Chapter X
Leila, who was never tired of describing that first moment to her friends, declared that it must have lasted several hours, and that if it hadn’t been for her aplomb in behaving as though nothing had happened she didn’t know what would have happened. Of course Ronny was much too much of a gentleman to make a scene and Dicky was obviously too frightened to speak and Celia sat quite still and looked quite stupid.
“Well, then, darling, why had you to prevent anything happening?”
“Darling, I’ve told you, there was Ronny with me, whom he’d only met that afternoon at Celia’s, and there was Celia, who’s engaged to him, with her arms round Dicky or Dicky’s were round her or it may have been a dead heat, you couldn’t really tell as Dicky, God alone knows why, was all wrapped up in that absurd old scarlet cloak which belonged to his mother and he wouldn’t let his father sell it when she died, it sounded really awfully touching when he told me about it once, or possibly twice.”
“Then he did have a real feeling for his mother?”
“He did for the cloak. It is quite a good colour. I don’t know about the mother.
“Anyway, it was I who asked them to come down to my floor and all have Ronny’s liqueur together. I don’t think they liked it much, but there was obviously nothing else to be done, though Celia did say she was just going and asked Dicky to get a taxi for her, but I told her we would ring up for one downstairs, so we all went down, Dicky very miserable and all tied up with his cloak in trying to get out of it, and then—of course it would happen just that night of all nights, so exactly like Rainbow Road!”
They walked down the narrow stairs one by one as slowly as they could, for not one of them wished to arrive in Leila’s sitting-room.
Ronny had taken advantage of Dicky’s discomfiture with the cloak to follow close behind Celia ; but at the landing window that opened a square of night sky at their feet, Dicky pushed violently past him, talking very fast about the necessity of guiding her past the bit where the rain had come in, and tripping over the heel of her shoe he whispered, “I’m going to see you home.”
They went past the Jimmys’ door and the miniature brass knocker in the shape of an Elizabethan lady smirked at them under the gas-jet. Celia looked at it enviously : how lovely to be Mrs. Jimmy, safe behind that knocker which she polished so brilliantly, and doing all her housekeeping at Le Coche.
“I am firm,” whispered Dicky. “I am absolutely ruthless.”
From such a statement she guessed that he must be very much afraid.
She too was afraid, she must not make her flight precipitate and so look like the confusion of a rout. There ought to be rules for this sort of thing in a Book of Etiquette for Irregular Occasions.
They followed Leila through the door of her sitting-room into darkness and the reverberations of a mighty voice which came rolling in through the open door-window in waves like thunder or the sea. The voice was very Irish and very drunk, it was also ecclesiastical, as rich with sorrowful anger as should be the voice of a priest when uplifted in chiding the sins of his people.
“I’m telling you, sorr, it is all a black-hearted plot on the part of the dirty robbers on the ground floor.”
“Oh heavens!” breathed Leila as she lit the lamp, “it’s the old man in the basement again.”
Dicky, his head spinning as if from a blow, seized the chance to cover his embarrassment ; he peeped over the balcony and reported that the old man was standing on the area steps bellowing up through the railings to an aloof audience of one who was smoking his pipe in the street and seemed in no way interested in this sudden complaint from the bowels of the earth.
“A plot,” it continued, “a hellish plot to turn an old man from his home, and for why do you think it was? All because I wouldn’t take a drink from him, though I’d take a drink from you, sorr, or any other decent man.”
Here there was a long pause, but it continued uninterrupted by any pressing invitation from the street. It should have struck the company with a peculiar poignancy that at this moment Ronny was handing round the liqueurs. He performed his rôle of the genial host with a mechanical precision that did not deceive Celia ; his sense of humour and respect for les convenances was suppressing his annoyance but he would be all the crosser for it later. Whatever he complained of she had a quid pro quo, but that was only deepening his sense of injury. She envied Leila, a free lance, a pirate ship sailing under no flag but her own, who was obviously more concerned with the old man in the basement than with any of them.
