Doves of Venus

by Olivia Manning

  It was Quintin. Her excitement paralysed her throat. His voice sounded distant and without warmth. He asked the time she was leaving London. When she told him, he announced his intention of seeing her off.

  ‘Oh, Quintin!’ She was mazed with gratitude. After a moment she said: ‘How wonderful! How kind!’ She almost said: ‘How generous!’ but was stopped by uncertainty. Why had he suddenly decided to see her off? He was not given to caprice or change of plans. It had occurred to her he intended giving her a Christmas present.

  Back in her room, she wondered what she could give to him. She was very worried. She could not buy anything. Having paid her rent in advance, bought her rail ticket and presents each for her mother and sister, she was nearly penniless.

  She had only two things she could give away. One was her reproduction of Rousseau’s ‘Snake Charmer’ that hung over her bed. It was her richest possession. In her opinion it ‘made’ the room – a sliver of a room with dirty cream walls, a torn haircord carpet, and just sufficient space to permit the occupant to pass the bed and reach the window. She sat on the bed for some time and looked at the Rousseau. She would have thrust it upon Quintin had it not seemed to her an ostentatious gift, unwieldy and difficult to carry.

  She would have to give him the other thing.

  The glass roof of the station was dark with fog. People tore busily around one another, for there was still room to move, but soon there would not be. There were queues winding out from the platform barriers. Officially it was still daylight. The crowds and the lines of queuing people among them seemed like the darkness clotted at the bottom of a muddy pool. Then the lights came on. Distracted faces appeared, shape and impetus was given to the confusion.

  Ellie, who was usually in a panic when catching trains, now cared nothing for her train. She was anxious only to find Quintin. They had arranged to meet at the buffet. As she made her way to it, she saw Quintin, in dark overcoat and bowler-hat, entering the door. A woman on her way out bumped into him, and he raised his hat and stepped aside. As he did so, two young men thrust past him with rough impatience as though his courtesy had been an interference with their liberty.

  Ellie, beset with pity and indignation, thought: ‘He does not belong here.’ She hurried, as though to his defence, but when she reached him, there he was, standing by the counter, looking, as ever, mild and undisturbed.

  He said: ‘Ah, there you are, my dear! You’ve plenty of time. Will you have a sandwich or something?’

  She shook her head. She looked up at the buffet clock, then out at the crowds, hiding behind all this display of anxiety her excitement at their meeting.

  ‘Come on, then,’ he said kindly, taking her small suitcase from her hand, ‘we’ll find you a seat.’

  He passed quickly and efficiently through the crowd. Ellie, at his heels, felt elated by the relationship of their movement among all these people. His appearance seemed to her exactly right. This was the man she would have chosen for herself. That he should have sought her out still seemed unbelievable felicity. This was the first time he had suggested their meeting for any purpose other than ultimate love-making of one degree or another. It seemed to her their past meetings had been organised, keeping their positions distinct, while this was informal and delightful, and conveyed a sense of permanency as though they were an engaged or married couple.

  The train, when they reached it, was already full. In each carriage people sat four-a-side, their outgaze smug and hostile as the ingazers went searching by.

  ‘We’ll find one. We’ll find one,’ Quintin assured her, but they came to the end of the train and people were standing in the corridor.

  Ellie said: ‘It’s all right. I’ll stand.’

  ‘Oh no.’

  ‘I often do.’ She got into a carriage before he could walk her back again.

  He said: ‘Go into the first class. I’m sure it will be all right in this crowd.’

  ‘I might get caught.’ She did not say she had not the money to pay the difference. He knew her salary. He stared down the length of the train. She felt it in his mind to give her the money that would cover the first-class fare, and felt also his unwillingness to give it. She diverted him by taking a small parcel from her handbag: ‘A Christmas present.’

  ‘No! For me? How delightful!’ He stood holding the parcel – nursing it, rather – and smiled as though worried by something.

  ‘Aren’t you going to open it?’

  She watched him taking out the cigarette-case and thought probably she would never see it again. It had been given to her the previous Christmas by a young man in Eastsea who had imagined he was in love with her. She did not smoke. She had never used it, but she had been fond of it. It was of transparent plastic, set in a gilt frame. She had known all the time it was too feminine for Quintin.

