Outbreak of Love (28 page)

When he came home he looked so innocent that Diana had the feeling that the barrier she was trying to maintain had dissolved, not through any deliberate action by either of them, but of its own accord. She had to continue for these three months a life of which the habits were not in accord with her intentions. There were moments like this when Wolfie, by some unconscious expression of his personality, so much more effective than his deliberate oglings, made the impulse of her habits irresistible. She had to stop herself laughing and ruffling his mousey hair. He did not notice how near she was to a reconciliation, as on the way home he had turned both his sorrows and his pleasures into music and they did not worry him any more. He went to his music-room where he stayed up late composing a little nocturne. He began in a minor key, in a melancholy reflective mood, which was interrupted by a succession of airy scherzos. He called it “Helter Skelter”.

While he was composing this, Diana was trying to reason out and justify her own position. She told herself something like this: “I either have to stay or to go. If I stay, what happens? I shall be most of the time alone in this too large and shabby house, keeping it in order for no real purpose. I shan't have Josie. Wolfie will always go out for his amusements, respectable or otherwise. His behaviour has freed me from any duty to him. But I'm no longer angry. I can't use my anger as an excuse for leaving. That's weak and negative. But as I'm no longer angry with him, it makes the present situation more difficult. I may very easily behave in a way which he would afterwards be justified in thinking underhand. I'm walking on a razor's edge till I go, but I must go. Apart from my own wishes I must keep my promise to Russell. There can be no question of my not going—none at all. If I stay here what will my life be? Harry will come down from Queensland and disapprove of us for two or three weeks every year. Daisy will come to stay when she's tired of house-keeping, or is going to have a baby. Josie, the one who most cares for me, will be on the other side of the world. If I stayed it would be allowing sentimental feelings about the past to spoil the future.

“If I go what happens? I suppose some sort of scandal is unavoidable, but it may not leak out for a year, and it will only be talked of in Melbourne. The family may not like it, but I don't owe them much, and should I sacrifice the remainder of my life to them? No one will know what I am doing in Europe, and by the time a divorce becomes public, Josie will be well established with her in-laws, and it may even be possible to keep the details from them. Anyhow, surely I've come to the time when I may consider myself. My life with Russell will be wonderful, all that I used to long for. We understand each other perfectly. There is never a flat moment when we are together. I am very fond of him, and I'm sure that when once we are away and free from all these uncertainties and stratagems, I shall love him dearly.”

She was determined to hold to her decision, but because of the danger of the habit of her life weakening her intention, she suggested to Wolfie that he should go and stay with Daisy for a while, as she and Josie were entirely occupied with preparations for the wedding, clothes, invitations and other details, which were of no interest to him.

In spite of this she found it more difficult to arrange meetings with Russell than before the engagement. If she went into Melbourne it was usually to go shopping with Josie, and if she went alone she attracted more attention as the mother of the girl who was to marry Captain Wyckham. People whom she only slightly knew, or who had let their acquaintance fade out when they found that she was not likely to be socially useful, now, as before Elsie's party, crossed the street to speak to her. Diana always responded to signs of friendship, but she felt the advances of these people to be more insolent than their former coldness, and they gave her a contempt for the society she was soon to leave, so that if it were not for Josie she would hardly have taken the trouble to conceal her meetings with Russell.

In those days it was impossible to go into Melbourne without meeting half a dozen or more people whom she knew, and it appeared quite natural that, when she was with Josie, they should run into Russell and have tea together. She wanted Josie to strengthen the liking she showed for him on the evening when they had dined at the French restaurant. One day she said to her:

“I think of coming to England soon after you're married. Would you like that?”

“Oh Mummy, that would be lovely!” exclaimed Josie, delighted.

“Do you think John would mind? I don't want him to think that he's to be saddled with his mother-in-law. I wouldn't stay with you.”

“He'd love it. He admires you tremendously. He often says so. Would Daddy come too?”

