Myra Carrol

by Noel Streatfeild

  Myra turned to ask why Uncle Fred needed sympathy. Her glance met Joe’s. There was a pause in which she felt something new to her. It was more than interest. It was pleasure, but its bias was to something acute and personal. The sensation was so marked that it confused her. She scuttled away from it, dropping her eyes to the deck, and asked him to go on.

  Joe passed his cigarette case. It was done in a natural way but it was as if he were saying to them both, “None of that now. None of that.” He snapped the case shut and returned to his uncle

  “My Uncle Fred, trotting round fussing about the native labour, whether they had hot and cold and all that, noticed that he came up against some funny looks, and that he had money from other sources than his mines and things. Finally he dug it all out. Great-uncle Sam had built his fortune by as nice a little female slave business as you could wish to find. It was a well-organised affair, both wholesale and retail, for having got his females, he ran his own brothels. It broke Uncle Fred up.”

  “But if he didn’t like brothels couldn’t he close them?”

  “It’s not so easy. A chain of people work in the trade; very exclusive world, father to son business and all that. Uncle Fred died rather curiously while trying to close them. He left the business to me with a request that when I’d sorted things out I would put all money peculiarly come by—he didn’t put it that way but that’s what he meant—into rescue homes for women and girls.”

  “Which are you off to now: closing the brothels or opening the rescue homes?”

  “I’ve cleaned up pretty well, but some of it you can’t find out about. Property. Uncle Fred owned masses of it. In a lifetime I couldn’t say what went on in all of it.”

  Myra laughed.

  “Well, if it comes to that, property is like that anywhere. If you nose about London you’d be surprised at the funny houses on the most respectable properties.”

  They had finished with Uncle Fred but neither wanted the talk to end. Yet they were too aware of each other to walk in silence. Myra was unusually bereft of poise. She found herself jabbing at small talk as if she were a fish being fed. She was not herself, using over-emphasis and making too much of her interest in little things. As Boulogne took definite shape she excused herself on the ground that she must tidy and said good-bye. His voice was no less off-hand than before but he spoke as though he saw no chance of being refused.

  “We’ll travel to Paris together. You’ve got quite a wait for the Biarritz train. I shall give you dinner.”

  Myra did not argue. The thought of the coming hours stirred her. She recognised the feeling and thought it must be the weather; it was hot and heat did that sort of thing to people, though not as a rule to her. It did not matter, though; it would give a piquant, sharp flavour to the day, and in hours spent in the train, or in a restaurant, or driving to the Quai d’Orsay, could not go much further. Powdering her nose, she saw a look in her eyes and laughed at herself.

  “All right. Here’s fun!”

  It was a queer day and shook them both. Outwardly it was ordinary enough but underneath everything that they did and said there was vibration. It was not comfortable. It had some of the strain of an approaching storm. Increasingly, as the time of Myra’s train drew nearer, it seemed impossible that they were parting. If nothing were done it would ease things if something were said. Joe took her to the station in a taxi. He had luggage of his own with him. She remarked on it.

  “I’m travelling with you,” he said calmly. “I’ll put in a day or two with Elsie after all.”

  “You won’t get a place to sleep on the train.”

  She knew the answer to that and spoke in the tone of one who did. He took her chin in his hands and turned her face to his.

  “No. Myra, you lovely thing, I shouldn’t dream of spoiling our day by a snatch-as-snatch-can ending. Do you ever feel you are walking towards something important?”

  His hands on her chin made her shiver. She could not think of anything at all. She found it quite difficult to speak.

  “I’m not sure.”

  On the train he sat in her carriage and smoked for an hour, and they had a drink or two. Then he got up and glanced casually at his watch.

  “It’s after eleven. I mustn’t keep you up. Good-night.”

  Myra sat where she was for quite a time. Then she got up and viciously brushed some ash off her bed.

  “It seems all right for him,” she said out loud, “but let’s face it; I feel like Hell.”

  St. Jean de Luz seemed, in spite of its sunshine and in spite of the welcome she received, drab and boring past bearing. After three days her telephone rang at eight in the morning. She swam up from depths of heavy sleeping-draught induced sleep. Joe’s voice over the line acted as a sponge of cold water.

  “I know you don’t recognise eight as a waking hour but I’m fetching you at ten. You had better pack.”

  “What for?”

  “To stay with Elsie.”

  No “will you?” No beating about the bush. What a man! Myra ordered her petit déjeuner. She went to her bathroom and on the way did something she had not done for years; she danced from sheer lightness of heart.

  Looking back afterwards Elsie’s small villa seemed to Myra to have nothing to it but a pink-walled terrace where she and Joe lay eating far too many figs. Elsie had a full house, which was in a permanent state of emotional crises. Nobody took the remotest interest in what seemed a rather plebeianly normal love affair. Elsie put Myra into the bedroom that had been Joe’s and said that Joe was having to make do with what really was the boxroom, “but I don’t suppose he will use it much, darling!” Myra accepted this without argument. She, too, did not suppose he would use it much.

