The Friendly Young Ladies: A Novel

by Mary Renault

  “I fell on my feet too,” said Leo with her dark slanting smile. “Didn’t I?”

  “That’s an evasion.”

  “There’s nothing to evade. You’re being ridiculous.”

  “I know. But I can’t help feeling it.”

  “Give her credit for the pluck she has. She couldn’t be sure she’d find anyone here.”

  “She had her return fare, and she’d have used it.”

  “You don’t mean half you say. If she came in now you’d be nicer to her than I would.”

  “She’s so helpless. I do it in spite of myself.”

  “Well, after all this, here she still is. We’ll have to think. Maybe we can find her a job.”

  “Can she do anything?”

  “Of course not. What about that tea?”

  “Wait while I change.” Helen unbuttoned her jacket and tossed her blouse, which looked as fresh as a narcissus, into the linen-basket. “I met Roger Brent today,” she said presently. “He gave me a cocktail.” She looked up from folding her skirt to watch Leo’s face.

  “Oh,” said Leo, putting her papers together. “How’s he keeping?”

  “He kept me for three-quarters of an hour, not counting the time he took coming to the point. As far as he ever did come to it. I guessed what had happened, from his taking notice of me at all.”

  “I’m sorry. I ought to have told you. I would have done if I’d remembered you might run into him. Was he embarrassing?”

  “He has his pride, I suppose, like anyone else. He just looked unhappy, and asked me casual-seeming questions about your psychology.”

  “How awful. I’m sorry. He suddenly got boring about a week ago. I did mean to tell you. I suppose I was feeling too sick about it, at the time. What did you say?”

  “Some form of mild euthanasia. That you were liable to moods and it was better to let you alone till they passed off, even if it took some time. He knew what that meant, he isn’t a fool. … Why ever did you let it happen? You must have seen it coming on; even I did.”

  “Oh, I know. I hoped I was wrong, I suppose. He’s fun to be with, you know, full of good talk. And then, when it began, it seemed all right, for half an hour. … If you want his side of the story, it’s in the waste-paper basket. I think I only tore it in half.”

  “Damn it, Leo. You can be a cad.”

  “That’s what Roger found.”

  “But why? You wouldn’t hear a breath against him. He’s the same person.”

  “He was a friend of mine.”

  “Well, you might be fair to him now.”

  “I know,” said Leo wearily. “Do you think I don’t realize? I liked Roger, we got on together. Nothing’s fair.”

  “Did he set about it badly?”

  “Rather well, I think. I hardly remember, now. … Yes, it was my fault, of course. Don’t ask me why I do it, because I don’t know. It’s like going on a blind, only the damage is more lasting. I hoped I’d grown out of it.”

  “But, my dear, what of it? Why not take it as it comes? Roger isn’t heavy in hand. He even has a sense of humour, within reason. You could have amused yourself while you felt like it, and no bones broken.”

  “I thought that too.” Leo looked out of the window, at the fading sun on the figurehead’s gilt hair. “I always do, till it’s too late.”

  “But what happened? From what I could gather between the lines, you must have fairly sliced him up.”

  “Nothing happened.” Leo got up and stood, with her hands in her pockets, looking down the river. “He was no more good to me, that’s all. Nor I to him. So I cut it out.”

  From the folds of the frock she was pulling over her head, Helen said, “I thought perhaps this time. … You seemed to like him so much.”

  Without looking round, Leo said, “It’s always someone I like. That’s the hell of it. That’s how it all began.”

  “My dear, I know. For a year or two, perhaps. But all this while. … A boy of nineteen. Who told you baldly that the two previous women in his life were prostitutes in—where was it?—Cairo and Shanghai?”

  “He didn’t tell me that to be beastly. He was trying to apologize.”

