Celia went on holding the receiver in her hand. After a moment the girl on the exchange said, “Number, please.” Celia put back the receiver. What on earth was Niall talking about? It must be a practical joke. Of course Freada had been at the party. That tall, nice, mad-looking woman who used to be a friend of Pappy’s and Mama’s. But why play practical jokes at half-past eight in the morning? Pappy was fast asleep. Celia could safely leave him now. She was so tired and stiff and cold that she could hardly stand. She could hear Edith downstairs drawing the curtains. She went down to warn her not to call Maria. Then she came upstairs again, to her own room, to dress. Her face looked pinched and yellow in the mirror, and her white evening frock was all crumpled from sitting on the floor. How terrible people looked in the morning, when they still wore evening dress. What could Niall have meant about going to Paris? She was too tired to guess, too tired to care. How nice to spend the day in bed, but with Truda away it would be impossible. Pappy would want her, Maria would want her. Somebody would want her. And anyway… the medical student had said he would telephone. She had her bath, and her breakfast, and when she was dressed she went along the passage once more to Pappy’s room.
He was awake. He was sitting up in bed in his dressing gown, eating a boiled egg. He looked fit, and well, and as if he had been sleeping for twelve hours, instead of five.
“Hullo, my darling,” he said, “I’ve had a series of most amazing dreams. All about some fellow in a hospital, trying to cut my gizzard with a carving knife.”
Celia sat on the edge of the bed.
“I must have drunk too much champagne,” said Pappy.
The telephone rang. “Deal with it, my darling,” he said, and he went on spooning his boiled egg, and dipping his toast in the yoke.
“It’s that Freada person,” said Celia, handing him the receiver. “She rang up once before, when you were asleep. She wants to talk to you.” And for some reason that she could not explain to herself, she slipped off the bed and went towards the door, and opened it, and stood outside in the passage. She felt uneasy, worried. She left Pappy to his conversation, and went to see if Maria was awake. Maria was sitting up in bed surrounded by newspapers.
“At last,” said Maria. “I thought you were never coming. They’re all good. The Daily Mail is damn good. A long bit all to myself. And another special bit in the Telegraph. There’s only one sniffy one, and that’s for the play, so it doesn’t matter. Look, you must read them. Come and sit down. What does Pappy say? Has Pappy seen them? Is Pappy pleased?”
“Pappy’s only just awake,” said Celia. “He’s on the telephone.”
“Who’s he talking to? Someone about the play?”
“No, it’s that woman Freada. You know, she used to be in Paris. Niall seems to be with her. I don’t understand.”
“How can Niall be with her? What do you mean? Niall must have left ages ago. His train went at nine o’clock.”
“No,” said Celia, “no, he’s still in London.” She heard Pappy’s voice roaring for her down the passage.
“I must go,” she said. “Pappy’s calling me.” Her heart was beating as she ran down the passage. He was still talking on the telephone.
“God damn it,” Pappy was shouting. “He’s only eighteen, I won’t have the boy seduced, I tell you. It’s the most monstrous thing I’ve ever heard in my life. Yes, of course he’s clever, of course he’s brilliant. I’ve been telling all these damnfool schoolmasters that for years. Nobody listens to me. But because the boy is brilliant it doesn’t mean I’m going to deliver him up to you to be seduced… Paris? No, my God, no. A boy of eighteen. What do you mean, he’s starved? I’ve never starved him. He eats what he likes. My God, to think that you, one of our oldest friends, should stab me in the back like this. It’s nothing more or less than rape, seduction, and stabbing in the back…”
He went on and on, foaming at the mouth with rage, while Celia waited just inside the door. At last he slammed down the receiver.
“What did I tell you?” he said. “It’s his father’s blood coming out in him after all. His father’s rotten French blood. A boy of eighteen, goes off and sleeps with one of my oldest friends.”
Celia watched him anxiously. She did not know what to do or what to say.
“I’ll have the woman hounded out of England,” he said. “I won’t allow it. I’ll have her hounded out of England.”
“Niall said she was going to Paris,” said Celia, “and that he was going with her.”
“It’s his bad blood coming out in him,” said Pappy. “I knew it would happen, I always foresaw it. Freada, of all people. Let this be a lesson to you, my darling. Never trust a man or a woman with brown eyes. They always let you down. It’s monstrous, it’s unforgivable. The Garrick Club shall know of this. I shall tell everyone. I shall tell the world…”
Maria came in the doorway, yawning, her arms above her head. “What on earth’s the fuss about? What’s the matter?” she said.
“What’s the matter?” shouted Pappy. “Niall’s the matter. My adopted son. Seduced by one of my oldest friends. God! that I should live to see this day. And you”—he pointed an accusing finger at Maria—“when did you come in last night? When did you get home?”
“Before you did,” said Maria. “I was in bed and asleep by half-past twelve.”
“Who brought you back?”
“Someone from the theater.”
“Did he kiss you?”
“I really don’t see, Pappy…”
“Ha! you don’t see. My daughter, brought back at all hours of the night, dumped in the house like a sack of coals, kissed and cheapened, and my adopted son seduced. A fine night, I must say. And there was another fellow too, hanging about on the doorstep, pretending he was from St. Thomas’s Hospital. A fine night for the Delaney family. Have you anything to say?”
No one had anything to say. Everything had been already said…
“Here are the papers,” said Maria. “Don’t you want to read what they say about the play?”
He reached out a hand for the papers, and took them from her without a word. He disappeared with them into the bathroom and slammed the door. Maria shrugged her shoulders.
“Really, if he goes on behaving like this I shall have to live somewhere on my own,” she said. “It’s too absurd… You look awfully tired. What’s the matter with you?”
“I didn’t get much sleep,” Celia said.
“What’s the telephone number?” said Maria. “I shall have to ring up and find out what it’s all about.”
“Whose number?”
“Freada’s, of course. I have to speak to Niall.”
She went downstairs and shut herself in the morning-room, where there was another telephone. She was there a long time. When she came out she looked white and defiant.
“It’s true,” she said. “He’s not going back to school. He’s finished with school. He’s going to live in Paris, with Freada.”
“But—will she look after him?” said Celia. “Will he be all right?”
“Of course he’ll be all right; don’t be so stupid,” said Maria. “And he’ll have his music. That’s the only thing he cares about, his music.”
For one brief moment Celia thought that Maria was going to cry. Maria, who despised all crying, who never shed a tear. She looked lost and frightened and utterly forlorn. Then the telephone rang again. Celia went back into the morning-room to answer it. When she came back, Maria was still standing at the bottom of the stairs. “It’s for you,” said Celia. “It’s—you know.”
“Was it the secretary or was he speaking for himself?”
“He was speaking himself.”
Maria went into the morning-room again and shut the door. Celia walked slowly upstairs. Her head was aching, but she did not want to go to bed. If she went to bed she might miss the telephone call from the medical student. As she turned down the passage, Pappy came out of his bathroom, with the papers in his hand.
“These are really very good, you know,” he said, “very good indeed. All except that little nincompoop in the Daily. I wonder who he is. I’ll ring up the Editor. I’ll get him sacked. Listen to this one in the Mail. It’s headed, ‘Another Delaney triumph. The second generation gets away with it.’ ” He began reading the article aloud, smiling all over his face. He had forgotten about Niall.
Celia went back to her room and sat and waited. The telephone went on ringing all the morning. But it was never for her. It was always people ringing up to congratulate Maria. When Freada rang at half-past twelve Pappy was still abusive, but not quite so abusive as he had been at half-past ten. He would never forgive her, of course, but it was perfectly true that the boy was wasting his time at school, and if he really had this flair for composing tunes, as Freada insisted, then he had better go to Paris and learn how to write them down. But a boy of eighteen… “He may have been a boy last night,” said Freada, “but I assure you he’s a man this morning.”
Monstrous. Disgraceful. But what a story for the Garrick. He went off to lunch at his club in a happy state of indignation. And while Niall sat on the floor of Freada’s drawing room in Foley Street eating scrambled eggs with a bent fork, and Maria sat at a corner table at the Savoy overlooking the Embankment and eating oysters à la Baltimore, Celia sat alone in the dining room at St. John’s Wood eating prunes and custard and waiting for the telephone to ring. It never did. The medical student had not recognized Pappy after all. And he had forgotten to ask her name.
13
How happy were we, when we were young? Perhaps it was all illusion. Perhaps, looking back now, with the forties close upon all three of us, the hours passed then much as they do today, but they took a little longer in the passing. Waking in the morning was an easier thing, we are agreed upon that. Because sleep was heavy. Not the fitful affair it has become. Fifteen years ago we could go to bed, any one of us, at three, at four in the morning, no matter what we had done, and fall like tired puppies onto pillows. Sleep came at once, the deep, forgetful sleep of death. We had our individual ways of lying in our beds. Maria, half-turned, her face upon her hand; the other arm above her head, and her right knee bent upwards. Celia upon her back, arms to her side, like a sentry; but with a fold of eiderdown, for comfort, under her chin. Niall slept always like an unborn child. He lay upon his left side, his hands, crossed on his chest, touching his shoulders. His back arched, his knees drawn to his middle.
They say that when we sleep our sub-conscious selves are revealed, our hidden thoughts and desires are written plain upon our features and our bodies like the tracings of rivers on a map; and no one reads them but the darkness.
These same attitudes are ours today, but we toss and turn more often, hours pass sometimes before we slip away; and when we wake the birds wake with us, sharply, in a slowly creeping dawn. And traffic, in a city street, has a hungry roar, even at seven in the morning, even at half-past six. Once it would be ten, even eleven in the morning, before we shook ourselves, and yawned, and stretched, and the good day opened itself before us like the blank pages of a diary, white and inviting, hungry to be filled.
For Maria, it would be London in the spring…
When the first days of April come, something steals into the air and touches you upon the cheek, and the touch travels downwards to your body, and your body comes alive. The windows are flung open. The sparrows in St. John’s Wood chatter, but the little sooty tree on the pavement opposite has a blackbird on its naked branch. Further down the road there is a house that has almond blossom in the garden. The buds are fat and luscious, ready to burst.
The bathwater runs fresh and freely on such a day, it pours from the taps with a great splash of sound, and as it runs you sing above it, you sing so truly that your voice rises above the flow of water. It’s funny, Maria would think, soaping herself with a loofah, that in the evening, if you have a bath, your tummy is round and rather full, but in the morning it is flat as a board, and hard.
It’s nice to be flat. It’s nice to be hard. It’s nice to be a person with a figure like this, and not one of those people with great fat behinds that jiggle as they walk, and full of bosoms that have to be braced up with something to keep them as they should be. It’s good to have a skin that only needs vanishing cream and powder, and hair that stays put, with just a comb run through it twice a day. Her new frock was green, and a gold-clasped belt went with it. There was a gold clip too, that he had given her. This she did not put on the front of her dress until she left the house because Pappy might see it, and ask who had given it to her. Truda had seen it once, lying on the dressing table.
“You never bought this, with what your management pays you,” she said. “Mind you, I’m not asking questions. I’m merely stating a fact.”
“It’s a bonus,” said Maria. “It’s what they give you when you’ve been a clever girl.”
“H’m,” said Truda. “You’ll have plenty of bonuses by the time you retire from the stage, if you go on through life as you’ve begun.”
Ah, Truda was a crotchety old idiot, you never could please Truda. She even grumbled on an April day, saying the spring was bad for her ulcered leg. The spring was not bad for her leg. It was bad for Truda’s soul, because Truda was old…
Should she wear a hat? No, she would not wear a hat. Even when she did wear a hat, he told her to take it off.
What lie now, for today? Yesterday had been a matinée, no need to lie. But one had to think out something for a Thursday. Thursdays were difficult. There was always shopping, but one could not shop all day. A cinema. A cinema with another girl. But then supposing one said a cinema which one had not seen, and Pappy saw it, and asked one all about it? That was the worst of living at home. The postmortems on the day. And what were you doing at half-past three if lunch was over by two-thirty, and the cinema did not start until five? A flat of one’s own, that would be the luxury. But it cost too much money—yet.
“Well, my Lord, you look like the answer to somebody’s prayer,” said Pappy, as she went in to say good morning. “No hope of your taking your father out to lunch for a change?”
Here it came. “Sorry, Pappy, I’ve got such a full day. Shopping all the morning, and then lunch with Judy—I promised her weeks ago, and we may do a cinema afterwards, I don’t know, it depends on what Judy wants to do, I shan’t be home much before half-past six.”
“Precious little I see of you, my darling,” said Pappy. “Here we are living in the same house, and you sleep in it, but that’s about all. Sometimes I wonder if you do sleep in it.”
“Oh, don’t be silly.”
“All right. All right. Go off and enjoy yourself.”
And Maria left the room singing, to show she had a clear conscience, and she ran downstairs before he could ask her any more questions. She tried to sneak out of the house before Celia came from the morning-room. Celia had a pen in her mouth, and her preoccupied face. She was busy with Pappy’s letters.
“You do look nice,” she said. “I love that green. Was it frightfully expensive?”
“Hellish. But I haven’t paid yet. I shan’t pay until they write that letter saying, ‘Madam, we wish to draw your attention…’ ”
“I suppose there’s no hope of your lunching with Pappy in London?”
“None at all. Why?”
“Oh, nothing. It’s only that he doesn’t seem keen to go to the Garrick today, he’s at a loose end. Such a lovely day.”
“You can go with him.”
“Yes… I did so awfully want to get on with that drawing. You know, the one I showed you, the lost child standing outside the gate.”
“It will be better if you leave it for a day or two. It’s a mistake to finish a drawing in one go.”
“I don’t know. Once I start a thing I like to go on with it. I like to go right ahead until it’s finished.”
“Well—I can’t go with him today. My day is all booked.” Celia looked at her. She knew about it. She did not ask
any questions.
“Yes, I see,” she said. “Well—have a good time.”
She went back into the morning-room, with the preoccupied face. Maria was opening the front door when Truda came up from the basement.
“Are you in to lunch?”
“No, I’m not.”
“H’m. In to dinner?”
“Yes, I’ll be in to dinner.”
“Well, be punctual then. We have it at a quarter to seven especially for you, because of the theater, so you might have the kindness to be on time. Your Pappy is always on time.”
“All right, Truda. Don’t nag.”
“That’s a new dress you’re wearing. Pretty.”
“Glad you like something of mine, anyway. Good-bye.”
She ran down the steps, and along the road, and the warm air blew in her face, and the errand-boy on the bicycle whistled and grinned. She made a face at him, and then looked back, over her shoulder, and it was heaven to be out of the house, and away from the family, away from everything, and walking to Regent’s Park full of crocuses, yellow, and white, and mauve; with his car waiting for her, and him sitting at the wheel, the car parked in the usual place between St. Dunstan’s and the Zoo. The hood would be thrown back today, because of the weather. The hood would be thrown back, and there would be lots of rugs in the back, and the picnic things, and as they drove down to the country they would sing, both of them, at the top of their voices. There was no such fun in the world as doing something you knew you should not do, with somebody else who should not be doing it either, on a spring morning with the wind blowing in your hair. And it made it all the more exciting because he was someone older than herself, someone like Pappy, whom people stared at in the street. Instead of driving her to the country he ought to be at a meeting, or at a luncheon, or giving away prizes to a lot of students; and he was doing none of these things, he was sitting beside her in the car. It was this knowledge above all that made her happy inside, and made her sing. It was like the old game of Indians that she used to play with Niall and Celia, when she, as Indian Chief, wore a scalp at her belt. She was playing Indians still… He would talk to her about the theater, and about his plans.