The Perilous Life of Jade Yeo (5 page)

"Yes," he said. He touched my face. "Thank
you. You were lovely."

I rousted him out pretty briskly. I can't
imagine how awful it would have been if Aunt Iris had returned
early.

He says he will come to see me again. I don't
really know if I want to see him again. I feel I would be
embarrassed.

How long this is! I started writing it in the
morning and it is past lunchtime now. Aunt Iris has come in three
times and looked begrudgingly approving of my diligence (though she
thinks writing is bad for my back and eyesight, and also for my
prospects of getting a husband). I must put this away and write
something that I would be paid for.

(Could I sell parts of this? One suspects
that anything with sex in it might sell for quite a good price, if
one could find the right buyer. Imagine Ravi's face if I asked! Oh
dear.)

I must not feel ashamed, I must never feel
ashamed. One must be true to oneself, and taste as much as one can
of the varied buffet of life: that must be the guiding
principle.

Our last day in Paris. Hardie took me out to
lunch, then we went for a walk in the Jardin du Luxembourg. It was
very very cold, but startlingly pretty despite the weather: orderly
European gardens with wide gravel paths, statues, flowerbeds. It
would be lovely in the summer. (How European it makes me feel to
write that!)

"It is nice to meet outside a hotel room for
once," I remarked.

"I am fittingly reproached," said Hardie. "I
have not been very gallant, have I?"

"No. But you have been very instructive," I
said to comfort him, but Hardie was not listening.

"My dearest, if you would come to me in
London, preferably auntless, there would be no need for these
sordid assignations in hotels. Diana and I would welcome you into
our own home—"

"Oh no no no," I said, alarmed. "Of course I
shan't see you in London. I have been perfectly happy with the
sordid assignations. I simply meant that it is nice to see these
gardens, and not be cooped up in a hotel all day. I've not had many
chances to see the city. Aunt Iris doesn't much like to go out for
anything besides shopping."

Hardie looked away, so I knew I had hurt his
feelings. For a celebrity he has an awful excess of sensibility,
and is very anxious about one's opinion of him. Perhaps it comes of
being an artist.

"I am sorry," I said. "I like you and Diana
well enough, but I should find it very odd to continue my relations
with you in a sort of three-person marriage. I had a conventional
upbringing, you see."

Hardie's expression wobbled between affront
and amusement, but finally settled on a smile.

"'Well enough'! Heartless little animal," he
said. "To fall back on your 'conventional upbringing' now, when for
the past week you have been—"

"Yes, yes, but that was all for the purposes
of artistic development," I said. "I thought it would be an
educational experience. It is all grist to the mill. You ought to
know, being a writer."

Hardie made a face.

"May we at least be friends on your return to
London, little Caliban?" he said. "Or would that occasion too much
disruption to your continuing artistic development?"

"Friends, yes," I said cautiously. "But you
know I don't like parties, or clever people in large groups."

"If you will come to tea with me and Diana
once in a while, I shall provide buns and biscuits and beverages,
and never invite anyone clever at all," promised Hardie.

He is something of a cad, but he can be
rather sweet for all that. It is funny to think of how dazzled and
shy I was when I first met him. I am not in the least intimidated
by him now, but perhaps that is what happens when you have seen
someone in the nude. I felt I had been bullying him enough, so I
gave him a kiss on the cheek when we parted.

I shouldn't object to seeing him socially,
and I would like to talk to Diana and find out what she really
thinks of things. But I am happy to put a period to our
romance.

It has given me lots of material, and one
feels one understands some things better now. I shouldn't have
liked to have been a virgin my whole life. But I do not love Hardie
even one little bit, and if I don't love him, it might have been
immoral to continue fornicating past the point that it was
educational.

Besides, my mother and father didn't sit with
me for afternoons and afternoons teaching me my times tables for me
to become a concubine.

