Dora was outraged—irrationally but not unpredictably; and only after many days of tears and cries for peace was prevailed on to accompany the girls to a lawyer's office where documents were ultimately and emotionally signed. It was a further week before she spoke to them at all normally, or could bring herself to forgive.
Dora herself was confused by the indignation aroused in her by the sisters' gesture. By their action, they had deprived her, however temporarily, of her privileges of victimization. Until she re-established her prerogative of disadvantage, she was under a handicap.
By her outrage she saw to it that tables were only briefly turned.
The event was put behind them, unmentionable, and soon she was talking again about doing without, so that you girls might have everything when I'm gone.
At that time, Dora was not yet forty.
The signing over of assets had taken place shortly before Grace encountered Christian at the Sunday concert—Dora's umbrage on that memorable afternoon being attributable to it. A few months later, when Christian and Grace became engaged, Grace told him of the financial arrangement: "It seemed only fair."
Christian said quietly, " H o w like you, Grace."
"You would have done the same."
Putting the fair hairs back from her forehead, he was touched beyond her expectation. "I should like to think so."
Now Major Ingot appeared to have made their sacrifice irrelevant.
When the Major brought Dora to London in the late spring, Christian said he would give a small lunch, or luncheon, at a restaurant. Just himself, Grace, the bridal pair; and Caro—who would ask time off from work. Christian was by then married to Grace and the proper person to do such a thing, but had no affection for Dora, whom he had seen in action now and then. There had been a convulsive scene, incomprehensible, on the occasion of Grace's betrothal; and letters from the Algarve had tended to take, from time to time, the unfathomable huff. Christian firmly (to employ his favourite adverb) believed that Dora could pull herself together—
could be brought to her senses by a good talking-to, which, he contended, was long overdue and would do her the world of good.
Even Grace still imagined there might be words, the words that could reach Dora and that had so far, unaccountably, not been hit upon. Only Caro recognized that Dora's condition was exactly that: a condition, an irrational state requiring professional, or divine, intervention.
Major Ingot was thickly built, though in no martial way, having a citified paunch and large pinkish jowl. Within the restaurant doorway he cut the oval sweep of a watermelon. His scalp was smooth except for a splaying of strands over the crown; his eyes, a hurt blue, were the eyes of a drunken child. At table he spread short hands on the menu, flattening out this plan of attack. A wedding-ring was already tight on his finger, like a knot tied there to remind, or the circlet fixed on a homing pigeon. His neck made a thick fold over his collar. Everything about him was contained, constrained, a fullness tied and bound. It was hard to imagine him a soldier; although he had a desk-bound corpulence that might have done for a general.
When asked by Christian about his military service, he produced staccato information before ordering crab salad.
Salad was not reliable in Estoril, nor seafood either. On the eve of departure, Dora had been poisoned by a plate of king prawns.
The bill of the Portuguese doctor had come, with the medicines, to thirty pounds.
"And that," said Major Ingot, "made it an expensive meal."
"Bruce was ropable," Dora told them. "And Bruce is usually a patient body."
The Major redly glared endorsement.
They must return to Portugal within the month, there was everything to be done to the flat. Curtains, upholstery, Dora already had the swatches. In addition, Rastas, the Major's Labrador, was in a kennel.
It was hard to imagine the Major's pleasures, difficult even to picture him in the ingle of a pub in Algarve England saying, "Let me tell you the one about." Retribution emerged as a main preoccupation: "They have made their bed and must lie in it," " H e will just have to take his medicine"—making of life a military, or prison, hospital. In the postwar scramble, the Major had been lucky; had, as he explained, fallen on his feet. In the free-for-all, some landed right side up, others came a cropper.
Around the table, the Major's punitive figures of speech aroused antipathies that were scarcely coherent. The truth was they were too reminiscent of Christian himself.
