Collected Works of E M Delafield

by E M Delafield

  Mary’s heart glowed, and she felt exquisitely happy. With a start of astonishment, she found herself recalled by the quiet, consciously-polite voice of Denis Waller, making conversation.

  “Do you live in Wales, Mrs. Morgan?”

  “In Monmouthshire,” said Mary, wanting to laugh.

  “It must be pretty there.”

  “Very.”

  She looked at Denis, and thought that he seemed more sallow and strained than usual. Probably Mr. Bolham was sarcastic and disagreeable with his unfortunate secretary, and Mary felt sure that Denis had all the touchiness of the underbred. She tried to speak as if she felt really interested.

  “Where is your own home?”

  “I — I’m a great deal in London. I haven’t, as a matter of fact, got a home at all now. Our family is a good deal scattered. Originally, we came from East Anglia.”

  Mrs. Romayne came up to them.

  “I say, do they always keep one waiting like this here?”

  “I’m afraid they do. They don’t make the bouillabaisse until the people who’ve ordered it — —”

  “Look, mummie!”

  Gwennie had found a white cat, and had it in her arms.

  “Oh, do all stay still,” shrieked Dulcie. “I can get a snap of you now.”

  Mrs. Romayne swore — but quite briefly and amiably — and Denis hastily drew himself up and folded his arms across his chest in a manly attitude.

  “That’s lovely — Oh, Mr. Buckland, you’re just in time. Do come and be photographed.”

  Buckland planted himself exactly in front of Denis, and struck a burlesque attitude.

  Denis stepped out from behind him and resumed his pose rather defiantly.

  “Olwen! David! Patrick! Do come and be photographed.”

  Patrick Romayne looked round, and did not stir.

  Olwen came and stood beside her mother, and David hastily climbed into a tree well out of the camera’s range.

  “That’s marvellous.... Oh, Mrs. Romayne, I’m afraid your hat will make a shadow over your face — could you possibly take it off, do you think?”

  “Damn, I suppose so.... No, why should I?”

  “Oh it doesn’t matter a bit, Mrs. Romayne, really it doesn’t.”

  “Hurry up,” shouted Buckland.

  “Mr. Waller, could you move a tiny, weeny bit nearer? I’m afraid you’re too far out.”

  Denis moved back, and was again obscured by the substantial Buckland.

  “Buckland, I’m awfully sorry — but if you’d — —”

  The tutor grinned, took Denis by the shoulders and pulled him forward and then pushed his hat down over his face just as Dulcie clicked the shutter.

  Denis, snatching off the hat, turned white with fury.

  “Don’t move — I’ll just get one more,” screamed Dulcie.

  “Oh!”

  Gwennie made a dive after the cat, which had suddenly escaped from her arms, and Mrs. Romayne, who disliked cats, walked away.

  The group broke up.

  “I hope that’ll come out,” said Dulcie doubtfully.

  “I’m sure it won’t,” Denis Waller assured her in a voice stifled with anger and humiliation. “We were all moving.”

  Mary Morgan felt sorry for him. Buckland had really been rather tiresome. But Denis was the kind of person who invariably provoked the merely latent brutality of other people into violent activity. There was a kind of trembling conceit about him ... something that cringed and challenged both at once.... And he looked so thoroughly miserable!

  Mary compassionately engaged in platitudinous small-talk with him until lunch was ready.

  (2)

  The others talked a great deal about the bouillabaisse. Patrick, after once assuring Gwennie that he did like it, remained silent.

  He had purposely taken his place between the wall and Captain Morgan, because Captain Morgan never seemed to expect one to talk. Opposite sat Dulcie, whose chatter was mostly addressed to the table at large.

  The beast Buckland was — as usual — beside Patrick’s mother, eating like the pig that he was, and talking with his mouth full.

  Little Lower-Fourth boys would be ashamed of having table-manners like Buckland’s.

