Friends and Lovers (35 page)

“They don’t often mix,” Penny said, and smiled in spite of herself.

“Actually, if you feel any happier about it, he is Protestant and Labour.

And as for his family, he has a sister who studies music and a father who was invalided out of the War. There’s no insanity, no drunkenness, no divorces, no prison sentences; nothing, in fact, that one might be ashamed of.”

“There’s no need to be facetious,” Mrs. Lorrimer said.

Penny took a deep breath.

“Look, Mother, David and I had thought up a surprise for you.”

Mrs. Lorrimer looked at her daughter almost wildly, as if to say that one surprise a day of such proportions was more than enough.

“You are staying over the weekend, aren’t you? David would like to have us for lunch next Sunday at Oxford. Mr. Chaundler will be there.

Grandfather’s friend. And once you really meet ‘ “Have you been going to Oxford to visit this man?”

Penny’s patience ended suddenly.

“You will see on Sunday that there are a lot of people travelling to Oxford to spend the day. A lot of girls, too. What’s wrong with that?”

“And he has been coming to London in order to see you?”

“Of course. When people fall in love they want to see each other, don’t they? Our bad luck is that we get so little time together, what with Geography and David’s work and my classes.”

“It has got to be stopped.” Mrs. Lorrimer’s voice was staccato. Penny, who knew that tone and what it meant, half rose from her seat on the bed, and then sat down again. She knew what was coming, and yet she couldn’t believe it. She knew, and yet she wouldn’t believe. It is now, she thought; whatever and whoever I am to be, it is to be decided now. Her anger left her: a strange feeling, as if she were standing apart from this scene watching everything with critical coldness.

“You must give me your word,” Mrs. Lorrimer was saying, ‘that you will see no more of this David Bosworth. You are both too young, the whole thing is folly, and if he has any decency he will wait for four or five years until you are old enough to know what you are doing.”

“I know what I am doing. Age isn’t a matter of years, Mother. Some women at forty are sixteen mentally. My grandmother was married at eighteen. You were married when you were twenty. Did that–-”

” You are to see no more of him, Penelope.”

“Why?”

“Because he is not the kind of man we want you to marry. You will understand that for yourself in a few years. I am only saying this for your own good, Penelope.”

“And just what is my ” good”? What good is there in anything if you are not happy? I am the one, surely, to judge what I want or what I do not want out of life. We’ve all different ideas about happiness, so how can we judge for each other? Moira’s idea of being happy would bore me to tears, but I don’t think she is wrong. I am just glad I am not Moira, that’s all.”

“I wish you were half as thoughtful and sensible as Moira. It would have spared me this worry.”

“Mother,” Penny said firmly, ‘it is you who are causing yourself this worry.

If you only trust me, then–-”

“It is obvious that we can’t trust you. If you won’t give us your promise to stop seeing him, then we shall send you away from London.

Not back to Edinburgh. We don’t want the embarrassment of inventing excuses why you had to come home so suddenly. You seem to have forgotten how people will talk, or you wouldn’t have given them so much reason for it.”

“If people have nothing else to do but invent gossip, then that is their loss, not mine.”

“Your father and I have decided to send you abroad for a year. We are willing to make the sacrifices to meet that expense. The School of Art in Munich is excellent, and you can stay as paying guest with Marcia Spiegelberger. You remember, she was at school with me and married that German professor? She has several young girls from England as paying guests. I had a letter from her at Christmas telling me all about it.”

“Beating up trade,” Penny said dryly.

“You always wanted to go abroad. A year in Munich would be delightful.”

Yes a year ago she would have leaped at this chance, but a year ago her family would not even have considered the idea for one moment.

Even last summer they had refused to allow her to accept an invitation abroad with a school friends. They had kept her firmly beside them, and it was beside them that she had met David. Now that she didn’t want to leave England, they told her to go. She wanted to laugh, but the look on her mother’s face checked her in time.

She said, “You don’t have to bother with all this trouble and expense. Mother, let’s go out to dinner, and I can talk about David to you. And then come up to Oxford with me on Sunday, and meet him, and Mr. Chaundler, and see things for yourself. And, really, everything will fall into its right proportion. At present it is all distorted. You make falling in love sound a tragedy. It isn’t something to mourn over. You should be so happy, along with me.”

