To the Dark Tower (22 page)

The young man whose money had made all this possible answered Shirley’s knock. Perpetually, there was a dewdrop on the end of his pointed nose; a lock of hair hung limply on his forehead: he wore tweeds baggy at the knees, with a slit up the back.

"Yes?" he asked.

"Is Mr. Petrel in?"

"Claude! I say—Claude!"

Mr. Petrel appeared, pen in hand. "Ah, Miss Forsdike! And how are the
lascivae capellae
. Your goats," he translated hurriedly. "Very Theocritean animals." Now that he was no longer stripped and ostensibly dressed as a labourer, but wore instead a white drill suit and a spotted bow-tie, he relapsed into the pomposity that was natural to him.

As so often happens when one has prepared a speech before-hand, word for word, Shirley took no notice of the question but rushed ahead: "You must think it awfully rude of me—the invitation, I mean. You see, it’s only just been given to me. Your son forgot—"

"Invitation? ... Oh, that!" Was it a pose, this bland dismissal? She could not tell. "I gathered that you must be too busy—or otherwise engaged. Reggy is very forgetful. I shall have to speak to him."

"But I should have liked to come."

"Well—come now."

"Now?"

"The tea is just made."

After half-hearted protestations he took her into a room where the young man was seated reading a book with a yellow Gollancz jacket. On a card-table were some small, round cakes, plain sponge, sprinkled with ‘hundreds-and-thousands’, and six fingers of toast. The young man rose, pushing back the lock of hair.

"My cousin—Alex Penny. Miss Forsdike."

"Yerce," said the young man. "Pleased to meet you. Yerce." Their hands touched.

"Miss Forsdike keeps goats, Alex. Extraordinarily
classical
, really. The Greek Anthology. The Eclogues. That line, ‘
Sed faciles Nymphae
...’ You know the one." He chuckled richly to himself. But the young man was holding out a plate. "Some toast?" Apparently he took no notice of these erudite ramblings.

"You know, Miss Forsdike, I have a feeling that you’re a school-mistress."

She blushed with chagrin. "Is it as obvious as all that?"

"Oh, no. You mustn’t take it as an insult. After all, I am myself—a compatriot—a colleague in misfortune, as they say..."

"You teach?" she queried.

He inclined his head. "You may call it that. Though whether I actually teach anybody anything... I lecture once a week to a class of a dozen or so men and women."

The young man cut in: "Claude is a professor. Some more toast?" His boredom made Shirley think, "How rude he is!" He had already handed her a cup of tea in which he had forgotten to put any milk. Being not entirely at her ease she did not mention the omission.

"Ah, yes," Mr. Petrel continued. "I’m a professor. The horrible truth is out. Which means that Miss Forsdike will now expect me to be absentminded and pedantic. ‘Don dull, don brutish...’ How cruel that poem is! Do you know, when I first read it, I thought: ‘No, I can’t go on. I simply can’t go on. I shall have to throw the whole thing up. Let me become a porter—or a dock-hand...’ "Suddenly he broke off: Alex was about to take a third finger of toast. "I think that last piece is mine, isn’t it? ...I
think
so." Alex withdrew.

All through tea he talked. Sometimes his conversation became merely a jumble of quotations; few of his sentences were ever completed; he had private jokes with himself, in Greek or Latin or Italian, at which he chuckled deeply. Alex lay supine in an armchair, his eyes on the ceiling, a pipe in his mouth. Sometimes he said "Yerce, yerce", or began "The point is...". But the point was somehow lost in the heterodox forest of his cousin’s learning.

Shirley was listening intently, her mouth slightly open, as children’s are before a peep-show. On occasions she nodded her head. For a moment she was an audience; and audiences made Claud voluble. But then he wearied. No man can stand his own success; he was tired of impressing her. He abdicated in favour of Cousin Alex, contenting himself with facetious interjections—"That’s it! The dignity of labour!" when Alex said, "We must increase the birthrate", and at the mention of land taxes, "God for Harry, England, and St. George!"

This last annoyed Alex particularly. A fanatical Georgist, he snapped: "Oh, shut up, Claude!" Georgism was his faith, as Social Credit, Buchmanism, the Pyramids is the faith of others. If only sufficient people accepted the taxation of land values, then, with this one foundation, everything would fall into place, the house of cards would cease to totter. This was the rock...

