The Chinese Room

by Vivian Connell

  Saluby was perhaps slightly nervous, but she immediately got him a drink and put him at his ease. After a moment he said: “Where is your husband? Out for a walk?”

  “No. He’s just rushed off up North. He got a telephone message that somebody was dying.”

  There was some more small talk, and then he said: “I’ve come to be a nuisance to you. I’ve got a case over at Yeoman Spire.” He paused. “Poverty is the real sickness. I...”

  “Of course. How much do you want? I’ll give you a check.”

  “That’s very good of you. Jimpson told me when I took over that I should always come to you.”

  “Yes. I’ll get my checkbook.” When she came back with the checkbook and began to write the check, she paused. “How funny, I don’t know your name.”

  “Oh, are you making it to me?”

  “Of course.”

  “The initials are ‘H. D.’”

  “Say fifteen pounds. You can have more if necessary.”

  “Oh, that’s rather a lot, but...Well, there’s a baby on the way, and...”

  “I’ll make it twenty-five.” She gave him the check. “Always come here without hesitation.”

  “It’s awfully good of you.”

  “I don’t think so. That’s the least we can do if we’ve got some money, to help people.”

  Saluby looked introspectively into his glass. “Of course, it doesn’t help them, really.”

  “Oh?”

  “Do you think that really helps people, to have a social system based on charity?”

  “Oh, I wasn’t thinking about it that way. I see what you mean.”

  “I don’t want to sound ungrateful.”

  “I understand.” She poured herself a drink. “Tell me, have you ever noticed any special desire among the English working people to help themselves?”

  “No. I can’t say I have.’

  “Nick’s father was a self-made man, and he never gave a penny to charity. He said that no human being was worth helping who couldn’t help himself.” She paused. “He despised the workingman in this country.” She paused again. “Nick might have gone in for politics, but he has the same idea about the English working people. Of course, this kind of charity is different, so I don’t mean that. When I came to live here, I tried to do something myself. But I could never be five minutes inside any house before they tried to entangle me in local gossip of some kind. I realized the feudal wars were still going on between doorstep and doorstep in the English village. I had no intention of being turned into a Napoleon to find the parson’s wife was a Wellington, just to gratify the jealousy and bitterness of yokel wives. I am not interested in Women’s Guilds, or giving out prizes at the local flower show. Barrington and Yeomen Spire look very pleasant under their thatched roofs and green creepers, but there are plenty of the weeds that poisoned Sarah Fuidge in every front garden. I imagine old Jock Bude knew that charity was the best fertilizer of those weeds in the working-class mind. I am sorry, if you are shocked.”

  “I am not. I’m rather surprised.” Suddenly he spoke in a bitter way. “I ought to know all about what charity does to the human mind. It’s like being fed on maggots that stay inside and eat the belly out of you.” He paused. “I’m sorry, to have to put it that way.”

  “It’s all right. I don’t like genteel talk.”

  She knew that he had some personal feeling about charity and thought that perhaps his kinks came from having a hard time.

  He looked at her and said: “You know, you don’t seem to be the same woman you were the first day I saw you.”

  “I suppose I am not.”

  There was a silence, and then he changed the subject.

  “Oh, that place in Dorminster is closed up. MacGregor has left his practice there. He’s caught a bug.” She was surprised to find that her heart leaped. “Caught a bug?”

  “Yes. You’ll probably see about it in the papers. He’s in London now, working it out in the lab. He’ll probably wind up with an O. M. It was lunacy for a man like him to waste his time in Dorminster. Now he’s got endowments and what not to enable him to work.”

  “Oh, I’m so glad.” She hesitated. “Is he an old friend of yours?”

  “Yes, I suppose so. I sometimes wonder if he doesn’t use my mind as a kind of lab to catch unpleasant germs in.”

  She smiled. “I can’t imagine anything like that with him. He’s not insincere. Are you fond of him?”

  “Yes. About the only person I like.”

  “You say it was stupid of him to waste his time at Dorminster. Is Barrington a very profitable place to be in for you?”

  “Why?”

