‘I’ll have a hunt tomorrow.’
‘You won’t find them.’
‘You know I always find things.’
‘I assure you you won’t.’
He leaned forward, shifted a book on the bed table, tilted it to read the title, let it drop again. His eyes travelled vacantly here and there in the twilit room, resting on objects, never once on her. Every reduced remark and gesture seemed intended to convey: ‘See, if you care to, how bare I am. Scooped out to the marrow. Helpless.’
‘Where on earth have you been?’ A heavy sigh from him incensed her and she added: ‘Your abrupt departure took a little explaining away, to say the least of it.’
‘I suppose it did.’
‘I don’t enjoy being humiliated.’
‘Who does?’
‘It would never occur to you, of course, to apologize.’
‘I don’t object at all to apologizing. Who expects me to? Everybody?’
She was silent; and after a moment he said with faint curiosity:
‘Was there a public scandal?’
After a pause she muttered: ‘No.’
‘Did you say no?’—again with curiosity. She remained silent, bursting with indignation, and he added in a detached way: ‘You’re good at that sort of thing. Face saving. Women usually are. I should have been stumped.’
‘You might at least apologize to me. Never never never in all my …’ she choked.
‘I do apologize. It was disgustingly bad manners. I’m sorry.’
‘I suppose you thought you were paying me out.’
He brooded; then said: ‘I see it must have seemed so. Perhaps that was it—I don’t know. I was surprised myself afterwards. At the time I just wanted to get away.’
It was like listening to a child’s self-analysis: like Anthony at three years old, reproved for howling without warning at the Infants’ dancing class, reflecting, then replying in a reasonable way: ‘Well you see, I didn’t know which I was—a tiny baby or a big boy.’ Watching the mindless preoccupations of his shifting hands and eyes, she felt apologies, indignation and the rest of it irrelevant. The fact was, they were plunged in the thick of an experience without precedent in all their years of marriage. A strange man was sitting naked on her bed: situation fraught with alarming fascination.
‘What did you do?’ she said with interest.
‘Walked about. I must have covered miles.’
‘How did your clothes get in such a mess? Your coat looked as if you’d squeezed through a trap-door in a loft.’
‘Not exactly.’ He looked amused. ‘I suppose it’ll clean off … No; that was from insinuating my person through an extremely narrow and filthy window.’
‘Where? Here? Hadn’t you got a latch key?’
‘No, not here.’ He fetched a sigh or yawn from the pit of his stomach. ‘I went back to look for my cuff links.’
An explosion rocked her whole nervous system. Pushing herself down in the bed, she stretched her legs straight out, pressed them together.
‘Where?’
‘In Dinah’s flat. I must have left them there months ago. I’d no idea. I hadn’t missed them. It was a queer coincidence, wasn’t it, you should mention them this evening?’
‘I don’t quite follow.’
‘Well, I’m telling you. They were in her flat.’
‘So you said.’
‘They were …’ He shrugged his shoulders. ‘Perhaps that woman’s pinched them. Well, that’s that.’
‘What woman?’
‘Caretaker woman—in the basement—where I got in.’
She fancied that he was smiling to himself. Hearing her heart beat in loud rapid thumps through her thin voice, she said: ‘I didn’t realize you were still seeing Dinah. As a matter of fact, I thought she’d gone abroad—for a long time. Not that I’d know her movements. Perhaps she didn’t go abroad. Or if she did, I presume she’s back. Safe and sound and everything as usual, I suppose. Since when, if it isn’t too personal a question?’
He looked puzzled; then, with an effort, patient.
‘I’ve no idea since when. I haven’t been seeing her. At least, not till today. I did see her today—or rather yesterday, I suppose.’
‘I knew it! I knew the moment you came in. All your lies—why bother? I shall always know. Oh well … What are your plans now?’
He frowned, a frown of faintly irritated query.
‘I haven’t any plans. None in particular. How do you mean?’
