Anglo-Saxon Attitudes (18 page)

'I don't believe Mrs Salad would be out of place anywhere,' he laughed, 'even in Avignon. She'd have found some way of ministering to the pleasures of the exiled popes.'

Dollie did not answer directly, but as she drove the little Wolseley Hornet over the bridge to Villeneuve she looked at him with a frown. They sped past the great stone walls that still guarded the ruins and she said, 'I want to go up there again.'

'All right,' Gerald answered. 'We can go on our way back.'

'You
don't need to come, darling,' she said. 'You've got it all in your head. That's why Mrs Salad and things don't put the wind up you. But I need so many goes to make me feel I've really been to a place.'

Gerald once more looked at her with surprise. 'You know that we needn't go back for at least a month, if you'd rather not,' he told her, but she shook her head.

'Oh, no, it'll be quite jolly to be back once we're there,' she said.

They lunched at Aiguës Mortes in a little restaurant in the central square looking across at the statue of Frédéric Mistral so pitifully declaring the nineteenth century's certainty of its taste. But before luncheon, while Gerald drank his vermouth, she had insisted on walking the ramparts despite the grilling noon heat. He caught sudden glimpses of her pale-green linen dress from moment to moment and imagined her there intent on every object - a lizard, and salt-pans in the distance, a Romanesque tower, some old men playing bowls. She would listen when he talked of the historical meaning of what they saw, would even ask questions, but he knew that, if she remembered anything of what he said, she kept it quite apart from what she saw. Her pleasure was direct and sensual. It was part of the atmosphere of concreteness, of certainty which she built around him. There were moments of odd, childish questioning, as this morning, but they were gone very quickly. Mostly she was just there, silent and happy. After the constant rambling of Stokesay, the eager enthusiasm of Rose Lorimer, above all, after the crescendoing whimsy with which Inge so consciously greeted each 'wonderful, natural' stage in the children's growth, Gerald found his energies and confidence depleted. His interpretation of Dollie's silence as affirmation of life brought him new vigour. Without her, he would never have gone beyond cautious articles, lectures only less cautious because he could believe them to be ephemeral. She had given him the assurance needed to generalize his knowledge, to sustain the scope of his long work on Cnut. She allowed him time to find words for his thoughts, and without words he lived in a blur of distrust.

After luncheon, as they sat at a café table over coffee and cognac, the unpleasant little Englishman whom they had noticed during the meal came over to them. 'Well,' he said, 'Snowden's had to eat his words and
we've
got to pack up and go home. I hope to God they get rid of the whole lot of them,' he said. 'I suppose Ramsay Mac's all right. He's had the courage to own he was wrong, at any rate. As for the rest, the sooner they go back to the board-school teaching or mining or whatever the damned thing was they were doing, the better for the country.

'Baldwin,' he assured them, 'will pull us through. He's a cautious old bird, but as wise as they make 'em. Just what we need. "You can't be too careful", that's got to be England's motto. Cheerio,' he said, 'see you in Angleterre.'

It was thus that they learned of England's going off the gold standard. Gerald, knowing Dollie's simple jingo responses to any national event - responses that had become more immediate, more violent, since she had become a 'bad woman' in the eyes of her family - decided to forestall her reactions. 'I'll get a paper,' he said, and then, scanning
Le
Temps,
he worked out exchange rates on the back of an envelope.

She sat staring across the Square with that expression he called 'her forehand-drive look'. She kept it, he told her, for tennis and the National Anthem. They treated her being an ex-tennis champion as one of the private jokes that oiled the machinery of their life together, and she helped in this on occasion by parodying the role. Nevertheless, the joke on his side was in some part defensive; he feared the 'Stock Character' side of her, that it might engulf the individual person on whom he depended, and he avoided as far as he could the conventional responses she made to events she did not comprehend.

She sat smoking her cigarette for a moment and drank some of her cognac; she had never lost a manner of 'being rather fast' in her smoking and drinking, although both tastes were habitual to her. 'Do you honestly think we have to, Gerrie?'  she asked. 'I can't see what earthly use it would be to anyone for me to be back at the flat, or you, for that matter. I mean it's not like the General Strike, is it?'

