The Gate of Angels (12 page)

‘Is that true?'

‘No, Sweedon can't write anything. He can't hardly write his own pawn-tickets. I wrote it—had style, didn't it? Where's your box?'

‘It's in the Left Luggage. If Dr Sage gives me a berth, I shall tell the railway to send it on. Stand out of my way now, Kelly, my train's going in five minutes.'

‘Women always think the train's going in five minutes. Trains start according to the time-table.'

Daisy looked him up and down.

He added, not at all as if he had never said it before, ‘I know a hotel in Cambridge, quite near the station.'

‘Where they don't ask questions, and if they did, they'd ask me, “What can you be thinking of coming here with that little runt?”'

Kelly looked stung. Then he recovered and said: ‘It'll be your first time, won't it?'—Daisy said, ‘I suppose when I came to the office like that you thought I looked easy.'—Kelly said,
‘I thought you were in an awkward fix. I wasn't surprised that a hospital nurse should be after the patients. What else do they go into it for? But I thought you must be more than ordinary fond of men if you was going to risk losing your job on account of this James Elder.'—‘I didn't mean to lose it,' said Daisy. ‘I love nursing.'—‘You need a man, though,' said Kelly. ‘I mean a man of some kind. That's what I am, dearie, a man of some kind. I'll look after you, Daisy Saunders. I won't marry you, that's not my style, apart from being married already, but I'll look after you, I give you my dicky-bird.'—‘You mean you'll pay for one night at a hotel that don't ask no questions,' said Daisy, whose eyes were full of tears.

‘Two nights, Daisy, three nights. You want to get used to it. What else can you do? I can't see there's anyone else wants you. I want you, though, Daisy Saunders. It's nothing. You just want to take a couple of whiskies.'

‘I don't drink,' said Daisy.

‘Is that true?'

‘No,' Daisy answered. ‘I never had a whisky, though.'

She felt pity for them both.

‘You'd better come, I suppose,' she said. ‘I don't expect you know Cambridge any better than I do, but I don't see as I can stop you.'

He put his arm round her waist, fingering her. What a pair we make, she thought. He doesn't deserve any better, no more do I.

 

 

 

 

14

Fred put the two sheets of writing paper with a small collection of other unposted beginnings of letters to Dear Miss Saunders which he couldn't bring himself to throw away from a conviction—something stronger, anyway, than a superstition—that was quite at odds with his rational self. This conviction was that if he destroyed his earlier efforts he would destroy, at the same time, his chance of finishing one at all. Yet the contents of the letters were already decided. He could have finished the first one, he could have finished any of them at any time. After seeing Daisy at close quarters for let us say half an hour—though perhaps with not very clear vision—and having, he thought, addressed nine remarks to her and had eight answers—those he could still repeat word for word—he knew that he must marry her. There was, from that point of view, nothing more to say.

It must be spoken about as soon as possible to Professor Flowerdew. The Professor hadn't expressed any sympathy or indeed made any comment about Fred's accident, because he had never heard anything about it. He had been in Vienna, and had missed the first few days of term. He knew nothing of his young assistant's fall. He was, however, in a state of distress. This, Fred knew, had been caused by the growing invasion of physics by the pernicious notion of mass. The conservation of mass, it seemed, was to be taken as a principle, along with the constancy of matter. But Flowerdew didn't believe that mass was indestructible, or matter either, and
where, he asked, was mass anyway? A crude notion of substance was slipping (or being slipped) unnoticed into science, proving itself constantly insufficient, and always under the necessity of being reduced to smaller and smaller particles. And once again the professor urged upon Fred that to base one's calculations on unobservables—such as God, such as the soul, such as the atom, such as the elementary particle—was nothing more than a comforting weakness. ‘I don't deny that all human beings need comfort. But scientists should not indulge themselves on quite this scale.'

At the same time Flowerdew reproached himself because his assistant had not yet started upon his own programme of research, or even settled what it was to be. It was scarcely the moment, then, for Fred to tell him that it would be necessary, for reasons which were at the same time physical and spiritual, for him to resign his appointment at Angels.

