“I love your dress, Anna,” said Olivia. It was made of stiff, dull, rich prune-coloured stuff, high in the neck, with long sleeves and a fitted waist, perfectly plain.
“Oh … It’s French stuff,” said Anna, still hanging back. “Simon gave it to me. I don’t like it on me. It’s too important.”
“Nonsense!”
“I’ve never seen you in such a good dress,” said Colin.
“I quite agree, my dear Anna,” said Adrian.
“It ought to be yours,” said Anna, gripping Olivia’s arm. “I shall give it to you.” Her eyes started to fix, in panic and revulsion: seeing through and opposing the attempt to support her upwards into the throng with a show of bright normal behaviour. They all stood still, unnerved, guiltily meeting each other’s eyes; Olivia by her side, the others behind her. It was one of those moments in a party when there is no coming and going; when, arriving late, listening in alarm, you think you have mistaken the night, for the house seems deserted.
But next moment, as if they had been momentarily deaf and hearing was now restored, voices, movement, laughter opened out on them above. Two or three young people came bounding down the stairs, brushing past them without a look. Anna went quietly on, saying in a murmur to Olivia:
“How is he?”
“Better. Much. Moved to London. I get only an occasional bulletin now?’
“His mother?”
“M’m … I’m to be allowed to see him soon—just once, when she can arrange it.”
“Good!”
Wanting to say: But none of that matters, for God’s sake don’t think of me, don’t sympathise—it’s not of the least importance … Forgive me for my letter … The letter dashed off in frenzy the night of Rollo’s accident had crossed the one from Anna saying Simon died peacefully at two this morning. Hers was so calm, restrained, and when she got my yell she sent a pre-paid telegram saying so distressed wire news at once. She’d behaved too well. Oh, Anna! … If she wouldn’t look at us as if we were shadows.
They reached the broad first-floor landing and met the hubbub and the brilliant light. Peter Cunningham appeared on the threshold, pale, handsome, his blue crystal eyes burning, slightly drunk, holding a plate and a glass. He cried, “Anna!” with such warmth of welcome that his cry seemed to draw her forward to join him. He encircled her with the arm that held the glass and made her drink. They heard him say: “This was for old Cora, but we’ll get her some more perhaps. Don’t leave my side. Anna darling, you look marvellous and I am so pleased to see you.” They drifted off together.
Yes, he was a bit like Simon—the colouring, the shape of the face. If he was going to make a fuss of her, she’d be all right. He wasn’t of intrinsic importance, she’d see that now: but one went on feeling emotional about people long after one had seen through them; and he might help to link her on to living again—blow up a spark in her perfectly indifferent, faintly smiling face.
“You managed to get her here,” said Olivia to Colin: for one must force oneself to speak of her and Simon sensibly, without this anguished chest; discuss ways and means, what’s best to do for her; practically, dispassionately. It’s not my tragedy. I’m right outside. It was my day-dream, loving Simon.
“Yes,” said Colin, staring at the party. “She was acquiescent. Agreed it was time to start seeing people again—and a party was the easiest way. I made her tight after tea and dashed her up and took her to the Palladium. She enjoyed that. I’ve never seen her laugh more.”
“Does she talk about him?”
“Yes. A good deal. She’s been going through old papers of his all day—burning a lot—and sorting his clothes and things. She wants to distribute them and be done with them. She’s quite calm. I don’t think she sleeps. But last night I made her take a drug.”
“Good …” Well, we shall all get used to it in time … “Come and find a drink.”
Adrian had disappeared. Soon Colin, acclaimed and surrounded, vanished too. One thing about having had a lot of trouble—I don’t mind any more being stranded at a party. The tide’s going away from me, carrying them all on its crest; my dress is an old boring one; I can’t say I care.
At the buffet in the farther room, a large young man in a dark suit that needed pressing, elbowed her in an effort to reach the galantine. He turned out to be her brother James. She said:
“I was wondering where I’d seen you before.”
