The House in Paris (13 page)

'Are you afraid of the sea?' Karen said disjointedly.

'Oh dear no, dear: are you? This is
my
eleventh crossing.'

You just mean, it makes you wonder?'

'It's all in the stars, they say — However, of course,
you're
settled,' said Yellow Hat, with as plain a stoppage of interest as was polite. The pot of tea she had ordered came; she poured it out hot and strong, then brooded over her cup with such an inward air that Karen repeated 'Settled?' rather uneasily.

'Surely to dear goodness,' said Yellow Hat, nodding glumly at Karen's ring, 'you wouldn't look beyond
that?
You know what's coming, all right.'

Karen poured out her coffee. 'For all we know, we may not get to Fishguard, but — '

' — Oh well, you see, dear, I've crossed eleven times — You ought to drink up your wine. D'you not like wine?'

'I was forgetting.' Melancholy filled Karen as she looked at her fingers through the yellow Graves that Yellow Hat would have liked. Catching sight of herself in a strip of mirror, she eyed her image with an unfriendly frown. How pettishly she took pleasures that came along! She disliked her pearl ear-rings, even, for looking bloodless. She returned to eye humbly and with no inner smile Yellow Hat's heavy frills and honest, heated face. 'I meant, apart from shipwrecks and outside things,' she said, 'surely what happens to one is what one makes happen oneself?'

Lighting a cigarette with momentous boldness, Yellow Hat let this pass. 'I have a sister married in Liverpool,' she said. 'Were you ever there?'

'Once. Is that where you're going?'

'I'm not, no; I'm going to Cardiff. I've cousins there, too. That's a fine town.'

'I live in London,' volunteered Karen, still looking at Yellow Hat with respect.

'Think of that! You're quieter-looking, if you'll excuse my saying, than most London girls. I never care for their style.' Her eye, running over Karen, made it plain that she thought well, if not very much, of her. She did not wonder about her, they were much too unlike. Karen saw she must look to Yellow Hat like something on a Zoo terrace, cantering round its run not knowing it is not free and spotted not in a way you would care to be yourself. She thought: She and I belong to the same sex, even, because there are only two: there should certainly be more. Meeting people unlike oneself does not enlarge one's outlook; it only confirms one's idea that one is unique. All the same, in the confusion of such encounters, things with a meaning ring, that grow in memory later, get said somehow — one never knows by whom ... 'D'you dance much?' said Yellow Hat.

'Yes, quite often. Do you?'

'I'm crazy about it,' said the great strapping girl. 'D'you know the Empress Rooms? Aren't they grand?'

'Grand.'

'Well, who knows we may run into each other there! I wear emerald green and I've got a mole on me back. If you see me passing, give me a good slap.'

The steward brought their two bills. The fellow who must have been after Yellow Hat pottered twice past their table, then gave up and went away. Yellow Hat, having watched him go round her yellow hat-brim, dived for her bag and hitched on her fur coat. 'We're pitching a bit,' she said. She added a shade doubtfully: 'Will we go up now and have a look round the lounge?'

'Do you know, I think I'll go straight to bed.'

'I daresay you'd be right: me mother's the same,' said Yellow Hat with an air of distinct relief. Smiling kindly at one another they got up and zigzagged out; the ship was pitching a bit. They paused at the foot of the stairs; the rubber-floored passage to Karen's cabin went on ahead. Yellow Hat seemed to feel: One can't just let people
go ...
She became embarrassed all over. 'Well...' she said.

'Well ....'

'I'll watch out for you at Fishguard,' said Yellow Hat, gathering speed. 'Try cotton wool in your ears. Well, so long till then.'

Forgetting to smile, they looked at each other askance, nodded, and parted — for ever. The ship ploughed ahead steadily through the dark.

