Zita’s room was untidy and silent. A letter of some twelve pages was flung down upon the bed, covered with exclamation-marks and green writing. It was apparent that Zita was having another love affair and that, as usual, it was leading to complications. Margaret took off her coat, tidied her hair, and stood looking at herself in the glass.
‘I don’t look too bad,’ she murmured at last.
She had taken to heart some of Zita’s scornful remarks about young English misses who dressed in bright colours which ‘did make themselves seem dim,’ and had managed to get herself a dress of dark-grey lace. With this she wore black net gloves and kept her black velvet bow at the nape of her neck, and carried an outsize glittering gold sequin handbag. Her hair was brushed very smoothly and she wore much brilliant red lipstick. No ear-rings, no necklace, no bracelets or rings, for Zita said that young English misses hung themselves with these things as if Christmas-trees they had been.
I look distinguished, she thought sadly, but what’s the use of that? I look so hopelessly serious, so earnest and thoughtful. I look as if I sat on committees all day or made pendants with a hammer. I should like to look like a kitten.
With which reflection, she went downstairs feeling subdued and remote from the rest of the cheerful company, with the intention of finding Zita.
However, Seraphina was agreeably surprised at her appearance, which Margaret had indeed rated too low. She looked elegant, as well as distinguished, and Seraphina thought that any young man who was not hopelessly spoiled by a surfeit of beauties ought to be pleased to talk to her. Accordingly, she presented to her a young man in naval uniform who asked her if she were Angela Britton? He was so bad at names. As Angela Britton was a gifted young repertory actress, Margaret was gratified at the implied resemblance, the young man assuring her that it was striking. But after they had thoroughly discussed this, and exchanged some remarks about one another’s jobs, and had each had a drink, silence began to fall between them, and even while Margaret was searching for something to say, the young man exclaimed, ‘Oh, I say – Nicky! – do excuse me, there’s Nicky Mallison,’ and darted away into the crowd.
She sipped her drink and watched the people. She was standing at the foot of the staircase, on which people were sitting, in groups and in twos, talking – talking – talking. Some of the girls were in Service dress, including a Pole, with the languid eyes of a harem beauty gleaming above her stiff soldierly collar. Many distinguished elderly men in evening clothes were there, and younger ones in uniform, and Hebe’s friends were recognizable by their youth, their air of abundant health, and their wedding-rings; they stood together in corners talking about their children. But there was plenty going on besides talking, for someone was usually at the piano improvising a gay tune or a dreamy one, while the large drawing-room had been cleared for dancing and Margaret could hear the medley of squeaky and metallic noises made by a small swing band. The smoke of many cigarettes wreathed slowly up into the air and the noise of conversation grew steadily louder but the room did not become disagreeably hot, for all the windows and the front door stood open and cool air floated in from the garden.
Presently Margaret saw Zita working a way towards her between the chattering groups, looking very cross and very smart in a dress of thinnest black lawn with wide ruffles round its hem, sleeves and neck. She had brilliant blue delphiniums made into a tight posy, fastened to a black band on one wrist and a tiny watch shimmering with diamonds on the other. Margaret, while admiring her toilette, did not feel quite pleased about it, for her own appearance slightly resembled Zita’s; both might have been dressed by the same House – as indeed they had, for the taste of one had moulded that of the other. We look like two plain women making the very best of ourselves, she thought.
‘Ach! such an evening!’ began Zita in a low, furious tone. She cast a glance over Margaret’s dress and snapped: ‘Good. You look chic.’ Then she viciously wound the diamond watch.
‘What’s the matter? I love your dress; did you make it? And what a lovely watch!’ said Margaret soothingly.
‘Of course I made it and much trouble it was. Ach! those children, I thought never should I come away. You like my watch?’ more complacently. ‘My new boy friend gave it to me.’
