I Shall Not Want (10 page)

Mary Kent's own lesson with the little ones had been almost as disjointed. She was not as intent as she should have been upon Pharaoh's daughter and the priest of Midian. Ever since that night when John Marco had said that he loved her she had thought of nothing else; he had absorbed her; she now accepted quite naturally the fact that in some obscure way she belonged to him already. Weddings in the Amosite dispensation are rarely the break-neck climax to a whirl-wind engagement; the affair is left to mature slowly, and the banns are read usually nine months to a year after the couple has become betrothed. She knew therefore that there would be a long, seemingly endless, ordeal of waiting before that night when at last, worn-out with waiting, she could lay her fair head down on the same pillow that supported his dark one. But for a whole week now it had seemed to be the one moment in life worth waiting for.

All the same, his impetuousness, the lack of reticence in his behaviour, rather surprised her. He was actually waiting there ready for her, outside the infants' room door. For the sake of an extra thirty-seconds of her company he had not gone along to the common room where the teachers, all five of them, left their hats and coats on chairs round the room and Mr. Tuke left his, importantly, on the table. She felt foolish and a little flattered by it all as she went into the common-room beside John Marco and knew that the eyes of the other teachers, Mr. Chirkwell (who was also the organist), Miss Mold, and Mrs. Birdlip were upon them.

And the walk back to the shop with his elbow up against hers had the same quality of delicious unreality about it. She felt so happy that she wondered if the other people they met would notice it; happiness of that kind seemed impossible to conceal. And John Marco himself was different, too. He looked younger. His colour was higher than usual and his eyes were brighter. At Chapel that morning he had looked pale; she had been worried about him. Now, with his jet-black bowler and his neat silk tie
he looked as if he could take all earth and heaven in his stride.

It was obvious from the moment they got inside the flat that Mrs. Kent had put herself out for them. She was wearing a brown velvet dress with a high lace collar, supported all round with little props of whalebone. It gave her a rich, ceremonial, presence, like a latter-day Queen Elizabeth. Even Mr. Kent had been made to get up and dress. In his blue serge suit with the high butterfly collar which showed how pathetically thin and wrinkled his neck was, he was striving to make himself a fit consort for Mrs. Kent's magnificence. It was only the plaster in the middle of his back that thwarted him. When he rose to shake John Marco by the hand he walked with a curious crab-like motion, endeavouring to keep the waist-band of his trousers from rubbing up against the plaster.

The tea was a lavish, rather splendid meal—very different
from
the hasty, improvised snack that Mrs. Kent had knocked together last time. They all sat round the table for it. And they sat there for some time. It was not the sort of thing that could be hurried through; it opened with sardines and it closed with meringues and sweet biscuits. To John Marco, used to the close catering of old Mrs. Marco, there seemed an eye-opening extravagance about such a spread. He kept imagining a successful future in which there would be whole vistas of such meals, only with Mary Kent instead of her mother, seated at the head of the table, with one white finger engagingly cocked as she poured from the silver tea-pot.

But a sudden misgiving came to him and he wondered whether he could ever give her this security, this sense of a heaped fire in the winter and plenty to eat in the larder, that she had always known. He wondered even whether he had any right to ask her father to let her share the thin days of a linen-draper who was still only an assistant. Then he caught her eyes, grey and quiet and smiling, and knew that he would have to ask.

When tea was over, Mrs. Kent and Mary cleared away. They left with trays loaded with the spoiled dishes and did not return immediately. John Marco found himself alone with Mr. Kent. Mr. Kent took out his meerschaum pipe, the bowl of which with careful devoted smoking had become mellowed into a deep honeyed, coffee-colour, and told John Marco that Mrs. Kent did not object to the gentlemen smoking once tea was over. When John Marco told him that he did not smoke at all, Mr. Kent seemed surprised, and also, for some obscure reason, rather pleased. He stood himself in front of the fireplace and smoked on in silence. But he did not seem somehow to be altogether at his ease. It was as though he were waiting all the time to say something—or hoping that John Marco would say it for him. John Marco could not help noticing that Mr. Kent was not looking in his direction at all: he was staring with a fixed, self-conscious expression at the door. John Marco turned: Mrs. Kent was standing there behind him, making little signalling gestures to her husband. When she saw that she was observed she withdrew hurriedly, and the two men were left together again.

