17

The nurse had left everything prepared. There was nothing Maria had to do or to find, all was put ready for her. There were four lots of napkins ready folded on the towel-horse before the fire, the Harrington squares inside the turkey towel, and new pins to go with each. The feeds were mixed ready in the bottles, and the only thing to be done, said the nurse, was to stand the bottles in hot water for a few minutes, and they would reach the required heat. If Caroline was restless during the afternoon sleep, then she should be allowed a little drop of water in another smaller bottle. But she would not be restless. She always slept. At five o’clock she could lie awake and kick for half an hour or so, she always enjoyed this, it would be good for her limbs. “And I will try to be back soon after ten,” said the nurse. “It’s just a matter of getting onto that bus, and whether I can see my mother off safely on the train.”

And she had gone. Out of reach, out of sight, the heartless, damnable woman, just because she had to see her wretched mother who had been ill, and Maria was left with Caroline for the first time alone.

Charles was away. It would happen that Charles was away. There was some idiotic dinner near Coldhammer that he had to attend which Maria was certain could not be of the slightest importance; but Charles had firm principles about these things, a promise was a promise, he must never let people down. And he had gone off quite early in the morning in the car. Celia, who should have been available, also begged to be excused.

“I can’t come, Maria,” she said on the telephone. “I have an appointment that I must keep. Besides, Pappy isn’t very well.”

“How can you keep an appointment if Pappy isn’t well?” protested Maria.

“Because it’s quite handy,” said Celia. “It’s only a matter of taking a taxi to Bloomsbury. But to come out to you at Richmond would take the entire day.”

Maria rang off, in a temper. It was really very selfish of Celia. If only the nurse had given her longer warning, she could have wired to Truda. Truda could have come from the little cottage where she lived now in retirement at Mill Hill, and spent the day. The only thing was that Truda was so crippled with rheumatism, she might have made an excuse as well. Everybody made excuses. Nobody would put themselves out to help Maria. She looked out of her bedroom window and saw with relief that there was no movement within the white pram. The pram was motionless. With any luck the pram would remain motionless until after lunch.

Maria set her hair in pins, and looked at the new photographs. Dorothy Wilding had really done them proud. Charles looked a little stiff, and his jaw seemed heavier than it was in reality, but they were the best of herself for a long while, and with Caroline in her arms looking up at her and smiling, the whole effect was really very good. “The Hon. Mrs. Charles Wyndham at home. Mrs. Wyndham was, before her marriage last year, the well-known actress, Maria Delaney.” Why was? Why put her in the past tense? Why insinuate that Maria Delaney did not exist anymore? It came as quite a shock to her when she read the lines in the Tatler. She had shown them to Charles with irritation.

“Look at this,” she said. “Anyone would think that I had given up the stage.”

“Haven’t you?” he said, after a moment or two.

She stared back at him, puzzled.

“Why, what do you mean?” she said.

He was tidying his desk at the time, putting his pens straight and his letters.

“Nothing,” he said. “It does not matter.” He went on straightening things, rummaging in pigeonholes.

“Of course I couldn’t act when I was having a baby,” said Maria, “but people send me plays all the time. People are always ringing up. Surely you didn’t think…” She stopped, because she realized suddenly that she did not know what Charles did think. She had never asked him. It had not occurred to her. Nor had it seemed important.

“The old man is getting rather frail,” said Charles. “By rights we ought to be more often down at Coldhammer. I’m not entirely happy about being here at Richmond. There’s too much to do down there.”

Too much to do… That was the agony of Coldhammer. There was nothing to do. Nothing, that was to say, for Maria. It was all right for Charles. It was his home, it was his life, he never seemed to have a moment free when he was there.

“I thought you loved this house,” said Maria.

“I do,” said Charles. “I love it because I love you, and it’s the first home we’ve had together, and Caroline was born here, but I think we ought to face up to the fact that it’s temporary. One of these days my job will be looking after Coldhammer. And you will have to help me.”

“You mean, when your father dies?” said Maria.

“He may live for many years. That’s not quite the point,” said Charles. “The point is that he’s going to depend on me, more and more, every year. However much I enjoy fooling around up in London—and to be perfectly candid I think it’s a waste of time, and I despise myself when I do it—I know in my heart that I ought to be at Coldhammer. Not necessarily in the house, but somewhere handy. That house that Lutyens designed—Farthings—on the edge of the estate, would suit us well. I could get hold of it anytime. Don’t you remember you admired it the other day?”

