by Angus Wilson
Of course, it was all dissipated in good-natured chaff and sound good sense, but as Hubert passed through the swing doors of the Metropole after luncheon he left his colleagues with an impression that he had relinquished them to a suitable background in the second-rate opulence of that vulgar hotel.
As he walked through the tram-ridden streets under the shadow of the great edifices of Bankers ‘Georgian, he seemed like a gentleman-farmer in for market day, in his tweeds, his brown shoes decently darkened with use, his canary waistcoat. Only perhaps the slightly excessive length of his hair above the ears might have suggested artistic interests – a collection of Lowestoft, perhaps, or some interest in the harpsichord. No destination could have seemed more appropriate to him than ‘The Lamb’, so solid and quiet in its alleyway retreat, an ordinary panelled old inn, with no ostentations of beams or warming pans, but still serving a good Cheshire or Stilton, and still delighting visitors with its knowing old cockatoo that filled the narrow hallway with its chuckles and guffaws.
Mrs Curry was waiting for him in the lounge. Even the huge chintz-covered armchair seemed inadequate to contain her billowing body, yet she was by no means voluminously dressed. She, too, was on business in Roddingham. Ron had driven her over in her old-fashioned Daimler, and, when she motored, Mrs Curry liked to dress for motoring. She wore, in fact, a neutral-toned tussore dust-coat over her grey linen dress, and her natural yellow straw hat had a great deal of mauve muslin veiling. Her only ornament was a small opal cross on her ample bosom. It was a costume, perhaps, more appropriate for preserving an antique tradition of motoring than for serviceable use in a closed car.
She made it clear from the start that graciousness was to be the mark of her relations with Hubert Rose by the gesture of her little dimpled hand that waved him to an armchair beside her.
‘Such dear neighbours,’ she cooed, ‘and we always seem to meet so far from home. I’ve got such good news for you, Mr Rose. Dear Mr Potter’s had a long talk with little Elsie’s mummy and she’s taken such a sweet, sensible view of our little treat for the child.’
Hubert laughed. He had, from the start of his relations with Mrs Curry, decided to take her words at their lower level. ‘That’s all right, then,’ he said.
‘Yes,’ said Mrs Curry, her blue eyes gleaming through their liquid veil, ‘dear little Elsie Black. She’s such a little parcel of love, and quite a simple little soul, too. She was playing on her swing when I saw her the other day, and she seemed more like ten than fifteen in her little peach-coloured party frock. Anyone who wins her love has got such a lot to make up to her for not having a real daddy. You should have heard her the other day, “I had a lot of daddies in the war,” she told me. “A G.I. daddy and a Norsky daddy and a Polsky daddy. But they all went away” Poor little thing, she’s quite simple. Oh it will want a lot of making up for.’
‘We’ve already agreed on that, I think,’ said Hubert.
Ron, who had been sitting stiff and unnoticed upon the sofa since Hubert’s arrival, crossed his legs and said, ‘There’s a lot of work goes to this kind of thing, you know.’
Mrs Curry considered for a second. She would have enjoyed discomfiting Hubert with Ron’s presence, but she conceded the priority to keeping Ron in his place.
‘I shan’t want the car until five, Ron,’ she said; ‘you’d better go to the cinema.’
The dark skin of Ron’s temple flushed with red. ‘I’m not sure I don’t …’ he began, and then hesitated as he caught Mrs Curry’s eye.
‘Not sure you don’t what, Ron?’ she cooed. ‘Hurry up, dear, you’ll be late for the film. I expect it’ll be all passion and kisses. Not like the kisses of a kiddie, all the same, are they, Mr Rose?’
Hubert realized only too clearly his inability to deal with Mrs Curry’s use of this phrase as sharply as he had with the junior partner’s. He had coped with Mrs Currys, Mr Potters, and Rons before in his frenzied search to regain those wondrous secret childhood games beside which all the pleasures of the adult world were dust and ashes in his mouth. He had learned to sit tight and watch every movement of these obscene creatures as they nosed a way for him through the underworld maze that led to the dark oblivion he sought. Rigid with watchful fear, spattered with foul, degrading innuendo, he must seek his return to innocence, be faithful to his childhood tryst – his sister’s remembrance of it, perhaps, confined to a yearly Christmas card – an art reproduction of Greco or Goya – from the Embassy in Madrid. Hubert was much given to such self-pity. He understood his needs so well, and felt so deeply that they should be satisfied.
