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NAN had had her first shock of discovery when she overheard Felicity talking by long-distance telephone with her brother. The villa which the Mors rented every year near Swanage was equipped with two telephones, one in the drawing-room and one in the main bedroom. Donald had rung up; and imagining that her mother, who had not hastened to answer the call, was still out shopping, Felicity had spoken frankly with him. Nan, who did not think that children should have secrets from their parents, had lifted the receiver in the bedroom and was disquieted indeed at what she heard.
Nothing emerged very clearly from the conversation, but enough emerged to make Nan suspect that more must lie behind. She sat for some time in the bedroom, thinking hard. Nan’s first emotion was extreme surprise. What followed it was anger. This was mingled with what was almost a feeling of satisfaction at the prospect of being able to find her husband so palpably in the wrong. After the quarrel which preceded her departure Nan had had a small twinge of conscience. She was quite sure that she was right to oppose Bill’s foolish and unsuitable plan; but she felt that perhaps she had been unduly unpleasant in her manner of doing so. The information which she had gained from Felicity, vague as it was, was sufficient to dispel her sense of guilt, and also to put her in possession of a weapon which it was certainly at this time convenient to have. Not that Nan imagined that Bill would persist much longer with his Labour Party scheme. She had never in the past, in any major issue, failed to persuade him eventually to see things as she did. But deep in her heart she was pleased all the same to have this unexpected access of strength, although the source of it was so extremely disagreeable.
Very soon, however, the disagreeable aspect predominated. Nan found herself exceedingly disturbed. She was deeply certain both of her husband’s correctness and of his common sense, and it was a measure of this certainty that the matter had appeared to her at first sight in terms of a momentary lapse on his part which gave her, in her struggle with him, a momentary advantage. But now her mind began to dwell on Miss Carter. Running over every meeting she had had with the girl, she now saw her as the sly insinuating creature that she was. How could she have thought her naive? Yet in a way she was naive. That sort of girl was able to mature the most infamous plans behind a mask of naivety which deceived even herself, living in an atmosphere of hypocrisy so total that she was unable any more to distinguish the true from the false. Was it possible that Bill really liked her? Presumably this soft cat-like nature must appeal to some desire to be soothed and comforted which existed in all men, especially middle-aged ones.
Nan had never reflected on this sort of matter before. She had never in her life for a single second doubted of Bill’s absolute fidelity to her. She did not propose to start doubting it now. Surely the children must have exaggerated or misunderstood. At the very most, all that was involved was some moment of infatuation, something which even by now was over, dissolved into the air. There was almost certainly nothing to it.
Or was there? Nan continued to be extremely uneasy and restless. What ought she to do? She thought of writing a letter to Miss Carter, and even began in her mind to compose one whose venom amazed her. But that was foolish. She had no vestige of evidence, and with that sort of girl one never knew, she might have the insolence to invoke legal proceedings. Nan had extremely vague ideas about libel and slander, and a corresponding nervousness at the idea of putting anything down on paper. And in any case, as she kept telling herself, it was all probably a misunderstanding, there was surely nothing to it.
She wandered about the house and got through the afternoon somehow. She managed to conceal her distress from Felicity. By six o‘clock in the evening she had reduced herself to a condition of mental turmoil such as she never remembered having experienced before. She decided that the only thing to be done was to go home at once, explain the whole thing to Bill, and get it definitely once and for all cleared up. Then she would be able to enjoy her holiday in peace. She was surprised at her inability to behave with normal calmness. She decided to go on the following morning. Then she tried to settle down to a book. It was impossible. She told a story to Felicity about having to go to London to see someone who was ill; she packed a bag and boarded the night train.
What Nan beheld when she entered her house surprised her very much indeed. She had arrived home at this hour, not with any intention of discovering a guilty pair, but simply because of her own impatience and the working of the train timetable. It had never occurred to Nan to imagine Bill capable of bringing the girl into the house. In a second she saw that she had been wrong throughout. Things had certainly gone very far. She turned and ran, partly as an effect of sheer shock, and partly because she needed to think again before she confronted her husband.
