That night the wind changed. Ellie was awakened by the cold air pouring in through her open window. Summer, it seemed, had gone in a day. Next morning the pavements were wet and cold beneath the slate-grey sky.
The countess, who had been wearing a silk dress the day before, now appeared in a coat and skirt and shivered in the bleak, north-facing room. Her mood had changed with the weather. She looked at Ellie’s jungle as though the joke had ceased to amuse. She scarcely spoke, and when Ellie, who had thought of nothing else, made a mention of the shop, the countess said vaguely: ‘Oh, it’s all very well talking about it, but who could you get to run it for you in your own interest and not in theirs? You know what people are like!’
Ellie said earnestly: ‘I would run it in your interest. I really would.’
The countess laughed. ‘Have you any experience of running a shop? It’s quite a job, you know.’
‘I’m sure I could do it.’
‘Nonsense. You’re much too young.’
Her tone wiped the shop out of existence. Ellie knew then it had all been fantasy. The countess shivered and said: ‘The horrid winter. Oh, to get away!’
After that, Ellie’s only visitor was Miss Horsepin, who, for the first and last time, entered the room to look at the mural. She peered at it peevishly: ‘What’s it meant to be?’
‘It’s a jungle.’ Ellie made a half-hearted attempt to explain it, but Miss Horsepin was not interested. She broke in to say:
‘I wish I could do work like this. I’d like a bit of extra cash.’ She fixed her washed-out eyes resentfully on Ellie’s materials as though the secret of their use had been unfairly withheld from her. ‘Where did you pick it up?’
Ellie, not over-pleased at this attitude towards her art, opened her mouth to speak, but Miss Horsepin held up a hand for silence: ‘There!’ she fiercely said. ‘Did you hear that?’
The countess had been speaking on the house-telephone. The receiver was replaced as Ellie paused to listen.
‘What was she saying?’ asked Ellie.
‘She was ordering dinner. She said: “A pheasant for the dining-room and a pork-pie for the nursery”. You see! They get pheasant: I get pork-pie.’
Ellie said: ‘I wish I had a pork-pie to go home to.’
Miss Horsepin looked displeased. She left the room without speaking again. Perhaps because of this, Ellie was not told that Peter and his nanny were leaving next morning for the Slanskis’ country house. When Ellie went to the nursery, it was empty: no meal awaited her. She rang Désirée, but Désirée did not come to the telephone. At last, driven by hunger, Ellie passed through the green baize doors to the kitchen quarters.
Désirée and Mottram were eating at the kitchen table. Désirée looked so fiercely at her that Ellie made to retreat, but Mottram said pityingly: ‘She wants her grub.’
‘You still eating here?’ Désirée asked in disgusted disbelief.
‘The countess said I could till I’d finished the mural.’
‘When will that be? It’s cook’s day off and it’s all extra work for me. You’d better sit here.’ Désirée went to the pantry. ‘There’s no more pheasant, but you can have this bit of pork-pie.’
Mottram, watching Ellie eat, asked: ‘How’s the job going?’
‘Nearly finished.’
‘Managed to cadge a bit of cash yet?’
‘Oh, not yet. I haven’t finished work.’
‘If I were you, I’d just ask for a bit on account.’
‘Do you really think she’d let me have it?’
‘No,’ said Mottram with a bellow of laughter.
‘Her!’ Désirée’s voice was a moan of weary bitterness. ‘And that old what’s-it, her mother! I’d like to know what Mrs Harris was before she got her daughter married to a lot of cash.’
‘The countess . . .’ began Ellie.
‘“Countess”, my foot!’ said Mottram. ‘You ever heard of one of them Polish nods doing an honest day’s work? He works like a perishing nigger. No more a count than I am.’
‘I’d like to know how she landed him,’ said Désirée. ‘She’s not got all that “glam”.’
‘I don’t know about “glam”,’ said Mottram, ‘but I do know she can have yours truly any time she likes. Ever notice the way that woman walks?’
