Mr Bowling Buys a Newspaper

‘Now, Ivy, you know quite well I’ve applied. They refused my application.’

‘There you are, then.’

‘Now, Ivy, I have it on good authority they only accept a small percentage of applications, they get so many. It does not mean I have not got a case.’

Her expression continued the dialogue, triumphantly, without the need of words. He thought her cruel about it, and he was not cruel himself, always wondering what would happen to her if he did get a bit of cash together, and divorced her. Where would she go?

On this occasion, the bust up was much as usual. There were no tears, it was past that. She’d known he would come back with his tail between his legs, she supposed he was starving, she supposed he’d been sleeping with other women.

Then she slammed the door and went to bed with her Bible.

He hadn’t any money to get tight with, so he played the piano furiously for an hour, and then slammed a door himself and went to bed, not with the Bible, but with a box of matches and twenty Gold Flake. In earlier days, there would have been tears from the next room. He’d have gone in.

‘Now, Ivy, this won’t do, my dear child. Can’t we straighten this thing out?’

But there was nothing to straighten out. She just wasn’t meant for men.

When he first met her—and they only met at all by the merest chance, a tragedy in itself—she’d looked so kind and well-bred and quiet, he’d fallen for her at once. ‘That’s the girl for me.’ Her smile was a tiny bit pinched, and her lips inordinately thin, with a dark down on top, but her eyes were straight and bright, they were dark blue. It wasn’t Angel, but it was perhaps Angel with dark hair. He’d been taken to a musical show by the aunt he stayed with during his school days, not many months before the old girl died. She was to meet a friend at the theatre, and when they got there this friend had just bumped into a Mr and Mrs Faggot, and their daughter. ‘This is our daughter—Ivy.’ They’d made a party of it, getting the seats changed at the box office so they could all sit together. And if they hadn’t just chanced to see the Faggots, he would never have seen Ivy. But there, wasn’t history made up of these ifs? He and Ivy seemed to have got on fine. He hadn’t fancied the old birds much, but you couldn’t get on with everyone. ‘No, I’ve got musical ambitions, really,’ he confided in Ivy in the interval. ‘Not this kind of thing, I’m afraid. The more’s the pity. There’s money in it.’

‘Classical?’ she asked, sounding interested.

‘Well, yes. I’m not saying I spurn the other. That will sound young. But I want to write. And play, too, of course.’

‘The violin?’

‘No. Piano.’

They went to several concerts, and one summer night at the back of the Albert Hall he discovered she’d never been kissed. She was rather shocked at being set upon in the street, so to speak, but he laughed.

‘You mustn’t mind, Ivy. What other chance do I get? Your people watch me like a pair of hawks, I’m afraid they don’t approve of me at all.’

‘Yes, they do,’ she lied.

‘Well, won’t you kiss me? I mean, there’s nobody about?’

‘Don’t be so common, William. I know you aren’t common, but we oughtn’t to behave like servants.’

He laughed.

‘Why not? If we don’t feel like servants?’

Their very first row was when he slapped her bottom good-humouredly, never a habit of his with ladies, but solely in an effort to make her a bit more human. To his astonishment, she turned pale with anger and humiliation and fainted. When she came round, he couldn’t help laughing because, if she wanted the truth, she never let him touch her anywhere else. He laughed and told her.

The first shock of realising she literally knew nothing, was a pretty stiff one. Victorian novels and all that, he thought. And he thought of her stiff and starchy and exceedingly stupid old mother, and felt no longer surprised, only angry. Poor kid.

‘Look,’ he sat on the bed and said, ‘Don’t you worry, old dear? I’m not a lout, I’d simply no idea, honestly.’

He could see she believed him, but she was too embarrassed to do anything other than huddle in the hotel sheets, like a wan and rather too old fairy who has just been assaulted by a hitherto virtuous gnome. ‘Look, Ivy, we’ll just talk. Or, shall I clear out? Whatever you say, my pet? I’ll dress again and go for a bit of a tootle by the sea, what?’ They were at St Leonards, of all Godforsaken places, The Hotel Criole, a fearful affair up the hill. Her mother had known of it, needless to say, and practically insisted. The old crab. But he’d laughed—you knew what that kind of woman was. ‘Whatever you say, Mrs Faggot!’

‘It is what my daughter says, I should hope,’ the silly cow said. My word, to think that kind of person lived safely through her seventy years and then died comfortably in her bed.

But he laughed.

‘Hastings,’ Ivy confirmed, so Hastings it was, at least, they seemed to call it St Leonards down there, though it looked all one to most people.

It was a bit of a job explaining to Ivy, in one’s best public school manner, where babies came from. She seemed to know, and yet she didn’t. She vowed she did know. ‘Of course I do, Bill, but …!’

‘But what, my dear child?’ he smiled. ‘Silly old thing!’

She sniffed and sobbed.

‘Never mind. Don’t even think about it,’ he said kindly, he went out of his way to be kind and considerate for months and months. ‘It’s quite unimportant,’ he pretended.

When he decided it was time to stop pretending, they were in the half-house in Blythe Road, Fulham, a basement, ground floor, first floor affair, some other family living upstairs. The marriage was already gravely threatened; quarrels, hair falling out in the bath, and other nervous disorders too despairing to mention, he thought. It dawned on him that he ought to have seen Doctor Elliot about her ages ago, though Dr Elliot was usually too fuddled to be seen about anything except elbowitis. But he tootled along and tackled him in the saloon. ‘Look,’ he said, ‘confidentially, old man, I want to talk to you about the wife. She’s driving me balmy.’ He laughed, being slightly embarrassed, but old Elliot wouldn’t send a bill in, this interview would only cost a pint of bitter, eightpence.

He returned home quite jubilant, and although they’d had a bit of an Upandowner in the early afternoon, he was very kind and considerate.

‘Ivy, my dear,’ he said gently, sitting beside her. ‘I’ve got this for you. I think we might save our marriage even yet.’ He gave her the admission card Elliot had given him, to a local hospital. ‘Will you go? You will, won’t you? It’s your duty, surely, isn’t it?’

She gave one look at the card, coloured, swung round and gave him a fearful welt round the face.

He got straight up and walked out of the house.

His face was hot one side, cold the other. His heart was icy cold all over, all round inside and out. Bloody Hell! Women. Well, well! there was something to be said for homosexuality after all. He was through with women. Through with them? He’d never started with them. Merely married one of them, one who wouldn’t even go to a hospital and be examined, perhaps have a small bit of an operation. This was the end.

He strode about Kensington Gardens, not knowing how he had got there, but realising slowly he hadn’t the fare back and must walk, in shoes which let the snow through.

The park looked sad and nice. It was white, the trees were stark and white, and the people like cold, uncertain shadows, moving about the ice of the Round Pond.

The sun was blurred red and shapeless up there in the grey-black of more snow to come, it looked like a half-healed wound.

When he got back, his feet were wet and cold and he was worn out. He was too tired to say any of the things he had decided to say. What was the use of saying he was going to leave her? Where would he go? Where would she go?

And what would God say about his obligations?

What God might not say about hers, were not his affair. He was full of self betterment, and spiritual theories, and liked to feel that marriage led two people towards a goal.

What could he feel now?

She sewed and she said:

‘I’m sorry I lost my temper. I ought not to have done that. I apologise.’

This time it was he who sat and said nothing.

She said:

‘You must realise, William, a woman is different, physically, mentally, and spiritually, from a man.’