The Doll (10 page)

‘I haven’t thought yet how I’m going to live,’ said May; ‘all I know is that it’s impossible to suffer more than I have suffered already. Those terrible months – and then to-day.’

‘Don’t cry, darling,’ she said, and she was thinking, ‘Oh, dear! is she going to begin all over again? It’s really too much. Besides, it’s getting late.’

‘Don’t you think,’ she said gently, ‘that a large brandy and soda would do you good? And your poor head must be splitting. If you go upstairs and go to bed with a nice hot bottle – and two aspirins – and try to forget . . .’

May smiled at her through her tears.

‘If you think that is a cure,’ she said. ‘No – I’m all right . . . don’t worry about me. You must get back, too . . . he’s coming home to-night, isn’t he? I’ve only just remembered.’

‘Yes,’ she said indifferently, trying not to parade her pleasure, and to make up for it she seized hold of May’s hands and said, ‘Darling – if you knew how terribly I feel for you, if only I could share it. What a wicked shameful thing life is – God shouldn’t let it happen – this horrid, miserable world, why were we ever born . . .’ and the tears came into her eyes, too, and they rocked together on the sofa, and she was thinking, her heart fluttering with absurd joy and the thought of his face before her – ‘Oh, dear – I’m so happy!’

Finally she tore herself away, the hands of the clock pointing to half-past six. ‘Of course I’ll come to-morrow,’ and supposing his train is early, she thought, and she wondered how she could possibly keep from smiling before poor May. ‘Darling, are you sure you are all right left alone?’ she said; and not waiting for the answer she was dragging on her coat and her hat, looking for her bag, trembling with the excitement which it was impossible to control any longer.

‘Good-night, darling,’ she said, kissing her fondly, patting the blotched, disfigured face which roused in her an insane desire to laugh (‘How vile of me,’ she thought), and she searched feverishly for some parting, consoling phrase; and because in half an hour she would be with him, blotted against him, losing herself, caring for no one, drunk and absurd – she said happily, her face radiant as she stood on the doorstep, ‘It’s all right; nothing hurts for long.’

For the fourth time she made up the fire, stabbing at the coal with the tongs, sparks flying on to the carpet, and she did not notice. She jumped up from her chair and touched the flowers, she sat down to the piano and played the bar of a tune, only to run across to the window and pull aside the curtain, thinking she heard a taxi.

She was not sure how she wanted him to find her. Crouched by the fire perhaps, or lying in a chair, or putting on the gramophone. The clock in the dining-room struck eight. ‘Oh! but it must be fast,’ she thought wildly, and called to the kitchen, ‘Mrs Cuff, what is the right time?’

‘Past eight, ma’am, and the dinner is spoiling.’

‘Can’t you keep it hot?’

‘I can keep it hot, ma’am, but the joint is overdone and the vegetables are cooked. Such a pity. He’s not going to enjoy it much.’

‘I can’t understand why he is late, Mrs Cuff. I’ve rung through to the station, and the train came in punctually at six forty-five. What can have happened?’

She walked from the dining-room to the kitchen, biting her nails, wondering if she was going to be sick. Surely he would have let her know if he had been coming by a later train. ‘He’ll be so ravenous when he does arrive he’ll eat anything – if it’s burnt to cinders,’ she said. She was not hungry herself; it would have choked her to touch the dinner.

‘He’s always up in the clouds,’ she thought; ‘he probably does not realise the time. That’s the worst of being temperamental. All the same . . .’

She put on a gramophone record, but the noise grated; the voice of Maurice Chevalier sounded high-pitched and ridiculous.

She went and stood before the looking-glass. Perhaps he would creep in suddenly and stand behind her, and put his hands on her shoulders, and lean his face against hers.

She closed her eyes. Darling! Was that a taxi? No – Nothing. ‘This wasn’t how I imagined it at all,’ she thought. She threw herself in a chair and tried to read. Hopeless – what nonsense people wrote, anyway. Why was one supposed to take an interest in the life of someone who did not exist? She wandered over to the piano once more and began to strum.

‘Some day I’ll find you,
Moonlight behind you,’

she sang, but her fingers were heavy and her voice a poor thin whisper of a thing that went flat and could not strike the right note. The canary in the cage pricked up his ears. He started his song, and soon it filled the room, deafening her, shrill and absurd, so loud that she flung the cover on to his cage in irritation.

‘Be quiet, can’t you, you horrid little thing!’ she said. It was being so different from the morning, and as she poked the fire again she remembered that moment during the afternoon when she had smiled to herself and thought, ‘I shall remember this minute.’

