Rose in Darkness

by Christianna Brand

  4

  AND IN THE FLAT next morning, Rufie was ringing up Sofy. Sofy was short for Sofa because she was so wickedly fat. She was another of the somewhat shifting group which had come to be known - from a Ronald Searle drawing it was - though in fact there were not often as many as eight of them, as the Eight Best Friends. Sari’s Eight Best Friends. ‘Sofy? It’s all right to talk. She’s still sound asleep.’

  ‘Are you sure, Rufie? I know by your voice that it’s Something.’

  ‘Ap-solutely soundo: I’ve just peeked in.’ The Eight Best friends were always tricking Rufie into saying certain words whose correct pronunciation subtly evaded him.

  ‘Yes, well, the cinema at Wren’s Hill, last night—’

  ‘She has no idea—?’

  ‘No, no, she didn’t want anyone to go, so one just plays it that way. Why she should care—?’

  ‘I suppose it’s a bit humiliating, poor love,’ said Sofy, ‘not ever getting any more work. And I never can think why. Of course she pretends to outsiders that it’s because she won’t do nude scenes.’

  ‘And that’s really to laugh,’ said Rufie. ‘Don’t you remember the other day when she opened the door, practically starko and couldn’t think what the lady was so surprised about?’

  ‘No, did she? Oh, Sari!’ said Sofy, fondly. ‘She really is too wonderful.’

  ‘And in a state because the woman might be upset. I mean, the rest of us were falling about with laughter but Sari was so afraid she’d shocked the poor thing and hurt her feelings.’ ‘Sari is a very special person,’ said Sofy. ‘Yes, but this time, darling, it really is a bit too much.... ’

  And Sofy rang up Etho. ‘Darling—have you heard from Rufie?’

  The gay, high voice that always sounded as though you were the one person in the world that Etho had been hoping would ring up! ‘I saw him last night.’

  ‘He called in at your place?’

  ‘Not to tell me anything in particular, though.’

  ‘It’s Sari again,’ said Sofy.

  ‘Oh, my God, no! What now?’

  ‘Followed.’

  ‘Oh, well that,’ said Etho. ‘She’s always being followed.’

  ‘But now some elaborate story, Rufie says, of a tree across the road, blown down by the storm. And can you believe it?—swapped cars with some man who also couldn’t get by because of the tree and he took her car and she took his—’

  ‘My dear, it’s all just fantasy, you people get so worked up. Sari gets bored, she cooks up these things for her own inner amusement. And she knows how Rufie does love a bit of drama.’

  ‘It’s more than that, Etho. I mean, no one loves Sari more than I do, but sometimes I do think that she’s a little bit kinky.’

  ‘She’s not kinky in the least. She’s bored, that’s all. She’s having fun. You don’t know Sari....’

  But he rang up Nan, all the same. ‘Nan, do go round and see what goes with Sari. They’re all in a flap because she had some adventure or other last night. She arrived home in something like a state of shock, apparently. Rufie had to ply her with brandy—’

  Nan was the newest of the Eight Best Friends. She listened with horror to Etho’s brief outline of the story of the tree blown across the road. ‘Oh, poor darling! And in that awful weather. I’ll go round to the flat, of course I will, and see that she’s all right.’

  ‘The only thing is’, said Etho, carefully, ‘that Rufie and Sofy don’t believe a word of it.’

  ‘Don’t believe it? Why not?’

  ‘I’ve no idea,’ said Etho. ‘You’d better ask Rufie.’

  So before she went round to Sari’s, Nan telephoned the flat. ‘Rufie? Is it all right to talk?’

  ‘Yes, yes, brandy and pills last night and still ap-solutely soundo.’

  ‘Why don’t you and Sofy believe this thing about her swapping cars?’

  ‘Nan, darling, you don’t know Sari yet,’ said Rufie. ‘She’s always being followed and having these terrible adventures. Of course she never swapped cars with anyone. There’s not a word of truth in it.’

  Nan was silent, bewildered. They were all so bewildering—exciting, amusing, glamorous, so quick and flashing; she never could think why they bothered with her, a sad, bored, ordinary widow, much older than any of them (except perhaps Etho) who had somehow got drawn into their enchanted circle. But—bewildering. She said at last slowly, a little ashamed of being so dull and prosaic: ‘There’s one simple way to find out. Why don’t you go down to the car park and see if the Halcyon is there?’

