Give Us This Day (78 page)

“Most women are married at my age,” she said, “and I’ve come within shouting distance of hooking someone three or four times in a row, but it always fizzles out. Not on my part, on theirs.”

Her honesty made an immediate appeal to him, especially as she illustrated the admission with a wry face but then, as if to demonstrate the fact that she had survived her disappointments, a chuckle.

“I can’t understand that. Let’s face it, you’re pretty, you’re good company, you’re a first-rate cook.”

“Ah, I daresay, kind sir, but I’m also considered flighty.” He had to laugh as she went on, “I am, too, but we aren’t here for long, are we, and I honestly can’t see why most people have to make such heavy going of it.” Then with a flicker of embarrassment, “Was Gilda flighty? Surely she must have been to run off like that, all the way to America.”

“You know about me and Gilda?”

“Not
you
and Gilda, or only the very little Auntie Edith’s told me. But everyone knows Gilda by now, don’t they? I mean, she’s famous. I saw her in that French Revolution picture at the Bijou, in Peterborough. Auntie Edith took me.”

He was jolted by this. It had never occurred to him that other people took Gilda’s posturing seriously, and as to Gilda de la Rey or whatever she called herself being considered famous, it seemed to him quite preposterous. He said, thoughtfully, “What did you think of her?”

“I thought she was awful. I mean, that kind of thing isn’t real acting, is it? No more than a lot of put-on eye-rolling and bosom heaving. I’m sure I could do better than that myself, although maybe it isn’t her fault.”

It struck him then that she must have known Gilda before he did, visiting here as a child and probably being patronised, as by a governessy sort of cousin. It would be difficult, he thought, to think of two more dissimilar women than his wife and Betsy Battersby. He was pondering this when he heard her say, “You don’t like talking about her, do you?”

“Not much, but it doesn’t matter with someone like you, that is, someone who knew what she was like before she was married. What
was
she like? When you met her after she came home from the Continent?”

“Lah-di-dah,” Betsy said, promptly. “Very pretty, of course, and clever, but I never liked her. She wasn’t interested in anyone but herself. Anyone could see that in a twinkling. I thought then, ‘Any man who marries Gilda Wickstead will be asking for trouble.’ I’m sorry if that offends you, but you did ask for the truth.”

“It doesn’t offend me.” He got up. “I’ll help you clear and wash up before Edith gets back.”

They cleared the table together and while relieving her of a heavy tray he noticed the pleasing swell of her breasts. It made him think fleetingly of Dulcie, the overripe barmaid at The Mitre, where he drank in the evenings sometimes, and he thought again,
I’m damned if I know why some lively spark hasn’t snapped her up long ago. She’d have a lot to offer to the right man
. Far more than most, he decided, standing beside her at the sink and watching her closely as she washed dishes, for every time she straightened up after lifting plates from the water her fine breasts rippled, and the evening sun, filtering through a side window, made her hair glow like red-hot cinders.
By God
, he told himself, looking away hastily,
I need a woman and no mistake!

But when they had gone back into the dining-room, she asked him if he knew the Bunny-hug and the Turkey Trot. “A girl I know taught me. She goes to all the hops at the drill hall, but there’d be hell’s delight in our house if I went there, with or without an escort. Did you ever learn to dance?”

“Formal dances,” he said, “when we were kids. We had a teacher call for the girls and she used to rope me in as a partner. I never took to it.”

“I could teach you. You can dance to ragtime; in fact it’s better. Here, roll that rug up and I’ll put it on again.” Mildly surprised at the pleasurable anticipation of learning the Bunny-hug with Betsy as a tutor, he did as she asked and soon they were prancing around the room to the whine of the phonograph. He realised that she was quite an expert, although the new dances did not seem to consist of more than skipping and jogging, steps that he found no difficulty in improvising.

