Doves of Venus

by Olivia Manning

  For some reason, she was certain that as soon as she entered the house, the telephone would ring and it would be Quintin. The house was dark and seemed empty. Unable to do anything but listen for the telephone, she lay on her bed beneath her coat and felt cold and hunger. When, at ten o’clock, she gave up hope, she rose and unpacked her bag and found the diaries.

  Here was excuse for action. She carried the load of her recorded past down through the silent house. It was raining outside. The fine rain stung her face. She went down to the river parapet and dropped the diaries one by one into the water. The oily light dimples shook and broke over the river surface. The books went through them like stones.

  She returned to her room with a sense of achievement and an impatience for what was to come.

  4

  When Ellie could bear his silence no longer, she telephoned Quintin. She did it one morning at half-past eight.

  Quintin, awakened out of sleep, hearing Ellie’s voice, felt guilty and irritated. Anyone more experienced than Ellie would have put him out of her mind.

  It had not been his intention so soon to end this little affair. Circumstances had forced a conclusion. Somewhere at the back of his mind there was an accusation: he might have accorded her inexperience kinder treatment.

  He said: ‘Oh, Ellie, my dear, this is too bad, isn’t it? I should have rung you days ago.’

  Her tone was casual but it struck too high a note: ‘I thought I ought to ring you in case you were ill.’

  ‘As a matter of fact, I haven’t been very well.’

  Her voice warmed at once with relief and compassion: ‘You didn’t look well when I saw you last – at the station. Have you had “flu”?’

  ‘Not “flu” exactly. I had some trouble with my lungs a few years ago. I have to go carefully sometimes.’ That was true enough.

  She cried out in alarm: ‘But why didn’t you let me come and see you? I could have nursed you.’

  ‘How kind, my dear. The housekeeper was in and out. She takes care of me. But when shall I see you? Are you free on Saturday?’

  ‘Oh yes. Quite free.’

  Quintin suspected that Ellie was always free. He had said to her once: ‘It is so refreshing to find someone who can accept a last-minute invitation.’ He had intended applause but she had seemed hurt, so now he said: ‘How fortunate. Where can we meet? I’ve been thinking it is ages since I was last in Regents Park. Shall we take a stroll there? Would it be fun?’

  ‘I think so. I’ve heard of Regents Park.’

  ‘You have not been there? How delicious! How really delicious to be a young person seeing everything for the first time!’

  ‘I suppose it is.’

  ‘Well, let’s start quite early. Could you manage two-thirty?’

  ‘Yes, easily.’

  He arranged to meet her at Baker Street Tube station, then he prepared to sleep again. He was unwilling to face the day. Petta was still in the flat, installed in the small spare room he used as a dressing-room. He disliked dressing and undressing in his bedroom. The dressing-room gave him space, and a degree of freedom with his clothes which he could not permit himself in his bedroom. The guest he occasionally put up for a night or two seemed to him nuisance enough; Petta’s sojourn was intolerable. He avoided her as best he could. When he came face to face with her, his nerves tensed with the unspoken question: ‘Why don’t you go away?’ but he said nothing. No doubt she thought she had defeated him.

  Temporarily, she had.

  The afternoon he had seen Ellie off at the station, he had returned to his flat to find Petta still on the sofa. She was asleep. The sight of her had infuriated him. This, he thought, was how she kept her promise to go. He called her; she did not move. When he shook her, her head lolled lifelessly. Then he noticed the empty pill-box on the table. At once he had felt the same fear he had known when she stepped in front of the speeding bus.

  He called Mrs Trimmer upstairs and rang for his doctor. The doctor had arrived with his partner and together they had set about reviving Petta. They had (he now thought) been remarkably quick and successful. Opening her eyes and gazing up at him with an air of tragic simplicity, she had said before the lot of them: ‘Darling, forgive me. It was Christmas . . . I was so alone’ – voice breaking – ‘I . . . I had nowhere to go.’ She broke down and wept. In embarrassment, he had looked round at the audience and met the full glare of Mrs Trimmer’s reproachful eyes. The doctors were trying to look like men of the world. One of them said:

  ‘Mrs Bellot should not be moved for a day or two. This sort of thing is a strain on the heart.’