  ‘But I’m looking at it out of the window this minute,’ said Rufie. ‘Of course it’s there.’

  In the event, they all turned up that morning at the flat.

  Sari woke late, very muttery and grumbly, with cat-like stretchings and yawnings and a great deal of gasping about how awful one felt in the mornings and how dreadful it was to be alive at all. Rufie, well used to her total inability to behave like a human being until fortified with cigarettes and black coffee, paid her no attention whatsoever except to supply her with both. He was employed somewhat spasmodically as a designer for the great fashion house of Christophe et Cie in Regent Street, and mostly worked at home. Home to Rufie was where he happened to be living—with any luck in someone else’s apartment. Much loved—by both sexes—he easily settled in, a welcome cuckoo in any available nest, bringing with him little but an assortment of only very slightly outré clothes and a simple arrangement of the tools of his trade. The work, when he was on form, came to him with such ease that he would sit on the edge of his bed with a pad on his knee and a few paint pots precariously balanced along the pillow and dash off sketch after sketch that in a brief time would be making headlines in all the couture magazines. Form, alas! however, too often eluded him and no arrangement of paint pots could produce anything but despair. His income in consequence was hardly a dependable factor; but since he would give away without a thought every penny he had, he equally without a thought accepted, when in need, the bounty of his friends. True, the second was a little inclined to out-balance the first but he was quite genuinely unaware of the fact. Calculation of this sort had no place in Rufie’s mind. At the moment, Sari had a large flat and was all too frequently short of spending money. Rufie simply appropriated the second bedroom, and while he was in funds, what he had was Sari’s also. The second bedroom led out, via the kitchen, to the fire-escape steps; so his social life, if a little curious to those who were narrow-minded about such things, need offend no one. Not that Sari cared two hoots how other people conducted their private lives. Live and let live.

  Bathed, extravagantly scented, in tight black velvet jeans with a black sequin monkey swarming up one leg with little clutching hands, in a vast black woolly sweater, hair standing up in its thick close fur on top of her head like a glowing, golden-y moss, by midday she was finally restored to life. She came into the bedroom where Rufie was curled up, paint pots a-wobble, sketching away like mad. He said, continuing to scribble, the act of creation apparently quite undisturbed by conversation: ‘Sunday! Nan’s coming over. Where could we go, what could we do?’ The storm had passed away leaving a beautiful sunshiny autumn day.

  ‘I’ll have to wait in, till this man comes and picks up his car.’ ‘Oh yes, of course, the man and the car,’ said Rufie. Assured by Etho that it would all turn out to be a bit of private nonsense on Sari’s part, he had given it little further thought; only how was she going to get out of all this stage-set, poor love? He suggested craftily: ‘You said he’d given you his number. Why don’t you ring and hurry him up?’

  ‘I tried but I keep getting the wrong people. The number’s all blurred with the rain.’

  ‘Oh, what a bore!’ He tried to make things easy. ‘You’re sure this wasn’t all a nightmare, love? I mean, a sort of dream—’

  ‘But it happened when I wasn’t asleep,’ said Sari.

  ‘Yes, but... Well that does look very much like your Halcyon in the car park,’ said Rufie.
‘I saw from the sitting-room, its nose sticking out from the shed.’

  ‘Well, of course it looks like my Halcyon. His was a Halcyon too. I told you.’ She shrugged. ‘Well, he’ll turn up some time. Meanwhile—what?’

  ‘If you can’t go out, we’d better ring round some of the chums to come and have lunch. Except of course, we haven’t got anything to eat. I’d go down to the delicatessen,’ said Rufie, using another of his words, ‘but I’m flat broke, myself.’

  ‘I’ve got a bit stashed away in my wiggy-bank but I simply must hoard it.’ The marmalade hair-do was a source of enormous expense since nobody could achieve its incandescent effect but a terribly special man who most unfortunately lived and worked in Rome. ‘A couple more weeks and I’ll simply have to go to Luigi. Would Nan bring some vittles?’ The heavenly part about Nan was that she seemed to be always in funds.

  ‘One rather tickly doesn’t want to ask Nan again.’ Particularly was yet another of the words. ‘I mean, she brought it last time and the time before, and she always contributes.’ All those lovely chicking sangwidges, he recollected.

