“Do I? D’you like my fringe? It’s new. Darling, I’m so pleased to see you … I’ve got two children … Can you imagine? … Oh, you have changed, as a matter of fact. You’re lovely, and you weren’t. Kate was. Is she still? P’raps not … She is lovely, isn’t she, Rollo?”
“She is …” said Rollo. He was watching them both with an absorbed expression, smiling and narrowing his eyes. They had the same eyes, though with variations—longish with full lids, the pupils dilated, the iris deep, peculiarly blue, electric-looking.
“D’you remember the Dance of the Wood Nymphs?—with shot chiffon scarves? And Monsieur Berton’s ear-trumpet? And the passion he had for you?”
“And Miss Baynes drinking tea all through our music lessons?”
“I wonder if it was tea? She used to get awfully hazy and mop her eyes a lot after a cup or two … How eccentric everything was, wasn’t it? Every one of our instructors cracky. No wonder I’m backward!” She gave a high shout of laughter. “But you’re not. But then you were clever, you and Kate … Oh, look, they’re all beginning to masticate … Where are we at this dismal board? Miles apart, I suppose. Never mind, we’ll talk afterwards. You’re over there, by Rollo. Good-bye.”
She waved her hand in the remembered gesture as she left them, and ran to slip into her place.
Now the scene had shifted on to another plane, unrealistic, strange and familiar. It was as if Marigold’s appearance had somehow co-ordinated diverse ordinary objects, actions, characters, and transmuted them all together into a pattern, a dramatic creation.
Now all was presented as in a film or a play in which one is at one and the same time actor and infinitely detached spectator. The round table with its surface like dark gleaming ice, its silver and glass, its five-branched Georgian candlesticks, the faces, the hands, the silent, swift circulating forms of butler and footman, the light clash and clatter, the mingling voices … all existed at one remove, yet with a closeness and meaning almost painfully exciting. This element I am perfectly at home in. Now all would unfold itself not haphazard but as it must, with complex inevitability.
Rollo on one side, Sir Ronald on the other. Whom had Rollo on his other hand? The one called Mary … and Sir Ronald had the Wicked Fairy. He was leaning towards her ear speaking French with an accomplished Foreign Office accent, scarcely raising his voice. She could hear now all right; she looked lively, rejuvenated, disconcertingly intelligent. Marigold was diagonally opposite, sitting beside her father: no doubt—with the aid of Aunt Blanche on his other side—to spare him social effort. Her hand was laid on his, she stooped forward with a soft rounded thrust of bare shoulders, curving her neck towards him, towards George on her left, animating them both, seeming to caress them, talking with the old mobile lip movements, screwing her eyes up. Her dress was made of some curious thick silk stuff, faintly striped and flecked, greenish whitish, with a gold thread in it, plain and clinging, taken back in a sort of bustle and cut right off the shoulders. Two white magnolias in the front of the bodice touched the table as she leaned out over it.
Drinking clear soup, she said to Rollo:
“It is exciting to see her again.”
“Marigold?”
“Yes. It’s so nice when the years haven’t made a person dim out. I was a tiny bit afraid she might have. You never can tell with those uncertain, shifting faces. Sometimes it’s all over in no time. They just bloom out tentatively and wither off. I suppose it depends what happens inside them. … She’s more extraordinary than ever. She’s really beautiful.”
“Beautiful?” He looked across at her. “Could you say that quite? It’s such a funny little snouty face—indiarubbery—isn’t it?”
“Well—it all depends what you like, I suppose … what you look for.”
“What do you like?”
She said ardently:
“I like what’s uncertain—what’s imperfect. I like what—what breaks out behind the features and is suddenly there and gone again. I like a face to warm up and expand, and collapse and be different every day and night and from every angle … and not be above looking ugly or comic sometimes …”
“I see … It sounds interesting—but not awfully restful.”
Nicola was the other kind, of course—flawless, unimpeachable.
“Is your wife still as lovely as she used to be?”
“Nicola?—Yes, I suppose she is.” His voice was rather flat. “She hasn’t altered much. But she’s not what you so eloquently describe, you know. She doesn’t give you surprises every half-hour.”
