by Alec Waugh
His father looked at him steadily. “You’d rather not tell me anything about it, son ? “
“I’d rather not, Father. I may never need the money. It may be – well, just an idea I’ve had.”
“I see, my boy …” He hesitated. “I’ve known you have had something on your mind. I’ve wanted to ask you What it was. But I dare say you are right. There are many things that are best not spoken of. I know you would never do anything that would disgrace our name. You’re industrious, you’re not extravagant. You’ve started well. You should go far. Yes, certainly you can have that much money if you need it. And if you should need more, don’t be afraid to ask. It’s often when a man’s young that he needs his principal the most.”
“Disgrace our name.” Francis smiled ruefully to himself as he sat later that evening with a pile of Judy’s letters scattered on his desk before him. Every week, sometimes twice a week through those five slow-passing months, a letter in that large back-sloping handwriting had arrived. He turned them over at random, reading a page, a phrase, a paragraph. There was the letter thanking him for the little ship, the ship that would “remind her that the miles were little.” She had put it on the mantelpiece in her own private sitting room, she wrote, the room where she kept things personal to herself; the “significant ship” she called it. “I kiss it every morning. Soon lipstick will have set a lovely patina upon its sails.”
He had sent her for Christmas the picture of Cap Ferrat seen in the framework of his bedroom window. “I shall love it,” she wrote, “both for its associations and itself. It hangs in a place of honor between a Cézanne and a Duncan Grant. I wonder what you will think of my little room. It contains such an odd jumble of unlikely objects. You won’t, will you, be jealous, if I refuse to tell you why some of them are there?”
They were cheerful rambling letters, gossip about her friends, about plays she had been to, books she had been reading. She had been living rather quietly, she told him. Henry was very busy, he was chairman of some Royal Commission, he had to go up to London every day. “And of course he likes to have the house quiet in the evenings. I live like a hermit, driving my servants mad prying into odd corners to see if they’ve scamped their work; you wouldn’t believe what a country mouse I am; half the time I’m on my knees grubbing in the garden for worms; but we do manage to have some fun over the weekend.” She wrote quite naturally of Henry, as a part of the permanent pattern of her life, just as Charlton was and the Mougins villa, just as he himself was seemingly. She had no doubt of her capacity nor of her right to keep all these wheels turning simultaneously under her control.
But it wasn’t possible; of course it wasn’t possible.
“Disgrace our name.” He knew what his father would advise. His father was a broad-minded man. Any young, any hot-blooded man, he would say, may find himself swept off his feet. It can happen to any of us. We can fall in love without realizing that we are doing so. No one blames a young man for landing in a fix. He is judged on how he behaves when he’s got into it. Sometimes it’s very difficult to extricate himself: sometimes he can’t, honorably. His honor rooted in dishonor stands. You’re lucky. You’ve got the Atlantic between you and this situation. Time heals everything. You’ve only got to play for time; let the thing move out of the foreground into the background of your life. You’re lucky, very lucky. You’ve only to wait: the thing will heal itself.
That was what his father would advise. That was the worldly-wise thing to do. Himself he knew it too. But between that knowledge and the resolve to act on it stood Judy’s memory, stood this high heap of letters, this testimony to her need of him.
It wasn’t a craze. He was sure of that now, a craze couldn’t have lasted for all these weeks. She did want him; she did need him. She was relying on him. Through all her letters, through all her friendly gossip ran the refrain “when you come over.” He shuffled among the letters. A sors Vergiliana. Any letter, any page, almost every paragraph was directed to that refrain. “First snowdrops in the drive today, and you not here to see them. By the time you are over here they’ll be all gone. Couldn’t you hurry a little faster?”
