Company in the Evening

by Ursula Orange

  Blakey’s cat had kittens, Philip was learning to sit up. Barry and Rene sometimes went walks together on Sunday afternoon and left me in luxurious, selfish peace. I took Antonia to meet Mother in Oxford and the child enjoyed herself ecstatically. (Trains and meals in awful tea-shops suitable to children are Antonia’s idea of heaven.) Dorothy Harper went away on a holiday and couldn’t possibly accept my kind invitation to lunch for a month. I amused myself inspecting all the schools in Harminster and making my choice for Antonia, who would shortly have to be flung into the mill of English education. Raymond rang me up at the office one afternoon to say he had suddenly acquired a couple of stalls for a play that evening, and would I come?

  I would. The invitation came at just the right moment. I was beginning to feel I had the energy once more to go out and enjoy myself.

  Raymond is good at creating a party atmosphere. In the old days we had always as a matter of course gone in for all the accessories—evening dress, dining out first, taxies home, and so on. On this occasion, Raymond was in uniform, and I in my office clothes, and there was no question of dinner first as the performance started so early. Nevertheless, from the first moment it felt like a party. Very gay we were, very witty with each other, very amusing in our comments on the play, very much at ease with each other and with the world, very assured and very heart-whole.

  I could never have believed that an evening which started under such splendid auspices could have ended so—peculiarly. I do not think it would have done so had we not, by the merest chance, encountered Sandra and her husband.

  Funnily enough, when one remembers my old vindictive day-dreams, we did meet in the bar during the second interval. Everything else was, of course, quite different. There should have been nothing in the least upsetting in the encounter for me. I was furious with myself for feeling upset.

  I could never have guessed, if anyone had told me I would never have believed that, at the sight of Sandra, I would have been assailed by a rush of the most agonizing emotion. For years I had been able to think of her calmly, to speak of her normally. Why then, at the sight of her face, should all my inside suddenly feel as if it had been turned to water? It couldn’t be true, it must be bogus emotion, I assured myself desperately, even as I moved forward to the inescapable encounter. (She had seen Raymond and hailed him with just the gay insouciance I had once imagined myself showing.) How could I mind a little incident like this when, at the time, I had felt so very little of the conventional wife’s fury towards the Other Woman?

  Delayed shock. That was the only explanation I could fling confusedly to myself. Delayed shock, all the worse for not having been felt properly at the time. I was suffering now because I had not once allowed myself to think about her as I should really have liked to think.

  Raymond’s touch on my elbow steadied me. At the time I thought it was accidental. All this turmoil was happening inside me—I was retaining perfect control of my behaviour, I thought.

  “You are absolutely cured again then, Raymond?” Sandra was saying. “I was so distressed when Betty told me about your . . . your . . .”

  “T.B.,” said Raymond. “Say it. No taboo. Yes, thank you, Sandra, I’m perfectly all right again now.”

  “May I get you another drink?” Sandra’s husband politely asked me. (I do not know if he knew who I was. There had been—mercifully—no introductions by surnames, and, even as I accepted his offer, I wondered for a moment whether he knew of Sandra and Raymond’s past. Sandra’s name had not been mentioned in the evidence in the divorce courts. Raymond had gone through the dreary farce of taking another woman away for a week-end and sending me the hotel bill. At the time I despised Sandra heartily for this.)

  “Are you living in London again now, Vicky?” said Sandra to me.

  Her manner, her appearance were, as far as I could judge, just the same as when I had last seen her. Smart, polished, a general effect of glitter. I had never known her at all well. As soon as I had begun to be unhappy about her and Raymond, I had gone to some secret pains to avoid meeting her.

  “No—I just come up from Harminster when necessary,” I answered.

  She wasn’t interested, of course. Why should she be?

  “Why don’t you two come on to Betty Attenborough’s afterwards?” said Sandra’s husband. “We’re going on to a party there. These people know Betty, don’t they, Sandra?”

