Caroline

by Richmal Crompton

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “She doesn’t want to see you. I don’t know how you have the effrontery to come here at all.”

  “Is it effrontery to want to see my own wife?”

  “Certainly, after the way you’ve treated her. I wonder you aren’t ashamed to look me—or any decent woman—in the face.”

  “I won’t discuss that with you. That’s a matter solely between Susan and me.”

  “What concerns Susan concerns me. I’m responsible for Susan’s happiness. I’ve stood by long enough and watched you making her unhappy.”

  “Stood by!” he burst out. “My God! I like that. . . . Stood by indeed! It’s your damned interference that made her unhappy, not me. You don’t care how unhappy she is as long as you can keep your devil’s claws in her.”

  She shrugged disdainfully.

  “Your insolence doesn’t affect me in the least. If you’ve only come here to make a scene, you’d——”

  “I haven’t. I’ve come to fetch my wife home.”

  “Susan is staying here.”

  “Where is she? I’m going to her.”

  “She’s gone to bed, and she particularly said that she did not want to see you. You’ve forfeited all claim on her by your behaviour.”

  He made an obvious effort to control himself.

  “You’re using this deliberately to get back your hold on Susan,” he said slowly and unsteadily, “but you know as well as I do that a wife is justified in overlooking a solitary affair that took place before marriage.”

  “And what proof have we,” said Caroline, “that it is a solitary affair? If you’ve deceived her over this, I’ve no doubt that you’ve deceived and are still deceiving her over many other similar affairs. She only found this out by accident, you remember.”

  His mouth took on an ugly line.

  “That’s what you’ve told her, I suppose.”

  “Of course. It was my duty to tell her. . . . The tragedy is that her discovery is so belated. If she’d known the sort of man you are she would certainly never have married you. I think you’d better go now.”

  He was trembling uncontrollably.

  “All right, I’ll go,” he said in a choking voice. “I’ll go to the devil as you’re so anxious for it. And I hope to God that one day Susan will know what you’ve done to her.”

  He flung himself from the room and a moment later they heard the slamming of the front door.

  “A most unpleasant interview,” said Caroline, with an expression of fastidious disgust, “but it had to come and I’m glad to get it over.” She seemed quite unaffected by the boy’s passionate outburst. “One can’t undo the marriage, of course, unless——” She was silent for a moment and her eyes grew thoughtful. Then she went on briskly. “Well—meantime we can make the best of a bad job. It’s lucky that I’d just got that post at Merton Park for Susan. . . . She can take it up at once. Fay will be going to college next year, and it will be nice to have Susan here.” She glanced round the room, speaking more to herself than Philippa. “She can have her desk in that window just as she used to have. I can help her with her work if she finds she’s got out of the swing of it. . . .”

  “Caroline,” said Philippa slowly, “are you seriously considering Susan’s staying here indefinitely?”

  Caroline’s eyes hardened as she looked at her.

  “If Susan’s marriage has turned out unhappily, it’s only natural that she should wish to return to her old home.”

  “It’s hardly a question of that,” said Philippa dryly. “Caroline, she can’t leave him just for one lapse and that before they were even engaged.”

  “ ‘One lapse’, as you call it, Philippa, proves the type of man he is. Personally I feel very sceptical about its being ‘one lapse’. It’s the only ‘lapse’ that poor Susan has discovered, I admit, but, as I said to her, once a man takes to that sort of thing. . . .”

  “Caroline, do listen to me. He’s not that type of man. He’s a thoroughly clean-living, decent boy. You can see that by just looking at him. I’ve had more experience of the world than you——”

  Caroline interrupted, speaking in her most suave tones.

  “I don’t deny your experience of the world, Philippa, nor do I envy you it. As I told you this afternoon, your ideas and mine on certain subjects are necessarily as wide apart as the poles.”

  Philippa shrugged.

  “There’s nothing more to be said, then?”

  “Nothing.”

  “I’m sorry. . . . Goodnight, my dear.”

  “Goodnight.”

