by MARY HOCKING
By lunchtime it was raining heavily, and the girls spent the time after lunch in the hall. An accomplished pianist thumped out a lively quickstep and several couples were dancing, including Claire and Heather. Heather was the leader, manoeuvring with more energy than grace, while Claire hung light as a feather in her arms. There was a dank smell of wet clothes coming from the cloakroom, and the windows were steamed over. Sweat made dark circles under the arms of the dancers. From the walls the prints of old London looked down and, above the prints, members of staff looked down from the balcony, talking as they watched the girls. ‘Just like prison,’ Louise thought, ‘with all the little cells going off the catwalk.’
A pimpled junior came and sat beside her, gazing adoringly, hoping Louise might dance with her. The child began to prattle about a film she had seen with Myrna Loy and William Powell. Myrna Loy, it seemed, was the very image of Louise.
Louise could not bring herself to dance with the child. ‘Look, cherub, I’ve got the curse, so I’m going to take a rest,’ she excused herself; then, seeing the crestfallen face, added, ‘I think I’ve got some pictures of Myrna Loy hidden away at home. I’ll bring them for you tomorrow.’
‘You wouldn’t have a photograph of you?’
‘I don’t take a good photograph; you’re much better off with Myrna Loy.’
The child gazed after her, and Louise was moved by this dim reflection of her own longing.
In the corridor she could hear the choral society singing ‘The Wanderer’s Night Song’ with mournful pleasure. She walked past the chemistry laboratory whence came a smell of sulphuretted hydrogen and went into the sixth form cloakroom. She put on her coat and went out to walk in the streets for the remaining twenty minutes.
As she walked, the rain stopped and the sun came out. Her mother had noticed her unhappiness and, thinking Louise and Guy had quarrelled, had said, it will pass, my love. It’s all a part of growing up.’ But Louise did not want the pain to pass into numb insensitivity, which was the condition in which she imagined most adults spent their lives. She had within her reach the one great happiness beside which everything else was insignificant. How could she turn from that immediate bliss in order to qualify for rewards of which older people spoke so vaguely and so joylessly? The deaconess at the chapel had once said to her in a moment of great daring, ‘There are sweets you can have off that tree, but if you taste today, you are denied those growing higher up.’ Louise did not believe that God would order things in this way, like a game in which you only understand the rules after the last whistle has been blown.
As far as she was concerned, the most stupid thing of all was to imagine that God, having created man and woman and given them this wonderful gift of physical love, would wish it to be treated as a forbidden fruit. It should surely be apparent to any person who had not totally rejected God’s abundance that something which aroused such a tender awareness of another person, such delight in the giving of body and spirit, could not possibly be anything but good.
The badness was the sense of sin from which even she was not free. It was strong and dark within her and she had to fight against it as she would have fought against any other evil force, such as Hitler. Love must conquer sin. If every lover felt this, why hadn’t love changed the sour face of the world? She could only assume that other lovers hadn’t been as strong as she, had not been prepared to risk as much.
She turned reluctantly in the direction of the school and at this moment she saw Jacov. He was on the other side of the road, and when she waved he crossed to her.
‘Why aren’t you at work?’ she asked.
‘I’ve got another job.’ It was evident he was pleased with himself. ‘I don’t start until tomorrow.’
‘What’s this job, then?’ He would tell her about the job and she would ask him if Guy knew about it. The need to mention Guy’s name drove everything else from her mind.
‘It’s at the film studios here in Shepherd’s Bush.’
‘How marvellous!’ She was suddenly happy as though she and Guy must have a share in his good fortune. They began to walk along the street away from the school.
Louise had no wish to play truant, but she believed, against all the evidence, that there was always time to do the thing which was of supreme importance. Time would suspend itself while she dealt with her first priority, whether it was picking pussy willows on the banks of the Thames when she had gone to watch the Boat Race, or feeding the milkman’s horse with sugar lumps on her way to catch a train. So now when she said to Jacov, ‘Did you get this job through that friend who came to see our plays?’ she did not see it as an impossibility for her to talk to Jacov about Guy and still be back at school in five minutes.
