The Echoing Grove (16 page)

‘So I went,’ he said. ‘I didn’t go to see a chap about my passport.
I
went round to see her.’

‘How was she?’ asked Madeleine, sorting strands of wool.

‘Oh, not exactly …’ He shrugged his shoulders, not attempting to disguise his wretchedness. ‘As you can imagine.’

‘No, I can’t imagine,’ said Madeleine in a thoughtful drawl. ‘I’ve decided not to go in for that any more—I mean, imagining probable aspects of this situation. One doesn’t want to go off one’s head. If you were in my place you might see the point.’

‘Oh, very possibly,’ he said with courteous restraint. ‘If I were in your place I could dispense with imagining
one
aspect of the situation, couldn’t I? I’d know. I don’t say I would succeed, like you, in eliminating every probable aspect. Yet one doesn’t, as you say, want to go off one’s head.’

She threaded a needle in silence; then said in a practical voice: ‘I rather wish you hadn’t—felt you must agree to go and see her. But perhaps—probably—you wanted to. How should I know? That’s your own affair, I suppose. What did she want to see you about?’

‘I don’t know.’

She raised her head from the work and sent him a look he did not meet but was aware of. He said:

‘I didn’t discover. She was in no fit state—it wasn’t any use. So I came away—as you were able to see for yourself.’

‘What do you mean, in no fit state?’ He did not reply, and she added: ‘Upset? Drunk?’

Overcoming an inner spasm, after a moment he nodded.

‘I see. She’s difficult when she’s drunk. Argumentative—truculent rather.’ He slightly shook his head. ‘Or at another stage,’ she continued, maintaining the practical level, ‘low in her spirits. Tearful.’

‘I expect you’re right,’ he said, polite. ‘I haven’t had much opportunity myself of observing these various stages. I happen not to have seen Dinah the worse for drink—that is, not what you’d call absolutely inebriated.’

‘You
know
she drinks like a fish.’

Raw, coarse, the words escaped, and hung between them offensive, ponderous as a hanged body. He got up in a leisurely way, stretched, his gaze travelling round with the look of one vaguely noting and dismissing objects before leaving a room—perhaps for ever.

‘Rickie!’ She found herself on her feet, confronting his inert figure and dead eyes. ‘Are you ill? Do you feel it?’ She reached for his hand and felt it cold and clammy. He drew it away.

‘No.’

‘Sit down.’

He did not mean to obey her, but found himself dropping heavily back, without volition, into his armchair. He was taking a stiff whisky from her and thanking her and hearing her say gently: ‘There, drink that, darling. Lie back. You’re tired, that’s all.’

‘I’m all right—except I’m in a muck sweat. I’ll have a shower.’

‘Presently.’

She was kind, she was quiet, she was in charge. He focused his eyes on her and saw her at first through an effect of blurred vision, then distinctly, sitting in her usual place opposite to him, her elbows propped on her knees and her chin on her palms, leaning forward to scrutinize him with an expression of authoritative solicitude; a beautiful, kind woman, at once familiar and a stranger. They smiled at one another. She said:

‘You looked such an awful colour, I thought you were going to pass out.’

He shook his head; but he felt thoroughly weakened, helpless, he wanted only sympathy and guidance. He wanted to say: ‘For God’s sake, take over, I don’t know what to do’; and so finally collapse in a last expenditure of shame and frustration.

Next moment he said it, almost under his breath: ‘I don’t know what to do.’ He felt his face working and heard convulsive sighs emanating from his own aching throat; also a voice from nowhere, from the pit, icily shrill, rejoicing:
‘
I say, you chaps!—here’s Masters blubbing again.’

He was grateful to her because she did not come maternally to draw his head down on her breast, but went on sitting, half turned away, in a familiar attitude again, her immature, imperfect, charming profile unconscious of itself in deep reflection, drawn down into a schoolgirl’s double chin.

‘Listen, Rickie,’ she said presently. ‘Wash out the bitchy things I said. I’m sorry!’

‘
You
’ve
nothing to be sorry for,’ he said: to this one too.

‘Yes, I have. And I am. You’re terribly worried about her?’

‘Yes. Oh yes. But there’s nothing I can do about her.’ He sat up and blew his nose.

‘She’s really in a bad way?’

‘I think so.’

‘You’re afraid she’ll take to the bottle again?’

