Love in Our Time

by Norman Collins

  He congratulated himself that it was no worse; from what he could remember of Elsie it wouldn’t have surprised him no matter what she had done. But there were still Lily and young Violet. Young Violet had always been the favourite—she was Gerald’s half-sister; but it was Lily, Mrs. Sneyd’s younger child by her first marriage, who was known to have the brains. She was, Gerald remembered, artistic and delicate. It had been planned that she was going to devote her life to music; she had had lessons twice a week from an L.R.A.M.

  “How’s Lily?” he asked jocularly. “Has she got married yet?”

  “Lily’s in Woolworth’s,” Mr. Sneyd replied. “She’s getting on all right.”

  “And young Violet?”

  “She’s fine.” Mr. Sneyd spoke with real enthusiasm about her. “She’s a knowing little thing all right.”

  There was another pause—a longer one this time—and it was Alice who broke the silence.

  “Can’t I get you something to eat, Mr. Sneyd?” she asked. “You look tired out.”

  Mr. Sneyd started. It was almost as though he was not used to being addressed kindly. But he said he had just eaten. He made a great point of it, as though it were something to be proud of.

  “How’s Mrs. Sneyd?” Gerald asked. He used the name with obvious reluctance, and it was significant that he left this question till last.

  Mr. Sneyd shook his head.

  “We don’t any of us get any younger,” he said.

  The remark made Gerald feel suddenly very sorry for his father. After all, it was Time that had been against Mr. Sneyd all along; his second marriage had been in defiance of it. And being young had been the second Mrs. Sneyd’s one excuse for existence. She had been left a widow at twenty-eight. It was simply her youth that had attracted the lonely and unloved Mr. Sneyd—her youth and what went with it. Seated in the cash desk of the Bon Marché, her piled fair hair displayed over the top of the grille, and her bosom—she always wore lacy, rather low-cut dresses—provocatively visible through the plate-glass front, she had made the handling of ordinary petty-cash transactions seem like an enchanted profession. Gerald still remembered her as he had seen her the first time his father had brought her back to the melancholy house in Station Approach. She had always seemed altogether too crudely blooming and high-spirited—she had thrown off her widowhood like a chill—to be on the arm of the already slightly seedy middle-aged man who showed her self-consciously into the faded drawing-room; her elder sister, whose hair was darker and who had no bosom to speak of, had accompanied her for the sake of the proprieties. Gerald’s antagonism to the newcomer had dated from the moment when, looking at the narrow staircase, the new Mrs. Sneyd had said that she preferred Axminster to oilcloth, and Mr. Sneyd had weakly and foolishly assented.

  “She’s with you now?” Gerald asked.

  “No, Mother’s at home.” Mr. Sneyd answered. “It’s young Violet. She’s got one of her chests.”

  Alice interrupted them to suggest that she should make them all some tea. And with Alice’s departure the atmosphere seemed to grow clearer. There was no longer a woman overhearing everything. The three men shook themselves; Mr. Sneyd asked if Alice had any objection to a pipe, and then produced a china bowled affair with a death’s head design on the front and lugubriously lit it. Gerald looked at the pipe with some emotion; he had grown up with that pipe and it was like having a piece of his childhood thrown back at him to see it again.

  “You up here on business or pleasure?” Mr. Biddle inquired.

  It was evident from the question that he did not know the nature of Mr. Sneyd’s business: shop-walkers in provincial emporiums do all their business on the floor. Once past the revolving glass doors of the shop they cease simply and suddenly to exist.

  “It’s my health,” Mr. Sneyd admitted. “I’ve got to go into St. Martin’s.”

  “What is it, Dad?”

  The fact that his father was ill, hurt him; he began to reproach himself for not having seen him for all those years. It didn’t seem enough that he had written. If Mr. Biddle had not been there and he had been alone with his father he would probably have done something foolish like going across and kissing him.

  “It isn’t anything much,” Mr. Sneyd assured him. “I’m just going in for observation. They couldn’t make me out in Tadford.”

  “Will you be there long?”

  “Oh, about a week.”

  “I’ll come in and see you.”

