Forty is Beginning (Timeless Classics Collection)

by Ursula Bloom

  ‘Let me stay, I implore,’ he whispered. She let him stay, and was grateful for it.

  The woman did not sit down as desired; she stood at attention, glowering. ‘I am Mrs. Hewlitt,’ she said.

  That was, of course, the one thing that Lilias had not expected.

  She said, ‘Oh?’ turned a little faint and sat down whilst the interloper stayed at attention, going redder than ever in the face. Jean poured out a cognac and brought it to Lilias. He also got one for himself, but apparently made no attempt to include Mrs. Hewlitt in the party.

  ‘Divorcee?’ was what he asked.

  ‘Certainly not! I am the memsahib.’

  Jean said something that Lilias couldn’t translate, drank a complete cognac and poured himself out a second. She looked like a memsahib! She looked like the wrath of God!

  ‘I have never set my husband free,’ announced the woman haughtily. ‘We split in Madras. He preferred polo to marriage. He was impertinent.’

  ‘Mon Dieu!’ said Jean, who seemed to be the one conducting this conversation.

  ‘I have not seen him for fifteen years.’

  ‘Surely,’ said Lilias, ‘that is desertion?’

  That was a mistake. A worse mistake was that at this very moment the door opened and the Colonel, having little idea of what was up, peeped innocently round it. He stared at his wife. The veins on his temples stood up like enormous sewer pipes. It was shocking to think of them as sewers, perhaps, but that was the first idea that struck Lilias.

  ‘It isn’t Harriet?’ he asked. ‘I thought you’d died in the earthquake in Tokyo?’

  ‘I was in the earthquake but I did not die,’ she said.

  ‘Your name was in all the papers,’ he said.

  ‘So was yours, and hers, yesterday.’

  ‘Touché,’ said Jean with bright optimism.

  ‘Méchant is the right word for him,’ thought Lilias.

  Maxwell had come into the room; the first glow had left his face, which was now tinged grey. ‘Why didn’t you get in touch with me before?’ he demanded, ‘instead of leaving me in this predicament believing that I was a widower when I was not?’

  ‘Why should I get in touch with you? I’ve been perfectly happy without you, far happier than with you. We led a cat and dog life.’

  ‘There is no need to go into that. What do we do now?’

  ‘I am hard up,’ said his wife.

  ‘Hell!’ said the Colonel.

  Lilias glanced wretchedly at Jean, who fell back upon the only strategy that he seemed to know; he brought another cognac. Like this, everybody would be drunk very soon, Lilias felt, and that would be the end of the party without a doubt!

  ‘I will set you free for money, and for money only,’ announced the lady, ‘but I want a lot of money.’

  ‘Do you? You deserted me, and according to the law I can get my freedom for that.’

  ‘In England yes; not in France. You never were quite as clever as you thought you were.’

  ‘Preposterous!’ said he.

  ‘It was damned nearly bigamy,’ she replied, ‘you ought to thank me for saving you from that.’

  Pathetically Lilias glanced at Jean. He shrugged his shoulders and all the time those bright eyes were laughing. She turned to Maxwell. ‘You never told me about Harriet.’ (‘What a name!’ she thought).

  The room was blurring a little; it was probably that cognac, and Jean should have known better. She was suddenly finding herself sitting here with an acute despondency descending on her; why did this have to happen to her? By now, all Manchester and London would know she was engaged, when all the time she was not engaged at all; whatever happened the Press must not be allowed to get hold of this latest titbit, for it would be luxury reading for St. Helena’s. Miss Halifax would adore it. ‘Jean, stop the papers publishing any of this,’ she whispered.

  He came much closer. ‘I have great influence with the Press, m’lle. They shall stay silent. They shall be quiet as death.’ He kissed her hand, pressing its softness between his own fingers, then he stepped out on to the balcony and disappeared. She did not know what he meant by ‘great influence’ but she was quite sure that she could rely on him. She felt very dizzy as she surveyed the other two who were giving active proof that their marriage had been a cat and dog life.

