Whether or not because he managed to swallow, his mother didn’t question him. Nor did she continue, for which he was thankful, in the vein of dramatic reminiscence. Quite apart from the fact that it was too early, Mr Gibson had been trying all his life to shut his ears to just such recitals: the tale of his father’s heroic flight from Moscow (1880) in search of political freedom and wider opportunities in the cheap-fur line, was something he strictly didn’t want to hear. For Harry Gibson was British to the core. He was British-born, and proud of it, and did everything he could think of to make himself a true son of Empire. By a really remarkable feat of will, he couldn’t remember any other surname than Gibson. In 1914, at the age of thirty-two, he volunteered for Kitchener’s Army (they wouldn’t take him until three years later), and it was the greatest satisfaction of his life to have held the King’s Commission. (He’d have given a leg to be decorated, and could probably have summoned up the necessary valour; but Service Corps rarely engage an enemy.) He could even recognise the slight un-Englishness of his relation with his mother: calling her Mater was an attempt to bring it into line. In short, Mr Gibson had all his life devoted himself to becoming a true-blue Britisher—solid, humdrum, unemotional; and succeeded so well, that in middle-age his rejection of a genuinely exotic background took revenge, and he fell for a pseudo-Spanish rose.
“Dolores!” thought Mr Gibson, in silent anguish. “What will become of you, O my Dolores, without your King Hal?”
The human countenance affording but a limited range of expressions, even a mother cannot always read her child’s mind. What old Mrs Gibson saw in Harry’s face was a justified regret that he hadn’t been left a sounder business. She therefore made haste to direct a bright if oblique light upon his immediate prospects.
“When you see Miranda this evening, I shall not come with you, you will just give her my best love. How glad I am you have always liked her!”
Mr Gibson remained silent. The thought of the interview ahead of him, the proposal-in-form, was pure nightmare.
“As she has always liked you,” added Mrs Gibson, “which of course is natural. Such a fine figure of a man my Harry is—not scarecrow! Do you know what we said to each other yesterday, her Aunt Beatrice and I? We said, ‘Why ever didn’t it happen before!’”
Harry Gibson pushed away his plate.
“For goodness’ sake, Mater,” he said heavily, “let you and I at least be frank with each other. Whom else have I to be frank with?”
The old berry-eyes flickered. Mrs Gibson did not look unhappy.
“I agree there have been greater beauties,” she admitted companionably. “But what an education! What piano-playing! You will be able to give musical evenings. How well I remember at your grandfather’s house in Moscow—”
“Please, Mater!”
“Very well, then, forget Moscow! You are quite right, with such a future before you! My dear Harry, you are going to be so happy!”
“I agree that it’s something not to go bankrupt,” said Harry Gibson.
With a sudden incautious gesture Mrs Gibson flung up her hands.
“And I suppose it’s something not to leave our nice flat! I suppose it’s something not to sell my nice furniture, to buy bread! I suppose it’s something your old mother won’t have to go out as a scrub-woman! Aren’t all these somethings too?”
“At last you’re being frank with me,” said Harry Gibson. “And of course you are quite right.”
He got up and went to wash his hands, as he’d always trained himself to do, after any meal, and got his bowler hat and his umbrella, and came back to kiss the mater, before he went off. What pleasure these simple actions had given him year after year! Now he performed them as slowly as possible, not to savour them, but to hold back the day’s events.
2
A mile away in Knightsbridge, Mr Joyce also was leaving for the day’s work. He was a small, spare man, half the bulk of Harry Gibson, and so much shorter than his daughter that she had to stoop to kiss his cheek as Aunt Beatrice pecked at him from the other side. Mr Joyce stood passive between them, as he’d learnt to do, in his good custom-built suit and his neat spring overcoat—Miranda always had him tailored in Savile Row—and waited for her to pat down, as she always did, the neat pearl pin in his neat grey tie.
“What time do you want me back?” asked Mr Joyce.
“Any time you like, Dadda!” said Miranda gaily. “So long as you don’t come into the drawing-room until you’re fetched!”