“Did I?” said Maria vaguely.

And then she had turned away and started talking about something else. The conversation savored too much of crisis. Crisis was always something to avoid. But sitting alone, this morning, she was reminded of the conversation once again. Richmond was the right distance out of London. Half an hour and she could be at any theater. Charles picking her up every evening, and they would be home soon after half-past eleven. It was nothing.

Coldhammer was nearly eighty miles from London. To motor up and down from Coldhammer would be out of the question. The train service was rotten. Charles must surely see that once she started acting again, she would have to be near London. Was it possible that Charles hoped, in his secret heart, that she would not want to act again? Did he picture her enthroned in Farthings, or some other place handy to the estate, doing the things that other wives did, the wives of his friends? Content to order meals, potter about a house, take Caroline for walks when the nurse was out, give little dinners, talk about gardens? Did he expect her, in point of fact, to settle down? That was the word for it. There was no other word. Settle down. Charles hoped to lure her down to Coldhammer to settle down. The house at Richmond was nothing but a bribe, a sop to quieten her. The house at Richmond was part of the process of breaking her in. Right from the start, Charles had never intended the Richmond house to be anything else. She remembered how vague he had always been about the future. She had been vague too. But purposely. Had she been vague because she was afraid? Had she been vague because in her heart she feared that had she said to Charles when they became engaged, “There is no question of my giving up my life for yours,” he might have said, “Well, in that case…”

Anyway, better not think about it. Better put it out of her mind. These things, if left alone, would sort themselves out. Charles loved her. She loved Charles. Nothing could go wrong. Besides, she had always got her own way. People, and events, had a fashion of shaping themselves to suit her. She put away the Dorothy Wilding photographs and picked up the morning paper. There was a paragraph about Niall: “This brilliant young man…” and going on to say that everyone would be humming the songs he had written for the new revue, due to open in London in two weeks’ time. The revue had been a wild success in Paris. “Delaney’s stepson, who is half French, has helped to adapt the revue for the English stage. He speaks French like a native.” Quite untrue, thought Maria. Niall could jabber very fluently for five minutes with a perfect accent, and then his mind would go blank and he forgot everything. Niall had probably done very little work on the revue, if any. Freada would have done it all.

Niall would have thought of the tunes. Somebody else would have written them down. There was a rehearsal going on probably at this minute. A quarter to twelve. Niall would be playing the piano, making jokes, preventing everybody from doing any work. When the producer got annoyed, Niall would become bored and leave them to it, and go upstairs to that funny room at the top and play another piano, all by himself. If the producer telephoned to him to come down, he would say that he was not interested, or he was much too busy thinking out another song for the finale, a better one.

“You may get away with that sort of thing in Paris,” Maria told him, “but I don’t think you will over here. People will say you’re insufferable. That you’re terribly conceited.”

“What if they do?” said Niall. “It doesn’t worry me. I don’t care a damn about writing songs, anyway. I can always go and live in a hut on a cliff.”

Because they wanted his songs so badly, he was allowed to get away with it. They had given him this room at the top of the theater and he lived there. He did as he pleased. Even Freada was not with him. Freada had stayed behind in Paris…

“It’s fun,” Niall had told Maria. “I like it. If I want anyone here to supper I ask them. If I don’t, I don’t. I go out when I please. I come back when I please. Don’t you envy me?” And he looked at her with those queer, penetrating eyes of his that saw too much, and she had turned away pretending to yawn.

“Why should I envy you? I love living at Richmond.”

“Do you?”

“Of course I do. It’s wonderful being married. You ought to try it.”

He had laughed at her and had gone on playing the piano.

The paper was right about one thing, anyway. The tunes he had written for this tiresome revue were maddening, insistent, you could not forget them for one single moment. Once you had heard them, you went on humming them all the time, throughout the day, until they nearly drove you crazy. The trouble was, thought Maria, that when the time came to dance to them, she would be dancing with Charles. And Charles was a stolid, safe dancer, steering you rather as he might steer a little ship through shoal water, an anxious eye to the bumps of other dancers. Whereas Niall… Dancing with Niall had always been like dancing with yourself. You moved, and he followed. Or rather, he moved and you followed. Or was it that you both thought of the same moves at precisely the same moment? And, anyway, why think about Niall? Maria sat down at her desk and wrote her letters. There were some bills, which she paid with the money Charles allowed her. Then a duty letter to her mother-in-law. Another duty letter to some dull people who had asked Charles and her to stay if they were ever in Norfolk. Why should they ever be in Norfolk? A third letter accepting the invitation to open a bazaar at a village three miles from Coldhammer in the spring.

