The Blue Rose (13 page)

“Do I look awful?”

“No, not awful, of course, but dreadfully thin and drawn.”

“I think it’s the drugs one is given nowadays that make one feel even worse than the illness itself,” Rose said.

“Well, never mind, now you’re home we’ll soon get you right again
...
You poor sweet, I suppose you were ill all the time and had no fun at all?”

“No, we had one heavenly evening in Basle when I felt perfectly well.” The thought of that evening was almost hurting now in comparison with the present. It seemed so far away and lost forever. “But tell me about
you.
How’s Derek?”

“He sent you his best love by the way. One usually forgets to pass on love. He’s working much too hard. It’s a terrible tie. One or other of us has to be there all the time and it’s usually both. The moment we leave it something seems to go wrong. It’s doing quite well—that is, the customers keep coming, which is the main thing—but somehow the profits aren’t working out quite as we calculated, and we can’t think why. For one thing the machine seems to take more coffee than we were told it would and if you put in less the customers complain immediately. But our real headache is the staff. Those society girls who are working either just for pocket money or to keep boredom at bay are quite hopeless. They always turn up late if they have had a party the night before, and they think nothing of not turning up at all if they’ve got something better to do
...”

“I shall have to come and help you,” Rose said half jokingly.

“Oh, darling, I wish you would. I can’t tell you what I would have given to have been able to ring you up last week and get you to come along. When you’re quite better it would be marvellous if I felt I could call on you in an emergency.”

“Of course I’ll always help in an emergency.”

“I suppose you wouldn’t consider a permanent job?”

“No, I don’t think Stephen would like it—and besides it wouldn’t be right to take the money—but you know you can always count on me to help you out in a crisis.”

“Bless you, darling, I know I can. By the way, how is Stephen?”

“Very well.”

“Still as much in love?”

“What—him or me?”

“Both of you.”

“I certainly am—much more so even—and I hope he is.”

“I’m sure he is. It was rotten luck though on him too having everything upset like that. Give him our love and say we hope to see him soon
...
Ducky. I must run. I’ve got to go and relieve Derek who’s got to have his hair cut. He hasn’t had time to have it cut since the opening and he’s beginning to look awfully like a poet
...
Good-bye, bless you. Give me a ring to-morrow and let me know how you are.”

Rose thought of going down to the drawing-room that afternoon to receive Clare and then she remembered that she had promised Stephen not to get up before he came home. Nevertheless she was reluctant that Clare should discover that she and Stephen were not sharing a room
—
but why should she mind? It wouldn’t matter with Clare. In fact Clare would probably commend her for not letting Stephen see too much of her while she was ill.

Stephen telephoned at lunch-time to know how she was, and she was able to tell him that she was feeling distinctly better and had been able to enjoy most of Vittoria’s omelet. “Clare is coming to see me this afternoon,” she said. “Apparently she knew that you had gone to the bank.”

“Yes, I rang her up this morning to thank her for the flowers she sent you. What time is she coming?”

“Half past three.”

“Then I’ll try and get home early to see her.”

“I thought you were coming home early anyway?”

“I’ll do my best, but one gets so tied up. Try and keep her for me.”

Rose was not cheered by this conversation. She knew that Stephen was bad on the telephone—he hated it—and never used an endearment on it, but he had sounded particularly cold, and then she was hurt too that he should make more effort to hurry back to see Clare than to see her. “What is the matter with me?” she asked herself. “I’m becoming so terribly touchy. I should be grateful that he is sweet enough to ring up at all, especially knowing how much he hates using the telephone
...
But why did he bother to ring Clare up this morning to thank her for my flowers? It was for me to thank her, or if he had wanted to ring her up we could have done it together last night.

...
I mustn’t get like this. It’s this beastly illness that is making me so petty and suspicious
...
Oh, why did I make him feel bad yesterday about not giving me flowers? When you think of all he has given me
...
What on earth could have made me imagine that those flowers were from him? Of course he wouldn’t have given me an ostentatious bouquet like that. It was always something lovely and specially chosen—mostly for the scent. He doesn’t like flowers without a scent
...”
and she went back in her mind over the occasion of their first meeting and found herself smiling involuntarily at the recollection of the pollen on her nose.

