Love in Our Time (7 page)

“Pour yourself out a drink,” she said. “You'll find it over there by the radio.”

He walked across with the slow, deliberate tread of a man who is making himself appear perfectly at ease.

“What'll
you
have?” he asked. “Gin or whisky?”

“Gin,” she said. “Only a drop.”

“O.K.,” he said.

When he had got the drinks, he came and stood over her like a waiter. He made no attempt to share the wide, yielding meadows of the divan.

“You're looking well,” he said.

“Thanks,” she answered. “I'm feeling lousy.”

“How are you getting on? Still at de Vere's?”

De Vere's was a shop window in Bond Street with a series of small cubicles attached to it. In the centre of the cubicles was a square of expensive carpet about the size of a workman's dwelling. On this tiny enclosure the mannequins paraded. There were usually five of them. And to be among their number was to have been admitted to the highest circles of that exclusive profession.

“Good Lord, no, I left there ages ago.”

“What are you doing?”

“I'm on my own now.”

“Oh,” said Gerald. And then because he realised that he was not leading the conversation quite as he had intended he assumed a kind of detached interest.

“Finding much to do?” he asked.

“Oh, yes, there's plenty to do free-lancing,” she said. “I do quite a bit for advertisements.”

“Do you?” he said. “What sort?”

He had seen one or two of them: it had given him a sudden pang each time he opened a paper and found that he was looking at Celia. But he wanted to retain his attitude of remote indifference.

“It was corsets last time,” she answered. “It's bath salts on Monday.”

“Do you like it?”

“It's well paid.”

“Why don't you go on the films?” he suggested. “You wanted to.”

“I've tried it,” she answered. “I'm the Society crowd type. Two guineas a day and find your own clothes. But the films are dead now. Have another drink?”

“Thanks. Will you?”

“Just a small one.”

He mixed it carefully and brought it back to her as though she were a stranger.

When she had taken the glass from him she reached up and pulled him down on the divan beside her. He sat there stiffly and awkwardly like a schoolboy invited to sit down in the presence of his headmaster. But once he was sitting beside her Celia just ignored him. She lay back trying to blow smoke rings from her cigarette.

“It was funny seeing Rex the other night,” she said at last. “I hadn't seen him since we broke.”

“What did you think of his wife?” Gerald asked.

“Poor old Rex,” said Celia. “I always knew he'd get a raw deal.”

“Don't you like her?”

“Oh, I'm crazy about her.”

It was then that Gerald played one of his bolder strokes.

“I wonder what you really think of me for getting married,” he said. “I wonder what you think of me and Alice?”

“I think you're very lucky,” she said.

“Do you really? You aren't just saying it?”

“You wanted to marry her, didn't you?”

“Of course I did.”

“Well, there you are then.”

She pressed her cigarette into the ash-tray.

“It seems funny all the same,” she went on. “We went about a good bit together once.”

“That was a long time ago,” Gerald reminded her.

“Only three years,” she said.

“Too late to do anything about it now,” he said.

He tried to sound cavalier and care-free as he said it. But it did not ring true. He succeeded only in sounding hearty in a cheap, false sort of way.

“Oh, it's easy for you to joke about it,” she said. “You've got what you wanted. I haven't. There's nobody to fill my hot-water bottle for me. I'm just stuck here till someone thinks of ringing me up.”

“I'm sorry, Celia,” Gerald answered. “I thought you were doing all right.” There was a pause. “You see quite a lot of Tony, don't you?” he added.

“Oh, yes, old Tony's all right. He's a good sort. He's helped me quite a bit. I don't know what I'd have done without him.” She stopped and began to trace patterns on the corner of the divan. “I know I'm a fool,” she said at last, “but I still miss you, Gerry, I wish to God I didn't.”

“I miss you too, Celia,” he said. And then before she could take him up he added: “But we've got to make our own lives now. There's Alice, remember.”

