‘Let’s finish it,’ she said.
‘What?’ He became uneasy again. ‘What?’
She jumped from his knee and went to the telephone. She dialled and asked for Mrs Primrose. The secretary was on the line. Mrs Primrose had just left for a tour of the factory. The telephonist would have to ring round for her.
‘No,’ said Petta. ‘Just give her a message. This is Mrs Quintin Bellot speaking’: she paused and her voice became lachrymose. ‘Please tell Mrs Primrose . . . please break it to her that Mr Quintin Bellot passed away in Berne this morning. Tell her I am flying to Switzerland at once—’ she caught her breath, then mumbled: ‘Thank you. Thank you. I am sure everyone will feel the same.’ She put down the receiver.
Arnold said in bewilderment: ‘But is he dead?’
‘No. That’s just to give a jolt to one of his prize bitches.’ She hugged herself and asked suddenly, in high excitement: ‘Shall I put a notice in The Times?’
‘I don’t think they’d accept it without a death certificate.’
‘I suppose not. Well, Gem Primrose won’t find it easy to check up. Quintin’s secretive about his movements; and there’ll be no reply from this number. Come. Come and see where I’ve had to sleep alone for six months or more.’
This time he rose, grinning. She pushed him ahead of her. Watching, as he went, the expanse of his back and buttocks that broadened down pear-shaped from his drooping shoulders, she knew him a failure, too slow in combat with the world, too sensitive to succeed.
PART THREE
1
On the following Monday morning Bertie was himself again: a self-sufficient Bertie, retreated into the stronghold of his own talent. Ellie had little to do in the studio at this time. Bertie was too absorbed in his own work to keep her occupied. She was content, imagining that any day now Quintin would telephone her. Meanwhile she was creating tiger-lilies, moss roses, carnations, grapes, strawberries, pomegranates, butterflies – all flowing from a silver cornucopia amidst stars of gold.
After a few days Klixon had begun to relent towards the studio. His laugh came in with him from the paintshop. He and Bertie exchanged ‘Primrose’ gossip. Having found that she was useful and showed no improper pride, Klixon also relented towards Ellie. He sometimes even included her in the conversation.
Before the war, in the days when painted furniture was ‘the rage’, Bertie had been a young designer in a Mayfair firm called Kelvin-Frinton and Frost. He liked to talk of those days to Klixon, who listened with an air of concentrated observation, learning, it seemed, everything there was to be learnt about this, as about everything else.
‘There were always twenty artists at Kelvinfrintonfrost, sometimes thirty. A huge studio. And we’d quite wonderful furniture: Regency and Georgian and Om-pere, and even earlier, even Queen Anne, though people didn’t like it much: vanfuls of it bought from the Caledonian Market. For a song, my dear; for a song. The buyer would go to Italy, too, and bring home boat-loads. The stuff we’d strip! Wicked, it was, really! I saw lovely bits of satinwood, wonderful old mahogany, walnut and rosewood – straight into the acid-bath, and then white paint, a few swags and urns, a lick of antiquing, and you’d get any price you liked for it. Not that anything cost much those days. Artists didn’t cost much either. Some of the girls worked for thirty bob a week. And when we had a piece of Om-pere with real marble, we’d paint over the marble and then paint on new marble. No one liked real marble: too Victorian – but they loved my painted marble: we did it in such delish colours: grey, pale blue, salmon-pink.’ He sighed. ‘We did it with a feather.’
On Monday morning, Klixon broke into Bertie’s chatter to say: ‘What do you think?’
His dramatic tone brought Bertie to a stop. Klixon put his arm round Bertie’s shoulder: he flapped a hand to Ellie and, when she approached, put his other arm round her shoulder. Then, holding their heads so that they almost touched his winged moustache, he rolled his eyes and whispered: ‘What do you think?’
‘What? What?’ they questioned. Ellie began to feel unreasonably anxious for her job.
‘The boy-friend is sick unto death.’
‘Who? Not the shareholder?’ Bertie seemed delighted. ‘Not that fellow Quintin?’
