by Nevil Shute
He said, ‘I want you to pack your things and come back home with me today. When we get home, I’m going to make some changes.’
She blew a long cloud of cigarette smoke. ‘What are they?’
‘I’m going to sell the house. We’re going to live in the country.’
‘Are we, indeed? What part of the country?’
‘Somewhere not far from London — Beaconsfield — Dorking — that sort of distance. On my part, I shall spend less time in London, and more at home. We might get some hunting in the winter.’
‘Anything else?’
He met her eyes, mocking him. ‘Yes,’ he said savagely. ‘A total exclusion of Prince Ali from your list of friends, and Cathcart, and the Cohens. I’ll have no more of them.’
She laughed a little. ‘I suppose I’ve brought that on myself.’
‘I suppose you have,’ he said.
‘It’s a pretty joyous sort of life that you’ve sketched out for me,’ she observed. ‘You evidently don’t trust me in London, so I’m to live in the suburbs. If I’m good you’ll take me out with the suburban drag on Saturday mornings. I’m to give up all my friends, and sit in the country alone and grow pansies.’
‘That’s it exactly,’ said Warren. ‘Those are my terms if we’re going on together. I won’t go on as we are. And on my part, I’ll do everything I can to make you happy — on those lines.’
‘And if I don’t accept your terms?’
‘I hope you will. If you don’t, I shall divorce you.’
There was a little silence.
‘Well,’ she said, ‘you’d better go ahead and do it.’
‘You wouldn’t like to have another try at carrying on together?’
She shook her head. ‘You don’t want me, and you know it. All you want is your work. That’s all you ever think about, your work and your business friends. It’s not as if you had to work as you do in order to live. You do it because that’s what you like. You’re never at home because you’re away on business; you never take a holiday. What sort of life do you think I lead, married to you? And now you want to shove me away down in the suburbs, away from all my friends and everyone I know. I’m certainly not going to agree to that. If that’s the way you feel, the sooner we bring it to an end the better.’
‘You mean that?’
‘I most certainly do.’ She paused. ‘I shall be staying here till Monday; then I shall be going down to Cannes, to Nita Menzies. You can send the papers there.’
He stood and stared out of the window at the leaden roofs beneath a leaden sky, the running traffic in the street below.
‘As you like,’ he said at last. ‘I’m sorry that we had to come to this.’
CHAPTER TWO
HE CROSSED TO London by the midday air service, and went straight to his office. He got there about four o’clock in the afternoon and plunged into his work. He had a long conversation on the telephone with Heinroth, and another with his banking associates in Stockholm. He cleared two days of correspondence in half an hour’s dictation; his typist left him with a sense of grievance and a batch of work that would keep her back an hour and spoil her evening.
‘Half-past five!’ she said to her companion in their room, ‘and all these letters to be done! It’s too bad! But my dear, have you seen him? He’s looking simply awful! Wonder what’s been happening?’
In his own room Warren sat with Morgan, his confidential secretary. ‘That’s the Finnish business, then,’ he said. ‘We’re practically home on that. Get the agreements drawn in draft, and we’ll get Heinroth to look over them. Then you can circulate them to the Board. You’ve got it on the agenda?’
‘I have arranged that, sir.’
He passed a hand wearily across his eyes. ‘We shan’t hear much of Plumberg for a time. The Moresley Corporation thing is dead, I think. I’m not going to do anything with that chap Cantello.’
‘There’s the Laevatian Oil Development.’
‘Let it sweat. I may be irregular at the office for the next week or so. I’ve got some personal matters to clear up.’
The secretary hesitated. ‘If I may say so, why don’t you take a holiday? You’re looking very tired. I’m sure the Board would wish you not to overdo things, sir.’
‘That’s all right,’ said Warren irritably. ‘I may be away for a day or two. Tell Miss Sale to let me have those letters as soon as they’re ready. I’m going home then.’
