“Stop worrying,” David said, with a smile. “I shan’t.”
Burns relaxed. He liked the look of that smile, the look in David’s eyes which had been allowed to appear for a moment before it was hidden again. “Fine,” Burns said, and he meant it even if he had to revise a nicely building theory. He didn’t object. If these people only knew, he wanted them to disprove the theories they aroused. He wanted to like them. The trouble was that few of them cared whether they were liked or not. Their attitude was that it was just too bad if foreigners didn’t like them or behave as they did; too bad for the foreigners, of course.
Burns walked slowly over to the window, and stood there looking morosely down into the garden. “What was it like here all through Easter? This place must have been a graveyard then. Nothing but monuments left. Why didn’t you take a week off and come to Paris with me? It’s nice in the spring.”
“Nice at any time. Not this Easter for me, though. Perhaps next year...” David glanced almost imperceptibly at Penny’s photograph. “I’m hoping to break the back of this work in May. Then, if all goes well, I’ll have a week-end in town.” And then, six weeks later, Finals. Thank God. His voice was casual. There was no hint of the trouble that had hindered his work so badly. Anyway, it was all over now. Margaret was living in a room near the School of Music, and had started classes there. By cutting his own expenses to the bare minimum he had enough left of his scholarship money (together with the Glendale Prize Essay money which he had won in January and the proceeds of the sale of the Cory’s Walk furniture) to finance Margaret and himself until he started earning a regular salary.
But how long was it since he had seen Penny? It felt like years, years all the longer because the distance to London was so short: the next train would take him there in one and a half hours. He had to keep remembering Penny saying, in that serious way of hers when she was arguing out something in her own mind, “The only intelligent thing is that I should let you work in peace.” Then she had sighed, tried to smile. “Oh, darling, how I hate doing the intelligent thing!” And then, as he had said nothing, only looked gloomily at her hands lying in his, she had said quickly, “But we’ll have that week-end in May as a kind of prize to cheer us along.” Yes, it was the intelligent thing to do, but it also was hard. My sweet Penny, he thought now, as he looked openly at her photograph, you keep tying me to you in every unexpected way, without even knowing that you have got me bound hand and foot.
Burns was watching David. Time to move, he decided. The trouble was that the people you wanted to know were all so damned busy; and even if they were doing nothing they had always those private little worlds of their own into which they would pop and leave you. Perhaps that was what made them seem so well worth knowing. If you ever could get to know them.
Burns crossed over to the door. “We must get together some time,” he tried.
David said, “Yes.” And then, with a frankness and warmth that both astonished and pleased the American, he went on quickly, “I’d like that very much. This is a difficult year for me, you know. But after June is over it will be different. I’ll have time then to do the things I want to do. I’ll be in London, and we’ll get together. You are going to be here for another couple of years, aren’t you?”
“If I don’t freeze to death.” Burns grinned widely. “I’d like to meet her too,” he said, looking at the photograph. “You’re a lucky guy, Bosworth. It wouldn’t be hard working for that.” He saluted Penny as he went out.
David’s thoughts echoed Burns’s last remarks. He settled, still smiling, at his desk.
He looked at Penny’s photograph, moved it so that she seemed to be looking directly at him, and picked up his pencil. The sheet of paper before him, fresh and white, invited clear headings, neat notes, numbered paragraphs. He opened the Critique of Pure Reason, forced himself to abandon romantic imaginings and concentrate on the unbroken page of small print. He began making notes, and as he wrote he felt a sense of pleasure. There was a lot of satisfaction in getting a job done as well as possible.
31
A ROOM OF ONE’S OWN
Penny was writing, too, at that moment. She looked round with a touch of pride as she noted the window measurements, and waited for Lillian Marston to verify them. This was her room. A few weeks ago it had been an empty, forlorn place on the top floor of one of the dingier houses in Fitzroy Square. But it was a quiet room at the back of the house, and its rent was a reasonable twelve shillings a week unfurnished, and it possessed two tall, wide windows. The Square itself was useful for quick, cheap shopping: Charlotte Street and the open-air markets lay near by, that was something to be remembered when one’s free hours were regulated by a job.
Now it was hers, becoming less forlorn with each week. The shabby walls and woodwork had been disguised by a coat of pearl-grey paint; coconut matting in its natural shade made a modern-looking covering for the uneven floorboards. These had been the biggest expenses. The few pieces of furniture had been bought cheaply in Tottenham Court Road and transformed, by a good deal of sawing asunder, sandpapering, and careful painting in the same soft shade of grey as the walls. And at last the important stage of curtains and coverings had been reached, and Marston’s long arm was now obligingly measuring the height of the windows.
“If I could find a design in green and white large enough to balance that size of window,” Penny said, “then the place would really begin to look decent. Sort of formalised bamboo-trees in green,” she added, eyeing the coconut matting, “rather in the way the Douanier would have painted them.”
“You must like your new job,” Marston said, with unconcealed amusement. “You are learning the jargon quite naturally. What is it like being an interior decorator?”
