Which Way?, page 6
“I thought you were fond of me,” he said at length.
“How I led him on!” she told herself. Aloud she said:
“I am, I am, but oh Hugo, not that way.” And she cried, “I wish I could marry you! I don’t know what’s the matter with me. I shall probably never know anyone so nice again.”
She looked at him with something of his own helpless supplication, as though asking him to be strong and competent, a solid fact in the present, instead of dematerialising almost visibly into thin air.
“Couldn’t you ever? Oh Claudia, couldn’t you try?”
“Never, never. It just isn’t any good,”
Still he didn’t go. She said:
“We can be friends all the same, can’t we, Hugo?”
He shook his head hopelessly.
“I don’t think we can, darling.”
And he went at last, rather stunned, for in his heart he had felt confident of Claudia.
Hugo didn’t go to Hollywood but he went round the world.
3
Demain! Il fut un temps où ce mot contenait pour moi la plus belle des magies. En le prononçant, je voyais des figures inconnues et charmantes me faire signe du doigt et murmurer: “Viens!” J’aimais tant la vie, alors! J’avais en elle la belle confiance d’un amoureux, et je ne pensais pas qu’elle pût me devenir sévère, elle qui pourtant est sans pitié.
Anatole France.
In March Claudia became twenty-three and throughout her twenty-fourth year she possessed a new, calm, unaccountable happiness. It seemed that all the waste corners of her life flowered before the friendship with Guy.
Why shouldn’t they be friends? She asked herself to lunch with him once or twice in the city at the Great Eastern after the racing party. When summer came she got up tennis fours in the evening. Then he began to take her to theatres and dance places like anyone else. She knew quite well that he went out with all the others, for the two of them used to compare their news and tell each other anything amusing they’d done. It would not have been her fault if he hadn’t known that she had plenty of other men friends. So they became mutually a habit, pleasant and soothing. Eileen disapproved of it all very much. The Heseltine parents knew Guy Verney’s name as a married friend of Claudia’s and Lalage’s, even met him once and liked him.
Claudia told herself that she was deceiving them and yet she did not feel that she was. Life at the flat always was shuttered off from life at Chesnor. She kept them as it were in different boxes.
Claudia was pleased when Alan Vane confided to her bits of his so-called private affairs. When Guy did so at last she was more than pleased; it really was ffriendship with two small ffs, because he didn’t tell things to the others. She never forgot one evening over a table for two at the Savoy when she made him tell her how he had been engaged to be married to a charming and lovely woman at the time he had met Carol. He suddenly felt that Claudia might understand, or alternatively that she wouldn’t understand and it wouldn’t matter. So he told her how at one meeting with Carol, at first sight, his engagement had blown up. His charming and lovely woman had married a rotter on the rebound and gone with him to India. He said unhappily:
“We did so mean to love each other for ever.”
Claudia thought not of her but of Carol. For when he married her they too must have meant to love each other for ever. Poor Carol, turning a new page in dazzling white with a flower garland for the sacrifice on her coronal of golden curls.
He told her, “We used to meet after the theatre, and she was so vital and gay. Just occasionally she was wistful. She thought she wanted a home.” Then he began again suddenly: “You know that line ‘For each man kills the thing he loves’? It’s perfectly true. If he loves an experienced woman he wants to make her innocent; if he loves a pure one he wants to teach her all about the world.” He laughed suddenly. “Don’t look so grave! Come and dance.”
All through the year, from time to time, little inconsequent vignettes of him etched themselves with peculiar reality on her memory for ever. Guy walking in the Park with her in October on a cold day, saying anxiously that her coat wasn’t warm enough.
“Pooh! It’s got to do the winter; it’s the only warm coat I’ve got.”
“Let me get you a thick one. Please, I should like to. … Don’t be silly, Claudia, there’s no sort of nonsense like that between you and me. I can buy you one so easily, and I hate my friends to be cold!”
She had protested that she had all the money in the world and was too hot already, but he had made her run, laughing and panting, over the grass to keep warm. Guy, after tennis in the summer with his white shirt open: she could call to mind so vividly the set of his head and neck. Guy comforting her when she had read in the papers of the death in the street of a sodden old flowerwoman she had sometimes dealt with, who, it appeared at the inquest, had once been the famous Lou Delane. Because it was dreadful that someone you had actually met should die. And it was dreadful that a triumphant music-hall star could become a blear-eyed hag selling flowers in the street. And it was most dreadful and pitiful of all that death should vanquish one who had once, as the papers told, had all those jewels, all those debts, all those lovers, and been the toast of fashionable men in London, Paris and New York. Guy had been perfect about it. When younger he had even heard of her from older men. The famous high kick, the famous turn of the head when she said: “Hullo boys! How are you all this evening?” The famous auburn hair. He had taken Claudia’s hand with infinite gentleness, infinite precaution. It was the December after they had met and it was the first time they had held hands.
