Not that I did not enjoy the week-end thoroughly. I did. I got exactly what I wanted, what I had come for—a complete change of atmosphere. And, funnily enough, I got something else, something I had been wanting equally badly, but had seen no chance at all of getting—a really good talk with a sympathetic and yet dispassionate listener about Rene and Blakey and Barry, a chance to tell it all to someone as an amusing story and yet as not nothing but an amusing story. A confidant, in short, in whom it would not be disloyal to confide.
Raymond was my confidant.
Chapter 7
*
We had gone out for a walk together on Sunday afternoon. The Sandersons are bridge fiends. I play, but Raymond knows I would usually rather be doing something else. Trevor Barrington and Betty made up the table. For two pins the R.A.F. boy would have accompanied us on our walk, but Raymond—who has a wonderful flair for managing things without giving offence—contrived to circumvent this.
“You didn’t want him to come, did you?” said Raymond, as we started out.
Once again, my appearance was far from glamorous. For one thing the snowy state of the ground necessitated gum-boots.
“Good Lord, no! He’d have wanted to edge the conversation round to Betty all the time.”
“I’m afraid he would have.”
“Poor devil,” I said (and knew that, with Raymond, I need not be more explicit).
“Exactly. Do him good in the end though, do you think?”
“Um . . . possibly. On the whole though, not, I think. Height of caddishness, isn’t it, to discuss our hostess like this while enjoying her hospitality?”
“Except that it’s an old-established rule that with you it doesn’t count.”
“You think that rule still applies?”
“Yes,” said Raymond firmly. “Yes—and always.”
I sighed, relieved. I think that one of the nicest things about marriage is the exquisite opportunities it gives one for what Raymond and I used to call ‘cad parties’—by which we meant those cosy little chats between us about the friends we had just visited or who had just visited us, during which one gaily gave vent to the most malicious observations, happily secure in the knowledge that, as Raymond said, it didn’t count. Lovely. I had missed them badly.
“You know, this week-end I can’t help feeling I’m taking part in a sort of slightly dated comedy of manners,” I said.
“Date about 1935?” Raymond suggested.
“Yes. About then. The only thing that really matters is who’s having affairs with who—and even that doesn’t matter, except superficially. It’s just a sort of game.”
“Quite. And Betty still keeps on, treating the war, really rather superbly, as ‘noises off’!”
“Marvellous, isn’t it? I must say I’m finding it the most glorious sort of dope.”
“You need dope, do you Vicky, these days?”
“Oh well—who doesn’t—these days?”
“Vicky, what’s this Rene woman like?”
There was Raymond at his old game, jumping a step or two in the ladder. Quickness as infinitely restful as it had ever been.
“Rene? Oh well . . .” I began to giggle. “‘Cad party,’ Raymond?”
“Certainly. Why not?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Really a bit caddish perhaps. Only there’s no one else I can to. I can’t even to Mother because I took Rene off her shoulders, God help me.”
“Come on. Be brave. Tell me what she’s like.”
I laughed and prepared to enjoy myself in the unworthiest way possible.
“Her name’s really Irene,” I said. “But she thinks ‘Rene’ is prettier.”
“Go on,” said Raymond, grinning.
“Talking to her is like walking through a bog—squash, squash, squash—never, just never do you really crunch on to anything solid. Nevertheless, talking is the breath of life to her.”
“You two must get on splendidly,” said Raymond, enjoying himself, I think, as much as I was. “Where was the appeal for Philip, do you think?”
“Oh—quite appealing if you like that sort of appeal, which I heartily detest. She was lonely. ‘Mumsy’ was dead, and ‘Auntie’ died too. She cried on his shoulder. No, to be quite honest, that last is just a guess. Within my utterly caddish framework I will yet try to be truthful, if I can.”
“I respect your artistic integrity. What does she make of you?”
“Oh, poor child, she’s a bit frightened of me, I’m afraid.”
“I never put you in Category H myself, Vicky, Why do you alarm her so?”
“I scold her sometimes. I just have to. Oh well, it’s a long story . . .”
“It’s a nice long afternoon, Vicky.”
It was then that I told him all about the Barry-Blakey-and-Rene episode, and much enjoyed the telling. Raymond had always been the most delightful of audiences, laughter and comprehension mixed in exactly the right proportions—by which, I mean, Of course, my proportions.
“Vicky,” he said. “Forgive me if I ask a rather impertinent question—meaning, of course, as one always does, a possibly pertinent one?”
“Yes?”
“Well. This Barry person. Do you, right underneath, have a sort of feeling that he’s your property, even if you don’t precisely want him? Are you just possibly cross with Blakey because she acted, on that occasion, as your worser self?”
“No. No, honestly not, Raymond. I don’t grudge Barry to Rene in the very slightest. Let him be her friend too by all means—or even her friend rather than mine, if that means he’ll take Rene off my hands occasionally.”
“I see. In that case, you’ve merely Blakey’s machinations to outwit.”
