The Friendly Young Ladies: A Novel

by Mary Renault

  Meanwhile, the ferry-boat had delivered its load. Peter effected introductions and apologies gracefully, but with that ghost of proprietorship which trickles through good manners, unaware, from the inward soul. Norah was evidently used to it. Helen felt for her, and took to her at once. She led them inside, and produced some beer.

  “I’ve been telling Norah about your work,” said Peter, “and she’s very interested. We were hoping you’d show us some. Both the technical and the non-technical, of course.”

  “I don’t do any non-technical work now,” said Helen untruthfully. She was shy of her efforts, for her standard was high and self-critical, and she had a horror of appearing to pose as a serious artist; she had penetrated a few Bloomsbury backwaters in her day. Especially she did not intend to pose with the object of impressing Norah, who struck her as likeable and genuine. She brought out a file. “These are for a book on eye surgery, by Bryn-Davies. It’s coming out next month.”

  “Bryn-Davies? Do you work for him?” Norah looked up, the last of her shyness gone. “I’ve taken his cases in the theatre sometimes. He was a houseman when I was training.”

  “You don’t mean to tell me,” said Helen, delighted, “that you trained at Hilary’s? But this is marvellous. So did I.”

  “Not really? When did you leave? But I was actually there that year. … Not till October? … Oh, night duty, that accounts for it, of course. … On Kingston? Then do tell me, what was the real truth about that Meredith business? I was too new a pro. to hear the inside story.”

  Helen knew the inside story, and several others. Norah knew, and was delighted to relate, what had become of dear old Eliot and that bitch of a Sister Tutor. The drawings slipped to the floor, forgotten. Peter picked them up, and studied them with critical aloofness. The godfatherly benevolence he had felt at the start of the reunion was beginning to wear a little thin. He thought poorly of Hilary’s, as a Jerome’s man should, and Norah rarely mentioned it to him. This sort of thing, he felt, was well enough to set the ball rolling, but was outlasting its function. The number of people, of whom he had never heard, that Norah appeared to have known intimately before she met him, seemed unnecessary, even superfluous. He picked up another drawing, and scrutinized it austerely.

  “The other way up,” said Helen, interrupting her narrative to turn it over for him. “Well, after some weeks even Matron got to hear about it, so …”

  “A friend of mine,” said Peter with determination, “is thinking of writing a thesis on the psychopathy of matrons.” He developed the idea, rather amusingly. They ran it along politely for two or three minutes, and, rounding a corner, were back at Hilary’s again.

  Behind the screen of the portfolio, Peter glanced unobtrusively at the door. Elsie was most uncharacteristically late. And Leo; could she be out? He had, after all, said that he was coming, so it seemed hardly credible. But he had barely been here ten minutes, though it seemed longer. More probably—much more probably—she was getting herself up a bit. He was seldom wrong in guesses of this kind.

  He had scarcely formed the thought when a long light step, definitely not Elsie’s, sounded outside. Peter buried himself in the portfolio. After her behaviour last time, he felt that a little initial reserve would not be out of place. He looked up just in time to catch the tail-end of a cursory smile and nod. Leo’s eyes were already travelling on. Lounging debonairly in the doorway, in a pose that made the most of very good tailoring, she remained fixed for a moment, returning, under dark half-dropped lashes, Norah’s fascinated gaze. Her own stare conveyed a calculated reticence, like that of a poker player trying, without complete success, to suppress his feelings at the sight of a straight flush, or of a bibliophile who has spotted a priceless first edition in a twopenny junk-box. Then, like one awaking from a momentary trance, she turned on Peter a face which was the most formal of interrogation-marks.

  Up to this moment, Helen had been making up her mind to disapprove of Leo altogether. It was all somewhat excessive and transpontine, and, besides, she felt she had been managing very adequately on her own. But the brittle bonhomie of Peter’s introduction, stretched so tenuously over a sulk, was too much for her sense of humour. He had asked, she decided, for what was coming to him. On Norah’s account her qualms had disappeared; Norah was quite well able to look after herself, and would be none the worse for a little encouragement to do so. And, looked at from another point of view, her neck was slightly, but reassuringly, too thick. Necks were a matter on which Leo was fastidious.

