X
November the eighteenth
A, dear,
I should be glad if you would cease spying on my movements. If I chose to spend the evening talking business with a friend it’s my affair entirely. Remember this once and for all. Aren’t you making yourself slightly ridiculous?
Yours,
X
November the twentieth
My dear A,
I received your extremely incoherent message on the telephone but scarcely know what it is all about. I accept your apologies, but need we go into that?
About seeing you – I can’t definitely say when. I have so many things to see to. I will try to let you know.
X
November the twenty-fourth
Dear A,
How ridiculous you are! As if I should disguise my voice on the telephone. It was the servant who answered. I was out all day. No, I’m afraid I shan’t be able to see you this evening. I’ll let you know when I can.
X
November the twenty-seventh
Dear A,
Why not be frank with yourself and admit that it isn’t because you have messages to send to Charles that you want to see me? I know only too well that it will mean another scene of reproach, more tears, more nerves.
I’ve had enough. Can’t you realise that it’s finished? I shan’t be able to breathe until I get out of this over-civilised, oversexed country, back to the peace and security of my plantation.
Now you know the truth.
Good-by.
X
Telephone message sent December first to Mrs B: ‘Mr X.Y.Z. sailed for China today.’
The Limpet
No one can call me an insensitive woman. That has been my trouble. If I could harden myself to other people’s feelings, life would be very different. As it is, here I am today a positive wreck, and through no fault of my own, but just because I can’t bear to hurt the people I love.
What is the future to be? I ask myself the question a hundred times a day. I’m nearly forty, my looks are going, and if my health goes too – which wouldn’t surprise me, after all I’ve been through – then I shall have to give up this job and live on the ridiculous alimony that I get from Kenneth. A fine outlook.
Well, there’s one thing. I keep my sense of humour. My friends, the few I have, give me credit for that at least. And they say I’m plucky. They ought to see me sometimes. When I come back from work at the end of the day (and often it’s after seven before I get home – my boss has no tender feelings, I can tell you that much), I have my little bit of supper to get. Then there’s the flat to dust and put straight – the woman who comes in twice a week always leaves something in the wrong place. Coming on top of a heavy day, by this time I’m so exhausted that I just feel like throwing myself on my bed and ending it all.
Then perhaps the telephone rings, and I make the most tremendous effort to be bright. Sometimes I catch a glimpse of myself in the looking glass – sixty-five if I’m a day, with those dreary lines, and my hair’s lost its colour too. As often as not it’s some woman friend cancelling lunch on Sunday because she has something better to do, or my mother-in-law complaining of her bronchitis or the letter she’s had from Kenneth – as if that’s my concern these days. The point is that none of them consider my feelings in the way I consider theirs.
I’m the one to get what Father used to call ‘the thick end of the stick’, and it’s been like that for as long as I can remember, way back in the days when he and Mother used to squabble like cat and dog and I had to play the part of go-between. I don’t pretend to have brains – I never have had. Plenty of common sense when dealing with everyday matters, and I’ve never been sacked from a job yet – I’ve always been the one to hand in the notice. But when it comes to asking for anything for myself, or sticking up for my own rights, as I should have done with Kenneth, then I’m quite hopeless. I just give in and say nothing. I suppose I’ve been more put upon in life, more used, more hurt, than anyone would credit could be possible for one lone woman. Call it fate or misfortune, call it what you will, it’s true.
And it comes from being unselfish, though I say it myself. Take what happened recently. I could have married Edward any time during the past three years, but I always refused to do anything drastic, for his sake. You have a wife and a career, I used to say to him, and your duty is to put them first. Silly, I dare say. I can’t think of any other woman who would have behaved in that way. But then I have my ideals, and certain things are right and certain things are wrong. I inherited that from Father.