To revert one moment to the poisoned prawns. If I may. For just such reasons there was a big future in the Algarve. British residents liked what they were used to—Twinings Earl Grey, Coopers Vin-tage Marmalade. Possibilities were pretty well infinite—Tiptree, Huntley and Palmer, to give a bare idea. Why not have a stab at it? Nor could the liquors be disregarded, Gilbey's, Dewar's. "It is all there for"—the Major made a deft, pink, snatching gesture above the tablecloth—"the taking." No, the Major was not thinking of getting into books. "It's a small turnover. Make no error, I like nothing better than a rattling good yarn myself. But the turnover doesn't justify. Your average tourist is not a big reader. Guide-books now—well, there you're on to a horse of a different colour."
There was no need to get mixed up with the Ports. The foreign residents out there were a well-to-do crowd, on the whole. Germans were coming back too, you'd be surprised. They preferred the Algarve to the Costa Brava, which had already been developed out of extinction. Furthermore, the government was stable. More so, he was sorry to say, than this lot we've got here at home. "These socialists wouldn't dare show themselves out there." If they did, they would soon laugh on the other side of their faces.
"I wouldn't live here if you paid me."
Thunder could be heard. Through the restaurant's glass doors, they saw a deluge.
As to the prime minister, the Major continued, "I wouldn't trust him with sixpence on the table"—slamming down the imaginary coin—"while I stepped out of the room."
Dora dealt out photographs, like trump cards, of herself in the sun. The Major said, "I'd have taken more, but I'd used up most of the roll on the dog."
Christian was surprised by Dora's good looks. He had always felt her nature did not come commensurately through in her appearance, and now that she was plumper and complacent—and kept the speckled veil, still suggestive of a bridal, turned up around her hat
—it was hard to credit her awfulness. With her dark eyes and high colour, she might herself have been native to the Algarve or Alen-tejo; had it not been for the mouth.
Contrasted with Dora's rounded self-approval, Caro was hollow-eyed, the pale, impressive ghost at the feast despite a crimson dress.
Only Grace truly looked her part, a sweet young matron with no darker side.
Dora was telling, "Bruce has an eye. And has picked up some exquisite pieces. Majolica, old rugs."
The Major agreed: "If I say so myself." (It occurred to Christian, like a warning, that this phrase usually preceded falsehood.) "I can go into any junk shop and pick out the one thing." Again, a show of thick, short fingers. "Of course, out there you have to bargain."
When it was agreed that bargaining went against the grain, there was a pause. Christian was thinking that in England a gentleman does not wear a wedding-ring.
Dora resumed: "Caro is looking so well. And happy." They all turned towards gaunt Caro, who held her wine-glass. "She must come out to see us." Dora was queening it. "And try her Portuguese." It was explained to the Major: "She has this gift."
Caro smirked a bit, to please.
Christian was thinking, A signet ring—well, that would be another matter. A horse of a different colour.
The Major said languages were unusual in an Orstrylian. He had a friend at Brisbane who was in dried fruit and nuts.
Christian lit a cigarette, and hoped his relation to the Major was not that of brother-in-law.
Dora remarked that her own language was good enough for her.
The Major was off on a
story about an Australian nurse in a military hospital. He knew the soldier, actually, to whom the incident had occurred.
When the coffee came, Grace got awkwardly to her feet, cup in hand as if she might propose a toast. Above a blouse of lavender flowers, her face and forehead shone. She set the cup down as deliberately as if it, rather than she, were in need of care; and fainted.
Grace was to have a child.
The London theatre where Paul Ivory's first full-length play was given had a small foyer which, at the end of that afternoon's mati-nee, was emptying slowly because of the rain. Women shuffled out in single file, and a few elderly men waited under the awning, wondering what came next. Caroline Bell stood to one side, unfastening her umbrella while she looked through glass doors at a tawdry street.
Paul entered from a small interior door near the ticket booth: himself an actor on cue. Finding the crowd still there, he hesitated.
And in that moment saw Caro, who had her back to him, her face obscured as if deliberately turned away.
