The Beautiful Visit (45 page)

‘Although I know all the chunes,’ said another daughter.

‘We
all
know the chunes,’ said the third crushingly.

That was. the beginning of the end. In vain did I try to explain the elementary principles that must be grasped before any playing might proceed. I was too depressed to be very persuasive.

Mrs Garth-Jackson succeeded in getting rid of me as a charlatan and without paying me. I went with all the dignity I could muster, inadvertently leaving Czerny behind me. I withdrew my
advertisement and gave up all thought of teaching anybody anything which I could not remember learning myself.

I resolved to cut down my meals, at least until I had finished writing.

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

I discovered that exercise and fresh air made me hungry. Sitting in my room and drinking a quantity of cold water, however, did not. I was far from starving, but subsisting
mainly on the monotonous tepid luncheons provided by Mrs Pompey, reinforced by bread, apples and cocoa in my room, required a certain adjustment of the mind if one was occupied in successively
copying music, writing and, worse still, worrying about a book.

One afternoon, however, having some music to return, I decided to walk back to Paddington. It was a beautiful day; one of those rare single perfect days, with balmy air and exquisite colour; the
whole inlaid with a seductive, but treacherous sense of timelessness. Tomorrow it would probably rain, but it was impossible to think so today.

I turned reluctantly from the edge of the Park towards my sunless room, and the copying which lay before me. The door of my room was unlocked. I pushed it open – and there was Elspeth.

As I opened the door she rose from the chair in which she had been sitting. She was dressed in a costume of vivid yellow, Which seemed to illumine the room. I think I gasped: tears of amazement
started into my eyes.

‘I have been waiting for you,’ said Elspeth. ‘You must have thought me so rude in not answering your letter that I decided simply to come.’

I shut the door. Curiously, seeing someone, a friend in this room for the first time, where I had spent so many solitary hours, my loneliness rushed out on me, enveloping me.

Elspeth said: ‘Can we light your fire? I cannot make it work.’

‘It needs pennies.’ I went to the little box in which I kept them, on the mantelpiece.

‘Have you been waiting long? I asked when the fire was alight.

‘Not very long. Your landlady put me in here. Is this where you live?’

‘Yes,’

She stared at me thoughtfully for a moment, and then said:

‘I have been abroad. Uncle does not forward letters. So you see, I have only just had yours. I got back two days ago.’

‘I am very glad to see you.’ I said. ‘Shall we have tea?’

‘On the bed there is a paper bag full of meringues,’ she observed.

I made tea. We talked about the Lancings, and she a little about Paris. There was a kind of constraint upon us; neither of our minds was employed in our conversation, as we wondered about each
other, our eyes occasionally meeting in a spasm of amiable curiosity.

When the tea was poured she said suddenly: ‘Tell me why you are here? Has something dreadful happened since I saw you last?’

‘No. I couldn’t bear living with my family any more, so I left.’

‘But why here?’

I looked at her shining trim head with small ear-rings glinting at the edge of her hair (her actual ears were invisible), and answered carefully: ‘I have very little money. I
couldn’t afford any where else.’

‘Do you work?’

‘I copy music. I don’t earn very much.’

‘Are you not very lonely? What happens when you’ve finished copying music?’

‘Nothing. I get some more.’

‘So much music as that?’ She made an extravagant little gesture with her fingers. ‘What did you dislike so much about your home?’

I tried to tell her, but somehow, since I had written about it, I had no more to say on the subject, and found it difficult even to be convincing.

‘I see,’ she said. I do not think she did. ‘But what do you intend doing? You surely cannot copy music all your life?’

I was becoming hardened to this question and countered: ‘What do
you
intend doing?’

Her clear serious eyes widened a moment but she answered casually: ‘Oh, I have some sort of plan.’

‘Well I have none,’ I said flatly. I knew from experience that this kind of conversation only made me thoroughly unhappy for long afterwards.

‘I remember you once said that you would write books and keep a small Zoo.’ I added.

‘How do you remember that? I remember thinking it, but I do not remember telling you.’

‘I was thinking about it the other day. Well, are you doing either of those things?’

