The Camberwell Beauty

by V. S. Pritchett

  The editor turned dramatically to the group.

  ‘A forgery,’ he cried. He laughed, inviting all to join the comedy. ‘A woman travelling under my name.’

  The clerk and the strangers turned away. In travel one can rely on there being one mad Englishman everywhere.

  The editor’s face darkened when he saw he had exhausted human interest.

  ‘Four-fifteen. Baggage,’ called the clerk.

  A young porter came up quick as a lizard and picked up the editor’s bags.

  ‘Wait. Wait,’ said the editor. Before a young man so smoothly uniformed he had the sudden sensation of standing there with most of his clothes off. When you arrived at the Day of Judgment there would be some worldly youth, humming a tune you didn’t know the name of, carrying not only your sins but your virtues indifferently in a couple of bags and gleaming with concealed knowledge.

  ‘I have to telephone,’ the editor said.

  ‘Over there,’ said the young man as he put the bags down. The editor did not walk to the telephone but to the main door of the hotel. He considered the freedom of the street. The sensible thing to do was to leave the hotel at once, but he knew that the woman would be at his lecture that night. He would have to settle the matter once and for all now. So he turned back to the telephone box. It stood there empty, like a trap. He walked past it. He hated the glazed, whorish, hypocritically impersonal look of telephone boxes. They were always unpleasantly warmed by random emotions left behind in them. He turned back: the thing was still empty. ‘Surely,’ he wanted to address the people coming and going in the foyer, ‘someone among you wants to telephone?’ It was wounding that not one person there was interested in his case. It was as if he had written an article that no one had read. Even the porter had gone. His two bags rested against the desk. He and they had ceased to be news.

  He began to walk up and down quickly but this stirred no one. He stopped in every observable position, not quite ignored now, because his handsome hair always made people turn.

  The editor silently addressed them again. ‘You’veentirely missed the point of my position. Everyone knows who has read what I have written, that I am opposed on principle to the whole idea of marriage. That is what makes this woman’s behaviour so ridiculous. To think of getting married in a world that is in one of the most ghastly phases of its history is puerile.’

  He gave a short sarcastic laugh. The audience was indifferent.

  The editor went into the telephone box and, leaving the door open for all to hear, he rang her room.

  ‘Julian Drood,’ he said brusquely. ‘It is important that I should see you at once, privately, in your room.’

  He heard her breathing. The way the human race thought it was enough if they breathed! Ask an important question and what happens? Breath. Then he heard the small voice: it made a splashing, confusing sound.

  ‘Oh,’ it said. And more breath: ‘Yes.’

  The two words were the top of a wave that is about to topple and come thumping over on to the sand and then draws back with a long, insidious hiss.

  ‘Please,’ she added. And the word was the long, thirsty hiss.

  The editor was surprised that his brusque manner was so wistfully treated.

  ‘Good heavens,’ he thought, ‘she is in that room!’ And because she was invisible and because of the distance of the wire between them, he felt she was pouring down it, head first, mouth open, swamping him. When he put the telephone down, he scratched his ear; a piece of her seemed to be coiled there. The editor’s ear had heard passion. And passion at its climax.

  He had often heard of passion. He had often been told of it. He had seen it in opera. He had friends – who usually came to him for advice – who were entangled in it. He had never felt it and he did not feel it now; but when he walked from the telephone box to the lift, he saw his role had changed. The woman was not a mere nuisance–she was something like Tosca. The pagan became doggish, the saint furtive as he entered the lift.

  ‘Ah,’ the editor burst out aloud to the liftman. ‘Les femmes.’ The German did not understand French.

  The editor got out of the lift and, passing one watchful white door after another, came to 415. He knocked twice. When there was no answer, he opened the door.

  He seemed to blunder into an invisible wall of spice and scent and stepped back, thinking he had made a mistake. A long-legged rag doll with big blue eyes looked at him from the bed, a half-unpacked suitcase was on the floor with curious clothes hanging out of it. A woman’s shoes were tipped out on the sofa.

