It seemed that he had scored a point for she considered some time before replying. ‘That’s true enough, Paul, that’s quite true and I suppose it puts me in the wrong. But it doesn’t make any real difference who is right and who is wrong, not now that I’ve had a chance to look back over the past and forward into the future!’ and to the cabby she called, ‘Take us to the Embankment and stop by Cleopatra’s Needle!’ and addressing Paul again, ‘I wonder if it’s possible to make you understand? It was very wrong of me to marry you, I realise that of course, but I think it would be far more wrong to go on pretending to make the best of it, and prevent you from leading a useful life as well as me. No, Paul,’ as he opened his mouth to protest, ‘let me say what I have to. We haven’t very long and we might never have another opportunity.’
‘But that’s monstrous!’ he burst out. ‘It makes me wonder if you understand what you’re doing!’
She looked at him sharply. ‘You mean that I’m slightly insane? Like my mother?’
‘No, I don’t mean that, and don’t keep twisting my words! You’re as sane as anyone in London but you’re allowing yourself to become the victim of a kind of mania. We could agree to differ, couldn’t we? Millions of husbands and wives do, without tearing their lives up by the roots! You say you didn’t love me but you gave a good imitation of love sometimes!’
‘Yes,’ she said, ‘I did and in that way I still could, Paul. But it doesn’t stop me from despising your whole way of life.’
‘You never shared my way of life and I never insisted that you did!’
She said, with a final attempt at reasoning, ‘Suppose I came back with you now? I should have a choice of playing nursemaid to a community with a medieval outlook, or accepting the role of a toy shut in a cupboard all day and taken out to be played with after dark! I know what would happen well enough, and so do you if you face up to it! You wouldn’t be content to let me develop wider interests of my own, and anyway, even if you were, I couldn’t do it down there, cut off from every new idea and everyone with a spark of intellectual curiosity. In the end you would retreat into a permanent sulk while I bore a child a year and pottered about in the rose garden between pregnancies! You think there is worthwhile work to be done in a place like Shallowford and maybe there is, for a man. But there’s nothing there for me and could never be and that’s why I decided to leave before we began to destroy one another, before it was too late for you to make a fresh start!’
The cab had stopped opposite the incongruous monument and they got out, Paul paying the man and following her to a seat facing the sluggish river. The sun shone brightly now and the Thames traffic was in full swing. Behind them trams sang back and forth along the Embankment and in front of them fussy little tugs towed strings of barges downstream, like ducks teaching ducklings to swim. Paul said, when a group of pedestrians had passed by, ‘How can you talk about a fresh start? We’re man and wife, aren’t we? We could only make a fresh start with each other but you won’t even discuss it!’
‘It isn’t easy to discuss it, Paul,’ she said earnestly. ‘When I was back there, alone in that horrible little cell, I could separate everything in my mind and I did think of you a great deal and could see very clearly the differences in our points of view but now, seeing you so hurt and desolate …’
‘Our points of view can’t be all that different, Grace,’ he interrupted. ‘I remember you saying that if we were able to bring physical joy to one another everything else could fall into place.’
‘I said there was a chance of that happening, Paul. It took me eighteen months to appreciate the real sacrifices demanded of marriage! Don’t you see, you’re concerned with the particular, and I’m concerned with the whole! Your outlook is honourable and useful enough but you’re content with a tiny field—a few dull-witted villagers, a little bad housing, involving maybe a dozen families. I want to work for an entire change in the system and I can’t even begin until women are admitted into the counsels of men! It isn’t a fad, Paul, it’s my reason for being alive!’
‘Nobody can move mountains alone, Grace. You’ve got to begin somewhere and in a modest way.’
‘That’s well enough for you, Paul and I’ve always understood that, but can you imagine a Raphael happy to paint miniatures? That’s what’s been wrong with us from the beginning. When I married you I thought I could change you, that perhaps I could use your idealism and money to create something worthwhile and enduring! But I can’t, and I never will! I see now that in trying to enlarge you, you will diminish me, until I go dry and sour inside. Neither one of us is to blame for this. You are new to patronage and see nothing contemptible in it but I grew up hating it, and determined to do battle with it! How could I do that if I was still part of it?’
She put her hand on his and looked at him with great earnestness. ‘You can get married again, Paul! You’re the kind of man who desperately needs a wife but the right kind of wife. I’d make it easy for you!’
