A Voice Like Velvet Read online

  Ernest, however, had a particular affection for Tredgarth, The Ridgeway, Horsell, Woking. He often pleased Marjorie very much by saying he had never been happy anywhere else, and that Tredgarth, in spite of its frightful name, had brought him a happiness he had never known before.

  ‘And by that, of course, I mean you have brought it, Marjorie! For it was your house!’

  Ernest paid compliments in rather a stately manner. He was a bit ponderous, rather as if he was reading it out to fifteen millions at six o’clock, or to twenty millions at nine o’clock. But although he said this and laughed, she usually blushed, for he was always sincere.

  ‘It’s nice of you to say so, Ernest.’

  ‘I mean it.’

  ‘I know you do.’

  They had the habit of linking arms and wandering around the house or the garden. There were little stone toadstools, and carved garden imps called Rufus and Redbreast. A small, pale boy, in stone, called ‘Norman’ in gilt lettering, was standing beatifically under a fine tree with his hands extended as if measuring the air. There was a little garden shed for Shorter, the gardener, to have tea in. Being a BBC official, the question of alcohol, for Ernest Bisham, needed intensely delicate thought, yet it seemed reasonable to fill Tredgarth cellars as full as possible in case of weekend guests. They were not obliged to drink. There was always a pin of Best Bitter, and a thinning shelf of gin, whisky, brandy, port and sherry. The cigar department was so depleted that there remained only a box of a hundred Coronas from Throgmorton Street, and two boxes of fifty from Piccadilly. The garden was full of leeks and sprouts and celery dug into trenches, though in another part there were delphiniums, forget-me-nots, fuchsia and dahlias. Marjorie and Ernest were both rather vague about gardens and staff arrangements, leaving most of it to Bess, who more or less lived there with them. Bess disappeared at long intervals, but always turned up, usually in the morning after a tinny toll call which asked: ‘I’m in Folkestone, is the bath water hot? I heard you at eight, Ernest, you sounded rather hoarse.’ Within two hours she would arrive in very large boots and a tin helmet and, ‘Oh, a hundred Churchman Number One, for Ernest, canteen prices—or are you saving your voice?’

  Generally speaking, it was calmer when Bess was away, for the servants didn’t worry about anything, least of all work, and when she came back, they did, and it was never long before one of them was being threatened with the sack, Marjorie privately protesting: ‘Please, Bess, don’t offend them, we only get servants at all because Ernest happens to be Ernest Bisham, the announcer. And even under these circumstances the servant problem is becoming increasingly difficult.’ But Bess said that no young person ought to take a servant’s job in these days unless they were pregnant. She saw women down coal mines, even, and applauded the Russian women fighting at the front. ‘Why don’t you look for an elderly couple? That’s all you need for this place.’

  At dinner, Bess often looked quite feminine, especially after her masculine and muddy arrival as an ATS sergeant. Her grey hair was a bit short, but that was regulations; she was fond of saying that her hair had at one time reached down to an unmentionable part of her back, but even now she went in for oddly feminine blouses with little tassels down the front. If there were guests to sherry or ‘warish’ dinner, she behaved formally and discussed the War Cabinet. If there weren’t, the subjects she chose depended on whether Ernest was at home or at the BBC. If he was at his place at the head of the table, she discussed what she would like to do with one or two of the other announcers; if she was alone with Marjorie, she never failed to lower her voice and say: ‘Well, my dear—is it a success?’ For Bess had been more or less the cause of the marriage, or at any rate the instrument of it, and for a time there did seem to be a doubt of its success. But that applied to the early stages of any marriage, didn’t it? Was it a success now? Marjorie was rather difficult to draw out. It was often difficult to know if she was merely reserved, or somewhat evasive.

