The Slaves of Solitude (10 page)

Miss Roach arrived promptly on time at the River Sun, and her friend was not there. She went to the bar, obtained a gin and french, and took it over to the corner in which she usually sat with
the Lieutenant. She had been careful to take with her, as a sort of escort, a newspaper, which she could read while she waited. There were very few people in the bar, however, none of whom were
interested in her, and she sat looking about her, studying the people and the room. This, about five years ago, had been redecorated by a new proprietor, and in such a startling manner as to give
the impression of having been redecorated only yesterday – in fact, it would probably, as numerous saloon lounges all over the country do, bear permanently the stamp of redecoration. The
house being Elizabethan in origin, a curious aim at an Elizabethan manner had been made in the way of black beams, wooden panelling, uncomfortable black chairs and tables, odd pieces of armour,
suspended swords, and almost indecipherable Gothic lettering over the doors. But upon this a Scottish atmosphere had been imposed – samples of Scottish tartans having been inserted into the
upper panels, and pictures having been put up which dealt exclusively with Scottish Highlands and other Scottish matters. Also framed Scottish proverbs had been hung on either side of the red
Devonshire fireplace, in which an electrical apparatus, set in an external semblance of burning coal, revolved incessantly. To add to the confusion, and in destruction of the other illusions, there
were two electric ball-machines (one representing, when lit and clicking, an imitation of the sport of racing-motoring, and the other of the sport of ski-ing); a glass-enclosed machine with a
chromium-plated crane which was by natural law capable of extracting cameras, watches, and wallets, but which in historical practice brought forth nothing save one or two hard, pea-like sweets to
console the operator; several green-leather chromium-plated high stools along the bar, and a modern green carpet with whorls which put one in mind of sea-sickness.

Nearly a quarter of an hour passed without Miss Roach’s friend appearing, and she was just about to fear that ‘something had happened’, when the door opened and she came in,
looking about her. Spotting Miss Roach, she came over and sat beside her, smiling and saying ‘Ah – here you are!’ It struck Miss Roach that she made no mention of being late; in
fact she gave out an atmosphere as if Miss Roach herself were a little late, and Miss Roach guessed that she might have made a mistake about the time, and said nothing. Miss Roach asking her what
she was drinking, the other said, ‘No – what are
you
drinking?’, to which Miss Roach replied, ‘No – what are
you
drinking?’; and there began a
rapid fire of protestations, all beginning with the word No, in regard to whose turn it was, who was ‘in the chair’, who had arrived first and who had invited whom – Miss Roach
finally going to the bar and getting two gin and french.

‘And did you enjoy your visit to the pictures this afternoon?’ said the German girl, when they were settled again and were lighting cigarettes. She said this with a certain arch,
suggestive, and old-fashioned air which was characteristic of her.

Thirty-eight years of age, with blonde hair, a fair complexion, a reasonably good figure, and a face which, with its large blue eyes, pinched nose, and fullish mouth, would not be noticed
in the street as attractive or otherwise, or as indicating any age more or less than her own, Vicki Kugelmann gave forth a faintly old-fashioned, or rather out-of-date, atmosphere, which Miss Roach
had never been able fully to analyse. It might have been caused by her hair, which was actually ‘shingled’ in the manner of 1925: it might have been her clothes, which, though neat and
becoming enough, had an off-fashionable and rather second-hand air: it might have been her manner, her quick facial expressions, the too industrious use of her eyes and mouth to express surprise,
sympathy, or resignation – her habit of making
moues.
It might have been her way of powdering her nose in a hand-mirror or smoking a cigarette with a cigarette-holder, both of which
she would do with more fuss, precision, and ceremony than was usual, as if these things were novelties to which she had been lately introduced and by which she was still fascinated. In all these
ways she impressed Miss Roach as being slightly, and somewhat naively, behind the times; though Miss Roach often thought that it might be less that she was behind the times than that she was behind
the customs and idiom of the country in which she was residing, that these mannerisms arose from the fact that she was to a certain extent a fish out of water – in a word, a
‘foreigner’S.

‘And how did you know I was at the pictures?’ asked Miss Roach.

