A Mixture of Frailties tst-3

by Robertson Davies

  “I—oh, I wouldn’t have any idea,” said Monica. “I don’t know anything about what it costs to live here. I’m not very good at English money yet. What would you think?”

  “I don’t suppose it will be very long before you know other students, and music students aren’t very flush of money, as a usual thing. You wouldn’t want to be above or below the average. Would five pounds a week do it? Say twenty-five pounds a month? That’s three hundred a year, you know; very handsome, really, and all your big bills paid.”

  Monica, who knew nothing about it, agreed that this was so, and Mr Andrews thought so, too, for a girl of the sort who called him “sir”.

  “Now as to teaching,” he continued, “I see that is all to be in the hands of Sir Benedict Domdaniel. He will tell you what to do, and we shall pay the bills. I see here that Boykin is writing to Sir Benedict today, to say that you have come, and you will undoubtedly be hearing from him very shortly. So there really isn’t anything more to discuss, is there? Except, of course, that if you need any help, or anything like that, get in touch with us. I’m away rather a lot, so you’d better ask for Boykin.”

  Mr Andrews rose to his impressive height, and turned out the very faint gleam of geniality which had illumined his large blue eyes. Monica was shown out into Plough Court by Mr Boykin, who assured her that he would see that she was moved to Courtfield Gardens that very afternoon.

  5

  “You’ll be wanting a few sticks, won’t you?” said Mr Boykin. He sat on Monica’s trunk, which he and a disgruntled taxi-man had just dragged and boosted up three flights of stairs, getting his breath and surveying her new quarters.

  “Semi-furnished was the wording of the advertisement,” said Mrs Merry. Her manner was not defensive, but there was a hint in her voice that, if hostility should arise, she was ready for it. “I naturally expected that the young lady would want to have her own things about her. It was never mentioned to me that the young lady was from the Dominions.” Mrs Merry contrived, in this statement, to make it clear that in her view being from the Dominions was the sort of thing which a tenant would conceal for as long as possible.

  Unquestionably Monica would be wanting a few sticks. There were no carpets on the floors and no curtains on the windows. The bedroom contained a single bed, a washstand upon which stood a very large jug in a basin, and a very small clothes-press in the Art Nouveau manner, with a bit of looking-glass let into the front of it. The sitting-room was furnished with one of those day-beds upon which it is uncomfortable to sit and even more uncomfortable to lie, a large discouraged pouffe covered with grubby cretonne, and a dirty, scarred little object which was probably once described as “a handy smoker’s chairside table”. There was nothing else.

  The rooms were small and the distemper on the walls had been marked and scuffed by many tenants. Outside the windows, two feet from the glass, was the decorative balustrade which ran across the face of the house—a kind of fence with bulbous stone palings—so that it was easy to look out at the sky, but very hard to see down into the street.

  “There are facilities for light housekeeping, as you see,” said Mrs Merry, opening the door of a small cupboard in which, indeed, there was a very old, scabby gas-ring and some shelving. She unveiled this wonder as though it clinched the desirability of her rooms.

  “And when may we expect the piano?” said she.

  “I’ll have one sent round when Sir Benedict gives the word,” said Mr Boykin. Mrs Merry thawed a little at the mention of a title.

  “I shall have to hold you responsible for any damage done in moving the instrument upstairs,” said she. Adding, to Monica, “You’ll be able to make as much noise as you like up here; there’s nobody on this floor in the daytime, and rarely anyone downstairs.”

  “That’ll be great,” said Monica, who was thoroughly unnerved by Mrs Merry, and anxious to placate her. If Mrs Merry wanted noise, she would promise noise.

  “I’ll be getting along,” said Mr Boykin. “Anything you want, give me a tinkle.”

  “Well—what about the sticks?” said Monica. “Shall I get them, and have the bill sent to you? Or what?”

  Mr Boykin had not foreseen this; he had assumed that Monica would buy her own sticks.

  “I’ll have to speak to Mr Andrews about that,” he said. “Don’t do anything until you hear from me.”

  “And what about Sir Benedict?”

  “We’ll be getting on to him; you wait till you hear from us.”

  “Yes—and money? How do I get money to live?”

  “Haven’t you any on hand?”

  “Very little.” As a matter of fact, Monica had twenty pounds in five-pound notes which she did not mean to touch. That was insurance against anything going wrong with the Bridgetower Trust. She was young, but she was no fool about money.

  “Well, I haven’t had any instructions yet. But don’t worry. I’ll get everything straightened away just as soon as I’ve had a talk with Mr Andrews. A Happy New Year, Miss Gall.”

  Mr Boykin took his leave, reflecting that the law would be the most delightful profession in the world if only it didn’t involve these odd little necessities to take care of people; they always wanted things which were, to the legal mind, superfluous and looked badly on itemized statements. Still, the girl had to have some furniture. And she was quite right not to buy it herself. That girl had her head screwed on right.

  “What do I do about heat?” asked Monica when he had gone.

  “The gas-fire and the hot-plate work from the meter above the door,” said Mrs Merry. “You will be wise always to keep a stock of shillings on hand; it is useless to apply to me, for I simply cannot undertake to make change for my tenants. It is a rule which I have been compelled to make,” she said reproachfully, and left Monica alone in her splendour.

