Venus Over Lannery (24 page)

“I don't think it strange at all,” she said.

“And you don't think it very ... very horrible, very incomprehensible?”

“No.”

“If I hadn't told you, I should have felt that I was being dishonest with you, somehow.”

“Have you told Mrs. Dryden or anyone else?” she asked.

He did not realise the significance of her question and she had not intended that he should. “No,” he said, “I haven't told a soul. I don't think it's necessary, do you?”

“No,” she said. “Why should you?”

Daphne, Juliet and Bill sat smoking cigarettes and sipping coffee and Cointreau in the sittingroom of Bill's flat. He had invited them to dinner to celebrate Juliet's birthday, a masterpiece of a dinner composed of an astonishing variety of
hors—d'æuvres,
a cold duck and salad, and a sumptuous charlotte russe, washed down by a bottle of champagne—“hide-and-seek,” as he facetiously called it. At first Daphne had refused the invitation. She had said that she was sure they would rather be alone, that they were asking her merely out of kindness, not because they really wanted her, and it was only after Juliet had implored her to accept and Bill had assured her that the evening wouldn't be complete without her, that she had at last given in.

And now, as she sat chattering with Juliet and Bill over the coffee and liqueur, she was the merry child. The “hide-and-seek” and the Cointreau had tuned her up and the image of Roy roused no pain in her: she could face it with nothing more than contempt, and her thoughts were far from suicide when Bill, opening a drawer in his desk to put away the pliers

with which he had unwired the champagne-cork, pulled out a revolver and challenged her: “Your money or your life!”

She laughed, and pushed forward her glass. “I'd rather have another Cointreau, if you don't mind.”

He was on the point of replacing the revolver in the drawer when she stretched out her hand. “Do let me have a look at it, Bill.”

He flicked open the drum, made sure it was empty, flicked it shut again and handed it to her. “It's pretty heavy,” she said, weighing it in her hand. “What do you use it for?”

“O, stamp-collecting and so on,” said Bill, and they all giggled.

“I mean, why do you have one?” she said.

“Left over from the Great War,” said Bill.

She examined it thoughtfully. “Is it guaranteed safe?” she asked. “Can I pull the trigger?”

“The best people,” said Bill, “don't
pull
the trigger; they press it, with a squeezing action. Allow me.” He took it from her and demonstrated. “Thus! And to unload, press the catch with the thumb, thus! And jerk sideways, thus!”

He handed the revolver back at her and coached her, mimicking an army instructor.

“How simple!” she said. “And what fun! How many people have you shot with it, Bill?”

“None!” he said.

“What, you missed them all?” They all laughed again.

“My total bag in the Great War,” he said, “was one Bradshaw's
Railway Guide.
At twenty yards you'll generally find the bullet at page two seven three.”

“You mean it doesn't go through?” she said. “They can't be much use.”

“Quite useful enough for their purpose.” He took a small pouch from the drawer, opened it and poured a couple of cartridges into his hand. “There they are!”

“O, do let me see!” said Daphne.

He dropped them back into the pouch. “Not likely! Or, rather, not until you hand me back that revolver.”

She handed it back; he put it away in the drawer and handed her the pouch in exchange.

Daphne opened it and poured all the cartridges into her lap. “How many are there?” she asked.

“Don't know,” said Bill. “Never counted them.” Daphne counted them aloud, dropping them back one by one into the pouch. When it was full she handed it back to him and he put it away. “And now,” he said, taking up the Cointreau-bottle, “for the third round.”

“Delighted, I'm sure!” said Daphne. “But first, if you don't mind”—she rose from her chair with a comical grimace of mock modesty—” I'll just make myself
quite
at home.”

She went out of the room and, when she had locked herself into the water-closet, she opened her left hand and gazed for a moment at the three
cartridges which it contained: then, hitching up her skirt, she pushed them one by one into her stocking and returned to the sitting-room, where she flung herself without an effort into the gay absurdities of the evening.

