The Balliols (32 page)

Ruth, listening to Tavenham's talk, watching the changing expression on his face, noting the movements of his hands, had that same impersonally aesthetic delight that you get when you watch an athlete, an acrobat, an actor making something that is really difficult, whose mastery has been perfected only by long combinations of thought and skill, appear mere child's play. His novelty fascinated her. He had a rather high-pitched laugh. He was always laughing: at what he said, at what she said. To keep the ball of laughter rolling, she found herself talking better than she remembered herself to have ever talked. The laughing responses he gave her, encouraged her, made her talk more easily, be more herself. Never had she felt more gay, more irresponsible, more alive.

He had not yet booked seats for anything. “I thought we might decide that ourselves, over dinner,” he said. “Nothing's so full that you can't get in at the last moment if you really want to.” So they got a theatre programme from the waiter, and the discussion of the various merits of the various pieces gave her the same feeling of partnership that she had had when she had walked into the restaurant at his side. It was the two of them arranging how they could get the most fun together, not he arranging some cut-and-dried scheme in which he expected her to fit.

They decided on “Hullo, Tango.” They both agreed that they did not want anything serious; that they went to a theatre to be
amused, not to be instructed. They wanted bright lights, movement laughter, dresses.

At the theatre there was that same proud feeling of heads turning in their direction as they strolled round the foyer between the acts; the same happy feeling of partnership as they laughed at the same jokes, turning towards each other to exchange a smile when anything particularly amusing was said or done.

Afterwards, as they stood on the pavement in the warm, lamplit night while a commissionaire sought a taxi, he turned laughingly towards her.

“Have you brought your latch-key with you?”

“No.”

“Then you don't want to be too late.”

“Not too late.”

“I thought we might have gone on to dance somewhere. But in that case, I think we might as well go straight back to supper.”

And that, too, seemed another facet of their partnership.

Tavenham had a flat in Westminster. In a large block of service flats. It was on the fifth floor. The windows of its sitting-room looked out upon the river. The curtains were undrawn. The vistaed view of the Embankment with its line of lights, the double-decked tramcars swaying along its length; the dark barges drifting slowly down the moon-silvered water; the chimney stacks and warehouses on the Surrey side was like a picture. Ruth gasped. It was so lovely. She walked towards it, as you do at an exhibition when a picture glimpsed across the room catches your attention. A cushioned seat ran under the low-set window sill. She knelt there, looking down. He stood beside her. She was grateful to him for remaining silent, till she turned away.

“Would you like to leave your cloak in there?” He pointed to his bedroom.

As he closed the door behind her, leaving her alone for the first time that evening, for the first time since she had walked into the Ritz, she realized her position. She had never been alone in a man's flat before. She smiled as she remembered the numerous films and novelettes which portrayed trapped girlhood. As though anything could happen to her that she was not ready to let happen.

She looked round the room. It was a masculine kind of room: a thick fawn pile carpet, a low, wide bedstead, a table at its side; a shaded reading-lamp, two novels, a water jug and tumbler. Thick damask curtains falling in heavy gold-shot folds. A walnut wardrobe,
a walnut dressing-table set with bottles, a silver-backed pair of hair brushes. A full length mirror spanned the gap of wall between the dressing-table and the wardrobe. In a corner were two pairs of riding-boots. Along the mantelpiece was set out a row of invitation cards. Above it was a large, brightly coloured hunting print. A man's room. And yet it had an atmosphere of warmth and of comfort. There was nothing bare or bleak about it. Thought Ruth, “This room could tell some stories.”

A bathroom opened out of it. It was a very modern bathroom with pale blue tiles. The bath was long, low, rectangular. There were glass shelves, set with bottles; a frameless mirror; a thick carpet-looking squared linoleum; a spongey indiarubber mat. A shower was fixed above the bath. It had a number of brightly polished taps. It suggested health, comfort, cleanliness. Through its open door was the warm opulence of the damask curtains. Whatever stories the room might have to tell they would not be squalid ones.

