The Echoing Grove (11 page)

‘Are you listening?’ he asked in a stern voice.

‘Yes.’ She shut her eyes.

‘She rang me up this morning at the office. I nearly jumped out of my skin. I hadn’t seen her since—or heard a whisper of her since last—whenever it was. You can imagine I was startled. She said she was going to the flat to pack up for good and clear out, and would I come along for half an hour or so, just to settle up a few things—business things. It was in my name, you know—the flat.’

‘I didn’t know.’

‘The rent was paid till September, but she’d decided to get out.’

‘You paid it.’

‘I paid it.’

‘I didn’t realize she was so completely your kept woman.’

‘She wasn’t,’ he said unprotestingly. ‘I simply paid the rent of this flat. She didn’t want that even, but I insisted.’ He paused: added bitterly: ‘To soothe my conscience.’

‘She was on your conscience?’

‘Oh, everybody was on my conscience.
You
were—are …’ He uttered a brief snort of laughter. ‘Naturally I felt responsible for her.’

So put that in your pipe, she told herself, and smoke it. But the sense of outrage burned in her like a corrosive chemical.

‘You know,’ he continued, ‘how independent she is.’ Tone of one discussing an acquaintance about whose character they had long been in agreement.

‘Oh yes! It’s not a quality one necessarily admires. It’s easy to flaunt one’s independence at other people’s expense. In other words to be a ruthless egotist.’

‘Well, it can mean that,’ he conceded, judicial. ‘I didn’t say I necessarily admired it. Though as a matter of fact in her I do.’

So put
that
in your pipe … ‘And your precious sense of responsibility!’ she cried, half choking. ‘It’s just your hopeless weakness. She can twist you round her little finger.’

‘So can you then,’ he said with a smile. ‘I never did give myself marks for it. But there it is: it must be put up with.’

She felt suddenly ashamed; and then despairing.

‘Are we
never
to get rid of her then? Is that what you’re telling me? Will you never get over it—get free of her? Is she going to turn up again for ever, to make my life hell, to whistle you back whenever she feels inclined, to ruin our future? Because if so …’

‘Hush!’ he said sharply. He took his hand away, and fixing her with a look of mingled anger and desperation, added: ‘If you’re going to start a scene again, I must go. I shall go to my room.’

He rose as if to carry out this threat, but as she remained dumb, sank down again. He sat rather bowed with his hands spread out on his knees, and said at last in a quiet voice:

‘I shan’t see her again. There wasn’t any question of it. I don’t know where she’s been, I don’t know where she went. Where she is now. She left when I did and handed me the keys and went I don’t know where.’

After a silence she said timidly:

‘Then you haven’t been with her just now?’

‘No, I have not. The flat is empty.’ He stared at the waxing light in the blue curtains.

‘I wish,’ she said with a sigh, ‘you hadn’t gone there when she asked you to. It was bound to—be a mistake. Still, I suppose you felt you must.’

He did not answer this. Throwing away the words, she said:

‘How is she?’

‘Well. At least … No. Ill, I think. She looked it. I don’t know. An awful colour.’

‘She’s always been an awful colour. It doesn’t mean anything. At least,’ she added, seeing the protest in his face, ‘she’s always been pale.’

‘Mm. Oh, pale, yes—she’s always been pale … She’s as thin as a wraith. All eyes. I don’t mind betting she hasn’t had a square meal for weeks. Sort of transparent.’

‘I expect she’s having a non-eating period. She’s done it before. People said how ethereal she’d grown to look, how spiritual. Or perhaps she’s starving simply for the experience.’ Masquerading as reassurance, hostility made her voice tense and thin. Destroy, destroy this too potent image of pathos and misfortune, she told herself. At all costs let him not pity, not wish to protect. But the face—all eyes—stared from its ambush, sickening his heart with pity, hatred, shame and yearning.

‘You may be right.’ He blew out a shuddering sort of sigh.

‘So you went round, to settle things up.’

‘Yes. For about an hour—oh, less. It was all quite formal.’ His nostrils dilated. ‘Extremely formal. Ceremonial handing over of the keys.’

‘What is she doing now? I mean, where is she living? Has she …’ Seeing him set his lips, she checked herself and added quietly: ‘All right. Don’t tell me anything. I don’t want to know.’

Dinah’s muted voice was in his ears, saying in answer to some question of his: ‘Oh no, I haven’t been here for a long time—until today’; and then his own voice saying:

‘You’ve been abroad haven’t you?’

