle Sydney. He drew a chair to the table and sat down with the air of one prepared to talk business. ‘Then let's get down to brass tacks. You've made up your mind? What is it you do want to do?'

‘I tell you I never want to see Walter again!'

‘Yes, yes,' said Uncle Sydney patiently. ‘We're taking that for granted. Now what do you want? A divorce?'

‘Oh!' Myra was taken aback. ‘I hadn't thought –'

‘Well, we must get the thing put on a business-like footing. I doubt if you'd get a divorce. You've got to prove cruelty, you know, as well, and I doubt if you could do that.'

‘If you knew the suffering he's caused me –'

‘I daresay. I'm not denying it. But you want something more than that to satisfy the law. And there's no desertion. If you wrote to him to come back, he'd come, I suppose?'

‘Haven't I just told you I never want to see him again?'

‘Yes, yes, yes. You women do harp on a thing so. We're looking at the thing from a business point of view now. I don't think a divorce will wash.'

‘I don't want a divorce.'

‘Well, what do you want, a separation?'

‘So that he could go and live with that abandoned creature in London? Live with her altogether? And what would happen to me, I should like to know?'

‘Plenty of nice houses near me and Carrie. You'd have the boy with you most of the time, I expect.'

‘And let Walter bring disgusting women into this very house, perhaps? No, indeed, I don't intend to play into his hands like that!'

‘Well, dash it all Myra, what do you want?'

Myra began to cry again.

‘I'm so miserable, Syd, I'm so miserable. If only Walter were different.'

‘Well, he isn't – and he never will be. You must just make up your mind to it, Myra. You've married a fellow who's a bit of a Don Jooan – and you've got to try and take a broadminded view of it. You're fond of the chap. Kiss and make friends – that's what I say. We're none of us perfect. Give and take – that's the thing to remember – give and take.'