Dinah's Husband: A heartfelt story of love and marriage in the 1930s

by Ursula Bloom

  In return she could tell him nothing of herself. He asked about her husband, and she had not thought out the answer to such questions, for she was bewildered. Already she was looking on Piers as being her husband, yet of course he wasn’t. She said that she was going out to Malta to see a friend, glossing over her marriage. Then, after the American had been left in Turin, she sat back and realised that this was the foundation stone for a crazy house of lies which she was forced to erect to cover her own embarrassment. She was not sure what she ought to do about it. The trouble was that, being so desperately in love, she wanted to tell everyone about Piers and couldn’t. She wanted to talk about him and publicise her emotion, and if she could not do so it would lose much that was exquisite. She could not talk because the world considered that she ought to be ashamed.

  She wondered how it would all end.

  3

  The train came into Rome.

  Now it seemed to have become suddenly most intensely hot, and although she took a taxi round the city she soon found that the sun beat down too fiercely for her. She was torn between the desire to see as much as she could of the city, and her terror that she would get sunstroke.

  In the Forum she developed a headache. She took an instinctive dislike to the Colosseum, and knew as she stood on the grass centre and stared at the tattered remains of a mighty empire long since dead, that here much that she was now feeling had been endured. Women had loved wisely and unwisely, and this ruin had been the husk of much that was human and terribly real. Once it had been so lovely. But beauty and love are the stuff that will not endure, and when they fade, chance slips through fingers grown worn and knobbly-knuckled with time.

  A beggar woman crept whiningly from behind a broken column, clutching a black shawl about her head, and holding out a hand that shook.

  ‘One penny, signora,’ she said humbly.

  Dinah’s first instinct was to move away, but she hesitated because she saw that the woman was very thin; her hands were skeleton hands, and although they were humiliatingly suppliant, her eyes stared at Dinah out of deep pits and were the defiant eyes of some outraged blackbird. Dinah opened her purse and took out a couple of lire.

  The woman clawed them to her over-eagerly. Then she pointed to the Colosseum, with its ruined pillars and its scarred façades like a pock-marked face. ‘Time,’ she said still clutching the lire closely, ‘you too will be as me. As the Colosseum. Too old.’ She said it very slowly. Very clearly.

  Her voice had given words to the very thought which had distressed Dinah so much. She turned quickly and went out of the Colosseum past the pestering guides with their postcards and souvenirs, out into the dusty roadway beyond. She wished that she had never come here.

  She went back to the central station, and sat in the waiting-room with the miscellaneous crowd of extraordinary people, and all the time her head throbbed like an engine. She promised herself that when the train came in she would go to the wagon-lit and lie down. However, when it did arrive, officialdom forbade her going to bed. The wagon-lit man came strutting along, a little martinet with a swagger moustache and a bullet head. But, said the wagon-lit man, it was not the order to let down the lits until after nine o’clock. After nine o’clock then it could be arranged, until then no!

  Rebuked and helpless because they seemed unable to converse in any sort of mutual language, Dinah shrank into her corner and closed her eyes. The beauty that is Rome slipped past the window, and she could not look. She would have given much to stare out at the colonnades and the ruins which extend for so many miles, out into the valleys and the fields and the hills which surround the city, but she felt too ill.

  She could not eat any dinner, and was only too thankful when at last the wagon-lit man appeared and with mutterings and shoulder shruggings condescended to open up the sleeper. She crept into bed. Rest was not for long, because they arrived at Naples just before midnight and she was in her first sleep. A crowd collected in the corridor to catch a glimpse of Vesuvius. She gathered that the volcano was throwing up some fire, and the crowd were noisy in their approval. It was as though they were at a firework display and had bought front seats for it. The wagon-lit man, believing that he was conferring a favour on her, opened the door of the sleeper and peered in.

  ‘Perhaps the signora would see?’ he enquired.

  After that she could not get to sleep again, but lay tossing and turning, until the light crept into the stuffy little railway carriage, when she fell into a tranquil slumber.

