Doves of Venus

by Olivia Manning

  ‘But why do you take them off?’

  ‘Can’t you guess?’ Later, she added: ‘You’ve no idea the fun we have.’

  ‘But where? Where do you have this fun?’

  ‘In my room. His is a poky little place at the top of the house.’

  So Terry had the freedom of Nancy’s room! To Ellie this seemed a final exclusion.

  Soon the Saturday nights were given up. Nancy was never free now. Oddly, as though it were Ellie who was to blame for this lapsing of friendship, Nancy had less to say in the studio and what she said could be harsh and critical. She said: ‘You’ll really have to get yourself a new coat. That coat looks awful.’

  She said: ‘Tom says he thinks you’re attractive but it’s a pity you dye your hair.’

  ‘I don’t dye my hair. When did he say this?’

  ‘That last evening. When you went upstairs for something. You know how stuffy he can be.’

  ‘But you know I don’t dye it. I couldn’t afford to.’

  Nancy was convinced. ‘It’s that bitch, Maxine, of course. Tom believes everything she says.’

  ‘Surely you told him I don’t dye it?’

  ‘I thought you gave it a rinse or something.’

  ‘I couldn’t even afford that.’

  In this matter, Ellie realised, Nancy had not defended her. It was not important, but it increased her sense of insecurity at a time when security was low. The spring, it seemed, was rousing expectations only to enhance deprivation. Not only had she lost Nancy, but Denis – who was a friend of sorts – chose this time to disappear.

  For weeks his boredom had been such that it had taken on a quality of physical suffering. Even his crossword puzzle could not absorb him. He pushed it aside and sat in the lassitude of despair.

  As for Bertie – it seemed that at any moment he might burst into tears. Anxiety so weighed on him now that he sometimes talked to the girls. Glancing askance at Denis as though Denis could be bothered to listen, he murmured: ‘He wouldn’t come at all if I didn’t drag him out of bed. Literally drag him out. I don’t know what’s going to happen. He must earn some money somehow.’

  When Mrs Primrose came in, Denis pulled himself to his feet. He stooped over her vacantly, leaning on his desk, his cigarette hanging from his lower lip. Though it was evident to the others he did not hear a word she said, she seemed to notice nothing wrong. Though he kept on his feet with an effort of such tedium that it seemed at any moment he might drop from sheer lack of will to stand, Mrs Primrose murmured on, her eyelids lowered as though to protect herself against any disturbance of her tranquillity.

  When she went, Denis would look round blankly and ask: ‘What the hell was she talking about?’

  Bertie attempted to overhear her instructions – no easy matter – and those he heard he carried out. It was those unheard that bore on him most cruelly. In his anxiety he would go round the studio crying: ‘You’ll get yourself the sack, Denis. I know you’ll get yourself the sack.’

  Yet Denis remained, as Ellie remained. There was only one indication that Mrs Primrose was not mocked, and that came at a time when it no longer mattered.

  A grand pianoforte, like a white whale, had come into the studio from the paint-shop. Bertie and Nancy were unwilling to tackle it. Denis took to playing inaccurately upon it bebop or boogie or ‘Mortify us by thy Grace.’

  He was playing one day when Mrs Primrose entered. Unaware of her, or indifferent to her, he continued to play. She raised her eyelids and from under her black brows she fixed on him eyes that were grey and bleak as rainwet slates. Ellie knew Denis was doomed.

  In a little voice, meek as the bleat of a lamb, Mrs Primrose said: ‘Mr Plumley.’

  ‘Sorry,’ said Denis, but before he rose he struck out in execration a row of consecutive fifths. When Mrs Primrose had gone, Bertie ran around, marking the new furniture, his soft backside quivering with indignation.

  ‘It isn’t fair,’ he said tearfully, ‘it just isn’t fair. Haven’t I enough to do?’

  ‘But I thought you loved it, darling,’ said Denis, back at the pianoforte, ‘Bertie, my Busy Bee. You believe genius is one per cent inspiration and ninety-nine per cent perspiration. If you perspire enough, you’re ninety-nine per cent a genius.’

  ‘Get out of my way.’ Bertie pushed Denis off the stool. ‘If you won’t help, please don’t hinder.’