  Taking one thing with another, Helen decided to stand from under. She got up to dispense more drinks, leaving the seat beside Norah vacant.

  Leo sank into it, giving her trouser-knees a neat hitch to ease the crease. As she settled herself, she sent Norah a private little smile, as who should say, “We managed that rather well, didn’t we?”

  Helen came to rest beside Peter, took up the drawings, and said with confiding charm, “Do these really interest you? The best ones are a little further down. Now here’s something that really was rather fascinating to watch, though you’ve often seen it I dare say….”

  Peter, his field of vision thus circumscribed by good manners, went through motions of eager attention and shifted restlessly in his chair. His temper was not improved by a clink of glasses at the other side of the room, accompanied by Leo’s voice saying, softly but audibly, “To our better acquaintance.”

  “… and these,” said Helen, “I did for an American who came over here….” She described, in detail, the surgical procedure, contrasting English with American technique, and trustfully inviting Peter’s opinion. Her deference would have been quite gratifying, at almost any different time.

  Over in the other corner, things were going like a song. Not for nothing had Leo been meeting Helen’s friends, in and out of hospital, for rather more than six years. The time being over-short for finesse, she led with the ace of trumps. “You know,” she said, “if I hadn’t heard you and Helen talking as I came in, I’d never have guessed, in a thousand years, that you were a nurse.”

  “Wouldn’t you?” Norah’s candid face warmed with pleasure. For reasons opaque to the lay mind, but crystal-clear to young women whose names appear on the State Register, she would have taken this as a compliment even if spoken in rebuke. As delivered by Leo, it was devastating. Peter himself had never paid her this tribute; though, as their acquaintance had ripened in the anaesthetic lobby of the theatre, the omission was reasonable.

  “The great thing,” she explained, “is to keep up some sort of a life of your own outside the job. When you take to sitting about in uniform in your free time, you may as well be dead. Your friend,” she added by way of a graceful return, “isn’t at all obvious, either.”

  “That’s why she’s a friend of mine,” said Leo simply. (To him that hath shall be given was, she had long since discovered, a good rule of thumb.) “I’m like you, I prefer untypical people. You and I are rampant individualists, I suppose. It’s not fashionable, but it’s a lot more fun. Don’t you think so?”

  Copying as far as possible Leo’s air of negligence, Norah agreed that it was. Helen had judged her correctly; she was well supplied with good sense. Tactics of pursuit would have alarmed her as effectively as they would have bored Leo, who, in any case, rated them abysmally low—not merely vulgar, but amateurish, which was worse. In this case, two exclusive people had naturally drifted together. It worked like birdlime. Norah had had more than two years of being improved; kindly, tactfully on the whole, amusingly sometimes, but unremittingly. Here was someone, clearly critical to a fault, who seemed not to think that any improvement was called for. It was immense.

  “What are you laughing at?” she asked, further intrigued by a deep, sotto voce chuckle which Leo made no attempt to explain.

  “Sorry. I was just thinking what an amusing time a person like you must have had in hospital. Subtly deflating these pompous sisters and so on. Though I suppose as a rule their hides are so thick you c
an’t get through them without being depressingly crude. Still, you must have had quite a lot of quiet fun all to yourself.”

  She had limned, with a few economical strokes, the secret self-portrait of four young nurses out of five. To Norah, such penetration on the part of an outsider seemed quite uncanny. She said, deprecatingly, “Well, you certainly would blow your brains out if you didn’t give your sense of humour an airing now and again.”

  Shreds of this conversation drifted over to Helen, as she shuffled the drawings in search of another suited to exposition. She coughed convulsively into her handkerchief, got up, and made a solicitous fuss over the refilling of Peter’s glass, which was only one third down.

