It was an excellent apartment. Considering that it housed only Miranda and her widowered father and her Aunt Beatrice, it was vast. The drawing-room alone, which Harry already knew fairly well, was at least four times the size of Dolores’ sitting-room. Even a grand-piano didn’t encumber it. From many points of view it was an ideal room for any confident suitor to be waiting in.
Seated in a handsome arm-chair, Mr Gibson waited. Seated in the stocks, he’d have been less ill-at-ease. Even physically he was uncomfortable, the great sheaf of carnations drooped awkwardly between his thighs and he didn’t know where to put it down. But at least they were carnations, not roses … “My Spanish rose!” thought Mr Gibson uncontrollably—and to his horror saw the bouquet, apparently of its own volition, describe a parabola through the air. He retrieved it furtively and laid it on the carpet beside him.
It was a good carpet, as the furniture was good furniture.
Joyces was a good firm.
Mr Gibson fortified his mind with the memory of their audited profits over the last five years. He was on to a good thing, better than his situation deserved, and he knew it. He knew he would never have been considered as a son-in-law (and derivatively as an associate), save as a last resort. Mr Gibson dwelt on the point, leaned on it; in his present frame of mind he preferred to think Miss Joyce’s advertised liking for him a myth got up among the women. He didn’t want her to like him. He wanted her to want to be married, as he himself wanted not to be made a bankrupt; he had an idea that as between man and woman it came to much the same thing.
A quarter of an hour passed long as a century. To an impatient lover it would no doubt have seemed longer: Mr Gibson was impatient only as a man about to be shot might be impatient. (Why hadn’t he been shot, in ’17?) The bitter parenthesis, by the memories it evoked, nonetheless helped his courage: when at last the door opened, like an officer and a gentleman Mr Gibson clutched his carnations and stood bravely up to meet the firing-squad.
Curiously enough, Miranda Joyce bore a marked physical resemblance to Miss Diver. Both were tall, black-haired, and bony. They were about the same age. Miss Joyce had even certain advantages: her make-up was better, she hadn’t Dolores’ slight moustache, and she was far better dressed. But whereas Mr Gibson saw Dolores with the eye of love, he saw Miss Joyce as she was, and whereas the aspect of Old Madrid made his heart flutter with delicious emotion, the aspect of Miss Joyce sunk it to his boots.
“My dear Harry,” cried Miranda gaily, “I’ve kept you waiting! Auntie Bee made me. Was she right or wrong?”
Doing violence to all his feelings, Mr Gibson made a shot at gallantry. It seemed at the moment the only possible line. Moreover the gallant answer, remembering his hideous quarter of an hour, happened also to be the true one.
“Wrong,” said Mr Gibson heavily. “Wrong every time.”
She looked at him speculatively, but made no comment. Then she looked at the carnations.
“With the mater’s best love,” said Mr Gibson, thrusting them into her hands.
“I don’t think that’s quite right,” said Miranda, “though I must ask Auntie Bee. Give mine to your mother, of course.”
“I will,” said Mr Gibson.
—Ominous, direful words! Words to seal a promise, a covenant! In this case the covenant already made with his mater and with Fate, and now to be made, specifically, with Miranda … Mr Gibson wondered whether he turned as pale as he felt; but the fearsome object of his vows, now seating herself, appeared to notice nothing amiss. The dreadful moment passed. The one that succeeded it, as Miss Joyce sat obviously expectant, was merely, if intensely, awkward. To postpone the moment that must come after, Mr Gibson very nearly asked her to play something on the piano.
He pulled himself together, kept a stiff upper lip He was aware that a proposal in form was so to speak part of the bond—also that the sooner he got it over the better. He was still on his feet; the great thing was not to sit down. He knew he wasn’t expected, in that day and age, to fall on his knees, it wasn’t for that the good carpet had been laid; but he felt nonetheless that he oughtn’t to propose sitting. Drawing a deep breath—
“My dear Miranda,” began Mr Gibson, “I expect you know why I’m here.”
“Do I?” said Miss Joyce.
She wasn’t going to let him off with a word.
“Well, a chappie doesn’t usually come calling with a bunch of flowers,” pointed out Mr Gibson, “unless he has something pretty serious on his mind.”
“I dare say some chappies do,” said Miss Joyce, playfully. “And aren’t they from your mother?”
Mr Gibson was damned if he was going to start an argument. He plunged on—if not straight to the point at least in its general direction.
“Anyone who plays the piano like you do, I mean anyone so accomplished and cultured all round, I dare say finds anyone like me a pretty rough diamond.” (Did a spark of hope flicker in his bosom? If so, it was quenched at once. She didn’t take him up.) “In fact,” continued Mr Gibson doggedly, “if it hadn’t been for what your Aunt Beatrice told the mater—”
“What did she tell her?” asked Miss Joyce rather sharply.
“That you—well, that you didn’t dislike me. I must say it came as a bit of a surprise.” Again Mr Gibson paused; again nothing came of it. There was no escape. “It gave me”—he chewed on the bullet—“hope. And in that hope,” continued Mr Gibson rapidly—as though the bullet had been a sort of hashish—“I’m here this afternoon even though you’ve every right to turn me down to ask you to be my wife.”
It was out. He’d got it out. Just before his knees gave way he lowered himself into the chair opposite Miranda’s and waited for her reply.
“Oh, Harry!” said Miss Joyce.
“Well, what about it?” asked Mr Gibson impatiently.
“I’m so surprised too! I can’t possibly answer straight away! I must have time to think!”
An appalling suspicion dawned.
“How long?” demanded Mr Gibson.
“At least a week! Ask me again in a week’s time—”
It was just as he’d suspected. He was to be put through the hoop again. And quite possibly again after that—once a week, in fact, something to be looked forward to once a week (thought Mr Gibson incoherently), like his mother’s Friday visit to the cinema … Well, he wouldn’t stand it. By comparison with such torture bankruptcy positively smiled at him. “I’m damned if I’ll stand it!” said Harry Gibson loudly. “It’s more than flesh and blood can bear! Either you give me an answer now, or you never see me again!”
It did the trick: as he leapt to his feet—and his eye was obviously on the door—Miranda too sprang up in pretty terror. She couldn’t turn pale, because of her rouge—but with fluttering hand and eyelid indicated pallor; and her breath was genuinely short.
“How masterful you are!” breathed Miranda, enchanted. “Oh, Harry, you just make me say yes!”
As she moved impulsively to accept his embrace, she impulsively pressed a bell; the maid who brought in the champagne must have been very handy.
2
“This is just for us,” said Miranda, “before we tell everyone … To you and me!”
Kissing her had been like kissing a sea-horse. Mr Gibson knocked back his drink thankfully. (“I shall turn into a sozzler,” thought Mr Gibson—dispassionate as a physician diagnosing the course of a disease.) For the moment, however, and although he’d had no lunch, he wasn’t intoxicated. He still had himself well in hand—which considering Miranda’s next choice of topic was fortunate.
Champagne, it seemed, turned Miranda into a woman of the world. With humorous understanding—
“Of course you have a mistress? Obviously,” said Miranda Joyce.
It was fortunate that Mr Gibson had himself in hand. He still couldn’t control his blood. A long-disused system of arteries and capillaries rushed blood to his cheeks, up to his forehead, up to the roots of his hair. He blushed like a boy.
> “My dear Harry, I don’t mind!” cried Miss Joyce. “A passionate man like you—why not?”
“Who told you?” shouted Harry Gibson.
Miss Joyce looked pleasurably frightened.
“No one in so many words. But away two nights each week—! Your mother told Aunt Beatrice that. Of course you have a mistress. I’m sure I could find out all about her, or Dadda could, if I was inquisitive!”
Mr Gibson perceived a possible course of action at all costs to be prevented.
“Since you know so much already—yes,” said Mr Gibson. (Though how far from the truth the literal truth! How far from the truth of King Hal and his Spanish rose!) “Since you know so much already—yes,” said Harry Gibson. “Do I need to tell you also that it’s all washed up?”
A bony sea-horse kiss rewarded him. Unfortunately the sea-horse was still being a woman of the world.
“Of course she’s been provided for?”
Mr Gibson’s control went. So did all his carefully-cultivated British slang, giving place to an older habit of speech, the speech he’d heard between his parents when he was a young boy.
“And out of what, tell me please, would I provide for her?” shouted Mr Gibson. “You know, or at least your father does, my situation! How could I provide for a dog even?”
“You are passionate,” confirmed Miss Joyce. “She must be behaving very well. Would it be kind if I went to see her?”
“If you do,” cried Mr Gibson, “if you try to, I will never, this I swear, look at you or speak to you again. Is that understood, woman?”
“Passionate and masterful,” murmured Miss Joyce. “Oh, Harry, I feel I’ve never known you before!”
3
Of the rest of the evening, of the intimate family supper that followed, Mr Gibson retained little subsequent memory. He still wasn’t intoxicated, but he was bushed. He told Miranda’s Aunt Beatrice the same (unsuitable) funny story four separate times. The arrival on scene of his mother astonished him more than it should have done. He wanted to know why she’d changed her mind about not coming. That she’d come after all, he argued, made nonsense of sending her best love; he showed unexpected heat on the point. There was in fact a moment after supper when old Joyce, Miranda’s father, led him away to a private sanctum—and then looked uneasily at the decanters there. “I am perfectly sober,” stated Harry Gibson pugnaciously. “That’s what I thought,” agreed Mr Joyce. “You’ll find a chinchilla coat in stock worth two thousand!” shouted Harry Gibson. “Don’t I know it, son?” agreed Mr Joyce placatively. “What did you call me?” asked Harry Gibson—and laughed like a drain.
He then returned to the drawing-room and demanded that Miranda should play the piano. As soon as the first piece was finished, he demanded another. He kept her at the piano for one hour and twenty minutes. In a happy lover, such conduct wasn’t altogether inexcusable: old Mrs Gibson, and Aunt Beatrice, like a couple of inexperienced commères, with many a beck and smile pulled off the feat of presenting it as infatuation. “So much my Harry admires her playing!” murmured Mrs Gibson. “It was music brought them together!” declared Aunt Beatrice. They had no audience except old man Joyce, perhaps they were rehearsing for the engagement-party, but their efforts weren’t wasted. The evening not only passed off without disaster, but could be accounted a positive success.
In the taxi going home old Mrs Gibson wasn’t even sleepy. Champagne and brandy, and wearing her best dress, and seeing her Harry at last on the way out of his troubles—all combined to rejuvenate her. In Moscow, she’d have been ready to dance till morning … The slight bother of hauling Harry out, and then getting him upstairs, and after that getting him to bed, tarnished her happiness not a whit. So a boy should come home, on such an evening!
CHAPTER FIVE
1
Loyal to their sad vows, Mr Gibson and Miss Diver refrained from all communication. Mr Gibson’s only solace, at this time, lay in remembering the hundred pounds put by April the Fifth into Dolores’ Post Office savings account. He still wished he’d made her promise not to try her luck again; for it was inconceivable to him that the future held any more luck for either of them, in either great things or small.
Dolores, treading the round from agency to agency and from shop to shop, was of the same mind.
2
Alas that her romanticism wasn’t more flexible, that she had seen herself too long as a Spanish rose to see herself now a Sleeping Beauty! It would have helped her, if only a little; the image more-over would have been a truer one—supposing Beauty waked not by the Prince, but by the vanishment of her enchanted palace. Essentially, for ten years, Miss Diver’s life had been as sheltered as the sleeping princess’s, and as cut off from all reality. When she needed money, Mr Gibson supplied it, and the common rubs of social life never bruised her, for she had none. She had sought no friends, because she didn’t want any. (An early overture from Number 10, where there were so many rowdy parties, she’d snubbed at once. “Quite right,” said Mr Gibson. “I like my little woman to be particular …” Dolores basked in his approval, but in fact the gesture cost her nothing.) Even before the advent of Martha, the work of the little house, and a little small-talk in the local shops, and a novel borrowed from the library, easily filled each day until King Hal came at evening to his Spanish rose. Even when he didn’t spend the night, he came each evening, for half-an-hour.
