Here Be Dragons

by Stella Gibbons

  It was nearly four o’clock, but the proprietor seemed content to cook eggs and chips for them, and for two men in dirty white coats who had been doing a removal job and had come in for a late lunch. It was almost peaceful in the tiny, steamy, crowded shed; the men talked in quiet, low, tired voices that nevertheless sounded easily below the cruel grinding roar of traffic going by outside, and John had some French cigarettes which he shared with Nell, who was getting a taste for strong tobacco. They could hardly see, through the smoke, across even that tiny place.

  But she thought that the food, which he had eaten at a rate that alarmed her, must have given him indigestion, for his tone was becoming increasingly gloomy.

  “… that time that I was taking the money at a Horror-Through-the-Ages Exhibition at Southend. They paid me a percentage on the takings because I was a barker, too, you see, roaring out about the horrors through my little ticket window … they had a wonderful and horrific Iron Maiden there, Nello, with a man inside her, a real one (that was Monty, he got horribly bored, of course, stuck in a case full of spikes all day and not able to smoke, so they had to pay him more than me). But she was truly wonderful, that Iron Maiden. I used to get into the booth after the show had closed down for the night, and look at her.”

  Nell said nothing, looking down at her cigarette. The charm of his voice was on her, as it had so often been during the past six months. But now it was September … and Benedict, and Nerina and Miss Berringer? The ones who had yielded completely? How was it with all of them? She did not look at him, but only listened; she wanted to look, but something inside herself was stirring faintly and rebelliously, under the spell.

  “The light used to come in through a skylight … you know, in Southend I don’t believe it’s ever truly dark; the land all round is so enormous and so is the estuary, there’s always a kind of ‘darkness made visible’; you can feel all that great gulf of air and water, especially if you’re somewhere high up, standing in those appalling ornamental gardens, and after a time you can see the water … and there was a light in the place where the Iron Maiden was, a sort of … of absence of darkness, more than light … outside you can smell stale fried fish and chips, blowing along the empty streets in the dark. Even the shells down there look grimy. There’s a thin coating of grime over everything. They look spoiled, somehow, those shells, not clean and cold like shells by the real sea. It’s as if they were trying to be clean … you know I don’t mind dirt much (you said I was dirty, this morning), but I minded those shells.…” He was quiet for a moment. “You did say I was dirty, you know.”

  “I didn’t. I said—I wished you would wash more.”

  “It’s the same thing.” He half-turned towards the counter, saying in a low tone, “I wonder if the milk here is fresh?”

  “John, it isn’t the same thing.” His look and tone had unexpectedly gone to her heart. She actually put out her hand and laid it over his, as it rested on the table. “I didn’t mean that, truly.”

  “You did mean it, I can’t rely on you. I can’t rely on anyone. There isn’t a single person, in all the eight million people living in London, that I can truly be myself with and have them still … go on liking me. And you’re just like everybody else. No milk? Oh, all right,” to the proprietor, “tea will be fine, then. Thanks, Jack.”

  “John, I do … you know it isn’t true to say you can’t rely on me.”

  The proprietor, without leaving the counter, handed a cup of tea to the nearest removal man, who made a long arm and passed it over. “Thanks, Jack,” John said again.

  “Do you know why I liked Nerina so much?” he said, after a silence in which he put a great deal of sugar into the tea, “because she never tried to make me different or asked me to give her anything. She never made demands on me. I hate being asked for things; time or attention or liking. I just want to be left alone, and to have someone there when I want them.”

  He was looking at her with the eyes of an angry child. “I was kind to Nerina, Nello, kinder than you realized (I’m always doing things for people I like, only nobody knows about it). Do you know that when I first saw that room of hers, that afternoon, I bloody nearly turned round and ran out of it? I didn’t, but I had to lean against the door, it was a frightening door with no lock, to make myself feel better. I kept thinking I shall die in a room like this, this is the kind of room I’m going to die in, a tiny room high up in an old house lost in the back streets, with just a bare washstand and a terrible bed and a rag of black carpet on the floor, and the sun pouring in, nowhere near setting for hours yet, through the dirty little window; I shall be like Chatterton, ‘the marvellous boy … that perished in his pride’, in that painting of him lying dead—it’s just getting light, and you can see the roofs of all eighteenth-century London through the attic window—only somehow I feel I’ll be older than he is in the picture when I die.”

