Ignoring this opening for a quarrel — of all her tricks, that one annoyed him most — Patricia said, as they turned towards the bottom of the garden, “The last owners let this place become a wilderness. There’s more work here than you will be able to tackle alone; we shall have to have a gardener. We must have this row of bushes out and perhaps just leave that peony where it is.”
“We haven’t bought the place yet,” Arthur said morosely. His reluctance to disappoint her made him speak more grudgingly than he intended. She did not seem to be able to understand that their business slipped nearer disaster every day.
What Arthur most resented was that this trouble, into which his firm slipped more deeply even as he spoke, should come as a barrier between Pat and him. He had seen clearly, a while ago, that they failed to make a very united couple; at first he had almost welcomed the financial crisis, hoping it would bring them more closely together, for Patricia had listened sympathetically enough to his woes before they married. Instead, there seemed something deliberate in her lack of understanding.
Of course, the miserable business with the boys had upset her. But after all, she knew Sofftoys and its workings. She had been a secretary in the firm before Arthur married her, a little irresponsible slip of a thing with a good figure and twinkling eyes. Even now, he could recall his surprise when she agreed to marry him. He told himself he was not like most men: he did not forget the good or the bad things in his past life.
It was the good things that sharpened his present miseries.
Plodding through the grass, he shook his head and repeated, “We haven’t bought the place yet.”
They reached the summer-house, and he pushed the door open. The summer-house was a tiny semi-rustic affair with an ornamental barge-board hanging low enough to catch a tall man’s head, and one window set in its riverside wall. It contained two folded garden chairs leaning across one corner, a rotted awning of some kind, and an empty oil drum. Arthur glanced round it in distaste, closed the door again, and leant against it, looking at Patricia.
Yes, for him she was attractive still, even after her illness and the death of Frank and eleven years of marriage to him. He felt an awful complex thing rise in his breast, and wanted to tell her all in one breath that she was too good for him, that he was doing his best, that she ought to see that ever since those bloody bombs were let off the world was going to hell in a bucket, and that he knew she was a bit sweet on Keith and was glad for her sake if it made her happy provided she didn’t just leave him.
“I hope Algy hasn’t fallen in the river and drowned,” she said, dropping her eyes before his gaze. “But perhaps he’s gone back to the house. Let’s go back and see.”
“Pat, never mind about the boy. Look, I’m sorry about all this — I mean about life and things being difficult lately. I love you very much, darling. I know I’m a bit of a duffer, but the times we live in—”
She had heard him use that phrase “I know I’m a bit of a duffer” in apology before, as if apology was the same as reform. She lost track of what he was saying under a memory of the Christmas before last, when she had induced him to give a party for some of their friends and business acquaintances. It had not been a success. Arthur had sensed it was not succeeding, and — to her dismay — had produced a pack of cards and said to a knot of his junior employees and their wives, with a host’s hollow geniality, “Look, I can see the party’s not going too well — perhaps you’d like to see a few card tricks.”
Standing there in the cool afternoon, she blushed dull red again at her embarrassment and his. There were no shames like social shames, suffered before people who would always try to smile. He was pathetic to think that naming the truth altered it in any way.
“Are you listening, Pat?” Arthur said. He still leant against the door, as if trying to keep something trapped inside. “You don’t seem to listen to me these days. You know I love you. What I’m trying to say is this — we can’t buy Mayburn, not at present. Business is too bad. It would be unwise. I saw my bank manager today, and he said it wouldn’t be wise. You know we have an overdraft already. He said times were going to be worse before they were better. Very much worse.”
“But it was all arranged! You promised!”
“The bank manager explained—”
“Damn the bank manager, and damn you! What did you do, show him a new card trick? You promised me when Frank died that we—”
“Patty, dear, I know I promised, but I just can’t. We’re not children. Don’t you understand, we haven’t got the money?”
“What about one of your life insurances—” she began, then checked herself. He had moved towards her and then stopped, afraid he would be repulsed if he came nearer. His suit looked shabby and needed pressing. The set of his face was unfamiliar to her. Her anger left her. “Are you telling me we’re bankrupt?”
He wetted his lips.
“It’s not as bad as that, of course. You know we have Moxan looking into matters. But last month’s figures are very poor indeed.”
At this she looked angry.
“Well, are things bad or aren’t they, Arthur? Why not come out with it and tell me the truth? You treat me like a child.”
He looked painfully at her, his face puffy, wondering which of half a dozen things would be best to say to her. That he loved her for her streak of childishness? That although he wanted her to share his troubles, he did not want her hurt? That he needed her understanding? That it made him miserable to quarrel in this ugly strange garden?
As always, he had a sense of missing in what he said the complexity he felt.
“I’m just saying, Pat, last month’s figures are very bad — very bad indeed.”
“Do you mean nobody is buying Sofftoys any more?”
“That’s about it, yes.”
“Not even Jock Bear?”
“No, my dear, not even little Jock Bear.”
She took his arm, and they walked together towards the empty house without speaking.
When they found Algy was not in the house, other troubles were temporarily forgotten as they began to worry about the boy. They called continuously through the bare and echoing rooms. No answer came back.
Patricia ran out from the house, still calling, running through the bushes, down towards the river, full of a fright she dared not name. She was level with the summer-house when a voice called, “Mummy!” As she swerved towards it, Algy was standing there in the gloom with the door half open; like a small projectile, he came flying to her, weeping.
Clutching him tightly, she asked him why he had remained in hiding when they had looked for him before.
He had no way of explaining, though he blurted out something about a girl and a game of hide-and-seek.
It had been a game; when his father opened the summerhouse door and looked in, it remained a desperate game. He wanted his father to find him and embrace him. He did not know why he crouched behind the garden chairs, half-fearing discovery.
Stiff with pins and needles, he remained where he was when the door closed again. He had overheard the conversation between his parents, a secret conversation more terrible for being mainly incomprehensible. It told him that there existed a tremendous threatening world with which no one — not even his father — could come to terms; and that they lived not among solid and certain things but in a crumbling pastry world. Guilty and afraid, he hid from his knowledge behind the chairs, anxious to be found, scared of the finding.
“It was naughty and cruel of you, Algy, do you hear? You knew I would be worried with the river so near. And you are not to play with strangers — I told you before, they sometimes have sicknesses about which you know nothing. You heard us calling you — why didn’t you come out immediately?”