The Darts of Cupid: Stories (3 page)

"I just thought you’d like to know, ma’am," he began, "I used to know a little girl and she was called Eve—isn’t it strange? Eve, just like you. She was only six years old at the time, but she was already very clever, and this would have been fine, only little Eve was conceited about her cleverness and she wasn’t clever enough to understand that it isn’t clever to be clever when it upsets other people."

I said, "Widow Dicks should have jumped onto her husband’s funeral pyre and committed suttee," and the Sergeant said, "This is not done in Ceylon, and we are not talking about Mrs. Dicks, we are talking about little Eve," and he went on relentlessly till I promised to keep my peace with Mrs. Dicks in the future.

On the day after this, the Major called me: "Come here, Miss P." When I stood by his side, he handed me what looked like a poem, beautifully set out on a sheet of handmade rice paper with those carefully irregular edges that look as though they have been nibbled by a well-behaved mouse. "You’re welcome to see it," he said. He watched me, smiling, as I read:

I now leave the Zone of Interior, Where everyone was my superior; Henceforward the body’s exterior Is all I’ll endeavor to know.

It went on for six more stanzas.

"What do you think of it?" he asked when I had put it down.

"It’s awfully impressive," I said. "Very smooth. The paper, I mean."

"Mrs. Dicks has resigned," he said, "and this is her Parthian arrow."

I said,
"Mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.”

"Oh, we speak Latin when we are humble," he said.

I nodded.

"Sergeant Parsons was already here," he continued, "buzzing into my ear. Wondering if you are worth it. Worth keeping. He says you’re a demoralizing influence. But what the hell. As long as you demoralize me in the future, instead of the others. How’s that?"

I did not speak.

"May I take it that since you did not say no you mean yes?"

I nodded.

"What’s troubling you, Miss P.? You don’t look happy about it."

"Why do you always call me Miss P.?" I said. "You deny me my status and my full name."

"I just can’t think of you as married," he said.

"How do you mean?" I asked. "Do you mean that you can’t imagine it, or do you mean you cannot bear to think about it?"

He looked at me, silent, till I cast my eyes down.

"We’ll get around to this another time," he said, "but in the meantime, as a stopgap, I’ll give you another reason. ‘Mrs. Prescott-Clark’ is such a mouthful. ‘Miss P.’ is a matter of convenience. I’m kind of lazy, I suppose. You of all people should know how I feel." And he laughed loudly.

From that day on, the Major, when he was present, made me come and talk to him at least once a day. But it was never for the purpose of chiding me, and he dispensed with all forms of address. He called, "Come here to me."

He had no cause for chiding me, either. I would have despised myself if I had now traded on his apparent goodwill toward me, and thus, in order to show that I was not a maidservant, I was forced to be on my best behavior.

Though the Major did not engage in talk with any of the others, none of my crowd was resentful or jealous. They had, from the beginning, given him his due as "a fine figure of a man" and as "having a presence," but had made it clear that they did not consider him attractive. June, Claudia, and Betty went through their days with amorous blinkers, being devoted to their lovers, and the others rather inclined toward the frigid indigo in the rainbow of the emotions and, like Beryl, were "sick and tired of all that." Sergeant Parsons refrained from comments. And the Big Bad Wolves, who had become tame wolves and could now talk to us only during the tea and coffee breaks, contented themselves with slight, inoffensive chaffing. "If you were a soldier, Buttercup," said Sergeant Kelly one day, "you’d be polishing the apple. But being what you are, it’s a sheer waste of your time singing duets with that big blob. Why don’t you ask him what kind of tree he is—if he is a son of a birch or a son of a beech?"

"Never you mind, Kelly," said Claudia, who had just joined us. "Keep your filth for another time. Listen, you lads and lasses, great news from the home front. This new wench who came yesterday into filing. The Major asked her out that very night. Straight off the bat. Aren’t you staggered?"

"She looks anemic," said June.

"Someone should tell her to get rid of that mustache," said Betty.

"And she did accept?" I asked.

"She did," said Claudia.

"And what happened?" I asked.

"I’ll tell you exactly," said Sergeant Danielevski. "She has this speech defect. And by the time she told the Major she was a g-g-g-good g-g-g-girl, she wasn’t anymore." We screamed with laughter.

