‘I know.’
‘Henry suggest it to you?’
‘No … Really no. It was entirely my doing. I didn’t want Henry to go bankrupt. I don’t think Henry himself would have minded going bankrupt at all. But I would. Do you think I was a fool?’
Mr Baldock considered.
‘In one way, yes, in another way not at all.’
‘Expound.’
‘Well, you haven’t got very much money. You may need it badly in the future. If you think your attractive husband can be relied upon to provide for you, you can just think again. In that way, you’re a fool.’
‘And the other way?’
‘Looking at it the other way, you’ve paid out your money to buy yourself peace of mind. That may have been quite a wise thing to do.’ He shot a sharp glance at her. ‘Still fond of your husband?’
‘Yes.’
‘Is he a good husband to you?’
Shirley walked slowly round the room. Once or twice she ran her finger absently along a table or the back of a chair, and looked at the dust upon it. Mr Baldock watched her.
She came to a decision at last. Standing by the fireplace, her back turned to him, she said:
‘Not particularly.’
‘In what way?’
In an unemotional voice Shirley said:
‘He’s having an affair with another woman.’
‘Serious?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘So you came away?’
‘Yes.’
‘Angry?’
‘Furious.’
‘Going back?’
Shirley was silent a moment. Then she said:
‘Yes, I am.’
‘Well,’ said Mr Baldock, ‘it’s your life.’ Shirley came over to him and kissed the top of his head. Mr Baldock grunted.
‘Thank you, Baldy,’ she said.
‘Don’t thank me, I haven’t done anything.’
‘I know,’ said Shirley. ‘That’s what’s so wonderful of you!’
Chapter Six
1
The trouble was, Shirley thought, that one got tired.
She leaned back against the plush of the Underground seat.
Three years ago, she hadn’t known what tiredness was. Living in London might be a partial cause. Her work had at first been only part-time, but she now worked full-time at the flower-shop in the West End. After that, there were usually things to buy, and then the journey home in the rush-hour, and then the preparing and cooking of the evening meal.
It was true that Henry appreciated her cooking!
Her eyes closed as she leaned back. Someone trod heavily on her toes and she winced.
She thought: ‘But I am tired …’
Her mind went back fitfully over the three and a half years of her married life …
Early bliss …
Bills …
More bills …
Sonia Cleghorn …
Rout of Sonia Cleghorn. Henry penitent, charming, affectionate …
More money difficulties …
Bailiffs …
Muriel to the rescue …
Expensive and unnecessary but quite delightful holiday at Cannes …
The Hon. Mrs Emlyn Blake …
Deliverance of Henry from the toils of Mrs Emlyn Blake …
Henry grateful, penitent, charming …
Fresh financial crisis …
Big Bertha to the rescue …
The Lonsdale girl …
Financial worries …
Still the Lonsdale girl …
Laura …
Staving off Laura …
Failure to stave off Laura …
Row with Laura …
Appendicitis. Operation. Convalescence …
Return home …
Final phase of the Lonsdale girl …
Her mind lingered and dwelt on that last item.
She had been resting in the flat. It was the third flat they had lived in, and was filled with furniture bought on the hire purchase system – this last suggested by the incident of the bailiffs.
The bell had rung, and she felt too lazy to get up and open the door. Whoever it was would go away. But whoever it was didn’t go away. They rang again and again.
Shirley rose angrily to her feet. She went to the door, pulled it open and stood face to face with Susan Lonsdale.
‘Oh, it’s you, Sue.’
‘Yes. Can I come in?’
‘Actually I’m rather tired. I’ve just come back from hospital.’
‘I know. Henry told me. You poor darling. I’ve brought you some flowers.’
Shirley took the out-thrust bunch of daffodils without any marked expression of gratitude.
‘Come in,’ she said.
She went back to the sofa and put her feet up. Susan Lonsdale sat down in a chair.
‘I didn’t want to worry you while you were still in hospital,’ she said. ‘But I do feel, you know, that we ought to get things settled.’
‘In what way?’
‘Well – Henry.’
‘What about Henry?’
‘Darling, you’re not going to be an ostrich, are you? Head in the sand and all that?’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘You do know, don’t you, that Henry and I have got quite a thing about each other?’
‘I should have to be blind and deaf not to know that,’ said Shirley coldly.
‘Yes – yes, of course. And, I mean, Henry’s awfully fond of you. He’d hate to upset you in any way. But there it is.’
‘There what is?’
‘What I’m really talking about is divorce.’
‘You mean that Henry wants a divorce?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then why hasn’t he mentioned it?’
‘Oh, Shirley darling, you know what Henry’s like. He does so hate having to be definite. And he didn’t want to upset you.’
‘But you and he want to get married?’
‘Yes. I’m so glad you understand.’
‘I suppose I understand all right,’ said Shirley slowly.
‘And you’ll tell him that it’s all right?’
‘I’ll talk to him, yes.’
‘It’s awfully sweet of you. I do feel that in the end –’
‘Oh, go away,’ said Shirley. ‘I’m just out of hospital and I’m tired. Go away – at once – do you hear?’
