by Dennis Parry
At last my eye lit on her. She had come in with Andrew whom she must have brought on her own initiative. But even as I looked he moved away in a manner which suggested petulance, and she was left with an older man in a dinner-jacket. Varvara herself was wearing a frock bordered with golden discs like spade-guineas. Her clothes-sense had obviously come on since the previous September: but there was still something to learn. Her dress, though intrinsically pretty, would have been more suited to vivifying and colouring up a type of looks which ran the risk of insipidity; for her to wear it was like gilding a peony.
‘Of course,’ said my companion, who must have followed my gaze, ‘the other Ellison girl might get it all.’
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘The extra money we were talking about. But I’d rather it went to Deirdre.’
‘You don’t like her cousin?’
‘Not much. I can’t stand people who’re larger than life—particularly outsize prima donnas.’
‘I’m sorry she’s getting that name.’
‘I didn’t realize you knew her. Perhaps I’m prejudiced. And anyhow I admit you’ve got to hand it to her for her work among those natives.’
‘I hadn’t heard about that.’
‘You know she was brought up in darkest Asia? I mean real Asiatic Asia, not India or somewhere like that. Well, naturally the inhabitants were continually ravaged by every sort of disease. I’m told that this girl used to go about nursing them quite regardless.’
I began to laugh. ‘Which will you have?’ I said. ‘Cholera or the ministering angel?’
My companion looked at me indignantly for a moment, then she too broke into a titter. We drank another glass of champagne apiece and then parted on that basis of mutual esteem which is often so unfairly engendered by malicious conversation about third parties. I made my way across the room and took up a strategic position behind Varvara’s back. She was still talking to the man in the dinner-jacket, and he was listening, his face inclined towards her with an expression of almost superhuman urbanity.
‘. . . My father would scarcely ever leave his estates in Turkestan, so consequently my mother and I never got a glimpse of the Season. Poor daddy, it was only his terrific sense of responsibility towards the tenants that made him—’
I stepped round to the front.
‘Hallo, Varvara!’
‘David! Where have you come from?’
‘My ancestral duck-shoot in the Carpathians.’
Varvara was not pleased, more especially as a grin of surprising intelligence flashed over the face of the other man. She retaliated on me by means of an introduction.
‘This is Sir James Lexing. And this, Jim, is David Lindley, a boy whom my grandmother took in for his holidays.’
It was sad to see what results were produced by incomplete transition between two worlds. The old Varvara would have denounced me with ringing violence, ending with a box on the ear; but this new edition, attempting a sleek insolence, sounded merely vulgar. I was not annoyed; I merely prayed that she would not get stuck in this intermediate stage.
My offence in her eyes was not yet complete. After a few banal remarks Lexing took skilful advantage of the break in the flow of fiction to which she had been treating him and moved away. She stared after him with undisguised disappointment.
‘What does he do?’ I asked.
‘He is at the Court.’ She mentioned quite an important office in the Royal Household.
‘My, my, you are coming up!’
‘I am taking my proper place in the world.’
‘What’s happened to Andrew? I saw him slink off looking vaguely disgruntled.’
Varvara said: ‘Most of the time now he is rather stupid. He presumes. Old acquaintances are not necessarily the ones best suited to each other. And because you knew a person when she was a child or sick, that does not give you the right to hang round criticizing and managing when she can look after herself.’
‘Ah,’ I said, ‘I see.’
‘I hope you do,’ she said pointedly.
‘I see that you’re losing any little sense of proportion which you once had. I hardly thought I should be defending Andrew, but your talk about presumption makes me sick. Who on earth do you think you are? . . . No, I’m going to tell you. You’re a rich girl of the English commercial middle classes and basically very well-attuned to your station. You just happen to have had a freak upbringing. But that doesn’t give you any title to play the aristocrat. What right have you got to ask for more than your own equivalent in a man? That’s Andrew. In fact he’s rather the better bet of the two because his father made the money and according to the “clogs-to-clogs” rule it’ll last another generation.’
