The Tumbled House

  “Press photographers,” said the woman next to Joanna. “They shouldn’t be allowed.”

  “They’re not,” said her companion. “Must have smuggled their cameras in.”

  “I expect it’s with Marlowe being in the news.”

  The murmur was growing in the hall; Don raised both arms to quiet it; it began to die. But he didn’t hurry to begin again. For a moment anger had almost blinded him. He was determined now to give the orchestra time to settle down and he was determined to have absolute silence. He got it. As he was at last about to restart he remembered this was all being broadcast.

  The Symphony went through to its end. At the finish the audience gave him an ovation. He wondered if it was in appreciation of the music or out of sympathy. His collar was fairly dripping now as if it had been softened in warm water.

  He said to the leader: “So sorry we had to do our homework over again.”

  “It’s a disgraceful piece of interference. You did quite the right thing.”

  “Were they thrown out? I couldn’t see.”

  “They left anyway.”

  “Well, it’s you chaps who had the worst of it. I only got the flash on my starboard beam.”

  The last piece was the Midsummer Night’s Dream Suite. It went through without a hitch. After the usual applause the audience began to stream out. Many of them discussed it. Joanna heard one woman say: “ Poor fellow; it put him right off.” “ Well, I don’t know about that; didn’t he stop on purpose?” “Of course, he did,” said Joanna in annoyance, and they stared at her, slightly knowing her face and wondering who she was. “ It’s the best Scherzo I’ve heard for three years,” said a tall woman in corduroy trousers. “Much quicker to walk to the tube. I always do.” “This libel action,” said someone. “You know his father was a frightful sham.” “ I say the Press ought to be muzzled. They’re getting that no one has any privacy.” “ That slow movement, ‘Going Home’, it makes you want to cry.” “But I said to him: ‘Bella’s right’, I said. ‘You can’t get away with that.’”

  Joanna hung back, letting the threads of people unravel at the exits. In a few minutes she would go behind and see Don; now instead of being a matter of doubt it was a necessity. Her eye was caught by a mink wrap worn by a tall dark woman in the terrace immediately below the boxes. Mutation. Lovely shade and shape. Then she looked at the woman. Mrs Delaney.

  Instead of waiting patiently in the emptying hall Joanna snatched up her gloves and ran sideways along her row, got out into the aisle and reached the door with the last of the crowd, tried to squeeze through with frequent apologies, was stuck, free, stuck again, she pushed ruthlessly into the circular corridor. The exits for the terraces in this confusing building.… She ran along, side-stepping and dodging. Another knot. A woman turned and frowned at her. “Do forgive me,” said Joanna, “it’s rather important,” and “please excuse me I’m anxious to.…” “We’re all trying to get out, miss,” said a man.

  She found the entrances to the terraces, pushed in past a few stragglers, but the seats were now all empty and she had come in by an entrance two doors too far back. She ran back down the crowded corridors. Another knot of people; she glanced quickly from face to face; nothing here.

  Out in the cloudy summer evening the audience streamed towards the buses, blocked the pavements; taxis and cars drew up; other people were making for the car park.

  She turned towards the car park, overtaking groups, glancing about. A lot of people looked at her with her striking figure and hair. She made for the entrance to the park, still peering as doors slammed, engines revved.

  She stayed about ten minutes watching cars as they went past. Then at last she gave up, angry with herself for not having been able to do the impossible thing.

  She didn’t want to miss Don, and knew that he lost no time in leaving. She went back into the Albert Hall, which was now deserted. She recognised some of the orchestra on their way out, and one or two smiled and raised their hats as they passed.

  At the turn of the corridor she stopped. She knew suddenly where she had seen Mrs Delaney before. It had, of course, been that face which had looked in at the window of the Old Millhouse on the night when she had visited it with Roger. She was no longer certain that she immediately wanted to catch Don, no longer certain what she was going to say to him.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  The summer was still at its height when Marion Laycock told Roger that her father was being difficult.

