The Rainbow and the Rose (21 page)

We did that, and we parked her car and drove into the woods in mine. It was a bright day and the woods were marvellous, carpeted in bluebells, and the air like wine. We left the car and walked on through the woods until we found a fallen tree to sit on for our lunch, and she unpacked the basket I had carried from the car.

Presently she said, ‘I had a talk to Dr Baddeley last week.’

‘What about?’

‘Derek,’ she said, ‘and us. I didn’t say you. I just told him there was someone else.’

She had been quite frank with her husband’s doctor. She had told him that whatever she decided to do would be dictated by her husband’s interest; that if he felt that a dissolution of the marriage would give him a great setback, then the marriage would go on. They had, however, talked of this once or twice when Derek had been completely in possession of his senses, and he had said that the marriage ought to be dissolved. It would never be safe for them to have a family, and while she was a young woman she should be free to marry again if she wanted to. He had been emphatic about it. What did Dr Baddeley think?

The doctor told her that her husband had talked of this to him, and had expressed the same views. He had pointed out to him that the marriage could not be ended just like that; there would have to be a divorce, and grounds for a divorce. Until one of them misconducted themselves the marriage would have to go on, and since he was in The Haven and couldn’t very well commit adultery, the initiative lay with her.

The doctor said his patient had been very much distressed by that aspect of the matter, and had said that it ought to be possible to end the marriage in her interest. From that time the doctor had avoided the subject, but his patient had referred to it several times. It was evidently worrying him. He thought, on the whole, it would ease his patient’s mind if the marriage could be brought to an end, though if that were to happen he would like her to continue her visits.

‘He was awfully nice about it,’ she said.

‘What prospect is there that Derek will get well?’ I asked.

She shook her head. ‘Very little. I asked him again about that. There’s been no change. He said he’d have to keep him certified for at least two years after the last attack.’

I nodded. ‘What’s the next thing?’ I asked.

‘I want to have a talk to Derek,’ she said. ‘I’ll have to pick
my time a little bit. It might take a week or two. Would you mind if I tell him who you are?’

‘Not a bit,’ I said. ‘We’d better have this all out in the open.’

‘I think so, too,’ she said seriously. ‘I’m sure it’s better like that.’

We had our lunch sitting together on the log. She told me about her childhood in Guildford, and I told her about my early life in Canada, and the hours passed like minutes. It was three o’clock before we woke up to the time. She had to go back for tea, and we began picking up the remains of lunch and packing them in the basket.

When we were ready she stood up, slender in the afternoon sun against the bluebells, and she said, ‘There’s just one thing, Johnnie.’

‘What’s that?’ I asked.

‘If this goes on,’ she said, ‘and Derek agrees to divorce me, I shall have to give him grounds for divorce.’

I had been thinking the same thing. I reached out and took her hand. ‘With me?’

‘I don’t know who else,’ she said seriously.

I smiled. ‘Would that be very terrible?’ I took her other hand.

‘No,’ she said. ‘Not with you. But it’s a bit smutty, and I wouldn’t have wanted to start off on anything in that way.’

‘It can be play-acting,’ I told her.

‘Play-acting?’

I nodded. ‘It’s a bit of a smutty play, but it’s play-acting all the same. There are hotels in London that cater for this sort of thing. Not the sort of a hotel that you’d care to go to normally. We can book a room and register as man and wife. We go up there at bed time making sure the porter notices us, and play cards all night in front of the gas fire.’

Her eyes danced. ‘Dominoes,’ she laughed. ‘I love dominoes.’

‘All right, dominoes. Then at seven o’clock in the morning
we tumble the bedclothes a bit and undress and get into bed, and ring for morning tea. Make sure the maid notices us and give her a good big tip. She goes to court and gives evidence, and you get your divorce without any strings on it.’

‘Would you do it that way, Johnnie?’ she asked. ‘Without any strings?’

‘I know you’d rather,’ I said, ‘and I think I would, although it means waiting a long time. When we’ve both got our divorces and we’re both free people, then I’ll ask you to marry me and we’ll start off clean.’

She came into my arms and we kissed, standing in the sunlight on the carpet of the bluebells, in the dappled shadows of the trees. Presently she sighed and said, ‘We oughtn’t to be doing this. We’re not free people yet.’

I released her. ‘No,’ I said. ‘We’ll have to watch our step. It’s going to be the thick end of two years before we’re free. But it’ll pass.’

