Here Be Dragons

by Stella Gibbons

  By this time they were sitting in the most expensive and glamorous restaurant in Hampstead. Nell, who had kept her love of tennis carefully hidden from the games-despising John, now joyfully admitted that she did.

  “Do you play a good game?”

  “I’m not too bad, I think.”

  “Good. We’ll have some games. I’m very keen. It’s about the only form of exercise I can afford nowadays—and even so I can’t manage a sub. to a decent club. We’ll have to play on the public courts at Parliament Hill Fields. What’s your best evening?”

  Nell did not like to dash the expression on a face which had now lost its gloom by telling him that all her evenings were marked by the same longing to get off her feet and sit down.

  “Monday’s a good evening for me. Or Tuesday’s quite good,” she said.

  “Next Tuesday, then. All right?”

  “I’d love it. I’ve been longing for a game.”

  “I’d better get along there tomorrow morning and book a court. There’s a terrific run on them.”

  “But it’s miles across the Heath … before you go to work.”

  “Miles, rubbish. I often go for a walk before breakfast. I can get the 615 trolley on down to Holborn.”

  It was pleasant to talk the same language again with someone. If Nell had not been wondering whether John was cross because she had left the party, she would have been enjoying the occasion even more. Robert ordered coffee and cakes with a quiet but lordly hand, and she did not protest because he seemed to like doing it.

  “This is a nice place,” he said, looking round at the desperate chi-chi elegance. “Dagoes, of course, but rather cheerful, don’t you think? We went to a marvellous place in Hong Kong …”

  He saw her home to Arkwood Road, and was so easy, calm and friendly, that it did not enter Nell’s head that he might kiss her good night. Whether it entered his or not, he did not. He went off very quickly, with a brisk lift of the hand—“Good night, Doctor Livingstone. See you on Tuesday,” and Nell went up the steps looking at the windows. They were wrapped in sulky darkness.

  “So you went off with Robert Lyddington,” John said to her meditatively, meeting her on the stairs a day or two later, “I expect you wondered where I was. I went out to have a drink with a girl who knew someone who might give me a job.”

  “Did you take it?”

  Better to ignore everything else; better not to say anything reproachful; always remember to imply that he could have had the job if he’d wanted it.

  “No … as a matter of fact. How did you get on with R. Lyddington? I’ve always thought him rather pleasant.”

  “Oh, do you know him?”

  “Not ‘know’, exactly. We know some of the same people. He’s a friend of Francesca’s, as a matter of fact. Before she left home she used to frequent a dreadful club in Hampstead, and R. Lyddington used to frequent it too. Hence.”

  “Oh.” Nell knew that John’s ‘dreadful’ meant pleasant, orderly and conventional.

  “How did you get on with him, Nello?”

  “Quite well, I think. We’re going to play tennis.”

  He would find out sooner or later, as he always found out everything, and it might … show him that he was not …

  “Oh? How very healthy and energetic of you. I shall come and lie on a bench and watch, encouraging you with shrill cries. Leaping about in the heat.”

  But all the same Nell thought that he was not pleased.

  However, what did it matter if he were not? His displeasure only meant that he liked to come first, always, with the people he called his friends. This was the first, and the last, time that she tried, ineptly enough, to arouse his jealousy.

  “By the way,” he said, slipping his arm round her waist and leading her downstairs, she having been on her way upstairs, “whom do you think is coming to be a waitress at your café? Chris’s Nerina.”

  “How can she be, John?” stopping to stare at him, “Mrs. Cooper only gave us notice this morning.”

  “I know. What’s the time?” glancing vaguely about him as though expecting to see clocks printed upon the air. “Well, even now Nerina is calling upon your Miss Berringer.”

  “She won’t find her in. She never is in, in the evenings.”

  “I know that, Nello dear. I often walk the Heath at twilight, as you may have observed, and I have seen Miss Berringer and the object of her passion. (It is a passion, by the way. A real one.) But this evening Miss Berringer will be in. Nerina was told that she will be.”

  “Who told her?” demanded Nell.