  Patrick devised curious and elaborate tortures for Buckland, in his own mind. He often did this. He imagined the tutor publicly stripped and beaten until he howled aloud and bellowed for mercy — he thought of seeing him forced under water and held there, drowning, or kicked mercilessly in the ribs and on the buttocks with heavy boots. He felt terribly ashamed of these thoughts, but did not always resist them.

  “Did you get your fair share of lobster, Patrick? If not, send up your plate.”

  “It’s quite all right, thank you,” said the boy, flushing and smiling at Mrs. Morgan.

  At the other end of the table, Gwennie was excitedly asking conundrums, new to no one excepting herself and David.

  “Patrick, do you know Arthur?”

  “Arthur who?” Patrick politely humoured her.

  “Our thermometer!” shrieked Gwennie, and went into gales of laughter.

  Nearly everyone laughed with her, and Patrick, as he did so, exchanged a look with Gwennie’s father. That made him feel less cross and unhappy, somehow — more on a level with grown-up people.

  People always said that sixteen was a difficult age, and probably it was. One wanted to do quite childish things very often, and yet one couldn’t — and then, when one tried to be grown-up, that was an absolute failure too. In a year or two, probably everything would be much easier, and there wouldn’t be this horrible sense of confusion and general perplexity that very often had to be expressed by the rudeness and sulkiness of which his mother complained.

  Patrick glanced at her remorsefully. He hated to vex his mother, who was always so frightfully decent to him, and gave him practically everything he asked for, and never got angry for more than two minutes, even when his report was a thoroughly stinking one.

  “I do want to try another snap presently, now that everyone’s here. Couldn’t I do one while we’re waiting for the sweet?”

  Dulcie sprang up and rushed away with her camera.

  “All look this way!”

  They obediently turned their heads.

  “Mr. Bolham, Mr. Bolham. I can’t see you! Your head is right in the shadow. Oh! Could you all sit a tiny bit closer? It’s so difficult to get you all in.”

  Patrick saw Buckland lay his arm across the back of his mother’s chair, hitching himself forward. Probably she didn’t know he was doing it. She was powdering her nose, not thinking about the cad Buckland at all.

  “Don’t move. Ow! I’ve forgotten to wind the last one off!”

  Dulcie wound frantically, and everyone moved.

  Denis Waller, glancing across the narrow table and catching Patrick’s eye, said with his gentle, rather melancholy little smile: “I always say that being photographed is like going to the dentist. In fact I think it’s the worse evil of the two.”

  “D’you hate it?” Patrick asked, not caring to know, but ready to return the friendliness of the smile.

  “I can’t bear it,” Denis replied with emphasis, at the same time carefully smoothing back his rather thin fair hair and slightly compressing his lips into an expression of firmness.

  “Now!” called Dulcie, and at the same moment David Morgan cried out: “Look at the pudding!” and instinctively the heads of the whole party turned towards the waiter, carrying the two halves of a very large melon, hollowed out and filled with ice-cream.

  “Failed again, I’m afraid,” muttered David’s father, and once more he and Patrick exchanged slightly amused glances.

  Dulcie came back to the table still optimistic.

  “I expect some of them’ll be all right, anyway. I do hope so, because I’ve only got one film left. I’m going to get someone to do a snap of me, after lunch. It sounds funny to want one of myself, but it’s for Pops. I know he’d love one, and I want it for a
surprise for him.”

  She looked hopefully round, and everybody avoided meeting her eye.

  At last Denis Waller said: “I dare say I could do that for you, Dulcie,” and immediately looked quickly round, as if to see whether anybody was laughing at him. No one paid any attention, and Dulcie thanked him effusively.

  The meal went on.

  People talked about the ice-cream, and there were exchanges of small jokes and personalities.

  Patrick joined in, with the Morgans especially, and suddenly felt cheered and amused. He thought how nice the Morgans were, all of them, and what a good-looking family — even Gwennie, who was too fat. But she was a thoroughly sporting kid, and marvellous in the water.

  Cigarettes were being offered and accepted. Captain Morgan held out his case to Patrick, who shook his head. Theoretically, he was not allowed to smoke yet, although he very often did so alone with his mother, who didn’t mind a bit. He liked having had a cigarette offered to him as a matter of course.

