As soon as Henry spoke of their new author Rodney Galt I knew that I should dislike him. ‘It’s rather a feather in my cap to have got him for our list,’ he said. The publishing firm of which Henry is a junior partner is called Brodrick Layland which as a name is surely a feather in no one’s cap, but that by the way. ‘I think Harkness were crazy to let him go,’ Henry said, ‘because although Cuckoo wasn’t a great money-spinner, it was very well thought of indeed. But that’s typical of Harkness, they think of nothing but sales.’
I may say for those who don’t know him that this speech was very typical of Henry: because, first, I should imagine most publishers think a lot about sales and, if Brodrick Layland don’t, then I’m sorry to hear it; and, secondly, Henry would never naturally use expressions like ‘a great money-spinner’, but since he’s gone into publishing he thinks he ought to sound a bit like a business man and doesn’t really know how. The kind of thing that comes natural to Henry to say is that somebody or something is ‘very well thought of indeed’, which doesn’t sound like a business man to anyone, I imagine. But what Henry is like ought to emerge from my story if I’m able to write it at all. And I must in fairness add that my comments about him probably tell quite a lot about me – for example he isn’t by any means mostly interested in the money in publishing but much more in ‘building up a good list’, so that his comment on Harkness wasn’t hypocritical. And, as his wife, I know this perfectly well, but I’ve got into the habit of talking like that about him.
Henry went on to tell me about Cuckoo. It was not either a novel, which one might have thought, or a book about birds or lunatics, which was less likely, although it’s the kind of thing I might have pretended to think in order to annoy him. No, Cuckoo was an anthology and a history of famous cuckolds. Rodney Galt, it seemed, had a great reputation, not as a cuckold, for he was single, but as a seducer; although his victories were not only or even mainly among married women. He was particularly successful as a matter of fact at seducing younger daughters and debs. Henry told me all this in a special offhand sort of voice intended to suggest to me that at Brodrick Layland’s they took that sort of thing for granted. Once again I’m being bitchy, because, of course, if I had said ‘Come off it, Henry’ or words to that effect, he would have changed his tone immediately. But I did not see why I should, because among our acquaintances we do number a few though not many seducers of virgins; and if I made Henry change his tone it would suggest that he was quite unfamiliar with such a phenomenon which would be equally false. Fairness and truth are my greatest difficulties in life.
To return to Rodney Galt – the book he was going to write for Brodrick Layland was to be called Honour and Civility. Once again it was not to be a novel, however, like Sense and Sensibility or The Naked and the Dead. Rodney Galt used the words ‘Honour’ and ‘Civility’ in a special sense; some would say an archaic sense, but he did not see it that way because he preferred not to recognize the changes that had taken place in the English language in the last hundred years or so. ‘Honour’ for him meant ‘the thing that is most precious to a man’, but not in the sense that the Victorians meant that it was most precious to a woman. Rodney Galt from what I could gather would have liked to see men still killing each other in duels for their honour and offering civilities to one another in the shape of snuff and suchlike before they did so. He believed in ‘living dangerously’ and in what is called ‘high courage’, but exemplified preferably in sports and combats of long standing. He was, therefore, against motor racing and even more against ‘track’ but in favour of bullfighting and perhaps pelota; he was also against dog racing but in favour of baccarat for high stakes.
The book, however, was not to be just one of those books that used to be popular with my uncle Charles called Twelve Rakes or Twenty Famous Dandies. It was to be more philosophical than that, involving all the author’s view of society; for example, that we could not be civilized or great again unless we accepted cruelty as a part of living dangerously, and that without prejudice man could have no opinion, and, indeed, altogether what in Mr Galt’s view constituted the patrician life.
I told Henry that I did not care for the sound of him. Henry only smiled, however, and said, ‘I warn you that he’s a snob, but on such a colossal scale and with such panache that one can’t take exception to it.’ I told Henry firmly that I was not the kind of woman who could see things on such a large scale as that, and also, that if, as I suspected from his saying ‘I warn you’, he intended to invite Rodney Galt to the house, only the strictest business necessity would reconcile me to it.
‘There is the strictest business necessity,’ Henry said, and added, ‘Don’t be put off by his matinee idol looks. He’s indecently good-looking.’ He giggled when he said this, for he knew that he had turned the tables on me. Henry used to believe – his mother taught him the idea – that no woman liked men to be extremely good-looking. He knows different now because I have told him again and again that I would not have married him if he had not been very handsome himself. His mother’s code, however, dies hard with him and even now, I suspect, he thinks that if his nose had not been broken at school, I should have found him too perfect. He is quite wrong. I would willingly pay for him to have it straightened if I thought he would accept the offer.
Reading over what I have written, I see that it must appear as though Henry and I live on very whimsical terms – gilding the pill of our daily disagreements with a lot of private jokes and ‘sparring’ and generally rather ghastly arch behaviour. Thinking over our life together, perhaps it is true. It is with no conscious intent, however; although I have read again and again in the women’s papers to which I’m addicted that a sense of humour is the cement of marriage. Henry and I have a reasonable proportion of sense of humour, but no more. He gets his, which is dry, from his mother who, as you will see in this story of Rodney Galt, is like a character from the novels of Miss Compton Burnett, or, at least, when I read those novels I people them entirely with characters like Henry’s mother. My parents had no vestige of humour; my father was too busy getting rich and my mother was too busy unsuccessfully trying to crash county society.
But it is true that Henry and I in our five years of marriage have built up a lot of private joking and whimsical talking and I can offer what seem to be some good reasons for it, but who am I to say? First, there is what anyone would pick on – that our marriage is childless, which, I think, is really the least of the possible reasons. It certainly is with me, although it may count with Henry more than he can say. The second is that everything counts with Henry more than he can say. ‘Discerning’ people who know Henry and his mother and, indeed, all the Ravens, usually say that they are shy beneath their sharp manner. I don’t quite believe this; I think it’s just because they find it easier to be like this so that other people can’t overstep the mark of intimacy and intrude too far on their personal lives. You can tell from the way Henry’s mother shuts her eyes when she meets people that she has an interior life and actually she is a devout Anglican. And Henry has an interior life which he has somehow or other put into his publishing. Well, anyhow, Henry’s manner shy or not makes me shy, and I’ve got much more whimsical since I knew him.
