Return I Dare Not Page 3

  “Oh Gibbie, you know that night, that night of Stella’s dance? I want to tell you that Hugo drove me home and we thought it would be fun to go down to Kew, and we got there just at sunrise and climbed in from the towing-path just opposite Zion House. Yes, I know, I’ve told you that part of it. But ever since that morning I’ve thought of nothing but Hugo. He is a little in love with me. Oh yes, I know all about Caro Chappell but I’m not worrying about her. And I don’t think he was. I had on my white chiffon, and I felt I was en beauté: I don’t believe anybody could have helped being in love with me. Of course it was partly that the gardens were quite empty and the may was out and it all looked very romantic. No, he didn’t make love to me, more than he always does to everybody. But he was so delightful that I can’t help thinking about him all the time. I’ve never enjoyed myself so much in the whole of my life. It makes me happy now to think of it. And I don’t propose to stop thinking of it. But nothing happened. And I daresay nothing ever will. But if anything ever should … I felt I ought to tell you.”

  It was impossible. And yet perfect frankness had been Philomena’s creed for years. It was the bedrock of a happy marriage, and her marriage with Gibbie had been happy in spite of the days when he dropped his Baedeker into the Tiber. Nothing must happen that would involve her in disloyalty to Gibbie. Their married harmony must be preserved, but there ought to be room inside it for this lovely thing, this renewal of youth. There must be room in it. Other people managed to eat their cake and have it. If one had courage, if one was frank, there need be no disloyalty. She could think of half a dozen instances among her romantic friends.

  Now they had got past Brookwood Cemetery and were back among the gardens of a suburb where laundry fluttered in the sun among the aerial posts, and stout men in their shirt sleeves mowed small lawns. She remembered that she must change her own laundry. Gibbie’s shirts were a perfect disgrace and there was iron-mould on the sheets every other week. She would write for the pricelist of that Hounslow place as soon as she got home on Monday. There was a whole lot of things to remember on Monday. A dentist’s appointment must be made for Chloe’s teeth. It ought surely to be possible to straighten them without subjecting the poor child to those hideous wires. And Susan had begun to tread over her shoes very badly: probably she had weak ankles and these must be remedied. It was all the result of not having very much money. Not that Gibbie was really poor, but he was not as rich as most of the people they knew. Rich people never have anything to attend to but their better feelings. Their children’s teeth are straight and they have their pick of parlour-maids. Philomena was still looking for a parlour-maid, because Ada’s month would be up on Tuesday week. She must go to Mrs. Duckett’s Registry again on Monday. She must make a list of all the things to be done on Monday … laundry … teeth … shoes … Ada … it was damnably unfair! For nearly half her life she had been smothered under teeth and laundries, when really she was not that sort of person at all. She had married too young. She had never lived her life. They (some hidden influences, not specified) ought not to have allowed her to marry so young.

  “Not that I blame Gibbie. I love him. Poor, darling Gibbie! He couldn’t get on without me and I’ll never … and the children … oh no, I haven’t forgotten them … of course he comes first, and the children. That’s solid. That’s lasting. Because I shall be old some day and then … those awful old women with no ties … I could never … but I have got an immortal soul after all, and it’s smothered … yes smothered under laundry baskets.”

  Gibbie must be made to understand. Surely, when he loved her so much, he would give her room to live. All that wonderful power was still in her body—the power to charm, to soothe, to ravish, to console. She had far more to give than Gibbie or the children would ever need. It was not fair. She had married too soon. Somebody was to blame. Not Gibbie; not her parents (though Mother might have told me); not the children (they can’t help having teeth and feet, poor angels); not even Ada. But all of them together.

  She realised that she had been making furious grimaces and that Adrian Upward, who sat opposite, was looking at her over the top of his paper in surprise.

  “I was rehearsing things to say to the laundry,” she explained hastily.

