Antic Hay (37 page)

Coleman was at home. After a brief delay he appeared himself at the door. He was wearing pyjamas, and his face covered with red-brown smears, the tips of his beard were clotted with the same dried pigment.

‘What have you been doing to yourself?' asked Mrs Viveash.

‘Merely washing in the blood of the Lamb,' Coleman answered, smiling, and his eyes sparkling blue fire, like an electric machine.

The door on the opposite side of the little vestibule was open. Looking over Coleman's shoulder, Gumbril could see through the opening a brightly lighted room and, in the middle of it, like a large rectangular island, a wide divan. Reclining on the divan an odalisque by Ingres – but slimmer, more serpentine, more like a lithe pink length of boa – presented her back. That big, brown mole on the right shoulder was surely familiar. But when, startled by the loudness of the voices behind her, the odalisque turned round – to see in a horribly embarrassing instant that the Cossack had left the door open and that people could look in, were looking in, indeed – the slanting eyes beneath their heavy white lids, the fine aquiline nose, the wide, full-lipped mouth, though they presented themselves for only the fraction of a second, were still more recognizable and familiar. For only the fraction of a second did the odalisque reveal herself definitely as Rosie. Then a hand pulled feverishly at the counterpane, the section of buff-coloured boa wriggled and rolled; and, in a moment, where an odalisque had been, lay only a long packet under a white sheet, like a jockey with a fractured skull when they carry him from the course.

Well, really . . . Gumbril felt positively indignant, not jealous, but astonished and righteously indignant.

‘Well, when you've finished bathing,' said Mrs Viveash, ‘I hope you'll come and have dinner with us. Coleman was standing between her and the farther door; Mrs Viveash had seen nothing in the room beyond the vestibule.

‘I'm busy,' said Coleman.

‘So I see.' Gumbril spoke as sarcastically as he could.

‘Do you see?' asked Coleman, and looked round. ‘So you do!' He stepped back and closed the door.

‘It's Theodore's last dinner,' pleaded Mrs Viveash.

‘Not even if it were his last supper,' said Coleman, enchanted to have been given the opportunity to blaspheme a little. ‘Is he going to be crucified? Or what?'

‘Merely going abroad,' said Gumbril.

‘He has a broken heart,' Mrs Viveash explained.

‘Ah, the genuine platonic towsers?' Coleman uttered his artificial demon's laugh.

‘That's just about it,' said Gumbril, grimly.

Relieved by the shutting of the door from her immediate embarrassment, Rosie threw back a corner of the counterpane and extruded her head, one arm and the shoulder with the mole on it. She looked about her, opening her slanting eyes as wide as she could. She listened with parted lips to the voices that came, muffled now, through the door. It seemed to her as though she were waking up; as though now, for the first time, she were hearing that shattering laugh, were looking now for the first time on these blank, white walls and the one lovely and horrifying picture. Where was she? What did it all mean? Rosie put her hand to her forehead, tried to think. Her thinking was always a series of pictures; one after another the pictures swam up before her eyes, melted again in an instant.

Her mother taking off her pince-nez to wipe them – and at once her eyes were tremulous and vague and helpless. ‘You should always let the gentleman get over the stile first,' she said, and put on her glasses again. Behind the glasses her eyes immediately became clear, piercing, steady and efficient. Rather formidable eyes. They had seen Rosie getting over the stile in front of Willie Hoskyns, and there was too much leg.

James was reading at his desk; his heavy, round head propped on his hand. She came up behind him and threw her arms round his neck. Very gently, and without turning his eyes from the page, he undid her embrace and, with a little push that was no more than a hint, an implication, signified that he didn't want her. She had gone to her pink room, and cried.

Another time James shook his head and smiled patiently under his moustache. ‘You'll never learn,' he said. She had gone to her room and cried that time too.

