Richard sighed. The gulf between the forces shaping world politics and the instinct that made her wear the little badge seemed to him utterly pathetic, and he could not begin to explain to her why.
“You want more tea?” she asked, pausing at the door.
He shook his head. “No, thank you. Vartouhi, don’t go just yet.” He held out his cigarette case. “Come and sit down and let us talk.”
“I do not like to talk, Mr. Marten.”
“So I have observed. I never thought to find a girl who didn’t. Do you talk much in your own country? or is it just that you dislike to talk in English to English people?”
“I like to talk in Bairamia, yes. Now I go to finish my breakfast, Mr. Marten.”
“I’m sorry; I didn’t know you hadn’t finished it. Please call me Richard, will you?”
“If you want. Rich-ard. Richard.” To his great pleasure she went out of the room murmuring his name, but he was disconcerted to observe a dimple come into her cheek as she turned away.
He lay still for a little while, staring at the distant blue winter sky visible through the low windows, and hoping she was not a flirt. To the sly yet innocent gaiety of approach to him that he occasionally detected in her, the only word applicable was “flirt.” His mother had that manner too, and he was disturbed to find it in Vartouhi, for he was a young man who did not like his love affairs to upset his mental programmes and his bodily plans. Already she was making him unhappier than he reckoned to be when he was in love, for there was no real exchange of conversation between them both to enable him to discover what her nature was like, and so he was forced to love as the very young or the very simple must love, ravished by the curve of a cheek or the fluting of an upper lip.
I suppose, he thought, that she has that picture of Home in her head that they all carry. They sit in the Corner House in London and in the cafés and milk-bars all over England, sometimes together and sometimes alone, and the English battle-dress makes them look all alike and yet brings out their differentness, their swarthiness or blondeness, the width of their cheekbones and the tilt of their eyes. The young women are gaudily dressed and get on your nerves with their unceasing vivacity and the older ones creep about Hampstead in trousers and peasant handkerchiefs looking stunned, only rousing themselves to make scenes in the food shops. One gets sick of the sight of them, and then one remembers those pictures they carry in their heads, so different, but all a picture of Home. For one it’s the neat wooden houses above the water among pines and rocks; for another the canals between the tulip fields; for others the shabby white plaster houses and old towers and plains of Poland, or the broad grey streets and gentle shabbiness of Vienna; for Vartouhi I suppose it’s fruit trees in flower. For all of them it’s the smells of their own food, the sounds of their own streets, the incommunicable light of their own skies. And then we ask them if they like England, and some of us feel offended when they let us see that they don’t.
Here Miss Fielding came in with Little Frimdl and sat down beside him in a dreadfully solid manner and began to tell him her plans for the play.
Little Frimdl, once launched, sailed remorselessly on, and no notice was taken of anybody’s excuses or disinclination to perform. Betty was now so busy at the Ministry of Applications that she had to bring home every evening the work that she had been unable to finish during the day, and when she remembered her gay idle hours in a Government Office during the Other War, she smiled and sighed, and it struck her that if the Nazi War were better organized, at least from the civilian point of view, than the Other War had been, this was chiefly due to what she had sometimes heard discussed by Richard and his friends as a sinister figure—the contemporary civil servant. But the consciousness that she herself was doing her duty did not make her more willing to be a Spirit of Mutual Co-operation in Little Frimdl, and she grew to dislike the rehearsals, which took place three times a week. Her severest condemnation of any event was to call it a bore, and she called Little Frimdl a bore to Kenneth and Richard very very often.
In the course of years Miss Fielding had acquired a collection of alleged national costumes which she had used in other Little Frimdls in the past, and she now so far conceded to Kenneth’s and public opinion as to suggest that three Spirits of Mutual Mistrust should be dressed as Italy, Germany and Japan, while the Spirits of Mutual Co-operation should be dressed as the United Nations. She herself was feeling most amiable just now, for she was never more content than when there was some plan for a party or play afoot, with furniture and people to be moved about. She kept an observant eye upon Kenneth and Betty, despite her many preoccupations, and although her fears were not completely set at rest, she felt that at least matters had gone no further; just as she had hoped, Betty’s attention was now chiefly absorbed by her son, and Miss Fielding congratulated herself upon her sagacity in having said that he might come on the visit; and really, that ankle had been quite providential!
