Doves of Venus

by Olivia Manning

  With Quintin, everything fell into position. It was his arrival, of course, for which she had been waiting all her life. When he promised to arrange her move to the studio, she knew it would be arranged. When Miss Senior, bringing round the tray of pay packets, said casually one Friday evening: ‘Miss Parsons, you can start on Monday in the studio,’ Ellie was transported as by the fulfilment of a premonitory dream. Everything at last was hers.

  Dahlia said pityingly: ‘What made them think of sending you there?’

  ‘I want to go. I used to be an art student.’

  ‘Did you!’ Dahlia looked narrowly at her. ‘I’m not surprised. I said to myself when I first laid eyes on you: “That one’s potty”.’

  Dahlia hardly spoke to her again. During the months ahead, if they came face to face in the hall or entrance, she moved away quickly with the look of someone who feels she has been injured but has no wish to make the matter public.

  Ellie, ascending the stairs on her way to the studio on her first day, met Klixon coming down. He stopped, keeping at a distance from her, throwing his head back, expanding his mouth in no semblance of a smile, and said: ‘So you’re moving to the studio!’

  Ellie was too frightened to answer. Her fear had nothing to do with Klixon. Now she knew Quintin, Klixon meant nothing. His disapproval affected her less than Dahlia’s had done. He said:

  ‘You should have consulted me. You’re taking a risk. I hope you don’t regret it. That packing job was a safe job. You might have been in it for years.’

  Having said what he had to say, he motioned her to pass on. She went, her fear heightened by a new sense of risk. Not that she risked anything. She had never intended to stay in the packing job. As for her new position in the studio – had she not been recommended by Quintin Bellot, a shareholder in the firm? It was the drama of risk, hazard deified, that caught at her throat.

  In the paint-shop the men, recognising her, shouted to her: ‘Hello, ducks! What are you doing up here?’

  Near tears, she croaked: ‘I’ve come to work in the studio. I’m looking for Mr Plumley.’

  ‘Mr Plumley? That’s him. Tall bloke at the desk there. Him with the golden curls. Here!’ they directed her. ‘Get round here. Mind the wet paint. There’s a girl!’

  She reached the studio. It was a white room full of white furniture lit from a dozen windows by silver daylight. Denis Plumley, sitting at his desk, showed no awareness of the uproar in the paint-shop. He was in young middle-age, his pallid, melancholy, classical face hung over with limp, black hair. Ellie, unable to speak, stood for some time beside him. He was filling in a crossword puzzle. When he glanced up and pushed away his hair, he noted her with surprise. She managed to say: ‘I’m Ellie Parsons.’

  ‘Oh, my dear, yes. What are we going to do with you?’

  Ellie looked round the gathering of white furniture, in the midst of which a youngish woman was cleaning a palette and a short, stout man painting cupids on a commode, and said: ‘I’ve come here to work. I’ve brought some designs.’ She had spent Saturday afternoon in the Manresa Road library copying urns, flowers and swags from books on period design.

  Denis Plumley asked: ‘Can you put on gold leaf?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Can you do “antiquing”?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Can you varnish nicely?’

  ‘Yes.’

  He smiled. He was not deceived. He stood up, as tall as the wardrobes, and called out pleadingly: ‘Rhoda darling, show this child how to do something. I don’t mind what.’

  When Ellie had learnt how to make a thin mixture of black and umber, to wash it over the white paint, rub it off, then brush the patina till the crass white surfaces seemed bloomed with age, she covered wardrobes inside and out, tables, bed-ends, commodes, cabinets, writing-desks, chairs. She had never worked so hard in her life before. In the evenings she left half-sleeping from exhaustion and the fumes of turpentine and new paint. When Quintin spoke with concern of the state of her hands, she said: ‘That’s nothing. I love being there.’

  ‘What about the other artists? How do you get on with them?’

  ‘They take no notice of me, but I don’t think they mind my being there.’ Ellie, who had had two glasses of wine, added: ‘I don’t think Mrs P. likes it, though.’

  ‘Likes what?’

  ‘My being there.’

  ‘Nonsense. I’m sure she loves having you there.’ Quintin turned his face from the subject and Ellie knew she must leave it.