  Marjorie Bisham knew quite well what it was that Bess wanted to know. Bess had the forgivable curiosity possessed by some spinsters of her age. And if she sometimes felt a small irritation over Bess, she didn’t remember it for long and had developed quite a deep affection for her. She often felt sorry that Bess had never married, and now never would, and she once told Ernest she thought Bess was happier in her present state; Bess made a sort of profession of being a snob. ‘She enjoys the reflected glory you bring her, Ernest! You must never let her down,’ she teased him. But it didn’t matter being a snob if you enjoyed it and were one for a particular reason. She and Ernest both had to be rather snobbish now and then, even if they were only pretending. At times perhaps they did really feel above other people. Then, it was awful to catch yourself at it. Everyone lived in a particular little world—didn’t they?—within the outer world, and they had to live according to those particular standards. The alternative was to get out and live in another one. Mrs Bisham now knew that this particular world was one which she had chosen deliberately—having got out of another which hadn’t fitted her at all. She had confided the details to Bess just before she’d decided to marry Ernest. And perhaps because Ernest, too, had been living in a world which hadn’t suited him at all, the new world he found with Marjorie succeeded instantly—in the outward and practical sense.

  In the emotional sense, however, as Bess suspected, it had not succeeded at all. Ernest and Marjorie had married without really being in love with each other at all. It was one of those practical and smiling marriages and there evidently weren’t going to be any children. Marjorie got sad-eyed and went for long walks in a large white mackintosh, returning to have tea by herself in her room. Bess had to have tea with Ernest in the drawing-room, when she would be at leisure to demand what on earth was the matter with him. Sometimes, even, guests would arrive, having been invited by Marjorie herself, but who now genuinely pleaded a headache. The elderly Wintles might come, bringing their brownish son called Jonas, who was said to have already had a tragic life, though not yet twenty-one, and, with his dead brothers, had been amongst the First of the Few. Poor Jonas seemed to admire Ernest, in a distant sort of way, and was always saying he was ‘browned off’ about this or that. He seemed to admire Marjorie, in a poodle-like way, and when she wasn’t on view he would declare to Bess he was ‘utterly browned off to hear it. Can I do anything, Miss Bisham?’ But there seemed to be nothing he could do, or anyone else.

  There was one shadowy evening over muffins, when just such a situation caught her once more. Marjorie had pleaded a headache, though refusing a doctor, and the guests this time were a bunch of rather nice people called the de Freeces, three rather tall cousins, or some such relationship, who spent the days nodding their greying heads and saying that the war would first of all be over by the spring, and then by the summer, and then by the coming Christmas. Then they would have to start all over again from scratch. They came on this occasion because Marjorie wanted to go and do some local part-time work in a new factory. And they rang the rusty bell sharp at four, all ready to nod their heads and say it was all arranged about the factory, it was nuts, and it was two shillings an hour if it was Sundays. But of course Mrs Ernest Bisham wouldn’t want to do it for the money, they knew that, dear. Famous announcers must be very rich, and hadn’t Mrs Bisham a little money of her own, didn’t they say? And no doubt he had? Anyhow, they had such a charming house, all wandery and sort of part of the scenery, like a gingerbread cake. They arrived full of everything, and were ‘mortified’ to hear that Mrs Bisham was ‘indisposed’, making her sound like a famous actress who has really had a row with the leading man, except, of course, that in this case the leading man was far too charming. His manners were enchanting and it was such a thrill seeing the actual person who read the news over your wireless. It was fascinating.

  But Bess wasn’t at all fascinated; at least, not when the de Freeces had twittered away again.

  She said, about Marjorie:

  ‘I’m beginning to wonder wh
y you married her! It surely wasn’t because I suggested it?’ Though if it had been a glaring success, she would have claimed this at once. ‘Much better if you’d stayed as you were, Ernest. Much better.’ She sat with a leg thrown over a bony knee balancing a Coalport teacup. Her stockings never fitted her thin legs very tightly, and her spoon never fitted the Coalport saucer very well, because of the depth of curve there.