He picked out another letter. “I’m reading Somerset Maugham’s new book The Casuarina Tree. There’s a rather lovely story in it called ‘P. & O.’ It’s based on two quite elderly people, people of over forty, falling desperately in love. Isn’t it strange to think that oneself in fifteen years’ time might be falling in love like that? It somehow seems all wrong. Somehow it seems ugly at that age; but then when I was eighteen ‘ I couldn’t understand how my younger aunt could get any fun out of dancing with her husband – poor thing she was only thirty – just my age. Doesn’t one ever grow old? Six months ago I’d have liked to think one didn’t, but now I would. I’d like to think that my whole life was a working up to that meeting on the Welcome terrace, that the whole of the rest of my life will be lived in the reflection of it. Darling, couldn’t it be that way? Let’s try and make it.”
Letter after letter with the same refrain. It wasn’t a craze. She did mean it. Surely she must mean it. She was relying on him, she was trusting him. He couldn’t let her down.
He rose to his feet. He began to stride backwards and forwards up and down his room. He knew what was the prudent course. That steamship ticket in his pocket was the putting of his head into a noose. Heaven knew what would be the outcome of his trip to England. But in the scales against worldly wisdom, against prudence, against the practical ordering of life was set his word to Judy. She was the most wonderful person that he had ever met, her friendship was the most wonderful thing that had ever happened to him. It was a miracle that out of all the people that she knew, the brilliant, gifted, prominent, attractive people, she should have selected him. He must be worthy of that miracle. Never must there come a time when he could not look Judy in the face. First things first. Always whatever happened, whether happiness or sorrow or disaster was the outcome, always things must be right between himself and Judy.
He turned back to his desk, sat down, drew forward a sheet of paper.
“Dear one,” he wrote, “I’m sailing on the 17th. This morning I bought my ticket. This morning I took my pictures to Van Ruyt, and he thinks well of them. We’ve sorted out the ten that I’m to bring with me. I’m longing to know what you think of them.” He paused: how often during the last four months had he not phrased and rephrased the letter that he would have to write to her if he went to England. He had given her no hint that he would be writing it. Better to avoid arguments and discussions. What was it that Julia had said? “One of you must make up your mind.” Well, he had made up his.
“Dear one,” he wrote, “this is the last letter that I shall be writing you before I sail. I’m coming – you don’t surely need telling that, for one reason only, to be with you again, to be with you as I much hope for always. But, Judy, there is one thing that you must realize. There is one thing I cannot do. I cannot come down to Charlton. I cannot accept your husband’s hospitality. It was one thing to dream at Villefranche. But now we must be practical. There are only two courses for us. To say goodbye forever, or to start on a new life together. I’ll be going therefore straight through to London, to the Savoy Hotel. If you were to join me there, we could leave at once for Spain or Italy. Or, if there are things you wanted to discuss first, we could talk them over in London first. But one thing is absolutely certain. I cannot under these changed conditions come down to Charlton. Surely you must see that,..”
It was a long, a six-page letter, he left it open to reread next morning.
It was in a mood of steady but serious resolve that he reread it. He was not a child. He could guess at the manifold consequences of an elopement. “Disgrace our name.” If anything could disgrace that name, this would. There could be no question here of a quiet, hushed-up divorce. It would be a scandal right enough. What a titbit for the gossip columns. Titled wife of a British diplomat, unknown American painter; his being five years younger would give th
e story an added relish. On account of the scandal, their marriage, his and Judy’s, would start under the worst auspices. Wherever they went there would be a nudging of elbows, a raising of eyebrows; there would be awkward moments, the wondering whether or not to recognize old friends.
Nor had he any doubts of the practical problems which would be raised. Judy had, he imagined, no money of her own. Her father was living on the Charlton estate, on the Charlton bounty. That was a responsibility that would now devolve on him; it would not be a light responsibility. They would be poor to start with, he and Judy. Marriage to him would mean Judy’s transference to a humbler, to a much smaller way of life. It would not be forever. It might not be for long. But at first certainly she would miss many aspects of her old life. She would be in the swim of things no longer: “behind the scenes” no longer. He, coming into her world from the outside, knowing the things which her world contained and his did not, could appreciate more clearly than she could, what she would lo^e by joining her life to his. It was not just a question of money, money mattered indeed less in that world than in many others. It was a question of being exiled from a whole cycle of stimulating contacts. Judy would lose much by which she set high store.
