Nine Lives (Timeless Classics Collection)

by Ursula Bloom

  She had forgotten Major Edgar Fergusson.

  Late in January a picture arrived with no message. It was of the Portmeor beach, with the island round to the right and a French crabber coming sneaking past the Head. She hung it with a hand that trembled, knowing that it brought a funny turn to her tummy, and realising suddenly that it wasn’t so much the man, as the place. Places could do that to one! James had sent his message in colour, and he needed no words for it.

  When the spring came again, her father came up and stayed with her for a long week end. Possibly he realised that she was not entirely happy about her job, but she never said so. He did not like her living alone, but as she said she preferred to be alone than with someone she disliked. The only person she knew was her friend Judy who had just had bad luck in Beauchamp Place where her little amateurish shop was dying on her.

  ‘I think Malcolm would give you a job,’ she told Judy. And so one day, just after Daniel had gone back to Holbeins, Judy came into the Henrietta Street office. Not only had the shop failed, but being a reckless spender, she had found her landlady nagging her for past rental, and she had literally been thrown into the street.

  ‘I didn’t know it was so bad,’ said Lesley.

  ‘My own fault! I went without food, but never without drink, for that did something to me. I’ve made a mess of things. I ‒ I am just a flop.’

  ‘And where are you going to sleep?’ asked Malcolm, ever practical when it came to this kind of thing.

  The day was already darkening, and in the garden they were selling tulips in thick bunches, vivid circles of colour, that looked very pretty. But it was so cold. A grey mist hung over London.

  ‘Oh, the doss house’ll do me,’ said Judy. She was still brave, and one could not help being sorry for her.

  ‘Look here,’ said Malcolm, ‘don’t be a fool! I would willingly let you sleep here, but what the earth is there to sleep on? You’d never get one wink of sleep.’

  ‘She could come with me,’ suggested Lesley, and she didn’t know why she said it; perhaps because it had worried Daniel that she was alone. ‘I’ve got a spare room, and a bed. Of course she can come home with me.’

  ‘You’re a pet!’ said Malcolm. ‘Bless your sweet heart, but then I always knew that you were a lovely!’

  At first Judy didn’t want to go home with Lesley, because, as she said, she looked awful and felt so grim. But after a lot of argument she got a taxi which the office paid for, and went off to fetch the few miserable things that she had. Malcolm was fidgeting about the studio with the light fading; he was not doing very much; he had the ineffable quality of being able to do nothing when he felt like it, and at the same time being able to put on the appearance of doing a lot.

  At last he said, ‘This is damned good of you Lesley. That girl needs help. I’ll have to find her something of a job, not that I think she’ll do it, but we’ll try. She’s her own worst enemy of course, and you’re a brick.’

  Then he went quickly out of the door before she could thank him for the kind words, and she heard him rattling down the uncovered stairs to the street.

  When Lesley got home, Judy was there. She was amazed at the mews cottage, for somehow although they were friends, she had never visited Lesley’s home before.

  ‘I never thought it would be like this. I never knew you’d got any money.’

  ‘My husband left me some and my father spoils me. I’ll show you your room, and you can have a bath before supper, to freshen you up,’ for Judy looked awful; noticeably she had slept in that crumpled suit of hers, and her greying hair was filthy.

  She was a long time over the bath and when she reappeared supper was ready, and Lesley was waiting for her with the sherry. Judy had made some considerable effort to clean up, but she looked thin and pale, playing with her food. After a while Lesley offered her a whisky, and was immediately sorry she had done so, because it was received so gratefully. Then Judy told her story.

  She was thirty-four, though she didn’t look it, she might even have passed for a rather sick twenty-four, whose hair had gone prematurely grey. She had been born on Exmoor, and her people had died before she could remember them. Both she and her brother had been brought up by an aunt whom they detested. Judy had started careers, drifting from art to the rag trade, from chorus to curios, but never sticking to anything. Her brother had died in an accident at Portsmouth, when he got crushed between two boats.

  ‘I was ill after that, you see I loved Brian quite a lot,’ she said slowly, and her tone made Lesley’s heart ache.