‘I can’t say I have.’ Désirée’s small mouth, heavily painted, was a patch of indignation on the lower half of her face. ‘But I do know what I think of her! “Insolent” she called me. What does she think she is? I’ve worked for better than her and stood no nonsense. And when she writes my name on instructions she leaves off my accents – now, that’s insolence, if you like.’ Désirée, throwing the plates together, seized on Ellie’s plate from under the last morsel of pie: ‘You finished?’
‘Yes. What about tomorrow?’
‘I’ll bring you a tray.’
Ellie’s mural, so vivaciously begun, was ended in cold, solitude and silence. Désirée brought her tray but was not willing to talk. Oppressed by lack of company, Ellie now only wanted to finish the mural and find a job, any job, that would bring her a living and contact with life. She no longer thought of Quintin. If, inadvertently, he came into her mind, she thrust him out again. In this matter she would stand no nonsense from herself. She had begun to think she might be a natural unfortunate in love: that she might never marry. This made more pressing her need for a livelihood.
On Friday afternoon the mural was completed. She leant against the opposite wall and gazed at it with a pang of fulfilment. The lion, that had been ‘lifted’ from a postcard reproduction of ‘The Sleeping Gipsy’, seemed to her peculiarly satisfying: the monkeys less so – but the whole conveyed something of the Rousseau quality that for years had possessed her imagination.
The countess must see it. She ran to the sitting-room, but knew from the silence of the flat that the countess was not in it. She rang through to the kitchen, but no one replied. In the end she wrote on the note pad:
‘Dear Désirée, would you please tell the countess the mural is complete. Would you please ask the countess if I can have the paint left in the tubes.’
She wanted to mention the money due to her but could think of no tactful way of doing so. She finished: ‘Yours sincerely, Ellie Parsons.’
She left a few days for this note to be digested, believing the money might be more freely given if overdue, then she telephoned the flat. Désirée replied with an accusation:
‘You left all that newspaper on the floor.’
‘I’m sorry. I forgot about it.’
‘Well, Mrs Harris says you’ll get nothing till you’ve cleaned the floor up.’
‘Cleaned it up?’
‘It’s in a shocking state. I can tell you, I’m not touching it.’
Désirée put down her receiver. Ellie felt a furious unwillingness to clean the floor. She left the house to walk off her anger, and met Denis. A tear rolled from her eye: he noted it without patience:
‘What’s the matter now?’ he asked.
‘I’ve had the sack. I owe a week’s rent.’
‘For crying out loud! I owe six weeks’ rent, and the last flat I was in, I left owing three months.’
‘I didn’t know you were so hard up.’
‘I’m not hard up. I just haven’t the ready. Tell them: “I’m out of work – to hell with you,” and if you need to eat, get Castiglioni to chalk it up. That’s what I do.’
‘I’ve never been inside Castiglioni’s.’
‘My dear child, you must make contacts. Get around. Get credit. Learn how to live.’
She sighed, fearing nothing in her upbringing had taught her how to live. To avoid admitting this, she told the story of her employment by the countess.
‘And how much were you to get for that little job?’
‘Well, I said eight pounds and she didn’t say anything: so I said six pounds and she still didn’t say anything, so I suppose she’ll give me what she thinks.’
‘Like hell,�
�� said Denis. ‘If you said eight pounds, stick to it. Go and clean her bloody floor – it won’t kill you – then say “I want my eight pounds and I’m not leaving without it.” Tell her you’ll sue her.’
‘I couldn’t do that.’
‘Rubbish. Stand no nonsense. If you let people kick you around, they’ll do it.’
Uplifted by Denis’s advice, Ellie walked on to Belgravia. Désirée opened the door. When she heard Ellie had come to clean the floor, her manner softened. She brought in a bucket of water and a packet of detergent. ‘Use plenty,’ she said. ‘It’ll make it easier.’
When Ellie finished, the floor was cleaner than it had ever been. She looked up at Désirée, who had watched her, and said: ‘Now, what about my money?’
‘You don’t think I’ve got it, do you? She’ll send it to you – if you’re lucky.’