I cannot live without Daisy, Fred thought. There is no God, no spiritual authority, no design, there are no causes and no effects—there is no purpose in the universe, but if there were, it could be shown that there was an intention, throughout recorded and unrecorded time, to give me Daisy.

 

A week later (the week during which he had debated at the Disobligers' Society), the porter told Fred that a Mr Wrayburn was in the house and wanted to see him. Fred found Wrayburn in the normal costume of a scholar off duty—tweed knickerbockers and a stiff collar—but agitated, and trembling a little. The work which he did for Dr Matthews—providing occasional notes on the notes on the supplementary and possibly forged manuscripts of the apocalyptic gospels—must, of course, be taxing.

‘It's a somewhat delicate matter, Fairly.'

Wrayburn seemed to want to go neither in nor out, so, as there was no-one for the moment in the court, the two of them began to walk round the walnut tree.

‘Well, perhaps “delicate” is not the right word,' said Wrayburn. ‘I'm hardly a judge of whether it's delicate or not.'

He fell silent, so Fred said, ‘Is it to do with Dr Matthews?'

Immediately, like a slot-machine, Wrayburn wheezed and clattered into a stream of words. ‘It has nothing whatever to do with Dr Matthews, and even if I felt tempted to do so, you can hardly imagine that I should confide in someone so much younger than myself, a mere acquaintance, and a man who knows nothing, and less than nothing, about palaeography. I do, however, want to say that because of the minute nature of my work, necessitating long stretches of concentration, I am perhaps more easily surprised, and more easily upset, than most people. I'm not talking, Fairly, about your accident often days ago. But yes, I admit, this has been a surprise to me.'

‘What has?' asked Fred. ‘What's happened?'

‘I don't say that it was impossibly late, I suppose it may have been about a quarter or twenty past nine. She was the only person I ever remember arriving at our house on a laundry-van. It appears that she asked for a lift at the station. But then, there had been no suggestion of her coming back at all.'

‘Has Miss Saunders come back?' Fred asked, his heart dilated and closed as though what he felt was fear.

‘Yes, I thought I made that clear.'

‘You didn't make it clear, you cretin. Why didn't you tell me at once?'

‘Fairly, are you out of your senses?'

Fred recollected himself. ‘Was I speaking loudly?'

‘Yes, very.'

‘Perhaps you could tell me what Miss Saunders said.'

‘Your voice was threatening, Fairly.'

‘Perhaps you could tell me what she said, and what she's doing here. She must have asked for me, as you very kindly took the trouble to come round to the college.'

‘Not at all, she hasn't asked for you at all. Venetia, too, thought that you ought not to be approached over the matter. But I exercised my own judgement. I don't want any further
burden of housekeeping on her shoulders. Ever since we moved out of Cambridge there have been difficulties over domestic staff, though speaking for myself I don't see that you could find an easier household to work for. All I require—'

‘Is Daisy staying in your house? Is she at Guestingley Road? For God's sake, Wrayburn, if you can't tell me anything else, tell me that.'

Wrayburn said coldly that he believed his wife had accommodated Miss Saunders in one of the attics. ‘You can't expect me to occupy myself with such matters.'

‘I don't expect it. You came here because you didn't want your wife to have to be responsible for her. Of course you didn't. Of course she mustn't be. But for God's sake have the sense not to let Daisy slip. Don't let her get back to London again. Lock the doors. Talk to her quietly and seriously. Knock her on the head, give her a sleeping draught.'

‘You're distraught, Fairly. You gave me to understand that you had no connection with this young woman.'

They could not expect to walk much longer by themselves round the great walnut tree. The Treasurer, side by side with the Master, was coming out from the next door. Supporting himself on the Treasurer's arm, the Master with an agile movement, stretched down to put first one palm, then the back of his hand on the grass.

‘It will rain on Wednesday,' he said. ‘Who was it wanted to know?'

During the reverse process the Master, never losing his dignity, gently raised himself back to the upright. Fred followed Wrayburn out and caught up with him bicycling north-westward. ‘I haven't any connection with her,' he called out. ‘Can't you see that's the trouble?'

