Kept Page 6

  “Her husband?” he asked. “Are they divorced or what?”

  “Her husband, Eric, was killed at Neuve Chapelle. Mrs Fairfield is a widow.”

  ‘“Um. But that’s nine years ago. What’s she been doing since?”

  “I don’t know; not exactly, at least. War work for three years. Then some sort of job in an insurance agency which she got bored with, and, since then—well, as far as I know, she’s not done anything.”

  “How does she live then?”

  Ransom shrugged his shoulders.

  “How do any of us live? There’s her pension, of course, and her parents are dead. Something came to her, I suppose, from them. And in a good many ways life’s cheaper for a woman than a man. They don’t spend money. Money’s spent on them. Another bronx?”

  Somerset shook his head. The one thing he must hear, the thing he had come to learn, the thing to which anything else that he might have learnt was a corollary, that one thing he had not dared to ask, and Ransom realised this as he watched him with a sideways penetrating glance.

  “Well,” he said. “What is it, Eric?”

  A hot wave of colour passed over Eric’s face as he answered.

  “It’s—I mean—well, what sort of a woman is Mrs Fairfield? Is she, I mean—you know what I mean—is she a decent woman?”

  So that was it. As indeed he had half suspected it to be. Was she fair game or not. That’s what it amounted to. He did not hesitate about his answer.

  “I know Mrs Fairfield pretty well,” he said, “and I think that she’s about the straightest and the most essentially decent woman I’ve ever known.”

  As he spoke Ransom watched Somerset’s face closely. Was it the answer he had feared or hoped for? To a man of his own age, a man in the early thirties, it would have been, given the conditions as they were, more often than not a disappointment. To a very young man, or to an old man, it would have been quite possibly a relief. Eric was twenty-three, little more than a boy in years, but the War had been a quick ripener. Those old arbitrary conceptions of time held good no longer. Who was to say what Somerset was thinking? Was he glad or sorry. Ransom looked curiously at him, but he could not read the answer. And indeed Eric was not himself quite certain whether he was glad or sorry. It was with mixed feelings, uncertain for what answer he was hoping, that he walked that morning to the Trocadero. Two sides of his nature were at war.

  For, although he had spent two complete years in the unsettling conditions of army life, he had had no experiences with women. And he had reached an age when his inexperience had begun to fret him. It was absurd, he told himself, that most of his contemporaries and a great many of his juniors should know what he did not know. Sooner or later he would have, he knew, to take the plunge. And it seemed absurd to delay what was inevitable. Masculine innocence, if it is not lost, as it usually is lost, casually at an early period of adolescence, can become, however, as actual to a man as virginity to a woman. It becomes a part of him, to be dislodged only by a genuine impulse. And for Eric Somerset that genuine impulse had not come. At Oxford he had lived in an exclusively masculine society, his vacs he had devoted for the most part to cricket and football tours and reading parties. He had no sisters, and so saw few girls at home. He worked very hard during the day in chambers, and he read at home for a couple of hours after dinner. Such spare time as he had was spent, not in lawn tennis which he despised, and dancing which on the whole bored him, but in football and bridge and cricket. He had had, that is to say, very few opportunities of meeting girls. And Marjorie Fairfield was the first woman who had ever seriously attracted him. “Who and what was she?” he had asked himself as he had climbed early that morning the steps of his home in the western reaches of the Cromwell Road. She wore a wedding ring, she called herself Mrs Fairfield, but there had not been made during the whole evening a single reference to her husband. And while one part of him was saying, “What does it matter who and what she is. She is the most divine, the most beautiful, the most adorable creature you have ever met, and you are head over heels in love with her “; while one part of him was saying that, another side was whispering, “Steady, my lad, steady; don’t fling away your wicket trying to hit sixes in the first over. For all you know this may be the sort of affair that you’ve been looking for—now don’t be a hypocrite and pretend you haven’t—ever since you came down from Oxford. She’s older than you, she’s married, or pretends to be. You meet her in a crowd of men, several of whom she addresses by their Christian names; she has no chaperone. You saw her driven back to the sort of flat where questions are not likely to be asked. You do not know anything about her; she may be one of those grass widows of whom you have read a good deal in the papers, who don’t worry about anything but enjoyment or what they consider a good time. You might quite possibly attract her; you may be something new to her. And that sort of woman would do anything and go anywhere for a new sensation. It may be the very sort of show you’ve been praying you might fall into. Go right ahead and good luck to you I say.” And all the time the other half was saying: “Yes, I dare say, I dare say. But she’s not that. And I don’t want her to be that. I want her to be someone I can love, someone that’s worth loving.” “And so you consider,” the answer came, “that love can exist only within the bonds of marriage. A fine Victorian sentiment. But a little demodé, shall we say, at present. Really, I don’t know why you should be so indignant because I’m suggesting to you that you may be able to get what admittedly you do want to get without the trouble and expense of marriage. Or perhaps you’re going to tell me you’re a platonist.” But the first half in the face of argument had continued obstinately to repeat, “You don’t understand, you don’t understand. I don’t want her to be like that. I want to love her. I want her to be worth the loving.”