‘Yes,’ Jacov said. ‘He said you ought to take a screen test.’
‘And Guy?’
‘He thought Guy’s style of acting was more suited to the stage.’
‘Guy would soon learn. It’s time British films had another good- looking actor besides John Loder. Oh, Jacov! If only you could get Guy a part in a film now!’
‘You’ll have to give me a little time. I don’t think they’re going to put me in charge of casting right away.’
‘It’s got to be now!’ she cried urgently. ‘Guy’s going to America.’
He stopped and studied her face. There was something about the crinkled eyes which suggested he might be making a calculation. He said, ‘Poor little one!’ There was mockery in his smile, though whether it was directed at her or himself was hard to tell. He bent forward and rested his cheek lightly against hers; then he strolled on, holding her hand. If the calculation had come out in his favour, it seemed he had not yet decided how to take advantage of it.
They walked without talking until they came to a car showroom. ‘When you are a film producer you will be able to drive a car like that,’ she said, pointing to a Daimler 15, priced at £450 and described as having ‘any amount of snap, deceptive speed and a remarkable suavity’.
‘Do you like suave cars, Louise?’
‘Look at that clock! I should have been at school half an hour ag°.’
‘Too late now. Let’s go to the pictures.’
She hesitated, looking resentfully at the clock, unprepared to accept its message while she still had things to say. ‘This trip of Guy’s to America was fixed up months ago. His uncle is paying for it. He can’t really get out of going, can he?’
‘For you, I would cancel a hundred trips to America! I would even give up this wonderful job which is going to make me famous. I would do anything for you!’ He flapped his arms wide, like a scarecrow, and rapped his knuckles on the showroom window. It was always in his gestures that he was most eloquent. If an upraised arm was all it took, he could have conquered the world; if an outstretched hand was all that was needed, no woman could have refused him. He spun round excitedly and pointed to the Daimler. ‘I will break the glass and we will take the car and drive away.’
It was typical of him that having half-convinced her that he would do such a thing he should then ask, ‘Where shall we go?’ Guy might not steal cars, but he would always have plenty of ideas about where to go. Jacov made a face at a man in the showroom who had come to investigate the rap on the window; then he turned away, hunching his shoulders. ‘Shall we have a farewell party for Guy before he goes to America?’
She looked away from him at the bare branches of plane trees against the windy, rain-threatened sky. ‘At St Bartholomew’s Hall, you mean? With all the Dramatic Society there?’ Momentarily, her face looked dull, the eyelids heavy, the mouth drooping listlessly.
Jacov wrinkled his nose in dismay. ‘We could have a party at my house, I expect – something more private.’
‘Could we?’ She looked at him thoughtfully, making her own calculations now.
‘Well, provided my mother . . .’ He began to cast about for objections.
‘She didn’t mind us rehearsing, did she?’
They walked on and eventually came to a cinema near Not
ting Hill Gate. Jacov said, ‘Paula Wessely!’
‘Isn’t this the one where he paints her in the nude?’
‘It’s all very innocent, though.’
She hesitated, and he began to tell her that Paula Wessely was really a Continental-style Janet Gaynor. Louise, who was concerned with how long her sanitary towel would hold out, decided that it would be all right, and in any case she would probably be able to get another in the cloakroom.
She had never seen a foreign film before, and was impressed. It proceeded with an ease and authority which American films lacked; it charmed you and had little sly jokes with you instead of shouting for your attention. Jacov put his arm around her, and as his fingers moved slightly beneath her breast her breathing quickened. Sensing her excitement, he bent and kissed her, lightly at first, then harder so that she could feel his teeth against her lips. If this ever happened when they were alone she wondered how long she would be able to hold him. He put his hand against her stomach, moving it slowly, and suddenly all the bits and pieces of her body which had lately been in such friction, irritating and gagging, as though nothing inside her had been properly made, ran together into this one burning centre. She thrust her head back sharply, gasping.