He looked at her with an expression of such incredulity that she made a hopeless gesture with her free hand, as though to reduce the width of the gulf opening between them. ‘I owe you that much, Paul! It was a selfish, stupid act on my part to marry you but to hold on to you, as a kind of long-term insurance, would be unforgivable! Can’t you see that this isn’t really a personal issue? I’ll never cease to think of you as kind and generous and honest but we don’t make a pair. We never have, in spite of all the self-deception you’ve indulged in about me!’
It was a spiritual annulment of their marriage and the final dissolution of his hopes. He knew then, and with certainty, that he would never hold her again, that there would be no more embraces, no more companionship by the fireside and certainly no more children of the marriage, nothing but a dry interchange of ideas that he only half understood, and her insistence on reducing everything to words and phrases that belonged in pamphlets rather than hearts enraged him.
He stood up, brushing away her hand as though even her touch was repugnant and then he saw tears in her eyes and rejoiced that he had found a means to hurt her. He was surprised at the intensity of his feelings and his sudden move away from her, across to the embankment wall, was a recoil against the violence of feeling that urged him to strike her across the face, to beat her senseless, to fling her down on the pavement and jump on her. He understood then how Martin Codsall must have felt as he struck Arabella, and recalled Rudd’s observation concerning the provocation under which some murders occur, but the moment passed. By the time she was beside him again he was almost drained of emotion and conscious only of a sensation of inertia and drabness, that drained all the colour from life and set him apart from the passage of people and vehicles on the pavement and roadway behind. He stood there silently for a moment but at length managed to say, ‘Simon? I suppose you took Simon into account when you did your thinking back there in the cell?’ She made no reply so he remained looking fixedly at the river until he realised that the touch on his elbow was heavier then hers and turning looked directly into the face of a middle-aged policeman, a man with a heavy walrus moustache and a look of professional concern in his eyes. ‘Are you all right, sir?’ the man said and when Paul stared as though he had materialised from the base of the monument, added, half-apologetically, ‘I thought you looked a bit queer, sir.’
With a tremendous effort Paul pulled himself together. His sense of humour was too far off to help but his sense of irony remained. He said, ‘I’m all right, officer. It hadn’t occurred to me to jump in!’ and then, ‘Did you … did you see which way the young lady went?’
‘Yes, I did,’ said the man, looking relieved, ‘she boarded a tram, heading for the tunnel! Bit of a tiff, sir?’ and he grinned and waited.
‘You could call it that,’ Paul said, ‘but she’s more accustomed to them than me it seems. She’s a suffragette—and my wife!’
The policeman looked surprised and them amused. ‘You
don’t say, sir? Then do you mind my giving you a piece of advice? Don’t go after her, just take it out in beer. Then, when you’re braced up, take a dog-whip to her! If all you chaps did that we chaps would have a quieter time on the beat, sir!’ and as though feeling that he had shown too much levity he suddenly straightened his face, nodded and continued slowly on his walk towards the Boadicea statue.
The encounter had the effect of steadying Paul somewhat, so that, for the first time since he had seen Grace leave the prison he was able to make some shift at viewing the situation objectively, putting aside thoughts of pursuit, compromise or following her to the headquarters of the suffragists and perhaps dragging her home by the hair. Yet he did not abandon all thoughts of violence, for his mind conjured for a moment with male license of the past when, as the policeman had hinted, a husband in his situation could have legally thrashed his wife in public and been applauded by the magistrates for setting a good example. But as he considered this, the ultimate sacrifice of dignity, the sheer hopelessness of the situation overwhelmed him and again he almost succumbed to a physical nausea and thought he might do worse than follow the policeman’s advice as regards a drink, or several drinks. He crossed the road and passed under Charing Cross arches, turning in at the first public house in Villiers Street and ordering a double brandy. It was only after he had swallowed his second dram, and had nibbled at a beef sandwich, that the forces of resentment began to reassemble inside him, swelling until they embraced not only Grace and the suffragettes but all womenkind and yet, as he continued to drink, his thoughts began to sort themselves into a less extravagant pattern. He knew that his immediate need was for companionship and thought first of Celia, then of Uncle Franz across the river, and finally of Grenfell, over at the House, but after a moment’s thought he rejected all three. Celia would not be available, Zorndorff was too cynical and Grenfell might even sympathise with Grace, for he too was preoccupied with pamphlets, white papers and codifications compiled from the raw material of human emotions. ‘God help me, I have to talk to someone,’ he said aloud and a cheerful voice beside him said, ‘Well, I’ve bin hoping you would, dearie! You wanter buy me a stout?’