“No. He wouldn't be able to leave the Conservatorium for so long. Daisy would look after him.”

When Diana next saw John she told him of her intention, and he said with apparently genuine pleasure: “That will be splendid. You must stay at Wootton Speke. You'll like my father.”

Although Wolfie was staying with Daisy and Bill Byngham at Frankston, it was not far away, and he sometimes looked in at Brighton to fetch a piece of music, or another pipe. He arrived one day at tea-time and as Josie was out, Diana took the opportunity of telling him that she was definitely going to Europe.

“Am I not to come?” asked Wolfie, looking offended but not seriously hurt.

“You can't leave the Conservatorium for so long,” said Diana. “Daisy and Bill can come here to look after you.”

“It is strange that my wife leaves me,” said Wolfie. He made no further protest. After the bleak atmosphere of his home in recent weeks he was thoroughly enjoying the rollicking family affection in Daisy's house. The prospect of continuing this, with grandchildren clinging to his knee, continuous talk about art and music, students sleeping in all the spare beds and on the drawing-room sofa, wine and beer at any hour of the day or night, and no one to question his assignations, appeared more agreeable than trailing round Europe in Diana's exclusive and disapproving company. Also he was lazy, and his old ambition to gain a European reputation had died. He was rather frightened of the idea.

When she had told Wolfie, Diana booked her passage on a ship sailing on the eighth of August. John and Josie would have sailed a fortnight, and Russell a week earlier, the latter to await her and join the ship in Perth. A few days after this she met John, who told her, as if it were very good news:

“Miss Rockingham's going home by the same ship as you. She was very pleased when I told her that you would be on board.”

Diana tried to show equal pleasure, and to conceal the dismay she felt. She rang up Russell in the evening and told him.

He sounded even more disturbed than herself, and suggested that they should postpone their departure for another week.

“I've told everyone I'm going on the eighth,” said Diana. “I can't give any reason for changing.”

They did not like to discuss it on the telephone, and they met next day in the Gallery to do so.

“Another thing,” said Diana, “is that Miss Rockingham, who has been charming to Josie, and very friendly whenever I have met her, will think it extraordinarily rude if I change my ship for no apparent reason, as soon as I hear that she's going on it.”

Russell admitted this, and suggested that Diana should also disembark at Perth and then they could sail together a week later. Or she could go to Colombo, pretending she had always wanted to see it, and wait there.

“But I hate those hot Asiatic places,” said Diana. “I couldn't pretend with conviction. We can't really go dodging about the Indian Ocean like that.”

They laughed a little at their predicament.

“I suppose I shall just have to appear surprised to find you on the ship,” said Russell. “But people know we know each other—especially Miss Rockingham. She lunched with us.”

“I wonder how well they know.”

“It will make the voyage a bit difficult,” said Russell thoughtfully.

A few days later, when she met him again, he was even more grave, and talked mostly about the effect of the assassination of the Archduke Ferdinand. This had shocked people in Melbourne but they regarded it as the sort of thing to be expected in the Balkans, and did not imagine that it could possibly affect their own lives, any more than Diana would have thought that the dismissal of a lift-boy in a block of Collins Street flats could decide her own future. Russell, probably more European-minded than anyone she knew, was anxious about its repercussions.

“But surely there couldn't be a European war nowadays?” she said, and added: “John is in the army.”

“It couldn't last a month,” said Russell. “It would be over before he got there.”

“How would it affect us? One can't help thinking of that.”

“I don't see that it need affect us. The war wouldn't be in England. We might get mixed up in a naval battle on the way.”

“I'm prepared to risk that,” said Diana. “Our affairs would become very unimportant.”

