Friends and Lovers (27 page)

The strangled voice said suddenly, “Mary Lorrimer and I were very good friends. We still are. I think I shall write her soon.” Really, one owed it to one’s friends to watch their daughters as carefully as one’s own.

“Where’s Carol tonight?” Edward Fane asked unexpectedly.

“Out. With Eleanor.”

There was a mild grunt for answer, and then silence.

Mattie Fane listened to her husband’s heavy breathing, and began to compose the letter to Mary Lorrimer.

“We were quite delighted to see Penelope. How she has changed amusing how quickly girls adopt London clothes and mannerisms! By the way, you never mentioned the young man at Oxford. Or were you keeping it as a surprise? Do write and tell me about him and his family. How excited you must be! I heard that he was very political, practically a Communist, but I am sure that was only gossip, for I know you and Charles are such strict Conservatives.”

Yes, she thought drowsily, I must bring that in. Perhaps not quite so crudely. And then I can give her news about Carol, about the wonderful success she has been having since she was presented last year. Perhaps just a hint about George Fenton-Stevens. Perhaps. After all, Carol would probably be engaged and married long before Penelope Lorrimer. After all

.

At that point the sleeping tablets justified the money paid for them, and Mrs. Fane’s worries were tucked up for the night.

Penny, as she climbed the darkened staircase to her room that night, remembered that she had never had time, after all, to explain to David about the Fane party. But it had become less important in face of all the news that David had brought with him.

She was still slightly dazed by it: for months she had accustomed herself to having no definite idea of the future, and then suddenly, tonight everything had begun to take a definite shape. Not that everything was settled, as David had been very careful to point out.

No job was settled, until he had taken his Finals and had produced a good First. But everything was as settled as it could be at this stage: it was certainly more settled than it had been last week.

Penny began to hum, and then stopped short and smiled as an angry voice called, “Shut up, there!” from one of the rooms which was already in complete darkness. That was some one who had had a very dull Saturday night.

Penny removed her black dress carefully, noticed the creased skirt, and was reminded of her mother, who hated cheap clothes because they wore so badly.

Well, she thought resignedly, she would just have to reach the ironing-board on Monday before Neri installed herself there. She pulled on a woollen sweater and tweed skirt, and over that went her flannel dressing-gown, for it was miserably cold in these upstairs rooms at night. She placed the small electric fire as near her ankles as was safely possible, sat down at the brown wood table, adjusted a wad of paper under its short leg so that it would stop rocking as she wrote.

Marston and Bennett, returning from the dance at College, saw the light under Penny’s door.

“Are you visible?” Marston asked, as she came in.

“I’m perfectly decent, if that’s what you mean,” Penny said, and covered the envelope’s address negligently with a piece of blotting-paper.

“Not writing himi’ Bennett said.

“Why we thought you had gone out with him tonight.”

“I was just writing some letters,” Penny said carelessly, avoiding Marston’s eyes; she rose from the desk and rubbed her cold hands.

“I

don’t know how your circulation gets on with these tuppeny electric fires, but I go to bed each night wrapped up like a cocoon.”

“A cardigan wrapped round one’s legs does help sleep,” Bennett said.

At the mention of the word she yawned, twisting her sweetly pretty face into a strange distortion, and ruffled her hair, curling hair with one of her nicely manicured hands.

“I had a marvelous time tonight. A medical from the West Indies danced with me all evening. The most divine tango.” “So I guessed,” Marston said.

“You danced a tango no || matter what the band played.”

“Well, if you really are dancing a good tango …” Bennett shrugged her shoulders. She was thoughtful for a moment. And then she gave one of her small, high-pitched laughs and sat down on the bed.

“You know,” she said, “I’ve often wondered whether a man who dances divinely with you, so that it just seems impossible to make one mistake while you are following him, might not be a good man to marry. That could be a very good test, couldn’t it?

What do you think, Marston?”

“I’m too tired to play guessing games,” Marston said sharply, and caused Bennett’s thin, delicate eyebrows to rise in a half-circle.