Varvara began to curse in several languages. The noise round us must have been pretty considerable, for nobody took much notice; then she seized a champagne cocktail and dashed it down her throat as if she were putting out a fire. Meanwhile I had switched from acerbity to righteous sorrow.
‘Nothing’s good enough for you now. It’s a pity, because you have so much if you’d only be content with it. Why should anybody who knew Doljuk as it really was want to tinker about with a lot of melodramatic pretences? Trying to pass yourself off as a mixture of Florence Nightingale and Lady Bountiful! What would your father have said, if he could have heard you?’
This last remark was unfair as I knew before it was out of my mouth. I was so ashamed of it that I had not the heart to evade the just consequence. I saw Varvara’s arm going up and a loose gold bangle slipping back against a line of short blonde hairs. I remember thinking, I hope she throws that glass; if she hits me it’ll break off and form an edge.
Of course I may have exaggerated a mere gesture of disgust. In any case the attack was never delivered. Innocent, wide-eyed, and rather red-faced, Deirdre slipped in between us.
‘Finding lots to talk about?’
Varvara glared at us both for a moment. Then she said something brief and unrepeatable and stalked away.
Deirdre put her hand on my arm.
‘Never mind. She’ll forgive you in the morning.’
She began to laugh.
‘I don’t see what’s so funny,’ I said.
‘Oh, I wasn’t laughing at you. I was just thinking . . . how one person gives something up and another takes it on.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘Well . . . bad language for instance. You heard what she said. Not that I’m in a position to throw stones—in front of you at any rate, because I once told you an absolutely filthy story in the garden at Aynho Terrace.’
‘I remember.’
‘I only hope it didn’t embarrass you too much.’
‘Tell me another if you like,’ I said rather warily.
At one moment I thought she was a little bit tight, but the next I caught a whiff of heredity, a reminiscence of that deadly methodical carelessness with which her father had tramped from one objective to another. And then again my suspicion seemed to be buried under a gush of spontaneous self-revelation.
‘I realized that talking like that was not only vulgar, but it gave one away.’
‘Gave people wrong ideas, you mean?’
‘Not so much that,’ said Deirdre with a warm smile. ‘But it labelled one as a repressed innocent. Every time I tried to be daring people could see my whole life with father. What’s the point of breaking out when you aren’t in prison any longer?’
Her language had a flavour of quotation. I thought that Tilda must be quite a clever woman.
‘Let’s drink to purity,’ I said, facetious because I was not sure of my ground.
‘Let’s drink to not advertising,’ said Deirdre. She gave me another glance which suggested that she had merely substituted the door-to-door canvass.
I should have been warned. It was not intoxication but the liberating sense of feeling really well for the first time in weeks which made me reckless. In this mood I sympathized intensely with any other escaped prisoner.
We began to talk about her new life, and it appeared that she was taking lessons at an art school.
‘I’m very keen, but I’m not sure that I have any talent.’
‘I bet you have.’
‘You can’t possibly tell without seeing.’ She paused as if expecting me to say something. ‘Would you like to see?’
‘Well . . .’
‘Oh, come on. Nobody will notice if we go to my room for a moment.’
I was caught off-balance. My hesitation had been due to the belief that she was inviting me to come round one day and inspect her exhibits at the school, and I was not sure that I wanted to carry my patronage so far. Unprepared with excuses, I followed her out of the room, in which the number of guests was rapidly dwindling.
‘It’s straight down the corridor,’ she said. ‘Second door on the left.’
As she spoke she fell a little behind me and a moment later I heard a swish and a soft flopping noise on the parquet. Looking round, I saw that she had brushed a woman’s fur coat off a heavily laden row of pegs.
‘There are too many parked here,’ she said. ‘They’ll get trampled on. I’ll drop this one on my bed.’