Mr Joyce nodded intelligently, and with a spry step departed for Bond Street. This spryness was something of a trial to Miranda, who worked hard to make her parent look distinguished; even wearing the best Savile Row suit, once in motion Mr Joyce looked chiefly spry. (Miranda had her eye on Harry Gibson’s apparel also: she meant to tone him first down, then up.) To-day, however, she was in no mood to regard anyone with discontent—not even old Beatrice, despite an overnight quarrel about the housekeeping.
“Auntie Bee, why don’t you make us your special goulash? For dinner?”
“Does Harry like it?” enquired the old woman anxiously.
“Of course he likes it! Make us your mont blanc as well!”
There was nothing old Beatrice enjoyed more than a field-day in the kitchen. She began her preparations at once, while Miranda kept an appointment at the hairdresser’s.
3
The child Martha was just waking up. She had naturally slept late. When at last her appetite roused her, she was pleased to find the little house so still. It gave her a free run of the kitchen, and there were eggs. Breaking three or four into the frying-pan she produced a sort of omelette, unorthodox but satisfying; and finding a pair of kippers set them tails up in a jug of boiling water as a second course. An hour later she felt very comfortable.
It was only then that she remembered saying good-bye to Mr Gibson. She logically presumed him gone for good. His departure didn’t trouble her, however (she could take Mr Gibson or leave him), except in its effect on Dolores: the aura of adult grief, on the verge of which she had stood the previous night, affected the child Martha as the aura of sickness affects an animal. But though the herd may shun the stricken deer, Martha couldn’t altogether shun Miss Diver, and she hoped extremely that Dolores would soon cheer up.
In Martha’s experience, what cheered adult females was tea. (Ma Battleaxe in Brixton had been used to brew a dozen cups a day, so cheerless she and her cronies: Martha remembered them huddled round the pot like a coven of witches—Miss Fish and Mrs Hopkinson and Miss Jones—capping tales of wicked lodgers.) Dolores obviously hadn’t breakfasted; Martha therefore, and it must be admitted chiefly out of self-regardfulness, made a nice cup of tea and carried it upstairs.
The door stood ajar; she padded in—and almost, because the curtains were still pulled, back into pre-dawn. The light had also an odd watery quality; Martha couldn’t help pausing a moment to observe Dolores’ bedroom transformed into a marine landscape. The big double divan loomed like a low rock, still half-awash under the tides of night: beyond, between the windows, the dressing-table rose baroque and pinnacled as the pavilion-end of a pier.—But the tea was cooling; Martha paddled on in, kicking aside a shawl as she might have kicked aside a jelly-fish, and gained the bed-side table as she might have gained a buoy.
Dolores lay very flat—as though drowned. Beneath the coverlet her narrow shape thrust up only two small peaks of feet. Even her head was down flat, the pillow at some point in her sleep having been thrust away. She was in fact sound asleep still; but Martha wasn’t going to waste pains.
“Wake up!” said Martha loudly.
Miss Diver stirred; reached out a groping hand, uttered a little unhappy cry, and slept again. There was nothing for it but to shake her, and Martha had no hesitation in doing so.
“Wake up!” repeated Martha impatiently. “I’ve brought you a nice cup of tea!”
With interest, but without surprise, she saw the cantrip work. Miss Diver opened her eyes a
nd lifted herself a little. (Also, in the same movement, pulled the quilt higher—because she was fully dressed. So paradoxically do the conventions operate.)
“You’ve brought me a cup of tea?” repeated Miss Diver, wonderingly.
“To cheer you up,” explained Martha. “I’m sorry I’ve eaten everything else, but if you’d like some bread and jam I could get you that too …”
By this incident was the immediate pattern of their lives decided. For all her brave words to Mr Gibson, Miss Diver had reserved somewhere at the back of her mind the linked images of Martha and a nice orphanage. Miss Diver, with her closer experience, wasn’t nearly so certain as Mr Gibson that Martha was going to be a comfort. They got on together very well, but never once in three years had a childish hand slipped confidingly into her own, nor a childish kiss spontaneously rewarded her care. In fact, had Miss Diver ever been able to pierce the clouds of self-induced romanticism, she’d have described her niece Martha as perfectly heartless. Before the chilling wind of Mr Gibson’s dreadful news, those clouds momentarily parted. Miss Diver’s unconscious mind, while she slept, had consolidated a new image of Martha altogether, and one almost unfairly realistic. Waking alone, Miss Diver would certainly have reexamined the advantages, to both of them, of a nice orphanage …
Now Martha brought her a cup of tea—to cheer her up. What more could a child of nine do? The clouds re-formed instantaneously. Swallowing tea and tears together, Miss Diver smiled gratefully at the kind little soul beside her bed.
