Complete Short Stories (VMC) (44 page)

‘Is that all?’ asked the other voice.

The dialogue faded out and she sighed, thinking: ‘I wish I hadn’t come. I feel so much worse here than I do at home.’

Coming round the lake’s edge towards her was the atrocious little Mr Brundle. She pretended not to have seen him and got to her feet and went off in the other direction.

By the afternoon post came a letter from Ursula, saying how dull she was and that Melanie had been so right about it all – and that comforted her a little.

Ursula was polishing a glass on a cloth printed with a chart of vintage years for champagne. Although she was drunk, she wondered at the usefulness of this as a reference. It would be strange to go home again to a black telephone, white sheets and drying-up cloths on which there was nothing at
all to read, not a recipe for a cocktail or a cheerful slogan.

On the draining-board two white tablets fizzed, as they rose and fell in a glass of water. The noise seemed very loud to her and she was glad when the tablets dissolved and there was silence.

‘There you are,’ Guy said, handing the glass to her. The water still spat and sparkled and she drank it slowly, gasping between sips.

‘Pamela will wonder where I am,’ she said. She put the glass on the draining-board and sat down with a bump on one of the kitchen chairs. She had insisted on washing the two glasses before she went home, and had devoted herself to doing so with single-mindedness; but Guy had been right, and she gave in. Everything she had to do had become difficult – going home, climbing the stairs, undressing. ‘I shall just have to sit on this chair and let time pass,’ she decided. ‘It will pass,’ she promised herself, ‘and it mends all in the end.’

‘Where did we go after that Club?’ she suddenly asked frowning.

‘Nowhere,’ said Guy. ‘On our way back to Pamela’s we stopped here for a drink. That’s all.’

‘Ah, yes!’

She remembered the outside of this bungalow and a wooden gate with the name ‘Hereiam’. It had been quite dark when they walked up the stony path to the front door. Now, it seemed the middle of the night. ‘I think you gave me too much whisky,’ she said, with a faint, reproachful smile.

‘As a matter of fact, I gave you none. It was ginger-ale you were drinking.’

She considered this and then lifted her eyes to look at him and asked anxiously: ‘Then had I had … was I …?’

‘You were very sweet.’

She accepted this gravely. He put his hands under her arms and brought her to her feet and she rested the side of her face against his waistcoat and stayed very still, as if she were counting his heart-beats. These, like the fizzing drink, also sounded much too loud.

‘I didn’t wash the other glass,’ she said.

‘Mrs Lamb can do it in the morning.’

She went from one tremulous attempt at defence to another, wanting to blow her nose, or light a cigarette or put something tidy. In the sitting-room, earlier, when he had sat down beside her on the sofa, she had sprung up and gone rapidly across the room to look for an ash-tray. ‘Who is this?’ she had asked, picking up a framed photograph and holding it at arm’s length, as if to ward him off. ‘Girl friend,’ he said briefly, drinking his whisky and watching her manoeuvres with amusement.

‘Haven’t you ever wanted to get married?’ she had asked.

‘Sometimes. Have you?’

‘Oh, sometimes … I dare say,’ she answered vaguely.

Now, in the kitchen, he had caught her at last, she was clasped in his arms and feeling odd, she told him.

‘I know. There’s some coffee nearly ready in the other room. That will do untold good.’

What a dreadful man he is, really, in spite of his tenderness, she thought. So hollow and vulgar that I don’t know what Melanie would say.

She was startled for a moment, wondering if she had murmured this aloud; for, suddenly, his heartbeat had become noisier – from anger, she was afraid.

‘You are very kind,’ she said appeasingly. ‘I am not really used to drinking as much as people do here – not used to drinking at all.’

‘What
are
you used to?’

‘Just being rather dull, you know – my sister and I.’

His way of lifting her chin up and kissing her was too accomplished and she was reminded of the way in which he drove the car. She was sure that there was something here she should resent. Perhaps he was patronising her; for the kiss had come too soon after her remark about the dullness of her life. I can bring
some
excitement into it, he may have thought.

Without releasing her, he managed to stretch an arm and put out the light. ‘I can’t bear to see you frowning,’ he explained. ‘Why frown anyway?’

‘That coffee … but then I mustn’t stay for it, after all. Pamela will be wondering …’

‘Pam will understand.’