  “Know Betty? Of course they do, darling! Why, Vicky’s one of Betty’s oldest friends, aren’t you, Vicky? Yes, do come, both of you.”

  She spoke with only the right amount of conventional enthusiasm, but I saw her eyes flicker towards Raymond, and tried to interpret the glance. Mischievous? Questioning? I did not know.

  The great thing was, I felt, that there should be no awkward pause at this point. Wild horses were not going to drag me to Betty’s party myself, but the very last role I was going to play in front of Sandra was that of killjoy or backer-out. Let Raymond speak.

  He did. Instantly.

  “Thank you very much, Sandra. We will drop in for a few minutes if we can.”

  I liked the ‘we.’ I liked the assumption that he and I were united for the evening with other possible plans for entertaining ourselves.

  It now only remained to explain to Raymond afterwards, quite quietly and without the slightest suggestion of making a scene about it, that I would not actually accompany him to Betty’s flat. He, of course, must go.

  The bell for the last act rang, and a commissionaire in the corridor called out, “Hurry up, please.” We all moved out and became separated again into two couples. Just as she drifted off, Sandra called over her shoulder to us, “If I get there first, I’ll tell Betty you’re coming—or we might share a taxi?”

  Raymond smiled and nodded. The curtain was going up and we hurried back to our seats.

  During the whole of that last act I felt quite sick with apprehension. If only I could have mentioned casually to Raymond at once that I was not coming on to Betty’s with him! There had not been time, and now I was working myself up into a state of nerves about it. If only I could pretend that I had to catch a train home at once. Unfortunately, Raymond knew that the trains ran until midnight.

  Not for worlds would I give Raymond my real reason for not wanting to go to Betty’s—that the sight of Sandra and him together made me feel literally and physically sick. It was a reason I myself heartily despised. I was a coward and would have to take the coward’s way out—a headache or some such excuse of the sort.

  There, that was the end of the play. The first two acts I had thoroughly enjoyed, the last hardly taken in at all. God Save the King. Stand to attention and don’t fumble. Now! Say quickly to Raymond . . .

  “This way! Quick, Vicky!” said Raymond, taking me by the elbow.

  The main exit was at the back of the auditorium, but, before I knew where I was Raymond had shepherded me through a side fire-exit. We were on the pavement, in a side-street.

  “Now, round this corner and with luck we’ll pick up a taxi before the crowd,” said Raymond, still completely in charge.

  “Raymond, look—I think I ought to be getting back to Harminster. I don’t think . . .”

  “Taxi?” said Raymond, waving.

  The taxi drew up. Raymond handed me in. Hypnotically, I acquiesced.

  “Raymond, don’t give him the address of Betty’s flat because I—”

  “Don’t worry, I’m not going to!” said Raymond. (Oh! the heavenly decision in his voice. I was so relieved that I did not notice to where he did actually direct the driver.)

  Raymond climbed in. The door slammed. The taxi drove off.

  “A neat get-away, you must admit, Vicky,” said Raymond, turning to me with a grin.

  “Oh Raymond! I thought you wanted to go there,” I said idiotically.

  “Me? Good God, no. I only accepted to prevent discussion. You didn’t, did you?”

  “Me? Good God, no,” I repeated absurdly, and then we both laughed.


  “Where are we going actually, Raymond? To the station for me?”

  “Station? Certainly not, not yet. You needn’t, need you?”

  “Oh no, I needn’t.”

  “Good. Complete agreement again. As a matter of fact, quick action of some sort being necessary, I gave the driver the address of my flat. Do you mind?”

  “Mind? No, of course I don’t mind—oh Raymond, I do nothing but repeat things after you and then agree!”

  “A very good course to pursue, Vicky. As a matter of fact, I had thought before that we’d go out and have supper somewhere. Having made our get-away, we can now re-direct the driver, if you like, Vicky. He won’t mind. He knows all customers are mad, anyway.”

  “Oh, let’s go to your flat, Raymond. I’d like to see it. Where is it?”

  “In the Temple—the bit that hasn’t been bombed. But you must want something to eat, don’t you, Vicky?”

