Love in Our Time (4 page)

“That you, old boy?” he had said.

“How's the world?” he had heard Rex answer.

“I say, old man, don't dress to-night,” he had said.

And Rex had answered, “Go on.”

That was all there was to it. But it had hurt; it had most distinctly hurt. It indicated that there was something intrinsically absurd in the idea of any party that he gave being good enough to dress for. He wished now that he had left things as they were and simply laughed it off, nonchalantly and at his ease, if anyone had turned up in the wrong clothes.

Because the room seemed hot he got up and opened a window. A moment later Alice came back in, seemed rather surprised to find the window open, and shut it
again. Gerald said nothing. Then Alice went through to the dining-room to fetch the little Dresden shepherdess from the mantelpiece—it had been a wedding present—and set it on the Minitone piano in the corner: it looked better there. They avoided each other's eye and tried to pretend they had not heard the clock strike. Secretly they began to work out plans in their minds for getting through that hecatomb of food in the next room. Then at eight thirty-two the front-door bell rang.

Gerald got up and straightened his tie.

“I'll go,” he said. “You stop here and receive them.”

It was Willie.

He seemed even more astonishingly commonplace than usual. The suit that he was wearing was a very neatly pressed blue serge and with it he wore a narrow white collar. But there all merit ceased. His hair seemed shorter and more stubby at the back and longer and fluffier in the front than ever. His tie was a horizontal striped one of the kind that can be bought in any branch of the multiple stores for sixpence.

“Sorry if I'm late,” he said.

Before they had sat down the front-door bell rang again. It was Rex and his wife this time. For a moment Gerald did not recognise the girl; under Rex's tuition she was very different from the plain, quiet girl from Coventry whom he had met six months before. She came prancing into the house on a pair of four-inch heels. Over one shoulder was slung a silver fox fur and in her hand she carried a small, rectangular handbag with her initials on it studded in brilliants. There was no doubt about it that Rex had made her very much the lady. When she slipped out of her coat Gerald saw with disapproval that she was wearing a low, sleeveless
dress of black velvet. It was the sort of dress that a woman spy might have worn at a diplomat's dinnerparty. After what Rex had said about not dressing it seemed the last straw.

The rest of the party had arrived, and they had all moved into the dining-room by the time Tony got there. They heard his arrival long before they saw him. The pulsating exhaust of the emeritus racing car could be heard throbbing up and down Boleyn Avenue as he searched for the house. Then it stopped, and everyone in the room had the warm, gratifying feeling of knowing that a man who owned a Bentley was in process of arriving.

As Gerald opened the door he saw that Tony had brought someone—a girl with him. She was standing in the shadow, a swathed, mysterious figure with a handkerchief over her hair.

“You don't mind, do you, old man,” Tony began. “I've brought an old friend of yours along?”

He stepped to one side as he said it and the light fell across his companion's face. It was Celia.

Gerald said nothing for a moment. He just stood there gaping. From the way he looked at her she might have been the first woman he had ever seen. Then a burst of laughter came from the dining-room where Willie was doing something clever with a bottle and a pack of cards, and Gerald remembered that he and Celia were not the only two people in the world. He pulled himself together and tried to appear at his ease.

“Haven't seen you for ages,” he said, and held out his hand.

As their hands met Gerald was aware of a sudden trembling weakness that ran right through him. He
remembered that it had been like that the first time he had met her; and he remembered also that he had no right to let it be like that now.

“Come … come on in,” he said. “We were just wondering where you'd got to, Tony, old man.”

The three of them completely filled the tiny hall and Celia was almost in his arms as he shut the front door. She was using the same scent which she had always used. At each breath Gerald felt that he was stepping back a couple of years into the past.

But it was difficult to be sentimental in Tony's presence. He was in the mood of a man who is determined to make a good evening of it. As he took off his coat he removed something heavy from his pocket. It was a bottle of whisky.