She did not mind opening a bazaar. It was right for the Hon. Mrs. Charles Wyndham to open bazaars. The only thing was that in a way it would be more fun, and she could get more amusing people to attend, and certainly more money, if she opened the bazaar as Maria Delaney. Perhaps it was rather disloyal to think that. Perhaps it would be better not to think of it at all. “Dear Vicar,” she began, “I shall be delighted to open your bazaar on April fifteenth…”

And then it happened. The first wail from the pram.

For a moment or two Maria took no notice. Perhaps it would stop. Perhaps it was only wind. She went on writing, pretending she had not heard. The wail grew louder. And it was not a windy wail. It was the angry, roaring wail of a baby very much awake. Maria heard footsteps on the stairs, followed by a tap on the door.

“Come in,” she said. She put on her busy, preoccupied face.

“Please, m’m,” said the young housemaid, “baby is awake.”

“That’s all right, thank you,” said Maria. “I was just going down to her.”

She got up from the desk and went downstairs, hoping the housemaid would hear and think to herself: “Mrs. Wyndham knows how to manage baby.”

She went to the pram and peered down into the depths.

“Now, now, what is all this about?” she said sternly.

Caroline was red in the face with anger, and struggling to raise herself from her pillow. She was a strong child. The nurse said proudly it was most unusual for so young a child to try to raise herself in this way. Why be proud? wondered Maria. Surely it would be more restful for the nurse if Caroline had been a little quiet baby, content and placid on her back.

“Now, now,” said Maria. “I can’t have this, you know.” She lifted up Caroline and patted her back, in case she had wind. The usual hiccough followed. Ah, then it was wind. What a relief. Maria put her back again in the pram, and tucked in the rug. Then she went back again into the house. But even as she walked upstairs she could hear that the crying had begun again. She resolved to take no notice. She sat down again to her letters. But it was difficult to concentrate. The crying became louder and louder, with a strange, high-pitched violence to the note.

The housemaid tapped once more upon the door. “Baby’s off again, m’m,” she said.

“I know,” said Maria. “There’s nothing the matter with her. It’s good for her to cry.” The housemaid left the room, and Maria could hear her say something to the parlormaid downstairs.

What was she saying? “Poor little mite,” in all probability. Or “She had no right to have a baby if she don’t know how to look after it.” Which was very unfair. She did know how to look after the baby. If the housemaid had a baby it would probably be left to cry and cry for hours and nobody would go near it. The crying suddenly stopped…

Caroline was asleep. All was well. But was it? What if Caroline had succeeded in turning herself over, and was now lying face downwards in her pillow, suffocated. Headlines. “Actress’s Baby Smothered.” “Peer’s granddaughter dies in pram.” There would have to be an inquest, and a coroner asking questions: “Do you mean to say you deliberately left your baby to cry, and took no action?” Charles, white-lipped and tense. And the pathetic little coffin with all those daffodils from Coldhammer…

Maria left her desk and went downstairs into the garden. The silence from the pram was ominous, terrible. She looked into the pram.

Caroline was lying on her back staring at the hood. As soon as she saw Maria she began to cry again. Her small face puckered up with loathing. She hated Maria.

“This is mother-love,” thought Maria. “This is what Barrie wrote about. This is what I imagined when I took Harry on my knee in Mary Rose, and it’s all quite different.” She looked over her shoulder and saw that the parlormaid was staring at her from the dining room window

“Now, now,” said Maria, and, reaching down into the pram, she picked up Caroline and carried her into the house.

“Gladys,” she said to the parlormaid, “as Baby seems restless, I think I had better have my lunch a quarter of an hour earlier than usual. Then I can get it over, and attend to her feed.”

“Very well, m’m,” said Gladys.

But Maria knew Gladys was not deceived. Not for a moment. Gladys guessed that Maria had picked up Caroline and brought her indoors because she did not know what else to do. Maria took Caroline to the nursery. She changed her filthy napkins and put on the first batch of fresh ones. It took ages. Caroline started crying again as soon as she was stretched out on her back, and each time Maria tried to truss her up she kicked and wriggled. Maria jabbed the pin into her own thumb. Why could she not snap the pin with one deft gesture as the nurse did?