Mr. Kent took the pipe from his mouth and gave a dry, nervous cough.

“That was my wife,” he said. “She wants me to ask you something.”

John Marco drew himself up. But Mr. Kent was not at first able to express himself.

“Mrs. Kent and I . . .” he began, and stopped. “If you don't mind my asking,” he began again, “we wondered, Mrs. Kent and me, whether . . . “he was in difficulties once more, however: the words would not shape themselves. He took out his handkerchief and blew his nose loudly as though to give himself confidence.

But John Marco interrupted him.

“I love Mary,” he said simply. “I want your permission to marry her.”

The words seemed at first to reassure Mr. Kent: it was all that he wanted to know. He liked the look of the young
man, and he was ready to trust him. But there was Mrs. Kent as well. She had prepared a long catechism for him to memorise. He started to go through with it.

“Are your . . . your prospects good enough to marry on?” he asked.

The question as he put it sounded strangely different from the version that Mrs. Kent had dinned into him. As he said it, it was shy and diffident; there was a note of implied apology in his voice for having asked the question at all.

“I shan't ask her to marry me,” John Marco replied, surprised at the moment at his own calmness in the face of Mr. Kent's perturbation, “until I can give her everything she needs. It may mean one year or it may even mean two. I can only say that in Morgan and Roberts' I'm well thought of. I have reason to believe that I shall be made manager one day.”

“Have . . . have you saved any capital?” Mr. Kent enquired.

John Marco paused; he drew in his lips for a moment. The image of his trivial savings transformed last week at a single stroke into something solid and substantial rose before him.

“I have nearly two hundred pounds,” he said quietly.

“So,” said Mr. Kent respectfully. “So.”

They were model answers. Mr. Kent let out a deep sigh at the relief of them. There was good money there already; and even so he was to be spared at least another twelve months, possibly another twenty-four, of his daughter's company. And only the proprietor of a one-man shop everlastingly struggling to keep a good face to the world on an income of sixpences for new watch glasses and five shillingses for as many hours' work, could know how desirable the managership of a flourishing draper's business sounded. Mr. Kent allowed himself to sit down and relax.

“You see,” he said, “Mary's only twenty. It's nothing of an age. I don't hold with young marriages; the girl
hasn't had time to know her own mind yet. We shouldn't want anything to happen until she's twenty-one. And then only if those prospects of yours have turned out all right. She's still a child remember.”

He was smoking peacefully again when Mrs. Kent and Mary came back into the room. The two men rose and the group reassembled itself round the fire. But Mrs. Kent was restless: she wanted to learn the result of Mr. Kent's cross-examination. And she knew that she would have to ask him for it. It was the greatest of her grievances against him that in the twenty-four years in which they had been married that he had never been known to do anything until she had badgered him to do so; and even then she had to bully him still further to get his assurance that the thing had been done. At this very moment, he was sitting back complacently pulling at his pipe as though what had transpired was not of the slightest importance to either of them.

But she caught his eye eventually and Mr. Kent rose obediently.

“Come along, Alexander,” she said. “It's your medicine time.”

John Marco waited for the door to be shut upon them and then he went over and took Mary's two hands in his.

“I've spoken to your father,” he said. “He understands.”

“He's given his consent then?”

John Marco did not reply. He pulled her towards him until she was facing him and her pure, grey eyes were on the level with his dark ones.

“Kiss me, Mary,” he said.

They kissed lip to lip like lovers, with his arms round her. When he released her, her colour had mounted and she was breathing fast. She went up to the mirror on the over mantel and began re-arranging her hair.

John Marco stood regarding her. His eyes ran up and down her longingly, lingering on the slim waist, the small
feet under the hem of her plain dress, the white hands raised to her hair. He could afford to watch; one day he would be possessed of all that beauty. She would be his entirely.

