The Town in Bloom

by Dodie Smith

  ‘No, she hasn’t and that’s why this spending a night with Hal is such a catastrophe. Oh, God, what hell life is – for Molly and me and now you! Well, if it’s any comfort to you, Rex is liable to tire of me any minute.’

  I had already been comforted by thinking that. I knew I should be deeply sorry for her when it happened; but that didn’t stop me from being thankful it would happen. Only momentarily had she shattered my hopes. I was now engaged in rebuilding them.

  She took me back to my story, wanting to know about the next few days after the vicarage party. I guessed she was trying to fit in the end of my affair with the beginning of hers, so I made it quite clear that they didn’t overlap. She said, ‘If only I’d known about you! Still, I can’t pretend it would have made all that difference – because I’m so terribly in love. I never knew I would feel like that about anyone. Though I could almost hate him on your account.’

  I said, ‘Well, don’t. Because I think he’s treated me wonder fully. Everything was my fault, yet he wasn’t angry even when I landed him in real trouble.’ I told her about Black Saturday.

  When I was in the middle of my visit to Mrs Crossway, Lilian interrupted. ‘No wonder he thinks you’re brave. And how grateful he must have been! He hates her to find out about him, even though she’ll never divorce him.’

  ‘But she’s longing to.’

  After I’d handed on the complete gist of my talk with Mrs Crossway, Lilian said, ‘He must have told me she’d never divorce him just to stop me from entertaining false hopes. Oh, I wish I had your courage. I’d go and see her and tell her everything. If I was the co-respondent he’d have to marry me – except that he wouldn’t if he knew I’d told his wife. He’d hate me too much.’

  ‘Anyway, you wouldn’t want him to marry you against his will, would you?’

  ‘Wouldn’t I just!’ said Lilian. ‘I’d have some claim on him then, however unfaithful he was. As things are, he can just turf me out for good. Besides—’ She began to giggle school-girlishly. ‘Once I was married I’d have that lovely house. Why didn’t you tell his wife the truth? Then you’d have had the house. And you’d have made the sweetest little co-respondent. Perhaps we could both be corespondents – and share the house and him. I’d mind less with you than with anyone.’

  By now I was laughing too. Everything seemed lighter, easier. I no longer felt jealous; we just seemed companions in misfortune. Lilian controlled herself first and said, ‘Stop or we shall get hysterical. Oh, it’s such a relief to talk to you and it somehow helps to know you’re in love with him too. Though I can’t think why it does, especially as I’m madly envious of you.’

  ‘You’re envious of me?’

  ‘Of course. Because he’s fond of you. That’s something you can count on.’

  ‘Still, you wouldn’t swop what you have for that.’

  ‘Well, not yet,’ said Lilian, laughing again, ‘but you wait till I’m out on my ear. We’ll help each other now, won’t we? I’ll tell you all the nice things he says about you.’

  ‘But how can I help you?’

  She was silent so long that I wondered if she had heard. At last she said, ‘I think you have helped me.’

  I asked in what way. Again there was a silence before she answered. Then she spoke quite casually. ‘Oh, by being friendly. Let’s go to bed now.’ She looked around at the moonlit roof. On its grey surface the shadows of the chimney stacks were densely black. ‘Rather nice up here – though it’s probably filthy. Anyway, it’s somewhere one can talk without being overheard.’

  As we went down, we wondered if we should go in and talk to Molly about her problem. ‘At least she’s off her high horse with me now,’ said Lilian, ‘and she may need company.’ But Molly’s light was out.

  ‘Though I daresay she’s lying awake worrying,’ Lilian whispered. ‘And we probably shall, too.’

  But I didn’t. The guilt I felt at having talked to Lilian was as nothing compared with the relief it had brought. Discretion is too heavy a burden for eighteen-year-olds.

  I was due at the theatre the next morning, so that Eve could go to a fitting of one of her admirably cut suits (doomed to be treated like a very old rag). I would willingly have worked on through the afternoon but she sent me off duty immediately after lunch; only in exceptional circumstances would she let me work morning, afternoon and evening. I sat reading in Regent’s Park, on the far side from the Crossway house. I had a horror of meeting Mrs Crossway, and had never ceased to feel unhappy about deceiving her.

