Ah King (26 page)

The Clarkes were due to sail for England in a fortnight and this determined the date of their elopement. The days passed. Violet was restless and excited. She looked forward with a joy that was almost painful to the peace that she anticipated when they were once on board the ship and could begin the life which she was sure would give her at last perfect happiness.

She began to pack. The friends she was supposed to be going to stay with entertained a good deal and this gave her an excuse to take quite a lot of luggage. She was starting next day. It was eleven o’clock in the morning and Tom was making his round of the estate. One of the boys came to her room and told her that Mrs Clarke was there and at the same moment she heard Enid calling her. Quickly closing the lid of her trunk, she went out on to the veranda. To her astonishment Enid came up to her, flung her arms round her neck and kissed her eagerly. She looked at Enid and saw her cheeks, usually pale, were flushed and that her eyes were shining. Enid burst into tears.

“What on earth’s the matter, darling?” she cried.

For one moment she was afraid that Enid knew everything. But Enid was flushed with delight and not with jealousy or anger.

“I’ve just seen Dr Harrow,” she said. “I didn’t want to say anything about it. I’ve had two or three false alarms, but this time he says it’s all right.”

A sudden coldness pierced Violet’s heart.

“What do you mean? You’re not going to …”

She looked at Enid and Enid nodded.

“Yes, he says there’s no doubt about it at all. He thinks I’m at least three months gone. Oh, my dear, I’m so wildly happy.”

She flung herself again into Violet’s arms and clung to her, weeping.

“Oh, darling, don’t.”

Violet felt herself grow pale as death and knew that if she didn’t keep a tight hold of herself she would faint.

“Does Knobby know?”

“No, I didn’t say a word. He was so disappointed before. He was so frightfully cut up when baby died. He’s wanted me to have another so badly.”

Violet forced herself to say the things that were expected of her, but Enid was not listening. She wanted to tell the whole story of her hopes and fears, of her symptoms, and then of her interview with the doctor. She went on and on.

“When are you going to tell Knobby?” Violet asked at last. “Now, when he gets in?”

“Oh, no, he’s tired and hungry when he gets back from his round. I shall wait until tonight after dinner.”

Violet repressed a movement of exasperation; Enid was going to make a scene of it and was choosing her moment; but after all, it was only natural. It was lucky, for it would give her the chance to see Knobby first. As soon as she was rid of her she rang him up. She knew that he always looked in at his office on his way home, and she left a message asking him to call her. She was only afraid that he would not do so till Tom was back, but she had to take a chance of that. The bell rang and Tom had not come in.

“Hal?”

“Yes.”

“Will you be at the hut at three?”

“Yes. Has anything happened?”

“I’ll tell you when I see you. Don’t worry.”

She rang off. The hut was a little shelter on Knobby’s estate which she could get to without difficulty and where they occasionally met. The coolies passed it while they worked and it had no privacy; but it was a convenient place for them without exciting comment to exchange a few minutes’ conversation. At three Enid would be resting and Tom at work in his office.

When Violet walked up Knobby was already there. He gave a gasp.

“Violet, how white you are.”

She gave him her hand. They did not know what eyes might be watching them and their behaviour here was always such as anyone could observe.

“Enid came to see me this morning. She’s going to tell you tonight. I thought you ought to be warned. She’s going to have a baby.”

“Violet!”

He looked at her aghast. She began to cry. They had never talked of the relations they had, he with his wife and she with her husband. They ignored the subject because it was to each horribly painful. Violet knew what her own life was; she satisfied her husband’s appetite, but, with a woman’s strange nonchalance, because to do so gave her no pleasure, attached no importance to it; but somehow she had persuaded herself that with Hal it was different. He felt now instinctively how bitterly what she had learned wounded her. He tried to excuse himself.

“Darling, I couldn’t help myself.”

She cried silently and he watched her with miserable eyes.

“I know it seems beastly,” he said, “but what could I do? It wasn’t as if I had any reason to …”

She interrupted him.

“I don’t blame you. It was inevitable. It’s only because I’m stupid that it gives me such a frightful pain in my heart.”

“Darling!”

“We ought to have gone away together two years ago. It was madness to think we could go on like this.”

“Are you sure Enid’s right? She thought she was in the family way three or four years ago.”

“Oh, yes, she’s right. She’s frightfully happy. She says you wanted a child so badly.”

“It’s come as such an awful surprise. I don’t seem able to realize it yet.”

She looked at him. He was staring at the leaf-strewn earth with harassed eyes. She smiled a little.

“Poor Hal.” She sighed deeply. “There’s nothing to be done about it. It’s the end of us.”

“What do you mean?” he cried.

