The Salvation of Pisco Gabar and Other Stories (12 page)

The first bedding of Violet Agg was all that Widgeon had hoped. The protests, the swoonings, the outraged modesty, the startled eyes, the hidings behind the window curtains, were beyond criticism. So enthralling was the promise that a couple of weeks passed before he half admitted to himself that it did not come up to the performance. Physically as well as mentally Violet was inert. She kept, Widgeon put it, her fun to herself. That she did have fun was evident from her frequent return, but exactly what it was he knew no more than a male fish watching the female lying silent and ecstatic in his spawn.

Her dependence on him was very sweet, and aroused all the pity and kindliness in a kindly nature. He was glad to find her curled up in the vast club chair when he came home and glad to hear her footsteps hurrying down the basement passage when he arrived before her. She was in love with him. There was no doubt about it. What she felt for her husband he did not know, nor greatly care. She was inarticulate. When he skated gingerly over the subject, she giggled.

“Agg's all right,” she said. “He's easy.”

Imperceptibly she had stopped stimulating his pity by references to Agg. She stimulated it by complaining prettily of her Dolf.

He saw Violet every afternoon, and every week he had to dip into his savings, though not for sums sufficiently important to worry him. She was content with simple amusements that Agg could not afford to give her—frequent visits to the neighborhood cinemas, and teas at large and noisy restaurants in the West End.

During the first month of their affair it never happened that Mr. Trimlake remained in town for the week end. When it did so happen, he decided to invite three friends to bridge on Sunday afternoon and warned Widgeon that his presence would be required. Widgeon in turn warned his Violet that she would not find him in his room.

The bridge four played late and stayed for a cold supper. Widgeon did not leave his gentleman's flat till a little after midnight. Strolling homewards, he was enormously relieved that he had not seen Violet that day and would not see her. She was emotionally grasping. Too early at their afternoon appointments, she would meekly and continuously protest he was late. When he took her to any entertainment she would try to prevent his getting back to his gentleman's flat on time, holding him with a sort of hurt mournfulness and bursting into tears as if she were jealous of Trimlake. She begged him to meet her at odd times outside Agg's lodgings, and, if he refused, easily compelled him to consent by throwing such a fit of weeping that his beaded and bosomless landlady knocked at the door of the studio and asked if there were anything wrong.

“You be careful with that little wife of yours,” the landlady had said to him, clicking her tongue in jealous indignation. “If I were a man I could make her very happy.”

True, all these annoyances were quite understandable considering his girl was in love and unhappy and a bit hysterical. They could be brushed away as easily as spider's web falling across one's face. It was the cumulative effect of them that was beginning to worry him. The intangible strands came drifting across his freedom in too swift succession to be purposeless.

Widgeon promised himself the personal enjoyment of his room for an hour before going to bed, intending to spend it in drowsy peace with a bottle of beer and a detective story. He arrived to find the light blazing and Violet in his bed, her clothes all over the floor and a vacuous smile of welcome on her face.

“Aren't you surprised, Dolf?” she asked archly.

Widgeon did his best to show pleasure, while wondering how to make sure that this visit would never be repeated. It was thoroughly dangerous. She might be able to deceive her husband as to her whereabouts every afternoon, but if she were proposing to be away from him for most of the night, there was going to be hell to pay.

“Now that,” said Widgeon tactfully, “is something worth coming home for.”

He sat down on the bed and slipped an arm round her shoulders. She nestled against him with a demure, consciously pretty movement.

“But what'll you tell Agg?” he asked. “He's no fool.”

“He won't say nothing,” she murmured confidingly.

“What did you tell him?”

“I told him where he gets off,” she answered with a little laugh.

“What do you mean? Does he know where you are?”

“Silly boy!” purred Violet, rubbing herself against him.

Widgeon kissed her with a cold-blooded imitation of passion. He was playing for time. A simple character, he was appalled by the dark cloud of complications that seemed about to overwhelm him.

“But does he know where you are?” he repeated.

“Course not! You don't think I'd tell him where you live, do you?”

“Then he knows you're with me!”

