Outbreak of Love (11 page)

Lady Pringle talked all the time in her fluty voice of the cultural future of Australia. “We have the Mediterranean climate,” she said, “and it is that climate which has produced everything of value in Western civilization. Even the culture of the East, in Persiah and Chinah has developed on that latitude. It is certain that Australiah has a great cultural future.” These sounded like Russell's ideas and Diana wondered if he had been talking to Lady Pringle in the same way that he had talked to herself.

Russell made efforts to include Diana in the conversation but Lady Pringle, having blossomed overnight into a music critic, thought everything she had to say must be of value, and it was difficult to stem her flow. Diana and Wolfie, who was enjoying his food but was sulky because he was not being admired, were practically ignored, and she wished that they had not come. When Miss Rockingham released Sir Dugald and turned to Wolfie, with whom surprisingly she seemed to be enjoying herself, Diana was no better off, as Sir Dugald talked across her to Russell.

By the end of the meal she felt that she almost disliked Russell, and was impatient for the moment when they could leave. She wondered why on earth he had asked them, and thought that he must have regretted the promise of close friendship contained in his manner at Elsie's party, but was obliged to do something about it, as non-committal as possible.

Miss Rockingham, who naturally assumed that she was the most important guest, at last said: “I have to go to help Lady Eileen lay a foundation stone,” and they rose from the table. When she had gone Sir Dugald went down to the cloakroom. Lady Pringle, to cover his retreat talked energetically to Wolfie. Russell turned to Diana: “I'm so sorry to have let you in for this,” he said. “I hope you didn't find it too awful.”

“Oh no. It was very pleasant,” she said, for the moment bewildered.

He gave a distressed smile. “It couldn't have been, but it's served its purpose. I'd no idea the Pringles were so overpowering. I really must apologize.”

“Please don't. Thank you very much for asking us.” As Sir Dugald had returned, she held out her hand to say good-bye.

“Don't go yet,” said Russell. “Wait till they've gone. We haven't made any arrangement to meet.”

He turned to the Pringles and by thanking them for coming practically compelled them to go. Diana admired his social agility, but with faint misgiving. If he could do that why could he not manage his luncheon table better? Perhaps he had deliberately appeared indifferent to her before the other guests? All kinds of ideas passed through her mind in the minute she was standing alone. What had he meant by the party “serving its purpose”? He could only have meant that it was to establish publicly that he was a family friend. That would be why he had asked Miss Rockingham. She had thought it must be from his love of the highest, but it had been to make their “family friendship” widely known. Everything Miss Rockingham did was noted, and in the dining-room, because of her, glances had been directed towards their table. By this evening half of the people they knew would have heard that she and Wolfie had lunched with Russell. Then Diana thought: “How silly! I'm making it all up.” But her dry feeling of irritation had disappeared, and when Russell turned towards her with a complacent smile at his skill in getting rid of the Pringles, she shared his amusement.

“Now let us sit down and talk comfortably,” he said.

“I must be at the Conservatorium at three o'clock,” said Wolfie.

“Are you going too?” Russell asked Diana.

“No, I'm going home.”

“If I run,” said Wolfie, “I shall catch Sir Dugald. In his car I shall not need to take the tram.”

He bowed to Russell and hurried after the Pringles.

“Are you going home by train?” asked Russell. “May I walk part of the way with you? I'm going to the club.”

She waited while he fetched his things and in a few minutes they were walking down Collins Street together.

“Lady Pringle has become very authoritative,” he said. “Is she always like that?”

“I don't know her very well,” said Diana. “She's interested in Wolfie's music, and she's more his friend.” As she said this, she realized that it was to let him know that she and Wolfie led partly independent lives. “I think she is rather stimulated by her talks the other night.”

“It will pass off, perhaps,” said Russell, amused. “A single success is a mischievous thing. Without repetition it's worse than failure.”

“But that doesn't apply to you.”

“D'you mean I'm incapable of success?”

“No, of course not, but you don't do any of the things that put you at the mercy of the public.”

“One is at the mercy of one's friends, who are more important than the public. And there are other things besides art in which one can fail.”

“What sort of things?”

“Well, in trying to avoid the second-rate.”

“In people?”

“No, people aren't as easily labelled as that. I mean in living.”

“I shouldn't think you've failed in anything.”

“That makes me sound very vulgar. Even so, I wish it were true.”

At the corner of Elizabeth Street Diana stopped to say good-bye before turning down to the railway station.

“Must you catch this train?” he asked. “I was going to suggest that we had tea somewhere.”

“I was going to do some gardening.”

“Shall I come and help you?”

She was pleased at this offer, and surprised at its simplicity. It showed a new facet of his character. She looked at his good English clothes, and general smart appearance.

“You don't look dressed for gardening,” she said. “It would be better if I had tea with you.”

They decided to walk to the kiosk in the Fitzroy Gardens, and went on up the hill. When they were brought their strong tea, and dry dull cake he said: “Australia should have been colonized by French or Italians, or some people who know how to live in this climate.”

“Then we shouldn't be here.”

“No, that would be dreadful,” he said. “All the same, there ought to be a restaurant here with a French chef. It ought to be the thing to come here—like dining in the Bois.”

“D'you think you will stay long in Australia?” she asked.

“Why? I intend to live here.”

“But your mind is in Europe. You like Australia now because you are thinking of all the European things that could be done to it. There will never be a French chef in the Fitzroy Gardens. When you realize that, will you want to stay?”

“I don't see why there shouldn't be. We must put the idea about.”

“They wouldn't like it—all those rich Toorak people.”

“Then they needn't come.”

“They rule the roost, now, and their aim is to be as like correct upper-middle-class English people as possible. They have no idea of an aristocratic culture—of your ideas and Miss Rockingham's.”

