Bruno’s Dream

15

Adelaide, who could hear through the open door that somebody was coming down the stairs, attempted to release her hand, which Will had gripped. Will resisted, squeezing her fingers painfully hard and thrusting his bulky body up against her. Adelaide kicked him as violently as she could on the ankle and pulled herself away. In the doorway she ran into Mrs. Greensleave, who had been regarding the last part of the struggle with amusement.

“Would you mind telling Mr. Odell that I’m just outside when he comes down?”

Adelaide said nothing, but went on down the stairs into the kitchen, which was below the level of the street. The kitchen was rather like a dugout and smelt of damp earth. From here she could both see and hear Mrs. Greensleave and Will, who were now in conversation beside the railings, out lined in a fugitive brightness of cloudy sun. Adelaide studied Mrs. Greensleave’s legs.

”What a pretty colour of blue you’re painting the railings,” said Mrs. Greensleave.

”Yes, it is rather good. A sort of Cezanne blue.”

”Oh, you know about Cezanne! Good for you. Did you choose the colour or did Mr. Odell choose it?”

”I chose it. Mr. Odell doesn’t know one colour from another.”

”I’m not surprised! Do you work here?”

”I am working here, but I don’t work here.”

”How absolute the knave is!”

”Shakespeare. I’m the odd-job boy.”

”And a very learned one! Do you work for a firm or on your own?”

”I’m what they term self-employed. And as I’m not a very exacting employer I’m usually unemployed. I’m on National Assistance.”

”Oh, hard luck.”

”For doing nothing, it’s princely.”

”I see you’re a philosopher, too! What’s your name?”

”Will.”

”Would you come and paint our house, Will?”

”Why?”

”I’d like to help you. And our house needs painting.”

”Maybe. I’ll think about it.”

”I can see you’re good at painting, being an admirer of Cezanne!”

”I’m good at better things than painting.”

”What else are you good at?”

”Drawing, photography, acting-“

”Acting? That explains your knowledge of Shakespeare.”

”My general culture explains my knowledge of Shakespeare.”

”Sorry, Will! Yes, I can see you as an actor. You’ve got a fine head. And if I may say so, I like the way you trim your moustache.”

”You’ve got a fine head too. I could do your photograph.

Make you look even more stunning.”

”Maybe. I’ll think about it! You’re a nice boy, Will. Are you what’s her name’s boy friend, the maid, what is her name?”

”Adelaide. Adelaide de Crecy.”

”Dear me, what a grand name.”

”What a grand girl.”

”Well, I wish you joy.”

”Where’s your house?”

”Kempsford Gardens, by West Brompton tube station, I’ll write it down.”

”Maybe I’ll telephone you. Maybe I won’t.”

”Oh please do! Keep still a moment, Will, you’ve got some blue paint in your hair. I’ll just try to wipe it off with this bit of paper. You’ve got such nice hair, it seems a pity to dye it blue!”

Adelaide opened the kitchen window a little so that she could close it again with a resounding crash. She selected the last but one teacup of the older Wedgwood set and dropped it on the stone floor. Then she left the kitchen, slamming the door behind her, and went into her own room. She saw that there was a long streak of blue paint on the skirt of the frilled chiffon dress which she had put on for Danby’s day at home. She took off the dress and kicked it into a heap in the corner. She took off her Irish enamel necklace and matching bangle. She put on her oldest overall and lay down on the bed. A few tears overflowed from her eyes.

Danby had not shared her bed last night or the night before. There was nothing very unusual in this but it always depressed her. The night before he had left a note saying he would be in very late. Last night there had been something a trifle self-conscious about the way in which he had said, “Not tonight, I think, Adelaide-I’ll go in my own place tonight. I want to read a bit.” He never read, as she knew perfectly well, since he was too tired and too tipsy when he came to bed to do anything except make love and fall asleep, and indeed he very often fell asleep in the middle of the love-making and had to be shifted by savage jabs and shoves which still failed to wake him up. Last night his light had gone out and his snores had been heard immediately after he had left her.