  Ernest, looking rather fat in a blue pin-stripe, stood by the high brick mantelpiece, staring with some embarrassment down at the log fire. He told her he wished she’d mind her own business and concentrate on a marriage of her own. He didn’t intend to hurt her; it was just a brotherly remark. She replied quite brightly that he couldn’t hurt her feelings like that; he knew quite well who she would have married if she’d had the chance, but men had never looked at her ‘like that’, least of all him, and so that was that. Then she said she really liked Marjorie, and she declared that Marjorie was not the ‘type’ to shut herself up in her room like this, she was too kindly. It meant that Marjorie was really becoming ill. You could be emotionally ill as well as merely having the measles. ‘But I suppose men can’t be expected to realize that! I like Marjorie much better than I thought I did. She’s all right. And you started off all right—what’s gone wrong? The first gloss has worn off, I suppose! Well, you’re very stupid. I hope you’re not behaving as if either of you is young? She is just right for you if only you give her a chance, Ernest, and handle her properly. It’s your fault if you’re pulling in different ways. Remember, she’s been married before. She knows something about men.’

  ‘I’ve been married before too,’ he remarked sombrely.

  ‘I should think the least said about that the better! What I’m trying to say is, if you wanted to play the bachelor, why didn’t you stay one? You’re still much too married to your radio, I suppose that’s it. All this success has gone to your head. You can’t treat Marjorie like that and expect to get away with it. She doesn’t look like a girl, but at heart she is one. Treat her like one.’ She stared across at him.

  He was large and he was certainly getting rather plump. His shoulders were extremely large. When he wandered to the piano and played some Chopin his backview looked massive and pompous. But he looked distinguished. His greying hair did.

  ‘I know you always pretend to think I’m a bore,’ she called through the music. ‘But you do listen to me, even if you pretend you don’t. Why don’t you buy her a dog?’

  The music stopped.

  His large head turned slowly and he was grinning.

  ‘Buy her a dog?’ he exclaimed, amused.

  She had the strange notion that now he was in profile he looked sleek and slim. The shadows, of course. He would make a magnificent cat burglar!

  A quaint litle shudder ran down her spine. Imagine a scandal like that! Their family! And an important man like Ernest!

  ‘You’re getting inhuman and pompous,’ she heard herself exclaiming. ‘We all are, perhaps. We’re so stuck up in our little world here. There’s danger in it and it’s time we grew out of it. So many important things are happening everywhere.’ She heard herself talking about China and Russia, and the new world after the war, and saying how could it be a better world unless individuals, actual individuals, started to improve themselves, and to rid themselves of their own little weaknesses? She said she was just as guilty as anybody else.

  But he was walking up and down with his cup and a piece of ginger cake and roaring with laughter about the idea of buying his wife a dog.

  ‘I meant a puppy, of course,’ she said crossly.

  He suddenly put down his cup and his cake.

  ‘She knows she can have everything she likes,’ he said a little sharply, and left the room. He didn’t bang the door. He seemed to slide through doors.

  His movements were oddly stealthy, weren’t they, for so large a man. Yet, for instance, you heard of huge men who could dance delightfully, whereas little men fell upon you like a ton of bricks. She supposed he had learned it in the studios. He would often talk about how you could leave the studio while somebody else was still on the air. He was often interesting about it at dinner. He would speak about ‘suspended microphones’ instead of ‘table’ ones. It was most interesting.

  And then, one Saturday, he did buy Marjorie a puppy.

  CHAPTER III

  THE moment reminded Marjorie of an occasion when she was very little. Her father had bought her a puppy in almost identical circumstances. Here was new proof that the history of our lives repeated itself. She hadn’t got on with her father, whose rather new title had gone to his head, and somebody had told him that the only way to win her love back was to buy her a pony or a puppy. As she already had two ponies, he bought her a puppy, and she felt at once that if he was capable of buying a little girl a puppy—somebody else had given her the ponies—he couldn’t be as bad as the neighbours said his title indicated. And it was only a knighthood anyway. She hugged him and pretended to herself that she didn’t a bit mind his full lips, and she pretended it was merely childish to think that love had anything to do with the shape of the mouth. She forced herself to kiss his mouth, and when his lips felt dry and hot and full against hers, she pretended it was only because he was old now that she didn’t like the feel of him. He dribbled, but that didn’t matter at all, he had bought her a Cocker spaniel, black. It was sweet. It writhed round, and yards of red tongue hung out, and shining white teeth flashed in the firelight. And although quite soon it was dead, and its donor too—they both met with a fatal accident in the farmyard via a new bull—the thought of them both returned, as such thoughts would.