  “Thanks very much, Gerald. I’ll be looking forward to that.”

  “I’ll be there too, Brother,” Mr. Biddle interjected. He spoke as one who swooped professionally on any opportunity to do a good turn.

  Mr. Sneyd turned appreciatively. “That’s uncommonly kind of you,” he said. “Are you sure you can spare the time?”

  “Anyone can spare the time if he plans his day properly … ” Mr. Biddle began. He did not finish because Alice came in carrying a tray with the best tea service set out on it. There was also a plate of rich, mixed biscuits. Alice looked young and pretty and efficient as she stood there; Mr. Sneyd reflected that Gerald had done well for himself.

  “Would you rather have some whisky?” Gerald asked; it was still the remains of Tony’s bottle of whisky that he was offering.

  Mr. Sneyd shook his head.

  “Never touch spirits,” he said. “Not used to them.”

  He stirred his tea noisily and set to work on the biscuits. It was noticeable that he took only the plain ones. He ate them hungrily, pushing the chocolate ones and jam squares to one side. Alice noticed this, too.

  “Can I get you anything else to eat?” she asked. “An egg or something.”

  Mr. Sneyd looked up gratefully.

  “No, thank you, dear,” he said. “I had some sandwiches on the train.”

  He took another biscuit as he said it; Gerald sat in silence and watched him eat.

  He became aware quite suddenly that Alice was making signals to him. Like all wives she was proceeding on the assumption that the raising of a single eyebrow was sufficient to convey the exact meaning of something that was at once too private or too important to be spoken out loud. She kept jerking her head mysteriously in the direction of the ceiling. At the fourth jerk Gerald understood. She was proposing that they should invite Mr. Sneyd to spend the night with them.

  But Mr. Sneyd settled the point himself.

  “I must be getting back,” he said. “I go inside first thing in the morning.”

  “Where are you stopping?” Gerald asked.

  “It’s the hotel next door to the station,” Mr. Sneyd replied. “I don’t recall the name.”

  “Will just St. Martin’s find you?”

  “That’s right,” agreed Mr. Sneyd. “You write to me there. I shan’t need any other address.”

  They said good-bye at some length. Mr. Sneyd seemed unnaturally grateful; he appeared remarkably touched that he should have been allowed to drink two cups of tea and eat a quarter of a pound of biscuits at his own son’s fireside. He left promising to write tomorrow to say how he liked St. Martin’s.

  Mr. Biddle insisted on leaving with him. On the way up to the tram-stop Mr. Biddle touched him on the arm.

  “Have you actually booked a room?” he asked.

  “Well, not exactly,” Mr. Sneyd admitted.

  “Where’s your bag?”

  “I left it in the cloakroom.”

  “I could lend you a nightshirt,” he said. “I don’t wear pyjamas.”

  “Neither do I.”

  “Would you care to come along, Brother?”

  “It wouldn’t be putting you out?”

  “There’s three bedrooms we never use.”

  “And Mrs. Biddle wouldn’t object?”

  “I’m a widower, Brother.”

  Mr. Sneyd held out his hand and Mr. Biddle took it.

  “He’s a good lad, my Gerald,” Mr. Sneyd was saying. “He walked out on us but I don’t know that I blame him. It wasn’t easy for any of
us.”

  They were sitting down in Mr. Biddle’s dining-room. There were beer and cheese and biscuits on the table. Mr. Sneyd had just made a good meal.

  “He oughtn’t to have lost touch with you like that,” Mr. Biddle objected. “The family’s the bedrock of Society. Look what’s happened in Russia.”

  “He wanted to get on in the world,” Mr. Sneyd continued, “and I couldn’t help him. I reckon he’s done very nicely for himself. He’s got a lovely wife.”

  “Allus is all right,” Mr. Biddle assented.

  There was silence while Mr. Sneyd helped himself to the last of the beer. He had drunk nearly a pint and was talking more freely by now.

  Mr. Biddle turned to him.

  “Why are you going into St. Martin’s?” he asked.

  The question seemed to hit Mr. Sneyd hard; he put down his glass and sat back staring at the tablecloth.