Adelaide lived in a perpetual state of anxiety in a world of important signs the exact bearing of which constantly eluded her. She lived like an animal, seeing nothing clearly beyond her immediate surroundings, hiding at movements, sniffing, listening, waiting. She could see the kitchen, the paint on her dress, the broken Wedgwood cup. But even Stadium Street was already a mystery to her: and the two largest portents in her life, Danby and Will, were almost entirely mysterious and terrifying. In relation to Will the feeling of terror was not entirely unpleasant, and of course she had known Will such a long time. Will scaring her, shouting at her, twisting her arm, though it was incomprehensible, was at least something familiar. But Danby’s quiet lazy comportment, his preoccupied smiles and unaccountable defections, although she ought by now to have been used to them, were read in trembling as one might try to read one’s death sentence in a foreign language.

She wondered if life were like that for other people and thought it could not be so. It was patently not like that for Danby. And there were married people who knew that they would be together forever and if anything was nasty or muddled it was only temporary. And there were people who did important work and had their names printed on official lists. And people with grand families and property. These people belonged to the structure of the world, to which Adelaide did not feel herself in any way attached. She felt like something very small which rattled around somewhere near the bottom and could quite easily fall out of a hole without anybody even noticing. Her greatest certainty was Danby, and what kind of certainty was that? He had talked about her old age, but what did that mean? Anybody could pension off a servant. He had absolute power over her status and her being. And how little she really knew him. She could hear Danby’s voice saying, “Let’s give it all a miss from now on, Adelaide, shall we?” in just the same casual tone in which he had said, “Not tonight, I think” and, so long ago, “What about it?”

Adelaide knew that she was becoming more irritable and nervy. She knew that she ought not to have broken the Wedgwood cup and she even regretted having broken it. She had resolved not to speak to Will when he was painting the railings in case he misbehaved and Danby saw, but halfway through the morning she had felt a sudden need for Will, although she had expressed the need simply by being unpleasant to him. Then there had been the horrible spectacle of that Mrs. Greensleave both patronizing Will and flirting with him, while Will simpered and answered back like a pert servant and let her paddle her hands in his hair. At that contact Adelaide had felt an automatic jealous shock, and more consciously a disgust at the failure in Will of something upon which she especially relied, his dignity: or perhaps simply his self-confidence, his peculiar pride, that which more than anything else made him the same person as the boy she had known. Will was now both a nuisance and a menace, but he was her last connection with a real Adelaide who had once existed, a pretty girl with two clever sixth-former cousins who lent her books and flattered her, while she wondered happily in her private heart which one of them she was destined to marry.

Adelaide sat up and put her legs over the edge of the bed. There was a hole in her stocking at the knee through which a mound of pink flesh bulged out. She leaned forward and undid her hair and let it fall down heavily on either side of her face. She had that heavy graceless fat feeling which she identified as the feeling of growing old, the feeling of no return. She had made some sort of life-mistake which meant that everything would grow worse and never better. Was there no action which she could perform which, like the magic ritual in the fairy tale, would reverse it all and suddenly reveal her hidden identity? But she had no hidden identity. She got up slowly and pushed her hair, or most of it, inside the back of her overall. She opened the door of her bedroom.

The door of Danby’s room opposite stood open and she could see the jumble of the unmade bed with the sheets trailing on the floor. Let him make it himself, she thought, and then changed her mind and went into the room. She began to haul the bed together. The big black box with all the little drawers in it which housed the most important part of the stamp collection was standing on Danby’s dressing table. Bruno had been too upset that morning to ask to see it. Ade laide dragged on the extremely faded Welsh counterpane. The room, the bed, smelt of Danby, an intimate sweetish smell of tobacco and sweat and male. Adelaide stared at the black box. Danby usually put the stamps into some sort of order before he put the collection away at night, and Adelaide, who had sometimes looked through the sheets in search of “pretty ones,” knew roughly how the drawers were arranged. She moved over and opened a drawer halfway down and fanned out the sheaf of transparent cellophane sheets. There was the set of Cape Triangular stamps. Selecting one at random she drew it quickly out and slipped it into the pocket of her over all.