“Seeing her once was a lovely surprise.”
“Was it? That’s nice. You didn’t meet her properly, did you? You must some day.” He was silent, his mouth falling into a heavy line. He added abruptly: “It’s a bore when people aren’t strong …”
“Isn’t she strong?”
“No … Always seems to have something wrong with her, poor dear. She’s always taking—having to take to her bed.”
“I’m so sorry. How wretched for you.”
“It is …” His expression was grateful. “You see, she’s awfully—I don’t know—highly strung, I suppose. At least, so her mother tells me … It’s a thousand pities, isn’t it?”
“It is.”
“One’s apt to feel such an insensitive brute—always being with a highly-strung person.”
“I don’t suppose for a moment you need to feel that …”
Was that going further—saying something a little less in the fencing style—than was expected? She felt a qualm. But he said, in the same doubtful, depressed voice:
“Well, I don’t know …” He helped himself to fish before saying with a rueful twist of an eyebrow: “I can’t bear women to cry. I do deplore it
“Yes, it’s a bad habit.”
He said quickly:
“That’s what I think” checked himself; added vaguely:
“No …”
“What does it make you feel when people cry?” she asked lightly. “Sorry? Irritated? or what? Does it melt you, or freeze you?”
He thought a moment.
“Donno. A mixture, I suppose. Damned uncomfortable anyway. I want to rush off miles …” He made a grimace, sighed. “It’s a very sad thing how much men make women cry.” His voice became personal again, light, flirtatious.
“Do they?”
“Don’t they?”
“Well …” She hesitated … Oh, yes! … Memory flashed mal à propos, all out of key … Far back, in the early love-making days with Ivor: so far away, so almost unremembered. And he’d cried too, had needed to be comforted … But that was to be buried …
“Perhaps I’m not much of a crie …”
“Oh, but it’s such a luxury!” he exclaimed with that curious sensual mockery and harshness she had noticed before. “Don’t you know what a luxury tears can be?”
“Well …” She felt at a loss. “P’raps I’ve still to find out.”
“Are you a puritan?”
“No.”
“No, I don’t think you are …”
“So what?” She met his eyes.
“I’m not sur … You don’t give away much, do you? Wise woman.”
“No, I’m not that.”
“Don’t tell me there’s nothing to give away …”
“It’s just that my life’s … not peculiar, I don’t mean, or mysterious … just rather unexplainable …”
“Is it? Try.”
“But it’s not like any kind of life!” she cried out, in a kind of helplessness and distressed reluctance. “Not like any that comes your way, I’m sure.”
“How d’you know what comes my way?”
Not that kind of waking anyway, and getting on a bus, and mornings with Anna; not bed-sitting-rooms and studios of that sort; not that drifting about for inexpensive meals; no
t always the cheapest seats in movies; not that kind of conversation, those catch phrases; not those parties and that particular sort of dressing, drinking, dancing … Most particularly not those evenings alone in Etty’s box of a house, waging the unrewarding, everlasting war on grubbiness—rinsing out, mending stockings for to-morrow, washing brush and comb, cleaning stained linings of handbags; hearing the telephone ring: for Etty again; and the ring before, and the next ring … Not the book taken up, the book laid down, aghast, because of the traffic’s sadness, which was time, lamenting and pouring away down all the streets for ever; because of the lives passing up and down outside with steps and voices of futile purpose and forlorn commotion: draining out my life, out of the window, in their echoing wake, leaving me dry, stranded, sterile, bound solitary to the room’s minute respectability, the gas-fire, the cigarette, the awaited bell, the gramophone’s idiot companionship, the unyielding arm-chair, the narrow bed, the hot-water bottles I must fill, the sleep I must sleep …
“Should I be shocked?” he asked with a comic look of hope.
She burst out laughing.
“No, I’m afraid not … No. I don’t mean to sound interesting. There’s nothing to tell. It isn’t anything.”
