The Bachelors (20 page)

Martin
looked at his watch and at her plump behind as she knelt over the broken
pieces, and wanted to kick it. For he felt suddenly that he was to her only the
man who handled her property and shares, and that she slept with him only to
ensure his loyalty and save herself the trouble of investigating the property
deals.

‘I can’t
stay very long. My old ma’s expecting me for supper,’ he said.

‘Let’s
have a drink.’ She sniffed away the last of her tears and carried off the tray
of broken china.

He had
poured their drinks when she returned with new make-up on her face. He had
often felt the only safe course would be to marry her, and he felt this now,
with fear, because she did not always attract him, and he was not sure she
would accept him. At the times when she stood out for her rights, not crudely,
but with all the implicit assumptions, he thought her face too fat and found
her thick neck and shoulders repulsive. At this moment, when she leaned against
the mantelpiece with her drink in her hand, he finding himself without the
right to question her about the frequency of Walter Prett’s visits, he thought
her jaw was too square and masculine. He saw it would be safer to marry her.
Often, when she had said, ‘Martin, what should I do without you? I should never
be able to manage my affairs without you,’ he had recognised her strong-boned
beauty and thought how a sculptor might do something about it. Even at these
moments, when he had found the idea of marrying Isobel a soothing one, the
panic returned that she might refuse. The thought was not to be borne. He
recalled the two old women and thought, after all, it would not be the decent
thing to leave them alone.

‘Carrie,
you have wiped the oven with the floor cloth.’

‘How
could I of wiped the oven with the floor cloth, when the floor cloth’s looking
you in the face over there…?’

He left
at seven, and on the way home pulled up at a telephone kiosk. He wanted to talk
secretly to Ronald Bridges and tell Ronald a little bit about Walter Prett’s
offensive behaviour, and to put himself right with Ronald, feeling now as if
Ronald’s eye had been invisibly upon him all the afternoon. He was never
comfortable when he did not feel all right with Ronald.

But
there was no answer from Ronald’s number. Soon Martin was eating cold lamb and
beetroot opposite Carrie and next to his mother.

He laid
his bald head on his hands and said, ‘Oh, stop nagging each other, you two
women.’ And they stopped their quarrel for a little space.

Towards half-past seven on
Sunday evening, Ewart Thornton was seated in Marlene Cooper’s flat in Bayswater.
He said, ‘I’ve got a pile of homework to do. Maths papers.’

‘Never
mind that now,’ she said. ‘Come and have supper.’

He had
been smoking a pipe. He tapped it out and worked himself stiffly and hugely out
of the deep upholstered chair.

‘Maths
papers,’ he said. ‘Preliminary tests.’

‘Ewart,’
she said at supper, ‘the Interior Spiral will be meeting on Tuesday at
eight-thirty to discuss our evidence with regard to Patrick Seton. We must
present a united front if it comes to a court case as I suspect it will. Now,
whom can we trust?’

‘Well,
you can trust me, for one,’ said Ewart, ‘but I must say I won’t be able to give
any evidence in court.’

‘What!’
said Marlene, holding the cold peas in the serving-spoon suspended.

‘I can’t
come to court.’

She
tipped the peas on to his plate and still stared at him. ‘You must,’ she said.
‘I’m counting on you.’

‘It
will be too near the end of term,’ he said. ‘Why,’ she said, ‘have we got to
quarrel every time we meet, Ewart?’ She started to eat.

‘There
is no quarrel,’ he said, sprinkling pepper on his salad.

‘You
can’t let me down,’ she said, ‘after all this preparation. Patrick’s future may
depend upon it.’

‘I’m
not convinced of Patrick’s innocence. As you know, I’m a man of principle. I’m
not sure that Mrs. Flower isn’t in the right.’

‘But
all you need to say is that Patrick is a genuine medium, and that Freda Flower
ran after him unmercifully, as you know she did. As you know.’

‘Marlene,’
he said, ‘I advise you to keep out of the case altogether. You are talking
wildly. No one would be interested in my evidence.’