“You certainly are becoming an expert on dancing, anyway: this is the fifth night you’ve been out this week. And don’t go to sleep on Lorrimer’s bed. I only came in to ask if she had a good time tonight.”

“You obviously didn’t,” Bennett said. And, contented with the sharp truth of that remark, she stretched herself comfortably on the bed.

“How did you get on, Lorrimer?” she asked curiously.

“I had a marvelous time,” Penny said.

“Well,” Marston said, her voice not troubling to hide its relief, ‘that’s a load off my chest.”

“What is all this about, anyway?” Bennett asked, with sudden interest.

“Look,” Marston said, ‘it is time we all went to bed—our own beds.

Come on, Bennett. No one can be as tired as all that.” “I tire very easily,” Bennett said, with more dignity than her legs showed as they were swung on to the floor.

“You look as fresh as a daisy, Lorrimer. All that porridge, I suppose, and heather and things.” She increased the roll of her r’s. She rather fancied her Scots accent. (When she had first met Penny—or, rather, after she had learned Penny came from Scotland, for at first she had not been altogether sure where Penny did come from—she had giggled and said, “Oh yes … It’s a braw brickt moonlickt nickt the nickt.” And she had looked so pleased with herself that Penny, in spite of her amazement—for what would Bennett have said if Penny had given an imitation of her idea of a Lancashire comedian just because Bennett came from some place near Manchester? —had found her annoyance tinged with amusement. ) But tonight nothing could irritate Penny. She said, “I feel like some one who can afford to refuse a thousand a year.” “Hyperbole Lorrimer,” Bennett said, with a laugh.

“Either that or it’s the First Stage … Tomorrow, you will be scattering rue and rosemary from a little basket, and we’ll have to watch all ponds.”

Her arms began to make the appropriate motions.

Marston said, “See you tomorrow, Lorrimer.” She looked pleased, knowing now that the evening had indeed been a success. She caught Bennett firmly by the arm.

“Look, will you stop being Ophelia and start imitating Lady MacBeth along that corridor?” The door closed, and the house was silent again.

It was midnight now, and Gower Street was deserted. It seemed a dead street in a dead town. Yet, only a few hundred yards away, was a bright, noisy thoroughfare; in the centre of the city the lights and bright signs turned the night into an electric day; people in thousands, there, were walking slowly in the tightly jammed throngs.

Penny turned away from the window, and began to pour cold water from the jug into the washbasin on its hideous stand behind the faded cotton screen. The deep silence from the house all around her seemed to increase: each small noise in her room—the clatter of her toothbrush on the marble top of the wash-stand, the sound of the water as her hands dipped into the basin, the rattle of the soap-dish as its top slipped— was magnified into strange disproportion.

She realized suddenly what frightened her about this house. Too many women.

Too many women, crowded into the drawing-room and library, trying to look as if this were all a normal kind of life, as if they could go on living this way indefinitely. Too many women all shut into lonely little rooms. All pretending to be so gay, so unworried, so intelligent, or so earnest. All pretending that life was quite simple, easily solved either by hard work or by plenty of fun. Now, in the bleak, lonely rooms, the worries were being reviewed, for women always did their worst worrying at night. Strange how normal they could be all evening, and then as soon as a they went to bed they lay and worried. Worries about work | that was delayed and examinations coming soon; worries ; about men and parties and complexions and clothes and figures and families and quarrels and pocket-money over- | drawn; worries about what was going to happen after this | June, or the next June, or whatever June ended this waiting | period of their lives.

That was the main trouble—this waiting, ; this terrifying feeling of uncertainty, all emphasized by the loneliness and the silence of night.

Tomorrow morning the pretences would be back with the bright smile and casual greeting. ; Or perhaps the main trouble. Penny thought, as she un- | dressed with expert speed to escape the coldness of her room, is that we try to be independent creatures, and we are not. We are dependent on others.