And the chair was still empty, and the room looked lifeless and dull, and she was a little girl whose mouth turned down at the corners, who bit the ends of her hair, who wriggled with hunched shoulders, sniffing in a hankie, ‘It isn’t fair.’

Soon she had to go upstairs again to do her face, because she had dressed herself all ready for him at half-past nine. Her face wanted doing again. Her nose must be powdered, her lips lightly touched (the stuff did come off so), and her hair brushed away from her face in the new way.

As she took a final peep in the glass she thought how cheap she was making herself – any girl waiting for a man – squalid, like birds who paraded before each other, and it seemed to her that the face that stared at her from the mirror, pretty and smiling, was not the real her at all, was forced and insincere; the real her was a frightened girl who did not care how she looked, whose heart was beating, who wanted only to run out into the street and beg him to come home to her . . .

Then she stood quite still – because surely that was a taxi drawing up to the front door, and surely that was the sound of a key in the lock, and weren’t those voices in the hall, suitcases dumped down, and Mrs Cuff coming out of the kitchen, and his voice? For a moment she did not move; it was as though something rose in her throat, stifling her, and something crept down into her legs, paralysing her – and she wanted to go quickly and hide, locking herself somewhere. Then the wave of excitement broke over her once more, and she ran out of the bedroom and stood at the head of the staircase, looking down at him in the hall below.

He was bending over his suitcase, doing something with his keys. ‘You might take these things up right away, Mrs Cuff,’ he was saying; and then he straightened himself, hearing her step on the stair above, and he looked up and said, ‘Hullo, darling.’

How funny – why, he had got fatter surely, or was it just his coat? And he must have cut himself shaving, because he had a silly little bit of plaster on his chin.

She went down the stairs slowly, trying to smile, but odd somehow, shy.

‘I’ve been so worried,’ she said, ‘what ever happened? You must be absolutely famished.’

‘Oh! I missed my connection,’ he said, ‘I thought you would guess. It’s all right, Mrs Cuff, I had my dinner on the train.’

Had his dinner? But that was not how she had planned it.

He kissed her hurriedly, patting her shoulder as though she were a little girl, and then he laughed, and said, ‘Why – what on earth have you done to your hair?’

She laughed too, pretending she did not mind. ‘I’ve had it washed – it’s nothing, just a bit untidy.’ They went into the drawing-room.

‘Come and get warm,’ she said.

But he did not sit down, he lounged about, jingling the money in his pockets.

‘Of course I would come back and find a lousy fog,’ he said. ‘God – what a country.’

‘Is it foggy?’ she said. ‘I’d not noticed it.’ And then there was a pause for a moment, and she looked at him – Yes, he was fatter, different somehow – and she said stupidly ‘How did you like Berlin?’

‘Oh! it’s a grand place,’ he said, ‘London can’t compare with it. The atmosphere, the life there, the people, everything. They know how to live.’ And he smiled, rocking on his heels, remembering it; and she thought how terrible it was that he was seeing things in his mind now that she would never see, going over things he had done that she would never know.

‘Fancy,’ she said, and she knew she hated Berlin, and the people, and the life. She did not want to hear about it – and yet supposing he did not tell her, but kept it to himself, wouldn’t that be worse? ‘Oh!’ he said suddenly, striking his forehead, a stupid theatrical gesture – not impulsive but planned. ‘By Jove – I must telephone. I’d quite forgotten. Some people who are over here from Berlin.’

‘Telephone?’ she said, her heart sick, ‘but, darling, you’ve only just come back.’

‘I promised though, rather important,’ he said, and kissed her as though he were saying ‘There now – be a good girl,’ and already he had pushed aside the curtains, and was lifting the receiver, and giving the number. It tripped off his tongue, she thought, he did not have to look it up in the book.

She went and crouched by the fire, cold for no reason, and tired. She felt empty inside – perhaps it was because she hadn’t had any dinner.

He had got on to his friends. He was talking German – and she did not understand. A flow of hideous stupid words, and he kept laughing – surely these friends couldn’t be as funny as all that? Why was he laughing? She thought he would never finish. And then he came back through the curtains, red in the face, smiling.

‘Well,’ he said, talking rather loudly, ‘tell me all the news.’ Perhaps he felt that after all it was her turn. She felt herself closing up, shy, stupid. She remembered. May and her husband. No – she could not tell him about that, it was as if – as if it wasn’t the right moment, it was too soon – besides.

‘Oh! I can’t think,’ she said. ‘There doesn’t seem to be anything to tell.’ He laughed, and his laugh turned into a yawn. ‘How’s the old bird?’ he said, glancing carelessly at the cage, not really wanting to know.

