Company in the Evening

by Ursula Orange

  That is what I think now, anyway. And sometimes, in the past few years, I have also thought ‘There, but for the grace of God and the existence of Antonia, go I.’ Betty, I am sure, thinks that I am just such another as herself. Pretence has become her own reality and so, I am sure, she unconsciously dismisses other people’s realities as pretence. I have often heard her condemn people’s behaviour as ‘silly’—by which she means undignified, lacking in style, consistency, gesture. I have never I heard her say anything which would suggest that she realized that behaviour comes sometimes from the heart, not from the head.

  Well, as I have told before, she and Mother between them helped me through my divorce—an oddly matched pair, who kept well away from each other, but who, nevertheless, each supplied a totally different kind of support. Betty treated me as a sensible young woman who had sensibly and in cold blood made up her mind to break an irksome contract. (I wasn’t quite as bad as that, but it was a help to have someone treating me so.) Mother treated me as her child who had got badly hurt and wanted her Mummy. (And I wasn’t quite as bad as that, but nevertheless a little of it was a comfort.) I ‘used’ them both shamelessly and neither bore me any grudge—Mother because she is Mother, and Betty because she did not know to what extent I was ‘using’ her to bolster myself up—not that she would have minded if she had; merely been faintly surprised. The fact that I stayed in her house for five months was nothing much to her. She had money, a large house, a well-trained staff, and rather expected her friends to indicate when they would like to come for a visit.

  The letter I now had from her was to invite me to this same house for a week-end. Evidently Betty had not yet allowed the war to get her down. It was precisely the same sort of airy and yet cordially-worded invitation as I might have received any time in the past—“. . . a few friends coming . . . think you’ll like them . . . send the car to-meet the 3.15 on Friday . . .” I grinned as I read it. Its appeal was positively nostalgic. Did this world of leisured moneyed people really still exist in February, 1941, were there still week-ends to be had in houses with servants, where chauffeurs met trains and one’s hostess collected (or, at least, pretended she’d collected) a nosegay of friends, culled for one’s own delectation? Evidently there remained still in England some small ‘pockets of resistance,’ small oases that refused stoutly to be engulfed by the war-time no-nonsense-and-hard-work atmosphere, and evidently Betty’s house was one of them. How very shocking; and how utterly delectable to slip back, just for one short week-end, into that other lost (and so rightly lost) world. A ‘refresher’ course in social futility; a reminder that just here and there in England people still lived in lovely, decorative, extravagant pointlessness. Dope, pure dope—and exactly what I felt I wanted. I made up my mind at once to accept.

  I grinned as I read Betty’s P.S.: ‘Bring your little girl, too, if you like, or haven’t anyone to leave her with. I’m sure she’d be no trouble at all.’

  No thank you, Betty. Only property children accompany their mothers on visits of the sort, and only property children are ‘no trouble at all’ on such occasions.

  I wrote to accept for myself, and to explain that Antonia would stay behind with Blakey and Rene. Then, the letter posted, I told Rene and Blakey; neither of whom looked at all pleased.

  I didn’t care, I had made up my mind not to care. This was going to be my treat, and my treat alone. It seemed, I thought (a little savagely), about my turn.

  * * * * *

  Much as I should have liked Betty’s chauffeur to meet the 3.15 from London on my account, I yet could not help realizing that I should save several hours by travelling to Betty’s house direct from Harminster by Thames Valley bus; and this, accordingly, I did. Betty, on my arrival, loudly applauded my ingenuity.

  “How clever of you, darling, to think of it! Now I should just have gone up to London and down again like a little robot.” She laughed her attractive laugh. (Betty’s manner, her appearance, her laugh, are all extraordinarily attractive.) “You’ve always had a bit of a practical streak though, haven’t you, Vicky? I remember once at a party—when you were about nineteen and looking too lovely in white—you kept the whole room absolutely spellbound while you talked about rats in London sewers, and how they were kept down.”

  “How awful of me, Betty! I promise I won’t again.”

  “But no, darling, that’s not the point. The point is, we were all of us absolutely fascinated. We loved it—do do it again. Look, this is your room.”