He did not recall ever having seen a more obvious harlot plying in public. She was a study in bright mauve, mauve summer dress, with old-fashioned leg-o’-mutton sleeves, mauve straw hat, open-work mauve mittens and it struck him at once that she was approximately Grace’s age, with Grace’s sturdy hips and shoulders and narrow waist. Her cheeks were heavily rouged and her lips gleamed with salve. She had on a pair of ear-rings made of some dull metal and a cheap coral necklace. Her hair, dark at the roots was dyed straw-blond and her eyebrows had been so mercilessly plucked that they had almost ceased to exist. He noticed all these things, misery sharpening his perceptions to an unusual degree and decided that her brittle smile was the saddest welcome he had ever been offered. He said, politely, ‘I’ll buy you a stout; you can have as much stout as you can drink.’
She laughed uncertainly, as though a little wary of him, but said, in her grating, Cockney voice, ‘Christ dearie, you wanner be careful wi’ your invitations!’ and to the impassive barman, ‘Fill ’er up, Fred!’ as she coiled herself on the high stool next to him, throwing one leg over the other and exposing a few inches of booted calf.
‘Whatever it is you don’ wanner do mor’n damp it down, dearie,’ she said, gaily. ‘Too much too quick an’ where are yer? Back where you was in no time at all with an ’angover as a bonus! You wanner take it nice an’ steady like me,’ and she downed half her stout in a gulp and he asked the barman for another brandy. As he raised it to his lips he saw that the girl was now looking at him closely and that her brittle smile was gone. She said, ‘Well, just that one if you’re really interested, dearie!’ and finishing her stout stood up and adjusted her hat in the gilded mirror. He followed her out into the sunshine, she slipped her arm through his and they went slowly up the hill towards Charing Cross Station. Seven brandies on an empty stomach left his mind free to conjure with irrelevancies, the warm colour of a pyramid of oranges on a coster’s barrow, the gap-toothed grin of the vendor, the words ‘Latest on the Far East War’ on a billboard beside a newsvendor. The girl said, ‘My place is behind the Turkish Baths. Lot o’ my gentlemen friends like to pop in after. Do you good it would, dearie, in your mood—quick game o’ Mums and Dads then sweat it aht an’ sleep it orf!’
She steered him into a narrow alley between two vast, slabsided buildings, then through a door and up two flights of uncarpeted stairs. At the top of the first flight an obese, bald-headed man was deeply absorbed in a newspaper, flaunting a heavy-type headline, ‘Japs Rout Tsar’s Army at Mukden!’ and Paul thought, ‘Now there’s idiocy for you! What real interest could a bald-headed old whoremaster have in Mukden?’ but the man did not look up as the girl ushered him into a small, sunless room that seemed full of stale steam. The bed was unmade, the single wickerwork chair piled with litter and there was unwashed crockery on the bedside table. The impact of the unrelieved squalor sobered him within seconds but the girl seemed disinclined to waste time. She reached behind her, unhooked her dress and let it fall, lifting her feet from the folds and stooping swiftly to unlace her boots. He watched her stupidly as she kicked them off, then picked up her dress and tossed it over the back of the chair, before making a half-hearted attempt to straighten the sheets. She wore no petticoat, only a punishingly tight corset and a pair of white, beribboned drawers the legs of which fell short of the top of her black stockings. He saw now that he had been misled by her padded shoulders and that although she had broad, fleshy hips that strained at the grubby rim of the corset the upper part of her body was very slender and her shoulders narrow and stooping. She said briskly, as she slipped off her drawers, ‘Are you one o’ the altogether boys or will near-enough do?’
‘How long have you been on the streets?’ he asked suddenly, not because he was interested but because it was the first conversational gambit that occurred to him but she looked at him now with amused exasperation. ‘Oh, Gawd!’ she said, with mock despair, ‘you ain’t one o’ them nosey parkers, are you?’ and then, as though deciding for herself that he was not, she said, ‘Let’s say long enough to send you on yer way rejoicing, dearie! Well, is it the lot or not? Or would you like a cup o’ cawfee first to clear yer pore head? No extra; all on the ’ouse.’