‘The same. I happened to be in our lady’s office this morning, making a query, and she said “Half a mo, I’ll ring the paramour’, and who did she get? His wife! The wife was in tears. It seemed the shareholder is like that famous Chinese invalid Mr Wun Lung, and that one not too good. The wife didn’t hold out much hope. As a matter of fact, he’s dying.’
‘No!’
‘Our Mrs P. looked as though someone had dropped a brick on her.’
‘But what shareholder?’ asked Ellie.
‘You don’t know him,’ said Bertie. ‘A fellow called Quintin Bellot whom she used to drag round the factory. Always giving the girls the eye.’
Ellie might have learnt more had Mrs Primrose not come into the paint-shop. Klixon broke away at once. He bent in a businesslike way over his desk. Bertie returned to his work. Only Ellie remained where she had been standing when she heard the news. She was shivering. She had not the sense to push her table out of sight.
For the first time, she received from Mrs Primrose a direct stare. This brought her to her senses. She picked up an ‘antiquing’ brush and brushed over a finished job. The handle of the brush slipped about in the sweat of her palm. She did not hide from Mrs Primrose, but watched her as she moved round the room. This woman knew what had happened to Quintin.
When she came to Ellie’s table, she said: ‘And what is this?’ Her face and voice were expressionless.
‘Oh!’ Bertie looked crossly at the table. ‘That’s just a little piece I’m letting Miss Parsons practise on.’
Mrs Primrose said nothing. She passed round the table and was gone.
‘Why on earth did you leave that there?’ Bertie was angry. ‘You are a silly little fool.’
Klixon asked: ‘What happened to that place during the war?’
‘Kelvinfrintonfrost? It stayed open. I was allowed to stay in the studio. They said I was psychologically unfit. I kept it going, with a couple of kids. In the end there was no furniture, but we did repair jobs for customers. We just named our price. We never closed!’
‘Ah-ha,’ said Klixon. ‘We never closed!’ He shook a finger in the air, rolled up his eyes and started to sing: ‘“Give me that old soft shoe, tra-la, give me that old soft shoe. Ta-ra, ta-ra, ta-ra-rah-ra-rah-ra-ra”.’
Ellie watched him. As soon as he stopped, she said: ‘Is Mr Bellot going to die?’
‘It looks like it.’ Klixon gathered his papers, said ‘Cheerio, chums,’ and left the studio.
Ellie stood out of Bertie’s sight and wondered what she could do. She could ask Miss Senior for the truth of Klixon’s story. The fear it had roused in her destroyed all other fears. She left the studio at once and went to the secretary’s office, but there was no one there. She heard a typist in the next room. She looked in to ask where she could find Miss Senior. ‘She rushed after Mrs P.,’ said the girl. ‘If they’re not in the factory, you’ll find them in the shop.’
Ellie returned to the studio.
That evening, to allay her agitation, she walked to Westminster. At the back of her mind was the thought that when she came to Quintin’s house she might learn something. She imagined a procession of nurses, doctors and specialists passing in and out. Perhaps among them there would be some humble person to whom she could speak. When she reached Quintin’s house, she saw no activity at all. The house might have been empty.
She stood for some time in the evening light on the opposite pavement and gazed at the dark windows of his flat. She tried to imagine him lying ill in his bedroom, but when she pictured the bedroom in her mind, it was empty. She did not know where he was.
Then she went into the park, where people were moving quietly in muted air. The stretches of water beneath the trees reflected the tea-rose pallor of the sky
. The waterfowl floated becalmed where the light struck between tenuous, drooping branches. She could believe in nothing. This beauty had no more substance than an image in poetry: the passers-by were shadows. Only she and her anxiety were real.
She wandered between the crowds until she came to the lake’s end where the windows of Buckingham Palace looked over the bushes. Now the rose of the western sky was a pink rose. Its colour tinged the air, heightening and clouding the green of foliage. The couples beneath the trees merged and emerged, distinguishable only by their movements.
She sat on a seat by the water’s edge. The gnats dodged about her head. The air was full of the muddy, weedy smell of lake water. This was a summer of her life that would not come again: a year of her youth that would not come again.
From somewhere near, a park-keeper blew his whistle. From the distance another whistle answered, a thin and anxious cry.