After the watch had been admired and Margaret had suppressed some disloyal reflections on Zita’s capacity for attracting boy friends who could afford to buy her miniature diamond watches, they chatted for a little while and then Zita darted away to speak to Mrs Challis and did not return and Margaret was once more left alone, but not so isolated as to be conspicuous. One or two people glanced at her with vague smiles but no one addressed her, and after some time she began to think that most of these people knew each other, for she heard many nicknames exchanged and caught shreds of gossip which argued intimacy between the gossipers. To her, everyone whom she studied seemed distinguished, interesting, beautiful, and she recognized several celebrities, while the soft continuous music, the warm air filled with perfume and cigarette smoke and the scent of dying roses, the brilliant lights and the continuous babble of lively voices, presented such an entertaining spectacle that after a while she ceased to wish to take an active part herself and was content to listen and look on.
In a little while she thought: I am enjoying it. Here I am, at a brilliant party that I would have given ten years of my life to go to when we lived in Lukeborough, but I’m not taking any part in it; I’m just looking on as if I were at a play; and yet I’m enjoying it. I am more content than I was a year ago; yes, I really am.
‘There’s the most wonderful view from the roof,’ suddenly said a girl’s voice above her head. ‘Too impressive. You go up and look at it, darling. You can see absolutely to the Ruhr!’
Margaret glanced up as the speaker came down the marble staircase, picking her way between the guests seated upon the steps, and saw that people were going along the corridor at the head of the stairs as if on their way to the roof. She suddenly felt that a breath of evening air would be delicious.
A few minutes later she stood breathing the faint breeze and gazing out across London, that beloved city, that wounded, unmartial group of villages, lying spread for mile upon mile, east and west and north and south, as far as the eye could reach, under the darkening summer sky. For the clouds had drifted away, and now every tower and dome and factory, every palace and church and stadium, stood out ghostly clear in the soft afterglow. Sometimes the myriad grey and cream tints were broken into by a dark-green mass of summer trees and occasionally, like bones, white or yellow ruins reared up. A few lights sparkled here and there amid the miles of buildings and smoke from the trains spread itself rollingly along the dark-blue or brown façades. It was the minute yet clear detail of the whole colossal expanse of masonry which gave it an irresistible fascination to the eye: the vastness of it awed the heart, and the pride and splendour of its history awed the mind, but these tiny rose-pink walls and dwarfed houses of tea-colour or livid white, each with its very windows distinct and each unlike its fellow, were – in the sense that they excited the imagination of the beholder and set it soaring – wonderful.
Margaret leant upon a parapet and gazed, her thoughts moving on from dream to dream. A few people were on the roof when she first came up, pointing out landmarks to one another and exclaiming at the clearness of the air, but soon they went away and she was alone. She had not thought to bring her coat, and presently she shivered.
‘Cold or miserable?’ asked Alex Niland’s voice, and she turned and saw him coming towards her across the leads. His evening clothes were rumpled and his hair was disarranged and under one arm he carried a bottle.
‘Which?’ he repeated, and put his arm, which was pleasantly warm, about her shoulders.
‘Having a nice little brood, eh? What are we here for? What does it all mean? Where are we all going and why? I know. Have some,’ and he unscrewed the bottle, putting both arms tightly round her in order to do so, and invitingly held out the foaming ne
ck.
‘No, thank you – oh – all right – thanks, I will –’ and she drank some foam, hoping that he would not spill it over her dress and wondering what was coming next.
‘That’s better,’ he said, and carefully wiped the neck of the bottle with a large, grubby handkerchief and drank himself.
‘You miserable?’ he went on earnestly, putting his face close to hers and gazing intently into her eyes with his own large ones, that looked dark and strange in the fading light. ‘Yes. Worrying about Gerry, aren’t you? Poor old Gerry, he’s had it. You don’t want to worry, you know.’ He waved his arm at the wonderful panorama spread below and around them and then at Venus, flashing above them through air so clear that an infinitely thin fiery net made of her own light seemed flung about her. ‘Look at that. Always something to look at. Minute you open your eyes in the morning. Have some more.’
‘I will, but I don’t like it much. I like you, though,’ said Margaret, in what she felt was a reckless manner, and she leant closer against the warmth of his shoulder. She drank some more foam and Alex carefully wiped her mouth with the handkerchief and then kissed her with a long friendly kiss.