  Philippa went to her bedroom. She heard Caroline come upstairs and enter Susan’s bedroom, heard Susan’s eager, tearful, “What did he say, Caroline?”, heard Caroline’s low voice, then the closing of the bedroom door.

  After some minutes it opened again.

  “And now get to bed, darling. I’ll come back in half an hour or so and tuck you up.”

  There followed the closing of Caroline’s bedroom door . . . then the furtive opening of Susan’s and a small soft tap at Philippa’s.

  “Come in,” whispered Philippa.

  Susan entered. She looked more than ever like an unhappy child, her face swollen with crying, her eyes bloodshot. She was still dressed and held a sodden ball of a handkerchief in her hand.

  “What am I to do, Philippa?” she said in a tear-choked voice.

  Philippa looked at her gravely.

  “No one but yourself can decide that, Susan,” she said.

  Susan sat down on the bed.

  “Caroline says . . .” she began, then her voice broke on a sob. She made an effort to control herself and went on shakily, “I owe everything to Caroline, you see . . . and she knows so much more of the world than I do. . . . She says it would be fatal to go back to him now at once . . . that it would make him think that I didn’t really mind, and that then he’d go on doing it.”

  She began to sob again. Philippa watched her dispassionately.

  “Do you love him?” she said at last.

  “Yes . . . terribly . . . that’s why I care so. . . .”

  “If you really loved him you’d forgive him.”

  Susan raised brimming eyes.

  “Would you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Caroline says——”

  “Never mind what Caroline says,” said Philippa shortly. “This isn’t Caroline’s business. It’s yours.”

  “Would you—go back to him?”

  “Yes.”

  “Now? . . . Tonight?”

  “Yes. At once.”

  “But Caroline . . .”

  “Don’t tell her you’re going. Just go. As quietly as you can.” Susan looked at her. Hope seemed to shine suddenly through her, misery.

  “Oh . . . I’d love to do that.”

  “Do it, then. And hurry. And don’t make a sound.”

  “You’ll—explain to Caroline?” Philippa smiled wryly.

  “I’ll do my best.”

  “Oh, thank you,” said Susan, throwing her arms about her and pressing a hot damp cheek against hers. Then she broke away and went back to her room. A moment later Philippa heard her cautiously descending the stairs, then the quiet, almost inaudible, closing of the front door.

  It was about half an hour after that that she heard Caroline go to Susan’s room.

  Then came a quick tap at her bedroom door.

  “Come in,” said Philippa.

  Caroline entered.

  “Susan’s not in her room.”

  “I know.”

  “You know? Where has she gone?”

  “She’s gone back to her husband.”

  “Why?”

  Philippa was silent.

  “Did you advise her to?”

  “She asked what I’d do in her place, and I told her.”

  Caroline drew a deep breath.

  “You—dared,” she whispered.

  In the silence that followed they hear
d the sound of fumbling at the front door.

  “She’s come back,” said Caroline. There was a terrible note of exultation in her voice.

  She left Philippa’s room abruptly and went down the stairs to the front door. Soon she came up again, her arm round Susan. Susan’s face was white and drawn. They both looked at Philippa standing at the top of the stairs.

  “He was drunk,” said Susan in a dull, far-away voice. “It was—horrible. . . . Horrible. . . . He—laughed. . . . He said—beastly things about Caroline. I can’t go back now. I didn’t know . . . Oh, Caroline . . .”

  “Come to bed, darling,” said Caroline tenderly.

  She turned to Philippa, her blue eyes narrowed till they were mere slits.

  “Perhaps you’d be good enough not to interfere in my affairs again,” she said icily.

  Chapter Fourteen

  PHILIPPA lay back in her chair in Marcia’s flat and glanced round her approvingly.

  “It’s charming,” she said. “I can’t find anything half as nice.”

  “It’s partly Neil,” said Marcia. “He has an eye for the right thing in the right place. Besides, I’ve spent all day dolling it up for you—and secretly feeling terribly nervous. I thought it would be so embarrassing meeting one’s mother for the first time, as it were. But somehow when it happened it wasn’t a bit, was it?”

