The Bay

by L. A. G. Strong

  It was taken for granted that I should go to the. Travers’ church now, and after mass, when we came out, I was solemnly presented to a number of their friends as their future son-in-law. It was a dismaying ordeal. It really scared me. The whole thing was so formal, so possessive—no, possessive is not the word, for it implies an effort to possess. There was no effort about the Travers’ attitude. Possession had taken place already. Walking slowly along the road, hearing Mr. Travers’ voice important m explanation of some point of politics to an elderly gentleman with a ginger beard shaped like a spade, who kept saying, “Do ye tell me that, now!” and the syrupy murmur of Mrs. Travers to the gentleman’s wife, and trying to smile as I answered fatuous questions from two or three other old fools, and Muriel with her face all flushed and soft like a mother’s when she’s just finished nursing her baby—I realised, with a swift, sickening shock, what I had let myself in for.

  But the moments of panic were rare. If you have had to depend on yourself for some time, even though you have only just come to realise the fact: if your last faint supports in the world are swept away, and you know that you are alone: if things have happened that make you uncertain where you stand mentally, socially, morally, and every other way: if you are of an affectionate nature, and have been short of mothering and feminine care for years: and if, on top of all this, you have a half fatalistic trust in Providence and feel that here is a chance to be rescued from low proclivities and launched on a higher level of life: then, even though you remain loyal in your heart to the said low proclivities, you find, especially if you are still young and immature, a certain attractiveness in letting go, in giving in, in allowing yourself to drift and to be steered and shepherded into what you know will at any rate be physical comfort. Not to mention the sex factor. So I think, looking back into myself, that there was some excuse for that young fellow walking slowly along the road in his stiff new navy blue serge suit, smiling inanely, instead of letting a whoop and cocking a snook and jumping over the wall and running for his life from the whole damned pack of them.

  Mr. Travers’ behaviour in the three weeks before our marriage was very strange and unbalanced. Most of the time he spent stalking about with an air of injured nobility, in a sort of holy sulk. Sometimes he would put down his paper and sit gazing reproachfully at Muriel, almost as if he were going to weep. One evening, when we were sitting together on the parlour sofa, quite decorously, as it happened, for Muriel had just finished putting herself straight and patting her hair before going in to help her mother with the supper, he burst into the room and stood glaring at us, white and trembling.

  Muriel jumped up.

  “Why, Father—what’s the matter? Are you feeling ill?”

  He hissed at her, his lips drew back from his teeth, but no words came. Then he rushed out again, as abruptly as he had come in.

  Muriel turned a scared face to me. I shrugged my shoulders. I was no longer interested in his vagaries. I just put up with them.

  “He’ll be all right,” I said, and Muriel looked reproachfully at me, thinking me callous, I don’t doubt. But he was all right. Five minutes after supper was ready, he came in, remote and cold, sat down, and presently made dignified conversation with us. His demeanour suggested one who, wounded in his finer feelings, yet knew how to behave in a civilised manner and set an example to others.

  A few days later, I arrived to be told by Mrs. Travers that he wished to see me in his study. She looked at me with solemn eyes, as if I were bidden to an interview with the Almighty.

  I went in. He was sitting in his chair, sideways on to me. I looked at him, and saw that the veins in his forehead were knotted.

  “There is to be no congress,” he burst out, “save for the express purpose of procreation. I will not have my daughter defiled by casual concupiscence.”

  He turned in his chair, and glared at me with bloodshot eyes.

  “You understand me? It is an express condition of your marriage. Otherwise, I withdraw my consent.”

  I was completely taken aback. I muttered something.

  “I have your solemn undertaking. Very good. You may go.”

  And I went, like a dismissed schoolboy. I had been taken by surprise. I had no reply ready. I often was “silent like that, from sheer ineptitude, at important moments.

  On the day we were married, he came to the church, looking like a ghost. There was a small reception, not at the house, but at a temperance hotel half a mile away. Mr. Travers did not attend it. As soon as the service was over, he excused himself, and returned home. When we went back, for Muriel had to change her clothes and get her things, we found a small knot of errand boys outside, staring at the house. Mrs. Travers, puzzled, got out of the cab. Before she could control herself, a cry escaped her.