”Good-bye, Will. Mind you ring me up! And don’t get any more of that paint in your hair.”

Lisa and Diana began to walk away down the street in the direction of Cremorne Road. Diana had hoped that Danby might walk along with them, but no doubt he had decided that there was no point in it since Lisa was there.

Diana had been shocked and sickened by the dreary little room and its awful occupant. What she had seen seemed more like flesh, living flesh as one rarely sees it, in extremis, than like a person. She had expected something quite other: a silvery-haired old gentleman, with an evident and affecting resemblance to Miles, whom she would coax along and charm into paying her compliments. She had expected something a little peppery and difficult, also frail, but eminently conversible. She had felt moved by the idea of the embassy once Lisa had suggested it, and she had seen herself in the rather touching role of reconciler and flower-bearer, undoing by her graciousness the harm which her husband had done. But on arrival she had realized at once that this was a case for the expert, for the professional. Familiar words like “old gentle man” could not come near touching that reality. Lisa was good in these extreme places, she had a knack. Diana felt here, as she had felt on her few visits to Lisa’s East End haunts, upset, embarrassed, and alarmed. She was glad for the old man’s sake that Lisa was there.

Diana went straight out into the street to escape from the awful impression of that pathetic length of flesh, and while she was flirting more or less mechanically with the handsome dark-haired painter lad, her thoughts had already reverted to Danby. In these days Danby quietly filled her mind in a way that she was determined not to find alarming. Her nerves were calmed by the dear man’s own insouciance and ease, an ease which she did not see as frivolity but rather as a kind of sincerity. With someone like Danby one knew exactly where one was. He did not pretend to the disrupting violence of absolutes. His cheerful way of asking for an affair had exhilarated her. It was easy to refuse, while at the same time one was in no way cheated of a compliment. Nor was she at all afraid that a baffled Danby would “turn nasty.” Of course he would try, perhaps for a long time, to persuade her. But she did not on reflection really think that the argument would end in bed. There must be nothing dreadful, nothing frightening, here. The argument would have to take place, and she rather looked forward to it. But in the very length of the argument would lie the makings of the lasting sentimental friendship which Diana felt she now so very much wanted and needed to have with Danby. After all, as he was pre-eminently a happy-making man she had only to convince him about where her happiness lay. And with this thought Diana had come, over the last few days, to realize that for all the excellence of her marriage she was not by any means entirely happy.

She had mentioned both Danby’s visits to Miles but had kept silent about the dancing. That episode had indeed be come so dreamlike, so strangely formally romantic, in her memory that she scarcely felt guilty of any falsehood in sup pressing it. That would not happen again; she could find all that she needed in a set of arrangements which would involve no falsehood. In fact even by the truth, Miles was likely to be more than a little misled at present since he could not conceive of anybody enjoying Danby’s company. He had commiserated with his wife upon his brother-in-law’s visitations. “That oaf!” Diana smiled, and her smile had tenderness for both men. She did not want to deceive Miles. She would give him, in time, enough intimations of the real state of affairs. “I like him, really.”

”He’s rather sweet.”

”Guess who I’m lunching with? Danby!” Miles would get used to it, and if he could never wholly believe in Diana’s predilection, in spite of her most careful factual statements, then so much perhaps the better. So she would stretch the situation, a little from Danby’s side, a little from Miles’s side, until she could achieve what now her whole nature craved for, another harmless love. She would love Danby, and no one would be any the worse. As she resolved upon this she felt her heart swell again with the imperative need to love, and she sighed deeply.

”What is it, Di?”

It had come on to rain a little and the two women, their scarves pulled well forward over their heads, were walking briskly along Edith Grove.

”That poor old man-“

”Poor Bruno, yes.”

”In that sort of state they become so-repulsive and horrifying. It must be terrible to be human and conscious and utterly repulsive. I hope he doesn’t know what he looks like.”