“I say, you’re jolly good!” she said, pausing to rewind the handle. “You’ve got a natural rhythm and you lead well. We’ll show Auntie Edith when she gets back. Come on, let’s try again.” He put his arms round her and noticed that her cheeks were flushed with the champagne and that she seemed eager that he should hold her close, and soon he began to perspire gently, not so much by reason of cavorting in a confined space but on account of the fact that Betsy’s sturdy thighs collided with his at every turn and hover, so that he found it difficult to sustain belief in her innocence.
She may have been reared in the Baptist tradition
, he told himself,
but she’s picked up the basic technique somewhere.
Then the phonograph ran down again and when she made no move to wind it, but remained in his loose embrace, he thought,
I’d be a fool not to make the most of this—a man must have a bit of fun sometime
s. He kissed her mouth, enlarging his grip in a way that supported most of her weight.

She did not seem to mind in the least. On the contrary, when he adjusted his position so that he could run his hand across her breasts, she gave a definite wriggle of approval, and it crossed his mind that his next move should be a suggestion that they write a note for Edith and go for a spin in his car as far as the nearest woods.

He had no opportunity to put the question, however, for as soon as his hold relaxed slightly she renewed it and began kissing him back in a way Gilda had never kissed him and then he was sure, somehow, that he had been excessively naïve about her, and that she had almost certainly had a wide experience in this particular pastime. He managed to get as far as “Why don’t we…” but at that moment the front doorbell rang loudly. She exclaimed petulantly, “Now who on earth can that be…?” and detached herself and went into the hall, where he heard her talking to someone on the doorstep.

She came back holding a folded note in her hand. “It’s from Auntie Edith,” she said, triumphantly. “She sent it over by Timothy, Mrs. Burrell’s little boy. It’s to say Mrs. Burrell can’t manage with that leg and all the children to see to, and wants Auntie to stay over for the night until Mrs. Burrell’s sister arrives from Devizes.”

“What did you tell the boy?”

“Well, what could I? There’s four children to feed and get off to school in the morning.”

“You mean you don’t mind staying here alone?”

“I’m not alone, am I? Auntie said you intended staying until tomorrow night.”

“So I did but—well, in the circumstances…”

“Oh, fiddlesticks to the circumstances,” she said emphatically. “If Auntie doesn’t mind, I’m sure I don’t, for I’m enjoying my birthday. How about you, Edward?”

He said, with a laugh, “You’re a rare tonic, Betsy, especially to someone down in the dumps. You’re sure you don’t mind me staying over?”

“I’d like you to. I’ll cook you a slap up breakfast in the morning and maybe you’d take me a ride in your car, for I’ve never ridden in one in my life.”

“You mean you want to go now?”

“Oh no, not now. The morning will do. If I’ve waited twenty-eight years to ride in a motor, I can wait overnight.”

There was simply no resisting her, and it astonished him that he had hardly noticed her on his previous visits here. He said, “We’ve had enough dancing on the sort of meal you provide. Let’s treat ourselves to a glass of Edith’s port and take it in the parlour.” He picked up the decanter and two glasses and followed her into Edith’s cosily-furnished snuggery where he settled himself on the sofa. It was growing dusk outside now and a feeling of well-being stole over him as she drew the chintz curtains and paused on her way back to him to inhale the perfume from a bowl of roses Edith had set on an occasional table. He had few doubts now as to what was expected of him, and when she passed in front of him he reached out and grabbed her, running his hands over her plump bottom and saying, gaily, “Edith’s got a nice sense of timing. Sit on my knee, Betsy.”

“I’m no light-weight.”

“And all the better for it.”

She said, teasingly, “I thought you preferred skinny girls. Gilda was skinny.”

“Oh, to the devil with Gilda. Let’s forget Gilda for a bit.”

“All right.”

“Any man in his senses would want you, Betsy, and that isn’t the champagne talking,” he said, pulling her down, gathering her up with a kind of desperation so that she laughed.

“Here, hold on lad! We’ve got all night, haven’t we?”

She began to settle herself close to him but he said, running his hand over her hair, “I’d like to see you with those pins out of your hair, Betsy. You’ve got wonderful hair. Let it loose now. It must look even more wonderful freed of that comb and all those pins.” She looked at him seriously for a moment, her head on one side and then, getting up again, “I’ll have to do it upstairs. It’s quite a business. Wait here, I won’t be five minutes.”

He could feel his heart thumping and was aware of the constriction of his starched collar that seemed to be choking him so that he was strongly tempted to take it off, together with his jacket. But he thought, Here, that’s taking to
o much for granted. But then he heard her step on the stairs and she came in as h
e was in the act of getting up, her hair cascading over her shoulders and wearing a voluminous pink bathrobe, sashed about her waist and reaching down to her bare feet, but sufficiently open at the top to display her breasts.

