ТОП просматриваемых книг сайта:
A Voice Like Velvet. Martin Edwards
Читать онлайн.Название A Voice Like Velvet
Год выпуска 0
isbn 9780008265359
Автор произведения Martin Edwards
Издательство HarperCollins
Thinking of him now, when she had to—for memories chose the queerest times to thrust themselves upon one—she often thought what a contrast there was between Mr Bisham and Captain Bud.
Ernest always inspired her and made her feel conscious of her increasing position in society. Bud had always made her feel conscious of having married beneath her, which was a horrible thing to think, let alone feel. She would think: ‘Now I know I’m a born snob,’ and she would turn from Bud in disgust. He was called Fred.
Fred Bud liked pubs. He liked to totter out of one and into another, and he liked to know the Christian names of the owners. He liked to know the Christian names of most of the customers too, and he liked saying, ‘What’ll y’have?’ to all and sundry, though, if any of them failed to return in kind he was singularly quick on the uptake.
In a few short months Marjorie was filled with a kind of horror at herself for having even contemplated him.
And she fled.
And she very soon found that the position of a young girl who is stupid enough to flee even from Satan himself, unless it is legal, is a very acute one. As her solicitor told her, she should have come to him first. She should have come to him on the quiet, and together they would have set a trap to catch Captain Bud when he was up to one of his larks, which were inevitably a neat fusion of alcohol and other women. As things were, the captain, now on the alert, was also now the innocent party, in the eyes of the world, and he could rush round to all his friends and say his wife had run out on him after only a few months, and that he could but conclude there was a man involved somewhere. This he did, adding that he had spoilt her from the word Go, and been sorry for her, but that now he had no option but to divorce her for desertion whether he managed to catch the co-respondent or not. He proceeded to write her two carefully worded letters asking her to return to him. But, as she knew, and her solicitor friend knew, Bud knew quite well she would be too proud to do this even if she wanted to. Marjorie made another mistake in being too thoroughly embarrassed to tell her solicitor everything, but she just couldn’t, he was an old family friend of her father’s. Had she done so, she might have got a divorce from Bud, with a bit of luck and a bit of added scandal. But she dodged this and the next proceeding was to wait three years until Bud brought his desertion case. As she heard from various sources, Bud spent the interim using such of her money as he controlled, and in telling his friends: ‘Damn nuisance this three years wait, old man, but it’s useless to expect any new evidence. I thought there was a man, but I doubt it now. Dear old Marjorie had absolutely no sex appeal, absolutely none at all.’
Marjorie’s solicitor had side whiskers. He was of the old school of thought, as the saying went, and although his stern countenance had been shocked out of its composure by one or two tasty cases, his mind had never really entered the wild arena which made up the present decade. Even when the blitz shattered his famous office chandelier, under which, it was said, Oscar Wilde had once passed—though on his way to a more go-ahead solicitor—the dignity of the premises remained. Pictures of other side-whiskered solicitors still lined the cracked walls, and the frosted glass on the doors still bore the names of the titled partners. Marjorie’s solicitor still sat in his accustomed swivel chair with the grey stuffing coming out of it, surrounded by the dust of centuries, jewels from the chandelier, bits of glass and a shattered book-shelf. And he sounded very pained to have to tell Marjorie that her case was ‘over yesterday. You’re a divorced woman, my dear,’ he said throatily. He still thought it was a dreadful thing to be, even though she was entirely innocent and had never done anything in her life more abandoned than have three brown sherries. To Marjorie, however, the news came like the announcement of a school whole holiday. She thought at once and, in fact, exclaimed: ‘I’m a free woman again, then! It’s all over and I’m free! It’s all been a sordid and dreadful dream!’ Her strange and immediate impulse was to dash to the nearest Lyons and have a cup of tea in the friendly din there. But she had to be polite and stay until her solicitor had made a pained and stately speech.
‘My dear child, you mustn’t mind my offering you a little advice. I’m sure this unhappy business will be an object lesson to you. Men are very unscrupulous, and this little … amateur gentleman belongs to a very common kind. I do most sincerely hope you will treat me as a friend, more of a friend, after this … distressing incident—if you can call a thing that has gone on for four years an incident? Please don’t go hotheadedly into a marriage again without asking my advice, my dear! I’m old enough to be your grandfather, and I was a friend of your father’s. And remember, you must marry some money next time. This man Bud has cost you most of your inheritance.’
This part of the sorry business pained him even more than the other part, and Marjorie noticed he could hardly bring himself to speak of it. But in the end it was just no good speaking of it, he said; they must speak of the present, and of course the future, not the past. The past was dead. When she thought of the past, she must think only of the happier memories, as we all had to. It was awful thinking about our mistakes. There was her father to think of, he pointed out, even though it was not very nice to think of that bull; he had always distrusted Shorthorns. She must not remember her tears. After that, he rang for some coffee, only to be told that all the firm’s cups had been broken by blast, and that the firemen had sprayed their specially imported coffee with some eighty odd gallons of dirty river water. It was still all over the general office floor. His elderly clerk looked rather like a Walt Disney spaniel which had just picked itself up after falling nine hundred feet down a lift shaft. He was permanently pale and panting. Marjorie’s solicitor dismissed him courteously and said it was no fault of his about the cups or the coffee.
‘No, Sir Tom,’ the old man quivered, pleased, and he shambled out with his trousers hanging.
‘Well, I’ll go,’ Marjorie said, still thinking of the friendly din in Lyons teashops. ‘And I can’t thank you nearly enough for … well, everything.’ She really meant for not charging her very much, but it was difficult to say that.
On the way out, he asked her what her plans were. When she sounded vague, he suggested that she should put the little money remaining into a bit of property, such as a new house. He said she wasn’t getting any younger, if he might say so, and the great thing was to have a roof over her head. And she had to live somewhere. He said why didn’t she live where he did, amongst her own kind? He lived near Woking, in Surrey, and there was golf and the pine trees were very healthy. He and his wife would help her make some friends. ‘And it’s near to London. But you’re fond of London, perhaps, and want to live there?’
‘No,’ she hesitated. ‘There’s the club. And I like theatres. But I think I’m used to the country.’
Pleased, he said the country was the best idea. Why didn’t she come down for a weekend and have a look round? She thought, well, he can’t be too old fashioned, or he’d frown at a divorced woman! Perhaps people weren’t ever what they seemed? Perhaps they just had to pretend? And times really had changed, hadn’t they? It really wasn’t quite so monstrous for a woman to have been divorced—even if she was guilty? And she wasn’t guilty. She was just silly.
In any case, if people were still so stupid as to mind if somebody had played one or two bad cards in their day, well, good luck to them.
She suddenly saw herself as a kind of Woking Merry Widow!
Yes, it would be rather amusing to buy a house down there, and make people wonder about her. She would make a few intimate friends, no doubt, and the rest could wonder about her to their hearts’ content. She would do the garden with a sad expression in a brown, floppy hat. She would do any war work that cropped up. Nobody would guess her advanced age, and people would wonder why on earth she hadn’t been called up; they’d probably put it down to her kidneys. If life was to be fun, you had to make it so; you had to create some situation whereby Life was inclined to have a go at you. It could surprise you. If you felt secretly lonely and often miserable, nobody need guess it. And who knew what might not happen?
In a burst of excitement she bought Tredgarth, a white mackintosh,