by Alec Waugh
He shrugged. ‘Eileen will get her decree absolute in April. I’ll stay out here till then. I’m glad that I never found a house for her. The lease of Bolton’s will expire in June. I don’t suppose she’ll want to take it on. Thank heavens none of the furniture is mine. There’s always a bad feeling when you start dividing up goods and chattels. “No, that’s not yours. I know Francis gave it to us both. But he was always more my friend than yours,” and “Yes, I know that it was your Uncle Frederick who gave us that Chippendale love seat, but he would never have given you as good a present. He took a shine to me. I remember the way he looked at me when he said, ‘I thought of you at once when I saw this.’ ” I’m spared all that, I’m glad to say.’
Had he, I wondered, subconsciously had such a day in mind when he had looked for a house so half-heartedly? If he had really wanted to grapple Eileen to him with bands of steel would he not have built round her a house that she could not bear to lose? He had made it all very easy for himself.
‘What about Timothy Alexander?’
‘He’ll stay with her, of course. She’s a good mother. Whistler’ll be all right as a step-father. I’ll keep in the background, see how the boy develops. He’ll probably need me some day. When that time comes, then I’ll be there. I’ve heard it said, you know, that children quite like the idea of a parent whom they don’t know too much about. He or she has a mystery and glamour for them. Eventually they react against the parent whom they see all the time. I’m not worrying about him. I am, though, just a litde, about Iris. It’s happened at the wrong time for her. She would have come out this summer, but for that you need a settled background. Where would she have her dance? She hasn’t a chip on her shoulder, but three step-fathers, that’s a lot, you know. She must be beginning to wonder who and what she is. But for this she would have had her coming-out dance at Charminster and that. .. well, with this changed situation, there are some things that just aren’t possible and that is one of them. And this also means that she won’t have opportunities of meeting Michael. Will that mean much to her?’
‘A great deal, I’d say.’
‘And that’s the very thing that might start a chip on that pretty shoulder. Suppose she marries someone rather ordinary, and the marriage doesn’t turn out too glamorously, she might well think “If I’d gone on going to Charminster I’d have married Michael. I’d be the Baroness Peronne instead of the wife of an overworked city drudge who falls asleep every evening while he’s listening to the news.” If you were writing a novel about her, isn’t that the way you’d make it happen?’
‘It might well be.’
‘Load the dice against your heroine. Isn’t that what Hardy did in Tess?’
‘I reckon so.’
‘What are you working on, by the way?’
‘I’m hoping after this trip to do a novel with a West Indian background.’
‘That’ll be a new departure, won’t it?’
‘I feel it’s about time I made one. This isn’t the best time for the family chronicle.’
I explained my problem. My last three novels had told how a family had developed over several years. I had started them in the Edwardian period; I had carried my characters through into the thirties. I had brought the various characters to a point where one of them could sum up the direction of their lives, what they had done, where they had failed, what lay ahead of them. ‘That kind of novel isn’t convincing now,’ I said. ‘Because you can’t tell what the world is going to be like in three years’ time. Suppose I were to start a family novel when I got back to England. It would take a year to write. It would take six months to get it published, in June 1940, let us say. No one knows what the world is going to be like in June 1940. We might even be at war. My characters wouldn’t have reached any harbour of finality. Suppose the story were to end in September 1938? During the last half of it my readers would be thinking “I can’t be interested in whatever point of conclusion any of these characters reach. A war will have broken out which will have altered everything. Families will be broken up, heroes and villains alike may be killed in action.” The war is a deus ex machina that can’t be used. Did you ever read Maupassant’s Preface to Pierre et Jean?’
‘No.’
‘In it he wrote that though the number of persons who daily meet with accidental death is large, you cannot have an important character slip under a cab or have a brick fall on his head in the middle of a story. And that’s what a war does; it’s the equivalent of a brick falling off a roof.’
‘How are you going to avoid this problem by setting your story in the West Indies?’