  She was in Sicily when she awoke refreshed, and out of pain. She propped herself up amongst the pillows to stare out. Here was a lovely land, with the tall purple-blue mountains, and the waterfalls ploughing their silver way down them. Here were the lemon orchards close on either side of the carriage, and to-night she knew that she would be in Malta. She drank the café au lait that the man brought her; to-day he was less grumpy, and more ingratiating, because he knew that their destination was near, and there was the chance of a tip. Though, as he told her, single ladies seldom tipped really well. The young married couples were the ones, they did not care what they gave so long as they might be alone. He always liked to see them because it meant that he could be sure of his money, and he would laugh, rubbing his hands together. He was going to buy a petit tabac one of these days and was saving hard towards that end.

  The train went on with its eternal throb across Sicily. She had never supposed that she could be so tired of the sound of an engine, like a great heart beating on and on and never stopping. It was tea-time when they pulled up alongside the quay at Syracuse, with the hot little town behind them, scarcely shaded by the sparse olive trees. The Maltese boat was tied at the quayside, and its brown-faced amiable stewards were bustling to and fro ready to help.

  England now seemed to be an interminable way off, and Max only a memory. It was shameful that she could forget so easily, and that he could fade, but the miles had been so long, and the days might as well have been weeks. Now an insurmountable distance lay between them. She thought of the old woman in the Colosseum again, wishing they had never met. She would be glad when she could tell Piers about it, and so thrust it out of her memory. She would be glad when they turned into the Grand Harbour, though to-night she would not see Piers, for only the men with wives could sleep ashore. To-night he would be on board and she would have to make her own way to the hotel, though to-morrow she knew that he would be ashore to see her. The thought thrilled her.

  They would never be parted again. Six months of being circumspect, and after that nobody could refuse them the joy of being together; no wonder that she felt so mentally elated, even though physically she was exhausted with the journey.

  4

  The little boat started and the night closed down on the tideless sea. She saw the stars grown large and lovely, and felt that this must indeed be a fairy ship, instead of a small (quite unseaworthy) vessel with cockroaches in the cabins, and ‒ so one infuriated Commander’s wife declared ‒ ‘a walloping big rat that came out and looked at me’.

  For Dinah there were no cockroaches and no rats, only the stars and the salty smell of the sea, and the knowledge that every churn of the engines brought her nearer to her destination. She saw it in that perspective.

  The boat turned into the Grand Harbour at midnight with the shoulders of great bastions rising gauntly on either side, and the big ships at anchor with bright lights down their gangways; the lights in Senglea and Vittoriosa were just as she had seen them that other time, when she had been here on a cruise and yet had known in some strange contradictory fashion that this moment would be and that the island was part of her life.

  She got up and stretched herself, because she was so very tired. One of the officers came to tell her that the guide from the hotel would put off in a little boat, and out of the darkness she heard her name called. Somehow it seemed to be an irony that it was still Max’s name. It is extraordinary how such small points strike home at taut moments.

 
She went down the gangway, finding it difficult to negotiate, and a dark hand reached out for her, helping her skilfully into the rickety little boat. It seemed to be a very uncertain craft as they wobbled to the Customs House steps, the man rowing it standing up and wriggling his oars in a peculiar manner.

  ‘Is it safe?’ she asked nervously.

  The guide assured her that it was safe and that all Maltese men rowed the dghaisas that way, she would find them very fast and it was a good way of getting along, he said. Why, sometimes they would row out as far as St. Julian’s Bay. There was no limit to this means of transport.

  She was transferred from the boat to an enormous wide car, with ancient springs, and it appeared to go at a fantastic speed through thin little streets to the hotel. As she sat in it, she knew that she had become apprehensive. It might have been the fact that nobody had met her, and although the guide was well-meaning, she felt a void in her heart; she did not know what it was, but she felt it like a weight, something which refused to allow her spirits to rise.

  The hotel door was merely a side door against a shop, and she had never thought that it would be like this. She had expected something smarter. She went inside and was met by Mr. Mifsud, who smiled urbanely, presented a large stained book to be signed, and told her that the guide would take her passport to the palace if she would leave it with him.