The cartridges, in the days that followed, did much to focus her resolve. By an unlucky chance, Juliet was away for a week on a visit to her parents, and Daphne, alone in the flat, with nothing to draw her out of her morbid preoccupations, brooded over her miseries, drifting further and further from the light of reason into a fantastic world of her own. By the time Juliet returned she had worked herself into a state of morbid dejection which the fits of merriment induced by Juliet's company could no longer dispel.

She knew that Bill would come to the flat that evening and she determined to get the revolver from him. Neither Juliet nor Bill noticed the slightest change in her. She was as amusingly childish as usual: she reacted to their company as mechanically as a dental patient reacts to laughing-gas. She had already rehearsed a hundred times the little plan she had evolved, and during supper she made her request in the most natural way in the world.

“By the way, Bill, Roy asked me to ask you if you would lend him your revolver. He's rehearsing a new play in which he has to shoot a wicked earl.”

Bill hesitated. “I'm not very keen on lending revolvers about the place.”

“Still,” said Daphne, “Roy's safe enough, isn't he? Besides, we won't insist on the cartridges, though no doubt they would add a touch of realism. However,” she went on, “if you'd rather not . . .”

At that, as she had expected, Bill gave in. “All right, I'll make it into a parcel and dump it here tomorrow.”

When she had got the revolver safely in her possession, Daphne wrote to Roy. She wrote the only kind of letter which, it seemed to her, would make him come to see her.

“DEAR ROY,—I have thought a great deal over your letter and I suppose you are right, but now I particularly want to see you about something. Will you come here at two o'clock tomorrow, or, if that time doesn't suit you, ring up and say when? If you come, I promise you that I will never bother you again.”

She sent the note by special messenger and then, in a strange state of vacancy, neither happy nor unhappy, she returned to the flat to live through, as well as she could, the twenty-four hours that separated her from the moment of his arrival. She felt as if she had drifted into some pale, deserted backwater where nothing real happened, everything had faded to a dream. During the afternoon she worked with a strange, calm efficiency at a design
for a dress for which she had received an order two days before. Everything she did, everything she heard and saw and felt—the chair beside the window, the touch of her pencil on the drawing-block, the mournful siren of a ship somewhere far down the river—had taken on an acute, unworldly significance which would have been unbearably painful but for the impermeable apathy that protected her. Somewhere outside that secure circle, she was aware, or she could have been aware if she had for a moment allowed herself to be, of something remote and tremendous, waiting. But it was easy to ignore it and she would go on ignoring it to the very last moment. But she must not allow herself to be disturbed: she must avoid Juliet when she returned at six o'clock. Juliet, she knew, was going out for the evening with Bill at a quarter to seven, so she herself would go out before six and not return till after Juliet had gone, and when Juliet returned she would be in bed and apparently asleep. And next morning she would pretend to have one of her headaches.

At a quarter to six she went out and walked. Walking was good: the harmless distractions of the street and the crowd kept her mind securely vacant. At half-past six she went into an A.B.C. and ordered tea and bread-and-butter. If she didn't eat, her nerves tomorrow... The remote, tremendous reality outside the circle loomed up suddenly and prodigiously. She wrenched her mind away from it. Yes, she had pulled herself together in time: it shrank
back, faded again into the darkness that lay outside her magic circle.

All next morning she stayed in bed, lying on her back with eyes shut, listening to the noises of London or the sound of her own breathing. She felt listless and exhausted: it was easy not to think. At a quarter to two she was up and dressed. She had loaded the revolver and now she hid it in a corner of the sofa in the sitting-room. She went into the hall, unlatched the front door and returned to the sitting-room, leaving its door ajar. At first she paced up and down the room, but when the clock on the mantelpiece struck two she sat down in her appointed place to wait. And as the minutes dragged slowly past and Roy did not come, her overstrung nerves whipped her into a rising anger. It was just like him to keep her on the rack like this. Was it possible that he wouldn't come? She had not reckoned on that, and the sudden conviction that he was not coming filled her with an unexpected and blissful relief. That, she now discovered, was what she really wanted. If he didn't come, that would be the end of it. She would give the revolver back to Bill, telling him that Roy had got another, and she would put Roy out of her mind for good and all. All this plan of shooting herself in his presence, the borrowing of the revolver which had made the plan become so suddenly and alarmingly real, and all the mental stress which had followed, had been in themselves an experience which had purged her of her tormenting emotions and finally released her from her exhausting
concentration on Roy. He wasn't coming: she was free: everything was right again.