Next week she told Derek the whole thing. He took it very well and said that he was sure that a divorce was the right course. He could not go himself to brief a solicitor and he asked her to see his solicitor in Leacaster and ask him to come and see him, and get the whole thing going with somebody to act for her. I had offered to go to see him if he wished but he didn’t want that; he told her very sensibly that matters of this sort were always easier if they were kept as impersonal as possible. She saw his doctor later and he congratulated her upon the way that she had handled it; he said his patient seemed much easier in his mind.

It was up to us then to provide the evidence. I scouted round and got the name of a hotel in Bloomsbury that seemed to do a good bit of that sort of thing, and telegraphed to book a double room. I got a couple of days’ leave from the club and went down to London, and met her at St Pancras Station, under the clock. ‘I don’t know if this is going to work,’ I
said. ‘I’ve been and looked at the hotel from the outside, and it looks all right.’

‘I expect it’ll work,’ she said. ‘If it doesn’t, we’ll have to try again. I feel as if I was playing the leading part in a dramatised version of a rude story.’

I laughed. ‘That’s exactly what you are doing.’

She nodded, laughing. ‘I’ll try everything once. Let’s go and register at that hotel.’

We took a taxi to the hotel and registered as Mr and Mrs Pascoe. She had taken some pains over her luggage and had got herself a new suitcase with the initials B.P. on it, and she had marked some of her clothes,
Brenda Pascoe
. In the bleak, utilitarian bedroom with the double bed and the gas stove she showed me these with pride. ‘It’s getting ahead of the game a bit,’ she said. ‘But I can leave them lying about, and somebody might look.’ We went down and had lunch in the hotel dining room, and then we went out. She wanted to go and see some herbaceous plants in Kew Gardens, so we went there and walked round the borders all the afternoon while she made notes in a little book for her garden at Duffington. ‘Though I suppose it’s rather silly,’ she said once. ‘I mean, I shan’t be living there very much longer.’

I touched her arm. ‘We’ll have a garden of our own, somewhere. Not so big as the Manor garden, though.’

‘I don’t want another one like that,’ she said. ‘I’d like to have a little garden in a suburb, that we could do all ourselves. It’d be much more fun.’

We went back and had dinner at the hotel. I had booked a couple of stalls for
Lilac Time;
she had never seen it and she liked Schubert, and this was a sort of compromise to please us both. It did, and when we went back to the hotel for the serious business of our visit to London we were very happy together.

In the bedroom we settled down to dominoes. There was only one tub chair and one upright one; we pulled
the suitcase stand out as a table and put a suitcase on it and played dominoes on that. By two in the morning we were both dropping asleep, and I didn’t care if I never saw another domino again in all my life. ‘Go to bed,’ I said. ‘The bed ought to be slept in, anyway. I’ll sleep in the chair.’

‘You wouldn’t mind if I did that? It’s a bit hard on you.’

I laughed. ‘Go on and go to bed. I won’t look.’

She did, and went to sleep at once. I sat on dozing intermittently in the chair till dawn came grey over the London roofs, and people started stirring in the corridors. I got up stiffly and turned out the fire, and opened the window to let fresh air into the room. She woke as I was doing that, and turned over sleepily, and sat up in bed. ‘Did you have an awful night?’ she asked.

‘Not too bad,’ I told her. ‘This is the last act, now.’

I undressed and put on my pyjamas and got into bed with her. She bubbled into laughter. ‘Johnnie,’ she said, ‘what marvellous pyjamas!’

‘I know,’ I said. ‘I chose them very carefully. There was a pair with naked women all over them, and I nearly bought those.’

‘It wouldn’t have been in the part,’ she said. ‘We’re supposed to be a respectably married couple, aren’t we? I wasn’t quite sure if we were or not. I wondered if I ought to have a flannel nightie buttoned up to the neck, and then I thought that it would be a waste of money, because I’d never use it again.’

‘I’m not quite sure what we’re supposed to be,’ I said. ‘I ought to have asked the solicitor. Anyway, you’re all right as you are.’

She leaned towards me. ‘You’re looking much too tidy. Let me rumple your hair.’

‘Not much,’ I said. ‘I’ll rumple it myself. One thing leads to another.’

She laughed. ‘Would you like me to get out and get the dominoes?’

We sat in bed together for half an hour, laughing and talking happily till we heard the rattle of teacups in the passage. I pressed the bell. ‘Now for a cup of tea.’

She laughed. ‘I’d love a cup of tea.’

