Dark Angel

by Sally Beauman

  In a way, he thought (returning to one of the small gilt chairs at the side of the floor, sitting down beside Jane Conyngham), he was glad to relinquish Constance. She went too fast. She muddled things; she muddied things, and Freddie preferred these things, whatever they were—life, he supposed—to be slower, more cautious, above all simpler.

  Freddie sat down in a puffing way, out of breath from the spins of the waltz. He mopped at his forehead and greeted Jane. He looked around the floor in a hopeful way, at the passing dancers, at the women in particular. Freddie was not anxious to fall in love—too much of an upheaval, just then—but he would have been quite glad to find some ordinary girl whom he could see from time to time. Someone to take to the theater, so he did not have to tag along behind Steenie all the time.

  None of the passing women held his eye, and he found his gaze strayed back, in the most irritating way, to the small and animated figure of Constance. She had not sat out one dance. Freddie, knowing it to be foolish, resented this. He resented the men who were her partners.

  Wrenching his gaze away, he turned to Jane with some relief. He had grown to like Jane after all. She was kind. She was sensible. She was easy to talk to; she was both resilient and astute. Freddie, who had been exposed through his ambulance work to aspects of life from which he had previously been shielded, began to understand a little the rigors of her work. Because of this, he respected her. He was not pleased, therefore, when Jane turned his attention back to the dance floor and, even worse, back to Constance.

  “Who’s that dancing with Constance now, Freddie?” she asked.

  Freddie averted his gaze with a jerk. “Oh, God, I don’t know,” he said irritably. “One of the devoted swains.”

  “Is it that American, the one Maud mentioned? What was his name? Gus Something. Gus Alexander, that’s it.”

  “I can’t see,” said Freddie, refusing to look. “If he’s wearing diamond shirt studs the size of pigeon’s eggs, then it probably is.”

  “His studs are quite large. And they do glitter.” Jane’s voice was dry.

  “Then it’s him. Can he dance?”

  “Not terribly well. He looks as if he’s wearing boots.”

  “Then it’s definitely him. I can’t stand him. He talks about money all the time. How much he’s made—down to the last cent. Also, he thinks he’s in love with Constance. Do you know how many roses he sent her the other day? Two hundred. Red ones. In a horrible gold basket thing. The kind of thing Stern would have chosen.”

  “And was she pleased?”

  “Of course she was. Constance loves extravagant gestures. She says people ought to be more vulgar.”

  “Does she indeed? Well, you know, Freddie, I sometimes think Constance might be right about that.”

  “Right? How can she be right?”

  “Oh, I don’t know.” Jane frowned. “We make all these rules and regulations, and most of them are arbitrary and silly. We decide you must hold a knife a certain way. Or we decide it’s not done to talk of certain things—like money. Why not? Why not just be like Mr. Alexander and say what you think?”

  “And eat your peas off your knife while you’re doing it?”

  “There are worse crimes, Freddie.” Jane paused. “When I am at the hospital …”

  Jane never completed this sentence. She stopped, and Freddie did not prompt her. She looked out across the ballroom, at the tiers of hothouse flowers, at the chandeliers, which made the air as lucid as glass. She saw the ballroom; she also saw the hospital.

  The transition from one world to another was abrupt; Jane found it difficult. She felt she ought to be able to separate the two worlds and see them as distinct, but increasingly she found this impossible. This inability to separate the parts of her life frightened her. She believed it was caused by overwork; sometimes she found it a little mad.

  That morning at Guy’s, she had been treating the wound of a small boy. His name was Tom. Tom slept in a crib in the women’s ward because the hospital suffered from chronic overcrowding. Tom had (among other things) rickets; like most of the children, and many of the women, he came from the East End and he suffered from malnutrition. He also had a diseased kidney; the previous day it had been cut out, leaving a neat round hole, like a bullet wound.

  Jane wanted this boy Tom to live. She always wanted the children on the ward to live, with a passion she feared, for it made it harder when—as did happen—the children died.

  Tom would survive; Jane was determined of that. Sitting on her small and absurd gilt chair, Jane wished that she was with him, and that she had not left the hospital. On the other hand she was glad to escape the hospital, too, for at the hospital, she lied.