  It was blazing hot, and one hadn’t got to exert oneself, and people were being rather jolly and amusing all round — suddenly it was fun.

  Patrick’s mother had begun to talk to Mr. Bolham and Buckland had moved away altogether from the table and was throwing pieces of bread down to the fishes, with David and Gwennie and their mother.

  Olwen Morgan said:

  “Patrick, can you do the missionaries-and-cannibals trick with matches?”

  “I can do one — I don’t know if it’s the same as yours.”

  She moved down beside him and they became absorbed in showing one another puzzles.

  Denis Waller joined them. He knew several rather good tricks, and was appreciative of those of Patrick and Olwen.

  Presently the grouping of the party broke up again, and Patrick was rather sorry.

  He found himself leaning over the parapet with Denis Waller beside him, looking down on the fishes.

  The heat was intense, and Patrick felt rather sleepy.

  “What time are we going back, d’you know?” he enquired.

  “I think the motor-launch was coming to fetch us at three o’clock. It’s now” — Denis consulted his wrist-watch in its large, conspicuous gold band that Patrick privately thought quite awful— “it’s now half-past two.”

  “If I hadn’t eaten so much lunch, I’d try and swim back. One could.”

  “Oh yes. It’s only about a mile. You could do it easily enough,” said Denis, in a very friendly voice. “Do you get much swimming at school?”

  “Quite a lot, in the baths.”

  “I thought you must. I wish I could swim half as well as you can.”

  “Oh well, it’s just practice, isn’t it?” Patrick said. He had often wondered whether Waller had a weak heart, or something, he seemed to spend so much more time on the rocks than in the water.

  “I was brought up in London, you see, and one doesn’t get the same opportunities there.”

  “What school were you at?” Patrick asked, not really interested, but with a feeling that Waller was trying to be nice to him and that he ought to show some friendliness in return.

  With faint surprise, he noticed that Denis avoided answering his very simple question.

  “I had the bad luck to be a day-boy, as a matter of fact, which I think is rather a mistake. One misses so much. Not so much in the way of work — I didn’t do so badly, scholastically, though I always say that my real education began when I left school.”

  Denis paused for a moment, and Patrick wondered if it would be rude to move away. He was getting bored.

  “D’you know what was the very first thing I did when I became my own master, Patrick?”

  “What?”

  “I took a course in psychology,” said Denis solemnly.

  “How does one do that?”

  “There are psychological colleges,” Denis replied mysteriously. “It’s a subject in which I’m intensely interested, and I was determined to master it thoroughly.”

  “And did you?” asked Patrick innocently.

  “As far as one can. Of course, one learns more from life itself than anything else — and reading. I read a great deal of psychology.”

  “I shouldn’t have thought you had much time,” said the boy politely.

  “I haven’t. I make it. You see, I care more about human nature than anything else in the world — I’m more interested in that than in anything else. I want to be able to help people, and one can only do that by understanding them.”

  “Yes, I see. I say, look at that fish — it’s huge. It’s not the same kind as the others surely.”

  “I think so — only larger. Yes. Ever since I could think at all, I’ve always found people absorbingly interesting. I’ve always known that nothing about people could ever shock me, or make me condemn them, because I should know that there was always an explanation. Everything in human nature has an explanation.”

  “Only one doesn’t know what it is, as a rule.”

  “Unless one happens to be a person who understands psychology,” Denis said gently. “I don’t mean to say, of course, that one understands everything, even then — but it does make a great many things clearer.”

  “Does it?” said Patrick.

  He now wanted desperately to break off this embarrassing conversation, but a paralysis seemed to be invading him, and an obscure dread of what Denis might say if he saw that his listener was leaving him abruptly, with his words half-uttered.

  The next moment his worst fears were realised.

  “The reason I’d like to help you, Patrick,” said Denis in his quiet little voice, “is partly because I’m naturally interested in young people, and partly because I myself have gone through something of what I think you’re going through now.”

