SEVENTY-FOUR

Irma had not spared herself over the furnishing of her home. A great deal of work, a great deal of thought – and, in her opinion, a great deal of taste – had been lavished upon it. The colour scheme had been carefully considered. There was not a discordant note in the whole place. It was so tasteful, in fact, that Bellgrove never felt at home. It gave him a sense of inferiority and he hated the powder-blue curtains and the dove-grey carpets, as though it were their fault that Irma had chosen them. But this meant little to her. She knew that he as a mere man would know nothing of ‘artistic’ matters. She had expressed herself, as women will, in a smug broadside of pastel shades. Nothing clashed because nothing had the strength to clash; everything murmured of safety among the hues; all was refinement.

But the vandal water came and the work and the thought and the taste and the refinement, O where was it now? It was too much! It was too much! That all the love she had lavished was drowned beneath the mean, beastly, stupid, unnecessary rain, that this thing, this thing, this useless, brainless element called rain, should turn her artistry to filth and pulp!

‘I hate nature,’ she cried. ‘I hate it, the rotten beast …’

‘Tut, tut,’ muttered Bellgrove as he lolled in a hammock and stared up at one of the beams in the roof. (They had been assigned a small loft where they were able to be miserable in comparative comfort.) ‘You can’t talk about nature like that, my ignorant child. Good gracious, no! Dammit, I should think not.’

‘Nature,’ cried Irma scornfully. ‘Do you think I’m frightened of it! Let it do what it likes!’

‘You’re a piece of nature yourself,’ said Bellgrove after a pause.

‘O don’t be stupid, you … you …’ Irma could not continue.

‘All right, what am I then?’ murmured Bellgrove. ‘Why don’t you say what’s in your empty little woman’s mind? Why don’t you call me an old man like you do when you’re angry with something else? If you’re not nature, or a bit of it, what the hell are you?’

‘I’m a woman,’ screamed his wife, her eyes filling with tears. ‘And my home is under … under … the vile … rainwater …’

With a great effort Mr Bellgrove worked his emaciated legs over the side of the hammock and when they touched the floor, rose shakily to his feet and shambled uncertainly in his wife’s direction. He was very conscious of doing a noble action. He had been very comfortable in the hammock; he knew that there was a very slender chance of his chivalry being appreciated, but that was life. One had to do certain things to keep up one’s spiritual status, but apart from that, her terrible outburst had unnerved him. He had to do something. Why did she have to make such an unpleasant noise about it all? Her voice went through his head like a knife.

But oh it had been pathetic too: railing against Nature. How maddeningly ignorant she was. As though nature should have turned back when it reached as far as her boudoir. As though a flood would whisper to itself, ‘Sh … sh … sh … less noise … less … noise … this is Irma’s room … lavender and ivory you know … lavender and ivory’ – Tut-tut-tut, what a wife to be saddled with in all conscience … and yet … and yet … was it only pity that drew him to her? He did not know.

He sat down by her side beneath a small top window, and he put his long, loose arm about her. She shuddered a moment and then stiffened again. But she did not ask him to remove his arm.

In the small loft with the great castle beneath them like a gigantic body with its arteries filled with water, they sat there side by side, and stared at where a piece of plaster had fallen from the opposite wall, and had left a small grey pattern the shape of a heart.