A keeper passed, holding a dog by the collar. ‘Come along now, Miss,’ he said, ‘I want to get home to my supper.’
She went at once, taking with her a memory of those evenings when she had hurried home to supper. She sniffed at fried sausages, strong tea, grilled kippers, toast . . . She had forgotten to have tea. When these memories passed, there remained in her mouth hunger like the taste of a copper coin. She said: ‘I chose to be different. I’m not sorry for myself.’
The park gates were half-shut when she went through them. The last of the courting couples were leaving.
‘Come along there,’ shouted the keepers.
The couples strolled out. The gates clanged to, clipping the heels of the last to go. A group of ejected boys stood in the road. Ellie quickened her step to pass them.
‘In a hurry, Miss,’ they shouted after her. ‘Going somewhere special?’
She sped away, in a hurry, and going nowhere at all.
2
The next morning Ellie was called to the office of Mr Daze, the chief of staff.
‘What does he want me for?’ Ellie asked Klixon.
Klixon shrugged his shoulders. He looked preoccupied, as though he preferred not to make even a facial comment upon the summons. Ellie was terrified at first, then suddenly she became excited, thinking perhaps Quintin had sent her a message through Daze. This hope, absurd though she knew it to be, made her rush, pink-faced, up the stairs and into Daze’s office. He looked at her sourly.
‘Now, Miss Parsons,’ he said in a quick, businesslike voice. ‘Mrs Primrose wants to put you on to a special job. She thinks you’ll be more use on this than in the studio.’
Ellie did not speak.
‘We’re putting you into J50 by yourself.’
‘Why?’ she asked too sharply, bewildered and agitated that this change was being thrust upon her at this time. She wanted to say: ‘I can’t attend to this now. I must go away and worry by myself,’ but the threat in Daze’s manner kept her silent. He was demanding her whole attention for the new project. He looked annoyed at her question: he might lose his temper and dismiss her out of hand. He repeated loudly, a vulgar tone coming into his voice:
‘Mrs Primrose is putting you on to a special job. You’re to move out of the studio into the small basement room J50.’
‘But must I move out of the studio? Couldn’t I do the work there? I’ve been happy there . . .’
Mr Daze interrupted dryly: ‘I’m afraid this is a job of work, Miss Parsons. You’re earning a living, or you’re supposed to be! It’s not a question of whether you’re happy or not. You’re under orders. You have to go where Mrs Primrose wants you to go.’
Mr Daze was a small man in a pin-stripe suit. He had a small, reddish face from which jutted a beak of a nose too big for his other features. His small mouth and chin were enclosed by anxiety lines. He met Ellie’s distracted eyes, then looked away.
‘Better go straight to J50,’ he said. ‘Mr Crump will bring your things there. He’ll tell you what to do.’
He spoke more gently, but made it clear that Ellie would gain nothing by wasting his time.
J50 was a small room, cellar-cold, windowless, lit by a single bulb. It had been a store-room when Ellie worked in the basement. Now the stores had been moved out: a chair and trestle-table had been moved in. On the table was a heap of pseudo-Italianate writing-cases and cigarette-boxes. They were cheap things, covered in imitation leather. She had never seen anything like them at Primrose’s before.
She knew Mrs Primrose was playing some sort of trick on her. She did not know the purpose of it, but she was afraid. Her instinct was to run to Quintin for protection and reassurance – but he was ill: he was out of reach: he must not be troubled.
Bertie brought her belongings down from the studio. He also brought two cans of white paint and materials for ‘antiquing’. She was to paint, ‘antique’ and varnish the boxes and blotters.
‘But why here?’ she asked. ‘Why in this miserable little room?’
Her apprehension and bewilderment seemed to irritate him. He shrugged his shoulders: ‘She says you’re a new department.’
‘But why? When can I come back to the studio?’
‘My dear child, how do I know? Better ask Mrs P. yourself.’
‘You know I can’t. Where did she get these things?’
‘She picked them up in a sale. They went with some curtains and odds and ends she wanted. She thought they might sell if they were white.’
‘Have you heard anything more about Mr Bellot?’
‘Mr Bellot? No. Why?’
‘I just wondered.’
When Bertie left, Ellie gave him time to return upstairs, then she set out again for Miss Senior’s office.
Miss Senior looked shocked when Ellie entered the office, then relaxed a little, as though realising that only the most extraordinary circumstance could have brought her there.
Ellie was aware of the enormity of her visit and its purpose. She went close to Miss Senior’s desk and held to its edge to hide the shaking of her hands. There was a swelling in her throat. Miss Senior, waiting patiently for Ellie to speak, held up between her thin, knotted fingers the sheet of paper she was about to put into her typewriter.
‘Could you please let me know about Mr Quintin Bellot? Someone told me he’s ill.’
‘Mr Bellot?’ Miss Senior’s narrow, pale, long-nosed face took on a curious look of unbelief and suspicion. She waited for a confirmation of one or the other.
‘He’s a friend of my family.’
‘Oh!’ Miss Senior lowered her eyelids and began rolling the paper into the machine. After a long, reflective pause, she said: ‘I don’t know that I ought to tell you. Why don’t you speak to Mrs P.?’
‘I can’t. Please, Miss Senior, please tell me. He isn’t going to die, is he?’
There was another long pause while Miss Senior fidgeted with the paper, releasing it, straightening it, releasing it again. ‘Well,’ she said slowly, ‘I don’t want to tell you this . . .’
‘What?’
The agony of anxiety in Ellie’s cry caused Miss Senior to look up. For a moment she stared at Ellie coolly, in judgement, displaying the fact that she, Miss Senior, who lived so satisfactorily within her emotional and monetary means, thought Ellie a muddled, silly, hysterical girl.
Ellie was checked as though she had been hit in the face. She looked at Miss Senior and waited.
Miss Senior said in sombre tones: ‘I am afraid he has passed away.’
‘Passed away?’ At first Ellie could not relate these words to the fact of death. ‘Do you mean he is dead?’
‘Yes. He died in Switzerland.’
‘But he can’t be dead. How could he have died in Switzerland? I saw him on Saturday evening. He didn’t tell me he was going to Switzerland.’
Miss Senior kept her face lowered, but her brow grew flushed. She said sternly: ‘It was Mrs Bellot who rang up. His wife. I take it she knew what she was talking about. He went to Switzerland on Saturday evening and died on Sunday.’
Ellie was bewildered
. ‘But he wasn’t ill.’
Miss Senior clicked her tongue impatiently. ‘Mrs Bellot said he had a haemorrhage. That can happen in a minute. If he’s a friend of your family, I don’t see why you can’t ask her about it.’
Ellie stood silently, holding to Miss Senior’s desk and looking at Miss Senior, until Miss Senior said: ‘I’m afraid you’ll have to go. I’m busy.’
‘Yes.’ Ellie turned and tried to find a door on the wrong side of the room.
Miss Senior said: ‘It’s over there.’
‘Oh yes. Thank you.’ Ellie spoke calmly. She found her way outside and went calmly to J50. What she had been told was held obscurely in some pocket of her mind waiting to be sorted out. She knew she was going to suffer, but not yet.
Testing herself, she said deliberately: ‘So he is dead. I shall never see him again.’ She felt nothing.
In a businesslike way she started work on the boxes and blotters. She sorted out her brushes, pitying their outcast look in this wretched room. Something trembled within her. She said: ‘Don’t be a fool.’
When she had removed the varnish from the boxes, she covered them with white undercoating. Cut off from the other employees and unaware of time, she worked right through the luncheon hour. During the afternoon, she said again: ‘Quintin is dead,’ and this time the jolt of her nerves brought her to a standstill. She tried to work again, but she could not hold the brush. She let it fall and her eyes filled with tears. She dropped into a chair, made suddenly incapable by grief. Tears streamed out of her eyes and down her cheeks: she began to sob. Once she had given herself to tears, she could not control them. She buried her face in her arms and sobbed in paroxysms of helpless weeping.
At first she could hear nothing outside herself: then she heard someone pass the door. Afraid that Klixon or Dahlia might come in, she ran through the basement to the cloakroom. There she hoped to cry in peace. It seemed to her there was nothing she could do but cry. For the first time in her life, she knew despair.
Doves of Venus Page 22