Bruno’s Dream

8

Danby straightened his tie and rang the bell.

The door was opened by a large-browed woman with very faded sand-coloured hair tucked well back behind her ears. The image of Miles vanished. “I say-Hello-I-“

”You’re Danby.”

”Yes. You’re Diana.”

”Yes. Oh good. I’ve been longing to meet you. Come in. I’m afraid Miles is out.”

There was some faint music playing in the background.

Danby followed her through the dark hall into a room into which the last evening sun was palely shining. Outside, through French windows, there was a pavement wet with recent rain, interspersed with bushy clumps of grey and bluish herbs. A very faint steam was rising from the sun-warmed pavement. But Danby had not taken his eyes off the woman.

The music, Danby now became aware, was dance music, old-fashioned dance music, a foxtrot, something dating from Danby’s youth and stirring up a shadowy physical schema of memories. A slow foxtrot. Diana turned it down to a back ground murmur.

”How nice of you to call.”

”Well, I could have telephoned, but I was passing by and thought I’d drop in.” Danby in fact had found himself much troubled by a craving to see Miles again. “It’s about Miles seeing Bruno? I’m so glad he’s going to, aren’t you?”

”Yes. I wonder would Saturday morning be all right? Miles doesn’t work on Saturdays?”

”Sometimes he does, but he can always not if he wants to.”

”About eleven then.”

”You know, you’re not a bit like what I expected.”

”What did you expect?”

”Oh something-well, it’s hard to say-“

”Miles’s description of me was unflattering?”

”No, no, no, it wasn’t that. I thought you’d be older, and not so-“

”Handsome?” They both laughed. The room was a variegated brightly coloured room, full of plump little rounded armchairs covered in chintz. There was a tall white art nouveau mantelpiece scattered with glistening china. The yellow and white striped walls were covered with a miscellany of small late-Victorian oil paintings and silhouettes and miniatures. It was a self-conscious eclectic room, a made-up room, a room which might have existed in Cambridge in nineteen hundred, full of cold light from the fens and an atmosphere of rather severe hedonism.

The girl, for so he immediately thought of her, was wearing a blue woolen dress without a belt, very short. She was plump inside the sheath of the dress, rounds of breasts, stomach, buttocks, well suggested and smoothed over. Her eyes were a rich unflecked brown, and her longish straight hair, now the sun was shining on it, gleamed a metallic silvery gold. She had a straight decisive nose and an intent faintly hungry enigmatic expression. Danby apprehended at once a certain sense of drama, a sense of her initiative. A nervy magnetic girl such as he did not often meet now. A rather severe hedonist.

”And am I like how you expected?”

”I’m afraid I didn’t really think much about you at all. But I shall think about you now.”

”You are polite.” They both laughed again. “Have a drink,” said Diana. “Miles has given up. Isn’t it awful?” She took bottles of gin and vermouth and sherry and small cut-glass tumblers out of a white cupboard.

Danby took the drink gratefully. The ritual of drinking, the time of day, the encapsulated moment of the first evening drink, always produced for him a rush of pure happiness along the veins. This occasion seemed, with its element of surprise, peculiarly perfect.

”I like a drink at this time of day, but I don’t like drinking alone.”

”Then I’m glad I called to provide you with a drinking companion!”

”I’m glad you called! Miles is so clammed up about his family.”

”Family, yes, I suppose I count as a family connection.”

”I think family ties are so important.”

”Depends on the family rather. What do you do, Diana?”

”What do you mean what do I do? I’m a housewife. I know what you do.”

”I’m a businessman I suppose. Or a printer. I never really think what I am.”

”I never really think what I am either. But I imagine that’s because I’m not anything.”

”You don’t go out to work?”

”Good heavens no. I’m unemployable.”

”You dust?”

”The char dusts. I garden, I cook, I rearrange the ornaments.”

”Creative.”

”Don’t be silly. Have another drink.”

”When’s Miles coming?”

”Not till late. He’s at some office gathering he couldn’t get out of. He hates it.”

”I don’t imagine Miles is very social.”

”He isn’t. He hates people.”

”You obviously rather like them.”

”Well, I’m a good deal matier than Miles is. Can I come and see Bruno too?”

”Of course. He’s longing to meet you.”

”Is he? I didn’t imagine he conceived of my existence.”

”Of course he does. He’s all agog.”

”You make me feel quite nervous. I’ll let Miles have first go. I’ve always so much wanted to meet you and Bruno. Is Bruno very ill?”

”Yes and no. He’s not in pain and he’s quite rational. He’ll like you.”

”I’ll like him.”

How stupid of me, thought Danby. It never occurred to me that there might be, like this, a girl. And what luck for Bruno. She would know how to deal with the old man. Girls had so much more sense. He looked about the room again. A girl who did nothing. Who sat in plump chintzy chairs and read. He saw a book on one of the chairs. Jane Austen. A woman who was perhaps a little bored. Who waited.

”I’m so very glad we’ve met at last,” he said.

Then, oh God, he thought, what awfully sexy music. What is it? It was something familiar. “What is that thing on the gramophone?”

She turned it up. It was a slow foxtrot, formal, dignified, intensely sweet, bringing with it again that precise and yet unplaceable sense of the past. Danby’s feet sketched a movement, sliding, catching, upon the close-woven carpeted floor.

Then the next moment he had sidled forward, slid his arm around her waist, and they were dancing in silence, advancing, retreating, circling, their slow precise feet patterning the floor and their mingled shadow climbing over the furniture after them.

The music stopped and they moved apart. Blue eyes stared at brown eyes and brown eyes dropped their gaze.

”You dance beautifully, Diana.”

”So do you.”

”I think the slow foxtrot is the best of all dances.”

”Yes. And the most difficult.”

”I haven’t danced in years.”

”Nor I. Miles hates dancing.”

”I won a dancing competition once.”

”So did I.”

”Diana, will you come and dance with me, some afternoon, at one of those dance halls, you know, one can dance there in the afternoons.”

”No, of course not.”

”Miles wouldn’t mind would he?”

”Danby, don’t be silly.”

”Diana, slow foxtrot?”

”No.”

”Slow foxtrot?”

”No.”

”Slow fox?”

”No.”