The switch three novels, p.35
Fire of Spring: the captivating story of two very different sisters and the men they love (The Historical Romance Collection), page 35
The third time Timothy had said, ‘Going on nicely, thanks. No, not up yet,’ he came into the bedroom with such an obviously inquiring look in his eyes that she answered it.
‘A friend of mine. A Frenchman. He’s married but wants me to go and be his petite amie in Paris,’ she said.
She was propped up in bed, her temperature normal again, her face pale and her nose restored in colour and shape, her hair brushed, the sheets clean and neat. It was time, she felt, to explain things to Timothy, and she was mildly surprised to find that she could.
It all came out, her life with Seth after the marriage into which her father had forced them, the birth and death of Dinkie, her share in her husband’s death, the light-hearted affair with Etienne on the Grosslochner pass and the ridiculous, quixotic way in which she had been cajoled by her sister and by her affection for Leo to accept the responsibility for the Guilio affair.
Timothy, sitting in the arm-chair he had brought in from the sitting-room, listened without comment. She made no attempt at excuse or justification. She just told the story, enfolding for him that part of her life at which so far he had only guessed.
‘Well,’ she ended, ‘that’s that. I might as well face the fact that Etienne has become an attractive proposition and you see the sort of person you’ve been restoring to life. I’ve committed most of the sins there are. Do you remember the ten commandments painted on the walls of the Sunday School at Little Pelling? The twists and twirls round the capitals fascinated me as a child by their sheer ugliness and crude colouring, but we all of us read them thousands of times because there was nothing else with which we could while away the time during the long, boring discourses in which surely no normal child could ever have found any interest. Well, I’ve broken most of them now. I’ve had other gods; I’ve worshipped images of my own making, Seth for one, in the early days; I’ve taken the name of the Lord in vain in moments of exasperation though I’m not habitually a swearer; I’ve certainly not kept holy the Sabbath Day because six days never have been long enough for all I’ve wanted to do or had to do; I dislike my father intensely and do not honour him even if it does mean an early death (though I could never see the connection); I’ve done murder; I’ve committed adultery; I’ve never stolen nor borne false witness to my knowledge, but I’ve certainly coveted a lot of things, particularly other people’s maids if not their oxen and asses. The very fact that I can remember the commandments so well (I haven’t left one out, have I?) is sufficient to damn me for ever, so I might as well go off as Etienne’s petite amie and round off my life of sin.’
Timothy, who had heard her out without interruption, turned his head to smile at her. He seemed quite unmoved by her recital. He had not betrayed horror by the slightest movement or change of expression when she told him how Seth had died, nor of her undecorated story of those two nights with Etienne d’Avran.
‘There’s an alternative,’ he said.
‘Such as?’
‘Better marry me, I think,’ he said casually.
‘Tim! What an idea,’ she said with a smile.
‘Why not? There’s really nothing left for us to find out about each other, and that’s as good a basis as anything for marriage. I’ve been with one or two girls. You do when you’re young. It’s curiosity and propinquity mostly, but I was so sacred stiff of V.D. that it kept me off after one or two clumsy and unpropitious adventures. There’s nothing in that sort of thing really. It’s grossly overrated as a pastime.’
Marla laughed irresistibly. He sounded so matter-of-fact. They might have been discussing cricket or bridge instead of the impulse which makes the world go on populating itself.
‘Don’t you agree in your heart?’ he asked her.
‘I believe I do.’
‘And yet you’re thinking of making it the ruling factor of your life by going to live with this French fellow.’
She did not reply to that. She could not believe that Tim had been serious in his casual suggestion of marriage, but his next words undeceived her.
‘I really think we might as well get married, Marla. It may not be quite as much fun for you living at Pellhampton instead of Paris, but it isn’t all that far from London that you could not come up when you like and I’d get you a car for yourself. You want someone to look after you, and an English husband is more reliable in the end than a French lover. I’m doing well. I can give you most things that he could give you.’