  ‘It is unthinkable; you always behaved vilely. You were “fishing fleet” in the beginning, caught me at Imtarfa at Malta, and followed me to Bengal,’ blazed Maxwell. ‘You must have wanted a husband pretty badly to put all you’d got into that pursuit. Now you pose as dead for years and then come and do this.’

  ‘I knew you were marrying money. The papers say you have only known each other a fortnight.’

  ‘That’s a lie!’

  ‘Anyway you can’t marry her, you aren’t free.’

  ‘It can be arranged.’

  ‘Not without me, and my price is expensive. I’m starting stables in Provence.’

  ‘What on earth for?’

  ‘Because I like horses.’

  ‘To hell with you and your horses!’ Now Maxwell was over-boiling. ‘You look like one yourself, and behave like one.’

  Lilias rose from the sofa, and the world was spinning horribly round her. ‘I think,’ she said, ‘I shall have to go and lie down.’

  Nine

  FINAL CURTAIN

  In his private room, prominently ornamented with polo sticks, the enormous photo of himself and the officers of the Madras Militia, the tiger skin rug (which had moth in the head), and numerous photographs of safari, and ‘Me on Elephant’ and ‘Me with dead Cheetah’, Maxwell Hewlitt faced Harriet.

  ‘Too bad,’ he said, ‘I always knew you were spiteful, but to come back from the dead …!’

  ‘How was I to know you thought I was dead?’ she enquired. ‘It was kinder to come back and stake my claim than to allow you to commit bigamy.’

  ‘You’ve mucked everything!’

  ‘Serve you right!’ said Harriet. ‘What about a drink? I’d like a John Collins.’

  ‘You would!’ said he, ‘you always were an expensive drinker. A throat like slate, and you haven’t improved.’ She brought out a man’s cigarette case. On its dented front was written, ‘Khatmandhu from Billyboy’. He let that one pass. ‘How masculine she looks!’ he thought, ‘how aggressive!’ He remembered the C.O. warning him not to marry Harriet, and yet he had gone through with it. ‘Love is a snare and a delusion,’ he thought, ‘love is the very devil, blast it! What it does to a chap! What hell!’ If only he had abided by the C.O.’s experienced common sense! But of course he hadn’t. He had been the prize fool, as was every young sub. when it came to it; now he was paying. He said, ‘Lilias will never marry me now.’

  ‘She can’t marry you because I shan’t set you free.’

  ‘Then I shan’t order you a John Collins. Get to hell out of this!’ said Maxwell furiously.

  Her answer was to stride manfully across the room, ring the bell and then sit down on the masculine sofa, knees wide apart embraced by knuckled hands, until the waiter came, when she ordered the drink herself.

  He said, ‘What do you expect to get out of this?’

  ‘You forget that I have a right here, I’m your wife.’

  ‘It happens to be Miss Marvin’s hotel; she has bought the place and she may dislike your being here.’

  ‘Then she’ll turn you out too,’ said Harriet, with disconcerting truth, and she proffered him the cigarette case. ‘Have a stinker?’

  ‘Who is Khatmandhu?’

  ‘The boys called me that.’

  ‘They made a mistake adding the Mandhu, I should have thought,’ but she merely grinned. He sat there bursting with fury. ‘You’d better stay here and drink your John Collins whilst I go up and try to pacify Lilias.’

  ‘Lilias isn’t her name.’

  ‘It’s what I call her and it’s a damned sight better than Khatmandhu, if you ask me!’

  Out he went. He mopped his feverish brow
, aware that that this was going to be a very nasty corner to turn. Lilias would be well within her own province if she chucked him out, and he for one could not blame her. He went to her suite, where he found her lying on the sofa with a tray of tea beside her. She did not look as upset as he would have expected, nor was she in floods of tears, which would have meant that he could put his arms round her and comfort her, drawing her into his arms and ending it all with the most glorious love scene.

  ‘Oh, Max!’ she said.

  ‘I say, Lilias, this is awful!’

  ‘You should have told me.’

  ‘As far as I was concerned, the marriage was over and done with. I had no idea that Harriet was alive.’

  ‘Yes, but you should have told me that you had been married.’

  He did not say that that was one of the small liabilities that did not ask words. ‘I know I should have told you, but it was one of those disturbing things that I had pushed out of my memory in self-defence.’

