Doves of Venus

by Olivia Manning

  Ellie looked down again. She had thought the writer was being kind to her, and now she knew he was not being kind. He was not even laughing at her: he despised her. The young man beside her, Simon Lessing, held her arm to comfort her and said: ‘Let me get you another drink.’

  ‘I don’t think I should have another.’

  ‘One more won’t do any harm.’

  He took her empty glass and went away. She kept her head down, distrustful of all of them, and thought: ‘But I have Quintin.’

  Outside, a thunderstorm was roaring and clashing. Denis went to the window: ‘No rain,’ he said. ‘A costive show. A case of cosmic collywobbles.’ Before he could return to the table, Bertie had jumped up and hurried to him. Denis listened to Bertie as though he were being told something he could not understand.

  ‘Well, that’s the position,’ Bertie ended on a high note. He glanced about defiantly. ‘And now I’ll go.’

  Denis made no comment. Bertie went. When Denis returned to the table, he started to do a step-dance, pretending to play a banjo and singing:

  ‘Under the A,

  Under the B,

  Under the Atom Bomb.’

  ‘Bravo,’ said the writer, patting the palm of his hand.

  ‘Do you know my modern child’s alphabet?’ Denis asked, ‘A is for Atom Bomb, O what a bang!’

  ‘Already out of date,’ said someone.

  ‘Here’s a new one.’ Denis went into his dance routine to sing:

  ‘I’ll love you atomised,

  I’ll love you pulverised,

  I’ll love your outline on the pavement.’

  Petta looked aside at Ellie and, meeting the girl’s eyes, said: ‘What do you think about it all?’

  Ellie shook her head vaguely. She had suddenly become appalled, as though she found herself stepping over a chasm which was revealing itself as much wider than she would have thought possible. As she drank her third glass of gin, she began to retreat from this company. All her senses were functioning as though at a distance from her. She seemed to be deep in a well round the rim of which buzzed a swarm of bees. When Simon spoke to her she could not reply.

  Watching her, Petta thought: ‘If I still had that look of innocence, that smooth magnolia face, yet knew all I now know – I’d give them hell. I’d win every trick. But as soon as you’ve learnt this game, you’re out of it. Your place at the table is wanted for a newcomer. And I suppose this is the newcomer, this silly innocent!’

  A wreck of a man, thrusting his thin, damp nostrils in between the swing doors of the bar, began a starved quaver:

  ‘I love you: yes, I do,

  I love you.

  It’s a sin to tell a lie . . .’

  Listening, Petta told herself this sing-song was typical of all she had ever been offered of love in these cold islands. Men here understood nothing of passion. Few men had been able to draw her from the prison of herself. Her first husband, Henry, looking down on her blank face, had asked her: ‘What do you think about at such a time?’ She said: ‘I design clothes for myself.’

  Denis said: ‘The trouble is, we invested in war. We didn’t provide for surviving it. We’ve left ourselves intellectually bankrupt. Now, the next war . . .’

  Petta lifted her face from the next war and noticed Ellie again. As she saw the girl, pale and unmarked, her youth all newly taken from tissue paper, she thought: ‘The last war did not touch her – but, my goodness, the next one will land her a whanger.’

  Ellie, who had been breathing-in Petta’s dry, heavy scent, looking at the lace handkerchief in her hand, at her expensive suede handbag, her coat of geranium-pink, thought: ‘If Quintin ever met a woman like this, I’d never see him again.’ As she raised her eyes in admiration, she met Petta’s scrutiny, cold as the look of an enemy.

  At that moment the lights went out. A voice began bawling ‘Time.’ One white globe was lit behind the bar: it cut through the smoky gloom. Shadows moved oddly. People seemed to draw together for comfort. The voice of the barman changed from appeal to command, from command to anger. Ellie, lost in the darkness among strangers, thought: ‘Supposing nothing ever does happen to me! Supposing there is nothing to hope for! Supposing we do no more than die!’ Knowing the situation beyond her, she dropped her head on to her arms and, sobbing, whispered to herself: ‘Quintin! Quintin! Quintin!’

  Denis said: ‘That kid’s squiffy. I must get her home.’

  Simon Lessing had a car outside. Together they took Ellie away.

