Her response, so sudden and passionate, seemed surprising only a minute or two later. All at once everything was changed. Her body felt at the same time hard and yielding, giving a kind of glow as if live current issued from it. I used to wonder afterwards whether, in the last resort, of all the time we spent together, however ecstatic, those first moments on the Great West Road were not the best.
To what extent the sudden movement that brought us together was attributable to sentiment felt years before; to behaviour that was almost an obligation within the Templer orbit; or, finally, to some specific impetus of the car as it covered an unusually bad surface of road, was later impossible to determine with certainty. All I knew was that I had not thought it all out beforehand. This may seem extraordinary in the light of what had gone before; but the behaviour of human beings is, undeniably, extraordinary. The incredible ease with which this evolution took place was almost as if the two of us had previously agreed to embrace at that particular point on the road. The timing had been impeccable.
We had bowled along much farther through the winter night, under cold, glittering stars, when Templer turned the car off the main road. Passing through byways lined with beech trees, we came at last to a narrow lane where snow still lay thick on the ground. At the end of this, the car entered a drive, virginally white. In the clear moonlight the grotesquely gabled house ahead of us, set among firs, seemed almost a replica of that mansion by the sea formerly inhabited by Templer’s father. Although smaller in size, the likeness of general outline was uncanny. I almost expected to hear the crash of wintry waves beneath a neighbouring cliff. The trees about the garden were powdered with white. Now and then a muffled thud resounded as snow fell through the branches on to the thickly coated ground. Otherwise, all was deathly silent.
Templer drew up with a jerk in front of the door, the wheels churning up the snow. He climbed quickly from his seat, and went round to the back of the car, to unload from the boot some eatables and wine they had brought from London. At the same moment Mona came out of her sleep or coma. With the rug still wrapped round her, she jumped out of her side of the car, and ran across the Sisley landscape to the front door, which someone had opened from within. As she ran she gave a series of little shrieks of agony at the cold. Her footprints left deep marks on the face of the drive, where the snow lay soft and tender, like the clean, clean sheets of a measureless bed.
‘Where shall I find you?’
‘Next to you on the left.’
‘How soon?’
‘Give it half an hour.’
‘I’ll be there.’
‘Don’t be too long.’
She laughed softly when she said that, disengaging herself from the rug that covered both of us.
The interior of the house was equally reminiscent of the Templers’ former home. Isbister’s huge portrait of Mr. Templer still hung in the hall, a reminder of everyday life and unsolved business problems. Such things seemed far removed from this mysterious, snowy world of unreality, where all miracles could occur. There were the same golf clubs and shooting-sticks and tennis racquets; the same barometer, marking the weather on a revolving chart; the same post-box for letters; even the same panelling in light wood that made the place seem like the interior of a vast, extravagant cabinet for cigars.
‘What we need,’ said Templer, ‘is a drink. And then I think we shall all be ready for bed.’
For a second I wondered whether he were aware that something was afoot; but, when he turned to help Mona with the bottles and glasses, I felt sure from their faces that neither had given a thought to any such thing.
3
EARLY in the morning, snow was still drifting from a darkened sky across the diamond lattices of the window-panes; floating drearily down upon the white lawns and grey muddy paths of a garden flanked by pines and fir trees. Through these coniferous plantations, which arose above thick laurel bushes, appeared at no great distance glimpses of two or three other houses similar in style to the one in which I found myself; the same red brick and gables, the same walls covered with ivy or Virginia creeper.
This was, no doubt, a settlement of prosperous business men; a reservation, like those created for indigenous inhabitants, or wild animal life, in some region invaded by alien elements: a kind of refuge for beings unfitted to battle with modern conditions, where they might live their own lives, undisturbed and unexploited by an aggressive outer world. In these confines the species might be saved from extinction. I felt miles away from everything, lying there in that bedroom: almost as if I were abroad. The weather was still exceedingly cold. I thought over a conversation I had once had with Barnby.
‘Has any writer ever told the truth about women?’ he had asked.
One of Barnby’s affectations was that he had read little or nothing, although, as a matter of fact, he knew rather thoroughly a small, curiously miscellaneous collection of books.
‘Few in this country have tried.’
‘No one would believe it if they did.’
‘Possibly. Nor about men either, if it comes to that.’
‘I intend no cheap cynicism,’ Barnby said. ‘It is merely that in print the truth is not credible for those who have not thought deeply of the matter.’
‘That is true of almost everything.’
‘To some extent. But painting, for example—where women are concerned—is quite different from writing. In painting you can state everything there is to be said on the subject. In other words, the thing is treated purely aesthetically, almost scientifically. Writers always seem to defer to the wishes of the women themselves.’
‘So do painters. What about Reynolds or Boucher?’
‘Of course, of course,’ said Barnby, whose capacity for disregarding points made against him would have supplied the foundation for a dazzling career at the Bar. ‘But in writing—perhaps, as you say, chiefly writing in this country—there is no equivalent, say, of Renoir’s painting. Renoir did not think that all women’s flesh was literally a material like pink satin. He used that colour and texture as a convention to express in a simple manner certain pictorial ideas of his own about women. In fact he did so in order to get on with the job in other aspects of his picture. I never find anything like that in a novel.’
