The False Inspector Dew

14

The news from Walter on Friday was worse than she had feared. The house was under offer. Lydia had booked a first class passage for two on the Mauretania, sailing from Southampton in fifteen days' time.

'For two?' said Alma. 'She still believes you're going with her?'

He looked away towards the elms on the far side of the Green.

Alma gripped his sleeve. 'Walter, what have you told her?'

He put his left hand gently over hers. It was shaking. 'My dear, you have been very sweet to me.'

'You're going, aren't you?'

He nodded. 'I can't do otherwise. Her solicitors are taking care of everything, even the selling of my practice.'

'But it belongs to you.'

'I may have built it up, but legally it's Lydia's. I signed papers when she paid for my equipment. She owns me.'

'No.' She buried her face in his jacket and hugged him. She sobbed convulsively.

That afternoon Alma did not return to the flower shop, and Walter telephoned the surgery to cancel his appointments. They walked along the towpath to Twickenham. In Marble Hill Park they found a quiet place beside an uprooted tree. Walter sat against the trunk and cradled Alma's head and shoulders. They talked for a long time. He admitted that the trip to America was almost certain to end in fiasco. Lydia would not be wanted by Chaplin or anyone in Hollywood. Her money would not last long there. Walter would find it difficult to set up a dental practice. Lydia would be angry and embittered.

'But she won't listen to reason,' he told Alma. 'She treats everything I say as an attack on her artistry. She says she won't be deprived of her destiny.'

'Then she's going, whether you are with her or not.'

'Yes.'

Alma was fighting for the man she loved. The fight was not with Lydia, who cared only about her career. She was pitted against Walter's fatalism. She had to convince him that he had a choice of his own. 'When you talked about your father committing suicide so soon after you were saved from the Lusitania, you seemed to be saying that it was a waste.'

'So it was. He might as well have drowned.'

'Aren't you throwing your own life away if you go to America?'

'My dear, I couldn't survive here without work, without a place to live.'

'You could live with me.'

'What?' For a moment that look of surprise bordering on panic flitted into his eyes. 'Oh, no -1 couldn't do that.'

She regarded him as steadily as she could considering what she had decided to tell him. 'Walter, I love you.'

His grip on her arm tightened. He closed his eyes. 'I feared that this was so.'

'Feared?'

'My dear, I have been selfish. I took advantage of your kindness to get sympathy. You have helped me to face up to my problems. But it must stop at that. We both know why — don't we?'

Alma had often sighed and shed tears over scenes like this in books, but now that it was happening to her she felt more bullheaded than romantic. She sat up and faced Walter and said, 'I don't expect you to say that you love me. I am twenty-eight years old and I have no experience of men. But I know what I am suggesting. I will not let you be destroyed by that fanatical woman.'

He shook his head. 'It would destroy you, Alma. Believe me, I am overwhelmed by what you say, but I am still a married man nearly twenty years your senior with no money of my own. Imagine the scandal it would create.'

'I have imagined it,' Alma said vehemently, 'and I'm indifferent to it. People who don't know the facts of the matter only betray themselves by gossiping. Please understand that I am serious.'

They started back along the towpath, and she pleaded her case all the way to Richmond Bridge and up the Hill to her house. Walter gently, but adamantly, refused to be persuaded. At the gate she asked him in.

'No,' he said softly. 'We must part now, with dignity.'

She saw that his eyes had moistened, and she could only guess at the thoughts of this unhappy, undemonstrative man.

She said, hardly believing it, 'Shan't I see you again?'

He shook his head. Then he kissed her.

She pressed her lips against his, trying to hold the kiss for ever. He put his hands on her face and gently pushed her away.

Alma said, 'I believe I could murder that woman.'

Walter frowned slightly and looked at her and the frown receded and was replaced by an expression that to Alma seemed very like enlightenment. The frown returned and he shook his head. He said, i shall never forget you.'

Alma put out her hand, but he had turned and was already walking fast down the Hill.