John Thomas & Lady Jane

I’m
washing myself, now I’m putting a dress on, now I’m going downstairs, now I’m
opening Clifford’s door, now I’m going to say good morning.’ Like Domestos, she
was going round the bend.

Chapter II
    ---------------------
     
     
     
    I T WAS HER father, Sir Malcolm, whom
you will remember was once an RA. He warned her. ‘Look out,’ he said. He was
big, burly, beefy — he would have looked ideal on a butcher’s block.
    ‘Connie, I hope you’re not putting
too great a strain on yourself.’ He could not stand his son-in-law, but then
his son-in-law could not stand. Now he came after her with his queer Scottish
persistency and a glass of malt whisky. Once a waiter in a restaurant asked if
he wanted some ice in his malt and he said, ‘Ice? Do you not know what it did
to the Titanic?’
    ‘You are not yourself Connie,’ he
said.
    And she said, ‘Then who am I? I’d
love to know. I might be someone important.’
    ‘You’re running for a fall, the pair
of you.’
    ‘There isn’t a pair of me,’ she said,
looking round.
    ‘I find this house depressing in
spite of your taste in arranging it. I count the hours until I can get out
again.’
    ‘Don’t worry, I will count them for
you.’
    ‘It would be absurd, Connie, to ask
you if you are happy,’ he said.
    ‘That’s absurd of you to ask me
that.’
    ‘Would you say yourself you are
happy? Perhaps you are not taking another thing into account.’
    ‘What things do I have to take into
account?’
    ‘Yourself. You’re screwing yourself.’
    She wished he wouldn’t keep saying
‘screwing’, that was just a memory.
    ‘Well, you know I do not believe in
screwing myself. Do you think I will collapse?’ she asked.
    ‘Why, decidedly I do! I am sure you
will,’ he said. ‘What am I to do then to stop collapsing? Hurry, it might
happen any minute.’
    Their eyes met. He gave her one
glance then turned aside. By walking round him she was able to meet it again.
He hated Clifford, he loathed Clifford’s special Englishy style, he always
dressed on the left.
    ‘What you need is more life, you need
more enjoyment, you need younger people of your own age, you need to dance.’
    Constance didn’t tell him Clifford
used to make her dance the Charleston naked and kept touching her with a
feather duster which ruined her routine.
    ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘you need to flirt a
little, not too much, just a little squeeze of the boobs. Come away with me to
the South of France for a month or two. Come, Connie, it will be best for you
in the long run.’
    Why, thought Constance, do people
want me to do long runs?
    Sir Malcolm had a second wife, a
woman much younger than himself and with a much larger income, which he ‘looked
after’ for her, and she went her own way and he went his. (He with a
substantial sum of her money.)
    She sighed and said, ‘I can’t leave
Clifford in the winter.’
    ‘Why not?’ he said. ‘He’s got warm
underwear. He can sit nearer the fire.’
    As he had lived with her mother’s
obstinacy, he knew quite well when to give up. When you can do nothing with
people you leave them to do things to themselves. Every night Constance took
her clothes off and did things to herself. She looked up at him as he stood by
the door drinking his third malt whisky and watched him walk into it.
    ‘All right, Father!’ she said softly.
It was the quiet way his first wife used to speak to him — that, or ‘Get out,
you drunken bastard’, but Connie was somehow softer, warmer, by about 3°F.
    The meals with Clifford were always a
trial. Clifford judged every dish. Clifford scrutinized the food in an intense
way, using a jeweller’s glass. Sir Malcolm hated eating at Clifford’s table so
he ate off the piano. The wine was white claret and he hated that. When he
asked for a whisky and soda he felt the elderly butler begrudged it to him.
With this refusal Sir Malcolm nearly had a seizure. There was a devastating
sense of economy, especially in the drinks. The food was good and sufficient,
Clifford noted on a piece of paper everything Sir Malcolm had and priced it
accordingly and he would be served with the bill on his departure. When Sir
Malcolm wanted a whisky and soda, a frosty tension was felt in the air. Constance broke the tension and said, ‘I think my father would like another whisky and
soda.’
    The servants were all old servants of
the family and Clifford had to put his will over theirs. The servants were his
servants and