The Weather in the Streets (The Olivia Curtis Novels)

by Rosamond Lehmann

  “Listen,” he said, “you can do anything with me. Only say. You choose. You say.” Urgent, insisting almost harshly, throwing the onus on me, like in the beginning.

  “Let’s not think to-night,” I said. “Let’s wait. We may see what to do.” Putting him off, he seemed so wild, so unlike himself. His voice was reaching to my marrow, I must keep my head. I felt such a glorious new burst of confidence I was able to counsel patience, prudence. Thinking: I’ve won! … Not caring much beyond that. “We’ll go to Salzburg first and—then see,” I said.

  “No, don’t let’s go,” he said. “I don’t want to, I don’t want to be bothered with any damned stuff from England.”

  “You said this morning you’d have to get your letters,” I said, gentle and reasonable. “Besides, I rather want mine.” … Feeling we must go back to the world and touch it for luck, if only for an hour, in case some blow was being prepared, had been launched in the world against our unlawful, reprehensible life outside of life … Feeling always Dad might have died, with me lost, ungetatable, condemned for ever … He said no more, he was silent on the drive back to our pension; but at dinner he was the same as ever—more loving if anything that night. No more insistence on reckless schemes. All that was as if it had never been. Next morning we drove in to Salzburg and went to the post office for our letters. The streets were crowded, one saw Tatler-familiar faces there for the Festival, and a good many smart English cars. I had a letter from Jocelyn giving me his new address in the town, one from Kate, one from Mother. All was well. Nothing from Anna. Rollo had a great packet, he didn’t open them then. We didn’t dare stay and have a look round, we got into the car and went out to the Wolfgangsee. After lunch I went to my room to lie down, my head ached, there was thunder in the air. From my window I saw him sitting on the terrace by the lake at the table where we’d had coffee, under a scarlet sun-umbrella, reading his letters. I watched him a long time.

  I must have dozed off. He came in at tea-time, and sat on my bed and took my hand, and said he must go back to England to-morrow. It wasn’t a surprise, I knew it … Some muddles about dates, he said, another partner wanting to start his holiday, he couldn’t feel justified in taking more now, specially after America; besides, he wanted some of September off to shoot in Scotland … We said never mind, it had been perfect, more than anybody could reasonably expect in a lifetime … The best days of our lives, we’d never forget them … I didn’t feel any great pang of misery … So brimful of contentment and satisfiedness, it seemed enough and to spare to keep me going through even a long separation. We considered for a moment whether I should drive back with him, it was very tempting, but he didn’t urge me, and I didn’t want to be back in England yet—Etty’s house closed, Anna away, Kate and her family making too much work for the maids at home. I wanted to see Jocelyn—to have a week or so of a different kind of time while I was about it … We looked out Rollo’s route on maps, I wired to Jocelyn to expect me, we were quite cheerful and serene.

  That night, just before dawn, the thunderstorm broke. I was afraid. I shall always be afraid of thunder. At the first tremendous peal he came in from his bath next door, saying, “Don’t be frightened.” I did love him then. It was what one had always longed for, never expected to have—someone appearing quietly at need, saying that—someone for oneself … The storm went away, the sun came up over the lake behind banks of shimmering splitting mist, the air was fresh and cold. We went to the window and looked out. He turned me to him, holding me by the shoulders, and said: “Remember I love you.”

  Remember I love you …

  I packed, and helped him pack. He made me take some money and come home comfortably, with a sleeper. God, I’m glad I did … The dark smiling waitress brought us a bunch of dahlias and gladioli as a farewell offering. We drove on to Salzburg and left my suitcase at the station; I got out by the fountain of the horses, and said good-bye, and saw the car move on, out of the Platz, and then I was alone in Salzburg. I strolled about a bit and sat in the Mirabelle Gardens, and then I went to Jocelyn’s hotel.

  He was banging away on a typewriter in a cell of a bedroom, with a thick smell of cooking and drains coming up from the court, his clothes all over the bed; and he was pleased to see me. He was leaving that very afternoon to join some friends on the Attersee. We went out by the bus, it seemed to take hours. He sat hugging his typewriter and talking about his plans for starting a new review. I could hardly take it in, I suddenly felt exhausted; and I kept on seeing Rollo rushing away, farther and farther away, over strange roads, alone, my place beside him empty.

