The Friendly Young Ladies: A Novel

by Mary Renault

  Peter was not the man, in these circumstances, to neglect the interesting alternative of verbal attack.

  “You’re maddeningly elusive,” he said.

  There was little in the material situation to justify this; but she received it without surprise. No, he thought, she wasn’t stupid. She smiled at him, not archly, but comfortingly, as if to say, “Never mind,” and rested her shining hair against his shoulder.

  “Why?” he pursued, with deliberately brutal directness.

  She sighed faintly. She might as well have told him, aloud, not to be tiresome. Peter was not thick-skinned; but determination, inquisitiveness, and boundless self-confidence produced an effective substitute.

  “Don’t you trust yourself with me?” he asked, dropping his voice. This, surely, ought to provoke something.

  It did. She laughed; charmingly, not unkindly, with sunny amusement. When she had stopped laughing she kissed him of her own accord.

  “Really,” she murmured, “you are rather sweet.”

  She kissed delightfully; but the pill tasted, in spite of the spoonful of jam. His determination became obstinacy.

  “Then it’s me whom you don’t trust?”

  She wrinkled her smooth brow; nothing could have conveyed more clearly that she considered the question meaningless. In the tightened pressure of his arm she nestled confidingly; it was as if she protected herself in an armour of down. But, more adaptable than the baffled crusader, Peter was quite ready to abandon the straight blade for the curved, silk-cutting scimitar.

  “I think,” he said, “in your heart you don’t trust anyone. I wonder why.”

  “I don’t know,” she said simply, “what you’re talking about.”

  “All men,” said Peter gravely, “aren’t alike, my dear. Does it seem odd that I’m not content simply to kiss you, satisfactory as that is; that I want you to trust me too?”

  “I don’t suppose it would seem odd,” she said in her soft kindly voice, “if I knew what you meant by it. One doesn’t simply trust people. One trusts different people for different things.”

  “And you trust me—for what?”

  “I haven’t needed to think. Why, is it important?”

  Her body was warm in his arm; she herself was like a gently smiling presence resting easily at a distance. He reached after it with words, seeking for something with which to touch it home.

  “You trust Leo,” he said. “With everything?”

  “Of course not.” She seemed amused. “I don’t trust her to count the change in shops, or to remember to bring things back when she goes to town.” There was a pause, during which he felt her continuing the list in her own mind. “I know what to expect of her; I suppose that’s what you mean.”

  “And she knows what to expect of you?” He raised his eyes meaningly to hers.

  Unperturbed by his gaze, Helen said, “She’d be pretty stupid if she didn’t, after five years.”

  “As long as that? Yours must be a very—unusual relationship.”

  “I expect most relationships are unusual when one knows enough about them. We’re pretty well used to ours; it seems quite ordinary to us.”

  “It must demand great courage … from both of you.”

  “What a queer thing to say. It takes less effort than any other relationship we’ve either of us tried. That’s why we go on living together, naturally.”

  She had drawn herself away from his arm; not in hostility, but, just as he had imagined, like the stroked cat that sees a bird through the window. The positive current of her personality had been switched on. Its sudden vitality made her more interesting at the very moment when she became less accessible.

  “You would sacrifice a great deal,” he hinted, “rather than hurt her?”

  She stared at him. “You do have odd ideas. I don’t need to sacrifice things not to hurt her. I keep telling you, we live together because we enjoy it. Anyone would think, to hear you talk, that we were a married couple.”

  She delivered this staggering speech without as much as a shade of emphasis; merely with a gentle reasonableness. He was, for a moment, on the verge of abandoning all his principles by allowing himself to be shocked. Hastily he reassembled them.

  “I suppose I shouldn’t ask,” he said, “what has happened to make you afraid of marriage?”

  “You can ask if you like. But I’m not afraid of it, so there isn’t much point.”

  “You’re young,” he said. “You’re very pretty; you’re domesticated, I imagine, and, forgive my mentioning it, normally sexed. You may want to marry some day; what then?”

