Love and Money (29 page)

“Your mother did.”

“That's not the same thing, is it?”

“Oh, well—never mind. We must change or we shall be late,” said Lavinia dismissively.

She threw the packet of deeds carelessly down on the telephone table. They slipped off the edge and fell to the ground. Walter picked them up and replaced them on the table. He then without a word left his wife's bedroom, to which he never returned.

For several years after this incident the Egmonts maintained a decent façade of happy married life. Lavinia snapped at Walter more than was pleasant to hear, but then Lavinia nowadays snapped at everybody, so snapping at Walter meant nothing serious; it was clear she still regarded her husband with possessive conjugal affection. To Walter's friends it seemed that Walter's heart was not now in his married life, but he maintained his courtesy towards his wife so steadily that Lavinia did not perceive his alienation. Until one summer Sunday evening. In family life Sunday
evening is often a dangerous time. The tedium of Sunday has accumulated, the problems of Monday loom; between boredom and apprehension the spirit tosses uneasily, vulnerable to offence.

Walter was sitting alone on the Mount Hall terrace, smoking a cigar. His large form overflowed the deck chair in which he lounged; one trouser leg, pulled up as he sat, revealed a cascading sock and an inch or two of ankle. Altogether he looked slack and dreamy and as if he were enjoying himself doing nothing, and this was irritating to the energetic Lavinia, who emerged from the french windows in a bad temper after a brush with her mother. The voices of May and Janet, who had been sent by Lavinia to water some prized antirrhinums at the side of the house, could be heard in the distance.

“Walter, have you written to your cousin?” said Lavinia sharply, referring to a letter of condolence she had urged Walter to despatch that night.

“No,” said Walter.

“Really, Walter!”

“I'm thinking what to say. I'll do it after supper.” “Why not now?” said Lavinia with her infuriating smugness.

“The post's gone anyway.”

“Not in Annotsfield. Janet could easily run it down to the G.P.O.”

“I don't want to write it now, Lavinia,” said Walter quietly.

“No—you'd rather sit and do nothing. That's you all over, Walter. Nobody would ever do anything in this house if I didn't drive them to it.”

Walter still saying nothing and making no move, Lavinia's vexation mounted.

“If you knew how slack and stupid you look lounging there, Walter,” she said angrily in her quick vehement tones. “You might be a young man in a dream of love.”

She laughed contemptuously.

Walter said nothing. Suddenly hot colour flooded
Lavinia's face, she rushed forward to confront her husband and shouted:

“You are in love! You're in love with another woman!”

Walter slowly turned on her a strange deep look. Lavinia was used to seeing his brown eyes kind and attentive; tonight they appeared sardonic and cold.

“I'm certainly not in love with you, Lavinia,” he said.

Lavinia screamed abuse at him with all the fury of a woman quite unexpecting to be scorned.

“You vile beast! How dare you treat me so! And what about May?”

“Leave May out of this,” said Walter quickly.

“How can you leave her out?” shouted Lavinia, perceiving her advantage. “If you don't give me your word of honour to give this up, I'll tell your daughter!”

“Tell her what, for heaven's sake?”

“About this—this affair of yours,” said Lavinia, trembling with fury.

“There's no affair. I've never spoken a word of love to any woman but you.”

“Give it up, or I'll tell your daughter—May shall know what kind of a man her father is, I promise you!”

“Lavinia, you're a wicked woman,” said Walter.

“Swear you'll give her up.”

“Give who up?”

“This woman of yours. Don't tell me you aren't in love with some woman or other, for I shan't believe you for a moment.”

“Very well. I won't tell you that. I will tell you that I've not the slightest intention of being unfaithful to my marriage vows—for May's sake.”

“You don't deny you're in love with someone?”

“What's the use, when you're determined not to believe me?”

“Did you call, mummy?” called May, limping round the side of the house.

“No, dear, no! Go on with your watering,” cried Lavinia, waving the child away imperiously. “You had better keep
your word, Walter,” she went on in a low savage tone, “or I'll see to it that you never see May again. You're entirely in my power, you see. Just as you were over the house deeds.”