‘Good heavens, no. At least, not at the moment.’ The corners of her mouth flitted upwards and then down again as though she were smiling alone to herself.

‘You see?’ I said. ‘It’s no good planning anything. Anyway, what could I plan?’

‘I suppose you could earn more money. That would make a difference.’

‘It would certainly make a difference. But I am not trained to do anything. I have no vocation or talent, or whatever it is people need.’

‘How did you learn to copy music?’

‘That doesn’t count. I was brought up on music. It is like words; only a little more complicated.’

‘And do you do it all day?’

‘Yes.’ I did not want to tell her about the book.

‘All the time?’

‘Almost all of it.’

That’s better,’ said Elspeth calmly. ‘I am afraid I know that you don’t.’ She indicated my writing-table with the back of her head. I saw that my second vast
exercise book lay open upon it, and felt violently angry and stupid.

‘I have not touched it. You must have left it there. Generally you lock it up, but today you forgot.’

‘How do you know that?’

She leaned back a little in her chair.

‘That is what people do. The locking up and the forgetting.’

‘Do you write?’ I asked politely.

She frowned. ‘I cannot. I have done enough of it to know that I cannot. It is a bad situation.’

I did not know what she meant, and did not reply. Suddenly she leaned forward and said, very charmingly: ‘Do
you
find it difficult? Will you tell me about it?’

I stared at her, hopelessly incoherent. ‘I haven’t finished,’ I said at last.

It’s about you, I suppose?’ Elspeth said.

I nodded.

‘What are you going to do with it?’

‘Do with it?’

She laughed. ‘Extraordinary creature. You don’t plan anything, do you? Look here, I want to read it. I read very quickly and shall not lose it,’ she added.

‘My writing . . .’ I began faintly. I suddenly felt sick at the thought of anyone reading it. There were all kinds of things.

‘Am
I
in it?’ asked Elspeth sitting bolt upright.

‘Yes. So you are.’

‘So I am,’ she smiled delightedly. ‘I’ll read it in one day, or perhaps two. Yes?’

I hesitated, knowing she would win. ‘It isn’t
finished
.’ I said again.

‘We’ll invent an ending,’ said Elspeth. ‘If I have time we will. I shall have to be quick because of . . . Why it might make you famous!’

I had the feeling that she said this to prevent herself saying something else. We did not talk about it any more. Nor did we again mention the Lancings. I felt that for quite different reasons
we had neither of us liked staying with them and that we neither of us wanted, by discussion, to find out how different our reasons for not liking it were.

She left in a short while, carrying the exercise books, with the promise that she would return with them two days later. She left me in a tumult; about her and about the book. I lay for hours that night imagining myself an accepted and successful author. Gigantic fantasies rioted with wholly improbable simplicity;
clear unpractical dreams filled me to the brim; my ambition was as boundless, as limitless, as my illusion, and I indulged them both in the privacy of my dark room for hours and hours.

CHAPTER FORTY

The next day, of course, I had to battle with the depression which results from any orgy of private and imaginative optimism.

In thinking of Elspeth reading my books, I fell to thinking of Elspeth herself. I realized that I knew almost nothing about her, since on each of the three widely spaced occasions when we had
met, she had seemed an entirely different creature. Nor could I, except by the wildest unsatisfactory conjecture, connect these three people, although they all had something in common. She had on
all occasions given the impression of being only partially contained in the immediate situation, as though the most vital part of her was withdrawn, intensely active, but withdrawn. If she had some
private life of which I was ignorant, it did not seem dependent upon her environment. I felt she carried it about with, her; and since ignorance is conducive to envy, I envied her.

Her appearance was also perplexing. She had dressed on this last, and the previous occasion with an extreme, but elegant, severity, although her face, her habitual expression of grave
preoccupation had altered remarkably little, I realized, since she was fourteen. She had looked too old for her age then; now she appeared, not precisely too young, but imbued with a curious
mixture of sophistication and youth. The effect was certainly startling, but it was impossible to be sure whether or not it was conscious.

In spite of the feeling I had so strongly about her divided nature, I felt that there was no situation to which she would prove unequal, possibly
because
of her essential division. She
had, I felt, what many people call (and I can think of no better way to describe it) some secret purpose in her life.