  “I don’t know if orthopaedic surgery is at all in your line. …” There were quite a number of orthopaedic drawings, illustrations to a monograph. Helen made the most of them. She had, at last, no reason to complain of an abstracted audience. Peter had become, suddenly, all eyes and ears. His head had come several inches nearer, and his comments were accompanied by intimate little glances. They were received into a blanket of bland, innocent friendliness. Helen had had her share of admiration, unforced to the point of occasional embarrassment; she could well afford to be amused this time, and she was. A small convex glass on the wall enabled her to see, without looking round, that the effect was being sadly wasted in the proper quarter. She felt, for a moment, quite sorry for him; her tender heart was apt to be moved by the most temporary reverses. She even allowed him to collect up her fingers accidentally, along with one of the papers, and returned his pressure with a maternal little squeeze. Then “Hullo,” she said over her shoulder. “Where are you people off to?”

  Peter, who had not the advantage of the wall-mirror, had been preoccupied with the success of his outflanking move. He looked up. The position at which it had been directed was no longer there.

  “Shan’t be a minute,” said Leo airily. “I’m just taking Norah to have a look at the canoe.” They disappeared; Leo motioning Norah, with a slight but gallant gesture, to precede her through the door.

  Peter gazed after them. There was a moment in which his jaw actually dropped; an unfortunate moment, for it was an expression which sat so incongruously on his face that it brought Helen’s comic sense into play. She observed, with acute enjoyment, his rapid recovery, his thoughtful reorientation, and his too obvious resolve to make the best of a job which might turn out to be not so bad after all. The sound of a shy, hesitant step on the ladder cut short her entertainment; she had quite forgotten, for a while, that the performance had been a benefit one.

  Elsie’s timing, though unconscious, had been perfect. She hit the exact moment when Peter had re-concentrated all his charm for the new mise en scène. As she appeared in the doorway, Helen stooped to gather in her drawings, moving so briskly that Peter’s best smile passed clean over her head. He received it back instead, from Elsie, in a pale tremulous reflection, like sunlight on a pool.

  “Well,” said Helen, getting up, “I really must be getting something done about the supper. I hope those two on the river won’t go too far; but I suppose we shall have to risk having it a bit overdone, shan’t we?” She smiled at him with the most innocent sociability. “Hullo, Elsie. You’re just in time to look after the company while I’m gone.”

  She moved smoothly off. Helen never bustled. She could accomplish more than most people without the appearance of effort.

  Elsie had Peter quite to herself for more than half an hour. He acquitted himself with what, in the circumstances, amounted to credit, and was never once unkind. The talk was not, perhaps, exactly dynamic; but for this Elsie accepted, very readily, the whole responsibility. Like all shy people, she was used to conversations beginning to sag when she was called upon to support one end of them. Even with Peter it had happened sometimes before, though not for quite so long. She answered the questions he asked about her life and progress, and was saddened a little, but unsurprised, to find him not listening very attentively to the answers. She did not lose sight of the fact that in being thus tête-â-tête with him she was enjoying the highest felicity. But after ten minutes there was a strange intimation at the back of her mind that she had had it now, that she was already happy enough, that no more was necessary for the present. If, even, other people came in, and there were general conversation, it would not plunge her into despair. When, during a lengthy pause, Helen came to lay the table, she was conscious of something absurdly similar to relief, and jumped up to help in spite of Helen’s assurance that there was really nothing to do. Here was the moment, she reaffirmed, on which her thoughts had been set for days; but now, in its very shadow, her mind had run ahead again, and she looked forward to she knew not what; to the next meeting or its anticipation; to sitting, this evening, and watching him quietly from a corner; even to looking back on it from the completed security of the past. For only precocity, or maturity, or unreconciled age are choked by biting off more than they can chew; to this, its natural exercise, youth is mercifully adapted, like childhood to green apples. Hunger is not so early awake; the taste and scent of love sustain, and, as with green apples, do it sometimes better than the substance. Cruelty and disillusion are the only untransmutable pains. For cruelty Elsie retained the instinct of a lingering childhood; against it her choice had guarded her safely enough. Disillusion had gone out of the door just four minutes before she entered it. Peter’s first smile, as she arrived, she had somehow felt at once contained happiness enough to last the evening; and, ever since, an instinct wiser than herself had been advising her not to ask for more. Shakespeare, she remembered (trying to excuse and understand the feeling), had been shy too, like an imperfect actor on the stage. To-morrow, next week, there would be miracles. Today it was enough to expect them; meanwhile she trotted in and out of the kitchen, busied herself with a dozen small distractions, and brought Helen into the conversation whenever she could.