And yet, suppose he did come? She jumped from the sofa. She would go out at once, quickly, before he arrived. Yes, that was an even better idea than she had realised. He would come and find the flat empty and she would never give him any explanation, or she would send him a post-card, saying what? “Appointment off!” Yes, that would be one in the eye for him, a fine revenge, a return of contempt for contempt. She ran into her bedroom to get her hat, but before she could put it on she heard his steps on the stairs. They mounted slowly, lazily: she recognised them at once as his. She ran back into the sitting-room, pushed-to the door and sat down again in the corner of the sofa, her heart pulsing furiously. The sudden reversal of her newfound solution bewildered her. She had no plan, now, for facing and beating Roy, and this increased her anger against him. She waited, flushed and breathless, watching the door as the steps on the stairs came nearer and louder and slower. Then with a sharp pang she heard him rattle a single crisp five-finger exercise on the glass panel of the front door, as he had always done. Now he had pushed the door open and next moment she heard him shut it, and then, insolently slow, his feet came down the three yards of passage. The door swung slowly open and Roy stood surveying the room.

For a moment they looked at one another in
silence. She could see that he was annoyed at her summons. “Well,” he said at last, “what's it all about, Daphne?”

Her eyes were still fixed on him, but she said nothing. To see him standing there, utterly indifferent to her, resentful, even, of having been forced to come to see her, woke a dull pain in her heart. “Come in!” she said at last.

He bowed with a ponderous mock politeness, took two exasperatingly slow steps into the room, turned and shut the door and walked over to the fireplace. “Well,” he said again, stretching himself wearily and setting one elbow on the mantelpiece, “what is it, Daphne? Say what you've got to say and be done with it.”

He waited, watching her with a faintly contemptuous smile. The tick of the clock on the mantelpiece drilled its way through the silence like a death-watch beetle. Roy braced himself suddenly and the smile left his face. “This is ridiculous,” he said; “I shall go.”

He made for the door, but before he could reach it Daphne darted from the sofa and intercepted him, facing him with her back to the door. “You can't go,” she said. “Didn't I tell you it was important?”

“If it's important,” he said, “get on with it.”

She returned to her place on the sofa. Again she felt tonguetied. “It's impossible to get on with it, as you call it, when you stand there like a block.”

“Well, what do you expect me to do?” he asked. “I've nothing to say: you've something to say: why can't you say it?”

She felt powerless and exasperated. He was so perfectly reasonable. He was always reasonable, always managed to twist things round so that he was irrefutably right and she hopelessly wrong. A spasm of furious anger rushed through her: she felt it flash like an electric shock from her heels to her scalp. It seemed to flame in her hair and unfocus her eyes. She pushed her hand between the cushions of the sofa, pulled out the revolver and pointed it at him, laughing. She saw his face change and his body brace itself, and it delighted her to have galvanised him at last into some sort of response. But in a moment he had relaxed. “I should be careful with that thing,” he said quietly. “They're not very safe unless you understand them.”

Ah, he was afraid, in spite of his pretence of calm. At last she had found a way of breaking through that exasperating barrier of indifference. She could work on him now, play on his feelings as much as she liked. She turned the muzzle to her own breast and put her finger on the trigger.

Again his face changed. “Listen, Daphne!” he said, and she noted a tremor in his voice. “You'd much better put it down and have a sensible talk.”

She watched his face: he was desperately nervous now. She could read his thoughts, could see the impulse take him to leap at her and seize the
revolver, could see him change his mind and set himself to humour her once more. She turned the muzzle from herself and again pointed it at him, leaning back in her seat with a contemptuous smile.