The Horatio Stubbs Trilogy (16 page)

How I felt about Virginia was another matter. I was then unsure how I felt; an immense lake of sorrow was growing inside me, but partly it was because I regretted she had become involved with Spaldine.

However, it was clear that many of Spaldine's charges against her were correct in essence. Virginia had deceived everyone. The wealthy upper-class background she had sketched was a myth – as I should have seen, had I had more experience, from her worn clothes and the shabby rooms in which she had to live.

‘You realize that the bitch is even now having it off with somebody else?' Spaldine said. ‘She came down here because she couldn't get enough round Nottingham.'

‘She's allowed to choose, isn't she?'

‘Don't give me that stuff! She's got an obligation to me – to us, let's say, hasn't she? To me, anyhow. Just because she was sacked from school …'

‘What? She was sacked? Are you sure? She never told me she was sacked!'

‘She never told you a bloody thing, Stubbs!'

‘She told me she wanted to join the Nursing Service.'

‘Oh did she! She told
me
she had to come to London to act as principal witness in some involved divorce case concerning a friend.'

‘Well, she mentioned that to me too – perhaps both are true.'

‘Look, they're neither true, you silly clot! I reckon she got bunked!'

‘You've no proof.'

‘I reckon the Head found out what she was up to. Christ, man, she must have had half the Upper School across her at one time or another. Someone on the staff would have been bound to find out!'

‘You're just guessing, and you've no right to say that. I don't see you've got any right to watch her house, either – much less clobber anyone who comes out.'

He shambled up to the bar and bought two more half-pints of beer and a packet of Woodbines. I watched him and saw what a radically unattractive fellow he was, his fair hair standing up in spikes, his nose pudgy and dismal and his trousers filthy from our scramble. No doubt I looked as bad myself. The knuckles of my left hand were bleeding badly, and I had wrapped them in a dirty handkerchief. Two sordid young men of seventeen, Virginia's lovers! Poor dear Virginia!

Spaldine put the beer down and lit a fag. I cadged one off him. A couple of old women were watching us covertly, attracted by Spaldine's vehement manner, doubtless. I gave them a good hard stare, mean-mouthed, and they looked away.

‘See, something fishy's going on round at hers,' Spaldine said. ‘I bloody know there's some other bloke having it off with her. She put me off meeting her tonight, you know. She doesn't want me any more, that's for sure!'

‘Wouldn't it be better to resign yourself to the worst? You can't make her' (I gulped) ‘love you.'

‘Are you bloody daft? Look, what I thought we'd do is this. We can have a plan of action, see? With two of us it's easy. We take it in turn to watch her place. She generally goes out in the morning. Instead of following her, we could slip in there and one search her room while the other kept look-out. Then we could find this other bloke's name and address …'

‘No! Spaldine, try and see this from a sensible angle …'

‘No, listen, you don't know what I was going to say!'

‘I don't want …'

‘Listen, never mind that! I wasn't going to say we should go and beat him up. I reckon perhaps I was wrong there. Wrong tactics! We go round and see this other bloke and just
scare him off
, you see!' He delivered this looking at me hard, his eyes blazing with inspiration, – watching to see the delight dawn on my face as I took in the brilliance of his plan.

‘Balls!' I said.

‘No, don't you see … Look, we can act a bit tough with him to show him we can't be mucked about. But we tell him, just tell him, all about the downright lies Sister has told us. That should scare him off.'

‘Why? Has it scared you off, Spaldine?'

He looked away from me, let his gaze travel jerkily over the bar.

‘I'll have to do it myself, then.' He took a meditative sip of his beer. ‘You're about as much good as a wet fish, Stubbs,' he said. He drained the rest of his glass, set it down on the table and wiped his lips. ‘And I don't want to see you round by hers again,' he said. He stood up, nodded severely, and marched out through the door.

I sat there, finishing my beer more slowly, and went out into the streets; if I hurried I could get back to my pie-and-peas shop before it closed. There would be time enough to suffer when my stomach was less empty.