When Kenneth left me – and I’d been through hell for six years – I didn’t go round complaining to all his friends. I just said we were incompatible, and his restless temperament clashed with my own more stay-at-home nature, and all that whisky drinking was not the happiest way to start a family. For a woman whose health has always been tricky he asked a lot, what with keeping him going while he had the drinking bouts, and cooking for him, and cleaning the flat, hardly able to stand myself – well, I said to his friends, it seemed really wiser to let him go. I collapsed afterwards, of course. Flesh and blood could bear no more. But blame him . . . no. It’s far more dignified to keep silent when one is lacerated.
The first time I realised how much people were going to depend on me in life was when Father and Mother came to me in turn about their own troubles. I was only fourteen at the time. We were living in Eastbourne. My father was in a solicitor’s office, not exactly a partner in the firm, but in an important position above the head clerk, and my mother looked after the house. It was quite a nice house, standing in its own garden, not semidetached or anything of that sort, and we kept a general maid.
Being an only child, I suppose I got into the habit of listening too much to grown-up conversation. I remember so well coming back from school wearing my little gym dress with the white-flannel shirt, and carrying the ugly school hat slung on my back. I stood in the hall, pulling off my shoes outside the dining-room – we used the dining-room as a living-room in winter, because the drawing-room faced north – and I heard Father say, ‘What are we going to say to Dilly?’ Dilys is such a pretty name, too, but they always called me Dilly.
I knew at once that something was wrong, from the very tone of Father’s voice and the emphasis on the ‘are’, as if they were in some sort of quandary. Well, any other child would either have taken no notice and forgotten about it, or walked straight in and said there and then, ‘What’s wrong?’ I was far too sensitive for that. I stood outside the dining-room, trying to hear what my mother answered, but all I could catch was something about, ‘She’ll soon settle down.’ Then I heard movement as if she was getting up from her chair, so I quickly ran upstairs. Something was afoot, some change, which was going to make a difference to all our lives, and from the way Mother said, ‘She’ll soon settle down,’ it sounded as if they were doubtful how I should take it.
Now, I’ve never been strong, and as a child I used to catch the most appalling colds. I was at the tail end of one on that particular evening, and somehow hearing the whispered voices seemed to bring the cold back again. I had to keep blowing and blowing my nose up in that cold little bedroom of mine, so that when I went downstairs my poor eyes and nose were red and swollen, and I must have looked a miserable sight.
‘Oh, Dilly,’ said my mother, ‘whatever’s the matter? Is your cold worse?’ And Father stared at me, too, in great concern.
‘It’s nothing,’ I told them. ‘I just haven’t felt very well all day, and I’ve been working rather hard on the exams for the end of term.’
Then suddenly – I couldn’t stop myself – I burst into tears. There was silence from Father and Mother, but they both looked very uncomfortable and worried, and I saw them exchange glances.
‘You ought to be in bed, dear,’ said Mother. ‘Why not go up, and I’ll bring you your supper on a tray?’
Then – it just shows how sensitive I was – I jumped up and ran round to he
r and put my arms about her, and I said, ‘If anything ever happened to you and Father, I should die!’
That was all. Nothing more. Then I smiled, and wiped my eyes, and said, ‘I’m going to wait on you for a change. I’ll get the supper.’ And I wouldn’t hear of Mother helping me; I was determined to show how useful I could be.
That night my father came and sat on my bed and told me about the job he had been offered in Australia, and how if he went it would mean leaving me behind for the first year, while he and Mother got settled in and found a home for the three of us. I didn’t attempt to cry or make any sort of fuss. I just nodded my head and said, ‘You’ve got to do what you think is best. You mustn’t consider me.’
‘That’s all very well,’ he answered, ‘but we can’t go off and leave you at boarding school unless we are quite satisfied you’re going to be happy, and that you’ll make the best of it with your Aunt Madge.’ This was his sister, who lived in London.
‘Of course I’ll make the best of it,’ I said. ‘And I’ll soon get used to being on my own. It may be a bit hard at first, because Aunt Madge has never cared twopence for me, and I know she has heaps of friends and likes going out in the evenings, which will mean I shall be left in that draughty old house by myself. Still, I can write to you and Mother every day during the holidays, and then I shan’t feel so cut off, and at school I shall be working so hard there won’t be time to think.’