But also there’s my own attitude to our marriage. I can only sum it up by saying that it’s like the attitude of almost everyone in England today to almost everything. I worked desperately hard to get out of the insecurity of my family – which in this case was not economic because they’re fairly rich and left me quite a little money of my own, but social – and when I married Henry I loved every minute of it because the Ravens are quite secure in their own way – which Henry’s mother calls ‘good country middle class, June dear, and no more’. And if that security is threatened for a moment I rush back to it for safety. But most of the time when it’s not in danger, I keep longing for more adventure in life and a wider scope and more variety and even greater risks and perils. Well, all that you’ll see in this story, I think. But anyhow this feeling about our marriage makes me uneasy with Henry and I keep him at a humorous distance. And he, knowing it, does so all the more too. All this, I hope, will explain our private jokes and so on, of which you will meet many. By the way, about security and risk, I don’t really believe that one can’t have one’s cake and eat it – which also you’ll see.
To return to Rodney Galt; Henry did, in fact, invite him to dinner a week later. He was not, of course, as bad as Henry made out, that is to say, as I have sketched above, because that description was part of Henry’s ironical teasing of me. In fact, however, he was pretty bad. He said ghastly things in an Olympian way – not with humour like Henry and me, but with ‘wit’ which is always rather awful. However, I must admit that even at that first dinner I didn’t mind Rodney’s wit as much as all that, partly because he had the most lovely speaking voice (I don’t know why one says speaking voice as though most of one’s friends used recitative), very deep and resonant which always ‘sends’ me; and partly because he introduced his ghastly views in a way that made them seem better than they were. For example:
Henry said, ‘I imagine that a good number of your best friends are Jews, Galt.’
And Rodney raised his eyebrows and said, ‘Good heavens, why?’
And Henry answered, ‘Most anti-Semitic people make that claim.’
And Rodney said, ‘I suppose that’s why I’m not anti-Semitic. I can’t imagine knowing any Jews. When would it arise? Oh, I suppose when one’s buying pictures or objects, but then that’s hardly knowing. It’s simply one of the necessities. Or, of course, if one went to Palestine, but then that’s hardly a necessity.’
And I said, ‘What about Disraeli? He made the Tory party of today.’ I said this with a side glance at Henry because he used then to describe himself as a Tory Democrat, although since Suez he has said that he had not realized how deeply Liberalism ran in his veins.
Rodney said, ‘What makes you speak of such unpleasant things?’
And I asked, ‘Aren’t you a Tory then?’
And he answered, ‘I support the principles of Lord Eldon and respect the courage of Lord Sidmouth, if that’s what you mean.’
Henry said, ‘Oh! but what about the Suez Canal and the British Empire? Disraeli made those.’
And Rodney looked distant and remarked, ‘The British Empire even at its height was never more than a convenient outlet for the middle-class high-mindedness of Winchester and Rugby. The plantations and the penal colonies of course,’ he added, ‘were a different matter.’
Henry, who makes more of his Charterhouse education than he admits, said, ‘Oh, come, Winchester and Rugby are hardly the same thing.’
Rodney smiled and said in a special hearty voice, ‘No, I suppose not, old man.’ This was rude to Henry, of course, but slightly gratifying to me. Anyhow he went straight on and said, ‘The thing that pleases me most about coming to Brodrick Layland is your book production, Raven. I do like to feel that what I have written, if it is worth publishing at all, deserves a comely presentation.’ This, of course, was very gratifying to Henry. They talked about books or rather the appearance of books for some time and I made little comment as I like the inside of books almost exclusively. It appeared, however, that Rodney was a great collector of books, as he was of so many other things: porcelain, enamels, Byzantine ivories and Central American carvings. He was quick to tell us, that, of course, with his modest income he had to leave the big things alone and that, again with his modest income, it was increasingly difficult to pick up anything worth having, but that it could be done. He left us somehow with the impression that he would not really have cared for the big things anyway, and that his income could not be as modest as all that.
‘Heaven defend me,’ he said, ‘from having the money to buy those tedious delights of the pedants – incunables. No, the little Elzeviers are my particular favourites, the decent classical authors charmingly produced. I have a delightful little Tully and the only erotica worth possessing, Ovid’s Amores.’
It was talking of Ovid that he said something which gave me a clue to my feelings about him.
‘I know of no more moving thing in literature than Ovid’s exiled lament for Rome. It’s just how any civilized Englishman today must feel when, chained to his native land, he thinks of the Mediterranean or almost anywhere else outside England for that matter. “Breathes there a Soul”, you know.’ He smiled as he said it. Of course, it was the most awful pretentious way of talking, but so often I do feel that I would rather be almost anywhere than in England that he made me feel guilty for not being as honest as he was.
It seemed, however, that after a great deal of travel in a great many places, he was now for some time to be chained to his native land. He had, he said, a lot of family business to do. He was looking out for a house something like ours. He even hinted – it was the only hint of his commercially venturing side that he gave that evening – at the possibility of his buying a number of houses as an investment. Meanwhile he was staying with Lady Ann Denton. I ventured to suggest that this might be a little too much of a good thing, but he smiled and said that she was a very old friend, which, although it rather put me in my place, gave him a good mark for loyalty. (Henry scolded me afterwards and told me that Rodney was having an affair with Lady Ann. This surprised and disconcerted me. It didn’t sound at all like ‘debs’. Lady Ann is old – over forty – and very knocked about and ginny. She has an amusing malicious tongue and a heart of gold. Sometimes I accept her tongue because of her heart, and sometimes I put up with her heart because of her tongue. Sometimes I can’t stand either. But, as you will have already seen, my attitude to people is rather ambiguous. However, Henry is very fond of her. She makes him feel broadminded which he likes very much.)
We had it out a little about snobbery that evening. ‘Heavens, I should hope so,’ Rodney said, when I accused him of being a social snob, ‘it’s one of the few furies worth having that are left to us – little opportunity though the modern world allows of finding anyone worth cultivating. There still do exist a few families, however, even in this country. It lends shape to my life as it did to Proust’s.’ I said that though it had lent shape to Proust’s work, I wasn’t so sure about his life. ‘In any case,’ he said with a purposeful parody of a self-satisfied smile, ‘art and life are one.’ Then he burst out laughing and said, ‘Really, I’ve excelled myself this evening. It’s your excellent food.’
Looking back at what I have written I see that I said that he wasn’t as bad as Henry made out and then everything that I have reported him as saying is quite pretentious and awful. The truth is that it was his smile and his good looks that made it seem all right. Henry had said that he was like a matinee idol, but this is a ridiculous expression for nowadays (whatever it may have been in the days of Henry’s mother and Owen Nares) because no one could go to a matinee with all those grey-haired old ladies up from the Country rattling tea-trays and feel sexy about anything. But Rodney was like all the best film stars rolled into one and yet the kind of person it wasn’t surprising to meet; and, these taken together surely make a very sexy combination.