 

In fact there was no mystery about Daisy's movements. Mystery is a luxury and would have been quite beyond her means. She had come back to Cambridge because she could
not think of anyone who was likely to take her on, except Dr Sage. To be more accurate, she did not know anyone who had a private hospital except Dr Sage. She had come to the Wrayburns because she had nowhere else to go. She said nothing about where she had been during the intervening days. With the fare back from London, and a shilling to the driver of the laundry van, she had come to the end of her money, but she did not intend to ask for something for nothing.

When Mrs Wrayburn took her up to the attic she saw at once that these were supposed to be the servants' rooms and that there were no servants sleeping in them. Here she was in the room where she had been put to bed with Fred Fairly. She undressed, hung up her skirt, and washed under the cold-water tap on the landing. The basin was surrounded with sage-green tiles, representing the story of Pélleas and Mélisande. From the attic, if she leaned out, she could just see the lighted windows of the farm from which the cart had come, and the road with a few moving lights going along it, sometimes the bright acetylene headlamps of a motor-car.

In the morning she came downstairs and found Mrs Wrayburn in a distracted condition. ‘Daisy—may one call you that?—
I
must tell you that I've decided recently that as a matter of principle we should live more simply. Fruit, vegetables, a minimum of tea or coffee, since science has proved these to be noxious. Now, as to main dishes, this is a tin which I bought at the new Eustace Miles Emporium in King's Parade. You can read about it on the label, it's all printed there and it's worth knowing for its own sake, particularly if—well, as you can see, this tin contains Health Plasmon, which may be combined with a variety of substances to make nourishing dishes without the necessity of cooking them.'

‘It looks like cornflour to me,' said Daisy.

‘I think one might get used to it,' said Mrs Wrayburn, trying for a decisive tone. ‘I believe in the power of the mind over the body. Yes, I do believe in that. One can get used to anything. Even men can get used to anything.'

‘I hope you won't mind if I say this, Mrs Wrayburn,' said Daisy, ‘but I don't think your husband's ever going to get used to this stuff, particularly if he has to have it raw. And it's a big house you've got here, with a lot of work needed, and there doesn't seem to be anyone living in.'

‘Ah, the empty bedrooms!' said Mrs Wrayburn. ‘They should be full of smiling faces and strong, willing hands.'

‘You live a bit too far out, I think, Mrs Wrayburn. I shouldn't think you'd get a girl to stay, and if she did there's nowhere to go in the evening except that farm.'

‘No, they don't stay for long,' said Mrs Wrayburn. ‘No, not for long.' She added, as though one thing followed from the other. ‘I studied for four years at Newnham. I was the Organising Secretary of the debating society. I was both the Treasurer and the Organising Secretary of the Women's Social and Political Union.'

She looked at the sink, loaded down with all that was necessary when a husband had his daily meals in the house. Like most of her friends, she had prayed not to marry a clergyman, a general practitioner, or a university lecturer without a fellowship. All these (unlike the Army or the Bar) were professions that meant luncheon at home, so that every day (in addition to cups, plates and dishes) demanded toast-racks, egg-cups, egg-cosies, hot water jugs, hot milk strainers, tea-strainers, coffee-strainers, bone egg-spoons, sugar-tongs, mustard-pots manufactured of blue glass inside, metal outside, silver fruit knives (as steel in contact with fruit-juice was known to be poisonous), napkins with differently coloured rings for each person at table, vegetable dishes with handles in the shape of artichokes, gravy boats, dishcovers, fish-forks with which it was difficult to eat fish (but fish-knives were only for vulgarians), muffin-dishes which had to be filled with boiling water to keep the muffins at their correct temperature, soup-plates into which the soup was poured from an earthenware container with a lid, cut-glass blancmange dishes, knife-rests for knives, fork-rests for forks, cheese dishes with
lids the shape of a piece of cheese, compotiers, ramekins, pipkins, cruets, pots. All of these were not too much (on a clean cloth, too, with the centre fold forming a straight line the whole length of the table) for Mr Wrayburn to expect—Mrs Wrayburn did not think it unreasonable, and nor did Daisy—and most of them were in the sink at the moment, waiting, in mute reproach, to be washed and dried.