Friends and Lovers (43 page)

Strange how we adapt ourselves quickly, she thought. Last May my whole life was cent red round Edinburgh. Now it is here. And things which I hadn’t even dreamed of then are opening up before me. She thought of her first ambitions, and found she was smiling at herself.

It was such an obvious reaction to want to live on the Continent in romantic places and become a great painter. Instead there was that folder growing richer with designs, more carefully worked over than when Marston had seen them. And there was this room, at last completed and ready for her visitors this week (Lillian Marston and Bunny were to be the first—they were coming this afternoon), which had given her a very practical lesson in her new career. For now it was more than a job of work which gave her economic freedom; now it was the beginning of a career. Bunny Eastman would decide that to-day. Or would he? If he didn’t like her ideas, then some one else might some day.

Penny, arranging sherry glasses and decanter on the birch tray, paused to admire the natural grain of the wood and its silver blond colouring.

She was laughing at herself again: last May she would never have had the thought that an idea can go on to live after others reject it. Last May she would have accepted Bunny’s refusal or his scorn. Now she would question it and act on the answer she would find. Still, she was nervous: rejections were always depressing, even if you didn’t accept them as the final verdicts.

She tried the tray in two different places, decided it looked best in a third. She arranged the deep yellow roses on the mantelpiece for the fourth time. She gave a last practical look around the room. I love it, she thought happily. She danced across the room, sang five high notes of no song in particular, and ended with a full circle swing on one foot. Happy, happy, Penelope, she thought, and danced for an imaginary David. He is coming on Friday, on Friday, she sang.

And then she heard footsteps on the stairs. She stood breathless, collecting her delightfully scattered wits, and then she dashed to the cupboard, catching a glimpse of her face in the mirror before she closed its door once more. Yes, it is he who brings the stars to your eyes, she thought.

When Marston knocked and called a casually cheerful greeting Penny was seemingly calm again. She opened the door, concealing, with some difficulty, her pride in ownership. Even Marston, although she had hardly expected Penny to be placarded with

“All My Own Work,” was surprised at the perfect offhand welcome. And then, as she entered the room somewhat dubiously with Ernest Boniface Eastman, she was still more surprised.

“Well!” she said, and both eyebrows went up.

She had taken care to tell Bunny before they reached Fitzroy Square that really Lorrimer must have been quite mad to choose such an impossible flat, and she had described it accurately as she had first seen it. Her eyes met Penny’s, and there was an amused glint in them.

If the strategy was good, the tactics were superb. Penny talked of everything and anything except the room. Bunny, his long legs curled round each other, his thin, greyhound body slouching half sideways in the armchair—now covered in dark green linen to pick up the leaf colour in the curtains —rested one hand against a slightly drooping head and balanced a glass of surprisingly good sherry in the other.

This was his favourite attitude when he was charmed—‘the wilting-rose position’ Penny called it. Suddenly, as he finished his fourth glass of Bristol Cream, he could bear this no longer. He leaped up. He leaned an elbow on the mantelpiece, and stood there for a moment. No detail in the room escaped him. Probably cost next to nothing, probably no more than a hundred quid all told. Still, most people would not guess that: it took the professional eye to add up the cost.

“I do like this; I really do,” he began.

Marston bent her head to search for matches in her handbag. Now we’re off, she thought. She lit a cigarette, and looked at Penny with increasing respect. If only she doesn’t become too serious, Marston hoped. But Penny was suiting herself admirably to Bunny’s tempo.

“Moderate Modern’ was explained, lightly, gaily, practically, and she even avoided arousing Bunny’s petulance. But he was, as Marston had predicted, extremely wary.

“Amusing,” he was saying, ‘yes, an amusing idea. But, my dear, I simply haven’t the time. Or the energy. Life is crushing enough as it is. Imagine sweating over designs and colours at five shillings a yard, when the amount of creative energy put into them should bring eighteen-and-six at least.”

Penny looked at her curtains pointedly.

“One-and-nine-pence a yard,” she admitted frankly, and then smiled with all her charm.