  During her early days in the studio, with Quintin behind her, Ellie had felt secure. The first time one of the painters put his head in and hissed: ‘Mrs P. coming,’ Ellie watched eagerly to be acknowledged by this important woman who knew she knew Quintin.

  She had, of course, seen Mrs Primrose before. Now, as she stood in the doorway talking with a mysterious and intimate quiet to the painters’ foreman, Ellie looked at her newly. She was a neat, dark, miniature woman who wore on her tailored suit a brooch flower of diamonds as large as the lapel. Ellie gazed and gazed at Mrs Primrose’s small, dark, hawk’s face, catching the flash of diamonds as she moved, but when Mrs Primrose turned from the foreman and looked into the studio, her eyes passed blankly over the space where Ellie stood. It seemed she did not see Ellie now, any more than she had seen her in the basement. Yet Ellie felt awareness, and, with it, enmity. Some instinct made her move out of sight. Hiding behind a piece of furniture, she glanced out cautiously. Mrs Primrose was talking to Denis in a voice no more than a whisper. They were going through the work-sheets. Denis could not keep his tenor down to her level. Ellie heard him say casually: ‘She is quite useful’, and was sure he spoke of her. Ellie was grateful to him.

  Mrs Primrose crossed to where Denis’s friend, the stout, short man, Bertie Hawkins, was decorating a wardrobe. Ellie could not hear what she said, but her movement expressed admiration. Bertie, indifferent, smiling from politeness only, fingered his brushes and waited for her to go.

  She passed Ellie, leaving on the air a scent of gardenias, and paused by another wardrobe on which Rhoda was drawing bamboos. She smiled at Rhoda and at her work, then left the studio without speaking again. She had not recognised Ellie’s existence.

  Ellie, chilled by the certainty she was not wanted there, no longer felt secure. Whenever warning was given of Mrs Primrose’s approach, Ellie would hide behind the largest piece of furniture and hope to be forgotten.

  In time she began to think she had been forgotten. Weeks passed and she was still in the studio: her confidence came cautiously back. She learned to put on gold and silver leaf: she could ‘antique’ and varnish. As she became skilled, Bertie let her fill in with flat colour Greek key and acanthus borders, later even to shade them.

  She was useful. She was progressing. Secretly, she came to regard her work with admiration, believing herself more than useful. She was becoming valuable. When she contemplated some massive piece ‘antiqued’ and varnished by herself she felt love for it, and pride in it. She was beginning to believe Mrs Primrose kept her because she was too good to lose. It even entered her head to ask for a rise, but she put that thought from her. Mrs Primrose had expressed no satisfaction. She had expressed nothing, but somehow she had let Ellie know she was not wanted.

  3

  Recovering from her cold, putting Quintin behind her, Ellie returned to the studio in a state of emotional and physical emptiness that surely betokened a new beginning.

  At least she could work.

  More than that, she had nothing and, having nothing, she could hope for everything. To begin with, there were Denis, Bertie and Rhoda. When she had had Quintin, she had been content to remain out of their sight. Now she would make herself known to them.

  She came, she knew, from the darkest outer rim of provincial ignorance. She had trained (of course, now, she realised she had not trained at all) for six months in the art classes of the Eastsea Technical School. She lived in a room so small it contained no table on which
to put a drawing-board: she had no drawing-board: she had no money with which to buy paper, canvas or paint – but Quintin had said to her: ‘You are a remarkable girl! A unique girl!’ and when she spoke with envious respect of Denis, Bertie and Rhoda, he had laughed at her, saying: ‘Really! You are delicious!’

  Abandoned by him, but still the unique and remarkable Ellie, here she was, back at the studio, dry-eyed and determined to live again. She found that the table she had been ‘antiquing’ had disappeared. One of the painters had varnished it. Disconcerted, feeling less unique, she asked Denis: ‘Was Mrs P. cross at my being away?’

  ‘She said nothing to me, darling.’

  Ellie caught her breath and asked after a moment: ‘She doesn’t want me here, does she?’

  Denis looked up from his crossword puzzle and said with a not unkindly exasperation: ‘How do I know? If she didn’t want you, would she have taken you on? It’s her firm.’