‘Her plans, I should have said. Her plans for you. Your joint scheme for the future. That’s what I mean. I’m sorry to seem nagging, but I’d rather know.’
He hunched himself, as if her voice grated intolerably on his ears, and remained silent. So she went on:
‘The moment she’s back she rings you up. The moment she rings you up you gallop round for a glorious reunion. So overwhelmingly glorious that you can’t be civil to your old friends for one evening—let alone to me—you can’t wait to see her again. You pick a quarrel with me to give you an excuse to gallop off again and visit her in the small hours. She’s waiting—oh yes!—you’d told her you’d get to her by hook or by crook. Pretending I’ve insulted you—you told her—oh, how indignant she’d be!—and comfort you …’ Her arms flung over her face, she thrashed about. ‘Utter humiliation—utter—utter—utter …’ she went on gasping through paroxysms of dry sobs.
The room she had seen once only, suppressed for ever, glared at her again in all its details: deep settee, brown with lemon-coloured cushions, brilliant red curtains, Khelim rugs, a dresser covered with painted bowls, plates, jugs—foreign-looking, cheap but attractive, one huge round glass lamp on a low table strewn with portfolios, art books, magazines: material, doubtless, for intimate cultural evenings, Dinah teaching him all about Picasso, Matisse, Renoir, Greek and Persian art, before they went to bed. Place of treachery and passion, broken in upon, exposed, sealed up, vacated … Reassembled again; Dinah sitting there once more with a closed smile of mockery and triumph, knowing that she would never open her door again to admit Madeleine to see—what once she had shown her.
Not a word came out of Rickie, till finally he said in the tone of one upon whom a great light dawns:
‘Oh, that’s what you think—I see. Do be quiet, Madeleine. You’ve got it all wrong, I promise you. Stop.’ He put his hands on the mound her knees made and shook it, repeating peremptorily: ‘Stop!’ At once she did stop; a stiff hysterical silence followed. He did not remove his hand; and presently began to pat her knee—the first personal gesture he had made. Uncovering her face, she saw that he was looking at her. For the first time. Something about him suggested an increase of animation, if not of sensibility; as if her outburst had penetrated to some nerve centre in him and administered shock treatment.
‘Are you listening?’ he asked in a stern voice.
‘Yes.’ She shut her eyes.
‘She rang me up this morning at the office. I nearly jumped out of my skin. I hadn’t seen her since—or heard a whisper of her since last—whenever it was. You can imagine I was startled. She said she was going to the flat to pack up for good and clear out, and would I come along for half an hour or so, just to settle up a few things—business things. It was in my name, you know—the flat.’
‘I didn’t know.’
‘The rent was paid till September, but she’d decided to get out.’
‘You paid it.’
‘I paid it.’
‘I didn’t realize she was so completely your kept woman.’
‘She wasn’t,’ he said unprotestingly. ‘I simply paid the rent of this flat. She didn’t want that even, but I insisted.’ He paused: added bitterly: ‘To soothe my conscience.’
‘She was on your conscience?’
‘Oh, everybody was on my conscience. You were�
�are …’ He uttered a brief snort of laughter. ‘Naturally I felt responsible for her.’
So put that in your pipe, she told herself, and smoke it. But the sense of outrage burned in her like a corrosive chemical.
‘You know,’ he continued, ‘how independent she is.’ Tone of one discussing an acquaintance about whose character they had long been in agreement.
‘Oh yes! It’s not a quality one necessarily admires. It’s easy to flaunt one’s independence at other people’s expense. In other words to be a ruthless egotist.’
‘Well, it can mean that,’ he conceded, judicial. ‘I didn’t say I necessarily admired it. Though as a matter of fact in her I do.’
So put that in your pipe … ‘And your precious sense of responsibility!’ she cried, half choking. ‘It’s just your hopeless weakness. She can twist you round her little finger.’
‘So can you then,’ he said with a smile. ‘I never did give myself marks for it. But there it is: it must be put up with.’
She felt suddenly ashamed; and then despairing.
