Crystal coloured proudly, and her eyes filled with circles of tears. She did not know that these things had been happening.
“Why?” he repeated, leaning back to watch her. “Now I’ll tell you why, since you can’t tell me. I’ll tell you for your own good. It isn’t my business, and yet, as a gentleman I hope, it is my business. She’s been trying to borrow money off me for a fortnight—£10 precisely. ‘Mrs. Lance,’ I said, ‘I have had one principle throughout my life, and I have never deviated from it one inch. I leave you to infer what that principle is; it will save me the pain of a refusal.’ So that is why she requests me not to ring you up. It is very foolish. It doesn’t injure me at all. It injures you.”
Crystal stared at him helplessly. She could say nothing.
“Do you know, Crystal,” he said, leaning over the table. “It is not as if I am the only one. Do you know …”
“But I don’t know anything about it at all. Oh, how dreadful!”
“Don’t you know?” he asked, trying to read her eyes. But this was like trying to read the thoughts of a flower or the movements of a pool.
“But no, Mummy hasn’t told me a word of this.”
“I am very glad. I didn’t think you did,” he said, relieved, but not ceasing to watch her.
“If only the coffee would come. What has Mummy been doing? What’s she doing?”
“She tried to borrow money from Mr. Heather, too, and from one or two others. She owes Fontenoy Dufaux £10. I tell you this, Crystal, to warn you. It is the sort of thing that will injure you and make everyone suspicious. People will begin to say,” he was biting his words off slowly and gravely, “that she uses you as a decoy to get money out of people.”
Crystal hated him, but was speechless. Tears came to her eyes. She knew very well that her mother had quarrelled with her relations about money.
“I’m sure Mummy would never think of such a dreadful idea.”
To humiliate her in the small violet, watery eyes of Mr. Heather, in the cool ledger blue eyes of Mr. Geelong, in the lively eyes of that divine man, Fontenoy Dufaux! No wonder her mother had thought him wonderful.
“He’s about the only one who has something better than the manners of a shopwalker,” she had said.
To be humiliated in the eyes of Fontenoy Dufaux was worst of all.
“I am sure Mummy did not borrow money from Mr. Dufaux.”
“She did.”
“Did he tell you?”
“No. Mr. Dufaux is a gentleman. I found out. Your mother told me she wanted ten pounds from me with which to pay him back.”
“Oh, please give it to her. Or give it to me, and I will pay him,” Crystal almost cried out. She understood well how her mother would never have felt under an obligation to funny little Mr. Geelong. It was the name of Fontenoy Dufaux that slipped lightly into her mind and grappled with her like a wrestler, strengthening her pride, arousing her anger, and making her shiver with wretchedness at the thought of her mother’s betrayal.
Crystal went out of the teashop alone. She walked without aim from street to street, her eyes brightened and darkened by tears and resolutions of anger against her mother. It was a cold day, and the wind flashed chilly squalls of light upon the shop windows and the polished streets. The pavements stared. The grey clouds were passing obliquely across the sky in an interminable tide that broke and capsized noiselessly and sank behind the iron-grey blocks of office buildings and the spires of the City. Crystal walked quickly with her head pressed down to the fur collar of her coat, her face pale and her eyes reddened. She walked in a passion, and bitter thoughts were grinding in her warm head.
“She has always been interfering with me ever since I can remember, and she doesn’t care what she does. Always talking about her money! She only wants it for herself. She can never forget how rich she has been. And she is so relentless that she even uses me. Everything is money, money, dreadful money. And that is why I have failed. Now I can see it. Everyone, as Mr. Geelong says, is suspicious. It is shameful.”
Crystal stepped blindly through the streets, passed through Leicester Square and Charing Cross Road. Her head was numbed and swollen with hatred. Her ears were deadened. On all sides she saw the smiling face of her mother. “I won’t stand it, I won’t! I won’t allow Fonty to be suspicious of me. Oh, if only I could get away from her.”
