Deliverance by L. A. G. Strong

Author:L. A. G. Strong
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 1988-10-15T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 5

They went away for their honeymoon, shutting up the shop for a week. It was very hard for them to do this, but the doctor insisted that Georgie have at least a week by the sea, in some bracing climate, before facing the winter.

Georgie was worried. He spoke of getting someone in to look after things while they were away: but Grace would have none of that.

“What? Have a stranger poking and prying about and most likely robbing us? Not likely.”

Poking and prying! Georgie suddenly remembered his cache of tea, and said no more.

The honeymoon was a nightmare for him. It is doubtful whether even the sea air did him any good, so miserable was he. Away from the shop, Grace and he had nothing in common. There was a concert one evening, and, thinking to please her, he suggested hopefully that they should take tickets. Grace showed not the smallest interest. The most he could get her to go to was the new-fangled cinematograph pictures. These delighted Georgie. He was naif but sensitive, and he reacted directly to both humour and pathos. Grace sniffed.

“Silly, I call it,” was her comment: and she proceeded to argue, on lines of literal and prosaic realism, that the actions of the characters didn’t make sense.

“No, no, I suppose not. Not if you look at it like that.”

Georgie sat up straight, all his pleasure gone. He and the girl he had married were strangers.

The other aspect of the honeymoon, the bodily intimacy with Grace, left Georgie feeling both debased and inadequate. Emotionally undeveloped, and confronted with the wrong girl, he suffered a profound shock. There was nothing abnormal about him, but natures such as his need all the help a positive instinct can give them. Robbed of that, he was bound to fail. Only once or twice, when self-pity or dismay made her vulnerable, had he ever wanted to touch Grace. Nothing but care and genuine tenderness could have awakened him towards her; and, as often happens with such pietistic and prudish natures, once the conventions were satisfied by marriage she was capable of an avidity which repelled and frightened him.

The effect of all this on Georgie was disastrous. Again having nothing against which he could measure his experience, he concluded that he was a freak, an outcast, since he found no pleasure at all in something which the rest of the human race seemed to regard as a major delight. Worse, he knew that he was failing Grace in a contact from which she seemed to expect even more than tradition had suggested should belong to it.

It was a relief to get back to the shop and start work again; but, from the first day, things were different. It was Grace’s shop now. There was no doubt about that. She took charge of shop and Georgie too. Georgie had to wear a yellow canvas apron and work like a donkey. He found himself ordered about, sent to bed, made to get up and make early morning tea, wear a collar and tie all day long, and shave first thing each morning.

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