  Sir Adrian tried to look as though he did not know what a laundry did or why one should say things to it. He had mixed so much with dukes that he had caught a little of the ducal vagueness about the baser details of life. He could not telephone from a public call-box without making a muddle, and he frequently lost his way on the Underground, which was a triumph of mind over matter as anyone who knew his home life could testify. Philomena, remembering the smell of cabbage in the Upward hall, asked after his sister Betsy, who had kept house for him since the death of his wife. Adrian replied briefly that Betsy was well. And the children? They were well too, so far as he knew all six of them were, as usual, in the enjoyment of rude health.

  Only by dissociating himself from Betsy and the children could Sir Adrian Upward hope to hold his own at Syranwood. For he was quite horribly and squalidly poor, and as a family man he would have been impossible. But very poor bachelors, if they can sing for their supper, have a certain appeal for the benevolent rich. So that Adrian was obliged to ignore the callow brood which he had so rashly begotten, and to suppress their obliging aunt.

  Very few people had even seen Miss Betsy Upward. She was said to have a mop of short grey hair, red hands and pince-nez. But Philomena was obliged to see her occasionally because Gibbie, who was Adrian’s publisher, insisted upon asking her to dinner. In many ways Gibbie was tiresomely kind-hearted. Three times a year did Betsy, in a ready-made lace tunic from the Kensington High Street, come ambling shyly in behind Adrian. She always short-circuited conversation at her end of the table and it was difficult to know who to put next to her. Nor was there any necessity for it at all. She wasn’t even the man’s wife, merely a poor relation who happened to keep house for him. But Gibbie thought that she was badly treated and now the mere mention of her name set the wheels of his benevolence spinning. He began asking Adrian to drop in with her one evening, though it was barely six weeks since the last time. Philomena did not support him as she should and knew that her languid warmth was obvious. But later on, if he should reproach her, she would make a stand.

  He was always wishing these dreary women on to her. Women with whom she had nothing in common. All his friends seemed to have made a point of marrying dull wives. But where wives were concerned she had nobly done her duty. She had sat with them in polite boredom for long hours by the drawing-room fire so that he could get his cronies to himself over the port. In no way had she ever cut him off from anyone whose companionship he valued. But as regards Betsy …

  The train came to an extraordinary jerking stop in the middle of a green field.

  An idea that something was wrong occurred to all of them simultaneously. It was so much more sudden than the usual slow-down and pause. Corny disappeared into the corridor. In a surprised silence they could hear the voices of the people in the next compartment. Adrian poked his head out of the window and saw a trainful of heads, all poked out, as a whisper of the dramatic spread.

  “It’s a special for the Prince of Wales,” he reported.

  A contrary rumour travelled from the other end of the train a moment later. The engine driver had fallen down dead of heart disease.

  “I wonder if we’ll be long,” speculated Philomena. “Wouldn’t it be nice to get out for a bit and pick those wild roses?”

  Gibbie at once protested. She had meant him to. Supposing the train went on? Well, of course, she had not really wanted to get out. He might have known that. But she wanted someone with whom to share the impulse. She wanted him to say:

  “Adorable creature! Yes, let’s!”

  There were people who might have liked being left behind with her in a green field. There were women who missed trains as they chose, who were above rules and time-tables and Gibbie was quite capable of find
ing them most attractive. But because she was his wife she might have no whims or caprices. She was just there to see that his children’s teeth grew straight.

  “I didn’t really want to,” she said coldly.

  “And how could I know that?”

  Adrian, at the window, reported that there was a bomb on the line.

  “No, but what is it really?” demanded Gibbie.

  “When Corny comes back he’ll tell us. I expect he’s gone to find out.”

  Corny had gone to find out, guided by that instinct which had caused him to be in at a record number of deaths. He went straight down the train to Aggie’s compartment. For it was clear to him that somebody had pulled the alarm cord and nobody else on the train was so likely to have done it. He arrived almost as soon as the guard, in time to hear Discobolos exclaim:

  “I tell you I never touched it. She pulled it herself. And I suppose she’ll tell you that I assaulted her. But if ever a woman asked for it …”

  Aggie sat, infinitely withdrawn and nunlike, in her corner. She lifted her eyes slowly and looked at the guard who was asking if she really had pulled the cord.