  “Oh, Gerald!” she gasped—and put a hand to her mouth. Every blind was pulled down, as if for a funeral. The scared maid-of-all-work reported that the master had gone up to his bed.

  So Muriel and I began our married life sitting one on either side of her mother, trying hard to comfort her and dry her tears.

  “Oh, my darling,” she kept sobbing. “And I did so want you to have a nice wedding day. I had so looked forward to it.”

  I got up.

  “He has no right to behave like this,” I said indignantly. “It’s utterly selfish and inconsiderate.”

  That did what all our ministrations had failed to do. Mrs. Travers’ tears stopped. She and Muriel gazed at me with horrified eyes.

  “Luke! How could you!”

  And we got ready to a running commentary on the extreme sensitiveness of Mr. Travers’ feelings, on his goodness of heart, his zeal for our welfare, on how he had been hurt and how much he had suffered, and how he did not look for gratitude, only for a little affection.

  Half an hour later we were sitting side by side in a first class carriage, rattling off down to Greystones. We clattered through Merrion Gates, and saw the sea. I looked at Muriel, with whom I was to share the rest of my life, and Muriel looked at me. I saw that she was shy of me, and felt a rush of affection for her. Clumsily, I reached for her hand.

  “Well,” I said, “now we’ve only ourselves to worry about.”

  “I know.” She squeezed my fingers. “Oh, Luke, I will look after you. I will try.”

  “There are some things we’ll never do to each other, anyway.” I cursed as I felt myself blushing. “We needn’t ever torment each other, the way——” I was going to say, the way your father torments your mother, but avoided it just in time—“the way some grown ups do. After all, we can always be kind to each other.”

  “Oh, Luke, we can.” For once I saw her soul in her eyes. “It isn’t much to ask, is it?” she said.

  “No.” We were coming to Blackrock. Soon we would see the harbour. “I can’t think why people make life so hard for themselves, when all that’s necessary is just to be kind. I mean, suppose you and I don’t agree about a thing— —”

  “But——” she leaned forward anxiously.

  “It’s all right, I’m not thinking of anything in particular. Truly.” She sat back again, half reassured, looking at me with careful attention. “I only meant, if at any time we thought differently—well, instead of making a big thing of it, and worrying each other, all we’ve got to do is just say, ‘Yes, my dear, I know that’s how you think. I think something else, but never mind.’ And kiss”—I kissed her—“and it will be all right.”

  “Oh, Luke.” She nestled against me, and sighed. “You are sweet to me.”

  I sat for a minute, my heart warm with the sense of my own wisdom, and the ‘simplicity of life. Then I jerked upright.

  “Look. There it is.”

  Startled, Muriel looked where I pointed. “What?” she asked.

  “The harbour. Here’s the West Pier, and soon—look, there’s the Poolbeg, she’s in for a spell. There’s the Melampus. Oh—and look. There’s Sir Thomas Lipton’s yacht, the Erin. Isn’t she a beauty!” We were clatteri
ng by all too fast. “There’s the jetty Captain Callaghan used to set out from. You know. I told you about him—the big fat man who went ahead of the mailer. There—oh, damn!” We were in the cutting, and could see nothing.

  “Luke!”

  “It’s just up about here the Doctor—— Why, what’s the matter?”

  “I did ask you not to use bad language. And on our wedding day too.”

  “But, good God, Muriel—— Oh. I’m sorry!” I sat back bitterly.

  “There you are, you see, darling. You don’t know when you’re swearing.” She put a loving hand on my arm. “Do try, just to please me. Let’s make a new resolve together. After all, there’s no sense in it. It doesn’t make things any more expressive.”

  “One, that’s not true. Two, it’s not your opinion, it’s your father’s. You and I are on our own now. Let’s be ourselves, and leave our elders out of it.”

  “You say things that your Uncle John says, and your old Doctor.”