‘I’ve taken all the paint off your mouth,’ and he wiped his own with the handkerchief. ‘You put on some more. That’s right. Now about my drawing your head. You come here next Saturday afternoon. About four o’clock.’
‘All right. What shall I wear? Will my hair do like this?’
‘Wear anything. Anything you like. Yes, keep your hair like that.’ He kissed her again. ‘That better?’
‘Yes – oh, yes, thank you – Alex. This’ – she tried to regain control over a situation which was rapidly becoming dreamlike – ‘this is awfully unexpected, isn’t it – I mean –’
‘No, no,’ he interrupted, shaking his head. ‘I’ve always noticed you and liked the shape of your head and your mouth, and I could see you were worried about Gerry. You shouldn’t, it’s a waste. He isn’t the right person for you to love, you want somebody who can love too, not a stuffed shirt; you stop worrying about him, Maggie.’
‘All right, I will,’ she said, beginning to laugh. ‘Oh, you are kind!’
‘Drink,’ said Alex, waving the bottle, ‘drink and kissing. That’s what you like, isn’t it? And you go and look at things, like I said. (You can see things anywhere; you needn’t go into the country or anything.) I wish there was some more.’ He turned the bottle upside down and shook it. ‘Damn. Never mind; it’s cold. Let’s walk up and down.’
‘Won’t people be wondering where you are?’ she asked, feeling it her duty thus to remind him, but hoping that he would not think it his duty to go back to his guests.
‘They’ll think I’m necking with someone somewhere. Doesn’t matter.’ He put her arm round her waist and arranged her arm round his, and thus entwined they began to pace up and down. She wished that Mr Challis and all the celebrities downstairs could see her, alone upon the roof with, and amiably enlaced about, the lion of the evening, and yet, on second thoughts, she was rather glad that they could not.
‘You don’t want to take things seriously,’ Alex was beginning, when a voice exclaimed, ‘Hullo there!’ and the soldier Lev came out of the attic window which led on to the roof, and over towards them. Though not exactly untidy, his appearance was not completely orderly; his hair was ruffled and – Margaret began to have a faintly nightmarish feeling – under one arm he carried a bottle.
‘Uh – huh,’ he said, nodding at Margaret as if he had always suspected that this was the sort of thing she did. ‘They’re asking for you downstairs,’ to Alex. He unscrewed his bottle and held it out to Margaret. ‘Thusty, Gorgeous?’
‘I’ll keep you company,’ she answered, and this time she drank some. It was rather good. Lev nodded as if satisfied.
‘I’ve been telling her she mustn’t worry,’ said Alex, taking the bottle from Lev and drinking. ‘She mustn’t, must she?’
‘Certainly not,’ said Lev, and his dark eyes, which glowed with melancholy fires, turned upon Margaret a sardonic smile that was not unkind. ‘Believe me, it’s a mistake.’ He took the bottle from Alex and drank.
‘We were walking up and down. To keep warm. You come and walk up and down,’ said Alex. ‘Here –’ he tried to put Lev’s arm round Margaret’s waist. ‘We all walk up and down, see?’
‘I get the idea,’ said Lev, arranging his arm round Margaret and hers about him. ‘Now, where do we go from here?’
‘Up and down,’ said Alex, beginning to march. ‘Just go up and down. I’ve been telling her – here, you kiss her,’ he interrupted himself. ‘You kiss her, too. That’s what she likes.’
‘I didn’t –’ began Margaret.
‘Maybe she doesn’t want me to,’ said Lev, peering down into her face.
‘If you would like to, I don’t –’
‘O.K. by me,’ said Lev, and gave her a kiss that was expert but not offensively so. They then resumed their march. It was beginning to get dark.
‘She’s a nice girl,’ Alex assured Lev, speaking over Margaret’s head. ‘Loving, I mean. She’s all right.’
‘I told you she was, didn’t I?’
‘You did.’ It struck Margaret that Lev had had more than Alex but carried it better. He walked a little unsteadily, but his voice was not so solemn.
