Providence (18 page)

But Kitty was at that moment genuinely lost in the Romantic Tradition and the dog observed a suitable silence.

‘She is putting the final touches to her lecture, Mother,’ said Pauline, quite accurately. ‘It is this coming
Tuesday, you know. We shall tell her all about the fête when we get home.’

‘Why are you speaking so slowly, Pauline? Is anything wrong?’

‘Why should anything be wrong?’ asked Pauline, who had just caught sight of Maurice Bishop striding along with an unaccustomed air of elation about him. ‘Let us go along here,’ she added, taking her mother by the elbow, but she was forestalled, and it would have been too impolite to have turned away at this stage.

‘Mother,’ she said. ‘Here is Maurice Bishop.’

‘Why, Maurice,’ cried Mrs Bentley. ‘How delightful! Is your mother with you?’

Pauline and Maurice gazed steadily and warningly into each other’s eyes. ‘How are you, Mrs Bentley?’ said Maurice. ‘You are looking simply splendid. Can I get you some tea?’

‘Thank you so … What
is
it, Pauline? Are you ill?’

‘You will forgive us, won’t you?’ said Pauline. ‘It is getting so crowded that I think we will just stroll round the rose garden and then go home for tea,’ and nodding her head twice in farewell, she grasped her mother by the arm and directed her none too gently to the rose garden, where they sat for ten minutes, Mrs Bentley expostulating between drags on a half-dead cigarette, and Pauline rather silent.

‘You were quite overbearing, Pauline. I should have liked to talk to Maurice. After all, I have known him since he was a boy. Has he got over that girl yet?’

‘I really couldn’t say, Mother.’

A shred of flaming tobacco fell on to Mrs Bentley’s skirt and was brushed off by Pauline as a matter of course. An intriguing thought struck Mrs Bentley.

‘Are you in love with him, Pauline? I should quite understand it if you were. But that is no excuse for behaving as you did. A little finesse, my dear. There is
no point in wearing your heart on your sleeve.’

‘In fact,’ said Pauline, ‘I rather dislike him. I always have, now that I come to think of it. Shall we go home and surprise Kitty? She is our guest, after all.’

In the car Mrs Bentley expressed a desire to attend Kitty’s lecture but was told by Pauline that the journey would tire her too much.

‘But I am so fond of her. Tell me, Pauline, what does she look like?’

Pauline thought. ‘She looks very pretty when she is animated and rather plain when she is not.’

Mrs Bentley nodded.
‘Journalière
, that used to be called. What else?’

‘She is very well-dressed, almost too well-dressed. Oh, I suppose she is quite attractive. They think highly of her in the Department.’

‘She has such a pretty voice,’ said Mrs Bentley. ‘Such very precise English. You rarely hear such good enunciation these days. It comes from her being a foreigner, of course.’

‘Oh, really, Mother. She was born in London. Although I agree that she gives the impression of someone not quite at home here. Trying to learn the rules, as it were.’

‘I should call her well-bred, and that says it all. The natives, after all, don’t have to bother.’

There were many reasons why Pauline did not want to pursue the subject of Kitty, who, she felt, must be having a perfectly ghastly weekend, and so she diverted her mother from this particular topic of conversation by trying to persuade her to give up smoking, as she did, in the line of duty, at least once a week.

‘You nearly set fire to yourself this afternoon.’

‘I didn’t even notice,’ said Mrs Bentley absently. ‘But what a spectacular way to go. It might even be on the wireless.’

‘I should have bought a cake at one of those stalls,’ mused Pauline. ‘Kitty will be starving to death.’

But Kitty had had quite a pleasant dreamy afternoon in the little garden, reading her lecture superstitiously, although she knew it was finished, and even rather good. She walked down to the local shop and bought a packet of waxen tea cakes and toasted them and put the kettle on and so a second tea was ready when Pauline and Mrs Bentley got home – the least she could do, Kitty felt, for Pauline had been so kind with her invitations, and was prepared to drive Kitty to the station whenever she decided to leave. Kitty was anxious now to get back to London and the intense absorbing ritual she had devised for herself and which now afflicted her with shivers of anticipation. So that when she asked Mrs Bentley if she would excuse her shortly after tea, explaining that she still had more work to do, although she had not, and had patted the still comatose dog, and met Pauline’s eyes fixed on her in some sort of speculation, she felt the visit had reached a quite natural conclusion. She kissed Mrs Bentley, who appeared a little surprised, but pleased by the attention. ‘I wish you all good fortune on Tuesday, my dear,’ said Mrs Bentley in her usual loud conversational tones. ‘Remember to aim your voice at the back of the room. And try not to look at anyone in particular. They will begin to wonder if you are sending out secret messages and then you will wonder what you have done to make them so uneasy, and then you will lose your nerve.’ It was not a cheerful piece of advice, but Kitty felt it was a useful one. I must remember not to look at Maurice, she thought.

