The Echoing Grove (26 page)

‘Oh, come off it,’ said Dinah still languidly but with a touch of something that might have been compunction in her voice. ‘You don’t need to justify it. There’s obviously something—God knows what—you felt you had to say to me; and if you’d written or telephoned beforehand I should have had the option of saying no; and you couldn’t risk that, you felt. So you plumped for shock tactics.’

‘They were a risk too.’ Madeleine went to the window and remained with her back turned, blindly looking out. ‘You’re not the only one to be subjected to shocks. I’m not the only one to inflict them.’

‘No—o …’ drawled Dinah in a judicial tone. ‘The shocks have been pretty evenly distributed.’

‘Your friend, for instance. His shock appears to have been total.’

‘Don’t take it personally.’ There was a hint of amusement in her voice; but turning from the window, Madeleine saw her face still clarified and stamped with its cold inward naught. ‘I’m sure he thought you were a smasher. If I saw him again he’d rave about you—you really embody his ideal of womanhood. But I shan’t see him again … or not for God knows how long. You see …’ She stopped, shrugged her shoulders; then said peremptorily: ‘Sit down again.’

Madeleine resumed her chair. Dinah’s eye ran over her, an appraising glance. She said partly to herself: ‘That’s a good suit. Who made it?’—then as if cutting in on her own frivolous train of thought, continued hurriedly:

‘What was I saying? Yes. I’ll tell you. We were trying to start up some sort of a life together—look after one another, keep ourselves ticking over—see? It wouldn’t make sense to you perhaps—I can’t go into it. You see, we were drinking. We drink when we’re in trouble—very weak of us, very unconstructive. He was in trouble too. It started about three weeks ago. I was sitting on a bench in Regent’s Park; and he came by. I hadn’t seen him for a long time. He was in very bad shape, that was obvious at a glance. I called out to him and then he went stiff all over, like an animal in danger. I thought he was going to bolt. But then suddenly he recognized me, he didn’t bolt, he came straight up and sat down beside me. He’d been kicked out of—someone’s flat, for stealing; and then the police had got on to him and picked him up; and some wealthy nobleman or other he’d expected would rally to him and bail him out had refused to help him—denied him thrice, in fact, to the police, as one might have expected. All very sordid. He was hysterical and melodramatic. He was going to blow the gaff on the lot of them, give ’em the works
—b
lackmail—God knows what.’ She paused to light a cigarette. ‘I’d been sitting there seriously considering doing myself in—bringing my life to an end. But now here was someone as lonely as myself: it seemed
meant
I should go on living. So I brought him back … He didn’t exactly jump at the idea; on the other hand he didn’t say
m
e nay. And here we’ve been mewed up ever since in this eccentric fashion. Not a very solid ground plan, I suppose. But it’s been company. I love his stories, they make me laugh—he’s got such an eye, such an ear for—well, human behaviour. We understand one another. He’s fond of me, I think. Is he my lover? That’s what you’re wondering, aren’t you? Mr and Mrs Masters didn’t envisage
that
when they discussed my case. Flat on my back of course, among the empty bottles, but not another
man
sharing my enseam
èd bed. I was to be put in my place
—put on probation—or in a Home for Inebriates.’ With every sentence her voice grew quieter, flatter, as if driven back further, further towards total concentration of energy without release. She put a hand up, forbidding interruption. ‘I know, know. He folded up on you, he passed the buck. I saw it all, I heard it as if I was in the room with you—that night he shook off my miasmic presence and scuttled back to you crying help, help!’

‘Shut up! Don’t be ridiculous. He didn’t.’

‘Oh yes, he did.’

‘He was so worried …’

‘Oh, I know all about his worries. We both know all about them now. He betrayed me to you.’

‘He did
not
betray you. He was in despair …’

‘I’d sooner he’d kicked me in the teeth. Cleaner … He thought I’d cracked up, he was scared. Poor brute, who can blame him? Poor Rickie. He’s handed over, you’re to be his conscience. I never would be that!
He’s
the one who’s done for, not me. You can tell him so from me.’

‘You’re wrong, you’re mad. It’s wicked of you. It’s not like that.’

‘Isn’t it? What is it then? He sent you to see me, didn’t he?’

‘No, he did
not.
It was my own idea.’

‘Begged you to take pity on me. Lend a helping hand. Oh, and he’d make it clear you could afford to. Because at last he’s come to his senses, he’s quite himself again. You can see eye to eye about me at long last. A drunken tart, pretty well past praying for.’

