No Fond Return of Love (11 page)

‘Yes, I know, that’s what life is like. And it is humiliating. One feels a sense of one’s own inadequacy, somehow, almost unworthiness,’ said Dulcie thoughtfully. ‘But then life is often cruel in small ways, isn’t it. Not exactly nature red in tooth and claw, though one does sometimes feel… And what will you have for pudding today?’ she asked, jerking herself back to reality by a sudden aware-ness of Miss Lord’s pitying look at her vague philosophizings. If this is what education does for you … she seemed to imply. Well might one ask, ‘But what will it lead to?’

‘Deep apricot tart,’ said Miss Lord, suiting her tone to the words.

The mid-morning post had brought two letters. They lay in the hall face downwards, waiting to be picked up. As always – and perhaps the feeling is universal unless one is expecting or hoping for a love letter – the thought of them gave Dulcie a slightly uneasy feeling. Then she saw to her relief that one of them was only Pontings’ catalogue, and she rejoiced in the prospect of looking through it and marvelling at the splendid bargains to be had in the White Sale or in the buying up of fabulous stocks from some failed manufacturer. She saw also that the other letter was a tucked-in printed thing, so that could be nothing troublesome either.

But when she opened it she found that it was an invitation to attend the Private View of the works of a painter whose name was unknown to her, but which was to be held at the gallery off Bond Street where Maurice, her former fiance, worked. Did he imagine, she wondered with a sudden rush of indignation, that she would find such an occasion at all congenial? That she could even bear to go to it at all? Life was at its tricks again, but this was a sharper cruelty than Miss Lord’s discomfiture over the baked beans. She stood with her invitation in her hand, wondering why she did not immediately tear it up. But then reason took over and suggested to her that in all probability the invitation had been sent automatically because her name was on the gallery’s list. It was possible that Maurice didn’t even work there now.

When Viola came in she showed her the invitation and asked her if she would like to use it. ‘I don’t really want to go myself,’ she added.

‘Why not? I always think Private Views are rather amusing. Couldn’t we go together?’

‘Yes, perhaps I will come,’ said Dulcie, imagining herself either plodding round in flat, comfortable shoes, or in more elegant agony, sitting on one of those round sofas in the middle of the room. Perhaps there was some kind of pattern in life after all. It might be like a well-thought-out novel, where every incident had its own particular significance and was essential to the plot. Seeing Maurice again, even if it were painful to her, might do something important to her self-confidence, even if only to make her ask herself, ‘How could I ever have loved such a person?’

She felt quite excited when the time came and they were actually pushing open the red-handled swing doors of the gallery and stepping on to the soft black carpet that covered the passages and floors.

There was a young woman sitting at a table with catalogues spread out on it and a visitors’ book open. Dulcie noticed the names of one or two art critics, but not, as she had hoped, that of Aylwin Forbes. And indeed why should he be here? He had no particular interest in modern art, as far as she knew. The young woman seemed a more elegant version of herself, rather as Dulcie might have looked if some woman’s magazine had taken her in hand. The fair hair was elegantly folded into a kind of pleat at the back of the head, the eyes shadowed with blue, and the finger-nails painted with a pearly pink varnish. Dulcie turned away and sighed. It was a little upsetting to see what one might have been.

‘Shall we start at the beginning and go stolidly round?’ Viola asked.

‘Oh, the pictures…’ Dulcie roused herself to look at the walls, and saw with dismay that they were hung with geometrical shapes in ugly drab colours.

‘Apparently this room contains pictures in his latest style,’ said Viola, consulting the catalogue. ‘The others are earlier works, so perhaps we should start in the other room?’

‘This looks a bit more understandable,’ said Dulcie, contemplating a black and white cat with a lemon in its paws. ‘But is he really a good painter? This picture of onions and peppers and wine bottles, with the view of boats through the window – hasn’t one seen this sort of thing rather often before? And what made him turn from these rather pleasant pictures to the dreary abstractions in the other room?’

‘He feels he has gone through colour, as it were,’ said a fat woman in a grey coat of some shaggy woollen material. ‘His history is rather interesting. He comes from Heme Hill.’

‘Indeed?’ said Dulcie, feeling that this was the only possible response. Then, more characteristically, she added, ‘But how splendid! I suppose he broke away from his background in the earlier pictures and then came to terms with it again – at least, I suppose the later pictures indicate that, don’t they?’