  And then, with her back to a small desk where she had been writing, stood Miss Mendoza. Or, rather, the bottle-green dress, the boxlike figure were Miss Mendoza’s; the head was not. Her hair was no longer black; it was golden. The idol’s head had been chopped off and was replaced by a woman’s. There was no expression on the face until the shock on the editor’s face passed across to hers; then a searching look of horror seized her, the look of one caught in an outrage. She lowered her head, suddenly cowed and frightened. She quickly grabbed a stocking she had left on the bed and held it behind her back.

  ‘You are angry with me,’ she said, holding her head down like an obstinate child.

  ‘You are in my room. You have no right to be here. I am very angry with you. What do you mean by registering in my name-apart from anything else it is illegal. You know that, don’t you? I must ask you to go or I shall have to take steps …’

  Her head was still lowered. Perhaps he ought not to have said the last sentence. The blonde hair made her look pathetic.

  ‘Why did you do this?’

  ‘Because you would not see me,’ she said. ‘You have been cruel to me.’

  ‘But don’t you realize, Miss Mendoza, what you are doing? I hardly know you. You have followed me all over Europe; you have badgered me. You take my room. You pretend to be my wife …’

  ‘Do you hate me?’ she muttered.

  Damn, thought the editor. I ought to have changed my hotel at once.

  ‘I know nothing about you,’ he said.

  ‘Don’t you want to know about me? What I am like? I know everything about you,’ she said, raising her head.

  The editor was confused by the rebuke. His fit of acting passed. He looked at his watch.

  ‘A reporter is coming to see me in half an hour,’ he said.

  ‘I shall not be in the way,’ she said. ‘I will go out.’

  ’You will go out!’ said the editor.

  Then he understood where he was wrong. He had-perhaps being abroad addressing meetings, speaking to audiences with only one mass face had done this-forgotten how he dealt with difficult people.

  He pushed the shoes to one end of the sofa to find himself a place. One shoe fell to the floor, but after all it was his room, he had a right to sit down.

  ‘Miss Mendoza, you are ill,’ he said.

  She looked down quickly at the carpet.

  ‘I am not,’ she said.

  ‘You are ill and, I think, very unhappy.’ He put on his wise voice.

  ‘No,’ she said in a low voice. ‘Happy. You are talking to me.’

  ‘You are a very intelligent woman,’ he said. ‘And you will understand what I am going to say. Gifted people like yourself are very vulnerable. You live in the imagination, and that exposes one. I know that.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘You see all the injustices of the world. You bleed from them.’

  ‘I? Yes,’ said the editor with his saint’s smile. But he recovered from the flattery. ‘I am saying something else. Your imagination is part of your gift as a poet, but in real life it has deluded you.’

  ‘It hasn’t done that. I see you as you are.’

  ‘Please sit down,’ said the editor. He could not bear her standing over him. ‘Close the window, there is too much noise.’

  She obeyed. The editor was alarmed to see the zipper of her dress was half undone and he could see the top of some garment with ominous lace on it. He could
not bear untidy women. He saw his case was urgent. He made a greater effort to be kind.

  ‘It was very kind of you to come to my lectures. I hope you found them interesting. I think they went down all right-good questions. One never knows, of course. One arrives in a strange place and one sees a hall full of people one doesn’t know-and you won’t believe me perhaps because I’ve done it scores of times—but one likes to see a face that one recognizes. One feels lost, at first…’

  She looked hopeful.

  This was untrue. The editor never felt lost. Once on his feet he had the impression that he was talking to the human race. He suffered with it. It was the general human suffering that had ravaged his face.

  ‘But, you know,’ he said sternly, ‘our feelings deceive us. Especially at certain times of life. I was worried about you. I saw that something was wrong. These things happen very suddenly. God knows why. You see someone whom you admire perhaps – it seems to happen to women more than men-and you project some forgotten love on him. You think you love him, but it is really some forgotten image. In your case, I would say, probably some image of your father whom you have hated all these years for what he did when you were a child. And so, as people say, one becomes obsessed or infatuated. I don’t like the word. What we mean is that one is not in love with a real man or woman but a vision sent out by oneself. One can think of many examples …’

  The editor was sweating. He wished he hadn’t asked her to close the window. He knew his mind was drifting toward historic instances. He wondered if he would tell her the story of Jane Carlyle, the wife of the historian, who had gone to hear the famous Father Matthew speak at a temperance meeting and how, hysterical and exalted, she had rushed to the platform to kiss his boots. Or there were other instances. For the moment he couldn’t remember them. He decided on Mrs. Carlyle. It was a mistake.

