The Transit of Venus (19 page)

One of the men he had accompanied to the mines, a Breton going for the
agregation,
drew away from a group on the pavement and walked with him. Ted thought how his American friend would have asked a question, " H a d a good day?" something of the kindly kind. Americans might be the only people left who asked how one felt—still imagining one might know, or tell; or assuming an un-troublesome, affirmative lie, some show of a willful unripeness like their own. After posting his letter to Caroline Bell, Ted was glad of the paired reticence with the Breton in the street: a companion-ship that broached his isolation but not his solitude.

When they reached the entrance of Tice's building, a group of students pushed past them, laughing and shouting. The Breton said,

"It's melancholy, all this high spirits." The two men leaned against a wall that was dirty in the way that only institutions of learning can be dirty, with the pressure of too many soiled hands and hips and bottoms propped there in argument or love. Beyond them, the long street slowly flowed in human clusters, taut or flexible; active with opinion, suffering and lust. The Breton touched Ted lightly on the shoulder. "Just remember, my dear, that women grow old. See you."

Ted had another letter to write, which he had not meant to begin that evening—but did, being unable to work.

Very good to have your letter and your news. Yes, I do have a photograph—since arriving here I've spent most of my time and a fair proportion of my funds being photographed. I don't know what it is about me,
everyone wants my picture, and in four or five copies too: the police,
the university, the Comit£ d'Accueil. For you, herewith, one copy only, in which I look like the kind of person I disliked most at Cambridge.

Since you are really coming over—good news—I'll try to get tickets for the May festival. They're giving Berg's
Wozzeck
and Stravinsky's
Oedi-pus Rex.
There will be plenty of ballet—the New York people, and the Marquis de Cuevas. Certainly you should see Golovine. As to tennis, everyone thinks the big match will be Sedgman-Drobny, will that be all right? I agree about what is happening at home—Attlee can count on my vote again next time.

I must finish a paper, so forgive a note only. We'll talk in May. It will be fine to see you. Let me know time of arrival. Yours.

A t t h e time when Grace and Caroline Bell got their first employment—at Harrods and the bookshop—they had made over most of their small capital to Dora. By undertaking to raise them, Dora had incapacitated herself for earning a livelihood, and it seemed right that recompense be made. That was Caro's reasoning, at least, and all of Caro's capital went to Dora in the new arrangement, for Caro might soon expect to have some semblance of a career. Grace, whose employment at Harrods lacked even that degree of promise, had retained half her assets at Caro's suggestion. Explained to Dora, the plan ignited high passion. She wanted nothing, had never asked anything from anyone, had walked to save so much as a bus fare, and the one thing she would never give up to a living soul was her independence. "I will be dependent on no one, I ask nothing."

Dora was outraged—irrationally but not unpredictably; and only after many days of tears and cries for peace was prevailed on to accompany the girls to a lawyer's office where documents were ultimately and emotionally signed. It was a further week before she spoke to them at all normally, or could bring herself to forgive.

Dora herself was confused by the indignation aroused in her by the sisters' gesture. By their action, they had deprived her, however temporarily, of her privileges of victimization. Until she re-established her prerogative of disadvantage, she was under a handicap.

By her outrage she saw to it that tables were only briefly turned.

The event was put behind them, unmentionable, and soon she was talking again about doing without, so that you girls might have everything when I'm gone.

At that time, Dora was not yet forty.

The signing over of assets had taken place shortly before Grace encountered Christian at the Sunday concert—Dora's umbrage on that memorable afternoon being attributable to it. A few months later, when Christian and Grace became engaged, Grace told him of the financial arrangement: "It seemed only fair."

Christian said quietly, " H o w like you, Grace."

"You would have done the same."

Putting the fair hairs back from her forehead, he was touched beyond her expectation. "I should like to think so."

Now Major Ingot appeared to have made their sacrifice irrelevant.

When the Major brought Dora to London in the late spring, Christian said he would give a small lunch, or luncheon, at a restaurant. Just himself, Grace, the bridal pair; and Caro—who would ask time off from work. Christian was by then married to Grace and the proper person to do such a thing, but had no affection for Dora, whom he had seen in action now and then. There had been a convulsive scene, incomprehensible, on the occasion of Grace's betrothal; and letters from the Algarve had tended to take, from time to time, the unfathomable huff. Christian firmly (to employ his favourite adverb) believed that Dora could pull herself together—

could be brought to her senses by a good talking-to, which, he contended, was long overdue and would do her the world of good.

Even Grace still imagined there might be words, the words that could reach Dora and that had so far, unaccountably, not been hit upon. Only Caro recognized that Dora's condition was exactly that: a condition, an irrational state requiring professional, or divine, intervention.

Major Ingot was thickly built, though in no martial way, having a citified paunch and large pinkish jowl. Within the restaurant doorway he cut the oval sweep of a watermelon. His scalp was smooth except for a splaying of strands over the crown; his eyes, a hurt blue, were the eyes of a drunken child. At table he spread short hands on the menu, flattening out this plan of attack. A wedding-ring was already tight on his finger, like a knot tied there to remind, or the circlet fixed on a homing pigeon. His neck made a thick fold over his collar. Everything about him was contained, constrained, a fullness tied and bound. It was hard to imagine him a soldier; although he had a desk-bound corpulence that might have done for a general.

When asked by Christian about his military service, he produced staccato information before ordering crab salad.

Salad was not reliable in Estoril, nor seafood either. On the eve of departure, Dora had been poisoned by a plate of king prawns.

The bill of the Portuguese doctor had come, with the medicines, to thirty pounds.

"And that," said Major Ingot, "made it an expensive meal."