  ‘Now what?’ she said.

  ‘I shall make her divorce me.’

  ‘I don’t believe in divorce. It’s wicked,’ said Lilias Marvin with Methodistical earnestness.

  That was a shocker! The one thing that Max had never expected was this. He felt his throat going dry with apprehension; he looked at the hotel which he had seen through difficult times and had fondly believed was his for ever.

  He said, ‘It may be wicked, but thousands use it as a short cut to happiness. Harriet means nothing to me, you can see that. The whole thing is dead as the dodo, that’s obvious. Finished. Done with. It never was a marriage. One honeymoon in Kashmir, which I thought was heaven, then the dark. And believe me, my dear, the dark was damned dark! I had hoped to find a little joy now, in my St. Martin’s summer, as it were. Oh Lilias, you can’t do this to me!’

  ‘I couldn’t marry you.’

  Now he realised that she had relied on him, that she had felt secure with him, but that she had never really loved him. ‘Oh God!’ he said, and again ‘Oh God!’

  The extraordinary thing was that she was not as upset as he had thought she would be. Half lying on the sofa she looked quite superb in that soft pink negligee with the frills that Harriet could never have worn. He had forgotten how shocking Harriet was; that shingle did not add to it, and those horny eyes of hers, glazed by gin. (‘Talk about liver and lights like lead! I have come to a pretty pass!’ thought he.)

  Lilias said, ‘After this I can’t marry you, that’s certain. You see, I hate the thought of divorce, and anyway …’

  ‘But Lilias, what’ll I do?’

  He didn’t love her overmuch; he had been carried away by events, he supposed. But there was the hotel, his livelihood; he was used to the south of France, and he would hate to go away from it; besides, his pension was inadequate for living elsewhere, and he had no other visible means of support. He could not let the hotel go, but this little woman looking like an angel in soft pink chiffon had the power to make such a move necessary.

  She said, ‘Maxwell, please don’t be worried. Maybe we made a mistake and after all life is going to work out differently. You’ll stay here for always, I hope, but … but I don’t think I’d want Harriet to remain.’

  ‘Harriet has gone already,’ he lied, because he had to do something to ensure his position. What he was not to know was that Harriet was doing more to hoop up the lead in the liver and lights and had now started on Pimm’s No. Is with zest.

  ‘This shan’t upset us.’ She drew off the heavy gold ring. ‘It says Nil Desperandum, Max, and you must do what you can about Harriet, but for us the affair is over.’

  ‘Darling, give me another chance? What’ll people say? We can’t end it up like this.’

  ‘Oh yes we can,’ she said softly. ‘It’s got to be.’

  ‘But the talk?’

  ‘That’ll be nothing. We just don’t say a word, we deny the engagement wildly, but we don’t do more. After all, we have never mentioned it yet, it has only been what those silly newspapers thought.’

  Given time, he might even now talk her round. Night on the Grande Corniche, with all the helpful backcloth of cicadas and mimosa and stars, should be a help. ‘You’re a wonderful woman,’ said he, and kissed her hand. For the time being he would pocket the ring, then go back and kick old Harriet out. Damn old Harriet! ‘Darling, I do love you,’ he added.

  ‘You’re a dear thing,’ she said, but her tone was final.

  There was trouble with Harriet.

  In the end he had to get her into a car and take her to the station. She was living at Cannes, and he felt that the sooner she got there the better. When he was rid of her, he could have swooned with delight, and he went back to Les Papillons and ordered himself a really stiff one. Damn all women! The C.O. had always told him that once a fellow got himself entangled with women, there was no end to the liabilities, and it looked like this to him.

  There was a note from Francis Lorimer. It was brought by a dilapidated-looking young man who on occasions acted as some kind of a courier for Francis.

  ‘What does he want?’ said Maxwell abruptly.

  He too had had trouble.

  Francis Lorimer had lived very comfortably on the Riviera for some time. Actually he had never liked work, none but fools do; he had lived on the bounty of old ladies who were more busty than trusty, and he had moved only in the best circles. It had been the envying wonder of his friends that he could always afford orchids and the most handsome young coffins of liqueur chocolates and marrons, and that he never seemed to be too hard up. He moved in political circles, and some said that he knew all the secrets of Europe.

