The Transit of Venus (20 page)

All this because a dark girl stood at a door with a furled umbrella in her hand.

"Caro."

So she turned, and again they stood side by side.

With his own sensations fresh in him, Paul saw her spasm of surprise and the sequence of quick, contradictory impulses. There was even recognition that she had run, or provoked, this risk in coming to see his play; and a flash that answered his own compulsion but was dourly mastered. Her lips closed to a deliberate curve he had not seen before because it derived from his desertion.

The lobby was by now almost empty. Lights had been turned out.

They made a dark pair, standing by the doors.

She said, "Yes?" as if accosted by a stranger. But trembled in the raincoat with her whole body so that she felt the separate stuffs of her clothes, and her anatomy delicately beating within. In the same way her mind struggled, tremulous, inside the event.

"You were good to come, Caro."

"I am glad to have seen it."

"I'm hardly ever here. There's been a change in the cast, the part of Mandy, the tubercular son, and I wanted to see how it went."

Automatic speech, anything to pass these moments.

She had never before seen Paul in a city suit. For his part he found her appearance extraordinary, large eyes and transparent skin: a formidable loveliness. He had expected to leave her behind him.

Impressions came and went in them, like quick tides.

Paul said, "Would you care to see backstage?"

They walked down a corridor of whitewashed grime. "Mind the steps." The stage had marks on it—a stroke of chalk, a stencilled arrow. The curtain, of stale, unclean crimson, was down, there was the glum furniture of the last act. At a time when Shakespeare was played in modern suburban dress or leather jackets, Paul Ivory's contemporary, working-class play was being acted out in royal robes. Father and Mother loomed as stage tyrants, crowned and majestic in purple and gold, while their subjected offspring cow-ered in cardigans and dungarees. This fairly obvious device had been called a stroke, or shaft, of genius in the press.

Caroline Bell accompanied Paul through a dingy labyrinth, never lowering her eyes. When they paused at a doorway she shook her hair back so that her face was entirely visible.

A man in overalls unlatched the door. Paul smiled his open, remembering smile: "Thanks, Collis." They went down a short flight, and Paul knocked on another door.

Caro was introduced to the great actor, who said, "If you do that again I'll have your hide." He was speaking to a dandified boy, who took grapes from a ribboned basket without replying. The embroidered royal robe hung on the wall. Paul said, "Feel it." Even a single fold was heavy to handle. The actor told her, "It gives the weight of bloody sovereignty all right." He had taken the colour off his face, and was wearing a lawn shirt and sponge-bag trousers.

A scalding radiator hissed in a corner. Caro loosed her coat.

Paul asked her, "What did you think of the Marmite scene?"

Before she could answer, the boy with the grapes said, "It's the strongest bit in the play."

Caro said, "I wasn't convinced a shopgirl would know the word

'Oedipal.' "

The actor laughed. "We've been through that. Don't forget it was a bookshop she worked in."

The boy said, "It's a bit heavy-handed, the king is dead long live et cetera. Otherwise it's okay."

The actor asked Paul, "Conder did all right, don't you think?"

"I've already told him so. He'll settle in. Mandy ought to look a damn sight sicker, that's all." It was to be noted that Paul smiled less with the actors—who, after all, were professionals.

The actor said, "Conder couldn't look sick enough to suit Valentine." Valentine was the boy with the grapes. This reference to his jealousy, while excluding the outsider—Caro—was, in the way of all exclusions, directed at her. The men exchanged a smile.

In the corridor the queen-mother sailed past them in long, sharp profile, eyelids and lashes heavily drawn in peacock colours, pen-cilled back to the hairline: the prow of a Greek trireme.

Paul said, "Performers never notice anyone but themselves/'

He had done the right, or astute, thing in exposing Caro to his attainment, summoning up his auxiliaries. He said, "Are you working in that office now?"

"Yes. I had a half-day off, there was a lunch for my sister."

"Same old cast of characters." Confirming his advantage. They had reached the street door. "Me included." He put his hand on the doorknob and leaned against the wall, not really detaining her.

"Me too, Caro." Behind him, aphorisms, all more or less obscene, were scratched or scribbled on whitewashed brick.

