by Alec Waugh
Harry gasped. In Sinclair’s face there was the desperate look of a man who is hazarding his entire fortune on the turn of a single card. On Iris’s one of proud defiance. As to what Harry was feeling, Gerald had no clue. He was like a man blinking at, dazzled by the sun.
‘Will you please repeat that,’ Sinclair said. ‘We must all get this clear. We mustn’t have any doubts as to what you really mean. A lot depends on it. Will you repeat after me, “I feel about Harry Pawling as Katheryn did about Henry VIII. I love him and I want to marry him.”’
Iris did not hesitate. What had she to lose? She was flushed with her triumph on the stage. She’d never go short of men. If Harry did not take up his option, there were many others. She was through with Rex.
‘I feel about Harry Pawling as Katheryn did about Henry VIII and I want to marry him.’
Harry blinked and shook himself. He turned to Iris.
‘Is that really true?’ he asked.
‘Yes, it’s true.’
‘In that case then …’
He turned back to Sinclair. He had been dared; he had to accept the dare.
‘I feel about Iris in precisely the same way,’ he said. ‘Divorce presents no problems nowadays. We should be able to settle this quite easily.’
9
An hour later, in the Keables’ drawing-room, Charles and Barbara, Shelagh and Gerald were talking over the night’s events. They were tired but they were in no mood for sleep. They had all in their different ways a great deal on their minds.
The tempest that had swept the club had subsided as speedily as it had arisen. Charles had intervened the instant he realized that a row had started. He had produced an immediate temporary solution. Iris should spend the night in the spare bedroom at the Halletts’ bungalow. They would discuss the matter with clear heads in the morning. Within a quarter of an hour the club room had been emptied.
‘How do you think it will turn out?’ Barbara asked.
‘I’d say that it all turns on Blanche; she has common sense and character. It depends on how she wants to play it.’
For a little they discussed the various possibilities; of what would happen in this eventuality or that; then they had found themselves discussing jealousy.
‘It’s curious that an explosion like this should have come as the result of a play that turns on jealousy,’ said Gerald.
‘That’s why it did come,’ said Charles. ‘The play had put the idea of jealousy into their minds; it puts them into a kind of self-confessional. I don’t think I’ve seen a modern play, any play indeed except Othello, that goes into the question of jealousy from so many angles.’
‘Do you think,’ Barbara asked, ‘that it’s reasonable for a man to feel jealous of what his wife did before he met her?’
‘It depends on the kind of man, and the kind of thing that she has done,’ Charles said.
For the moment the Pawlings and the Sinclairs were forgotten. Jealousy had become the problem.
‘Surely it’s unreasonable,’ Barbara argued, ‘for a man to object to what a woman has done before he meets her. She is what she is because of the emotions she has lived through. If he says he loves her as she is, he ought not to resent the way in which she has become that person. Surely Henry was acting like a possessive savage when he talked about having someone else’s leavings; a woman is not diminished by a love affair, she’s enriched by it.’
‘That’s a very modern point of view. It wouldn’t have held good in Victorian times and even today, it does make a difference what kind of man it was.’
‘I don’t see that.’
‘Oh, I do,’ Gerald said.
‘You do, then please explain.’
Shelagh turned to him, expectantly, anxious to get the angle of the younger generation, her own generation. ‘Why should it make a difference?’
‘Because, well, let me put it this way,’ Gerald paused, then smiled. ‘You’ll forgive me, won’t you, if this becomes quite a speech, but this is how I see it. When a man falls in love with a woman so much that he wants to marry her, he wants to give his entire self to her, to have no secrets from her; he wants it to be the same way in return, for her to give her entire self to him. He wants reciprocity. It isn’t a barbarian possessiveness. It’s exchange; my true love has my heart and I have his. Now if the man or men that she was in love with before him, were men whom he can like, were his own type of man, there’s a kinship of a kind between them. Something may have happened to prevent those first love affairs ending in a marriage; it may have been a married man, or a soldier posted overseas; there may have been money difficulties; there were obstacles and neither felt strongly enough about each other to surmount them. A man can accept that kind of love affair because he can see that kind of man as a forerunner to himself; he can think she did not love that man enough to overcome the obstacles, as she has in his own case. That’s what you meant, sir, wasn’t it, when you spoke of the kind of man as making so much difference.’
‘That’s what I meant.’
‘And weren’t you at the same time thinking that you wouldn’t have any of those consolations, if it hadn’t been your type of man, if it had been somebody you hated and despised, a man whom you could not think of as a forerunner.’ He turned to Barbara. ‘This,’ he went on, ‘is how I see it. If it is the kind of man who would make one say, “What on earth could she have seen in him?” he is forced to recognize that she has something in her nature that needed the kind of thing that that man gave her. It may not be a large part of her nature, but it exists; whatever it is, he knows that it is something that he cannot give her and that she needs. She cannot feel herself complete without it. She has not given herself to him as fully as he has given himself to her. There’s not been reciprocity, so he can’t feel secure. It is not that he does not trust her, but that he knows she has sides of her that he has never touched; sides that have responded to somebody he despises … that’s the chief point you see. He realizes that there is a side of her that he cannot help but hate.’
