The Merciless Ladies (33 page)

Mr Rosse finished his muffins, stared at his plate. I ordered some more.

‘If I were in Mr Stafford's position I'd simply come up for the next hearing and defend myself. Let him say that he cannot afford a barrister; that will immediately emphasize his position
vis-à-vis
his first wife. Then if the judgement goes somewhat against him, as it must if he has earned over a thousand pounds this year, let him default on his payments. Let him make no effort to pay. Let his wife summons him again. Let her go on issuing garnishee orders. It'll keep her well occupied. It'll keep her amused. It'll cost her a pretty penny. It's really a question of staying power. In the end she'll get tired. After all, in cases like this, it is usually the husband who comes off best in the long run.'

I nodded. ‘Very good advice. The trouble is you're not prescribing for a normal man. He wouldn't come down and defend himself in court – I'm pretty sure. Nor would he tolerate bailiffs knocking on his door. Olive Stafford has more staying power than he has, and she'll last the course if it finishes her. It's much more likely to finish him instead.'

‘Failing anything else', said Rosse, ‘it might be worth the trifling expense to employ an inquiry agent. One never knows what one is going to find. And naturally there is a
dum casta
clause in the maintenance agreement.'

‘What the devil is that?'

‘A clause making it a condition of the payment that the wife shall remain chaste. Very necessary and right.'

‘I think it would be a waste of money. You could try it but I think it would simply fail. Olive is – an unusual creature. She's really very pretty, and can be charming; but she's as unlovable as granite. Even if she ever took the time in her exhausting social life she'd be scrupulously careful to cover her tracks. She's not altogether sexless, of course, but I believe she hates giving way. She resents being possessed. There are insects, aren't there, in which the female kills the male afterwards. There's something of that in her nature.'

Mr Rosse was looking at me interestedly. ‘ She's probably
had
affairs. But to get her remarried is the best solution.'

‘No doubt.'

‘Surely she would prefer some trifling loss of independence to the uneasy debt-ridden existence of a divorced wife?'

‘You have to remember that until a year ago she was getting an allowance of two thousand a year. Every prospective husband hasn't that to offer.'

‘No. A reasonable view … You say when you went to see her she was perfectly determined to go on with it, laid all the blame on her husband, I suppose?'

‘Yes. All.'

Mr Rosse began another muffin.

‘Well, she's not – hm – unusual in that respect anyway.'

II

For a while nothing. All this time my own life was going on, full and exacting and satisfying. In the country the financial crisis had mounted and a National Government formed under Ramsay MacDonald. Another idealist corrupted by the establishment. Or another hothead discovering the hard facts of life. Depending how you looked at it. Thank God I no longer had a responsibility to report it.

One in three Americans was out of work; six hundred banks had closed their doors; the skyscrapers were proving useful platforms for suicide; dispossessed householders camped in broken shacks on the sides of rivers; former industrialists begged the price of a meal.

I sold my Morris Minor and bought a Wolseley Hornet, the first small car brought out by that distinguished firm, the smallest six cylinder ever. One and a quarter litres. A new radical design, pushing the engine far forward over the front wheels. I didn't keep it long enough to discover all the bugs: that the valve springs were too weak, that the tiny cylinders suffered excessive wear, that its ‘twin-top' gear was occasionally valuable for overtaking but was no use whatever on gradients because there was not sufficient power.

A play was in rehearsal to open shortly at Drury Lane called
Cavalcade.
St John Ervine in the
Observer
wrote of Coward that he was ‘a faithful representative of the spirit of his time. If we wish to understand some of the youth that grew to manhood in the War, we must take a good look at Mr Coward, in whom the gaiety and despair of his generation is exactly mixed. He has no faith in life here or hereafter …'

P. Steegman had just painted Somerset Maugham, a commission which almost certainly would have fallen to P. Stafford if he had still been functioning. There was talk of an award of the Nobel Prize for Literature to John Galsworthy.

