Читать книгу Stinging Nettles - Bowen Marjorie - Страница 6

Table of Contents

§ I

THE "party" at Sophie's studio was crowded by all the people Lucie had seen there before.

No one knew why Sophie had this studio; but she had always kept it up; it was really the one staple thing about Sophie, for the Falconers moved about every six months and the studio remained the one permanent address.

It was "off" Kensington High Street and very expensive for the wretched accommodation offered, always dirty and generally occupied by diseased cats, who were made more than free of the place by Sophie, whose one definite enthusiasm appeared to be centred on animals.

There was not much furniture; what there was was most characteristic of Sophie.

There was a piano for her to "practise on," a long glass for her to "pose" before, a divan for her to lounge on, and a hideous collection of all kinds of litter spilling from boxes, bursting from portfolios, hung upon pegs and thrust into cupboards. [To-day it had been tidied.]

The rubbish was crammed away into corners behind draperies, a row of dirty, chipped mascots were dusted and put on the mantelshelf surrounding a large press photograph of Sophie, which she had touched up herself with black and white paints, and a straggling collection of snapshots of men many of whom Sophie didn't know.

The few Sowers Lucie had bought—few, because they were so expensive in February, were arranged in odd jars, and Mrs. Falconer had brought extra tea equipment and arranged it on a side table.

All three women had spent the morning doing this and going round the shops, and now, after a nondescript meal on the marble topped table of a "tea-shop," they stood cutting sandwiches and taking cakes and biscuits out of cardboard boxes and paper bags.

Lucie felt wretched; tired, first from her sleepless night, then, from the scurry round the shops, the rushing from tube to bus laden with parcels, the "tidying" of the studio.

Sophie had been disagreeable and difficult, at once stubbornly set on the "party" and apathetic about it; she had been tiresome over the purchase of the shoes and Lucie had known her own temper wearing thin.

The sights of the morning had depressed her also, like a living commentary on her thoughts of the night.

§ II

In the artificial brightness of the tubes, two sickly babies, stifling for fresh air, stunned by the blast and rattle, wailing till they were shaken and thumped: in the buses a press of women in unsuitable, fantastic costumes, some painted, all more or less anxious, haggard, loaded with parcels of finery, hung with beads, crippled with fancy shoes, with faces powdered, dirty, wrinkled or smooth, with teeth discoloured, bad or false, clutching frivolous bags of beads or silk or velvet, thrust together in the great square buses, shrill or silent, jaded or giggling,—a great press of women being swept along the packed London street.

On the pavements hoards, swarms of women, gazing in the shop windows, pushing into the tea-shops, some dragging bored and unwilling children, most of them alone. Lucie had felt like an ant in an ant-heap; she wished a great wind could blow them all away.

Women, women everywhere.

There were so many of them the world was beginning to be run to please them; they had money, too, pennies if not pounds.

Cunning men made it their work to beguile their pennies out of them—first clothes, all kinds of clothes—line on line of great shops, marble, gilt bronze, pile carpets, music, yards of mirror, to sell things people could do without.

Stacks and stacks of newspapers and magazines and novels written for women, carefully prepared to catch and please them, cinema after cinema, theatre after theatre, catering for women, for all these myriads of swarming women, uneducated, unwanted, restless, discontented, powerful by force of number—like locusts. On the hoardings, in the buses and tubes, on the covers of books and papers, women, heads and figures of women, pretty, well-dressed, comfortable.

Everything to beguile and flatter woman through her vanity, her idleness, her foolishness, to cheat her into imagining herself beautiful, pursued, potent and mysterious.

Paints, dyes, creams, beauty parlours, "try us and be like Cleopatra or Ninon de l'Enclos"—novels, serials, newspapers, "read us and see the wonderful things that happen to you adorable creatures."

Cinemas, theatres with the same appeal, shops, exhibitions, dubs, hotels, all clamouring for the attention, the time and the pennies of the women—all sham, fraud, bluff.

And hireling labour (itself feminine, discontented, restless, with wandering eye on the "pictures," on the novelette in the pocket) looking after the children of the well-to-do, and the children of the poor "shifting for themselves."

§ III

Sophie had gone into the little dark cupboard of a room adjoining the studio to dress, and Lucie finished setting the tea cups while Mrs. Falconer sat by the gas fire, smoking quickly and nervously, cigarette after cigarette.

She was tired and overwrought and Lucie yearned over her; Mrs. Falconer was both charming and lovable, but so wild and weak she had coiled her life into one knot after another; daring, violent tempered, unreasonable, yet generous and warm-hearted, well born and well educated, gifted and of a fascinating personality, she had made a failure of everything she had touched, including her daughter, whom she idolised almost to a point of insanity.

