Love in these Days

by Alec Waugh

  How soft, how velvet soft the perfumed water that lapped in tired ripples against her arms and neck. How comforting to know that before the high heaped bedroom fire the soft flakes of an immense towel were slowly warming; how restful the knowledge that there were no hard knuckles to rap upon the door, reminding her that in ninety seconds her ten minutes would be up. Time, like comfort, was for sale.

  She had left the door of her bedroom open so that she could watch as she stretched back in the cooling water the wavering shadows upon the ceiling; the glint of the firelight on the gleaming mahogany of the vast low bedstead; the gilt frames upon the wall; so that she could see in its enamel casket upon the mantelpiece the minute hand of the clock move round to twelve.

  Not that she was in any hurry. Humphrey would be calling for her at eight, but the later one dined the better. Ciro’s, her customers used to tell her, did not really begin to be amusing before ten. And it was so pleasant here in this new-found twilit warmth. Lazily she lifted herself out of the cooling water. How marvellous it was not to be chilled by that first surrendering of one’s body to the air, to be able without hurry to let one’s toes search for the fur-lined moccasins, to scamper dripping over the thick carpets to the heated towel, to sit huddled in its toasted whiteness before the deep and reddening glow.

  Above her on the mantelpiece the hand of the clock moved slowly round. It was time for her to begin dressing, she supposed. With a quick droop of her shoulders she let the white tent fall away from her, and raised herself upon her hands. But she was indisposed to action; she was so happy; so at peace. She kicked away her slippers and on bare feet walked over to the wardrobe. With her fingers upon the door she hesitated.

  There in the long sheet of glass she stood reflected.

  It was practicallv the first time in her life that she had looked at the smooth white body, with its wide hips and breasts that were inverted cups of ivory; and a smile came into her eyes that was less of pride than gratitude, as though that curved loveliness before her was not perhaps so much a possession of her own as a kindly ally that would one day fail her, but that now and for a space of years would spread before her the rich rewards of beauty; as though her smile were an acknowledgement of her indebtedness, as though she was thanking this white familiar for the warmth, the comfort, the leisure it had brought to her; thanking it and at the same time begging it to postpone till the last hour the ultimate, the inevitable betrayal.

  In the hall beyond the bell of the front door rang shrilly.

  “Heavens!” she thought. “Humphrey already.”

  And pulling a silk wrap round her, she ran out into the passage.

  Chapter X

  How Things Develop

  Gwen Lawrence was feeling bored. It was a state of mind in which she had surprised herself with increasing frequency during the last few weeks. Not only was she not particularly enjoying the things that she was doing; but she could not think of anything to do that would amuse her more. And that, she was the first to admit, was a highly unsatisfactory state of things.

  It was half an hour since she had finished dressing. She was not due at the Embassy till half-past one. There was an interval of two hours to be filled. And she could think of nothing with which to fill it. There was no one she wanted to see, and not a great many people that she would have been able to, had she wanted. Her female acquaintance was restricted. And the majority of her men friends, during the morning, at any rate, were engaged by some form of occupation.

  She could go down, of course, to The Times Book Club and change her books. But there was nothing that she wanted particularly to read. She had read the dozen or so odd novels that were being talked about. And novels existed for her solely as topics of conversation.

  She could, of course, spend an hour or so in the Brompton Arcade over the choice of a new evening frock. But she had spent a good deal on clothes during the last month one way or another. She had all the dresses that she strictly needed. And if Guy was going to give her presents, they might just as well be things that could be converted into practical capital when the ultimate shipwreck came.

  An interval of two hours, and with no means of filling it. And in two hours’ time even there would be nothing that she would be justified in looking forward to with the least excitement. A lunch at the Embassy—just such another lunch as she had had on Wednesday and would have on Friday.

  She would fidget her way through a number of highly-flavoured courses: high-flavoured because to her crowd eating was an affair not of appetite but of palate. You could not feel hungry when there was never an interval of more than three hours between one meal and the next.

