Conrad Aiken: The Collected Short Stories of Conrad Aiken

This, apparently, had been too much to expect. But she bore him no grudge—quite the contrary. He had continued to stand by them for three and a half years after that, which wasn’t so bad.

“Especially,” she added, “considering that I wasn’t as young as I used to be. I was getting on. My looks were going. And when I finally lost them, I lost the Major. He just went off to France and never came back. Wrote me a lovely letter, and enclosed a draft for a hundred pounds. He didn’t try to make excuses: that wasn’t his way, ever. He just said ‘My dear, our affair has run its course.’ That was all. I couldn’t blame him. I cried my eyes out, and I didn’t know really what to do with myself at first, as if I was lost, but I didn’t blame him.”

“I suppose it’s what you have to expect,” I said.

“It’s what women have to expect,” she answered.

“Well, it’s a man-made world, and no mistake—what did you do then?”

She shrugged her shoulders, relaxed, sighed, seemed suddenly to become a great deal older.

“I did the only thing I could do. I went back to the Bonaparte.”

“Oh?”

“I made the hundred pounds last as long as I could, first—but when it was getting low, I saw that I’d better do something. So I went back. But it was too late.”

I failed to catch her meaning, and she rather wearily explained. She was too old, that was all—the men paid no attention to her. Evening after evening she would sit in the Bonaparte, drinking coffees, only to come away alone. To begin with she had been too proud to give up; refused to admit the truth. But then it dawned on her. Her clothes were giving out—she had to find something else—so she hit on the cinema. She began to haunt the cheaper cinemas, and found that she could just make a living out of it. She would approach men—preferably the older ones—as she had approached me. She had two or three “regulars” whom she saw every few days. They gave her half a crown, and sometimes a drink or two afterward. It was, in fact, one of her regulars—an old man—whom she had been waiting for this afternoon, at the Elite Palace, when I had come along. So that was that.

“What an extraordinary thing!” I said.

She didn’t seem to think so. It was like everything else.

“What can you expect?” she said.

I suddenly remembered the Proctors, and the distance from Marble Arch to St. John’s Wood; and I looked at my watch.

“The only thing is,” she went on, “if I should happen to be ill. What would I do?… For instance, one day last autumn I slipped on those greasy cobbles in Covent Garden and hurt my ankle. I fainted among the cabbages and cauliflowers and when I came to I was in the ambulance. They took me to the hospital and gave me ether. I had such a funny dream when I went under—I was stuck in a long red sewer-pipe, with one doctor putting his head in one end and another at the other, and both of them bellowing at me to come out. Suppose it had been something serious? As it was, I was only laid up for a fortnight, and it happened I had enough money. The boy went shopping, and I could hobble round enough to cook. But sup pose I’d got a broken leg.… My God!…”

She gave an amused, rather maternal, chuckle.

“It would be awkward,” I admitted.

There was a pause, and then I said that I would have to be going. She flushed, looked a little scared, cleared her throat.

“You couldn’t spare me half a crown, could you?” she said. “I think I’ll stop here and have a sandwich.”

I took out a ten-shilling note and gave it to her. She thanked me.

“Goodbye,” I said, shaking her hand, “and the best of luck.”

She half stood up, and then sank back into her chair, smiling confusedly.

“If you’re ever in the Elite Palace again—” she said.

“Right-o.”

I pushed open the glass door and went out. It was still raining. A clock was striking the half hour. I walked to Oxford Street, hailed a taxi, and started off to St. John’s Wood.

Ann and Jim would already be mixing the cocktails. Poppy would be playing the piano, and the host of kittens would be charging from end to end of the long corridor under the rain-sounding skylight. I would tell them about it—I would tell them what life was really like. Would they believe me? Yes, they would be fascinated. It was just the sort of thing to tell at dinner—it would start the party off admirably. And then there would be a discussion. I could hear Jim saying “But is life that, or is it this—the four of us sitting here and talking about it?” Poppy would be bored, as usual, and Ann would be furious. Jim would offer us a choice of vermouth or beer. We would drink, talk, listen to music, wonder whether a little more garlic ought to have been injected in the lamb. Poppy would tell us about X’s, the painter’s, latest rout. And meanwhile, the West End lady, having finished her sandwich and perhaps her fourth glass of port, would be returning to the Elite Palace.

“Don’t be melancholy, darling, I’m sure it will all come out all right.”

“But how often have I got to tell you that I’m not melancholy? I’m not melancholy at all. I’m afraid you’re old-fashioned. You just think I ought to be melancholy!”

“It’s all these subterfuges, all this concealment. The way you had to go to the hospital under an assumed name. And signing a false name to the birth certificate. And now living here in this one-horse town! Good lord.”

She smiled at him, as if affectionately amused by his despair, took his arm, and they walked slowly, very slowly, up the little hill in the park. He kept his head lowered, as if thinking, and when he didn’t respond to a repeated tug at his elbow, she brought her face so close to his that her forehead touched the rim of his hat.

“Besides,” she said, “you’re forgetting that the whole idea was mine. Wasn’t it?”

“Oh, I know, but that has nothing to do with it. There’s so much I want to do for you and Bibs, and can’t. You oughtn’t to be living here, buried away like this, and especially as I can only get here so seldom. No. And all the time I have the funniest feeling—”

“What?”

“Well, it makes me laugh sometimes. But I keep feeling that you and Bibs ought to be living with the rest of us.”

“ That’s a bright idea. Your wife would be so glad, wouldn’t she?”

“Gosh, yes. Just the same, if you ever saw the other kids—”

He stopped suddenly, and grinned at her.

“ That would be all right. But suppose she saw Bibs! She’d know it in a flash.”

They resumed the walk, very slowly, they passed under a maple tree, scarlet leaves had fallen on the path from the scarlet mass above them, and the sweet smoke came up to them from a smudge fire at the bottom of the hill. The delicious melancholy held them still for a moment. They stood under the tree and said nothing.

“That’s for instance why it would be, I suppose, dangerous for you to live in New York. God knows New York’s large enough, but if you ever did meet—”

“It’s got to be postponed.”

“And that’s the sort of thing that makes me sick. This everlasting secrecy. Hole in corner.”

“I told you in the beginning that I knew all about that and was prepared for it. Didn’t I? And that I assumed full responsibility. It’s my funeral, not yours.”

“That’s exactly what I’m afraid of, Enn—”

“Oh, I didn’t mean that !”

“It’s bound to be, at least in some respects. It isn’t good for you. You haven’t met a soul here. The minute you meet people, they’d begin to smell a rat. Mrs. Doane suspects already—I could see it this morning when I met her here with Bibs.”