A Harp in Lowndes Square

by Rachel Ferguson

  ‘No thanks. Why should I?’

  It pleased him, and I was in the mood which takes a confused and slavish pleasure in giving satisfaction, anyhow and anywhy.

  That should have been the end of Owen, for me, but it wasn’t. Apparently, everything in one can’t be killed at once, and if the imaginary best goes, the second best remains.

  On another night we went on to a club that Owen assured me was the last thing in this and that. It seemed to me to be singularly like the restaurant we had left, minus the good food, wine and service, but being over-suggestible, I began to see it through his eyes at once, and actually got a certain horrified elation out of dancing with a stranger, though I had a Victorian-Edwardian voice in my ear which dowdily informed me that this was not nice. I could almost see the face of the voice, and annoyingly enough – for was I not enjoying myself and being modern and seeing life? – I could grin at it without feeling in my real self that the voice was being ridiculous at all. I bowed to it and succumbed to the present and was a failure with both. It was evidently my fault that I had to go on telling myself that in this L-shaped room we were all being very daring and having the time of our lives; nor on the other hand could I rid myself of the fixed notion that the place was a den of iniquity, and yet all round me were dazzling children, ten years my junior, who danced and murmured and drank and generally carried on, if not with obvious pleasure, at least with an air of knowing all the ropes in the rigging. Theirs were lives as slick, easy and effortless – and as soulless – as a service flat. One envied, yet one deplored.

  I discovered that I knew very little even about myself. A man’s voice behind me asked his partner if she was coming back to his digs for the night, and my only sensations were an interested listening for her answer, which was drowned in the crashing of ‘When We’ve Wound Up The Watch on the Rhine’, plus a slight surprise at the essentially inconsiderate nature of the invitation given to a girl without toothbrush, pyjamas or suit-case with day clothes inside – an aspect of illicit dalliance which is eternally evaded by the novelists, who at this point always shelter behind a smokescreen of asterisks.

  Yet when a baby-faced creature of seventeen squealed that her sandwich was bloody nasty, I was shocked.

  The Vallants don’t know how to play. That side of them was probably my share of the family kink. I put my elbows on the little table, three inches from a bottle of champagne which had its ration of gold foil round the neck and a traditionally-shaped cork but no label, and which had cost thirty-seven and six, and reflected that if aunt Emmeline were in the room her reactions would be terribly similar to my own, except that she had the courage of her convictions, and would leave. Hearty obtuseness and innocence would rescue the Seagraves who would enjoy it all enormously, while aunt Sophia would be amply capable of going round the room collecting introductions and towing the hypnotized males up to her daughters.

  Mother …

  She would see through the whole thing at a glance, sit there tolerating, and contrive to make the room a temporary home out of two chairs, one table and a bottle.

  The small band, with a preliminary tap on the trapdrum, began to play:

  Jus’ see those tip-collectors,

  Those upper-berth inspectors,

  Those Pullman Porters on parade!

  Owen was revelling in it all, delightedly trotting in the arms of a very pretty coloured girl who had snaffled him with an easy directness worthy of the Verdunes! I watched them benevolently, thought ‘That’s “living in the moment”, and I can’t do it’.

  I took out my little engagement diary and furtively did sums. The night’s work seemed to be going to make ten pounds look uncommonly foolish for my poor Owen, but I did contrive to fend off a waiter who tried to whip away our quarter-finished bottle and palm a fresh one on to the table. That was nearly two pounds to the good. All this was amazingly tiring. There seemed to be no ventilation at all, and I hoped I wasn’t going to be a wet blanket by looking ill, and began to paint a fresh face on, a thing I’d never done in public before because the cynicism of the act always offends me, but here it was merely conspicuous not to. Not that Owen would notice if one were ill, or if he did it would only annoy him. It is important not to be tiresome.

  V

  A woman of quite seventy-five jogged past me in a picked little two-step, neat as a thrush’s, and if the very young man supporting her were her grandson, the family resemblance was even less marked than usual. She had a heavy make-up – it looked more like greasepaint than the uniform of powder, rouge and lipstick; her wrinkled eyelids were smudged with grey-blue above and below so that the result suggested ill-treatment rather than allure, and her withered lips were too indeterminate to derive advantage from red outlines.

