Doves of Venus

by Olivia Manning

  Petta said: ‘I’ve rung your number every day. I thought you were never coming back from wherever you were.’

  ‘I’d’ve stayed if I could,’ he said.

  Petta smiled gently. As she watched him, her eyebrows a little raised, her face and body leaned towards him in tender appeal. She said: ‘I’ve been so miserable without you. Take me home with you.’

  He gave her a shocked stare, then said: ‘You’re crazy.’

  ‘I’m not, Theo.’ She slid her delicate hand and forearm across the table and touched his wrist. She slipped two fingers up under his shirt-cuff: ‘Darling,’ she said.

  Abruptly, he pulled his arm from her: ‘You’re being ridiculous. All that’s over. I suffered enough: we both suffered enough. It would be lunacy to start it up again. It’s out of the question.’

  He spoke with decision, but a sulky decision. She was not convinced. ‘Theo, look at me,’ she said pleadingly, and when he looked she lifted a hand as though to say: ‘I am helpless and defenceless.’

  Turning from her, he said: ‘Don’t be silly.’ She watched him, believing still in her old power over him. She knew this peevish resistance too well to take it seriously.

  She begged him: ‘Get me a drink.’

  He rose with a sort of sullen obedience and went to the bar. The centre of the bar was crowded. Between the heads moving this way and that, she could sometimes see Theo’s side-face as he stood waiting to be served, too absorbed in his own thoughts to press for attention. He was ten years her junior. His smooth, regular face was still a young face. Now it was the face of someone cornered and resentful. The weak down-droop of his lips filled her with contempt. He did not belong to her world at all. He was a journalist: the sort that fills the picture weeklies with re-writes of old murders, haunted houses, great loves, famous trials and curiosities of history. He started thumping this stuff out at nine in the morning and went on till five. He was becoming well known. He earned rather more than a cabinet minister and could have earned much more had he been ambitious. He was content to spend his evenings here, drinking beer by the pint glass. Petta had disturbed him by widening his life. She had refurbished his sitting-room, given parties, improved his dress, put him on to an agent who marketed his stuff abroad, arranged lecture tours, travel-film scripts and documentaries. He had accepted what came, but resentfully, finding this extra work an intrusion upon the daily life he had organised round his typewriter, his Encyclopaedia Britannica and his public-house evenings. He had found a formula for life. He did not want it changed.

  When he returned from the bar, he put her gin down before her with the air of a small boy who has unwillingly performed an errand.

  She said: ‘How did you enjoy your trip to “Sunny Honolulu”?’

  ‘Cuba,’ he corrected her, and left it at that.

  ‘I’m glad you’re still getting this film work.’

  ‘The Cuba film was the last of the contract.’

  ‘Will you get another contract?’

  ‘I don’t want another.’

  The end of the contract. The end of her interference. The return to a routine life. His clothes were becoming shabby again. She felt her old exasperation with his lack of ambition. She wanted to overwhelm him with her own fervour, to set him to do her work for her – but this was not the moment for that. She asked him in her subdued, suppliant’s voice: ‘What are you working on now?’

  At the same moment she looked up and found Arnold Valance’s eyes fixed on her. He looked away at once, but his expression had told her he was hers for the taking. She knew who he was. This was not his home ground, but she had seen him in here before.

  She looked at him again. Again his eyes were fixed on her and this time they remained for several seconds in the long look of recognition. She noted that when he returned his attention to Denis Plumley, he was smiling.

  She sat back in her chair and looked at Theo. Already his face was coarsening. For years he had been swallowing beer as though life owed it to him. Soon his youth would be gone. And what would remain? His selfishness, his ignorance and his vanity.

  He had answered her last question, but she had not been listening. She broke in on something he was saying to ask: ‘What on earth is going to become of you, Theo?’

  He looked up, startled by her change of tone. She had been suddenly restored to her old, magnetic vivacity. The ridicule in her glance made him shift uneasily in his seat.

  ‘Don’t worry about me,’ he said. He jerked up his beermug and tried to empty it in a mouthful. It was too much for him.

