The Collected Short Fiction Part 48

Tea was just what he wanted; Ellen had somehow known that, as his mother always knew it. Ellen was drinking it only for company's sake and making eyes at him over the rim of the cup. G.o.d, the illusion there can be in a single cup of hot tea! In the first cup, anyway. But it would be quite like Helen to materialize ever so faintly, just when he was relaxing, though it would have been difficult for her to find anywhere suitable to sit in the bijou flatlet. The only armchair was filled with copies of The Natural World, so that Ellen was sitting on the foot of the divan, with her legs pressed together in the most ladylike degree. Her b.r.e.a.s.t.s were firm as c.o.c.klesh.e.l.ls.

She rose chastely and came for his empty cup.

"More?"

He faintly shook his head. Normally, he would have accepted and probably gone on accepting, but now he felt unequal even to drinking tea. He was a haunted man.

Ellen took the cups back into the kitchenette, and he could hear her tidily was.h.i.+ng them up. She put the milk back in the refrigerator, and what was presumably the ingredient itself back into a little cabinet which shut with a click and was probably marked Tea. She returned to the living room and, standing before a small octagonal looking gla.s.s in which the reproduction of "The Childhood of John the Baptist" had-previously been reflected, began to comb her silky but st.u.r.dy hair.

Laming a.s.sumed from this that they were about to depart and felt most disinclined. It was as when at last one reaches Bexhill or Gognor Regis and the beach is calling, but never before has one felt more promise to lie in mere musing in and upon one's new bed and, thus, half slumbering one's life away.

Ellen combed and combed; then she tied a wide cherry-colored sash around her b.r.e.a.s.t.s and reentered the divan with him. He could smell the scent she had sprayed on her neck and shoulders in the bathroom. Even her eyes were brighter than ever under the influence of some ointment. Her hand began once more to explore Laming. To his surprise, he roused up immediately, and was bemused no more. It might have been the brief and partial breaking in of daily life that had half stupefied him. He tied Ellen's sash tighter than ever with the strength that is supposedly male; so that her bright eyes clouded like pools.

Hours later once more; it was not merely dark but black as blindfold, and they were both lying on the floor, relis.h.i.+ng its hardness through the carpet, which stretched from wall to wall, though that was but a short way, however one measured it. Ellen's body was hard too, now that there was resistance. Their legs tangled like rubbery plants. She showed him things that can only be done in the dark, however clumsily, things he would never be able quite to evade or reject.

Laming felt an agonizing, sciatic pain and writhed upwards, though Ellen's arms were still around his waist.

He saw that from what must have been the ceiling, or at least very near the ceiling, a pair of pale eyes were looking expressionlessly down on him, on the two of them. He could even see some hint of the bone structure surrounding the eyes. Then there was another pain, like a gutting knife ripping out his tendon.

He yelled out, from the pain and from the vision. Instantly, Ellen was all softness and tenderness, a minstering angel of the midnight. He clenched his eyes shut, as he had so often done in childhood and at school, however foolish it might seem to do it when all was dark anyway.

Midnight! Or could it be even later? He had no idea what had become of his watch. He only knew that his mother must have started worrying long since. Her dependence on him was complete, so that much of the time he quite forgot about her.

He was lying on his back with Ellen on top of him, embracing him, enveloping him, enchanting him. Her released bosom pressed tenderly down on him, and her mouth rested softly on his chin. In the end, she had reconciled him to reopening his screwed up eyes, which were about the level of her head. He had to give himself a mental jerk in order to perform the operation, but he really knew quite well that the other eyes, or face, would have gone. They never remained for very long.

When they had the light on and were walking about again, he still felt the sciatic stress, very much so. He was positively limping, though Ellen could not have been nicer about it, more sympathetic. It proved not to be midnight at all, let alone later. It was only about quarter to eleven.

"Doesn't your sister want to come home sometimes?"

"Not when we want the flat, silly."

They walked, arm in arm, to Major House station. Even the jazz on the radio had mostly stopped.

"I'm seeing Helen on Wednesday," he remarked idiotically.

"And me on Sat.u.r.day," she responded. "Same time and place. OK?"

There was a kind of pause.

"OK, Laming?"

"OK," said Laming.

She kissed him softly and disappeared down the station steps with complete composure, utter serenity.

