Diana

by R. F Delderfield

  Nobody at home referred to Diana. Uncle Reuben had had a satisfactory report about me from his friend, the editor, and I could see that he had now completely forgotten the part Diana had played in removing me to London in the first place. Although, in some ways, I liked going back to Whinmouth, I was always glad when it was time to return to the privacy of my bed-sitter and the demands of The Illustrated Echo. In London I was able to keep Diana in her glass case some of the time. Down here she popped out of it every few moments, and the closer I went to Sennacharib, the more painful and depressing became my thoughts.

  It was after my return on that occasion that I made my first real effort to put her out of mind altogether. I had written barely a page of The Royal Tigress since the night I saw Yves on the newsreel and now I forced myself to contemplate the empty prospects that faced me if I failed to get over Diana and discovered, after years of waiting perhaps, that I was nothing more to her than the partner in an adolescent prank. Sometimes I imagined I could hear her discussing me with a sophisticated friend, over a coffee on some exotic terrace by the sea. “Jan? Oh, we had a lot of fun when Mummy wasn’t looking! He was frightfully stuck on me I believe, but the weeniest bit dreary, darling, taken all round.”

  I was certainly becoming a dull young dog, and one day Twining, the friendly, pimply subeditor, who was several years my senior, told me as much. Twining had married the previous year, after getting his girl into trouble, and now lived out at Twickenham in a semidetached. At the office he frequently bewailed his premature loss of freedom and inveighed against the economic miseries of marriage and parenthood.

  “By God, young Leigh,” he told me when he overheard me saying that I had no plans for the evening, “you single blokes don’t know when you’re well off, I’m damned if you do! Look, son, you’re free, you’ve got dough in your pocket, you can go where you like and you can stop there until morning, with no one to chew the fat over you when you turn up with a hangover and a contented cow’s look on your mug. What’s eating a kid like you? Why the hell don’t you see life while you’ve got the chance and before some calculating Judy puts tabs on you?”

  Twining was no more than a chance acquaintance and never, during my stay in London, did he qualify as a friend, but by this time I felt a desperate need to confide in someone, so without reflecting much upon the matter I told him about Diana. I was surprised and slightly flattered by his interest. He asked me scores of questions about her and gave my answers a good deal of thought. Finally he blew out his cheeks and regarded me with amused contempt.

  “Christ, kid,” he said, “you’ve got it bad, haven’t you? It’s a good job you told me about this, though, because Uncle Twining is the very man to see you through it! I’ll tell you what, let’s knock off and go down to the pub for a jar. We can talk it over in comparative privacy down there.”

  I instantly regretted having told him. I was not much attracted to him and I was young enough and green enough to be shocked by his casual attitude to marriage. I had met his wife, a fluffy, talkative little blonde, and I pitied her. Their marriage seemed a very shallow and tawdry partnership when measured against my dreams of marriage to Diana. However, there was no help for it now, so we adjourned to the local pub and carried our beer to an alcove, where he became jocularly confidential.

  “Listen here, son, I’m years older than you and maybe it’s none of my biz but damn it, I don’t like to see a chap hooked the way I was and that’s what you’re heading into—you’ll get married on the rebound to the first bit of skirt you meet the day the lady of the manor gives you the brush-off! Yes, yes, I know, that can’t happen, you’ll say, but it will, Buddy, it will and I’ll tell you how and why.”

  He then launched into a colorful description of Diana’s set, and he knew them well, for he had worked for a time on the gossip page of a daily.

  “They’re as hard as nails, son, and just as mercenary as their mothers, so don’t get any ideas to the contrary. Oh, they’re okay for slap and tickle when they’re on the point of ‘being launched,’ and you really can’t blame ’em, because the men they eventually do marry never have any lead in their pencils and somehow they know it, even at that age. That’s why they run off with chaps like you and make hay while the sun shines, but when it comes to marrying, brother, they keep their eye smack on the ball! Nothing less than three to five thou’ a year and a title if they can hook one. You can’t blame ’em for that either. If you’d been brought up with someone to wait on you hand, foot and finger, and if you’d kipped in the Carlton at Cannes from the time you could remember, would you trade it to change shoes with an unpaid char and a fortnight at Margate with the kids every August?”

