Ten Pollitt Place

by C. H. B. Kitchin

  Justin paused, as though he anticipated cries of ‘Shame!’ But when these were not forthcoming, he continued, ‘After this fine preamble, Mr Lorry quoted one of my less inspired sent­ences—a clumsy one, I admit—I see now that I phrased it as I did to avoid ambiguity over a personal pronoun, but I ought to have taken more pains—well, he took this wretched sentence and browbeat me with it for half a paragraph. But this bores you. Please do have a cigarette. Lady Victoria? Oh, of course, like me you don’t smoke.’

  As he spoke, he went to a side-table, picked up a mahogany tea-caddy case, opened it and looked a little puzzled. ‘Oh dear, there are only two Virginians left. I thought I emptied a packet of twenty into it a few days ago.’

  Lady Beatrice said, ‘Do you think perhaps the invaluable Magda——?’

  Justin shook his head. ‘Oh no, I’m quite sure she wouldn’t. I must be mistaken. Please don’t be deterred. As I said, I never smoke now.’

  Lady Beatrice took a Virginian, and Lady Farless, after taking one from the compartment reserved for Turkish, which contained a great many, reverted to the subject of Justin’s reviews and said, ‘The Sunday Beholder is so dreadfully left-wing, I never take any notice what it says.’

  Nobody contradicted her, and Lady Victoria, who had been busy with thoughts of her own, murmured, ‘You’d hardly think it, Justin, but I was once considered an enfant terrible.’ (Indeed, no one could think so, who saw her small, starved-looking body, her bluish skin and her trembling little hands. Yet she had a graciousness and a sweetness of which the other two women were devoid.)

  Justin, ignoring both the last remarks, said introspectively, ‘The worst of it is, I’m not sure that James Lorry isn’t right.’

  Then Lady Beatrice, feeling that it was high time that the conversation should be pulled together, asked, ‘Mr Bray, how many books have you published?’

  ‘Seven Silent Sinners was my twenty-fourth.’

  ‘Oh, but you should have a silver jubilee. You must write one more, to make up the twenty-five.’

  The advice was meant to be encouraging, but even Lady Beatrice realised that she had put it rather tactlessly. It implied a number of unpleasant things,—not only that Justin’s twenty-fifth book would certainly be his last, but that he would be hard put to write it, and that even if he did succeed in doing so, the book’s only merit would lie in ending a series,—the merit of the hundred thousandth purchaser at Garrows’ sale, who received a free gift for having the luck to complete such a spanking total.

  Lady Farless thought the whole subject should be dropped.

  She said, ‘Oh, Mr Bray, I’ve a piece of news for you. I spent a fortnight in Cornwall this summer with some friends and they remember your Miss Tredennick quite well. Do you know, they said she wasn’t Cornish at all? Her grandfather—or it may have been her great-grandfather—who was more or less a self-made man, took the name simply because he liked the sound of it. Later, Miss Tredennick’s father sold the family business, left the Midlands and bought Polvannion, where he passed as the genuine article. He sailed and fished and shot birds and had them stuffed and sat over his port after dinner reading Horace. Has Miss Tredennick ever told you her father read Horace?’

  ‘Oh yes, she has. She can even quote one of the Odes—

  Aequam memento rebus in arduis

  Servare mentem. . . .

  I forget it now. I’ve never discovered if she can translate it.’

  Lady Farless, who had once gone to tea with Miss Treden­nick, tried to patronise her and was snubbed for her pains, continued, ‘I can’t think she was ever an attractive woman. She suffers too much from acidity to have any charm. Do you like her, Mr Bray?’

  ‘Yes, I quite like her.’

  ‘That means you don’t, of course. I wonder if anyone does. Do you think her ex-maid, your treasure’s mother, really cares for her, or is she hanging on for a legacy?’

  ‘I think Mrs Muller is a very good woman.’

  ‘So she’s hardly one of your seven silent sinners,’ said Lady Beatrice.

  ‘She may have sinned, but be repenting for it.’

  ‘And the perfect Magda,’ Lady Farless went on, ‘what a time that girl has. Of course it must be a pleasure to look after you, but if she has to spend all the rest of her time dancing attendance on that old woman, I’m really sorry for her.’