  She was preceded upstairs by Giuseppe, the waiter-cum-chamberman, and he opened the door into the stuffy little room, as though it were the entrance to a suite at the Ritz. The curtains had faded with the sun, and the shutters were closed so that no air got in. It must have been left like this for a very long time. She saw that the bed was old and lumpy, and had become misshapen with the innumerable bodies that had lain in it. A soiled muslin net was draped round it. There was a capacious mahogany wash-stand with basin and jug that were unrelated in shape or colour, and the glass on the dressing-table had been split across, hanging forward in its frame in a drunken, lopsided fashion.

  ‘I bring you hot water,’ said Giuseppe, and went off to get it for her.

  She sat down on the bed surveying the baldness of the room; its crudity frightened her more than she had thought possible, and for the moment she did not know what to do. She saw what she had done stripped of all its romantic gildings, and was afraid. The bones of this thing were ugly. Only the flesh, so liable to decay, had held beauty.

  Supposing we made another mistake? she was saying to herself helplessly.

  Then she turned and saw on the table beside the bed a paper parcel. It contained flowers which had been sent in for her, for her name was carefully written on the label. She took them up and opened them. It was an enormous bunch of red roses, already falling for want of water. She lifted them up to smell, and the card fell out: ‘With love from Piers’. The essence of the flowers, even though they were dying, could fill this room and could make it beautiful, just as their love could illuminate their lives.

  5

  Piers came ashore early the next afternoon and in a gay mood suggested that he should take her to San Antonio and they could have tea in the garden of the Melita Hotel. She had foolishly gone out to explore Valletta in the morning and had not bought sun glasses. The glare was dreadful. There were white streets where the glittering façades of the houses literally hurt the eyes. She had found flowers for sale in the kiosks, attractive Indian shops, and she had ultimately wandered into St. John’s Cathedral where the Gobelins tapestries were hanging. She stood staring at the high ceiling with the paintings, and the gallery and the great altar before her. A ragged man was at her elbow.

  ‘I show you, signora. The tombs of the Knights of Malta. The silver gates. The big key. I show you, signora.’

  ‘No,’ she said quite sharply, ‘I don’t want to see them.’

  Her eyes did not hurt here in the dim light, with the candles before her burning in yellow triangles of flame, and the scent of the lilies over it all. She moved about the cathedral, its tranquillity was a balm, its loveliness entrancing. As she stood close to the high altar she wondered if she were a scarlet woman? Perhaps she had no right to be here, when all the time she had left her husband to come away with another man against all the canons. She had never thought much about right and wrong before. She had been through religious phases, of course, the time of her confirmation and first communion; later, just before her marriage, she had wanted to turn Catholic, then had not had the strength of mind and the idea had faded.

  Now she felt that nothing could make her feelings for Piers wicked, and even if the Church declared it to be sin, it was not sin really. She thought of Max left alone in Buckinghamshire, and out of pure impulse she brought out a pencil and wrote on the picture postcard she had bought from the lame man at the door, and she sent it to Max.

  I am here, and quite well.

  Dinah.

  It might seem an absurd thing to do, but suddenly all life had become absurd.

  Her feelings changed the moment that Piers came ashore. It was as though they had not met for a hundred years and she had much to tell him. Calais. Paris. Rome. She would rather not think about Rome. Naples and Syracuse. And coming here last night to this small hotel and the dingy little bedroom.

  ‘You got my roses, darlingest? It was all that I could do.’

  ‘Yes. I got them just when I needed them most. They did help me a great deal. I hate the hotel.’

  ‘I thought you might. That is why I am going to take you out.’

  They sat hand in hand in the carrozzi. Although he had said that they would have to be very careful because of the Methodistical leanings of his captain, she found that he flung that sort of thing to the winds the moment they got outside Valletta. They were driving along a dusty road, with prickly pears on either side, and lizards darting in emerald streaks on the little loose stone walls.

