The Middle Age of Mrs Eliot (36 page)

She set off for work angry, tired, and with a headache that racked her with every step she took. In the dictation class, taken by Miss Corrigan herself, she made four stupid mistakes, and, rattled by her sudden failure, asked two questions that suggested ignorance about things she knew perfectly well. Miss Corrigan said with a little laugh, ‘
Not
your bright day, Mrs Eliot.’ Some of the girls giggled a bit
spitefully
; but Meg thought, I can’t blame them if they dislike me, I’ve never really bothered with them; but then, I’m not here for that, I’m here to become an efficient secretary.

At the end of the afternoon’s work Meg felt quite unable to face a return to the flat. She had heard Tom’s voice, before she left that morning, grumbling at his mother when his breakfast tray was taken in to him, so that there seemed no hope of his having been arrested, or, if that was too monstrous a wish, none that he had been too
shame-faced
to return home. Even if he were to be out this evening, she had no relish for dining alone with Viola. She almost regretted that some
little dinner party – an ex-Colonial servant and his wife, or even Donald – had not been arranged, but Viola had begun to lose heart before Meg’s lack of enthusiasm. She rang up and said that she would be out to dinner.

At first she had included Poll in her anger. Now she felt that this was unfair; although she wouldn’t care to be involved very often with Poll’s set as she now knew it, she had enjoyed herself and it was her own fault that Tom had been there at all. She decided to ring Poll up and thank her. As soon as she was in the telephone box she realized that she wanted to tell Poll about her trouble with Tom.

When Meg declared that she had so much enjoyed the party, Poll said in her flattest, most conventional tones, ‘Did you? I’m so glad.’ Then she added, ‘I think everyone did. It was a very
good
party.’

It was difficult to tell from Poll’s voice whether she was in a bad temper; perhaps she was still angry over their previous telephone
conversation
, or perhaps she was piqued because Tom had only kissed her on the lips. Meg said very enthusiastically, ‘Well, I
certainly
thought so.’

Poll didn’t reply to this. Despite this lack of encouragement, Meg felt a desperate need to talk about the Tom situation and Poll seemed the only person she could discuss it with. She said, ‘I’d like to come over to see you, Poll.’

‘Yes, you must. When-will you?’

‘Now, if I may.’

‘Oh!’ There was a pause. ‘I haven’t got another party and there isn’t any food,’ Poll said dampingly,

‘You must come out with me. We can go to some little place in the King’s Road.’

‘You do make things sound unattractive, Meg. Anyway I’ll take
you.
After all I owe you some money and now the trust is broken I expect I’d better pay you. Only such a lot of people are borrowing from
me
now. Perhaps I could pay you back by taking you to lots of “little places”.’

‘Yes, do,’ Meg said impatiently. ‘I’ll come round straight away.’

Sitting in the bus, Meg thought that she was making a mistake in going to Poll’s. She’s obviously in a stinking temper, she thought, and even if she isn’t, I’m not sure it’s a good thing to tell her about Tom. She realized that it was the first time that anything unpleasant had happened to her without Bill being there to comfort her. The odd thought came to her – ‘except, of course, his death’. She pushed the thought away angrily. Anyway Tom’s behaviour would have been
embarrassing to report to Bill, he would have flown into such a rage. Yet however unwise it was to tell Poll, she knew that she would do so; she needed so much to confide in someone, I ought not to be going there, she thought. But it was too late.

Poll opened the door, holding a large glass of tomato juice in her other hand. Meg had somehow expected her to show the effects of the night before – to have pouches under her eyes or to be wearing a dirty housecoat or dressing gown. In fact she was dressed and made up
exactly
as usual; her face showed no sign of fatigue or hangover.
Surprise
added to Meg’s nervousness. She said, hearing herself sound foolish, ‘Tomato juice! What a good idea!’

‘I don’t think it would be, if it was,’ Poll said. ‘It’s a Bloody Mary.’

Then to her horror, Meg heard herself say, ‘The hair of the dog?’

She couldn’t think how the awful phrase had come into her head. Poll ignored it.

If she showed no effects from the night before, the house looked like Hangover Hall. Empty glasses and full ashtrays were everywhere, even on the stairs. A small space had been cleaned around the sitting room fire like an animal’s nest in the undergrowth. They sat down and Meg tried not to think that vodka would further upset her
digestion.