She had telephoned to Alicia one evening, disturbing her as she lingered over her late and solitary dinner after nine hours spent in the factory, and informed her that she had got to be a Spirit of Mutual Mistrust in Little Frimdl. Alicia was just about to refuse vigorously when she recollected that Richard Marten was still at Sunglades and realized that if she accepted a part in Little Frimdl she was bound to see something of him. The prospect seemed to her more attractive than most prospects she came across nowadays, so she altered her reply to, “Oh, have I? All right, I expect I can fit it in. Who have I got to be? I don’t mind doing Italy if you’ve got one of those square peasant head-dresses but I do draw the line at Japan.”
“The costumes are accurate in every detail,” replied Miss Fielding repressively, “and the Japanese, Alicia, should at least be given the benefit of the doubt. They have done nothing so far.”
“Do you call what they’ve been doing to the Chinese for the last five years nothing?”
Miss Fielding was understood to mutter that it was all very unfortunate, and then went on in a louder voice to arrange that Alicia should come over on the following Tuesday evening to look at the play and the costumes and fix up dates for rehearsals.
What a bore, thought Alicia as she carried her brandy into the drawing-room. She lay down on a couch and put up her feet, in lovely little brocade sandals, on the cushions among the pages of the Evening Standard which her father always brought down with him from the City, while the voluminous skirts of her green house-coat, most graceful of contemporary garments, fell in folds to the floor. She slowly turned the brandy round and round in its big glass, occasionally taking a sip and thinking how good it tasted and congratulating herself on having told her father that she wanted a bottle put aside, from their dwindling stock, for her personal use when she was unusually tired. She shut her eyes.
For nine hours she had been manœuvring a crane, attached to a cabin, to and fro under the roof of the factory; hauling the barrels of the big guns into position with the crane as the men and women working on them below needed the angle changed. She rather liked the work, which isolated her from the other workers and gave her a not unattractive bird’s-eye view of the enormous long, low, airy shed in which the guns were shaped, but it was very tiring and she was glad to lie still. The softness of the couch, the warmth, the silence broken only by a murmur of dance music from the wireless, and the fiery bite of the brandy, were all so pleasant that she began to think vaguely about her own comfort, and to wonder what the other girls and women who had shared her journey homewards in the crowded bus were doing; some of them, she knew went back to shabby Council houses on the outskirts of St. Alberics and cooked supper for a family; others hurried home to look after a delicate sister or invalid mother or a brood of little children in some picturesque but inconvenient cottage in Cowater or Blentley; others again lived in one room in the back streets of the town, or were one of a family crowded into some small house, patched up after being damaged by blast, in the High Street or out towards the London road. A few of them
, but only a very few, went home to houses where there was domestic help, talk about books and music, and some sense of social and financial security in spite of the war, and she was fairly sure that she was the only one who went home to lie on a couch in 75s. brocade sandals and sip 1890 brandy. So she was very lucky, and she told herself that she ought to realize it.
She slowly opened her eyes, and let them wander round the cream, dark brown and fawn drawing-room, which had been decorated by Heals’, when their arrangements were the height of fashion, at her mother’s wish. It’s like a room in an hotel, she thought, and I’m bored here, in spite of being so comfortable and so lucky. There were only herself and her father at home now, for her youngest brother was at a boarding-school, her sister had joined the W.R.N.S., and her elder brother was a prisoner in Italy. Her mother was with her new husband somewhere and Alicia had not heard from her since last Christmas when a card had come saying, “All my thoughts, sweetie. Mums.” The establishment was too comfortable, however, for Alicia seriously to consider setting up a less luxurious one of her own, in spite of her boredom when she was at home. Mr. Arkwright ranked technically as a widower in the eyes of domestics, and as his daughter never interfered with the management of the household, perfect service was secured at a very high cost that troubled nobody, and everybody concerned was satisfied.