  This was no doubt meant for reassurance. How could she explain why she was employed there! Her arrival in the studio had probably mystified Denis, Bertie and Rhoda. When she said nothing, Denis said:

  ‘Why don’t you speak to her? Chatter gaily. Be ingenuous. Put across your girlish charm.’

  ‘How can I? She never looks at me.’

  ‘Well, push into view. Ask her how she likes your work. She’s all right, really. You’ll soon win her over.’

  Ellie, contemplating the monstrous impertinence of pushing into Mrs Primrose’s view, said faintly: ‘I couldn’t.’

  ‘It’s up to you, darling.’ Denis dismissed her with a flick of one of his long, white, unused hands. ‘Get to work on Bertie’s last piece. Don’t stand there wasting my time.’

  Ellie thought: ‘If I hadn’t my job, I would be so unhappy, I would die.’

  But she had her job and did not die.

  During the middle of the morning Denis finished the crossword puzzle and came to lean against a wardrobe, on the twin doors of which Bertie was limning a shepherd and shepherdess surrounded by flowers.

  Looking at this work, Denis said: ‘Ah, Rex! What an artist he was!’

  ‘Really, Denis!’ said Bertie.

  Denis touched the rim of the wreathing flowers, and said: ‘The old boy who wrote “fringed grot, grass plot” knew a thing or two, or didn’t he? What do you think, darling?’

  Bertie giggled in spite of himself, then said primly: ‘Don’t be naughty, Denis.’

  ‘Now, what I don’t understand is censorship. If I find I’ve doodled a three-leafed clover, I know what I have in mind – but, knowing what I have in mind, why a three-leafed clover?’ asked Denis, touching with the point of his finger the clover on which the shepherd was pressing his foot.

  ‘Really, Denis! I have to draw something. What do you expect me to draw?’

  ‘I don’t know, dear. You’re doing quite well. It is a bedroom suite. But I sometimes feel you’re still in the cloisters.’

  ‘Do the Time Sheets,’ Bertie commanded, with mock sternness.

  ‘I hoped you would finish them off this afternoon.’

  ‘Oh, Denis, really!’ Bertie seemed both cross and pleased at the same time. ‘You expect me to do everything.’

  ‘Not everything, darling. Tell me what you think of Leslie.’

  ‘As a designer, or a cup of tea?’

  ‘Tea, darling, tea.’

  ‘I’d say she’d had it.’

  ‘Had it! Too true: too often. Never was one myself for the wide open spaces.’

  Ellie turned to look at them, hoping for some clue to Bertie’s yelp of laughter: she saw none. Bertie, catching her eye, became prim again. He said: ‘We’re shocking baby.’

  ‘You’re not,’ said Ellie regretfully, ‘I haven’t understood a word.’

  When, between eleven and mid-day, tea was made in the paint-shop, it was Ellie’s task to collect four cups for the studio and distribute them. Then, if she had the courage, she would have opportunity to talk to someone – but to whom? It seemed to her that only Rhoda was possible. An attempt to approach one of the men might be misunderstood.

  Rhoda made no move, at any time, to talk to anyone. If she caught Ellie’s eye, she smiled, but without encouragement. She was a large plump woman, claiming to be delicate. She was always asking the painters to shut windows, or move furniture, so that she might be screened from draughts. On cold days she wrapped a rug round her legs. Shut in by furniture, wrapped in her rug, she would perch on a high stool, surrounded by her materials – her crocodile handbag, her crocodile court shoes (she changed into sheepskin slippers), her box of biscuits, her cigarettes, and the novel she read while she drank her tea – a small island on which she was marooned for most of the day.

  Denis never went near her. Bertie occasionally strolled over to her, and when this happened Ellie would try to overhear their conversation. A conversation between painters might prove as dazzlingly strange as were most conversations between Bertie and Denis. Unfortunately it did not, but Ellie learnt something about Rhoda. Rhoda lived in a place called Golders Green, a place so remote she had to have her own car in which to drive to and from the studio. From her mention of the lily-pond, the big lawn, the little lawn, ‘Mummy’s awful plaster gnomes’ and Daddy’s irises, Ellie came to believe Rhoda lived in the country. That might prove a hindrance to friendship between Rhoda and Ellie. Still, when Ellie brought in the tea, she served Rhoda last and lingered to look at the jointed stems of bamboos, the pointed leaves, the little figures, the ‘Willow Pattern’ bridges and so on, all, in some odd way, associated with the studio’s pet period, Regency. She said with Bertie’s intonation: ‘Very nice.’

