Marston’s smile faded, and her favourite eyebrow curved in real surprise. “Don’t worry about the Aubusson,” she said. “Another spot or two won’t spoil its charm.” And just what was the mess, she wondered.
Penny searched for her handkerchief and blew her nose violently.
“Spring colds are a blight,” Marston said, and turned her head to look out of the window. “Better take care of it. They go on and on and spoil all your fun. Are you going out tonight?”
“No. Mother has a headache.”
“Well, it might be a good idea if we had dinner together. Or it might be still a better idea if you went to bed and I brought you nourishing jellies.”
“My cold isn’t as bad as that,” Penny said, rising from her knees, suddenly business-like as she found a cup and saucer and poured some tea into it. “I’m all right,” she said, and burst into tears.
Marston looked with embarrassment towards the bowl of primroses. “That is just the right shade of green for them,” she decided. “Even the imitation mahogany looks all right underneath them.” She studied the desk as a whole. An idea seemed to please her. “It would make a pretty still-life—abstract drawings over a desk; one Impressionist painting of a murdered cow, I think, waiting for more impressions to be added; and there at the side, quite unpaintable, a bowl of primroses. Still-lifes should have a moral attached: the only excuse for being still is to run deep, isn’t it? The trouble is that, although it is a good idea, I could never use it. I keep having good ideas that are no use to me. Just never could paint a still-life. Probably, with my present technique, the whole thing would look like a study of a couple of fried eggs. It is a strange thing how a primrose is not a primrose and a pigeon on the grass is nothing but alas, once I start painting them. But then, I’ve always my camera.” She paused, and watched Lorrimer reflectively—who was now standing at the window pretending to look down into the street. “Shall I go, or may I have another biscuit?”
Penny turned away from the window, and gave Marston a small, shamefaced smile. “Don’t go,” she said. “If you don’t mind sitting there and watching this performance.” Her lip trembled slightly, “Oh, damn,” she said, “I must look a complete fool.” She sat down on the bed, and looked at the tea-tray which she had arranged so carefully. “Funny how your whole life can be altered in an hour,” she said. “Everything seemed so perfect, and then it wasn’t.” She half sighed. “Oh, well... Marston, has anyone on this floor a copy of The Times?”
“I must admit that I’m finding this conversation difficult to follow,” Marston said. “But I know that Neri has The Times, if you really want it. She gets it in order to cut out all the small paragraphs of our stupidity—the woman who divorces her husband twice and marries him for a third time; the man who writes to the editor, on the day after the Nazis come to power, about the nesting habits of the yellow-tailed blue-tit; a picture of the long line of feathers bobbing towards presentation at Court opposite a picture of the unemployment queues in Jarrow; the carefully worded trial, which deceives nobody, of the two Guardsmen in Hyde Park. She sends them to her cousin who edits a paper in India. I suggested that she would find us much more ludicrous in some other newspapers, but Neri only smiled politely. I think the prestige of The Times lends a bizarre quality to the cuttings which she sends. But she did show signs of alarm when I told her that her sense of humour was becoming quite English.”
“I sometimes wonder why she does stay here. Or even why she came in the first place. She arrived disliking us.”
“And on a scholarship founded by an Englishwoman.”
The two girls exchanged glances and began to laugh.
At least, Marston thought, we have reached this stage. No more tears, thank God.
“I am looking for a job,” Penny said suddenly. “Hence The Times.”
“Not much help there these days. Quite the best thing is to have a friend who has a friend who knows someone. Finding a job is just a matter of the right introductions.” Then her voice became serious. “What sort of job, Lorrimer? And why?”
“Something to keep me alive.”
“You don’t seem fussy, anyway.”
“I can’t afford to be. You see, my family want me to leave London, and I don’t want to. That’s why.”