IV

It was nearly four when Clare arrived. Antonio showed her up to the bedroom and Rose was immediately struck when she came in by her elegance and vitality. “Well, my poor dear,” she said, coming over and sitting down on the foot of the bed. “And how are you? I’m sorry I’m late but I’ve had a million things to do
...
I just had to pop into the drawing-room while I was here to have a look at my screen.” (Rose had forgotten all about that awful screen.) “It really does look lovely there though I suppose I shouldn’t say so, but I’m so pleased you’ve put it just where I suggested. But it’s so gloomy in your
drawing room
without any flowers or anything. Poor Stephen. You must take my flowers down this evening when you get up for dinner
...
And now let me look at you. Stephen says you are much better
...
Goodness, you must have been ill. Poor little shrunken thing. Quite wasted away. You seem to have gone to nothing. Where’s that lovely bloom of youth? You must get back your looks soon or Stephen won’t like it
...
It
was
a shame. I can’t imagine anything more unlucky happening on your honeymoon. And poor Stephen must have had an awful time too. Men so hate illness, don’t they? But I’m sure he was as kind as can be. He tells me he’s very glad to get back to work. He rang me up this morning to ask me to come and see you as he thought you were feeling rather low but I told him that of course I was coming anyway and had been just on the point of getting on to you when he telephoned
...
I’m so glad he had that nice Italian girl to go about with while you were laid up. And she was so good to you too, I hear. She sounds charming
...
How wise of you to have packed Stephen off to his dressing-room. Illness isn’t very attractive, is it? But now you’re quite better again, aren’t you? I’m sure that in another couple of weeks you’ll be quite yourself and
look
quite yourself again too
—
and then you’ll have all the fun of capturing Stephen over again. New dresses, a new personality. You’ll just have to show him, and I know you can. I look on you as my
protégé
. I’m not going to have you slipping like this. Who would have thought that in less than three weeks Stephen would be glad to get back to work?”

“Stephen loves his work,” Rose found herself saying.

“Of course he does, but this time I really did think it had found a serious rival in you—but I suppose a leopard can’t change its spots. The great thing will be to fill your own life so full that you don’t mind
...
I hear that Francie is desperately in need of your help.”

“I shall probably go and help her. I saw her this morning.”

“If you want to get rid of Stephen while you’re convalescing you can always send him to have dinner with us.”

“He hopes to be back in time to see you this afternoon,” Rose said.

“Did he say that?”

“Yes, he rang me up at lunch-time and I told him when you were coming.”

Clare looked at her watch. “I’m afraid I can’t wait,” she said.

“He said I was to try and keep you for him.”

“Well, you might tell him I’ve got a pressing and rather exciting appointment
...
No, it’s a secret! A new job, I hope. Will you tell him also that there will be a game of bridge for him to-morrow evening at our flat if he cares to come. Good bridge, tell him. He can certainly come to dinner but if he doesn’t want to leave you he will be very welcome afterwards—any time. I imagine you have to be ‘settled’ early for the night, as one’s nanny used to say. You don’t play bridge, do you? It’s a great pity because Stephen does enjoy it so. You really ought to learn
...
Now, I’m afraid I must be going. Good-bye, my dear, and mind you look after yourself and get well soon. We can’t have you looking like that,” and she swept out leaving the invalid feeling, in her weak state, that it would be better for everybody if she was dead.

A quarter of an hour after Clare had gone Stephen came into her room. “You have just missed Clare,” she said.

“No, I met her in the hall.” (So they had been talking to each other downstairs for a quarter of an hour, had they?) “She doesn’t think you are looking at all well.”

“So she told me. I
have
been ill. You can’t expect me to look myself all at once.”

“You must get fatter.”

“I wish everyone would stop saying that. I can’t do it all in a moment. I’m doing my best.” There was an edge to her voice that he had never heard before.

“Clare has asked me to go and play bridge there tomorrow evening,” he said.

“I know.” She took hold of herself with an effort and added as sincerely as possible: “I hope you’ll go.”

“I may if you’ll be all right.”

“Of course I’ll be all right. Why not go there to dinner?”

“No, I won’t do that. But I may go in afterwards when you go to bed.”

“Yes, do do that
...
And Stephen, you
must
go to your club whenever you want to. At least one evening a week for your bridge.”

“Don’t you mind being left?”

“No,” she replied gallantly, “I like being alone occasionally. It will give me a chance to see my own friends.”

