The Great Lover (16 page)

Mrs Stevenson’s voice on the stairs drags me to my duties. ‘Nell! Did you leave this kettle on the stove? It’s almost boiled dry, so it has! You’ll burn us all in our beds, you will, one of these days, my girl.’

As I am hastening downstairs, Rupert’s words are running through my head, and a savage fury flares in me again: ‘I should have taken you that day in the orchard…’ How dare he? The assumption! The cheek of the man! The baldly stated,
to my face
, idea that he could have me any time he wanted, regardless of what my thoughts might be on the matter.

My face is hot, I know, and red, as I rush to cover my hand with a teacloth and retrieve the kettle. But the face that greets me in its shining surface has a surprised, wild look. I’m startled to see that it is not anger at all reflected there, but something else entirely.

I have been to the newspaper’s offices in London to have it out with Nevinson. Fat lot of good it did me. The miscreant has no idea that it’s the alteration of the little words that makes the difference between Poetry and Piddle. I had the impression from Nevinson’s startled gaze that I was being…loud, and ruddy, and possibly ludicrously beautiful too. Or just ludicrous. He said, of course, that if he were the sole editor himself he’d let them stand. It was all nonsense.

I ranted a little to Eddie Marsh later, who smoked in silence and took me out to see
Trelawny of the ‘Wells’
and then on to Lady Ottoline’s salon. We stood near the window, slightly apart from the others, engrossed in our conversation.

‘I don’t claim great merit for “A Channel Passage”, dear Eddie,’ I began,
sotto voce
, ‘but the point of it was (or should have been)
serious
’. There are common or sordid things–situations or details–that may suddenly bring all tragedy, or at least the brutality of actual emotions, to you.’

Eddie repeated his preference for poetry that he could read at meals. I ran my fingers through my hair, controlling a desire to punch him. He pretended not to notice and drew long and hard on his cigarette, darting little glances at me until his monocle popped, and fell on to his cheek, where he cupped a hand to catch it.

‘Look, Eddie–Shakespeare’s not unsympathetic, is he?’ I hissed, in exasperation. ‘I mean, “My mistress’ eyes are nothing
like the sun.” What’s that if not an attempt to do away with sentimental and idealistic imagery? Couldn’t we compare love to something besides roses for once?’

We were both surprised to notice that I was shaking.

We travelled back to Eddie’s rooms in the Gray’s Inn Road by motor-car, belonging to some government friend of Eddie’s–a conciliatory gesture, which I refused to be impressed by. There was a tense silence as we entered his rooms and I sniffed in that bachelor smell of cigarette smoke, books and damp wool. Eddie’s rooms always make me think of Lowes Dickinson’s room at King’s: too many books and pictures for too small a space. Eddie strode to the window to wave good night to the chauffeur. Then he turned to the claret left for us on a tray by his bed-maker, Mrs Elgy, and poured us both a tiny glass. As usual Mrs Elgy had also left a cold supper of ham, cheese and bread, but I shook my head, feeling childish, when Eddie offered me some.

‘My dear—’ began Eddie.

His expression was so plaintive that I couldn’t bear it. ‘Oh, for God’s sake, Eddie, pass me that claret. Must my glass be the perfect size for a visiting maiden aunt?’

‘Mrs Elgy…’ he began, by way of explanation.

I threw myself into his armchair, swinging one of my legs over the side in a hopeless effort to inject some energy into the room. Eddie glanced at the fire beside me and I know he was wondering whether he would appear too servile if he now knelt at it and made it up.

‘What a strange evening!’ I said, in conciliatory mood at last. ‘Full of Ottoline’s admirers and would-be lovers. Was that Henry Lamb?’

Eddie, clearly relieved by my changed mood, nodded at once, and poured me another glass of claret, filling it to the brim, where the red liquid skin trembled dangerously in the miniature glass. ‘The fellow in the queer suit?’ he asked.

‘Oh, I thought it rather marvellous. Quite the most interesting thing about him–did you see it had tails, shaped at the hips? And the rather jaunty red handkerchief round his neck? I might adopt that myself–he looked far more elegant and fashionable than any of the men in faultless evening dress.’

‘Oh, Rupert, no, you looked by far the most–dapper!’

Eddie’s look of serious alarm was so laughable I spluttered on my claret. I put my hand to my tieless collar and opened the second button on my shirt. Fun to watch Eddie’s eye behind his eye monocle, see him struggle with himself not to glance there, at my bare throat.