  15

  The rain came down as the last dawdlers were pushed from the public-house. The doors were locked behind them. They stood against the closed door, pressing away from the downrush of water.

  Arnold put up his umbrella and looked at Petta. She moved under it.

  ‘It won’t be much,’ he said. They could see the edge of the storm like a wall across the street: ‘Have you far to go?’

  ‘I have nowhere to go.’

  She wanted him to accept her statement as simply as she made it, but he said: ‘Are you serious?’

  ‘Of course.’

  He took her arm. They walked together up the King’s Road and turned into Sydney Street. ‘I live off the Fulham Road,’ Arnold said. ‘My place is pretty dilapidated; not even very clean. My char leaves things much as she finds them.’

  ‘It will do.’

  She could feel his nervousness, his desire for an explanation. She would not make one. She felt irritated because he could not accept their impending relationship as she accepted it. Like everyone else, he wanted the conventional preliminaries.

  Now they were alone together, he had become tonguetied, uncertain of himself. She glanced at his big belly, his vague handling of the umbrella, his limping foot, and there came down on her a chill distaste for the night ahead. Could he have responded to her own recklessness, nothing else would have mattered. Now she anticipated nervous fidgeting in a dingy setting.

  She thought: ‘If I see a taxi, I’ll call it and say it was all a joke. I’ll say I must go home: my husband is expecting me,’ but at the thought of Quintin’s frozen presence in the flat her resolve failed. She had known from the first she would have to find some other refuge. She could bear no more of life with Quintin. Even Arnold Valance was to be preferred.

  This was the extremity to which her need had reduced her. She sighed. Arnold, bending over her, put his hand to her elbow and said: ‘We are nearly home.’

  Next morning, while Arnold sat in bed with the Sunday papers spread over the soiled counterpane, Petta made coffee. The flat comprised two rooms. The kitchen was a large cupboard in the sitting-room. The bathroom, on a lower landing, was shared by the tenants of the floor below.

  The sitting-room, filled with forlorn junk-shop furniture, smelt of the books that were stacked everywhere. The dirt and untidiness of the place did not worry her unduly, but she found the cupboard-kitchen distasteful. It held a sink, gas-stove and provision shelves. Unventilated, it gave out a strong smell of old frying fat and a leak in the stove. She threw away half a tin of fungus and poured the last of the sugar into the cracked basin. As she made coffee, she felt the peace of domesticity. She might have been living here with Arnold for twenty years.

  When she carried in the breakfast, he looked at her with satisfaction and held out his hand – a gentle and undemanding man.

  He would do. He would have to do.

  He sniffed at the coffee jug: ‘I say, this is something like.’

  She was in her most tender and compliant mood, as sweet as he believed her to be. She remained so all day.

  She explained that her life with her husband had become impossible. He was a philanderer and indifferent to her. She had been intending to leave him for some time. She could bear no more of it. Arnold held her hand as she talked, looking aside with his shy, pale eyes that were every few minutes drawn to her face. He seemed scarcely able to bear this record of her sufferings. In protest against it, he said once or twice: ‘My dear girl, my d
ear girl,’ and at moments he seemed to be feeling acute pain.

  Talking or reading the papers, they sat around until evening. Then they went to a restaurant near South Kensington station.

  Petta’s mind was made up. She would move her belongings from Quintin’s flat. She had reached at last the moment when she could say: ‘This time I am leaving you for good.’ She intended going on Monday morning to the flat alone, but she made the mistake of mentioning this to Arnold. He insisted that he must accompany her. He was an honourable man. He was not afraid to face her husband. She might have dissuaded him, but at the risk of rousing his suspicions.

  Well, he was presentable enough! He even looked impressive.

  When they reached the house, Arnold took the stairs slowly. Petta ran ahead with some idea of facing Quintin. ‘Tell him nothing. Give me a chance,’ she would say; but when she called ‘Quintin,’ there was no reply.

  The flat felt empty. She looked at the letters on the hall table. One was addressed to her in Quintin’s hand. She could hear Arnold at the second landing. With her anxiety choking her, she shut herself in the dressing-room and read the letter:

  ‘Saturday.

