Venus Over Lannery (18 page)

“Because I wish you could analyse me out of Daphne's system.”

“And her out of yours?”

“No, I can deal with that myself.” He stared at the pale-yellow gloves that lay on his lap, his thick black eyebrows drawn into a frown. “It's extraordinary, you know, that mind and body should be so completely divided. If Daphne and I—you're a doctor, so I can say these things to you—if Daphne and I were a couple of animals, we would be perfectly happy. In that way we're completely in love with each other. But in every other way we're disastrously incompatible. And yet, even when I
make every conceivable allowance for Daphne, I can't believe it's my fault. You see, she doesn't trust me. She's full of the most fantastic suspicions, and when I try to allay them she tells me I'm a liar. She's made up her mind that I'm a sort of romantic Don Juan, so that each time I try to prove to her that I'm not, it's only another proof of my monstrous craftiness. So what can I do? It's a vicious circle from which there's no escape. Romantic! Good God, as if I didn't get more than enough of that every blessed night on the stage. What's the meaning of it, Edna?”

“It looks as if she was the romantic one.”

“Daphne? Romantic about me?”

“Romantic about herself,” said Edna. “But that's as far as I can get, Roy. If you ask me what she wants, I can't tell you, and I'm sure she couldn't.”

“She wants to shut me up in the meat-safe, that's what she wants,” he said indignantly, “to keep me under lock and key for her own uses.” He sighed wearily. “The thing's a mystery to me. What is it that drives her to make a hell of our life together? Is she mad or possessed of a devil?”

“O, we're most of us possessed of devils, if it comes to that,” said Edna. “I'm more and more amazed, in my job, at the number of people who, in spite of iron constitutions, are determined to be ill.”

“Well, whatever my devil is,” said Roy, “it's different from Daphne's, and I see no reason why I should go and live in her hell, especially when it wouldn't do her any good if I did. If I keep out of
her way, perhaps she'll get me out of her system in the end.”

Edna considered. “She won't do that,” she said at last. “If she's determined to have her hell, she'll simply make herself a little magic image of you to keep it going.”

“Well, I'd rather it was the image than me; and, anyhow, it'll keep her occupied.”

“Yes,” said Edna thoughtfully, “terribly occupied. It makes it all the more necessary that you should keep out of her way. Fortunately,” she added, remembering Daphne and Eric at Lannery a few weeks ago, “she's occupied with other things as well.”

“Thank God for that!” said Roy, without showing the smallest curiosity ... .

Sitting over a cup of tea the same afternoon, waiting for Roger to come home, Edna reflected on her talk with Roy. In his account of Daphne's attitude to him it had struck her that he was describing, though in different terms and an aggravated form, Roger's attitude to herself. Daphne, in Roy's grim phrase, had wanted to lock him in the meatsafe. Roger wanted to enslave her intelligence. But at least he did not imagine things against her and then hate her for his imaginations. He dealt with facts: his fault was to attach a false significance to them. She really did prefer Chopin to Beethoven, but he failed to see that it didn't matter. Or weren't Chopin and Beethoven and all their other points of disagreement mere symbols of his wish to domineer
over her? And now, or at least until Mrs. Dryden had made those sharply revealing remarks down at Lannery, she was determined to domineer over Roger. She had given herself away, as far as that was concerned, when she admitted that she had refused to go for a walk with him, although she really felt quite inclined to go. And Mrs. Dryden, of course—wise, penetrating old thing that she was—had spotted it at once. “Beware of acting on principle, Edna!” She blushed to herself now as she recalled that unpleasant little incident. It had been disgraceful of her to make their struggle a public matter. But, after all, it was Roger who had forced her to do that; he had tried to use the presence of Mrs. Dryden and Joan to compel her to give in; he had tried to exploit her sense of decent behaviour. But what would have been the right way out of the difficulty? Mrs. Dryden hadn't told her that. She had given her some very enlightening hints, but she hadn't given her a definite solution, and she herself, unfortunately, hadn't thought of asking her for one. The old lady had been extraordinarily nice: she was one of those rare people who can say exactly what they think without causing the least offence. After her searching remarks about Roger and herself, she had been delightfully frank about her own difficulties with her husband. And yet that story had not been of much help: their two cases were so different. Mr. Dryden had obviously not been of the domineering sort; and so, when Mrs. Dryden had ceased to resist and had thrown her grievances overboard, the

