Westwood (57 page)

‘I will, but I don’t like it much. I like you, though,’ said Margaret, in what she felt was a reckless manner, and she leant closer against the warmth of his shoulder. She drank some more foam and Alex carefully wiped her mouth with the handkerchief and then kissed her with a long friendly kiss.

‘I’ve taken all the paint off your mouth,’ and he wiped his own with the handkerchief. ‘You put on some more. That’s right. Now about my drawing your head. You come here next Saturday afternoon. About four o’clock.’

‘All right. What shall I wear? Will my hair do like this?’

‘Wear anything. Anything you like. Yes, keep your hair like that.’ He kissed her again. ‘That better?’

‘Yes – oh, yes, thank you – Alex. This’ – she tried to regain control over a situation which was rapidly becoming dreamlike – ‘this is awfully unexpected, isn’t it – I mean –’

‘No, no,’ he interrupted, shaking his head. ‘I’ve always noticed you and liked the shape of your head and your mouth, and I could see you were worried about Gerry. You shouldn’t, it’s a waste. He isn’t the right person for you to love, you want somebody who can love too, not a stuffed shirt; you stop worrying about him, Maggie.’

‘All right, I will,’ she said, beginning to laugh. ‘Oh, you are kind!’

‘Drink,’ said Alex, waving the bottle, ‘drink and kissing. That’s what you like, isn’t it? And you go and look at things, like I said. (You can see things anywhere; you needn’t go into the country or anything.) I wish there was some more.’ He turned the bottle upside down and shook it. ‘Damn. Never mind; it’s cold. Let’s walk up and down.’

‘Won’t people be wondering where you are?’ she asked, feeling it her duty thus to remind him, but hoping that he would not think it his duty to go back to his guests.

‘They’ll think I’m necking with someone somewhere. Doesn’t matter.’ He put her arm round her waist and arranged her arm round his, and thus entwined they began to pace up and down. She wished that Mr Challis and all the celebrities downstairs could see her, alone upon the roof with, and amiably enlaced about, the lion of the evening, and yet, on second thoughts, she was rather glad that they could not.

‘You don’t want to take things
seriously
,’ Alex was beginning, when a voice exclaimed, ‘Hullo there!’ and the soldier Lev came out of the attic window which led on to the roof, and over
towards them. Though not exactly untidy, his appearance was not completely orderly; his hair was ruffled and – Margaret began to have a faintly nightmarish feeling – under one arm he carried a bottle.

‘Uh – huh,’ he said, nodding at Margaret as if he had always suspected that this was the sort of thing she did. ‘They’re asking for you downstairs,’ to Alex. He unscrewed his bottle and held it out to Margaret. ‘Thusty, Gorgeous?’

‘I’ll keep you company,’ she answered, and this time she drank some. It was rather good. Lev nodded as if satisfied.

‘I’ve been telling her she mustn’t worry,’ said Alex, taking the bottle from Lev and drinking. ‘She mustn’t, must she?’

‘Certainly not,’ said Lev, and his dark eyes, which glowed with melancholy fires, turned upon Margaret a sardonic smile that was not unkind. ‘Believe me, it’s a mistake.’ He took the bottle from Alex and drank.

‘We were walking up and down. To keep warm.
You
come and walk up and down,’ said Alex. ‘Here –’ he tried to put Lev’s arm round Margaret’s waist. ‘We all walk up and down, see?’

‘I get the idea,’ said Lev, arranging his arm round Margaret and hers about him. ‘Now, where do we go from here?’

‘Up and down,’ said Alex, beginning to march. ‘Just go up and down. I’ve been telling her – here, you kiss her,’ he interrupted himself. ‘You kiss her, too. That’s what she likes.’

‘I didn’t –’ began Margaret.

‘Maybe she doesn’t want me to,’ said Lev, peering down into her face.

‘If you would like to, I don’t –’

‘O.K. by me,’ said Lev, and gave her a kiss that was expert but not offensively so. They then resumed their march. It was beginning to get dark.

‘She’s a nice girl,’ Alex assured Lev, speaking over Margaret’s head. ‘Loving, I mean. She’s all right.’

‘I told you she was, didn’t I?’

