Twopence Coloured (16 page)

T
HUS it was, with “Little Girl,” and Mr. Rocket, and Mr. Marsden, and Mrs. Lover at West Kensington, and a ticket at Mudie’s, that Jackie occupied herself
throughout
the winter. And “Little Girl” moved to two different theatres, and the cast and various numbers were altered, and it still did steady business.

And one morning, suddenly, the sun was yellow and quiet in a hushed Talgarth Road, West Kensington, and the spring had come….

And with that yellowness and quietness, and that
poignantly
frail air upon everything, that puzzling sad
hopefulness
which made itself felt even in this distressed neighbourhood, Jackie’s heart, which had numbed itself throughout the winter with a dull sense of loss and
unhappiness
, now responded seekingly and achingly to the promise of the season.

She had heard from Richard, as she now called him, only once since that night in Sheffield. He had written from Brittany, telling her something about himself, but talking of no further meeting when he returned to England.

At times Jackie could not help wondering — and Jackie, being what she was, conceived herself at such moments as one verging on abysses of thought — she could not help wondering why Richard was now away in Brittany and the whole thing was so out of the question. She put this to herself as a thing which she would not allow to enter her calculations, but at times she was enormously interested in it hypothetically.

Jackie, indeed (but this only at sleepless midnight, when the great moral tide of her twenty years was at its lowest
ebb), could really not see why people couldn’t get Divorces…. She did not know much about these things, had never dreamed of them as anything ever touching herself, and the mere word had a sort of base practicality about it which chilled her. But, for all that, when people were really unhappy …

But, of course, in that case, people would have to be absolutely terribly in love with people….

Well, she could do that all right, on her side….

And then, suddenly, and again by telegram, he announced that he had returned, and was coming to see her. And he arrived one evening, two hours before the show, she meeting him at the station on a hot, crowded, dizzying summer’s day.

And he saw her round to the show, and had supper with her afterwards, at Lines’. And he told her that he had come to London about his book, and was going to stay in London for about three weeks.

And sitting there, after the show, in the warm pink-shaded lights, at half-past eleven — but with the night, somehow, still young, and wild, and soft, and mysterious — it seemed to Jackie as though a sudden paradise had been opened before her eyes — as though another reprieve had come — yet
another
— and she could glory in it. And they talked and talked. And as they talked, and the black bent waiters hovered about, as though in half-leering but eagerly conspiratorial possession of their secret, she looked at his warm yet clear-cut face, which was now so infinitely dear to her, and let her whole soul recline upon the three weeks ahead.

*

And those three weeks contained no disappointment for Jackie. Indeed they ever afterwards stood out as perhaps the most precious weeks in her existence. They were days of dustiness and blazing London sunshine; and he met her every day, and took her everywhere. And every evening, when the skies were red, behind London house-tops, and the
air was cool, he was softly escorting her round to the theatre. That one moment of departure was as dear to her as any other, with its sweet surety of return. She never forgot those red cool skies, and those soft escortings to the stage-door….

And the days themselves, and the trips they had…. Hampstead — Maidenhead — Richmond — Cookham — Shepperton — Hindhead — Virginia Water…. And
sunshine
always, and green and cool places, and water…. And lunches…. Innumerable lunches…. And teas … teas by the river … languorous but cool teas by the river, with cress and bread and butter…. And the railway … always by railway … first-class — alone … or with unknowing and foolish people of whom fun might be made…. And always the fear of being late for the theatre … and always the taxi just in time … and always the red, cool sky at the end. The red cool sky, behind the house-tops, after the full green joyous day.

And nothing ever said, nothing ever admitted. And sometimes, because of this, a sadness and melancholy on Jackie’s part, in so far as it was possible to be sad, so long as he was there….

And the whole thing so manifest and very simple…. Jackie, on the one hand, a normal human being, striving frailly and unprotectedly to live to the full, to spread herself emotionally, and fulfill her instincts. And seeing in him her chance to do so, her chance to throw down all barriers, to devote herself to one sufficient and beauteous object, to have and give protection, and warm herself for ever….