Poll said, ‘You haven’t said anything about the mess the house is in
.
It isn’t always like this, you know. Mrs Taylor couldn’t come in today because her mother’s ill.’

Disastrously Meg said, ‘How like chars.’

‘Is it? Well it isn’t like Mrs Taylor, Nor like her mother. She’s never ill. She’s a wonderful old woman. She walks all the way over Albert Bridge to bring me cakes she’s made.’ Poll made it sound very feudal.

Meg felt too flattened to say anything more. Perhaps Poll noticed it, for she suddenly brightened up and began a long and very lively inquest on the party. Meg could scarcely recognize the people she had met the night before as she heard about them. She had found them funny because they had been incongruously assembled and because, since they were all a bit drunk, their remarks had been absurdly
inconsequential
. Poll missed none of this absurdity. As they recounted the various conversations, she reiterated an expression that recalled to Meg their old art school days. ‘Wasn’t she a scream?’ she cried. ‘Or didn’t that make you scream? It did me.’ But she attributed other
positive
virtues to her guests that Meg had not found, and, as the adjectives
she used were as vague as they were emphatic, it was difficult to tell exactly what these virtues were; but there was a definite implication of active merits where Meg had found only incidental
entertainment.

When Meg told her of the launderette manageress’s embarrassing remarks about Bill’s death, she said, ‘Oh, Alma! She’s
too
extraordinary,
isn’t she? Of course having a face like that helps her to be so amusing.’ Of the Indian student she said, ‘I can’t
think
what goes on in his head, can you? But he does it all to the manner born.’ The
red-faced
, cissy man, it seemed, was called Hilary. ‘He’s one of the regulars at the Antigua, I
was
angry that he didn’t bring his friend. He’s marvellous anyway, of course, but he’s a hundred per cent funnier when his friend’s there.’

Meg didn’t like to say that the newspaper photographer had told her that Poll was a duke’s daughter, so she merely said. ‘He thinks you’re very grand.’

Poll looked vague. ‘Well, I suppose he’d know,’ she said. ‘He’s tremendously up in things.’

Meg had believed that she could always tell when Poll was
speaking
ironically, but in all this she sensed a certain serious estimation, or, if not that, at any rate a refusal to accept last night’s crowd only as funny people who had been collected together. She wondered if
perhaps
Poll was very reasonably unwilling to treat them entirely as a joke because of some personal affection for them. She selected at
random
the lady whose lover locked her out, and said, ‘She seemed a very likeable woman.’

She was snubbed for her dishonesty, however, for Poll said, ‘I wouldn’t know really. I don’t care much about “likeable” do you? She and Garry are an awfully
mad
pair. And I don’t mind, do you, as long as people are entertaining.’

As to how they had to entertain in order to win Poll’s approval Meg could get no clear answer. There was a clue, perhaps, in her
attitude
to the gorilla-like man, Leonard.

‘
He’s
not very funny,’ she said, ‘coming in and saying my party was full of phonies. I suppose he wants me to have all the bores here.’ She named some of the people whom Meg had expected to see there. ‘I don’t have people here just because they’re well known,’ Poll said.

‘But they’re not as well known as all that, Poll, and they
are
old friends of yours.’

Poll looked suddenly very cross. ‘Well, I
don’t
have them here.
They don’t mix well and they fuss about what one’s doing. If the people I have here aren’t good enough for you and Leonard that’s your look out.’

‘But I liked them very much.’

Poll’s face once more took on a vaguely blissful look.

‘Yes, aren’t they amusing?’ she said, then, as though considering, she announced, ‘When one’s young, Meg, it’s all right to collect people. But now I’m older I like people to collect
me.
’
She poured out more drinks. ‘Don’t let’s go to that little place of yours,’ she said, ‘it’s sure to be scampi or snails or something I couldn’t eat. I’ll make a delicious omelette later. With chives. Don’t you love chives?’
Meditatively
she said, ‘I would like it if Leonard
didn’t
come here. He’s immensely strong.’ Then, ‘And
you
,’
she said, ‘the beard was terribly put out when
you
disappeared like that.’