  “Well if I wanted to, I should, I suppose.”

  “You wouldn’t find the decision hard to make?”

  “What decision? The decision would have been made. You don’t suppose Leo would want to keep me if she knew I wanted to be somewhere else?”

  There seemed to be no penetrating her contentment. He became cruel, not in malice, but as, in the hospital, he might have applied increasingly painful tests to a patient who showed no signs of sensation.

  “Perhaps,” he said, “when it came to the point, you might be afraid to let her know.”

  “Let her know?” She might have been repeating an incomprehensible phrase in a foreign language. She seemed to be about to say something, to think it not worth the effort and give it up. At last she remarked, “I think you must have read a lot of novels, or something. People don’t live that way.”

  She could hardly have delivered, if she had thought it out for weeks, a more deadly insult to the sanctum sanctorum of Peter’s self-esteem. He found it hard to believe, indeed, that the words had been uttered, or, if uttered, that they meant what they seemed to mean.

  “You have,” said Helen serenely, “such sensational ideas.”

  He was speechless; but Helen, who had intended to go on talking in any case, did not notice it.

  “Mind you,” she pursued with friendly toleration, “I like men. They’re perfectly all right in their way. I lived with one, once.”

  “Really?” said Peter. Nothing else would emerge.

  “Yes, for several months, while I was at the Slade. He was quite pleasant, but a bit of a cad.”

  Peter had recovered, by this time, to the extent of caressing her gently and making a sympathetic noise.

  “Not a cad as a lover, mind you. He did all that very well. He was just a cad to live with. Things like wanting all the space for his own work and not leaving me any room for mine. Or time. I don’t think he liked, really, seeing me work at all. I was better at it than he was, that might have been one reason why. Between women, you see, an issue like that is bound to come out straightforwardly, but a man can cover it up for ages. And then, he thought I ought to like his friends but he needn’t like mine. If I had a cold or a headache or wasn’t feeling bright for the usual sort of reasons, he just used to go out; it never occurred to him to do anything else. Leo isn’t any more domesticated than most men, but she isn’t above filling you a hot-water bottle and fussing you up a bit. Well, anyway, he kept on assuring me he loved me, and I feel sure he believed it. When he asked me to marry him he was thunderstruck that I didn’t fall into his arms with tears of gratitude. He kept on at me about it; he thought I was afraid of being a burden on him, I think. Finally he tried to make me have a baby so that I’d have to. He said it was for my good. I was tired of arguing by then so I just packed and went. I expect he’s scratching his head about it still.”

  “That’s too bad.” Peter’s soft voice, and the pressure of his hand, brought a smile and answering squeeze, but both were distrait; Helen had become interested in what she was saying.

  “Shortly after that I took up nursing, and met a great many people, as one does. But instead of asking myself what they’d be like in some romantic situation, I always found myself imagining them shut up with me in a three-room flat. Only two people passed. One was an honorary surgeon who was fifty and happily married. Leo was the other. I’ve never regrette
d it.”

  “And is that all?” asked Peter at length.

  “Of course it isn’t. You asked me why we were still living together at the end of five years. As far as I’m concerned, that’s the reason.”

  “And Leo? Is it as simple as that for her?”

  “Leo can tell you about herself, if she wants to.”

  He had come, he saw, to the blank wall of an impregnable loyalty. There was a generosity in him that acknowledged and was pleased by it. His vanity, on the other hand, impelled him to tap the wall here and there. It was sufficient to have found the flaw, he had no wish to exploit it.

  “On your side,” he said, “surely it entails a certain amount of—well, reticence?”

  “How do you mean?”

  “Do you tell Leo quite everything you do?”

  “Nobody tells anyone everything. It wouldn’t be interesting. I don’t think whether I shall tell Leo things or not.”

  “Will you tell her, for instance, about this afternoon?”

  “Not if you don’t want me to.” She spoke like someone who reassures a child.

  “I was thinking,” said Peter, a little nettled, “of her feelings, not of mine.”

