Doves of Venus

by Olivia Manning

  Petta, unaccountably disturbed, moved for comfort into the midst of her crowd of friends, among whom she was the beauty, the spoilt and adored one. She was dressed as a late-eighteenth-century marquise: her dress and looks caused people to step aside for her and gaze after her and speak their admiration aloud. After midnight, when people were reeling madly around the floor, a student had climbed up to her box and handed her a rose.

  For thanks, she said: ‘My dear boy, it’s faded.’

  He smiled, saying as he jumped back to the floor: ‘They are all faded, except you.’ As she watched after him, she saw the woman in the green wig breaking in between her two companions, who had been dancing together. She was scolding them, and crying aloud. Petta thought: ‘There, but for the grace of God . . .’ She, who could have asked for nothing that could have added to her life!

  The last time she saw the woman was towards daybreak when the company was falling to pieces in an atmosphere of melancholy squalor. Crowds of people were lying in heaps on the floor: a few couples remained, the partners propping one another up, trudging about as though in delirium. Her party was leaving, yet she looked back, seeking something, and saw what she sought: the woman in the green wig moving alone among the dancers, fluttering her hands and singing to herself in a voice like a wail.

  Now Petta asked herself: ‘What had she to do with me? Why have I never forgotten her?’ A stranger had entered her mind years ago and now had permanent place there. She wondered what had happened to the woman. No doubt she was dead. All she had lacked of the suicide was courage to end herself. But perhaps she was alive, an old woman, a wreck of a human creature.

  Petta caught her breath, her thought checked abruptly as though she had bitten on a nerve. She came to a stop and looked about her. She was standing on an island opposite St George’s Hospital. Her fur coat was heavy with rain: she felt like a wet cat. She had no memory of leaving the park, of negotiating the traffic and reaching this point of safety.

  What was the matter with her? It was as though some dark area of her mind was derelict, peopled by ghouls. If she were not always vigilant to skirt it, she stumbled in and was lost.

  She wondered where she had been going before that excursion into her mental slums. She thought: ‘The important thing is not to be alone.’ With some idea of visiting a bar where she was known, she found a way through the traffic stream and started along Knightsbridge. She shook her coat. The rain had stopped. Passing the lighted windows of shops, she saw glances drawn to her, men fingering their ties at her approach. Their eyes met hers. She smiled into herself. It seemed to her now that somewhere near, just within reach of her hand, there was the solution of her whole life. She began to hurry as though the solution lay in a region just ahead of her: in a moment she must come on it. At times she ran a little as though she were a young girl impelled by the excitement of life. The sense of life about her was a delicious sweetness she could taste with her whole body. In delight at her own existence, she could have flung open her arms and embraced anyone she passed. She looked into her own mind for the face of love and, parting her lips, she said: ‘Quintin’, but at once she looked away. No more Quintin. Suddenly she whispered: ‘Why, Theo!’, greeting her memory of him as she might greet a friend found amidst chaos.

  Of course, she could return to Theo.

  She began running along the kerb, waving and calling at cabs until one drew in beside her. She entered breathlessly, several times telling the driver her destination.

  ‘All right, lady: I know.’ He pulled the glass screen across to silence her.

  She sat on the edge of the seat, restlessly watching the road, scarcely able to bear the delays at traffic lights, corners and pedestrian crossings. Once she called out: ‘I’m in a hurry.’

  ‘Can’t do it any quicker, lady.’

  At last they reached the King’s Road public-house where Theo spent most of his evenings. She paid off the cab and entered the saloon bar. When she saw he was not there, she had the illusion the place was empty. She left at once.

  She was not really perturbed. If he were not there, she knew where he would be. She walked to his house in Upper Cheyne Row, all fears and indecisions gone. As she neared the door she anticipated their meeting with such longing that tears filled her eyes. She knocked impatiently. The ground and first floors were in darkness. He usually worked at the back of the house. No sound came from inside. She knocked louder. When there was no answer, she pressed the bell of the upper maisonnette, determined somehow to get inside and wait for him. No one answered the bell. She put her finger on it and held it down, whispering: ‘Hurry, hurry.’

