Читать книгу The Complete Short Stories - Muriel Spark - Страница 10

Linda Patterson, aged twenty-eight, was highly discontented. Daphne could not see why. She herself adored Uncle Poohbah with his rheumatism and long woollen combies. Only his constant threats to sell the damp old house and go to live in some hotel alarmed Daphne at the same time as the idea gave hope to her cousin Linda. Linda’s husband had been killed in a motor accident. She longed to be free to take a job in London.

“How could you leave that lovely climate and come to this dismal place?” Linda would say.

“But,” Daphne said happily, “this at least is England.”

Not long after she arrived Aunt Sarah, who was eighty-two, said to Daphne, “My dear, it isn’t done.”

“What isn’t done?”

Aunt Sarah sighed, “You know very well what I mean. My nightdresses, dear, the rayon ones. There were three in my drawer, a green, a peach, and a pink. I only discovered this morning that they were gone. Now there is no one else in this house who could have taken them but you. Clara is above reproach, and besides, she can’t climb the stairs, how could she? Linda has lots of nighties left over from her trousseau, poor gel –”

“What are you saying?” said Daphne. “What are you saying?”

Aunt Sarah took a pin out of her needle-box and pricked Daphne on the arm. “That’s for stealing my nighties,” she said.

“She’ll have to go to a home,” said Linda. “We can’t keep a daily woman for more than a week because of Aunt Sarah’s accusing them of stealing.”

Pooh-bah said, “D’you know, apart from that one thing she’s quite normal, really. Wonderful for her age. If we could only somehow get her to realize how utterly foolish she is over that one thing –”

“She’ll have to go to a home.”

Pooh-bah went out to look at the barometer and did not return.

“I don’t mind, really,” said Daphne.

“Look at the work she causes,” said Linda. “Look at the trouble!”

Next day, when Daphne was scrubbing the kitchen floor Aunt Sarah came and stood in a puddle before her. “My Friar’s Balsam,” she said. “I left a full bottle in the bathroom, and it’s gone.”

“I know,” said Daphne, scrubbing away, “I took it in a weak moment, but now I’ve put it back.”

“Very well,” said Aunt Sarah, trotting off and dragging the puddle with her. “But don’t do it again. Pilfering was always a great weakness in your mother, I recall.”

The winter temperature lasted well into April. Linda and Daphne had to sit by a one-bar electric fire in the library if they wanted to smoke; Pooh-bah’s asthma was affected by cigarette smoke.

Linda was conducting a weekend liaison with a barrister in London, and with Daphne in the house she found it easier to disappear for longer weekends, and then, sometimes, a week. “Daphne,” she would say on the phone, “you don’t mind holding the fort, honestly? This is so important to me.”

Daphne went for walks with Uncle Pooh-bah. She had to take short steps, for he was slow. They walked on the well-laid paths to the river which Daphne always referred to as “the Thames”, which indeed, of course, it was.

“We went as far as the Thames,” Daphne would tell Linda on their return. They ventured no further than the local lock, a walk bordered with green meadows and wonderful sheep.

Relations of some friends in the Colony invited her to London. She accepted, then told Linda when she would be away.

“But,” said Linda, “I shall be in London next week. It’s important, you know. Someone’s got to look after Pooh-bah and Aunt Sarah.”

“Oh, I see,” said Daphne.

Linda cheered up. “Perhaps you could go the week after?”

“No, next week,” said Daphne patiently, “that’s when I’m going.”

“Someone’s got to look after Pooh-bah and Aunt Sarah.”

“Oh, I see.”

Linda started to cry. Daphne said, “I’ll write to my friends, and explain.”

Linda dried her eyes and said, “You can’t imagine how deadly it is living in this awful house year after year with a couple of selfish old people and that helpless Clara.”

Next weekend, while Linda was away, several Patterson relations arrived. Molly, Rat, Mole and an infant called Pod. Mole was an unattached male cousin. Daphne expressed a desire to see Cambridge. He said it would be arranged. She said she would probably be in London soon. He said he hoped to see her there. Aunt Sarah stuck a pin in the baby’s arm, whereupon Molly and Rat took Daphne aside and advised her to clear out of the house as soon as possible. “It’s unhealthy.”

“Oh,” said Daphne, “but it’s typically English.”

“Good gracious me!” said Rat.

At last she had her week in London with the relations of her friends in the Colony. Daphne had been told they were wealthy, and was surprised when the taxi drove her to a narrow house in a mean little side street which was otherwise lined with garages.

“Are you sure this is the right place?” she asked the driver.

“Twenty-five Champion Mews,” he said.

“That’s right,” said Daphne. “This must be it.”

Before Daphne had left the country Linda had remarked, “A house in Champion Mews. They must be rather rich. How I would adore a mews house.” Daphne remembered this.

The interior of the house was very winning. She readjusted her ideas, and at dinner was able to say to her hostess, “What an adorable mews house.”

“Isn’t it? We were so lucky – literally everyone was after it.”

