Marjorie looked round as the door opened. It was as though her doom had descended upon her. She felt her knees go weak at the sight of George. There was something like tears in her voice.
‘George!’ was all she could say – she was not ready with any other speech. She put out one hand and moved towards him as though to drive him back, but it was only the feeblest of gestures.
‘George! I – you –’
George had nothing to say at all. The last traces of any hesitancy on his part were erased by the sight of Marjorie on the verge of tears. He came forward to comfort her, and then the touch of her flesh put an end to the thought. Marjorie came into his arms; out of a desert of indecision into a sweet oasis of heedless submission. The bed was there beside them. For one second, like a lightning flash across a darkened sky, the thought came into Marjorie’s mind that her husband was a murderer. When it had passed all that remained was a greater eagerness to anticipate this new lover’s every wish. Ely was an inexperienced lover, gentle and yet clumsy, infinitely tender while passion tore at him. Marjorie felt her whole heart and soul go out to him in love.
‘Darling,’ she said. ‘Darling. Darling.’
12
Mrs Clair was sure next morning that they were lovers. She had been nearly sure last night, when on her return from the cinema she had found Marjorie asleep in the tumbled bed, her hair disordered and her clothes abandoned with an untidiness she had never permitted in Marjorie as a child. Mrs Clair had crept into the room, forbearing to switch on the light, and making use of the shaded light of a candle on the dressing table. Marjorie slept peacefully and breathed regularly. Mrs Clair, peering at her, could mark the relaxation of her attitude and the flush on her cheeks. She smiled as she crept about the room making ready for bed.
And next morning those two had only eyes for each other and no attention for anyone else. The children’s chatter was unheeded by them, although Ely had a pat on the shoulder for Anne and spared time to tickle Derrick’s fat neck. Mrs Clair intercepted a brief meaning smile which passed between Ely and Marjorie, and she remembered how once she had intercepted just such a smile between Ted and Dot; in her innocence in those days she had attached no importance to it. She hugged the comparison to herself. It seemed almost a shame to blight their happiness, but Mrs Clair had other objects in view than just the cuckolding of Ted. There must be a worse punishment for him than that, and in the end they would be far, far happier than they would be merely as guilty lovers. She rapped on the breakfast table to command attention, and she looked round at them all with a magisterial air.
‘Ladies and gentleman!’ she said. ‘No one seems to have remembered it except me. This is our last day. What does everybody want to do on our last day?’
Certainly no one seemed to have remembered it. Both George and Marjorie revealed by their faces with what a shock the reminder came to them. Anne was sorry, too. Only Derrick remained equable – the prospect of one more whole day at the seaside made tomorrow’s return still very remote to him.
‘Well, what does everyone want to do?’ repeated Mrs Clair.
‘Let’s go on the beach,’ said Anne.
‘Let’s go on the beach,’ echoed Derrick.
‘Some people seem to know what they want, at any rate,’ commented Mrs Clair. Neither George or Marjorie had anything to say.
‘There’ll be packing to do later on,’ said Mrs Clair. ‘You’ll be busy then, Marjorie. Suppose you and George take the children on the beach while I do the housework this morning?’
They agreed, eagerly.
It was different on the beach this morning from yesterday morning. Instead of dragging out the process of settling down beside the groyne Marjorie hastened it. Instead of lingering over starting the children at their play she cut the business short. She made the fantastic offer of an ice cream for each of them, to be eaten not out of a packet, but sitting up at a table in a real café, if they managed to build this morning a sandcastle worthy of such a stupendous reward. That set the children to work at once – Derrick labouring with his wooden spade to raise a mound big enough for the genius of his sister to work on, Anne with her chin in her hand walking round him, dreaming architectural dreams. Then Marjorie was able to come to George as he sat beside the groyne. She could press his hand and smile at him, and he could smile back at her, and for a space they forgot the world about them.
Not for long. There suddenly welled up in Marjorie’s mind a fountain of ugly thoughts – her mother’s reminder that this was their last day had been cunning indeed. Tomorrow she must go back, to where Ted awaited her. There would be the house in Harrison Way, of which she had once been so proud. It was a digression, but a very relevant one, to think how dirty and untidy the house would be after Ted had lived in it alone for three weeks, and what a mountain of washing there would be to do on Monday. There would be the shabby sitting-room, the thought of which Marjorie could hardly endure, and the bathroom and the bedroom, and Ted with his beastly lips and hands. Hands which had one pawed Dot about; hands which were red with her blood. Marjorie shuddered convulsively.
‘Sweetheart,’ said George. ‘What’s the matter? What’s the trouble, dear?’
‘What are we to do?’ asked Marjorie. She tore at his hands with her fingers as fresh realizations broke upon her; she spoke like a madwoman. ‘What are we to do? What are we to do?’
‘Do?’ said George sturdily. He was not perturbed as yet. Vaguely in his mind he had felt that there would be a way out of the obvious difficulties before them; his present happiness had been too intense for him to think about details. ‘Oh, we’ll be all right, dear. It’s not so bad nowadays. We can get a –’
‘Divorce,’ had been the word he was gong to say, but it remained unspoken. As soon as he came as near as that to reality, he saw far more plainly the objections to that course. Marjorie voiced them for him.