She cast about in her mind … Amorphous, insubstantial … Leaning against Etty’s mantelpiece, head pressed down on the edge, till forehead and wood seemed part of one another, thinking: Do I exist? Where is my place? What is this travesty I am fixed in? How do I get out? Is this, after all, what was always going to be? … One couldn’t explain that to him.
“Let’s take it step by step,” he said. “What do you do in the mornings?”
“In the mornings I go to work … But that gives a wrong, busy impression. I help a friend who’s a photographer. Her name’s Anna Cory. She’s very good. I’m a sort of secretary; and sometimes I help her with sitters, when she’s tired or bored.”
“Sounds interesting,” he said conventionally.
“Occasionally it is, but often it isn’t. Nobody comes, or Anna gets sick of the faces and won’t take any trouble …” And is so casual, not to say contemptuous, that they go away flustered, bridling, and do not recommend her to their friends. “She’s a painter, really, a good one, only she says not good enough; and she’s only interested in beautiful people.”
“She sounds rather petulant and exacting. I don’t think I’d like her to take my photograph.”
“I’ve made her sound awful, but she’s nice. And you should see her when she is interested. She’ll take endless trouble. Only of course it isn’t a commercial way of going on. I expect it’ll come to an end soon.”
“And what’ll you do then?”
“Don’t know. Look for something else, I suppose—goodness knows what. I shan’t be snapped up.” He looked faintly disturbed and she added gaily: “The rest of the time I mooch about and go to the pictures, and see people and play the gramophone and talk … Just like other people, in fact. So there really is nothing to tell, you see. What I enjoy most in the world is my hot bath. I’d stay in one all day if it weren’t so debilitating.”
“What a horrible confession.”
“What do you enjoy most in the world?”
He considered, raising his eyebrows:
“I really only like one thing.” He said it in a momentary general silence; laughed to himself and added: “Tell me where you live.”
“I live in the house of my cousin, Etty Somers. P’raps you remember her?”
“Lord, yes, I remember Etty Somers. We were debs together. What’s happened to her? Hasn’t she married?”
“No, she never married. She still floats about—just the same. Does some little odd jobs and goes lunching and dining and night-clubbing …”
“She was very attractive.”
“Yes. She is still: only she’s got a bit teeny-looking—shrunken. And somehow she doesn’t fit these earnest down-to-bedrock days. She’s a pre-war model left over, really. She says garden parties and parasols and blue velvet snoods, and a stall at society bazaars and Lily Elsie … and the Dolly Dialogues and airs and graces. Poor little Ett! Though I don’t know why I say poor. She seems quite safe and happy …” She had her own money, and people with a bit of money were all right. “She never wanted to marry. She could have a dozen times over.”
“I see,” he said. He was looking at her closely, amused … Wondering about me. She said on a sudden impulse, flushing:
“I married years ago—I’m really Mrs. Ivor Craig. It didn’t work. We separated two years ago … However, perhaps you know all that by now.”
“Bad luck,” he said quietly.
“Oh, no. Stupidity. Only myself to blame.”
“Oh, don’t do that,” he said quickly. “Don’t blame yourself. Or any one else. I never do.” He was serious, saying something he meant. “People do what they must,” he said, staring at his plate.
“Yes,” she said, with a kind of internal start. “I think that too.”
It was like a surrender. She felt acquiescent, supported. Now he’s the person who’s said that to me.
As if some obstacle to general sight and hearing had suddenly been removed, she became aware again of the room and its other occupants. Voices, faces by candlelight opened out on her once more. She saw Marigold shaking with laughter, heard her talking shrilly, rapidly, down the table to George and beyond George to her mother, to the man called Denham on her mother’s further side. They seemed to be chaffing Lady Spencer. All were turned laughing towards her, and she was countering their sallies with a quick tongue and a sparkling eye. Dear, dear Lady Spencer, enjoying herself, being teased … Even George looked almost lively. He doesn’t remember me. He looked quite blank when I murmured we’d met … as if he couldn’t have heard aright. He hasn’t changed much … a little less of the flat brown hair on the small round, unintellectual head; frame a little heavier, expression a trifle more stunned, opaque … “D’you remember, Mr. Basset, when you were obliged to correct me for calling pink coats red coats? …” Oh, dear, the mortification … The one called Denham’s got a horrid face. And so has his wife. A coupling of monsters … Rollo ought to talk to her now, she looks constricted, conveying: “Don’t mind me. Being ignored doesn’t upset me in the slightest. I have my own thoughts … Nowadays of course one’s used to bad manners …” Plump, buttoned-up face, baby-blue eyes close-set, turned-up nose, banal obstinate mouth in grooves … Beyond her, the impassive, steadily-chewing macaw’s profile of Aunt Blanche …
Now for Sir Ronald. She turned towards him, breaking the ice with a radiant beam. He said in a surprisingly high, feminine register:
“I feared vis uvverwise delightful meal was going to slip by in vain proximity.”