‘I expect it was quite a surprise to you, Mr Rose, to find that the lady you wrote to in Brighton was such a near neighbour after all,’ said Mrs Curry. She carried against the heat a jade green parasol with a parrot head top, and, as she talked, she demurely traced little patterns upon the scarlet Turkey carpet with the ferrule.
‘I rather think,’ replied Hubert – he made perhaps too nonchalant a play with his amber cigarette holder – ‘that we’re both a bit too old to be surprised.’
‘Oh no!’ said Mrs Curry, her great eyes all harmony and peace. ‘I love surprise. Every minute of life has some new surprise – the blue skies when you wake up in the morning, the first aconites, the birds making love outside my window, a little child laughing – they’re all things we’ve seen a hundred times, but every time they’re a surprise. It’s what makes me love life so. All the funny little things. I always say to Ron, when we go to the cinema, “I’ll have a nice little snooze, dear, and you can wake me up for the Silly Symphony”. All the pretty little tiny things in those cartoons, the naughty little bunnies in their frillies getting smacked where Nature intended, or dear old Pluto catching his nose in the chamber pot.’
‘And what,’ asked Hubert, ‘about the dear little spiders eating their flies and the sweet little mice running over the food?’ His mouth twisted slightly with disgust.
Mrs Curry laughed with delight. ‘Oh dear,’ she cried, ‘all you men are the same – you only love the big things in life, big ideas, big ambitions. Mr Pendlebury’s just like you, he sees the world on such a big scale. But I’m afraid he’s a wee bit bitter all the same, things haven’t quite turned out as big as he hoped. I said to him only yesterday, “You have such large views, Mr Pendlebury, but I wonder if you haven’t missed a little of life, because you haven’t seen the importance of the tiny things around you”. I’m not a clever woman at all, but I’ve always noticed little things – people’s little ways, you know, and their funny little fads – and life has been very kind to me really.’
‘Pendlebury?’ said Hubert, glad to cast off from the dangerous shoals of Mrs Curry’s penchant for life’s minutiae. ‘You mean Bernard Sands’ brother-in-law? I heard he was in Vardon.’
‘Do you know him?’ asked Mrs Curry.
‘I’ve met him casually once, I think, but I don’t know him.’
‘Oh he’s such a clever man,’ said Mrs Curry, ‘he comes to see me a lot. I think he finds it a wee bit gloomy at the Broad House, with his sister being so poorly. I’m only so glad that he finds my little cottage a happy refuge. There’s no clever talk, I’m afraid, but we’re always cheerful. Poor Mrs Sands, it’s very sad. She cuts herself off from life’s joys so dreadfully. I’m afraid Mr Sands must be very lonely, although he’s so famous.’
Hubert smiled. ‘Oh, I think life has its compensations for him,’ he said.
Mrs Curry was delighted. ‘Do you?’ she cried. ‘You think so? Oh I’m so glad. Some companionship, perhaps?’
‘Yes,’ replied Hubert, ‘the companionship of youth might be said to fit the case.’
‘Oh really,’ cried Mrs Curry. ‘Of course, that would be it. Youth is so important to any artist, youth of one kind or another.’
‘Oh, definitely one kind, I think,’ said Hubert. ‘A protégé, I believe, is the term. I met him the other evening with some young poet.’
Mrs Curry smiled at Hubert. ‘How good you all
are to young people. And then they say there’s no love left in the world. A young poet!’ In her delight she could no longer restrain from her more vernacular, less ethical speech. ‘A nice young chum!’ she cried. ‘Oh, I should like to meet him. I expect he could tell us all sorts of things that Mr Sands would be far too modest to say of himself. Perhaps he’ll be at Vardon Hall on Thursday to see his friend’s triumph. There’s always a little hero-worship in these things, isn’t there? I do so hope it’s a fine sunny afternoon, it would be awful if it was showery.’ The word seemed to appeal to her, for she repeated, ‘Oh yes, a showery afternoon would quite spoil the fun.’ She glanced at the black marble clock on the mantelpiece. ‘How absurd of me to go on talking like this to you,’ she cried. ‘A man in love only wants to hear of one thing. Dear little Elsie! She’s such a pliable little thing….’