  “I’ve gone about it ever so slowly, as we agreed. I just brought you more into the conversation. At first I thought it was working; he seemed very well disposed—you know, praised your ability and judgement. But then last night he said suddenly: ‘I hope you’re not getting a schoolgirl crush on Roger Shorn’. I said: ‘Daddy, I’m not a schoolgirl and haven’t been for four years’. He said: ‘That doesn’t really answer my question, does it?’ and I said: ‘I don’t suppose Roger Shorn knows I exist’, and he said: ‘Oh, yes, he does, that was obvious the last time he came to dinner’, so I said: ‘ Well I’m very flattered to know it’, and he said, looking at me over his glasses: ‘Marion, you still haven’t answered my question’.”

  “Then?”

  “I still thought it better to be careful so I just replied: ‘I like him awfully. And I think what you suppose were his attentions to me was just his natural courtesy to all women. But I must say that if it wasn’t for his age I should think him one of the nicest boy friends it was possible to have.’”

  Roger suppressed a shudder. “Go on.”

  “That must sound rather nauseating to you,” she said, showing him that he must suppress his shudders more expertly. “But you have to realise that Daddy isn’t yet awake to the fact that I’m a grown woman. There’s a time-lag in his brain where I am concerned, and I have to treat with him on that level. Anyway, then he said: ‘You must know I’ve nothing against Roger Shorn as a person. But you have to realise that he’s very much a man of the world, living in a sophisticated society that you have never known and, I rather hope, never will know. Although, if these negotiations go through, I shall welcome him as a business colleague, I don’t think he’s the sort of person I want my daughter to imagine herself in love with.’”

  “Oh, dear. And do you imagine that?”

  She gave his hand a squeeze. “ I said to him: ‘ You’re doing the imagining. Daddy, not I. So tell me now once and for all what you imagine you’ve got against him.’ He looked a bit testy and said: ‘I’ve nothing whatever against him in the broad sense of the word. I’ve told you. But where you’re concerned I like to be very fussy indeed. And there’s this libel action pending. I shall want to know what comes of that.’” Marion looked at Roger doubtfully. “ I’m sorry, dearest, don’t be offended with me. You asked me to repeat exactly what he said.”

  “I’m glad you have,” said Roger. “It enables me to see what I’m up against.”

  “Of course it can’t make any difference in the long run.” When he didn’t answer she said: “Can it?”

  “No,” he said, with slight, deliberate hesitation. “If I’m sure of your love I’m sure of everything.”

  “Be sure of everything,” she said.

  Roger had been undecided for a long time whether as a matter of policy he should seduce Marion. At first he had had no such thought; he would have been willing to follow the normal seasonal progression: engagement, father’s consent, social wedding; it all seemed set fair for the conventional lead-up to the conventional exercise.

  But a tide was running against him. In this he stood to gain more and to lose more than he had ever expected. Negotiations over The Globe were coming to the crucial stages. His relationship in a business way with Percy Laycock had gone ahead very quickly, and he had no real need of Marion, as he had once supposed he might have. Indeed on the short view he was rather sorry he had tangled with her, for it spelt danger where there need have been no danger. His first idea had been the better one, to tie Mi
chael up with the daughter while leaving his own movements free.

  But that was past. To jilt Marion now would bring him the worst of both worlds, however tactfully he might try it. But didn’t secret meetings really run him into the same risk? If they were discovered he would lose Sir Percy’s goodwill in The Globe transactions, and his present hold over Marion might just not be strong enough in the face of her father’s veto.

  What followed? If he saw Marion aright she would not surrender herself lightly, but once he was established as her lover she would be bound to him by ties that couldn’t exist in any other way. Whichever side up the coin fell he was then in a winning position.

