The Eye of Love (10 page)

All the same, it was unreasonable of him to object to Miranda's activities in the show-room. Possibly he mightn't have done, if they hadn't involved the running-upstairs afterwards. But his whole scheme of existence, at this time, was designed to avoid being alone with her—he was assiduous at Knightsbridge, he dined willingly in Knightsbridge most evenings of the week, because there would be Mr Joyce and Auntie Bee, also the mater, and he could always ask Miranda to play the piano, or if the women's manœuvres looked like being too much for him, demand to talk business with old man Joyce. The tête-à-têtes in his office filled him with dismay.

He kissed Miranda twice a day as it was. (Upon arriving at the Knightsbridge flat, and upon leaving it.) It was still like kissing a sea-horse, but he had trained himself not to flinch. She expected also to be kissed in the office—with less formality. If he didn't take care, she was on his knee. The first time Miranda so impetuously showed her affection, Mr Gibson had no other resource than to seize the E to K telephone directory and look up the Hudson Bay Company. The act dislodged without discouraging her. Upon hearing the engaged signal (in one way not unwelcome, Mr Gibson telephoned simply because he'd looked up the number, he had nothing to say to Hudson Bay), Miranda was back on his knee in two shakes.

She wasn't any bonier than Dolores. Her good face-cloth jacket was better padding than a Spanish shawl. But Mr Gibson felt no fragile rose upon his bosom: he felt a skeleton.

Her ungloved forearms were no leaner than Dolores'—in fact a slight
duvet
of black hair by comparison softened them: Mr Gibson, whose dislike for dogs had often troubled him as being un-British, felt a greyhound's paws about his neck.

In a way it was as much for Miss Joyce's sake as for his own—the die being cast, the inescapable accepted—that he issued a doubly roundabout ultimatum.

“Will you please explain to your chum Beatrice,” Harry Gibson instructed his mother, “that a man would rather run his business by himself? Also that if he comes up to scratch every single damned night of the week, his days at least should be his own?”

Old Mrs Gibson giggled. If Miranda was at this time behaving like a girl of seventeen, Mrs Gibson was behaving like a frivolous sixty. All she lacked was a knee to sit on herself.

“So Miranda comes to the shop too often? Then throw her out, boy!” advised old Mrs Gibson. “Show yourself masterful!”

Of course the women had got together. Harry's masterful wooing was now a family legend.

“Throw her downstairs!” cried old Mrs Gibson. “There is nothing dear Miranda would like better!”

This was in fact precisely what Harry Gibson feared might happen. When he remembered the parabola described by a bunch of pink carnations, he felt he could hardly trust himself with Miranda at the top of the steep office flight. Whether or not something of this showed in his face, Mrs Gibson sobered.

“All joking apart, of course you are quite right,” she agreed. “The whole pleasure of marriage is that a man should have a wife to come home to; even in the pleasure of being engaged, the girl should not over-do things.”

For a rare moment, she looked at her son anxiously. They were sitting at breakfast together: for all her new pleasures and excitements it was still the best hour of the day to her. Mrs Gibson had deceived herself with wonderful success: the fundamental satisfaction, the knowledge that her son wasn't marrying a wife who would take him away from her, was buried so deep that when she exclaimed how much Harry admired Miranda's piano-playing, how completely he relied on her taste, how well the two children suited each other, for ninety-nine per cent of the time Mrs Gibson believed every word. Now, in a hundredth moment, she looked at him anxiously.

“Is all well, Harry boy?”

Undoubtedly Mr Gibson would have been decorated, had war as waged by Service Corps offered more opportunity. It was reserved to civilian life to show his mettle. His personal future stretched before him like a desert—or rather like war itself: a perpetuity of discomfort diversified by moments of terror. When he thought of Dolores, of how Dolores might be faring, he often had to loosen his collar. He suffered constantly from hallucinations—thinking he saw her in the street, or in a restaurant, or on a passing bus. But out of his deep tenderness for his mother, and out of a dogged resolve to play the game like a true Britisher, he drew strength to clear his brow and smile.

“Do I know when I'm on velvet, or don't I?—Toodle-oo,” said Harry Gibson.