“I feared so too.” She continued to beam, disarming him. In case he thinks because he’s old … or because I’m too engrossed …
“Better late van never,” he said. His eyes were as limpid, as innocent as a couple of dew-washed periwinkles: the girlish eyes of the British general, the Imperial administrator, the pioneer explorer … He gave a jerk of his head towards his other neighbour, and murmured: “Wonderful creature …”
“She must be. Such an appearance. It’s fabulous, isn’t it?”
“Ve wittiest woman I ever knew,” he pronounced solemnly, “and ve most truly cosmopolitan. And what a musician! … What a musician! …”
Olivia took a look across him at the gaunt aquiline profile set in a dark remotely-brooding immobility, neither eating, drinking, looking nor listening.
“She seems to embody Gothic grandeur …”
He considered this.
“I fink raver of ve great French style,” he said. “Zélide …”
“Ah yes. Zélide …” To reassure him about the extent of my culture.
“In vese days,” he sighed, “a glorious anachronism … a blessed anachronism …”
“Ah, yes.” Time to change the tone. Culture will fail me. “No pudding?” She raised her eyebrows at his empty plate.
“N … No …” he said doubtfully, rather anxiously. He stuck his eyeglass in and eyed the pink-and-white cherry-scattered volupté she was engaged upon. “No, I fink not.”
“It’s so good,—you can’t imagine. Angel’s food.”
“Between you and me,” he murmured, leaning towards her confidentially. “I don’t care much for sweets. Never did. I shall reserve my forces for ve savoury … I suppose vere is a savoury?” He looked anxious again. “I can’t read ve menu at vis distance.”
“‘Croûtes aux champignons à la crême,’” she read encouragingly.
“Ah! Yes—good. Croûtes aux champignons à la crême. Always delicious in vis house. Vey’ve had veir cook close on twenty years here—did you know? I fink I must be acquainted wiv the whole of her extensive repertoire. She’s a wonderful creature. Of course, she has her weak spots like all artists. But she has a way of doing veal …” He cast his eyes up. “It’s like nuffing I ever tasted in vis country … Croûtes aux champignons à la crême. I shall reserve my forces for vat and enjoy vis course vicariously.”
“I love puddings,” she said, in the style of pretty confession. “In fact, I love food altogether.”
“Excellent! So do I. I like to hear a lady admitting to a healthy appetite. From what I gavver, it’s rare in vese degenerate days.” His eyes travelled mildly over her, and his thought was plain: Not that these curves are as they should be … Tastes formed in the Edwardian heyday, when Aunt Blanche had, presumably, dazzled him with her upholstery, revolted from modern concavity. Ah, Blanche and Millicent Venables, notable pair of sisters, graceful, witty, majestic! … And all the others … Alas! a mould discarded. These contemporary silhouettes, not only unalluring but disquieting, like so many other symptoms in the sexes nowadays …
“My very dear sister-in-law, Millicent Spencer,” he went on, polishing his eyeglass, “has always understood to a remarkable degree ve art of living … somefing of a lost art nowadays, to my mind …decidedly a lost art. It includes, I need hardly say, a forough understanding of ve principles of gastronomy … a forough understanding … Her table is still one of ve best in England … one of ve best.” He turned round in his chair and sniffed yearningly towards the serving-table. Still no savoury?
The Weather in the Streets (The Olivia Curtis Novels) Page 8