As she ran away through the rain she could hear his steps pursuing her in the gloomy stillness of the early morning, and she ran down a side road and into an alley that led to some garages. There she stood quite still for some time after the sound of his footsteps had disappeared. She leaned back against the fence, clutching her small handbag, her feet deep in a dump of weeds which was growing out of the gravel. She stared fixedly at the side of the house opposite. The curtains were drawn. The people in the houses all about were still sleeping. By now the rain had soaked through the scarf which she was wearing about her head and was beginning to trickle down her neck inside the collar of her raincoat.
As she stood there Nan felt, for the first time since she had found out that something was wrong, overwhelmed with sheer misery. She had felt amazement, fury, and extreme disquiet, she had even experienced a curious exhilaration, something of the instinct of the hunter. But it had not occurred to her to feel exactly unhappy. She had never in her life allowed Bill to cause her real unhappiness. There had been, there could be, no occasion for this. In her situation, that of a successfully married woman, unhappiness of that sort would have been merely neurotic. Nan despised the neurotic. But now she felt real grief- which her husband had caused. Gradually the conception that he was interested in another woman began to reach not only her mind but her emotions. As she stood there, her back against the fence, chilled and soaked by the rain, she felt that she had suddenly been dragged into some awful nightmare: she had been driven out of her own house. Her hand went to her mouth. She shook with the grief and the horror of it. The hot tears warmed her cheek, mingling with the rain.
After a while Nan began to walk along the road. She walked through the housing estate and out at the other end, through the shopping centre. The shops were not open yet, but the day was beginning. People were passing on their way to work. The rain was abating a little. Nan went into a public lavatory and adjusted her appearance as best she could. Then she went out and boarded a bus that would take her to Marsington. She wanted to see Tim Burke.
Nan’s relations with Tim Burke were curious. She had known Tim for more than ten years, ever since her husband, who was teaching at that time in a Grammar School in south London, had first made his acquaintance through the Labour Party. She had always liked him. He had, it seemed to her, a sort of absurd grace and elegance of character which had occasionally, on particular evenings which she still remembered, shown her husband to her by contrast as a rather dour, rather dull and clumsy man. Nan had not, however, made much of these thoughts, and would not even have kept them in her mind had it not been that, at a certain moment, she noticed that Tim Burke’s attentions to her were becoming very marked.
Tim had always treated her with a slightly ludicrous sort of gallantry which Nan had put down to his racial origin, and which she had often laughed at with Bill, but which had pleased her very much all the same. Her husband was never gallant. But now she began to feel, with a mixture of distress and pleasure, that it was possible that Tim Burke was the tiniest bit in love with her. She had said nothing to Bill about it, had made no effort either to see or to avoid Tim, but had watched him closely. One evening about nine o‘clock she had been alone with him in the shop. Bill had gone down the street to make a phone call, since Tim kept no telephone. Tim had been putting a necklace round Nan’s neck, something which he often did when Bill was there. He was facing her and his hands met behind her head to fasten the clasp. The clasp was fastened. But Tim did not withdraw his hands. Then he kissed her on the lips.
Nan had been shocked and upset; yet in the very same instant she had been delighted. She had pushed him away from her. Bill came back almost at once and cut off any possible discussion between them of what had taken place. Nor did either of them ever refer to it again. For some time after this Nan avoided Tim, and saw him, if it were inevitable, only in the company of Bill. Tim behaved in what seemed to Nan a very transparent manner, trying by his whole bearing to indicate to her his regret for what had passed, combined with his continued respect and affection. But Bill noticed nothing, and Nan said nothing. That was four years ago. Gradually relations between them became more natural, and Nan began to remember the incident not with any pain but with a sort of sad gratification. She could not help hoping that Tim Burke remembered it in this way too. It was packed away forever. But the distant thought of it gave a special fragrance to the infrequent occasions on which, always in the company of her husband, Nan permitted herself to see the Irishman.
