Her eyes upon the orchid in the plastic box, Ellie felt an overwhelming longing to be with young, happy, cocktail-drinking people. She felt that only a thin glass wall of not-knowing separated her from a world of such people. If she could break through it, her life would be changed.
She glanced about her as though the means of breaking into life were at hand. Some young people were pushing in through the swing-doors of the restaurant. On an impulse she followed them as though she were with them. They ran down a marble staircase beneath a sign that said ‘Grill Room’. She dared not follow, but stood in the marble hall wondering how she had come there. She had imagined there would be warmth and a luxurious cushioning of sound within, but, instead, the confusion of the street had entered like the fog. Under hard, white lights, crowds of people wandered about the closed food counters. A man in a uniform was shouting directions: ‘The café, the cafeteria, the Blue Room, the Pink . . .’ She felt a trespasser. She had no excuse for eating again. She had had toast for tea.
She left. Ahead, a congregation of lights jerked and ran and showered out stars more dazzling than sunlight. She reached Piccadilly Circus. Here she passed a number of young men ranged against the shops. None looked at her. Some were staring avidly at passers-by as though searching for a lost friend, the rest were blankly looking at nothing. Their bodies seemed flattened back from the crowd by indifference. In the over-brilliant light their faces, gleaming sickly, seemed weary of every aspect of life. Ellie wondered what kept them there in the cold.
Beyond the lights of the Circus, there were other loiterers. Women, this time. She had heard about them. They lolled at street corners, alone or in pairs, taking the air as though it were summer. They did not glance at her. She looked at them almost enviously. They knew nothing of solitude.
Now that the crowds and lights were left behind, she suddenly began to shiver with the cold. She had been cold all day, yet it was only now she became conscious of it. It was as though the cold had turned and attacked her, and, however fast she walked, it held to her. She realised it was mid-winter.
During her weeks with Quintin she had lived, it seemed, like the ‘Snow Queen’ girl, in a garden where it was always summer. Now she was shut out from the summer garden of love.
‘My fault,’ she said.
All female gossip, all advice given in women’s magazines, made it clear that a woman thrown over had only herself to blame.
She said: ‘Stop feeling sorry for yourself.’ After all, she was no worse off than she had been when she first arrived. She had known no one – but her solitude had had a difference. Then, as she walked about the streets alone, she walked an adventurer. The massive stone façades of the West End, shut and darkening with evening, the crowds pushing their way home, the mysterious impersonality of this city – all those had been part of the challenge she had accepted by coming here. Now there was no mystery. London seemed empty as a mausoleum.
Even Quintin did not want her here. He saw no future for her. He, of all people, had said: ‘You’d be better at home, and safer.’
‘Yet, I’m staying here.’
She remembered the morning after her day-trip to London – her announcement to her mother and Emmy that she had found a job in London. They had been dumbfounded. She had been braced to fight against her mother’s commands and appeals. When Mrs Parsons spoke, she said only:
‘I give her six months.’
‘I don’t.’ Emmy seemed the more indignant of the two. ‘I don’t give her two weeks. You wait. Living in a cubicle, filthy food, no money, no friends, no fun – she’ll soon be sick of it.’
‘And what about her painting? All those evenings wasted at the Technical College! What’s it led to, after all? A job tying up parcels.’
Ellie said: ‘When I find a room, I’ll start painting again.’
‘A room!’ Emmy shouted. ‘What sort of room will you get on your screw? London isn’t Eastsea, you know.’
‘She’ll starve herself,’ said Mrs Parsons. ‘When she has a breakdown, she’ll come back here expecting to be nursed. As if I haven’t enough to do.’
‘I won’t come back!’ said Ellie.
She crossed the road. She would have been glad to walk till midnight, but she had walked as far as she could. Her feet hurt; her legs felt weak as rubber. When, at the Ritz, a Chelsea bus stopped beside her, she had not the will to reject it. She decided to save money and expend more time walking from Sloane Square.
At Sloane Square, a young man left the bus behind her and, trotting at her side, murmured hoarsely: ‘In a hurry, aren’t you? Mind if I come along?’
