Doting

by Henry Green

  “I will,” he answered. “Do you want to go anywhere, Ann?”

  “No thanks,” she said. As he hurried out, she began to put her face to rights in the mirror above Diana’s fireplace.

  When the man came back Miss Paynton asked,

  “Why d’you not wish for me to step out with Charles, Arthur?” As she said this, she settled back into cushions with a sort of easy confidence.

  He hesitated in front of her.

  “Now, Ann, I never said that, surely?”

  “But you meant it.”

  “Did I?”

  “You know you did. No, sit away over there, Arthur, I want to talk.”

  “Why?” he asked.

  “Because this is important,” Miss Paynton went on. “It’s my life, after all. I must meet people, you do grant me that?”

  “Of course, Ann.”

  “And if I am to meet them, I can’t pick and choose, can I? I mean it’s impossible for me to ask gentlemen out, I haven’t the money, for one thing. So I go where I’m invited.”

  “But that doesn’t prevent someone, surely, putting in a word of warning?” he objected.

  “Yet why? I can’t see the good. I don’t imagine you think I’m blind to how people are?”

  “I never thought so for a moment,” Mr. Middleton protested in what seemed to be some confusion. “Only that with much more experience . . .”

  “And I’m earning mine!” she took him up. “Then you do admit, Arthur, you tried to turn me against Charles?”

  “Well yes, I suppose.”

  “But why? Please never think I mind, I don’t. I value your interest in me, Arthur, truly I do! Just tell me. What are your intentions?”

  “Pure,” Mr. Middleton answered, with evident amusement.

  “That’s not very flattering, is it?” the girl laughed. “No, stay where you are now, be a dear! You tell me this elaborate story against a man you introduce one to, and who has since become a special friend, and you won’t explain?”

  “Jealousy, Ann,” the man replied, with a show of modest candour. She laughed, almost nervously.

  “Very soon I shan’t believe you, any of the time,” she said.

  Now he did come over to sit at her side. He took her nearest hand, which she left in his. “I adore you,” he assured the young lady, in a bright voice. “I love you.”

  “You’re sweet,” she replied at once, without the note of conviction. “But Arthur, you should realize my main concern must be with marriage?”

  “Of course.”

  “You see, I’ve been wondering if I’d marry Charles. In case he asked me.”

  “Yes, Ann.”

  “Don’t pretend to be so glum, then!”

  “I’m not!” he groaned. “Oh dear, I am sorry, have I said the wrong thing again?” she wailed. “But I love your interest, truly I do! Yet won’t you understand how difficult it is to be a girl?”

  “Yes,” he gently said.

  “Oh I think I could dote on you if I once allowed myself,” she cried out with plain enthusiasm. “You are so sweet to me, you truly are! What would you advise? If he did propose, I mean.”

  “Turn the man down, Ann.”

  “But what on earth for?”

  “He’s got a child already.”

  “Why shouldn’t he, poor sweet?”

  “Well, it must be a complication, after all,” Mr. Middleton suggested.

  “No, I fancy there’s something much more wrong with him than this little Joe that I’ve never yet seen,” the girl confessed.

  Arthur kissed her hand, which she then hauled away.

  “No, listen!” she implored. “If only for a short time longer. This is important.”

  “I am,” Mr. Middleton protested.

  “Then why is it, Arthur, you don’t even wish me to stay happy, enjoy myself?” she asked.

  “Surely those two things are quite distinct and separate?”

  “How could they be? If anyone is happy she enjoys herself, no one can get away from that!”

  “Yet if you are enjoying yourself, you needn’t necessarily be happy,” he objected.

  “Well, I think you’re just splitting hairs.”

  “I’m not, Ann,” he assured the girl.

  “Then I imagine that must be the difference in our ages.”

  “What?” he cried out. “D’you honestly mean to sit and tell one there’s a difference between happiness at forty and at nineteen.”

