The Merry Muse by Eric Linklater

Author:Eric Linklater
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 1959-02-26T16:00:00+00:00

VIII

In the minority conspicuously untouched by the Dionysiac infection was Jane Telfer.

Jane was lonely, frightened, and unhappy. Simon had gone again to London — the War Office had wakened him at midnight, the Royal Air Force had flown him at dawn — and Yacky Doo had disappeared. She had gone again and again to his flat in the mews behind St George’s Church, and the pale blue door, as still it refused her entrance, had taken on a blank and mocking look. Desperately she wanted a reconciliation with him. She wanted to admit her theft — and then her loss — of that abominable book in its manila envelope.

She had looked in vain for Paula Moberley, who had gone to the Gargoyle Restaurant and persuaded Fred the barman to give it to her. — And how had Paula known what was in the envelope? Who had told her? Why had she lied, and been flagrantly dishonest, to get possession of it? — She must have known its value, and there was only one person who could have told her that.

On Monday night Paula had dined with Tom and Mona Murdoch, with Hugh Burnett, and with Max; and on the following morning she had returned to the Gargoyle and Fred had given her the book. So it was Max who had told her — told her its value and described the envelope — and would he have done that except under the compulsion of extreme emotion?

Jane was exceptionally well-balanced, but even the equipoise of sane and healthy emotions cannot prevent a girl from becoming ignobly and wildly jealous of a schoolfellow whom she has always detested, when she finds proof that her schoolfellow has become her father’s mistress. And that was Jane’s discovery. She had had her suspicions, and her suspicions had been reinforced by the gossip of her old friend Hester. She had tried to repel them, and to some extent had succeeded because she had always discounted everything that Hester told her. But now, confronted by her own deduction, she admitted both it and the humiliating recognition that Hester had been justified in all she hinted.

Paula was her father’s mistress, and Paula had stolen the book because her father, loose and garrulous in the intoxication of an old man’s love, had told her about it—just as Simon, in her arms, had broken a promise and told her. Jane had her sense of honesty, and admitted that she had got her knowledge of the book by a sensual and irrelevant argument, but, for the life of her, she could not see that an argument of that sort, so natural between her and Simon, was proper in the case of her father and her detested schoolfellow. Paula’s influence had been malignant, and by any standard of behaviour her association with Max was insufferable.

Hatred was a new experience for Jane. As a schoolgirl she had often said, of Paula, ‘I hate that creature’ — but the feeling had been superficial, a mere ripple of sensation that did not touch the thinking part of her brain.

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