by Rosie Thomas
There was no signature, only a drawing of a rather larger pig, sitting disconsolately beside a milestone bearing the words ‘Too many miles from Clio.’
Clio read the letter twice, and then smiled. ‘Idiot,’ she said aloud. Then she folded it and replaced it in the envelope and put it carefully with a thin sheaf of identical envelopes in the top drawer of her dressing table.
She would have lunch with Miles again today, of course, if he did turn up at Fathom. She had tried before now to pretend that she was busy, in the wake of some disagreement or show of bad humour, but he always persuaded her. The truth was that she never wanted to resist him. Sometimes she had to hold on to her chair, or on to the beery mahogany curve of the bar, physically to restrain herself from leaping at him, snatching him to her, because she wanted him so much. And all the time she had to make herself light, and whimsical, because that was what he liked, and never to hint at the dark possessiveness that gnawed at her like a cancer. Sometimes all the nerves in her body screamed with the effort of it.
Well then, she thought. She would see him today because she couldn’t bear not to see him. But she would ask Julius to meet her too, and when Miles appeared she would ask him to join them and the three of them could go along to the Fitzroy or the Hope or somewhere. She could listen to the two men talking, and try to see Miles through her brother’s eyes. It would be a relief, a respite for her from her own anxiety and jealousy and Miles’s pressure on her to be a happy piglet.
‘Have lunch with me today?’ she asked Julius when she reemerged from her bedroom dressed for work.
‘Of course I will,’ he said, so happily that she felt guilty.
The Fathom offices looked the same as they had always done. Clio’s desk was heaped with orderly piles of manuscripts and proofs, with her big black typewriter set in the middle of them. Her desk was an oasis of order in the usual chaos of boxes of back issues, review copies, files and dirty teacups. The door to Max’s inner office stood open, revealing his empty chair and overflowing ashtray. Max had already gone out.
Julius looked around with distaste. His own domestic habits were spinsterish in their precision. ‘How can you bear to work in here?’ he asked, but Clio only laughed at him.
‘Shall we go?’
‘Um, in a minute,’ Clio answered. ‘Just let me do something quickly for the post.’
While he was waiting for her, Julius stood looking out of the dust-veiled window into the street. He saw a taxi draw up and a man step out of it. He was wearing a creased linen jacket and dark blue trousers like a French workman’s. He turned and strolled towards the front door, and then pushed it open without knocking. He stood in the doorway, gazing in at them and smiling, as if he belonged there and they were the visitors. He was wearing a red handkerchief knotted around his throat, and he had large hazel eyes and warm-coloured skin. Julius knew immediately that this was the man who had written Clio’s letter.
‘Miles? I wasn’t expecting to see you,’ Clio lied. She tried to make her voice light and teasing, but it stuck in her throat. She knew that Julius was watching her, and cursed herself for the stupidity of bringing them both here.
Miles’s eyes widened. ‘Weren’t you? I’m sorry, and now you’re busy, so I’ll just go away again. But won’t you introduce us first?’
‘This is my twin brother, Julius Hirsh. Julius, this is Miles Lennox.’
‘The violinist?’
Miles held out his hand. He had an attractive voice and he spoke clearly, enunciating each word as if it was important. It had the effect of making people listen to what he said, even if it was nonsense.
‘Yes.’ Julius shook the hand.
‘This is wonderful.’ When he smiled, the naturally pensive lines of his face became sunny. ‘But now, I’m interrupting. Perhaps we’ll have a chance to meet again?’
‘Miles, I don’t think Julius will mind if you join us for lunch. Will you, Julius?’
‘Not at all,’ Julius answered, as if he had any choice in the matter.
Clio’s urgent job for the post seemed to be forgotten. She put on her hat and the three of them went out into the early summer sunshine. They walked westwards, through the Bloomsbury streets and spring-green squares, to the Fitzroy Tavern. Miles talked, sometimes dashing a few steps ahead and then turning to face them, running backwards in little half-strides so that he could see them as they walked. He was in one of his buoyant moods, and Clio began to relax. Julius would like him, he could hardly help it, and it was plain that Miles already liked Julius.
