Cluny Brown

by Margery Sharp

  So why go to String Street? Why not just cut it out?

  Cluny hesitated. It was, though she did not realize it, a moment of testing; but as she sat with her hand in Belinski’s the current between them flowed ever stronger, filling her with confidence, with kindness. She couldn’t go off and leave Uncle Arn just like that. She wasn’t going to start her new life by running away from the first difficulty. Better to take things as they came and deal with them as best she could, and (if she could) leave Uncle Arn with his sense of duty unimpaired.

  “We’ll go to String Street,” said Cluny, on a long sigh. “I dare say it won’t be so bad. I dare say we’ll quite enjoy it.”

  Adam Belinski drew steadily at her hand, drew her on to the seat beside him.

  “You are my brave dear,” he said. “I can see you are going to be very good for me.”

  He would have kissed her, but at that moment the train stopped, and some people got in. But Adam and Cluny did not mind. They had entered upon such good fortune that kissing was relatively unimportant.

  II

  Cluny got out at Paddington feeling extraordinarily happy. She did not feel different: on the contrary, she felt more like herself, as though she had at last stopped acting a difficult part. There had been no conscious play-acting in her relations with Mr. Wilson—but she had played up to him. She would never have to play up to Belinski; anyway she couldn’t, because he was too clever. Nor would he ever ask her who she thought she was, because to him—and to him alone, so far as Cluny could see—everything she did, thought or said appeared perfectly natural.…

  She looked slightly different, however, for Belinski had pulled a dark red scarf from his suitcase for her to wind around her head, and it became her. She looked taller than ever, just as odd, but striking: a porter said “Taxi?” to her in the most natural way. But they didn’t need a taxi to go to String Street, they left Belinski’s luggage in the cloak-room and turned out of the station on foot. Cluny sniffed appreciatively at the familiar London air.

  “Devon was beautiful,” said she, “but I couldn’t have stayed there always.”

  “Of course you could not. Shall we ever stay anywhere always?”

  “I don’t know. It doesn’t matter,” said Cluny Brown. “Wherever we are—”

  She paused, and stopped dead. They were passing a public-house, on whose threshold stood a weazened old man with a mug of beer in one hand and a dog in the other. The animal was so small that it fitted quite comfortably into his palm: it was black and fluffy, with a neatly curled plume of tail and very bright eyes.

  “Mr. Belinski!” said Cluny, pulling at his sleeve.

  “You had better begin calling me Adam,” said Mr. Belinski. “What is it?”

  “Adam, look at that puppy!”

  The old man, observing their interest, at once set it down on the pavement. It staggered a few steps, and sat. Even after four months’ association with a well-bred dog like Roderick, Cluny was able to gaze on it with rapture.

  “Do you want it?” asked Belinski casually.

  “Yes, please!” gasped Cluny. “Ask him if it’s to sell.…”

  It was; its price was one pound. This wasn’t much, indeed, for a pure-bred male Pekingese and the companion of a man’s declining years, but even Cluny felt doubtful. The puppy she had once, so briefly, owned already cost but half a crown.

  “Offer him ten bob,” she whispered.

  But Belinski said he would not haggle over the first present he had ever made her, and offered fifteen-and-six, and at this figure the animal changed hands. It was all done so swiftly, so simply, that Cluny could hardly believe her good luck: even with the little creature tucked safely in her arms she kept stopping to marvel and exclaim; she might, thought Belinski, have been given the moon.

  “But why should you not have a dog, if you want one?” he asked. “That was what I never could understand.”

  Cluny shook her head gravely.

  “I couldn’t understand why I couldn’t do half the things I wanted to. There never seemed to be a proper reason: it was just because people didn’t want to do the things themselves. Look at Uncle Arn.”

  The thought of Uncle Arn impelled Cluny to shift the puppy to one arm and take Belinski’s hand. They walked hand in hand down String Street, and knocked on the door. Mr. Porritt was at home, and very much surprised to see them.

  Chapter 28

  I

  “It’s me, Uncle Arn,” said Cluny Brown.