  “But Diana isn’t like that,” I protested, angrily. “She hates the way she’s been brought up and there’s not an atom of snobbery about her.”

  He laughed unpleasantly, and although he was genuinely trying to help me I could have struck him across the mouth.

  “I didn’t expect you to believe me,” he said. “You’re a bloody little romantic and you’ve got it coming to you, but you’ll believe me in the end, son. You’ll look back on this conversation and say to yourself, ‘Old Twining was spot on! Old Twining knew his way around. Everything he said would happen has happened!’ Damn it, man, forget the moonlight and roses for a minute and look on it from the practical viewpoint. How in God’s name do you reckon you’ll ever be able to keep a girl like that? Suppose you make the grade here? Suppose you land a good job with a national daily? Even then you won’t take home more than thirty a week, and I daresay she spends that on clothes and make-up right now. Have another jar, on me this time—you look as if you need one!”

  We had another drink and then two more. By the time I had seen Twining onto his train at Waterloo I was slightly drunk and very desperate. He leaned out of the compartment window and gave me a final piece of advice.

  “What you need, Leigh, is a woman. Boy, oh boy, do you need a woman! Any woman! Take my advice, son, get yourself one tonight and start fresh.”

  I didn’t take his advice at that time. I was far too timid to come to much harm in London and on the few occasions that a prostitute had accosted me I had always mumbled something unintelligible and hurried on my way, with my eyes at pavement level. I told myself, of course, that this was because of Diana but I don’t think it was, not at that time. Uncle Reuben had forced himself to lecture me on this subject before he turned me loose in town, and when a closer familiarity with men like Twining encouraged me to take some of his dire warnings with a large pinch of salt, I was engrossed in my book and in grandiose dreams of the future. There was no room in my life for casual encounters.

  The conversation, however, did have a sequel.

  A week or two later Twining rang down from the subs’ room and said that his wife had, gone over to her sister’s for the weekend and had taken the baby with her. He was on the loose for one Saturday afternoon and evening, and would I care to join him in a pub crawl? I said I had nothing better to do, and when we left the office about 2 P.M. he piloted me toward a battered Austin Twelve tourer, parked in our truck ramp.

  “It’s my brother-in-law’s,” he told me, gleefully. “He said I could have it until tomorrow and it’s given me a swell idea. What do you say to a run out into the country, just to see what’s growing down there?”

  I much preferred this to the cinema and an aimless drift around the suburban pubs, but it was soon clear that Twining’s curiosity about the country had nothing to do with wild flowers. We headed straight for Tonbridge, where he had once worked as an estate agent’s clerk, and from an inn on the outskirts of the town he made a phone call and rejoined me in high feather.

  “I’ve fixed a date with Peggy,” he said. “She’s a nifty little piece, an old girl friend of mine, and she’s promised to find a friend. There’s a hop over at Penshurst, you see, nothing much, but good for a lark, and listen—she says we can go back to her place after for coffee and sandwiches. We’re in luck
, son! Her old man kicked the bucket years ago and her old woman is deaf as a post and goes to bed at nine anyway.”

  I felt a certain amount of pleasurable excitement at the prospect of such an evening. Looking back, it seems incredible to me that I had arrived at my eighteenth birthday without ever having been interested in a girl other than Diana, but I know that this was so. I think I was more curious than eager to hold another girl in my arms and try someone else’s kisses. Suddenly I began to feel almost grateful to Twining for including me in this philandering expedition.

  We had tea and picked up the girls at Peggy’s home, a largish, cottage-type house in a quiet, tree-lined cul-de-sac. Peggy was a slim, boyish-looking blonde—Twining was only interested in blondes—and she seemed delighted to welcome him back. I learned afterwards that they had been engaged for a tune and it was obvious that she had no idea that he was now a married man.

  The girl she brought for me was Madeleine. She seemed at first a vaguely disinterested young woman. Later I realized that this air was only assumed for my benefit, for when she forgot to pose she became friendly and talkative.