Covering her face with her hands Madeleine said: ‘I can’t stand this any more.’

It was the low thick almost guttural sound of the voice that she meant, rather than the horror of what was being said. But the sound ceased. Dinah sat still, upright, in a characteristic attitude, knees crossed, one high-arched foot in a green leather mule slanting downwards at its own odd steep angle. Still with
her
face buried, Madeleine brought out with heavy sighs, reluctantly: ‘If you think that of Rickie, you can’t love him.’

Her hands dropped down. Her eyes and those of Dinah met; they stared together, surrendering at last to one another the image, helpless and threatening, of the undone man between them. Presently Dinah said in a faint light voice:

‘Where is he? When is he coming back? … No, don’t tell me, what’s the use? How are the children?’

‘Very well.’

‘I hope you’re all right, all of you—will be. I’m not. But there’s nothing to be done. Thank you for coming—whatever you came for.’

‘Where has he gone?’ Dinah raised apathetically inquiring eyes. ‘Him, Rob.’ She hesitated over the semi-anonymous truncated name, feeling it stick suddenly in her throat, become a symbol for all she feared and hated—the levelling de-individualizing new order to whose massed ranks something in Dinah was committed.

‘Oh, Rob … God knows. I only know I’m sure he’s hopped it. Given me the bird.’ Her smile was wintry, wry.

‘But
why
?
Aren’t you—surely you’re being morbid? Why should he?—if he and you … You talk as if he was an escaped prisoner. I thought you said it worked—that you were getting on together …’

Passionately she wanted Dinah to have this life with Rob. If it would do to go on with, it must be restored to her: they must all be immunized against the dire possibility of Dinah being left with nothing.

‘I suppose,’ said Dinah after a moment, ‘he felt a prisoner. Well, I know he did. We both did in a way. But I hoped to make it work; and I suppose he had no hope. I could only deal with the material he let me deal with. What he was suppressing I could only—accept as being there and leave alone. There was plenty pushed down inside me too for him to leave alone. But for me it was different: I didn’t want to make a get-away; and sometimes he did want to. I’ve felt it more than once these last ten days. I hoped it was a phase that would pass once he got more confidence in—in his ability to lead a positive life.’ She paused, with a ghost of the forceful sniff that Madeleine had learnt in the schoolroom to associate with Dinah’s formulas for living: some plan or other laid down beforehand, expounded with this committee-woman’s sniff. Her face brightened for a moment, as if a gleam of curiosity, or of satisfaction in the untying of an intellectual knot were passing through her mind. ‘No, not hope,’ she murmured. ‘I just insisted to myself. I
wanted
it to work—and he was negative—he let me have a bash at it. He’s past
wanting.
Or never got as far as wanting …’ Her voice petered out on an edge of query; her face darkened again.

‘But you’re talking about him,’ said Madeleine, ‘as if it had all happened a long time ago. He’s only been out of the room about half an hour.’

She felt the protest to be, if not altogether convincing, at least sensible and bracing; and was startled to see Dinah’s mouth drop open as if she had received a shock: like a person, she thought uneasily, brought brutally to see herself in unsuspected straits, cut off.

‘Yes,’ she said presently, now totally incurious. ‘Yes, he’s only been gone … What does it mean that I’m talking about him in the past? It means that I saw the end from the beginning. But you gave me a turn when you pointed it out.’ Again a wry amusement touched her lips. ‘I do get confused about time. If one loses one’s emotional focus’—she stopped, struggled, went on huskily—‘that’s what happens. Aeons—split seconds—they interchange. One gets outside the usual way of counting:
you
know—meal times, morning, afternoon, evening, night, if one goes on sitting in this … if one has nobody to check up with.’

‘Oh, Dinah.’ Madeleine leaned forward, impulsively stretched out a hand. ‘Darling.’ But Dinah, though her eyes followed the movement without hostility, remained sitting bolt upright, not a muscle relaxing; and there was nothing to do except withdraw the hand. ‘I don’t know, I can’t know, what it’s all about; but I’m sure he will come back.’

‘He? Which?’
The monosyllables were a pounce, the glance accompanying them a sudden glare, the smile a grin. Madeleine looked away, less with a sense of outrage than of dread. Silence fell.

‘Sorry,’ continued Dinah, in thin staccato tones. ‘Uncalled for. I go too far and no mistake. Everybody has always told me so; or if not told me
shown
me so. What does one do about it? I must resign. Then I can hurt nobody and nobody can hurt me. What makes you sure that Rob will come back?’