In fact, my stomach began to suffer directly it was full of pie-and-peas. My entrails, all my insides, had undergone awful contortions of coldness during the episode with Spaldine. Leaving the pie-and-peas shop, I had to make for the nearest public lavatory at the double.

It was one of those subterranean London affairs, and as I sank down on the seat in my stall, the subterranean nature of my life was borne in on me. My coming to the bloody capital was meant as a great gesture of love; but so submerged was everyone in the animal hurly-burly of their lives that nobody had noticed it. Nobody. Only my stomach, as it emptied, gave indications that the gesture had ever been made.

All round me were other declarations of abortive love. Beside, the usual boastings about length and frequency of climax and pleas for assignation with eighteen-year-old R.A.F. boys, several case histories were scrawled on the door and walls. One was about a fellow luring a news-girl into his kitchen on a Sunday morning and sucking her off on the table. One began, ‘My older brother is in the Merchant Navy and when he comes home he has to share my bed with me.'

I read them with detached interest as I wiped myself. Written large by my right-hand side was a pencilled notice: ‘Why Shit Here When There Are Better Stories in the Next Cubicle?'

The story of my life, I thought.

My ‘Virginia Journal' had travelled south with me. Sitting on my bed and laying it on my rickety little bedside table, I spent some hours writing it up, trying to make sense of what was happening.

There is some happiness now in seeing that even then I was generous to Virginia, although I believed that society imposed a sort of obligation on me to judge her harshly and to hate her for her way of life: but that was a hangover from the kind of judgements exercised by a previous generation. Naïve though my sentiments were, they ended with a sentence that now pleases me a lot: ‘I never gave Virginia a single present (more poverty than meanness), and she never gave me one, but yet she gave me more than I can say.'

That was meant to be the last word.

I decided that Virginia wanted to see me no more than she did Spaldine; so I would fade out of her life. If that was her point of view, I had sympathy with it; we were in London now, not Branwells, and she no more wanted me in her bed than I wanted young Brown in mine; circumstances had altered cases. All this was pusillanimous, perhaps; it was not unnatural to feel down-hearted in the circumstances. I had no hatred of her – any hatred was directed towards the odious Spaldine.

Feeling extremely low, I brought out my comforter and commenced to rub it, gazing at it affectionately and thinking how ably it had worked to Virginia's and my mutual pleasure in that little nest of hers which she had never allowed me to see. It stood to attention at the thought. I began to grow enthusiastic myself. After the spasm of pleasure raked through my body I climbed into bed and went to sleep.

For the next day or two I went about pretending that a new phase in my life had begun. I cultivated a Miss Tregonin, a Cornish girl with a mass of freckles who was younger than I and also worked at the trestle table in the department. I had no intention of going home with my tail between my legs.

On Saturday came a letter from Virginia, written on her violet notepaper, saying that she was in trouble but would like to meet me at the National Gallery at noon that day. We could have lunch together.

‘… in trouble
but
would like to see you …' Not ‘… in trouble
and
would like to meet you …' What was the distinction there, and was it one she had intended to make? What, for God's sake, was the trouble?

And the business about meeting her at noon. The department did not close until noon, so I could not hope to be at the National Gallery before 12.15. I pictured that frail little elusive figure among the columns; would it wait for me? Could it? What were the hidden pressures of its life that kept it moving all the while? I remembered what I knew intuitively: somehow, Virginia had been hurt.

So I slipped away from the department at 11.40, hoping nobody spotted me, and Virginia turned up at the Gallery at 12.30.

It happened that the Gallery was shut that day for what were euphemistically called ‘Alterations'. Most of the pictures were being crated up and taken into the country. Trafalgar Square was a sober sight, with sandbags everywhere, and a great water tank, and other evidence of warlike preparedness. Like almost everyone else, Virginia and I carried our gas-masks in little square boxes.