Fortunate Elspeth, I thought, having successfully simplified her situation without knowing anything about it.

I spent the whole day alternately resolving to put Elspeth and the books out of my mind, and impatiently waiting for her return and her conclusions, I spent an almost sleepless night in the same
condition.

She arrived exactly when she had said she would. She was carrying a small suitcase. I had prepared tea for us, and proceeded to dispense it, confidently expecting that she would of herself
broach the subject of my book. But she seemed wrought up and unusually silent. It had been raining, and she arrived buttoned to the chin in an unusually long and heavy mackintosh, although she was
bareheaded.

‘I had better hang it somewhere,’ she observed, after standing restlessly in it for some moments. She was wearing an equally businesslike shirt and tie; together with a beautifully
cut grey costume, the skirt of which reached to her ankles.

‘I’m so sorry.’ I unwedged the piece of paper in the wardrobe door, and produced a hanger.

‘Do you always have to do that?’ she asked.

‘Use the paper? Yes. Otherwise it swings open.’

‘Bore for you,’ she remarked and flung herself into a chair.

‘Do you know what struck me most forcibly about your book?’ she said suddenly after a very long silence which I had not known how to break. I drew a deep breath; she was coming to
the point.

‘No? How should I?’

‘It struck me so much that I thought you might also have noticed it,’ she replied, ignoring the tea I had placed beside her.

I waited.

‘It is that after repeated efforts to shake off your family atmosphere and environment, you have finally succeeded in eloping with it . . . in carrying it off, and bringing it
here.’

‘This is not in the least like my home!’ I cried.

‘No? It is considerably less comfortable, and much more solitary. Otherwise it seems to me to be very much the same.’ She said this almost aggressively, but her eyes looked calmly
out of her pale serious face, and I saw that she really meant what she said.

‘What I want to know,’ she continued, ‘is whether, if presented with the opportunity, you would be prepared to leave all this behind, and
really
get away? Would you, do
you think?’

I struggled hard to adjust my mind to the new and brutal conclusion she had put forward.

‘I suppose
if
the opportunity really arose, yes,’ I said slowly, my dreams of authorship rapidly fading under her practical and unexpected attack.

‘But you do not believe in the opportunity?’

‘I find that difficult,’ I admitted.

‘Is that because you really want an unadventurous kind of life, or because you simply haven’t had the chance to try anything else?’

‘You’ve read the book,’ I said stiffly.

‘What sort of shape do you believe the world to be?’

This question really shook me so much that I answered quite simply: ‘Round.’

‘Entirely round? Spherical?’

‘Er . . . yes. I haven’t thought much about it.’

‘My uncle has thought of almost nothing else for the last twenty-five years,’ said Elspeth.

There was a short silence.

‘I am beating round the bush, but there
is
a bush,’ she said at last. ‘It is not so much that I believe in
it
; but I believe in
him
, and he is too old to find out
for himself.’

‘Could you explain a little more about it?’ I asked.

‘The point is that I am not talking nonsense. This has something to do with that book you have written. I should not have said anything if I had not read it. First of all: do you think you
would be prepared to leave all this for something utterly different? I cannot say very much more than that until I know myself.’

I looked round the drab crowded room.

‘Don’t you think I should be foolish to refuse?’

‘
I
think so. Now look.’

She picked up her plate, turned it in her hands, and put it down.

‘No,’ she said. ‘It would be easier if I get my suitcase.’

Thereupon began a most improbable exposition. It was her uncle’s theory, she said, and although a few people upheld it, they were totally unprepared, or unable, to do anything to promote
it. Her uncle was rich, he was old, he was infirm, and above all he was obsessed with his idea. He left it to her, and she was determined to do everything in her power to prove or disprove the
thing. She required someone who was able to record her findings, accurately, and at the same time, with imagination. ‘The two are indivisible. I have discovered that,’ she said. I must
divulge the idea to no one, but she thought that I would fulfil this particular position admirably. ‘There will also be a lot of hard work,’ she said. ‘Harder, I think, than you
have ever known.’ She looked at the exercise books. As soon as she had finished speaking, she rose to her feet and announced that she was going.