She saw that she had given herself away, and her voice rose shrilly, careless of the refined accent to which she ordinarily compelled it.

“Course 'e knows! And 'e don't care! What d'you take me for? Think I can't manage Agg? I told him about yer ages ago. I love you, Dolf,” she added more softly. “I'd die if you left me; I would reelly.”

“That's all right,” Widgeon comforted her. “I don't see how you can go on living with Agg, though.”

“He don't care, I tell you. We get on all right, Agg and me. He says he'll wring my neck some day. Something awful his language is!” she added with a giggle, confidence growing as Widgeon gave no sign that any irreparable damage had been done. “But he wouldn't hurt his little Veeolett. I can manage him. And when he gets real cross, I buy him a bottle of whiskey and let him take it out on that.”

“But hasn't he got a girl himself?” Widgeon asked.

“Naow, darling!” she laughed, with a twang of contempt. “I caught him mucking about soon after we got married and I put a stop to it. And now he says one woman's more than enough for him.”

“Well, but suppose he was to divorce you?”

“My hubby! He wouldn't dare! He'll let me do what I like, Dolf. And I've got as good a right as the next to be happy. You don't mind, do you? I only give Agg a bit of you know what when I know he ain't keen.”

Widgeon was horrified. His picture of Violet as a conquered, drooping lily had been wiped out by her admission that she had told her husband “ages ago.” He saw how she had led him into taking a room of his own by direct hints, and hints passed through Mrs. Hussey. He saw all the coquettish, nervous tricks that had so delighted him as calculated. Oh, they were natural to her all right, a part of her! But deception was a part of her. And he'd thought she was so ladylike for a porter's wife. Well, God's truth, he hadn't been far wrong! With her complaints and hysterics and her right to be happy, whatever that meant, she was getting a bit above herself and no mistake.

He had a moment of intense sympathy for Agg. Whatever the porter had been, she had brought him down to her own level, breaking up his character with tears and whiskey. And now she was in a fair way to dominate her new capture, too. What Violet meant by love he didn't know, but she felt it and she wouldn't take a clean break quietly.

“I didn't ought to have come,” she cried suddenly, hiding her head in the pillow. “Oh, Dolf, I don't know why I did it! Oh, Dolf, you make me so ashamed when you look at me like that.”

Widgeon realized that he had been glowering furiously at Violet's navel. She had mistaken his look, he supposed, for a desirous stare. Or perhaps not. She might very well have been giving him her usual line from habit. That would be like her. She wasn't clever. He saw her as ruthless, obstinate, and without shame—a combination far more effective than cleverness in getting her way.

He had a vision of what would happen if he told her to go—so vivid and detailed a vision that in his bewilderment he was not sure it had not happened. She would weep, kick the bedclothes on the floor, and throw herself on top of them with her thin little bottom weaving circles in the air and her fingers plucking at herself, at him, at anything within reach; and when she was finally calmed, dressed, and ready to go home she would insist on lovemaking.

He was in no mood for such a scene; he wanted to get into that bed and sleep, whether accompanied or not. He undressed, and embraced her with a curt brutality divested of any tenderness. She sighed contentedly and curled up beside him.

“Your little Veeolett was so lonely,” she whispered.

She left him at 4 am. Widgeon, protesting at being awakened, gathered that she thought it improper to stay with a lover all night but a venial sin so long as one returned before dawn. Apparently she believed in keeping up appearances even with a husband who—but perhaps Agg believed in keeping up appearances too. She hadn't, thought Widgeon as he drowsed back to sleep, left him much else to keep up.

Widgeon only just arrived at his gentleman's flat in time to call him. Mr. Trimlake liked his morning tea at 7.45 precisely. At 8.00 he shaved. At 8.10 he took his bath. At 8.20 he dressed. At 8.30 he sat down to breakfast. This regularity eased the work of his manservant, but meant that clothes must be laid out, shoes cleaned, and eggs cooked with the smart efficiency and exact timing of a parade ground. Widgeon economized an initial seven minutes by borrowing a ready-made pot of tea from Mrs. Hussey, and thereafter ran to schedule. Mr. Trimlake noticed the dark semicircles under his man's eyes, but, since there was nothing to criticize in the service, made no comment.