“You’re my little comfort,” affirmed Miss Diver.
Martha, again pleased to see the cantrip work, was far from realising what made it so efficacious. That very afternoon, however, Miss Diver set out in search of some employment that would support them both.
4
Mr Gibson’s place of business was in Kensington; a very nice premises, taken when his father so rashly decided to launch out. It was over a high-class tailor’s: there was a spacious show-room, with two private fitting-cabinets, a good work-room above, and a handsomely furnished office. The plate by the entrance still announced Gibson and Son: Mr Gibson glanced at it without piety.
In the show-room Miss Molyneux, vendeuse and model, and Miss Harris, who fitted, were as usual discussing the private lives of film-stars. “Why not?” thought Mr Gibson. They couldn’t discuss the customers, because there weren’t any; indeed it was only the endemic slackness of trade that made such pals of them at all. They broke off politely to bid their employer good morning, and Miss Molyneux had a message as well.
“Mrs Whittingtall phoned, Mr Gibson. The lady who looked at the nutria.”
“The one we offered to re-model at cost,” supplied Miss Harris.
“Well?” said Mr Gibson.
“She’s decided against it, Mr Gibson.”
“Thank you,” said Mr Gibson. “Come up to my office, both of you, in half an hour.”
“Both of us?” repeated Miss Molyneux, raising her plucked eyebrows. “Suppose there’s a customer?”
“There won’t be,” said Miss Harris. But she was a good sort. “Not at nine-thirty, dear,” she added tactfully. “Luxury goods, I’ve often noticed, ladies rarely shop for much before lunch …”
Mr Gibson went on upstairs. He didn’t go into the work-room, because there was no one there. (In his father’s rash hey-day it housed three girls and a cutter. Old Mr Gibson’s downfall had been a passion for auctions; he bought up any quantity of second-hand goods, expecting to re-model and sell them at a handsome profit. Harry Gibson was presently overloaded with such eccentric items as monkey-fur evening-capes.) Now there was no one at all, in the work-room, and Mr Gibson was momentarily glad of it.
There was naturally no one in the office. This also suited him: he needed the strictest privacy for his next act, which was to open the safe and place therein a Spanish comb. Recognising even as he performed it, its futility: how much longer would that safe remain inviolate? Joyce’s accountants had been through the books a month before, and almost cynically returned them to Gibson custody; they could still at any moment re-enter. In a week, in two weeks, he’d have to find another monstrance. But so brittle a treasure couldn’t be carried in the pocket, and he was perfectly aware that at home his mother went through his drawers.
The tortoiseshell was still warm. Mr Gibson’s heart, if not his mind, refused to recognise that warmth as deriving from his own person. He shut Dolores’ comb into the safe, first making a sort of nest for it with his handkerchief, as tenderly as if it had been a tress of her hair, newly-shorn.
There wasn’t anything much to take out, beyond the ledgers. Mr Gibson studied them for some time—trying as so often before to spot where things had definitely begun to go wrong. Essentially it all boiled down to the auctions: a chinchilla coat, for instance, property of a Russian princess, his father had paid six hundred pounds for; it was still knocking about in store, no yellower than when bought, and now definitely unsaleable. A couple of bearskin rugs—“My God, who wants bearskins?” thought Mr Gibson bitterly. “Are we in the stuffed-animal line?”—had cost the firm two-fifty. “They sent their equerries to bid against him,” thought Mr Gibson, full of hate for the entire Muscovite aristocracy, “and he fell for it every time. But it’s I who am left holding the cub—and now in the Depression!”