  About half-past four I went back to the Club for tea and as I entered the lounge I saw that Adrian Crossway was having tea with Zelle. They were so much absorbed in each other that neither of them noticed me, and I was careful to choose a table some way from them. Here I was hidden from Zelle by a pillar but I could still see Adrian Crossway in profile – a very handsome profile. He was wearing a suit of clerical grey flannel and looked to me like a stage clergyman of the disarmingly human type, one who plays a splendid game of cricket. I dimly remembered such a character in a play I had seen done by amateurs; and another character had been a ‘fallen’ woman whom he had treated with gentle tolerance, telling her in effect to go and sin no more. (My dear aunt had remarked that it was no use telling the woman that, when he didn’t tell her how to earn a living.) What would Adrian do if he learned the truth about Zelle? And could she really let her ‘fallen’ state by night sponsor her good works by day?

  I was thinking this might make a much more interesting play than the one I remembered, when Lilian came from the writing-room at the far end of the lounge. She joined me and I offered her a free cup of tea in my slop basin, an economical habit much favoured by Club members and much frowned on by the Club management. As I was pouring it, she noticed Adrian Crossway and turned to me in astonishment. I told her he had come to see Zelle about the good works she was planning to do.

  ‘How extraordinary!’ Lilian shot another glance at Adrian Crossway. ‘He doesn’t look to me as if he’s discussing good works. Heavens, do you think he’s fallen for her?’

  I said this was only the second time they’d met.

  ‘Still—’ She broke off, gulped her tea and said she must go and post a letter. ‘And I won’t be back because I’ve some jobs to do.’ It was Club protocol never to barge in on a girl entertaining a man so I was not surprised that she whisked out of the lounge with her head averted from Adrian Crossway.

  Soon he rose to go and Zelle went with him, presumably to see him off. As they crossed the lounge I noticed how vividly pretty she looked, with more colour than usual. When he held the door for her he smiled in a way that might have been merely due to clerical benevolence but certainly looked more than that.

  I hoped to ask her how things had gone but she did not return. And soon it was time for me to go to the theatre.

  I did not get home until late, having walked; I had as yet nowhere near finished all the ‘thinking things out’ called for by Lilian’s disclosure of her affair. There was a note from Zelle in my pigeon hole, asking me to come up to her room and saying: ‘Don’t let the girls know as I’ve told them I have a headache.’ Luckily they weren’t around as I went up to the fourth floor.

  I found Zelle, in her madonna-blue dressing-gown, reading the Bible. She said she had hated it as a child – ‘I hated everything to do with chapel. But it’s different now.’

  We sat together on her window-seat and she told me about Adrian Crossway’s visit. He had been marvellous – ‘Goodness simply radiates from him, though he doesn’t talk about it much or keep mentioning God. Somehow he makes goodness seem fun – we kept on laughing. I wish you could have seen him.’

  I said I had and he had seemed as happy with her as she was with him. ‘He looked terrifically interested in you, Zelle.’

  ‘He’d be interested in anyone who wants to be good. I don’t flatter myself it’s more than that, though he did say that even at our first meeting he’d felt we were going to be friends. He�
�s coming to London again on Saturday and we’re going to this place in the East End, and then I’m having dinner with him. And soon I’m going down to stay at the inn, so that I can go to his Harvest Thanksgiving Service. He says the church will look lovely.’

  Who was I to decide she wasn’t a suitable friend – or even a wife – for a clergyman? Particularly as I wasn’t religious. I tried to sound enthusiastic. ‘You’ll enjoy that, won’t you?’

  She gave me a quick glance. ‘Don’t worry. I’ve the right to do it now. I’ve given Bill up.’

  ‘Zelle! When?’

  ‘Tonight. I was due to meet him at the flat. It was awful.’

  It certainly sounded awful. She had so disliked the idea of leaving the Club that she had asked Bill if she might keep her room on and only go to the flat when he could be with her. ‘And he didn’t mind a bit – he was glad I’d made some friends. But of course he wanted me to stay on at the flat for the night. Well, I’d expected that and I thought it would be all right. I’m fond of him and I’ve never – well, minded. But I couldn’t go through with it, I simply couldn’t. And I never will again.’