difficulty had been solved. But if she herself were to cease to resist Roger they would simply be back again at where they had started: he would take complete control of her again. And yet she didn't want to dominate Roger for the mere sake of domination. She didn't in the least want to turn him into another Edna: Mrs. Dryden had been wrong if she really thought that. All she wanted was to stop his attempts to dominate her. How was it to be done? Opposition on principle would not only make him more stubborn still, it would spoil their whole life. She saw that now. She loved Roger and was quite ready to give in to him as far as she honestly could. Mrs. Dryden had quoted St. Paul: “Love suffereth long, and is kind.” She too believed that, but she didn't believe that love required that one should falsify one's own nature. She couldn't consent—to take again their ridiculous symbolical bone of contention—to pretend that she liked Beethoven better than Chopin. That would simply be dishonesty. Love couldn't stoop to that, and love, real love, couldn't demand it. She didn't in the least want Roger to like Chopin better than Beethoven, so there, anyhow, Roger, not she, was in the wrong. She glanced at her watch and, as she did so, she heard his latchkey in the lock, and next moment he came in, alert, smiling, glad to be home. She was filled with self-reproach. She felt as if she had been speaking ill of him behind his back.

On a Saturday afternoon, after a miserable fortnight during which he had visited Daphne every other day and found her always inexorably hostile, Eric called again at the flat. The door was opened by Juliet and, as it opened, a cheerful laugh came from the sitting-room—Daphne's laugh, and then her voice: “My good Bill, you simply don't know what you're talking about.”

His heart leapt. Surely everything must be all right again. Juliet's friendly face had broken into a smile at the sight of him. “O, it's you, Eric. Do come in. Bill's here.”

He hesitated. “I just called to ask how Daphne was, and whether there was any news.”

Juliet, of course, had been in the secret from the first. “No, Eric,” she said; “I'm afraid there isn't.”

His face fell. “Then I don't think I'll stay. You'll tell her, won't you, that I called?” He turned to go. “She sounds pretty cheerful,” he said bitterly.

“O, she's cheerful enough most of the time,” said Juliet. “You'd much better come in.”

He hesitated and then reluctantly consented. Perhaps, after all, she might feel more kindly towards him to-day; and even if she didn't, his going away without seeing her might give her the impression that he was co-operating in their estrangement. She would certainly seize on any excuse for a grievance against him.

As he went into the sitting-room Bill hailed him. “Thank God, it's Eric! Here, Eric! You know how to manage Daphne, don't you?”

Eric did his best to appear cheerful. “Well,” he said, “I'm not sure that I can guarantee . . .” He turned to Daphne.

But Daphne was not going to help him. She met his eyes with a stony gaze, a gaze which warned him at once that she was not going to countenance even a pretence of friendship between them. He glanced anxiously at the others, fearing that they had noticed, but they were talking together with their backs to him and Daphne. They could have seen nothing. But what a fool he had been to come in! He might have known that it would do no good. His instinct had told him, at the first sound of Daphne's laugh, that he was overhearing something from which he was excluded. He stood there embarrassed, forlorn and deeply wounded. He dared not look at her again: there was no one for him to talk to, nothing for him to do. Unable to endure the situation any longer, he went to the door.

Bill saw him. “Hi there, Eric! You're not going?”

“I must,” said Eric. “I only looked in for a moment”; and before they could stop him he went out.

As he let himself out of the front door he heard Daphne's voice again: “There's no good talking to me, Bill. I
know
”; and then her laugh, gay, irresponsible as in the days when they had laughed so often together.