“Yes, I see that,” said Walter.

The Egmonts now gradually became known to their acquaintance as a typical example of the incompatible husband and wife who remain together only for the sake of their child. Walter's behaviour was courteous but cold and he avoided his wife's company whenever possible. Lavinia maintained the outward decencies, and did not attempt to discover the identity of the woman who had aroused those “silly feelings” in Walter—she knew she could trust his word and unconsciously feared to rouse his anger by any such attempt, though to herself she said she could not “condescend” to it. But she often wore her smile of triumph when she spoke to him; she was reflecting with satisfaction: “Well, I nipped
that
in the bud.” People who first met Walter and Lavinia during this period could not believe that they had once been a mutually adoring couple. What had they ever had in common, enquired such new friends? Lavinia was widely detested for her intolerable bossiness, though almost as widely respected for her capacity to get public work done. Poor dear Walter was regarded as an absolute pet, but of course far too easy-going and slow. Where Lavinia's friends and her enemies concurred was in regarding her treatment of May as a mistake—though they differed as to its motive, her friends saying uneasily that Lavinia's devotion to the child led her astray, her enemies stating emphatically that Lavinia could not bear to let anyone in her power escape beyond its range.

Certainly Lavinia kept May at home all through her teens, allowing her to receive education only at a private day-school in Annotsfield, to and from which that nice Janet drove her every day. May's contemporaries, now that the slump was dissipating, went away to expensive boarding-
schools—Roedean and Cheltenham and Wycombe or perhaps Harrogate; May would like to have followed their example and Walter was willing, but Lavinia scoffed the suggestion out of court. May, she said, was not strong enough yet to go away from home. May accepted this ruling dutifully, but listened to the school tales of returned cousins with such a wistful air that the hearts of mere friends quite ached for her, and even cross old Mrs. Crabtree put in a plea on her behalf. This last interference excited Lavinia to fury. Having humiliated her mother into a palsied fury by reminding her that she was eating the bread of Walter's charity and had no right to a voice in any Egmont affairs, she swept off to the pleasant little room known as May's study, where she found May and Janet together, and demanded in ringing tones:

“Did you ask Grannie Crabtree to talk to me about going away to school, May?”

“No—yes—not exactly,” stammered May, her heart beating fast. “She knew I wished to go—but I didn't ask her. That is——”

“I believe I mentioned it to Aunt Crabtree,” put in Janet quietly.

“Never
dare
to do such a thing again!” cried Lavinia at her most imperious. “May is not fit to live a normal school life and the sooner she accepts that fact the better.”

She swept from the room. After a moment's pause, during which May sat white and trembling, her delicate mouth a-quiver, her large eyes full of tears, Janet sprang to the girl's side and took her in her arms. May buried her face on Janet's shoulder and the two wept together.

May was a clever, scholarly child, and another attempt was made to give full play to her undoubted ability when she reached university age. This time the attempt was supported by May's headmistress, whom most parents found formidable. But Lavinia easily defeated her.

“You are not a mother, Miss Pannell—you cannot quite enter into my feelings,” she said.

After this insulting thrust at Miss Pannell's spinsterhood
she went on to hint at dark secrets in May's physiology; Miss Pannell withdrew her support from the university project and it fell to the ground.

So May stayed at home. Her life was not without its compensations, however. Lavinia indulged all her wishes save the one that really mattered, and May attended lectures and concerts and theatres, not only in Annotsfield but in Leeds and Bradford and even Manchester across the Pennines. It was observed that sometimes May was accompanied by her father, whom she loved dearly, sometimes by her mother, who loved her dearly, almost always by that nice Janet, her devoted companion, but never by Walter and Lavinia at the same time. There seemed to be a tacit understanding between husband and wife not to spoil each other's pleasure in their daughter's company. As the years went on it became generally recognised in Annotsfield that May Egmont—such beautiful eyes, my dear, and the sweetest disposition, musical too, such a shame about that foot— looked quite happy whenever her mother was not with her, and fortunately Lavinia was so busy nowadays with public Good Works (where bossiness had full scope) that she accompanied her daughter less frequently than of old.

