by Ursula Bloom
‘I think she’s a cat,’ said Jock, which was an unusually definite statement for him to make, for he believed in the kindlier outlook. ‘But we shan’t be troubled with her again. We’ve done the polite, and that is that. Let’s hope that has finished with it.’
‘Yes, let’s,’ agreed Twit, but his voice was not enthusiastic.
IV
Jill was married late that October. Jock got a special licence and they were married one bright morning before the lazy day had drawn itself radiant from the white east. It shone with a gold and gay luminosity through the birch tree. It tinged the sky with its pale golds and pinks and blues. It was a brilliant day. The night before she had a long talk with Twit. They sat over the fire late, an eerie night with the wind whistling round the chimneys, and the light pattering leaves blown rappingly against the panes. She was nervous, a shattered Jill, very much the affrighted wife of Edward Shane, a little thing again, a child in love.
‘It sounds ominous, Twit.’
‘It’s all right.’
‘It would be so terrible if I made another mistake.’
‘You won’t.’
‘You never know a man till you’ve married him, do you? But you like Jock?’
‘He’s all right.’
‘I do hope we’ll be happy.’
‘So do I.’
‘And you’ve got the home still. That was so important. I always told you that I would never upset you. I’ve kept my word, Twit.’
‘Yes.’
The birch tree shook itself angrily without, its scattered leaves assailed the window like tears; they were golden tears flying through the storm-ridden night.
‘There’s been more than the usual bond between us, my dear. We’ve been very faithful to each other. I suppose it ran in our family. Granny Grimshaw was like that, and Great-Granny.’
‘Yes.’
She was staring into the fire reminiscently, as though stepping back into a phantom past. ‘One of these days I’m going to read Mother’s diary right through, all about us from our very earliest days. Only there’s never time.’
‘I thought you’d lost it,’ he said indifferently.
‘No, it is in the bottom drawer of the bureau. One of these days …’ She nodded her head mysteriously. She was looking very serious, in her clinging blue frock, her mouth was grave and her smile held a hint of sadness. ‘There are so many things we are going to do one of these days,’ she added.
With the spring we promise ourselves that we will one day go into the wild wet woods and gather bluebells. But spring passes with never a bluebell gathered. We tell ourselves that this summer we will go to the country and lie on some windblown hill and listen to the bird songs and watch the brave gold glory of gorse and the sailing ships scudding across the line of horizon which is sea. But there is never time. Little conventions and routines set their chains upon us and rob us of the loveliest happenings of all. It has to be. This is life, and there is no escape from it.
They sat silent for a while. There was only the flicker of the fire, the same sound as of candle flame, and the light imperious rapping of leaves scattered on the panes.
‘I do hope I’ll be a good wife to him.’
‘You’d be a good wife to anyone, Jill,’ he said, and he meant it. He admired her in his own way. Admired, but was afraid.
‘In a sense I’m glad there was the affair with Clive. It taught me so much. I see life differently. If there had not been Clive, I would not have dared to marry Jock.’
‘Then it was a good thing.’
‘Yes. Jock’s been splendid about it.’
A faint fear pricked Twit. He said hurriedly, ‘Don’t be a little ass and discuss it with him.’
‘We’ve never mentioned it.’ She sat still, her hands drooping in her lap. The glistening pink nails fascinated him, as he supposed they fascinated Jock. At last she rose. ‘I suppose I had better go to bed.’
‘Yes, you’ll be tired.’
‘It’s a long way by road from here to Bournemouth.’
‘I can’t think why you’re going to Bournemouth,’ he said. ‘Paris would have been much nicer.’
‘Not for a honeymoon. Paris is bright and effervescent. The very young would love it. It glitters. But I want the pines and the quiet, and being alone with Jock.’
‘I see.’
She kissed him. Jill, who so seldom kissed him, but now she did it shyly, as one a little afraid. It seemed as though she was bridging some chasm. Then she went upstairs to bed, and he had an idea that she was crying.
The next morning Jill was married to Jock.
