What Caroline thought of Bernard it would be impossible to say.
She was a nice girl, modest; she lit up under any kind of appre
ciation. She was pleased to be such a success with the Dobsons’
friend, for she had begun to fear she bored them and was hanging
heavily on them from having fewer engagements in London than
they expected. At a quarter to three Helen Dobson raised her
eyebrows at the clock, and said poor Caroline must not be late for
her wretched dentist. Bernard, declaring himself alarmed by the
hour, asked for a taxi, and Helen suggested that he should drop
Caroline at Park Crescent. Neither Bernard nor Caroline was
1
pleased at having the matter taken out of their hands. In the taxi he
said to her that the arrangement had been delightful, and she replied
that he must encourage her: she was a coward, she said, she did
dread the dentist. Bernard was interested, for last week he and Flavia
had written each other some pages about their own apprehensions,
and now he thought he would tell Flavia what kind of apprehension
these girls one met, like Caroline, had. Caroline said he was so sym -
pathetic. She told him that next month she was going to Wengen
2
for winter sports; it was obvious she would have liked to ask him to
join their party. He rather trifled with the idea; he did not mind
letting Flavia guess that he was much in demand. Caroline, from the
portico in Park Crescent, smiled back a brave little smile at him.
Later, he did not mind letting Flavia guess that Caroline quite
attracted him. For really Flavia was perverse, she refused to appear.
She refused to allow him to see her handwriting; she refused to write
from anywhere but a
poste restante
. “And this,” she added, “is nowhere
near where I live.” (She must be at some pains to fetch his letters.)
From the moment she first wrote direct to him, with reference to a
letter of his in
The Athenaeum
,
3
she had established himself and herself
as superior people who could not wish to meet except in the spirit.
“Those imminences,” she had been writing after a week or two,
“those perplexities . . . ” She cited quite a large number of corre
spondents in this manner. “Nothing,” she wrote, “is more perishable,
nothing lovelier than a distance.” But really it was annoying. He
would have liked, for instance, to have confronted the Dobsons with
Flavia.
Caroline
, forsooth! And if ever a woman had been provocative
– “My tall shadow,” she wrote, “My absurd voice that will not pitch
high,” and “He could not see me, my head was against a dark
cushion . . . ” She knew altogether too many men. It was this, of
course, that made Bernard so special. But he did feel at times too
special. When that letter of hers arrived by the evening post, the
emptiness of his room became intolerable. She probably lived in
Westminster. Her clothes, “my absurd preoccupation,” must be
delicious. “I laughed inside with you all through the dinner party.”
This was all very well.
Caroline did ask him to join their party for Switzerland; Bernard
did go out with her. In that bright air she flowered, all pink and
gold. In every letter he sketched some movement of hers for Flavia.
He could not help speaking to Caroline of Flavia; she wished
she
had
such a wonderful, wonderful friendship, too.
“Is she very beautiful?”
“You’ll think us absurd,” said Bernard, “we don’t meet.”
“How
clever
of you,” breathed the young thing. Her relief was
obvious. That night he wrote Flavia a letter about a kiss: did she
know, did she ever feel . . . ? Caroline waltzed divinely. Flavia’s
letters became a little less interesting; he suspected she did not care
for dancing, just possibly she might not dance very well. After a
silence of ten days, she wrote: “Of course, you are in love with her.”
Very much startled, Bernard proposed that night to Caroline.
Caroline from the first said she feared that after Flavia Bernard
would find her dull. But the letter Flavia wrote him about his
engagement had not been intelligent: she was, after all, a woman,
and she had certainly lost interest. Now there was no doubt that
Caroline found him interesting. Their engagement was brief and
very demonstrative. Towards the end of the honeymoon there was
more time to talk; he found himself, while dropping Flavia’s name
right out of their conversation, pointing out to Caroline several
things Flavia had noticed. On several occasions some remark of
Flavia’s would become apposite. “What marvellous ideas you do
have,” said Caroline, twinkling all over with an appreciation which,
if not subtle, certainly had a charm of its own, a quality. She was a
curious little thing; she lacked humour in the usual sense – his and
Flavia’s humour – but at some quite slight allusion, some accident of
the day, her laughter would come on quite almost unaccountably, as
uncontrollably as bleeding from the nose; you would say it was
almost hysterical.
