Love in Our Time (23 page)

But he did not think of Miss Wachett for long. It was hot in the carriage and the motion of the train rocked him to and fro like a baby in a cradle. With the pleasant consciousness of a difficult task, so far well done, he sat back and closed his eyes.

Before he was ten minutes out of Tadford he was fast asleep.

After he came out of the third motor dealer's in Great Portland Street, Gerald went into an A.B.C. for a cup of coffee. It had been the same in every showroom. When he had walked in, a smooth, good-looking young man rather like himself had come forward thinking he wanted to buy something. Then, when it turned out that he wanted to
sell,
all the smoothness had vanished. The three young men, one after the other, had walked out condescendingly on to the pavement and looked at the car as if it were something that was home-made.
Gerald had been forced to stand by while they kicked contemptuously at the tyres and jumped up and down on the running-board to test the springs. And, in the end, he had driven off again each time telling them he would rather give it away than sell it at their sort of price.

He hadn't gone round to Rex from whom he had bought the car because he didn't want him to know he was selling it. That would have been too much an admission of failure, a confession that life in Boleyn Avenue was something beyond his means. But there seemed to be nothing else for it. So in the end he paid his twopence for the small coffee he had just drunk and got back into the car again. It gave him a pang simply to see it. He had washed and leathered it himself last night. Even the chromium plating was unscarred. It had come up like silver under the duster. Altogether, he wondered whether there was a smarter sports car in London. The oversize headlamps and the twin horns which he had fitted showed that the car had belonged to someone who took his motoring pretty seriously.

Rex seemed pleased to see him at first. He suggested that they should go along and have a drink. After the coffee, Gerald didn't want it. But he was very anxious to be friendly and nearly every deal in Great Portland Street, he remembered, was completed over a drink. Rex, for instance, had merely to walk into the Free House on the corner and say, “The usual,” for the barmaid to know exactly what to serve him.

He tried, of course, to dissuade Gerald altogether as soon as he found out what he had come about, and offered him a series of dazzling exchanges in return—a 1927 two and a half litre Bentley with a body shaped like a boat, an eight-cylinder Delage that had crossed mountains,
an Invicta with a speedometer the size of a soup plate. The position, in brief, seemed to be that for so much hard cash paid over the table his present car was worth nothing; but for this worthless object plus a five-pound note he could have his pick from among a collection of breathless palaces on wheels. It seemed almost as though he had turned up in the very middle of a lean period, and that it was the five-pound note that Great Portland Street was waiting for. In the end, Rex reluctantly suggested that Gerald should bring the, car back on Thursday and he would see if he could get anybody to look at it. He spoke as though it was not the kind of deal that he altogether liked to be mixed up in.

They stayed on chatting for a few minutes longer. But Rex was definitely not so cordial. He was disappointed in Gerald; the man had been his friend once. They had stood at the same bars and smoked each other's cigarettes and played around with the same girls and had evenings in town together. What was more, they had set themselves a certain standard. And now Gerald was showing the white feather and selling out. For a man, who had once known how to live, to exchange freedom and a car for marriage and a villa in an outer suburb seemed to Rex a pretty contemptible thing.

But all he allowed himself to say was: “Well, it's your life, old boy.”

He tapped on the counter with a florin.

“Same again, please, miss,” he said.

When Mr. Biddle got back to Finchley it was about six o'clock. And after he had washed and changed his clothes into something less formal, he went round to see
Alice. He took his dog with him—during the time he had been away he rather suspected Miss Wachett of having neglected her duties by the animal—and strolled round quietly at about three miles an hour.

The events of the morning now seemed curiously ancient and remote; it was not that he had forgotten his duty to Mrs. Sneyd; on the contrary he was coming round especially to see Gerald about her. It was simply that Tadford and everything about it—Mrs. Sneyd and young Violet and Lily and the self-made Fred—had receded; from Boleyn Avenue it was like thinking about an unhappy township on another planet.