As Nan sat on the bus, her tearful face turned towards the glass of the window, she did not experience any doubts or hesitations concerning the propriety of visiting Tim in this crisis. She was in extremis. She must have help. She did not know what to do. The idea of confiding in one of her women friends, such as Mrs Prewett, was inconceivable. Her need to see Tim, once the notion had occurred to her, was extreme. She sat there and suffered — and more and more the feeling that bit into her, appearing as a physical pang, was something which she began to recognize as pure jealousy. She breathed in quickly through her mouth and found that she had uttered an audible sob. She buried her mouth in her handkerchief.
Nan got off the bus and hurried down the street towards Tim’s shop. She saw him far off, outside on the pavement. He was taking down the wooden shutters, although it was not yet nine o‘clock. Nan ran up to him, touched him on the shoulder, and went at once into the shop. Tim followed her in. He had seen her face. He shut the shop door and locked it. The room was darkened, as half the shutters were still up.
‘What is it?’ said Tim Burke.
Nan said, ‘I’m sorry, Tim, to come like this. Something awful has happened.’ She kept her handkerchief pressed to her mouth.
‘Is Mor all right?’ he said. ‘Or is it the boy?’
‘No, not an accident,’ said Nan. ‘I’ve found out that Bill is having a love affair with that girl Miss Carter. I came back and found them in our house embracing at six o’clock in the morning!‘ Her voice trailed away into a wail, and she sobbed without restraint into the handkerchief.
‘Oh God!’ said Tim. He led her back through the shop and into his workshop. The rain had stopped, and the sun was shining into the tiny whitewashed yard where the small sycamore tree was growing. Nan went through into the yard. Here they were in private. The yard was not overlooked. She put her hand on the slim trunk of the tree.
‘Let me take away your coat,’ said Tim; ‘it’s drenched you are.’
Nan gave up her coat and accepted a towel to rub her hair with. She sat down on a little bench beside the tree, her back against the wet white wall. She felt the dampness through her dress, but it didn’t matter now. The world had exploded into a lot of little senseless pieces. Sensations of the body and small pictures of her surroundings moved around by themselves, now blurred and now extremely clear. She saw with immense clarity the leaves of the sycamore tree, still drooping with water. She reached out and plucked one off. She had almost forgotten Tim Burke by the time he came to sit beside her.
‘When did this happen,’ he said, ‘that you found the pair of them?’
‘What? Oh, this morning about six,’ said Nan. As she saw again in her mind the scene with Bill sitting beside the girl on the floor, his head resting on her knee, her tears were renewed, and she reached out and plucked another leaf from the tree.
‘I tell you what,’ said Tim Burke, ‘I’ll give you a sup of whiskey, it’ll stave off the shock from you.’ He came back with two glasses. Nan took hers automatically and began to sip the golden stuff. At first she coughed, but then she felt it warm and violent inside. She felt a little better.
Tim had swallowed his at a gulp. He sat down again. Someone was knocking at the door of the shop. He paid no attention. Through her grief Nan became aware that Tim was at a loss. He did not know what to do. Nan hated it when other people did not know how to conduct themselves. She was used to taking control of situations. She would have preferred not to have to control this one.
‘Did you know what was happening?’ said Nan, drying her eyes. The effort made her feel better. ‘Did you ever see them together?’
No,‘ said Tim, ’I didn’t. I’m sorry. But you know it’s likely not anything important at all. Whatever it is, it’ll soon be done. Don’t be too angry with Mor.‘
‘Oh, don’t!’ said Nan. Somehow to talk of being or not being angry with Bill had nothing to do with it. That was not what it was like.
‘What did you do?’ said Tim.
‘I ran straight out of the house,’ said Nan, ‘and came here.’ She drank some more whiskey and Tim filled up her glass. She reached out again to the tree.
‘You’d better go back again,’ said Tim. ‘Mor will be waiting, and he’ll be in an agony.’
Go back, yes, thought Nan. The real pain after all was not that the world had fallen into little pieces. That was a relief from pain. It was rather that the world remained, whole, ordinary, and relentlessly to be lived in.
‘Don’t be too hard on Mor,’ said Tim again. ‘He’ll have a bad time of it. And anyway you are the stronger one. Yes,’ he said, ‘you are the strong one, you know.’