  She had been taught to lie; it was necessary. Above the bed of each woman on the ward there was a number. (The women were known by numbers, not names.) Next to the number was a fatal diagnosis: carcinoma. Sometimes of the stomach, or the lungs, or the skin, or the brain; always carcinoma—it was, after all, the cancer ward.

  The women were not told that. Most of them were illiterate; they could not read their own placard, and if they could, they were deceived by the Latin term.

  “It isn’t cancer, is it, dearie?” they always asked, sooner or later.

  “Of course not,” Jane would say in her new, bright, well-trained voice. “Let’s shake up the pillow and make you comfortable, shall we?”

  The ward sister said that was the only thing to do. Once, Jane had believed the ward sister. Now she was no longer sure she did. She would have liked to ask Freddie’s opinion. She would have liked to tell Freddie how the hospital would not go away but pursued her everywhere.

  But it would have been ill-considered, ill-mannered to have done so. Etiquette again. Also unfair to Freddie, who was young and (Jane thought) unhappy. This was her burden; she must carry it.

  So, Jane began on the sentence about the hospital but left it incomplete. She leaned forward, resting her chin on her hands. I should like you to see her as she was then. Like Constance, she was changing.

  She was thin; she sat, in a nervous way, on the edge of her gilt chair. Her hands were reddened and coarsened by the work at the hospital, which involved (she was a voluntary nurse, and therefore given menial tasks) much scrubbing with carbolic.

  It was characteristic of her to hold these hands in front of her face, as if she wished to hide it, particularly when she spoke. She still lacked confidence, and so, when she did speak, it was often in a disconcerting way: She would begin briskly enough, but halfway through a sentence her poise would desert her; she would finish the rest of the words in a rush. She would take refuge in safe phrases, clichés, little earnest rushes of dull and incontrovertible obviousness, and then—because she was intelligent, and despised this timid and evasive language—she would break off. Jane’s sentences tended either to blur or to hit an invisible cul-de-sac; men found this tiresome.

  She had a narrow, fine-boned face, the high forehead of a child, and—at her best—eyes that were unwavering. She no longer considered these eyes—hazel, flecked with brown—her best feature; she no longer considered her face at all.

  One other thing: she had cut her hair. This, in 1916, was daring. Jane did not care. She cut it herself, for practicality at work, and she liked it cut. It suited her. Her face was often anxious and striving, but her hair had a new character of its own. It framed her face and exposed the delicacy of her neck; it was obedient to the comb and lay straight and smooth against her scalp, clipped like a helmet, the color of newly cleaned copper. It was assertive, that hair; Jane herself was only just beginning to assert, and when she did so, she sometimes had a curious sensation: It was her hair that showed her the way. Cut, it had a new authority.

  She might have authority too, one day, Jane felt. Meanwhile, she was still tentative, even with Freddie. So she began on the sentence about the hospital, then hid her mouth with her hands and left the sentence unfinished.

  Instead, after a pause, she directed Freddie’s a
ttention back to the less difficult (she thought) topic of Constance, and the beauty of Constance’s dress.

  Freddie looked: Constance was in the act of selecting her next dance partner from a crowd of eager young men. Her quick small hands gestured in the air; her hair, pinned up and fastened with glittering combs, looked lovely and yet precarious, as if it might tumble about her shoulders at any moment. She turned from man to man; a white glove against a black shoulder—Constance, who made a ballet of flirtation.

  Freddie rose. It was not a ballet he wished to watch any longer. He left Jane to the ministrations of the approaching Hector Arlington (on leave; in uniform), and went in search of champagne. Since the war continued as it did, there was a shortage of manservants; the champagne was brought him, in the end, by Jenna.

  She looked pale, ill, and exhausted—so much so that it was a moment before Freddie recognized her. When he did, it depressed him further. She had once been so pretty, and now she was aged. Age, time, change. Freddie felt thoroughly gloomy. So much for Constance’s luck.

  He stood underneath the orchestra box and drank his champagne very fast.