  “Can’t we find something to eat there?”

  “There’s some bacon and tins of things, I think. Wouldn’t you rather go out though?”

  “No,” I said decidedly. “I’d much rather picnic in peace at your flat.”

  “All right then,” said Raymond, without further demur. I was a little surprised at him showing even the amount of hesitation he had.

  Raymond’s flat was up a lot of stone stairs, up which our feet clattered coldly. The names of the occupants were written over the doors. It was curiously reminiscent of an Oxford college.

  “I’ve just taken it furnished for three months at a time,” explained Raymond, opening the door and showing me into a room that might well have been a college room—nicely proportioned, a ‘good’ room (not a box in a centrally-heated, steel-framed block of flats), but somehow an austere, a slightly impersonal room. I did not feel that I had very much right to be there.

  “I suppose women are allowed in here, Raymond?” I said absurdly.

  “Good gracious yes! What are you talking about?”

  “I only felt the atmosphere was rather—monastic.”

  “Is it?” Raymond glanced round vaguely. “Well, if you want the Nun’s Retreat it’s just down the passage on the left.”

  “Thank you.”

  I went and spent some time doing up my face again—a glance in the mirror assured me that it needed it. On the way, I passed the half-open door of what, I thought, must be Raymond’s bedroom. I glanced in. It also looked bare and impersonal, and rather dreary in the half-light from the passage. It gave me an odd sensation to think of Raymond sleeping alone in this room every night. It was not a painful sensation; it was just—funny. I could find no other word for it.

  When I came back to the sitting-room, the place looked more welcoming. The gas-fire was roaring cosily, Raymond had pulled up chairs and was in the act of getting out glasses.

  “Gin-and-lime, Vicky? You look better now.”

  “Better?” I said surprised. “Was I so very untidy, or what?”

  “Not so very untidy,” said Raymond, carefully measuring out some gin. “Just white.”

  “White? Was I? Did I really? I didn’t realize I’d . . .” My voice trailed away. I might have realized Raymond would see through my pretence of nonchalant chat to Sandra. Damn his perception! Especially as I still felt that I didn’t really believe in my own reactions.

  “Raymond—I didn’t really mind meeting Sandra, you, know,” I said feebly.

  “Didn’t you? I did,” said Raymond briefly.

  Well. Already my inside had ‘turned to water’ that evening, in the conventional way, and now blessed if my heart didn’t seem literally ‘to sink.’ I began to think there was more in these old novelist’s phrases than I had imagined.

  “Not for myself, of course,” added Raymond casually. “Only for your sake. We were having a lovely time—and she spoilt it. Vicky, you didn’t really think I was going to try to take you on to that bloody party, did you?”

  “Yes, I did. I was even prepared to agree with you that one ought to go. Why not, I mean, and all that.”

  “Correct gesture in fact?”

  I nodded.

  “The woman who told me that ‘admiration of gestures had been our undoing’ being presumably in eclipse?” suggested Raymond.

  “Oh, yes. I’m only a prig on Sunday afternoons. This is Wednesday evening. Quite different.”

  “Oh, of course, I see. Quite different,” retorted Raymond gravely.

  “Raymond—just to restore my slightly damaged self-confidence. You don’t think anybody else noticed I’d gone white—or whatever my revoltingly dramatic reaction was—do you?”

  “No, I’m sure they didn’t. Your sang-froid was admirable, Vicky.”

  “And yours, too,” I said politely,

  “Mine? Oh, mine wasn’t sang-froid. It was pure cold-bloodedness. A literal translation which means something utterly different. In the words of the grand old cliché, ‘What’s over is over.’ There now, that’s quite enough of that, thank you. Have another drink. How’s Rene?”

  “This is where I’m competent in the kitchen with bacon, Isn’t it?” I said, accepting his lead, as I usually accepted it. (So his feeling for Sandra was quite ‘over,’ was it?)

  “I’ll come and watch and tell you that’s not the way to open tins,” said Raymond.