‘A divorce? What, me from Ted? George darling, we can’t. Just think – . What about your job?’
For three weeks George had given no thought to his job. He was Grainger’s subordinate in the branch showrooms. His future was practically at Grainger’s mercy. Not merely that, but there was the managing director of the vast company, higher far than Grainger, who was notorious for being straitlaced, and for dismissing without hesitation any member of the staff who strayed in the least from what he considered the path of rectitude. George’s dismay showed in his face, and involuntarily he uttered the managing director’s name.
‘And there’s Mr Hill – !’
‘Yes,’ said Marjorie. ‘I’ve thought of him, too.’
She knew of Hill’s reputation – and yet it was not until that morning that she had realized suddenly that it was that reputation of Mr Hill’s which had done most to frighten Ted last June into doing what he had done – just another piece of evidence only of weight with those few people intimately acquainted with all the circumstances.
Suddenly Marjorie became aware of George’s unhappy expression, and was all anxiety and contrition.
‘George, darling,’ she said, putting out her hand to him. ‘Don’t worry so. It’ll be all right.’
She smiled bravely at him. She was far more deeply and passionately in love with him now than she had been before she gave herself to him – that was quite typical of her. But her troubles were so many. They surged up again despite herself.
‘There’s the children,’ she said, miserably. ‘You know what Ted’s like. He hates children, but if I tried to leave him he’d keep Derrick and Anne just to spite me. And he’d be horrid to them, too. I know he would. I couldn’t, I wouldn’t leave them with him.’
Her lips were trembling, but George had no word of comfort for her in that moment.
‘That’s so,’ he said grimly. He knew enough about the law to be sure that any wife who left her husband voluntarily would be compelled to hand over the children to the husband who ostensibly had a home open to
her. And he hated the thought of Derrick and Anne at Grainger’s mercy, too. He set his jaw and tried to think clearly about the future. The idea of a divorce grew more unattractive the more he thought of it. Grainger was bad tempered and vindictive, as well he knew. George could foresee that not only would he lose his job but he would be faced with heavy legal costs; and he had a vague idea that an injured husband could recover not merely costs but damages from a co-respondent. If it were possible, Grainger could be trusted to do it. He would not rest until Ely had been utterly ruined, until he was begging in the streets, and Marjorie too, and both of them tormented with the thought of what was happening to the children.
‘We’ve only got until tomorrow,’ said Marjorie at his side. ‘I shall have to go back to him tomorrow. Oh, I can’t, I don’t want to!’
The bare thought of that drove him half mad.
‘I don’t want you to, either,’ he said, desperately. ‘I don’t want you to.’
It was Marjorie who was being the practical one of the two of them now, for a space. Her mind quested about for a solution of their difficulties.
‘Darling,’ she said – there was a faint chance that there might be a helpful answer. ‘Have you got any money?’
‘No,’ said George, bitterly. ‘I drew out all I’d got to pay for the car. I’ll get twenty quid for that, though, when I sell it again.’
‘Twenty quid’s not much,’ said Marjorie. ‘And I haven’t any. The housekeeping’s nearly all gone. I’ll have to let the bills run for a week after I get back.’
It was strange how those last few words slipped out unexpectedly. To most minds – not to George’s – they would have constituted proof that Marjorie was reconciling herself to the thought of returning home. Actually the explanation lay in that to leave her husband was such a tremendous step that Marjorie could not really think except in terms of not having done so.
They sat side by side on the sunlit beach, the groyne at their backs. All round them were holiday makers, the nearest party not more than five yards away. Children ran and laughed and shouted. Far out, where the distant sea, at the lowest point of the ebb, broke feebly in the shallows, there were shrieking groups of bathers. A seagull wheeled overhead, magnificently white against the blue sky. To a casual observer George, open shirted and grey flannelled, and Marjorie, in her summer frock, would appear no different from the hundreds of other holiday-making couples, presumably discussing the seaside price of food, or last night’s film. Life and death hung on their words.
Marjorie sat with her hand at her heart; to her the blue and gold of their surroundings were all drab and tinged with grey. The first of her troubles was returning to her consciousness now with renewed force – for a space she had almost forgotten it in the excitement of having a lover. Her husband was a murderer, the murderer and seducer of her own sister. That appalling fact was more appalling still, now. It loomed up before her like an iceberg before a liner. Sheer terror took hold of her. She cringed before circumstances far too powerful for her to contend against for a moment, like Gulliver in the grip of the giants. Terror – and self-pity – broke her down. The tears welled up into her eyes and poured down her cheeks. She was shaken with sobs, as she sat there with her back against the groyne. The casual observer might guess that now he was witnessing a lovers’ quarrel.
The sobs recalled Ely to consciousness as he sat staring grimly along the beach.
‘Sweetheart!’ he said as he turned to her. ‘Don’t cry, darling. Oh don’t. Everything’ll be all right in the end. Really it will. I swear it will. Oh darling, I can’t bear it when you cry.’
He put his hands out to her, and she sank towards him, and he kissed her quickly and furtively, on her lips and her wet cheeks. Her tears tasted salt to him – even at that moment he noticed it.