‘But that isn’t fair,’ Barbara interrupted. ‘A girl can be misled, she doesn’t understand herself. She experiments to find out what she is. She discards what she doesn’t want, suppose a man or …’ she checked, flushing hotly, that she must not say ‘… suppose, but it’s ridiculous. We find out by trial and error; men do, why shouldn’t women? Why should it be held against us? Why?’
She checked again. She turned to Charles. ‘Is that what you meant, about the kind of man and about what she’d done?’
‘Yes, more or less.’
‘I’ve got a lot to learn then … oh I’m sorry. I’m tired. It’s been a heavy day. Let’s go upstairs, Charles. Leave these young things to thrash out how it is for them. No, I won’t take a whisky with me. Water for me. Good night, tomorrow’ll be another day.’
10
Gerald had stood up to say ‘Good night’. He crossed to the table where drinks were set. ‘I think I will have a whisky. You too, Shelagh?’
‘No, not for me.’
‘Then perhaps I won’t either.’ He paused, looking down at her. ‘I’m sorry about tonight,’ he said.
‘It wasn’t anything to do with you, you happened to be with Rex when the balloon went up.’
‘I don’t mean that. I mean what I said about you and Angus.’
‘Oh, that. It’s I who should apologize; it was silly of me to get so upset.’
‘I felt so certain that you were talking about Angus.’
‘I wasn’t; I was talking about you.’
‘About me?’
‘I thought you were worrying about your foot, about not being a first-class cricketer any more. You had set so much store by that. You said at the dance that you’d lost your chance of being anyone of real importance. You weren’t the same person any longer in a world of men. I was afraid that you might think it would make a difference where a woman was concerned. And it wouldn’t, I promise you it wouldn’t.’
‘But you
spoke with such feeling. Why should you be so bothered as that, on my account.’
‘Because, oh well …’ She stood up. She could not remain seated with him looking down at her; not while she was saying what she had to say. Even though when she was standing up and in high heels she was four inches shorter. She looked at him helplessly. This wasn’t the way that she had meant to say all this. She had pictured it altogether differently in the imaginary conversations that she had had with him. Why couldn’t things work out the way one planned. ‘Because of Barbara and you,’ she said.
‘Barbara and me?’
She nodded quickly. ‘It started at the dance, the way you looked at her; I realized then. It seemed so wonderful for both of you. No, please don’t interrupt; it’ll sound terrible at first; she’s my stepmother, after all. But it’s all wrong between her and Daddy. I know it is. He’s so much older. He can’t live at the pace she does; and as time goes on, he’ll find it harder; then there’s my mother. She’s a widow. She and my father never quarrelled. They were perfectly happy. It was only that she got swept off her feet; which can happen so easily, can’t it? At that age.’ How I chatter on, she thought. It’s only with him I do. There’s nothing I can’t say to him. He leads me on, he draws me on; it’s as though I were thinking out loud. In a great rush of words it all poured out; everything that she had bottled up for weeks. The relief of being able to speak out at last!
‘So that was why I thought it would be such a good thing for all of us if you and Barbara were to marry. I was afraid that you might not ask her, because you were diffident about your accident.’
She paused, breathless.
‘So that’s the way it was then, was it?’
‘That’s the way it was.’
‘You were never in love with Angus?’
‘Never, for an instant.’
‘Everybody thought you were.’
‘I know they did.’
‘You encouraged all of us to think so. Lila as good as told her stepmother that you were. You and Lila were so close.’
‘I know.’
‘And then your coming in when Angus had his accident.’
‘I know, I know. It was something that started as a joke. I wasn’t fooling Angus. You won’t think that, will you? I’m not that kind of person. Angus was in the joke himself.’ If only she could explain completely; but that was Lila’s secret. ‘It was very silly, but it was one of those things that are hard to stop when they once get started.’
‘And all the time you were imagining me in love with Barbara.’
‘Well, weren’t you?’
‘I’m not now.’
‘You were once, you must have been.’
‘Perhaps; I was lonely here. She was young and friendly. There weren’t so very many other attractive girls around. Yes, I suppose I was; a little.’
‘I saw the way you looked at her at the dance.’
‘I expect that was the last time I looked at her like that.’
‘Why?’
‘Because I fell out of love with her that night.’
‘Can you fall out of love that quickly?’
‘If you fall in love with someone else. I met you that night, you know.’
‘Me … you …’
‘I shall never forget that talk we had; the things you said, the way you looked. You were so fresh, so wholesome, so attractive: so full of life. I couldn’t sleep. I lay awake thinking of you. I asked myself what I was doing, mooning about a married woman when there was someone in the world like you. You were everything I had ever dreamed of a girl being; I felt that I had known you all my life, that you were what I had been looking for all my life. I got up. I played my South Pacific record. “Some Enchanted Evening.” A whole new world had opened for me; and then a very few days later I learnt from Lady Studholme that you had fallen for Angus Macartney. There was a lunch party. I was told to invite him for you.’
‘You believed I was in love with him?’
‘Why shouldn’t I? He was young, handsome, he had money, he’d have more. He was a good chap. You seemed very right for one another. Everybody thought so.’