Her uplifted face, expressionless. She reached past him; but would not put her hand over his to take the doorknob, and hesitated, poised and thwarted. He saw she could not speak. She reached again for the door and kept her eyes on him, like a captive who edges watchfully towards escape. There was the everlasting, irritating, and alluring impression that she addressed herself to an objective beyond the small, egoistic drama of their own desires.

Paul said, "You always had some contempt for me."

"Yes."

"And love too."

"Yes." A flicker over her stare was the facial equivalent of a shrug. " N o w you have a wife to give you both."

They stood fronting one another. Paul removed his hand from the door. "Caro. For pity's sake."

The figure of speech appeared to move her, and for an instant it seemed she might laugh. Again he pressed what he took for an advantage: "Have a bit of mercy."

She herself leaned back on the chalky wall, and closed her eyes.

" H o w should you hope for mercy, rendering none?"

"These walls are full of dirty quotations, one way and another."

There was silence while she leaned there, austere with her umbrella, sheathed and closed. She roused herself and did step past him, then, to pull at the heavy door.

From behind her, Paul said, "You've got white all over your back." And in the most natural way in the world brushed his hand down her coat. Then passed his arms about her waist and put his mouth to the nape of her neck, and said, "Almighty God."

They walked in the wet street. Paul took hold of the loosened belt of Caro's raincoat and seemed to lead her through the rush-hour crowd—not pulling but establishing contact and mastery, so that she accompanied him like an acquiescent animal on a leash or rein. At the corner he signalled a taxi, and gave the driver an address. When they got in, he said, "We might take a look at my new premises. I'm fixing up a house I bought. You must tell me what you think." He held her hand as they sat in the cab—literally held it, since it lay in his with as much response as a coat belt. Caro sat without speaking, turning towards him her look that was neither sullen nor expectant but soberly attentive; and, once, a glance in which tenderness and apprehension were great and indivisible, giving unbearable, excessive immediacy to the living of these moments. Paul had seen that look before, when they first lay down together at the inn beyond Avebury Circle.

"This is it." Paul leaned forward to tell the driver. "You can let us off here. It's a cul-de-sac—once in, you can't get out."

The rain had stopped. The house was narrow and flat-fronted, a slot of brick severity between two pigeon-breasted buildings with porticoes. By the curb, a man working on the engine of a parked car nodded to them and went on singing:

"Roses are flowering in Picardy,

But there's never a rose like you. "

Paul used a bright new key. There were smells of paint, plaster, and raw wood. Brown paper was spread on the floors, and each window had an X pasted on it like a warning of plague.

Precipitous stairs were shinily white. The yard at the back was muddy and littered with workmen's discards, although a pile of flagstones showed it would be paved and planted in due course.

A sink of pale porcelain stood in the kitchen, strapped and papered, ready to be puttied: a patient in bandages at a dressing-station.

In the dining-room the hospital motif recurred. Painters' cloths were whitely draped over trestles and a table. The smell of paint was antiseptic, anaesthetic.

Caro asked, "Is Tertia here?" The bull by the horns.

Paul pushed a painted door delicately with his finger. "Tertia is staying in the country till this is ready for her." Even a house required advance warning of Tertia. "You're my first guest."

The living-room took all the next floor, but was narrow nonetheless. Caro walked to the front, then to the back. They went up again. Paul switched on an unshaded light. " U p here is where I doss down."

It was the top room and the largest, not having stairs above. From the windows you could see the houses opposite, then a block of flats. There were espaliered trees that would be protective in the summer, or so Paul said. Several rugs on the bare floor were rolled and tied. The walls were dry, the windows had been cleaned. There were unattached lighting fixtures in a corner, door handles in a cardboard box; a pair of marble obelisks already decorated the mantel. A telephone had been connected and was placed on the floor. One window was half-way up, because of the fresh paint, and the room was cold.

With another bright key, Paul unlocked a built-in cupboard.

"Let's have a drink." There was a package on an upper shelf of the closet, and a framed painting propped below. Paul showed Caro the picture.

She said, "Segonzac is a middle-class painter."

"Not every artist can be supreme."

