A Voice Like Velvet. Martin Edwards

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СКАЧАТЬ it for the money, they knew that, dear. Famous announcers must be very rich, and hadn’t Mrs Bisham a little money of her own, didn’t they say? And no doubt he had? Anyhow, they had such a charming house, all wandery and sort of part of the scenery, like a gingerbread cake. They arrived full of everything, and were ‘mortified’ to hear that Mrs Bisham was ‘indisposed’, making her sound like a famous actress who has really had a row with the leading man, except, of course, that in this case the leading man was far too charming. His manners were enchanting and it was such a thrill seeing the actual person who read the news over your wireless. It was fascinating.

      But Bess wasn’t at all fascinated; at least, not when the de Freeces had twittered away again.

      She said, about Marjorie:

      ‘I’m beginning to wonder why you married her! It surely wasn’t because I suggested it?’ Though if it had been a glaring success, she would have claimed this at once. ‘Much better if you’d stayed as you were, Ernest. Much better.’ She sat with a leg thrown over a bony knee balancing a Coalport teacup. Her stockings never fitted her thin legs very tightly, and her spoon never fitted the Coalport saucer very well, because of the depth of curve there.

      Ernest, looking rather fat in a blue pin-stripe, stood by the high brick mantelpiece, staring with some embarrassment down at the log fire. He told her he wished she’d mind her own business and concentrate on a marriage of her own. He didn’t intend to hurt her; it was just a brotherly remark. She replied quite brightly that he couldn’t hurt her feelings like that; he knew quite well who she would have married if she’d had the chance, but men had never looked at her ‘like that’, least of all him, and so that was that. Then she said she really liked Marjorie, and she declared that Marjorie was not the ‘type’ to shut herself up in her room like this, she was too kindly. It meant that Marjorie was really becoming ill. You could be emotionally ill as well as merely having the measles. ‘But I suppose men can’t be expected to realize that! I like Marjorie much better than I thought I did. She’s all right. And you started off all right—what’s gone wrong? The first gloss has worn off, I suppose! Well, you’re very stupid. I hope you’re not behaving as if either of you is young? She is just right for you if only you give her a chance, Ernest, and handle her properly. It’s your fault if you’re pulling in different ways. Remember, she’s been married before. She knows something about men.’

      ‘I’ve been married before too,’ he remarked sombrely.

      ‘I should think the least said about that the better! What I’m trying to say is, if you wanted to play the bachelor, why didn’t you stay one? You’re still much too married to your radio, I suppose that’s it. All this success has gone to your head. You can’t treat Marjorie like that and expect to get away with it. She doesn’t look like a girl, but at heart she is one. Treat her like one.’ She stared across at him.

      He was large and he was certainly getting rather plump. His shoulders were extremely large. When he wandered to the piano and played some Chopin his backview looked massive and pompous. But he looked distinguished. His greying hair did.

      ‘I know you always pretend to think I’m a bore,’ she called through the music. ‘But you do listen to me, even if you pretend you don’t. Why don’t you buy her a dog?’

      The music stopped.

      His large head turned slowly and he was grinning.

      ‘Buy her a dog?’ he exclaimed, amused.

      She had the strange notion that now he was in profile he looked sleek and slim. The shadows, of course. He would make a magnificent cat burglar!

      A quaint litle shudder ran down her spine. Imagine a scandal like that! Their family! And an important man like Ernest!

      ‘You’re getting inhuman and pompous,’ she heard herself exclaiming. ‘We all are, perhaps. We’re so stuck up in our little world here. There’s danger in it and it’s time we grew out of it. So many important things are happening everywhere.’ She heard herself talking about China and Russia, and the new world after the war, and saying how could it be a better world unless individuals, actual individuals, started to improve themselves, and to rid themselves of their own little weaknesses? She said she was just as guilty as anybody else.

      But he was walking up and down with his cup and a piece of ginger cake and roaring with laughter about the idea of buying his wife a dog.

      ‘I meant a puppy, of course,’ she said crossly.

      He suddenly put down his cup and his cake.

      ‘She knows she can have everything she likes,’ he said a little sharply, and left the room. He didn’t bang the door. He seemed to slide through doors.

      His movements were oddly stealthy, weren’t they, for so large a man. Yet, for instance, you heard of huge men who could dance delightfully, whereas little men fell upon you like a ton of bricks. She supposed he had learned it in the studios. He would often talk about how you could leave the studio while somebody else was still on the air. He was often interesting about it at dinner. He would speak about ‘suspended microphones’ instead of ‘table’ ones. It was most interesting.

      And then, one Saturday, he did buy Marjorie a puppy.

       CHAPTER III

      THE moment reminded Marjorie of an occasion when she was very little. Her father had bought her a puppy in almost identical circumstances. Here was new proof that the history of our lives repeated itself. She hadn’t got on with her father, whose rather new title had gone to his head, and somebody had told him that the only way to win her love back was to buy her a pony or a puppy. As she already had two ponies, he bought her a puppy, and she felt at once that if he was capable of buying a little girl a puppy—somebody else had given her the ponies—he couldn’t be as bad as the neighbours said his title indicated. And it was only a knighthood anyway. She hugged him and pretended to herself that she didn’t a bit mind his full lips, and she pretended it was merely childish to think that love had anything to do with the shape of the mouth. She forced herself to kiss his mouth, and when his lips felt dry and hot and full against hers, she pretended it was only because he was old now that she didn’t like the feel of him. He dribbled, but that didn’t matter at all, he had bought her a Cocker spaniel, black. It was sweet. It writhed round, and yards of red tongue hung out, and shining white teeth flashed in the firelight. And although quite soon it was dead, and its donor too—they both met with a fatal accident in the farmyard via a new bull—the thought of them both returned, as such thoughts would.

      Marjorie had been brought up in the country kind of way, with plenty of money—or, rather, no awareness of it at all as a subject—and with all the familiar country attributes such as hunting, or following the hunt in cars, and shooting pheasants and hares, and playing tennis with drearies, and motoring out to some glamorous country hotel in the hopes of meeting a rich man—Daddy said always marry someone who was rich—who hadn’t got full, dry lips. Nearly all of them had, with tedious habits to match. There was something so dull about most men. You didn’t seem to meet one in ten who was worth talking to, and there was said to be a statistical shortage of men in any case, due to the Great War. So as for meeting one in a hundred who was worth real consideration? Their conversation was one long drawl, or else it was hearty and alcoholic fatuity. Was it because they were English? Suddenly it dawned on her that she was already bitter. Yet her function as a woman had somehow to be fulfilled. She was aware that she wanted to have children. She had never known her mother, who had died of Bright’s Disease when СКАЧАТЬ