She had had, as she often said, "an awful life"; her husband had been a worthless scoundrel, and she had been through the bittered embarrassments of sordid poverty; she had quarrelled with her own family, her husband's family and most of her friends; she was always courageous, dramatic and agitated, scheming for Sophie, and full of "plans."

Her work, brilliant in itself, was not marketable; she spent a lot of time raving against the taste and judgment that would have none of her or Sophie.

She began about her daughter now, as soon as the door had closed on her.

"How do you think she is looking, Lucie, she seems to me very pale—"

"She wants her face washing and a smile," thought Lucie, wearily, aloud she said:

"I think she is all right—we were late last night."

"You ought not to have gone," said Mrs. Falconer vigorously.

"Sophie wanted to go."

"Poor child! The man was put off by those Bearish women."

"Sophie asked them."

"She is always so generous. But Mrs. Bearish should look out for herself. She never asks us anywhere."

Mrs. Falconer, whose whole disposition was composed of inconsistencies, was always veering in her opinion of her friends; at one she would be enthusiastically generously fond of them, at another perversely jealous.

"It is good of you to have helped us, Lucie." She gave her niece one of her endearing smiles, and Lucie quickly bent and kissed her.

She really loved Mrs. Falconer, and it was largely for her sake that she put up with Sophie, and the life they all lived.

Mrs. Falconer squeezed her hand in silence, never ceasing to smoke in feverish haste; she was marvellously young in appearance, eager, vital and charming, and she attached an almost crazy importance to this question of age; in reality she was an elderly woman, and the effort to compete with women twenty years younger than herself was not the least of the strains on her nerves and temper.

"Oh, Lucie," she cried suddenly. "I do hope he comes this afternoon—"

"Mr. Kaye?"

"Of course."

Tears pricked Lucie's lids, swollen from lack of sleep.

She thought of Pio's letter, unanswered—waiting for her when she got home...

Mrs. Falconer continued to talk of Sophie—Sophie's beauty, brilliance, wit, fascination, her love affairs, the love affair, her ill-luck, her health, all dramatically, with fine choice of words.

Sophie wanted to go on the stage as a dancer. She must go—it didn't matter that she had had little training—her individuality would be sufficient.

Lucie hardly listened; she knew it all by heart; knew also that Sophie's dancing had been "turned down" by every manager or agent who had seen her performance.

And as her mother talked of her, anxiously, passionately, with abstracted eyes and tired, nervous lips, the girl appeared.

Her hair was fluffed out and her face powdered; she wore an odd sort of green tulle dress, not at all fresh, white stockings and cheap velvet shoes; like her mother she was obsessed by this idea of youthfulness; the one object of her dressing was to look girlish, even childish; she had set her whole personality at eighteen and she was so immature that strangers frequently took her really to be that age.

She had almost succeeded in deceiving herself into believing that she was a young girl, and into thinking that people who had known her "hawking" round for twelve years or so, thought so too.

She at down now on a stool by her mother's chair, clasping her hands round her knees and tucking her feet under her skirt; although she was graceful, her ankles were clumsy and her legs thick; she made no effort to finish "getting the tea"; it was Lucie who did that, piling up the cakes (she disliked sweet things), slicing, toasting, boiling the kettle on the gas ring, measuring out the tea.

§ IV

Lucie had a curious feeling about tea; she rather dreaded it—it was so inevitable—it always turned up at a crisis.

In all the horrible moments of her life there had always been someone hurriedly making tea as if it was a panacea against all ills.

To the sick excitement of long journeys had always been added someone's lament "if only I could get a cup of tea"; the dread discomfort of "moves" was associated with "I'm dying for a cup of tea" and in moments of shock, or loss, or anguish, there was always—"do try to take a cup of tea."

Whether you liked it or not it haunted you; it was always there, insistent, you found yourself sipping or gulping it in your strange and dark hours.

And did you not read of it, linked up with all wretchedness?

A warm tea pot and soiled cup by the suicide's bed, or on the table beneath which the murdered woman sprawled—"They made themselves a cup of tea, and then"—the prelude to many and desperate and awful acts.

§ V

The guests began to arrive; Lucie looked at herself in the long glass; she thought she appeared utterly "washed out" in her neutral coloured dress and black hat; the lines in her face were heavy, her pressed down hair no colour at all.

"It doesn't matter," she told herself resolutely, "and I must not let myself get so depressed; everything is all right really, just because my little corner of the world seems wrong I must not think the whole universe is."

Mrs. Falconer was all animation now, greeting everyone with effusive kindness, confidential with the women, coquettish with the men, flattering to everyone.

