Love, I’m not sure what it is, what does it mean? Elaine loves to love things. She loves tweed suits, mushrooms, bleached mahogany furniture, bridge, even me. “I love you, Gordon, naturally I do, for heaven’s sake you’re my husband, aren’t you?” She loves the children too. Eat your custard because Mummy loves you and wants you to be big and strong. Elaine wants to be loved in return, she’s always asking me if I love her and I always say I do. “Certainly, of course, absolutely, sure, naturally, why shouldn’t I love you, you’re my wife, aren’t you?” What have we been talking about all these years, Elaine and I? I never killed a city for Elaine.
“I remember,” Gordon said.
“I felt dead too, Gordon. I knew I was moving around, sometimes I could feel my legs walking up the streets but they didn’t have any connection with me, they just walked by themselves automatically.”
“I didn’t — I didn’t mean to make you feel this way about me.”
“I know, but I do. It’s happened. You don’t really want me to go home, do you, Gordon?”
“No.”
“Well, that’s settled then. And you mustn’t worry, promise?”
“I promise, Ruby.”
She pressed her head against his shoulder. Her mouth trembled and her eyes were blurred with tears. “I’ve never loved anyone before and nobody’s ever loved me either, not my father or mother or my aunt or another man, no one.”
“I’ll make it up to you,” Gordon said. He felt a new and grave responsibility for her. She had such stubborn naiveté, she was so ignorant of the world and of the difficulties ahead of them both.
In fear and love and desperation he put his arm around her and held her close.
For Gordon, who was by nature a blunt and honest man, life became a series of sly, awkward deceptions.
He lied to Hazeclass="underline" “You’d better phone Mrs. Hathaway and cancel her five o’clock appointment. I have a bit of a headache.” He lied to Elaine: “That walk last night set me up. I think I ought to get more exercise—” and to the children: “Daddy can’t read to you tonight, he’s going down to the Y to have a swim.”
Later, he and Ruby parted at the front door of Ruby’s boarding house. The proprietress, who didn’t allow visitors of the opposite sex in any of the rooms, had lately become suspicious of one or two of her tenants, and she sat all evening in the parlor with the blinds up, looking alert.
“The old biddy’s watching,” Ruby said. “Don’t kiss me.”
“All right.”
“Will I see you tomorrow, Gordon?”
“I don’t know.”
“What did you tell Elaine tonight?”
“That I was going for a swim at the Y.”
“You better wet your hair some place.”
On his way home he went into the public lavatory and dampened his hair under the tap. He splashed some water in his eyes to make them a little red, and dried his face with his handkerchief. He walked home along the dark quiet streets with the smell of the lavatory in his nostrils and despair and degradation in his heart.
On his arrival Elaine noticed his damp hair and reddish eyes, but she also noticed that he didn’t smell of chlorine as he always did after a swim in the pool. She didn’t make any comment to Gordon, she merely noted the discrepancy in the little account book she had kept inside her head for years.
The next night Elaine left the children alone, with a bag of chocolates as solace, and followed Gordon down to Mr. Gomez’s café. Through the window slot in the front door she saw Gordon enter one of the back booths and greet someone who was already there. After the first vicious thrill of triumph — “I was right! I’ve been right all along, absolutely right!” — she felt a dazed incredulity. She had followed the wrong man, it was not Gordon (good old comfortable, steady, hard-working Gordon); and the woman who had followed him, dodging behind bushes and trees pretending to be mailing a letter and looking for a certain house number, was not herself, Elaine, the sincere, virtuous, respectable Elaine she knew and loved so well.
Elaine was, during the first few hours, more appalled at herself than at Gordon. How could I, she thought. How could I, following him like that, peering in that window — what would Mama say if she found out?
Neither Mama, nor Gordon, nor anyone else, found out about Elaine’s trip in the dark. Elaine managed to forget it herself except when Judith referred to it as “the night Mummy left us alone with the chocolates.”
The night of the chocolates, which was for Judith one of her most delightful experiences, was the beginning of what Elaine called her fight for her home and her happiness and the children. She fought indirectly, via the telephone and Mr. Gomez.
The calls infuriated Ruby. “Why can’t she leave us alone? She’s got everything she wants, what’s she griping about? I’m the one should be griping.”
“What’s the matter now, Ruby?”
“I’ve got to move.”
“Why?”
“The old biddy’s found out about us. She told me very politely this morning that she didn’t keep a house and she wasn’t a madam and if I wasn’t out by Thursday morning she’d report me to the police and they’d run me out of town. Nice, eh?”
“She must be crazy to talk like that,” Gordon said, pale with anger. “My God, Ruby, didn’t you defend yourself? Didn’t you talk back?”
“Sure I talked back,” Ruby said dully. “I said I’d move out Thursday morning and that’s all I said because it’s all I could say.”
“But you must have—”
“Well, I didn’t. I want to get out of there, anyway. I don’t even want to go back there tonight. She scares me, Gordon.” She leaned her head on her hands in a picture of weary resignation. “What’s the matter with me tonight? I guess I’m tired. Don’t pay any attention to me. Things are getting so much more mixed up than I thought. I just seem to be making a sort of general mess of everything. Even my new job. You know what Mr. Anderson said to me tonight? He said I was the worst waitress he’d ever seen and I guess he’s right. In the same breath he asked me to go out with him. I said no. Would you be jealous if I did go out with him, Gordon?”
“I suppose I would,” Gordon said soberly. “I don’t know. I’ve never been jealous of anyone before.”
“You wouldn’t. I mean, that’s sort of typical of you. You’re just sort of generally nice, aren’t you?”
Gordon smiled. “Elaine would like to hear that.”
“Don’t talk about her tonight. I’m too tired, I’m so tired I could die. What a job, hauling food around all day. You should see some of them eat. God, people are pigs. It makes me so sick watching them that I never want to eat again.”
“You’ve got to quit that job. I’ll get some money for you. I’ll tell Elaine that—”
He stopped, unable to think of anything to tell Elaine that she would even pretend to believe. Out of the budget Elaine allowed him twenty dollars a week for lunch and incidentals. The budget had always been Elaine’s job — an office budget that covered salaries, rent and new equipment, and one for the household. These budgets invariably balanced, and Gordon was grateful to Elaine for taking over the job and making his money stretch further than he would have been able to do. He had never needed more than twenty dollars a week for himself. Now that he did, the only way he could get it was by more lying. If he cashed a check on their joint account Elaine would find out about it and he would still have to lie.
In the end he wrote out a check for fifty dollars and told Elaine he had lost it on a horse race.
“How could you, Gordon,” Elaine said, with soft reproach, “when you know how we could have used that money! The children are old enough now to perceive things. They see that the Brittons next door have a slide and swing, but they haven’t. And poor Paul has had his heart set on a model airplane with a real motor in it. Or a wading pool. I did so hope we’d be able to manage a wading pool this summer. Well — I won’t nag, Gordon, I hate nagging wives. But I must ask you for the sake of the children to keep within your allowance.”