Nan knew. She would have to hold this situation as she had held all other situations, controlling Bill, easing the effects of his clumsiness, guiding them both through. She would have to cope with this. The thought was melancholy but there was a little comfort in it.
‘I’ll go out in a minute,’ said Tim, ‘and order you a taxi. But just now relax yourself and don’t be thinking what you’ll say. Let him do the talking.’
Nan thought, he wants me to go, he wants to be rid of me, to move this awful thing away to another place. She felt no animosity against Tim. In the intense rainy sunlight of the yard she saw his face close to hers, pale, unhealthy, puckered up with distress and indecision. She reached out and found his hand. They sat so for a while, rather awkwardly side by side, as if posing for an old-fashioned photograph. Nan laid her glass down and with her other hand plucked some more leaves from the tree. The sun was beginning to warm them. It was a strange interval.
After a while Nan raised her eyes to Tim. He was looking at her intensely. She sustained his gaze.
‘Come inside,’ he said, rising suddenly, and reaching a strong arm to pull her to her feet. ‘Come inside now, and rest in the big armchair.’
Nan got up. The yard began to rotate quietly round her. The whiskey must have gone to her head. She sat down again. The nightmare feeling returned. The objects in the yard were present to her with an appalling precision. She made an effort and stood up on her own. The yard was looking very strange, as if it were growing brilliant and slightly larger. She saw that she had picked nearly all the leaves off the sycamore tree. It stood there rather wretchedly gaunt with a premature autumn, its shadow stretching up the bumpy wall which was steaming in the sun. A curious light was shining. Nan looked up and saw directly above her a rainbow displayed against a pewter-coloured sky. She shuddered, and went back through the door which Tim Burke was holding open for her.
In the little workroom it was very dark. Tim worked there usually by neon light. Nan stumbled against the thick leg of the work bench. The big armchair stood in the farthest darkest comer, a large decrepit thing, banished some time ago from Tim’s small sitting-room upstairs. Awkwardly Tim led her towards the corner. Nan began to say something and turned to face him. A moment later, half pushed by Tim and half collapsing of her own accord she had fallen back into the grinding springs of the chair. She lay there spread-eagled, suddenly helpless, her legs outstretched, her shoes propped at the high heel. She saw through the small square window a section of the metallic sky and a slice of the rainbow. Tim was leaning over her now, his hands upon the two arms of the chair. He was leaning closer, and the window was blotted out. Then, placing one knee upon the edge, he lay upon her, his arms struggling to meet behind her back while his heavy body crushed her into the depths of the chair.
Nan lay there limply, her hands upon his back and upon the sleeve of his coat, not grasping, but dropped there like two exhausted birds. His shoulder was pressing her chin back and her head sank into the deep dusty upholstery, releasing a musty smell. For a moment or two Nan lay still, looking thoughtfully over his shoulder through the half-open door of the workroom and into the darkened shop. Then she wriggled slightly, trying to release her chin from the pressure. She became aware that the weight of Tim’s body upon her was comforting, was more than that. She began in a half-hearted way to struggle.
At once Tim moved, taking his weight off her and endeavouring to shift her to one side so that he could lie beside her in the chair. For a minute they jostled, Nan withdrawing her arms and awkwardly edging away, her heels braced and slipping on the floor, and Tim burrowing beside her, his big hands underneath her body. Then they lay still again, facing each other. Nan found that her heart was beating very fast. She felt a little fear and a little disgust at finding Tim’s white face so close to hers, his lips moist and parted. Then she threw her arms about his neck and drew him up against her, partly so as not to see any longer the staring look that was in his eyes.
‘Nan,’ said Tim, ‘I do love you, you know that, don’t you? I wish I could do something for you, some good thing.’
‘Yes,’ said Nan. She knew that the strange comfort that she felt would last only a few seconds longer.
‘Dear, I’ve so often wanted to tell you things,’ Tim went on, his voice burring in her ear.
‘What things?’ said Nan. Distantly she could hear the voices of people passing in the street.