Claudia was to him something fragile and to be protected. He was especially anxious that when she married it should be someone of whom he approved. In the early days he even produced a few eligibles for her. On rare occasions he suddenly decided for the moment that he was not a good friend for her and urged the fact upon her. She retaliated by laughing at his conceit in supposing himself to be dangerous. They felt very easy and natural and affectionate together, and it became necessary to be together often.
When Carol came back from Hollywood she lived in Guy’s house, but she was in no one’s way for she had a theatre engagement as leading lady and hardly saw her husband at all. Guy and Claudia met often. But never again by invitation of Lalage or any of her set. Even though they were Guy’s own set. Even though Lalage persisted in her kindness and hospitality to Claudia so that some of the others, through meeting her often, took her up too. They knew of her success with Guy for they teased him about it, but never by any accident were the two asked out together.
A radiance and secure happiness hung about Claudia in all her doings, in all her ways. It made her prettier than she had ever been and could have ensured her a dazzling supply of all the attentions she loved. But it was impossible to concentrate on other men.
4
What, not upbraid me
That I delayed me,
Nor ask what stayed me
So long? Ah no!—
New cares may claim me,
New loves inflame me,
She will not blame me,
But suffer it so.
Hardy.
I didn’t say there was nothing better than hay, I said there’s nothing like it.
Alice Through the Looking-Glass.
One Friday, Eileen and Claudia motored down together to Chesnor. Tommy was to join them the next day.
“Hullo, Eileen,” said Mrs. Heseltine, delighted to see her favourite guest, “we’ve had a terrible misfortune. Fred has started pigs and there’s no peace or quiet for anyone. You’re fond of dumb animals, aren’t you?”
Eileen smiled. “Oh yes, very. Do I have to fraternise with them?”
“Well, you watch them woffling their swill and ask Fred leading questions on pig culture. You could read up ham-curing in the Encyclopaedia of an evening when you cut out at bridge. Don’t let Fred rush you into keeping a pig in your Square Gardens. Fred is so impulsive.”
“I’m now going to take the girl friend for a walk,” announced Claudia.
When they were slogging it across the fields, “I suppose you are still Guying it up and down?” asked Eileen. The discussion was a departure. She would have liked to have had the key of all Claudia’s affairs, but her own reserved, uncommunicative attitude unwittingly discouraged confidences. Thus challenged, however,
“Yes, I am Guying it,” said Claudia, “down rather than up.”
“Meaning?”
“I’ve been Guying it for more than a year now. The first year was all the same only getting more so. Now it’s different.”
The answer was a shock to Eileen. Apparently Guy had been the whole motif of the past fourteen months, not just an edging of embroidery.
“How, different?” she asked.
“Well, we could have talked together or walked together for ever, and we had an illusion we understood each other. Really! How should we? Well, it was very nice. It is very nice still. I don’t think he’s so fond of me when I’m not there, but when I am he is. I know him less well, and then sometimes we are even more intimate. There is less to say and he wants to kiss me.”
A slow smile curved her mouth and she looked as though she tasted something sweet like honey. Eileen said bitterly:
“You gratify him, I’m sure.”
“Oh I think he’s quite gratified, yes,” said Claudia pleasantly, “unless gratification implies an element of surprise.”
A need to hurt Claudia came over Eileen. A possessive instinct to prove her strength. She felt that in her own happiness with Tommy she was isolated in a tower and losing her grip upon the rest of her life. She began smoothly, in her cool, attractive voice:
“He takes you for granted then?”
“It can’t be helped,” explained Claudia, “because I don’t act to him. I should of course, but then I’m really fond of him.”
“So you just serve yourself up on a dish. What will he think of you when you’ve trotted after him a little longer?”
“Worse than that! He won’t think of me at all!”
“It’s women like you who are really cheap. You might be better if you were a bad lot, a type complete in a way, vital, amusing. Fooling round with a few clandestine kisses, you’re just innocent and vulgar.”
Claudia was strangely unmoved. She said: “I know. But I think he doesn’t know—yet.”
“You couldn’t be exciting. One could only love you for being white and fragrant. You’re silly. You’ll disgust him.”
“No, he’s too kind. I shall bore him.”
“And when he’s bored?”
“He must know by now in a way that I love him. When he’s bored he’ll—realise that I do. Do you see the difference? He’ll resent me then because he’ll feel a cad and yet know it was my own doing. Then he’ll be very good and give me up and not let me sacrifice my time to him any more. And I shall think, ‘He’s tired or he’s worried or he’s feeling ill, I mustn’t be touchy,’ and go on ringing him up till the first year of our friendship is all blurred out and I’m a ridiculous nuisance but a nice little thing. Then I shall give it up and he’ll forget.”
In face of so much wisdom and such utter folly Eileen felt suddenly powerless. She came to her real grievance.
“But Claudia, how does he make you so happy; happy away from him even and everything; so happy in yourself; when now you know all that?”
She explained: “I know it but I don’t believe it. I feel quite safe and the world’s all right because it is still he who says when we part, ‘When do I see you again?’”
