Before the Fact (16 page)

It was Joyce who wrote dismissing the Dellfield servants with a month’s wages. It was Joyce who went down and shut the house up. She did not see Johnnie. Johnnie, she learned, had left Dellfield too and gone to live in Bournemouth. She obtained his address and came back with it.

It was Joyce who sent a private detective to Bournemouth to obtain the necessary evidence.

Only one thing Lina would not do, and that was to stop Johnnie’s allowance. On that point she was quite obstinate.

“Don’t you see,” she said to Joyce, “if it were the other way round and Johnnie was divorcing me, he’d have to maintain me till the decree was made absolute. I’d be his wife till then. Well, Johnnie’s my husband till then. He can have his alimony.”

Joyce could not but applaud the cynicism, while deploring the wasted money it would cost.

Cecil was very kind to Lina, in his gentle way.

He took her to a strange play produced by the Stage Society of which Lina could not make head or tail and which bored her exceedingly, though she told Cecil it was extremely clever. He took her, and Joyce, to a cocktail party given by an extremely famous novelist, mostly to other extremely famous novelists, who frightened Lina very much before she got there and disappointed her still more when she did. Everyone asked Lina what she did, and she had to confess to the humiliation of being the only person in the room who did nothing. Then they told her what they did.

“But how quite too marvellous,” said a willowy young man, all spots and spats, and lifted his head to waft a yawn over hers. Then he caught sight of a friend, and his glazing eye brightened.

“What, you here, Frank? How too utterly marvellous. You know Mrs. Er-er-h’m, don’t you?”

The willowy young man escaped, and Lina found herself being addressed by a short, stocky, prematurely bald young man, who dipped his head before speaking like a chicken about to drink.

“Chp chp chp chp chp chp chp chp chp chp chp,” he observed, or as near to that as Lina could gather, in the gentlest possible voice. “Don’t you think so?” he added, suddenly and clearly, on a rising inflection.

“Oh,” said Lina, “I
do.
”

As usual when nervous, she had thrown too much enthusiasm into her voice. The stocky young man, who thought he had only remarked that it was getting a little hot in here, looked at her in mild alarm.

“Chp chp chp chp chp,” he said, with a dart of his head towards the other side of the room, and edged away with an uncertain smile.

Lina, feeling utterly provincial, followed his progress towards a strange young woman in crimson silk, with a black pork-pie hat and a white satin muff. The stocky young man seemed far more at home with her than with Lina.

Why do people find me alarming, she thought despairingly, when I’m simply terrified to death of them myself?

Cecil also took her, on her own request, to the National Gallery. Translating into ideas about painting the bias which made him approve of the dull expressionistic nonsense beloved of the Stage Society, he explained to her quite vehemently why none of the pictures should be there at all. Lina was surprised to find that her brother-in-law should hold such strong opinions about anything. That they should be so mistaken did not surprise her in the least.

But Joyce took her for a day’s outrageously extravagant shopping, and after it to dinner at the Ivy and to
Bow Bells;
and Lina laughed for the first time since she left home.

The first fortnight she spent in Hamilton Terrace was the most wretched time that Lina had ever experienced. She felt that life had been exploded for her like a toy balloon, and there was simply nothing left. At times she thought, quite seriously, of suicide, as the simplest way out – simpler, somehow, than divorce. Luckily, however,
Bow Bells,
and her new frocks, saved her from that.

Joyce plainly mistrusted her.

She was too sensible to overstate her case against Johnnie, but she continued to sound Lina subtly in order to make sure that she was not weakening.

Lina did not weaken.

“Oh, yes. I know it’s impossible. That sort of thing can’t go on. I mean to divorce him.”

Joyce nodded sympathetically, satisfied.

“But the awful thing is that I still love him,” Lina added mournfully. “He’s my child.”

Joyce snorted. “Lina! Don’t be so
flatulent.
”

Lina met Ronald Kirby at a studio party in Kensington.

It was not the sort of party that Joyce would have dreamed of going to on her own account. Since Cecil had made his name, Joyce had become very particular about the parties she let him attend. A mixed gathering of artists and second-rate writers would not have been considered for a moment.

