After he had been engaged to her for seven years he felt that it was impossible to wait for her any longer. Human endurance had been tested to the limit. For seven years he had held her hand by the stile in the field, and it was beginning to pall at last.
It seemed to him that there must be more in life than these things.
He admitted that time had been when the simple fact of looking at her from a distance had ensured him weeks of fever and excitement, when the mere process of brushing against her on a tennis court had caused a state of nervous prostration.
Such follies belonged to the distant past. He was twenty-four now instead of eighteen. In the irony of his soul he wondered what Napoleon would have done if someone had offered him a box of tin soldiers; it occurred to him that Suzanne Lenglen in her day would have protested had she been compelled to play battledore and shuttlecock.
He was earnest, he was desperate, he was very much in love.
Saying good-night to her at half-past nine in the evening was a modern equivalent to the appalling tortures of the Spanish Inquisition. At these moments his legs twisted themselves inside out, his fingers clutched at the air, and his tongue got caught up in his uvula.
A low moaning noise rose in his throat, and he wanted to creep up a wall. Marriage seemed to be the one solution . . . Scarlet in the face, his hands clenched and his jaw set, he made his declaration to her father.
‘Sir,’ he began, ‘I can’t stand this any longer; I must get married.’
The father looked him up and down.
‘I can well believe it,’ he said; ‘but it has got nothing to do with me. Personally, for a boy of your type, I put my faith in long engagements. You’ve been engaged for seven years. Why not draw up a contract for another seven?’
‘Sir – we can’t wait any longer. When we look at each other, we feel—’
The older man interrupted him brutally.
‘I’m not at all interested in what you feel. Can you support a wife?’
‘No – yes – at least. I will find a job.’
‘Is there anything you can do?’
‘I can tinker about with cars.’
‘I see. Is that enough to make her happy?’
‘I sort of . . .’
‘You expect to make a girl happy when you’ve no money, no job, no qualifications, and the only thing you know how to handle is a spanner.’
‘Sir, I—’
‘Splendid. I’ll say no more. My daughter is twenty-four; she can do as she likes. I’ll pay for your wedding; but neither of you get a penny from me afterwards. You can work. I have a feeling your marriage will be a success.’
‘Sir, may I – can I – I . . .’
‘Yes, you can clear out.’
The wedding was good, as weddings go. There were church bells, white dresses, veils, orange blossom, and the ‘Voice that Breathed o’er Eden’.
The bridegroom tripped over his feet, fumbled with the ring, forgot his lines, and looked at his bride as though she were a lump of chocolate and he were a Pekinese.
There were champagne, speeches and tears; the afternoon ended up with a cloud of confetti and somebody’s old shoe. The bride and bridegroom left with nothing but five pounds, a couple of suitcases and a borrowed Austin Seven.
Their one stick of furniture was a tent.
‘My darling,’ he told her, ‘I cannot afford to take you to a seaside hotel, not even for a weekend. We must sleep under the stars.’
His bride was more practical than he.
‘We will motor to London in a borrowed car,’ she said, ‘and there we will find rooms and a job. But I must have a honeymoon first. Let’s spend it in the tent I used as a Girl Guide.’
It seemed to him that this was the most romantic idea that had ever penetrated the human mind.
He gurgled strangely and waved his hands.
‘A pig-sty with you would be Paradise,’ he said, ‘but to think of you in a tent . . .’
‘There will be a moon,’ she sighed, ‘and trees murmuring, and a brook rippling.’
‘I will slay some animal for your breakfast,’ he cried, his voice breaking, ‘and we’ll roast it over a roaring fire. You can wear the skin to protect you from the bitter cold.’
‘Don’t forget it’s June,’ she said quickly, ‘and we shall only be on Berkhamstead Common.’
‘How wonderful you are, darling!’
‘Am I?’
The Austin Seven bumped along the country roads.
In the evening they came to a wild stretch of heath that could be no other than their destination.
‘We must not pitch our tent too close to the road,’ he said. ‘I want to feel that I’m alone with you, miles from civilisation, with nothing around us but the tangled gorse.’
‘How shall we ever get the car over the rough ground?’ she asked.
‘We will leave it near the road, and we’ll strike inland towards those trees. I’ll carry the tent on my back.’
‘You look like a prehistoric man, passionate and savage,’ she told him.
‘I feel it, my darling.’
It was dark before they had found a suitable camping-ground, and the tent was hoisted with difficulty. It had a queer list to starboard, and looked like the relic of a past age.
‘We are like nomads,’ she said vaguely, her mouth full of potted meat. It was cold, and she wished she had a warmer coat.
‘Isn’t it wonderful?’ he said, trying to break the neck of a ginger-beer bottle. He had forgotten the opener.
After supper they sat outside the flapping tent, waiting for the moon that never came. Large clouds scurried across the sky.
‘Darling,’ he whispered, ‘to think we have waited seven years for this. At last we are alone together, really alone. I couldn’t have waited any longer.’
‘No, nor could I. Isn’t this the most romantic thing that’s ever happened?’
They sat for a few minutes more.
‘I think I’ll go in the tent,’ she said.
She disappeared, and he stood outside, smoking a cigarette.