  What a contrast, these last ten days. Jocelyn, everything he stands for, the whole colour and temper of his mind—politically indignant and convinced, bigoted, really, so much the reverse of complacent: Europe not England his country, his point of departure in argument and discussion; his rabid class-consciousness, his ill-fitting clothes, just clothes—necessities—unrelated to him inside them, his earnest, midnight-oilish, physically arid look, his unemotional affection for me … What a contrast! … A kind of life I’ve never shared in before; anti-luxurious, a bit antiseptic, a bit humourless … but cheerful, friendly, smoothly regulated. A life of belief—that’s the true difference. Jocelyn and his kind believe in themselves, in their work, in a future they must contribute to. There’s no principle of belief in Colin, Anna and those, nor in Rollo … In Simon it’s different again, an unconscious power, without direction, or this awful moral fervour. It was a frugal life, funds barely eked out, drinks and expeditions carefully communal … No one got on anybody else’s nerves … Johann and Willi, the Austrian friends, so neat and spotless with one change of linen, so easily happy, sensitive, delicate-mannered; so much the antithesis of what is coarse or oafish … Willi three years without work, Johann’s elder brother shot in the Vienna rising … I should think more about such fates and struggles. If I were free I would, perhaps … Willi taught me some German. He’s charming, with his lazy blue eyes and ravishing teeth. Pale Johann played in the evenings on the café piano. Willi’s plump Lisel from the village came boating with us and fell in … The tow-headed child at the villa where we lodged, with his page’s haircut, his white cat, his passion for Jocelyn’s typewriter … Our long swims in that heavy peacock-blue water, the pert, theatrical little steamers, the café on the jetty, the moon on the water … Rollo’s heavenly letter coming, far the nicest he’s ever written, a poignant letter … I read it again and again, almost incredulous. Jocelyn lent me books; I began to think again about writing … Took some notes for my lake story. I should have done more if I hadn’t begun to get worried …

  What are they all doing now, I wonder … Sound asleep beneath their plumeaux … Good-bye, Jocelyn, Willi, Johann … You were good to me, I was happy … till I got worried. Even after that of course; because, of course, there’s no need to worry. Six, seven days late … I’m worried. But it’s happened once before, the first year Ivor and I were married; over a week then, I was beginning to be sure—but it was a false alarm … That was in August too—so I expect it’s the time of year, I’m sure I’ve heard it does happen sometimes; or all that long cold bathing, lake water’s very cold, that might easily account for it … I’m worried. Falling for one, Mrs. Banks calls it. “When I fell for our Doris …” I feel a bit sick. Train-sick, I expect. I’ve never been train-sick in my life. This morning when I got up, suddenly retching as I began to wash … Nerves. Lying down like this I feel fine. Be all right tomorrow. Sleep. Thank God for lying down, a sleeper to myself. Supposing I’m sick when I get up to-morrow … That would clinch it. No, it wouldn’t. A long journey like this often upsets people.

  Switch on the blue light. No, off again—too mournful. The water-bottle rattles. Is the stopper out? The cupboard door unlatched? My hands are dry, I feel the smuts in my nails …

  Queer, how a train journey throws up images, applies some stimulus to memory and desire …

  The sto
ry unrolled from the beginning in a kind of rough sequence; like when a person’s drowning, so they say …

  Ai, what a screech … Into a tunnel, my ears thicken … out again. Nearer home, nearer Rollo. To-morrow, come quick … don’t come … Slowing down now … Through a station, lights on the blind, under it, sharp flashes; rumble and clank; a man’s voice calling out, what does the French voice say? … Cut off … On again, faster now, gathering speed …

  Relax, go with the train’s speed, give to its swaying … Breathe, breathe easily …

  Sleep …

  Part Three

  I

  Driving away from Victoria, she thought: I can let myself in, put cool sheets on the bed, be hidden, sleep for a few hours anyway. Face facts to-morrow, see what to do … Get hold of Rollo. But I don’t want to … I don’t want to see him or think of him. How can this be, in twenty-four hours? Is it a symptom, does it seal my fate? … The female, her body used, made fertile, turning, resentful, in hostile untouchability, from the male, the enemy victorious and malignant … Like cats or bitches … Ugh!