How often women must be held back from that taking of the final plunge by the fear of a squalid setting. Before her eyes, when the hot mounting blood had counselled her to courage there had risen the picture of a cold, cheerless flat, a draughty passage, a gas fire that popped; or some tawdry, suspect suite in a hotel. She had shuddered, and kept her head. How different from that was this. Whatever happened here, an atmosphere of Victor's choosing would be in keeping with his own fastidious taste. A thing of grace and beauty.

When she came back into the sitting-room he was standing by a small supper table. He was drawing a cork, slowly, from a bottle. It came out so gently that there was scarcely a sound as it left the bottle's mouth. There was a gurgle and the chink of ice as the bottle sank back into the steaming pail. He turned; pulled back a chair for her; patted it.

“I hope you'll like what I've ordered for us.”

The use of the word “us” rather than “you” gave her again that happy sense of partnership.

Alone with Tavenham again after the thronged noise of the theatre that same aesthetic pleasure of watching him returned, of listening to him, of seeing a thing done perfectly; though in a more marked degree than during dinner, for then her attention had been distracted by the movement of the restaurant, the people round her, the talk. Here, there was nothing to distract her. All her faculties were concentrated upon him.

In the centre of the supper table was a large bowl of lobster
salad. It was the kind of dish that she would herself have chosen had she been handed a long menu. The cool wine was sweet, but it was not sugary. It was rich, full-blooded. She did not know what it was. She knew nothing about wine. She was grateful that he had not offered her the obvious champagne.

His talk was easy, gay, as it had been at dinner. There was no sense of embarrassment or constraint. You're nice, she thought. Nicer than I ever thought you'd be. I didn't think it would be like this; that you'd be so friendly; that there'd be this feeling of our having a happy time together. I thought it would be a sparring all the time; a game of attack and of defence. I was excited to know how you'd behave; what you'd do and say; what happens when a man like you tries to seduce somebody like me. But the very word “seduce” seems to convey something that's underhand, sly, tricky. No, it isn't in the least like that. You're not like that.

But at the same time she knew very well that he would not have asked her out, would not have brought her here, unless he intended to make love to her. And with a part of her mind she was still detachedly, inquisitively wondering what would happen next. Yet with only a small part of her mind thinking that; only in small part was she detached. More and more she found herself relaxing to the emotional atmosphere of the moment. This was an evening she well knew that she would remember all her life; which would form a standard by which other evenings would be judged. It would make a second-best of a great deal.

It might be that within a very little while she would meet the man with whom she was destined to share her life; at whose side she would go to marriage as inexperienced as her mother. It was possible but it was unlikely. She was not the girl to marry merely for the sake of being married. She was not going to marry till she was certain that she had found the man to whom she could be the kind of wife she wanted to become. It was very likely that she would have to wait many months. She knew herself; and she knew how more than probable it was that during that time of waiting some hot-blooded moment would break down her reserve. That moment, when it came, would be ruined for her by the memory of this night. “Yes, yes, this is well enough. But it ought to have been then.” Never again would the moment and mood, the place and the person fuse so exquisitely. If ever it has to be, and in all human probability it has to be, it should be now. So, as she talked and laughed and listened, the various arguments of the issue chased themselves through her brain; chased themselves until they wearied her; until the power
of self-dissection left her. “I'll leave it to you. Whichever you make it the easier to say,' Yes' or ‘No,' it shall be.”

The last drop of the cool golden wine had been poured into the long-necked glasses. Tavenham rose to his feet.

“Let's go and sit over there. It's more comfortable.”

He held out his hand to help her to her feet. He lifted her and they stood close. Her head was on a level with his chin. She leant back her head, looking up at him. He was smiling down at her. “You're a lovely thing,” he said. He put his arms round her very gently, then his hold tightened. She closed her eyes. It's like that first time in the woods, only it's lovelier now, because he's finer, because I'm older, because it means more to me. I've more to compare him with. Now, as then, she had a feeling of the wine of life being offered to her to drink.