Yes, it’s comfortable, Alicia thought as she sipped her brandy, but I can do without comfort. I don’t really mind getting tired at the works or smothered in oil or going without sleep on a night shift. If I could live the kind of life that would make me happy, I could, honestly, do without comfort—only I don’t know what kind of life that would be. It will be amusing seeing him again.
CHAPTER 11
AFTER LUNCH ON the following Saturday afternoon, Vartouhi wheeled her bicycle out onto the road, and stood looking about her with a pleased smile.
It was just half-past two. The sunlight, silvery rather than golden for there was as yet no mist in the air, glistened along the twigs and branches of the willows, the elms, the beeches that were now all bare of their leaves, and showing their dark delicate shapes against the pale green hills of winter grass and the long rolling pale brown fields. The cold air smelled chiefly of freshness, but every now and again a breath of distant smoke, or damp leaves, or scent from hawthorn and yew and bryony berries would drift along on the general coldness and make Vartouhi, whose sense of smell was keener than that of a fully civilized person, sniff with pleasure. To her, the ivy growing over a wall that she slowly cycled past had a faint bitter perfume, and the bank of moss at the edge of the wood smelt of damp, while there was a keen woody scent, not so strong as that of freshly cut logs, from the bark of the trees. A blending of the damp smell and the bitter smell came from a long rampart of rhododendrons growing above the wall of some private estate, and when she dismounted at a bridge and leant over it to watch the winter stream swirling silently past with its long bright green weeds weaving and flowing, she breathed the marshy odour of mud and water plants. The silver sunlight glittered on the little stream, the red and yellow branches of naked willows hung down into it and were swept sideways, with sunlight silvering them too, and the water made a low sweeping rippling sound, hardly audible in the stillness.
She cycled slowly on, the faint pleased smile always on her face. There was no need for her to hurry, for Miss Fielding had taken Richard out for his first drive in the car, and had announced that they would not be home until dark. She looked at the birds flying above the ploughed fields or walking in the grass, the distant hills with their little black trees, the near wood where a few solitary yellow leaves lingered on the oaks, and all the time she was climbing up into the low hills. The lane passed between ploughed fields and was lonely; in half an hour she passed only two cottages. The slope continued gently upwards and at length brought her out into a village where old cottages made one long straggling street ending in a church with rich dark yews. The sun was now sinking towards the west and the mists were beginning to rise, and the stones of the church tower looked golden in the thickening light. She rode on past a few children coming out of the village school, and left the village with its pale houses and dark trees behind her. The air began to grow intensely cold.
This part of the country had become very lonely since the war. The villages were still crowded with evacuees from the London raids, but much of the countryside had been taken over by the Army, and at one stroke silence and peace had been reimposed upon lanes and fields that had not known them for forty years. There were roads that climbed between fields, dancing in summer with the blue and purple vetch, that were abruptly barred to the walker by notices: “No entry. W.D.”; and the village, the fabled view or the brass tablet had to be reached by some old, faint track that no one but poachers and badgers had used for years. Here, if Vartouhi had known it, the hedges and fields were like those of an older England. The spirit of a place is changed if many people go to it; it can no longer be itself. Since the solitude enforced by the war had come over these tracts of land, they had been able to be themselves once more. Their flowers had budded, blossomed and faded unpicked, their blackberries had slowly ripened and then rotted richly on the bushes, weeds grew with furious speed and strength over the footpaths and against the hedges and stiles. Only the aeroplanes passed over these woods and fields, and left no trace of their ominous shadows. Loneliness could do what it would with such places, and fortunate were the few people who saw what it made of them.
At last Vartouhi dismounted at the top of a hill.