Jacov said urgently, ‘Come! We’ll go. I know where to go.’ He got up, urging her to join him. A man in front turned round and told him where he could go. Louise, cold and trembling now that he had withdrawn from her, whispered, ‘I want to see the film.’
Jacov sat beside her, watching her face instead of the screen, sometimes leaning in front of her so that she could not see; when she pushed him away, he would be still for a few minutes and then he would lean close again, lips against her ear, whispering his own racy, if inaccurate, translation of what was taking place on the screen until people told him to be quiet.
When they came out of the cinema, the manager asked them whether they had enjoyed the film, and told Louise she was like Paula Wessely. She was pleased, as she had thought Paula Wessely enchanting. Jacov was not so flattering. ‘You are very English. Like the girl in the Ben Travers farces, Winifred Shotter, who keeps promising exciting things that never happen.’
‘There’s a time and place for the exciting things.’
‘No.’ He shook his head. ‘There is only now.’
In the cinema he had behaved like a wilful child trying to gain attention, but now, face pinched white with cold as they waited for the bus, he looked neither child nor man. So thin, he was more bone than flesh, and with the dark, curly hair blowing around his head, he seemed out of place in the queue of homegoing shoppers. He jigged about, trying to warm himself, looking for all the world like one of the figures on a stick sometimes carried at carnivals. On the bus he was silent. Louise thought about the film. Although it had had a fairy-story ending, implicit in it had been a perception of life that was different from her own. Now, as the bus trundled through the darkening streets, she felt unsettled sitting with Jacov at her side. He, like the film, was different; he cast shadows where previously all had been bright and clear.
‘Will you get into trouble at school?’ he asked coldly when they parted, some distance from their homes because they did not want to be seen together.
‘They won’t know. I had private study periods this afternoon.’
This proved unduly optimistic. The adoring junior had reported that Louise had been unwell. When Louise could not be found Kathleen had been sent to her home and, not finding her there, the police had been summoned.
There was a considerable fuss. Louise was kept at home the following day while Judith went to see Miss Blaize. She was not feeling any worse than usual at her monthly time, but she could see the situation was only going to be acceptable to them if they could decide that she was fairly grievously afflicted. She obliged them. Eventually, Miss Blaize accepted the explanation that Louise had ‘just sat in the park until the stomach ache got better and then had a cup of tea in the ABC at Notting Hill.’ Louise, after all, had a blameless record as far as behaviour was concerned, even if academically her performance was disappointing. Miss Blaize acknowledged to Judith that ‘Girls do tend to be unpredictable at this age,’ and wisely decided that it was not a matter to be put to the Chairman of the Governors.
At home, Louise lay in bed reading the love scenes in The Rosary, and visualizing Guy in the role of Garth, blinded and unable to leave for America.
Later, she heard the puppy crying and went downstairs to console him. The house seemed very quiet. She could not recall a time when she had been alone in it. She picked up the puppy and went into the dining-room, examining the tatting chairback cover on which Grandmother Fairley had worked a swan; noticing how brightly the silver gleamed on the mahogany sideboard, and how the green curtains had faded in the folds to a silvery grey; fingering the crack between the windowsill and the window-frame where the putty, inexpertly inserted by her father, had come away. In the garden the grey cat was sitting on the bird-table eating the scraps of bacon fat, the intricate wire contraption which Alice had rigged up to prevent him swinging lightly as a mark of his passage. There was frost on the grass. Shivering, she turned away, meaning to go back to the kitchen where the boiler was alight, but pausing by the fireplace to show the puppy its reflection in the mirror. It was not interested but, sensing something expected of it, licked her nose. Behind the heavy serpentine lighthouse on the mantelshelf there was a pile of old cards and snaps, and looking through she found one of herself, woolly hat pulled down to eyebrow level, holding Badger in her arms. It must have been taken in the garden of their other house in Sussex; Daddy had written on the back, ‘Louise, aged 8, with Badger.’ The puppy wriggled and anxiously licked her hand.