‘No coffee but thank you, thank you very much,’ he said foolishly, and for some reason, this pleased her and she said, ‘I like you! You’re different! I dunno why, but you don’ go with the girls neither, do you, or not all that much! You c’n alwus tell, mos’ly be the way they stand gawping, like you! Either that or they’re in such a perishin’ hurry! Tell you what,’ she put a finger in her mouth so that suddenly she no longer looked like a tart but like a lewd parody of a little girl teasing an adult, ‘we’ll ’ave our cawfee after an’ jus’ for you we’ll ’ave the altogether, so as you c’n swank to yer pals after!’ She swung round, putting her back to him. ‘You’ll ’ave to un’ook me, tho’!’
He stared at her narrow back, noting the contrast between the slack hooks at the top of the corset and the terrible tautness of those sheathing her buttocks. The stench of stale steam filled his nostrils so that he found it difficult to breath and his head seemed hardly to belong to him at all, yet it continued to record details with the accuracy of man making an inventory. He noted that the closed window was half covered with peeling paper, that the paper had a fussy pattern and that the girl favoured mauve above every other colour, for even the ribbons on her discarded drawers matched her outdoor clothes. Then, as though these facts revealed to him the absurdity of his presence here, he said quickly, ‘I’m sorry, I’m going now! Here …!’ and fumbling in his pocket he found a sovereign, slammed it down on the bedside table and hurried from the room.
The girl was so astonished that he was half-way across the landing before she realised he had gone and then, darting as far as the th
reshold, she shouted, ‘Come on back, Soppy! I’m clean I tell yer, I’m clean!’ but he went blundering down the stairs two at a time, rushing past the old man down the second flight to the passageway.
The clean air of the streets seemed as heady as the rush of a gale over Coombe Bluff and he gulped at it as if it was liquid. He went up Northumberland Avenue and into the Square, hurrying through the slow-moving traffic, across to St. Martin-in-the-Fields, then up Charing Cross Road as far as Leicester Square, where at last he slackened speed, crossing under Shakespeare’s statue to a seat opposite the Empire. He sat down with a vast sense of relief, as though he had just escaped suffocation in a sulphurous tunnel.
Traffic flowed round the Square and people passed to and fro in front of him but he seemed to have lost the knack of recording inconsequential detail and the only thing that impinged upon him, apart from relief, was a hoarding, advertising ‘Pearsons’s Preserved Peas’ fronting a building in the process of demolition. It struck him as being a very eye-catching advertisement, calculated to inspire almost anyone to have the utmost confidence in Pearson’s Preserved Peas. It was a great splash of colour, a compound of greens, yellows and blues, depicting a sea and country landscape not altogether unlike that of the Vale south of the final bend in the Sorrel. He thought, ‘By God, I believe it is the Valley!’ and then he realised that no corn was ever as golden as that and no sea as blue, not even on a windless day in high summer. The illusion braced him and in a persistent way worked upon his fuddled brain, so that presently, when he had recovered his breath, his head began to clear and he was able to review the events of the day, from the moment he had issued from Celia’s and hired the four-wheeler to his irrational flight from the sordid little room behind the Turkish Baths. He thought. ‘It can’t all be due to too much brandy on an empty stomach. I must have had a kind of brainstorm!’ and he wondered idly where Grace had gone after boarding the tram and then, by degrees, what he should do about her or himself, now, or later, or at any time in the future. He thought of hailing a cab and calling on Uncle Franz, or walking down to Westminster and sending in his card to Grenfell but a growing self-disgust prompted him to put both courses aside. What could either of them do beyond tendering advice? And what use was advice against an obstinacy like hers? Then he looked up at the hoarding again and this time it seemed to have a message for him, reminding him not solely of home but of all the people of the Valley, women and children whom, he supposed, had come to rely upon him to some extent. He thought, ‘As long as I’m here I can’t even think! I can always think down there so why don’t I just go home, out of all this fume and clatter, to people I need, even if hardly one among them really needs me?’ Then, as he stood up, he thought of Ikey Palfrey, now launched upon his first full day at school and buttressed by his bogus kinship with Squire of Shallowford, a boy with a manufactured background and a superimposed accent but with the courage of a hunted fox. The inevitable comparison between himself and Ikey made him shudder, so that self-pity ebbed from him. ‘Craddock,’ he said to himself, ‘that boy would make a baker’s dozen of you at this moment! For God’s sake pull yourself together and get out of here!’ and he got up and began to walk swiftly down the hill towards the Strand, remembering that there was a train from Waterloo at midday and if he could get a cab at Charing Cross and promise the cabby double fare he might conceivably catch it.
Long Summer Day (A Horseman Riding By) Page 47