She was rather silent in the car, thinking of the various ordeals of the week to come. Her lecture was in the evening and Professor Redmile had invited her to drink a glass of sherry beforehand – ‘although I am sure you will not need Dutch courage, Miss Maule. We know
the quality of your material. Great stuff. Great stuff.’ The occasion, thought Kitty, would be even more taxing than the lecture itself, particularly as there would be several people there and whenever this occurred Professor Redmile tended to confide in them details of the revised estimates for the New Building. Glazed with boredom, his guests invariably drank too much, and Kitty had visions of them falling asleep during the lecture, rending the air with their snores and having to be elbowed awake when it was all over. For the lecture itself she could trust herself to her typescript and Louise’s dress; if I can keep my nerve, I shall be quite effective. Whatever Mrs Bentley says, I must remember not to shout. That is not the dress for shouting in. And I must get plenty of sleep between now and Saturday.

London was silent in the heat and although the weather was so exceptionally fine the streets seemed to be deserted. She reached the flat in an anxious though somnolent state which surprised her; she put it down to the effects of so much concentration and to Mrs Bentley’s curiously jarring command not to look at anyone while she was lecturing. She had imagined herself communing eagerly with her audience, and had seen them responding to her with equal eagerness; she had envisaged the sort of open exchange that always seemed to elude her. And now, she realized, it was to be yet another solo performance of high strain. She sighed, and let herself into the flat.

Through the wall there came the sound of a robust and actorish voice describing sheep-stealing in Elizabethan England. Within minutes, Caroline knocked on the door and was revealed to Kitty’s gaze in a violet cotton print dress, violet sandals, and violet eye-shadow to match. She had evidently spent the entire day refurbishing herself, for her hair and nails were immaculate. ‘Thank God you’re home,’ she said. ‘I’ve
been dying of boredom.’ She advanced into Kitty’s flat, leaving the sheep-stealing recital behind her. ‘It must have been marvellous in the country. You are lucky, Kitty. Nobody ever asks me out now.’

‘But all your friends …’ Kitty began.

‘Well, now that I’m divorced they don’t want to know me. You know how it is with a woman on her own. The wives close ranks. A woman on her own is a threat, Kitty.’

Kitty, who could not see Caroline as a threat, said nothing. Then, realizing that Caroline meant to stay for the rest of the evening, she calculated how many eggs she had left. ‘You’ll have a snack with me, won’t you?’ she said pleasantly. And even more pleasantly, ‘Why don’t you switch that thing off and leave it off for a bit? You cannot, by the remotest stretch of the imagination, be interested in Elizabethan sheep.’

Caroline laughed, drifted off, then drifted back again, displacing a small cloud of scent. ‘Actually, I don’t want anything to eat. It’s too hot. Why don’t you show me what you’re going to wear for your lecture? I haven’t seen your dress yet.’ Kitty, seeing her face rosy and childlike with anticipation, went obediently to the bedroom to prepare herself. The dress was as good as ever, but Kitty did not like what she saw. I am strained, she thought; this waiting is telling on me. And I am tired of the company of women. If only I could see Maurice. If only he were here instead of Caroline. Why does he not come to me? Do I have to give a lecture to engage his attention? Must I avoid his eyes in the hall at the very moment when I need to read some message in them? Why does he keep me waiting so long?

‘Very nice,’ said Caroline, in a dubious sort of voice. ‘But don’t you think you ought to liven it up a bit? I think if you wore my chains and a vivid scarf … Actually it’s your face that needs dressing up a bit, if you
don’t mind my saying so, Kitty. Just stay there. I’ll be back in a minute.’

When she returned, it was with an armoury of bottles and jars and brushes, and a pair of sandals with very high heels. Instructing Kitty to try them for size, she darted into the bathroom for a towel, and draping it around Kitty’s shoulders, proceeded to transform her, humming with pleasure as she did so. I must let her get on with this, thought Kitty, suppressing a yawn; it has clearly saved her evening. Although it is rather ruining mine.

