The Dangerous Years (16 page)

“Tom!” she said again. “I wish I could help you. I know you are in trouble.”

“Let us go up,” he said, tightening his grip on her arm. “We can't leave things like this. We must talk it out, decide to do something …”

“We can't go up,” she whispered, pretending to misunderstand, “Joan and John are up there.…”

“I know,” he said, ignoring that pretence, and implying by his glance that he knew it was pretence. “But we'll go up. There's nowhere else to go. Why not? We are responsible to ourselves. I'll tell you of that after.”

“After what?” she said, weakly.

He drew her up, taking the magazines from her lap and dropping them on the chair. He walked before her to the lift, and she followed. They stood in it facing each other, silent, looking into each others' eyes, and seeing there, by
the flash of light from the first floor, the second floor, the third floor, the plea, the determination, and the passionate welcome.

“You've passed the second floor,” she said, as he opened the lift door and drew her out.

“Yes, we must not disturb husband and wife.”

The corridor was empty, and Colonel Batten put his arm round her, an act of possession, or at least a claim. He felt her response, her hand clasping his coat, her face upturned to his.

They were in his room now. She stood, knowing what she was about to do.

“Come, Mary,” he said; and she found herself back in the past. But no, this was a timeless experience, the triumph of living, an autumnal fire leaping up suddenly, the fiercer because of the sere fuel. She found his mouth upon hers, and the expert hands fondling her. Her response was complete, fearless.

When Mary left husband and wife alone, they faced each other accusingly, and stood for some moments without a word, or a movement. Joan was pale still; obstinate, a schoolgirl at bay. So she seemed to John Boys, who looked only at her face, and was unaware of the rest of her person, the large hips, the full bust, the turbulent breathing that accentuated her figure.

“Call it off, Joan,” he said at last. “Look here, old girl…”

He found it impossible to put his emotions into words. He was not an articulate man, even in the small-talk of life. Now he floundered.

Joan could not help him; nor did she want to. She was angry, not only with him but with the whole of her world. It was conspiring to humiliate her, to refuse her claim to an adult inheritance. Why was that? If only she knew, she could put up a fight: but here she was only half-aware of what she wanted, clumsy over the cheat, and damning herself for that clumsiness.

“I'm not to blame,” she stammered. “I've tried to explain, but you won't understand. Mother should not have left us. I begged her not to.”

“She had to, Joan. We can't behave like this. It isn't decent. What on earth would people think if they heard us?”

“It's not a matter for public discussion. Teamwork is no use here. That may be what's wrong. You have no other criterion but that. Everything is teamwork with you. You go through life roped to a party.”

“Isn't marriage surely a matter of being roped together?”

“I can't argue. Either you keep to our compact, or I have to despise you.”

This stung him. He started towards her, then drew back angrily. He put a great hand to his moustache, and fumbled at his lips before speaking.

“That's going a bit far, Joan. Despise me? What on earth do you mean? That's a bit too much, old girl. Come now, acknowledge what I say. You're getting above yourself. It's a touch of hysteria. Let's calm down and talk this thing out afresh.…”

His reasonableness maddened her. She retreated to the door between the rooms.

“You must go!” she cried. “Go before we say something beastly to each other. I'm sorry I said that. I don't want to hurt you more than this. I've hurt you, but it's not my fault. I can't understand. We are unhappy together, John. We are unhappy.” She began to weep, and he crossed the room and pushed his handkerchief into her hand. His voice trembled, as though he too were unmanned.

“Pull yourself together, Joan. What's it all about?”

“You don't know, do you? You don't know? And who is to tell you?”

“Look here, you're wandering, my dear. I'm not blaming you for anything, Joan. Can't you see what I'm trying to say? I thought we had parted in one of our usual rows; just a bit of temper, like all the rest of our squabbles. Then I find you gone off like this. I mean, it is hardly civilised. It isn't the sort of thing one does. We are educated people, Joan. It's a matter of giving an
example in this modern world of loose morals and meaningless promises. I'm not a pi chap; my work prevents me from subscribing to all that sort of thing. But we know what's what, Joan, surely. Say you agree with me!”