In spite of his professional pride Widgeon wished to God that his gentleman had noticed something wrong and said so. He was fair up against it. Fair up against it. He had no one to talk to—for nothing would induce him to discuss this particular difficulty with the house servants—and it would have relieved him to imply to his gentleman that all was not well, even if he gave no details.

Thinking of this woman whom he had carelessly invited into his life, he slowly cleaned the flat, telephoned for supplies, and showed the maid on the floor below how to clean a decanter with lead shot. Still thinking of her, he went to the Rising Sun for a cut off the joint and a half-pint. His obsession with her was such that when he returned to his room at three and found her there, he felt that he had never left her. It was to him a curiously morbid continuity. He was depressed and shocked by this merging of the life of the worried brain into actuality. He seized rashly on the sanity of direct speech.

“Look here, my girl,” he said. “You can't come here at night. I can't get up in the morning, see?”

“Oo, ain't you cross!” exclaimed Violet.

“It's got to be understood. That's all.”

“So you can't get up in the morning, Dolf!” she retorted shrilly. “But I've got my rights too. I love you, don't I? What would you do if we were married? You'd 'ave to get up and work, wouldn't you?”

“We aren't married,” said Widgeon, “and we aren't going to be.”

“Maybe,” she hinted darkly, “you'll 'ave to marry me.”

“What makes you say that? Force of habit?”

“'Ow can you say them things to me?” she screamed. “There's another woman. I know what it is. There's another woman.”

“Go on! You know there ain't.”

“There's another woman. You don't want me any more! I know! You've 'ad your way with me, and now you don't want me any more.”

“It's only that I don't want you here at night, Veeolett—” began Widgeon, feeling the immemorial guilt of man at this accusation.

“And I thought you loved me!” she wept. “You don't want me. You don't want me here at all.”

“Well,” said Widgeon, choosing the worst possible moment to declare himself, “I don't. And that's a fact.”

She drew herself up, pitiful, broken, drooping.

“You don't!” she answered in a flat voice. “Then I'll go, Dolf. I'll go.”

“Now, not like this, Veeolett,” he said with more compunction. “We've been pals, and—”

“It's all over now. Good-bye!”

She gave the word the three syllables of the movie actress.

“Well—er—good-bye,” he said, opening the door for her.

Widgeon dropped into his chair, reproaching and congratulating himself. With the subconscious intention of shutting out the past, present, and future so far as it was concerned with Violet Agg, he got up and locked the door. He then took up a book and opened a bottle of beer, tasting less the liquid than the freedom he had hoped for and missed the previous night. He enjoyed a half-hour of such peace as could by an effort of will be had while sitting on an uneasy conscience and indefinite forebodings.

A little after five o'clock there was a knock on the door. Widgeon froze. He guessed who it was. Of course she would have waited until it was nearly time for him to go back to work—she could hold him there against his will and teach him a lesson. There was a second and louder knock, undoubtedly Violet's. It was a thin staccato drumming, as of anaemic knuckles in an uncontrollable spasm of nerves. Still motionless, he heard her try the door. Then the storm burst.

“Let me in! Let me in! A—oh, I'm locked out! A—oh! 'E won't let me in!”

She battered on the door, the thump of her head against it marking time for the frantic rolling of her knuckles.

Widgeon stealthily opened the window, closed it again behind him, and tiptoed across the back yard into the cover of a flight of iron steps by which his landlady had access to the sooty patch of crazy paving which she called her garden. He waited until Violet's hysterics had brought the landlady downstairs to her aid, and, as soon as he heard her manly tones mingling with the yap of Violet and adjuring him to open the door, ran up the iron steps and passed silently through her flat. He fled, hatless, to refuge with his gentleman.

It was infinite pleasure to welcome Mr. Trimlake, to hang up his hat and serve him his dry martini. The sane, cold environment of comfort and celibacy soothed him. It was like coming out of a pub full of drunks into the coolness of a spring morning.