For a moment Eileen was isolated again in her tower with her happiness and Tommy. How could he ever have ceased to ask her, “When do I see you again?” And what would it be like to be Claudia in six months’ time? It could not have happened to Eileen so it was unimaginable. But formidable. Claudia could have no pride. It was not even as though Guy were dangerous and passionate. He held her accidentally with a little sentiment, a little charm. The thing was of her choosing, not his. He was quite simple; nice, selfish, responsive, pleasure-loving. Not in the least dangerous, just fatal for Claudia.
“Do you want to marry Guy?” asked Eileen.
“Of course not. How could I? What about Carol? Everything’s all right how it is.”
Eileen, a fighter herself, made a furious gesture. Claudia continued placidly:
“Several of his friends have thought it just worth while to say to him, ‘You’ll divorce Carol and marry that girl. I know you’ll marry that girl,’ so as to make quite sure he won’t. But they really needn’t have bothered.”
“Claudia, you’d never—you’d never live with Guy?”
Claudia was completely surprised. “No, of course.”
“Considering how you seem to feel I don’t see your ‘of course.’”
“You see,” said Claudia, advancing the only sound reason that presented itself to her, “I don’t think he’d be likely to want to.” And she explained “After all when I’m a perfectly nice girl, and when I suppose he really could even get a divorce, and things are very pleasant how they are, and he’s not very like that, I don’t think either of us could. Do you?”
“I wish you’d pull yourself together, Claudia, and find a Tommy of your own.”
“I wouldn’t look as high as that!” she laughed.
“After all, there are so many fish in the sea. You must know that there are thousands of better and handsomer and cleverer men than Guy.”
“Oh yes, I’ve noticed that myself.”
“And people just as clever and amusing.”
“Sure there are, darling! But they’re not for me.”
5
The amity, that wisdom knits not, folly may easily untie.
Troilus and Cressida, Shakespeare.
Claudia dropped in on Guy at his house for nine o’clock breakfast one day. It was her only chance to see him before he went for a few days on business to Glasgow; a thing which men simply will do, in defiance of the advice of their female friends. They were quite used to breakfasting together thus. They kissed each other perfunctorily and settled down to eat, and to look at their letters, Claudia having brought her post along with her.
“What have you got, Claudia? Anything amusing?”
“Oh, just invitations and things.”
“Pass them across and I’ll see if you may accept them.”
“Now then, Guy, I don’t want any blasted sauce from you. What’ve you got yourself?”
“Just business and bills … oh no, here is something rather pure and fragrant! I’ve got an invitation to a debs’ dance.”
“You can’t have.”
“But I have. Look.”
“Somebody must have borrowed an awfully old list.”
“Don’t be catty, child. It’s simply that I’m getting into the right set at last. I’m going to have it framed and hung over the drawing-room mantelpiece.”
He immersed himself in the paper. She got on with her breakfast, and getting up presently to pour herself out a second cup of coffee she saw that he was ready too and poured him out one at the same time.
“Thank you so much.”
She wondered if perhaps she shouldn’t have waited on him, but anyway it was too late now.
“Any news, Guy?”
“The Conservative won the Digglesbury by-election, just that touch of coral pink lends chic to a black straw, half a human face and two fingers have been found in a newspaper parcel in Shoreditch, and Mrs. Dogsbody Lane has had twins. Let me get on with the financial section now!”
There was silence for a little.
“There’s the Mail and the Express,” said Guy hospitably. “Do have a look at Beachcomber. I say, it’s getting late and you’ve almost finished. I wish you’d read me the racing news while I lower my sausage.”
“All right. How are things in the City?”
“Rotten.”
“Here’s the racing news. What do you want to know?”
“Oh, pass it to me, darling. … Thank you … Good Lord! Do you know that Derek Denzel had £40 on Burlington Bertie at eight to one? We must ring him up about this. I dined with them last night. They were in splendid form and bickered at the tops of their voices from caviare to Cointreau. Where were you last night, Claudia?”
“Quaglino’s with Harold.”
“Did you behave nicely?”
“That’s nothing to you.”
“I promise you it will be a lot to you if you didn’t!”
“Not to be impertinent. Oh, Guy!”
“Yes?”
“Guy, in general theory, is it a good thing for girls to be hopelessly innocent like I am? I used to think they should be, but I don’t know. P’raps it makes them rather asses.”
“There,” said Guy, “you’ve started a very difficult question. I think it is a good thing really. Only I must admit that all the little pieces who tell me things I’d meant not to learn for another ten years are certainly a great deal easier to talk to. You’ve not finished, have you? Let me get you an apple or something?”
“No thanks. Guy, do you think the Denzels are happy together?”
“You mean because they fight so much? Well, I think they like it. I should find it rather tiring, but Delia’s got so much vitality and Derek isn’t very sensitive. Not a delicately-strung couple! It’s all quite friendly and they can’t have any idea what it sounds like. It’s certainly amusing! Would you like to help me choose a dressing-gown some time, Claudia?”