"No, but seriously, what happened?" I asked.

"Nothing," said Claudia, "as far as I can make out. She hasn’t got a stammer, but she’s got a boyfriend on a firm tether, or he’s got her on one, and she was transferred here because he pulled strings, and he’s Quartermaster and works in the PX. The Major gave her a chaste drink and then they separated. He didn’t even see her home to her place."

I was convinced of the truth of the story, especially because I knew that our crowd would have taken great pains to keep me informed of the Major’s amorous exploits. And yet, an hour later, when the Major made me come and talk to him, remarking, "I just don’t feel like work today. I’m tired. I worked hard all day yesterday and then some, late into the night," I could not restrain myself from saying, "Yes, on the mattress. On the human body."

"First wrong, second right," he said calmly. "I’m taking an additional degree as a surgeon, the F.R.C.S. What the hell, I’m in England anyhow, I might just as well. That’s why I sometimes go up to London—for the coaching."

"I didn’t know," I said, "and I shouldn’t have made that remark. It was frightfully mauvais genre."

"You are never mauvais genre. You couldn’t be if you tried," he said. "What the hell, you are like a little princess—you even have long hair and put it up like a crown."

I thought, And what’s the use being like a princess if you ask out the common floozies? and to cover my embarrassment, I said hastily, "But isn’t it an awful strain on you? Working here and then cramming on top of it?"

"No," he said, "for me it’s easy, with the kind of training that I’ve got. I’ve done the first part already. It’s in two parts."

A few days later, Claudia came with more news. "I say, you lasses, he’s doing the rounds. He must be frantic for a woman. There’s this new girl, come in to work for the Merry Widow, and he asked her out. Again slap on the very first day; her bottom had hardly touched the chair."

"What’s she like?" asked June.

"Usual stuff—common as dirt, trained shorthand-typist. What’d you expect?" said Claudia.

"And what happened?" I asked.

"Wouldn’t play," said Claudia. "Gave him the cold shoulder, and he retreated to previous position according to plan, as they give out in the war news."

"Very odd," said June, "when you come to think of it. He’s been here two months now and still hasn’t got himself a steady."

"Perhaps he doesn’t want a steady," said Claudia. "Let’s ask Prescott-Clark. She’s an expert on the Major."

"I haven’t got a clue," I said.

"But he’s an expert on you, Prescott-Clark," said Betty. "Do you know, the other day when you took the half day off he cast round for you and got at Sergeant Parsons. ‘Where is Miss P.? Why isn’t she at work?’ And Parsons said, ‘I let her go home, she wasn’t feeling well.’ And the Major said, ‘This must have been a great relief to her.’ The Sergeant went away blushing, I swear to God. And, Prescott-Clark, now you’ve blushed, too. Golly."

"He’s a beast," I said. "And you know I never make a fuss over my curses. Besides, he’s barking up the wrong tree, what with my blameless life, as you know. Besides, I had such a cold I shouldn’t have come in in the morning, either."

"Keep your shirt on, Prescott-Clark," said Claudia. "You go and tell him how blameless you are. But you’ve got to hand it to him, he’s awfully good at repartee."

"Mostly of the hand-me-down ready-made variety," I said.

We went on speculating as to why the Major had not got a woman friend. I thought it was because he did not wish to be distracted from his studies for the Royal College of Surgeons, but I kept quiet about it, just as I kept quiet about all our talks. When we came to learn the answer, I was as astonished as everyone else.

"Shame on you, Prescott-Clark, you really haven’t got a clue," Claudia a few days later. "Yap-yapping at him, day in, day out, God knows what drivel, and if I hadn’t had a hangover and gone screaming for an Alka-Seltzer, you’d still be in the dark, the lot of you. And all this time, here we were worrying if he really is a man, only because he looks like one. But now we’ve caught him with his pants down."

"Speak for yourself, Carter," I said.

"You pipe down, Prescott-Clark. You’re a washout," said Claudia. "The hat at the gate. That’s her."

