The Bohemian Girl (14 page)

At their second meeting, Diana was the first to see Molloy across the Cornwallises’ familiar drawing-room, but he turned round within a moment of her sighting him, and pushed through the crowd towards her. She waited, and did not let her eyes leave him.

‘Well, a fine evening, is it not, Miss Blentham? And dear Mabel does give such very good parties!’

‘As you say, Mr Molloy. Let me introduce you to my sister. Maud, this is Mr Molloy, whom I’ve met –’

‘At some ball or other, was it not?’ said Michael, without a trace of his Irish accent. His attitude this evening startled Diana, but his appearance did not. He wore a very old dinner-jacket, braided dark green trousers, and a soft collar. ‘How do you do, Miss Blentham?’

‘How do you do?’

Two minutes later, Michael had presented Maud to another man who looked as patently Bohemian as he did himself, and taken Diana into a corner. ‘Diana,’ he said, ‘I want you to marry me. I came here tonight because I knew you’d be here and I wanted to ask you.’

There was a space of two seconds, then Diana said in a low steady voice: ‘Ask me again in six months’ time.’

‘Six months! I can’t be waiting that long.’

‘I can’t be waiting less.’

‘Don’t you know your own mind?’

‘No.’

‘You do.’

‘Please don’t bully me, Mr Molloy.’

‘Michael.’

‘Michael.’

He looked at her and watched her bosom heave. A lock of his thin brown hair was stuck to his forehead with sweat.

‘You said,’ she told him, ‘that you wouldn’t – talk like this again. Do you remember?’

‘I do. I didn’t mean it. I merely thought I was being too precipitate. The first meeting is not the time to be making a regular proposal to a girl.’

Diana laughed.

‘But I knew my own mind, even then,’ he said. ‘And I’ll make you know yours.’

‘Tell me about yourself, Michael,’ she said.

He crossed his arms over his chest. ‘I’m a painter as I told you, and I’m thirty-seven years old. I’m an Irishman, my father’s a builder with a firm of his own in Dublin, and I haven’t a penny in the world beyond what I earn.’

‘Dear me,’ said Diana.

‘I’m not eligible, am I?’

‘No, indeed.’

‘Well, Miss Prim!’

‘You’re ridiculous. Don’t look so angry.’

‘I’m offering you love. Don’t think I don’t feel my ineligibility – even though I may try to make a joke of it! I’ve no sense of humour.’

‘It wouldn’t work, Michael – I mean, if we were in fact to marry!’ said Diana, looking into the crowd with red cheeks and ears.

‘And why would it not?’

‘We should quarrel.’

‘No, we shouldn’t, if you loved me. I’m not quarrelsome, and I should protect you from all that makes life hell, Diana – even though I’ve no money.’

‘Do let’s change the subject for a while, Mabel’s staring at us!’

‘Very well,’ he said, ‘we’ll discuss the Royal Academy private view.’

They did discuss it, although he had not gone there, and then Michael began in earnest to talk about painting, just as though she were not the woman he loved.

He was sharing his passion with her, and she was learning, and she loved him. It occurred to Diana that no other man had ever talked to her seriously, and she believed that Michael would like it if she talked at length on serious subjects, too. She felt tipsy: not with juvenile adoration or the longing to be married, but with powerful excitement; and she knew she wanted to be in bed with him. He was so very determined. She remembered that Julian Fitzclare, for all his love of her, had not proposed instantly because he did not know his own mind. She had had to take charge, and use silent pressure to make him stop worshipping and ask her to marry him. And then, drowned in responsibility, she had realised her mistake and taken all the blame. If Michael Molloy ran off with her, nearly everyone would blame him, not her, and he would think them right to do so. She, Diana, would be able to relax in his arms on crumpled sheets, to ignore other people’s prejudices and do exactly as she pleased.

‘When shall I see you again? Can I call on you?’

‘No.’

‘Parents, is it?’

‘Yes.’

‘Is there nowhere –’

‘My married sister’s coming to London next week. I’ll tell her to ask you to something.’

‘Is she eccentric, your sister?’

Diana started at this idea of Violet, but said: ‘Yes, I suppose so, in a sense. She fell in love with a man old enough to be her grandfather.’

‘Very well done of her, to be sure. Is he rich?’

‘Tolerably so.’

‘And what’s her name, so that I’ll know her invitation when I see it?’

‘Violet – Lady Montrose.’