Morgan left him, and he sat alone in his empty office, his fingers drumming nervously upon the leather of the empty desk in front of him. He had said that he was going home; to what sort of home was he going? He pressed a key and spoke into the desk telephone; they were to ring his house and say that he would be in to dinner. He must sell that house, he thought. He must discharge the servants. He would live in a flat, perhaps in Pall Mall or the Albany. He must write to Elise to remove her things. He must see his lawyer. He must go through the tedious, intolerable formalities of a divorce to win a freedom that he did not want. He must start in middle age to build up another life, new interests.
‘It’s going to be lots of fun,’ he said bitterly.
He got up from his desk, and paced up and down the office. In a minute or two he rang irritably for his letters; one or two appeared, which he signed; the remainder were unfinished. He spoke to Morgan on the internal telephone.
‘I’m going now. You’d better sign those letters for me.’ He put on his hat and coat and left the office.
He dined alone that night in his deserted house, sombre in dinner jacket in the empty dining-room, with shadows flickering in the corners from the candles on the table. His butler served him silently, efficiently; Warren ate very little. He took his coffee in the library before the fire; when he had served it Evans waited for a moment by his side.
Warren looked up. ‘What is it, Evans?’
‘Could I have a word with you, sir?’
‘Certainly. Go ahead.’
The man coughed. ‘I am afraid I must give you my notice, sir. I am sorry to inconvenience you, but I would like to leave in a month’s time.’
Warren was silent for a minute, sipping his coffee. Then he said, ‘I’m sorry to hear that, Evans. Why do you want to go?’
The man hesitated, and then said awkwardly, ‘No particular reason, sir, just that I can’t feel settled here.’
‘Is the money all right?’
‘Oh, quite all right, sir. But I feel that I should be better for a change.’
Warren glanced up at the man, standing deferentially before him. ‘I see. As a matter of fact, Evans, I was going to speak to all of you tomorrow. Mrs Warren will not be coming back to live here. I’m closing down this house, and going to live in chambers.’
‘I am very sorry to hear that, sir.’
Warren nodded. ‘I was going to give you all a month’s notice, with three months’ wages. So you needn’t feel you’re inconveniencing me.’
‘That is very generous treatment, sir. I am sure the staff will appreciate your kindness, in the circumstances.’ He hesitated. ‘With things the way they are, sir, I am sorry that I gave you notice. But I wasn’t to know.’
‘That’s all right. As a matter of interest, why did you want to leave?’
The butler hesitated again. ‘I don’t know that I can quite answer that, sir. But it hasn’t been the sort of house that one would care to spend one’s life in, if you understand what I mean.’
Warren said, ‘I understand.’ He nodded to the man. ‘All right Evans — that’ll do. I’ll see you all in the morning.’
The man left him, and he sat for a long time before the fire, quiet and motionless, full of reflection. So that was it. His house, his mode of life, had become so notorious that decent servants wouldn’t stay with him; they had their own lives to consider. He did not blame them. But if that was what his servants thought about it all, what would London and the City think?
Prince Ali Said ... Already he could frame the limericks and the c
onundrums in his mind. He knew the Stock Exchange.
He sat on in the library, quiet, without reading; as the fire died the shadows closed in upon him. He had worked hard all his life. He had been in the Gunners in the War and had risen to command a battery; he could still remember the sequence of his firing orders, the colours of the different grades of shell, and that you concentrated when the aiming point was in the rear. He had gone into his father’s bank at the Armistice and had worked hard in the City for the last fifteen years.
His life, he thought, was more than half over. He had worked hard since he was a boy; what had he got to show for it?
His wife had left him, had preferred a coloured man. His house was one that decent people would not stay in, even if they were servants. He had few friends; he worked too hard for that. His health was still good, but he had grown nervous and irritable; that was the work again, the difficulty that he had in sleeping due to lack of exercise, perhaps, due also to the drugs he took to make him sleep. In the morning he would take the necessary steps to close the house and put it up for sale. Then, he supposed, he would go and live in a service flat, and try to build up a new life — for what? For more work? He had worked hard for fifteen years and had got nothing, it seemed to him, that was worth having.