  “Oh … I helped. I know who’s going away for a few days in Hampstead, and who’s stopping at home … or rather, I know someone who knows a talkative milkman … I knew Mrs. Cooper was leaving The Primula, and I just set myself to find an evening when Miss Berringer would be at home … you see, Nerina can’t call on her during the day because she’s got this washing-up job in Fitzroy Street. But the open-air art exhibition is coming on soon, and Chris will be in Hampstead all day. So Nerina will want to be here in the evenings, and then he can come and meet her after work.”

  “Well …” Nell said.

  Her chief feeling was regret at the departure of Mrs. Cooper. They had all got on so well together. Was Nerina very C.D.? (Coffee Dish.) Nell now applied these initials to a certain type of young person, although she always pictured Nerina as fortyish, dark, and big. Certainly she belonged to what Margie Gaunt called the N.S.B. or No Second-name Brigade.

  “You will like Nerina, Nello. She is quite enchanting.”

  Nell somehow did not think that she would.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  IDYLL: BY GEORGE SAND

  THERE WAS SOME kind of an argument or quarrel going on in Hampstead about the art exhibition. As she hurried to work every morning, looking forward to a day which grew steadily busier and more profitable in tips as the summer advanced, Nell caught glimpses of placards advertising the local paper, which spoke of Art Show disputes and controversies and deadlocks. She also heard snatches of conversation among certain jeans and beards which had begun to frequent The Primula.

  “I hope this doesn’t mean that our new evening piece is arty, and this is the advance guard of her pals,” observed Miss Berringer, studying these portents through the slit in the curtain. “She might be, at that. But it’s probably only the Exhibition, as usual.”

  Nell did not ask for further information. She did not want to hear about Nerina; it would be nuisance enough when she came. John’s obvious liking for ‘Chris’s woman’ had set up in his cousin a sales-resistance to the mere sound of her name.

  Meanwhile a long, low, structure of steel rods and canvas began to appear along the upper part of the High Street which the new C.D. frequenters of The Primula disrespectfully nick-named The Cowshed. This, Nell supposed, would display the paintings and could shelter them if it rained. Hampstead showed increasing signs of being given over to Bohemia; the pavements echoed with flapping of sandals and the clapping of continental clogs; there were tights and striped blue-and-white jeans to be seen loitering round the Underground station, and somehow all this seemed to Nell to be linked with the expected arrival of Nerina at The Primula next Monday evening.

  She did not think much about the event: she had not time: but she had an uneasy feeling. John seemed to be hovering behind it; finding out about things by underground ways, arranging, managing, intriguing. How confidently he had announced that Nerina was coming to work at The Primula! and that had been before she had actually applied for the job.

  He must have taken considerable trouble, in his secretive way, to get her there. And that must mean that he liked her very much.

  Nell was glad to remember that someone else was arriving on Monday evening, as well; Elizabeth Prideaux, home from her finishing school at Châteaux d’Oex, and ready to be presented at one of the Palace Garden Parties. She would be frantically busy (she wrote, on a heroic-looking postcard of the Dent Blanche), but must see Nell very
soon. She would ring up the minute she got back. The postcard had a mysterious postscript, Lucky you, and Nell’s pleasure in the thought of her friend’s arrival was now unclouded by any fears that her own present occupation would be despised.

  Lucky you to be a waitress was what was meant. Nell thought that the envy might not be shared by General and Mrs. Prideaux, but did not mind that so much as she would have three months ago.

  She was not at the tea-shop on Monday, her day off. On the evening of Tuesday, being determined not to hang about a moment later than usual out of curiosity, she went back into the kitchen with her tips after emptying the begging-bowl and found it fuller of people than when she had left it; Miss Berringer, Mary lingering over a final pampering of her stomach, Miss Cody briskly changing her shoes, and someone else, who was standing in a corner slowly taking off a pale, shabby coat. She found herself addressed, in a voice possessing the quality, translated into human tones, of the silvery little bell that summoned the waitresses.

  “Aren’t you John Gaunt’s cousin?” The intonation was social, guarded and composed, yet sweet; it was the word which always recurred when one thought of Nerina.