  For some moments Mr. Porritt simply stood and looked at her. His mind never worked very swiftly, and the unexpected appearance of a niece presumed to be in Devonshire gave him almost too much food for thought. (It was characteristic of him also that he got down to these thoughts at once, there on the doorstep, without even telling her to come in.) Only four days ago he would have supposed that she had got the sack; the very recent visit of Mr. Wilson offered an alternate explanation, that she had come to ask his consent to her marriage—wasteful, indeed, when you looked at the train fare, but right and proper at that; what absolutely stumped him was the presence of a strange man who (if number two held good) ought to have been Mr. Wilson or no one, and wasn’t Mr. Wilson. So Mr. Porritt stood and turned all this over in his mind, until Cluny grew impatient.

  “Let’s, come in, Uncle Arn!” she cried; and gave him an affectionate shove.

  Mr. Porritt moved back; Cluny pulled Adam Belinski in after her and shut the door. Under the bright light the plumber gave him a close look; his first and damning thought was that he couldn’t place him. Cluny meanwhile kissed her uncle heartily, and with a backward jerk of the head performed the necessary introduction.

  “That’s Mr. Belinski, Uncle Arn, and we’re going to be married.”

  “You’ve got the wrong chap,” said Mr. Porritt.

  These, the first words he had spoken, had at least the merit of putting the whole matter on a sound, argumentative basis. Having uttered them almost without thought, Mr. Porritt found himself on firm ground, and Cluny for her part saw exactly what she was up against. As for Mr. Belinski, he wisely held himself in reserve.

  “Well, you might say you’re glad to see us,” remarked Cluny irrelevantly.

  “What’s that dog doing?” asked Mr. Porritt.

  “He’s mine. We’ve just bought him. You can help think of a name.”

  Cluny held the puppy up, his four short legs dangling from her palm, and gently approached him to her uncle’s face. The puppy hiccuped.

  “Going to be sick,” prophesied Mr. Porritt gloomily. “Don’t you take him into the kitchen.”

  “If I don’t go into the kitchen, how can I get us anything to eat?” asked Cluny reasonably; and marched through the door leaving the two men behind.

  The extreme narrowness of the hall gave them a forced air of intimacy, as though they were there for some common domestic purpose, such as shifting the hat-stand. Mr. Porritt continued to fix the stranger with an unwinking gaze, to which Mr. Belinski returned a genuinely sympathetic look. He already knew far more about Mr. Porritt than Mr. Porritt was ever to know about him.

  “I am sorry that this is such a shock to you,” he said at last. “Indeed, it happened very suddenly. My name is Adam Belinski, I am a Pole, and a writer. But we are going to the United States.”

  These statements had the effect upon Mr. Porritt of a mild concussion. They sounded wonderfully clear and plain, but he could attach no meaning to them. He therefore ignored them altogether, and harked back to his original line of thought.

  “Where’s the other chap?” asked Mr. Porritt.

  “Mr. Wilson, the chemist? I imagine he is back at Friars Carmel.”

  “I suppose he was a chemist?” said Mr. Porritt uneasily.

  “Certainly. Of the highest standing.” If it seemed odd to Mr. Belinski that he, as one suitor, should be required to supply the credentials of another, he did not show it. Indeed, he understood very well Mr. Porritt’s urgent need for some solid ground. He added helpf
ully, “Mr. Wilson is probably the best chemist in the neighbourhood, and studied at Nottingham University.”

  “Well, then.…” Mr. Porritt fetched a deep snort of breath. “Two days ago comes this other chap, saying he wants to marry her. I tell him to go ahead. Two days after, you come saying you’re going to marry her. It don’t make sense.”

  “We can only offer Mr. Wilson our sympathy.”

  “Furthermore,” continued Mr. Porritt, getting into his stride, “if Mr. Wilson’s all you say, and it agrees with what I’ve seen of him, she’d be daft to change her mind, and what’s more I won’t allow it. Stay and have a bite if you like, but if you don’t, no one will take it amiss.”

  Before Mr. Belinski could reply to this very fair proposition, however, they were interrupted by Cluny putting her head round the kitchen door.

