by Ursula Bloom
Shrugging his shoulders, the waiter offered him a pleasant little table with a bowl of pink chrysanthemums on it, and accepted the order with poise. The food and wine were good, the little maestro played excellently, and every now and then the girl in black sang. She was a strange-looking girl, with a white skin, hardly any colour at all, and dark red hair drawn back from her face in the madonna fashion. Adam had never realised until this moment how attractive red hair could be! She had dark eyes, emphasised by over-blacked lashes, and every time he looked at her large, moistly red mouth he felt curious about her. He liked the small roundness of her face, the little cushions of cheeks and smaller cushion of a chin. He didn’t usually notice girls, but this one was different. She had a large voice for one so small, perhaps some would have called it a strident voice, but he found it compelling.
When she had finished and the clapping had died down, the little maestro whipped up his violin, and flipped off again in a gavotte of gipsy music. The girl came straight across to Adam’s table, and sat down on the empty chair opposite to him. He watched her do it.
‘You don’t mind?’ she asked.
‘Of course not.’ But he did. He minded very much. He ordered some wine for her, then turned rather severely. ‘Do you make a habit of this sort of thing? I mean letting men pay for your meals and drinks?’ After all, she might as well realise that two could play her own game.
She stared at him reproachfully, then a shocking thing happened. He saw her eyes fill with tears that quivered helplessly on the over-blacked lashes. ‘So that’s what you think.’
‘I’m sorry. But … well, naturally I thought it was all part of the game.’
‘There isn’t any game at all! It’s just that I’m damned hungry.’
He watched her eat, and she had been quite right, she was damned hungry. ‘I apologise,’ he said.
‘Everybody seems to think that a girl does not have to eat. I do have to, you know, just as you do. Now I’ve got to sing again. Excuse me.’
She went back to the dais and sang of edelweiss and the far Bavarian mountains, coming back to eat an enormous quantity of goulash. Adam was interested in her, and drew her story from her. She was an Austrian from Garmeisch. She had always wanted to travel and to sing, and first of all she had worked in Paris, but disliked it, so had come here to London. She rented a little room in Shaftesbury Avenue, not that she liked Shaftesbury Avenue, it was in fact the home of a very different type of girl, but it was handy for her work here, and she had to work late. She accepted the liqueur that he offered.
‘You speak very good English?’ he said at last.
‘Do I? Oh well, I have to sing in English here, it would not be so good if I spoke bad English.’
‘Of course not.’
He did not admit even to himself how intrigued he was, but he had completely forgotten his original intention to attend Bitter Sweet, and was getting the most out of the moment.
Before he left he had arranged to meet her next week.
The next time that they dined together they were formal about it. Heidwig wore a blue frock, cut daringly low with a heart-shaped décolletée, and he was irritated to find how much it stirred him. Adam had thought about her a great deal this week, also he had been having trouble with his father, which added to it.
James was indignant that the old subject of Adam taking Orders had cropped up again, and he had decided to come to Cambridge and discuss it with the tutor.
‘You’ll catch it!’ said Marty, who had dropped in at a most unpropitious moment.
‘It’s all wrong that I can’t be what I want to be. You’re allowed to go on the stage.’
‘I showed noticeable talent, perhaps, and perhaps you didn’t show noticeable talent for the church,’ said Marty. ‘Why not start a few Revivalist meetings and let people see what you can do? It might give the old man an idea or two.’
‘Why not shut up?’
‘I’m only making helpful suggestions. Join some first-class Bible-banging society on a par with the C.U.D.S. and let the old man see what a clever boy you are! That’s what I did. First class tip, straight from the horse’s mouth.’
‘Damn it all, you can’t start producing religion like that.’ Adam could never see a joke!
‘Can’t you just? I could quote you lots of cases. General Booth, Aimee MacPherson, Mrs. Baker Eddy. I must say that Joanna Southcott had her ideas …’
‘Oh SHUT UP!’
