Company in the Evening

by Ursula Orange

  “And yet you’re so attractive to men, Vicky,” said Betty, who says this sort of thing without the slightest hesitation. “Surely there must have been somebody in these last few years who has tempted you. Hasn’t there?”

  She flashed me a sideways look under her lashes.

  “No, nobody at all, Betty. I won’t say I haven’t had a few dishonourable proposals, so to speak, and one entirely honourable one—but I couldn’t take much interest in any of them.”

  “What a pity, darling,” said Betty sympathetically.

  I did not want her sympathy. Indeed, it annoyed me.

  “In fact, if you really want to know, Betty,” I added, “I have lived in complete chastity ever since my divorce, and there seems every prospect of my continuing to do so.”

  I thought it was about time somebody gave Betty a healthy shock of the sort. Shock it undoubtedly was. She looked quite horrified.

  “But darling! It must be so bad for you.”

  “Rubbish!” I said briskly.

  “Oh no, it’s not rubbish,” said Betty seriously. “Vicky darling, if you start talking like that I’m going to feel worried about you—I really am!”

  “My dear Betty, surely you don’t expect me to take a lover as a sort of tonic or pill or something?”

  “Now Vicky! You’re just talking like that to put me off,” retorted Betty, not without a certain acuteness. “You know perfectly well that I only mean that it would be natural for you to want—well, not to be lonely—any longer.”

  “I’m not lonely,” I said, deliberately misunderstanding her, and enjoying doing so. “I’ve got Antonia and Blakey and my sister-in-law to keep me company.”

  “You’re being very naughty and perverse to-night, Vicky,” said Betty, laughing. In spite of the laugh I could see that she was a little annoyed with me. Perhaps, for the first time, she realized that I was now at last utterly free of her, emotionally speaking, and of her long-wielded sway over me. “You really know perfectly well what I mean, don’t you?”

  “Well yes, I do, Betty,” I admitted, slightly penitent. For after all, according to her own lights, she had always been and would always be extraordinarily kind to me. “But I really don’t see that there’s anything to be done about it. And I’m certainly not, generally speaking, at all unhappy.”

  “No?” said Betty, doubtingly. “All the same, darling . . . You know Hubert and I and several others of us, we quite thought you’d eventually settle down with Charles.”

  “Charles? I haven’t seen him for years. He’s in New York, I imagine.”

  “That’s where he really lives, is it?”

  “Yes. He was only over in London on business, you know, that time we all saw so much of him.”

  I slightly emphasized the ‘all,’ but Betty was not to be put off.

  “He went back to New York, didn’t he, just about the time you went there?”

  “He did indeed. And I saw quite a lot of him over there. I was very fond of Charles,” I said calmly.

  “And he of you,” said Betty meaningly. “But all the same—oh well, we all guessed wrong about him and you, did we?”

  I was not really cross with Betty for her insinuations—not even though there was just enough truth in them to get home. Charles had been in love with me and I had enjoyed the fact that he was. That was all, and Raymond had never appeared to mind. No, I was not cross, but I did want to close the conversation. There had been, I felt strongly, enough raking up of the past already that day.

  “If you guessed that—that Charles was to me what Sandra was to Raymond, you did guess wrong, Betty,” I said firmly. “And if you guessed that there was anything ‘collusive’ about our divorce, you guessed wrong too.”

  “I didn’t guess either of those things exactly, Vicky. I only thought that perhaps Raymond and you came to some sort of understanding about everything. And that was why, shortly after you got back from New York, Raymond and you stopped living together and you started divorcing him. But, of course, if you say Charles didn’t come into the picture at all, I’ll believe you.”

  “The only ‘Understanding’ that Raymond and I came to after I got back from New York,” I said wearily, wondering how on earth I had allowed the conversation to go so far, “was the understanding that I couldn’t stand the situation of Sandra and him any longer. Very hysterical of me, no doubt. And, as a matter of fact, I wanted to be the one to clear out of the house, and Raymond only went to stop me, so, morally speaking, I left him. That’s all. But Charles, as you see, didn’t come into the picture at all. As a matter of fact, I’ve never set eyes on him since I said good-bye in New York.”

