‘What have you done with Beth?’
‘Done with her? Do you imagine I’ve hacked her to pieces with a meat-cleaver?’
‘No, I didn’t think that, actually.’
‘She’s in there’ – he made an impatient gesture in the direction of the wall – ‘with this young man, listening to him reading his poetry.’
‘Drink up your brandy.’
‘I don’t want it.’
‘Just because I said it was Teddy’s!’
‘I always hated him. I’ve just this moment realised how much. I’ll certainly not drink his brandy.’
‘The most sensible thing to do to people you hate is to drink their brandy.’
Silence fell once more. They were desperately uneasy.
‘And is Prudence sitting at her mother’s footstool, breathing in this fine literary air?’ Tory inquired.
‘I worry about Prudence . . . Everything has turned out so differently from what I planned. I’m no feminist, but I do believe in girls having lives of their own. I’ve always disliked the idea of their wasting time while they wait to be married-off. But she is even less fortunate than those girls used to be . . .’
‘You mean there’s no marrying-off.’
‘She has the worst of two worlds. In a place like this what is there for her?’
‘Good evening,’ Prudence said to Geoffrey Lloyd, passing him in the hall on her way out.
‘Her bronchitis is a pity,’ Tory was saying.
‘Bronchitis!’ Robert exclaimed. ‘That’s merely an excuse for something I daren’t put into words, even to myself.’
‘Say it to me!’
‘You know it already. She could never do a job because her mind is empty. She moves through normal life and seems normal herself; but inside her there is nothing.’
‘I think you are quite wrong.’
‘Remember what she was like at school. Impossible.’
‘At lessons perhaps; but that’s not everything.’
‘It’s the same sort of thing as earning one’s living. Where it all went wrong for her, I don’t know, or when it was I began to see that she was being left behind. Neither Beth nor I are complete fools . . .’
‘Beth at school was a bit one-sided . . .’
‘Of course. Literary people always do suffer from an aversion to mathematics. The sight of figures upsets them. Notice how often they write a number rather than make the figure . . . But I was good at maths when I was young.’
‘So you had it planned that all your mathematical cells, or whatever they are, would coincide with Beth’s literary ones in equal proportions and produce a fine all-round sort of child . . .’
‘It looks as though Beth’s mathematical cells have coincided with my literary ones . . .’ he admitted. ‘The result is nothing, as it was bound to be.’
‘I think we are not being very scientific.’
‘No. Children are a great disappointment.’
‘Stevie has her wits about her. And I think you are wrong about Prudence. If you are not going to drink that brandy, please hand it over to me. Carefully!’
‘Why do you think I’m wrong about Prue?’
‘Because she has intuition and perception, perhaps all the keener because her head is not a rag-bag of bits of knowledge.’
‘She is still a child.’
‘She is not. What does Beth think about all this?’
‘Beth?’ He walked up and down. ‘Don’t ask me what goes on in Beth’s head.’
‘She was already a writer when you married her, you know,’ Tory said accusingly.
‘I didn’t count on it going on so long – not having books published, for instance. I thought when she had children . . . but even then she used to sit up in bed scribbling. A confinement is a fine chance to finish off a novel, she thinks. When she was feeding poor Prue she wasn’t thinking about her. It’s a disease, a madness.’
‘Perhaps in the end it is what she was intended for . . . perhaps her writing is the Beth-ish thing. Not the children.’
‘Oh, nonsense!’ he said, tiredly. ‘It’s a disease all right. I ought to have cured it, but I could not.’
‘She is about the only happy person I know. Don’t you see how she is to be envied? Nothing people do can ever break her.’
‘Writers can be broken just like everybody else. Look at Keats and Chatterton and . . . Oscar Wilde. And all the others who were beheaded and locked up and shot.’
‘What I mean is that the thing that is precious to them, that they are staked upon, is always safe inside, can’t be got at or violated – only by themselves.’
‘I didn’t come here to talk about what writers are or are not,’ he thought.