  Now, from among the crowd in the centre of the bar, a figure dodged warily into sight – an old man, keeping an eye on the barman and holding open a decayed raincoat beneath which he displayed, like a hand of cards, some paper-covered booklets.

  Petta watched him as he edged round Denis’s party. No one there gave him a glance. Denis and Arnold, it seemed, were absorbed in an argument. The girl with a face like a powder-puff was gazing at them, a-gawp and a-glitter. The young man beside her was watching her with a world of meaning in his face. Lucky girl. Petta thought: ‘If I were starting my life again, that is the sort of man I would get for myself. I would live in a cheap Victorian house and have a dozen children and never have time to wonder where my looks had gone.’

  The old man, his white hair starting up from his head, his beard frenzied as the beard of a prophet, noticed Petta and made his way towards her. As he drew near, his surface broke up. He lost his seer’s look: he was dirty: his teeth were black, his eyes were full of guile. He brought with him a stench of old urine as he bent over her. ‘Spare a copper, lady.’

  Theo moved his face away. The man, taking no offence, moved his display of books round so that Theo found himself looking at them. He was about to shift again when one caught his eye. He pointed imperiously at it. The old fellow, in his eagerness, nearly fell on top of him.

  ‘Here y’are, guvner, “Fortune by the Stars”’; the book shook between his fingers. As Theo took it, the man pulled the corner of another one from an inside pocket: ‘Brochures,’ he whispered.

  Theo shook his head but held to the fortune book: ‘How much?’

  ‘Two bob.’

  Theo tossed the book back at him and looked away. The old man, scrambling to catch it, said: ‘A bob, then, guv. A bob—’ he trembled over Theo – ‘it cost me that. All right, a tanner. A tanner to you, guv, just to make a sale. Just to change m’luck. God’s truth, guv, what can you get for a tanner these days?’

  Theo brought out a handful of change and examined it. With a fastidious forefinger and thumb he picked out six-pennyworth of coppers and threw it on to the table. The old man scooped it up with a businesslike gesture and went. Theo glanced idly about him, then, when it would seem he had forgotten the book, he picked it up.

  Petta had watched his movements closely.

  The truth was she could not remember now whether she had ever been in love with him or not, but to heighten her contempt for him she asked herself, had it been insanity, or what, that had possessed her? At her age still not to know herself, still to be gullible, still to be capable of the self-hypnosis of passion that could cause her to mistake this boor, this prig, this carping egoist for a man!

  He was holding the book open at his own birth date. She said: ‘Come on. Read it aloud. Give us a laugh.’

  He ignored her. Something he read brought a simper to his mouth but he bit it back. He pursed his lips, expanded his nostrils, lifted his eyebrows and gave an approving nod . . . Petta snatched the book from him. He made to snatch it back: she held it out of reach. His expression became angry: he was about to catch her wrist when he realised people were watching him. He sat back, motionless in anger.

  Petta read aloud: ‘“People born under this sign are lovers of everything beautiful.” (Well, what d’you know!) “They possess strong family ties, pride and love of home. They are generous and high-minded.” (The author of this feuilleton must have known you personally.) �
�They desire to lead and are fairly successful, but never originators.” (Oh, bad luck, little Theo!) “They . . .”’

  Theo rose and tried to strike a way through the people packed in front of him. They did not move. He was forced to go round them.

  ‘Theo.’

  He turned.

  ‘Your book, baby boy!’

  He took it from her. She watched the fretful push of his shoulder as he broke into the crowd. He passed out of sight. Petta wondered how long it had been since she said to him: ‘I cannot live without you.’

  She looked over at Arnold Valance. As she did so, he turned his head away. Something in his movement told her he was a man who might expect too much of her. She had intended to join Denis’s party as soon as Theo went. Now she sat uncertainly, conscious of his vision of her – a delicate beauty, the faultless possessor of a faultless face. She understood that rôle, but too long had passed since anyone had asked her to play it. She remained alone in her chair, in a dream of existence where nothing would be expected of her – no effort, no movement, no wit, no virtue, a relationship with sleep. She propped her head on her hand and returned unawares to memory. She found herself in a summer afternoon so long distant she did not at first relate it to herself. The two little girls were little girls seen in a picture-book. In the distance was a picture-book lawn where ladies in summer dresses sat at tea. It was not until she smelt the honeysuckle that she identified herself with the girl astride the garden wall. This was the colonel’s house: the ladies had come with the newly arrived English regiment. The little girl standing on the grass below the wall was the colonel’s daughter. Although she had almost forgotten what was coming next, she suddenly resisted the memory, but now its impetus was too great for her.

