She looked away. A bubble of tension seemed to develop and explode between them. He watched me from the other side of the room. I thought once or twice we looked at each other, but he was too busy, caught up in his own world, to come near: sleek, handsome-looking in his wedding-clothes, being an usher, being the son of the house, laughing with a glass of champagne in his hand, surrounded by friends, by relations … And Nicola was there too, in an enormous white hat. I was still in the chrysalis; engaged unimpressively, without a Times announcement, to Ivor, and my clothes were wrong: a subsidiary guest, doing crowd work on the outskirts, feeling inferior, up from the country.
“I follow her career in the Tatler,” she said. She smiled, thinking how often the face, the figure, almost freakishly individual, had popped up on the page in Etty’s sitting-room, sharply arresting the attention among all the other inheritors of renown: the co-lovelies, co-dancers, racers, charity performers, popular producers of posh children: Lady Britton at Newmarket, at Ascot, at the point to point, at the newest night-club, the smartest cocktail bar, the first night of ballet, opera; stepping ashore at Cowes, basking on the Lido, sitting behind the butts, wheeling her very own pram in the Park, entertaining a week-end party at her country home; Lady Britton with her dogs, her pet monkey, her Siamese cat, her husband …
“Yes,” he said, as if with a shrug, half-amused, half-cynical, “she does seem to be something of a public figure.”
One never saw him or Nicola in the gossip columns. Some people seem to lose their news value with marriage, some to acquire it. Nicola, that once sensation, appeared to have faded out. What is the clue to this?
“She’s a restless creature,” he said. He drank some coffee and looked uncertainly out of the window.
“Is she happy?”
“Happy? Oh, well …” He raised his eyebrows, and made a faint grimace, as if the question were pointless or beyond him altogether. “She seems all right. She was always determined to enjoy life, wasn’t she?”
“Yes, she was.”
“So I suppose she does. Or doesn’t it follow? …” He laughed slightly. “But to tell you the truth I haven’t looked into it very closely. Brothers don’t generally know much about their sisters, do they?”
“I suppose you don’t feel romantic about her,” she said, smiling. “I always did. In fact, the way we felt about the whole lot of you! … You were fairly drenched in glamour. Especially you.”
“Me? Good God!” He burst into such a shout of laughter that the other occupants of the car peered round their partitions to look at him. “You’re pulling my leg.”
“No, I assure you. You floated in a rosy veil. Marigold was always feeding us up with accounts of you, and everything you did sounded so superior and exciting. You didn’t seem real at all—just a beautiful dream. Of course it was a very long time ago. One gets over these things.” She smiled, meeting the look in his eye—the kindled interest, the light expectation of flirtation. I can do this, I can be this amusing person till Tulverton; because after that we shan’t meet again. The shutter will snap down between our worlds once more … He’s wondering about me … A person with thoughts you don’t dream of, going into the country I shan’t tell you why …
“Well,” he said, sitting back. “I’ve done a number of things off and on over which I prefer to draw a veil—but I swear I’ve never floated about in a rosy one.”
“How do you know what you’ve done? It’s all in the mind of the beholder—We don’t know what we look like. We’re not just ourselves—we’re just a tiny nut of self, and the rest a complicated mass of unknown quantities—according to who’s looking at us. A person might be wearing somebody else’s hated aunt’s Sunday black taffeta, or look like a pink blancmange that once made somebody else sick—without knowing it … Or—oh, endless possibilities.”
“I see,” he said seriously, looking first at her, then down at himself. “It hadn’t occurred to me. Even a pair of brown plus fours … Could they be so unstable?”
“Oh, yes. How do you know how they might look to Lucy, for instance? … Once I had a simple ordinary frock, not very nice, with rows of pearl buttons on it—and someone I knew turned pale when he saw it and rushed trembling away. I had to change. But I can’t just have been wearing a frock with pearl buttons, can I?”
“Good God! Did he explain?”
“No. He didn’t know why. He thought it was the buttons, but he wasn’t sure. He went to a psycho-analyst but he never discovered.”
“What a frightfully sensitive chap he must have been!”
“Yes, he was.”
“Are all your friends interesting like that?” He leaned forward over the table, his eyes teasing her in a way she remembered. “I do wish I knew the people you knew. My life’s terribly humdrum.”
“Is it? That’s hard to believe. What is your life?”
“Oh—just a City man. I left the army, you know. Three years ago.”
She suggested rather nervously:
“And—you’re married?”
“Yes, married into the bargain. Three years.”
“I saw about it in the papers.”
“Married man, City man. What could be more humdrum?”
“Well, it depends—”
“I daresay …”
She glanced at him. He was looking out of the window. The warm, trivial, provocative play of his interest over her had been suddenly withdrawn. A hint of moodiness about him, a flatness in his voice struck an echo; and in a flash she remembered the sculpturing moonlight, their voices dropping out on to the dark, answering each other in a dream. “I’ve seen you dancing with somebody very beautiful.” His flat reply: “Oh, yes, isn’t she?” “I dare say she’s as stupid as an owl,” he said moodily. These things of course he wouldn’t remember, but I do. They had retained their meaningless meaning; were frozen unalterably in their own element, like flowers in ice. She came down the stairs in a white dress and held up her hand to signal to him; whereupon he left me and they met far away from me, the other side of the hall. Even then there had seemed a confusion in the images—a feeling of seeing more than was there to see: the shadow of the shape of things to come. Or was that nonsense? But he had married Nicola Maude: just as I knew then he would.