  “But I’m not — —” Patrick began violently.

  “My dear fellow, don’t bother to talk like that to me. You’re simply putting up a defence reaction because you don’t want to face certain facts. It’s absolutely natural — it’s one of the most common symptoms in the whole of psychology. I come across it over and over again, and I may as well tell you at once that it doesn’t cut any ice with me at all. I know exactly what it’s worth, I assure you.”

  Patrick listened, bewildered and resentful, and yet half uncertain as to whether he had any right to be resentful. It was perfectly evident that Denis genuinely meant to be kind, and perhaps it was rotten to feel so angry....

  “Look here — —” Patrick began, and then stopped. He looked helplessly at Denis, who returned his gaze with one of deep and solemn benignity.

  “I know exactly how you’re feeling. I’ve been through it all myself. I dare say you’re thinking now that you wish to goodness I’d shut up, and leave you alone, and I will in a minute, too” — Denis smiled, with an air of great shrewdness, but Patrick made no attempt to return the smile— “but I wanted — I’ve wanted for some time — to tell you that if you come to the stage — and I think you will, before so very long — of wanting to talk over your difficulties with a fellow rather older than yourself, and whom nothing — nothing whatever — could surprise or shock — well, I should be very much honoured by your confidence. And I think that I could help you.”

  “Thanks awfully,” said Patrick. He was sweating violently, and he swung round from the low parapet and looked wildly round the garden without having the least idea as to what he was looking for.

  “Your tutor, Buckland,” said Denis in a peculiar tone, “isn’t the slightest use to you, of course. He knows nothing whatever about you, to begin with.”

  “Oh, Buck’s all right,” said Patrick with a sudden loudness that astonished himself, and at the same moment he found the necessary force to walk away.

  (3)

  Denis stood gazing after him reflectively.

  Had he succeeded in making a real contact with the boy, or not? One discounted, of course, the quick, nervous denial of any trouble.... That, Denis told himself, was exactly what he
had expected. Patrick simply hadn’t the courage, as yet, to admit to himself what it was that he was afraid of, and so he pretended not to be afraid. But now the ice was broken, and he knew that one person, at any rate, had seen through his pretence, and had understood the reason for it. Next time they talked, it would be easier.

  Denis resolved that the initiative, next time, should come from Patrick.

  “Meanwhile,” he thought, “I shall work at building up his confidence in me. Talk to him about ordinary things, and let him see that I take things for granted....”

  The next moment, his game of make-believe crashed to the ground.

  Patrick turned round, and came straight up to him. The sweat was shining on his upper lip.

  “I hope you won’t think I mean to be rude or anything,” he said, “but I’m afraid I must have made a most frightful ass of myself, in some way or other, to make you think there was anything the matter. There isn’t, absolutely. I’m having the most extraordinarily good holidays, as a matter of fact. Please don’t think I mean to be ungrateful. It’s awfully kind of you to bother about me at all, but I — I just thought I’d better tell you that everything’s marvellous, so far as I’m concerned.”

  Without pausing, Patrick walked away again.

  Denis tasted an agony of self-abasement and of rage against himself.

  He had known all the time that he was only play-acting — trying to compensate himself for the disappointment of not spending the afternoon with Chrissie, and for the humiliation of having been despised by the concierge, and ordered about by Mr. Bolham.

  He felt, as so often, that he hated himself.

  (4)

  “There’s the boat coming now. Where the hell’s that parasol of mine got to?”

  “It’s here, mother.” Patrick handed his mother the parasol.

  “Thanks, darling.”

  He welcomed avidly the term of endearment from her, and the easy smile she gave him.

  Far down into the back of his mind he thrust the thought that there must be, after all, something to fear most horribly, since Waller seemed so sorry for him.

  CHAPTER VI

  (1)

  Denis, very hot from the ascent of the steep and shadeless drive, came into the Hotel and glanced wistfully at the concierge. He had a faint hope that there might be a telephone message for him from Chrissie, or even a letter.