  The English girl said ‘Hello! Come down here,’ and, eagerly and fearlessly, Petta had jumped at once down into the summer garden. They walked together round the stables, where there was a carriage but no horses. Petta climbed on to the dusty leather of the coachman’s seat and pretended to drive. She shouted: ‘Sit up here beside me,’ but the English girl in her white gossamer dress said: ‘Mama says I mustn’t.’ Petta swung round the stable wall from hook to hook. She walked along the partitions between the stalls and climbed into the mangers full of straw. The English girl laughed at Petta’s wild energy, but she kept out of range of the dust and straw and said: ‘Oh no, Mama would not like me to do that.’ Petta’s antics flagged at last and the girl said: ‘I’ll show you my rabbits.’ When they came into view of the tea-party, the colonel’s wife called: ‘Joan, come here, darling,’ and Joan had crossed to her mother and been introduced to the party of ladies. She behaved with a charming shyness, already an accepted personality in the world because she was just what a little girl should be.

  The ladies did not seem to see Petta, who was also a little girl – but an untidy, dirty little girl who probably had no right to be there. The grown-up Petta could now see herself as she had been then, standing on the fringe of the party, brushing her hair away from her brilliant eyes, smiling and smiling and waiting to be noticed, like a friendly puppy that cannot imagine it will be overlooked.

  No one could have ignored a puppy as she had been ignored. Only Joan’s mother looked at her, giving her a frown, no doubt wishing her out of sight. Petta, of course, did not move. She was waiting for her new friend. At last Joan was released. The girls started to run off together, but when they had gone a few yards, the colonel’s wife called her daughter back again. She whispered – in the quiet of the garden her whisper filled the air: ‘Who is that girl, darling? Wherever did you meet such a person?’

  Joan tried to move away. ‘She’s nice. She’s very clever.’

  ‘I dare say, but she isn’t clean.’

  Although Petta heard all this conversation it did not take shape for her until she remembered it years later. She was too full of her new friendship, of the garden, of the silken ladies. These things crowded out resentment. Their contempt, if it was contempt, was some silly mistake. Aware only that they were wondering who she was, she ran across to the tea-party and said: ‘I am Petronia Berengaria Vanessa Kilkane, of Kilkane House.’

  Joan’s mother looked round her guests with a splutter of laughter: ‘And no doubt,’ she said, ‘descended from the Irish kings?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ said Petta.

  The officer’s wives found this delightfully funny. Petta watched them. It seemed to her then that she felt nothing, understood nothing – but now she knew their laughter had struck against the blank wall of her innocence and left something dark there.

  Remembering this, she could have put down her head and wept for her own innocence – then, in a second, the whole incident had swept back into absurdity, into darkness, into complete forgetfulness. She was suddenly revived. Looking about her, she met the anxious, longing eyes of Arnold Valance.

  She finished her drink. Then, as though making a leisurely way from the bar, she passed Denis’s group and paused. Arnold Valance seemed not to exist for her. Her eyes, their silver colour clear and gleaming between her darkened lashes, were only for Denis. She spoke in a low voice sweet with sex:

  ‘Why, Denis darling, I haven’t seen you for so long.’ The confidence of her vivacity had a hypnotic force. It dominated them all, but it was Denis whom she held by the arm, possessing him with her look as though she had been searching for him down the centuries. She turned to the three at the table – Ellie, Simon Lessing and Bertie – gave Arnold Valance a casual glance, then said: ‘You must all have a drink with me.’

  ‘No, no,’ said Arnold, ‘this is my round. Please allow me.’ He started out for the bar.