‘Well, really,’ said Susan, rising in some dudgeon. ‘I do think – well, one might at least be civilized.’
She went out of the room and the front door banged.
Shirley lay very still. Once a tear crept slowly down her cheek. She wiped it away angrily.
‘Three years and a half,’ she thought. ‘Three years and a half … and it’s come to this.’ And then, suddenly, without being able to help it, she began to laugh. That sentiment sounded so like a line in a bad play.
She didn’t know if it was five minutes later or two hours when she heard Henry’s key in the door.
He came in looking gay and light-hearted as usual. In his hand was an enormous bunch of long-stemmed yellow roses.
‘For you, darling. Nice?’
‘Lovely,’ said Shirley. ‘I’ve already had daffodils. Not so nice. Rather cheap and past their prime, as a matter of fact.’
‘Oh, who sent you those?’
‘They weren’t sent. They were brought. Susan Lonsdale brought them.’
‘What cheek,’ said Henry indignantly.
Shirley looked at him in faint surprise.
‘What did she come here for?’ he asked.
‘Don’t you know?’
‘I suppose I can guess. That girl’s becoming a positive pest.’
‘She came to tell me that you want a divorce.’
‘That I want a divorce? From you?’
‘Yes. Don’t you?’
‘Of course I don’t,’ said Henry indignantly.
‘You don’t want to marry Susan?’
‘I should hate to marry Susan.’
‘She wants to marry you.’
‘Yes, I’m afraid she does.’ Henry looked despondent. ‘She’s always ringing me up and writing me letters. I don’t know what to do about her.’
‘Did you tell her you wanted to marry her?’
‘Oh, one says things,’ said Henry vaguely. ‘Or rather they say things and one agrees … One has to, more or less.’ He gave her an uneasy smile. ‘You wouldn’t divorce me, would you, Shirley?’
‘I might,’ said Shirley.
‘Darling –’
‘I’m getting rather – tired, Henry.’
‘I’m a brute. I’ve given you a rotten deal.’ He knelt down beside her. The old alluring smile flashed out. ‘But I do love you, Shirley. All this other silly nonsense doesn’t count. It doesn’t mean anything. I’d never want to be married to anyone but you. If you’ll go on putting up with me?’
‘What did you really feel about Susan?’
‘Can’t we forget about Susan? She’s such a bore.’
‘I’d just like to understand.’
‘Well –’ Henry considered. ‘For about a fortnight I was mad about her. Couldn’t sleep. After that, I still thought she was rather wonderful. After that I thought she was beginning, perhaps, to be just the least bit of a bore. And then she quite definitely was a bore. And just lately she’s been an absolute pest.’
‘Poor Susan.’
‘Don’t worry about Susan. She’s got no morals and she’s a perfect bitch.’
‘Sometimes, Henry, I think you’re quite heartless.’
‘I’m not heartless,’ said Henry indignantly. ‘I just don’t see why people have to cling so. Things are fun if you don’t take them seriously.’
‘Selfish devil!’
‘Am I? I suppose I am. You don’t really mind, do you, Shirley?’
‘I shan’t leave you. But I’m rather fed up, all the same. You’re not to be trusted over money, and you’ll probably go on having these silly affairs with women.’
‘Oh no, I won’t. I swear I won’t.’
‘Oh, Henry, be honest.’
‘Well, I’ll try not to, but do try and understand, Shirley, that none of these affairs mean anything. There’s only you.’
‘I’ve a good mind to have an affair myself!’ said Shirley.
Henry said that he wouldn’t be able to blame her if she did.
He then suggested that they should go out somewhere amusing, and have dinner together.
He was a delightful companion all the evening.
Chapter Seven
1
Mona Adams was giving a cocktail party. Mona Adams loved all cocktail parties, and particularly her own. Her voice was hoarse, since she had had to scream a good deal to be heard above her guests. It was being a very successful cocktail party.
She screamed now as she greeted a late-comer.
‘Richard! How wonderful! Back from the Sahara – or is it the Gobi?’
‘Neither. Actually it’s the Fezzan.’
‘Never heard of it. But how good to see you! What a lovely tan. Now who do you want to talk to? Pam, Pam, let me introduce Sir Richard Wilding. You know, the traveller – camels and big game and deserts – those thrilling books. He’s just come back from somewhere in – in Tibet.’
She turned and screamed once more at another arrival.
‘Lydia! I’d no idea you were back from Paris. How wonderful!’
Richard Wilding was listening to Pam, who was saying feverishly:
‘I saw you on television – only last night! How thrilling to meet you. Do tell me now –’
But Richard Wilding had no time to tell her anything.
Another acquaintance had borne down upon him.
He fetched up at last, with his fourth drink in his hand, on a sofa beside the loveliest girl he had ever seen.
Somebody had said:
‘Shirley, you must meet Richard Wilding.’
Richard had at once sat down beside her. He said:
‘How exhausting these affairs are! I’d forgotten. Won’t you slip away with me, and have a quiet drink somewhere?’