  He paused and drank tea. He was not looking at her, and Nell slowly withdrew her hand, from which he had jerked his own away. How short her own, inward withdrawal from him had been. Miss Berringer might be dead, and Nerina carrying an illegitimate child, and Benedict’s career threatened by a dreadful girl, but none of this made any difference: N. S. (she was afraid) Loved J. G. She could see the initials scrawled in dim white chalk on a brown London wall. N. S. Loves J. G.

  “Please don’t say things like that, John. You can rely on me, truly.”

  “I’ll believe that when you prove it.”

  They did not talk any more. He drank his tea, staring out through the window at the sooty slope of the railway bank, and Nell thought that she would suggest going home; she had a lot of things to do, and she was beginning to feel she could not bear it here. The removal men finished their meal and went out, one of them winking sympathetically at her as he edged past their table. The grinding of the traffic was swelling towards the rush hour; it came in loudly for a moment, then the door shut it out; it must fit better than seemed likely, that door. How quickly all this had blown up; it had been such a good earlier part of the day.

  Which was worse: this feeling, or having him go away?

  She still had not made up her mind when he turned his head and looked at her, and smiled.

  “I think perhaps we ought to be going. I’ll put you on the Tube. It’s quite easy from here to Hampstead,” he said.

  “Aren’t you coming?” she said, when they were outside once more. The royal blue sky had faded to white; thin cool clouds had crept up to cover it, but the long brown hoardings hiding the railway were flushed with peach from a hidden sunset; in such a light it was possible to like looking even at Fortess Road.

  She had not been able to keep from asking him.

  He shook his head.

  “I don’t think so. I’ve got to meet someone in the West End who may give me a job to fill up time until the tenth.… I’ll just put you on to your train. You’ll be quite safe, you know, Nello darling.”

  And that, in one sense, was the last time she ever saw him.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  JOURNEY TO FRANCE

  “I THINK IT’S a bad sign that you don’t feel tired. You’ll probably collapse suddenly and take weeks to recover,” said Elizabeth.

  “Thanks,” Nell said, sitting on the floor in the Knightsbridge flat on an evening or so later; she had been invited to dinner with the double purpose of assisting Elizabeth to pack for her Jamaican visit, and enjoying a gossip.

  “Truly, Nell. You really should have at least a fortnight’s rest before you start looking again. No-one will give a job to a girl creeping around with a green face.”

  Nell said that she did not creep, but her tone lacked conviction.

  Elizabeth got up lightly from the floor and went over to the bed. “Oh, we must get this done; isn’t it ghastly? help me, there’s a poppet, Nello.”

  Nell got up with a wooden expression; Elizabeth must have heard him use it, for no-one else did.

  “Do you think Jamaica will approve?” Eli
zabeth held out a yellow playsuit.

  “I’m quite sure it will.” Nell was neatly stowing away garments in the cases.

  “It can thank Uncle James for the sight. If it weren’t for him I shouldn’t be getting a smell of Jamaica. He’s always been kind to me; when I was small he used to have an enormous Christmas tree, just for me, in his awful house in Belgrave Square. He lived all alone (except for about eight servants, of course), and the bathrooms had photographs of cricketing teams. Most embarrassing as one got older.”

  “Why did he go to Jamaica.”

  “Chest. He can’t stand the English winter. Now the eight servants are black, and the house is lovely, and he says he’s ‘made arrangements for my entertainment’, so I suppose there will be some young men. At least, that’s my idea of entertainment. It may not be Uncle James’s, of course.”

  Nell folded an evening dress of vivid cotton. She was thinking soberly how nice it would be if she were going to Jamaica, or anywhere else blue and exotic, but she neither expected nor wanted Elizabeth to say I wish you were coming too.