And he, on the other hand, a less normal and more
aggressive
and knowledgeable individual — but recognizing in her that warm, transparent, inner life of hers — that inner life working itself out behind her grave, clear, foolish, and to him extraordinarily beautiful face. And yearning to deliver and console that inner life; and knowing, with too great a
conviction
, of his power to do so….

That inner spiritual life which Jackie always carried about with her, like a burden … that inner life only to be caught at work occasionally, and unawares, in a thoughtful,
uncon
scious
glance … that contemplative, optimistic, puzzled, striving and never confessed inner life … to which
everything
he might say was quietly referred, for sober meditation, and from which all her speech sprung automatically, and all her too artless tones and self-betraying looks….

The charm of Jackie, indeed, was overwhelming.

And because the whole thing was so obvious and ingenuous, it hardly needed confession, and they knew this. It was simply with them…. It was with them in the roar and tumult of London traffic, with only five minutes to get there, as much as it was with them on the quiet lawn of Skindle’s, with the river calm below, and the quiet, cushioned, vulgar punts floating lazily by…. It was with them as much in the tender invitation of the Waldorf band (with which they sometimes supped), as it was with them on the summit of the Sussex Downs, with nothing but the sky and the wind, and the brown sunlight scudding over a hazed and map-like county beneath. It was with them at all stations — at journey’s end or journey’s beginning, that is — either at the rural and earnest quietude of the Hassocks
halting-place
, or under the gaunt blackened roof, and sense of fear and hurry, of the Victoria terminus. And what was going to be done about it neither of them had any idea, and (quite genuinely) neither of them cared.

And nothing was done about it. One week slipped by, and she still had two weeks to recline upon — two weeks slipped by and she still had one week to recline upon — and the last week slipped by (and there was never any suggestion that the time should be prolonged) until there were but two days left. And then there was a last, sad, brilliant day; followed by a pale, nervous, anti-climactic morning, upon which the senseless sun blazed as brightly as ever. And she had lunch with him, and spent the afternoon with him, and had tea with him, and at last saw him off at the station to Brighton. He was going there to stay with his brother.

It was a swift moment, that of the parting — under the clock. A vast engine was hissing near by, and they were shouting at each other like sailors giving orders before being
submerged in a sea of noise: and at one moment he was there, and at the next he was gone, and she was looking vaguely at the three-and-sixpenny novels on the
bookstall
….

It was always at Stations, wasn’t it, she thought, as she walked away….

And having nothing to do, and nowhere to go, she walked across Green Park, where she sat down for a little by the water, in mute contemplation: and on to Piccadilly, from whence she walked up and down Regent Street for some time: and then she went into Shaftesbury Avenue, and turning up a side street, unescorted, entered the theatre. Here the stage was wrapped in complete darkness and deathly silence, and she appeared to be the first to have arrived.

And she went up the stairs, and entered the deserted dressing-room. And the casement window of this looked out upon a crowded Soho back-street, and the same, always the same, red, cool sky. And everything was very unfamiliar in the dying light of day, since she had never before seen a dressing-room other than in a blaze of light and noise.

And she sat down in the dusk, amid the lifeless glimmer of cast-off clothes, the lurid smear of greasepaint and carmine, the towels and littered cosmetics of the virile and absent feminine; and she looked out of the window at the red, cool sky — the red, cool, unknowing, incurious sky — and she wondered where he was now.

And she desolately imagined him arriving somewhere, in some far, remote, sunset distance. Somewhere a train was carrying him away — after all the warmth and eagerness and inexpressible consolation of these three weeks — carrying him unrelentingly away. And the subdued roar of the traffic, all around, was like the roar of the unappeasable world which had taken him.

And as the dusk fell deeper, and as she looked down at the street below, where the lamps were already glowing emerald upon the dead fruity litter of the vending and
beautiless
humanity that thronged this quarter, Jackie felt that she could not bear another parting like this.