She was bewildered and moved, except that too much emotion was ruled out by Timothy’s lack of it. He made it sound like a business proposition or an invitation to dinner.
‘Yes, but what would you get out of it?’ she asked.
‘A good companion, someone to look after me and see that I have a comfortable home and an occasional clean shirt.’
‘You don’t have to marry somebody to get a clean shirt,’ she pointed out reasonably, ‘and you have a housekeeper, and no man need ever lack companionship.’
‘Of sorts. I can go out to dinner and meet brilliant people and when I put my mind to it, I can talk to them on their own subjects within reason though with little distinction. Certainly Mrs. Brand looks after my material welfare and mixes a pretty pudding. But ‒ do you mind if I reel off a quotation at you?’
‘You did once before, you know.’
‘This isn’t poetry. It’s Stevenson, R. L. Didn’t he say something to the effect that a while together by the fire happens more frequently in marriage than the presence of a distinguished foreigner to dinner? And I happen to like the whiles together by the fire. What about it, Marla?’
‘Tim, are you seriously proposing to me?’
‘Absolutely. I’m doing it badly because I’ve never done it before, but I hope I’ve made my meaning plain.’
She made a little helpless gesture. It all seemed so fantastic, so unbelievable.
‘You’re only asking me to marry you to save me from Etienne,’ she said, ‘though why should you bother?’
‘Etienne is only a very small factor.’
‘We don’t love each other, Tim.’
If she had faintly hoped he would disclaim that from his point of view, she was disappointed.
‘I think love is very much overrated as a basis to happiness in marriage,’ he said. ‘At best it becomes before long a pleasant habit, slipping gradually into the arm-chair and slipper age; at worst it becomes a hated bondage with mutual loathing. People who base it on the thing which it is, after all, the embryo of the arm-chair and slipper state, have a much better chance of coming through. We’ve got the chair and slipper friendship, Marla. We’re pleasant company for each other and neither of us is likely to ask or expect too much of the other, and I’ve got a house in view, one of my own that I’ve not yet offered for sale, which will enable us to live dignified lives without too close propinquity.’
She laughed again, doubtfully, in a puzzled fashion.
‘Tim, I can’t make you out. You’re ‒ different somehow from any man I’ve ever known.’
‘Well, to judge from the recital of them you’ve just given me, that should be cause for thankfulness,’ he said with a grin.
‘You really mean that you’re suggesting a marriage of ‒ a marriage that’s just a continuation of our friendship except we’d be living in the same house with the same name?’
He nodded.
‘That’s about it,’ he said. ‘It sounds to me quite a feasible proposition, both of us feeling as we do about love and that sort of thing.’
She reviewed the alternatives. She could not go on as she was. It was too unsatisfactory and lonely for one of her naturally companionable temperament. She could go to Etienne d’Avran and have a few years, quite a number of years if she were clever with herself and with him, in luxury and emotional satisfaction and no doubt he would provide for her when desire had been satisfied or was worn out. Or she could marry again, fanning to the point of proposal the undoubted interest and admiration she had evoked in several eligible young men, though they, of course, would want their pound of flesh ‒ their eight stone four of flesh, to be exact.
It was the bondage of the married state which was so distasteful to her and which was driving her to accepting Etienne’s proposition. But Tim, dear, kindly, cheerful, unromantic Tim, offered her something which would be bondage, but of a different sort. He had made it clear (too clear perhaps for her self-pride) that she did not affect him emotionally. Her bondage to him would be that of friendship, mutual service, a little gratitude perhaps, and she would still belong to herself without that dread which Seth had implanted in her of possessive access, whether she would or no, of her body. Married to Tim, she would still be her own.
As she remained silent and reflective, he got up and crossed the room to take the tray off her knees.
‘Finished? Is that as much as you can eat? If you’re going along to the bathroom, for goodness sake put a warm coat on. They ought to have put central heating into these flats. Here, put this on. That flimsy dressing-gown’s no good,’ giving her his heavy overcoat which he had thrown over the back of a chair.