I had a girl-friend called Jane Bowker, with whom for a few months I thought something important and serious for us both was growing. But always I found myself not totally lost. Often I thought of Holly in Cumberland. And often I thought of Olive in Clarendon Gardens. Maybe I was always doomed to live other people's lives more urgently than my own. It is perhaps a failure of personality, which accounts for so much.

As autumn approached I had another letter from Holly.

‘Paul has been away for five days. This, I know, should be in capital letters. He had a letter last week to say that old Dr Marshall, your one-time headmaster, was dying, so he packed a bag and went. I had a woman in to sleep; but I'm not in the least afraid of being alone here. When you get to know it the valley isn't eerie any longer.

‘I was turning out a suitcase yesterday and came across the photographs taken in the old
Patience.
What a crazy scheme of ours to come home in that little leaky cutter!

‘Do you remember a discussion we had, you and I, in the saloon of the
Patience
right in the middle of the bad weather? It was a deep one, about religion and God and seasickness, and having something to believe in, though it never really got going. But I did feel in those days that life had been examined too closely for my good. It wasn't that I couldn't see wood for trees; but I couldn't see the trees for the wood. Life in a thoroughly well-run, well-explained universe just wasn't attractive.

‘Things have changed a bit since then. Not that I see things much more clearly, but the perspective is better. For a long time now I've watched a man struggling to express his personal view of life, which he alone can feel. That has knocked holes in the scientific explanations.

‘
Not
because Paul's pictures are necessarily good. I wonder if you see what I mean, Bill? The man with the one talent is just as good an argument as the man with ten, so long as he uses it. If I were starting a religious revival I should put down as a first law that it is the business of all of us to create something to the very highest level of our ability, whether that something is a symphony or a cake, a home in a city or a pair of shoes, a cathedral or a field of corn. Aren't such people the people who are happy? And don't we all, by the act of producing something which has not existed before, show a sort of kinship with the something which made
us
?

‘Here endeth the first lesson. Not very impressive; but I feel there's a sort of personal truth for me wrapped up in it. Be kind enough not to laugh.

‘Paul has been doing two pictures with the palette knife for a change. He uses the PK like a workman using a trowel for building a house. I want him to send you one.'

‘I had a letter from Bertie last week; my first this year. No thought of returning home. He seems to be the happiest of any of us.'

On the back of the letter, written in pencil was a postscript.

‘By the way, I've come to the conclusion I'm going to have a baby. About March. Perhaps this fact has a hidden influence on the prosy part of this letter. After all, if a girl can't start a religious revival once in her life …

‘So I'm going to be a creative artist in a way I hadn't bargained for. Perhaps Daddy's mathematics may yet come in useful for adding up the grocer's bill.'

III

A few days later, moth to flame, I telephoned Olive.

‘This is Bill. I thought I'd ring.'

‘Well?'

‘Sorry about our last meeting. Afraid I was rude.'

‘Should I expect anything else?'

‘Well, you
were
a little provoking.'

‘Flint to tinder, eh?'

‘Yes … But I've come to the conclusion that squabbling like that is a fairly sterile occupation. It gets us nowhere.'

‘D'you think we ought to get somewhere?'

‘Not in those insinuating terms. But I miss you when I don't see you … and it seems a pity.'

‘For whom?'

‘Well, doesn't it? We're closer in a way than many people who don't fight. And if we agreed to cut that out.'

‘Could we?'

‘Once in a while, I think. How about trying?'

‘In what way?'

‘Have dinner with me sometime.'

A slight metallic laugh. ‘Where?'

‘The Savoy.'

‘Can you afford it?' ‘How abont Monday?' ‘Sorry. Can't.' ‘Tuesday?.' ‘All right … On one condition … that you don't mention Paul.' I made a face at the receiver. ‘Agreed.' ‘What time?' ‘I'll call for you at seven-thirty.' ‘All right. Thanks.' She rang off.