The room was soon full of noise and clatter; Lucie, glad of something to do, went to and fro with plates of sandwiches and cakes. Her mind, tired, alert, supersensitive, would note and analyze the people among whom she moved despite her resolve to be cheerful and sensible.

They were nearly all women, of course.

And, it went without saying, free and independent women; so free and independent that it would have been considered fogeyish to mention the fact—it was just taken for granted.

Lydia Copeland was there, the prettiest woman in the room, dressed in jade green, with "real" gold hair, but bloodshot eyes and a sunken mouth, insolent to the women, defiant to the men, a clever young actress of disreputable history, vulgar, amorous, a shrew and as hard as flint. Near her was Julia Jarrett, well groomed, well dressed, prim and silent with "pince-nez" and white kid gloves; Lucie remembered her (it seemed yesterday) as an unattractive child; now she was a welfare worker and studying for the bar. Beyond was Hester Foy, plain, fusty, wearing hideous clothes smelling of naphtha, sweetly superior, middle-aged, outwardly placid, inwardly soured, thwarted, sick, by profession a singer, like Sophie, unmarried, very "refined."

Then on the divan behind them were the girls, Ellen Bowness, the only child of a wealthy home, spoilt, idle, silly, expensively dressed, painted, giggling, hollow-chested, gaunt, but bright and good-humoured.

She did not belong to this set at all but was there for "fun"; her parents rather admired Sophie's voice, and Mrs. Falconer had desperately encouraged them; they were well off and might be "useful."

The other girl, Pamela Raitt, was far more pleasing in appearance, but jaded, tired, soiled; she worked as a secretary to two different men; one in the mornings, one in the evenings, she made just thirty-five shillings a week.

Then there was Mrs. Bearish, faded, shabby, yet finished and elegant (Aurora would come in later after her time at the office), talking to a quite well-known and brilliant woman, Louisa Kingdom, who shouted and gesticulated with ink-stained fingers, and dragged on and off her head a dirty tweed hat and looked pale and sandy and vicious like a ferret.

And near there, two large elderly women, Harriet Dornett and Ellen Barden, ardent feminists, who took up "causes" and were rude and offensive in appearance, jabbering their own particular jargon to Clara Biddulph, a haggard woman of sixty dressed like sixteen, with a hat like an inverted flowerpot hung with streamers, and knobbly toes showing through satin shoes; she appeared to think the two reformers rather wonderful, but then she was a literary agent and had to keep "nosing" for possible clients as well as avoiding those who weren't and never could be anything but impossible from a commercial point of view.

Sophie lounged over a table with her great friend of the moment, Elinor Kennaway, whose chinless face showed the entire upper set of long teeth beneath a parrot's nose and lovely eyes; they were playing with a sheet of paper and "planchette" and had gathered round them the only men present.

The men were very ineffective, sufficient only to give the faintest flavour of masculinity to the party, like one drop of sherry in a huge sponge trifle.

One of these, Mr. Dodd, was a very old friend of the Falconers whom he regarded as superior beings; he was so very unpresentable, so hopelessly not a "gentleman" that he was only tolerated at these gatherings because he enjoyed them and he had to be kept in a good humour somehow for they owed him a great deal of money and intended to owe him a great deal more.

A civil servant of thrifty habits, short to deformity, red-haired, with the bewildered, grave countenance of a chimpanzee, Mrs. Falconer had actually been able to flatter him into thinking he was a valuable member of society and an ornament to the brilliant set in which she moved.

He adored her and thought both she and Sophie the most wonderful of beings; behind his back Mrs. Falconer laughed at him and Sophie sneered.

Lucie disliked him, disliked still more the familiarity he was allowed—ah, how she disliked it all!

Another of the men was a starved-looking Irish charlatan, who had wonderful gifts in the way of making other people believe he had strange psychic powers, and who specialized in ghosts, spirits, elementals, or whatever happened to be the last thing in horrors; another was a provincial actor who had trained his face to look classic in the limelight and his figure to wear stage uniforms till there was nothing human about his appearance save his encroaching puffiness and stoutness—these two defects being at least pitilessly real.

And the third man was a young clerk who was wrong altogether, appearance, manners, voice, clothes; he had come out of the War (he had served a year in England at the end of things) with the title of Captain, and insisted on this, and let the women insist on it, till he felt he was what enthusiastic Mrs. Falconer, in her delight at his admiration of Sophie had called him—"a typical English soldier."

§ VI

Lucie looked from one to another, looked back again, tried, feverishly, to "make conversation" first to one and then at another.

"Am I wrong in thinking them all hideous, cheats, frauds, selfish, abortive? I must be. They all seem satisfied with each other. And who am I to judge?"