Lina had not at all wanted to go.

It was to be a silly party, with all the guests dressed as children; and Lina thought that, in her circumstances, it would be too dreadful. But Joyce had insisted. It would be good for her. It would take her out of herself. Besides, it might even be amusing. So Lina, too dispirited to resist, had allowed herself to be persuaded into an abbreviated red-and-white check frock and tied a large bow in her hair and felt rather ridiculous. Even the sight of Cecil, melancholy in black velvet knickers and a Lord Fauntleroy collar, but prepared to suffer so much for her sake, failed to cheer her. Joyce of course looked quite charming and about nineteen in rose-pink taffeta.

There was a great deal to drink, and it was not long before Lina began to feel guiltily glad that they had come.

She recognized, with surprise, that though they ought to be doing nothing of the sort, her spirits were beginning to rise. She began to forget, for quite long intervals, that she was a betrayed wife and a bruised soul, and remembered only that this impossible party actually was rather amusing. She knew she was drinking too much, but that was deliberate: a gesture of contempt and defiance towards the profligate Johnnie. She toyed with the idea of getting quite drunk and being disgraced.

As Joyce had said, the party comprised a mixed lot. Mixed parties are not usually successful, but this one was. They all seemed to know each other, and everyone was cheerful. Except for Cecil, no one was in the first class and so had no dignity to keep up. The host designed posters, and his wife wrote serials for the newspapers. Lina felt proud of being the sister-in-law of the most distinguished man in the room.

First they stood about in groups and talked, then there was dancing, and after that they played nursery games. It really was rather fun. Somewhat jovial versions of Hunt the Slipper, Oranges and Lemons, and Blind Man’s Buff were performed, and then someone suggested Hide-and-Seek in the dark. The suggestion appeared popular. The host shepherded the men into another room, and all the women put one of their shoes in the middle of the floor. Then each man appeared in turn and chose a slipper, whose owner was to be his partner for hiding. Lina felt quite excited as she watched a tall, dark man who had not yet been introduced to her pick out her slipper.

“That’s mine,” she whispered to Joyce. “Who is he?”

“Ronald Kirby,” Joyce whispered back. “Black-and-white artist. I’ve met him. Quite nice, but enthusiastic.”

Lina knew his work. He drew funny little men in absurd plights for
Punch
and other humorous papers.

Joyce just had time to introduce them before she too was claimed.

Kirby looked at Lina with a smile which she instantly thought one of the most attractive she had ever seen, a real smile that embraced his gray-green eyes just as much as his rather pronounced but sensitive mouth.

“I say,” he said confidentially, “I believe I know a really good place, but it’s rather a scramble to get there. Are you game to try it?”

“Yes, let’s,” said Lina at once.

They stood together for a moment, while the last men drew their partners, and then all the lights were put out. Kirby took Lina’s hand and drew her confidently into the darkness.

She felt pleasingly excited.

Kirby led her up the stairs that rose from one end of the studio. Bodies bumped into them and were bumped by them, the air was full of hissing whispers, cigarettes glowed here and there. It was exhilaratingly mysterious. The really good place proved to be actually in a neighbouring roof. They had to climb out of an upstairs window and cross a few feet of leads, and there was a little door into a gabled roof.

“Isn’t it rather dirty?” suggested Lina, peering into the blackness inside.

“No, there’s a mattress to sit on, and I brought these.” He showed two or three cushions which he had caught up as they passed through the studio. “I know this cubbyhole. It’s the private resort of our host. But we’ll have to talk in whispers, because it’s over someone else’s rooms. Or would you rather go back?”

“Of course I wouldn’t. It’s most exciting.”

Kirby struck a match, and Lina saw the mattress stretched across the rafters. She sat down, and there was room for her feet where the level swept down to the door. Kirby closed the door and sat down beside her.

Lina’s heart began to beat rather more quickly, though she did not quite know why. It was an adventure, in a way, sitting there in the darkness beside a strange young man.

“And what will you do if our host comes and demands his private resort?” she giggled, her glass clutched in her hand.

“I’ve latched the door on the inside,” Kirby whispered simply.

“Oh!”

They sat for a moment in silence.

