Before the Fact (21 page)

All day Friday they were very busy. In spite of it being a scratch affair, everybody of any interest or importance in Joyce’s set seemed to have found it possible to come. Nearly eighty people had accepted her hurried invitations.

Gunter’s were doing the refreshments, so there was no need to bother about those, but there were a hundred other matters to be seen to. Like all the rest of the household, Lina got up an hour earlier than usual.

In her own home Lina quite enjoyed the preparations for a party. There she was efficient, swift, and decisive. In Joyce’s she felt rather lost. She wanted to help, but could not help feeling she was more in the way than anything.

“Can’t I do the flowers for you?” she asked Joyce.

“Yes,” said Joyce gratefully. “You do the flowers.”

Like all women, Lina was convinced she could arrange flowers just a little better than anyone else. Joyce had ordered bundles and bundles of tulips, and Lina spent a really happy hour putting them in their vases.

“Thank you so much, dear,” said Joyce, called in to approve. She passed a frowning eye over the massed vases. “I never think tulips look really nice mixed, though, do you? I think I’ll have the mauve ones in the drawing room, the pink ones in here, and ...” With swift movements of her small brown hands she pulled Lina’s work to pieces and began to rearrange it.

“I tell you what you could do, though,” she said over her shoulder. “Open those bottles I put in the morning room, for the cup.”

Lina went off, somewhat dispirited.

She could not find the corkscrew.

“Cecil will have one in his study,” said Joyce.

Lina had never been into Cecil’s study before when he was working. She hesitated outside the door, wondering whether to knock or not. In the end she knocked and went in all in one movement.

Cecil was writing, at his desk. He jumped up and got the corkscrew. Lina felt guiltily that she had probably spoilt the very best passage Cecil might ever have written.

She went out, envying him his calm detachment, to open the bottles morosely in the morning room. She had not been trusted to mix the cup.

At six Gunter’s men came, and the confusion grew worse.

Lina hung about, wearing a helpful face and feeling a nuisance.

Joyce was making cocktails.

“Let me help,” said Lina.

“I tell you what you could do,” said Joyce, over her shoulder. “Keep an eye on Armorel. Nurse is busy mixing the cup for me.”

Armorel was discovered in the dining room, filching things off the plates with all the depravity of six years old, as the men put them out.

Lina, having no children of her own, knew that she was better able to manage them than any infatuated mother. She reasoned with Armorel.

“You didn’t quite realize you oughtn’t to do that, dear, did you?”

“No, Auntie Lina.”

“I know if you thought, you’d never do a thing like that when Mummie’s back’s turned, would you?”

“No, Auntie Lina.”

“So now you understand, you won’t do it again, will you?”

“Oh,
no,
Auntie Lina.”

Joyce’s voice floated down from the drawing room, “Lina, will you bring the mauve tulips up here?”

Lina took the mauve tulips up, secure in the knowledge that Armorel could now be safely left.

She came back to find Armorel filching things off the plates, to the open encouragement of Gunter’s men.

At seven o’clock the soda water had not come, and Lina was able to make herself useful by telephoning for it.

They ate a scrap meal off the corner of Cecil’s study table, and went up to dress afterwards.

At nine o’clock Joyce came into Lina’s room.

“Ronald’s here. I told him the party was at nine. Go down to him as soon as you’re ready. You’ve got a clear half hour to do your grovelling in. And grovel! You owe him that.”

“All right,” said Lina. “All
right,
” She was not going to grovel for a moment. But she would forgive Ronald very nicely.

As she put on her frock she looked forward to forgiving Ronald.

It was a charming frock, if a trifle candid: white satin, cut as low as possible in front, and a good deal lower than that at the back. Women were being candid that season. Lina looked at herself in the long glass from every possible angle. Her face was all right; her fair hair, brushed tightly to her head and unwaved, only curled at the ends round her neck, inwards at the sides and outwards round the back, gleamed under the light; her frock, worn this evening for the first time, was admirably slimming.

“Well, I’m damned if I look a minute over thirty,” observed Lina contentedly to her reflection, and went downstairs.

Ronald was waiting in the empty drawing room.