  “Where’s Leo?” she asked, as she collected plates from the dresser.

  “Out in the canoe,” said Helen, “with Norah Haynes. (The cheese is on the top shelf.) Norah trained with me at Hilary’s. She and Peter came along together. Have you laid a place for her, by the way?”

  “Oh, no,” said Elsie cheerfully. “I didn’t.” She had just made good the deficiency when the canoe returned.

  It was audible some minutes before it arrived, for just as it came within earshot, Norah had finished telling an amusing story, and Leo’s delighted laugh, crackling like a boy’s from deep to high, carried clearly across the water. Peter, whose perfunctory offer to help had been swept aside, got the full benefit of it through the open door, and felt an uncomfortable prickling at the back of his neck. The whole episode, he decided, was of the sort best ignored by an adult mind. One could only regret that a woman of Norah’s native intelligence could, after two years’ acquaintance with real values, be capable of such a lapse into the third-rate. He would intimate this to her in due course; she was, at least, capable of taking a hint. Meanwhile …

  The canoe coasted in towards the bank, kissing it neatly under Leo’s practised hand. They were humming, as they landed, a verse of “Home on the Range,” which they had been harmonizing further up the river.

  Where the graceful white swan goes gliding along

  Like a maid in a heavenly dream. …

  Elsie thought the soft voices, in the gathering dusk, romantically sweet and sad.

  “We must meet again,” said Leo, in the voice that means, You cannot step twice into the same river; better not try.

  “Yes,” said Norah, assenting both to the spoken courtesy and the unspoken truth. She was trying, half-heartedly, to imagine what she would think about all this to-morrow morning. It had been so light, so gracefully unreal, like an indiscretion at a masked ball. She gazed at Leo curiously, over the tie-rope of the canoe. One had thought, as far as one had previously thought at all, of thick women in starched evening shirts, and intense, shy-making confidences. … Norah found that, a
s after a moderate indulgence in champagne, little remained behind except a general impression that one had been unusually witty and charming, together with a feeling of light-hearted sophistication and no harm done. And indeed, anything that happens in a light canoe, even when moored, must needs be moderate enough.

  Leo caught her eye and gave her a broad, outrageous, comprehensive wink.

  “Come on in,” she said, “and eat your supper like a good girl.”

  They were both blinking a little in the electric light indoors. Peter ignored Norah’s entrance with quiet unobtrusive dignity; so it was Leo who introduced her to Elsie, in a manner which did nothing to alter Elsie’s belief that she had been a friend of the household for years. Supper went quite well; for a party of four women and one man, who moreover contributed very little, it had almost a swing. Norah was in excellent form; she was feeling, in fact, rather full of herself, and Peter’s disapproval, of which she was quite well aware, she found to her own secret surprise had no effect whatever on her spirits. She was conscious of being one up on him, a most unusual feeling and quite astonishingly satisfactory. For Elsie, it was the best part of the day. When Peter did talk, he talked mostly to her; but these desultory moments, while they uplifted, called for no effort, and the general talk freed her from any responsibility for bridging the intervals between. She could sink into herself, look at him now and again; remind herself that it was she whom he had come to see, a truth evident now beyond mistake and sufficient in itself. Helen’s personality at the head of the table was like a bland fluid holding everyone else’s in smooth suspension. Only Leo, leading Norah on with concealed ingenuity from strength to strength, but already experiencing the sad ennui of victory, and Peter, who had even passed the stage of thinking what he would say to Norah on the way home, wanted the evening to end.