  “Yes,” was all Nell said, cross because his name made her stomach contract.

  “I thought you must be. He told me to look out for you. I’m Nerina.”

  To look out for you … as if The Primula were the size of a Lyons Corner House. Nell, making a mental note that Nerina was one of the N.S.B., answered pleasantly:

  “Oh, you know John, don’t you … it’s nice to see you here … er …”

  Her primrose hair was tied back in a tassel from a face small and white, with firm childish lips and eyes of lightest green; lovely eyes. Yet she was not pretty. Nell could imagine him admiring her immensely. He never admired people or things that were ordinary.

  “Do you know Benedict Rouse?” Nell asked, beginning to roll up her own apron. She had an unfamiliar pain in her heart.

  “Oh yes. Isn’t he wonderful? So clever …”

  “Very nice.” Nell made poor Benedict sound like a cake, but she could not help it; the pain was rather dismaying.

  “John’s wonderful too. He’s so clever too, isn’t he?”

  “Very,” said Nell, trying not to sound grim.

  There were evidently stronger reasons for his liking Nerina than her looks. Nell already knew that what he liked best of all from his friends was admiration. Some instinct always kept her from pretending to give it him, and she never knew whether he would have liked her more if she had. She only knew that, while she could keep certain feelings for him a secret, she could not pretend to have for him feelings which she did not.

  Nerina was slowly arranging the ends of her apron strings, which went twice round her fairy’s waist, into a butterfly-bow.

  “How old are you?” she went on, more shyly.

  “Nearly twenty. How old are you?”

  “Quite ancient, aren’t you? I’m nearly seventeen.”

  Nell, who would not have been surprised had she said nearly fifteen, thought that there would be other occasions when she could talk to Nerina. She made her farewells rather more briskly than usual, and went off.

  So much for the large, dark, elderly creature of her fancy, who must have been created by John’s use of the word ‘woman’. Now that his liking for Nerina was more understandable it was, thought Nell irritably, more likely to be … a nuisance. This pain, for instance.

  She dismissed the whole affair, yet at the back of her mind there was comfort. Everyone—John, Benedict, all the creatures at The Coffee Dish—agreed that Nerina was very much ‘Chris’s woman’, and, now that Nell had seen her, she recognized (while hoping that she never looked like that) the dreaming, withdrawn, abstracted air of one helplessly in love which she had first noticed in Benedict.

  It was surely unlikely that Nerina, thus shackled, would become interested in … anyone else. As Nell marched homewards she became more cheerful.

  “Nell? Don’t you want any supper?”

  “How can I, mother?” she hardly paused as she was hurrying through the hall in white shorts and shirt, “I told you I was meeting Robert for tennis … leave something out for me, will you … or don’t bother … I’ll get something while I’m out. …”

  “Bring him back with you, dear, if you like,” Anna said calmly to the closing door.

  She stood there for a moment, a large graceful figure in a cotton dress on which the pattern was faded to shadows, holding a tray laden with food more plentiful and nourishing than the Selys had been eating six months ago.

  She was thinking that Nell’s job could not be so tiring as it would seem to be, if she could rush off like that to play tennis at the end of the day. It was most interesting and satisfactory too, that she should have met the grandson of Mr. and Mrs. Lyddington; ‘the old people’ at Willow House. Anna was looking forward to meeting him and to talking about his family: she and Martin had already had two evenings of pleasurable reminiscent talk out of the event. To Anna it was nearly the most interesting thing that had happened since their coming to Hampstead.

  She did not have any typical motherly thoughts about Nell’s having met her first young man, because she had always taken it for granted that Nell would go out with young men when she reached the proper age for doing so. Anna herself had known many, and brusquely yet not ungracefully had rejected their attentions; and the fact that the Selys lived in the heart of the country with little money and few acquaintances had never disturbed her unconscious assumption that Nell would one day be able to make her choice. Now, seeing Nell livelier, more cheerful and apparently getting fun out of life in spite of her queer job, Anna felt pleased. She did not approve of the job; to her sister-in-law she decisively called it ‘this nonsense of Nell’s’ and said firmly that it was only going to be very temporary; Nell must get something better; ‘interesting’, and ‘leading somewhere’. (She had in mind some secretaryship to the Master of a Cambridge college.) But she admitted that the money was wonderfully useful.

