The Weather in the Streets (The Olivia Curtis Novels)

by Rosamond Lehmann

  “It is.”

  He came to the fireplace where I was standing—standing up straight as always when I’m in a stew—threw his cigarette on the fire—electric fire—treating it like a coal one. He stood beside me, an elbow on the mantelpiece, played with the elephant and the three ivory monkeys and the cloisonné box, fiddling like Marigold. A stranger. It was all heavy, laborious, flinty, it was like having to break stones … wondering: Has he come to unsay it, call it off?

  “Rollo, will you have a drink?” And my voice cold, sharp, smooth. “I’m afraid there isn’t much in the house. There’s some beer … or some gin?”

  “No, thanks awfully. I really won’t just now.”

  I sat down on the stool. “I say, how’s your father?” he said.

  “Much better, thank you. Sitting up in bed and eating more and stronger. I rang up this evening.”

  “Oh, excellent. I’m so glad …”

  Being with Rollo, even thinking about him at that time always made me start worrying about Dad, feeling guilty. I’d had to ring up twice that day. Mother’d been pleased but a bit bracing the second time—an extravagance, unnecessary now.

  “Are you going away this week-end again?” I said.

  “I think I am. Are you?”

  “I’m not quite sure.”

  “Nicola went down to Cornwall last night—to her mother. I may go down and join her—just for the week-end—get a bit of shooting …”

  “Oh, will you?” Hell of a way for two nights, I thought—the expense—but that’s nothing to him … I thought: How devoted-sounding.

  “She’s going to stay a bit,” he said. “I’ll be a grass-widower.”

  “Oh, will you?”

  Suddenly he said: “I came as soon as I could …” Trying to break down something, making an appeal; as if saying: I had to wait till she’d gone, surely you see …

  “Thank you for your letter …” Able to say that now, look at him with a bit of smile unfrozen.

  “Not much of a one, I’m afraid.”

  “It was very nice.” By the last post Monday night, and this was Thursday … three lines in his small, thick writing, uneven and not too legible, running downwards on the page; saying, “Darling, I’ve been so happy all day, you were so sweet to me. How do you feel? I’ll ring up as soon as I can.—R.”

  Read and reread …

  Getting up from my stool to take another cigarette, nervouser and nervouser … He struck a match for me, saying very softly, in a funny, diffident, plaintive voice: “I’ve thought about that evening such a lot.”

  “So’ve I.” Looking at the cigarette, puffing furiously.

  He put his head down suddenly to give me a light, quick kiss on the cheek. No good. What can break this down? How to melt, how to start? … Because here he is, he’s come for what I promised, it’s got to be made to be … standing up side by side in Etty’s crammed room …

  “Darling, are you glad to see me?” Coaxing …

  “Yes, Rollo.”

  “Don’t be frightened,” he said.

  It was all over before now, it could still be nothing, never happen … I don’t know how, there wasn’t one moment, but he made it all come easy and right as he always did, saying: “She won’t be coming in, will she?”

  “Not before midnight, anyway …”

  His head looked round the room quickly, over my head. “Not here,” I said. If it had to be it must be where it was me, not Etty … It must be more serious and important … “Wait. I’ll call.”

  Running upstairs, one flight, past Etty’s bedroom, another flight, my bedroom, my own things. That was better. Bed, books, dressing-table, arm-chair, my picture of people sitting on park chairs under a plane-tree, sun-dappled—a woman with a pram, another with a red sunshade—my picture I bought with Ivor at the London group, with a wedding cheque, and was so excited, that was still all right to live with, though not so good as I’d thought. I turned up the gas-fire and switched on the bedside lamp with the shade Anna did. I thought: He must think everything nice, not tartish, undressing quickly, and my red silk dressing-gown on, tied tightly, it had to be wonderful, not sordid, thinking: This tremendous step, I must tell him, explain … But it was already the space in between where no deciding is, and no emotion … His loud step came up the stairs, he came in quickly as if he knew the room. “I couldn’t stay down there any longer.” Not looking round, but only at me. That’s the thing about him, it always was, from the beginning—his directness—no constraint, awkwardness or head-doubts about what he wants, acting on a kind of smooth, warm impetus, making it all so right and easy … Saying: “Oh, darling, I knew you’d be beautiful.” Delighted … “It’s rather a step,” I tried to say, but already it wasn’t any more.

