There were several things, Celia found, that Dermot didn’t like about her.
Any sign of helplessness annoyed him.
‘Why do you want me to do things for you when you can perfectly well do them for yourself?’
‘Oh, Dermot, but it’s so nice having you do them for me.’
‘Nonsense, you’d get worse and worse if I’d let you.’
‘I expect I should,’ said Celia sadly.
‘It isn’t as though you can’t do all these things perfectly. You’re perfectly sensible and intelligent and capable.’
‘I expect,’ said Celia, ‘that it goes with slightly sloping Victorian shoulders. You want, automatically, to cling – like ivy.’
‘Well,’ said Dermot good-humouredly, ‘you can’t cling to me. I’m not going to let you.’
‘Do you mind very much, Dermot, my being dreamy and fancying things and imagining things that might happen and what I should do if they did?’
‘Of course I don’t mind, if it amuses you.’
Dermot was always fair. He was independent himself, and he respected independence in other people. He had, presumably, his own ideas about things, but he never put them into words or wanted to share them with anyone else.
The trouble was that Celia wanted to share everything. When the almond tree in the court below came into flower it gave her a queer ecstatic feeling just under her heart, and she longed to put her hand into Dermot’s and drag him to the window and make him feel the same. But Dermot hated having his hand taken. He hated being touched at all unless he was in a recognizably amorous mood.
When Celia burnt her hand on the stove and immediately after pinched a finger in the kitchen window she longed to go and put her head on Dermot’s shoulder and be comforted. But felt that that sort of thing would annoy Dermot – and she was perfectly right. He disliked being touched, or leaned on for comfort, or asked to enter into other people’s emotion.
So Celia fought heroically against her passion for sharing, her weakness for caresses, her longing for reassurance.
She told herself that she was babyish and foolish. She loved Dermot, and Dermot loved her. He loved her, probably, more deeply than she loved him since he needed less expression of love to satisfy him.
She had passion and comradeship from him. It was unreasonable to expect affection as well. Grannie would have known better. ‘The men’ were not like that.
At week-ends Dermot and Celia went into the country together. They took sandwiches with them and then went by rail or bus to a chosen spot and then walked across country and came home by another train or bus.
All the week Celia looked forward to the week-ends. Dermot came back from the City every day thoroughly tired, sometimes with a headache – sometimes with indigestion. After dinner he liked to sit and read. Sometimes he told Celia of incidents that had happened during the day, but on the whole he preferred not to talk. He usually had some technical book that he wanted to read uninterrupted.
But at week-ends Celia got her comrade back. They walked through woods and made ridiculous jokes, and sometimes, going up hill, Celia would say, ‘I’m very fond of you, Dermot,’ and put her hand through his arm. This was because Dermot raced up hills and Celia got out of breath. Dermot didn’t mind his arm being held if it was only a joke and really to help her up the hill.
One day Dermot suggested that they should play golf. He was very bad, he said, but he could play a little. Celia got out her clubs and cleaned the rust off them – and she thought of Peter Maitland. Dear Peter – dear, dear Peter. That warm affection she felt for Peter would stay with her to the end of her life. Peter was part of things …
They found an obscure golf links where the green fees were not too high. It was fun to play golf again. She was frightfully rusty, but then Dermot wasn’t much good either. He hit terrific long shots but they were pulled or sliced wildly.
It was great fun playing together.
It didn’t just remain fun, though. Dermot, in games as in work, was efficient and painstaking. He bought a book and studied it deeply. He practised swings at home and bought some cork balls to practise with.
The next week-end they didn’t play a round. Dermot did nothing but practise shots. He made Celia do the same.
Dermot began to live for golf. Celia tried to live for golf too, but not with much success.
Dermot’s game improved by leaps and bounds. Celia’s stayed much the same. She wished, passionately, that Dermot was a little more like Peter Maitland …
Yet she had fallen in love with Dermot, attracted by precisely those qualities which differentiated him from Peter.
One day Dermot came in and said:
‘Look here, I’m going down to Dalton Heath with Andrews next Sunday. Is that all right?’
Celia said of course it was all right.
Dermot came back enthusiastic.
Golf was wonderful; played on a first-rate course. Celia must come down next week and see Dalton Heath. Women couldn’t play at the week-ends, but she could walk round with him.
They went once or twice more to their little cheap course, but Dermot took no further pleasure in it. He said that that sort of place was no good to him.
A month later he told Celia that he was going to join Dalton Heath.
