The Beauties and Furies

by Christina Stead

  ‘But clocks do,’ said Oliver. ‘I suppose because, however long they count, they never have more than two dozen hours in their pocket.’

  ‘And who wants what they’ve got?’ sighed Coromandel sentimentally.

  ‘Some one hour there must be that would be worth stealing,’ said Oliver.

  She opened her eyes wide upon Oliver, dropped the long lashes indifferently upon her cheek, then, indolently running one pale jade nail through the folds of the frill of her corsage, she said: ‘Perhaps you will find it at home. That’s the rule, at any rate,’ with insolence. Then, walking to the couch, she lay down there, reclining as Dresden China dolls do, with elastic grace.

  Oliver said: ‘You are monstrously beautiful!’

  ‘No doubt,’ said the girl. ‘My mother has disowned me, for she says I am the daughter of a monster, that hamadryad in the salon, to wit, but that is quite a history, which I may tell you some day, if you should return.’

  She turned off the light again, but the effulgence from above rolled above them thicker than before, as if more lights had been turned on. It displayed the great supple, yellow, linen-backed map of the world which hung above the couch. The rolls of parchment and linen lay around Coromandel like reeds; she did not trouble to move them. She said to Oliver, ‘Don’t move them. Why should you?’ The girl, who was looking abstractedly upwards, rolling her glassy eyeballs in the light, suddenly reflected a brighter glow.

  ‘Ah,’ she said to Oliver, ‘she’s taken up the tarpaulin.’

  Oliver paid no attention to what she said, but kissed her. But observing in her eyeballs the light from the roof above, he noticed a small shutter rolling up in each iris and a minute black oval projecting itself over the edge of the bright space.

  ‘Look,’ said the girl, laughing. ‘My mother!’

  Oliver looked upwards with difficulty, and saw that the centre of the glass had been uncovered, and that through a bright square in the centre a woman with large pale eyes and a worn face was staring at them.

  At this moment Coromandel chose to recall his senses, wandering all over the visible world, to herself, and, foundering in a volcanic bay, he had no time to recollect anything more than a windmill of dancing heads looking at him from the minatory shutters of heaven. It is very appropriate to speak at this moment of a volcanic ocean, since Coromandel had reclined among charts and soundings, and at the same moment, the large map of the world, pinned inadequately above the couch, fell down and covered them with a most unparalleled blanket; while, without, along the volcanic line from Kamchatka to New Zealand, and also on the opposite side of the Pacific, at this minute and for some quarter of an hour afterwards, slight earth tremors were recorded on the seismographs.

  They talked their whole lives over. She let him out late, when the stars were shining. The rue de l’Université, lacquered, ran before him, and he ran along it waving his hat in the air. He stopped at a bar open late, and then turned homewards and took a taxi to the hotel apartment on the Montagne Sainte-Geneviève. Elvira was not yet home. It was eleven o’clock. He fell at once into dreams associated with the cherubim fed on truffles which he had seen earlier in the evening and with other inhabitants of their palpable world of painted air.

  When he awoke early in the morning all his black horses had vanished. It was a strong-limbed spring morning, silver, blue-draped, soon to be hot, but the trees still not out. The old bells of the Montagne, with the sweet tintinnabulation of cowbells through trees, counted out seven o’clock to him. He turned his head. Elvira was not there. He sat up and tried to be dismayed, but he knew very well what had happened. What a woman she was! She was a monster of indecision: there was something grand and frightening about a life so involuntary. He lay back and laughed, but hot prickles of anxiety began under his skin. There was a letter under his door: he was to meet her at the Deux Magots with Paul, Adam and Sara at ten o’clock. He threw up his hands and burst out laughing. He loitered down the streets, taking a coffee at a bar, and when he got to the Deux Magots, found them all assembled: a strain of false camaraderie united Sara and Elvira, Paul looked pasty, Adam was reading the paper. When he came to their table they all gave an imperceptible jerk and formed a band round Elvira.

  Oliver said good-morning carelessly, and to Elvira, satirically, ‘I hope you slept well: I positively didn’t know you hadn’t come home till this morning when I awoke. I got home early, went to sleep, and slept so well that—It’s such beautiful weather, isn’t it?’ he continued to Sara.