‘You don’t mean to say she’s already widowed!’

‘No, of course not. I didn’t – mean to put a comma between Violet and Lady.’

‘See how well I know what’s what in English Society,’ he said, opening his eyes wide.

‘I’m impressed,’ said Diana.

‘My father was a Land League man in his youth – and so was I – but a great, great snob, Diana. Knew all these things by heart, so he did, and could have told me that your Papa’s peerage is not old by any means. A fourth baron, is he not?’

‘Far better than a Dublin builder, at all events!’

‘Oh, Diana, Diana. How was your Rational Dress?’

Then she realised that she had not even thanked him, and it seemed positively cruel of her not to have done so, when he had no money.

*

Michael and Diana courted each other in peace in Violet’s Green Street house, once Sir Walter had said that Michael seemed a good, intelligent man, and the whole affair was no concern of his. At other times over the following few weeks, Diana behaved with more propriety than usual. Lady Blentham noticed how amicable she was, but said nothing, only worried. She had made a private vow to speak to Diana only if she tried to wear the Rational Dress, but Diana did not wear it.

When she told her husband that she was puzzled by Diana’s behaviour, Charles told her that, odd as it might seem, very likely Hugh Parnell was about to make her happy. ‘Rather too young for marriage, of course, I gather he’s only just down from Oxford, but I don’t think that’s a very serious objection. James Parnell was at my tutor’s, must be young Parnell’s uncle, no, cousin perhaps. Really, my dear, he’s a nice young chap, and she could do far worse than marry into that family.
The Parnells of Combe Chalcot, you know, are nearly as good as the Venables.’

‘Please don’t try to tease me, Charles. Diana would never fall in love with a young man so – commonplace as Hugh Parnell, and I don’t believe for a moment he is serious in his intentions, as they used to say when I was a girl!’

Diana overheard this conversation when she passed the drawing-room door. She opened it, and said: ‘Maud and I are going, Mamma – Buxton says the carriage is ready.’

‘Very demure you look, Didie,’ said Charles. She was wearing white, with lilies of the valley in her hair, and huge puffed elbow-sleeves which were suitable for an afternoon dress, and original in a ballgown. Her cheeks and lips were slightly rouged, but her mother did not notice.

‘Then I hope you enjoy yourselves, my dear,’ said Angelina. ‘Give my love to Violet, of course. I wonder if it will be a good party? Giving one’s first London dance is always rather difficult, and her drawing-room really isn’t quite large enough.’

Lady Blentham, who was going to dine alone with her husband and then go to bed, suddenly felt both old and wretched when she parted the drawing-room curtains and watched her daughters climb into the waiting brougham. Even Maud looked young at this distance. Dear God – whatever Diana does, she thought, I shall be too tired to take an interest. My favourite child – but
nothing
seems to rouse me to feeling. She told herself not to exaggerate, and turned resentful eyes on Charles, who was to attend a late-night session at the House while her own visit to the opera with her brother and sister-in-law had had to be cancelled because Mrs Venables was ill.

At one o’clock, Violet sat down for the first time since her party began. From her seat behind a bowl of roses, she watched her guests trying to dance in the inadequate space, and imagined Diana’s future life in which nothing like this would ever be seen. She envied her extremely.

Violet was pregnant, footsore and looking unusually plain, and she had given this party only because she knew Lady
Blentham would have been triumphant in displeasure, had her daughter done no more than invite close friends to dine with her, and wholly neglected her supposed society duty. Walter and Violet both said that they despised social fetishes, and loved unconventionality, and they were pleased that Diana seemed to share their views. Violet supposed that when her sister married Molloy, she would lead a life much the same as her own, though London-based and of course, rather more eccentric.

She did not think Michael’s lack of money a real objection, because she and her husband regarded money only as the means to buy worldly things which were quite unnecessary, and in any case, however angry the Blenthams were, they would not cast Diana out completely. Her parents would be very, very angry, that was true. Violet resolved to stand by Diana whatever happened, and she guessed that Edward and Kitty, Maud and even Roderick would support her too, if Angelina were over-ferocious. She smiled, and at that moment, Edward came up and asked her to dance.

‘You’ve invited quite a few oddities, haven’t you, Violet?’ he said as the little band struck up the tune for a valse.

‘Oh, I suppose you mean the Sacheverells. You are such a snob, Teddy. Why shouldn’t one invite a doctor to a dance? Anyway, Mrs Sacheverell was presented the same year as poor old Maud.’