Another time they were lying in bed together, in the pink bed; only you couldn't see it was pink because there was no light. They were lying very quietly. Warm and happy and remote she felt. Sometimes as it were the physical memory of pleasure plucked at her nerves, making her start, making her suddenly shiver. James was breathing as though he were asleep. All at once he stirred. He patted her shoulder two or three times in a kindly and business-like way. ‘I know what that means,' she said, ‘when you pat me like that.' And she patted him – pat-pat-pat, very quickly. ‘It means you're going to bed.' ‘How do you know?' he asked. ‘Do you think I don't know you after all this time? I know that pat by heart.' And suddenly all her warm, quiet happiness evaporated; it was all gone. ‘I'm only a machine for going to bed with,' she said. ‘That's all I am for you.' She felt she would like to cry. But James only laughed and said, ‘Nonsense!' and pulled his arm clumsily from underneath her. ‘You go to sleep,' he said, and kissed her on the forehead. Then he got out of bed, and she heard him bumping clumsily about in the darkness. ‘Damn!' he said once. Then he found the door, opened, and was gone.

She thought of those long stories she used to make up when she went shopping. The fastidious lady; the poets; all the adventures.

Toto's hands were wonderful.

She saw, she heard Mr Mercaptan reading his essay. Poor father, reading aloud from the
Hibbert Journal
!

And now the Cossack, covered with blood. He, too, might read aloud from the
Hibbert Journal
– only backwards, so to speak. She had a bruise on her arm. ‘You think there's nothing inherently wrong and disgusting in it?' he had asked. ‘There is, I tell you.' He had laughed and kissed her and stripped off her clothes and caressed her. And she had cried, she had struggled, she had tried to turn away; and in the end she had been overcome by a pleasure more piercing and agonizing than anything she had ever felt before. And all the time Coleman had hung over her, with his blood-stained beard, smiling into her face, and whispering, ‘Horrible, horrible, infamous and shameful.' She lay in a kind of stupor. Then, suddenly there had been that ringing. The Cossack had left her. And now she was awake again, and it was horrible, it was shameful. She shuddered; she jumped out of bed and began as quickly as she could to put on her clothes.

‘Really, really, won't you come?' Mrs Viveash was insisting. She was not used to people saying no when she asked, when she insisted. She didn't like it.

‘No.' Coleman shook his head. ‘You may be having the last supper. But I have a date here with the Magdalen.'

‘Oh, a woman,' said Viveash. ‘But why didn't you say so before?'

‘Well, as I'd left the door open,' said Coleman, ‘I thought it was unnecessary.'

‘Fie,' said Mrs Viveash. ‘I find this very repulsive. Let's go away.' She plucked Gumbril by the sleeve.

‘Good-bye,' said Coleman, politely. He shut the door after them and turned back across the little hall.

‘What! Not thinking of going?' he exclaimed, as he came in. Rosie was sitting down on the edge of the bed pulling on her shoes.

‘Go away,' she said. ‘You disgust me.'

‘But that's splendid,' Coleman declared. ‘That's all as it should be, all as I intended.' He sat down beside her on the divan. ‘Really,' he said, admiringly, ‘what exquisite legs!'

Rosie would have given anything in the world to be back again in Bloxam Gardens. Even if James did live in his books all the time . . . Anything in the world.

‘This time,' said Mrs Viveash, ‘we simply must go through Piccadilly Circus.'

‘It'll only be about two miles farther.'

‘Well, that isn't much.'

Gumbril leaned out and gave the word to the driver.

‘And besides, I like driving about like this,' said Mrs Viveash. ‘I like driving for driving's sake. It's like the Last Ride Together. Dear Theodore!' She laid her hands on his.

‘Thank you,' said Gumbril, and kissed it.

The little cab buzzed along down the empty Mall. They were silent. Through the thick air one could see the brightest of the stars. It was one of those evenings when men feel that truth, goodness and beauty are one. In the morning, when they commit their discovery to paper, when others read it written there, it looks wholly ridiculous. It was one of those evenings when love is once more invented for the first time. That, too, seems a little ridiculous, sometimes, in the morning.

‘Here are the lights again,' said Mrs Viveash. ‘Hop, twitch, flick – yes, genuinely an illusion of jollity, Theodore. Genuinely.'

Gumbril stopped the cab. ‘It's after half-past eight,' he said. ‘At this rate we shall never get anything to eat. Wait a minute.'

He ran into Appenrodt's, and came back in a moment with a packet of smoked salmon sandwiches, a bottle of white wine and a glass.

‘We have a long way to go,' he explained, as he got into the taxi.

They ate their sandwiches, they drank their wine. The taxi drove on and on.

‘This is positively exhilarating,' said Mrs Viveash, as they turned into the Edgware Road.