  6

  Splendour it was, to Monica, for she had never had a place of her own before, nor had she lived in such a grand house. Mrs Merry’s establishment was in one of South Kensington’s Italianate terraces, with an imposing entrance hall and a handsome, sweeping staircase. It was true that Monica’s rooms were on the floor which had once sheltered the servants, and lacked the high ceilings and ornate plasterwork of the lower apartments: it was true, also, that the gas-fire was an inadequate, popping nuisance, and the inconveniently placed meter demanded shillings with tiresome frequency; and it was true that quite a long journey had to be made to the bathroom on the lower floor, for the large jug and basin were apparently not intended for use. But it was her own place, not to be shared with Alice or anyone, and she had high hopes of it. She settled down to wait for news from Mr Boykin.

  During the first week of waiting she passed the time by exploring the part of London in which she found herself. She walked in Kensington Gardens and Hyde Park. The Albert Memorial, coming to her as a surprise, seemed a beautiful thing, and the Albert Hall, from the outside, splendid. She walked the Natural History Museum and the Victoria and Albert, and told herself that they were immensely educational. She found Cheyne Walk and the river. She became so well known in Harrods that the detectives began to watch her closely. While she was exploring it was not hard to keep her spirits up.

  It was another matter when she was in her rooms in Courtfield Gardens. Mrs Merry was no cheerful Cockney; indeed, she was like nothing of which Monica had ever heard. She seemed to be rather grand, for she spoke in a refined manner, making a diphthong of every vowel, and she wore a look of suffering bravely borne which was, in Monica’s eyes, distinguished. If Mrs Merry had given her any encouragement, Monica would have confided in her and sought her advice, but Mrs Merry kept her tenants in their place by an elaborate disdain, which she made particularly frosty for Monica’s benefit. And so Monica spent her evenings alone, sitting on the day-bed as long as she could endure it, and going to bed when she could bear no more. During the first day or two she attempted to get on with War and Peace, but found it depressing, and as time wore on she suffered from that sense of unwo
rthiness which attacks sensitive people who have been rebuffed by a classic. She read magazines and newspapers. There appeared to be an extraordinary amount of rape in London.

  Meals were her greatest worry. Where could she eat? There were plenty of places which offered food, it was true, but she did not like any of them. There were horrible, dirty little holes-in-the-wall, which depended heavily on sausages and boiled cabbage for their bill of fare. And there were foreign restaurants which alarmed her because the food was all described in unknown tongues, and incomprehensible purple writing, and besides it was all too expensive to be enjoyed. In Chelsea she found coffee bars, but they seemed to be the exclusive property of oddly-dressed young men and women who made her feel awkward and unwelcome, and anyhow they did not offer much to eat. There were other Chelsea restaurants, kept by very refined ladies who, like Mrs Merry, gave out an atmosphere of highbred grievance; they provided extremely quaint and individual surroundings, stressing Toby jugs and warming-pans, but gave surprisingly little food for what they charged. And none of the food agreed with her. After a few days her largest meal had become a bready, cakey tea at a Kardomah in Brompton Road.

  She could cook nothing in her room, for she had no pots—not even a kettle. It was a new and disagreeable experience to Monica to have to go to a public place and choose every bite that she ate, and she quickly came to dread it. She tried to reach Peggy Stamper at the Three Arts Club, but she had gone, leaving no address.

  By the end of the second week she had a cold, and could barely repress panic about money. There had been no word from Mr Boykin. Every day, after the tenth day, she had told herself that she would call him on the telephone, or go to Plough Court to find him, but she did not do so, and knew, in her heart, that she was afraid. After all, what assurance had she that Jodrell and Stanhope would really do anything for her? Perhaps there had been some change in the situation in Canada; perhaps the Bridgetower Trust had collapsed, or changed its mind; perhaps, owing to one of those muddles about dollar and sterling currency, of which she had vaguely heard, it had proved impossible to get any money to England to support her; perhaps—this was when the cold had taken a turn for the worse—they had forgotten about her, or decided that she would not do, and would disclaim any knowledge of her if she went to see them.

  Meanwhile she had made quite a hole in her reserve fund of twenty pounds. Eating was horribly expensive, and she tried to economize by bringing things to her rooms in bags, and eating them there. But this diet of apples and buns brought her no comfort. The cold—feverish and wretched, now, in spite of innumerable shillings pushed into the maw of the gas-meter—the raw damp of a London winter, and the peculiar London smell were wearing her down. She began to have spells of crying at night. And then, as the third week wore on, she dared not cry, because letting down the barriers of her courage in any way brought such horrible speculations, and tumbled her into such abysses of loneliness, that she could not sleep, but lay in her bed for hours, trembling and staring into the darkness. The charm of having her own establishment had utterly worn off, and her two bare rooms echoed hollowly.

  She did not pray, for as War and Peace seemed to have lost its magic in crossing the ocean, so did the religion of the Thirteeners. That blatant, narrow faith could not be hitched to anything in her present situation; never, in this strange land, did she hear anyone speak in a voice which suggested the aggressive certainty of Pastor Beamis.

