Psyche (31 page)

Although she was entirely honest in this expression of her feelings, Bel might have added that her insistence on a secondary occupation for her girls was a not unimportant part of the front she showed to the world, a front so cleverly stage-managed it would have been almost impossible to improve upon it.

Her establishment consisted of the second and third stories of two semi-detached houses that she had at first rented, and later, prospering, bought outright. The two houses, in effect one building, were situated on a side street running south from the square encircling the park and art gallery, but close enough to the corner for an oblique view of the park to be possible from all the windows that faced the street. It was a location calculated to a nicety. She was sufficiently near to the faded grandeur surrounding the park to make the presence of cars outside her place unremarkable, yet not so near that the people inhabiting this section would be likely to evince any interest in her. Further south, the district, deteriorating rapidly, housed a class that fully appreciated the reciprocal value of leaving other people alone.

From outside, the size of the quarters she occupied could not be guessed at, for, although the upper two stories had been converted into one unit, the ground floor with its two separate entrances had been left more or less untouched. On the south, all access to the upper floors had been cut off, and she rented the independent apartment thus formed to a Lithuanian family who, not at all fortuitously, were unable to converse intelligibly with anyone other than fellow Lithuanians. A large and boisterous family, apparently perfectly happy in their linguistic isolation, they unwittingly created—particularly of a summer's evening when gathered en masse around their front doorstep—the impression that they must, of necessity, occupy much more of the house than was actually the case. Later on. Psyche, becoming fond of the fat and smiling baby, was often a part of this group, her blonde head a startling contrast to the dark ones around her.

Bel's disposition of the ground floor on the north side was somewhat different, but equally well-considered. Inside the front door
one found an enclosed stairway blocked by a door that was always kept locked; this was the real entrance to Bel's own domain. At the back of a narrow hall was another door. This led to Kathie's quarters, for Kathie did not, at least for the record, ‘live in'. The three remaining ground-floor rooms were let to an old lady who was, conveniently, almost blind; an old lady whose name had been one to conjure with in the society of the early nineteen-hundreds. A severely straight figure, clad all in black, her patrician features waxen clear behind a fine black veil, she could be seen, morning and afternoon the year round, walking slowly up and down in front of the great house on the square that had once been hers. Seeing her thus, one saw again, if at all imaginative, the gracious leisure of the turn of the century; saw carriages with liveried footmen; saw plumed hats and trailing pastel-tinted skirts; saw, as she still saw, all the images of a once bright yesterday.

Bel had used her head, rather than her heart, when she had given this tenant her small niche on the edge of the only world she would ever again see clearly. However, as was so often the case with Bel, her sympathy involved her as she had not anticipated in advance, and, as living costs rose, on one pretext or another she continued to reduce a rental already disproportionately low.

When Kathie, who often audited her accounts for her, had questioned her about this, she had made no attempt to rationalize her generosity, simply saying tartly, “That old dame stays there as long as I have a bean to my name.”

To Psyche, therefore, as she followed Kathie up the walk to Bel's on the evening when she first came there, was unfolded a montage of impressions specifically designed to mislead people a great deal less innocent than she was.

They were met by vocal greetings from the Lithuanian family, a dimly seen cluster in the dusk—greetings in broken English difficult to interpret, but unmistakably friendly, irrepressibly cheerful. And as this welcome subsided into carefree, private laughter, she saw on her right—a three-dimensional portrait framed in darkness—the old lady sitting by her open window, her white
head resting against the sombre tapestry of a wing chair, her delicate blue-veined hands folded tranquilly in a black silken lap.

The inside hall was dimly lit, but when Kathie unlocked the door to the stairway they entered at once into the rosy reflected light of a big room which, as Psyche stepped into it, seemed not unlike a rose-coloured heaven, the core of its warmth and brightness the plump woman in red who came forward to welcome her.

“Come right on in, baby, and make yourself at home.”