"Obviously." She roused herself to meaning, as to a need for manners. "But there is a veracity—a keeping of faith, if you like—

that enhances even some lesser talents. Something Mrs. Thrale said about your father—that he wasn't a great poet, but he was a true poet."

Paul put the picture away, since it had not served its turn.

"Well," he said, "sit down. Drink to my new house." It displeased or somehow hurt him that Caroline Bell should recall his father.

Caro sat on the pile of rugs. She watched Paul handle a silver flask with her same sardonic look, as if she were about to laugh. "There are no glasses—we'll have to use the cap, I'm afraid. What's more, we have to share it." He handed it to her. "A loving-cap."

She drank. She did not hand the cap back to him, but set it beside her on the freshly waxed boards. Paul said, "Hey, my new floors,"

and picked up the little container and drained it off. "Would you like another?"

"No. It tasted of tin."

"Tin my eye, that's sterling silver." He sat beside her on the rugs.

"You must tell me what you think of my house."

"There is so little space."

"Now you're spoiling things."

"What is left to spoil?"

The telephone rang. The bell exploded in the unclad room, ricocheting off walls and ceiling like a burst of bullets.

Paul had to kneel to talk. "It is. But I'd like to know how you got this number. . . . Look, if this is going to press tonight you'd better read it to me. . . . Very well, you may quote me as follows.

I have no response to Mr. Whatsit's remarks. I am not responsive to viciousness, and I find Mr. Whatsit's own writings the quintes-sence of vulgarity. . . . That's what I said. Certainly:
Q-U-I-N-T,
then essence . . . That's right, exactly like vanilla. Actually, the word means 'substance of heaven.' Would you please read that back?

. . . That's it, then. . . . Well, that would have to be after I return from Spain, where I go tomorrow, say the end of—yes, that's good for me. Call me then."

Paul put the phone down. He rose and stood with palms placed together, looking at Caroline Bell as if she needed solving; recreating the frame of mind in which he had brought her there.

"Are you really going to Spain tomorrow?"

"Of course not." He looked round for the flask. "Let's have another of those tin things." He handed it to her. "How does it taste now?"

She took a little and handed back the cup. "Now it tastes as if it had your initials on it."

"You've turned such a bitch, Caro. You used to be—"

"What?"

"Angelic. But much less beautiful. That, alas, is the way it goes.

Now tell me about my house, my play."

"You don't want opinions, you want approval."

"I do want your approval."

There was another detonation of the phone bell. Paul knelt again to talk. "Yes, this does seem to be Flaxman five— No, I'm afraid she isn't here but I can give her a— I've told you, she is not here but I—" At an interjection Paul raised, or hardened, his voice to proceed with his own speech—a slight restraint of eyelids showing he was too well bred to close them, even momentarily, in exasperation. "I distinctly told you Mrs. Ivory is not here." He said "Mrs.

Ivory," instead of "my wife" or "Tertia," as a Party member might solemnly transform Russia into "the Soviet Union." He looked comical, crouching on the floor while standing on his dignity.

Caro said, "Tell them you're going to Spain tomorrow."

"I am certainly not going to stand here"—Paul crouched lower

—"listening to—" He stared, then banged the receiver down, the force of the action taking him forward on all fours. He stood up, brushing his trousers. "Hung up on me, the bastard. He thought

—pretended to think I was the servant."

"That's because you said Mrs. Ivory like that." Caro watched Paul wonder about the call, the caller, and Mrs. Ivory. Honourable Tertia. "What sort of voice?"

"Oh—educated."

God forbid Mrs. Ivory should take a lover from the lower classes.

Below in the street the man went on singing in a voice high and unsteady as an old recording:

"But there's one rose that dies not in Picardy,

'Tis the rose that I keep in my heart. "

Paul closed the window. "If it's any satisfaction to you, this is pretty much the situation." He was speaking of the phone call.

"More troublesome than you expected, then."

This was scarcely a question, and Caro, looking up in lassitude from the bound rugs, might have been perfectly indifferent. Her venture at spoiling things by honesty had yielded nothing: honesty must be honestly intended, or its facts are worthless. But Paul considered a moment before saying, "It does create a new degree of isolation."