Kind Are Her Answers (30 page)

The price-ticket showed. It was forty guineas; more than he had spent on a luxury in his life, or could reasonably afford. He could do it, though, if he made the car last another year; it wasn’t too bad. He knew as he made the calculation, that it was purely formal. He would have had this if it had meant going short of clothing.

“Do you mind if we go in a minute?” he said. “I’ve just remembered, there’s something I’ve got to see about here.”

“All right, I’ll wait and look in the window.”

“No, come in with me. I might want some advice.”

“If you like.” He saw a little hurt look in her eyes which she concealed as soon as its first surprise had gone. He had said the first thing that came into his head, and realized too late that she must suppose he was doing an errand for his wife. Anxiety to make this up to her tangled itself confusedly with his other emotions. They went in.

The shop had concealed lighting and a thick pile carpet, and its atmosphere was tinged by the passage of expensive scents. A lithe saleswoman, with platinum hair of incredible intricacy, swam across to them like a black velvet mermaid. Kit was seized with stage-fright, and thrust out his jaw to conceal it. Janet had never taken him buying clothes.

“Can I help you, madam?”

Christie indicated Kit with a glance, and began edging away, pretending to look at some stoles on a stand. The plushy texture of everything in the shop made her tweed coat look rough and thin. Kit cleared his throat.

“Could we see the coat at the left of the window? The …” Had he been wrong about its being beaver? There was some other sort of fur which looked rather the same. To say “The brown one” would, he supposed, be beneath contempt. Christie would know; but she had wandered off. He made a gesture, like a man not accustomed to wasting words.

“The brown beaver swagger coat? Certainly. Madam will like this coat. It’s a charming little model. It only arrived yesterday.” She drew back the brocade curtain that divided the window from the shop. As she went, Christie happened to turn round. He raised his eyebrow to beckon her over.

“If Madam will step into the fitting room?” The saleswoman had the coat over her arm. She was drawing another curtain, showing more concealed lights and a pier-glass. Christie looked up at him, waiting for him to clear up whatever misunderstanding had arisen.

“Come along,” he said.

She walked in, patiently puzzled. When the saleswoman took off her coat and lifted the fur one, she submitted in a kind of daze.

“There, sir? Don’t you think it suits Madam to perfection? And the colouring, of course, exactly right.”

“Do you like it?” Kit said.

Christie had been looking at herself in the glass, with passive wonder, as if she were admiring some unusual effect produced by chance phenomena, such as frost crystals. When he spoke, she looked up quickly at his face. Her own was a blur of startled bewilderment; he could see that she had been asking herself if he had embarked on some elaborate piece of fun, in which she was supposed to be backing him up. At his smile her eyes grew frightened, like a colt’s when one dangles a bridle before it. She looked round at the saleswoman, waiting for her to go away so that she could ask him what it was all about.

“Well, do you like it?” he asked again.

“Yes, of course, it’s a beautiful coat.” The saleswoman beamed. Christie added, silly with nervousness, “It makes you want to stroke it all the time.”

“Good,” said Kit to the saleswoman. “We’ll have this one, then.”

“Certainly, sir. Madam will find this a most satisfactory coat. It’s a quite exceptional little model. We shan’t be repeating it. Where may I have it sent?”

Kit turned deliberately away, so that he could not see Christie, nor the reflection of her face in the glass. “We’ll take it with us,” he said doggedly. “Now.”

“Er—yes, sir. If you would just step this way?”

Kit walked out of the fitting room without looking back. While he was establishing confidence in his cheque he tried to make his cardiac rhythm settle down. What was there, he said to himself, to get in such a state about? A thing every one did. He walked, with defiant firmness, back to the middle of the shop.

Christie was going through, in her old tweed coat. It looked thinner than ever after the soft pile of the fur. Her face was quite white. She walked without looking at him towards the door.

“Miss Bennett, will you pack this coat? Madam is taking it with her.”

“Don’t bother to pack it. We’ll take it as it is.” He took it from the assistant and threw it over his arm, overtaking Christie just as she reached the door. The saleswoman bowed them out of it, and, after they had gone, looked after them with raised eyebrows through the plate-glass.

Christie had pushed her hands into her tweed pockets. She walked on for a few yards looking straight ahead, then said “Thank you” in a small expressionless voice, without turning round.

“What’s up?” asked Kit defiantly, trying to draw level. She kept half a pace ahead; the coat made him bulky in a crowd. He cannoned into some one, swore silently, apologized, and got up to her elbow. “Don’t you like it?”

“I like it awfully. It was very—kind of you to give it me. I’m sorry I was funny about it, but I was surprised. Can we go back to the car now?”

“We’re on our way. Just round the next corner.”

The car park was illuminated by one of those arcs which are supposed, for some reason, to resemble daylight. Under its ghastly glare Christie’s face had the pallor of the dead. When he sat down beside her he could feel her shaking. “You’re cold,” he said roughly, and threw the coat over her knees.

“Thank you. It is rather cold.”

He edged the car out, reversing less accurately than usual. While they were driving through Paxton, he made the traffic an excuse for not looking round. In the country roads they drove on still in silence. He glanced round once, to see Christie staring through her own reflection in the windscreen. A few minutes later he stopped the car on a grass verge beside the road.

“Well? If anything’s the matter, say so.”

“Why should anything be the matter?” Christie looked out of the far window. “I’m a very lucky girl. I’ve just been given a fur coat.”

“Well, what are you being like this for? I wanted to give it you … I thought you’d be pleased.”

“Did you? I suppose that was why you went about it the way you did.”

“I wanted it to be a surprise,” he said obstinately.

“It was.”

“Christie, look here.” The lights on the dashboard glimmered up into her face. He saw that her lip was pulled in to keep it from trembling. “No, but, Christie. Come here.”

“Oh, don’t.” She pushed him away.

“Stop being such a fool,” he said, suddenly angry. “Come here.”

“Let me go!” She twisted, furiously, in his arms. One of her fists, clenched to push him off, glanced up and struck him on the mouth. She stopped struggling.

“I didn’t mean to do that,” she said unsteadily.

“It’s all right.” His lip was cut somewhere inside; he swallowed the blood till it stopped.

“Did I hurt you?”

“It isn’t anything.”

“Kit, are you mad or what? How
could
you do it like that? Not asking me, or anything. And all in front of that beastly woman, so that I couldn’t say I minded. Dragging me into a rich shop, all popeyed and not knowing what the hell was happening and wearing a frock with a darn in it, and buying me a fur coat. A
fur coat.
I shouldn’t think they’ve stopped laughing yet.”

“I don’t think it’s all that funny.”

“Don’t you? They will. Their customers bring in quite a good class of bird.”

“I’m sorry it annoyed you. I hoped it wouldn’t. Don’t you want it, then?”

“Of course I don’t want it. Stop the cheque and send it back. Give it to your wife. Give it to any one. … I’m sorry; I didn’t mean to be rude. But why did you do it to-day—just this evening, when everything was so nice? And you’d just—” She felt about in the car round her feet. “It’s gone!”

“What’s the matter? Lost your bag?”

“No. My picture of the sunflowers. I’ve left it in that awful shop. Now I haven’t got even that. And I did love it so.” He saw that she was beginning to cry.

“Here, for God’s sake,” said Kit. Her tears roused something primitive in him. He pulled her round, using his strength less carefully this time, so that she stopped fighting with a little gasp of pain. “I’m sick of this. Now shut up.”

“Please, don’t, Kit. Don’t be unkind to me.”

“Unkind?” he said slowly. “I could choke you.”

He pinned her arms behind her and kissed her, painfully and unsparingly. She cried out and struggled helplessly at first, then lay still, with wide-open eyes, in his arms.

“God damn you,” he said, his breath coming in jerks, “you’ve never done anything but lie to me. I suppose you talk to every one the same. It must be damned funny for you, telling them all that none of the others count and they’re the one. This proves it. Doesn’t it?” He shook her unresisting body. “You can’t even take anything from me. You hand me off as if I were some one who’d tried to pick you up in the street. And then you’ve the bloody nerve to make out I’m more to you than this Maurice swine, or Fell, or God knows who. If it keeps me amused it’s good enough, isn’t it? You say anything. You don’t care.”

He kissed her again, forcing her head back, and let her go. There was a silence.

“Kit. Your lip’s bleeding.”

She gathered herself up from the corner into which he had thrust her, and, fumbling a little, fished out a scrap of handkerchief, with eau de cologne on it, from the neck of her dress.