  ‘Who is Mrs. Carlyle?’ said Miss Mendoza suspiciously. ‘I would never kiss any man’s feet.’

  ‘Boots,’ said the editor. ‘It was on a public platform.’

  ‘Or boots,’ Miss Mendoza burst out. ‘Why are you torturing me? You are saying I am mad.’

  The editor was surprised by the turn of the conversation. It had seemed to be going well.

  ‘Of course you’re not mad,’ he said. ‘A madwoman could not have written that great poem. I am just saying that I value your feeling, but you must understand I, unfortunately, do not love you. You are ill. You have exhausted yourself.’

  Miss Mendoza’s yellow eyes became brilliant as she listened to him.

  ‘So,’ she said grandly, ‘I am a mere nuisance.’

  She got up from her chair and he saw she was trembling.

  ‘If that is so, why don’t you leave this room at once?’ she said.

  ‘But,’ said the editor with a laugh, ‘if I may mention it, it is mine.’

  ‘I signed the register,’ said Miss Mendoza.

  ‘Well,’ said the editor smiling, ‘that is not the point, is it?’

  The boredom, the sense of the sheer waste of time (when one thought of the massacres, the bombings, the imprisonments in the world) in personal questions, overcame him. It amazed him, at some awful crisis-the Cuban, for example-how many people left their husbands, wives or lovers, in a general post; the extraordinary, irresponsible persistence of outbreaks of love. A kind of guerilla war in another context. Here he was in the midst of it. What could he do? He looked around the room for help. The noise of the traffic outside in the street, the dim sight of people moving behind office windows opposite, an advertisement for beer were no help. Humanity had deserted him. The nearest thing to the human-now it took his eye – was the doll on the bed, an absurd marionette from the cabaret, the raffle or the nursery. It had a mop of red hair, silly red cheeks and popping blue eyes with long cotton lashes. It wore a short skirt and had long insane legs in checked stockings. How childish women were. Of course (it now occurred to him), Miss Mendoza was as childish as her voice. The editor said playfully: ‘I see you have a little friend. Very pretty. Does she come from Guatemala?’ And frivolously, because he disliked the thing, he took a step or two towards it. Miss Mendoza pushed past him at once and grabbed it.

  ‘Don’t touch it,’ she said with tiny fierceness.

  She picked up the doll and, hugging it with fear, she looked for somewhere to put it out of his reach. She went to the door, then changed her mind and rushed to the window with it. She opened the window; as the curtains blew, she looked as if a desperate idea had occurred to her-to throw herselfand the doll out of the window. She turned to fight him off. He was too bewildered to move and when she saw that he stood still, her frightened face changed. Suddenly, she threw the doll on the floor and, half falling on to a chair near it, her shoulders rounded, she covered her face with her hands and sobbed, shaking her head from side to side. Tears crawled through her fingers down the backs of her hands. Then she took her hands away and, soft and shapeless, she rushed to the editor and clawed at his jacket.

  ‘Go away. Go away,’ she cried. ‘Forgive me. Forgive. I’m sorry.’ She began to laugh and cry at once. ‘As you said-ill. Oh, please forgive. I don’t understand why I did this. For a week I haven’t eaten anything. I must have been out of my mind to do this to you. Why? I can’t think. You’ve been so kind. You could have been cruel. You were right. You had the courage to tell me the truth. I feel so ashamed, so ashamed. What can I do?’

  She was holding on to his jacket. Her tears were on his hands. She was pleading. She looked up.

  ‘I’ve been such a fool,’ she said.

  ‘Come and sit here,’ said the editor, trying to move her to the sofa. ‘You are not a fool. You have done nothing. There is nothing to be ashamed of.’

  ‘I can’t bear it.’