  Then it was afterwards. He said, whispering:

  “I’m your lover …”

  I thought about it. I had a lover. But nothing seemed changed. It wasn’t disappointing exactly … The word is: unmomentous … Not wonderful—yet … I couldn’t quite look at him, but it was friendly and smiling. His cheek looked coarse-grained in the light from the lamp. I saw the hairs in his nostrils … I was afraid I’d been disappointing for him … Thinking: Aren’t I in love with him after all then? … We hadn’t said love once, either of us … Thinking: It’s happened too quickly, perhaps, this’ll be the end … I thought of Simon, of Anna and the others at the cinema, seeing them so clearly, thinking: What a contrast: a different make of face even, a different race altogether. Where was I between the two? Rollo with Anna would be unimaginable. Simon and I … I love Simon; but that’s different again, never to sleep together, that’s certain … All the same, just then I thought: I love Simon, not Rollo—thinking I’d done something against Simon, somehow … it was mad of course … thinking it was siding with Etty and Mona and people like that, against Anna and her kind of feelings about love, to have Rollo for my lover …

  He said: “Isn’t it nice being all quiet and peaceful afterwards?” He was so kind and gentle.

  “Yes,” I said … thinking how one’s alone again directly afterwards.

  “What time is it?”

  I hadn’t an idea. It might have been half an hour, two hours … He looked at his wrist-watch.

  “Half-past eleven.”

  “I’m so afraid Etty may be back sooner than she said.”

  “Oh, Lord, that wouldn’t do, would it?”

  I said, “I’m hungry.” We laughed. “Let’s go out and have something to eat.” I dressed. He sat on the bed and smoked a cigarette, seeming quite at home. I thought: Has he done this sort of thing before, then?

  “Nice room,” he said. He was taken with the lamp-shade, thinking the horseback-riding ladies lewd and funny. He said he’d like one like it for his dressing-room. He walked about in his way, and smoothed his hair with my brush, stooping to peer into the mirror. It felt so domestic … Being married to Rollo, which would never be … Thinking that was the worst of my marriage; not enough money to have privacy, places of one’s own; Ivor’s clothes and comb and toothbrush mixed up with mine, Ivor lying in bed, bored, watching me dress … Rollo and Nicola wouldn’t know what that was like, did they have separate bedrooms or what? … I smoothed out the bedclothes and pillow, which amused him, and tidied everything, opened the window to let out the smell of his cigarettes—to blow it all away. Turn down the fire, switch off the lamp. There! He’s vanished. Hypocrite room, deny it all! At the door he put his arms round me and kissed me—a different kiss from any yet—tender, grateful and protective.

  “Darling,” he said.

  We went downstairs and put out all the lights. Then we went out into the empty street, into the car, and we drove away.

  Rules’s was rather empty that night. There were a few theatre people vaguely familiar, and an unaccountable party of stout thick people with indistinct standard faces, wome
n by Derry and Toms with artificial sprays pinned on, and big, black, leather handbags with fierce clasps and handles; men with thinning, sleeked hair, stiff collars, face and neck in one; all with false teeth; all silent or speaking in undertones. No one we knew. We went through into the farther part and got the corner table, and sat on the red plush side by side. Opposite us were two young men, blonds, smoothing their hair and saying rather elaborately: “The point is …” They didn’t take much notice of us. When they left, with a toss of their heads, settling their ties, we were alone behind the partition and we held hands. All the junk round us, the prints, the marble busts, oil-paintings, the negress with the lamp, the plush, the rather murky yellow light, the general stuffiness—all this made an atmosphere of a sort of sensuality and romantic titillation—the kind that lurks and lingers in curiosity shops and old-fashioned music-halls; the harsh, dark, intimate exhalation of hundreds of people’s indoor objects and sensations, unaired, choked up pell-mell for years with no outlet … It was just right then …

  We ordered sausages, and Rollo a lager and I a big cup of coffee. He felt in his breast pocket and took out a coin and showed it me on his palm. “I told you I’d hold you to it,” he said.