  ‘She runs them up herself in the kitching,’ said Sari. But the chicking sangwidges were a joke against himself.

  Sofy would be no good. She was currently resting and even flatter broke than usual. ‘I do think it’s hard on her, poor old Sofa. She’s got to stay fat because nowadays she only gets fat-girl parts, but there aren’t all that many fat-girl parts going; and she has to spend a fortune stuffing herself with food she can’t afford, to keep herself in work she doesn’t get.’

  ‘What about Charley?’

  ‘Virryvirry good oideah,’ said Sari in a stage Indian accent subtly tinged with Scouse. Charley, she remembered, had sworn to himself to spend today swotting up for his medical exams, but she knew how all too easy it would be to tempt him from this path. ‘And Pony?’

  So Rufie rang up Nan again and Pony, and settled back with Sari over more black coffees on the immense long studio couch. ‘The minute I get paid for my sketches, we’ll stand Nan a terrific meal at the Cellier du Thing, to make up for all this scrounging.’

  ‘Or a presie. What could we sell,’ said Sari, looking round the room, ‘that would buy Nan a really gorgeous presie?’ She knew a girl who was madly covetous of the sequin monkey pants....

  They fell to planning the presie. Rufie might design a simply outrageous hat, what about that?—something that would really do something for Nan’s image which, let’s face it, was just a shade, well a deep dark shadow in fact, too twin-set-and-pearls. They could make it together. Sari had one of those rather smelly Japanese parasols which would do splendidly (without the handle of course) for the brim, and then with holes cut out between the struts. And into the holes, one could push plastic chrysanthemums, masses of bronzey and yellow chrysanths, just right for the Japanese theme, or was that China?—and make a sort of crown of them too; and in fact in summer Nan could use real fresh ones, dashing off to the loo now and then if it was a hot restaurant or anything like that, to renew them. (Sari herself was a great dasher off to loos. ‘I must go for a quick wee,’ she would say, emerging half an hour later with a brand new face-do and general air of radiance that halted reproaches on masculine lips.)

  Or even sprinkle them with water, agreed Rufie, it being after all, an umbrella. But the parasols did smell terribly oily. What about a pet?—poor Nan, so lonely without her husband. A hamster?—in a very special cage to make it more expensive because hamsters were probably quite cheap and one did want to make it a really handsome present. Sari, however, was not too sure that a hamster would sufficiently compensate for the departed husband—Bertrand his name had been, wouldn’t you know?—and there’d be all that cleaning out to do. They decided at last to ring up Etho. Etho was terribly good on presents and might even come in with them, so they could do something really stupendous.

  Etho rose to the occasion in his usual delighted fashion and suggested a pot of orchids, frightfully expensive and apparently they took the most ghastly amount of care and attention, quite as much as Nan could possibly have lavished on Bertrand, so would occupy her in that way, and no problem about cleaning out. He readily agreed to come in on it, and by the way he would collect her and bring her over to the lunch and a couple of bottles too. Etho was one of the Eight, really the first and to Sari most important of the Eight, but he played life very cool, keeping himself to himself, amused by them all, entertained, fond, indeed devoted—but uninvolved. He had known Sari from the days of The Spanish Steps, which had been made by the company he worked for; indeed had probably been the archway through whom she had made most of her friends in this country. She had lived largely abroad until she had come here to make the picture, and had no other ties in England. He explained it all to Nan, driving her up to the Hampstead flat for lunch. ‘Oh, and I warn you that a presie may be on the way.’ He loyally suppressed any mention of the orchids but described the proposal for a Japanese-sunshade hat.

  Nan was much alarmed. ‘But they wouldn’t really have done it?’

  ‘Don’t you believe it! They get caught up with these ideas—of course they’re hopped-up half the time....’

  ‘You don’t mean—on drugs?’ said Nan, shocked.

  ‘Well, it’s only a bit of pot. And not Sari, she never touches the stuff. But Rufie gets lit and then he incites her to further mad ideas, which after all are very ingenious—and nothing will stop them. We had a friend once, well not too unlike yourself, as a matter of fact, and they broke into her flat while she was away and painted it throughout in a lovely Van Gogh yellow. Like walking into sunshine, they said, and so warm and cheering for her after all those dismal greys and greens she’d had before. They were genuinely miserable when she said it was more like walking into a tub of butter and brought in the decorators, with more nice muted greens and greys.’