  He walked back slowly from the Trocadero. He had only an hour’s interval for lunch. But he did not feel hungry. He would tell his clerk to bring him his tea earlier, at half-past three instead of four. He could not at such a moment face the noise and geniality of the small inn in Devereux Court where he lunched on most mornings at the bar off two sandwiches and a pint of bitter. He could not discuss the county championship with the landlord, or listen to the exchange of amorous inanities between the yellow-haired barmaid and that decaying newspaper reporter who every day from twelve to three sat writing up his page of jokes for the next day’s issue. Every day of his life for the last fifteen years he had written between twenty-five and thirty jokes, and always in that particular bar-room, and always to whichever of the barmaids happened to be the prettier, he would say every quarter of an hour or so < “Now what do you think of this. ‘A farmer in Gloucestershire reports. . . .‘”

  “There’s only one way to write jokes,” he would say, “and that’s to remember what people were calling chestnuts twenty years ago. They’ll be just getting fresh again now. A joke’s funny for six months, amusing for a year, for six years it’s grouse in the gun-room. You drop the thing and let it sleep. And in about twenty years, when everyone’s forgotten all about it, and there’s a new generation in the world, you dig it out again and tell people that it’s new. People’ll be laughing like fun over this joke of mine in 1950.” No, he couldn’t bear it. He must be alone a little, alone with these new, disturbing thoughts.

  It was a grey day, one of those dull afternoons on which even the green leaves in Temple Gardens seemed to have withdrawn into a dark captivity.

  He hesitated at the entrance to the Gardens. There was a seat within a few yards of him, a seat facing the Embankment and the unceasing flow along its shining surface of the tall, swaying, two-roofed cars. You could think better when you were sitting down, and he had need of thinking. Was he glad or sorry? That was the question that he must decide—was he glad or sorry? In the light of this new knowledge he must try to recompose his picture of her. Something at least he knew of her. Nine and a half years ago she had been married, for nine years she had been a widow. For nine years she had lived
on memories. There had been the three years during the War of cheerless, uninspiring work, the washing of plates, the scrubbing of floors; those long hours when her head and back and elbows must have ached. Then peace, and the closing of the hospitals, and the attempt to get back to the conditions of pre-war life. But she had been wearied by the long succession of office hours, and now that there was no need to work, now that there was no one for her to work for, she had felt naturally that there was no reason why she should go on working. And so she had drifted into the life of dance clubs and theatres and luncheon parties, the continual passing from one form of entertainment to another, had drifted into it because—well, with her husband dead and the War over, and nothing in particular to look forward to or to live for, it had not mattered to her very much what she did; that was how he saw her then, as a woman who had come to regard her life as finished, who had known happiness and had lost it, and now expected little and asked possibly for less. That was how he saw her, and perhaps as he sat there on a seat in Temple Gardens, looking with unseeing eyes to the row of wharves beyond the river, ignorant of her as she was, ignorant and misinformed, and lacking the experience that would make complete for him an understanding of her, he came nearer through his love of her to an understanding of her than he was ever afterwards to come. “She’s been very unhappy,” he told himself, “and she’s got past her unhappiness now, but she’s found nothing new to care for. She’s got her youth, though, and her beauty, and there’s all the best of life in front of her. It’s for me to prove to her that she has. I’ll make her see that life is worth something for her. I can do it for her; yes, I know I can; I can do it, because I love her. One can do anything if one loves enough. Anything, anything.”

