"I simply long to go to Stratford-on-Avon," said Helen. "I believe Fabia Drake's doing frightfully well there."
"Yes, it would be lovely," said Laming.
"I adore opera too. I long to go to Bayreuth."
Laming was too unsure of the details to make an effective reply to that; so he concentrated on paring away the hard narrow strip from the upward edge of his cutlet.
Later there were orange segments and cream; while Helen spoke of life in South Devon, where she had lived as a child and Laming had twice been on farmhouse holidays.
Ellen brought them coffee, while they sat on the settee. Her eyes were reflected in the fluid. No odalisque could have made slighter movements to more effect.
The peppermint creams came partially into their own.
"I don't eat many sweet things," said Helen. "You must remember, Laming?"
The worst part was that now he did remember. She had submitted quite a list of such items in the cafe after Marie Tempest. What she liked most was chicken perfectly plain. What she liked least was anything rich. What a crashing mistake he had made in the selection of his gift! But what else would have been practicable?
Ellen, however, was making up for her roommate. She was eating cream after cream, and without even asking before taking another, which made it all the more intimate.
"I long to visit Japan and see the Noh." said Helen.
Laming did not know about that at all and could only suppose it was a relative of the mikado, about whom there was something unusual. Or perhaps it was a huge stone thing, like the Sphinx.
"When I get my certificate, I'm going on a real bust," said Laming, then blushed at the word. "If I get my certificate, that is."
"Surely you will, Laming?"
"No one can ever be quite sure."
Ellen was twisting about in the armchair, arranging herself better.
Laming told a rather detailed story about the older colleague in the firm who had left no stone unturned but still lacked a certificate. "It's held up his marriage for more than eight years. He was there long before I was."
"I'm sure that won't happen to you, Laming. Shall we ask Ellen to give us some more coffee? Don't you adore coffee? I drink it all night to keep me awake."
Laming assumed that it was her statistics. Increasingly, civil servants were having to take work home, as if they had been in real business. Laming had read about it in the evening paper, more than once, in fact.
"Not too full, Ellen! I shall slop it over myself."
"Would you like to see my old programs, Laming? Ellen won't mind, I'm sure."
But Laming had managed to glimpse a meaning look in Ellen's soft features. It contrasted noticeably with Helen's habitual inexpressiveness.
"I should like it, but I think we should do something that Ellen can join in."
He was quite surprised at himself and did not dare to look at Helen that time.
"Shall we play three-handed Rocket?"
"I'm afraid I don't know the rules."
"I'm nothing like clever enough for them," said Ellen, her sixth or seventh remark.
Laming had ceased to count. He knew he could not carry any more remarks faithfully enough in his mind.
"Well, then, we'll just talk," said Helen. "What aie we going to do next, Laming?"
"There's that thing at the Apollo."
"Yes, I long to see that."
"I can't remember a single thing that's been said about it."
"We mustn't always allow our minds to be made up for us."
They had all become quite chummy, Laming realized; nor could it be the passing effect of alcohol. At that moment he felt that he had been really accepted into the household. Instinctively, his manners fell to pieces a little.
At the end of the evening, Helen said, "You must come again often. We like having company, don't we, Ellen?"
Ellen simply nodded, but with her lovely, almost elfin, smile. She was fiddling with the bottom edge of her jumper, using both hands. The narrow horizontal stripes were in a sort of gray, a sort of blue, a sort of pink. Her skirt was fawn.
"I should very much like to, Helen," replied Laming, in a public-school manner, though the place he had been to was pretty near the bottom of any realistic list.
"Well, do. Now, Laming, we meet a week from today at the Apollo."
She imparted her dry grip. Laming could not but remember that only three or four weeks ago it had all but thrilled him. When in bed, he must look at his Chessman's Diary to see exactly how long ago it had been.
Ellen merely stood smiling, but with her hands locked together behind her skirt, a posture that moved Laming considerably.
On the way home, however, he was wrestling with a problem more familiar: the problem of how to attempt reciprocation in these cases, when one could not at all afford it; these cases in which hospitality could hardly be rejected if one were to remain a social being at all. The complaint against life might be that even if one expended one's every mite, which would be both unwise and impracticable, the social level accomplished did not really justify the sacrifice. Most urgently one needed to start at a higher level: ab initio, ah ovo. And, if one hadn't, what really was the use?
But after business came pleasure, and Laming, awake in bed, spent a long, long time musing on Ellen, and twisting about restlessly. It was gray dawn before, in a sudden panic, he fell asleep.
In fact, was thinking about Ellen a pleasure? Apart from the inner turmoil caused by her very existence, there was the certainty that she was quite other than she seemed, and the extreme uncertainty about what to do next in order to advance with her.
When his mother brought him his cup of tea, he looked at her with sad eyes, then quickly turned away, lest she notice.
However, for the first time in Laming's life, something extraordinary happened, something that a third party might have marveled at for months and drawn new hope from.
Only two days later a crisis had arisen in the office: one of the partners required a parcel to be delivered at an address "down Fulham way," as the partner put it; and Laming had been the first to volunteer for the job-or perhaps, as he subsequently reflected, the junior who could best be spared.
