Sir!' She Said (24 page)

But she did not listen to his explanation. She was angry and upset, in a mood that saw all things out of focus. Again they danced in silence.

“Darling,” he said. “Couldn't we slip away for an hour or so. They wouldn't miss you. You could come back afterwards.”

His voice was husky with cigarette smoke. To Jean who could not see the expression of his eyes, it
sounded casual. So that's all he wants from me, she thought.

“No, of course I can't,” she said.

They did not speak again till the music had stopped. As they walked back from the restaurant to the bar, he stopped abruptly. “Look here,” he said, “I'm not standing any more of this. If you can't get away now, I'm going.”

“Then you'd better come and say good-bye to them all. I've got to stop.” They stood facing each other, too tired, too angry to make the first step to a reconciliation.

“What train are you catching tomorrow?” he asked.

“An early one. Half-past ten, I think.”

“I've got to be on the links at ten. I shan't be able to see you off.”

“When will you be back in London?”

“The end of next week. I'll ring you up. What'll I do about your clothes?”

“Forward them to my people's address. I'll say I lost them on the journey.”

“There's nothing more?”

“No, nothing more.”

They turned and walked on into the bar. “I'm so terribly sorry,” Gavin said, “but I must say good-night now. I've got to be on the links tomorrow early. I shall feel like death if I don't get some sleep.”

His manner had become in a second, light and charming. He was smiling affably, waving a hand in a graceful gesture of good-bye. A moment more and
he had gone. Jean watched his slim figure pass round the corner of the corridor, then turned back to the smoke-laden atmosphere of the bar; its noise, its grubbiness, its silly chatter. Her spirits sank. “I wish I were a man,” she thought. “Then I'ld get beastly drunk.”

Thirty hours later Jean Ryland walked into Lady Prew Catholic's establishment, feeling that she would need a month's sleep to recover from a fortnight's holiday. Julia Terance was already there. She, too, was looking tired.

“Well, what sort of a time have you had?” she asked.

Jean shrugged her shoulders.

“It had its moments.”

“And the grand romance?”

Jean smiled, a little wistfully.

“It was lovely,” she said, “bits of it. But all that, you know. . . it's putting too big a strain on love.”

Which was what Julia herself was thinking. Had been thinking for weeks, subconsciously: had known incontestably since she had heard Melanie's laugh across the telephone. That was the way to love: to recognise that kinship in one another, that trust, that confidence that could say, “You're mine, I'm yours, we can let the world slip safely.” That was the way to love. Love was too delicate a growth to be subjected to the strain of an intrigue.

It was all very well to talk about the romance and
glamour of affairs. In the right setting they were no doubt well enough. In extreme youth, when everything was new, when you climbed by a ladder of lovers to self-knowledge: or when circumstance contrived to isolate a moment; when you met abroad, on some ship or at some hotel for a few days or a few hours, some one you would never meet again. To that there was a glamour. But an intrigue carried on in London by people who were no longer children, in the intervals of their private lives, had all the disadvantages and few of the advantages of marriage. It was not a question of right or wrong, but of the practical ordering of life. People talked of marriages going wrong. And in all conscience the obstacles that marriage raised in the path of love were high enough. To make a successful marriage was a high and rare achievement. But in spite of those difficulties love stood more chance of surviving within marriage than outside it. The obstacles that were raised by an affair were far higher than those that marriage raised. Two years was a long time for an affair to last. The only affairs that did last were those whose circumstances approximated most closely to those of marriage. No marriage, she felt, could ever make her more restive against the servitude it involved than did this long, exhausting intrigue with Leon Carstairs.

That evening when she returned to her flat after dining at her parents' house, to find a letter from Leon Carstairs, she had scarcely the courage to break its seal. “What on earth does he want to write to me for?” she thought. “What new trouble is
there?” As she unfolded the sheet of paper, she felt nervous. It was not usual for him to write to her. And the letter had been sent by express delivery.

“Darling,” it began. “The most marvellous news. You'll hardly believe it. At first I couldn't. But quite unexpectedly, that partnership's come through. So now, so now. . .”

It was the letter she had waited for so long: the letter she had so often dreamed of reading. But now that it had come, she felt none of the exhilaration she had expected. She did not feel that the door of happiness was opening for her, but that the weight of an intolerable burden had been taken from her. She did not think, “Now I can be alone at last with Leon.” She thought, “Now I can give up working at Prew Catholic's. I can give up the flat. There'll be warm carpets and hot water and fires to welcome me at night. There'll be no more early rising. When I feel tired I'll laze in bed and ring for my breakfast when I want it. I'll have the whole day in front of me to spend as I choose, idly, for my own amusement. I'll never again have to meet people I don't want: never let myself be put in a false position. That's over, all of it, for ever.” And she felt tired, intolerably, as one does when the pressure of a long strain is suddenly removed.

At the same time that in the hall of a front flat Julia Terance was reading an expressed letter, in the grillroom of the Ritz Hotel a dinner party of four people was breaking up. It had been a happy, intimate little party. The room had been quiet, with music playing faintly from the lounge. The dinner had been well chosen. The Richebourg admirably mellow. The circumstances had been as they should be at a celebration dinner. And there was a genial smile of successfully proffered hospitality on Mr. Anderson's face as he laid his hand on Leon Carstairs' shoulder.

“I hope, my dear boy,” he said, “that this is going to be the forerunner of many other parties, that you and your wife will come and spend a week-end with us shortly. I assure you that for me one of the happiest things about this new association of ours, is the opportunity that it is going to give me to see more of you. I've always wanted to, you know. I've always been fond of you. But I felt that it would be hardly fitting till you were actually a partner with us. There'll be no such difficulties now.”