“I see,” Marston said, but she didn’t. She searched for a cigarette. Perhaps the family had lost its money, couldn’t afford to keep Lorrimer in London any longer. That could be it. Lots of people were losing their money nowadays. “Then you really do want a job? Sort of declaration of independence?”
“Yes.” And much more so than you imagine, Lillian. This is my independence for which I’m fighting, Penny thought. “It all happened so suddenly, I’m still at the stage of hardly believing it.”
Money trouble definitely, Marston decided. “Depressing thing a depression,” she said. “Daddy was calculating at Christmas how much longer he could afford a daughter in London. Still, we can’t go on being depressed forever. No doubt, someone somewhere is thinking up, at this very minute, another war to end unemployment. Then all you have to do is to make munitions, and you can buy three fur coats.” She became serious again as she added, “It is strange, isn’t it, that a war produces a boom, when you probably have no inclination to enjoy anything, and that peace—when you really feel like having a good time— produces a depression. It is all quite beyond me. But then, I’m an artist, and artists never solve problems: they only state them. And bewilder people. Which is known as the incommunicable soul. Primroses into two fried eggs.”
“Well, I shall have to try and make mine communicable,” Penny said. “I suppose I should try for a job where I can use the only thing I’ve been trained for.”
“On the contrary. You’ll get a much better job if you know absolutely nothing about it. Training, if you take it seriously, is only a drawback. If you want to be a politician, then you study pig-farming or bird-life. If you want to be a diplomat, then you study medieval history or the Significance of the Vase Shape in the Ping-Wing-Ting Dynasty. If you want to be a journalist, then you take a degree in classics. Quite simple, darling. Throw away your brushes and oils and charcoal and smock, and become a private secretary. You can’t type or do shorthand. Splendid. You’ll make a wonderful secretary.”
Penny smiled obediently, but she didn’t answer. She was watching the slate roof of the house opposite and the uneven row of chimney-pots with their metal helmets, slashed and shaped like thirteenth-century armour, revolving slowly with the creaking dignity of a knight, or hanging loosely askew, jolted occasionally by the wind into a brief, apologetic hiccup. Above them was a sky showing its first real spring blue, with soft white clouds chasing each other and a sun already slipping towards the west. The light held the warm colour of evening, and the grey walls of the house were less cold. There, just under the drunken chimney-pots were the nursery windows on the third floor. Any minute now she would see a bright head of curls above a small round face, all freshly pink and white from its evening bath, with short pyjama-covered arms stretched up to grip the highest of the three polished brass rods which guarded the window. In the daytime, whenever he heard a car’s brakes before his house, he would appear (probably he had clambered up on a nursery chair to raise his short body to the proper level); he would twist and crane his neck excitedly to see who it was, losing interest if it were a stranger, suddenly motionless if it were his mother or father. In the evening, at this time, he would watch for them coming home or leaving for a party. And then he would stare out at a world that ignored him, resting his forehead against the middle rod of polished brass, until a crisply starched nanny would catch him under his armpits and swing him off to bed.
“What time is it, anyway?” Marston was asking. “I’ll scrounge a copy of The Times for you if that would make you happier, and then I’ve some ’phoning to do. After that we’ll go to Marinelli’s, and we can discuss jobs with spaghetti to give us inspiration. It is good for conversation—no need to worry a
bout choking on bones. So bear up, darling. After all, if there isn’t a job to be had there is always Edinburgh.”
“There isn’t,” Penny said. “That’s quite final. It must be a job. I’ll measure ribbon by the yard if necessary.” And I must ’phone, too, she remembered. I must ’phone David. Only, I must get my thoughts straightened out first of all. I must not worry him, make him think things are worse than they are. Or perhaps I should wait until tomorrow. Perhaps by that time Mother will have understood that David and I are in earnest, that we cannot be divided and separated. If only she would come to Oxford on Sunday, if only she could see us together...
“It’s six o’clock,” Penny said, finishing her answer to Marston. A small bright head had appeared at the opposite window. It was bent, trying to see who was in the street in front of its house. And then, finding nothing, it looked across to Penny’s window. She rose and went forward. The striped arm waved vigorously. She waved back.
