“I’m speaking only for myself, dearest — I know my ideas are anti-social, and that society couldn’t exist if everyone acted according to my views. I’m essentially a selfish woman, Dane. It’s not that I don’t care about what happens to people; but I’m most concerned with what happens to me in this very short life we’re given. I suppose I’m a materialist. My notion of love doesn’t require marriage to consummate it, that’s all. In fact — I’m speaking only for myself — I reject the whole concept of marriage. I’m no more capable of being happy as a housewife, or a country club gal, or a young suburban matron than I am of renouncing the world and taking the veil.
“Maybe love and marriage go together like a horse and carriage, as the song says,” Sheila went on, taking his cold hand, “but I’m an electronic-age-type dame. To me a ring on the finger is like a ring in the nose. What a mockery modern marriage is! No wonder divorce is one of our leading industries. I can’t stomach the hypocrisy of marriage, so I side-step it. Can you picture me billing and cooing ten years after in a vine-covered cottage beside a waterfall?”
She laughed. He looked at her woodenly.
“The trouble is, of course, that I don’t need a man to support me. I certainly don’t need your money — I have plenty of my own. I don’t hanker after social position; I have a pretty elevated position in my own sector of society. And I certainly couldn’t subordinate myself to your career, because I have my own — what’s worse, mine is made, while yours is still in the making. Marriage is all right for women in a bourgeois society...”
“What about children?” Dane asked her bitterly. “Doesn’t your advanced concept include the little matter of children?”
“Not especially. Let those propagate the race who can’t propagate anything else; Lord knows there are enough of them. I love children as much as the next woman, but in this life we have to make hard choices. I’ve made mine, and motherhood has no place in it. So you see, Dane, what you’ve fallen in love with.”
“I see, yes,” he said.
“We can be happy without marriage. As long as we stay in love. Don’t you see that, darling?”
It seemed to him there was anxiety in her eyes. As for him, the Grand Marnier was gone by now, together with his anger and most of his sickness. Only emptiness was left.
“No, Sheila, I don’t. I don’t say what you propose is immoral — the hell with that; it’s worse. It’s impractical. If marriage without love is hateful, so is love without marriage. It has to creep instead of walk, skulk in dark corners, hide—”
“It has to do no such thing,” Sheila retorted. Her head was cocked, her tone cool. “You’re talking like a schoolboy, darling, do you know that? Last night — satisfied with a kiss in the dark. Really, Dane! And now this goody-goody talk. What’s next? Are you going to tell me you’ve been keeping yourself chaste for your one and only little wifie? The difference between us is that you’re a romantic, and I’m a merchant realist.”
So there it was — the shrew hidden in every woman, the flash of carnivorous teeth, the bite.
He had thought of himself as taking his pleasure when and where he could create it, a reasonably sophisticated man. And here was Sheila, making him feel like a — what had she called him? — a schoolboy! Looking at her, he felt abjectly estranged. No trace of warmth or womanliness seemed left in the symmetrical face before him. It was like a Greek sculpture, smoothly inscrutable with secrets buried in time. Her philosophy was as far beyond him as his was beyond his mother’s. Maybe he was still a Yaley at heart: have fun while you’re unattached, then settle down with a wife — have fun afterward, too, if you could get away with it.
But Sheila’s philosophy seemed contemptuous of any standard. He was sure he could never catch up with her, even surer that he didn’t want to. And yet... a line from a poem he had jeered at came into his head: La Belle Dame sans Merci/ Hath thee in thrall.
It was as if she knew it, for she chuckled; and even this tiny sound from her throat made him hunger.
“Oh, Dane, don’t look so woebegone,” she cried. “Instead of being married lovers, we’ll be lovers, period. Dane... don’t tell me you’ve never had a woman!” She looked at him with absolute horror.
He was glad that she was not smiling when she said it, or he might have leaped at her. The brandy had been a mere stopgap; the beginning of the old feared roaring stirred in his ears. Careful, he warned himself; keep control, as he felt his hands become fists.
“Yes, I’ve had women, but I must seem impossibly old-fashioned to you. Because I’m strictly a one-woman man. Well, I’ve had my share of disappointments. This seems to be another of them.”
“Oh, Dane.” She moved away a little. “You say you’re a one-woman man. Don’t you mean you’re a one-woman-at-a-time man? And that’s just right with me. I shouldn’t want it any other way. I’ve no intention of sharing you with somebody. We’re not far apart at all. Isn’t that true?” When his mouth clamped tighter, Sheila said, “I don’t mean I’d never consider marriage. In a way, it would be up to you to show me that marriage — with you — is what I really want.
“But I don’t want it at this particular time, not even with you. I’m a one-man-at-a-time gal, and right now that man can be you. But you must understand that while I’d be yours and yours only, I don’t know for how long. A week, a month, five years — maybe forever; how can either of us tell? You notify me when you want out, and I’ll do the same.”
Was he, could he really be, in love with her?
Dane began to pace, and Sheila sat back and watched him with that same trace of anxiety. Did this mean she was giving the old man the gate? Or was she playing some sort of game with both of them? Damn this development! It had really fouled everything up. (How could love foul up anything? So maybe he wasn’t in love with her after all.)
He stopped before the ottoman and took her hands in his. “All right, baby, we’ll let the plot write itself. On your terms. Maybe I’ve escaped a fate worse than death. Lovers, is it? Let’s get started.”
Her arms tugged, and he let himself fall.
The next morning he was in a more comfortable frame of mind. Having savored the taste and depths of her, he could not doubt her. It was not a game — however brief it might turn out to be, it was not a game. He was convinced that she had told him the truth.
So Sheila was a one-man-at-a-time woman, and he had accomplished his purpose. In her forthrightness, Sheila would certainly have told his father, at the start of their affair, what she had told Dane; so it could come as no surprise to him when she broke it off.
This should send his father back to his mother, with no need for a confrontation — no need, when it came to that, for either of his parents to know how the trick had been accomplished. There was no reason for the elder McKell to learn that Sheila’s new lover was his son; and let Lutetia think her husband had settled back in the nest of his own volition. It would comfort her.
But something was — not exactly wrong; off-key, perhaps. He offered Sheila a key to his apartment, and she refused it. “Not yet, darling. I’m still enjoying my illicit status.” Instead, she offered him a key to hers.
And when the following Wednesday came, he could not see her. “I’m only human, darling,” she said over the phone, a smile in her voice. “Not tonight. Tomorrow night?”
That Wednesday night, as usual, Ashton McKell did not come home at his other-weekday hour. He was gone all evening.
Sheila had lied to him. It must be that. Yet how could it be? Or was she easing his father off? That was it. He was probably taking it hard, and she had decided to let him down gradually. Still, it meant that he and his father were sharing Sheila’s circular Hollywood bed. It left him with a vile taste.