  “Not a bit,” agreed Philippa with a smile.

  “Tell me. . . . I suppose you just remember me. I was about two, wasn’t I? Have I changed much?”

  “Very little,” said Philippa. “I remember you as a mischievous little girl with dimples and an attractive smile. You’re bigger, of course, but otherwise not much different.”

  “Splendid!” laughed Marcia. “While as for you——” She considered Philippa with her head on one side. “Now I’ve met you, of course, I realise that you’d have been something of an asset as a family background. Father and Nina and Caroline were all distinct liabilities. For the first time since you went I feel rather annoyed with you for deserting me like that without a qualm.”

  “It wasn’t quite without a qualm, my dear. I never worried about Caroline, because even at four Caroline was eminently capable of looking after herself, but for years, just about your bedtime, I used to imagine someone else tucking you up and saying goodnight to you, and it gave me quite a nasty little pain inside.”

  “It was probably indigestion. I’d like to pretend that I cried myself to sleep for you every night after you’d gone and said, ‘Have the angels taken Mummy back to Heaven, Daddy?’ but the truth is that I didn’t miss you at all. I didn’t even realise you weren’t there. Even at that age as long as I got my meals regularly I never worried about anything else. I remember that later when I went to school I rather enjoyed having no mother. It made me feel important and pathetic. I sometimes posed to myself as an orphan or tried to think of Nina as a cruel stepmother. Poor little Nina! Anyone less like a cruel stepmother could hardly be imagined. She couldn’t manage me at all, but she was so terrified of father’s finding it out that she used to hide all my sins from him and bribe me to be good when he was there. I’d be very good a whole evening for twopence and moderately good for a penny. She was scared to death of father. And of Caroline. I believe she was completely under Caroline’s thumb before Caroline was ten. Even father was, to a certain extent. I was the only person in the house who refused to be. Caroline and I fought like cats till I got married. She likes to absorb everyone around her, and I refused to be absorbed. She’s very determined, and she’s clever, too, in her own way, and at times I found it quite hard not to be absorbed, but my natural perversity saved me.” She laughed, then grew serious. “Caroline’s a joke in a way, isn’t she? But in another way she’s not a joke at all. . . . How are things going on? I never go to Bartenham now. I daren’t. Right down at the bottom I’m frightened of her.”

  Richard and Philippa and Fay had come up to London for the day in Richard’s car. The original arrangement had been the one proposed by Richard on the afternoon when Mrs. Beecham called—that he should drive Philippa to London for a day’s flat-hunting. Fay’s joining them had been arranged later and much against Caroline’s will. Fay’s form mistress had noticed that Fay’s eyes seemed to be troubling her, and had written to Caroline suggesting that she should be taken to an oculist. Caroline had been tenderly concerned.

  “But, darling, why didn’t you tell me? How silly of you not to say anything! There’s so little time left before your exam., and, of course, you must get glasses before then. We must have it seen to at once.”

  Caroline would have taken her up to Town herself, but all her time was occupied by her coaching engagements. Besides—there was Susan, pale and wan and silent, setting off every morning to Merton Park School, returning tired and dejected at tea-time, listlessly preparing her work for the next day, then going to bed to sob herself to sleep. Caroline was very affectionate and patient, helping her with her corrections, encouraging and reassuring her.

  “Darling, you’re getting on beautifully. Of course, it’s not easy to pick up the threads again. Periods of transition are always a little trying, but you’re managing splendidly. It will get easier and easier till soon you’ll find that you’re enjoying it all just as much as you used to in the old days. And, sweetheart, you’ve got the comfort of knowing that you’re doing the right thing, that you’re being true to yourself and to your ideals, that you’re breaking away from a life that could bring you nothing but unhappiness and degradation.”

  And Susan agreed, trying to fight down the longing for Kenneth that kept her awake, sick and heartsore, night after night. . . .

  There had been another scene with him. Dishevelled and distraught, he had forced his way into the drawing-room when Caroline and Susan were alone together and had pleaded with Susan to return to him. Caroline had curtly ordered him out of the house, and he had turned on her with a stream of angry accusations that had roused Susan to a tearful defence. The scene had then resolved itself into a bitter quarrel between husband and wife to which Caroline listened with a quiet smile.