The bar seemed dark after the brilliant day outside. When Julius’s eyes accustomed themselves to the murk he saw walls and ceiling browned by decades of cigarette smoke, small brass-ringed tables and upright chairs arranged on the bare floor, and a long brown bar. There were quite a lot of people standing and leaning down the length of the bar, and the air was thick with smoke and the malty stench of beer.
Julius’s companions were clearly regulars here.
‘Miles and Clio,’ someone called out, and another lugubrious voice murmured. ‘Greetings, you two. How your bright faces do enliven the dull day.’
Julius looked at Clio, and saw that her cheeks were pink with a kind of meek happiness that he had never seen in her before. Her eyes shone as she watched Miles.
The owner of the lugubrious voice, a man in corduroys and a walrus moustache silvered with beer froth, was offering drinks. Julius let himself be introduced and drawn into the circle. He had never much liked London pubs compared with the cosmopolitan bustle of cafés in Paris or Berlin, but he accepted a half of warm bitter and prepared to enjoy himself for Clio’s sake.
Clio glowed. She had done the right thing in bringing her brother here after all. She had heard the greetings through his ears as they came in, ‘Miles and Clio’ and ‘you two’. They were a couple, of course, and her anxiety was only bred from her knowledge that she was twenty-eight, and had been a little lonely, and was now so consumingly in love. She knew that if she couldn’t have Miles she didn’t want anyone else. She seemed to have been waiting for him ever since they had been introduced at the party for Pilgrim’s exhibition, and for long before that in her imagination. Even going to bed with Pilgrim that night in his studio now seemed a preparation for Miles, discharging herself of her virginity in order not to embarrass him with it.
Only Clio and Miles did not sleep together, not yet. He kissed her playfully, and sometimes he held her close to him with a kind of wistful intensity. She was ashamed of the sharp currents of sexual longing that these episodes set off in her. She wondered if she was abnormal, and then remembered the Marie Stopes teaching that it was right and natural for women as well as men to feel physical desire. Miles must feel exactly as she did, she reasoned, only Miles was a gentleman whereas Pilgrim wasn’t.
Clio worried about how they might progress beyond their present expressions of mutual affection. Just once, she had tried to show him that he could do more than kiss her. But it had only been once. He had shivered with an involuntary moue of shock and distaste, and she had felt crass and unladylike. She warned herself that she must let Miles set his own pace. Only time went on, and he seemed quite content, and she had to tread round the circle of her suppressed anxiety and appetite without ever seeing the way out.
Julius and Clio stood for a few minutes with the writers and painters and publishers at the bar, listening to a vehement argument about the outcome of the General Election and Mr Baldwin’s chances of forming a coalition with the Liberals. Miles seemed to drift through the group, acknowledging it and at the same time suggesting his distance from the clamour. At length, smiling faintly, he raised his eyebrows at Julius and Clio.
‘Shall we sit down over there?’
They took their drinks and went, with relief. Julius noticed that Miles guided Clio’s arm and drew out a chair for her to sit down. He was pleased to see her taken care of, and to hear from their acquaintances that they were accepted as a regular partnership. It was better
than he had hoped at his first sight of Miles Lennox.
More drinks were brought from the bar. Miles was drinking whisky to follow his beer, and no one seemed disposed to eat anything. Julius nursed his half of bitter and dreamed of a melting omelette aux fines herbes, or the plat du jour at La Coupole. Tomorrow night he was playing a Bach concert at the Wigmore Hall. He needed food, and sleep, and no disturbances. He began to regret having accepted Clio’s invitation to this place full of unkempt, vociferous people.
‘I see that your smart cousin won his seat in the shires,’ Miles was saying.
‘My cousin’s husband,’ Clio corrected him.
The corners of Miles’s long mouth curled humorously as he turned to Julius. ‘Clio doesn’t like me to tease her about her grand relations.’
‘They aren’t so very grand,’ Julius said. He didn’t want to talk about Grace here, and to change the subject he asked, ‘Are you a writer, Miles?’
At once, both Clio and Miles looked pleased.