Yet all the time there was that detached part, watching her, outside, criticizing, taking stock, thinking, “Yes, but what's he going to do next? What's he going to say? What's the next step? Is it to be ‘Yes' or ‘No?'” In the moments when her imagination had brooded on such a scene she had pictured the moment of transition from undeclared to manifest intention in terms of embarrassment, awkwardness, clumsiness. I couldn't stand that. If he were to be shy and awkward, it would spoil everything. I couldn't stand it. I'd just go.

Her imagination had never succeeded in picturing the scene as she would have it happen. She had never suspected that the tension at such a moment would be broken by a laugh, so that everything would be made easy, friendly, the sharing of a joke.

He lifted her into his arms; right off her feet. Cradling her with one arm below her bent knees he carried her across the room; lowered her gently on the bed.

“In novels, with a touch of the hand a heroine's clothes fall to the ground in a pool as if by magic. But in real life they don't. It's a very intricate and awkward business.”

He handed her a Chinese dressing-gown.

“In exactly seven minutes I'll be back,” he said. There was no discussion, no question of saying “Yes” or “No.” It was very, very simple to relax, to do things the way he chose.

Seven hours later her maid was rousing her with her morning tea. She sat up in bed, abruptly; rubbed her eyes, blinked them, stared quickly round the familiar room. “Well, is it a dream?” she asked herself; shook herself, poured out a cup of tea, gulped at it
and decided that she really was awake. She thought hard; then nodded. No, it wasn't a dream. It had happened right enough. She jumped out of bed, ran over to her mirror, stared at her reflection. “Well, and you don't look any different.” She smiled; the reflection smiled back at her. She began to laugh. “So that's how you feel about it; proud as Punch. No end of a devil. Who's fooled all these stodgy matrons with their ‘All in good time, my dear.' Think yourself the cleverest person that ever was. Well, I'm not sure I don't agree with you.”

As she brushed out her hair, she began to hum one of the tunes from last night's revue.

“He had to get under, get out and get under to patch up his little machine.”

The humming broke into words, her feet beat time under her chair. She wanted to dance, she was so happy. I'll never regret it, never. He's just a darling. I'll be grateful to him till the day I die. He made everything seem so right, it might have been made so horrid. By knowing what it had been with him, she could realize what it might have been with someone else. What a mistake I might have made. What he's saved me from. I'll never see him again, most likely. He'll lose interest. He's so busy. There must be so many other girls. But I'll never forget him, never. I'll be grateful till the day I die.

Never had she felt so happy, so alive, so self-confident. At breakfast she could hardly restrain her exuberance. To the rest of the family it was an ordinary morning, just as yesterday had been an ordinary day. Hugh was consulting the columns of
The Sportsman
, wondering whether it would be worth while going to the Oval that afternoon. Sussex were playing there. He didn't think they had a chance of making a match of it. But it would be interesting to see Knight bat.

A letter had arrived from Lucy. She was going to have another baby in the autumn. That meant she wouldn't be able to come back to England till the following summer. Her father was perturbed as far as he was capable of perturbation, by the Irish situation. In his opinion, Civil War would have started in a month. Her mother had asked whether he considered there was any likelihood of trouble over all these ultimatums that Austria and Serbia were sending one another.

“Far too far away to affect us, anyhow,” said Balliol.

Francis in the intervals of this disconnected stream of comment
and conjecture was trying to obtain permission to join some friends who had taken a villa for the summer in Wimereux. He had never been abroad. He was desperately anxious to accept.

“But you can't cross to France by yourself,” his mother was objecting.

“The moment I arrive at Boulogne I'll be met. I've done train journeys before.”

“This is different.”

“How is it different? I changed trains at Frome going to Wells. It's only a question of one change from the train to the boat at Dover. A boat's the same thing as a train.”