by MARY HOCKING
‘He can’t help it, dear. He had a bad time in that Jap prison – camp . . .’ And so on and so on, explaining, soothing, pacifying, until in the end she had shouted:
‘I hate Christopher! I have hated him all my life and I was sorry he didn’t die in that prison camp.’
This, and other incidents, crowded her mind and occupied much of the journey until at last, turning to look out of the window, she saw a straggle of buildings where the hedgerows had been. A timber store, a warehouse, a yard with a lot of broken-down cars in it. She gazed at the ugly buildings beginning to thread together. London! A row of council houses, a picture palace; another row of houses with no slates on the roofs and then a great gash with weeds struggling through rubble. She leant forward eagerly, forgetting Clyde in the immense reality of blitzed London. Her breath misted the pane and she rubbed it clear with her gloves. London! In ten minutes a taxi would take her through the broad, busy streets full of people who were amusing and sophisticated on their way to drinks at the Berkeley followed by more intimate supper parties. Perhaps she and Kerren could have a drink at the Berkeley. How good it would be to see Kerren! The war years had been a wonderful release for Robin, the only time in her life when she had been able to do things that were silly and irresponsible. And Kerren had been a wonderful ally.
The train was slowing down. In the distance she could see the roofs of platforms like so many ceremonial awnings reaching out to welcome trains. She opened the door of the compartment. There were no porters so she had to carry her own case, but she managed against all odds to get a taxi. ‘Hotel Frobisher,’ she said triumphantly.
The Frobisher was at Lancaster Gate, overlooking Hyde Park. Her father-in-law always stayed there. She had resented his interference, but since he had insisted on paying the bill she had not argued too strenuously. The hotel was a tall, thin building sandwiched between two more resplendent hotels which were still requisitioned by the army; it looked good in an unobtrusive way. The manager remembered Mr. Vernon Senior: Robin had a bedroom facing the park. How naïve people were who believed that money did not count! Robin thought as she looked out of the window. The evening was smoky, but she could see a few blurred lights dotted here and there between trees in the park. The lights enchanted her after the years of darkness.
She watched a boy and a girl greet each other on the pavement immediately below. They kissed, then he put his arm round her shoulders and they walked slowly in the direction of Marble Arch. They seemed such children. How exciting to be at the beginning again. To have time to gaze in shop windows at things you could not yet afford to buy, to study menus outside restaurants until you came to one that suited your pocket, to have time to quarrel and make up and drift apart again . . . Something twisted inside her. She put her fists against her lips to hold back the tide of bitterness; through clenched teeth she moaned the name of Con over and over again. She closed her eyes and fought the familiar battle with despair. Something would happen, never Con again, but something; the whole course of life could not possibly be set at twenty-three, something would happen to release the trap. It was no use. Panic began to take over. She looked round frantically for something on which to anchor her mind and saw her suitcase lying on the ground. Did I bring everything with me? She sat staring at the suitcase, forcing herself to play a childhood party game of remembering articles set out on a tray. Foundation cream, night cream, powder, cleansing milk . . . This is the way we play the game of love in Cheltenham. We don’t parade our anguish, beating our breasts and crying out, ‘God, give him back to me!’; we bleed internally. Mascara, eye shadow, liner . . . Did I bring that new liner? She jumped up and ran to her handbag; her fingers were trembling so much that she could hardly extract the keys and then she could not fit them into the locks. She went on playing the game while she struggled with the keys. Coupons in case I see anything I want to buy, scent, present of talcum powder for Kerren, cotton wool . . . She had the suitcase open now. The game was beginning to work. Coat hangers, clothes brush, travelling clock . . . She was really not sure about the travelling clock and by the time she had found it she had another reason to panic. It was half-past five.