‘You did.’ It struck Margaret that Lev had had more than Alex but carried it better. He walked a little unsteadily, but his voice was not so solemn.

‘I knew what she was like the first time I saw her,’ said Lev suddenly, ‘I thought, it’s just too bad I can’t fall for that dame but that’s my luck. I always fall for the other sort. She’ll be all right, though.’

‘Which dame do you mean?’ said Alex.

‘Why, this one. Which is it?’ peering into Margaret’s face. ‘Yes, that’s the one. Dress is different, but it’s the same one,’ and he kissed her again.

Margaret was now divided between a dreamy and slightly intoxicated pleasure in this regular promenade under the stars supported by their arms while their voices solemnly discussed her (they were both tall men) above her head, and a growing conviction that Alex should go downstairs and entertain his guests. I am alone on a roof with two drunken men at night and they keep kissing me, she thought. Doesn’t it sound awful? But it isn’t awful at all. Things are very often different, thought Margaret, from what they sound in words.

‘Don’t you think you ought to go down?’ she said gently to Alex.

‘What for? Oh yes, I suppose so. Lev, you tell her she mustn’t worry.’

‘You mustn’t worry, sister,’ said Lev’s deep voice out of the dusk. ‘It’s bad, but it’s not
so
bad.’

‘That’s it,’ said Alex, dreamily. ‘Bad but not so bad.’

‘Bad, but not so bad,’ repeated Margaret. ‘All right, I’ll try not to worry, and thank you both very much.’

‘What was she worrying about?’ asked Lev, drinking again.

‘Everything,’ said Alex.

‘You shouldn’t,’ said Lev to Margaret. ‘Earl likes you; he thinks you’re swell. He’s gotten himself engaged to a British girl; what do you know about that?’

‘Oh, I am so glad!’ exclaimed Margaret, and as the last of her eligible admirers thus left the lists, she heard him go without a pang.

‘You like me?’ demanded Lev suddenly, diving at her.

‘Very much,’ she answered.

‘You like me too,’ said Alex, ‘and I like you and I like Lev –’

How much longer this would have lasted was a question Margaret often pondered afterwards, but at this moment a figure in white appeared at the attic window, and Hebe’s voice called: ‘You three lunatics. Come on downstairs!’

In the autumn, Margaret paid that visit to Lady Challis to which she had long looked forward.

When she had nervously telephoned to propose herself, she had been unable to speak to Lady Challis and had made the arrangements with a cheerful voice calling itself Mary, against the customary background of other voices and barking dogs, while there seemed a doubt whether Bertie (who was described as being Busy With The Plums) could meet her at the station. Oh, that did not matter; she knew the way; she could walk, Margaret eagerly assured Mary’s voice, and so it was decided that she should go down on the morning of the following Saturday.

When she set out, it was in the full and glorious type of an autumn day; with a wind rolling white and golden clouds across a sky whose sunny blue gulfs seemed to lead on and on into Heaven. Her heart was light; she pressed forward eagerly into the wind and looked every now and again at the sky, thinking it resembled that in Alex’s great painting,
The Shrapnel Hunters
. All England was talking of the picture that autumn. It showed three children searching for fragments of steel that had fallen overnight among the willow-herb and dock-plants of a bombed site, and the critics were comparing it with Millais’s
Autumn Leaves
, some of them insisting that this was the greater painting because in it there were pity and terror, as well as beauty, whereas in the older master’s picture there was
only beauty
. Margaret had no opinions about that, but she had been many times to see
The Shrapnel Hunters
and had taken its shapes and colours into her mind’s eye, finding comfort in them amid the picture’s grim strength.

It was now difficult for her to realize that the man who had painted this picture should once have kissed her and advised her about her attitude towards life, for after the drawing of her head had been made, she had seen no more of him. He had gone to Italy on his official mission, leaving Hebe to make the house in St John’s Wood habitable against his return, and he had already been away for nearly three months. While he was making the drawing he had barely spoken to Margaret, and when he had said good-bye to her, all that he had given her with her model’s fee
was an absent smile and a pat on the shoulder and a ‘Thank you, Maggie dear.’

