The Transit of Venus (4 page)

She was no sooner down the aisle than Christian spoke. He had never done such a thing in life, but knew there was no time to lose.

They got swiftly through some piffle about Sibelius, and by the time the duenna returned Christian had written a phone number and suggested Saturday. All this, which should have seemed extraordinary to him, appeared inevitable and entirely right.

He got to his feet, and Grace said, "Dora, this is Mr. Thrale."

He saw Dora's face flash with the realization they had stolen a march on her, and with an impulse to spoil things. Dora saw a sandy man, quite tall, who could easily present a threat. Christian had discovered they were half-sisters and from Australia. When the concert was over, he put them in a cab.

He did not, during that week, tell himself I must have been besotted, even though besotted was one of his words. He knew that something out of the ordinary had been set in motion. But did wonder if it would survive reunion with Grace, whose attraction could well decline at an address of furnished rooms. One would then be faced with the process of coming to one's senses. To do him justice, Christian Thrale feared rather than hoped for this.

On the Saturday he went to W. 11 by taxi, to take off the pall. The stairs were freshly painted white and had a scarlet carpet. There was a glass jar of yellow flowers on a landing.

It had not occurred to him, he himself might have brought.

As he went up he was shamed by a sense of adventure that delineated the reduced scale of his adventures. After the impetuous beginning, he would puzzle them by turning out staid and cautious.

In a gilt mirror near the door he surprised himself, still young.

Grace's beauty was a vindication. He had relied on it, and it did not let him down. She was calm, as before, and smiled. There were the gold flowers again, on a table. Christian sat on a furnished-looking settee. No, no difficulty at all finding the address and knew the area quite well, actually, from once having had a dentist nearby.

A kettle whistling in a kitchenette was swiftly muzzled by, he assumed, Dora.

Caro brought in the tray. My sister. A place was cleared for cups and plates. Christian sat again, and Caro opposite, with Grace bent between them: Is that too strong, these are from Fortnum's. With a silver blade she laid open a quadrant of cake. A little furrow of concentration between her eyes was beguiling as the grooved brow of a kitten. On the sofa Christian was a man on a river-bank, not so much gazing at the other side as aware of a current into which he must plunge. He saw Grace shining and rippling over afternoon stones. She leadeth me beside the still waters.

Opposite, Caro's still waters ran deep.

Unfortunately Dora has had to go to Wigmore Street to pick up her new glasses. Thank God. It was clear that Dora battened on the girls' occasions, might be absent from necessity but never from tact.

As in the concert hall, it was evident they must make the most of the time before she returned, get things to a pitch where she could not reverse them. In relief at no Dora, Christian sat easy, had a second cup, and was pleased. Into the furnished staleness there came cool air from a window, and a scent of bath salts or cologne.

Against the light, Caro's head and shoulders were remarkable.

Once or twice he made her laugh. But when he leaned for biscuits felt her eyes on him as if. As if, for instance, she knew about the sense of adventure on the stairs.

He found these women uncommonly self-possessed for their situation. They seemed scarcely conscious of being Australians in a furnished flat. He would have liked them to be more impressed by his having come, and instead caught himself living up to what he thought might be their standards and hoping they would not guess the effort incurred. Quickness came back to him like a neglected talent summoned in an emergency: as if he rose in trepidation to a platform and cleared his throat to sing.

The room itself appeared unawed by him—not from any disorder but from very naturalness. A room where there had been expectation would have conveyed the fact—by a tension of plumped cushions and placed magazines, a vacancy from unseemly objects bundled out of sight; by suspense slowly dwindling in the curtains. This room was quite without such anxiety. On its upholstery, the nap of the usual was undisturbed. No tribute of preparation had been paid him here, unless perhaps the flowers, which were fresh and which he himself if he had only thought.

It was a high room that Grace said had seen better days.

Christian said, "I can't imagine a better day than this."

A few objects, and the books, evidently their own. There was a warped picture of a woman's head painted on wood.

"Caro got it in Seville."

"It's an angel."

Caro had been three months in Spain for the language. To do this she had gone as nursemaid to an English family, who had afterwards taken her to France and to Italy. Caro was now working—serving was what she said—in a bookshop while studying for a government examination.

It was even worse with Grace, who was in the Complaints Department at Harrods.

There could be no outcome to such activities but marriage. He knew all about Caro's examination and she would never pass it. It had only recently been opened to women, and he had never heard of a woman passing it. "It is stiff," he said. It did not even lead to prospects, you came in at the lower level, it was a way of having people with languages without giving them career service.

"An exploitation, if you like," he concluded.

Caro said, "I don't like," and took a cream wafer. "Peek Frean's," she read, before biting the lettering in half.

"I shall confine myself to saying," he began again, and stopped.

He did not know where he got these expressions, I confine myself, I shall refrain from, I withhold comment upon—as if he had placed himself under house arrest. It might be from his father. He asked with whom had she dealt, where was she to present herself. And over the officials and bureaux of her answers assented with knowing confirmation—as a Greek will sagely nod at the mention of Hesiod or Pindar even if he has never read a line of them.

The situation of Grace was more pointed still, an abeyance. What could she possibly learn in a Complaints Department?

"I," said Grace Bell, "have learned that a soft answer does not turn away wrath." The girls fell to laughing together, their bodies slightly inclined each to each even across a tea-table.