  Big stakes. The only other consideration was that he liked it. One afternoon in early September they met at a little tea shop in Wigmore Street. It was enough off their normal routes to make recognition unlikely, and it was quiet and secluded. They had not seen each other for eight days, but they hadn’t a great deal to say.

  After tea he said: “Darling, how early must you really be back?”

  “I should be home by seven.”

  “Your father’s in to dinner?”

  “Well, no.… But I told the cook I’d be back.”

  “When will your father be in?”

  “He’s in Manchester. He might be home late tonight, or he might stay overnight.”

  “Come to my flat for an hour or two. It’s easier, to talk there. Then we can have dinner at a place I know in Chelsea and afterwards I can see you home. There’s really no reason to be in just to please the servants.”

  “.… I suppose I could phone.”

  “Of course you could. Well, come to my flat first anyway. I promise I’ll be good.”

  She glanced at him in slight surprise, for she had not expected him to be anything else. He was content for the moment that he had put the thought in her head.

  In his flat he slipped into the living-room while Marion was taking off her coat, and switched on the fire and part lowered the blind. When she came in she glanced towards the window but made no comment and sank into the settee holding her knee in her hands.

  “It’s so very restful in this room, Roger. I long to live here. I wouldn’t spoil it for you?”

  “You’d provide the only things it at present lacks. I’m longing for the time when you’ll be here every day and all day——”

  “I love to hear you say so.”

  “—and all that that means,” he added.

  After a minute she looked away. He went on considering her.

  She said abruptly: “I saw Michael on Tuesday.”

  Roger accepted the switch of subject. Move two had been registered.

  “Did you?”

  “Yes. We walked down Davies Street together. I found him terribly nice. Quite, quite different from what I first thought.”

  “I’m glad. Even though it makes me rather jealous.”

  “Oh,” she laughed. “As if there were any reason! I’m the one who should be jealous.”

  “Why? How can you say that?”

  He sounded hurt and she said hastily: “I didn’t mean of any woman now. I meant only of—of all the women in the past.”

  He frowned at the fire. “You know, you don’t really need to be.”

  “Dearest,” Marion said, coming to him. “I’d no wish to offend you. You see, I must be aware that there have been many others—whereas with me there have been no others. At times it—it frightens me.”

  He took her head slowly in his hands, regarded seriously, reverently the equine bones of her face, narrow but resourceful, the heavy waved hair, the dark loyal eyes. This was the worst of her, her face. But it would wear, it wasn’t pretty-pretty; and she had a good body.

  “You mustn’t be frightened.”

  “I am. Sometimes I’m frightened of you and of the comparisons you must make.”

  “That’s terrible! It mustn’t ever be.”

  “But it is, Roger.”

  “I could change that.”

  “How?”

  “Darling,” he said. “Do I have to tell you how?”

  He felt a tremor pass through her body. He thought, if she’d had three drinks now instead of one.…

  He released her very suddenly.

  She said: “What’s the matter, dearest?”

  “You’re thinking of the other women.”

  “No, I’m not.”

  “How can I convince you that they never meant what you mean?”

  He stopped. It was a long time since he had used this approach. Now, only now, because of Fran, and partly because of Joanna, he had become self-conscious of his own ways, although Joanna never had the cynicism of Fran.

  “What were you going to say?” Marion asked.

  “I was going to say that you’re completely wrong if you suppose any comparisons I make in my mind weigh against you. How can I convince you that it’s the other way round? I began life on the wrong foot, as it were, particularly in my relations with women, and I’ve been out of step ever since. You offer me a way back, a new way, that there has never been before for me. I want you to try to forget everything but us. If I am your first man, I want you to think of yourself as my first woman. That’s how I look on it.”

  “If I could think that I should be very proud.”

  “You must think that because it is true.”

