Sir!' She Said (16 page)

“There are some men,” he said, “who would feel jealous.”

At that for the first time in their conversation her composure left her. Her eyes glinted angrily.

“You don't trust me, you mean. You don't trust your own wife.”

“Of course I trust you implicitly.”

“Then what's all this nonsense about jealousy?”

He shrugged his shoulders. “Jealousy's not a question of trusting. It's. . .” he hesitated. “Do you remember the ridiculous fuss you made when you found me dancing with Gladys Stokesbury?”

“Ridiculous? It wasn't ridiculous at all. I'm not going to have my husband going about alone with other women!”

“You go about alone with other men.”

“That's different.”

“I don't see how.”

“My dear, of course it is. You can trust me. You've just said you can.”

“And you can't trust me, you mean?”

“How can one trust any man? Men are polygamous. Every book on sex that's ever been written has said as much. You'ld be certain to get into mischief if you weren't looked after.”

“So I'm to sit at home while you gad around London with a succession of different men?”

“If that's what you find most amusing.”

“I don't see that there's anything else for me to do.”

“There's your club.”

“My club!”

“Or you can go to watch boxing, or billiards, or you can go to a theatre or a cinema. You're perfectly free.”

“Is that your idea of freedom?”

“Well, what more do you want? You can do anything you like.”

“Except the things I want to.”

“I don't know what you mean by that. I'm not going to have you going out with other women, if that's what you mean. And, anyhow, why do you want to go out with them? Aren't I enough for you?”

He looked at her helplessly. It was an issue that he had contested once, and that he had not the courage to thrash out again. He shuddered as he remembered
the miserable week, so many years back now, that had followed her discovery of the completely innocent evening he had spent with Gladys Stokesbury. He had argued, he had pleaded, he had cajoled. “Be reasonable,” he had said. “You're always going out with some man or other. Night after night you leave me here at home to amuse myself. Why shouldn't I go out with Gladys Stokesbury now and again? I'm not in the least in love with her. I'm not even attracted to her. She's just a companion, that, and no more than that. Why shouldn't I go out with her?”

But Faith had refused to discuss the question. She had retreated behind a barrier of obstinate reserve.

“It is no use arguing,” she had said. “I am not going to have my husband going about with other women.”

“And I,” he had retorted, “am going to do exactly as I choose.”

“In which case,” she had. announced, “I shall cease to regard you as my husband.”

And for a whole week she had observed towards him an attitude of frigid and unapproachable politeness that had reduced him to a state of nervous irritability in which it was impossible to sleep or work or play. That cold hostility had pursued him everywhere. In the end he had capitulated unconditionally.

“I'll promise anything you like!” he had cried, “if only you'll come out from behind that barrier.”

The moment he had given that promise she had become again the sweet, affectionate companion with
whom he had fallen, and still was, in love. As long as she had her way she was charming and agreeable. The moment that she was thwarted she became hard and hostile and impossible. There was only one way of maintaining peace, of leading any sort of life, and that was to let her do exactly as she chose. It was no use trying to reason with her. She was not interested in reason. She was concerned only with her own will and the getting of it. She knew, too, the way to get it. She had only to retreat behind that barrier to make his own capitulation inevitable. She held all the cards. As everywhere women were holding all the cards to-day.

With a sigh John Terance looked up at the portrait of his great-grandfather that hung above the mantelpiece. A genial four-bottle fellow he had been. You could tell that from the flushed face, the thickened nostrils, the friendly wrinkles about the eyes and mouth. A genial autocrat who had ruled his family of thirteen children as a colonel rules a regiment. He had not bothered about getting home in time for dinner. He had stayed in the card-room of the Granville as long as his money lasted, and his legs supported him. He had told his wife that the nursery, the drawing-room and the kitchen were her province. He had given supper parties for the ladies of the chorus, and had excused himself with the reflection that with men these things were different, and that, anyhow, men were polygamous. As though, John Terance reflected, to keep track of one woman's fancies was not job enough for any man. In the whole course of her married life his great-grandmother had
not received a single letter that had not been read by her husband first. A genial autocrat.

And there was the telephone ringing, and Faith was lifting the receiver, and, “Oh, yes, Bobby darling,” she was saying, “and you're calling for me here? that'll be splendid. And, angel, whatever you do, don't forget. . .”

Terance shrugged his shoulders. There was nothing to be said. One could not argue with her. One had to let her be. But it was reprovingly that he looked up at his great-grandfather's portrait.

“If only you had been less of an autocrat,” he thought, “life would have been a great deal easier for me.”

“Can he? I wonder? He should be able to. I don't know.”

Mr. Bulliwell's breath came fast and labouredly. It was hot: damnably. The sweat was running down his face; his collar was soiled and sodden. His vest had rucked above the equatorial expanses of his stomach. His shirt was scratching him between his legs. His feet were swollen inside his pointed shoes. He had galleried sixteen holes and felt as though he had walked sixteen miles. His anxiety was greater, however, than his discomfort. He was too busy praying that Gavin Todd would win his match against the American who had challenged him to a return match on any day on any course, to realise how miserable he was himself.

It had been an exacting match. To begin with Todd had gone right ahead. At the turn he had been five up. But from then on the American had pulled the game right round. He had won the tenth hole, halved the eleventh and twelfth, won the thirteenth, halved the fourteenth, and won the fifteenth and sixteenth holes with ease. He was on top. Had it been then a thirty-six hole match there was no doubt who would have won: the betting would have been
twenty to one on the American. Even as it was the betting was against Todd. If Merivale finished level on the eighteenth green the chances were overwhelmingly in favour of his taking the lead and match during the extra, deciding holes.

“If Todd loses the next hole, he'll lose the match,” thought Bulliwell. “The moment his lead's gone his confidence will follow, too.”