‘Why not, indeed?’

‘Or an
actress,
or an
artist,
or a person in
trade
!’ said Violet, stamping her feet to the music.

‘You’re the worst dancer in London,’ said Edward.

‘You’ve aged terribly since I saw you last. Your face is so red, Teddy, I suppose it’s because it’s so very hot in here – I must tell Angus to open another window, oh, how I do hate being a hostess – tell me, are you happy with Kitty?’

‘Never regretted it for a moment,’ said Edward, refusing to look surprised.

Kitty, who never regretted having left the stage to marry Edward, saw him dancing with his sister and decided to go upstairs for a short rest. Edward’s only fault, she thought, was
a tendency to admire other women; but she knew he did not have a full-fledged mistress, and so she refused to criticise him. He would be safe with Violet for the moment.

Edward was her dearest possession, but though he was attentive, and handsome, and charming, he had never made her well-imagined bodily passion for him magnificently real. As she edged and smiled her way through the noisy press of idlers on Violet’s staircase, Kitty reflected that, in fact, the mysterious satisfaction about which even the immoral did not talk directly had never been so very important to her. What with Teddy and the kids, she thought, I’m happy, and loving’s pleasant enough, I’m sure. A nice little thing.

On the second-floor half-landing, Kitty raised her head; and up above her at the very top of the stairs, she saw the grey-lit figures of Diana and Michael Molloy. As she focused her eyes, Kitty took in her breath, for she recognised true, troublesome passion now that she saw it. ‘Well!’ she muttered.

Diana was moaning, and her hair was in a terrible state. Michael’s hands were on her waist, pulling her lower half towards him, and his face was pushing her head back as he kissed her over and over again. When he began to raise Diana’s skirt from the back, Kitty swung round, opened the bathroom door, and deliberately slammed it behind her as loudly as she could.

Kitty soon decided that violent lust and emotional intensity were more immoral in a girl born with Diana’s advantages than they would be in anyone else. Diana had enough good things in life as it was; the folly and ingratitude of loving a man like Molloy made her sister-in-law truly angry.

Kitty knew that Lady Blentham would be furious too: and she told Edward that she meant to write to her, because Diana must not be allowed to wreck her life. Edward was shocked by his wife’s description of what she had seen, but he refused to do anything, and said that would be the wiser course for her to take as well.

Perhaps he was right, Kitty thought, when the letter to Angelina had been taken away. Perhaps her mother-in-law would not be in the least impressed by her writing, would even refuse to believe what she said. Lady Blentham had not once received her in the six years of her marriage, and Kitty hated her, though she understood. She wished that she were Angelina, able to be cruel sometimes and save Diana from ruin. Diana was a good, innocent girl, and worth saving.

Angelina looked at the signature, and moved her lips silently, then returned avidly to the beginning.

Angelina looked across the breakfast table at Diana, who was dressed in her riding habit and had opened
The
Times.
Probably she was reading the Divorce Court proceedings. ‘How dare –
can
you read the newspaper in front of me,’ said Lady Blentham in a low steady voice, and pulled it away from her daughter. ‘You know what my feelings are.’

‘Mamma!’

‘Be quiet, if you please.’ Lady Blentham was truly thankful that they were alone together. Charles was out, and Maud was in bed.

Diana watched the London dust floating in the sunlight before her mother’s pallid face, and with her eyes narrowed and blinking rapidly she thought of how she would marry Michael and live in Camden Town.

I am afraid Diana has formed a very unsuitable connection,
– Angelina supposed that Kitty had searched a long time for that phrase
– with an Irish painter, called Michael Molloy. I have met him at Arthur Cornwallis’s, and I suppose Diana met him there too, though exactly when I do not know. Whether he intends marriage or not, I also do not know. However, I do think that Violet
– not even ‘Lady Montrose’ thought Angelina! –
is in favour of the idea of them marrying. I hate to say anything so vulgar, but I saw Diana kissing Mr Molloy, at Violet’s little dance on Thursday.

‘Oh –’

‘Yes, Mamma?’

Angelina read on without replying.

Little Angel, an ugly baby, had been christened Angela after Lady Blentham, who considered the name a very inferior form of her own.

When Angelina laid down the letter, Diana said: ‘Mamma, I’m no longer so young that I cannot be allowed to read the newspaper for fear of knowing about things I should not.’