‘Am I trying to tell him that whatever he and I do to Beth we cannot really destroy her?’ Tory wondered.
‘Why did you say Prue has perception?’ he asked suddenly in alarm.
Tory thought carefully. ‘Nothing special,’ she lied.
‘Nothing about us?’
‘How could it be? There isn’t anything about us, is there?’
‘No.’
He knelt down beside the sofa where she lay and took her in his arms.
‘Right up to the moment when he kisses me there is still time to go back,’ Tory thought in a panic. ‘Let us not!’ she said aloud.
‘Too late,’ he said calmly, and took her head between his hands and turned it a little sideways so that he could kiss her. She shut her eyes and felt that she was dropping backwards through endless space, that hard though he might kiss her, he would never be able to follow her to the end or catch her up.
Geoffrey Lloyd sat down, holding his folder of manuscript, and waited. He had looked forward to this evening for, apart from loving the sound of his own voice, he liked the titillation of what he thought of as spiritual relationships with older women, liked the safe excitement.
‘You don’t mind, Geoffrey, do you, if I do some mending while I listen?’
Although this was not what he had planned, he could not dissent. Beth glanced round for her work-box and he jumped up and fetched it for her. When she had swung her feet up on the sofa and he had made her comfortable with a cushion at her back he shuffled with the manuscript and paused.
‘The Zones of Pleasure,’ he presently announced. He read calmly and with confidence. After a moment or two Yvette and Guilbert got up and stretched and walked contemptuously to the door, where they stood waiting.
‘Oh, dear,’ said Beth, beginning to gather together her wools and cotton-reels, but Geoffrey sprang to the door and took the poor creatures and threw them somewhat violently into the hall.
‘I’m so sorry,’ Beth apologised when he returned.
After this he read for a while in peace.
‘I am rather bad at saying “How nice”, or “How nasty”, after each poem,’ she said artfully as he turned a page. ‘So I will just listen and say nothing, and you can read without interruption.’ ‘I wonder where Prue is?’ she thought uneasily. ‘And what can have upset her. I plan a pleasant little evening for her and she just disappears.’
The verse was of a kind she found embarrassing to listen to. It was a great deal about sex and revolution, and the atmosphere in the room seemed to become sultry. An almost overpowering desire to laugh swept through her. ‘Don’t let me!’ she prayed to no one in particular, weaving grey wool in and out of Robert’s socks. ‘Don’t let me! Please don’t let me!’
‘Loving this world and for its sake
The hymen of the future we shall break,’
Geoffrey read, and Beth cut off her wool with a little snap and blushed. His hand flicked over the page and he began again.
She was safe now. The moment of hysteria had passed and she felt she would not laugh. She darned peacefully, not listening. She composed a kind and critical little speech for the end and then fell to scheming about her book; sorting out snippets of dialogue, planning death-beds. She rolled up Robert’s socks into neat balls, very pleas
ed with her work, and then took up a frock of Stevie’s she was lengthening. The button-box fell with a crash. ‘Geoffrey, I am so sorry. How very rude and clumsy.’
They were on their hands and knees on the floor, gathering up needles and buttons and buckles and many other oddments, when the door opened and Robert came in.
‘Curse, sod, damn, and worse,’ said Geoffrey to himself, standing up and shaking hands.
Maisie washed at the sink in the scullery before going to bed. The curtain was drawn over the small window; the only light was from a small oil lamp. She stood in her petticoat and her hair was pinned to the top of her head. Leaning over the bowl of water she soaped her arms. In the kitchen Mrs Bracey snored.
The door from the yard opened and Eddie came in. Furiously, dripping wet, she snatched at the towel.
‘Sorry!’ He shut the door and stared at her. Then, as he went towards the kitchen door, he suddenly put out his hand and stroked her polished-looking shoulder, touched her soapy arm. He hesitated and came back to her, his face changed, darkened.
‘Why wouldn’t you come this afternoon?’
‘I couldn’t.’
‘Wouldn’t, you mean.’
‘Mother . . .’
‘That was an excuse.’