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

IT took Rose several weeks to feel really fit again, though long before that she was trying to lead a normal life. She would force herself to do things but feel most dreadfully tired afterwards, especially in the evenings, so that it became almost a habit for Stephen to send her to bed early.

She, who had always been so busy, found time hanging on her hands; she, who had always longed for an opportunity to do some serious reading, now found, since her illness, a difficulty in concentrating. During her engagement she had imagined how wonderful it would be to have time to spend in Stephen’s well-stocked library while waiting for Stephen to get back from the bank. She had planned to do her shopping and household chores in the morning and then devote the whole afternoon to reading and going to museums and picture galleries—in fact trying to take up her education where it had been left off—but now she found the whole pattern of the day very different from anything she had imagined. For one thing Vittoria liked to do her own marketing and would brook no interference in the kitchen. She and Antonio had run the house very satisfactorily for Stephen while he was a bachelor, and they were prepared to tolerate and even to welcome Rose’s presence in it, but only so long as she confined herself simply to telling them how many there would be to dinner and whether she herself was in or out to lunch. They did not have a Sunday off but took the whole of Wednesday from soon after breakfast. This had been the arrangement before Stephen married and they saw no reason to change it. Stephen had got into the habit therefore of always going out to dinner on Wednesdays—either dining with friends or going to his club—and he took it for granted that Rose would prefer him to take her out to cooking dinner for him herself.

Rose had known of this arrangement soon after they were engaged and had thought what fun it would be to cook dinner for him on Wednesdays but for the first couple of weeks after they returned from their disappointing honeymoon, while she was still a semi-invalid Vittoria and Antonio had refused to leave the house at all, and the very first Wednesday they had gone out, Stephen had said to Rose in the morning, without any question in his voice, “We’ll go out to dinner this evening,” and since then they had gone out every Wednesday because Rose had got the definite impression that Stephen preferred it that way.

So there was really nothing for her to do in her own home except arrange the flowers. She did not even dare rearrange the furniture since Clare had impressed on her how much Stephen would dislike the slightest change in his much-loved home. Fortunately when they were alone together in the evenings they sat in the study—fortunately, because Clare’s screen had quite spoiled the drawing-room for Rose. She couldn’t get to like it however much she tried, and when she was in the room she didn’t seem to be able to see anything else. It was so large and prominent, staring at her with its hundreds of eyes, and the fact that she didn’t feel she could talk to Stephen about it made it all the worse.

But as a matter of fact they did not often spend the evening alone together. They had to entertain a certain amount (Vittoria never seemed to mind how many people there were to dinner and always managed to cope without any extra help) and they were asked out a certain amount, and then Stephen had to go to a certain number of City dinners to which women were not invited; and then again Rose, true to her determination to encourage Stephen’s friends, often asked Robin Johnson to dine with them when they might otherwise have been alone.

She kept telling herself that as soon as she felt really well again her life would be different because then her power of concentration would come back and she would take up some subject to study or do a definite course of reading and enjoy going to museums, but at the moment she just felt bored and listless (boredom is not a question of having nothing to do so much as a state of mind which renders all intellectual food tasteless and which is very often the result of being physically below par) so that when Stephen came home in the evenings she was afraid that he must find her dreadfully dull. She had nothing to recount to him of the day’s happenings—no gay little adventures, no profound thought from the day’s reading, not even any untoward household incidents.

Nor did she have any anxiety over the household accounts to occupy her mind. All she had to do was just to write out cheques at the end of each month for the tradesmen and, at the end of the week, one cheque for Vittoria’s book. Stephen himself paid the couple’s wages. Perhaps it was the monetary aspect of her new life, more than any other, that she found it difficult to adjust herself to. She and Stephen had a joint account and she had been given a cheque book of her own, and Stephen had told her to draw on it for anything she wanted. “But how much?” she had asked. “You must give me some idea.”

“Well, anything within reason,” he had replied.

“Are you drawing more money now that we are married?
”
she had asked, and when he said that he was not, she had exclaimed: “But then I am going to be an awful expense to you.”

“It doesn’t cost any more for two to live than one. My overheads don’t go up in any way.”

“But there are my clothes
...”

“Well, I shall just have to spend less on myself,” he had replied with a laugh, “or work harder.”

“Would you like me to get a job?”