His face was turned towards her again now, in rather a tentative way, as if he might be going to ask: “You’re married too, aren’t you?” or some such question; which to prevent she said quickly:
“Don’t you like being in the City?”
He answered in the conventional tone of mild disparagement:
“Oh—it’s not so bad. It’s boring sometimes, but other times it’s not such a bad game. Anyway, it’s the only way that presented itself of turning a necessary penny. And now that my outstanding abilities have raised me to the position of partner I give myself an occasional day off—which helps to relieve the tedium. To-day, for instance.”
“I suppose you’re going to Meldon?”
“Yes, going to murder a few pheasants. I meant to go down last night, but it was too thick. The woods ought to be looking good … You going home, too?”
“Yes …Yes, I’m going home. Just for a few days.”
“D’you often come down?”
“No—not very often really. No, I don’t.” She stopped, feeling stubborn, choked by the usual struggle of conflicting impulses: to explain, to say nothing; to trust, to be suspicious; lightly to satisfy natural curiosity; to defy it with furious scorn and silence; to let nobody come too near me …
There was a flat, weighted silence. He offered her a cigarette out of his smart gold case, struck a match for her. She watched his hand as he lit his own. The fingers were long and nervous; a ring with a blue engraved stone on the left-hand little finger; a well-shaped hand, not a very strong one. She said:
“Last time we met you told me to read Tristram Shandy.”
�
��And did you?”
“Yes, of course.” She smiled. “I started the very next day. It was clear as yesterday in memory: Kate gone to the Hunt Ball with the Heriots, me reading in bed, holding little brown calf Volume I. with a thrill of emotion, thinking: “I’m not bereft, I’ve something too”: not Tristram Shandy, but a link with the grown-up world, the world of romance—of Rollo. “I was awfully disappointed and puzzled. I’m afraid I gave it up. But last year I tried again—and I enjoyed it a lot.”
“Good!” he said. He seemed pleased and amused. “My favourite idea of heaven is still a place where there’s a new volume every three months.”
“I suppose you know it’s one of the things men try to make one feel inferior about? They say only a man can appreciate it properly. Like old brandy.”
“Do they?” His eyebrow lifted, he had an expression of humorous flirtatious deprecation. “Well, naturally I’d subscribe to that. I mean I couldn’t be left out of a thing like that, could I? All the same, one mustn’t be bigoted. I’d be prepared to say that every rule has an exception: and you may be it.”
“Thank you so much.”
“Not at all. I must have been perspicacious enough to detect it years ago.” After a pause he added, “What a good memory you’ve got.”
She sighed.
“For the old times—yes, I seem to remember everything. When one’s young a little goes such a very long way. It’s like being on a rather empty road with a few signposts simply shouting at you and a few figures looming out at you larger than life. At least, it was like that for me. One has so little and one expects so much.”
He did not reply.
“Were you like that?” she said.
He said slowly:
“More or less, I suppose. I was awfully enthusiastic and foolish, you know, and enjoyed everything like mad … But I don’t know … I’ve always been an idle sort of bloke … drifting along with the stream, knocking up against things. I don’t actually remember my youth frightfully clearly … Just one or two things …
“The way I made bricks out of straw! … It’s staggering to look back on.”
He glanced at her, glanced away again, said finally:
“I think you must have been rather a peculiar young creature. I thought so at the time.”
“What time?”
“The time we talked … Didn’t we?” He hesitated, diffident.
“At a dance we had … when I found you on the terrace … Didn’t I?”
“Oh—do you remember that?”
“I seem to. To the best of my recollection you were a thought depressed: and we talked about life.”
“Oh dear! Yes, we did. I always did if I got half a chance. But how extraordinary!”
“What?”
“You remembering.”
“You don’t, then?”
“Yes. Oh, yes. Awfully well.”
“Well, then, why shouldn’t I?”
Meeting his eyes, she laughed and shook her head. She could think of nothing to say. He stubbed out his cigarette and gave Lucy a pat.
“But what I notice,” she went on, feeling slightly perturbed, disorientated, as if she must re-establish a more impersonal basis, “is that things that have happened more recently aren’t nearly so vivid. It’s all a blur. Houses I’ve lived in—people I’ve been with … There seems a kind of shutter down over a lot of things—although they should be more real. No images come …” The difficulty of remembering Ivor with precision; or that cottage we had …
“It’s age creeping on,” he said. “That’s what it is. I suffer from the same thing myself. Though I shouldn’t have expected you to, yet awhile.”
That’s the way he treated me last time … She noticed a faint touch of grey at the edge of his thick chestnut hair, above the ears, a suspicion of reddening in his ruddy complexion. He must be thirty-five at least, and in the end he would look like his father. She said:
“I suppose it is age. Impressions pile up faster than you can sort them, and everything dims down and levels out. Not to speak of there being a good many things one wants to forget … so one does.”