She went down for lunch carrying Caroline in her arms, and she sat eating lunch with Caroline balanced on her left arm, while she fed herself with her right hand and a fork. Caroline cried throughout the meal.

“They’re artful, aren’t they?” said Gladys. “They know when someone strange has the handling of them.” She stood watching in sympathy by the sideboard, her hands behind her back.

“She’s hungry, that’s all,” said Maria coldly. “She will settle directly she has had her two o’clock feed.”

The trouble was it was only a quarter past one. The whole of the timetable had been upset. Never mind. The bottle would do the trick. That blessed bottle in the nursery full of Cow and Gate.

Maria scraped through her lunch, swallowed down her coffee, and took Caroline up to the nursery once more and heated up the bottle that stood with its fellows on the white trolley. She felt like a bartender preparing a triple gin for some old drunk.

“Make her take it slowly,” the nurse had said. “She must work for it. She must not take it all in gulps.”

It was all very well for the nurse to talk. How did one make a baby feed slowly? The Cow and Gate squirted from the rubber teat into Caroline’s mouth like a fountain jet, and if Maria tried to edge the bottle away Caroline screamed and fought like some fearful man with D.Ts. The feed that should have taken twenty minutes was all over in five. And Caroline lay back on Maria’s lap, swollen, replete, her lips loose, her eyes closed. She reminded Maria of the old, vagrant woman who used to lie asleep after midnight in the alley-way outside the theater. Maria took her downstairs and put her back in the pram. Then she put on her own coat and walking shoes. “I’m taking Baby for her afternoon walk,” she called through to the kitchen. Nobody heard. The three of them were laughing and talking, and the gramophone was on, the gramophone that Charles had given them for Christmas. They were swilling cups of tea. They did not care about her at all. They were enjoying themselves, while she had to take the baby out in the pram.

The air was brisk and cold, but it was fine. And the pram was white with a black hood. It was nicer than other people’s prams. Maria walked firmly along the road towards Richmond Park, and it was a pity in a way, she thought, that nobody was there to matter, a friend, or a photographer. It was a waste that no one knew she was there, pushing her baby in a pram. She had just crossed the road and was entering the Park gates when it happened. Caroline started to cry again. The patting on the back, the ritual of the morning began again. It had no effect at all. Maria took the pram behind a tree, and went into the fearful performance of changing napkins. Caroline cried louder than ever before. Maria tucked her firmly in her rugs, and began to walk very rapidly, jerking the pram up and down as she walked. Smothered screams came from beneath the rugs. Because the afternoon was fine there were more people than usual walking in Richmond Park. There were people everywhere. And all of them could hear Caroline crying. As Maria went past them, pushing the pram almost at a run, they turned to look at her, they paused to listen, because of the fearful noise of a baby screaming in a pram. Girls exercising dogs smiled at Maria with pity, and youths on bicycles whizzed past her, laughing.

“Be quiet,” hissed Maria in desperation. “Please be quiet,” and in panic she turned the pram and went back again out of the Park and along the street, and stopped it outside a telephone kiosk at the corner.

She gave the number of the theater where Niall was rehearsing and after some delay the stage-door-keeper found him.

“What’s the matter?” said Niall.

“It’s Caroline,” said Maria. “The wretched nurse has left me with her, and Charles is away, and she keeps crying and crying. I don’t know what to do. I’m speaking from a call box.”

“I’ll come and fetch you,” said Niall at once. “I’ll get my car. We’ll drive somewhere. The noise of my driving will make her stop.”

“Aren’t you rehearsing?”

“Yes, but it doesn’t matter. Tell me where you are. Describe your call box. It won’t take more than twenty-five minutes if I come at once.”

“No, come to the end of the road,” said Maria. “Wait for me there. I’ll have to put the pram in the garden. And I’ll fetch another bottle for her. Perhaps the one after lunch wasn’t the right temperature.”

“Bring all the bottles you can find,” said Niall.

Maria stepped out of the telephone box. A policeman at the corner was watching her. Caroline was still crying. Maria turned and pushed the pram in the opposite direction from the policeman. You never knew. It might be against the law to leave a child to cry.

