The Dangerous Years (18 page)

“Tell me, my dear,” said Mrs. Batten, now for the first time emerging from her contented habit of silence in the background of affairs, “what is this? Does it mean that you are …?”

She was interrupted by a bitter laugh, and Joan started up.

“Oh no! no! Nothing like that! It's quite temporary. Something must have upset my inside.” Joan wrung her hands with nervousness.

Mrs. Batten studied her, but without shrewdness or intrusion.

“Not your mind, perhaps? I think you maybe worried?” Joan would not be drawn.

“Oh, we are all worried. It's the way life goes. But sometimes things happen so unexpectedly that one is knocked off one's balance. I'm so sorry to have been a nuisance. …” She turned aside and hid her face again in her hands, rubbing her temples to try to bring herself back to normal. Mrs. Batten hesitated a moment, then put an arm round her. Speaking now in French, since her command of English was not adequate for this occasion, she urged the girl to ignore appearances, and to rest content, to relax, to let things flow past her.

“Better to return to the others, perhaps,” she said. “I think, nevertheless, that your husband will be deeply concerned.”

Joan was in a condition only to half-appreciate the significance of that ‘nevertheless'. She recognised it as part of the conspiracy of events, and was too weak to resist. She allowed Mrs. Batten to lead her back to the
salon
, and to bring her a glass of cognac.

The doctor, still standing and talking with John, paused
to look at his wife, enquiringly, but she shook her head, and he did not interfere.

“Your wife is unwell?” he whispered to John. “But she is in good hands, you know. The better half of my large practice here in Paris is my wife's creation. She is specially experienced in nervous troubles …”

“Nervous troubles?” said Boys, suspiciously. “There's nothing wrong with Joan there, I hope. D'you see anything wrong?”

Dr. Batten did not reply immediately. He looked at the English athlete, the mountainous frame, the clear eyes and masculine features. He leaned forward and studied his own feet, and spoke thus with bent head.

“There is so much that eludes our vision, Mr. Boys. But a holiday in the Alps will be a good tonic for you both.” Then he twinkled, and added, “Almost another honeymoon!”

Boys was again suspicious, and tried to change the subject.

“That son of yours is a remarkable child. I hear that he is musical.”

Dr. Batten accepted the rebuff, which Boys could not have administered more adroitly had he done it consciously. They were now on the doctor's field of anxiety.

“Yes. But he needs careful handling. My brother is urging me to allow the boy to appear in public. I am against that for two reasons. I have more interest both in music and in the child, than my brother. He is not inclined, perhaps, to think very far ahead. He has always been an impulsive fellow, charging suddenly. That is rather old-fashioned warfare, I believe. One needs nowadays to think of support, transport, and all the rest. Tom has the impulses of an old cavalry officer; almost a knight errant. They get him into trouble at times. One reason why he is over here indefinitely …”

But the doctor thought better of it. He returned to the principal interest of his life.

“Adrian needs careful handling, or he will break. That ominous single-mindedness, with its habit of concentrating on one obsession at a time … You understand what it can lead to? All sorts of disasters. And to let him follow this singular gift so early—it really amounts to a genius, you know, for it is the whole child, not merely his intelligence—that would imprison him for life. He would become a mechanical maniac. He must become a human being. That is where my brother and I disagree. Though I doubt if my brother sees it so clearly as that. He hungers after triumphs, poor fellow. It is a romantic weakness, and has already led him into trouble. You understand me?”

Boys was out of his depth, but he had an instinctive sympathy with the doctor. There was nothing revolutionary about all this talk, so far as he could see. And it led to team work, which was everything.

“You want the boy to stay at school, in the ordinary way?” he suggested.

“Practically that. But of course, he is being watched, and his music lessons are gradually being specialised. The odd thing is, that he thinks in terms of sound; graduated sound. I am not sure whether it is more primitive or more sophisticated, than using words to reason with, to communicate with. What is your opinion? Is the boy a throwback to a pre-language period; or is he one of these unique beings, who use another medium for reasoning with—a Turner, a Bonnington, a Mozart; or maybe one of your mathematicians or physicists? Do you, as a physicist, think in terms of words, or equations and symbols?”

Boys could not enter into this problem, for his day had been a disturbing one, and he could see that Joan was unhappy still.

“At any rate,” he said abruptly, disinclined for abstract
discussion, “I hope that the little blighter won't get into trouble for this escapade. After all, he only wanted the key of his engine. That's a practical matter.”

“All important! All important!” said the doctor, unruffled by this second rebuff.

A moment later, he was surprised by Boys taking the initiative.

“Look here, sir, a whiff of mountain air would do that boy good too. A bit of outdoor life for a week or two, don't you think?”

Dr. Batten considered this shrewdly. He left Boys, walked up to his wife, touched her on the shoulder without speaking, grimaced, turned and turned about the room several times, and then came back to his position
vis-à-vis
his guest.

“It is an idea! Good. I must tell you, Mr. Boys. I am rather harassed by this importuning. Not only my brother: but he has brought in that American agent. And I confess that I am more afraid of him. There is a vast weight of commercial experience, and cunning, behind that man. And that sinister benevolence! I know my brother's limits; and he is an innocent. But this other … No! I am afraid of that. It would be good to send the child out of his reach for a while, and thus I may be able to shake him off. He has been haunting our home since Christmas Day. Let us discuss it.”

He called to his wife, and with Boys joined the two women. Joan, with the help of the cognac, was again in command of herself. She stood up, and accepted the fact that John was beside her and had taken her hand covertly. Again, with a spasm of despair, she told herself that this was the last refuge from complete isolation in the world.

The project was being discussed between the four people, when Mr. Sturm was ushered in by the elderly maid. Again he came loaded with parcels, including a sheaf of flowers for Mrs. Batten, which he instantly
presented to her, beaming at her and saying, “A taste of the forthcoming spring, dear lady. We have had enough of winter, surely. We want to expand, to let the buds open, to bring a little warmth into the world, I suggest!”

It was impossible not to be amused by such effrontery. It was almost endearing. Mrs. Batten took the flowers graciously, with only half a glance at her husband, who had ignored the proffered hand of the impresario, after the parcels had been deposited on a chair.

“And have I had the pleasure, sir?” said Sturm to Boys, pumping firmly at his great fist, and enjoying the resistance. “Ah, you are Mr. Boys, Professor Boys, perhaps? No? But that will come, that will come! I am really glad to have met you, now, for your wife and I are well acquainted, and her lady mother; ah! there I congratulate you both. A more lovely, and if I may say so, a more saintly little lady I have never …” but words failed him. He waved his hand, which was now purple after its effort with Boys' arm. Then he darted a foxlike glance from the doctor to the younger man, “Did I overhear—forgive me—that you are taking our young
maestro
, our world wonder, for a Swiss vacation? No? I see, you are! Excellent; excellent! And I have done the right thing, I have bought him a pair of skates!” He took up one of the parcels and untied it, to hand the skates round. “He will glide round the world on these!”

“You cannot refuse,” whispered Mrs. Batten, drawing her husband aside. “It is really well-meant, Luke. And he may help Tom. That is what I hope.”

Dr. Batten accepted the gift on the boy's behalf, and allowed himself to rejoin the conversation. It was augmented by Colonel Batten, who had returned to dine.

The next two days were spent in getting tickets and providing the necessary outfit for Joan and the boy. John was already equipped. The winter deepened, a fierce frost came down over Paris and the sandy strips along the shores of the Seine began to set solid. One or two venturesome people tried the ice on the pond in the Luxembourg Gardens, but were chased off by the
agents
, whose capes flew out in the savage east wind, like the wings of ravens foreboding disaster. The plane trees along the boulevards were draped with hoar-frost, and here and there a branch fell, split open by the invisible titan.