  “I’m so glad you’re tall,” she told me, soon after we had been introduced and had settled ourselves in the back of the car. “I can’t stand little men at any price!”

  “A little goes a long way,” chuckled Twining, who was small himself.

  He had already started to paw Peggy in the front of the car and settled down to enjoy himself with desperate resolution.

  “Well, girls and boys, off we go! First stop The Bull, Hildenborough, second stop The Cock, Leigh—pronounced ‘Li,’ Mr. Leigh! Bull and cock! Highly appropriate, what?” and he laughed uproariously at his own feeble quip.

  I glanced at Peggy to see how she would take this, for secretly almost everything Twining said was inclined to shock me a little, but she was obviously accustomed to his type of humor and only said, “Now George, behave!” as we roared out of town, Twining showing off madly with a series of rapid gear changes, and Madeleine looking out of the window with studied unconcern, as though already raising a line of defense against tepidity on my part.

  I stole a cautious look at her as we went along. She was dark and pale to the point of being pasty. She had a full face and slightly pendulous cheeks, but her eyes were large and brown, with curling lashes that reminded me of Diana’s. She had a ripe, sulky mouth and now that I was able to look at her more closely, I saw that she was a good deal older than Peggy, twenty-two at least, and apparently experienced with men. On the way out I rather wished we could swop girls, for Peggy’s freshness and vitality appealed to me far more than Madeleine’s sultry charm, but there could be no question of that, so I made up my mind that the sooner we had a drink or two, the better would be the prospect of a pleasant evening. I might lose my embarrassment at being paired off with a complete stranger, and she might loosen up a little and come halfway to meet me.

  We stopped at the two pubs Twining had named. The girls had gins and lime and we drank beer. Peggy soon became very giggly, but I was right about Madeleine. After the second stop she made the running, nestling close to me, lifting my hand and putting it on her lap.

  Soon I began to enjoy myself in a mild sort of way and the evening passed pleasantly enough. The dance was a jolly uninhibited affair, with plenty of loud laughter, bursting balloons, streamers, and squeals of delight from the patrons. We stayed until midnight and then made our way back to Tonbridge, Twining driving with one hand and mounting the curb as we swung into the quiet cul-de-sac where Peggy lived.

  Peggy told us to be very quiet, and we all filed in through the back door. The coffee and sandwiches were there but they were mere pretexts. After a sip and a nibble Twining and Peggy retired to the front room, Twining winking at me as he left and pinching the little blonde’s bottom with an air of a customer sampling goods.

  There was an awkward silence after they had gone. Then Madeleine said, “You haven’t been out with many girls, have you, John?”

  I was prepared to bluff but she smiled and gave me a peck on the forehead. She looked much more attractive when she smiled and my shame at being spotted as an amateur was reduced by her good-natured approach.

  “Never mind,” she said, “I’d much sooner have you than that nasty piece of work in there! He’s an absolute stinker and for the life of me I can’t understand what Peggy sees in him.”

  I said that nobody could ever see what anyone else saw in anyone. I also admitted that her guess about my lack of experience was accurate. Her interest in this confession surprised me.

  “Why?” she wanted to know. “Did you once go steady with someone?”

  “Yes,” I said, “for a long time—ever since I was a kid.”

  “But you’re only a kid now,” she laughed, and then, quite gently: “What happened? Come unstuck?”

  “More or less.”

  “Want to talk about it?”

  “No.”

  “I’m glad,” she said. “Most of the chaps I get landed with do. I’m a universal aunt and it isn’t very flattering.”

  She said this so solemnly that I felt sorry for her. I put my arms around her and kissed her, lightly at first but more enthusiastically when she responded with a kind of desperate eagerness. She was a nice girl to kiss and I lost all my shyness after we had stood swaying for a moment or two.

  “I like you, John, you’re a decent boy, not at all the type I should expect George Twining to go around with,” she said, rather breathlessly.

  I told her that Twining wasn’t a friend, just an office colleague, and she told me that she had recently been thrown over by a boy she expected to marry and that this was the second time, not counting friendships that hadn’t amounted to much from the beginning.

