Cluny Brown

by Margery Sharp

  “He’s out,” said Cluny.

  “Can’t you get hold of him?”

  Cluny reflected. It wasn’t the weather for burst pipes, and for no lesser calamity did she intend to disturb her uncle’s Sabbath.

  “No, I can’t,” she said.

  “Good God!” cried the voice passionately. “This is intolerable! This is unheard of! Isn’t there any one else? Who are you?”

  “Cluny Brown,” said Cluny.

  There was a short pause; when the voice spoke again it was in quite a different key.

  “She was only a plumber’s daughter—”

  Cluny, who had heard that one before, rang off and went back upstairs. She got into bed and lay down again and relaxed according to the directions, joint by joint all the way from her toes up to her neck. “Now pretend you’re a Persian cat,” said the piece in the paper; but Cluny, whose imagination was precise rather than romantic, felt more like one of the long green or crimson sausages hawked about the streets to keep draughts from under the door. It probably didn’t matter … What did matter was that hardly had she achieved this desirable state when the phone rang again. “Let it,” thought Cluny; and proceeded to the next stage, of completely emptying her mind. Only she couldn’t, because of the telephone. It went on and on, until at last there was nothing for it but to get up and answer it again.

  “Miss Brown?” said the voice. “Please accept my apologies.”

  “Is that all you got me out of bed for?” cried Cluny indignantly.

  Again there was a pause; and Mr. Porritt, had he been listening, would have sympathized with the caller. When you rang up a plumber you didn’t expect—well, you didn’t expect Cluny.

  “Good heavens!” exclaimed the voice solicitously. “Are you ill? Shall I bring you some grapes?”

  “It isn’t grapes, it’s oranges.”

  “What is?”

  “The cure. But I’m not ill.” (Having gone so far, Cluny felt she had better clear the whole thing up.) “You stay in bed twenty-four hours drinking orange juice, at least I suppose it’s the same if you suck them, and the whole system is wonderfully toned.”

  “You sound better already,” observed the voice.

  “I feel better,” agreed Cluny.

  “You don’t feel well enough to come round and see what’s the matter with my sink?”

  Cluny hesitated. As a matter of fact, she felt very well indeed. Standing there in her cotton nightdress, in a draught, her bare feet on the bare linoleum, she felt quite extraordinarily well, all over, except for one spot on her upper lip which was rather sore from sucking oranges. Could it be that the cure had worked already? And if so, ought she not to do her duty by the trade, and perhaps get a new name on her uncle’s books? A sink didn’t sound serious; stopped up, most likely, and no one with enough sense to unscrew the bend …

  “I’ll give you ten bob, as it’s Sunday,” lured the voice, “and you can take a cab. Ten-A, Carlyle Walk, Chelsea. Are you coming?”

  “O.K.,” said Cluny; and conscientiously reached for the order-book, to put it down.

  II

  The correct costume for a young lady going to fix a gentleman’s sink on a Sunday afternoon has never been authoritatively dealt with; Cluny had naturally to carry her uncle’s tool-bag, but as an offset wore her best clothes. These were all black, being part of her mourning for Mrs. Porritt, and the circumstance was not, at this stage in her career, without importance. It explained for example how she had got a table at the Ritz. Unusually tall, thin as a kippered herring, Cluny in a plain black coat looked very well. From the back she looked elegant; it was only her face spoiled it from in front. But in twenty years Cluny had got used to her face, and now, dabbing on the powder, could contemplate it without resentment: thin cheeks, big mouth, big nose, not a spot of colour: a short face from brow to chin, wide-angled at the strongly-marked jawline; thick black hair, which she cut herself whenever it grew below the shoulder, and tied behind, well away from the nape, so that it stuck out like a pony’s tail. “Lucky Uncle Arn’s short-sighted,” thought Cluny philosophically; and then ran downstairs laughing, for it had suddenly struck her that maybe the Voice was looking for a bit of fun, and if so he wouldn’t half get a shock when he saw her.