  Sara, who had been looking him over incredulously, detailing him, jumped. ‘Yes, it is nice,’ and smiled ingenuously.

  ‘Miss Steele, I think?’ went on Oliver, dimpling. Sara flushed faintly and nodded. She kept her steady, clear eyes on him, and he saw a pleased surprise creep over her. They chattered on for a few minutes about the political news, and Elvira, who had been sitting there cosily but mutely, like an egg laid in a tussock, began with weary pertness:

  ‘Why don’t we talk about what we’re here for?’

  ‘Sara looked at her indignantly.

  ‘I gather it’s all decided,’ said Oliver smartly.

  Elvira seemed to have thought out a set speech: she began without embarrassment, naïvely:

  ‘You see, I am fond of Paul, you can’t annihilate ten years in a couple of months, and I don’t want him to suffer: on the other hand, I never really made him happy; we just lived in a sort of back garden for years, or rather, he kept on digging up the same plot of ground, and he turned me from a woman into a cabbage to ornament his back garden. When I was at college I got the medal in history and French, and I used to be interested in the socialist movement. At first I didn’t notice what was happening to me, because I was absorbed by the physical side of marriage. I just sat there and vegetated. When Oliver came along, I noticed there was a new intellectual world I knew nothing about: I began to feel old-fashioned. I thought to myself, Paul has made me into a cabbage, or rather, he has given me a cabbage shell. I am still the same person underneath as when I was at school, but everyone else thinks I am Elvira, the hearthside wife. I wanted to be young again. I wanted to do something creative. Oliver kept sending me letters and asking me to be his mistress, but I couldn’t make up my mind to do anything underhand. In a way, I didn’t care enough to do anything underhand. I didn’t want to decide on something and find I had broken up all our lives. Paul and I were living on a basis of misunderstanding: Paul was sleeping away from me, and I kept having such nightmares. We were unhappy. I didn’t want to be a cabbage-wife, a back-yard wife. I thought, a relation like ours can’t be broken up so soon, so someone must make an experiment, and it had better be me than Paul. A man can never remember he is making an experiment. As soon as he loves another woman physically, he thinks he is head over heels in love, and he will throw everything away for her. Women have a more practical sense, a more cynical sense of human relations. They know nothing is worth all that bother.

  ‘So I decided when the time came to make an experiment. I came away with Oliver. I am very fond of him too. You can all see he has charm: no one is asking himself or herself why I went away with him. But it is not just charm I was looking for, it was—a new life, a bath of the soul. I thought his charm and love would act like cold cream, and his inexperience like an astringent, and give me a new skin, take away my mental wrinkles. Well, I find there is no such thing as a spiritual renaissance, at least not for a woman. We are too much nailed to a coffin of flesh, our souls are only plants, they are rooted in an earth of flesh. We need a home, security, comfort for our flesh before the mind can grow. That is because we are the carriers of life…’

  Oliver listened to her simple pomp with smiling, Paul with disillusioned, eyes. ‘But in a sense, he made me creative!’ She laughed. Everyone else looked askew. She went on, like a woman talking in the dark… ‘I have life in me now: I must think not of myself, or Paul or him, but of the future. Paul and I have a home, Oliver has no home. He wants to go somewhere out to th
e colonies or something of the sort and make a home. How can I, in my condition? I need peace. I have had to make too many decisions: it is not good. I should be resting…’

  Paul broke out impatiently: ‘Elvira, what are you going to do?’

  ‘You are not really sympathetic with my problem. It is very distasteful to have to explain oneself to people to whom explanations are a burden. You think me slow—life has frightened me. I have tried to think things out, but I need more patience than other people. I am ankylosed. You have all had your part in making me like that.’

  She was ruffled: she had been avoiding the issue, complacently spreading herself out over her speech. She had two vermouths before her, and, they could see, would go on mildly eating and drinking and prolonging her navel-philosophy for a week. Sara’s eyes did not recover from their startled, measuring look, but a sort of calculation had crept into them too: she looked from Paul to Elvira, stole a glance at Oliver and back to Paul. She quietly detailed all of Paul’s attitudes.

  At this moment Blanche d’Anizy strolled on to the terrace, and came up, impudently but gracefully intrusive.

