No More Meadows (50 page)

Tommie practised his American. When they were introduced to other guests, Christine said: ‘How do you do?', which she had not given up even after nine months in America, but Tommie said: ‘Glad to know you', or ‘I certainly am happy to meet you', and repeated people's names, just like an old hand.

However, when a surly-looking man arrived not quite sober from another cocktail party and Tommie brought out his: ‘Happy to meet you', the man stuck out his jaw as if he were spoiling for a fight, and said: ‘Why should you be? You've never seen me before, and you're never going to see me again. I'm leaving this goddamn town in two hours for Chicago. Why should you be happy to meet me?'

‘Well, I don't know – dash it, my dear chap,' stammered Tommie, surprised into being very English. ‘Bit of a setback,' he said, as the man stumbled away to the bar. ‘I'll have to rewrite my lines. Perhaps I – Gosh, darling, look. There's a man wearing my regimental tie. Let's go and talk to him and be English for a bit.'

‘Tommie, it doesn't mean that he –' Christine tried to detain him, but he was already half-way across the room, his limp more pronounced, as it always was when he had had a few drinks.

‘I see you were in my lot,' Tommie said, holding out his hand.

‘How?' said the man in the regimental tie. ‘How's that again, sir?'

‘Your tie.'

The man's baffled face broke into a beam. ‘Smooth, isn't it? My wife bought it for me. The first one she's bought I've been able to wear. Glad you like it.'

‘It's a pattern I've grown fond of,' Tommie said, leaning forward to examine the little label on the end of the tie, which said: ‘King's Own Yorkshire Light Infantry. Genuine copy.'

Tommie wanted to see Christine's home at Arlington. He said that he must be able to imagine her there after she had gone back. He added also that he wanted to know where to find her.

‘Oh, Tommie, don't,' she said. ‘Even if you're joking. You know you promised that you wouldn't try to see me after Vin gets back. I won't go on with it. I can't. You must leave me alone – please, darling, or I shan't be able to get along. And something terrible might happen. Vin might shoot you, or shoot me, or anything. You don't know what he's like.'

‘Tell me,' Tommie said. ‘Tell me more about the man Gaegler.' He was always wanting to hear about Vinson. His curiosity about Christine's husband was unnatural and almost morbid. Christine did not want to tell him anything. What she was doing to Vinson was bad enough without the added disloyalty of discussing him with her lover. Sometimes, when she felt a sudden panic about Vinson's homecoming, she wanted desperately to tell Tommie everything, and to say to him with tears that he was all the things that Vinson was not; but she would not let herself.

‘Tell me more about how jealous he is,' Tommie persisted. ‘Tell me about the time you went out with his brother.'

‘No. I wish I'd never said anything about that. I didn't mean
to. You're so unfair, Tommie. You must make things worse this way. I won't criticize Vin to you. I won't, however much your male vanity wants me to. He's my husband and I –'

‘The loyal wife,' Tommie said, grinning. ‘A charming picture.'

‘That's unfair too, but I suppose I deserve it. Please, Tommie, you must help me. I've got to get back to Vinson in three days. Don't make it more difficult than it is already.'

‘Why shouldn't I? I may have plans of my own.'

‘You promised! You promised me you'd stay away. Tommie, you must. It's the only thing to do.'

‘That's right,' he said with his baffling look, at the same time innocent and bold. ‘I promised, didn't I?'

‘I don't trust you,' Christine said in a small voice.

‘Why not?' He opened his eyes very wide. ‘I've promised. So let me come and see your house, my darling. If you're going back to get that dress for tonight, I'll come with you. I must know everything about you, don't you understand? How you've got your kitchen arranged, what your dressing-table is like, how the light will strike your face when you open the door in the morning to let Timmy out.'

Christine got up. ‘Let's go now then,' she said. She had known all along that she would take him. She had never been able to refuse him anything he wanted, and they only had three more days together.

It was Sunday. With any luck, the Meenehans would be in their rumpus room with the central heating and the television and Daddy's cigar all going full blast. Christine stopped the car at the bottom of the lawn. If she did not take it into the driveway, perhaps Mrs Meenehan would not hear them arrive.