‘Are we never to get rid of her then? Is that what you’re telling me? Will you never get over it—get free of her? Is she going to turn up again for ever, to make my life hell, to whistle you back whenever she feels inclined, to ruin our future? Because if so …’
‘Hush!’ he said sharply. He took his hand away, and fixing her with a look of mingled anger and desperation, added: ‘If you’re going to start a scene again, I must go. I shall go to my room.’
He rose as if to carry out this threat, but as she remained dumb, sank down again. He sat rather bowed with his hands spread out on his knees, and said at last in a quiet voice:
‘I shan’t see her again. There wasn’t any question of it. I don’t know where she’s been, I don’t know where she went. Where she is now. She left when I did and handed me the keys and went I don’t know where.’
After a silence she said timidly:
‘Then you haven’t been with her just now?’
‘No, I have not. The flat is empty.’ He stared at the waxing light in the blue curtains.
‘I wish,’ she said with a sigh, ‘you hadn’t gone there when she asked you to. It was bound to—be a mistake. Still, I suppose you felt you must.’
He did not answer this. Throwing away the words, she said:
‘How is she?’
‘Well. At least … No. Ill, I think. She looked it. I don’t know. An awful colour.’
‘She’s always been an awful colour. It doesn’t mean anything. At least,’ she added, seeing the protest in his face, ‘she’s always been pale.’
‘Mm. Oh, pale, yes—she’s always been pale … She’s as thin as a wraith. All eyes. I don’t mind betting she hasn’t had a square meal for weeks. Sort of transparent.’
‘I expect she’s having a non-eating period. She’s done it before. People said how ethereal she’d grown to look, how spiritual. Or perhaps she’s starving simply for the experience.’ Masquerading as reassurance, hostility made her voice tense and thin. Destroy, destroy this too potent image of pathos and misfortune, she told herself. At all costs let him not pity, not wish to protect. But the face—all eyes—stared from its ambush, sickening his heart with pity, hatred, shame and yearning.
‘You may be right.’ He blew out a shuddering sort of sigh.
‘So you went round, to settle things up.’
‘Yes. For about an hour—oh, less. It was all quite formal.’ His nostrils dilated. ‘Extremely formal. Ceremonial handing over of the keys.’
‘What is she doing now? I mean, where is she living? Has she …’ Seeing him set his lips, she checked herself and added quietly: ‘All right. Don’t tell me anything. I don’t want to know.’
Dinah’s muted voice was in his ears, saying in answer to some question of his: ‘Oh no, I haven’t been here for a long time—until today’; and then his own voice saying:
‘You’ve been abroad haven’t you?’
‘What made you think that?’
‘Someone told me so. Mentioned it. I think it must have been your mother. But perhaps I got it wrong.’
‘Oh, I see.’ She paused; something—amusement?—contracted her face for a moment, throwing cheek-bones and temples into even sharper relief. ‘You must have got it wrong. I haven’t been abroad. Have you seen Mother lately?’
‘Not very lately. She’s pretty tired, as you know. She can’t leave your father—or won’t.’
She lowered her eyes, and was silent. Presently he said:
‘You’ve been—where then?’
She looked at him, raising her eyebrows as if in surprise, and said:
‘In London.’ Silence. ‘Quite in another quarter though.’
‘Alone?’
‘No. With someone.’
‘I see. I hope you’re happy.’
‘Yes, thank you, perfectly happy.’
‘May I know with whom?’
‘No, I don’t think so,’ she said without hesitation, still in that muted voice.
The snub made him wince, but he said politely: ‘Just as you choose. I’m sorry if I appeared impertinent. I’m very glad to hear you’re happy, and I hope this chap will prove more satisfactory than I did. Not that that would be difficult. He’s expecting you back?’
Did she hesitate then? Was it only inside himself that a screw tightened as she replied: ‘I’m going straight back.’ Was that, in fact, what she did say? Certainly he could still hear the very telling lines he was given next.