“You needn't be afraid about Alice,” Celia answered. “I'm not poaching. It's just that I'm lonely. I get fed up to the teeth being here alone all day.”

He felt sorry for her as she said it, and because he felt sorry for her, he put his hand on her shoulder. As soon as she felt it there she put her cheek down to it.

“That's better,” she said. “I like feeling you again.”

He did not attempt to remove his hand. Instead he began to stroke her hair with his other hand. He could feel her responding to it like a cat.

“Poor old Celia,” he said. And then, because he could think of nothing else to add to it, he said again: “Poor old Celia.”

She turned over towards him. “Put your arms round me once,” she said. “I shouldn't mind so much if I'd been in your arms again.”

While he was holding her she smiled up at him.

“I reckon a girl's in a hell of a fix if she feels this way about a man,” she said.

Then, because her costume was a new one, she said that she was going to take it off. While she was gone, Gerald went over and stood moodily by the window. The lights were just coming on in the street below. There were people, oddly fore-shortened, hurrying along
in the twilight, going home. He looked down on them rather enviously; at that moment he wished that he, too, were home.

When Celia called to him from the bedroom the sound of her voice set him trembling all over. He left the window and went through to her.

She had taken off more than her costume. She was lying back on the bed with only some sort of wrap around her. In the last streaks of light that came through the window she looked pale and lovely.

“Gerry,” she said, “it's been such ages.”

He stood still where he was.

“You've got me all wrong,” he told her. He could feel his heart hammering somewhere right up in his throat.

But all she did was to hold out both arms towards him.

“I'm waiting, Gerry,” she said.

The room seemed to contract and draw in upon itself. Soon there was nothing in it but himself, and Celia lying there on the bed. It was very quiet, too; none of the noises from the street seemed to reach up as high as that. And the air was full of the scent she always used.

“You … you don't understand,” he said. “I've got Alice.”

He was still trembling as he went down the stairs. He had simply snatched up his hat and coat and run for it. As he got to the door he had heard Celia call out to him. But he hadn't waited to hear what it was; he knew that if he heard her he wouldn't be able to go at all. And he wanted to go. So he had just slammed the door and left her. Once outside he walked very rapidly, like a
man who is anxious to escape from something. The whole neighbourhood seemed somehow sordid and nasty to him, and he wanted to wash himself clean of it. He hated Bloomsbury and Woburn Gardens and top flats, and everything that went with them. When he reached Tottenham Court Road and saw a 284 bus coming he greeted it almost as a friend; it was something at once clean and familiar, something that belonged to the other world of Alice and Boleyn Avenue and the future.

Woburn Gardens was just something rather rackety left over from the past.

The bathroom in the Sneyd home was the most opulently furnished room in the whole house.

After the modest, distempered bedrooms with the cheap, deal cupboards, it was like coming upon a corner of Babylon to go into the bathroom. The brilliant chromium of the taps, the shaded mauve of the tiles and the glittering bevel-edge of the mirror combined to give an air of rather splendid luxury; it was as though within those four walls hygiene had suddenly become wasteful, even wanton. And there was the built-in bath. It was the latter that counted. To a man, one bath—even one bathroom—is very like another. But for a woman a built-in bath has a message all its own. You soap yourself and get clean in the ordinary kind. But in a built-in bath you lie full-length and feel like Cleopatra.

The builder who had installed it knew all about the psychology of bathrooms. He knew that a built-in bath and a few stainless fittings only cost a pound or two more than the old-fashioned sort and add a full fifty pounds' worth to the value of the house. And in this Alice agreed with him; she regarded the extra money as well expended. She bathed every day before tea, and those steamy twenty minutes were the most blessful of the day. She did most of her thinking in the bath. Lying there with the water reaching up to her shoulder blades, she always felt singularly constructive and clear headed.

At that moment she was occupied with thoughts of a radiogram. She had tried for weeks to suppress the idea, but now it filled her whole mind. Without a radiogram the house seemed suddenly unfurnished.