*
Mrs Curry sat in the front seat and ate chocolates – large, expensive ones with soft centres. After each, she licked the ends of her fat, sticky fingers to which the chocolate had adhered. Ron kept his eyes fixed to the road and drove at an average of fifty. He whistled ‘Ghost Riders in the Sky’ between his teeth, slightly off key, pitching the tune a little louder each moment that Mrs Curry failed to notice his bad temper.
‘Mr Rose has met Mr Sands’ little friend,’ Mrs Curry said, rummaging amongst the empty frilled papers.
Ron changed to ‘Water’. ‘Don’t you listen, Dan, he’s just a lying man,’ he sang in rather loud Cockney-American.
‘A poet, he said,’ Mrs Curry remarked.
Ron made a special snarling noise which signified ‘Oh’.
‘I daresay it was the same little friend you met in St Albans,’ Mrs Curry continued, undoing a box of peppermint creams.
‘Oh, you do, do you?’ said Ron. ‘Well, excepting that that one wasn’t a poet, it might have been, I suppose.’
‘Somebody’s got a little black dog on his back,’ said Mrs Curry playfully.
‘Somebody’s got a bloody cheek,’ answered Ron. ‘You put the muckers up on the bastard, didn’t you? But you wasn’t going to tell me nothing about it. You and your bloody “love”.’
‘Silly boy!’ cried Mrs Curry. ‘I didn’t quarrel with Mr Rose and I’m not going to quarrel with you. He was very grateful for the little help we’ve given him. And I’m very grateful to you, Ron. I want to give you a nice present.’
Ron relented a little; he turned and flashed the old one two at her. ‘All right,’ he said, ‘I’ll buy it.’
‘What do you say to two new suits at that tailor’s I showed you in Sackville Street?’
‘That’s easy,’ Ron replied. ‘I’d say, “F— off.”’
‘Do you remember,’ Mrs Curry asked dreamily, staring out at the blowsy summer countryside, lush with vegetation, yet dry and dusty at the end of the day’s heat, ‘that old pin-stripe suit you were wearing when you were sent to me for that little job last year? You’d creased the trousers so carefully and then it split at the knee when you sat in the drawing-room. And your poor, funny shirt with the hole under the collar. Oh dear! I’m afraid you weren’t at all at ease. A good-looking boy like you always wants to be nicely dressed.’
‘I can get the clothes whenever I like,’ said Ron. He slowed down and, taking a comb from his breast pocket with one hand, he ran it through his hair. ‘That blonde piece at St Albans is proper nuts on me. Wanted to give me a signet ring and all.’
Mrs Curry’s silvery laugh was as hard as metal. ‘Poor Mr Potter will be getting quite jealous,’ she said.
‘Yeah, Potter?’ said Ron with contempt.
Mrs Curry recognized the effects of drink and the cinema when she heard them. ‘Poor Mr Potter! He’s such a baby. He’ll run and tell Jack Winter.’
‘The big shot, eh? So what?’ Ron asked. He held up his index finger close to the next one. ‘Jack Winter and me’s like that.’
‘Oh dear! Oh dear!’ Mrs Curry laughed. ‘Jack is such a child. He’s always trying to pull my leg.’ She fumbled in her bag, then putting on her horn-rimmed spectacles she began to read from a letter, ‘“The truth is I’m not accustomed to entrusting my affairs to little fools like Wrigley that can’t keep their mouths shut. So if you and me’s not to quarrel, Vera, and for old time’s sake, take the advice of an old pal and keep your fancy bits out of business.” I took him seriously and wrote him such a rude reply,’ Mrs Curry laughed. ‘He will have the laugh on me.’
The production of a piece of paper mentioning his name, and that unfavourably, acted like magic upon Ron. He felt surrounded by hidden enemies. Though he prided himself on trusting no one, he always accepted at face value any friendly gesture that was offered to him. ‘I don’t care nothing about Jack Winter,’ he said, ‘nor for the bloody lot of you for that matter. Here’s one little boy that can look after himself.’ He was at once the lone wolf and the boy who got to the top though everyone tried to kick him down.
‘Silly,’ said Mrs Curry, ‘but I do care for you, dear, when you’re nice and cosy. You don’t have to be naughty with me. I was pulling your leg about the suits. That was just the beginning, Ron dear. I want you to have a nice time and money in your pocket to play with. You’d like that, wouldn’t you, dear?’
Ron turned and looked at her. The look in those large blue eyes seemed to satisfy him, for he stopped the car and, putting his arms round her, he gave her a very passionate kiss. ‘Like that?’ he asked.
