65 Short Stories (167 page)

‘I suppose you wouldn’t lunch with me one day?’

‘Any day you like.’

They arranged a date and duly met. He knew that she had married the man on whose account he had divorced her, and he judged by her clothes that she was in comfortable circumstances. They drank a cocktail. She ate the 
hors-d’oeuvre 
with gusto. She was fifty if she was a day, but she carried her years with spirit. There was something jolly and careless about her, she was quick on the uptake, chatty, and she had the hearty, infectious laugh of the fat woman who has let herself go. If he had not known that her family had for a century been in the Indian Civil Service he would have thought that she had been a chorus girl. She was not flashy, but she had a sort of flamboyance of nature that suggested the stage. She was not in the least embarrassed.

‘You never married again, did you?’ she asked.

‘No.’

‘Pity. Because it wasn’t a success the first time there’s no reason why it shouldn’t have been the second.’

‘There’s no need for me to ask if you’ve been happy.’

‘I’ve got nothing to complain of I think I’ve got a happy nature. Jim’s always been very good to me; he’s retired now, you know, and we live in the country, and I adore Betty.’

Who’s Betty?’

‘Oh, she’s my daughter. She got married two years ago. I’m expecting to be a grandmother almost any day.’

‘That ages us a bit.’

She gave a laugh.

‘Betty’s twenty-two. It was nice of you to ask me to lunch, George. After all, it would be silly to have any feelings about something that happened so long ago as all that.’

‘Idiotic’

We weren’t fitted to one another and it’s lucky we found it out before it was too late. Of course I was foolish, but then I was very young. Have you been happy too?’

‘I think I can say I’ve been a success.’

‘Oh, well, that’s probably all the happiness you were capable of.’

He smiled in appreciation of her shrewdness. And then, putting the whole matter aside easily, she began to talk of other things. Though the courts had given him custody of their son, he, unable to look after him, had allowed his mother to have him. The boy had emigrated at eighteen and was now married. He was a stranger to George Moon, and he was aware that if he met him in the street he would not recognize him. He was too sincere to pretend that he took much interest in him. They talked of him, however, for a while, and then they talked of actors and plays.

‘Well,’ she said at last, ‘I must be running away. I’ve had a lovely lunch. It’s been fun meeting you, George. Thanks so much.’

He put her into a taxi and taking off his hat walked down Piccadilly by himself He thought her quite a pleasant, amusing woman: he laughed to think that he had ever been madly in love with her. There was a smile on his lips when he spoke again to Tom Saffary.

She was a damned good-looking girl when I married her. That was the trouble. Though, of course, if she hadn’t been I’d never have married her. They were all after her like flies round a honey-pot. We used to have awful rows. And at last I caught her out. Of course I divorced her.’

‘Of course.’

‘Yes, but I know I was a damned fool to do it.’ He leaned forward. ‘My dear Saffary, I know now that if I’d had any sense I’d have shut my eyes. She’d have settled down and made me an excellent wife.’

He wished he were able to explain to his visitor how grotesque it had seemed to him when he sat and talked with that jolly, comfortable, and good-humoured woman that he should have made so much fuss about what now seemed to him to matter so little.

‘But one has one’s honour to think of,’ said Saffary.

‘Honour be damned. One has one’s happiness to think of Is one’s honour really concerned because one’s wife hops into bed with another man? We’re not crusaders, you and I, or Spanish grandees. I liked my wife. I don’t say I haven’t had other women. I have. But she had just that something that none of the others could give me. What a fool I was to throw away what I wanted more than anything in the world because I couldn’t enjoy exclusive possession of it!’

‘You’re the last man I should ever have expected to hear speak like that.’

George Moon smiled thinly at the embarrassment that was so clearly expressed on Saffary’s fat troubled face.

‘I’m probably the first man you’ve heard speak the naked truth,’ he retorted.

Do you mean to say that if it were all to do over again you would act differently?’

‘If I were twenty-seven again I suppose I should be as big a fool as I was then. But if I had the sense I have now I’ll tell you what I’d do if I found my wife had been unfaithful to me. I’d do just what you did last night: I’d give her a damned good hiding and let it go at that.’

‘Are you asking me to forgive Violet?’

The Resident shook his head slowly and smiled.

‘No. You’ve forgiven her already. I’m merely advising you not to cut off your nose to spite your face.’

Saffary gave him a worried look. It disconcerted him to know that this cold precise man should see in his heart emotions which seemed so unnatural to himself that he thrust them out of his consciousness.

‘You don’t know the circumstances,’ he said. ‘Knobby and I were almost like brothers. I got him his job. He owed everything to me. And except for me Violet might have gone on being a governess for the rest of her life. It seemed such a waste; I couldn’t help feeling sorry for her. If you know what I mean, it was pity that first made me take any notice of her. Don’t you think it’s a bit thick that when you’ve been thoroughly decent with people they should go out of their way to do the dirty on you? It’s such awful ingratitude.’

‘Oh, my dear boy, one mustn’t expect gratitude. It’s a thing that no one has a right to. After all, you do good because it gives you pleasure. It’s the purest form of happiness there is. To expect thanks for it is really asking too much. If you get it, well, it’s like a bonus on shares on which you’ve already received a dividend; it’s grand, but you mustn’t look upon it as your due.’

Saffary frowned. He was perplexed. He could not quite make it out that George Moon should think so oddly about things that it had always seemed to him there were no two ways of thinking about. After all there were limits. I mean, if you had any sense of decency you had to behave like a tuan. There was your own self-respect to think of It was funny that George Moon should give reasons that looked so damned plausible for doing something that, well, damn it, you had to admit you’d be only too glad to do if you could see your way to it. Of course George Moon was queer. No one ever quite understood him.