As she went along the cold corridor of the flat, she giggled irrepressibly. How like Timothy to break off in the middle of a proposal of marriage to organize a trip to the lavatory!
By the time she came back, she had made up her mind. For good or ill, and for better or worse (though she would refuse a church wedding), she would make this queer marriage.
That had been a year ago, more than a year for they had been married early in December and it was now January and she and Tim had had their first Christmas together.
He had asked if she would like to spend it elsewhere, in London perhaps or, with a sly grin, Paris.
‘I’d rather the while by the fire,’ she had replied, and had known a warm feeling of comfort in the look he gave her.
Outwardly, at any rate, it had been a marvellously successful marriage, and, looking back over it and remembering in detail the bargain they had struck, she told herself that its success was more than just outward. It had been wonderful to her and Tim as well.
She thought of their first home-coming after a registrar’s stereotyped blessing had sent them off to do what they liked when they liked, as Timothy had put it with a grin, hailing a taxi.
She had had a moment’s misgiving at that, but he had kept loyally to their bargain and the marriage had never been consummated. They kissed now and then, on her birthday, on his, on Christmas Day and on their first wedding anniversary, but the kisses were typical of their marriage, friendly, undemanding, and there had been nothing else.
They had had to live at first in the small house he had shared with Ferrar, that gentleman obligingly taking himself off to an hotel until the new house was ready. Timothy took her to show her the house he had had in mind, but told her that, if she could put up with their present quarters for six months or so, he had other plans.
‘What are they?’ she asked.
‘Come and see,’ and he took her to the other side of the estate, which was now complete with good roads, a shopping centre, playing fields and a youth club, a cinema and a small repertory theatre. The side nearest to what had been the village of Little Pelling had been completed some time ago, its pleasant, detached houses sold and occupied, their gardens already wearing a look of planned order, trees planted to replace the old, scrubby firs which had had to be sacrificed to the building, and neat lawns stretched between gravelled or stone paths.
‘I really can’t recognize it one little bit,’ said Marla bewildered. ‘Was this ever the moor? And where’s the gravel pit? And those holes where we used to skate and usually fell in?’
He showed her what had been built over these childish scenes and she sighed a little.
‘How terribly and finally we lose our childhood, Tim. There’s nothing left, is there?’
He gave her a strange look.
‘Yes, there’s just a little bit,’ he said. ‘That’s what I’ve brought you here for. This empty plot. See?’
It had been fenced in, and it lay there between two good-sized gardens, a bit of the original moorland, with heather and gorse and a clump of shabby-looking trees, spruce and fir, in the midst.
Marla looked at him for explanation, frowning a little. Why had this bit been left?
‘You don’t remember?’ he asked. ‘A girl in a white frock and a very young youth and a spot of moonlight?’
And then she remembered and strangely the hot colour flooded her cheeks and her eyes grew dangerously soft and there was a lump in her throat.
‘Oh, Tim, were we ever as young as that? Was life ever so wonderful? And the moon ever as bright? Was that why you’ve never built on it?’
‘Yes. Sheer sentiment. The altar of youth on which it lies defenceless but unbound. Hark at me growing lyrical! What shall we do with it, Marla? Build our house on it? It’s a good plot and will give us about half an acre of garden, as much as anyone wants nowadays. It’s convenient here for shops and things, though if you’d rather have the one just being finished, it’s O.K. by me.’
‘No, let’s build one here,’ she said. ‘And ‒ must you cut the trees down?’
He gave her an amused glance.
‘Marla, surely you aren’t guilty of mere sentiment?’ he asked her.
‘Not really, but ‒ it may be salutary to us at times to remember that even I was once innocent and young,’ she said with a cynical note in her voice to cover that odd moment of emotionalism.