She shut the bedroom window and went into the bathroom. She concentrated fiercely on her preparations for the evening and as she watched the process whereby she was transformed from provincial Cinderella into metropolitan sophisticate her spirits rose. By the time she left the hotel she felt that tingling excitement London always aroused in her. She stood on the steps of the hotel for a moment, quietly savouring success. As she turned her head, coolly appraising the night, she could feel the movement of her hair, heavy in its sleek page-boy roll, and this gave her a little sensuous thrill. She put up a hand and fluffed a few auburn strands across one cheek just to give the authentic casual effect. She had intended to stroll down Park Lane and pick up a taxi near Piccadilly; but the air was acrid with fog, so she said to the man standing in the doorway of the hotel. ‘Would you call me a taxi, please?’
There was no answer. She turned to look at him. How absurd to have imagined that a small hotel like The Frobisher would boast a commissionaire! He was very tall and in the dim light he looked vividly angry, eyes like flint, flaring nostrils and a grim gash of a mouth. How to cope with this wounded Mephistopheles?
‘I’m so sorry . . . But all this traffic bewilders me . . .’
She had become a little breathless and this created just the right impression of feminine helplessness. Immediately he was all gallantry. He stalked into the road regardless of the swirling traffic and soon returned miraculously unscathed with a taxi meekly spluttering at his heels.
Robin said, ‘Magnificent!’ and held out her hand. He raised it to his lips. No one had ever done this before; she was not sure whether she should wait for it to be returned or take it away herself. While she was debating this he made a slight movement and Robin let her hand flutter down. He held the door of the taxi for her. His eyes were astonishingly piercing, she felt that he could see to the depths of her soul: a disturbing sensation, since she was never very happy about the state of her soul. She got into the taxi and he stepped back. In the light of the street lamp she could see that he was dressed in a dark blue demob. suit which was too narrow across the shoulders. The driver had drawn back the glass panel. ‘Where to?’ he demanded crossly. Her brain seemed unable to transmit messages to her fragmented senses. The driver said, still more crossly, ‘Costing you money, lady.’ Her lips moved. She did not know what she said, but he repeated ‘Regent Palace’ and the taxi moved off. She sat back, trembling pleasurably. What an extraordinary encounter! It would make an amusing story to recount to Kerren.
Chapter Five
The only time Kerren had seen Robin out of uniform had been on the wedding day when Robin had worn a traditional white dress because her mother had insisted that anything else would have been brazen in the circumstances. She was, therefore, unprepared for Robin in velvet suit of deep purple. This gorgeous apparition damped down the spontaneity of Kerren’s greeting. There was no doubt about Robin’s feelings; she kissed Kerren lightly but with genuine affection. Kerren said, ‘I hope you haven’t been waiting long?’
‘It doesn’t matter. It’s marvellous to have time to kill. What are you drinking?’
‘Gin and something.’
‘Navy girl!’
Robin was all airy gaiety. Kerren, unable to compete, sat down feeling distinctly earthbound; she eased off her tweed coat which no longer seemed worth the trouble she had taken pressing it. Robin went to the bar to order their drinks. Two American army officers who were hunched on bar stools studied her appreciatively. Some of the bloom had dusted off them since they first came to Europe; the look of the hard-bitten campaigner had been grafted on to, but had not quite eradicated, the college boy exuberance. One of them said to Robin, ‘Why couldn’t you be twins, sugar?’ Robin turned her head away, her long patrician nose at its most disdainful angle. When she came back with the drinks, Kerren said, mak
ing an effort, ‘You look stupendous! However do you manage it?’
‘We’ve got an old dear who comes to do for us. I give her my cast-offs and she gives me coupons. I don’t have a conscience about that kind of thing, do you?’
‘I never seem to have any money, let alone coupons; it makes life much simpler.’
Kerren’s conscience, in fact, was stern about such things as coupons and rations. Robin, who suffered from a constant need to justify herself, began to wish she had not worn the new suit. She asked, ‘How’s Cath?’ to get them back on common ground.
The Americans left the bar while Kerren was telling Robin about Cath.
‘She’s determined to suffer,’ Robin said. ‘Like one of the characters in a Graham Greene novel, hell-bent on coming to a bad end.’ They began to talk about other people they had known.
They talked briefly about Beatie, who had been killed when a plane crashed in a village street on Kerren’s wedding night.
‘I was heartless about that,’ Kerren admitted. ‘I couldn’t forgive her for demanding my attention at such a time.’