Open country rolled away before her, with its low grey hills and meadows wreathed in mist, and the red sun sinking coldly below shreds of gold and scarlet cloud. Not a light shone from the little houses on the far hillsides; it was nearly time to pull the curtains against the enemy and the coming night; the island was preparing for its sixteen hours of darkness. So far away that it made no sound, an aeroplane was moving across the sky. Vartouhi looked long about her; observed the aeroplane and gazed at the fiery fragments of vapour above the sinking sun until she was dazzled, and breathed with delight the icy air of evening. Her eyes were used to great distances, to following the slow sail of the eagle across sunny miles of light ending in broad summits of snow, and her ears had been accustomed from childhood to a very few musical sounds; the crowing of a cock and the splashing of water, the prolonged call to prayer, the chatter of familiar voices in a quiet place and the rustling of the wind through the fruit trees. Here, on this little hill above an alien landscape, where trees and soil and sounds were so different from the ones where she had been born, she nevertheless felt for the moment no longer a stranger. The openness, the solitude and the peace were the same.
Suddenly a pleasant young voice addressed her, and she quickly turned and confronted a cheerful hatless parson, one of the new kind, who was slowly cycling past.
“I am sorry—I do not hear,” said Vartouhi.
“I’m sorry to butt in—I only said that if you are going on down the road to Treme, don’t be alarmed at the two tough-looking gents, working in the fields; they’re only Italian prisoners.”
“So?” said Vartouhi, with her polite little smile.
“Quite harmless. Good scouts, really,” said the young parson, much taken with that smile, and smiling himself as he cycled slowly away down the lane. “Just thought I’d tell you. Good night.”
“You are varry kind and good. Thank you.” She stood on tiptoe to call after him.
Then she turned to mount her bicycle, with a very changed expression. Her lips were pressed together and she frowned. “But I,” she muttered, as she began to cycle away down the road which he had indicated, “I am not kind—nor good, too also,” and she increased her pace.
The lane led back to the main road from which she had come. She rode through a small wood, where there was a thin violet mist among the darkest trees and a red light hovering in the open glades, and came out between grassy fields. Then she saw two men who were working in a
ditch on the left, wearing a peculiar striped dress. As she approached they both glanced up.
They were small men with dark complexions and long drooping noses, and so alike that she thought they might be brothers. They stared at her unsmilingly but not sulkily; they looked tired and indifferent.
Vartouhi stopped, and dismounted. Leaning on the bicycle at a distance of about twenty feet from them, she called clearly in Bairamian:
“Italian dogs!”
The men stared, ceasing to move their small dark hands among the bleached grass and thorn stems. Then one of them called something back to her that sounded polite and inquiring.
“I am not here to talk to you, dog and murderer, breaker of oaths!” she shouted. “I come to mock at you in your misery, you slaves and prisoners of the English!”
They stared at each other, shaking their heads. Then one climbed out of the ditch and began to come towards her, with a doubtful smile. The other leant on his spade, staring.
The first man spoke again in the same polite tone. He had nearly come up to the bicycle when Vartouhi stamped on the ground, and spat.
“Do not dare to approach nearer to me, dog. Go back to your ditch in the ground. May it be your grave!”
The Italians were already numb with cold and confused by the misty winter twilight that was so different from the clear dusk of their own land, and this furious little woman in a red cap and unbecoming trousers who shrieked at them in yet another unknown tongue completed their bewilderment and unhappiness. The dreary cold! and her angry, bitter voice! Their soft romantic natures, that could so easily turn to boastfulness and thence to bullying, seemed to curdle inside them with a misery they felt to be undeserved, and the one who had come out of the ditch stopped short, staring at her in horror.
“Yes, I spit at you! I spit for my father, whose farm you have doubtless taken away, for my mother whose old age you have ruined, for my sisters whose youth you have ravished, especially for my niece Medora who because of you is banished to Turkey and my sister Yania who is banished to New York in the United States of America. I spit at you for all my country of Bairamia——”
The Bachelor Page 10