She saw that an antagonism which had been growing imperceptibly between her mother and herself from months was coming to a head, and she was fevered. Her terror and anger were divided between two people: her mother and (for some reason that had risen, silvery and cold, out of the darkness of her soul) Fontenoy Dufaux, whom she had known only for a few weeks, and whom—she avidly prayed—she would never meet again.
She crossed Trafalgar Square with small regard for the traffic that came skimming towards her, like a low flight of birds and, divided dramatically on either side. She passed, for no reason at all, down Northumberland Avenue to the Embankment, and there she stared at the river without for a long time seeing more than a ribbed track of light streaming under the bridges. There were plumes of steam darting up from the engines on Charing Cross Bridge. The swaying boom of trams passed and re-passed over her body. A newspaper was blowing across the pavement helplessly. A ragged woman was sitting on one of the seats with a pile of matchboxes fixed between her stiffened fingers. The wind was sweeping chains of leaves across the road, chains that were broken by soft speedy gusts, to reform and scatter spent into the gutters. Over the thick yellow river the desolation of the running sky was more apparent. White fragments of cloud broke out from heavier accumulations and turned away into eerie curtains of spray that were swept down by the immaterial flood. Crystal stood there, until she felt too weak to stand any more. She sat down on a seat for half an hour, wretched and hungry; the taste of Mr. Geelong’s coffee became acrid in her mouth.
She walked home wearily. She looked up at the rows of windows in the Square, and the windows of their room seemed fiercer and blacker than any of the others. She was so breathless and trembling as she climbed the stone stairs to the door that she did not know how she would open it. When her courage returned, she pushed the door open, and was startled to see her mother was out. The still room was strong with undisturbed light. Crystal threw her hat and coat on a chair and, pulling back the gaudy curtain, lay on the bed. She lay sobbing and shivering for a long while until her anguish grew feverish and hot; and her body lay inert under a bitterness that ripened into sorrow and a sorrow that became languorous, and was rarefied until it was resolved into a voluptuous craving for Dufaux. It lay upon her heavily and she dared not move for fear of breaking the dense, hot immaterial moulding in which, in the stillness of the room, her body lay. Her mother found her so, asleep.
“Crystal! What are you doing? Are you all right?”
She was anxious, and her hands on Crystal’s shoulders were as gentle as a cat’s-paws. Crystal jumped up and moved away, for her mother’s smiling lips were moving as if they were going to kiss her.
“Now what is it, Crystal? No secrets!”
But Crystal said nothing to her mother that day or in the days that followed.
Then the miracle happened. One morning, while Mrs. Lance was again out teaching Mr. Trellis’ children, Mr. Geelong rang up to say they were booking for “The Greengage Girl”, and there was a small part Crystal ought to get. She almost ran all the way to the agent’s and was admitted without delay.
“Ah, you’re the little girl who was with Fontenoy Dufaux,” the agent remarked. Everyone was smiling that morning. It was a magic name. Not until she got her contract and was instructed to go to Chester to join the company, did she tell her mother.
“I think I’ll throw up the boys and come with you, Crystal,” she said. “We could manage on four pounds a week, easily. I hate you’re being away from me.”
Crystal was bewildered by this new terror until she suddenly remembered her mother could never afford the railway fares. When reminded
of this, Mrs. Lance became very sharp-tempered, foretold that everything would go wrong and declared that Crystal was being very underhand. She even played with the idea of borrowing money from Mr. Trellis; but Crystal begged her so urgently not to do this, and promised to send her mother some money as she saved it, admitting she liked Mr. Trellis so well that she could not bear the thought of such an humiliation. Mrs. Lance laughed and grew hopeful.
“He is so dear, Mummy. We do not want to do anything that would—”
“Put him off,” interposed Mrs. Lance and surrendered.