And he felt as worried, as nervous, as unhappy as if his own commercial prosperity were at stake.

“If only he can pull it off,” he thought, “if only.”

He felt for Todd that fervour of unaccountable adoration reserved for athletes, that Aristotle described as the lowest form of love. Bulliwell identified himself with Todd. From a distance he had always admired him, and now that they had become acquainted he felt as though it was himself, not Todd that was playing. “If he could only win this hole,” he thought, “even if he could halve it, it might be enough; it would give him back his confidence.”

Which was what Gavin himself was feeling.

In most games there is a psychological moment to which you look back and say, “that was the deciding stroke.” Such a moment had come at the turn, at the tenth hole. If Todd had won that hole he would have been six up, and Merivale would have abandoned heart. Todd had realised that, and realising it had played over-confidently. He had been so sure of winning that he had tried to do in three a hole he should have been content to do in four. As a result he had gone off the course and had lost the hole.

The loss of that hole had given his opponent the confidence he needed. From that moment Merivale had outplayed him thoroughly. If the American were to win this hole, Gavin knew that although they would start the eighteenth hole square, he himself stood little chance of winning. But he knew equally well as he walked from the sixteenth hole to the tee, that could he halve that hole, could he check the American's chance of success, could he start the eighteenth hole one up, the betting was on his keeping his lead. It was a moment as psychological as the tenth hole had been.

There was a dead silence in the huge gallery as the American prepared to drive. The seventeenth hole was about the most difficult and fascinating in the course. A stream ran out at an angle across the fairway, some two hundred and sixty yards away. The one chance of getting on to the green in two was to clear that stream. It was a shot, however, that only a champion playing at the height of his form would attempt. Bogey for the hole was five. The safe game was to stay on the near side, clear the stream with the second shot and reach the green in three. From the way the American addressed his ball it was clear, however, that he was going to try to carry the stream. Glances were exchanged meaningly in the gallery. So this was his game, was it, to carry the stream on the wave of his self-confidence and win the hole on his drive.

Gavin waiting at the side fidgeted with his tie nervously. It was a bold move, almost a reckless move: as reckless as his own attempt at the tenth
hole to win the match out of hand. Perhaps it would have the same result.

There was a nerve-charged silence as the American addressed the ball, as his club swung back, as its head cracked on the indiarubber; a moment of utter silence as the thousand eyes of the crowd watched the flight of the white swallow; the swift rise against the pale blue of the sky; the slow dip into the dark shadows of the pines; a moment of completest silence; then there was a loud burst of clapping: a burst that was continued; that paused, only to break out louder, as it was seen that the ball had not only cleared the stream but had rolled some thirty yards beyond it. It was a drive of close upon three hundred yards; such a drive as only a big golfer can produce and only rarely. The American watched his shot; then with a smile on his mouth he walked away from the tee. The smile was eloquent. “Beat that,” it said.

In that moment Todd came as near to losing his head as he ever had during his golfing career: he felt as though he were being dared: dared to carry that stream, to press his shot in a desperate attempt to outdrive his opponent. And it would be madness to attempt it. He knew that. He knew he could not outdrive Merivale, and in the attempt to do so he would, as likely as not, drive off the fairway into the stream. It would be madness to attempt the shot. Far better to play short on to the near side of the stream, and by an accurately laid approach shot fluster his opponent into a mistake. It was an advantage to play your second shot before the other man. He knew how often a big drive lost a man a hole.

Squarely, ironically he met with his own smile his opponent's half smile. Moving slightly to the left he teed his ball. Anyone knowing his play would realise that he was going to play short. He knew what kind of whispers would be going on behind him; knew how the refusal to accept the challenge of that big drive would be accepted as an admission of failure. The knowledge that that was being whispered increased the feeling of defiant confidence that the refusal to be dared had brought him. He'ld show them.

There was very little applause for Todd's drive. It was an anti-climax to the American's big hit. But through Todd it sent a thrill of pride. The ball had gone almost exactly where he had meant it to. Two hundred and fifty yards and down the fairway. His next stroke would leave the ball properly placed for an approach shot. With luck he should hole out in four. Certainly he would manage it in five. As he walked down the course for the first time since that wretched shot at the tenth tee, he felt confident, spurred with the will to conquer. He felt no nervousness as he addressed the ball. He was playing within himself.

This time there was a burst of applause as the ball flew straight towards the hole, stopping some thirty yards from the green, on grass so smooth that you could almost have used a putter on it.

Merivale watched the shot anxiously. There was no real reason for him to be anxious. He was virtually a stroke ahead. He should be on the green with his next shot. But his opponent's refusal to be flustered
had flustered him. As he addressed the ball ideas that would not ordinarily have occurred to him, fretted him like mosquitoes.

There was a steep bank on the far side of the green. He became suddenly afraid of hitting into it. There was no reason why he should have been afraid. But he found himself remembering that his drive had carried much further than he had thought it would. He had the wind behind him. If his drive had carried further, might not his approach as well? “I mustn't hit too hard,” he thought, as his club swung back.

The thought as his club swung down made him check, made him hold back. The sliced ball curved short and sideways. As he watched it a panic laid hold on the American. He was behind his opponent; he would have to play the third shot first. Unless he got well on the green and near the hole, his chances of winning the hole were slight. He was a hundred yards away. “Whatever happens,” he thought, “I must hit hard enough. I mustn't fall short. I mustn't make that mistake again.” He wondered which club to use. He took out a mashie: changed it for a cleek, then took his mashie out again. “I mustn't play short,” he thought.

He didn't. The ball hit true and straight and hard, flew thirty yards beyond the green to bury itself in the thick grass of the bank beyond. Todd, standing a few yards off, knew that beyond doubting the hole and the match were his.