  Then Lady Victoria, who, if she was following the conversa­tion at all, was doing so at a distance of ten minutes, said, ‘Justin, do you remember the day I came to tea with your dear mother in your beautiful home at Haresley, and you came in and recited a very long piece from some Greek play you were going to act at school the next term? I can’t have been much more than twenty-eight, but I suppose I looked just as old to you then as I do now. Oh dear, how quickly this delightful afternoon has gone. Thank you so much for it. Let me see, the girl put my coat on a table in the hall, I think.’

  Justin said, ‘I ordered a car to take you back. It should be here in about five minutes.’

  ‘But that was most wrong of you. No, I’m not even going to thank you. I can still get on buses and I want to do it as long as I possibly can. I love them.’

  It was a chance for Lady Farless to let it be known that she never used such a means of conveyance.

  ‘But don’t you find the conductors terribly rude? I’m told they simply show no respect at all.’

  ‘Why should they? They help me on and off and see to my parcels if I’m carrying one, and call me “Mum” or “Ducks”, which I adore. And nobody ever gives them the smallest tip. Try that on a taxi-driver and see what happens!’

  Lady Beatrice said, ‘I agree to that,’ and Lady Farless, making it quite clear that she never used taxis either, added, ‘Yes, I’m told they’re just as bad. What are your views, Mr Bray?’

  ‘Like Lady Victoria I take buses whenever I can—and make it a point of honour to climb the stairs to the upper deck. I devoutly hope I shall die before that simple pleasure is taken from me.’

  Lady Victoria shuddered and said, ‘Oh, Justin, don’t talk of your dying,’ while the other two women made deprecating noises. The front-door bell rang and Justin went into the hall. When he was out of earshot, Lady Beatrice said, ‘I’m afraid he is looking older than when I saw him in the early summer.’ Lady Farless agreed. ‘It must be that book of his. Between ourselves, I did manage to finish it, but found it heavy going. Well, I think it’s time we heavily went ourselves. Can I give you a lift? My car’s in the Crescent. My chauffeur said he thought he’d better park there, as this street was so full of cars when we arrived. Oh, Lady Victoria,—if only I’d known you hadn’t a car, I should have been delighted to take you home.’

  Lady Victoria smiled and said, ‘That’s very kind—but even so, I should have preferred to go home by bus.’

  Justin came back. ‘Yes, Lady Victoria, your car is here. But really there’s no hurry. Won’t you have a little sip of brandy before you go? After tea is an excellent time for it. Are you quite sure? What about you, Lady Beatrice,—and you, Lady Farless?’

  Lady Victoria and Lady Beatrice shook their heads and smiled. Lady Farless also shook hers, but she didn’t smile, as she felt that Lady Victoria’s rejection of her car had been meant as an affront. (Thank goodness she still had a lot more money than these two daughters of impoverished earls.)

  Half in and half out of the room, the farewells began. When the hired car had left with Lady Victoria, and the backs of Lady Beatrice and Lady Farless could be seen crossing the end of the road into the Crescent, Justin turned round and saw an angel-face beaming up at him from the area. He quite liked Hugo,—more sincerely than he ‘quite liked’ Miss Tredennick.

  ‘Oh, it’s you! Have you been spying on my guests?’

  ‘No, Mr Bray, I didn’t come out for that. I’m not a spy, though they said my father was one.’

  ‘Who said that, Hugo?’

  ‘Oh, the boys in Cornwall, when Mother brought me back there after the war. But I think th
ey got it quite wrong.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ As Hugo didn’t answer, he added, ‘You’ll catch a cold in that thin pullover.’ Hugo looked at him intently for a moment, as if summing him up, then said, ‘Good night, Mr Bray,’ and went through the area door.

  Justin looked at the sky, now dark with clouds and the coming of dusk, and then up and down the street which was empty except for a young woman who strode along it from the further end with a jaunty swinging of her hips. She wore a thin bright dress which fluttered about her knees in the rising breeze. When she came nearer, Justin recognised her as one of the lodgers who went in and out of Number Seven. Her body seemed alive with enterprise and appetites which gratification would only serve to renew. She was on the south side of the street, but as she passed, she turned her head and gave him a bold, interrogative stare. Justin turned his eyes again towards the sky, affecting to study it, and thought, ‘What a difference between her and those three women who have just had tea with me! If it comes to that, what a difference there is between her and me! And yet, she’s probably had more happiness already than any of us. Well, it isn’t my fault that I wasn’t born like her.’