‘I’d love to,’ said Shirley. ‘This place gets more like a menagerie every minute.’
With a pleasing sense of escape, they came out into the cool evening air.
Wilding hailed a taxi.
‘It’s a little late for a drink,’ he said, glancing at his watch, ‘and we’ve had a good many drinks, anyway. I think dinner is indicated.’
He gave the address of a small, but expensive restaurant off Jermyn Street.
The meal ordered, he smiled across the table at his guest.
‘This is the nicest thing that’s happened to me since I came back from the wilds. I’d forgotten how frightful London cocktail-parties were. Why do people go to them? Why did I? Why do you?’
‘Herd instinct, I suppose,’ said Shirley lightly.
She had a sense of adventure that made her eyes bright. She looked across the table at the bronzed attractive man opposite her.
She was faintly pleased with herself at having snatched away the lion of the party.
‘I know all about you,’ she said. ‘And I’ve read your books!’
‘I don’t know anything about you – except that your Christian name is Shirley. What’s the rest of it?’
‘Glyn-Edwards.’
‘And you’re married.’ His eyes rested on her ringed finger.
‘Yes. And I live in London and work in a flower-shop.’
‘Do you like living in London, and working in a flower-shop and going to cocktail parties?’
‘Not very much.’
‘What would you like to do – or be?’
‘Let me see.’ Shirley’s eyes half closed. She spoke dreamily. ‘I’d like to live on an island – an island rather far away from anywhere. I’d like to live in a white house with green shutters and do absolutely nothing all day long. There would be fruit on the island and great curtains of flowers, all in a tangle … colour and scent … and moonlight every night … and the sea would look dark purple in the evenings …’
She sighed and opened her eyes.
‘Why does one always choose islands? I don’t suppose a real island would be nice at all.’
Richard Wilding said softly: ‘How odd that you should say what you did.’
‘Why?’
‘I could give you your island.’
‘Do you mean you own an island?’
‘A good part of one. And very much the kind of island you described. The sea is wine-dark there at night, and my villa is white with green shutters, and the flowers grow as you describe, in wild tangles of colour and scent, and nobody is ever in a hurry.’
‘How lovely. It sounds like a dream island.’
‘It’s quite real.’
‘How can you ever bear to come away?’
‘I’m restless. Some day I shall go back there and settle down and never leave it again.’
‘I think you’d be quite right.’
The waiter came with the first course and broke the spell. They began talking lightly of everyday things.
Afterwards Wilding drove Shirley home. She did not ask him to come in. He said: ‘I hope – we’ll soon meet again?’
He held her hand a fraction longer than was necessary, and she flushed as she drew it away.
That night she dreamed of an island.
2
‘Shirley?’
‘Yes?’
‘You know, don’t you, that I’m in love with you?’
Slowly she nodded.
She would have found it hard to describe the last three weeks. They had had a queer, unreal quality about them. She had walked through them in a kind of permanent abstraction.
She knew that she had been very tired – and that she was still tired, but that out of her tiredness had come a delicious hazy feeling of not being really anywhere in particular.
And in that state of hazines
s, her values had shifted and changed.
It was as though Henry and everything that pertained to Henry had become dim and rather far away. Whereas Richard Wilding stood boldly in the foreground – a romantic figure rather larger than life.
She looked at him now with grave considering eyes.
He said:
‘Do you care for me at all?’
‘I don’t know.’
What did she feel? She knew that every day this man came to occupy more and more of her thoughts. She knew that his proximity excited her. She recognized that what she was doing was dangerous, that she might be swept away on a sudden tide of passion. And she knew that, definitely, she didn’t want to give up seeing him …
Richard said:
‘You’re very loyal, Shirley. You’ve never said anything to me about your husband.’
‘Why should I?’
‘But I’ve heard a good deal.’
Shirley said:
‘People will say anything.’
‘He’s unfaithful to you and not, I think, very kind.’
‘No, Henry’s not a kind man.’
‘He doesn’t give you what you ought to have – love, care, tenderness.’
‘Henry loves me – in his fashion.’
‘Perhaps. But you want something more than that.’
‘I used not to.’
‘But you do now. You want – your island, Shirley.’
‘Oh! the island. That was just a day-dream.’
‘It’s a dream that could come true.’
‘Perhaps. I don’t think so.’
‘It could come true.’
A small chilly breeze came across the river to the terrace on which they were sitting.
Shirley got up, pulling her coat tightly around her.
‘We mustn’t talk like this any more,’ she said. ‘What we’re doing is foolish, Richard, foolish and dangerous.’
‘Perhaps. But you don’t care for your husband, Shirley, you care for me.’
‘I’m Henry’s wife.’
‘You care for me.’
She said again:
‘I’m Henry’s wife.’
She repeated it like an article of faith.
3
When she got home, Henry was lying stretched out on the sofa. He was wearing white flannels.
‘I think I’ve strained a muscle.’ He made a faint grimace of pain.
The Burden Page 9