Paul Ivory stood with his hand on the door he had just opened, a man who controls himself under an accusation. The unfairness was not only that the woman had been placed in his path but also that, given her unawareness, the choice was left to him whether to speak. Even while registering injustice, Paul was almost physically swayed by the sight of Caro, and by the deliberate, detached authority with which fate had again produced her. Paul had measured his forgetfulness of Caroline Bell by the swift current of change and achievement in his recent months of life. He had not merely left her but left her behind. From the standing-room assigned her in the theatre of Paul Ivory's existence, Caro should pensively observe his performance, and applaud. Now, at the sight of her averted head, he had no choice, and must act under compulsion. He approached her with some consciousness of exaltation, obeying an impulse not necessarily to his advantage. Obeying his need as if it were virtue.
All this because a dark girl stood at a door with a furled umbrella in her hand.
"Caro."
So she turned, and again they stood side by side.
With his own sensations fresh in him, Paul saw her spasm of surprise and the sequence of quick, contradictory impulses. There was even recognition that she had run, or provoked, this risk in coming to see his play; and a flash that answered his own compulsion but was dourly mastered. Her lips closed to a deliberate curve he had not seen before because it derived from his desertion.
The lobby was by now almost empty. Lights had been turned out.
They made a dark pair, standing by the doors.
She said, "Yes?" as if accosted by a stranger. But trembled in the raincoat with her whole body so that she felt the separate stuffs of her clothes, and her anatomy delicately beating within. In the same way her mind struggled, tremulous, inside the event.
"You were good to come, Caro."
"I am glad to have seen it."
"I'm hardly ever here. There's been a change in the cast, the part of Mandy, the tubercular son, and I wanted to see how it went."
Automatic speech, anything to pass these moments.
She had never before seen Paul in a city suit. For his part he found her appearance extraordinary, large eyes and transparent skin: a formidable loveliness. He had expected to leave her behind him.
Impressions came and went in them, like quick tides.
Paul said, "Would you care to see backstage?"
They walked down a corridor of whitewashed grime. "Mind the steps." The stage had marks on it—a stroke of chalk, a stencilled arrow. The curtain, of stale, unclean crimson, was down, there was the glum furniture of the last act. At a time when Shakespeare was played in modern suburban dress or leather jackets, Paul Ivory's contemporary, working-class play was being acted out in royal robes. Father and Mother loomed as stage tyrants, crowned and majestic in purple and gold, while their subjected offspring cow-ered in cardigans and dungarees. This fairly obvious device had been called a stroke, or shaft, of genius in the press.
Caroline Bell accompanied Paul through a dingy labyrinth, never lowering her eyes. When they paused at a doorway she shook her hair back so that her face was entirely visible.
A man in overalls unlatched the door. Paul smiled his open, remembering smile: "Thanks, Collis." They went down a short flight, and Paul knocked on another door.
Caro was introduced to the great actor, who said, "If you do that again I'll have your hide." He was speaking to a dandified boy, who took grapes from a ribboned basket without replying. The embroidered royal robe hung on the wall. Paul said, "Feel it." Even a single fold was heavy to handle. The actor told her, "It gives the weight of bloody sovereignty all right." He had taken the colour off his face, and was wearing a lawn shirt and sponge-bag trousers.
A scalding radiator hissed in a corner. Caro loosed her coat.
Paul asked her, "What did you think of the Marmite scene?"
Before she could answer, the boy with the grapes said, "It's the strongest bit in the play."
Caro said, "I wasn't convinced a shopgirl would know the word
'Oedipal.' "
The actor laughed. "We've been through that. Don't forget it was a bookshop she worked in."
The boy said, "It's a bit heavy-handed, the king is dead long live et cetera. Otherwise it's okay."
The actor asked Paul, "Conder did all right, don't you think?"
"I've already told him so. He'll settle in. Mandy ought to look a damn sight sicker, that's all." It was to be noted that Paul smiled less with the actors—who, after all, were professionals.