‘What made you think that?’

‘Someone told me so. Mentioned it. I think it must have been your mother. But perhaps I got it wrong.’

‘Oh, I see.’ She paused; something—amusement?—contracted her face for a moment, throwing cheek-bones and temples into even sharper relief. ‘You must have got it wrong. I haven’t been abroad.
H
ave you seen Mother lately?’

‘Not very lately. She’s pretty tired, as you know. She can’t leave your father—or won’t.’

She lowered her eyes, and was silent. Presently he said:

‘You’ve been—where then?’

She looked at him, raising her eyebrows as if in surprise, and said:

‘In London.’ Silence. ‘Quite in another quarter though.’

‘Alone?’

‘No. With someone.’

‘I see. I hope you’re happy.’

‘Yes, thank you, perfectly happy.’

‘May I know with whom?’

‘No, I don’t think so,’ she said without hesitation, still in that muted voice.

The snub made him wince, but he said politely: ‘Just as you choose. I’m sorry if I appeared impertinent. I’m very glad to hear you’re happy, and I hope this chap will prove more satisfactory than I did. Not that
that
would be difficult. He’s expecting you back?’

Did she hesitate then? Was it only inside himself that a screw tightened as she replied: ‘I’m going straight back.’ Was that, in fact, what she did say? Certainly he could still hear the very telling lines he was given next.

‘Well, ask him from me to take you out for a change and give you a steak and a bottle of good claret.’

Her eyes seemed to narrow, then fixed him in wide open blankness.
Touch
é!
Just as he’d guessed: some down and out, some cad or cripple.

‘You’re not looking very well,’ she said. ‘Have you quite recovered?’

‘Yes, thank you. Entirely recovered.’

‘And you’re happy?’

‘Oh yes. I wouldn’t go so far as to say
perfectly
happy, like yourself. But I get along.’

‘Children well?’

‘Splendid.’

‘I found these cuff links in a drawer.’ She passed them to him, adding in a preoccupied way: ‘I don’t think there was anything else of yours.’

‘Oh, thank you. Very careless of me. Funny I hadn’t missed them.’

‘Oh well, you have others …’

From first to last no kindness, and no truth.

Madeleine said nervously:

‘You went back for your cuff links … I don’t quite …’

‘Oh yes. She’d found them when she was clearing out. She gave them to me—that I’m sure of. But what I did with them, God knows. I never thought about them again till I came in and you said—that. Later on, when I left in that abrupt and offensive manner, it occurred to me—after a bit—to go along and see if they were still there. I don’t like loose ends, they trip you up.’

‘Did you ring?’

‘Yes, I rang.’ His lip curled faintly. ‘I didn’t really expect anybody to come to the door, and nobody did. So I decided to break in.’

‘How did you manage?’

‘Easy, once I put my mind to it. There’s a bit of low spiked area railing on the right. I vaulted that—just missed crashing down the area steps—and landed up between the wall of the house and a sort of partition wall on the corner. There was a thread of path to get round to the back by. I found a window, a small one, unlatched, about the level of my head. I guessed it was a lavatory and it was—a most unsavoury one. I clawed on the window and pushed it down as far as it would go, and got a grip on the top of the frame and swung up. I just managed to wriggle through and went in head first groping for the lavatory seat and pretty well turned a somersault. It was damned uncomfortable.’ He stopped and glanced at her, as if suddenly aware that his voice was expressing nothing more nor less than simple pride and satisfaction in his exploit. ‘I knew,’ he went on, ‘that Mrs Thingummy slept somewhere around, not to speak of an antediluvian yapping terrier bitch, but on the deaf side both of them, thank God. Anyway there wasn’t a sound from any one of us. Then I took my shoes off and went up several flights of stairs. As I told you, there was nobody. Nothing.’

She made an effort, drew a hand from under the bedclothes, took his, and said with sympathy:

‘It must have been horrible.’

‘It was rather.’

‘You’d been hoping she might have come back. Might still be there.’

Letting his hand lie in hers, he studied the carpet.

‘I don’t know,’ he said, after a brooding silence. ‘What good would it have been?—no good at all. It was the unreality … earlier on. I got it into my head, if I checked up I’d—recover my sense of direction. However, there was nothing there. No links—not of any kind! Not a clue.’ His mouth twisting ironically, he gave her hand a sudden quick pressure.

‘You’ve no idea what she’s doing?’

‘Living with someone. That’s all I know. She said that.’

Ah! …
Her heart struck like a clock.