  Denis went to the window and stared out into the mews. Bertie, bustling about, sorely tried, kept up a run of comments: ‘It’s hopeless.’ ‘I can’t go on like this.’ ‘My own work’s suffering.’

  In the midst of this, Denis roused himself suddenly and left the room. When, an hour later, he had not returned, Bertie said with tense satisfaction: ‘There! Now he’ll expect me to clock out for him.’

  Denis did not return the next day, nor the next. Bertie, who had a cold, was sometimes seen to wipe not only his nose but his eyes. Nancy and Ellie treated him with great consideration. At the end of the week one of them ventured to ask if Denis was coming back. Bertie shook his head.

  On Monday morning Mr Klixon appeared. He said: ‘I’m fitting in Plumley’s work. Don’t suppose it will take long. Can’t see why she keeps this place open. Orders don’t justify it. No use even as a shop window. Out of date, all this painted stuff. Just ruining good furniture. Look at that piano! Did you ever see anything like it?’

  Mr Klixon went through the time-sheets, costed the pieces that stood finished, ordered their removal, cleared up the papers on Denis’s desk, came round, hands in trouser pockets, chest thrust out, and looked at the designs in progress as though they had meaning for him, then went. He had not given Ellie a glance. In three-quarters of an hour he had completed work that Bertie and Denis might have muddled through in a week.

  When he had gone, Ellie, choking with anxiety, said: ‘Will he persuade Mrs P. to close the studio?’

  Bertie replied irritably: ‘Of course not. While there are orders, the studio will be here to carry them out.’

  Grateful for their sympathy, gentle in his unhappiness, Bertie began to show the girls a new friendliness. Ellie was so far encouraged that she confided to Bertie her fear of Mrs Primrose.

  Bertie said vaguely: ‘She’s always been very nice to me,’ but the next time a small table came into the studio, he passed it to Ellie, saying: ‘You can decorate this when you’ve nothing else to do. If it’s good, I’ll show it to Mrs P.’

  Ellie received the table as though it were compensation for all else she had lost. She designed for it a cornucopia from which poured every sort of exotic fruit and flower. When she transferred this to the table-top, she asked Nancy’s opinion of it.

  ‘It’s flamboyant,’ said Nancy, whose own designs were anything but that. ‘It’s too big.’

  Ellie had no use for such criticism: she was looking for praise. She was in love with the design herself and spent hours in the library seeking some new beauty to add to it. She admired it so much that she longed for others to admire it, too. When she started to paint it, she asked Nancy:

  ‘Don’t you like the feeling in this line?’

  Nancy laughed at her: ‘I adore the feeling of uncertainty in this one.’

  Ellie would not be discouraged. She believed that when the table was finished, her abilities would be recognised, her position confirmed, her salary raised and Mrs Primrose astounded.

  12

  One morning Nancy arrived late at the studio. Her eyes were pink-rimmed. When she hurried to Ellie, she could not speak for tears.

  ‘Is it Terry?’ Ellie asked.

  ‘No. My mother.’

  ‘Not dead?’

  ‘No. Oh, Ellie, I have to go back to Bleckworth.’

  Her dejection was such that Ellie asked: ‘But surely not for good?’

  ‘I don’t know. She has to have an operation. Father says he can’t afford a housekeeper. I must go back. Just when I’ve found Terry.’ Nancy threw her paint-box and brushes together, moving about blindly, scarcel
y knowing what she was doing. Once or twice a sob broke from her and she said: ‘It isn’t fair.’

  The sense of division was gone from between them. Ellie was near weeping with her. ‘Is she very ill? Is there any danger?’

  ‘I don’t know. I’m worried about her, of course: but my life is here. Supposing I get trapped there. I may never get back. If I were a man they wouldn’t think of dragging me back. They’d have to find someone else – but because I’m a girl, I must give up everything and go.’

  ‘Supposing you didn’t go?’

  ‘How can I get out of it?’ Nancy spoke despairingly, tears trickling down her cheeks.

  Ellie knew the sense of ruin that had come upon her. She knew and dreaded it. She watched Nancy’s departure with sorrow. The studio seemed empty when she had gone. Work was slack. Nancy’s job would be kept for her until the autumn. If she did not return then, another designer would be employed. Meanwhile the two widowed figures, Ellie and Bertie, worked alone.