“I was hot after all that food and drink and dancing,” she said, equably, “and you must be, too. Why don’t you take your jacket and collar off while I pour us some port?”

It was as though she had found some secret spring in his character, releasing a man charged with an abundance of tenderness and affection. He had always been reckoned the most dour and inarticulate of the family. “Closer to old Sam, in his mellow period, than any one of them,” Adam would say of him, and then his late-flowering high spirits had been checked and turned back by the monstrous assault on his pride.

What began as a kind of mutual dare, with undertones of body hunger on his part and high spirits on hers, transformed itself, in a matter of seconds, into a genuine giving and receiving.

He said, touching her neck with the tips of his fingers, “You’re beautiful, Betsy! You’re the most beautiful woman in the world.”

“You don’t have to say that. In fact, you don’t have to say anything. I needed you and you needed me. I’ve thought about you a lot. You’re not feeling guilty about me, are you?”

“I’m not in the least guilty, Betsy. Just grateful. Would you like me to go and come over again when Edith’s back?”

“You want to?”

“No, I don’t want to. I want this to happen again as often as you want it to. But I can’t expect that in the circumstances.”

“You mean Gilda?”

“I mean Gilda. She’ll divorce me in time, but when I can’t say. And I wouldn’t want you to be mixed up in a divorce.”

She considered this a moment, looking thoughtful, but the strain of concentration was too much for her and presently she smiled. “It’s late,” she said, “too late to go into all that. Would you like some tea?”

He laughed. Always, he thought, she would demonstrate this priceless gift of being able to sidestep the imponderables and find fulfilment in the moment, and the small change that emerged from the moment. “No,” he said, “I don’t want tea, Betsy. The only thing I want is you.”

3

It was doubtful, Rory Clarke had once told his English wife, whether Ireland would ever be free without more blood-letting, and that meant getting arms for the south. Watching, clause by clause, the tempestuous progress of the Home Rule Bill, she had argued, “But if it goes through, if you get what you’ve been fighting for all this time, would you ever vote for bloodshed, Rory?” He replied, gravely, “No. I’d do all I could to stop it. We’re not assassins.”

They were not so squeamish in the Balkans.

At dusk on June 27—about the time Lieutenant-Colonel Swann was watching Lance-Corporal Hunter strip and reassemble a Vickers machine-gun, and while his brother Edward, abed in England, was discovering the hitherto unimagined charms of Edith Wickstead’s hoydenish niece Betsy—five students, the eldest of them no more than twenty, met their schoolteacher mentor, twenty-three-year-old Danilo Ilic in the park at Sarajevo, after a final consultation at a neighbouring coffee house.

Ilic handed four of them a bomb, a revolver, and a dose of cyanide. To the fifth, Cabrinovic, he gave a bomb and a phial of poison. The poison, as it turned out, was all but harmless, but the bombs and guns were lethal, even in the hands of amateurs. Their use on the Appel Quay a few hours later were to herald a million fusillades clear across the world. Not least in Ireland, where bombs would burst and guns blaze long after the rest of Europe had sickened of killing.

Helen’s humiliating failure to serve Sinn Fein interests in the matter of the stolen briefcase had effectively blocked her admission into the inner councils, but it had one bonus. It had strengthened her relationship with Rory, for he was all too aware that she had at least tried, that she had been prepared to jettison family loyalties for his sake. And this was all that mattered so far as he was concerned.

From then on she enjoyed his complete confidence, even if she was disbarred from accompanying him on his endless journeyings about the country, and had perforce to remain the far side of a locked door when officers of the movement assembled in her home for conferences. Yet she did not resent this exclusion. Rory trusted her and she resolved to build upon his confidence by what could be described as pursuing an intensive course in Irish grievances, readily available to her in his well-stocked library.

She never read novels or a fashion journal nowadays. Her reading matter was entirely confined to pamphlets, newspaper clippings that Rory had pasted into albums that he referred to as “The Score,” and local histories and government surveys devoted to the economics of Ireland over the last century or so. She was appalled by what she read.