Mrs Pridham was middle-aged, and smart. Mr Pridham was a plastic surgeon.

“I shan’t make the mistake,” he said to Daphne, “of asking you about all the dangers you encountered in darkest Africa.”

Daphne laughed.

“You must have a Season of course,” said Mrs Pridham. “Have you arranged anything?”

“I’m here for two years at least.” Then she remembered about the London Season, and said, “No, I have nothing arranged. But my uncle has written to various friends.”

“It’s getting a little late in the year,” said Mrs Pridham.

“Really,” said Daphne, “I just want to see England. I’d like to see London. I’d like to see the Tower, and Uncle Chakata’s friends.”

“I shall take you to the Tower tomorrow afternoon,” said Mr Pridham.

He did, and afterwards they went for a spin round Richmond and Kingston. He pulled up at a pleasant spot. “Daphne,” he said, “I love you.” And he pressed his lips of sixty summers to hers.

As soon as she could disengage herself, she casually wiped her mouth with her handkerchief – casually, for she did not want to hurt his feelings. However, she told him she was engaged to be married to someone in the Colony.

“Oh dear, I’ve done the wrong thing. Have I done the wrong thing?”

“Daphne is engaged to a lucky fellow in Africa,” he said at dinner that night. Mole was present. He looked at Daphne. She looked back helplessly. Mrs Pridham looked at her husband, and said to Daphne, “Before you do anything, you must have your London Season. Stay six weeks with us, do. I’ve brought out girls before. It’s too late of course to do anything much but –”

“Do stay with us,” said Mr Pridham.

Later, when Daphne explained the tale of her “engagement” to Mole, he said, “You can’t stay with the Pridhams. I know someone else you can stay with, the mother of a friend of mine.”

Mrs Pridham looked sad when Daphne told her she could not prolong her visit. For the rest of the week she unmistakably cast Daphne into her husband’s way, frequently left them alone together, and often arranged to be picked up somewhere in the car, so that Daphne was obliged to dine with Mr Pridham alone.

Daphne mentioned to Mole, “She hasn’t the least suspicion of what he’s like. In fact, she seems to throw the man at me.”

“She wants to hot him up,” said Mole. “There are plenty of women who behave like that. They get young girls to the house simply in order to give the old man ideas. Then they get rid of the girls.”

“Oh, I see.”

She went to stay as a paying guest with the mother of Mole’s friend, Michael. It was arranged by letter.

Michael Casse was thin and gangling with an upturned nose. He had been put to stockbroking with an uncle, but without success. He giggled a great deal. His mother, with whom he lived, took a perverse pride in his stupidity. “Michael’s hopelessness,” she told Daphne, “is really …” During the war, his mother told her, she had been living in Berkshire. Michael came home on leave. She sent him out with the ration book one day after lunch to buy a packet of tea. He did not return until next morning. He handed his mother the tea, explaining that he had been held up by the connections.

“What connections?” said his mother.

“Oh, the trains, London, you know.”

And it transpired that he had gone all the way to Fortnum’s for the tea, it never having occurred to him that tea could be bought in the village, nor indeed anywhere else but Fortnum’s. Daphne thought that very English.

Michael now lived with his mother in her flat in Regent’s Park. Greta Casse was as gangling as her son, but she gangled effectively and always put her slender five foot ten into agreeable poses, so that even her stooping shoulders and hollow chest, her bony elbows akimbo, were becoming. She spoke with a nasal drawl. She lived on alimony and the rewards of keeping PGs.

She took vastly too much money from Daphne, who suspected as much, but merely surmised that Greta Casse was, like her son, stupid, living in an unreal world where money hardly existed, and so one might easily charge one’s PGs too much. Daphne frequently slipped out to Lyons for a sandwich, so hungry did she go. She assumed at first that society women were simply not brought up to the food idea, but when she saw Greta Casse tucking in at anyone else’s expense, she amended her opinion, and put Greta’s domestic parsimony down to her vagueness about materialistic things. This was a notion which Greta fostered in various ways, such as always forgetting to give Daphne the change of a pound, or going off for the day and leaving nothing in the house for lunch.

That she was, however, a society woman, in a sense that Daphne’s relations were not, was without doubt. Molly and Linda had been presented, it was true. And Daphne had seen photographs of her mother and Aunt Sarah beplumed and robed, in the days when these things were done properly. But they were decidedly not society women. Daphne mused often on Greta Casse, niece of a bishop and cousin of an earl, her distinctive qualities. She went to see Pooh-bah one weekend, and mentioned Greta Casse to a Miss Barrow, a notable spinster of the district who had come to tea. Daphne was surprised to learn that this woman, in her old mannish Burberry, her hands cracked with gardening, her face cracked with the weather, had been a contemporary of Greta’s. They had been to various schools together, had been presented the same year.

“How odd,” Daphne remarked to Pooh-bah later, “that two such different people as Mrs Casse and Miss Barrow should have been brought up in the same way.”