  He sighed with a stab of envy, went indoors to his room and sat down at his desk, alone.

  IV

  THE TENTH OF OCTOBER

  The mists dissolved, the gauzy vapours obscuring the critical brain quivered and shrank into smoky wreaths, while a ring of light, both perilous and precious beyond all imagining, seemed to swim round inside Robert Fawley’s head.

  He sat up in bed, and looking deliberately at his wife’s empty bed by the opposite wall, admitted to himself, for the first time and without any kind of reservation, that he had no longer an atom of love for her. Not an atom! The word made him almost laugh. His job was to deal with atoms, and he knew very well that in spite of their smallness they were far from contemptible. Words were funny things. Poets like Swin­burne and novelists like Justin Bray strung them together to make jingling noises all about nothing. Figures and facts were the only gateways to reality. Yet were they? A delicious con­fusion muddled his mind, though two vital antitheses stood out clearly enough,—he was out of love with his wife and in love with Magda.

  He yawned, stretched himself, jumped out of bed and stood up. His body was well-proportioned and showed few signs of middle-aged fat. He had fairish hair and small, rather closely packed features that could relax into amiability. He stretched again, inflating his chest and extending his arms, as if preparing for physical exercises. There was a time when he’d done them regularly—it was a fellow’s duty to keep fit—but Dorothy had caught him in the act and tittered, and somehow, like so many things since his marriage, even bodily fitness had seemed to lose its importance.

  Then he looked out of the window. The sky was grey and clouds of a deeper grey were coming up from the west, and a few raindrops spattered the panes. Summer was over,—but how lucky they had been that it had lasted just long enough, by one day, to give him and Magda their first glorious after­noon together. How lucky they had been in so many ways, with so many almost insurmountable obstacles miraculously removed. First of all, there was Dorothy’s decision to spend a few days with her sister in Cambridgeshire, and to come back, not on the Saturday, as was her habit, but on the following Monday. The second blessing was Magda’s being free on that particular Sunday. In theory she and her mother took it in turn to go out on Sundays, but in practice they were both often tied to the house. And finally,—a real stroke of genius on the part of the god of good luck—Robert had sole right of entrance to a cosy little flat in Twickenham. A bachelor colleague of his, who had been sent on a mission to the United States, had given him the key for domestic reasons. ‘If you’d just look in once a week or so, to see if my letters are being forwarded,—and so on. . . . And if you’d like to give your wife—or a lady-friend!—a meal there, after going on the river, it’s O.K. by me.’ That was six weeks ago, and the bit of facetiousness about the lady-friend had then seemed dismally irrelevant to Robert.

  Of course, he had told Dorothy about the flat, and with her usual curiosity about houses and how people lived, she insisted on making the expedition with him. So they went on the river and had a kind of high tea at 25, Underbourne Mansions. It wasn’t a great success, and when it was over, Dorothy had said, ‘Another time, we’ll go on to Hampton Court and dine properly at the Mitre.’ And Robert had thought, how different, how very different, the afternoon might have been with a different companion,—say with that fine girl he’d noticed going in and out of Number Seven. How often the sight of her strong thighs, as she strutted down the street, had tempted him to an ocular adultery!

  For at that time,—only a month ago, though it seemed much longer—Magda was no more than a sweet unapproach­able vision, a phantom of delight, but not flesh and blood to be kissed and cuddled and fondled and made love to. Robert had never been one to waste much time over visions, however alluring, and though he spoke to Magda every day, and had never spoken (nor intended to speak) to the girl over the road, the latter had seemed far less unattainable. Nor was he looking for illicit diversion. Free love? Well, that was a very difficult question. The old religious taboos had gone by the board, of course, but there was the state to be considered.

