by Alec Waugh
Resolutely she beckoned to the waitress.
“Bill, please,” she said.
To her surprise Gwen Lawrence was still at home when she returned.
“What, you here!”
“I’m thinking,” Gwen answered. “My husband wants to be divorced.”
A chill fear laid hold upon May’s heart. Divorced. Then Gwen would be free again to marry. And she would leave the flat and they would never see each other again. Still, if it would make Gwen happy. . . .
“How splendid!” she exclaimed, and contrived to make the simulated enthusiasm ring true.
“I’m not sure though,” said Gwen, “that I want to.”
Not want to. Then they would be still able to live on together. But was it wise of her? Oughtn’t she to get free? Wouldn’t she be happier that way . . . .
“Don’t you want to be free?” she asked.
“If there were anyone to be free for.”
“What about that boy,” May Julian suggested, “that you met at the dance the other night?”
Gwen Lawrence laughed.
“Graham? Oh, he’s like all the rest.”
And she described the scene at Christopher’s party.
“That boy wants a lesson,” she finished, “and I rather think I’m going to give him one.”
“But I can’t quite see,” was May Julian’s comment on the incident, “if you are as anxious as you say you are to give this boy what you call ‘gip,’ why you should have gone to the trouble of saving him from an extremely embarrassing situation.”
“If I had shown him up,” Gwen explained, “as I very easily could have done, I should only have spoilt one of Christopher’s parties; a thing I should have hated to do, because I’m fond of Chris. And further, I shouldn’t really have done more than give Graham an uncomfortable half-hour. It was the sort of quarrel that lovers find it easy to make up, that, if anything, draws them closer to one another. That’s all that could have happened. So little was at stake. There would have been a brief unpleasantness, and there it would have ended.”
“Whereas now?”
“Whereas now, it rather depends upon Graham Moreton himself. There’s no need for him ever to see me again if he doesn’t want to.”
• • • • • • • •
Which was more or less of what Graham Moreton at that precise moment was endeavouring to convince himself. “You need never see her again, there is no reason why you should. There is every reason why you shouldn’t.” That was what he was telling himself.
It was of that all day long that he had been trying to convince himself. But all day long tormentingly between his resolution and himself had flickered the distracting memory of Gwen Lawrence’s smile as she had said good-bye to him.
A fleeting, ironic smile that had lit the amber eyes with mockery; a smile that invited but did not demand an explanation; that was content, in fact, to go without one.
“Really, but this is all very curious,” that smile had said to him. “All very curious, and it’s no business of mine to know what it’s all about, and I’m quite prepared to get anyone out of a mess that comes my way. Still, you must admit it’s quaint.”
All day long he had been unable to clear his memory of that smile.
There had not been a great deal of work for him at the office. A certain number of letters to be answered; a contract or two to be examined; two or three travellers to be interviewed. But not that huge bulk of work that at such a moment he would have welcomed; work that must be attended to, that could not be put aside. Work that he could have taken as a drug to humble memory.
It was work of such a type that he could have wished to have that morning. But there was, to fill six hours’ space, definite occupation only for some four of them. The remaining hours were of those so valuable, so essential to the creative worker, the hours in which one makes one’s own work, formulates one’s own plans; the hours by which the creative worker stands or falls; the hours which Graham had put in the past to such splendid use.
But that was on the other days: the days on which he had in his own life nothing definite to think upon. It was different to-day when tantalizingly between his resolution and himself flickered the memory of that fleeting smile.
He tried to concentrate his attention on the files of the financial news, but the type danced before his eyes. He walked round the office in search of someone similarly situated who would be prepared to discuss some casual detail of policy or routine. But everyone seemed to be weighed under by a bulk of work.
No one was in the mood for conversation. He tried to think out some advertising scheme for the new quick-drying enamel that they would be shortly putting on the market, but the paper lay blank on his desk before him. He began to turn idly the pages of the telephone directory, wondering if there were not some client or other to whom he might not profitably devote a half-hour’s interview. But his fingers stopped turning the pages at the letter L.
Slowly his eye was running down the column. Lawrence, A.; Lawrence, Arthur; Lawrence, Augustus. What curious christenings! Slowly his eye ran on. There it was: Lawrence, Gwen, Mrs., 17 Ciber Crescent, N.W.I., Grosvenor 53282. Near the Edgware Road probably. On his way home, that was to say.
Lifting the speaking-tube, he called down to the main office for a street directory. Ciber Crescent. Yes, there it was—between Edgware Road Station and Marylebone. Ciber Crescent. On his way home.
He leant forward, his head upon his hands. What was this madness that had descended on him? Why was he worrying about this woman? She was nothing to him. He was nothing to her. He had flirted with her in an idle moment, had become involved, through her, in a childishly absurd deception; a deception from which she had very cleverly and very generously saved him. He was, that is to say, in her debt. He owed her a visit of thanks and explanation. “This is how it happened,” he should say to her. “You were very kind to me. I must thank you very much.” That, obviously, was what he ought to do. She had a right to gratitude and to an explanation.