“You dare!”

“But I do wish you’d tell me how much I
ought
to spend on myself.”

“Just get anything you want, darling—anything you need. We’ve got plenty. Don’t worry.”

She discovered that he hated talking about their finances and because she had no idea of their income (their pass
-
sheet was sent to him and she did not see it) she found herself economizing wherever she could so that she would cost him as little as possible. She would not have to buy any new clothes for a long time, and she spent hardly anything on her own lunches at home and never took a taxi when she was on her own. She found Stephen’s attitude towards money quite incomprehensible. He would come home some evenings with his outside pockets stuffed with notes which he never seemed to count or keep tidily in a note-case as other men did, and at other times he would not have half a crown to pay for a taxi and would have to borrow it from her.

As the weeks went by Rose found herself going more and more to the Botticelli in the day-time. Everything was going smoothly for the moment and the Earles were not in need of her help, but Francie was usually there and Rose enjoyed the companionship and the friendly, happy
-
go-lucky atmosphere. She enjoyed it particularly in the early afternoons when it was more or less empty and soft music was playing, relayed from a long-playing gramophone. It became quite a habit of hers to go there by bus after lunching alone at home, and have her coffee there.

It was the one time of day when Francie and Derek could relax; the young Irishman, Shane, who helped Derek at the bar, was usually there, and the four of them sat down together and had a good gossip with lots of jokes. This warm, cosy companionship in the aroma of coffee and “Palm Court” music suited Rose’s lazy convalescent mood for more than the astringent beauties of the Wallace Collection or the Victoria and Albert Museum, or even of her own home which, when Stephen was not there, had a cold, unlived-in feeling about it which she had not been able to counteract—probably because she had not dared change anything in it. Although she had not actually put this into words, even when talking to herself, it
was
rather like living in a house where there had been a previous, beloved wife whose relics must never be touched.

Nor had she put into words, or even into definite thought, the knowledge that something had gone wrong with her marriage. It was just a soreness always there now in her heart. If she had been challenged with it she would have said that it was the fault of her illness. She was not quite herself yet, and her illness was the cause also of this depression of spirits—this lassitude of hers. But the truth was that she had lost faith in Stephen’s love for her. She was convinced that he had woken up from his enchantment to find her a very dull, ordinary girl, and that in his heart of hearts he must already be bitterly regretting the choice he had made. Lack of confidence both in herself and in his love made her feel ill at ease with him, so that instead of saying to him whatever came into her head, chattering away quite naturally as she had done at the beginning, she now found herself
self-consciously
thinking before she ventured on a remark, and very often leaving it unsaid.

She could not get out of her mind those words of Clare’s which she had overheard on their wedding day, when Stephen, in saying good-bye, had thanked her for what she had done for him: “I hope you will be thanking me in a year’s time,” Clare had said. Would he thank her even now?

She could not blind herself to the fact that Stephen had changed. They now shared a room and the wonderfully comfortable large bed they had had such fun in ordering together when they were engaged, but even so there seemed to be no
mental
intimacy between them. She realized that physical love-making without mental communion does not bring two people really close together. Physical intimacy was really a very small part of love. She had felt much closer to him on occasion during their engagement. No, it was the shutting away of his mind from her, the shutting away of the core of his being, of his soul, which she was so uncomfortably aware of. They were living their separate lives, with their separate thoughts and emotions, and neither could tell the other of the disappointment and loneliness from which they were suffering. But Rose imagined that for Stephen it was a very different kind of disappointment from her own. Hers was the pain of believing that she had already lost him, while his must be the misery of realizing that he had made a mistake.

One morning her own feeling was overwhelmingly brought home to her by four lines of Shakespeare. She was in the study and had opened
The Winter’s Tale
at random, and these words had sprung to her eyes and struck at her mind with a vicious impact:

To me can life be no commodity:

The crown and comfort of my life, your favour,

I do give lost; for I do feel it gone,

But know not how it went
...

“Yes,” she thought to herself, “I feel it gone, the crown and comfort of my life, your favour, but know not how it went.” Yes, that was just what it was like—his favour withdrawn. For a little while his “favour” had irradiated her life, warming her through and through, and now it had gone, like the sun going in, and she was left chilled and lonely. She had looked up “commodity” in the dictionary, for it seemed a strange word to use in this context, and had found that it meant “convenience, profit, benefit, advantage, interest”—indeed so much that makes life worth living.

