Death of a Hero (30 page)

“All right, of course, if you want to. I'll take you to the station. When are you going?”

“I wish you'd come with me, George. Father and mother would like to see you, and they'd appreciate it so much.”

“Now look here, Elizabeth, don't let's have any humbug here. I don't ask you to meet my parents and I don't see why I should have to stay with yours. I think your mother's quite awful, one of those nagging martyr women who're always taking on unnecessary jobs and worries, and then grumbling about how much they have to do and how little they're appreciated. Your father's all right. He's a decent sort, with a human respect for other people. But after I've feigned an interest I don't feel in golf and we've shaken our heads over the wickedness of Liberal Governments, we've really nothing left to say to each other.”

“But it's so much easier for me if you'd come too.”

“No, it wouldn't. We'd be shown off as the happy married pair to your mother's friends, and our sufferings would be dreadful. Besides, it'll be easier for you to adjust yourself temporarily to their prejudices if you don't have the sensation of a satirical me watching you.”

So Elizabeth went by herself, and George remained alone in London. He always missed Elizabeth frightfully when she went away, but instead of going out and amusing himself he stayed in and tried to pass the time by overworking. By the evening of the fifth day he was
thoroughly fed up. He decided to go out and ring up various friends in turn, until he found some one to have dinner with him. He had just finished washing and was putting on a clean collar, when some one knocked at the door of his studio.

“Half a minute,” shouted George; “I'm dressing. Who is it?”

The door opened, and in came Fanny, wearing a charming new dress and a gay wide-brimmed hat with a large feather in it.

“Why, Fanny! How good to see you, and how lovely you look!”

They kissed affectionately. Fanny sat down on the bed.

“I've come to be taken out to dinner. If you think you're doing anything else, you're mistaken. You'll have to ring up and say you can't come.”

“As a matter of fact, I was on the point of going out to find somebody to dine with me, so your coming is a godsend.”

“How's Elizabeth?”

“She's all right. I got a letter from her this morning. She's with her parents, you know.”

“Yes, I know. How long'll she be away?”

“Another ten days. Poor darling, she sounds awfully bored already.”

“And what are you doing?”

“Oh, fighting the lone hand here. Do you want to see the picture I'm finishing?”

And George dragged round an easel with a large canvas on it, into the light.

“But it's good, George! It's got great qualities of energy and design.”

“You don't think it's too hard and angular?”

“No, not a bit. It's excellent. By far the best thing you've done.”

And Fanny jumped up from the bed, put her arm round George, and kissed him again. For the first time her lips were not cool, shut and sisterly, but warm and open and delicious – the lips of an accomplice. The sudden flicker of warm desire awoke in George's flesh, and he felt his heart leap and the blood flush to his face. He held her to him, and pressed eager firm lips to her soft yielding mouth. For a few seconds she seemed to resist, and made as if to thrust him from her. He held her more closely, and suddenly her stiffened body yielded delicately, moulded itself to his, her head moved slowly backwards with closed eyes. Between the moist velvet of her lips he felt on his the exquisite
caress of a gentle tongue-tip. George gently laid his hand on her left breast, and felt the rapid beating of her heart. She softly drew away her lips and looked at him.

“Fanny! Fanny!”

Her gem-like eyes, now all flower-like, looked at him.

“Fanny! Most dear Fanny! I must have loved you a long time without knowing it.”

Fanny spoke slowly, still watching him:

“You're such a nice man, George, and yet such a boy.”

“And you are divine and inexpressibly lovely and thrilling and adorable…”

They kissed again, and stood there embraced until George felt dizzy with the blood beating in his brain. He pulled her gently towards the bed, and they lay down, clothed, in each other's arms. George's hand moved tenderly and delicately over her uncorseted girl body, so warm and firm and fragile under the thin, cool silk dress. The incoherent words of lovers gave place to silence, and they lay trembling in each other's arms, almost like frightened children comforting each other.

Fanny sighed, and opened her eyes.

“What time is it?”