‘I knew what she was like the first time I saw her,’ said Lev suddenly, ‘I thought, it’s just too bad I can’t fall for that dame but that’s my luck. I always fall for the other sort. She’ll be all right, though.’
‘Which dame do you mean?’ said Alex.
‘Why, this one. Which is it?’ peering into Margaret’s face. ‘Yes, that’s the one. Dress is different, but it’s the same one,’ and he kissed her again.
Margaret was now divided between a dreamy and slightly intoxicated pleasure in this regular promenade under the stars supported by their arms while their voices solemnly discussed her (they were both tall men) above her head, and a growing conviction that Alex should go downstairs and entertain his guests. I am alone on a roof with two drunken men at night and they keep kissing me, she thought. Doesn’t it sound awful? But it isn’t awful at all. Things are very often different, thought Margaret, from what they sound in words.
‘Don’t you think you ought to go down?’ she said gently to Alex.
‘What for? Oh yes, I suppose so. Lev, you tell her she mustn’t worry.’
‘You mustn’t worry, sister,’ said Lev’s deep voice out of the dusk. ‘It’s bad, but it’s not so bad.’
‘That’s it,’ said Alex, dreamily. ‘Bad but not so bad.’
‘Bad, but not so bad,’ repeated Margaret. ‘All right, I’ll try not to worry, and thank you both very much.’
‘What was she worrying about?’ asked Lev, drinking again.
‘Everything,’ said Alex.
‘You shouldn’t,’ said Lev to Margaret. ‘Earl likes you; he thinks you’re swell. He’s gotten himself engaged to a British girl; what do you know about that?’
‘Oh, I am so glad!’ exclaimed Margaret, and as the last of her eligible admirers thus left the lists, she heard him go without a pang.
‘You like me?’ demanded Lev suddenly, diving at her.
‘Very much,’ she answered.
‘You like me too,’ said Alex, ‘and I like you and I like Lev –’
How much longer this would have lasted was a question Margaret often pondered afterwards, but at this moment a figure in white appeared at the attic window, and Hebe’s voice called: ‘You three lunatics. Come on downstairs!’
Chapter The Last
In the autumn, Margaret paid that visit to Lady Challis to which she had long looked forward.
When she had nervously telephoned to propose herself, she had been unable to speak to Lady Challis and had made the arrangements with a cheerful voice calling itself Mary, against the customary background of other voices and barking dogs, while there seemed a doubt whether Bertie (who was described a
s being Busy With The Plums) could meet her at the station. Oh, that did not matter; she knew the way; she could walk, Margaret eagerly assured Mary’s voice, and so it was decided that she should go down on the morning of the following Saturday.
When she set out, it was in the full and glorious type of an autumn day; with a wind rolling white and golden clouds across a sky whose sunny blue gulfs seemed to lead on and on into Heaven. Her heart was light; she pressed forward eagerly into the wind and looked every now and again at the sky, thinking it resembled that in Alex’s great painting, The Shrapnel Hunters. All England was talking of the picture that autumn. It showed three children searching for fragments of steel that had fallen overnight among the willow-herb and dock-plants of a bombed site, and the critics were comparing it with Millais’s Autumn Leaves, some of them insisting that this was the greater painting because in it there were pity and terror, as well as beauty, whereas in the older master’s picture there was only beauty. Margaret had no opinions about that, but she had been many times to see The Shrapnel Hunters and had taken its shapes and colours into her mind’s eye, finding comfort in them amid the picture’s grim strength.
It was now difficult for her to realize that the man who had painted this picture should once have kissed her and advised her about her attitude towards life, for after the drawing of her head had been made, she had seen no more of him. He had gone to Italy on his official mission, leaving Hebe to make the house in St John’s Wood habitable against his return, and he had already been away for nearly three months. While he was making the drawing he had barely spoken to Margaret, and when he had said good-bye to her, all that he had given her with her model’s fee was an absent smile and a pat on the shoulder and a ‘Thank you, Maggie dear.’
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