Friends and Lovers (26 page)

“There is quite a difference in salary actually,” David said. “It costs twice or even three times as much to live as a diplomat as it does to live as a journalist. A journalist can spend just as much or as little as it suits him on clothes or entertaining. But a diplomat has a semi-public kind of life: he has ” obligations.” It is hard on him, harder than most people think: either he must have some small income of his own or he must wait for years before he can get married.”

“So that’s why you gave up the idea of trying for the F .0, We should have to wait for years …” She frowned, pushed aside her plate, fingered the stem of the coarse wineglass Then she said quickly, “Darling, I could look after you wonderfully on almost three hundred pounds a year. On twc hundred pounds, if necessary. Honestly, David, I am not sc extravagant. We could manage. All we want is a very small place—two rooms even. I can learn to cook. And this year I’ve discovered how to save money on clothes.

We could live simply. We don’t need much if we have each other. We coulc manage.”

“There would be something rather hothouse about us if we couldn’t manage on almost three hundred a year,” Davic agreed.

“But not attached to something like the F .0.” I’m afraid. There’s a scale of living attached to jobs like that which is really crippling unless you have enough money. Ii wouldn’t be good for you or for me. Penny—not as the individuals we want to be. Particularly when neither of us believes that money is the proof of a man’s worth. It is usefu to make life easier, that’s all. But it doesn’t mean you are superior to the chap who has less money.

This price value on a man is becoming more and more a kind of snobbery just as silly as the older ones about family trees and lane ownership. It is all perfectly ludicrous.

And you don’t havf to indulge in vulgar ostentation to be a money snob: there i; a particularly insidious kind of money snob, all very quiet restrained, with fixed ideas of “what is done” and “what isn’ done”

That is what we should have to battle against, darling and I just won’t waste my energy on that.”

“You mean that ” what is done” and ” what isn’t done” cost money?”

“Yes. Even on the quietest level. You can make little with cisms about the new-rich who buy diamonds and cars an yards of paintings, and pride yourself on being ” poor” ii good taste. But that somehow always turns out to mean that you wear correct clothes which certainly don’t cost thirt; shillings off the peg. And you like concerts and theatres which never means you have gallery seats. And you are ; member of a club, which isn’t the Y.M.C.A. reading-room either. And the funny thing is that if one hasn’t the mone] to live on that ” simple” scale the quiet snobs who do live on it are inclined to think your tastes are all wrong, just as they think that those who spend more money than they do are vulgar in another way.

They talk, with a whimsical smile, of being poor these days. Poor ..

God, they don’t even understand their own English language. Give them a taste of really being poor, keeping a wife and children on thirty bob a week, living four to a room: dirt, squalor, disease around you; no holidays, no escape. Give them that. Penny, and watch them yell. I bet they wouldn’t be so quiet about it either as the millions who are really poor.” He paused, and then smiled and said,” Sorry, Penny. Didn’t mean to get on to my soap-box. I was just trying to show you that if we tried to live within our income our tastes would be considered wrong. They would need, in order to be considered right, a little help from some quiet gilt-edged bonds.”

“But surely if people are doing the same kind -of jobs they can’t be all snobs about money? Surely some of rhem realize it is only a matter of luck that they inherited or married money? That is nothing to be proud of.”

“Not all of them are snobs,” David agreed. And then he said, with a wide grin, “But it would be difficult for them to imagine that an evening at the theatre on their standards can represent our food and laundry bills for the week.

That’s really my point. Penny. I don’t think that it is good for anyone to have to face that disguised competition. Hi man beings don’t wear very well when they have to pretend to live on a scale which would use up three times the money they are actually paid.”

“Then careers such as that become a kind of closed shop,” Penny said angrily.

“A very select trade union indeed. If you can’t meet our economic standards stay out. Which only means, doesn’t it, that the country loses in the long run? Yet you would think that a country would encourage its young men with brains to marry and have children.

It is setting a kind of limit, isn’t it, on the brain-power we could develop?