‘I know it’s expensive. But, after all, I can economize in other ways. Golf is the only recreation I’ve got, and it’s going to make all the difference to me. Both Andrews and Weston belong there.’
Celia said slowly:
‘What about me?’
‘It wouldn’t be any good your belonging. Women can’t play at week-ends and I don’t suppose you’d care to go down by yourself in the week.’
‘I mean, what am I going to do at the week-ends? You’ll be playing with Andrews and people.’
‘Well, it would be rather silly to join a golf club and not use it.’
‘Yes, but we’ve always spent the week-ends together, you and I.’
‘Oh, I see. Well, you can get someone to go about with, can’t you? I mean, you’ve got lots of friends of your own.’
‘No, I haven’t. Not now. The few friends I had who lived in London have all married and gone away.’
‘Well, there’s Doris Andrews, and Mrs Weston, and people.’
‘Those aren’t exactly my friends. They’re your friends’ wives. It isn’t quite the same thing. Besides, that isn’t it at all. You don’t understand. I like being with you. I like doing things with you. I liked our walks and our sandwiches, and playing golf together, and all the fun. You’re tired all the week, and I don’t worry you or bother you to do things in the evening, but I looked forward to the week-ends. I loved them. Oh, Dermot, I like being with you, and now we shall never do anything together any more.’
She wished her voice wouldn’t tremble. She wished she could keep the tears back from her eyes. Was she being dreadfully unreasonable? Would Dermot be cross? Was she being selfish? She was clinging – yes, undoubtedly she was clinging. Ivy again!
Dermot was trying hard to be patient and reasonable.
‘You know, Celia, I don’t think that’s quite fair. I never interfere with what you want to do.’
‘But I don’t want to do things.’
‘Well, I shouldn’t mind if you did. If any week-end you’d said that you wanted to go off with Doris Andrews or some old friend of yours, I should have been quite happy. I’d have hunted up somebody and gone off somewhere else. After all, when we married we did agree that each side should be free and do just what they wanted to do.’
‘We didn’t agree or talk about anything of the kind,’ said Celia. ‘We just loved each other and wanted to marry each other and thought it would be perfectly heavenly always to be together.’
‘Well, so it is. It isn’t that I don’t love you. I love you just as much as ever. But a man likes doing things with other men. And he needs exercise. If I was wanting to go off with other women, well, then you might have something to complain about. But I never want to be bothered with any other woman but you. I hate women. I just want to play a decent game of golf with another man. I do think you’re rather unreasonable about it.’
Yes, probably she was being unreasonable …
What Dermot wanted to do was so innocent – so natural …
She felt ashamed …
But he didn’t realize how terribly she was going to miss those week-ends together … She didn’t only want Dermot in her bed at night. She loved Dermot as play-fellow even better than Dermot as lover …
Was it true what she had so often heard women say that men only wanted women as bedfellows and housekeepers? …
Was that the whole tragedy of marriage – that women wanted to be companions, and that men were bored by it?
She said something of the kind. Dermot, as always, was honest.
‘I think, Celia, that that is true. Women always want to do things with men – and a man would always rather have another man.’
Well, she had got it flat. Dermot was right, and she was wrong. She had been unreasonable. She said so, and his face cleared.
‘You are so sweet, Celia. And I expect you’ll really enjoy it better in the end. I mean you’ll find people to go about with who enjoy talking about things and feelings. I know I’m rather bad at all that kind of thing. And we’ll be just as happy. In fact, I shall probably only play golf either Saturday or Sunday. The other day we’ll go out together as we did before.’
The next Saturday he went off, radiant. On Sunday he suggested of his own accord that he and she should go for a ramble.
They did, but it was not the same. Dermot was perfectly sweet, but she knew that his heart was at Dalton Heath. Weston had asked him to play but he had refused.
He was full of conscious pride in his sacrifice.
The next week-end Celia urged him to play golf both days, and he went off happily.
Celia thought: ‘I must learn to play by myself again. Or else – I must find some friends.’
She had scorned ‘domestic women’. She had been proud of her companionship with Dermot. Those domestic women – absorbed in their children, their servants, their house running – relieved when Tom or Dick or Fred went off to play golf at the week-end because there was no mess about the house – ‘It makes it so much easier for the servants, my dear –’ Men were necessary as breadwinners, but they were an inconvenience in the house …
Perhaps, after all, domesticity paid best.
It looked like it.