  ‘Oh Piers, it is all so shadeless and treeless.’

  ‘You’ll see San Antonio is different. It’s like England.’

  ‘Really green?’

  ‘Yes, really.’

  He was quite right. San Antonio was a country garden. Here she felt they could be lovers, recapturing the emotion which had seemed to be elusive in the bare streets of Valletta. There were flowers in the borders, and the Governor’s summer palace peeping through the trees; bread fruit on the bushes, and orange trees heavily laden.

  ‘We’ll go into the pub and pick our own oranges for tea there,’ he said, happy as a schoolboy.

  ‘It doesn’t seem true. I never thought I’d see these things really growing.’

  ‘It’s true enough. What’s more, I’m here and you’re here. That’s the loveliest thing that has ever happened to me, and of course it’s true.’

  ‘I wish life could stay just as it is to-day. I wish it did not have to go on. There are so few moments in living when you want it to stay really still.’

  ‘If it stayed now we should never get married. That wouldn’t do at all. You should hear my captain on that subject, he likes to see his officers properly spliced and no rot about it.’

  ‘Nothing outside ourselves matters.’

  They went to look at the lily pond and feed the fish there. The rushes were tall on either side, and an oleander bent over it. After a while they grew tired of lawns and little paths, of lily pools and trees, and came out of the gate alongside the Melita Hotel. Passing through it they went into the garden behind, where a late jasmine made a pale wreath about an arbour, and the trees were bright with oranges and lemons.

  ‘We’ll have tea here,’ said Piers, ‘thank God we’ve got it to ourselves.’

  They had it secluded for a few minutes, sitting there with the scent of the jasmine and the shade of the pepper trees. It was sweet. She did not know how long it lasted, an hour, a minute, it did not matter; then suddenly it all changed.

  Mrs. James appeared. Mrs. James was the wife of the ship’s chaplain, and he and she always came out once a week as a special treat to pick their own oranges for tea in the
hotel garden. The chaplain was a round-faced individual, short and dapper, with childishly cherry-coloured cheeks and a benign smile. She was tall and sallow, one of those women around whose shrunken waists a belt grips too firmly, and about whose shrivelled bosom a jumper hangs disconsolately. But Mrs. James prided herself in doing her best for naval sweethearts and wives, and also on keeping a rigidly disapproving eye on the ‘fishing fleet’ which fished those waters so arduously in spring and autumn.

  In the hall of the hotel her husband paused to exchange pleasantries with the hotel manager, and whilst he delayed, she saw Dinah and Piers. She had always distrusted Piers since there had been a bother about an Admiral’s cousin one spring in Devonport. Piers was too good-looking and too gay. The combined gifts were likely to lead him into hot water.

  Mrs. James distinctly saw him holding Dinah’s hand, before either of them was aware of her presence. When they saw her, they relinquished the clasp of each other so quickly that Mrs. James was quite sure that she had guessed aright. This girl was ‘fishing fleet’ and she had achieved a bite! Very injudicious of the young man, considering that he had one black mark against him already, thought Mrs. James. Promotion being difficult, no wise lieutenant could afford to play tricks. Especially under Captain Clarke. He never stood for any nonsense.

  She crossed the minute garden and settled herself on one of the small iron seats beside the couple. ‘How surprising to meet you here!’ she said to Piers, ‘and a friend?’

  He had to introduce her. Understanding that she knew everybody in the island, and had a nose that would ferret out any piece of news that was going, he said, ‘Mrs. Hale has only just come out from England. I am showing her round the island. She is an old friend of my mother’s.’

  This was naturally appeasing, and Mrs. James was inclined to be impressed. ‘And where are you staying?’ she asked. Unfortunately Dinah told her, then of course the bomb burst.

  The hotel she was at was not the right hotel at all. Nobody who was anybody had ever stayed there, and nobody who was anybody ever would. Why didn’t she move to the Osborne where a Serene Highness had once stayed, or the Great Britain, which was the only hotel in the island run by an Englishman?