“Hullo, Lina,” he said casually. “Look here, am I the first or is the party off?”

Lina went up to him and held up her red mouth. Lip stick could go to hell. “Is that all you’ve got to say to me, darling?”

“No, not by a long chalk it isn’t.” Ronald put his hands on her bare shoulders and rocked her to and fro. “I want to know what the devil you mean by playing me up like that?”

“Playing you up, darling?”

“That’s what I said. I know I played my cards badly. I know I let you know how infernally fond I was of you; so you just thought you could take me for granted and do what you liked about it. Isn’t that right?”

“I suppose it is, really. Darling, I’m sorry. I won’t take you for granted again. Kiss me.”

“No, you won’t.” Ronald was rocking her more violently. “I tell you, I’ve had a hell of a time these last few days, and I’m not going to have it again. I know your sort. What you need is a good spanking.”

“Ronald! You wouldn’t dare!” Lina thought he looked almost as if he meant it.

“Wouldn’t I?” Ronald said grimly. “Wouldn’t I! Let me tell you, that’s just exactly what I’ve come here to do.”

“
Ronald!
”

Three minutes later Ronald said, a little breathlessly: “Now I’ll kiss you.”

He hugged her to him, crushing the breath out of her. Lina had never had such a painful kiss before. But she did not protest.

“That’s the stuff!” she said to herself exultantly, as she ran up the stairs to her room five minutes afterwards. One’s face can always be redone, and three minutes with a needle would repair the tear in her frock quite well enough. “That’s the stuff! That’s the
stuff!
”

The name of Miss Ethel M. Dell did not enter her mind: so she could not wonder if it had occurred to Ronald’s.

Lina had made up her mind at last.

Lina did not go to tea at Ronald’s flat the next day.

In the morning, Joyce had a telegram. It was from Robert’s school in Surrey.

Robert taken ill not serious but would like you both to come.
A
SKRIGG
.

Lina had never seen Joyce so upset before.

Nevertheless, upset though she was, she lost none of her efficiency. The car was ordered up from the garage, a telegram dispatched in answer, and within twenty minutes Joyce and Cecil were on their way to Surrey.

With the empty feeling that follows somebody else’s departure, Lina went up to her bedroom with the idea of washing some stockings. She was worried on Joyce’s behalf and felt tired after only four hours’ sleep instead of eight.

She had barely put the stockings into the water when the housemaid appeared at the door.

There’s a gentleman to see you, madam. I showed him into the drawing room.”

“Oh, thank you, Mary.”

Lina went downstairs. It did not occur to her that the gentleman could be anyone else but Ronald, though she did wonder vaguely why Mary had not announced him by name.

She opened the drawing-room door and went in.

It was Johnnie.

“Hullo, monkeyface.” Johnnie’s engaging grin was uncertain and wavering.

“Johnnie!”

Lina’s knees had gone almost powerless. She managed to get to a chair, and clung to its back, struggling for self-possession. “What on earth do you want?” Her voice at any rate sounded cold.

“You! Monkeyface, it’s no good. I can’t live without you. I simply can’t. Listen – I love you. No other woman means anything to me. I haven’t seen another woman since you went. They make me tired. You’re the only woman in the world for me. I know I’ve treated you rottenly. I swear I’ll be different if you’ll come back to me. Won’t you have a shot at it, monkeyface?”

He tried to take her in his arms, but Lina resisted him.

“This is a rather different tale from the one I heard from you last,” she managed to get out, with a fair enough semblance of calm.

“I know. Darling, I was mad that evening. I can’t think what made me say those things to you. They weren’t true, hardly any of them. I just wanted to hurt you. I was crazy.”

“Some of the things you said were crazy, certainly.”

“About Caddis?” Johnnie said shrewdly. “Darling, I know. But I was so infernally jealous.”

“Jealous! Even if it had been true, you said you didn’t even mind.”

“I
had
to pretend not to mind. But you gave me hell over Martin. I was mad with jealousy. Honestly I was.”

“And so you find you love me after all, do you?” Lina said slowly. “You’re sure it isn’t just that you’re running short of cash, Johnnie?”

