by Alice Miller
“I expect the telegrams are somehow to do with him. And I wondered”—she turned around—“what it is he might have told you.”
Nora stiffened.
“You see,” and Georgie leaned forward, surprising herself with her confession, “it was thought, at some point, that I’d marry him. And now I don’t believe that will happen at all. But I am still getting these hostile messages. And I just want to understand it. I just want to know what to do.”
Nora walked back to her chair and sat down.
“I’m sorry,” Georgie said. “I’m asking too much. I just didn’t know who else to ask. Everything has gone rather wrong.” She was horrified to find that she might cry. She reached a hand up to her cheek.
Nora watched her. “Here is what I know,” she said slowly. “Mr.—Smith—is torn between three forces. The cat, the hare, and the dog. Three women, I think. He doesn’t know which one to choose. As far as I can tell—we talk in symbols, of course—he was going on a journey, over the water, to make a proposal to the—the dog. It was unlikely, from the stars, or indeed from anything that Mr. Smith says, that she consented. So it is unlikely that he will be connected to the dog. In which case he will decide between the cat and the hare.” The young woman pressed her fingers to her lips. “I assume you are one of these.”
“Yes.”
“I should not have told you all that, of course.”
“I won’t tell anyone. I am rather bored of it, to be honest. Sometimes I wish he would find an elephant or an albatross and marry it instead.”
“But perhaps your telegram came from—one of—the others.”
Georgie stood up. “Yes. Thank you.”
Nora stood up too. She was reaching into her pocket, and she passed Georgie a handful of coins.
“This is all I have,” Nora said. “But please take it. Mother shouldn’t have taken all that money.”
Wanting to refuse, but knowing that she would need it, Georgie took the money. She wasn’t sure what to say.
“I do want to help,” Nora said. “If you ever need—to come again, please do.” She smiled tightly, looking out beyond the door. “I will tell Mother I invited you.”
THIRTY-SEVEN
The-cat-and-the-dog-and-the-hare. The-cat-and-the-dog-and-the-hare. Maud and Georgie and a third. Tomorrow she would go to the At Home and settle this. She was determined. The cold air tumbled the bottom of her coat, her lapels, her hair.
But tonight, where would she go? It was too late to call Dorothy, and besides, Georgie was still angry with her for lying to Mrs. Thwaite, for starting all this.
She had thought of trying to smuggle herself back into the dormitory. But the doorman would surely know not to let her in, her old room was locked, and all the girls would have seen her today in the hallway. Now if anyone caught her, they could report her to the police. The only other place she could think of to go to was the Order. The front door of the Bassett Road house was never locked.
She was in no hurry to get anywhere. She walked all the way across town under a heavy grey sky. She saw a group of children begging on the edge of Hyde Park and did not meet their eyes; she had nothing to give them. She passed them in a blur of blue and grey ragged clothing. The-cat-and-the-dog-and-the-hare, she repeated.
There was a chill, the cool air rushing up her nose and into her ears and mouth. Sometimes she imagined them all, years from now, all old and poor, walking around this city as abroad everyone still killed one another from holes in the ground. A soldier had told her that at the front early on, the Belgians had had an advantage over the Germans until the Germans piled up their own corpses and hid behind them, shooting at the Belgians from between the German bodies. Still, some people insisted they were not sending a whole continent of men out of their minds. That there was some way forward after this.
When she got to the large white house, she saw a For Auction sign on the lawn. It was arranged, then. Still, she went up the steps to the front door and found that it was open. Inside, the house was silent. She hoped there would be no one there.
The house had still not been cleaned, and was emptied of most of the furniture. The dark mahogany staircase looked lonely. At the foot of the stairs was a box, with various items of clothing. She picked up a single red cushion, and underneath found a robe, black with a white cross at the breast, to mark the Hiereus. She shook out the robe and examined it. In a pocket she found a couple of coins, which she put into her purse. The hangings had all gone, as had any other evidence that the building had ever housed a magical order. Inside it looked more suburban and ordinary than ever. It was hard to imagine any spirit had ever entered its doors, that any magic had even been thought of in these rooms. As she stepped, the floor groaned under her, but there was no answering noise.
She went upstairs, carrying the cushion and the robe. Each stair creaked painfully under her steps.
She let herself into Harkin’s office. It was completely bare—the desk had gone, and the books; only the built-in bookshelves remained, clean of books. A piece of cloth was wedged in the window, presumably to stop up the draft. She raised the window and pulled the cloth out. It was one of the scrunched-up hangings from the walls, of the Hierophant. She shook the hanging out and laid it out on the floor. The Hierophant’s hands were both raised, the same as on her major arcana card. On the hanging, the right hand was making the gesture of benediction. She would usually think this was some kind of sign, but now it seemed like empty coincidence. The cloth was thin, but it was all she had, so she lay on top of it, using the cushion as a pillow, keeping her coat on and layering the robe on top of her like a blanket. She thought it would be impossible to sleep.
She woke in the morning with the light milkily entering the windows. Her neck and shoulders ached. She saw there was blue ink spilled over the floor which she hadn’t noticed in the dark, and that she had stained her coat and her dress. Only then did she notice that there was a woman standing in the doorway. The woman’s hair was sleeked down, her skirt and jacket impeccable, and she was staring at Georgie as if she were vermin.