II

They saw quite a lot of the Frentons, for they dined in Eaton Square about once a fortnight, and the Frentons dined with them just as often. It became a habit to invite the Frentons whenever they had a dinner party. Clare’s presence gave Rose confidence—it was a great help to have at least two guests whom she knew well and who also seemed to know everyone else present—and they always obliged by coming early to help Rose in receiving. Clare indeed was apt to behave rather more like the lady of the house than Rose herself, but Rose did not in the least resent this because Clare not only took so much of the responsibility off her at the time but also helped her beforehand with the seating of the guests and by telling her who played bridge and who didn’t, and often inviting an extra guest herself when someone fell out at the last moment. Clare had so often acted as hostess for Stephen in the past that she seemed to know all his friends and which of them got on with which and who should not be asked together. Rose had wondered whether perhaps Stephen would think that she was allowing Clare to take too much responsibility, but when she asked him this he said: “Do just what you like, darling. If you find Clare a help, by all means ask her. She’s a bo
rn
organizer. You can quite safely leave everything to her if you want to. She was marvellous to me in my bachelor days.”

Having Clare there did make it easier for Rose, and she was so diffident that she could not but be glad of it. At least she knew that she wasn’t letting Stephen down when they entertained by some gaucherie of her own, and then Clare always organized the bridge at these parties, which she would have been quite unable to do. Clare always saw to it that there was bridge both at her own house when they went to dine there and at their own. Sometimes there was another non-player for Rose to sit out with, but most often Rose was either odd woman out in what would otherwise have been a party of eight bridge
-
lovers, or else there was a tenth person invited who was as fond of bridge as the others, which meant that one person had to cut out, and while out would have to talk to Rose although he usually made it clear very quickly that he preferred watching the game to talking to her. She felt very much like an ungainly daughter in her own house, and wondered sometimes whether it would make any difference to anyone if she slipped away to bed.

Stephen did ask her once or twice whether she wasn’t bored with these bridge evenings, but each time she replied gallantly that she enjoyed them very much as it saved her the trouble of talking. And she asked him in his turn whether he would like her to learn bridge but he replied rather dampingly that he didn’t think she would enjoy it and that anyway it would take years for her to reach the standard of himself and Clare and their bridge-playing friends. “And a bad player does hold up the game so,” he added.

She was sure he didn’t know how snubbing his reply was, but it did cut her to the quick. He didn’t know either, of course, how terribly bored she really was by these bridge orgies. It was always the last rubber that seemed to go on interminably, and in Clare’s house there was usually a bore provided for her to talk to on the sofa, which was much worse than when she was able to remain silently doing her knitting as she did at home.

But it was not only at dinner parties that she saw Clare. She saw her on average about twice a week d
uri
ng the daytime. Clare was always ringing her up and suggesting a meeting of some sort—either lunch at her club or a dress show or a private view or a special film show at some highbrow little studio that she had tickets for and would so like Rose to go with her. She was really wonderfully kind to Rose, and Stephen more than once expressed his approval that they had become such friends. But somehow Rose was never happy after a meeting with Clare. On the contrary she usually came home with her ego more deflated than ever and feeling ever more conscious than she was before of her own inadequacies. She was far happier after she had been with Francie. Francie’s forthrightness and her happiness with Derek acted on Rose like a tonic, and she had to confess that the occasions she enjoyed most in her life at this time were the hours she spent in the coffee bar. She really enjoyed them even more than the few evenings she spent alone with Stephen, for now she was never completely at her ease with Stephen as she was with the Earles.

She felt sometimes that she was being terribly ungrateful to Clare, who went out of the way to be so kind to her, for after all it could not have been very much fun for Clare to see so much of her and take her to so many shows and entertainments of various kinds—she would surely prefer to take one of her own friends and contemporaries—but at other times she had a sort of feeling that Clare was being kind to her more for Stephen’s sake than for her own, although she was always referring to her as her own
protégée
, and even introducing her as that to other people. There was certainly something proprietorial in Clare’s attitude towards her, and perhaps it was explained when one day Clare said to her: “You are just like the daughter I have never had.”

Rose was surprised by this remark, remembering what Francie had said about Clare not liking children. “Did you want to have a daughter?” she asked.