Angelina scarcely heard her. Her chief thought, for several moments, was of the woman’s insolence in doing right. Then, silently, she made herself concentrate on the sense of the ill-expressed letter.

‘Is that letter to do with me?’

‘Yes,’ said Lady Blentham at last.

Diana bent stiffly over her toast, and looked at it. ‘I should think it’s an impertinence.’

Angelina got up. ‘It is intolerably impertinent. From your sister-in-law.’

‘
Kitty
?’

‘Is it true, Diana, what it says?’

‘What does it say? I haven’t seen it.’ She guessed, although she did not know, and had never confided in Kitty.

‘You may read it,’ said Angelina in a voice of contempt.

Diana took it. No doubt, she thought when she finished reading, Kitty considered her letter a model of efficient dignity.

‘Well?’ said Lady Blentham.

Diana put down the letter and her napkin and went to the door. ‘I can’t talk about it now, Mamma. I’m going to see Kitty and ask her what she means.’

Angelina ran to her. ‘Then what she says is a falsehood? It’s slanderous, Diana?’

‘No, it’s not altogether a falsehood.’

‘Diana!’

‘No, Mamma!’ She left, and Angelina heard the front door slam.

Diana walked to the nearest cab rank, and told the driver to take her to Cadogan Square. Though in the past year she had had so much more freedom than before, she had been alone in a hansom cab only four times in her life. ‘I thought you were a friend,’ she said aloud to an imaginary Kitty, then realised she must not say anything so commonplace. She was as puzzled as she was bitter, and she was still trembling a little from her rejection of Angelina.

The hansom drew up before the young Blenthams’ house. Diana paid the cabman, rapped on the door, and was admitted by the butler, whose shocked and curious glance made her remember that she was still in riding-dress, and that it was far too early to be paying calls. She intended that, very soon, such things would no longer concern her.

‘Is Mrs Blentham at home?’

‘Yes, miss, that is –’

‘It’s important. Please ask her to see me – no, I’ll go up! Where is she?’ Kitty and Diana had had several friendly talks
at odd moments in public, but no one could think them intimate. Diana had rarely been to their house even since her coming of age, and the butler had taken a moment to recognise her. ‘Come, tell me!’ she said to him.

‘I believe in the boudoir, miss,’ said the man coldly. ‘But I fancy …’

Diana went upstairs and found the room. ‘Hello, Kitty!’ she said. Kitty, who was reading a novel on the sofa in her dressing-gown, looked up.

‘Well! You’re up early – you don’t want me to come riding with you, do you, because I’m afraid I can’t. Do sit down, Diana!’

‘Thank you. I’ve come about the letter you wrote to my mother,’ said Diana, sitting down and thinking that the pink-and-gold boudoir full of huge photographs and too-expensive flowers was just the thing for an actress. She assumed that Edward and Kitty were heavily in debt: an inexcusable, foolish thing to be. ‘She had it this morning.’

‘Oh, you’re cross, are you?’

‘Yes.’

‘Well, I meant it for the best, Diana.’

‘Nonsense.’

‘Why
do
you think I wrote, then?’ said Kitty, slowly closing her novel.

‘Some kind of spite – or jealousy. I can’t think what I’ve done to make you feel like that, to do what you have.’

‘Spite and
jealousy
?’ said Kitty.

‘Am I putting it too strongly?’ said Diana, consciously raising her eyebrows.

Kitty imitated her. ‘Rather, Diana. Of course I didn’t do it for
spite,
I did it for the very reasons I said. Because Lady Blentham will be able to stop you ruining your life, at least I’m pretty sure she will, which is what you’ll be doing, if you marry him – never mind if he seduces you. I’m sorry to speak so crudely, I’m sure, but you’re old enough to know what I mean!’

‘He wants to marry me. There’s no question of seduction.’

‘So much the worse!’ said Kitty. ‘In a sense.’

‘My mother won’t be able to prevent my marriage, neither will my father. I’m of age, though everyone seems to forget it.’

‘They’ll be able to – well, put pressure on you, and I just hope you’ll listen,’ said Kitty.

‘My mind is made up,’ said Diana.

‘So you’ll marry him, will you? And what will you live on, an allowance from Papa?’

‘Michael earns something and yes, I expect that once my parents have – recovered, they’ll give us something too,’ said Diana. She never took her eyes off Kitty, and her toes wriggled angrily inside her boots.

‘And supposing that’s so, how much do you suppose you’ll have?’