  “To what?”

  “This cup of coffee.”

  “Is that my shilling?”

  “It is.”

  “D’you mean to say you really kept it?”

  “I did.”

  “We didn’t imagine this sort of cup of coffee, did we?”

  “I did,” he said. “I’ve got lots of imagination” Thinking to himself then: I will too? … flipping, pocketing my shilling—planning­ the joke? …

  “You’re very business-like,” I said. “Do you always get on so swimmingly?”

  “Ah, now don’t,” he said, coaxing, plaintive. “Don’t say things like that, will you, darling? I’m the luckiest man in the world. You don’t know how proud I feel. You don’t know what you’ve done for me. I’m so grateful and so proud …” We held hands and smiled into each other’s eyes; it was all tender, relaxed now, drowsy and smiling, the last of the bars fixed so stiff against him gone, and all of me acceptance, pleasure, like floating in warm lit water.

  He said, “My God, I was nervous when I walked into your house to-night.”

  “You concealed it,” I said.

  He said, “You were like a statue. I thought I’d never be able to bring you to life.”

  “I was afraid you wouldn’t too,” I said. “But you made it all right for me.”

  He said, “You feel all right about it now, don’t you, my sweet?” His voice has a particular way with endearments—irresistible.

  “It was wonderful” I said; I seemed to realise suddenly … wishing we were back now in the room, and it could all be again and me different, more welcoming … I did wish it.

  We went on talking softly, saying it had to happen, didn’t it? We were always to have this kind of meeting … At least I said so, he agreed. We could have sat on all night, but we didn’t stay so very long. It was just as easy to part … He was going down to Cornwall to Nicola next morning, but that didn’t matter at all; just then it didn’t seem particularly important to arrange for our next meeting; everything would glide on without our worrying and be all right … It’s strange how incurious, unpossessive we both were then. It might have finished that night. It might have been enough … or couldn’t it have been, really? …

  We dropped the shilling into the vase of scratchy, dry chrysanthemums on the table, so that we’d never know what happened to it next. I went home in a taxi by myself. I didn’t want the car announcing me sensationally in the tiny street, in case of running into Etty … Darling, whose plutocratic auto? … We waved good-bye through the taxi window, and I kissed my hand to him on the pavement looking at me, and drove off. I was home before Etty after all. I was glad, it took away the last bit of fear of her noticing something different in the house …

  He used to say: “I don’t believe you’d ever make a scene.” He said that often in that time. “You’re the only woman who doesn’t go on about things. You leave people alone. It’s so refreshing …” “But of course,” I’d say. “That’s not odd, is it? Unusual?” “You don’t know how odd it is,” he’d say, wrinkling his forehead … But what have I got to go on about? I used to think then. I’ve got everything … He’s my lover … It was enough. Enough belongs to me … Perhaps not possessive like some women, I’d think, smug. Congratulating myself, saying: “I don’t think I’ve ever been very jealous. I suppose it’s not my line.” … The time I said that he shook me, saying: “I’d like to make you then” … and making love, we played a game of jealousy, saying things to provoke and tantalise, and in the game I was pierced for a moment as if truly pierced with jealous rage. I saw what it was like … but only till it was afterwards, and then it all slipped away among the words and feelings of that plane, so disconnected from the everyday ones, one hardly can imagine them. I only thought it had been exciting … He was always giving me to understand he was a jealous person. “My God yes!” he said; and I thought, Nicola?—and I couldn’t ask. In that time Nicola was hardly mentioned. We kept his life apart from me separate, we suppressed it; or it didn’t seem to matter. Yet often she was why he couldn’t meet me, or had to get home early … I was incurious—or I made myself so—or I thought I did … “Now I’ve got you,” he’d say, “nothing else matters—all the things I couldn’t see how to cope with …” Always very vague, but I felt he’d been sad or dissatisfied for a long time in his private life and I wanted to comfort him without asking too much … It was enough he put his head down on my breast … I wonder how long that time lasted … Perhaps not long at all … a few weeks perhaps …