‘They seem like Heme Hill,’ said Viola, for she had spent her earliest years in that neighbourhood. It was later that her father, with his love of Wordsworth, had taken a house in Sydenham, equally convenient for his office near Victoria and yet ‘almost in the country’.

‘Is the painter himself here today?’ Dulcie asked.

‘Yes – he is the young man in the speckled polo-necked sweater, standing over there.’

Dulcie hardly bothered to look in the direction indicated. It was boring, she thought, how young artists and writers still looked as one expected them to. How much more amusing it would have been had he appeared in a suit of one of the ‘subdued business patterns’ which she had read about the other day in Pontings’ catalogue. ‘I do hope some of the pictures have been sold,’ she said, looking anxiously for little red stars and circles in the corners of the frames. It would be so dreadful if she had to buy one out of pity, though the cat and lemon was quite pleasant.

‘Yes, three in this room are sold,’ said Viola, ‘and some of the abstracts, too. I think there is somebody wanting to talk to you,’ she added.

Dulcie had no time to feel the overpowering agitation she had always imagined the meeting with Maurice might produce. It came upon her so quickly. She found herself saying, ‘Why, hullo, Maurice, how nice to see you,’ and then introducing him to Viola, who seemed to brighten up at the sight of such a young and personable man.

‘We don’t quite know what to make of all these pictures,’ she said, and Dulcie allowed them to move a little away from her while Maurice explained to Viola the ‘significance’ of the painter’s later work.

It did seem astonishing now, not that she could ever have loved such a person, for surely Maurice belonged to that category of persons who are always loved, but that he – so very much the opposite of everything that she was – could ever have considered marrying her.

He was of medium height, slender and brown-haired, with grey eyes and rather pointed features, the general effect being of softness and smoothness, yet with something hard underneath. He was wearing a heavy signet ring that Dulcie had not seen before. Perhaps he was now engaged to somebody else?

‘Wonderful, seeing you again like this so unexpectedly,’ he said softly, turning away from Viola, who was gazing at one of the pictures with the dutiful, slightiy glazed, expression of a woman who has been shown what to look for by a distractingly handsome man.

‘Wonderful?’ she echoed. ‘Didn’t you know I’d had an invitation to the Private View?’

‘I didn’t really think, and even if I had known I shouldn’t have expected you to come, in the circumstances.’ He held up his hand and contemplated his nails delicately.

‘Yes, I wondered if it would be too painful,’ said Dulcie honestly, ‘but I thought that it might be a good thing for us to meet – and, as you see, it is,’ she added, not looking at him.

‘Is Miss – er – your friend living at your house now?’

‘Yes, it’s quite a good arrangement,’ said Dulcie lamely: for of course to have a not particularly congenial woman friend living in one’s house was hardly to be compared with being married to the man of one’s choice – ‘quite a good arrangement’ was putting it almost too high. She experienced a sudden feeling of desolation, and heard Maurice saying something about lunch one day or a party he was giving, without taking in the significance of his words. She felt herself sinking down again into that state of lowness that she had hoped never to experience again. She heard Viola murmuring something polite, even saying that something would be ‘delightful’. Her eyes wandered unhappily round the room and she could think of nothing but to escape as quickly as possible. It was ironical to think that she had even imagined that the visit to the Private View might have some special significance in her life.

‘Goodbye,’ she said, for already he was talking to somebody else.

‘Goodbye, and let’s meet again soon,’ he called out.

‘I think we’ll go and have tea, shall we?’ Dulcie suggested.

‘Yes, but won’t there be any kind of refreshment here?’ Viola asked.

‘There doesn’t seem to be any sign of anything, does there, and we can hardly ask …’

Suddenly Dulcie grasped Viola’s arm. ‘Look,’ she said in a whisper, ‘do you see that clergyman? Isn’t he like Aylwin? I wonder if it can be his brother?’

Viola looked. She saw a clergyman gazing at a painting of some angular-looking flowers in a lop-sided vase.

‘Well, Wilkins,’ he said, going up to the artist, ‘it looks as if you got out of bed the wrong side when you painted that one.’

There was some indulgent laughter on both sides and the clergyman then left the gallery, closely followed by Dulcie and Viola.