  Not a sound from inside.

  Her excitement failed. The house stood back from the road, one of a row behind gardens. In the dark, damp garden that smelt of sooty earth she stood shivering, bleakly lost, as though she had been rushed excitedly to a promised appointment only to find nothing. What could she do now? Where go?

  After standing about for some minutes, she searched in her bag for her diary that had a pencil in its spine. When she found it she tore out a page and wrote: ‘Theo darling, why have I heard nothing from you? I must see you again.’

  She heard someone coming from Oakley Street. A woman’s step. Her hands trembled. There was something she had wanted to write, but now she could not remember what it had been. In panic, she scribbled her name and thrust the note into Theo’s letter-box. Someone came in at the gate. A woman’s voice enquired behind her: ‘Looking for Theo?’

  The bland insolence of the tone restored Petta. She turned, smiling, to ask: ‘How ever did you guess?’

  The woman from the upper flat returned smile for smile. ‘Didn’t you know he had been invited to lecture in the States? He left three days ago.’

  ‘Oh!’ Petta was not equal to this information. She had to swallow an impediment in her throat before she could ask: ‘How long will he be away?’

  ‘Several weeks.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  She kept up a show of sprightly unconcern until she gained the cover of Cheyne Row: there she stood still. It seemed to her that in the whole world there was no one who would welcome her, nowhere she could go, nothing she could do. She felt paralysed by lack of cause to live. She had not even cause to move from the spot where she was now. She might have stood there indefinitely had not a cat come up from the basement of a house and pressed itself against her legs. She picked it up; a small, warm, living creature pulsing with pleasure beneath her chin. She thought: ‘I must have a cat of my own.’ She looked into its dark, pointed face and said: ‘I love you.’ The dynamo in the cat’s throat whirred louder. She brushed her chin over its head. Then, suddenly, she dropped it. As she walked towards the river, the cat followed her. She hurried to get away from it.

  Of course she could not have a cat. An animal, any animal, was troublesome. She had no settled home. If she kept a cat in an upstair flat, she would have to have a box of earth for it. The box would have to be emptied and refilled. A cat had to be fed. The house would smell of boiled cod, a most disgusting smell. She would never be free to go away.

  To be free to go, even though she never went, seemed to her now the first need of life. Yes, children and pets were out of the question. They interfered with life.

  ‘I must go away.’

  She began to think of places she knew on the Mediterranean. Her mind became full of the dazzle of sunshine on painted houses, of flowers and the peacock sea. She thought: ‘I’ll go tomorrow. Or the day after’, and then the fancy disintegrated into heat, dust, mosquitoes, flies, the tedium of travel, of finding sympathetic accommodation, and the strangeness of strangers who seemed always critical, antagonistic and dull.

  She had travelled enough. She felt the effort of change beyond her.

  In Cheyne Walk she wandered over to the river. She had some idea of walking to Chelsea Bridge, but the sharp wind tired her. Before she had reached Albert Bridge she came to a stop, scarcely able to move further, so weighted was
she by an oppression of boredom.

  Once she had said to Quintin: ‘I don’t suppose I shall have to live in this world many more times. They could not ask it.’

  ‘Who could not ask it?’ He was amused, yet curious. ‘What are you talking about?’

  She knew he was laughing at her and said: ‘Why trouble to explain? I’m beyond your comprehension.’

  ‘Are you, now?’ He could never hide his contempt for her absurd femininity. ‘Then why didn’t you leave me in peace?’

  ‘I mistook you for someone else.’

  ‘Oh? For whom?’

  ‘I don’t know. Just someone different: someone who would understand me.’

  Someone different! Not that she really wanted someone different: she simply wanted Quintin to want her.