Alice was glad to see him: he could tell that at once. He could tell also that she was far from recovered from the shock over the whole affair of Mr. Sneyd's death. She looked worried and downcast, and he did his utmost to cheer her up again. Everything, he impressed on her, would work out all right in the end. But in the meantime he warned her that Gerald would be expected to do his bit.

“He'll have to stump up, you know,” Mr. Biddle said.

“Yes, I suppose he will,” said Alice.

“Can't just leave 'em like that.”

Alice shook her head.

“He won't like it,” Mr. Biddle continued. “But it's his duty.”

“All right,” said Alice. “Don't go on about it. Gerald'll do it if he said he will.”

“Yes,” Mr. Biddle answered. “But he hasn't said he will yet. That's the whole point.”

Alice got up and went over to the couch.

“Well, anyhow,” she said. “It's Gerald's affair whatever he does. I don't think it's anybody else's business.”

Mr. Biddle looked at her in distress. It was the first time that he could ever remember her deliberately rude to him like that. It hurt—not because of the rudeness but because of what she must have been feeling. She wasn't happy; anyone with half an eye could see that. Mr. Biddle got up and went over to sit on the couch beside her.

“Anything special worrying you?” he said.

She shook her head.

“Everything all right between you and Gerald?”

She gave a little laugh.

“Of course it is,” she said.

“No money worries.”

“No, none.”

She tried to laugh again, but, it wouldn't come.

“Just a bit on edge?” he inquired understandingly.

“That's about it,” Alice agreed.

He leant over and placed his hand on her knee.

“Then do you know what's the matter with you?” he asked.

“What?”

“It's time you started a family,” he said. “That's your trouble.”

“You
really
think so?”

“I'm sure of it.”

“Oh, you're so clever, aren't you?” said Alice suddenly. “You think you know everything.”

She got up and went out of the room without another word.

Mr. Biddle half-rose to follow her. But on second thoughts he decided that it would be better to stop where he was. The fact that she had taken his remark in that way showed how right he was. He felt sure, too,
that very soon, almost immediately, in fact, she would be sorry and want to say so. So, picking up the evening paper, he removed the top sheet to put under his feet to save the cushions and settled down full length on the couch to read until Alice should decide to come back to him.

But quite soon he closed his eyes and got the rest of the nap that he had started in the railway carriage. Alice looked in once or twice to see if he was all right and then went back into the kitchen to go on getting Gerald's dinner ready.

It was Gerald's last call of the day.

He was not sitting in the office of an advertising manager this time but in the waiting-room of Dr. Xavier da Leppo in East Square, N.W.1. It was not a cheerful or encouraging kind of ante-chamber. Whatever daylight there was had been sifted through a pair of yellowish Nottingham lace curtains and fell dubiously on the circle of shiny leather chairs, the thumbed, dirty periodicals on the table, the wallpaper of birds and flowers, the crumpled fan of paper in the empty grate.

Then the green baize door that led into the consulting room opened and Dr. da Leppo himself came in. He was a small, brownish man with a neat round head of sleek black hair. There was more of Buenos Aires than of Harley Street about him. He wore a bright, professional smile on his face and perpetually showed a double row of strong white teeth as he talked. At first glance he was not unlike an amiable and encouraging otter. Gerald comforted himself by reflecting that at least he looked competent. But the handshake was a disappointment. The smooth little fist simply melted up as he grasped it.
And now that he was near to the man he became aware that Dr. da Leppo had apparently soaked himself in scent; the sweet, sickly smell of it was stronger even than the disinfectant odour of the surgery.

He seemed very alert and businesslike, however, and came to the point at once.

“How long have you known the young lady?” he asked.

“We've been married about a year,” Gerald told him.

“Is this her first?”

Gerald nodded.

“Does anyone else know about it?”

“Not so far.”

“Quite sure?”

“Quite.”

Dr. da Leppo went over and stood in front of his gasfire.

“Is she the sort of young lady,” he said, “who can be relied on?”

