He said impatiently, paying no attention to her words but answering the tone of her voice: “Why must you dramatize everything so? It’s simply a matter of common sense and convenience. We don’t get on well together – possibly we never did – and I’ve wasted so many years of my life that I think it would be sheer folly on my part to waste what is left to me.”
Her hands rearranged the bottles and brushes incessantly. It was hard to speak for the pain in her throat. She dragged out unsteadily:
“How long have you felt like this?”
“A long time now.”
Half to herself she said: “I didn’t know. I suppose I’ve been a blind fool.” And then to him: “Is it because I let you down over the house? Is it because I have my family here?”
He said not unkindly:
“We can leave all that out of it, my dear. The reason I want my freedom is that I want to marry again. I met someone when I was in America during the war.” His tone became reminiscent, almost dreamy. “We fell deeply in love,” he said huskily, as if he saw her there before him.
“I knew all along that you were infatuated with some woman. You gave yourself away when you couldn’t bring yourself to touch me or kiss me.” She felt sick with the physical humiliation of being undesired.
“You see,” he said inanely, “I love her in a way I’ve never loved you. It was one of those things—a coup de foudre! Neither of us could understand it. I’ve never felt like this for anyone else. And yet, she’s not my type of person at all. Very beautiful. Very elusive. She’s extraordinarily honest, too, and yet it’s not a bit your sort of honesty that one can see through to the very bottom, like clear water. With all her frankness, she is still maddeningly elusive, terribly exciting – ”
She sprang up, knocking some of the toilet things off the table in her agitation, unheeded. She spun round and stared directly at him for the first time, with eyes like shrill blue pebbles in her frantic face.
“Shut up!” she cried in a high voice. “Shut up! Shut up! I don’t want to hear. How dare you tell me about your filthy amours! You must be mad...! Oh! Oh! Oh! It’s like a nightmare! Mother of God, I think I’m going mad myself,” she sobbed, holding her temples with both hands and rocking painfully back and forth.
Edmund stared at her in amazement. This neurotic agitation of hers, so ill-judged and unseemly, was in such sharp contrast with his Genevieve’s exquisite unruffled poise and dignity that he could not help feeling disgusted by his wife with a kind of weak contemptuous pity.
“For God’s sake, don’t cry!” he implored pettishly. “You know I can’t bear tears. Whose fault is it if I don’t love you anymore? It’s just one of those things, my dear girl. Can’t you see that we’ve grown so far apart that we could never live together again...? Leaving Genevieve out of it.”
“It’s no use discussing it,” she said harshly, drying her eyes, composing her face. “I will never divorce you!”
“You can’t say that!” he protested.
“I will never divorce you,” she repeated. “I will never divorce you.”
When he had gone, she sat staring at the closed door. She repeated over and over to herself like an hypnotic: It’s an infatuation, nothing more than an infatuation. He’ll come back to me if I don’t lose my head. They always do. They always go back to their wives in the end. The wife holds all the cards, they say. I only have to play them properly. And the children make it even more certain; he’d never leave them. I have done my duty. I don’t see that he has anything to reproach me with. It’s not my fault that everything went wrong while he was away. And I must be careful not to reproach him either. I must be very tactful, very patient. I’ll be sweet to him, very sweet. I won’t think about her. I’ll take more pains with my appearance, I really will. I’ll get my hair set every week, and wear stockings, and get my nails manicured. I’ll make him take an interest in me again... On and on into the sleepless dawn she plotted her hopeless little plans.
But she had little chance to put her plans into execution, for the very next day Edmund received a cablegram. He seemed to take a very long time to read its message, staring down at the flimsy slip of paper with an unfathomable expression.
“Well?” demanded Great-Aunt Tory, as inquisitive as a child, tapping her knife with restless impatience against her plate. “Is it bad news?” The older we get the more desirable is bad news – for somebody else.
Edmund folded the paper quickly and put it in his pocket.
“Thank you, no. I have to go to London for a few days,” he said curtly.