“But you wouldn’t be spending your energy on designs for this idea. That would be a shocking waste of your time.” She cleared her throat, and kept her eyes determinedly turned away from Marston.

“No, Bunny, the good cheap materials are all there, ready for sale, just waiting to be picked out from the bad cheap materials. All one has to do is to think of using them differently. These curtains of mine are made of material which was sold for dresses, which would have been hideous; but it is all right for curtains. Of course, the whole room was done on practically nothing. You would see that at once.”

Bunny acknowledged that fact modestly.

“Thirty-one pounds,” Penny said, ‘and that includes pots and pans and things.

Thirty-one pounds two-and nine pence to be exactly exact.”

Bunny’s usual quick phrase was somewhat slow in coming. Then he said, with a bright smile, “Yes, that was more or less what I guessed.” He looked round the room once more. “Amusing, really.”

The visit ended with Bunny still resisting slightly, but obviously attracted to the idea. It would take three or four weeks before Penny would learn whether it had been successfully presented to him or not. And then, if he did accept the idea and financed a new branch of his firm, with quite a new name, to cater for people who had more taste than excess money. Penny would probably have to fight in her own way to keep the idea as she had imagined it.

“So far so good,” said Lillian Marston, after Bunny had left with protestations of regret at having to simply tear himself away.

“He never makes a song and dance out of his goodbyes unless he feels rather good about something. I think you hooked him, sinker and all.

But why didn’t you show him the folder?”

Penny, busy clearing the overflowing ashtrays, straightening the cushions where Bunny had slumped all over them, poured another glass of sherry for Marston.

“Here, you deserve this,” she said, bringing over the glass to Marston.

“The folder— frankly, I thought he had as much as he could swallow at one time.”

Marston regarded her curiously.

“You know, you get on surprisingly well with him. Do you really like him?”

“As much as he likes me. Which is limited, of course, for he is a limited kind of man. I suppose we do get on quite well together. You see, he isn’t afraid of me.”

“Is he afraid of me?” Marston asked.

“Terribly,” Penny said, with a wide smile.

“You make me sound like a predatory female,” Marston said lightly, and rose to go. She thought she was changing the subject when she asked, “When is your David coming to see all this?” She waved a graceful hand around the room.

“This weekend,” Penny said, and then regretted her frankness for no thinkable reason at all.

“My grandfather is arriving tomorrow,” she added quickly.

“And Bunny has given me the afternoon off. Isn’t that marvelous?” “Amazing,” Marston said.

“And your grandfather is coming all the way from his island?”

“Well, he is really going to visit Oxford. He and Walter Chaundler are thinking of collaborating on another book, you know. But, of course, he is spending a day or two in London to see me.”

“An emissary from the family? An advance scout, as it ” Quite possibly.”

Marston caught some of the anxiety which lay behind the brief answer.

“Oh … Well, he is bound to see that you are happy here.” Happy.

There was that word again, blast it. It had slipped out as usual. She went on quickly, concentrating on the room, “Now I begin to see how you must have hated Baker House. I really wouldn’t mind having a place like this myself. Bunny was very acute when he said that you had given it some of your charm.”

She was relieved to see Penny’s smile come back. She glanced at her watch.

“Late again,” she said cheerfully.

“I am meeting Chris for dinner.” And then, with comic emphasis on dark omen, “We are going to Have It Out tonight.”

But later, in the street, she felt a touch of irritation. Why did she always have to bring in the word “happy” when she was talking to Penelope Lorrimer?

Of course she didn’t want a room like that, or a life like that. Then why say it? Poor old Penny, she thought, and felt better. Poor old Penny, she had to be cheered up some way: she had undertaken far too much. My role, Lillian Marston thought, will become more and more depressing: Lord, how awful to have condemned myself to a future of acting the sympathetic aunt.

God, I couldn’t bear it. When David and Penny break up I’ll disappear on a holiday to the Continent or something. I couldn’t bear it.

Chapter Thirty-three.

HAMPTON COURT REVISITED.