“Oh, damn the money. Lina, if you’ll only come back to me you can dock that infernal allowance altogether. Honestly, I mean it.”

“That doesn’t sound very like you, Johnnie.”

Johnnie poured out a torrent of protestations. Lina did not know him, Johnnie had not known himself, he had not realized what she meant to him, he had been utterly wretched since she went, he could not stand it any longer, wouldn’t she give him just one more chance?

“I’ll be absolutely honest with you, Lina. I
did
marry you for your money. But, my God, I fell in love with you afterwards. On our honeymoon. I thought you were wonderful. And more every day since. I’ve been in love with you for years. You must know I have. I couldn’t have acted all that time. I’ve been trying to do without you, because I knew what a rotter I’d been to you, and it was only fair to let you have your freedom. But I can’t. I simply can’t.”

“Sit down, Johnnie. We’ve got to talk this out.”

They talked it out. But it all came back to the same thing. Johnnie couldn’t do without Lina. Would she not give him one more chance?

At last Lina said:

“I’d better tell you, Johnnie. There’s a man here in love with me. We intend to get married as soon as I’m free.”

Johnnie turned rather white. “Are you in love with him?”

“Yes.”

“Have you ...?”

“Not yet.”

Johnnie got up. He looked very tired.

“Well, I suppose it’s no good my staying. Good-bye, monkeyface. Good luck. I hope he’s a good ’un, that’s all. You deserve one.”

He walked past her to the door. Lina saw two tears ooze out of his eyes and run ludicrously down his cheeks.

“Johnnie!”

“Hullo?”

“I will come back to you.”

She knew now that Johnnie must love her.

She had known, from the very first moment she saw him, that she loved Johnnie, desperately, and had loved him desperately all the time.

During the whole interview, Ronald had hardly crossed her mind.

Lina did her best to keep her head. It was difficult, when all she wanted was to get inside Johnnie’s arms and stop there for good, but she tried hard.

She did not give way too easily.

She would go back to Johnnie, but only on terms. He was to find another job, his allowance was to be cut down to two hundred and fifty pounds, he was to be completely faithful to her until or unless he found he could be so no longer; then he was to tell her honestly and allow her to divorce him. If he would agree to that she would take him back.

Johnnie did agree. He would agree to any damned thing, he told her, if only she would come back to him.

He gloated and capered over her return like a small boy.

“You won’t half catch it from Joyce,” he exulted. “I shouldn’t have stood much chance if she’d been here, should I? Monkeyface, we’ve got to get out of here before they get back. I’ve got the car outside; go on – shove your things in your trunk now, this minute. Off with you! I’ll give you just twenty minutes to pack.”

Lina actually sang as she went upstairs. Johnnie wanted her: she wanted Johnnie: everything was wonderful. And this time everything was going to be all right. Johnnie had had his lesson.

As she packed, hurriedly and unmethodically and rapturously, she thought of Ronald. She had not the courage to ring him up herself. She would ask Mary to do so. And she would write to him from wherever it was they stayed that night.

She was sorry for Ronald. He had been right all the time, when he said she was still in love with Johnnie. She had known it herself, in her heart. That explained such a lot which had puzzled her during the last few weeks – her throwing herself at Ronald’s head, her dithering, the way she had let him and anybody else influence her, her inability to make up her mind, the dull pain that was with her all the time even when she had thought herself at her happiest. She had simply been drifting, not caring really what did happen to her, because she thought she had lost the anchor of Johnie’s need for her; and Ronald’s need had seemed so – well, unimportant, compared with that.

She was sorry for Ronald. Very sorry. But he would get over it. She would write to him.

Somehow she got most of her things into the trunk; the others could be sent on later. She put on her hat and coat, and went down.

Johnnie himself carried down her trunk, with exaggerated caution like a conspirator, grinning at her, over the top of it. He put it on the grid, fastened the straps, and they set off. It was two months since Lina had come to stay in Hamilton Terrace, but she felt that she was leaving nothing of herself in London. She felt it was not she at all who had ever come to stay there, only a pale, gutted ghost of the real Lina.

Johnnie drove with her hand in his. When he had to release it to manage his gears, he put it on his knee.