“Yes. And the antagonism between Blakey and Rene to contend with . . . Oh, it all sounds very trivial, Raymond, but the trouble is, you see, more than trivial issues depend on it. My job, for instance. If things get too unbearable it will have to be Blakey, not Rene, to go. I can’t sack Rene. But then I must have someone utterly reliable to leave Antonia with, on the days when I go to London, and that’s not easy to find these days. I don’t see Rene looking after both children and doing the cooking and house as well. It wouldn’t be fair to ask her—apart from the fact that I wouldn’t trust her. . . . Oh Lord, Raymond, for God’s sake stop me! I’m simply not going to bore you with my domestic problems.”
“Date definitely 1941, not 1935. Only I’m not bored, Vicky. Believe it or not, I’m passionately interested. . . . Vicky, it’s a small point, but why didn’t you tell Rene who I was that night I saw her? Or did you tell her afterwards?”
“No, I never told her, Raymond. I don’t know quite why not. Possibly just because she’s not the sort of person to take that sort of thing in her stride. I mean, she’d have goggled. And anyway, what the hell business is it of hers who my friends are?”
“Do you know, Vicky, I begin to see why poor Rene is frightened of you?”
“Oh, so do I, Raymond! And you needn’t go to tell me that I’m not very nice about Rene, that I’ve drawn an unfair picture of her. Of course I have. If you don’t like a person, obviously you’re not going to see their nicest side, are you?”
“Vicky, my sweet, don’t go so violently on the defensive! I’m not criticizing you. I’m enjoying you, and I’m still on your side. I only just wavered towards Rene for one moment when you said that about it being no business of hers who your friends were. The emphasis on the ‘who’ was almost savage.”
“Yes, well. As a matter of fact, I had a reason for being a trifle savage and secretive about your identity. I would permit Rene to know my other friends more readily—witness Barry. The truth is that once Rene and I had a bit of a quarrel about you.”
Even as I spoke I knew that Raymond’s interest, together with my desire to clear myself of appearing unnecessarily unkind to Rene, were together luring me on to speak of things I had really better not refer to.
“About me? An odd choice of subject when there must have been so man
y better.”
“Yes, it was, wasn’t it? It wasn’t much really—I wouldn’t dream of discussing you properly with Rene, Raymond,” I said haughtily.
“Thank you,” said Raymond, but I saw his lips twitch and guessed that his unspoken comment was again, ‘Poor Rene!’
“—It was merely that Rene seemed to have the idea that you’d more or less knocked me about, and were nothing but a good riddance to me and Antonia, and naturally I resented that, Raymond, and told her so.”
“Was it worth quarrelling about, after all these years? Ah well, Vicky, I’m very touched that you should think so, anyway. It was a very loyal gesture on your part, to defend me to Rene.”
Perversely enough, this rather nicely-turned little speech of Raymond’s annoyed me. I think it was the word ‘gesture’ which touched me up. Real honest anger is no gesture, nor had I been moved by any abstract conceptions of ‘loyalty,’ nor had I even stopped to think whether the subject was ‘worth’ quarrelling about. I had acted on impulse and from the heart, and of course afterwards regretted it. I did not want to be congratulated on a good gesture.
Rather to my own surprise, I burst out and heard myself saying, “Oh Raymond! This admiration of ‘gestures’ has been our undoing! Your undoing and my undoing, we’re alike in that. We ought to pull ourselves up before it’s too late.”
Raymond looked interested.
“I’m not quite sure that I see what you mean, Vicky.”
“No? It’s difficult to explain precisely . . .”
It was, for I wanted to avoid all concrete examples from the past, to express myself in general terms, and yet, now that I had so recklessly embarked on the subject, to make my point, and make it strongly.
“I only mean that we’re too damn civilized, both of us, Raymond. We’ve both of us almost grown out of all the primitive instincts, we don’t understand them any more. We don’t understand about people loving passionately or hating passionately or worshipping passionately. We’ve grown out of jealousy, we’ve grown out of revenge, we’ve grown out of saying prayers. Instead of behaving naturally, instead of grabbing and praying and crying, we stand a little aloof, smiling faintly and behaving beautifully in an arrogant sort of way. We’re too proud to fight, Raymond, that’s our trouble. And possibly we think it’s just a little bit vulgar to feel passionately over anything. We’re awfully good at behaving well, but I’m not at all sure that that isn’t our worst vice. It might often be much better, if we behaved really badly—and naturally—for a change.”
“Could you give me an example?”
“No, because I’m rather carefully not being personal. I’m sure you can think of heaps for yourself. I can.” (Supposing I had rated you like a fish-wife and thrown the fire-irons at your head when I first became jealous of Sandra, instead of giving you to understand you had my blessing and disappearing with a halo of bogus broadmindedness to New York? Supposing you, Raymond, had insisted that I should have a baby when you wanted to start one—a year after our marriage—instead of agreeing so chivalrously that it would be a pity for me to give up the office just as I was getting on so well there.) “I only mean,” I finished, “that if we hadn’t been so damn civilized, you and I, we might have made a better job of things. I’m not talking about our marriage particularly, you know,” I added hastily, and, I’m afraid, a little unconvincingly. “I’m just talking generally.”