The train to the north passed through a vast sea of fog in which London lay like the phantasmal and disintegrating planes of a harbour by night. So spires and chimneys had for a moment the humid gleam of rotting piles rising out of a smeared mud-bank. Sometimes in the fog a long factory would seem to be floating at anchor in the darkness like a liner with all its lights glittering. The vaguely perceived ripple of the roofs and the sudden troughs of streets over which the train passed were splashed with yellow lights. Crystal sat in the corner of her compartment thinking about the days to come, and several times trying to pray to God to take care of her. She prayed with her eyes open because when she closed them all she could see was the face of her mother as pale as straw with her ironical, crack of a smile on her lips. Her mother’s eyes always seemed to have burned her face dry. All Crystal’s life her mother had been hiding in Crystal’s eyes, and however far away she went from her, Crystal would always be carrying her mother’s image about in her head. Her conscience would always be her mother’s voice. Crystal’s prayer dissolved into the words of her part:
“Good morning, Sir John.”
“…this time of the morning.”
“Now you are being cynical (Move to l.c. business). Have you said anything to Leslie?”
“…if I stay here all my life.”
“Oh, Sir John.”
And then the crimson darkness of her closed eyes was lightened, and a glorious golden light poured into her. She opened her eyes, and by their magic the fog had cleared away and the sun was shining. The sunlight was caught in a net upon her face, her breast and her hands. The tone of the carriage wheels had risen to a high and musical chanting. White stations slithered by and the people on the platforms seemed to be spinning like coloured tops. All the green country with its sheared hedges and cropped trees swung into a slow voluptuous movement swelling and declining, a dazed grey-green sea under a stinging sun. Crystal was warm and happy, the goddess of the tidal shires and of the clouds that broke silently upon the horizon. The red farms trawled on the tops of the hills, and sometimes the chimneys, the spires or the flash of windows from some distant town would be seen sinking away like islands into a disturbing solitude. Crystal’s spirits became lighter and happier. She would have lots of success and lots of money, and would be back soon to play in London! She dreamed on until the train arrived in Chester.
She went straight up to the theatre and found the manager who had come up from London to “give the company hell.” Mr. Ben Spears was a huge, florid, fair-haired Jew with very small blue eyes and with so remarkable opinion of himself that he spoke very little. His mouth was small, his lips very thin, and he was so tall that it seemed he never heard what was said to him. He smiled superciliously at Crystal, and said quietly and indistinctly, as though he had a peppermint in his mouth:
“So you’re the new Doris! I envy you. There’s many a little girl would give her eyes to have this part. I have hundreds on my books who would gladly pay me to take it. You’ve got the part.”
“Yes.”
“It is a wonderful part,” he muttered to her; his small, smiling eyes were like little squirting azure tears that would at any moment fall upon her. “And it’s a wonderful play. John Chichester wrote it specially for me twenty-five years ago, and gave me all the rights when he died. ‘I want to give it to the man who has made it,’ he said. (A very different version was current in the profession, and the play groaned like a worn-out cab from town to town.) “But,” said Mr. Spears in an even quieter muttering which turned his words into the dribbling of a fat bath-tap, “it has got to be played. The people who play in this play have got to put their whole lives into it. I myself have sat up till three in the morning putting in little touches that have made it what it is. Doris Angela created the part in London when King Edward sent specially to thank me. This isn’t an easy part, and if you are afraid of it you had better say so now.”
At this the door was pushed wide open and a woman, who had the figure of a turkey and the plumage of a bird of Paradise, came in, shouting resonantly:
“Dooley, darlint. Won’t you give me a cup of tay …” and stopped to stare blankly at Crystal.
“Will you kindly wait outside, Miss O’Malley,” said Mr Spears with dignity. She frowned, and was about to flounce out in a sulk when he called her back.
“Miss O’Malley, one moment. I want to introduce you to Crystal Lance. She’s the new Doris.”
Miss O’Malley made a very refined and quavering noise which sounded like “Oy, oi-oo-er,” and said, “Sure I’m pleased to mate ye.” And seemed to spread huge and muscular beating wings over Crystal’s head. Her eyes were like two large drooping bunches of violets, and her large loose mouth opened to the extent of her back teeth and revealed gold. Her voice throbbed, her body shook as she spoke or laughed. One imagined under the plumage of her bosom an electric piano. “Sure, I’m after searching the whole town through for digs for ye, and divil a bed could I find but a little place at the back of me own digs in Albert Street. Will I take her there now?” she asked familiarly of Mr. Spears.