“We aren’t the only country that limits its choice. They all do, whether it is by money or religion or politics. And you must remember that any diplomat would only raise an eyebrow, perhaps not even that, and think, “Limiting the country’s choice? Nonsense. The best man wins, that’s all.” And he’d straighten his tie, look bored with such childish ideas, and he wouldn’t even bother to listen to any argument about disguised quotas. He got into his job by competitive examination, and so his conscience is clear.

“How nice for him,” Penny said. Then, more gently, “I suppose the truth is that a man can face money worries by himself. With a wife—well, there are other wives? Isn’t that it, David? But what if that wouldn’t worry me? What if I’d |j| take them all on, and say “I

don’t give a herring’s leg whether you have a maid or two or three, or a fur coat, a Paris hat, an Alix dress”? Really, David- …”

“It would be much more like having stewed sausages three nights in a row to make up for one evening of decent food and wine for a dinner-party. No, thank you, darling. I’m damned if I’ll play that game. Now let’s forget it.

I’ve buried the F .0. idea. What do you want to be? The wife of an oil magnate or of a journalist?”

Penny smiled. As long as he is you it doesn’t matter what my husband is, she thought. And then she became very serious.

“What did your father say, David? And your tutor? Weren’t they disappointed?” They will blame me, she told herself unhappily.

“Oh, just slightly amazed for a moment or so,” he said lightly.

“In any case, I might never have passed the F.O. entrance examinations, or I might have been a rotten diplomat.” He grinned, and put all the memories of Chaundler’s discussions with him this week quite out of his mind. His father had not had time to reply to his long explanatory letter; more discussions to come, there. Still, his father had liked Penny when he had met her, and as long as David didn’t concentrate on money-grabbing, but developed a career with some idea of public service behind it, his father would have no absolute objections. (His father was developing almost a mania for his public-service idea: there was some connexion between it and his complete belief in a coming breakdown in civilization. That was almost a mania too. You could not mention Germany now without starting a worrying argument. ) Yes, Penny and his father had got on well together. Margaret, however, had been quite another matter.

“My train leaves in sixty-five minutes,” he said.

“What is it to be.

Penny? Big business or social consciousness?” He was watching her with a smile, but his hand was tense oti the glass of wine.

“David,” Penny’s voice said gently, ‘you can’t possibly mean you want me to choose.”

“Why not? You’ve got to live with it for the rest of your life.”

“But if a man is unhappy in his job he won’t do much good work. You know what you want. You always know.” She laughed then.

“You know so well what you really want, David.”

“Yes.” His eyes held hers.

“I know.” After that pause he said, “But, to return to the job and, after all, it is a luxury to be able to discuss two possible jobs in a depression where even one is hard to find, so we might as well enjoy any luxuries we have what do you think, Penny?”

“I think …” she began, and then stopped short. She looked at his uncertainly. If only she could make the right choice, the choice he wanted.

“You don’t really worry about having a lot of money, do you, David? I mean, as long as we have oh, David, I really could run our house beautifully on three hundred pounds a year.”

“Why do you choose Fairbairn?” he asked. He tried to keep his voice impersonal, to keep his delight out of it.

“Because well, because it really is your kind of thing, isn’t it? The work you are doing now at Oxford leads into it so naturally.

Fairbairn is one of the best economists we have, isn’t he?” She looked at David worriedly. Surely he hadn’t already decided on the other job. Had she made a mistake?” David, I wish you would do just as you really want. I’ve spoiled one idea of yours already. Don’t let me spoil this one too. If you really want the oil thing, take it.”

She looked quite unhappy.

He rose suddenly, came quickly round to her side of the table, and kissed her vehemently. Her ribs felt as if they were broken.

“David!” she said, with delight, and the word came out in a gasp as he suddenly freed her so that she could breathe again. He went quite calmly back to his chair, as if he had only been opening a window.

Giuseppe, coming upstairs with a bowl of fruit and coffee, beamed with approval and delight. He approached their table, and then hung back: this wasn’t just the right moment. Not that they would have noticed him very much. The young man was now raising his glass of wine towards the girl.

