Kay’s Reviews > Caroline's Waterloo > Status Update

Caro’s soft heart was wrung, but she went on ruining her knitting in what she hoped was a cool manner. ‘I didn’t mean you to be upset,’ she explained gruffly. ‘You see, I had to know…well, I thought that if you m-minded about me at all, you would look for me, but if you didn’t then I’d know I had to go away.’ She dropped three stitches one after the other and added mournfully: ‘I haven’t put it very clearly.’

She hesitated, suddenly feeling unwanted and longing for a reassuring word. He had spoken briskly, as he might have spoken to a casual stranger who had stopped to give a hand, only she felt sure that he would have added his thanks.
‘Do as I say, Caroline!’ and this time he sounded urgent and coldly angry.

You must know that I have a great regard for you Radinck.’ She looked across at him her loving heart in her eyes and unaware of it. ‘You have no need to reproach yourself; you made it very clear before we married that you didn’t want to change your life and I agreed to that. I’m very content.’
His eyes were searching. ‘Are you? Perhaps I have done wrong in marrying you Caroline—you might have found some younger man.’

He said seriously ‘You have no need to—you have a quite violent virus infection of the respiratory system.’
It was silly to get upset but somehow he had made her feel like a patient in a hospital bed; someone to be cured of an ailment with a completely impersonal care. Her eyes filled with tears until they dripped down her cheeks and although she put up an impatient hand to rub them away, there seemed no end to them.

‘I wish you would refrain from this continuous “Yes, Radinck”, as though I were a tyrant!’
‘Oh, but you’re not,’ Caro assured him warmly. ‘That’s the last thing you are; it’s just that you’ve lived so long alone that you’ve forgotten how to talk. Never mind, you’ll soon get into the habit again now that I’m here.’ .. he said something in a subdued roar, something nasty in his own language, she judged, watched him go.

Radinck crumpled up the letter in his hand and hurled it at the wastepaper basket.
‘What an abominable girl you are, Caroline! As I said some time ago, you have this gift of putting me in the wrong.’

Radinck maintained a steady flow of casual talk as they drove home. Caro listened when it seemed necessary and, once in the house, bade him a quiet goodnight and started up the staircase. She was halted halfway up by his query as to whether she wouldn’t like a cup of coffee with him, but she paused only long enough to shake her head, glad that he was too far away to see the tears in her eyes.

‘What exactly do you do?’ she asked carefully. ‘That’s if you don’t mind telling me.’
He didn’t answer her at once but remarked testily: ‘Why is it that so many remarks you make appear to put me in the wrong, Caroline?’ and before she could deny this: ‘I am a physician, specialising in heart conditions, and the various diseases consequent to them.’

His leave taking was casual. No one looking at the two of them, thought Caro, would have guessed that they were going to be married within a week. She watched him get into his car and drive away, her eyes filled with tears. She knew nothing about him; where he was staying, what he was doing in London, if he had friends…the only thing she was sure of was that she loved him enough to bear with his ways.

‘You can of course buy anything you want when we return, but I presume you will want something for the wedding.’ His voice held a faint sneer.
‘I won’t disgrace you,’ she told him quietly and was pleased to see him look a little taken aback. If she hadn’t loved him so much she would have been furious.
He begged her pardon stiffly and she said kindly: ‘Oh, that’s all right—it’ll be super to have some decent clothes.'