At any other time she would have ignored him. Now she glanced round as though someone were offering her happiness.
‘Can’t very well stop me, can you?’ said the young man. He gave a laugh that was dramatically sardonic. Ellie, jolted out of her gloom, told herself she must behave as though nothing could disconcert her. She enquired, with the self-conscious ‘charm’ of a hostess, what was the young man’s profession.
He was a clerk at Covent Garden market.
How interesting! And did he enjoy his work?
He supposed so.
Where did he live?
At Walham Green.
And was he very lonely?
Not particularly.
He replied with increasing reluctance and suspicion. ‘What is all this, anyway?’ he asked.
‘Nothing. I was just wondering.’
‘You don’t live with your folk, do you?’
‘No. I have a room in a boarding-house.’
They turned into Oakley Street. He looked about him: ‘Where are you making for? Battersea?’
‘No. I live here. It was so kind of you to see me home.’ Ellie held out her hand in its cotton glove. She felt she had carried things off very well, but the young man was not so easily dismissed.
‘Here! You’re going to let me come up for a bit, aren’t you?’
‘Up to my room? Of course not.’
‘Oh, go on. Just for a bit.’
‘It’s impossible. Besides, the housekeeper wouldn’t allow it.’
‘What’s it got to do with her? I’d soon tell her off if she stuck her mug in.’
An unpleasantness Ellie had felt all the time in him now came undisguised to the surface. Slightly sick, Ellie said with the hauteur of fear: ‘It’s out of the question.’
‘Why did you drag me down here, then?’
‘I didn’t drag you. You said I couldn’t stop you.’ She had been fumbling blindly in her bag for her key; at last it met her fingers; she ran up the steps.
‘You little slut!’ The young man spoke venomously.
Heavens, suppose he made a scene! Ellie got the door open and in terror slammed it behind her.
In her room, she stared into her glass, certain some tragical change must have come upon her as a result of that day, but she saw no change. She did not look a minute older.
She said: ‘Oh, Quintin!’ But the sense of the young man remained like a poisonous taste in the mouth. She washed herself and cleaned her teeth. The young man slowly faded away. The thought of Quintin remained.
She sat on the end of her bed and brushed her hair and gazed mournfully at its colour in the glass. One of the Eastsea art students had said to her: ‘I’ve mixed and I’ve mixed, but I can’t mix a red like that.’ On an impulse she took out her scissors and cut off the lock that hung beside her cheek. It lay, the colour of rosewood, like a question-mark on her hand. She put it into an envelope and next morning posted it to Quintin. She thought it would plead for her. Days passed. There was no reply.
7
After his parting with Ellie, Quintin returned to his flat. As he passed the open door of his dressing-room, that was now Petta’s bedroom, the clothes thrown from the wardrobe, the ransacked drawers, the litter of shoes, told him his wife had already changed for the evening. This was the usual disorder she created about her. He frowned, acutely irritated.
He
found her lying on the sitting-room sofa. She was in black. Her narrow dress, of heavy silk, was cut to mould the lower half of her bosom and reveal the upper. She had veiled her neck and shoulders with a transparent, sequined scarf.
He could tell at once from her pose, from the height of her heels, the extreme style of her little hat, the number of jewels she was wearing, that she was in one of those exalted moods he found so trying. As he crossed to the fire, she stretched out an imperious arm and said: ‘You’re late! Where have you been?’
‘I thought we were supposed to dress?’
‘No. Alma rang to say the Claypole man was driving up early on business, so he’ll be in his “natty lounge”.’
Quintin frowned again. The break with Ellie had left him dissatisfied. He knew he had treated the poor child shabbily – and all because of Petta, whom he found unendurable. He warmed his hands. As he was about to go to his room, she said: ‘Do get ready,’ restless because she was ready herself.
He paused, picked up the evening paper and leafed slowly through it. Petta held her impatience in check. She asked: ‘What’s Alma’s idea – giving this dinner-party?’
He was silent behind the paper for several minutes before he said: ‘Heaven knows. It will almost certainly be a bore. I don’t want to see Tom Claypole again, and one never gets much of a meal in a big hotel.’