"You can take a No. 14 most of the distance," the partner had said. "If you get stuck, ask someone. But do take care, old chap. That thing's fragile." Whereupon he had guffawed and returned to his den.
Laming had clambered off the bus at more or less the spot the partner had indicated and had looked around for someone to guide him further. At such times, so few people look as if they could possibly know; so few are people one could care or dare to address at all. In the end, and without having to put down the heavy parcel, Laming had obtained directions from a middle-aged district nurse, though she had proved considerably less informed than Laming had taken for granted. In no time at all, Laming had been virtually lost, and the parcel twice or thrice its former weight.
And now he had come to a small park or municipal garden, with mongrels running about the kids in one corner, breaking things up. He was very nearly in tears. At the outset, it had seemed likely that offering to perform a small service would stand well for him in his career, but that notion had gone into reverse and japed at him within five minutes of his starting to wait for the bus. He could hardly carry the parcel much farther. Ought he to spend money of his own on a taxi? If one were to appear?
And then he saw Ellen. The road was on his left, the dark-green park railings were on his right, and there were very few people on the pavement. Ellen was walking toward him. He nearly fainted, but responsibility for the parcel somehow saved him.
"Hullo, Laming!"
It was as if they were the most tender and long-standing of friends, for whom all formality was quite unnecessary.
"Hullo, Ellen!"
He too spoke very low, though really they were almost alone in the world.
"Come and sit down."
He followed her along the length of railing and through the gat
e. In a sense, it was quite a distance, but she said nothing more. He had heard that, in circumstances such as these, burdens became instantly and enduringly lighter, but he was not finding that with the parcel.
She was wearing a sweater divided into diamonds of different colors, but with nothing garish about it; and the same fawn skirt.
Once or twice she looked back with an encouraging smile. Laming almost melted away, but again the parcel helped to stabilize him.
He had naturally supposed that they would sit on a seat There were many seats, made years ago of wooden beams set in green cast iron frames, some almost perpendicular, some sloping lasciviously backward. Many had been smashed up by children, and none at that moment seemed in any way occupied.
But Ellen sat down at the foot of a low grassy bank, even though there was an empty seat standing almost intact at the top of the rise. Laming, after a moment for surprise and hesitation, quite naturally sat down beside her. It was early May and the grass seemed dry enough, though the sky was overcast and depressing. He deposited the parcel as carefully as he could. It was a duty to keep close to it.
"I want you," said Ellen. "Please take me." She lifted his left hand and laid it on her right thigh, but under her skirt. He felt her rayon panties. It was the most wonderful moment in his life.
He knew perfectly well also that with the right person such things as this normally do not happen, but only infrequently with the wrong person.
He twisted around and, inserting his right hand under her jumper until it reached up to her sweetly silken breast, kissed her with passion. He had never kissed anyone with passion before.
"Please take me," said Ellen again.
One trouble was of course that he never had, and scarcely knew how. Chaff from the chaps really tells one very little. Another trouble was "lack of privacy," as he had heard it termed. He doubted very much whether most people-even most men-started in such an environment, whatever they might do later.
He glanced around as best he could. It was true that the park, quite small though it was, now seemed also quite empty. The children must be wrecking pastures new. And the visibility was low and typical.
"Not the light for cricket," said Laming. As a matter of fact, there were whitish things at the other end, which he took to be sight screens.
"Please," said Ellen, in her low, urgent voice. Her entire conversational method showed how futile most words really are. She began to range around him with her hand.
"But what about-?"
"It's all right. Please."
Still, it really was the sticking point, the pons asinorum, the gilt off the gingerbread, as everyone knew.
"Please," said Ellen.
She kicked off her shoes, partly gray, partly black; and he began to drag down her panties. The panties were in the most beautiful, dark-rose color: her secret, hidden from the world.
It was all over much more quickly than anyone would have supposed. But it was wrong that it should have been so. He knew that. If it were ever to become a regular thing for him, he must learn to think much more of others, much less of himself. He knew that perfectly well.
Fortunately the heavy parcel seemed still to be where he had placed it. The grass had, however, proved to be damp after all.
He could hardly restrain a cry. Ellen was streaked and spattered with muddy moisture, her fawn skirt, one would say, almost ruined; and he realized that he was spattered also. It would be impossible for him to return to the office that day. He would have to explain some fiction on the telephone, and then again to his mother, who, however, he knew, could be depended upon with the cleaners-if, this time, cleaning could do any good. He and Ellen must have drawn the moisture from the ground with the heat of their bodies.
Ellen seemed calm enough, nonetheless, though she was not precisely smiling. For a moment, Laming regretted that she spoke so little. He would have liked to know what she was thinking. Then he realized that it would be useless anyway. Men never know what girls are thinking, and least of all at moments such as this. Well, obviously.
He smiled at her uneasily.
The two of them were staring across what might later in the year become the pitch. At present, the gray-greenness of everything was oddly meaningless. In mercy, there was still almost no one within the park railings; that is, no one visible, for it was inconceivable that in so publicly available a place, only a few miles from Oxford Circus and Cambridge Circus, there should at so waking an hour be no one absolutely. Without shifting himself from where he was seated, Laming began to glance around more systematically. Already he was frightened, but then he was almost always more frightened than not. In the end, he looked over his shoulder.