  His eyes were bright as he walked through the Strand towards his chambers. “I’m glad,” he said, “I know I’m glad. I can’t think why I’ve allowed myself to doubt that I could be anything but glad. I don’t believe I could love anyone that I should not be proud of loving.”

  There was a large pile of papers waiting him on his desk. “A brief just come through from Jones & Gimerall,” his clerk informed him. “The Amalgamated Western Motor Company. One of their lorries has run into a greengrocer’s cart in Stepney. Case coming on on Thursday.”

  Eric nodded. At any ordinary moment he would have been wildly excited by the announcement of a brief. He did not receive too many. But something of greater import had to hi decided first. In the confusion of the raid Mrs Fairfield had let fall her handkerchief, and Eric, seeing she had not noticed the loss of it, had retained it in his hand. Was it to stay, where it lay now, in his breastpocket, so that always he would retain something that was a part of her, something that had rested in her hand, that had touched the soft skin of her neck and face, something to which still lingered faintly the scent of Quelques Fleurs; should he keep it or should he allow it to give him an opportunity of writing to her, of recalling himself to her, of making her think, if only for a few moments, of him, of making her wonder who he was, what he looked like, what he had said to her, how he had danced. An effort of recollection that would fix him permanently in her memory; so that he would exist for her, as otherwise he would not have existed; so that he would emerge from the cohort of nondescript young men with whom she had danced at this place or at that, and on that day or the other day, had danced with and forgotten. He would have a name and an identity. He would be Eric Somerset, the boy she had met at the Wolves, who had returned her handkerchief. Should he return it or should he keep it? If he kept it, one day he would be able to say to her, “That first time we met, the evening at the Wolves, do you know that you dropped your handkerchief, a little cambric thing with a red and black striped border, and that I picked it up and did not return it to you, and that ever since I have carried it with me in my pocket-book. From the very first, you see, I loved you.” Suppose though he were never to have an opportunity of saying that. How was he going, after all, to meet her? He would feel shy of asking Heritage to arrange a party. He always did feel a little shy of Heritage; he was so much younger. And how else could he hope to meet her? They did not probably have a great number of friends in common. And, anyhow, he would not know which of his friends they were. He could not go round asking everyone he met if they knew Mrs Fairfield. He went out himself so little. Only about one dance and two or three formalish sort of dinner parties in a season. The betting was enormous against the chance of his ever meeting her. And he could not spend his whole time going to the sort of dance club and restaurant she would be likely to frequent. It would be absurd to let slip this one chance of introduction.

  He toyed momentarily with the idea of returning the handkerchief in person; but only momentarily. It was more than probable that he would find her out and, if he left a message with a maid, it was almost certain that the message would, if given at all, be given incorrectly. “A young gentleman brought round this handkerchief, Mrs Fairfield. A Mr Hummerston, I think he said. I haven’t seen him before, ma’am.” And how out of her vast suite of acquaintances would she be able to connect with a Mr Hummerston the boy she had danced with two nights ago. She would pause. “Mr Hummerston,” she would say. Then shake her head. “I can’t remember,” she would say, and think no more about it. No, if he was to return it, and on that point he was decided now, it had better be returned by letter.

  The phrasing of the letter, though, would require care. Did he know her well enough to begin “My dear Mrs Fairfield “? No, hardly; no. And it might make her think he was American.