I should have said that to Hardie! Imagine
his face. I'm sure he would never think to describe me as his
concubine, or his previous lovers as members of his harem. But all
the high-flown poetising about passion overcoming staid convention
in the world cannot change the fact that very few women harbour
girlish dreams of becoming second wife. My grandmother was a second
wife and she thought it was rubbish, and my grandmother was a very
sensible woman.

I bumped into Ravi on Charing Cross Road
today. I went there to purchase the sequel to
The Duke's
Folly
. It's called
The Duke's Delight
. The Duke has
procreated since the previous book, and his charming harum-scarum
daughter has interrupted her primary occupation of getting into
scrapes to become attracted to an ineligible young officer, thus
repeating the mistakes of the previous generation. (My mother would
say it was karma, dishing up to the Duke a fitting revenge for his
unfilial actions in the first book.)

I came up the road with my brown paper parcel
and there was Ravi standing next to a bin of discounted books, a
Sanskrit grammar in one hand and a monograph on Ceylonese natural
history in the other.

"Do you know Sanskrit, Ravi?" I said.

He started, came back down to Earth, and
smiled at me.

"I've been making a study of it," he said. "I
learnt a little when I was a boy, but that was a very long time
ago. I'm trying to pick it up again. Are you busy? Would you like
to have tea with me?"

"Is it tea time already?" I said. "Oh!" I
caught his wrist and covered his watch with my hand. "Now tell me
what time it is."

"It's half past three," said Ravi.
"No—twenty-five to. And we've had a good month at the ORL. I am in
a mood to spend my riches. Let me just acquire these books and then
we will go to Fortnum & Mason."

When he'd paid he swiped my parcel and put it
under his arm with his usual unfussy courtesy. We went off down the
street, happy as ducks in a bakery.

"It is precisely twenty-five to," I said.
"And you didn't even look! Was there any indication that you would
be a genius when you were born? Did your mother observe that the
back of your head jutted out particularly, or did you perhaps have
six toes on one foot?"

"It isn't quite as unusual an ability as it
seems to you," said Ravi.

"Because not everyone is as stupid about time
as me, you mean," I said. "But you shan't shake me. I shall
continue to believe it is magic."

"If you want to consider me a wizard then do
by all means," said Ravi. "But it's nothing very mystical. I know
how much time it takes me to do things. So long as I've looked at a
clock once in a day, it's just a matter of calculation."

"Now that proves it's pure magic," I said.
"If it were not for its sometimes getting dark, and for one's
getting hungry, I would never notice the passage of time."

"Is that why I haven't been seeing you as
often as I used to?" said Ravi.

I glanced up at his face, but he was gazing
at the shop windows with a mild interested look.

"Oh—it isn't—" I said. "I've just been
busy."

I felt foolish. I hadn't thought he would
notice that I had stopped visiting the
Oriental Literary
Review
office.

"Yes, I imagine the attention you received
for the
Mimnaugh
review has kept you on your toes rather,"
said Ravi. "I hope it's been profitable as well as
interesting?"

"Oh yes," I said. "I've had lots of work.
Publishing that article was the greatest favour you've ever done
me."

"I wonder," said Ravi quietly.

What did he mean? I should have asked him,
but I felt too awkward. Instead I said,

"In fact I'm so nearly rich I ought to spend
some of it, just to make sure I'm not shut out of heaven by my
wealth. Will you insist on its being your treat, or may I pay?"

"I believe I set out the terms when I made my
offer," said Ravi. "We'll have no chopping and changing now, if you
please."

"You have," I said, "an unpleasing rigidity
of character, Ravi. You lack flexibility. Work on this. It is the
only blemish that mars a great mind.—Oh, but I have a brilliant
idea. I shall buy your tea and you shall buy mine. That's fair,
isn't it?"

Ravi allowed that it might be acceptable. I
do like a man who allows you to be chivalrous in return. Hardie
never did. I suppose he was trained to think that is manners, but I
like to hold doors for other people once in a while.

It was nice to be with Ravi, who is sensible.
But it wasn't the same—not quite the same as it used to be. He
didn't seem entirely natural.

I can't bear to think he might be
disappointed in me. And he doesn't know the half of it.