Later the children came in with a governess to say good-night. "Oh,
must
we go to bed?" they protested. "It’s still light." Dutifully they kissed Claude’s forehead and went grumblingly upstairs. Later, they could be heard laughing, screaming, and racing down the corridors. Claude rose: "That governess... She lets them get out of hand. With my wife away... Do please excuse me."

Shirley remained below with Alex, who talked of his plans for the farm. "Of course, it doesn’t pay yet. But it will. It’s been mismanaged for years and years, you know..." He had studied agriculture at Cambridge.

For the half-hour that Claude was away, the din of voices, the thud of feet worked impetuously towards a
crescendo
. The walls shook; there was a crash of something falling over, followed by howls of laughter. At intervals Alex raised his eyebrows and said, "Really! Those children!"

Eventually Claude returned, re-tying his bow-tie and patting the dust off his suit. His face was blotchy with perspiration: he was out of breath. Chuckling, he exclaimed: "My word, what a tussle! What a rag! Whew! It makes me hot."

Shirley got up to go.

The lamps were lit, Mrs. Humber got out the old card-table whose baize was worn from green to grey, and they played cut-throat through the long evening. From next door came the clatter of china as the half-wit girl washed up. Round the glass funnel of the lamp beside them moths fluttered with a tick-tick of wings: there were smells of paraffin in the air, the atmosphere was dry and hot. In hands with bulging veins, whose cracks were grimed and rough, Mrs. Humber spread her cards. With two fingers she twisted her lower lip. Doris concentrated glumly. Shirley yawned through her nose, so that the nostrils dilated in tell-tale fashion.

Mrs. Humber said: "I meant to ask you where you went for your walk this afternoon. You were out a long time."

"I had an invitation to tea."

"To tea?" She looked up hungrily, almost with resentment. "But who with?"

"Some people at Ash Farm."

Doris cut in: "Oh, Shirley! That was the awful man who—"

"He isn’t awful." She blushed, and in her confusion threw away a trump. "He’s very nice, really. It was all a mistake—"

"How
could
you? I know a pick-up—"

"Be quiet, Doris!" Mrs. Humber clicked her cards together. "Why will you talk in this vulgar way? ... Go on, dear."

"Well—he caught the goats for me one day when they got loose—and—and he invited me to tea. That’s all." It seemed a very lame story.

"Well, what’s wrong in that?" Mrs. Humber asked querulously, as though Shirley were not properly excited. "Very nice, too... Who are the people?"

Shirley explained, saying at intervals: "They’re awfully kind... He’s a dear, really... The children are quite sweet..."

"Are they here for long?" Mrs. Humber asked.

"Oh, no. Just for the holidays. Mrs. Petrel is away in Germany with her mother."

"Oh, I see. I was going to say that if they were permanents I’d go and call on them." She liked to keep up this fiction of ‘calling’, though in fact it was a practice which she had dropped years ago simply because her calls were never returned.

"I’d like you to meet them!"

"Yes," said Mrs. Humber. "Yes, do bring them over. He’s a professor, you say? And his cousin was at Cambridge? Perhaps tea on Sunday..." Her hand trembled with excitement.

Doris looked at her sardonically from beside the lamp.

Shirley was sketching the old windmill. Everyone who could sketch in those parts had, at some time or other, sketched the old windmill. It was ‘picturesque’. People also went for picnics there: their cars filled the country lane, and their waste-paper littered the fields. But to-day, perhaps because there was a certain autumnal sharpness in the air, the place was deserted except for the small group of children who surrounded her easel. Whenever one sketched the mill these children, or other children like them, miraculously appeared to suck fingers behind one’s back with noisy absorption.

"Charming," a voice suddenly murmured.

Shirley turned round to discover Mr. Petrel leaning on a walking-stick. His plump face had the shiny, rather rubbed, look of someone who has just shaved. Under his arm was
Mr. Norris Changes Trains
.

"Hullo."

"Hullo." He fingered his buttonhole in which was a red carnation.

"Have you been there long?"