V
That afternoon, when Jill had departed to Bournemouth, Twit felt strangely mopey. He went to the office. Old Stillmer had one of his bad attacks of lumbago, and was not available. Arthur Simpson whistled as he leant forward on the high table drawing plans. He noted Twit’s melancholy.
‘The poor devil needs cheering up,’ he told himself, and, feeling magnanimous towards life, he said, ‘Look here, what about coming round to see Mercedes?’
‘Is it a car or a swimming champion?’ demanded Twit wearily.
‘Neither. She’s my little bit. Built for speed too. What about it?’
‘She doesn’t seem much in my line.’
‘She’s a fair clinker. Come round and have a cup of tea with her? It’s just what the doctor ordered.’
Twit shilly-shallied, but he felt so gloomy that he decided on seeing the lady with the queer name. It could make no difference one way or the other, so round he went with Arthur Simpson. Mercedes lived in Chapel Street, which had not a good name. The cynics classified it much as Strada Forni in Valetta, where the light ladies lifted mockingly painted faces for your caresses. Mercedes had a little flat of her own, a bedroom and sitting-room, and no questions asked. All this Arthur confided breezily to Twit as they went down Chapel Street towards Number Twenty-Seven.
Number Twenty-Seven was an unprepossessing abode. It was a tall, shallow house of an uncompromising greyness. It was angular, fitted in between other angular houses. It gave one an idea of primness, of austerity, and of spinster ladies in serviceable skirts and home-knitted jumpers. From the outside it was an altogether spinsterish house. They were admitted by a frowsty landlady into a narrow hall with a grim and peeling wallpaper. They went up straight prim stairs of patterned linoleum, from which the pattern had long since been trodden out by trapesing feet. It was an uninspiring house, and Twit wished that he had not come. It was some long time since clean and honest air had found its way within; it reeked of frowst, of old soiled clothes and hot human bodies. It was impregnated with the odour of fish cooking in some fetid kitchen hidden away in the bowels of the house. Arthur tapped sharply on a door at the top of the stairs and instantly it was opened.
It happened in a flash. This drab, reeking lodging-house, squalid and malodorous, and then the door, and the girl standing there, and the vista beyond. Twit found himself admitted and sitting on a club fender staring owlishly about him.
Like a play, this! The curtain goes up, and behold! Here is something unexpected. The room with its thick grey carpet and its few good pieces of furniture attractively displayed. Cherry cushions and a cherry-shaded lamp, an audacious doll with an impertinent face peering up at him from a divan. Another doll in silk and tinsel, mocking him from the mantelshelf. A Harlequin on the tea-table, splashed in scintillating diamonds, and flashing a lithe brittle sword.
That was it! Harlequinade!
It is always the unexpected when the curtain goes up, it may be revue, or musical comedy, or drama. He had expected a rather drab drama with a prostitute as heroine. Instead it was the old-time Harlequinade, refreshingly new again. As to Mercedes, he watched her greedily. She had short black curls that fell on the nape of her neck, little curls that you wanted to coil round your fingers. Her face was round, a dazzling white, her painted mouth was ripe, like mulberries; he wanted to taste it. She was petite and yet not slim with the modern craze
for attenuation. Mercedes had a warmly full throat, and outpointing breasts glowing in twin roundnesses defined beneath a dark lace frock. She was voluptuous, lovely, and he wanted her. He had forgotten that it was Jill’s wedding day and this was Arthur Simpson’s ‘little bit.’ He had forgotten everything else save that he was a man and she was a woman. She was talking to Arthur and his commonness seemed to grate.
‘I brought my friend along,’ said Arthur; ‘his sister married to-day and he’s a bit off colour, wants cheering up. I thought you’d do it fine.’
‘I’ll try,’ she said, and she looked across at Twit languishingly. Her gaze was penetrating. It held him. She had golden eyes like one of the great cats. They surveyed him tranquilly and unflickering. They seemed to say ‘Look at me. Love with me. Take me. I am yours for the asking.’
‘A wedding’s a mistake,’ she said.
‘That’s what I say.’ Arthur was irrepressible. ‘Freedom and no fetters and all that.’
‘I think marriage a good idea,’ said Twit.
‘Yes. He’s in the running for old Ethel Stillmer. Fancy that!’