  ‘But it’s charming,’ he said. As he made to open it, the catch came off in his fingers.

  She gulped in her throat. ‘It’s broken,’ she said, knowing she should offer to take it back to some shop.

  As though he knew she could not, he said quickly: ‘It doesn’t matter. It only needs two little screws.’ He put the case into his breast-pocket and smiled at her. ‘Very nice,’ he said and patted the pocket. ‘Now I must give you something. What can I give you?’

  She smiled, not answering. He took her hand and held it; he moved his other hand expressively: ‘I have nothing,’ he said. After a pause, he whispered: ‘Nothing to give you.’

  Still smiling, she put his hand to her lips: ‘If only I needn’t go! If only I could spend Christmas here with you!’

  She did not know what he was doing at Christmas, but she had in her mind a picture of him alone in his flat, and pitied him, yet felt some exasperation that he would not urge her to remain.

  His lips parted; he looked at her as though he had something important to say, but hesitated, sighed, then said: ‘Perhaps after you come back we will be able to meet more often.’

  ‘Have things changed? Are they going to be different?’

  ‘They will have to be different. They cannot go on like this,’ he spoke uncertainly, as though he were very tired. In this bleak, queasy light, he might have been ten years older than his age.

  ‘What will you do at Christmas?’ she asked.

  ‘I don’t know. Sit all day in my club, I expect. I’ve never cared for these holidays. Such an interruption of one’s life. When I was a child . . .’ he broke off and pressed the base of his right palm against his brow. After a moment he shook his head slightly and said: ‘What was I saying?’

  ‘What’s the matter? Do you feel ill?’

  ‘No, I did not sleep very well. Something worried me. I’ll be all right.’ The whistle blew. ‘Look after yourself,’ he said.

  The train creaked and gathered itself together for departure.

  ‘I wish I could stay,’ said Ellie, ‘I hate going.’

  ‘You’ll be back in no time. I’ll ring you . . . what’s today? I’ll ring you early next week.’

  That promise for the future lessened the intervening days. The train was moving. She held to Quintin’s fingers until they were drawn from her, then he put his hands into his overcoat pockets. He stood smiling rather humorously as she leant out to wave to him. He looked, what indeed he was, a man whom any woman might approach with confidence – and it was she whom he had chosen to approach.

  When he was out of sight, she still felt his touch like a powder on her skin. Watching out at the blae fog on the river, through which the tower of Big Ben appeared shadowy, furred with scaffolding, she felt him still like a physical presence into which she could merge for pleasure and comfort. But the break had been made. His presence faded from her and she faced the alien days without him.

  The Battersea Power Station swung past, shadow on shadow; the tower of the Brentford Gas Works; the pagoda at Kew. With gathering speed the train passed out between the backs of houses into the winter countryside where a grey light glinted on puddles an
d sharpened the criss-crossing nakedness of trees. A desolate world; and she was being taken where she did not want to go.

  Ellie’s home was at the shabby end of Eastsea front. Her mother, widowed and left without an income, had invested her capital in a small restaurant over which there were living-rooms. This property, she promised them, would be left between the girls when she died. She often said: ‘Look after your business, and your business will look after you.’

  The restaurant tables were set for tea when Ellie entered, but the place was empty. When a student she had painted on the walls galleons with swelling sails riding a swelling sea. Now she saw them as for the first time. They shamed her. She was suddenly beset by a powerful vision of someone from the London studio where she worked visiting Eastsea and coming in here for tea and seeing the name of Ellie Parsons boldly written on the prow of the largest and most frightful galleon.

  When her mother appeared, Ellie gave no greeting but said with disgust: ‘The first thing I’m going to do is paint out these ships.’

  ‘Oh no, you’re not, my lady,’ said Mrs Parsons with a decided twist of the head. ‘I didn’t want them in the first place, but now they’re there, they’ll stay.’

