She looked at the people around her, knowing that it was with a cocky aggressive sideways cast of her eye, as if expecting them to hiss back at her, “Don’t stare!” But look at them, all these tourists, just as she herself had been till a week or so ago, with their good clothes, and their solid flesh, and their grooming, their carefully arranged faces and their hair—good Lord, look at the heads around her, there were parts of the world where a family could be kept alive for fifty pence a week. Some heads here would keep a dozen families alive for months. This was a ridiculous way of thinking, because it was no more than what people had been thinking for the last two hundred years. The French Revolution. Two thousand years. Christianity. Probably thousands of years longer than that, if one only knew it. For many thousands of years people had looked at expensive heads of hair and thought of how much food and warmth they represented, so obviously it was a thought of no use at all, so why bother to have it? But thoughts of this sort did go ticking on, useless or not. The old woman next to her was a fat old thing with dead-white hair carefully puffed and curled to hide a shining pink scalp. Her carcass with its diamonds and its furs would feed hundreds of families for years and years. As people had probably never stopped thinking. But what a remarkable thing it was, this room full of people, animals rather, all looking in one direction, at other dressed-up animals lifted up to perform on a stage, animals covered with cloth and bits of fur, ornamented with stones, their faces and claws painted with colour. Everyone had just finished eating animal of some kind; and the furs that were everywhere, despite the warm evening, were from animals that had lived and played and fornicated in forests and fields, and everyone’s footcovering was of animal skin, and their hair—no, one had to come back to this again, it was impossible not to—their hair was the worst: mats and caps and manes and wigs of hair, crimped and curled and flattered and lengthened and shortened and manipulated, hair dyed all colours, and scented and greased and lacquered. It was a room full of animals, dogs and cats and wolves and foxes that had got on their hind legs and put ribbons on themselves and brushed their fur. This was a thought even more useless if possible. There had been a caricaturist, hadn’t there, who drew people as animals, so what was the point of thinking like this, he hadn’t achieved anything by it, for it all went on and on.
Natalia Petrovna was saying with measured flirtatiousness: Well, if the word “morbid” doesn’t appeal to you, then I’ll say that we’re both old, old as the hills.
Oh for God’s sake, thought Kate—but alas, had said it, too, for a woman several seats down leaned forward to give her a contemptuous stare. The woman looked like a cat, an old pussycat that has gone fat and lazy; but enough now, stop it, she should keep her attention well away from the stage since she couldn’t behave properly—really, why was it that no one but she could see, couldn’t anyone see that what they were all watching was the behaviour of maniacs? A parody of something. Really, they all ought to be falling about, roaring with laughter, instead of feeling intelligent sympathy at these ridiculous absurd meaningless problems.
Unhappy woman, for the first time in your life you are truly in love!
And soon off went the audience, jostling and pushing and heaving to get their glass of something or other, and Kate went to the cloakroom, where she was not surprised to see that a monkey looked back at her from the mirror. The attendant was a fat old pig, and women coming in for a wash or a pee were cats and dogs. One was a pretty little fox, all sharp nose and bright observant eyes. Returning to the audience, now getting themselves uncomfortably back into their seats, Kate saw that they had all become what a few minutes before she had fancied they might be: she was in a room full of animals, each one dressed more ridiculously than the next. Was this how that old artist had always seen humanity? It had been no fancy of his, but he had lived always in the state she was in now? He had been served in shops by pigs and monkeys, had loved women with the faces of cats and little bitches, had evaded wolves, looked into mirrors hoping that one day a human face would at last appear there, dissolving the animal mask that always confronted him, no matter when and how he crept to the glass, trying to take himself by surprise, hoping that the light of an early morning, or a break in his sleep, or a sudden turn away from his easel or sketchbook would let him see the face of man with the eyes of a man looking back into his?
And he thought that perhaps one day when this happened the animal masks would dissolve away from all the people around him and then—well, what?
Then the Lion would lie down with the Lamb no doubt, and all these ridiculous thoughts could stop running around in people’s heads, the old “progressive,” “liberal,” “intelligent”—or socialist or what-you-will—thoughts, because they were useless, they did not change anything, that lot on the stage there had been swept off the boards by a revolution, and what of it, there they were still at it, and nothing had changed, and the same thoughts went revolving and revolving in their grooves in people’s heads, and quite soon they would sound loudly for what they were, like a lot of old scratched gramophone records, because people would find what was grinding around and around in their heads intolerable because of its repetitive meaninglessness. They would put an end to it. They would have no choice.
Natalia Petrovna, in an exquisite green gown—the third that evening—was on the point of tears. Tears came into Kate’s eyes in sympathy.
To do this so well, to portray ridiculous shameful behaviour that everyone should be hissing at and condemning, men and women of the highest intelligence and talent spent years of aspiration, hard work, devotion, study, humiliation, living on hope or tuppence-halfpenny in the provincial rep. They sweated and suffered for this, the moment of high art, when Natalia Petrovna sweeps languid skirts across dirty boards and says to a girl who fancies the same young man: When you think that our secret—entirely my fault, I know—that our secret is already known in this house by two men—instead of mortifying each other, shouldn’t we be trying to rescue ourselves from an impossible situation? Have you forgotten who I am, my position in this house?