Her voice unsteady, Psyche said, “I don't know why you have done this. I—I don't know how to thank you.”

“Think nothing of it, baby. I once had it tough, myself. Here, Kathie, take the kid's things up to that little room you used to have.” Then, turning and addressing a man standing behind her, she said, “This is her, Joe. The kid I was just telling you about.”

Psyche saw a swarthy, heavy-set man in his fifties, with eyes, beneath thick dark eyebrows, as shrewd and friendly as Bel's own. A large diamond winked on the little finger of the hand he extended to her, and, although there were many who would have deplored his presence in that place, his firm clasp and genial self-assurance added a note of permanence and stability to the scene that would have been lacking without him.

“Joe's a special friend of mine, baby,” Bel said. “If you stick around, you'll be seeing a lot of him, so you better decide to like him.”

For the first time in twenty-four hours. Psyche smiled. “I don't have to decide.”

There was triumph in Bel's voice. “There you are, Joe! What did I say? I told you she was a nice kid, and I wasn't bom yesterday.”

The man stroked a chin which would always, even after he had just shaved, betray a blue shadow. “You've made a good friend, girlie. You're lucky.”

“You don't need to tell me that,” Psyche said quietly. “I know it.”

It was Joe's turn to smile, a smile which showed even white teeth, gold-stopped in two places. “Okay, Bel. You were right. I guess you and the girlie here will work things out between you.”

The light that had transiently come into Psyche's face faded, and even the warm glow of the lamp failed to cover up her drained whiteness.

Bel, watching her, said quickly, “You're dead beat, aren't you, baby? Look, I'm going to take you up to your room pronto, and one of the girls will bring you supper on a tray.”

“I'm sorry. You see, I lost my purse, and I”

But Bel would not let her go on. “You can tell me all about it in the morning, baby. Right now, you're going to bed. My God, she's got beautiful hair, hasn't she, Joe? Come on, baby, it's this way.”

It was not one of the girls, but Bel, herself, who brought a tray up to the third floor room under the eaves which Psyche was to like better, in many ways, than any other room she ever had.

“There you are,” Bel said, putting the tray down on a table beside the bed. “Just set it outside the door when you're finished, and someone will chase it later on. Sleep as late as you want, and don't worry about a thing. Just sleep tight, don't let ‘em bite, and we'll have a real good talk tomorrow.”

Listening to the sound of small pumps descending the stairs, Psyche knew that the tap of high heels would always remind her of Bel as long as she lived.

She looked around the little room, at the blue curtains, at the window-seat from which one could see out over the tops of the trees in the park, at the frilled dressing-table, at the soft grey carpet, at the reproduction of Gainsborough's Blue Boy hanging against a clean grey wall—and knew that, hungry as she was, she must cry before she could eat.

When she woke in the morning, she realized that the house and her room both faced east, for direct sunlight poured in across the window-seat. It was this, as much as anything else, that oriented her immediately, that told her as soon as she opened her eyes that she was no longer at Nick's. The intermingled sounds of traffic, voices, and all the machinery of a great city at that hour in high gear, were a secondary impression, and one that she was in a mood to like. Silence, at that moment, would have been disconcerting.

Lying there, not quite ready to move physically into this strange new day, she found it almost impossible to believe that she had left the studio only the previous afternoon. Nick, the red-roofed barn, and the long, warm hours of the past summer seemed like an interlude already dimmed by the passing of much time. Curiously it was the shack that seemed close to her just then, closer and more real than it had been since the night on which she had fled from it. Briefly she knew a painful nostalgia for something that could never be hers again, for the uncomplicated existence—actually so far removed from what she really wanted— that she had known with the two big, simple people who had never been other than kind to her.

When she was dressed, she went downstairs and retraced her steps along the corridor flanked by closed doors through which Bel had led her on the previous evening. Entering the living-room, she found it deserted, but from an open doorway at the far end she heard a radio playing and Bel's slightly hoarse voice raised above it.