  An hour later it happened. It all seemed so unexpected, so unpremeditated, that she couldn’t have believed even if she had been told that the fire had been switched on in his bedroom and the curtains drawn ever since they came in at five. One thing after another this afternoon had undermined her resistance—which had never really been a resistance to him but to her conscience and her upbringing. She was herself unaware of her scruples failing until the last moment and she found herself in his bedroom with his cool gentle fingers sliding the zip of her frock.

  Then when it was over she burst into tears and clung to him while he stroked her fallen brown hair. Again came the incongruous spectre of his memories of Fran to plague him; but now unexpectedly they helped him to a new tenderness towards Marion. The girl in her untutored awkward grace caught a moment at his unguarded self.

  “Darling, I’m sorry; did I hurt you?”

  “I’m sorry. I expect I was terrible.”

  “You were wonderful. Why are you crying?”

  “I think you must hate me.”

  “If I’ve made you think that, then how utterly I’ve failed.”

  “Perhaps,” she said, “ I mean that I hate myself.”

  “Why should you hate yourself? Why should you be anything but happy? I am. If you’re not happy in five minutes I shall know that you don’t love me.”

  “Oh, that isn’t true. I love you so much but I.… Roger, I don’t want you to say just the easy comforting things. If you despise me at this minute, tell me. Promise that, whatever else, between ourselves you will never pretend.”

  He stared at her. She was holding the sheet before her, hiding her breasts. Her arms were strong and creamy, the shoulder blades prominent. Few women, even the most beautiful, Roger had long ago decided, look attractive when they are crying, it was a delusion. This one was no worse than most, and better than some because in her distress she had put on a kind of dignity.

  He said: “ Nothing that has happened this afternoon could possibly make me hate or despise you. I only love you more and more and more. And want you more. If you’re unhappy now, I must be the one to be despised.”

  She managed to find a handkerchief and wiped her face. “ I’m not—unhappy if that’s how you truly feel. I only—desperately wanted you to tell me the truth. I was so awful so afraid, so—embarrassed, that now I am … abased. Is that the word? If it were not for that I should be happy. If it were not for that I should be proud.”

  He saw that the corner had been turned, that all was, as usual, going to be well.

  “Be proud,” he said. “I’m proud. I’m very proud.”

  Chapter Twenty-Four


  Bennie got engaged to Michael on the nineteenth of September, but she said tell no one until after the action. She didn’t know whether as a result of it Don would take any more kindly to the idea of Michael as a brother-in-law, but at least the quarrel would be past and not still fomenting.

  Michael’s acquiescence came hard; he was so heady with delight that he was bursting to tell everyone. But at least there was the consolation of buying the ring. Still heady, he took Bennie with him to Burlington Arcade. In the shop the well-tailored assistant said: “Engagement rings? But of course, sir. Something like this, sir?” A tray was slid out, diamonds winked on black velvet; prices were staggering. “Have you something less expensive?” Bennie asked. The well-bred face by showing no change of expression seemed to Michael to register contempt. “ But of course, madam. What sort of price?” “About thirty-five pounds,” Michael said. “Less,” said Bennie. “Twenty-five is plenty.”

  The assistant bowed and went away. Michael noticed that despite the utter courtesy of their welcome they were constantly under observation while their own assistant was gone. It turned his mind to the life he had nearly taken up.

  “These, madam, are inexpensive and very good value. This at forty-five.… Must it be diamonds? This little secondhand ruby ring is exceptional value at thirty-five. The setting of course is Victorian, but … Or then again——”

  “Thanks,” said Michael, “we don’t want any of those. Come on, Bennie, we’ll look elsewhere.”

  “But, Michael, I think——”

  “Come on.”

  Outside the shop he looked at her with flushed face and said angrily: “I’m sorry, Bennie. It’s just I can’t stand it.”

  “Stand what?”

  “These dead-pan shop-walkers! They represent all I hate most in life … the sham gentility, the smooth lies; they’re like—like social eunuchs. It’s all part of this ridiculous conspiracy to choke one in cotton-wool.…” She was surprised to see that his hands were trembling.