Oh, foolish things,‘ said Tim. ’Things about Ireland, about when I was a child there, things I couldn’t tell to anybody else.‘
Nan thought, now Tim is going to tell me about his childhood. She had an instantaneous vision of herself spending the morning lying in the armchair and hearing about Tim’s childhood. I must be drunk, she thought. She began to struggle again.
This time Tim braced his hand against the back of the chair and pulled himself out until he was kneeling beside her. Nan dragged herself up to a sitting position. A light dust surrounded them and a smell of the past.
Now that she could see his face again Nan felt her despair returning. After all, it was nothing but a senseless pause. Another minute and they would both be feeling embarrassment. ‘Please call me a taxi, Tim,’ she said.
Bowing his head, Tim rose and went out into the shop, closing the door behind him. She heard him pass into the street. She sat up and began to search for her handbag. She examined herself in the pocket mirror. As she saw her dishevelled head in the half light she started quite quietly to cry again. But by the time Tim had returned she had combed her hair and applied some powder to her nose.
When she heard his steps she got up and they met at the door of the shop. He put his two hands at her waist.
‘Oh God!’ said Tim Burke. Words failed him.
‘Is the taxi coming?’ said Nan.
‘It’ll be here in half a minute.’
Nan looked into his face. Now that she was erect it no longer appalled her; and suddenly she wished desperately that she could stay with Tim Burke that morning and talk to him, talk to him about anything at all, about Ireland, about his past life of which she knew nothing, about his hopes and fears, about when he had begun to love her. For an instant she apprehended him there, pale, awkward, strong, with his two large palms seeming to enclose her body. In that instant she saw him close, mysterious, other than herself, full to the brim of his own particular history.
There was a loud knock at the door.
‘It’s the taxi,’ said Tim.
They looked at each other.
‘Shall we send it away?’ he said. Nan was silent. She wanted, very much she wanted to know him now, this person that confronted her. She could not think how she had endured to have so little knowledge of him. In the privacy and difference of his past, in all that had brought him, by ways that he had never told, to the present moment, there lay for her a promise of consolation and a long long solace of discovery.
‘If you could only come to me,’ said Tim, ‘be with me somehow — ’
Nan turned from him. With coldness, with violence, the reality of her situation touched her, the irresponsible silliness of her present conduct. She shook her head. She saw the glass of whiskey standing near by upon the counter and she drank the rest of it in a single gulp. The knocking on the door was resumed.
‘Open the door,’ said Nan.
Tim fumbled at the latch, and then the pale sunlight was falling in a broad shaft into the shop, as far as where Nan was standing. The taxi-man was waiting in the road.
Nan came forward.
‘Don’t forget me,’ said Tim, as she passed him.
‘Yes,’ said Nan. She steadied herself out on to the pavement.
‘Don’t forget me,’ he repeated, standing behind her in the doorway of the shop.
Nan got into the taxi. A moment or two later it was speeding away. Her grief was restored to her.
As the taxi rolled along, Nan wondered what on earth she was going to say to Bill. She had never been in a situation remotely resembling this with Bill before. In ordinary life all her talk with Bill was planed down into simple familiar regularly recurring units. Any conversation which she might have with him was of so familiar a type that they might have talked it in their sleep. This was one of the things that made marriage so restful. But from now on all speech between them would have to be invented. The words spoken would be new things, composing a new world. Nan did not know what she would say - but in spite of Tim Burke’s warning she was determined that it was she who would talk and not Bill. She wondered if Bill would say he was sorry. What did people say at a time like this?
Nan stepped out of the taxi. Tim had already paid the fare. The taxi-man helped her out. He was wearing an odd expression on his face which made Nan realize that her breath must be smelling strongly of alcohol. When she thought this she staggered, and the gatepost came rushing to meet her at an unexpected angle. She was beginning to feel a slight nausea which was just distinguishable from the rest of her distress. As the taxi drove away she began to search through her handbag for her latchkey. It didn’t seem to be there. She must have left it in the door when she arrived in the early morning. She looked to see if it was still there. It had gone. She stood in the front garden wondering what to do.
