It was true; there seemed to be almost nothing to eat, and she entertained herself by collecting what food there was and handing it to anyone who looked in want of it or who could spare a second from their loud, quick, grinning conversation to bolt it … it was amusing, moving from group to group and noticing who needed what, and trying to supply it. She would have welcomed some notice from the bright, elderly, successful faces surrounding her on all sides, but the only one who said anything to her but ‘’nks’, in return for a biscuit or a glass (for she had now added that of wine-waiter to her rôle) was a lady who looked at her and murmured rather wistfully “… heavenly to see straight hair,” which was not a very interesting mot to repeat to the parents after the ball.
Someone had opened a window; cool air was eddying the smoke about, and between the parted curtains there showed the lamps in the street and the night sky. Margie, standing still for an instant and rubbing one minute foot, slipped from its shoe, against her glass nylon, was glancing quickly about the room. She looked dog-tired. Her dark-blue dress sprinkled with silver droplets seemed to have drawn down all the colour from her face into its sombreness. The party was almost over.
“Do have a sausage roll …” Nell said, to an enormous bald man surrounded by smaller people who were gaping up at him admiringly as he roared and waved his arms about; it was a silly thing to do, for it stopped him in full flight. He paused, blinked at her, shook his head, glanced at his wrist, screamed, and at once swam majestically off towards Margie, pulling all the smaller people with him, and beginning to apologize for having to leave while he was still within six feet of her. Nell stood in some dismay, watching.
“Good God, why do you have to do this? Haven’t you had a drink yourself? Where’s John? John, why aren’t you looking after Nell? She’s having to be a waitress … can’t you make yourself useful? Oh, must you? Well … yes, tomorrow … no, about a month. Yes, it is … I hope so … lovely to have seen you …”
It was Charles Gaunt, putting a distracted hand on her shoulder as he accompanied some friends to the door, jerking his head towards Margie to bring her into the group as he did so, and pushing Nell with him. John, leisurely approaching across the now almost empty room with a glass in one hand and an immensely long cigarette holder in the other, observed to Nell:
“I suppose you were getting your hand in.”
“Do shut up,” in a low tone.
“Why? There isn’t anyone here who matters now that dear little Gardis has gone … do you like my jacket?” turning his shoulders about to display a white coat, “my papa’s valedictory present. I am sure you don’t. You are going to tell me that it looks weird.”
“I do rather like it, as a matter of fact.”
“It’s too early in the year for it, of course, but I couldn’t resist wearing it. I saw you talking to old Celia Costello. Isn’t she wonderful? Do you know she’s nearly eighty?”
“I thought she was rather horrid.”
“Of course she is but she’s wonderful as well. Why do you always want everything and everybody to be nice? I say, I must go. I don’t want my papa … I’ll see you some time soon, I expect.”
It was difficult to realize that two hours ago this elegant creature had been kissing her neck in a lonely, in-need-of-comfort kind of way. Nell watched him skilfully and charmingly extricate himself from the remnants of the party, with an air of being about to come back to it at any minute. But she thought that he might not come back until long after midnight, if then; often she was aroused in the small hours by the stealthy closing of the front gate or that unmistakable step approaching the house in the quiet of dawn. She never spoke to anyone of these excursions and happenings. To learn his ways, to keep his secrets, gave her the feeling, which was becoming necessary to her, of sharing something with him. Certainly she could not be sure of any other kind of bond.
CHAPTER EIGHT
“AND ALL MY NIGHTLY DREAMS …”
THE LAST GUEST but one had gone. The room looked as repulsive as most rooms on such an occasion. Nell, realizing with embarrassment that she was the last guest, was opening her mouth to apologize and say “thank you for having me,” when Margie cut in, in a flat voice:
“Will you be an absolute angel and help me cope with the washing-up? That wretched man’s never turned up, blast his eyes … not that it would have been his job to wash up anyway, I suppose … but not even to let me know … if you’re really going to be a saint, let’s get it over, shall we?”