  Marjorie had been brought up in the country kind of way, with plenty of money—or, rather, no awareness of it at all as a subject—and with all the familiar country attributes such as hunting, or following the hunt in cars, and shooting pheasants and hares, and playing tennis with drearies, and motoring out to some glamorous country hotel in the hopes of meeting a rich man—Daddy said always marry someone who was rich—who hadn’t got full, dry lips. Nearly all of them had, with tedious habits to match. There was something so dull about most men. You didn’t seem to meet one in ten who was worth talking to, and there was said to be a statistical shortage of men in any case, due to the Great War. So as for meeting one in a hundred who was worth real consideration? Their conversation was one long drawl, or else it was hearty and alcoholic fatuity. Was it because they were English? Suddenly it dawned on her that she was already bitter. Yet her function as a woman had somehow to be fulfilled. She was aware that she wanted to have children. She had never known her mother, who had died of Bright’s Disease when she was a very small child, and any supplementary guidance seemed persistently lacking. She was taught by strange governesses, none seeming to have the maternal touch, and she lived through one or two little country schools in a lost and dreamlike fashion. She needed individual attention, and somehow never got it. It was probably her own fault, she often thought. As for her father, he was a queerly impersonal man, busy at the life of village squire, without managing to impress very much. When the new bull trod on the spaniel and got her father against the wall, he was ill for quite a long time with his fractured pelvis. Then, certainly, he did seem to become aware of his daughter, and he died wondering why he hadn’t married again, if only to give her some brothers and sisters, and a set of uncles and aunts.

  Not a month after his funeral, Marjorie rather desperately lost her head and married the only possible man within range. He was called, ridiculously, Captain Bud. To her secret shame, she was to be called Mrs Bud. But she expected to lose herself in motherhood. Captain Bud hadn’t a penny, but he proceeded to get through most of hers in no time. He was a dreadful little man, and she knew it, but she was terrified of being homeless after being so safe. Her home had had to go to some unknown cousin under the entailed will, and to escape to London with Captain Bud, and to be secretly married there, seemed the only reasonable solution to her problem, and i
t passed for romance.

  Captain Bud had lived down the lane in a council cottage. He had a certain way with him, and he had dandruff on his coat collar. He was short, and people cattily said he would need a pair of stilts to marry Marjorie in. He was in an insurance house and didn’t say much about his title of captain. He was fifty-two. Marjorie had the notion that young men were bores, lots of girls didn’t like men of their own age, and she met Captain Bud at a hunt ball in Maidstone. Captain Bud, though quite properly introduced through suitable friends, had arrived without his white gloves, if, indeed, he possessed any, and she often felt that she married him solely because of this and the crumpled look of his tails. Everyone present treated him like dirt, and pointed to his dandruff in a Countyish manner, and although she wanted to treat him like dirt, something seemingly pathetic in his pasty face made her feel fatally sorry for him. She defied everybody by dancing with him, and afterwards lost her party and let him motor her to Tonbridge to a teabarn, where there was cream and night dancing. To her astonishment she noticed herself seeing him to his council cottage, which was an inverted procedure for a man and a woman, surely, and she heard herself agreeing to do it again on the morrow. When he kissed her, she was quite surprised to find he was good at it and his lips were quite intriguing. In about a fortnight she was telling herself she could ‘change him’, and at any rate she could brush his coat collar for him and stop people talking about his dandruff. He was decidedly a bit short for her, but it was all right, and she suddenly thought they were made for each other, it was perfect nonsense saying you had to marry somebody of your own age and your own class. She asked many of her Kent friends what they thought, but when they seemed rather quiet she put it down to envy. Captain Bud moved out of his council cottage and they rented a thin, tall house in Belgrave Square. The captain declared it was the grandest day of his pretty variable life, and he proceeded to hit the high spots in no uncertain manner.