  I asked her if she’d told Bill that and she said she’d tried to but he’d kept on saying it would all come right. ‘At least, he said that after I swore there wasn’t anyone else, which there isn’t in the way he means. I just said I wanted to live a decent life.’ There was a sudden glint of humour in her eyes. ‘You should have heard me piling that on. You see, I meant to make him feel guilty so that he’d put my bank account straight. And he did ruin me – as I gently reminded him.’

  ‘Goodness, do people still talk about girls being ruined?’

  ‘They do where I come from,’ said Zelle. ‘Anyway, poor old Bill got properly harrowed and said I wasn’t to worry about anything. And he’d go on paying my allowance and be very, very patient. So I relaxed a bit. And then suddenly—! Patient! I had a free fight to get out of the flat. I’ll never go back there. I’ll never see him again. It’s finished.’

  ‘But what will you do – without an allowance?’

  ‘I’ll get a job. Perhaps Adrian can get me one. I shall tell him on Saturday that I’ve lost all my money.’

  ‘Won’t you tell him about Bill?’

  ‘No, never. I couldn’t bear to disillusion him. He thinks I’m good – he said so, today, when I was telling him I longed to be. He said, “The longing is the goodness, and one can see that in your eyes.” Wasn’t that wonderful?’

  I thought it embarrassing, when said during tea in the Club lounge. But perhaps Adrian Crossway had not said it as emotionally as Zelle did. I felt sure her longing for goodness was mainly a longing for him, whether she knew it or not. Then I accused myself of cynicism and did my best to be sympathetic.

  We went on talking until nearly two in the morning; that is, she did, with very little prompting from me. Again and again she went over the scene in the flat, telling me what she had said and what poor old Bill had said. (I discovered he was nearly sixty.) I found her hard-headedness about Bill and sex, combined with her emotionalism about Adrian and goodness, a bit dislikeable; but I still liked her, and felt sorry for her. I also felt sorry for Adrian Crossway and I could not imagine how things would work out.

  At last, to my relief, she asked me to go. She said she wanted to read some more of the Bible before she went to sleep.

  On my way downstairs I thought how extraordinary it was that Molly, Lilian, Zelle and I were all at the same time involved in difficult love affairs. But I soon saw it wasn’t in the least extraordinary. As I went along dimly lit landings, past the doors of rooms and the archways leading to ‘villages’ of cubicles, I could think of any amount of girls sleeping within them who were involved in love affairs, few of them satisfactory. Words dropped into my mind: ‘It is our time of life for them.’

  Then, for a philosophical moment, I tried to project myself into a future when I should be as old as the oldest Club member, whose room I was then passing. (She was around sixty, a cheerful soul who enjoyed half-crown flutters on horses.) But I hastily returned to the present, finding the thought of aged peace unattractive; and knowing that, whatever the agonies, I would not willingly have skipped one day of my time of life.

  15

  After our midnight session on the roof I had expected Lilian to want more confidential talks, but she showed no sign of it. And though she, Molly and I always exchanged words over the cubicle tops while we had breakfast, the words had become fewer. We weren’t at all unfriendly but it seemed that none of us welcomed questions or wanted to volunteer information.

  The day after Zelle kept me up so late I fell asleep after breakfast and woke only in time to get down for lunch. Molly and Lilian were out. I wondered if Lilian would be spending the afternoon at the flat. Then I tried to get my mind off that subject; but even if I had been able to, it would have been brought back to it in the evening, by a talk I had with Eve Lester.

  She had been out of the office settling some problem in the dress-circle bar. When she came back she said: ‘I’d better tell you – before you pick up some gossip; the whole theatre’s buzzing with it. But perhaps you know already. I mean about Lilian and Mr Crossway.’

  I said I did know and she asked me how. ‘Brice promised not to tell you. Was it one of the programme girls?’

  ‘No, it was Lilian herself.’

  ‘Well, one can’t expect her to be discreet when he isn’t. I suppose she’s cock-a-hoop.’

  There was a hard note in Eve’s voice which was not like her. So I told her how unhappy Lilian was.

