The Scent of Water (19 page)

“Forget it!” said Charles impatiently. “You’re spending the day with me, aren’t you?”

“Yes, I am,” said Valerie softly and moved a little closer to him. He had insisted on driving her car, for he hated being driven by a woman. He drove well but extremely fast. “Not so fast, darling,” she whispered.

He accelerated slightly. He was in a rotten temper and the pressure of her shoulder against his, the perfume of her scent in his nose, no longer gave him the slightest pleasure, merely irritated him. He had been a fool to let it begin again. The sense of guilt, that always oppressed him when he was at Appleshaw with his parents, was heavier than ever now that he had met Randall and liked him. It had never been his habit to consider the feelings of husbands, which he regarded as none of his business, but Randall was different. He felt curiously connected with the man, involved with him. And involvement was a thing he avoided like the plague.

“What’ll he do all day?” he asked. “Work?”

Valerie opened her eyes, which she had closed partly to avoid her nervousness over Charles’s driving, partly in an effort to recapture the sense of being young and beautiful that she had always felt in his company. “Paul? Just moon about. What work he does he only does at night. He’ll probably stuff the cold ham I left him into his pocket and go out to the woods. He’s bone lazy, you know.”

“So you have frequently told me,” said Charles. “How does he find his way about in the woods?”

“He’s got Bess and a good bump of locality. The blind have, you know. They develop marvelous powers. People pity them but they needn’t.”

“No?” inquired Charles dryly, and then after a pause, “As it happens I don’t pity Randall. I shouldn’t presume.”

“For heaven’s sake, Charles!” ejaculated Valerie. “Are we to spend this heavenly day together arguing about Paul?”

“Who began it?” inquired Charles. “And if this is a heavenly day keep your eyes open, woman, and look at it.”

“I didn’t mean heavenly because of flowers, and sunshine, I meant heavenly because we are together.”

“I take you. But I thought flowers and sunshine were supposed to be an added bloom upon the rapture of young love?”

Though her eyes were closed again she knew he was looking at her and wondered if she was looking as young and beautiful as she felt; or was trying to feel, for there was a sense of strain in it all today; and she was aware of the mockery.

“You’re hateful, Charles!” she flashed.

“I am,” he agreed. “Let’s stop somewhere and have a drink.”

They stopped at the next pub and after that they managed better. In Westwater he bought her an expensive pair of earrings out of the money his father had lent him and then they lunched in a hotel and laughed and talked in something of their old style. They went to a movie and he did not repulse the hand she slipped into his. Yet all the time he was thinking, What damned fools we’d look if the lights went up, and he thought that growing old, if you’ve neither wisdom nor stability, does make a fool of a man. Shows you up. And despair took hold of him. It was lightened by the thought, Dad’s no fool. He seemed for a moment or two to share his father’s wisdom. It fell over him like a cloak and provided a modicum of shelter.

Valerie, eating chocolates while Charles smoked, wondered if Paul had gone to Nightingale Wood. He had told her about it soon after they had come to Appleshaw, and had wanted to take her there. “It’s the sort of place you want to share with someone else,” he had said. She couldn’t remember now why she hadn’t gone, she hadn’t wanted to for some reason or other, some good reason of course. Suddenly a suspicion scorched across her mind. Was he sharing it today with Mary Lindsay? He’d been for a walk with her once before. One way and another he seemed to see a lot of her. That hateful woman! She slaved for Paul, she was the most marvelous wife, and this was all the thanks she got. The film was very affecting and tears of self-pity welled up. She reached for her handkerchief and dabbed at her eyes.

“What’s up?” asked Charles.

“Sometimes I think you don’t care about me as much as you did,” she whispered. “It’s been wonderful, finding each other. It’s still wonderful, isn’t it?” She nestled closer to him, for contact between his body and hers had always sent a thrill through her. It did not come today. His body felt curiously heavy and sullen against her shoulder, though he returned the pressure of her hand.

“This is a rotten film,” he said, regarding a close-up of an enormous embrace with an equally enormous nausea. “Let’s get out. Let’s go to that place on the river. You know. We went there once before. And have a drink.”

They drove to the place on the river and sat in the garden watching the swans. Valerie had tea and sugar cakes which made her feel slightly sick after the chocolates and the swaying speed of the car, and Charles had several more drinks. He had to nerve himself to end this thing. It had become ridiculous. Yet he had still said nothing when Valerie began to fuss about getting back to cook Paul’s evening meal. And he must. He couldn’t do it in the car and have a weeping woman on his shoulder. They’d land in the ditch. “Don’t fuss, Val!” he said impatiently. “Paul doesn’t strike me as the kind of chap to make a stink if his chops are five minutes late.”