Someone had already been stacking some of the glasses on the draining-board in the kitchen, and Nell went to and fro, collecting the remainder, while Margie began the rinsing.
“Have an apron,” she said, indicating two voluminous garments of blue linen embroidered with red. “This is mine and this is Charles’s. He loathes washing up, of course, who doesn’t, but he loves to cook and he’s got quite a reputation. His Oeufs á la Neige and Coq au Pâté are quite famous; Phil Harben will have to look out.”
Her voice rattled on, sounding slightly hoarse from never having stopped talking once during the last four hours, but the conscious sparkle in her face had been replaced by a shut-in exhausted look.
Nell listened without interrupting until Margie herself broke off her stream of chatter, gave a start and muttered, “Oh God, what’s the matter now?” Charles Gaunt could be heard exclaiming and rustling papers in the next room. Margie fixed her eyes apprehensively on the door—while continuing to rinse the glasses. Suddenly, frowning and gnawing his upper lip amidst convulsive twitches, he appeared.
“Do you know anything about this?” holding out a letter with an accusing glare.
“That? Oh, heavens. I meant to tell you …”
“But it hadn’t even been opened. It was lying under a mass of stuff. It’s dated April the fourth and it’s been here ten days.”
“Oh Charles, I truly am sorry … I’m simply desolated … I remember now … it was that time we were up when you had to cover that show for Home Choice … there were some letters in the hall and I was in such a rush … I just brought them up and dumped them on the desk … I was tearing off to see Kitty about those old theatrical prints … and I simply never thought a thing about them from that day to this. It was appalling of me. Has anything absolutely frightful happened as a result?”
She stood there, her hands with their long red nails dangling at her sides, staring at him with a crushed yet also a ‘this-is-the-last-straw-at-the-end-of-such-an-evening’ expression.
“Only that I shall have to sit down at once and write fifteen hundred words for Gracious Living on ‘Wines to Amuse Your Friends’. The dateline is tomorrow.”
“Charles! How frightful.” She fumbled in her apron pocket for the devilish spectacles and set them distractedly on her nose: perhaps to give herself confidence. The whole gesture suggested one of his nervous twitches, much enlarged.
“I’m glad you realize it. Leave all that now, will you, and get out your machine. I’m all in, and so are you, I expect …”
“Who says I’m all in?” tilting the spectacles with a tiny wink at Nell.
“—but I’m not in a position, nowadays, to turn down thirty guineas … we shall be on this until three this morning, I should think … there’s a mass of stuff to be looked up—and the dates on the vintages had better be correct this time …”
“You know how sorry I was about that—”
“… oh, God, and now I can’t tie it up with the advertising …”
“Won’t they do that?”
“You know nothing keeps the wine people sweet like the personal touch … really, Margie, it’s too bad, you know. Are you slipping up, do you think?”
She flung down the tea towel and went to get out her typewriter.
He lingered. He explained to Nell—speaking in a voice jarred with exasperation, whose every word could be heard in the next room—that he looked back on the days when he had had time for his own work as if they were a lost paradise. Of cours
e, she wouldn’t have read The Aftermath, his first novel. It had been written before she was born; it was about the men who had come home after the 1914 war and had had to adjust themselves to what in those days was called Civvy Street, and it had sold eighty thousand copies and made him a nice little bit of money. But he had had to keep it up, of course; not miss his market; follow up success—all the rest of the line—and damn and blast all the people who wouldn’t or couldn’t realize that a writer had to have time to digest his material—and of course, thanks to them, his second book hadn’t done nearly so well as the first—Hercules Bound, it had been called, about industrial troubles and the General Strike of 1926—although Arnold Bennett—she wouldn’t have heard of him either—had praised it in ‘The Evening Standard’, and he’d had to take to journalism to keep the never-never man from the door, and then he’d let himself be persuaded by Peggy into doing a bit of broadcasting as well—and then there’d been Ask Me Another, and from the day he walked into that blasted studio until this he’d never had a minute; not even a spare half-hour a day to write the thriller he’d had in his head for the last three years—and it was damn good too. He knew it was. Almost certain to make a film—and then you were made. But what chance had he got of writing a line? with broadcasts, and articles for the Sunday rags, and the women’s rags, and goodwill tours here and there and all over the place? Not a hope; not a hope in hell.