‘Tell me you love me, darling,’ moaned Marjorie.
‘Oh, I love you, dear. More than anything else in the world.’
‘Whatever happens, you’ll still love me?’
‘Of course, of course. Whatever happens.’
They kissed again, hurriedly, and then tore themselves apart as they remembered how public was the place in which they sat. The casual observer could guess now that the lovers were reconciled again; but if that had been the hypothesis upon which he had been working he would have been puzzled to account for Derrick and his relationship to them, when the little boy came running up to them.
‘Mummy! Uncle! Come and see what me and Anne have made! Come and see! Can we have our ice cream now?’
They followed him down the beach while he gambolled and galloped ahead. Anne was putting the finishing touches to a vast rococco palace, elaborate in its battlements and ramps and wings. Seaweed, shells, and pebbles had all been called in to help in its decoration. There was even a paper flag streaming stiffly from a flagstaff on the tower. Anne was brooding over the whole effect with a faraway look – the look of a creative artist just emerging from dreams – in her eyes.
‘Lovely!’ said Marjorie. It was second nature to her now, after eight years of motherhood, to put on that bright tone when speaking to her children, no matter what she was suffering herself. ‘Did you do it all by yourselves?’
‘Yes!’ shrieked Derrick.
‘Of course we did,’ said Anne. ‘At least, Derrick didn’t do much of it.’
‘I made the pile!’ expostulated Derrick.
‘I think it’s perfectly wonderful,’ interposed Marjorie. ‘Don’t those shells look nice on the sides.’
‘Derrick found those,’ said Anne, honestly.
‘Can we have our ice cream now?’ clamoured Derrick, capering wildly and waving his spade.
‘Can we, Mummy?’ asked Anne.
The earnestness of her tone was due to her yearning for this solid proof of appreciation of her talent, rather than to any gluttony.
‘I suppose so,’ said Marjorie, helplessly, with a side glance at George.
‘Oh yes, of course,’ said George. He was not as practised as Marjorie at mastering his emotions in the presence of the children, but he did it for her sake, and with a nice appreciation of her motives. ‘Come on, kids. Which café shall we go to – the Beach or the Willow Pattern?’
They made their way up the crowded beach again, threading a path through the seated groups. Marjorie looked at the children as they ran ahead, Derrick plump and sturdy in his bathing costume, Anne – ethereal, not skinny in that golden sunlight – graceful in her scanty frock, her arms and legs tanned golden brown. For a moment Marjorie reverted to the discussion which Derrick’s coming had interrupted.
‘I couldn’t leave them, could I?’ she said, pleadingly, and she lifted her eyes to George’s face and put her hand on his arm.
George shook his head.
‘No,’ he said. ‘You can’t leave them, dear. I can see that. We’ll think of something soon, dear.’
Yet during the rest of that nightmare day the question ‘What are we going to do?’ arose time and again. Marjorie asked it again wildly, in the afternoon. She had found herself, somehow, alone in the kitchen with Ely, and they had kissed, madly, half swooning, but when the insane seconds had passed Marjorie held back at the full stretch of Ely’s arms and said ‘What are we going to do?’ There was panic in her eyes and voice. She was as conscious now of the passing hours as a condemned criminal. Tomorrow she would have to go back to Ted; the hands of the clock seemed to be travelling faster than usual.
Later that afternoon another idea came to her.
‘Take the children out down the road,’ she whispered urgently to Ely. ‘Buy them some sweets – anything. Please dear.’
Then when she was alone with her mother she asked her help – she was like an animal trapped in a shed, running to each corner in turn in a vain search for a chance of escape.
‘Mother,’ she said, breathless, ‘I don’t want to go home tomorrow.’
Mother h
ad chosen the shady corner of the verandah and was taking her knitting out of her work bag. Her face was necessarily averted while she was doing this; it was some seconds before she sat upright again, and she adjusted her needles with what was to Marjorie maddening slowness before she spoke.
‘I’m not surprised,’ she said, placidly. ‘This is the best holiday we’ve ever had, I think. But everybody has their own work to do as well, you know, dear. Life can’t be one long holiday.’
It was exasperating to be misunderstood like this.
‘I don’t mean that,’ said Marjorie. ‘I don’t care a hoot about the holiday. I mean that I don’t want to go back and live with Ted. Not ever.’
The face which Mrs Clair raised from her knitting wore convincingly the expression of blank surprise which she had been getting ready to exhibit ever since George took the children out.
‘My dear!’ she said. ‘Whatever do you mean?’
‘What I say, Mother. I can’t go back to Ted. I can’t. Oh, do help me, Mother.’
Mrs Clair was ready for this. The solitary days and evenings she had spent this holiday had given her ample time to make up her mind as to what she wanted. Merely to deprive Ted of Marjorie, to leave him in possession of the children, would not be nearly enough.
‘Marjorie, dear,’ she said. ‘I’m surprised at you. Leave your husband? Whatever for? I don’t see how I can help you to do that.’
‘Because of Dot, Mother. And you know all the other things. But you can’t expect me to go back to him after what he did to Dot.’