by Dodie Smith
‘Because her tea will go cold. Besides, I hate being in a room with sleeping people – unless I’m sleeping myself.’
Zelle unresentfully woke up and had her tea, but she seemed to me quieter than usual.
Lilian began talking about Molly’s trousseau; by now, Molly had received ‘bastard’s pay-off’ so could afford to launch out. Lilian, after commenting on this with satisfaction, remarked:
‘Molly, did it ever strike you that your being a byblow worked out all for the best with Hal and you really were very wise to tell him?’
‘Of course I was,’ said Molly. ‘I couldn’t possibly not have told him.’
‘Oh, I’m not thinking of your conscience,’ said Lilian. ‘I’m thinking of the effect on Hal. If he did have the idea of asking you to have an affair, as we were afraid he would, well, he could hardly have done that after he saw how much you minded about your mother not having been married.’
Molly’s baby face crumpled with worry. ‘Do you mean that, if I hadn’t told him, he wouldn’t have asked me to marry him?’
‘We shall never know that, shall we?’ said Lilian. ‘And anyway, it doesn’t matter. The great thing is, he did ask you.’
‘But of course it matters!’ Molly now looked horrified. ‘I don’t want him to marry me because he feels he ought to. Perhaps he thinks I told him just to force him to propose.’
I said that was nonsense. ‘You told him so soon – long before he proposed.’
‘Perhaps he went on hoping he wouldn’t need to. There was one time, later, when he got very matey – out in the country. But I didn’t, well, rebuff him. It was he who pulled up.’
‘That proves he respects you,’ said Zelle.
‘No, it doesn’t. Perhaps it was knowing what happened to Mother that made him feel he couldn’t take advantage of me.’
‘It would have made some men feel just the opposite,’ said Lilian. ‘They might have thought your mother’s daughter would expect to be taken advantage of.’
‘Not Hal,’ said Molly. ‘He’s the soul of honour. That’s all the more reason I wasn’t sure a byblow was good enough for him.’
‘But you’re being utterly illogical,’ said Lilian. ‘It’s because he’s the soul of honour that he proposed. And everything’s all right.’
‘Not if he only proposed because he’s the soul of honour and didn’t really want to. It’s as if I tricked him into proposing.’
‘It is not!’ we all yelled at her, but we didn’t have any effect. And the more we argued, the worse things got, the truth being that there really is no way of deciding if an honourable man is less or more likely to treat a girl honourably because her mother wasn’t treated honourably.
At last I said: ‘Surely an honourable man treats a girl honourably however her mother was treated.’
‘Of course,’ said Lilian. ‘And if hearing about your mother made Hal a bit extra honourable, well and good. Anyway, it’s now signed and sealed with a whopping emerald, so why worry?’
‘I find your attitude … distasteful,’ said Molly, choosing the word carefully. During the discussion she had stopped looking like a worried baby and became more and more haughty. ‘One is not a gold-digger or a go-getter – or whatever one calls a woman who forces a proposal from a man.’
‘One just calls her sensible,’ said Lilian.
Molly, ignoring this, rose. ‘Excuse me, please. I shall have a bath before dinner.’
She stalked out looking enormously tall and every inch the daughter of a D.S.O. in the regular army – even if he hadn’t got around to marrying her mother.
We stared after her. Lilian said:
‘What the hell do you make of that? Is she doubtful of Hal or just angry with me? And why be angry? When she first fell in love with him we talked like mad about … well, tactics for getting him to propose. I suppose she’s now joined the ranks of women who’ve landed their men and she wants to forget any landing was needed. Oh, God, I hope she won’t do something silly.’
But we couldn’t see anything she could do, except perhaps have it out with Hal, in which case he was bound to reassure her.
‘Still, I wish I hadn’t put the idea into her head,’ said Lilian. ‘It must have taken the edge off her happiness.’
I said, ‘Not for long, I shouldn’t think. She’s got such a lot to be happy about.’
‘All the same, I’ll try to have another word with her before she goes to her bath. My theory is that when people have anything to gloat about they should be helped to gloat a hundred per cent.’