  “Fire and flowers. Glorious,”

  “This weather . . . I mean we all thought England just couldn’t, didn’t we? Siberia—perhaps. But Berkshire—no! And now it seems it can happen. Snow! Falling down and piling up the whole time, the whole time.” She gestured with her hands to represent the snowflakes and did not look in the least silly. She is an extraordinarily graceful woman.

  “This mirror!” exclaimed Betty, suddenly darting to the dressing-table, “I can’t help feeling it’s a bit murky. Can you see in it, Vicky? No, of course you can’t. I must—”

  ‘Ring for another dressing-table,’ I finished mentally with a grin, but aloud I said, “Nonsense, darling, I can see perfectly.”

  “Well, I can’t. But then, if I could, perhaps I mightn’t like it. I might look ‘well-preserved’ Vicky—do you think? Of course at forty-three it begins to be difficult not to look ‘well-preserved’—don’t you think?”

  “I expect my difficulty will be to look it. You aim so very high, Betty.”

  (Oh, gloriously futile conversation, with what a sense of luxury I snuggled myself back into the old ‘Betty’ atmosphere.)

  “You do look older, Vicky darling,” said Betty (woman-to-woman-in-frank-affection tone, that used to flatter me so when I was about nineteen). “It suits you though—in a way . . . That line of temple and cheekbone—sharper now, but very subtle and taking. . . . Why haven’t we seen more of each other recently?”

  Affection, compliments, prompted by nothing at all—not insincerity, just nothing. Yet, oddly enough, the magic still worked. Betty ‘presented’ me to myself as someone desirable and subtle—and immediately my vanity awoke and gave a little luxurious stretch and, like a kitten in front of a cosy fire, purred and fluffed up its fur.

  “Yes, it’s a long time since we’ve met,” I said, “One way and another. . . .”

  “Still with those publishers of yours, Vicky?”

  “Yes. Publishers to you always, agents actually to me, but nevertheless, you mean what I mean.”

  “And how’s . . . your little girl?”

  “Antonia?” I said (kindly making her a present of the name for future reference). “Very well, thank you.”

  “Does she go to school yet, Vicky?”

  “Not yet. She’s not quite five.” (It’s all right, Betty, you needn’t talk about Antonia any more, you’ve done your duty!)

  “Betty, who else is here this week-end?”

  “Oh darling, come down and have some tea and I’ll tell you. niere’s just ourselves for tea—isn’t that nice? Hubert’s away, you know, and the others are arriving later at various times. Not that there’s very many—you know, Vicky, nowadays, it’s most awfully difficult to fix things up definitely with people, isn’t it?”

  We went down the stairs, arms affectionately linked.

  “I know. They’re either in the army or working,” I agreed with a grin. “It’s a shame!”

  Betty laughed. “You needn’t be so ironical, Vicky . . . Of course, I know as well as anyone that we’ve”—her eye fell on a big vase of flowers as we entered the little morning-room, and she finished the sentence abstractedly—“that we’ve got to win the war. Vicky—I call that vase well arranged, don’t you?”

  “Very well. Whose handiwork?”

  “That’s just it, darling. My ex-kitchenmaid. I taught her, of course, but don’t you think she’s an apt pupil? She’s only eighteen. I shall congratulate her. She’ll be awfully pleased at that. Darling,
sit on the sofa by the fire. Curl up on it, if you like. I’m just going to ring for tea.”

  “Oh Betty, I am enjoying myself!” I cried, flinging myself luxuriously on to the sofa and piling cushions behind my back. “What’s the opposite of ‘slumming ‘? That’s what I feel I’m doing now, with all this talk of congratulating kitchenmaids and ringing for tea.”

  “Don’t be absurd, darling, you’ve missed the point. I said ex-kitchenmaid. My dear, she’s our housemaid now—I just had to promote her, there was no one else to be had. So you see, it is a slum now, this house, after all,” concluded Betty triumphantly “Here comes our eighteen-year-old to answer the bell. . . . Tea, please, Margaret, and toast, I think, don’t you, Vicky?”

  “Lovely,” I said, and added as the door closed, “But Margaret is not, I take it, your sole domestic prop, Betty?”

  “Oh no, there’s the cook, of course, and Margaret’s mother, who comes in daily to help and a little girl of fourteen in the kitchen—but that’s all. It’s really awful, isn’t it, Vicky? I don’t know what’s going to happen to all of us. Have you still got your faithful old What’s-Her-Name?”