  “All right,” Kenneth had said at last. “I’m through with it. If you’re as anxious as all this to be rid of me, you shall be. I’ve been faithful to you so far, but I’m damned if I will be any longer. You can have your evidence for a divorce whenever you want it.”

  With that he flung out of the house. He had played into Caroline’s hands, of course. She could now take for granted, on his own admission, that he was living a life of such flagrant immorality as precluded even the possibility of Susan’s returning to him.

  “Darling, I think it proves that what I said all along is true. He never has been faithful to you, but now——! If he doesn’t send us evidence for the divorce, of course, I’ll ask Richard to get it for us.”

  “Oh, Caroline.”

  “I know, my darling. . . . I know how you loved him. But he’s never been worthy of your love. He’s never really loved you at all. . . . Do you want to share him with other women?”

  “No . . . no!”

  “That’s what it would mean. He’s said so himself. . . . I know how it hurts you, darling. It’s like having a festering limb cut off. However painful it is, it’s the only thing to do.”

  Susan agreed and went languidly about her work, trying unsuccessfully enough to take an interest in her pupils and their progress, terrified by the black emptiness that life had suddenly become to her, grateful to Caroline for her constant care and affection. Caroline, after all, was the only person in the world whom one could really trust, the only person who really loved one. . . .

  And so Caroline didn’t want to take Fay up to the oculist’s, even though she might have arranged to do so. It meant that Susan would have had to come home after her day’s teaching to an empty house instead of to Caroline’s tender ministrations. Caroline was very particular about that. Susan, tired after her day’s work, must be fussed over and petted, must be put into her favourite chair, wi
th cushions at her back and Caroline to pour out her tea, wait on her, and beguile her with cheerful conversation. No . . . Susan was going through a hard time, and Caroline couldn’t desert her. Moreover—poor little Susan was not really strong. Bereft of Caroline’s guidance, even for an afternoon, she might do something foolish and irrevocable, might even jeopardise her whole future happiness by making overtures of reconciliation to the brute who was her husband. Therefore, somewhat reluctantly, she had allowed Fay to go up to Town with Philippa and Richard.

  Fay, for her part, was glad to get away from the house. There had been a nightmarish quality over everything since Susan came back. It had begun the night she came—the night when Fay had lain awake, her heart hammering in her breast, listening to Susan’s hysterical sobs in the next room, to Kenneth’s angry voice downstairs, to Caroline’s voice, icy and contemptuous, to the constant coming and going . . . Susan creeping into Philippa’s room . . . creeping down the stairs and out of the front door . . . Caroline going to Philippa’s room . . . Susan coming back up the stairs . . . more talking. . . . She wanted to go out and ask what it was all about, but she was afraid. It was something horrible . . . so horrible that she couldn’t face it. Then it had all died away into silence except for Susan’s sobs in the next room—muffled convulsive sobs that went on and on throughout the night.

  Caroline had, of course, explained things to her the next day. Susan had had to leave Kenneth because she’d found out that he wasn’t a good man. Fay knew what she meant. She meant—that. The thing one wasn’t supposed to talk about, or even think about. Kenneth was that sort of a man. . . . Caroline said that if Fay met him in the street she wasn’t to look at him or speak to him. The dreadful thing was that she couldn’t feel as Caroline wanted her to feel about him. He’d always been so kind and jolly. She couldn’t think of him as wicked, however hard she tried.

  And now Susan was living at home again and setting off each morning to teach, as she had done before she was married. There was a sense of strain between the three of them. Susan and Fay had never been very friendly with each other. Each had been devoted to Caroline, but not to the other. Fay had always had an odd unreasonable sense of guilt towards Caroline whenever she was on friendlier terms than usual with Susan. They had never had very much to do with each other, even when Susan lived at home. It was partly the differences in their ages, of course, and partly that Caroline generally made a third when they went out, and each was conscious of Caroline, not of the other.