“You know, Mrs. Aysgarth, I chose your slipper on purpose.”

“Did you?” Lina was conscious of a little flutter.

“Yes. I knew that old game, so as soon as hide-and-seek was suggested I had a good look at your shoes.”

“Really?” Lina was too unsophisticated to hide her pleasure. “Why?”

“I thought you looked so nice.”

Lina did not answer. She was not used to compliments, especially on her looks, and generally they embarrassed her; she felt them to be insincere. But this one had been so simply spoken that she believed it. He really had thought she looked nice. It was balm to her, after Johnnie’s brutal words.

She put her glass down beside her, clasped her hands round her knees, and leaned gratefully against her companion. The movement was instinctive. Her usual self-consciousness, which scrutinized every action before she made it, had been dispelled by the drink she had taken.

“What did
you
think when you saw who’d chosen it? Were you disappointed?”

Lina knew nothing about the art of flirting. “No,” she said clearly. “I was glad.”

“You darling!”

The next instant Kirby’s arm was round her, he had taken her chin in his hand, and was kissing her mouth.

It was so sudden that Lina was taken completely by surprise. She had expected perhaps a little verbal sparring, possibly even a tentative hand on her waist, which she would instantly shake off; but nothing more. Kirby’s kisses astonished her.

They astonished her out of her senses: for the next thing that Lina realized was that she was returning them more fiercely than they were being bestowed on her.

“You sweet thing,” Kirby muttered, holding her so closely to him that the thumping of his heart against her breast was almost the first thing that reached her returning consciousness.

She tore herself away from him. “I’m not – I’m not,” she cried distractedly. What in heaven’s name had happened to her? Had she suddenly gone quite mad?

Johnnie was standing now like a spectre at her elbow.

“Hush!”

Masterfully Kirby put his arm round her again, and drew her to him. She resisted half-heartedly, and that only for a moment. She wanted to be kissed again; wanted it desperately.

He did kiss her, gently.

“Do you know,” Lina heard herself saying, in a strangely detached voice, “that was the first time I’ve let anyone kiss me since I was married?”

“Is it?” Kirby’s voice was caressing, but it had no conviction. Quite obviously he did not believe her. And how could he, when she had just kissed him like that?

“Yes,” she said flatly; and realized, with impotent annoyance, that she was beginning to cry.

At first Kirby did not notice her tears.

Lina lay limp against him, as she concentrated on trying to check the tell-tale sobs and heavings. Then her wet cheek, as he brushed it with his, gave her away.

“I say – you’re crying.” His voice was dismayed.

Lina shook her head violently. “No, I’m not.” She tried to force a laugh.

“But you are. Your cheeks are wet.” He felt them gingerly with the tips of his fingers.

“I’m not – I’m
not!
”

She gave way and collapsed on his shoulder, her body shaking with sobs.

In its usual annoying way, alcohol had ceased to exhilarate and become depressing.

Lina had told Kirby everything.

Encouraged by his kindness, she had poured out all Johnnie’s unfaithfulness, at first interspersed with tears and then indignantly.

Kirby was very sympathetic. His understanding surprised Lina. Complete stranger though he was, she felt that he was the first person who had adequately grasped what she was suffering. His condemnation of Johnnie was no less indignant than her own, although only this one side of Johnnie’s rascality had been imparted to him.

“It’s a damned shame,” he kept repeating. “A really nice person like you. God knows there are few enough nice women in the world. He must be a plain idiot, your husband. Hurry up and divorce him and find someone who’ll appreciate you. It’s a damned shame.”

“But you don’t know me,” Lina had to protest. “I may not be at all nice, really.”

“You’re a darling,” Kirby declared, and sounded as if in his opinion there could be no possible doubt about that.

Lina felt immensely soothed.

Kirby kissed her, and stroked her hair, and went on telling her how nice she was, and how he had been attracted to her all the evening from the very first moment of seeing her, and how impatiently he had been waiting for hide-and-seek so that he could choose her slipper, and how much nicer she was now he knew her than he had even imagined before, and what a damned shame it all was. Lina found it most heartening to believe him. After all, she was quite nice; and it
was
a damned shame.