‘Such as what?’ he asked, in a low tone of direst despondency.
She laughed in a series of excited ripples, attracting the attention of everyone near. ‘Whelks,’ she said. ‘Or fish and chips.’
‘Both pretty expensive these days.’ He turned sideways in his chair and pushed his plate away.
Petta watched him with amusement. ‘The trouble with you, darling, is that you’ve never tried to adjust yourself to whatever comes. In life you can do one of two things – retreat into a private world and admit you’re done for, or face it like a swimmer who cuts through a wave and comes out on the other side ready for whatever he finds there.’
Arnold sat as though he had heard nothing, but after a while he said: ‘It’s not that I can’t adjust myself: I simply don’t want to. I have no use for poverty and middle-age. I don’t like the common man: he bores me. I want things to change, but I’m not such a fool as to think they’re going to.’
‘Well, that’s something.’
‘I envy the young. They expect nothing.’
‘The world will change again before they’re dead.’
‘But they don’t know it.’
‘They soon will.’ She leant towards him, gently smiling, and squeezed his hand: ‘Poor Arnold, you’re an unhappy man.’
‘No, I’m past unhappiness. Nothing can touch me now.’
‘Then you’ve no cause for complaint.’
‘Cause enough. When your unhappiness goes, everything goes with it. Each time you’re wretched and make a recovery, some part of yourself has died. In the end you’ve nothing left but your aches and pains and a tired feeling in your belly, and your brain going on like a machine that’s got into the habit of it.’
She squeezed his hand again, but now she had lost interest in this analysis of his condition. She wanted to talk to someone else. She pulled her fur coat up over her shoulders and said: ‘Come on. Let’s go to the “Rose”.’ She imagined Robert would be there. She looked across the restaurant into a pink looking-glass and saw her face a-glow, as lovely as it had ever been. She would give one look at Robert, then look away and fail to notice him again.
Arnold said wearily: ‘Oh, not the “Rose”. Let’s go back. I feel like an early night.’
She went impatiently ahead: ‘One drink. Come on. I’m sick of this place.’ She danced a little as she moved, turning about on her heel as Arnold paid at the counter: then they passed into the cold street.
‘Almost Christmas,’ Arnold sighed.
‘How do you usually spend Christmas?’
‘In bed.’
‘I did that last year. I . . . I’d been ill. This year, let’s have some fun. Let’s give a party.’
Arnold grunted, neither agreeing nor disagreeing. They walked down the King’s Road to the public-house. Denis Plumley and his friends were sitting near the door. Petta gave a look round but could not see Robert. She put her hand under Denis’s chin, tilted up his face and, gazing into it, said: ‘Darling Denis, let’s get drunk.’
Denis smiled, but looked to Arnold for succour. Arnold said: ‘What is everyone drinking?’
‘I don’t want anything,’ said Petta. ‘I don’t need to drink.’
When Arnold came back he brought her a glass of ginger ale. She had been talking excitedly while he was at the bar, but already her exhilaration was passing. When he and Denis started some arguments about books and films, she settled back into silence. Robert did not arrive. A stupor of boredom came down on her. She began to think about Quintin: of the days of their early acquaintance when she had longed for him and it had seemed he felt no interest in her. Then she had told herself: ‘Bear it: let it pass. The day will come when you will see him and it will mean nothing.’ In the end she had had all she wanted from him, yet the day of indifference had not come.
She felt an almost unendurable intolerance of the voices about her and the flat, tepid liquid she was drinking. It occurred to her that she was the cause of her own failure. When she reached that point, knowing where it would lead, she came to a stop. She sat, trying to think of nothing, feeling herself hedged in by the edgy limits of the minor anxieties of life. When she sighed, Arnold caught her arm.
‘Very well,’ he said. ‘We’ll go.’
‘Go where?’ She shook his hand off irritably. ‘It’s not closing time.’
‘We’re all going. Denis is taking us to a party.’