The statement, clinical, made without an edge of diffidence or even of query, caused him another surge of suffocation, this time quickly suppressed. It seemed to him in everybody’s interest to surrender Dinah’s pride.

‘I don’t know that I’d exactly pin it down to that,’ he said, uncomfortably. ‘She
had
been drinking this evening and judging by … the state of the kitchen …’

‘What was the state of the kitchen?’ Her head came round, she looked across at him with lively curiosity.

‘Well … quite a number of empty bottles … I should be inclined to think—yesterday and the day before and the day before as well … and probably tomorrow and the day after … How should I know? It’s not my business anyway—it’s nobody’s business how she … But of course it was painful. To have my nose rubbed in it. What I am responsible for. On top of everything else, I mean.’

She took up her work again and said after a moment or two, in a considered way: ‘You shouldn’t feel too responsible. Some people always do drink their way through trouble. I couldn’t myself, nor could you, but as she’s done it before, I suppose she’s that sort of person: she’ll do it again. She stopped before. She’ll very very probably stop again. But it is upsetting.’ She laid down her work, brooding. ‘Horrid altogether. And awful for you, I do see.’

‘Christ!’ He burst into a laugh and checked it, telling himself that to counter with bitterness and sarcasm would be to start the vicious duel again. ‘That’s not the point, is it—my lacerated feelings? Hers seem to me a lot more important. I can’t subscribe, you know, to this simplified view. Apart from which, I call it taking on a pretty big responsibility to label anybody a drunk.’

‘I don’t,’ she protested quickly, as if a little hurt and shocked. ‘On the contrary, I said I thought—this was only temporary. She’s very resilient.’

He was moved to remark aloud upon the similarity of the comments these girls made about one another; he refrained. He said rather shortly:

‘I misunderstood you, then. I’m glad we’ve cleared that up.’

He wondered if perhaps there was now nothing more to say. He put his arms out along the arms of the chair, leaned his head back, closed his eyes and said:

‘She’s drinking because she’s alone and because she’s in despair. If she did it before, you know, and I know, that was why she did it. You know why she stopped: because I stopped her. Not forcibly, of course. Because she stopped being alone. And because I was able to make her happy. We don’t need to go into how—everlastingly regrettable that was on my part. Not again. What’s bothering me is that I can’t stop her this time … As for you, I don’t know what’s going on in your head. I can’t imagine. You’re behaving very well, I must say.’

The more he talked, the more the drone of his own voice seemed to anaesthetize him. He might, he thought, have gone on much longer, but on the other hand it was a bit less trouble not to go on any longer. He continued to lie somnolent, every muscle slack, his mouth fallen slightly open. It crossed his mind that if he could remain thus, he was in a very strong position—yes, scoring proper bull’s-eyes, like a person coming round from chloroform. No use for the nurse to bridle, flounce, scold, weep, coax, cross-examine: he was entirely excused; she simply had to take it.

‘Shall I go and see her?’ said her voice, at last, from afar; and he replied, at last, from an equal distance:

‘Would that be a good idea?’

‘Goodness knows.’ He heard her get up and rustle about, brushing, smoothing, tucking in chair covers, emptying an ash-tray with brusque-sounding movements. ‘But you wouldn’t object?’

‘It’s not for me to object.’

‘Oh, do shut up saying it’s not for you to this and that. I’m fed up with it, it’s so feeble and priggish. I merely wanted to make sure I don’t get bawled out by either of you afterwards for my utterly crass, gross, tasteless, tactless, beastly cheek—just like me—even to suggest such a thing.’

‘I can’t answer for her,’ he said, opening one eye. He watched her snatch up a harmless cushion, beat it into shape, fling it back into its correct position. ‘She might not trust you—beforehand … as I do.’

He saw her pause in her brisk automatic tasks, standing still with her head lifted as if listening attentively for the meaning of his last words.

‘Well, she ought to trust me,’ she said finally, rather aggrieved. ‘After all, we’ve known each other since …’ She shrugged her shoulders. ‘But I’m glad you do,’ she added with a light sigh, sardonic possibly.

‘What will you do?’ he murmured.

‘Do?’

‘Say. If—when—you meet.’

‘
That
I shall never tell you.’ He opened both eyes wide to see her posed before the fireplace, drawn up to more than her full height, looking extraordinarily dignified, dramatic. ‘And I must ask you now to give me your solemn word never, never to question me.’

‘I swear it.’ Sitting as it were at her feet in his armchair, he felt at a disadvantage.