‘Four or five hundred a year? Many people live on less, though I don’t see quite why you …’

‘They do indeed, Diana. They live on much less, and do you know what it’s like! Now do stop looking as though you’d swallowed the poker, I thought I was a friend of yours.’

‘Diana, you don’t know what you’re doing, you’re just a girl in love, and you think you don’t care if you upset your family. D’you realise that if Michael Molloy marries you, you won’t be in Society?’

‘Realise it?’ said Diana. ‘Do you think I want to be “in Society” as you call it, any longer? When I could be …’ She did not say ‘just with him’, but she smiled. Until she met Michael, Diana had despised people who believed in what her father called love in a cottage on nothing a year. She felt much older now than she had felt a month ago, and not only older, but braver, wittier, stronger, more beautiful and wise.

‘I suppose he makes poverty look positively heavenly!’ snapped Kitty. ‘Well, I wash my hands of you.’

‘I’m so glad. Do you apologise for writing to my mother?’

‘No, I do not,’ said Kitty, sitting upright, with her hands crushed beneath her thighs. ‘Oh, I’m sorry if my doing that has only made you more headstrong about it all, and it looks as if it has! But I did the best I could and I can’t be sorry.’

‘If you wanted to save me from ruining my life,’ said Diana, ‘why didn’t you write to
me,
and give me your advice? Why
did you write to my mother, Kitty? Why couldn’t you say all that – all this to me?’

Looking at Diana, Kitty herself wondered why for a moment.

‘Was it an attempt to please her, make her pleased with you?’

‘I daresay, but what nonsense you do talk.’

‘It didn’t please her.’

‘I should imagine not.’

‘Well,’ said Diana, ‘I don’t want to have an irreparable quarrel with you. I’m going – let’s forget it. Will you cut me, Kitty, when I’m married?’ She got up and arranged her skirts.

‘I just might.’

‘Oh.’

‘Diana, do you remember coming to call on me when you were a flapper, and we were just married? You managed to come alone in a hansom, and, oh, you were so excited and pleased with yourself. No harm in that at that age. But you haven’t changed a bit.’

‘You’re so jealous, Kitty,’ said Diana. ‘Do cut me in future, it should be quite amusing in the circumstances.’

‘Diana Blentham, you’re a bloody idiot!’

Diana smiled, because the Cockney swear-word shocked her, and of course it ought not to, things being as they were. She left the house feeling quite calm, and on the whole decidedly the winner: though at the back of her mind there was a new picture of Kitty as a powerful, well-intentioned yet unpleasant woman. Diana did not think she would see her again. Once Kitty had represented a wild and intoxicating, quite improper world; but it was hard to remember that now.

*

Within a day, Diana’s family seemed to her to become caricatures of their old selves, dancing foolishly around her in bewilderment and rage. She remained quiet and determined, observing their vagaries; and the thought of Michael entirely prevented her being made unhappy by them. They were almost strangers, and Diana felt free, because she no longer belonged to them.

Five days after Violet’s dance, Diana met Michael down by the trees north of the Serpentine, a part of Hyde Park visited by few of her friends. She could have met him in her sister’s house, as she had already done twice that week: but she wanted nothing to do even with Violet, who had been so sensible and kind.

‘Well, darling? Why’s the need to be so clandestine?’ said Michael, folding up his Irish newspaper as soon as she came up looking anxiously for him. ‘Lady Montrose hasn’t turned nasty?’

Diana jumped. ‘Oh, dear one! No, she hasn’t, but I don’t want to use her.’ She blinked at him and took in her breath. ‘Michael, tell me, are you perfectly
sure
–’

‘Do you want us to be married soon? Is that it? Why, Diana? Don’t you remember saying six months?’ he told her, smiling suspiciously, and putting one thin, heavy arm round her waist.

‘My love.’ She squeezed his hand because he understood everything at once, more quickly than she did herself. ‘It’s so difficult, you’ll be horribly insulted and I can’t blame you.’

‘Ah?’ Michael reached up and picked a sticky leaf from one of the lime trees. There were a few late boats on the Serpentine, and its water was soft steel blue: dark green in the shade.

‘Papa had the – impertinence, when he’d read Kitty’s wretched letter, which I told you about as you know, to get one of his friends at the Home Office to make enquiries about you at Scotland Yard. Words dropped in the right ear at Brooks’s, all so very discreet, don’t you know?’ She longed for him to kiss her.