“What are you doing here?”
“I—I was told I could come.”
“By whom?”
“By Dr. Harkin.”
“He has given up this house.”
“Ah.”
“The mad are no longer welcome here.”
“I’m not mad.”
“You are trespassing. I will telephone the police.”
“I’m already leaving.” Georgie picked herself up and left the robe lying on the floor. She walked out past the woman, feigning a dignity she did not feel.
Once she was safely outside, she went to find a tea-shop, where she could sit and have a pot of tea. The coins she had were just enough, if she gave no tip, for a pot of tea and a telephone call. Seeing her coat and dress marked with ink stains and her hair frizzed around her face, the proprietor eyed her warily, and stayed close by as if at any moment she might do something inappropriate. But once he heard her speak and saw she had some money, he brought her a pot of tea and left her alone. The tea was warm and strong. She raked her fingers through her hair and wondered what it was she should do with herself. The party was tonight, but how could she turn up like this? When she stood up from the table, the proprietor was relieved to see her go.
She used the telephone in the hallway to call Dorothy.
“Where are you? Nelly called for you.”
“What did you say?”
“I said you were sleeping.”
“Thank you.”
“What are you doing?”
“I need to come over.”
“Why?”
“They found out about Harold. At the hospital.”
“Oh. Right.”
Georgie felt a moment of panic. “I don’t have any money for a cab.”
“I can pay when you get here.” Dorothy told her the address.
When she arrived, Dorothy was waiting outside on the curb to pay the driver. She s
aid nothing about Georgie’s appearance, just ushered her inside and up the stairs. Ezra and Dorothy’s apartment was small, not in a desirable part of town; the young poet didn’t make much in the way of a living. He was out, and Dorothy gave Georgie a towel and encouraged her to wash. When Georgie returned, Dorothy did not offer any apology about the story of the deceased brother, or even ask her what happened. They kept to safe topics at first, of Rothenstein’s new work, of Marinetti’s lectures, and of Dorothy’s new pictures, which she showed to Georgie, all of a similar cubist bent that seemed more interested in adhering to intellectual ideas than struggling with the strange contradictions of human existence. But all this dancing around was making Georgie feel more desperate.
“Do you think you might have something for me to wear?” she said suddenly.
“For what?”
“For Willy’s.”
“You’re going?”
“Of course.”
“But you’re not still hoping—”
“Of course not.”
“Georgie—”
“Actually, I met an officer in the hospital.”
“Really?”
“A medical student. He’s very handsome.”
Dorothy raised her eyebrows, and walked through to the bedroom, where she opened the wardrobe. Georgie listened to the squeak of hangers shifting across the metal bar, and the clunk as the hangers bumped into one another.
“He’s sweet,” she added, “and age-appropriate, of course.”
“You might be able to make this work,” Dorothy called from inside the wardrobe. “It’s too big for me. You can keep it if you want.”
She re-emerged with a dress on a hanger.
The dress was black. It was a rough silk which was too dressy for the occasion, and it cut off just above the ankles, in the newer fashion. Georgie’s ankles were her least favourite feature, being rather puffy and pink, as if her skin had been splashed with boiling water.
“I can’t wear that.”
“I don’t have anything else that would fit.”
Georgie frowned at the dress. Dorothy made no move to leave the room, so Georgie pulled her own ink-stained dress over her head with her friend standing there. She felt awkward, and involuntarily held her arms tightly across her chest as she stood in her petticoat.
She tried to pull the black dress over her head, but it felt small, and she got so stuck Dorothy had to help her. There was a sharp ripping sound, and as Georgie pulled her head through the hole in the neck of the dress, she gave a brief sob.
“Not bad, actually,” Dorothy said. She had obviously noticed Georgie’s distress, and patted her friend’s arm. She led her to the mirror and disappeared from the room.
It was too dressy, yes, and her ankles did look puffy and awful, like a sick person’s. But perhaps no one would look at her ankles. She was also not wearing the right shoes, but Dorothy’s feet were far longer and slimmer; nothing could be done about that. The overall effect was not so bad that she wouldn’t go. It was never her looks that people had been attracted to anyway, she told herself.
Dorothy returned with a brandy bottle and two full glasses.
“What was it that tore?” Georgie said.
Dorothy closely examined the dress. The hole was just under the armpit.
“Barely visible,” Dorothy said encouragingly.
“Well, I can’t take it off now, anyway,” Georgie said, taking the glass and drinking. “I’ll probably never get it off. What will you wear?”
Dorothy smiled and sipped. “I’m not going.”
“What? Why not?”
“I’m not in the mood.”
“Is it Ezra? Is it that woman again?”
Dorothy shook her head.
“But I thought we would go together.”
Dorothy shrugged. “Ezra and I quarrelled. I promised he could go on his own.”
Georgie hesitated.
“Don’t worry,” Dorothy said, “I’ll lend you the money for the car.” She held her glass up, as if she were offering a toast.