  And all the time there would be the strain of entertaining Guy.

  They would discuss the qualities and defects of the particular night club to which they had been on the previous evening. They would criticize the band and approve the cabaret. They would decide on the theatre they were to go to on the following evening. They would exchange such scandal about prominent persons as might have come their way: as she had done at so many other lunches, and with so many other men.

  Heaven, but it was dull, dull, dull.

  Moodily she looked through the window upon the street. Out of a blue sky, across which small dove-coloured clouds were drifting lazily, the sun shone with the uncertain radiance of an April morning. How many hearts on such a day would not be thrilled and gladdened by the promise of sun-drenched hours that stretched for them towards the fair day’s close?

  But for her it scarcely mattered whether the sky was clear or clouded, whether it was rain or sun that slanted on to that long expanse of roof: one day was like another: a repetition of the same effects—one restaurant or another, one theatre or another, one night club or another. There was no difference, no essential difference between them. They were built on the same pattern equally with the men who took her to them.

  The trouble was, of course, she knew, that in her life the sauces that should flavour a substantial dish had become the entire meal. A succession of decorations with nothing for them to decorate. It was a dangerous road to follow. For what after all was heroin but the flavouring of a flavour, the gilding of a decoration? As cabarets stood to offices, so heroin stood to cabarets. And for her cabarets and restaurants, cocktails and dances and theatres, had become the equivalent of the average man’s office life, had become actually her profession, the means through which she won her livelihood, and contrast one had to have. One could not manage without periodic heightenings of tension. And she had none. That was the trouble.

  Moodily she stared out of the window. She must if she were to keep sane, contrive to create some variety in her life.

  • • • • • • • •

  It was the outcome of such speculations that caused at about half-past eleven on the following morning the telephone bell to ring at Graham’s elbow.

  “Yes,” he said, “Graham Moreton speaking, who is that?”

  From the other end of the telephone came a light, ironic laugh.

  “Really, how business-like that sounds. I hardly dare to speak to you now.”

  It was a feminine and familiar voice. Unplaceable for the moment.

  “I’m afraid——” he began tentatively, but she cut him short.

  “Of course,” she said. “I never expected you to know. It’s only the second time you’ve spoken to me across a telephone. Gwen Lawrence,” she informed him.

  “Oh, Mrs. Lawrence.” From the sound of his reply it was not possible for her to tell whether he was pleased or sorry. That he was surprised though, and excited, that was obvious.

  “I suppose,” she said, “I ought not to be ringing you up in the middle of the morning’s work.”

  “My work’s not so important as all that,” he laughed.

  “And in a way, you see,” she continued, “it’s about business business that I'm ringing you up. Oh, no, no, not your business: mine. I was thinking that I’d rather like to invest some money, or rather gamble with s
ome money. And as it was you, in a way, that put the idea into my head with that absurd misunderstanding we got landed into, and as I know nothing about brokers, and less about shares, and you, I presume, know a little about both, I thought I might do worse than ask your advice about it.”

  He would be delighted, he replied.

  “Then perhaps you will come and have another cocktail with me this evening. You can? Admirable. Thank you so much, Mr. Moreton.”

  He found her talking on the telephone when he arrived.

  “Who is that? What? Oh yes, Arthur Everest,” she was saying. “Can I dine with you on Friday? No, I’m afraid I can’t on Friday. No, nor Wednesday. I’m afraid I’m pretty well booked up all this week. The one after? Well, I’m rather thinking of going out of London for a day or two. My dear man, that’s rather like making a date in the next world. I really can’t. Ten days at the outside is all my head will carry. Of course I don’t keep a diary! I expect my friends to remember my engagements. Ring me up in about three weeks’ time. Good-bye.”

  “There,” she said, turning with a sigh of relief to Graham, “such a bore and so well rid of him. I do hope you’ve forgiven me. And I do hope you’ll excuse my clothes.”

