To the Dark Tower (18 page)

She lay for a while on the enormous bed, which had in its centre a hollow, a cradle. She imagined Théo and Mother lying on either side, and then slowly, slowly, tumbling downwards into the centre. Oh, it was useless. She put out a hand, took Mother’s medicine bottle, and removed the cork. Her tongue ran round the rim, she pulled a face. It was bitter, crusted.

Then she got up and returned to the dressing-table. She looked for powder. Ah, here it was. A large and bedraggled puff was stuck in what looked like an ornamental soup-tureen. She did not realise that this was for toilet use only. Tentatively, she touched nose, one cheek, the other cheek. Then, bolder, she took up a pair of tweezers and began to pull at her eyebrows: She winced at the pain, made a gap in the centre, and then left off in fright. With two combs she scraped her hair upwards.

At that moment there were footsteps. In panic she pulled out the combs, tried to tidy the table, upset a perfume bottle. The nauseating liquid trickled on to her bare legs. It felt as if she had wet her knickers.

"What
are
you doing in here?" Mother came in. Then seeing the damage she shouted in one of her sudden paroxysms of rage: "You slut! You bitch! Get out of my room! Get out! At once!" She rushed towards Shirley. "Making yourself up! Using my things! How dare you!" She looked around for something to hurl at her, picked up the enormous puff, and threw it in her face. Shirley burst into tears.

But no sooner had she done this than Mother, with one of her sudden changes of temper, began to laugh shrilly. "You idiot! You little idiot! You don’t know how funny you look!"

Shirley gazed at herself in the glass. Her face was caked in a uniform white, except where the tears had made runnels.

Mother still rocked with merriment; already she had collapsed on to the bed. "Oh, it’s priceless!" she sobbed. "You—look—so—crazy!"

Shirley rushed for the door. But there she collided with Théo who had come up at the sound of their voices. First he gaped at her; then he said, "My God! What have you been doing?"; then he, too, was laughing hysterically.

Weeping, caring nothing for the pain, she scrubbed her face with a nail-brush over the kitchen-sink.

For as long as she could Mother made her wear the clothes of a schoolgirl—black woollen stockings, blue tunic, strap-shoes. At eight o’clock she was packed off to bed: so that it became difficult to remember a time when she was allowed to play in the garden for as long as she liked. If anything exciting was to happen—a dance at the hotel, a visit to Paris—Mother always said: "You’re too young, Shirley. You’re far too young." She wanted her to remain perpetually adolescent, clumsy, gauche. She could not bear to think of her coming to womanhood just at the moment when her own powers were waning. She thought that by holding Shirley in this bondage she could hold time in bondage also.

It was not surprising that the child did not reach puberty until she was eighteen.

In that year one of the English aunts, whom Shirley had never met, left her a few hundred pounds in her will. She would go to the Slade she decided, where Father himself had studied. In this way she would become an Artist. How magical that sounded! She would escape Mother, and her ‘gentlemen’, and the yearly visits of Miss Corry and Miss Witherby. She would be free.

Somehow, she never got to the Slade. But the next year saw her at an art school in South Kensington, where she won most of the prizes. She found that she could, with the greatest of ease, reproduce the style of the principal, Mr. Blain. It was an ‘academic’ style, not dissimilar to her Father’s. Out-side an art school or an academy it would not have had much success. But for the moment she was the best pupil. Both she and Mr. Blain were thrilled.

He was a kindly widower who might have passed for a civil servant. He was interested in birds and plants and had a ‘flatlet’ off Baker Street. He played the recorder.

At the end of her last term he asked her to tea, and she helped him press some wild-flowers in a room with jars full of tadpoles in it, and acorns growing shoots in old medicine bottles, and a model yacht which Mr. Blain sailed on the Serpentine.

When they were eating their tea before a gas-fire Mr. Blain said: "And what are you g-going to do when you l-leave the school?" He always stammered when he talked of anything other than his hobbies.

Shirley thought of her father and said: "Well—I really wanted to continue studying in Paris."

"Paris!" His light-blue eyes widened, he ceased for a moment to masticate buttered scone. "D-do you think that would be a g-good idea?"

"Don’t you?"

"Well—w-wouldn’t it be serving both G-God and M-Mammon?"

She was not sure what he meant by this. But she knew it was a form of disapproval.

"What else can I do?" she asked.

"Of course, there’s advertising", he began brightly, in a manner which he usually kept for prospective parents. "Plenty of possibilities there. Plenty of money."

She wrinkled her nose, and he broke off. "But you’ve too much talent for that. Leave the commercial side alone."

"Yes," she said. "Leave the commercial side." It was pleasant, sitting like this, drinking out of a cup without a handle, while they discussed her whole future.

"I’ll tell you what!" he said suddenly. He sat up with a start, so that the plate on his knees tilted at an angle and spilled melted butter on to his trousers. But he did not seem to notice it: and she did not dare to point it out to him. "I’ve got a f-friend," he began. "She has a shop in Chelsea. They make all their own stuff—trays, all that sort of thing. Why don’t you join her? It’s interesting work. And with my recommendation..."

