Elsa revealed herself as the most capable of cooks and managers. Mrs Higson proved the most efficient of ‘doers for’. The little house was kept as neat and bright as a new pin. Its equipment—including gas-supply and indoor sanitation—was entirely satisfactory. The local tradespeople were obliging. The Guildford shops were but half an hour away by bus. London could be reached in an hour and a half. Puttiford’s delightful common and golf-links began at the front door. All the loveliness of Surrey lay around them. They bought a small car, joined the golf-club, made friends with the score or so of agreeable people who were their neighbours, and ran up to town every week for a theatre or a concert. Everything, in fine, connected with their cottage was delightful except that, after a couple of months, Whalley discovered that he couldn’t write plays in it.
On the morning of the second day after their arrival he shut himself up in the tiny room between the kitchen and the sitting-room which he had arranged as his own special sanctum. Its one little window faced north, however; the sun never came into it; it was rather damp, and it had no fireplace. The oil stove smelt and he put it out, chilled down, became oppressed by the smallness and darkness of the room and the busy clatter of the kitchen next door. He adjourned to the sitting-room; but a clothes-horse draped with airing-sheets had been drawn across its fire. After half an hour of disjointed musings, he went out and inspected the garden, which, he decided, would want a lot of tidying-up. Then he remembered that his foot had caught in the bedroom carpet when he had entered it on the preceding night. Failing to find either tacks or hammer, he went off to the village to procure them. On his way he met the genial secretary of the golf-club and was easily persuaded to return to the cottage, collect his clubs, and play a very pleasant eighteen holes.
In the afternoon Elsa and he went for a long walk, returning just in time for tea. After tea he remembered the tacks and the hammer and hurried off to the village. The bedroom carpet, he discovered, required tacking down all round. To do this it was necessary to move most of the furniture. Descending to the sitting-room he found Elsa in the firelight. They sat there until it was time to change for the meal which they had decided to call supper. Afterwards he retreated again to his sanctum and for nearly an hour sat there, endeavouring to entice his thoughts away from their endless retracings of the past four months. They refused, however, to submit to any control—jumped to and fro, from his first walk with Elsa to their walk that afternoon—to the car they would have to get—to Mr Loxton and the unlikelihood of his living beyond seventy-five—to his own father’s death at sixty-eight—back to Elsa. Some day—incredible, desolating horror—one of them would die and leave the other. Every moment that he lived must be lived for her—with her. She was alone now—in there in the sitting-room. He had left her alone for a whole hour. But he must leave her alone—sometimes. It was impossible to think except of her when he was with her. And yet … that hour had gone from them. Yes—there was a deuce of a lot to be done in that garden. But the garden mustn’t be allowed to interfere with the things that really had to be done. Nor golf. It had been a very jolly game that morning—that iron of his at the seventeenth had been rather a beauty. Pleasant chap, the secretary. He had said that his wife would call. He mustn’t forget to tell Elsa.
He went back to the sitting-room and kissed Elsa passionately. They were drowsy after their long walk and went off to bed before ten.
The days slid away. The weeks began to slide away. There was always something to be done—something that had been done to think about. Sometimes for a week on end the one thing that must be thought about—that must be done—disappeared completely from view. Then, as they returned from a walk or a drive or a mild bridge-party, an abstracted silence would fall on him, and he would quicken his pace, or speed up the car. Arrived at the cottage he would hurry into the little sanctum, light the oil-stove and a pipe, and seat himself with Elsa’s pen and a writing-block. Mrs Higson’s curiosity was aroused by the elaborate designs drawn on the crumpled sheets which she found in the sanctum’s waste-paper basket. She had believed that the master was a literary gentleman, but formed now the conclusion that he was an artiss or something.
No other tangible result was produced by these spurts of industry which gradually became more and more widely spaced. Whalley, of course, explained to Elsa humorously what happened to him when he shut himself up in his lair.
‘I sit down and think that I have got to think of an idea for a play. I immediately stop thinking about anything for a bit. Then I begin to think about you. I draw curlimacews until I think again that I have got to think about an idea for a play. Then I think that it is utterly impossible to think of an idea for a play. The darned thing must come of its own accord. One has nothing to start from—one hasn’t the faintest idea where one wants to go. I draw a lot more curlimacews. Then I think that I have got to think of an idea for a play—that I must start earning some money straight away, and that, whether it is impossible or not, I must think of an idea for a play before I leave that room. I immediately stop thinking about anything. Then I begin to think about you and draw curlimacews until I think again that I have got to think of an idea for a play. It goes on like that until you open the door and tell me that it’s teatime. It’s exactly like trying to make a blind mule drink out of a bucket that isn’t there. There’s no use worrying about it. The darn thing must come of its own accord … Oh, I wanted to oil the lock of the garage.’
Returning from a call one afternoon towards the end of February, Elsa found him standing in the garden regarding the cottage with a curious frowning intentness. A drizzling rain was falling. She reproached him for standing in it without a raincoat.
‘The little shanty got on my nerves suddenly,’ he explained, rather shamefacedly. ‘I felt I had to get outside. It’s such a little box of a place. The ceilings are so low. I’ve felt all along, somehow … stifled … cramped …’
Her voice trembled a little.
‘But I thought you were quite happy here, dear.’
‘Happy? Yes, yes, dear, absolutely happy—you know that, don’t you. It isn’t that. But … It’s so difficult to explain—so perfectly idiotic. It’s all right so long as I am with you, but when I’m alone … That little den of mine gives me the horrors now. When I go into it, all I want to do is to get out of it again as quickly as possible … Oh, there’s that washer for the scullery tap. I shall have time to fix that before tea.’
He abandoned the sanctum altogether. Spring came and was gone. Summer came. Surrey was a garden of drowsy enchantment. The cheery, decorative young people at Myrtle Cottage had made themselves very popular. They played a lot of golf and tennis—had nearly always some engagement for their afternoons. They worked in the garden. Whalley had always some small job to do about the house. Elsa’s eyes lost the watchfulness that had grown in them for a little while following that incident in February. He appeared absolutely happy. Nothing else really mattered.
At the beginning of September, however, his interest in the links and the garden declined noticeably. ‘We’ve got to get out of this place, Elsa,’ he said abruptly as they drank their early tea one morning. ‘Puttiford, I mean, for a bit, anyhow. It’s no use to us. It’s a backwater—a blind alley for us. These people who live here in those houses in among the trees—well, they’re very nice and kind, and so forth—but, you know, they’re dead. Stuffed. Nothing ever happens to them. Nothing could ever happen to them. They’re determined that nothing will ever happen to them. That’s why they live at Puttiford. We’ve got to get away from them … get round … see people who are alive and do things. Anyhow, for a bit.’
They left the cottage in Mrs Higson’s care and took the car up one side of England to Scotland, and down again along the other side, travelling by short stages, and staying at a number of alarmingly expensive hotels. If the people whom they encountered along the way were not dramatically inspiring, most of them were at all events alive and amusing. The two months’ holiday was a gratifying success and had a gratifying sequel. Within a month from their return to Puttiford, Whalley wrote a play.
True—it