  “I can’t understand that,” I said. “You’re jolly good company and I think you’re pretty and exciting!”

  I was alarmed by her reaction to this gallant speech on my part. I only said it with the intention of cheering her up but it had the effect of transforming her expression into something approaching radiancy. I had never had to say things like this to Diana. She didn’t need to be flattered or courted, because it had been obvious to her from our first meeting that I regarded her as the most exciting person on earth. With Madeleine it was very different. She took my hands in hers and gazed at me with eyes as soft and wide as a heifer’s.

  “Do you think so? Do you really think so, John? Oh, I could hug Peggy for ringing me up tonight! Look—why are we standing like this? There’s a sofa in the corner and we might as well make ourselves comfortable. Peggy and George will be necking in there until early morning.”

  My experience with girls might have been limited but it was wide enough to understand now why men had shied away from Madeleine. She wasn’t content with rushing fences, she kicked her way through them. Before I knew what was happening, the lights were out, the back door key was turned and we were clinging to one another on the sofa. I don’t remember taking an active part in these preliminaries.

  It was an old and uncomfortable sofa and seemed to have been designed by someone who enjoyed making things difficult for lovers. It had a hard, shiny surface and any sudden movement was apt to deposit one or both of us onto the floor. After two such humiliations we settled for this and made ourselves comfortable as possible with cushions. Here, after a great deal of kissing and clumsy caressing, my enthusiasm overtook hers, but her protests seemed to me very halfhearted and I persisted, so that at length she whispered, “Wait a minute, John—please!” and removed herself from me in the darkness. A moment later I realized that her protests had been lodged in defense of her dance frock and not, as I had imagined, on behalf of her honor, for when she came back to me she had removed her dress and we had soon pressed the encounter to its’ logical conclusion.

  I don’t remember feeling as guilty or apprehensive in my life and she sensed it at once.

  “It was what you wanted, wasn’t it, John?” she asked anxiously.


  I made a tremendous effort to convey a gratitude that I did not feel and kissed her, misjudging the distance in the dark and kissing her neck instead of her face.

  “Yes, of course, Madeleine,” I said, and while the answer seemed to satisfy her it sounded to me like the words of a man confessing to a crime that would hustle him to the gallows.

  I don’t know how long we sat there, tired, cold and crumpled, but at last she got up, humming a snatch of a tune we had heard earlier in the evening. I can remember the tune. It was “Little White Lies,” and whenever I hear it now, it conjures up a small wavelet of that vast tide of guilt and fear that poured over me as we slouched about Peggy’s kitchen, making fresh coffee and waiting for Twining to emerge from the front room.

  We said very little but it was clear that Madeleine did not share my crushing load of dismay. As she tidied her hair, pausing in her partings and combings to give me swift, sidelong smiles, there was an air of smugness and complacency about her. At that particular time I hated her for it.

  4.

  My feelings of apprehension about this incident persisted for some time but my sense of guilt disappeared almost at once. In fact, as time went on and no dire consequences resulted, I began to feel mildly defiant about it, as though, by making love to a stranger, I had scored off Diana and punished her for demonstrating that she had outgrown our pledges and had no intention of renewing them.

  All that winter this resentment against her mounted, and alongside it there grew in me a deliberate intention to vindicate myself as a man ill-used by a woman in whom he had reposed trust. It was a painful, gradual process. The plant that Diana had nourished in me over a period of three impressionable years had grown very deep roots, and it was not easy to extract them. When I first came to London the most innocent friendship with an office girl would have constituted a shameless betrayal of our Sennacharib vows. I am not claiming that this was a sensible attitude for a boy of my age and experience, but am simply stating that it was so. Even my confidences to a man like Twining had seemed an act of disloyalty and the passage with Madeleine was a bonfire of all my hopes and ideals at the time. Later the sense of personal betrayal left me and I began to rationalize my behavior, and this became much easier as the months passed and I made more friends among the staff, and one or two fellow lodgers. Twining was one of the first to notice the change in me and having surmised, quite accurately, what had happened between Madeleine and me while he was closeted in the front room, he lost no time in taking the credit for it.