  Quintin said: ‘She could stay here, but there’s no one to look after her.’

  ‘Oh, I’ll look after the poor dear,’ said Mrs Trimmer.

  ‘Very well.’ Quintin was almost too angry to speak.

  So Petta had stayed. Mrs Trimmer, behaving like an accomplice, had gone off in a taxi to fetch the luggage from Theo’s flat while Petta, at the telephone, rang round their acquaintances. ‘Here I am back again. Do come in for a drink some time,’ she kept saying, speaking as though she had just returned from a holiday.

  Several days had passed before Mrs Trimmer, giving the flat its weekly ‘turn out’, found a crumbling pink tablet pushed down behind the sofa seat. When she slid her fingers in further, she found a dozen more. Quintin had gathered all the pieces into an envelope and taken them to Petta, who was in bed. She opened her eyes wide and said: ‘My tablets! Where did you find them?’

  ‘I thought you had swallowed them.’

  ‘I took six; that’s a fatal dose.’

  ‘Not for an addict. Why did you hide the others?’

  ‘I don’t know. I don’t think I did hide them. They must have fallen out of the box.’

  ‘Well, there they are. You may need them again.’

  He left her, determined to have nothing more to say to her. He existed now in a state of obstinate reservation of himself. He was determined – if Petta did not go, he would. He was already planning his escape, but meanwhile he had to settle this affair with Ellie. He suffered the irritation of frustration. He had been reminded of Ellie’s ardour and youth. He knew, if the relationship could not continue to its natural conclusion, he was liable for some time to be pestered with regrets for her.

  Besides, he did not want to hurt the poor girl. He simply could not now carry on an affair with any girl who had not a flat of her own.

  What reason could he give Ellie for the break-up? The truth was too crude. Besides, she had accepted him on the understanding that he had been abandoned by his wife. Her conscience might come between them if she were told his wife had returned. Or, if it did not, she, being young and innocent – the youngest, indeed, of many ‘little girls’ – might plead that to see him was pleasure enough for her, not realising there could be only one right, true end to expensive suppers in Soho.

  At the thought of his predicament, he could have caught Petta by the shoulders and run her out and flung her luggage after her. When that fury passed, he reflected that only a silly, inexperienced girl like Ellie would instal herself in a boarding-house where all comings and goings were noted. Still, he liked her silliness; he loved her inexperience. He even thought of providing her with a flat – but the rent of a furnished flat these days! The cost of premium and furniture for an unfurnished one! Out of the question.

  No, he would have to put her off with vague excuses. He could say the separation was temporary. If she had any sense, she would let it go at that.

  He felt that, as a sort of parting gift, he should do something for the girl. Her chief need was money. It occurred to him he could get her a rise in salary. He could not do much else. He was one of those unfortunates who were being taxed out of existence; he lived on a bare minimum; he was not in a position to give anything to anyone. But he was dining with Gem Primrose that night and he might put in a word for Ellie.

  As soon as this idea took hold on him, he tried to free himself from it. He had
suffered enough for his folly in promising Ellie her present job. At first Gem had simply refused to consider the girl at all. Quintin moved uncomfortably as he remembered that passage with Gem. It was a memory of ignominy.

  He had brought the matter up after he and Gem had dined extremely well at the Caprice. He asked her back to his flat; he had something to show her. There, with casual confidence, he had produced Ellie’s untidy portfolio, saying: ‘I’ve found you an artist – and a very charming child she is.’

  Gem took the portfolio without enthusiasm. She surprised him by the gravity with which she examined the water-colour scribbles inside it.

  It was clear she suspected his interest in Ellie – but did that matter? She had always said the last thing she expected from him was fidelity. It was a joke between them. She said she knew him inside and out. He had supposed she would give the girl’s paint-splashes a glance, then say: ‘All right, you old roué, I’ll take her to please you.’

  Not a bit of it. Her small, vulpine face had had the expression of someone not to be sold something she did not want. As she picked up the sheets of paper, her only comment had been an occasional click of disapproval. He felt her antagonism strongly. Perhaps he had been unwise. He had promised Ellie the job as lightly as he might have promised her a visit to a cinema.

