by Henry Green
“There you go again,” she said cheerfully. “Oh I might have known this! Then was it just one of those things you throw off at a party?”
“Dreadfully sorry. . .” he began but she interrupted.
“You should be more careful what you say to women,” she complained with a laugh. “You’re almost impossible Richard. And I did set such store! You told me at the engagement party what you liked where I was concerned was my special blend of still being young and yet that I’d all the allure of experience.”
“Good God I’ve always felt it Liz.”
“Then why couldn’t you recollect?”
“I did,” he insisted. “I do.”
“After all that’s happened how can I believe you now?” she asked, her back to the fire.
“Never could manage to be much use at explaining,” he said, moved over, put his arms about her waist and gave her a hug and a long kiss. She drew back but not away from his arms.
“Oh no you don’t!” she laughed upon which he embraced her again.
“Look here . . .” she said seriously when next he allowed her to come up for air but at once his mouth came back on hers. After a moment she went noticeably limp and then, while he still pressed his lips on her tongue she raised her arms and tightened these around his neck.
“Oh Dick!” she said at last. “Oh Dick!!”
Upon which for no discoverable reason he began to choke. He soon had to let go of her and if at first she seemed to smile good-naturedly, then as his face grew more purple and at last black, as his staring eyes appeared to fight an enemy within so frightful was the look of preoccupation on them, so in no time at all she was thumping his back, breaking off to fetch a glass of water, letting off small “oh’s” of alarm until, when his red eyes were almost out of their sockets he began to be able to draw breath once more and what was plainly a glow of ease started to pale him, to suffuse his patient, gentle orbs. Upon which, before this expression had time to grow positively hang dog, she got him in the bedroom on the bed. As he lay watching her and she unbuttoned his collar he found his voice again.
“Dreadfully sorry but quite all right now,” he gasped.
“What was it then?” she cried.
“Always have often swallowed the wrong way all my life.”
“I was so frightened. Oh Dick!” she said laying her soft cheek along his face.
He stayed the night and next morning she seemed entirely jubilant,
•
A week or so later Mrs. Weatherby entertained John Pomfret once more at her flat. It was dusk and as they were seated next each other on the sofa, his arm around her shoulders while she held his free hand moist in both of hers; as the fire glowed a powerful rose and it rained outside so that drops on the dark panes, which were a deep blue of ink, by reflection left small snails’ tracks across and down the glass in rose, for Mrs. Weatherby had not drawn the curtains; as he could outline her heavy head laid next his only in a soft blur with darker hair over her great eye above the gentle fire-wavering profile of her nose, and, because he was nearest to this living pile of coals in the grate, he could see into this eye, into the two transparencies which veiled it, down to that last surface which at three separate points glowed with the fire’s same rose; as he sat at her lazy side it must have seemed to him he was looking right into Jane, relaxed inert and warm, a being open to himself the fire and the comfort of indoors but with three great furnaces quiescent in her lovely head just showing through eyeholes to warn a man, if warning were needed, that she could be very much awake, did entirely love him with molten metal within her bones within the cool back of her skull which under its living weight of hair was deeply, deeply known by his fingers.
“Oh dear,” she murmured for the third time “darling d’you think we should close the shutters?”
He did not answer but tightened hold, to keep her. At that she leant a little more against his shoulder.
They had been talking by fits and starts, not so much in reply one to the other as to make peaceful barely related statements which had advanced very little what they presumably meant by everything they said because they now seemed in all things to agree, in comfort in quiet and rest.
“So you don’t feel dearest you should be married in church?” she sighed as though to sum up a long discussion.
“Registry office, or might look ridiculous! At our age,” he almost whispered to an ear he could not see.
“However you say,” she agreed. There was another pause. “I’ll think about it,” she added.
“What was that darling?”
“The Registry office” she explained.
“I know. Go on,” he mumbled, yawning.
“I said I’d think it over, aren’t you sweet,” she sighed again and silence fell once more. After a long pause she murmured,
“D’you realize I can hardly believe Mary’s given him back the ring, dearest?”
“Which ring?”
“Why the engagement! You’re not to fall asleep on me yet,” she commanded in her softest voice.
“Yes she did,” he murmured “or so she said.” He yawned again.
“But Philip’s never mentioned a syllable John.”
“Can’t hardly think Mary’d actually go as far as pawn the object,” he muttered.
“Oh darling the poor child could not get much for what it was, would she,” and indolently saying this Mrs. Weatherby chuckled. “Oh no she simply’s not made that way, Mary’d never do such a thing. Now she’s gone to dear Myra in Florence, Philip’s taken Bethesda out twice, yes twice, two whole times did you know?”
“Never heard of her. Who’s she?”
“So unsuitable dearest, a girl at his work.”
“Well Jane,” he said with a sort of low-pitched assurance, then yawned a fifth time, “our children will just have to work their own lives out, we can’t do everything for them.”
She gave no answer. They relapsed into easy silence. After quite an interval he began again,
“But Jane my dear as I’ve explained before this very evening, I’m worried about your Penelope. I feel I’ve a real responsibility towards you there darling.”
He spoke so softly she could not have heard for she asked,
“A real what my heart?”
“Responsibility, love. Always told you a man about the house is what the child needs. Now just when she’s going to have a stepfather you speak of sending her off to ah . . .” and he yawned yet once more “to one of those sleeping places, how d’you call ’em . . .” and he came to an end.
“Boarding schools,” she gently prompted.
“Yes. . .thick ankles. . .hockey, Jane.”
“Oh no the poor angel, then I’d never allow it,” the mother protested comfortably but with a trifle more animation.
“There you are . . .” he mumbled. “Always knew you couldn’t send her away. . .when things came to the point.”
“Oh no,” she quietly said “I’d stop her playing those games at school then.”
“Expect you know best,” he commented, yawning a last time.
There was a longer pause while his eyelids drooped.
“And how’s your wicked diabetes my own darling?” she whispered.
“All right,” he barely answered.
“And is there anything at all you want my own?”
“Nothing . . . nothing,” he replied in so low a voice she could barely have heard and then seemed to fall deep asleep at last.
