Dermot was prosperous. He was making nearly two thousand a year. Celia and he had a lovely time. They both agreed that they ought to save, but they also agreed that they wouldn’t start just yet.
The first thing they bought was a second-hand car.
Then Celia longed to live in the country. It would be so much nicer for Judy, and she herself hated London. Always before, Dermot had negatived the idea on the score of expense – railway fares for him, food being cheaper in town, etc.
But now he admitted that he liked the idea. They would find a cottage not too far from Dalton Heath.
They eventually settled in the lodge of a big estate that was being cut up for building. Dalton Heath golf course was ten miles away. They also bought a dog – an adorable Sealyham called Aubrey.
Denman refused to accompany them to the country. Having been angelic all through the bad times, she became a positive fiend with the advent of prosperity. She was rude to Celia, went about tossing her head in the air, and finally gave notice saying that as some she knew were getting stuck up it was time she made a change.
They moved in spring, and the most exciting thing to Celia was the lilacs. There were hundreds of lilacs, all shades of mauve and purple. Wandering out into the garden in the early morning with Aubrey at her heels, Celia felt that life had become almost perfect. No more dirt and dust and fog. This was Home …
Celia adored the country life and the long rambling walks with Aubrey. There was a small school near by where Judy went in the mornings. Judy took to school as a duck takes to water. She was very shy with individuals, but completely unabashed by large numbers.
‘Can I go to a really big school one day, Mummy? Where there are hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of girls? What’s the biggest school in England?’
Celia had one passage of arms with Dermot over their little home. One of the front top rooms was to be their bedroom. Dermot wanted the other for his dressing-room. Celia insisted that it should be Judy’s nursery.
Dermot was annoyed.
‘I suppose you’ll have it your own way. I shall be the only person in the house who is never to have a bit of sun in his room.’
‘Judy ought to have a sunny room.’
‘Nonsense, she’s out all day. That room at the back is quite large – plenty of room for her to run about in.’
‘There’s no sun in it.’
‘I don’t see why sun for Judy is more important than sun for me.’
But Celia, for once, stood firm. She wanted badly to give Dermot his sunny room, but she didn’t.
In the end Dermot was perfectly good-natured about his defeat. He adopted it as a grievance – but quite good-temperedly – and pretended to be a downtrodden husband and father.
They had a good many neighbours near them – most of them with children. Everyone was friendly. The only thing that made a difficulty was Dermot’s refusal to go out to dinner.
‘Look here, Celia, I come down from London tired out, and you want me to dress up and go out and not get home and to bed till past midnight. I simply can’t do it.’
‘Not every night, of course. But I don’t see that one night a week would matter.’
‘Well, I don’t want to. You go, if you like.’
‘I can’t go alone. People don’t ask you to dinner except in pairs. And it sounds so odd for me to say that you never go out at night – because, after all, you’re quite young.’
‘I’m sure you could manage to go without me.’
But that wasn’t so easy. In the country, as Celia said, people were asked in couples or not at all. Still, she saw the justice of what Dermot said. He was earning the money he ought to have the say in their joint life. So she refused the invitations, and they sat at home, Dermot reading books on financial subjects, and Celia sometimes sewing, sometimes sitting with her hands clasped, thinking about her family of Cornish fishermen.
Celia wanted to have another child.
Dermot didn’t.
‘You always said there was no room in London,’ said Celia. ‘And of course we were very poor. But we’ve got enough now, and there’s heaps of room and two wouldn’t be any more trouble than one.’
‘Well, we don’t want one just now. All the fuss and bother and crying and bottles all over again.’
‘I believe you’ll always say that.’
‘No, I shan’t. I’d like to have two more children. But not now. There’s heaps of time. We’re quite young still. It will be a sort of adventure for when we’re getting bored with things. Let’s just enjoy ourselves now. You don’t want to begin being sick again.’ He paused. ‘I tell you what I did look at today.’
‘Oh, Dermot!’
‘A car. This second-hand little beast is pretty rotten. Davis put me on to this. It’s a sports model – only done eight thousand miles.’
Celia thought:
‘How I love him! He’s such a boy. So eager … And he’s worked so hard. Why shouldn’t he have the things he likes? … We’ll have another baby some day. In the meantime let him have his car … After all, I care more for him than for any baby in the world …’
It puzzled Celia that Dermot never wanted any of his old friends to stay.
‘But you used to be so fond of Andrews.’
‘Yes – but we’ve grown out of touch with each other. We never meet nowadays. One changes …’
‘And Jim Lucas – you and he used to be inseparable when we were engaged.’
‘Oh, I can’t be bothered with any of the old army crowd.’
One day Celia had a letter from Ellie Maitland – Ellie Peterson, as she now was.
‘Dermot, my old friend Ellie Peterson is home from India. I was her bridesmaid. Shall I ask her and her husband down for the week-end?’
‘Yes, of course, if you like. Does he play golf?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Rather a bore if he doesn’t. However, it won’t really matter, you won’t want me to stay at home and entertain them will you?’
‘Couldn’t we play tennis?’
There were a number of courts for the use of residents on the estate.
‘Ellie used to be awfully keen on tennis, and Tom plays, I know. He used to be good.’
‘Look here, Celia, I simply can’t play tennis. It absolutely ruins my game. And there’s the Dalton Heath Cup in three weeks’ time.’
‘Does nothing matter but golf? It makes it so difficult.’
‘Don’t you think, Celia, that it’s ever so much better if everyone does as they like? I like golf you like tennis. You have your friends down and do as you like with them. You know I never interfere with anything you want to do.’
That was true. It all sounded perfectly all right. But somehow it made things difficult in practice. When you were married, Celia reflected, you were somehow so tied up with your husband. Nobody considered you as a separate unity. It would be all right if it were only Ellie coming down, but surely Dermot ought to do something about Ellie’s husband.
After all, when Davis (with whom Dermot played nearly every week-end) and his wife came to stay, she, Celia, had to entertain Mrs Davis all day. Mrs Davis was nice but dull. She just sat about and had to be talked to.
But she didn’t say these things to Dermot because she knew he hated to be argued with. She asked the Petersons down and hoped for the best.
Ellie had changed very little. She and Celia enjoyed talking over old times. Tom was a little quiet. He had gone a little grey. He seemed a nice little man, Celia thought. He had always seemed a little absent-minded but very pleasant.
Dermot behaved angelically. He explained that he was obliged to play golf on Saturday (Ellie’s husband didn’t play), but he devoted Sunday to entertaining his guests and took them on the river, a form of spending an afternoon which Celia knew he hated.
When they had gone he said to her: ‘Now then, have I been noble or have I not?’
Noble was one of Dermot’s words. It always made Celia laugh.
‘You have. You’ve been an angel.’
‘Well, don’t make me do it again for a long time, will you?’
Celia didn’t. She rather wanted to invite another friend and her husband down two weeks later, but she knew the man wasn’t a golfer, and she didn’t want Dermot to have to make a sacrifice a second time …
It was so difficult, thought Celia, living with a person who was sacrificing himself. Dermot was rather trying as a martyr. He was much better to live with when he was enjoying himself …
And, anyway, he was unsympathetic about old friends. Old friends, in Dermot’s opinion, were usually a bore.
Judy was obviously in sympathy with her father over this, for a few days later when Celia mentioned her friend Margaret, Judy merely stared.
‘Who’s Margaret?’
‘Don’t you remember Margaret? You used to play with her in the Park in London?’
‘No, I didn’t. I never played with a Margaret anywhere.’
‘Judy, you must remember. It’s only a year ago.’
But Judy couldn’t remember any Margaret at all. She couldn’t remember anyone she had played with in London.
‘I only know the girls at school,’ said Judy comfortably.
Something rather exciting happened. It began by Celia being rung up and asked to take someone’s place at a dinner party at the last minute.
‘I know you won’t mind, dear …’
Celia didn’t mind. She was delighted.
She enjoyed the evening frightfully.
She wasn’t shy. She found it easy to talk. There was no need to watch whether she were being ‘silly’ or not. Dermot’s critical eyes were not upon her.
She felt as though she had been suddenly wafted back to girlhood.
The man on her right had travelled a lot in the East. Above everything in the world Celia longed to travel.
She felt sometimes that if the chance were to be given her she would leave Dermot and Judy and Aubrey and everything and dash off into the blue … To wander …
The man at her side spoke of Baghdad, of Kashmir, of Ispahan and Teheran and Shiraz (such lovely words – nice to say them even without any meaning attached). He told her, too, of wandering in Baluchistan where few travellers had been.
The man on her left was an elderly, kindly person. He liked the bright young creature at his side who turned to him at last with a rapturous face still full of the glamour of far lands.