The question was rapped out with no perceptible change of tone; yet Madeleine felt, or feared to discover, behind it an appeal for reassurance; as if even she, Dinah, might in the pass she had come to be willing to believe that her judgement might be faulty; and that someone coming fresh to Rob might have detected something she had overlooked or dared not build on.

‘It seems so dotty …’ she feebly began.

‘You mean, because if a visitor drops in unexpectedly and one offers them a drink and then finds one’s out of gin one naturally goes out to buy another bottle and naturally comes back with it?’

‘Well, roughly that. It all seemed to me quite natural—normal …
?
He didn’t appear in the least—upset or peculiar? You didn’t seem to mind. You gave him the money …’

It was all she could say; but still it weighed on her that their last chance had gone of saving this situation on any deeper, equalizing level. ‘Might your being sure conceivably make sense?’ had been the unutterable cry or question. Frankly, she had answered, she had observed nothing beyond what had been apparent: that he had quietly popped out to remedy the most trivial of social predicaments. It was all she had found to say and it was the truth: or rather it was honest. Going further than was necessary in honesty, she could have added that she had been half looking forward to the reappearance of this unusually decorative male figure; personally regretted his non-return. But the truth required of her had been of another order. If only she could have said, for instance: ‘Because from the way he looked at you it was perfectly clear to me that he adores you.’ Even the opposite, some barely formulated conjecture told her, would have conferred grace, or the right prelude for it, upon this botched, maimed scene; if she could have said something on the lines of: ‘No, I was judging superficially. Looking back I see now that everything was abnormal—looks, words, the way he took the note and didn’t say thank you and made off. You are probably right when you say he won’t come back. We must face the probability.’ Ah yes, if she could have seized her cue and spoken the lines that would have led with artifice to ‘we’, not ‘I’ and ‘you’ … Insight, in fact, plus magnanimity were what had been required, not honesty.

‘Yes, I did give him the money,’ agreed Dinah with slow cold satisfaction. ‘Thank God for that anyway—I didn’t prevent him. If anything brings him back, that will.’ She looked fully across the gulf at Madeleine. ‘You see, we hadn’t run out of gin. There’s two-thirds of a bottle in the kitchen. We didn’t hide it or pour it down the sink or lock it up. We’d got to the point of being able to look at it together.’ This time her laugh held a hint of rueful avowal in it: part of the void became a human area. ‘You little know what drunks get up to—their ruses and stratagems. The thing is, the moment I called him in the park and he stopped, and didn’t run away—the moment he came towards me was—well, saved’s a word I avoid—cured say, temporarily cured. I had good and sufficient reason to do what I preferred—snap out of it. But it wasn’t the same for him. I was just the offchance he saw of giving himself a breather. And then the offchance we neither of us mentioned that … However,
that
takes more than an act of hope on one side—which is all that it amounted to. Real hope isn’t like that, is it? It’s a state. For instance, being pregnant is a state of hope, real hope; but knowing it’s on the cards one might become so isn’t. He’d simply gone to earth. Men do that more than women, perhaps you’ve noticed. Isn’t it queer to sleep in a shroud with someone? Perhaps you never have; but
if
you have by any chance you’ll know one can’t be said to have a lover in one’s bed. That’s the answer to your inquiry.’

‘I didn’t inquire,’ the other murmured. ‘It’s not my business anyway.’

‘No, it isn’t, but I don’t mind telling you.’

But I mind hearing, thought Madeleine, shrinking from the revelation. Such sexual confidences they had never, even in the old days, attempted to exchange. She curled herself sideways in her chair, one elbow propped on the arm and her chin in her hand: look and pose of a schoolgirl, nonplussed, chagrined, with flushed cheek and thick-lashed eyes cast down. I haven’t much experience, she thought, abashed, uneasy, knowing that what Dinah had so violently exposed would germinate in her, pushing up wild shoots in territories fallow now for years; never to be explored, since her sole tenant, to whom she was still bound, disturbing once the virgin surface, taking the thin sweet-and-sour-tasting crop, had left her soil unhusbanded. Null sleep she knew, the neutral double nights of unembracing, casting no light or shadow; not folded, not released … Not in a shroud: not what they meant, not the level that they pierced, those words half understood that haunted her:
youth pined away, snow-shrouded virgin; fiend; rose; sick rose; invisible worm.