‘There’ll be no need to date it. It will be the kind of story that can take place any time. It’ll be placed in an exotic setting unfamiliar to the reader. It will be apart from the reality of their daily routine. Besides, it isn’t going to be a chronicle. It’s going to be a story with a plot; a woman murders her husband.’
‘How’s she going to do that?’
‘Leave the exhaust of the car running in a closed garage.’
‘I look forward to reading this.’
‘I’ll try to make it readable.’ I returned to the present problem of the novelist. ‘We had exactly the same problem in 1919,’ I said. ‘We couldn’t write a contemporary novel that covered several years. If we started it with the hero getting demobilised, the story would have to run on till 1923 or 1924. And the reader would feel “How can he tell what the world is going to be like in 1923? There may be a revolution.” If you started the story in 1910, even if you were to finish it in 1913, the reader would say “How can I take an interest in any of these characters when I know that whatever mess they may land up in, August 1914 is going to provide them with a ready-made solution.” It’s rather strange that we should get the same problem twice in the same lifetime.’
‘Isn’t that what usually happens?’
‘How do you mean?’
‘That you get in middle age the same problem that you had when you were young. You see it from a different angle. You may solve it in a different way. But it’s the same basic problem. Because we remain the same basic people. You can only ring a certain number of changes on yourself.’
‘Has that been your experience?’
‘Not yet; but I’ve seen it in other lives. It’ll probably come my way. The second time round I’ll see it with different eyes. Then I’ll understand what it was about the first time, understand when it is too late.’
I pondered that. We sat in silence on the verandah. In the sitting room the gramophone was purring sofdy. The Carib girl was on the divan still, her head buried in her arms. The moon was unveiled by clouds. From the garden below us the ripple of the stream mingled its murmur with the multitudinous voices of the forest. It was all very peaceful. A line of Lascelles Abercrombie crossed my memory, ‘Oh, the fine world and fine all for nothing.’ Was this peaceful beauty doomed? ‘What’ll you do if there’s a war?’ he asked me, ‘something in propaganda?’
I shook my head. ‘I went to Sandhurst and got a regular commission, so in 1919 I transferred to the regular reserve. I’ve asked the War Office what my position is. If there’s a general mobilisation, I go back to my regiment automatically.’
‘How old are you now?’
‘Forty last July.’
‘A bit old for a platoon commander. They’ll send you on a staff course, probably.’
‘Most likely.’
I was prepared to leave that to chance.
‘What are your plans?’ I asked.
‘I’ve applied for an emergency reserve cornmission. It should go through.’
‘Did it occur to you to stay on here?’
‘Of course, I could argue a case for staying here. There may be important work here for someone like myself. But I want to be in the centre of things. I’m only thirty-four. I’ve kept pretty fit. I fancy I’m fit enough to drive a tank.’
‘I imagine that most of your generation will prove to have been just too young for t
he first war and just too old for this. I’ve heard that they’re going to have reserved occupations; that they’re not going to have technicians and first-class administrators wiped out in front-line trenches. They’re not going to interrupt the education of first-class brains and they’re going to keep back schoolmasters; they’re going to see that the young generation can have a proper education. Oxford and Cambridge will go on. I should say that most of your generation who’ve had no military training will be of more use to their country in offices and laboratories.’
‘Yet even so there are going to be quite a number who feel that in wartime they should be in uniform. I think your brother’s one of them.’
I thought so too; even though he had only just become a father and had bought a house in Gloucestershire.
‘I’d give a lot,’ said Raymond, ‘to be able to picture us all as we’ll be two Christmasses from now.’ I remembered an occasion when I had been a prisoner of war in Germany, in Mainz, in July 1918. A group of some forty of us had been waiting at the gateway to the dining hall for the bell that would summon us to what passed for a meal in those strictly rationed days. One of us had made a precisely similar remark; another, a more than somewhat class-conscious member of the upper orders had said, ‘I’d like to switch back four years and see how we all looked in July, 1914.’ We all knew what he was thinking. More than a quarter of the officers gathered there had come from very humble origins. But as Turgenev had pointed out in Smoke, a wind blows and the top branches of a tree are bent to meet the lowest.