It was the Depression that had finished him off. 1932 was the year of the Depression, the year when even people who could afford new furs wouldn’t buy them, because it was the thing to go shabby. “All right, kill all trade together!” thought Mr Gibson violently. “Where will taxes come from then?” But in his heart he knew the Depression only a final blow, that even if women started buying like mad again, Gibson’s would never be able to unload a yellowing chinchilla coat …
The half-hour he’d allowed himself passed all too soon. All too soon—on the tick, in fact—Miss Molyneux and Miss Harris presented themselves in the doorway. There was nothing for it but to tell them.
“Come in, Miss Molyneux, come in, Miss Harris!” invited Mr Gibson—he hoped heartily. He hoped also that his heartiness would last out. Moderating it a little, he nonetheless achieved a fairly easy tone as he explained how a new era for them all was about to open. “For all of us,” insisted Mr Gibson. “You girls can come along too.” He was right to insist: he had made the retention of Miss Harris and Miss Molyneux a point of honour, and carried it with difficulty. “Couldn’t leave my girls behind, could I?” insisted Mr Gibson. “Couldn’t let down the old Regiment! So if you want to come along you can—even though it’s toodle-oo to G. and S.…”
They weren’t so distressed as he’d expected. He hadn’t exactly looked for tears; but they evinced even a certain pleasure—especially Miss Molyneux. Joyces had such lovely salons, and in Bond Street! positively rejoiced Miss Molyneux: a girl showing furs at Joyces was really, if Mr Gibson understood, being really looked at, by ladies who knew musquash from lapin. “And who buy,” added Miss Molyneux. “Because depression or no depression, in Bond Street, Mr Gibson, you get all the foreign visitors. I believe I could sell sables there, Mr Gibson, just give me the chance!” “Myself, I’m only too glad of any job, with this depression on,” said the more realistic Miss Harris; but she too looked pleased. “Mr Gibson, I’ll bring back monkey-fur!” declared Miss Molyneux earnestly. “With Joyces’ décor, I’ll bring back monkey-fur. Then who’s got the only skins in London?” “We have,” said Mr Gibson grimly. “No one else is such fools.” He didn’t ask, he hadn’t the heart to, why monkey-fur shouldn’t have been brought back in his own show-room. He knew Miss Molyneux was right. It needed a décor like Joyces’, to put monkey-fur across; and even if she succeeded in her mad project, the Gibson skins were by now half-bald …
The girls went off in high spirits, and Mr Gibson should have been glad. He tried to be glad, but the evening’s engagement projected too heavy a shadow. It was all he could do to keep a stiff upper lip.
He had to fight hard not to telephone Miss Di
ver; and went without lunch in case Miss Diver should telephone him. But she too wasn’t letting down the Regiment.
The few visitors to the show-room were such obviously poor prospects that Miss Molyneux didn’t bother to summon him. Or else Miss Molyneux, her spirit already in Bond Street, wasn’t bothering with them. Whenever Mr Gibson passed the door on his way downstairs (in case Dolores stood hesitant without), he heard nothing but heartless chatter about the beauties of the Joyce décor.
About four o’clock there arrived an immense bouquet of pink carnations. “For Miranda, in case my busy boy forgets!” his mother had scrawled on the card. Harry Gibson certainly hadn’t forgotten Miss Joyce, but it was true he hadn’t thought of flowers. Fortunately he met the messenger on the pavement, and so didn’t have to explain them, or avoid explaining them, to Miss Harris and Miss Molyneux. Even the former seemed by this time to have lost her head a little: if she could once style a genuine skunk, Mr Gibson heard her declare, she’d show all Bond Street where it got off …
Essentially he spent the day alone; yet felt it pass all too quickly.
5
Dolores knew her comb in Mr Gibson’s keeping. When she had looked for it in the bedroom, and in the sitting-room, and in the hall and on the stairs, she knew he’d taken it. She wished it could have been—and for once the violence of romantic imagery was but plain-speaking—the ashes of her heart.
CHAPTER FOUR
1
Time, however slowly, passes. No one has yet found a way to hold it back. At six o’clock that evening a maid ushered Mr Gibson into the Joyce drawing-room—first floor, very good apartment in Knightsbridge—there to await his betrothed-to-be.
The Eye of Love Page 3