J
ACKIE had learnt a good deal about Richard, and Richard’s past life, in those three weeks. But it was not his habit to speak much about himself, unless urged to do so, and concerning one subject particularly, that of his brother — a subject in which she was very greatly interested, since she could not conceive, and rather trembled at the conception of, anything in the same stamp as himself — she still remained very much in the dark. She had heard, indeed, that he was an elder brother, that he lived quietly on his own estate in Sussex, and that he was on terms of perfect accordance with Richard: but this was all. The three facts combined had awakened in her a certain trepidation, together with a certain grudge and antagonism, which engendered in its turn a very strong desire to meet this individual and win him over to her side. She doubted whether this would be easy, but reminded herself that she was lucky in having but one relation (and that a male) to contend with.

So little, however, had she learnt from Richard concerning him, that it was Miss Cherry Lambert from whom she first got the news, one Saturday about a month later, firstly that Charles Gissing was an amateur cricketer in the Sussex eleven, secondly that he was at this time playing at Lord’s. Miss Lambert claimed to have met him, and described him as charming. This was a great blow to Miss Biddy Maxwell, who disputed every inch of Gissing-ground with her friend; but she retorted quickly, if a trifle inapplicably, with Tate, whose autograph she claimed to have, and offered to produce. She also said that she thought it very Snobbish having Gentlemen and Players like that, as the players were just as much gentlemen as the gentlemen, and it ought to be
altered, and it was very Snobbish. Which was also a One (in a subsidiary way) in Miss Lambert’s Eye. There followed a discussion on Oxford and Cambridge, both of which were deprecated.

Jackie, however, had decided to go to Lord’s.

On Monday morning, therefore, she found herself at eleven o’clock on a hazed blue summer’s day, queueing up, with a rather agreeable sensation of excitement and espionage,
outside
the ground. The unusualness of this procedure, together with an unalterable conviction that she was doing something slightly underhand, provided her with a thrill from the
beginning
, though she had no idea how thrilled she was actually to be.

This was not, of course, her first experience of this summer game. At Hove, indeed, and when her father was alive, Jackie had had free entrance to the member’s pavilion of the County Ground, where she had spent many of her
happiest
though most languid days — from her earliest youth, when, for mysterious purposes of her own, it was her habit, for absorbed hours on end, to keep the score; down to the latest period before the war, when she attended for more social and less interested reasons. She was thus far from
deficient
in knowledge of the game, and as she now strolled over the lazy arena, after all these years, she felt stealing over her a melancholy and pleasurable reminiscence of the
unhurrying
life that had once been hers. The theatre seemed very distant on this sunny, green, quiet, hot day.

Hearing in the distance the quick
pock-pock
,
pock-pock
of the practising in the nets — a sound infinitely more excited and eager than anything the rest of the day or the actual game would provide — she strolled over there in the vague hope of seeing and being able to recognize the one she had come expressly to observe. But here, although she made several attempts, she was unable to select anyone, and shortly afterwards she bought a card, upon which his name was
printed as number five, and found a high seat on a sunny terrace, and prepared to watch.

It was almost like a call, this — a sunny call to the life she had left…. She remembered it all so well. The rolling of the pitch, the clanging of the bells, the slow dispersing of the crowd from the field, the emergence of the umpires — the whole semi-official but leisured and warm-hearted routine. And Middlesex still batting, with three wickets to fall. And Hendren still in, with his score at eighty-seven. And the emergence of the players, to mechanical applause, and the placing of the field, and the digging in, and the looking round, and the first maiden over, and the slow settling down to one of those mornings-after-the-night-before of cricket, which Jackie knew so well, but which she now found inexpressibly delightful. Indeed, by the time Hendren had reached his century, and the three figures on the black and white board whirled giddily and exultingly up amid a swelling storm of applause, Jackie was quite overcome with pleasure.

Hendren was bowled at a hundred and five, and ten minutes later the innings ended.