At least, after this conversation, Miranda didn't visit the shop quite so often, and when she did she stayed below. Whatever old Mrs Gibson said, to Auntie Bee, or to Miranda herself, or, possibly, to Mr Joyce, her words took effect. It was again a minor victory; but at least Harry Gibson did Miranda no physical injury.

2

Dolores too suffered from hallucinations.

She was still unluckier than Mr Gibson in that she had less to occupy her mind. It was the obverse of her luck in getting Mr Phillips: in the job-hunting queues, what with anxiety and aching feet, she had often forgotten her King Hal for whole hours at a time; those days over, and as Mr Phillips settled, no mere domestic routine could pull her thoughts from their North, and they dwelt on the happy past without intermission. Admittedly Miss Diver made no attempt to discipline them, on the contrary. Her ritual dusting of the sitting-room has been described; in time her nonsensical ejaculations before pieces of bric-a-brac, so unsympathised with by Martha, became a ritual preface to each solitary evening—
Big Harry
(the stuffed ermines),
King Hal
(the bronze lady),
King Hal
(the china pierrot),
Big Hally
(the pierrette). It was foolish, even reprehensible, so to play on her own feelings—as it was foolish to lie, later, staring at a photograph by the bed and willing it to utter; but so foolishly, reprehensibly, did Miss Diver behave. And when she went out into the streets, she saw Mr Gibson at every turn.

Gargoyle-faced Mr Johnson, selling matches on the curb of Queen's Road, to Dolores momentarily assumed the likeness of Harry Gibson. A man in front of her at the butcher's, before he turned his head, looked like Harry Gibson. A passenger descending from a bus looked like Harry Gibson. Each likeness naturally dissolved into reality before Dolores had time to pluck a sleeve, or cry a name, or run after—supposing she could have brought herself so to pluck, to cry, or run. The disillusion was nonetheless bitter.

All separated lovers know this particular anguish. Such hallucinations are a common phenomenon, when lovers are separated.

Lovers of the more obviously romantic sort have the world's sympathy to sustain them. Runaways to Gretna Green still find witnesses; film-stars not quite thrice-divorced are sustained by the sympathy of their fans, as they battle on to a fourth exchange of life-long vows. Mr Gibson and Miss Diver enjoyed no such moral support. Only they themselves could preserve their romantic vision: and that each held in mind an image to all but one another unrecognisable, must be accounted a remarkable proof of their true love.

Even to herself, Dolores was finding it difficult to retain the character of a Spanish rose. As she soon discovered, even the most perfect lodger has one inevitable disadvantage: that of postulating a landlady. However quiet his step, however unobtrusive his demeanour, a man going in and out twice a day is bound to be observed; and as the card in the window, so long as it remained an empty show, had not, the coming of Mr Phillips universally declared her new status.

Miss Taylor the chiropodist stopped her familiarly in the street.

“So you've got a lodger at last!” cried Miss Taylor, in congratulatory tones. (This was actually a little disingenuous of Miss Taylor, who it may be remembered could have sent along a bed-sit, as soon as Dolores put her card up; but she had merely been returning snub for snub, as she was now—another sign of Dolores' declension—willing to let bygones be bygones.) “I hope he suits?” asked Miss Taylor, quite anxiously.

Dolores, her head high, replied that she seemed to have been very fortunate.

“Then treat him like a basket of eggs, my dear,” exclaimed Miss Taylor, “for they're scarce as hens' teeth! The liberties some expect to take—though I'm sure
you'd
never allow—passes belief. How are the tootsies?”

Dolores, moving on, replied that they gave her no trouble at all.

“Well, don't let them go too long,” advised Miss Taylor shrewdly, “now that you can treat yourself again …”

Which was bitterer to Miss Diver, a chiropodist's familiarity, or the discovery that her own financial straits had been common knowledge? By comparison with either, the ache of a fallen arch was nothing.

In the shops, where even during the leanest period, when her purchases dwindled to a minimum, the tradesmen's manner exhibited an awareness, so to speak, of her social superiority, the same sansculotte wind blew. As a lady of independent means (however small, derived from whatever source), Miss Diver was a cut above. Now all knew how she got her living—

“Chops again? Funny how all lodgers cry out for chops,” observed the butcher sociably.