“Yes, there’s that.” He nodded; and after a moment said seriously: “Do you mind the idea of getting old?”
“Terribly. Do you?”
“Terribly, I’m afraid. Teeth dropping out, wrinkles, fat and slow and pompous. No more feeling enthusiastic and expectant. No more—anything.”
“Yes.” No more making love, did he mean? “And feeling you’ve missed something important when it’s too late.”
He nodded ruefully.
“It’s the principle of the thing I object to. Being stalked down and counted out without a single word to say in the matter.”
“I know. In a trap, from the very start. Born in it, in fact.”
He said with a faint smile:
“I don’t suppose we’re quite the first people to resent it, do you?”
“No. And sometimes I think it may not be as bad as all that—that the worst is now, in the apprehension of it … and actually we’ll just slip into it without a struggle, and accept it quite peacefully …” After all, Dad had done this, and most people who grew old …” We shan’t long for our time over again.”
“Don’t you think so?” He stared out of the window.
“I think it. I don’t feel it. But very occasionally I get a hint—that one day I might be going to feel it. I suddenly see the idea of it … like getting a glimpse of a place a long, long way off. You only see it for a second now and then in one particular weather; but you’re walking towards it and you know it’s where you’re going to get in the end.”
“That’s a better way to look at it.” He still stared out of the window. “I dare say you’re right too. It should be like that. I expect it will … at least, if we’ve had a fair run for our money.” He turned to look at her intently, and said with sudden emphasis: “And that’s up to us, isn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“One’s apt to put the blame on—other people, circumstances: which is ridiculous.”
“And unsatisfactory.”
“You’ve found that too, have you?”
Something about the way he said it startled her vaguely: as if he were insisting on an answer—a true one. What was in his mind? Wasn’t he getting a run for his money? What did he want? He didn’t look the kind of person to be gnawed by dreams and desires beyond his compass … So prosperously handsome, so easy-mannered, so obviously pleasing to women …
“I’m afraid I’m not very grown-up,” he said suddenly.
“Nor am I.”
“I should have said you were.”
“Oh, no!” There was a pause; and she added nervously: “I’ve noticed people with children don’t generally mind so much … about age, I mean. They seem to feel less anxious about time.”
“Do they? I suppose they do,” he said. “I expect it’s a good thing to have children.”
“You haven’t got any?”
“No,” he said. “Have you?”
“No.”
They made it a joke, and laughed … All the same, it was surprising he hadn’t produced an heir. Couldn’t, wouldn’t Nicola? … or what?
“Then,” she said, “there are the pleasures of the intellect. They’re said to be lasting. We must cultivate our intellects.”
“Too late,” he said. “One ought to make at least a beginning in youth, and I omitted to do so. The fact is, I don’t care much about the intellect. I’m afraid the scope of my pleasures is rather limited.”
“Really?”
“Confined in fact entirely to those of the senses.”
“Oh, I see …” She answered his odd comically inquiring look with a lift of the eyebrows. “Well, I suppose they’re all right. Only they’re apt to pall.”
“Oh, are they?”
“I was thinking of cake.” She sighed. “It used to be my passion—especially chocolate, or any kind of large spicy bun. Now, it’s beginning to mean less … much less.”
He leaned back, laughing; the tension dissolved again.
“Hallo,” he said, “the gasworks. We’re nearly there. I’ve never known this journey go so quickly.”
The steward advanced, pencil poised over pad.
“Two, sir?” He smiled, obsequiously arch.
“Yes,” said Rollo.
“No,” she said quickly.
“Please”
He scrawled out the double bill and shortly moved on, gratified by his tip. She laid a shilling in front of Rollo.
“Thank you,” she said.
“Aren’t I allowed to stand you one cup of coffee?”
“Yes, certainly, with pleasure—any time you invite me. But please take this now—for luck.”
“I dislike feminist demonstrations,” he said.
“So do I.” She picked up the shilling and put it in his palm.
He looked at it and said finally:
“Right!” He flipped it in the air, caught it and slipped it into his breast pocket.
“And I’ll hold you to that,” he said.
“What?”
“That cup of coffee.”
The train was slowing into Tulverton. The familiar roofs and chimneys, the clock tower slid by, etherealised in the first soft gold breaking of sunlight. In another few minutes they were alighting on the platform. There stood Benson the chauffeur, brass-buttoned, capped, dignified, greeting him with respectful fatherliness, looking exactly as he used to look twenty years ago fetching Marigold from dancing-class: a kindly man of character. Jovially Rollo hailed him. A porter was already dealing nimbly with the baggage. In the aura of cap-touching recognition and prompt service surrounding him, he appeared as with a spotlight on him, larger than life-size; the other occupants of the platform a drab background to him. Jocelyn would find in the scene a fine text for a sermon of snorting moral indignation; Colin would observe with his best sardonic lip on, and afterwards act it; Anna would detach herself and stroll off to look at the automatic machines … But I with my capacity for meeting everybody half-way stand meekly within his orbit and feel gratified by his attentions.
The Weather in the Streets (The Olivia Curtis Novels) Page 2