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       Chapter Two

      The marriage would have been no more noteworthy than ten thousand others had it not been for a third party who was obliquely involved.

      Edwin Shorthouse was singing Ochs in Der Rosenkavalier. Like Adam, he became acquainted with Elizabeth during the rehearsals. And he, too, fell in love with her.

      ‘Love’, as used in this connexion, is largely a euphemism for physical excitement. To the best of everyone’s knowledge, Edwin Shorthouse’s affairs with women had never risen above this plane. His habits suggested, in fact, a belated attempt to revive the droit de seigneur, and his resemblance to the gross and elderly roué of Strauss’s opera was sufficiently remarkable for it to be a subject of perpetual surprise in operatic circles that his interpretation of the role was so inadequate. Possibly he himself was uneasily conscious of the similarity, and felt the basic stupidity of Hofmannsthal’s creation to be a reflexion on his own way of life. Sensitivity, however, was not Edwin Shorthouse’s most outstanding trait, and it is more likely that his aversion to the part was instinctive.

      There may have been something more than mere sensuality in his attitude to Elizabeth. Certainly it is difficult, on any other hypothesis, to account for the active malevolence which Elizabeth’s marriage to Adam aroused in him. Joan Davis held the view that it was his vanity which was chiefly concerned. Here was Edwin (she said); coarse-grained, middle-aged, ill-favoured, conceited, and almost continually drunk; and here, on the other hand, was Adam. The choice, to anyone but Shorthouse himself, must have seemed a foregone conclusion: to him it had undoubtedly been a wounding blow.

      ‘But don’t worry, my dears,’ Joan added. ‘Edwin’s concern is with the female form divine – not with particular women. As soon as another shapely girl comes along – and the world’s full of them – he’ll forget his tantrums.’

      Elizabeth herself suggested frustration as the cause of Shorthouse’s immoderate annoyance. She had not seen a great deal of him at rehearsals, though whenever they met he had been markedly attentive.

      ‘I noticed that,’ said Joan. ‘He was always “undressing you with his eyes”, as the absurd phrase has it.’

      Elizabeth agreed. But – she added – it had been difficult to deal with this attitude until the evening when Shorthouse had made efforts to transfer his somewhat cheerless imaginative pastime to the realm of actuality.

      ‘Naturally,’ Elizabeth concluded demurely, ‘I didn’t encourage him … Hence, as I say, he’s frustrated. That’s the answer.’

      Adam had yet another theory. In his opinion, Shorthouse was really in love; within his opulent and unprepossessing frame, Adam maintained, there burned the flame which had destroyed Ilium and held Antony in sybaritic bondage by the Nile. ‘In other words, l’amour,’ said Adam. ‘More Levantine than spiritual, I agree, but, none the less, the genuine article.’

      There seemed, in fact, to be no wholly satisfactory solution, and for a time they contemplated the phenomenon with no stronger emotion than a mild interest. Eventually, however, it became tedious, and at last irritating. Adam was obliged to be fairly often in Shorthouse’s company, and there are few things more exacerbating than an attitude compounded of sneers and snubs – and an attitude the more disconcerting, in this case, because of the real hatred which lurked behind it. In the early days of the engagement, moreover, Adam became aware that sundry vague and discreditable rumours concerning him were going the rounds of his acquaintance, and in one case they found such ready acceptance that he was estranged without explanation from a family with whom he had been for years on the friendliest possible terms. In his innocence Adam did not at first connect Shorthouse with this new affliction, and it needed a chance remark to enlighten him. Even so he controlled himself and carried on as if nothing had happened. Adam had some respect for his work and was determined if possible, to avoid complicating it by an open rift with Shorthouse.

      The honeymoon, which followed the Rosenkavalier production, gave him a respite, and when he and Elizabeth returned from Switzerland to set up house in Tunbridge Wells they were too much occupied with organizing their joint ménage to worry about anything else. Shorthouse, presumably, would be simmering down by now; and luckily, their engagements kept the two men apart until November, when both of them were signed up for Don Pasquale. Adam went to the first rehearsal with mild apprehension, and returned perplexed.

      ‘Well?’ Elizabeth demanded as she helped him off with his coat.

      ‘The answer is in the affirmative. Edwin would seem to be cured. All the same …’ Adam, who had just removed his hat, absent-mindedly put it on again. ‘All the same …’

      ‘Darling, what are you doing? Was he friendly? You don’t sound at all sure about it.’ They went into the drawing-room, where a huge fire was burning, and Elizabeth poured sherry.

      ‘He was friendly,’ Adam explained, ‘in the most overpowering fashion. I don’t like it. In the old days Edwin’s notion of friendship was to bore one perennially with rambling, pointless anecdotes about his professional experiences. He no longer does that – with me, anyway.’

      ‘Perhaps he’s ashamed of himself.’

      ‘It’s СКАЧАТЬ