by Ursula Bloom
‘The painted lady goes North to die,’ she thought, as she sipped a liqueur in the hotel. ‘Where did I hear that one before?’
It was just an old legend which meant absolutely nothing, because there was no truth in it; she ignored it.
She had got to see Norway again, just once again, before she finally settled down with Chester. She had realised that a week ago. Because she and Chester would be married after all, they would start life anew, and everything would be as she had always pictured it. Her mind went back over the last few months when so much had happened.
She thought of the meeting with Chester that night, and the subsequent dinner in the small but discreet restaurant, with the flat silver bowls of dark red roses, the wine, the good food, and her general feeling that life was suddenly turning in a better direction for her.
She had blinded herself resolutely to the realisation that this would take some explaining to Val, who was happily ensconced on the Wye, and who had already extended his first ten days by a second ten, because the weather was so good and he was enjoying himself so much.
Madeline had decided to forget Val pro tem, for Chester was the only one who had ever mattered. Over the dinner table he told her in more detail what his life had been whilst she was away. Hélène had turned out to be a termagant. You wouldn’t have thought such a gold-and-white creature could be so volcanic, he said; he had had a dreadful time with her. She would look him through and through haughtily as though he was made of dirt, and, damn it all, after a time he had had the feeling that he was made of dirt.
Hélène had been a spoilt child, she had had everything her own way in life, and she expected to go on having it. She had no warmth of feeling, she was never impulsively generous like Madeline had been, but was an aloof creature. Chester had never sounded the outer walls of her defences, and that was an awful thing to admit after one had married a girl.
The job had gradually failed him; he supposed that his heart wasn’t in it; it had never been his job, anyway. He glossed over the time when old Mr. Hellgarth had done his best to help him in his marriage, longing (for his daughter’s sake) to put matters right, and, having failed in this, had finally to sack him. Hélène had left him and had gone back to her father; and he had had to experience all the humiliation and dirty business of a bogus divorce. He spoke the truth when he told that to Madeline, for there had been no other woman in his life really, only this difficulty of trying to fix things up for Hélène, who had accepted it all as being part of her right.
The job in the city irked. Chester felt that he had gone back much to the days of the oil-and-colour shop and they were terrible. Chester’s ambitions had always soared high, believing when he had married Hélène that he had done uncommonly well for himself, their photographs in several of the better weeklies, and in a couple of dailies, having fired his imagination, But the thing couldn’t last. Nothing in this world lasts, he told Madeline pathetically.
In truth he had thought of Madeline as the one bright star, and had been acutely aware of the way that he had failed her; he was as sorry as it was possible for a man like Chester to be sorry about it. Deep sorrow wasn’t for him, and he knew it. He had few illusions left about himself in his shabby clothes.
Madeline told him about Frank’s legacy, about Val and St. John’s Wood, about her own circumstances. The more he heard, the more Chester realised that he had been a fool to chuck her up, for Madeline had guts! Also now she had money, and he dare bet that old Nonna had left her a packet, for Nonna was the sort who would keep a filthy stocking wadded out with notes somewhere under the bed. He eyed Madeline with more and more appreciation, wishing that he had the taxi fare to see her home, and give her a kiss for old time’s sake, and hold her hand. But he hadn’t!
They met again.
It was Madeline who took him to a tailor to be fitted out with some new clothes. She knew that Chester would find it impossible to do the best for himself unless he was properly equipped; the shabbiness of his suit and the frayed condition of his shirts gave him an inferiority complex which would always stand between him and a better job.
‘But I can’t possibly take them from you,’ he said, his mouth working with some distress.
‘You can pay me back later. Please, Chester, I insist that you let me help you this much.’
‘It’s terribly good of you,’ and then repentantly, standing in the shop with the tailor’s dummies, and the smart overcoats displayed, ‘Oh, God, what a cad I’ve been to you!’
She said nothing.
The tailor was an offensively smarmy little man; he had a bald head which shone obtrusively; he wore pince-nez and tottered about with a Gordon Harker urbanity. He regretted deeply that he had not been born a gentleman, and was now so much of a gentleman that he was actually aggressive with it. He arranged for the suits, sending them down to the shirt department, where they chose four good shirts and a couple of ties.
As they came out into the street again, Madeline realised that for the first time for months she was happy. Chester was, of course, radiant.
‘At least let me take you out to tea somewhere?’
‘Very well.’
It was the irony of fate that at the tea shop they should choose the table next to a small squat Scotsman, and the moment that she saw him Madeline knew that it was Sandy Mac. She hoped that he wouldn’t recognise her (she was a good deal thinner, and had dark shadows under her eyes that even her make-up couldn’t hide), but she had not changed sufficiently, for Sandy was observant. He turned to look at her; instantly his kindly grey eyes smiled. ‘Mrs. Greyston?’ he said, glanced at Chester, and away again.
‘How are you, Sandy Mac?’
‘I’m very well, thank you, very well indeed. And pleased to see you; you’ve been ill?’
‘I caught cold this spring and got a patch on the lung.’ As she said it the stupid little cough harassed her once more. ‘Can’t lose it, apparently,’ she said, trying to explain it.