‘A very good one,’ Clio told him, firing up with pride. ‘He published a wonderful collection of stories, After Image, you must read it, Julius. And some war poetry, and several very much admired pieces for Fathom and The Calendar of Modern Letters …’
Miles leaned across to her and put his hand over hers, indulgently. ‘Darling, that’s enough. What will Julius think? It’s all juvenile stuff,’ he told him. ‘What I am working on now is much more significant. It’s a big novel, very experimental in form, an exploration of the modern condition unconfined by traditional narrative techniques. I want to break away from the idea that a story must begin and end, even that it must have recognizable characters.
‘I’m trying to capture and distil the generality of human thought and experience, give it expression through a series of disembodied voices, if you like, each one crying out of darkness. Even Ulysses, you know, is quite conventional. We know who Bloom and Molly are, so all our perceptions of them are precoloured by that knowledge –’
Miles broke off, and looked modestly down into his whisky glass. Clio slipped out of her chair and took the empty glasses to the bar.
‘How interesting. How far have you got?’ Julius asked, suppressing the tremors of scepticism.
‘It goes very slowly. I have to break off to do hack work in order to live, of course. More steadily in the last few months, mostly thanks to Clio. But it’s bad luck to be too optimistic … As a matter of fact I’m meeting my publisher one evening next week. I’ll show him some of the early sections. If he likes it I shall breathe more easily.’
Clio came back and set the fresh drinks on the puddled table. ‘Really? You’re ready to let Tony read it? That’s marvellous. You didn’t tell me.’
Miles took her hand again. ‘I know. Superstitious, or something. Anyway, that’s quite enough about that. Thanks for the drink, darling. Now, Julius, are there any tickets left for tomorrow evening?’
They talked about music, and then about new films, and at last the conversation slipped back into literary gossip. Miles was good company, but Julius began to feel very conscious that he had had two drinks on an empty stomach. At half past two, Clio looked at her watch.
‘Oh, God. Back to work for me.’
Miles showed no inclination to move. Someone at the bar had sent over another whisky for him. He put his long fingers up to Clio’s chin and drew her face down to his so that he could kiss her on the lips. ‘Mmm. Let’s go together to hear Julius’s lovely music tomorrow night, shall we?’
‘Yes, let’s do that. Don’t sit too long in here drinking whisky, will you?’
‘Would I?’
As she left with Julius, Clio looked back to see that Miles had already been reabsorbed. He was listening intently to what someone was saying, with his fingertips pressed together and his smooth, symmetrical features composed like a brooding saint in a pre-Raphaelite painting.
Julius and Clio retraced the way through the sunny streets, blinking at first in the great slices of light that cut across their path. The city had settled into the yellow daze of a hot afternoon. Julius felt the beginnings of a headache vibrate between his eyes.
‘Thank you for coming. I wanted you to meet him,’ Clio said simply.
‘Do you always drink so much? Don’t you eat anything, even a sandwich?’
Clio stopped, immediately contrite. She put her hand on his arm. ‘Oh, I’m so sorry. I’d completely forgotten you need to eat regularly. Look, there’s a Jewish café on the next corner. You can get salt beef on rye bread.’ The delicacies of Nathaniel’s childhood. Julius’s irritation dwindled a little.
‘I was asking about you. I can make myself a sandwich at home.’
Clio shrugged. ‘I don’t usually bother. It saves money. And it makes me at least feel thinner, even if I don’t look it. If you think that’s drinking a lot, just go in there this evening. Any evening.’
‘How serious is it?’ Julius asked abruptly.
Her voice was so low that he could hardly hear it. ‘It’s serious. I would marry him tomorrow, if he asked me.’
I don’t think it will come to that, Julius almost said. He didn’t know whether to feel relieved or pained for her. ‘Does he make you happy?’
There was a moment while she thought about it. He saw the soft, girlish look that had transformed her. The innocent surface of her expression seemed to shiver with anxiety.
‘Oh, yes. Yes.’
‘Well, then.’ He kissed her forehead. ‘Bless you.’
Clio smiled at him. ‘Thank you. You are the first person in the family to meet him. I wanted it to be you first.’
‘It’s your life, Clio. Not ours. It doesn’t matter what any of us think.’
