Steenie handed Constance her glass of champagne. She did not drink it. Steenie drank his very fast, then poured another. Constance was now rearranging an amusing group of objects on a side table. She moved a small porphyry column a fraction of an inch. She frowned at the flowers—Steenie’s one contribution to the room. They were large, heavily scented white lilies—expensive lilies; they had used up one whole week’s worth of Steenie’s meager allowance.
Steenie began to feel sicker still. There was another reason why this room made him uneasy: Most of the contents had been paid for by Constance—and, since Constance had no money of her own, that meant they had been paid for by her husband. Constance was generous with Stern’s money. It acquired things Steenie could never have afforded himself, since his father had been, Steenie felt, remarkably ungenerous over the whole matter of his new home. With grumbling reluctance, Denton had stumped up the money for the lease; he had refused—in an extremely graceless way—to stump up any more. Steenie had been expecting an advance against his trust fund; it had been refused. Constance, waving a checkbook, had stepped into the breach. Considering she had been married such a short time, Steenie thought she had learned to spend her husband’s money very fast. He had risked one such observation, and Constance had given him a wry look.
“Man and wife are one flesh,” she said. “One bank account, too. Remember that, Steenie.”
If it had not been for Constance, this studio would have been furnished with castoffs from his parents’ homes. He would have been surrounded by memories. Constance had saved him from this. Nevertheless, Steenie felt he had been dictated to; he also felt he had been compromised. A specific indication of that fact confronted him that very evening: The guest list for his exhibition preview, which of course included Constance and her new husband, accordingly excluded his aunt Maud. Maud, when told this by an embarrassed, squirming Steenie, had behaved with dignity, decorum, and (Steenie felt) a magnificent unconcern. She said she
quite
understood; she would make her own, private visit to the gallery at a later date. Would Steenie perhaps keep back for her one small painting which she had always liked? Steenie had agreed. The painting in question was now the only one in the gallery bearing a small red sticker to indicate it was presold. Looking at this sticker, Steenie had loathed himself.
Steenie downed his second glass of champagne. He hesitated, then decided to risk a third.
“Lady Cunard
is
coming?” His voice came out in a squeak.
“Of course she’s coming, Steenie. I told you. She promised me.”
“And Stern—do you think he’ll be able to get away?”
“Montague? Oh, he’ll come. I shall meet him there. He has some meeting first, I think.”
Her tone was careless, as it often was when she spoke of her husband. Steenie, who knew that tone of hers, and knew Constance used it to disguise strength of feeling, looked at her closely. As always, her face revealed nothing.
“Oh, well, I’d like to know what he thinks of them. If he doesn’t make it, I shall understand. I know how busy he always is—”
“Busy?” Constance seemed to find this amusing. “Oh, he is always busy. But he is also very organized. Meeting after meeting, right through the day—yet he fits marriage into his schedule, Steenie. He is very good about that.”
“Fits it into his schedule?”
“Of course.” Constance gave an odd smile. “Do you know, he returns to me every evening at exactly the same time? Six. Six-thirty, at the very latest. I could set the clock by the turn of his key in the lock. I wait for him upstairs—well, downstairs sometimes. Do you know what we do then, Steenie? We go to bed.”
Steenie was startled. It was unusual for Constance to be so frank. He took nervous refuge—as he had begun to do—in a passable imitation of Conrad Vickers.
“
No!
Constance, darling,
every
night—always the same time? Too impressive. Such ardor—”
“Every night. Always the same time. Other times as well, of course—but always then. From Downing Street to bed. From war to his wife. It’s strange, I find. Tell me truthfully now, would you ever have suspected such a thing?”
“From Stern? No. I suppose not. He always seems so very controlled….”
“I know.” Constance gave a small shiver. She appeared to hesitate. Steenie flung himself down on the sofa Constance had chosen and Stern had paid for. He adopted an artistic pose.
“Darling!” he said, throwing up his hands. “It’s too riveting. I have to admit, I
had
wondered. Is he … I mean, when you—”
“I shan’t be indiscreet.” Constance’s face became closed. “I have no intention of telling my marital secrets to you, Steenie.”
“You mean there are secrets?”