While she was in her bedroom getting her dress and Tommie was roaming round the house with a small smile on his face, Timmy, who had not lived in the house long enough to trust it, began to bark his misgivings on the lawn. Christine leaned out of the window and tried to shout at him in a whisper. He waved his plumed tail and went on barking.

‘Darling!' Tommie called up the stairs. ‘There's a woman with a face like a sweet potato pounding on the kitchen window. What do I do?'

‘Nothing. I'll come down. And don't call me darling, for heaven's sake.'

‘I heard the doggie bark,' Mrs Meenehan said, when Christine opened the back door, ‘so I came right over to bring you back for some coffee and cake. I have a very dear friend with me I want to have you know.'

‘I haven't got very long,' Christine said. ‘I just came home to get a dress and then I have to go straight back to the friends I'm staying with.'

‘You come right along with me now.' If Mrs Meenehan issued an invitation, there was no getting out of it.

‘I have someone with me, though,' Christine said, for Tommie was visible in the hall, inspecting Vinson's ship prints. ‘My cousin – a cousin of mine from England. He happened to come to Washington for a few days on business. Wasn't that lucky?' She wondered if her voice sounded as wild and unnatural as it felt.

‘Bring him along. Hi there, Mr –'

‘Burns,' said Tommie, coming into the kitchen.

‘So you're Catherine's cousin. My, my. Well, I'm sure the Commander will be pleased to hear she had someone to look after her while he's away. These Navy men. Always here and there. I know what it is. When Daddy and I had command of the
Walrus
he was never home for but a few days at a time.'

The Meenehans' rumpus room was in semi-darkness, with a variety show on the screen, Mr Meenehan in slippers and a lumber jacket, and Mrs Meenehan's friend, very fat, wedged into an upright canvas chair, head on to the television set.

‘I certainly am happy to meet you,' she told Christine. ‘Tessie here has told me so many antidotes about you.' She was also happy to meet Tommie, and he said that he was happy to meet her, and asked her where she came from, which he had already discovered was a thing Americans greatly liked to be asked.

‘Tuscarawas County, Ohio,' Mrs Grady said with a proud gleam in her protruding eyes. Christine and Tommie murmured unconvincingly – it was always hard to think of a suitable response when someone had told you their home town – and
sat down in front of the television set, which was the only place where there were chairs.

Mrs Meenehan climbed up the basement stairs with her slip showing to get coffee and cake, although they said that they had only just had lunch. Mr Meenehan made a little conversation, with half his attention on the television show, and Mrs Grady told them some items about Tuscarawas County, Ohio, with music and song and eulogies about toothpaste sounding through her talk of schools and county jails. No one thought of turning the television down to make talk easier. The Meenehans preferred just to raise their voices.

Mrs Meenehan's coffee was bitter and her cake like a loofah that has been left to dry out on the edge of the bath. Christine and Tommie ate and drank bravely, trying not to look at each other. With the return of his wife from the kitchen Mr Meenehan made no further attempt at conversation. It was Sunday, and he wanted to watch the television, so he went on watching it, chuckling sometimes to himself and slapping his thin knees.

When she had exhausted Tuscarawas County Mrs Grady did not have any more to say either. She preferred to sit and stare, storing impressions away behind her glaucaemic eyes to retail to the folks back home. Mrs Meenehan, however, was never at a loss for talk. Every time Christine was getting up to say they must go Mrs Meenehan started on a new topic and she had to sit down again. Tommie was very polite and patient, but he kept telegraphing looks to Christine which showed that he was thinking as she was, that they had so little time together, and must they waste it like this?

Mrs Meenehan was telling him about the trip she and Daddy had taken in Europe after he retired. ‘We rented a car over there,' she said, when she had finished making it quite clear that Daddy had retired as a
lieutenant commander,
‘the funniest little French automobile. You never saw anything like it.'

