Point Counter Point (37 page)

‘We were so thrilled and delighted by your kind letter,’ said the stouter of the ladies.

Burlap smiled Franciscanly. ‘One’s glad to be able to do something for literature.’

‘So
few
take any interest.’

‘Yes, so few,’ echoed Miss Hignett. And speaking with the rapidity of one who tries to say ‘ Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled pepper ‘ in the shortest possible time and with the fewest possible mistakes, she poured out their history and their grievances. It appeared that they had been living together at Wimbledon and conspiring to be Romola Saville for upwards of six years now, and that only on nine occasions in all that time had any of their works been printed. But they hadn’t lost courage. Their day, they knew, would come. They had gone on writing. They had written a great deal. Perhaps Mr. Burlap would be interested to see the plays they had written? And Miss Hignett opened a despatch case and laid four thick wads of typescript on the table. Historical plays they were, in blank verse. And the titles were ‘Fredegond,’ ‘The Bastard of Normandy,’ ‘Semiramis’ and ‘Gilles de Retz.’

They went at last, taking with them Burlap’s promise to read their plays, to print a sonnet sequence, to come to lunch at Wimbledon. Burlap sighed; then recomposing his face to stoniness and superiority, rang for Miss Cobbett.

‘You’ve got the proofs?’ he asked distantly and without looking at her.

She handed them to him. ‘I’ve telephoned to say they must hurry up with the rest.’

‘Good.’

There was a silence. It was Miss Cobbett who broke it, and though he did not deign to look up at her, Burlap could tell from the tone of her voice that she was smiling.

‘Your Romola Saville,’ she said; ‘that was a bit of a shock, wasn’t it?’

Miss Cobbett’s loyalty to Susan’s memory was the intenser for being forced and deliberate. She had been in love with Burlap herself. Her loyalty to Susan and to that platonic spirituality which was Burlap’s amorous speciality (she believed, at first, that he meant what he so constantly and beautifully said) was exercised by a continual struggle against love, and grew strong in the process. Burlap, who was experienced in these matters, had soon realized, from the quality of her response to his first platonic advances, that there was, in the vulgar language which even his devil hardly ever used,’ nothing doing.’ Persisting, he would only damage his own high spiritual reputation. In spite of the fact that the gitl was in love with him, or even in a certain sense because of it (for, loving, she realized how dangerously easy it would be to betray the cause of Susan and pure spirit and, realizing the danger, braced herself against it), she would never, he saw, permit his passage, however gradual, from spirituality to a carnality however refined. And since he himself was not in love with her, since she had aroused in him only the vague adolescent itch of desire which almost any personable woman could satisfy, it cost him little to be wise and retire. Retirement, he calculated, would enhance her admiration for his spirituality, would quicken her love. It is always useful, as Burlap had found in the past, to have employees who are in love with one. They work much harder and ask much less than those who are not in love. For a little everything went according to plan. Miss Cobbett did the work of three secretaries and an office boy, and at the same time worshipped. But there were incidents. Burlap was too much interested in female contributors. Some women he had actually been to bed with came and confided in Miss Cobbett. Her faith was shaken. Her righteous indignation at what she regarded as Burlap’s treachery to Susan and his ideals, his deliberate hypocrisy, was inflamed by personal feelings. He had betrayed her too. She was angry and resentful. Anger and resentment intensified her ideal loyalty. It was only in terms of loyalty to Susan and the spirit that she could express her jealousy.

The last straw was Beatrice Gilray. The cup of Miss Cobbett’s bitterness overflowed when Beatrice was installed at the office—in the editorial department, what was more, actually doing some of the writing for the paper. Miss Cobbett comforted herself a little by the thought that the writing was only Shorter Notices, which Were quite unimportant. But still, she was bitterly resentful. She was much better educated than that fool of a Beatrice, much more intelligent too. It was just because Beatrice had money that she was allowed to write. Beatrice had put a thousand pounds into the paper. She worked for nothing—and worked, what was more, like mad; just as Miss Cobbett herself had worked, at the beginning. Now, Miss Cobbett did as little as she could. She stood on her rights, never arrived a minute early, never stayed a minute past her allotted time. She did no more than she was paid to do. Burlap was annoyed, resentful, distressed; he would either have to do more work himself or employ another secretary. And then, providentially, Beatrice turned up. She took over all the subediting which Miss Cobbett now had no time to do. To compensate her for the subediting and the thousand pounds he allowed her to do a little writing. She didn’t know how to write, of course; but that didn’t matter. Nobody ever read the Shorter Notices.

