Venus Over Lannery (16 page)

“Jim Marshall didn't realise it, I'm sure,” said Elsdon, “and, as a matter of fact, neither did I. I think I had ceased, by then, to notice Naomi's antics.”

“I liked him,” said the Colonel. “I thought him a very good fellow.”

“A very good fellow,” said Elsdon. “I was always delighted when he turned up.”

“I never told you, did I, George,” said the Colonel, “that I met her a week or two after she left you? It was in an hotel in a beastly seaside place up north. I was driving to Scotland, to shoot with the Farrants, and my car broke down and I had to spend a whole blessed two days there. I was sitting in the lounge reading a paper after lunch when her voice roused me and there she was, standing in front of me. ‘Bless my soul, Naomi,' I said, ‘what a surprise.' She sat down beside me with a somewhat embarrassed smile. ‘You don't seem to find it a pleasant one, Bob,' she said. ‘I don't,' I answered flatly. ‘That's because you don't understand,' she said. ‘O, don't I?' I said. ‘I understand perfectly.' She shook her head with a melancholy smile. ‘If you understood me ... ' she began, but I interrupted her. I was going to have no more nonsense. ‘My dear Naomi,' I said, ‘I understand you so perfectly
that I can tell you, without your bothering to explain, exactly what happened.' She eyed me doubtfully. ‘You began,' I said, ‘to feel responsible for Marshall.' She swallowed it without the least suspicion. ‘Yes, Bob,' she said, ‘yes, I really did.' ‘I knew it,' I said. ‘And so you were entirely responsible. If you'd left the silly fellow alone he wouldn't have given another thought to you. Did you think I didn't see you working away at him month after month? You're such a one for responsibility, aren't you, Naomi? It must be terribly harassing to have such a scrupulous conscience. You felt responsible for George once, you may remember. And when you get bored with Marshall, or he with you, no doubt you will be looking out for some new responsibility. In fact, you're a martyr to duty, aren't you, Naomi?' I was so angry, I spoke with such venom, that for once even Naomi couldn't misinterpret what I said. But she came out on top, none the less. Trust Naomi to do that. To my consternation she burst into tears. That was a dirty trick, wasn't it? My anger collapsed: I felt as if I had been ill-treating a defenceless child—defenceless, it occurred to me for the first time, even against her wretched self. Yes, I had really got under her skin that time. But a man—rather a good-looking fellow, I noticed—came into the lounge a moment later and, in a flash, she had herself well in hand. Weeping, you see, is so damaging to the complexion. She tucked away her handkerchief, got up, and left me without a word, and that was the last I saw of her.”

Elsdon nodded his head meditatively. “A strange, unhappy creature!” he said sadly.

The Colonel snorted. “A very dangerous woman,” he said, “especially to those she took a fancy to.”

Eric and Daphne, driving back from Lannery to London, stopped for dinner at the little hotel where they had had tea on the previous afternoon, and, having finished dinner, they sat and drank coffee in the lounge. Eric felt blissfully happy. “You won't forget,” he said, “to write and tell Aunt Emily how much you enjoyed your week-end.”

“No, Eric,” said Daphne, “I won't forget.”

“Nor to tell her that your ruined life isn't ruined any longer.”

Daphne considered this suggestion. “I may perhaps mention,” she said, “that restorations have begun.”

“Only begun?” he pleaded.

“Well, I might tell her, if it wasn't indiscreet, that her nephew's a perfect pet.”

“And that you're happy?”

“Yes, that too.”

“And tell me, Daphne, do you think we ought to be starting?”

“By all means, if you want to.”

His eyes, earnest, darkly glowing, searched hers. “I want to do only what you want. If we are to get to Town to-night, we ought to start now.”

“And if we don't?”

“We could start at half-past six tomorrow morning.”

“An early morning drive! That would be rather nice,” she said gaily, ignoring his seriousness.

“You mean it? Seriously? You'd like us to spend the night here?”

She smacked him gently on the cheek. “Why are you making such a solemn business of it, you old donkey?”

“Because I want you to make your own choice. I'm not urging you.”