She had thought that perhaps she would not see this brother before the lunch-interval, but in the slow hour that followed three Sussex wickets fell, and he was fifth upon the card. The ground, meanwhile, had been growing very full for this always most popular London match, and the sun on the terraces had been growing very much more hot; and an air of seething expectancy was over all. And then the fourth wicket went down.

The last player vanished — there was a pause — a
portentous
silence from the crowded members’ pavilion — and then a flash of white against and amid those stolid rows, and he was out on the green — raising his cap to that more
emphasized
applause commonly accorded to a new amateur, and walking at an easy pace to the wicket….

She could n’t see … but much browner … and possibly larger … and kindly … shoulders built for kindliness alone … and brown … extraordinarily brown … and smiling brownly at Hendren … and Hendren smiling back,
as only that enchanting professional was able to smile … and taking his stand … and looking around … and cutting his first ball off Durston for a single, and running up the pitch to a soft swelling burst of applause….

He made twenty-four before lunch.

Jackie’s lunch-hour, by which time the sky had become grey, and for which she had been provided with very luscious egg-sandwiches by Mrs. Lover, was like a curious dream…. That this individual was not out — that the whole game, that the whole crowd, clustering and pacing in a released manner over the field, was thus suspended and as it were dependent upon him; that this was Richard’s brother; that Richard loved her; that she loved Richard; that she might never have Richard; that she might have Richard for ever; that no one in this schoolboyish, plebeian or
supercilious
crowd was remotely aware of these tragic but exquisite complications … it was all so quaint. But there was also a pure detached thrill about it which she could not resist. And she sat there munching her sandwiches, and spilling the crumbs, and brushing them off, and saying No this seat was not engaged (so far as she knew) and going on munching — surely the most singular and singularly involved figure that ever watched a day’s cricket in the history of Lord’s.

The sky was even greyer still by the time the game
recommenced
, and he came out looking stronger, and browner, and cooler than ever. And he had another little humorous passage with Hendren (for whom Jackie had by now
conceived
an adoration) and he settled down with his partner to a very slow game indeed. But he scraped his way up to fifty at last, and the huge pea-in-box roar of applause that arose was, for some reason, very sweet in Jackie’s ears….

He then settled down again, with the slow intent of one aiming at his century: and at sixty-four, with a suddenness so great as momentarily almost to divert the mind from the catastrophe, his stumps were in a mess and he was walking away….

But even then the day was not quite over. For the Sussex wickets fell very quickly after this, and an hour after the tea
interval Middlesex were batting again. And the last hour of the day was as happy as any to Jackie, with the plunging and deepening-yellow sun shining blindingly in her face, and the glowing green grass and white glowing figures in front….

And for a long period, when he was in the long-field, the most astonishing proximity…. Practically invisible,
because
of the sun, but not more than twenty yards away…. His back turned, his eyes shaded with his hand, and the creak of his cricket boots, and the aura of his energy as he paced up and down or ran….

*

And then, all at once, a vast thundercloud looming up, darkening the field and daubing the sky with sharply defined and outlandish rays. And a chill wind rising … and shiverings … and the slow-rising streams of the first departures…. And enchantment gone, and a coldness at heart….

And then a few rain-drops, and an umbrella raised
hysterically
in the distance, and a general stir and disturbance…. And only five minutes to go in any case…. And a sudden snatching of stumps and a rushing in….

But not raining properly yet, and Jackie, very cold, and very desolate, in the thick, dusty crowd on her way to the gates…. Very cold and desolate, and the scrunch, scrunch, scrunch of feet on the ashen-white gravel….

But a glorious day, for all that — an unforgettable day. A sunny and quite unforgettable day….

And Richard at the main gate — as though waiting for her.

“Hullo, Jackie,” he said. He spoke sadly and quietly, and looked down at her without apparent surprise.

