Doves of Venus
Page 32
When they reached South End Road, she said: ‘Put me down here. I don’t feel like sherry.’
‘Nonsense,’ said Nancy. ‘You look as though you need it.’
The car turned into Keats’ Grove. They were the first arrivals. The snow, no longer falling, lay untrodden on the neat, small garden behind which the house of Tom’s solicitor stood like a doll’s-house. A maid showed them into the front room. They were left alone with plates of sandwiches and several decanters of sherry.
‘Fall to.’ Nancy took a sandwich in each hand.
Ellie, watching from the window, felt sick at the thought of meeting Quintin again. ‘They’re coming,’ she said fearfully.
‘What do I care?’ said Nancy. ‘He was my uncle.’
Maxine entered first. She gave Nancy a stare of threatening calm, then turned the full force of her vivacity upon the men behind her. Among them was Quintin. Ellie saw him responding to Maxine as he responded to every attractive woman. She moved into the bow of the window, willing to remain unseen, but Quintin saw her and crossed to her at once. He looked as though this were a meeting too long delayed. His face was alive with pleasure, and with astonishment at finding her there.
‘My dear child, whatever are you doing here? Did you know old Tom Claypole?’
Ellie at once set about explaining her presence. Her apparent casualness was enhanced by the fact that she felt as though she were being throttled. While she talked, Quintin gazed down into her face with an admiring amusement, his hand hovering to take her hand, to restore them at once to their old intimacy.
Ellie took a step away and kept her hand out of reach. The spell no longer worked. That was a relief: and equally a relief was the fact she no longer felt angry with him.
When she had nothing more to say, he started explaining his sudden departure to Switzerland. He seemed unaware of her new indifference to him. Watching him dispassionately, she saw him more charming, more elegant, better-looking than anyone else in the room. The other men had been old friends of Tom. They were commonplace men who had given their lives to commonplace employments: Quintin was of another order of human being. He had been free to be anything, and he had chosen to charm. It seemed to her right that Tom’s money should have gone to him. She could not imagine he had ever manoeuvred to obtain it as Maxine and, she feared, Nancy had done. She told herself that Quintin would own the money, not the money Quintin. Somehow these reflections tidied away her past relationship with him. He was rewarded. Her reward was elsewhere.
He managed to catch her wrist and give her hand a shake to gain her attention. He had mistaken the remote gravity of her face.
He said: ‘You must not be cross with me. You took it all too seriously, you know. It was just a little affaire – not to be taken seriously.’
She opened her eyes at him and laughed. ‘Are you sure I took it seriously? One can play even at seriousness.’
His smile widened: he raised his brows and stared at her as though transported by admiration of what he saw.
‘You remarkable girl!’ he said. ‘You reawaken all my old interest.’
‘I hope not. It would be such an anti-climax. You see, I’m married now.’
‘Married! At your age!’ He turned over her hand and looked at her ring. ‘So you are! Why, I am delighted.’
She had not expected him to be as delighted as that. The atmosphere between them flattened somewhat. There was a pause, then she asked: ‘Where is your wife now?’
‘Carrying on some squalid liaison somewhere. The usual thing.’
‘And the lady with whom you went to Switzerland?’
He nodded, amused that she was so well-informed: ‘Alma? She intended marriage and left me when she found my wife would not part with me.’
‘And Mrs Primrose? Are you still attached to her?’
‘Oh, that! – that was nothing. I thought it would be entertaining to stretch up to an apple just out of reach – and lo and behold! I made a little movement and it fell into my hand. Naturally I did not want it then.’
Ellie smiled her disbelief. ‘What will you do with Clopals?’ she asked.
‘Sell it. I believe it’s terrible; a sort of super-suburban Kozy Kot; all mod. con. and so on.’
‘I thought it was wonderful,’ said Ellie.
Quintin touched her under the chin. ‘When are we going to meet again?’
Smiling, she turned her face away and shook her head.
‘But, my dear child, surely you are not going to deprive yourself of all sorts of fun? These days, marriage is no more than the permanent set against which we play out our romances. It’s not a binding contract.’
She said quietly: ‘I think it is a binding contract.’
‘Oh, oh!’ He shook her hand while she held herself stiffly from him. ‘What a little prude! You used not to be like this. Do you imagine your husband will remain faithful to you?’
‘Yes. Why not?’
Quintin laughed at her: ‘My dear child, husbands just don’t remain faithful.’
‘Perhaps some husbands do.’
‘You’ll learn better. And, don’t forget, life is short: you will grow old.’
She thought of Simon and smiled: ‘I’m prepared for that.’
He tilted back his head, narrowed his eyes and drew down his lips in a smile that would once have enthralled her. Now she was acutely aware of the marks of age on him. She thought of Simon’s strong, young body and smiled into herself, a smile secret and expectant.
Quintin said: ‘Perhaps I made you unhappy? If I did, I am sorry. But we are all victims, one of another.’
She was not sure he was not laughing at her. She smiled, guardedly, but his face remained sad. Ageing and sad.
‘I must go,’ she said.
‘No, no. Don’t go.’
‘The will has nothing to do with me. I’m not meant to hear it.’
Snow had been falling again. A white light was reflected from the lawn on to the ceiling. Now the motion of snowflakes was thinning into nothingness. When the last flake fell, the outside world was still. To her it seemed to have been renewed by snow as by the supernatural agency of love. She longed to walk into it.
Quintin, holding her wrist, was trying to detain her. Gently, but with determination, she detached herself. ‘My husband is expecting me for tea.’ She spoke rather proudly – a married woman, a woman with a secure background.
Quintin gave his little, comic bow, turning his lips down as though to say: ‘I acknowledge my error.’
When she said good-bye, his only reply was a small, regretful movement towards her. She hurried away.
Nancy had been cornered by Maxine. Ellie signalled that she was going, and went without speaking again to anyone.
Down in the square she boarded a waiting bus. The air was cold and brilliant as crystal. The trees were snow-heavy as with blossom. When the bus moved off, it passed in spectral quiet through the twilight of Kentish Town and Camden Town, journeying westwards into the transformed city where Ellie had her home.
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Epub ISBN: 9781446429433
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Copyright © The Estate of Olivia Manning 1955
Olivia Manning has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.
This novel is a work of fiction. Names and characters are the product of the author’s imagination and any resemblance to actual persons, livin
g or dead, is entirely coincidental.
First published in Great Britain in 1955 by William Heinemann Ltd
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ISBN: 9780099416043