  At once their old antagonism was alive between them. Ellie felt again her mother’s power and the frustration of past defeats. She would have turned and walked out if she could: instead, she forced herself to smile. ‘Well, here I am! Home for Christmas!’

  Mrs Parsons said: ‘And about time. I’d almost forgotten what you looked like,’ then she, too, seemed to remember the significance of the season. She smiled and said: ‘You know you’re welcome any time.’

  With a sense of truce, they kissed and went into the kitchen. Mrs Parsons was a foot shorter than Ellie. She was a strong, square woman who wore tweeds summer and winter. Her clothes were spotted with grease because she felt an apron to be an indignity. She would say to her customers: ‘I’ve had to be father and mother to my girls,’ so Ellie used to wonder if that was why her mother looked so much more masculine than other mothers. Mrs Parsons’s cheeks stood out like red rubber balls, her chin was a third ball stuck on below her mouth. She sweated a lot and scrubbed her face impatiently with a handkerchief. When people said to her: ‘Don’t you overdo it, Mrs Parsons. Make those girls of yours give a hand. You ought to put your feet up sometimes,’ she would laugh and echo derisively: ‘Put my feet up! Much chance of that.’

  In the restaurant she laughed readily and said things like: ‘It’s no good looking on the gloomy side’ or ‘We’re all here to help one another’ or ‘I often say we pass this way but once,’ so she was reputed to be both brave and good-natured.

  She looked brave and good-natured from habit in the restaurant, but as she and Ellie passed through the bead curtain into the kitchen, her face took on a belligerent peevishness. She said: ‘The new girl’s off to do her Christmas shopping. They’re all alike. A lazy lot. They don’t want to work.’

  ‘Why should they?’

  Mrs Parsons eyed Ellie sternly: ‘Is this what they teach you in London?’

  ‘I was only joking.’

  ‘I’ve kept you something.’

  Mrs Parsons, sitting, morosely watching Ellie eat a dish of fish-cakes, asked: ‘How long are you staying?’

  ‘I’ve only got Christmas Day and Boxing Day.’

  ‘And then you’re going back? Even though I’ve told you Emmy’s getting married, you’re going back?’

  Ellie was astounded by this accusation. How could her mother ever have supposed anything else? She said: ‘My job is there. I live there.’ She added unwisely: ‘I belong there.’

  Mrs Parsons set her lips tightly. Ellie finished her meal in silence. She had learnt in London to eat with a fork alone and awaited adverse comment, but her mother seemed too preoccupied to notice. When Ellie put down the fork, Mrs Parsons burst out: ‘You’re under age. I could have you brought back. Yes, I could. I could have you brought back.’

  This was a new line of attack. Ellie, looking at her mother with frightened eyes, could think of no defence against it. Mrs Parsons, seeing how effective her words had been, nodded with satisfaction and rose to pour out tea. She left her threats in the air for some minutes, then sighed and said: ‘I don’t know what I’ve done to deserve a daughter like you. Other people’s daughters don’t go off and get jobs in London.’

  ‘They leave home when they marry.’

  ‘They don’t go to London. Besides, you’re not married.’

  ‘Why do you mind? You’ve got Emmy. She was always your favourite.’

  ‘That’s nonsense. Besides, Emmy and Joe are going to Battle. He’s starting up on his own there.’

  ‘Battle’s not far.’

  Ellie, tasting the forgotten iron-rust taste of her mother’s tea, felt, like a burden upon her, her old struggle for freedom. The thought of returning to Eastsea suffocated her.

  Mrs Parsons said: ‘Miss Bird was in here only lunchtime and said: “When Emmy goes, you shouldn’t be here alone, Mrs Parsons; not with your high colour. You must make that Ellie of yours come back”.’

  ‘I’m not coming back. If you try and make me come back I’ll . . . I’ll disappear.’ Ellie looked directly at her mother, longing for this conversation to stop.

  Mrs Parsons slid down in her chair and pushed her hands into her pockets. She sat with her legs planted apart. She would have looked mannish had it not been for the very feminine complaint in her small, blue eyes. Her mouth with its horse-shoe droop seemed compressed by the three inflamed, damp balls of her cheeks and chin. She was not so much angry as consumed by resentment.

