Dark Places (13 page)

Charity work indeed! I would permit no such fiddle-faddle from any wife of mine. Norah shot me a look and began to twist her gloves together as if to strangle them. ‘Not at the minute,' she said. ‘I have been thinking about it, I have been looking around, but what with one thing and another…' I sat clenching my glass, willing her into silence, and she did finally subside, and began to smooth out each finger of the gloves on her knee.

To get myself out of the embrace of chintz, I went over to the piano in desperation and jabbed at some notes, and Mrs Ogilvie was beside me all at once, smoothing a bit of the crazed varnish with the tea-towel she had in her hand—‘You must take us as you find us,' Ogilvie had said, but I had not thought he meant tea-towels and palaver!

Oh, I wished to go home! I could not bear the thought of sitting here, observed by Marjorie Ogilvie, and by Norah too, suffering an evening's chit-chat and hearing this woman call him Jim, a quartet of suburban husbands and wives grinning and chattering away at each other.

The food was brought. Ogilvie stood in his place at the head of the table, carving, and Mrs Ogilvie, shinier than ever, doled out greasy potatoes.

‘Marjorie is very active in all kinds of ways,' Ogilvie said with a pride I found nauseating, and Mrs Ogilvie nodded, her lean face gone serious, not to say dour, and I realised with a burst of understanding like a door being flung open, that Mrs Ogilvie must be an Emancipist, and was probably working to make sure women became engine-drivers and Prime Ministers. Now I understood her: I understood her sexless brazenness as she stared me in the face, thinking herself as good as I; I understood her leanness, her sexless wiry energy of form.

Ogilvie! I thought, you are not the man I thought you! I began to notice everything with rage and contempt—the thick china we were eating off, the inferior silver, the overdone beef—and my heart began to harden against Ogilvie. I had a moment's vision of him in bed with his wife: there was no question in my mind as to who wore the pants in that relationship, and as Ogilvie stared at me I could envisage all too clearly that greyhound Marjorie astride him, whipping his lumpen flesh on until it responded.

I was an unpleasant guest. I was at my most churlish, I refused everything offered to me, picked around at the food on my plate in an insulting way, and hardly spoke. Time had reversed our positions, and Ogilvie, who when we were mere students had seemed to inhabit the pinnacle of success, was exposed in the light of maturity to be nothing more than a shabby little man with frayed cuffs.

I watched coldly as Ogilvie tried to woo me with wit. ‘Singer!' he exclaimed, with the bottle of only-passable wine in his hand. ‘Singer, let me fill you up!' I shook my head and put a finger over my glass: I was keen for this meal to be done, and the less we ate and drank the quicker than moment would arrive. But Ogilvie would not take no for an answer. ‘Come, Singer!' he coaxed. ‘Alcohol, Singer—one of the greatest of human inventions!' He held the bottle up to the light and stared at it as if it was a great vintage.
You would do better not to draw attention to it
,
Ogilvie
, I thought unpleasantly. He swooped down with it to my glass and filled it before I could stop him, crying out, ‘A greater invention than Hell, Singer, greater than the bullet, greater even than the sock-suspender!' His voice, full of far too much cheer, was loud and forced in this small quiet room.

I downed the wine quickly, as if it were medicine, although I did not go so far as to grimace. At last plates were removed. Mrs Ogilvie did not actually scrape them at the table, but she stacked them with a great slattern's clatter. Trifle was brought and I ate mine so quickly, mad with impatience now, that Mrs Ogilvie was sure I must have enjoyed it, and would want more: there was a tedious exchange with a trembling spoonful of the stuff hovering over my plate.

When Norah accepted a second helping I had to clench my feet inside my shoes in rage. ‘Fool woman!' I shouted in my heart. ‘We will never be done!'

That lot of plates was cleared; a dish was heard to slide off the top of a stack in some further room, and smash in a satisfying way, and Norah began a titter, and looked around for support, but I was giving her none.