‘I’m teasing, old man. Ka made me this shirt–rather nice, isn’t it? I think blue’s my colour.’

‘Ka?’

‘You know Ka…Katharine Cox. Newnham girl. Fabian secretary. Bad posture and serious thoughts. A fine seamstress, though. She’s mad for me.’

‘Ah…’

The words ‘Aren’t we all?’ hovered around him like the words in a thought balloon, and I had to stifle another laugh.

The thawing of my mood seemed to give Eddie false confidence, and after a slug of claret, he suddenly ventured, ‘You know, dear, it would be a great shame to feel you have to be ugly in your poetry in order to somehow compensate for your…erm…personal beauty…’

Immediately, I felt my ire rise again. ‘
Ugliness!
That’s just the thing. What you call
ugly
I call realism. Oh, not the realism of those critics who believe that true literary realism is a fearless reproduction of what real living men say when there is a clergyman in the room!’ I snapped. I felt a little prickle of joy at the hurt look on Eddie’s face. It was the kind of remark I’d so often wanted to make with the Ranee, or even Father, but had never dared. It’s always gratifying how much liberty Eddie’s admiration permits me.

And with that I downed my glass and picked up the
English Review.

There was a pause while the cogs in Eddie’s brain clicked audibly, as he searched desperately for a new way to mollify me. He swept some books from a chair and perched himself on it, as close to me as he dared. ‘Oh, yes, Rupert, I saw your article on
Richard the Second
. Marvellous stuff…’

I silently munched bread and Stilton, not feeling inclined to let him off the hook
that
readily. More cogs whirring. Eddie sat tense and alert, like a listening terrier. Then, at last, inspiration: ‘You know, dear boy, I have been thinking. I’m out at the Admiralty so often–why don’t you use this place as your London
pied-à-terre
? It’s splendidly convenient and Mrs Elgy is very fond of you…and I could leave you a key…’

Oh, joy! Such genius! I pretended to be considering his offer. My mind immediately danced ahead with the possible freedoms this might bestow…Of course I will have to endure Mrs Elgy calling me ‘Duck’ and ‘Me-duck’ so often I’m tempted to quack. And that annoying habit she has of wanting to detain me with chat about the ‘carry-on’ of that wicked Adelaide Knight (of whom I know nothing), married–can you believe it, Mr Rupert, sir?–to a
negro
man (and care less). But Mrs Elgy aside, the spare room has a large and comfortable bed, an enervating view over Holborn rooftops, some impressive paintings and artworks.

So I leaped from my armchair and took Eddie’s hands and thanked him, and drank another brimming glass of claret, and stumbled off to bed in a vastly improved mood.

It’s not hard to guess why the Ranee dislikes Mr Marsh so much. She would be vastly reassured if she knew of the indomitable Mrs Elgy, with her witchy laugh and constant monologue. The Ranee doesn’t even know, of course, that Eddie’s a member of the Apostles, but she isn’t wrong in her general suspicions. It’s only that she’s wrong in her estimation of Eddie’s
courage. Except for one extraordinary occasion after the Cambridge production of
Eumenides
at the ADC, when I was standing around in my heraldic little skirt–an occasion never again mentioned–and Eddie was horribly sloshed and crept up behind me and goosed me with his long, refined fingers; apart from that, there is no indication
at all
of what she suspects. Eddie is a model of decorum. Sober, Eddie is an exemplary companion.

I lay in the tight little bed, and contemplated his offer. At last–a place to bring my conquests! Admittedly, there haven’t
been
any yet (if Denham is not to be counted, and he isn’t) but, well,
I have begun–and now I give my sensual race the rein
! Ha! Thank you, Eddie, dear boy.

Whatever your motives might be.

There are two things I had forgot about my sister Betty. One is how vain she is about her looks. Falling dead-beat into bed each night, I’m forced to wait while she curls each strand of hair round a strip of rag before I can snuff out the candle. Mornings are delayed while she unties them again, fixing her hair in the tiny mirror we’ve propped against our only shelf. Since our hair must be pinned up and
most
of it is hidden beneath caps all day, I can’t fathom the trouble she takes. How did she get this way, in the middle of the Fens, where there is no one to see her but the geese over the fields?