  “Who’s that?” Denton said in querulous tones. He screwed up his eyes and peered at the dance floor.

  “Where, dearest?”

  “There, Gwennie, there! Dancing with Hector Arlington. Who’s that?”

  “It’s Jane, dearest. Boy’s fiancée. Jane Conyngham,” Gwen replied, with increasing emphasis as Denton’s face took on an obtuse expression, as if he had never heard of Jane, let alone met her.

  “Ghastly get-up.” Denton scowled. “What the hell’s she done to her hair? Looks as if she’s been scalped.”

  “She’s cut it, dearest. It’s the new thing, I believe. I think it rather suits her. So much less severe. She looks years younger. Almost pretty.”

  “Hideous frock.” Denton was not listening. “Perfectly ghastly. Yellow, is it? Looks like sick. You should have a word with her, Gwennie.”

  “Jane isn’t very interested in clothes, dearest. She never has been, if you remember. Besides, I like that dress. It suits her coloring. Of course, she is so very thin … but she has a kind heart, Denton, a kind heart.”

  “A kind heart, and a fortune,” Denton remarked, and chuckled.

  Gwen cast him a suspicious glance. Denton now seemed to recall Jane perfectly; for an instant Gwen suspected he had done so all along.

  Gwen now found her husband’s memory—or lack of it—an increasing puzzle. For small things—dates, names, certain words, in particular adjectives—Denton’s memory seemed to her indubitably bad. Denton, describing someone or something, had grown alarming in his incapacity to grasp the opposite word:

  “He’s …” he would begin, and his eyes would revolve like Catherine wheels; his hands would gesture convulsively.

  “Tall?” Gwen would prompt in a patient voice. “Big? Well-built? Stocky? Stout?”

  Really, she would think, she needed a thesaurus.

  “Broad-shouldered? Of a military build? Very large? Gigantic?” This, in response to Denton, who had grown purple in the face and whose right hand, by then, would be indicating some vast stature.

  “Tall,” she would conclude. “I feel sure you just mean tall, dearest. More than six foot—like you and Boy and Acland. Very tall—is that it, Denton?”

  “Hairy,” Denton might then pronounce, with a wild and wicked gleam in his eyes. Hairy, or bald, dwarfish or sly; whatever the word Denton finally produced, it had little to do with the charade he had just been enacting.

  On such occasions Gwen felt sure she was being teased, and could become irritable. Could her husband’s lapses of memory be a matter of perversity? It did seem odd to fail to recognize Jane Conyngham one moment, yet recall her fortune the next. Gwen sighed; she reassured herself. Of course the problem was genuine. Denton’s mind had become an imperfect conductor, that was all.

  “Are you tired, Denton?” she asked, leaning forward to him in the motherly way that had now become second nature. “It is growing late. No one will mind if you retire early.”

  “Not tired. Not tired at all. Enjoyin’ myself,” Denton replied in a firm voice. He looked down at his brandy glass, which was empty, and which Gwen did not intend should be refilled.

  “Not sure about some of these people, though.” He surveyed the room. “Woman over there—the one with all that paint on her face. Looks like a …”

  “Denton!”

  “Hussy. Looks like a hussy. What did you think I was going to say? And that fellow with her, damned dago. Who invited him? And what about that one? Prancin’ over there in the corner. A bugger by the look of him. Long hair. Wearin’ disgustin’ red stuff all over his cheeks. Ought to be out at the front. That’d knock some sense into him.”

  Gwen raised her new lorgnette and gazed at the young man Denton had just indicated. He had his back to her and was talking with some animation to Freddie and a group of other younger men. They included Conrad Vickers, the would-be photographer; that tall shambling bear of a boy everyone called Wexton; and, to the edge of the group, Basil Hallam, the actor.

  Gwen still disapproved of these friends in a vague way: Vickers, in particular, seemed to her excessively animated. The young man accused of prancing by Denton still had his back to her, but Freddie, she noticed, was deep in conversation with Wexton. He (or so Jane said) was about to join an ambulance unit in France. Just as Gwen was thinking how wary she must be—the last thing she wanted was for Freddie to emulate him; ambulance driving in Hampstead was all very well, but ambulance driving at the front was another matter—the prancing young man turned round. Gwen saw that it was Steenie.