Giuseppe turned away and frowned fiercely at an interested table of two men and a woman. Don’t you smirk like that, signora, he thought: no one would ever want to kiss you, even with all the lights out. And as for the two signori, you didn’t do so well for yourselves this Saturday night: the best you could manage was this leather-faced, leather-hearted woman to share between you. If anyone should be laughing at anyone else, it certainly should not be you.

“Coffee?” he inquired, keeping his body so placed that he would block their view.

The two men had the grace to realize their barbarism. They began talking hurriedly about poetry. Poetry! Giuseppe thought. How could they pretend to understand poetry when they did not even know it when they saw it? He let the coffee he was pouring slop over on to their saucers. Not frequent customers, anyway; and the tip, which the two men shared between them too, no doubt, was always poor.

David was watching Penny with a smile. He had never been happier.

“To you,” he said very quietly, and drained his glass.

Chapter Nineteen.

AFTERTHOUGHTS IN GOWER STREET.

Mr. Fane was in his dressing-room, but neither that nor his silence deterred his wife from summing up the events of the day. She creamed her face before the pink-shaded light on the elaborate dressing-table, and kept up a continuous flow of comment. Mrs. Fane saw nothing peculiar in the fact that Edward had long since given up the habit of answering her. She tried to ignore a deepening wrinkle at the side of her mouth. It had been a successful party, she told herself again.

“I’m quite exhausted. Still, it was a great success.

You didn’t say how you liked my new suit. And how did you like Carol’s dress? Well worth the money, really. She did look well this evening. Did you notice how George Fentonstevens quite monopolized her? What a pity Lady Fentonstevens couldn’t come—George said she was leaving for the Riviera.

Never anywhere near her husband. All she does is spend his money.”

She let that fact soak in. At least, I stay beside you, she thought, as she wiped off the cleansing cream carefully. Then from an elaborately fashioned jar she scooped some heavy cream, yellow with the sheep’s fat out of which it was made, scented with the essence of flowers. She smeared it over her face, her eyes following the reflection of the upward movements of her third finger as solemnly as if she were a priestess sacrificing before an altar. Then she rested (five minutes for the cream to penetrate), and her thoughts flickered back to Carol again and to George. Dear George. It would be so suitable.

“Penelope Lorrimer,” she said suddenly.

“What a surprise … so unlike Mary Lorrimer. Extraordinary that George should know her. And Billy remembered seeing her too. George was describing the summer in Scotland. He and another man—David something or other—visited Dr. MacIntyre … David Bosfield, that’s it. And then Billy said, “That’s who she is.” Do you know. Billy has seen her dining in the George on Sundays with this Bosfield person? George was really most surprised.

He hadn’t even known! Personally I think the whole thing looks very odd. I wonder if Mary Lorrimer has even heard of this man Bosfield?”

Mattie Fane picked up a delicately shaped bottle and poured its verbena fragrance on to some cotton-wool. She began to smooth away the glistening cream, leaving enough round the wrinkles to help them through the night.

“He does sound peculiar, if you ask me. Billy says he is one of those Labour speakers in the Union debates.” She shook her head in disapproval and moved across the thick turquoise-blue carpet towards her silk-covered bed.

“Why didn’t she say who she was?” she asked indignantly of the mirrored ceiling. And imagine Essex Rockfort walking away from Carol, and asking who was the girl with the dark auburn hair. Auburn! Plain brown with a henna rinse.

“Are you coming to bed, Edward?” she called sharply, and tied up her chin-strap.

He was thin and he stooped, and his eyes narrowed when he didn’t wear his glasses. He didn’t speak, because he was conscious of his empty gums—his teeth were now smiling charmingly in a crystal tumbler of antiseptic fluid on his dressing-table—and a long, thin strand of grey hair fell away from the bald crown of his head. She watched him with a sense of dissatisfaction.

His age told hers. But she wasn’t really old. Men just aged more quickly than women.

Edward Fane climbed heavily into his bed, with the boredom of a man who has long learned to expect no pleasure | there.

“Good night, Mattie,” he said, and closed his eyes. Duty done for the day.

“Good night, darling.” Mrs. Fane’s voice sounded strangled, but chin-straps had to be tight. She swallowed her sleeping tablets and switched off her lamp. The fireplace glowed gently in the warm darkness.