And mostly, if we would only be honest enough to admit it, we are dependent on men. They give us the balance that we need. She smiled as she imagined the professional feminist’s retort to such an admission. She laughed as she realized she could no longer be convinced by that retort. Perhaps, she thought, I never really wanted to believe the feminists, and that is why I backslide so easily. Last year she had thought of her future mainly as a career of painting, with her family and friends and some rather attractive men—perhaps even one man in particular (she had always imagined him as some one with fair hair, blue eyes, very perfect features, and a terrific reputation as an athlete and sportsman)—forming an interesting background.

But now she thought about David more than she thought about herself, and that was quite a lot judging herself as an average human being. Now the whole perspective had shifted. It was his career which now worried and excited her. Her own had become identified with his.

“Oh, David,” she suddenly said aloud, and the darkness and silence deepened the emotion in her voice.

She lay thinking about David, about the way he would look at her or speak to her, about all the things he had told her tonight. She laughed softly and hugged herself with happiness. No wonder she had forgotten to tell him about the Fanes’ party. That had been a small incident, a trivial one; she probably would never see or hear from them again. She dismissed them with a long, lazy yawn. She fell asleep thinking of much more important things.

Chapter Twenty.

DAVID IN OXFORD.

Mrs. Pillington’s lodgings, where David had found rooms for his final year, were in a row of grey stone houses, sharp-gabled, small-windowed, in one of those deceptive Oxford lanes which slip away from the street, twist over rounded cobblestones, promise a short-cut to the unsuspecting stranger, and bring him up—just as he is congratulating himself on his astute sense of direction—against high stone walls.

Mrs. Pillington was considered a fairly decent sort by most of the undergraduates who had taken lodgings with her. She was Yorkshire by birth, and she remembered her husband, now that he was dead, with a good deal of pleasure. She had been thoroughly educated in bringing up three outsize sons two in the Navy and one a policeman in London), and a pretty daughter who had now left Oxford, with virtue intact, for a job in Reading Hospital. She provided substantial meals at very little more than what you might expect to pay; the rooms were dusted almost every day; and the College regulations were stretched as far as they would go without actually being broken for those who, she had decided, were ‘nice and agreeable.” Those she disapproved of—well, that was a different story. Mr. Pomfrey, for instance, even if he did have the most expensive room on the first floor, also had a taste for slightly tarnished blondes. So he was kept very strictly to the regulations, and he was reported to the authorities for the least infringement. And Mr. Wichell, on the first floor back, would not have his room next term no matter what he offered to pay: the esoteric tastes he shared with his small group of friends had decided that. But Mr. Fillerton, on the second floor front, was another sort altogether, and so was Mr. Bosworth, on the second floor back, even if they did like parties, loud gramophone records, too many beer-bottles lying about, and a lot of misplaced objects all over the room. Men, she had discovered in the last twenty years, were peculiar: even more peculiar than Mr. Pillington had been. And if no man could be a hero to his landlady, he could at least be classified as normal or undesirable.

To-day was the last day of February, complete with grey sky and a feeling of dampness hanging in the raw air. Mrs. Pillington had gone out into the small back garden to see what damage the heavy rain had done that morning. She was wearing her late husband’s galoshes and a shapeless tweed coat which had once belonged to her youngest son. She was bending over one of the narrow flower-beds, a stiff, square shape figure, quite unconscious that ‘her Mr. Bosworth’ was watching her from his high window. He was waiting for Fenton-Stevens to come to see him. They had meant to walk out to the Rose Revived this afternoon, but the weather had postponed that idea to a day when the view could be enjoyed. They had compromised with beer and a talk in David’s rooms at five o’clock.

David had stopped his work promptly on the hour, added a lump of coal to the fire in the small black grate, and searched for that new number of transition which he had promised to lend Fenton-Stevens.

George always borrowed the books and magazines which he thought he ought to read, and left them lying about his room. ) Then he had walked over to the window and looked over the garden’s high grey wall.

In a few weeks there would be a sprinkling of green over these black skeletons of trees, now dripping so mournfully that the sodden earth underneath was perforated with little holes like a nutmeg-grater. And the stone walls would come to life, with their particles of quartz and mica reflecting the spring sunshine, turning their cold colour to a golden grey.