‘You find plenty of women with flesh like that sitting in the Ritz.’
‘Maybe. And I can paint them. But can you write about them?’
‘No real tradition of how women behave exists in English writing. In France there is at least a good rough and ready convention, perhaps not always correct—riddled with every form of romanticism—but at least a pattern to which a writer can work. A French novelist may conform with the convention, or depart from it. His readers know, more or less, which he is doing. Here, every female character has to be treated empirically.’
‘Well, after all, so does every woman,’ said Barnby, another of whose dialectical habits was suddenly to switch round and argue against himself. ‘One of the troubles, I think, is that there are too many novelists like St. John Clarke.’
‘But novelists of the first rank have not always been attracted to women physically.’
‘If of the first rank,’ said Barnby, ‘they may rise above it. If anything less, homosexual novelists are, I believe, largely responsible for some of the extraordinary ideas that get disseminated about women and their behaviour.’
Barnby’s sententious tone had already indicated to me that he was himself entangled in some new adventure. Those utterances, which Mr. Deacon used to call ‘Barnby’s generalisations about women’, were almost always a prelude to a story involving some woman individually. So it had turned out on that occasion.
‘When you first make a hit with someone,’ he had continued, ‘you think everything is going all right with the girl, just because it is all right with you. But when you are more used to things, you are always on your guard—prepared for trouble of one sort or another.’
‘Who is it this time?’
�
�A young woman I met on a train.’
‘How promiscuous.’
‘She inspired a certain confidence.’
‘And things are going wrong?’
‘On the contrary, going rather well. That is what makes me suspicious.’
‘Have you painted her?’
Barnby rummaged among the brushes, tubes of paint, newspapers, envelopes and bottles that littered the table; coming at last to a large portfolio from which he took a pencil drawing. The picture was of a girl’s head. She looked about twenty. The features, suggested rather than outlined, made her seem uncertain of herself, perhaps on the defensive. Her hair was untidy. There was an air of self- conscious rebellion. Something about the portrait struck me as familiar.
‘What is her name?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Why not?’
‘She won’t tell me.’
‘How very secretive.’
‘That’s what I think.’
‘How often has she been here?’
‘Two or three times.’
I examined the drawing again.
‘I’ve met her.’
‘Who is she?’
‘I’m trying to remember.’
‘Have a good think,’ said Barnby, sighing. ‘I like to clear these matters up.’
But for the moment I was unable to recall the girl’s name. I had the impression our acquaintance had been slight, and was of a year or two earlier. There had been something absurd, or laughable, in the background of the occasion when we had met.
‘It would be only polite to reveal her identity by now,’ Barnby said, returning the drawing to the portfolio and making a grimace.
‘How did it start?’
‘I was coming back from a week-end with the Manaschs’. She arrived in the compartment about an hour before we reached London. We began to talk about films. For some reason we got on to the French Revolution. She said she was on the side of the People.’
‘Dark eyes and reddish hair?’
‘The latter unbrushed.’
‘Christian name, Anne?’
‘There was certainly an “A” on her handkerchief. That was a clue I forgot to tell you.’
‘Generally untidy?’
‘Decidedly. As to baths, I shouldn’t think she overdid them.’
‘I think I can place her.’
Don’t keep me in suspense.’
‘Lady Anne Stepney.’
‘A friend of yours?’
‘I sat next to her once at dinner years ago. She made the same remark about the French Revolution.’
‘Did she, indeed,’ said Barnby, perhaps a shade piqued at this apparently correct guess. ‘Did you follow up those liberal convictions at the time?’
‘On the contrary. I doubt if she would even remember my name. Her sister married Charles Stringham, whom I’ve sometimes talked of. They are getting a divorce, so I saw in the paper.’
‘Oh, yes,’ said Barnby. ‘I read about it too. Stringham was the Great Industrialist’s secretary at one moment, wasn’t he? I met him with Baby and liked him. He has that very decorative mother, Mrs. Foxe, whom really I wouldn’t——’
He became silent; then returned to the subject of the girl.
‘Her parents are called Bridgnorth?’
‘That’s it.’
‘One starts these things,’ Barnby said, ‘and then the question arises: how is one to continue them? Before you know where you are, you are thoroughly entangled. That is what we all have to remember.’
‘We do, indeed.’
Lying in bed in the Templers’ house, feeling more than a little unwilling to rise into a chilly world, I thought of these words of Barnby’s. There could be no doubt that I was now, as he had said, ‘thoroughly entangled’.
Everyone came down late to breakfast that morning. Mona was in a decidedly bad temper. Her irritation was perhaps due to an inner awareness that a love affair was in the air, the precise location of which she was unable to identify; for I was fairly certain that neither of the Templers guessed anything was ‘on’ between Jean and myself. They seemed, indeed, fully occupied by the discord of their own relationship. As it happened, I found no opportunity to be alone with Jean. She seemed almost deliberately to arrange that we should always be chaperoned by one of the other two. She would once more have appeared as calm, distant, unknown to me, as when first seen, had she not twice smiled submissively, almost shyly, when our eyes met.