‘Poor Alma! Now George’s dead, she’s no doubt going the pace.’
‘No doubt.’
He threw down the paper. As he was about to take himself off, she said in a pleading tone: ‘Quintin.’
He turned to look at her. She leant forward from the sofa and, catching his hand, persuaded him towards her.
Unwillingly, with misgiving, he let her pull him down until he had no choice but to sit on the edge of the sofa. She gazed at him, her eyes damp and tender, and putting her arms about him she tried to draw him down to her. The scarf slid from her shoulders. As his head approached her, he gazed into the white flesh of her bosom and saw it crinkle slightly where it had lost elasticity. He jerked away from her, saying: ‘We’re already late.’ Her hands dropped: she let him go.
When he had lain for ten minutes in a hot bath, his tranquillity was restored. He dressed in a leisurely way, crossing to his glass and adjusting carefully every garment he put on. Petta called him, a long-drawn petulance in her voice. Mildly he answered her: ‘All right. Ring for a taxi.’
At the hotel they found Alma and Tom Claypole sitting in one of the small withdrawing-rooms that were set in alcoves slightly above the main hall. She greeted the Bellots with mock severity: ‘How naughty you are! Tom is driving into Hertfordshire tonight and keeps, he tells me, a régime of early bed-times.’
Quintin turned to Claypole with a contrite smile: ‘How can I excuse myself?’ attempting by his manner to distract attention from the fact he had no excuse to give. ‘I am delighted to see you again. How many years have passed since you came down to Chudleigh in that remarkable car, the envy of my boyhood. Was it a “Silver Ghost”?’
‘It was.’
Claypole spoke with satisfaction, yet a stiffness remained in his manner. When Quintin started to speak again, he smiled coldly and, looking away to where a dozen or so girls in ball dresses were ascending the main stair, he said: ‘Charming! Quite charming!’
‘There’s a debutantes’ party upstairs,’ said Alma; she sighed: ‘Girls dress so prettily these days, don’t you think?’
‘They do indeed.’ As Claypole watched them, the tip of his tongue touched his lower lip. When they passed out of sight he glanced away and, catching Quintin’s eyes on him, he drew down the corners of his lips. The two men understood one another, but Quintin might not yet regard himself as forgiven. Claypole first gave his attention to Petta, who had been standing a little apart.
In the indirect lighting of the hall, she looked no more than twenty-five. Quintin, watching the pair of them, supposed that to Claypole she must seem adorably feminine and alluring. The old, dark, heavily folded face melted with admiration. The black, monkey-like eyes became fixed, brilliant, acutely aware that here was no ordinary beauty.
He said: ‘No wonder your husband has made so little response to my overtures. He has been keeping us apart. He wants you all to himself.’
Petta smiled vaguely.
Quintin remembered that the old boy had been regarded as something of a lady-killer in poor Aunt Rose’s day. Many years must have passed since Claypole made his last kill. Anyway, Petta was in no mood to play up to him. She lifted her smile to the regions above his head and said to Alma: ‘I think I’ll leave my coat in the cloakroom.’ The women went off.
Claypole raised his eyebrows, stuck out his lower lip and, catching Quintin’s sympathetic amusement, smiled and shrugged his shoulders. The men were now in accord. They strolled towards the door of the dining-room.
Quintin returned to the topic – the safe topic – of Chudleigh. Claypole was now willing to respond. Had he been asked why he cared what impression he made on this elderly member of his own sex, he would not have known. He charmed from a habit of charming he had inherited from his grandmother. He imagined every creature he met had, up to a point, of course, a claim upon his comity.
‘Those were delightful days at Chudleigh.’
‘They will not come again.’ Claypole gave Quintin a quick, oblique glance, then said: ‘Dear me, how quickly time has passed!’