  “Well, you have a good brain, haven’t you?”

  He gave a slight shrug. “I don’t know. I just don’t seem to be able to get hold of the helm. Maybe I’ve got a drift in my mind.” He paused. “I like human guinea pigs. The peasant is the best psychological guinea pig of all.”

  Somehow that made her shudder. She realized that his face, which had the kind of good looks one saw in those young men who posed for multiple store advertisements, somehow had a twist in it, so that one always seemed to catch it in a half profile. It was a curious slanting face, and he had that detestable trait, habitual to the café prostitute, of looking at one by moving the eyes and not turning the face. He never liked to be caught looking at you. He peeped around a corner at the world. Now he lighted a cigarette, and there was a lull, and she wondered how on earth she had given herself to him.

  “I suppose I ought to be going?”

  “What is the hurry?” she smiled. “Surely you don’t feel you have to go because Nicholas is away!”

  “No.” He paused. “How is he?”

  “Oh, he’s all right.” She felt an instinct to be guarded. “I think he needs a holiday.”

  “Why doesn’t he take it?”

  “Oh, he’s tied up on some Advisory Council or something.”

  Saluby was looking out into the twilight on the lawn.

  “Is he still trying that experiment on himself?”

  It was a moment before she replied. She felt her senses feeling for his mood like inquisitive antennae. “I think so.”

  “I was hoping he’d tell me his reaction. That kind of thing is useful to a doctor.”

  She had meant to consult Saluby on her anxiety about this, and now she found herself guarding it from him. “Don’t you think it is rather a silly idea, for somebody in his position?”

  “What do you mean by ‘his position’?”

  “Well, one hardly expects a person of affairs to go in for that kind of thing.”

  “Why the hell not!”

  She was astonished at the venom in Saluby’s voice. “Why the hell shouldn’t he be a guinea pig as some damned pauper? What the devil is he, anyway, except a kind of toll gate that money goes through?”

  “Good heavens, you needn’t get so worked up about it! Anyway, whatever you say, it seems ridiculous for him to waste his time on that kind of thing.” She paused, and said sharply: “I’m not sure I like the way you use the word guinea pig.”

  “What the hell are we all but guinea pigs? That’s all I am to MacGregor, although he doesn’t suspect it. He just likes me with him to watch whether the bug in my brain will kill it or be killed.”

  “So you see Nicholas as a guinea pig to make an experiment on?”

  “Yes, a valuable one. Outside, he’s a phlegmatic normal. Inside, he’s just a superstitious peasant with a mind like a dog that bays at the moon. That’s why his hands are always arguing, the peasant is wrestling with the sleek and wealthy banker, one of them is trying to kill the other. He’s just as valuable as a guinea pig as he is as a banker.”

  There was a curious glint of light on Saluby’s face in the dusk that made it phosphorescent and cold, so that one could feel it damp on the eye.

  She felt a tendency to shiver. “It’s getting dark. I’ll switch on the light.”

  When she put the light on, she felt
more comfortable. “Well, if you talk like that, you seem to think that the letters might have an effect on Nicholas?”

  “Well, that’s the idea, isn’t it, to find out?”

  TWENTY-NINE

  Nicholas had just caught the Dorminster connection last night, and Muriel ordered the car for ten o’clock. She rang Mr. Strood at the bank to let him know that Nicholas was away. She did not ask for Miss Coleman. She had made her own plan to find out if Nicholas was dictating the letters. Then she rang Fantoine and made a hairdressing appointment and next booked a room at the Clarendon. She was going to stay a night or two in London. As she packed her suitcase, she sang gently and smiled as she put in her hygiene box. A couple of months ago she would not have done that. She had never used it, indeed, until she had made love with Saluby. And now, remembering how, in spite of her physical dislike of him, he had almost hypnotized her last night, she realized for the first time the compulsion of the mind over the flesh. Saluby had become so confident of himself in his analysis of Nicholas that he almost had been able to dominate her by sheer mental power. She would not forget the lesson of what the working brain could do. She had read somewhere that no woman can in the end resist a man with a brilliant mind. It seemed to her now that it was true.