“Guessed this was a bottle party,” he said, “so I thought I'd bring something along.”

“Thanks very much, old chap,” said Gerald. “Very decent of you.”

“Not a bit,” Tony answered. “Probably drink it all myself.” He put his hand on Celia's shoulder and the two of them went through into the dining-room.

The party was working up pretty nicely by now. The air was milky with cigarette smoke and loud with talk. And the table looked very different already. It was as though drunken Cossacks had raided the place. Most of the sandwiches had been eaten and small fragments of egg and ham had been dropped among the cakes and tartlets. The empty beer bottles were collected in an untidy huddle in the corner.

Gerald pushed Celia over in Alice's direction. “You've met Celia Hunt before,” he said. “You met her up at The Spaniards with … ” He stopped himself; with
Rex's wife actually in the room it didn't seem tactful to say with whom he had met her. Alice and Celia shook hands; they did so in the manner of women who are instinctively hostile to each other.

“What about making room for me?” Tony asked over Gerald's shoulder.

There was that purr in his voice that comes natural to all socially irresistible men. He went out of his way to make himself agreeable to Alice; and Alice, now that the party was at its height, no longer seemed to resent him. She let him kiss her hand and tell her that she was the most beautiful woman in the room. From the way she held her hand up to be kissed she seemed even to be encouraging him.

They opened Tony's whisky straight away. The effect was sharply noticeable. Coming on top of an hour's serious beer drinking, the whisky behaved like a spell. Everybody wanted it. Even those who had been drinking the quiet and seemly claret cup—two-thirds cheap Bordeaux and one-third soda and lemon—turned to the whisky and liked it. Gerald had some himself. It was the first thing he had had to drink that evening, and coming on top of a light and scanty dinner it did its work. He felt livelier and more care-free. Quite little things began to amuse him. Feeling at the top of his form he went round telling people they weren't eating anything, and spreading a warm atmosphere of conviviality wherever he went.

When Mr. Biddle, on his late evening walk, knocked at the front door to look in for a moment to see how Alice was getting on, Gerald did not mind in the least. He insisted on his coming in. Earlier in the day it had been the one thing that he was fearing; the thought of that
unpressed, ill-fitted figure among people like Rex and Tony had haunted him. He was afraid that the party might turn as one man and laugh at his father-in-law and, through his father-in-law, at him. But now it didn't seem to matter. He looked at Mr. Biddle's patterned waistcoat and made-up tie, the knot of which swelled first in and then out like an Edwardian beauty's waist, and smiled. He knew that by now no one in that packed inner room would have noticed if Mr. Biddle had been wearing no tie at all.

Gerald stood for a moment in the doorway and looked at his own party. It was like a pocket rebellion. Everyone was shouting at once and reaching out for things and laughing uproariously at nothing; it gave Gerald a curious feeling of aloofness to be standing there and seeing it all going on in front of him. There they were, all fourteen of them, hard at work enjoying themselves just because he had suggested it. They had the appearance of extreme happiness that people wear when they find themselves in the presence of boundless free food and free drink. He had the suspicion as he looked on them that, one and all, they would, if necessary, have come twice as far for half as much.

He noticed with amusement that Tony was still paying particular attention to Alice; and she still seemed to be liking it. He was showing her a trick with three pennies, and she kept laughing and asking him to do it again. Gerald was very pleased to see her enjoying herself so much; it was what the party had been for. And it was Alice's preoccupation with Tony that made it possible for him to talk to Celia. He went up to her eager but sheepish.

“Nice to see you here,” he, muttered.

She gave him that little half-smile that he had remembered so often.

“I like your home,” she said.

“Do you? I'm glad. It is rather nice, isn't it?”

“Oh, yes, it's lovely. I like the colour scheme.”

“That was done before we got here.”

“But it's very nice, all the same.”

“Yes, it does fit in well, doesn't it?”