The wedding was now only a fortnight ahead, and Diana was taken up with arrangements and could think of little else. The presents began to arrive. Although from the same people, they were far more expensive than those sent to Daisy, again on the principle “to him that hath”. They had to be opened and a list made for Josie to write letters of thanks, and then re-packed and sent to Elsie's house where they were to be on view, guarded by plain clothes detectives in the billiard room. Arrangements had to be made to ship them to England after that. She had not only to arrange Josie's trousseau but to design the bridesmaids' dresses and to think about her own.

There were two rolls left of those beautiful stuffs which her mother had left her, one of blue silk, and one almost flame colour though soft in tone. She knew that she looked her best in red, that she could “carry it off”, but she thought it would be too striking to wear at a wedding, especially her daughter's. Yet it was not only this consideration which made her choose the blue. She could not be certain that there would not be other acquaintances besides Miss Rockingham on the ship, when Russell joined her at Fremantle, people who knew her better, and that in far less than a year she might be the subject of scandal. Then, as was their habit, the scandalmongers would give a retrospective resumé of her character, and say: “What decent woman would wear red at her daughter's wedding?” All through the preparations, and at the wedding itself, she had this feeling that she was under the threat of hostile criticism.

Harry arrived from Queensland a week before the wedding day, and increased this feeling. He exuded disapproval. Diana had scraped some more butter from her bread to send him to the most expensive, and presumably the best “public school” in the state, from which he returned with reverence for the rich grandsons of Scottish crofters who were his schoolfellows, and contempt for his family and their characteristics, their lively wit, their spontaneous affections, their creative ability and above all for their indifference to public opinion when their sense of justice was affronted. When his schooling was finished he went off as a jackeroo on the sheep station of one of his school friends, obviously to escape from humiliating associations with his relatives. Diana was distressed at his attitude, and disgusted to have paid so much to turn her son from a real into a synthetic gentleman. He now talked about “good form” and called Wolfie “sir” though every intonation and gesture he used to his father was one of contempt.

She had hoped that a year on the station would have made him more sensible, but it had only made him a little coarser in appearance and defiantly “Australian”. He saw, perhaps truly, that his relatives were simply the survivors of the early administrators of the colony, with the self-sufficiency they had inherited from those people, still half-English in their attitude and entirely so in their values, and that they had no future in the country. It may be of interest to note here that the 1914 war finished them. They no longer survived as a group of any importance, or at any rate of social importance, as their qualities could not survive amongst people whose only respect was for money. It was odd that Harry combined his talk of “good form” and his “sirs” with this attitude, but like most young people, he was slightly muddled. He was rather like a man who buys highly varnished imitation Georgian furniture, but thinks the genuine antique too shabby. So he was angry at Josie's marrying an Englishman, especially one with aristocratic associations, as he thought that it would perpetuate the malaise of his family. If, on the other hand, the daughter of one of his squatter friends had bought such a husband, as Clara Bumpus had done, he would not have objected, as that would have shown the power of their money, which he revered.

Wolfie came back from Frankston on the same day that Harry arrived. He was bursting with happy paternal affection and was about to embrace his son, but Harry shook hands and said offhandedly: “Hullo, sir.” Wolfie looked very hurt and Diana was angry. A day or two later, when Harry again, beneath the formality of his address, showed his contempt for his father, she turned on him saying: “The slightest of Wolfie's preludes is of more value to the human race than anything you are likely to produce in the whole of your boorish life.”

This sort of thing increased her feeling of being in a false position, of being in a way, treacherous. She hotly defended Wolfie when she was planning to leave him for another man, but she could not bear Harry's attitude. He must have inherited his pomposity from some ancestor of Wolfie's. On Wolfie it was an amusing gossamer film of manner which fell off at the slightest provocation. In Harry it appeared to be solid throughout.

Another incident, if it could be called that, which puzzled her, happened one afternoon when she went to tea with Maysie. Miss Bath was there and apparently found great difficulty in answering when Diana spoke to her. She seemed so offended that Diana thought that by some oversight she could not have been invited to the wedding, and when she got home she looked up the list, but found the tick against Miss Bath's name which showed that she had accepted.