We went and ate in a humble restaurant near Charing Cross Station. There were net curtains at the window, through which a wintry sun attempted to shine. We smiled at each other, hardly knowing what to say.

She made no attempt to apologize for the dreariness of our last meeting. Was she aware how miserable I had felt then? Rather sharply, I asked what sort of trouble she was in.

‘You haven't the experience, Horry, to know how complicated life can be,' she began.

‘I have more experience than you may believe, Virginia. I am no longer a kid, as I told you the other night.' Only a long while after did I realize that that declaration might not have the effect on her I intended. I was conscious then of my youth and of the fact that if she was in trouble then it was a man she needed; later I perceived that she could only achieve satisfactory relationships with boys – children, in fact, on whom her gentle, almost non-existent character could have some weight, and who might repose in her a trust she could not give herself.

She looked at me doubtfully, her head on one side. I was being judged in ways I could not know. ‘I am sorry we are having to meet one another in London. It's all more complex than Branwells … My life just is terribly complex. You can see how I have come down in the world, through no fault of my own. I'm such a silly about money matters, among other things. Now there's the war to make everything more difficult. I'm lucky to have such a good friend in Josie …'

I took her hand and said, ‘Virginia, darling, you also have a good friend in me. I'm not just another chap who screws you and disappears – I love you, I want to help you!'

‘You mustn't use that ugly word, pet. You are a dear boy, but you can't help me.'

‘How do you know? Tell me what sort of trouble you're in! I'm down here all on my own – I'm free to help in any way I can. I came to London just to help you. Of course, I'm a bit hard up …'

The waitress arrived and we had to be quiet. We sat and looked at each other as the soup plates arrived. Then she said, ‘I'm being watched night and day at Josie's place. It's her cousin – the one you saw. I know he is connected with the divorce in some way. They have got a man watching me, the solicitors. I believe he has a gun in his pocket.'

‘Did he follow you here, to this restaurant?'

‘I don't believe so. I went in and out of a few shops by different doors on my way to meet you. That's why I was slightly late.' So she had noticed she was late.

‘Virginia, darling, I want to tell you something. I want you to understand that I do dearly love you. It's not just sexual attraction. I know all about the age difference between us, but it makes no difference to me – I love you just as you are. And I know more about you and your private life than you may think. It has no effect on my feelings for you.' I said that rather hastily, for a slight flicker of expression came over her face, a tiny change, something so transient – and then she directed her gaze down at the tablecloth.

The intuitive core in me felt her alter; but of course I overruled that and went on. ‘It's true you are being watched, Virginia, but not for the reasons you imagine. You are being watched by Christopher Spaldine and he intends you no good. He has nothing to do with anyone in the house, but he wants to get revenge on you.'

Half-smiling, she said, ‘Christopher Spaldine? He was one of the boys in the art club, wasn't he?'

‘He was one of your lovers, Virginia!'

She kept looking at my shoulder with a fixed expression.

I babbled on, offering to guard her and I know not what else; but I had lost contact with her.

The meal was an absolute failure.

We paid the bill, half each at her insistence, and went outside. She was walking rather briskly, her short-cut fair hair bobbing, her head just slightly on one side. I held her arm. There were other people all round us; she could disappear.

‘Come and spend the night with me, Virginia. Please – let me hold you in my arms, just as I used to do!'

I was terrified by the way she walked; she held herself stiffly and moved too fast. I manoeuvred her into a stationer's shop and talked to her earnestly. She stood gently by me, picking at a thread on her coat, as I tried simultaneously to explain and discount the things Spaldine had told me.

Looking at me, smiling rather crookedly, Virginia said, ‘We had better stop seeing each other, Horry, if you really believe those indecent things Christopher Spaldine said about me.'

That floored me. In the midst of my stammered explanations she said, ‘Darling, I don't want to hurt you – you have been a dear boy. But if you are connected with all these other people, then I mustn't have any more to do with you.'

Her face was really rather hard and determined as she spoke.