Dolores, who always used to acknowledge his remarks about the weather, remained silent.

“Though they don't all, if I may say so, get 'em as regular as your chap,” added the butcher—helpful and good-natured. “What about a nice pound o' mince?”

“I'll take chops, thank you.”

“Feeds separate,” noted the butcher intelligently. “Very nice too. My sister-in-law once tried it.”

Bracketed with a butcher's sister-in-law, Dolores was nonetheless forced to wait while he cut her order. Of course she didn't ask the expected questions; but butchers, unlike lady-chiropodists, are so little used to being snubbed that they do not know it when they are.

“It didn't answer. In fact, it ate up all the profits,” continued this self-appointed mentor, “her buying chops just the same as you. To
which
the answer, as I told her, is rissoles. Take a nice pound o' mince—”

“Thank you. Good morning,” said Dolores.

Every such encounter a little abraded, each day, her power to retain the character of a Spanish rose. She knew it. She would have stayed entirely within-doors, and sent Martha to shop, had it not been for the perennial, perennially-betrayed, hallucinating hope that drew her out. What would she have said, if she'd truly encountered her King Hal at the butcher's? She didn't know. No more than when she'd envisaged Martha at Kensington had she any really treacherous thought. She simply wanted to see him again—longed with all her heart. In any case, she never did. It was always an hallucination.

3

Martha saw him.

As Miss Diver, before she lost heart, reminded her, she liked playing in Kensington Gardens. The phrase wasn't strictly accurate, but rather one of Miss Diver's customary prettifications: it was convenient to let Martha go walks by herself, and a curious backwash of the Edwardian Barrie-and-Nanny myth—Peter Pan, all those nice children—led Miss Diver to dispatch her trustfully to the Gardens. Martha never actually played there. She had no one to play with—and never loitered on the outskirts of a game, of tag or French cricket or cowboys, in the hope of being co-opted. Nor did she particularly appreciate the Gardens themselves—preferring for interest Alcock Road, where to Martha's mind there was more to look at. Large-scale natural beauty never said much, to Martha. In fact, her walks took her to the Gardens far less often than they were supposed to; and when Miss Diver supposed her ring-o'-rosing round Peter Pan, she was far more likely to be earthed with Mr Punshon.

On this particular morning, however, some three weeks after Mr Phillips' arrival, Martha might have been acting on instructions.

It was fine mid-August weather, pleasanter in the Gardens than between houses; Martha nonetheless sauntered straight across, casually emerged into Kensington High Street, casually—but as though she were obeying instructions, or being Guided; Dolores would undoubtedly have plumped for Guidance—bore right, and presently found herself at the corner of the High Street and Almaviva Place, where she halted to contemplate a tree.

This in itself was abnormal. (The beauties of nature saying so little to her.) But the tree in question stood alone, a great chestnut spared for its antiquity by Borough Council after Borough Council. It wasn't cluttered up with a lot of other trees: Martha could see it. She thought she could draw it all inside two triangles. Lacking paper and pencil, she was forced to memorise. This was such hard work that when Mr Gibson, emerging from the shop, crossed her line of vision, Martha instinctively shut her eyes.

Because Mr Gibson's shape was vaguely familiar, and therefore eye-catching. Her eye caught, and distracted, by a familiar ovoid silhouette, what else could Martha do but screw down her lids? When she opened them again, Mr Gibson was gone.

He for his part didn't see Martha. His vision was as narrow as hers. The shape perpetually sought by Mr Gibson's eye was long and narrow—or tall and slender; a dumpy silhouette under the chestnut his eye as automatically abolished, as the eye of Martha abolished him.

This was the only chance Chance offered, to bring Miss Diver and Mr Gibson once more into contact. Their stars had at last pulled it off, all the necessary factors were assembled in conjunction. But the vigorous star that ruled the child Martha wasn't interested.

4

Martha's star at this period had actually its own battle to fight. Mr Phillips entering on his fourth week in Alcock Road, allowing for the first few days off Martha had said “Good morning” to him seventeen times.

“Anything on your mind?” asked Mr Punshon.

Martha shook her head. She was drawing the big china beer-mug he kept his tobacco in. It had a flat metal lid which when cocked up added interest: cylinder and disc.