  It was understood when she was in London it was difficult to meet, but that winter she was away a lot. She went to Germany to see a doctor, or else she went down to her mother. I got a picture of someone perfectly helpless, with a maid to do everything, and every one gentle to her, and trays in bed, and wonderful nightdresses and wraps—the kind in Givan’s window or the Ladies’ Royal Needlework place. I saw her under a white satin quilted bedspread with pink and apricot satin cushions, monogrammed, propping her head, and a blue satin and lace wrap on, being visited by assiduous doctors exuding that restrained pervasive hygienic sex-appeal that is so telling … I put her like that, a wax figure immune in a show case, to account for her, to make her harmless …

  I wouldn’t let him give me clothes, though I longed for new things to wear for him. He wanted to buy me frocks, but I said no. It was partly not liking to dwell on how much I needed them, would like them—he couldn’t bear to feel I was poor and had to work—partly the impossibility of appearing suddenly in new things and everybody wondering, guessing; but also it was pride. I wouldn’t be a kept woman. He seemed surprised about this, but he partly liked it too, saying, “You’re such a frugal little thing.” … Though he was so generous, lavish, he was pleased I didn’t want to spend his money … I thought indignantly: He’s got bills enough, paying for her négligées … But he gave me wonderful stockings, and flowers, and all the books I wanted. I suppose I thought nobody would notice these. I don’t know if anybody did or not … Then of course the ring on my birthday—a square emerald set in platinum, deep, flawless. God knows what it must have cost. I was aghast. I looked and looked at it, and it said Nicola, Marigold, not Olivia. It said nothing about us, just brilliant, unimpeachable, a public ring, saying only with what degree of luxury he could afford to stamp a woman … I didn’t know what to say. He said, “I did so want to give you an emerald, darling, because I love emeralds. Do you?”

  “I do. Oh, I do,” I said.

  “Look,” he said suddenly, “I thought this looked like you. I don’t know why—I had to get it too.”

  He put it in my hand, and it was the ring I wanted, our ring—a ring for the little finger, early Victorian, I think,
a peridot set round with little pearls, in a thin elaborately turned gold setting. Made by hand and special. I loved it at once. “I’ll wear it always,” I said, “and the important one I’ll wear at night alone, or when we dine together at the Ritz—when you want to flaunt me.” I put it away in my jewel-case in the top right-hand drawer of my dressing-table and there it is now. Sometimes I look at it, thinking: that’s an expensive thing. I’m worth something now if I’m ever in a fix … I haven’t even looked at it for weeks now. I suppose it’s still there … My darling little ring, I never take it off. I said to Etty and Anna it belonged to my grandmother, and to Kate and mother, Anna gave it me, it was her grandmother’s.

  The white lacquer and onyx cigarette case with the marcasite mount was his Christmas present. “Love” engraved inside it in his small crooked writing … but it never seems mine in spite of the inscription. I use it when I’m with him or by myself, I don’t think anybody’s noticed it … though Kate’s bound to spot it sooner or later … It’s nice, I must say, to go about with somebody well off for a change. I wonder how rich he is, there seems no limit to what he can spend, yet they’re all supposed to be badly off nowadays. It’s all relative, I suppose … People like him can overdraw and no questions asked.

  No one must ask questions, no one must find out. It dashed me a bit sometimes at first, Rollo being so cautious, always in a stew for fear he’d be seen, recognised; always saying safer not, better not go here, do this or that; not ring up too often at the office … Quite soon I got infected with it … At Christmas when he went away with Nicola he had some cheap yellow office envelopes typed with his name and address, and gave them to me for my letters to him.

  “Did you burn them at once?” I said.

  “Yes, darling,” plaintive … I minded rather … “I did adore them,” he said coaxing. “Such lovely letters …” I’d hoped he’d say, “I meant to burn them, but I couldn’t …”