  “See what I mean?” Denton waved a liver-spotted hand in his direction. “Paint. Plastered all over him. Vomit-making.”

  “Denton dearest. Please do not be foolish.” Gwen gave Denton a repressive glance. “That is Steenie, as you could see if you would wear your spectacles. And he is simply a little flushed, that is all. It is hot in here, and he has been dancing—”

  “What’s more”—Denton’s gaze roved on and lit upon the figure of his sister—“what’s more, take a look at Maud. Mutton dressed as lamb, hanging on his arm—that fellow, what’s his name? The Israelite.”

  “Denton, please. Maud may hear you—”

  “Damn good thing if she did. Might bring her to her senses. What in God’s name does she think she’s doing, eh? She’s English—dammit, she’s my sister. First she marries a wop, and now this. A … moneylender. I ask you, how does a man like that come by a title?”

  “Rather in the same way your father came by his, I imagine,” said Gwen, with asperity. “He purchased it, I should think.”

  “Preposterous! If I had my way—”

  “Hush now, Denton my dear. You know what the doctor said. And anyway, you quite like Monty, you know you do.” Gwen motioned one of the elderly footmen forward and watched while Denton’s brandy glass was refilled. The measure was small, for the servants had their orders, but it sufficed. Denton subsided.

  “Leech,” he muttered. But his anger was spent. A moment later and he appeared to have forgotten both Maud and Sir Montague. Gwen felt relief.

  These outbursts on the subject of Stern had grown more frequent of late, and—coupled with certain little hints and evasions from Maud—Gwen sometimes found them troubling. It had occurred to her once or twice that Denton might have borrowed from Stern, as, she knew, many of their friends had done. Stern was known to have a sympathetic ear for those with expensive habits, whether it was something foolish, such as gambling or speculation, or something sounder, such as outlay on estates.

  The Arlingtons, for instance: according to Maud, in the strictest confidence, Hector Arlington, advised by his mother, the formidable Gertrude, had turned to Stern and had been assisted. A temporary embarrassment, of course, something to do with death duties. Even Sir Richard Peel, Denton’s old crony and the most conservative of men, had, it was rumored, turned his portfolio ov
er to Stern and been delighted with the results. Peel was of the old guard, and unashamed of that fact.

  “Can’t have the fellow in my house,” he had once remarked to Gwen. “Know he comes here, know he goes about, but I can’t do it. Habits of a lifetime—you know how it is. And the great thing is, he understands. Never pushes. Tactful chap, for a Jew.”

  Had Stern been useful, in a similar way, to Denton? In the past few weeks Gwen had begun to consider this possibility; she considered it now, gazing across the ballroom to where Stern stood, Maud on his arm, talking quietly.

  Until recently, it had never occurred to Gwen that Denton could need either financial advice or assistance. After all, they lived very simply: only three houses—Winterscombe, London, and the hunting lodge in the Highlands which Denton liked to visit in August and September, for the deerstalking and the fishing. Their entertaining was not lavish; the number of their servants was much reduced by the war. No, it was incomprehensible that Denton should need to borrow. If he did have connections with Stern, it must be for advice on investments, that was all.

  Yet, there were oddities: Denton was so close with money, and always had been, so she feared to show him the recent bills for her dresses. On other occasions he would be—without explanation—lavish, casting caution to the winds. His presents to his sons were always more than generous; he had even encouraged the arrangements for this ball. On the other hand, there was that inexplicable insistence, going back years, that Boy should marry an heiress, an insistence that offended Gwen, for it smacked of the mercenary. Why should Boy need a rich wife?

  “Bed,” Denton suddenly remarked. He rose. “Bed now, I think. I’m becoming too old for this kind of thing, Gwennie.”

  “Nonsense, Denton darling.” Maud had joined them, Montague Stern at her side. She leaned across to give her brother a kiss.

  “You can’t retire now—you’ve danced only once. Make a little circuit with me, just a small one….”