  “No,” she said.

  “Well,” began Discobolos …

  “Now then!” said the guard sternly, “You be quiet until you’re spoken to. Did he offer to insult your ladyship?”

  “No. Oh no,” said Aggie.

  Discobolos, who thought the guard was being funny, began to recover countenance. He suggested that perhaps the little lady hadn’t known what she was doing, but as one man to another … and he produced a case of Treasury notes.

  Aggie spoke again, even more faintly. She thought the man might be drunk and perhaps they would put him into another carriage.

  “Now then! Now then!” expostulated the guard. “You can’t use language like that, sir. Not here. You come along with me and I’ll trouble you for your name and address.”

  “You take a tart’s word against mine? It’s blackmail. That’s what it is. She pulled it herself. It’s a put-up thing. That’s what it is. I’ll get you sacked for this …”

  “Now then. You come along out of here.”

  The victim was dragged into the corridor where they heard the guard saying:

  “You know who that lady is? Well, she’s Lady Aggie Melotte. That’s who she is. And I’ll trouble you to stop using insulting language. All right, Bill. Let her go.”

  The train started with another sudden jerk, and Corny, having witnessed the final, speechless collapse of Discobolos, went in to comfort Aggie. He wanted badly to know who had really pulled the cord.

  “I’m sure I don’t know,” said Aggie. “He was a howwid man. Have you got me any tea, Corny?”

  “No, Aggie. I told you. There isn’t any.”

  “Oh, very well, then, have you got a pencil? I’ll give you a gibbet.”

  She gave him Great unaffected vampires and the moon, but he lost because his mind was wandering. In imagination he was telling this latest Aggie story to an appreciative audience. Not that he would have much opportunity for doing so, which was a pity. For Aggie stories had come to be a mark of bad taste, since so many of them were told by people who did not know her.

  “L” he said vaguely.

  “You’ve been gibbeted once for an L,” scolded Aggie. “You aren’t trying. Go and fetch Hugo. Perhaps he can be more amusing.”

  “Hugo’s asleep.”

  “Well then wake him up.”

  Corny obediently edged his way down the swaying train to take another peep into Hugo’s compartment. It was impossible to know whether its occupant was asleep or not. He still lay at full length on the seat of the carriage and his eyes were shut, but there was a taut forbidding look about his mouth and Corny would rather have put his head into a wasps’ nest than disturb him. So, after waiting for a few minutes, he edged away. Unable to face Aggie without Hugo he took refuge in a smoking carriage with a stranger, a very large, red, raw man with blue P & O labels on his battered portmanteaux. This person did not look up when Corny joined him, but after a little while a Will like a steam roller commanded the intruder to take himself off and stop polluting an All-White-Sahib’s carriage. Corny had never been so much aware of an ousting influence before, though mental behests of the sort were frequently directed at him, did he but know it. Worse still, it was an unconscious will. The stranger was absorbed in a copy of (not the Daily Mail, for Corny peeped to see) the Lancet. He was not merely glancing through it, he was mopping up information from the page in front of him with the concentrated fury of a Hoover scouring a carpet. But the nearness of Corny was displeasing and mechanically he flicked the annoyance away. His soul said:

  “Go.”

  Corny, with a faint squeak of protest, went. He took another cautious peep at Hugo and this time he met with open, hostile eyes. They stared at him without encouragement, and were tightly shut again. Even to Corny that hint was unmistakable. He went to wash his hands.

  4. The Other Life.

  Hugo hoped that he would go down the drain. All possibility of sleep had been banished by that fellow’s spying. Just when he was tipping deliciously on the edge of it something would nag at him and pull him back. His relaxing nerves wound themselves up again like an automatic spring. He lay quite still on the cushions with his eyes shut and thought:

  “Here is the amazingly successful Hugo Pott lying quite still with his eyes shut.”

  The thing was like an orchestra in a restaurant. He did not always listen to it, but it was always there. It accompanied every course in the Trimalchian banquet of his career, and in moments of solitude, like this, when he could stop to listen, the noise it made was deafening. He could hear nothing else very clearly, and his thoughts came to him in a muffled confusion.