“If you refuse to go to Munich,” Mrs. Lorrimer said, ignoring Penny’s words—in fact. Penny was thinking, she hadn’t listened at all for the last few minutes, and this argument was becoming a monologue—‘then you cannot expect your father and me to go on supporting you. We shall not pay for your expenses in London. That’s decided.” “Then I shall support myself,” Penny said quickly. She was angry again.

Don’t, she thought, don’t flare up. Keep calm. Argue. Don’t get angry.

Argue.

Mrs. Lorrimer gave a short laugh.

“How?” she demanded. What a child Penelope was! She rose abruptly, gathering bag and furs and gloves with a hand that was now decided and sure.

“I

have a headache,” she said, ‘and so I’ll go to my hotel. I shall see you tomorrow, and we can discuss this again after you have had time to think about it.”

“I don’t need time. Mother. I know the answer now,” Penny said. There was a hard, hot lump in her throat, and her eyes smarted as if they had been stung by salt water. She bit her Up.

“Please come with me on Sunday.”

“Neither you nor I go on Sunday. This entanglement with David Bosworth ends now. You are not in love with him: you are only infatuated by the idea of love. All girls are at the age of nineteen. I shall see you tomorrow at half-past eight for breakfast at my hotel. We can make arrangements then.” The dogmatic note left her voice suddenly.

“Really, Penelope, you have been such a worry to us. You will never know how upset we have been until you have a daughter of your own.”

Mrs. Lorrimer waited at the door, but Penelope did not run towards her to kiss her, to ask her forgiveness, as Moira would have done.

Penelope had always been a determined, at times unmanageable, child.

Now she had turned away and had walked to the window. She was saying in a strained voice, “I don’t have to come to breakfast totell you what I have decided. I’ve decided that you are much more interested in your own peace of mind than in my happiness. You want to regulate my happiness so that it suits yours. You want me to choose the kind of man you would choose, have the same formal engagement and wedding that you had, have a house like yours, furnished like yours, have friends like yours or even share your friends, until my whole life becomes an echo of yours.”

“Penelope!”

Penny’s voice calmed down, but as she turned to face her mother her eyes were still angry.

“I am sorry. Mother, that I had to speak that way, but you left me no choice.”

“I never thought that any daughter of mine–-” Mrs. Lorrimer’s voice broke.

Then she quickly regained control of herself.

They remained standing there, Mrs. Lorrimer nursing her hurt pride and wounded affection. Penny openly defiant. It was Penny who broke the uncomfortable moment.

“This is really silly she said, and forced a smile. She came forward towards the door.

“Look, Mother, come and have i cup of tea, and I’ll talk about what I feel, and then you’l understand.”

“You have talked quite enough already,” Mrs. Lorrime: said, her voice low but staccato once more, as she accentuated each word.

“You are being both senseless and ignorant.

Penny’s anger surged back, and this time she did not can if she dealt a blow that hurt.

“If David Bosworth were Georgi Fenton-Stevens, would you raise the objection that I am to young to think of marrying him? Or that you did not know him well enough? Or would you refuse his invitation to lunci in Oxford?” “Yes, I should,” her mother said. But they both knew, a their eyes met, that it was not exactly the truth.

Mrs. Lorrimer had to walk several streets before she found the taxicab rank.

This allowed her anger to cool sufficiently before she entered the musty cab with her dignity restored Outwardly she was a tall, quietly dressed lady of middle age who had achieved the right mixture of expensive dow dines and colour less charm to prove her social position. Inwardly her emotions were so roused that she could not even thini logically. It had been a long time, anyway, since Mrs. Lor rimer had tried self-analysis; so long, in fact, that she ha lost that gift.

By the end of the journey to her hotel she had convincec herself that she had indeed only acted for Penelope’s good that she had been wise and kind as well as right, and that Penelope had been unwise, unkind, and terribly wrong. I an not trying to arrange her life, Mrs. Lorrimer decided: I an only trying to prevent her from making any mistakes whict she will surely regret. And I am not a snob.

To prove that she gave the driver a gracious smile as sh( tipped him.

The man responded with a pleasant good-day— she always got on well with servants. Her confidence was one more restored by the time she entered the hotel, even if th idea of a revolt against her authority still rankled. The wa^ to deal with any revolt was with a firm hand.

She had arrive in London just in time.