The second is that she is a worrier, in a way that I am not, nor never have been. Taking care of five youngsters from the age of eleven, I never had indulgence, and that has served me well. But for Betty, all must be talked through in the tiniest detail before anything can be done. She is very worried about her duties at the Orchard. She is terrified of some of Mrs Stevenson’s
new-fangled objects, like the Faithfull washer, with its dangerous figure-of-eight movement that takes flight on the kitchen floor when you rock it. I keep trying to explain that it’s simply a mimicry of the sort of thing we’d do if we were scrubbing the linen in a dolly-tub, to which she wails, ‘Well, then, why can’t we wash the clothes in the river Granta, as we would at home?’

The May Day celebrations that Rupert and his friends demand nearly finish her off: strawberries and honey and cream and tea on the lawn for about a half-dozen of them (and every time she fetches something Betty forgets the tray, or the request of a spoon, or some brown sugar, or some plum jam, and has to run back in again, doubling the work she does). Being in service, I realise, is something I took to right away; but, then, I had always been the one keeping house, and bossing the others. Betty had some small freedoms to roll a hoop or skip with the others. And she had never been good with skinning a rabbit or baking an eel pie.

I keep trying to teach her that a good maid must listen at all times to what is being said, in case a request is buried in it. ‘Oh, yes, and more tea would be good…’ But at the same time she must never, on any account,
appear
to be listening. When the men shout strange quotes to one another, or if she accidentally comes across a joke about ‘Higher’ and ‘Lower’ Sodomy, her face must be blank. I remind her of Mrs Stevenson’s warning to me that she will not keep girls who take too much notice of the goings-on of the Varsity men. When they talk of Apostles and Embryos and the Carbonari Society, Betty finds the blank eyes easy; the difficulty is if someone suddenly says, ‘I thought I asked for a knife half an hour ago, what?’

She is afraid of Rupert, for his way of addressing her directly and quite suddenly, having learned her name and that she is my sister. He calls her ‘Young Bet’, or ‘Wild Bet’ and he always says this with a smile, and a glance at the dark beaky Frenchman (whose name I now know is Mr Raverat), as if to share some
private joke. I’ve troubled to tell Betty the names of the ones I recognise: the lady with the brown hair in a long plait and the large behind and the pince-nez, with the rounded shoulders and a sort of thick mouth, is Miss Katharine Cox (the others call her Ka). She is a little greedy, and always asks for more cream. Miss Gwen Darwin is very kind, but likes to do things herself: just put the pot beside her and let her pour, and fetch her own spoon. The other lady is her cousin, Mrs Frances Cornford, a poet, very sweet on Rupert; she will always sound a little sharp in her requests, but don’t be frightened, she simply has a loud voice. The man with the pressed-down hair across his bald head, whom Rupert calls ‘Dudders’, is Mr Dudley Ward to us: a very gentle man indeed, who will preface any request with ‘I say, I don’t suppose I might trouble you for the…’ but it must be remembered that he likes a slice of lemon, not milk, with his tea and is always dropping something under the table, which, being short-sighted, he can never find. The only other person I recognise is the handsome one, Mr Geoffrey Keynes, who tends to drift off in his requests, and you must stand awhile and wait for him to finish his ‘Oh–I say–might I–um…’

Today they are in high spirits. I have the feeling that Mr Keynes is sweet on Miss Ka Cox (my instincts are rarely wrong). He is part of some silly game, which they think is a May Day ritual; it involves planting a mandrake root and putting a sprig of blossom around it and calling it the Vegetation God. Mr Keynes finds a baby slug in a cowslip and carries it on his palm towards this mandrake root and the others sing a rhyme: ‘Geoffrey who behaved so Odd; Geoffrey who put slugs in God.’

Then the heavens open and a great bucket of rain is sloshed at us. Betty, Lottie and I scurry to carry cups and plates into the kitchen and to fetch umbrellas and overcoats for our guests, but they wave them away, laughing like lunatics, throwing back their heads, and sticking out their tongues to catch the drops.

It’s a wet and frantic task to fold the tables and chairs and
take them in from the lawn to stack in the shed near the two-holer to keep dry. Cyril, Mr Neeve’s boy from the Old Vicarage came to help us, and Mr Neeve too. The guests have gone off for a swim in the rain at Byron’s Pool. Mrs Stevenson reminds us that they will soon be back, wanting scones and sandwiches, so charges Betty with stoking up the oven and kneading the dough.

‘All that foolish May Day kerfuffle,’ Betty mumbles, once Mrs Stevenson is out of earshot. ‘And us missing May-ladying, the best day of the year…’