‘Oh, I hope not.’

She frowned more than ever and shut her eyes tightly although the room was completely dark.

Melanie sat on the edge of the bed, coughing. She was wondering if she had suddenly got T.B. and kept looking anxiously at her handkerchief.

The sun was shining, though not into her room. From the window, she could see Professor Rybeck sitting underneath the Wellingtonia with an assortment of his worshippers. From his gestures, Melanie could tell that it was he who was talking, and talking continuously. The hand rose and fell and made languid spirals as he unfolded his theme, or else cut the air decisively into slices. Mrs Rybeck was, of course, knitting. By her very presence, sitting a little apart from her husband, like a woman minding a stall on a fairground, she attracted passers-by. Melanie watched the Belgian woman now approaching, to say her few words about the knitting, then having paid her fee, to pass on to listen to the Professor.

Desperately, Melanie wished to be down there listening, too; but she had no knowledge of how to join them. Crossing the grass, she would attract too much attention. Ah,
she
cannot keep away, people would think,
turning to watch her. She must be in love with the Professor after all, like the other women; but perhaps more secretly, more devouringly.

She had stopped coughing and forgotten tuberculosis for the moment, as she tried to work out some more casual way than crossing the lawn. She might emerge less noticeably from the shrubbery behind the Wellingtonia, if only she could be there in the first place.

She took a clean handkerchief from a drawer and smoothed her hair before the looking-glass; and then a bell rang for tea and, when she went back to the window, the group under the tree was breaking up. Mrs Rybeck was rolling up her knitting and they were all laughing.

‘I shall see him at tea,’ Melanie thought. She could picture him bowing to her, coldly, and with the suggestion that it was she who disliked him rather than he who disliked her. ‘I could never put things right now,’ she decided.

She wondered what Ursula would be doing at this minute. Perhaps sitting in Pamela’s little back garden having tea, while, at the front of the house, the patients came and went. She had said that she would be glad to be at home again, for Pamela had changed and they had nothing left in common. ‘And coming here hasn’t been a success, either,’ Melanie thought, as she went downstairs to tea. She blamed Ursula very much for having made things so dull for them both. There must be ways of showing her how mistaken she had been, ways of preventing anything of the kind happening again.

‘Miss Rogers,’ said the Professor with unusual gaiety. They had almost collided at the drawing-room door. ‘Have you been out enjoying the sun?’

She blushed and was so angry that she should that she said quite curtly, ‘No, I was writing letters in my room.’

He stood quickly aside to let her pass and she did so without a glance at him.

Their holiday was over. On her way back from the station, Ursula called at the kennels for the cat and Melanie, watching her come up the garden path, could see the creature clawing frantically at her shoulder, trying to hoist himself out of her grasp. The taxi-driver followed with the suitcase.

Melanie had intended to be the last home and had even caught a later train than was convenient, in order not to have to be waiting there for her sister. After all her planning, she was angry to have found the house empty.

‘Have you been home long?’ Ursula asked rather breathlessly. She put the cat down and looked round. Obviously Melanie had not, for her suitcase still stood in the hall and not a letter had been opened.

‘Only a minute or two,’ said Melanie.

‘That cat’s in a huff with me. Trying to punish me for going away, I
suppose. He’s quite plump though. He looks well, doesn’t he? Oh, it’s so lovely to be home.’

She went to the hall-table and shuffled the letters, then threw them on one side. Melanie had said nothing.

‘Aren’t
you
glad to be home?’ Ursula asked her.

‘No, I don’t think so.’

‘Well I’m glad you had a good time. It was a change for you.’

‘Yes.’

‘And now let’s have some tea.’

She went into the kitchen and, still wearing her hat, began to get out the cups and saucers. ‘They didn’t leave any bread,’ she called out. ‘Oh, yes, it’s all right, I’ve found it.’ She began to sing, then stopped to chatter to the cat, then sang again.

Melanie had been in the house over an hour and had done nothing.

‘I’m so glad you had a good time,’ Ursula said again, when they were having tea.

‘I’m sorry you didn’t.’

‘It was a mistake going there, trying to renew an old friendship. You’d have hated the house.’

‘You’d have liked
mine
. Grey stone, Georgian, trees and a lake.’