  We knocked up a scratch meal together—bacon, fried bread, a tin of beans, coffee—the sort of meal that seems bed-sitting-roomish and dreary if a woman makes if for herself, but rather cosy and intimate if concocted in congenial mixed company. Over supper I entertained Raymond with what he called “The next instalment of your Rene story.” I found no difficulty at all in making the history of the two doctors sound quite amusing.

  “Thank you, Vicky. That was most enjoyable. I can hardly wait for the next episode in ‘The Life and Adventures of Rene Sylvester.’ ”

  “It ought to be written from Rene’s point of view as well—and the two histories bound up together. A very valuable document for social workers, it would be. All the same, I’m sure you oughtn’t to encourage me to be such a cad about Rene. You’re not a feminine man, Raymond, but you have a most dangerous feminine capacity for being a good listener.”

  “I wouldn’t call you a masculine woman, Vicky, but you have a most dangerous masculine capacity for shouldering dependents. Is Rene yours for life, do you suppose?”

  “God knows! I can’t sack her, can I? Yes, I expect she is mine for life—and when we’re two old hags mumbling toothless by the fireside we’ll still have our little disagreements from time to time. Philip and Antonia will be able to join in and take sides presently. It will be fun for them. Oh well! Raymond, it’s your turn to bat now. Tell me—do you ever think of writing another novel?”

  Raymond said not, he thought. The conversation passed to books, which we had always enjoyed discussing, and thence to the office and thence to Raymond’s job in the War Office. Time passed quickly, and it was Raymond who finally said, “Vicky, I simply hate to end this, but what about your train?”

  I glanced guiltily at the clock.

  “Oh Lord! Yes, I ought to go. What a fag!”

  Suddenly, as I rose, I felt very tired; and the prospect of all that long journey back to Harminster, with twenty minutes cold walk in the black-out at the end of it because the buses would have stopped running, absolutely appalled me.

  “What an effort,” I said drearily. “Can I get a taxi to Paddington, do you suppose, Raymond?”

  “I’ll come down with you and we’ll see if we can pick one up in the Strand. They’re not as frequent as they used to be at this time of night, but we’ll probably get one all right.”

  “Oh, I hope we can. It seems about a hundred years since I left home this morning.”

  Raymond shot me a quick glance. “I’m sorry if it hasn’t been worth it, Vicky. I rather bounced you into it I know.”

  I suddenly woke up to the fact that I was behaving rudely and ungratefully.

  “Oh Raymond! I didn�
�t mean that. I’ve had a lovely evening. It’s only the prospect of this awful trek home . . .”

  “Frightful, I agree. You ought to have a club or something, Vicky, where you could stay the night occasionally.”

  “M’m. Only I don’t go two days running to the office usually, you know. Although, as a matter of fact, I could do with putting in an extra half-day to-morrow . . . Raymond!” (A brilliant idea struck me.) “Raymond, I know. Let me spend the night on your sofa here.”

  Raymond and I had often in the old days put up belated party-goers on sofas or camp-beds. I swear that, as I spoke, my suggestion seemed exactly on a par with situations of the sort. Raymond’s instant negative response was all the more of a shock to me.

  “No, I’m afraid you can’t do that, Vicky,” he said, firmly.

  I suppose it was a very long time since anyone had told me categorically that I could not do something I wanted to. Immediately I felt injured and defiant.

  “Why ever not, Raymond? It’s a perfectly sound idea. You needn’t even see me to-morrow morning if you don’t want to. I’ll get up early and go out to breakfast.”

  “Don’t be absurd, Vicky. It wouldn’t do at all, and you know it.”

  I don’t think Raymond had ever spoken to me in that tone before. I did not dislike it as much as I should have thought I would have done. Nevertheless, I was not going to give in weakly.

  “Have you gone conventional in your old age or something, Raymond? Have you got a charwoman who comes in early or something?”

  “No. It’s not that. She doesn’t arrive till ten. All the same, you’re not going to, Vicky.”

  “Why ever not? You might at least tell me.”