He was only telling Nell all this so that she might be warned never to take on too much; burn up her health and her nerves doing work she hated. She’d better look at him. He was enough to warn anybody. Of course, if you could once get on T.V., especially on to a panel game, your troubles were over. You could lie back and relax—and God knew that you didn’t have to be good to get on to a panel game … yes, your troubles would be over.
He stopped. The hard light in the kitchen showed up the weariness of his grey face and the dullness of his eyes. He had not once looked at Nell as if he saw her, throughout all his tirade, and now he stood looking down at the floor in silence. She felt rather sorry for him: John’s father.
“Charles? I thought you wanted to get started.” Margie’s voice came snappishly from the next room.
“Yes, we must get down to it.”
He smiled charmingly at Nell and escorted her to the door, she receiving on the way there an absent wave of the spectacles from her hostess. As she ran down the stairs she heard the typewriter begin.
For some reason, she found it pleasant to see the parents seated one on either side of the fireplace in the drawing-room. Her father looked feeble and old, her mother only glanced up long enough from The Hampstead and Highgate Express to ask if she had had a good time? and returned immediately to its columns; nevertheless, Nell thought that they compared well with wonderful old Celia Costello, Gardis and poor Charles-for-god’s-sake, and the rest, and the conclusion influenced her in deciding to stay another two weeks with Akkro Products. Poor old things: they were only just getting used to the idea of her having a job at all.
She announced that she was going down to the kitchen to hunt herself up some supper.
“That reminds me,” Martin looked up slowly from his book, “this afternoon, while everybody was out and I was alone in the house, someone rang up to say that they couldn’t come to the—er—party. It was someone named Patrick, I gathered, who had promised to help wait. He had a cold; they all had colds, he said, so none of them could come, and would I tell Mrs. Gaunt. But the line was bad and I couldn’t hear clearly, and I’m afraid I forgot. Was it all right, do you know?” He looked anxiously at Nell.
“That was a firm that hires out waiters for parties—‘Patrick’, it’s called, Margie said. No, it didn’t matter—there was hardly any food to hand round anyway, and what there was I handed round.”
As she ran down to the kitchen she almost expected to hear cries of “Waiting? What a peculiar way of earning a living. Nell, don’t you ever do anything of that sort” but naturally the drawing-room remained sunk in the usual dull, but somehow comforting, hush which had pertained to all the Vicarage drawing-rooms in which the Selys had ever sat, and she was able to bolt a fried egg and think over her future plans without interruption.
The noise of the typewriter had stopped by three o’clock, so unless poor Margie (Nell now thought of her as poor) were engaged in re-writing the article by hand, the task must have been accomplished. Soon after, Nell heard the sound of the front gate opening, but lay still, refusing to creep to the window and peer out, while the soft night air, scented with hidden leaves, blew faintly into the room. By straining her ears she fancied that she could hear him making his way, with infinite cautiousness, upstairs, and presently, satisfied that he had come in, fell asleep again.
But in the garden at the back of the house, where brilliant starlight made every object mysteriously visible, he was sitting at the foot of the steps leading up to the iron balcony outside the drawing-room, trying to see exactly what he had done to his shin. Attempting to find a way in at the back of the house because he had mislaid his key, he had tripped, and sprawled almost the length of the flight. He was furious with everything, and when a quiet, grating voice behind him said sympathetically, “Poor old chap, did you tumble-down-dee?” he merely growled without looking up.
When he did look up, he saw what might have been a goblin, so small and bundled up was it. A scarf covered the head, and between its folds large bright eyes gleamed behind glasses; it had grey hair, and feet in a doll’s bedroom slippers, and two tiny knotted claws of hands. He looked at it without surprise.
“Yes I jolly well did tumble-down-dee. I hope I didn’t disturb you? I’ve been chucking pebbles at your window for the last twenty minutes.”