‘I couldn’t forgive her for being such a success with men,’ Robin contributed her confession.
They turned their attention to the living. Jessie had actually married Fred. ‘The only reason he went through with it was because he couldn’t get her any other way.’ Robin’s tongue was as sharp as ever. Marney was married, had one child and was expecting another. ‘He’s making sure she keeps out of trouble.’ When they had exchanged all the news of their cabinmates, Robin asked Kerren whether she had seen Adam. Would it be an idea to look him up over the week-end, he was always good value, wasn’t he? In panic, Kerren lied that she did not think he was in London. ‘He’s with Reuters, remember? At this moment he’s probably having a sundowner somewheres East of Suez.’ She went on quickly to ask whether Robin remembered the party at which Dixie had done a striptease and First Officer had walked in when she was down to her silk stockings? They bought each other drinks and capped each other’s memories; but every so often there was an awkward pause when the laughter petered out. They could not strike a spark, neither had the confidence to generate real hilarity.
More people came in. There was a group of men standing round the bar now, flashily dressed in jackets so square that it looked as though the coat hangers had been left in. They talked with loud confidence and displayed five-pound notes as though they were a new form of identity card. Where had men like this come from? One hadn’t noticed them during the war but as soon as it ended they had emerged to take over the peace. Robin kept making contemptuous remarks about them, but she was not displeased to attract their attention. Kerren said:
‘Let’s move, shall we? We can wander round and find a place to eat.’
Fortunately, the fog had lifted and the night was bright. As they turned up Sherwood Street, Robin said:
‘Weren’t those men awful?’ They had fascinated her because they were so obviously successful; now she was ashamed and anxious to condemn them. ‘How did they get all that money? On the black market?’
‘I suppose so.’
‘You meet some strange people.’
Robin thought that now she might tell Kerren about the man outside The Frobisher, but Kerren interrupted to enquire about Terence.
‘Won’t you miss him?’ she asked.
‘Oh yes. But it will be nice to have a rest from motherhood.’
‘But you love Terence.’
‘Oh, I love him.’ Robin dismissed love as though it was the least of emotions.
They turned into Old Compton Street. Robin, regretting the Berkeley, was uneasy about Soho: she was afraid that the kitchens were not clean and she would find an insect in the food. They were passing shops, closed now, dingy shutters drawn; ahead there was a lock-up garage, then an alleyway. The pavement was strewn with crushed vegetables and bits of a broken packing case. There were not many people about, but at the corner of the street ahead a young woman waited, quietly smoking a cigarette; she looked very much at ease, as though she owned the dark mile around her. She wore a boxy fawn jacket and the shortest skirt Robin had ever seen, at least an inch above the knee. As they passed her they could see her face quite clearly in the light from the lamp, a face like a flower, fresh and unblemished; not the face of someone who has been driven into a corner by life. Robin said:
‘If you had the chance to change places with her for one night, would you?’
‘Do you know, I was just thinking the same thing!’
They warmed to each other, their old feeling of comradeship restored.
‘Now why is it?’ Kerren asked. ‘What is attractive about her kind of life?’
‘It’s the freedom,’ Robin said. ‘I envy her. At least she has the courage to live the way she chooses. She probably ran away from Cheltenham or some such place.’
They came to a crossroads and turned into Dean Street. They had a meal in a Spanish restaurant which, in spite of the five shilling limit, was very expensive. This seemed, if anything, to set the seal on Robin’s enjoyment. Money mattered to Robin; she had given up freedom and meant to enjoy what comforts remained.
In the morning, they went to Harrods. ‘It doesn’t impress me,’ Robin assured Karren. ‘I just have to go there for a laugh.’ She spent the whole morning and a lot of money over her laugh. In the afternoon they went to Hampstead. ‘When you’re really established in something you must live here,’ Robin said. They were both convinced that Kerren would become established in something and they enjoyed themselves looking for a suitable house which must, Robin insisted, have a view across the heath.