Linda’s eyes were fastened on him, with all her heart showing anxiously in them. She said timidly:
“Shall you be back for Oliver’s birthday?”
“I’ve no idea.”
*
Genevieve had purposely told him to meet her in London – not Southampton. She did not want to be caught at a disadvantage, looking even ever so slightly less than her exquisite best. She preferred to fight the arduous battle with the Customs alone, with no uneasy consciousness of a stray lock of hair, a smudged lipstick, a creased shirtwaist, being regarded with a critical eye. Only her own critical demand for perfection could imagine Edmund or any man seeing flaws in her appearance, especially at such a moment. But for her the moment was all-important; first impressions counted for so much. And this was almost a first impression. She would not for the world have him disillusioned. Any disappointment there was to be must be hers; she had made up her mind to that. And if she was satisfied, all would be well.
She had brought her car with her, and she drove fast on the unfamiliar road to London. A room was reserved for her at the Ritz Hotel. Edmund’s club was conveniently near in Dover Street. They were going to have a wonderful time! Of course Edmund found her more desirable than ever. Because now she was desirable in rather a different way. It was partly the old enchantment of her mysterious femininity, her gentle unshakable confidence that what she wanted would be – the sublime confidence, in effect, of a fabulously rich person who has never known defeat and who therefore does not believe in its existence. That attitude to life has a powerful fascination on those for whom defeat sits always like a spider in the corner of the room.
Then it would seem to Edmund that this exquisite refinement and particularity was symbolical of her mind and character. Looking at the jewels weighing down her slender wrists, the jewels against her neck, he could not forget her wealth, all her suave life... He would think of his debts, he would think of Hawkswood, and then he would think: If I could marry her...! Staring at her, like a child gazing through a confectioner’s plate-glass window, with all his hungry soul in his eyes.
“Stop looking as if you’re going to eat me, darling, for goodness sake, or they’ll send for the manager,” she laughed softly, very well pleased with her effect on him. The funny little man! What she saw in him she couldn’t imagine. He was not beautiful or gay; he was not a type she admired and had none of the qualities she looked for in a man. He wasn’t even gentle and sweet, like Paul. But that iron-controlled physiognomy hinting at rigidly repressed emotion never failed to stir her pulses, quicken her heart beats. He was a man who looked capable of anything, and the notion, with its threat of cruelty, excited her.
That first evening they were too happy in each other’s presence to talk of the future. She did not mention marriage, and so Edmund had no need to mention to her the sour word “divorce.” They had a champagne supper to celebrate their reunion, and then they drove round the park dreamily in the light summer dusk. It was in that tricky light betwixt and between, and she leaned against his shoulder as she drove. She must have turned her head momentarily toward him, or been fooled by the shadows, for suddenly there was a cry and the car jerked, under Edmund’s hands, askew and then to a standstill.
“My God! What was that?” said Genevieve faintly. “Have I run into something? I felt a bump.”
“It looked to me as if he fell in front of the car,
” said Edmund swinging open the door.
“Lordy, lordy! Have I killed him?” said Genevieve, closing her eyes tightly and clinging to the steering wheel as if it was a life belt.
“I’m going to see. Wait there!”
Edmund called: “It’s all right. No damage done. Only shaken. We’ll drive him home. Help me get him in the front, dear, it’s easier. I’ll sit at the back, unless you’d like me to drive.”
“No, it’s all right,” Genevieve said softly, eyeing her victim apologetically.
He was tall, absurdly handsome, with a quizzical eyebrow and a helpless smile; he stood there smiling at Genevieve as if he’d come to a party.
Edmund said: “My dear chap, do bend! You can’t hope to get in unless you bend.”
“Extraordinarily kind of you,” he commented gratefully, bending his head but forgetting to raise his feet, and in consequence nearly falling on his nose.
Drunk, mouthed Edmund silently over his head.
“Drunk!” said the man, and giggled boyishly. He leaned back in the seat and flicked back his silver locks. He said with convincing gravity: “Remarkably lucky thing I happened to be drunk tonight; otherwise I might have been killed. Fatal to be knocked down if you’re not drunk. Advise everybody to get drunk if they’re going to be run over.”