She knew perfectly well that they couldn't afford the thing. They hadn't eighteen guineas to spend. But the manufacturers appeared to understand the position exactly; they were evidently used to dealing with young people like the Sneyds. For instance, there was an advertisement for the Majestophone in that week's
Radio Times
. A young man very like Gerald was sitting with his arm round the neck of a girl very much like Alice and they were both gazing at a massive cabinet across which was written the words: “It tunes as it plays.” But it was the superscription that had first caught her eye: “Yours for the asking—Beethoven—Brussels—Caruso—Harry Roy—Kreisler—Radio Luxembourg—the whole world of music at your feet for three and nine a week.” She knew that they could afford
that
; anyone in their position could afford three and nine a week. Even fifteen shillings a month did not sound impossible. It was only the original eighteen guineas that was altogether out of the question; and that sort of outlay would go on being out of the question until the age of the money-box returned.”

Admittedly, it wouldn't be the only amount they were paying. There was eleven and threepence a week to pay on the sideboard and on the altogether too wooden-looking refectory table that seemed to fill the dining-room. And there were four more instalments—big ones: three or four pounds a time—to pay on their bedroom suite. She knew all that, and the thought of it often frightened her. But it was the same with everyone. They weren't
living on credit any more than the rest of their neighbours. With the exception of one or two elderly couples who had retired to Boleyn Avenue and brought their bits of bamboo and rosewood with them, the residents were all youngish people who were in the same sort of fix. If the furnishers had called in their half-paid-for stock, the standard of living in Boleyn Avenue would have dropped overnight to a peasant level. But as it was, the weekly and monthly payments went on. There were pianos and wireless sets and refrigerators in all the houses. And every wife, proud of her home, sat contentedly back looking on while her husband devotedly sold himself into slavery not only to the one master he already worked for, but to half a dozen extra ones as well.

It was not until the rising flood of hot water from the chromium tap had made her feel faint and a little sick that Alice stepped out of the bath. The illusion of luxury slipped from her as she did so. She was no longer a milk-white Dietrich reclining on a couch of foam. She was a young woman who had work to do in the kitchen before her husband got home. And to-night there was plenty to do, because Mr. Biddle was coming to dinner.

The dinners to which Mr. Biddle was invited were planned on a lavish and unnecessary scale. During all the years she had known him, Mr. Biddle had never asked more of an evening meal than it should have two courses—one meaty, and the other suety. But when Alice was entertaining him the meal took on a very different complexion. There were grape-fruit served in raised glass dishes and candles on the table and finger-bowls.

The reason she went to so much trouble was a confused one. It was partly that she wanted to persuade her father that they really lived like that every night,
and partly because, having had things like grape-fruit dishes and finger-bowls given to them as wedding presents, she felt that it was waste never to use them. And so it was that everything came out and was put on the table. Every time Mr. Biddle came he could scarcely conceal his astonishment. He really blamed Gerald. It seemed extraordinary to him that any man should expect his wife to go round dolling up the table when he could have saved her all that work. There was something essentially selfish about him which he didn't like.

The work in the kitchen took Alice until nearly six. There was too much to do to think about anything then. But at six o'clock when she emerged and began laying the table, the idea of the radiogram came back to her. Twice she broke off from, what she was doing and went through into the drawing-room to see how the furniture could be arranged to accommodate it. She did not now even so much as doubt that somehow the thing would be hers. By six-thirty, when Gerald arrived, the Majesto-phone was a part of the house:

Altogether, it was a lucky evening on which to catch Gerald. He had had an unusually good day. By calling on the off-chance on an old acquaintance in Doctor Robinson's “Eat-Sleep Insomnia Biscuits” he had found him promoted to Advertising Manager; and Gerald had walked out of the office with a contract for six half-doubles in his pocket. When he heard what Alice wanted his first thought was to indulge her.