  ‘Of course Sari could live in a Van Gogh yellow flat—and wear a chrysanthemum hat,’ said Nan, a tiny bit jealous of the friend not too much unlike herself. She was consumed with interest in them all and especially in Sari, but hitherto had not quite liked to ask too many questions. ‘That’s not her real name, I suppose? I mean, no one could really be called Sari Morne?’

  ‘No, no, Norma Jean Baker I dare say. She says it was Maria Bloggs and no one can shake her, but that’s only Sari-nonsense. Solon asked her when he first met her and she simply said, “Sari Morne.” Of course he knew it wasn’t true but what did that matter? It was a great name for cinema.’

  ‘I don’t even know who Solon is.’

  ‘Well, he’s was, because he’s dead now. He was my boss and it was he who found Sari and as it were created her.’

  ‘As a film star?’

  Etho liked Nan very much. It was he who had introduced her into the circle. He had picked her up at a very dull party where there had been a great deal to drink but nothing to eat. ‘A super party?’ he had suggested politely, upon introduction.

  ‘It might be if there’d been another “p” in super,’ she had replied and on the strength of this joke he had invited her next day to one of the lunches at the Hampstead flat. It had in fact turned out to be the only such joke Nan had ever made or ever did make; but she had nevertheless infiltrated into their ranks. Why, they could never quite make out; it was her innocence, perhaps, which was really rather sweet, about all that to them was just everyday life—and indeed there was something refreshing about her, like a clear stream winding its way through all the spume and spray of their own turbulent waters. Her naive curiosity amused Etho, nor did the twinge of jealousy escape him. Lounging back in the driving seat, long legs stretched to the pedals, thin hand casual on the driving wheel, he settled down to explain what he could of Sari....

  An orphan. There’d been a ‘plane crash apparently, when she was about three or four or something and she’d been snatched from the jaws of death, but her parents had perished, complete with grandparents and uncles and aunts, the lot. Well, not all in the ‘plane, perhaps
(Nan was so literal!), but anyway there was not a soul left except one simply fearful aunt, apparently strictly not designed by nature for the comfort of bereft kiddywinx. ‘Very rich and smart, trailed the poor child round Europe, never any proper schooling, and then ended up by falling ill rather suddenly in some inconvenient spot, Como or somewhere, but anyway in that part of Switzerland if Como is in Switzerland which I never quite know....’

  ‘Italian Switzerland,’ said Nan in her confident way—as though it really mattered, Etho thought. One part of Switzerland was very much like another, if not worse.

  ‘Well, anyway, she was brought to Rome, to this convent hospital which is outside Rome, towards Tarquinia, and there she died. The girl was left absolutely friendless and the nuns kept her there at any rate till the funeral, and they would have done afterwards, I suppose, till something was arranged. But anyway, Solon was out there looking for locations for The Spanish Steps—we had a frightful job with the box-office, I may say, because naturally the customers thought it was a Spanish film and stayed away in droves in case they should be subjected to a bullfight—’

  ‘And quite right, too.’

  ‘—and it was only Sari being such a hit that brought them all in, after all, and saved it. Well, as I was saying, Solon was mooching around and he happened on this funeral in progress and thought that here was a nice bit of local colour so he shuffled along with the mourners—a riot, he said it was, black horses and plumes, the lot—I think he made most of it up, actually, it simply couldn’t have been true. But anyway,’ said Etho, coming up for breath, ‘there at the graveside he saw this kneeling figure. Kneeling there weeping, she was, and he said he’d never seen anything so woe-begone—or so beautiful—in his life. The place was packed with nuns and priests and what have you, all in pitch black and absolutely hideous, with little rimless glasses every last one of them—and there in the middle of them this absolutely golden goddess, crouching there crying. And then when they threw the earth in on the grave, she seemed not to be able to stand it one second longer and she got up and slipped away through the gravestones—the like of which, I may add, he said had to be seen to be believed. So a covey of the nuns ran after her and there was a great clucking and calling but she just scudded on, screaming at them to leave her alone, leave her alone. Well, she wasn’t alone for long because as soon as the nuns had been well and truly left behind, he caught up with her and he took her by the arm and turned her towards him—he said he simply had to look once more into that marvellous face. And she turned to him—and he suddenly realised that it was woebegone no longer, but radiant: absolutely radiant with happiness....’