  ‘The whole family united! A domestic League of Nations. What are you going to do, Elvira, at last? Have you finally made up your mind? Come, I won’t bother you: you have so much to talk about. A bientôt!’

  She rejoined her men-friends in the corner, and amused, curious glances were directed at them.

  ‘Let’s get out of this,’ said Adam. ‘Where’ll we go to lunch? Or rather, I’m going to take Sara to lunch, and you three can have lunch together.’

  They paid, and the three fateful ones walked towards Montparnasse. Elvira seemed happy between her two men: she was gay with her vermouths and teased them both about their position in an outrageous manner. Both men were quiet, but Oliver fell lightly into line and began to tease her again. They went to an Italian restaurant in the rue de Montparnasse and sat at a table upstairs. The sunlight fell on the houses opposite, sparrows were building, the sun fell on the artificial roses in the vase and on the Chianti Paul had ordered. Elvira warmed up.

  ‘It’s pleasant like this: I wish we could live like this. Why can’t we? All three. If you love me, Paul, you ought to have something in common with Oliver. There must be something in common between you. Even if it’s only—’ She made an obscene remark, excited by their rivalry.

  ‘If two children grab for one cake, they’re close friends, I suppose,’ commented Oliver. Paul was silent.

  ‘They are closer friends than before,’ said Elvira, ‘because it never occurs to them there are other cakes in the world, it’s just a passion for the one.’ Her security and impudence gave her beauty a sparkle of independence. The looks of the men crossed.

  ‘One of you has to lose me,’ she answered simply: ‘if you both really loved me, you’d give my plan a trial.’ Her eyes, growing roots of seduction, sucked in their breaths, her prolific ego, masked in pathos, had them in its tendrils. Her eyes almost dropped a tear. ‘I am all alone. How can I decide for you? Haven’t either of you any will-power?’

  ‘There is something in what you say,’ put in Paul at last. ‘But I can’t do it. You must make up your mind.’

  Oliver remarked:

  ‘To me the world presents itself as a series of affirmations, my will is always decided. To you it must be odd, Elvira: you see an endless series of switches, you are a rogue-train careering over a universe of rails with no one at the signals. Now here are two signalmen: here is your chance.’ He turned laughing to Paul. ‘Like the old grandfather, when conscription was brought in in the last war. The mother and father came running to him: Father, what shall we do? Bobby will perhaps be conscripted. How can we get him out of it? The old man said, Calm, my children: it’s a question of probabilities: it is all laid out before you in a comforting set of alternatives. Either Bob will be conscripted or he won’t, one of the two. If he is conscripted, either he will stay here or he will go to the war, one of the two. At the war, either he will be wounded or he won’t, one of the two. If he is wounded, either he will die or he won’t, one of the two. If he dies, either he will go to heaven or hell, one of the two. If he goes to hell, either the devil takes graft or—but of course, the devil takes graft, like us men, and the stoniest conscription officer takes graft, so what is there to worry about?’ He laughed. Elvira looked at him with gloomy eyes.

  ‘And so one of you will take graft?’ enquired Elvira.

  ‘Why not: you, Elvira, will shortly pay a dividend, that is, have a child: one of us will hand in the coupon: if you choose Paul, you get back your old home, appurtenances and income: if you choose me, I will benefit by your yearly income of £200—you can keep the wolf from the door while I pay a dividend out of books by writing another…’

  Paul murmured: ‘You have a good business head: you ought to go into finance!’

  Oliver laughed. ‘Elvira was planning the other day to get you to place me in the City. She has a head on her. Seriously, though, I should like it. What profits can books really pay? I am sick of them. I want to get my hands on sealing-wax, cabbages, coupons, bread, something solid: I’d like to go into commodity-broking…’

  Paul stirred himself to be polite and give the young man advice. Elvira listened intently. When the coffee came they both fell silent and looked at her. She had refused most of her lunch, suffering from indigestion. She saw them looking at her, and put her hands over her face. When she took them away, her great long-lashed eyes were full of tears.

  ‘I am so weak,’ she said. ‘I love you both: I am cruel because weak. Another woman would have made up her mind long, long ago. I am heart-broken because of all the trouble I have caused you both. Forgive me when you can.’