“Perhaps. One or two. Montague is—”
“The most incredible lover.” Steenie giggled. “The stuff of every woman’s dreams: masterful, dominant—I can imagine that. Connie, my sweet, I feel positively envious.”
“I could love him, Steenie.”
Constance put down her champagne glass. She turned away. Steenie stared at her in astonishment.
“
What
did you say?”
“I said I could love him. I come … very near to loving him. That was something I never expected.
Like
him, yes; admire him, even, or respect him—I expected all that. But not love. I hadn’t calculated on love. I used to think … Well, never mind what I thought. I’m probably wrong in any case. It’s just a passing thing—being a new wife….”
Steenie began to regret the champagne he had drunk. It was clouding his mind and slowing his responses, just when he wanted to concentrate. For a moment he forgot about being Conrad Vickers.
“Connie, I don’t understand. You sound so resentful. He’s your husband. Why shouldn’t you love him?”
“Because I don’t want to love
anyone
.” She turned back to Steenie in an angry way. “Is that so hard to understand? I don’t trust love. I don’t believe in it. It weakens people. It makes them dependent—stupid little puppets, with someone else pulling the strings. I don’t want to be like that—I never did. Most women can’t wait, of course. Love, love, love—they think of nothing else. They speak of nothing else. It’s a disease with them. Well, I don’t want to catch that disease. I’d sooner have malaria, typhus, tuberculosis—anything….”
“Connie—”
“It’s true! I’d rather my lungs rotted than my mind—and that’s what happens when someone loves. Their mind goes. Their thinking goes. Their
self
goes. I’ve seen it often enough—”
“Connie, stop this.” Steenie found that her remarks came too close to him for comfort. He stood. “You’re working yourself up for no reason at all. You don’t mean half you say—”
“Oh, but I do,” Constance replied more quietly. “I have thought about this very carefully. My husband does not love me, you see. He was never even
in
love with me. He made that very clear. He has spelled it out to me, several times, face to face.”
“Connie, don’t be foolish.” Steenie stared at her in consternation. “Listen—if Stern said that, he cannot have meant it. He … is playing a game, that’s all. People do. Conrad does it with me. Stern just doesn’t want you to be too sure you’ve made a conquest. You’re a woman. Women are bored by easily available men—you especially. If Stern threw himself down at your feet, languishing with love, you’d hate it—you know you would.”
“Perhaps.” Constance turned away. “I might respect him less. I might think his judgment poor. I am not worth loving—I always knew that. Still, I might have liked to be loved, just once.”
“That’s ridiculous.” Steenie stared at her in astonishment. “You know that’s not true. Lots of people love you. I love you. Look at all those men, following you about, before you married—they were besotted with you—”
“Ah, but they did not know me.”
“Well, Stern must know you.”
“No. He does not.” Constance shook her head. “He would like to, I think sometimes. I intrigue him, you know—like one of those clever Chinese puzzles. He would like to take me apart, put me back together again—and then he would lose interest at once. So, I am very careful. It would be a bad idea, don’t you think, if he knew how I felt? I shall never tell him, Steenie. Not if we are married for fifty years. I shall never let him be sure who I am, whether I love him or not. The politics of love, you see? I intend to keep a balance of power.”
“That’s absurd. No one can live like that. Besides, what’s the point? If you love someone, why not trust them and say so? Why turn it into a stupid war? Wexton always said—” Steenie stopped, coloring. “Well, anyway, it’s just false pride that makes you say these things—”
“No, it’s not. It’s experience.”
“Why experience?”
“Because I loved my father. I loved him very much, Steenie. I used to tell him how much I loved him. I’m sure you can remember the result.” She looked back at Steenie over her shoulder, then gave a small resigned shrug. “He hated me. He resented me. The more he saw how I loved him, the worse it was. I shall never make that mistake again. Once is enough.”
Having said this—and she spoke in a flat tone, with no sign of bitterness, as if stating an obvious fact—Constance walked away. The conversation, begun without warning, now seemed to be closed. Steenie hesitated. The last person he wanted to discuss was Edward Shawcross.
“Connie,” he began awkwardly, after several minutes of silence, “are you unhappy? Is your marriage making you unhappy—is that what you’re trying to tell me?”