  “From all Charles and you have told, I’m beginning to think so, Arthur.”

  “And what has he said?”

  “Well, you see, poor Charles’s had a very unlucky, unfortunate life, with a lot of sickness which turned wrong.”

  “But you’re bracketing me with him, Ann, and I haven’t!”

  “I don’t know, and this is not personal, mind, but I find your generation so sad; no, not sad, that’s not the right word. What I mean is, you seem melancholy, all of you.”

  “Can’t say I’ve ever noticed it in old Charles! I’d have thought he was a bit of a gay dog, myself.”

  “When he can’t bear to marry again because his new wife may die like his first one did!”

  “My dear!” Mr. Middleton protested.

  “And he won’t really let himself love his little Joe in case the boy goes the way the mother went!”

  “No, Ann!” he protested once more.

  “You see, Arthur, I’m beginning to think I’ve come upon a very different side of Charles.”

  “Is it his true one?”

  “Well, his wife did die in childbirth, didn’t she?”

  “Yes, poor Penelope.”

  “And you say he oughtn’t to mind still?”

  “I’ve said nothing of the kind, Ann.”

  “Yet, weren’t you trying to tell me it was stupid, if you’d already lost one wife, to fear losing another?”

  “It’s unnatural, that’s all.”

  “You mean it’s natural for women to die that way, even now? You’re saying they’re expendable as regards babies?”

  “How d’you intend ‘expendable’?” Mr. Middleton demanded, with obvious bewilderment.

  “I don’t know,” the young lady wailed. “It’s a phrase I use, about myself, with my great friend, Claire, and I’m never sure, quite, just what it means.”

  He drew away from her.

  “Because I could not consider things natural for a moment if anything happened to you while you were having a baby,” he said.

  “I should hope not, Arthur!”

  “Exactly.”

  “You’re just like everyone else,” she said, with some apparent bitterness. “You want the best of both worlds. A succession of poor, beautiful women who bear you babies and die of them. Which is intolerably selfish!”

  “What makes you think I do?” he appealed.

  “Because Charles is afraid for his life to marry a second time, and you aren’t,” she told Mr. Middleton.

  “Oh, come here,” the husband demanded, putting his nearest arm around her shoulders, and the far one about her lap.

  “Arthur!” she said, in the expiring voice she used to close telephone conversations.

  He started to kiss the girl all over her face.

  “Arthur!” she exclaimed in the same tone. She put her left hand into his right, on her lap, and laced the fingers into his. Apart from that, she let him kiss her, freely.

  He got quite out of breath in the end.

  “Oh, let’s go next door!” the man murmured, at last.

  “No, Arthur,” she said, in a different voice.

  “D’you mean that?”

  “I’m afraid so,” Miss Paynton answered, and slewed her mouth away from his.

  “How can one tell when girls mean no?” he whispered, kissing the lobe of an ear.

  “By believing them, dearest,” she told the man. He seemed to credit this, for, after a moment, he drew away and began to fiddle with his tie.

  Not so long after,
he dropped the young lady home, with a polite ill-humour which she did nothing to dispel.

  •

  The same evening Mrs. Middleton rang Charles Addinsell on long distance from Scotland.

  “Oh Charles,” she cried, once he had answered “he’s already got four fish!”

  “Splendid!” the man replied.

  “Charles darling, I must see you,” she demanded.

  “Where?”

  “Oh not up here, of course. I’m coming South.”

  “So soon?”

  “You see, Peter’s in the seventh heaven with all his success. I can quite well leave him. And I don’t trust Arthur out of my sight another moment. Besides, I want to see you, darling.”

  “Yes.”

  “I must say you don’t sound so very delighted,” she wheedled.

  “Haven’t been able to sleep at nights for thinking of you,” was Mr. Addinsell’s response, in a voice which carried conviction.

  “Oh you shouldn’t do that, darling!”

  “Can’t help myself, Diana,” he said.