  “Poor old Vicky!”

  “No, I’m not setting myself up to be the virtuous wronged wife,” I said quickly. “The reasons for a divorce are never utterly simple, and the question of which partner happened to commit adultery may be really rather irrelevant—outside the courts.”

  I believed this to be true, as I said it. I did not mean exactly that adultery ‘didn’t count,’ but I did mean that the circumstances which had led up to the adultery counted more. I knew that Betty, even if she missed this implication, would agree.

  “Oh, of course, darling,” said Betty instantly. “Of course you’re right. And I’m so glad you can talk about it all so sensibly. It does show that if you do ever want to marry again—and I’m sure you will one day, you know, Vicky—you won’t have any sort of silly ‘thing’ about marriage.”

  “No, I haven’t got a ‘thing’ about marriage,” I said, yawning.

  “Darling, you’re half-asleep! You must tuck up at once. I mustn’t stay another moment. Good night, darling. You must come here again soon.”

  “Thank you, Betty, I’d love to if I can manage it. Good night.”

  But, after Betty had gone, I found that, tired as I was, I couldn’t sleep. Betty’s insinuations about Charles, sincerely as I had denied them, had started a fresh train of thought in my mind. Supposing I hadn’t started a baby at such an extraordinary inapposite moment . . . supposing the width of the Atlantic had not separated Charles and me after my break with Raymond . . . supposing that, on one particular occasion in New York (Charles and I alone together in his flat, Charles in love with me, I secretly unhappy because of a letter from Raymond with references to Sandra in it), supposing that a party of Charles’ friends hadn’t happened to call in on him, interrupting us at a very tense moment. . . . Supposing that circumstances (not ourselves, just circumstances) had been just a little different for Charles and me—should I possibly be married to him now? And, if so, should I be happier than I now actually was or less happy?

  This ‘if’ frame of mind! Once you get into it, there’s no escape from it—particularly at twelve o’clock at night when you’re still tossing about awake in bed. If’s and if’s, further back and further back. If’s about Charles, now if’s about Raymond. If Raymond had urged me to give up my job when I got married. . . . If I’d had a baby quite quickly, then I’d probably have had another, why hot? (Ah, but neither of the horrid little things would have been Antonia, bless her! Or would one of them? Wilder and wilder speculations and sleep further off than ever!) If my father hadn’t died when he did, the very week after my return from New York, would I have run to Mother earlier on in the story and possibly come back to forgive Raymond rather than to issue ultimatums—with agony inside and a top dressing of nonchalant ‘It’s-been-good-fun-while-it-lasted’ sophistication? (Ah, but ‘forgiveness’ was one of the things Raymond and I laughed at; had, we assumed, grown out of.)

  If’s about Charles, if’s about Raymond, if’s about me. And, finally (although I tried to beat my way out, to escape from this nightmare of coiling, spiralling suppositions), an ‘if’ about Raymond and Charles and me all enlooped in one vast tentacle. If I hadn’t flaunted Charles so gaily, so arrogantly in Raymond’s face, would Raymond have taken up, to quite such an extent, with Sandra?

  But here, at this point, with an enormous mental e
ffort, I broke free and landed back (almost, it seemed, with a thump) into the solid realities of the present. Useless, utterly useless to go on threshing about in the past in this feverish way. It was the present that mattered. Here I was, aged thirty-three, divorced, a mother, holding down a job and running a household that included Rene. These were facts. And the best thing I could do was to go to sleep on them.

  Perhaps, in the circumstances, I might permit myself a couple of aspirin.

  I did (three). And, eventually, went to sleep.