Polished by the wheels and shining like an old and precious bronze, the road stretched before them, reflecting the lamps. It had the inviting air of a road which goes on for ever.

‘They used to have such good peep-shows in this street,' Gumbril tenderly remembered: ‘Little back shops where you paid twopence to see the genuine mermaid, which turned out to be a stuffed walrus, and the tattooed lady, and the dwarf, and the living statuary, which one always hoped, as a boy, was really going to be rather naked and thrilling, but which was always the most pathetic of unemployed barmaids, dressed in the thickest of pink Jaeger.'

‘Do you think there'd be any of those now?' asked Mrs Viveash.

Gumbril shook his head. ‘They've moved on with the march of civilization. But where?' He spread out his hands interrogatively. ‘I don't know which direction civilization marches – whether north towards Kilburn and Golders Green, or over the river to the Elephant, to Clapham and Sydenham and all those other mysterious places. But, in any case, high rents have marched up here; there are no more genuine mermaids in the Edgware Road. What stories we shall be able to tell our children!'

‘Do you think we shall ever have any?' Mrs Viveash asked.

‘One can never tell.'

‘I should have thought one could,' said Mrs Viveash. Children – that would be the most desperate experiment of all. The most desperate, and perhaps the only one having any chance of being successful. History recorded cases . . . On the other hand, it recorded other cases that proved the opposite. She had often thought of this experiment. There were so many obvious reasons for not making it. But some day, perhaps – she always put it off, like that.

The cab had turned off the main road into quieter and darker streets.

‘Where are we now?' asked Mrs Viveash.

‘Penetrating into Maida Vale. We shall soon be there. Poor old Shearwater!' He laughed. Other people in love were always absurd.

‘Shall we find him in, I wonder?' It would be fun to see Shearwater again. She liked to hear him talking, learnedly, and like a child. But when the child is six feet high and three feet wide and two feet thick, when it tries to plunge head first into your life – then, really, no . . . ‘But what did you want with me?' he had asked. ‘Just to look at you,' she answered. Just to look; that was all. Music hall, not boudoir.

‘Here we are.' Gumbril got out and rang the second floor bell.

The door was opened by a impertinent-looking little maid.

‘Mr Shearwater's at the lavatory,' she said, in answer to Gumbril's question.

‘Laboratory?' he suggested.

‘At the 'ospital.' That made it clear.

‘And is Mrs Shearwater at home?' he asked maliciously.

The little maid shook her head. ‘I expected 'er, but she didn't come back to dinner.'

‘Would you mind giving her a message when she does come in,' said Gumbril. ‘Tell her that Mr Toto was very sorry he hadn't time to speak to her when he saw her this evening in Pimlico.'

‘Mr who?'

‘Mr Toto.'

‘Mr Toto is sorry 'e 'adn't the time to speak to Mrs Shearwater when 'e saw 'er in Pimlico this evening. Very well, sir.'

‘You won't forget?' said Gumbril.

‘No, I won't forget.'

He went back to the cab and explained that they had drawn blank once more.

‘I'm rather glad,' said Mrs Viveash. ‘If we ever did find anybody, it would mean the end of this Last-Ride-Together feeling. And that would be sad. And it's a lovely night. And really, for the moment, I feel I can do without my lights. Suppose we just drove for a bit now.'

But Gumbril would not allow that. ‘We haven't had enough to eat yet,' he said, and he gave the cabman Gumbril Senior's address.

Gumbril Senior was sitting on his little iron balcony among the dried-out pots that had once held geraniums, smoking his pipe and looking earnestly out into the darkness in front of him. Clustered in the fourteen plane-trees of the square, the starlings were already asleep. There was no sound but the rustling of the leaves. But sometimes, every hour or so, the birds would wake up. Something – perhaps it might be a stronger gust of wind, perhaps some happy dream of worms, some nightmare of cats simultaneously dreamed by all the flock together – would suddenly rouse them. And then they would all start to talk at once, at the tops of their shrill voices – for perhaps half a minute. Then in an instant they all went to sleep again and there was once more no sound but the rustling of the shaken leaves. At these moments Mr Gumbril would lean forward, would strain his eyes and his ears in the hope of seeing, of hearing something – something significant, explanatory, satisfying. He never did, of course; but that in no way diminished his happiness.