To the Dark Tower Page 15

  And as though to bear witness to this sad declension, this rejection of la vie bohème, around the four walls of the chintzy little room flapped marine birds by Peter Scott.

  One day, when Miss Plumpton’s help, the adenoidal Clara, had to go to the hospital to have her "dubes seed do", Shirley was lent for the afternoon. It was a slack time at the "House of Martha" (as the tea-room was called, both Mincie and Miss Plumpton being converts to Anglo-Catholicism); and Shirley heard much more of old Chelsea.

  "You know, dear," said Miss Plumpton suddenly, "I do think it’s nice the way you don’t use any make-up. I like a girl to be natural." She sighed: "I only wish the men did." Then seeing Shirley blush she said: "I do hope you didn’t mind my saying that. But I’ve thought for so long that you’d make such a nice wife for some lucky man. You mustn’t worry about having to wait, you know. I’m sure the Prince Charming will come along in the end."

  Shirley turned away in embarrassment to serve two regulars with rock-buns and Indian tea. But when she returned Miss Plumpton said: "I’ve got a nephew whom I very much want you to meet. He’s a medical student at the hospital up the road. I’m sure you’d get on famously."

  "I should like to meet him."

  "Would you? That’s the spirit!" Miss Plumpton swung her gold earrings in pleasure. "He’s coming over this evening. Why don’t you get Mincie to bring you along. After supper," she added hastily in case of misunderstanding.

  "May I?"

  "Of course! I’ll have some tea for you. He’s a dear boy. My god-son."

  "Waitress! I say, waitress!" Someone in sealskin and a wooden necklace was calling for her. She scurried off.

  Mincie brought her knitting in a bag which she had made out of samples from Derry & Toms, and Jo-Jo, the Sealyham, and some soda-mints in case of trouble. Miss Plumpton had changed for the occasion into a black velvet garment which was tied with an embroidered girdle a foot or more below her waist: over it she wore a ‘coatee’ with half-length sleeves, edged with greyish-green fur. Shirley, in her desire to satisfy Miss Plumpton’s preference for ‘natural’ girls, had washed her face in soap and water and then left it. It, like her hands, had a rubbed appearance.

  They were all introduced, they all sat down, and Jo-Jo jumped into Minrie’s lap. Shirley looked at the young man. He was large, and seemed to have been poured into his clothes hot: his shirt gaped open, his trousers were pulled dangerously tight across his buttocks, his collar was creased. His face was pink and benign, until one encountered the glasses, which enlarged his eyes until one seemed to be seeing them in an aquarium. His hair was brushed straight off his forehead: but suddenly it rebelled, just after passing the ears and stuck out in tufts. He was fiddling with a crystal set.

  Miss Plumpton said to Mincie: "Mincie dear, shall I get the tea now? What do you think?"

  And Miss Mincer said: "Just as you like, dear. I really don’t mind."

  So Miss Plumpton went out and rattled Poole pottery next door, and eventually appeared with the tray and the tea. "I think the kettle was boiling," she warned them, optimistically. "I wonder if you’ll like this sort of tea. It’s Yerba Maté. They drink it in Uruguay—or is it Paraguay? At any rate the Culpeper place said it was excellent—and very good for the digestion." She addressed these last words to poor Mincie who had difficulties in that quarter.

  After this, they all sat in silence for a long time, while Miss Plumpton lapped tea noisily, and poor Mincie was noisy in quite another way, and Jo-Jo was fed on brittle flakes off the Chelsea buns, and Shirley stared into the fire, her face becoming more and more red, and the young man inserted a piece of wire into the crystal set and made it twitter, and then said "Damn!"

  Then Miss Plumpton began: "Really, the other day, such a funny thing—"

  But immediately she was silenced by the young man who said: "Sh! Oh, for heaven’s sake! I’d almost got it to work. That was the Midland Regional, that was."

  So again they were silent, while the young man squeezed out for them, as though, from a tube, a thin trickle of sound, a ghost, which Miss Plumpton triumphantly pronounced to be "Yes, we have no Bananas." Other similar melodies followed. Still none of them talked.

  Eventually, Mincie yawned and said, "Jo-Jo wants to go walkie", and they all, except the young man, got up and kissed each other. Miss Plumpton kissed Jo-Jo, and Miss Plumpton kissed Shirley, encouragingly, on the forehead, and Miss Mincer kissed Miss Plumpton, once on either raddled cheek. But the young man never moved.

  "Good-night," they called to each other. "Good-night, dear. So kind of you... Mind the step."

  "Good-night," the young man muttered, pulling ferociously at a knob.

  The next time Shirley saw him was when Miss Plumpton had gone to see her Harley Street specialist. She was always referring to her ‘trouble’; and occasionally, in her less boisterous moments, one would hear her exclaim: "Oh, what it is to be a woman!" Shirley for some treason associated these pronouncements with her visits to the doctor. She never had positive proof.

  When the visits were made Shirley ‘took over’ at "The House of Martha", serving stewed breast, mashed swedes, and apple and junket to a dozen or more customers. After the apple course, the plates were always lined with what looked like toe-nails: Miss Plumpton was too haphazard to core an apple with any success.

  Shirley saw him sitting by himself, by the window, his elbows resting on the glass top of the wicker table. On the mat, which she herself had stencilled, was placed a copy of Pearson’s Weekly. Sometimes he shuddered with what she took to be laughter.

  It was very important to make the right impression. She went into the kitchen and examined her face in the glass. How pale she looked! If only she had some rouge... But hadn’t Miss Plumpton said ...? With both hands she began to pinch her cheeks until they were filled with colour. Then she licked her lips and patted her hair.

  "Hello," she said. "Have you been served?"

  "Oh—hullo," he murmured, without looking up. "Is Miss Plumpton away?"

  "I’m afraid so. She’s seeing her—" She broke off. Was it quite the thing to mention the specialist?

  "Oh, never mind. I’ll have the lunch. It’s on the house, you know. She doesn’t mind."

  "Swedes or spinach?"

  He pulled a face. "Either—both. If they’re hot."

  She scurried off. In the kitchen she piled his plate with the choicest morsels of meat. In two heaps she placed swedes and spinach.

  "Oh—I say!" he remonstrated when she set it before him. "I didn’t really mean both. I couldn’t."

  "Shall I take it away?"

  "No, no. Doesn’t matter now. I’ll leave it to one side." He still read Pearson’s Weekly, jabbing his fork towards his mouth, snatching the raised meat in sudden gulps, then loading once more, in careful tiers. He was a methodical eater, demolishing his plate according to plan. One imagined that he would make a competent surgeon.

  Meantime, in the kitchen, Shirley was picking pips, ‘toenails’, and peel out of his helping of apple. She found a half-empty carton of ‘coffee cream’ and poured that over it. Then she watched him from behind the bead curtain until he was ready.

  Muscles rippled up and down his pink cheeks as he ate. One of his knees was perpetually agitated. A woman tried to sit down in the place opposite him, but he grunted, "That’s taken", and she wandered out. Sweat glistened on his upper lip.

  Shirley took him his pudding, and saw, with satisfaction, that he was able to eat it without surreptitiously having to pick his teeth as the other guests did. Pearson’s was now propped against Miss Plumpton’s ‘daffs’, crushing their heads sideways.

  At last he got up to go. Shirley ran forward, smiling.

  "I hope you liked your lunch."

  "Oh—yes." Crossly he fumbled in his pocket. Something clicked down on the glass-topped table. Then he wound one of those lengthy school scarves round his neck, an affair of three colours
of a particularly dazzling kind, braced his shoulders, and went out.

  Shirley crossed to the table. On it were three half-pennies.

  "I know it will be hung," said Miss Plumpton, as they clambered into a taxi and the canvas was placed across their knees. "I know it will be hung. I feel it." Later, she had the satisfaction of going to the private view ("The last time I came to a private view it was to see a portrait of myself, au naturel, so to speak"): and she was able to stand for a long time before ‘No. 406’, so that everyone would know that she knew the clever girl who had painted it.

  The picture was entitled "Miss Adelaide Mincer", and showed Mincie watering the geraniums in the window-box on the second floor. It was never sold, but returned to "Lucky Finds" and was hung beside a gold-illuminated text: "If you don’t succeed at first..."

