Agatha Christie - Giant’s Bread

He moved towards the door. There he paused and looked back at her. ‘If Llewellyn dies—which seems almost certain, Nina must try to get some kind of a job. Then there will be the child to think of. Do your objections apply to her?’

‘Do you think I want a girl in my home who will turn out like her mother?’

His father said quietly: ‘Yes or no would have been quite sufficient answer.’

He went out. Myra stood staring after him. Tears stood in her eyes and began to fall. Vernon did not like tears. He edged towards the door—but not in time.

‘Darling—come to me.’

He had to come. He was enfolded—hugged. Fragments of phrases reiterated in his ears.

‘You’ll make up to me—you, my own boy—you shan’t be like them—horrid, sneering. You won’t fail me—you’ll never fail me—will you? Swear it—my boy, my own boy.’

He knew it all so well. He said what was wanted of him—yes and no in the right places. How he hated the whole business. It always happened so close to your ears.

That evening after tea, Myra was in quite another mood. She was writing a letter at her writing table and looked up gaily as Vernon entered.

‘I’m writing to Daddy. Perhaps, very soon, your Aunt Nina and your cousin Josephine will come to stay. Won’t that be lovely?’

But they didn’t come. Myra said to herself that really Walter was incomprehensible. Just because she’d said a few things she really didn’t mean …

Vernon was not very surprised, somehow. He hadn’t thought they would come.

Aunt Nina had said she wasn’t a nice woman—but she was very pretty …

If Vernon had been capable of summing up the events of the next few years, he could best have done it in one word—Scenes! Everlasting and ever recurring scenes.

And he began to notice a curious phenomenon. After each scene his mother looked larger and his father looked smaller. Emotional storms of reproach and invective exhilarated Myra mentally and physically. She emerged from them refreshed, soothed—full of good will towards all the world.

With Walter Deyre it was the opposite. He shrank into himself, every sensitive fibre in his nature shrinking from the onslaught. The faint polite sarcasm that was his weapon of defence never failed to goad his wife to the utmost fury. His quiet weary self-control exasperated her as nothing else could have done.

Not that she was lacking for very real grounds of complaint. Walter Deyre spent less and less time at Abbots Puissants. When he did return his eyes had baggy pouches under them and his hand shook. He took little notice of Vernon, and yet the child was always conscious of an underlying sympathy. It was tacitly understood that Walter should not ‘interfere’ with the child. A mother was the person who should have the say. Apart from supervising the boy’s riding, Walter stood aside. Not to do so would have roused fresh matter for discussion and reproach. He was ready to admit that Myra had all the virtues and was a most careful and attentive mother.

And yet he sometimes had the feeling that he could give the boy something that she could not. The trouble was that they were both shy of each other. To neither of them was it easy to express their feelings—a thing Myra would have found incomprehensible. They remained gravely polite to each other.

But when a ‘scene’ was in progress, Vernon was full of silent sympathy. He knew exactly how his father was feeling—knew how that loud angry voice hurt the ears and the head. He knew, of course, that Mummy must be right—Mummy was always right, that was an article of belief not to be questioned—but all the same, he was unconsciously on his father’s side.

Things went from bad to worse—came to a crisis. Mummy remained locked in her room for two days—servants whispered delightedly in corners—and Uncle Sydney arrived on the scene to see what he could do.

Uncle Sydney undoubtedly had a soothing influence over Myra. He walked up and down the room, jingling his money as of old, and looking stouter and more rubicund than ever.

Myra poured out her woes.

‘Yes, yes, I know,’ said Uncle Sydney, jingling hard. ‘I know, my dear girl. I’m not saying you haven’t had a lot to put up with. You have. Nobody knows that better than I do. But there’s give and take, you know. Give and take. That’s married life in a nutshell—give and take.’

There was a fresh outburst from Myra.

‘I’m not sticking up for Deyre,’ said Uncle Sydney. ‘Not at all. I’m just looking at the whole thing as a man of the world. Women lead sheltered lives and they don’t look at these things as men do—quite right that they shouldn’t. You’re a good woman, Myra, and it’s always hard for a good woman to understand these things. Carrie’s just the same.’

‘What has Carrie got to put up with, I should like to know?’ cried Myra. ‘ You don’t go off racketing round with disgusting women. You don’t make love to the servants.’

‘N-no,’ said her brother. ‘No, of course not. It’s the principle of the thing I’m talking about. And mind you, Carrie and I don’t see eye to eye over everything. We have our tiffs—why sometimes we don’t speak to each other for two days on end. But bless you, we make it up again, and things go on better than before. A good row clears the air—that’s what I say. But there must be give and take. And no nagging afterwards. The best man in the world won’t stand nagging.’

‘I never nag,’ said Myra tearfully, and believed it. ‘How can you say such a thing?’

‘Now don’t get the wind up, old girl. I’m not saying you do. I’m just laying down general principles. And remember, Deyre’s not our sort. He’s kittle cattle—the touchy sensitive kind. A mere trifle sets them off.’

‘Don’t I know it,’ said Myra bitterly. ‘He’s impossible. Why did I ever marry him?’

‘Well, you know, Sis, you can’t have it both ways. It was a good match. I’m bound to admit it was a good match. Here you are, living in a swell place, knowing all the County, as good as anybody short of Royalty. My word, if poor old Dad had lived, how proud he’d have been! And what I’m getting at is this—everything’s got its seamy side. You can’t have the halfpence without one or two of the kicks as well. They’re decadent, these old families, that’s what they are—decadent, and you’ve just got to face the fact. You’ve just got to sum up the situation in a businesslike way—advantages, so and so. Disadvantages ditto. It’s the only way. Take my word for it, it’s the only way.’

‘I didn’t marry him for the sake of “advantages” as you call it,’ said Myra. ‘I hate this place. I always have. It’s because of Abbots Puissants he married me—not for myself.’

‘Nonsense, Sis, you were a jolly pretty girl—and still are,’ he added gallantly.

‘Walter married me for the sake of Abbots Puissants,’ said Myra obstinately. ‘I tell you I know it.’

‘Well, well,’ said her brother. ‘Let’s leave the past alone.’

‘You wouldn’t be so calm and cold-blooded about it if you were me,’ said Myra bitterly. ‘Not if you had to live with him. I do everything I can think of to please him—and he only sneers and treats me like this.’

‘You nag him,’ said Sydney. ‘Oh, yes, you do. You can’t help it.’

‘If only he’d answer back! If he’d say something—instead of just sitting there.’

‘Yes, but that’s the kind of fellow he is. You can’t alter people in this world to suit your fancy. I can’t say I care for the chap myself—too la-di-da for me. Why, if you put him in to run a concern it would be bankrupt in a fortnight! But I’m bound to say he’s always been very polite and decent to me. Quite the gentleman. When I’ve run across him in London he’s taken me to lunch at that swell club of his and if I didn’t feel too comfortable there that wasn’t his fault. He’s got his good points.’