Andrew had to spend a week in Sweden, planning one of the special half-hour programmes which they did, from time to time, on different countries. He had sent a card to the Cartwells, giving them the address of his hotel, and on the morning he was due to leave there was a card in reply from Madeleine. It expressed the hope that he was having a good time, and ended: ‘Come and see me, when you get back.’ The injunction puzzled him slightly – it implied some kind of urgency without making it explicit – but he put it in his pocket and then forgot about it in the confusion of departure.
Carol always met him at the airport after trips of this kind. He went to the Bar to find her, and saw her sitting at a table by herself, looking towards the door. Her face had a tense look, and he wondered if she were angry about something. He would need to find out the trouble, delicately, and jolly her out of the mood.
‘Hello, darling,’ he said. ‘Good to be back.’
‘Had a good time? You look well.’
‘Fairish. Too much food and drink. Would you like another here, or shall we push on home?’
She disliked airport buildings and was usually glad to get away. He was surprised when she said:
‘Get me another, will you? I’m drinking gin and peppermint.’
Andrew got himself a whisky and brought the drinks over. It was probably best to behave normally, and follow her lead. Whatever it was would come out soon enough. He saw that her blue eyes had fixed on his with a probing steadiness that disturbed him; he picked his drink up, and looked at that.
She said: ‘I’m going to leave you, Andy.’
He was aware of a slight shiver that ran across his shoulders and down his spine; he hoped the tremor had not shown. The girl behind the bar called something to a colleague at the back, and her voice grated on him, raucous, almost unbearably harsh. He tried to look back into his wife’s eyes, but found he could not.
‘I’m sorry,’ Carol said. ‘I think it’s best to be direct about it.’
He looked at her hand, at the dull red polish of the fingernails, and thought of the times he had watched her paint and dry them; and of all the other small intimacies of their life together. From now on, for him, she would be groomed and clothed – friendly or hostile but always a stranger.
He asked her: ‘Who is it?’
‘David.’
He was not too numb to be amazed.
‘David? David Cartwell?’
‘Yes.’
‘It’s you he’s been seeing these past weeks?’
She spoke with some impatience. ‘Yes, of course.’
‘But …’ He choked back the trite pointless words which came automatically to his tongue. In a level voice he said: ‘Sweetheart, you want time to think things out.’
She shook her head. ‘No, I don’t.’
He had felt no jealous resentment when she mentioned David’s name, but now he began to resent him on her behalf. For him this was just one more in a series of adventures; Carol had taken it more seriously. He wanted to explain this to her without hurting her. It was not easy.
‘David,’ he said, ‘– I don’t want to run him down or anything, but I told you what Madeleine said about him …’
‘You mean, that he’s made something of a practice of this? I know that. In the past.’
‘And you think it’s going to stop?’
In a dry voice, she said: ‘One takes chances on people, doesn’t one? You did, on me.’
‘It was a good bet for eleven years. I’m not prepared to write it off yet, either.’
Her eyes searched his, and again he looked away.
She said: ‘You’re not going to make trouble, Andy, are you – about a divorce? I’m not asking you to do anything yourself; just divorce me on the evidence I provide.’
Andrew said: ‘We need another drink.’ She made no reply, and he took their glasses to the bar for replenishing. This time he got himself a double. When he brought them back, he started off on a prepared line:
‘David’s a fascinating character. I can see that myself, and I suppose the sexual angle adds quite a bit. His technique looks impressive, too. And we’ve been married a long time. It’s not so surprising that you should have gone temporarily overboard.’ She tried to say something, but he overrode her. ‘I know it seems serious to you. Perhaps it is serious, for him and you. Perhaps you’ll make a reformed character out of him. But let’s wait and see about that, shall we?’
She said, with the first signs of anger: ‘Don’t try so hard to be so bloody reasonable. What’s the next thing – that I go off by myself somewhere to get it all straightened out in my mind?’
‘I can’t see it would do any harm.’ He was a little angry himself. ‘It’s not so funny from my side, either, remember.’
‘I want David,’ Carol said. ‘I’m asking you to co-operate.’
‘And the children?’
‘I want to keep them if I can, and I don’t think you would really want them for the whole of their holidays. You can have any reasonable access, of course.’
The calculation infuriated him. He said:
‘And when David realizes that you’re getting too serious, and backs out the way he’s done before – what do you do then?’
She sighed wearily. ‘We’re in love. Can’t you understand that?’
‘I can see that you are. And that he’s wanted you to believe that he is.’
‘Look,’ Carol said, ‘I know David. I probably know him better than I’ve ever known you. We’re the same type.’
He thought he knew what she was referring to. ‘Leading a bit of a wild life before we were married doesn’t make you the same type as David,’ he told her. ‘Being as good-looking as you were, and mixing in that crowd, it was inevitable. But that’s nearly twelve years ago.’
‘Is it?’
‘You probably have a bit of a hankering for your youth. We all do. That doesn’t mean you would really go back to that kind of life if you had the choice.’
‘All right,’ she said. ‘I have to tell you, don’t I? To think I used to worry at one time about your being suspicious. Of George Price, particularly.’