“Do you still keep this up?” Marston was openly amused. “Who is he, anyway?”
“I haven’t the foggiest,” Penny said, turning away from the window. Her voice was normal once more, and she was really smiling. Tomorrow at breakfast, she was thinking hopefully... everything would come out all right after all. “But he can’t be left to stand at a window, waiting for someone to look up and wave. Can he?”
“I’ll write a reference for you. Kind to children and dogs, impervious to men. Why, any woman would take you on as a governess anywhere on that recommendation.” Marston moved to the door. “I’ll scout around for The Times,” she said casually. Mentally she was already listing the people she knew who could be useful in finding a job for Lorrimer. She would start ’phoning them right away. And keep on, until she got some satisfactory answer.
Not so impervious, Penny was thinking. Not so impervious. She touched the soft petals of the primroses, letting her fingers ride over them lightly. To give David happiness, that was her happiness. To have him love her, that was her life. Without him—her heart tightened. The primroses blurred over, their outline was lost, as if someone were shaking them in front of her eyes until she could see them no more.
Marston did not return until almost an hour had passed. By that time Penny had bathed her face and eyes, and was beginning to look natural again. Marston felt a great relief: she had begun to regret her blithe invitation to dinner, in case Lorrimer might be tragic all through it.
As they were reaching the hall they met the parlourmaid, who smiled with pleasure at not having to climb to the top floor after all. It was a telephone call for Miss Lorrimer.
“Probably Mother,” Penny said hopefully. “Perhaps—”
She didn’t finish, but ran towards the telephone. She talked there for a considerable time.
When she joined Marston again, who had been pretending to be interested in a three-months-old copy of the Tatler, she was so white and wan that Marston said nothing at all.
Penny broke the silence as they walked towards Tottenham Court Road. “That was David,” she said, and her voice was as colourless as her cheeks. “His father is dead.”
26
DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE
A sense of duty is a tormenting thing: if you do what you feel you ought to do you often wish you hadn’t; if you don’t do it you are left worrying in another direction. There is no escape from it, because there is no escape from yourself. And so Penny, next morning, dressed carefully and slowly, in spite of a cold that had increased to the point of making her want to stay in bed for the day, and set out for her mother’s hotel.
The dinner last night with Marston had been a failure. This theory that one should be very, very controlled and, oh, so brave was all wrong. It would have been better for her in every way if she could have let herself recite her woes in diluted form to Marston, instead of discussing the design of stage sets in the new Komisarjevski production of Grand Hotel while all the time she was thinking about David. David and his father. David and his sister, Margaret. David and her family. David. The only result had been the worst night in all her life.
She had fallen asleep by three o’clock, worn out by arguing with herself, and had awakened an hour later with the postponed tears drenching her pillow. The dream that had aroused her had been so vivid that she lay taut in the narrow bed, feeling the cramp in her tense body, hardly daring to move because of the sharp pain which would then twist her muscles and threaten in its intensity to hold her powerless forever. The skin on her face was tight, as if it had been sewn up to her scalp, and there was the taste of salt on her lips. She had lain there, watching the green-grey sky, as unreal as a pool of stagnant waters under a threatened thunderstorm, seep into the tight walls of the room. And the dream was played over again, mistily, inaccurately, as dreams were remembered. But still threatening and hideous. They mean nothing, she told herself, as she watched the black hearse and four black horses move so slowly over the endless road. She was walking behind it, and yet not walking, for her feet moved without her volition. She was weeping, weeping bitterly, remembering how cruel she had been, cruel wicked cruel to think that a daughter of mine sharper than a serpent’s tooth, cruel, cruel to her mother when her mother was alive. And now it was too late, too late for anything except this pillow, wet and horrible to the touch of her cheek. Nothing now but this endless road and Margaret Bosworth standing black and still against the bleak horizon. Nothing else, no one else on the anonymous background, on the flat, colourless land flowing into the abyss of the horizon. No David. It was then that the tears for her mother became tears shed for herself.