"For a full five minutes." He stooped over to examine the picture. "Ah, yes. A talent—a decided talent. I had no idea you were so accomplished a young lady. But allow me—a suggestion..." He took the paint-brush from her unresisting fingers. "Those clouds. Wouldn’t it be more—more adventurous, if you took the brush this way—sharply? So." He demonstrated on a discarded piece of paper. Then seeing that she was not entirely satisfied: "Ah, yes," he continued. "I know what you think. The effect is ragged. But certainly it is. And isn’t that the very thing that you want? This is a ragged day. Look at those clouds once more. They are tattered surely; they are torn to pieces. If you will accept criticism from... I am no artist myself—no executant. But as a dilettante—I have given some time to the study of painting..."

Clumsily she began to take his advice. But now that she knew that he was there, watching, everything began to go wrong. The colours ran into each other, she spilled her water. He smiled, in vanity, at these little accidents. It pleased him that he had the power to confuse her merely by his presence.

"You must be more adventurous, Miss Forsdike. You must make the High Bid. But yes... I think that you are too afraid."

"Perhaps I am."

A little crossly she began to pack up her things.

The invitation came as a surprise. Meeting her out, he said: "I am going up to town for a day—on Wednesday. There are one or two exhibitions—the National Gallery, the Tate... Knowing your interest in painting, I thought that perhaps... It seemed to me that if you saw what can be done with paint—the excitement of the thing—then... Well, you remember what I said about the need for boldness? I should like to show you Cézanne—Matisse—Picasso, perhaps..." Through all this she waited, nodding, for the invitation to be formulated in so many words. "The question is—would you like to accompany me?"

"Oh, I should love to!"

He frowned a little, as though to discourage so obvious a show of enthusiasm. "Good. That’s settled, then. Excellent. The only thing is..." He took her arm, confidentially. "I would rather... People talk so... Perhaps you had better not mention to your friends... A visit to the dentist, say... A sick relative. I leave it to you."

She nodded sagaciously. He was, she realised, afraid of scandal.

Shirley was accustomed to travel third-class. But on this occasion, without consulting her, he bought two first-class tickets. Putting one into her hand he said, "Thirteen-and-six". The hint was unmistakable. Apparently this was a ‘Dutch’ treat. She took the money from her bag and gave it to him.

When they were settled in an empty carriage, and he had chosen his place and crossed his legs and turned the heater from medium to full, he opened the portfolio which was the only luggage he had brought and took out the
Spectator
and the
New Statesman and Nation
. As he spread them on his knee he murmured: "Twin guardians of the Faith. So beautifully complementary. The
Statesman
is perhaps a little too—too
critical
for my tastes. While the
Spectator
... A certain dullness. But read together ..." He put his glasses on his nose.

Shirley opened the
Strand Magazine
.

"No, no!" he exclaimed at the restaurant. "That’s quite the wrong choice. You must have the Crêpe Suzette. Two Crêpe Suzette, waiter." Apparently he ignored the fact that Crêpe Suzette was three shillings more expensive.

At the end of the meal he said: "let me see. Thirty-two shillings. That’s sixteen each. Plus two shillings in tips. You owe me seventeen shillings." Dutifully she paid, wondering how soon she would find her purse empty. She dreaded the moment of having to say: "I’m afraid I’ve run out of money."

At the National Gallery he suddenly whispered to her, "Just run along for a minute." And because she looked at him in bewilderment he repeated, in a cross, high-pitched voice, "Oh, run along, do!" Then, as soon as she had left him, he turned smiling to a woman a few feet off: "My dear, what are you doing here?" Shirley stared, blushing, at an Old Master.

A few minutes later he tapped her on the shoulder. "I’m sorry I had to shoo you off like that. A friend. A friend of my wife’s... It would have been rather embarrassing to make introductions." As though to console her he took her arm.

After he had shown her all the things that he wanted to show her they sat down on a bench to rest. "You know," he said suddenly. "I don’t believe you
really
liked any of those pictures. Did you?" He sounded petulant.

"Oh, but I did," she said, miserable at her failure. "But I did."

"Be truthful."

"I am being truthful."

He shrugged his shoulders and got up. "Now for the Tate," he said, as though he were faced with an ordeal. "Afterwards, we can have tea."

She had not been properly appreciative, she decided. From then on she exclaimed, "Oh, lovely!" at every picture that he made her stop at. She was determined to please him at any cost. But when he hurried her past a picture by Mancini she stopped dead, staring, saying nothing. "Oh, come on!" he protested. "You don’t want to waste time on old Mancini. Here—look at this Dentin." But she did not move.