  Her friend did not really wish for Sely’s company in Jamaica, nor indeed, for any female companionship; it might intrude on the entertainment provided by Uncle James.

  “You must ask him to buy you an Espresso bar,” she said.

  Elizabeth sat down suddenly on the bed, which puffed up on either side of her.

  “Sely! What an absolutely wonderful idea. You are the most brilliant girl. Of course I will; that’s exactly what I’ll do. He might, you know, at that.” She was staring at Nell with round and sparkling eyes.

  “Would he, Liz? I was joking.”

  “Yes, but it was like fools rushing in or Baalam’s ass—sorry, I don’t seem able to say the right thing—what I mean is: you spoke more wisely than you knew. He truly might. You see, he isn’t at all one of those blighted bachelor uncles; he’s a cheerful, expansive old thing, and he goes all round the family calling me his Heir (it’s bad luck on Nicholas, but he has got Grandpapa), and so I might persuade him that if he bought me an Espresso he could do the Inland Revenue out of some death duties. You know the way one does.”

  She leant forward waving her white hands about. “I shall ask him right out. You can; he’s that sort of person. (We’re rather alike in some ways. I hate people slithering round the point, too. Of course there’s tact, but that’s different.) And it will be an interest for him, as well. If I were running an Espresso bar with you I should have masses to write to him about, instead of having to try and think up something besides my latest young man (I’ve gaffed a beautiful architect, by the way; remind me to tell you).”

  “Running it with me?” Nell said.

  “Of course,” impatiently. “I shall need your help. I don’t know one thing about the catering trade. Besides—it’s been arranged for ages. You know that.”

  “But I only have fifty pounds, Liz.”

  “So have I. But what you will put into it as capital will be your experience and knowledge; management of staff, and that sort of thing … where shall we have it? In Knightsbridge? Or do you think that’s getting overcrowded with them?”

  Nell was now sitting on the bed too.

  “Oh … Knightsbridge or that part of London. … I don’t think it’s too overcrowded yet … and competition is healthy, it will keep us on our toes. Oh …” she got up and walked quickly round the room, and sat down on the bed again, “unless there really is a chance, don’t let’s talk about it,” shaking her head and shutting her eyes.

  “There’s a very good chance,” said Elizabeth.

  “Won’t he disapprove of an Espresso? Too modern?”

  “Oh, he isn’t in the least like that. He had a rather dim youth himself; he was too delicate to go to school or to Cambridge; and now he likes to see the young doing what he thinks are dashing things. He adored it when all those girls and boys did The Frogs; he took a party to it.”

  “He sounds nice.”

  “He is. Oh God, we must get this packing done. Now, Sely,” beginning to switch clothes into neat piles, “we’ll have a plan of campaign. (Strategy. You begin with strategy and tactics is putting it into practice. That’s quoting Daddy.) You get yourself a good rest and be all full of energy for helping to run the Espresso in the autumn, and I will ask Uncle James to buy it for us.”

  “How soon will you ask him? Or will that depend?”

  “Almost as soon as I get there. I shan’t be able to wait—at least, of course I could wait, but I dislike manœuvring round anything unless it’s strictly necessary. (Actually I’m good at manœuvring, so it makes it rather difficult my disliking it.) And Uncle James doesn’t expect me to manœuvre round him. He would be surprised if I did. He might even be rather hurt. So be prepared for news of one kind or another soon, my Sely-bird.”

  She fitted two rolled pairs of stockings into a space which they exactly filled, and shut the case.

  “And I will tell you what I will do,” she said, “if it’s ‘yes’, I’ll telephone you.”

  “All the way from Jamaica?”

  “All the way from Jamaica. Madly expensive, of course, but Uncle James won’t mind; that’s the kind of thing he enjoys. (We shan’t have to sit on this, it shuts perfectly.)”

  So did the other three cases. However, Nell had not anticipated having to sit on any awkwardly bulging suitcase belonging to Elizabeth.

  She began the rest cure that night by going to bed as soon as she arrived home, but was too much absorbed by thought to sleep.