  “Leo’s feelings? Whatever for? She’d laugh, of course.” Seeing his face and instantly contrite, she added, “I’m so sorry. I thought that was what you meant.”

  There was a pause during which Peter seemed to see, through Helen’s sweet, gently concerned face, the outline of another. He was annoyed with the image and with himself; he had been enjoying, most of the afternoon, a pleasant pity for her. To recover this emotion, and the feeling of well-being that went with it, he said, “Don’t be sorry. I’m glad for Leo to laugh. There’s too much loneliness in the world not to be glad of any human happiness one sees, however unorthodox—and precarious, perhaps. Believe me, I wouldn’t do anything to make it less.”

  As a pool is ruffled by a flicker of wind, Helen’s blue eyes held, for a moment, the delighted appreciation of a joke, from which she seemed to withdraw into some private meditation. Next moment they were cloudy and soft with sympathy again.

  “That’s very sweet of you,” she said.

  She rendered it so prettily that he was about to kiss her again, when he became aware of a sharp pain in his calf. It was produced by the swan, which had exhausted the remains of the sandwiches and, finding the bag itself unpalatable, had returned after the manner of the ancient Danes for a further subsidy. It pursued them, threatening and offensive, as far as the Lily Pond.

  Peter took Helen home; as everyone did, even escorts who scorned convention or cultivated the remiss. In her presence such things became a reflex.

  “Leo’s out,” she said, discerning some occult sign from across the river. “And Elsie’s at the cinema. Never mind, you must come in and have an egg to your tea with me. I’ll have to leave fairly soon, I’m going to the theatre. But I dare say someone will be in by then.” She added, presently, as they crossed the gang-plank, “I’m not sure where Leo went to. Somewhere with Joe, I expect. We’d better leave them a couple of pints to come back to.”

  She went into the galley to collect the meal. Peter wandered round the living-room; it was strewn, here and there, with traces of Leo’s recent occupation. Her personality seemed still to be lounging casually about the place, as incomprehensible, now he had been discussing her half the afternoon, as ever. They had not, after all, he reflected, discussed her at all. On the table were some loose papers; one of them had a carefully drawn plan of a ranch with its corrals and out-buildings, annotated in a clear and somehow quietly authoritative hand; not Leo’s scrawl, which he had seen before. An old, well-chewed pipe lay abandoned beside it. Peter found the set-up irritating; since Helen would be wanting to lay the table, he swept the collection up and dumped it on one of the lockers in a heap.

  She must, he decided, for all her arrogance, be fundamentally lonely. (It was not Helen, making pleasant domestic sounds within earshot, of whom he was thinking.) This Joe person was probably a symptom of it. A simple doglike creature, Peter guessed, who would put up with anything or be too dumb to notice it. What she needed was a really constructive relationship. Perhaps she realized it and, when it offered, became defiant, as the subject who has most need of psycho-analysis is loudest in condemning it. Helen’s placid kindness, the dim harmless neighbour with whom she pottered about the river—well, they did little enough damage, no doubt, but where were they getting her? Eccentricity in women always boiled down to the same thing. She wanted a man.

  Helen was coming, with the fruit of her labours on a tray. Her cooking, he found, was on a level with her looks. What, after all, was she doing here? No doubt she hadn’t told him everything; well, that would come. He hoped that Elsie’s session at the cinema was beginning rather than ending; one did not want to shirk anything one could do, but she was, undoubtedly, heavy going. If Helen left first he could leave with her; in fact, it might be better not to wait. He was preparing his excuses when Helen went out to fill the kettle again.

  It was a still day, on which small craft could approach without a warning ripple. Peter heard none, till the hull he sat in was softly jarred by the impact of a punt. Elsie, he thought; oh damn. Then from the floating deck outside he heard Leo’s voice, easy and clear.

  “Come in and see if there’s some tea left.”

  “Well, I … No, thanks, maybe not today. I think I might get something done this evening. The canoe looks pretty good, now it’s dry.”

