Collected Works of E M Delafield

by E M Delafield

  As long as she continued to withstand him, Denis ardently wanted to marry her. When at last she agreed, an inward sinking of the heart warned him that he was about to commit an irreparable folly.

  They were married in a City church, and no one known to either of them was present.

  A week later, Denis got a job. He took two furnished rooms — all that he could afford — in another part of London, and Phyllis joined him. The weeks that followed were a nightmare to Denis. He found the close proximity of another human being in cramped quarters almost unendurable, and his fastidiousness revolted at having continually forced upon his notice the details of domestic life. The recurrent processes of purchasing, preparing, and eating food, of making and unmaking a bed, of carrying and emptying slops, all filled him with disgust. He hated and despised himself for his squeamishness, and feared to hurt Phyllis by showing it.

  Denis, however, was not of the stuff to withstand a strain. He broke helplessly within a month.

  “It’s the sordidness of it all,” he had cried piteously, gulping and sobbing. “I — I just can’t stand it. I can’t live like this.”

  And Phyllis had understood.

  Denis remembered with shame and passionate gratitude how good she had been to him.

  The rooms had been given up. Phyllis had said that she would not go back to her aunt, but would get a job somewhere as a typist. She had actually succeeded in doing so, and had begged Denis not to send her any money, but to let her keep herself. It was important, after all, that he should not appear to be hard-up.

  Denis had protested emphatically, and said that at least she must let him help her. But Phyllis had kept her job in the City, and continued to earn three pounds a week, and Denis, often out of employment, in actual fact never did send her any money, although he quite frequently bought her little presents.

  He found another boarding-house, then a resident post, and was unspeakably relieved at his return to what he viewed as a civilised way of life.

  His infatuation for Phyllis had died almost instantly, although he continued to be fond of her, and they very often met and sometimes he took her to a hotel for a few days. Eventually, he took a tiny flat in Cicely Road, North London, and Phyllis moved into it. She always kept his room ready, and told her neighbours that her husband was a commercial traveller.

  For long stretches of time nowadays, Denis could contrive to forget altogether that he was married. He embarked freely on emotional and sentimental relations with women, that he always thought of as friendship, stifling occasional scruples with the reminder that he had never been physically unfaithful to his wife. He had, in fact, no desire to be. Phyllis was enough to satisfy his very occasional urgings of the flesh.

  He knew, when he thought about it, that she still loved him, and would probably always do so. She was of an inalienable faithful type. Denis was grateful to her, affectionate towards her, and utterly convinced of his own superiority to her in character, intelligence, and sensitiveness. He felt that he ought never to have married her.

  Side by side with this conviction existed a terrible suspicion in Denis’s mind that he was fundamentally a cad, and that some day everybody would find it out.

  Often he rehearsed to himself long speeches in which he would prove to imaginary auditors that he was doing no wrong to anybody in concealing the fact of his marriage. It was nobody’s business but his own. If he could have known, with absolute certainty, that nobody would ever find out about it, the recollection of it would have ceased to trouble him, for his only real criterion of conduct was what other people might think.

  Since meeting Chrissie Challoner Denis had been both happier than ever before, and more intensely miserable. He was terrified lest she should discover that he was married, not so much for fear that she would give him up, as because he did not want to admit that he had ever been seriously in love before knowing her. He was also, in the depths of his heart, ashamed of having married secretly without means to support his wife, and of living in Cicely Road, and of admitting that Phyllis earned her daily bread as a City typist.

  It was the worst luck in the world that Courteney should have come to the Hôtel d’Azur at the same time as himself. Denis knew him perfectly well by sight.

  He had lodgings in the house exactly opposite to the Wallers’ basement flat, and Denis remembered that Phyllis had once run across the road and asked Courteney if he could let her have change for a florin, for the shilling-in-the-slot meter.

  Courteney, when he was at home, seemed to spend quite a lot of time sitting in the front window smoking. Of course he must many times have seen Denis arrive, with his little bag, and be greeted at the door by Phyllis, and go away again next morning, or a few days later.