He gave her a quick look when she mentioned Miss Rockingham and she wished she had not done so.

“I mean,” she went on, “they have to build their house in good classical proportions before they can add a rococo façade. You have to be a gentleman before you can afford to be eccentric.”

“I must say I like rococo façades,” said Russell. “When d'you think you'll come to Europe?”

“You say
come
to Europe. That shows you are living there in your mind?”

“All civilized Englishmen lived in Italy in their minds. Shakespeare did, but his heart was in England. One's mind may be in Europe but one's heart in Australia. Anyhow, isn't your mind in Europe as much as mine? No one whose mind was fixed in Australia could talk of façades.”

“Yes, but I talk of going there, not coming there.”

“That's simply due to your geographical, not your mental situation.”

“Are you advising me to go there, then?”

“No, certainly not. At least, not yet. Not while I'm in Australia.”

“How long will that be? I suppose that depends on the chef in the Gardens.”

They went on talking, half-seriously, half-chaffing, looking down the sloping lawns, where the elms and other English trees were sprouting in their fresh spring green. The scene was quite un-Australian, and though familiar to Diana, combined with Russell's conversation, it reawakened her desire to visit again the other side of the world.

He walked with her to the station. Under the dome they ran into Wolfie, who did not show any surprise at seeing them still together. He explained that he had caught up with the Pringles, as if they had spent the whole afternoon wondering anxiously whether he had had to take a tram to the University. When Diana said that Russell had taken her to tea in the Fitzroy Gardens he bowed and said: “Most kind.” In his presence they did not like to make arrangements for a further meeting, but Diana said: “Do ring up and come out to see us.”

In the train Wolfie talked about the lunch party for a few minutes. He said that he liked the oysters, but the chicken was overcooked, and that he would have preferred hock to claret. He complained too, of Lady Pringle's monopolising the conversation.

“She was not modest,” he said, “but I had pleasure with Miss Rockingham.”

For the rest of the journey he hid himself behind the evening paper. Diana thought about Russell. She talked with him more easily than with anyone she knew, although she had only seen him three times since his return. She found talking to him extremely refreshing to her mind, after a married life deprived almost entirely of mental, if not of emotional contact. She had long given up trying to reach intellectual understanding with Wolfie. In one way she understood him perfectly, as one understands a charming Labrador, which whimpers at the door to go out, or cheerfully sweeps a coffee cup on to the floor with its tail, or complacently eats up all the butter left on a low tea-table. But Wolfie did not understand her. She thought: “I mustn't begin saying my husband doesn't understand me, especially to Russell.”

She was by no means sure, of course, in spite of their easy conversation, that she understood Russell. His attitude rather implied that he wanted her to do something, to go to Europe or somewhere. She would say that to him the next time they met. This European-Australian business seemed to form a sort of pattern to which they were fitting their relationship. But how could she say so soon that there was a relationship between them? Yet she had never, in the whole course of her life, become so quickly on easy terms with a complete stranger. Their childhood's association had left no tie, though perhaps an intimate knowledge of early background did make for a certain ease. She wanted to see him again soon, not only for the pleasure she had in talking to him, but to discover what he was really like. He said things which were not in keeping with the first idea she had of him, which was of a conventional but intelligent, perhaps rather precious bachelor with social ambitions. Even if he had been only that she would still have liked him, but would have felt that they could not have much contact. But he was more than that. It was nice of him to offer to help with gardening.

It did occur to her at this stage that if she were often seen with him “people would talk”, but she had never bothered very much about what people said. She was not “in society”. She did not go automatically to all the smart parties. She had friends and relatives, like Elsie and Maysie and Sophie who were regarded as the cream of society, but her association with them had no connection with social functions. She was independent of their approval and would have given any of them tea in the kitchen if it were convenient, whereas many people “in society” if they had Sophie to dine, would have been on tenterhooks lest their parlourmaid should make a mistake with the wine.

During the next few days she found that she was always a little excited when she answered the telephone. When five days had gone by since his lunch party and he had not rung up, she began again to have the doubts about him which she had when he did not call after their first meeting. He could not be simple. Offering to help with the garden must only have been a sophisticated affectation of simplicity. She made up her mind that if he did ring up she would put off any appointment he suggested.

He rang up the following day and asked her if she would go round the National Gallery with him, and have tea there. He sounded perfectly natural, with no hint of apology or suggestion that he should have rung up earlier. Diana, in spite of her resolution, accepted.

She thought she had been very stupid. Of course it was natural that he should wait a week before inviting her again. What on earth had she expected? That they should immediately spend every other day together? That was the frame of mind which had been responsible for what the family called her “idiocies” as a young girl. She always expected everything, superlatively, at once. It was in fact the frame of mind that made her marry Wolfie, and she had paid for that—though she loved Wolfie, and could not now imagine life without him.

She met Russell three times in the following three weeks, once in the Gallery, once on a wet day in the tea-room, and once he drove her out to Heidelberg in his car, and they had a picnic tea on the river bank, boiling a “billy” over a fire of sticks. She enjoyed that most of all. At each of these meetings their conversation continued much on the same lines, absolutely easy, lively and intelligent, with a good deal of chaff, and always the Australian-European argument cropping up, so that it seemed to have almost the character of a flirtation.

At the end of these three weeks he left for Tasmania, where there were festivities at this time of year, with the fleet at Hobart. Diana found herself criticising him for going there, for doing the correct social thing, though she had often done it herself in times past. Again she thought how absurd it was to expect him to stay in Melbourne during the blazing heat of January, when most people he knew would be away, simply to have tea with her once a week, and anyhow she would be away herself, as she had arranged with Steven and Laura to exchange her house for Westhill during that month. This enabled Steven to bathe and Wolfie and Diana to have some mountain air.