  Chapter 8

  *

  For some weeks after my visit to Betty, life was, or appeared to be, extremely dreary and tasteless. The weather continued extraordinarily cold, causing me to do frightful things that I had never done before in my life, like wearing an old sweater over my pyjamas in bed and even then getting up in the middle of the night to boil up the water in my hot-water bottle again. Antonia, who did not seem to have read the bit in the book about healthy children glorying in frost and snow, disliked the cold as much as I did, and was often peevish. Blakey got chilblains. The kitchen seemed always full of Philip’s nappies in various stages of staying rather wet. Rene said this weather really wasn’t fair on a little baby, and I said that Philip was the only one it was fair on, and that if only somebody would tuck me up in a nice snug cot or pram all the time, I would ask nothing better of life. The pipes froze. Mother wrote that she had a streaming cold and couldn’t travel to Oxford to meet me after all. It thawed. It froze again, and I fell down and cut my knee. Philip rolled off the sofa while in my charge, and although fortunately uninjured screamed loud enough to bring Rene running. Blakey reported that Antonia had refused to say her prayers and that consequently she, Blakey, had, as a punishment, taken away her much-loved Mickey Mouse gas-mask for a week. (And, at the time, I had not enough spirit to see anything funny even in this.) The butterfly-nut off the mincing machine mysteriously disappeared. Blakey, on no grounds whatsoever except the excellent ones of personal dislike, suspected Rene, and Rene suspected me and I suspected Antonia.

  Life, in short, seemed full of minor irritations and singularly bereft of major or minor pleasures. I had lunched with Raymond once in town, but, ridiculously enough, had spent most of my time trying to get used to the look of him in uniform. He had got his War Office; job and seemed very pleased at finding himself working just under an old friend of his. I was pleased, too, for his sake, but, as Raymond talked more and more about this friend of his, I began to wonder, a little crossly, whether it was for this I had taken trouble over my appearance and asked Mrs. Hitchcock for a longer lunch-hour than I usually took. Afterwards I was cross with myself, rather than with Raymond. For what on earth had I expected of this lunch? Nothing at all, naturally, so why be piqued when it passed off quite ordinarily?

  Perhaps it was merely that a vista now stretched ahead of me with nothing perceptible to look forward to at all. If I was as I had firmly resolved, henceforward going to live solidly in the present, eschewing all ‘might-have-beens’ and ‘if’s’ and like woollinesses of the mind, well then the present might, I felt reward me by displaying some slight interest in my existence—just a little variety or entertainment, no matter what.

  The only variety that came my way was Rene’s illness, which happened just at the beginning of March. It was not the sort of entertainment I had hoped for,

  Rene got a mild form of ’flu. It was not serious, but did necessitate taking to her bed one Sunday evening and staying there. Rene was still feeding the four-months-old Philip, and I assumed that she would carry on while in bed, at least partially. She was not very ill and she had been, I knew, very keen not to wean Philip before it was really time—an attitude in which I heartily supported her. I was, therefore, more than a little indignant when I came home from the office on the Monday evening to find that the doctor had called and brusquely told her to “put that child on to bottles,” as he went. Rene was almost in tears about it.

  “I haven’t tried a bottle yet,” she said, “because, honestly, I don’t know how, Vicky. I fed him myself at six o’clock, as I always have, and he seems to have settled off to sleep perfectly happily. Oh, of course I must do what the doctor says, but it does seem a shame!”

  “Oh, good gracious Rene, if you don’t want to give up feeding him—and I think you’re absolutely right to want to keep on—I certainly shouldn’t do what the doctor says,” I said.

  Rene gazed at me, round-eyed. “Oh Vicky! Won’t he be cross with me, then?”

  “I shouldn’t tell him. He isn’t coming again, is he? Didn’t you argue about it with him at all at the time?”

  “No, because he just said so and then went, before I had time to say anything.”

  “Oh, he probably thought you’d be only too pleased at an excuse to drop it.”

  “You don’t think he meant it for Philip’s sake?” said Rene, reverently.

  “Oh no. I shouldn’t think so. I expect he was thinking entirely of you. Doctor Saunders doesn’t care a rap about babies, you know. If he was thinking of Philip, he’d have left you with more instructions about what to give him and so-on, wouldn’t he? You know heaps of very good doctors hardly know a thing about infant feeding, and care less.”

  Rene looked shocked.

  “I never have him for Antonia, you know. I have a woman doctor—rather a friend of mine, Doctor Mary Lambert—who knows all about that sort of thing. Would you like me to ring her up and ask what she thinks?”

  “Oh, I would, Vicky. Would it be all right, do you think?”