  “It’s something inside of me,” he said. “It’s been gnawing for about a year and it’s got worse lately.”

  “Is it serious?”

  “I sometimes reckon it’ll be the end,” Mr. Sneyd said in a quiet, flat voice. “It can’t go on getting worse like this.”

  “Can they operate?” Mr. Biddle asked.

  “Not if it’s what they think it is, they can’t,” Mr. Sneyd replied. “It just means waiting for it.”

  “I’m sorry, Brother,” said Mr. Biddle.

  He asked no more questions; he knew perfectly well what Mr. Sneyd meant and Mr. Sneyd knew that he knew. Neither of them transgressed against good form by actually mentioning cancer.

  “I don’t mind for myself,” Mr. Sneyd remarked after a while. “It’d be a release. It’s the others I’m thinking of. There are three of ’em dependent on me.”

  “Aren’t the kids old enough to look after themselves?”

  “I married twice,” said Mr. Sneyd simply. He spoke as one who has defied nature and lost.

  “Does the wife know?”

  “Not a hint. She thinks it’s just indigestion.”

  “Don’t worry,” said Mr. Biddle. “It’ll all come right in the end.”

  They crept upstairs so as not to disturb the timid Miss Watchett. At the door of the spare room Mr. Sneyd turned suddenly to his host.

  “Not one word of this to Gerald,” he said. “It’d send him half-crazy.”

  “Not a word,” Mr. Biddle promised.

  They shook hands on it because it was solemn, and the confidence served to unite them. They were two elderly men conspiring to spare the feelings of youth. They had both reached sixty odd, and having seen a considerable stretch of life go by, they felt that they knew a great deal about it.

  Then because it was late and Mr. Sneyd had an early appointment in the morning they said good night. Standing at attention on the upper landing they gave each other the Mariners’ salute.

  It was a formal affair, Seaman saluting Commodore.

  Chapter Seven

  By the end of the month Alice knew she was going to have a baby.

  She had been only vaguely worried at first and inclined to laugh at herself. Then, as the days passed, the uneasiness grew. A little kernel of anxiety developed inside her mind and expanded until it pushed all other thoughts out of the way. In the daytime she could not settle down to anything and when she went to bed it was only to wake two or three times in the night still thinking of that one possibility. It began to alarm her. She studied herself in the bevelled mirror in the mauve and chromium bathroom and was incredulous. Her whole body looked as it had always looked. Yet, in a sense, it did not even belong to her any more; and she was frightened of it.

  It made it worse, too, her not daring to tell Gerald. But she didn’t want to worry him, not just now when he was so worried already about his father. He had been quite frank about it. “If anything happens to him,” he had said, “they’ll expect me to do something. And you know how we’re placed.” She had told him then that she couldn’t bear to see him anxious like that. If anything happened to Mr. Sneyd and Gerald was expected to support the family she would go out and get a job herself she had said. But Gerald had refused to hear of it. “No, thank you,” he had said. “I don’t want any wife of mine to have to go out and earn her own living. I’ll find a way somehow.”

  He had been silly and pig-headed and obstinate about it; but Alice had loved him for it.

  And now this thing, so much worse than anything Gerald could have imagined, had happened. Instead of helping him she was just going to be another and bigger anxiety. She knew how methodically and unromantically careful he had always been. And Gerald had been so confident that everything would be all right; he had planned the whole of his life on the assumption that there wouldn’t be a child for years.

  But were babies so expensive really? She wondered. If they were, how could the world and East Finchley be so full of them? Probably other people exaggerated; it was those who hadn’t got them who seemed so afraid at the thought of having them. If she and Gerald were careful they could manage somehow. They were young and they’d still have each other. They needn’t be the kind of parents who were stuck in all the time simply because they hadn’t got a nurse. With their own car, they could go into the country and have picnics in a field with the baby lying on a rug out there in the sunlight … the picture, distant though it was, served to comfort her. She was no longer frightened; only excited. She saw how absurd it was, being frightened of telling Gerald. He would be nice enough about it as soon as he knew. He might even be pleased. It was his sort of man who got very much attached to a child.