She went back to the house and hid the pram behind a bush in the garden near the garage. She went upstairs and came down again carrying two more bottles and another batch of napkins. She felt like a burglar in her own domain. Luckily she met no one. The servants were still downstairs. Immediately she lifted Caroline out of the pram Caroline stopped crying. Maria hid in the garage with the rugs and the bottles and the napkins until she heard the sound of a car at the end of the road brake violently with a screech. That would be Niall. Maria came out of the garage, carrying her belongings, and went down the road to the car.

Niall was dressed oddly. He wore a very old pair of evening trousers, and a polo sweater that had moth marks at the neck.

“I came just as I was,” he said. “I left them to it. I said I had to take somebody to hospital.”

“That’s not true,” said Maria, climbing into the car with Caroline.

“We can make it true,” said Niall. “We can take Caroline to a hospital and leave her in the children’s ward for the afternoon.”

“Oh, no,” said Maria, alarmed. “Charles might get to hear. We can’t do that. Think of the shame for me.”

“Well, what then?”

“I don’t know. Just drive.”

Niall started the car with a jerk. It was an old Morris that had once belonged to Freada. Niall drove very badly in a series of wild rushes. He either went much too fast, swerving round islands, or crept in the middle of the road like a snail. He never understood the signals of a policeman. “That man,” he said, “why did he wave me on? What does he mean?”

“I think you apologize,” said Maria. “I think you are on the wrong side of the road.”

The car zigzagged in and out of traffic. People shouted. And Caroline, who had stopped crying momentarily because of the new movement so different from her pram, began crying again.

“Do you like her?” said Niall.

“Not frightfully. But I shall later, when she can talk.”

“She’s like Lord Wyndham,” said Niall. “I shall give her a wristwatch every birthday, as other godfathers give pearls.”

Caroline went on crying, and Niall slowed down the car.

“It’s the pace,” he said. “She doesn’t like the pace. I tell you what. I think we ought to ask advice.”

“From whom?”

“From some nice, homely woman. There must be a nice homely woman who has had a lot of children, who would give us advice,” said Niall.

He peered anxiously to right and left, and then, forced onwards by the stream of traffic, he turned the car into a busy thoroughfare, with shops on either side, the pavements thronged with people.

“That woman there, with the basket,” said Niall. “She has a cheerful face. How about asking her?” He slowed the car to a standstill, and, reaching over Maria, he lowered the window and called out to the passing woman.

“Excuse me,” he said. “Could you come just a moment?”

The woman turned round in surprise. Her face was not quite so cheerful close to as it had seemed in the distance. And she had a cast in one eye.

“This lady doesn’t know what to do about the baby,” said Niall. “It keeps crying. We wondered whether you would be so terribly kind and help.” The woman stared at him, and then down at Maria and the wailing Caroline.

“I beg your pardon?” she said.

“The baby,” said Niall. “It goes on and on. It won’t stop. And we neither of us know what to do.”

The woman turned very red. She thought it was some sort of practical joke.

“You shouldn’t try and fool people that way,” she said. “There’s a policeman over there. Do you want me to call him?”

“No,” said Niall. “Of course not. We only wondered…”

“It’s no use,” whispered Maria. “Drive on… drive on.”

She bowed haughtily to the woman, who turned away uttering exclamations of disgust. Niall let in the clutch of the car and it jerked forward.

“What a beastly woman,” he said. “That sort of thing would never happen in France. In France they would offer to mind the baby for the afternoon.”

“We’re not in France,” said Maria. “We’re in England. It’s typical of the country. All that fuss about prevention of cruelty to children, and yet there’s not a soul to help us with Caroline.”

“Let’s drive to Mill Hill,” said Niall, “and leave her with Truda.”

“Truda would be angry,” said Maria, “and tell Celia, and Celia would tell Pappy, and it would be all over the Garrick in no time. Oh, Niall…” She leaned against him and he put his left arm round her, and kissed the top of her hair, and the car swerved in all directions.

“We could go on driving westwards forevermore,” said Niall. “We’re heading for Wales at the moment. Welsh women are probably very good with babies. Shall we go to Wales?”

“I know why mothers leave their babies in shops to be adopted,” said Maria. “They can’t stand the strain.”

“Couldn’t we leave Caroline in a shop?” said Niall. “I don’t believe Charles would really mind. It would only be his pride. The thing is no one in their senses would be mad about Caroline, not at this stage. Years later, perhaps, when she’s a debutante.”

“I wish to God she was a debutante now,” said Maria.