  “Dear Mrs Fairfield.”

  What then. “I found on the floor of the car last night, after we had seen you home, this handkerchief, which must, I feel, be yours.”

  That was all right so far, but it wasn’t very far; only two lines of it, and, with his small handwriting, two lines that looked singularly lost in the middle of a large square sheet of paper. “I must add something to it,” he thought, “and something personal,” he added. But what? He so seldom wrote letters; that was the worst of the telephone. One got out of the habit of expressing one’s self in words. What should he say? That it had been very nice meeting her the other night, and he hoped they would meet again one day. He could hardly say more than that. He could hardly suggest a meeting. He could only say that it had been nice, and leave it to her, if she wanted, to answer his letter and, perhaps one afternoon, ask him to have tea with her.

  “It was so nice,” he wrote, “seeing you the other day, and I hope one day soon that we shall meet again.”

  He hesitated for a while over the signature. Was it to be Yours sincerely, or Sincerely yours? Perhaps the inversion was more intimate. You were taught at school to write “Yours sincerely,” and later on, because you felt it somehow to be inadequate, you put the sincerely first. So he wrote “Sincerely yours,” slipped the handkerchief inside the envelope, and ran downstairs. He could not trust a clerk to post it. He paused for a moment before the letter-box; another minute and it would be out of his control, another minute and he would have taken the first step in an enterprise that might lead to, God knew, what ending. And suddenly, surprisingly, some cautionary instinct began to speak to him. “Be careful,” it said. “Think twice. You don’t know where this show will end, or what it will lead you to. You’re quite happy as you are. You’ve got your work and your friends and a comfortable home. You don’t want to marry yet. It’s too early. You want to be established first. You know that; you must know that. You’ll need ten years of solid work to put yourself on the road to becoming what you want to be. Why complicate your life? There’ll be time enough later on, all the time there is.

  In ten years you’ll be only thirty-three. Think again; please, please, think again.”

  Doubting, he turned the letter over in his hand: hesitating, he tapped the hard edge of it against his teeth, and as he tapped, through the thin paper of the envelope came faintly at first, then more strongly, the scent of Quelques Fleurs. That scent, that dizzying, that intoxicating fragrance, how it
permeated everything it touched, as her personality permeated everything it touched. Who was to resist it? With a hurried flick of the wrist he tossed the envelope into the red mouth of the pillar-box.

  Eric’s parents lived in a circumstance of apparent, but only apparent prosperity. Their house in the Cromwell Road was one of the very few in that neighbourhood that had been neither cut up into flats nor converted into a nursing home, a private hotel, or a refuge for some patriarchal settlement of several families and generations. The establishment consisted of two maids, a cook, and the cook’s husband. Four people, that is to say, ministered to the comfort and the needs of three. The cellar was within its limits excellent. Eric’s father never bought wine that he did not like himself. And his prejudices included champagne, all liqueurs other than yellow and green Chartreuse, and port. The madeira and sherry were, however, admirable. And in ten years’ time the claret would be as good as the Burgundy was now. You would if you dined there once carry away with you the impression that the Vernon Somersets were either relatively wealthy or very heavily in debt. They were, however, neither. They had no debts. They had no capital. They spent what they earned. Vernon Somerset was perhaps the most prominent authority on Divorce in England. He was also an extremely able lawyer. But he was a free lance. He had not slipped into a firm; his connection, as few people allow themselves twice the luxury of a divorce, was of a fleeting nature and would die with him.

  “I have,” he had once said to Eric, “practically nothing, my son, to leave you. My life is insured, but not very heavily, and your mother, should I die before her, will probably prefer to live on the capital of it rather than the interest. I have, however, given you a good education, and I have implanted in you a number of excellent but expensive tastes. If you are to satisfy those tastes you will have to work extremely hard. You will, I hope, consider that they are worth it.”

  “I don’t know whether they are worth it,” Eric had answered, “but work is, I know that all right. I’m not going to be a failure.”