Friends and Lovers (34 page)

“Or was it to the left, and then the right, and then the left? Or to the right, and then the left, and then the left?” David asked. Yes, definitely, one needed a constant sense of humour.

“We ought to have brought a logarithm table with us,” Penny said.

“We could have worked it out by sin and co,?. If one can find non-existent lightships by sin and cos one surely could find a gate which does exist.”

In the end the keeper had to come and fetch them. He was quite philosophic about it, as if he had expected any young man with good sense and a pretty girl to lose his way. And that little practical extra, slipped into his hand as the young man thanked him, would buy him an extra pint or two this evening: that was always a help to being philosophical.

They walked slowly back from Marinelli’s to the green door in Gower Street.

“It won’t be so long now,” David was saying.

“Not so long before we do not need to say goodbye any more.” And stop worrying whether you will see her again, he thought, next week, or the week after, or ever.

“Do you really think I should bring Mother to Oxford next Sunday? She could come some other time, when you are less busy.”

“I think it would be a good idea. And, quite apart from that, I want to see you. I can work like a stoat all week if I think I can see you on Sunday.

I’ll invite Chaundler to lunch that day too. He will assure your mother that I am perfectly respectable, really.”

Penny smiled and pressed his arm. She knew, as he had guessed, her mother’s weakness for respectability. Some day, she thought, she was going to ask her mother what it was about people that she called ‘nice.” As a standard it did seem to vary. Take the Fanes, for instance. Mrs. Lorrimer called them a nice family. They had nice accents, nice clothes, a nice house, and a nice income. Yet, as a family, they were a mockery, and as individuals they were selfish and cheap. They had a very pretty facade of niceness, like a mean building camouflaged from the front to look broader and bigger than it was.

Mr. Fane was the only one who had made any claim to reality for himself: if any of the others were to die in their sleep there would be absolutely no loss to the world.

T’m sorry for Mr. Fane,” Penny said suddenly.

“Because he is the only one of the family whom you don’t know?

Perhaps if you met him you’d feel less sorry.”

“Well, if I were a man, and did the providing and got very little in return for my trouble—well …”

“Well, what?” David was watching her with amusement.

“I don’t know.” She shook her head in bewilderment.

“You see, I never thought of that before. Frankly, David, I don’t believe many women have thought about it. Either they learn it instinctively, and their husbands are happy, or they don’t learn.”

“I think you chose a pretty good example to generalize over,” David said.

“But how on earth did the conversation take this turn? Have we just passed the Fanes’ house?”

Penny looked in surprise at the number over the fanlight of the nearest house.

“Why, yes, we must have passed it. And I could swear that I never noticed it. Didn’t even know we were almost at the end of the street. How short it seems when I’m walking with you, David.

Last night Marston and I went to see the new Rene Clair film; and, coming back, we walked up this street and we both agreed it was far too long. No street should be this length and look so much the same all the way. Yet, tonight.”

“It’s too short. Just as the hours are too short when we are together.” He glanced at his watch.

“We’ve been eight solid hours together to-day. They seem less than two.

Look, when we get married I’ll have the days arranged into thirty-six hours, so that we’ll have enough time to do all the things we want to do together.

That would be pleasant.”

Wonderful.”

“Wonderful, too.”

They looked at each ottier. Then, holding arms more tightly, with hands clasped and fingers interlocked, they walked towards the green door. David watched her walk up the steps which bridged the basement area, waved back to her, waited until the door had closed. He crossed to the lamppost, looked down the length of the long street, long and dreary. It was a lonely street now. He paused to light a cigarette and waited. His eyes were on the top floor of the house. That was her window. He had waited like this every time after saying goodbye. But tonight. when the light had been switched on, and she had come over to the window to draw the curtains, she stood there looking down into the street. He knew by the stillness of her body that she had seen him. And then she waved, and he waved back, and it was she who now stood watching him as he turned to enter the narrow, dark side-street which would take him to Tottenham Court Road.

The dark street was silent and desolate. The wind was colder. It came from the east, a hard sharp wind that needed the Atlantic to soften its bite.