‘You must be a knave or a fool,’ said Mercedes, and she still looked at him in that same strangely perceptive way. She still asked him with her eyes. She still admitted that she was his for the asking.
‘Ethel of all people!’ jeered Arthur, ‘forty or more, and flannel underwear. A woman like Ethel would be safe in Utah.’
They laughed then. Uncomfortably, Twit joined in. He did not know that he cared for this too personal conversation, but he did care for Mercedes.
‘Still, you aren’t going to be so silly,’ declared Mercedes; ‘an old woman isn’t worth it. You come and see me. I’ll change your ideas.’
‘Put a little life into him,’ urged Arthur.
‘Pep.’
‘Rather!’
She went to the side and stood there fingering glasses and a decanter. Her round, even breasts rose and fell. He watched them furtively. He could not help it, but they compelled him.
‘What about a drink?’ she asked. ‘I shake a pretty fair cocktail. Or there’s whisky.’
‘A cocktail,’ said Arthur, and winked at Twit. Arthur had assumed an air of proprietorship that was maddening. Arthur was adopting the role of the bright boy about town, who had taken his friend’s hand and was leading him down the broad path to damnation. The friend being, of course, a simple lout. Twit might be a simple lout, but he did not want Arthur Simpson to tell him so. He felt he was glowering. He took the proffered glass from Mercedes, and sipped at it. It was like fire. The liquid seared its way down his throat and burnt like vodka within him. It savaged his vitals. He felt it curiously searing and leaping about him, running through his veins as a prairie fire runs along the grass.
‘I told you she knew what was what,’ said Arthur exultingly; ‘have another?’
He wanted to refuse but he could not. It was at the fifth that he jibbed. By the fifth Twit was a strong man. The liquid had fused a new courage into his soul. He did not care now what happened. The cocktails had inflamed his imagination as Mercedes had inflamed his desire. The Harlequin had brandished his glittering sword. That queerly white triangular face, cut short by the vividly black mask, it danced before his excited vision. He did not care what happened next in the urgent compelling fantasy of Harlequinade. Then he saw that Mercedes was making signs to him.
‘Come and help me shake a cocktail,’ she called.
Arthur had picked up the ukelele that lay on a cherry cushion beside the fire. He was strumming ‘Valencia.’ Mad, crashing, devilish tune! Over at the side Mercedes shook the cocktail with Twit, her eyes held his with their tranquil unflickering command. She said in a low voice, ‘Go now, I’ll get rid of him. Then come back.’ There was perfume about her, sandalwood and cedar, the warm tender fragrance of a garden in Kashmir. The hot subtle perfume of the East. It was heady. That also fused his being. Her golden eyes and the intoxicating scent of incense and sun-baked tulip trees and desert roses …
‘All right.’
Across the shaker his eyes held hers. He saw the hard brilliant light in their goldness and the one message striking in upon his physical desire.
‘I’ll come back,’ he promised in a low voice, ‘and you will be good to me?’
‘I’m never stingy when I like a chap, and I like you.’
‘Good,’ said Twit.
From the sofa came the twanging of Arthur Simpson as he picked at the strings in his boisterous, discordant tune.
VI
The street was autumnal. Grey fog twined faintly about the place. It was yellowish where it met the smoke and faded into wisps of tulle about the old trees in the square. Twit dug his hands deeply into the pockets of his coat and walked round and round in an effort to keep himself warm. Here it was squalid and dreary, just as his life had been, a dull routine, unpunctuated by any of the bright piercings of romance. There had once before been a glamorous interlude in Strada Forni with Rosie. It had been a snatching at the frill of the frock of gay Fortune as she passed derisively by. This time she should not pass him by. He would not remain shut out in the gloom and the darkness and the foggy damp chill of night. Inside that room at the head of the frowsty stairs he saw the attractive burnish of all that he had missed. Mercedes made him feel as he had never felt before, and he wanted to go on feeling like that. He saw the melancholy policeman on his beat cast a second glance at him, then pass on his way. He saw the postman come on his bicycle, a waterproof cape arranged like a black shiny tent about him. He dismounted, opened the box and took out the letters, slamming the little door to with a clank and turning the grating key in the lock. Then he mounted and rode off again.