“It’s too ghastly,” she was telling them in agitated whispers lest her voice should carry to the enemy below. “I believe he’s found out about the letter we wrote to the landlord and got the other people in the house to sign. Because it really isn’t safe, he made the most awful noise last night, and Mab slept with the coal-hammer beside her bed and I had the carving fork because we’ve lost the knife and I suppose the fork would do if you went for his eyes, but we’ve always been very nice to him so he thinks it’s the Ground Floors.”
Leila’s ghoulish treachery seemed to afford her a certain terrified delight. Celia regarded her with the perplexity that she used to feel as a child when she listened to grown-up people gossiping. Those extraordinary stories could not be true, they were part of a make-up game, the cleverest grown-ups invented them, and the others had to sit round and pretend they believed them.
They were all sitting round pretending now, pretending that the moment when Leila and Ronny had opened the door had never existed. It was too much for four people to pretend all together.
And all the time the accusations from beneath the surface of the earth rolled up through the open window in rhythmical and rhetorical periods which should have struck Leila’s guilty conscience with remorse. “For what,” said the voice, “did these dirty robbers on the ground floor do but write the filthiest lying letter that ever was penned, and get the people in the house to sign it and even frightened the poor little girls on the first floor into it, and they the tenderest, golden-hearted little girls that wouldn’t hurt a fly, nor they would, and all for some cock-and-bull story that I might burn down the house just because I like my steak well done and not raw as they eat it themselves, the uncivilized savages.”
“And I never kissed her,” throbbed in Dicky’s head ; “I never even kissed her.” He had held her by a silver thread, it had drawn her into his arms and now it was broken for ever.
If only he had not taken Leila’s corkscrew, if only he had opened that damned bottle with a pen-knife or a sardine key or the caretaker’s hatpin which he had noticed on the landing! But he had irrevocably taken the corkscrew, which had drawn Leila and Ronny up the stairs at just that inevitable, never-to-be-finished moment.
Yet he could announce quite distinctly that the old man had mounted the steps in a resurgent lurch and, hanging over the railings, addressed his unresponsive audience in a directly personal attack.
“What was it you did to us in 1798? Answer me that.”
The man with the pipe replied that he wasn’t doing anything in 1798.
“You lie!” roared the accuser. “You were dandling our babies on your bayonet points. Is that your civilization? I call it highly improper.”
The man with the pipe walked rather quickly down the road. The voice dwindled into a thin whine, as the old man subsided into the basement.
“Isn’t he really rather touching?” Leila was peeping over Dicky’s shoulder.
“Golden-hearted girl,” he murmured, “he saw the light in your room and hoped you were listening.”
A figure hopped out on to the balcony two doors up the road.
“Look here,” it called, “you really might do something about your caretaker, Leila. He’s keeping the whole road awake just because I wanted to get to bed early for once.”
“Oh, it’s only old Blincko.”
“Good old Blincko.”
“Come along and have a drink, Blincko.”
�
��Shut up, Dicky. It’s not your drink anyway. She’s the most awful nuisance,” Leila complained to the others, “always coming along to use my ’phone. I only hope she won’t come by the balcony, as the house in between doesn’t like it, but she’s quite mad. Still, her posters are marvellous.”
“Why do you call her Blincko?”
“Because it’s her name. They’re the Blinckos of Blenkinsopp, you know, who came over with William, no, not the Conqueror, the Orange.”
“Oh, drop the snob stuff,” cried Dicky ; “it’s a waste when they see her.”
He noticed that his witticism was also wasted. Ronny merely shifted his feet and looked away from the hysterical note in his voice.
The Blincko of Blenkinsopp appeared in the door window in pyjamas and with her hair standing stiffly up in a shock round her head.
“Good Lord,” she remarked,” why didn’t you tell me you were having a party? I’d have put on my coat.”
“I thought you lived in it,” said Leila.