‘Well,
this is sudden,’ she said.

‘I have
told you my views. I’ve advised—’

‘Yes,
but I thought, as a member of the Interior Spiral, when it came to the point,
Ewart, you would stand by me and…’ She was crying, and it satisfied him to
see her cry and to think that he had brought about this drooping of her stately
neck, the leaning of her head on her hand, the tremor of her jade earrings, the
resigned dabbing of her eyes with her handkerchief, and the final offended
sniff.

He
introduced his fork into his mouth judiciously and chewed like a wise man until
she should be delivered of her distress.

‘I don’t
see why you are so surprised. I’ve told you all along that I consider it absurd
to go into the witness box on Patrick Seton’s behalf. It would do him far more
harm than—’

‘Oh,
Ewart,’ she said. ‘No, you were never definite. I can’t believe it.’

It was
true he had never been quite definite on the subject before tonight, but he had
said enough, from time to time, to allow him now to extricate himself from any
charge of sudden betrayal. He recalled that some time previous he had said to
Marlene, ‘I can see Mrs. Flower’s point of view. Of course, she was foolish to
hand him over the money, even allowing it was a gift—’

‘Oh, it
was a gift. Patrick says so. He can prove it. There’s a letter.’

‘It’s a
large sum for her to give.’

On
another occasion he had said, ‘My sympathies are not entirely with Patrick. He
may be a good medium, but as a citizen—’

‘It is
time spiritualism was recognised as a mark of good citizenship,’ Marlene said.

More
recently, at a meeting of the Interior Spiral —the secret group within the
Group — Ewart Thornton had said, ‘There is bound to be a certain amount of
prejudice against spiritualists if the case is brought up. My advice is to keep
out of it and let the law take its course. Mud sticks.’

‘We
must fight prejudice,’ Marlene had said. ‘And we all intend to support Patrick
in every way. We must decide what we are going to say. We can’t carry on the
Group without Patrick.’ On that occasion Patrick had arrived, frail as a
sapling birch with rain on its silver head. ‘We are just discussing,’ Marlene
said, ‘our combined witness on your behalf, in the event of its being called
for.’

‘Ah-ah,’
Patrick sighed, hunching his shoulders together, ‘the unfortunate occurrence.’

‘And
what is more,’ Marlene said, ‘we want your assistance in settling what we are
to say about Freda Flower. You will have to give us the relevant dates so that—’

‘We do
not all know Mrs. Flower,’ Ewart had said.

‘Oh,
don’t we?’ said Marlene.

Ewart
had thus feebly worked towards this moment on Sunday evening when, sitting at
Marlene’s supper table, he said, ‘I’ve told you all along that I consider it
absurd to go into the witness box.’

‘Oh,
Ewart. No, you were never definite. I can’t believe it.’

‘Think
back,’ he said. ‘I’ve told you all along what my position is.

He
leaned both arms confidently on the table, and felt a great awkwardness inside
him, and looked at Marlene with an overpowering stare until he perceived her
submission: she thought him altogether sure of his rectitude.

Then he
experienced a sense of this rectitude, and was satisfied. He would have liked
to have disappointed her more than this, because he was greatly attracted by
her and greatly disapproved of her. He disapproved of, and was attracted by
what she took for granted in life —by her freedom to indulge her spirit, and
buy the acquiescence of her followers, and run up debts without worry, and
cultivate spiritualists and mediums, and have no need of lovers. He was
attracted by and disapproved of the departed Harry who had bought earrings to
dangle against this tall lady’s neck, and who had died and been buried and dug
up again by her, and cremated, and who was now being trafficked with beyond the
grave. He had feasted on anecdotes of her past life, and wanted more, and was
avid, in an old woman’s way, for her downfall.

‘I have
counted on you,’ Marlene was saying, ‘to witness for Patrick because it would
be such good publicity for the Infinity. People would know we are not cranks.
No-one would take you for a crank, Ewart.’