‘Romantic,’ Ursula said and did not notice that Melanie locked her hands together in rather a theatrical gesture.

‘Pam seems complacent. She’s scored over me, having a husband. Perhaps that’s why she invited me.’

‘What did you do all the time?’

‘Just nothing. Shopped in the morning – every morning – the housewife’s round – butcher, baker, candlestick maker. “I’m afraid the piece of skirt was rather gristly, Mr Bones.” That sort of thing. She would fetch half a pound of butter one day and go back for another half-pound the next morning – just for the fun of it. One day, she said, “I think we’ll have some hock for supper.” I thought she was talking about wine, but it turned out to be some bacon – not very nice. Not very nice of me to talk like this, either.’

However dull it had been, she seemed quite excited as she described it; her cheeks were bright and her hands restless.

‘We went to the cinema once, to see a Western,’ she added. ‘Mike is very fond of Westerns.’

‘How dreadful for you.’

Ursula nodded.

‘Well, that’s their life,’ she said. ‘I was glad all the time that you were not there. Darling puss, so now you’ve forgiven me.’

To show his forgiveness, the cat jumped on to her lap and began dough-punching, his extended claws catching the threads of her skirt.

‘Tell me about
you
,’ Ursula said. She poured out some more tea to sip while Melanie had her turn; but to her surprise Melanie frowned and looked away.

‘Is something the matter?’

‘I can’t talk about it yet, or get used to not being there. This still seems unreal to me. You must give me time.’

She got up, knocked over the cream jug and went out of the room. Ursula mopped up the milk with her napkin and then leant back and closed her eyes. Her moment’s consternation at Melanie’s behaviour had passed; she even forgot it. The cat relaxed, too, and, curled up against her, slept.

Melanie was a long time unpacking and did nothing towards getting supper. She went for a walk along the sea road and watched the sunset on the water. The tide was out and the wet sands were covered with a pink light. She dramatised her solitary walk and was in a worse turmoil when she reached home.

‘Your cough is bad,’ Ursula said when they had finished supper.

‘Is it?’ Melanie said absent-mindedly.

‘Something has happened, hasn’t it?’ Ursula asked her, and then looked down quickly, as if she were confused.

‘The end of the world,’ said Melanie.

‘You’ve fallen in love?’ Ursula lifted her head and stared at her.

‘To have to go back to school next week and face those bloody children – and go on facing them, for ever and for ever – or other ones exactly like them … the idea suddenly appals me.’

Her bitterness was so true, and Ursula could hear her own doom in her sister’s words. She had never allowed herself to have thoughts of that kind.

‘But can’t you … can’t he?’ she began.

‘We can’t meet again. We never shall. So it
is
the end of the world, you see,’ said Melanie. The scene gave her both relief and anguish. Her true parting with Professor Rybeck (he had looked up from
The Times
and nodded as she crossed the hall) was obliterated for ever. She could more easily bear the agonised account she now gave to Ursula and she would bear it – their noble resolve, their last illicit embrace.

‘He’s married, you mean?’ Ursula asked bluntly.

‘Yes, married.’

Mrs Rybeck, insensitively knitting at the execution of their hopes, appeared as an evil creature, tenacious and sinister.

‘But to say good-bye for ever …’ Ursula protested. ‘We only have one life … would it be wicked, after all?’

‘What could there be … clandestine meetings and sordid arrangements?’

Ursula looked ashamed.

‘I should ruin his career,’ said Melanie.

‘Yes, I see. You could write to one another, though.’

‘Write!’ Melanie repeated in a voice as light as air. ‘I think I will go to bed now. I feel exhausted.’

‘Yes, do, and I will bring you a hot drink.’ As Melanie began to go upstairs, Ursula said, ‘I am very sorry, you know.’

While she was waiting for the milk to rise in the pan, she tried to rearrange her thoughts, especially to exclude (now that there was so much nobility in the house) her own squalid – though hazily recollected – escapade. Hers was a more optimistic nature than Melanie’s and she was confident of soon putting such memories out of her mind.

When she took the hot milk upstairs, her sister was sitting up in bed reading a volume of Keats’ letters. ‘He gave it to me as I came away,’ she explained, laying the book on the bedside table, where it was always to remain.