  “Well, if you can see all that—”

  “Oh, God, I can see it. I saw it at the time. I can remember. I thought how straight and decent he really was; I knew that. I’d known him for years. I’d knock anyone else down, I thought, who spoke to him like this. And if I’d had anything to do it with quickly, before I’d had time to think, I believe I’d have killed him. … How do I know it was his fault at all? Perhaps I’d have treated anyone like that. Roger, perhaps. That’s what I thought, when it came to the point.”

  “Roger’s an adult, civilized man. You know that. You know it wouldn’t be the same.”

  “But I might be. How do I know? I liked him too much. I couldn’t risk it. It was for his sake, really; because we’d been friends. But it has to be someone you like. You see, there’s no answer. It’s time I gave up looking for one.” She turned back from the window, into the room. “After all, what does it matter? My life’s good enough as it is. I’d only spoil it. The only thing I really mind is—well, just knowing there’s something one hasn’t got the guts to face. But at least one needn’t take it out on other people. I never will again. For heaven’s sake let’s do something about this tea. I’m empty.”

  Helen put her puff and lipstick away with her gentle, precise movements. Like one who continues a conversation, she said, “Elsie ought to have got the tea, while you were working. She’d be some use if I could train her to look after you when I’m not there. She can start by helping with the washing-up.”

  CHAPTER XI

  IT WAS NOT HER book—a promising one from the twopenny library, entitled Stargleam—or the sleepy afternoon sun on the deck, which had carried Elsie, oblivious, past tea-time, and the first stirrings of a healthy appetite. She had been writing, and with a concentration more earnest than Leo’s. She was composing a letter to Peter.

  In a sheltered spot in the stern, she had assembled a pile of cushions and settled with her writing-block on her knee, glad of the silence that had settled on the boat since lunch-time. She wrote slowly, filling in the lengthy intervals between the sentences by watching the passing river traffic, and enjoying to the full the waves of melancholy, yearning, adoration, and hope which her occupation engendered. The thought of Peter filled her, as water fills a cup. It also invaded her literary style.

  “It is wonderful to be free,” (she wrote) “and living among untrammelled” (how many l’s? Perhaps unshackled would be safer) “unshackled people. Life here is all and more than I hoped for, and I feel that for me a new phase has begun.” She paused here for some time; the moment had evidently come for description, and this, she found, was where the difficult part began. “My sister lives a very Bohemian life,” she continued triumphantly, “on a houseboat where she has lived since she became successful. She has told me all about her love affair but I feel that perhaps I ought to treat that in confidence.” (She liked very much the grown-up look of this.) “Her life was tragic for a time but she has surmounted it.” Leo, she thought, couldn’t possibly mind that.

  She raised her eyes, in search of further inspiration. They met those of a youngish man in a punt, which he was poling expertly and straight towards her. For a moment, indeed, she thought he was about to ram the Lily Belle; but a last-minute leverage on the pole brought him up alongside. He was square-built but lean, wearing dirty grey flannel slacks and a thick leather belt of great age. Above the waist he was bare and very brown. He was probably in the early thirties. He eyed Elsie with interest, but had the air of one who takes his own presence for granted. His eyes were screwed up against the sun; he had coarse, curly hair, dry with weather, and an intelligent, contented face.

  “Hullo,” he said. “Is Leo working, do you know?”

  “I—I think she is,” said Elsie, in a flutter. She had never seen so much of a man at such close quarters, a
nd was anxious to conceal the fact that it disconcerted her. He had crisp bleached hair on his forearms, a shade lighter than his tanned skin; long tough muscles showed when he moved. His forehead was wet along the hairline, and he breathed audibly; he had been punting fast. Elsie found him rather overwhelming. “I’ll go up,” she said, scrambling to her feet, “and let her know you’re here.”

  “No, don’t do that. I was only going to give her a shout to say I’d be along later. But you can tell her. How are you liking it here?”

  “Very much, thank you. I’m having a lovely time. Are you sure you wouldn’t like me to fetch Leo down?”

