If you could believe that people were so simple, and Waldo couldn’t quite, but hoped. Dignity is too hard won, and lost too easily.
“Well, if you’ve decided it like that, between yourselves,” he said, “I congratulate you, Arthur.”
It made him feel like Arthur’s elder brother, which in fact he had become.
While Arthur’s overgrown-boy’s face was consoled by this simple arrangement. He went on simply to fill the greased tins with dough.
Not long after, Waldo overheard in the bus that Mrs Feinstein had died. It was a shock to him, not because he had felt particularly close to Mrs Feinstein, but the unexpectedness of her death found him abominably unprepared. (He would have felt equally put out if Mrs Feinstein, if anyone, Arthur even, opened the bedroom door without warning and caught him in a state of nakedness examining a secret.) At first he felt he didn’t want to overhear any more of the rumour the bus was throwing out at him. Then he decided to listen, and perhaps turn it to practical account.
To be precise, Mrs Feinstein had died several weeks ago, the informant was continuing, and old Feinstein and the daughter had now come to sort out their things before disposing of the house, it was only understandable, what would a man a widower want with one house in the city and another at Sarsaparilla.
The bus ran on.
Waldo was relieved Arthur hadn’t found out about Mrs Feinstein’s death. He couldn’t have. He would have announced it immediately.
So Waldo kept quiet. He would have to write, he supposed, although, when you came to consider, he had barely known the woman. Even so, Waldo composed several letters, none of which was suitable, one being too literary, another too matter of fact, almost bordering on the banal, a third, though addressed to the father, suggested by its tone that it was intended for the daughter.
So Waldo decided to walk over to O’Halloran Road quietly one week-end. It was a Sunday, as it turned out, which made his decision more discreet, formal in a way. As he walked, it even began to appear momentous. Could it be that this was one of the crucial points in his life? His mouth grew dry at the idea. He had, if he wanted to be truthful with himself, thought vaguely, though only vaguely, once or twice, that in the end he might decide to marry Dulcie Feinstein. Now her mother’s death was helping a decision crystallize by introducing a certain emotional compulsion and inevitability. It was obvious they had both been waiting for some such occasion to drop their defences and accept an arrangement which could only turn out best for themselves.
As he walked along the roadside, thoughtfully decapitating the weeds, Waldo went over the ways in which he would benefit by marriage with Dulcie. On the financial side they might have to skimp a bit at first, because he would refuse to touch anything Dulcie brought with her until he had proved himself as a husband. Nobody would be in a position to say theirs was not an idealistic marriage. The ring — they would decide on something in the semiprecious line, of course, though he would not suggest an opal, as some women were foolish enough to believe opals bring bad luck. Then, the home. Undoubtedly he would benefit by having a home of his own. A bed to himself. And the meals Dulcie would prepare, rather dainty, foreign-tasting dishes, more digestible, more imaginative and spontaneously conceived. Because food to Mother was something you couldn’t avoid, and which she had always offered with a sigh. But it was his work, his real work, which would benefit most. The atmosphere in which to evolve a style. The novel of psychological relationships in a family, based on his own experience, for truth, illuminated by what his imagination would infuse. One of the first things he intended to do was buy a filing cabinet to instal in his study.
It was all so exhilarating. He wondered whether Dulcie would affect surprise. More than probably. He doubted whether any woman, faced with that particular situation, ever came out of it completely honest.
When he arrived at the house Waldo was surprised to find it didn’t look any different. He had feared it might be wearing an oppressive air. As it wasn’t he felt relieved, though he couldn’t help wondering a bit about the Feinsteins. They had seemed very fond of the old girl.
He went up, and into the long room in which his relationship with the family had grown. Now there was a smell of dust, of furniture disturbed, of new, glaring packing-cases. Waldo almost protected his eyes. And heard his breath snore backwards down his throat on discovering his brother Arthur seated with Dulcie on the sofa. They were facing each other, their knees touching. Waldo couldn’t help noticing Dulcie’s, because her skirt was drawn up higher than usual, exposing the coarse calves which filled her black stockings. For at least she wore mourning.
Dulcie and Arthur looked round, out of some intimate, not to say secret, situation in which they had been discovered.
Dulcie couldn’t help laughing, which made her look, you couldn’t say pretty, but healthy.
“Poor Waldo has seen a ghost!”
Arthur too laughed a bit.
“He got a shock because it’s me.”
It was certainly a shock. Arthur was wearing a coat besides, which he almost never did, and his hair was darkened to a deep chestnut by the watering it had undergone.
“Anyway,” he said, “I’m going now, because I’ve done what I came for. I still have a lot of messages to run, and you like to have Dulcie to yourself. Waldo,” he told her, “is just about the jealousest thing you’ll find.”
Waldo could get nothing out but a mumbling, “I I I,” at the same time propping himself against one of Feinsteins’ obscenely physical chairs.
But Arthur and Dulcie were again ignoring him.
“Arthur, dear,” Dulcie was saying, “thank you again. I am so touched.”
She was looking into her hand. She could hardly express herself, it appeared, as she sat on the sofa, in her black dress, turning her face at last towards Arthur. Although her mother had died, Dulcie’s was not a mourning face. Her expression, rather, attempted to offer joy to those she addressed. Her eyes shone, no longer like those of a suppliant spaniel, but a woman, Waldo feared, of some experience and certainty.
“You can tell if you like,” Arthur said. “Otherwise people may feel hurt.”
“I shall have to make up my mind,” Dulcie answered.
She was offering her face almost as though for a kiss. Waldo forced himself to concentrate on the ugly shadow of Dulcie’s encroaching moustache.
“For the moment,” she was saying, “I’d like to keep it as something between ourselves.”
“That’s up to you,” said Arthur.
He was trying to imitate a man giving his permission, but had to finish it off with a boy’s wriggle of his fat neck. After that, he left.
Waldo was embarrassed, not only by the situation, but by the shambles of a room, the clutter of old newspapers, and the packing-cases which Dulcie, apparently, had been filling dutifully with ornaments and books.
“I’m sorry if I interrupted,” Waldo felt he ought to say.
He was glad he hadn’t composed a speech to suit his intention, because certainly he would have forgotten it.
“It was nothing,” said Dulcie, “nothing.”
It didn’t sound convincing, and she got up and emptied her hand into a little tortoiseshell box, which she took out of one of the half-packed cases, and which Waldo had noticed in a cabinet in the days of false permanence.
“What I came to say was really of no importance either.” Perhaps that was going too far. “I mean,” he said, “it is not of immediate importance, because Mrs Feinstein, and nothing I can say in sympathy will help,” he said, “either you, or your father. Or Mrs Feinstein.”
He was pleased with that, its humility.