He looked at her under his eyelids. She noticed he had that look of a bird of prey … a wild or untamed version of Dad’s and Uncle Oswald’s look of a queer bird. A notable young man, alarming.
“Have some of this,” he said. “It’s remarkably good.”
“When did you get back?”
“A few days ago.”
“Been home?”
He looked at her quizzically.
“Not yet. I’m going to-morrow perhaps—or next week. It depends.”
His voice was cool, slightly ironic. You leave me alone, it said. I’ll go home when I like.
“It seems very odd to find you in this galère. How did you get here?”
“Through the back door,” he said. “I’m friendly with the second footman.”
He doesn’t trust me … I don’t blame him … He used to trust me when he was a child.
“It’s terribly nice to see you, James. You look awfully well.”
“So do you,” he said …
I don’t … But he wouldn’t notice.
“You seem to have grown enormously and filled out, or something.”
“Yes, I have,” he said. “My chest measurement’s a good two inches up on last year.”
“Splendid … Thank you for all your post cards.”
“Can’t thank you for yours,” he said.
“I know—I’m a hopeless correspondent. I did mean to …”
“You might have sent me one line, I do think.”
He sounded injured. She thought: Can I win him then?
“I’ve thought of you a lot. Only I felt out of touch … I thought anything I wrote might seem unreal … or unwarranted.” Taking the plate of galantine from him, she added quickly but casually: “Any plans?”
“Nothing definite. I shall go back to Paris soon, I think, for the winter, and then do a bit more wandering. I want to go to Central Europe, and then perhaps eastward a bit—Russia—Persia.”
“I see.” It sounded an impressive, expensive programme. But one must be careful to take it for granted he was sole master of his movements. “You like living abroad?”
“I do.”
“Got friends?”
“Some.”
Among that young, unknown group, perhaps, swarming in and over the settee, looking confident and lively.
“Have you been writing?”
“Yes.” He glanced at her; then seeming suddenly to decide to trust her, said: “New Poetry has taken two. Look out for them if you’re interested. I’ve got a sort of play in verse too … I’ll show you some of the stuff one day. If you like.”
“I should indeed like. How exciting.”
She thought: He’ll do something, and I never shall. Achievement-to-come sat on his brow, it seemed to her, as it had in his childhood. He had his eyes again, and they were the same but different; he’d struggled a good deal, suffered … He looked twenty-five rather than eighteen: twenty-five and five years old mixed. Something’s happened to him that didn’t happen to his sisters … He’s broken the mould entirely which we were all cast in. Kate might have but she wouldn’t—doubting herself and her rebellion, deciding the discipline of ordinary ways was best. I might have, but I couldn’t: meeting everybody half-way, a foot all over the place, slipping up here and there; in a flux, or thinking things funny. But he won’t do that.
“How’s the old man?” he said.
“Just the same.
There he sits. Sometimes he makes a remark and Mother marvels at his brilliance and quotes it to everybody—like a parent with a child just beginning to talk.”
He brooded.
“I rather wish I’d known him,” he said.
“I wish you had. He was …” No good going into that now. Still, it was curiously consoling, James saying that.
“Is Mother still sore about the mill?” he said.
“No, I’m sure she’s not. She’s changed, I think—or gone back to something. Now she’s alone so much she seems to turn things over in her mind. She makes pronouncements which fairly make one sit up; about education being no use and one can overdo self-control, and there’s a lot in this new psychology, and trying to direct other people’s lives is unpardonable. … All the old manner but such different matter I feel quite shocked. What d’you think she said last time I was there? Out of the blue: ‘Your Grandpapa lived much too long—he ruined his children’s lives.’ Think! Grandpapa!”
Smiling together, seeing in mind’s eye Grandpapa’s imperial expanse of waistcoat and watch-chain, his magician’s beard and dome of baldness guarding the sideboard, they were brother and sister.