  When she put down the last of the paintings, Gem drew in her breath sharply and looked at the bundle with narrowed eyes. She said at last: ‘This girl can’t draw.’

  Quintin had to make an effort to consider Ellie’s work as seriously as Gem did. He said: ‘She’s not much of a draughtsman, agreed. But her work has something – freshness and colour! Don’t you think? Take that fruit piece. It is dark and rich. She’s looked at Gauguin and learnt something.’

  ‘It’s crude, slapdash stuff. It’s not what we want. If we take on another artist, we must have someone with a knowledge of period.’

  ‘She’d soon pick that up.’ Unfortunately he could not keep from his tone his contempt for Gem’s ideas of ‘Regency’, ‘Georgian’, ‘Empire’ and all the rest of it.

  Gem lifted her eyebrows a little; paused reflectively, then said firmly: ‘No, Quintin, I don’t think she’ll do.’

  He had felt that nervous drop in spirits that made persistence impossible. He said nothing more that night; but he had promised Ellie the job. How could he leave her to think his promises meant nothing?

  He invited Gem out to dinner again a few evenings later. She asked him to call for her at her office. When he arrived, no doubt knowing what was in his mind, she handed him a cartoon of cupids pulling a load of flowers.

  ‘That is nice work,’ she said. ‘That’s the sort of thing we want.’

  ‘It’s one of the Pompeii murals.’

  Taken off her guard, she protested: ‘Bertie Hawkins did it. He’s one of our best artists.’

  ‘He must have found it in some book on Pompeii.’

  ‘How clever of him.’ She put the cartoon out of sight.

  They went to the Ivy. When he judged her mellowed by a few glasses of vintage burgundy, he put his hand over her hand and said coaxingly:

  ‘Give the girl a trial.’

  She answered soberly: ‘It’s like this, Quintin. It would be unwise to take her from her present job. It’s a difficult job to fill, so she’s likely to keep it. If she failed in the studio, there might not be anything else to offer her. She’d be out of work.’

  She spoke sense. He had been a fool. He refilled their glasses, then said humbly: ‘I’m sorry, my dear; I’m afraid I promised that girl a job in the studio. If I have to tell her it’s no go, I shall look pretty small.’

  ‘I see.’ Gem looked as though she did not like what she saw.

  ‘Don’t misunderstand me . . .’

  ‘I don’t misunderstand you. I have never pretended to have any illusions about you. As you wish it, I’ll give the girl a trial – but don’t blame me if I can’t keep her. Now, for goodness sake, let us talk of something more amusing.’

  In that way Ellie had got her job. She was absurdly happy in it; so happy, indeed, that he was sometimes annoyed that all this happiness had been bought at his expense. Why, therefore, had he given himself the painful task of cadging her a rise?

  These reflections ruined his luncheon, made his afternoon a purgatory, and sent him to the Primroses’ Green Street house in a state of anxious vexation. Berthold was on a business trip to the States. He and Gem dined alone. His appetite was ruined by the unspoken plea for Ellie sticking in his throat.

  He felt guilty towards the girl. She had been a virgin. She had simply opened her arms to him. She had asked for nothing. He had been touched by her poverty and courage.

  He was a humane man; emotional, even sentimental – or so he believed. If he were wealthy he would delight in making lavish gifts. But the feel of money sickened him. Beggars often roused his pity, but stronger than pity was his unwillingness to bring money into the open, to hand over to another human being some degradingly small sum. Money, it seemed to him, soiled any relationship it touched. Had Petta not had her private fortune, no persuasion could have made him marry her. Her financial independence had seemed to him an earnest of the marriage. A foolish idea, but his own. He could not change.

  While these thoughts circulated vaguely through his mind, he was suddenly jerked into activity by one that put all the others out of sight. A plea for Ellie would prove to Gem that the girl was getting no financial assistance from him. With the Ellie affair coming to an end, he would be more dependent on Gem. He had better restore her confidence in him.

  He blurted out: ‘You know that child, Ellie Parsons – the one in the studio? She’s still getting only what she got in the packing department. You probably did not realise. I think she’s having a pretty thin time.’