  “Bill Brooks says we made quite a job of it. … It’s time I put in a spell myself, now you mention it. I’ve got to get this pie-eyed heroine rescued. I can’t think why on earth he should want to bother, in the middle of the round-up too.”

  “Don’t forget his horse will be pretty blown if he’s been cutting out cattle for long.”

  “It gets shot quite soon. Thanks for working out all that stuff, it’ll keep me going for days. … Here, wait a minute, this looks like a bit of yours. Yes, that’s the lot, I think. ’Bye, Joe.”

  “’Bye, Leo.”

  There was a moment’s pause; Peter could hear an armful of oddments being dumped outside. Then Leo strolled into the room. Her hands were in her corduroy pockets, her head was up. For a few seconds she did not see him; the sun, outside, had been in her eyes. She took out a cigarette and lit it. Her face had a kind of watchful happiness; she looked like someone who has been lately in peril, and who holds, in the moment of safety, to a vigilance it may yet be too soon to relax. She threw the match from her cigarette quickly away; she seemed to be throwing a thought away with it too.

  “Helen,” she said.

  “Well, Leo,” said Peter, getting up from his chair.

  She did not start with surprise; she seemed to withdraw into herself for a moment, before she came forward to meet him.

  “Well, Peter,” she said. “Did you and Helen have a good day?”

  She was smiling; it might have been in mockery, he could not tell. Suddenly it mattered very little.

  “Yes,” he said. “Most successful, thanks.” He was smiling too. The challenge, thrown and accepted, made them lose the thread of their irrelevant words.

  Helen came back and said, “The tea won’t be a minute. Is Joe coming in?”

  “No, he’s gone home to work. I’d better go and clean up before I eat. Shan’t be long.”

  She was, however, a little longer than usual. When she came down again, she had changed into the scarlet dress.

  CHAPTER XXII

  WITH HALF-DISAPPROVING APPRECIATION (for his tastes were conservative), Foxy Hicks looked at Helen’s silver-grey dress, gathered up round her to diminish contact with the grubby seat of the ferry-boat, and her little velvet jacket frogged with silver lace. Pretty, but no warmth in the things, he thought. “Going out enjoying yourself, Miss Vaughan?”

  “Yes,” said Helen. “I’m going to the theatre.”

  The girls nowadays, thought Mr. Hicks, get too much gadding around; the
y lose the fun of it. Outings meant something when I was a lad.

  “Miss Lane will be crossing you back, I reckon,” he said, “in that canoe.” He disapproved on principle of canoes, which had a high nuisance-value in the hands of trippers who couldn’t steer them.

  “I’ll be coming back by car, so we shall cross at one of the bridges lower down.”

  “Ah,” said Foxy, with a rufous wink, “home with the milk, as they say?”

  “Not as bad as that.” She smiled at him, pleasant and agreeable-like as usual; but she looked, he thought, a bit middling tonight. As if in answer to this reflection, or to one of her own, she said, “It’s rather a bore, really. I didn’t feel like turning out. But it was too late to put it off.”

  “You young ladies, you get so much gaiety you get blasé.” He pronounced it rather like “blowsy.”

  “Yes,” said Helen, replying absently to the general sense, “I expect it’s that.”

  It was beginning to be twilight. Between the willows on the island, a yellow patch of lamplight appeared. Foxy remarked, conversationally, “Mr. Flint sitting at that writing of his again. Funny thing to me what he finds to write about, living by himself in a hole-and-corner place like that.”

  “He likes not being disturbed, I suppose.” I wish to God, she thought, he’d come in with Leo tonight. She never runs into trouble when Joe’s about. For Brutus, as you know, was Caesar’s angel. … Why, when one’s mind is upset, should it throw up ridiculous tags? Inappropriate too. She turned to look over her shoulder at the Lily Belle. No lights on, she thought, only the fire. Well, it’s early yet. … I suppose, after all, she could hardly have done better than she’s done this time. Neither of them has any capacity for hurting the other; she can only hurt herself. But I wish it were over.