It was clear that evening that Henry liked him very much too. Not for that reason, of course. Henry hasn’t ever even thought about having feelings of that kind I’m glad to say. As a matter of fact, Henry doesn’t have sexy feelings much anyway. No, that’s quite unfair and bitchy of me again. Of course, he has sexy feelings, but he has them at definite times and the rest of the time such things don’t come into his head. Whereas I don’t ever have such strong sexy feelings as he has, but I have some of them all the time. This is a contrast that tends to make things difficult.
No, the reason Henry liked him I could see at once, and I said as soon as he had left, ‘Well, he’s quite your cup of tea, isn’t he? He’s been everywhere and knows a lot about everything.’ I said the last sentence in inverted commas, because it’s one of Henry’s favourite expressions of admiration and I often tease him about it. It isn’t very surprising because Henry went to Charterhouse and then in the last two years of the War he went with the F S P to Italy, and then he went to the Queen’s College, Oxford, and then he went into Brodrick Layland. So he hasn’t been everywhere. In fact, however, he does know quite a lot about quite a number of things, but as soon as he knows something he doesn’t think it can be very important.
We both agreed then that Rodney Galt was quite awful in most ways but that we rather liked him all the same. This is my usual experience with a great number of people that I meet, but Henry found it more surprising.
In the week that followed Henry seemed to see a good deal of Rodney Galt. He put him up for his Club. I was rather surprised that Rodney should have wanted to be a member of Henry’s Club which is rather dull and literary: I had imagined him belonging to a lot of clubs of a much grander kind already. Henry explained that he did in fact belong to a lot of others, but that he had been abroad so much that he had lost touch with those worlds. I thought that was very odd, too, because I imagined that the point of clubs was that no matter how often you went round the world and no matter how long, when you came back the club was there. However, as I only knew about clubs from the novels of Evelyn Waugh, I was prepared to believe that I was mistaken. In any case it also seemed that Rodney wanted particularly to belong to this author’s sort of club, because he believed very strongly that one should do everything one did professionally and as he was now going to write books, he wanted to go to that sort of place.
‘He’s a strange fellow in many ways,’ Henry said, ‘a mass of contradictions.’ This didn’t seem at all strange to me, because such people as I have met have all been a mass of contradictions. Nevertheless Rodney’s particular contradiction in this case did seem odd to me. I had imagined that the whole point of his books would be that they should be thrown off in the midst of other activities – amateur productions that proved to be more brilliant than the professional. However, his new attitude if less romantic was more creditable and certainly more promising for Brodrick Layland. I decided indeed that he had probably only made this gesture to please Henry, which it did.
We dined once or twice with him and Lady Ann. She has rather a nice house in Chester Square and he seemed to be very comfortably installed – more permanently indeed than his earlier talk of buying houses suggested. However, this may well have been only the appearance that Lady Ann gave to things, for she made every effort short of absurdity to underline the nature of their relationship. I really could not blame her for this, for she had made a catch that someone a good deal less battered and ginny might have been proud of; and I had to admire the manner in which she avoided the absurdity for, in fact, looking at him and at her, it was very absurd, apart from the large gap in their ages – fifteen years at least, I decided.
Lady Ann as usual talked most of the time. She has a special way of being funny: she speaks with a drawl and a very slight stutter and she ends her remarks suddenly with a word or expression that isn’t what one expects she is going to lead up to. Well, of course, one does expect it, because she always does it; and like a lot of things it gets less funny when you’ve heard it a few times. For example, she said she didn’t agree with Rodney in not liking Look Back in Anger, she’d been three times, the music was so good. And again, she quite agreed with Henry, she wouldn’t have missed the Braque exhibition for anything, but then she got a peculiar pleasure, almost a sensual one, from being jammed really tight in a crowd. And so on. Henry always laps up Lady Ann. She’s a sort of tarty substitute mother-figure for him, I think; and indeed, if he wanted a tarty mother, he had to find a substitute. I thought, perhaps, that Rodney would be a little bored with her carry on, but if he was, he didn’t show it. This, of course, was very creditable of him, but made me a little disappointed. Occasionally, it is true, he broke into the middle of her chatter; but then she interrupted him sometimes just as rudely. They might really have been a perfectly happy pair which I found even more disappointing.
I can’t help thinking that by this time you may have formed some rather unfavourable views about the kind of woman I am. Well, I’ve already said that often I have very bitchy moods; and it’s true, but at least I know it. But if you ask me why I have bitchy moods it’s more difficult to say. In the first place life is frightfully boring nowadays, isn’t it? And if you say I ought to try doing something with my time, well I have. I did translations from French and German for Brodrick Layland for a time; and I did prison visiting. They’re quite different sorts of things to do and it didn’t take long for me to get very bored with each of them. Not that I should want wars and revolutions – whenever there’s an international crisis I get a ghastly pain in my stomach like everybody else. But, as I said, like England, I want security and I don’t. However, what I was trying to explain about was my bitchy moods. Well, when I get very bored and depressed, I hate everyone and it seems to me everyone hates me. (As a matter of fact most people do like Henry better than me, although they think I’m more amusing.) But when the depressed mood lifts, I can’t help feeling people are rather nice and they seem to like me too. I had these moods very badly when I was sixteen or so; and now in these last two years (since I was twenty-five) they’ve come back and they change much more quickly. When I talked to Henry about it once, he got so depressed and took such a ‘psychological’ view that I’ve never mentioned it again. In any case it’s so easy to take ‘psychological’ views; but I’m by no means sure that it isn’t just as true to say like my old nurse, ‘Well, we all have our ups and downs,’ and certainly that’s a more cosy view of the situation.
But enough about me, because all this is really about Rodney Galt. Well, in those few times I saw him with Lady Ann (it seems more comic always to call her that) I began to have a theory about him; and when I get theories about people I get very interested in them. Especially as, if my theory was right, then Lady Ann and Henry and Mr Brodrick and no doubt lots of other people were liable to be sold all along the line or up the river or whatever the expression is; but on the whole, if my theory was right it only made me feel that he was more fascinating. The best sort of theory to have. One thing I did want to know more about was his family. In such cases I always believe in asking directly, so I said, ‘Where are your family, Rodney?’ He smiled and said, ‘In the Midlothian where they’ve been for a sufficient number of recorded centuries to make them respectable. They’re the best sort of people really,’ he added, ‘the kind of people who’ve always been content to be trout in the local minnow pond. I’m the only one who’s shown the cloven hoof of fame-seeking. There must be a bounderish streak somewhere though not from mother’s family who were all perfectly good dull country gentry. Of course, there was my great-great-great uncle the novelist. But his was a very respectable middling sort of local fame really.’