  Gem frowned slightly, but spoke with her usual cool reasonableness: ‘I don’t suppose she’s dependent on her salary. She must get an allowance from home.’

  ‘Not a penny.’

  ‘But the studio salaries are small. It’s understood. It’s a luxury department. We like to get people who have a little private money.’

  ‘She has nothing.’

  ‘What about her family?’

  ‘Her mother’s a widow – runs some sort of little business on the south coast.’

  ‘Doesn’t she want the girl at home?’

  ‘Clamours for her, I believe; but Miss Parsons wants to live her own life. She came here all on her own, and here she means to stay. She’s determined to be an independent, wage-earning woman. One must admire her spirit.’

  ‘She’d be better at home. And safer.’

  Quintin smiled through it all. Beaten, still he rallied her: ‘Let’s say a ten-bob rise?’

  ‘I’m afraid not. The firm cannot be expected to subsidise Miss Parsons’s independence.’

  ‘She does a tough job – all that “antiquing” as you call it. Labourer’s work; though, God knows, the poor child imagines she’s an artist. She’s in the seventh heaven about working in a studio.’

  Gem said coolly: ‘No doubt she will get a rise as soon as she proves she’s worth it.’ He recognised that definitive note. Argument would get him nowhere. He looked at Gem with bleak admiration.

  Well, he had done what he could. He had no parting gift with which to soften the blow for Ellie. By Saturday morning, the thought of meeting her at all had become agony to him.

  It was a cold, colourless day. He awoke bad-tempered, scarcely able to contemplate that walk in Regents Park. He would have put it off, but knew it must, sooner or later, be faced.

  Thinking of Ellie’s youth and her delight in that arduous underpaid job in Gem’s ridiculous studio, he knew himself young no longer. Was there anything that could pluck him up before he was lost for ever in the slough of increasing age?

  Voices came from the sitting-room. Petta was talking to Mrs Trimmer. He imagined they were gossiping about him. Mrs Trimmer adored ‘Madam’. Quintin made no protest. He had
never encouraged Mrs Trimmer to talk. She was well paid but he did not trust her. He believed she cheated him on the household bills. With some satisfaction he told himself that when he made his ‘get-away’ and ‘Madam’ had to take herself off, Mrs Trimmer would look far before she found another victim as uncomplaining as he.

  He had breakfast, bathed, dressed and went out. As he left the house he heard a woman’s voice call ‘Deena.’ This was answered by the excited, shrill barking of a dog. He stood on the top step, pretending to search his pockets while the woman passed. An apricot poodle bounced about her as though on rubber feet. She gave Quintin a half-glance and laughed, ostensibly at the dog. She snapped her fingers. The dog bounced joyfully. Quintin smiled, knowing for whom all this was intended. He had seen her half-a-dozen times before. They had almost reached the point of speech, yet neither spoke. As he descended the steps, he looked after her. She was a tall woman, hatless, wrapped in a white coat of heavy wool. She had the sort of legs that could launch even a plain woman on an international career of mink and diamonds. Despite the simplicity of her dress, everything about her, the smooth bloom of her skin, the lint-pale hair severely dressed, the shoes of white lizard skin, gave off a scent of luxury. This caught at him oddly. He had grown up in a world where the insignia of money had meant a great deal. Even his grandfather, his mother’s father, the master of Chudleigh Park, had married his daughters to money. First-generation money at that. The girls, Rose and Jasmin, had been too plain, too overshadowed by their lovely mother, to attract the attention of established fortunes. They had been sacrificed to the upkeep of Chudleigh. Both had died young.

  Quintin’s father, the son of a builder, had been a natural money-maker. He once told Quintin that by buying and selling real estate he had banked ten thousand pounds before he was twenty-one.

  ‘It won’t be far short of a million, lad, when it reaches you,’ he said, but it had been a long way short of a million. The instinct that guided him, almost a second-sight, left him overnight. In the last few months of his life he lost more than he had made in the previous twenty years. On his deathbed he told Quintin: ‘You’ll have about two thousand a year. Not much – but I started with five pounds in the Post Office Savings. You’ve nothing to complain about.’