  ‘So, Elvira…’

  ‘I am so sick,’ she said. ‘The child has decided: it is you, Oliver.’

  Paul counted the money out of his wallet, his large hand shaking slightly.

  ‘I’m glad it’s decided,’ he said. ‘I’ll go down town, get my business done, and we’ll catch the night train via Dieppe. I’ll ask Sara if she minds. I don’t want to stay another night in this town.’

  Elvira asked: ‘Is Sara going back with you?’

  ‘She came for me.’

  Elvira shrugged her shoulders and got up lazily from the table. She pulled on her little new gloves, which Paul had bought for her that morning, smoothed them, and looking sarcastically at Paul, remarked:

  ‘I see you will console yourself: as well I didn’t choose the other way.’ She laughed at Oliver. ‘You call women a trade union: it’s a trade union where everyone is watching for the other’s job.’ To Paul’s pale protesting face she laughed: ‘Don’t make those big O-eyes, Paul: I see as far as a bat. What do you bet your “distant cousin” doesn’t return home to her greasy pots and sandwich-cutting so fast?’ She gurgled at all her jokes.

  Outside Paul raised his hat, saying, ‘I’ll get in touch with you this afternoon,’ and strode stormily down the street.

  Oliver put Elvira into a taxi, laughing. ‘You are a little devil!’

  ‘You don’t half know me,’ she threatened. ‘I’ll lead you a life.’

  They went straight home. In the taxi he said: ‘I believe you intended to stay with me all along.’

  ‘I don’t know: but when I saw Sara hanging round him and the understanding that existed between them, I said to myself, if he is substituting so easily, it is all over between us. Who wants to sleep at night with a corpse?’

  ‘Perhaps you’re mistaken.’

  ‘I’m not: he doesn’t know it yet, perhaps: he’s too devoted to me still, after all. But she knows it. She’s a thirty-year-old virgin: they’re awake to any man. And then I know what he likes, quiet, peace, a pastoral view.’

  She said: ‘Listen, let’s go to his hotel. No, we’ll drive home, and I’ll send him a note. No, wait, I’ll write to Mary first and tell her to pack up all my things, my linen, the summer curtains, a basket of old linen I have—I’ll need it.
I’ll tell her to send it on.’

  ‘Why, we’ll get everything we need for our home, dear.’

  ‘No: these are mine. Why shouldn’t I have them? They cost enough to replace, and we ought to economise if we’re going to set up house. It costs enough. I know: you don’t—yet. Then I’ll write to Paul, asking him to send the things on. We’ll put them in storage until we get a proper home. No: we’ll put them in storage in London. I’ll write to a friend of mine—you know, Bessie, who just got married. She can keep them for me in her cellar.’

  ‘Why, dear, leave them in Mecklenburgh Square till we go back to London.’

  ‘No, I want it all cleared up: nothing left behind. And there’s no reason why his new consoler should be fussing round with my things.’

  ‘You women with your darling rags.’

  ‘Nonsense, you men don’t know the value of such things: you don’t need them. We need ironing-sheets, dusters, silver-cloths, old linen for wounds, old towels for cold-cream…’

  He stopped up his ears.

  ‘Have them, have them all!’

  They both laughed.

  ‘Ye gods, a woman is property incarnate.’

  ‘Oh, we are of the earth, earthy.’

  He laughed at her and held both her hands. ‘Earthy little hands: then I’ll give you all the property you can grasp: you shall have everything you want, stuff, rags, towels, dresses, silver, rings, carpets, furniture. I’ll keep on piling up property, and you can sit happily, in Nirvana, on top of everything, queen of the Great Heap. I will, I will, I promise. I’ll devote my life, you ravishing mercenary, to piling up property for you. There, does that make you happy?’

  ‘It really does,’ she said. ‘I love things I can touch. I am realist.’

  They laughed all the way home, and she was very happy all the evening with the vast fantasia of property he spun for her amusement. She said, at the end: ‘It’s wonderful how you understand me: Paul never understood me. He made some mossy ideal out of me, a mossy dead woman like that statue we saw in the Beaux-Arts, a cabbage. To you, I am just a human being. I like that. There are no disappointments, just a gradual understanding. You understand women well for a young man: you must have had a lot.’