  “Uncle Arn, you’ve never eaten eight eggs in two days!”

  “I gave half a dozen to your Aunt Addie.”

  “Well!” cried Cluny. “Mr. Wilson takes all that trouble to bring you fresh country eggs, and you go giving them away! Now there’s only one each, and one over.”

  “You have it,” said Mr. Porritt.

  “Well, you might open some beer while I boil them.”

  “I don’t feel like beer,” retorted Mr. Porritt. “I’m too put out.”

  “Then give Mr. Belinski a glass. I bet you gave Mr. Wilson beer,” said Cluny stubbornly.

  II

  It was extraordinary how Mr. Wilson had somehow managed to join the party. Cluny, having absently boiled the fourth egg, put it too in a cup: it looked like a fourth place. After all, as she pointed out, if it hadn’t been for Mr. Wilson they’d have had nothing to eat. Moreover, he had evidently left a great impression on Mr. Porritt, who delivered what was practically a speech in his praise. Cluny’s tender conscience forced her to join in, and Mr. Belinski had at least nothing to say against him. There was nothing to say against him. From whatever angle one approached, Mr. Wilson was perfect.

  “He told me,” mourned Mr. Porritt, “his turn-over was up ten per cent every year. That’s what I like. That’s steady.”

  “He is steady. And he’s wonderful to his mother.”

  “He said, ‘There’s some object to living over the shop.’ What I said was, ‘If you’ve got a shop, stick to it.’ There’s nothing like trade.”

  “You did get along well,” said Cluny. “Go on, have his egg.”

  But Mr. Porritt waved it aside.

  “We had quite a long chat. I don’t know I’ve ever met a chap I liked better, not at first go. We got everything settled—”

  Cluny offered the fourth egg to Belinski, and on his refusal ate it herself. She was quite untroubled, for she had still a child’s capacity for contemplation: deep inside herself she was brooding quietly and continuously on the infinitely rich sensation of being at last where she belonged. She belonged with Adam Belinski. Were they in love with each other? Cluny could only have answered, she supposed so. All she knew consciously of love were its preliminaries as taught by the movies, and these she and Belinski had skipped: they had met at the centre of the maze, not on its outer rim: they accepted each other simply and finally as the basic fact of their joint lives.

  Mr. Porritt talked on. They did not mind him, they did not even wish him to stop. The untidy supper table, the overheated kitchen, suited them very well. They were never to pay much attention to their material surroundings. Raising her head, Cluny met Belinski’s eyes fixed on hers in a look of great peacefulness: it was a look she was to meet again and again in the diverse circumstances of their erratic, turbulent, haphazard existence. In shabby lodgings, in luxurious borrowed penthouses, travelling steerage or by air-liner, eating off gold plate or out of paper bags, peace would be theirs—not as a shield against the world (for they always welcomed the world, whether it pursued them in the shape of duns or disciples) but rather as a warm cloak, a travelling cloak, against the world’s weather. Mr. Porritt’s obstinacy was no more than a light mist; however he might talk, thought Cluny easily, he would soon come round. She was sorry for his disappointment, because Mr. Wilson was so obviously Uncle Arn’s cup of tea, but he would get over it.…

  She stooped down to see if her puppy was eating his supper. She had prepared him a saucer of bread and bovril; he had consumed about half and fallen asleep in the middle. Cluny picked him up and tenderly wiped his ears; through his soft fur she could feel the warm supper inside him. He put out his tongue and licked her hand.

  “He knows you,” said Mr. Belinski.

  Cluny nodded, feeling almost unbearably happy.

  “What shall we call him?” she asked.

  But before any one could make a suggestion, there was a loud knock at the door.

  III

  How various were the emotions with which each heard it! Cluny Brown turned pale: across her happy confidence shot a feeling of something very like guilt, and certainly like apprehension; Belinski, with his strong literary background, immediately thought of the knocking in Macbeth; Mr. Porritt turned on them both a look of sombre complacency, as of a man who sees Nemesis approaching, but not for him. It was he who answered the door, and he alone who felt a pang of disappointment as he returned not with Mr. Wilson but with only a telegram from him.