  She enjoyed herself in London. When she had got her hair done in Dover Street, she walked down to the Berkeley, lunched by herself, and enjoyed the play of her beauty on the South American at the next table. His companion, however, did not enjoy the way he kept looking at Muriel, as if he recognized in her the kindred blood of a tropical clime. Muriel was beginning to feel her power over men. She sighed. It was a pity the young Frenchman who had done her hair in Fantoine’s was not right about a rendezvous very special for this evening!

  After lunch she bought a flask of perfume in Bond Street and then went to Grosvenor Square, where Madame Ranel agreed that a garment cut as simply as an Athenian tunic, of ivory silk, had a most enchanting moonlight effect on madame’s golden skin. After an amusing conversation, Madame Ranel, with French candor, said that Madame Bude seemed to have exchanged herself for somebody else and remarked how pleasant it was to dress somebody who had learned to grow, not merely wear, clothes on her lovely figure. Muriel left in good humor. She knew how significant it was that this keen Frenchwoman should have noticed the change in her. It was too early for tea, and she decided to walk about London.

  She turned into Piccadilly and walked along toward the Circus. The faces of people, she noticed, became very naked in the sunlight. She observed women in an acute way now. It seemed to her that the only women whose minds and bodies were alive were in society, Or girls who, working in smart shops, were in contact with the fashionable world. The emptiness and worry in the faces of the women who had come in on the bus to shop in the cheap stores alarmed her. Their whole lives obviously went into keeping an eye on the saucepan, the baby, and the housekeeping money. Nearly all of them had bitter eyes. Busy with livelihood, they had no time to live. They appalled Muriel. Their faces were alike as the dials of clocks. Each day was yesterday again. She walked along and stood near a famous tea-shop and studied the wives going in the corner door. They were the wives of the major, the parson, the lawyer, the tea planter—in a word, the women of the world known as Poona, whether they lived at the end of the P. and O. or in Knightsbridge. They were as distant from Mayfair as from Surbiton. They read Punch, The Tatler, the social page of The Times, came up for the new Cochran show, enjoyed a Dodie Smith play, thought Noel Coward modern. They were bound to know somebody who knew somebody in Malay about whom Maugham was supposed to have written. That somehow made them a part of the world of literature. Muriel remembered her mother and the garrison wives and felt a crawling on her skin. Where had she felt this sensation before? Suddenly she remembered. She had felt like this once before, when after reading Darwin she had stood by the monkey house in the zoo and asked herself: “Was I once one of these?”

  She took a long breath. If money did nothing else, at least it got one away from them. Once again she had that uncanny feeling that she was watching ghosts walking in from the past. They seemed no more contemporary than the Boer War and Rudyard Kipling. The smart revues and novels mocked them. But the incredible thing was that they were nearly the whole of England and apparently were ignorant of the fact that they were dead and had been interred years ago by the Bright Young People. Muriel left the corner and walked up Bond Street. A fashionable and lovely girl that Muriel knew to have written books on surrealism and the origin of swing music came out of Asprey’s and bumped into a lumpish country gentlewoman in tweeds who almost certainly had never heard of Dali or Duke Ellington. Muriel had the notion that she could not have been more surprised at a collision between a ricksha and an airplane. Somewhere in the gap between those two women something was lost. Muriel wondered if it could be the future of England.

  She felt somewhat ashamed of herself. In ten years she had not done very much with the advantages of money. This was the first time she had walked about London and really seen something. She had grown up more in the last two months than in the last ten years. She had an uncomfortable sensation that she had damn nearly missed the whole thing. She looked at her watch. It was time to go to the Ritz and have tea and make her telephone call.