“I’ve no idea... I only work in an interior decorator’s office.”
“I make this window almost two yards and one foot, again. Two yards and ten inches to be precise. From the top down to the window sill, that is. Doesn’t Bunny let you try out any of your ideas? I know he is the boss, and a prima donna too, but still—he didn’t just engage you as a book-keeper, did he?” Marston sat down on the topmost step of the ladder, and lighted a cigarette.
“No, but I’m still very much in the apprentice stage. I’m learning a lot, too. It really is quite an experience to see Bunny swing into form with his prize customers. They begin by retreating to the safe position of brown, and then they end by agreeing that off-white is the only possible setting. Although why people insist on off-white for a room in town, unless they are willing to keep windows tightly shut and die of suffocation, is something I haven’t quite solved.”
“But it keeps decorators in business. If they weren’t then you wouldn’t have this room, and you wouldn’t be able to write home saying how wonderful everything is. You know, Lorrimer, I think your family must be quite frantic.”
“Why?” Penny was finishing her calculations. “From the floor to the window sill is two feet. I’ll need double width. That makes... Good Lord, Marston.” She held out the note-book with her calculations.
“Put your little sums away, darling, and answer the nice lady.”
“But they can’t be frantic. I am not sleeping on the Embankment, and I did find a job. Thanks to you, Lillian, and your friend Bunny Eastman. Really, you must have pestered him over that telephone until he had no breath left to say ‘No.’ I still feel guilty when I think of the jobs I couldn’t find for myself, and of all the other girls still searching the newspaper columns each morning.”
“Don’t be so damned Scotch. You don’t need to spoil the job by having guilt. I knew Bunny needed someone with a few brains attached. And he isn’t a willing martyr to friendship. He can be as hard as nails, even if his hair waves and his voice curls. He is quite anaesthetised to all women, so he is completely business-like and unsentimental. In one way,” Marston concluded thoughtfully, “that’s a Good Thing.”
“Definitely,” Penny agreed, with a smile. “But you did make thi
ngs easier for me, Lillian.”
“Nonsense,” Marston said brusquely. She was always embarrassed by thanks. “You still haven’t given the proper answer to my question.”
“About my people? But they can’t possibly be worried about me. I’m happy. I never felt better in my life.”
“Exactly. You should be miserable, you should hate all this worry and effort, you should be lonely and homesick. And instead you probably write letters filled with the joy of living. Do they write much to you?”
“My sister writes,” Penny said shortly. Her face hardened for a moment. “She is bursting with curiosity.”
“And with disapproval. She’ll never forgive you for doing what she had not the courage to do. Here, Lorrimer, steady this brute while I climb down. I’m getting cramp up in this crow’s-nest.”
Penny held the stepladder, looked at the windows reflectively, and said, “If I could find fifty-four-inch material and allowed—”
“Lorrimer! I love you dearly. But I have had quite enough work for one evening. Besides, you have probably decided everything already in your own little head, and I’d only give you advice you did not really need.”
“Well...” Penny said, and then smiled. She couldn’t deny that. She looked round the room again, seeing it as it would be when everything was in place. She would place the large plain table in front of the windows, and she would work there, so that the excellent top-floor light would come in leftward. Against the wall which lay directly opposite to the windows and work-table there was the bed, low, without head-boards, waiting for a simply tailored cover to make it look quite impersonal. In the centre of the third wall there was a small fireplace, with a bookcase and an armchair (later, with luck, there would be another), which she would also cover once she found time and the right curtain material. The fourth wall was so broken by doors—one entrance, two cupboards—that all one could do with it was to put a low sideboard, painted grey, in the one decent-sized panel of space. Not even Marston had guessed that the sideboard was the base of a one-time kitchen dresser, whose top shelves, sawn off, now stood near the window wall to hold Penny’s folios of drawings and the large books on art which never fitted into normal bookshelves.
“Well...” Marston echoed. She walked round the room. “I shouldn’t say it was exactly cluttered with furniture.”
“Of course, it isn’t finished yet,” Penny said.
“Of course.” People were always funny about their houses and gardens: this was never the moment to see either of them— if only you had come next week the rugs would have been down or the petunias would have really been blooming. Nothing ever was finished or completely perfect to the owner.
“I think it is all simply marvellous. But I’m afraid that when I live alone I’ll just take a furnished room in a hotel.”
“Expensive,” Penny said.
Marston looked mildly surprised. “Oh, a cheap hotel, darling.”
“Horrid.”
“Don’t be so realistic. Now, I suppose you’d like me to admire all the other improvements you have been making round here. Shall I make a tour of inspection of the kitchen, scullery, and other offices?” Marston did not wait for an answer, but strolled out into the narrow landing. In an alcove there was a sink, a small gas oven, and some narrow shelves.
Marston said, “H’m!” as she looked at the well-equipped shelves. “Domestic creature at heart, aren’t you?”
“Thanks to Woolworth’s,” Penny said. “Now let me make some tea to show how well I can cook—”
“And meanwhile I’ll visit the other offices.”