Mrs Ogilvie returned smoothing her hair and smiling as brightly as if she was as pleased to see her ugly dinner-set broken as I was. She did not sit down again at the table, but on the piano-stool, spun it around, and played a chord. ‘Mr Singer, I am a tyrant, you know,' this bony woman exclaimed, and I stared, for she seemed capable of anything. ‘Mr Singer, with a name like yours I feel sure we can expect some entertainment from you,'

Other feeble males might be prevailed on by twittering females to stand at the side of the piano and stick a thumb into the waistband of their trousers, strike an attitude, and sing. For myself, I did not know how a man could stand showing his tonsils to a roomful of people. ‘By no means, Mrs Ogilvie, will I be prevailed on to sing,' I said. ‘And Norah, as she has said, does not play.' Mrs Ogilvie did not shrink back from my stone-like tone: she continued to gaze into my face, but she looked coldly now.

In the event, no one sang. I could see that Ogilvie had finally allowed my chill to penetrate his heartiness, and that Mrs Ogilvie was now animated, pink of cheek and gleaming of eye, by dislike for me. I glanced, not very surreptitiously, at my watch, but saw that even such an ungracious guest as myself could not leave just yet.

Mrs Ogilvie decided on a different stratagem now, seeing that a jolly night of music was out of the question. ‘Would you care to look at my glasshouse, Mrs Singer?' she asked. ‘It is my pride and joy.' Norah was not a woman that any Emancipist could warm to, but I could see Mrs Ogilvie reminding herself that Norah was a sister.

Ogilvie lost no time. ‘Well, Singer, perhaps I could show you my study, there are one or two items of interest there.' I had no wish to see Ogilvie's study: I was prepared for fancy paper-weights in the shape of the Eiffel Tower, and vulgar elaborate pen-sets, birthday gifts from Mrs Ogilvie. I was prepared for a room attempting the grandiose, as so much else this evening had, with thousands of books, all worthless, lining the walls and some kind of self-important tooled-leather desk, saved and scrimped for: I could imagine it all, of a piece with the chintz and the dinner-set, and looked forward to finishing off the last of my illusions about Ogilvie. ‘Nothing could give me greater pleasure,' I told Ogilvie, and got to my feet as slowly as possible, so he had to wait to usher me through the door.

To call the room a study was to overstate the case: it was simply the glassed-in back verandah, where the light rained down onto the desk and a few leaning bookcases. I turned to the books as a refuge, and Ogilvie did too. ‘I observe the same law regarding my bookshelves as I do in the rest of life,' he said grandly, running his hand along the spines of his thin little collection, ‘namely, that competition is the mechanism whereby excellence flourishes. If I do not consult one of these books in the course of a year, it has not earned its shelf-space: it has become a parasite, and I weed it out.' He fiddled on the desk for a moment before saying in a different and less confident way, ‘Of course, Marjorie cannot bear to see a book thrown away, she salvages all my rejects and keeps them on her own shelves; we differ in such things, Marjorie and I, we do not see eye to eye on everything. But,' he stopped fiddling over the pens on his desk and looked me in the face, ‘in spite of that I am devoted to her, Singer, we are joined by the strongest of intellectual bonds.'

I could forgive Ogilvie now: he wished me to know that he had not become a fool. As clearly as I could myself, he could see the difference between Norah and Marjorie, a gulf almost as between different species, but he was man enough to declare his loyalty to her. Now he glanced at me, as if fearing skepticism in my face, and said, ‘My life is not a wealthy one, Singer, as you can see, but I count it rich for having a wife of intelligence such as Marjorie.' The night fell very still as if to receive this declaration. I considered the matching declaration I myself could make, that my life was becoming wealthier every day, but I counted it poor for having a wife of silliness such as Norah.

Unlike Ogilvie, however, I was not prepared to unburden my soul to a man who was, after all, really a stranger to me. I began, ‘Well, Ogilvie,' preparing a few banalities about
married bliss
and
better halves
, but he came halfway to meet me in my difficulties. ‘Oh, I did not mean to burden you with my entire life-history, Singer! I am a terrible gasbag, you know.' And there was the old Ogilvie shining through now, charming me with his smile and his way of leaning in towards you as if you alone were the special one. ‘My word, Singer, I am glad we met again,' he said, and all my churlishness dropped away. As a pair of gentlemen, there were few outlets available to use in this moment, but we used to the hilt those we had. I slapped Ogilvie on the back, he shook my hand at length, and we spoke together the phrases we were permitted:
Good man
,
jolly good show
,
damn fine
,
by Jove eh
.

