Next morning he sent flowers. Later that day Mildred telephoned her thanks and asked him to come in for a drink the following evening. By then he had recovered sufficiently to feel better about things. He thought it probable that Mildred's lack of enthusiasm was due to Bertie's having mishandled matters on their honeymoon, as it was said that many women suffered from a lasting reaction on that account. But he had again acquired a mistress, and one who shared all his interests, made a charming companion and had an apparently complaisant, virtually absentee, husband; so, given time and patience, he felt that the future could hold much happiness for them both.
When he arrived at the Soames' flat, Mildred opened the door to him. Her large eyes were intense, her prominent teeth flashed in a sudden, rather coy, smile and she said in a low voice:
`Come in, darling. Bertie's back from the north for a few nights, and I've told him about us.'
For a few seconds Adam did not take in the implications of what she had said. Then he was seized with an impulse to turn and run. But by that time he was inside and advancing towards the open door of the sitting room with Mildred blocking his retreat.
A moment later he was confronting the rotund Bertie, who gave him a look more of pain than anger, and said with a shake of his head, `I wouldn't have believed it of you, young feller. You didn't strike me as that sort, and I thought Mil was content to go on as things were. I suppose it's largely my fault for not having insisted on her coming up to Manchester so that I could be with her much more frequently. But there it is. These things do happen, and Mil tells me that you've fallen for one another. Well, I'm not one to stand in the way of other people's happiness. She can have her divorce and I'm sure you'll do the right thing by the little woman.'
Swallowing a lump in his throat, Adam stammered, `Yes… oh, yes. Of course.' Upon which Bertie suddenly became quite cheerful, began to mix Martinis for the three of them and declared
`That's settled, then. I'm glad we can all remain friends. All we have to do now is to work out ways and means so that we can get things tidied up with a minimum of fuss and bother.'
It then transpired that Bertie was willing to give Mildred `grounds' on the understanding that she made no claim for alimony and that, apart from her personal possessions, he retained the contents of the flat. He added, with disarming generosity, that until the divorce came through he would remain in the north, so Adam was welcome to move into the flat if he wished.
They then shelved the subject, made a determined pretence that it had never arisen and, with somewhat forced cheerfulness, dined together at a nearby restaurant.
Adam got away as soon as he decently could, and walked home with his mind in a whirl. Later, lying in bed, he made a fairly shrewd appreciation of the situation. The full blooded and gregarious Bertie was thoroughly tired of his earnest and puritanical minded wife; he had, therefore, jumped at this chance to be rid of her at no financial loss to himself. She, too, was thoroughly tired of him and, as his future held no particular promise, had seized on this opportunity to swap him for an author who was a potential best seller and in due course, might become a distinguished and wealthy husband.
Much as Adam took pleasure in Mildred's company, he was not in the least in love with her and had no wish to be married to anyone. Yet it seemed that, like it or not, he had landed himself with her. Short of cutting loose and disappearing, he saw no way to evade the course that was being thrust upon him. She had become his main contact with the editors who provided him with a living. Moreover, having been taken off his guard, instead of having had the courage to make his feelings about her clear, he had rashly promised Bertie to do the right thing by the `little woman'.
Greatly troubled, he eventually fell asleep, vaguely hoping that something might arise that would enable him to wriggle out of his obligation.
But next morning the ground was cut from beneath his feet. Mildred arrived at his lodging, kissed him with unexpected fervour and took charge of matters. She said that Bertie had gone, so Adam could move into her flat.
In vain he protested that to do so might queer the divorce and that her good name would suffer with her neighbours. Mildred replied that in these days there were so many divorces that the King's Proctor had not the means to investigate one per cent of them and that, as she and Adam were to be married as soon as the divorce was through, her neighbours were quite liberal minded enough to look on them as turtle doves rather than as adulterers. She then made Adam pay his landlady a week's rent in lieu of notice, packed his belongings for him and carried him off.
Once they had settled down, Adam was much happier than he had expected to be. He enjoyed many small comforts that he had previously lacked, and in bed, although she was no Polly, Mildred gave herself to him willingly. Having had little experience of sleeping with women he accepted it that her limitations were normal in contrast to Polly's, whose amorous abandon he now put down to her having been a nymphomaniac.
Nevertheless, after some months their initial contentment was to be marred by increasingly bad news from the literary front. Adam's second book proved a flop. It had been well subscribed; but the reviews ranged from indifferent to downright bad, and in its first three months it sold less than thirty per cent of the copies that Across the Green Seas had in the same period.
Mildred railed against the critics and remained convinced that Adam had the makings of a best seller. Together they laboured on his third book in which, for background, he used his experiences as a crime reporter in Southampton. Again she insisted on inserting lush passages describing the hero's affaires with several young women. Reluctantly he accepted them, while marveling that a woman who could write of sexual encounters with such gusto should, herself, be comparatively cold.
This was more than ever borne in on him after the divorce came through. They were married quietly a week later at Chelsea Town Hall, and moved to a smaller flat in the same neighborhood which they had been decorating and furnishing as their new home. That night, although they had had only half a dozen friends in for drinks, she declared herself too tired to let him make love to her. And from then on their relations in that way steadily worsened.
Mildred began to suffer from migraines and backache. When Adam became sufficiently wrought up to press her she submitted; but reluctantly, and with the air of a martyr, so that he was left with the guilty feeling that he had behaved like a brute. Clearly she derived no enjoyment from it and for him it became only a hard won temporary satisfaction. Bitterly, he came to the conclusion that she had exerted herself to give him pleasure before their marriage only to keep him on the hook. Twice when she flatly refused him he lost his temper, seized her with his big hands by the shoulders and shook her until her teeth chattered, then took her by force; but afterwards he was thoroughly ashamed of himself and begged her forgiveness.
A fortnight after he had sent in the manuscript of his third novel, Mr. Winters asked him to lunch at the Garrick, and there took him to task. Over the coffee he said:
`We are taking After Dusk in Southampton because the success of your first novel will still enable your name on a book to show us a margin of profit. But it's not going to get you anywhere. Now tell me, how much of it is you and how much is Mildred?'
Adam admitted that Mildred had had a considerable hand in it, particularly with the love sequences.
Mr. Winters gave a cynical grin. `I thought as much, and to you as an author your wife is a menace. She is a competent reader and good enough to recognise the big stuff when she sees it; hence her appreciation of your first novel. But her real flair is for light romance: the triangle fiction that goes down well with young girls and frustrated spinsters. Its sales are entirely to the libraries and its authors are almost unknown. But the ones that Mildred picks always show a profit. Not much, but it is bread and butter publishing that helps to keep the firm going. Some writers are naturals at turning out such trash. But you are not, and your new book is neither flesh, fowl nor good red herring. Snap out of it, dear boy. Go home and tell Mildred to put her head in a pudding cloth, then sit down to it and write me a really good book.'