“Oh, my dear, you can’t very well leave her now, can you? It was all right before. She would have been unhappy, but she would have got over it. But now it’s different. It’s not a very nice time for a woman anyhow. For months she feels more or less ill. She wants affection. She wants to be taken care of. It would be frightful to leave her to bear it all alone. We couldn’t be such beasts.”

“Do you mean to say you want me to go back to England with her?”

She nodded gravely.

“It’s lucky you’re going. It’ll be easier when you get away and we don’t see one another every day.”

“But I can’t live without you now.”

“Oh, yes, you can. You must. I can. And it’ll be worse for me, because I stay behind and I shall have nothing.”

“Oh, Violet, it’s impossible.”

“My dear, it’s no good arguing. The moment she told me I saw it meant that. That’s why I wanted to see you first. I thought the shock might lead you to blurt out the whole truth. You know I love you more than anything in the world. She’s never done me any harm. I couldn’t take you away from her now. It’s bad luck on both of us, but there it is, I simply wouldn’t dare to do a filthy thing like that.”

“I wish I were dead,” he moaned.

“That wouldn’t do her any good, or me either,” she smiled.

“What about the future? Have we got to sacrifice our whole lives?”

“I’m afraid so. It sounds rather grim, darling, but I suppose sooner or later we shall get over it. One gets over everything.”

She looked at her wrist-watch.

“I ought to be getting back. Tom will be in soon. We’re all meeting at the club at five.”

“Tom and I are supposed to be playing tennis.” He gave her a pitiful look. “Oh, Violet, I’m so frightfully unhappy.”

“I know. So am I. But we shan’t do any good by talking about it.”

She gave him her hand, but he took her in his arms and kissed her, and when she released herself her cheeks were wet with his tears. But she was so desperate she could not cry.

Ten days later the Clarkes sailed.

While George Moon was listening to as much of this story as Tom Saffary was able to tell him, he reflected in his cool, detached way how odd it was that these commonplace people, leading lives so monotonous, should have been convulsed by such a tragedy. Who would have thought that Violet Saffary, so neat and demure, sitting in the club reading the illustrated papers or chatting with her friends over a lemon squash, should have been eating her heart out for love of that ordinary man? George Moon remembered seeing Knobby at the club the evening before he sailed. He seemed in great spirits. Fellows envied him because he was going home. Those who had recently come back told him by no means to miss the show at the Pavilion. Drink flowed freely. The Resident had not been asked to the farewell party the Saffarys gave for the Clarkes, but he knew very well what it had been like, the good cheer, the cordiality, the chaff, and then after dinner the gramophone turned on and everyone dancing. He wondered what Violet and Clarke had felt as they danced together. It gave him an odd sensation of dismay to think of the despair that must have filled their hearts while they pretended to be so gay.

And with another part of his mind George Moon thought of his own past. Very few knew that story. After all, it happened twenty-five years ago.

“What are you going to do now, Saffary?” he asked.

“Well, that’s what I wanted you to advise me about. Now that Knobby’s dead I don’t know what’s going to happen to Violet if I divorce her. I was wondering if I oughtn’t to let her divorce me.”

“Oh, you want to divorce?”

“Well, I must.”

George Moon lit another cigarette and watched for a moment the smoke that curled away into the air.

“Did you ever know that I’d been married?”

“Yes, I think I’d heard. You’re a widower, aren’t you?”

“No, I divorced my wife. I have a son of twenty-seven. He’s farming in New Zealand. I saw my wife the last time I was home on leave. We met at a play. At first we didn’t recognize one another. She spoke to me. I asked her to lunch at the Berkeley.”

George Moon chuckled to himself. He was alone. It was a musical comedy. He found himself sitting next to a large fat dark woman whom he vaguely thought he had seen before, but the play was just starting and he did not give her a second look. When the curtain fell after the first act she looked at him with bright eyes and spoke.

“How are you, George?”

It was his wife. She had a bold, friendly manner and was very much at her ease.

“It’s a long time since we met,” she said.

“It is.”

“How has life been treating you?”

“Oh, all right.”

“I suppose you’re a Resident now. You’re still in the Service, aren’t you?”

“Yes. I’m retiring soon, worse luck.”

“Why? You look very fit.”

“I’m reaching the age limit. I’m supposed to be an old buffer and no good any more.”

“You’re lucky to have kept so thin. I’m terrible, aren’t I?”

“You don’t look as though you were wasting away.”

“I know. I’m stout and I’m growing stouter all the time. I can’t help it and I love food. I can’t resist cream and bread and potatoes.”

George Moon laughed, but not at what she said; at his own thoughts. In years gone by it had sometimes occurred to him that he might meet her, but he had never thought that the meeting would take this turn. When the play was ended and with a smile she bade him good night, he said:

“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.