Rosie raised her hand and softly stroked my face. I do not know why I should have behaved as I then did; it was not at all how I had seen myself behaving on such an occasion. A sob broke from my tight throat. I do not know whether it was because I was shy and lonely (not lonely in the body, for I spent all day at the hospital with all kinds of people, but lonely in the spirit) or because my desire was so great, but I began to cry. I felt terribly ashamed of myself; I tried to control myself, I couldn’t; the tears welled up in my eyes and poured down my cheeks. Rosie saw them and gave a little gasp.
‘Oh, honey, what is it? What’s the matter? Don’t. Don’t!’
She put her arms round my neck and began to cry too, and she kissed my lips and my eyes and my wet cheeks. She undid her bodice and lowered my head till it rested on her bosom. She stroked my smooth face. She rocked me back and forth as though I were a child in her arms. I kissed her breasts and I kissed the white column of her neck; and she slipped out of her bodice and out of her skirt and her petticoats and I held her for a moment by her corseted waist; then she undid it, holding her breath for an instant to enable her to do so, and stood before me in her shift. When I put my hands on her sides I could feel the ribbing of the skin from the pressure of the corsets.
‘Blow out the candle,’ she whispered.
It was she who awoke me when the dawn peering through the curtains revealed the shape of the bed and of the wardrobe against the darkness of the lingering night. She woke me by kissing me on the mouth and her hair falling over my face tickled me.
‘I must get up,’ she said. ‘I don’t want your landlady to see me.’
‘There’s plenty of time.’
Her breasts when she leaned over me were heavy on my chest. In a little while she got out of bed. I lit the candle. She turned to the glass and tied up her hair and then she looked for a moment at her naked body. Her waist was naturally small; though so well developed she was very slender; her breasts were straight and firm and they stood out from the chest as though carved in marble. It was a body made for the act of love. In the light of the candle, struggling now with the increasing day, it was all silvery gold: and the only colour was the rosy pink of the hard nipples.
We dressed in silence. She did not put on her corsets again, but rolled them up and I wrapped them in a piece of newspaper. We tiptoed along the passage and when I opened the door and we stepped out into the street the dawn ran to meet us like a cat leaping up the steps. The square was empty; already the sun was shining on the eastern windows. I felt as young as the day. We walked arm in arm till we came to the corner of Limpus Road.
‘Leave me here,’ said Rosie. ‘One never knows.’
‘I kissed her and I watched her walk away. She walked rather slowly, with the firm tread of the country woman who likes to feel the good earth under her feet, and held herself erect. I could not go back to bed. I strolled on till I came to the Embankment. The river had the bright hues of the early morning. A brown barge came down stream and passed under Vauxhall Bridge. In a dinghy two men were rowing close to the side. I was hungry.
17
After that for more than a year whenever Rosie came out with me she used on the way home to drop into my rooms, sometimes for an hour, sometimes till the breaking day warned us that the slaveys would soon be scrubbing the doorsteps. I have a recollection of warm sunny mornings when the tired air of London had a welcome freshness, and of our footfalls that seemed so noisy in the empty streets, and then of scurrying along huddled under an umbrella, silent but gay, when the winter brought cold and rain. The policeman on point duty gave us a stare as we passed, sometimes of suspicion; but sometimes also there was a twinkle of comprehension in his eyes. Now and then we would see a homeless creature huddled up asleep in a portico and Rosie gave my arm a friendly little pressure when (chiefly for show and because I wanted to make a good impression on her, for my shillings were scarce) I placed a piece of silver on a shapeless lap or in a skinny fist. Rosie made me very happy. I had a great affection for her. She was easy and comfortable. She had a placidity of temper that communicated itself to the people she was with; you shared her pleasure in the passing moment.
Before I became her lover I had often asked myself if she was the mistress of the others, Forde, Harry Retford, and Hillier, and afterward I questioned her. She kissed me.
‘Don’t be so silly. I like them, you know that. I like to go out with them, but that’s all.’