  Denis had always thought it madness for Phyllis to speak of him as her husband, even though both of them used her maiden name, but she had declared that it was impossible to avoid making an occasional acquaintance, and that if she did not say she was married, people would think her a kept woman. Denis had reluctantly submitted. He was now half frantic with anger and alarm at the thought that this concession might lead to the betrayal of his true circumstances.

  He burned with shame as he remembered his ignoble panic in the face of Courteney’s recognition of him. He felt sure that his abject denial had been of no avail in convincing Courteney that he was mistaken.

  Sitting, half undressed, on the edge of his bed at the Hôtel d’Azur, Denis suffered qualms of actual physical sickness as he rocked himself to and fro, clasping his head in his hands, and turning over and over in his tormented mind every possible aspect of his predicament.

  CHAPTER VIII

  (1)

  The Moons, with much outward nonchalance and some inward excitement, organised an expedition in honour of their new motor-boat. A brief dialogue had taken place between them on the subject.

  “Have you the least idea how to work this blasted thing, Hilary?”

  “Naturally. I had a trial trip with the mechanic who brought her over. One only needs a little common sense.”

  “Who’re we taking?”

  “If we ask those Villa Mimosa women, it’ll save having them here for a meal. I dare say they won’t come.”

  “The Gush woman’ll sink the boat if she does. And I suppose Chrissie’ll want her little pet dog asked, too.”

  “Very well — we’ll cut out Gush and take Waller. I suppose you want Buckland?”

  “May as well. He knows about motor-boats.”

  Hilary, who was in a good temper, caught Angie by the shoulders, shook her, and then kissed her violently on the mouth.

  The invitation was refused by Chrissie Challoner and accepted by Buckland.

  Denis demurred, and made a good deal of fuss about leaving his work. Angie, who was determined to have at least three men to two women in the party, appealed direct to Mr. Bolham.

  “He says, For Heavens’ sake go,” she reported maliciously. “He can get on much better without you. What have you been doing?”

  Denis flushed hotly.

  “I’ve not been very well this last day or two,” he said quietly. “I’m subject to violent headaches, as Mr. Bolham knows.”

  “Really,” said Angie, quite uninterested.

  “I’d rather you didn’t mention it to anyone, if you don’t mind. I very seldom say anything about them.”

  Angie, far from mentioning the violent headaches of Mr. Denis Waller, had ceased to remember them almost before he had finished speaking about them.

  She was deciding what to wear for the expedition. They meant to go to one of the more distant islands and bathe from there.

  A white bathing-dress and her long yellow trousers, she decided, and a new yellow-and-white handkerchief on her head. She felt calmly pleased that Chrissie wasn’t coming. Not that it really mattered. Chrissie had no chance whatever — clever women never had. Angie’s lovely mouth curved into lines of genuine amusement as she reflected that Chrissie, reasonably young and pretty, with
money and a well-known name, had apparently not succeeded in attracting the admiration of anyone better than Denis Waller.

  At the last moment, on an impulse, she asked Courteney, whom she found lounging on the terrace by himself, to join them. He accepted very readily but annoyed her by asking if he might bring Dulcie.

  Ungraciously she agreed.

  The boat was moored to a tiny jetty near some fishing-huts. Hilary, who had suddenly donned a white cap with a peak, stood over her and drawled some information that he had, Angie felt perfectly certain, just acquired and probably rehearsed to himself until he knew it by heart.

  “Six cylinders,” said Hilary amongst other things, “... she’ll do twenty knots easy ... could take half a dozen people ... oiling ... cooling ... petrol tank....”

  Angie paid very little attention. It was too hot standing in the sun on the jetty.

  “Come on, let’s start.”

  “Wait a minute,” said Hilary, annoyed.

  “It’s too hot.”

  “Buckland, you can be engineer, if you like,” said Hilary haughtily. “I shall take the wheel. Waller, let go the painter when I give the word.”