  “They’re—all right. I’ll leave them out, if you like. That’s only fair. I’ll leave them out if you’ll leave him and your mother out.”

  Muriel said nothing, but a look of soft obstinacy crossed her face. Like a fool, I didn’t leave well alone.

  “After the way your father has behaved lately, the less we have of his views, the better.”

  “You’re not to say that,” she flashed out. “He feels my leaving home terribly.”

  “And makes you and your mother miserable. A queer way of showing it.”

  “Even if he does show his feelings, that doesn’t mean that he doesn’t know a great deal, and doesn’t say wise things.”

  Here we were, near a fight on our wedding day. This was too silly.

  “Darling.” I kissed her. “I’m sure he says stacks and stacks of wise things. But don’t let’s worry about them now. Let’s be silly in our own way.”

  She smiled, a little doubtfully, then kissed me with sudden ardour.

  “Oh, Luke, darling. I do love you so.”

  The train rocketed and bocketed past Glenageary and Dalkey, screwed itself noisily into the little curved tunnel at Sorrento, and rushed out exultantly into the sunshine and beauty of Killiney Bay, that long golden arm that fringes the Vale of Shanganagh and completes on the south the full ring of Dublin Bay. Seen coldly on a map, Dublin Bay ends round about Dalkey: but because I love both, I extend it to Bray Head, and call the whole the Bay. My life’s theatre, the haunt of all that is most beautiful and tragic and moving and laughable that I have seen or known or heard of. The Bay.

  The rest of the day we spent wandering about, having tea, having supper, shy of each other, but holding fast together, seeking in each other a refuge for our own shyness.

  We retired early. Muriel went first to undress, and shut me out for a long time. When I was ready, she made me kneel down beside her, while she prayed aloud that God would look down on us, His children, and bless our marriage and keep it always a sacrament, and transmute our bodily desires to serve His glory. She said it off like a parrot. I suppose her mother taught it her.

  Then, as soon as the light was out, her arms leaped at me, and her wet mouth fumbled for mine.

  Our honeymoon was not unhappy. For a great deal of the time we were very happy. We were on our own, we could get up when we pleased, and have our meals at whatever hour suited us. We were not at Greys tones itself, but a farmhouse some distance inland, which had been chosen by the Travers because a cousin had stayed there and recommended it. The weather was good. We wandered about, avoiding the summer crowds, and were glad to do nothing. We were both far more tired than we knew, after the strain of the last weeks.

  My difficulties were two. I could not get away from Muriel’s clinging affection, which sometimes stifled me. All my life I have needed to get off at times by myself, but now, if I showed the least inclination to do so, Muriel was hurt, and reproached me. The other difficulty was that the talks to which I, at any rate, had looked forward, the constant exploration of each other’s mind with which our friendship had begun, and for which I now thought we had full opportunity—these talks did not happen. Several times I attempted to start, but Muriel either was too sleepy, or agreed placidly with what I said, or I would look at her and find her smiling at me fatuously and not listening.

  “Darling Luke,” she would say, and reach up to stroke my ear or my cheek. “You look so sweet.”

  It was a long time before I realised that she had no intellectual curiosity. She had acquired a semblance of it, in order to get me, just as she would have acquired an interest in football or chemistry or, foreign stamps. Now that she had got me, it disappeared. It is one of the many terrifying things about women, the way they simulate or even acquire what they need for their own purposes. It isn’t deceit, it’s something far subtler and more dangerous, which comes to them by nature, like protective colouring. I raged against Muriel in my mind, in those early days, and felt bitterly cheated, not realising that she was in the grip of that inexorable force that keeps the world going, and could no more help herself at one time than another.

  I was often bitter during the next few months. The honeymoon lasted a fortnight. At the end of it we were to go straight into the little house the Travers had chosen for us. At first the idea had been that we should live with them, but I put my foot down there, and Muriel, I discovered, needed only a little encouragement to agree with me. But, with each day of absence, she leaned more and more heavily on her mother. They exchanged letters every day, to my secret annoyance, as I wanted above all things to wean her from her parents.