I remember he looked a bit upset – poor old Father, he was sensitive like me – and he said, ‘What makes you say that about your aunt?’
‘Nothing definite,’ I told him. ‘It’s just her manner and the way she’s always been down on me. But don’t let it worry you. I suppose I can take my own little possessions and have them in my bedroom there? It would mean a link with all the things I love.’
He got up and walked about the room. Then he said, ‘It’s not absolutely settled, you know. I’ve promised the firm I’ll think it over.’
I wasn’t going to show him I minded, so I lay back in bed and hid my face in the blanket and said, ‘If you really and truly think you and Mother will be happy in Australia, you’ve got to go.’
I was peeping over the blanket and I can see his expression now. His face was all puckered up and distressed, which made me quite certain that, if he did go to Australia, it would be a big mistake.
The next morning my cold was worse, and Mother tried to make me stay in bed, but I insisted on getting up and going off to school as usual.
‘I can’t go on making a fuss about a silly cold,’ I told her. ‘I’ve got to harden up, in future, and try to forget how you and Father have spoilt me. Aunt Madge will think me an awful nuisance if I expect to stay in bed whenever I have a cold. What with London fogs, and so on, I shall probably have a cold the whole winter, so I may as well become used to it.’ And I laughed cheerfully, so as not to worry her, and teased her too, and said how lovely it would be for her in the warm sunshine of Australia, while I was sitting alone in the bedroom of Aunt Madge’s London house.
‘You know we’d take you with us if we could,’ said Mother. ‘But it’s the fare, for one thing, and not being quite certain what we shall find when we get there.’
‘I know,’ I said. ‘That’s what’s worrying Father, isn’t it, the uncertainty of it, going to a life he doesn’t know, and cutting himself off from all his old ties here.’
‘Did he tell you that?’ Mother asked me.
‘No, but I could feel it,’ I said. ‘It’s a wrench, and he won’t admit it.’
Father had already left for the office, so we were alone, Mother and I. The maid was busy with the bedrooms upstairs, and I was stuffing my school things into my satchel.
‘I thought he seemed so happy about it all,’ said Mother. ‘He was really excited when we first discussed the plan.’
‘Well, you know best,’ I said, ‘but Father’s always been like that, hasn’t he? Wild over something at first, and then he cools off when it’s too late, like the time he bought that motor mower and you had to go without a winter coat. It would be terrible if you got out there and he found he didn’t settle happily after all.’
‘Yes,’ said Mother, ‘yes, I know . . . I admit I wasn’t enthusiastic myself at first, but he talked me round.’
It was time for me to catch the bus to school, so I didn’t discuss it any more, but to show how much I sympathised I hugged her very hard, and said, ‘I do hope so much you’re going to be happy and that you’ll enjoy the business of hunting for a house and running it all yourself. You’ll miss Florence at first’ – Florence was our maid, she’d been with us a long time – ‘and I know it’s hard to find help in Australia. One of the mistresses at school is an Australian, and it’s a great place for young people but not for the middle-aged, according to her. But then, that will be part of the excitement, won’t it, being a pioneer, and living rough.’
I blew my nose again, because of the wretched cold, and left her to finish her breakfast, but I could see she wasn’t all that happy about Australia, not deep down.
Well, the long and the short of it was, they never went in the end. I don’t know to this day why it was, but I think it must have been because they both depended on me so much that they couldn’t bear to part with me, even for a year.
It’s a funny thing, but after that time, after the Australia plan was shelved, I mean, Father and Mother seemed to drift apart, and Father began to lose interest in life, and in his work, too. He used to nag at Mother, and Mother would nag at him, and I found myself acting the part of peacemaker. Father took to staying out in the evening, at his club, so he said, and often I remember Mother would say to me with a sigh, ‘Your father’s late again. I wonder what’s kept him tonight?’