Thus it happened that when one of the Armitages, a quiet, nice man in the thirties, a distant connection of the Egmonts with a university post in Oxford, began to pay “attentions” to May, Lavinia was not there often enough to perceive their trend. She knew nothing of them, indeed, until one cold dark afternoon in the December of 1938. On sweeping into Mount Hall with her usual imperious step, smiling with triumphant glee over her chairmanship of the meeting that afternoon—she had got her own way by beating down a good deal of opposition—she learned from the maid that Miss Crabtree was upstairs reading the newspaper to old Mrs. Crabtree, and Mr. Egmont in the library having had tea.

“Where is May, Walter?” demanded Lavinia, sweeping in.

“She's gone to the Choral concert.”

“Oh—I'd forgotten it was tonight. But who's with her? And surely it's too early?” began Lavinia.

“Herbert Armitage has called and taken her off to the George for a bite before the show. I gave him my ticket,” drawled Walter.

“Herbert Armitage?” cried Lavinia in capital letters. “You've let her go out alone with him?”

“Why not? I think he may possibly be attached to May, you know. A very nice fellow,” said Walter approvingly. “No harm in being a little older. Suitable. Same tastes.”

“You don't mean to say he's thinking
of marrying
her?”

“He's hinted at it once or twice to me,” said Walter. “In fact, I think he means to bring it to the point tonight.”

“She's much too young to think of such a thing.”

“She's eighteen.”

“It's preposterous! It's out of the question! You'll marry her off and then I suppose you think you'll be free to go off with
your
woman!” shouted Lavinia at the top of her voice.

Walter looked at her.

“Haven't you forgotten that yet, Lavinia?” “No! And you haven't either,” said Lavinia brutally. “Don't try to pretend to me that you have.”

“I've kept my word to you in the matter, however.” “I'd soon have made you know it if you hadn't.” Walter looked at her again.

“You were not like this when we married, Vinny,” he said. “Whose fault is that?” cried Lavinia, rushing from the room.

She went straight out of the house by the side door to her car, which in spite of all her orders and instructions Brigg had not yet put away. Although this disobedience was at the moment convenient, it enraged Lavinia. The whole world seemed to conspire to thwart her, she thought as, panting slightly for she had put on weight the last few prosperous years, she climbed into the driving seat and slammed the door. Brigg delighted to misunderstand her instructions, Walter's whole heart was set on frustrating her, and now May! At the bottom of her heart Lavinia was deeply, painfully, unforgivably wounded by May's lack of con
fidence in her mother. That Walter should know about this Armitage man and not Lavinia! But Lavinia would show May! May should find out her mistake! May should learn she had a mother! Lavinia would confront the pair at the George. Of course, if May really wanted this Herbert Armitage . . . But how could she? He was far too old, a dry old stick, not well-off—besides, May was not suited to the requirements of marriage, thought Lavinia, remembering with a pang compounded of jealousy, anger and protective love, the misery of her own confinement. No! May must not marry! She must stay peacefully at home with her loving mother! It was important to catch them before the proposal was actually made, reflected Lavinia, swinging the car masterfully round into the front drive and pressing her foot on the accelerator.

The next moment, as it seemed, Lavinia opened her eyes to find herself gazing into the grave faces of Walter, May, Janet, old Mrs. Crabtree, their family doctor and a starched white person who was presumably a nurse. It was daylight; the chill gloomy daylight of a winter dawn. The familiar furniture of her bedroom stood around her.

Lavinia had always been quick in the uptake, as the Yorkshire phrase goes, and she did not linger in comprehension now. She knew at once that in the dark she had driven full tilt into the left-hand pillar of the Mount Hall gateway, had smashed up herself and the car, and was now about to die.

She foresaw the consequences with her usual shrewdness. May would marry Herbert Armitage after her mother's death. Well, let her have him if she wants, thought Lavinia, feeling very virtuous at thus yielding to her daughter's wish, though in reality her motive was: “If I can't be with May, neither shall Walter.” But Walter won't need May, she raced on; as soon as I'm dead Walter will of course rush after that woman of his, whoever she may be; he's only in his forties, he's still a good-looking man.