What else could he do, however, but write this letter, but offer her the choice of a life shared with him? It was all he had to offer. There was one thing he could not do, go down to Charlton.
“Will Father be very upset over a divorce, do you think?”
It was of Julia that he asked that question, on the morning before he sailed. He had come down from Connecticut by the early train; he was embarking that afternoon. It was the first time that he had seen Julia since the morning of his arrival, five months ago. She was to have a baby in the early May. It was to see her doctor that she had come into town unexpectedly that October morning, She had wintered in the South.
She had passed the “ugly stage,” and now looked very beautiful very much at peace as she lay out on her long chair in a loose jade green tunic, a glass of orange juice beside her, transparent; an ethereal quality. There was an otherworldliness about her, as though she had withdrawn from normal life but by the very fact of the withdrawal was enabled to see more clearly into its heart.
Outside it was cold and bleak, rain mingling with the wind; but here in this warmed room, with irises and jonquils in yellow and blue profusion, it was easy to believe that spring was on its way.
Julia shrugged as he set his question.
“You know what Father is. He fusses over any change of plan. There’s never been a divorce in the family before. He’s not really shocked by it as Grandfather used to be. But he’s got an idea that it’s something that happens in other families but not in ours. He’ll get used to the idea in time.”
“Mother’ll be unhappy.”
“She will, on religious grounds. But all the same …” Julia paused. She looked at him thoughtfully. “In the last analysis you know it’s Mother and Father who matter least, only three people really matter. You and Judy and her husband. He nodded. Of course he had thought about Sir Henry. Sir Henry had befriended him, honored him, entertained him. In return for that he was ruining the last years of Sir Henry’s life, taking the sunlight from them. Yes, he had thought of that. From one angle his behavior was inexcusable. Wasn’t there though another angle?
Judy had talked of what she owed her husband, but did not Sir Henry on his side owe her just as much? She had given him her best years. He – a man in late middle age – had been given for the second time in life what a man was entitled to only once, in youth – a young woman’s love. And at what cost after all to Judy had he been given it? Sir Henry was thirty-five years older. Did he realize how empty a life would be left for her when he was dead? They had no children. Was that of choice? And if so, was it of his choice or of hers; his selfishness or her reluctance to complicate his life, so as not to deprive him of her full attention? Hadn’t Judy been sacrificed for him over these last years? Was he really owed so much?
“He’s well over sixty,” Francis said. “A good many men find themselves widowers at that age. They don’t have a bad time. And he’s got so much. His house, his position, a good deal of money.”
He didn’t see that Sir Henry need be an object for all that pity. He had his children and his grandchildren: his clubs, his many friends, his many interests; surely he could occupy as well as most the mauvais quart d’heure before the close.
“Judy’ll feel badly about him, though.”
“I know she will.”
But there was a snag to everything, or rather there was an obverse side to everything. Judy would feel badly about Sir Henry, certainly. But suppose she were to remain his wife. How dreary the last thirty years of her life might be, an ageing woman without the background of her husband’s prominence and prestige, counting for less and less each year. What might not happen under those conditions to one who had been nicknamed flibbertigibbet? Judy, if any woman, would need the steadying hand of a husband during those years hard for any woman when her youth was slipping: a husband moreover who had known her when she was young, in whose continued love for her her youth would be incorporate.
Was not Judy’s last half of life a heavier stake than the ten years which surely Sir Henry could fill in easily? Phrases out of her letters to him ran through his memory. He remembered the things that she had said in that cool dark café in the Rue de Poilu. “I’ve been so miserable. I’ve been robbed of youth. I’ve had no personal life, no life of my own.” Without him, her last years, her last twenty years, might well be pitiful.