He tried to touch her, but she backed away, and knocked her elbow against the door-post. Nursing it, she glared at him, her mouth working, and the tears wet on her gaunt cheeks. The parting in her fair, Eton-cropped hair had disappeared, and a strand lay across her forehead, scimitar-wise. John tried again to touch her, but not eagerly enough to succeed. He stood there, as awkward as she. They were both silent again, and desperately miserable.

“Damn all your ethics,” she said at last, as the significance of his last words sank into her mind, to add to her despair. “It is not a public matter. That is what I try to show you. It is something between us two.”

He flushed and his mouth set obstinately. His manly appearance was only the more accentuated by this. Dropping his hand, he retreated a little.

“Oh well,” he said, coldly, like a schoolmaster weary of arguing with a refractory pupil, “you persist in harping on that theme. I'm surprised, Joan. We've been at it for years now. This is something that cannot be forced, or done in cold blood. It must come naturally; all the books say so.”

Joan began to laugh. She laid her head against the door-jamb, turned up her throat and face, and laughed, her breasts shaking with hysteria.

“Oh, really! You defeat me, John. But for heaven's sake let's put a stop to this. We get no farther. What's the use of your pursuing me? I can't see the use of it. We might as well live by correspondence. You can tell me all about your work at the laboratory, and your mountaineering. … It can be done just as well by post.” She
suddenly determined to be cruel, afraid of her love for this unsatisfactory husband.

“Now please go away. I am staying here with Mother for a while. You have had your sport during the Christmas holidays. I'm carrying on with mine. You can make what excuses you like in Cambridge. Say I'm unwell! It's not a lie. I am miserable and degraded. And you are responsible.”

“Degraded?” he said the word incredulously. “You are mad, Joan. That is what's wrong. I'd say you were wicked, if I were that sort of chap. But I believe you are ill, nervously ill. True enough, I'll tell people that, if they want to pry into our affairs. True enough! I had thought our marriage was an ideal one. We have done everything together. No two friends …”

“Ideal! Ideal indeed! It could not have been purer. It must have begun at Roedean and Rugby, over a hockey match. Oh God, the lovely, wholesome mud on our knees, John! Look at them. Look at them!”

She held out a long leg, and burst into laughter both harsh and ugly. John winced, and stepped back.

“I don't understand you, Joan. You are utterly unlike yourself. I wish your mother had not left us. Look here, you are her daughter, after all. She would be infinitely distressed if she heard all this nonsense, and the innuendo behind it. For don't think I can't understand what you are driving at. The humiliation is not all on your side, mind you.”

He suddenly drooped, his huge frame appearing to shrink. Joan saw the change and it made her more merciless. She strode towards him and shook her fist in his face.

“You poor fool, John. You will never understand. My mother, indeed! I
wonder
! Perhaps we neither of us understand her. She has brought me up to this way of life, which drove me to marriage with you—though that
is not all. There
was
something else to it. I did love you, I did want to please you and to share your life and interests. But you have assumed too much, with your schoolboy acceptances. I'm a woman, I'm your wife, not a … not a … not a …
chum
!”

They faced each other now with increased desperation, both of them afraid, and both angry. Joan gathered herself for further cruelty.

“Mother may be responsible, after all, as you say. She was the one who decided to hide the flesh and blood. She was the one who feared something. I can't blame her. She was grieving for my father, whom she had worshipped. I still remember him, and how I felt I was an interloper, while he was at home. She must have been abandoned to him; abandoned, yes, you know what I mean, or don't you? Then when he was killed, she had to face that loss; more than his death, perhaps. I can see it now. This misery has opened my eyes. Thank you for that, at least. But you must go. I'm not blaming you any more. We just can't carry on as we were, that's all. I may have needed a man who would wake me up, and you a woman who could bring you out of that epicene world of school and university and the decent country parsonage where nothing is mentioned, nothing done that is not ethical and orthodox.… But I'm raving. I'm getting out of my depth. That's what is wrong. I'm not used to the depths. And now they are gaping before us, and you won't recognise the fact. You think Mother does not know: but I wonder. If she could hear us now, would she realise what it is, the misunderstandings of the blood, the sense of shame because there has been no cause for shame; the
disgusting
purity! Yes, that startles you, doesn't it!”