It was only just after quarter past when Laming put his key in his mother's front door. Though his mother was pale, she was so glad to see him that it was quite easy to explain that another chap had suggested that he and Laming go to the movies and that the picture had proved much longer than they had thought, and so forth. The film had been about climbing in the High Andes, Laming said, and there were wonderful shots of llamas.

"I thought they were in the Himalayas, Laming."

"These were llamas with two l's, Mumsey dear. As if they were Welsh llamas. They have almond eyes and they spit."

The explanations were practicable because he had in fact seen the film, without having bothered to tell her. It had been shown some weeks ago in the canteen next door to the office, where many of the men found their way for lunch. It was being circulated to such places by some adult educational organization. The oddest things prove in the end to have a use of some kind, Laming reflected. He had often noticed that.

"What's the matter with your leg, Laming?"

"I think I've twisted it somehow."

"Better see Dr. Pokorna on Monday before you go to work."

"It'll be quite well by Monday, I promise, Mumsey."

She still looked doubtful, as well as pale.

"I promise."

What he could never decide about her was whether she really took it for granted that girls were a matter of indifference to him.

"Something wrong with your leg, Laming?"

"I seem to have twisted it, Helen. I've no idea where."

"What have you been doing with yourself since our little party?"

"Same old grind." Really, he could not bring himself to meet her eyes. He did not see how he ever again could meet them, look right into their paleness. What was he to do?

"Not many people here," he said.

"We mustn't let ourselves be affected by numbers. We must behave and react exactly as we should if the theater were packed."

"Yes, of course," said Laming, though he did not know how he was going to do that either.

Furthermore, the curtain simply would not go up. Even though no one new had come in for ten minutes by Laming's watch, the watch that had been lost in the big bed.

"Did you enjoy our party?" asked Helen.

"You know I did, Helen."

"Ellen said she thought you didn't like her."

"Of course I liked her, Helen."

"Don't you think she's very attractive in her own way?"

"I'm sure she is."

"I sometimes feel quite a shadow when I'm with her, even though I may be that much cleverer."

"She doesn't seem to speak very much."

"Ellen's a very nice person, but she happens to be the exact opposite to me in almost every way," explained Helen. "I should adore to change places with her once in a while. Don't you think that would be great fun?"

A man in a dinner jacket had come onto the front of the stage and was reading from a piece of paper, having first a.s.sumed a pair of spectacles, while they watched it. It appeared that one of the company had a sudden attack of gastric flu; time had pa.s.sed while his understudy had been sought for on the telephone; and it had now been decided that someone else's understudy should come on in the proper costume and read the part from the script.

"I thought that understudies were always waiting about in the wings," said Laming.

"I expect there isn't much money with this production," said Helen. "It's a shame about the poor fellow being ill, isn't it?"

"I've never heard of him."

"It might have been his big chance," said Helen, "and now it's gone, because the play might be off before he's better."

"We mustn't think about that," said Laming, following her earlier and more sanguine cue.

How on earth was he to entertain her at the end? After that party? What exactly would she expect? The problem had been worrying him all day. He had become involved with two girls when he could not afford even one, never had been able to and probably never would.

Descending the many steps to ground level, Helen summed up excellently: the rest of the cast had naturally been affected by the zombie in their midst, and it would be unfair to judge the play, as a play, by this single overcast representation. "I adore blank verse, anyway," Helen concluded.

Laming hadn't even realized.

"Especially this new kind," said Helen. "It can be terribly exciting, don't you think?"

Of course she gave no sign of being excited in the least, because she never did.

"Would you like a Welsh rarebit tonight, Helen? By way of a little change?"

"Oh, no, I can't eat things like cheese. Our usual cup of coffee is absolutely all I need. Besides, it makes a kind of tradition for us, don't you think?"

At the end, she suggested that next time they go to Reunion in Vienna, with the Lunts.

He really could not suggest that there might be difficulty in finding a free evening, and he doubted whether she could suggest it either, even in quite other circ.u.mstances.

"The Lunts are very popular," he pointed out. "We might not get. in."

"Let's try. If we fail, we can always go to something else. We shall be in the middle of Theaterland. What about a week from today?"

"Could we make it Thursday?"

They agreed to meet in the queue that time.

They still shook hands each time they parted, though, by now, only in a token way. Advance in intimacy was marked by her omission to remove her glove for such a trifling, though symbolic, contact.