Julia nodded as he explained. “That’s very true, you may be right. But there’s you, yourself. I’m wondering how you feel. If I were for instance to hear this minute that Max had been killed in a motor smash, I wouldn’t know how to go on living. I’d feel that my life was over. We’re so interknit that I couldn’t go on without him. I should, of course. I’d probably remarry some day. But at the time when that message came, I shouldn’t know how I was to go on living. Would you feel that way about Judy?”
He hesitated. And as he hesitated, she went on: “No, that’s scarcely a fair question. I’ll put it differently. I’ll ask you this. What answer are you really hoping for? Would you feel that your life was ruined, or at any rate the next few years of it completely spoiled if there was a message for you at Southampton saying that she could not join you?”
Again he hesitated. Would he feel that his life were ruined: or would he if he were honest himself admit that he would be relieved? Never to see Judy again, how tame and savorless, how purposeless life would be. But against that were the scandal of a divorce, the innumerable awkward situations that would arise, the inevitable sense of guilt. He was in a mess: there was no denying it. Was he not poised between two evils, uncertain which the lesser was?
She smiled at his hesitation. “If you can’t answer that question right off the reel, are you absolutely certain that you are wise to go? Isn’t that one of the things the movies teach us, that a hero should be absolutely certain that he does want the girl?”
He shook his head. “There’s only one thing in the world that matters to me – Judy, and what Judy thinks of me. I couldn’t have a moment’s happiness, a moment’s peace of mind if I did anything that Judy would despise me for. She would despise me if I didn’t go. I’ve promised her. She’s trusted me. Whatever happens I must stand right with her.”
“I see, so that’s it. Well that does make sense.”
A minute later they went in to lunch. It was a simple meal – grilled sole, salad, and a layer cake – served in a small dining annex off the sitting room. It was very simple but very cosy. The glass-topped table, the Lalque glassware, the starched monogrammed napery, the green and gold edging to the place plates were a welcome change after the rough oak, the cut glass and the heavy silver of his parents’ house. It was all very gay and modern, reminding him of the South of France. Life had gone very pleasantly for Julia, to have fallen in love with som
eone as marriageable as Max, to be able to face the future with such easy confidence, their assets mounting faster than their responsibilities.
How differently had the cards been dealt to him.
Chapter Nine
He was travelling by a small ship, a German one. She did not dock at Southampton. She merely anchored in the Solent to put off passengers. A crowd gathered round the purser’s office when the immigration authorities came aboard. Francis elbowed his way through them to the desk.
“Any letters or telegrams for me, Mr. Francis Oliver?”
The purser shuffled through the mail. “Mr. Oliver … Mr. Oliver … Yes, here’s one.”
Francis’ heart gave a thud. So she had written then. What was it to say? Was it a goodbye letter? Or was it the acceptance of his ultimatum? Was it the end of one life, the beginning of another? All my life, I’ll be remembering this moment, he thought as he stretched out his hand to take the letter.
The envelope bore the seal of the Savoy Hotel. At the sight of it, his heart seemed to miss a beat. She was there already then, there and waiting for him. Feverishly he tore the letter open, to pause, puzzled. It was typewritten.
“Dear Sir,
We shall be delighted to reserve you accommodation as requested for the night of March the 25th.”
He stared at it, then pushed his way back to the purser’s desk.
“Isn’t there anything else for me, Francis Oliver?”
Again the purser shuffled through the “O’s.”
“No, sir, I’m sorry. Nothing more here for you.”
She had not written. But then why should she? Unless it were in renunciation. It was only if she had not been coming to join him in London, that she would have written. The fact that she had not written proved that she would be there to meet him. It must be so. Yes, of course it must. Unless, that was to say, she had written to the hotel. She might have done that, mightn’t she, to make sure? Had he asked her to write to him at Southampton? He couldn’t remember. He didn’t think he had. Wouldn’t she be likelier to write to him at the hotel? The fact that there was no letter here meant nothing. He’d have to wait another three hours to get his answer.