And his hand pressed affectionately on Leon's shoulder.

“He really is a dear old boy,” said Leon as he drove back with Mabel. “I think I've misjudged him all along. He's old-fashioned and Victorian, but he's a dear.”

“And he's really fond of you.”

“That's just what I've never felt before.”

“He is though. It's the clearest thing I've seen.”

The garage was a hundred yards from Carstairs' house. Mabel stood by him while he backed the car into the lock-up. She looked mouselike in her ermine cloak. As they turned into the road, he took her arm. The sense of success and the well-being that follows a good dinner made him affectionate. He drew her close to him. From her hair rose the scent of mignonette.

“I think you ought to be really happy in the office now,” she said. “I think our good time's just beginning.”

For the last four years Leon had slept on a divan in his dressing-room. But to-night on this day of triumph he felt a need to talk. When he had changed into pyjamas he tapped at his wife's door.

“Can I come in and talk to you?” he asked.

She was seated at her dressing-table, brushing her hair. Over a pale blue nightdress she wore a green Chinese coat. A shaded lamp spread a soft light over her yellow dressing-table, on to a three-sided silvered mirror, on to powder pots and scent bottles and enamel hair brushes; shadowing the corner of the room, and the wide low bed with its blue silk edged blankets and cream-tinted sheets. Though it was late June, the night was cool, and Mabel had turned the switch of
the electric fire. At the doorway Leon paused, enchanted. It was like a lovely picture. The room was eloquent of warmth and elegance and ease. As he came into the room Mabel turned her head and smiled; a fond and friendly smile such as he had not seen upon her lips for many months.

“Leon dear, have you thought about what we're going to do?” she asked.

“Going to do?”

“Now that you've come into this partnership. It's going to make a good deal of difference, isn't it? We'll be a lot better off, won't we? I was wondering whether you'ld still want to sell this house. We always said we would as soon as we could afford to. We never meant to stay here. We didn't really like it to begin with, did we? Do you remember that first time we came here?”

He remembered the day very well. A bleak November morning just after the birth of their first child, with Mabel in the full glow of her recovered beauty.

“We just said we'ld stay for a year or two,” Mabel said. “And then there was Violet, and somehow I began to like the place. It became a part of me. I don't think I'ld like to leave it now. There's such a lot of our lives bound up here. Don't you think so, Leon?” He nodded his head.

“The best part of our lives, I suppose, really.”

She smiled at that. “Perhaps. But think how much good there is to come. I was thinking that we might take a small house in the country, down by the river somewhere. It would be such fun. We could
have people down to stay with us. We'ld see our friends as we never have a chance of seeing them in London, at leisure, and at ease. We could have such jolly times.”

Swinging round on the small stool she began to talk eagerly, happily, her face alight. And before Leon Carstairs' eyes, as he sat on the bed's edge watching her, there rose up a picture of how pleasant a thing life might become for them, now that the future's uncertainty had been removed. There was no country like England for enjoyment if you had just enough money for amusement. People were content with simple things. People would like coming down out of the noise of London to a quiet garden by the river. Mabel was right. He'ld see his friends under jollier circumstances than he ever had before. And he'ld have a chance of seeing people that he never had before, people he had felt shy of entertaining in London. A place in the country would make all the difference to his life.

“We'ld have such fun,” Mabel was saying, and she began to make up the first party they would have. Who should be asked with whom? How would this person get on with that? “Darling, it would be heavenly; couldn't we get one now, straight away for what's left of the summer?”

It was the concrete statement of a date that roused Leon out of his dream. A cottage by the river. Week-end parties, a comfortable and easy life. But that was not what was going to happen to him. It was not for the sake of that that he had striven for this partnership; it was in order that he might marry
Julia that he had worked. He was not going to take a cottage in the country. He was going to elope with Julia to some other and smaller house. There would be the squalor and publicity of divorce. Instead of more money there would be less money. Instead of friendship with Anderson there would be disapproval. Anderson would feel he had been cheated. There would be no happiness for him in his work. It was this and not that other picture that awaited him.

The knowledge was a cold wind blowing on him. He felt so warm and happy in this comfortable present. He did not want to embark on the cold seas of adventure. He wanted to shut away the thought of what lay ahead. He was so happy here. And there was Mabel rising from the stool and coming over and standing in front of him. He had taken one of her hands in his and was playing with her fingers. “Darling,” she was saying, “these months have been pretty difficult for you, haven't they?” Her eyes were soft and tender, as they had been in early days. And he was agreeing with her. Yes, they had been difficult, more of a strain than he could realise now.

“I know it was, my sweet, and I wasn't the help I should have been. But it was a strain on me, too. I've had my worries. It wasn't that I didn't realise. If you knew how proud of you I am.” Smiling, she had lifted her arms and folded them about his neck. They were warm and soft: scented faintly with mignonette. They were resolute, they were a protection against all the dangers that the future held. With her lips close against his ear, “It's going to be all right now,” she whispered.

With a quick preoccupied step Julia Terance hurried on the following day to the Soho restaurant where she were lunching with Leon Carstairs. During the morning's work she had made up her mind on what she wanted done. She knew by now how weak and irresolute Leon was. Of himself he would decide nothing. From henceforth it must be herself who held the helm. There must be no vacillation now. The point must be got down to straight away.

And so it was at random that she answered Leon's greetings and agreed with him over the choice of lunch. The moment that the waiter had left them she leant forward across the table.

“Leon,” she said, “I am so happy about this. I can't tell you just how happy. For both our sakes. And I know what you're going to say now. That divorce is a long business. That it will be a year at least before we're free to marry, but darling, I don't want to worry about that. We've waited so long. I want to begin our new life straight away.”