Something had been taken away from her. Not Picus or Felix, but what they had made her think about. Apples of Iduna the goddess, given her to feed the Aesir, without which she pined without dying. What happened to Iduna and her apples after? Loki, Saturday, had stolen them and shut her up in a giant’s castle, and she had been waited on by elf-women, very pleasant in front, but round the back made out of hollow boards. Beastly hot day and no adventures. Business at grey offices in Lincoln’s Inn. The only woman she really liked married to a boy she did not. She was going to dinner there.
She remembered that the woman, her friend Lydia, had wanted once to marry Clarence. Might have married him until, one day, Clarence had made a scene: said that he could not leave Picus: that Picus needed him: had told Lydia that she did not love him: that it was a trick to get a husband: and had broken down badly after. Lydia had said nothing. And ‘had never been quite the same since.’ That said it exactly. Had probably married her slick young outsider to annoy Clarence. A real chorus-boy beauty with a spirit to match. She would dine there, in their pretentious flat, all shams. It pleased Lydia if her friends flattered her husband. Scylla knew that it might please her that evening if she shewed contempt.
So no sweet temper adorned her as she swung into the new sitting-room with its faked cabinets and painful majolicas, and saw Lydia in a too-short frock and a too-tight hair wave, and a too-pink make-up, reading the
Vexed deliberation marked the ivory forehead, her chief beauty. Her stockings were not drawn tight, and did not match. An intelligence made for children and learning and administration was adapting itself to marriage, with a gigolo, in a shaky business, in London, without capital, after the war. Would do it badly unless she broke him. Could not break him, he would twist and slip off.
A cathedral had better not turn mouse-trap, or a chalice a cocktail shaker. A ten-inch gun should not be trained on a mark that is not there.
And Scylla found that all she could do was laugh to see her friend so much in love.
And Lydia knew this. Also that Scylla had kept her freedom, was up to all their old amusements out in Europe, down in the South. Scylla saw Clarence continually and made fun of him. Might flirt with him, more curious things can happen, when her proper business was to marry too, and establish herself.
And both the young women knew that this meeting if inevitable was unfortunate, the end of a friendship from university to marriage. Lydia had made a dangerous one. God only knew where adventure would lead the other.
The husband came in. Knocked over his wife’s book with a movie paper, and began to talk about himself. A row at the garage and how he had scored. Lydia frowned.
“Phil, Scylla is here.” He kissed Scylla several times, while she stared up to see what the prettier woman could do with her eyes; while she was loathing him because he had taken her friend away from her. To use Lydia’s practical brain and her unpractised love for his own little ends, to betray her, mishandle her, exploit her. And be dreadfully punished when Lydia recovered from her passion because he had laid familiar paws on her pride. Her heaven-born pride which might as easily move to hell. In a timeless instant she saw the woman Lydia would be, when she would punish her fancy-boy for being the slick little animal he was. And, during the transition, break both hearts.
At lunch, on Philip’s insistence, she praised the table-setting, who had adored Lydia for being the world’s worst housekeeper. It was easier when Philip dropped the garage and making eyes, and shewed frank jealousy. He was really afraid of his wife’s old friends, knew that he must detach her from them quickly. And Lydia revelled in his authority, her mind storing it up for later, for part of the interminable, intolerable score they would have to recite to one another. . . . In a house where there would be no children, nor any garden for forgiveness full of the other’s favourite flowers.