  London in the scorched irritable airless end of day was an extension of the mind’s loathing and oppression. Petrol fumes were nausea; the traffic a fatuous, reluctant, laborious progress towards a pointless destination; the picture-houses, with mock-oriental fronts, proclaiming within a blend of cool darkness and hot passions, were tawdriness, satiety, cynical sham and cheapness. The main thoroughfares looked empty and discouraged. Only in the by-streets, where mews and slum just touch, just unaggressively nudge the more classy residential quarters, groups of children, submerged in the fuller season, had come up and overflown upon the pavements: London’s strident August undergrowth, existing like cactuses in waterless stone; shouting, running, taking communal licks at ice-cream cornets; deprecated by the charitable passer-by, wish-transferred with spade and bucket to the seaside, where it would be better for them to be … But they look tough, cheerful enough, perhaps some Fund is sending them soon, one really should contribute …

  Outside the pub on the corner, a yellow mongrel lay stretched on the stone in the shade, tongue dripping, teased by flies. A couple of urchins in ragged bathing-suits were watering one another out of a watering-can … Oh, to be under a fountain, sprinkled from head to foot with fresh reviving spray; to be dissolved in the crisp break of a cold salt green wave! …

  Lifting heavy weights is a good thing to do. She dragged her suitcase to the second landing. Etty’s bedroom door flew open, and who should appear but Etty, in her dressing-gown.

  “Darling!”

  “Etty! I didn’t expect you’d be here.” She pulled her face together to smile a delighted greeting. “I was just going to creep in for the night and collect a few things and go on home. What are you doing in London?”

  Etty had come back, she explained, for two nights on the same errand: to refurbish her wardrobe before joining Mona and some others on a Mediterranean cruise.

  “My dear, Greece! Isn’t it too marvellous? I shall really see all that. I’ve been most studiously informing myself about the Acropolis and all those temples. They have Zecturers on board, too—I shall come back a perfect blue-stocking.”

  “Etty, it is nice to find you.”

  It was: a comfort … possibly salvation. Etty’d be sure to know of someone, in case … Everything would be all right. Of course. Already the nausea had let up a bit, retreated to manageable distance.

  “Come and sit down and tell me all about it. I was just having a little rest.” She went back and lay down on her bed again, and Olivia sank in the arm-chair, her back to the light. “Did you have a marvellous time? Austria is a divine country, isn’t it? There’s something so adorable about it. You’re marvellously brown. Oh, how I envy you!” She glanced in the mirror at her own white cheeks … which she would perish rather than permit to tan. “Look, over there, darling, there’s some letters for you. I didn’t know where to forward them.”

  Among a mixed lot, one fat one from Anna. Nothing from Rollo … though I told him to write here … I don’t care.

  “Darling, it’s too unfortunate I’m dining out and there isn’t a bite in the house. I never dreamed there was a soul left in London, but Jack rang up this morning, he’s stuck in an office all this month. What can we do? It would be too unkind, wouldn’t it, to desert him at the last minute? Shall I ring up and suggest bringing you too?”

  “God forbid I … No aspersions meant, darling, I’m sure he’s divine.”

  “Well, he’s not actually. He’s quite sweet, but I’m afraid you might be rather bored.”

  “Is he mad about you?”

  The expected formula of reply—familiar since the far days when Etty had dazzled her cousins with a flapper bow of black taffeta, high-heeled patent-leather slippers and corsets—tripped blandly, deprecatingly from her tongue.

  “Well, rather enamoured … He’s not awfully scintillating, poor sweet, but he’s a good friend.” She added, in the new line of tart self-mockery which was growing on her: “And how we superfluous women do value that!”

  Disquieting in Etty, unsuitable … as if nowadays something led her to consider, in secret, with distaste, the passage of time, and with dissatisfaction her own part in it.

  “As a matter of fact, Ett, I think I’ll go to bed. I don’t want any food—except perhaps a biscuit. I’m a bit done in after the journey.”

