Mr. Beluncle: A Novel (Modern Library Classics)

by V. S. Pritchett

  “Are you anything to do with the Parkinson Group?”

  “My father is. I…” said Henry.

  “We're going to have a hell of a dinner if you are,” said the rude Miss Roads.

  It was a difficult evening. Miss Roads was not pleased with Mr Chilly and Mr Chilly was not pleased with her. She shot pellets of bread across the table and laughed loudly. She was a girl who appeared to live between public-houses and a lot of furnished rooms, among young men who were in debt, who were turned out by landladies, who dossed down on the floor of her rooms, who sold her things; at the same time she appeared to travel abroad and to be snobbish about her family connections. She snubbed Henry.

  A glass of wine buzzed in Henry's head. A desire to have personality filled him. He suddenly could not stop talking about the customers in the furniture trade. He informed her that there was a slump in the price of the best woods, that labour was difficult, that several well-known shops were bankrupt. He went on to the system of invoicing. He pointed out to Miss Roads that what passed for mahogany was not always mahogany but Chippendale was always Chippendale, you could tell it.

  A small kink appeared between Mr Chilly's fair eyebrows. He listened, with a wistful desire for instruction, to Henry.

  Miss Roads argued about a set of Chippendale chairs her mother had been left and then sulked because Mr Chilly waved his weak hand at her and said:

  “Listen to this. This is interesting. Henry really knows.”

  Henry realised that he was having personality.

  Miss Roads was not pretty but her yellow-brown eyes burned in her pale face, and the face was alive, fine and nervous. Her voice jarred on him, but that he began to find attractive.

  And then, he admired Mr Chilly's rooms and thought that was how he would like to live. He brooded upon the story of Aunt Constance. Another mystery in his squalid family. He coloured with shame at the thought of Mr Chilly meeting Autlt Constance, who was always drunk. He coloured at the thought of what Mr Chilly must be thinking of his father, He coloured most at the thought of what Mr Chilly must think of himself. And suddenly he began to hate Mr Chilly.

  Miss Roads began to make conversation about going. She asked about Henry's trains. Could it be that she was trying to get him to go, while Mr Chilly was trying to get him to stay? Henry felt that his personality must stay.

  “My dear,” whispered Mr Chilly, when she was out of the room, “protect me. Stay. Isn't she too irresistible? My dear, you must stay and make a hit.”

  And then a peculiar expression came on to Mr Chilly's face, a sad, lumpish, pondering, despairing expression. Quite clearly, it said to Henry Beluncle: “It's quite hopeless. You have not made a hit. Not even with me, my dear. You are too curious altogether. It will be years before you are presentable.”

  And the serious look of one saying “Goodbye” came on to Mr Chilly's face, followed by his convenient look of folly.

  Henry thought of Miss Roads all the way home in the train. If he saw her again he would fall in love with her, on the general principle that if he saw a girl twice it would be inevitable for him. It was a kind of fatal arrangement he had with himself. He saw, in his mind, the room, the books, the incomprehensible picture. To be as old as Mr Chilly, have one's hair a little receding, not growing thick on the forehead like his own! Henry stood up in the empty compartment of the night train, and, taking his pocket knife out, began to saw off a few pieces of hair in front at the parting in order to gain a little on the sluggish pace of experience.

  The front door of his house was opened by Mr Beluncle.

  “Ten o'clock,” said Mr Beluncle. “How dare you come reeling into your home at this hour. Who the devil do you think you are, keeping me up? Get out of my sight before I lose my temper, before I say something I regret—before I break your back. Is that your idea of the religion of love, your mother worried to death?”

  XLVII

  Henry was a hero to his brothers.

  “What time?” said George.

  “Ten o'clock,” said Henry.

  “Did he use language?” said George eagerly.

  “Yes,” said Henry.

  “Abominable,” Leslie said dryly.

  Two days later Henry was walking to the station and had reached the rusting chestnuts where the park began. He was thinking of Celia Roads. She has a head (he thought of her attractions), a quick tongue, she talks fast, she contradicts, she has a fur coat; she doesn't like me, she is at war with her mother, she is unhappy, Mr Chilly is frightened of her. She was discontented in that lovely room. She talked of being in Italy. Fancy leaving a home which had Chippendale chairs in it. How do you ever meet people like that again?