‘Whatever happens in Europe, do you think that anything will look any different here?’ I said.
‘Now that’s another matter.’
We had not talked a great deal about Dominica. There was not a great deal to say. That autumn a commission had come out from England, under Lord Moyne’s chairmanship. ‘Had he any idea,’ I asked, ‘what they decided?’
Raymond shook his head. ‘The great thing is that there should have been a commission and it should have come here. It’ll give the people a confidence in themselves. They feel now that Whitehall is concerned about them. That’s why I gave that party with those films. I wanted the people who matter in these things to notice that there was such a place.’
‘You think that party helped?’
‘It didn’t do any harm. The commission spent four days here. They might have spent only two otherwise, or they might not have come at all. They might have asked us to send a delegation to Antigua. It wasn’t so easy for them to get here.’
‘And did the meetings do any good?’
‘The local notables were made to feel important; that was the main thing. That was what I said to you after that party. They’ve had so much bad luck; they need a shot of something—a piqure; that’s what that party was. You can’t tell whether or not it did good, any more than you can tell whether a tonic you take in the winter helps to keep off colds. You catch a cold, of course you do. But you might have caught a worse one without that tonic. Everything adds in.’
‘And if there isn’t a war, you’ll go on living here?’
‘Partially. I’m not going to spend my whole life here. Heavens, no.’
‘It might be something for Timothy Alexander one day.’
‘That’s what I’ve been thinking. It should be a way of getting back to him, or at getting him back to me. I’d like to have him associate me with a place like this—a father who lives in the West Indian islands is a feather in a small boy’s cap. It makes him different. It gives him something to brag about. That’s what a small boy needs. He doesn’t want his parents to be better than other boys, but he likes them to be different. That makes him special. I look forward to bringing him out here, for a summer holiday.’
He had got the future planned. My godson was not going to feel neglected. He was not going to feel as Raymond himself had done, that no one was bothering over him.
‘If there is a war,’ I asked, ‘what effect do you think it will have on Dominica?’
‘There’ll be a boom. There always is in war time. There’ll be a demand for raw materials. Antigua and St Kitts will have a good market for their sugar, and we, as one of the Leewards, will benefit from that. And there’ll be a need for our special products, limes in particular. There’ll be torpedoes, of course. But our goods will be insured. We shan’t lose by that.’
‘If there isn’t a war, will you get a flat or a house of your own in England ?’
He shook his head. ‘More trouble than it’s worth. Besides, it would mean an extra tax problem. I can keep my clothes and the few things I have of my own in Charminster. I’ll rent furnished flats whenever I’m over.’
‘You’ll probably marry again.’
‘Will I? I suppose I shall. Most people do. But I’m not certain that I’m very satisfactory as a husband. Too selfish, I suppose. As far as I was concerned, my marriage was all right. I thought it was for Eileen too. I was surprised when she broke the news to me. A bombshell, well, that’s really what it was. I was perfectly happy the way things were. That proves that matrimony isn’t my long suit, I guess.’
It was sad to hear him saying that. The divorce seemed such a pity. Was anyone going to be any the better off? Which is, I suppose, how nine times in ten the outsider feels when a marriage breaks. It could all have been saved so easily. I wished that I had known six months ago. Not that I could have done anything. Anyhow, it was too late now.
10
I wrote to Eileen from New York. ‘I have been in the West Indies and have only just heard your news. I wish you the very best of luck. Don’t let’s lose touch. I expect to be back in England in mid-February. I’ll drop you a note. Every best wish.’
A note from her awaited my return. ‘Your letter was a great relief to me. I was afraid that it might prove a case of taking sides and you’re one of the half-dozen of Raymond’s friends that I’d hate to lose. I’m living very quietly, while this case is still sub judice; so any day that suits you for lunch is fine with me.’
