Phyllis Bottome: The Dark Tower

One day Winn came down to breakfast with a particularly disagreeable expression. He said “good-morning” into his newspaper as usual without noticing her pathetic little smile.

He only unburied himself to take his second cup of coffee, then he said, without looking at her,

“It’s a beastly nuisance, the War Office want me to extend my leave – hanged if I do.”

Estelle thanked Heaven in a flash and passed him the marmalade. She had never dreamed the War Office could be so efficient.

“That shows,” she said gracefully, “what they think of you!”

Winn turned his sardonic eyes towards her. “Thanks,” he drawled, “I dare say it’s the kind of thing you’d like. They propose that I should stay on here at the Staff College for another year and write ’em a damned red tape report on Tibet.” His irony, dropped from him. “If it was a job,” he said in a low voice, “I’d go like a shot.”

“Mightn’t it mean promotion?” she asked a little nervously. Winn shrugged his shoulders. “I can write anything they want out there,” he said gloomily. “All I want is ink! What I know I’ve got in my head, you see. I’d take that with me.”

“But you couldn’t talk things over with them or answer their questions, could you?” Estelle intelligently ventured. She had an intelligence which ripened along the line of her desires.

“I could tell them anything they want to know in ten minutes!” said Winn impatiently. “They don’t want information, they want a straight swift kick! They know what I think – they just want me to string out a lot of excuses for them not to act! Besides the chief thing is – they’d have to send for me, if there was a row – I know the ground and the other chaps don’t. I wish to God there’d be a row!”

Estelle sighed and gazed pathetically out of the window. Her eyes rested on the bed where the hyacinths were planted, and beyond it to gorse bushes and a corrugated iron shed.

They were at Aldershot, which was really rather a good place for meeting suitable people. “What do you intend to do?” she asked, trembling a little. Winn was at his worst when questioned as to his intentions; he preferred to let them explode like fire-crackers.

“Do!” he snorted, “Write and tell ’em when they’ve got any kind of job on the size of six-pence I’ll be in it! And if not Tibet’s about as useful to draw up a report on – as ice in the hunting season – and I’m off in March – and that’s that!”

A tear rolled down Estelle’s cheek and splashed on the tablecloth; she trembled harder until her teaspoon rattled.

Winn looked at her. “What’s up?” he asked irritably. “Anything wrong?”

“I suppose,” she said, prolonging a small sob, “you don’t care what I feel about going to India?”

“But you knew we were always going out in March didn’t you?” he asked, as if that had anything to do with it! The absurd face value that he gave to facts was enough to madden any woman. Estelle sobbed harder.

“I never knew I should be so unhappy!” she moaned. Winn looked extremely foolish and rather conscience-stricken; he even made a movement to rise, but thought better of it.

“I’m sure I’m awfully sorry,” he said apologetically. “I suppose you mean you’re a bit sick of me, don’t you?” Estelle wiped her eyes, and returned to her toast. “Can’t you see,” she asked bitterly, “that our life together is the most awful tragedy?”

“Oh, come now,” said Winn, who associated tragedy solely with police courts and theaters. “It’s not so bad as all that, is it? We can rub along, you know. I dare say I’ve been rather a brute, but I shall be a lot better company when I’m back in the regiment. We must buck up, that’s all! I don’t like to bother you about it, but I think you’d see things differently if we had a kid. I do really. I’ve seen heaps of scratch marriages turn out jolly well – when the kids began to come!”

“How can you be so disgustingly coarse!” shuddered Estelle. “Besides, I’m far too delicate! Not that you would care if I died! You’d just marry again!”

“Oh, no! I shouldn’t do that,” said Winn in his horrid quiet way which might mean anything. He got up and walked to the window. “You wouldn’t die,” he observed with his back turned to her. “You’d be a jolly sight stronger all the rest of your life! I asked Travers!”

“Oh!” she cried, “you don’t mean to tell me that you talked me over with that disgusting red-faced man!”

“I don’t talk people over,” said Winn without turning round. “He’s a doctor. I asked his opinion!”

“Well,” she said, “I think it was horrible of you – and – and most ungentlemanly. If I’d wanted to know, I’d have found out for myself. I haven’t the slightest confidence in regimental doctors.”

Winn said nothing. One of the things Estelle most disliked in him was the way in which it seemed as if he had some curious sense of delicacy of his own. She wanted to think of Winn as a man impervious to all refinement, born to outrage the nicer susceptibility of her own mind, but there were moments when it seemed as if he didn’t think the susceptibilities of her mind were nice at all. He was not awed by her purity.

He didn’t say anything of course, but he let certain subjects prematurely drop.

Suddenly he turned round from the window and fixed his eyes on hers. She thought he was going to be very violent, but he wasn’t, he talked quite quietly, only something hard and bright in his eyes warned her to be careful.

“Look here,” he said, “I’ve thought of something, a kind of bargain! I’ll give in to you about this job, if you’ll give in to me about the other! It’s no use fighting over things, is it?

“If you’ll have a kid, I’ll stay on here for a year more; if you won’t, I’ll clear out in March and you’ll have to come with me, for I can’t afford two establishments. I don’t see what else to offer you unless you want to go straight back to your people. You’d hardly care to go to mine, if they’d have you.

“But if you do what I ask about the child – I’ll meet you all the way round – I swear to – you shan’t forget it! Only you must ride straight. If you play me any monkey tricks over it – you’ll never set eyes on me again; and I’m afraid you’ll have to have Travers, because I trust him, not some slippery old woman who’d let you play him like a fish! D’you understand?”

Estelle stared aghast at this mixture of brutality and cunning. Her mind flew round and round like a squirrel in a cage.

She could have managed beautifully if it hadn’t been for Travers. Travers would be as impervious to handling as a battery mule. She really wouldn’t be able to do anything with Travers. He looked as if he drank; but he didn’t.

Of course having a baby was simply horrid; lots of women got out of it nowadays who were quite happily married.

It was disgusting of Winn to suggest it when he didn’t even love her.

But once she had one, if she really did give way, a good deal might be done with it.

Maternity was sacred; being a wife on the other hand was “forever climbing up the climbing wave,” there was nothing final about it as there was in being able to say, “I am the mother of your child!”

Her wistful blue eyes expanded. She saw her own way spreading out before her like a promised land. “I can’t,” she said touchingly, “decide all this in a minute.”

He could stay on for two years at the War Office, and Estelle meant him to stay without inconvenience to herself. He tried bargaining with her; but her idea of a bargain was one-sided.

“I sometimes feel as if you kept me out of everything,” she said at last.