4

Nobody could have offered more of contrast to Yellow Hat than Naomi Fisher, found waiting downstairs at Chester Terrace next morning when Karen got home. The morning-room where they had put her was a bleak restless place where nobody ever settled. It was behind the dining-room and had two doors: the service-lift groaning up a shaft in one corner alarmed you if you did not know what it was. The main telephone was in here, with a plugboard for extensions, a bureau, with a dry ink-well and rack of telegraph forms, and an unsmiling row of directories and old
Who's Whos.
From the top of a case of exiled books, a bust of the Duke of Wellington frowned down at you blindly; the walls were hung with engravings of the Virtues in action which Mrs Michaelis had never liked. The gas-fire had a stiff tap and was seldom on. To be put in here by a servant showed the servant's distinction between being shown in and being asked to wait. Naomi's anxious brown eyes and humble manner must have led Braithwaite to think there must be something she wanted; and that therefore she was no lady. What she did want, and wanted badly, was to see Karen: a need so pressing as to be without grace. So here, when Karen came in quickly, she was sitting, at the edge of a cold leather armchair. All 'endy' black furs and French-virginal primness, she sat with strained dark eyes fixed on the opening door. She had heard the taxi out there, then Karen's voice. Emotion, odd at so early an hour, kept her speechless till after they had kissed.

Your face is cold,' said Karen. 'It's terribly cold in here. I'll kill Braithwaite one of these days!'

'I have come too early.'

'No, why?' said Karen, pulling off her gloves.

'You must be tired,' Naomi said, anxious.

Karen was — or was it dazed? 'I did sleep in the train, though. How much of you have I missed? How long have you been in London?'

'Just four days, Karen. Next Tuesday we must go back.'

Naomi spoke with an unreproachful sadness that made Karen exclaim: 'Why didn't you let me know? I needn't have been away. But I only heard by chance.'

'I should have thought. I came round here at once, they told me you were away,' said Naomi, gazing at her with fatalistic love.

'I was in Ireland; I don't really know why.'

'Oh, but that seems sad, when you went so far! You see, I had to come over here when I could, and that was quite suddenly; between two American girls and two more American girls.'

'Bother those girls!' said Karen. 'Are these really the last?'

'Yes, these are the last. We had not been intending even to take them, but they were friends of old friends and we did not like to refuse. It is for two months only.'

Impatience on Naomi's behalf had made Karen angry ever since, as a young girl, she had been at the Fishers' herself: at this moment, kneeling to light the fire, impatience made her bruise her thumb on the tap. She had decided not, after all, to bring Naomi upstairs, in case they should run into Mrs Michaelis. Though bound to be specially nice to Naomi Fisher because she wished she were not there, Mrs Michaelis would be wanting, naturally, to hear all about Rushbrook from her daughter. So, when the gas had popped alight, Karen and Naomi stood to talk in the window, each leaning a shoulder into a curtain and looking across the small garden at the dark brick mews behind. Naomi was in black from top to toe, for the English aunt who had died leaving her the money. She explained to Karen she was staying at Twickenham in dead Miss Fisher's house, with a cousin called Helen Bond, a co-legatee and executor, going through clothes, papers, books and those sad meaningless things that are called 'effects', getting the house ready for the auctioneer. (Helen Bond and she had agreed to sell.) Though she had only known her aunt so slightly (Miss Fisher had disapproved of her brother's French marriage) all this was sad work, Naomi said. Dust from her aunt's life seemed to have settled on Naomi, making her voice husky, her skin unalive. But, though she did not look it, she had a turn for affairs; Karen had no doubt she would get through everything well. It was nice to think of Naomi's having money.

'Max has helped me,' said Naomi.

Then, as though she had drawn undue attention to something, she stared nervously at the window-sill, seeming to shrink all over. Karen's heart smote her; she saw
she
ought to have spoken of Max first, and how unkind on her part the omission was. She should have cried: 'I'm so glad!' before she was into the room. But ungladness made her perverse and shy. And Naomi looked so much more like someone who'd lost an aunt than someone who'd gained a lover. Max should have given her something to smile about, or, at least, violets to pin on her black fur. Karen's thoughts at once leaped to attack him, as though they had been waiting. Naomi remained with her eyes down, as though imploring Karen not to feel she must speak. She had outgrown years ago any girlish naturalness, without having learnt how even to imitate any other. You could see that her tremendous inside life, its solitary fears and fires, was out of accord with her humble view of herself; to hide or excuse what she felt was her first wish.

'Oh, my
dear
Naomi ...'

'Yes, Karen?'

'You know how glad I must be that you're so happy!'

'But you are happy yourself.' Naomi looked up almost accusingly, as though her friend spoke too much from the outside. She fixed her eyes on Karen as though daring her to stay calm. Her timid husk dropped off, or she lit up inside it; she stood with face and eyes exposed, turned burning to Karen, as much as to say: 'Look ... Surely you are the same?'