He froze.
On the seat almost behind them, the cast-iron and wood seat that Ellen had silently disdained, Helen was now seated. She wore the neat and simple black dress she had worn in the first place. Her expression was as expressionless as ever.
Possibly Laming even cried out.
He turned back and sank his head between his knees.
Ellen put her soft hand on his forearm. "Don't worry, Laming," she said.
She drew him back against her bosom. It seemed to him best not to struggle. There must be an answer of some kind, conceivably, even, one that was not wholly bad.
"Please don't worry, Laming," said Ellen cooingly.
And when the time came for them to rise up finally, the seat was empty. Truly, it was by then more overcast than ever: Stygian might be the very word.
"Don't forget your parcel," said Ellen, not merely conventionally but with genuine solicitude.
She linked her arm affectionately through his and uttered no further word as they drew away.
He was quite surprised that the gate was still open.
"Where shall we meet next?" asked Ellen.
"I have my job," said Laming, torn about.
"Where is it?"
"We usually call it Bloomsbury."
She looked at him. Her eyes were wise and perhaps mocking.
"Where do you live?"
"Near Finsbury Park."
"I'll be there on Saturday. In the park. Three o'clock in the American Garden."
She reached up and kissed him most tenderly with her kissing lips. She was, of course, far, far shorter than Helen.
"What about Helen?" he asked.
"You're going to the Apollo with Helen on Wednesday," she replied unanswerably.
And, curiously enough, he had then found the address for the parcel almost immediately. He had just drifted on in a thoroughly confused state of mind, and there the house obviously was, though the maid looked very sniffy indeed about the state of his suit in the light from the hall, not to speak of his countenance and hands; and from below a dog had growled deeply as he slouched down the steps.
Soon, the long-threatened rain began.
Of course, had he been a free agent, Laming was so frightened that he would not have seen Ellen again. But he was far from a free agent. If he had refused, Ellen might have caused trouble with Helen, whom he had to meet on Wednesday: women were far, far closer to other women in such matters, than men were to men. Alternatively, he could never just leave Ellen standing about indefinitely in the American Garden; he was simply not made that way; and if he were to attempt a deferment with her, all her sweetness would turn to gall. There was very little scope for a deferment, in any case: the telephone was not at all a suitable instrument, in the exact circumstances, and with his nervous temperament. And there was something else, of course: Laming now had a girl, and such an easygoing one, so cozy, so gorgeous in every way; and he knew that he would be certain to suffer within himself later if he did not do what he could to hold on to her-at least to the extent of walking up to the American Garden and giving it one more try. Helen or no Helen. It is always dangerous to put anything second to the need we all feel for love.
It was colder that day, and she was wearing a little coat. It was in simple midbrown and had square buttons, somewhere
between bone and pearl in appearance. She was dodging about among the shrubs, perhaps in order to keep warm. Laming had wondered about that on the way up.
"Hullo, stranger!"
"Hullo, Ellen!"
She kissed her inimitable kiss, disregarding the retired rail-waymen sitting about in greatcoats and mufflers, waiting for the park cafe to open.
"We're going somewhere," said Ellen.
"Just as well," said Laming, with a shiver, partly nerves, partly sex, partly cool, damp treacherous weather. But of course he had struck entirely the wrong and unromantic note. "Where are we going?" he asked.
"You'll see," said Ellen, and took his arm in her affectionate way, entirely real.
The railwaymen glowered mptionlessly, awaiting strong tea, awaiting death, seeing death before them, not interfering.
Ellen and Laming tramped silently off, weaving around bushes, circumventing crowded baby carriages.
Orsino, Endymion, Adonis: the very roads were named after lovers. Laming had never noticed that before. He had always approached the park from the south, and usually with his mother, who did not walk fast and often gasped painfully. Once in the park she had downed a whole bottle of Tizer. How they had all laughed about that, forever and a day!
Around this turn and that, in the queer streets north of the park, Ellen and Laming stole, tightly locked together; until, within the shake of a lamb's tail as it seemed, they were ascending a narrow flight of steep black stairs. Ellen had unlocked the front door, as if to the manner born, and of course she was going up first. She unlocked another door and they were home and dry. -
"Did it work out all right about your clothes? The mud, I mean?"
She merely smiled at him.
"Who lives here?"
"My sister."
"Not Helen!"
Of course not Helen. What a silly thing to say! How stupidly impulsive! Ellen said nothing.
There were little drawings on the walls by imitators of Peter Scott and Mabel Lucie Attwell, but all much faded by years of summer sun while the tenant was out at work.
Or tenants. Most of the floor space was occupied by an extremely double divan, even a triple divan, Laming idiotically speculated, squarer than square. It hardly left room for the little round white table, with pansies and mignonette round the edge. All seemed clean, trim, self-respecting. The frail white chairs for dinner parties were neatly tucked in.
The Collected Short Fiction Page 58