"You tie me up nicely and then you can do what you like with me. Afterwards, I'll tie you up and do things with you." Tot Ellen it was a quite long speech, the longest, he thought, he had ever heard her make. They had already been in the flatlet a good couple of hours.

It had become much warmer, as befitted the later part of May, and she had been wearing a short-sleeved blouse, instead of a sweater; a beach skirt instead of the fawn one. The blouse was in narrow honey and petunia stripes, with a still narrower white stripe at intervals. Ellen had left most of the b.u.t.tons unfastened. The retired railwaymen, some without their jackets, had just stared and then began talking with self-conscious absorption, to their fellow workers, willing her to go, to be burnt up, while they diverted attention. Ellen was also wearing little-girl knee socks. Laming was desiring her far past the point of embarra.s.sment all the way to the flatlet.

He could not even touch her, let alone take her half-bare arm.

But when, at that later point, he acted upon her suggestion, he had to admit to himself that he lost initiative: he did not really know what he could do, what would be far enough out of the ordinary to please her. And when he appealed to her for suggestions, she began to display that all too familiar female amalgam of mockery and fury.

It was when he struck out at her with the first thing that came to hand that he saw Helen standing in the window with her back to the room. She too wore a lighter dress, one that Laming had not seen before; cornflower-colored. Previously, he had himself had the window behind him, or at his feet, but of course she could not have been there or she would have cast a shadow, and right across Ellen's body. Or was that true of whatever was in the room with him and Ellen?

The figure in the window was all too manifestly sunk in trouble and despair. One could almost hear the sobs and see the bitter tears falling on the new dress. Even the hair was obviously disordered across the face.

Laming threw away the object he had s.n.a.t.c.hed up, totally unromatic and unsuitable in any case.

"What's the matter now?" inquired Ellen.

"Look!" This time Laming actually pointed a shaking finger. "Look!" he cried again.

"What at?"

On the previous occasions he was unsure whether or not Ellen had seen what he saw. He also realized quite well, then and now, that it would probably remain uncertain, no matter what she said or did.

"Look at me instead," said Ellen quietly. "Do something nice to me, Laming!"

He looked back at the window, but of course the two of them were once more along, or seemingly so.

"Oh, my G.o.d," cried Laming.

"Do something nice to me, Laming," said Ellen again. "Please, Laming."

She was becoming ever more talkative, it would seem; and he had realized that there were things one could do, which involved talk, very much so. The popular ant.i.thesis between talk and action is frequently false, but in no case more so than after meeting a girl in the American Garden.

Laming liked Reunion in Vienna better than any other play he could remember. He could identify almost completely with the archduke in white tunic and scarlet trousers, for whom Haydn's stirring anthem was played whenever he appeared, and for whom ladies wore lovely evening dresses almost all the time. There was sadness in it too, though; if there was no hope at all of ever living like that (because nowadays no one did), what point was there to living at all? Laming was so carried away by the finale to Act One that he momentarily forgot all about Helen, and when the intermission came, he could think of nothing to say to her. She might perhaps like the play, at least up to a point; but it could not conceivably mean as much to her as it meant to him.

What Helen proved really to like was Lynne Fontanne. "I should adore to look as elegant as that," she said.

"You often do," responded Laming, though it cost him an effort, and she actually took his hand for a moment as they sat there.

How strange life is! Laming reflected. If he had somehow been richer, he could obviously have been a Lothario. As things were, Helen's hand frightened him. Also she was wearing the cornflower dress he had first seen the previous Sat.u.r.day in the flatlet.

"I love coming here with you," she said later, when they were in the cafe. "It's an adventure for me." If only she could have looked more adventurous! Laming supposed it was that which was wrong.

Moreover, the three girls who served in the place, all obtrusively married, had long ago come to recognize Helen and Laming when they entered and to take them more and more for granted. Helen quite probably liked that, but Laming did not. Also they solicited with increasing cheekiness for more substantial orders than single cups of coffee. Laming was perfectly well aware that the three girls were laughing at him every minute he was in the place and probably for much of the rest of their time together too.

"What about Careless Rapture next week?"

"We shall never get in to that."

"The gallery's enormous."

He had not known, because he had never entered the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane.

Again they agreed to meet in the queue. That evening, Helen had continued to insist upon paying for herself, most honorably.

"I adore Ivor Novello's way of speaking," said Helen. "It gives me the s.h.i.+vers."

"Isn't he-?"