“Poor Mother—” he said regretfully, well disposed but detached, unfilial sounding. “I’m glad she feels like that about the career question. Because I don’t intend to settle down and be a credit.”
“How about money?”
“I’m all right.”
“A hundred and fifty doesn’t go very far,” she said, carefully casual.
He looked at her under lowered lids, debating within himself. Of course,” he said, colouring, looking youthful, “I hope to be able to earn a trifle by my writing. But apart from that … I tap another source, you know.”
“No, I didn’t know,” she said mildly.
“Uncle Oswald.”
That was a startler and no mistake. But she managed to say with no more than the slightest lift of the eyebrows:
“I’d no idea …”
“Isn’t it amazing?” he said, appeased by her equable front. “He started it about a year ago—just before I was packed off to Fontainebleau. He just wrote and told me he’d made arrangements for me to have a hundred a year from him—to help me do what I wanted—so that I needn’t be pushed into anything for lack of funds.”
“But he’s got nothing himself … Two or three hundred …”
“He said he had enough—more than he needed. Anyway, when I saw him just before I went, and said he mustn’t, he got into one of those moods—you know, when he whisks down all the blinds and shrinks up to a little monkey-nut.”
“I know.”
They both fell silent, contemplating afresh the fact, which had been from the beginning, of Uncle Oswald’s secretive nobility about possessions. All my life he’s worn the same threadbare overcoat; frayed linen, grease spots on his suit; he lives in one dark room and hasn’t enough to eat and gives his money away in the streets. Once, on my birthday, I put my hand out to shake hands and he slipped ten shillings into it, pretending not to know he’d done it … The only purely disinterested character I’ve ever met … Not quite right in the head, the freak of the family … a bit sinister, too—not altogether attractive …
“It never occurred to me he knew what was going on,” said James. “He never appears to register, does he? He didn’t say one word to me. For some reason I couldn’t stand the sight of him just then. I tell you what. I’ve an idea he pinched the key of my desk one day and read my journal. I knew some-body’d been at it.” He laughed. For a moment his expression had the oddest resemblance to Uncle Oswald’s: knowing, ambiguous, humorously sly.
“Please, it wasn’t me.” Though I wanted to …
“I never suspected you,” he said, “of as much interest in my affairs as that.”
Now, was that meant to be a crack?
He put his plate down and said pleasantly:
“Why don’t you come out to Paris for a bit this winter? I could show you a side of it you probably don’t know.”
“I might, James.” She was gratified. “I’d like to.”
“Well, think about it,” he said.
He’s not a bit interested in me, doesn’t wonder what my life is. Not that I mind at all, it’s rather a comfort. We might manage to get on, I shouldn’t wonder. He’d be delighted to show me round, instruct me …
He was scrutinising a picture of Simon’s hanging just above their heads; a Provencal landscape.
“Is that by that man Cassidy?”
“Yes, Simon Cassidy. Those panels are his too—and that portrait.” I can tell him something too.
“Extraordinarily competent,” he said after a pause; “but on the sentimental side, isn’t it? Nasty pink.” He had the kind of dominating nose and curling lip that seem to scorn whatever they observe. “He’s dead, isn’t he?”
“Yes, he died nearly two months ago. He was a great friend of mine.”
He nodded, not interested; strolled away—by design?—as Adrian bore down upon them.
“My dear,” said Adrian, “between you and me, I feel profoundly uneasy. The younger generation’s fairly hammering at the door—what do you feel? Who was that eagle you were engaged with?”
“My brother.”
“Good God! I didn’t know you had one. Is he nice?”
“Not exactly. He rouses pride in me, but also dismay.”
“Why?”
“Well, I don’t know … Something to do with feeling his principles might oblige him to shoot us in the revolution.”