  ‘My Dear Petta,

  ‘I am about to leave for Switzerland. I have been threatened with a return of my old chest trouble and advised to see a specialist in Berne. For both our sakes I shall remain away for some time. The present situation is intolerable and I hope my absence will give you the impetus to remake your life with someone else. The rent of the flat is paid until the end of the quarter. My solicitor will then arrange for my belongings to be moved. You can take it on if you wish. I shall not return to it.

  ‘I have instructed my solicitor to start proceedings. I am sorry, dear Petta, but our marriage has come to an end and official recognition of the fact will be best for all concerned.’

  ‘Quintin’

  ‘For all concerned!’

  Petta could hear Arnold Valance puffing in the hall. She wished she could tell him to leave her in peace. She bolted the dressing-room door. She heard him go into the living-room and, finding no one there, come out, calling: ‘Where are you?’

  She burnt with anger against him. Could she not be alone to realise and absorb the finality of solitude which Quintin’s desertion had brought upon her?

  She shouted: ‘Go into the sitting-room. I’m making coffee.’ She heard him blunder off again.

  Switzerland! The name of the country brought another name to her mind. Alma! And only Alma had enough money there to keep him ‘for some time’! But it was unthinkable. Above all things, he wanted youth in his women.

  After some minutes Petta regained herself enough to emerge, but she did not go into the kitchen. She went into Quintin’s bedroom and dialled Alma’s number. The butler answered the telephone. Her ladyship has gone to Switzerland. When did she go? On Saturday evening; the seven o’clock plane. Still she could not believe it.

  The bedroom looked out on to a well. With its wine-coloured walls, ceiling and curtains, it was almost dark. She switched on the lights and went through the drawers of his writing-desk. She found some cheap cuff-links, a plastic cigarette-case, a lighter, a metal pencil and half-a-dozen trinkets. She recognised them for what they were – tokens of affection. She threw them into the waste-paper basket.

  She went to the hanging-cupboard which held some of his old suits. Striking at the neat row of sleeves, she said savagely: ‘Damn the lot of you!’

  When she went into the sitting-room, Arnold turned, his smile diffident yet expectant. She took no notice of him. She looked into the cupboards beneath the large Georgian book-case which covered one wall. These had been kept locked while Quintin was here: now the keys were in the key-holes. She flung the doors open. In her anger she breathed as though near to choking. She found nothing but books and empty folders, and a large portfolio. She dragged this out into the open. There was a system and fury about all her movements that caused Arnold to follow them with a perplexed look of enquiry. ‘Anything wrong?’ he asked. ‘Anything I can do to help?’

  She pulled at the portfolio tapes, impatiently breaking those that would not untie, and threw open the boards. Within were shabby sheets of drawing-paper, each heavily painted in pure colour.

  ‘For God’s sake!’ she said with seething disgust.

  ‘What is the matter?’ Arnold lifted himself in his seat: ‘Whose are those? Yours?’

  ‘Of course not. They’re signed “E. Parsons.” There’s a name for a genius! “Miss E. Parsons, Eastsea Technical College, Eastsea” – I ask you!’ She ran through the paintings quickly, then, with sharp and violent movements, picking them up in twos and threes, she tore them into pieces.

  Arnold raised himself again, a thing he did not do easily, and protested in a mild, hurt way: ‘You shouldn’t do that.’

  ‘Silly little bitch!’ – Petta ripped up the last of them – ‘Probably saw herself as a femme fatale. One of those emotional, frustrated little pieces on the look-out for someone else’s husband. Quite ruthless, but treating it all as a Great Love, something Too Big for Both of Them.’

  ‘But you shouldn’t tear up her work. She may want it back.’

  ‘She may – but she won’t get it, will she?’ Petta, white, with a fierce and wild look of rage, gathered up the pieces and searched for the waste-paper basket: then she noticed the empty grate, in which lay the gas-poker. She dumped the pieces in the grate and lighting the poker thrust it, flaming, among them. Arnold watched, still pained, still dissenting, yet alarmed and fearful lest he be made to suffer, too.

  Petta went back to the portfolio. A white envelope remained. It was addressed to Quintin. She lifted it, looked into it, then shook out on to her hand a lock of hair. Satin-shining, it curved like a question-mark, the colour of rosewood. As though it were infected, she looked at it with horror then threw it on to the burning papers.