  “Ay, ay, sir,” replied Denis, appropriately facetious.

  Hilary took the boat out of the bay at half-speed, and then turned her eastward. Angie was secretly impressed. She liked the light-coloured cushions of the Hirondelle, and the sense of ownership, and she had not really expected Hilary to have any mastery over the boat whatever.

  “Full speed ahead!” shouted Hilary grandly.

  Buckland opened up the throttle, and the Hirondelle bounded forward, sending a sudden shower of spray from the bows.

  The speed of their progress afforded them a delicious breeze.

  Angie, with calm cruelty, reflected that Denis was exactly the sort of person who might be seasick, even though the sea was dead quiet. She looked across at him, sitting beside Dulcie, exchanging with her small platitudes of conversation. Angie thought that he looked a perfect fool. She pushed her foot against Buckland’s, and, with her eyes, directed his attention to the spectacle presented by Mr. Bolham’s secretary. Buckland grinned derisively. There was an odd expression on the face of Courteney as Angie, in turn, caught his eye.

  “I say, she’s marvellous!” shouted Hilary at the wheel.

  He swung the Hirondelle westwards, in the direction of the island.

  “We must be doing pretty nearly fifty, I should think,” remarked Denis critically.

  Buckland guffawed.

  “More like twenty — if that.”

  “I should have said fifty,” stiffly returned Denis.

  “It doesn’t matter what you’d have said, it won’t alter facts. What d’you think, Courteney?”

  “It’s difficult to estimate, quite, isn’t it?” replied Courteney non-committally. “But scarcely fifty, I think.”

  Denis turned and looked at him.

  There was a grinding, violent bump. Angie was thrown forward on her knees, and at once automatically screamed.

  Hilary began to curse Denis for not keeping a proper look-out.

  Buckland said: “Hell, we’ve struck something.”

  Whatever the Hirondelle had struck, the obstacle was submerged beneath the water.

  “I couldn’t possibly have seen it,” icily said Denis — but no one paid any attention to his self-justification.

  (2)

  At the impact, Buckland had instinctively reduced speed. A moment later, he opened the throttle again and the speed of the Hirondelle increased.

  Perhaps no great harm had been done.

  He felt grimly certain that neither Hilary nor Denis would be of the slightest use in any emergency. Courteney had guts, and probably common sense, but he’d admitted that he knew nothing about machinery.

  The girls — of course — were both shrieking and exclaiming. They’d be no good, anyway.

  “I say,” said Hilary uncertainly, “d’you think there’s much harm done? The engine seems all right.”

  “I wonder what it was,” said Angie.

  “A rock.”

  “A submarine.”

  “A whale,” suggested Buckland sardonically. He was in reality thinking hard.

  They were about half-way between the mainland and the island. If the worst came to the worst, either he or Hilary could swim ashore. So, in all probability, could Courteney. Dulcie certainly couldn’t manage it, nor Denis. He didn’t know about Angie, but thought it doubtful.

  Screwing up his eyes against the glare, he looked all round at the glittering expanse of sea and sky.

  Good — there was a tiny, rocky islet to be seen, well above the water. Probably not much more than half a mile from where they were now, if only Hilary would have the sense to head that way, instead of in the opposite direction.

  “Look here — —” he began.

  “Oh!” wailed Dulcie. “The water’s coming in — look!” Water was indeed coming in, rising fast between the floor-boards.

  Angie screamed again, although with moderation — rather as if she felt that screaming was the proper thing to do, Buckland told himself. He grinned at her reassuringly.

  “It’s all right. I say, Moon, what about stopping the engine and having a look over the side? She may have been holed, when we bumped.”

  Hilary, muttering and cursing below his breath, stopped the engine.

  “You think we ought to look over the side?” he asked Buckland, with the irritability of the unsure.

  “Shall I do that?” Denis Waller volunteered in a tone of quiet efficiency that caused Buckland to take him at his word on the spot. He’d teach the little sweep to show off!