As he stood waiting for his bus he changed his mind and decided to walk. A walk would shake him up and do him good. Thoughts were less painful when you were engaged in the business of walking, and he set off, taking short cuts down by-streets and through little squalid squares that he had never seen before. So she was cheerful most of the time, was she? Obviously, then, the terrible change in her, the invariable dejection and moroseness, was reserved for him alone. Was it because the sight of him so inevitably reminded her of her anxiety, that she couldn't help treating him as she did, or was she deliberately trying to make his burden as heavy as possible? Who could tell? It was impossible to believe that, behind the gay, affectionate, sweettempered girl who had made life so enchanting for him, there had existed all the time this grim, cruel, inexplicable creature, impervious to any appeal of reason or affection, whose one desire seemed to be to wound him. The change was worse than death. For not only had the old Daphne died, but the memory of their love and all the happiness they had shared was being poisoned by the new Daphne.

Even if she were to change back again into the old Daphne, it would restore nothing now. The horrible secret was out: he would know that the Daphne he loved was only one half of the real Daphne. Then, quite suddenly, through the weary tangle of his thoughts a sharp, amazing fact emerged, the fact that his love was dead, that he hated her. The discovery was a relief to him: nothing that she said or did could wound him any more. If he could have followed his natural impulse he would have gone away there and then, run from her as from something sinister and dangerous. But how could he leave her in her present predicament? He must at least see her through that, whatever his feelings towards her might be.

His friend the doctor, as he had expected, declined to help Daphne and strongly advised him to have nothing to do with any such attempt. But when Eric had explained her state of mind and her mention of killing herself he had reluctantly given him an address.

“You know him?” asked Eric.

“No, but I know about him.”

“Is he ... is he safe?”

“Safe? He's a qualified practitioner, it that's what you mean. Don't mention my name, of course; not even—if you don't mind—to your young woman.”

He went to tell Daphne the same evening. She received him as before, but his announcement produced its effect. “That's very good of you, Eric,”
she said, and there was a faint gleam of kindness in her eyes.

“What do we do now?” he asked. “Would you like me to go and see the fellow?”

“No,” she said, “not yet. I'll let you know. But you've shown me that you're not going to shirk your responsibilities.”

“Well, thank God for that!” he thought sardonically. “You didn't think,” he asked her, “that I showed that at first?”

Her glimmer of friendliness faded at once. “When, for instance?”

“At the very beginning, when I asked you to marry me, or, failing that, to let me . . .?”

She turned away impatiently. “O, that! That was out of the question.”

“Well,” he said, turning to the door, “you'll let me know, won't you—better ring me up—when you want me to . . .?”

“Yes, I will. But wait a minute. You must have a drink before you go, a glass of sherry. We've got some sherry: Bill brought a bottle the other night.”

“No, thanks!” he said. “I don't see why I should . . .”

“O, but you must,” she said, opening the diningroom door. “You deserve something after coming all this way. Besides”—she gave a little nervous laugh—“I'm afraid, as a matter of fact, when Bill was here we had one of your bottles of burgundy.”

“Why not, Daphne?” he said. “They're yours, to have when you like.”

She poured out two glasses of sherry. “You were always a generous creature, Eric: I'll say that for you.”

He took the glass she handed him. “Thank you,” he said, “for the unsolicited testimonial.”

She bowed. “Of which, please, make whatever use you wish.” Her voice, as she said it, had something of the old gaiety.

He finished his glass at a single gulp and put it down on the sideboard. That brief parody of their old merriment, so far from cheering him, had touched him on the raw. “I must go,” he said.

“Just one more glass,” said Daphne.

“No, thanks! You'll write or ring up, won't you?”

He had dreaded the visit to his doctor friend and this visit to Daphne, and the relief at having them both behind him gave him a feeling—illusory, as he well knew—that things were going better, that something had been accomplished. For nothing, of course, had actually been accomplished. The gnawing anxiety had not been diminished; on the contrary, it would increase every day, and he lived in dread of the moment when she would ring up and ask him to get in touch with the other doctor. Every time his telephone rang the sound went through him like a bullet. There was no good going to see Daphne again until he heard from her, and the days dragged on and no letter came from her and no telephone message, till he had acquired a sort of protective
apathy, living from day to day in the immunity of the moment, like a man walking on thin ice, aware of the depths under his feet, but feeling himself none the less supported.