  A lieutenant, swinging by, was knocked into by her shoulder and cried, ‘Hah beldam! Methinks thou art astray!’ and she becked at him, pleased.

  I was furious, and putting out my foot, managed to send him sprawling.

  I have heard so many people brutally mocking these old dancing women; but why should they not take pleasure where they find it? The worst that any of their denouncers have ever been able to say is that it is undignified, but isn’t loss of dignity deplorable at any age? And at least they dance for pleasure and not for home and husbands – like the Seagraves! If it comes to that, I have never been able wholeheartedly to despise the gigolo, who, apart from sundry repellent but strictly personal characteristics, seems to me to be supplying a businesslike demand as useful and definite of its kind as one of Cook’s couriers. The woman without a background has a thin time, at any age, and if she can afford to pay for partner, escort and attention, roundly and sensibly, why not? ‘Then she can pay a woman companion’, seems to be the answer to this, and the fact that the elderly, salaried âme damnée is not only not the same thing at all, but positively labels and shelves her employer as an unwanted left-over in the keen eyes of commissionaires, waiters, staff and guests with their terrible power of giving or withholding comfort, good time and dignity is alluded to by nobody. And if I have made up my mind never to be an enamelled harridan, but to relapse, rather, into lace and lavender or epigrams and gout, it is not because I believe that all gigolos are perverts – poor tired wretches! – or that all their old women expect to sleep with them at least once, but because London night life for women opened its doors just in time for me to be young in it myself, and to see and feel the dreadful intolerance of youth to age, its thoughtlessness and easy failures in penetration.

  Dance, little old ladies! And indeed you’re enjoying it more than we are!

  You’ve worked for it by ordeal of basement mansion, tyrannical mate, over-large family and atrophy of your unsuspected brain; by male contempt for you at thirty, by hansom that was Fast and bicycle that was Unwomanly and vote that was Unsexing, and pretty legs that were never seen. And if ever James has a son, we’ll bring him up to appreciate old women and, at worst, to see them for the sad forlornities they really are under the paint – and belike to scrape some of it off before taking them a jaunt. And I thought that if ever I own a large house, I will have routs galore for nice, mellow, crusted old couples, and encourage them to flirt, delicately, and revive old flameships, and manœuvre those who should have married each other and married somebody else into adjacent gilt chairs, and watch them gently savouring mulled burgundy. And there shall be partners aplenty for all those whose dancing days were very numbered in youth, and who never tasted life or kiss or look because their noses were snub or their ankles thick – the eternal Harriets and Miss Chilcots of life. And if it takes half a glass too much to make them burgeon, burgeon they shall, and the snub nose shall be discovered to have a talent for brilliant mimicry, and the ankles a gift of repartee, and Miss Chilcot, urged to the piano, silences us, happily, with her voice which nobody guessed at because her complexion was ‘poor’, and anyway there were six sisters to educate.

  And there will be no marriage or giving in marriage, but plenty of flirtation a
nd giving in flirtation, and no jazz bands at all.

  Perhaps a quadrille or two, and a waltz, and the Lancers after supper. And at twelve-thirty, my private fleet of hansoms, jingling, shall arrive for the hard-up guests, and clop from my door full of dears called Adrian and Julian and Cosmo and Lydia and Carlyon, and similarly pleasantly preposterous names.

  ‘Mr. Carlyon’s carriage stops the way!’

  ‘The maid for Miss Virtue, Miss.’

  ‘A little foggy to-night, Sir Cosmo.’

  ‘May I have the pleasure of seeing you home, Miss Chilcot?’

  Ah me! What good times there are in the world for everybody, and they’re being missed right and left for the stupidest reasons.

  VI

  It was about the time when I was thinking that we ought to go, I to the home, hot-water bottle and book I was longing for, that a woman came and sat at our table and said, ‘I’ve been watching you for ten minutes’, a compliment I could not return as the room had long been too packed for the study of types.