This
did not move him. He liked very much to see Marlene with her private means
trying to win him over; and he knew already he was not a crank. He set his face
squarely at her, and felt glad he had conferred with Freda Flower and had
canvassed witnesses for Freda.

‘Ronald
Bridges,’ she said, ‘has also let me down rather badly to-day.’

‘He isn’t
one of us, surely?’

‘Oh, he’s
not a spiritualist. But he has let me down, all the same. One thing about
Patrick,’ she said, ‘he has never let me down.’

He was
anxious to go, for he wanted to telephone to Freda Flower from the cosy
seclusion of his own study at Campden Hill. He loved a gossip with a homely
woman like Freda Flower, and it had been most pleasant, recently, to settle in
to telling her how things were going in the Wider Infinity group, and what was
being said. For, like a Christian convert of the jungle who secretly returns by
night to the fetish tree, or like one who openly supports a political party and
then, at last, marks his vote for the opposite party, he felt justified in
Freda Flower to the extent of these telephone conversations even although she
was an unsuitable person to meet.

‘Freda,
I was at a party last night at Isobel Billows’. You won’t know her — she’s not
a member of the Circle. But a lot of us were there. I did my very best, Freda,
to persuade members to come forward in your favour. After all, where did all
the money go? The members know that Patrick has had far too much handling of
the funds, in any case. I tried to impress it on young Tim Raymond, but I’m
afraid he is too young and irresponsible. And, my dear, I’m not saying anything
against Marlene, but she…’

‘Patrick
Seton could look you in the eyes,’ she would say, ‘and tell a lie so that you
would believe you were telling the lie, not him.’

‘I can
well believe you, my dear,’ he would say time and again, into the telephone
receiver, lolling back largely in his chair and pulling his waistcoat over his
stomach. ‘And I can’t think why you hesitate to give your evidence in full
force.’

Marlene
was piling the supper things on to a tray. She looked at Ewart several times as
she did so, to see if he appeared as if he could still be persuaded. He stood
up like a righteous husband, and contemptuously added the pepper pot to the
tray.

‘I won’t
keep you, then, Ewart, if you are in a hurry to get back to your work,’ she
said.

But he
was anxious to help Marlene wash the dishes before returning to gossip with
Freda Flower. He liked putting an apron around his large body and he liked
holding the cloth in his hands to dry the dishes one by one. Sometimes at the
end of term, after the examinations, he invited three of his best boys to
dinner on Saturday at his rooms, and he liked that very much —planning the
menu, buying in the food, preparing it, cooking it for them, fussing over the
stove for them, seeing they had enough to eat, like a solicitous mother.

He
wiped Marlene’s dishes and put them away carefully and proudly. He was
encouraged by her dejection and satisfied, now, he had taken the only course.

His
hips were wide for a man. He smoothed the apron while waiting, cloth in hand,
for the next plate. Marlene did a vexed scouring of a saucepan. Ewart made neat
the bow which tied the apron strings behind him.

‘Is
that the lot?’ he said.

‘Will
you be here tomorrow night?’ she said, ‘for the Interior Spiral.’

‘I’m
afraid not, my dear.’ He was prepared to be charming.

‘I can’t
understand you,’ she said. She took off her apron. He untied his and held it
out to her. She cast the aprons, with graceful carelessness, over the back of a
chair.

He
touched her arm consolingly as a man of integrity a woman who could not be
expected to understand integrity.

‘You
will come to the séance on Wednesday? ‘He looked reproachful. ‘Oh, yes,’ he
said. Marlene must be made to understand that simply because he refused to
support her favourite he was not therefore a lapsed spiritualist.

‘Good,’
she said sadly, ‘I’m glad, Ewart. I’m grateful for that.’

She
went over to that serving-aperture in the wall which divided the kitchen from the
séance room and flicked a straying fold in the short curtain.

‘Patrick
will take the chair on Wednesday,’ she said.

‘It may
be his last appearance,’ Ewart said.