by Zen Cho
The people were the sort of people whose grandparents could have had chicken every day if they had wanted it. The men were beautiful and the women looked intelligent. They were a pleasure to gaze at, pretty as a picture and as real, but the whole thing made me wish I read the papers more. At parties it is as it is with gossip: it's not half as good if you don't know who the players are.
One of the guests passed me her empty glass, thinking I suppose that I was a servant, and I was just wondering whether I should take it as an opportunity to make a break for the kitchen and thence outside when someone tapped me on the shoulder.
"Enjoying yourself?" said Ravi, nodding at the two glasses I was holding.
"Oh, thank goodness," I said. It was such a relief to see a familiar face. I could have hugged him. "Do you know anyone here? I have no idea who anybody is. They really should set up some sort of system. The butler could label people as they came in. Just something discreet—a tag with their names and some indication of their relative notoriety would do. A gold tag for the Queen, silver for a Kipling. That sort of thing."
"I'm acquainted with some people here," said Ravi. He looked around. "Of course, almost everyone you'd know by sight or reputation."
"Are they important?" I said glumly. Ravi smiled.
"It depends on what you mean by important," he said. "They're the sort of people who would benefit from being seen at Hardie's party. And Hardie gains a certain cachet from having them here."
He was too polite to ask what I was doing there, so I explained:
"I was included because of that blasted review. Hardie sent me an invitation, with a personal note and everything. I thought it would be an experience."
"How are you finding it so far?" said Ravi.
"I feel a bit of a tomato," I said. I looked down at my bright red dress.
"Is that the one you bought with the proceeds of 'The Well-Dressed Woman'?" Ravi remembers the things one has said. It's a small thing, but it shows what sort of person he is.
"No, it's an old dress," I said. "I decided to save the money for my grandchildren."
"Well," said Ravi. He seemed about to swallow his words before he said them, but then his mouth went firm and he said, "Old or new, you look beautiful in it."
I expect I went as red as the dress. I was trying to think of something graceful to say in reply when thankfully Ravi stopped paying attention to me and started looking at something over my shoulder. I turned around to see what it was, and saw Sebastian Hardie.
"I'm very pleased to see you, Ravi," he said. "I thought you might be too sensible to come."
"I'm afraid curiosity overcame sense for once," said Ravi. "One knows there's always something worth turning up for at your gatherings." He shook Hardie's hand. "May I introduce you to my friend?"
"I'm not sure I need an introduction," said Hardie. "'The terrible Mimnaugh', I presume?"
He wasn't what I expected at all. I'd seen his picture in Vogue and so had known he was good-looking, in the style of a Romantic poet living in the Lake District. He had a long face with dark hair curling over a white forehead, and wrinkles around his eyes that made him look melancholy when solemn and sweet when he smiled. But he wasn't at all grand.
The most surprising thing about him in person was that he struck one as being sincere. He had a very grave, intense look that, when directed at one, made one feel one ought to say something interesting to deserve it.
"Hardly anyone calls me that," I said absurdly. Hardie smiled as if I'd made a joke. He had a nice smile as well—one that quirked the ends of his mouth just slightly, so that it had a quality of distance. He looked like he was smiling in a daydream, or at the sound of children's laughter.
"It was kind of you to reply to my invitation," he said. "You must forgive me for my importunacy. I was grateful for the attention you gave Mimnaugh, even if you didn't find the poor fellow to your liking."
"Oh," I said.
He was so good-looking! It is dreadful when people are good-looking and pay attention to you. It rarely happens to me, so I didn't know what to do with myself.
"I did like some of your other books," I offered.
"Please don't apologise," said Hardie. "I read your review with great interest, if not precisely pleasure—I'm not quite advanced enough for that, I'm afraid. But it would have been churlish to be offended. A really serious reader is a treasure for any author."
I thought of the novelette on my bedside table. It's sitting on top of Dream of Red Chamber, which I have been meaning to read for ages, only I've misplaced my Chinese dictionary somewhere, so I have been reading other things while waiting for the dictionary to turn up.