Karen said: 'Yes. But we are not at all the same.' Naomi, now again no more than herself, agreed: 'Yes, Life is so different for you and me, naturally.'

Karen felt she had reason to be tired. Even without a journey, she could not discuss her heart at eleven o'clock. She felt in her overcoat pocket for her cigarette-case and sat down, noncommittally smiling, in the leather armchair. Sun, then shadows of clouds on the brick mews made the room lighten then darken uneasily. The time in Ireland, like one long day spent waiting, hung on her mind. She was in that flagging mood when to go on living seems only to be to load more unmeaning moments on to your memory. Pulling off her hat, she tilted her head back and impatiently rolled it, as though to shake off something, on the leather chair-back — like, Mme Fisher once said, a young English boy.

She knew Naomi loved her with that touch of devotion that can be on one side only; a thing you cannot return. All Karen herself felt was: here was this bond between them, or band round them, forged in that year in Paris (yes, forged — it was metal, inelastic, more than chafing sometimes) when she was so young, so much frightened of Max, so unable to ignore him, that Naomi there was what you had to have. But since then, there had been everyone else, and her conscience began to send in bills about Naomi. She ought to want to thank Max for making all that all right ... Holding her cigarette at arm's length she watched it fuming away. 'And so Max is over here with you?' she said.

'At a hotel in the Adelphi.'

'Oh. On a holiday?'

'He has some business here, but also helps me with mine.'

'I'm sorry I may not see him; there's so little time left.'

'Oh, but three days more! Oh, I beg you to!' exclaimed Naomi. Turning round from the window to face Karen she interlocked tightly her black-gloved fingers, then drew them apart slowly, as though with pain. To go back to Paris without that would disappoint me, Karen.'

'But it isn't as though he and I hadn't met, Naomi. I once saw him so often.'

'You did not like him in those days.'

'In those days I was stupid.'

'But I beg you now to meet him again.'

Karen said easily: 'Can't we wait till we're married? Till we're all married, I mean? You still have Ray to meet. There's so little time now, and I want to talk to you. After all, I have met Max, but you can have no idea what Ray is like.'

'Perhaps I have,' said Naomi disconcertingly.

Mrs Michaelis said, whenever she met the Fishers, that she did wish Naomi had a less emotional manner. 'She does not do herself justice; her eyes start out of her head. Do you never find it a little trying, Karen?' 'I know what you mean, but she's perfectly calm really; I think I should miss her manner,' Karen often replied. The conclusion used to be, always: 'The fuss she makes flatters you.' This morning, she did find Naomi trying; she could feel her mouth setting in a smile like her mother's — a too kind, controlled smile.

'Naomi,' she said, 'you know I want to like Max: I
must,
now. But if I still didn't, you wouldn't blame him, you'd blame me. How could you not, as things are?' She added, glancing up at the bust of Wellington: 'Did he ask to?'

'Ask to see you? No,' said Naomi, still more disconcertingly. 'Not so far, at least.'

'I don't think I take that well.'

'You were never friendly to him.'

'Oh, that is absurd! You know how frightened I was of him. I used to think
he
knew, too. You mustn't encourage him to be touchy, Naomi; you make him sound like a man who cannot pass a looking-glass. Surely people
should
be indifferent, even if they are not?'

'Oh, Karen, there are no giants.'

'Surely there should be.'

If Karen's passion for indifference took Naomi aback she did not show it, but, as though to counter the Mrs Michaelis Karen had so suddenly put on, put on Mme Fisher herself and said, with her mother's smoothness: 'Perhaps in your world, Karen. You live, you see, in a more fortunate world.'

'Do I?' said Karen moodily, dropping her mother's manner.

Naomi's gloved hands made a level movement, as though to say, 'But of course.' She looked through her friend with unenvious dark eyes.

'I wish you would take your gloves off,' exclaimed Karen. 'It is dreadful in here at the best of times, and when you stay with everything on, Naomi, you make me feel we are in a waiting-room — I am not as unfair as I sound; you know I admire Max; all I meant was, he was sarcastic when I was eighteen. But if there
is
time to meet, why on earth shouldn't we?'