  Joe never came to Myra’s room. He spent, however, every waking moment in her company. Elsie had told him quite a lot about Myra. Enough to make him understand that she did belong to the world in which he had first seen her and not to Folkestone and her husband and children.

  “All the same,” he said, “you don’t, you know.”

  “How do you mean?”

  He stretched out to a leaf of figs lying between them.

  “You may think you do. You may even want to, though God knows why you should, but you don’t and you never will. What do you get out of it?”

  As the days sauntered by, he dragged almost all that she thought out of Myra. In bits she told him her story, putting Aunt Lilian in her proper place and not as the blazing spot of interest in an otherwise uneventful life that she appeared when told of by outsiders. He listened well, only now and again asking questions. He was puzzled about her home. It was clear in her voice how she had loved it; it seemed to him odd that she had not had her children brought up there and spent some time there herself. One day he asked her about it. She tried to explain.

  “It had changed. When I lived there it was perfect in a magical way. When I came back and other people were in the house, what I had known had gone.”

  “I suspect it was you who had gone. The girl you tell me about isn’t a younger you, you’ve superimposed somebody on yourself. I wonder why?”

  She considered that.

  “Don’t we all? I mean, all through childhood you have an idea what you want to be like when you grow up. I imagine up to a point the child you is shaping the adult you.”

  He took her hand and played with her fingers.

  “I think that’s pretty just, certainly where superficials are concerned. Now I hated rush and tear and flap. Vicarages are full of it. Bishops dashing in for confirmations and losing buttons off their gaiters. Men’s societies meeting at the same moment as Communicant’s Guilds and only one room free. A never-ending roar for buns for school treats fetched by the vicar’s children on bicycles. Urgent notes to be dropped, parish magazines to be dropped, rows of desiccated females sitting with their feet on oilcloth in a roaring draught in
the vicarage hall. No peace, no elegance of living. Elsie and I revolted. Elsie into further fuss, me away from it. That’s why I travel on cargo boats. Seamen never fuss or flap, and there aren’t any passengers, thank God. I wanted to live calmly and collectedly. I meant to be a barrister. Those fellows, even at dinners, think before they speak. Great-uncle Sam’s foibles have made things easy. Managing a lot of money is hard work, you know, but you can do it serenely and you can think.” He took her other hand. “But I don’t believe the child you planned the adult you. Are you going to tell me that fishing in your river, and hunting, and doing lessons with your comic governess, some part of you was saying, ‘One day I’m going to be notorious. I’m going to go about with the fastest moving set of my day and age.’ Tell me something. Is being beautiful the answer? Can a woman be admittedly the outstanding beauty of her time and live quietly?”

  His hands in hers, Myra did not mind what she said. Confession only seemed to draw them closer.

  “No, I don’t think it’s possible. You get a kick out of being looked at. It sounds frightful, but it’s true.”

  “Then, of course, there’s the power angle. One way and another you know everybody and you could get anything you liked?”

  “Yes. It’s difficult to explain, but the whole set-up becomes part of you. Somebody once told me that they thought it was pretty sour of the Gods to hand out beauty, that they only did it for the fun of seeing you hurt like Hell when it starts to go. I don’t agree. It’s worth all the hurting that may be coming, and as a matter of fact I, personally, don’t fuss much. I’m nearly thirty and I’ll soon be going off a bit; but what I say is, it’s been fun while it lasted. It is fun; nobody who hasn’t had it knows how much.”

  “I thought you’d say something like that, but that particular attitude is part of you. You intend to float along from cradle to grave not minding anything much, don’t you?”

  The sun beat down on them. A lizard ran up the pink wall. To-day’s figs were in a brown basket. One had split, showing crimson seeds. She could feel it all: the colour, the warmth, being etched on to her memory. She felt something else too. His question brought her face to face with a fact. Her drifting days of not minding anything were over. She took her hands out of Joe’s and sat up. She spoke as if against her will.

  “That was true.”

  “Was?”

  She had been tortured in a way she had not known it was possible to be, by her longing for him to make love to her. His inflection gave her a chance to speak.

  “I love you, idiot. You surely knew that.”

  He sat up.

  “Love!”

  She was in his arms. She did not bother to ask if he loved her. She was over the edge of reason, past speech, but even had she been in control of her mind she would not have asked. That he did love her had been obvious almost since the day they met.

  For Myra the days drifted by. Other people than Joe did not exist for her. She was mazed with happiness. She lost a staccato way of moving and of thinking; it was as if contentment had put her into a lower gear. She knew all the time, deeply sunk in happiness though she was, how gossamer and ephemeral was this period. She had the same feeling about Elsie’s villa, as years before she had felt about her home. It was an enclosed place; outside the ordinary things were going on, worry and sorrow splashing, but not even the spray could reach her. All the same she knew that one step outside and there were the swirling waters, and she kept her mind from thinking of them. This was a time of pure enchantment; it was wicked to spoil even the thin edge of its beauty by tiresome thought. It was, therefore, like a sudden smashing of defences when Joe, after over two weeks in which he had apparently been as silently happy and contented as herself, woke up one morning with a determination to make plans.

  “You had better go and see your husband about your divorce. Or would it be better if you wrote?”