  But, unlike her father, Shirley knew already.

  It wouldn’t do, she decided, just as she was dipping her paint-brush into a tumbler of murky water. She left it there and stared into space, her chin cupped in the palms of both hands. A robin leapt on to the window, chirruped and then disappeared; the girl opposite practised her double-stopping with tense shrills of cat-gut; the room shook convulsively as a remover’s van thundered past. But she noticed none of these things. Abstracted, she was thinking.

  I’m only partly living, she thought. That’s the whole trouble. I’m not really alive at all. That morning she had begun by getting their breakfast of thin slices of toast, tea, Cooper’s marmalade; Mincie read the Daily Sketch, and murmured, "Oh, these poor Chinese! Another earthquake!"; then she said, a little crossly: "I do believe you’ve used yesterday’s milk for the tea. It tastes rancid." After breakfast Jo-Jo had to be taken for a walk. "See what sort of duty he does," were Mincie’s instructions. "His tum-tum is rather upset. And don’t let him eat garbage at number sixteen." George Arliss was on at the Gaumont: Mincie and Miss Plumpton liked him: perhaps they could all go to the matinée. Outside the town hall a beggar pulled her sleeve; he had no nose, and was selling bootlaces; really it was most offensive. Then someone, a young man in Oxford bags and a pork-pie hat, poked Jo-Jo with his walking-stick because he was making a mess on the edge of the pavement. Shirley blushed hotly. On the counter at "Lucky Finds" was a box for the R.S.P.C.A. and another for the Anti-Vivisection League.

  When she returned home she set to work on some lampshades. Mincie had a new ‘line’, as she called it. She sent Shirley up to Charing Cross Road to buy second-hand stacks of music; then one threaded them in pleats with pieces of ribbon, and sold them for twelve-and-six each. She did this all morning and part of the afternoon, until Miss Plumpton came round and asked if she would kindly go to Mudie’s for her. Mudie’s had none of the things that she wanted: no, there was such a run on Lady Eleanor Smith’s Red Wagon, but would The Virgin and the Gipsy do instead? Shirley said "Yes", until she discovered that it was by D. H. Lawrence. So she took back Marjorie Bowen, whom Miss Plumpton called ‘reliable’.

  And now she was alone in the studio, painting the single rose that flopped in an old scent bottle. "But I’m only partly living," she repeated. "I’m only partly living." It was not like this in the novels that she read or the films that she saw. There, each incident had its own significance; each incident led on like the rungs of a ladder; there was always a promise of something more exciting; until, at the end, George Arliss was made Duke of Wellington, and Chaplin walked into the sunset, and Marlene said, "Yes. Oh, yes", and was embraced by a sheikh.

  Lacking all wisdom, she thought: Life should be like that too, little realising that so much is greyness, a void, in which we work that we may eat and eat that we may work. The philosopher said, "I feel, therefore I am". It would be a mistake to assume, "I am, therefore I feel", if feeling means more than the ache of hunger, the wish for sleep, the everyday experience of everyday things.

  She began to pace the room in a sudden anguish, clasping and unclasping her hands. I must get away, she thought. Oh, I must begin living. Soon it will be too late. Time passes, and nothing is done. Time passes.

  She walked resolutely down the stairs and gave notice.

  But how was she to begin? If she had had money she would have gone on a cruise, or taken a trip to America, or done something equally adventurous. But all that was now left of the legacy was twenty pounds. Someone else might have ‘blown’ it all in a few weeks of excitement. But Shirley had ancestors who had been peasant proprietors. She must hoard this meagre amount—‘in case’.

  A job. But what? She could go on painting trays for one of the big stores, but would that really be much different? Then she thought of other, more eccentric, possibilities—a shop-girl perhaps. But shop-girls were only paid thirty-shillings a week. She couldn’t live on thirty shillings. So what was left? There seemed to be nothing.

  Suddenly she remembered Mr. Blain. He would probably have ideas. She rang him up, and after much hesitation he arranged that they should meet at the Strand Corner House. Over a marble-topped table she told him about her wish to ‘Live’. "Yes, I see," he interjected slowly. "Yes, I see. Quite so. Quite so."

  "What about a school?" he asked at last.

  "Teaching?"