When Burlap went to live in Beatrice Gilray’s house, Miss Cobbett’s cup overflowed again. In the first moment of anger she was rash enough to give Beatrice a solemn warning against her tenant. But her disinterested solicitude for Beatrice’s reputation and virginity was too manifestly and uncontrollably tinged with spite against Burlap. The only effect of her admonition was to exasperate Beatrice into sharp retort.

‘She’s really insufferable,’ Beatrice complained to Burlap afterwards, without, however, detailing all the reasons she had for finding the woman insufferable.

Burlap looked Christ-like. ‘She’s difficult,’ he admitted. ‘But one’s sorry for her. She’s had a hard life.’

‘I don’t see that a hard life excuses anybody from behaving properly,’ she rapped out.

‘But one has to make allowances,’ said Burlap, wagging his head.

‘If I were you,’ said Beatrice, ‘I wouldn’t have her in the place; I’d send her away.’

‘No, I couldn’t do that,’ Burlap answered, speaking slowly and ruminatively, as though the whole discussion were taking place inside himself. ‘Not in the circumstances.’ He smiled a Sodoma smile, subtle, spiritual and sweet; once more he wagged his dark, romantic head. ‘The circumstances are rather peculiar.’ He went on vaguely, never quite definitely explaining what the rather peculiar circumstances were, and with a kind of diffidence, as though he were reluctant to sing his own praises. Beatrice was left to gather that he had taken and was keeping Miss Cobbett out of charity. She was filled with a mixed feeling of admiration and pity—admiration for his goodness and pity for his helplessness in an ungrateful world.

‘All the same,’ she said, and she looked fierce, her words were like sharp little mallet taps, ‘I don’t see why you should let yourself be bullied.
I
wouldn’t let myself be treated like that.’

From that time forward she took every opportunity of snubbing Miss Cobbett and being rude. Miss Cobbett snapped, snubbed and was sarcastic in return. In the offices of the
Literary World
the war was open. Remotely, but not quite impartially, like a god with a prejudice in favour of virtue—virtue being represented in the present case by Beatrice—Burlap hovered mediatingly above the battle.

The episode of Romola Saville gave Miss Cobbett an opportunity for being malicious.

‘Did you see those two terrifying poetesses?’ she enquired of Beatrice, with a deceptive air of friendliness, the next morning.

Beatrice glanced at her sharply. What was the woman up to? ‘Which poetesses?’ she asked suspiciously.

‘Those two formidable middleaged ladies the editor asked to come and see him under the impression that they were one young one.’ She laughed. ‘Romola Saville. That’s how the poems were signed. It sounded so romantic. And the poems were quite romantic too. But the two authoresses! Oh, my goodness. When I saw the editor in their clutches I really felt quite sorry for him. But after all, he did bring it on himself. If he will write to his lady contributors…

That evening Beatrice renewed her complaints about Miss Cobbett. The woman was not only tiresome and impertinent; one could put up with that if she did her job properly; she was lazy. Running a paper was a business like any other. One couldn’t afford to do business on a basis of sentimentality. Vaguely, diffidently, Burlap talked again about the peculiar circumstances of the case. Beatrice retorted. There was an argument.

‘There’s such a thing as being too kind,’ Beatrice sharply concluded.

‘Is there?’ said Burlap; and his smile was so beautifully and wistfully Franciscan, that Beatrice felt herself inwardly melting into tenderness.

‘Yes, there is,’ she rapped out, feeling more hard and hostile towards Miss Cobbett as she felt more softly and maternally protective towards Burlap. Her tenderness was lined, so to speak, with indignation. When she didn’t want to show her softness, she turned her feelings inside out and was angry. ‘Poor Denis,’ she thought, underneath her indignation

‘He really needs somebody to look after him. He’s too good.’ She spoke aloud

‘And you’ve got a shocking cough,’ she said reproachfully with an irrelevance that was only apparent. Being too good, having nobody to look after one and having a cough—the ideas were logically connected. ‘What you need,’ she went on in the same sharp commanding tones, ‘is a good rubbing with camphorated oil and a wad of Thermogene.’ She spoke the words almost menacingly, as though she were threatening him with a good beating and a month on bread and water. Her solicitude expressed itself that way; but how tremulously soft it was underneath the surface!