‘You don’t know her.’
‘I know you’re a fool if you let her ruin your life.’
‘My life isn’t ruined just because I don’t go to the pictures with you,’ she said proudly, and tried to escape from his exploring hands.
‘Come here.’
She shook her head. He took her arms and drew her closer. ‘Please, don’t!’
She laid her hands flat against his chest and tried to push him away.
‘Next time will you come?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Iris would, I bet.’
‘You’d better ask her.’
‘I wanted you. Weeks before I have another chance perhaps.’
Mrs Bracey turned in her sleep, groaning, and Maisie put her fingers to her lips warningly. ‘I must go to bed. She might wake.’
Without a word she put her blouse round her shoulders and lifted the latch. Eddie, who was frightened of her mother, scarcely breathed as he followed her through the kitchen, creaking up the stairs. ‘Damn Iris!’ he whispered as she reached her bedroom door. He ran his hand down her thigh, detaining her.
‘Good night!’
When she opened the door she found that Iris was still awake.
‘What’s all the whispering about?’
‘I was only saying “good night” to Eddie.’
‘Why whisper?’
‘Mother’s asleep.’
‘Put the light on.’
‘No, I can manage.’
Her arms felt stiff with dried soap. She hurried to bed, lay beside her sister, her thigh, her breasts, still with his touch upon them.
‘What have you been up to?’ Iris asked.
‘Don’t be silly. I’m tired.’
‘Has he been kissing you?’
‘Why shouldn’t he?’ Maisie said angrily.
‘All right. All right. I don’t know how you could, that’s all.’
‘Why not?’
‘Well, he’s so . . .’
‘What?’
‘Such a kid . . . shows off so . . .’
‘All young men show off, unless there’s something wrong with them. I’ve seen you making up to him yourself.’
‘I wouldn’t let him kiss me.’
‘I suppose you’re still waiting for Noel Coward.’
‘Someone a bit better than Eddie, certainly . . .’
‘Better?’
‘You know what I mean. Look at his great, red hands. What else did he do?’
‘If only I could sleep alone!’ Maisie thought. ‘If only I could keep my secrets to myself!’
‘Passion seems to be in the air to-night,’ Iris said sarcastically. ‘That old fool Hemingway and Lily Wilson. He took her home again. It must be the spring. I shall have to see what I can do for myself; perhaps old Pallister . . .’
‘Damn Iris!’ Maisie thought.
When he had taken Lily home Bertram went for a walk along the waterfront. A soft wind blew in from the sea, waves swirled in and broke in great swathes beneath the lighthouse. Lamplight, lights from the windows, fell over the uneven cobblestones. He walked along past Tory’s house, which alone was in darkness, and beyond the Cazabons’ house to where the cliff rose up, thrusting itself out into the open sea. The path here, at high tide, was wet with spray. He walked slowly, reluctant to go in. Below him, as he paused to lean on the railings, the waves flogged the sea-wall, flecked with long trailing foam, floating seaweed. Above him was a smell of dusty trees, an atmosphere of great darkness, and the faint crepitations of dead leaves.
Also leaning over the railings a little farther on was Prudence, with her hair tucked into her upturned collar, and her hands thrust up her wide sleeves for warmth.
‘Hallo!’ she said as if, he thought, it were midday.
‘What are you up to?’
‘The same as you, I expect. Out for a walk.’
‘Have you quarrelled with your young man?’
‘I haven’t a young man.’
‘How long have you been here? You look frozen.’
‘I don’t know.’
‘You’re a strange girl. A very strange girl. So beautiful, too, and not to have a young man!’
‘Beautiful!’ she echoed in a startled way. Then she laughed, dismissing the idea. ‘I’m not beautiful.’
‘Indeed you are.’
‘I’m cross-eyed.’
‘Nonsense. Your beauty is imperfect, moving. The only kind worth having.’
She turned away from the railings, dropping her hands, staring at him.
‘I’m going back now. Are you coming?’ he asked her. Without answering, she began to pace along beside him. They went slowly, their heads bent, a wide space between them.