Well there wasn’t much given away there because after all there are minnows and minnows and even ‘country gentry’ is rather a vague term. It was a bit disingenuous about Galt the novelist, because even I have heard of him and I know nothing of the Midlothian. And that was the chief annoyance. I knew absolutely no one with whom I could check up. But it didn’t shake my theory.
Now we come to the most important point in this story: When Rodney Galt became our lodger. But first I shall have to explain about ‘the lodger battle’ which Henry and I had been then waging for over a year and this means explaining about our finances. Henry had some capital and he put that into Brodrick Layland and really, all things considered, he gets quite a good income back. But the house which we live in is mine; and it was left to me by my Aunt Agnes and it’s rather a big house, situated in that vague area known as behind Harrods. But it isn’t, in fact, Pont Street Dutch. And in this big house there is only me and Henry and one or two foreign girls. They change usually every year and at the time I’m speaking of, about six or seven months ago, there was only one girl, a Swiss called Henriette Vaudoyer. Henry had long been keen that we should have a lodger who could have a bedroom and sitting-room and bathroom of their own. He said it was because he didn’t like my providing the house and getting nothing back from it. He thought, that at least I ought to get pin money out of it. This was an absurd excuse because Daddy left me quite a little income – a great deal more than was required even if I were to set up a factory for sticking pins into wax images.
I think Henry had, at least, three real reasons for wanting this lodger; one, he thought it was wrong to have so much space when people couldn’t find anywhere to live, and this, if I had thought of it first I would have agreed with, because I have more social conscience really than Henry, when I remember it; two, the empty rooms (empty that is of human beings) reminded him of the tiny feet that might have pattered but did not; three, he had an idea that having a lodger would give me something to do and help with the moods I’ve already told you about. The last two of these reasons annoyed me very much and made me very unwilling to have a lodger. So Henry was rather shy in suggesting that we should let the top floor to Rodney Galt. He only felt able to introduce the subject by way of the brilliant first chapter of Rodney’s new book. Henry, it seemed, was bowled over by this chapter when Rodney had submitted it and even Mr Brodrick, who had his feet pretty firmly planted on the ground, rocked a little. If it had been a feather in Henry’s cap getting Rodney Gait before, it became a whole plumage now. Nothing must get in the way of the book’s completion. Well, it seemed that living at Lady Ann’s did. Henry pointed out that wonderful friend though Lady Ann was, she could be difficult to live with if you wanted to write because she talked so much. I said, yes she did and drank so much too. But I asked about the house that Rodney was going to buy. Henry said that Rodney hadn’t seen the one he really wanted yet and he didn’t want to do too much house hunting while he was writing the book which would require a lot of research. Above all, of course, he did not want to involve himself with what might turn out to be a white elephant. To this I thoroughly agreed. And, to Henry’s surprise and pleasure, I said, yes, Rodney could come as a lodger.
I was a little puzzled about Lady Ann. I made some enquiries and, as I suspected, Rodney had thrown her over and was said to have taken up with Susan Mullins, a very young girl but almost as rich as Lady Ann. However, Lady Ann was putting a good face on it before the world. I was glad to hear this because the face she usually put on before the world, although once good, was now rather a mess. But I didn’t say anything to Henry about all this, because he was so fond of Lady Ann and I was feeling very friendly towards him for making such a sensible suggestion about a lodger.
Hardly had the lodger idea taken shape and Rodney was about to take up residence, when it almost lost its shape again. All because of Mr Brodrick. I should tell you that Henry’s senior partner was again one of the many people about whom my mood varied. He was a rather handsome, grey-templed, port-flushed old man of sixty-five or so – more like a barrister than a publisher, one would think. Anyway what would one think a publisher looked like? He was a determinedly old-fashioned man – but not like Rodney, except that both of them talked a bit too much about wine and food. No, Mr Brodrick was an old world mannered, ‘dear lady’ sort of man – a widower who was gallant to the fair sex, is how he saw himself, I think. He had a single eyeglass on a black ribbon and ate mostly at his Club. Sometimes I thought he was rather a sweet old thing and sometimes I thought he was a ghastly old bore and a bit common to boot.
At first, it seemed, he’d been delighted at Henry’s capturing Rodney for their list, mainly because he was rather an old snob and Rodney seemed to know well a lot of people whom he himself had only met once or twice but talked about a good deal. He patted Henry on the back once or twice – literally I imagine though not heartily – and saw him even more as ‘a son, my dear boy, since I have not been blessed with any offspring myself’. (I often wondered whether Mr Brodrick didn’t say to Henry, ‘When’s the baby coming along?’ He was so keen on heirs for Brodrick Layland.)
But suddenly it seemed that one day Mr Brodrick was talking to Mr Harkness of Harkness & Co., and Mr Harkness said that why they hadn’t gone on with Rodney as an author was because they’d had a lot of financial trouble with him – loans not repaid and so on. Mr Brodrick didn’t care for the sound of that at all and he thought that they should do what he called ‘Keeping a very firm rein on Master Galt’s activities’. And as he saw Henry as a son and perhaps me as a daughter-in-law (who knows?) he was very much against our having Rodney as a lodger. The more strictly commercial the relations with authors the better, he said.
Henry was upset by all this and a good deal surprised at what Mr Harkness had said. I was not at all surprised but I did not say so. I said that Harkness had no right to say such things and Mr Brodrick to listen to them. In any case, I said, how did we know that Mr Harkness had not just made them up out of sour grapes. And as to commercial relations I pointed out that Rodney’s being a lodger was commercial and anyway the rent was being paid to me. So Mr Brodrick knew what he could do. But Henry still seemed a little unhappy and then he told me that he had himself lent Rodney various sums. So then I saw there was nothing for it but the brilliant first chapter – and I played that for all I was worth. Did Henry, I said, expect that anyone capable of that brilliant first chapter was going to fit in with every bourgeois maxim of life that people like Harkness and Mr Brodrick laid down in their narrow scheme of things? I was surprised, I said, that Henry who had a real flair for publishing because he cared about books should be led into this sort of ‘business is business’ attitude that, if persevered in, would mean confining one’s list to all the dullest books produced. Anyway I made it clear I was determined that Rodney Galt should come if only as a matter of principle. When Henry saw that I was determined, he decided to stand on principle too and on the great coup he had made for Brodrick Layland as forecast by that brilliant first chapter. So Rodney moved in.
What with all the research Rodney needed to do for his book and what with Susan Mullins you may think that I was getting unduly excited about nothing. But if you have jumped to that conclusion, well then I think you can’t have a very interesting mind and you certainly don’t understand me. When I say that I had become interested in Rodney that’s exactly what I mean and ‘being interested’ with me comes to this – that I don’t know really what I want or indeed if I want anything at all, but I know for certain that I don’t want to leave go. So for the first week or so Rodney went to the British Museum and read books about civility and honour of which they have lots there – intended when they were published in the seventeenth and eighteenth century for people who were on the social make, I think. I rather used to like to think that after all this time they were being read again by Rodney. When he was not at the British Museum, he was with Susan Mullins or on the telephone talking to her.
The British Museum fell out of Rodney’s life before Susan Mullins. After only a fortnight it was replaced by books from the London Library which as Rodney had a sitting-room seemed only sensible. Then came a period when Susan did not telephone so often and once or twice Rodney telephoned to her and spoke instead to her mother (who was not called Mullins but Lady Newnham because she had been divorced and married again to a very rich Conservative industrialist peer) and then high words were exchanged. And finally one day when he rang he spoke to Lord Newnham and very high words were exchanged and that was the end of that. It became difficult then for Rodney to keep his mind even on the books from the London Library let alone going to the British Museum. It seemed somehow that his mind was diverted more by financial schemes than by study. None of this surprised me much either, but I thought I would not worry Henry by telling him in case he began to be afraid that there would only be a brilliant first chapter and no more. In any case it might have only been temporary, though I was not inclined to think that.
So Rodney and I used to go out in his MG (and perhaps it would have been more in keeping if he had refused to use any kind of motor-car later than a De Dionne but I was glad that he didn’t). We went here, there and everywhere and all over the place. We saw a great number of lovely houses – a lot in London, but gradually more and more outside London. Rodney came very near to taking some of them, he said. And then since he proposed to turn some of the houses when he bought them into furnished rooms or flats, we looked at a great number of antiques. The antiques we looked at were rather expensive for this purpose, but Rodney said that only good things interested him and what was the good of his expertise if he never used it. But it was quite true – that he had expertise, I mean. We also had a lot of very good luncheons. On my theory Rodney would pay for these during the first phase, but later I expected I would have to pay. But I was determined to make the first phase last as long as possible and I succeeded. We took to going suddenly too to places like Hampton Court and Cambridge and Hatfield House and Wilton. We did not go to see any friends, though, partly because it wouldn’t have done, but mostly because we really were very content to be alone together. However, often when we passed great parks or distant large houses, Rodney told me to which of his friends they belonged; and this was nice for him.
In fact we both had a wonderful time, although Rodney’s time would have been more wonderful, he said, if I’d agreed to go to bed with him. Sometimes he cajoled; or at least he made himself as attractive and sweet as he could which was a lot; and this, I imagine, is what ‘cajole’ means. But often he took a very high-handed line, because in Rodney’s theory of seducing there was a lot about women wanting to be mastered which fitted into his general social views. Then he would tell me that unless I let myself go and accepted his mastery which was what I really wanted, I would soon become a tight little bitch. I had, he said, all the makings of one already at twenty-six. ‘You think,’ he cried, ‘that because you have attractive eyes and a good figure that you can go on having sex appeal just by cock-teasing every man you meet. But let me tell you it won’t last, you’ll quickly become a hard little bitch that no one will be interested in. It’s happening already with your bitter humour and your whimsy and your melancholy moods. You’re ceasing to be “civilized”.’ Civilization seemed to be his key to seduction, because he made light of my married position on the same grounds. ‘In any civilized century,’ he said, ‘the situation would be sensibly accepted,’ and then he talked of Congreve and Vanbrugh and Italian society. But I didn’t care to decide too easily, because Vanbrugh and Congreve are no longer alive and this is not Italy of the Cicisbei and affairs of this kind aren’t easy to control and even if life was often boring it was secure. Also I quite enjoyed things as they were, even the violent things he said about my becoming a bitch, but I wasn’t sure that I would like all that masterfulness on a physical plane.
So we went on as I wished and I enjoyed managing the double life and if Rodney didn’t exactly enjoy it he was very good at it. For example, one morning an absolutely ghastly thing happened; Henry’s mother suddenly arrived as Rodney and I were about to set off for Brighton. I have already said about Henry’s mother that you can feel two ways about her; I think that I would be prepared to feel the nicer way more often if she didn’t seem to feel so consistently the nastier way about me. As it is, our relations are not very good and as, like most people, we find it easier to fight battles on our home grounds, we don’t often meet.
Henry’s mother doesn’t bother much about dress and that day being a rather cold summer day she was wearing an old squirrel-skin coat over her tweeds. As to her hats, you can never tell much about these, because her grey hair gets loose so much and festoons all over them. It is said in the Raven family that she should have been allowed by her father to go to the University and that she would then have been a very good scholar and happy to be so. As it is, she has lived most of her life in a large red-brick Queen Anne house in Hampshire and the only way that you can tell that she is not happy like all the other ladies is that as well as gardening and jam making and local government, she does all the very difficult crossword puzzles very quickly and as well as the travel books and biographies recommended in the Sunday papers she reads sometimes in French and even in German. She closed her eyes when she saw me but this was no especial insult because as I have said she always does this when she speaks.
‘You shouldn’t live so close to Harrods, June dear, if you don’t want morning callers,’ was how she greeted me.
As Rodney and I were both obviously about to go out there was not much to answer to this. But the Ravens have a habit of half-saying what is on their minds and it immediately seemed certain to me that she had only come there because she’d heard about the lodger and wanted to pry. I said, ‘This is Rodney Galt, our lodger. This is Henry’s mother.’
Rodney must have formed the same conclusion for he immediately said, ‘How do you do? I’m afraid this is a very brief meeting because I’m just off to the London Library.’
‘Oh?’ Henry’s mother answered. ‘You must be one of those new members who have all the books out when one wants them. It’s so difficult being a country member. Of course, when Mr Cox was alive,’ and she sighed, putting the blame on to Rodney but also making it quite clear to me that it was him she wanted to investigate. I thought it would be wise to deflect her so I said, ‘You’ll stay and have a coffee or a drink or something, won’t you?’