Presently he left the library and went up to his room. He stood for a time looking at his face in the mirror; he saw it to be lined and haggard, the face of a man older than his years. He turned away, and went mechanically to the drawer of his dressing-table; he would not sleep that night without the assistance of his allonal.
He took the little vial in his hand. He saw an old face twitching at him from the mirror; the battery major straightened up, a gust of passion swept over him. ‘My God,’ he said aloud. ‘I’m looking like a corpse.’ Impulsively he threw the vial in the fire and turned towards his bed.
He hardly slept at all that night.
He set about his business early next morning, the keen mind dulled and impeded with fatigue. He saw the servants after breakfast and gave them, in hard, businesslike fashion, the gist of what he had already told the butler; a month’s notice with three month’s pay. Then he sat down and wrote a letter to Elise, hard and efficient, to ask her to remove her things from the house within the month, before he put the furniture in store. He paid a visit to a house agent. And then he went to his solicitor, and sat in conference with him for an hour.
He lunched at a solitary table in his club, reserved and aloof. In the smoking-room, over his coffee, he fell into an uneasy sleep and woke after twenty minutes of twitching insensibility, dazed and unwell.
He went down to his office.
In the house that he had left the servants gathered round to talk about their notice, dispersed to make pretence of work, and gathered round again. ‘I won’t say but what three months’ pay will be a comfort and a nest egg to put by,’ said the cook. ‘But what a thing to happen in the house!’
‘I never did like black gentlemen,’ said Elsie. ‘That Prince Ali, he gave me the shudders the first time I saw him. What she could see in him ...’
Donaghue, the chauffeur, winked at Evans. ‘The blacker the berry, the sweeter the juice, as you might say.’
‘Not in my kitchen, if you please, Mr Donaghue,’ said the cook with dignity.
‘Sorry,’ said the chauffeur.
‘It’s a pity that it had to happen now,’ said Evans. ‘I’d hoped to get away before the bubble bust. It doesn’t do one any good in getting a new place, this sort of thing.’
‘That’s what I say, Mr Evans,’ said the cook. ‘It makes things very difficult, I’m sure. Mistresses don’t like it, say what you will.’
‘Well,’ said the chauffeur. ‘She’s got a nice new place, and no mistake.’
‘I wouldn’t be too sure she’ll keep it,’ said Evans.
‘Ah,’ said the cook darkly. ‘The evil stoop and pick up luck.’
They moved away about their work again. Donaghue followed Elsie out into the hall. ‘It’s a rotten break-up, this,’ he said. ‘Just as we were beginning to get to know each other, too.’ He had only been there for about two months. He was cursing himself, boyishly and miserably, that he had not made more headway with the girl in that two months. He hadn’t wanted to rush things. And now this bust-up had come.
‘I’m sorry, too,’ she said. ‘But that’s life all over, that is. Just as you think you’ve got nicely settled down, something happens.’
‘That’s right,’ he said enthusiastically. ‘I’ve often thought it was like that.’
They stood in silent, intimate communion for a moment.
He mustered his courage. ‘Were you doing anything tomorrow afternoon? Your half day, isn’t it?’
She said, ‘I always go and see my Aunt Millie, at Streatham. She’s been ever so good to me since I came to London.’
‘I was wondering if you’d like to see a picture,’ he said awkwardly. ‘There’s some good ones on ...’
She smiled radiantly on him. ‘That’s ever so nice of you, Mr Donaghue,’ she said. ‘I could see Aunt Millie on Sunday. I could get ready by half-past two.’
‘That’s a date,’ he said, and went to polish a clean car in an exultant dream.
Warren worked steadily for some hours in his office. He cleared up the arrears of his work with some half-formed idea that he might go away. He was tired and stale. He had no particular desire to take a holiday, but he could not go on in Grosvenor Square alone. He felt that he must have a break in his routine.