  He looked up. Mary Phibbs in the dark blue frock she wore in her shop was coming towards him. She had never come so near to his house before and, at any moment, his father might be overtaking them if he had the whim of catching the same train.

  Mary was not walking in her slow, heavy, shy way, turning her head to the gardens or the wall, pretending not to see him. She was rushing and at the sight of him she ran towards him. Henry turned anxiously. He would have been glad to have run away.

  “Where have you been?” she said. “What has happened? Why haven't you come to the house? I waited for you all Monday, all Tuesday. I've been so worried, I haven't slept.”

  She put her arm on his. Her arm was not light and soft any more, but was heavy and pulled with all the power of her anxiety. Her small eyes looked into his.

  “Trouble at home. That's all,” he said. “I couldn't come.”

  She had both hands on his arm. She was giving herself to him as she walked and her mouth opened with a small twist of pain that was in itself beautiful.

  “I am going to the station with you. You haven't stopped loving me? Is it what I said about not going to church? About losing your faith?”

  “No,” said Henry. “Trouble at home. The usual thing, but worse now.”

  “I can't believe it,” she said. “I told Sis and she said I was a fool, she was so cross with me. 'You're in love with a boy, not a church,' she said. I was silly. Forgive me. When you didn't come, I cried. I shall get told off for coming this morning. Sis said I wasn't to. I got up early and I didn't have breakfast. Mother said, 'What has got into our Mary's head?' but J said nothing.” Mary chattered complacently, imperiously, startled by herself, her eyes sparkling and alive. “Oh,” she said, pressing her nails into his arm, “I thought I had lost you. Why didn't you write, even? If I had known. But not to see you, not to have a word!”

  “I have had a terrible row about us,” Henry said.

  “Oh,” she said softly. “I am so sorry.” She stopped. “It is terrible for you to suffer. My boy,” she said. “Kiss me. If we have each other.”

  He had never felt the power of her heart until then, her unpractised hands had never held him as they held him now. Her waist was now soft and he could feel the weight not of her love alone but of love itself, as he awkwardly kissed her.

  “Oh, I have got you,” she said. “I thought I had lost you.”

  He looked anxiously up the path and across the park. They walked on, talking of what they could do and how they could meet for longer times, openly, not in this secrecy, and Henry, feeling her leg bump heavily against him as he walked, longed for this too.

  “I have thought of you every night,” he said.

  “I have too,” she said. And she said, “I wanted you to be with me.”

  “I do too,” he said.

  “I mean,” she said quietly, “when I was thinking of you. Last night terribly. It was wicked, wasn't it? I'm often wicked.”

  Henry sat in his train. The train passed two or three stations before he noticed where he was. At the fourth the freshness of the sunlight was dimmed by a film of smoke that gives to central London the aching light of an eclipse.

  The torture began. The sight of love in her face for the first time, the knowledge that she was not a girl, but a woman, the sudden strength of
her womanhood in her hands, the awkwardness of open desire in her mouth, showed him that, whatever his feeling for her was, it was not a love like hers. The pride, so flattered by her, now turned against her; she was pursuing him, she was asking from him, she was demanding him. She had gone over to the enemy, for by her innocent action, she had shown him that his father was right. A terrible revelation came to him: I do not love her.

  He got out of the train and walked the few hundred yards to the Bulux offices. It was a wretched neighbourhood. There was the vast hospital where already the sick were out on their balconies, the nurses passing like white-winged birds, the cars of the doctors turning in. There were the warehouses with their cold doorways and their warm ones, and the sunlight on the railway arches opposite to them. The worn pavements, which, in this labouring part of the city, seemed thinner and softer in their dirtiness than they were in the wealthier parts, frequently were broken by the cobbles of side streets and alleys; and out of the long fog-yellow tunnels of the arches, leading to the river, came the sudden, brassy, thrash of vans. As he passed by others going to work in these warehouses, Henry wished there was someone to whom he could speak. He was astonished that no one looked at him or spoke to him, for he was surely as conspicuous in his guilt as a man walking with a rope round his neck.