‘I don’t want to go,’ she grumbled, but did not really care. After all, there was no knowing. She might meet someone. She let herself be led off. She felt sleepy. She stumbled on the kerb. Arnold pulled her up. As they crossed the road, the wind blew her coat open. Fog was coming up from the river. She walked blindly, not knowing why she felt so cold, and grumbled as she went: ‘This world is hell. There’s no possibility of happiness: it’s not intended, of course. It’s either the misery of youth or insufficiency of age. All I can look forward to now is dying.’
‘Nonsense.’ Arnold half-carried her along. ‘You’re too young to die.’
She wrenched her arm from him and said angrily: ‘No one’s too young to die. But who cares? To die young is simply to get away before the bills come in.’
As she swung away from Arnold, she bumped into a little group of people. She shouted: ‘Crowds everywhere. When I was young the world was comfortably filled, now there’s no room to move. It’s all queues and crowds and bad temper and noise.’
Arnold pulled her along, trying to catch up with Denis, who, walking ahead with his friends, clearly wished to disown her. They turned into a doorway beside the Town Hall.
Denis said: ‘The light’s always broken here.’ He led them in darkness along a passage, up stairs, along another passage, to where a door stood open on a lighted room. Arnold, who took the stairs slowly, soothing Petta’s complaints as they went, arrived a long way behind the others. In the doorway she looked round and said aloud: ‘What a place! God save us!’
Arnold led her over to a divan covered with a torn rug and settled her on it. ‘What will you drink?’ he asked.
‘Water.’
‘Have some gin. It will wake you up.’
‘I don’t need waking up. Who’s giving this bloody party?’
‘I’ll find out.’ He moved away to a table where drinks were being distributed. Most of the guests were gathered round it. A standard-lamp and some reading-lamps lit the packed-up easels and drawing-boards. There were several broken-down divans against the walls. The oddments of furniture were scattered round a stove, the heat of which did not reach the point where Petta sat. Between the ranges of the lights there were areas of darkness that might, for all she could see, stretch into infinity.
Of course the party was crowded with young people. A little while ago she had not noticed them because she seemed to be one of them. Now, wherever she looked, there they were, thrusting her out of life, taking possession of what had been hers.
There was an atmosphere of congratulation at the end of the room. Arnold, making no attempt to return to her, was talking to a young man and beginning to laugh. Her sight was not very good. She narrowed her eyes and saw the studio like a park in a fog. She gave it up. She had lost her sense of time. She could not have told whether she had been sprawling there five minutes or half an hour when a young man came in her direction, moving at an angle that permitted him to by-pass her if her appearance proved discouraging.
She stretched out her hand to him, fingers apart as a baby stretches for a rattle. ‘Here,’ she said hoarsely, ‘come and sit here.’
He laughed as though she had made a joke and sat on the edge of the divan.
‘What sort of party is this?’ she asked in the same hoarse, intimate voice.
‘It’s an engagement party.’
‘Do people still get engaged in Chelsea? How “old world”!’
He laughed again, uncertain how to take her, and seemed about to move away. She leant forward and held to his arm, whispering conspiratorially: ‘Show me. Show me th
e engaged girl.’
‘She is behind the table pouring drinks.’
Petta narrowed her eyes again and saw the girl pouring drinks with the lavishness of an amateur: ‘And the man? Ah, that one. I’ve seen him before somewhere. I hope she treats him properly.’
‘I think she will. Can I get you a drink?’
‘Someone is getting me one.’ She held to his arm, preventing him from rising: ‘Don’t go. Tell me about these people.’
He looked as though he did not think there was much to tell: ‘They’re just people who live around here.’
She felt his detachment, noticed his glance move again and again to the door. Perhaps in the past young men had behaved in this way in her company, but she had not noticed it. ‘All right. This is where the strong swimmer cuts through the wave. Be a brave girl. Stick it. Come out on the other side.’ The trouble was, she could not see the justice of her state. She was not old: she was a girl hidden behind a mask. Now that she had realised she was no longer young, she did not know how she should behave. She had become a stranger in her own life.
