To the North (5 page)

Hanging up the receiver, Cecilia felt this was unfair. Henry had had his weaknesses: had
he
never gossiped to Lady Waters? … She dressed, touched her mouth up, took out a pair of fresh gloves and, with the morning before her, walked down to Baker Street Station to save twopence. At the florist’s she pinned a carnation into her coat.

Cecilia lunched in St. Leonard’s Terrace with three young friends—not a party, they just dropped in—three young married women. The conversation was esoteric: they spoke of happiness; knee-to-knee round the painted table, nibbling salt almonds and twisting the long-stemmed Venetian glasses they confessed they could not understand themselves; each, as she talked, took on an air of childish rarity and importance. They were young women delicately compact as hyacinths; one wore frills down her front, she was going to have a baby; one showed a glowing reticence, she had a lover; one, a bride, was called from the
soufflé
to telephone to her husband. Going upstairs to coffee they all advised Cecilia to marry again.

Emmeline lunched not far from Woburn Place at a shop called “The Coffee Pot,” with Peter Lewis, her partner. She read a book about Poland, he blue-pencilled manuscript; they ate poached eggs on spinach, each paid for their own lunches and did not speak to each other. The place was full of pleasant young men and women, secretaries of the surrounding learned societies, lunching elbow to elbow. Young women in more of a hurry ate salad up at a counter, perched on high scarlet stools: young men are seldom in such a hurry as all that. Emmeline, who knew most of them, nodded and smiled going out, looking less unapproachable than she had looked at the party. When she got back to the office, Cecilia rang up from St. Leonard’s Terrace to say she now found she had six hundred and fifty-eight lire: how much would that be? A client with passport trouble came in and asked Emmeline to ring up a consulate. Peter was worried when someone came in to ask silly questions about Brazil just as he was getting on with the graph; he threw the graph at Emmeline and rang up some shipping companies. Their secretary, recently down from Lady Margaret Hall, who worked for ten shillings a week and the experience, made more mistakes than usual in her typing and looked gloomily over the wire blind at the sky. There had been several personal calls for her lately: Emmeline said perhaps she had better go home. Peter complained she made more noise than was possible with her typewriter; her touch must be unsympathetic. She had hands like mattresses; also, he did not approve of pin-money girls.

“But we can’t afford one who isn’t,” said Emmeline, sketching a new poster on the back of an envelope.

“I’d pay nearly ten shillings a week
not
to have her.”

“She may marry,” said Emmeline hopefully.

“I don’t see how she can, poor thing.” Hunching his shoulders as though in a high cold wind he added: “She doesn’t like us.”

“I think she likes the experience.”

“Then she ought to pay
us
ten shillings a week.”

“We might sack her,” said Emmeline, “that would all be an experience.”

“I don’t see how we can.”

It always came back to this. Neither liked to suggest that the other should learn to type. Emmeline finished the poster, he amended the lettering; meanwhile she upset some green ink over his graph. She was surprised, and a little annoyed with him; she had had no idea the green ink was about… . All the same, a colourless harmony presided over the office, in which they both took up personally a very small space. Capacity for the direct side of business apart, they were an ideal partnership. Their office, a room with fine cornices overlooking a courtyard, had once been someone’s back dining-room and was divided by folding doors from the premises of an archaeological society where almost complete silence reigned. Peter and Emmeline each had roll-top desks of their own, hers by the window, his under the green glare of a lamp he hardly ever turned off. Their secretary occupied a deal table half into the fireplace; she had wedged the legs with blotting-paper but when her violence became excessive they would both look up and wince. There were maps stuck over with flags (to denote the position of clients), their own posters, three shelves of files, a small safe of which only the secretary could remember the combination, a hat-rack, a cupboard for tea-cups and sherry. Two swivel chairs were provided for clients, who could thus face either Peter or Emmeline. … As Cecilia said, it all looked very workmanlike. Cecilia did not, however, care much for Peter, who looked, she said, rather too Peter-ish.