‘All right. I’ll shut up, but don’t come howling to me for help when it starts going bad on you. That’s all.’
‘Do I ever?’
‘I thought you did.’
‘Marty, how can you be so beastly?’
But Marty had gone. Much later he found that a new bottle of Bristol Cream had gone with him!
Adam could not forget Heidwig. So far he had never entered into this sort of affair, with the result that it had come late in his life, and therefore much more ardently. Next week he had a stupendous interview with his father, and was told that his mother would be along to see him later on, and in his wrath and humiliation Adam went back to the little Austrian restaurant. It was just as before, only this time he was not contemplating Bitter Sweet afterwards.
There was the haze of smoke, and the little maestro perspiring vigorously as he wielded his bow. The maître d’hotel rushed to the door, his eye welcoming, for he never forgot a customer, and had noticed Adam’s attention to Heidwig. He hailed him intimately, and Adam came back to the restaurant as though to home, though nothing could have been further from Dedbury House, as he knew. He was a pleasant-looking young man, tall and well-built, with his mother’s fairness, and a freshly bright colour indicative of athletic activities, which was entirely misleading, for Adam had always loathed exercise.
He sat down at the table where he had been before; instinctively the maître d’hotel had realised what he wanted. Adam saw Heidwig sitting on the dais in jade green which contrasted with her dark red hair, and made her look more beautiful and unapproachable than ever. She smiled at him, then went forward to sing; as he listened, Adam knew that she had the power to thrill him more than anybody else he had ever met. Perhaps it was that English women did not appeal to him, and in this little Austrian he could find something different. He had always heard that the Bavarians were highly sensitive people and knew that he personally had inherited much of his father’s sensitiveness. Carolyn was always saying so.
When Heidwig had finished, she came and sat down at his table, almost as if it were arranged. ‘Nice to see you. I am going home early to-night,’ she said.
‘But I’ve come up from Cambridge particularly to be with you.’
‘Then why not come home and spend the evening with me there? Or are you afraid?’
‘Of course I’m not afraid.’
‘I’d like to show you my little room. It’s simple, of course, but it is home.’
‘I’d very much like to see it. We’ll dine and when you have finished we’ll go back there together.’
‘Very well.’
He could hardly eat from excitement. Heidwig on the other hand ate liberally, because once again she was very hungry. He watched her with the chicken pilaff, and the rhum Baba. Poor little Heidwig! It was a shame that they starved her so.
She sang once more, and the evening trailed on to ten o’clock when she fetched her coat, a dark warm coat of better style than he had expected, and she tied a handkerchief over her head, a madonna blue handkerchief.
Together they stumbled down the street with a hint of frost in the air, and they went in the direction of Shaftesbury Avenue. The lights blazed more brightly for the frost, and the headlights came in one long blinding stream of yellow towards them. She said, ‘Tell me your name again?’
‘It’s Hinde. Adam Hinde.’
‘That’s a very nice name. I don’t think I have ever met a man called Adam before. Have you ever met Eve?’
‘I think I’m meeting her now.’
�
��That’s fun!’
They were in the Avenue with the lingerie shops lit up, and trails of pink and blue garments in the windows. The Avenue was full of young men in love, with arms round slender waists, looking fervently into over-mascara-ed eyes. But Adam did not see them because he believed that this was only happening to himself.
They paused in a doorway with a bag shop on one side, and a cheap dressmaker’s on the other. She fitted a key into a lock, and instantly the street door yielded. A horrible smell of frowst came down the stairs, dismaying Adam, but apparently Heidwig did not notice it. She went on ahead up the stairs with the lino that had long lost all pattern, on to a tiny box of a landing, and, opening another door, turned on the light.
Inside was the room that he had half expected, an ill-shaped, squarish room, lit by a central bowl of light with four doves on it in imitation alabaster, and some painted pink roses. A divan bed was against one wall, bundled together and badly made, but everything concealed under an art silk cover. An indifferent dressing-table had expensive rose-du-Barri brushes on it, mingling with cheap trinkets. The washstand was a misfit one, marble-topped, with a ponderous Victorian toilet set displayed, and a violently pink soap in the dish still caked with dried particles of an equally violently coloured mauve predecessor.