  She was one of those small-boned, ultra-fair women with tonged-looking hair, who always contrive, without having it, to suggest tuberculosis, and upon whose fragile chests even the minimum of jewellery appears excessive. The passée chorus girl who was never on the stage: the consumptive who never coughed.

  I did polite things with my eyebrows, and she said, ‘You’re here with Raymond, so you needn’t lie about it. Well, I’m Mrs. Owen.’

  I said, ‘Oh yes?’ civilly. My heart was thumping, not, as I knew she assumed, out of panic, but because I dreaded a public scene. I sat, weighing the chances in the light of my experience of James’s houris.

  ‘Never occurred to you that he was married, eh?’

  ‘I never gave it a thought.’

  I hadn’t. Such a likelihood had, of course, presented itself to my mind, but Owen had made no allusion from the start to his home affairs, and one just doesn’t say ‘Are you married or single?’ any more than one asks ‘What is your income?’ More young women of my class get into this type of mess through misplaced courtesy than is commonly realized. Added to which, I had had no designs upon Owen of any description, except for understanding, soothing, and the bolstering up of my never too robust self-confidence.

  ‘“It’s the war” of course,’ she added with a brisk spite which somehow daunted one. ‘How long has this been going on?’

  I suppose if I had been older or cleverer, or anything not myself, I should have riposted ‘How long has what been going on?’ I didn’t, and doubt if I should even now, because I knew exactly what she meant.

  I answered, ‘I’ve known Mr. Owen for about seven months. We first met through my work; he wanted a substitute typist and my office sent me.’

  ‘Oh … of course.’

  And even that I understood. The typist and the wealthy employer and the chase-me-Charlie preliminaries ending in the night-club. The case was so complete, the picture so perfect, that I could have laughed aloud, except when I remembered the numerous small presents that Owen had tried to give me and that I had always refused from the first, and of which one must say nothing at all, and when I thought of the procession of chain-tea-shops we had sat in during those first weeks, places chosen because they were near the office and over whose marble-topped tables letters could be signed as we ate our tepid muffins. Indeed, it was probably those qualities in myself least likely to appeal to his wife which had first made Owen focus me as a person; the facts that I was punctual, fairly accurate, didn’t suck sweets while he was dictating or comb my hair all over his desk, and that I set my face against books, scent and chocolates, never said ‘Pardon me’ and ‘Go on!’ and hadn’t a breach of promise look in my eye.

  I had liked him well, after working a fortnight for him; enjoyed vicariously all that massive authority: bluff though some of it probably was, it was what I needed after the delicate family atmosphere. And having reached a certain stage of mutual liking, I imagine that the rest had followed with him through goodness knows what of domestic dissatisfaction about which, again, one made no enquiries.

  ‘And you’re in love with him, of course?’

  ‘No.’ I couldn’t tell her that if there had ever been a chance of that, Owen had killed it stone dead in his attitude to Lalage. It baffled her to silence, and I wasn’t experienced enough to take any advantage of the lull although I would answer any questions. The story, as Americans say ‘listened badly’, and I knew it. In this sort of situation neither prosecution nor defence can usually prove anything, and there is nothing left but words, and the nature of those, again, depends upon character and temperament. But I put up a flurried petition that whatever was going to occur might end at myself and not overflow into my home.

  Mrs. Owen found her husband with her eye and saw the coloured girl.

  ‘Seems he’s left you, now.’

  ‘Yes.’

  She was fishing about in a sea of assorted angers, hesitating which to hook first, and then the music stopped with an affected, dissonant wail, Owen smoothly stranded his partner, hurried up to me and saw his wife with a slight start into which anyone might be betrayed if confronted with an unexpected and familiar face.

  I got up and said I would go ‘unless anybody wants me to stay’. It seemed that nobody did, and we all stood there trying not to catch each other’s eye while I struggled, unaided, into my cloak and collected what seemed to be endless personal trifles from the table: handkerchief, cigarette case, matches, diary – I felt like an under-rehearsed parlourmaid on the first night of a cocktail comedy. Mrs. Owen’s voice came to me through the confusion of the minute.