Christ, he thought, always walking away from her, always leaving her.

Would there ever be an end to this? Ever an end to the loneliness that was more searching than any east wind? He threw his half-finished cigarette into the gutter.

“Christ,” he said, listening to his footsteps’ empty echo in the silent street. Then he thought of the lines he had found last night when he had been searching through the Oxford Book of English Verse for a quotation that had baffled him. He had opened the book casually, and there they were. He began to repeat them as he passed the last stretch of unlighted shops and dark dead houses.

western wind, when wilt thou blow That the small rain down can rain?

Christ, that my love were in my arms And I in my bed again!

He thought of the man who had written them. Poor beggar, whoever he had been four hundred years ago.

And then the lights and noise of Tottenham Court Road brought him back to the twentieth century and a train to be caught. He glanced at his watch and began to hurry.

Chapter Twenty-five.

PUNITIVE EXPEDITION.

Mrs. Lorrimer sat in Penelope’s bedroom, watched her daughter arranging two teacups on an improvised tea-table, and felt still more unhappy.

In Edinburgh it had been simple to work up a mood of righteous indignation: her daughter living in luxury in London; her daughter taking a frivolous life for granted; her daughter, as return for such pampering, behaving with a ridiculous lack of common sense, perhaps even ruining her whole future. But now a good deal of Mrs. Lorrimer’s indignation was turned against the room.

It was not worth a third of the money spent on it.

Penelope, accustomed to the Crescent and its comfort must have been miserable here.

And yet she did not look unhappy. Mrs. Lorrimer’s annoyance increased.

We gave her every opportunity, and yet she is happy in a place like this, Mrs. Lorrimer thought bitterly. No sense of values whatever, if Mattie Fane’s letter carried any truth. Yes, it was the letter that had brought her to London. As she had said to Mr. Lorrimer, she simply had to see Penelope to set her mind at ease. Mr. Lorrimer agreed, with his usual keen legal perception, that smoke usually implied fire. Not that he thought much of that Fane woman, a silly, lightheaded flibbertigibbet, but who was this Bosfield, anyway?

“Bosworth … Father likes him,” Mrs. Lorrimer had said. Mr. Lorrimer had shrugged his shoulders. So Mrs. Lorrimer had set out for London, feeling the whole thing somehow was her responsibility, and she had a worrying journey, during which she mentally prepared several little speeches and various approaches. But now, as she sat here and looked round the little room, it was difficult to get started on any of them.

“I see you have been doing some work,” she said, noting the untidy desk. If painting could be called work, she thought. Still, that was a good sign.

The rest of the room was neat enough, but the desk was an eyesore. Really, Penelope ought to keep all these things in drawers and cupboards.

Penny, who had spent a tiresome half-hour at lunchtime making the desk neat, said,

“Of course.” It was difficult to keep the note of surprise out of her voice.

Had Mother really expected her to be doing no work at all?

“How is the food here?” Mrs. Lorrimer asked. Penny looked up, her surprise increasing, as she finished arranging some biscuits on a Woolworth plate.

Conversation had, indeed, been peculiar ever since the restrained meeting at the station. Brief comments, unimportant little questions, all made and asked in an atmosphere of cold gloom which had been both worrying and irritating.

“Not particularly interesting,” Penny answered, with determined cheerfulness, ‘but no one has yet died of hunger.”

Mrs. Lorrimer, watching the smile on her daughter’s face, had to admit, in spite of her determination to be critical, that Penelope was really becoming a most attractive young woman. Woman?

Yes, she was older: she was thinner, she wore lipstick, and she had arranged her hair differently. All that made her look older. What ridiculous fashions were adopted by girls to-day, as if they wouldn’t be old quite soon enough without adding ten years to their ages now.

“Why didn’t you write and tell me about this?” Mrs. Lorrimer gestured with a contemptuous arm as she looked round the room. Her eyes avoided the primroses which Penelope had arranged in a green bowl and the excellent reproductions with which Penelope had decorated the bare walls.

“It would only have sounded like complaining,” Penny said. “Besides, you wanted me to stay here. It was one of the conditions attached to coming to London.”