  Very soon he would get to Basingstoke and then even this much seclusion would be impossible. Once more he began to make those old, futile plans for escape, a yacht, a trip to the desert. And forthwith the train wheels began to drum out snappy little paragraphs:

  … Lunching at the Savoy Grill yesterday I ran across Hugo Pott who told me that his next play will be completed in the Arabian Desert …

  Hugo Pott waves a cheery good-bye. Dramatist makes home in the Sahara …

  … at a farewell dinner to Mr. Hugo Pott, reading from right to left: Mrs. Chappell, Mr. Pott, Mr. ‘Corny’ Cooke …

  … Hugo Pott takes Pott-Luck in the Gobi desert. Reading from left to right: Mr. ‘Corny’ Cooke, Mr. Pott, Mrs. Chappell …

  … Hugo Pott, the dramatist, has fallen off his camel in the desert of Sinai (Reuter).

  There was no escape; no spot from darkest Africa to Baffin’s Bay where his private orchestra would not accompany him.

  The train was already slowing down. It was time to get out. He struggled to his feet and looked in the glass over his head to see if there was really a smut on his nose. His face, so much photographed, so smudged with a world publicity as to be scarcely his own any more, glowered back at him. Like all his other possessions it was an asset rather than a face. A wonderful asset. For the millionth time he wished that he had not been born so Nordic, so virile, clean and candid. Fair hair and blue eyes were an impossible handicap for anyone in his situation. He scowled and the features in the glass melted into a romantic gloom. He made a grimace of disgust and saw reflected something so charmingly wry and whimsical that he groaned aloud:

  “Oh help!”

  The train had stopped and a porter mistook this shout for a summons. He opened the door and began to throw suitcases about. A parting glimpse in the glass showed Hugo that the geniality tap had turned on of its own accord and he stepped down onto the platform with the expression of a successful but unspoilt young man arriving for a week-end at a country house. Gracefully preoccupied with his porter, he did not see his co-arrivals until he was near enough to give a start of genuine surprise and pleasure.

  “Aggie! How delicious! You’re not going to Syranwood? (I suppose it’s all right, not a gaffe, call
ing her Aggie in public? I always did that time at Cap Ferrat.) Hullo Corny! What did Paul Wrench die of, do you know? (Perhaps I said it just a shade too loud, as if I wanted everybody in Basingstoke to hear. Well, but damn it all, so I do.) Look who’s here! Gibbie and Philomena!”

  But Philomena did not immediately hear these cries. She was very busy talking to Adrian Upward, and she walked out through the barrier without seeming to realise that the others were still on the platform. For she had no notion of waiting patiently at Hugo’s elbow until he had finished fondling Aggie. Knowing that her rival was on the train she had been prepared for this moment. Aggie was bound to be the most important person on the platform at Basingstoke and it was a good gesture to leave her in possession of such a field. Philomena was not obliged to depend upon birth or notoriety; her setting was a garden at dawn and her appeal was lyrical. If she had any power to hold him it must keep its own terms against Aggie. Hugo could take it or leave it. He must know, as well as any one, that Aggie had the sort of face which, in a commoner, betokens adenoids, that she must be getting on for fifty, and that a lifetime of being spoilt had turned her into a vain, egotistical bore.

  “Hi! Philomena! Hi!”

  But she was out of the station and had got very quickly into the nearest of the Syranwood cars, so that there should be no petty manœuvring. If Hugo wanted to ride with Aggie he certainly could. Adrian Upward was a very interesting man.

  “Get in,” she urged him. “Get in quickly. I want to have a long bathe before dinner.”

  She was thinking of the artificial lake at Syranwood, among its green lawns and shady trees. Her new bathing dress, a tunic of green silk covered over with little flowers, looked like a poem. Everything that was lyrical and fresh in her, the perfect symmetry and firmness of her body, would find its background against that cool water. That was her only answer to Aggie. Let Aggie come swimming if she dared.