‘He’s all right,’ she said.

He sprawled in a chair, still yawning, his mouth wide open, and she knew as she looked at him that it was not just her fancy, it was not just imagination, but, besides being fatter, he was different in another way – altered, queer –
changed
.

He whistled softly, his eyes staring into space. Then he said slowly, ‘Gosh – time’s a funny thing. To think that at this moment last night I was in Berlin.’

She smiled nervously, anxious to please, but something stabbed her heart like a sharp little knife, twisting and turning – and into her mind ran the words over and over again: ‘It’s all right, nothing hurts for long – nothing hurts for long.’

Week-End

W
hen they motored down to the country on Friday evening they scarcely spoke to one another at all. They both of them felt that words would spoil the perfect harmony. He sat at the steering-wheel, intent on his driving and the straight road before him, one hand directing the car and the other around her shoulders. She leant against him, her hands in her lap, and every now and again she sighed and murmured inarticulate sounds of appreciation.

He seemed to understand those sounds, because he answered them in his own way, smiling from time to time, his knee just touching hers.

Their minds were blank and foolish, empty of consecutive thought. Sometimes she glanced at him sideways, and it came to her presently that she adored the way his hair grew at the back of his neck. She did not notice the funny patches of sun-burn on his forehead that reddened with every mile. He caught a glimpse of a dark curl under a beret that twisted upwards in the right way, yet missed the smear of powder that ran patchily on her nose. They were in love.

‘You see,’ he told her once, ‘the marvellous thing about us is that we are such companions. I felt that about you from the first. No effort, no straining after effect. I can be perfectly natural with you. When I think of all the other women one has known—’ and he broke off, laughing, shrugging his shoulders. After all, it would not hurt her to believe that there had been other women.

‘Yes,’ she had said: ‘that’s what I feel, too. At last I can be myself – there’s no need to pretend any more. I can relax and be at peace.’ As she said this, she made her voice sound sad, a little tired, hoping by the inflexion she might suggest that hitherto, her life had been too strong, too vital – that she was one of those who had burnt the candle at both ends.

‘Peace,’ he said slowly. ‘Yes; how I longed for peace out in India. You haven’t any conception, my darling, what life does to one out there.’ He had lived very comfortably in Madras for six years, but there was no need to go into all that. She had such romantic ideas of India; she might imagine him pig-sticking, in white breeches; studying Yoga, perhaps.

‘I can picture you,’ she told him, ‘working and riding under that fierce sun, while I drifted aimlessly in London, leading my useless, butterfly life – going from party to party.’ She laughed, bitterly, she hoped, thinking she was conjuring in his mind the vision of night-club after nightclub, nigger bands, bored sophistication – anything but the slightly formal evenings in Kensington to which she had been accustomed.

‘It’s wonderful, isn’t it,’ he said, ‘how we understand each other. We love the same things; we think alike; we disagree over nothing. I mean, it’s absolutely terrific the – well – I tell you—’ He broke off lamely; words could not express his feelings.

‘Darling!’ she said.

When they arrived, the moon was shining on the water, and the tide was high. The waves broke gently on the beach below the house. ‘I’ve often dreamed about places like this,’ she said vaguely, spreading out her arms. She never dreamt; but no matter. ‘I’ve imagined lying on hot, white sand, with a cloudless sky above, and next to me someone I could love, who would understand. Someone who would give me peace.’

‘My sweet!’ he murmured. She rather harped on peace, he thought. He was wondering whether it would be possible to hire a speed-boat for her, with some reliable boatman in charge. ‘We’ll get a boat tomorrow, shall we?’ he said. ‘And sail away from all this to the horizon.’ His voice was dramatic, he turned his profile to the sky. Swiftly she changed her mood to tune with his.

‘You and I together, sailing towards the stars,’ she said. They felt so romantic, so adventurous, like Vikings almost.

By midday on Saturday they had little names for one another, and they talked in a special language. It was impossible for either of them to make a statement without lisping and pouting, without stamping their feet and clapping their hands. They had passed from a fatuous self-content to a strange senility.

‘Mousie wants to go bathe,’ she said; and she was tall and dark, and she would not see thirty again. ‘Hoosie wants go bathe, too,’ he said. And they splashed each other and played ring-o’-roses in the sea.

‘Hoosie’s so big and strong,’ she told him, as they lay on their backs in the sun; ‘that’s why Mousie loves Hoosie so much.’ She ran her fingers up and down his arm. He shivered slightly; bathing did not agree with him.

‘What’s for lunch?’ he said, slapping his white, dead fingers. ‘I don’t know about you, but I’m hungry.’

She felt hurt, suddenly, a little rebuffed. ‘I’ll go and see,’ she said. He repented, though; he saw the shadow between them. ‘Hoosie kiss Mousie first,’ he said.

She smiled, and the cloud passed away from the sun. ‘We do love each other, don’t we?’ she said.

‘Yes, darling.’

She stumbled up the beach to the house, trailing her wet wrapper behind her. For the first time he noticed the calves of her legs were big without stockings.

They rested after lunch until five o’clock. The sky was still clear, and the sea without a tremor. ‘Is Hoosie going to take Mousie in a boat?’ she asked.

He remembered his promise with misgiving. What a bore. Was she going to drag him out? ‘Hoosie will do anything Mousie wants,’ he said, yawning.

They walked down to the little quay to inspect the boats.

‘Let’s have that lovely red one, darling, it will just match my beret,’ she suggested.

‘Mousie wants red boatie,’ he said absently, but he was wondering whether he could manage the engine.

‘Quite simple, sir,’ the fellow explained. ‘Foolproof. A child could run her. Here’s your spark; here’s your throttle – adjust your lever, so – half-open. Give her three swings, then open up.’

‘What?’ he said. ‘What? I don’t follow. Say it again.’ He glanced over his shoulder to see if she had heard. She was settling herself among the cushions; she was not looking. The fellow started the engine in one swing, and in a moment they were away, the boatman waving encouragement from the quay. He gripped the tiller, glancing anxiously to right and left.

‘Clever Hoosie, to manage boatie so well,’ she told him.

He swallowed, and stuck out his jaw. They were heading for the open sea. Thank God the water was smooth. He began to feel more at his ease; the light wind ruffled his hair, the spray danced in his face.

‘Darling, you look so wonderful!’ she screamed.

He smiled. Sweet little Mousie. He steered the boat towards a sheltered bay.

‘What’s the time?’ she asked sleepily. He woke with a start. How long had they been anchored in there? He could not remember. The sun had gone from the bay; the water looked grey and cold. They both shivered, and she reached for her coat. ‘Mousie wants to go home,’ she said.

He tried to remember what the fellow had told him about starting the engine. Open the thing how much? – pull which lever? He went on swinging without success, barking his knuckles every time. ‘Damn, blast and hell!’ he swore, sucking his fingers, the skin rubbed raw.

‘Naughty Hoosie!’ she scolded.

‘Well, try the blithering thing yourself,’ he said.

‘I don’t pretend to know anything about boats,’ he said, exhausted. ‘The beastly engine is a dud; it won’t work. Good God! These fellows ought to be shot for hiring out a boat like this. Look here—’ A screw came away in his hands.

‘You pulled it off yourself; I saw you,’ she said. ‘I don’t believe you know how it does go.’

‘That’s right, blame me,’ he said. ‘Whose idea was it, anyway, yours or mine? I was perfectly content as we were. I didn’t want to hire the blasted boat.’

‘Well, my dear, if I’d known you were so incapable, do you think I’d have come out in it?’ she said. ‘Look at your face – all covered in oil smears. If you knew what you looked like—’

How like a woman, he thought, cursing him, when he had tried to please her. ‘Well, we’re in a fine mess,’ he said gloomily. ‘I don’t know what to do.’ He shivered; he put on a mackintosh. She was suddenly aware of the patch of sunburn on his forehead. His hair was thin on the top, too. She felt irritable, cold, and bored.

‘Can’t you shout or wave?’ she said. ‘Surely someone will hear?’

The beach and the cliffs were deserted, though; there was not a soul in sight. His ‘Cooee’ sounded so ridiculous, she thought, shrill and hateful, like a Boy Scout’s. The call got on her nerves. ‘Oh, do stop!’ she said. ‘It’s obviously no good.’

He began blowing on his hands. ‘I hope the sea won’t get up,’ he said. ‘I’m a rotten sailor. The slightest motion makes me sick.’

She stared at him frozenly. ‘I thought you were good at these sort of things,’ she said. He flushed irritably. ‘D’you think I’m an explorer, or what?’ he said. ‘I don’t mind telling you that exposure is very bad for me; I get chills very easily. A few hours of this is enough to lay me off for weeks.’

‘Well, surely you’ve been used to roughing it in India?’ she said, with a shrug of her shoulders.

‘My dear girl, do you think India is a sort of movie land for film stars? Don’t show your ignorance. I had a very comfortable house in Madras, with ten servants to look after me.’

‘Pity some of them aren’t here now,’ she said icily.

They were silent for some minutes. The tide had turned and was coming in fast, rocking the boat from side to side.

‘Look here,’ he said, ‘I don’t like this at all. We’re probably in very great danger. I don’t like it.’

‘You might have thought of that before you brought me out here,’ she snapped. ‘All you cared about was showing off in that idiotic way. What on earth did you anchor in this horrible bay for anyway?’

‘Oh, it’s my fault that we anchored, is it? Didn’t you ask me to make love to you?’ he said.

‘Ask you! I like that! Do you think it gives me any pleasure to be messed about in this dirty, uncomfortable boat?’ she said.

‘Well, by heaven, I certainly wouldn’t have done so if you hadn’t chucked yourself at me,’ he said.

‘Oh, so you accuse me of making myself cheap, do you?’ she said. ‘I suppose you’ll be saying next that it was I who suggested coming down here for the week-end?’

‘My poor child, it was pretty obvious that you wanted to, wasn’t it?’

‘I don’t know if you realise that you are talking like a cad and a liar. Nobody has ever said things like this to me before.’

‘They probably never had the chance,’ he said.

‘You’re appallingly conceited, aren’t you?’ she said. ‘And I suppose you think this is the first week-end I’ve ever spent with anyone in my life?’

‘I can’t say you give me the impression of having vast fields of experience,’ he said.

‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘And you may as well know that it was my first week-end, and I don’t mind telling you now that it’s been the biggest disappointment of my life, from every point of view.’

It began to rain, a few spots at first, then a drizzle, finally settling to a steady downpour for the evening. The sky darkened, and the boat rocked on the rising tide. He leant against the gunwale, a thin, pitiful figure in his damp bathing suit and mackintosh, his nose blue with the cold.

She suddenly remembered a picture book of her childhood and an illustration of a little goblin called the Inky Imp. What an absurd object he was! How inefficient; how lacking in courage. She blew her nose, she began to cough. He turned away, so that he could not see her blotched and streaky face, the wet rat’s tail of hair that drooped upon her shoulders. She looked sulky, peaked, incredibly unattractive. She reminded him of a bedraggled mouse. Mouse. The name suited her, by thunder!

‘Thank the Lord we don’t have to go on talking that perishing language, anyway,’ he thought.

She watched him sullenly for a while, then stubbed him with her foot. ‘If you’re going to be sick, for God’s sake be sick,’ she said, ‘and have done with it.’

They were towed back to the harbour by a fishing boat, at five in the morning. Already he was suffering agonies with rheumatism in his feet, and he had a chill on the liver. She was starting a cold in the head and her right cheek was swollen with neuralgia. They went straight to bed, and slept until the afternoon. They woke to a grey cheerless Sunday, with the rain still pattering against the windows.

They sat in the sitting-room on two hard chairs, while the fire smoked, and they had not even the Sunday papers. Their minds were blank and foolish, empty of consecutive thought. Sometimes she glanced at him and noticed the patch of sunburn on his forehead. He caught a glimpse of the smear of powder on her nose. They were no longer in love.

‘You see,’ he told her, ‘the thing is, we aren’t companions, really, at all; we don’t even like the same things or have one thought in common. It’s so hopeless that – well – I tell you—’ he broke off lamely, shrugging his shoulders.

‘That’s what I feel, too,’ she said. ‘We simply rub each other the wrong way the entire time. You make me restless and miserable.’

‘I wish to heaven I was back in India,’ he told her.

‘I can imagine you,’ she laughed bitterly, ‘sitting on a stupid office-stool, biting the end of your pen, while I’m being useful canvassing for Members of Parliament at by-elections.’

They listened to the rain and the surf on the shore.

‘This is a hateful place,’ she said; ‘gloomy and depressing; nothing but stretches of heavy sand-dunes. Like a convict settlement.’

‘Fool!’ he thought, but he was wondering whether it would be possible to hire a car to take them back to town. He was too tired to drive himself.

‘It gives me neuralgia just to sit in this appalling room,’ she said. But he had not heard. ‘Let’s get a car,’ he said, ‘and leave the beastly spot, and go back to London.’ His voice was irritable; he peered moodily out of the window, and the rheumatism pricked at his shoulders.

‘You and I, driving that way alone?’ she said. They were so bored with one another, so tired. A tiny patch of blue appeared in the sky and a blackbird whistled from a tree. They did not see, they did not hear. ‘God! it might be the end of the world here,’ he said.

When they motored up to London on Sunday evening they scarcely spoke to one another at all.