At the dining-room door they turned to wait for the women, who could now be seen crossing the hall towards them. Beside Petta, Alma looked an Amazon. Once out of her daytime uniform of tweed skirt, cashmere jersey and pearls, she seemed not to know what to wear. She had on a Dior model that would have taxed the looks of a professional beauty of twenty. She was almost grotesque. Her hair was thick, strong and unmanageable. Her petticoat dipped a little at one side. She could never keep her shoulder straps out of sight. Yet her negligence was more pleasing to him than the elegance he shared with Petta. He had, as his father had had, a pernickety sense of order in dress that he despised. Indeed, extreme elegance in women was repellent to him, invariably turning his thoughts to the mortal end of the flesh beneath.
Alma arrived at the dining-room, to be greeted as though she were a minor royalty. She leant towards the head waiter, speaking confidently of her reserved table and, moving in his protective shade, led her party across the room to a table opposite the door.
‘Very nice,’ she murmured, with a grieved glance at the waiter, who knew, as Quintin also knew, she preferred one of the secluded corner tables, all now occupied. The party glanced through the menu, subdued by Alma’s hurt feelings. She recovered when the first two courses were safely ordered. She was a flustered but generous hostess. Old George Wheeldon, self-styled gourmet, had kept her in training. She did less well with the wine waiter. The earliest date, the highest price! And something of everything. What on earth were they in for? The eyes of the two men met in mutual apprehension. Claypole smiled and looked away.
Catching the smile, Alma felt the men to be in accord and she turned invitingly to Petta, but Petta remained remote. All Alma’s efforts could produce from her no more than a delayed, vague nod or shake of the head, or that smile that was the smile of sibyl Petta, mystic-minded Petta, Petta who contemplated higher things. ‘For God’s sake,’ Quintin wanted to say, ‘forget about her.’ Soon Alma did forget about her. While Petta sat on the fringe of their consciousness, picking at her food, Alma attached herself, an unassuming listener, to the men’s talk.
Their conversation was more intimate than was usual between persons so slightly acquainted. Taking advantage of the fact that they were, by marriage, uncle and nephew, Tom Claypole was heading with tactful determination towards a subject that must have tantalised him for years – the failure of Quintin’s father. Quintin did nothing to deflect or direct enquiries. He was amused by the devious methods of Quintin’s generation. He let the old fellow recall Edwardian financiers, their fortunes and their tragedies, and when
the air was full of speculation, vast wealth and curious failure, Claypole said, apropos as it were: ‘I knew your father quite well in the old days. It was he who introduced me to your aunt.’
‘Indeed!’
‘After her death, I’m afraid I broke away from many old friends. I did not care to be reminded of past happiness.’ Claypole spoke down at his plate, then, lifting his face that suddenly revealed itself as afflicted and unsure, he said: ‘We were never intimate, but I remembered always that I was indebted to him. There was nothing I would not have done for him. Had he called on me . . . at the end, I mean . . . I would have made every effort.’
The sincerity of his intention brought Quintin to speech: ‘I do not think anyone could have done much.’
Claypole, his moment of emotion past, cocked a black eye, eager, yet discreet. ‘Could he not have been . . . um . . . ah . . . restrained?’
‘I suppose he could, had anyone realised what was happening, but he always had been, as you know, a law unto himself. And it all happened so quickly. There was no indication of any abnormality in his behaviour. Indeed, one could not say he became abnormal – he became normal. He lost money as I would probably lose it if I suddenly started investing right and left. His genius, or magic, or whatever it was, simply ceased to function.’
‘Magic?’
‘It seemed like magic. One of his executors said to me: “I was always convinced your father could see into the future.”’
‘Bless my soul!’ Claypole contemplated the suggestion of magic with a surprised and slightly contemptuous amusement such as a senior wrangler might display towards the antics of a counting boy. Quintin nodded in sympathy. He, also, had no taste for the ebullients of life – the eccentric, the neurotic, the outlandishly gifted. He knew his satisfaction at an adverse judgement on his father resulted from a certain guilt. He awaited the enquiry that would hold embedded the accusation that, had he given any attention to his father’s affairs, he might have been the one to save the family fortune. No enquiry came. Claypole probably knew from experience that the sons of his wealthy business acquaintances seldom had a taste for money-making.
Doves of Venus Page 8