  But because she didn’t want any congratulations at the moment, she went to a doctor who was a stranger. He was quite impersonal and coldly efficient. He told her that it was a little early to say for certain; but he added that he thought it was quite safe enough for her to go back and tell her husband.

  Alice was lying down resting when the large van containing the radiogramophone drew up. She had to lie down in the afternoons now; she got so giddy. But she got up to open the door. Then holding on to the dressing-table in the bedroom, she stood at the window watching the men unload. She could see the outline of the thing; under its cover of sacking it looked massive and magnificent.

  And once inside the house, it looked even more huge than it had seemed outside. It dwarfed and it dominated. There was an immediate feeling that the rest of the room ought to have been furnished round it. She stood and gazed at it. The instrument was not bleak and forbidding like the refectory sideboard in the dining-room, but sumptuous and awe-inspiringly extravagant. The inlaid walnut shone in a halo of pure costliness. Everything around it, even the new covers seemed inevitably a little faded and commonplace; it was as though a fixture from the First-Class had miraculously been transported into the Tourist.

  While the men were finishing fixing it, she went upstairs again. Once in the bedroom her head swam, and she had to lie down on the bed. The house revolved round her and, when it stopped, it left her feeling sick, very sick. She did not move until a burst of music from below announced that the set was working. It seemed moreover to be working particularly well. When the announcer spoke it was like having a powerful stranger shouting in the drawing-room.

  The machine was still playing, only more softly by now, when the two men left. Alice signed a paper that acknowledged that the instrument was in perfect working order when it had been delivered, and the van drove away. Then she went back into the drawing-room and began to play with the knobs; it was tremendous, like toying with a battleship. The thing blared and boomed. Finally, she found some distant and improbable station that was transmitting dance music and let it play to her. She put her feet up on the couch and lit a cigarette. It was the kind of thing she had always seen herself doing; it was having one’s feet up on a couch in the afternoon, instead of on the oilcloth under a typist’s-table, that was the difference between marriage and earning your own living.

  If it weren’t that she still felt sick, the afternoon would ha
ve been perfect.

  When Gerald left the office he turned and went the other way. He wasn’t going straight back to Finchley to-night; he was going to see his father first. In readiness for the visit he bought an extra evening paper and a pound of grapes from a man he found pushing a barrow.

  St. Martin’s Hospital stood in a grey square at the back of the Pentonville Road. It was not an encouraging neighbourhood. The houses, which all looked the same, ran in sloping, congested rows at right angles to the bleak hill up and down which the trams went grinding. It was not that the area was a slum; very far from it, in fact. A slum has a nasty, teeming vitality of its own. And St. Martin’s Square, and St. Martin’s Street and St. Martin’s Terrace had nothing. They were simply forlorn and hopeless, the decaying vestiges of a once-triumphant civilisation. The stucco had flaked off the front of the public house at the corner; and the stone steps up to the front doors were worn into shallow arcs by the passage of endless regiments of tired, unliftable feet. Even the lamp-posts—old fashioned, gas-mantle affairs—looked shabby.

  Gerald gripped the brown paper bag, which already had grown suspiciously moist in the corner, and set off to take a short cut. He felt himself growing more and more depressed as he proceeded. It was all so terribly like his own native Station Approach.

  Then he turned the corner of St. Martin’s Road and came on the back of the hospital. It towered up like a great lighted iceberg; the mere mass of it was chastening. As he walked past, a door in the side of the place opened—it was a narrow, intimate sort of door—and two men came out carrying a coffin. There was a light hearse, little more than a dog-cart, waiting outside. The two men loaded up and drove briskly off. Gerald looked away. He felt curiously ashamed, as though he had seen more than he was meant to see. That little door at the back through which the failures were carried out had evidently never been intended for visitors’ eyes.

  He had some little difficulty in seeing his father at all. But the Night Sister was Irish and could therefore understand relations wanting to see each other. She seemed in particular to understand Gerald’s wanting to see Mr. Sneyd. She kept calling Gerald “You poor boy,” while she talked to him.