“It’s charming of you to take it like that,” said Genevieve. “Where shall I drive you?”
Edmund from the back suggested that they ought to take him to a doctor just to make sure no unknown damage had been done.
“I’m a doctor,” he assured them. “A very special specialist from Harley Street.” He made it sound like a line from a comic song. His name was Dr. Paul. He said: “Can we go and have a drink somewhere? I want to tell you the story of my life.” He was inconsequential and absurd.
There was a streak of mud on his cheek and Genevieve leaned forward to brush it gently away. He looked up at her fixedly with a peculiar expression of intensity.
“Now,” said Dr. Paul indulgently, “I will tell you the story of my life...” They were feeling so good-humoured that his absurdities only amused them. Presently he leaned forward to whisper in Genevieve’s ear: “Can’t we get rid of this chap? I want to be alone with you. I feel this is a terribly important moment in both our lives, no other person should profane it by being present. I should like it to be – ” he made a beautiful gesture – “quite – quite sacred.”
“That would be nice. But I don’t think it would be quite kind to him, you know.”
Dr. Paul said confidentially: “Let’s shake off this fellow! I know a place much more amusing than this where they have some really drinkable whisky.”
“It’s sweet of you, but I couldn’t do that.”
“You could do anything, you’re so beautiful. You don’t mind me saying that you’re beautiful, do you? Because you are, and I don’t like to see you going around with a type like this. I don’t like him. Do you?”
“Well, yes, I do.”
Dr. Paul turned round and peered at Edmund curiously.
“Do you? Why?” he asked.
“I suppose I’m used to him,” said Genevieve lightly.
“You’re not going to tell me he’s your husband,” he said suspiciously.
“Well – not exactly. Not yet,” said Genevieve.
“Not yet? Not yet?” he grumbled. “That’s a fine thing to tell me after nearly running me over. How do you think that makes me feel?”
They turned into Harley Street.
“Come on, this is where you live,” said Edmund. “What number do you want?”
“Dear old man, the best of pals,” said Dr. Paul affectionately. “I’ll take whatever number you give me... Double or quits, eh?”
He smiled at them charmingly. He got out of the car.
A slightly unreal expression fixed his features. He said very formally: “Thank you so much for a perfectly delightful evening.”
They watched him stalk up the moonlit steps with the deliberateness of a heron and disappear into the house without a backward glance.
CHAPTER 6
A couple of days later Edmund drove her in the Packard down to Hawkswood. It looked its loveliest just then at the beginning of June and she was enchanted with what she saw of it, which was not much – glimpses caught through the trees.
She said: “No wonder you don’t want to give it up!”
He looked at her gratefully – “as kind as she was fair!” – it was wonderful to have someone who could understand without a lot of laboured explanations how you felt about the important things in your life. Since she was rich she understood money very well. He described his financial predicament to her and she listened seriously and sensibly and sometimes put her finger acutely on a point.
“But,” she said, without any unnatural pride or self-conscious ness, “it will be all right soon, when we are married. And meanwhile we can make some arrangement. I’ll get my lawyer to fix it.”
He said: “I wish it was all as simple as you make it sound. It’s not going to be so easy.” He hesitated. “You’ll have to know sometime.” He looked at her crossly, as though it was somehow her fault. “Linda won’t divorce me.”
“She won’t divorce you?” she repeated incredulously. “But why not?”
“Oh, she doesn’t believe in divorce,” he shrugged.
“Doesn’t believe in it?” echoed Genevieve again. “I’ve never heard of such a thing! One might as well say one doesn’t believe in income tax, it seems to me. Did you tell her about us – about me?”
“Of course.”
“Well, then?”
“Well, nothing. It doesn’t make a particle of difference to her; except that I suppose she rationalizes it to herself as a mere infatuation that I shall get over if only she hangs on like grim death and performs all those sickeningly futile little rites that women go through at such a time.”