  Perhaps Judy had nursed a resentment against the life which had robbed her of the person she adored. There was nothing anyone could do to comfort her; the thing had happened and she wasn’t fighting it the right way. In an impulse of goodwill Lesley had brought Judy here, even though she had always felt dubious about her as a friend. She was one of those vague people to whom one is drawn by pity, yet repulsed by mere fact. She admitted that spirits helped her; there were men, too. She said it not looking at Lesley, but into the middle distance, as though she hoped this was a deadly secret admitted for the first time.

  ‘You must think I’m a bad lot,’ she said.

  ‘I think you’re ill. Let’s get a decent doctor to help put matters right?’

  ‘I’ve no money.’

  ‘I have, and I’ll pay.’

  Judy said, ‘I don’t want you to pay, and go on paying. I haven’t come here to sponge on you. Do let me be; please do let me be. I loathe interference, it is the most inhuman of the deadly sins.’

  I was right, I oughtn’t to have let her come here, why on earth did I do it? Lesley asked herself.

  It took three dreadful days persuading Judy to see a doctor, and later he reported on her to Lesley. The truth was Judy was worn out. She had a low residue of reserve strength, and had drawn on herself to the uttermost. She needed six months on a country farm, six months nursing up with good food and no opportunity to drink, and that was the one thing she wouldn’t accept.

  ‘I don’t go,’ said Judy.

  ‘All right.’

  In the first fortnight she started to look better, for the new, more solid background gave her help. She drank less and in consequence ate more. In her good moments she was pathetically childlike, almost amenable and she developed a solid devotion to Lesley.

  ‘Now you’ll never be able to get rid of her,’ said Malcolm. ‘I ought to have warned you this might happen.’

  ‘I don’t want to get rid of her, poor soul, but I admit that she may be complicating.’

  ‘She’ll probably commit suicide in your house. The coroner will be rude, and you’ll have to pay a fortune to get her decently buried.’

  Horrified, Lesley said, ‘Somehow I don’t think she will let me down like that.’

  ‘Her type don’t consider it a let-down. They do it because they are just too damned miserable to go on living! You ought to get rid of her before she becomes an old man of the sea.’

  ‘I will ‒ if I can.’

  Judy pulled up quite a lot, and took Lesley round introducing her to some of her pet haunts and the less sordid of her men friends. They were casual, these men, they held life lightly, love too. Somehow Lesley felt herself torn two ways. She didn’t know why, but the restlessness rose again and inflamed her; the uncertainty of living ‒ the doubt!

  Another springtime had broken in the first burst of warm weather, and it was that wonderful week of the year, when the yellow-green can bear imprisonment no more, and ripples along the ashgrey of branches. Within a few hours the eternal miracle of springtime had come to the parks. The first summer smell of hot tarmac with it, and on the faces of everybody that look of enjoyment which always comes when the sweet of the year is riding in.

  It happened casually and simply, so that Lesley could not believe that she herself was involved. She was dancing with one of Judy’s men friends at a funny little club, then driving out with him in his car into the loveliness of the spring night. Th
ey watched the stars, and talked dangerously of love, of life, and of what it all meant, as though these were the matterless subjects which did not really affect themselves.

  Admitting her own starvation (even James had told her that it would be starvation) Lesley went back to his flat with him for a last drink. She would never know how she found herself in his arms, and not unwillingly. She did not pretend about it. Hours later she couldn’t even chalk up another black spot against herself, because the worst part was that now she had changed more, and it no longer counted as a black spot. It had been completely satisfying.

  Next day she felt calmer than she had done for years, happier, and far less restless. Yet angry with herself, all of which was inconsistent.

  ‘How did you get on with Terry last night?’ Judy asked her. ‘Usually he gets everything that he wants.’

  ‘Does he?’ Even to Judy she wouldn’t confess the truth. Terry had got all he wanted. She also!

  ‘By Jove, he does.’ She lit another cigarette with a hand that shook slightly, which told Lesley that she had had more than enough to drink last night. ‘But you’d be safe with him,’ she added.

  Lesley knew that Judy was what her father would have called a ‘bad companion’ and that she must be careful. She must be sure that nothing like this ever happened again. So, when Terry telephoned, she assumed a haughty manner, and said she was through with him. Naturally it was more difficult when they met, because openly he laughed at her.