  At lunch-time he walked to the middle of London Bridge and looked at the brown river between the wharves. Rows of men and women leaned here during the lunch hour and the seagulls flew over them. One minute Henry was smiling with pleasure at the memory of the love in Mary's face; then the pleasure sickened with offence at the pursuit. He did not notice the people leaning beside him.

  Presently he heard a woman's voice saying:

  “Wake up. We are stand-offish, aren't we?”

  He saw Miss Vanner beside him.

  “Looking at the boats? Thinking of going to sea? I've been talking to you for ages.” She looked at him shrewdly.

  “I am sorry,” he said, “I did not notice you.”

  “Oh, I don't mind,” she said, in an offended tone. “You're superior, aren't you?”

  “No,” he said. He was blushing. “I didn't notice you.”

  “Are you miserable?” she said kindly, leaning on the parapet with him. “You looked as though you were going to throw yourself in.”

  “No,” said Henry.

  “Had a row with your girl-friend?”

  “No,” said Henry loudly.

  “Oh,” she laughed. “Caught you, you dark horse. You've got one. When are you going for your holiday? Are you going with her?”

  “Good Lord, no,” said Henry indignantly.

  “Poor girl,” she said, laughing at him.

  “I'm going with my boy,” she said. “We always go together. Well, what is wrong with that?”

  Henry said there was nothing wrong. Her face was near to his and she said sympathetically:

  “I shall be glad when Mrs Truslove is back, your father's nerves! Has he been at you again?”

  “No,” said Henry.

  “Oh well, if you don't want to talk, don't. But don't be shut up in your pride. I suppose you'll be a partner one day.”

  “Oh no,” said Henry earnestly.

  “No?” Miss Vanner gaped.

  “I'm leaving when I can.”

  “What are you going to do?” she said, amazed.

  “I'm going abroad,” he said.

  Miss Vanner studied his face and gave a genial glance of unbelief at his clothes.

  “You're right,” she said. “What does your girl-friend say to that? I wouldn't let my boy go abroad. Out of sight, out of mind. It's funny,” she said, as they straightened and walked away from the bridge, “running into you like that. You're peculiar. I should go mad if you and Mr G. were away together. You're not familiar, like the others, neither is he. Not familiar. I like a man to be stand-offish. My boy'd have something to say if he saw me walking with you. I saw you there standing wrapped up in your thoughts, quite sad, that's why I spoke. Quite romantic, wasn't it?”

  Henry laughed to avoid answering.

  “I know what you're thinking,” she said.

  “What?”

  “I know,” she said. “I know what you're thinking all the time.”

  “What d'you mean?”

  “I'll tell you some time. You're thinking about me. Don't get hot and eager, will you? You know what is the matter with you? You're too pious. I was going to ask you a question.”

  But Miss Vanner would not reveal her question. It was concerned with what he was thinking, she said, and she knew what he was thinking, it was in his face. One day, she said, perhaps. She pulled her blouse down at the waist and looked at him with sudden offence. And she widened the distance between them as they walked the last fifty yards.

  “Mr Chilly,” she said, “has manners. I mean, if you conduct a conversation with him, you enjoy his full attention. And he gives you his confidence. Not that I prefer older men.”

  They arrived at the whitened doorstep of Bulux Ltd. and Miss Vanner stopped and beckoned Henry back a few yards to be out of earshot, she said, of any Nosy Parker inside.

  “Here,” she challenged. “You say you're leaving?”

  “Yes.”

  “Is it true that this place is going up the spout?”

  “What d'you mean?” said Henry.

  “Oh well, you wouldn't tell if you knew,” she said. “But there are plenty of rumours in the office. Mrs Truslove's leaving, isn't she? Chilly isn't here this morning. He put money in. There's a rumour going round—your aunt's been in and Chilly went to see her about re-organising the firm. He's got money. Only your father doesn't want it. Chilly's away. Or is he? I don't know.”