Dreams are only dreams, she had told herself. She had turned over the pillow, as if by turning away the wet linen she could blot out its cause.
Yet it was a relief to enter her mother’s room and to hear her calm voice, very much alive, giving instructions for breakfast. Tea, not coffee. Porridge, with salt. Crisp toast unbuttered. Three and a half minutes for the eggs. Marmalade, bitter not sweet. And, out of relief, Penny’s kiss on the upturned cheek was more than dutiful. Her mother nodded approvingly. And Penny, with sudden new hope and a confidence to match her mother’s, smiled too. It is going to be perfectly all right, they both thought. Both, sure of having won their way, were tactfully thoughtful of each other as breakfast began with charming evasion. Those who won must help those who had lost to feel at ease. Mrs. Lorrimer gave full news about Edinburgh, and Penny listened and asked questions dutifully, privately allowing herself to smile over the dreadful predicament of an Edinburgh ever forced to do without the Lorrimer family.
Mrs. Lorrimer noted her daughter’s concentration. She is making amends, she thought, and she went on talking with increasing confidence. “A charming city, Munich,” she said. “I know you will love it. And you’ll enjoy the family: it isn’t the usual dull professor’s; he is interested in politics, and the house is filled with remarkable people. I believe he is going to have quite an important position in the new Government.” And then, noticing her daughter’s expression, she halted abruptly.
Penny rose suddenly and walked to the window. They faced each other across the strange room. “This isn’t much use, is it?” Penny said quietly.
“Because you won’t listen.”
Penny shrugged her shoulders.
“And you won’t even discuss the matter,” Mrs. Lorrimer went on, with growing indignation.
Penny stirred restlessly, as if she wanted to be free of all this endless argument. Her mother noticed that, and her voice was now angry. “What hold has this Bosworth got over you?” she demanded harshly. “What is there between you? Answer me, Penelope.”
At first Penny did not answer. She stood there, her eyes thoughtful as she remembered David.
“It is time that one of us spoke frankly,” she said, after the long pause. “I am not David’s mistress—if that is what you have been trying to learn.”
Mrs. Lorrimer looked shocked, but there was relief in her eyes.
Penny pitied her for
the pretence. She went on, “I don’t feel proud of that at all. It only proves I trusted David less than he was willing to trust me. And that I hadn’t the courage. I believed that I would be injuring the family if I didn’t behave as you trusted me to behave, but now I see that you didn’t trust me. Or you would not have made this journey, you wouldn’t have insisted on these questions.”
Mrs. Lorrimer gestured vaguely in protest as she looked unhappily at Penny. “We trust you, Penny,” she said faintly. “Of course we do.” Her voice strengthened. “But young men are not to be trusted. Young men of today have no sense of morality. They forget that if a man loves a woman he should never do anything which will make her an object of scorn.”
“Then morality must only be a matter of appearance. For it seems that a man may have affairs with other women, and, provided he is discreet, his wife isn’t an object of scorn. Aren’t cheats to be scorned? And aren’t there so many of them, hiding behind appearances? Isn’t that more to be scorned than a man and woman who are loyal and honest to each other?”
Mrs. Lorrimer steadied herself by a deep breath. “You talk nothing but nonsense. It is bad enough to inflict it on my ears, but it would be worse if you inflicted it on your own life.”
“That is why it would be better if I found a job. Neither you nor Father will believe I am serious about David unless I do.”
“Your father will—” Mrs. Lorrimer began, and then halted as her voice broke.
“And Grandfather?” Penny asked suddenly. “He would not be so angry with me, would he?” She crossed the room then to her mother. Mrs. Lorrimer drew angrily away from her touch.
Friends and Lovers Page 28