After another stiff hour of concentration, not interrupted by clients, Emmeline put on the kettle and soon poured out pale tea into thick bright pottery cups. The parlourmaid rang up from Oudenarde Road, on Cecilia’s behalf, to say they were right out of sherry: would Emmeline bring back a bottle with her and be home early?

During Emmeline’s talk with the parlourmaid Peter remained by the fireplace, blowing his tea with an air of slightly disdainful discretion, as though he were thankful he had no ties. Emmeline knew nothing and wished to know nothing of Peter’s life; their partnership having been based on a strong common interest—or strictly, fervour—and a little spare capital on both sides: up to that, they had only met at those rather dispersed and apparently hostless parties they both attended. Though he knew almost everyone she knew, and apparently thought them frightful, she never discussed him elsewhere. He spoke sometimes of catching a train; she had seen him once in a restaurant quarrelling with a haggard young friend… . Nothing urgent came by the four o’clock post; having filed a picture post-card from a client in Prague under “testimonials” they decided to close the office and take their projected new poster round to a friend at the Southampton Row school of art. On the way, Emmeline wondered if they were prepared for the Whitsun rush; this led Peter to re-open the question of their publicity; he also felt they were not doing enough with airways. Turning left, they paced Theobald’s Road for some time in an agitated discussion: when they got to the art school their friend had gone. Peter, who had this form of incipient mania, could not remember if he had remembered to lock up the office, or whether he had only thought he
must
lock up the office; Emmeline found she had left a cheque on her desk, so they went back quickly to find the office unlocked and a client there.

An elderly gentleman in an overcoat, only too clearly another friend of Sir Robert’s, stood eyeing between alarm and respect the posters, the blotted graph and the sugar-bowl. Only an excellent lunch and the strongest regard for Sir Robert could have brought him to this end of London at all. As they came in, he had been in the act of picking up his bowler; apprehension had gained on him; meeting Peter’s stern eye in the doorway he looked decidedly trapped.

“I’m afraid,” said the client, still with some faint idea of escape, “I am after hours?”

“Not at all,” said Peter, shutting the door firmly.

“We are so sorry,” Emmeline said, putting on her spectacles and sitting down at her desk, “to have kept you waiting. We’ve had a terribly busy day.” Mopping up the last of the green ink she said something about publicity.

“We are directing our own publicity,” Peter took up fluendy. “And the exceptional rush on airways has kept us so busy we do not know where to turn.”

Reassured by Emmeline’s mildness, Sir Robert’s friend put down his hat again, spinning his chair in her way. He spoke of Sir Robert; they chatted; he went on to enquire after Cecilia. Peter, after a glassy half-look that said “Yours” to Emmeline, unwound his scarf from the hat-rack, flicked down his hat and went off to wash, leaving them to it. Gently, with a series of feathery touches to right and left, Emmeline rounded the rambling old gentleman down the straight path to business. Though he had no wish to leave England so soon his wife, it appeared, was determined to do so; he did not care where they went so long as it was not again to Biarritz. Guessing that he spoke no languages and would want bridge, Emmeline reached down the appropriate files, marked: “Lakes.” Peter, running cold water over his wrists at the end of the corridor, heard them talking about mosquitoes. Listening critically, he thought Emmeline’s manner insufficiently feminine; he could have done it better himself.

Emmeline got back late with the sherry; whoever it was had gone. The drawing-room, however, was still rich with strange cigarette-smoke; Cecilia, in black, wandered among the furniture with the air of not having yet readjusted herself to solitude. As Emmeline came in she said: “I suppose I do lack background… .”

“Who has been telling you that?”

“Julian.”

“Oh?” Emmeline said, surprised. “Did he come to tea?”

“Yes,” said Cecilia, gloomy. “I was to have seen Georgina, but I wired and told her life was too difficult: she will be furious.”

“I’m sorry about the sherry.”

“Oh,
that
didn’t matter.”

“Why, did he annoy you?”

“He depressed me,” said Cecilia, lighting a cigarette. She blew three rings of smoke and watched them dissolve critically: “It is all very well to talk to me about backgrounds,” she went on… .