‘It does. You all matter to me. Mummy, Pappy, Aunt Blanche, the Babies. Even Grace,’ she finished, oddly.
Julius stayed in London for five more days, and then left for Paris. He told Clio that he planned to move soon to Berlin. In Germany, Hindemith and Schoenberg and the other pioneers of atonal music were revitalizing the orchestral repertoire, and he wanted to work at the heart of the new movement.
‘I wish you weren’t so far away,’ Clio said.
‘Berlin isn’t far, and Paris is close. Come and see me. You can speak the languages, why not use them?’
‘Perhaps I will.’ Clio smiled at him, knowing that she wouldn’t leave London while Miles was still there.
She missed Julius after he had gone, but she was happy to have the Gower Street flat to herself again. Miles liked to visit her in the evenings after his day’s writing, and these were Clio’s happiest times, but he had not called at Gower Street at all while Julius was staying with her.
On their evenings alone together Miles would sit beside the gas fire with his long fingers curled around a whisky glass, and gossip to her about books and publishers and their friends from the Soho pubs. Miles was an excellent talker, and he was a clever mimic and a waspish but accurate observer of Soho people and their pretensions and calamities. He could make Clio laugh until her eyes ran with tears, and make the frowsty world of literature seem wild and funny and glamorous.
‘It’s all perfectly true,’ Miles would protest, peering sideways and shaking his smooth head at her, after recounting the latest scandal or rejection or lover’s quarrel with a full repertoire of voices. ‘You don’t think I would make it up, do you?’
Clio loved to be alone with him, in the little flat, while he made her feel part of a cosmopolitan conspiracy of two. She cooked him ambitious dinners, of which he was always appreciative, and kept his glass filled with wine or whisky. And then after they had eaten and Clio had removed the dishes and made a pot of coffee for him, Miles often read to her. He liked Housman and Kipling and Browning and he read well, with humour as well as passion. Clio would sit on the floor with her head resting against his knee, half listening and half dreaming, while his warm hand smoothed her hair.
One night, after even more whisky than usual, Miles had fallen asleep in his c
hair. She had hoisted him up while he mumbled and protested and steered him through into her bedroom. Then she had let him fall sideways on to the bed and had loosened his collar and taken off his shoes, and covered him with her blankets. She lay down beside him, in the warmth that he had generated, and listened to his thick breathing until she fell asleep herself.
In the morning she had brought him tea and aspirins and he groaned and pretended to hide his head. But then he caught hold of her hand and looked straight at her, and said, ‘I wish we could always look after each other, just like this, without any piglet play.’
Somehow Clio had stopped herself from answering triumphantly, ‘But we can. It’s what I want. Just that.’
She had smiled at him, and adjusted the curtains halfway across the window so that the morning light was not too bright for his headache. It was one of the best of all their times together.
A week after the Wigmore Hall concert, Clio spent the evening alone at home. She made herself an omelette, and when she had cleared it away she sat down to read a sheaf of submissions for Max. There was nothing she could admire amongst them, and she was left with the dry taste of boredom and disappointment. At eleven o’clock she got undressed and put on her Chinese robe. She washed some stockings and hung them to dry over the bath, and stood for a few minutes looking blankly out of the tiny window at the black rooflines and pasty-lit rooms of Bloomsbury. A nauseous sense of futility and apprehension weighed in the pit of her stomach, but she made herself ignore it and went wearily to bed.
The sudden drill of the doorbell made her start and shiver. The ringing went on and on, as if whoever was doing it was pressing the button with the last of his strength. She pulled on her robe and groped to the door.
‘Miles.’
He was leaning against the jamb, white-faced with blood dried on his puffed mouth.
‘Oh, God.’ She put her arms under his, took the weight of him. ‘Come here, let me help you.’
Somehow she found the strength to haul him inside and up the stairs. She let him fall into an armchair and tilted his head back against a velvet cushion to look at his chin. Miles’s eyes were closed and his face was waxy. She brought a bowl of warm water and a cloth, and knelt beside him to sponge the blood away. There was dirt in his hair and his hands were bruised and filthy. He stank of whisky.