Ah yes, that was the kind of talk people should make pilgrimages to hear.
Well, what she was thinking was going to have to be wiped from her mind; because who was she to find a great con what everyone else found marvellous, and anyway, she had always found it wonderful in the past, so presumably she would again, once normality had set in, and habit, and she was back in her family, sweeping her skirts all about the place and unfurling her exquisite lace parasol with a flick of her white wrists.
One last effort and I shall be free. Freedom and peace, how I have longed for you both, and very soon everyone stood up to applaud and applaud, in the way we use in our theatre, as if the need of the actors to be approved, the need of the watchers to approve, feeds an action—palms striking repeatedly together in a fusillade of noise—which is a comment quite separate and apart from anything that has happened on the stage, nothing to do with whether the events shown are ugly, beautiful, admirable or whatnot, but is more of a ritual confirmation of self-approval on the part of the audience and the actors for going to the theatre and for acting in it. A fantastic ritual. A fantastic business altogether.
Kate applauded with the rest, and shouted out Bravo! as some enthusiasts were doing from the back stalls and the gallery, grimaced back at the catlike woman who was frowning horribly at her—presumably because she was now making noises of approval whereas before she had been critical?—and was swept to the pavement by people who had lost their animal masks and were men and women again.
She waited obdurately for a taxi, observing that more than one chose not to stop for her, the crazy creature on the pavement’s edge. Finally a taxi did stop, and the driver said, “But that’s only a couple of hundred yards away!” and she said, “Yes, I know it is. But I’ve been ill.” So she was driven to the hotel, and went through the foyer like a criminal, hoping that no one would notice her. But of course they did, heads kept turning after her. She got to her
room, took up her hand mirror—she certainly could not have found the energy to sit upright a moment longer—and fell into bed and looked at her face.
Since that morning, the dry brassy crinkly mass of hair had got worse, and her face was an old woman’s. Natalia Petrovna would not have put up with that face for a moment. She could be imagined sitting in front of a glass in a delicious white morning gown, smoothing cold cream made with cucumbers—the Russians were very strong on cucumbers—into the bruised flesh under sharp, defensive red-rimmed eyes, and saying: I’m standing on the edge of a precipice, save me! Or, while she got her maid to undo the hundred little covered buttons down her back: Can anyone ever have been so unhappy?
Long ago, a young girl lay on her back in a bed, with a hand mirror held close to her face, and she was thinking: That is what he is going to see.
What he very shortly did see was a face that could only be described as “elfin” or “piquant,” despite eyes of a depth of brown that could not be anything else but a spaniel’s.
For years Kate, who spent the requisite amount of time in front of many different mirrors, had been able to see exactly what he was seeing, when his face was close above hers. Oh it was all so wearying, so humiliating … had she really spent so many years of her life—it would almost certainly add up to years!—in front of a looking glass? Just like all women. Years spent asleep, or tranced. Did a woman choose him, or allow herself to be chosen by him, because he admired that face she had so much attended to, and touched, and turned this way and that—she wouldn’t be surprised, she wouldn’t be surprised at all! For the whole of her life, or since she was sixteen—yes, the girl making love to her own face had been that age—she had looked into mirrors and seen what other people would judge her by. And now the image had rolled itself up and thrown itself into a corner, leaving behind the face of a sick monkey.
Those actors were absolutely right. They didn’t allow themselves to be shut inside one set of features, one arrangement of hair, one manner of walking or talking, no, they changed about, were never the same. But she, Kate Brown, Michael’s wife, had allowed herself to be a roundly slim redhead with sympathetic brown eyes for thirty years.
Kate was now grimacing into the hand glass, trying on different expressions, like an actress—there were hundreds she had never thought of using! She had been limiting herself to a frightfully small range, most of them, of course, creditable to her, and pleasing, or non-abrasive to others; but what of what was going on inside her now, when she was ill (her skin was burning again, a shell of heat over the cold lake of sickness), when she was seething and rebelling like an army of ants on a carcass? But she still had a few weeks, she had a long span of freedom ahead … how long? She rummaged for Michael’s letters, which had sent packing all emotions but one: the longing for him, for the comfort of being with him, the family, for her home. Now she saw that he had said he would not be back until the end of October, possibly even the middle of November—if she didn’t mind? He would not accept the invitation to extend his visit if she would rather he did not. He gathered from her letter that she was finding her summer interesting too—well, good luck, he was delighted, it was about time she had a break. He would see her in the autumn if he did not hear from her at once. But of course he had not heard, because Kate had not taken in this part of his letter: now, to make sure, she sent a telegram to say that he must please himself.
As soon as it was light she bathed, put on a dress that swung around her, brushed her hair this way and that, and, failing to control it, tied it into a scarf, ordered, but could not eat, a lavish cosmopolitan breakfast, and left the hotel without knowing where she was going.
