“No, Henry’s not a kind man.”
“He doesn’t give you what you ought to have-love, care, tenderness.”
“Henry loves me-in his fashion.”
“Perhaps. But you want something more than that.”
“I used not to.”
“But you do now. You want-your island, Shirley.”
“Oh! the island. That was just a day-dream.”
“It’s a dream that could come true.”
“Perhaps. I don’t think so.”
“It could come true.”
A small chilly breeze came across the river to the terrace on which they were sitting.
Shirley got up, pulling her coat tightly around her.
“We mustn’t talk like this any more,” she said. “What we’re doing is foolish, Richard, foolish and dangerous.”
“Perhaps. But you don’t care for your husband, Shirley, you care for me.”
“I’m Henry’s wife.”
“You care for me.”
She said again:
“I’m Henry’s wife.”
She repeated it like an article of faith.
3
When she got home, Henry was lying stretched out on the sofa. He was wearing white flannels.
“I think I’ve strained a muscle.” He made a faint grimace of pain.
“What have you been doing?”
“Played tennis at Roehampton.”
“You and Stephen? I thought you were going to play golf.”
“We changed our minds. Stephen brought Mary along, and Jessica Sandys made a fourth.”
“Jessica? Is that the dark girl we met at the Archers the other night?”
“Er-yes-she is.”
“Is she your latest?”
“Shirley! I told you, I promised you…”
“I know, Henry, but what are promises? She is your latest-I can see it in your eye.”
Henry said sulkily:
“Of course, if you’re going to imagine things…”
“If I’m going to imagine things,” Shirley murmured, “I’d rather imagine an island.”
“Why an island?”
Henry sat up on the sofa and said: “I really do feel stiff.”
“You’d better have a rest to-morrow. A quiet Sunday for a change.”
“Yes, that might be nice.”
But the following morning Henry declared that the stiffness was passing off.
“As a matter of fact,” he said, “we agreed to have a return.”
“You and Stephen and Mary-and Jessica?”
“Yes.”
“Or just you and Jessica?”
“Oh, all of us,” he said easily.
“What a liar you are, Henry.”
But she did not say it angrily. There was even a slight smile in her eyes. She was remembering the young man she had met at the tennis party four years ago, and how what had attracted her to him had been his detachment. He was still just as detached.
The shy embarrassed young man who had come to call the following day, and who had sat doggedly talking to Laura until she herself returned, was the same young man who was now determinedly in pursuit of Jessica.
‘Henry,’ she thought, ‘has really not changed at all.’
‘He doesn’t want to hurt me,’ she thought, ‘but he’s just like that. He always has to do just what he wants to do.’
She noticed that Henry was limping a little, and she said impulsively:
“I really don’t think you ought to go and play tennis-you must have strained yourself yesterday. Can’t you leave it until next week-end?”
But Henry wanted to go, and went.
He came back about six o’clock and dropped down on his bed looking so ill that Shirley was alarmed. Notwithstanding Henry’s protests, she went and rang up the doctor.
CHAPTER eight
1
As Laura rose from lunch the following afternoon the telephone rang.
“Laura? It’s me, Shirley.”
“Shirley? What’s the matter? Your voice sounds queer.”
“It’s Henry, Laura. He’s in hospital. He’s got polio.”
‘Like Charles,’ thought Laura, her mind rushing back over the years. ‘Like Charles…’
The tragedy that she herself had been too young to understand acquired suddenly a new meaning.
The anguish in Shirley’s voice was the same anguish that her own mother had felt.
Charles had died. Would Henry die?
She wondered. Would Henry die?
2
“Infantile paralysis is the same as polio, isn’t it?” she asked Mr. Baldock doubtfully.
“Newer name for it, that’s all-why?”
“Henry has gone down with it.”
“Poor chap. And you’re wondering if he’s going to get over it?”
“Well-yes.”
“And hoping he won’t?”
“Really, really. You make me out a monster.”
“Come now, young Laura-the thought was in your mind.”