THIRTY-EIGHT
As she had time while she was waiting for the car, Georgie briefly stepped into a scruffy department store, passing by the store clerks and locking herself in one of the dressing rooms to assess herself one last time in the mirror. Immediately she wished that she hadn’t. At the last minute she had borrowed a coat from Dorothy, and in the mirror now it looked terribly naive, the way the lips of the pockets slightly turned out, as if they were little tongues lazily protruding from mouths. She took the coat off, but she knew she had nothing to replace it. She wished she had borrowed one of Dorothy’s shawls instead. She put the coat back on and resolved she would take it off as soon as she got in the door. Yes, that would work. And the dress would have to do. She turned in the mirror. You are being an idiot, she told herself. This will do fine. Not only do you not especially care what he thinks, he doesn’t care for things like dresses anyway. Although he likely did, of course, being so concerned with what he wore himself. He strutted, Willy did. She didn’t strut, and certainly could not strut, particularly with this dress and this coat. It was a difficult thing to explain away in a conversation. I ruined my coat and my dress and so I borrowed these! I know they are a little odd-looking!
“Miss? Are you all right in there?”
Why was she so nervy, so irritated? She patted her hair, the frizzed parts like wild entwined cobwebs in the light. It didn’t matter. If you were beautiful, you looked beautiful; if you were middling, you looked middling. She would not pretend she could change this; she didn’t want to appear to have tried too hard.
“Miss?”
“I’m all right,” she called through the door. She put her coat back on and pushed her hands in her coat pockets. She checked her wristwatch and confirmed what she already knew: she was late. She had planned to be there early, but now she would arrive in the middle of the party. She smiled at the reflection in the mirror, and the reflection smiled back sceptically.
“We’ll get there, lassie,” the driver said, lifting a cigarette to his mouth as though it were a flute and he were playing a lullaby. He seemed amused by her agitation. After they had driven through a few streets, she realised she was sweaty, and her armpits gave off a strange reek that she didn’t recognise as belonging to her.
“You can stop here,” she said, and the driver peered back at her.
“You sure? We’re some way off yet.”
“I’m sure.” After paying him with money that Dorothy had lent her, she launched herself out of the car. She walked slowly past Endsleigh Gardens and down the Euston Road, hoping the breeze would dry the marks under her armpits, neutralise the smell, hoping her heart might lighten, might stop making itself known. How she hated herself for all this fussing; it would be fine, she knew, once she got there. I don’t even mind what happens, she told herself fiercely, as she crossed the busy Euston Road and turned into the narrow alley to Woburn Place. At the doorway, a tall, elegant girl was standing in a slim green coat, shielding a cigarette with her hand as she lit it. Georgie walked past her and went on through the doorway.
THIRTY-NINE
Upstairs a large crowd was already gathered, scattered about in clusters. Someone was changing the gramophone, until the notes of Chopin’s nocturnes trickled into the room. She stood apart a moment, looking for Willy.
“How lovely you look!” It was Olivia, Dorothy’s mother, and she embraced Georgie. She smelled of cold lemons and some kind of pickle. Georgie followed Olivia to a circle of people, standing with their drinks and talking. Someone handed Georgie a glass of Chianti. She still could not see Willy. And although Olivia was always clever and witty and particularly skilled at bringing out those qualities in those who barely possessed them, to Georgie the conversation seemed to stroke over everyone’s lips, without pausing to gain any substance: there was a play that two or three people had seen which was neither good nor bad; Rothenstein was preparing another exhibition, said to be similar to
the last; and someone’s boy was home on leave from the war, and it was said he’d started writing interesting poems. Georgie kept scanning the room for Willy, but she couldn’t see him anywhere.
Ah, there he was, emerging from the kitchen and taking his place near the middle of the room, flanked by four or five others, who were all watching him, bemused by his usual performance of playing the Great Poet: commanding, clever, in control—so unlike when she’d seen him on the street after the uprising, or the old man she had visited the week before. This was the Willy she had fallen for: the performer, and seeing him she wanted to be close to him again. From across the room, she watched him for a moment throwing his hands about as if to conduct his audience, playing his voice like an instrument, with artful decrescendo and sudden crescendo. She came a little closer, her elbow jostled by a man, who did not turn around. “At the last session,” Willy was saying to the little cluster of people, “even Leo spoke to me.”
A bearded man looked up at him. “Is that someone you know?”
“My daemon. Leo Africanus. He is a fourteenth-century Moor.”
The man suppressed the smallest of smiles. “Really?”
“He speaks to me in Italian.”
“How extraordinary.”
Georgie knew the stories of Willy’s daemon, whom Willy had once admitted to her he’d likely got from an encyclopaedia.
A tap on her shoulder and she turned to see Ezra beside her, his hair flushed up around his head like a peacock. He had a wine bottle in one hand and sloshed more Chianti into her glass, until it was comically full. As she sipped it, Willy noticed her, midsentence, and while he kept speaking to his audience, he winked at her. Ezra pressed an unlit cigar between his lips and spoke out of the corner of his mouth. “Where’s my wife?”
“She’s not coming.”
“Really?” He seemed neither disappointed nor surprised, but took the cigar out of his mouth.
“I thought you knew.”