  Just like that. Said in his slow way, but with quiet firmness. No preliminaries to prepare her. This was absolutely the first mention of the word divorce. Myra’s mind unwillingly left her Paradise and flew to Andrew. She saw him quietly finishing a happy holiday with the children; she was convinced he had enjoyed it the more because she was not there. She saw herself asking for a divorce. She shied away from that and saw him reading a letter from her. She shied away from that too. Ludicrous though it was, Andrew was going to mind abominably. He was not the sort of person for divorce. He would feel ashamed, and a failure. He was not successful in life; it was a funny thing to care about but he cared about none of his plays being any good. He needed propping up, not kicking down. To ask him to divorce her was kicking him down. It was publishing the fact that he was not a successful husband. She and Joe were having petit déjeuner on her veranda. She had gone on drinking her coffee while she considered what he said.

  “I don’t want to hurt Andrew.”

  “You won’t hurt him less because you put off breaking the news.” She was frowning at her cup. He looked at her enquiringly. “Is it how to break it that’s worrying you?”

  “You don’t know Andrew. He’s nice and the sort of person who makes you feel mean if you hurt him. He’s been unlucky, not only over me but over plays he writes. He always wanted to write plays. It’s simply sickening for him that he can’t.”

  “You can’t hold yourself responsible for that.”

  She raised her eyes to his.

  “Don’t get angry with me. It sounds perfectly easy to you, I know. I’ll just go to Andrew and say, ‘please, my poppet, I want a divorce,’ but it’s not like that all.”

  “It seems to me the point is do you want a divorce?”

  She did not answer immediately.

  “I want you always. To be with you all the time. You know that. I simply can’t imagine anything else now. But I don’t want all the mess it means. I’d like us to live together, not go back to England. I could go to the East with you. That way Andrew would get used to the idea gradually and he would either divorce me or not, just as he felt.”

  Joe’s eyes twinkled.

  “That’s a pretty picture. It just happens that I’m fairly well known in respectable business circles, and respectable business men don’t travel around openly with other people’s wives.”

  “Lots do. I’d call myself your wife.”

  “Fine. Inconspicuous creature like you who has never been photographed could easily get away with that. But, of course, there is such a thing as a passport.”

  “I expect I can get the passport fixed.” She looked at him pleadingly. “I don’t want to have a fuss. It’ll spoil everything.”

  “Why don’t you write—or let me.”

  She was quite determined about that.

  “I couldn’t write. He’d think it awfully mean. No chance for him to argue or anything.”

  “I see. Come on, let’s go and bathe.”

  In the sea he caught hold of her and held her to him.

  “I’m going away, darling.”

  It seemed to Myra that everything turned a rapid somersault. She spoke in a whisper.

  “Where?”

  “To the East. I’ll be gone about six months or so.”

  “Without me?”

  “Not for choice, but, you see, you’ve got to do this breaking with your husband business. I don’t want a mistress. I want a wife and a home and children.”

  “No. I can’t let you go. Give me a couple of days. I’ll go and explain to him.”

  He held her closer.

  “No, darling. Somebody has to be tough with you and not let you drift. I seem the one. You’re not going to your husband asking for a divorce because I’m holding a pistol to your head; you are going because you want more than anything in the world to marry me. I’m sorry about your husband, but on your own story you aren’t doing him any good; I’m sorry about your children, but you’ve come to a spot where you
must make a clear-cut decision.”

  She clung tighter to him.

  “I can’t let you go.”

  He tried to break the strain.

  “Funny place we’ve chosen for this drama. Come on in, you’re shivering.”

  “It’s not because I’m cold.”

  “I know that, but come on. Six months is no time. If we are lucky the divorce might be through by the time I’m back.”

  “What am I to do while you’re away?”

  “See solicitors. Enjoy yourself.”

  “Why are you doing this to me? It’s awful facing this divorce alone.”

  They were in shallow water; he put his arm through hers.

  “Because I love you. Because I love you too much to risk being slaughtered. Don’t think I’m not going to be tortured leaving you behind. I’ve been convinced all along that if you make a break you must do it yourself and do it deliberately. Then I’ll know I’ve got you. With me about you’d be swayed. I couldn’t face even a sneaking fear that you regretted what you’d done. That you cared, for instance, if your husband married again and your children were brought up by a stepmother. Be sure. Take your time. Then, when you are convinced past arguing, bring me out of your pocket. You see, you are such a mixture. The façade that you’ve put up has not only hidden you from other people, it’s prevented you knowing yourself.”

  “n-d-o-n.” Myra was scratching with her nail at a remnant of luggage label. London, of course. London in August, or was it September? She had refused to leave St. Jean before Joe. She had gone with him to Marseilles. She had dismissed Lucille; she was not going to let Miriam and the others know her news from that unkind tongue. It had been a stupid, heart-breaking trip. People in love should never see each other off. That ghastly journey—and then London. Even thinking of that arrival twelve years ago a smell came back. What was it? Very like the other smells in the barn, but different. Dust sheets! Dust sheets of twelve years ago. Mercy, yes, she could not only smell them but see them.