  Bertie, resigned, it seemed, to Denis’s departure from the studio, was withdrawing again into the consolation of his art. He had scarcely a word for Ellie.

  The summer came suddenly. In a night spring’s damp penumbra lifted to reveal a brilliant sky. Heat poured down into the London streets. The dusty smell of cars and melting tarmac recalled to Ellie her innocent first weeks in this city. How she had lived since then!

  Returning in full daylight, she found her room stifling and was restless to leave it again. She bathed her aching feet, drank tea and, aimless and companionless, returned into the open air. The heat mist filled the streets so that they were golden, opaque as sun-filled water. Weary and eager, she was impelled by certainty that, turning some corner, she must come upon Quintin. Again and again she saw him down the vistas of the evening streets, but as she ran his likeness melted. She had pursued a stranger. With the failure of the light, these visions passed. The air grew cool. Among the ghost shadows of dusk, she was oppressed by solitude.

  The doors of public-houses were propped open. She could see inside where people were crowded together – all seeming to know each other, all friends – and from the doorways came the smell of hops and sawdust.

  In Eastsea once she had visited a public-house. A young man, walking home with her from the Life Class, had invited her to have a drink. When she later mentioned the fact with a triumphant casualness, her mother had been aghast. With impressive severity she commanded: ‘Never – never let me hear of you entering a public-house again.’

  ‘But it was only a little bar marked “Private” and there was no one else in it and I only had ginger-beer.’

  Halfway through this defence Mrs Parsons gravely raised a hand. As Ellie’s voice tailed off, she said: ‘Your father drank.’

  ‘I didn’t know.’

  ‘I think you are old enough to know now.’

  ‘But did he die of drink?’

  ‘He died of T.B. accelerated by drink.’

  Ellie had looked so appalled that Mrs Parsons merely added: ‘So never enter a public-house again.’

  Glancing nervously into the Chelsea public-houses, Ellie now felt the fascinated dread of one foredoomed. What would happen were she to enter and order – a cocktail? Would she be seized by an unendurable craving? – something that could be satisfied only by more and more cocktails: cocktails for which she had not the money to pay? Would she pawn her winter coat and her spare pair of shoes and her suitcase and her Rousseau reproduction? Would she give all, all for cocktails? Such a downfall had its attractions. At least it gave one something to die for.

  In the late evening an enormous moon, red-gold like a guinea, came up in a satiny glow behind the trees of Battersea Park. Her walk, that had taken her along the Embankment, up Beaufort Street into the Fulham Road, through Sydney Street and down Flood Street, had brought her back into the little gardens in Cheyne Row. There, exhausted, her feet sore, she sat down. The noise of the Embankment traffic seemed muted as though the heat were a thickening of the air, but it was cut through by a car radio, a baritone singing an old popular song:

  ‘Al-ways, al-ways.

  Not for just a day, not for just a month,

  Not for just a yee-er, but

  Al-ways.’

  ‘What a ghastly song!’ thought Ellie, and her eyes filled with tears.

  Somewhere in the gardens there was a syringa tree in flower. She remembered those evenings when she had walked home from the art class and breathed the summer scents of flowers. Then she had believed she could achieve so much, she had been so exhilarated by the sense of the future and her own achievement, she had thought she might at any moment fly into the air. But now she did not feel like that. Sitting on the garden-seat, half-sleeping from exhaustion, she felt, even in her finger-tips, the weight of her own body. She could scarcely face the effort of moving it.

  The two people sharing her seat murmured together. Others walked through the gardens, couples caught closely together. No one else was alone.

  Every now and then a taxi would stop: there would be a sound of voices, sometimes laughter, then the voices were cut off; there came the ping of the taxi flag adjusted, the taxi starting off. People were arriving for a party.

  Ellie got to her feet and walked to the end of the gardens. Returning along Cheyne Walk, she passed the house that was alight for the party. No one she knew was entering. She returned to her room. At least she had a room: she had a bed: nothing could deprive her of sleep.