Mona’s sulkiness cast a gloom over the house. Although obviously lazy and easy-going in her manner of life, she possessed also an energy and egotism that put considerable force behind this display of moodiness. Templer made more than one effort to cheer her up, from time to time becoming annoyed himself at his lack of success; when conciliation would suddenly turn to teasing. However, his continued attempts to fall in with his wife’s whims led in due course to an unexpected development in the composition of the party.
We were sitting in a large room of nebulous character, where most of the life of the household was carried on, reading the Sunday papers, talking, and playing the gramophone. The previous night’s encounter with Quiggin had enflamed Mona’s memories of her career as an artist’s model. She began to talk of the ‘times’ she had had in various studios, and to question me about Mark Members; perhaps regretting that she had allowed this link with her past to be severed so entirely. Professionally, she had never come across such figures as Augustus John, or Epstein, trafficking chiefly with a group of the lesser academic painters; though she had known a few young men, like Members and Barnby, who frequented more ‘advanced’ circles. She had never even sat for Isbister, so she told me. All the same, that period of her life was now sufficiently far away to be clouded with romance; at least when compared in her own mind with her married circumstances.
When I agreed that both Members and Quiggin were by then, in their different ways, quite well-known ‘young writers’, she became more than ever enthusiastic about them, insisting that she must meet Quiggin again. In fact conversation seemed to have been deliberately steered by her into these channels with that end in view. Templer, lying in an armchair with his legs stretched out in front of him, listened indifferently to her talk while he idly turned the pages of the News of the World. His wife’s experiences among ‘artists’ probably cropped up fairly often as a subject: a regular, almost legitimate method of exciting a little domestic jealousy when life at home seemed flat. Her repeated questions at last caused me to explain the change of secretary made by St. John Clarke.
‘But this is all too thrilling,’ she said. ‘I told you St. John Clarke was my favourite author. Can’t we get Mr. Quiggin to lunch and ask him what really has happened?’
‘Well——’
‘Look, Pete,’ she exclaimed noisily. ‘Do let’s ask J. G. Quiggin to lunch today. He could get a train. Nick would ring him up—you will, won’t you, darling?’
Templer threw the News of the World on to the carpet, and, turning towards me, raised his eyebrows and nodded his head slowly up and down to indicate the fantastic lengths to which caprice could be carried by a woman.
‘But would Mr. Quiggin want to come?’ he asked, imitating Mona’s declamatory tone. ‘Wouldn’t he want to finish writing one of his brilliant articles?’
‘We could try.’
‘By all means, if you like. Half-past eleven on the day of the luncheon invitation is considered a bit late in the best circles, but fortunately we do not move in the best circles. I suppose there will be enough to eat. You remember Jimmy is bringing a girl friend?’
‘Jimmy doesn’t matter.’
‘I agree.’
‘What do you think, Nick?’ she asked. ‘Would Quiggin come?’
One of the charms of staying with the Templers had seemed the promise of brief escape from that routine of the literary world so relentlessly implied by the mere thought of Quiggin. It was the world in which I was thoroughly at home, and certainly did not wish to change for ano
ther, only for once to enjoy a week-end away from it. However, to prevent the Templers from asking Quiggin to lunch if they so desired was scarcely justifiable to anyone concerned. Besides, I was myself curious to hear further details regarding St. John Clarke; although I should have preferred by then to have heard Members’s side of the story. Apart from all that—indeed quite overriding such considerations—were my own violent feelings about Jean which had to be reduced inwardly to some manageable order.
‘Who is “Jimmy”?’ I asked.
‘Surely you remember Jimmy Stripling when you stayed with us years ago?’ said Templer. ‘My brother-in-law. At least he was until Babs divorced him. Somehow I’ve never been able to get him out of my life. Babs can demand her freedom and go her own way. For me there is no legal redress. Jimmy hangs round my neck like a millstone. I can’t even get an annulment.’
‘Didn’t he go in for motor racing?’
‘That’s the chap.’
‘Who disliked Sunny Farebrother so much?’
‘Hated his guts. Well, Jimmy is coming to lunch today and bringing some sort of a piece with him—he asked if he could. Not too young, I gather, so your eyes need not brighten up. I can’t remember her name. I could not refuse for old times’ sake, though he is a terrible bore is poor old Jimmy these days. He had a spill at Brooklands a year or two ago. Being shot out of his car arse-first seems to have affected his brain in some way—though you wouldn’t think there was much there to affect.’
‘What does he do?’
‘An underwriter at Lloyd’s. It is not his business capacity so much as his private life that has seized up. He still rakes in a certain amount of dough. But he has taken up astrology and theosophy and numerology and God knows what else. Could your friend Quiggin stand that? Probably love it, wouldn’t he? The more the merrier so far as I’m concerned.’
‘Quiggin would eat it up.’
‘Do ring him, then,’ said Mona.
‘Shall I?’
‘Go ahead,’ said Templer. ‘The telephone is next door.’
The Acceptance World Page 7