‘It’s a bit of a so-and-so,’ said Heidwig carelessly, ‘but to me it’s home. Sit down.’
He sat there awkwardly on the easy chair, bowed with other people’s posteriors, and draped in a cover that did not fit it; she put a match to the fire. She went down on her knees to put the match to the gas, he saw her bent head and the little white nape to her neck whereon the knot of dark red hair rested; stooping, he kissed her suddenly, because he couldn’t stop himself.
She looked up surprised. ‘Now then!’
‘Heidwig, you are so different from anybody that I have ever met before.’
‘Oh no, I’m not really. I’m ordinary.’
‘That’s the one thing you are not. I’ve never been girl-conscious before. You’re marvellous.’
Smiling condescendingly, she came and perched on the arm of his chair; he gave her a little tug so that she lost her balance and slipped down into his lap.
‘Darling, why didn’t we meet before?’
‘How should I know, Adam?’
‘It was Fate brought me to the restaurant.’
‘That was it! Fate.’
Her mouth was warmer than he had expected, moister, much more exciting. He kissed her again and again, and now the evening no longer had any pattern, for he did not know what was happening, nor did he care.
Only that he had her in his arms, held closely to him. Only that her day clothes seemed to have melted away into one nondescript garment, peachy in colour, with black lace frills, very attractive.
They were on the humpy bed which smelt of frowst, with an art silk cover to it. Nothing mattered any more. Only himself and Heidwig! He kissed her again and again, and the red hair fell down and blew across his face, smelling of white rose brilliantine; a smudge of lipstick darkened his cheek.
Hours later, he returned to Cambridge.
Going back in the morning (which is never quite the same thing as night), Adam, sitting in the train, had time to think things over.
Day was garish after the undulating lights and dim mysteries of last night. Now he was restless, no longer so deliciously satisfied; now he did not know what it was he wanted. Jumpy too; his nerves were playing him up.
He would naturally have to marry Heidwig. He wasn’t one of the men who came to her room and left next day with some small remuneration as mark of their visit on the mantelshelf. It couldn’t end like that!
She had told him how men deceived her. She had wept a little on his shoulder, and had stirred the soul of chivalry within him. He at least would be different.
‘You’ll forget,’ she said.
The train stayed for ages at Hitchin, shunting in a leisurely fashion, then pottering along through a lot of primitive little stations to Cambridge. He wondered what they would be thinking of him, for it was the first time that he had ever missed a lecture.
He walked back, and when he got on his own stairs he had the feeling that someone was in his room already. He knew it before he opened the door, and then he saw that his mother was there.
He didn’t want to see her! This morning she was the last woman in the world whom he wished to meet, and wasn’t it like her to arrive like this? She sat on the divan smoking a cigarette, and trying to do the Times crossword with the gold pencil Marty had given her last birthday. Adam knew that he looked scruffy (usually he took pains with his appearance), but to-day there had been no time. He had the feeling that she would realise that something different had happened.
She looked up. ‘Hello, darling? Daddy thought we could have a talk.’
So that was it!
She had come to talk him out of taking Orders, and she might just as well have saved herself the trouble. ‘Oh, hello?’ he said, but not over-welcomingly.
‘Adam darling, where have you been? They said you would be at the lecture, but you weren’t. I saw Marty, too.’
So Marty was in this as well! ‘What did Marty say?’
‘Marty said that you must have got a girl up your sleeve. That is what Marty would think of, wouldn’t he? I just laughed at that. Ridiculous!’
The trouble with his mother was that she laughed a great deal too much. He couldn’t see that there was anything particularly funny in that know-all Marty having put his finger on the right spot.
He said, ‘Well, do you mind if I have a shave? I missed the last train home, it was most uncomfortable.’