He had something to do with books, she gathered, and she told him, laughing a good deal, about her one unlucky venture. He said he’d like to see her manuscript. Celia told him that it was very bad.
‘All the same, I’d like to see it. Will you show it to me?’
‘Yes, if you like, but you’ll be disappointed.’
He thought that probably he would. She didn’t look like a writer – this young creature with her Scandinavian fairness. But, just because she attracted him, it would interest him to see what she had written.
Celia came home at one A.M. to find Dermot happily asleep. She was so excited that she woke him up.
‘Dermot – I’ve had such a lovely evening. Oh! I have enjoyed myself! There was a man there who told me all about Persia and Baluchistan, and there was a nice publisher man – and they made me sing after dinner. I sang awfully badly, but they didn’t seem to mind. And then we went out in the garden, and I went with the travelling man to see the lily pond – and he tried to kiss me – but quite nicely – and it was all so lovely – with the moon and the lilies and everything that I would have liked him to – but I didn’t because I knew you wouldn’t have liked it.’
‘Quite right,’ said Dermot.
‘But you don’t mind, do you?’
‘Of course not,’ said Dermot kindly. ‘I’m glad you enjoyed yourself. But I don’t know why you’ve got to wake me up to tell me about it.’
‘Because I have enjoyed myself so much.’ She added apologetically, ‘I know you don’t like me to say so.’
‘I don’t mind. It just seems to me rather silly. I mean, one can enjoy one’s self without having to say so.’
‘I can’t,’ said Celia honestly. ‘I have to say so a great deal, otherwise I’d burst.’
‘Well,’ said Dermot, turning over, ‘you’ve told me now.’
And he went to sleep again.
Dermot was like that, thought Celia, a little sobered as she undressed, rather damping but quite kind …
Celia had forgotten all about her promise to show the publisher man her book. To her great surprise he walked in upon her the following afternoon and reminded her of her promise.
She hunted out a bundle of dusty manuscripts from a cupboard in the attic, reiterating her statement that it was very stupid.
A fortnight later she had a letter asking her to come up to town to see him.
From behind a very untidy table strewn with bundles of manuscript he twinkled at her from behind his glasses.
‘Look here,’ he said, ‘I understood this was a book. There’s only a little more than half of it here. Where’s the rest? Have you lost it?’
Puzzled, Celia took the manuscript from him.
Her mouth fell open with dismay.
‘I’ve given you the wrong one. This is the old one I never finished.’
Then she explained. He listened attentively, then told her to send him the revised version. He would keep the unfinished one for the moment.
A week later she was summoned again. This time her friend’s eyes were twinkling more than ever.
‘The second edition’s no good,’ he said. ‘You won’t find a publisher to look at it – quite right too. But your original story is not bad at all – do you think you could finish it?’
‘But it’s all wrong. It’s full of mistakes.’
‘Now look here, my dear child, I’m going to talk to you quite plainly. You’re not a heaven-sent genius. I don’t think you’ll ever write a masterpiece. But what you certainly are is a born storyteller. You think of spiritualism and mediums and Welsh Revivalist meetings in a kind of romantic haze. You may be all wrong about them, but you see them as ninety-nine per cent of the reading public (who know nothing about them either) see them. That ninety-nine per cent won’t enjoy reading about carefully acquired facts – they want fiction – which is plausible untruth. It must be plausible, mind. You’ll find it will be the same with your Cornish fisher folk that you told me about. Write your book about them, but, for heaven’s sake, don’t go near Cornwall or fishermen until you’ve finished. Then you’ll write the kind of grimly realistic stuff that people expect when they read about Cornish fisher folk. You don’t want to go there and find out that Cornish fishermen are not a breed by themselves but something quite closely allied to a Walworth plumber. You’ll never write well about anything you really know about, because you’ve got an honest mind. You can be imaginatively dishonest but not practically dishonest. You can’t write lies about something you know, but you’ll be able to tell the most splendid lies about something you don’t know. You’ve got to write about the fabulous (fabulous to you) and not about the real. Now, go away and do it.’
A year later Celia’s first novel was published. It was called Lonely Harbour. The publishers corrected any glaring inaccuracies.
Miriam thought it splendid, and Dermot thought it rather awful.
Celia knew that Dermot was right, but she was grateful to her mother.
‘Now,’ thought Celia, ‘I’m pretending to be a writer. I think it’s almost queerer than pretending to be a wife or a mother.’