‘I don’t think so. I grew up during the war. I didn’t expect much.’
‘So you’ve no cause for complaint?’
‘I’m not complaining.’ Ellie raised her chin a little. ‘I think I’m jolly lucky.’
‘Do you read the newspapers?’
‘Not often. Denis does, at the studio. He says we’re just waiting for it.’
‘For what?’
‘The bomb, of course.’
Tom stared at her a moment, then laughed in his throat. ‘Yes, quite so! The bomb!’
They had come to the end of the shrubbery and, as the trees parted, they could see the wet sky lifting like a canopy to reveal the wet light of the west. As it brightened, the day changed from winter into spring.
Tom, looking about him with a gratified expression, said: ‘Dear me, yes, the bomb! Not much future after that!’ He smiled into himself, but suddenly turned to Ellie and seemed concerned for her: he squeezed her arm again. ‘Surely you don’t worry about atom bombs?’
‘Hydrogen bombs!’ Ellie automatically corrected him. ‘No, I hardly ever give them a thought. Besides, they’re a sort of insurance against getting old and not marrying and having no money and perhaps dying alone of starvation in a basement, the way old people do. I just tell myself: “Don’t worry, we’ll all be dead long before that happens”.’
‘Upon my soul!’ Tom stared at her, astounded. ‘Do you mean to tell me that’s the way young people look at life these days?’
‘Of course not. Only when they stop to think about it – and how often is that?’
‘You’re a frivolous lot.’ Tom spoke severely but smiled as he spoke. ‘Follow my example, my dear. When I was at the ’varsity I did two things: I opened a deposit account and I took out a subscription to The Times.’
Ellie laughed. ‘I read a lot,’ she said, ‘I borrow everything I can get from the library. When I read Defoe or Dickens, I think “Things aren’t so bad now.” If I read the papers, I might think they are worse.’
Tom squeezed her arm. ‘Quite a fresh little mind,’ he said and, moving his hand down her arm, he squeezed her fingers: ‘Cold fingers! Here!’ He stopped and pulled from his pocket a pair of rabbit-lined gloves: ‘Put these on.’
As her hands sunk into the fur, she was touched by his kindness. She thought that a girl might marry for kindness and count herself lucky, but there was not much ardour in the thought.
Taking her arm again, Tom smiled into her face and said: ‘You’ll think I’m a bit quizzy, but – you asked me if I’d ever been in love. You didn’t tell me whether you had.’
Startled, Ellie gave him a guilty look, blushed and said: ‘No.’
‘Young woman, do you see any green in my eye?’
Not understanding the question, Ellie looked into his small, black eyes, saw he was laughing and laughed herself.
He seemed satisfied. As they walked down to the stream, he said: ‘A warm, sympathetic nature like yours cannot help being attracted by the opposite sex, but I am sure you are not the sort of girl to do anything foolish.’
Ellie truthfully replied that she did not think she was.
By the stream, Tom took his arm from Ellie’s and paused to wipe the wind-tears from his eyes. Ellie was glad to be released from him. She deliberately went where Tom would not wish to go – down through the long grass where primroses, each as large as half-a-crown, had reached the air on the end of long, hairy, water-pale stems. Here there were larches. Sheltered and river-fed, they were putting out their first fur of green. She pulled a branch down, the colour flashing with electric brilliance as it brushed her cheek. She breathed in a scent of citron sweetness, so pungent that her eyes filled with tears. She whispered: ‘Quintin.’
Tom called her: ‘You’ll get your shoes soaked.’
Reluctantly, she let the branch go. When she reached Tom she said: ‘The larch smells of spring.’
‘No doubt. Everything smells of spring.’
Perhaps he was annoyed at being left. Contritely, Ellie slipped her arm through his: he smiled. As they turned to walk back to the house, he gazed into her face with an affection that was near tenderness.
Nancy said as they entered through the central french window: ‘Maxine rang. She’s coming here this afternoon.’ Her glance at Ellie said: ‘I told you so.’
Tom was disturbed: he lifted his arm so that Ellie’s hand slipped away. ‘Is she now?’ he said, speaking nervously as though there were a dozen things he must do and he did not know on which to start: ‘I’d better see Mrs Fitton.’