  ‘Yes, I think you’d better, you dirty little thing.’

  It was, I suppose, rather similar to a blow in the face from a fist. For a blessed second or two I couldn’t take in the words, then, realizing, was unable to believe that this had actually been said to me.

  At the outer door I found Owen by my side. He had ‘seen me off’, I’ll say that for him, and was obviously furious in a red, suppressed kind of way.

  ‘Vere, I can’t say how sorry I am I’ve let you in for this.’

  ‘It would have been fairer, I suppose, to have warned me,’ I said, mechanically. I was stupid with shock and fatigue. The commissionaire watched us tentatively and hopefully.

  ‘I’ll see Madam O. apologizes.’

  ‘No. No, Raymond, let it alone for heaven’s sake, you’ll only make it worse. Let it all rip. Good-night.’

  CHAPTER XVIII

  I

  FIVE days later I was walking down the Infirmary passage. Every now and again I sank my nose into the huge bunch of flowers I had bought for Miss Chilcot; their scent drowned the smell of chill efficiency and carbolic. They had been paid for with Owen’s money, the balance due to me when I cleared out of his office for good. He had given my agency an excellent testimonial in which he ‘greatly regretted being unable to offer Miss Buchan a permanent place on his staff’, and I kept a poker face while Miss Royal purred over it.

  ‘That’s so nice, Miss Buchan. I always say that there’s nothing, if you know what I mean, like sending out ladies. They never make difficulties. Always able to cope… and really, you’d be surprised what can go on in offices … I don’t mean in a really nasty way, but awkward.’

  ‘Rather a good epitaph to an employer,’ I suggested, ‘“He was lovely and pleasant in his life and in death he was not Nasty but Awkward”.’ But, internally, I was not amused. I was worried about my apparent continued capacity for being hurt. It is disabling when there is work to be done, and although my feeling for Owen had hardly earned the right to grief, he had done his best to put me in the way of grief by encouraging waste emotion in his own snatch at happiness. I ought to be used to that, by now. But it shook one’s faith in general kindliness.

  The Sister was barring the ward door in a rather extra manner, it dawned on me; she must have recognized me, or this was just another slick weaving of red tape.

  ‘I’m sor
ry to tell you that Miss Chilcot passed away yesterday afternoon.’

  There was my Doctor Filson, and I heard myself repeating his name.

  ‘Doctor Filson is not here.’

  ‘But he’ll be round soon! I can wait.’

  One would wait endlessly. I felt that nobody but this whistling, crosstalking man with the fluttering eyelids – half healer, half comedian – would do. For me, this time. All he was and knew, for myself alone, if I only possessed it for five minutes. And this woman was looking prim and offended.

  ‘You can see Doctor Cavanagh if you like.’

  I threw chicanery to the dogs. ‘Sister, where is Doctor Filson? I … I promise you nobody but him will do.’

  Perhaps it is that one is urgent and uncontrolled so seldom that when one does let go, one’s demands have a special significance; anyway, I won, if you could call it winning.

  ‘Doctor Filson has joined up.’

  ‘Oh, my God!’

  For a second I even thought of running for comfort to his wife. They say that husbands and wives often grow to resemble each other and was it too much to expect that Mrs. Filson, through life with the doctor, should have acquired some of his strengths?

  But I remembered that she was Mrs. Filson, and that wives don’t help one.

  The Sister, more than ever the official because I had sworn in her passage, said ‘Miss Chilcot had some things for you, and a letter. You may use one of the nurse’s sitting-rooms to go through them in. Come this way please’. She handed me over to a young ward maid who brought in the ‘things’ and my letter and asked me to ring for her before leaving and left me.

  II

  Before reading the letter I had to go round the room, getting a line on it. I can never settle to anything until I am on some terms or other with the four walls which enclose me.

  This little place had nothing much to say; it was neat and civil and a little chilly, like the nurses who used it. I chose one of the three chairs – a padded rocker – and opened the envelope. The letter was a long one, and Miss Chilcot must have written it over several days. Indeed, the opening date was that on which we had first seen each other.