She was disappointed, but not so disappointed as she would have been some months ago. She told herself that if she intended to follow the advice which he had bestowed upon her at the party (and she did) the best way to begin was not to take his own casualness to heart. It was natural, she told herself, that the Nilands and the Challises should mean more to her than she did to them, because their lives were full, while her life, in all that human beings most desire, was empty.

When once we begin to make the best of circumstances, the task becomes easier as we proceed. Change of heart, conversion, seeing the light, are all names for the quick or gradual turning of our faces towards that ancient Way, worn by the tired feet of millions of ordinary people who ‘tried to make the best of it’ as well as by the bleeding feet of the Saints. During that autumn, Margaret also resolutely turned her mind away from the great tragedians, the great philosophers, the great wrestlers and strugglers and questioners, and listened instead to music and poetry. Occasionally some strong-minded acquaintance suggested that she was being weak, cowardly and escapist (that blessed word), and then Margaret would think of Lev, who would have demanded ‘So what?’ and continue in her habits, strengthened. (Lev had been sent abroad, Zita informed her, and the family at Westwood had heard no more of him. Zita naturally assumed him to be dead, and was aggrieved when Margaret received a card from him at Christmas.)

The holiday which the two girls had spent together had proved a success. Margaret had set out upon it with apprehensions concerning Zita’s talkativeness and touchiness, to say nothing of other qualities which might well come to light after sharing existence with her for a week, but most of her fears proved unfounded. The fresh scenes and new faces and sense of freedom acted upon Zita like a tonic; her Jewish liveliness and warmth expanded in them; and she also possessed the invaluable quality of making an occasion
go
; at least there was never dullness where Zita was.

Margaret became protectively fond of her. In many ways she seemed the elder and Zita turned to her for advice and comfort. This (though tiresome when leading to sessions prolonged into the small hours) was flattering.

It was as well that she had become true friends with Zita, for when she returned to London she found that Hilda was engaged.

And never was anyone so engaged as Hilda; she might as well, thought Margaret, have worn a label; so dreamy, so silent, so solemn was she. Sometimes Margaret would see her in the evening, setting out for a walk with the young petty officer in the Navy who had brought about this transformation. They walked in silence, looking at one another, with Hilda’s arm passed through his in defiance of Regulations, and to Margaret he seemed a pleasant, ordinary young man enough. They were to be married soon, and would share his leaves in the very small flat which Hilda had been fortunate enough to find until his ship was ordered abroad. It would then be lonely for Hilda, but Mrs Wilson hoped that she would quickly have a baby and then there would be plenty to do.

So the skimmer over the surface was caught; the dancer trapped and bound and made to undergo those feelings at which she had so often smiled in others. Margaret was glad that her friend was to be so happily settled, and looked forward to being bridesmaid at the large and elaborate wedding which was being planned; she thought that the change in Hilda was poetic justice.

Mrs Steggles said that Hilda had gone downright soppy over that boy, and refrained from mentioning Margaret’s own unengaged state. Mother and daughter found it easier to get on together than they had at one time, and when the inevitable estrangement with her dear friend,
Mrs Piper, occurred, rather later than Margaret had anticipated, it was to Margaret that Mrs Steggles vented her indignation and turned for comfort.

The Steggleses attended Dick Fletcher’s wedding, and saw Mrs Coates looking indeed damn’ pretty in a pink dress and a flowery hat with floating veil. She pressed Margaret’s hand effusively and studied her with eyes in which the expression did not soften except when she glanced at Dick. During the reception at Westwood-at-Brockdale afterwards, Margaret thought how completely the installation of its new mistress had destroyed the fairy-tale feeling in the little house. It was still pretty; still so clean as to seem unreal amid the shabbiness and dirt of war-worn London, but the hush through which the wind-bells sounded had gone for ever.

She saw Linda once more, dressed suitably and with obvious care, but the child did not seem to recognize her until Margaret asked her if she had ‘forgotten Margaret?’ and then Linda smiled and put out her hand, but it was not clear if she did remember. It seemed to Margaret that her manner had returned to the apathy from which she herself had once taken pride in leading her, and once she overheard the bride speak to her somewhat sharply, but perhaps it was healthier that the child should be treated with normal impatience when the occasion demanded and, in any case, Margaret herself could do nothing about it.