Robin wanted to go back to Kerren’s room after tea, but Kerren persuaded her that they should go to her hotel instead. Kerren knew by now that Robin would be horrified by the room; it had been a mistake ever to have imagined that she would make an adventure of it. Kerren clinched matters by pointing out that if they returned to The Frobisher Robin would be able to have a bath before they went out in the evening.
They were going to Dilys’s flat.
‘I’m looking forward to meeting her,’ Robin had said when told of this arrangement. ‘She’s the one who has the Gift of Life, isn’t she?’
‘You’ll like the flat,’ Kerren said, sensing that Robin had no intention of liking Dilys.
The flat was on the fifth floor of a block which overlooked Hyde Park from the Knightsbridge side; the aspect at least would please Robin. Dilys was rich, but not rich enough to have one of the flats directly overlooking the park; but by leaning out of her bedroom window and craning to the right one had a glimpse of it.
The flat itself was a place of good beginnings. There was the half-finished mural in the hall which depicted a barren purple landscape with a lake of fire in the middle from the centre of which rose an inadequate spurt of turquoise water. ‘It supports a figure,’ Dilys explained when Robin tentatively asked about the centrepiece. ‘But I can’t see it clearly in my mind yet.’ In the lounge there was a beautifully modelled head of a young woman with a broad, flat face which expressed the intense, dreamlike tranquillity of the saint. It was a shock to discover that the back of the had was hollow. ‘I call it Schizophrenia,’ Dilys said, though she admitted that she had run out of clay.
All the walls in the flat were washed white so that Dilys could paint murals when the spirit moved her. There was very little furniture. ‘I don’t like furniture,’ Dilys explained. ‘I feel it moving in on me.’ A settee and one chair had, however, been provided in the lounge for the convenience of visitors. Robin felt that the flat was waiting for someone to inhabit it. Kerren felt that the mural and sculpture hinted at a great gift as yet not realized.
Cath, who accompanied Kerren and Robin on this particular evening, was impressed though rather ill at ease. Dilys’s flat always aroused in her an old conflict between disapproval and envy. It seemed to her like a stage set for Design for living. As she sat in the lounge, she could imagine the men coming and going, affairs
beginning and ending without pain or strife. She wondered whether Dilys had invited her current man this evening. Dilys had said that his only drawback was a certain stiffness. She adored music and so did he; but whereas she could enjoy it lying on the carpet in a completely relaxed position, he went to concerts in dreary halls and sat on hard seats. In this, Dilys suspected a puritan intensity which was not so far revealed in his love-making. Cath thought of him as the man who would not lie on the carpet. She longed for him to materialize.
Robin simply longed for a man to materialize. She sat on the settee and looked at the others dotted about the carpet like so many fallen petals and thought how silly it all was! As for Dilys, Robin had seldom seen anyone so unattractive. The long, white face peering out from the web of dark hair belonged, in Robin’s view, to the more repellent kind of fairy story. The insubstantial, half-awakened maiden with the vague now-where-am-I-and-who- are-these-people kind of charm did not appeal to Robin who liked to make an immediate impact on other people. Robin dug her heels into the carpet and hoped that they at least would leave a mark.
The light was fading, the curtains were not drawn and a window was open somewhere behind Robin so that the evening breeze cut across the back of her neck and shoulders. Dilys had switched on one bar of the electric fire and the three on the floor were watching the bar turn gradually from rusty black to red-gold as though it was a beautiful phenomenon from which they derived especial comfort. Robin turned and looked out of the window. Through a gap between two tall blocks she could see a patch of sky, a deep, dusky rose; the sharp tang of a winter evening came to her. She got up and walked on to the balcony. The lights were on in several windows now; it was years since Robin had seen so many lighted windows, it was like gazing into a golden honeycomb. In a room opposite a man was putting on a tie in front of a mirror, she watched him stand back to examine the effect, his chin tucked in, his shoulders squared. She could see the shirt drawn tight across his chest and as she watched she felt the faintest shiver of desire. This was how she would like her loving to be, quick, impersonal, with no consequences. Behind her in the room, Dilys said in her vague voice which seemed to drop sentences into the air as though they were meaningless and she was just trying them out for sound:
