“Is that the key? Thank you,” said Dolores—sitting up straighter, but otherwise without moving.
“I’ve slipped the latch,” muttered Mr Phillips.
His dazzled eye took in more and more: the high-class Rexine upholstery, the stuffed ermines in the gilt cabinet, the pierrette to match the pierrot … He still held the key in his hand.
“Thank you, you may put it down,” said Dolores.
Mr Phillips advanced an awkward pace towards the mother-o’-pearl table. Upon it stood Dolores’ tea-things. But she didn’t offer a cup to Mr Phillips—as an ordinary landlady might have done; she simply waited for him to go.
Mr Phillips took a last look round. His eye, as it catalogued each treasure, wasn’t Martha’s, still less Dolores’; it was nonetheless avid. He’d have particularly liked a closer look at the statuette …
“Good night,” said Dolores, dismissively.
3
That was all. Mr Phillips was in the sitting-room perhaps two minutes. It took him however nearly two hours to get to sleep. He heard eleven strike, and twelve; and even so shortly before dawn woke again and lit a cigarette.
It was his first lodgerly misdemeanour. All landladies hate their lodgers to smoke in bed, because of the risk to sheets, also a lodger frizzled alive (should the whole bed catch) means an inquest. Mr Phillips, hitherto of all lodgers the pearl, now reached for matches and cigarettes without a second thought, so confused in mind was he still.
The luxury of Miss Diver’s private apartment had more than startled, it had staggered him. For all his wide experience of lodgings, he’d never before lodged in a house with such a room as that in it. In a house that let lodgings, it seemed … unnatural. To take the ornaments alone—what was that statue doing there? A bunch of dried grass would have been more the mark. Searching his memory, Mr Phillips recalled a couple of stuffed bullfinches: never a whole pack of stuffed ermines. (Ermine, good lord! The most expensive animal there was!) As for the bowl of glass fruit casting its multicoloured glow, it struck Mr Phillips as almost improper.
In fact the whole room struck him as a bit improper.
But this wasn’t what struck him most. Summing his whole impression, he returned to his first thought of all, the thought that crossed his mind actually as he first contemplated (not with Martha’s eye, not with Dolores’) the sitting-room’s astounding contents.
“There’s been money spent,” thought Mr Phillips.
As he lay smoking and thinking this over, another point occurred to him, of which he’d been hitherto aware only subconsciously. All the curtains, in the house in Alcock Road, matched. They were all (he checked them over in his mind) pink. They were pink, he was pretty sure, even at the back. To an experienced lodger, this again was very striking.
“There’s been money spent,” thought Mr Phillips.
His cigarette was only two-thirds smoked; but realising that at the moment he couldn’t get much further, he economically cut off the end with his nail-scissors, blew down the butt, and once again composed himself for sleep.
4
The first time Mr Phillips assisted with the garbage-pail was on the Sunday morning following. Dolores, caught beside the dust-bin, wasn’t altogether pleased. She knew her apron soiled and her makeup rudimentary; as a Spanish rose, she felt taken at a disadvantage. “Aren’t you down very early?” she asked sharply. “By chance, I felt like a walk before dinner. That’s too heavy for you,” returned Mr Phillips, seizing the pail with one hand and the dust-bin lid with the other. “Allow me!” Dolores recovered her poise—it was obviously impossible to start a tug-of-war—replied more affably that he was very kind. To her relief, he didn’t appear to notice her undress …
Soon he was emptying the garbage quite regularly. Dolores left it outside the back door for him last thing at night, and he disposed of it before leaving each morning; and was allowed to wash his hands afterwards at the kitchen sink.
The only immediate result of this was that Martha, who was usually laying her own and Dolores’ breakfast, at last noticed something about Mr Phillips’ appearance. The back of his neck was grooved by two extraordinarily long, deep hollows, beginning behind the ears and disappearing into his collar: which by throwing his spinal column into unnatural prominence, made his head from behind look like a can stuck on a pole.
Dolores didn’t mind Mr Phillips in the kitchen. It wasn’t sacred ground; she had no feeling for it. She cooked and ate meals there, but never lingered—preferring her bed-chamber in the afternoon and at evening the sitting-room; and this suited Martha very well, because it gave her the kitchen-table to draw on undisturbed.
5
She drew regularly every afternoon, from about two till half-past five. She found she drew better, regularly. She got on.
This happy spell of intensive work nonetheless brought its problems. Martha was now using up a great deal of paper, and even had the supply of old envelopes been unlimited, which it was not, they were inconveniently small. No sort of paper abounded, in the house in Alcock Road, and she knew better than to ask Dolores to buy any specially. Martha would soon have been in serious straits, had she not fortunately discovered an important, and free, source of supply.
There was half-way along Praed Street a large and popular drapery establishment, whither Miss Diver occasionally sent her for a reel of cotton or a packet of needles. A more interesting department than the haberdashery offered nets, veilings and lace, which came wrapped around large sheets of thin white cardboard; and as these were emptied, they were thrown away.
Martha saw them being thrown away—a whole heap, kicked together on the floor behind a counter by a sales-lady’s foot. It seemed impossible, but so it was.
“Don’t you want those?” asked Martha incredulously.
“What, this rubbish? I should say not,” replied the sales-lady, looking amused.
Martha didn’t hesitate an instant.
“Can I have them?”
“Well!” said the sales-lady. “Whatever for?”
“To draw on.”
The sales-lady wavered; and as she had been taught to do whenever out of her depth, called a shop-walker.
“Mr Connaught! Can this little girl have our old cardboards to draw on?”
Mr Connaught, approaching, appeared equally surprised. But shop-walkers are compact of savoir faire. He regarded Martha quizzically, showing off his easy mastery of any situation.
“And what does she want to draw?”
Some instinct led Martha to reply, “Pussies.”
Actually both the term and the subject were equally repugnant to her; if there was one thing that hadn’t a hard outline, it was a cat, and if there was one thing Martha despised it was baby-talk. But her instinct was sound; both adults at once smiled benevolently on her, and at each other with understanding. A little girl who wanted to draw pussies—what a rare note of sweetness in the long commercial day! They let her have the cardboards at once. And Martha, stifling her distaste for such puerilities, as soon as she got home slapped off a couple of big fluffy cats with bows round their necks, to carry back next morning as presents.
After that she had as much cardboard as she needed. She collected it in a business-like way once a week.
Where had she seen a lot of pencils?
6
“Dear me, you’re quite a stranger!” said the kind Librarian.
Martha stared at his desk. Five or six pencils at least lay in the tray, and some were easily short enough to be given to a little girl.
“I forgot,” said Martha vaguely.
“Have you come to look at our landscapes again?”
Martha followed his prompting glance and recognised with surprise a bamboo swaying in the wind, a tiger crouched upon a rock. She had forgotten … and even now wasn’t interested. They were right, but they hadn’t any hard outlines. The kind Librarian watched her face and sighed. “How soon it passes,” he was thinking, “the gift of natural, instinctive appreciation! I w
onder”—for he was a very conscientious man—“if I could have done more?”
Martha turned back to the desk and fixed her gaze on the pentray. She wasn’t there to hang about.
“Perhaps you’re tired of them,” said the Librarian. “One day, if you like, I could take you to see some really beautiful pictures—hundreds and hundreds of them. They’re in a place called the National Gallery. Would you like that?”
“Thank you very much,” said Martha, in rather final tones. “Do you use all those pencils?”
The Librarian sighed again. She was after all just a child like any other—and all children always wanted pencils.
“Do you need one for noughts-and-crosses?”
Martha didn’t want to draw any more cats for anyone, so she said yes. It was unfortunate, and came of putting all adults in the same box. Pussies would have left Mr Agnew cold; but if she’d told him of her involvement with shapes, he’d have given her all the pencils on his desk. As it was, she got just the stubbiest.
“Thank you very much,” repeated Martha glumly.
It wasn’t nearly so successful a foray as she had hoped for; moreover something in the Librarian’s manner frightened her off, so that she never went back to try again. (Interferingness: the adult vice.) In the end she turned to cadging odd stumps from Mr Punshon, who always had one or two lying about his bench. She rubbed out with bread.
7
“How soon it passes!” mourned the Librarian, that same evening, to his gentle, artistic fiancée.
“How soon what passes, darling?” asked she.
“The natural, instinctive appreciation of beauty. You remember that little girl I told you about?”
“Who came to look at the landscapes? Of course I do, darling. Has she been again?”
“To beg a pencil to play noughts-and-crosses,” said the Librarian sadly. “She doesn’t even see them now. I offered to take her to the National Gallery—”
“Darling, I think you’re the kindest man in the world!” cried his fiancée impulsively.
Mr Agnew looked round, and gave her a quick kiss. They were pacing beside the Serpentine, in the blue dusk. Pale amber streamers, reflected lamp-light, floated on the surface of the water as pennons float in air: the upper branches of the trees, to the west melting into the sky, to the east showed still in detail against the up-thrown glow of London. As he finally put Martha from his mind—
“If I showed her this,” said the Librarian, “I don’t believe she’d have eyes for it …”
Which was perfectly true. Martha’s eyes were at that very moment glued to a pair of kippers, tails up (the tails formed a double bow-shape), in a cylindrical jug.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
1
Leaving home in the morning, kissing his daughter and allowing himself to be pecked at by old Beatrice—
“Toodle-oo,” said Mr Joyce.
The door shut behind him—on Mr Joyce wearing his new winter overcoat, a loud fawn and brown check, very hairy, and his new silk scarf, striped in loud and probably regimental colours. Old Beatrice turned nervously to Miranda.
“Such a nice idea I have for our lunch! Why don’t I make us my special goulash?”
“In the middle of the day it’s too heavy,” said Miranda crossly.
Both knew what they were to eat at night; roast beef. Both knew what Mr Joyce would say, as it came to the table, as he sharpened the carving-knife and caught Harry Gibson’s eye.
“Good British grub!” Mr Joyce would say.
2
Mr Joyce had found a friend.
A wholly unexpected result of Harry Gibson’s domestication at Knightsbridge was the formation there of what could only be called a masculine front.
Passive as he was, Harry by his mere presence had from the first, and inevitably, changed the numerical proportions between the sexes: what no one could have foreseen was Mr Joyce’s rapid organisation of an offensive alliance.
Miranda placed the blame squarely on her father. The overtures hadn’t come from Harry, whatever Mr Joyce learnt from him Harry hadn’t wilfully taught; it was again, apparently, the result of his mere presence—as though daily contact with anyone so big and bluff and British spurred Mr Joyce to emulation. Spontaneously he picked up Harry’s British slang, spontaneously discarded the tastes of a lifetime to prefer good British grub to Beatrice’s goulash; but the result, of course, was that he … encouraged Harry; until Harry was now encouraging him back.
Miranda had no wish to see her lover brow-beaten. His masculinity was precious to her. But she’d certainly expected the Joyce ethos (so much the more refined) to work upon the Gibson, and not the other way about. She certainly hadn’t expected her father to behave like an only child who suddenly makes a friend.
He supported Harry on every point, great or small—and with particular pleasure, it seemed, if the result in any way irritated Miranda or old Beatrice. (Miranda was too obtuse to recognise this pleasure’s spring; but the whole of Mr Joyce’s domestic life had been dominated by females he provided for.) On the point of a six-months engagement, he’d taken Harry’s part; now after roast beef, or liver-and-bacon, or steak-and-kidney pie, the Knightsbridge table offered steamed pudding every night. And as though that wasn’t sufficient offence to old Beatrice’s monts blancs, Mr Joyce deliberately—there could be no other word for it—began to put on weight. “He wants to be a big man like my Harry!” chuckled Mrs Gibson, much amused; and indeed in his new winter overcoat, which he was wearing long before the weather warranted it, Mr Joyce managed to look several sizes larger.
Harry went with him to choose it—and not in Savile Row. (“Half the price as well!” reported Mr Joyce delightedly.) It almost exactly duplicated the one Harry had.
Miranda might have been right in putting the first blame on her parent, but her fiancé’s influence was certainly no longer passive. Mr Joyce had encouraged him so much, they now encouraged each other …
How strangely, beautifully (from Mr Joyce’s point of view), things had turned out! Harry Gibson was by no means the son-in-law he’d have put his money on given a choice. Most rarely, among the natural moneymakers, old Joyce thought little of money for its own sake. To scrap over three or four pounds was instinctive, but in thousands he thought like a Maecenas; and it had been the secret dream of his life to wed Miranda to some violinist, or painter, or composer, whose early struggles, by himself financed, would in time gloriously flower. (Not too late: while he was still alive: every patron has his limitations, and Mr Joyce wanted to shine in reflected glory.) Like the practical man that he was, he took positive steps to this end—had Miranda’s portrait painted, frequented private views, cultivated an acquaintance who ran a concert agency; to acquire only a taste for modern art and a dislike of modern music. All the painters seemed to be married already, and the musicians not to care for Miranda.
No embryo genius coming on the market in the course of so many years, Mr Joyce at last accepted Fate’s rebuff and settled for Harry Gibson—even as a business prospect poor, but a necessary husband for Miranda. And how had Fate rewarded him? By finding him a friend.
The lot of Harry Gibson, by this circumstance, was also ameliorated. He wasn’t, like Mr Joyce, happy. He was far from happy. But he felt a friendliness towards the old man on his own account, he grew fond of the old boy, and the knowledge that Mr Joyce valued his company—more than valued it, thirsted for it—made his attendance at Knightsbridge less unendurable. Harry Gibson was never for a moment happy, in the Knightsbridge flat; but he had become domesticated there.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
1
The first time Mr Phillips took Dolores and Martha to the pictures was on a Saturday afternoon early in September.
The leap, from Good morning and Good evening, to such an invitation, was hardy indeed; even though his garbage-emptying and subsequent hand-washing had slightly extended their conversational terrain. To do him justice, Mr Phillips appeared aware of this. Encountering Miss D
iver in the hall—where he had obviously been waiting for her to emerge from the kitchen—he put it very properly, as a favour.
“It would be doing me a favour,” stated Mr Phillips, “to give me the pleasure of your company.”
Dolores’ first impulse was to refuse. It was such a—how to put it?—such a lodgerly thing of Mr Phillips to do! But she hadn’t been to a cinema for months; the piled-up monotony of her solitary evenings was sometimes almost crushing; and the refusal meant to be so prompt and firm weakened to hesitation.
“I really don’t think I can, Mr Phillips … leave Martha in the house alone.”
Mr Phillips hesitated in turn—but only for a moment.
“Bring Martha too.”
“How very kind! But thank you, I think not.”
“It’s just the sort of picture you’d like,” persuaded Mr Phillips.
If he baited the hook with intent, it was skilfully done. What sort of picture did Mr Phillips think she liked? No woman could have failed to feel a little stir of curiosity, even of vanity, and Dolores was doubly engaged—for was it a landlady’s taste Mr Phillips believed himself to have divined, or that of the mysterious Other she felt he sometimes glimpsed? A Western or a war picture or a comedy would have answered the first; far narrower the range acceptable to a Spanish rose.
“Romantic,” added Mr Phillips.
How could Dolores not give way?
The Eye of Love Page 9