  “Then could the evening after tomorrow suit, for drinks before dinner?”

  “Of course!”

  “You are kind! I’ve been thinking of you such a great deal, Charles!”

  “Damn this telephone. Wish you were here,” he said.

  Following which, they spoke of the weather for a few sentences, and she rang off.

  •

  When the day came Mrs. Middleton went round to Charles’ flat at half past six. She kissed him on the cheek but moved her mouth away as he tried to put his lips to hers.

  While he was mixing a drink, she asked “Did you really miss me, like you said on the phone?”

  “Too true I did.”

  “I missed you, as well.”

  “Why, Diana?”

  “Well, for one thing, you are the one person in the whole wide world I can confide in about Arthur.”

  “That’s a reason. Why else?”

  “Which is my secret,” she responded briskly. She accepted the drink he brought over and sat down on the sofa at his side. He at once put an arm around her shoulders.

  “No, Charles,” she murmured, pushing it off with her free hand.

  “Whatever you say,” the man agreed.

  “Now, Charles, I want to ask you over Arthur,” she began. “Has he been out with Ann, d’you think?”

  “Don’t imagine so.”

  “Have you?”

  “I believe I did run into the girl for a moment.”

  “So you asked her if she had, Charles?”

  “No.”

  “And when it meant so much to me!”

  “She’d never have told me true,” Mr. Addinsell protested.

  “But you could have told from her face, darling!”

  “Doubt it.”

  “Now don’t be false-modest, Charles. With all your experience!”

  “Well, if she had said something, and I thought her lying, and reported to you she’d done the opposite of what she told me, where would I have been with old Arthur?”

  “Then you’re his friend, not mine!” she mourned, in a low voice.

  “You know that isn’t so, Di.”

  “It looks very much like it. Oh anyway, I told him he could take her out the just once more, to get rid of the girl!”

  “As a matter of fact I believe I remember someone did seem to say he’d seen them out together.”

  “Morning or evening?” she asked, in level tones.

  “Wouldn’t know, I’m afraid.”

  “Charles, you’re lying to me . . .”

  “Now I...”

  “No, don’t interrupt, I can see it in your dear face,” she cried. “Oh how you could! And for him! It was at night, wasn’t it?”

  “Well...”

  “Oh the brute,” she whispered and began to cry softly, not even bothering with a handkerchief. “And at a time I promised reprisals if he did,” she added, almost under her breath. “Oh damn, Charles, I’m going to cry,” although a tear was already on her chin. “I feel simply awful! Oh dear, sometimes I almost hate Arthur.”

  “Whatever you do, don’t tell the old chap I told you!”

  “Oh no, I won’t, I promise. Oh damn. Look, Charles, I’m afraid I shall have to go to the bathroom. There’s nothing else . . .”

  “Well of course. Sorry about all this.” He opened the door. “You know the way?” She did not answer. She was sobbing over her glass as she went.

  Mrs. Middleton did not come back for ten minutes. In that time the man put down two stiff whiskies.

  When she opened the door to rejoin him she thrust her finished drink forward. “Get me another, darling, I need it, and please forgive that little exhibition.”

  “You look more lovely than ever,” he said, to which she replied, but gently “Don’t be so absurd, dear Charles!”

  He rattled the cocktail shaker.

  “Forgive me,” she repeated.

  “For what?” Mr. Addinsell asked.

  “Because, you see, I simply must know. Has he gone to bed with Ann again?”

  “Even if she’d told me she had, Di, I wouldn’t believe a word she said.”

  “So then she has!”

  “How can I tell?” he implored.

  “How he could! After eighteen years’ married life!!”

  “Don’t let yourself get upset,” Charles pleaded, bringing her drink over. “People do, you know.”

  “Does that make it any better?” Mrs. Middleton demanded, not looking at him.

  “Nothing ever gets better,” he replied. “Not at our age,” and he put a hand round her waist, at which she moved just out of reach.