  III

  Ten-A turned out to be not a house but a studio, built over a mansion-garden in the palmy days of Victorian art. Since then the mansion had become a block of flats, and the studio a garage, now turned back into a studio by Mr. Hilary Ames. He was not an artist but liked giving parties. He was giving a party that evening, and it was therefore particularly necessary that his sink should be unstopped. But Cluny’s malice was also half-justified: the quality of her deep voice, the incongruity of her occupations, had tickled his fancy. This was not difficult to do: Mr. Ames’s fancy was for young women, and rather easily stimulated; but Cluny was right also in foreseeing a slight shock at first sight. She arrived, knocked, was admitted, and surprised upon the gentleman’s face an extremely mixed expression.

  “Now then, what’s the trouble?” asked Cluny benevolently—standing over him rather like a young policeman. She was considerably the taller, and the first thing she noticed about Mr. Ames was the small bald patch on top of his head. For the rest, he was fiftyish, plumpish, and had on a canary-coloured pull-over which had cost six pounds, and which Cluny thought made him look like a tiddlywink.

  Mr. Ames for his part took one look at Cluny’s nose and dismissing all frolicsome thoughts at once led the way into a small malodorous scullery. The sink brimmed with greasy water, some of which had slopped upon the floor, but nothing seemed to have burst and there was no smell of gas. Cluny set down her bag in a competent manner, removed her good coat, and handed it to Mr. Ames. She might have been Arnold Porritt in person.

  “Can you put it right?” asked Mr. Ames anxiously. (Just as they all did.) “I’m expecting some friends about six, and I can’t have this mess.”

  “They’d smell you a mile off,” agreed Cluny cheerfully. “Got a coat-hanger?”

  “Certainly,” said Mr. Ames, looking surprised. “Do you need one?”

  “Not here,” said Cluny, “but you might put my coat on it.”

  As soon as he had withdrawn to do so she undid her suspenders and rolled her stockings below the knee. (They were her best.) Then she rolled up her sleeves, hitched up her skirt, and got down to it. It wasn’t difficult: all you had to do was loosen a nut, unscrew the joint, and let the foul water run out into a pail. In this instance the stoppage was considerable, but by working at it with a bamboo Cluny satisfactorily ejected the last gobbet. Then she turned the taps full on for a good sluice down, and to make a job of it scrubbed down the sink itself with Vim. Opening the back-door, Cluny further emptied the pails into a patch of derelict shrubs, and took in a couple of milk-bottles which happened to be on the step. It was at this moment that Mr. Ames returned, and it was a moment of peculiar significance. Cluny’s tall thin figure, dark against the sunlight, was admirably balanced between the pail in one hand and the bottles in the other; as she turned her head the ridiculous pony tail of hair showed in a bold calligraphic flourish. She looked like no one on earth but Cluny Brown, and at the same time, stepping in with the milk, she looked as though she belonged intimately to her surroundings. For no reason that he could seize Mr. Ames thought suddenly of a blackbird at a window.

  “There you are!” said Cluny. “Clean as a whistle!” She set down pail and bottles and looked at him. Mr. Ames looked back, and there was a short silence.

  “If you don’t think it’s worth ten bob—” said Cluny uncertainly.

  “Of course I do …”

  “And the taxi was three-and-six. But I needn’t take one back.”

  “We’ll call it a pound, and all square,” said Mr. Ames.

  But Cluny would not. She took the note, but produced six-and-six in change, and began to repack her kit. In a few minutes she would be gone; Mr. Ames realized the lapse of every second, but the
rapidly increasing pressure of his dishonourable intentions, acting like a mild concussion, held him speechless. For the first time in his life he didn’t know how to begin. And yet there was one move so simple, so obvious, that Cluny herself advanced it in the most natural way.

  “Can I have a wash?”

  “Good God, yes!” cried Mr. Ames.

  All his aplomb returned as he led her to the bathroom. It was the very place to arouse, as he now urgently desired to do, her wonder and admiration; he had confidence in his bathroom, and he was not disappointed. Before the enormous amber-coloured bath, the amber-tinted mirrors—the oiled-silk curtains and innumerable shiny gadgets—Cluny in turn was bereft of speech. She gazed and gazed, till her eyes were like pools of ink.

  “Nice?” prompted the owner.

  “Heaven!” breathed Cluny.

  “I like it too,” said Mr. Ames, “though my friends say it suggests a love nest.” He made a practice of introducing this term into conversation with new young women, to see their reaction. Cluny’s was unexpected.

  “I do wish Uncle Arn was here!”

  Slightly jarred, Mr. Ames asked why Uncle Arn.