‘He certainly has got a look of Aylwin Forbes,’ said Dulcie. ‘Can it be that he is going into that place to have tea?’

The clergyman was standing by a shop window, gazing at a display of cream cakes.

‘Let’s go in too’ said Viola. ‘We need a cup of tea’

They were lucky enough to find a table next to the one the clergyman had chosen, but once they were seated and had been brought their tea there was little they could do beyond stealing surreptitious glances at him and remarking again on his likeness to Aylwin Forbes. The fact that he had ordered coffee rather than tea and chosen a particularly elaborate and creamy-looking cake seemed to confirm their suspicions. But after whispering that surely a clergyman ought to be visiting or attending some kind of meeting rather than be sitting drinking coffee and eating cakes in Bond Street, Viola seemed to lose interest in him. It was Maurice she wanted to talk about.

‘What a charming young man’ she said, rather gushingly. ‘And so good-looking. Where have you been hiding him all this time?’

‘I haven’t exactly been hiding him,’ said Dulcie, ‘but it was a little awkward to get in touch with him myself. You see, I was once engaged to him’

‘
You
were engaged – to
him
?’ Dulcie received Viola’s unflattering though not unexpected exclamations of surprise with bowed head.

‘Yes, the engagement was broken off about a year ago. Didn’t I tell you about it?’

‘Yes, you did mention that you had been engaged, but naturally I never
imagined
…’

‘Naturally not – you wouldn’t’

‘Did you have an engagement ring?’ asked Viola in an openly curious tone.

‘Yes. It was very pretty, a garnet in a circle of pearls’

‘Oh, antique.’ Viola sounded slightly less interested. ‘Did you keep it, after…”

‘Yes. You see,
he
did the breaking off.’ It was almost a relief to be honest about it after all these months – to face up to the fact that he just hadn’t wanted to marry her, in spite of his way of putting it which had emphasized her goodness and sweetness and his own unworthiness.

‘I see’ Viola could hardly be blamed if she sounded the tiniest bit satisfied at what she had heard. ‘I suppose in those circumstances he could hardly expect you to return the ring.’

‘No – but I didn’t keep it. It wasn’t that I couldn’t bear the sight of it, but it seemed pointless to shut it up in a box, and I couldn’t wear it, so I sold it.’

‘You sold it?’ said Viola, surprised, for it sounded so very unlike Dulcie to do such a thing.

‘Yes.’ Dulcie paused, and then went on, ‘I had seen an advertisement in the
Telegraph
– an appeal for some distressed gentlewoman, a general’s daughter living in very “reduced” circumstances – you know how I can never bear things like that.’ She smiled apologetically. ‘I sent the money there – it wasn’t very much, but it brought some kind of relief. Oh dear, now I sound like Miss Lord and her television advertisements – so many things seem to bring “relief”.’

‘Look – Aylwin Forbes’s brother has been joined by a companion,’ Viola whispered.

‘Goodness, yes – and wearing gaiters! Is he an archdeacon, do you think?’

‘Ah, Gaythorne,’ boomed the gaitered clergyman, in a voice that penetrated to the farthest corner of the tea-room, ‘I thought I might find you here!’

Gaythorne, Dulcie thought, so he can’t be Aylwin’s brother after all. She felt quite ridiculously disappointed, and could hardly bring herself to listen with her usual interest to the conversation of the two clergymen, which was really most unsuitably catty.

‘I suppose I’ll see you at the induction this evening?’ the gaitered one asked.

‘Rather! Though it’s really such a
very
western part of West Kensington that I can’t imagine how one gets there.’

‘They say he’s an ex-chorus-boy or something – never done any pastoral work at all. I can’t
quite
see him at St Jude’s,’ said the gaitered one in a gloating tone. ‘I give him a year, at the most

At that moment a waitress came up to the table where the clergymen were sitting, with fresh coffee and another plate of cream cakes.

‘I suppose we ought to be going,’ said Dulcie, still conscious of her disappointment.

The afternoon had been a rather painful experience altogether; but later, when she was able to analyse her feelings, she realized that it was not her love for Maurice that had returned during their short meeting in the art gallery, but the remembrance of the unhappiness he had caused her. And that, she told herself stoutly, would soon pass.