‘Of course. I’ll wait downstairs for you.’ She gave him another glance and he had an idea that she was seeing something in him that she did not understand. His family never wished him to do anything to please himself; it was too bad of them. He washed and shaved, not hurrying. When he went downstairs, Carolyn was standing in an archway talking to Mickey James, a young man who ‘kept’ on Adam’s landing. Rather an awful young man, Adam thought, no deep feelings. Just a scallywag. Yet the extraordinary thing was that everyone seemed to like him.
‘Oh hello,’ he said, ‘of course if I’d known you were coming along to-day I’d have fixed up lunch in my room.’
‘Why not fix it up now?’
‘Oh.’
He wanted to be free of her, but saw that she wasn’t going to be shaken off. He was convinced that she was here for no good purpose, but went off to arrange about the lunch. He felt that the worst was about to happen, and went back to his room with her to wait for the food.
Carolyn sat down on the sofa; he noticed that she had a new dark mink coat and that the tiny hat to match was pierced with a diamond arrow that twinkled at him outrageously. Adam was convinced that she had come here to get at him, and knew that he could take it. But for the moment she said nothing. She elaborately enlarged on safe subjects; the garden at Dedbury, the case his father was defending, Marty’s prospects, Luke, who had been very bronchial all last spring, and seemed to be seedy again. When the coffee was on the table and Gibson had gone, she said, ‘You know why I’ve come here, Adam?’
‘I suppose you were sent to talk me out of taking Orders?’
‘Not quite that. Your father and I both feel that it isn’t right for you.’
‘I know my own mind. Dash it all, even old Masters agrees with me on that.’
‘I know, he wrote to us.’ Then slowly after a pause, ‘Adam, when I married your father it always struck me that he had a wall round his heart. I daresay it sounds a little fantastic, but haven’t you ever felt it in Daddy?’
Surprised out of his reserve, he said that he had.
‘It’s grown greater with the years, too. As a girl I always hoped that I’d be able to tear it down, but I couldn’t. Life has not been very easy, Adam, and now I have a son who is also building himself up a wall. Two of you. It doesn’t simplify things. I came down here to-
day without anybody knowing, because I thought perhaps I could help.’
He looked at her. It was strange that at this particular moment he should be thinking of those ideals that he and Hubert had discussed so closely. Her coat! Hundreds of innocent little animals had died to make it. That big solitaire on her finger which might have represented food for a crowd. It wasn’t fair that one woman should have so much, and less fair that she dared sit here complaining that she had so little.
He said, ‘It’s time we had a straight talk, and maybe I’ll shock you, because we have never talked the same language. I think lots of things that I don’t say.’
‘I realise that, Adam.’
‘I have always wanted to go into the church.’
‘Not quite always. It was the time of your confirmation at Eton. I always felt that you were not very happy there, and possibly that was why religion afforded an escape. I never wanted you to go there.’
‘I hated it.’
‘Why do you want to take Orders so much?’
‘I believe that like that I could be of use to my fellows in this world.’
‘Can’t we all be of use if we serve in our own particular niches?’
‘But this is my niche.’ He went across to the fire, and stood there with his back to it, his hands sunk down in his trouser pockets. ‘Mummy dear, if I want it, surely that should be enough? More so when I am backed up by my tutor. I’m no longer a little boy.’
‘You feel that you could help the world more that way?’ she asked, and then, ‘Very well, Adam, I’ll tell Daddy, but it’s going to be difficult. I’ll do what I can, for you know that I love you and want to help you, and that Daddy is very reserved about such things.’
Perhaps it would be better to tell her everything now that he had the chance, and have done with it. ‘This isn’t all, Mummy. There’s a girl …’
‘Adam, if you are going to tell me that you’ve fallen in love with a nun, and want me to talk the Mother Superior round, I really shall faint!’
‘Of course it isn’t a nun.’ He looked at her with the resentment rapidly rising in his tone. ‘She sings. She hasn’t had a chance in life yet, poor sweet, and she comes from Garmeisch.’