‘I was very put out when he found me,’ Meg said. A light tone would allow her to skim over it all quickly if Poll proved
unsympathetic
. ‘He made a pass,’ she said.

‘Well, I suppose so,’ Poll replied. ‘I must say I shouldn’t have minded.’

‘Well, I
did.
I burned him with my cigarette.’

Poll looked surprised. ‘I’m rather glad he
didn’t
take to me if
that’s
what he wants.’

Meg felt in danger of crying. Poll’s judgement at that moment seemed of the greatest importance to her. If she thinks I’ve behaved stupidly I don’t know what I shall do, she thought. But Poll’s tone changed.

‘My dear Meg, surely you haven’t let the beard upset you? Anyone can see he’s in a bad way about sex. You’d better tell me what
happened
.’

Meg told the whole story. When she repeated Tom’s remark about Bill, Poll said, ‘Silly little beast! Anyone could see that you and Bill had a marvellous time in bed. He
must
be in a bad way about you to have said that. Well, you mustn’t go on staying there. He obviously thinks of you as the marble statue he’ll bring to life with his kisses.’ She gave a great raucous laugh.

Meg said, ‘That’s what’s so awful, Poll, I’d no idea that I went about behaving like the untouchable grand lady.’

‘Well, you
did
rather, dear. But I can’t see why not. You didn’t
want
anyone except Bill to touch you. And you could
afford
to be the grand lady.’ She got up. ‘I think we’d better have something to eat,’
she said. As she was heating the omelette pan, she remarked, not
looking
at Meg, ‘Well, you haven’t to worry about all that now. Being the grand lady, I mean.’ She broke the eggs into a basin. ‘I must say I don’t think you seem to know what you’re doing.’

‘I managed things very badly last night, I know.’

‘Oh, I don’t mean
that
. All this typing and shorthand and living at old Lady Thing’s.’

‘Living at Viola’s obviously has been a mistake. But I can’t see what you have against the secretarial course. It will get me quite a well-paid job; and if I don’t let myself get stuck in a rut, which I don’t intend to do, I might get involved with all sorts of things I don’t know about. I’ve lived in such a narrow world, Poll.’

‘Lucky you,’ Poll said, ‘I can’t think why anyone should
want
to know about most of the life that goes on in England now. Of course, I do see all those successful middle-class people you had to keep up with because of Bill’s work must have been rather ghastly. But you don’t
have
to keep up appearances now, Meg. What on earth do you want to go and work in some ghastly little office for?’

‘I must have some money, Poll.’

‘Well, you won’t get any that way. How much money
have
you got?’

‘A very few thousand pounds. It isn’t quite certain yet …’

Poll interrupted. ‘But, good God,’ she said, ‘you don’t have very expensive tastes. You can almost
live
on that for a while. And then you know lots of people to borrow from. That’s what
I
’
ve
always done. And as you saw last night I meet masses of interesting people if that’s what you want. And you needn’t
do
anything. That’s the main thing. Doing things is so awful. I have a heavenly time. Even without breaking the trust, I mean. And anyway that won’t last long.’

Meg looked at Poll in surprise. It was clear that she meant what she said; she
did
believe that she had a full, interesting life and it was obvious that she really enjoyed it,

‘If one can’t be
really
rich,’ Poll said, ‘I don’t think it matters how little one has.’

Meg said, ‘I don’t think I’d be very good at borrowing and so on.’

‘You’ll learn, dear,’ Poll replied with mock sharpness. ‘If it’s some silly moral scruple, you’d better get rid of it at once, Meg. Nobody cares about
us
, why should we care about
them
?’

Meg said as tentatively as she could, for she didn’t wish to puncture Poll’s optimism, ‘I really don’t think I should like your life.’

She was afraid that Poll would be angry. People never liked to have their way of living criticized. But she need not have feared.

‘Oh, my dear, you can’t know what it’s like then. It’s absolute bliss, I get up when I want to. And I know where all the people are if I want to find them, and none of the lots of people have anything to do with the other lots unless like last night there’s a special party. And sometimes I just go to pubs I don’t know where there are blissful strangers.’

She gave Meg a list of all the pubs and clubs she visited and which group frequented which of them. It takes, Meg thought, ‘talking on their own subject’ to make people into bores.