‘But I need it now. Can’t I speak to her?’
‘Her? She’s not here. She went off to Majorca days ago. You can have her address, but that won’t do you much good. She never pays till she gets a writ. Why, they’ve put the bailiffs in twice since I’ve been here.’
‘Haven’t they any money?’
‘Pots of it. She just doesn’t like paying for things, that’s all.’
‘What about the count?’
‘He’s a dead loss. He never comes in till dinner-time: and at week-ends he mustn’t be disturbed.’
‘What am I to do? I owe a week’s rent, and I haven’t any money at all.’
‘You could ring the count,’ said Désirée. ‘I’d ring him. Other people have done it. Get him at his office. Tell him straight. He knows what she’s like, all right. There’s always trouble here.’
Walking back to Chelsea, Ellie saw Simon Lessing on the other side of the road. He was looking at her, but when she returned his glance, he looked abruptly away. It was evident that he thought she wished to avoid him. She told herself she had only herself to blame.
7
At first Petta had barely noticed the shortcomings of Arnold’s flat: now they disgusted her. Had she had the energy to arrange a move, he would willingly have gone with her, but she had no energy: she cared about nothing. She lived in these quarters as a refugee lives, uncommitted, temporary, without expectations.
They arose late. Arnold spent most of his days in the British Museum library. Petta lay around the flat as she used to lie around Quintin’s flat. Often enough, when Arnold left, she returned to sleep as to a familiar resiance where nothing was expected of her.
On an October afternoon, while rain poured into the weed-filled garden beneath the window, she sprawled uncomfortably in a Victorian arm-chair, her cheek against the plush, her mouth open. The fire was sinking. Only an orange glimmer remained beneath the fur of ash.
As she grew cold, apprehension touched her. The clock gathered itself to strike. In the interval of silence, the canal of her dream turned into an asphalt road. The board on which she had been carried along by an inner urgency now moved with difficulty as though caught in treacle. The single, cheap ping of the half-hour threw the dream into confusion. Traffic appeared and cut across her path: a policeman rose before her, requiring her to stop. As a circular car hurtled towards her as a ball towards a batsman, she was saved by a last-minute change of scene. She found herself alone in a room at the top of a building; in darkness, not complete, rather the darkness of a film where important objects and faces are limned by an artificial moon. As she felt her way cautiously through this polished night, she heard, below, the clump of running feet. She leant from a window and gazed over a panorama of steep house sides and deserted streets. A line of round, lighted globes, white as bryony berries, threw a channel of light on the gloss of the tarmac. She could see no one, although the runner was passing directly beneath her. The sound diminished. She called: it ceased. Now she knew who was there. She knew that at the sound of her voice he had flung himself out of sight. She felt him standing there, somewhere below her, flattened in a doorway. She could hear his breathing so clearly, it might have been her own.
Her eyelids opened. Her head had dropped so that her neck was aching. She had been breathing heavily. Before she could wake completely, she buried her face in her arms, but it was no good. She had been skimming the surface of consciousness too long to escape again. Her mind began to work. Boredom forced her to open her eyes. She felt for the switch of the reading-lamp.
Because the rain-dark was not night, but a sort of sordid half-night, like a rag pulled over the sky, the bulb shone bleakly. It enhanced the wretched disorder of the room. Petta had made no attempt to charm Arnold’s charwoman, who, disapproving of Petta’s presence in the flat, her lying a-bed, her hopeless untidiness, had left without notice a week before. After that Arnold did what he could. He threw the bed together, cleared the grate, washed a dish or two when all were dirty, emptied the ash-trays, and sometimes murmured: ‘You might give a hand.’
Petta said: ‘Housework depresses me.’
‘Then you might find another woman.’
Petta had not the energy to do even that. An indifference, like paralysis, had come down on her since Quintin’s escape. This was the first time she had completely lost hope of recovering him. Now she knew he would divorce her if he could. She believed he could not – but he had placed himself out of her reach. Their relationship was at an end.
All the false moves of her life had, together, reduced her to this. She believed, now, she had only to move, to err.
When the clock struck the three-quarter-hour, she remembered the evening post. She had written to Quintin, through Verney, begging him at least to write to her. She had forgotten how long it was since she posted the letter. Though he had not yet replied, he might take pity on her in the end.
With an effort she started to make the journey downstairs.
As she reached the lower landing, she saw someone move in the darkness of the hall below. She knew at once who it was – a man whose room was on the ground floor. She had seen him several times, a foreigner of some sort, probably a German. His eyes, small, of an indefinite yellow-blue, looked shallow as a pair of lenses: his thin, short nose had a turn to one side that gave vulgarity to the whole face. Beneath his nose there was a scrubby patch of hair; beneath that, a thin, long mouth that ran into puffy cheeks. On his head there was a fawn-grey stubble. She imagined he gave off an unpleasant odour, but she had not been close enough to him to know.
When she had to pass him, her one idea was to get away from him, yet her instinct was to observe him, believing it in him to commit some disgusting crime against life. Once or twice, descending the stairs, she had seen him fingering the old letters that lay on the hall-stand unclaimed by past tenants – the word ‘fingering’ came into her mind because it expressed her disgust at his existence. Her impulse had been to make some insulting remark to him. She had looked at him as though he were a decomposing carcase, or some other object that repels yet draws the sight. He always met her stare with a slight, placating smile, moving aside from the letters as though to imply they were hers if she wanted to examine them.
Once she saw he had pulled out the drawer of the old-fashioned hall-stand. That, too, was stuffed with letters. The house was dirty, neglected, full of people whose rent was overdue. No one bothered to forward letters, but the envelopes had been slit open in a search for postal-orders.
Now, looking down on the discoloured grey of the man’s suit, she asked herself with disgust: ‘Why must he hang about in the hall?’ knowing he did so from an unbearable, helpless and supplicating loneliness. She thought no human creature had a right to exist whose unhappiness so infected the air.
As she reached the last flight, she heard him strike the wall with his shoe. She peered at him. He was standing close to the wall, his hand spread on the dirty paintwork. Something furtive in his pose alerted her: anger glanced through her. She saw he had cornered a mouse and was trying to kill it.
‘What are you doing?’
He looked
up, not replying. The mouse made off. In a tone of loathing so intense it surprised her, she said: ‘You criminal! You disgusting butcher!’
The man started: his mouth fell open: his weak, shallow eyes filled with fear. After a moment, he said gently: ‘Why, it was a mouse; no more. Would you have mice here, everywhere?’ He had a foreign accent, very slight, that completed for her his degraded repulsiveness.
She gave a quick look at the letters, saw there was nothing for her, then went upstairs. When she reached the room, she fell trembling into the chair. Her rage at that moment was such that she could have murdered, had she had strength to murder. Her anger turning against her, she started to weep, but she wept angrily, telling herself: ‘Those who have no compassion for the beasts will destroy themselves.’ She cried herself into a stupor from pity – but she did not know what she pitied. She did not like mice. If one came into her room she would set a trap for it, though she would prefer someone else did the killing.
When she could cry no more, she looked about her at the litter of newspapers, the heaped ash-trays, the dusty, sticky table-top, and said aloud: ‘Quintin has driven me to this.’
She remembered the house in Culross Street where she had lived with Henry: she thought of her daughter, Flora, whom she had not seen for two years. She tried to think of them with regret, but she could not deceive herself for long. Even had she never met Quintin, she would have left Henry. She had suffered with him, as she suffered now, a sloth of the spirit that had made her existence intolerable. Quintin had saved her then, but who could save her now? This time, perhaps, the condition was incurable, a process of age. The sensual exhilaration that had once been a glow through her whole body might never raise itself again. Perhaps that evening in the public-house, when she had caught Arnold’s eye and seen the young man, Simon What’s-his-name – perhaps then the last glint of it had been running out like the last upswirling glint of bath-water down a plug-hole. If that were so, she might as well turn her face to the wall and die.
Doves of Venus Page 26