She approached this door, and saw a large, streamlined red-and-white kitchen, divided by a counter into two parts, the nearer section furnished with chrome-fitted red tables and chairs. Bel was partial to red.

Bel, in a dressing-gown, sat at one of these tables, an empty coffee cup in front of her, talking to a girl whose back was to the door.

“Hello,” Psyche said uncertainly.

Bel's response, on seeing her, was just right. Casual, friendly, it was as if she had been used to having her around for a long time. “Hello, baby. Come on in and have something to eat. You sleep well?”

“I had a wonderful sleep.”

“You don't know Monique, do you?”

Monique was, surprisingly, as French as her name. Bilingual, she had no need to speak French, but it was something she did anyway.
“Bonjour, chérie.”

Psyche looked blankly at the pert face, under a lacquered cap of black hair, that smiled up at her.

Her eyes sparkling between incredible lashes that Psyche was to learn were put on and off with her clothing, Monique rose to display a slight but beautifully neat figure.
“C'est à dire
—good morning, honey. Glad to know you. See you later.
Maintenant, il me faut partir tout de suite. Je suis déjà en retard.”

With which, her hips swinging to the music of a radio that at Bel's place was never turned off, she walked out of the kitchen.

Bel lit a cigarette from the stub of another one. “She's a show-off, that girl, but you'll like her, baby, when you get to know her better.”

Psyche found Bel's calm assumption that she was going to stay very comforting, but she could not accept it without protest. “I can't stay here. You don't understand. I haven't any money—any job—anything.”

“You want cream and sugar, baby? Now relax, and take it easy. You wouldn't be here if I didn't understand that much.”

“But I can't pay my way like the other girls who live here.”

“For God's sake, baby, you don't think” Bel began, and then stopped abruptly, her small pointed teeth catching her full underlip. That she should have to explain her mode of living to this clear-eyed girl was something that had not even occurred to her. Now, faced with the necessity, she knew that she could not do it, knew that she was going to refuse to recognize it as a necessity.

Psyche, completely misinterpreting the expression on Bel's face, said quickly, “You are so kind, I know it doesn't matter to you about the money, but don't you see it matters to me—terribly.”

Yeah, Bel though wryly, but it isn't going to matter as much as something else. Maybe Kathie was right, and Joe too. Maybe I've been a damn fool.

If Psyche had known then what Bel could have told her and did not she would almost certainly have left. By the time she discovered it for herself, she already had all the assurance of personal freedom she needed, and was so passionately grateful to Bel she would have done almost anything other than condemn her in favour of a society that had put her out on the street from which Bel had taken her in.

She talked with Bel that morning, uninterrupted, for nearly two hours. She told her story from the beginning, omitting neither fact nor conjecture, finding, in the dark eyes fixed intently on her, a sympathy and comprehension such as she had never met with before.

When she had finished, Bel was silent for a moment, and then remarked, almost to herself, “It's like I said. Having no place to go can be kind of a turning-point in a girl's life.” Then she went on briskly, “Seems as if there isn't too much you can do to earn pay, baby, not good pay. But there are lots of ways you could be real useful to me here, if you wanted to. You stick around a while, helping me out, while we figure something better for you.”

“Give me something to do right now,” Psyche said quietly. “I'll never be able to repay you properly, but I can try.”

3

A
CROSS
the succeeding weeks psyche became more useful to bel than either of them had anticipated in advance, not the least of her usefulness being the manner in which, without premeditation, she became an accepted and welcome part of the life of the street. an advantage, from bel's point of view, that by this time was not lost on psyche.

Bel, letting it be generally known that Psyche was her niece, found it a pleasant relief to have one member of her household about whom she need have no concern at any time. And the persistent feeling that she was doing, by proxy, what she had once hoped to do for a blue-eyed, fair-haired child, now long since dead,
brought her a comfort she had never admitted to herself that she wanted.