”We all interpret and idealize our faces. I expect Bruno has some idea of his appearance which is quite unlike what we saw.”

”I hope so. I can’t think how Danby can manage it. Treat ing like a person-what isn’t a person anymore.”

”Bruno’s not so far gone. He talked sense after you’d left.”

”You’re so good, I wish I had your knack.”

”I’m more used to it.”

”What did he say?”

”He said to tell Miles he didn’t mean what he said at the end.”

”You know, I think he thought you were Miles’s wife!”

”I don’t know who he thought I was.”

”He seemed to think you were somebody, he certainly took to you.”

”I do wish we’d known him earlier.”

”Well, that was Miles’s fault. God, I hope I’ll never get like that, I’d rather be dead. Don’t you think there’s a lot to be said for euthanasia?”

”I’m not sure. It’s so hard to know what’s going on inside a very old person.”

”No wonder Miles was stumped.”

”Miles will have to try again.”

”Well, you tell Miles that. You’re good at being firm with him. Wasn’t he cross this morning?”

”Guilty conscience!”

”Danby was thoroughly fed up with him.”

”Yes.” The two women turned into the Fulham Road, their heads bowed to the light rain.

”Lisa.”

”Yes.”

”There’s nothing special going on between me and Danby, you know.”

”I didn’t think there was.”

”He’s a thoughtless impetuous chap but he’s really very sweet. You mustn’t be hard on him.”

”I don’t know anything about him.”

”You’re like Miles, you’re so uncompromising. I think it makes you just a little too severe sometimes.”

”Sorry!”

”Danby’s a very affectionate person and I think he’s a bit lonely. I suspect he hasn’t really talked to a woman for ages. He imagines he’s a bit keen on me, but I can manage him. It’s just the first shock! I know he plays the clown a bit but he’s not a fool. There’s no drama.”

”I didn’t think there was, Di.”

”That’s all right then. You worry so, Lisa, and I know you don’t suffer fools gladly. You and Miles are so alike. I can’t think why you’re both so fond of me!”

Lisa laughed and thrust her arm through her sister’s and gave it a quick squeeze. A little later as they were taking the short cut through Brompton Cemetery Lisa said, “Seeing Bruno like that reminded me of Dad.”

”Oh God. Lisa, I’ve thought about it sometimes, but I never liked to ask you. Were you actually with him when he died?”

”Yes.”

”One hates to think of these things. I’m such a coward, I was very relieved it happened when I was away. Was it rather awful?”

”Yes.”

”Like what?”

”I think one almost absolutely forgets the quality of scenes like that.”

”Was he-frightened?”

”Yes.”

”That must have been terrible for you.”

”It’s like no other fear. It’s so deep. It almost becomes something impersonal. Philosophers say we own our deaths. I don’t think so. Death contradicts ownership and self. If only one knew that all along.”

”I suppose one is just an animal then.”

”One is with an animal then. It isn’t quite the same thing.”

”He was so good earlier on in the illness.”

”He didn’t believe it earlier on, any more than we believe it now.”

”We did try to deceive him.”

”We were trying to deceive ourselves. It was terrible to see him realizing-the truth.”

”Oh God. What did you do?”

”Held his hand, said I loved him-“

”I suppose that is the only thing one would want to know.”

”What was awful was that he didn’t want to know. We’re so used to the idea that love consoles. But here one felt that even love was-nothing.”

”That can’t be true.”

”I know what you mean. It can’t be true. Perhaps one just suddenly saw the dimensions of what love would have to be-like a huge vault suddenly opening out overhead-“

”Was it-hard for him to go?”

”Yes. Like a physical struggle. Well, it was a physical struggle, trying to do something.”

”I suppose death is a kind of act. But I expect he was really unconscious at the end.”

”I don’t know. Who knows what it is like at the end?”

”What a gloomy conversation. Why, Lisa, you’re crying!

Oh stop crying, darling, stop crying, for heaven’s sake!”