  “Blakey? Yes. She’s all I’ve got now.”

  “Well, of course, darling, there’s only yourself and Antonia to be looked after, isn’t there? I mean, it’s not very many.”

  “Whereas here,” I said, smiling at Betty, “there’s not only yourself and Hubert—when he’s home—but also” (I counted on my fingers), “the cook, the housemaid, the housemaid’s mother, the fourteen-year-old, the chauffeur, and presumably a gardener! A household of eight persons. It makes a difference, doesn’t it?”

  I did not really think Betty would agree seriously that it did, but I could not resist trying.

  For a moment she frowned, and then burst out laughing.

  “Ah, but that’s not arguing fair, Vicky! What about the size of this house? I can’t alter that, can I, Vicky? What about all these people I’m having down this very week-end? What about—”

  “You win, Betty,” I said happily. “I was only being offensive just as a try-on. You can’t think how I appreciate your house and the way you run it, and your kindness in asking me here. It’s heaven!”

  “Darling, I’m so glad,” said Betty vaguely. “Oh good, here’s tea. We’ll have it on this little table between us, Vicky, and help ourselves. Thank you, Margaret. Well—as I say, I’m not expecting many people this week-end. There’s a rather sweet young Air Force pilot and the Sandersons—you remember the Sandersons, darling?—and Trevor Barrington—have you ever met him? You must have seen him on the stage dozens of times—and Raymond, of course, just down for the day on Sunday.”

  “Raymond!”

  “Yes, didn’t I tell you? I thought I had. Oh no, I remember I fixed it up afterwards with him.”

  “No, I didn’t know.”

  “You don’t mind, do you, darling? Why, when I saw Raymond in town not so long ago he mentioned that he’d been seeing you. So naturally I took it that you two were on quite friendly terms, meeting in the ordinary course of events and so on like—well, like most people do again after a bit. As a matter of fact, couples usually seem to get on so much better after they’re divorced, don’t you think, Vicky? Vicky, I am sorry if you mind! I never dreamt you would!”

  She was quite genuine in her surprise, I could see that. Divorced couples re-meeting socially were a commonplace in Betty’s life.

  “No, I don’t mind,” I said, wondering, as I spoke, whether this was the truth or not. “It’s just that—it’s a bit of a surprise. I have seen Raymond recently, Betty, but as a matter of fact it was a pure accident. We just ran into each other.”

  “Oh well—the first time it usually is an accident, isn’t it? I mean, that makes it easier in a way, and then afterwards everything is perfectly simple. Don’t you think?”

  “Oh quite,” I agreed, since what else, as the well-behaved guest, could I do but ‘agree? And then (with a queer little quirk of possessiveness, for I did not want Betty to tell me about Raymond), “Betty, you know, of course, about Raymond’s T.B.?”

  “Yes, poor lamb. A shame, wasn’t it? However, he’s apparently quite all right again now.”

  “Yes. Betty, while we are on the subject—I mean, you’ve been seeing Raymond on and off all this time, haven’t you?”

  “Yes, certainly. On and off, as you say. I’m very fond of Raymond. He’s a lamb. So are you, Vicky. Lambs, both of you. What do you want to ask me?”

  “Betty, did Sandra chuck Raymond because he got T.B.?”

  Ever since I had met Raymond that question had been teasing me. Not that it mattered to me, of course. I only felt that if I knew, once and for all, I could stop wondering about it for ever. I could not ask Raymond, and I had not meant to ask Betty, until the opportunity suddenly occurred, and I could not resist it.

  I suppose I spoke with a sudden intensity, for Betty stared at me with surprise for a moment and then burst out laughing.

  “Oh darling, no! Why, Vicky, you are behind the times.”

  “I expect I am,” I said, feeling a little squashed and about nineteen again.

  “Sandra chucked Raymond—or he chucked her, I really don’t know which—ages ago. I don’t remember exactly when, but not so very long after you’d parted. Sandra’s had a reconciliation with her husband now. That mythical husband! He turned up from New York or somewhere and, my dear, he’s absolutely charming! He and Sandra are positively a devoted couple now.”