"Oh, yes. It sounds lovely."

"There’s a studio there. So in your f-free time, you could paint—seriously, I mean. And then, in no time—why, you’ll be hung, you mark my words. You’ll be famous."

"Oh, no ..." she protested. But she felt that his words were somehow prophetic. Like Laura Knight, she thought. The picture of the year, reproduced in
The Times
.

"Shall I speak to my friend—Miss Mincer?"

"Oh, do. Oh, please."

It was all settled. In the silence, the warmth, she ate cup-cakes from the Lyons’ round the corner. Life seemed suddenly full, rounded off, complete.

It was only when they said good-bye that she felt something missing. Their handshake seemed a sketch, a suggestion. But of what? She did not know. And he was too shy, too frightened, to enlighten her.

She never went to his flat again. Except for occasional visits that he paid to Miss Mincer the last she saw of him was when, one by one, the leavers went to his study to say good-bye. She was the last on the list.

It was difficult, when she was summoned into the small, untidy room, crowded with paintings by ‘promising pupils’ to realise that if she ever came here again it would be as a stranger. She saw then the pathos of it all—the pathos of all departures, from however uncongenial an environment.

He began: "I haven’t really much to say to you. J-just good-bye—and good luck. It’s been a real pleasure to have you as a pupil—and—and as a f-friend..." Then he blushed, for this last addition was not part of the speech as he had already delivered it sixteen times. "Just one thing before you go," he continued. "I—I have here a—a little gift—a token. Only a token. Nothing more." He pushed aside papers nervously, with both hands, as though he were doing a breast-stroke through them. "Ah, yes," he said at last. "Here it is."

"But this is very kind of you," she began. "Oh, it’s nothing, it’s nothing at all, really." She took the brown paper parcel with a murmured "Thank you." "Good-bye," he said. "Good-bye." Their hands met. Then she went out. It was a book called
Eyes and No Eyes
, by Claud Blain, F.R., brought out nearly twenty years ago by a firm of educational publishers. On the fly-leaf was the dedication: "To Edith, beloved wife", opposite a colour reproduction, "Flea-bane by river-bank". Other students brushed past her, carrying canvases, paint-boxes, rucksacks. Their voices were shrill with plans, excitement, talk of the future. As they went out they left the door open behind them, and a wind, sharp with the promise of snow, blew down the corridor. She shivered and moved away.

For no reason her eyes were filling with tears.

At Miss Mincer’s she learnt how to put lacquer on to trays and paint on to boxes. On a handloom she made scarves with ravelled ends. Lampshades were decorated with an acanthus pattern. She made the things, Miss Mincer sold them.

It was a shop in a side street in Chelsea, "Lucky Finds", with a doormat which said "Welcome" and a scrofulous Sealyham whose growl implied the reverse. In the shop sat Miss Mincer, polishing her nails on a buff, knitting, or reading a book from Mudie’s Library (Subscription C). She wore a flowered smock and ankle-socks above court-shoes. It was impossible to tell where she had come from, or how she had found herself among reproductions of Van Gogh’s "Sunflowers", framed copies of "Trees" in William Morris calligraphy, a couple of Paisley shawls, one of which had a cigarette burn through it, and of course the scarves, the lampshades, the boxes, the trays.

Next door was her great friend Miss Plumpton. "Oh, yes, we’re
bosom
friends," she told Shirley. Miss Plumpton kept a tea-room where she also served two-course luncheons at one-and-six a head. The cakes were craggy, but tended to suddenly crumble if one persevered hard enough. From Miss Plumpton’s ears dangled gold ear-rings, her hair was wrenched back in a tight little knot. "Spanish", she would have called it, forgetting that the effect is not so easily achieved when the tint has changed from black to grey. Once upon a time she had been on the fringe of Chelsea’s artistic sets, but at the present her only cultural pretensions were back numbers of
Time and Tide
and a badge from the League of Nations. "I was a model for Augustus John, dear," she confided to Shirley. "That was more years ago than I’d really like to confess." She giggled, as though at some rare audacity: but whether the artist or the passing of years was the cause, one could not tell. "Oh, yes!" she sighed. "I’ve had a full life. I’ve known them all." She shook a meagre handful of currants into what was going to be a castle pudding and then continued: "But that’s all over now. It’s all right for a bit. But it doesn’t really do, you know."

"No. I suppose not." Shirley was not very certain to what she referred.

"Yes. It’s all over now," she continued. "Funny to think how crazy I was about art, and poetry, and that sort of thing. The time I first heard Scriabin’s "Poème d’Exstase"! There was an air-raid on: but I walked home, blithe as a lark. And Stephen Phillips—and Rhoda Broughton... I don’t suppose you read Rhoda Broughton now. And the time I saw George Moore in Ebury Street ... I’d never touched one of his books. But the girl who was with me said, ‘That’s George Moore’, and really the way ... Oh, how I do love to hark back to it all! It makes poor Mincie laugh until the tears come into her eyes. But it’s all over now. It’s all over."

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.