  Muriel always looked eagerly for her mother’s letter the moment we got down. On our last morning but one, as she read the letter, I saw that soft, secret look come over her face, that half smile, which I had learned to dread.

  “What’s the matter?” I asked.

  She didn’t answer at once. Her attention was given to one thing at a time.

  “What’s wrong?” I said again.

  “Nothing. Why?”

  “What are you grinning at in that sly way?” I tried to keep my voice light.

  “Silly Luke! I’m not.”

  “What is it, then? What does your mother say?”

  It was already a source of contention between us that I would not say “Mother,” but always “your mother.”

  “We shall have to go back to them for a few days. Number Twenty-three isn’t ready.”

  “But—they promised it would be all done by the fifteenth.”

  “I know. But it isn’t. The carpet in the parlour isn’t right, and Mother’s had to send the bedroom curtains back.”

  I saw red.

  “I’m not going back to your father’s,” I said. “You can go by yourself, if you want to.”

  “But, darling! Where else can we go?”

  “Anywhere. Stay here. Go to a hotel in the city.”

  Her eyes opened wide. “But that would be frightfully extravagant. And it would hurt poor dear Mother’s feelings most dreadfully.”

  I pushed back my chair.

  “It’s all a plant,” I said. “It’s a trick of your father to get us apart again. I bet you we’ll be put in separate rooms.”

  Muriel was flooded with blushes. She made a sign at me, and I saw the door was open, and the maid probably listening outside.

  “I don’t care,” I said. “I’m not going there.”

  I went out into the garden. Early though it was, the butterflies were busy, and the two great mop-shaped bushes of lavender in front of the door were persecuted with them. I can hardly see such a thing now without a feeling of anger and frustration.

  In the end, of course, Muriel won. We were five weeks in that blasted house before our own was ready, and, by the time we got into it, there was precious little difference between the two. We might as well have stayed. And, while we did stay, they put us, as I foresaw, in separate rooms. But to this, as it happened, Muriel was the first to object. She complained to her mother, a
nd got soft evasions only. The second night, she came in to me and cried and said how unhappy she was. I was rather brutal in reply. I told her to be quick and get our own house ready, for I saw that if she got too comfortable at home she’d be in no hurry to leave.

  The bed we were in was not big enough for two, and she was making me uncomfortably hot. I tried to persuade her to go back to her own room. She flung her arms round my neck.

  “Be kind to me, Luke darling. I’m so unhappy.”

  “Wait till we get to our own house. We’ll never be happy till we do.”

  She sighed, got up, and fumbled for her slippers.

  “I don’t believe you really love me at all.”

  “No, of course I don’t. That’s why I married you.”

  “I don’t think I ought to have let you.”

  “Go to bed, there’s a good girl. You’ll feel better tomorrow.”

  She stood for a few seconds, then sighed heavily.

  “Good night, Luke.”

  “Good night, Muriel. Don’t worry. This’ll soon be over.”

  She went to the door, opened it, and stepped outside. I saw a light in the opening, and heard her gasp. There was a queer sort of hissing sound, and, unmistakable and sharp, the sound of a slap. A door slammed, and Muriel rushed in and stumbled over to me. I sat up and put my arms around her. She was shuddering.

  “What on earth’s wrong?” I whispered. “What’s happened?”

  “Father,” she gasped. “He looked awful.” She shuddered again. “He—he hit me.”

  I suppose my muscles must have tensed, for her grip on me tightened. The darkness tingled with the shock of something beyond the pale, something from the outer edges of life. I felt my spine creep. Then I took refuge in a furious anger. Muriel was afraid to go back to her room, and I kept her with me for a couple of hours, but the night was close, and it was unbearably hot, so at last I took her to her room, and locked her in, so that he could not get at her.

  In the morning, Mrs. Travers, when she went to call her with a cup of tea, could not get in either. I deliberately refrained from going to open the door, since I wanted the position advertised. I heard whispering going on, and then Mrs. Travers came and tapped softly at my door. I knew she was terrified he would hear, so I made her tap three times before I answered.