Why, then, was he hesitating? Why was he working himself into this temper of indecision over what was, after all, a simple act of courtesy? Why did that inner voice continually repeat to him: “Leave it alone. The matter’s over. You need never see her again. Get free of it while you can”? Why should he be fretting himself into this condition? She was nothing to him, and he was behaving as though he were in love with her. Which was ridiculous. He was in love with Joan. In a world of women, Joan alone existed for him.
But if he did not go and thank her it would be an insult almost to Joan. It would be a confession of cowardice. Angrily he stifled the warning voice. Angrily refused to listen to it. Leave well alone, indeed. Get free of it while he could, but what was there for him to get free from?
You need never see her again. But when it came to that, there wasn’t anyone in the world that one did need to see again. Only there was such a thing as manners.
Resolutely he lifted the receiver of his telephone.
“Put me through to the exchange,” he said.
There was a pause.
“Number, please.”
“Grosvenor 53282,” he answered.
Another pause. Then a listless, impersonal voice:
“Hullo!”
“Can I speak to Mrs. Lawrence?”
“Mrs. Lawrence is speaking,” the impersonal voice replied.
“Oh, good evening . . . it’s Graham Moreton at this end.”
There was, or perhaps he fancied there was, a half-second’s pause before on an interrogative note the impersonal voice answered, “Yes?”
“I was wondering . . . I wanted . . .” Graham began, then paused. “Might I come and see you some time?” he asked.
“I’m in most evenings,” he was told, “between six and seven, if you would care to come and have a cocktail.”
“Might I this evening, then?”
“I shall be delighted. At what time?”
“Would half-past five b
e too early?”
“I shall be delighted to see you then. Good-bye.”
Her voice had grown friendlier at the close: friendlier, Graham decided, was the right word. There had been nothing of coquetry in its intonation. Friendliness to a friend, he told himself.
But he had not seen the scornful lift of her lips as she hung back the receiver on its clamp. He did not hear in what a tone she murmured to May Julian:
“There, as I thought! I knew he would!”
Chapter VII
Lilith of Old
Four hours later, on the doorstep of No. 17 Ciber Crescent, Graham Moreton lingered in hesitation.
Again that cautionary voice had begun to whisper to him: “You’re quite safe still,” it said. “Nothing’s happened to you yet. You can go away and send a message. Your fingers have not pressed that bell. What lies on the other side of that door is still unknown to you.” Again it whispered, and again scornfully he stifled it.
What was there that could happen to him? This was an ordinary visit to an ordinary acquaintance that meant nothing and could lead nowhere. Firmly he pressed the bell.
The room into which Graham was led seemed to him as curiously impersonal as its owner was individual.
In the corner of the window was a long, polished table on which had been set out a couple of glasses, three or four bottles and a cocktail shaker. Before the fire had been drawn an immense divan sofa, into a corner of which a number of magazines and papers had been tossed carelessly. On the far side of the fireplace beside a large brass standard lamp was a deep brown velveteen-covered chair; the walls had been distempered grey. The black-framed etchings that were evenly spaced along them were such as are to be seen at any reputable exhibition. The window-curtains were a dull red damask, through which shone here and there, faintly a thread of gold. Taken feature by feature separately, it was well enough. It was not that there were indications of bad taste anywhere; it was just that there were no indications of any taste at all. It was the room of a woman to whom a flat is a headquarters simply, a place that could never bear the impress of personality, or rather whose personality was to be impersonal.
“The cocktails are over there,” she remarked as they came into the room. “They’re already mixed. You might just give them a shake and pour them out.”
Critically she sipped at the pale yellow liquid.
“Um!” she said. “A bit sweet, perhaps; still . . .” She sipped again, then shook her head. “Too much Italian vermuth or too little gin. One of the two. However . . .” And with a quick jerk of her wrist she emptied the glass and handed it across to Graham. There was a pause.
“Well?” she said, and leant backward in her chair.
“I’ve come to thank you,” said Graham quietly. “It was extraordinarily good of you. I’ve come to thank you, to thank you and to explain.”
She shrugged her shoulders.
“It was nothing,” she said. “I felt that there was something wrong, something to be acted up to. I just took up my cue. I must say I rather wondered.”
“It was like this, you see,” and in slow, uncertain sentences he proceeded to explain.
Lying back in the chair, her eyes fixed on him, from time to time nodding her head, Gwen Lawrence listened. She was wearing a loose tea-gown of black georgette; through the thin material the white outline of her arms and shoulders glimmered faintly. From above her the standard lamp cast downwards a spreading triangle of light that divided her sharply from the surrounding twilight.
Looking at her as he spoke, looking into that isolated patch of colour, everything else in the room appeared to be unreal; the white neck rising from the black gauze of stuff; the head’s proud carriage; the high curved forehead in its helmet of brown hair; the soft lips slightly parted, the piercing amber eyes; these alone existed.
“I see,” she said at length. “I understand how it came to happen. But it wasn’t wise. You should never tell lies about the things that scarcely matter. You should keep your lies for the big occasion. But then, perhaps,” she added with a smile, “there isn’t going to be one. There may not be, she’s nice, that girl of yours.”