I wanted to ask her if she had been the mistress of George Kemp, but I did not like to. Though I had never seen her in a temper, I had a notion that she had one, and I vaguely felt that this was a question that might anger her. I did not want to give her the opportunity of saying things so wounding that I could not forgive her. I was young, only just over one and twenty, Quentin Forde and the others seemed old to me; it did not seem unnatural to me that to Rosie they were only friends. It gave me a little thrill of pride to think that I was her lover. When I used to look at her chatting and laughing with all and sundry at tea on Saturday afternoons, I glowed with self-satisfaction. I thought of the nights we passed together, and I was inclined to laugh at the people who were so ignorant of my great secret. But sometimes I thought that Lionel Hillier looked at me in a quizzical way, as if he were enjoying a good joke at my expense, and I asked myself uneasily if Rosie had told him that she was having an affair with me. I wondered if there was anything in my manner that betrayed me. I told Rosie that I was afraid Hillier suspected something; she looked at me with those blue eyes of hers that always seemed ready to smile.
‘Don’t bother about it,’ she said. ‘He’s got a nasty mind.’
I had never been intimate with Quentin Forde. He looked upon me as a dull and insignificant young man (which of course I was) and though he had always been civil he had never taken any notice of me. I thought it could only be my fancy that now he began to be a little more frigid with me than before. But one day Harry Retford to my surprise asked me to dine with him and go to the play. I told Rosie.
‘Oh, of course you must go. He’ll give you an awfully good time. Good old Harry, he always makes me laugh.’
So I dined with him. He made himself very pleasant, and I was impressed to hear him talk of actors and actresses. He had a sarcastic humour, and was very funny at the expense of Quentin Forde, whom he did not like; I tried to get him to talk of Rosie, but he had nothing to say of her. He seemed to be a gay dog. With leers and laughing innuendoes he gave me to understand that he was a devil with the girls. I could not but ask myself if he was standing me this dinner because he knew I was Rosie’s lover and so felt friendly disposed toward me. But if he knew, of course the others knew too. I hope I did not show it, but in my heart I certainly felt somewhat patronizing toward them.
Then in winter, toward the end of January, someone new appeared at Limpus Road. This was a Dutch Jew named Jack Kuyper, a diamond merchant from Amsterdam, who was spending a few weeks in London on business. I do not know how he had come to know the Driffields, and whether it was esteem for the author that brought him to the house, but it was certainly not that which caused him to come again. He was a tall, stout, dark man, with a bald head and a big hooked nose, a man of fifty, but of a powerful appearance, sensual, determined, and jovial. He made no secret of his admiration for Rosie. He was rich apparently, for he sent her roses every day; she chid him for his extravagance, but was flattered. I could not bear him. He was blatant and loud. I hated his fluent conversation in perfect but foreign English; I hated the extravagant compliments he paid Rosie; I hated the heartiness with which he treated her friends. I found that Quentin Forde liked him as little as I; we almost became cordial with one another.
‘Mercifully he’s not staying long.’ Quentin Forde pursed his lips and raised his black eyebrows; with his white hair and long sallow face he looked incredibly gentlemanly. ‘Women are always the same; they adore a bounder.’
‘He’s so frightfully vulgar,’ I complained.
‘That
is his charm,’ said Quentin Forde.
For the next two or three weeks I saw next to nothing of Rosie. Jack Kuyper took her out night after night, to this smart restaurant and that, to one play after another. I was vexed and hurt.
‘He doesn’t know anyone in London,’ said Rosie, trying to soothe my ruffled feelings. ‘He wants to see everything he can while he’s here. It wouldn’t be very nice for him to go alone all the time. He’s only here for a fortnight more.’
I did not see the object of this self-sacrifice on her part.
‘But don’t you think he’s awful?’ I said.
‘No. I think he’s fun. He makes me laugh.’
‘Don’t you know that he’s absolutely gone on you?’
‘Well, it pleases him, and it doesn’t do me any harm.’
‘He’s old and fat and horrible. It gives me the creeps to look at him.’
‘I don’t think he’s so bad,’ said Rosie.
‘You shouldn’t have anything to do with him,’ I protested. ‘I mean, he’s such an awful cad.’
Rosie scratched her head. It was an unpleasant habit of hers.
‘It’s funny how different foreigners are from English people,’ she said.
I was thankful when Jack Kuyper went back to Amsterdam. Rosie had promised to dine with me the day after, and as a treat we arranged to dine in Soho. She fetched me in a hansom and we drove on.
‘Has your horrible old man gone?’ I asked.
‘Yes,’ she laughed.
I put my arm round her waist. (I have elsewhere remarked how much more convenient the hansom was for this pleasant and indeed almost essential act in human intercourse than the taxi of the present day, so unwillingly refrain from labouring the point.) I put my arm round her waist and kissed her. Her lips were like spring flowers. We arrived. I hung my hat and my coat (it was very long and tight at the waist, with a velvet collar and velvet cuffs, very smart) on a peg, and asked Rosie to give me her cape.
‘I’m going to keep it on,’ she said.
‘You’ll be awfully hot. You’ll only catch cold when we go out.’
‘I don’t care. It’s the first time I’ve worn it. Don’t you think it’s lovely? And look: the muff matches.’
I gave the cape a glance. It was of fur. I did not know it was sable.
‘It looks awfully rich. How did you get that?’
‘Jack Kuyper gave it to me. We went and bought it yesterday just before he went away.’ She stroked the smooth fur; she was as happy with it as a child with a toy. ‘How much d’you think it cost?’
‘I haven’t an idea.’
‘Two hundred and sixty pounds. Do you know I’ve never had anything that cost so much in my life? I told him it was far too much, but he wouldn’t listen. He made me have it’
Rosie chuckled with glee and her eyes shone. But I felt my face go stiff and a shiver run down my spine.
‘Won’t Driffield think it’s rather funny, Kuyper giving you a fur cape that costs all that?’ said I, trying to make my voice sound natural.
Rosie’s eyes danced mischievously.
‘You know what Ted is, he never notices anything; if he says anything about it I shall tell him I gave twenty pounds for it in a pawnshop. He won’t know any better.’ She rubbed her face against the collar. ‘It’s so soft. And everyone can see it cost money.’
I tried to eat and in order not to show the bitterness in my heart I did my best to keep the conversation going on one topic or another. Rosie did not much mind what I said. She could only think of her new cape, and every other minute her eyes returned to the muff that she insisted on holding on her lap. She looked at it with an affection in which there was something lazy, sensual, and self-complacent. I was angry with her. I thought her stupid and common.
‘You look like a cat that’s swallowed a canary,’ I could not help snapping.
She only giggled.
‘That’s what! feel like.’
Two hundred and sixty pounds was an enormous sum to me. I did not know one could pay so much for a cape. I lived on fourteen pounds a month, and not at all badly either; and in case any reader is not a ready reckoner I will add that this is one hundred and sixty-eight pounds a year. I could not believe that anyone would make as expensive a present as that from pure friendship; what did it mean but that Jack Kuyper had been sleeping with Rosie, night after night, all the time he was in London, and now when he went away was paying her? How could she accept it? Didn’t she see how it degraded her? Didn’t she see how frightfully vulgar it was of him to give her a thing that cost so much? Apparently not, for she said to me:
‘It was nice of him, wasn’t it? But then Jews are always generous.’
‘I suppose he could afford it,’ I said.
‘Oh, yes, he’s got lots of money. He said he wanted to give me something before he went away and asked me what I wanted. Well, I said, I could do with a cape and a muff to match, but I never thought he’d buy me anything like this. When we went into the shop I asked them to show me something in astrakhan, but he said: No, sable, and the best money can buy. And when we saw this he absolutely insisted on my having it.’
I thought of her with her white body, her skin so milky, in the arms of that old fat gross man and his thick loose lips kissing hers. And then I knew that the suspicion that I had refused to believe was true; I knew that when she went out to dinner with Quentin Forde and Harry Retford and Lionel Hillier she went to bed with them just as she came to bed with me. I could not speak; I knew that if I did I should insult her. I do not think I was jealous so much as mortified. I felt that she had been making a damned fool of me. I used all my determination to prevent the bitter jibes from passing my lips.
We went on to the theatre. I could not listen to the play. I could only feel against my arm the smoothness of the sable cape; I could only see her fingers for ever stroking the muff. I could have borne the thought of the others, it was Jack Kuyper who horrified me. How could she? It was abominable to be poor. I longed to have enough money to tell her that if she would send the fellow back his beastly furs I would give her better ones instead. At last she noticed that I did not speak.
‘You’re very silent tonight.’
‘Am I?’
‘Aren’t you well?’
‘Perfectly.’
She gave me a sidelong look. I did not meet her eyes, but I knew they were smiling with that smile at once mischievous and childlike that I knew so well. She said nothing more. At the end of the play, since it was raining, we took a hansom, and I gave the driver her address in Limpus Road. She did not speak till we got to Victoria Street, then she said: ‘Don’t you want me to come home with you?’
‘Just as you like.’
She lifted up the trap and gave the driver my address. She took my hand and held it, but I remained inert. I looked straight out of the window with angry dignity. When we reached Vincent Square I handed her out of the cab, and let her into the house without a word. I took off my hat and coat. She threw her cape and her muff on the sofa.
‘Why are you so sulky?’ she asked, coming up to me.
‘I’m not sulky,’ I answered, looking away.
She took my face in her two hands.
‘How can you be so silly? Why should you be angry because Jack Kuyper gives me a fur cape? You can’t afford to give me one, can you?’
‘Of course I can’t.’
‘And Ted can’t either. You can’t expect me to refuse a fur cape that cost two hundred and sixty pounds. I’ve wanted a fur cape all my life. It means nothing to Jack.’
‘You don’t expect me to believe that he gave it you just out of friendship.’
‘He might have. Anyhow, he’s gone back to Amsterdam, and who knows when he’ll come back?’
‘He isn’t the only one, either.’
I looked at Rosie now, with angry, hurt, resentful eyes, she smiled at me, and I wish I knew how to describe the sweet kindliness of her beautiful smile, her voice was exquisitely gentle.
‘Oh, my dear, why d’ you bother your head about any others? What harm does it do you? Don’t I give you a good time! Aren’t you happy when you’re with me?’ ‘
Awfully’
‘Well, then. It’s so silly to be fussy and jealous. Why not be happy with what you can get? Enjoy yourself while you have the chance, I say; we shall all be dead in a hundred years, and what will anything matter then? Let’s have a good time while we can.’
She put her arms round my neck and pressed her lips against mine. I forgot my wrath. I only thought of her beauty and her enveloping kindness.
‘You must take me as I am, you know,’ she whispered.
‘All right,’ I said.
18
During all this time I saw really very little of Driffield. His editorship occupied much of his day, and in the evening he wrote. He was, of course, there every Saturday afternoon, amiable and ironically amusing; he appeared glad to see me and chatted with me for a little while pleasantly of indifferent things, but naturally most of his attention was given to guests older and more important than I. But I had a feeling that he was growing more aloof; he was no longer the jolly, rather vulgar companion that I had known at Blackstable. Perhaps it was only my increasing sensibility that discerned as it were an invisible barrier that existed between him and the people he chaffed and joked with. It was as though he lived a life of the imagination that made the life of every day a little shadowy. He was asked to speak now and then at public dinners. He joined a literary club. He began to know a good many people outside the narrow circle into which his writing had drawn him, and he was increasingly asked to luncheon and tea by the ladies who like to gather about them distinguished authors. Rosie was asked too, but seldom went; she said she didn’t care for parties, and after all they didn’t want her, they only wanted Ted. I think she was shy and felt out of it. It may be that hostesses had more than once let her see how tiresome they thought it that she must be included; and after inviting her because it was polite, ignored her because to be polite irked them.
Cakes and Ale Page 17