But she was not to be deflected. ‘What strange ideas you have about how I spend my mornings, June dear,’ she answered, ‘I haven’t come up from Kingston, you know. I’m afraid you’re one of those busy people who think everybody idle but yourself. I just thought it would be proper since I was so close at Harrods that we should show each other that we were both still alive. But I don’t intend to waste your time, dear. Indeed if Mr Galt is going to the London Library I think I shall ask him if he will share a taxi with me. I’m getting a little old to be called “duckie” as these bus ladies seem to like to do now.’
So Rodney was caught good and proper. However, I needn’t have worried for him, because when Henry came home I learned that his mother had been round to Brodrick Layland and had spent her time singing Rodney’s praises. It appeared that he’d been so helpful in finding her the best edition of Saint Simon that she had offered him luncheon and that he had suggested Wheelers. His conversation must have been very pleasing to her for she made no grumble about the bill. She had only said to Henry, ‘I can’t think why you described him as a beautiful-looking young man. He’s most presentable and very well informed too.’ So we seemed to have got over that hurdle.
But Rodney was a success with all our friends; for example, with ‘les jeunes filles en fleur’. This is the name that Henry and I give to two ladies called Miss Jackie Reynolds and Miss Marcia Railton and the point about the name is that although like Andrée and Albertine, they are Lesbian ladies, they are by no means jeunes filles and certainly not en fleur. Henry is very fond of them because like Lady Ann they make him feel broadminded. They are very generous and this is particularly creditable because they do not make much money out of their business of interior decoration. They have lived together for a great many years – since they were young indeed which must be a great great many years ago – and Henry always says that this is very touching. Unfortunately they are often also very boring and this seems to be all right for Henry, because when they have been particularly boring, he remembers how touching their constancy to each other is and this apparently compensates him. But it doesn’t compensate me.
When the jeunes filles met Rodney, Jackie who is short and stocky with an untidy black-dyed shingle, put her head on one side and said, ‘I say, isn’t he a smasher!’ And Marcia who is petite rather than stocky and altogether dainty in her dress, said, ‘But of a Beauty!’ This is the way they talk when they meet new people; Henry says it’s because they are shy, and so it may be, but it usually makes everybody else rather shy too. I thought it would paralyse Rodney, but he took it in his stride and said, ‘Oh! come, I’m not as good-looking as all that.’ That was when I first realized that I preferred Rodney on his own and this in itself is a difficulty because if one is going to be much with somebody you are bound to be with other people sometimes. How ever, the evening went swimmingly. Rodney decided that, although he would always have really good objects in his own house, the people to whom he let furnished flats would be much happier to be interior decorated and who better to do it than les jeunes filles en fleur? Well, that suited Marcia and Jackie all right. They got together, all three in a huddle, and a very funny huddle it was. Rodney already knew of some Americans, even apart from all the people who would be taking furnished flats from him when he had them to offer, and the rest of the evening was spent in deal discussions. Henry said afterwards he’d never felt so warm to Rodney as when he saw how decent he was to les jeunes filles. I wasn’t quite sure what the decency meant but still…
The truth was that much though I was enjoying Rodney’s company, I was beginning to get a little depressed by the suit he was so ardently pressing and the decision that this ardour was forcing upon me. It would be so much nicer if there was no cause and effect in life, no one thing leading inevitably to another, but just everything being sufficient in itself. But I could see that Rodney was not the kind of person to take life in this way and quite suddenly something forced this realization upon me rather strongly.
I have not said much about our Swiss, Henriette Vaudoyer, and I don’t propose to say much now because nothing is more boring than talk about foreign domestics. I have to put up with it at three-quarters of the dinners we go to. Henriette was a very uninteresting girl, but quite pretty. There were only four of us in the house: Henry and me in one bedroom and Rodney and Henriette in two bedrooms. Well, no one can be surprised that Rodney and Henriette began to be in one bedroom sometimes too. I wasn’t surprised but I was upset, it gave me a pain in my stomach. Clearly there were only two things I could do about that pain: get rid of Rodney or get rid of Henriette. The brave thing would have been to get rid of Rodney before I got worse pains; but already the pain was so bad that I was not brave enough. I gave Henriette notice. She said some very unpleasant, smug, Swiss sort of things to me and she began to say them to Henry which was more worrying. Luckily one of Henry’s great virtues is that he never listens to tale-bearing and he did what is called ‘cut her short’. However, he was a bit worried that I should decide to be without a foreign girl, because we’d always had one and sometimes two. But I explained that we had Mrs Golfin coming in, and she was only too pleased to come in even more, and for the rest, having more to do would be wonderful for my moods about which I was getting worried. So Henry saw the necessity and Henriette went. But I saw clearly too that I would have to decide either to accept Rodney’s importuning or not, because soon he would take no answer as the same as ‘answer – no’.
I think maybe I might have answered no, only at the time Henry annoyed me very much over the holiday question. This is a very old and annoying question with us. Every year since we were married Henry says, ‘Well, I don’t know why we shouldn’t manage Venice (or Madrid, or Rome) this year. I think we’ve deserved it.’ And first, I want to say that people don’t deserve holidays, they just take them; and secondly, I want to point out that we’re really quite rich and there’s no question of our not being able to ‘manage’ Venice or Rome. I long, in fact, for the day when he will say, ‘Well, I don’t know why we shouldn’t manage Lima this year, taking in Honolulu and Madagascar on the way home.’ But if he can’t say that – and he can’t – then I would prefer him to ask, ‘Shall we go to Italy or Spain or North Africa this year, June? The choice is yours.’ However, just about the time that Henriette left, he came out with it. ‘Well, I don’t see why we shouldn’t manage Florence this year.’ So I said, ‘Well I do, Henry, because I don’t bloody well want to go there.’ And then he was very upset and as I was feeling rather guilty anyway, I apologized and said how silly my moods were and Florence would be rather enchanting.
Henry cheered up a good deal at this. ‘If that is so,’ he said, ‘I’m very glad, because it makes it much easier for me to tell you something. It’s been decided on the spur of the moment that I’m to go to New York on business. It’s only for a fortnight but I must leave next week.’
Now I wouldn’t really have wanted to go to New York for Brodrick Layland on a rush visit but somehow everything conspired together to make me furious and I decided then and there that what I wanted was what Rodney wanted, physical mastery or no. And actually when the time came, the physical mastery wasn’t such a trial. I mean there was nothing ‘extra’ or worrying about it. And for the rest, I was very pleased.