The milk book was on the table in the hall together with a note to her father, which must have been put there during half-term week, saying that if the coalman called he must remember to count the sacks.
The drawing-room door was half open, the fire laid in the grate but not yet lit. Her mother must have been sewing last night – the sewing machine was open, a length of dull gold material, probably for curtains, folded and laid by it. On the round table by the window was a small vase of flowers, late Christmas roses, white and pale pink, held in a green sheath of leaves. Louise stood in the doorway gazing at the flowers, which were arranged with such perfect simplicity that they seemed to draw the whole room together, giving it composure and grace.
The puppy wriggled more energetically. She went into the kitchen and began to prepare tea for her mother, something she had seldom thought to do.
Chapter Fifteen
Spring came early. March was full of promise which April would not keep.
Ben and Angus Drummond were walking through Hyde Park. They had struck up a rather unlikely friendship, and when Angus was on vacation they met in town occasionally. It was early evening now and Hyde Park, in late sunlight, had that air of all things being new which March can give when not tearing itself to shreds. Both young men had been studying hard and Ben, in particular, coveted the pleasures he had had to forgo. He looked keenly at girls with gleaming hair half-hidden under little veiled hats, their exquisitely painted faces so cool, so insouciant, that to involve them even in dreams seemed audacity. ‘Now, that I’d like!’ he said, passing one such vision. ‘Just for the night, to find out what goes on underneath all the gloss.’
‘You wouldn’t get near her in one night,’ Angus said.
Youth gave Ben an utter assurance in the future, combined with an urgent sense that opportunity was being lost to him which would not come again. He said, ‘Why don’t we head back to town? I know a place in Denman Street . . .’
‘My mother is expecting me,’ Angus said. ‘I can’t let her down. She has a rotten time.’
They came out of the park opposite the Bayswater Road and turned towards Notting Hill. Soon they came to a cinema where there were long queues for Forsaking All Others. Angus saw the younger Vaseyelins towards the front of the ninepenny queue. ‘They won
’t let you in,’ he said. ‘It’s an “A” certificate.’
‘I’ll get by,’ Katia replied scornfully. ‘I do it all the time.’ She was heavily made up. In make-up, as in other matters, she was not a neat person and had made a few heavy-handed daubs at her face, creating a patchy, garish effect. Angus thought she looked very Jewish. He could imagine her several years hence running a dress shop in Oxford Street, standing in the doorway, daring people to walk past. She had the dark, magnetic eyes which it is difficult to avoid. While they were chatting, he could not keep his eyes from her face.
A current of energy flowed from her. Perhaps she would not run a dress shop after all – she would do something remarkable. He watched her jogging up and down, every so often glancing at the head of the queue, impatient, demanding. A breeze, light but keen, frisked from the direction of the park. The people passing them seemed incredibly brisk and purposeful, moving towards assignations, whether good or evil, of the greatest significance. Angus had a sudden picture of himself with Katia in years to come, going to exhibitions, knowing the artist, going to theatre parties after the show, living in a world of remarkable people all full of driving energy.
She was saying, if you don’t think I’m old enough, what about taking us in? I bet you’re not doing much this evening.’
‘Joan Crawford!’ Angus made a fastidious face.
‘Who do you like, then?’
‘Someone with a bit more natural verve.’ He had very little idea what he wanted; he needed someone to be decisive for him.
‘Claudette Colbert?’ She lowered her eyelids and looked arch. ‘A bit of ooh-la-la?’
‘I’m afraid I’m just not interested in films,’ he said hastily, afraid of appearing ridiculous.
At this moment people began to come out of the cinema, at first in ones and twos, and then in large numbers. Katia said, ‘The big film’s over.’
Angus and Ben turned away and continued their walk. Light, delicate and tremulous, filtered through the trees. Angus was plagued by a sense of opportunity almost within reach and an awareness of the impermanence of all things.