‘Ah. I know. I know everything,’ said Vicki, in the same mocking and suggestive way, and taking a puff at her cigarette she threw her head back and puffed the smoke out in a thin,
premeditated stream, as though aiming at some precise target in the air. She then neatly tapped at her cigarette over an ash-tray – doing this simply for the sake of neatly doing so, for
there was as yet hardly any ash upon her cigarette.

Her English accent was curiously in keeping with her cigarette smoking – a little too excellently polished, a little too much at ease, and conscious of being so. Her skill here, however,
was remarkable, and could only have been acquired by one who had spent, as she had, the greater part of her adult years in England. It was, when first meeting her, only in the consciousness that
she was speaking English extraordinarily well that the listener realised that she was not English.

‘No – how
did
you know?’ asked Miss Roach, genuinely puzzled and interested, for she had not as yet said a word to the German girl about the Lieutenant, and could not
conceive how this last meeting with him had become public property already.

‘Ah – I have my spies,’ said Vicki, and then added, ‘As a matter of fact, I was the other side of the street and saw you going in.’

‘Oh – really?’ said Miss Roach. ‘I didn’t see you.’

‘No – I know you didn’t. But I saw you.’ And at this Vicki again needlessly tapped at her cigarette over the ash-tray, and then looked at her cigarette in an amused and
mysterious way.

It was now quite clear to Miss Roach that Vicki was deliberately making a ‘thing’ of her visit to the pictures with an American, and she thought this rather absurd and characteristic
of the other’s slightly old-fashioned, ‘foreign’ psychology. On the other hand, was she not in reality fully justified? Was there not, if all was told, a very positive and mature
‘thing’ already in being? But how could Vicki know this?

‘As a matter of fact,’ Vicki went on, ‘I have seen you with him before. I have seen you sitting in here.’

This was a double surprise to Miss Roach; firstly because, quite unknown to herself, she had been seen in here with the Lieutenant by someone who knew her; and secondly because of the rather
strange item of news accidentally furnished, that the German girl had been in here apart from her. She would hardly have come in here alone, so who had brought her in? A man? It flashed across Miss
Roach’s mind that she had, conceivably, created a false mental picture of her new friend, that the lonely ‘German spy’ she had taken under her protection might, conceivably, lead
a life of her own, with other protectors. But the thought passed, and she said, ‘Oh – so you’ve seen me in here, have you?’

‘Oh yes,’ said Vicki, ‘I have seen you in here. It seems you have adopted your pet American already, my dear . . . No?’

Again Miss Roach was slightly taken aback – partly because Vicki had unexpectedly called her ‘my dear’ for the first time in their acquaintanceship, and partly because of the
boldness and outspokenness of the remark itself – her direct allusion to a sexual aspect of life, and her jaunty assumption of its normality, not only for men and women in general, but for
Miss Roach in particular. Hitherto Vicki had never opened her mouth with her save shyly and reticently to speak of purely impersonal or sorrowful matters.

‘Well,’ she said, not quite knowing what to say, ‘I don’t know about
adopted .
. .’

‘Kidnapped, then, perhaps?’ said Vicki. ‘You are a fast worker, my dear.’

This time Miss Roach could hardly believe her ears. To be called, at her age, with her physical equipment, in Thames Lockdon of all places, and by Vicki Kugelmann of all people, a ‘fast
worker’! As if she were a young, attractive girl, who went about with and was neither incapable nor guiltless of enticing men! And that ‘my dear’ again. And
‘kidnapped’ – what an extraordinary expression! This indeed was a new Vicki Kugelmann. She also realised that Vicki was deliberately airing her fearfully outmoded idiomatic
virtuosity. ‘Kidnapped’, and ‘fast worker’, along with ‘my dear’, all bore that faintly grotesque stamp of 1925 which she had so often observed in her.

She was not quite sure whether she altogether liked and approved of this new Vicki Kugelmann, or whether she did not. It then occurred to her that Vicki’s sole object in all this was that
of pleasing, encouraging, and flattering her friend, and that she was partially succeeding in her object, inasmuch as she (Miss Roach) was already, and in spite of a warning voice inside telling
her to do otherwise, feeling slightly pleased, encouraged, and flattered.

‘Well, as a matter of fact,’ she said, ‘he’s just staying in the same boarding-house, that’s all. Or rather, he comes in for meals.’

‘Oh well,’ said Vicki, ‘one has to meet a person somewhere, doesn’t one?’