The minute Lilian had gone Zelle said, ‘I want to talk to you – not here; someone may come in. Let’s go to my room.’
But when we got to the fourth floor she said, ‘No, not my room in case Lilian comes up. We’ll go to the roof.’
We went up a narrow staircase and stepped out onto a large, flat roof surrounded by a parapet. I had never been here before so I looked around with interest. We walked over a notice chalked in giant letters saying: ‘Do not tap dance here. I am asleep underneath.’ A little further on was another notice: ‘Nor here, I sleep, too. Follow the arrows.’ The arrows led to a part of the roof that was over bathrooms. Zelle said the tap dancers usually came at dawn when they were full of zest. She herself often came up at night, to look at the stars.
We went over to the parapet. One got no sensation of giddiness, because part of the fourth floor jutted out below so that nowhere was there a sheer drop to the ground. We stood leaning on the parapet, looking towards the western sky where the sunset was just beginning.
For a few minutes we talked casually about the view and the faint smell of hay – I thought it must come from the heat-dried grass in Regent’s Park, though it surprised me that the scent should blow so far. At last I asked Zelle what she wanted to talk about. She was silent for a moment. Then, not looking at me, she said: ‘You saw him today, didn’t you? You knew who it was.’
‘You mean your guardian – your cousin, Bill?’
‘He isn’t really my guardian, or my cousin. Did you guess?’
I said uncomfortably, ‘Well, I did wonder, but only today. It was so odd that you didn’t take any notice of each other.’
‘We couldn’t, with his wife and the boys there. They don’t know I exist. Did Molly and Lilian notice anything?’
I told her I was almost sure they hadn’t.
‘Anyway, they probably know about me – though if so, they’ve been wonderfully tactful and never given me any hint.’
‘Nor have they to me. I handed on everything you said that night at the hotel and they accepted it. I expect they still do. Why didn’t you want us to know the truth?’
‘Well, who would? I thought it might put you all off being friends with me, specially you. Does it?’ She turned her head and looked at me.
‘Of course not – whatever it is; I still don’t quite understand. Was nothing you told me true?’
She was looking away from me again, staring into the sunset. ‘Bits, here and there. Most of the time I was just inventing. You said you were an orphan so I said I was, too. You said you had been brought up by an aunt so I invented a grandfather. It was true that I lived in a Welsh village.’
I asked about the crumbling old house she had described so fully. She said the house was there but it wasn’t crumbling and she hadn’t lived in it. ‘I lived in a wretched cottage, we hadn’t even a bathroom. My father was usually out of work; he drank. My mother did odd jobs when she was well enough; she’s dead now. I went to the Plas – the old house – to do cleaning, and sometimes I helped to “maid” women who stayed there. I was terribly envious of their clothes. Then I was taken on as nursemaid. I went to picnics if the children did and that was how I met Bill – he often stayed at the Plas. A year ago he brought me to London and set me up in a flat. Well, now you know. You are shocked, aren’t you?’
I swore I wasn’t. But I was, a little. My aunt’s broad-minded ness had extended to women who lived with men who co
uldn’t marry them (‘George Eliot did’), to emancipated women who refused to marry the men they lived with (‘One doesn’t necessarily agree with them but they are making a stand about something’), even to prostitutes (‘They are often driven to it’). But she was prejudiced against ‘kept women’ – unless they were great courtesans or in history, when it didn’t count – and she had handed on her prejudice to me. Besides, it distressed me that anyone who looked like Zelle should be kept by an elderly, ugly man. But perhaps she loved him; if so, I should feel better about it.
I said, ‘I expect you’re fond of him.’
It was some seconds before she answered. ‘I ought to be. He’s wonderfully generous – and so considerate; he puts masses into my bank account so that I can pay my own rent and all my bills and never need ask him for money.’ She gave a little laugh. ‘Poor Bill, he’s in for a shock when he finds I’m overdrawn and haven’t paid the rent. But he won’t mind. He’ll be glad I’ve had a happy summer. It’s been the happiest time of my life.’