‘Tell about where you went,' Mrs Grady said, nodding her fleshy head. ‘They'll admire to hear that.'

‘Well, we went just about everywhere, you know. We covered France in five days. Don't you think that was something? Then we went over the Alps to Italy. Quite a climb,
though of course nothing to our Rockies. We were quite impressed with Italy. We hadn't been too impressed with France, with all those children going about in black aprons, but when we got into Italy, and the people had some colour to their clothes – why, you might have been in the United States!'

‘That must have set you up no end,' Tommie said seriously.

Mrs Grady, who had been looking speculatively at him for some time, shifted her weight in the chair and said: ‘You're foreign, ain't you? May I ask where you come from?'

‘England.'

‘Oh, fancy. And how long have you been over here?'

‘Let's see – about a week.'

‘I suppose,' said Mrs Grady, ‘you studied our language before you came over here. I think it's wonderful that you are able to speak it so well.'

Christine stared at the television set. She dared not look at Tommie. They both stood up and made some excuse to go. When they had had their laugh out, doubled up and gasping behind Mr Meenehan's toolshed, Christine realized that she had not laughed like that since she was married.

When they got into the house they began to laugh again, laughing and kissing each other in the hall. When Christine went to her bedroom to get the dress she had come for, Tommie followed her upstairs.

‘Plees,' he said. ‘I do not spick the language so well – but I know how to say it in French.' He said it.

‘Oh no, Tommie.' Christine backed quickly away from the bed. ‘Not here. Please not here. Don't you see, that's the last, most awful thing we –'

He was much stronger. Even with his handicap it was never any use trying to struggle against Tommie. She was lost. This was the worst sin of all, and one that could never be forgotten. How could she ever again lie with Vinson on this bed and not remember Tommie? Was that what Tommie wanted?

‘What do people say at a time like this?' It was their last evening together. ‘There must be something that people say that makes it easier to bear, or at least makes them able to realize that it really is good-bye. I can't realize it.'

‘No, darling,' Tommie said, ‘because it isn't good-bye. All right, I know. Don't say it. Don't say: “You promised.” I know I did. I promised, and I am coming with you to New York tomorrow to try and persuade that chap to take over my place at the college here and let me have his. I haven't said just how I'll try, but I've said I'll try. Well now, look. If he says yes, I'll be in New York; you'll be in Washington, two hundred and fifty miles apart. Do you honestly think that's going to keep you and me away from each other? How can anything do that? It would be like trying to keep the two cut ends of a worm apart. And suppose the chap says no, then I'll have to stay in Washington. How do you think we can avoid seeing each other?'

‘We could. We wouldn't know the same people. We'd move in different circles.'

‘Move in different circles!' He laughed, throwing his head back. ‘What an expression. My God, you
are
a Navy wife. I suppose the man Gaegler talks about “moving in the right circles”.'

‘Don't be horrid, Tommie.'

‘Never will discuss him, will you? But I gather from things you've let slip that he's a snob. Snobbish and selfish and conventional and jealous – and probably a bore. My God, Christine darling, you got yourself into a hell of a mess that day you sat on a bench in Grosvenor Square.'

‘No I didn't. Vin isn't like you think. My marriage isn't any worse than most people's. It would have been all right if I hadn't met you.'

‘How can a marriage be all right unless it's perfect?'

‘You don't understand. You get fond of a person. You – you get used to them. If they have faults – or perhaps not faults, but things that just aren't right for you – well, you do mind when you first discover them, but after a bit you get used to them and it doesn't matter.'

‘It must matter. It must get worse and worse.'

‘No. You don't understand. It isn't like that. You don't understand about marriage.'

‘I understand about
your
marriage,' Tommie said. ‘It's all washed up.'

‘It isn't! Be quiet, Tommie.'

‘Christine darling, don't snap my head off every time I mention divorce.'

‘Why not? I've told you Vin would never divorce me. He's a Catholic.'

‘But would you get a divorce if you could?'

‘What's the use of asking me that? I can't.'

‘But
would
you?' Tommie took hold of her shoulders painfully and made her look at him.