School for Love (18 page)

After that they had fried aubergine until Felix was nauseated by the smell of it. Miss Bohun would say: ‘Now, Felix, won’t you have another one of these little fish-things?’

‘No, thank you, Miss Bohun.’

‘And you, Mrs Ellis?’

No reply from Mrs Ellis.

‘Of course, they’re not really fish, but I’m sure aubergine is just as good as fish. I believe firmly in vegetables. The best Indian sages eat nothing else. Don’t you find they agree with you, Felix?’

‘Yes, Miss Bohun.’

‘And you, Mrs Ellis?’

No reply from Mrs Ellis.

Miss Bohun’s satisfaction at having discovered this fish substitute lessened a little the table’s desolation, but in the end Felix cried out in spite of himself: ‘Oh, Miss Bohun, aubergine again!’

‘Why!’ Miss Bohun opened her eyes with surprise, ‘I thought you liked it.’

‘But not for every meal.’

‘If you knew the bother and expense of housekeeping these days, Felix, you would not be so finicky.’ Miss Bohun sighed: ‘Heigh-ho. I had hoped if there was another woman in the house we could take turns with the housekeeping, but . . .’

At this Mrs Ellis, surprisingly, spoke: ‘I am quite willing to take my turn at housekeeping, Miss Bohun. After all, if we are, as you say, sharing expenses, you must have over £60 a month to run this house. I feel I could do something quite impressive on that.’

Miss Bohun gave her a startled look and for some moments seemed to be reflecting in a perplexed way on what Mrs Ellis had said. She did not mention the subject again, but Mrs Ellis mentioned it to Felix: ‘Nikky says she runs that house on less than twenty pounds a month – so can you imagine she would let me do the housekeeping?’

She no longer spoke of Miss Bohun as a joke, but
instead with a contemptuous anger that troubled Felix because it seemed to prove Mrs Ellis to be unreasonable and involved in pettiness. He supposed Mrs Ellis had been upset by Miss Bohun’s remark about the baby belonging to her late husband, but he could not see the remark as being, after all, so very important. Miss Bohun was obviously trying to be kind and reassuring, but Mrs Ellis, for some reason, behaved as though she had received a deadly insult. One day he asked Mrs Ellis: ‘Why are you so cross with Miss Bohun?’

She said: ‘I’m not going to tell you.’

‘Not ever?’ asked Felix.

‘No, not ever.’

Felix was sorry for Miss Bohun and touched by her show of indifference to rebuff, but his adherence now was to Mrs Ellis, and when, without any reference to Miss Bohun, she said across the supper table to Felix: ‘Like to come out tonight?’ his embarrassment was completely lost in his delight.

‘The cinema again?’ asked Miss Bohun with hurt casualness. ‘I do hope, Felix, you’ll not stay out too late,’ but she received no reply beyond Felix’s: ‘No, Miss Bohun,’ and then they were gone.

After that Miss Bohun’s manner changed. She, too, retreated into grievance and long periods of silence would descend on the meal tables. When she spoke it was with sudden outbursts of aggressive cheerfulness: ‘Well, I must be off to my “Ever-Readies”. Dear me, how nice it is to have something to
do
. . . to feel that one is really of use in the world. And there are such splendid people at the “Ever-Readies” – such a jolly crowd. No sulking there.’

Felix felt these innuendos to be very unfair. He had no
wish to sulk; his silence came from the feeling that now Miss Bohun had somehow got back into the right, not only Mrs Ellis but he himself was in the wrong. For some reason he felt guilty whenever he went out with Mrs Ellis, but this guilt was suddenly lifted when Miss Bohun one day announced in loud, decided tones: ‘I’m sorry to have to tell you, but I am forced to put up the rent.’

Mrs Ellis’s head gave a startled, upward jerk and she looked at Miss Bohun in spite of herself. Miss Bohun seemed satisfied with this result. Felix, waiting in some dismay to hear more, saw her lips set momentarily with placid composure, then she said quietly: ‘I do not want to do this, of course, but milk has gone up another piastre – the summer shortage, of course – and yesterday we had eggs. I want you to eat well, but everything has to be paid for. Now there’s some talk of raising the price of fish. There seems no end to the increase in expenditure; so, I’m afraid I shall require five pounds extra from each of you this month.’

Felix looked at Mrs Ellis, but she did not speak. He wanted her to protest, but could think of nothing to say himself. For the rest of the meal, during which Miss Bohun kept humming to herself the tune of ‘Jerusalem the Golden’, he wondered miserably whether the Consul would be willing to pay this money.