I said it seemed dreadful she’d just spent so much on the lunch party when her bank account was overdrawn.
‘Well, I wanted to have one last fling before I leave the Club. Oh, God, I wish I didn’t have to go. I hope you’re right in thinking the girls haven’t guessed about me. If they have, Molly might tell Hal and he might tell Adrian Crossway. He’s coming to have tea with me on Tuesday, to talk about the work he’s found for me in an East End Settlement.’
It seemed peculiar work for a kept woman but I held my peace about that and said I couldn’t imagine Molly talking to Hal about her. ‘She wouldn’t think it fair and anyway they’ll only be interested in each other.’
‘And the girls might understand, they’ve been around quite a bit. It was you I worried about most. You’re so untouched.’
I wondered if it would help her to know the true facts about me but I was still being discreet. So I just said I was as fond of her as ever. And it was true. I was shocked for her, not at her; shocked she should have to live a life so unsuitable for her. Thinking of this I said, ‘Zelle, wouldn’t you be happier if you gave Bill up? Couldn’t you, if Adrian Crossway gets you a job?’
‘Oh, it isn’t a paid job. I’ll only be able to do it because Bill’s keeping me. What I hope is that doing worthwhile work will make me feel better about Bill. Let’s forget it all and have dinner somewhere nice. We’ll go down and find the girls.’
We found Lilian in her cubicle. She said Molly had stonewalled all attempts to reassure her about Hal, by saying: ‘The subject is closed.’
Molly was still in her bath so Zelle and I went along and thumped on the door and Zelle asked her out to dinner. Molly said, ‘Thank you, child, but I intend to have a quiet Club dinner and go early to bed.’ The tone was icy for a girl lying in hot water.
I whispered to Zelle, ‘It sounds as if she’s taken her lorgnette into the bath with her.’
14
The next night, when I got back from the theatre, I decided to miss the gathering in Zelle’s room and go up on the roof; I had taken a fancy to it and there was a good moon. I went to the place where Zelle and I had stood, and leaned against the parapet.
After a few minutes I heard someone calling my name. It was Lilian’s voice, I thought; I turned and could see her by the staircase door. She saw me then and joined me.
‘Zelle thought I might find you here,’ she said, ‘as you weren’t in your cubicle. The most awful thing’s happened. Molly’s just informed me she’s going to spend a night with Hal. She won’t say when but I gather it’s to be soon. She’s terribly upset but absolutely determined to do it.’
‘But why? Did Hal ask her to?’
‘No, she asked him. She more than asked, she insisted – said she wouldn’t marry him if he didn’t agree. And now she doesn’t think he’ll want to marry her afterwards and neither do I. Could you have believed any girl would have been such a fool?’
Lilian then launched into a description of what Molly said she had said to Hal and what Hal had said to her. It would have been funny if only we hadn’t felt it would result in disaster.
It seemed that after the idiotic conversation in the Green Room Molly had planned to ask Hal if he really did want to marry her, but she had come to the conclusion (just as Lilian, Zelle and I had) that he could hardly say anything but ‘yes’. So she had decided to convince him he didn’t have to marry her, by pretending to be modern and dashing and asking him to take her away on a trial trip.
‘Can you imagine it?’ said Lilian. ‘Molly pretending madly and poor old Hal being horribly shocked; he’s the last man to do anything modern. And then he got touchy and said she didn’t have to marry him if she had any doubts. She thinks his final idea was that she wants to find out if she likes sleeping with him, before she ties herself up. As if anyone could find out in one night! You have to take things on trust and hope for the best. But now, with Molly in this mood and Hal disillusioned about her, things are sure to go wrong and they won’t get a chance to come right.’
I asked if there was any hope of getting Molly to change her mind but Lilian said she didn’t think it would help now. ‘I gather she was weakening a bit by the end of the evening, but by then he’d begun to be for it; or rather, he was dead set on her not marrying him unless she was sure she’d stay married. He said his family didn’t go in for divorces. What a mess it all is! And I started it – by what I said in the Green Room.’