Caro told him, "London is our achievement. Our career, for the time being." As if she read through his forehead like glass. "Having got here is an attainment, being here is an occupation."

Like a creature whose lair has been observed, he shifted to new cover. "Very sensible not to plan too far ahead."

They would talk about him afterwards, and Caro would adjudi-cate. He did not know if Grace would abide by the verdict or not.

Caro would bite him in half like a biscuit. He wondered how Caro stood up to Dora, and for a moment would have been curious to see them together. When Caro got to her feet, when she brought hot water or closed a window, she moved with consequence as if existence were not trivial.

When these girls were small their parents had drowned in a capsized ferry. Christian was to refer to this as "a boating accident"

for the rest of his life.

"And do you then," to show his independence of their futures,

"mean to try out life here, and return to—was it—Sydney?"

Caro laughed. "Life doesn't work that way."

As if she knew, and he did not.

A plate on which biscuits had lain was old, chipped, Italian, and had a border of rustic lettering. Caro had brought it from Palermo.

Saying "May I?", Christian took it up and read aloud, turning the disc to decipher:
"Chi d'invidia campa, disperato muore.
Who lives—

if I'm right?—in envy, dies in despair." He put it back on the table.

The angel had been charming; the plate had a sharper edge.

How happy he was, all the same. Christian, who often feared to find himself in obscure conditions, in a monochrome where his colours might not prove fast. Given the present circumstances—the furnished room, the brute fact of Sydney, the desk at Harrods, and the examination already as good as failed—this should now have been overwhelmingly the case. But was not, by any means.

These women provided something new to Christian—a clear perception unmingled with suspiciousness. Their distinction was not only their beauty and their way with one another, their crying need of a rescue for which they made no appeal whatever; but a high humorous candour for which—he could frame it no other way

—they would be willing to sacrifice.

Christian was happy. Grace had done that for him. She will make you very happy.

The degree of good faith being required of him amounted to a mild abandon, but he did not want to botch this afternoon. His chances in life seemed bound up with the colours of girls' dresses, the streaks of curtain at windows, a painted angel; and even with a tea-cosy of crocheted orange, felted with handling, that said everything about the landlord. Turned to him, there were the two long figures in light. He would have liked to think, Sargent; but feared something more disruptive, like Vermeer.

There were intervals when he knew that he was the one in need of rescue, that Grace might easily do better than take up with him, and that Caro would pass the examination ahead of all the rest. But health was hard to maintain: self-importance flickered up like fever.

There was something else now, with the three of theoi in that room, some event or at least a moment. Whatever this was, the excitement in it was displacing the calm, the charm. It was quickly past. Christian knew that Grace was as much as he could manage; she was already a departure, though of his own unexpected choosing. Caro was beyond his means. He was like a cabinet minister faced with a capital decision. On the brink of the sofa he renounced any possibility of Caro. There was deliverance in this, and a flow of propitiatory emotion towards Grace.

Now that Caro had proved too much for him, he almost disliked her.

Grace was telling about a customer who had sent back a dead canary in a box, for refund. Christian must soon make himself clear.

A third meeting would be commitment of a kind, to a chain of new circumstances.

"And got it back stuffed, from Taxidermy, with a bill for five guineas!"

Christian was laughing out loud with relief. He could hear this laughter of his that showed what he could do when given a chance.

In his laughter it was as if he already took Grace in his arms.

She came downstairs to see him out. Dora, now in sight along the street, performed her usual function of bringing matters to a head. He asked Grace to dine with him during the week, and she made an arrangement for Wednesday. They repeated time and place like vows, safe forever from the sharp heels of Dora on the path.

Christian quite strongly did not want to see Dora, but waited to greet her and hoped for credit from Grace. Dora's hair was netted in a veiling cap, like thatch under wire. She dropped her key, and bumped her head on Christian's as they both bent down for it. This in turn gave rise to false little gasps of overdone apology. Christian knew the type. She was one of those persons who will squeeze into the same partition of a revolving door with you, on the pretext of causing less trouble.

By the time he got home he had forgotten Caro. It was years before he seriously considered her again, or before she became the object of another cabinet-level review. Long before Wednesday he began to wish for Grace, and when the evening came was more charming to her than he had ever been to anybody in his life.

Have we missed it?"

Ted Tice was staring up the country road for the bus. Caroline Bell was looking round at roadside trees and tangling gardens that no Australian could take for granted. Signs of last month's storm were difficult to find: however hard you might look, the earth insisted there was nothing wrong. Tice stood ungainly, his character loose on him that day like clothes he must grow into. His question did not wake her.

They had little to say under the heavy trees. It was when the bus trundled and they got on board that they began to speak, starting up along with the ancient snorting engine and the metal shudder of flanks and the raised voices of other passengers. The bus enclosed them like social obligation. Or it was departure that loosened their tongues, a reminder, as they wound down the valley of the River Test. Caro, though leaning back, arm extended to brace herself against the seat in front, showed no desire to be mistress of the situation. Ted Tice looked down her profile of eyelid and lip, down her blue shoulder and breast and her bare arm to where her hand grasped the rusted metal of a seat-back. Her body had a more distinct outline when she was parted from her sister.

An hour had already passed, of this day they were to spend together. Ted Tice was glad of each additional mile, which would at least, at last, have to be retraced. Every red and noticeable farmhouse, every church or sharp right turn was a guarantee of his time with her. He said, "Are you thinking how tame it is, all this?"