Finding Vicki thus relentless in attack, Miss Roach now decided to counter-attack.

‘And who were
you
in here with,’ she said, her tone and looks adding a sort of humorous ‘pray’ to her words, ‘when you saw me?’

Thus, in addition to going over to the attack, she was able directly to seek the answer to a question which actually filled her with some curiosity.

‘Me? . . .’ said Vicki. ‘Oh – only Mr. Jordan . . .’

And by the use of the word ‘only’, it seemed to Miss Roach that Vicki intended to convey that Mr. Jordan – being the middle-aged vet in the town by whom she was employed
– was not by any means an American, or anything like one, was not really, in the strict sense of the word, a ‘man’ at all.

At this, a slightly disturbing thing happened to Miss Roach: she experienced a definite sense of relief and pleasure. She was disturbed because of the apparent implications of this feeling. Was
it within the bounds of possibility that she was jealous – that she was pleased because Vicki did not, like herself, have an American, did not, after all, come in here with ‘men’?
For the moment she could think of no other explanation. Then she realised that this was not jealousy of the common sort: that it arose only from the thought that her budding friendship with Vicki
might go awry or not materialise as she had hoped. It was not that she grudged, or could in her nature ever grudge, anyone having men friends: it was simply that if Vicki was the sort of person who
attracted and whose secret main interest in life was men, then there would not be, after all, any basis for a genuine companionship with Miss Roach, whose main interest it was not and could not,
for obvious reasons, ever be. It was not a question of envy: it was a question of fear of having been mistaken in a specific type of person.

Miss Roach, glad thus to have explained this feeling to her entire satisfaction, was destined, however, to receive something of a shock in Vicki’s next remark.

‘At least,’ said Vicki, ‘I
think
it was Mr. Jordan . . . the time I saw you.’

Which quite clearly meant, of course, that instead of having come in here on one occasion only, and on that occasion with her employer, she had come in here several times, presumably with
several people, for she could not remember the individual she had been with when she had seen Miss Roach. Something slightly mischievous in her tone struck Miss Roach, also, that she was
deliberately trying to convey this impression, and desired to be further questioned. It looked, indeed, almost as if she were fishing for some sort of return of the subtle flattery she had been
dispensing to Miss Roach. Though she was not really enjoying this conversation, and would have preferred to lead it into other channels, she could not but oblige.

‘Oh,’ she said. ‘So you’ve been in here with a lot of people, have you?’

‘Oh – I don’t know about a lot,’ said Vicki. ‘A few . . .’

And again her tone and faintly smiling look suggested that she would not object to having further secrets extracted from her.

‘You know,’ said Miss Roach, ‘I’ve got an idea that it’s probably you who’re the fast worker – not me.’

There was a slight pause before Vicki answered.

‘Me? A fast worker?’ she then said, twirling the stem of her glass in her hand, and looking amusedly at it. ‘Oh no . . . Not fast . . . Slow but sure . . . That is your Vicki .
. . Slow but sure.’

If one multiplied her immediate reaction to this remark a hundred times or so, one might say that Miss Roach’s hair stood on end. Her feeling was one of shame as much as shock –
shame at the awful complacency of the ‘Slow but sure’ and at the atrocious narcissistic use of ‘your Vicki’.

What, in the name of heaven, did this mean? She had been prepared to visualise and accept Vicki as one in whom certain men might well be or become interested – but what was this? She was,
it seemed, setting herself up as a sort of seductress. Miss Roach looked at her. Was she, perhaps, a seductress? She might be, but for the life of her Miss Roach couldn’t see it. She saw
nothing but an ordinary, rather badly dressed, foreign-looking woman in her late thirties, with rather nice blue eyes, and a pinched nose, and rather nice-coloured hair – the sort of woman
who might, indeed, seduce some odd, elderly man who knew her (in rather the same way as Miss Roach had seduced the accountant in her firm), but whose immediate impact upon anyone, man or woman,
seeing her in public or meeting her in private, would amount to zero. And now this
femme fatale
had appeared upon the scene, whose self-confessed deadly methods were slow but sure! The
thought occurred to Miss Roach that she was, perhaps, a little sex-mad. Or had she been drinking before she came in here, and was she slightly drunk? She had arrived unaccountably (and
unapologetically) late, and this might well be the explanation.