Mrs Curry gave forth a mooing sound. ‘You can be a very loving boy when you try, can’t you?’ she said.
*
They stopped for drinks two or three times on the way home, and when they entered the cottage Mrs Curry’s red head was on Ron’s shoulder. ‘I can’t give you anything but love, baby,’ she sang in her rich voice, ‘that’s the only thing I’ve plenly of, baby.’
Ron pinched her broad bottom. ‘A bugger for that tale,’ he said. ‘What you got out of Rose?’
‘Naughty Mr Rose,’ Mrs Curry lisped. ‘I told him spring flowers come expensive out of season. But he’s very understanding, he doesn’t mind what he pays for his bunch of violets.’
‘’E’s playing a funny game,’ said Ron, ‘messing about with kids.’ And, imitating a favourite film star, he added, ‘That’s bad, that’s awful bad.’
Mrs Curry’s squeeze was like a sudden incursion of the sea. ‘Who said it was bad for us?’ she laughed.
To Bill, awaking from sleep in an armchair in the sitting-room, the conversation came as the continuation of a nightmare. He had failed again; the story of the Great Mother, Rhodes ‘mother, was untrue, false, the villagers themselves had laughed it out of court, and now the village children were crowning him with a mock wreath – roses and violets. Bernard looked at his manuscript.’ That’s bad, that’s awfully bad,’ he said, and the children, laughing, danced round him in a ring, ‘Bad, bad, bad,’ they sang.
Whatever Mrs Curry’s feelings when she found Bill in her sitting-room, she cooed with delight. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘who’s been asleep in my bed?’
Bill, dazzled by the light, sat like a great moon-faced bear, blinking his eyes and swallowing the bile of a hangover sleep. ‘I’ve been to sleep,’ he said. ‘I took the key from under the mat and made myself at home. I had a tin of your sardines, too. I hope you don’t mind.’
If Mrs Curry had been more sober she would have minded very much, both at his finding the key and at the sardine oil on the little marqueterie table; as it was, suspicion and pride were dissipated in a cloud of power. ‘You lazy old thing,’ she said, and tousled Bill’s hair. ‘You won’t know how to do without me soon.’
Bill, feeling at a disadvantage, took refuge in words. ‘When,’ he asked, ‘have we been able to do without you? Samson couldn’t, you know, nor David. Put ye Uriah in the forefront of the battle. Actium and an Empire lost might have satisfied you, but, no! to Ann Hathaway my best bed.’
If this hymn to her sex passed a little above Mrs Curry’s head, it was not the less
gratifying to her. She dearly loved a scholar and a gentleman at her feet; and many a one, with her understanding of humanity’s funny little fads, she’d had. ‘That’s all right, dear,’ she said, ‘you’ll get there in the end.’ With her instinct for man’s inner yearnings, she always answered Bill’s unintelligible flights with general reassurances.
For Ron, Bill’s range of historical allusion had less magic. ‘What’s he want hanging around here?’ he asked. ‘You ought to be more careful what you do with your key.’
Mrs Curry’s smile of rebuke was slow and kind, and her hand as it ran down Ron’s arm was slow and kind too. ‘There’s always a tiny corner for the lonely here,’ she said. ‘You make yourself comfortable, dear,’ she told Bill. ‘Ron and I have got a little business to talk over.’
‘We’ve talked enough business with him hanging around,’ said Ron. ‘How do you know what he’s up to?’
Mrs Curry’s eyes hardened a little. ‘Dear Mr Pendlebury, he wouldn’t bother himself about our little secrets. Would you, dear?’ she asked, and she pulled the lobe of Bill’s ear ever so slightly.
To Bill’s horror, the whole of their conversation pieced itself together in his mind in clear detail, and with it, so much more of what he had heard in the past week slipped into its monstrous place. How could he travel light, when other people projected their lives upon him like this? ‘My dear lady,’ he said, ‘a far wiser man than I once said, “The misfortunes of other people sit lightly upon our shoulders.” Like La Rochefoucauld, I never make the mistake of considering anyone but myself.’
‘Well,’ said Mrs Curry, ‘I’m sure that’s fair enough. And nor you should, the way luck treats you. Oh well, unlucky at cards, you know. All the same, dear, I only hope the ladies have been kinder to you than the naughty horses.’
‘It’s just a question of following up your losses,’ said Bill.