  She was wearing, as far as he could judge, very little but the thinnest of camisoles beneath the brocaded dressing-gown that a large enamel button held precariously together at the waist.

  “The telephone bell has simply not stopped ringing,” she explained. “One can’t very well let it ring, and if you take the receiver down they cut you off and you’re taxiless. I’ve not had a chance to finish dressing. I haven’t begun to mix the cocktails. What sort shall we have? Not that I’ve much variety. Perhaps it had better be a bronx.

  “And now,” she continued, as she began her preparation, “I want you to give me some advice about some investments. It’s not that I want really to make money, but I’d like to be able to have a thrill when I open the morning paper.”

  “As dull as that,” he asked, “and with a telephone never silent?”

  She shrugged her shoulders.

  “Life repeats itself,” she said. “Shares would be a new game for me. Tell me, it should be quite simple, shouldn’t it?”

  “How much would you be prepared to lose?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. About two hundred, I suppose; not more. Is that bronx all right?”

  “Excellent,” he answered. “And unless you wanted to gamble too wildly you ought to be able to do quite a lot with two hundred. You won’t be actually buying the shares, you see. You’ll be paying the difference, if there’s a loss that’s to say, between what the shares were bought at and what they fetch. There’s brokerage, of course, and the interest on the broker’s money to be added on. Not that that comes to much. They send you an account once a fortnight on contango day, but neither side bothers to pay till it’s over fifty, so your two hundred ought to last you quite a while.”

  “I see,” she said, “and all I’ve got to do is to go to a broker and explain things to him. The only thing is”—and for a fraction of a second she hesitated—” the only thing is that I don’t know any broker personally. I wonder if you could——”

  She paused interrogatively, leaving him to complete her meaning.

  “If I could go to a broker for you?” he said. “I shall be delighted. It wouldn’t be any trouble to me at all. Humphrey Stirling hangs out practically next door to our offices.”

  The conversation was interrupted by the sudden imperious summons of the telephone.

  “Who is that? What? Yes. Gwen Lawrence speaking. Oh, it’s Guy. Good evening, Guy. How are you? I won’t say it’s days since I’ve seen you, but it must be hours. Far, far too many hours. And can I lunch with you to-morrow? I’ll be delighted. Where? Ritz Grill at half-past one. That’ll be heavenly. Good-bye.

  “You see,” she said, turning to Graham, “always the telephone.”

  “And yet you find life dull.”

  She pouted her lips.

  “One lunch at Ciro’s is very like another. There are only a limited number of dishes in the world, and by the time one’s tried them all——”

  “But one’s hosts?” he suggested.

  She laughed.

  “No, no; one’s hosts are as alike as the dishes they provide are all alike. I’ve exhausted the kaleidoscope, I’m afraid. But at least these shares will be new. You’ll ring me up, won’t you, and tell me what you buy? And, at any rate, even if the thrill from them is less than I expect, this little transaction is going to give us a chance of seeing more of one another.”

  And her hand was stretched out frankly in simple friendship to him, but in her eyes wavered momentarily a glance neither to be analysed nor forgotten.

  • • • • • • •

  Early next morning Graham called upon Humphrey Stirling.

  “I’ve come,” he announced, “to consult you about some shares.”

  Humphrey leant back in his chair and drew a long white-fingered hand over the sleek expanse of his pomaded hair.

  “If only more people would find themselves in your position I should find myself a considerably richer man. Concerning what manner of shares may I advise you?”

  “I’m prepared,” Graham told him, “to lose two hundred.”

  Humphrey whistled.

  “Folk have come into this room,” he said, “with proposals for netting a cool million, but never before has anyone come to me to suggest a loss.”

  “It’s for a friend.”

  “That explains it; I see light.”

  “Humphrey, you are an ass.”

  “Not such an ass as your friend would appear to be.”