  ‘What was that?’ Arnold tried to see for himself, but it was too quickly consumed.

  ‘Hair,’ said Petta. ‘Disgusting.’ A feel as of silk still lay on the palm of her hand: she rubbed it violently against her thigh. ‘To think of Quintin sentimentalising over things like that! I would not have thought it possible.’

  For a moment she stood holding to the chimney-piece, supporting herself against the certainty that Quintin had roused in someone a romantic, magnanimous, despairing love – the sort of love no one had ever offered her.

  ‘Curse him,’ she whispered.

  Arnold sank back into his seat, seeming dazed as though hit by a storm. ‘I don’t understand. Whose things are you destroying?’

  ‘Nobody’s. They’ve been abandoned. This was my husband’s flat. He’s cleared out and now I’m clearing out.’ Against her will she touched her own hair and felt it, as she knew she would, as dry as straw. She moved towards a wall-cupboard, but the ringing of the telephone distracted her. She snatched off the receiver and spoke breathlessly into it: ‘Hello. Who the hell is that? Hello.’

  Mrs Primrose wished to speak to Mr Bellot.

  ‘Put her through.’ Petta turned, glittering, towards Arnold: ‘This is another of them.’

  Arnold drew his brows together in expectation of further assault, but Petta’s voice when she spoke again was dulcet and suffering: ‘Gem, my dear, is that you? Yes, it is Petta speaking . . . But I’ve been back a long time. You did not know? How like Quintin not to tell you. I’m afraid I have some bad news for you . . . Poor Quintin! . . . Yes, his lungs again. He has been flown to Switzerland to see a specialist in Berne. We had to charter a special plane . . . Expense, indeed! But it was an emergency; a question of life and death . . . I know . . . I . . .’ her voice broke and failed her: she paused, then whispered: ‘I must be brave, but his doctor here did not offer much hope.’

  Arnold murmured solicitously: Petta turned her back on him. She said into the receiver: ‘I shall go when . . . if . . . I’m needed, but, for the moment, I’m forced to remain here. Flora needs me . . . Flora, my daught
er, of course . . . yes, a child . . . Dear me! Poor Gem! Quintin does not seem to have told you anything . . . I will ring you, of course. I will let you know as soon as I know myself.’

  She dropped the receiver and turned, smiling, to Arnold, suddenly pliant and sweet. In a little voice she persuaded him: ‘Come and help me pack. I’m so tired of this place.’

  Arnold remained where he was. She went to him and lifted his hand, pretending to pull him up – but he pulled his hand away. He still looked confused – but he was recovering. He was emerging into disillusionment. The expression of his eyes had changed. He was on guard against her. She moved impatiently away. Was she never to find a man who could accept and understand her moods?

  ‘What is this about your husband?’ Arnold asked.

  ‘He has some lung trouble. He has gone to Switzerland. I found a letter from him when I came in.’

  ‘Has he gone alone?’

  ‘I would like to know that myself.’

  She stood looking out of the window. She heard Arnold sigh, then he said weakly: ‘I don’t think you should have destroyed those paintings. They probably meant a lot to someone.’

  ‘Oh, nonsense.’ She lifted the ragged home-made portfolio: ‘Look, it’s falling to pieces. It’s covered with dust. It’s been here for months. He probably gave some student ten bob for the lot. Let’s get rid of it.’ She broke the rotting cardboard into pieces and stuffed them in with the rest. The poker was still alight.

  ‘Look.’ She showed him her dusty hands, then wiped them on his corduroy trousers.

  ‘Hey,’ he protested, but weakly: his defence was falling. She sat on his knee and put her arm round his shoulder.

  ‘You can’t realise how thankful I am to be getting away from here.’

  Arnold smiled. Petta was glad Quintin had not seen him. He had the slightly disintegrating appearance of a man who drank too much. His skin was puffy: his eyes seemed too small for their sockets. He moved them round to watch her as she fingered the soft, fine-textured skin beneath his collar. He had the look of a baby, half-rebellious, yet delighting in the power of its nurse. As she felt his surrender, she started to giggle.