So that when Henry set off for New York, I was committed on a new course of life, as they say. But the weekend before Henry left, he insisted on running me down to a country hotel in Sussex and making a fuss of me. I suppose I should have felt very bad about it, because really he did his best to make the fuss as good as possible. But all I could think of was that I did hope cause and effect and one thing following another wasn’t going to make life worse instead of better. After all I had made this committal to a new course in order to make life less boring, but if it meant that there were going to be more decisions and choices in front of me, it would be much more boring. One thing, however, I did decide was that I would try not to talk about Rodney to Henry even if I did have to think of him. After all, talking about Rodney would not have been a very kind return for the fussing.
In the end, however, it was Henry who raised the subject of Rodney. It seemed that Lady Ann had not been able to put a good face on all the time. One day at a cocktail party when even she had found the gin stronger than usual she had dropped her face in front of Henry. She said that the money she had spent on Rodney nobody knew – this I thought was hypocritical because she was just telling Henry how much it was – and the return he’d made had been beneath anything she’d ever experienced. I must say she couldn’t have said worse, considering the sort of life she’s led. Henry was very upset, because although he liked Rodney, Lady Ann was such a very old friend. But I said that age in friendship was not the proper basis for judgement (after all just because Lady Ann was so old!) and I also reminded him that hell had no fury. I succeeded in pacifying him because he didn’t want his fussing of me to be spoiled, but I could see that things would never be the same between Rodney and Henry, as now indeed they were not between any of the three of us.
Well, there we were – Rodney and me alone for ten days. And Rodney did exactly the right thing – he suggested that we spent most of the time in Paris. How right this was! First there was the note of absurdity of adultery in Paris. ‘That,’ said Rodney, ‘should satisfy your lack of self-assurance. Your passion to put all your actions in inverted commas.’ It must be said that Rodney, for someone only my age, understands me very well, because I do feel less troubled about doing anything when I can see it as faintly absurd. Of course, the reasons he gives don’t satisfy me very well; when I asked him why I was like that, he said, ‘Because you’re incurably middle class, June darling.’ On the whole though, by this time Rodney gave me less of his ‘patrician line’. However, things had not yet reached the pass that I could tell Rodney my theory about him.
This theory, you will already have guessed, was that he was little better or little worse or whatever than an adventurer, not to say, a potential crook. I did indeed know that his affairs had reached a serious state because of some of the telephone conversations that I overheard and because of the bills that kept arriving. The nicest thing was that Rodney paid the whole of the Paris trip. It is true that he hadn’t paid for his rent for some weeks; it is also true that his trip to Paris was intended as an investment; nevertheless I think it was very lovely of him to have paid the Paris trip when he was up to his eyes in debts. Let me say that until the last day or so the Paris trip was everything I could ask or that money could buy. Also, though I don’t think Rodney realized this, it was a great relief to me not to be committing adultery in Henry’s house (for in a sense it was Henry’s although it belonged to me).
It was only the last day but one of our trip, when we were sitting at a café looking at the Fontainebleau twiddly staircase and drinking Pernod that Rodney began to press his further suit. I had been expecting it, of course; indeed it was the choice that lay ahead, the inevitable decision, and all the other things that I had so hoped would not happen but that I knew would. He asked me, in fact, to leave Henry for him. At first he just said it was what we both wanted. Then he said he loved me too much to see me go on living with Henry in such a dead, pretence life, getting more bitterly whimsical and harder every year. Then he said I was made like him to use life up and enjoy people and things and then pass on to others. It was all very unreal; but if he had only known it was exactly this confidence trick part of him that attracted me. I could quite clearly see the life of travel and hotels we should have on my money and the bump there would be when we got through my money which I think Rodney would have done rather quickly. But it was the bogusness, the insecurity and even perhaps the boue beneath, for which I had such a nostalgia.
Somehow, however, he didn’t grasp this or perhaps he was too anxious to secure his aims. For he suddenly changed his tone and became a pathetic, dishonest little boy pleading for a chance. He was desperate, he said, and it must look as though he was after my money, for he was sure I had put two and two together. This I had to admit. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘then you know the worst.’ But he begged me to believe if he could have me with him, it would be different. He had real talent and he only needed some support to use it. Did I understand, he asked me, exactly what his life had been? And then he told me of his background – his father was a narrow, not very successful builder in a small Scotch town – he described to me most movingly his hatred of it all, his hard if dishonest fight to get into a different world, the odds against him. It was I, he begged, who could get him on to the tram-lines again.
I don’t think I’m very maternal really, because I didn’t find myself moved; I only felt cheated. If I hadn’t been sure that in fact whatever he said, life with Rodney would have been much more like what I imagined than what he was now promising, I should have turned him down on the spot. As it was I said I must think about it. He must leave me alone in London for at least a fortnight and then I would give him an answer. He accepted this because anyway he had business in France, so I returned to London alone.
Henry was glad on his return to find Rodney absent, I think. And in a short while he was even more glad still. Or, at any rate, I was, because if Rodney had been in our house I think that Henry would have hit him. This, of course, might have fitted into Rodney’s ideas of the violence of life, even if not into his view of civilization; and probably Rodney being much younger he would have won the fight, which would have made me very angry because of Henry. But it is just possible that Henry would have won and this would have made me very sad because of my ideal picture of Rodney.
What put the lid on it (as they used to say at some period which I’m not sure of the date of) for Henry was a visit he made to his mother shortly after his return, when he discovered that Rodney had borrowed money from her. I could only think that if Rodney could get money from Henry’s mother he had little to fear about the future (and maybe if my future was joined to his, though precarious, it would not founder). But Henry, of course, saw it differently and so did I, when I heard of the sum involved which was only £50, a sum of money insufficient to prevent foundering.
Hardly had Henry’s mother dealt Henry’s new-found friendship a blow from the right, when up came les jeunes filles and dealt it a knockout from the left. It seemed that they had busily decorated and furnished two flats for American friends of Rodney’s – one for Mrs Milton Brothers and one for Robert J. Masterson and family – and as these American people were visiting the Continent before settling in England, the bills had been given to Rodney to send to them. The bills were quite large because Rodney had told les jeunes filles not to cheese-pare. Now Mrs Brothers and Mr Masterson and family had arrived in London and it seemed that they had already given the money for les jeunes filles to Rodney plus his commission. Jackie said, ‘You can imagine what it makes us look like,’ and Marcia said, ‘Yes, really it is pretty grim.’ Then Jackie said, ‘We look such awful chumps,’ and that I think was what I agreed with most. Henry said he felt sure that when Rodney returned, he would have some explanation to offer. I didn’t think this likely and I didn’t think Henry did. ‘Well,’ said Jackie, ‘that’s just it. I’m not sure that Rodney ought to return because if Mrs Brothers goes on as she is now, I think there’ll be a warrant out for him soon.’