She looked at him sharply. “How
does
he strike you? You met him at the local, didn’t you?”

“Not at all what I expected from your description. Quiet, easy sort of chap. We’re going for a walk together on Friday.”

She was horrified, all the magazine stories she had ever read rising up and circling around her like a cloud of bats with warning squeaks. “A walk together? Charles, you can’t do that!”

“Why not?”

“Well, you can’t, he doesn’t know about you and me.”

“I bet he does. He’s no fool.”

She was on her feet in agitation. “Of course he doesn’t know. If he knew he’d have made a scene.”

“He’s no scene maker. Don’t be a fool, Val. Sit down.”

“No. It’s not chops. It’s casserole and it needs a good hour.”

She was walking quickly toward the car and he could only follow her in mingled exasperation and relief. He hadn’t done it, and now, he couldn’t. Another day. A little later. But once in the car, exasperation triumphed over relief and he drove far too fast and not at all steadily. As they whirled through the lanes Valerie was frightened. He was, she thought, a little drunk. And he looked sweaty and hot. How could she have thought him so marvelously good-looking?

“Let me drive, Charles,” she said sharply, hating him for her fear.

“Little fool,” he muttered.

“Stop, Charles! I must drive. If you don’t stop I’ll make you.”

He laughed and drove on, with his elbow out to keep her away from him. They passed a cottage, lurched around a corner on the wrong side and confronted an oncoming car. Charles wrenched at the wheel and they mounted the grass verge and crashed into a telegraph post.

It was what is called a minor accident and after a few moments of bewildering confusion Valerie was aware of herself being helped out of the car, and then she was standing on the grass crying but unhurt. But Charles, it seemed, was hurt, for the occupants of the other car, a man and a woman who were strangers to her, were fussing over him where he lay on the grass. No one was fussing over her and she cried so bitterly that the woman came over to her.

“Don’t worry, my dear. He’s all right. Just concussion and a broken collar bone, we think. My husband is a doctor. Your car is rather knocked about but you two are all right. Come and see your husband. You’ll see for yourself he’s not badly hurt.”

But Valerie shook her head and looked the other way. She hated illness and injury and she didn’t want to look. Her crying took on a hysterical note and the man said curtly over his shoulder, “Take her into the cottage and tell them to give her a cup of tea. Plenty of sugar.”

She was taken into the cottage and a dear old woman gave her tea and made a great fuss over her and she began to feel better. A policeman appeared from nowhere and took notes. The doctor telephoned for an ambulance and it came and took Charles to the hospital. The doctor went with Charles and his wife drove her to Appleshaw. “Put me down here, please,” she said when they got to the green. “My cottage is quite close.”

“Is there anyone at home to look after you?”

“Yes,” said Valerie. “Put me down here, please. And thank you very much.”

Paul would be in and she did not want this woman letting it all out to him. She wanted to tell him herself, carefully. She had seen Charles walking along the road and given him a lift. Rehearsing what she would say, she stood at the front door fumbling for her key in her bag. Paul opened the door quietly from within while she was trying to find it She looked up and saw him there.

“What is it, Valerie?” he asked. “What’s happened?” He took her arm and pulled her into their little sitting room and then suddenly took her impulsively into his arms. “You’ve been in some sort of danger, haven’t you?”

She began to cry again. “The car. It ran into a telegraph post.”

“Are you hurt?”

“No.”

“You’re sure?”

She nodded, her face pressed against his coat, not willingly but because he was holding her so tightly that she could not help herself. “If I had been hurt,” she said irritably, “you’d be just about killing me, holding me so tightly. Paul, let go. I want to put the casserole in the oven.”

“Damn the casserole,” he said. He picked her up and put her gently on the sofa. He took off her shoes and sitting at the bottom of the sofa held her small cold feet in his hands. Her feet were always cold and he had done that sometimes on their honeymoon. He had been so sweet then, in those days before he became blind and nervy and obstinate, and she began to cry afresh as the memory swept over her. “Don’t cry, Val,” he said. “Do you want a cup of tea?”

“I’ve had it,” she sobbed.

“Then stop crying and tell me what happened. Were you with Charles? Was he driving?”

“Yes.”

“Is he hurt?”

“Not badly. He’s gone to hospital. Coming back from Westwater I saw him walking along the road and offered him a lift.”