‘I was very sorry to see about your husband in the paper. He ought to have had treatment earlier.’
‘Yes, you always said that, didn’t you?’ To change the subject, she introduced him to Chester. ‘This is Mr. Thane, a very old friend of mine.’
‘Charmed,’ said Chester; instantly Madeline realised by his bearing that he was putting on an act. He was conquering the shabby suit and shirt, he was posing again. She had thought that he had got past all that; he probably had with her, but not with other people.
Sandy said, ‘Where are you living these days? I’d like to ring you up. I’m all alone in London and would very much like to meet you again at lunch somewhere. Do give me your number?’
She gave it to him reluctantly, remembering how Sandy had talked to herself and Frank with that air of proprietorship which she supposed all doctors had, and could not break away from in their private lives. She wished that she hadn’t come into the tea shop.
‘I’ll ring you up if I may.’ He rose, taking his pay ticket from beside his plate, and moved off to the pay desk by the door.
Chester said, ‘Extraordinary chap, and why did he call you Mrs. Greyston?’
‘He knew me as that. When I went to Norway with Frank it seemed so much easier if we called ourselves Mr. and Mrs.’
Chester stared at her. ‘I didn’t think that of you, Maddy.’
‘No, and you needn’t think it now. There was nothing in it, nothing at all.’ She leant forward on the table. ‘Oh, Chester, don’t you see that you are misjudging me? I’m not one of those, and never was. Frank wasn’t that sort of man, either; he didn’t think about a woman in that way, he was just a darling,’ and, very softly indeed, ‘Such a darling.’
‘What about this present chap? Val whatever-his-name-is.’
‘Yes, I know,’ she said slowly.
Val was a problem. Val, who could get so hopelessly drunk and need her so much; Val, who could think along such exquisite lines, so that he entranced her. Just as Frank had taught her to
see, so Val was teaching her to think.
Cups, let them be deep …
that was Val!
Every time that she went back to the little house in St. John’s Wood she knew that this couldn’t go on. She KNEW, but could do nothing about it. Whilst he was away it was all right, but when he came back she must sever the relationship, only how? Val needed her, he had been good to her; it seemed a poor way to repay her debt by leaving him. She tried to write to him that night, but it wasn’t easy.
Dear Val,
I never knew that the written word was so hard, but since you have been away things have happened and that first man whom I told you about has come back into my life. I sound ungrateful, and really I am deeply grateful to you for all that you have done for me, only our present relationship …
Relationship was the wrong word, but what could she call it? She tore the letter up, starting again, copying it until she got to that one word, then, staying her hand, caressed the end of the pen with her tongue.
Next morning there came the letter from Val which made her decide not to post her own.
Darling Maddy,
Here we have been hotting things up, I’m afraid, and I had a hell of a head yesterday. It’s no use, I can’t be good in a big way, and you mustn’t ask it of me. When I drink I see beauty, I dream beauty, I am beauty, but when I’m stone sober I’m a poor shuddering worm, vile, stupid, and just a damn fool. Even my pen becomes stilted. I need you, Maddy, I need you very much. Think I shall cut my visit short here, because I want to see you again; you are my one anchorage in a dim world. And believe me, when I say it’s damned dim at the moment. I shall be home on Thursday. All my love, dearest.
Val.
But the letter was apparently born of a hang-over, for Val was not back on Thursday, when she had hoped to talk to him and get things set upon a better footing. Val did not come back until the following week, when she had torn up several letters in the futile attempt to write to him, and had bitten the end off her pen.
‘I can’t think why,’ said Chester, ‘he is nothing but a common seducer. What the hell is the good of getting my poor sweet in and nursing her up, and then asking that in return?’
She wanted to say ‘and what did you ask?’ But she couldn’t. Not to Chester, Chester was different, he was the man who had always held her heart, who always would hold it, and whom she couldn’t say no to.
What a fool I am, she thought.
Lunch with Sandy Mac wasn’t pleasant. She had an idea before she started that it would be difficult, remembering that Sandy Mac could never forget that he was a doctor; he and his profession were inseparable.
He wanted to know about the pneumonia, because he had heard her little cough and it worried him. ‘Ought to get your lungs examined,’ he said.
‘Good Heavens, you aren’t off on that tangent again? You are not suggesting there is anything the matter with me?’
‘Hoots no, but it is wise to be on the safe side. I told you that Frank was infectious.’
She resented the inference very much, because it seemed to cast some stigma on Frank. ‘Please don’t suggest that.’
‘You don’t realise that I’m only trying to be helpful. I want to help you, to do my best for you. Please let me?’ When he spoke like that it wasn’t easy to say him nay.
‘There is nothing wrong with me,’ she maintained.
‘Then you can have no objection to being examined.’
‘Except that it seems to be such waste of time, everybody’s time, yours as well.’
‘Don’t be silly!’
He would get his way because he was that sort of man; Frank had been strong enough to withstand him, possibly because in the Norwegian village there was no adjacent Harley Street and nobody could be called in in a weak moment, but Madeline couldn’t get her way. She had to go.