  There was excitement, and anticipatory pleasure, but there were also doubts; Nell wondered if she could be as content with an Espresso bar as with a tea-shop. Whenever she had pictured her own place, she had seen white walls, chintz curtains, pieces of old china and tables of stained oak, and always behind the modest vision was the half-realized wish to refresh people. The clients of an Espresso bar would scarcely need refreshment; pepping customers up by giving them a shot of coffee was not the same thing.

  It was not that she preferred old trouts as customers. There had been too many old trouts at The Primula. But she thought that she preferred the ordinary mild crowd that frequents tea-shops to the kind of crowd that patronizes the Espresso bars.

  Heavens, I can’t be complaining? She rolled over restlessly.

  If he does buy it for us it will be the most marvellous …

  Then what shall I do about getting a job? Liz and I didn’t discuss that. Of course, I could always arrange to leave, if I had to, at a moment’s notice.…

  It was true that she was tired; she had been walking about Knightsbridge and Mayfair all day; looking at places and sizing them up, but doing only that; not going inside to enquire about vacancies. At the moment she felt that she needed, rather than wanted, a job. And she missed The Primula; she missed its staff; and once while she was peering critically into an ultra-smart coffee-bar near Harrods’, she had seemed to hear a beautiful voice saying petulantly, I detest smart places; they’re vulgar. Do you want to work in a smart place, Nello?

  She remembered hearing that now, and, as she remembered, her limbs seemed gently to contract, and her heart did the thing called ‘missing a beat’. She almost sat up in bed. But she did not; she lay still; and then gave a long, soft whistle.

  Today was the tenth; the day that he took his Medical.

  How had he got on? And how could she possibly have forgotten? Unbelievable; yet she had forgotten, just as Nerina had forgotten about Chris’s painting things when once she knew about the baby. Nell must be more tired than she knew.

  She did not realize that this was the first time, since their meeting in the freak March fog of six months ago, that she had forgotten anything that had to do with him; she only felt guilty; seeing herself as a false cousin and unreliable friend; and her thoughts were concerned no more with tea-shop or Espresso bar before at last she fell asleep.

  In the morning, part of her problems were removed by the arrival in the post of a cheque for two hundred
pounds.

  It was for Martin, a present from Peggy, who was so very sorry to hear Nell’s bad news. He was to do exactly what he liked with the cheque, but please would he not be too sensible.

  It could not have come at a better time, and Nell brought in the tea to hear the parents arranging to take themselves that evening very modestly to the theatre. Wouldn’t Nell like to come too? No, thank you; Robert was coming to coffee. Oh yes, said Anna; she had forgotten; and by the way, someone had been trying to get Nell all day yesterday on the telephone. One of those tiresome people who wouldn’t leave a name. A woman.

  Nell put down the teapot carefully. All day? It might be someone with a message.…

  “Do you know how John got on at his Medical?” she asked, sitting down at the table.

  Anna shook her head. “His father was asking for him yesterday evening; he seemed in rather a stew. I said we hadn’t seen him for days.” And no more we have, thought Nell, bolting cereal; it’s quite three days, nearer four. Faint uneasiness began to steal through her. But there was plenty to discuss; the cheque, and the Uncle James plan, and John was not mentioned again. The day passed quietly; Nell thought she would not go into town; she performed household duties and paid some attention to a wardrobe which the busy summer months had forced her to neglect. Latish in the afternoon Anna went off with Martin to some service. They had secured tickets for that very good play about the Jesuits, with Donald Wolfit, and would go straight on into town from Saint Saviour’s, having supper somewhere before the performance.

  The house was quiet. It was getting dusk in the road outside. Nell was sitting in her bedroom, mending by the light of her bedside lamp, when the front door bell rang.

  She had such a quick, strong feeling that it was John. The uneasiness, which had been growing upon her since she remembered having seen some of his dangerous friends in their odd, dark, heavy clothes wandering down Oxford Street yesterday in the customary manner, lifted at once. She dropped the mending and ran down into the hall: he must have forgotten his key, as usual.