  It was addressed to Mr. Porritt, and reply-paid. The boy waited; he was, for the time being, Mr. Wilson’s, errand boy. Mr. Porritt left him in the hall and shut the door on him while, very deliberately, he read the message through twice. Then with a solemn gesture he laid it flat on the table between Belinski and Cluny Brown.

  IF CLUNY BROWN IS WITH YOU [said Mr. Wilson] TELL HER I WILL MEET THE 3.15 TRAIN LEAVING PADDINGTON 10.40 TOMORROW TUESDAY STOP IF SHE IS NOT ON IT I WILL MAKE NO FURTHER COMMUNICATION STOP IF SHE IS NOT WITH YOU ADVISE YOU TRACE ADAM BELINSKI POLISH PROBABLY KNOWN TO POLICE STOP YOU HAVE MY SYMPATHY WILSON

  Cluny slowly raised her dark head.

  “It must have cost shillings,” said she.

  “All of five bob,” agreed Mr. Porritt. “See what he says? I have his sympathy.”

  “He is undoubtedly a very magnanimous man,” declared Mr. Belinski.

  They all paid Mr. Wilson the tribute of a moment’s silence.

  “What are you going to say?” asked Mr. Porritt at last. “It’s for young Cluny to answer.”

  Cluny slowly fetched the big diary, with pencil attached (in which she had once written the address of Mr. Ames), and sat down with it at the table. She knew her uncle was right: it was for her to answer. Under the eyes of the two men she wrote, crossed out, chewed her pencil and wrote again; and at the end of ten minutes silently drew back to let them read.

  DEAR MR. WILSON [Cluny had put] PLEASE DO NOT TROUBLE TO MEET THAT TRAIN STOP I AM VERY SORRY TO BE A DISAPPOINTMENT TO YOU BUT BETTER NOW THAN LATER ON STOP I SHALL NEVER FORGET YOU STOP POSTAL ORDER FOLLOWS ALL THE BEST FROM UNCLE ARNOLD MR. BELINSKI AND CLUNY BROWN

  If no one was quite satisfied with this production, no one could suggest any improvements—or none that Cluny would admit. Belinski felt he had been rather dragged in, but she insisted that this was a delicate way of publishing their intentions. Mr. Porritt wanted to send sympathy in return, which Cluny considered impolite to Belinski. She was not perfectly satisfied herself, but at least the message had one great merit, that of length; it was going to cost a lot more than Mr. Wilson had allowed for, thus showing they weren’t mean. She took it out to the boy, and it was a solemn moment when they heard the gate close behind him and his footsteps diminish down the road.

  “That’s that,” said Cluny Brown. “Cheer up, Uncle Arn; we’re not dead yet.”

  She caught Belinski’s eye, and wordlessly indicated that he had better take himself off. He bade his future uncle-in-law good-night, adding that he would come round in the morning (to which Mr. Porritt replied that he would be out on a job) and Cluny took her lover into the narrow hall, where for the first time he kissed her. They had been sure of each other alr
eady, but it was with a sweeter assurance still that Cluny returned to the kitchen and after a moment’s hesitation sat down in her old place, opposite her uncle, across the Porritt hearth.

  IV

  It felt queer to be back; not quite real. She had been away only four months, but after Friars Carmel the familiar room seemed smaller than she remembered it. Cluny was glad to see it so clean and well-kept, yet its very neatness made her feel like a stranger. She had used to leave bits of sewing about, magazines, books from the twopenny library; now not a tea-cup was out of place. The spun-glass bird no longer adorned the clock, and her collection of calendars had all been taken down. Well, perhaps Mr. Porritt had never liked them.…

  Cluny considered her uncle. He didn’t look any smaller, but he too had changed. As he sat before the hearth, staring into the grate, he gave the very definite impression of a man used to living alone. He didn’t look unhappy, but he looked remote. Cluny suddenly felt a great desire to recapture, if only for five minutes, if only for the last time, something of their old companionship. She said softly:—