  So! All that agony over Sandra wasted! Pure sheer waste. (Ah! I reminded myself quickly, but was it waste? Wasn’t it better to have the agony over Sandra once and for all and get it finished and have it done with, rather than endure and wait for the next time—and the time after—and go through with it again and again, minding less—yes, this was the awful thing, the thing that had panicked me—minding a little less each time, until in the end one hardly minded at all, and one’s marriage, which had started so marvellously, had become indistinguishable from the marriages of any other of Betty’s friends’?)

  “No, I didn’t know all that,” I said lightly, “I’ve been out of things so much lately.”

  “You have, haven’t you?” said Betty sympathetically. “This war and one thing and another—it makes life so difficult, doesn’t it? I mean to meet one’s friends and so on.”

  “Yes,” I agreed with a private grin. Betty patronizing the war as a social nuisance was grand.

  “You know, Vicky—stop me if you don’t want to talk about it—but—”

  “That’s a sure gambit, Betty, and always works, as you very well know. Well?”

  “Well, if you’d never dashed off to New York with that publisher woman of yours with the extraordinary name—”

  “Mrs. Hitchcock, literary agent, you mean. Yes?”

  “—At such a tactless moment, darling, Raymond would never have got so involved with Sandra. Why on earth did you?”

  “Well, Betty, that’s a plain question, and I’ll give you a plain answer. Or answers. One: it was a good opportunity for me—in the office, I mean, and the office, I need hardly tell you, takes no account of domestic tact or tactlessness. Two: funk. I didn’t want to be hurt, and I thought if I shut my eyes and ran away everything might be over and all right again by the time I got home. Three: pride. I will not, I simply will not play the role of the little wifey darning socks at home and waiting to forgive and forget all. There’s your answer.”

  “All the same, it wasn’t wise, darling. You’d much better not have gone away just then.”

  “I don’t think I care for a marriage that turns into a game of strategy, Betty.”

  “Oh, Vicky darling! As if one hadn’t got to—sooner or later—just plan a little, here and there. . . . Why, surely . . .”

  “All right then. I haven’t got enough guts to play that game. Put it like that, if you like. I do admire your guts, Betty, I do seriously.”

  “Oh Vicky, what nonsense! It’s just a que
stion of—of the right attitude. Of—of not taking things too seriously, that’s all.”

  “Exactly,” I said, in a small voice. (‘There, but for the grace of God, goes . . .’)

  * * * * *

  Trevor Barrington I ‘saved up’ to tell Rene about, like a nice aunt chancing on a toy that would just suit her little niece; Rene, I knew, would be thrilled when I told her that he was exactly as gracious and courtly off the stage as he was on. Distinguished old gentlemen were Trevor’s theatrical line, and he was undoubtedly right at the top of his own particular tree. His manner, in private life, was so exactly suitable to the rôles he played on the stage, that one found oneself speculating once again on that old question—do actors act off the stage or are they rather themselves on it? Rene, in any case, would be enchanted to hear about him.

  I would not, of course, tell her that probably Betty and Trevor were conducting a liaison together, and that this was possibly the whole reason for the week-end party.

  I had, naturally, no direct evidence of this myself, (Betty conducts all her affairs with great decorum), but nevertheless, knowing Betty as well as I did, I was pretty sure I was right. This being the case, I felt it was hard on the young—the very young—R.A.F. boy, to invite him down the same week-end. Not that he would necessarily guess anything; indeed, it would be extremely unlikely that he would. He was too nice. But obviously he thought Betty the most wonderful person he had ever had the privilege of knowing, and, equally obviously, there was a rather nasty eye-opener, of some sort or other, coming to him shortly, in the future. However, it was none of my concern.

  The Sandersons were a couple I had known, on and off, for many years. Everybody tended to invite them about as makeweights or useful stop-gaps. They were good, unobtrusive mixers: she, smart without being outstanding; he, good company without being a dominant personality. Really, I think that is absolutely all I know about them—but then I have never, I think, met either of them at all, except at parties—this week-end at Betty’s house counting most definitely as a ‘party.’ The atmosphere was such throughout, not feverishly gay or hectic or anything of the sort, but steadily, unobtrusively ‘social’ nevertheless. It was rather like being on board ship: at first one was conscious of the beat of the engines that earned one along; later one ceased to hear them unless one deliberately listened, and it was only when one disembarked finally from the house after the week-end was over that one realized that one had been tired and a little wrought-up by this perpetual, almost silent throbbing of the machines.