They had built their house, and into it had gone the best that Timothy had learnt in the building of other houses, though every one on the estate had been separately planned and considered so that no two were exactly alike, and those with a family resemblance were not allowed within sight of one another.
Into Marla’s house went the best of the older ideas and the most exciting of the newer ones. Her old flair for design and colour re-discovered itself and she and Timothy had fun with plastics. The house was full of colour and light, some of the rooms visible from other rooms through transparent translucent walls of amber and rose and pale green which could be pushed back at will to make larger rooms for entertaining. They had gaily coloured furniture made of gleaming plastics in their most modern rooms, though comfort was never sacrificed to these somewhat bizarre novelties and in their usual sitting-rooms they had been more conservative, with strong, deep chairs and tables which would not tip over or shift if Timothy sat on them.
They had moved into the new house before the cold weather set in, though the first cold spell brought them new excitement in proving that their revolutionary ideas in heating were practical ‒ or otherwise.
And though Marla seemed to have slipped into becoming a working partner in the firm of Reath and Ferrar, taking over such things as kitchen planning and built-in furniture as well as decorations, Timothy kept a watchful eye on her and gave her that warm feeling that her health and her happiness mattered to him.
For instance, after a late night at the theatre or at one of their many friends’ houses he always insisted on her staying in bed to breakfast and coming down to the office at ten instead of at nine, as she usually preferred to do.
It was on one of these mornings that she had been reading of the birth of Gail’s daughter.
She had not seen Gail for some weeks. She had been busy for one thing, and for another, her sister’s bewailings about her pregnancy had been unendurable and had evoked in Marla feelings and desires she was determined to keep dormant.
Faced with the concrete fact of the child, however, she could not entirely quell the thoughts in her mind and the memory of Dinkie and envy of Gail. Life with Timothy was pleasant, very comfortable and easy to live. He was a perfect partner and companion, even tempered, cheerful, amusing, utterly reliable. He loved finding things to give her and was touchingly grateful for anything she gave him.
And that was all.
They had made a home out of Things instead of warm humanity. They were living a life made of plastics, lovely to look at, transparent, having to be carefully handled because it was still a new idea and might be brittle, might show scratches and stains if any were allowed to get to its surface.
A plastic marriage.
She rose and went into the adjoining bathroom to turn on her bath and went back to the bedroom until it was ready. It was a beautiful room of rose and silver, its walls like the inside of a shell with long curtains of rose velvet at the many windows. Her bare feet trod the thick white pile of a carpet specially woven for her; she crossed the room and paused uncertainly before the many-mirrored dressing-table of some rare, dark wood which Timothy had found in a forgotten corner of an old timber-yard and had brought home for her. On its plate glass top lay brushes and jars in silver and rose-pink enamel which were another of Timothy’s gifts. Everywhere she looked were evidences of his thought for her and she went on to the window and looked out at the garden which she had made for herself without his help. He was no gardener.
Not really from sentiment, but because it was the natural thing to do, she had centred her main design about the little group of spruce and fir which, tidied up and pruned, looked rather more in keeping than when they had been a part of the rough moorland
Had she, in tidying them up and making them fit into the general scheme, lost what they had stood for when Tim had spared them? Just as somehow the life they were making together had crowded out the memory of the girl and boy they had been?
She knew herself to be unsatisfied in the midst of all this luxury and kindness. She was restless. What, after all, had they made between them, she and Tim, that amounted to anything? Where was all the promise, the sense of adventure, the romance of the unknown future, above all the awareness of themselves and of each other, which had been theirs when they had kissed, a girl in a white dress and a very young youth as Timothy had called them, under that little group of trees?
And gradually, stupefyingly, frighteningly, knowledge came to Marla.
She was in love with Timothy. She had not recognized it before because love as she had known it had been a torrent and a torment, a restless longing, an insatiable demand. But love for Timothy had come on quiet feet, with no noise or fuss, come as a stranger who had always been a friend, unrecognized, unasked ‒ and unwanted?