When we returned to the wives and the chintz I looked at them in a new way. I looked at watery Norah, each of whose shallow depths was quite transparent to me; and at Marjorie Ogilvie alongside her with her clever eyes, and her mouth that seemed always on the point of a wry or ironical smile, and that seemed to conceal who knew what surprising thoughts. Just for a moment I was seized with a pang. Had I done the right thing, after all, in snaring the daintiest and most adoring of those muslin gowns? Had I done right to go for chatter about grosgrain, and a graceful way with a saucer? Or was it conceivable that I had short-changed myself ? Should I have found, as Ogilvie seemed to have, a witty ironical comrade full of surprises, someone to bring a bit of fun into life? Could I have found someone to share the dark solitude of self ?

The thought was like a door opening out of a dark wall, letting out laughter and music, the sounds of others finding joy, while I myself was left out in the cold, all alone. It was a freezing pain such as I had never felt, all the worse because, until this moment, I had not even guessed at the possibility of such a thing. There was a bleak void at my heart, and a sense of outrage. Why had no one told me a man could hope for more? Why had no one told me a wife might bring joy?

But, no! I closed the door: I looked at Norah as she sat neatly against a corner of the chesterfield, her cheeks prettily flushed, her skin gold in the lamplight, her eyes soft and admiring as Ogilvie and I came in and stood before her. We would shortly go home, Norah and I, and I would come to her as she lay in her peach satin nightdress, and she would be soft under me, her eyes closed, her limbs mine to do with as I wished. Whereas—I looked hard at Marjorie Ogilvie, and tried to imagine her in her nightgown, hair spread out on the pillow—she would still have her ironical smile and her clever eyes hiding surprising thoughts, and I was not a man who wished to find himself in bed with an ironical smile and clever eyes.

Twelve

SOMETHING WAS BEGINNING to be required to be proved. People were starting to comment, in a sly way: hints began to be dropped, glances began to invite confidences. Kristabel was the only one who minded her own business, and that was because she and Forbes were also failing to do the expected. Mother, casually, and not as if it concerned anyone she knew, began to speak of various old wives' tricks she had heard of, and I was growing anxious enough to try them.

Against Norah's protests I tried tipping her up on end like a bottle, I tried large quantities of oysters and stout taken beforehand, I tried tincture of belladonna introduced into the cavity; I even employed a ridiculous person, a hypnotist, who spent an hour with Norah in a darkened room, charged me five guineas, and went away laughing! Norah actually tittered in my face when I tried Mother's waxed-paper trick, but it seemed that this was the one that finally bore fruit.

Norah began measuring her neck in the mornings. I felt cold fear the first time I saw her with the tape-measure around her neck; was she measuring herself for the noose? I said nothing, but the next day once again she had the tape-measure ostentatiously in her hand as I passed, and leaned forward to the mirror so she could read the figures. It went against the grain to have to ask Norah anything, especially since she so clearly wished me to ask, but there was nothing for it.

‘It is one of the best early signs, Albion,' she said, with a peculiar simper, and I was forced to ask, becoming more irritated, ‘Signs of what, Norah?' But even then she would not give me a straight answer. ‘Oh Albion, can you not guess?' she smirked and mewed, and I could imagine my hands grasping her around that neck and squeezing: her eyes would bulge, her cheeks would purple, but she would finally come out with it.

As if she saw this look written on my face she said quickly, ‘A baby, Albion, a thickening of the neck is one of the first signs that a woman is with child.'
With child!
Something in me flinched from the dignity of the phrase: it was true that I wished for a son, but I did not feel that Norah had any right to become a person of substance, as she did in describing herself as
with child.

‘That is good news, Norah,' I said evenly, ‘and, if I may say so, high time.' Norah, whose face had brightened when she had announced herself as being
with child
, deflated, and her forehead creased. Creased and deflated was the way I preferred Norah, and I put my arms around her as a mark of approval that our demeaning bedroom practices had finally paid off: as a reward, I was willing, for a few minutes, to be that romantic gentleman she wished for.

It turned out to be a wild kind of night when Norah was brought to bed. The tempests of wind and rain beat so furiously against the roof and the windows that I could not hear Norah as she said something from the end of the dining-room table during dinner. ‘I beg your pardon, Norah, you will have to speak up,' I mouthed down the table at her, but her eyes slid over me without seeing; she got up quickly from her chair and without a word to me moved in an awkward sort of way, bandy-legged under her skirt, towards the door.