Slowly he explained the financial crisis to her in very simple terms, emphasizing the plain patriotic line to which she would respond.

'Yes, I see,' she said. 'It's pretty serious, isn't it? But then so's this holiday to you. Thinking out this new book and so on. And it is to me, too,' she added, 'very important. Couldn't you wire for some money?'  she asked.

'I
could,'
Gerald answered.

'Well then, go ahead, old dear,' she replied; 'only do ask for enough to make a
good
holiday. I mean it seems so difficult, darling, to know what's enough, doesn't it, with all this pound falling business. It's better to be on the safe side.'

It was partly stupidity of course, as he knew, but not altogether, and he thought of the complaining, moralizing self-denial with which Inge would have greeted the situation - or else she would have made a terrible whimsical game of the economies needed to get home. 'Are you sure?'  he asked.

Dollie did not answer the question. 'Pay for the drinks and let's move,' she said. 'I'm not going to let you off going round the wall. The view's quite stunning.'

For twenty minutes or more they leaned on the wall parapet, staring out southwards across the salt marshes and on to the Camargue.

'I've tried,' she said suddenly, 'but it doesn't work. The guidebook says it was a port and the Crusaders set off from here and I know what Crusaders looked like, I've seen them in books and churches, so I ought to be able to imagine it, but I can't. It isn't a port now, it's flat marshy land. Perhaps it was that heron flying by that distracted me. I like it, though.' When Gerald did not answer, she said, 'I suppose you can imagine Crusaders.'

'I expect I could if I tried, but I was thinking.'

'Oh, not about the Confessor, so far from Hastings!' She could never separate the Confessor from the Conqueror.

'No,' said Gerald, 'one of those things that seem so important and end up as platitudes. I was remembering the few times that I've been really happy like this and feeling that they were so much more intense than the rest of life that perhaps they were on a different plane of reality. I was wondering if it was only when we were really happy that we knew what was true. A nice bit of cosy egotism, I suppose.'

'It does seem a bit good-goody,' Dollie said, 'like those horrid little limp suede books Mother used to put by the spare-room bed for visitors. Full of great thoughts.' She pressed her finger slowly against his temple, running down to his chin, feeling the outline of his cheekbone. 'I'm very happy too, dear, you know,' she said.

The shops in the Square were open once more when they came down into the town. They bought postcards. Dollie found one with a feather skirt which you could blow. 'All the same,' she said, when she had blown it three or four times, 'it is a bit pathetic. And a bit foul,' she added. It was clear that she felt it; then she laughed and blew it again.

'Do you think Kay would like this?'  Gerald asked, picking up a cicada brooch. 'It's very unattractive. But the taste of sixteen! You would know, Dollie, you were a girl once.' She did not answer. 'All right then,' said Gerald, 'girls have better taste than boys. They're born with aesthetic discrimination.
You
choose something for her.'

Dollie raised her eyes from the tray of postcards. 'No,' she said, 'I'd rather not,' and she went on absurdly blowing at the feather skirt.

'Well,
I
think a cicada brooch. You know what, Dollie! Some of this awful folky stuff would just suit Inge. What do you think - an Arlesian doll or a quotation from Mistral in poker-work?'  and when she did not answer, he said again, 'Which do you think, darling?'

'I haven't the foggiest idea,' she said violently, and threw the feathered postcard back into the tray.

It was impossible for Gerald to interpret the silence she maintained on the drive to Aries as life-affirming. She could lose her temper on occasion at tennis or at bridge, but it was a momentary flare-up with inept partners; this was something more. He suggested that they left sightseeing in Aries for a cooler day, a day when they were less tired, any other day that she chose. Her answer was to drive to the Arena, and, without bothering to take her box camera out of the car, she made a complete circuit of the stadium with him in silence. He was not spared the ruins of the theatre or the traipse across the river and down the long avenue to the Christian tombs. Finally, the storm broke on the roof of the cloister of Saint Trophime.

'It's no good telling me about columns and carving, Gerrie,' Dollie said. 'I don't know Roman from Romanesque and I never will. Oh! I know you don't care, but perhaps half the trouble is that you like to pretend I'm not a fool.'