  “Being a plumber,” explained Cluny. With a professional air she examined the taps, the waste, the snaky hand shower; the yellow rubber cushion and fish-shaped ash-tray aroused an emotion more purely æsthetic. Laying the silkiness of the curtains against her cheek, she almost purred. “It’s as good as the films!” she sighed at last. “Can I really wash here?”

  “Of course you can. Have a bath,” said Mr. Ames.

  He lit a cigarette while Cluny considered. The situation was unusual, owing to the fact that she really did need bathing; Mr. Ames, with his wider experience, was naturally more struck by this than Cluny. He felt he had never advanced this gambit in more favourable circumstances, and that it was a good omen.

  “You are kind …” said Cluny.

  “Not in the least. I’ll get you a towel.”

  But Cluny Brown had not yet made up her mind; in the Porritt-Trumper circles of her upbringing one did not take baths as lightly as all that. One planned them ahead, with due regard to when the boiler would be on, and who else wanted one; above all, after bathing, one assumed clean underwear. Cluny naturally had no change of linen with her, and this put her off. She also felt she could have almost as good a time in the hand basin.

  “I’ll just wash,” said she. “But thank you all the same.”

  “Much better have a bath,” said Mr. Ames.

  “Do I hum?” asked Cluny anxiously.

  Then Mr. Ames made his mistake. He should have told her the truth, that she did indeed smell pretty foul. But he wasn’t used to people who took their truth neat.

  “Good heavens, no.”

  “Then I’ll just wash,” said Cluny. “Run along.”

  There was no key to the lock, but this did not worry her, because of course Mr. Ames knew she was inside; removing the upper part of her dress Cluny sluiced herself vigorously in the lovely hot water and worked up a glorious lather of geranium-scented soap. (Mr. Ames, quietly reopening the door, saw nothing of her but her long, thin, ivory-coloured back; and Cluny, her eyes full of suds, did not see Mr. Ames.) The sweet spicy scent enchanted her, it easily over-rode the last of the cabbage-water, and she readjusted her dress with well-founded complacency. Her nose was of course shiny again, but by some fortunate chance the toilet appliances included a large bowl of powder. Cluny was never one to spoil the ship for a ha’p’orth of tar. When she returned to the studio Mr. Ames, mixing cocktails, smelt her before he saw her.

  He did not immediately speak. A moment was repeating itself (Mr. Ames was a connoisseur of such moments). As he had been struck before by the peculiar intimacy of Cluny’s entry by the back-door, so now he was struck by the intimacy of her entry from his bathroom. He gave her a long look; then the ice clinked in the shaker as he set it down.

  “Cocktail or tea?” asked Mr. Ames.

  “Cocktail,” said Cluny promptly.

  He handed her the small ice-cold glass—the first cocktail of Cluny Brown’s experience. It was a dry martini, and it went down her ivory throat in one long ripple.

  “Good God!” exclaimed Mr. Ames. “You don’t drink it like that!”

  “Beer you do,” said Cluny simply.

  Strangely moved by this unsophistication, Mr. Ames made her sit down on the divan and waited with almost paternal anxiety for the effects. There seemed to be none. To his enquiry how she felt Cluny replied that she felt fine, and asked for another to drink it properly. Mr. Ames poured her a small one, and one for himself, and under his guidance Cluny tried again, taking delicate sips, and setting the glass down, between times, on a low coffee table. The divan too was low, very wide and soft, backed by a pile of cushions: Cluny settled comfortably back, happy in the belief that as cocktails were so much more relaxing than orange juice, so no doubt they superiorly toned the system. Mr. Ames leaned on one elbow and watched her. It was by now incredible to him that he had ever thought her plain: he could see only the extraordinarily fine texture of her white skin and the extraordinarily clean cut of the lids over her long black eyes.

  “What about your party?” asked Cluny suddenly.

  “You’re staying for it.”

  “Do you think I ought?”

  “Positive.”

  “Thank you very much,” said Cluny.