Nancy said: ‘I’ve told Mrs Fitton. She said: “Miss Maxine’s room is always ready”.’
‘Yes. Yes, it is.’ He glanced about him, distracted completely now from his interest in Ellie. Suddenly he began to hurry from the room. ‘I suppose she’ll remember to put a light to Maxie’s fire.’
Nancy, looking after him, nodded significantly: ‘You see!’ she said.
At luncheon Tom looked out from his preoccupation to say: ‘I know you girls are great ones for seeing a picture on Saturday evenings. I thought tonight we might go to the little cinema. How would you like that?’
Nancy asked which film was showing. Fitton was sent to find the local paper. The name of the film meant nothing to them; no one showed enthusiasm. Tom’s question was left unanswered. Indeed, Tom seemed too distracted to remember, when a few minutes had passed, that the subject had been discussed at all. As soon as luncheon was over, he said he would rest in his room. He spoke like a man preparing for a difficult time ahead.
While they drank coffee alone, Nancy said: ‘I’m blest if I’m waiting here to welcome her. We’ll go for a walk and come back late for tea.’
The pall over the sky had thinned: the light fell more richly, giving an illusion of warmth. They walked for a long way, skirting the ploughed, chocolate-coloured fields where the white-flowered blackthorns were singled out from anonymous hedgerows. The sun broke through as the girls returned up the lawn. At the sudden brilliance, the certainty of spring, they started running, laughing to one another, Maxine forgotten until they burst into the drawing-room and found her sitting there with Tom.
She was sitting in the chair where Ellie had sat the night before. She gave Nancy a faint smile of recognition but seemed not to notice that Ellie was with her.
‘So you’re back,’ said Tom with some annoyance. ‘I was about to ring for Fitton to take the tea away.’
‘We went for a long, healthy walk.’
‘Did you! Um. I’ve told you before, Nancy, that I prefer you to stay inside Clopals. I’m responsible for you girls while you are here.’
‘I forgot.’ Nancy spoke without apology. ‘Can I cut this chocolate cake?’
‘It’s there to be cut. Mrs Fitton will bring you fresh tea.’
Tom gave Ellie a look of piqued interest. She realised they had regained his attention by their independent action. He wanted to keep them about him, to possess their interest, to know them dependent. He said to Maxine: ‘You have not met Ellie before?’
When Ellie looked round she found Maxine was observing her. Without smiling or moving, Maxine said: ‘How do you do?’ then lifted her face as though absorbed in thoughts remote from anything about her.
Lolling in her chair, one arm drooping over her head, she looked to Ellie like one of those jointed figures that display clothes. She lolled – but stiffly. Her legs were stretched out, crossed at the ankles as though to show to advantage her expensive shoes. All her clothes looked expensive, glossy, new.
‘Where did you go?’ Tom asked. Nancy described their walk.
When Ellie looked at Maxine again, she saw Maxine’s eyes fixed critically on her hair as though she were seeking some point on which to disparage it. She herself was dark-haired. Her eyes were dark brown, the large, clear eyeballs very white, so that they reminded Ellie of those china eggs used to trick hens.
Ellie had imagined she would find herself outfaced by a vivacious and dominating beauty
. Instead, Maxine was not even much of a beauty. She had a strong, full-bosomed figure, but her features were set in heavy cheeks joined by a heavy chin that gave her face a fleshy look. While the girls ate tea, she lolled there, inert and silent, yet she outfaced them with her silence. They were all changed by her presence; Tom most of all. He no longer gave Ellie warm, admiring glances: no longer implied, by the deference of his manner, that she was a privileged and exceptional guest. Instead he kept his face turned from her.
When, some time after six, Tom was called to the telephone, Maxine, left alone with the girls, looked at Nancy and said: ‘So you two are off to the cinema?’
‘Are we?’ Nancy looked at Ellie and began to rise as though, if Maxine wished it, she would be off to the cinema that very minute.
Ellie kept her seat. She said: ‘I thought we were all going.’
‘Oh!’ Maxine stretched her muscles without moving her position. ‘I get enough of cinemas in town.’