She slipped ahead again and threw open the door. Perhaps it was Tilda’s system for decompressing the personality; at any rate Deirdre had been allowed to launch out into a scheme of decoration which was feminine to the point of tartiness. A full-length mirror had been let into the wall; and behind it stood the bed quilted in white satin with an ornate doll on the pillow and a white sofa at its foot. The only object which struck a sterner note was the writing-desk. This she opened and took out a portfolio of drawings.
As far as I remember, they weren’t bad. But even at the time it was hard to form an impression because, as we bent over them, she kept on sweeping her loose-cut coiffure across my face. It was like doing an art gallery with a yak, only nicer.
I was aware of the absolute constancy of my feelings about Deirdre. When I had first met her I thought she was an awful little girl, but I took a liking to her, which was only intermittently tainted by the memory of whose flesh and blood she was. Those were still my sentiments.
Presently I had my arm round her shoulders and then we were kissing and then we were on the sofa. Deirdre was not so passionate as Varvara but much more lascivious. You felt an ulterior motive, closely connected with self-esteem, behind her love-making.
Presently she said: ‘I do feel mean about this.’
‘Why?’
‘Poaching, sort of.’
‘My dear, I’m not anybody’s exclusive possession.’
‘You mayn’t think so,’ she said. ‘But Varvara has a very strong sense of property. I wouldn’t like to come between her and her rights. . . . Why did you shiver?’
‘I’ve a bit of a chill.’
‘I thought you might be disgusted with me for talking like that about my cousin. Really I admire her.’
‘Is that true?’
One of Deirdre’s more engaging characteristics was her willingness to give serious thought to any reasonable question.
‘Yes,’ she said after a pause. ‘But it doesn’t prevent me from thinking that she’s rather frightening and at the same time rather ridiculous.’ She sighed. ‘Of course she and I have one great thing in common.’
‘What’s that?’
‘We both hated my father.’
Words failing me, I resumed the embrace. At that age I found girls like Deirdre, though they were often called rude names, rather restful for a necking-party. With them there was no problem of not going too far, they saw to that. Nevertheless she put me sufficiently under her spell to kill my sense of time. When we went out the party had obviously been in its later stages, and if I had been allowed to think, nothing would have induced me to risk making myself grossly conspicuous. I dare say that subconsciously I was relying on Deirdre, whose position was still more vulnerable, to gauge how long we could safely linger.
From time to time there were still noises of people leaving and before they did so they often came along the corridor to fetch their outdoor clothes. But they all entered a room lower down on the other side, and their movements had long ceased to disturb me. I thought nothing of it when two voices seemed to come closer than usual. In my false security I had no time to disengage myself before the door was thrown open. On the threshold Tilda was saying:
‘But I don’t think any of them were put in here.’
She saw us and a look of well-bred nausea flitted across her face. ‘Deirdre! Do you realize that people have been looking for you everywhere to say goodbye?’
Tilda was a lady; it showed in the way that, despite her annoyance and disgust, she instinctively moved across in order to block out the view of the person who was with her. It was a manœuvre which would have worked very well if that person had not been Varvara who could easily see over her head.
Deirdre separated herself from me without obvious discomposure.
‘Are you looking for a coat?’ she said. ‘I found that one on the floor so I brought it in here.’
Varvara’s eyes were sparkling with rage.
‘Now it will smell of bitches,’ she said.
‘Smell more of bitches, perhaps,’ said Deirdre with surprising quickness.
‘Stop it, both of you!’ said Tilda. ‘You’re behaving like sluts.’
‘I was only showing David my pictures,’ said Deirdre.
As the joke about etchings had not then been invented, this remark did not convey quite the same impression of calculated impudence as it would today. But it was blatant enough to add fuel to Varvara’s anger. Under the strain of conflict her new flossy manner and her conventional vocabulary temporarily disappeared.
‘You tempted his lust,’ she said, and I saw Tilda wince. ‘I know his weak and sexful nature.’