JULIAN HAD DEPRESSED CECILIA BY TALKING ABOUT HIS NIECE, a girl of fourteen. Though his manner took light from her animation he had arrived preoccupied: she had assumed that this must be something to do with herself, but soon wished she had not asked him what was the matter.

Pauline, an orphan, had been controlled for the last five years by a committee of relatives, of which Julian, as her guardian, was unwilling chairman. His brothers and sisters all felt he got through life too easily, forming too few ties and buying too many pictures; it was not without some sense of justice that they had inflicted this minor worry. He paid the child’s fees at boarding-school (no one had left any money for Pauline), visited her once a term and took her to plays in the holidays. Her confirmation, which seemed to him premature, the fixing-in of a plate to correct prominent teeth and treatments for flat feet and curvature had all been reported to him. Her complexion, his sisters told him, time would correct; he heard with relief that though highly nervous she was not astigmatic and had no digestive trouble. His eldest sister ordered her clothes, for which he paid, a sister-in-law took her in for the holidays or arranged for her circulation among relations.

But for the last week of these Easter holidays there had been a break-down; no one could have Pauline. The family intimated to Julian that they would be satisfied with any arrangement he chose to make, and suggested a week in his flat in London, visiting the museums and getting to know her uncle. Pauline, said his sister-in-law, is full of interests and wonderfully responsive. She put Pauline into the London train and retired into a nursing-home, where she had a baby.

So Pauline was, at present, in Julian’s Westminster flat, where she played the gramophone and talked a good deal to the housekeeper. She stitched name-tapes on to her new summer-term outfit, sang to herself and was terribly little trouble. But his housekeeper did not like children; his flat was not arranged for a little girl. His community with all bachelor uncles in the great tradition of English humorous fiction did not console Julian. He saw that this must be funny, but suffered acutely. For his niece, who read Ian Hay, the situation was full of charm. She was diligently little-girlish; whimsicality distorted their conversation. She alternated between the romp and the dream-child, occasionally attempting the mouse, when she effaced herself noticeably. With a sense of guilt that was profound, he did not know which of these aspects was most distasteful. It was at him that she daydreamed, at him that she thundered about the flat; her assaults on his attention were like the firings-off of a small gun.

It was not, Julian said to Cecilia, the gramophone that he minded, though she scratched his records and walked a whole box of needles into a rug: he was out so much, it was not fair to complain. It was not that, having been recommended to drink much milk, she was always white round the mouth and left clouded glasses about on the mantelpiece. It was not that she rubbed her chilblains with small pieces of camphor. He did not know what it was… . When he went down to the school the headmistress took him aside to tell him Pauline was psychologically interesting; she seemed to be proud of Pauline. The headmistress had made Julian think of a man who once came into his flat with a new fire-extinguisher. “I should like to interest you,” he had said, “in this new line we are showing… .” The headmistress, failing to interest Julian, had liked him less.

“It is not …” he said, looking heavily round Cecilia’s drawing-room. “Oh, she’s doing her best, poor child; I can feel her doing it.”

Cecilia said, surely one could put up with anything for a week?

In fact, it was less the niece than the uncle that worried Julian: something in him that would not bring off the simplest relationship, that could be aware of any relationship only as something to be brought off; something hyperconscious of strain or falsity. This descent of an orphan child on his life might have been superficially comic, or even touching. But the disheartening density of Proust was superimposed for him on a clear page of Wodehouse. The poor child’s approximation to what she took to be naturalness parodied his own part in an intimacy. She mortified him on his own account, and on account of the woman so drearily nascent in her immaturity: he confronted again and again in her look, as she chattered and romped, the unavowable anxiety of the comedian. He was estranged from her, as though she were transparent, as he was estranged from almost all women, by a rather morbid consciousness of fraternity. After three days of her company, he felt like a pane of mean glass scrubbed horribly clean, like a pool dredged of its charming shadowy water-weeds. Those inexactitudes of desire that sent him towards Cecilia, those bright smoky movements of fancy became remote and impossible. Society, peopled with nudes, became unseemly as a Turkish bath; he could look nowhere without confusion, least of all at himself.