happened during the day was embroidered for Robert at night – the books she read were only used as a bridge between their two minds. The style was parenthetic, for she could not take leave even of a sentence. So many brackets scattered about gave the look of her eyelashes having been shedupon the pages. When she had written ‘Yours, Muriel’ or, later, ‘Your Muriel’, there was always more to come, many postscripts to stave off saying good-night. Loneliness, longing broke through again and again despite the overlying insincerity. She had – writing in her room at night – so wanted Robert. Like a miracle, or as a result of intense concentration, she had got what she wanted. Kneeling before the drawer, with the letters in her hand, she was caught up once more in amazement at this fact. ‘I got what I wanted,’ she thought over and over again.
His letters to her had often disappointed, especially in the later phase when possessiveness and passion coloured her own. Writing so late at night, she had sometimes given relief to her loneliness. Those were momentary sensations, but his mistake had lain in taking them as such; in writing, in his reply, of quite other things. ‘But did you get my letter?’ Muriel now read – the beginning of a long complaint, which she was never to finish reading; for the door opened and Robert was staring at her with an expression of aloof non-comprehension, as if he had suddenly been forced to close his mind at this intimation of her character.
Muriel said shakily: ‘I came across our old letters to one another – or rather mine to you … I could not resist them.’
He still stared, but she would not look at him. Then he blinked, seemed to cast away some unpleasant thoughts, and said coldly, holding up a letter which she still would not glance at: ‘Lady Bewick is running this dance after the garden party. I came up to ask how many tickets we shall want.’
‘I thought you were taking Latin,’ Muriel said naively.
‘They are having Break now.’ And, indeed, if she had had ears to hear it, she would have known by the shouting outside.
‘I should let her know today,’ Robert said. ‘Whom shall we take?’
Muriel was very still. Warily, she envisaged the prospects – Hester going along, too. Hester’s brown, smooth shoulders dramatised by her chalk-white frock. Robert’s glance at them. Muriel’s pale veined arms incompletely hidden by her lace stole. Perhaps Hester was a good dancer. Muriel herself was too stiff and rather inclined, from panic, to lead her partner.
‘Why could we not go alone?’ she asked.
‘We could; but I thought we should be expected to take a party.’
‘Whom do you think?’
‘I had no thoughts. I came to ask you.’
‘I see.’ ‘He wants it every way,’ she thought. ‘For her to go, and for me to suggest it.’ She tied up the letters and put them away.
‘You should take Hester,’ she said suddenly. She began to tremble with anger and unhappiness. ‘I can stay at home.’
‘I had no intention of taking Hester.’
‘I suppose you are angry with me for reading those letters. I know it was wrong of me to open your drawer. I have never done such a thing in my life before.’ She still sat on the floor and seemed exhausted, keeping her head bent as she spoke.
‘I can believe that. Why did you now?’ he asked.
For a moment, gentleness, the possibility of understanding, enveloped them; but she let it go, could think only of her suspicions, her wounded pride.
The tears almost fell, but she breathed steadily and they receded. ‘I was bored. Not easy not to be. I remembered something … I was talking to Beatrice about it yesterday … I knew I should have written it somewhere in my letters to you. I was sure you wouldn’t mind my looking.’ Her excuses broke off and at last she dared to look at him. She smiled defiantly. ‘I wrote them, you know. You seem as cross as if they were written by another woman.’
‘They
Angel Payne, Victoria Blue