She thought: ‘He is afraid I’ll make a pass at him.’ Withdrawing all the tendrils of her attraction, she coldly said: ‘You seem to be looking for someone. I must not keep you talking.’
‘As a matter of fact,’ he said, ‘I’m looking out for my wife. Our baby-sitter was late. I came on ahead.’
Arnold brought Petta a glass: ‘It’s only beer,’ he said. ‘That’s all there is.’ She took it without comment. Seeing she had a companion, he went back to the crowd round the table. The young man could have made a get-away, but did not do so. Petta, reassured, rallied him a little nervously, fearing her old power to enchant might turn against her:
‘Why, how respectable you are nowadays, you young people! Marriage and babies before you’ve even started to live.’
‘But isn’t that living? What else is there?’
‘Oh, lots of things. At least, there used to be. Travel, for instance: in my day you could live abroad for next to nothing: you could spend months in the sunshine. Then there were parties that went on for days. And people were amusing; so witty: they didn’t give a damn about anyone or anything. They just did and said what came into their heads. We enjoyed life so much, we weren’t in a hurry to marry. As for having a family . . .’
‘Have you no family?’
‘I had – I have a daughter. It doesn’t mean much. I saw her the other day: she’s a complete stranger. I expect you think you’ll get your rewards when the kids grow up? Believe me, you won’t. There are no rewards.’
‘We weren’t thinking of rewards.’
Petta did not listen to him. She grumbled on irritably: ‘Why is it all so dismal now? What’s happened to life? What’s missing from it? It used to be such fun. It’s true, conditions were different. Money bought things then. Everyone had country cottages: they picked them up for a few pounds. Other people did the work for us – but it wasn’t all that that made life fun. I know you have plenty to worry about – still, why don’t you enjoy yourselves any more? You can’t blame conditions. I’ve had to accept them, and I’ve more to lose than you. My money’s scarcely worth a thing these days. “Come on,” I say to myself, “Life’s still fun . . .”’
The young man listened, bewildered as though he were being accused of a crime he did not know existed. He laughed, shook his head slightly, then seemed to give it up. He protested: ‘We’re quite happy.’
Petta, propped against the wall, sniffed at her glass and said in surprise: ‘Beer!’ At any other time she would not have drunk it, but now she sipped it as she spoke. ‘The human situation,’ she said, ‘sickens me. I don’t want to be an animal. I don’t want to be a machine for breeding, but if I have children, I don’t want to love them simply because a gland is secreting mother love into my system. And when I’m middle-aged – as I am, of course: no need to tell me – I don’t want to feel depressed and defeated because some other gland isn’t doing its job.’
The young man, watching her, seeming to hide whatever he felt beneath a look of laughter, asked: ‘And love?’
She considered the question sombrely, and sombrely answered: ‘That’s a trick, too.’ After a moment, she said: ‘I resent the whole set-up. I want my emotions to be attached to something bigger than biology. I object to the limitations of the human creature. I want to be something different.’
‘What, for instance?’
‘God knows. I don’t. I don’t suppose I shall ever know. I suppose I shall die and come to an end without ever knowing what it is I have wanted to be, but . . .’ she suddenly thumped the divan, ‘I put it on record here and now, that I am dissatisfied with my human state. I ask for more.’ She looked accusingly at the young man for some moments, then pointed angrily at him: ‘But you, you’re satisfied, aren’t you? You’re all cosily settled in your little hole – wife and children cuddled up together. It’s easy for you. You’re young.’
She was holding her glass so that it spilled on to the rug. He steadied it for her, saying as though to a difficult child: ‘Did you think that when you were young?’
She caught her breath, slighted, but he noticed nothing. He said: ‘Perhaps it is easier, being young. I don’t know. I can’t tell till I’m old – but it doesn’t seem so easy.’ As he spoke, some instinct drew his eyes again to the door. At once he put down his empty glass and rose, excusing himself.
She watched him go, not caring. To hell with the young! What a pack of fools they were!