Constance seemed to find this question strange.
“Unhappy? No. Why should you think that? You’re quite wrong. I like being married to Montague. He is changing me. My new life is beginning. I think I just wanted to tell you—” She broke off. “You are my only friend, Steenie.”
This was the closest Steenie had ever seen Constance come to admitting any kind of weakness. He was touched by it. He blushed, hesitated again, made a rush at her, and gave her a hug.
“So I am. And you’re
my
best friend too. Oh, Connie”—he drew back—“I feel such a mess. All these nerves—it’s not just the party and the invitations—”
“I know that.”
“It’s Wexton, you see. I miss him terribly. Then Conrad likes to make me jealous. I can’t talk to Freddie anymore. Mama never goes out—she won’t even come here, you know. Father’s so old and so crotchety. He goes on and on about money. And I know it’s because of Boy. I know it’s broken them, and none of us can say what’s really wrong. When we talk it’s awful. It’s like tiptoeing around a mine field. We can’t mention Acland. We can’t mention Boy. Everyone pretends they believe all that stuff about a shooting accident—and no one does. Even Freddie pretends. I
told
him all those terrible things Boy said—but he won’t listen. He just says it was shell shock, the war talking—and I
know
he’s right. Part of me knows he’s right. But there’s another bit that won’t lie down. I keep asking questions. I think, what if …”
Constance, he saw, was watching him; no staring off into the distance now. Her face was intent and concentrated. When Steenie turned away and sat down, Constance followed him. She sat next to him. She took his hand.
“Steenie,” she began in a hesitant way. “Steenie, tell me. All those what-ifs of yours—do you mean what Boy said to you about my father’s death?”
“I suppose so.” Steenie concentrated on his hands. “You see, I know he wouldn’t have done that—all those things he said. I know he wasn’t sane when he said them. But he was so very
definite
about it. He went on and on in this awful reasonable voice. How he took the guns. How he discussed it with Acland. And so I think sometimes—well,
something
must have happened. Why else would he invent all that? Where would the idea come from?”
“I understand. He was very definite in his note to me as well.” There was a pause. Constance was about to say something to Steenie that was of the very greatest importance. Steenie would later explain to Wexton that what she told him gave him not only relief but a sense of release—although what she told Steenie did not have that effect on me when I read it.
“Steenie,” she began in a tired voice, “I don’t really want to talk about that night anymore. But if there was something I could tell you—about that night, and about Boy, which would put an end to all your doubts … if you could be sure that it was just the war talking when you sat there with Boy—would that help?”
“Yes. It would. You see—” Steenie paused. “I did love Boy. I can understand shell shock, at least. But I can’t bear to think of Boy as a murderer.”
“He wasn’t a murderer, Steenie. If you think about Boy, and remember him as he was, you’d know that anyway. The point is: he could not have been involved in my father’s death. Not in any way. It’s the one thing that’s impossible, and he must have known I would know that.”
“Why? I don’t see—”
“Oh, Steenie.” Constance squeezed his hand. “Because the night of the comet, I was with Boy. I was with him all night.”
Steenie’s parents did not attend his preview party; their absence was not remarked in the melee. The reception began at seven; by seven-thirty the gallery was so crowded that guests had spilled out onto the pavements. Steenie, plotting the guest list with Constance and Conrad Vickers, had been worried that it might prove divisive. He feared a kind of social apartheid, with the older, grander, richer friends (“The Cunard contingent,” as Vickers called it) on one side of the room, and the younger, poorer, more artistic element on the other. To Steenie’s great surprise and growing delight, lavish quantities of alcohol broke down social barriers. There was a brief period of suspicious social sniffing (“Like dogs! Only more decorous,” Steenie cried later); then resistance was overcome.
Conrad Vickers and Steenie swooped from group to group, and if Steenie paid marginally more attention to potential patrons than impoverished poets, his friend Vickers made up for it, scattering his “dah-lings” far and wide with a generous lack of discrimination. More and more red stickers were appearing; more and more people, it seemed, did not consider this work glucose and rosewater—or if they did, preferred art that was so palatable.