Right now my substitute book is The Duke's Folly. The Duke is searching for the naive yet spirited young governess who has helped him throw off his malaise (dukes are always in terrible danger of lapsing into a malaise; it must be all that fox-hunting and quail). But the heroine has gone to the country and is living with her amusing but embarrassingly middle-class sister. I can't imagine the sort of face Hardie would make if he came upon The Duke's Folly on his bedside table, but I love reading it. It's like sinking into a warm bath, or eating a bowl of congee with thousand-year eggs.
"I take all my reading seriously," I said.
"I could tell. That is why I wanted to meet you," said Hardie.
"Yes. I thought the review was written with remarkable insight," said Ravi. Hardie's grave interested expression wobbled a bit, but Ravi didn't seem to notice. He said to me,
"Shall I get you another drink?"
"Yes—no—" But by the time I'd made up my mind he was gone, leaving me alone with Hardie.
"There's an interesting mind," said Hardie, looking after Ravi.
"Ravi is a brick," I said.
Hardie smiled that absent-minded smile. "One does love him. But it remains to be seen whether there is true originality there, or whether it is simply cleverness," he said. "Now, you are a different matter."
It was difficult not to be flattered by that, but—
"How do you know?" I said. "You've only just met me. And you only read that one article. It was five hundred words and mostly complaining."
"We've met before in a previous life, of course," said Hardie. His face gleamed with humour. "Probably you were a porcupine then. How did Ravi find you?"
"I found him," I said. "I went to the doctor's one day and saw the Oriental Literary Review in the waiting room, and I wrote down the editor's address and went to see him the next day. I was quite surprised to find he was so young. I thought he would be old and bearded, and wear moon-shaped spectacles."
"Why did you go?" said Hardie.
"Oh, I fell and scraped my knee," I said. "It sounds ridiculous but it hurt terribly. Has it ever happened to you? It's as if your heart has picked itself up out of your chest and moved down to your knee. It sits there and pulses. You feel horribly exposed. And then the knee went filmy and yellow, and started to drip—"
"Thank you, I have a clear enough idea," said Hardie, grimacing. "I meant to ask why you went to find Ravi."
I knew that, of course. I suppose the question isn't that personal in itself, but the answer is something I'd rather not tell strangers. But Hardie's face was intent and listening. He wasn't only pretending to be interested. I said,
"I'd already sold a few pieces to—" perhaps I shouldn't mention my series on five ways to spruce up an old party dress—"to some other magazines, and I thought he might pay me to write things. But the other reason was because I was lonely."
"Were you?" Hardie looked at me. I thought he was going to say something serious and philosophical about loneliness, but instead he lifted his hand and traced the air just above my cheekbones, almost touching me but not quite.
"It's a shame I'm no sort of artist," he said, so low I had to strain to hear him over the noise. "How I should like to paint those lines."
Now what is one supposed to say to that?
"I'm sure you'd be nice to paint t
oo," I said, unable to think of anything better.
Hardie laughed.
"Poor Ariel," he said. "Alone on an incomprehensible island. Has any other mariner heard your whispers, or did they think it just the wind?"
"I'm really more of a Caliban," I said primly.
Hardie tilted his head.
"Even better," he said.
At that point, thank goodness, someone called out to him: "Hardie! We need your opinion on a matter of very great importance!" He sounded serious and precise and drunk, so it was probably something silly.
Before I could turn away, Hardie put his hand on my arm.
"Come and see me again," he said.
That was all. The next moment he had vanished in the crowd, and I fled. I didn't even say goodbye to Ravi. I hope he didn't spend too much time searching for me.
I do not like Hardie, it was beastly what he said about Ravi being only clever. And he wrote a foolish book. Being good-looking and interesting and having the heavy-lidded gaze of a romantic tapir does not excuse writing a foolish book.
Perhaps he did not mean it. Probably he did not mean it. If he did not mean it, it is all right. I will wake up tomorrow and water my pansies and write as usual. This will be nothing but a dream.