  And, although she did not say so to anyone, she admired Nell for working so hard at a job which she for all her better brain could not have tolerated for a day; ‘kow-towing’ to awful people, dishing out weak tea and inferior cakes, listening to the greasy gossip of common women (these terrible opinions, let it be said with slavish haste, were Anna’s only because she had been born before 1914 and in the so-called upper classes). Nell certainly did not get her capacity for mixing with the masses from her mother. Anna supposed that she might get it from Peggy, who had none of the qualities of a lady but possessed many which were useful for living in the world of the nineteen-fifties.

  “Did you have a quiet afternoon, dear?” she asked her husband, while they were eating their supper in the spare room.

  She liked to set a tray of food down anywhere in the house where there was a bit of sunlight or a view, and eat, and Martin was growing to enjoy these picnics too.

  Neither of them realized how irregular their ways had grown, nor how faded, battered and chipped their always shabby possessions had become. Anna did next to no housework; Martin often did not dress until midday. A light veil of dust covered the quiet, brightly painted, rather chilly rooms. When Anna went out to shop, which she did often, she slung on a seven-year-old knitted cap and cardigan, and sometimes Martin, who was beginning to shuffle, went shrinkingly with her as far as the shop where he bought his daily paper. Their voices had grown quieter and their movements slower.

  Miss Lister, who combined a sharp attention to what was happening to other people with a perfectly splendid inability to notice what was happening to herself, had already told the milky-maans that they were Going Down, delivering this verdict (she was never heard to say that anyone was Going Up) after she had been to tea with the Selys at Anna’s invitation. Another kind of observer might have said that after thirty years spent in driving themselves and in presenting two masks to life, they were at last becoming, so far as was now possible, t
heir true selves. Yet another would have said that they were only beginning to grow old.

  Martin roused himself; he had been lost in a long look out of the open window. There it was, rising above the roofs far below the steep fall of the hill: a massive tower of pale-red brick, not of the familiar shape that, for so many months, had set him grieving and trembling, yet it must be a church.

  “Quiet afternoon? Oh no, dearie. I hardly ever do, you know. The telephone went three times, and two young people came, asking for John … don’t any of his friends have any regular work? I thought that all young people worked nowadays.”

  “John’s friends aren’t ordinary young people. Was the telephone anyone for Nell, dear?”

  Nell had taken to demanding “Any telephone messages?” immediately she came home in the evenings.

  “Yes … oh dear. I should have remembered … Elizabeth Prideaux. She wanted Nell to telephone her this evening; I did write down the number; I’ve got it somewhere here … yes … here it is.”

  “I’ll leave it for her in the hall,” Anna said, taking the paper. “You ought really to have a pad for taking all these things down.”

  “Yes. I could use some of my old sermon paper.”

  The words were spoken without any hesitation or glance towards her; his eyes were fixed upon the distant view.

  “How pretty that is,” Anna leant back in her chair sipping her tea, “I wish I could paint.”

  He did not reply. He had just realized that the sight of the church tower was not hurting him.

  Nell and Robert had enjoyed their first evening’s tennis so much, and found themselves so well matched, that they now played on three evenings a week, taking it in turn to manage the difficult business of booking the court. Golders Green was easier to reach for both of them than Parliament Hill Fields, so now they usually played amidst the deer, the magnificent flower gardens, and the Jewish strollers in the Park there. Nell was not quite so tired at the end of the day, now that she was growing accustomed to her work, but she would have had to be much more tired than she was to give up her tennis. She had had her racquet, which was a Slazenger and a birthday present from Lady Fairfax, restrung, and although her clothes were of the cheapest kind possible, one of the most becoming dresses in the modern world had its usual effect upon her appearance, and she was gratified to receive glances of approval.