He nodded.
When Crystal and she were outside, she asked eagerly:
“Are ye Irish?”
“No,” said Crystal, “I am not.”
“Oh well, that’s all to the good, for if two of us were Irish there’d soon be a fight in the company; not that we haven’t had a good few already.”
Crystal limped through the streets with her suit-case after Miss O’Malley, who swayed now into the traffic and now bumped cheerfully into any good-looking young man she could find. Albert Street was a cul-de-sac with hoardings on one side and a dozen dingy villas on the other. They all had iron gates and a flight of steps up to the front door. Many of the villas had aspidistras in the windows or canary-cages, and all the windows had lace curtains. Crystal was shown into a back room on the ground floor next to the kitchen, and looking onto a dismal area. There was a large iron double bed, with a picture of “Christ leaving the Praetorium” over the mantelpiece and a photograph of Lord Kitchener. There were some paper daffodils in a sachet over the bed which Crystal attempted to remove, but put them back with a scream when she found there was a lot of somebody’s hair tangled up in them. The room was small and very hot, and in the narrow grate a fire was stoked up almost to the chimney. The wall paper was peeling because of the heat.
“Comfy, anyway,” said Miss O’Malley, who, to Crystal’s disgust, had determined to stay and watch her unpack. She pulled her hat off roughly as one snatches the petals off a giant poppy, and there was revealed a squat, smallish head with a low forehead fringed by vivid auburn hair. It was cut short and high above the pink stout neck and was evidently dyed. The two women looked at each other’s hair in surprise. Miss O’Malley screwed up her brows extravagantly until they were almost knotted in jealous horror.
“Good God!” she said, “haven’t you shingled it?”
Indignation had made her drop unawares from the Irish brogue, which she had assumed since playing in variety in a small Dublin theatre, into her native Cockney.
“No,” said Crystal tactfully. “One needs such specially good hair to have it shingled.”
The whole of Miss O’Malley smiled and gleamed. An almost visible wave of pleasure passed in a rich and fleshy eddy from her bosom, across her stomach and forked in two satiny streams down her thighs. And then the tide curled back and arriving at her face, there resol
ved itself into a scowl. Miss O’Malley could scarcely control her jealousy.
“How did ye hear of this job?” she asked, returning to the brogue.
“From Shirley’s.”
“Who saw you? Old Tommy Shirley?”
“Yes, I suppose it was.”
“Well, I’ll be damned if I know how ye got it,” said she, “because they asked especially for a brunette. Do you see you’ll spoil all my entries. Ye can’t have two red-haired women on the stage at once. Can you? God in heaven knows what we’ll do.”
Crystal’s heart quickened with fright and anger, but she said sweetly:
“I’ll have to wear a wig.”
“Och, I’ll bet Mr. Spears didn’t see you with yer hat off now, did he? If he had ye’d never have stayed in his office a minute. Sure, I don’t know what I’ll do about it. That fool Shirley to send you up here!”
And she began to walk up and down the room in a temper. “I won’t have it,” she cried. “I won’t have it.”
Crystal was roused.
“It depends on Mr. Spears.”
Suddenly Miss O’Malley flopped on the bed and broke into tears. Her eyes grew wider and wider, and larger and larger tears poured out of them. “On my pillow.” Crystal battled with herself. Suddenly Miss O’Malley sat up, an absurd sight with her hair rumpled and the tear-marks disordering the paint on her face. “Who were you playing for?”
“I was playing with Fontenoy Dufaux.” Crystal was careful not to say how long ago that had been.
But Miss O’Malley jumped to the floor at the mention of this name.
“What!” she exclaimed. “You were playing with Fonty?”
“Yes.”
“God in heaven, so that’s how you got it! It’s him that has been working all this against me.… I know what it is now. It’s a mean scheme to get rid of me. Spears and he have been putting their heads together. Don’t think I’m blaming you. I loved that man. I have worshipped him, and this is how he treats me! I shall shoot myself!” she screamed.
The Spanish Virgin Page 6