My red dress smells of alcohol and smoke.
Tuesday, 19th October 1920
I shouldn't have gone. Why did I go? Curse this restless thirst for excitement! You would think living on one's own miles from home in the most thrilling city in the world ought to be enough, but no. I've got to rush off to see married authors in clandestine circumstances.
Sebastian Hardie is married! I suppose I ought to have known that, but he isn't quite posh enough to be in Debrett's, and he certainly didn't mention it in his letter. What a lot of nonsense he spouted about it in person—but I am getting ahead of myself.
It was a whole week before he wrote. I'd almost persuaded myself that he wouldn't when I received the letter. It was rather warm in its sentiments, considering we'd only met the once. But I must confess something shocking: I wasn't shocked.
The problem is that I have never had the chance to be naughty. When I was little I was too busy reading books for it to occur to me. When I was older there was never any opportunity—everybody I knew was so well-behaved, and it's no fun being bad on your own. Now I am living on my own in London and ignoring pleas to return home, which I suppose is badness enough.
But I want a chance to be properly bad. So far all I have done as an unaccompanied maiden in London is read and write and cook. This is hardly tasting the delights of debauchery in the immoral West.
Of course, I didn't go to see Hardie with the idea of debauching—or being debauched, I suppose, since I imagine any bauch he ever had has long been removed. (Certainly his letter gives this impression. I had to look up most of the words.) I just wanted to see what would happen.
This time the butler knew me. He ushered me in when I'd scarcely even given my name. I don't know what I was expecting, but I certainly didn't think to find the family sat down to tea.
There was Hardie, looking like a statue with a mind too grand for pigeons to disturb, and a queenly woman with lovely red hair, and two little boys. It was the little boys that made me stop. The letter burned in my pocket.
"Oh," I said. "Is this not Hardy's house? I'm sure the man outside told me Thomas Hardy lived here. I read Jude the Obscure and thought I should come to England and tell Mr. Hardy how I admired it. I must go and give that man outside a piece of my mind. I'm so sorry to have bothered you—"
"Do sit down, my dear," said the lovely red-haired one. "We've been expecting you. Sebastian's told me all about you."
"I hope you don't mind that we've begun without you," said Hardie. "Julian and Clive were ravening for their tea, and we don't stand on ceremony in this house. This is my wife Diana."
There seemed nothing to do but to sit down.
"That's all right," I said. "Tea is a made-up meal to me anyway."
"Do you not have tea in China?" said Diana.
The British are a peculiar race. My grandfather was transported to Malaya because they needed tin, and yet I've never once met a Briton to whom the thought had occurred that perhaps I spoke English because I am from one of their colonies. It is as if I were a piece of chess in a game played by people who never looked down at their fingers.
"We have the beverage, but not the buns," I said, to avoid tiresome explanation.
"I am glad to be English, then. I should miss the buns," said Diana. "And you were the one who wrote about the terrible Mimnaugh, if I recall correctly."
"That's right," I said.
"Dear Ravi, what magnificent risks he takes," said Diana, smiling.
"One loves him for his purity," said Hardie. "He's quite unspoilt, despite Cambridge and all this unhealthy mingling with lesser specimens of the Bloomsbury genus."
"Yes. Ravi," I said, "is more like a mountain view than a human being, really."
They laughed, though I am not sure that we were all amused at the same thing. The conversation was like walking along a narrow cliff path in the dark, never knowing whether the next step would take you over the edge. And yet one was drawn in despite oneself.
I think Hardie could sense I was cross, because he said:
"Ravi certainly has a genius for seeking out the genuine. I do not know anyone with such an unerring eye."
"Your essay bears out that truth," said Diana, nodding at me. "But Sebastian, we were discussing Mrs. Woolf's novel. You did not like it?"
Hardie shrugged. "I did not think there was anything to like, or dislike for that matter. There is nothing there. It is all surface."