We lunched at the Jardin. The moment we had ordered lunch, after one sip at a daiquiri, she broke straight into the subject. There was no leading up.
‘So you’ve been to Dominica?’
‘Right.’
‘How’s Raymond?’
‘Fine. The same weight, no cold or flu.’
‘I didn’t mean that. You know what I meant. How is he taking it?’
‘It was a bit of a shock to him. He hadn’t expected it.’
‘I know he hadn’t. That’s the one part of this wretched business that I enjoyed.’
‘What was?’
‘Surprising him. He hadn’t the right to be surprised. He should have expected it, or something like it.’
‘He was contented with the way it was.’
‘That’s my complaint. He hadn’t any right to be, or rather he hadn’t any right to think that I’d be. Being left alone for four or five months a year.’
‘He didn’t want you to be left alone. He wanted you out there with him.’
‘And leave Iris behind? How could I do that? You know as well as I do, after that carnival performance, that I had to have her with me, and how could I take her out; how could I run that risk? I couldn’t, could I?’
‘You couldn’t.’
‘Then how could he expect me to like being left alone for four or five months a year ?’
‘Sailors’ wives are alone longer than that.’
‘He’s not a sailor.’
‘But he takes Dominica as seriously as a sailor takes the sea.’
‘That’s what’s so maddening. He prefers Dominica to me.’
‘To a man who amounts to anything, his career comes first.’
‘But I wasn’t warned. If I’d married a sailor, I’d have done it with open eyes. “This is what you’re letting yourself in for,” I’d have told myself. “Do you think that you can take it?” Then I’d only have had myself to blame, if I found I couldn’t. But when Raymond and I eloped, he
didn’t know of the existence of Dominica. He fell in love with it after he’d been with me. For that’s what he did, didn’t he, he fell in love with the wretched place.’
‘That’s what he did.’
‘Now don’t you agree that is rather more than I had bargained for?’
She had so strong a case that I felt I had better change my ground.
‘You picked up an unlucky hand, but when you saw how the suits were stacked, well, don’t you think even so that the lot of a sailor’s wife is not too bad, particularly when she’s comfortably off? You had complete freedom, you could do as you liked. No one questioned you. Don’t you think that a great many women would be prepared to envy you ?’
‘I suppose they would.’
‘Haven’t you heard many married women say—women who’ve been married for several years, of course—“Yes, I’d enjoy an affair if there weren’t so many complications attached to it. It’s nearly always more trouble than it’s worth.” You’ve heard enough women say that, I’m sure.’
‘I’ve heard them.’
‘But that wasn’t your position ?’
‘That wasn’t my position.’
‘When Raymond was at home he was an amusing companion, wasn’t he?’
‘I’m not denying it.’
‘I got the impression …’ I hesitated. Should I say it or shouldn’t I? Hadn’t I told myself that evening on the verandah at Overdale, that it was too late now to interfere. But was it though? The decree absolute had not yet been pronounced. Should I ever forgive myself if I didn’t play every card I held ? ‘I’ve always felt that Raymond was still in love with you.’
‘In his way he was.’
‘It’s not usual for a husband to be still in love after eight years.’
‘So I’ve been told.’
‘Isn’t it possible that in another eight years’ time you may be thinking “I didn’t know when I was well off.” ’
‘Maybe.’
‘In that case, then …’ I looked at her with a question in my eyes. She answered me with a question. ‘Haven’t you heard it said that a woman in the last analysis will choose the man who needs her most ? I may have seemed to be getting it both ways, ninety-nine married women in a hundred would have envied me my life, and wouldn’t ninety-nine men in a hundred have envied Derrick? Wasn’t he getting it both ways, all the advantages of marriage without the disadvantages? He had me to himself for four or five months a year, all the privileges, none of the responsibilities, none of the dreary routine of domesticity. Isn’t that exactly what you at thirty would have wanted for yourself?’