  Rhoda smiled, saying nothing.

  Ellie asked: ‘Did you understand what Bertie and Denis were talking about this morning?’

  ‘I wasn’t listening.’

  Ellie attempted a version of the conversation. At the end of it, Rhoda said vaguely: ‘I don’t suppose it meant anything much,’ and she opened her novel and glanced at it several times as though she could not keep her attention from it.

  Ellie went away, wondering whether the conversation between Denis and Bertie had meant anything. Her mother would have dismissed it at once as ‘a lot of nonsense.’ For that reason, Ellie was unwilling to dismiss it. ‘I must understand everything,’ she decided, ‘Everything.’ But she need expect no help from Rhoda. She feared she would never get to know her at all, and there she was right. Rhoda left without warning a few weeks later. She sent a note to Bertie which he read aloud: ‘My daddy thinks work in the studio is too much for me.’

  ‘I can’t bear it,’ said Denis, and neither mentioned Rhoda again.

  4

  When Ellie realised Rhoda had gone for good, she thought: ‘I may be promoted to her job.’ Hope spiralled up from the pit of her stomach and, like a spring, shot her into a state near hysteria. She had swallowed back so much dejection that here it was, leaping out at her with a different look. She eyed Denis and asked herself why she should not fall in love with him. The fact that no one wanted her need not deprive her of the excitement of wanting someone.

  At the thought, she suddenly rushed across the studio, flung her arms round Denis and said: ‘Darling Denis, will I get Rhoda’s job?’

  Denis, a gold cigarette-holder between his teeth, looked down on her and opened his eyes in astonishment: ‘Heavens above! What has happened to baby?’

  Ellie let her arms drop but she kept her manner up as best she could: ‘Tell me, tell me, tell me – will I get Rhoda’s job?’

  ‘It is most unlikely.’

  ‘But why not?’

  ‘Don’t be silly. Could you do Rhoda’s job?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Of course you couldn’t.’ Denis sat down to his paper, not bothering to say more.

  A little deflated, Ellie said: ‘Well, I’m jolly glad Rhoda’s gone. Now we’ll get someone different. I love change. I feel something wonderful’s going to happen.’

  Denis looked acro
ss at Bertie: ‘Do you feel something wonderful’s going to happen, Bertie?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Alas, we’ve done everything, seen everything, heard everything – even that “most melodious twang.” Nothing wonderful can happen again.’

  ‘What “most melodious twang”?’ asked Ellie.

  ‘Go away and find out for yourself.’

  Even when irritated, Denis’s manner was tolerant. He gave a sort of comic act of irritation. Ellie felt she could say anything to Denis, but to Bertie she could say almost nothing. She often told herself: ‘I like Denis,’ but she could not change this to ‘I love.’ It was not Denis’s face that came into her mind when, between sleeping and waking, the guard slipped from memory.

  For three weeks she was the only woman on the first floor. With Rhoda, some restraint went from the air. Not only was Ellie in an odd fever of excitement at this time, but she sent out her excitement like an emanation, and only Bertie was not amused. The painters and carpenters called after her: ‘Come here, duck!’ ‘Hey, sugar!’ ‘Hey, strawberry!’ and tried to catch her as she dodged from them.

  Denis she thought a brilliant wit. When he held up her pen-knife to Bertie and said: ‘My dear, look! An edge like a consumptive’s temperature-chart,’ Bertie gave a pallid smile, but Ellie, intoxicated by all the attention she was receiving, leant her head against the wall and wept with laughter.

  All went well for two weeks and two days, then Denis’s mood changed. It changed overnight. One day he spent leaning against Bertie’s wardrobe telling stories about a friend called Edwin who was a tolerable companion so long as one could listen, at any time, in any place, to the story of his constipation: the next, he was silent at his desk, not working on his crossword puzzle, but gazing, head pressed to hand, at a sheet of blank paper. When Ellie crossed to him, as confident as ever, and said: ‘Denis darling, let me decorate the little desk that’s just come in!’ Denis replied coldly: ‘Certainly not.’