  Ellie turned away. She knew her mother was thinking that she had had to work most of her life and now, when her daughters were old enough to support her, when her rewards were due, she was being abandoned. Ellie, beset by guilt and pity, was herself resentful at being blackmailed in this way. She said in her mind: ‘Two more days of it,’ and was suddenly frightened by the possibility of being forced by some accident to return here. Once back, she might never escape again.

  Her mother, as though sensing advantage, pursued it. She said: ‘There’s no need to be in London to do your painting. That girl who was at evening classes with you, Judy What’s-her-name, she’s at home. She’s happy enough. She’s got a job with the gas company. Her mother says she paints in her spare time.’

  ‘She can’t have much spare time.’

  ‘Well, not as much as you’d have if you were helping me here. You’d have an hour or two in the afternoons as well as after supper.’

  Ellie listened restlessly to her mother’s voice growing eager as though its owner really believed in its persuasive powers. In the tone of someone making an offer that could not be refused, Mrs Parsons said: ‘And I’ll let you paint in the drawing-room – so long as you clear your mess up afterwards, of course.’

  ‘It’s no good.’ Ellie softened her rejection of the offer by adding: ‘I can’t work in the drawing-room. It’s too small. It’s dark. It’s cold. I don’t want to clear things up when I’ve finished. I want somewhere that’s my own. I want to be free.’

  ‘Free!’ Mrs Parsons was suddenly roused to scorn and fury. ‘Free to do what, I’d like to know?’

  Ellie blushed. ‘Just free,’ she whispered. She too felt fury, but it was muted by the knowledge she had used her freedom to pursue not art, but life.

  Mrs Parsons now spoke as though she suspected Ellie’s thoughts: ‘People talk, I can tell you. Why, only the other day Miss Bird said to me: “That was a disgraceful thing your Ellie did, going off to London like that! People are talking.” “I know they are,” I said, “but what can I do? Ellie cares nothing for me. I’ve no influence over her”.’

  Mrs Parsons’s face assumed the mask of the martyr, that mask with which she had forced her daughters to obedience when they were children. Seeing it and hating it, Ellie was suddenly certain her mother sought her return not for love of her but from vanity and to satisfy the Ri
pleys, Miss Bird and the rest of the Pratt Hill Baptist congregation. She said bitterly: ‘Tell Miss Bird there are too many old maids in Eastsea as it is.’

  ‘Old maids? What have “old maids” got to do with it?’

  ‘That’s what I’d become if I stayed. I’d never find anyone I wanted here.’

  ‘And who have you found up there?’ Mrs Parsons stared at Ellie with penetrating suspicion. ‘You take care, my lady. You’ll land yourself in trouble.’

  Ellie rose and picked up her case. ‘I’m going upstairs.’ She was unnerved by her mother’s insight and warning, yet the consciousness of danger increased her sense of achievement. It increased her determination to hold to independence at all costs.

  At tea-time Emmy appeared, briefly. She pushed two slices of bread and butter into her mouth, took a gulp of tea, then, humming loudly to herself, set about preparing for her evening out with Joe.

  Mrs Parsons said: ‘Joe. Joe. Joe. That’s all we get now – Joe.’ She grumbled, but she grumbled indulgently; not that it mattered to Emmy, who neither listened nor replied. Unlike Ellie, she was able to cut herself off from her mother’s presence.

  She kept her make-up on a shelf in the kitchen. She curled and combed and patted her hair: she smacked on powder with a heavy puff, licking her forefinger to dampen her eyebrows and lashes, covering her upper lip with a dark lipstick and pressing it down so that the lower was also reddened. She did everything with a dancing movement, listening to nothing and no one, eager to be gone.

  Ellie watched her, not without envy, disconsolate that she was to be left alone again with her mother. Business was slack on Christmas Eve and Mrs Parsons spent most of the evening in the kitchen which was also the family sitting-room. Her talk was a recalling of old grievances: ‘I shall never forget the time when that women said . . .’ or ‘That fellow came in here and had the cheek to . . .’ or ‘That old chap spat on the paintwork and I said . . .’