“Let the sleeping dog lie until it gets up to bite you.”
“You think it will?”
“I do.”
“Bad!” muttered the General. “Clare’s too young.”
That was Dinny’s own perpetual thought. What at the first blush she had said to her sister: “You must get free,” remained her conviction. But how was she to get free? Knowledge of divorce had been no part of Dinny’s education. She knew that the process was by no means uncommon, and she had as little feeling against it as most of her generation. To her father and mother it would probably seem lamentable, doubly so if Clare were divorced instead of divorcing—that would be a stigma on her to be avoided at almost all cost. Since her soul-racking experience with Wilfrid, Dinny had been very little in London. Every street, and above all the park, seemed to remind her of him and the desolation he had left in her. It was now, however, obvious to her that Clare could not be left unsupported in whatever crisis was befalling.
“I think I ought to go up, Dad, and find out what’s happening.”
“I wish to God you would. If it’s at all possible to patch things up, they ought to be.”
Dinny shook her head.
“I don’t believe it is, and I don’t believe you’d wish it if Clare had told you what she told me.”
The General stared. “There it is, you see. In the dark.”
“Yes, dear, but till she tells you herself I can’t say more.”
“Then the sooner you go up the better.”
Free from the scent of horse, Melton Mews was somewhat strikingly impregnated with the odour of petrol. This bricked alley had become, indeed, the haunt of cars. To right and to left of her, entering late that afternoon, the doors of garages gaped or confronted her with more or less new paint. A cat or two stole by, and the hinder parts of an overalled chauffeur bending over a carburettor could be seen in one opening; otherwise life was at a discount, and the word ‘mews’ no longer justified by manure.
No. 2 had the peacock-green door of its former proprietress, whom, with so many other luxury traders, the slump had squeezed out of business. Dinny pulled a chased bell-handle, and a faint tinkle sounded, as from some errant sheep. There was a pause, then a spot of light showed for a moment on a level with her face, was obscured, and the door was opened. Clare, in a jade-green overall, said:
“Come in, my dear. This is the lioness in her den, ‘the Douglas in her hall!’”
Dinny entered a small, almost empty room hung with the green Japanese silk of the antique dealer and carpeted with matting. A narrow spiral staircase wormed into it at the far corner, and a subdued light radiated from a single green-paper-shaded bulb hanging in the centre. A brass electric heater diffused no heat.
“Nothing doing here so far,” said Clare. “Come upstairs.”
Dinny made the tortuous ascent, and stepped into a rather smaller sitting-room. It had two curtained windows looking over the mews, a couch with cushions, a little old bureau, three chairs, six Japanese prints, which Clare had evidently just been hanging, an old Persian rug over the matted floor, an almost empty bookcase, and some photographs of the family standing on it. The walls were distempered a pale grey, and a gas fire was burning.
“Fleur gave me the prints and the rug, and Aunt Em stumped up the bureau. I took the other things over.”
“Where do you sleep?”
“On that couch—quite comfy. I’ve got a little bath-dressing-room next door, with a geyser, and a what-d’ye-call-it, and a cupboard for clothes.”
“Mother told me to ask what you wanted.”
“I could do with our old Primus stove, some blankets and a few knives and forks and spoons, and a small tea-set, if there’s one to spare, and any spare books.”
“Right!” said Dinny. “Now, darling, how are you?”
“Bodily fine, mentally rather worried. I told you he was over.”
“Does he know of this place?”
“Not so far. You and Fleur and Aunt Em—oh! and Tony Croom—are the only people who know of it. My official address is Mount Street. But he’s bound to find out if he wants to.”
“You saw him?”
“Yes, and told him I wasn’t coming back; and I’m not, Dinny; that’s flat, to save breath. Have some tea? I can make it in a brown pot.”
“No, thank you, I had it on the train.” She was sitting on one of the taken-over chairs, in a bottle-green suit that went beautifully with her beech-leaf-coloured hair.
“How jolly you look, sitting there!” said Clare, curling up on the sofa. “Gasper?”
Dinny was thinking the same about her sister. Graceful creature, one of those people who couldn’t look ungraceful; with her dark short hair, and dark, alive eyes, and ivory pale face, and not too brightened lips holding the cigarette, she looked—well, ‘desirable.’ And, in all the circumstances, the word appeared to Dinny an awkward one. Clare had always been vivid and attractive, but without question marriage had subtly rounded, deepened, and in some sort bedevilled that attraction. She said suddenly:
“Tony Croom, you said?”
“He helped me distemper these walls; in fact, he practically did them, while I did the bathroom—these are better.”
Dinny’s eyes took in the walls with apparent interest.
“Quite neat. Mother and Father are nervous, darling.”
“They would be.”
“Naturally, don’t you think?”
Clare’s brows drew down. Dinny suddenly remembered how strenuously they had once debated the question of whether eyebrows should be plucked. Thank heaven! Clare never had yet.
“I can’t help it, Dinny. I don’t know what Jerry’s going to do.”
“I suppose he can’t stay long, without giving up his job?”
“Probably not. But I’m not going to bother. What will be will.”
“How quickly could a divorce be got? I mean against him?”
Clare shook her head, and a dark curl fell over her forehead, reminding Dinny of her as a child.
“To have him watched would be pretty revolting. And I’m not going into court to describe being brutalised. It’s only my word against his. Men are safe enough.”
Dinny got up and sat down beside her on the couch.
“I could kill him!” she said.
Clare laughed.
“He wasn’t so bad in many ways. Only I simply won’t go back. If you’ve once been skinned, you can’t.”
Dinny sat, silent, with closed eyes.
“Tell me,” she said, at last, “how you stand with Tony Croom.”
“He’s on probation. So long as he behaves I like to see him.”
“If,” said Dinny slowly, “he were known to come here, it would be all that would be wanted, wouldn’t it?”
Clare laughed again.
“Quite enough for men of the world, I should think; I believe juries can never withstand being called that. But you see, Dinny, if I begin to look at things from a jury’s point of view, I might as well be dead. And, as a matter of fact, I feel very much alive. So I’m going straight ahead. Tony knows I’ve had enough physiology to last me a long time.”
“Is he in love with you?”
Their eyes, brown and blue, met.
“Yes.”
“Are you in love with him?”
“I like him—quite a lot. Beyond that I’ve no feeling at present.”
“Don’t you think that while Jerry is here—?”
“No. I think I’m safer while he’s here than when he goes. If I don’t go back with him he’ll probably have me watched. That’s one thing about him—he does what he says he’ll do.”
“I wonder if that’s an advantage. Come out and have some dinner.”
Clare stretched herself.
“Can’t, darling. I’m dining with Tony in a little grubby restaurant suited to our joint means. This living on next to nothing is rather fun.”
Dinny got up and began to straighten the Japanese prints. Clare’s recklessness was nothing new. To come the elder sister! To be a wet blanket! Impossible! She said:
“These are good, my dear. Fleur has very jolly things.”