John Boys decided that the situation was out of hand, and he tried to bring it down to earth.

“Look here, my dear girl. We can't go on like this, arguing and saying things we shall regret later on. I'll
tell you what. I've brought your skis over with me. It was my idea, when I found you had come to Paris, to pick you up here and for us to go on to St. Moritz to join the University Club there. It will do us both a world of good. You've had too much indoor stuff this term; all the year indeed, cramming away over the old boy's research. Let him stew for a bit. He's gone off to the States. You come with me now, and get some fresh air and mountain air at that. Look, I'll leave you now, and come back to-morrow morning. I'm in a scruffy little hotel near the Madeleine, somewhere behind the American Embassy in a street called the Rue Boissy d'Anglas. One of our lab. men told me of it; damn cheap though, and that's good enough, since the beds are clean. I'll be over in the morning, then; good-night, old girl.”

He approached her, and kissed her cheek, then patted her on the back. “Keep smiling, old thing,” he said, and was about to retreat, when the door opened, and a child peered in, his beady eyes alive with curiosity and enquiry. The man stared at this apparition, and Adrian Batten entered, soberly now, and shut the door behind him. He looked shyly at John Boys, then approached Joan, increasing his pace as he neared her, until at the last, he ran to her and clasped her round the thighs, nearly knocking her over in his intensity. He reached up and took her hand, then higher, and drew her face down to his, to kiss her.

‘Joan!” he said, his childish voice piping high with anxiety. “I can't find Uncle Tom. I thought this was his room, because I came here before, three doors from the lift. I remember counting my footsteps … But this isn't his room. But I've found you. I wanted to find you, Joan. I ought not to be out, and Father will be angry. I can't bear that. He frightens me, he says nothing!”

The child was over-excited, and he clung to Joan desperately. She dared not repulse him, but she was at a
loss how to deal with such a violent concentration of feeling. She looked appealingly at her husband, their differences for the moment put aside. He turned back, curious to learn what all this was about, and who the child might be. He saw an ordinary urchin, wearing indoor slippers, his legs blue with cold: a large head with tousled, soft hair; but it was the eyes that held his attention, the eyes of an adult, and an adult with some vivid purpose in life. But they made the child appear slightly abnormal to John Boys, and he was prepared to disapprove.

“Who is this?” he said, gravely.

“The doctor's son,” said Joan, stooping over the child and trying to comfort him, for he was now shaking, and she feared that he would begin to cry. And the idea of this particular child crying was alarming. He was normally so gentle, assured, even serene, in spite of his intensity of mood. His tears would be as heavy, as bitter as those of an old man, dragged from the depths of experience, worth their weight in sorrow.

“Look, Adrian, you must let me take you home again. You've come out in your slippers, and you'll catch cold. No overcoat either! What will they say if they know? But we must smuggle you back again. Come, I'll get my coat.”

But he would not release her. He buried his face in her stomach, and murmured from there, “Father has been angry about the American. He said I must not play again to him, or go sailing my boat with him. But he is a friend of Uncle Tom, and I don't know what to do.”

“I know what you ought to do. You ought to go to bed. Why, it is nearly seven o'clock, Adrian. Let us forget the American. Don't you worry about that. Your father knows what is best for you, surely? And your mother too, she will look after everything, I'm sure.”

While she was thus trying to comfort the waif, her
husband had gone down on his knees and was rubbing the boy's legs, to restore warmth to them.

“Poor little blighter! He's as cold as charity. Damn silly, letting him escape like this. There's frost about.”