His legs shook and his hands trembled. ‘This is the most beautiful moment in my life,’ he thought.
A sudden gust of wind blew at his hair. There was a patter in the trees, and a large cloud, hovering overhead, seemed to burst swiftly and silently.
‘Darling,’ she called softly.
He tiptoed inside. Another gust of wind blew across the heath, followed by the sheeting rain.
Two minutes later the tent fell in.
The grey dawn crept into the sky. The battered remains of white canvas fluttered hideously in the wind, like the torn rags of some long-dead explorer. A young man hammered at the pegs with the undaunted perseverance of the very great.
His clothes were sodden, his shoes were pulp. His bride, crouched in the fork of a tree, watched him with dull eyes. At last he admitted defeat, and kneeling in the comparative shelter of a gorse bush, he kept up a monologue that sounded like a chapter from James Joyce.
And the rain fell and the wind blew. Once a still small voice spoke from the fork of a tree.
‘Darling,’ it said, ‘I believe we’d have been happier at Bournemouth, after all.’
Two figures stood side by side on the edge of the London road.
‘I tell you it was here we left the car,’ he repeated for the twelfth time. ‘I remember this patch of stones.’
‘I’m sure it was further back,’ she said; ‘there was a broken tree stump.’
‘Well – wherever it was, it’s not there now. It’s been stolen; that’s all.’
There was a sharp note of irritation in his voice. It is not every man who spends his wedding night in a gorse bush. And now the car was gone, and in it their two suitcases – nothing remained to them but the clothes they wore.
‘Perhaps,’ she suggested, ‘this is a calamity that has been sent to test us.’
He said so-and-so, and so-and-so.
She looked about her vaguely.
‘I don’t see how they would help us,’ she told him. ‘Besides, I don’t see any. No, darling, the only thing to do is to smile and be brave. After all, we have each other.’
‘Darling, forgive me,’ he said.
Hand in hand, they wandered along the road.
Hope springs eternal in the human breast . . .
They walked for hours, but in the wrong direction. They found themselves in Tring. They had lunch and walked again; they found themselves in Watford.
They caught buses, they caught trains; they found themselves in London.
It was nine in the evening once more. The day had passed slowly, horribly, yet with a subtle swiftness.
As children lost in a wood, they wandered up and down the Euston Road. Shabby, rain-bespattered and unwashed, they looked like the remnant of a hunger strike march.
Suddenly her shoe button burst. Stifling a groan, she bent her weary back to fix the strap.
As she did so, her wedding ring slipped off her finger and rolled into a drain . . .
They stood on the doorstep of a lodging-house.
‘My wife and I want a room for the night,’ he said. ‘We camped out yesterday, and then our car was stolen, and so was our luggage.’
The woman glanced at the girl’s left hand.
‘My wife lost her ring, too,’ he added.
The woman sniffed and shrugged her shoulders.
‘You seem to have lost a good many things.’
‘We are telling the truth,’ he said coldly.
‘I don’t believe a word of your story,’ answered the woman, ‘but I won’t turn you out this time of night.’
Meekly they followed her upstairs.
‘The lady can have this room, and the gentleman the one at the end of the passage. This is a respectable house, and I’m a respectable woman.’
She frowned down at them, her arms akimbo.
‘And I’m a very light sleeper.’
There seemed no more to be said.
She turned and left them in the passage.
‘Good heavens! Have I got to creep like a thief to my own wife?’ he whispered fiercely.
‘Hush! she may hear,’ she whispered back.
‘Darling,’ he said, ‘you go to your room and wait for me. I’ll pretend to go to mine, and then I’ll come along to yours.’
‘Supposing the boards creak?’
‘I’ll risk it. Darling, I love you.’
‘So do I.’
He began to undress in his own room. The lodgings might be uncomfortable, but they were better than a gorse bush.
What an appalling day it had been! But she had behaved marvellously. Any other girl would have gone home to her family.
To think he had waited for her seven years . . .
He opened the window, and as he did so the door of his own room slammed.
There was a noise of something falling on to the floor. He turned, and saw that the handle of the door had slipped off into the passage outside, while the useless knob lay at his feet . . .
The next morning he bought her a wedding ring at Woolworth’s.
They moved to lodgings where the landlady was deaf, and where the door of the room bolted and double-locked.
It seemed to them that the world was theirs. The only trouble was that they had no money.
He left her alone while he looked for a job, and as soon as his back was turned she crept away to an agency. They must both work if they wished to live in comfort together.
How wonderful their life would be – the quiet suppers, the long evenings . . .
And, later, children playing about the floor.
They met at half-past six, he with his jaw set, a feverish glint in his eye.
‘Darling, I’ve got a job,’ he said.
‘How splendid!’
‘It’s all I could get, but it’s better than nothing. Anyway, we’ll have to-morrow in the day-time, all to-morrow.’
‘Oh! no,’ she told him. ‘I’ve got a job, too. I’m a daily companion to a lady in Golders Green. My hours are from nine until seven.’
He stared at her as one who has heard sentence of death.
‘You don’t mean what you’re saying!’
‘Why! Whatever’s the matter?’
‘My hours are just the reverse. From seven until nine.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Darling, I’m a night porter at a bank in Acton.’