“If you’re in love with Hester perhaps I’ll make it difficult too,” she said.
“Very well, I’ll go and stay with the Wades. They’ve done everything but ask me.”
“Oh, no, Harry. Everyone here is so boring. Apart from you and the Wades we don’t see anyone who isn’t disgustingly rich. They’re all so offensive about money, pretending it doesn’t matter, as if it had been conferred on them like a divine privilege. They don’t see any fun in having lapis lazuli dashboards on their cars, and that kind of thing, but Joe says some of them are just as shaky as we are, even the brewers. I mean the small brewers – we don’t know any of the old brewing aristocracy.” She lay back, sighing.
“You don’t happen to know a small brewer who’d want to finance me as a poet? They used to like that kind of thing.”
“I’m certain they don’t like it now. If you were a college you might get endowed. Harry, Joe’s being very queer.”
“In some new way?”
“He’s going to Ireland.”
“Why?”
“He says he wants to buy some new cinemas, but his real purpose is to get away from you. He says perhaps he’ll buy a farm in Ireland and stay there until you go away. He says you’re giving him a nervous breakdown and he can’t bear another week of it. He’s so keen to go that although Aer Lingus is booked up because of the Horse Show he’s chartering a plane. He was taking a couple of directors with him, but now their wives are ill or they’re having alcoholic cures or something and they can’t go. He ought to cancel the plane, but he’s trying to find someone else to share it and even if he can’t he’s going alone. I think that’s extravagant. It has four seats.”
“He’ll be able to put his feet up. Have you any cigarettes in the house, Moira?”
“There’s a box somewhere. Oh no, there isn’t.”
Harry stood up and walked restlessly to the mantelpiece. “Would you like to ring for some?” he suggested.
“I can’t. I’m sorry, Harry, I can’t. Joe says as he only smokes cigars and would never let a cigarette touch his lips and I don’t smoke at all we’re not to keep cigarettes in the house. He says you smoke them all. Harry, he’s getting restless. He doesn’t want you to stay.”
“I’m getting restless, too,” Harry said. He sat down beside Moira and took her hand in his. “I’m getting worried about Joe. Suppose he had guests in the house who weren’t me, what’s he going to do about keeping up appearances? Shareholders won’t appreciate the rose garden when they want to smoke.”
Moira looked down thoughtfully. “You have wonderful hands, Harry. Lovely long fingers with the most exciting vibrations. But you should use a nail brush. He’s keeping some cigarettes in his bedroom for emergencies.”
Harry stood up. “What drawer?”
“I don’t know. I should try the top one, in the dressing-chest with the handkerchiefs.”
While Harry was upstairs she lay back, frowning, then arranging the softly flowered dress over her knees.
He came down holding a box. “I like a handmade cigarette,” he said. “Good old Joe.” He leant against the mantelpiece, opening the box.
She stood up in a graceful, swirling movement, and walked towards him with short, rather plodding steps, as though she was crossing an expanse of suet pudding.
“Shall I get you a light?”
She stood beside him and he put his arms round her and kissed her. When he let her go, he was grinning.
“Why have you gone so hard?” he asked.
“It’s from Paris. The corset’s built into the dress.”
“You feel like a piece of machinery. It’s like embracing a robot,” he said.
“These damned dress designers. They never think of practical details,” she said angrily.
“If you could think of a practical detail for a moment – is Joe really trying to get rid of me? Or is he trying to get rid of you?”
“Me? Joe trying to get rid of me. Harry, why should he?”
“Is he taking you to Ireland?”
“No.”
“Is he taking me to Ireland?”
“No.”
“So he’s going to leave us alone together, in this house. Do you suppose he’d be happy about that unless he wanted trouble. I can see the way it will be,” Harry said, his eyes beginning to shine. “He’ll only pretend to go away. He’ll come back suddenly, in the small hours. It’s the classic situation, except that he may come by helicopter. Is he a very jealous man? Do you think he wants a chance to kill me, or is he only after divorce?”
“Oh, Harry!”
“If he goes away we’ll have to be very careful. The only safe thing would be to have nothing to do with each other. Unless you want to be divorced?”
“Do I?” she said. She stood and thought, until her face forecast all the lines and bitterness of middle-age. She saw herself less brutally than the observer, not for a moment imagining that the pool was already drying up and that the thirsty traveller would pass it without a glance. She knew that soon she might have to rise from the pool and clutch the traveller and hold him while his eyes turned away.
“Perhaps I don’t. I’m used to dear old Joe,” she said.
“But, Harry, how awful if he’s really plotting against me!” She began to cry a little. He wiped her eyes with a pale blue silk handkerchief.
She stopped crying.
“That’s Joe’s handkerchief,” she said.
“I know. When I was getting the cigarettes, I remembered I was out of handkerchiefs. I did put some out for your old crab of a housekeeper to wash. But they never came back. I suppose she got them mixed up with Joe’s. So I took a couple of his. While we’re on the subject, Moira, I suppose you couldn’t trouble your feminine head about what happened to my other shirt?”
“She came to me – but we were talking about divorce.”
“Go on about the shirt.”
“She asked if she was to wash it or throw it out. Joe was there. He said, en passant, throw it out.” She laughed, a little nervously.
“Well, really, Moira!” Harry said in an outraged voice that made her laugh harder.
“But look at what I’m wearing!” he said, and took off his coat. She looked at the torn and dirty shirt underneath and laughed so much that she had to totter to the chaise longue and sink down, tortured by laughter.
Harry looked down at his shirt and laughed uncertainly.
“All right, then, let’s talk about divorce,” he said.
She made wild motions with her hands.
“Stop it, Harry, you’re killing me,” she said, choking.
There was a loud knocking at the door. She tried uselessly to control herself.
Joe walked into the room, looking fixedly at the floor.
“I knocked,” he said. “In my own house, I knocked.” He stood looking down with exaggerated meekness. “I was afraid of what I might see. You will be able to explain, Harry, what has been happening in this room?”
“I was talking about laundry,” Harry said, putting on his jacket. “It made Moira laugh.”
“It’s true, Joe,” Moira said. She was panting, and her face was streaked with tears of laughter.
“I haven’t laughed so much for years,” she said apologetically.
“Thank you, Moira, you have exposed the results of marriage. Harry, if you could make me laugh so much, I might keep you in this house for ever, but for me you are not a joke. You are so unamusing that I thought of hitting you. I have something to tell you. I am going to Dublin. I am going for a few days’ rest.”
“The last time I was in Dublin I didn’t go to bed for forty-eight hours,” Harry said reminiscently. “Moira says you’re chartering a plane. Why don’t you both go?” he asked in a generous manner.