Towards the end, when Miss Bohun was least expecting it, Mrs Ellis asked in a remote, cold voice: ‘I believe there is a Government control on
pension
prices. The price of a single room with meals is controlled at twenty pounds a month.’

Miss Bohun replied: ‘I’m afraid the people who fix those prices know nothing about the expense of running a home these days.’

‘But most prices are controlled, and you never deal on the black market.’

Miss Bohun gave a slight click with her tongue and replied irritably: ‘If you mean you cannot see your way clear to pay the extra five pounds, then I shall be forced to make further economies.’

‘Heaven forbid,’ said Mrs Ellis. She had finished her meal but she sat still for several minutes, then she said rapidly and not without effort: ‘And are you putting up the rent of the front bedroom as well?’

Miss Bohun had been about to lift her fingers from her finger-bowl. Now, although she stared at them, she seemed to forget to move them. Suddenly she said accusingly: ‘Who told you I receive rent for the front bedroom?’

Mrs Ellis smiled to herself and rose from the table. Before she could go Miss Bohun, remembering her fingers and lifting them out and drying them on her handkerchief, said with calm dignity: ‘I am not a rich woman, Mrs Ellis. No doubt you are used to those fortunate people whose worldly wealth permits them to
give
their services to their faith. I wish I were one of them. I am not. My private money is very small – just two hundred pounds a year. . . .’

‘Really,’ interrupted Mrs Ellis, ‘I wish I had a private income of two hundred pounds a year.’

‘As I said, Mrs Ellis, I’m not a rich woman, neither am I a young one. My mother left me my little income and it’s all I’ve ever had given me. I have never had a husband to keep me, or even to die and leave me a comfortable pension. No, I have had to rely on myself all along. I have had to build up for my own old age. Having no wish to be dependent on others, I must work while I can and work hard.’

She stood up, paused to glance at them in silence, then, turning slowly, went up the stairs. It must have seemed to her, as it did to the others, that she had administered an unanswerable rebuke. A few moments passed before Mrs Ellis roused herself and said: ‘Well, I’m damned.’

Felix, recovering from Miss Bohun’s censure only to remember its origins, said: ‘How awful! Another five quid a month. I won’t have any pocket money at all now.’

‘Why should we pay it? Whatever she says, she can’t justify charging twenty-five pounds. This wretched service, these workhouse meals – I shall send her a note and tell her that I’m not eating in any more. I’ll pay only for the room.’

‘But I can’t do that. You see, she was kind and . . .’

‘You’d better let your Baghdad friend deal with her.’

‘Yes,’ Felix agreed despondently, afraid the Consul would tell him to move to the Y.M.C.A. Now it was no longer a debt of gratitude, but the presence of Mrs Ellis that kept him in Miss Bohun’s house; he worried for some time, expecting to be presented with the ultimatum that either he left or gave up his pocket money.

The Consul must have paid up without question, for Felix heard no more about it, but something else occurred that seemed to him worse. Mrs Ellis, without warning him, disappeared from the meal table. Miss Bohun made no comment and Felix, left alone to suffer her censure, had not the courage to ask about Mrs Ellis. Sometimes he heard Mrs Ellis leave her room but he did not run out to intercept her – he kept to his room if he knew she was in the house; he did not go into the garden if she were there. He was hurt and yet he felt cool and aloof from her, as though he had thrown off a burden. He decided
he would not attempt to speak to her again. He cared for nobody – nobody and nothing in the world except Faro; he said to Faro again: ‘I love you; I love you.’ He knew he really did love Faro; he would often lift her in his arms to the level of his face and rub his smooth cheek against the very tender fur of her throat; then he would carry her round the room, she purring, her eyes, oblique to watch him, half-closed in ecstasy. Faro was natural and genuine and would never disillusion him or put him unfairly in the wrong.

After a week had passed, it seemed to him that his own aloofness from her had somehow cancelled out Mrs Ellis’s indifference; now he could see her again and start afresh without any danger to his pride. He knew suddenly, then, that he did want to see and speak to her again; and in an instant he was possessed with the idea and could not bear the thought of waiting until she returned. But he had no idea where to find her. During the afternoon he kept going to his window and watching for her; at last, about six o’clock, as the sun was dropping in the sky, he saw her coming over the wasteland. He went back to his desk and composed himself so that he could appear the more naturally out of his door as she came along the passage. At last, scarcely able to bear his own excitement, he burst out of the room and said, ‘Hello’ into her face.