“All those trailing feathers,” said Niall. “I never can see that anything is gained by it. Stuck in the Mall, hour after hour.”

“It’s pageantry,” said Maria. “I love it. Like being a king’s mistress.”

“I don’t see that it’s the slightest bit like being a king’s mistress,” said Niall. “Driving into the courtyard in a hired Rolls, as you did last year, with Lady Wyndham stuck beside you.”

“I adored every minute… Niall?”

“What?”

“I’ve suddenly thought of something. Let’s stop at the next Woolworths and buy Caroline a comforter.”

“What’s a comforter?”

“You know, those awful rubber things that common babies have stuck in their mouths.”

“Do they make them nowadays?”

“I don’t know. We can try.”

Niall slowed the Morris to a crawl, looking for Woolworths, and finally they came to one, and Maria got out of the car and went inside the shop. She returned, her face triumphant.

“Sixpence,” she said, “and very good rubber. Red. The girl said her little sister had one at home.”

“Where does she live?”

“Who?”

“The little sister. We might take Caroline and the mother could look after both of them.”

“Don’t be silly. Now, watch…” Very slowly Maria pushed the comforter into Caroline’s mouth. It acted as a sort of gag. Caroline sucked noisily, and closed her eyes. The effect was magic. The crying ceased.

“You’d scarcely credit it, would you?” whispered Maria.

“It’s rather frightful,” said Niall. “Like plugging someone with cocaine. What if it has a terrible effect on Caroline in after-life?”

“I don’t care,” said Maria. “Not if it keeps her quiet now.”

The sudden peace was wonderful. Calm waters after storm. Niall started the car again, increasing the pace, and Maria leaned back against his shoulder.

“How easy it would be,” said Niall, “if every time one felt on edge one could just go to Woolworths and buy a comforter. There must be something psychological about it. I think I shall get one for myself. It’s probably what I’ve wanted all my life.”

“I think it would be vicious,” said Maria, yawning. “A grown man going around with a bit of rubber in his mouth.”

“Why vicious?”

“Well, perhaps not vicious. But putting off… where now?”

“Wherever you like.”

Maria considered. She did not want to go back to Richmond. She did not want to carry the now peaceful Caroline upstairs, and start the weary routine of the orange juice, the kicking on the cushion, the next feed, the changing of the napkins, and all the things that she was supposed to do. She did not want to play at being the Hon. Mrs. Charles Wyndham all alone at home. The house at Richmond, empty of Charles, empty of everything but wedding presents and the furniture that had come from Coldhammer, seemed suddenly a tie, a millstone round the neck.

She was reminded, curiously and for the first time, of the doll’s house that Pappy and Mama had presented to her on her seventh birthday, and with which she had played, enchanted, for a fortnight, letting no one touch it but herself. Then, after one wet day, when she had played with it for a full afternoon, it suddenly bored her, she did not want it anymore, and very generously she had given it to Celia. Celia had it still…

“Where are we going?” said Niall.

“Let’s go to the theater,” said Maria. “Take me to the theater. I can watch you rehearse.”

The stage-door-keeper was an old friend of Maria’s. His face was wreathed in smiles as he welcomed her.

“Why, Miss Delaney,” he said. “You ought to come to see us more often. You’re quite a stranger.”

Quite a stranger… Why did he say that? Did he mean that people were forgetting her? That already she was slipping from their minds? Niall found some cushions, and a rug from the car, and between them they carried Caroline to one of the boxes on the circle level, and made up a bed for her on the floor. She was sleeping soundly, the comforter between her lips. Then Niall went down again onto the stage, and Maria went and sat at the back of the dress circle in the dark, because, after all, she had no right to be there, it was cheek to go and watch someone else’s rehearsal in a show that was no concern of hers. She had never seen a revue in rehearsal before, and she was glad to find the chaos even greater than the chaos that she knew. So much argument. So many people talking at once. So many bits and pieces that surely never, never could be pulled into one, and every now and then Niall’s music, dear and familiar to her because he had played it on the piano, magnified into numbers for the orchestra, and Niall himself, stumbling about in his absurd clothes, getting into everybody’s way.

And she wanted to be with them on the stage, not sitting alone there in the circle in the dark, waiting for Caroline to cry.