George fumbled for his watch.

“Nearly half-past eight!”

“Heavens! We shall be too late for dinner if we don't hurry.”

George went to get his coat, and returned to find Fanny unconcernedly drawing her silk stockings tight and trim.

“Where can we go that's near?”

“There's a new place just started in Frith Street – we can go there.”

George watched her as she smoothed her mussed hair and absorbedly fitted on the large hat before the mirror. He was still trembling a little, and noticed how steady her hands were. Only a few minutes before they had been so close, all the barriers down, each existence melted in the other. That had been perfect, complete happiness. “Had been”. Already the current of ordinary life was sweeping them apart again. Oh, not very far really, still within hailing distance. But very far, compared with that wonderful nearness. Such an ecstasy could not last. But why not? Perhaps one of the many bitter jests of the gods – to show us for an hour what happiness might be if we were gods. None can possess another, none can be possessed. Is it possible to give, is it possible to take? Does one existence really melt into another for a few minutes,
or does it only seem to? What is she thinking now? Her mind is as remote from mine as if she had slipped into another dimension. Romantically we ask too much. It is much that she is lovely and finds me desirable. Let us not ask too much. Enjoyment is enough. Yet how fragile even that is! It is as if one tried to carry a small flickering light in a thin glass vessel through a tumultuous, hostile crowd. How earnest is the world to suppress the delight of lovers! How bitterly wrong all that is!

They went down into the warm, airless street, where the lamps were already lighted. Dirty children still played noisily and screamed on the side-walks. An Italian woman slip-slopped past them in felt slippers, carrying a jug of beer. Soho smelled frowzy and stale. Fanny noticed this.

“Why do you and Elizabeth live in this horrid district? It must be awfully unhealthy, especially for Elizabeth.”

“Oh, one gets used to it. Hampstead's too far out, Kensington's too dear, Chelsea's both dear and ungetatable. When I'm in town I like to be in the middle of it. Suburbs are beastly. We all suffer from the English ‘home' system of building – one hut, one family. And from our peculiar desire to be in a town and the country simultaneously, we don't seem able to live the purely urban life of the Latins. But London's too big and frowzy.”

They dined in the small restaurant, which had been “decorated” with rather feeble pictures by young artists, to give it that Latin Quarter air. It was somehow ineffectual. A bit amateurish. However, they didn't care about that. Since they were comparatively old friends, they did not suffer the haunting and disagreeable uneasiness and strangeness which fall between those who suddenly become lovers. The spontaneity of their passion absorbed any possible feeling of remorse. They talked quietly, but without any strain and effort. Fanny gave some amusing descriptions of the odd freaks among the British “colonies” on the Riviera. Why is it that one sees such curious and freakish specimens of one's countrymen abroad, types one never sees at home? Do the foreign surroundings bring out the freakishness, or were such people destined to emigration by their very oddity?

But there could be no doubt – Fanny and George were on a new footing with each other. There was a new and delicious intimacy between them. Strange that a few kisses and caresses should make such a difference.

As they were leaving the restaurant, Fanny was hailed by some friends at a table near the door.

“Hullo, Fanny! How are you? I say, why don't you come along with us? We're all going to Marshall's chambers at ten. There'll be lots of people there. It ought to be amusing.”

“No, I want to see that new film at the Shaftesbury.”

“But you can see that any time.”

“No, this is the last week, and I'm going to Dieppe tomorrow for a week.”

“Oh, all right. Sorry you won't come. Look us up when you get back. Goodbye, goodbye.”

They got into a taxi, and Fanny gave the address of her flat.

“Did you really mean that you are going to Dieppe tomorrow?” asked George a little wistfully.

Fanny squeezed his arm, and kissed him briefly and skilfully as the taxi lurched them together.

“Of course not, goose! We're going to be together, unless you piously decide not to. But it's useful to have an alibi. People are still fussy about one's ‘reputation', you know.”

“But suppose we meet them, or someone else who knows you?”

“I shall say I changed my mind, or that I got bored and came straight back.”