‘None better,’ said Deirdre, ‘I’m sure. But the point is, my dear, you’re acting like a dog-in-the-manger. You have a row with David—oh yes, anyone who wasn’t blind could see that—and you throw him over for people who you think will be more useful in helping you to forget your unfortunate background. Then you’re furious because somebody else out of the kindness of her heart tries to make it up to the poor boy.’
I was too fascinated by the argument to care about the undignified role which had been thrust upon me.
Varvara drew a deep breath and pointed at the coverlet.
‘If you and I were laid side by side on that bed and David came in to us . . . I know whose side he would bloody well choose!’
‘You’d be welcome,’ said Deirdre in the fashionable mock-Cockney. ‘You can have all your property.’
She dropped her glance to the coat as if to indicate that it and I had shared the same status of pawns in a campaign for Varvara’s discomfiture. (I believe she really had planned the whole episode.) But the next instant she gave me a look of mingled defiance and apology: I had to do it, her face said, if I was to keep my end up.
Tilda turned on me: ‘Can’t you do anything to stop them?’
‘I can do one thing,’ I said brusquely, and pushed her out of the way.
I was not practising rudeness and violence for their own sakes. Indeed my object was to prevent the latter. Although it was December and wet, the weather had continued unusually mild. All the time that Deirdre and I had been in the room the white net curtains had been billowing gently in front of a half-open window. But they would not have made much of a barrier against a falling body. As Varvara moved towards her cousin I dived hastily across and slammed down the sash.
Varvara did not seem to notice any significance in my action. There was an extraordinary and baffling expression on her face: I knew that it represented the extreme of some emotion but which I could not tell. When she reached Deirdre, who was trembling visibly, she folded her in a brisk embrace and placed a kiss on her forehead. Then she stood back, beaming seraphically.
‘You have done well,’ she said. ‘You are the servant of God.’
&nb
sp; Whereat she kissed her again.
‘What’s that for?’ said Deirdre in a tremulous voice. Despite her brave pert show, she knew she was outweighted and the row had told on her.
‘For love,’ said Varvara. ‘And for compassion.’
‘I still don’t see it.’
‘You have rebuked my sin,’ said Varvara, ‘with your own. Therefore I have compassion and humility towards you. The Chinese say: “What meat for the man who goes to bed in dirty boots? His wife will certainly put a toad in the pot.” ’
I took it on myself to interpret further.
‘Reductio ad absurdum,’ I said blithely. ‘There’s no way of bringing home people’s bad conduct like behaving worse.’
‘I wish,’ said Tilda, ‘that you wouldn’t be so smug about your part in these barnyard gambols.’
Varvara took Tilda’s hand and looked into her chilly green eyes with two enormous rings of glowing blue fire.
‘You also,’ she said, ‘are a good woman. All you wish is to save two poor girls for a little longer from their folly and their appetite. . . .’
‘Please!’ said Tilda wriggling.
But Varvara’s charity was inexorable.
‘Some day I shall come to you and implore you to advise me how to become happy by keeping my place in the world and making no trouble there. . . . But I think I shall wait for the summer because you would speak best under a shady tree in a sun-hat.’
I suppose this was equivalent to telling Tilda that she would carry more weight if her face were hidden; but the result was the reverse of what I expected. Tilda was visibly melting, from frozen hauteur, through bewilderment, to a sort of resigned benevolence. I looked round and saw a corresponding change in Deirdre: she was simpering amiably.
And damn me, as Fulk might have said, if I didn’t catch it! I suddenly felt what a beautiful thing it was to have enemies and to forgive them; to do wrong and to confess it; to make an ass of oneself and not to mind. The air was saturated with an impulse towards such feelings, diffused from one abnormally powerful personality. I have had a similar experience once or twice since, but on the darker side, involving the radiation of hatred or embarrassment. Nor have I ever seen three such dissimilar types as Tilda and Deirdre and myself rendered sensitive to a single influence.