She wanted to be in a theater that she knew, where she belonged, in her own sort of play. And for it to be the third week in rehearsal, and knowing her lines, and getting into her stride, and having worked all day—but really all day—and now a little tired, and now her temper rather worn, and snapping “What?” to the producer who called up to her from the stalls. Then quickly regretting it, because after all you never knew, you might be fired. But the producer being also perhaps the actor-manager, and likeable, and human, and possibly even lovable, would laugh silently inside himself and call, “Just once through again, Maria darling, if you don’t mind.” And she would not mind. She would know it had not been right. She would want to do it again. Later, when they broke off, they would go and have a drink together, in the pub across the road, and she would talk too much, and he would not mind, and she would be so tired she would want to die. But it would be the right sort of death. The only death…

Suddenly she was aware of Niall kneeling beside her in the circle.

“What’s the matter?” he whispered. “You’re crying.”

“I’m not crying,” she said. “I never cry.”

“They’re stopping in a moment,” he said. “They always break at six thirty. You had better come up to my room with Caroline before they know you’re here.”

She went to the box for Caroline, and Niall carried the rugs and the napkins and the bottles, and led the way upstairs to his curious flat at the top of the theater.

“Well, what did you think of it?” he said.

“Think of what?” she asked.

“The revue,” he said.

“I don’t know. I wasn’t really watching,” said Maria.

He looked at her, but he said nothing. He knew everything, always. He gave her a drink, and lit a cigarette, and she threw it away after a minute or two, she never smoked much. He put her in the armchair, the seat sagged and the springs were broken, and he found another chair for her feet. Caroline was asleep on his bed, wrapped in the rugs. The comforter lolled sideways from her mouth.

“It’s nearly seven,” sighed Maria. “She has not had a bottle for hours.” There were all the napkins too. What should she do with the napkins? She put out her arms to Niall and he went and knelt beside her. She thought of the Regency drawing room, small, correct, and exquisite, in her house at Richmond. The evening paper, ready beside her chair. The bright fire burning. The maid having tidied and drawn the curtains. Here, in Niall’s room at the top of the theater, the curtains were not yet drawn. The sound of the traffic in Shaftesbury Avenue came to the blank, staring windows, and down on the pavements below them would be hurrying, passing people, some making for the Underground at Piccadilly, others walking to meet their friends and go out upon the town. The lights were going up on all the theatres. The Lyric, the Globe, the Queen’s, the Apollo, the Palace. The lights were going up on all the theatres over London.

“The thing is,” said Maria, “I shouldn’t have married.”

“It need not affect you,” said Niall. “You can always do two things at once. You always have. Or even three.”

“I suppose so,” said Maria. “I suppose I can.”

They spoke in whispers because of Caroline. If they talked louder Caroline might wake.

“Charles wants to go to live near Coldhammer,” said Maria. “What then? I can’t go and live at Coldhammer.”

“You’ll have to have a flat,” said Niall, “and go down to Coldhammer at weekends. It’s too far to go up and down every night.”

“That’s what I thought,” said Maria. “But would it work? Would Charles mind? Would it break up our married life?”

“I don’t know,” said Niall. “I don’t know what married people do.”

Lights kept flashing from the building opposite, sending streaks of color into the darkened room. The newsboys at the corner shouted “Late Night Final. Late Night Final.” The traffic surged below.

“I have to come back,” said Maria. “I shall go mad if I don’t come back.”

“Charles will watch you from a box,” said Niall. “He’ll be terribly proud of you. He will cut out all your notices and paste them in a book.”

“Yes,” said Maria, “but he can’t spend his life doing that, watching me from a box and pasting things in books.”

The telephone started ringing. It was a soft burr… burr… Not a shrill summons. The sound would not wake Caroline, in the drugged sleep that the comforter had given her.

“It often does that,” said Niall. “I never answer it. I’m always afraid it might be somebody boring, asking me to dinner.”

“What if it was me ringing?” said Maria.

“It can’t be you tonight. You’re here,” said Niall.

The telephone went on ringing, and Niall reached for one of Caroline’s napkins and threw it over the bell. The shot was a brilliant one. The napkin hung suspended like a shroud.

“We’ll have some dinner presently at the Café Royal,” said Niall. “They know me there, it’s always rather pleasing.”

“What about Caroline?”

“We’ll take her too. And then I’ll drive you home.”

The telephone, that had stopped with the throw of the napkin, began again.

“It’s a soothing sort of sound,” said Niall. “I don’t mind it. Does it worry you?” He tucked another cushion under Maria’s back.

“No,” said Maria, holding out her arms. “Let it ring.”