‘George Price?’
‘And others. That kind of life, Andy – I never did abandon it. There’s no harm in your knowing now.’ She sat back, putting her hands together on her lap. ‘It might make things easier for you, I suppose.’
He felt the involuntary shiver again, and the clamminess of sweat down his back and along his legs.
‘How many others?’
‘Three or four. None of them was important, before David. That’s how I recognize the difference.’ The blue eyes stared at him. ‘I never turned you out of my bed before, did I? But I couldn’t sleep with you now.’
His legs were trembling; for the moment he wanted only to end this nightmare, to get away. He said:
‘What do you want me to do?’
‘For the present, you could go to a hotel. Or I’ll move out, if you prefer that.’
‘No,’ he said. ‘I’ll go. That’s all right.’
‘Did you get my card?’ Madeleine asked. ‘I wasn’t sure that it would arrive before you left.’
Andrew nodded. ‘Yes. I got it.’
‘It was difficult to know what to say. I knew from David what was waiting for you, but I couldn’t mention that, of course. I thought you might not want to come here afterwards, so I wrote asking you.’
‘I would have come anyway.’
‘I’m glad. What are you doing – where are you living, I mean?’
‘I’ve booked in at a hotel for the time being. I haven’t had time to look around yet.’
She smiled sadly. ‘I suppose it wouldn’t do for me to take you as a lodger. All sorts of possible trouble with the Queen’s Proctor.’
‘David?’
‘A friend of his who’s gone to Spain has lent him his flat. It’s just off the King’s Road.’
‘Madeleine, I don’t understand.’ He looked at her; it was as easy to look into her eyes as it had been hard with Carol. ‘Did you know it was Carol when you told me there was another woman?’
‘Not for certain, but I was pretty sure.’
‘She’s told me that – this isn’t the first time.’
‘I guessed that, too. I guessed that when I realized David was interested in her.’ She spoke with faint bitterness. ‘It’s not the chaste women that appeal to him. I suppose it should be counted in his favour.’
‘And the appeals don’t last. All right – tell me how long it’s going to be before this one peters out. You know how he operates, and I think I have a right to the information.’
‘He’s asked me to divorce him, too.’
There was a silence. Andrew said:
‘Why should he be serious now?’
‘Why, indeed? I had thought, some day, it might happen – I could hardly feel secure, could I? But one expects it to be a younger woman. Carol’s six years older than I am.’
‘Seven. She was thirty-two in June.’
‘David said thirty-one.’ They looked at each other, and Madeleine began to laugh. ‘It’s silly, isn’t it? As if a year matters, or seven years.’
‘Can I get myself a drink?’
‘Yes. Get me one, too. Scotch, I think.’
From the sideboard, he said to her: ‘I understand it up to a point. They’ve both been cheating for years, so there was every reason for them to get together. It went well. I was as ignorant as I’d always been, and you were as prepared to turn a blind eye, and take him back when he got tired of it. Then what happened?’
‘Calling them cheats doesn’t help, does it? And even cheats have feelings. I don’t know Carol well enough to know why she fell in love with David – except that I know he’s lovable. As for him, well, she’s very lovely. Lovelier than any of his other conquests. And then, if she fell for him … As I said, he’s never pursued chaste women. It was always kept very much on the physical level, on both sides. He was so busily concerned with demonstrating that he could master their bodies that their hearts just didn’t enter into it. Carol’s the first one who’s really gone after him. He would feel guilty if he didn’t love her in return.’
‘What about you? Doesn’t he feel guilty about that?’
‘There are degrees in guilt, aren’t there? And I’ve queered my pitch by being too understanding before. With me, the guilt is blunted by all those confessions. If he leaves me for Carol, he only sees it as wronging me a little more than he has done in the past – wronging her would be a different kind of betrayal. And he can always tell himself that it’s better for me, too – that I’m well rid of a bad husband.’ She tried to smile. ‘In fact, he’s told me that already.’
‘Yes, you know him,’ Andrew said. ‘And it’s true enough, I suppose.’
‘And you,’ she said, ‘are rid of a bad wife. A stroke of good fortune for both of us. We should be properly grateful, you to David and me to Carol. We might have gone on for years otherwise, mightn’t we? For a lifetime.’
He said: ‘I don’t know what I’m going to do. When I came here … I still didn’t think it was serious – on his part. I’d got used to that idea.’
After putting their drinks on the coffee table, he had sat down in an armchair. Madeleine got up from her place and came over to him. She put cool dry hands on his forehead and sat on the arm beside him.
‘Poor old Andy,’ she said. ‘It’s really hard for you, isn’t it? You’re losing innocence, as well as a person. I wish I could help.’
He had come to her, consciously, for sympathy, but her physical closeness, reminding him of his loss, distressed him. Restless, he got up and walked to the window to look out.
‘I cry at nights,’ she said. ‘Women are luckier than men, I suppose?’
He turned back to face her. ‘Go on talking.’
‘About what?’
‘It doesn’t matter.’
She smiled sadly. ‘No. It doesn’t matter.’