  “No, it’ll interrupt her. I was only passing. So long; see you later, I expect.” He leaned hard on the punt-pole, and, crouching till his hands were almost in the water, glided away with gathering speed. Elsie, who had not had nearly time to get used to the fact of his being there, and only now remembered that in order to announce him to Leo it would be necessary to know his name, gazed after him with her mouth slightly open. It was some time before the letter got under way again.

  “She is a very independent person. She does not seem to take much notice of the men who come round to see her, but they keep on calling. It is difficult to know what she thinks about it as she is very reserved really I think.” A sudden emergence of female instinct caused her to add, to her own surprise, “I have just been meeting one of them; he seems very nice and I am expecting to meet him again this evening.” She gazed at this sentence for some time, and was on the point of crossing it out, but, getting more used to it on a second reading, liked it and decided not to. After all, she thought, none of it was untrue.

  “She has a great friend, called Helen Vaughan, who also lives on the boat. She is very artistic, and has a very interesting job in town, drawing pictures of operations. I think she leads a rather exciting life though she does not talk much about it. She is very pretty and wears lovely clothes, but has a very sweet nature.

  “I forgot to mention what my sister does. She is a novelist.” She re-read this several times, feeling quite impressed by it herself. Surely Peter would think her worth knowing now! “She writes. …” The pen hung in mid-air, and wavered. Elsie went over the letter again, from the beginning. It only made her more acutely aware of an approaching drop in the intellectual temperature. She found herself wishing that Leo had written even one book with a title like, say, The Problem of Sex, or Whither Womanhood? which might tempt Peter, with a promise of intellectual equality, to come and call. “She writes. …” Leo’s most recent work, she had found on a reexamination of the shelf in some such hope, was called Rustlers’ Roundup. A gull, leaning for a moment flat-winged on the air before her, gave a derisive mew. Its unwinking eye must, however, have conveyed some message, for Elsie’s pen came down with sudden decision. “She writes under a nom de plume, which she keeps a secret, but actually her books are very well known.”

  Her sigh of relief was interrupted by voices, and the sound of a closing door; Helen must have come back while her attention was elsewhere. She folded the writing-pad; there would be time to think of a final paragraph after tea.

  “Would you like to come out into the kitchen with me?” asked Helen, with gentle decision, when they had greeted one another. “I expect you’d like to know all the workings.”

  “Thanks ever so,” said Elsie, much flattered at having her company sought. At the galley door she paused, remembering something.

  “Oh, Leo. A man came and said he was coming to see you, and I’m awfully sorry, but I forgot to ask him his name.”

  “What sort of man?” said Leo quickly. Her face looked as it had when she had first recognized Elsie in the Green Lion.

  “Well—not any special sort. I mean—”

  “Did he come by the ferry?” Leo pulled a spoon, which she happened to be holding, through her fingers.

  “No, he came in a punt. I think,” she added bashfully, “he must live in the neighborhood, because he only had a pair of trousers on.”

  Outside in the galley, Helen began to laugh quietly.

  “Oh, Lord, she means Joe.” Leo was laughing too; as if, thought Elsie with faint annoyance, it were she who had made some amusing error. “Thank God for that. I was forgetting you hadn’t met him. Come on, let’s get tea started.”

  Puzzled and a little ruffled, Elsie joined Helen and trailed behind her devotedly, bringing in the wrong things and changing them with eager obedience, so that the meal was ready only a few minutes later than it would have been if the others had got it unaided. They were just settling down to their second cups when the bump and scrape of a boat sounded outside. Leo put out a long leg and hitched an outlying chair up to the table; Helen lifted the lid of the teapot and appraised the contents; but the entrance of the young man from the punt seemed, to Elsie’s secret disappointment, to disturb them no more than if it had been one of themselves. He was dressed as before except for the addition of a sweater rather cleaner than his slacks, and made himself more confusing than ever by kissing Helen casually, and smiling across at Leo as he did so.

  “I’m sorry, I’m a bit early,” he said, sitting straight down at the table. “I thought you’d have finished tea.”

  “We ought to have.” Leo hacked off a thick wedge from the cake. “Would you rather have beer?”