‘Well, you didn’t mean to.’
‘God, no! And yet I keep harrowing myself by feeling I may have been sort of unconsciously trying to bitch things for Molly because I envy her so.’
I was astonished to hear Lilian say that as I knew she found Hal extremely dull. Was she merely envying Molly for making a wealthy marriage? (If the poor girl was still going to.) I was trying to puzzle this out when Lilian went on:
‘I’m terribly unhappy. Would you mind if I told you about it? I haven’t said a word to anyone else because he asked me to be discreet. But he certainly isn’t; I bet lots of people at the theatre know. Do you?’
I said, ‘I do now. Go on, Lilian.’
Surprisingly, after the first sharp pang of jealousy, I didn’t mind very much – that is, I didn’t then; I expected to, later, but was determined to defer misery, otherwise I should give myself away to Lilian. And of course I was curious; that helped. I even found some pleasure in listening because everything she told me concerned him.
She said that though she had often joked about her interest in him, it was a joke; and she had started rehearsals with only one idea: to make a success of her part. Never had she planned to attract him and when, during rehearsals, he had showed her he was attracted she had been flattered and excited but not in the least in love. Then—
‘Once I’d opened in the part, you can’t imagine what it was like,’ she told me. ‘He’d take me out to lunch and to supper and get me to come to his dressing-room after matinées. It was wildly thrilling – I fell for him instantly though I did try to hold out; I didn’t want to seem easy to get. But I don’t believe women ever do hold out on him and he must have seen how I really felt. Anyway, one afternoon – it’s just a week ago – we went to a secret flat he has. We’ve been there three afternoons since.’
I said, ‘Then why aren’t you happy?’
‘Because he doesn’t really give a damn for me – doesn’t even pretend to. We’re supposed just to be playing a delightful game. If I give him even a hint that I care for him he gives me much more than a hint that he doesn’t want me to. He likes me to be hard; that attracts him. You wouldn’t think a man could make love so devastatingly and yet never show any tenderness. And somehow he always manages to make me feel it won’t last. Oh, God, he can be cruel!’
‘I don’t understand. He’s the kindest man I’ve ever known.’
‘He’s not kind in love,’ said Lilian.
He had been kind to me. He had shown me tenderness. Surely that proved he cared more f
or me than he did for her?
‘Oh, I know he can be kind-hearted,’ she continued. ‘He still is to me, sometimes, at the theatre; and in a way it means more to me than what happens at that flat. He’s very fond of you, by the way; did you know? He often talks of you.’
‘Really? What does he say?’ I tried not to sound eager.
‘Oh, that you’re a darling and intelligent and amusing; and brave, too – I suppose he meant that night you went on in my part.’ She smiled and spoke as if being nice to a child. ‘Sometimes I’m quite jealous of the things he says about you.’
‘You needn’t be.’ I meant to say it casually but it came out sounding bitter.
She looked at me quickly. ‘You’re not – you’ve always said you’re not – you’re not just a bit in love with him yourself?’
I reminded myself that I had to be discreet (his word, and he had used it to her too). I had often longed not to be – in a Club where most girls gossiped about their love affairs, to the Club maids, if no one else was handy – but I was proud of resisting the temptation and meant to go on doing so. I intended to say, ‘No, of course not,’ and laugh Lilian’s question off. But this sudden temptation was too much for me. I told her everything.
From the beginning she was far more distressed than I expected her to be. She kept interrupting me to say things like, ‘I can’t believe it. Why didn’t you tell us? We might have helped you, advised you.’ When I told her about the night in the barn she was so horrified it was almost funny. I said:
‘Really, Lilian! You sound like someone’s grandmother. Why are you so shocked on my account when you’re not on your own?’
‘You’re years younger than I am. And I’ve had other affairs.’
‘Have you, Lilian? You never told me.’
‘Well, of course not. You were such an innocent. Molly and I always tried to protect you from – well, knowing too much about things like that. Anyway, I’ve only had two other affairs and one didn’t count; we were engaged.’
‘Has Molly had affairs, too?’