‘We would not want to go without Tom,’ said Ellie. ‘After all, we came here to see him.’
Tom entered the room as she was speaking. Erica was on the telephone, he said: she wished to speak to Maxine.
Maxine began by moving slowly, then suddenly was out of the chair and crossing the room with an alert, swinging walk that seemed the walk of an altogether different person. As the door closed after her, Tom bent towards Ellie and asked: ‘What was that? The cinema? I like to see a picture now and then. Shall we go?’
‘If you come, too.’
‘Very well, then.’
Maxine’s conversation on the telephone took some time. When she returned, Tom said: ‘I think, my dear, we might all go to the cinema.’
‘Oh no!’ Maxine’s brows met darkly over the bridge of her fine, straight nose. She threw herself back in her chair as though too much were being asked of her.
‘If you do not feel up to it, of course . . .’ Tom spoke with a rather cool solicitude that seemed to bring Maxine to her senses.
She sat up, smiling, and said: ‘If you want to go, dear, of course I’ll come.’
It was arranged that they should eat sandwiches, go early to the cinema and return for a late supper. Maxine accepted these arrangements with a bland, bored smile. Ellie, feeling she had scored a point on Nancy’s behalf, began to chatter about Denis Plumley, who had written film scripts for a famous unit in the days before the slump in British films. Denis, she said, lived only to return to script-writing. She described his frequent cry at the studio: ‘How long, O Lord, how long?’ and his crossword puzzle which he tried to solve in under ten minutes, after which successful solution he was bored because he had nothing else to do.
‘And he says terribly witty things,’ said Ellie.
‘Indeed?’ Tom smiled a smile of unbelief. ‘What has he said that has particularly impressed you?’
Maxine closed her eyes, excluded but seeming to wish for nothing else.
‘He’s always saying things that impress me.’ Ellie looked round the room in an attempt to catch her own wonder at Denis’s wit. She breathed at last: ‘You know . . . well, you know T. S. Eliot?’
Tom, restraining himself, nodded gravely.
‘Well, I always thought everyone thought Eliot so frightfully good, no one would dream of criticising him. But Denis criticises him.’
‘Um. And what does he say about Mr Eliot?’
‘He says . . .’ Ellie, remembering what Denis had said, started to laugh: it was some time before she could speak again. ‘Denis went to Eliot’s plays – I’ve only read them, of course, but Denis saw all of them. He was talking about Eliot’s humour, and he said Eliot was like someone up from the country uncertain about tipping, and so does it very punctiliously, very exactly, putting the money down on the table and nodding to the waiter: “That is the tip, you know”, and with Eliot it is: “That is the humour, you know”.’
Tom gave a little shout of surprised laughter: ‘That’s quite good, and true. And true.’
Encouraged, Ellie recalled more of Denis’s remarks that, as she read her way through the public library, were becoming more comprehensible to her. While Ellie talked, Maxine became sunken so deeply into her black silence that Tom could not help but notice it. Aware of his power among the girls, he began to withdraw his attention from Ellie and bestow it upon Maxine. When the sandwiches arrived, he offered the plate first to her.
‘You’re very quiet, my dear.’
‘Am I?’ She spoke as though half-asleep. She stirred lazily, hiding resentment under an air of lethargy. She smiled, but it was an injured smile. Tom frowned down on her as though his affection were, at that moment, being unwillingly dragged towards her: then, suddenly intimate and anxious, he bent over her:
‘How about a little b. and s., eh?’
‘You know I never touch spirits.’
‘Oh! Oh!’
She jerked herself upright and began patting her hair. Her irritation escaped into her voice: ‘Really, Tom! I don’t mind the odd gin, of course, but . . .’
‘Odd! What’s odd about gin?’
She gave him a look of naked exasperation which, almost at once, she covered with a smile.
Tom coaxed her: ‘Just a little one.’ He put his hand on the decanter.
She started ‘Definitely . . .’ then corrected herself as though the word were a bad habit: ‘Certainly not. Bad for the complexion.’