The actor said, "Conder couldn't look sick enough to suit Valentine." Valentine was the boy with the grapes. This reference to his jealousy, while excluding the outsider—Caro—was, in the way of all exclusions, directed at her. The men exchanged a smile.
In the corridor the queen-mother sailed past them in long, sharp profile, eyelids and lashes heavily drawn in peacock colours, pen-cilled back to the hairline: the prow of a Greek trireme.
Paul said, "Performers never notice anyone but themselves/'
He had done the right, or astute, thing in exposing Caro to his attainment, summoning up his auxiliaries. He said, "Are you working in that office now?"
"Yes. I had a half-day off, there was a lunch for my sister."
"Same old cast of characters." Confirming his advantage. They had reached the street door. "Me included." He put his hand on the doorknob and leaned against the wall, not really detaining her.
"Me too, Caro." Behind him, aphorisms, all more or less obscene, were scratched or scribbled on whitewashed brick.
Her uplifted face, expressionless. She reached past him; but would not put her hand over his to take the doorknob, and hesitated, poised and thwarted. He saw she could not speak. She reached again for the door and kept her eyes on him, like a captive who edges watchfully towards escape. There was the everlasting, irritating, and alluring impression that she addressed herself to an objective beyond the small, egoistic drama of their own desires.
Paul said, "You always had some contempt for me."
"Yes."
"And love too."
"Yes." A flicker over her stare was the facial equivalent of a shrug. " N o w you have a wife to give you both."
They stood fronting one another. Paul removed his hand from the door. "Caro. For pity's sake."
The figure of speech appeared to move her, and for an instant it seemed she might laugh. Again he pressed what he took for an advantage: "Have a bit of mercy."
She herself leaned back on the chalky wall, and closed her eyes.
" H o w should you hope for mercy, rendering none?"
"These walls are full of dirty quotations, one way and another."
There was silence while she leaned there, austere with her umbrella, sheathed and closed. She roused herself and did step past him, then, to pull at the heavy door.
From behind her, Paul said, "You've got white all over your back." And in the most natural way in the w
orld brushed his hand down her coat. Then passed his arms about her waist and put his mouth to the nape of her neck, and said, "Almighty God."
They walked in the wet street. Paul took hold of the loosened belt of Caro's raincoat and seemed to lead her through the rush-hour crowd—not pulling but establishing contact and mastery, so that she accompanied him like an acquiescent animal on a leash or rein. At the corner he signalled a taxi, and gave the driver an address. When they got in, he said, "We might take a look at my new premises. I'm fixing up a house I bought. You must tell me what you think." He held her hand as they sat in the cab—literally held it, since it lay in his with as much response as a coat belt. Caro sat without speaking, turning towards him her look that was neither sullen nor expectant but soberly attentive; and, once, a glance in which tenderness and apprehension were great and indivisible, giving unbearable, excessive immediacy to the living of these moments. Paul had seen that look before, when they first lay down together at the inn beyond Avebury Circle.
"This is it." Paul leaned forward to tell the driver. "You can let us off here. It's a cul-de-sac—once in, you can't get out."
The rain had stopped. The house was narrow and flat-fronted, a slot of brick severity between two pigeon-breasted buildings with porticoes. By the curb, a man working on the engine of a parked car nodded to them and went on singing:
"Roses are flowering in Picardy,
But there's never a rose like you. "
Paul used a bright new key. There were smells of paint, plaster, and raw wood. Brown paper was spread on the floors, and each window had an X pasted on it like a warning of plague.
Precipitous stairs were shinily white. The yard at the back was muddy and littered with workmen's discards, although a pile of flagstones showed it would be paved and planted in due course.
A sink of pale porcelain stood in the kitchen, strapped and papered, ready to be puttied: a patient in bandages at a dressing-station.
In the dining-room the hospital motif recurred. Painters' cloths were whitely draped over trestles and a table. The smell of paint was antiseptic, anaesthetic.
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