The older one gets, the further one moves from the events to be told, the more reluctant one becomes, when the memories are painful, to disturb them, to give them the benefit of an extra life by setting them down for others to see. It's like showing some stranger round your house and into a room not opened for years. You draw back the curtains, dust drifts in the pale sunlight and shows up long-remembered yet half-forgotten furniture. The eye of the memory catches sight of so much better left unseen.

I should like to make it clear that I went to meet Olive that evening with no plan of any sort in mind. None at all. I did not at the time closely analyse my motives for going, and in retrospect it's impossible to define them without confusing the intention with the outcome.

The evening was bright and fine with the first thin freckle of autumn frost on the pavements. Tyres left faint marks on the delicately powdered roads. My car was having its first service, so I took a cab. She was wearing an azure velvet dinner frock with sleeves to the elbow and a low square neck. Over it was a mink bolero. She congratulated me on finding her with a night free this week: if it had not been tonight it could not have been for twelve days. I accepted this remark in a fittingly humble spirit and took her to dinner.

I set out to please her, and under the effects of the food and the wine she began to thaw. She frequently smiled at my remarks as well as expecting me to defer to her own. I watched the small bright teeth, the small pointed eye-teeth, disappearing behind precise firm lips, the vivid painted little face changing its contours. Except when smiling she looked so much older, so much more like her mother. Some of the bloom had gone already – she was only thirty-one – but the more I watched her the more sure I was that it was not physical ill-health. Much more probably what in those days used to be called neurasthenia. The old corrosive element of self-absorption.

We had a cockrail first, a half-bottle of Puligny Montrachet, a bottle of Volnay '25, and Cointreau with the coffee. As we sipped the last I said: ‘ Where now?'

‘Now? Home, I suppose. D'you want to go on?'

‘It's early yet. You must know more night clubs than I do.'

‘There's ‘‘The 77”. And ‘‘The Blue Peter'' which isn't far from where I live. There's ‘‘The Hungaria''.'

‘Let's try ‘‘The Blue Peter”. I've heard of it but haven't been. Are you a member?'

‘Yes.' She looked at her watch. ‘But it's early yet. The place doesn't get going till midnight. I suppose we could dance here … Or have a drink at my flat?'

I nodded. ‘Let's do that.'

As we got into a taxi I said: ‘What did you decide to do about Maud?'

Olive laughed. ‘She's leaving next week.'

‘So she
was
stealing things?'

‘I never caught her out. But I'm
tired
of her. She knows me too well. Anyhow I can't afford her now.'

‘Poor Maud.'

‘Poor Olive. I can't even keep the flat, so that's going too.'

‘What will you do?'

‘Ah. That's a surprise. I'll tell you later.'

‘Is Maud in tonight?'

‘She's out till midnight. She's really taking it hard. You never liked her, did you?'

‘I don't fancy women with acne.'

She laughed again. She was not drunk but she was more easy and friendly in her manner than I had ever known her – except perhaps in the very early days before she married Paul.

‘She hates my guts, really. I believe she had a thing for me – wanted to keep me all for herself. One of those women. Now she feels she's being turned off without a thought and all her love has changed to jealousy.'

It was about ten-thirty when we reached the flat. By then ideas were moving in my head – or perhaps they were responding to physical impulses. At this distance I can't be sure. When we got in she threw off her bolero and went over to put on a record.

‘Get you a drink?' I said.

‘Please. Brandy. D'you know, stupid Bill, I feel better than I've done for ages. Perhaps, if you can only keep off the forbidden subject, you
are
good for me.'

‘Glad to hear it.'

We drank and danced. I knew then, if I wanted her …

We sat for a bit, sipping brandy. I leaned over and kissed her gently, experimentally. She didn't resist.

She said: ‘I'll tell you sometime. I'm sure it'll amuse you – if it doesn't infuriate you. Will it infuriate you? I expect so. So I'll say nothing now.'

‘You
can't
', I said. ‘Not after that!'

‘I'll do what I damn well please!'