  She crossed the road to a public-house and bought a gin as an excuse for sitting down. She had spent a lot of time in bars with Theo, but she was not a natural drunk. She became sleepy long before she could become merry. She thought enviously of those to whom drink was a refuge. ‘If I could get really drunk,’ she thought, ‘I’d never be sober again.’ From the distance of her sobriety, she saw the crowd about her ridiculous and unreal.

  A man carrying a glass of stout came over to her table: ‘Mind if I sit down?’ He sat down and offered her a cigarette. She took it. He was a strongly-built man in early middle-age, prosperous-looking; a shopkeeper, perhaps, she thought, someone on the up and up. She watched him evaluating her fur coat and rings. He looked down at her shoes, then, lifting his eyes and catching hers, he laughed: ‘Got a Rolls outside?’

  ‘A what?’

  ‘You didn’t walk here?’

  ‘I walked part of the way. I was feeling depressed.’

  ‘Depressed!’

  She knew exactly the effect her frankness and simplicity of manner had on this sort of man. She noted the drop in his assurance: his approbation taking life as though a fog were clearing and he realised that here was something remarkable. When he spoke again, it was with respect: ‘I wouldn’t think you’d any call to be depressed. What is it? What’s the trouble? Could I help you?’

  ‘No. It’s just – life’s too familiar.’

  He was startled, then, deciding she meant only what she said, he agreed: ‘It gets a bit familiar at times, but if you’ve got what it takes, the world’s your oyster – of which, I may say, I’ve had a good few lately.’

  ‘A good few what?’

  ‘Oysters. You shouldn’t let things worry you, you know. Tell yourself, like I do: “We’ll soon be dead.”’

  ‘I often do.’ Indifferent to her effect on the man, she explained herself deliberately as a means of dealing with her own mood: ‘When I have to face myself and know there’s no one to blame but me, and there’s no hope because I cannot change myself, then I understand the purpose of death. It’s reasonable: it’s desirable: it puts an end to failure. I know then we’re not required to suffer for ever.’

  He moved uneasily. His expression forced her to smile. He said in a warning mumble: ‘You’re getting morbid, girlie.’ His respect was waning.

  She burst out laughing. In an instant her mood had turned and now it was as though she had been given control of the world.

  She said: ‘Don’t be frightened,’ not that he looked frightened: he suspected someone was making a fool of him.

  She crossed her legs and looked down at her narrow ankles, her neatly shaped calves. He looked, too, but without satisfaction. He knew they were not for him. He did not speak as she finished her drink.

  ‘Well,’ she said, ‘I must go. Thank you for your company. You have cheered me up.’

  ‘Always glad to oblige,’ he said ungladly.

  Out again on the riverside, she walked until she found a taxi. When she arrived at the flat and was paying the driver, she saw Quintin coming down the steps of Alma’s house. He hurried towards her and said in a wrathful half-whisper:

  ‘Really, Petta! Your behaviour was, as always, impossible. What do you suppose Alma thought?’

  ‘What do I care?’ she tipped the man extravagantly, threw the rest of the change into her bag and ran up the steps. Before she entered the house, she said in her most penetrating tone: ‘I’ve no use for the English middle-classes. They’re so bloody vulgar.’

  Quintin gave Alma’s windows a glance of apparent concern, but he was in no way displeased that she should experience for herself the eccentricities of Petta’s behaviour.

  PART TWO

  1

  Ellie did not tell herself she would soon see Quintin again. Self-deception would not bring him back. Instead, she turned herself from the thought of Quintin, telling herself she might live for half a century more and all that time without him. ‘My life must change. I must find myself friends.’

  That was no easy matter. Her life had broken in half. In one half there was Quintin: in the other, no one at all. First she had to cure herself of the habit of thinking of him as the only companion she needed or wanted. Every time his name came into her mind, she said: ‘He has given you up. Forget him.’ The trouble was, she did not believe that. Whenever the telephone rang, she imagined it was Quintin, to say he must see her again. One thing helped her through the first bleak days: her cold grew worse.