She laughed. “O, aren't you, with those blazing brown eyes of yours?”

He stood up. “Then I think we'd better start,” he said conclusively.

But Daphne didn't stir. “I've said already, Eric, that I think it would be nice to drive in the morning.”

In the weeks that followed, it seemed to Eric that he and Daphne had found the perfect life. Daphne, as it happened, had received an unusual number of orders and during all the hours that Eric was at his office she was busy making sketches, choosing materials, and writing letters, so that their meetings after the day's work was over came as a delightful contrast, a rapturous escape into an Earthly Paradise. Sometimes they went to a theatre or a concert, but for the most part they were content to sit and talk. About what? In later days Eric could never recall a word of what they had said. They talked for the pure pleasure of talking to each other, like two birds on a bough pouring out their irrepressible delight in one another alternately or simultaneously in effortless improvisations. When the week-end came, they set off for the country in Eric's car, discovered a room in some cottage or village inn, walked all Sunday and drove back to London and work in the early hours of Monday morning. It seemed to Eric that he had come to life for the first time, and when he looked back on his existence in the days before that meeting with
Daphne in the Haymarket he saw it as little more than a dull, groping, unsatisfied search after fulfilment.

So the days and weeks went by and it never occurred to him to ask himself if there could be any limit to this enchanting life, or whether in the course of time it might die as a butterfly dies at the end of its season, or become, for one or both of them, stale or insufficient. His spirits never flagged, nor did Daphne's, until one evening, five or six weeks after their visit to Lannery, when, hurrying round to her flat after work, he found her for the first time out of humour. At first he noticed nothing more than that she was less talkative than usual, but after dinner he realised that she was restless and preoccupied. His liveliness no longer met with the usual response. It was as if she had suddenly grown ten years older. “Is there anything the matter, Daphne?” he asked.

“I don't know,” she replied thoughtfully. “Perhaps, and perhaps not.”

“O, well,” he said carelessly; “if it's as vague as that, why bother?” He put his arm round her. “Are you feeling unwell?”

“Not a bit,” she said.

“Then what is it?”

“I'm worried, Eric.”

“Worried? What about? Too much work?” She laughed joylessly. “My dear, I like too much work, when I can get it.”

“Too little work then? You're not worried about money, are you, Daphne?” he asked, eager to
abolish that particular worry at a word from her.

But she shook her head. “O, good God, no! I never worry about money: I'm not a millionaire.”

“Then it's simply imagination?”

She gave a wan smile. “It may be. I hope so. Don't let's talk about it.”

Eric fell silent. What could have happened? Had Roy appeared on the scene again? A cold anxiety stirred like a little snake inside him. He inspected her from under his eyebrows, but did not like to ask her.

She caught his eye and laughed. “Don't glower at me like that,” she said; “you look like a private detective.”

Her laugh reassured him and made him laugh too. For the rest of the evening things seemed a little better.

It had been arranged, some days before, that they were to go to the theatre on the following evening. They were to dine first at Daphne's flat, and Eric was on the point of starting when his telephone bell rang.

It was Juliet who spoke. “Is that you, Eric? Daphne has asked me to tell you that she can't go to the show this evening.”

“Can't go?” he replied. “Is there anything the matter?” Once again, as when Daphne had failed to turn up at the garage, Eric had a sudden sinking of the heart.

“Well, yes,” came Juliet's precise tones, “there is. I can't ... er . . .”

“No, of course not,” he said; “but what about dinner? Am I to come along? I was just starting.”

“She didn't say. Yes, I think you'd better come along.”

“Isn't she there?” Eric asked.

“Yes, she's here.”

A horrible sensation, half fear, half exasperation, crept through him. “Then can't she come to the telephone?”

“You'd better come along. I'm just going out.” To escape from the suspense as quickly as possible Eric took a taxi. Was it another of those inexplicable whims of hers? When he arrived, would he find her, as last time, all smiling and ready for him? Well, if he did, he would not take it as mildly as last time. He would let her know that he wasn't going to be treated like that. She had no right to submit him to these minutes of awful anxiety.