  The weather held until the week-end. Saturday came, brilliant and empty. King’s Road was full of girls in new summer dresses, all moving as though they had somewhere to go. Ellie moved in the same way, pretending a whole week-end of amusements. She visited the library, walked to Sloane Square to buy a quarter of a pound of tea, walked as far in the opposite direction to buy a pound of sugar, then, looking purposeful and excited, she sped back to her room. When she reached it, she could not bear to stay in it.

  In the evening she set out to walk to the Chelsea Pensioners’ Hospital. To get there, she went first to World’s End and turned through Riley Street to the river. Halfway along Chelsea Embankment, she saw Quintin.

  This was not an illusion. This Quintin really was Quintin. She came to a stop, as frightened as if she had conjured him up by witchcraft. For several moments she felt too sick to move. Of course it could not be Quintin. Such meetings did not happen. She walked forward slowly, keeping her eyes on him. He was leaning against the Embankment wall, elbow on the parapet, chin propped on hand, gazing down on the gilded river.

  She paused beside him, staring at him, unable to speak. He glanced round. His expression changed from surprise to delight:

  ‘The very person! Do you know, I was thinking about you?’ He caught her hand and held it and looked at her as though he had had no means of finding her save by chance – and chance had brought her here!

  ‘Why, this is delicious!’ he said, and he gave his old laugh of pleasure. ‘You must have known I was here? You must have come to look for me?’

  At the first sight of him she had grown white with cold: but now her cheeks were burning. Of course she had come to look for him. But to find him! – that was more than she had ever hoped for.

  She nodded, still unable to speak. He gave her hand a shake: ‘Say something, you silly girl! Where have you been all this time?’

  She could only smile at that. With the forefinger of his free hand he touched, very lightly, the bloom on her cheek. He said: ‘A short time ago I passed a girl with cheeks like yours, and I thought of you. I thought: “That’s what I want – a young, young girl with skin like a peach.” I kept thinking about you. I rang your number but there was no reply, so I took a taxi to Chelsea Bridge and walked down here looking at the river, and I thought: “Perhaps I shall see her”.’

  She swallowed in her throat. ‘Did you really come to look for me?’

  ‘Yes, yes, I did.’ He gazed into her face, smiling, assuring her, and catching and squeezing both her ha
nds he held them together between his. Her finger-tips showed between his hands and he put them to his lips. Then, holding both her hands in one of his, he cupped the line of her jaw. ‘You are so young,’ he said. ‘How exquisite – that line of youth, that delicate skin!’

  She said lightly: ‘I shall grow old.’

  ‘No. You’ll never grow old. You’ll never change.’

  She smiled, yet that was just what she believed herself. Youth was a part of herself. To be Ellie was to be young.

  As she smiled, he said urgently: ‘But you’d forgotten me, hadn’t you? You do not love me now? I said to myself: “That young, brilliant, romantic love of hers – it couldn’t last. I should have drunk it off like a hot posset. I shouldn’t have left it to grow cold.”’

  She protested: ‘But it hasn’t grown cold. I’ve been thinking of you all the time. I couldn’t forget you.’

  ‘My dear!’ He gazed at her, then he asked anxiously: ‘You still have that studio job?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘That’s good. I’ll always know where to find you.’

  ‘It’s seven months since we last met. You said it wouldn’t be long.’

  ‘I know. The whole thing was unforgivable, my dear. I could not help myself.’

  ‘But shall I ever see you again?’

  ‘Of course. We are friends. We shall be seeing each other all our lives.’

  ‘I mean – soon?’

  ‘Yes, soon. Why not?’ He laughed as he spoke. ‘When my affairs are settled, I will telephone you. Straight away. There, that’s a promise!’ He gave her arm a shake to confirm it. He was in his most delightful mood, seeming to put from himself an enchantment so that she believed she too possessed his charm. She thought: ‘This is life – this very moment. I am not thinking of the future, or the past. I am alive now.’ Believing herself irresistible, as he was, she caught his arm: ‘Let’s go into the park. It’s so lovely when the moon rises.’

  He glanced at his watch and looked startled. ‘You bad child,’ he said, ‘you’ve made me forget the time. Good heavens above!’ He broke from her and looked about him. He signalled a taxi. Before it could stop, he had opened the door and jumped inside. He called to the driver: ‘Straight ahead. I’m in a hurry,’ then waved at Ellie from the window: ‘Take care of yourself, my dear.’