  “It’s like this.”

  But Humphrey had lifted a warning finger of reproof.

  “Why go into it? The fact stands that you have a friend who wants to lose two hundred pounds on the Stock Exchange. Many people who have started more ambitiously have not got so far. Do you think he would like to lose it in industrials?”

  “Now, please——”

  Humphrey Stirling gave a sigh of resignation.

  “Very well, then. As you will. In Elizabethan parlance, better acquaint me.”

  Graham proceeded to explain.

  “My friend would like this two hundred pounds to last as long as possible. So you’d better put me on to something that will fluctuate a little, but not too much.”

  “I see, not too desperate a hazard. Advance by brigades rather than divisions. Hand me the Financial News. Brazil? Let me see. No, Brazil’s too steady: that would be like advancing by platoons. Mexico? That, on the other hand, would be to advance in army corps. Death or glory. Not Mexico, I think. Florida? Now, that looks happier. There’s a pleasant little sun-soaked concern in Florida which should suit your friend admirably. Wobbles a bit, inclined to wobble up rather than wobble down. From what I’ve heard, it’s likely to remain fairly steady for a couple of months; then it’ll go one way or the other with a rush. Something to do with the Gulf Stream or other. At any rate, we’ll be able to grapple with it before the crash comes, and you might turn a tidy little sum. Your friend might do much worse than Florida Asiatics. How about it?”

  “It could scarcely be better,” Graham Moreton conceded.

  “Then, let me see now, we’ll allow your friend a drop of four points a share, and we’ll allow him, to be on the safe side with the brokerage and stuff, a hundred and eighty pounds. That’s forty-five shares, and with shares at eighty-seven, your friend will be holding some three thousand nine hundred pounds worth of Asiatics. That should send the lad with a happier smile about his duties. There remains now only the question of a reference.”

  “Oh, a reference.”

  It was the thing that Graham had not thought of. He had forgotten to ask Mrs. Lawrence for the name either of her bank or her solicitor.

  “Yes,” Humphrey repeated, “a reference. You hesitate. Ah, how clear it grows; the idea was, I presume, that if anyone was to lose two hundred i
t should be me. The oldest of old stories. And I thought a genuine novelty to be on its way.”

  For a moment Graham did not reply. He was thinking rather hard. It would be easy, of course, to ring up Mrs. Lawrence and get the name of some referee or other. But now he had come to turn the matter over he was not certain that his having forgotten to ask her for a reference might not be a good thing really.

  He was not too certain that he wanted Humphrey, who knew a good many of his friends and had an indifferent reputation for discretion, to know that he was buying shares for Mrs. Lawrence.

  He did not attempt to analyse his preference for secrecy. It would be, he felt, just better.

  “Look here,” he decided suddenly. “I’ll take those shares in my own name. My friend——”

  But again a wearily reproving finger had been lifted.

  “Why go into it?” Humphrey admonished him. “So much time is wasted on explanations that are quite unnecessary. If you’ll put your name to the business, that’s enough for me. Forty-five Florida Asiatics at eighty-seven. And at four points down you sell.”

  Ten minutes later Graham was explaining the transaction to Mrs. Lawrence across the telephone.

  “Florida Asiatics,” he explained to her. “They are at eighty-seven now, and you don’t touch the limits of your two hundred till they’ve got to eighty-three.”

  “But it isn’t too likely to do that, is it?”

  “Oh no, it’s wobbling a bit; up, rather than down, he told me. After two months, though, it’ll go one way or another with a rush, but we can sell out before that happens. It’s a long time off—two months.”

  Yes, it was a long time, she repeated to herself. Every fortnight at the least for two months he would be coming to see her now. And if in that time she could not make him fall in love with her. . . .

  “And you’ll be coming round on contango days,” she said, “to tell me all about it, and to advise me what to do. I can’t tell you how grateful I am for all the trouble that you’ve taken.”