messy ones are jam.â
âCucumber, please,â decided Copper, inserting her slim person between the nattily yachting-suited figure of Ronnie Purvis and the large, khaki-clad bulk of Mr Albert Hurridge, the Deputy Commissioner. She was guiltily aware that her preoccupation with Nick Tarrent had had the effect of making her completely uninterested in every other person on the Islands with the exception of Valerie and Charles, and seized now with a temporary fit of remorse, she listened patiently to the Deputy Commissionerâs incredibly dull and anecdotal conversation, bore equally patiently with the stereotyped flirtatiousness of that self-satisfied lady-killer Mr Ronald Purvis, and did her best, though without much success, to include his silent, faded wife in the conversation.
Ronnie Purvis was a member of that well-known genus, the compulsive philanderer, who imagines that his job in life is to brighten it for every woman he meets. Inordinately vain, he was possessed of a vain manâs cheap attraction, and no one had ever quite understood how he had come to marry poor, dull, faded Rosamund Purvis. For if Mrs Purvis had ever had any claims to prettiness, the heat and fevers of the tropics had shrivelled them away long ago, and at thirty she succeeded in looking a good ten years older than her husbandâs bronzed and athletic thirty-six.
People were apt to refer to Mr Purvis as âpoor, dear Ronnieâ, and to add that it was a tragedy that he should be tied to that limp, uninteresting woman. Few would have believed the truth: that Rosamund Purvis had been a Bachelor of Arts at twenty-two, and one of the most brilliant students of her year at Oxford. A dazzling future was prophesied for her; and then, a year later, she had met Ronald Purvis, home on leave from India, fallen helplessly in love with him, and married him. That had been seven years ago, and the loneliness of forest camps, the damp, sticky, cloying heat of the Andamans, the birth and death of two successive children, and her husbandâs eternal philandering, had combined to turn the once-pretty and intelligent woman into the colourless nonentity that Port Blair knew as âPoor, dear Ronnieâs dreary wifeâ.
Meanwhile poor, dear Ronnie continued to flirt desperately with any and every girl he met, and to explain to them in turn, in sad, brave tones, how little his wife understood him â a phrase only too often in use, and which can generally be taken to mean that, on the contrary, she understands him only too well. He also continued, at thirty-six, to look as young as he had at twenty-five, and to conduct those of his flirtations which progressed into âaffairsâ, with unblushing openness in his wifeâs house.
âI canât think why on earth she stands it,â Charles had once said to Valerie: âIf I was in that womanâs shoes, Iâd clear out and leave him to his messy little affairs. Sheâs got no guts.â
âPerhaps sheâs in love with him?â suggested Valerie.
âRats!â retorted Charles inelegantly.
But as it happened, Valerie had been right. Rosamund Purvis despised her husband and bitterly resented his infidelities. But she still loved him, and so she stayed with him: tired, disillusioned, middle-aged at thirty, knowing herself an object of pity and contempt to the settlement â¦
Ronnie, however, was not having his customary success at the present moment. Valerie he had failed to impress from the first, and her subsequent engagement to Charles Corbet-Carr had effectually put a stop to any romantic adventures he may have anticipated in that direction. In the position of Public Boyfriend Number One, Mr Purvis had worked systematically through the present scanty female population of Ross and Aberdeen, and was suffering from the pangs of acute boredom at the time the Maharaja had docked at Chatham, bearing on board Miss Caroline Randal.
One look at
âCucumber, please,â decided Copper, inserting her slim person between the nattily yachting-suited figure of Ronnie Purvis and the large, khaki-clad bulk of Mr Albert Hurridge, the Deputy Commissioner. She was guiltily aware that her preoccupation with Nick Tarrent had had the effect of making her completely uninterested in every other person on the Islands with the exception of Valerie and Charles, and seized now with a temporary fit of remorse, she listened patiently to the Deputy Commissionerâs incredibly dull and anecdotal conversation, bore equally patiently with the stereotyped flirtatiousness of that self-satisfied lady-killer Mr Ronald Purvis, and did her best, though without much success, to include his silent, faded wife in the conversation.
Ronnie Purvis was a member of that well-known genus, the compulsive philanderer, who imagines that his job in life is to brighten it for every woman he meets. Inordinately vain, he was possessed of a vain manâs cheap attraction, and no one had ever quite understood how he had come to marry poor, dull, faded Rosamund Purvis. For if Mrs Purvis had ever had any claims to prettiness, the heat and fevers of the tropics had shrivelled them away long ago, and at thirty she succeeded in looking a good ten years older than her husbandâs bronzed and athletic thirty-six.
People were apt to refer to Mr Purvis as âpoor, dear Ronnieâ, and to add that it was a tragedy that he should be tied to that limp, uninteresting woman. Few would have believed the truth: that Rosamund Purvis had been a Bachelor of Arts at twenty-two, and one of the most brilliant students of her year at Oxford. A dazzling future was prophesied for her; and then, a year later, she had met Ronald Purvis, home on leave from India, fallen helplessly in love with him, and married him. That had been seven years ago, and the loneliness of forest camps, the damp, sticky, cloying heat of the Andamans, the birth and death of two successive children, and her husbandâs eternal philandering, had combined to turn the once-pretty and intelligent woman into the colourless nonentity that Port Blair knew as âPoor, dear Ronnieâs dreary wifeâ.
Meanwhile poor, dear Ronnie continued to flirt desperately with any and every girl he met, and to explain to them in turn, in sad, brave tones, how little his wife understood him â a phrase only too often in use, and which can generally be taken to mean that, on the contrary, she understands him only too well. He also continued, at thirty-six, to look as young as he had at twenty-five, and to conduct those of his flirtations which progressed into âaffairsâ, with unblushing openness in his wifeâs house.
âI canât think why on earth she stands it,â Charles had once said to Valerie: âIf I was in that womanâs shoes, Iâd clear out and leave him to his messy little affairs. Sheâs got no guts.â
âPerhaps sheâs in love with him?â suggested Valerie.
âRats!â retorted Charles inelegantly.
But as it happened, Valerie had been right. Rosamund Purvis despised her husband and bitterly resented his infidelities. But she still loved him, and so she stayed with him: tired, disillusioned, middle-aged at thirty, knowing herself an object of pity and contempt to the settlement â¦
Ronnie, however, was not having his customary success at the present moment. Valerie he had failed to impress from the first, and her subsequent engagement to Charles Corbet-Carr had effectually put a stop to any romantic adventures he may have anticipated in that direction. In the position of Public Boyfriend Number One, Mr Purvis had worked systematically through the present scanty female population of Ross and Aberdeen, and was suffering from the pangs of acute boredom at the time the Maharaja had docked at Chatham, bearing on board Miss Caroline Randal.
One look at
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