She answered casually: ‘Hello. Where have you been all this time?’

‘Where have
you
been? You haven’t had any meals here for ages.’

‘Well,’ she answered reasonably, ‘I told you I was going to stop having meals in. I didn’t see why I should pay so
much for her beastly food. The trouble is she is making me pay sixteen pounds a month for the room alone – so it’s damned expensive. . . .’

‘But how can she possibly charge sixteen pounds?’ asked Felix, drawn at once into the entrancing game of discussing Miss Bohun. ‘She told me the food cost most.’

‘Well, she does charge sixteen pounds,’ Mrs Ellis shrugged a little, seeming rather bored with the game at the moment. ‘What did you do at Easter?’

He copied her slight shrug. Easter had come and gone since he last saw her. ‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘Miss Bohun may be religious, but she doesn’t seem to think much about those things. I mentioned it and she said: “What, Easter already! There’s always something. . . .”’

Felix’s attempt to copy Miss Bohun’s exasperated uninterest made Mrs Ellis burst out laughing: ‘Come in,’ she said as she opened her door.

Felix had not been in her room since the night Miss Bohun had burst in and ordered him and Nikky out. He entered happily, sniffing the scent in the air as though it were something on which he could get a tangible hold.

‘Well,’ said Mrs Ellis, ‘if you’d been around I’d have taken you to see the Holy Fire.’

‘What Holy Fire?’

‘A ceremony in the Holy Sepulchre on Easter Saturday. The Greek patriarch produced fire from Heaven – I’ve never seen such a crowd. People went quite crazy; they almost set the church alight.’

‘No! And you didn’t take me?’ His distress was so poignant he could scarcely keep it from his voice.

‘Oh,’ Mrs Ellis was remorseful now that she saw his suffering, ‘I would have asked you if I could – but one
of Nikky’s friends at the café gave me the tickets so I had to ask Nikky to come.’

‘But . . . but
couldn’t
you have got another ticket?’

‘No. They’re very difficult to get. But don’t look so miserable. I promise you if we’re both here next Easter I’ll take you.’

It was poor consolation. Felix sat on the edge of the bed trying to pull himself out of his hurt; it was like a bitterness of disappointment inside him although he had expected nothing. Somehow it was related to the past when the year had been so beautifully hung, like garlands, on the four secure props of Easter, his birthday in July, his mother’s in September, and then Christmas. The sense of security had gone quickly enough when the Shiptons had forgotten all about him last Christmas. He had expected nothing this Easter – and yet here he was wretched because there had, after all, been something, but not for him. He made an effort to say with interest, betraying nothing:

‘What is this Holy Fire for?’

‘I don’t know. I think it’s Pentecost.’

‘What’s Pentecost?’

‘My dear boy, don’t ask me. You are incredibly ignorant, Felix. People ought to know more at your age than when they’re grown up.’

His indignation at the unreasonableness of this statement raised him from his dejection and they argued happily enough for half an hour. When she told him to go because she wanted to change her dress, she said: ‘Would you like to come to the café to-night?’

‘Yes, of course.’

‘Come along after dinner. I’ll look out for you.’

When he arrived Mrs Ellis was sitting alone at a table where she had had dinner. She was smoking and drinking coffee.

‘Hello,’ she said. ‘You are the first.’

‘Are other people coming?’

‘Nikky probably – and his friends. They usually drop in.’

Felix was glad to have Mrs Ellis to himself for a while. Almost at once he started to talk about his mother, feeling in some way that his devotion to Mrs Ellis left him in debt to his mother’s memory. Mrs Ellis, her elbows on the table, her eyes narrowed against the smoke, watched him with a sleepy half-interest that he found exciting. He told her about his mother’s lovely dresses and how she would sometimes ask him to choose one for her, but she never accepted his choice because he was not good at choosing; she would say: ‘Yes, darling, that is a nice dress – but I think I had better wear the pink,’ or ‘the black’; how she was rather religious, but not a lot; she would read C. S. Lewis aloud to him, but would play bridge on Sunday afternoons with the Shiptons and Mr Turner-Tufley and say: ‘I am sure God has no objection to our having a little fun’; how Mr Turner-Tufley was very nice and had a wife in England whom he had not seen for years; how Felix’s mother would sometimes sigh when Mr Turner-Tufley went, and put her arms round Felix’s neck and say: ‘Anyway, I always have my little boy.’ And she was terribly artistic and good at interior decoration and could paint table-mats and make lamp-shades . . .