by Ursula Bloom
‘Wouldn’t he understand?’
‘Does one’s skipper ever understand anything? Look at him, he looks like something on a door-knocker. You can see what he’s like.’
She glanced across to where the Captain was standing; she thought that he looked a pleasant man, rather like Max, but shorter, with kindly penetrating eyes that looked you through, but she could not see that he looked in the least like a door-knocker. She said nothing.
‘I tell you he is a devil when roused, and I just won’t have this going on! Why did you come to the dance if you meant to behave like it?’
For a moment she did not know whether to burst into tears or to fly into a temper. Either would have been easy. Then she had the sense to appreciate that this was no mood in which to argue with him. She had the presence of mind to walk out of the imitation arbour with the clematis and the roses, to go along the deck and slip into the nearest chair to watch the dancing. She had not thought that Piers could work up a scene, or could fail to see her point of view; this was something that could never have happened between Max and herself, and it was an amazing thing that it could happen now. Her heart was jerking, and seemed to be high up in her throat, so that she was not sure of herself, and knew that she must try to control herself.
She oughtn’t to have come here.
That was what it amounted to. She ought to have stayed in the dreary little hotel with the aspidistras and the broken fans, and the Maltese night coming up hot and fetid and enclosing like a cloud. She ought to have been content with sitting in that soiled lounge, which smelt of stale smoke; with Giuseppe hovering about her, and the longing for air, and to get away. Only something in her had rebelled against it.
‘Mrs. Hale’ ‒ she turned to see that Mr. James was here with the Captain at his elbow ‒ ‘I thought you’d like to meet our Captain.’ He smiled amiably.
‘How do you do?’
‘How do you do?’ He was kindly, she was sure; the grey eyes might be penetrating but they had understanding in them, they reminded her very much of Max’s. ‘I am afraid I am pretty poor at dancing, but if you care to try?’
‘I’d love to.’
They went across the deck together; she liked the way that he talked, and knew that she was more at home with him than she had been with any of the other officers whom she had met. He was older, and she was used to age. He asked about her home and her husband. It seemed that he had known some of Max’s family and was additionally interested. She told herself that was the sort of thing that would happen, it is such a small world when you want it to be a big one, so large when you pray for it to shrink.
He also knew Venice, had been there when the destroyers had anchored in the lagoon and had always enjoyed the place. He had been quite a young man then.
‘You must meet my wife,’ he said. ‘Perhaps you would care to come and lunch on board one day? Or dine with us? We have quite a pleasant house at Pieta ‒ lucky to get it, because there is such a run on these houses.’
‘I don’t go out very much,’ she said.
‘But you ought to! There is lots to see and do in this little island.’
‘I wasn’t well, and I tire rather easily. I ‒ I came to Malta for my health,’ she lied desperately, because she believed that it would excuse her.
‘Then we must see after you,’ he said gallantly. ‘I’ll tell my wife to write to you. Where are you staying?’
Again she had to tell.
‘Do you ‒ do you like it there? It has not got a very good name.’
‘It’s very quiet,’ she said, ‘that was why I chose it.’
‘Oh, I see.’ But she knew from his tone that he did not see.
She was looking round for Piers, but he seemed to have disappeared completely. The evening went on. All the time there was a growing feeling of anxiety in her heart, because Piers was nowhere to be seen, and she could not express this fear to anyone else. She felt that she must see him before she left, but she went without meeting him.
3
Piers came round to apologise two days later, when he had got over the sulks. He was ashamed. The truth was that he had been born with a jealous temperament, and it was something that he could not control. Once his temper got out of hand he could not bring it to heel again; he was sorry. He had brought with him an armful of flowers, and afterwards he took her to Mnaidra in a car. She hoped that the quarrel might help them to understand one another better, and they sat down on the cliffs between the ruins and the sea, and gathered tight little bunches of wild thyme.
‘I’ve been a pig, and I’m ashamed; but I won’t do it again,’ said Piers. He was stuffing little hard grapes into his mouth from a vine which trailed over a dusty tussock of grass. ‘I was always madly jealous, and it is such a silly thing to be.’
‘Don’t let’s talk about it any more. You’ll get poisoned if you go on eating those grapes. They’re probably full of dysentery.’
‘Typhoid, more like. It’s an infected soil.’
‘Then don’t eat them.’
‘I’m hungry.’
They drove home later hand in hand, with the sunset closing down on the island, and the bells jangling in the distance, with the occasional pop of fireworks, for there had been a festa. Pale pink plaster effigies had been carried through the streets, and fireworks had been let off to frighten the devil away; there was a general air of garlands and gaiety about the place.
‘Think,’ said Piers, happy as a child, and now completely oblivious of the quarrel, ‘we have got one another for ever, the moment the divorce is through. Max wrote to-day saying it would be one of the first cases in the Hilary term! I wonder why these johnnies name their terms after girls; it seems odd to me!’
‘I shall be glad when it starts.’
‘And so far I think I can say that nobody has a nose to the trail. That’s one good egg.’
‘Yes, isn’t it?’