“But, Edmund, surely you’ve explained – ”
“My dear girl, you can have no idea what it means to explain anything to Linda. She has the silly obstinate mind of a child, and the strength of her prejudices is irresistible. It’s like battering one’s head against a wall; at the end of an argument with her one comes away bruised and bleeding, having gained nothing. She simply shuts her mind to whatever you may say. She is perverse and unalterable and mean.”
Still, when he left her that night, he murmured against her cheek: “Don’t leave me! ... Don’t leave me just yet, honey! Give me time! I’ll think of a solution. Every problem has its answer.”
Genevieve, too, hoped that with patience Linda might change her mind. And because she wanted to be alone with Edmund, undisturbed, she began looking for a suitable furnished flat. She knew exactly what she wanted, and she was lucky enough to find it quite quickly in Brook Street: a top-floor flat from the windows of which she could see the treetops waving in Grosvenor Square. It had charm and distinction. It would make an agreeable setting for her. It’s most desirable feature for Genevieve was that no one else lived in the house. There was an alarmingly expensive antique shop at street level; above that there was a Russian milliner who made wonderful little hats and had her showroom on one floor and her workroom above it. Then the top floor.
Edmund could come and go unobserved, and stay the night, with no one the wiser. That seemed to her fair enough. That did not seem to her deceitful but merely discreet. With Quaker propriety, she valued her good name above everything.
She took the flat without hesitation for a period of three months with a monthly option thereafter. She was even lucky enough, or wealthy enough, to find the perfect maid, capable, discreet, and, even at such short notice, devotedly loyal. That was early in July.
It happened also about this time that Edmund ran into Ivor Campion, his cousin, and took him down to Hawkswood to stay. Edmund said:
“Look after him, Linda. He’s had a rotten time. Make him feel at home; let him feel he’s welcom
e to stay as long as he likes.”
Linda said: “Aren’t you staying, then?”
“A night or two, just to settle him in. Then I have business to attend to.”
“Yes, of course,” she agreed in a small docile voice, but could not forbear to add: “Only I never see anything of you now.”
He looked impatient.
“What do you want to see me about?”
She said: “Oh, Eddie!” and covered her face with her hands so that he should not see and be irritated by the quick-springing tears.
He drew in his breath. But after a moment or two he said, kindly enough: “Come and walk round the place with me. Has Strivens relayered the hedge on the east side of South Field where Newton’s cows broke through?”
And before he left he again commended Ivor to her care.
“Be nice to him,” he said.
Edmund and his cousin had never been on noticeable terms of intimacy in the old days before the war, for the obvious reason that there was nearly ten years’ difference between them. But during the war they chanced to land themselves in the same prisoner-of-war camp for a few months. That experience created a certain relationship between them to which the blood-tie contributed not a little. Then Edmund contrived, with three others, to escape; and Ivor was transferred to another camp. Four years of Ivor’s war had been spent in the excruciating idleness of a prison camp. He came out looking at least twelve years older than his real age, which was twenty-seven, hollow-eyes, skeletal, and pathetically sunburnt. It was his good fortune to run into Edmund just after receiving his discharge from the military convalescent home where he had been fitted with his new foot. He was only too glad to accept Edmund’s invitation. He had no home. There was no one to look after him, no one to care a row of pins for him, if it came to that – not that he cared. He was glad that he had no family to fuss over him; he had a kind of grim confidence in himself.
He had, as yet, not the faintest notion how he meant to earn his living. He had no job, no prospects, no career even, for he had still been at Cambridge when war broke out. For hours in the convalescent home he languidly buttered through career-guidance pamphlets. He found it surprisingly difficult to decide anything. Not that that agitated him. For twenty-seven years he had not had to make any attempt to keep himself, so that he could not wholly adjust himself to the idea now. He had his gratuity and his pension; there was no need to decide anything until he had built himself up again. He was inclined to be neurotically preoccupied about his diet, at present. He still weighed under eight stone. It would be quite permissible to loaf for a few months in the country on the pretext of writing a book about his war experiences.
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