The hotel bill had left her funds pretty low. Low, that is, for Kate Brown of the world of conferences, but high for an ordinary woman who had some weeks on the loose waiting for her family to come back to her.
Maureen’s Flat
She got onto a bus and sat on it until she saw a gleam of water—a canal—and the word, scarlet on dead-white paint that shone in the heavy September sunlight, Ristorante. The rest of the street was all London, basic London, and she got off, and saw a noticeboard by a cigarette shop. As she approached it, she saw that the proprietor of the shop, a small old man wearing overalls, and a young man, were together putting up a new card on the board. The old man held up his thumb in that gesture which in some countries means: Good, that’s fine, that’s spot on, but on its blade was a thumb tack, and this he applied hard to the centre top of the white square. The young man had long Jesushair and his feet were bare. His face was sweet, childish, and open; and when the old man had gone back into the shop, he stood looking at the hundred or so bits of white card, among which his was now lost.
It said: Room in private flat to let until end of October five pounds a week share kitchen and bath.
Kate said to the young man, “Where is this room?”
“Around the corner.”
“Is it yours?”
At this he grinned, politely, but with a small what-else-can-you-expect nod, which grin was making a statement she was meant to notice, for he followed it with, “Mine?”
It having thus been made clear that like all her generation she thought in terms of private property, while he, being of his age, was free, his grin became natural, and he followed it with, “Among others.”
“If I took the room,” said Kate, using the humorous adaptable tone that came easily after years of use with “the children,” “would it be mine, or would I have to share it?”
At this he consented to laugh, and said, “Oh no, it would be yours. I’m going away for a bit, and most of us will be away.”
“Then could you show it to me?”
He examined her. What he was seeing, of course, was an old woman. That she was ill, or had been, was being absorbed into “an old woman.” Then he turned, to set himself beside her, thus indicating that she was possible, and they walked together along the pavement by the canal. He was giving her glances which she interpreted as: But we didn’t want an old woman in the place.
She said, “I am clean, careful, housetrained.”
He laughed, again in his way of making it clear that it was after careful consideration, and said, “I’m not hung up about that.” Then, interpreting, “I don’t mind what you do. But there’s someone in the flat who …”
“I have to be approved, is that it?”
The flat was a basement flat, and rather dark, after the yellow September glare. The young man went ahead of her along a wide hall that was furnished with piles of cushions and some posters. There was the dry tang of marihuana. Kate followed him thinking she would be shown the room that was to let, but she was led into a large room that had French windows open onto a small patio, crammed with plants of all kinds. On a hard chair by the windows sat a girl in the sunlight. Her bare brown feet were planted side by side on rush matting. Quantities of thick yellow hair fell all around her face—fell forward over it, so that it was not until she lifted her head that Kate saw a brown healthy face in which were round blue candid eyes. She was doing nothing. She smoked.
She considered Kate, then looked at the young man.
He said to Kate, “I didn’t ask your name?”
“Kate Brown.”
“This is Kate,” he said to the girl. To Kate he said, with the formality that must have come from his upbringing, which included a small stiff nod, like a curtailed bow, “This is Maureen.” Turning back to the girl he said with the naive awkwardness of his acquired manner, “I put up the card and she was there and said could she come along?”
“Oh,” said Maureen. She pushed back hair, jumped up from her chair as if meaning to do something, but then sat down again, with the instant relaxation of a cat. She wore a very short brown skirt and a blue checked shirt, like the girl you see on a poster advertising milk or eggs.
At last she smiled and said, “Would you like to see it?”
“Yes,” said Kate.
“You think she will be
all right, do you?” said the young man to the girl—his girlfriend? This struck his upbringing as rude, and he even reddened a little, as he explained to Kate, “You see, I wanted to make sure that Maureen was all right before I took off.”
Maureen’s eyelids lowered abruptly; two white half-moons on brown cheeks. Kate thought that she stopped a smile.
“I’m fine, Jerry. I told you,” said Maureen.
“Well in that case I’ll just …”
“Yes, do.”
Jerry nodded at Kate, gave Maureen a long steady look which was meant to impress something on her—but what, Kate could not decide—and went out of the room. And that was the last Kate saw of him.
Maureen considered. She was wondering if she should ask about Kate’s qualifications to pay? All she said was, “It’s the room at the end of the passage on the left. It’s Jerry’s but he’s going to Turkey.”
She did not come with Kate, but sat on, planted on her chair, in a cloud of blue smoke that smelled of other states and climates. The blue ripples and whorls and waves lay all about her as if she were sitting in sunny water.
The room was small, and had in it a narrow bed and a cupboard. It was many degrees colder than the front of the flat, which was on the south. This room had a chill on it that connected with the cold that lay permanently around Kate’s stomach. But it would do.
She went back to the girl and said the room was all right, and that she would stay in it until the end of October—hearing herself say this, she realised she had made decisions her conscious self knew nothing about.
As Maureen said nothing about money, she put down five one-pound notes on a red cushion near the girl’s feet.
At this Maureen allowed a smile to appear from behind her blind of yellow hair. “Thanks,” she said. “But any time.”