In their secret garden (5, Alcock Road, W.2), she’d dreamed away ten years; and woke ill prepared to face the world without.
She had lost, for example (dreaming in Mr Gibson’s eye of love), all ideas of what she looked like to any other eye. The first time the girls in the queue laughed at her, she didn’t even notice; the second time, she was panic-stricken.
There was always a queue, if any shop had a vacancy. One vacancy drew twenty or thirty applicants.
Dolores on this second occasion was well towards the front; and had dressed with particular care to make herself look as young as possible. Perhaps her skirt was on the short side—considering the boniness of her legs; perhaps her blouse too peek-a-boo, considering the salt-cellars at her collar-bones; but when the girls behind sniggered, she at first, again, didn’t realise who was their butt. “Skinny Lizzie,” they’d been whispering; but no one behind, or indeed before (Dolores looked both ways), seemed to deserve the cruel jibe. Many of those queueing were certainly thin, but only with a thinness then regrettably commonplace; so that it needed a figure of fun indeed to attract ribald comment …
“O Skinny Lizzie,” breathed a wicked voice, “how’s Scraggy Sister Maggie?”
“Careful! You’ll put Lizzie in a tizzy!”
“Careful! Sister Maggie’ll come and scrag-you-all!”
They squealed with laughter, four young girls enchanted by their own wit, while Miss Diver looked about in perplexity. It was the kindest among them who enlightened her, a little creature of sixteen or so, suddenly moved to compassion. “Poor old thing, it’s a shame!” Dolores heard her hiss rebukingly—and with astonishment felt a bag of peppermints pressed into her hand. “Go on, have one!” adjured the Samaritan. “And don’t you take no notice—Skinny Lizzies themselves!”
After this Dolores was afraid to queue again. She had a valid excuse; even a week had taught her that there was no demand for shop-assistants over thirty—there was no demand for anyone, over thirty—and this saved her from examining her fear too closely, so that she was able to forget the incident quite soon. In fact, what had rightly terrified her was no less than a threat to her identity.
The queues of job-hunters found ways to keep their spirits up. Each familiar face—and how many grew familiar!—had its sobriquet; Miss Diver herself could already recognise Ginger, and Russian Boots, and Once-I-Had-My-Own-Shop; a hilarity in the circumstances admirable fixed them like characters in a comic strip. In such company there was a place ready-made for Skinny Lizzie; Dolores’ instinct warned her to flee while she was still a Spanish rose.
Not to
betray the past: not to shoddy (even though he would never know it) King Hal’s image of his love, was now Dolores’ only ambition; and not an ignoble one. That it led her to risk a more fatal metamorphosis still, by advertising for a lodger, was in the circumstances inevitable.
Originally it was a blow to Miss Diver to discover that she couldn’t after all sub-let. The terms of the lease, of the little house in Alcock Road, she found didn’t allow it. This now appeared a rare piece of fortune. Only behind those pink curtains could she find refuge from the unkind world; and luckily she hadn’t, speaking to the agent, mentioned lodgers.
3
Martha lettered the card beautifully—the single word “Apartments” in a fancy script copied out of a Tatler. It was her first encounter with Indian ink, and to employ its turgid blackness on smooth white pasteboard ravished her. That she made more cards than one was still due mainly to a search after perfection; when the fourth and last appeared in the dining-room window, it was a master-piece.
Miss Diver meanwhile arranged the empty bedroom opposite her own, under Martha’s attic, as the hybrid known technically as a bedsit. This involved the purchase of a bed, but the rest of the furnishings came from the dining-room—two oak chairs, one with arms, and the sideboard translated into a bureau-cum-dressing-table—and the hall, denuded of its coat-cupboard. Miss Diver wished to lay out as little cash as possible, and was prepared, so long as the sitting-room remained inviolate, to strip the rest of the house to the bone. Actually nothing was missed, in a practical way; only twice a week had the dining-room been put to its proper use, in honour of Mr Gibson, the hall-cupboard was always kept empty, sacred to Mr Gibson’s big overcoat. Dolores and Martha ate commonly in the kitchen, and the lodger was to be fed from trays …
“Put ‘With Service,’” instructed Dolores.
The Eye of Love Page 4