“Little fool,” said Gunilla. “Nearly a hundred Aspirin and half a bottle of gin. Where would she have got the idea that it would kill her?”
“She didn’t mean to kill herself,” said Arthur. “It was what it is now fashionable to call a gesture of despair.”
“No, no, don’t patronize her,” said Gunilla. “She meant to kill herself, undoubtedly. She was just badly informed, as many suicides are.”
“You must admit she made a very effective scene out of it,” said Dulcy. “I was moved. Blubbed quite a lot, I confess it without shame.”
“She saw herself as Elaine, the Lily Maid of Astolat,” said Maria. “Dying of love for the faithless Lancelot. Hulda has learned a great deal from this opera, quite apart from the music. She did it to make you feel cheap, Geraint, just as Elaine made Lancelot feel cheap. Now, Davy my pet, time to change sides.” She shifted the feeding child to her other breast.
“Do all babies make that slurping noise when they are feeding?” said Geraint.
“It’s a very nice noise, and no impertinent questions from you, my lad. You’re in the doghouse.”
“I’m damned if I’m in the doghouse,” said Geraint. “You can’t blame me. I won’t put up with it.”
“You’ll have to put up with it,” said Dulcy. “Of course it’s unjust, but who are you to escape all of the world’s injustice? This is one of those cases where the female side in the great struggle undoubtedly wins. You scorned her love, which God knows was obvious enough, and she tried to kill herself. Doghouse for you. Bitter shame upon you, Geraint Powell, you heart-breaker, for not less than two weeks.”
“Bullshit!”
“Coarseness ill becomes a man in your position. You are cast as the haughty, gallant, gay Lothario, and if you have any dramatic sense at all—which is what you’re paid to have—you will play the part to the hilt.”
“Is nobody on my side? Sim bach, say a few eloquent words in my defence. How am I to blame?”
“Well, to be totally fair and even-handed, Geraint, I have seen you, now and then, casting inflammatory smiles in her direction.”
“I smile at everybody, particularly when I don’t mean anything by it. Perhaps I smiled—a meaningless grimace of courtesy—at Schnak now and then when she kept getting under my feet. I swear upon the soul of my dear mother, now adding a fine mezzo to the heavenly choir, that I meant nothing, nothing whatever, by it. I smile at you Nilla, and at you, Dulcy, and God knows I don’t expect it to get me anywhere, you horrible old dykes.”
“Dykes!” said Gunilla indignantly. “How dare you use such a word to me—to us. You are a boor, Geraint.”
“Isn’t he a boor, Nilla? That’s precisely what he is. A boor.
She loved thee, boor; she loved thee, cruel boor;
Shakespeare, freely adapted for the occasion.” Dulcy was enjoying herself greatly. Indignation and Scotch were working strongly inside her.
“She didn’t love me, even if she thought she did.”
“It comes to the same thing.”
“Yes, I fear it does,” said Darcourt. “Poor old Schnak was in the grip of one of the great errors of the frenzied lover. She thought because she loved, she could provoke love in return. Everybody does it, at some time. I speak as the voice of calm reason.”
“And you ignored her cruelly,” said Arthur. “Doghouse for you, Geraint.”
“I suppose I must make a statement,” said Geraint. “What I am about to say does not spring from vanity, but from bitter experience. Listen to me, all of you. Since I was but a winsome lad, women have insisted on falling for me. It has something to do with chemistry, I suppose. Chemistry and the fact (which I state without any vanity whatever) that I am absurdly good-looking. Result, a lot of trouble for me. But am I to blame? I refuse to accept blame. Are beautiful women to blame because men fall for them? Is Maria to blame because just about everybody who sees her falls in love with her, or at least looks upon her to lust after her? I’ll bet that even Sim bach, bloodless old turnip though he is, loves Maria. Can Maria help it? The idea is too ridiculous for discussion. So why am I to blame because Schnak, who is emotionally warped and retarded, gets silly notions about me? My beauty has been a large part of my success as an actor, and I tell you I’m bloody sick of it. That’s why I want to get out of acting and into directing. I will not be sighed at and lallygagged over by audiences of hungry females. I have too keen an intelligence to value such admiration, which is simply aroused by the Livery of Hell—my physical appearance. I am close to middle age, and my beauty is giving way to a ravaged distinction. I have a gammy leg. So perhaps I can look forward to the remainder of my life in peace.”
“I wouldn’t count on that, Geraint,” said Arthur. “You must bear your cross. Even if your looks are going, the chemistry is bubbling away as merrily as ever. But we’re wandering from the point. The point is Schnak. What are you going to do about Schnak?”
“Why must I do anything about her? I’m not going to encourage her, if that’s what you have in mind. I can’t abide the shrimp. It isn’t just that she’s ugly to look at. Her voice goes through me like a rusty saw, and her impoverished vocabulary grates on me unbearably. Even if I were willing to forgo beauty, I simply must have the luxury of language. It isn’t just that she looks ugly. She sounds ugly, and I want none of her.”
“You make a terrible fuss about voices, Geraint,” said Maria.
“Because they are terribly important, and usually neglected. Listen to you, Maria; music every time you open your lips. But most women don’t even know that’s possible. It is one of the three great marks of beauty. It totally changes the face. If Medusa speaks like a goddess, you can’t tell her from Minerva.”
“Very Welsh, Geraint,” said Dulcy.
“And none the worse for that, I suppose?” said Geraint.
“There, my dumpling, that’s enough,” said Maria, and putting little David over her shoulder she patted his back gently. The child gave a mighty belch, extraordinary for his age.
“That boy is obviously going to grow up to be a sailor,” said Arthur.
“Or a great lord of finance, like his daddy,” said Maria.
“Will you call Nanny, darling?”
When Nanny came she was not the stout, red-faced figure of stereotype, but a girl in her early twenties, smart in a blue uniform; David was her first charge.
“Come on, my lambie,” she said, in a Scottish voice that made Geraint glance at her approvingly. “Time for bed.”
She took the child over her shoulder, and this time David gave a long, reflective fart. “That’s the boy,” said Nanny.
“David has more sense than the lot of you,” said Geraint. “He has summed up this whole argument in a masterly blast. Let’s hear no more of it.”
“Oh, but we must,” said Maria. “You can’t get out of it. Even if you didn’t encourage Schnak, you must comfort her. The logic is clear, but it would take too long to spell it out.”
“I’ll throw up the show, first,” said Geraint, and, dragging himself from under the heavy cover, he stamped out of the room. He avoided the cliché of slamming the door.
The others chewed over the rights and wrongs of the situation for quite a long time, until Darcourt fell asleep. It was midnight when they went to their own quarters. The big motel was full of people associated with Arthur in one way or another, and Albert Greenlaw insisted on calling it Camelot. Was there a lot of gossip at Camelot about Lancelot and Elaine? Malory doesn’t say.
7
Geraint was at the hospital the next day, as soon as rules permitted. Schnak was in a room for two, but by good luck the other bed was empty. She sat up in bed, wan and bedraggled, in a hospital gown that had once been blue and was now a poor grey, eating a bowl of orange Jello, washed down with an eggnog.