  Mr. Ames took a firm hold on himself. His desire to make love to her was by now extreme, but time was against him. At any moment some of his friends might arrive—the Drake woman, for instance, who always came at least an hour early in order to tell him her troubles … and to drink a preliminary cocktail, and to recline, just as Cluny was doing, on that wide divan.… The memory was so unwelcome that Mr. Ames recognized, with a thrill of pleasure, one of the first symptoms of a genuine affair: the desire to obliterate the past. He could afford to wait—at any rate until the party was over, and Cluny was staying behind to help him clear up. To avoid temptation Mr. Ames therefore thrust himself away from the cushions, and Cluny too started erect in the belief that it was time for another sip. She leant forward to take her glass, their shoulders touched; and at that instant a step sounded in the scullery. Some one had come in through the open back-door, some one was on the threshold of the studio; and remembering the Drake woman’s horrible habit of giving him surprises Mr. Ames forced himself to look round with a pallid smile.

  But it wasn’t the Drake after all. There, with a brow like thunder, stood Mr. Porritt.

  IV

  Cluny, who was really fond of her uncle, jumped up with every sign of pleasure. Mr. Ames rose too, but more slowly. He later made a very good tale of it, but at the time the situation was hardly humorous at all. Mr. Porritt looked curiously formidable.

  “Uncle Arn!” cried Cluny. “Have you come to see the sink?”

  Mr. Porritt did not reply. Instead he advanced, took the glass out of her hand, smelt it, and threw the contents onto the floor.

  “I say!” protested Mr. Ames. (He was a man noted for his presence of mind, his quick wit, his savoir faire; such was the aspect of the plumber that for the moment all three deserted him, and this feeble ejaculation was all he could find.) “I say! What’s wrong?”

  “That is,” replied Mr. Porritt grimly. “Giving a young girl strong drink. Cluny Brown, come here.”

  Cluny obediently approached a step nearer. The scent of sweet geranium hit him like a wave.

  “How did he get you here?” demanded Mr. Porritt.

  “He rang up because his sink was stopped.”

  “Which is no business of yours, as you well know.”

  “I thought I could fix a sink. And I did. You take a look,” said Cluny, rather proudly. “Besides, he offered ten bob.”

  “Ten bob! And you swallowed it?”

  With the mistaken idea of establishing Mr. Ames’s bona fides, Cluny at once produced the note. Luckily Mr. Porritt did not look at it and see it was a pound, but too
k it too from her hand and cast it down. He was working up to the crucial question.

  “Has he done anything to you that I ought to know?”

  “No, I don’t think so,” said Cluny.

  This answer, so highly unsatisfactory to both her uncle and the now writhing Mr. Ames, was simply an attempt at the exact truth: Cluny herself thought there was nothing, but what her uncle would think was a different matter.

  “Then get your coat,” said Mr. Porritt thickly.

  Cluny looked at Mr. Ames, and the latter, with as much nonchalance as he could muster, went into the bedroom to fetch it. As he opened the door he could feel the plumber’s inimical gaze boring into his back, piercing him, alighting (with furiously unjust suspicion) upon the double bed. Unjust now, at least; for the last few minutes had most thoroughly purged Mr. Ames of every indecorous thought.

  “Uncle Arn,” said Cluny.

  “Well?”

  “Before we go, wouldn’t you like to see the bathroom?”

  Mr. Porritt had never in his life raised his hand to a woman, but he nearly raised it then. And Cluny knew it. Only Mr. Ames’s return saved them both. Cluny seized and dragged on her coat, Mr. Porritt automatically picked up his tool-bag, and they marched together out of the studio, both furious, both spoiling for a row, taking no more notice of Mr. Ames than if he had been—a tiddly wink.

  V

  The row broke as soon as they got outside, raged all down Carlyle Walk, and reached its height on the Embankment. What chiefly infuriated Cluny was that she was six-and-six-pence down, the change from the pound note; and this attitude in turn exacerbated the fury of Mr. Porritt. He was more deeply shaken than Cluny realized; and her obtuseness driving him from his natural decorum of speech, he proclaimed in so many words his belief that Cluny had narrowly escaped being seduced, and the further belief that she had been asking for it. At that Cluny stood stockstill on the Embankment and turned first scarlet and then so white that her uncle thought she was about to faint. She did indeed feel qualmish, but that was because the cocktails, on nothing but orange juice, were at last taking effect. What she chiefly felt was an overpowering, hopeless sense of rage at the stupidity of the universe as represented by Mr. Porritt. It was so great as to be almost impersonal: it was the generous rage of ignorant youth; and Cluny had to steady herself against the parapet as it swept over her.