“Don’t lie to me, Val,” he said fiercely, and the hold of his hands tightened on her feet. “You’ve the right to spend the day as you like, of course, but not the right to lie about it. Tell the truth for God’s sake. You’ve nearly wrecked our marriage with the lies you tell yourself and me. Do you think I don’t know about the times you tell me the matches are in one place when you’ve put them in another, or that Bess is ill when she isn’t, or all the other little cruelties you think up? It doesn’t matter so much about the lies you tell me, they’re like the pinpricks of a child, but the lies you tell yourself go as deep as death. If you tell yourself you’re one sort of woman when you’re another sort you’ll land up by being no sort. Just a nothingness. No one exists unless they know themselves. Valerie, pull up for God’s sake. Do you think I want to lose you?”

“I do not,” she said. “Hard-working housekeepers are not easily come by these days.”

She watched, with a half-smile on her lips, for that slight tensing of the muscles of his face that came as he constrained himself to silence. It was a look that both maddened and satisfied her, maddened her because she could not ring a retort out of him, satisfied because she knew her thrust had gone in. But it did not come. Instead he flared into anger. “You silly little fool! That’s not what I meant. I don’t care a damn about your housekeeping and life might be pleasanter if you did leave me.”

“Paul!” she cried, divided between fury and an anguish of hurt pride.

“I haven’t finished. Pleasanter but pretty pointless. I don’t only live to write, as you think, I also live to hold you up if I can till you come alive again.”

She burst into floods of tears. “Paul, you’re hateful! Storming at me like this when I’ve just had this awful shock. I feel most dreadfully ill!”

“Come to bed then,” he said and pulled her up from the sofa into his arms. He did not say he was sorry. He was not sorry. The afternoon with Mary, stirring him so deeply, and the joy of the release he had shared with Edith, had brought about release for him as well. All the pent-up anger and grief of years surged up in a flood of power. Without a false step he carried Valerie upstairs and put her on her bed.

“Send for Mother,” she sobbed. “I want to go to bed for days and days and have Mother.”

“No,” he said firmly. “Neither of us gets on with your mother. Stay in bed as long as you like. But you’ll jolly well stay there, not keep getting up in your dressing gown playing the martyr. If I get stuck over things I’ll ring up Joanna.”

“You’re not to, Paul. I’ve got some pride if you haven’t.”

“I’ll get you some more tea and some aspirins. That’ll quiet you down.”

“It’s your fault if I’m upset.”

“Yes, it is. But you’ll be all right after a good rest. And I’ll ring up Doctor Fraser.”

She raised herself on her elbow. “You won’t! You know I can’t stand him.”

He flung an arm around her and kissed her and the power in him made her feel she was gripped to a dynamo. Then he went downstairs and she heard him ringing up Dr. Fraser.

It was a long time since anything so gossip-worthy had happened at Appleshaw and details of the affair were not wanting, for the policeman who had taken notes turned out to be their own policeman, Ted Barnard, visiting his aunt at the cottage. People could not help enjoying the gossip but they were sorry too because of Colonel and Mrs. Adams. They took it quietly but they aged a good deal and they got very tired going backward and forward to see Charles in Westwater Hospital. He was slow in recovering, for the concussion turned out more serious than they had thought at first and the shock brought back the nerve trouble of the war. Their friends were good to them, taking them in and out by car. Mrs. Hepplewhite was especially kind, driving them herself in the Bentley with Tania placed on Mrs. Adams’s lap to console her. They were very exhausted on Mrs. Hepplewhite’s days and not so tired when Mary or Joanna took them, but somehow it usually seemed to be Mrs. Hepplewhite. She was so eager and one could not hurt her. She was so extraordinarily kind. She came to see them at the cottage too, her arms full of flowers. Arranging them after she had gone made Mrs. Adams so tired that she couldn’t sleep at night. Mrs. Hepplewhite took flowers to Valerie as well, and held Paul’s hand in both hers to show her silent sympathy. Not that she was exactly silent but she did not refer to what had happened. Her talk flowed under and over it and embedded it in honey. Her tact was as overwhelming as her kindness. But Paul was not overwhelmed, only amused. He knew what the sympathetic pressure meant. He had never supposed that Hepplewhite was a satisfactory husband. In Mrs. Hepplewhite’s thoughts he and she were now twin souls, locked together in understanding. Gravely he would return the pressure and bow her from the gate with a courtesy that brought the tears to her eyes.