  "Why not?"

  She clasped his hand as though at some wonderful discovery they had made together, quite oblivious of the shocked way in which he drew back and winked his hairless eyelids. "That’s it!" she exclaimed. "That’s it! Of course!"

  Her enthusiasm should perhaps be explained. She had only spent a term at boarding-school: so that now it seemed a world full of possibilities. To be a school-girl had been one thing: but to be a mistress... Phrases came into her mind—‘intellectual companionship’, ‘good talk’, ‘the cameraderie of the common-room’. But of course. Why hadn’t she thought of it before?

  In her memory were stored imagies, magical symbols. On late summer evenings Miss Mixton and the Maths mistress played clock-golf on the lawn beneath the dormitories. The mistresses had their private jokes and illusions, passed on over the heads of their charges at meals or on the playing-field. The common-room was a place where no girl might go without permission. And after eight o’clock, when for them the day was over, a second lease, a strange life from which they were excluded opened out like a blossom within a blossom. In those days it had always seemed as if the girls were in an anteroom, while next door, in the main chamber, other secret and exciting things went on. The mistresses could join the girls, but no girl could ever cross the threshold into that alien world.

  But now it would be possible. The journey would be made.

  It was not quite as she had expected.

  Her best friend became Miss Tree, who was forty-five and had dry, brittle hair and a dry, brittle voice. Miss Tree taught French and Shirley helped her. She had a little money, which meant that she could wear tailored tweeds and run a two-seater and have a radiogram in her room. She was the only one of them who seemed to have a life wide enough to swallow the school and still leave room for other interests. She lectured to the W.E. A., and sometimes motored in France, and had for the last twenty years been making desultory notes for a book on the Peninsular War. At the school she was feared, disliked, and despised in turn. She was harshly candid, could afford to be independent, and had the reputation of being a highbrow.

  At meals, instead of the witty conversation that Shirley had expected, she had to listen to what funny little Muriel said when asked to decline mensa, and how Miss Cox had dealt with a minx who cribbed off her neighbour. Ceaselessly, they discussed the girls, and the chances in the lacrosse match, and the amount of sweets that should be issued each day after lunch: until, suddenly, one of them would remember that outside the gates was a roar of traffic, and people, and another, less comfortable, world. Then: "What’s the news to-day?" or, "I suppose Dorothy Round is certain for the finals?" would suddenly cut across order marks and inferiority complexes.

  Only Miss Tree kept aloof, crumbling bread between bl
oodless fingers as she gazed sardonically from High Table on to the chattering multitude below them. She had thin legs encased in ribbed stockings and rouged her cheeks unnecessarily. She tended to asthma.

  She and Shirley became friends because their work brought them so much together. At first her dry, almost contemptuous, manner wounded. But in her rooms were French books that could be borrowed, records of Josephine Baker, and a cupboard of drinks. Without many words she smoothed difficulties, so that a time-table which hadn’t worked suddenly came to rights, and the horrible Ida was removed to another form, and there were cakes and coffee after tenuous suppers.

  She encouraged Shirley to sit in her room, but always contrived to exclaim harshly, "Oh, please don’t ruck up that chair-cover," or, "Really, your nails! Do you never clean them?" Sometimes she came up to Shirley’s room at night to borrow an aspirin or to say that she couldn’t sleep. She never slept well.

  She was a Socialist, who said in a crowd: "The smell of these people! It really is disgusting," or, "I hate human beings. In the mass they make me homicidal." She visited the local prison, but never talked of what happened there. Strangely the girls liked her.

  One morning she lent Shirley a fountain-pen in the common-room to correct exam papers with. It was an expensive pen, massive, with a broad gold nib. "I don’t mind your using it," she said, “provided you don’t press hard. But for heaven’s sake don’t let anyone else touch it."

  Later, after she had gone to read Lettres de mon Moulin with the Upper Fifth, Miss Humber came in. She was a girl of about twenty-five who taught science from behind thick glasses. The headmistress had once said, out of her hearing, that her figure was all over the place. She had worked hard from elementary to secondary school, and from secondary school to provincial university. Invariably in the summer her nose peeled and she took to going about in sandals, without socks or stockings. She was very keen to be a success, to be liked.