We had reached Fortnum's and sat down, and
each commanded the other to order whatever we liked off the menu,
price be damned. But the awkwardness, imagined or not, was gnawing
at me, so I said:

"Ravi, we are friends, aren't we?"

Ravi gave me a surprised look. He has the
nicest eyes. One feels one could say anything to those eyes, and it
would be understood as one would want it to be understood.

"I should like to think we are," he said.

"You don't think notoriety has spoilt my
character, do you?"

Ravi looked very serious. He leaned back in
his chair and rubbed his chin and raised his eyes to the ceiling.
He opened his mouth, but he couldn't keep it up, and started
laughing.

"You are a three-horned spotted beast," I
said. "I am serious!"

"I think," said Ravi, "any damage to your
character was already fixed by the time
Mimnaugh
made you
famous. That is my professional opinion."

"Well—" I hesitated. "Would you still be my
friend even if I had done something you didn't quite approve of?
Something that was—that was rather foolish?"

That made him calm down and look at me
properly.

"Is this about Sebastian Hardie?" he
said.

"No! What makes you think that?" I said, but
I could feel I'd gone a furious red. I pressed my cheeks to try to
make it go away.

Ravi looked as if he regretted bringing it
up. "I've heard ... some things."

"Oh," I said.

I could well imagine the sort of things
people have been saying. Hardie has let drop that our dalliance in
Paris is not as much of a secret as I'd thought. Apparently he
wrote some poems about the piquant charms of Caliban, and his
friends guessed who he meant. I got quite cross and called him all
sorts of names, saying he was a great big jarmouth and a child like
him brought shame to his mother, but he was so apologetic that I
let it drop.

Aunt Iris does not move in Bohemian literary
circles, so I thought it would be all right. It hadn't occurred to
me that Ravi might hear of it.

"Were they rather awful things?" I said.

Ravi stared at the tablecloth. He seemed to
be working out what to say.

"Everything I heard said more about the
speaker than the spoken of," he said. He met my eyes and smiled
slightly. "I'm afraid I couldn't tell you much about what was said.
People didn't talk about it for very long in my presence."

"Thank you," I said. I wanted to touch his
hand, but didn't. "I haven't seen Hardie since Christmas
anyway."

Ravi nodded, but I knew he wouldn't say
anything more about it if I didn't. I didn't know what he'd heard,
but I didn't want to ask him either. I suppose it doesn't really
matter.

I said, "Do you mind, Ravi? I mean ...."

But I didn't know how to say what I meant.
Ravi is lovely, but probably he is like most other men, and expects
good girls to be different from girls who have sex without being
married or frightened.

I used to be a good girl and that was
uncomplicated, but I thought complicated would be more interesting
than safe.

"Shall we still be friends, do you mean?"
said Ravi.

That wasn't quite what I wanted to say, but
it was close enough. I nodded.

"We shall be friends," said Ravi, "as long as
you continue to like me, and say things without stopping to think
about them first, and do not insult my clothes or my poetry. Will
that do?"

I rubbed my eyes.

"Do you write poetry, Ravi?" I said.

"Doesn't everybody?" said Ravi.

"I don't," I said. "I feel you only ought to
write poetry if you are tremendously intelligent, or terrifically
in love. You are the former, of course, but I've never been either.
Will you show me your poetry?"

"I only write poetry in Tamil, I'm afraid,"
said Ravi.

"Will you teach me Tamil?"

"Perhaps," said Ravi. "Some day."

After that I was much happier, and I think
Ravi felt more comfortable as well. He ordered a piece of sponge
cake and I had trifle, and we both had interesting kinds of tea.
And we talked about everything—almost everything.

It was on the tip of my tongue to tell him,
but in the end I couldn't bring myself to do it. I suppose it's for
the best. I do not see Hardie till Thursday, and it's only right
that he should know first.

I told Hardie and Diana today. I did it
almost as soon as I had sat down, for fear that I should lose my
nerve if I waited. Diana was pouring us tea when I turned to Hardie
and said: