The Late Breakfasters (Faber Finds)

‘Who is he?’ enquired Pamela, the resonating chambers of her (never very resonant) voice clotted with mucus.

‘I beg you pardon?’ enquired Edwin courteously.

‘The director. What’s his name? Or is that a whimsey little secret too?’ Pamela was unused to not being answered first time.

‘The director’s name is not actually a secret, but I doubt whether any of you would know it.’

‘Thought he was world famous,’ persisted Pamela spitefully. Probably she had by now something against Edwin. She added with unwelcome acumen: ‘How’s he to reach the masses now if he hasn’t done it already?’

‘I don’t think I actually described him as world-famous: only in certain informed circles.’ It was the first time Griselda had ever seen Edwin reduced to the defensive. His entire narrative, moreover, seemed to her less impressive than some of its glittering predecessors.

‘I see,’ said Pamela, ‘high hat. Tell your Princess she’d do better with Punch and Judy. More to remould society, I mean, if that’s the idea, as you say it is.’ Pamela seemed to doubt whether it was the idea. She tried to sniff, but her nose was so blocked that she failed to do so, which was much more distressing than even success would have been. The zymosis which choked her tubes seemed, none the less, somehow to have cleared her brain. She applied a minute hard ball of a handkerchief and began with the other hand to release drops from a bottle of bitters on to her pancake.

Griselda noticed that Mrs Hatch was barely even eating.

Real trouble broke out only when Brundrit brought in a large dish of medlars.

The trouble was that no one seemed to want medlars: no one except perhaps Mrs Hatch, and even she, like most people in such cases, seemed more concerned that the others should like medlars than happy that she liked them herself. She implied, with the faintest undertone of pugnacity, that these particular medlars had been preserved in exactly the recommended state of decomposition since the previous autumn, an undertaking involving much skill and difficulty, of which the present company were privileged to enjoy the benefit.

To begin with, the Duke and Duchess did not know what medlars were, and fogged themselves worse and worse with obscure Germanic polysyllables, cooing together like puzzled budgerigars. Then Edwin seemed afraid that the deliquescent fibres would damage his suit. And Griselda had experienced medlars in the past.

Pamela merely said ‘They look rotten.’

The Duke, speaking German, made some reference to their smell.

‘Not rotten at all,’ said Mrs Hatch. ‘The fruit is in the finest possible condition for eating. It is properly bletted.’

‘What is bletted, Melanie?’ asked the Duchess.

‘Medlars cannot be eaten, Odile, until they mature. Then they are the most delicious of all fruit. Try one and see for yourself.’

The Duke and Duchess took one medlar each.

‘Griselda?’

‘No thank you.’

‘Don’t be narrow. Have you any first-hand experience of medlars?’ This question clearly, in the grammarians’ phrase, expected the answer No.

‘Yes. I’m afraid I don’t like them.’

‘Then you’re a silly girl. Pamela.’

‘I’m only allowed to eat food which is perfectly fresh.’

‘What about you, Edwin? You may use the table implements if you wish to preserve your appearance.’

‘Please excuse me on this occasion, Mrs Hatch. I always lunch very lightly, you know. Usually only a single quail brought to my office from the Express Dairy or somewhere like that.’ Edwin had begun to doubt whether the proposed film would regenerate the proletariat after all. This made even so perfectly balanced a man as Edwin a little standoffish. Perceiving the fact, Griselda wanted to restore his confidence, as he was so much more agreeable when confident.

But before she could think of anything to say, the Duke and Duchess had begun to misbehave. The rearrangement of the table consequent upon the departure of Mr Leech, the absence of George Goss, and the reluctance of Edwin to risk contracting a nasty cold, had brought the Duke and Duchess against all custom to adjoining seats: and the difficulty they had experienced in identifying the strange foodstuff in the Duke’s language, had amplified into intermittent and giggling exchanges of pleasantries in German. Suddenly the Duke said something very quickly to his wife under his breath; and the two of them burst into explosions of unsuitable mirth. They tilted back their chairs, roared at the ceiling, nudged one another, and gasped out confirmations of the joke which were strangled by new attacks of laughter beyond all control. It was plain what they thought of medlars, even when properly bletted.

Mrs Hatch said nothing at all, but piled up a heap of medlars on her plate, and began to devour them displaying much more appetite than earlier in the meal, and sucking rather noisily.

The Duke and Duchess went on laughing in an uncontrolled Germanic way. At first they were oblivious of their isolation; then suddenly they became over-sensitive to it and began long-windedly to apologize. The single medlars, still almost intact, were evidence of their good intentions.

‘It was something of which Gottfried said they reminded him.’ concluded the Duchess not very happily: especially as they then began both to laugh again.

‘I was spending a night once inside the Great Pyramid,’ began Edwin. He had overheard and understood the Duke’s simile and was fearful of its disclosure. ‘We had nothing to eat but dates. Not the artificially nurtured Tunis dates we buy in boxes, but the real native dates, small and packed into blocks and not very clean. The dogs, you know. Not to mention the heat and the native children. We had a little camel’s milk too in a gourd. It would have been most unwise to introduce any Western food, as we were entirely in the power of the group we had gone to meet.’

‘Was it a pleasant meeting?’ asked Griselda.

‘Very profitable indeed. It enabled me precisely to foretell the date of the rebuilding of the Temple.’

‘Which Temple?’

‘The Temple of Jerusalem. As you probably know, I adhere to British-Israel. It is to my mind the only conceivable explanation of modern British history. We are mere tools.’

‘Shall I serve coffee, madam?’ asked Monk. Mrs Hatch who was still silently assimilating the putrescent-looking heap, merely nodded.

Griselda tried to talk intelligently about the Glastonbury Thorn and to discuss the question of whether or not the Prophet Jeremiah was buried on an island off the coast of Scotland, only to be reborn as General Booth; but it was difficult going. Edwin, naturally, was eager and convincing, politely countering possible objections and clarifying dark places; but the Duke and Duchess had sunk into a state of guilty abashment, quite unlike their usual mood, and sat drinking cup after cup of cafй au lait and wringing their hands under the tablecloth; while Mrs Hatch continued simply to sulk. She had been so agreeable on and before their walk that Griselda was unable fully to understand what was the matter with her, though Austin Barnes, shaker of nations and breaker of lives, almost certainly had something to do with it, she supposed.

Ultimately the house party fell to pieces like the ten little nigger boys. Two were already missing. Then, as Edwin was explaining the mystical status of the Union Jack, Pamela abruptly remarked that her Father always insisted upon her going straight home when she was ill, and proceeded upstairs to pack, Mrs Hatch offering singularly little resistance. Five minutes later, by which time Edwin had arrived at the Biblical appointment of the site of Balmoral Castle, the Duchess, with exquisite anguish, observed that if there were to be no games in which all of them could join, she and Gottfried would like to retire for their usual afternoon rest, and departed easing the belt of her dress (she was a little flushed) and followed by her husband hard on her heels. Again Mrs Hatch stonily acquiesced, and sat glaring at the йpergne. Suddenly Edwin stopped in the middle of sentence and, exclaiming ‘The Aga Khan. I must, if you will forgive me,’ hastened away. ‘I wonder if the lines to that part of India are busy at this hour?’ he enquired absently as he carefully closed the door.

Left alone with Griselda, Mrs Hatch was clearly about to say something of the utmost significance. Her mien was almost frightening with import. But Monk entered and asked if he could clear; and once more Mrs Hatch wearily acquiesced.

‘Shall Stainer serve tea, ma’am? It’s the usual time.’

‘Do you want any tea, Griselda?’

‘Yes, please,’ said Griselda stoutly. ‘If I could first remove your boots.’

‘Remove what you like,’ said Mrs Hatch; then, addressing Monk, added ‘Tea for Miss de Reptonville. And I suppose we may have visitors. Tea for five or six. Nothing for me.’

Griselda began to realize that few things are so important in any kind of shared life with the moods of the person it is shared with. Mrs Hatch was being quite unlike herself. Griselda recalled Louise’s words about the difficulty of living with anyone, and that even Louise had shown signs of a moodiness which would doubtless wax on longer and less desperate acquaintanceship.

To judge by her past experience, she suspected that so many medlars had made matters worse by giving Mrs Hatch colic.

It took Griselda twenty minutes to remove the boots, and to oil and part her hair; and when she again descended it was to find that Mrs Hatch’s single visitor that Sunday had arrived, a certain Mrs Cramp, the wife of a neighbouring landowner. It was still raining hard.

‘Bitches,’ cried out Mrs Cramp in a loud harsh voice like a police whistle, ‘have two or three times the staying power of dogs. If not more.’

A fire had been lighted and the scene offered all the cosiness of an English country house at Sunday teatime; though none of the other guests seemed eager to partake. Griselda soon learnt that Pamela had already left without saying Goodbye to anyone, even to her hostess. In the end, however, George Goss clumped down the stairs.

‘Think I’ve thrown up the worst by now, Melanie,’ he announced. But he seemed too dispirited even to pester Griselda. He sat by himself crumbling a lump of the famous cake and casting round the furniture for the alcoholic provision normally made for him.

‘Melanie,’ he said at last. ‘Could I have a drink?’

This time Mrs Hatch did not even answer; and George Goss continued to sit feebly opening and closing his fingers, like a frustrated crustacean.

Nor did Edwin fare better. When he reappeared from the telephone room (it had been converted from its previous function of downstairs lavatory), Griselda was startled to notice that his face was pale and his hair almost dishevelled round the ears. Manifestly he was using all his worldly knowledge and resource to conceal that anything was wrong. He accepted tea and cake; but every now and then Griselda heard him whispering to himself between mouthfuls. The words sounded like ‘It can’t be. It can’t be.’ The crisis came quite suddenly: Edwin sat up straight in his chair, and, returning his cup, from which he had been drinking, to his saucer, cried out: ‘The Pope must intervene.’ After that he seemed to recover rapidly, and to return to his normal, exceptionally well-adjusted frame of mind; but not before Mrs Hatch had said in the rudest possible way ‘Edwin Polegate-Hampden, you bore me.’ It was proof how hard to disturb was Edwin’s fundamental equilibrium that he was able to smile and reply ‘The ex-Empress used to say exactly the same.’ Edwin then munched briskly and began to draft a long sequence of telegrams for Monk to spell out as best he could to a country telephone operator on a Sunday evening. Mrs Hatch even seemed almost to demur at Monk being given this employment.

Dinner was worse. The Duke and Duchess made a belated reappearance, the Duchess, evening dress being inconsistent with the Sabbath, in a short gown of olive-coloured satin, rather more shiny than would have best suited any other wearer but exactly right for her; and Edwin seemed entirely restored to cheerfulness by the knowledge that Monk was still faithfully at work on his behalf and on behalf of enduring humanity. But George Goss was still rather ill, and also empty, as the rattlings and roarings of his intestines bore witness whenever conviviality ebbed, which was frequently. For Mrs Hatch’s mien had by now become such as almost to cancel all faintest prospect of the jovial. Griselda sincerely wondered what could be the matter with her.

It was unfortunate that none of the company, pleasant people though they all were, really appealed to Griselda as a sympathetic conversationalist. After all, it was her last evening as a guest at Beams. Did most house parties deflate in this way? she wondered. She tried to place in her mind the exact time when the gaiety had been at its height, the social balloon most stuffed with gas. She was unable to settle this time. She could only think of Louise, who seemed in no way whatever a part of her surroundings. This, however Griselda reflected, was probably wrong: one had to put up with George Goss belching and with hours of wasted living if one was to have any hope of minutes with such as Louise.

‘The thing I can least abide in life,’ announced Mrs Hatch, apropos of some behind-the-scenes domesticity, ‘is deceit. Did you know, Stainer, that my grandfather in Greece once strangled with his own hands a servant who deceived him?’

‘No, mum,’ said Stainer, shaking all over, and beginning to snivel.

‘It was only a small matter. It was the principle my grandfather cared about. And I feel precisely the same as my grandfather. Do you understand what I say?’

Stainer was now speechless.

‘Answer me, please. Do you understand?’

‘Yes, mum.’ The words were hardly audible in the unpleasant hush that had fallen upon all present. Griselda reflected upon the fact that, unlike most domestic servants she had encountered, Stainer seemed to contemplate neither cheeking Mrs Hatch nor leaving her employ.

‘Then you will never attempt to deceive me again?’

‘No, mum.’

‘Very well then. Serve the ortolans.’

Griselda thought not of ortolans, but of falcons: of a sky full of falcons and herself a dove amongst them. She was frightened.

Their spirits temporarily broken, the Duchess did not suggest games, nor Edwin bridge. Instead, Mrs Hatch, apologizing perfunctorily to her guests and referring them to their own devices, ordered Monk, by now as one shellshocked with telephoning, to bring her the big ledger, and settled down to an evening of entering up accounts, which she did with no small dexterity. The full deployment of her powers required concentration, however; and it was soon to be made clear to the luckless company that the continuum was readily disturbed. Edwin who would probably have liked to attempt flirtation with Griselda, or something tending in the same direction with the Duchess, was reduced to drafting a study for The Times Literary Supplement to be entitled ‘A Case for Holy Living.’ The Ellensteins and Griselda felt remarkably bored, and began, in their different ways, to think of bed, although it was not yet half-past nine.

Suddenly George Goss roared out ‘In Christ’s name, Melanie, what’s the matter with you?’ Griselda realized that he was crazed from lack of liquor.

Mrs Hatch who was adding an entire long column, made a small tight gesture of exasperation, utterly murderous, but said or did nothing further. George Goss began to stagger away, questing for a drink, a lion at last.

The Duke and Duchess excused themselves. Mrs Hatch could not have seemed more indifferent. They ascended the staircase, a little shakily, Griselda thought. Nerviness riddled the entire community. Then Griselda decided to snap the link herself. After all, she had Sir Osbert Sitwell’s ‘Winters of Content’ to read; and her bedroom was just the place for such a book.

‘If you can spare me, Mrs Hatch, I think I’ll go to bed too. Our walk must have tired me.’ This last statement was untrue, but something of the kind seemed to be required.

Mrs Hatch was glaring at an invoice, seeking to pluck out the heart of its mystery. She said nothing.

‘Well – Good night.’

Mrs Hatch still did not look up, but she said ‘Good night.’ Her tone baffled Griselda completely. It was certainly not noticeably pleasant. Griselda could not recall her Mother, or any of her Mother’s circle, behaving like this in the capacity of hostess. But her Mother was limited, and her circle small. Nine-thirty struck in the hall as Griselda entered her room, leaving Mrs Hatch in malign solitude with her sums. It was raining harder than ever.

XII

The room was filled not with damp night, but with Louise’s perfume.

Griselda softly cried out ‘Louise!’

Then again she recalled that the perfume was Stephanie’s also. But as apparently only Louise could see and converse with Stephanie, it was difficult to know what to do, except be frightened once more. More than ever, Griselda wanted Louise to be with her. But she had no idea where Louise was.

Griselda tentatively removed her wrist watch and laid it on the dressing table. A gust of wind, weighted with rain, so jarred the window that Griselda thought she would investigate. There was nothing to be done about that either: though the water was seeping into the room at many points between the well-made sashes and frames, and though it would clearly be a troubled night for any sleeper not enamoured of a storm. Fortunately, Griselda was not such a sleeper. She was simply a sleeper not enamoured of a ghost.

For when she returned to the dressing table, though her back had been turned upon it for only seconds, a strange object had appeared, and lay beside her familiar efficient wrist watch. It was a tiny knife: almost a dagger; conceivably a stiletto. The silvery blade, as if daily used and polished for generations, reflected a great bar of light across the ceiling. The ivory hilt was inlaid with purple amethyst, spiralling round it like the pattern on a Byzantine column. From butt to tip the knife was about five inches long. Griselda picked it up and tried the blade. The two edges were so sharp that it was difficult not to cut off at least a finger. They converged to a tip like the sting of a glittering insect.

Again there was a disturbance at the window. Such noises were likely to continue throughout the night, and Griselda took no notice, but went on staring at the knife. But the disturbance took on definition. It seemed to be rapping and crying. Someone appeared to be seeking entrance through Griselda’s first floor window.

Supposing that it might be Stephanie, Griselda felt utterly appalled. But the noises continued; and, as when a bird enters one’s bedroom, it was impossible indefinitely to ignore them. In the end, Griselda took the little knife, crossed the room, and once more drew back the curtain. Crouched on the sill outside was indisputably a figure. After a moment’s terror, Griselda realized that it was Louise. She opened the window.

‘What’s that you’ve got?’

‘I thought you might know. I found it on the dressing-table. It seemed to appear when my back was turned.’

Cascades of water were pouring through the open window, soaking everything. Louise’s white mackintosh was the colour of clay; her long hair bedraggled like a corpse’s.

She stood sniffing the charged air. ‘I wonder if it’s a good sign or a bad one. Revenge or rescue. Pity it’s so hard to know.’

Griselda shut the window, becoming seriously wet in the process. She redrew the curtains and stood in the centre of the room.

‘I’m so very glad to see you, Louise. On my last night.’

‘Did you think I wouldn’t come?’

Griselda gently shook her head.

‘Even if I had to swim the Hellespont like Leander visiting Hero.’

‘Dear Leander.’ Griselda put down the little knife. ‘As you’ve been so long in the sea, you’d better take off your wet clothes.’

Louise began to remove her soaking mackintosh. She was wearing trousers like Mrs Hatch’s.

‘Are you locked out?’

‘No. I’ve been waiting in the Pavilion for your light to appear. I didn’t want us to waste time and the house is swarming, which makes communication difficult. Everyone seems to have gone to bed very early tonight.’

‘Mrs Hatch is doing sums, and didn’t want us. You’re soaked. Undress. I’ll lend you some clothes.’

Louise undressed. It took only a minute.

‘Which clothes would you like? Which of my poor silly garments?’

Louise smiled. Then she crossed to the bed and put on Griselda’s pyjamas, laid out by Mullet.

As Louise put on Griselda’s pyjama’s, a great wave of feeling swept through Griselda like a wall of flame. She was unable to doubt that this was passion. It left her muddled and stupid.

Louise sat down and dried her glasses on one of Griselda’s handkerchiefs. Then she untied her hair and began to rub it. Seated in Griselda’s pyjama’s, and rubbing her long thick hair, she looked very beautiful.

‘May I stay?’ she asked, smiling like a representation of the Madonna, really the painter’s mistress.

Griselda had herself begun to undress, but slowly. ‘Of course,’ she said. ‘But there is one thing . . . dear Leander. Mrs Hatch said something at breakfast . . .’

‘This is true love, my Hero,’ replied Louise, rubbing her hair energetically. ‘Love is only possible where there is like feeling. Sometimes that can be found in a body which is unlike: more usually it cannot. Love without like feeling is something best left to little Fritzi. Do I make things reasonably clear to you?’

‘Perfectly clear, darling. Not that it was really necessary.’

‘Then I may stay?’

Griselda shivered. ‘If you don’t mind the haunted room.’ It was growing seriously cold; and she began to hasten the day’s last rites.

‘Really and truly I don’t mind anything now.’

The clock in the hall below struck ten. Louise was scenting herself with Griselda’s scent, which made her smell very strange.

XIII

The clock in the hall below struck six.

Griselda, happier than she had ever been or would ever be again, heard it strike. Shortly afterwards there ensued, and quickly terminated, a train of events which she never in her life wholly understood; never, so to speak, got to the bottom of. Actual enquiry or close investigation were, in the nature of things, forever debarred to her. Later on in life she concluded that this applied to most mysteries she really cared about. This particular train of events took place, moreover, largely in silence, at least as far as concerned human utterance; and the crucial events largely in darkness also, as the bedroom curtains were still drawn, it was not yet fully daylight, and no one turned on the electric light until the crucial events were over.

There were steps outside, the bedroom door opened, and someone entered with a firm step in the uncertain light. Louise who was still asleep, was dragged from bed on to the floor, then hauled along the floor towards the door; all by the person with the firm step. On the way to the door, Louise, however, sufficiently realized the position to tear herself loose. There was a scuffle in the vicinity of the dressing table and a sharp groaning cry. Griselda guessed that one of the combatants had got hold of the dangerous little knife. At the cry a second intruder entered the room: and the two of them succeeded in dragging Louise away, still struggling valiantly but in utter silence. Griselda could hear the contest continuing down the passage outside. There was a lapse of time before courage enough came to enable her to leave the warm bed for the cold world, especially as, having brought only a single pair of pyjamas to Beams, she was naked. She put on her dressing-gown and went, trembling, to the open door. Outside all was now unexpectedly and frighteningly quiet But suddenly the figure of Mrs Hatch, in trousers and her usual heavy grey sweater, loomed up and came towards her.

‘Get yourself dressed and packed immediately,’ said Mrs Hatch in a voice of matter-of-fact command. ‘You will leave the house within half an hour: before anyone else is up. Maghull is aready waiting with the car to take you to the station. When you have joined the train, he will drive to your Mother with a letter I have written her. She will have had time to read the letter carefully and, if necessary, repeatedly, before you arrive. I am sorry I cannot offer you breakfast, but the kitchen staff will not be down before you go. Hurry: or you will have to leave as you are.’

She walked away.

It never occurred to Griselda not to do what Mrs Hatch had ordered. She shut the door, turned on the light, and groped into her garments. Shaking all over, she packed. She packed Louise’s letter. She noticed Louise’s glasses, still on the bedside table. She wondered what had become of the little knife, and even perfunctorily searched for it. It was missing. Griselda recollected that she did not even known upon whom it had inflicted hurt. Whether the knife was meant to revenge or to rescue, remained unkown.

When, carrying her suitcase, she descended the familiar staircase to the hall, she saw that the front door stood open, the car waited outside, and that discoloured daylight was creeping into and around the house like mist. There was no sign of Mrs Hatch, or of anyone else other than Maghull on his box; but upon the hall table the large ledger lay open, the final balance, reached at no one could tell what small hour, ruled off and repeatedly underlined in gay scarlet ink. Entering the lavish vehicle, Griselda noticed that Maghull’s left hand was largely concealed by a newly tied bandage.

In the car Griselda wondered whether it would help Louise if she were to go to the Police. But she was not even sure whether her love for Louise might not be taken as an offence against the law. Griselda, in fact, felt at the moment too scared and ill to do anything effective. She began to weep, her tears spreading across the soft blue upholstery. She had to be assisted by Maghull into the railway compartment. He had the grip of a fanatic. No one asked to inspect the return half of her ticket.

It was only in the train that she clearly realized, in a series of horrifying shocks of perception, that neither she nor Louise had any means whatever of making contact with the other. Later it occurred to her that much trouble might have been saved, indeed two hearts from breaking and two lives from ruin, had either she or Louise thought to lock the bedroom door.

Part Two

XIV

But it was useless to continue weeping after the train had passed Clapham Junction. Not only was the compartment now filled with early wage-earners, looking pugnacious and embittered at their unjust destinies (one of them, a middle-aged woman, shapeless and sagging with repeated mismanaged maternity, stood for much of the journey upon the toe of one of Griselda’s shoes); but it had become clear to Griselda that a broken heart does not annihilate routine necessities, but merely makes them considerably more difficult to contend with.

Griselda’s Mother being the woman she was, it was now out of the question to return home, especially considering the trouble which had attended Griselda’s last year at school. This circumstance gave Griselda a marked feeling of relief. It was no comfort at all for having lost Louise that she was also rid of her Mother; but her new freedom from her Mother comforted her for much else. As the train passed Queen’s Road station, Griselda disentangled her left arm, opened the purse in her handbag, and was surprised to count three pounds, fourteen shillings, and sevenpence. Her Mother had made provision for her to tip: and she had not tipped. She had not even tipped Maghull. On the other hand, the clothes in her suitcase were appallingly inadequate as equipment for life: that is to say for what her Mother’s brother, Uncle Bear (his first name was Pelham, but he had never lived down a hit he once made in a school play), for what Uncle Bear termed ‘real life.’ On the other hand again, it was spring, and summer stretched ahead, warm and endless.

By the time the train had passed Vauxhall and had settled down for the wait common to all trains entering Waterloo, a brief spell enabling the traveller the better to meet the massed claims of the terminus. Griselda had resolved firstly to seek out the Great Exhibition Hotel and secondly to seek out Lord Roller. The Great Exhibition Hotel had been strongly recommended to her by a schoolfriend who had the habit of spending odd nights in Town. Lord Roller had offered employment.

At the other side of the compartment, four labourers, their clothes smeared with yesterday’s earth, were playing a simple form of nap, easing the run of the cards with monosyllabic obscenities. The train jerked into motion: as it racketed across the barricade of points, every second, it seemed, about to be derailed, the regular passengers rose to their feet and pressed towards the doors, hypnotized by routine into an appearance of striving to meet life halfway. Before the train had stopped, they were leaping on to the platform and running towards the sliding iron gates. The ticket collector had difficulty in controlling them. Until one looked again at their faces, it was for all the world as if they had an incentive in their existences.

Griselda, to whom the morning rush hour was a new experience, remained seated for a moment, fighting back the instinct to run with the herd. Then she drew down her suitcase from the rack and stepped from the train to find the platform deserted, and the ticket collector, a few seconds ago flustered and perspiring under the stampede, now irate and resentful of her dilatoriness.

‘Come along there. You’ll be late for work.’

Having delivered up her ticket, Griselda sent her Mother a telegram from the station telegraph office.

‘Taking job in London please don’t worry get better quickly much love Griselda.’

It seemed to be in the tradition of messages sent on these occasions, though it was Griselda’s first of the kind.

She knew her Underground, and proceeded to South Kensington, changing at Charing Cross. Each train was again abominably crowded; and the only excuse for a crowd, collective conviviality, conspicuously absent. At every station men and women fought in the doors and on the platforms. Between stations they joyessly read newspapers. The whole grim business was utterly orderly.

The Great Exhibition Hotel proved larger than Griselda had expected, and distinctly more pretentious. She booked a room for a week, thereby (after some firm bargaining) incurring a liability of three pounds ten shillings, supposing she passed seven days without eating. A porter in his shirtsleeves took her in a tiny, slow lift to the fifth floor and to 79^A.

‘They knocked 79 in half,’ he explained, hanging about for recognition. Griselda gave him sixpence: which he regarded with a look which meant that women were all the same. The process of adaptation had proved fatal to the proportions; but the room was not exactly dirty, but offered a good view in the direction of Earl’s, possibly even Baron’s Court, the busy Inner Circle railway being in the foreground. The furniture was bright yellow but capacious. The bed bore a far-flung counterpane, hand-wrought in patterns of sheep-coloured wool, entirely different on the two faces. It was unbelievably heavy, the labour, obviously of years; superfluous labour Griselda thought. Beneath it was a flat and slithery eiderdown, covered in livid patchwork; and no fewer than four good blankets, tightly wrapped in on each side. Griselda deduced that many elderly ladies spent the evening of their days looking out towards the ghosts of old Earl’s Court and its Great Wheel from the casements of the Great Exhibition Hotel: possibly, as they gazed, they matted coverlets heavy as lead sheeting, sewed gaudy scrap to gaudy scrap.

As in a royal palace, the water closet was of the gracious valve type. Small trays sprinkled with small breakfasts, were beginning to fidget towards the bedrooms as Griselda descended. In the Lounge sprawled several residents of a different type: one of them even whistled through his front teeth as Griselda passed. It was hard to believe that these residents needed bedrooms of their own: they seemed to live in the Lounge talking shop: and when they needed a bedroom, to have recourse, inevitably, to someone else’s.

Griselda had noticed a Tariff in the Hotel which stated ‘Breakfast 3/6. With Meat 5/6. Preserves Extra’; and set out to look for a teashop. She found one open, and breakfasted excellently for one shilling and sevenpence plus twopence gratuity (forbidden but extracted). She then found that she lacked twopence with which to telephone Lord Roller, and had to return to the cash desk a suppliant. A further sixpence having been reluctantly converted into four pennies and four halfpennies (it was clear from her manner that the harridan in the little box lost hopelessly on the transaction), Griselda realized that she did not know the name of Lord Roller’s firm. Nor was Lord Roller himself in the Telephone Directory, even at a private residence.

At a loss, Griselda peered through the glass of the telephone cabinet. The morning rush was over; the crowds had vanished into air. There were much refuse, two dogs, an ineffective cleaner, and a belated young man with a bowler hat and umbrella, obviously bound for the City.

‘Excuse me,’ cried Griselda, breaking out from her place of confinement. ‘Could you very kindly tell me where I might find Lord Roller?’

The young man immediately stood quite still, staring round him, and blushing almost purple. ‘I – don’t – know,’ he said after a long pause, forcing out the words through lips shuddering with embarrassment. ‘Sorry.’ He lifted his hat, looked at his wrist watch, and hastened on towards his world of familiar things.

The cleaner was also standing immobile, regarding. Suddenly she spoke: ‘You try Arkwright and Silverstein. That’s where you’ll find ’is lordship, dear. Arkwright and Silverstein. London Stone double two double two. You try and you’ll find ’im.’

‘Thank you very much,’ said Griselda.

‘Don’t forget to remember me to ’is lordship.’ She gave a gurgling laugh and began to clatter furiously with her bucket. This made telephoning difficult, but Griselda did not care to complain.

Lord Roller had not yet arrived, but his secretary, on learning that Griselda had met him at the All Party Dance, made an appointment for her at ten forty-five.

‘Ask for Miss Guthers,’ said the secretary.

The Inner Circle, which bore Griselda back to Charing Cross and then on to the Mansion House, was now almost deserted. Apart from a small intrusion of foreign tourists at Victoria, the clanking train had become a very fair place for hearkening to the inner voice. Griselda’s inner voice remarked to her that she was wrongly dressed for seeking a job.

This contention received support when Griselda encountered Miss Guthers. Miss Guthers was dressed expensively and fashionably, though she did not look expensive or fashionable owing to years of overwork and the effort to control cheeky and lazy subordinates upon always just too little authority for the purpose. She regarded Griselda kindly, and seated her in a minute mahogany waiting-room like a large coffin, lined entirety with bound volumes of The Merchant Banker. A small table bore a single newspaper, a copy of The Times. Griselda opened it and read the principle headline: ‘Aftermath Of The Roller Report’. She looked at the first leading article: ‘The Roller Report: What Next?’ She turned to the Court News: ‘Reception for Lord Roller’ (provided two nights previously, she read, by Edwin’s dazzling friend, Lady Wolverhampton). The paper contained only one photograph: a special study by a staff photographer of the typical English village of Lydiard Bust, with an entirely new crop of oats filling up the foreground, and much of the background also. Griselda began to read Mr Morgan’s glittering comments on last night’s play.

‘Lord Roller will see you now.’ Miss Guthers almost conveyed concern that the interview should go well. There is no one it is easier to like than a first class woman private secretary; and Griselda liked Miss Guthers.

Lord Roller, however, wore an expression of extreme gravity. He rose as Griselda entered, and personally offered her a mahogany chair.

‘I must tell you quite frankly, Miss de Reptonville,’ he said, ‘that I did not expect to see you quite so soon. That, none the less, would have been entirely in order, and I should have been pleased to assist you in your project of leaving the Secretariat of Sociology. But under the circumstances which now obtain, you will, I am sure, understand that any help from me is out of the question. Please do not hesitate to smoke.’ He extended an open cigarette case: it was made of gold and was one of a consignment sent out the previous year as Christmas presents by the Ministry of Mines.

‘Thank you, Lord Roller,’ replied Griselda, ‘but I don’t smoke.’

‘An excellent thing. I wish my position allowed me to follow your example.’ He sat back watching her: his fine head reflected in the many photographs above the fireplace of past Permanent Secretaries to the Treasury, all of them signed, and many with warm words of greeting added.

‘I have not actually got a job in the Secretariat of Sociology. I’ve merely been offered one. You very kindly advised me against taking it and said that you might be able to offer me something – something better, I think – yourself.’

‘I recall our conversation perfectly, I assure you. Miss de Reptonville. A good memory is unfortunately required by the nature of my work. I say “unfortunately”, because it is seldom that I have anything to remember which is so agreeable as was our little talk.’

‘That is charming of you, but I understood you to say just now that you were unable to help me? I gathered that you must have found me a pest, after all.’

‘Not in the least, Miss de Reptonville. I found you a most engaging young woman. I still find you a most engaging young woman.’ Lord Roller rotated his swivel chair and took a large cigar from a silver box on a table behind him. ‘Nor must you suppose, not for one moment, that I am passing any kind of judgment whatever. Not in the very least: I know much too little of the world to attempt any such thing.’ He took a match from a little ivory box on his desk, struck it, and drew heavily but gracefully on his cigar.

‘But the offer of a job is closed?’

‘It would be quite inconsistent with the obligations I have accepted. I know you will appreciate that. I do not have to say that the matter is entirely impersonal. I am subject to various duties, which take many decisions out of my hands. Very narrow lines of conduct are laid down. For better or worse. I frequently think for worse. But now let us say nothing more about these particular matters. I am sure you will agree. Let us discuss something else. I have no other engagement, I am delighted to say, for the next ten minutes.’ Lord Roller consulted his watch, a fine inherited repeater, and added: ‘Indeed, eleven minutes.’

Griselda hesitated. Could her love for Louise be already such common knowledge? Had Lord Roller gone over to the side of her Mother? Was there a cabalistic communion, based presumably upon telepathy, between such all eminent personages as Mrs Hatch and Lord Roller? Miss Guthers had seemed ignorant of anything amiss. Or was it because of knowledge that she had been so pleasant and agreeable? In any case a good private secretary was supposed to differentiate in her reception of the Recording Angel and of the man to read the gas meter, in degree only, and not in kind. Griselda began seriously to worry about her inexperience of Uncle Bear’s ‘real life’. But then her love for Louise seemed much more ‘real’ than her obligation to Lord Roller. Repelling another onset of tears, Griselda reflected that unless she had a reasonable job by the end of the week, she would go to jail for debt, which would put society still more against her.

‘Lord Roller,’ she said bravely, ‘I need a job. Suddenly I need a job badly. I have no right to bother you, but since we still have eleven minutes, or perhaps ten by now, I wonder if you can suggest anything? Or must it be the Secretariat?’ Griselda thought of living in a loft with Louise. Tears, tears. Almost she wished that she smoked. Lord Roller had already made the room like a luxuriously aromatic engine house. The reek of his mammoth cigar deadened the nerves of even non-smokers.

‘It will not be easy,’ he said. His tone implied that his magnanimity in offering to say no more about Griselda’s offence (if that was what he was offering to say no more about), was meeting with insufficient acknowledgement. But even now it was uncertain whether his present remark alluded to more than the depressed state of trade, so alarmingly revealed in the Report; was more than an accepted and standard observation to jobhunters. ‘You may have to enter the Secretariat after all.’ It was as if Griselda had to enter a convent for a course of spiritual rectification; even that being, all things considered, a lucky escape.

‘I should so much rather not.’

‘Naturally. But it is not in every case possible to choose. Often our present is decided for us by our past. I do not wish there to be any misunderstanding, however: any doubt that I am anxious to do everything possible. Though I should so much prefer to talk about the daffodils I noticed growing in the Green Park this morning, or the newest novel which I lack time to read, and can only read about.’ He smiled: then expelled a cloud of smoke so dense and unexpected as to make Griselda cough.

‘I am so sorry. Let me ring for a glass of water. And we might have the window a little open perhaps, just for a moment.’

‘Thank you. I’m perfectly all right.’ It was almost the sensation of crying again.

But Lord Roller had already rung. Miss Guthers appeared instantly.

‘Could you possibly fetch a glass of water, Hazel? I have nearly choked Miss de Reptonville.’

‘Certainly. Lord Roller.’

Again in an instant, Miss Guthers was back with a tumbler filled to the brim with water. Despite the speed of the transaction, not a drop was spilt: an achievement which Griselda found difficult to sustain.

‘Could you open a window too?’

‘The noise is rather bad today, Lord Roller. Now that it’s almost summer, it’s difficult to have the windows open. All the roads are coming up and the traffic’s being diverted. You can hear the hooting.’

‘None the less, please open the window, Hazel. Miss de Reptonville requires air. The Ministry of Transport has no business to repair the roads anyway, with the country in the state it is. Write a letter to Leech pointing that out and I’ll sign it. See that it catches the midday post or it’ll never arrive with the posts as they are now. You might even send it to Number Ten by messenger.’

‘The messenger service isn’t at all what it used to be, you know. Perhaps I’d better telephone Downing Street and ask them to send a messenger to collect.’

‘Please don’t trouble,’ interjected Griselda.

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘The window. Please don’t trouble, I’m perfectly all right.’

‘That’s splendid.’ Miss Guthers smiled encouragingly. ‘What about some more water?’

‘No, thank you. I still have more than half a glass. I wonder if we could possibly finish what we were saying, Lord Roller?’

‘Of course we can. All right, Hazel. Just let me know when Sir George arrives.’

‘Yes, Lord Roller. Shall I take your glass?’

‘Thank you so much for the water.’ It was probably wise to keep on the right side of Miss Guthers, especially as Griselda’s last remark might have been interpreted as a dismissal and as presumption.

‘Well, Miss de Reptonville, you want suitable employment.’ Lord Roller took a sheet of paper from a satinwood stationery stand which stood on the table with his cigars. He began to write. ‘An opportunity has occurred to me. It might prove to be the very thing.’ He scratched away. ‘You don’t mind working out of London?’

‘I should prefer London, but, obviously. I’m in no position to choose. How far away will this be?’

‘Not far, you’ll be pleased to hear. Not far at all. Just the other side of Seven Kings.’ He signed the document: a swift, driving, single name; then folded it and put it in an envelope. ‘No. On second thoughts, you’d better read it.’ He withdrew it from the envelope and passed it folded to Griselda.

The paper bore two or three sentences in a hand, dashing and sloping eagerly to the right, but not one word of which could Griselda read.

She stared at the indecipherable words while Lord Roller stood behind his desk watching her and waiting.

‘I’m terribly sorry. I’m bad at handwriting. I can’t read all of it.’

‘Doesn’t matter in the least, Miss de Reptonville. Hardly worth showing you. Conventionality, simply; but I hope it does the trick. My fist’s got worse and worse, I’m afraid, with increasing years of service. Give me the thing back and I’ll pack it up again.’ Griselda gave it back. ‘Just find your way to this address and they’ll take care of you.’ He was writing on the envelope. ‘I’ll do it in capitals.’ He smiled again at Griselda.

‘I feel I’m rather a fool, Lord Roller.’

‘Hardly worth employing, I’m sure.’ He said this with the kindliest of irony. ‘There.’ He returned the letter.

Miss Gathers was back in the room.

‘Sir George, Lord Roller.’

‘Show him in, Hazel. And bring a lot of whisky. Better open a new bottle.’

‘Yes, Lord Roller.’

‘Good-bye, Miss de Reptonville. I do hope I’ve been of some small help. Your position is difficult.’ He extended his hand. ‘But whatever you do . . . don’t worry.’ It was the last word on the subject.

‘Thank you for giving me so much of your time.’

‘I should so much have preferred to talk of the daffodils in the Park.’

‘Perhaps on another occasion.’

He glanced at her.

‘I hope so.’

Miss Guthers had rather to rush Griselda’s departure from the office, as Sir George could be distinctly overheard stamping like a thoroughbred in a loose box.

XV

Mr Shooter, to whom Lord Roller’s letter was addressed, hardly even attempted charm; nor did The Bedrock Accessories Supply Company, her prospective place of employment, impress Griselda much more favourably. Even when with the assistance of Messrs Arkwright and Silverstein’s outside porter, she had located Seven Kings, it seemed to take several hours to reach the place by train from Liverpool Street, so that on arrival she at least expected spring buds on the trees and skipping lambs. But Seven Kings seemed little different from the less attractive parts of London. It was now lunchtime but Griselda did not dare to eat; nor did there seem facilities, even had she dared.

Mr Shooter worked in an untidy office entirely walled with a special kind of glass. Outside, a press of some sort was noisily making accessories. Every thirty seconds it stamped something out; so loudly that conversation above the concussions was difficult, and hardly easier between them. Grinding and rolling mills made up a background evocative of the nation’s industrial effort. Mr Shooter possibly found the general atmosphere of toil, stimulating; but as he was entirely bald, and rather yellow, it was not easy to say. The plywood door of his office bore the legend ‘Personnel Manager. Do NOT Disturb’ in ugly modern lettering. Above his electric heater was a large framed reproduction of de Laszlo’s portrait of Lord Roller in the robes of a Baron.

Griselda was shown in by a sniffing child, fresh from some Essex hamlet.

‘Maudie,’ screamed Mr Shooter, as the infant was about to depart, ‘I want some real tea, not this stinking slops. Get busy, will you, and don’t forget next time.’

Maudie shuffled away.

‘Take the tray with you.’

Maudie returned for the tray. As she bore it towards the door, she winked at Griselda. It was impossible for Griselda to wink back, even if she felt so inclined. The office door rasped along the floor every time it was opened or shut.

‘Well?’

Griselda handed Mr Shooter the letter. Mr Shooter really did not seem an easy man to talk to.

‘May I sit down?’

‘If you think it worth while. Bring that chair over from the window. You can put the box of samples on the floor under the dictaphone.’

‘Thank you.’ The box of samples was difficult to lift and tended to burst open.

‘Sorry. Can’t read this. What’s it say?’ Mr Shooter tossed the letter back in the direction of Griselda, but it fell off his desk on to the floor. ‘Sorry. You read it.’

‘I can’t read it.’ Griselda had succeeded in towing up the rickety little chair. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘It’s from the great white chief isn’t it?’

‘From Lord Roller, yes. Is this his factory? I didn’t know.’

‘One of his factories. He’s got twelve in Canada alone. This one’s only a sideline.’

‘What do you make?’ enquired Griselda politely. ‘I’m afraid I’m very ignorant.’

‘Nothing but accessories,’ replied Mr Shooter. The fact seemed to pain him; but it was as if the pain were something he had learned to bear. ‘Let’s stick to you. What’s it all about?’

‘I understand from Lord Roller that you might be able to offer me a job. If you think I’m worth it, that is.’ Griselda was far from sure that, even desperate as she was, she wanted to devote herself to making merely accessories.

‘You got that from the chief personally?’ Mr Shooter stared hard at Griselda. His eyes were like guns mounted behind slits in the yellow pillbox of his face.

‘Certainly,’ said Griselda with hauteur.

‘Well, there’s one thing.’

‘What is it?’

‘Welfare.’ Mr Shooter’s eyes were keeping Griselda covered more ruthlessly than ever.

‘I might be able to help with that.’ Griselda saw herself dressed as a hospital sister and wondered whether she could call upon the required amount of saintliness. At once she doubted whether she could.

‘Our last four welfare officers have had to leave us rather suddenly. Oh, personal reasons in each case. Quite sufficient. But now the job’s going once more.’ He stared again at Lord Roller’s letter, which Griselda had replaced upon his desk.

‘Could you tell me a little more about it?’

‘Knowledge of people, that’s the main thing. Knowledge of the common people. The welfare officer must be guide, philosopher, and friend to every worker in the place. She must be able to get inside their minds. If she can do that, special qualifications are less important. There’s a bit of simple nursing, of course, and first aid, naturally. Have you a first aid certificate?’

‘Actually, yes.’

‘You have?’ Mr Shooter seemed surprised and impressed. He took a writing pad from the drawer of his desk and made a note.

‘Then there’s librarianship. Do you read?’

‘It’s my favourite thing.’

‘We don’t want a bookworm, you know,’ replied Mr Shooter, glowering. ‘Only the lighter stuff. Religious guidance is another side of the work; for those who want it. Mostly the young girls. You do that in co-operation with Mr Cheddar, the priest-in-charge. What else is there? Oh yes, help with games of all sorts, and advice upon the food in the canteen. Mrs Rufioli superintends the actual cooking, gives the kitchen girls hell and all that; but the welfare officer has to see to it that the canteen expenditure doesn’t exceed the firm’s financial provision. I suppose you can keep simple accounts?’

The figure of Mrs Hatch and her terrible ledger recurred in Griselda’s imagination. ‘I think I can,’ she said faintly.

‘The main thing is that the welfare officer must be on her toes morning, noon, and night. If she keeps on her toes all the time – and I mean all the time – the job’s not difficult to hold down.’

Griselda looked at her toes. Whatever Louise might imply, she thought her shoes were rather attractive. She wondered at what point the applicant introduced the matter of remuneration. Mr Shooter, his oration finished, had produced a rectangle of madeira cake on a plate from another drawer in his desk, and now sat crumbling it into debris, and stuffing untidy briquettes of the debris into his small round mouth. It seemed to Griselda an inefficient way of eating madeira cake. Meanwhile, Mr Shooter said nothing further.

‘How much,’ enquired Griselda tentatively––

But Mr Shooter cut her short. ‘The usual Rawnsley Committee rates,’ he said with his mouth full. There was little difference in hue, Griselda observed, between the cake and Mr Shooter’s complexion.

‘And hours?’

‘I think we’re adopting the Giddens Council recommendations, but the whole subject’s still in the melting-pot. You’ve nothing to worry about, though. This is a modern factory, based on efficient time and motion study.’ The banging press outside underlined his words. ‘Besides which, we go all out for welfare.’

The door rasped and Maudie reappeared with her pale green plastic tray. The teapot was smeary; the cup, saucer, and milk jug discrepant. The sugar basin, however, was of the sanitary variety. Maudie had evidently resolved to seek re-entry to Mr Shooter’s favour by augmenting her allure: she had shaded her eyelids, cast off her cardigan, and assumed a mode of speech modelled upon that of Miss Myrna Loy.

‘Your tea, Mr Shooter,’ said Maudie, still sniffing. ‘Nice and strong.’

Mr Shooter looked up at her. ‘Thanks, Maudie,’ he said, in almost cowboy tones. ‘Sorry I was short with you.’

‘That’s quite OK, Mr Shooter. We all know how hard you work.’ It was difficult to believe that Maudie would long continue an accessory. In two years time, when she would be fifteen or so, she would be conquering new and wider fields. Griselda suspected that Maudie was precisely the type which brought welfare workers into existence and rendered their existence unavailing.

‘Now I must go into rather a lot of details,’ said Mr Shooter, imbibing strong tea, to Griselda. ‘Some of them are pretty personal, but there’s another lady present to see fair play.’ Maudie had seated herself on a stack of unopened parcels. They appeared to contain Government circulars upon questions of personnel management.

Griselda rose to her feet, ‘Please do not trouble,’ she said. ‘I don’t think the position is quite what I am looking for.’ She felt entirely regal as she swept from the room; the regality being modified only temporarily by Maudie emitting a long squelching sound through her incorrectly painted lips.

XVI

After purchasing and eating four penny buns and drinking a mugful of Bovril, Griselda decided to seek a job by a different method. She took an omnibus from Liverpool Street to Piccadilly Circus, and rambled through the back streets north of Piccadilly and west of Regent Street, looking in the shops, and seeking also a place where she could possibly want to work. It was what her school had described as the Direct Method. On this occasion, the Direct Method proved immediately efficacious.

The aspect of a certain small bookshop appealed to her greatly. The window was stocked neither with Books of the Month nor with sombre ancients; but with a well chosen selection of books published during the preceding fifty years or thereabouts. Unfortunately for the enlightened management, the shop appeared to be empty. Above the window was the name ‘Tamburlane.’

Griselda entered. A tall, well-made man, with a red face and white fluffy hair, emerged briskly from an inner room.

‘I’m afraid we are out of Housman today,’ he said in a gentle cultivated voice.

‘I already have him, thank you.’

‘Indeed? I must apologize for my precipitancy. I supposed that like my other customers today, you might have been guided here by that thing in The Times.’

‘I’m afraid I missed that particular thing in The Times.’

‘Just as well, really. At least in my opinion. Not that I’ve anything against the old man himself. But The Times does rather dote, don’t you think? On A.E.H. and J.M.B.?’ His articulation of the word ‘dote’ was pleasantly idiosyncratic.

‘Yes,’ said Griselda. ‘Now you mention it, I really believe that The Times does.’

‘Insufficient catholicity. Their enormous parsonical readership is at the back of it. It’s useless attaching blame to the Editor. Quite a broad-minded well-read chap in his private life. I’m told. I wonder if you’d care for a small glass of port? I always indulge myself after luncheon and it’s all too seldom I have a friend to indulge with me.’

‘There’s nothing I’d like better.’

‘Delightful. You have spontaneity, the one real virtue. But I must not let myself stray into compliments. Please sit down.’ He indicated a Chines Chippendale chair. Griselda saw that there were a number of them in the inner room.

‘Are you Mr Tamburlane?’

‘Yes and no. But yes for present purposes. Certainly yes. And you?’

‘Griselda de Reptonville,’

He was filling two beautiful little glasses, from a beautiful little decanter, with assuredly most beautiful port.

‘That is the most delightful name I have ever heard. In what is vulgarly known as “real life”, of course. I do hope I shall enrol you among my permanent customers.’

Griselda swallowed half the contents of the glass at one unsuitable gulp.

‘I really rather hope to be enrolled among your employees.’

He was sipping like a rare and fastidious fowl.

‘Well, nothing could be easier than that. Nothing at all. I take it you love books?’

‘Perhaps I love them more than I know about them.’

‘Indeed I certainly hope so or you would stand little chance here. In view of what you say, you’re engaged. Do you wish to start work now?’

‘Would tomorrow suit you?’

‘Excellently well. Naturally you will not be expected to lower the shutters. Ten o’clock I therefore suggest?’

He recharged the two glasses. The wine looked rich as Faust’s blood.

‘I think I should tell you of my qualifications. For working in a bookshop I have one or two.’

‘They are apparent to me. You have beauty and spontaneity, and you love books. Those things are rare and becoming daily rarer. They suffice. Indeed they suffice.’

‘I shall try very hard indeed,’ said Griselda.

‘Never forget the words of the great Prince Talleyrand: “Surtout, point de zиle.” That advice will carry you far in life. Though I am perfectly sure that you will be carried far in any case.’

‘I have made a sadly slow start.’

‘“He tires betimes, who spurs too fast betimes.” I never can overcome my lust for Shakespeare. Can you?’

‘I haven’t tried. Should I try?’

‘Peasant stuff much of it really; but none the less a genius. Indisputably a genius. I was speaking only figuratively. You mustn’t take anything I say too literally.’

Griselda looked up from her port.

‘Oh, don’t take alarm. My words are not serious, but my deeds move mountains. Or so I sometimes like to flatter myself.’

A man entered the shop and began to explore the shelves.

‘Perhaps I should go,’ said Griselda. ‘Thank you very much indeed for the port. And for the job.’

‘It has been the greatest possible joy to me. Such a lovely head, such lustrous eyes: always about the shop. Blessedness, indeed: beata Beatrix, and all that. And don’t misunderstand me in any particular. My homage is entirely aesthetic; wholly impersonal, so to speak. My eros veers almost entirely towards Adonis.’

The customer looked up at these words, uttered in a voice like a ring of treble bells; and suddenly left the shop.

Griselda noticed the repeated claim of men to be regarding her impersonally. Their motives for this claim seemed as varied as their implication that the process ennobled them was consistent.

‘I entirely understand,’ said Griselda, ‘Good-bye until tomorrow morning.’

‘Take something to read,’ cried Mr Tamburlane. ‘Take this.’ It was Rupert of Hentzau. ‘I presume you’ve read The Prisoner?’

‘I’m afraid that’s one I’ve missed.’

‘Then take The Prisoner too.’

‘You are most thoughtful. I’ll return them very quickly.’

‘Indeed not. You’ll read them for solace in years to come, most blessed damozel.’

It was only later while eating an йclair in Fullers that Griselda realized that this time the matter of wages had not been mentioned at all.

XVII

But it settled itself quite suitably. As soon as Griselda diffidently raised the subject upon her arrival the next morning, Mr Tamburlane cried out: ‘Please, please, please. No more holding back, I beg. Though alas, I cannot be prodigal. You will soon see for yourself the state of business, and I make it my policy to try to confine outgoings to a sum not exceeding takings. Would four pounds per week keep your slim gilt soul, if I may quote my old friend, within your rosy fingered body?’

‘I believe that’s about the market rate,’ replied Griselda, perhaps a little disappointed, however unreasonably. ‘Thank you very much.’ It would be necessary to depart from the Great Exhibition Hotel as soon as possible.

‘The shop shuts at six o’clock, and at one on Saturdays. You will find that much of the business, such as it is, takes place each day during the general matutinal interregnum.’

In many respects the job was an ideal one. The work was of the lightest and unfailingly interesting; and Mr Tamburlane, apparently the only other person connected with the running of the business, became upon further acquaintance more and more likeable and sympathetic. The few customers were mainly artists, aristocrats, idlers, and scholars; persons bashed by life into extreme inoffensiveness, varied in certain cases by mild and appealing eccentricity. There was also a small number of exceedingly beautiful women customers, who lighted up the shop as with nimbuses. The main drawback, perceived by Griselda from the outset, was that the job entirely lacked what she believed to be termed ‘prospects’. Until one knew him, it was difficult to understand what need Mr Tamburlane had of an assistant. After one knew him, it was plain that his need could not truly be translated into financial terms.

Griselda also experienced much difficulty in finding a dwelling place. Having little idea how to set about this search, she attempted several unsuitable neighbourhoods, and a greater number of much more unsuitable landladies. She knew that she needed advice, but hesitated to apply for it to Mr Tamburlane. By the end of her first week in the shop, she was still lodged at the Great Exhibition Hotel, and facing insolvency for lack of a few pounds.

In other ways, however, her acquaintanceship with her employer throve exceedingly. He proved a man precisely of his word: he complimented her ceaselessly and often imaginatively upon her appearance, her ideas, and even her work; but showed no sign at all of ever intending to go further. It seemed to Griselda an admirable attitude for an employer.

The real trouble, of course, was the loss of Louise. The extent and hopelessness of this loss, and also its unnecessariness, saturated Griselda’s thoughts and feelings only by degrees. By Friday, however, she felt so despairing, and her acquaintanceship with Mr Tamburlane had developed so warmly, that she resolved to confide in him, at least in part. It was necessary to confide in someone or die; and she could think of no other possible person among all her few friends and relatives, most of whom were, moreover, geographically unavailable. She was not sure that she would want to live in quarters found by Mr Tamburlane; but in the matter of Louise, and Louise’s disappearance, there might well be less suitable confidants. So early in the morning there was little risk of interruption by customers.

‘Indeed I can help,’ cried Mr Tamburlane, at the conclusion of the mournful tale. ‘You poor thing. And how fortunate today is Friday.’

‘I am glad that something about it is fortunate,’ said Griselda.

‘Friday is the very day of the week for such a sad narration. Friday is the day Miss Otter calls.’

‘Who is Miss Otter?’

‘I shall tell you. There is a certain weekly newspaper. It circulates only privately – to subscribers, you undersand; only to subscribers. Not many people know about it, but it serves a variety of special and important purposes. There is no need for me to be more specific. I am sure I have said enough for you to take me?’ Griselda thought of the St James’s News-Letter; wondered if Mr Tamburlane were talking of something similar; and nodded. The drift of Mr Tamburlane’s words seemed utterly beside the point, and had Griselda spoken, she would have started to weep.

‘The paper is generally known among its subscribers as The Otter. It has, in fact, an entirely different, rather dull name, which is printed at the top of every copy; but The Otter it has been for years, simply as a tribute to Miss Otter’s personality, Miss Otter is the Editor, so to speak; certainly the entrepreneur. She visits me each week and we decide the contents of the next issue. I am proud to say that from time to time it has been owing to me that there has been a further issue. The sum involved is really very tiny. But as the unacknowledged offspring of a rich nobleman – rich even in these days – I happily have some very small resources of my own, with which I endeavour to add to the douceur of life.’

‘Unacknowledged, Mr Tamburlane?’

‘For good and obvious reasons, I’m afraid, Miss de Reptonville. Please don’t think I’m the rightful heir deprived; or even a younger son deprived. Nothing at all like that, I entirely uphold the strictest interpretation of the rules of blood and succession. Without them the nobility would very soon become unfit to govern.’

‘I thought they’d ceased to govern anyway,’ said Griselda, interested in spite of herself.

‘Temporarily they have indeed. But you do not suppose that the present political bacchanal will last many years, I take it? As a wise and beautiful young woman, you cannot be deceived about that?’

‘You will remember that I attended the All Party Dance, Mr Tamburlane.’

‘I am answered as by an oracle. But to return to The Otter. It is fortunate indeed that you decided to confide in me. For The Otter exists largely in order to help with just such problems as yours, Miss de Reptonville. But, as I live, here comes Miss Otter in person.’ He dashed out of the little inner room where this conversation had taken place.

Griselda looked at the new arrival with much curiosity. Miss Otter was a bent little woman, dressed, not very well, entirely in black. She had a quantity of white hair, and a brown wrinkled face, with a huge nose and enigmatic eyes. She wore no hat, but a wide black velvet band across her white hair.

Mr Tamburlane introduced Griselda. Miss Otter accepted the introduction after the affable style of an important personage, took Griselda by the hand, and remarked: ‘I perceive you are in much distress of mind. I am grieved. Please accept my sympathy.’ The last request was delivered somewhat in the tone of a dethroned Queen.

Griselda could only say: ‘Thank you very much.’

‘You are indeed right, Miss Otter,’ said Mr Tamburlane, ‘as always. Miss de Reptonville lives under a heavy burden. But fortunately you and I may be privileged to assist in lightening those slender shoulders.’

‘It will not be our first such case,’ said Miss Otter, smiling graciously.

‘Nor yet our our one hundred and first, if it were possible to keep a reckoning. Now, Miss de Reptonville, I leave the shop entirely in your management. Miss Otter and I have affairs to discuss. If any problems arise, you must call upon your own good judgement to solve them. For Miss Otter and I must on no account be disturbed. Help yourself to sherry and biscuits if you require to relieve responsibility with refreshment. Miss Otter and I shall not emerge until teatime. When I am sure we shall all be very ready for crumpets and anchovy toast.’ He waved Miss Otter into the inner room and entering behind her, shut the door. Griselda noticed that Miss Otter carried a portfolio of papers and had a slight limp.

As usual there were few customers, though a young man who wanted a book on the botany of the Andes, became quite offensive when Griselda, after much searching, was unable to find him one. A tired woman brought her son, aged about ten, to select his own birthday present. She seemed prepared to spend up to fifteen shillings, and urged the claims of a book of scientific wonders illustrated with many polychromatic plates, and acres of isonometry. The boy insisted on a copy of the Everyman Mabinogion. Despite the economy, his Mother seemed angry and disappointed An elderly man prefaced his requirements by presenting Griselda with his card: Professor O. O. Gasteneetsia, FRS. The Professor then showed Griselda a minute cutting from a penny daily. It advised a book entitled ‘What About A Rumba?’ Griselda offered to order it for him. But he kept saying ‘Tonight. I come again tonight’ until drawn from the shop by a newsboy shouting about a crisis of some kind.

Griselda wondered whether she should procure crumpets and anchovies, but hesitated to leave the shop. The neighbourhood, moreover, seemed unpropitious, at least for crumpets. At about 5.15, however, when she had drunk all the sherry and eaten all the biscuits, and still felt exceedingly famished, a pleasing smell began to fill the shop. At 5.25, the inner door opened and Mr Tamburlane called to her: ‘Enter, Miss de Reptonville. The fatted calf is dead. Alas! that Miss Otter has to leave us.’

The room was full of blue smoke, the beautiful eighteenth century table spread with hot crumpets and buttered toast, a Wedgwood Chinese teapot, with cups and plates to match, an opened jar of anchovies, and a litter of papers in process of reassembly by Miss Otter. Among the papers, Griselda noticed, seemed to be a number of very grimy and unpractised looking letters; others were inexplicable drawings in pompeian red on fresh white cartridge paper.

‘All this clutter!’ ejaculated Miss Otter, smilingly. ‘No, please don’t help me. I am an untidy old woman. You sit down and eat your tea.’

Griselda had never previously met with tea in the shop, or indeed, any other meal. It was true, however, that each day she left Mr Tamburlane to provide for himself while she took lunch in a teashop. Today she was ready to tuck in.

‘Good-bye, Mr Tamburlane,’ said Miss Otter, strapping her portfolio, ‘I’ll find my own way to the door. Good-bye, Miss de Reptonville. If you’ll take an old woman’s advice, you’ll turn down the next proposal you receive. Come what may, you should turn it down. No matter how keen on you the other party seems to be. Feelings change, you know, with the passage of the years. Nor is that the only reason.’ She was on her way through the shop. ‘Don’t forget what I say. Miss de Reptonville.’ The outer door shut.

‘Don’t you worry.’ said Mr Tamburlane to Griselda, repeating Lord Roller’s counsel. ‘I talked to Miss Otter very fully about your tragic misfortune. I think that together we shall have the great happiness of recapturing the lamb that has strayed. It is fortunate indeed that I was by when your need arose. Have a Bath Oliver?’ He extended an exquisite Wedgwood biscuit box.

‘Thank you. I’d like another piece of anchovy toast first.’

‘I imagine, Miss de Reptonville, that my words of cheer fill you with scepticism?’

‘I’m afraid I’m not very hopeful that I shall find my friend. But it is very kind of you to concern yourself.’

‘You probably think that I am a crank and that Miss Otter is mad?’ He was eating crumpet after crumpet.

‘Certainly not.’

‘And that our weekly paper, if it exists at all, has less than no power in the land?’

‘Not at all.’ Griselda began to wish she had never confided in Mr Tamburlane.

‘Yes, Miss de Reptonville, you certainly think all these things; How surprised you will be! That is all I care to say at the moment. How surprised you will be! How pleasantly and delicately surprised!’

‘Would you let me see a copy of your paper?’

‘Subcribers only, you will recall. I fear your sceptical attitude unfits you as yet to enter that charmed cricle.’ He had begun to drink cups of tea in as quick succession as he had eaten crumpets.

‘I see.’

‘Child of loveliness, yours but to reap where Miss Otter and I have sown.’

He began to talk about books; and very shortly afterwards Griselda was engaged upon a dreary quest for lodgings in and around Ladbroke Grove.

XVIII

In the end, a decision being urgently necessary, she settled upon a small rectangular residence in a block of flats built for young, and presumably underpaid, office workers of her own sex, by a semi-charitable organization, the New Vista Apartments Trust. Situated just off the western side of that great dividing thorough-fare, the Edgware Road, Greenwood Tree House purported to improve upon such commercial lodgings as could be obtained for a like rental. Under the rules, tenants had to move out upon reaching the age of thirty; and were expected, though not compelled, to interest themselves in the work of the YWCA or in some cognate organization approved by the Management Committee. The block was not an unreservedly first-class piece of construction, owing to shortage of funds; but it had been designed (for less than the rightful fee) by an eminent cathedral architect, and therefore reflected the very best in contemporary design.

In addition to her depression about Louise, Griselda now began to suffer from positive loneliness. Although Mr Tamburlane’s mysterious paper was stated to be issued weekly, he soon made it clear that nothing was likely to come of the quest for Louise for several months. Combined with the obscurity about how the paper in any way forwarded the quest, and Mr Tamburlane’s incommunicativeness upon matters of detail, this announcement confirmed Griselda’s view that the whole episode was a dismal exercise in whimsicality, conducted at her expense, or possibly a patch of moonshine from the minds of two near-lunatics. Miss Otter visited Mr Tamburlane regularly each Friday, but rarely remained closeted with him for so long as on that first occasion. Upon entering and leaving, she continued to favour Griselda with cryptic and prophetic observations: ‘Next time a title comes your way, Miss de Reptonville, I think you would be most unwise to lose your chance’; or simply ‘More friends are what you need most at the moment, my dear.’

In three months of inner misery, Griselda made only a single friend, apart from Mr Tamburlane, who continued as punctiliously complimentary as on the day she met him. The new friend was Peggy Potter, her neighbour in Greenwood Tree House. Peggy was a broad, well-built girl with a large bust; a little taller than Griselda, and with a quantity of more or less fair hair hanging to her shoulders. She wore woollen dresses, of which Griselda felt that Lousie would have strongly disapproved, and had a reserved air derived, as Griselda soon discovered, from a conviction that she had little in common with her fellow inmates. This circumstance, combined with the fact that, before coming to London she had passed her entire existence in Bodmin, where she had graduated at University College, made her as a friend for Griselda something of a cul-de-sac. Ultimately Griselda realized that inner misery was a positive handicap when seeking to extend a social circle.

It was the pipes in the passage which brought Peggy and Griselda together. Each apartment was equipped with an electric radiator dependant upon a shilling meter; but outside in the passages were occasional steam coils, installed to guard the cocoanut matting and other decorations from injury by damp. The flow of electricity was so costly that the tenants formed the habit of drying their stockings and underclothes on these pipes, which were kept hardly more than lukewarm. The practice was specifically forbidden in the Rules: but as the Rules in most cases failed to provide for sanctions (the Management Committee felt that small fines, for example, were anachronistic and reminiscent of the evil days before the Truck Act) this particular Rule was obeyed only by those who wore no stockings. The practice was to steal out after eleven o'clock and drape the coils: realistically, the difficulty was the insufficient number of the installations. Griselda and Peggy became friends upon Peggy suggesting that they sidetrack the general run of inmates by sharing the use and the cost of a single electric heater. This arrangement involved them in constant use of one another's rooms.

They began to drink tea together, and Griselda lent Penny a packet of ‘Lux.’ In less than a week, Peggy suggested that Griselda accompany her to hear some music. It proved to be a recital of songs by Duparc, given by a rather elderly Belgian woman, retired some years previously from the provincial operatic stage of her country. The Wigmore Hall was almost empty, and Griselda was slightly scared by the unaccountable permanent decorations behind the platform; nor were the seats which Peggy and Griselda occupied either very cosy or very close to the centre of interest: none the less Griselda enjoyed the evening because she was so glad to have a friend to share her enjoyment. During the interval, which was rather long, she gave expression to this feeling by offering to stand Peggy a cup of coffee: but the Wigmore Hall proved not to offer refreshments. Outside, at the end of the recital, a group of excitingly dressed women with collection boxes and very little English beset the small audience for contributions some continental charity. Griselda gathered that the charity had been founded to commemorate the recitalist's wonderful work for the Allies during the World War.

One thing followed another, and soon Griselda was accompanying Peggy to other entertainments: a production by students at the Rudolf Steiner Hall of a seldom performed Elizabethan tragedy; and a recital at Friends House of works by lesser members of the Bach family, the performers being partly professional and partly amateur. One Sunday afternoon they ambled round the Tate Gallery, where Peggy was much addicted to Mr Graham Robertson's Blakes.

‘Have you read that book of his? His reminiscences?’

‘I found him an exhibitionist. He's not my period, of course.’

‘Shall we go and see the surrealists some time? At the Zwemmer? I'd like to.’

‘Once is enough for surrealism; just like Madame Tussaud. You go, Griselda, and you'll see what I mean.’

‘But the critics say that the surrealists are the modern equivalent of Blake, and you say you like Blake?’

‘Blake had belief. The surrealists have no belief. Surely that is fundamental?’

‘Have you belief, Peggy?’

‘Not yet. But I am prepared to have.’

They passed on to some water colours in the basement, with which Peggy was clearly well acquainted, as she discoursed upon them most convincingly and exhaustively, though water colour landscapes were not Griselda's favourite kind of picture.

Peggy seemed to live in a general condition of contingency: her prevailing attitude was the provisional. Thus although a permanent civil servant, and apparently well advanced in the service for her years (though remarkably ill paid, Griselda thought, considering her Honours Degress and years of youth devoted to passing difficult examinations), yet Peggy’s attitude to her job was merely, as she put it, ‘marking time’. Where she aimed to go when her march was resumed, was, however, indefinite. Equally her sojourn at Greenwood Tree House was described by her as a ‘passage through’; while even her health she referred to upon Griselda once enquiring about it, as ‘under observation.’ She accumulated almost no possessions, and seemed content to have Griselda as her only friend. There were times when Griselda wondered whether Peggy was not in a state verging upon suspended animation.

One evening towards the end of June, they were seated in Hyde Park. Peggy was reading The Listener; Griselda a book from Mr Tamburlane’s stock. Peggy suddenly spoke.

‘I’m taking some leave in August.’ It was the first time Griselda had heard the military term applied to civil life. ‘I’m going to Italy. Not the big towns and tourist centres, of course; just some of the smaller places in the south. Right off the beaten track. I try to visit a new country each year. I suppose you wouldn’t come with me?’

‘I can’t afford a holiday yet. Nor am I entitled to one, I think,’ It was difficult to imagine Mr Tamburlane raising an objection; but, oddly enough, it was equally difficult to imagine the job being still there, or even the shop upon return from a holiday. ‘I’m terribly sorry. Of course I’d have loved to come.’ Griselda’s regret was tempered inwardly by a distinct reservation in favour of the big towns and tourist centres: particularly, she felt, in Italy.

‘I could find the money for both of us, if that’s what it is. You could repay me later. Or not at all, if you couldn’t.’

‘That’s terribly generous. Thank you, Peggy.’ Griselda touched her hand, which Peggy slightly withdrew. ‘But as things are with me, I don’t see how I could ever repay you.’

‘You needn’t. I said that. Only if and when you can.’

‘I couldn’t agree to that.’ Griselda knew that she could agree quite easily had she wanted to visit tiny poverty-stricken Italian villages with Peggy. ‘But thank you again. It is a very kind idea.’

‘Not particularly, I want you to come with me, Griselda. Do think it over. Believe me I’m quite good at digging out just the places no one else ever gets to.’

‘There are many better people than I am for that sort of holiday.’ But Griselda thought with guilt of her fondness for long walks, of how difficult she was to tire, her prima facie suitability for the undertaking. ‘What about the people you’ve gone with before?’

‘I’ve usually gone alone. But I’d like you to come.’

Griselda glanced at her: at her big bust, her rather dull hair, her indifferent clothes, her face already drawing on its iron mask of frustration, only to be removed by death.

‘I’d like to come, Peggy. But I mustn’t. I really mustn’t. Please don’t tempt me.’

‘I thought we could have a good time.’

It occurred to Griselda as possible that Peggy, despite appearances, really cared for her: not in the least as Louise cared for her, and she cared for Louise, but in some other way, not necessarily the less authentic because probably approved by society or because completely unaccompanied by any display of feeling. Griselda was incapable of feeling very much without showing that she felt something; without tendering her affection. It seemed a simpler way than Peggy’s.

‘Next year, perhaps. Where do you plan to go next year?’

‘Finland. I don’t think you’d care for that.’

Peggy resumed The Listener. In the end they went to the Marble Arch Pavilion together, as if nothing had happened.

Later, while washing stockings in Peggy’s room, Griselda said: ‘Would you like to borrow Old Calabria before you go? Doesn’t it deal with just the part you’re visiting? It’s a book Mr Tamburlane always has in stock, and I could easily lend it to you for a week or two.’

‘Thank you. Griselda, but I think I’d rather form my own impressions. I don’t know that I’d care to see things through Norman Douglas’s eyes.’

Griselda began to squeeze out a wet stocking. ‘Peggy,’ she said. ‘What do you want most in the world?’

Peggy looked faintly hostile, as in the Park.

‘I don’t think the question has much significance for me.’ she replied. ‘I don’t think I see life in quite those terms.’ Then she added, obviously trying to please: ‘What do you want most in the world?’

But, contrary to Peggy’s notion, Griselda had neither expected nor desired that the question should be thus lobbed back at her. She was merely trying to enter into a corner of Peggy’s mind; fractionally to explore an outlook which she believed to be as habitual among her neighbours as it was alien to herself. ‘I want to know about you.’

‘Really I’m remarkably content as I am.’

‘I’m not content as I am.’

‘I know you’re not. And of course I know why you’re not.’

‘Why am I not?’

‘Griselda, we’re not schoolgirls. We don’t have to go into all that at this hour of the night.’

Her attitude was so impossibly aloof, that Griselda became momentarily filled with a younger than schoolgirlish urge to shock. ‘What I want from life is ecstasy.’

‘What will you do when you’ve got it?’ Peggy had taken off her dress and stood in her knickers and brassiиre. ‘I mean after you’ve got it?’

‘I shall reconsider the whole subject,’ said Griselda.

Peggy smiled slightly, relieved that the conversation was apparently being dropped. By way of farewell gesture she said: ‘If you really want to know, Griselda, I’m not the marrying kind.’

‘I’m not. I rather thought you were.’

‘No, I’m not.’

‘I see.’ Not that she did. ‘Anyway you don’t want to borrow Old Calabria.’

‘Afterwards, perhaps. If I may?’

‘Of course. If I’m still at the shop.’ Griselda gathered together four wet stockings, like bits of ghosts which had been out in the rain. ‘Good night, Peggy.’

Peggy’s preparations for bed had advanced no further. She jerked into speech. ‘Tell me something, Griselda.’

‘Yes.’

‘Is my bust too large?’

‘Of course it isn’t. It’s much better than having too small a bust like me.’

‘Then it is too large?’

Peggy’s face was white. She was very near tears.

‘It’s larger than most people’s. I wish mine was. It’s a good thing.’

Peggy was visibly making a great effort. ‘I sometimes feel self-conscious about it. Not often.’

Griselda kissed Peggy gently on each breast. Suddenly she felt a hundred years older than Peggy; and oddly enough, glad to be so. ‘Attractiveness is mainly a matter of thoughts.’

Peggy had removed her last garments and was putting on her nightdress. ‘It’s easy for someone as attractive as you to say that. Most men never get as far as a woman’s mind.’

Griselda recalled Louise’s words about fellow feeling. ‘I expect not,’ she said sadly.

‘I’ve decided to do without them. You can if you try. At least I can. It’s not even very difficult.’ Peggy began to brush her teeth.

‘I need someone to love me.’

‘I’m glad to say I don’t. It’s extraordinary how well I do on my own.’

‘I can see there are advantages.’

‘Not that I’m bigoted about it. It’s just what suits me.’

‘I think you’re very wise to do what suits you. But I still think you have a particularly attractive figure. Shall I turn out the light for you?’

‘You’re kind to me, Griselda.’ She was climbing into the divan bed.

‘You’re kind to me. Shall I open the window?’

‘Please. Quite wide.’

‘The sky is full of stars.’

‘More rain, I’m afraid. July is often a wet month, though not so wet as August.’

‘Surely it would mean rain if there were no stars?’

‘It depends. Often it means rain either way.’

‘What a pity! Good night. Peggy dear.’

‘Good night. Griselda.’

Griselda returned to her own room, and, switching on the electric heater, began to dry the two pairs of stockings, to eat chocolate wafers, and to conclude her interesting book.

During the small hours she was awakened by screams and groans from the next room, and deduced that Peggy must be having a nightmare. She reflected that, as a friend, she should intervene; but before thought had turned to action, she was once more dreamlessly sleeping.

XIX

Griselda preferred a light luncheon at Fullers, comparatively dear at the price, to a cheaper and more substantial meal at Lyons or the Express Dairy. Some time after Peggy had invited her to Italy, she was making for Fullers’ shop in Regent Street when she encountered Geoffrey Kynaston. After several days of rain, it had suddenly become humidly hot, and Kynaston was wearing a white shirt, open at the neck, and grey flannel trousers, neither garment being noticeably new, clean, or appealing.

‘Hullo, you,’ he said in the most casual manner.

‘Hullo.’

‘Still alive and kicking after the bust-up?’

‘As you see.’

‘Got some new clothes too. A great improvement, if I may say so.’

Indeed it could not be said that Griselda was saving any money at all. She was not even attempting to do so.

‘Thank you.’

‘I didn’t grasp that you were that way?’

‘What way?’

‘That way.’

‘I’m not. Or not entirely.’

‘I see. Thank you for clearing my mind. I’m not that way at all. I think I told you.’

‘You did.’

‘In the light of your explanation, I’m glad to see you. More glad, I mean, than had it been, as I supposed, otherwise.’

‘I’m glad.’

‘Perhaps we could start something up?’

‘What?’

‘Light refreshments first, I suppose. To judge by your air of purpose. Can you pay for two?’

‘With difficulty.’

‘If you can do it all, you’re better placed than I am. Let’s go.’ There was a second’s pause, and he added: ‘You don’t mind do you? I did feed you at Hodley.’

‘It’s quite all right,’ said Griselda. ‘Come on.’ They advanced up the hot busy pavement

‘You don’t work, if I remember? I suppose you have an allowance?’

‘No.’

‘Not a job after all?’

‘Why not?’

‘How grimly disillusioning.’

‘I’m sorry. How’s dancing?’

‘Packed up. What did you suppose?’

‘It never occurred to me.’

‘It was on its last legs when you arrived. You could see the state of business for yourself.’

‘I’m sorry. What about poetry?’

‘Same as before.’

‘That was better than nothing.’

‘Very little.’

They reached and entered Fullers. Kynaston’s costume was not precisely what the management was used to at that particular branch.

‘What’ll you have?’ enquired Griselda, putting forward the menu.

‘Just a large fruit salad,’ said Kynaston, without looking at it ‘And a cup of Ovaltine or something like that.’ Seated opposite him. Griselda observed that he seemed really emaciated.

‘Wouldn’t you care for something more solid?’

‘Not in this heat.’

There was a pause.

‘How’s Doris?’

‘Down with TB. Never mind about her. I want to know about you. Or are you still uncommunicative? Of course, I see now that you had your reasons. Not that you need have had. I’m utterly sympathetic in principle. I hope you gather that?’

‘Could we talk about something else?’

‘I like masterful women – in fact, I direly need one myself to organize things for me.’

‘I remember.’

‘And, of course, that kind of woman often—’

‘Please could we talk about something else?’

‘I thought that perhaps you would be grateful for an utterly sympathetic listener?’

The arrival of the waitress spared Griselda an answer.

‘There’s no Ovaltine.’

Griselda supposed that he would order Nescafй; but he said ‘A sundae will do. When I’ve finished the fruit.’

‘Which sort of Sundae?’

‘Any sort.’ Later he was brought a sundae costing 3/6. It was the biggest and best

‘Let’s come to realities.’

‘Haven’t we?’ asked Griselda.

‘I mean our joint future.’

‘I’m provided for. I’ve got a job in a bookshop.’

‘You can’t be getting much?’

‘No. But I like the job.’

‘Which shop?’

‘It’s called Tamburlane.’

‘Rather beyond the means of most people who can read. But reputable.’

‘You know it?’

‘By reputation. Tamburlane was the son of pauper parents and raised in the East End. He always wanted to own a bookshop: a morbid respect for learning based on frustration. In the end he made a bit of money out of prospecting in Alaska and got his way. There! I feel well-informed.’

‘Better than I am.’

‘You pick up things like that from the sort of people I’ve mixed with. Where are you living?’

‘Off the Edgware Road.’

‘Do you like it?’

‘Not very much.’

‘Monica Paget-Barlow says there’s a flat in Juvenal Court. It’s not altogether an ideal home, but I expect it’s better than what you’ve got. Possibly the two of us could afford it? That is if I could settle on something which brought in money steadily.’

‘I’m perfectly content where I am.’

‘You mean you’ve not yet had time to get round to the idea of living with me?’

‘Not yet.’

‘You don’t feel equal to organizing me?’

‘Not even myself.’

‘I’m sorry, Griselda. I’m not really heartless.’

At a neighbouring table, a child was sick on the floor. It was impossible to believe that so small a vessel could have held so much.

‘I’m unhappy.’

‘Of course.’

‘I’m glad to have met you. I need a friend.’

‘I’ve always been fond of you, Griselda. You know that.’ He spoke as if his was a hopeless passion of many years standing.

‘Where are you living now?’

‘Friends house me for odd nights.’

‘Are you looking for a job?’

‘The jobs available are mostly rather hell.’

‘I know.’

‘I’m trying to work up my plastic poses.’

‘Do they help?’

‘It’s an extension of Laban’s teaching. But entirely original.’

Across the room a waitress overturned a tray laden with portions of roast veal. She was a pretty girl and several men began to assist her with the re-assembly. But their efforts were competitive and helped very little.

‘Now that I’ve met you I think I’ll close with General Pampero.’

‘Who’s he?’

‘The Liberator of Orinoco. He spent most of his life in exile: naturally in London. The Orinocan Government have just bought the house he lived in. They want someone to curate. Very few Orinocans are allowed out of the country. I know a girl who works in the Embassy. She claimed I was a D.Litt. and got me the offer.’

‘Where’s the house?’

‘Somewhere the other side of Mecklenburgh Square. Quite a healthy neighbourhood.’

‘Why haven’t you moved in already?’

‘I’m afraid of acquiring roots.’

‘You had roots in Hodley.’

Kynaston stopped eating and looked into Griselda’s eyes.

‘Griselda, I suppose you wouldn’t marry me?’

‘I’m in love with someone else.’

‘In love?’

‘Certainly.’

He continued to gaze at her.

‘I’m in love with you.’

‘I doubt it.’

‘Of course I’m in love with you,’ he said with faint irritation. ‘You’re unique.’

Griselda said nothing.

‘Let’s stick to realities. Is there any future to this other business?’

Griselda still said nothing.

‘I mean we’ve both made pretty good messes of our lives so far. I think we should cut our losses.’

‘I’m in love with someone else, Geoffrey.’

‘I have an intensely devoted nature. I could make you happy.’

‘Are you happy yourself?’

‘You could make me.’

‘I expect most married couples have exactly those expectations of each other.’

‘They’re perfectly reasonable expectations. People aren’t designed to be happy in isolation like sentries in boxes.’

He seemed startlingly in earnest.

‘What about Doris?’

‘I’m very fond of little Doris but I don’t want to marry her. Besides, as I told you, she’s got TB.’

‘Does she want to marry you?’

‘She can’t marry anyone. She’s very ill. I can only see her once a week.’

‘You do still see her?’

‘Of course, I do. I’m very fond of her. I’m not a monster.’

‘I’d like to see her some time.’

‘I don’t think you’ve much in common. But you can if you want to.’

‘I suppose we haven’t really.’

‘I am glad you can see it. It’ll save a lot of nervous tension and train fares. Will you come and look at this flat in Juvenal Court?’

‘Won’t you live where you work?’

‘The Orinocans have sublet most of the house. The General’s relics hardly fill two rooms. There’ll be an Orinocan Enquiry Bureau in a third room. That’s me too. An Orinocan trading concern have got the rest. But I can’t afford Juvenal Court without you. It’s quite amusing. Friends of mine live in the other flats. Come and see it this evening. The flat won’t stay empty for ever. I’ll call for you.’

‘Geoffrey,’ said Griselda. ‘I must make it plain to you that the chance of my marrying you is entirely and absolutely nil.’

XX

But when the shop shut, Kynaston was lurking outside.

‘After all, I’ve nowhere else to go,’ he said.

He even assisted Mr Tamburlane to put up the shutters: so that Griselda had to introduce him. Though he was reasonably good-looking by modern male standards, his clothes appeared as inappropriate as in Fullers.

Mr Tamburlane seemed unperturbed. After they had stood about on the pavement outside the shop mumbling disconnected generalities, he said: ‘I wonder if the two of you would care to join me in a small repast? I usually go to Underwoods. They know my ways.’ It was the first such invitation Griselda had received from him.

Kynaston immediately accepted for himself and Griselda. They proceeded on foot to a restaurant near the Charing Cross Road. Mr Tamburlane, although the hysteria of the evening rush hour was at its height, and tired workers were flickering and zigzagging across the pavement like interweaving lightning, walked slowly and contemplatively, his eyes directed upwards to a group of swallows swirling after flies, his expression that favoured in coloured representations of the Blessed St Francis.

‘Sister, my sister, O soft light swallow,’ quoted Mr Tamburlane, gazing upwards in a warm and gentle rapture, as the trio clove a passage through the toilers frenzied for the consolations of home.

‘Sister, my sister, O soft light swallow,

Though all things feast in the spring’s guest-

chamber.

How hast thou heart to be glad thereof yet?

For where thou fliest I shall not follow,

Till life forget and death remember.

Till thou remember and I forget.’

‘There is no felicity,’ he continued, as they stood outside Swan and Edgars, waiting to cross the road, ‘exceeding that which can ensure upon utter disregard of the consanguineous prohibitions.’

Underwoods claimed to combine the tradition of the English chop-house with that of the cosmopolitan restaurant-de-luxe. The tables were set in dark mahogany boxes, but there were attractive red-shaded lights, and the benches had been ameliorated with padded upholstery. The tablecloths were very white, the cutlery very glittering, and the menu cards large as barristers’ briefs. There were dimly illuminated portaits of Daniel Mendoza and the Boy Roscius. There was a greeny-grey skull in a glass case bearing a silver plaque inscribed with the names ‘William Corder’ in pleasantly extravagant Gothic script. Griselda thought it might well prove the most agreeable restaurant she had so far visited.

Mr Tamburlane seemed to be exceedingly well known, both to the staff and to many of the other customers. Preceded by the head waiter, whom he had greeted with a quiet ‘Good evening, Andrews,’ he advanced between the lines of boxes, frequently acknowledging greetings. Griselda, following him, attracted almost as much interest; and Kynaston came last, looking more unsuitably dressed than ever. There were an unusual number of men in the restaurant; and few of the women but looked exceedingly striking. Under-waiters with long white aprons darted about like trolls.

Mr Tamburlane was shown to a table near the back of the room. ‘I hope you will have no objection,’ he enquired of his guests, ‘to caviare, turtle soup, sole, a fillet steak, and a bird? I am becoming increasingly set in my ways.’

Griselda noticed that Kynaston seemed entirely able to eat a normal meal provided that it was offered and organized by someone else.

As they ate, and drank the excellent and appropriate wines which their host ordered out of his head and without recourse to the Wine List, Mr Tamburlane talked more and more expansively, breaking off every now and then to impart to an under-waiter a request for French Mustard or another baton. He called the under-waiters by their Christian names: Leslie, Frank, and Noel. By the deference shown him in return Mr Tamburlane might have been his namesake, the Scourge of God. It even seemed to Griselda a little exaggerated, like a caricature of good service.

‘It gives me particular pleasure,’ said Mr Tamburlane, ‘to meet another acolyte of the golden and gracious Miss de Repteonville, for another acolyte I readily perceive that you are. Miss de Reptonville has rapidly set up her own particular and especial altar in my soul. I am sure she has in yours also?’

‘I proposed marriage to her today. During lunch.’

‘Then’ cried Mr Tamburlane, transfigured, ‘this little dinner is an agape, a love-feast, without my knowing it. How limited your news makes me feel, how squat and lacking in vision! We should have drunk from the fountain in the temple of Lanternland, and the livers of young white peacocks should have been our sustenance. For, if I may for one single moment be personal, your youthful candour and clear brow give assurance of our goddess’s response.’

‘Not quite,’ said Kynaston. ‘It’s still an open question.’

‘You did not cry out and leap to his waiting arms,’ said Mr Tamburlane in amazement to Griselda.

‘We were lunching in Fullers at the time, Mr Tamburlane.’

‘Do it now, Miss de Reptonville. They know me here and I can declare a plenary indulgence for all possible consequences. Take him and let us inaugurate a rite which shall last till Venus succumbs before the onrush of Apollo. On a later day, I shall myself take the bridegroom aside and, old man that I am, show him secrets of joy most germane to your bliss, Miss de Reptonville, most unknown to his heart.’ Mr Tamburlane’s fluffy white hair was moist with rapture, good wine, and the heat of the restaurant, his beaming face, the image of the Japanese ensign.

‘I’m afraid I turned the offer down,’ said Griselda. ‘I’m very sorry to spoil things.’

‘But why, dear Anaxarete, make yourself stone?’

‘You know very well, Mr Tamburlane, that I have no inclination to marry anyone.’

‘But you could fall into no error more fundamental! If you wish to continue – if you hope to rediscover—’ But suddenly, with a sound like the discharge of a cork, the excited Mr Tamburlane, ignorant of the extent of Kynaston’s knowledge, discontinued his observations. ‘Fear nothing,’ he said to Kynaston, his eyes still very bright, ‘nor let your night’s rest be troubled unless with anticipation of raptures. I shall myself speak apart to our erring one during business hours tomorrow.’

‘It will make no difference,’ said Griselda, smiling sweetly. ‘I’m resolved to marry no one.’

‘Noel,’ exclaimed Mr Tamburlane, ‘we’re ready for the steak.’

It was exquisite; as was the ensuing bird, which Mr Tamburlane carved personally, with a long thin knife, like a rapier, incredibly sharp, and a fork fiercer than Morton’s. Afterwards came flaming pancakes, and rich Turkish coffee in cups bearing the insignia of the establishment, and two Benedictines each. Mr Tamburlane completed the occasion by appending to the bill his curving, speckled, backward-sloping signature; and giving a pound in largesse. He then suddenly excused himself to Griselda and Kynaston, and rapidly disappeared through a little door beneath a reproduction of Winterhalter’s portrait of the Duke of Sussex.

‘Enjoy your dinner, miss?’ enquired Noel.

‘Very much indeed, thank you.’

‘Nice gentleman, Mr Tamburlane.’

‘He comes here a lot?’

‘Usually with his Indian friends.’

‘I don’t know about them,’ said Griselda, her curiosity surmounting her manners.

‘All in coloured robes and covered in diamonds and rubies.’ He placed his hands on the end of the table and sank his voice.

‘I’m afraid we don’t live up to that.’

‘No, miss,’ said the waiter, glancing at Kynaston’s torn and dirty cricket shirt. ‘Of course, Mr Tamburlane gets all his money from India.’

‘How?’ asked Kynaston.

‘Business with the rajahs and such like. They’ve all got as much money as a dog has fleas.’ He lowered his voice still further. ‘They say it’s them who keep his account with us in order.’

But Mr Tamburlane was standing behind him.

‘Beg pardon, sir. I was just asking the young lady whether she enjoyed her dinner.’

‘Of course, she enjoyed her dinner, Noel. This is the happiest day of her life.’

Used to such situations in the course of his work, the waiter took Mr Tamburlane’s meaning immediately.

‘My respectful congratulations to you, sir. And to you, madam.’

‘Thank you, Noel,’ said Kynaston calmly. ‘I’ve done nothing to deserve my good fortune.’

‘And what becomes of us now?’ enquired Mr Tamburlane, seating himself on the corner of the upholstered bench. ‘The night is still a virgin. All right, Noel. You can go.’

‘Thank you, sir. Good night sir. Good night madam. Good night sir.’

‘Tell me, young bridegroom,’ resumed Mr Tamburlane, when the adieux to Noel were concluded, ‘what was your intention tonight in bearing off Miss de Reptonville? You must, I suppose, have had some intention. Or perhaps not; perhaps you thought merely to let the gale of love blow whither it listed? If so may I blow with it for a spell? May I savour, if only by proxy, la premier souvenir d’amour?’

‘We were going to look at a flat.’

‘The hymeneal shrine! Nothing could more perfectly suit me. Let us go there at once. Frank,’ cried Mr Tamburlane. ‘please ask the doorman to summon us a taxi. No, wait. Ours should be a ritual progress. Make it a hansom. There is always one stationed at the bottom of Piccadilly.’

‘There is one thing which is being overlooked,’ said Griselda when the flurry had subsided.

‘Name it,’ said Mr Tamburlane. ‘It shall be my privilege to provide it. Shall night-scented flowers be strewn before us as we pass through Leicester Square? I presume that is the direction?’

‘Juvenal Court,’ replied Kynaston. ‘Just off Tottenham Court Road.’

‘Shall the fountains in Seven Dials run wine? Shall two white oxen be roasted whole in St Giles’s Circus?’

It occurred to Griselda that Mr Tamburlane was a little drunk. Possibly his meals when his Indian friends were actually present, were less far-reaching.

‘The point we are overlooking,’ said Griselda, ‘is that I have no intention of marrying.’

‘Let us leave events to take their course,’ replied Mr Tamburlane. ‘Indeed I have absolute faith that they will do so.’

The doorman entered the restaurant and came to Mr Tamburlane’s table.

‘Hansom, sir.’

Mr Tamburlane rose.

‘Swift as the thoughts of love. We are grateful to our Hermes.’ Griselda’s worst forebodings were confirmed when Mr Tamburlane produced his wallet and found it empty. The pound he had given to the waiter must have been all it contained. He sought for change in his trousers pocket and produced sevenpence. This sum seemed far from satisfying the doorman, who, for one whom presumably he had regarded as a very special customer, must have run all the way to Piccadilly Circus.

‘Blimey,’ said Hermes. ‘That all you’ve got?’

‘The privilege of serving Eros must make up the balance.’

‘What’s a ruddy statue got to do with it?’

‘Come,’ cried Mr Tamburlane, ‘let us mount the car of love.’

‘Bloody swindler,’ said Hermes. ‘Look at that!’ He extended his hand bearing the seven coppers to Frank seeking sympathy.

‘More fool you,’ said Frank. He added something which Griselda failed to hear, being now on her way out of the restaurant. She noticed, as she followed Mr Tamburlane, who firmly took the lead, that his many acquaintances among the customers gave an impression of knowing him only by sight. They smiled and bowed as he passed, but said nothing. The doorman could still be heard execrating Mr Tamburlane in the background. But Andrews, the head waiter, was as deferential as ever.

‘Hope to see you again soon, sir.’

‘Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow,’ replied Mr Tamburlane.

‘Would you care to book a table now, sir? Like yesterday?’

‘All our yesterdays,’ said Mr Tamburlane; and, suddenly remembering the customary usage, stood aside for Griselda to precede him into the warm summer air. There could be little doubt that he was the worse for drink.

There was the appalling question of who could pay for the hansom; including, Griselda supposed, an extra passenger. Only one answer being possible, Griselda attempted to recall the total sum in her handbag. Did hansom cabs charge at the same rates as taxis, she wondered; and would there soon be a scene like the one with the doorman?

‘Mount,’ said Mr Tamburlane to Griselda.

The door of the cab hung back against the side, and Griselda put her foot on the little step and entered. She had never been in a hansom cab before. The vehicle, although astonishingly open to the air, somehow managed to retain a strong, utterly unknown smell.

‘Mount,’ said Mr Tamburlane to Kynaston.

Kynaston ascended and seated himself. He looked somewhat dishevelled with wine, though less so than Mr Tamburlane.

Mr Tamburlane’s foot was on the step when the driver shouted down out of the sky ‘Two’s the legal limit.’ He flourished his whip.

‘Stuff,’ replied Mr Tamburlane.

‘I’ll lose my licence.’

‘I’ll buy you another one,’ said Mr Tamburlane.

‘Mind you do,’ said the driver. Mr Tamburlane had looked like a tip of unprecedented size, and the driver was used to eccentrics who could pay for their indulgences. He flicked Mr Tamburlane on the left ear.

Kynaston had moved close to Griselda, making a small amount of room for Mr Tamburlane in the far corner. But Mr Tamburlane ignored this provision and fell heavily into place between the two of them, sending Kynaston sliding away along the slippery leather.

‘Permit me,’ he said, putting an arm round each of them. ‘For warmth.’

Indeed it was surprisingly draughty for such a warm evening.

‘Will you be cold?’ said Griselda to Kynaston along the back of Mr Tamburlane’s neck. She had completed her mental arithmetic and a last desperate hope entered her mind. ‘Perhaps we’d better go by tube?’

As she spoke she felt through Mr Tamburlane’s body his other arm tightening on Kynaston.

‘Thank you, Griselda,’ said Kynaston gulping. ‘I’ll be warm enough. I loathe wrapping up.’ But his tones were soft. They expressed pathetic gratitude for what he took to be Griselda’s first piece of solicitude for him, her first essay at managing his diffused and migrant life.

‘Vile were if indeed,’ said Mr Tamburlane, muscling in still further, ‘for the Lachender Held young Siegfried to mask his manhood with draperies.’

There was a moment’s silence while Mr Tamburlane consolidated his grip, and Griselda looked up at the stars.

‘Well?’

The cabman had lifted the little hatch in the roof.

‘Advance,’ said Mr Tamburlane.

‘Once round the Park?’ asked the cabman. ‘Or along the Victoria Embankment?’

‘Juvenal Court,’ said Kynaston. ‘Just off Tottenham Court Road.’

‘It’s not usual,’ said the cabman. ‘I don’t cater for regular fares. Can’t afford it. There’s taxis for that. I’ve got my living to earn.’

‘We’ll see that you don’t lose by it,’ said Mr Tamburlane, his voice full of banknotes.

‘Take care that I don’t.’

‘Young love is on the wing tonight,’ said Mr Tamburlane.

‘Honeymoon couple? OK.’

He shut the trap and they drove off. At the moment of departure the doorman appeared: ‘Watch out,’ he shrieked. ‘They’ll welsh you.’

‘Lie down and cool off,’ rejoined the cabman ungratefully.

It was pleasant, though squashed. Griselda remembered Lord Beaconsfield’s phrase ‘The gondola of London.’ To journey from one gilded hall to another by hansom cab alone with the person one truly loved must indeed have been heaven. As soon as the present journey started, however, Griselda realised the origin of the unusual smell. It came from the horse. The vehicle. moreover, lacked a jingling bell: that essential appurtenance for romance.

They clattered along swiftly. Pedestrians, habituated to vehicles equipped with audible warnings, were several times all but slaughtered, to the accompaniment of dreadful language from the cabman. Walking-out couples, glad of something to do, and parties up from the country, stood on the pavements sentimentally staring. Police constables were irritable or facetious. An elementary school child threw a fire-cracker, which fortunately failed to discharge. At Cambridge Circus an elderly woman shouted several times to the driver ‘It’s unsafe. It’s unsafe. It’s unsafe’; at which the driver lifted the trap in the roof and bawled down ‘She’s dead right’, then went into roars of Mephistophilean laughter. Griselda wondered whether the fiery and erratic behaviour of the horse reflected some kind of incorrect feeding.

Juvenal Court appeared to be three adjoining mid-nineteenth century houses run together and converted into a rabbit warren. There were lights at every single window including one or two very small ones. A girl’s head was projecting from one of the upper windows.

‘Barney,’ she cried, ‘come to me.’ Presumably she was addressing an intimate on a lower floor.

Instantly a man looked out. ‘I’m tired,’ he shouted back in a cultivated accent. The street light showed that he had much smooth black hair and a large nose. The girl moaned and withdrew. Griselda had seen that she was wildly beautiful.

Kynaston had squeezed himself from Mr Tamburlane’s grasp and began to stand about ineffectively on the pavement. He seemed worried.

Mr Tamburlane, though his eyes were open, indeed unusually wide open, continued supine.

‘Well?’ enquired the driver.

Griselda opened her purse. ‘How much?’

‘I leave that to the party concerned, miss.’ The driver implied that the question was in curiously bad taste.

Griselda submitted two halfcrowns. Instantly and wordlessly the driver hurled them on the granite setts of the gutter.

‘It’s all I can spare.’

‘Who’s asking you?’

Kynaston had ascended the steps to the surviving front door and stood lurking in the shadows. The other two front doors had been superseded by kitchenettes.

‘Come on, Mr Tamburlane. We’re there.’ Griselda dragged at his arm, but it merely came away as if it had dropped off his shoulder. Mr Tamburlane continued to stare at the horse’s tail out of unnaturally large white eyes.

The driver lifted his hatch. He adressed one word to his fare.

‘Out.’

Mr Tamburlane hardly moved, but the horse swished his tail and whinnied. Kynaston was fidgeting. He seemed distinctly upset.

‘Please, Mr Tamburlane,’ cried Griselda weakly, but still, she thought, firmly.

Mr Tamburlane turned a little away from her, groaned slightly, and addressed himself to the space formerly occupied by Kynaston. His voice was low and throbbing. ‘Гхгз, гхнбйоὶ куумпн Ю уйгЮ ϕЭсей,’ said Mr Tamburlane.

Griselda turned her back on him and called to Kynaston. ‘Can you come and help?’

‘What do you suggest?’ said Kynaston from the doorstep. He seemed almost shifty.

Griselda looked up at the cabman; who again lifted his little flap and in accents of deep distaste uttered another single word.

‘Scram.’

The effect was surprising. The horse reared a little, neighed noisily, and clattered away down the street. The tumult of his shoes on the granite setts was considerable. As the vehicle disappeared from sight it seemed for some reason to be swaying from one wheel to the other. The driver looked to have lost his reins and, at undoubted peril, to be erect on his perch expostulating. Soon, however, all was quiet once more and Kynaston was holding back the heavy front door, covered with letter-box flaps each with several names, for Griselda to enter.

‘Thank God that’s over,’ said Kynaston.

‘I don’t want Mr Tamburlane to be hurt,’ said Griselda.

‘I expect a policeman will pull them up soon. The police are always doing things like that. Anything rather than have him back. It’s most unfortunate how strongly I attract that type of man. Young or old, it always happens. I regularly appeal to the wrong type in both sexes. I wish I attracted you, Griselda.’ He stopped groping for the switch and began to grope for Griselda.

‘Let me advise you to recover the cash.’ A door had opened on to the dark hall and Barney was looking out. Kynaston saw the switch and turned on the light.

‘Thank you very much,’ said Griselda. ‘I will.’ She had forgotten her two important half-crowns.

She returned to the gutter but the coins were not to be seen.

‘Can’t you find them?’ It was Kynaston, once more at the top of the steps.

‘Come and help to look for them.’

He remained in the shadow. ‘I’m better at losing than finding.’

‘Let me look.’ It was Barney. He wore a check shirt and brown trousers. He descended to his hands and knees, and crawled along, striking matches.

‘Please don’t trouble.’

‘How much was it?’

‘Five shillings.’

‘No trouble.’

Kynaston was clearly bored. He still seemed uneasy.

‘It’s very good of you.’

‘Five shillings is five shillings.’ Barney groped along like a small brown bear taught to let off a train of tiny fireworks.

‘Please stop now. It really doesn’t matter.’

Barney resumed the human posture. ‘The scum of the earth live round here. They wouldn’t miss a chance like that.’ The street seemed deserted. ‘Would you allow me to reduce the loss? I imagine Geoffrey’s in his usual condition.’ He put his hand in his trousers pocket and offered Griselda half-a-crown.

‘Certainly not. I mean thank you very much; but No thank you. It really doesn’t matter at all,’ Griselda added extenuatingly.

‘Please yourself.’

‘I do mean thank you all the same.’

‘So long as you know what you mean.’

Kynaston was looking embarrassed. He changed the subject.

‘Is Dykes in?’

‘I suppose so. Why?’

‘We want to look at the empty flat.’

‘Empty what?’

‘Empty room.’

‘We?’

‘I’m going to marry Griselda. Griselda de Reptonville. Barney Lazarus.’

Griselda had heard of him. Paintings by Barney Lazarus were sometimes mentioned by the Art Critics of The Times. She hard understood that he painted mostly Mothers.

‘How do you do?’ said Barney. They shook hands on the pavement. ‘I cannot possibly congratulate you.’

‘It’s the man you congratulate,’ said Kynaston.

‘That remains to be seen,’ said Barney, looking Griselda up and down. ‘I’ve known Geoffrey for years,’ he remarked to her, ‘and I would rather marry King Kong.’

‘I don’t know King Kong,’ remarked Griselda, smiling sweetly.

XXI

Dykes, who lived entirely in what had once been the larder of the house (the other rooms in the basement being let to tenants), proved to be wholly drunk. Roused by Kynaston, he stumbled up the battered stair singing snatches of old songs. His memory being ruined by the bottle, however, he was unable to recall which room was to let. Furthermore, having forgotten all he had ever learnt at school (if not more), he was incapable of distinguishing between the numbers on the different doors. The three of them bounced and crashed from amorous routines to solidary drudgeries until Kynaston asserted ‘I am sure Monica said Number Thirteen.’

He and Griselda climbed another flight; but Dykes said his heart would carry him no higher. ‘We may not need a key,’ said Kynaston. ‘I daresay it’s lost.’

Across the landing before them, a dark brown door was inscribed 13. Kynaston turned the claborate brass handle and entered without obstacle (the key being on the inside); then sagged back, standing upon Griselda’s toe.

‘Good God, Lotus,’ he said faintly and peevishly, ‘this is really too much.’

The room was medium sized, middlingly furnished in a style unexpectedly like Greenwood Tree House, painted in the same dark brown as the door, and with hideous paper leaving the walls and ceiling. Standing on the dust coloured carpet was the girl who had shouted from the upper window. At closer quarters, she was still wildly beautiful, with well kept golden-red hair, bright green eyes, a prominent somewhat Iberian nose, a large but well-shaped mouth, and a perfect skin. She wore crкpe-de-chine pyjamas, intended for parties. She was rather plump, though well-proportioned; and appeared to be expensively corsetted. Griselda found her age unusually difficult to guess.

She glared at Kynaston for a moment; then at Griselda.

‘If you must be unfaithful to me, Geoffrey,’ she said in a voice as beautiful as her face, ‘then you need not insult me as well by always seducing an ingйnue. There are other mondaine women in London.’

Kynaston stood his ground remarkably well. ‘Lotus, I’m going to marry Griselda. Griselda de Reptonville. Mrs Lamb.’

‘Are you insane, Geoffrey?’

‘You can’t look after me, Lotus. I thought you could, but I was wrong. I really believe Griselda can. And without bullying me, as you do. As well as being sensible, she is sweet and sympathetic. Besides you yourself refuse to marry me–’

‘I am above such a thought!’ she interrupted. Suddenly she extended her hand to Griselda. ‘Ignore my remark. It was intended only to hurt Geoffrey not you. As you love Geoffrey, you must forgive me for that also.’

‘I don’t love Geoffrey.’ replied Griselda, smiling and shaking Lotus’s hand.

‘Perfect. That’s the only possible basis for marriage.’

‘I’m not going to marry.’

‘Monica told me you’d gone away,’ said Kynaston interrupting.

‘I’ve come back. I’m living with Barney now.’

‘I suppose that also is intended to hurt me.’

‘Certainly. And it’s quite true.’

‘You’ve been quick enough.’

‘And you? Or is this merely another Doris Ditton?’ Turning to Griselda she added: ‘Please don’t think I mean anything personal.’

‘I’m going to marry Griselda.’

‘She says not.’

‘She’ll be sorry for me in the end.’

Lotus sat on the edge of the divan. ‘You know, Geoffrey,’ she said, ‘I’ll take you back. This instant, if you like.’

‘I can’t understand what you see in me, Lotus. I’m not your kind of man at all.’

‘What are you going to live on without me?’

‘I’ve got a job. Anyway you’ve never supported me.’

‘Paid your debts. It’s much the same. What sort of a job have you got?’ She seemed genuinely to wonder; and remarked to Griselda: ‘Geoffrey’s incapable of work of any kind.’ It was a simple statement of fact.

‘I think we’d better face reality,’ replied Geoffrey.

‘I inspired all his poetry too,’ continued Lotus to Griselda.

Suddenly she fell sideways on the divan and began to sob. She sobbed beautifully. Kynaston looked distracted.

‘Good night,’ said Griselda.

‘For God’s sake,’ cried Kynaston clutching both her elbows and holding on.

‘It’s late. I really should go.’

‘I beg you,’ cried Kynaston. ‘You can see how utterly wrong for me she is and always has been.’

‘She’s very beautiful,’ said Griselda falling into the new convention of speaking as if the person spoken about were not present.

‘You’re beautiful too, Griselda.’

‘Not in the same class.’

Lotus looked up. ‘You are. You are. You know you are.’ Huge separate tears streamed down her lovely skin. ‘I love you Griselda. I need you. Please don’t leave me now.’ He was still desperately gripping one of her elbows.

Lotus dropped off the bed and knelt on the floor crying her heart out. ‘When you’ve married him, will you let me see him? Ever?’

But the door had opened and Barney entered. He spoke very quietly.

‘I thought I heard Lotus crying. Silence, Kynaston, while I break every bone in your body.’ Barney was a painter of the traditional school. Griselda had never before seen anyone in so dreadful a rage.

His first blow laid Kynaston on the floor, where Barney began systematically to maul him.

Deeming explanation useless, Griselda began to drag at Barney’s shoulders from behind. This was equally unavailing.

‘Could you please help?’ she said to the tear-stained Lotus. Even Lotus’s pyjamas were becoming dark and saturated. Her beautiful tears were particularly wet.

Lotus rose from the floor and with a single kick from one of her attractive shoes, mastered the situation. Barney stopped half-murdering Kynaston, and looked up at her, all rage evaporated.

‘I thought–’

‘You thought wrong. Get out.’ She kicked him again, unexpectedly and maliciously.

‘I wanted—’

‘Go to bed, Barney. You said you were tired.’

Once more his expression changed. ‘You’d made me desperate. I’m not a pekinese.’

‘You foul the air.’

Barney flushed; rose to his feet; and took Lotus in his arms. Quite calmly, as it appeared, she bit deeply into his left cheek. Barney’s blood on her big well-shaped mouth made her look like a beautiful vampire.

Barney felt in his trousers pocket for a handkerchief, but he was unprovided. Remembering the half-crown, Griselda extended her own handkerchief. He began to dab at his streaming cheek. Griselda’s handkerchief was much too small.

‘Are you going back to Kynaston?’

‘I’m not going back to you.’

‘I see.’ He turned to Griselda. ‘And you? Where do you come in?’

It was difficult to know what to say. Lotus saved Griselda the trouble.

‘Stop asking questions and leave the room, Barney.’ She took a short step towards him. It was like the school bully and her victim, Griselda thought.

‘I’ll kill myself.’

‘The best thing you can do.’

His bloodstained face was now completely white.

‘You don’t believe me?’

‘I don’t care.’

Hanging from the washbasin was a dirty towel, the property of a former tenant. It might have hung there for months. Lotus snatched it and flicked it with a loud report in Barney’s face.

‘Lotus.’ His voice was a voice from the tomb. ‘Lotus, I love you. I love you terribly, Lotus.’

Before she had succeeded in driving him from the room, she must have been hurting him quite considerably.

When Barney was outside, Lotus locked the door and stuck the key into the top of her black corselette, which her exertions had exposed to view.

Griselda was alarmed. But Lotus only looked dreamily at her for several seconds, her large eyes full of lustre, her exquisite hands making small groping movements; then with a low cry fell upon the prostrate Kynaston, all beautiful compassion. Again she looked at Griselda.

‘Do you know any first-aid?’

‘A little.’ Griselda reflected. ‘Very little.’

‘Can you tell if he’s alive?’

‘I think I can.’

Griselda held the mirror from her bag against the side of Kynaston’s mouth pressed against the dust coloured carpet. A slightly yellow mist immediately clouded it.

‘He’s alive.’

Lotus sqatted back.

‘I don’t mind if you marry him so long as you let me go on seeing him. It’s only his body I want really. I don’t at all care about your having everything else.’

‘I quite understand. Hadn’t we better try to bring him round?’

‘So long as you understand. It’ll be no different from any other marriage. Except, of course, that Geoffrey will never be able to keep you. Still I want him to be happy and might be able to help with that: always through you, of course. Geoffrey can’t tell the difference between fourpence and ninepence.’

‘That’s very kind of you.’

‘It’s not only kindness. There’s a close connection between a man’s happiness and his vitality, you know. In many ways, men are exactly like animals. Perhaps you don’t believe that?’

‘Shall we chafe his extremities?’

‘Why?’

‘It’s what we were taught.’

‘Then you’d better do it.’

Griselda hesitated.

‘Have you any brandy?’ She thought that this might, among other things, get the door unlocked and Lotus out of the room.

‘Of course.’

‘Do you think you could bring it?’

‘I suppose so.’ Lotus rose to her feet, stretching the cramp from her leg muscles. ‘What a curse men are.’ She was looking for the key. ‘Wait.’ She had unlocked the door and was going upstairs. Indeed she had left the door open.

To her own surprise Griselda remained with the body.

When Lotus returned, she once more locked the door. ‘We don’t want a crowd,’ she remarked. She bore a half-full bottle of excellent liqueur brandy; distinctly superior to what might be expected of Juvenal Court.

‘Shall we force it down him?’

‘I suppose so. I’ve never done it.’

‘I’ve never done it either. I always let other people deal with emergencies.’

Tenderly Lotus rolled Kynaston on to his back.

‘Give me that tooth-glass. I don’t see why we shouldn’t have some first. The whole thing’s Geoffrey’s own fault.’

‘It needs washing. There are two dead flies in it.’

‘All right. Wash it. But be quick.’

Griselda emptied the flies to the floor and cleaned the glass to the best of her ability.

‘I’ll dry it.’ Somewhat to Griselda’s distaste, Lotus dried the glass on the grimy towel. ‘Now then.’ She half-filled the glass with brandy. ‘Me first, if you don’t mind.’ At once the glass was again empty. ‘Now you.’ Griselda’s allowance was considerably smaller.

‘Thank you.’ It was certainly wonderful stuff.

‘How do you force drink between tightly clenched jaws?’

‘Geoffrey’s mouth is open.’

‘Oh yes. Still I don’t want to waste it.’

‘Let me try.’ Griselda was beginning to worry lest Kynaston have concussion, whatever that might be.

‘Careful.’

Griselda poured about half a tablespoonful of brandy into the glass and released it drop by drop down Kynaston’s throat.

‘Careful.’

When the glass was nearly empty, Kynaston seemed to have a violent spasm. He curled up instantaneously, like a caterpillar which has taken alarm. His mouth closed sharply and a curious rattle came from somewhere inside him. It frightened Griselda so much that she swallowed what remained in the glass.

‘Of course.’ she said, ‘he’s been having very little to eat.’

Lotus stared at her dreamily; again half-filling the glass.

‘Don’t forget your promise,’ she said, drinking.

‘What promise?’

‘You may not think you’ll marry Geoffrey. But he’ll marry you. You won’t be able to resist him: and he’ll make marriage his price.’ She had unbuttoned Kynaston’s shirt and was running her free hand over the upper part of his body. ‘Or part of his price.’

‘Shall we call a doctor?’

‘How innocent you are, Griselda!’

Suddenly Lotus had cast the tumbler into a corner of the room, where it shattered with rather too much noise and into rather too many pieces; had thrown herself upon the half-naked Kynaston: and was frenziedly kissing his mouth. Instantly Kynaston sat up.

‘Beloved,’ he said, clasping Lotus in his arms. Then, seeing Griselda, he gave a groan of shock and disgust, and was on his feet, buttoning his shirt.

Lotus lay on the floor. She appeared to be looking round for another glass. As with the locked door, she seemed to find difficulty, Griselda thought, in sustaining her romantic emphases.

‘Come away at once,’ said Kynaston, apparently none the worse. ‘We shall have to live elsewhere.’ The knock-out seemed to have awakened in him a slightly hysterical dignity.

‘No need at all,’ replied Lotus from the floor. ‘Griselda and I are on the best of terms. We are going to be great friends.’

‘I didn’t know,’ said Kynaston. ‘Griselda needs some friends.’

‘We’ve made a bargain.’

‘What bargain?’

Lotus smiled her lovely smile. ‘Geoffrey,’ she said, ‘do organize a picnic for next Sunday.’

‘All right, Lotus.’

‘We’ll all come. It’ll be like old times.’

‘So long as no one crosses me about the arrangements.’

‘Who would?’

He smiled back at her.

‘Griselda hasn’t seen you at your wonderful best until she’s been on one of your wonderful wonderful picnics.’

Now Griselda smiled also.

Kynaston was at the door.

‘It’s locked.’

All three were still smilling.

‘Where’s the key?’

Lotus knelt, sitting back upon her ankles, and, her hands clasped behind her, extended her plump black-corsetted bosom towards him.

‘Reach for it.’

The key being extracted, and the door opened, they left Lotus, the search for another glass abandoned, imbibing direct from the bottle.

‘Marry-in-haste,’ she said between gulps.

‘I never shall,’ said Griselda still smiling.

XXII

Through his door on the ground floor, Barney could be clearly heard grinding his teeth and his colours.

As Griselda and Kynaston passed into the summer night, the clock on the local Crematorium struck midnight, an intimation repeated a few minutes later by the doubtless more accurate clock at the Palace of Westminster.

‘I should have told you about Lotus.’

‘She’s no affair of mine.’

‘I never expected to see her again. It’s Monica Paget-Barlow’s fault. She misled me.’

‘I see.’

‘All the same she’s rather splendid.’

‘Miss Paget-Barlow?’

‘But I’m quite finished with her none the less. She lacks your glorious independence.’

‘I’ve lost the thread.’

‘You’ll come on the picnic?’

‘No. Thank you.’

‘Don’t be jealous. It’s absurd of you. Really it is.’

‘I’m not jealous. I have another engagement.’

‘What?’

Without particularly thinking. Griselda answered the truth. ‘I’m spending the day with my friend Peggy Potter.’

‘Where are you going?’

Regrettably, Peggy, with her passion for the provisional, always, when possible, refused to agree upon a plan in advance.

‘Does that matter?’

‘Bring her with you. There’ll be a crowd. She’ll pass unnoticed.’

‘No, thank you. She’d hate that.’

They were walking southwards down Tottenham Court Road, as Griselda did not care to risk the passage of the back streets at midnight. Outside Goodge Street Station, Kynaston stopped, again took hold of Griselda’s elbows, and said: ‘Griselda, I love you with all my heart.’ He seemed to mean it. But as he spoke a lift arrived, and they were pushed about by a load of tired revellen and resentful night workers.

Absurd though the declaration was, Griselda had too soft a heart to feel unmoved. ‘Where will you go tonight?’ She asked sympathetically.

‘I’ve made arrangements . . . Please marry me.’

‘No, Geoffrey. It’s impossible . . . You’ll be all right?’

‘I’ll be far from all right if you won’t marry me. Besides I’ve got a slight headache.’

‘When do you take up your job?’

‘On Liberation Day. Next Wednesday. It’s a job for a D.Litt. There’s very little money in it.’

‘Poor Geoffrey! I really must go. I shall miss the last tube.’ Griselda had previously intended to walk.

‘You won’t need an address for me as I shall look in the shop every day.’

‘No please, Geoffrey, I’m sure there’ll be trouble with Mr Tamburlane.’

‘Yes. I suppose there may.’

‘I wonder if Mr Tamburlane’s still alive? Poor Mr Tamburlane.’

‘Promise to come on the picnic and we’ll leave it at that for the moment. I’ve got a lot of things to do anyway before I’m tied by the leg on Liberation Day. Promise, Griselda.’

‘Certainly not.’

‘Ten o’clock next Sunday at Juvenal Court. Bring your own lunch. Tell your friend to bring enough for the two of you.’

‘Good night, Geoffrey.’

‘May I kiss you?’

‘No.’

He kissed her. Although it was Goodge Street Station and another lift had come up, Griselda realized that Kynaston really had feelings. It was most surprising.

Despite her efforts, he felt her respond.

‘Griselda darling . . .’

But Griselda had been swept away by a flood of sad ineluctable memories and a posse of half-drunken suburbans on their way to Hendon, Edgware, and Trinity Road, Tooting Bec.

The tide of grief because Louise had been lost was so overwhelming, and the prospect of Sunday spent alone with Peggy so depressing (fond of Peggy though she was), that when she arrived back at Greenwood Tree House, Griselda, though it was late by Peggy’s standards, knocked at her friend’s door. With so many weightier cares to keep her from sleep, Griselda knew that she would lie awake all night unless she settled the matter of the picnic before the retired.

‘What is it?’

‘It is I. Griselda. Please let me in.’ Peggy always locked her door.

There was a curious sound of shuffling and putting away, which continued for an unexplained time. Then the key was turned and Peggy stood in the doorway.

‘Come in Griselda,’ she said quite pleasantly.

‘You needn’t have bothered to put on your dressing-gown.’

Peggy said nothing.

‘Do get into bed again. I can quite easily talk to you in bed.’

‘I’d rather not. Sit down.’

They sat formally in the room’s two chairs. Peggy must have been putting away her clothes and underclothes, as none were visible.

‘Had you anything in mind for Sunday?’

‘Need we settle so long beforehand? After all, it’s not work. Can’t we leave it till the time comes?’

‘We’ve both been asked on a picnic.’

‘Both?’

‘I’ve been asked and asked to bring you.’

‘I see. Will the people like me? Seeing that they don’t know me or I them. I should hate to spoil your day.’

‘Of course you won’t spoil my day, Peggy. I hardly know the people myself. I shall be glad to have you for company.’

‘Are they a married couple?’

‘There’s to be quite a number of people, I believe. You’ll be able to pass unnoticed, if you wish.’

‘Not if they’re my sort of person, I hope. And obviously not if they’re not my sort of person,’ said Peggy, patiently smiling. ‘Are they my sort of person? You won’t mind my asking.’

‘Not exactly,’ replied Griselda thoughtfully. ‘But I’m sure you’ll like them. I do,’ she added without particular regard for truth.

‘Could I let you know later?’

‘No. I want to know now. Or I shan’t sleep.’

‘All right, I’ll come. Thank you for asking me.’

‘Thank you for coming.’

‘I suppose it must be important to you. There’s someone expected? Somone in particular?’

‘Nothing like that. Just a group of old friends. Very pleasant people,’ replied Griselda, seeing mental pictures of Lotus flagellating Barney with the towel and Barney trying to beat out Kynaston’s brains.

XXIII

When Griselda arrived at the shop next morning, Mr Tamburlane was taking down the shutters as usual.

‘Since I had to hurry away last night, let me at once whisper in your hymeneal ear, Miss de Reptonville,’ he exclaimed as she approached.

‘Are you quite safe, Mr Tamburlane?’

‘I glow. I bask. I kindle.’

‘Then that’s all right.’ Griselda entered the dusky shop with its smell of scholarship.

‘Advance the nuptials. Miss de Reptonville. It’s the best thing you can possibly do. Afterwards you can throw the traces right over and – your tastes being what they are, of course – Society will do nothing but smile upon you.’

‘Please don’t concern yourself.’

‘In my anachronistic way I feel called to advise you; both as your employer and also quasi-paternally.’

‘It shows thought, Mr Tamburlane.’

‘But perchance the plough has entered the furrow without aid from me?’

At that point a young man came into the shop and saved the situation by calling, in an affected voice, for the Complete Incubology of St Teresa of Avila, which had to be got up from the basement.

None the less, all day Mr Tamburlane made himself quire a nuisance with his sympathetic but entire misunderstanding of Griselda’s situation. Nor did the heat help.

Saturday was really hot.

‘Need we go tomorrow?’ enquired Peggy, as she lay beside Griselda in the Park, her head on an old copy of ‘Headway’.

‘It may not be so hot.’

‘Then it will be raining. It’s August.’

‘Look at that duck.’

‘That’s a widgeon.’

‘We don’t have to go if you don’t want to.’

‘I don’t want to spoil it for you.’

‘I agreed to spend Sunday with you, Peggy. It’s for you to say about the picnic.’

‘It’s only the heat. I’d love to come otherwise.’

‘Surely it’ll be hotter in Italy?’

Sunday was hotter.

Griselda had passed the night naked on top of her bed and had slept perfectly; but she feared that Peggy might not have slept at all.

‘Are you awake, Peggy?’

‘I’m making sandwiches. Come in.’

Griselda entered. Peggy was fully dressed in a pale blue cotton frock covered with small sprigs of pale pink flowers; and was being exceedingly useful. Griselda was delighted by her energy and practicality. Kynaston’s cynical suggestion was coming to pass. Peggy was preparing lunch for the two of them.

‘I’ll go away again and get some clothes on.’

‘Do you like mustard with tinned salmon?’

‘Please. It adds a flavour.’

Immediately Griselda thought that this might be interpreted as offensive. So she added. ‘They’re beautiful sandwiches. So even.’

‘Got the knack at College,’ replied Peggy. ‘I made sandwich lunches for my group every day.’

‘Didn’t the others ever take a turn?’

‘Catch them,’ said Peggy with much meaning but no explanation.

Griselda put on a dark flame coloured silk shirt and her black linen skirt.

At five minutes to ten they were at Juvenal Court. Peggy had insisted on bringing her rucksack. It seemed to Griselda to go somewhat queerly with her cotton frock, but certainly came in useful as a repository for the little packets of food.

Seated on the steps were Barney, dressed precisely as before, and a young man in a tennis shirt, with fair hair and an open innocent face. Behind them on the step above, was a girl in a khaki shirt and grey flannel trousers. She had sharp but lively features, including a longish nose and almondish eyes; dark skin and black hair, drawn tightly back and tied with a length of wide khaki ribbon. She sat with her legs rather wide apart; but not sprawling: on the contrary, giving an impression of alertness and vigour.

Barney rose, followed by the innocent looking young man. The mark of Lotus’s teeth was plain on Barney’s cheek.

‘How nice of you to be so punctual.’ It was as if nothing had happened: almost as if nothing had happened ever. Barney’s tone was the pink of polite nothingness.

‘We’ve walked,’ remarked Peggy. ‘From the other side of the Edgware Road.’ Griselda did not really understand Peggy. Possibly she profited from being brought out.

‘How sensible of you to bring your rucksack.’

‘I like to keep my hands free.’

‘Naturally.’ Barney turned to Griselda. ‘Do introduce your friend.’

‘Peggy Potter. Barney Lazarus.’

‘The painter?’

‘Himself. How do you do?’

‘I know your work.’

Barney was admiring Peggy’s large bust.

‘Better than knowing me.’

‘Stop fishing for compliments, Barney. She’s only just set eyes on you.’ The girl on the step above was speaking. ‘I’m Lena Drelincourt.’

‘How do you do?’ said Griselda. ‘I’m Griselda de Reptonville.’

‘Not patient Griselda?’ cried the innocent looking young man in a public school voice and high glee.

‘This is Freddy Fisher,’ said Barney, embarrassed because he had failed to introduce Griselda.

‘I write,’ explained Lena Drelincourt.

‘I work in a bookshop. Perhaps we stock you.’

‘I shouldn’t think so.’

‘There are several more of us to come,’ said Barney, making conversation. ‘Guillaume and Florence. Your friend Geoffrey Kynaston. And, of course, Monica Paget-Barlow. And Lotus.’

‘And Lotus,’ said Lena Drelincourt, underlining.

‘More women than men, I’m glad to say,’ resumed Barney.

‘Twice as many,’ said Lena, ‘not counting Freddy, which you can’t. It’s an incitement to unnatural vice.’

Freddy Fisher blushed all over his head and neck.

‘So many of the younger generation of men like to stay in bed over the week-end,’ explained Barney.

‘Where’s Geoffrey?’ asked Lena. ‘If he doesn’t appear soon, I’m going to take charge.’

‘Why are the arrangements always left to Geoffrey?’ asked Freddy Fisher.

‘Because he makes a scene otherwise,’ answered Lena.

‘He’s not a child.’

‘No. He’s a baby. He only feels grown up when other people do what he says.’

A tired looking girl, obviously much younger than she seemed, with a small round head and a small round face, nondescript hair and nondescript clothes, came out of the house. Barney introduced her as Monica Paget-Barlow. She smiled quickly, said nothing, seated herself on the top step and began to knit.

She was immediately followed by Guillaume and Florence. Guillaume was an elderly-looking man (though he also was probably younger than he looked), with long sparse grey hair and an air of unsuccessfully applied learning. His other name was announced as Cook. He was exceedingly untidy.

Florence was a slender dark woman of about thirty with short brown hair and a Grecian nose. She gave an impression of quietness and docility, which, like her appearance, was far from unattractive. She wore a tight shirt of dark-blue jersey-silk, which emphasised her slenderness and lack of figure, and dark blue trousers. Consciously or otherwise, the costume was well chosen to present her to advantage. She was introduced as Florence Cook, but probably was not. Griselda liked her at sight, and wondered what she found in Guillaume, supposing that she found anything.

‘We could hardly have a better day,’ said Guillaume in accents of deep anxiety. Before long Griselda perceived that it was his habitual tone. He spoke seldom and slowly and, though his words were commonplace, he appeared to worry very much over choosing them. Now he continued to stare at the sky, already almost colourless with heat.

‘Have you all got your lunches?’ enquired Barney.

Everyone had. Monica Paget-Barlow’s was contained in a round bundle, somewhat resembling a pantomime Christmas Pudding.

‘I could put some of the packets in my rucksack,’ suggested Peggy, who, though Griselda had sat on the step, still stood on the pavement.

‘Splendid,’ said Lena. ‘Many thanks.’ She extended her packet.

‘I don’t think you should do that,’ said Freddy Fisher to Peggy. ‘Or let me carry the rucksack.’

‘I’m used to walking with a rucksack.’

Florence was restraining Guillaume from offering their joint packet.

‘There’s Geoffrey,’ cried Freddy Fisher.

They watched him approach. He was entirely unencumbered. His dancer’s gait was exhilarating.

‘Hullo Griselda. Hullo everybody. Anyone got any lunch to spare?’

No one spoke.

‘I expect there’ll be things left over when the time comes. Where’s Lotus?’

‘Lotus!’ shouted Lena Drelincourt without moving and at the top of her very clear voice.

There was an expectant pause. But nothing happened.

‘Go and get her,’ said Lena.

Without either intending it, Barney and Kynaston looked at one another for half a second.

‘Shall I go?’ asked Freddy Fisher helpfully.

‘You go,’ said Barney and Kynaston, each to the other; and Freddy Fisher went.

The expectancy became a strain.

‘Where are we going?’ enquired Florence.

‘Epping Forest. Walk to the Dominion, Number Seven bus to Liverpool Street, train to Chingford,’ replied Kynaston. ‘There are Day Tickets.’

‘Tell us about the Forest,’ said Florence.

‘There are parrots.’

‘Anything else?’ enquired Lena.

‘Epstein at work,’ said Barney.

‘I know his work,’ said Peggy.

Suddenly Lotus appeared, followed by Freddy. It was as when the Conductor goes to fetch the Prima Donna. Everyone, moreover, stood up.

Lotus wore a black shirt buttoned to the neck, and a white linen coat and skirt, expensive, fashionable, and likely to remain clean for one day only, or for less. Alone among the women she wore silk stockings, and her shoes had the air of being specially made for her. By daylight, Griselda thought her lovelier than ever. Standing in the doorway with the dark passage behind her, she surveyed the party with her bright green eyes, looking through Barney, and over Peggy, until she saw Kynaston slightly concealed behind Guillaume.

‘Geoffrey,’ she said, ‘let us lead the way together.’

She looked like ‘Harper’s Bazaar’, but she walked like Boadicea. In fact, she could probably outwalk all of them, except Griselda, and (if the walk were far enough off the map) Peggy Potter.

On the Number Seven bus, Lotus sat with Kynaston in an empty front seat; Peggy with Barney; Monica with Guillaume; Griselda with Florence; and Lena by herself, peeling a large pear with a larger clasp knife, which had been dangling from her belt. There was no seat for Freddy, who volunteered to stand inside; where, the others being all outside, he paid all the fares. Monica and Guillaume travelled in silence. At the bus stop Monica had brought her knitting from the discoloured circular reticule in which it travelled, and had resumed work, hardly ceasing even in order to climb the stairs of the vehicle. She was producing a small tightly knitted object, the colour of a brown-green lizard, more brown than green. Guillaume seemed lost in sad thoughts.

‘He suffers a great deal,’ said Florence to Griselda, regarding with apparent fondness the blotchy back of his scalp. Her voice was sweet and quiet.

‘Why?’ asked Griselda.

Lena stopped peeling for a moment and cocked a faun-like ear.

‘He is a disappointed man.’

Lena resumed peeling.

‘Why?’

‘He is disappointed in the world. He is disappointed in himself.’

‘Can nothing be done?’

‘I do what I can. But I sometimes think he’s disappointed in me.’

‘That’s absurd. I mean I’m sure he isn’t.’

‘I am too small a thing really to enter into him.’

‘How long have you been together?’

Lena had finished peeling and begun eating, cutting the soft ripe flesh into precise sectors.

‘Twelve years. Since I was nineteen. He has been my life.’

‘I know how you feel.’

Lena glanced at Griselda sharply. Florence gazed at her for a moment, then said: ‘These picnics! Why do we go on them?’

‘I don’t really know,’ said Griselda. ‘It’s my first.’

‘I wonder how many of us really enjoy them . . . I mean really. You know what I mean by enjoyment?’ She looked solemn, and a little timorous.

‘Yes,’ said Griselda. ‘I know what you mean by enjoyment.’

In the front seat, Lotus, early in the day though it was, laid her beautiful golden-red head gently on Kynaston’s shoulder; who squirmed slightly, then appeared to resign himself. The bus had only reached Holborn Viaduct. Barney and Peggy were talking about tactile values. Lena shut her big shining knife with a loud snap, and reattached the weapon to her person.

On the train they were unable to find a compartment to themselves and they had to pack in with a couple travelling from one side of London to the other, in order to spend the day with a married daughter. Even without Freddy, who was queueing for tickets, it was very congested on such a hot day. Monica’s knitting needles became entangled from time to time in the male stranger’s watch-chain.

‘Yuman personality,’ said the male stranger to the female stranger. ‘It’s sacred. You can’t get past that.’

‘We’re all as we’re made,’ said the female stranger.

‘No system of Government will change yuman personality.’

‘Either way it’s the same.’

‘Yuman personality is sacred.’

‘It bloody well isn’t,’ interjected Barney. ‘You try being a nigger in the deep south.’

‘Kindly refrain from using foul language in the presence of my wife,’ said the male stranger.

‘Behave yourself, Barney,’ said Lotus. ‘Or you can go home.’

‘No offence,’ said the male stranger. ‘Not really.’

‘I am offended,’ said Lotus.

‘I should think so too,’ said the female stranger. ‘Dirty Yid!’

Barney, so easy and self-possessed before Lotus had joined them, flushed slightly, but said nothing. Peggy threw Griselda a glance of unsatisfactory anticipations fulfilled.

Freddy only managed to race up the torrid platform and hurl himself amongst them just as the train started. There seemed nowhere for him to sit but the floor; with which, however, he professed himself quite content.

The embarrassment, discomfort, and tension were little relieved by Lena producing a thin pocket book from one of the breast pockets of her shirt and commencing to make some small drawings.

‘Anti-semitism is so unnecessary, don’t you think?’ said Florence quietly to Griselda, as the train puffed up the incline to Bethnal Green. ‘I know it’s one of the things he feels particularly. Though he doesn’t say so, I know it.’

‘Is he a Jew?’

‘Oh no. He feels with all who suffer. The people everywhere.’

‘Look at that,’ said the male stranger, savagely indicating Bethnal Green. ‘Shocking.’ He glowered accusation at the misjudged Barney.

‘What does Lotus live on?’ asked Griselda in an undertone.

‘She’s an heiress.’

‘Then what’s she doing in Juvenal Court? I’m sure you know what I mean.

‘She likes living with artists. Also she’s in love with Geoffrey and he’s not in love with her. It’s her way of ever seeing him.’

‘Are you sure Geoffrey’s not in love with her?’ It was difficult to believe that any man could resist Lotus’s beauty, passion, imperiousness, and riches. Moreover, she was holding Geoffrey’s hand at that very moment.

‘Quite sure. You can tell because he refuses to let her keep him. That’s a sure sign with Geoffrey. Though he’s weak of course, he refuses to be kept by anyone he’s not in love with.’

‘Have you known Geoffrey for long?’

‘He lived in Juvenal Court for two years; when he was teaching the recorder you know.’

‘Do you like him?’

‘Everyone likes Geoffrey. He’s weak, but sweet.’

‘Like that nauseating tea,’ said Lena quietly.

‘Florence,’ said Guillaume across the compartment. ‘Look at the sunlight on the windows of that gasworks.’

‘Yes, darling. Beautiful.’

‘If only it could be made as sunny and glittering within.’ He seemed more troubled than ever.

‘People like you and me don’t know how the factory workers live,’ observed the male stranger, disentagling Monica’s wool from the lower part of his braces.

‘What the hell’s the good of going somewhere as lovely as Epping Forest,’ soliloquized Lena in her clear voice, ‘without a man to ravish one?’

After that the strangers fell silent until the next station, at which they alighted.

At Chingford, under Kynaston’s direction, they struck up the road to the Royal Forest Hotel, then descended to Connaught Water. Kynaston and Lotus still walked ahead, their easy efficient movements a pleasure to watch. Had she not known them, Griselda might have taken them for gods descended to Essex earth. The rest of them advanced en masse, two of the number knowing the others hardly at all, the rest knowing them perhaps too well. Peggy was conserving her energy, as if a range of mountains would have to be crossed before nightfall. Lena slouched with her hands in her pockets; but her slouch was somehow electric.

‘Do you see how the water catches the reflection of the willows?’ said Guillaume to Florence.

‘Yes, darling. Beautiful.’

Outside the Hotel were motor coach parties drinking. When they set eyes on Lotus, they whistled and catcalled because she was so beautiful: but Lotus strode past, like a Queen on her way to execution, not increasing her pace or diminishing her poise.

‘Anyone know what that is?’ asked Peggy, taking no notice and pointing to Queen Elizabeth’s Hunting Lodge.

‘It’s one of the places where the upper classes get together to kill things,’ said Guillaume.

‘Damn good sport,’ said Freddy Fisher. ‘Done any beagling?’ he enquired of Griselda.

‘No, never,’ replied Griselda.

‘I beagled almost every day for a month last autumn. You can if you’ve got a fast car.’

‘What do you do with the rest of your time?’

‘Learn to paint. Animals and birds, you know. I’ve got to for a living, more’s the pity. Dad’s lost his last halfpenny. Horses, you know.’

‘But you’ve still got a fast car?’

‘Not any more.’

‘Oh dear.’

‘You’re terribly pretty, Griselda. I should have liked to ask you home. Mum would have taken to you no end.’

‘Perhaps I shall meet her sometime,’ said Griselda politely.

‘She’s dead. Drugs. Dad was to blame.’

‘I am sorry. But I don’t know that you should be so sure it was your Father’s fault.’

‘Of course it was Dad’s fault. He had to stop it all coming out at the inquest.’

‘Still it’s often hard to be sure.’

‘Of course I’m sure. It’s spoilt my whole life.’

‘Can we stop for a moment?’ asked Monica. ‘There’s a drawing-pin in my shoe.’

When Connaught Water came in sight, covered with boats, Florence’s sensitive face lighted up. ‘Oh I should like to go out in a boat.’

Guillaume’s brow became rigid with apprehension. ‘Hardly with so many other people, Florence. I am sure the boats must be dirty.’

Florence smiled gently and said ‘It just passed through my mind, darling.’ Married or not, Florence was suffering from that cancer of the will which Griselda had observed so often to accompany matrimony. She and Lena exchanged glances.

At the lake they left the road and entered the trees. Within five minutes the clatter had become inaudible. They passed several times from thicket to clearing, the change in temperature being each time overwhelming, and soon were among the hornbeams.

‘Everyone,’ cried Lotus over her shoulder, ‘must look for a parrot.’

Kynaston caught Griselda’s eye and looked deeply unhappy.

His distress of mind possibly accounted for the fact that within ten minutes from leaving the road, they were lost. Kynaston did not for some time admit this, but urged them on, with unnecessary expressions of confidence, along a rutty but diminishing track; they could make a right angle in any direction, but could not continue in their course.

‘I wonder which of these would be the quicker?’ soliloquized Kynaston. Clearly there should have been a path through the brambles which lay straight ahead.

‘Don’t be silly,’ said Lena. ‘they go in opposite directions. You’d better choose.’

‘I wish we had a map among us.’

‘We rely on you.’

Kynaston looked wildly from left to right and back again while they waited for him to decide.

Guillaume broke the long silence. ‘Both ways look equally beautiful,’ he said helpfully.

‘Does it matter?’ cried Lotus. ‘Do we really have to get anywhere?’

Peggy’s expression changed from aloofness to horror.

‘To travel is better than to arrive,’ said Guillaume.

‘To travel hopefully,’ corrected Lena. ‘What hope have we?’

‘Surely we should enjoy ourselves?’ said Florence. ‘On such a lovely day?’

Monica had begun to knit. Freddy was brooding about his Father’s wickedness. Barney had been filling his heart with tears ever since the train.

‘The thing is, Griselda,’ said Kynaston desperately, ‘that I’m better at organizing picnics than walks.’

‘I remember,’ said Griselda, taking pity on him.

‘Remember what?’ enquired Lotus.

‘I’ve been on a picnic with Geoffrey before. I enjoyed it.’

‘Shall we go back to the lake?’ suggested Florence being constructive.

‘It’s true that you’re never actually lost so long as you can find the way back,’ observed Kynaston, hoping, like many greater men to preserve his leadership by retreat.

‘Surely we shouldn’t admit defeat?’ said Guillaume. He wished to keep Florence from the boats.

‘Besides,’ enquired Lena, ‘can you find the way back?’

‘Naturally, I can find the way back.’ The implication that he would rather they went forward contrasted so much with the attitude of his previous remark that it was obvious to Griselda that he could not find the way back, and had suddenly realized the fact. She wondered what he would do, thus totally trapped.

‘For heaven’s sake, let’s go somewhere,’ cried Peggy. Her outburst made Monica drop a stitch.

‘Shall we toss for it?’ suggested Florence, still patiently seeking to advance the general well-being. It struck Griselda that Florence would make a wonderful mother, though possibly her hips were too small for easy childbirth.

‘Geoffrey!’ said Lotus. ‘Tell us what to do and we’ll do it. You can be so self-confident.’

‘This is the moment,’ said Lena.

Suddenly Kynaston resumed the leaderhsip. ‘Let’s have lunch. It’s just the place.’

Kynaston got very little. Peggy had at first said to Griselda that she had not walked far enough to acquire any appetite at all; but managed none the less to eat most of her share. Lotus, seated on a small mat, ate nothing but a little hothouse fruit (although it was summer) and some walnuts. Guillaume was on a diet which involved him in eating several times the normal amount of the few things he was permitted to eat at all. Barney almost surreptitiously unrapped some unusual but not unappetising comestibles approved by his community. He insinuated himself alongside a tree which Peggy was occupying, somewhat in the background; and, glancing from time to time at Peggy’s bust, began to cheer up.

At the end of the meal, the situation had once more to be faced.

After various desultory and generally unrealistic suggestions from the others, Lotus said ‘Why move from here? Are we not quite comfortable as we are?’ She sank her left hand into Kynaston’s hair as he lay on the ground beside her.

‘Perfectly comfortable,’ said Guillaume, yawning as his diet disagreed with him.

Monica began to knit at a different angle. Perhaps she was turning the heel. But the rapidly increasing product of her labours seemed without any such precise points of reference.

‘There’s the difficulty that we don’t know the way back,’ pointed out Florence.

‘We’ll be all right when the time comes.’ This was Barney.

‘I,’ said Lena, ‘want a walk. Anyone join me?’

‘I’ll join you,’ said Griselda, rising. ‘What about you, Peggy?’

‘It’s too hot.’ To her surprise, Griselda, now that she was on her feet, could see that Peggy’s ankles were tightly clasped in the crook of one of Barney’s arms.

‘Anyone else?’ enquired Griselda. She had not expected to have to walk alone with Lena.

‘I’d love to some other time,’ said Freddy regretfully. By this he meant that he would love to accompany Griselda, but he was frightened of Lena, whom he thought unsexed and a bluestocking.

‘Florence?’

Florence looked lovingly at Guillaume, who was begining to fall asleep. ‘I don’t think so, Griselda.’ There was something charmingly tender about her; something unusual and precious which Griselda felt was going to waste.

‘Come on, Florence. I’d like you to.’

Florence smiled and shook her head. Then she laid a handkerchief over Guillaume’s brow, and settled down to watch over him.

Lena meanwhile was slouching up and down impatiently. Griselda walked across to her through the recumbent group.

‘Which way?’

‘Not again!’

‘This way then.’ Griselda indicated the turn to the left.

‘Thank God you know your own mind.’

They set off along the track. Griselda’s last recollection of the group was the look of agony in Kynaston’s eyes as she vanished from his sight and a lock of Lotus’s splendid red-gold hair touched his cheek.

XXIV

‘Pity Florence wouldn’t come.’

‘She’s better where she is.’

‘Isn’t Guillaume rather selfish?’

‘That’s why Florence loves him.’

They walked some way in silence. It was almost too hot to talk. Also Griselda divined that Lena, although a little alarming, was one of the favoured people with whom silence is possible even on short acquaintance. Soon the track turned into a sunken glade.

‘What are your books called?’

‘Inhumation is the one I like.’

‘I should like to read it.’

‘It’s not based on experience.’

‘I’m sure that doesn’t matter.’

‘It matters to me. Inhumation is based on frustration. I’ve never succeeded with men; although I’ve tried very hard from time to time. I’m too cerebral for the dear dolts. Not clinging and dependent. Florence is what they like. Or you.’

‘I’m not clinging and dependent.’

‘Aren’t you? Sorry. I don’t really know you, of course.’

Again they walked for some time in silence. The glade was full of dragonflies, with their quaint air of impossibility.

‘The only proposal I ever received,’ remarked Griselda after a while, ‘was on the grounds that I was not clinging and dependent. Proposal of marriage, that is to say.’

‘Geoffrey Kynaston is unlike the ordinary male. I should accept him. You’ll be lost otherwise if you’re the type you say you are. I’d take him myself if he’d have me.’

Griselda had wondered why Lena had been so rude to Kynaston.

‘How did you know?’

‘Barney.’

‘Is Barney a good painter?’

‘He’s not a Rubens or George Goss. He can only paint Mothers. He has a fixation.’

‘I knew he painted Mothers.’

‘Udders, you know.’

Griselda nodded.

After another silence, Lena said ‘Is love important to you, Griselda?’

‘Yes, Lena,’ replied Griselda. ‘Love is very important to me.’

‘We’re in a minority.’

‘I suppose so.’

‘I meant what I said in the train. I should like a man now.’

‘It’s the main thing about beautiful places.’

Suddenly they turned a corner and came to a high wrought-iron gate. It was surmounted by a painted though discoloured coat of arms, consisting simply of a mailed fist. It was apparent that the truck had been constructed as a subsidiary drive to a house; and that the glade was an artificial excavation designed to keep the drive on a level.

‘We can’t go back,’ said Lena. ‘We shall rejoin the others, and I’m not ready for that yet.’

‘The gate’s open,’ said Griselda.

Lena pushed it. It ground on its hinges, but opened wide at a touch. They passed through, and Griselda closed the gate behind them.

The drive stretched on among beeches which, though presumably in private ownership, were indistinguishable from the publicly owned beeches in the forest outside.

‘Do you know who lives round here?’ asked Griselda.

‘I’m afraid not. I’m a stranger in these parts.’ Lena’s tone had lost its previous habitual colouring of sarcasm. She had become entirely friendly. Griselda surmised that this might be a privilege, and that Lena might be a good friend to have.

‘I suggest,’ continued Lena, ‘that we find our way out the other side of the Park, cast round in a circle, and rejoin the others from the opposite direction.’

‘Perhaps they will have gone?’

‘Perhaps they will.’

A few minutes later, Griselda said ‘I suppose we may be stopped?’

‘You must use your charm, Griselda. It’s there if you’ll bring it out.’

‘What will you do?’

‘I shall climb a tree.’

‘Are you good at that?’

‘Watch.’

She darted away from tree to tree.

‘We must have a clean tree. I don’t want to dirty my trousers. Wish I hadn’t lent my blue ones to Florence.’ Even though she was quite close, the Forest had begun to echo her clear voice.

Suddenly she was ascending: with unbelievable speed and agility; like a small grey and buff monkey. In a minute or two she was out of sight among the dense green summer foliage.

‘Be careful,’ called Griselda up the tree trunk.

‘I’ll be careful,’ cried Lena from the greenery; and the Forest shouted: ‘Careful, careful, careful.’

‘Look out below.’ Something was descending. It was a shoe. It was followed by another shoe. Then, a few yards away, at the perimeter of the tree, fell a pair of socks and Lena’s shirt and trousers. Griselda looked up and saw Lena brown and naked at the very end of a thick branch. She was sitting on the branch with her legs drawn up; leaning back upon the left arm and hand, which rested on the bark behind her.

‘How brown you are!’

‘The sun was my stepfather.’ Now she was standing on the branch, her hands above her head and clinging to wisps of leafy twig hanging from the branch above. ‘I’m going to the top. Then down again. Wait for me, Griselda. I’ll be very quick.’

Griselda waved up to her and she had disappeared again among the leaves.

After a pause a fairly large whole branch crashed down from high above. It lay on the ground like the handiwork of a hooligan.

‘Lena! Are you all right?’

There was no answer, but before Griselda felt alarm, Lena could be heard descending.

‘Did you get to the top?’

Lena paused about twenty feet from the ground. In the hot streaks of sunshine she looked startlingly in keeping.

‘We’re nearer the house than we thought.’

Griselda laughed. ‘Then you’d better dress quickly!’

‘It’s not that.’ Lena’s manner had changed a second time. Now she seemed almost subdued. ‘There’s something going on. There are tall trees near the house, but at the very top I could see over them. I think someone’s dead.’

‘What did you see?’

‘I’ll dress and we’ll go on. Then you can see for yourself.’

She stood on the ground shaking bits of the tree from her brown body. In a minute and a half she was dressed, and combing her hair.

‘What do you call those things you see in churches?’

‘Cockroaches,’ said Griselda.

‘Wooden things. To do with funerals.’

‘Coffins,’ said Griselda.

‘You’re wise to wear your hair short.’

‘Yours is too beautiful.’

‘I know. That’s why I keep it. It’s my sole physical asset.’

‘Not quite,’ said Griselda smiling.

‘Much good has it done me.’ She was retying the khaki ribbon. ‘Now come and look.’ She slouched ahead, her hands once more in her pockets.

After two or three hundred yards, the track became paved with kidney stones, sunk far into the earth with neglect. After another two or three hundred yards, it gave upon a well-kept lawn, round which it curved to the door of a big late seventeenth-century house, in dark red brick, with large windows at long intervals, and heavy pre-Georgian details. The front door (from which the main drive stretched away in the opposite direction) was concealed by a bulky columned porte-cochиre; high above which, rising on its own against the sky above the front wall of the house, was a massive relief representation in stone of the emblem which Griselda and Lena had noticed on the gate, the simple mailed fist. About the lawn were enormous isolated cedars of Lebanon.

Before they left the shelter of the Forest, Lena caught Griselda by the arm. ‘Look! That’s a thing to see from the top of a tree.’

In the sunshine before the porte-cochиre, a strange figure sat upon the stones of the drive working. It appeared to be a dwarf. It had very long arms (like a cuttlefish, Griselda thought), very long black hair (somewhat like horsehair), and a completely yellow face. Its ears were pointed, with strands of stiff black hair rising from the top of them. It wore black clothes. Very industriously, despite the great heat, the figure was polishing a large black piece of wood.

‘You were right,’ said Griselda, speaking unnecessarily softly; ‘that’s a hatchment.’

‘Would that be the undertaker?’

‘No. Undertakers must have charm.’

‘Dare we go past?’

‘I think so. Unless you’d prefer to go back.’

‘Aren’t we trespassing?’

‘This is the twentieth century.’

‘Should we take advantage of that?’

‘I’ll apologize and ask the quickest way out.’

They advanced from the safety of the trees. Instantly, against the ponderous grandeur of the house, they felt themselves misplaced and insignificant, wrongly dressed and intrusive.

The dwarf went on polishing until they were almost upon him, whereupon, without haste or appearance of surprise, he rose, bowed ceremonially, and extended his long left arm rewards the door of the house.

‘I’m afraid we’ve lost our way,’ said Griselda. ‘Will it be all right if we go on down the drive?’

The dwarf who had completely black eyes, bowed again, and continued to point to the front door.

‘Let’s see for ourselves,’ said Lena after a second’s silence. She tried to pass the dwarf on the other side, with a view to making for the drive.

The dwarf, still with his arm extended, stepped to the right and barred her way. Now by gestures with the right arm he seemed to reinforce the invitation already made with the left. Griselda saw that the big double front door wood wide open.

‘Shall we go back?’ said Lena.

The dwarf took a further step. He now stood facing the door and with the lawn behind him. Both his immense arms were fully extended, so that he looked like a queer tree. The hatchment lay face downward on the stones.

‘What is there inside?’ asked Griselda.

The dwarf bowed once more, this time stretching back his arms and upturning his hands. His hands were unusually large and white; and wiry black hair grew in the palms.

‘Let’s go,’ said Lena.

She looked about to run for it, but the dwarf, his arms still extended, leapt right off the ground like a goalkeeper, and descended in her course.

Griselda, anxious to prevent an unpleasant and undignified dodging contest, which, moreover, she feared the dwarf would, in at least one case, win, said ‘I think we’d better investigate. They may need help.’ Most of the blinds in the house were drawn.

‘If you say so.’

They entered the house, the dwarf one pace behind them.

When they were through the front door, he returned to his polishing in the sun.

The drawn blinds made the hall very dark, despite the strong light outside. At once, however, the two girls saw that a figure stood motionless at the bottom of the stairs which rose before them. It was an elderly woman, very tall, very upright, very grey, and wearing a grey dress reaching to the ground.

‘So you’ve come. This way.’

She began to lead the way upstairs, then stopped.

‘Only one of you.’ She peered at them. ‘You.’ She indicated Griselda. ‘You,’ she said to Lena, ‘can go – or wait. Just as you choose. It won’t take more than five or ten minutes now.’

‘There’s some mistake,’ said Griselda. ‘We—’

‘Hardly,’ interrupted the woman, smiling a slight, hard, weary smile through the gloom. ‘But you won’t have to stay long. Your friend can wait if she chooses. Come upstairs, please.’

‘Why me?’

‘I’m not sure your friend would serve. Please sit down,’ she said to Lena. ‘And wait.’

‘Why won’t I serve?’ enquired Lena.

‘There is a condition which must be complied with. You’ll be perfectly safe,’ she added somewhat contemptuously, ‘Both of you. Now,’ she said to Griselda, ‘follow me.’

Griselda followed her up the wide staircase and into a gallery on the first floor, which seemed to run the length of the house and was filled with tapestries, there being apparently no other furniture of any kind except a carpet, though it was difficult to be sure in the dim light. Beyond the gallery were several large dark rooms filled with dust-sheets. Then there was a high double door.

The woman opened one of the doors very softly, disclosing artificial light within; and with an authoritative gesture from the wrist, indicated that Griselda should pass by and enter. The light in the room within enabled Griselda for the first time clearly to see her face. She looked imperious but sad; like one leading a dedicated life.

The room Griselda now entered was hung with black, which kept out all daylight. It was illumined by several hundred candles assembled on a frame such as Griselda had seen set before images in Catholic cathedrals; but larger, and formed of fantastically twisting golden limbs. The light fell upon a single enormous picture standing out against the black hangings: in an elaborate rococo frame, it depicted an Emperor or conqueror at his hour of triumph, borne by a white horse up a hill into a city, apotheosed alike by the paeans of his followers weighed down with loot, and by the plaints of the mangled, dying, and dispossessed. Opposite the picture was an immense four-poster bed, hung like a catafalque with black velvet curtains which descended from a golden mailed fist mounted in the centre of the canopy high up under the extravagantly painted ceiling. The carpet was of deep black silk. In the air was faint music.

The writhing candelabrum stood near one of the posts at the foot of the bed. While leaving all but the bed and the picture shadowy, it lighted up the room’s occupant. Griselda at once recognized him. That look of a censorious Buddha, those clear yellow eyes, were, indeed, not to be forgotten. The man in the bed was Sir Travis Raunds. He looked older than ever, and horribly ill, but he was turning the pages of a black folio volume containing coats of arms exquisitely illuminated on vellum.

As Griselda entered, the sick man looked up from his escutcheons.

‘Ah, my dear,’ he said in a high musical voice, ‘in a world as near its end almost as I am, you at least do not fall short. You are as lovely as any of the dear women who performed your office for my ancestors. Kneel: there, where there is light.’ He pointed to a patch of carpet, and Griselda knelt before his bed in the candlelight. Though the black curtains kept out the sun, the candles made the room very hot.

‘Thank you. Now give me your hand.’ He made a slight, weak gesture. ‘You are perfectly safe. It will only be for a minute. Though time was—’ But his remarks were tiring him, and he broke off with a Buddha-like smile.

Griselda extended her left hand. He took it in long thin white fingers, like those of a high-born skeleton, and lightly drew her towards him. She found that a stool stood beside the bed and seated herself upon it.

‘How are you, Sir Travis?’ she asked gently.

‘Listen, my dear. Listen to your answer.’

Griselda listened. The music was as of a very large orchestra very far off: too far off for any particular melody or instruments to be recognized.

‘What is it?’

The dying man seemed to hear more than she did. ‘“’Tis the god Hercules, whom Antony loved, now leaves him.”’ He was listening intently.

‘Sir Travis,’ said Griselda, ‘tell me about life.’

‘Lord Beaconsfield told me that men are governed either by tradition or by force. I have since found it to be true.’

‘But,’ said Griselda, a little disappointed, ‘that’s a rule for governing other people. What about yourself?’ She noticed that the distant music was ebbing.

‘You do not need to govern yourself, my dear, if you succeed in governing other people.’

Suddenly Griselda thought of something: something that it was past belief she had not thought of before.

‘Sir Travis,’ she said, eagerly; too eagerly for a sick-room.

He did not answer.

‘Sir Travis!’ She almost shook his hand and arm.

But Sir Travis’s mind was elsewhere. ‘Tell Venetia,’ he said smiling wickedly, ‘that I’m leaving her for ever.’ And his high musical voice died away.

‘Sir Travis!’

‘One more thing only,’ said a voice from the shadows. ‘And then you will be free to go.’

A young man in a dark suit stood before Griselda on the other side of the huge bed. He was small and looked French. He seemed to hold some small object clasped in each of his hands.

‘I thought we were alone.’ Griselda looked over her shoulder. There was no sign of the tall woman, but the door through which she had entered, had disappeared behind the black hangings.

The young man smiled slightly; then stretching out his hands across the bed, opened the palms. In each lay a large gold piece, which glittered in the candlelight.

‘You know what to do?’ His alien mien was confirmed by a slight accent.

‘Is he dead? How do you know?’

‘I know.’

Looking at the man in the bed, Griselda knew too.

‘Poor Sir Travis!’

‘Of course. It is very sad.’

Griselda lifted the hand which had just held hers and laid it on the bed. She had never before touched a corpse. She almost expected the hand to be cold: it was much more shocking that it proved as warm as in life.

‘You know what to do?’ The young man still held out the gold pieces.

‘I think so,’ said Griselda. ‘But why me?’

‘It is all that remains. Then you can go.’

Griselda took the pieces from his hand.

‘They’re five-pound pieces! And quite new!’

‘Sir Travis made a special arrangement with the Mint.’

‘For this?’ Griselda’s voice sank in awe.

‘For what else? Gold coins are no longer taken in shops. Only pieces of paper.’

‘They’re beautiful.’

But the young man indicated the slightest touch of impatience.

Very carefully and tenderly, Griselda laid the gold pieces on the dead man’s eyelids.

‘Thank you, mademoiselle,’ said the young man, indicating the slightest touch of relief. ‘Now if you will follow me.’

Coming round the bed, he drew a section of the black hangings, and Griselda followed him back to the dim hall.

At the top of the stairs, the tall woman awaited them in the shadows.

‘Is all in order, Vaisseau?’

‘But naturally.’ His tone was as proud as hers.

‘And she can go?’

‘Immediately.’

Lena stood below. ‘Is everything all right, Griselda?’

Griselda squeezed her hand. ‘There’s nothing to keep us, Lena. Let us go.’

The tall woman and the young man silently, and almost invisibly, watched them go back into the hot sun.

Outside was a strange disturbance. The hatchment had gone and the dwarf, it seemed, with it; but looking round for the origin of an unaccountable noise which filled the summer air, the two women saw him crouched on the paving stones in a corner behind the porch. He was not weeping, since there were no tears; he was crying like an animal, but like no known animal, for, as they now perceived, he had hitherto been dumb.

They looked up from the distressing sight and saw that high above them, beneath the immense mailed fist, hung the hatchment, polished and varnished and renewed, until in the afternoon sunshine it shone the very pennant of death triumphant.

XXV

Griselda was unable to imagine why she had never thought to look up Hugo Raunds’s address in ‘Who’s Who’, or even in the Telephone Directory, and write to him for possible news of Louise’s whereabouts.

Distracted by the omission, and full of resolve to repair it as soon, as possible, she imparted to Lena, who seemed pleasingly without over-pressing curiosity, a somewhat slender account of her recent experiences.

‘But is it a madhouse?’

‘I think it’s just a very old family.’

They were walking down the drive towards the main entrance to the park. As the big elaborately wrought gates came into view, it appeared also that a small crowd was assembled outside. The first idea that they were faithful tenants come to enquire about the course of their protector’s illness, or to mourn his passing, was dispelled by the way they stood packed together in the heat, by the fact that the lodge-keeper seemed to be remonstrating with them from behind the bars, and, most of all, by the noise they were making. In the end, Griselda saw that some of them carried placards, hideously lettered with slogans: ‘Aid To Abyssinia, Guatemala, Democratic Spain, And Chiang-Kai-Shek’; ‘Workers! The Intelligentsia Stands Behind You’; and, most immediate in its application, ‘Sir Travis Raunds Must Go’. The inclusion of the title struck Griselda as a courteous detail, inconsistent with much else; but perhaps it served to spur David by making Goliath look fiercer.

‘I wonder you ’aven’t all something better to do on a nice day like this,’ the lodge-keeper was saying. Clearly he had allowed himself to be drawn into unwise disputation. He was a mild elderly man with lank hair and an habitual air of having recently been rescued from drowning.

His remark was greeted with catcalls.

‘Why don’t you join us in fighting the enemy of your class?’ enquired a tall prematurely bald young man with spectacles. He carried a battered puppet dangling from a crude gallows, which he had looted, during a university rag, from a Punch and Judy stand. Two or three of his fellow demonstrators began to chant the Internationale.