The girl who stood in the doorway was large and pale and round-bosomed – not a beauty: not a beauty as Petta had been at her age. The young husband lifted her hand and pressed his lips into her palm, then they smiled at one another. Sliding his arm round her waist, he led her into the room. They went, not towards Petta, but over to the engaged couple, who, in imitation of their visitors, encircled each other’s waists. The two couples exchanged looks of congratulation and pleasure as though they believed themselves bound safely for ever in content and love.
Petta, swallowing in her throat, drew her glance from their illusioned world: ‘What does it matter? It lasts so short a time.’ She looked about her for distraction and saw an old magazine wedged down between the bed and wall. She drew it out: a thick, glossy American magazine, the cover missing. She opened it at a picture of a serious-faced young man in uniform – the first American killed in Korea. That forgotten war! How old was this periodical, for goodness sake?
An American called Kenneth: and here were his mom, dad, sis, the family dog. The father was a coal miner, not at home on the upper crust of the world where the wars were made. When a reporter asked him why the boy had given his life, the father replied: ‘He was fighting against some sort of government,’ and then: ‘That boy was in here every night by dark. Never caused us a mite of worry.’ And Mom said: ‘He never saw a bad day in his life. Never bothered nobody any time.’
The rest of the article had been washed off. It seemed as though someone had dropped the magazine into the bath. Half the thick, glossy pages were stuck together solid as cement. Petta threw it aside. ‘They all die,’ she thought with morose satisfaction and she looked about her blackly.
Seeing she was alone, Arnold came over, bringing Denis. He said: ‘Why not come and meet some of the others?’
‘Why should I? What are we doing here among the young? They all look so damned pleased with themselves.’
‘Let me get you another drink.’
‘No.’
The engaged couple crossed over to the three on the divan. Denis caught the girl’s hand and said: ‘Ellie darling, you’ve met Arnold Valance. This is Mrs Valance.’
Petta smiled vaguely and made no attempt to correct him. As the girl bent towards Denis, her hair, that had seemed black when in shadow, was seen to be a dark red. Petta found this colour disturbing, though she could not remember why. She watched the girl playing hostess in an earnest, painstaking way, like a child at a dolls’ tea-party.
‘And what will you do when you are married?’ asked Denis.
Simon Lessing, putting his arm protectively round Ellie, said: ‘I’m sending her to the Polytechnic. She must learn to draw. I don’t want any regrets.’
‘Why bother’ said Petta. ‘She’ll be producing babies in no time.’
‘Women have no regrets,’ said Arnold. ‘They’re a lazy lot. They’re only too glad to use someone else’s talents instead of their own.’
The girl smiled, denying nothing. As Denis pulled her closer, questioning her confidentially, Simon returned to the guests round the table.
‘Tell me, darling,’ Denis asked in a half-whisper. ‘Are you living here?’
‘Yes. You see, it’s cheaper and we’ll soon be married. And it’s so wonderful. I’ve always wanted to live in a place like this.’
Denis looked up at the crumbling plaster and down at the bare floor, and said: ‘Delicious, darling! Just like a French film or something.’
Petta watched the girl answering questions, taking no offence, all the time holding the heavy jug of beer, waiting for their glasses to empty. Arnold held his out. As she leant forward, filling the glass with a careful, steady hand, he touched her glistening hair.
‘Like silk,’ he said.
Simon had returned to the crowd round the table. The girl glanced about for him, uncertain whether to leave her present company or not. Denis gave her a little push, dismissing her: ‘There’s a good girl! Go and fill them all up. Let joy be unrestrained.’
She smiled and went.
Petta realised Arnold was drunk. There must be more than beer over at the table. She said: ‘This is a boring party. Let’s go.’
Arnold did not answer, but started one of his tedious literary arguments with Denis. A heavy, uncomfortable sleepiness hung over Petta so that she longed to be away from the place. She shook at Arnold’s arm and said again: ‘Let’s go.’
Doves of Venus Page 30