'Not knowing the styles of architecture isn't my criterion for judging fools,' said Gerald. 'In any case,
what
trouble? I shan't say that I thought we were so happy, because you obviously aren't. But I will remind you that you said
you
were.'

He was suddenly angry with her, but she was unaffected by his mood. 'I shouldn't take that line if I were you, Gerrie. You pretty near got your marching orders this afternoon. No!' she said, 'I mean it. But I care for you too much and it isn't as if you were to blame really. I shouldn't have agreed to it.'

'Agreed to what?'  asked Gerald.

'To your keeping on with Inge,' she said. 'I should have insisted on your getting a divorce. Even the silliest little shopgirl has the sense to try to get an honest woman made of herself.'

Gerald put his hand on hers; she did not return the pressure but she did not move her hand away. 'We had a very difficult decision to make,' he said. 'Perhaps we were wrong. If so, I'm very sorry. But we had the children to think of. And, after all, Inge behaved very decently.'

'I don't know anything about Inge. I don't want to hear about her. Neither your complaints nor your praises. How do I know what's gone on between you? The rights and the wrongs of it. I don't want to know.'

She walked away from him and began to descend the wooden stairs to the cloister below. She was talking now over her shoulder, disregarding the other tourists. 'One thing - there's to be no more present-giving. I'm not going to choose all those damned presents for your family. Oh! I know you're not to blame. I should never have accepted the situation. With Inge ringing me up, "I knew it must be
your
choice, Dollie, Gerald would never have thought of anything so charming," and "the children looking forward to Auntie Dollie's gifts". It's disgusting, Gerrie, that's what it is.'

'Aren't you making rather a moral mountain of it all of a sudden?'  he asked.

'Yes. That's true. It's nothing to do with morals, of course,' Dollie said. 'I'm past all that or superior to it or whatever you like. Anyway, right and wrong and so on never meant much to me and they don't touch me at all now. I'm sorry. I was dramatizing. It's just that so much of it has gone rotten on me, Gerrie. And Fitzroy Square and the good times together, dancing at Ciro's and Mrs Salad don't quite make up for that. I know it when I'm away from England and I know it's not going to get better. It'll get worse. It's all right for you. It's all one piece for you. That's why you're perfectly happy reading Mrs Salad's letter here and so on. Well, I can't. I can't give you up either and I don't want to. But I'm not being sweet Auntie to your family any more. No fear. It hasn't done any good. You're as much a stranger to the children as if you'd made the break. You say so yourself. And if that's how they feel about you, what do you really suppose they think of sweet Auntie Dollie? What does Inge make sure they think? No, I've no right to say that. It's not her fault, it's ours.'

As they passed down the steps of the church into the broad square, she looked back at the carved tympanum. 'Is that a Last Judgement?'  she asked. 'It usually is. Well, that's when I'll judge Inge and I don't want to hear any more about her until then. Oh! don't worry. I know I've got to see them and I'll behave myself, but, for the rest, you've got to keep them out of my life.'

That evening in their hotel at Avignon she drank too much and apologized again and again in a maudlin way and was very amorous. Their relationship dragged on like that for the next three years. ...

Robin was telling a story now. 'I'll give you this one for your column, John,' he said, 'because if you use it everybody who's ever had to do any serious business will laugh at you. I'm telling you because it's time you knew what life was like, what real moral decision means. We have a supplier,' he said, 'of small parts. He wasn't very important before we took on prefabrication, but he is now. A funny little man, probably churchwarden of the local church - it's a South-West suburb. He only produces in a small way, but he was an old business client of grandfather's. Father probably knew him. Do you remember Grimston, Father?'  he asked; 'a funny, sandy-haired little man?'

Gerald made no answer.

Robin laughed. 'He's asleep. Well, this chap can't produce on the scale we need, he's slow and unreliable but he's got an old-established name. We've offered him everything to buy the goodwill, a first-rate price for the business, even retirement with a good holding of Middleton shares - he couldn't possibly get them on the market. But he's an obstinate old fool; he insisted on holding out, partly from sentiment, partly from conceit. So we've busted him. We got him flooded with so many orders from important firms that he hadn't a chance of fulfilling them. I know just what you'll say about that, John, but in the next breath you'll say people must have their houses quickly. All right, what's your choice?'