  ‘You can’t come that one over me,’ he said.

  Richard wouldn’t have talked like that. Terry had the tang of Richard about him, and that made it perhaps easier to refuse him, for she knew his kind.

  ‘No more,’ she said.

  He realised that she meant it.

  For some weeks she stayed aloof. She made a valiant attempt to get Judy on to the water waggon, which finally she found to be impossible. She worked hard in the office on the poster work, but the restlessness returned. In July one of her own posters was used by the Tube railways, which was a great encouragement, and Malcolm was nice about it. He said if only she would settle down to this work she would go a long way, but it was she herself who stood in the way. Perhaps it was true! If she looked down into her heart, Lesley knew that it was true, and recoiled from that truth.

  The day that the Tube people bought the poster, they had a special tea in the office, eating cake on crumby trestle tables, and drinking healths in strong bitter tea. Then, quite unexpectedly, James Stevens appeared in London, walking into the mews cottage with no word of warning, as though he had seen Lesley but yesterday, and not years ago, with an interim of unanswered cards and letters.

  She opened the door to him and stared in amazement. ‘James? Where on earth did you come from?’

  ‘Can you give me a shake-down for the night?’

  ‘There’s only the sofa in that room; it’s a short sofa, and you have to let down the end, which I should think would be maddeningly uncomfortable.’

  ‘It’ll do,’ said he, not caring.

  Judy was out. She was trying to sell some sketches of hers to the A. P. and had gone along with a portfolio at eleven. She might not be back for hours. Seeing James again was a sudden joy, even if at heart Lesley felt that he might have warned her. They sat talking in the tiny paved garden at the back, where she had set a standard hammock, which took an awful lot of room but was very comfortable to sit in. She had had to choose between flowers in tubs and the hammock, and still wasn’t sure that she had done right. She told him a lot about herself.

  ‘How’s St. Ives?’ she asked. ‘Still beautiful?’

  ‘Quite beautiful, and pictures looking up. I’ve done a lot for the States. They like my stuff, and pay fantastic prices, for they don’t like it unless you charge them the earth.’ Then ‘Do you live here alone?’

  ‘I did.’ She’d have to explain about Judy sooner or later, and knew it would be difficult. ‘I took in a girl friend; at the time she was only an acquaintance, and now I’ve got fond of her. Judy drinks a lot, and she ‒ well, she just gets along! She needed anchorage.’

  ‘You’re not telling me that you acted as anybody’s anchor?’

  ‘In a way. She’s gone to the A.P. selling work, or trying. I hope she won’t be disappointed, for if she is, she may …’

  ‘I make a very good Prairie Oyster.’

  ‘She’ll want it.’

  But Judy returned elated, for an editor was interested.

  She came in looking quite pretty in a skimpy blue cotton frock, her grey hair flung back. She was having blue rinses now, and they gave her a new quality, also she had filled out a bit.

  ‘By Jove,’ said James, looking at her. ‘If it isn’t the Blue Boy in reverse.’

  From that first moment Lesley knew that James had taken to Judy, and was pleased, for perhaps his influence might be stabilising. So she left them together as much as she could. It coincided with the fact that week there was a lot to do in the office. The Tube people were being fussy over further posters, and although at the original interview they had seemed to be so amiable and easy to work for, now they were a nuisance. It dawned on her that it had been a mere fluke that she had hit on the right idea for them in the beginning, and such flukes are rare.

  Malcolm explained that she would have to do a good bit of quick thinking, but somehow, when she had wanted to be so clear on these matters, she had gone confused.

  At the back of her mind there had been a hazy idea of slipping across to France in August, because Edgar Fergusson had written a most charming letter, asking her to go down to Cap Roche. She’d like to go. She wondered if the place would remind her too vividly of Richard, but thought not. She was older now; wiser. She felt that maybe she had gone a little stale on her job, and that was why she couldn’t satisfy the Tube people with her ideas. Malcolm did not think it was that. Art worked in waves, he said, you had bursts of ideas, or none, and this just happened to be the none.