She was very anxious that Bill should not know that she had been drinking whiskey. So in what was to come she must keep him at a distance from her. She decided not to ring the bell, but to go in through the drawing-room doors at the back of the house, which were normally unlatched, and interview Bill in the drawing-room with the doors open. These thoughts came rather slowly. In the picture as she now saw it there was only Bill; it was a matter of managing him. It was something between herself and Bill.
Nan began to walk round the side of the house, supporting herself against the wall. She felt mortally tired. But when she reached the drawing-room doors she found that they were closed and evidently bolted on the inside. This was unusual. She pulled at them helplessly for a while. Then she decided that she would get in instead by the low window which was beside the doors. It seemed to be undone. She stepped on to the flower-bed. The earth was soft and muddy after the rain. She pulled the window open and managed to put one foot through the opening.
‘Nan, what in heaven’s name are you doing?’ said Bill’s voice from behind her. He had just come into the garden by the side gate. Nan could see him out of the corner of her eye.
She said nothing, but made desperate efforts to get through the window. She had now got half-way, and was straddled across the sill, her skirt drawn tight, with one leg well into the drawing-room and the other one still outside. She could see the mud falling off her shoe on to the cushions of the sofa. Her other shoe had come off, embedded somewhere in the earth behind her.
‘Nan!’ said Bill’s voice again. He was coming towards her. her.
‘Keep away!’ said Nan. She was pulling furiously on the frame of the window. She could hear Bill stepping on to the flower-bed. He put one hand on her shoulder and one underneath her and propelled her forward into the drawing-room. Nan collapsed on to the sofa. She had to restrain a strong desire just to lie there and whimper at the idiocy of everything.
She sat up. Bill was still standing at the window looking in. He was holding her shoe in one hand and was feebly trying to brush the mud off it.
‘Bill,’ said Nan loudly and clearly, ‘how long has this business been going on?’
‘Wait a minute,’ said Bill. ‘I’ll come round the front way.’
As soon as he disappeared, Nan jumped up and opened the doors wide. Then she drew the sofa a little nearer to them and lay down upon it, propping herself up with cushions and facing into the room. She found a rug and drew it over her feet. Behind her lay the garden, drenched with rain and dazzling now with pearls of light as the strong sun shone upon it, and the plants gradually lifted themselves up, murmuring as they did so. The fresh air blew into the room, dissipating, so Nan hoped, the remaining smell of the whiskey. Bill entered by the drawing-room door.
‘Sit down, Bill,’ said Nan. She indicated a chair near the door.
Bill did not sit down, but stood by the wall kicking his feet. He looked very like Donald.
‘Let me explain,’ began Bill, ‘about last night. Miss Carter stayed here all night because of the storm, and because she’d made an excuse to Demoyte and couldn’t go back there. It was the first time she was in this house. I’d only seen her alone twice before that - or three times, if you count the first night. And I’ve never made love to her.’ He hated saying these things. He stood, pawing with his foot and looking down.
Nan believed him. ‘All right, Bill,’ she said. ‘You are obviously what they call a fast worker. How little I knew you! Anyhow, I’m not interested in this sentimental catalogue. You talk as if you were confessing the secrets of your heart to someone who wanted to hear them.’
At this moment Nan realized with dismay that she was developing hiccups. The only hope was to check them at once by holding her breath. She breathed in very deeply.
Bill waited for her to go on, and as she continued to be silent he said after a moment or two, ‘I should not like you to think that I regard this as anything trivial.’
Nan was still holding her breath.
After another moment of waiting Bill began to say, ‘I realize that I have acted -’
Nan gasped and drew in another breath. It felt as if she had defeated the hiccups. She interrupted him. ‘Listen, Bill,’ she said, ‘I’m not going to make a scene about this. I believe all you say. I’ve trusted you all my life, and I trust you now not to act in a way that will make us both ludicrous.’
‘You don’t quite understand -’ said Bill. He was leaning back against the wall and looking with a frown at a particular place in the carpet as if he were trying to decipher the pattern. He beat the wall lightly as he spoke with the heel of Nan’s shoe.