‘It was a master touch of yours getting the Jameses to take you to that dance. Clever, I call it.’
But he was not so pleased at the end of the week, for the Captain’s wife wrote and asked Dinah to lunch on board. The invitation was kindly meant by a couple who wished to be hospitable, but the idea of an hour or so with the chance of questioning was not appealing. She did not know how to get out of it, seeing that if she refused they would be sure to ask her again and then she would be confronted with a worse difficulty. She asked Piers when he came ashore, and sat down in the frowsty lounge with Giuseppe hovering about with a lime and lemon.
‘You can’t go,’ said Piers.
‘I realise that, but what excuse can I give?’
‘You ought to know of one, women are used to that kind of thing.’
‘I’m not used to that kind of thing. I’ve never been divorced before, and I’d like to tell them the truth.’
‘Good God, you mustn’t do that! There’d be the most frightful shemozzle.’
‘It seemed to me that the Captain was a very understanding man.’
Piers looked at her in exasperation. ‘You aren’t starting that?’
‘Starting what?’
‘You haven’t got a hunch on the Captain?’
‘Good heavens, no! I thought he was kind, and he reminded me of Max. I liked him, that’s all. I felt that if I told him the truth it would be wiser.’
‘It would be madness.’
‘All right, then. I shall pretend that I don’t feel well enough to go.’
‘That’s a good idea.’
She wrote a tactful letter, saying that she was in Malta only for her health and must not accept too many invitations, and they must not consider her rude if she refused. A fortnight later another invitation appeared; the Captain’s wife expressed the hope that she was better and suggested that she came to an informal lunch in their own home; perhaps that would be easier of access for her, and they would be alone together.
Dinah appreciated the fact that if she went on refusing invitations she would arouse suspi
cions, and this would be extremely foolish. Piers did not accept this view, he thought it would be crazy to go, but Dinah decided that probably her own judgment was the sound one. Also it was not entirely unallied to the fact that she was tired of seedy meals in the humid room of the hotel, with the broken fans. She would give much to see clean napery again, and silver that was not tarnished and crusted with stale food that had not been washed away in the desultory washing-up. Twice the fish had made her ill, which had been treated quite casually by the manager, who assured her that it very often made the English ill, as though it were the fault of the visitor and not of the viands. The food was frequently tainted, which was accepted as a matter of course by everybody save herself. She longed to have a comfortable lunch again.
When she did go she was startled to find that it reminded her of old times. It was almost like being with Max. Here was quiet conversation; nothing thrilling, she admitted, nothing effervescent and amusing, but something to which she had been entirely accustomed for four years of her life, and liked.
She understood the Captain and his wife, whereas there were moments when she did not understand Piers. She became alarmed that she might have been so used to older folks, that she could not acclimatise herself to younger ones, which would mean that she stood the chance of spoiling her whole future.
‘You must come again,’ said the Captain’s wife just before she left.
‘I … I don’t think I shall be in the island much longer,’ she said.
‘Surely you are not going back so soon?’
‘No. I thought of going on to Rhodes.’ The idea of Rhodes came to her with a rush. There had been a hen-necked spinster staying in the hotel, who wore strangely cut skirts, a man’s hat, and pince-nez. She was doing a tour of the Mediterranean islands, and the idea had presented itself to Dinah as being a suitable excuse.
‘You’ll like Rhodes,’ said the Captain.
‘Yes. I’d like to do all the Mediterranean islands, but perhaps there won’t be time?’
She left them with the impression that she would be leaving at the end of the week. Much as she had enjoyed her lunch it was not a venture which she dared to repeat.
4
All through that autumn she had to contend with these perplexing moods of Piers. They were the petulant moods of a young man who expects everything to go his own way. The makings-up were sweet enough, but she became very tired of having to cope with the argument to reach the reward, and knew that she was becoming more irritable and that there were times when she said too much. It would be very different when they were married, she told herself; then their relationship would be on so much sounder a footing that she could compete with Piers’ difficult moments.
At Christmas Max wrote to Dinah, and sent her a handsome cheque. She was almost ashamed that he should be so kind, and she so undeserving. His asthma had been bad again, though Dr. Wellby had tried some new stuff on him, and he thought that it was a success, but it had been so damp in England that he felt she was well out of it. He wished her a very happy new year.
To their surprise, the case was heard in late January.
There was little in the paper about it, merely the notice in the cause list, Piers’ name and initials, something which conveyed nothing of the emotional tragedy behind it. Hale versus Hale and Grant. Surely, she told herself, that could not be themselves, three human people in the most horrible triangle of all. Piers was elated over it; he thought that everything had been managed satisfactorily, and that now they ought to sail through without any untoward difficulties. No reason to make a fuss, no reason for anxiety. They celebrated the hearing of the undefended case by going over to Citta Vecchia and visiting the cave where St. Paul preached.
‘The place you didn’t want to see,’ he said.
‘Only because Max came here once, when we were returning from that Greek cruise.’