  Petta, like a fire lighted in its midst, was the centre of the company. Everyone looked at her, expecting a revelation, but now that Arnold was not there to listen she had nothing to say. Her hand fell from Denis’s arm. Her colour seemed to fade. The others realised she had not brought new entertainment: she had merely halted the old.

  Petta smiled at the three at the table, but already Simon’s attention had returned to Ellie. Bertie was taking this opportunity to attract Denis’s attention. He stood up and whispered fiercely to Denis, who replied: ‘It’s no good, darling. I’ve got one of my normal phases coming on.’

  Petta looked about her, smiling vaguely, like an actress who has forgotten her lines. Turning his shoulder away from Bertie, Denis said to her: ‘Have you come back to live among us?’

  ‘Not yet – but I feel at home in this part of the world.’

  Arnold returned. He had been lent a tray on which to carry the drinks. His hat had slid to the back of his head: his umbrella was still clasped by his elbow: he held the tray at eye level to safeguard it from the crowd. Before he could get to the table, the umbrella escaped, clattering down somewhere beneath the feet of the crowd. He returned to retrieve it and brought it back crushed and dusty. When the drinks were distributed, he stood beside Petta, leaning slightly over her, giving her contented glances but not speaking to her, as though, having been safely captured, she could be kept in abeyance. He looked to Denis to continue the conversation.

  It was after ten o’clock, not yet closing time but people were sensing its approach. There was an urgency in the drinking: they looked uneasily about them through the smoky air. Those who had cars were planning to make their way across the frontier of some borough where licensing hours were longer. Glasses piled up among a litter of cigarette ends and cartons. The tables, wet with beer, fogged with ash, gave off a rancid smell. Manners, conversation and sense were all failing with the failure of oxygen.

  Denis said: ‘They say one day the sun will expand and envelope the whole solar system – all the planets just cinders, stuck like currants in a suet pudding. Who’ll care then? Take this star, Betelgeuse . . .’ Denis drank from his glass, then gazed into it for so long that Arnold said:

  ‘Betelgeuse? What did you say it was?’

  ‘A star.’

  ‘I don’t think I’ve heard of it.’
r />   ‘It is two and a half million miles across.’

  ‘Dear me! Rather large.’

  ‘The earth is eight thousand.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ Petta interrupted. ‘Only eight thousand?’

  Ellie shuffled forward in her seat, touched now with an eager excitement, feeling that in this matter of the stars she was on her own ground. She listened to Denis as one expert to another. He said:

  ‘When the sun swallows up the earth and Mars and Venus, and Neptune and Jupiter, and all the rest of them, who’ll care whether you were Wullie Shakespeare, or just that chap who wrote – what-was-it-called? – “How to make friends and influence people without actually cheating”?’

  Ellie, her mind upon the great star Betelgeuse, herself a familiar tenant of the stars, spoke suddenly and said: ‘But our destiny is not here.’

  The three standing turned as though a bird had spoken. Arnold Valance smiled on Ellie’s behalf, but Ellie remained solemn. She had meant what she said. Simon Lessing was solemn for her sake. Slowly, beneath the scrutiny of her audience, she flushed and looked down at her glass.

  Arnold Valance said: ‘This is an age when a writer lifts his eyes from his work and looks straight into the face of death. And he faces it in cold blood. He’s not drugged by faith or hope or heroics. He is forced by his own nature to see it clearly. Perhaps our destiny is not here, but we have no proof of that.’

  His intense, almost emotional manner forced Ellie to raise her flushed cheeks. He was looking at her and she looked back, moist-eyed in sympathy as though she had been listening to poetry.

  She said: ‘But I feel immortal. I know I’m immortal.’

  ‘That’s an illusion of the creative temperament. I take it you are creative in some way? An art student, or something?’

  ‘She’s a full-blown artist,’ said Denis, ‘a member of the Cape Gooseberry school of water-colourists.’

  ‘The defeat of time,’ said Arnold, ‘that’s another illusion. But time is advancing over you, an avalanche moving quietly but much more quickly than you think. It will bury you in the past and your poor little talent with it.’