“Only in the mornings. It’s awkward for climbing the balcony partitions. My hair’s untidy.”
“Don’t mention it. It’s quite unnecessary.”
“Well, it’s your fault. I’ve been burying my head in the pillows to try to drown the noise of your drunken caretaker.”
“I must go,” said Celia.
“May I ’phone for a taxi?” asked Ronny.
“Oh, must you? Well, then, it’s Kensington——”
“I know the number,” interrupted Dicky and dashed for the ’phone.
“Thanks,” said Ronny and lit another cigarette.
Dicky glared at him over the receiver, but before that monosyllable he was helpless. In dumb entreaty he fixed his eyes on Celia as he ordered the taxi. Surely she would remember that he hadn’t kissed her, that nothing else in all the world mattered beside that. She had dined with him, it was clearly his prerogative to see her home. She said so to Ronny in a very brief whisper, but he said,
“It’s absurd. Do you expect me to order another for myself and drive along behind you?”
He was in a very bad temper. If she let Dicky insist, he might even make it awkward for them. And she could not depend on Dicky to carry it through, for she had seen he was afraid.
She could not speak to him, she could not even look at him to show what she was thinking.
There was the taxi buzzing below the window. It was waiting for her like a dark trap and she must get into it and there would be a quarrel and either they would make it up “with lots of love and kisses” like the end of a child’s letter all about nothing, or else she would have to break off the engagement now for good and there would be more and more terrible quarrels, with Papa who would say she was disgracing the family, and Mamma who would say, “What will Fanny Marshall say?” and even Iris would shrug her shoulders and tell her she was hopeless, and all her friends would say, “But, my dear, why? He was such a perfect pet and an utter lamb and rather an angel.”
But the taxi was waiting.
She and Ronny had said good night and went downstairs, lighted by Leila with an old brass nursery candlestick, for the light had already been put out in the hall, “and our curtain has come down again,” she said apologetically to Celia as she took them past the no longer mysterious lobby whose mountainous piles of boxes were draped in the bedspread.
There was the taxi buzzing outside the door, dark, relentless.
Leila was now behind them with the candlelight glittering on her polished hair, and her high laugh following them down the steps.
“So good of you to come,” she was saying mechanically, for that cannot have been quite how she would have intended to sum up their unintentional visit, and there was Ronny saying all the right things which happily covered the dumbness that fell on her and choked her, there he was holding open the door of the taxi and she had to step inside.
He got in after her. The door banged. They were shut in together. The quarrel began. It went on. It was made up. It began again. The engagement was broken off. It was joined again.
Ronny was not jealous. Nor was Celia. Ronny did not want to quarrel. He hated quarrelling. He only wanted to express his feelings very violently and have it all over and express another set of feelings in quite a different way.
Celia did not want to quarrel. She only wanted them to decide something, she was not quite sure what, but she kept on saying it must be decided. She refused to settle down into a comfortable acquiescence about nothing in particular except a decision in common to decide nothing.
Four times Ronny pulled down the window and told the taxi driver to drive on.
The taxi driver, who was lacking in imagination and wanted to get home to his supper, had already driven twice up the Palace Road and twice down the Palace Road and along Rainbow Gardens and round Rainbow Square and even down Rainbow Street, which was still lower than Rainbow Road. So he continued to drive round and round The Borehams, to the exasperation of those of its peaceable inhabitants who were already in bed and could not conceive why a taxi should thus patrol their all but private precincts, rotating round and round their railed enclosure and its sacred edifice.
And all the time they went on saying that it was absurd to quarrel and that the idea of any jealousy was perfectly absurd, but that the thought of Celia sitting on a sofa hugging that filthy little rat of a dago made Ronny feel physically sick, that was all. “I can hardly speak of it.”
“You’ve managed to do so about eight times, and some of the details you put in were unnecessarily descriptive.”
“I’ve apologized for that. I admit I did rather lose my head at first, and I don’t wonder.”