  ‘Come and sit here,’ he said putting his arm on her shoulder. ‘I was very proud when I read your poem. Look,’ he said, ‘you are a very gifted and attractive woman.’

  He was surprised that such a heavy woman was not like iron to the touch but light and soft. He could feel her skin, hot through her dress. Her breath was hot. Agony was hot. Grief was hot. Above all, her clothes were hot. It was perhaps because of the heat of her clothes that for the first time in years he had the sensation of holding a human being. He had never felt this when, on a few occasions, he had held a woman naked in her bed. He did something then that was incredible to himself. He gently kissed the top of her head on the blonde hair he did not like. It was like kissing a heated mat and it smelled of burning.

  At his kiss she clawed no longer and her tears stopped. She moved away from him in awe.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said gravely and he found himself being studied, even memorized, as she had done when she had first come to his office. The look of the idol was set on her again. Then she uttered a revelation. ‘You do not love anyone but yourself.’ And, worse, she smiled. He had thought, with dread, that she was waiting to be kissed again, but now he couldn’t bear what she said. It was a loss.

  ‘We must meet,’ he said recklessly. ‘We shall meet at the lecture tonight.’

  The shadow of her future passed over her face.

  ‘Oh no,’ she said. She was free. She was warning him not to hope to exploit her pain.

  ‘This afternoon?’ he said trying to catch her hand, but she drew it away. And then, to his bewilderment, she was dodging round him. She was packing. She began stuffing her few clothes into her suitcase. She went to the bathroom and while she was there, the porter came in with his two bags.

  ‘Wait,’ said the editor.

  She came out of the bathroom looking very pale and put the remaining things into her suitcase.

  ‘I asked him to wait,’ the editor said.

  The kiss, the golden hair, the heat of her head, seemed to be flying round in the editor’s head.

  ‘I don’t want you to leave like this,’ the editor said.

  ‘I heard what you said to the man,’ she said hurriedly shutting the suitcase. ‘Goodbye. And thank you
. You are saving me from something dreadful.’

  The editor could not move when he saw her go. He could not believe she had gone. He could feel the stir of her scent in the air and he sat down exhausted but arguing with his conscience. Why had she said that about loving only himself? What else could he have done? He wished there were people there to whom he could explain, whom he could ask. He was feeling loneliness for one of the few times in his life. He went to the window to look down at the people. Then, looking back to the bed, he was astounded by a thought, ‘I have never had an adventure in my life.’ And with that, he left the room and went down to the desk. Was she still in the hotel?

  ‘No,’ said the desk clerk. ‘Mrs. Drood went off in a taxi.’

  ‘I am asking for Miss Mendoza.’

  ‘No one of that name.’

  ‘Extraordinary,’ lied the editor. ‘She was to meet me here.’

  ‘Perhaps she is at the Hofgarten, it’s the same management.’

  For the next hour he was on the telephone, trying all the hotels. He got a cab to the station; he tried the airlines and then, in the afternoon, went out to the airport. He knew it was hopeless. ‘I must be mad too,’ he thought. He looked at every golden-haired woman he could see: the city was full of golden-haired women. As the noisy city afternoon moved by, he gave up. He liked to talk about himself but here was a day he could never describe to anyone. He could not return to his room but sat in the lounge trying to read a paper, wrangling with himself and looking up at every woman who passed. He could not eat nor even drink and when he went out to his lecture he walked all the way to the hall on the chance of seeing her. He had the fancy once or twice, which he laughed at bitterly, that she had just passed and had left two or three of her footprints on the pavement. The extraordinary thing was that she was exactly the kind of woman he could not bear: squat, ugly. How awful she must look without clothes on. He tried to exorcize her by obscene images. They vanished and some transformed idealized vision of her came back. He began to see her tall and dark or young and fair; her eyes changing colour, her body voluptuously rounded, athletically slim. As he sat on the lecture platform, listening to the introduction, he made faces that astonished the audience with a mechanical display of eagerness followed by scorn, as his gaze went systematically from row to row, looking for her. He got up to speak. ‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ he began. He knew it would be the best lecture he had ever given. It was. Urging, appealing, agonizing, eloquent. It was an appeal to her to come back.