‘Looking like death again this afternoon,’ remarked his typist to her friend. ‘I bet there’s something wrong.’
He knocked a pencil from his desk in the late afternoon, and stooped to pick it up. A sudden cramp shot through his abdomen and for a minute he was wrung with pain; then it relaxed, and he was sitting motionless in his chair, a little white and breathing very carefully for fear it would come on again. Presently he began to move, cautiously at first, then with increasing confidence. ‘Exercise,’ he thought. ‘I ought to get more exercise. I’ll die at fifty if I don’t look out.’
He left the office at about seven o’clock and walked part of the way home through the wet, lamp-lit streets in pursuit of his new resolution. He went down Cheapside, over Holborn Viaduct, past Gamage’s and Kingsway nearly to Tottenham Court Road. There he was tired and a little faint, and took a taxi to his house in Grosvenor Square. ‘I can’t go letting myself get run down like this,’ he thought. ‘I’d better get away and get some exercise.’
He had a whisky and a bath when he got home, and felt refreshed; he put on a dinner jacket and went down to dine alone. With the first mouthful his appetite left him; he ate very little, and went through into the library for coffee. He drank two cups of coffee and a little brandy, and felt better. He sat in his deep chair before the fire, and faced the problem of his sleep.
He knew he would not sleep. He had hardly slept at all the previous night; he knew that it would be the same again. He would not sleep without his allonal, and he had done with that. You need to be physically tired to sleep; it was imperative to him that he should get more exercise, at once, and quickly. He must get away somewhere, and walk. If he walked twenty miles a day for the next week sleep would return to him, he knew; walking was what his body clamoured for. It would rid him of this sick feeling, would clean his mind and body as they needed to be cleaned. Twenty miles a day, and for a week on end.
That was what he would do, tomorrow. But for this night ahead of him, in some way he must get through that. Queer, this matter of his sleep. If he were travelling, in car or train or aeroplane, he would be able to compose his mind, to rest and doze, and fall into a sleep of sorts; in bed he could not sleep without his allonal. But he could sleep in a motorcar.
And that would get him right away, and he could walk. Twenty miles a day; till he was well.
He rose and pressed the bell. He glanced at his watch; it was ten o’clock. When Evans came, he said:
‘Is Donaghue about?’
‘In the housekeeper’s room, sir.’
‘Tell him I want the car. In half an hour.’
‘Very good, sir.’
‘Tell him to get the tank filled up, and put some warm clothes on. I may be going a long way.’
He went up to his room and changed into an old business suit that he had bought in the United States. He put on a heavy ulster and a scarf, and gave Evans a flask to fill with brandy. These completed his preparations for the road; he looked at the contents of his notecase. He had about eighteen pounds. That, he thought, would see him through.
In the housekeeper’s room Donaghue was making similar preparations, swearing a little to himself. He had no fancy for a drive of unknown length on a cold night in February.
Elsie came to him with a little packet in her hands.
‘I cut you some sandwiches, Mr Donaghue,’ she said, a little shyly, ‘and there’s a bit of seed cake. I do hope he won’t keep you out too late.’
He took them gratefully, and mumbled his thanks. ‘See you half-past two tomorrow, anyway,’ he said. ‘Even if it makes me miss my breakfast.’
She smiled at him. ‘You wouldn’t rather we put it off?’
‘Not much. I’ll be back.’
He had already brought the car to the door; he went out to it now, and Evans went into the library.
‘The car is quite ready, sir.’
Warren rose slowly from his chair, in ulster and scarf. He was feeling unwell, and the prospect of a long night drive seemed less attractive to him now, but he might as well go. He would probably sleep a little, anyway.
‘All right, Evans,’ he said. ‘I may be away for a few days.’
The butler hesitated in surprise. ‘Shall I pack a bag, sir?’