Her face, which Caroline demonstrated to her with pride, was enlivened with many colours: green on the eyelids, a curious brick pink on the cheeks and mouth. She looked, in fact, like a bad facsimile of Caroline. When she had been draped in the chains and scarves, she saw, with interest, that she resembled a prostitute she had once seen emerging from the George-Cinq. A cynical, capable, and utterly French other self had emerged, and this self was not the sort of woman who gave lectures or aspired to the unity of a simple life or desired to align herself with the beliefs and customs of the established majority. This startling face held promises of great assurance, of sophistication; this was a face that belonged to a woman who knew how to please. Caroline was delighted with it. ‘The thing is, Kitty, that you sometimes look a bit depressed, if you don’t mind my saying so. As if you’ve … I don’t know, been stood up, or something. In fact, you want to take the initiative a bit more. Nothing’s going to happen if you just sit in this flat.’ She sighed. ‘I should know.’ She looked so tragic that Kitty went to put the kettle on. Changing out of her dress, but with her face still adorned, she wondered how she could get rid of Caroline at a reasonable hour, remove all traces of her ministrations, and get a good night’s sleep.

It was, they agreed, an incredible summer. It was also a particularly poignant evening, and after they had eaten their scrambled eggs, Kitty suggested a walk by the river. But Caroline declined, and seemed to want to talk about people whom Kitty did not know, people who had been in Caroline’s ‘set’, as she called it, when her fortunes had been at their highest. Kitty listened politely, her mind absent. I shall see him the day after tomorrow, she thought. And then after that I can telephone him about Saturday, to see if there’s anything he wants me to do. It seems absurd to feel so shy of him, but I am only like this when we are apart. Paris seems such a long time ago. If only we could go back there, this summer. In the car, this time. I should like him to show me France. There is nothing I can show him; he cannot be expected to be interested in what I know. I wish Caroline would go. I am longing to get this stuff off my face.

Caroline, becoming more discontented by the minute, left eventually on a rather mournful trailing note, and within seconds the sound of the late, news bulletin was seeping through the wall. Minutes later she knocked at Kitty’s door. ‘I forgot to wish you luck,’ she said. ‘But you’ll be all right. I’ll look in and see how you’re getting on.’ In which case, thought Kitty, there is every reason for my being out for most of tomorrow. If she tries to do my face again, I may go mad. I shall simply have to sit in the garden. Oh, I am fed up with sitting in gardens by myself. I want it to be different now. I don’t want to be alone any more.

She tidied the kitchen, then went into her bedroom, which still showed signs of Caroline’s efforts. She smoothed the counterpane, and put the bottles that Caroline had forgotten to take away with her on one side. On an impulse she slipped on the dress again and tried to look at herself dispassionately in the glass. She
saw a graceful figure but one that did not seem quite right; it was too formal, perhaps, too self-conscious. It was what Louise would have described as well-groomed, with all that that implies of deliberate presentation. Then she realized what had worried her ever since she had got the dress home and examined herself in her own flat, in her own room. I look as I looked at Jean-Claude’s wedding.

He had married a noisy little dark girl called Christiane and Louise had sent Kitty over to represent the family. There had been a very pretty ceremony in the bride’s village church and in the afternoon there had been a gigantic meal that had lasted until five o’clock. A rather grandly placed cousin had lent her house and they had all sat down at a long table on the lawn and had drunk champagne with every one of the numerous courses. She was amused and a little wistful, particularly when Jean-Claude, whom she thought had forgotten her, raised his glass to her, the visitor from England, and of course she had had to respond. You next, they chorused, the old greedy aunts, the small philosophical uncles, you next. When you put away those books it will be your turn. Soon, soon. And she had smiled and shaken her head, and they had poured out more champagne.

And when they had finished the enormous meal and when the light was beginning to fade, and a little wind had sprung up, flapping the corners of the damask tablecloth, they had gone into the house and had started to dance, the heavy aunts and shrivelled uncles, Christiane in her white dress, noisier and more vivid than ever, and eventually Jean-Claude had asked her to dance and had held her almost as he had once held her, his breath warm on her hair. But she was a little shy of him now, for he seemed such a reformed character, so smart, so promising, that it was difficult to remember
the hotel room with the slice of ham curling up in the greasy paper and the rickety table by the window. For now he was a professional man and a married man; he had a career ahead of him and he was about to take up his abode in a
maison de caractère
which his wife’s parents had bought for them in the suburbs. She hardly knew what to say to him and was silent. But when the dance ended, he had kissed her lightly and said, ‘You should always wear that colour. Yellow is your colour. And ask me to your wedding soon. I hope you will be as happy as I am today.’