  “It’ll have to, that’s all,” she announced, with a sort of resigned conviction in her voice. “I can’t go on with my life like this.”

  “Relax,” he told the woman, as he came after her.

  “No, really Charles, we mayn’t dodge one another round the chairs and tables. Now, just you sit down, over there, and think about me for a while.”

  “I am,” he replied, obeying her.

  “Then what ought I to do to him?”

  “Take things easy, Diana.”

  “How can I?”

  “Have your own fun, for a change. Be yourself!”

  “But myself is just what I am being, at this moment.”

  “And teach old Arthur a lesson.”

  “Oh, I think mothers, of grown up boys, who go to bed are pretty squalid, don’t you?”

  “People do.”

  “Which is no reason why I should,” she calmly objected. “Besides, it’s so long now, I really believe I wouldn’t know how.”

  “Then you should let someone remind you.”

  “You, perhaps?” she asked, with a half smile across the six feet of space which separated them.

  He gave a gay laugh.

  “I’d like nothing better,” he asserted. “What man wouldn’t. But I know enough to realize I’m out.”

  “Why, Charles?”

  He got up, as if to come across to her.

  “No, go on sitting there, Don’t spoil everything just when you’re about to fascinate me.”

  “Only wish I could, Di.”

  “Tell me, then.”

  “We’ve known each other too long.”

  “Why?”

  “Well, I mean,” he said, in what appeared to be a perplexed voice. “You’re the wife of my oldest friend.”

  “But you’re telling me that ought to make no difference!”

  “Only it does, sometimes,” he explained. “No, all I said was, you should teach old Arthur a lesson.”

  “Very well, perhaps I ought. But who with?”

  “Don’t you know anyone?”

  “Not in that sort of way, Charles.”

  “Then how about me, in the end?”

  “Yet you’ve just said we’ve been friends too long.”

  “I might be mistaken.”

  “I d
on’t think one ever is, not on instinct.”

  “So you won’t.”

  “No Charles.”

  “Can’t say I blame you.”

  “You’re rather sweet,” she murmured, only she now wore a distant expression. “Oh, my God, will you just please look at the time. I’ll be late for his dinner.”

  “And this is the man you were going to discipline?” he asked nodding in the direction of the flat she shared with Arthur.

  “Oh well,” she laughed, came up and kissed him on the mouth. “One’s still to keep up appearances, after all! Hasn’t one?” She laid her cheek against his.

  “So it’s goodnight?” he softly enquired.

  “I’m afraid so, my darling,” she said, and left.

  •

  That same evening, once their cook had left them alone with the food, Mrs. Middleton, white faced and in a voice that trembled, said to her husband,

  “So you took her out at night, after all?”

  “Ann? I don’t know how you found out, but I did. Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “Because when I thought it over, my dear, I came to the conclusion your suspicions were rather absurd, if you’ll excuse the expression.”

  “Then nothing’s sacred to you, now. Is that it?”

  “Oh, Di!”

  “You promised so faithfully, you know you did!”

  “But a promise dragged out of one when you’re in a state . . .”

  “Is not binding? Oh, Arthur, you’ve grown double faced!”

  “How?” the man asked.

  “You say so when I haven’t arrived back in London more than half an hour before I hear you’ve been around with her on an evening out?”

  “Who told you?”

  “Your own best friend.”

  “And who would that be?”

  “Only Charles Addinsell.”

  “Oh, don’t please believe a word he says.”

  “Then you deny it?”

  “No.”

  “Well, in that case, where are we?”

  “Where we’ve always been.”

  “Don’t be so sure, Arthur. You might try me too far.”

  “And how about our old arrangement?” he asked, with an obvious show of indignation. “When one of us gets invited he or she always has gone, irrespective of what the other may be doing.”

  “Oh darling, you promised, you know you did!”

  “Under duress.”

  “Under how much?”