“Have you? I didn’t hear you.”
“So I gathered.”
“I was looking for my naughty boy. He will go out at night. I’m sure that vet. didn’t do him properly. They ought not to want to go out at night when they’ve been done. Have some cocoa? I’m going to have a little cupsy.”
“Oh … thank you. It’s awfully kind of you.”
This conversation had been conducted in a succession of piercing whispers. John now slowly gathered himself up, and, assuming the grave gentle expression which always accompanied his mood of feeling like a chivalrous young knight, followed Miss Lister noiselessly down the path towards the light shining dimly in her cottage.
It came from one candle, burning stilly in an old blue holder and sending her humped shadow towering and sliding across the faded walls as she closed the back door, and moved about between cupboard and gas stove. He sat in a broken Windsor chair with arms resting on the table and chin sunk in his hands, staring between eyelids heavy with sleep at the rusty row of saucepans, which looked as if none of them had been used for years, and the chipped cups, whose gilt gleamed faintly through dust, ranged along the dresser. The lovely place, the best place to be in of them all; no need to talk, to pretend, to try; no need to do anything but look, and dream, and almost to catch as it spun murmuring softly, hypnotically by, the moment itself …
“Where have you been, you naughty one?” she asked, coming to the table with the steaming saucepan, but her tone was merely playful; it held no curiosity at all.
“Oh—out and about. Heavenly cocoa. You are kind, Auntie Daisy.”
“After the gir-hirls, eh?” She filled his cup.
“Not this evening.” He sat very still, in furious impatience, smelling the mild yet rich steam while she filled her own: a young knight, a young officer of the 1914 war, did not gulp his cocoa before an old woman, or his men, had been served.
“I’ve got some biscuits somewhere. Damn,” producing a limp object from a tin, “they’ve gone pammagy. That’s only fit to chuck on the fire,” and she removed a rusty lid and threw the biscuit into the boiler. “There.” She sat down at the table and drew her cup towards her and lifted it tremblingly to her pretty, withered lips. “This is cosy, isn’t it? Just you and me.”
“I’m perfectly happy.” He drew the back of his square, powerful hand across his mouth and sighed unrestrainedly. “I don’t know what I should do, without you, Auntie Daisy, and here.”
“Have some more. Do. There’s plenty.”
“Oh … but what about you?” His eyes dwelt on the half-full saucepan like a greedy child’s.
“Now you know I never drink more than one cup, dear. You have it.” She refilled his cup. It was a ritual; the cocoa, the candlelight, and the things they said; and the tiny variations which occurred every time they performed it only added to the delicious sensation of permanence, and timelessness, which it gave him. He tasted the drink voluptuously, with some sense that had nothing to do with his five bodily ones, staring at the stilly flame of the candle.
“No, can’t manage more than one cup now. Not what I was, you know.”
“Nonsense, Auntie Daisy.”
“Nearly seventy-three, dear. Can’t believe it, sometimes.”
“Neither can I. You look so wonderfully young.”
“Oh, come off it … I wish Dandy would come in. Hate him being out at night all among the robber-pussies.”
She got up and trotted to the door. While she stood there, peering out into the dim night where huge slow wafts of air wandered, calling softly for her cat, John stirred the sugar at the bottom of his cup and spooned it into his mouth.
His eighteen-year-old body could successfully keep at bay hunger and weariness and lack of sleep, but nothing could control the images of himself—vast, towering, perpetually changing their rôle but always appearing in sympathetic and romantic shape—which fled continuously across the mirror of his imagination; that mirror which he knew must be cleared of them before it could reflect, as he truly longed that it should reflect, the real things that he saw. To watch this great image pass and re-pass, commanding the love and veneration of all who saw it, was the secret food of his spirit, yet its presence also filled him with guilt and shame. Often he longed to be rid of it, and hidden from it in the place that was even quieter and more safe than this one; the place which he saw, and felt, within his most secret self at times when he was drifting away into the sleep of utter exhaustion.
Here Be Dragons Page 13