  Eve’s tone softened. ‘Poor kid, one ought not to decide girls are hard just because they look it. Funny how hardness attracts him these days. Perhaps it makes him feel less guilty.’

  ‘Does he feel guilty?’

  ‘Well, not morally. But he minds hurting people and I think he tries to protect himself by choosing hard women and making it clear that he doesn’t really care for them – which often makes them keener than ever, poor devils. But I can’t fuss about Lilian’s future miseries. How’s this affecting you?’

  ‘She hasn’t taken anything that was mine.’

  ‘And won’t,’ said Eve. ‘He’ll go on being fond of you after he’s fallen for, and tired of, any number of Lilians. I just wanted you to know.’

  I thanked her and then sat quietly while she talked about him, mainly excusing him, saying his susceptibility to women was part of his equipment as an actor, and that his affairs were a form of stimulant – which he could no more resist than some men could resist drink. She told me the theatre staff always got to know and heartily approved – ‘Except Brice, of course; he’s always furious – but he’s furious about almost everything Mr Crossway does. The others think of it as part of a romantic Don Juan-Casanova story and like father, like son; though the old man was much more dashing, often ran several affairs at once. Well, there it is and I’m thankful you’re being so sensible about it.’

  She wouldn’t have said this had she known I had convinced myself that neither Lilian nor her successors could prevent my Last Act from crowning my play as I wished it to be crowned.

  The next day – the Thursday of that memorable week – Lilian and I had lunch together at the Club. She told me Molly had just departed carrying an overnight case. ‘And when I asked her where she was going she said, “Mind your own business, child.” So I suppose she’s off with Hal and I bet it wrecks everything. But I’ve too much on my mind to worry about her. If you knew…!’

  I thought I soon should, but then Zelle joined us; and as she did not know about Lilian’s problems and Lilian did not know about hers we only talked about Molly’s, which we all knew about. Lilian and I soon went off to the theatre – it was matinée day – and the bus was no place for confidences. But after we got off Lilian asked me if I ever prayed. I said I tried not to, but sometimes one could not resist a vague ‘please make it all right, God’. She said: ‘Well, mention me to him, will you – just for the next
few days? Believe me, I need it.’

  I asked her if she was praying herself, and she said she was half demented with it – ‘There’s a voice in my head that goes on all the time, saying “Please, please, please” to someone somewhere. I’d love to talk about it but I daren’t. It might be unlucky.’

  That afternoon I worked in the Throne Room. Eve had rescued a play from the scripts turned down by the official play-reader and was convinced Mr Crossway ought to read it. But it was very badly typed. So she had asked me to re-type it and set it out properly, fitting the work in when I could. Its hard-up young author had recently called on us and I had said I would get my copies – I was taking carbons – finished soon. I have reason to remember that job as, only a few days later, it altered the course of my life. (This was more than it did for the life of its author as the play was never produced; though he did eventually have some success.)

  But at the moment I was merely thankful to be on my own with interesting work to occupy my mind, though it was not too occupied to prevent my watching Lilian’s last-act scene through the spy-hole. She played it exactly as she had been taught, without one changed intonation. But Rex had certainly changed his performance. He made it clear that he was attracted by her. This actually improved the scene and did not detract from the scene which followed. I wondered if he had changed deliberately or if he did not realise what he was revealing. Either way, it would be a change noticed by Brice Marton or anyone watching from the wings. No wonder the theatre knew of his interest in Lilian.

  When I got back to the Club that night I went to my cubicle without going to Zelle’s room. Lilian, too, skipped the Veda toast session. She and I talked a few minutes, lamenting over Molly’s empty cubicle. Then Lilian said, ‘Don’t forget. Pray, pray, pray!’ And though I dimly felt that what benefited her might not benefit me, I dutifully did pray.

  Nothing special happened at the theatre next day – that is, nothing special happened to me; plenty was happening to others and doubtless Eve knew about it by the evening. Had I been in the office she might have told me, but I was shut away with my scripts except when I came out for coffee and then she was not there. I worked on until the curtain was down, when she looked in on me to say she was going home and would I close the office when I left? I said she looked tired and she admitted she had a headache.