  On Sunday morning she awoke so muffled and hot-eyed, her mental misery could scarcely make itself recognised. Out of doors there was a little pallid sunshine. Sunshine should never be missed. At least she could wear away part of the day’s boredom by walking in the park.

  When she left the house, she found the brightness was hard and cold. There was spite in the wind. All the wonders she passed – the façades of Oakley Street, the houses of Cheyne Walk, the iron swags of Albert Bridge, the river’s sleek and glossy folds pressing between the pylons – all had lost their magnificence. A dust lay on life.

  She took the long walk round by the lake and stood among the Sunday people throwing bread to the water-fowl. Yesterday, she thought, yesterday . . .

  ‘Here,’ she said to a small girl in pink. ‘That’s a bit too big, you know. Let me break it up for you.’

  The little girl seemed to resent this service. She took the broken bread with a fierce look and flung it towards the ducks. ‘Not those, not those,’ she said, kicking up her pink feet at the interloper sparrows.

  ‘Yes, let the sparrows have some,’ said her mother, ‘Here is another piece for the ducks.’ The child took it and threw it with a great effort and it landed at her feet.

  Ellie, watching and smiling, became aware that someone was watching her. She looked round into the face of a man in a wheel-chair who had come so close that one wheel was brushing her skirt.

  He said: ‘Isn’t it a lovely day!’

  She stepped from him as though repelled by a physical force. At once she tried to make amends for her movement. She agreed the day was lovely. She looked up to where the branches rocked stiffly in the wind as though too cold to sway: ‘Almost like spring,’ she said. Then she tried to escape: the chair moved with her. When she looked at its occupant, he was still watching her, smiling up at her face, a thin, middle-aged man with a clever, perky face, not ill-looking. He spoke with a slight Cockney accent: ‘Do you come here often?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I’ve seen you before, you know.’

  She blushed as though she had been accused of lying. As she lowered her face, he bent to look at her. ‘I’ve often noticed your hair,’ he said.

  She did not reply but quickened her step: he kept beside her. ‘Come and have Sunday dinner with me,’ he said.

  She looked at him, surprised, and, meeting his coaxing, confident smile, felt a frisson of pure dislike. ‘It’s impossible.’

  ‘Do come. I live alone, you know. I have a little room off Battersea Road. I do everything for myself. Come and help me.’

  So he could leave the chair! ‘It’s quite impossible—’ she backed from him – ‘I have to meet my fiancé – over there.’ She waved in the direction o
f Cheyne Walk, having in mind a restaurant where, in the evenings, she had seen through the window people dining by candle-light. ‘As a matter of fact, I shall have to hurry. He’ll be waiting for me.’

  ‘What a pity! You looked so nice.’

  She went off, nearly running, afraid he might pursue her, but now the wheel-chair remained still.

  ‘Nice, nice!’ she cried to herself. ‘What good is it looking nice if the only people who want you are horrible young men and men in wheel-chairs?’ She hurried all the way as though she had indeed a fiancé impatiently awaiting her, a fiancé who looked exactly like Quintin. The fantasy almost carried her in through the restaurant door. Steering away in time, she went to a snack bar, where, in the belief that one should feed a cold, she allowed herself soup as well as poached egg on toast.

  * * *

  On Monday morning, in a stupor of headache and fever, she put her coat on over her pyjamas and went downstairs. She imagined if she took some aspirin she would have energy to go to work. She called down into the dark and silent basement, but Mrs Mackie was out.

  Ellie went back to her room and managed to dress: then, with some idea of lying down to recuperate for five minutes, she dropped to her bed and went to sleep again. She awoke at mid-day with her breath burning her lips. The girl who did the rooms had been and gone. Ellie wondered on whom she could call for help. She felt no great sympathy with herself. She knew that those who chose to earn a living in London should do so on the understanding they were never ill. Other people, living alone and working as she did, were so organised to deal with a difficult life, it was unfair to ask assistance from them. Besides, whom could she ask?