‘You’re unhappy,’ he said, and he remembered what Tory Foyle had said about the girl’s lonely, dull life. ‘What about this young man?’
‘What young man?’
‘The one you say you haven’t got.’
‘I shan’t ever have a young man.’
She was agitated. She even stopped walking for a second, and then moved on more briskly than before, wringing her hands.
‘Why do you say that?’ he asked gently, as gently as he could above the noise of the water and the buffeting wind.
‘Because . . .’ She lifted her white face and looked briefly at the sky as if for help. ‘Because . . .’ She gave up; she shrugged. ‘I hate love,’ she said in a quicker, different way. ‘I don’t ever want to fall in love or for anyone to fall in love with me. Surely there is more in the world than that?’
‘I have never found it so disagreeable that I wished for much more,’ he said.
‘You’re laughing at me.’
‘Yes, young people always imagine they’ve said something one can laugh at. Oh, my dear, I’m sorry. Why am I rude to you? And what has happened to you, I wonder, that you talk in this way.’ He thought: ‘I suppose she has been jilted.’
‘Nothing has happened to me,’ she said, and he noted the hesitation at, the stress upon the last word.
‘You don’t want to go home, do you?’ he asked, for her step slackened as she came near the house. ‘Are you in some trouble there?’
‘Of course not.’
‘This is not the first time I have delivered you at your doorstep.’
‘No.’
‘Well . . .’ He hesitated. Obviously something more seemed to be demanded of him. ‘Don’t let yourself be distressed about a young man who doesn’t even exist.’
‘No.’
Still staring at him, she drew her coat collar up to her chin and shivered. ‘I wish . . .’ she began.
‘What do you wish?’
But young people feel they have the right to begin sentence
s and never finish them, to leave their listeners stinging with curiosity.
‘Good night.’ So little sound came from her moving lips. A great pressure of fear lay over her, he thought. If she had not been beautiful, he would have felt exasperation and impatience at the annoyance of becoming involved in her troubles, whatever they were, even when he was involved only to the extent of curiosity or pity. ‘Bed-ridden old women,’ he thought (having spent an hour with Mrs Bracey early in the evening discussing some of the more disreputable kinds of behaviour in remote parts of Africa), ‘young women who are frightened of waxworks, girls who are frightened of God knows what, themselves possibly.’
But he said ‘Good night, my dear,’ in his gentlest voice and walked on past Tory’s house. ‘Now there’s a woman,’ he decided, glancing up at the dark windows, ‘a woman who is frightened of nothing, who needs nobody’s help, who can take a blow on the chin’ (he liked this manly figure of speech) ‘without flinching.’
The lighthouse now interrupted the run of his thoughts with its fleeting gesture, and in his mind’s eye, his painter’s eye, he saw the two men sitting in the little building which crouched in the shadow of the tower; there they were, in shirt-sleeves, fans of greasy cards in their hands. In silence they eyed one another, one card went down, then the next, and so the night wore on.
He turned in at the Anchor. ‘What is that child frightened of?’ he wondered. ‘If I were a young man I would have taken her into my arms and kissed away all her misery.’ He had always had great confidence with women and a tendency to kiss them better, as he called it; only when he had gone, their fears, their anxieties returned, a little intensified, perhaps, but he, of course, would not know of that, and remained buoyed up by his own goodness.
‘Like a final beer?’ Mr Pallister inquired.
As usual, Bertram began to refuse and then, ‘Yes, I will. I think I will,’ he said and came and waited by the dying fire, spreading his hands out over the dull coals, his mind haunted by the girl’s white face, the bewildered, frightened eyes.
‘That doctor’s girl,’ he began, taking his drink from Mr Pallister. ‘A queer girl, that, walking along by the sea-wall just now. All alone.’
‘Yes, a queer girl,’ Ned Pallister agreed. ‘And them dratted cats of hers. Unnatural devils. She thinks the world of them, you know.’
A View of the Harbour Page 12