  ‘How does he do it?’ asked his friends, ‘and if he can do it, why can’t we?’ They couldn’t. Accruing bills had taught them that.

  Only a few hours ago Francis Lorimer had unfortunately had an unhappy interview with two forbidding gentlemen at police headquarters. He was detained, and couldn’t think why.

  They must imagine that I am a spy or something utterly foolish. Do, I beg you, dear Colonel Hewlitt, ask Lilias to help me. You yourself could do much for me. These people have pushed me in off the deep end and I am drowning. It is insufferable here; no mod. cons.! Please help me.

  Maxwell had never liked Francis, and could only laugh. If they took him out and shot him at dawn, spy or no spy, the world would be well rid of one undesirable. In the present chaotic times in Europe, an extra wastrel was a bad show, he felt. He rang up a friend at Headquarters, and the friend, reserved and cold, said that he believed they had brought in a young man for questioning. For some time recently there had been a leakage of important details in this part of the world, and a special agent had been down here trying to find out things. It could not go on, it was so detrimental to la belle France. On the words la belle France, he seemed to get very worked up. There was no doubt about it, he loved his country and was prepared to do anything for it. So Maxwell hurriedly rang off. Personally he didn’t give a hoot for Francis’s letter, and he consigned it to the wastepaper basket ‒ a Benares bowl which he had bought in an Indian bazaar, taking it everywhere with him since.

  He must now get the lawyers to work on Harriet. If he could get himself free, perhaps he could persuade Lilias to do something about the future. He must make quite sure about that future.

  ‘Damn all women!’ said the Colonel for the umpteenth time.

  Lilias and Jean were motoring above the Corniche. ‘I must have air,’ she had told him. So he took her up high, and then they stopped the car, looking down on to Monaco, sweet with early evening.

  ‘Something is the matter?’ asked Jean.

  ‘It is the Colonel’s wife.’

  The eyes laughed but the mouth was honest. ‘She is like a horse, yes?’

  She began to giggle.

  ‘Too bad,’ said he, ‘the old love always comes back.’

  ‘Now Francis is detained for questioning, he seems to have been up to something.’

  ‘Ah!’ said J
ean.

  ‘Isn’t it awful? Would you have thought that he was a spy?’

  Jean ignored that one. He said, ‘I have given up the flat. I shall have to be leaving here myself. I shall not be able to drive you so much. You will find a new chauffeur? There is Pierre de Fortois, he is very amiable, he drive very slowly, which you like.’

  She had not thought how worrying it would be to lose Jean. ‘You can’t be a spy too?’ she asked.

  ‘Perhaps. One never knows. When the place gets too hot we go. N’est-ce pas?’

  ‘Jean, I don’t believe it.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘No indeed. You are not a spy, I am sure of that.’

  He said, ‘You are very nice, so nice I kiss you,’ and he did. She ought to have said something and she couldn’t, because before she realised what was happening she was kissing him.

  ‘You come with me?’ he asked, ‘we marry and you run the château with maman?’

  ‘We marry and I run the hotel here,’ and she was surprised to hear herself bartering.

  ‘We go between the hotel and the château? Yes?’

  ‘Oh Jean, you’re wonderful!’

  He said, ‘At least I have no wife like a horse to come and alarm you. See! You like this?’ He put a hand into his pocket and brought out a small blue case. It had a magic name on it, and when he opened it a huge diamond disclosed itself. Diamonds speak all languages and pass all frontiers, Francis had said. It was about the most important-looking diamond she had ever seen; undoubtedly it could speak all languages.

  ‘Wear it,’ he suggested.

  ‘But Jean, if you are a spy, you will give it up for my sake?’

  ‘I have never been one. Never. You do not believe? Oh la la! How strange are women! How perverse! Oh la la!’

  They drove into the town; she did not know if this were heaven or hell; she knew which it was when they ran into the small scootling car coming up. There was one ghastly moment when she knew that the bottom was falling out of her world, a resounding crash, and then when she came out of the haze, she was lying in Jean’s arms. He was talking to an official; it was a good thing that her French had improved out of all knowledge.