Mrs. Lorrimer had forgotten that, somehow, when she had first entered the room. Now her criticism of Penelope’s lack of money sense seemed levelled at herself. She said sharply, “I see you have been buying clothes. You shouldn’t wear black, Penelope. It isn’t becoming: makes you much too old.”

Penny looked down with disappointment at her black crepe dress.

“I

saved some money,” she said defensively. And then, “I thought we might have dinner somewhere decent, and go to a theatre. After all, this visit to London does call for some sort of celebration.”

“We shall have dinner at my hotel. I have a lot to talk to you about,” Mrs. Lorrimer said.

Penny looked worriedly at her mother.

“Is something wrong at home?” she asked.

“Is Father ill again?”

“Don’t be silly, Penelope. You talk as if your father were an invalid.

There is nothing wrong with him that a simple diet won’t cure. We are all well and happy, a very happy family indeed. Except where you are concerned.

You are the one we have been worrying about a good deal.” There, it was said. Mrs. Lorrimer took a deep breath.

This was not the approach she had intended, but the opening had suddenly come, and she had taken it, and there it was—a beginning.

But Penelope seemed to be determined neither to understand nor to be helpful.

“Why, Mother,” she said, ‘look at mel Don’t I look well, even if I have got a cold? And that’s only because I thought spring had come last Sunday and wore a suit to visit Hampton Court. Apart from that, I’m in marvelous health. And I’ve never been so happy. Mother, I have the most wonderful news for you!” Penny halted her enthusiasm for a moment.

Her mother was not sharing it. At the moment her mother looked almost on the point of tears. Never been so happy … perhaps that had been a tactless remark. Penny hastened to explain it. The note of gladness came back into her voice, and her eyes were shining. It is about David, Mother, David Bosworth.”

Mrs. Lorrimer almost dropped her teacup.

Penny was saying excitedly,” He wants to marry me. He will soon be going down from Oxford, and he has a job, a wonderful job, and we could get married this summer.”

The teacup fell. Mrs. Lorrimer did not even notice it, it seemed. It was Penny who picked up the pieces.

“Why did you hide this from us? What have you to hide?” Mrs. Lorrimer asked, in sudden anger.

“Why, nothing.” Penny was taken aback. Her delight in her news faded.

Her voice became defensive again.

“And we didn’t hide anything purposely. I tried totell you at Christmas that we were in love. I tried totell you in my letters that I saw David.

But you never seemed interested.”

“Isn’t it customary for a young man to make himself known to the girl’s family before he even mentions marriage?”

“David was going to write, and he was going to go up to Edinburgh to see Father as soon as his Finals were over. Don’t you see. Mother, he had to wait until things were more definite, until he could say to you and Father–-”

” And I take it,” Mrs. Lorrimer interrupted, with withering scorn, ‘that you now count yourself engaged without the permission of your parents, without an engagement ring, without any announcement?”

“Well, you can’t become formally engaged while you are still an undergraduate. At least, it isn’t much approved. And you can’t marry until you have finished your University career.”

“I should think not,” Mrs. Lorrimer said, in an outraged voice. She paused for a moment to try to restrain her rising anger. She smoothed the skirt of her brown tweed suit, pulled at her beige chamois gloves, all with small, broken gestures. Her white face had flushed, her blue eyes stared at her daughter accusingly.

“But,” Penny went on firmly, taking advantage of her mother’s inability to speak, ‘that doesn’t prevent men at Oxford from falling in love or making up their minds to marry the first moment that is possible.”

There was no answer. Mrs. Lorrimer was searching for her crisp linen handkerchief in her brown leather handbag. Her lips were pinched and thin.

“Really, Mother,” Penny said indignantly, ‘this can’t be so much of a shock.

For one thing, you saw his letters on our hall table; you’ve noticed mine to him. And I did mention him in my letters home, and I did ‘ “I never imagined for one moment that things had gone so far. You are only a child, Penelope, and you don’t know how foolishly you are behaving. As for this David Bosworth, we know nothing about him. We don’t know his family; we don’t know one thing. He might be a Catholic, a Communist, or anything.”