  “No, tea, thanks, if there’s any left. I’ve had it, but I always think one’s second tea tastes better than one’s first, don’t you? What a nice squelchy cake.” He smiled at Elsie over the top of it, remarking, when his mouth was empty, “Your sister and I have met already,” as an afterthought. Elsie noticed that Helen, without asking him how he took his tea, pushed over to him a brew like a labourer’s, dark brown and with three lumps of sugar.

  “If it isn’t strong enough I’ll make some more.”

  “Just right, bless you. Oh, Leo, I was passing Hassal’s this morning, so I thought I’d look in and see if your galleys were ready, and they were, so I brought them.” He pointed to a thick package he had dumped on a chair.

  “Oh, good; that ought to be the final lot. How soon do they want them?”

  “Two days if possible. I did about half for you in the train, I thought you wouldn’t mind.”

  “How right you were. I don’t know how you do them in the train, though, I always need the floor. Did you see anything that ought to come out?”

  “Only a couple of quite short bits. I’ll show you in a minute. It’s rather a good one, I think. I like the part where he rides that horse into the saloon.”

  “You are a fool, Joe. You always like the most incredible parts.”

  “I believed every word of it while it lasted. It was a pleasure, I assure you, no trouble at all. Mason says he doesn’t really approve of your eliminating the love-interest completely.”

  “I did put a girl in. I’m sure I did. Her name was Susie, or Sadie or something. And I mentioned her again at the end.”

  “Maybe he bit too far, or not far enough, like the boy with the sausage roll.”

  “I always think it would save such a lot of trouble if you could just indicate it with a row of crosses, or BERT LOVES MABEL, or something quick, and get on with the story.”

  “Well, you practically do. Mind you, it suits me all right.”

  “I’ll put more in the next if they make a fuss. The more intelligent section of my public thinks girls are soppy, anyway.”

  Elsie was beginning to feel a little at sea in this conversation, and to suspect that Joe—of whom calling manners were, apparently, not expected—had forgotten she was there. What was the use, she asked herself, of having a sister who was an authoress, and being left out of all the literary talk? A momentary pause gave her the chance to remedy this.

  “I am reading a very nice love story,” she stated, “at the moment.”

  “Really?” said Joe, turning on her at once a grave but friendly attention. “Who by?”

  Elsie had no idea. She chose most books by their titles, supplemented b
y a peep inside; she hardly knew what it was in Joe’s kindly voice which suddenly made her suspect that this might turn out not to be good form. She went pink.

  “Lucille Something-or-other. I—I can’t quite remember the rest of it.”

  “What’s it about?” Joe asked, with a companionable smile. They all waited for her to tell them. Elsie’s blush deepened. All at once she was acutely aware that she was out of key, that they were being kind to her, that she had arrested a conversation that interested them and that they were concealing the fact from her as best they could. Now she must go on, and she wished the floor would open and let her quietly down into the Thames.

  It’s quite a simple story really, she said rapidly. “I mean it isn’t deep at all. It’s about a girl who’s a mannequin, and she’s very beautiful, and everybody admires her except the chief dress designer who’s very handsome, but he only cares about his work and doesn’t seem interested in women.”

  “I met a dress designer once,” said Helen reminiscently, “at a cocktail party.”

  “Fancy your never telling me,” said Leo. “Was he handsome and keen on his work?”

  “Yes, very. I remember he had his nails varnished a sort of dull mauve. He wasn’t interested in women, either.”

  “Do go on, Elsie,” said Leo hastily. “What happened then?”

  Once again it seemed to Elsie that the conversation had changed gears for her benefit. Acutely miserable, she floundered on.

  “Well, this girl, Star, has a bet with one of the other girls that she’ll get him to take her out, and she does, and they fall in love; and then this other mannequin, who’s jealous, tells him about the bet and he thinks she doesn’t really love him and instead of designing a dress specially for her, as he was going to, he designs one for the other mannequin instead. “That’s as far as I’ve got.”