  “Right you are. Pop over the side, and have a look at her,” he commanded briskly.

  Denis, with some deliberation, removed his shorts, and stood up, looking skinny and helpless, in a pair of turquoise-blue bathing-drawers.

  “How shall I — what shall I —— ?”

  “Get on with it,” roared Buckland.

  “Here,” said Courteney, more charitably, and thrust the painter into Denis’s hand.

  Clutching it, he gingerly let himself into the water. The others watched him in silence, scrabbling with one hand along the side of the boat.

  “I can feel a gash — here — in the side.”

  “Damn — I thought so,” muttered Buckland. “How far down is it?”

  “About a foot below the surface, I should think.”

  Hilary came over to Buckland. He suddenly assumed an authoritative manner.

  “We must plug the hole,” he announced. “What about doing it with rope?”

  “Not a chance,” said Buckland. “Here, wait a sec.” He jumped overboard and investigated Denis’s discovery for himself.

  There was a gash of about fifteen inches long in the side of the Hirondelle, through which the water was coming fast.

  “We’d better start baling, hadn’t we?” Dulcie Courteney timidly suggested. She sounded frightened.

  Denis, with some difficulty, crawled into the boat again.

  “There isn’t anything to bale with,” Angie pointed out.

  “Chuck me the painter — or the cushions — anything,” said Buckland.

  He pushed the things they gave him into the gap in the boat’s side, but was aware as he did so that he could neither ram them in tightly enough, nor were they sufficiently large, to be of any very great use.

  “We shall have to swim for it,” he thought, climbing over the side.

  The two girls, Denis, and Hilary were inefficiently baling out water with their hands and Hilary’s peaked cap.

  Courteney had found a very small bilge-pump and was unsuccessfully trying to work it.

  “No scoop anywhere?” said Buckland.

  Courteney shook his head, at the same time raising his eyebrows in a silent enquiry that Buckland perfectly understood. In reply he grimaced ruefully, shrugging his shoulders.

  “Well?” enquired Hilary sulkily. Buckland de
cided that he was tacitly expressing his willingness to make over the command of his unfortunate Hirondelle to anyone who might understand the situation better than he did himself.

  “Well, I think we’re all going to get wet — but everyone can swim, I suppose?”

  “I’m absolutely no good,” said Dulcie, her voice suddenly high.

  “Yes you are — you’re all right,” interposed her father sharply. “We’re quite close to some rocks. I think we’d better make for them as fast as we can. We may not have to swim at all.”

  “But if we do,” shrilled Dulcie.

  “If we do, Mr. Moon and I can take you along between us. You’re all right in the water, Mrs. Moon?”

  “Yes, pretty fair.”

  Buckland glanced at Denis, rather amused at the prospect of seeing the little worm in a blue funk. Denis, however, had set his lips firmly and sat with his arms folded, in his favourite attitude. He said nothing.

  Buckland went to the engine. He was not surprised when he found it impossible to start the boat again.

  “Water’s got at the magneto, I expect,” he observed laconically. He was streaming with perspiration.

  “This boat can’t sink,” said Hilary Moon loudly and suddenly. “I was told that there are special air-chambers under the seats that make it impossible for her to sink.”

  As though she had only been waiting for the word, Angie suddenly lost all control of her temper.

  “I don’t believe you know anything whatever about it. I can’t think why I was such a fool as to let you take anyone out in your beastly boat. You’ll drown us all, before you’ve done — I know you will.”

  Her voice broke, and she began to scream abuse at him on a shrill, cracked note.

  Hilary snarled at her in return.

  Buckland, who always expected women to behave badly in any difficulty, took no notice of them.

  Courteney held up a very small oar.

  “Look! Couldn’t we use these? There’s another one here.”

  “Used for paddling her about in harbour, I expect. Come on, then.”

  Buckland seized one oar and Courteney the other. The progress that they made was very slow, and rather erratic in course. Buckland wondered if Courteney had ever used an oar in his life before.