When she came back she said, “Well, the abominable bathroom hasn’t grown, but it looks altogether different. Don’t make things too nice, Lorrimer, or you’ll have the rent raised.” She looked at Penny with concealed surprise as she carried the tea-tray into the room. “Perhaps you did find your right career after all, even if you got into it by accident.”
Penny was pleased by Marston’s praise. Marston had been first alarmed and then gloomy when she had seen this flat before Penny had actually decided to take it.
“My trouble is,” Marston went on, “that I see things as they are and not as they could be. I expect the next time I come to see you I’ll be amazed by curtains and colours and things.”
“Next time I am going to ask Bunny Eastman to come along with you.”
Marston sipped her tea thoughtfully. “That might be a good idea.” She waited for the explanation, but Penny went on with careful unconcern:
“First, this room has to be ready. I have been doing it gradually. Partly because of lack of time, but mostly because of money. I got Bunny to pay my salary by the week: it makes things easier, to start with. I also used the remainder of my last quarter’s dress allowance from my people. Later I can start gathering some money to pay it back. I hated using it. It would have been such a grand gesture to hand it back intact. But I needed it, and you can’t afford grand gestures when you are desperate. False pride is much too expensive, really.”
“I’ve been ill-mannered enough to wonder how much all this has cost.”
“Fourteen pounds and six shillings so far. I am allowing myself twenty-five pounds altogether. Which brings me to an idea I have been developing in the last two weeks. Have another cup of tea and I’ll tell you about it.”
“No sugar, this time. And no cake either, thank you. A horrible thing happened yesterday. I put on my black skirt, and the waist-band would scarcely fasten. It is all these dinners with Chris.” Marston lit a cigarette, watched Penny pour out tea, and then said unexpectedly, “What amazes me most is the way you know exactly what you want. All these ideas and things... What is this one?”
Penny described it in detail, and over a third cup of tea they discussed it.
“Yes,” Marston said, “it is good. But you’ll never get Bunny to listen to it. His name is expensive, and he’d rather die than lose that reputation. You’ll see.”
“He can start a new firm with a new name altogether to develop this idea. He won’t lose by it financially. That might sound attractive to him.”
Marston smiled. “You know him quite well already.”
“And that is why some day you will bring him here for a glass of sherry. I shan’t mention my idea at all to him at first. I’ll let him look round. Can’t you see him, sitting in that armchair (which will look quite different with its cover in just the right shade to emphasise or contrast with the curtains), glancing round him while he pretends to notice nothing? If he says he likes it—‘I do like this; I really do. I adore it.’ (Penny gave a good high-pitched imitation and leaped up to stride about the room in the way Marston had seen the blond, beautiful Eastman do when his interest was excited.) ‘Most amusing. Definitely amusing’—then I shall start talking about the room. I’ll give him the cost, analysed, if he demands it. He will, if he is interested. And then I’ll produce my idea about the new firm. We could give it a ham name like Moderate Modern. Oh... isn’t that awful? Still, something like that. That will catch the fancy of people who have to furnish a house for less than Mrs. Whosit pays for her curtains or fireplaces alone. No one likes to think they are furnishing cheaply. ‘Moderate’ is much more soothing, isn’t it? But we wouldn’t be bogus, for anyone who did come to us would have a pleasant house for their money. And they’d be all the happier for it, too. There is nothing more dismal than dull, stereotyped rooms: it makes people into a pattern of dimness. The trouble is that unless you have lashings of money to spend on a house, it is almost impossible to have an exciting one. It’s silly. Charm and taste don’t—that is, they shouldn’t—depend on money. In fact, money often kills them. Funny, isn’t it, how poverty or wealth can both kill taste? One because it crushes people—you reach the stage when a loaf of bread on the table is more important than a vase of flowers on the window sill. And the other because it takes away the need for any personal effort—you can hire people, can’t you?”
“Yes, my sweet,” Marston said,
with a smile. “But Bunny isn’t given to philanthropy. And he would have to raise your salary. He couldn’t go on paying you that miserable three pounds a week. He’s an astute blighter really: he only pays you so little because he knows that jobs are so scarce.”
“Well, even if he did have to pay me more he wouldn’t lose money. The idea would make some profit; I know it would. For there are far more people with little money to spend than there are with lots of money.”
“But it all means a lot of work and effort for a comparatively small profit. Can you imagine Bunny’s genius thriving on anything less than a guinea a yard? Can you imagine him giving up any time or thought to selecting good-looking designs and textures and colours for half a crown a yard, as you suggest? See, darling?”
“Yes. But I could do it. I’d love it. It would be fun beating the ramp on prices, and helping others to do it. I wouldn’t decorate rooms, of course, so Bunny need not fear that I’d steal any of his thunder. I’d choose fabrics and furniture that looked good, and weren’t expensive, and have them all there for the customers to select as they pleased. In any case, people ought to choose their own rooms, just as they choose their own clothes.”