  Unfortunately Lesley was worrying more than anybody thought about the posters, and because of this she left Judy quite a lot with James, who was staying on. He also was having some trouble with a difficult agent, with a picture gallery that asked too much, and he made no extra work on the sitting-room sofa.

  ‘I’m not worrying you, Lesley?’

  ‘Of course not. Stay as long as you wish.’

  He was kind about it, sending in lavish gifts, beautiful flowers; bottles of cointreau which he knew she liked, and baskets of fruit from Harrods. Yet somehow she had come to the conclusion that he had sought her out not because he liked her and desired her society, but merely for a bed and free board. It was a horrid thought.

  She challenged him about it on the night of the big thunderstorm, when Judy was out with one of her boy friends. Lesley had always hated thunder, and drew the blinds and put the lights on. It made James laugh, which enraged her, for being on edge she was in the mood to quarrel.

  ‘It’s all very well, but I can’t help it if it scares me.’

  ‘What do you think will happen?’

  ‘I don’t think anything, I hate the flashes, and I loathe the noise,’ and then, ‘If you are going to be nasty, don’t stay here. I can’t think why you came, really. You never wrote to me.’

  ‘Damn it all, I sent you that picture. It was the beach as you knew it, and I painted it for you, and there you are!’ He said it in the irritating manner of one who is martyred.

  A clap of thunder shook the place, and it almost sounded as if the Hyde Park Hotel had been stuck; when she came to she said, ‘If you feel like that about it, you can have the wretched thing back.’

  ‘Are you jealous, my sweet?’

  ‘Of course I’m not. Why should I be jealous? I just think you are making use of this place.’

  ‘And you’re perfectly correct.’

  ‘Well, it’s vile of you! I like you James, I’m fond of you, and it isn’t pleasant when the feet of clay poke out.’

  ‘We’ve all got our
feet of clay. Man’s made that way. Don’t let it worry you, for the clay feet take me places,’ then, ‘You think I’m attracted by Judy, don’t you?’

  ‘Well, you are, aren’t you?’ Lesley wished that she could treat it calmly, but she couldn’t; she felt indignant inside.

  ‘Certainly I am. I should have said that Judy was a remarkable girl, and you need not be angry with me about it, because I am returning home the day after tomorrow.’ Lesley had not thought that he would go so soon, and for a moment there came the keen desire, the strong nomadic thirst to go back with him to St. Ives, and stay there. She yearned for the lovely view beyond the window of the fisherman’s loft, and almost waited for him to suggest it, her eyes appealing, and in her heart believing that this must come.

  ‘You mean you’ve got work to do?’

  ‘Something like that.’

  ‘Yet I’ve always thought you were born idle.’

  ‘Darling, you do say the truest things! Of course I was. No, work is not the real reason.’

  ‘I’ve always liked you James, why have we changed, and are being like this to one another? We’re sparring for places, and it isn’t right.’

  ‘If you don’t know the answer, well there it is.’ The last peal of thunder died away; the storm was losing vehemence, and that clap was far quieter than any of its predecessors. Lesley felt relief that it was passing, and realised that quite probably it was the wretched storm that had made her touchy. She hoped so.

  He looked across the room. ‘It’s going away, that means it should be cooler after this, and more pleasant. I, for one, shall be glad.’

  ‘I’ll be glad, too,’ she said then with studied indifference went over to her work. Damn the Tube! Damn the posters!

  Next morning to Judy’s surprise Lesley had thought out a design which it appeared they almost liked. The man said that at last she was on the right lines, and she went back to the office well pleased with herself.

  She worked late whilst the mood was still on her, and Malcolm giving his considered opinion of it, decided that she had done very well. Then she remembered that she had promised to go to a little club that evening with James and Judy, and that she must get home early to change. The club was one of those small intimate ones which had sprung up everywhere in the neighbourhood of Shepherd’s Market. There was dancing to a pleasant band, not too noisy like some, and everybody was friendly. Lesley had not even noticed the name of the place, ‘The Good Friends’ or ‘The Convivials’ or something of the sort, written in cyclamon-pink copperplate on a jade signboard. It was a bad choice that colouring, she thought, because her feelings were for strong clear colours that stood out boldly and brooked no argument.