‘Knobby Clarke is dead, Saffary. You can’t be jealous of him any more. No one knows a thing except you and me and your wife, and tomorrow I’m going away for ever. Why don’t you let bygones be bygones?’

‘Violet would only despise me.’

George Moon smiled and, unexpectedly on that prim, fastidious face, his smile had a singular sweetness.

‘I know her very little. I always thought her a very nice woman. Is she as detestable as that?’

Saffary gave a start and reddened to his ears.

‘No, she’s an angel of goodness. It’s me who’s detestable for saying that of her.’ His voice broke and he gave a little sob. ‘God knows I only want to do the right thing.’

‘The right thing is the kind thing.’

Saffary covered his face with his hands. He could not curb the emotion that shook him.

‘I seem to be giving, giving all the time, and no one does a God-damned thing for me. It doesn’t matter if my heart is broken, I must just go on.’ He drew the back of his hand across his eyes and sighed deeply. ‘I’ll forgive her.’

George Moon looked at him reflectively for a little.

‘I wouldn’t make too much of a song and dance about it, if I were you,’ he said. ‘You’ll have to walk warily. She’ll have a lot to forgive too.’

‘Because I hit her, you mean? I know, that was awful of me.’

Not a bit. It did her a power of good. I didn’t mean that. You’re behaving generously, old boy, and, you know, one needs a devil of a lot of tact to get people to forgive one one’s generosity. Fortunately women are frivolous and they very quickly forget the benefits conferred upon them. Otherwise, of course, there’d be no living with them.’

Saffary looked at him open-mouthed.

‘Upon my word you’re a rum ’un, Moon,’ he said. ‘Sometimes you seem as hard as nails and then you talk so that one thinks you’re almost human, and then, just as one thinks one’s misjudged you and you have a heart after all, you come out with something that just shocks one. I suppose that’s what they call a cynic’

‘I haven’t deeply considered the matter,’ smiled George Moon, ‘but if to look truth in the face and not resent it when it’s unpalatable, and take human nature as you find it, smiling when it’s absurd and grieved without exaggeration when it’s pitiful, is to be cynical, then I suppose I’m a cynic. Mostly human nature is both absurd and pitiful, but if life has taught you tolerance you find in it more to smile at than to weep.’

When Tom Saffary left the room the Resident lit himself with deliberation the last cigarette he meant to smoke before tiffin. It was a new role for him to reconcile an angry husband with an erring wife and it caused him a discreet amusement. He continued to reflect upon human nature. A wintry smile hovered upon his thin and pallid lips. He recalled with what interest in the dry creeks of certain places along the coast he had often stood and watched the Jumping Johnnies. There were hundreds of them sometimes, from little things of a couple of inches long to great fat fellows as long as your foot. They were the colour of the mud they lived in. They sat and looked at you with large round eyes and then with a sudden dash buried themselves in their holes. It was extraordinary to see them scudding on their flappers over the surface of the mud. It teemed with them. They gave you a fearful feeling that the mud itself was mysteriously become alive and an atavistic terror froze your heart when you remembered that such creatures, but gigantic and terrible, were once the only inhabitants of the earth. There was something uncanny about them, but something amusing too. They reminded you very much of human beings. It was quite entertaining to stand there for half an hour and observe their gambols.

George Moon took his topee off the peg and not displeased with life stepped out into the sunshine.

P. & O.

♦

Mrs Hamlyn lay on her long chair and lazily watched the passengers come along the gangway. The ship had reached Singapore in the night, and since dawn had been taking on cargo; the winches had been grinding away all day, but by now her ears were accustomed to their insistent clamour. She had lunched at the Europe, and for lack of anything better to do had driven in a rickshaw through the gay, multitudinous streets of the city. Singapore is the meeting-place of many races. The Malays, though natives of the soil, dwell uneasily in towns, and are few; and it is the Chinese, supple, alert, and industrious, who throng the streets; the dark-skinned Tamils walk on their silent, naked feet, as though they were but brief sojourners in a strange land, but the Bengalis, sleek and prosperous, are easy in their surroundings, and self-assured; the sly and obsequious Japanese seem busy with pressing and secret affairs; and the English in their topees and white ducks, speeding past in motorcars or at leisure in their rickshaws, wear a nonchalant and careless air. The rulers of these teeming peoples take their authority with a smiling unconcern. And now, tired and hot, Mrs Hamlyn waited for the ship to set out again on her long journey across the Indian Ocean.

She waved a rather large hand, for she was a big woman, to the doctor and Mrs Linsell as they came on board. She had been on the ship since she left Yokohama, and had watched with acid amusement the intimacy which had sprung up between the two. Linsell was a naval officer who had been attached to the British Embassy at Tokio, and she had wondered at the indifference with which he took the attentions that the doctor paid his wife. Two men came along the gangway, new passengers, and she amused herself by trying to discover from their demeanour whether they were single or married. Close by, a group of men were sitting together on rattan chairs, planters she judged by their khaki suits and wide-brimmed double felt hats, and they kept the deck-steward busy with their orders. They were talking loudly and laughing, for they had all drunk enough to make them somewhat foolishly hilarious, and they were evidently giving one of their number a send-off but Mrs Hamlyn could not tell which it was that was to be a fellow-passenger. The time was growing short More passengers arrived, and then Mr Jephson with dignity strolled up the gangway. He was a consul and was going home on leave. He had joined the ship at Shanghai and had immediately set about making himself agreeable to Mrs Hamlyn. But just then she was disinclined for anything in the nature of a flirtation. She frowned as she thought of the reason which was taking her back to England. She would be spending Christmas at sea, far from anyone who cared two straws about her, and for a moment she felt a little twist of her heartstrings; it vexed her that a subject which she was so resolute to put away from her should so constantly intrude on her unwilling mind.