He had a newspaper, screwed up like a baton, in his hand, and his collar was a little disordered, and his face and hands a little grubby from a day obviously spent at Lord’s. And Jackie observed all these things and observed none of them.
And she had a terrible sense of having been caught — trapped irrevocably — and she read his sadness and quietude as his scorn. And she heard herself saying, in a frightened mist, “Hullo, what on earth are you doing up here?”

And at this moment a roll of thunder — like the
piano-shifting
of some evil-minded tenant in the gaunt grey above — broke upon their ears. And they looked into each other’s eyes, in a fascinated way, and ignored it. Consciously and deliberately, and until it had expended itself, they ignored it, saying nothing.

“I’ve been here all day, Jackie,” he said.

There was a pause.

“You know, I did n’t mean you to see me,” said Jackie, attempting a smile, which he returned.

“I did see you though, Jackie. I saw you having lunch.”

“No.
Not
my sandwiches?” pleaded Jackie.

“Yes. Sandwiches and all. And I was so hideously
fascinated
I simply couldn’t spoil it. Otherwise I might have given you a decent one.”

“Jolly glad you didn’t…” said Jackie, vaguely, and there was a pause.

“I’ve sent you a wire to-day.”

“Have you? What about?”

“Well, what are you doing now?” Here a departing
gentleman
collided with Mr. Gissing.

“I beg your pardon, sir,” said the departing gentleman.

“All right.”

“Well,” said Jackie. “I was just going over to the theatre, really.”

Large spattering drops of rain commenced to fall.
Deliberately
and consciously they ignored these drops of rain.

“Theatre. Yes. Well, I’ve got to be somewhere at eight. What shall we do?”

A flash of pink lightning — a snarl exploding in a crash — a darkening and a panic, and a straight-falling torrent of rain. Every one was rushing for shelter.

“Damn!” He took her arm.

And she was no longer afraid of his scorn, or ashamed of
herself. She was forgiven (if there was any forgiving), and all was as before. She was in a thunderstorm at Lord’s Cricket Ground with the man she loved. And she relied upon him. And it was very strange, and very uncomfortable, and entirely beautiful.

“Taxi,” he murmured, and led her into the middle of the road. Here he stopped a machine, and opened the door. She got in.

“Where to, Jackie?” he cried.

“Where to? I don’t know. Where?”

“Swiss Cottage,” he shouted to the driver. “What? … Oh, the station … and back again!”

He was in beside her and sitting opposite her. The taxi was moving away.

His clothes were dabbed with wet, and his newspaper baton was limp. She had never before seen him so grubby and untidy, and found him more than usually attractive in this state. Also it was the first time she had ever seen him truly nervous and ill at ease. He was like a small boy impatient under pain. He kept on jabbing his knee with his paper, and looking meaninglessly out of the window as he spoke.

“Look here, Jackie. I’ve got on to a job for you. That’s what the wire was about. You’ll find it at the theatre. You know ‘Little Girl’’s coming off in three weeks?”

“No!”

“Yes. Well, this thing I’ve got is a chance for stock. Just the thing you want, really. You won’t get paid much, and there’s a certain amount of work, but you’ll get all the experience you want. Walter Carters — the man who owns the Old Strand. He’s taking a show round the London halls, and then he’s going down to the King’s, at Brighton, to do some repertory — a month or two. Awful trash, but just the thing you’re wanting. And I want you to go along and see him, to-morrow.”

“I say — how ripping,” said Jackie, who had no idea what she was saying. “Do you think I’ll get it?”

“Bound to. You see, when they get to Brighton I’m going to play the leads.”

“You!”

“Yes — you see — and we can be in it together.”

The skies crashed above: the rain threshed the roof and spat at the window: and in the garish dusk of this strange chamber he looked over at her, in a strained way, and jabbed his knee with his paper. And the taxi was speeding up by the long wall of Lord’s on its way to Swiss Cottage.

And the other side of that wall, she suddenly and
inconsequently
reflected, was the brother of this distressed and lovable being. Probably changing now, in that receding but still visible pavilion…. And it was a very wet day, and this was a curious connection she had developed with the cricketing world….