‘Well, lots of people have been here! You can’t take exception to the place because it’s popular. There are catacombs too; once a schoolmaster and seven little boys got lost in them; they say he is still wandering round looking for the way to get out, and the seven little boys have grown to seventy.’
‘Idiot!’
‘I’m a nice idiot, anyway. Say that I’m a nice idiot.’
‘Of course you’re a nice idiot!’
The sun was smiling down on them like a spring day in England even though it was the first week in February. The custodian of the cave was drawn out of his rectangular house, and arrived, handling a large key ominously. There was a gregale coming, said he, and he felt cold, very cold indeed. He opened the small iron gate with a good deal of clanking, and led the way down into the cave itself. A vine, breaking into fresh green, had curled itself about the railings; she was glancing at it as the door opened, then she saw the statue. Dinah supposed that she had screwed herself up for this moment! Lately she had been nervy, and this was something which alarmed her. She saw St. Paul, his hands stretched out to bless, with the light shining behind him so that the translucent veins could be seen like the veins of a leaf running through those hands. It was living marble, stone become virile in a way that she could not explain.
‘Oh!’ she said apprehensively.
‘It’s all right! You go inside.’ Piers gave her a push. She was in the cave now, white (as was all Malta), with the pickaxe lying in the corner just as Max had told her it lay, and the statue staring at her with mild eyes. At the same time she knew that those eyes were penetrating; although sightless and carved from stone it seemed to her that they saw. They saw that she had no right here.
There rang through her head a text she had once learnt because she had been naughty, something which she had never forgotten, and which had emanated from this man.
Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal …
It seemed to her that Max was the saint, and that they were his hands stretched out to her, and his eyes reproving, so that there was no escape from them. She had made the unwise decision. It had not been charity that had deserted an old man who needed her, for a young, jealous man who could live alone.
‘I want to get out,’ she told Piers.
‘Oh, come, must chip off a bit of the rock. Everybody does that, the Maltoosh won’t forgive you if you hop off without having a bit of the rock to take home with you. He gets an extra tip for that, and expects it.’
‘I’ve got to get out. I’m claustrophobic or something …’ She pushed past him, up the steps again into the sunshine of the Maltese day. The vine was still there in its fine new green, and the stocks in the garden beyond were sweet with blossom. She stood there and knew that she had behaved like a child and should be ashamed. She did not know what to do next. But at this particular moment she realised that she had made the wrong choice and all the indignity and humiliation she was living through must detract from her love for Piers, and scar it in some immutable way.
Piers came after her. ‘That was a silly thing to do,’ he said.
‘Piers, darling, it is all so dreadful, but things keep reminding me, and I’m silly about them.’
He said, ‘It’ll be all right. We’re getting on fine. Don’t keep harping, my pretty, because life is going to be lovely for us. Look, it’s spring again.’
‘I know. I know all that, but since I have stayed here in that awful little hotel knowing nobody, and doing nothing, things have preyed on my mind more. I can’t help harping.’
He put her in the car and got in beside her. ‘I was an ass to suggest coming here at all, and ought to be kicked for it. I thought if I left you in England, you’d be lonely, and never realised you might feel just as awful here. I’ve been a mutt.’
‘It wasn’t your fault.’
‘Well, anyway, let’s forget it.’
‘We can’t keep on trying to forget things.’
He became colder. ‘You know there are times when you are a bit difficult, my pretty. Emotional
, I suppose. I’m the practical kind. You keep on about old Max; well, you chose to leave him, didn’t you?’ Then apparently he regretted having spoken before he thought. ‘I’m sorry. We are supposed to be celebrating, it isn’t much of a celebration if we start quarrelling.’
It frightened her that nowadays they were always getting wrong, although she knew it was the strain of living as they were doing. She knew that she was emotional, and ought to take herself in hand, but it was not very easy. She sidled closer to him as they drove along the coast road, with the wind blowing off the sea and the smell of sand in it.
‘We’ll go to the desert one of these days,’ he said, ‘and gather Sahara roses, and camp out, and listen to Bedouin love songs and all the rest of it. It would be the most romantic honeymoon that ever a couple had,’ and laughed as he pressed her to him.
She nodded.
5
If only it were not so extremely dull, she kept telling herself. In England she had thought that Malta would be wildly exciting. Now she was tired to death of the long straight Reale, of the Indians in their doorways who accepted her as a resident and so no longer pestered her, of the Giovanni steps, and the sea, and the island itself with its strong fierce smells, and its closeness to the earth.
With spring there came the longing to be going out and about and not merely existing in a back street hotel. She had had her bedroom moved to a first floor one with a balcony, on which she could sit occasionally and watch the street below; but it was a dull street. There was only the boy with the goats in a desultory string, their udders sometimes dragging in the dust, and the girls flirting behind their faldettas, and the man who sold caged birds outside St. John’s Cathedral and who always came home this way in the evenings. She was so sorry for the poor birds that he caught and caged. Once she had bought some so that she might set them free, but she had the feeling that they would be caught again, and would flutter helplessly back to the teeming pavement outside St. John’s, to be sold again.