‘Who?’

‘God knows.’

I bet I know.

‘Did she tell you?’

‘She said just that. Someone.’

A complex of emotions made her say quickly:

‘Well,
that
won’t last long, take it from me.’

He sent her an inquiring glance, opened his lips to speak, but only shrugged his shoulders. She murmured:

‘Do you mind so dreadfully?’

‘Oh well … It’s never altogether pleasant, you know. A blow to vanity.’

‘I do know.’ Still her predominant wish was to console him.

He nodded. ‘However much one might reasonably expect it. Or even wish it.’

‘You did …’ she said hurriedly; added: ‘Wish it.’

‘Oh certainly. I’ve been hoping—well, hope’s the wrong word … but if I knew she was being looked after, it would be a load off. I might not exactly relish it but—it would be a load off.’

‘I don’t suppose one would be likely to thank—one’s ex-lover—for being so magnanimous,’ she said after a silence.

‘I’m not magnanimous. It’s easy putting on a magnanimous act if you’re indifferent. But in fact,’ he said, curt, ‘I’m not.’

She bit on this in silence, in almost physical pain.

‘No,’ he went on, ‘it’s my streak of realism. It generally operates too late. And neither of you ever appreciated it.’ He lightly pressed her hand again. ‘Not that I expect thanks—from either of you.’ His nostrils stretched, in self-contemptuous amusement.

‘I cannot bear it,’ she cried, ‘that you feel responsible for her. I cannot bear it.’ He was silent and, struggling for composure, she went on: ‘I know her better than you do. Twenty-eight years I’ve known her. She’s well able to take care of herself.’

‘I wish I could believe you,’ he said soberly.

‘She’s quite unscrupulous. She only cares about what she wants.’

‘What does she want?’

‘You, I suppose. Me out of the way—destroyed—and you at her disposal. Utterly … Don’t you see this is just another move in the same old game? She wanted to find out if you’d still come when she whistled. And you did. Oh, round you trotted. And now you’re on a string again. And off she goes,
mysteriously,
knowing you won’t rest now till you’ve found her. Which is exactly what she wanted.’

He bent his head and meditated, as if debating the strength of this case against Dinah.

‘She didn’t behave as if’—he stopped—‘as if that was exactly what she wanted.’

‘How did she behave?’

‘As if she was’—he stopped again—‘in a bad way.’

‘I thought you said it was all very formal.’

‘Yes. She’s not usually formal. Why should she be like that? She’s so direct as a rule: not exactly informal, ever, but absolutely direct.’

‘You amaze me,’ she replied, with subdued but passionate sarcasm. ‘If that’s your considered judgement you amaze me. I think one of us must be confusing terms. To me, direct means honest, it doesn’t mean self-assured. I grant you she’s
that.
However …’

‘Mm. Yes. Honest,’ he repeated in a tone of preoccupied corroboration. ‘That’s what I do mean. That’s how I think of her.’ A spasm of distress crossed his face; as if what had passed between him and Dinah was at last beginning to take form, substance, colour, at last becoming evidence he recognized. He added: ‘She wasn’t self-assured. Quite the opposite.’

‘Feeling her way perhaps. A bit embarrassed. I can’t remember ever seeing her embarrassed but she may be capable of it.’ He looked at her with vague inquiry. ‘I mean, she was telling you, wasn’t she, she’d already—found someone else …’

‘Oh, that wouldn’t embarrass her,’ he said decisively. A look sardonic, indulgent, appeared on his lips: distasteful to observe, seeming to uncover secret vistas of experience sexually shared, imparted without guilt. ‘She never made any bones about that sort of thing.’

‘I suppose she played you up with—descriptions. I believe some women do.’

The look altered sharply to a wary reticence, and then to blankness. ‘Oddly enough,’ he said with detachment, ‘I never minded what she might be up to. Yet I’m as jealous as the next man. Horribly jealous, in fact.’ He frowned in a surprised way. ‘I suppose she gave me confidence … It didn’t matter … I knew, or rather …’ He checked himself, then concluded: ‘Oh no, she’s freer than some in her—private life, but she’s not a bitch. She’d never get me round to cock a snook at me.’

The tide was beginning to crawl in again: unpredictable tide that rose now and then from somewhere beyond the farthest point of ebb and swung them off the treacherous flats they stood on. She felt it start to lift her, stinging and cleansing the raw abscess in her breast. Hold on, she told herself, soon we shall be afloat, we shall have drawn one another in.