I felt miserable when they had gone and so did Henry, but for different reasons. All I could find to do was to pray that Mrs Brothers should die in her bath before she could start issuing warrants. Henry said. ‘I only hope he doesn’t come near this house again, because I’m not sure what my duty would be.’
Then, the very next morning, at about eleven o’clock the telephone rang and it was Rodney. I told him what Henry had said and we agreed that it was most important that he should come to the house when Henry was out. He came, in fact, just before lunch.
I had expected him to look a little haunted like Humphrey Bogart sometimes used to in fugitive films; he did look a little hunted but it wasn’t quite like the films. Less to my taste. As I looked at him, I suddenly thought of something. So I made an excuse and ran upstairs and hid my jewel box. I would have hated to have been issuing warrants for Rodney. Then we had a long chat and something more. About that I will only say I have rather a ‘time and a place’ view and so it ended things as far as I was concerned with a whimper rather than a bang. As to the chat, I said that I had thought things over and the answer was no, very reluctantly. And when people say ‘you don’t know what it cost me’, I think it’s rather stupid because they could always tell you. So I will tell what this cost me – it cost me the whole of a possible, different life with someone very attractive. I shall always regret it when the life I am leading is particularly boring, which it often is. But that, after all, is the nature of decisions. The answer had to be no. And I do not despair of other chances. But life is, indeed, a cheat.
What Rodney said after my negative answer was a pity. He went on again about how soon I would become a hard little bitch and rather depressing with all my ‘amusing’ talk. He even said, ‘I should think you might go off your head. People who get the idea that they can make a game of other people’s lives often do.’
I must say that I thought, everything considered about Rodney’s own life, this was a bit too much. And in any case all this toughness and bullying was all right when Rodney was pressing his suit, but now that the suit had been pressed and sent back, I thought it all rather boring. And so I changed the conversation to the warrant that might be out at any moment. Rodney was well aware of this, he said, and he had almost enough but not quite to get abroad that night. I said I would see what I could find in ready cash, because obviously cheques would be no good. He didn’t seem sure about this, but I stuck to my point, emphasizing how little he understood money matters as evidenced in his life.
While I was looking for what cash I had, he went upstairs to the lavatory and I heard him walking about in my bedroom so I was glad for his sake that I had hidden my jewel box. And I did find enough to help him overseas, because I had put some aside in case he turned up although I did not tell him this. Away, looking rather hunted but still very handsome, he went out of my life.
It was all rather an anti-climax without Rodney, although his name was kept alive, what with Henry’s mother, and les jeunes filles, and the Americans, and Mr Brodrick furious at only having a first chapter, however brilliant, after paying so much in advances. But all this was not the same for me as Rodney’s physical presence, not at all the same.
It was only a month later that it got into the papers in quite a small column that he’d been arrested for stealing some money at the house of the Marchesa Ghirlaindini in Rome where he was a guest. It mentioned also about Mrs Brothers’s warrant.
Well, I did miss the excitement of life with him and the decision that I hated so much when I had to make it; so I got talking to an old friend of mine – Mary Mudie who writes a long, gossipy column in a Sunday newspaper. And sure enough there was a featured bit about him the very next Sunday. All about the well-known people he’d dined with and about Lady Ann Denton, how he was one of the ‘many fortunate young men of talent and charm who had profited by her friendship’, and how valuable she was as a bridge between her generation and the young. Then there was a bit about Rodney’s great brilliance as a writer and how few who knew him in this capacity realized his double life. It told us with what expectancy connoisseurs of the fresh and original in modern writing had awaited his new book and how ironic its title Honour and Civility now seemed. So brilliant was the first chapter of this, it said, that an old-established publishing firm, famed for its cautious policy, had gone to unusual lengths to assist its young author. Realizing the supreme importance to a writer of congenial surroundings in which to work, the enterprising junior partner Mr Henry Raven even installed their brilliant protégé as a tenant in his own house. Then came a block heading ‘More Friend Than Lodger’ and it was followed by a bit about me. ‘ “I can hardly believe that Rodney was leading this double life,” said almond-eyed, brunette June Raven, well-known young London hostess and wife of publisher Raven, “he was more of a friend than a lodger as far as I was concerned. He was not only clever and witty, but he had the rare gift of easy intimacy.” ’ Dear Mary followed this up immediately with a mention of Rodney’s first book, Cuckoo – ‘a study of married infidelity in history’s pages as witty as it was scholarly.’ The paragraphs went on with a little interview with Rodney’s parents. ‘ “Rodney never took to the building trade,” his father told me in the front parlour of his typical unpretentious little Scots “hame”, “he always wanted big things out of life.” ’ And then Mary ended on a moral note, ‘Rodney Galt got his big things – bigger perhaps than he imagined when an Italian court on Monday last sentenced him…’ It was a sad little article, but I did think it was clever of Mary to have made so much of what I told her.
I’m afraid Rodney will be very upset by the piece about his parents, but he did say very nasty things to me. And Henry, too, won’t like the ‘more friend than lodger’ part, but Henry ought to pay for my being faithful to him too, I think. At least that’s how I feel, after life has presented me with such awful choices.
Sure enough Henry read Mary’s article and got into a terrible rage. ‘I’m pretty sure it’s actionable,’ he said. So I looked very nonchalant and said, ‘I don’t think so, darling, because I supplied Mary with all the information.’ Then he looked at me and said, ‘I think you should be very careful, June. This sort of mischievous behaviour is frequently a danger signal. It may seem a strange thing to say to you but you’d only have yourself to blame if you went off your head.’ He was trembling when he went out of the room, so I think it likely that he’d known about me and Rodney for some time.
Well, there you are – both Henry and Rodney take a ‘psychological’ view of me. But as I said before I often think that common sense views are wiser. I spoke before of my old nurse and what she used to say of me was, ‘Miss June wants to have her cake and eat it.’ Well, so do most people one meets nowadays. But I think perhaps I want it more than the rest, which makes me think that in the end I’ll get it.