Penny was looking down gloomily at the bowl of primrose; when Lillian Marston arrived. Marston, who had been invitee to the tea party had thought it would be a good idea to come late: by that time all the family news would be exhausted, and conversation could become general. There was nothing so boring, Marston considered, as to have to listen to news about people whom you didn’t know, unless it was the polite explanation of why they were worth talking about.

“Sorry I’m so late,” Marston said, concealing her surprise at finding Lorrimer alone.

“Had a good party?” She helped herself from the plate of chocolate biscuits.

She chose the armchair, stretched her long, slender legs comfortably, and ate the biscuit thoughtfully.

“I’ve had a rotten day,” she said. “Everything went wrong.” Then she noticed the small pool of tea near her feet.

“The roof is leaking or something, I do believe. Have you any tea to wash this biscuit down, or did you spill it all on the carpet?”

Penny turned away from the primroses and began to search for a piece of blotting-paper. Then she knelt on the floor— which was one good way of hiding her face—and, with her head bent, tried to mop up the damp circle on the carpet.

“It seems to save soaked in,” she said in a stifled voice. She sat back on her heels and surveyed the stain.

“Oh, what a mess!” she said, and threw the blotting-paper on the floor.

“Oh, what a mess,” she repeated dismally.

Marston’s smile faded, and her favourite eyebrow curved in real surprise.

“Don’t worry about the Aubusson,” she said. “Another spot or two won’t spoil its charm.” And just what was the mess, she wondered.

Penny searched for her handkerchief and blew her nose violently.

“Spring colds are a blight,” Marston said, and turned her head to look out of the window.

“Better take care of it. They go on and on and spoil all your fun. Are you going out tonight?”

“No. Mother has a headache.”

“Well, it might be a good idea if we had dinner together. Or it might be still a better idea if you went to bed and I brought you nourishing jellies.”

“My cold isn’t as bad as that,” Penny said, rising from her knees, suddenly businesslike as she found a cup and saucer and poured some tea into it.

“I’m all right,” she said, and burst intotears.

Marston looked with embarrassment towards the bowl of primroses.

“That is just the right shade of green for them,” st decided.

“Even the imitation mahogany looks all right unde neath them.” She studied the desk as a whole. An idea se emt to please her.

“It would make a pretty still-life—abstract dra\ ings over a desk; one Impressionist painting of a murderf cow, I think, waiting for more impressions to be added; ar there at the side, quite unpaintable, a bowl of primroses. Sti] lifes should have a moral attached: the only excuse for ben still is to run deep, isn’t it? The trouble is that, although it a good idea, I could never use it. I keep having good ide, that are no use to me.

Just never could paint-a still-lif Probably, with my present technique, the whole thing wou look like a study of a couple of fried eggs. It is a strange thil how a primrose is not a primrose and a pigeon on the gra is nothing but alas, once I start painting them. But then, I’l always my camera.” She paused, and watched Lorrimer refle lively—who was now standing at the window pretending look down into the street.

“Shall I go, or may I have anoth biscuit?”

Penny turned away from the window, and gave Marston small, shamefaced smile.

“Don’t go,” she said.

“If you dor mind sitting there and watching this performance.” Her 1 trembled slightly, “Oh, damn,” she said, “I must look a cor plete fool.” She sat down on the bed, and looked at the te tray which she had arranged so carefully.

“Funny how yoi whole life can be altered in an hour,” she said.

“Everythn seemed so perfect, and then it wasn’t.” She half sighed. “O well

Marston has anyone on this floor a copy of TJ Tim est “I must admit that I’m finding this conversation difficult follow,” Marston said.

“But I know that Neri has The Time if you really want it. She gets it in order to cut out all t) small paragraphs of our stupidity—the woman who divorc her husband twice and marries him for a third time; the mi who writes to the editor, on the day after the Nazis come power, about the nesting habits of the yellow-tailed blue-t a picture of the long line of feathers bobbing towards pre se tat ion at Court opposite a picture of the unemployme queues in Jarrow; the carefully worded trial, which deceiv nobody, of the two Guardsmen in Hyde Park. She sends the to her cousin who edits a paper in India. I suggested that sl would find us much more ludicrous in some other newspapel but Neri only smiled politely. I think the prestige of The Times lends a bizarre quality to the cuttings which she sends. But she did show signs of alarm when I told her that her sense of humour was becoming quite English.”