A maid about forty years old came in, a horse-faced woman with a slightly humorous expression. I ordered tea, and then I winked at her, as I had been told to do. She smiled, and crossed the room to close the window, taking a good look round the room as she did so. When she brought the tea she took a good look at us both in bed.

As the door shut behind her, Brenda asked, ‘Is that all, Johnnie?’

‘That’s all,’ I said. ‘I’ll go out in a minute and get her name.’

‘It seems too easy.’

In the corridor on my way to the bath I found the chambermaid hanging around. ‘Thank you for looking after us so well,’ I said. ‘In case I don’t see you again, here’s something to remember us by.’ I put two five pound notes into her hand.

She smiled, and said, ‘Thank you, sir. My name’s Doris Swanson. If you should want to get in touch with me at any time, I live at 56 Kitchener Street, North Harrow.’

‘I’ll remember that.’

‘I’m sure I hope that you and the lady will be very happy.’

‘Thank you,’ I said, and went on to my bath.

When I got back to the bedroom she was dressed and packing her suitcase. I dressed and we went down to breakfast together. We had decided we had better not go back to Leacaster by the same train; we left the hotel in a taxi and put her suitcase in the cloakroom at St Pancras Station. She would do some shopping and go home in the afternoon.

In the bustle of the station she turned to me. ‘Thank you for everything,’ she said. ‘I was rather dreading this, but it’s been lovely, all the time.’

I grinned at her. ‘Like to do it again, one day?’

She laughed. ‘Not just like this. But I should never be afraid again.’

April came to an end, with Brenda coming out to fly her Moth practically every day. We started on a mass of legal work. There were three solicitors engaged in our divorce proceedings, one for Derek in The Haven, one for Brenda, and one for me; mine was also working on my own divorce. All three had their offices in Leacaster and all lunched together at the Conservative Club; I suppose each of them suspected that the divorce was a put-up affair, but we all went through the motions. Whenever I wasn’t flying at that time I seemed to be in a solicitor’s office.

The Pageant at Sherburn-in-Elmet, the aerodrome for Leeds at that time, came early in May. We took up two club machines, and Brenda took her Moth, and a young man called Peter Dawson flew up in his private Comper Swift. He won the Sherburn Stakes that year. I didn’t want Brenda to fly in a race just yet but she went in for the landing competition and won it by a most colossal fluke, finishing up her landing run with one wheel slap in the middle of the two-yard bullseye marked out at the centre of the circle. She also won the
Concours d’Elegance
, but I suspect that the white boiler suit and the short, curly hair had more to do with that than Airwork’s careful work on the machine. She flew back to Leacaster in the evening with two silver cups in the luggage locker of her Moth, bursting with pride of achievement. At Cramlington a fortnight later she won another one for coming in on the sealed time in the arrival competition, and had it presented to her by the Lady Mayoress of Newcastle who made a little speech about Women in the Modern World.

Derek’s solicitor got in touch with Doris Swanson and she came to Leacaster one Sunday to identify Brenda. Derek signed the papers petitioning for his divorce, and the case went down for hearing in the autumn. At a committee meeting of the Leacaster Aero Club I told them that more members than we had seats for in the machines wanted to go to the Rally with the Aero Club de Paris at their own expense, and suggested that we should close down the club for that week and take all three machines; Mrs Marshall also wanted to go. The Chairman said that he thought it was a good thing to show the flag in this way once a year, but questioned whether Mrs Marshall had enough experience to fly abroad. I said we couldn’t stop her flying anywhere she wanted to in her own aircraft, but suggested that I should fly with her in the front seat of her machine and lead the club Flight from that. In that way we could look after her and see she didn’t get into trouble. They thought that was a very good idea, and told me to lay it all on.

The Rally at La Baule was held on the first week-end in June that year, the machines being timed to arrive between two and three in the afternoon. This was all right for the Aero Club de Paris who had about a hundred and fifty miles to fly and could do it comfortably in the morning, but not so good for us with over five hundred miles to fly at an average ground speed of about seventy, with two refuelling stops. I decided that we would leave Leacaster at ten o’clock on Friday morning and fly in loose formation to Lympne on the south coast of England at the Straits of Dover, and have lunch there, and refuel. Then we would take off again and cross the Channel by the shortest route with everybody wearing life jackets, and fly along the coast of Normandy to Dinard, landing there to enter the French Customs and spend the night. It would then be only a short flight on to La Baule next day.