Fanny's flat was small, but pleasantly clean and modern. After the picturesque but rather dingy antiquity of his large eighteenth-century panelled room, George found it delightful to be in bright-painted, clean rooms with a white-tiled bathroom. Among Fanny's many remarkable efficiencies was the genius of discovering excellent flats at a fabulously cheap rental, furnishing them charmingly for about five pounds, and running them perfectly without the slightest fuss. She generally shifted her quarters about every six months, and invariably for the better. How pleasant is efficiency in others, especially when you are rather inefficient yourself! I wouldn't exactly say that George was inefficient, but the details of material life rather bored him. When you had so much else to do and so little time to do it in, he thought it rather a waste of life to be too pernickety about one's surroundings and fixings. However, he decided then and there that he and Elizabeth would have to get out of Soho. It was too disgustingly frowzy.

Fanny was a marvellous lover. Or, at least, George thought so. It was not only that she was golden and supple and lithe, where Elizabeth was dark and rather stiff and virginal, but she really cared about love-making. It was her art. It was for her neither a painful duty nor a degrading necessity nor a series of disappointing experiments, but a delightful art which gave full expression to her vitality, energy, and efficiency. Like all great artists, she was entirely disinterested – art for art's sake. She chose her lovers with great care, and rather preferred them to be poor, to avoid any suspicion of commercialism or arrivism. She knew she had the genius of touch, and was unwilling that it should be wasted. If she hadn't been a great lover, she might have been a good sculptor. But like all artists she was exacting, and had her vanity. She would not waste her talents. If a subject was not profoundly responsive and appreciative, she put him aside at the earliest possible moment. No clumsy, inhibited Englishman for her! No, thank you. Perhaps that is why she spent so much of her time abroad.

But this particular Englishman was not inhibited or ineradicably clumsy. Crude perhaps, rather lacking in style and finish, but capable of rapid progress under expert guidance. Fanny, with the artist's unerring glance, had long ago perceived that there were considerable possibilities in George. He had natural aptitudes and, what is far more important, the sense of delicate artistry which finds its highest satisfaction in bestowing delight. He was neither a bull nor a turkey gobbler. Fanny was satisfied; she had not made a mistake…

For the remaining days of Elizabeth's absence George did not work whatever. And a very good thing, too, for he needed a holiday. He stayed at Fanny's flat. They made picnic meals in the flat, or ate out at places where they were pretty certain not to meet friends – City stockbrokers' taverns, or curious pubs with sawdust and spittoons on the floors, where you sat on stools at the bar and had a cut from the joint and two veg. with beer. They went to “low” music-halls and saw all the primitive films of the day – Charlie's were the only good ones – and for a lark went to see what the inside of the Abbey looked like, a place no Londoner ever visits. They agreed that it looked like the atelier of an incredibly bad academic sculptor installed in an overcrowded but rather beautiful Gothic barn. Fanny rather hated Gothic architecture – she said all those points and squiggles gave her the creeps; but George said that if you wanted to see the real spirit of mediaeval
sculpture you ought to look underneath the seats of the canons' stalls. But they didn't quarrel about that. They were far too happy.

Nothing more was said about Elizabeth, until the day before she returned.

“You'll meet her, of course?” said Fanny.

“Of course.”

“Well, give her my love.”

“I suppose I ought to tell her about us,” said George, reflectively.

Fanny saw the danger in a flash. Her “freedom” was of a different kind from Elizabeth's rather theoretical and idealizing kind. Fanny's was light-hearted and practical; moreover, she had observed human beings and knew her Elizabeth far better than George did. She also knew her George. If George told Elizabeth, she knew quite well there would be a bust-up, that Elizabeth's theories would be abandoned as speedily as on the former occasion. But she knew it was useless to reveal the truth to George. On the other hand, she didn't want to lose him and didn't want to “take him away” from Elizabeth – not until much later when Elizabeth started the struggle. Fanny knew that George had to be managed within the limits of masculine stupidity.