‘And I must rely on you never, never,
never
to question her.’

‘You can rely on me.’

‘It’s the first thing I shall tell her—if I see her: that you’ve given me your word. And she must too. That’s my condition: it’s to be between myself and her, and nobody else.’

He tried to imagine Dinah thus confronted. Would she feel, as he did, impressed, abashed and hypnotized?

‘Why are you shaking your head?’ asked Madeleine, rather sharply.

‘I didn’t know I was.’ He sat up, yawned. ‘It must have been reflex action. Something—what is it?—walking over my grave.’

‘It is fantastic,’ she agreed, rubbing her eyes. ‘Perhaps I’m still numb. Or dotty. If I let myself think about it I’d …’ She stooped and began to gather up her work and fold it into a large quilted bag. ‘Mind you, I haven’t decided yet if I’ll do it at all. If I can possibly face it—apart from whether it’s any use.’ She switched off the lamp on the table by her chair. ‘But somebody’s got to take action, I suppose. We can’t sit at home making wax figures and sticking pins in them and burning each other in effigy. With you scurrying between us to collect the drips.’

He did not care for his
r
ôle.
He got up and said politely:

‘Well, I’m going to bed now. And I’m extremely grateful.’

He dragged his heavy limbs upstairs, telling himself that women were formidable, really relentless; not a nerve in their bodies.

He fell asleep at once and dreamed that he was bouncing two hard rubber balls on the asphalt floor of something like a school games yard, watched by his mother and somebody like Corrigan. Bounce, bounce, higher, higher! ‘Look out!’ ‘It’s quite all right,’ said he, or someone, reassuringly. ‘They’re made of elastic. Very, very, very resilient.’

The floor began to crack and tilt.

Two days later he went abroad. During this time Madeleine remained active, serene and wifely. The children were round him while he shaved and dressed, and both evenings were devoted to pleasant social engagements in the company of friends of their mutual circle. Looking beautiful, her brilliance misted in an aerial web swathed over a small white straw hat with two white roses nestling in its brim, she accompanied him to the airport to see him off. He went first to Milan, then to Rome, then to Bucharest. He was a poor correspondent, but he wrote regularly to Madeleine—sketchy travel bulletins; her letters, long, affectionate, amusing, arrived regularly at every address he wired to her. She said she missed him; he told her in reply that he often wished her with him; but wherever he went, whatever he saw, it was Dinah that he missed. Five, six times he started the letter to Dinah, the final true terrible letter of love, the ineluctable farewell; each time he tore it up.

After three weeks, on his way back through Rome, he looked up a certain Italian count, a light-hearted chap, who had been his contemporary at Oxford, went dining and dancing, was introduced to a rather attractive woman, youngish, married but husbandless,
plantureuse,
unromantic but amorous, and to their great mutual pleasure spent the night with her in her luxurious apartment. Unfaithful at last to Dinah after all these years. Next morning, in a generally unadhering frame of mind, he got a short note off to her, told her he thought of her very often, sadly and helplessly, hoped she was getting out and seeing people, feeling better in every way; wished to God there was something he could do for her. He supposed he’d be back, he said, before very long: he couldn’t help dreading London and the dismal grind. With his love always, Rickie. Then he scrawled a postscript: if there was anything he could do, anything practical, would she promise to let him know? But they could not meet, she
must
see that by now, as plainly as he did. He could never forgive himself but clung to the hope that one day, looking back on it all, she would remember only their love which was something he would never forget and be able to forgive him. His greatest wish was for her happiness.

That was that, he told himself, dropping it into the letter-box; pretty poor, but the best he could manage. Occasionally, during the forty-eight ensuing hours before he caught the home-bound plane, he reflected that he would try for the present to get abroad as often as possible. He had made excellent contacts, brought off three deals with which he had been entrusted: the uncles would certainly be pleased with him. More than once he considered ringing up his Italian bed-fellow to make another date. He did not do so. In retrospect she talked too much and he found her tuberose scent, still clinging to his suit, rather cloying and sickly. He sent her a box of red carnations. He told himself that in future, while seeking no amorous adventure, he would take whatever came along. Nothing, oh nothing on the grand scale, nothing ever any more to shame and torture. He would do his duty by Madeleine, poor girl, and by the children. He longed to be old and past the game that no one ever won. He was tempted to wish that he was fitted to become a monk.