John Boys revelled in the consequent discomfort. He lumped his tackle up from the Gare du Nord, filling the lobby of the tiny hotel in the Rue Boissy d'Anglas. He strode to and fro between this
arrondissement
and that of the modern hotel where his wife and mother-in-law were lodged in sybaritic warmth.

“What about a fleecy lining for that overcoat?” he asked. He saw Joan flinch.

“I'm sick of that coat,” she said, evasively. “I'm not wearing it again.”

He was about to remind her that it was Welsh homespun, and almost new. But the odd expression in her eyes warned him that she might still be unaccountable. He did not want to lose ground, after this triumph of inducing
her to come with him to Switzerland. What would have happened if I had left her to it? Jolly glad I came over to hoist her out of this damnable mood. He furthered this soliloquy by going into a huddle with Dr. Batten about ways and means of producing money, whereby he could take Joan to buy a lined and wind-proofed coat, a useful affair that gave her the appearance of a Channel pilot. This pleased him immensely.

“Mrs. Batten seems quite well off,” he told Joan, during the shopping expedition. “Why not suggest that we take young Adrian home with us, to go to school in Cambridge? What d'you think?”

He was trying valiantly to wind the threads of reconciliation round her, and for once she was not averse. But she did not believe in the refuge he offered; perhaps because he was still offering it only on his own terms. And even had there been a change, it was probably too late. A dreary self-consciousness had crept into their relationship, lowering the temperature of love. John must be a specialist in low temperatures, she thought, with wry humour. It could have its uses, even if it was only a recoil from the centigrade excesses of his work upon the atom at Cambridge.

She accepted his new proposal passively. She had nothing much to say about anything. She was tired, shaken, cold. She wanted somebody else to take on the responsibility, this intangible menace that had come down over her. Was it all a fantasy, as she once or twice told herself, and dared to hope. But when she saw her mother and Colonel Batten together again, during the foursome expedition to the shops, and caught once or twice the exchange of glances betweem them, her hope vanished. She was ready to believe anything. She tried to show no change of intimacy toward her mother, but could not convince herself that she was successful.

Joan need not have worried, for Mary was at present
incapable of dispassionate observation. Life was whirling her down-stream. She did not notice the incident about the overcoat which she had taken with her into Colonel Batten's room the night before. All that she was conscious of was a wild relief that Joan was being taken away for a time. What did it mean, she asked herself: but there was no time to answer. Every moment was a tumult of feeling, and this mad inflammation of consciousness was instantly filled, and further expanded, with the hunger of nerves and blind desire that last night's surrender had induced in her, mind, soul and body. Body! She felt herself inside her clothes, and was exultant. Poor Joan, she thought; and that was as far as she got, a short mental journey unaccompanied by conscience. It was, indeed, a cruel commiseration, feline, primitive. Poor Joan! She had to load the girl with presents, or try to; but Joan protected herself by reminding this over-animated mother that the money would not last out, without much delay while the bank in Paris assured itself of the financial position of these English spendthrifts.

Joan began to weary, too, of so much lavishness from both her mother and her husband. Both are trying to buy me, she told herself, and again the desperate loneliness gripped her. She looked across the luncheon table, at the Battens' flat, where the shopping party had returned, and she saw little Adrian studying her with adoration. He was so happy at the thought of going away with her that he had retired into a state of coma, from which he looked out like a fox-cub at the back of the den, only a pair of gleaming eyes to be perceived. She could not escape the boy's eyes. They grew more significant as she felt their latent power.

“I hope it will be all right?” she said to Mrs. Batten, over coffee.

“My dear,” said that complacent mother, “you must not foretell troubles. There is enough to do without doing it the day before it is necessary.” She looked from Mary
to Joan afresh. “Yes, we all have our consolations. But I know this sensation of anticipating an expedition. We are all apprehension; everything
must
go wrong, barriers are impassable. It is an illusion, a trick of the nerves, my dear; perhaps a mere physical thing, an inertia, a drag of response behind the change of circumstances. I have learned not to believe in safety. Nursing during the war taught me that. There is only one safe method of living—to welcome danger.”