I would look up from my homework and say – just to tease, you know – ‘You shouldn’t have married a man younger than yourself. He likes young company, that’s what it is, and he finds it with those girls in the office, not all that older than I am myself.’
Mother didn’t make the best of herself, it was true. She was such a home bird, always in and out of the kitchen, making pastry and cakes, which she did so much better than Florence. I’ve inherited that from her, I’m glad to say – no one can teach me anything about cooking. But, of course, it meant she was apt to neglect her appearance. Then, when Father finally did come in, I would creep out into the hall to meet him, and make a face, and put my finger to my lips.
‘You’re in disgrace,’ I would whisper. ‘Mother’s been on about it half the evening. Just come in and read the paper and don’t say anything.’
Poor Father, he immediately looked guilty, and there would be a fine evening in front of us, with Mother tight-lipped at her end of the table, and he sulky at his, and me between the pair of them trying to do the best for both.
When I left school the question arose, what was I to do? I’ve told you I had no brains, but I was quick, and fairly bright in the ordinary things, so I took a typing and shorthand course, and thank heaven I did, as events turned out. At the time I didn’t think it would lead to anything. I was eighteen then, and, like most girls of my age, stage-struck. I had taken a leading part in The School for Scandal at school, played Lady Teazle, as a matter of fact, and could think of nothing else – the reporter was a friend of the headmistress, and I got a mention in the local paper – but when I suggested going on the stage both Father and Mother put their foot down.
‘You don’t know the first way to set about it,’ said Father, ‘apart from the cost of the training.’
‘Besides,’ said Mother, ‘it would mean living up in London and being on your own. It would never do!’
I took the secretarial course just to have it up my sleeve, but I hadn’t given up all thoughts of the stage. The way I saw things, there was no future for any of us living in Eastbourne. There was Father still dug in at the solicitor’s office, and Mother pottering about at home; it was so narrowing to their outlook that they seemed to get nothing out of l
ife. Whereas if they went up to London to live, there would be a mass of new interests for them. Father would enjoy the football matches in winter, and cricket in the summer, and Mother could go to concerts and picture galleries. Now my Aunt Madge was getting on in life she must be lonely living in that house in Victoria all by herself. We could join forces with her, as paying guests, of course, and it would help her out.
‘You know what it is,’ I said to Mother one evening. ‘Father will have to think of retiring soon, and what bothers me is how you’re going to keep up this house when he does. Florence will have to go, and I shall be out all day at some job typing my poor old fingers to the bone, and here the pair of you will be stuck without anything to do except take Prince for a walk.’
Prince was the dog, and he was getting old like Father.
‘Well, I don’t know,’ said Mother. ‘Your father’s not due for retirement yet. There’s time enough to plan in a year or two.’
‘I only hope somebody else doesn’t plan for him,’ I told her. ‘I wouldn’t trust that Betty Something-or-other at the office – she has far too much say in things, if you ask me.’
Actually, Father had been looking tired the last few months, and I was not very happy about his health. I taxed him with it the very next day. ‘Are you feeling all right, Father?’ I asked.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Why?’
‘You look as if you’ve lost weight this winter,’ I said, ‘and you’ve gone such a bad colour, too.’
I remember he went and looked at himself in the mirror.
‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I am thinner. It hadn’t struck me.’
‘It’s worried me for some time,’ I told him. ‘I think you ought to see a doctor. You get a pain sometimes, don’t you, just under the heart?’
‘I thought that was indigestion,’ he said.
‘Could be,’ I said doubtfully, ‘but when a man’s getting on you never know.’
Anyway, Father went and had a checkup, and although there was nothing radically wrong there was a suspicion of ulcer, the doctor said, and his blood pressure was high. If he hadn’t gone for the checkup it might never have been discovered. It upset Father quite a bit, and Mother too, and I explained to Father that it really wasn’t fair on Mother to continue working as he did, or on himself. One of these days he would get really ill and have a heart attack in the office, and heaven knew where it would end. Also, cancer doesn’t show in the early stages, I told him, and there was no guarantee that he mightn’t be suffering from that too.