But when he arrived she did not meet him. He found the door unlatched, pushed it open and shut it behind him. He found her in the sitting-room, seated in an armchair. She did not turn her head when he entered and did not move when he went to her chair. Her face was grim and blotched as if she had been weeping. “What's the matter, Daphne?” he asked anxiously, kneeling down beside her.

She turned a stubborn face towards him. “Can't you guess?” she said. Her voice was hard and resentful.

“No,” he said at last. “Why should I be able to guess?”

“I'm going to have a child,” she said.

The news struck him like a physical blow. “But it's impossible,” he said.

She made an angry gesture. “What's the good of your kneeling there telling me it's impossible, when I've told you it is so?”

“You're sure?”

She turned away her face in exasperation. “What's the good of asking idiotic questions? ‘Are you sure?' Would I say it if I wasn't sure?”

He tried to take her hand, but she snatched it away. Her harshness wounded him and checked his sympathy. “You know as well as I do that it's very unlikely,” he said. “That's why I couldn't believe it. But if you're sure, well . . .!”

He went over to the window and stood looking out. He had accepted the fact, faced it and in a few moments he had made his decision. He turned to Daphne. “Listen, Daphne,” he said gently; “it'll be quite all right. We'll get married at once, as soon as ever I can get a licence.”

Yes, he had decided and he was content. He felt a strange, warm thrill at the thought of the child. And yet, buried, almost inaudible, beneath his conscious happiness, a voice in the depths of his heart cried out against the cruel trick that chance had played him, extinguishing finally his impossible hope of a life with Joan. He was deliberately tying himself for life to Daphne: his children would be hers, not Joan's. None the less, he was glad he could accept what was inevitable, and he would see to it that he

and Daphne were happy together. But Daphne had not replied. He put his hand on her shoulder. “So it's all right, isn't it?” he said. “We'll get married, won't we?”

She shook off his hand and turned on him furiously. “Marry you? Do you think I want to marry you? I'm not in love with you; never was.”

Her anger roused his, but he restrained himself. “But what can we do, Daphne, if we're ... if you're going to have a child?”

“I'm not going to have it,” she said. “Nothing would induce me to.”

He stared at her, horrified and afraid. “But how can you . . .?” He broke off. “Listen, Daphne. Even if you won't marry me, we'll manage. I'll manage everything: you shan't have any worry about it. And when the child's born, I'll take it over and provide for it, if you want to be free of it. You shall be perfectly free, if you want to be.”

She gave a hideous laugh. “Thank you! How simple! I'm to have no worry, am I not? No worry over bearing the child? You seem to have forgotten that trifling detail.”

It seemed as if she were deliberately trying to antagonise him, but he must forbear. Whatever she said, he must remind himself that she was in a terrible state of agitation. “Daphne,” he said, “do please try to help me to help you. Say what you'd like me to do.”

“Find out how I'm to get rid of it,” she said brutally.

He stared, frozen to the heart. “Get rid of it? Do you mean you want me to find out about some beastly quack doctor? O,Daphne, we can't do that.”

“There you are!” she said with fierce scorn. “You land me in this and then you leave me to get myself out of it.”

The blood rushed to his face. For a moment he was stung to retaliation. “
I
land you in it? How did I land you in it more than you landed yourself?”

Her blue eyes glared with hatred. “If you hadn't gone on bothering and bothering me . . .”

“That's a lie, Daphne,” he broke out, “and you know it is. When you pretended you wanted me to stop being in love with you, I took you at your word and determined to cure myself; and when I wrote and told you so, what did you do? You wrote and cursed me for a turncoat.”

He paused, breathless, and in the pause recollected himself. “I'm sorry,” he said quietly. “But if you go on at me like that, you drive me to defend myself. Let's keep a check on ... on our nerves and talk it over quietly.”

“A lot of good talking will do,” she said wearily. “But, unless we talk, we shall get nothing done. Now listen! We've always got on very well up till now, haven't we?” He waited, but she made no reply. “Well, why shouldn't we have a very happy life together?”