The thin rain was penetrating through the fog. The grey old houses looked greyer than ever, the leafless trees more derelict. A young man came round the corner. He was a young man in a merry condition. The coat collar was hunched about his ears and he was singing. He was singing bold scraps of that most devilish ‘Valencia.’ It was Arthur Simpson! Twit drew himself into a dark doorway and let Arthur pass. He went stumping across the square in the rain, singing as he went, and hardly remembering the words of the song.
Very loudly, ‘Valen-ci-a,’ then, ‘Pom-te-pom-te-pom-te-pom-te-pom-te-pom-te-pom tiddly iddly, pom POM. Valen-ci-a …’ on into the distance.
A faint grin twisted Twit’s mouth. He came out of his hiding place and walked briskly in the opposite direction. He tapped for a second time at the forbidding door of the house that reminded him (quite wrongly) of a spinster. He was admitted by the same sour landlady. The atmosphere was just as before, save a little stronger, for ‘me ’usband had come ’ome and fancied a bloater.’ He went upstairs.
‘You know your way?’ nodded the landlady.
Yes, he knew his way.
He tapped at the door. Her door. He saw it flung wide. The warm cherry light was magnetic. He trod across the precious threshold as in fantasy he had trodden the threshold of his dream-castle a hundred times. He heard the door close behind him, and saw her standing there, pulsing, virile, imperatively alive.
‘Well,’ she demanded, ‘aren’t you going to kiss me? Aren’t you going to take me in your arms? What do you think you’re doing?’
He put his arms about her, limply at first, as one afraid of touching what is merely ethereal. He drew her to him gently and then hungrily. The man in Twit for once rose predominantly. It choked the weakness within him, it silenced qualms, it demanded food and was fed. In that moment when he crushed Mercedes to his heart he was himself. He was a man coming into his own at last.
‘Carry me to the fire,’ she insisted.
He lifted her up. How light she was! How she clung and cuddled her face into his neck! It might be the cocktails, it might be the sheer worship of the woman, he could not tell, but it was heady stuff and his world was swinging.
They sat on the divan.
‘Tell me about yourself?’ she urged.
‘There’s n
othing to tell.’
‘But there must be. You’re not like Arthur, you’re different. What’s your name?’
‘Twit.’
‘That’s a funny name,’ and she laughed. They were little light cascades of laughter, like a fountain-plume fluttering to the bowl below.
‘You shan’t laugh at my name,’ he said fiercely. And the fierceness was a new part of him. It was a delicious part.
‘If I wish to I will,’ and she laughed again.
He silenced her with kisses. They were hot shameful kisses that he did not recognise as his own, but they silenced her. After a long while she said:
‘Do tell me?’
‘There’s little to tell.’
‘You’re married?’
‘Heavens, no!’
‘Ethel Stillmer attracts you?’
‘Of course not. Why, she’s old and silly.’ It was himself speaking, the bright youth of Twit flashing to the surface. It was leaping up in response to the revolutionary sword of Harlequin.
‘That’s right. I’m young. You like me?’
‘I love you.’
‘Do you really? I can love too. I took a fancy to you the moment you came in here, and we’re going to be a lot to each other.’
He leant towards her, his body bending over hers in urgent demand. ‘I want to be everything to you.’
‘You shall be.’ She caught his face down to hers, fitting his hands on her throat so that they touched the dark tendrils of curls which had enchanted him earlier in the evening. ‘You’re going to be everything to me?’
‘Mercedes, I love you.’
‘Go on, Twit, go on.’
‘I want you. Words don’t explain. I’m such a fool at expressing myself.’
‘No need,’ she said and laughed, ‘we have each other. We are each other’s. Kiss me properly. None of your Ethelish pecks, put your heart into it, Twit.’
As his face, grown white and tense, stooped to hers and his hot lips met hers, crimson painted, he saw for an instant a phantom sweep in between them. It was the white triangular face of Harlequin, masked and expressionless. Yet it seemed that the bloodless lips sneered cynically.