The first greeting was affectionate, but restrained. They both said, much too politely, how well each was looking, and how were they? Dr. MacLntyre then walked about the room, pretending he was stiff after so much sitting in a train. Without any comment he noticed Penelope’s drawing-board with a half-finished design tacked to it, her bookcase with its well-filled shelves, the reproductions of Utrillo and Rousseau on the walls, and David’s photograph on the table beside her work. She was nervous, he realized, as he turned away from the photograph, and that too depressed him. He did not like London, he hated nowadays the fuss of travelling, and he had left his last two chapters in very bad shape on his desk in the study as Inchnamurren.

For weeks now his daughter’s worried letters had invaded the peace of his island. And, if only to stop their dirge, he had visited Edinburgh. There, in spite of a lot of discussion (once Moira and Betty were out of the room), he was still no nearer to understanding the problem of his favourite granddaughter. T shall go and see Penelope,” he told Mary and her husband finally.

“And that is what you both ought to have done weeks ago.”

But now, watching his granddaughter, he suddenly realized why Mary had been so worried over her. It was not, as he had been told in Edinburgh so repeatedly, that Penelope needed advice and help, that she was living in great unhappiness, carefully disguised in her letters out of pride and pigheadedness. But, rather, it was only that Mary had begun to realize that Penelope was now in no need of advice or help, that the child-parent relationship had been broken, and would never be resumed. He was beginning to wish he had never attempted the journey at all. I am a curious interferer, he thought: that is how I must seem, and that is how I feel.

He sat down in the green armchair and elbowed a yellow cushion out of his way.

“H’m,” he said, in some surprise, ‘comfortable!” That was his only remark about the room.

Penelope sat down on the floor, as she always used to do when she came to see him in his study. There she was, wearing a neat black suit instead of a sweater and skirt, looking thinner, paler, but somehow prettier. Pretty?

Stupid word. She was reaching beauty. And no woman ever looked beautiful unless she had some inner happiness. Beauty was not a surface quality. He studied her covertly. She was not so anxious now. There was even a hint of amusement in the deep blue eyes watching him so steadily. As if they were saying, “This is a joke which you and I are sharing, without even needing to tell it.” The little monkey, he thought with affection anrl pride, and smiled openly.

“Well,” he said, looked round the pleasant room, looked back at Penny, and then drew his pipe out of his pocket and stretched the legs comfortably.

Penny relaxed too.

“This is wonderful,” she said, her eyes sparkling with delight. “How glad I am to see you!” She rose, hugged him, and then sat down once more in front of him, her legs sideways, her right arm supporting the weight of her body, her left hand clasping her ankles. She wore a plain signet ring on its third finger. She began to talk, answering his questions, plunging with all her old enthusiasm and frankness into the details of her new life—her work, her friends, her interests, what she had seen and done since she came to London, the Slade, Baker House, this room, the new ideas which her job had stimulated. Her grandfather listened critically, but he was surprised in spite of himself. He was glad now that he had made this journey to London.

She had not thrown away her chances, as Mary and Charles insisted. She was developing new ones, through new influences, that was all.

He purposely kept off the subject of David. It was embarrassing, anyway, to think that the girl, still so much the Penny he had known at Inchnamurren, had become a woman. It is always a shock to older people, even to the most sympathetic, to realize that the children they have loved are now capable of a quite different kind of love.

But the subject of David did crop up, and afterwards Dr. MacLntyre was inclined to consider it had been no accident.

Penny had been talking about painting, and about the present dominance of the French schools. She was beginning to believe that to repeat their techniques, to try to paint in their manner, might produce an adept canvas, but at best it was only being an echo.

“If there is anything of real value in a painter,” she was saying, ‘he has got to find his own expression. He should learn from others, but he shouldn’t become an echo, or a part of a fashion. That is true of poetry too.

Perhaps that is what is wrong with so many young poets today. They must be in the fashion, even if it kills their own natural inspiration. It is the thing to-day to write uglily, they seem to persuade themselves. So let us have no more beauty. That would date us: we’d be called Georgians or something equally damning. As if beauty could ever be outdated.” “Poets reflect the times,” her grandfather said. The world is ugly and harsh to-day.” He was listening with concealed amusement, a touch of pride, and much pleasure. Where had she picked up that idea, he wondered.