  “I never heard anything,” said Henry. “When was my aunt here?”

  Miss Vanner said: “You're close.”

  They walked on: “Poor Mr Cook, at his age, where will he get a job?” she accused.

  “Oh God,” thought Henry, “am I to be made responsible for that too?” Henry sat at his desk.

  “I do not love her. I do not love her,” Henry was saying to himself. “It was terrible seeing her.”

  And then he changed to the other side.

  “When you say you do not love her you are simply being bullied into thinking so by your father.”

  New voices came into the dispute: his brother's, Mr Phibbs's, Mrs Truslove's, Mr Chilly's. They became so loud, egging him on, holding him back, accusing him of treachery, praising him for clear-sightedness, arguing all over the page of figures under his hand, that by the middle of the afternoon, the sounds of the office became blurred, as if the floor and the walls were made of felt. Then a glass window came down between him and the clerks. He could see their lips move and watch them walk but they made hardly a sound. Miss Vanner thrashed her typewriter and no noise came from it. “Dear Sir, We are in receipt,” he heard Mr Cook say. And Mr Cook kept on saying it. Henry got down from his stool smiling sadly at the doomed foolery of Mr Cook and was going to laugh out loud with him. He was going to say:

  “That's good: we are in receipt. Not jwm. Not Mr Cook.” But he changed his mind. His ears roared. Henry rushed out of the office to the lavatory and was sick and his head seemed to be breaking up into streets and buildings and rooms. He came out shuddering with cold and Miss Vanner saw him coming back along the passage.

  “Are you all right?” Miss Vanner asked.

  Henry smiled. His last impression was of a loud roar and of her red mouth wide open as he fell to the floor, which rang as though he had hit iron.

  XLVIII

  She was standing as a rule when he saw her, behind three or four tiers of fancy cakes at Lippard's, so that he generally saw no more than her head and shoulders. She was a dyed blonde of forty-five, with dark, irritated eyes, a double chin, heavily made-up and pale and she had a small mouth that seemed to be shaping the words “Pardon me”. She wore heavy spectacles. It was a pleasure, Mr Beluncle found, to watch her. She was the manageress. She kep
t her eyes on the girls. She bullied the men who came up with trays of cakes from the kitchens, in a surly way, not saying very much. She could do three or four things at once and still appreciate Mr Beluncle's bantering conversation as he sat on the stool on the other side of the counter drinking coffee and eating cakes. When she came from behind the cakes, she was seen to be a heavy woman with a light step. She reminded him of a trimmer and cleaned-up version of his sister Constance^— Constance as she could have been. He admired her because —except for the hair—she looked like himself.

  Mr Beluncle used to come in for a cup of coffee on Tuesdays and Thursdays.

  “What's biting you?” he used to say perkily, or

  “Put it all on today, haven't you?” nodding to her jewellery or

  “What's the matter with the coffee?”

  The manageress played up to Mr Beluncle's role of the difficult customer, who was always cheerful, always pretending to complain.

  After this, he got on to “old times”.

  “What happened to that woman who used to be upstairs?” or

  “I remember this place before they opened up at the back.”

  They were now old acquaintances. For a long time the manageress had thought he was one of those dangerous middle-aged men who can always bring a car round the corner and “run you down to Brighton”, “a good sport”. He was not. She sighed. “Good sports” were dropping out of her life. Resignation, melancholy and long-faced thoughts came to her when she saw Mr Beluncle; he was respectable. He was what she had missed. He belonged to the large class of jovial, paternal arm-squeezing middle-aged fathers of family who wanted sympathy. She relapsed into that: her figure had gone—”if you want to know”—her voice sagged, she wanted sympathy too. A common physical desuetude and tiredness drew them together, the consolation of wagging their tongues about their lives to someone who knew nothing of their lives. They knew the cards to play: Mr Beluncle had always liked manageresses; he knew the compliments they liked. She— her name was Mrs Robinson—had always liked a manager. Their meetings were a kind of suicide pact in which their voices and their autobiographies died together over the counter twice a week.