  Yet she continued to write home, once a week, saying nothing of her misery and her fears. She was, she told her family, waiting to begin her studies; meanwhile she was seeing something of London.

  What was the good of complaining to them? What could they do? And would they not be likely to say that it was just what they expected? Had they not, right up until the last minute, expressed doubt about the whole venture, which only the thought of the easy money kept from bursting into outright contempt? She was outside the range of her religion, and outside the range of her family. Whatever was to come, she must meet it alone.

  If nothing had happened by the end of the coming week, she would get a job. Probably it would have to be dish-washing, or something of that sort; so much an outcast did she now feel that she could not conceive of getting the sort of clerical work she had done at home. In time—perhaps in two or three years—she would be able to scrape up enough money to go home, if the disgrace were not too great. Monica Gall, who was taken in by that crooked Bridgetower crowd—who had the nerve to think she could sing!

  By this time her cold was much worse, and she had an ugly sore on her upper lip.

  But on the Tuesday of the fourth week, Mrs Merry hooted refinedly up the stair-well that she was wanted on the telephone. It was Mr Boykin.

  “Well, Miss Gall, how is it going?” said he. “Hope you didn’t think we’d forgotten all about you? Ha ha. Takes a little time to get an answer from Canada. But we now have the go-ahead on the extra furniture for you, and Mr Andrews suggests that I go with you to one of the second-hand shops in King’s Road and see what we can do. Would this afternoon be convenient? Sure you’ve nothing else on? Very well; perhaps you’ll make a sort of tentative list of what you’ll be wanting. Oh, and Sir Benedict is now back from Manchester, and he says we may as well have the piano sent around at once, as you’ll be wanting one. And he can see you next Friday at three-thirty, if you’ve nothing else to do at that time. His house is in Dean’s Yard, Westminster. I’d be very punctual, if I were you; he’s put off someone else in order to fit you in. ‘Til this afternoon then.”

  7

  “Why do you want to be a singer?” said Sir Benedict.

  Monica blushed, and held a handkerchief to the coldsore on her lip. “I’m sorry to waste your time like this,” said she; “it’s just that I’ve such an awful cold I can hardly make a sound. I’m awfully sorry.”

  “Oh, I didn’t mean that. Of course you’re terribly roopy; I just wanted to remind myself of what you sound like. But what I meant was, what’s behind all this? Here you are, and these people in Canada are prepared to spend a great deal of money on your teaching. Is there something special about you? Why do you want to sing?”

  “I want to be an artist.”

  “Why?”

  “Well—because it’s a fine thing to be.”

  “Why?”

  “Because—because it makes you a fine person, and you can help people.”

  “How?”

  “You bring great music to them. You sort of—enrich their lives, and make them better.”

  “Why do you want to do that?”

  “It’s what we’re here for, isn’t it?”

  “I really don’t know. Is it?”

  “Well that’s what art is for, isn’t it? To make people better? I mean, you give people art, and it raises them up, and they see things differently, and it—it sort of—”

  “I don’t want to put words into your mouth, but perhaps you are trying to say that it refines them.”

  “Well; yes, really.”

  “Has it refined and enriched you?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You’re not sure?”

  “I’m not very good at it, yet.”

  “But you think you’ll be good at it if you have instruction?”

  “Yes. I mean—well, yes.”

  “Why?”

  “I hope I have some talent.”

  “Don’t you know?”

  “It’s not a thing you can very well say about yourself.”

  “Why?”

  “Well—it sounds like blowing your own horn.”

  “And why shouldn’t you blow your own horn?”

  “You’re not supposed to.”

  “You mean that you have travelled three thousand miles, at the expense of these people in your home town, to study singing under my guidance, and yet you think it indelicate to tell me, of all people, that you have talent.”

  “It’s really for you to decide that, isn’t it?”

  “Partly. But y
ou ought to know yourself.”

  “Well then, I think I have talent. And I want to sing more than anything else in the world.”

  “That’s better. But I wonder if you’ll think that when you’re fifty. It’s a dog’s life, you know, even if you do well at it. But there; you see you’ve got me talking silly now. Every old hand tells every novice that a life in music is a dog’s life. It’s not really true. If you’re a musician that’s all there is to it; there’s no real life for you apart from it. Now listen: I haven’t been bullying you like this just for fun: I’ve been trying to find out what you’re up to. All I know at present is that you have a pretty fair little voice—good enough among several hundred others just as good. What training will do still remains to be seen. But unless you have some honest appraisal of yourself you haven’t much chance. And all that appears now is that you think you have some talent, and are bashful about saying so: you want to sing, with some vague notion of benefiting mankind in general, and raising people a little above the mire of total depravity in which God has placed them. What do you want out of it for yourself?”

  “I hadn’t thought much about that.”

  “Little liar! Now, answer me honestly: haven’t you had day-dreams in which you see yourself as a great singer, sought after and courted, popular and rich—probably with handsome men breaking their necks to get into your bed?”

  Monica blushed deeply, and was silent. None of her day-dreams had ever included bed.