Then: “I suppose you’re frightfully in love with one another.”
He flushed and tried not too successfully to laugh away the question.
“Naturally,” he said.
“Naturally?” she repeated. “I don’t know why you should say naturally. Engaged couples aren’t invariably, you know. Engagements are sometimes just things that happen. Like your story about your lunch with me. I rather wondered if it had been like that with you. But then when I saw her—so sweet, so pretty—I thought almost certainly it couldn’t be. All the same,” she added, “it is curious.”
“Curious?” he asked. “What’s curious?”
“Nothing,” she answered, “nothing. Anyhow, it’s the ordinary thing. It’s what happens, everywhere. But each time, perhaps it’s because I’m not altogether English, each time it a little bit surprises me. You’ve been engaged, you say, two years?”
“A little longer.”
She shrugged her shoulders.
“Two years. That, you know, is what surprises me about you English. You meet a girl, you fall wildly in love with her. Life, you say, is going to be impossible without her. She promises to marry you. You become engaged. And then, for eighteen months, for two years, for three years, nothing happens. This person without whom life is to be impossible, lives in her parents’ house and you in yours, and you go to dances together, and to theatres, and you hold hands on your drives back in a taxi, and all the while this grand, overpowering passion goes to sleep, I suppose.”
And with a gesture of uncomprehending scepticism she lifted her hands sideways from the chair.
“What else is one to do?” he protested. “One can’t marry without money. One has to have a house, furniture, a position. We’d have married the week of our engagement if we could.”
“Oh, I know, I know; it’s all very right and proper, and the family’s the unit of the State. It’s the wise and worldly way. But, oh well, I find it a little hard to believe wholeheartedly in these immense passions that can be shut away comfortably in a case for a year or two years, or thirty months; that can be put into cold storage till so much money has been earned or such a position been attained. But, then, perhaps I see love differently.”
“And how do you see it?”
“How do I see it?” She hesitated, her head flung backwards, her eyes half closed. “I see it as something wild, untamed, untamable, something that makes its own laws, because it’s stronger than all laws. Something that careers are ruined for. Something you can’t argue about: that you’ve got either to accept or to reject. That you can’t compromise with; that you’ve got to take on its own terms or not at all. Something that you can’t control; that’s not for sale and not for seeking; that comes or goes in its own place and its own season; without warning, without mercy; a thing that destroys life, but that will make it worth the living first. Not a thing that can be preserved in jars.”
Slowly, sweetly, out of the spreading angle of light, the rich accents of her voice came to him: slowly, sweetly, holding him in a stillness, a powerlessness to think or move that was half hypnotic. And when she ceased to speak, he gave such a shudder as patients do when doctors rouse them from a trance.
“But I mustn’t keep you from that pretty girl,” she laughed. “It was nice of you to come and explain. I was a little curious.”
“I can’t say how grateful I am to you.” He had risen to his feet and was standing beside her. His hand was stretched out to hers in leave-taking. So it was over, then. The little interlude was rounded off. Gratitude had been exchanged, and explanations. They could go their own ways now, free of one another.
“Good-bye,” he said; her soft cool fingers were resting against his, the rich, amber-coloured eyes were smiling into his.
Another minute and they would be divided: another minute and the front door would be
closed behind him; he would be walking down the steps, into the street and out of her life, as likely as not, for ever. Another minute.
But somehow in that minute’s space he had heard his own voice saying:
“And I hope, Mrs. Lawrence, that we’ll be seeing one another soon. And I hope very much that I may be able to do something some day in return.”
She smiled, a warm, friendly smile.
“I shan’t forget,” she said, and her fingers for a moment were pressed tightly against his.
“This is my address,” he said, and fumbled in his waistcoat pocket for a card.
She nodded.
“Thank you, I won’t forget. Oh, and you might jot down your office number.”
As Graham walked out into the street he wondered for the fraction of an ironic instant whether an office telephone number was not the twentieth century equivalent for the garment left by Joseph in a woman’s hand.
• • • • • • • •
Joan and Graham had arranged to meet that evening at seven o’clock in a second-hand bookshop in the Charing Cross Road. They were to dine together in Soho and go to some pictures somewhere afterwards, and as it was only a few minutes after half-past six he decided to walk, at any rate as far as Oxford Circus.
It was a mild spring evening. One of those evenings that startle us in early March with a sense of approaching summer. One of those evenings in which the heart is stirred with a promise of high adventure.
The air was soft, the sky was blue. Caressingly on roofs and chimney-stacks lingered the diffused radiance of a fading sunset. A faint mist of green mantled the tall trees and shrubberies of the park. There was a lightness in the tread of the old men walking southwards towards their clubs. A reckless gaiety on the faces of the shop girls as they hurried, laughing together, homewards.
Ah, but it was a good world; a good world to be young in, a good world to be in love in, a good world where out of the luminous sun-shot haze of a March evening you could step into the cool quiet of a London bookshop, to find waiting for you there a face that brightened at your coming, a clear toned voice that said, “Ah, darling!” and a smothered broken little laugh in answer to your whispered, “If I could only kiss you here.”