“I've told you she's my wife,” Gerald answered.

The information did not seem to impress Dr. da Leppo.

“Are you paying for this or is she?” he asked.

“I am,” Gerald replied.

Dr. da Leppo came nearer.

“Because in this kind of work,” he explained, “I always ask for my fee in advance.”

Gerald took a deep breath and sat back.

“How much is it?” he asked.

Dr. da Leppo's eyes travelled up and down him: the doctor was a very good judge of income.

“Five guineas,” he said. “No cheques.”

Gerald did not reply for a moment and Dr. da Leppo went on.

“Hadn't I better see the young lady?” he suggested.

“What's the best time? ” Gerald asked.

Dr. da Leppo consulted his diary.

“Is next Saturday all right? ” he asked. “About tea time.”

Mr. Biddle was still there when Gerald got back. Alice and he had made it up again. She had finished what she was doing and was seated on the floor at his feet. Mr. Biddle was stroking her head. There was now a warm atmosphere of domestic complacency over the whole house; Gerald felt almost like an intruder as he went in. And somehow he had never been less pleased to see Mr. Biddle. To-night in particular he wanted to be alone with Alice.

But Mr. Biddle did not allow him any time for misgivings. No sooner had Gerald kissed Alice than he found himself enveloped in a cloud of vicarious hospitality.

“Come and sit here,” Mr. Biddle said. “You're tired. You've been working.” He got up and gave Gerald his own arm-chair with an air of having made him a present of something.

“Thanks,” said Gerald.

Mr. Biddle took the smaller chair and turned towards Alice.

“You get him something to eat, dear,” he said. “It's always the hungry ones who leave home.”

Mr. Biddle watched Alice go. It was the moment he had been waiting for. Throughout his life he had always made it a rule that when there was an unpleasant duty to perform he should get on with it. So he began straight
away, without waiting even for Gerald to take off his shoes.

“It's about Mrs. Sneyd,” he said.

“Well, what about her?”

“Somebody ought to do something.”

“Meaning me?” Gerald asked.

Mr. Biddle paused. “It's what your father would have wanted,” he said.

“How about Alice?” Gerald asked.

“She'd want it, too,” Mr. Biddle replied.

“But suppose there just isn't enough to go round?”

“Then you'll have to cut down on something.”

“Such as?”

“Oh, cars and refrigerators and wireless sets,” Mr. Biddle answered as though Gerald had several of everything.

Gerald took out his case and lit a cigarette.

“I can't sell the frig. and the radio because they aren't mine,” he said.

“There's still the car,” Mr. Biddle reminded him.

Gerald blew out a thick cloud of smoke.

“I'll think about it,” he said at last.

He added nothing about the supercilious young men in Great Portland Street; that was his affair, just as much as Dr. da Leppo was. It was at moments such as these that he wondered why he always found it so confoundedly difficult to be frank with his father-in-law.

But Mr. Biddle pretended not to notice. He leaned forward, knees wide apart, laboriously filling his pipe. He had said enough for the present and did not intend to labour the point. It was not, indeed, until they were all three sitting down together in the dining-room that he observed—as much to the room in general as to
Gerald—that charity and self-sacrifice were the noblest attributes of mankind. Then having said so he took another mouthful and went on as though nothing had happened.

He did not stay late. Something told him that the young people would probably want to be together. He even wondered if perhaps he had not said too much already. So, before he left, he went over to Gerald to make things up a bit.

“Would you like to come along to a smoking concert?” he asked.

Gerald caught Alice's eye: she was signalling that he was to accept.

“Thanks very much,” he said rather doubtfully. “When is it?”

“Next Saturday,” said Mr. Biddle. “At the Mariners' Hall. Seven for seven-thirty.”

Gerald started.

“I'm sorry,” he said. “We're going out on Saturday.”

“Where are we going?” Alice asked in surprise.

“You know,” said Gerald awkwardly. “You wanted to see somebody.”