‘A sherry, then. That’s harmless enough.’ He poured her a glass of Amontillado. ‘Ellie here likes very dry sherry,’ he said. ‘She has a most cultivated taste.’ He smiled down on Ellie as though they shared a secret. She returned his smile but looked away, become shy, wary, unwilling to join in this game.
They drove the three miles to the village cinema with Tom beside Partridge and the three girls silent on the back seat. Maxine remained silent until the return journey, when Ellie, feeling in some way responsible for the evening, said: ‘I’m afraid it was a pretty awful film.’
‘I enjoyed it.’ Maxine’s tone reproved Ellie’s ingratitude and discourtesy. She leant forward and put her hand on Tom’s shoulder: ‘Thank you, dear, it was sweet of you to take us.’
Tom patted the hand on his shoulder. He said: ‘I’m glad someone enjoyed the evening.’
He may have meant no more than he said but Ellie felt as though a weight had fallen within her and was dragging at her bowels. She could not overcome the sensation. She could not speak. Tom, not noticing or not caring, did nothing to comfort her.
The film may have wearied him, or perhaps he needed his evening meal. When he entered the house he looked exhausted, withdrawn and old.
This fact, it seemed, gave Maxine her opportunity. Her manner changed. She no longer sulked. Suddenly she was a mature woman, an adult at home in an adult world: and she was willing to talk. When they took their places for supper, her glance round the table affirmed the fact that she would now compensate Tom for the absurdly juvenile conversation Nancy and Ellie had forced upon him.
Her full, over-cultivated voice dominated the company. Sitting upright, one elbow on the table, her bosom outlined by the taut silk of her dress, she disported a regal manner.
Ellie thought: ‘This now is Maxine; a Maxine who gets what she wants.’
She first brought up the subject of some wild land which lay on one side of the Clopals garden. Tom had been approached by a farmer who had offered a good price for it. Maxine advised him to accept. Tom thrust out his lower lip with a certain hauteur, seeming to suspect the farmer of impertinence. What made the man suppose Tom would sell his land? The land, Maxine thought, lay outside the natural contour of the garden. If Tom did not intend to cultivate it, it would be no loss to him.
Nancy, seeing Tom’s reluctance to part with any of his property, tried to join the discussion but soon found she was defending the wrong piece. She retired in confusion and did not speak again.
Maxine, having made her point about the land, next asked if this were not the moment to sell some sh
ares she had bought on Tom’s advice. If she sold now she could pay off her overdraft and have something in hand.
‘No, no.’ Tom spoke with decision. ‘Don’t sell. There’ll be a bonus issue soon and I’ve been tipped off they’ll go higher yet. And don’t worry about the overdraft.’
Nancy turned her head sharply and gave Ellie a look. The look conveyed much to Ellie: it would have conveyed more had she known what an overdraft was.
Maxine said: ‘I’m so sorry, Tom darling, to worry you about so many things when you’re tired, but . . .’ she glanced round as though to say she had been given no previous opportunity to speak, ‘but I have just been offered such a dear little house in Knightsbridge; such a pet of a place. It would be so nice to have a place all one’s own. It’s been an ideal of mine for years.’ She spoke as though there was virtue in aspiring towards such an ideal: she sighed: ‘One gets a little weary of a flat, don’t you agree? Well, I thought if I sold the shares and had something to put down, I could take out a mortgage on the house and pay it off gradually. It would be so worth doing.’
‘Um.’ Tom did not respond at once. After a long pause, he said: ‘That’s flying a trifle high, don’t you know. You’ve got a charming flat. A house is a great responsibility. We’ll have to chew this over.’
Nancy winked at Ellie, yet, despite discouragement, Maxine seemed satisfied. She now let these affairs drop and started praising Mrs Fitton’s chocolate mousse, looking first at Nancy then at Ellie, as though convinced they could not appreciate it without her help.
Ellie went to bed in a low mood. Having observed the grave and informed assurance with which Maxine met Tom on his own ground, she felt young, ignorant and defeated in advance. She was deeply envious of Maxine, who, no more than six or seven years her senior, had the knowledge, confidence and income of a much older generation. She longed to be as grown-up as Maxine: to enter the great world of mortgages and overdrafts.
Doves of Venus Page 15