‘Rather giddy-making, but nice.’
‘Oh, definitely.’ He unwound the scarf from his neck, hung it with the cloak over the settle and drifted irresolutely to a position behind the couch. ‘I mean to say-yes, definitely. Like champagne. Almost like being in love. But I don’t think it could be that, do you?’
She tilted her face to smile at him, so that he saw it oddly and intriguingly inverted. ‘Oh, surely not.’ She caught his roving hands, held them, dumbly protesting, away from her breast, brought them up under her chin and imprisoned them there.
‘I thought not. Because, after all, we’re married. Or aren’t we? One can’t be married and in love. Not with the same person, I mean. It isn’t done.’
‘Absolutely not.’
‘Pity. Because I’m feeling rather youthful and foolish tonight. Tender and twining, like a very young pea. Positively romantic.’
‘That. my lord, is disgraceful in a gentleman of your condition.’
‘My mental condition is simply appalling. I want the violins to strike up in the orchestra and discourse soft music while the limelight merchant turns up the moon…’
‘And the crooners are crooning in tune!’
‘Damn it, why not? I will have my soft music! Unhand me, girl! Let’s see what the B.B.C. can do for us.’
She released him; and her eyes, in their turn, followed him to the radio cabinet. ‘Stand there a moment, Peter. No-don’t turn round.’
‘Why?’ he said, standing obediently. ‘Has my unfortunate face begun to get on your nerves?’
‘No-I was just admiring your spine, that’s all. It has a kind of sort of springy line about it that pleases me. Completely enslaving.’
‘Really? I can’t see it. But I must tell my tailor. He always gives me to understand that he invented my back for me.’
‘Does he also imagine he invented your ears and the back of your skull and the bridge of your nose?’
‘No flattery can be too gross for my miserable sex. I am purring like a coffee-mill. But you might have picked a more responsive set of features. It’s difficult to express devotion with the back of one’s head.’
‘That’s just it. I want the luxury of a hopeless passion. There. I can say to myself, there is the back of his adorable head, and nothing I can say will soften it.’
‘I’m not so sure of that. However, I’ll try to live up to your requirements-my true love hath my heart, but my bones are my own. Just at the moment, though, the immortal bones obey control of dying flesh and dying soul. What the devil did I come over here for?’
‘Soft music.’
‘So it was. Now, my little minstrels of Portland Place! Strike, you myrtle-crowned boys, ivied maidens, strike together!’
‘Arrch!’ said the loud speaker, ‘… and the beds should be carefully made up beforehand with good, well-rotted horse-manure or…’
‘Help!’
‘That,’ said Peter, switching off, ‘is quite enough of that.’
‘The man has a dirty mind.’
‘Disgusting. I shall write a stiff letter to Sir John Reith. Isn’t it an extraordinary thing that just when a fellow’s bubbling over with the purest and most sacred emotions when he’s feeling like Galahad and Alexander and dark Gable all rolled into one-when he, so to speak, bestrides the clouds and sits upon the bosom of the air-’
‘Dearest! are you sure it’s not the sherry?’
‘Sherry!’ His rocketing mood burst in a shower of spangles. ‘Lady, by yonder blessed moon I swear…’ He halted, gesturing into the shadows. ‘Hullo! they’ve put the moon on the wrong side.’
‘Very careless of the limelight merchant.’
‘Drunk again, drunk again… Perhaps you’re right about the sherry… Curse this moon, it leaks. O more than moon, Draw not up seas to drown me in thy sphere!’ He wrapped his handkerchief about the stem of the lamp, brought it across from the table and set it beside her, so that the red-orange of her dress shone in the pool of light like an oriflamme. ‘That’s better. Now we begin all over again. Lady, by yonder blessed moon I swear. That tips with silver all these fruit-tree tops… Observe the fruit-trees. Malus aspidistriensis. Specially imported by the management at colossal expense…’
The voices came faintly to Aggie Twitterton, crouched shiveringly in the room overhead. She had meant to escape by the back stair; but at the bottom of it stood Mrs Ruddle, engaged in a long expostulation with Bunter, whose replies from the kitchen were inaudible. Apparently on the point of departure, she kept on coming back to make some fresh remark. Any minute she might take herself off, and then Bunter came out so silently that Miss Twitterton did not hear him till his voice boomed suddenly from just below her:
‘I have nothing more to say, Mrs Ruddle. Good night to you.’
The back door shut sharply and there was the noise of the drawing of bolts. One could not now escape unheard. In another moment, feet began to ascend the stair. Miss Twitterton withdrew hastily into Harriet’s bedroom. The feet came on; they passed the branching of the stair; they were coming in. Miss Twitterton retired still further, shocked to find herself trapped in a gentleman’s bedroom that smelt faintly of bay rum and Harris tweed. Next door she heard the crackle of a kindled fire, the rattle of curtain rings upon the rods, a subdued clink, the pouring of fresh water into the ewer. Then the door-latch lifted, and she fled breathless back into the darkness of the stairs.
‘Romeo was a green fool, and all his trees had green apples. Sit there, Aholibah, and play the queen, with a vine-leaf crown and a sceptre of pampas-grass. Lend me your cloak, and I will be the kings and all their horsemen. Speak the speech, I pray you, trippingly on the tongue. Speak it! My snow-white horses foam and fret-sorry, I’ve got into the wrong poem, but I’m pawing the ground like anything. Say on, lady of the golden voice. “I am the Queen Aholibah-’
She laughed; and let the magnificent nonsense roll out organ-mouthed:
‘My lips kissed dumb the word of Ah
Sighed on strange lips grown sick thereby.
God wrought tome my royal bed;
The inner work there of was red,
The outer work was ivory.
My mouth’s heat was the heat of flame
With lust towards the kings that came,
With horsemen riding royally-
Peter, you’ll break that chair. You are a lunatic!’
‘My dearest, I’ve got to be.’ He flung the cloak aside and stood before her. ‘When I try to be serious, I make such a bloody fool of myself. It’s idiotic.’ His voice wavered with uncertain overtones. “Think of it-laugh at it-a well-fed, well-groomed, well-off Englishman of forty-five in a boiled shirt and an eyeglass going down on his knees to his wife-to his own wife, which makes it so much funnier-and saying. to her-and saying-’
‘Tell me, Peter.’
‘I can’t. I daren’t.’
She lifted his head between her hands, and what she saw in his face stopped her heart. ‘Oh, my dear, don’t… Not all that… It’s terrifying to be so happy.’
‘Ah, no, it’s not,’ he said quickly, taking courage from her fear.
‘All other things to their destruction draw,
Only our love hath no decay;
This no tomorrow hath, nor yesterday;
Running it never runs from us away
But truly keeps his first, last, everlasting day.’
‘Peter-’
He shook his head, vexed at his own impotence.
‘How can I find words? Poets have taken them all, and left me with nothing to say or do.’
‘Except to teach me for the first time what they meant.’
He found it hard to believe. ‘Have I done that?’
‘Oh, Peter-’ Somehow she must make him believe it, because it mattered so much that he should. ‘All my life I have been wandering in the dark-but now I have found your heart-and am satisfied.’