“You kept your head beautifully in front of the others. It was only when we were alone in the taxi that you chucked it out of the window.”
“I’m not going to pay any attention to what you’ve said about our engagement. You are obviously wrought up and hysterical.”
“It was you broke the window-strap.”
“To go to a man’s flat for supper whom you’ve only met twice, late at night, a dago who’s got no decent ideas, who’d think nothing of letting a woman down——”
“He didn’t let me down, and you did.”
“I’ve explained everything.”
“So have I.”
“How you could let him touch you!”
“Do you like Leila’s lipstick?”
“She’s quite a nice, simple girl, quite different from what you led me to expect, and I only took her out because she had nothing but Indian corn for supper. She obviously doesn’t know how to look after herself.”
“Obviously.”
“Women are cats.”
“Then don’t abuse Dicky.”
“You cannot seriously imagine you’re in love with him?”
“I don’t care if I am.”
“Celia!”
“Well, how can I tell? Oh no, I can’t be. But I’m not in love with you and you aren’t really with me, so what are we engaged for?”
“I’ll soon make you believe I’m in love with you.”
“Shut up, Ronny. Oh, please don’t be an ass. It’s no good, it’s no good at all!”
Her wail was stifled by his kisses, which could communicate nothing to her but a sense of her isolation. It was Dicky who should have kissed her. He had done so once, but that did not count, not as it would have counted this evening in that supreme and perfect moment which Leila’s voice had shattered into fragments. If she could only have gone back with Dicky, but it was Ronny who was with her, Ronny who was outside, beating at the air.
“We are nothing to each other,” she cried. It had the worst possible effect. When she had the opportunity she became haughty and asked frigidly what was the difference between a dago and a gentleman. Ronny said he was no good at riddles and her outraged dignity collapsed in laughter.
“Oh, do let’s be friends ; it’s so much more fun and I do want to go home.”
But Ronny’s ideas on
friendship were different from hers and her consequent attempt to suspend the engagement only produced another order to the driver to drive on.
“What d’you think I am?” inquired the driver. “A giddy-go-round?”
“Good Heavens!” cried Celia, “there’s the policeman at the corner again. He’s been driving round and round The Borehams all this time.”
“You’ve hit it,” said the driver, “and I’m not going to start for Maidenhead now neither.”
“Why Maidenhead?”
“Oh, shut up,” said Ronny, whose protective instincts were strong. He told the taxi driver what he thought of his initiative and manners. The policeman drew a step nearer. This beat, he decided, was not so dull as he had thought. That young lady at number seven, she was making the place hum a bit.
They had to go in, and Mamma, who had only just got in, welcomed them with happy smiles, for she had won five shillings at bridge.
“You naughty children to run out together again like that when poor Cook had kept the dinner waiting over half an hour. It was such a nice little dinner too. I remembered your passion for chestnut curry, Ronny. Yes, I spoil you, don’t I? Well, I hope you had a lovely time together to make up for it.”
“Oh, Lovely!”
“Perfectly Lovely!”
“I’m so glad, darlings. How do you like the pearls on me, Ronny? Rather sweet, aren’t they? Do you really? Oh, you mustn’t say that in front of Celia, and they are her pearls too. Yes, she lets me wear them sometimes when I’m good. Poor dear Granny never got over Iris breaking up the old tiara, though I am sure everybody converts their tiaras nowadays, and that girl you had to tea to-day, Celia, said she had done so too.”
Celia thought, “I’ll say it now, to both of them. That will make it certain. I’ll say, ‘ I’m sorry, but I’m not going to marry Ronny.’”
She said :
“Did Leila have a tiara? Yes, I suppose she would, and if you asked to see it she’d have just dropped it down the area grating.”
“Are you being catty, dear? Well, she’s your friend, not mine. But I thought her quite a nice girl after all, and such nice manners. She told me she had noticed me at the Army and Navy Stores because it’s so rare to see anyone well dressed there. Did you like her, Ronny?”
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