“Here,” she said.

She wiped his cheek, and held the handkerchief to his mouth. He bent his head lower, over her hands. Reaching her arms out quickly she caught it against her breast.

“Please, Kit. Dear Kit.” He could feel her breath rise and fall with the rhythm of her words, and a little catch in the pauses between. “Listen, I didn’t mean it. Truly. I’ve been a filthy pig to you. It’s a beautiful coat. It was marvellous of you to give it me. I’ve been looking at it in the window for weeks and wanting it every day. I swear I have. Say it’s all right.”

“What’s the use,” said Kit under his breath. “You’re just being kind. As usual. What’s the use of pretending. You didn’t want to take it, and the reason is you don’t give a damn.”

“Don’t. It wasn’t that. Please; you’re making me cry.”

“Of course it was. Cry over Maurice. I can do without.”

“Oh, Kit, stop. Just stop for a minute.” She throttled his face against her, so that he breathed with difficulty. “Don’t you see, I thought you wanted to stop loving me.”

“You’re crazy,” he said into the stuff of her dress.

“Why?” You said you’d have chucked any one else by now. I’ve let you down twice. I thought you’d done it to show me where I got off. Just another bit of fluff.”

Kit twisted his head to look up at her. He gave a blurred grin, which hurt his mouth. “Fluff?” he said. “What a hope.”

“Say you see. Say it’s all right.”

“All right?” He turned his face out of sight. “It’s never all right. I lie awake wondering if you know what I look like when I’m not here. Sometimes I think I’d like to mark you so you’ll remember.”

“You can if you like. Anything. I wish you would. I wish I were dead.”

“No, you’d better not die.” He smiled, his face still hidden. “I couldn’t come and haul you back from there. While there’s life there’s hope, I suppose.”

“You’re bleeding on my dress. Oh, God, I do love you so. Don’t ever leave me.”

“Not till you say.”

“Oh, that’s no use. I say anything. Don’t leave me ever.”

“All right. Look out, don’t put that bloody handkerchief on your face. Mine’s here somewhere.”

“I’ve stopped now.” She attended to her face, inaccurately, by the green dashboard light, “My lovely coat. I shall wear it always. Even in Buenos Aires. I’m going to put it on now. Where is it?”

“God knows. There’s something round my feet.”

They picked it up, and in the semi-darkness brushed cigarette-ash and dust out of its folds.

“I’m going to make this all up to you. At the Easter School we’ll have a heavenly time. No one bothering us all night.”

“The Easter School? Good Lord, I’d forgotten about that.” He helped her into the coat. “All right, I suppose I’ll come if you can get the room. But mind you tell Rollo I’m not going to be let in for any damned love scenes, or anything like that. Couldn’t get the stuff across if my life depended on it. Don’t forget to tell him, will you?”

“No,” said Christie, snuggling her face into the coat to hide a smile. “I’ll remember very carefully.”

K
IT MADE THREE SEPARATE
attempts to tell Janet about the Easter School before he succeeded in bringing it out. It made him feel ridiculous; and he found that to look ridiculous before her was as unpleasant as it had ever been. It would have embarrassed him less to tell her the truth.

“I didn’t know,” she said, staring at him, “that you went in for acting at all.”

“Not lately. I—I used to help with the shows in hospital.” (He had once taken the part of an anaesthetized patient in a burlesque operation, quite successfully.)

“Were you still doing that when I met you? I should like to have seen one of them.”

“Oh, well,” he lied desperately, “they weren’t the sort of thing you could take a woman to.”

“No. Of course.” He had guessed that her vague knowledge and general suspicion of hospital would allow this to pass.

Fraser—who had, of course, to be given his address—was even worse. He got this over quite baldly, and, when Fraser looked along the top of his glasses, talked rapidly about something else. The weather had turned fine and dry, and the work was falling almost to summer level. He had never taken a holiday so early, but this made the idea sound less unreasonable than it might have done. Fraser probably needed a rest more, and Kit would have persuaded him to take one if there had been any hope of succeeding; but Fraser’s custom of starting out in the first week of August was invariable.

Janet left the day before Kit; Bill and Shirley called for her in their car. He was, to his relief, called out to a case at the time. Bill’s friendly interest in his plans would have been a little more than he could bear.