  Robert believed very strongly in the state. He wasn’t a Communist, though he met a good many in the course of his work—some of them very pleasant and intelligent fellows—and could see their point of view, and like them didn’t hold with an unrestricted individualism. It might be that absolute equality would make nonsense of life, just as zero values made nonsense of certain otherwise reliable mathematical formulae, but some approximation to equality was a desirable social experiment. At least, it would sweep away a good many unwanted cobwebs,—not only the prestige of rank and wealth, but the more odious and insidious prestige that still attached to the old classical tradition, abstract philosophy, the airs and graces of a ‘culture’, which paradoxically throve only because it was not universally diffused.

  He himself had suffered from the superciliousness of its exponents,—people who sniffed at you if you stressed the o in Pythagoras or pronounced Archimedes as three syllables. He had met them even at the technical school and at the newish provincial university where he had won a scholarship, and there were one or two at the research institute where he had his job. Dorothy’s father had paid lip-service to these shib­boleths, though they played little part in his make-up, and lamented that he hadn’t been given an education such as he’d done his best to give his daughter. Dorothy was hardly a blue-stocking, but her smattering of what she called ‘the arts’ was quite enough to humiliate her husband. At that very moment, Swinburne’s Atalanta was on the table by her bed.

  The sight of it carried Robert’s thoughts back to his expedi­tion with Dorothy to Twickenham. They had gone there circuitously by Putney Heath and Kingston, and while they were in the bus on their outward journey, Dorothy had noticed the blue L.C.C. plaque on a house on Putney Hill. She ex­claimed, ‘So that’s the famous Pines! To think I’ve never been to see it before!’ And when he asked her what the Pines was famous for, she said, ‘Don’t you know that Swinburne lived there many years with his friend Watts-Dunton? I really must read some Swinburne again. I used to love his poetry.’ And she had bought the book the very next day, though she didn’t seem to look at it very often.

  Yet Robert was not altogether a doctrinaire. His nature was easy going and lazily kind. He liked simple pleasures,—good, plain food, light music, an occasional film and a glass of beer drunk matily in a pub. These were solaces to which everyone had a right. They bolstered no ego, fed no class-consciousness and roused no unhealthy or antisocial impulses.

  The only time, hitherto, he had been thrown off his unam­bitious balance, was when he met Dorothy. She was twenty-nine and he twenty-three, still young enough emotionally for calf-love. She was unlike all the women he had met—not that they were numerous—and when she fell for him, as she did
with a neurotic possessiveness, he was more than flattered,—he was overwhelmed and thought himself on the threshold of a new life. And so he was, though it didn’t take the form that his transient mood of romance had pictured for it. Romance apart, it wasn’t a foolish marriage on his side. Dorothy had a bit of money of her own and the expectation of more when her father died. He was a sick man at the time of their courtship and only kept them waiting a couple of years.

  Robert’s instincts were conventional enough to make him unwilling to live on his wife’s income. Let her spend what she cared to on clothes and that sort of thing, but their establish­ment must be his affair. The small, semi-detached villa they found at Hackfield, a new suburb in the Hendon-Edgware direction, was very much to his taste. It was within easy reach of his work, the garden was big enough to give him exercise during the week-end and surely there was all the society Dorothy needed,—a tennis club, a bridge club, a drama league and so on. But Dorothy never cared for the neighbourhood, and as the years went by, her dislike of it grew. She loved a pretty home, but theirs, to her way of thinking, wasn’t pretty. Besides, there was far too much house-work to be done, and domestic help, however much one was prepared to pay for it, was at Hackfield almost non-existent.

  One day she came back from a trip to the West End of London (which she visited as often as she could), with the news that she had found the perfect flat,—a whole, self-con­tained first floor in Pollitt Place,—a beautiful sitting-room with a balcony, a fair-sized bedroom behind, a tiny modern kitchen and a sweet little bathroom. And there was another small room, tucked away in a projection at the back, which Robert could turn into whatever he liked,—a study or even a carpen­ter’s shop. (He was one of those people who can’t sit and read or meditate or even listen long to the radio or watch TV, but must always be doing some sort of manual work,—taking things to pieces to clean them or repair them or merely to see how they are made. No wonder in his scale of values the artisan ranked higher than the artist.)