  She ordered tea in the Ritz and went along to the telephones. It was almost ten minutes past five. She had decided to ring the bank at that hour, hoping that Miss Coleman would have gone. She guessed that everything could be sharp on the clock at Bude’s and that Miss Coleman would leave at five. She seemed to have got a minor clerk or a porter at the bank, and it was some time before they found the address book of the staff. She took down Miss Coleman’s address and smiled. So far everything had gone all right. The bank had said that Miss Coleman had just left. She would go round to Miss Coleman about six-fifteen. She would probably have not gone out, and she was almost certain to have got back by then, even if she had tea somewhere on her way home. Muriel looked at the address before she put it into her bag. Suddenly she realized that Miss Coleman lived in a very expensive place and began to wonder if she was going to be the brilliant but dull person she had pictured. She thought she had better ring up Barrington and learned that Mr. Bude had wired that his uncle was dead and that he did not expect to be home for some days.

  She had tea and then went back to the Clarendon and found her box from Madame Ranel had arrived. She went upstairs and had a bath and decided to wear the moonlight garment. Then she stood in front of the bathroom glass and smiled. Damn it, one never knew what was going to happen. She clicked open her hygiene box. She went to a great deal of care in dressing and eventually had to ask the taxi driver to hurry to Park Lane when she called a taxi. She had noted going out that the cocktail bar at the Clarendon was beginning to look gay already, although the fashionable world was supposed to be in Scotland or abroad. She decided she would come back there and have a cocktail.

  Muriel’s first thought when Sidonie opened the door to her was: “Thank God, I’m looking smart.” Her second thought was: “Surely this can’t be Nick’s secretary!” She was careful from the first question.

  “Is Miss Coleman at home?”

  “Yes. I am Miss Coleman.”

  “Oh...I am Mrs. Bude. May I come in? Am I disturbing you?”

  “No. Do please come in.”

  Muriel photographed the room in one glance, noted the sculptures and paintings, saw within the alcove of the room, in the parting of the curtains, that the table was laid for supper or dinner for one with exquisite glass and fine silverware. She saw that Miss Coleman’s frock was expensively simple, that her hair was dressed in a fashionable salon.

  “Do sit down. I just must turn off something in the kitchen. I shan’t be a moment.”

  Muriel did not sit down. She looked at the bookcase, saw at once what it signified; went to the window to look over the park; remarked as she turned back a drawing of a kangaroo on a large sheet of paper on the desk, saw it was enclo
sed in a geometrical design, gathered from a quick glance that Miss Coleman’s mathematical knowledge was complicated and abstruse; then she stood in front of the Matisse and was looking at it when Miss Coleman came back.

  “I was just admiring your things.”

  “What will you have? Sherry or a cocktail?”

  “I’d love a cocktail. But—am I being a nuisance?”

  “Oh no. I’m doing nothing.”

  Miss Coleman handled the cocktail things with lovely articulate hands. Muriel noted the glasses and almond dishes and the biscuit tray were elegant and expensive. She thought abruptly: “Either she’s got an enormous salary, or somebody is keeping her. Good heavens, can it be Nicholas!” She said: “I’ve been shopping all day. This cocktail is just what I wanted.” She smiled.

  “What are you giving me?”

  “One I make up myself.”

  There was an easy silence until she gave Muriel her glass.

  “Oh, this is good! Yes, I’d love a biscuit.” She paused. “I suppose I ought to apologize for coming to see you here, but I didn’t want to go to the bank.”

  “That is all right. How did you get my address?”

  “I rang the bank”—Muriel smiled—“after five o’clock.” Now Miss Coleman smiled very slightly, as if to convey that she knew she was dealing with somebody clever. Muriel smiled at her and said spontaneously: “I must say I didn’t think you’d be like—well, this!”

  Miss Coleman paused, then decided to give a little of herself in response. “Well, I’ve got a bit of a surprise, too, from you.”

  Muriel paused for a moment and looked her in the eye. It required a certain candor in oneself to look into those cold, lucid eyes. Muriel decided that it was no use in being over-guarded. This girl was clearly well bred, reticent, and her sensitiveness was safeguard enough without a somewhat vulgar caution. Muriel said in a forthright way: “I’ve come to see you because I’m worried.” She paused. “I had meant to ask you if I could have your promise to keep this visit confidential”—Muriel smiled—“but, now, of course, I can see there is no need to ask you that. Now, I’ll see if I can get to the point at once.” She looked straight at Miss Coleman.