She went to the airless consulting-room in a famous street, and met the doctor with the formidably restrained manner, masked under the guidance of kind helpfulness. He was an austere man, who irritated her by his speech. He made a lot of notes on a piece of paper which she felt certain would be filed and never looked at again; there were long pauses, specimens, and then coming out into the street with a frightened feeling at her heart, and a wonder whether doctors did this sort of thing with the sole idea of being terrifying, and pompous, or whether they really desired to help.
She walked into Regent’s Park, sitting there for a while with the cool wind in the trees, and the children playing and the dogs romping about. Children and dogs were always human and had not time for reserve and pomposity. She liked them.
She wanted to think, or she thought she wanted to think, but somehow the afternoon glided by, and she was quite content to sit here with the light-gold sunshine, listening to the sound of dogs and children, and thinking only in terms of poetry.
Cups, let them be deep …
D. H. Lawrence! She wondered why the line kept recurring?
Two outstanding events happened before Val’s return. The first was the offer of a better job for Chester, which delighted them both. They met to discuss it, walking in the park one evening, with the lupins in flower, exquisite blue and pink steeples of blossom.
‘It’s just what I’ve always wanted,’ he said, ‘A job which gives a chap some initiative. It offers a good salary too, and on it we could be married the moment that the divorce is through.’
‘I seem to remember another divorce, Chester.’
‘I know. I’m ashamed to mention the very word, but this time it is the truth, Look.’ He whipped out of his pocket a letter from a firm of solicitors in the Temple, giving date, time and place, and assuring him that everything would be in order. ‘This time, Maddy, my own sweet, I do intend to marry you; though, God knows, if I were in your shoes I wouldn’t believe myself.’
‘The queer thing is that I do believe you, Chester.’ She had always heard that the worse a man behaved to a woman the more she loved him, and it looked like it being so in her case.
‘This job is in insurance work, I’ve brought the letter for you to see. I should hate to think that I just had the chance to be what I wanted to be and then missed the boat again.’
She read the letter slowly; the firm was one that she had heard of when she was at Rozanne’s, she could not think in what connection, and did not see that it mattered very much. They offered the job to Chester, with reference to his previous experience (she did not dwell on that, for he, with his imaginative soul, had gone back to the F.O.), and salary was in the region of six hundred, but they asked that, as a formality, he should sink something in the firm. ‘Formality’ seemed to be an elastic word.
‘But surely, Chester, they can’t want you to take shares in their firm?’
‘Yes, they do. It seems queer to me, but I took advice on it and they told me that quite often firms do that; it does insure one’s own future with them, of course, and if only I had the money to put up it would make our future’ (he accentuated the word ‘our’) ‘secure.’
‘You have no money?’
‘I’ve been a fool, Maddy! First of all there was Biddy; I had to give her quite a lot to keep her going ‒ oh, I know I pretended I didn’t, but I did. Then I got into that financial mess, and Hélène wasn’t cheap.’
‘But you had a good salary at Mr. Hellgarth’s?’
‘He was as stingy as they’re made. You would have thought for his daughter’s sake he’d have coughed up, but some men don’t give a damn about their daughters …’
‘You want me to lend you the money?’
‘I never thought of that for a moment; besides, it is not right to take money from a woman. Anyhow, you wouldn’t have that much.’
‘Yes, I have got that much,’ she said tiredly. She was a fool! The awful part was that she knew that she was a fool, but she had said before that she would work for him, and unfortunately that offer still held good. She knew that she loved him too much. She recognised his weaknesses, she knew his bad traits,
but she couldn’t tear up her love for him, for her roots were there, and they were loyal roots that she could not tear up.
He said, ‘We’re going to be married, my dear. This time we really are going to be married, you know, and nothing can stop us, so help me God!’
It was true, for this time he did mean it; she knew that he meant it, whatever the outside world might think. ‘You shall have the money,’ she said tenderly; ‘it is the foundation-stone for our future. Oh, Chester, I wish you knew how much I cared for you.’
He took her into his arms and kissed her, even out there in the public park; but the park was occupied with its own business, and the sight of two lovers kissing under the trees mattered very little to it. They went their way.
After all her trials she had won through; once she had thought herself a painted lady, closely akin to Sheila, but she had only been passing through the transitory moods of growing up, and had gradually worked her way into the light again; the radiant light of loving Chester, and being his wife. Still there was Val to be reckoned with.
Before Val arrived home she was rung up by Sandy to say that he had got the doctor’s report, and that he wanted to talk to her about it. She knew exactly what he meant when he said it in that reserved voice, he couldn’t hide the tone from her.
‘So they found something?’
‘Well, of course it is in almost everybody at some time or other; nothing to be worried about, but you ought to have some treatment.’
She experienced the sudden revulsion of feeling that once she had not been able to understand in Frank; it was the hatred of being pushed into accepting medical aid, the longing to go one’s own way, to work out one’s own reprieve, and to refuse the assistance offered. She understood how Frank had felt, perhaps she had always understood.
‘I can’t see you to-day,’ she said, ‘to-morrow,’ and in her heart hopefully, ‘to-morrow never comes.’