‘They did?’
‘Barbara did certainly.’
‘But when you saw us together, you surely must have realized. …’
‘Why should I have? It was something that I’d accepted. And there was a glow about Angus; he looked different, more vital.’ Ah, she thought, because of Lila. ‘I couldn’t imagine anyone not being in love with you,’ he went on. ‘Every time I saw you, I found some new thing in you; something I’d missed before. You were so honest, so straightforward; such a sense of fun. I liked you so much and you were so appealing; so courageous after all that trouble in England. You stood on your own feet. You looked unprotected. I wanted to protect you. It was such a delight to look at you.’
‘Why didn’t you tell me this?’
‘Because of Angus, because of that diffidence of mine. It wasn’t easy. I found you more attractive every time I saw you. I found it more and more difficult to keep my hands off you.’
He took a step towards her; he put an arm round her waist, raising his hand against her shoulder. He held her with a forceful tenderness. ‘All the time I’ve been thinking you in love with Angus, and all the time you’ve been thinking me in love with Barbara.’
‘I never had the least idea you felt like this about me.’
‘Well, you know now.’
He took her chin in his hand and lifted her face under his, with an air of gentle mastery. ‘Don’t you think you should start getting used to the idea.’
‘Perhaps I should.’
‘You might not find it all that difficult.’
‘Perhaps I wouldn’t.’
‘I’ll do my best to help you.’
He lowered his head. He kissed her very gently on the lips.
Chapter Twenty-six
Harry Pawling woke in his air-conditioned bedroom with an unthrobbing head—he had not had time to drink more than a single whisky after the performance—but with the sense of ill-omen that normally accompanied a hangover, the need to reconstruct the previous evening, to discover what had happened, to what he was committed. Detail after detail was recalled. God, he thought, oh God; and Blanche would be back that afternoon. The final performance was tonight. If only it was this time tomorrow. He closed his eyes.
How would Blanche take it? If Blanche had been here it would not have happened. He remembered that skirmish when she had side-tracked Rex. She would have side-tracked him in the same way last night. Perhaps it was not too late. She could still side-track it. But did he want her to? The memory of Iris Sinclair beckoned. ‘I feel for Harry Pawling in the same way that Katheryn Howard felt for Henry VIII. I love him and I want to marry him.’ She really had said that. No pretence, no subterfuge. She had looked irresistible in that off-shoulder dress. To be loved at his age by somebody like that.
He swung out of bed. He crossed over to his washing-basin and faced himself, balding, with ruffled hair, with blotched unshaven cheeks and heavy jowl. Yes, but it wasn’t looks that mattered. That was the whole purpose of the play’s first act. A girl could fall in love with a man twice her age.
He stood with his legs apart, arms lifted sideways. He swung himself sideways and downwards, so that his finger-tips touched his toes, on one side first and then the other; he raised his arms above his head, stretching himself and leaning backwards. He had never felt fitter in his life. Only one whisky after dinner; that was the recipe.
It was a long time since he had confronted a breakfast tray with so much relish. He cracked two eggs into a cup. They tasted good. The first morning hooter sounded as he came downstairs. He would be there before the staff. When had that happened last? He checked. How would he face the staff? The story would be round the camp by now. Every office boy would know. Would they smirk as he went through the row of desks? Would they chuckle behind their files when the summons came to report to the G.M.’s office? This wa
sn’t London, where you could have a scandal in your surburban circle and report at your city office the next day, secure in the knowledge that no one except one girl in the personnel section knew where you lived. In an oil camp your business was everybody’s business. What would Charles say to him, how would he answer Charles? Shouldn’t he see Iris first, to make certain that the whole thing was not a misunderstanding?
He swung right instead of left at the central avenue. As he turned, he passed Basil’s car. Basil was alone at the wheel; normally Julia would have been beside him, to drive the car back afterwards. So Julia was cherishing Iris. He was relieved at that. He was glad that he had not to talk to Iris alone.
The two young women were breakfasting on the veranda. Iris was in Chinese pyjamas, pale green, short-sleeved, unbuttoned at the throat. The sight of her leaning across the table, peeling a mango, thrilled him. Soon she would be sitting across his table every morning.
She waved, happily. ‘Hi, come and have some coffee.’
‘No thanks. I’ve breakfasted; I only called to see how you were making out.’
‘I’m doing fine. You can sit down anyhow.’
Seated across the table from her, he did not know what to say. Julia looked from one to the other.
‘I’d better leave you two alone,’ she said.
Iris stopped her.
‘Heavens no, one can’t bill and coo at this time of the morning. Come on, Harry, another cup of coffee’ll do you good.’
‘Perhaps it would.’
Anyhow, the sipping of it gave him occupation. The coffee was strong and hot. Better than the coffee that he had had in his own house. He had to say something. He did not know what to say.
‘Have you heard anything from Rex?’ he asked
‘The less I hear from him the better.’
‘You meant what you said last night, then?’
‘You bet I did. I’m washing him right out of my hair.’
‘And about us, you meant that too?’
‘Didn’t you?’
‘Of course, yes, but I mean … I’m so much older.’