Burlap was only too happy to let her carry out her tender threat. At halfpast ten he was lying in bed with an extra hot-water bottle. He had drunk a glass of hot milk and honey and was now sucking a soothing lozenge. It was a pity, he was thinking, that she wasn’t younger. Still, she was really amazingly youthful for her age. Her face, her figure—more like twentyfive than thirtyfive. He wondered how she’d behave when finally she’d been coaxed past her terrors. There was something very strange about these childish terrors in a grown woman. Half of her was arrested at the age at which Uncle Ben had made his premature experiment. Burlap’s devil grinned at the recollection of her account of the incident.

There was a tap at the door and Beatrice entered carrying the camphorated oil and the Thermogene.

‘Here’s the executioner,’ said Burlap laughing. ‘Let me die like a man.’ He undid his pyjama jacket. His chest was white and well-covered; the contour of the ribs only faintly showed through the flesh. Between the paps a streak of dark curly hair followed the line of the breastbone.’do your worst,’ he bantered on. ‘I’m ready.’ His smile was playfully tender.

Beatrice uncorked the bottle and poured a little of the aromatic oil into the palm of her right hand. ‘Take the bottle,’ she commanded,’ and put it down.’ He did as he was told. ‘Now,’ she said, when he was stretched out again unmoving; and she began to rub.

Her hand slid back and forth over his chest, back and forth, vigorously, efficiently. And when the right was tired, she began again with the left, back and forth, back and forth.

‘You’re like a little steam engine,’ said Burlap with his playfully tender smile.

‘I feel like one,’ she answered. But it wasn’t true. She felt like almost anything but a steam engine, She had had to overcome a kind of horror before she could touch that white, full-fleshed chest of his. Not that it was ugly or repulsive. On the contrary, it was rather beautiful in its smooth whiteness and fleshy strength. Fine, like the torso of a statue. Yes, a statue. Only the statue had dark little curls along the breastbone and a little brown mole that fluttered up and down with the pulsing skin over the heart. The statue lived; that was the disquieting thing. The white naked breast was beautiful; but it was almost repulsively alive. To touch it…She shuddered inwardly with a little spasm of horror, and was angry with herself for having felt so stupidly. Quickly she had stretched out her hand and begun to rub. Her palm slid easily over the lubricated skin. The warmth of his body was against her hand. Through the skin she could feel the hardness of the bones. There was a bristle of roughness against her fingers as they touched the hairs along the breastbone, and the little paps were firm and elastic. She shuddered again, but there was something agreeable in the feeling of horror and the overcoming of it; there was a strange pleasure in the creeping of alarm and repulsion that travelled through her body. She went on rubbing, a steam engine only in the vigour and regularity of her movements, but, within, how quiveringly and self-dividedly alive!

Burlap lay with his eyes shut, faintly smiling with the pleasure of abandonment and self-surrender. He was feeling, luxuriously, like a child, helpless; he was in her hands, like a child who is its mother’s property and plaything, no longer his own master. Her hands were cold on his chest; his flesh was passive and abandoned, like so much clay, under those strong cold hands.

‘Tired?’ he asked, when she paused to change hands for the third time. He opened his eyes to look at her.

She shook her head. ‘I’m as much bother as a sick child.’

‘No bother at all.’

But Burlap insisted on being sorry for her and apologetic for himself. ‘Poor Beatrice!’ he said. ‘All you have to do for me! I’m quite ashamed.’

Beatrice only smiled. Her first shudderings of unreasonable repulsion had passed off. She felt extraordinarily happy.

‘There!’ she said at last. ‘Now for the Thermogene.’ She opened the cardboard box and unfolded the orange wool. ‘The problem is how to stick it on to your chest. I’d thought of keeping it in place with a bandage. Two or three turns right round the body. What do you think?’

‘I don’t think anything,’ said Burlap who was still enjoying the luxury of infantility. ‘I’m utterly in your hands.’

‘Well, then, sit up,’ she commanded. He sat up. ‘Hold the wool on to your chest while I pass the bandage round.’ To bring the bandage round his body she had to lean very close to him, almost embracing him; her hands met for a moment behind his back, as she unwound the bandage. Burlap dropped his head forward and his forehead rested against her breast. The forehead of a tired child on the soft breast of its mother.