  “Oh yes,” I said recklessly. “We can reckon we’re consulting her for Philip, not for you.”

  I went straight to the telephone, and was lucky enough to catch Dr. Mary herself. I was a little horrified when she immediately took it that I was expecting her to pay a professional call on Philip, but, as soon as she mentioned how very busy she was, I saw my way out and assured her that a little advice over the telephone was all I needed. I did not say anything about Dr. Saunders. I merely told her the facts of the case, that Rene was not really ill and that she was very anxious to go on feeding Philip.

  She said, as I had thought she would, that if Rene’s attack was really only a mild one, she could certainly continue to feed Philip, and that it was improbable that the milk would upset him. Rene should proceed with caution, noting results carefully, but by no means doing anything drastic and sudden. That, she said definitely, would be a great pity. She added some instructions about how to prepare a supplementary feed for Philip, if temporarily necessary, and said that she would call in on us towards the end of the week to see how we were getting on.

  Well, I couldn’t stop her coming, if she wanted to. Probably Rene would be up and about again by then.

  Fortunately I had not to go to the office the next day, and really I quite enjoyed myself nursing Rene and Philip together. I find it a bore to be vaguely ‘nice’ to people, but no bore at all to do something definite and practical for them. For the first time I really felt quite fond of Rene, and proud and fond too of Philip. I had always thought him a nice healthy little baby, but now I was amused to find myself discovering him quite particularly sweet. I had him in my room at night, as it seemed healthier while Rene was ill, and quite enjoyed his company.

  I enjoyed being competent too. (It is so easy to be competent over other people’s children—one is never seriously worried about them). I took Blakey’s scales from the kitchen and test weighed every feed for Rene. I was quite pleased when a few supplements (mixed most carefully by myself) proved necessary. Rene was inclined to be distressed—she had had no trouble at all hitherto—but, in my best professional calm cheery manner I assured her that it was nothing but a temporary expedient.

  That was Tuesday. On Wednesday I was due to go to the office again. Rene was better, but clearly needed another day or two in bed. It was quite obvious that she dreaded the prospect of being left to Blakey’s ministrations on the morrow.

  I had taken such a lot o
f selfish pleasure in being the One on whom everyone was depending, that I had not bothered very much about co-opting Blakey into my little act. On Tuesday night I realized that this was a mistake. Blakey, I saw, was distinctly disgruntled. Probably, had I appealed to her earlier on to rise well to a crisis, she would—like the true servant she is—have risen beautifully. As it was, I had just ignored her all day, and she was retaliating by registering complete indifference to Rene and Philip. Things boded ill for the morrow.

  When Rene suddenly said, “Oh Vicky! You have been sweet to me to-day. What shall I do without you all to-morrow?” and turned appealing eyes on me, I suddenly made up my mind to do a thing I had never done before in my office career. I went straight downstairs and telephoned to Mrs. Hitchcock to say that I was terribly sorry, but a domestic crisis prevented me from coming to the office the next day.

  Mrs. Hitchcock, I could tell, was not pleased, but, in my exalted ministering-angel mood, I hardly cared. Blakey was not pleased either when I told her. The perverse old creature had been robbed, at a stroke, of a grievance and a chance to show her mettle, and, although I saw this, I did not care either. I made Rene some Ovaltine, superintended Philip’s last feed, tucked them both up, and went to bed in a glow of smug self-appreciation. I had, I thought cosily, now two more whole days to be wonderful in.

  I had. And I was. The nice thing was that both Rene and Philip progressed splendidly under my rule. By Thursday evening it was evident that Rene could perfectly well get up, for a little the next day. Philip showed no signs whatever of being upset. What a splendid reliable person I really was! If only everybody always did exactly what I told them to, how smoothly things would always run!

  It was in such a mood I returned to the office on Friday. Brisk, refreshed, ready to make up for lost time. As it turned out, I needed all my energy.

  Mrs. Hitchcock, after an extremely perfunctory, not to say disapproving enquiry after ‘my invalid,’ handed me a letter with the remark, “Well, you see what’s happened now. Something will have to be done about that woman.”