  “Darling, what a shame. Of course you must be. Those sleepers always finish me.”

  “It’s the heat. It was fearful.”

  “I can imagine! Too ravaging. I can’t tell you what an oven London’s been to-day. I’ll make you a cocktail. Luckily there’s a scrap of gin and grapefruit in the cupboard. I was just about to indulge in a diminutive doleful orgy on my own, just to strengthen me for Jack. Stay where you are.”

  She rolled busily off the bed. Olivia, on the point of saying, out of habit, “Let me …” gave it up, stayed where she was and opened Anna’s thin French envelope. Anna’s handwriting, small, nervous, spidering, half formed, her style, child-like, vivid, ingenuously eccentric, her punctuation, a few capricious commas, made up an obscure yet revealing commentary on her character.

  Darling Olivia (she wrote) here we are in Villefranche now, and I personally never want to leave, although needs must shortly, having spent £100 what with one thing and another. That is the Last of the Profits of Photography and shortly comes the Winter of my total Beggary. It’s gambling that’s chiefly done me in, Simon’s so reckless in every way, running the gamut of sensations and passing money like water. He’s mostly in very good spirits and has collected a lot of remarkable friends. Arthur Menzies for one—do you remember the one his discarded mistress shot at and wounded?—poor man, he’s more or less in hiding in his sumptuous villa, and has more or less persecution mania, which, of course, makes him persona grata to Colin. It was Peter Cunningham who discovered him; he took us all to call, and we won him round at once quite unintentionally by saying we’d come by bus. The result is we have the car sent round daily, in case we need it.

  There are a few monsters with sketching utensils in the hotel we don’t speak to, and one lovely Frenchwoman who looks like a South Sea Islander—I would like to paint her, but of course don’t dare ask and anyway would make a muck of it. Besides, there hasn’t been time to touch a brush. She has a superb two-seater roadster, she and her husband sit in the front in white linen motoring caps with clip-on ear-flaps. We sit in the dicky and drive at terrific speed to Juan-les-Pins, drop husband at the gambling rooms and go and dance rumbas with lovely negroes under the palm trees to lovely negro rumba music.

  Our last evening cost the poor husband 9000 francs, as we rushed from Juan to Cannes and completely forgot about him till 4 a.m. He’d gambled it all away waiting for us—made it during the first part of the evening, put it in his pocket and sat down to wait for us, when we didn’t appear he got
so bored he started to play again and lost the lot. We had a glorious drive back in the dawn, eating hot dogs from an American bar. I wish you could see some of the negresses in beach pyjamas, yachting caps and monocles.

  I’m having a mixed time as regards emotion, but I am determined to go with the wind, bathe, drink and not brood till I get home. That will be soon for Mrs. Cunningham’s turned up and is having an Effect on Peter, though she’s in a different party, living in a fragrant literary ethereal upper-class way with Gil Severn, and not interfering. We met her walking in Cannes the other day with her hot-water bottle in a pink plush cover full of tepid water instead of her bag. She only seemed mildly surprised when we pointed it out, and what’s more, even that didn’t make her in the slightest degree a figure of fun, we all felt just as respectful.

  Cora’s turned up too, and haunts Simon night and day, which he suffers with patience unruffled. However futile my own predicament … (here two lines were barred and cross-barred out in thickest impenetrable black) I will let you know directly I get back. Simon says we can go on having his house for September, so I hope you will come there too. I do hope all is well, I do think of you. Personally I don’t think I could be happy in Austria, I didn’t like it when I went, it seemed awfully thick-skinned and uncivilised visually—no good—but I suppose this is a narrow exacting professional view. I can’t remember any Austrian painters, but I suppose they say look at our music. Love A.

  She folded away the letter, amused and depressed. It wasn’t quite like Anna: so glib, external. She must be in a bad state over Peter … How are we all to make the change-over quietly into winter? To what shall we look forward?

  Etty came back with a glass of yellowish liquid in each hand.

  “I just popped some sheets on your bed while I was about it,” she said. “Then you can cast yourself between them whenever you feel like it.”

  “You are an angel, Ett.”