"Sebastian is really a thwarted reactionary," said Diana to me. "He hates to see anyone do anything new with a book, or for anyone new to do it."
"Calumny!" cried Hardie.
"I must say I share Hardie's feelings in this," I said, thinking of The Duke's Folly.
We spoke of literature, or rather Hardie and Mrs. Hardie did, until the buns were consumed. Then Hardie got up:
"Our visitor shall decide. If you will come to the library with me, I'll dig up the book for you and we shall see what you think of it. I shall be deeply injured if you think it no worse than Mimnaugh."
"Go on, my dear," said Diana, looking up from the table. "Julian takes ever so long over his tea."
I trotted obediently out of that sun-drenched familial scene into the dusty seclusion of the library. Hardie shut the door behind me, swept me into his arms, and kissed me.
His chin was rough and he smelt of tobacco. I hit him in the chest and shrieked.
"Please, there's no need to be distressed," he gasped. "You looked so beautiful in the light—I couldn't contain myself. I thought you wouldn't mind."
There was a sturdy-looking desk. I planted myself behind it.
"By what byzantine chain of logic did you arrive at that conclusion?" I demanded.
"Did you not read my letter?"
"This letter?" I took the letter out of my pocket and waved it at him. "This letter? Is this a letter for a married man to write?"
Hardie stopped looking foolish. His face softened. His eyes went kind.
"Is that the problem?" he said. "Dear girl—dear innocent girl. I shall explain all."
"Not with two minors in the house, you won't," I said.
"I love Diana. She is my mate in the purest, truest sense of the word," he said. "But the glory of a love such as ours is that it is subject to no limits. The wellspring of an eternal love does not run dry. Diana knows this as well as I. We are as one in this, as in everything. We promised each other at the very beginning that we should never allow any appalling Victorian archaism to be a restriction on us. I am allowed my passions—for literature, for art, for beauty in all its forms."
He was coming closer. He was so dreadfully good-looking! I am not used to good-looking gentlemen leaning very close and speaking in low tender tones. Girls ought to be given training i
n their youth, to be prepared for such an eventuality.
"And Diana's passions?" I said.
The light in Hardie's eyes dimmed.
"The conjugal act gives her little pleasure," he said. "But she knows all of my heart and mind—she has joy in that, and in our children, and the garden. She has her own friends. She paints—she will never be great, but it gives her pleasure."
"Quite the perfect marriage," I said.
I had thought the position behind the desk the most secure, because with the wide rampart of the desk before me, I would only have to defend a limited space. It now became apparent that there was a flaw in my thinking. Having a limited space to defend also meant there was limited space for escape—space that could all too easily be filled up by the determined bulk of a man.
Hardie is surprisingly tall for a sensitive poet type.
"With such ideal domestic arrangements, I can scarcely see why you would need me," I said.
Perhaps I could scramble over the desk? Oh dear.
He smelt really very nice.
"Can you not?" Hardie whispered. He kissed me again.
I'm afraid I melted against him a bit. No one had touched me in months and months. Mine was an affectionate family and I missed human contact. And I have never been touched by a man, so of course that was exciting.
Hardie was doing quite uncivil things with his mouth. It was a trifle wet, but warm and strangely pleasant.
A pigeon took off from the window. The sound of its wings woke me out of my stupor. I broke away and said to Hardie,
"I am going home now."
"Will you come and see me again?" said Hardie.
I know what he means by "see me"! I am not so innocent as all that! And he can't have thought me so very innocent, considering the letter he wrote me. Anyone who wanted to stay innocent would have been scared away by that.
Perhaps that was the point.
That was quite a lot badder than I meant to be.
I do not know what to think. I have been restless all day.
Friday, 22nd October 1920
Succour from an unexpected source. I am to go to France with Aunt Iris. The beautiful Rose and the exquisite Clarissa are staying with friends; Uncle Gerald is tied down with business; and Aunt Iris must go to Paris to see a tailor about a dress. What strange exigencies drive the rich. But Aunt Iris cannot go anywhere alone, and so she has commandeered me.