“Quite,” said Raymond reassuringly. “And you’re being very interesting, Vicky. Only I think you depict us as further gone than we really are. One can have feelings—real primitive tough ones—without necessarily showing them, can’t one?”
“Yes. Only if the poor things never get a run off the chain, they pine away and die.”
“It’s better than never putting them on the chain and letting them bark and jump about all over the house all the time. That’s hell!”
“Oh, quite. Only you and I would never be in danger of that. Our danger is that, if we don’t ever let them out, one day we’ll find we simply haven’t got them any more.”
“I wonder. Vicky, even after all these years, did you find yourself totally unmoved at the prospect of seeing me again this week-end? I know I didn’t.”
“I thought we could carry it off perfectly well.”
“Oh yes. That’s self-control though. Not—unfeelingness. Different, isn’t it?” He paused and then added softly, and half as if he was apologizing for saying such a thing, “I know I nearly said I couldn’t come after all when I heard you were to be here.”
“Why, Raymond?”
I knew it was a mistake to ask. I knew the conversation was edging on to dangerous ground. I knew things dead and buried had better be left dead and buried. And yet, for the life of me, I couldn’t help wanting to know.
“I didn’t want to get hurt, I suppose.”
(Hurt? Raymond hurt after all these years? Had it been as bad as that for him at the time then? Of course I had never imagined he had got off scot-free from unhappiness, but, selfishly wrapped up in my own agony, I had not at the time felt his pain to any extent. And now I, perhaps, was the less vulnerable of the two of us. How strange.)
“I don’t think,” I said slowly, while all this flashed through my mind, “that it’s any good trying to conduct one’s life on the principle of not getting hurt. You lose too much that way. Besides—you don’t find my company hurtful, do you, Raymond?”
“I find it delightful as a matter of fact, Vicky. I should like to go on seeing you from time to time, if I may. Let’s see—I know your office telephone number, I think.”
I was relieved to find an undercurrent of mockery in his voice again. We had, I felt, edged round a dangerous corner together.
“Yes, I’d love to meet you again sometimes, Raymond,” I said heartily, and meant it. Then, suddenly, I laughed;
“What’s the joke?” said Raymond, smiling at me.
“Nothing.”
“Nonsense. Tell me what you’re giggling about like that at once.”
“Well—only that I had a sudden vision of ourselves ten years ago overhearing this conversation of to-day—time suddenly going wrong you understand me, in a Priestley-Dunne sort of way—and us being utterly horrified. And then I imagined a companion picture—us overhearing this conversation five years ago and how blissfully soothing and reassuring it would have sounded.”
“Yes, I suppose it was just ten years ago we got married,” said Raymond.
We were walking up the drive back to the house. I wanted our outing together to end on a light note.
“I put my hand upon my heart” (I quoted mockingly),
“And swore that we should never part,
I wonder what I would have said
If I had put it on my head.”
I had come across that recently in some anthology or other, and it had amused me. I thought it would entertain Raymond now and would round off our conversation on the correct note.
I had forgotten to allow for Raymond’s quickness and for his infuriating capacity for getting in the last word.
“Yes,” said Raymond smoothly. “Or, to alter the rhyme a little to suit the situation of five years back, instead of ten—
“You put your hand upon your head,
And vowed you’d stick to what you’d said,
It might have been the better part,
If you had put it on your heart!”
He grinned at me triumphantly.
“Just to turn the tables on you, darling, and to punish you for being airy about me.”
“Raymond! Oh well . . . it was very clever of you to make that up on the spur of the moment like that. One couldn’t expect it to apply in the circumstances.”
“No?” said Raymond teasingly; and we entered the house together.
* * * * *
Betty, clad in a glamorous garment (of the genus ‘wrapper’ rather than plain ‘dressing-gown’) came and sat on the-end of my bed on Sunday night, and seemed prepared for what I did not
particularly want—a girlish chat.
“Darling, I’ve hardly seen anything of you this week-end, after all,” she said in prettily-simulated regret.
“I know. The time seems to have gone in a flash. I have enjoyed myself, Betty.”
“I’m so glad, darling. . . . It’s the office you’re going to to-morrow at crack of dawn, is it?”
“Yes. Three days a week, I generally go.”
“Don’t you find it rather a strain, darling, still keeping on working like that?” She gazed at me sympathetically.
“I should find it much more of a strain not having an office to go to, Betty. Apart from the work interesting me, it gives me two atmospheres to move about in—home and office. It’s refreshing, you know.”
“Darling, I think you’re marvellous! Such energy! You always had, hadn’t you? . . . All the same—it must be tiring in the end, whatever you say.” She picked up a tassel from her sash and twiddled it round her fingers, “Somehow I always thought you’d marry again, Vicky,” she finished.
“Oh? No, I don’t think that’s likely,” I said nonchalantly.
I was, as a matter of fact, tired and wanted to go to sleep. But I could hardly, in the circumstances, tell her to mind her own business.
“Not attracted by the idea, darling?” hazarded Betty.
“Not particularly by the idea. I’m not averse to it or anything, but I don’t want it particularly,” I said truthfully. “And I’m certainly not attracted by any particular person.”
Company in the Evening Page 11