"Bruce was ropable," Dora told them. "And Bruce is usually a patient body."

The Major redly glared endorsement.

They must return to Portugal within the month, there was everything to be done to the flat. Curtains, upholstery, Dora already had the swatches. In addition, Rastas, the Major's Labrador, was in a kennel.

It was hard to imagine the Major's pleasures, difficult even to picture him in the ingle of a pub in Algarve England saying, "Let me tell you the one about." Retribution emerged as a main preoccupation: "They have made their bed and must lie in it," " H e will just have to take his medicine"—making of life a military, or prison, hospital. In the postwar scramble, the Major had been lucky; had, as he explained, fallen on his feet. In the free-for-all, some landed right side up, others came a cropper.

Around the table, the Major's punitive figures of speech aroused antipathies that were scarcely coherent. The truth was they were too reminiscent of Christian himself.

To revert one moment to the poisoned prawns. If I may. For just such reasons there was a big future in the Algarve. British residents liked what they were used to—Twinings Earl Grey, Coopers Vin-tage Marmalade. Possibilities were pretty well infinite—Tiptree, Huntley and Palmer, to give a bare idea. Why not have a stab at it? Nor could the liquors be disregarded, Gilbey's, Dewar's. "It is all there for"—the Major made a deft, pink, snatching gesture above the tablecloth—"the taking." No, the Major was not thinking of getting into books. "It's a small turnover. Make no error, I like nothing better than a rattling good yarn myself. But the turnover doesn't justify. Your average tourist is not a big reader. Guide-books now—well, there you're on to a horse of a different colour."

There was no need to get mixed up with the Ports. The foreign residents out there were a well-to-do crowd, on the whole. Germans were coming back too, you'd be surprised. They preferred the Algarve to the Costa Brava, which had already been developed out of extinction. Furthermore, the government was stable. More so, he was sorry to say, than this lot we've got here at home. "These socialists wouldn't dare show themselves out there." If they did, they would soon laugh on the other side of their faces.

"I wouldn't live here if you paid me."

Thunder could be heard. Through the restaurant's glass doors, they saw a deluge.

As to the prime minister, the Major continued, "I wouldn't trust him with sixpence on the table"—slamming down the imaginary coin—"while I stepped out of the room."

Dora dealt out photographs, like trump cards, of herself in the sun. The Major said, "I'd have taken more, but I'd used up most of the roll on the dog."

Christian was surprised by Dora's good looks. He had always felt her nature did not come commensurately through in her appearance, and now that she was plumper and complacent—and kept the speckled veil, still suggestive of a bridal, turned up around her hat

—it was hard to credit her awfulness. With her dark eyes and high colour, she might herself have been native to the Algarve or Alen-tejo; had it not been for the mouth.

Contrasted with Dora's rounded self-approval, Caro was hollow-eyed, the pale, impressive ghost at the feast despite a crimson dress.

Only Grace truly looked her part, a sweet young matron with no darker side.

Dora was telling, "Bruce has an eye. And has picked up some exquisite pieces. Majolica, old rugs."

The Major agreed: "If I say so myself." (It occurred to Christian, like a warning, that this phrase usually preceded falsehood.) "I can go into any junk shop and pick out the one thing." Again, a show of thick, short fingers. "Of course, out there you have to bargain."

When it was agreed that bargaining went against the grain, there was a pause. Christian was thinking that in England a gentleman does not wear a wedding-ring.

Dora resumed: "Caro is looking so well. And happy." They all turned towards gaunt Caro, who held her wine-glass. "She must come out to see us." Dora was queening it. "And try her Portuguese." It was explained to the Major: "She has this gift."

Caro smirked a bit, to please.

Christian was thinking, A signet ring—well, that would be another matter. A horse of a different colour.

The Major said languages were unusual in an Orstrylian. He had a friend at Brisbane who was in dried fruit and nuts.

Christian lit a cigarette, and hoped his relation to the Major was not that of brother-in-law.

Dora remarked that her own language was good enough for her.

The Major was off on a story about an Australian nurse in a military hospital. He knew the soldier, actually, to whom the incident had occurred.

When the coffee came, Grace got awkwardly to her feet, cup in hand as if she might propose a toast. Above a blouse of lavender flowers, her face and forehead shone. She set the cup down as deliberately as if it, rather than she, were in need of care; and fainted.

Grace was to have a child.

The London theatre where Paul Ivory's first full-length play was given had a small foyer which, at the end of that afternoon's mati-nee, was emptying slowly because of the rain. Women shuffled out in single file, and a few elderly men waited under the awning, wondering what came next. Caroline Bell stood to one side, unfastening her umbrella while she looked through glass doors at a tawdry street.

Paul entered from a small interior door near the ticket booth: himself an actor on cue. Finding the crowd still there, he hesitated.

And in that moment saw Caro, who had her back to him, her face obscured as if deliberately turned away.

Paul Ivory stood with his hand on the door he had just opened, a man who controls himself under an accusation. The unfairness was not only that the woman had been placed in his path but also that, given her unawareness, the choice was left to him whether to speak. Even while registering injustice, Paul was almost physically swayed by the sight of Caro, and by the deliberate, detached authority with which fate had again produced her. Paul had measured his forgetfulness of Caroline Bell by the swift current of change and achievement in his recent months of life. He had not merely left her but left her behind. From the standing-room assigned her in the theatre of Paul Ivory's existence, Caro should pensively observe his performance, and applaud. Now, at the sight of her averted head, he had no choice, and must act under compulsion. He approached her with some consciousness of exaltation, obeying an impulse not necessarily to his advantage. Obeying his need as if it were virtue.