Round the Bend Read Online Free Page B

have a baby in January.
    I know this will be a great blow to you, and I can’t tell you how sorry we all are. Captain Wysock has been down to see us and we had a long talk. He was heartbroken about you, but we talked it all out and we thought that it would be best if there was a divorce and he was to marry Beryl; they are very much in love and that is what they want. Beryl will be writing to you in a day or so, but we thought I had better write and tell you first.
    Captain Wysock comes of a very high-born family. His father is a count and has big estates near a place called Jabinka and a town house in Warsaw. He has been very generous to Beryl, and we feel that as things have turned out a divorce would be the fairest thing all round, and I hope you will think so too.
    Beryl wants me to say she sends you her love, and we all sendour sympathy in what must be a shock to you. But I am sure that it will all be for the best.
    Your affectionate father-in-law,        
Albert Cousins.
    I was at Damascus when this letter came to Cairo, and I didn’t get it till I got back to Egypt a few days later. By that time the letter from Beryl had just come in, so I got them both together. That one read:
    Darling Tom,
    I saw Dad’s letter before he sent it off and I have waited a bit before I wrote so as you should get his first. I don’t know what you must be thinking, Tom, and believe me I wouldn’t have had things happen like this for the world. It’s such a mix-up. But I’m sure the best way to get it straight now is for you to divorce me. I couldn’t come back and live with you again not after what has happened, not even if you wanted me which I suppose you don’t, not now. Feodor and I are very much in love and we want to get married, so if you divorce me that will be best and you’ll be free to look for someone else. I’m so terribly sorry it’s turned out like this. I never thought a thing like this would ever happen to me.
    I wish you could meet Feodor, Tom—he’s such a dear. His family is terribly rich with a big castle in the country and everything; I do hope they’ll approve of me. He hasn’t seen them since the war began, but he knows they’re all right. After the war, when we’re married, we’re going there to live. He’s given me the most lovely engagement ring, diamonds and emeralds, but first of all we’ve got to get the divorce.
    Don’t be miserable about all this, Tom. I know it’s all for the best.
    Your loving
    Beryl.
    I was up to the eyes in work at that time. I read these letters through with my mind half occupied with the problems of getting enough aircraft serviceable to maintain our scheduled services, andthey were just another thing to me. It was like when you’re counting on an aircraft being finished for the morning flight to Khartoum, and an engineer comes up at six o’clock in the evening and tells you he needs a right-hand contact breaker and they’ve only got left-hand ones in the store and they’ve been telephoning all round and there aren’t any right-hand ones in Cairo. Beryl and her boy friend, in my mind, took their turn in the queue with all my other worries, and must wait for attention till I got the decks cleared a bit. At the same time, I was sick and angry when I got these letters, because there’d been a lot of this sort of thing going on in England. Somebody once told me that ten per cent of the wives of men serving overseas had been unfaithful to them. Now I was in with that ten per cent.
    In the brief moments that I had to think about my own affairs that day I wondered how in hell she expected me to set about a divorce in a foreign country like Egypt, in the middle of all my work, in wartime. And then I wondered if they were all mad to go believing such a transparent, cock-and-bull story as this Polish soldier had told them, about his father being a count, and huge estates, and all that. It was a crazy, miserable business that they’d written out to plague me