For two nights running, upon leaving work, we had seen a young woman outside the wire netting, a few paces away from the guards at the main gate. We had noticed her mainly because of her elegance, which was underscored by her large, soft-brimmed summer hat. During those war years, ladies’ hats had fallen victim to the prevailing fashionable shabbiness, and were replaced, though in cold weather only, by turbans and woollen large-meshed snoods. Glancing from the hat downward, I had seen that the stranger wore a sky blue dress with inset panels of pleating, of the unfashionable and expensive kind favored by elderly and rich clergymen’s wives—a garment belying her youth and her tall, voluptuous figure. And glancing upward once more, I saw that she was a pretty blonde, with a tip-tilted nose in a long oval face. Her prettiness was of the kind that is entirely pleasing and entirely forgettable, and if she had appeared by the gate on the second evening without the hat, I might not have recognized her. Though standing alone, obviously waiting, and looking into space, she was smiling. I suspected that this was not so much due to happy thoughts as to her willingness to display her pretty teeth.

"She’s come down from London," said Claudia. "That’s why he’s been flitting Londonward all this time. And now he’s brought her down here to share his bed and board. He’s left his hotel and moved into a flat. And she’s flung her bonnet over quite an expensive windmill, never you fear; the flat’s in a house in St. James’s Square—superb situation, high living and low thinking. The Merry Widow knows exactly what it cost, too, because she did some of his ordering for him. And the woman in the hat’s a lady, because she called him once over the telephone while he was in the Brigadier General’s office, and, you know how it is, two words are enough and you know where you are. Not like with the Yanks, where you never can tell from the way they speak. And she’s called Constance Ray. Mrs. But then, over that I wouldn’t put my hand into the fire. Altogether, if you ask me, apart from the Mrs., the name is too good to be true."

"Sounds made up to me," said June.

"Rather eccentric of him, bringing her down here. Coals to Newcastle," said Betty.

"She is a Gainsborough type," I said.

"Harken to Prescott-Clark, standing up for the Major," said Claudia.

"Perhaps she’s an actress," said Betty. "What with that name, and not at all out of the top drawer, and it’s been the good old elocution lessons for her all the time."

"Never you fear, we’ll find out," said Claudia. But they never did find out.

For days, Sergeant Danielevski went about saying, "Have you seen the Major’s mistress? She’s got lovely big blue eyes," and he accompanied these words with a most suggestive mime, holding his cupped hands in front of his body and shaking them up and down as though weighing two outsize oranges. I joined in the laughter, experiencing a kind of relief, as one may feel relief when at last receiving the punishment with which one has been threatened for a long time.

Once more, I could not master myself and made a remark to the Major. He called me to him one day and threw on his desk a stack of snapshots, facedown, with a gesture of contempt, as though after having started on a game of cards he had found himself holding a bad hand. "Look at them," he said. "I just got these, sent from home."

I gathered them up and turned them over. I did not like being shown photographs "from home." I always found myself embarrassed when confronted with pictures of scraggy or sagging wives and overfed, grinning offspring, and I had learned from June and Betty to overcome this embarrassment and to say, "Now, it beats me how a ghastly man like you managed to hook himself such a divine wife and produce such angelic children."

But this time there was no need to brace myself. "What a beautiful woman," I said.

"Part of her profession. She used to be an actress," he said.

In another snapshot, immediately recognizable, like the winged lion on things Venetian, was the baby’s scowling face, stamped with the square jaw and square forehead. "How old is the little girl?" I asked.

"Three," said the Major.

"Really, Major," I said, "with a lovely wife like this, I cannot understand how you can even as much as look at another woman."

"I don’t look. So what the hell are you talking about?"

As I turned away and his laughter followed me, I thought how odious it was of him always to laugh at his own jokes. And yet I always came when he called, "Come here to me," and by now no one took the trouble anymore to remark that "Prescott-Clark and the Major get on like a house on fire." Sometimes it was related to me that he had been at a party with Constance Ray, and that they both had been very animated, and I was given descriptions of her dress. Once, I saw them at a dance, but only from afar; they were leaving as I arrived.

ONE DRIZZLY MORNING in the autumn, I slipped as I got out of the bus in front of the gate, fell on the mud-sodden fallen leaves, and grazed the heel of my hand. It did not bleed when I looked at it, but after I started work I saw that I had stained my coding slips. I went to Sergeant Parsons. "Better than having a torn stocking," I said, "what with clothes rationing being the way it is."