When she came away from the mirror, he put his arm round her shoulders, but gently this time as though to comfort her.

“We shall have to wait,” he said. “We shall have to be patient. But every day now will bring it nearer.”

“I shall wait,” she said, “as long as you ask me to.”

“But we shall see each other every day,” he went on. “There won't ever be those weeks again when I used to see you only on Sundays.”

“Did you mind so much?” she asked.

“Oh, Mary.”

They were interrupted at this point by the return of the parents. They entered tactfully, leaving a pause between turning the handle of the door and actually stepping into the room. As for Mrs. Kent, she seemed to have been crying; she kept dabbing at her eyes and her nose with a screwed-up handkerchief which she held stuffed in her hand. But even so, Mrs. Kent was not a Woman to surrender her only daughter quietly and without a struggle.

“Alexander's just told me,” she said. “It's come as a great shock.”

“Mother ...” Mary Kent began. But Mrs. Kent stopped her.

“I don't say I'm not pleased,” she went on, “but I can't quite get used to the idea. I still think of Mary as such a little girl.” She paused. “And I don't want to think of her making herself unhappy by doing anything silly just on the spur of the moment.”

John Marco turned to her.

“I've told Mr. Kent that we shall wait,” he said in the same calm voice of authority that had impressed Mr. Kent. “We shall wait until I can give Mary everything she's been used to. I was telling her just now that no
matter how much we want it for all our sakes it can't be at once.”

Mrs. Kent opened her eyes a little wider. He seemed to be such a reliable, level-headed young man; and the fears that she had been suffering, subsided a little. When he came to say good-bye Mrs. Kent did the most astonishing thing: she kissed him. He kissed her obediently in return.

Then Mr. Kent took Mrs. Kent by the hand because she had suddenly started crying again, and they thoughtfully allowed Mary to see him off alone. The two lovers stood out in the dim, narrow landing together.

“May I see you to-morrow night?” he asked.

“We'll see,” she said.

They kissed again, and he held her there so that the gas-light fell on her face; her hair shone.

“We'll go together and buy a ring,” he said. “We'll buy it on Thursday.”

“I shall be so proud,” she told him.

“I'll give you this now,” he said suddenly.

He felt in his pocket and produced a thin gold ring which had once been Mrs. Marco's.

“We'll break it and each keep half,” he added.

“You won't be able to break it,” she said.

He smiled and, pressing the tiny circle of metal between his thumb and forefinger, he destroyed it.

“There,” he said proudly.

“I'll keep it always,” she said.

She came right down to the bottom of the stairs and they kissed again, foolishly in the manner of lovers afraid of separation. Then he opened the front door and stepped into the windy emptiness of the street.

But the street was not empty. Standing opposite, under the solitary street-lamp was a woman. She was motionless, gazing up at the window of the room in which he and Mary had been sitting. He did not need the light of the lamp to show him who it was. She was dressed all in black
and he had seen her face. At the sight of her a wave of coldness ran over him.

Then, noticing that the front door had opened and that there were people on the doorstep, the figure under the lamp turned and began to walk rapidly away.

The January sale at Morgan and Roberts' was not a trifling affair; every department was affected, and old Mr. Morgan, who became agitated at such times, kept going out onto the pavement (a thing which in the ordinary way he never did) to see that in this annual Spring-time clearance, when the mistakes of the past twelve months were being remaindered at a fraction of their usual price, dignity was nevertheless still being observed. For, during that desperate week of cut-throat selling, the whole appearance of the shop was changed. Instead of two or three elegant china hands delicately displaying the latest fashions in kid and suède gloves, whole boxes full of gloves were piled into the window, marked “Very Special: 8/11 reduced to 5/11,” or “Cannot be repeated 5/11 now 3/6.” And in place of the unsmiling wax ladies who for upwards of a generation had worn the new models in millinery on their heads, the hats were simply crammed into the available space, stuck onto pegs or even left dangling on clips from a cord suspended from the ceiling.