Bernard found for himself and Caroline a delightful flat. As she
said she had not much taste and, anyhow, did not mind, it was he
who decorated the flat. He sighed; this would have been the perfect
setting for Flavia. Bernard, who had a little money, had recently set
up as a publisher: he had an office in Soho, a sympathetic staff, not
much to do at present. He was a good deal at home; perhaps at
home a little too much. The Dobsons, who had sent them a
beautiful set of Kipling, were among their first visitors.
At dinner he could not help quoting Flavia to Helen Dobson.
Afterwards Caroline asked: “You do miss her, don’t you?” The dinner
Caroline had given the Dobsons had not been much nicer than the
lunch the Dobsons had once given Bernard and Caroline; Bernard,
who had wanted it all done with crushing perfection, said: “Well,
you could hardly expect me not to.”
Caroline pulled out a pink-and-white check handkerchief and
began to weep. “I thought I was enough,” she said. “Can’t you ever
love a
real
woman, Bernard?”
Unfortunately, Caroline had a most infantile taste in handker
chiefs. These had elephants round the borders, or Mickey Mice,
were pink, blue, or lemon (never Flavia’s green or plain mannish
lawn), and seemed to be always appearing. She was for ever wiping
her fingers or dabbing her pretty, pink little nose; besides this, she
wept a good deal. She wept now. “It’s not
my
fault I’m not d-d-ddark, Bernard.”
“My dear, we can’t all be the same.”
“You didn’t like the dinner,” she sobbed.
“Perhaps roast chicken wasn’t very original.”
“But everybody
l-l-likes
roast chicken.”
(What dinners he might have given the knowing Flavia! What
dinners she might have ordered him!) “You don’t love me,” wept
Caroline. Having exhausted her pink check handkerchief, she thrust
it behind a cushion and brought out a Mickey Mouse one.
“If I hadn’t loved you,” said Bernard, shutting his eyes, “should I
have given up Flavia?”
“She might have b-b-bored you,” sobbed Caroline. She became
most annoying, and he advised her to go to bed. She left him, and
the distinguished little room looked flat and empty, as though it had
never been inhabited. No tall shadow had ever moved on its walls,
no low voice enlightened it; against the dark divan cushions no dark
head had ever been invisible. Days came and went, he perceived no
longer the Wednesdayness of a Wednesday, the uniqueness of ten
o’clock; the sun became a mere busy planet, odious, jumping the
skies like a Kruschen
4
grandfather; the fire was genial without inti
macy. He suspected Caroline’s husband, the Dobsons’ acquaintance
Bernard McArthur, to be an ordinary little man. It was now past
midnight; Bernard drank a whisky-and-soda and went to bed.
Two days later there was a letter from Flavia.
“So now you are married,” she wrote. It was a charming, ironic
letter of speculation. Not speculation entirely – was she then married
herself? It was possible – it was improbable . . . It was unthinkable:
Bernard, he knew, possessed her. Dear Flavia, lonely, lovely. “We
would not meet once,” he wrote back, “we must not meet now.” “Oh,
why, why, why?” cried every sentence of Flavia’s.
Bernard was annoyed, but not quite annoyed, when he looked up
once to find Caroline examining Flavia’s blue envelope across the
breakfast-table. She had a little cold that morning, her eyes watered;
she said nothing. He said nothing. “Poor little Caroline,” Flavia had
written. “I can’t help wondering if you’re nice to her.”
“Caroline,” said Bernard, “I wish you would take that zoological
handkerchief off the breakfast-table. As you have such a cold, my
dear, it’s not even hygienic.”
“Yes, Bernard . . . No, Bernard,” said Caroline. She suddenly burst
out laughing. “How f-f-funny you are,” she tittered. “Zoological
handkerchief! Oh, Bernard, how funny you can be! Oh . . . ” She
had her laugh out. Bernard thought perhaps she was running a
temperature.
“She’s like a child,” he could not help writing (though they had
sworn not to discuss her). “You said once all women
5
were children.