He found that she was looking full at him and he knew that she didn't want to talk about colour schemes any more than he did. It was simply that they wanted to say something to each other, and colour schemes seemed safer than anything else they could think of.

“Won't you show me the rest of the house?” she asked at last.

Gerald caught her glance.

“Come on,” he said. “I'll show you now.”

They went into the drawing-room. After the uproar in the front room it seemed suddenly very quiet and civilised; the furniture all looked at its best without people actually sitting on it.

“This is nice, too,” she said.

“It's a bit small,” he remarked airily. “It's all right if you haven't been used to anything too large.”

“What's out there?” Celia asked.

“That's the garden.”

“Can I see?”

“O.K.”

He pulled back the bolts of the french window and they stepped out on to the little slab of concrete.

“This is where I do my digging,” he said fatuously.

“How big is it?” Celia asked.

“It goes right down to there,” he said, pointing
vaguely out into the darkness. “It's a goodish-sized patch.”

She began to walk across the lawn and he followed her. When they were in the middle of the lawn she turned to him. “I've missed you so much,” she said.

Gerald stopped. He had the curious sensation of knowing the second before she began to speak what it was she had been going to say.

“I've been missing you,” he said.

“Much?”

“A lot. A hell of a lot.”

“I'm glad.”

“You shouldn't be,” he said. He diligently kept his distance; he was still trying to pass it off as a sort of tragic joke. “You shouldn't want me to be unhappy.”

“Why shouldn't I” she asked. “You've made me unhappy enough.” She reached out and put her hand in his. “Give me a kiss,” she said.

He kissed her. It was a hard, obedient kiss. When it was over he dropped his arms to his side.

“That wasn't the way you used to kiss,” she said.

“I'm sorry,” he answered. “But I hadn't got Alice then.”

“Does Alice make all that difference?”

“Yes,” he said slowly. “She does.”

He took out his cigarette case and passed it to Celia. It was a protective, deliberate sort of thing to do.

But Celia ignored it. She took him by the arm instead.

“I know I'm being beastly,” she said. “But I can't help it, I'm jealous. That's what I am, jealous. I'm left out in the cold.”

“Then why don't you come and see us some time?”

“It isn't both of you I want to see.”

Gerald turned and removed her arm.

“Look here, Celia,” he said. “It's no use. It isn't fair to Alice. I've married Alice and she wouldn't understand.”

“Wouldn't understand what?”

“Wouldn't understand that you can be married to someone and still like to be with somebody else as well.”

“Are you still in love with me?”

“I didn't say so.”

“You said enough.”

She took his arm again and began to walk back to the house. At the french windows she stopped for a moment.

“You're quite right,” she said. “It wouldn't be fair to Alice. I don't want to hurt her.” She paused. “All the same,” she added, “I wish you would think of me sometimes. It can be damnably lonely in the evenings just living in a flat all by yourself. That's my number in case you want it; I wrote it down for you.”

She handed him a small scrap of paper that she had been carrying about in her handbag. As he put it into his pocket he noticed that it was soaked with that same scent she used.

The party had reached its climax while Gerald and Celia had been outside. The top of the piano was now open and they were all standing round singing. It was Willie who was doing the playing. He played in a vigorous, forthright fashion like a man on piece work. There was nothing that he did not know at all and nothing that he knew completely. As a virtuoso he was magnificent.

The first thing that Gerald noticed was that Alice's
Dresden shepherdess lay in fragments on the floor: Willie had accidentally knocked it off the top of the piano as he sat down to play. But even this Alice didn't seem to mind. She was standing at the piano with Tony's arm round her shoulders. When she saw Gerald and Celia together she only turned her head slightly and went on singing. Gerald and Celia joined the group. The others moved round to make room for them and more arms went round shoulders. But the singing did not stop for a moment. Willie had them properly organised by now and they sang whatever they were told to sing. The evening closed with the chorus of “Little Brown Jug” repeated over and over again; they sang it until even Willie was sick of it.