‘Well, ask him from me to take you out for a change and give you a steak and a bottle of good claret.’
Her eyes seemed to narrow, then fixed him in wide open blankness. Touché! Just as he’d guessed: some down and out, some cad or cripple.
‘You’re not looking very well,’ she said. ‘Have you quite recovered?’
‘Yes, thank you. Entirely recovered.’
‘And you’re happy?’
‘Oh yes. I wouldn’t go so far as to say perfectly happy, like yourself. But I get along.’
‘Children well?’
‘Splendid.’
‘I found these cuff links in a drawer.’ She passed them to him, adding in a preoccupied way: ‘I don’t think there was anything else of yours.’
‘Oh, thank you. Very careless of me. Funny I hadn’t missed them.’
‘Oh well, you have others …’
From first to last no kindness, and no truth.
Madeleine said nervously:
‘You went back for your cuff links … I don’t quite …’
‘Oh yes. She’d found them when she was clearing out. She gave them to me—that I’m sure of. But what I did with them, God knows. I never thought about them again till I came in and you said—that. Later on, when I left in that abrupt and offensive manner, it occurred to me—after a bit—to go along and see if they were still there. I don’t like loose ends, they trip you up.’
‘Did you ring?’
‘Yes, I rang.’ His lip curled faintly. ‘I didn’t really expect anybody to come to the door, and nobody did. So I decided to break in.’
‘How did you manage?’
‘Easy, once I put my mind to it. There’s a bit of low spiked area railing on the right. I vaulted that—just missed crashing down the area steps—and landed up between the wall of the house and a sort of partition wall on the corner. There was a thread of path to get round to the back by. I found a window, a small one, unlatched, about the level of my head. I guessed it was a lavatory and it was—a most unsavoury one. I clawed on the window and pushed it down as far as it would go, and got a grip on the top of the frame and swung up. I just managed to wriggle through and went in head first groping for the lavatory seat and pretty well turned a somersault. It was damned uncomfortable.’ He stopped and glanced at her, as if sudden
ly aware that his voice was expressing nothing more nor less than simple pride and satisfaction in his exploit. ‘I knew,’ he went on, ‘that Mrs Thingummy slept somewhere around, not to speak of an antediluvian yapping terrier bitch, but on the deaf side both of them, thank God. Anyway there wasn’t a sound from any one of us. Then I took my shoes off and went up several flights of stairs. As I told you, there was nobody. Nothing.’
She made an effort, drew a hand from under the bedclothes, took his, and said with sympathy:
‘It must have been horrible.’
‘It was rather.’
‘You’d been hoping she might have come back. Might still be there.’
Letting his hand lie in hers, he studied the carpet.
‘I don’t know,’ he said, after a brooding silence. ‘What good would it have been?—no good at all. It was the unreality … earlier on. I got it into my head, if I checked up I’d—recover my sense of direction. However, there was nothing there. No links—not of any kind! Not a clue.’ His mouth twisting ironically, he gave her hand a sudden quick pressure.
‘You’ve no idea what she’s doing?’
‘Living with someone. That’s all I know. She said that.’
Ah! … Her heart struck like a clock.
‘Who?’
‘God knows.’
I bet I know.
‘Did she tell you?’
‘She said just that. Someone.’
A complex of emotions made her say quickly:
‘Well, that won’t last long, take it from me.’
He sent her an inquiring glance, opened his lips to speak, but only shrugged his shoulders. She murmured:
‘Do you mind so dreadfully?’
‘Oh well … It’s never altogether pleasant, you know. A blow to vanity.’
‘I do know.’ Still her predominant wish was to console him.
He nodded. ‘However much one might reasonably expect it. Or even wish it.’
‘You did …’ she said hurriedly; added: ‘Wish it.’
‘Oh certainly. I’ve been hoping—well, hope’s the wrong word … but if I knew she was being looked after, it would be a load off. I might not exactly relish it but—it would be a load off.’
The Echoing Grove Page 9