But I don’t think you are, Flavia.” He could not resist another study
of Caroline, the sort of woman one marries. He went perhaps a little
too far; Flavia took a rather unpleasant licence; her subsequent letter
displeased him. Perhaps she was rather hard? Poor Caroline was
charming that morning. She did not glance at the envelope or refer
at all to it, but sighed (sitting there rather pleasantly in the sunshine)
and said she wished
she
had a friend. “An interesting friend,” she
added, “but, of course, I am not interesting.”
“Yes, you are, darling,” said Bernard amiably. “You’re interesting in
a different way.”
“Am I, Bernard? How?”
“Well, you’ve got a delicious little personality.”
“Have I, Bernard?”
“You have ideas that you can’t express.”
“Oh, do you think I have? Would you like me to express my
ideas, Bernard?”
“No, darling; they’re perfect the way they are.”
“When you first saw me, did you think I was interesting?”
“Yes,” said Bernard. He did not tell her that that day he had found
everything interesting – the cat, the taximan, the advertisements on
a bus, the colour of the Dobsons’ front door. (It was the day he had
got that wonderful letter from Flavia about himself.) “Did you think
I was interesting?” he added, humouring her.
“No,” said Caroline thoughtfully.
Bernard put down his coffee-cup.
“You were nicer than I expected,” said Caroline. “Less nonsense
about you. For instance, when I talked to you about winter sports, I
quite expected you might be superior.”
“Because the Dobsons’ friends are superior?”
“Oh, but the Dobsons said you were rather dull. But I thought
you had a nice sense of humour. Generally when I am talking to men
I wish I were dark and thin, but you were so nice and homely, you
made me feel comfortable. And I thought you might be nice to be
married to, because, though you might not know much about food
(even I could see that the Dobsons’ lunch was horrible), you had
quite a large appetite. I knew I shouldn’t like to marry a clever man,
but I shouldn’t have liked to have married a dull man either, and
I thought you were good at using other people’s ideas in your talk.
I thought you were rather pathetic, too. I suppose I do like men to
be rather pathetic. And when you talked to me about Flavia in
Switzerland I thought you were still more pathetic. I really did fall
in love with you. I thought to myself, ‘Fancy swallowing all
that
stuff.’ I thought what a lamb you were.”
“Thank you, Caroline.”
“Well, really, Bernard, it made me feel quite embarrassed. I
thought, ‘What a good thing he is talking like this to someone as
stupid as me.’ You see, I did love you.”
“Thank you,” said Bernard again.
“You know, Bernard, she
is
pretty awful. Even a girl like me could
see that, you know. She gets it all out of novels. I thought, ‘She must
be a typist.’ I mean, she types and everything, doesn’t she? And all
that about food you told me was pages out of ‘Marcel Boulestin.’ ”
6
“It was
not
pages out of ‘Marcel Boulestin.’ ”
“It was, Bernard:
I
read ‘Marcel Boulestin.’ ”
Bernard let this pass. He pushed back his chair from the table and
stared at Caroline, at her pink-and-white innocent, wise face, like a
child’s over the round, white silk shirt-collar and neat red tie. She sat
up to the table, her hands folded. She looked pleased; no doubt
because she was married, could speak home truths to a husband, and
had thought, for once, of something to say. He thought of saying,
“You do not even annoy me,” but hesitated, not because this was
untrue, but because he doubted if he could bring this off. Flavia’s
letter lay his side of the coffee pot.
“I expect now,” said Caroline, “she writes to tell you you ought to
be nice to me. ‘Poor little Caroline,’ I dare say she says. I dare say
she expects I am a good little thing?”
“You are remarkably clever,” said Bernard sarcastically.
“Not clever the way I seem,” said Caroline. “Clever in a much
more obvious way. You see, I do read a lot of novels – I hope I’m not
being unkind, Bernard?”
“Oh no! You interest me.”
“
Do
I interest you, Bernard?” said Caroline wistfully. “I do want to;
I love you so much.”
This seemed to Bernard beside the point, he was by now really
angry. “The fact is, you’re jealous.”