“Good God! How beastly.” Adrian had become a good deal tipsier in the last half-hour. “He looks to me an absolutely cold-blooded beast. I’m sorry—he’s your brother, Olivia—but I must say it. Now, don’t let’s think about him any more. I come to you, my dear, with a personal request.” He took her hand. His lower lip trembled.
“What, Adrian?”
“You are my friend, aren’t you, Olivia? There’s nobody else I can turn to. The only being besides myself who believes in disinterested affection.” He burst into tears. “You’re not laughing at me, are you?”
“Of course I’m not.”
“You see that boy over there? The one who took the front part of the bull …”
“Yes?”
“I know it’s no good. I simply know he’ll dislike me and be disagreeable—but to avoid the humiliation, my dear, of being an instantaneous object of suspicion—because all I want—which I know he won’t believe, or his parents won’t—is to offer him my friendship and affection … which at my age, my dear, is absolutely all one wants …”
“I know, Adrian. Shall we go and talk to him?”
“That’s precisely what I was about to suggest. If you’d support me, my dear—break the ice with a few light friendly words— I leave it to you …”
They crossed the room, went out on to the landing and approached a fair-crested, attractive youth with a natural look of dissipation. He was standing alone upon the landing, leaning against the headpost of the banisters. She said to him with all the light amiability at her command:
“Do tell me, were you the front part of the bull or the back part?”
“The back part,” he said simply.
“There, Adrian!” She looked encouragingly at Adrian; adding to the youth: “We’ve been having an argument about you.”
Nervous, wistful, a bowed column of wincing, tender susceptibilities, Adrian uttered a hollow laugh, and said:
“I was absolutely convinced you were the front part.”
“Were you?” said the youth. He seemed very sleepy, and didn’t look more than fifteen. He looked vaguely away, then at his feet. Silence fell.
“You were frightfully good,” said Olivia, losing ground.
“Did you think so?” he said politely.
“Wasn’t it awfully hot under those great thick rugs?”
“Not particularly; I had a little hole to breathe through.”
“It was frightfully amusing,” said Adrian. “When you suddenly emerged at the end … U—uh—huh—huh—huh—huh!” What a laugh—he oughtn’t to attempt it …
“Did you think so?”
Well, I can’t do any more … She slipped away. Out of the tail of her eye she saw Adrian take a feeble step forward, saying with an unnerved swallow:
“Which was it you said you were—the front part or the back part?”
“The back part.”
Jasper kissed her hand with old-world courtesy, gazed deeply beneath his brows upon her, said intensely: “Yes …” nodding his head with slow and cryptic significance. But soon he passed on. I can’t be bothered to-night and nor can he. He’s other fish to fry. Fresh, palpitating young virgins to mould and subjugate. I’m in a black dress, drab and sober, unalluring; an old stager with a totally undistinguished walking-on part … It’s Rollo’s fault, and Simon’s … Something with resentment, defiance, bitter, stirred inside her. I must be attractive again. I shall find another lover, Rollo … Simon, I shall stop weeping for you. You make my face as dead as you are.
The party was splitting up and evaporating. One room was now almost entirely occupied by a noisy huddle dancing and stamping in a ring—Lancers, judging from the shouting of contradictory orders, and the passing and repassing in different directions. Colin’s face flashed up, sharply defined upon a background of more or less amorphous entities: frantic, he looked, with dilated eyes, one arm round the waist of Amanda, and the other encircling a plump, appealing young creature with a mop of dark curls and a dewy skin. Amanda was flushed, laughing—enjoying herself; she looked peaceful, dissolved into the noise and rhythm.
“Grand Chain!” shouted someone; and Olivia flung herself forward to join them, seizing and seized at random, whirled round, carried off her feet … Mingling at last … for the first time this evening: laughing back into laughing faces … But only for a few minutes. Soon it all petered out, broke up and drifted away … as if I’d broken it up … She was left among a mixed group of drunken acquaintances, secondary figures; and David Cooke said:
The Weather in the Streets (The Olivia Curtis Novels) Page 37