‘Don’t do that,’ said Nan. ‘You’re making marks on the wallpaper. I think I do understand. You’ve got yourself into a sentimental state about this girl. All right. There’s nothing very terrible about that. But whatever there is to it, now you must just stop. Your own good sense must tell you what to do here and how to do it.’ Nan found to her surprise that the words were not new after all. The pattern of her former conversations with her husband was not lost. This thing could be dealt with as she had dealt with all crises in the past. She felt with a sense of relief her protective power over him. The nightmare was at an end.
I can’t stop,‘ said Bill in a dull voice, still looking at the carpet.
‘None of that, please,’ said Nan. ‘You made this mess and you must get out of it. Be rational, Bill! Wake up and see the real world again. Even if you have no consideration for me or for that wretched girl who’s scarcely older than Felicity, think a little about your reputation, your position as a schoolmaster. Think about the precious Labour Party. This flirtation is bound to end pretty soon. If you let it drag on you’ll merely do yourself a lot of harm.’
‘I love this girl, Nan,’ said Bill. He tried to look at her, but could not face her stare.
‘If you only knew,’ said Nan, ‘how pathetic you are! Just see yourself, Bill, for a moment. Just look at yourself in a mirror. Do you seriously imagine that you could make anything out of a love affair with an attractive, flighty little gipsy with a French upbringing who might be your daughter? Don’t make yourself more ridiculous than you already are! If the silly child seems attached to you at the moment, and isn’t just being kind so as not to hurt your feelings, it’s probably because she’s just lost her father.’
‘I’ve thought of that too,’ said Bill.
‘Well, I’m glad you see the point,’ said Nan. She hiccuped violently and disguised it as a cough. ‘Now you get yourself sorted out and stop seeing this girl - and we’ll say no more about it. You know I don’t want to make a fuss.’
‘I can’t stop seeing her,’ said Bill. He was still leaning against the wall with a sort of exhausted lassitude.
‘Oh, don’t be so unutterably spineless and dreary!’ said Nan. ‘You know perfectly well you’ve got no choice.
‘Nan,’ said Bill, trying to look up again, ‘how did you find out?’
‘I overheard the children talking on the telephone,’ said Nan.
Bill jerked himself upright. He said, ‘The children know, do they - Oh, Christ!’ He turned to face the wall and leaned his head against it. The shoe hung limply from his hand behind him.
‘Don’t use that language, Bill,’ said Nan. ‘It’s not a very nice thing to inflict on them, is it? At least the children won’t tell anybody. I only hope the gossip hasn’t started already. Does anybody else know about this little caper?’
‘I don’t think so,’ said Bill, ‘no one who’d talk, that is. I think Demoyte has probably guessed. And Tim Burke knows.’
‘Tim Burke knows?’ said Nan. She leaned back among the cushions. A feeling of extreme tiredness came over her, and with it the nausea was renewed. The strength which had carried her through the interview faded from her limbs, leaving them heavy and restless. She knew that the misery was still there, after all, waiting for her. She wanted to end the conversation.
‘Oh, go away, Bill,’ she said. ‘You know what you ought to do, just go and do it.’
Bill stood irresolutely at the door. ‘Are you going to stay here now?’ he said. ‘Can I get you anything?’
‘No, go away,’ said Nan. ‘Go away into school and don’t come back for a long time. When I’ve had a rest I’m going back to Dorset.’
‘Going to Dorset?’said Bill. He seemed alarmed. ‘Wouldn’t it be better if you stayed here?’
‘To keep an eye on you?’ said Nan. ‘No, Bill, I trust you completely. I don’t want to spoil Felicity’s holiday. — and I don’t want to make people talk by suddenly reappearing here. I leave you to finish this thing off by yourself.
‘But, Nan — ’ Bill began to say.
‘Oh, get out!’ said Nan. ‘I’m tired, tired of you. Get out. I’ll write to you from Dorset.’ She turned over on the sofa, hiding her face in the cushions.
She heard Bill take a few steps across the room as if he were going to come to her. Then he stopped, turned back, and went out of the door. A minute later she heard the front door close behind him. Nan waited another minute, and then she got up, went into the kitchen, and was extremely sick.
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