He gave a verbal assent, “I suppose so, yes,” but clearly he did not understand what she meant about it being odd.

Back she went to Regent’s Park. Greta Casse arranged a dinner party for Daphne at a West End restaurant, followed by an all-night session in a night-club. About twenty young people were invited, most of them in their early teens, which made Daphne feel old, and she was not compensated by the presence of a few elders of Greta’s generation. Michael came, of course. Englishman though he was, Daphne could not take him very seriously.

The party was followed by another, and that by another. “Can’t we invite Mole?” Daphne said.

“Well,” said Greta, “the whole idea is for you to meet new people. But of course, if you like …”

The bill for these parties used up half of Daphne’s annual allowance. Luncheons, at which she met numerous women friends of Greta’s, used up the other half. Daphne longed to explain to Mrs Casse that she had not understood what was involved by becoming her lodger. She did not want to be entertained, for she had merely counted on somewhere jolly to stay. Daphne had not the courage to put this to Greta who was so uncertain, precarious, slippery, indefinite and cold. She wrote to Chakata for money. “Of course,” she wrote, “when I’ve had my fun I’ll take a job.”

“I hope you are seeing something of England,” he replied when he sent his cheque. “My advice to you is to go on a coach tour. I hear they are excellent, and a great advance on my time, when there was nothing of that sort.” She rarely took much notice of Chakata’s advice, for so much of it was inapplicable. “Do introduce yourself to Merrivale at the bank,” he had written. “He will give you sherry in the parlour, as he used to do me when I was your age.” On inquiring for Mr Merrivale at the bank, Daphne was unsuccessful. “Ever heard of a chap called Merrivale?” the clerks asked each other. “Sure it’s this branch?” they asked Daphne.

“Oh yes. He used to be the manager.”

“Sorry, madam, no one’s heard of him here. Must have been a way back.”

“Oh, I see.”

Daphne got into the habit of ignoring Chakata’s questions, “Have you been to Hampton Court?” “Did you call on Merrivale at the bank? He will give you sherry …” “Have you booked for a tour of England and Wales? I trust you are planning to see something of the English countryside?”

“I couldn’t find that bootmaker in St Paul’s Churchyard,” she wrote to him, “because it is all bombed. Better stick to the usual place in Johannesburg. Anyway, I might not order the right boots.”

Soon, then, she made no reply to his specific requests and suggestions, but merely gave him an account of her parties, pepping them up for his benefit. He seemed not to read her letters properly, for he never referred to the parties.

Greta came back to the flat one afternoon with a toy poodle. “He’s yours,” she said to Daphne.

“How utterly perfect!” said Daphne, thinking it was a gift, and wanting to express her appreciation as near as possible in the vernacular.

“I had to have him for you,” said Greta, and went on to demand a hundred and ten guineas. Daphne ducked her face affectionately in the pet’s curly coat to hide her dismay.

“We were so terribly lucky to get him,” Greta was saying. “You see, he’s not just a miniature – they’re slightly bigger – he’s a toy.”

Daphne gave her a cheque, and wrote to Chakata to say how expensive London was. She decided to take a job in the autumn, and to cut out the fortnight’s motoring tour of the north with Molly, Rat, and Mole which she had arranged to share with them.

Chakata sent her the money as an advance on her next quarterly allowance. “Sorry can’t do more. Fly has had a go at the horses, and you will have read about the tobacco crops.” She had not read about the blight, but a bad year was not an uncommon occurrence. She was surprised at Chakata’s attitude, for she believed him to be fairly wealthy. Shortly after this she heard from friends in the Colony that Chakata’s daughter and her husband who had gone to farm in Kenya, had been murdered by the Mau Mau. “Chakata implored us not to tell you,” wrote her friend, “but we thought you should know. Chakata is educating the two boys.”

It was the middle of May. Daphne had engaged to be Mrs Casse’s lodger till the end of June. However, she telephoned to Linda that she was returning to the country. Greta was out. Daphne packed and sat down courageously with Popcorn (the poodle) on her lap to await her return, and explain her financial predicament.

Michael came in first. He was carrying an empty bird-cage and a cardboard box with holes in it. On opening the box a bird flew out in a panic.

“A budgerigar,” said Michael. “I expect they fly about wild where you’ve come from. They talk, you know. It’s frightened at the moment, but when they get used to you, they talk.” He giggled.

The bird was perched on a lampshade. Daphne caught it and put it in the cage. It had a lavender breast.

“It’s for you,” Michael said. “Mummy sent me home with it. She bought it for you. It says ‘Come here, darling’ and ‘Go to hell’, and things like that.”

“I really don’t want it,” said Daphne in despair.

“Peep, peep, peep,” said Michael to the bird, “say hallo, say hallo. Say come here darling.”

It sat on the floor of the cage and moved only its head from side to side.

“Really,” said Daphne, “I have no money. I’m hard up. I can’t afford your mother’s birds. I’m just waiting to say goodbye to her.”

“No,” said Michael.

“Yes,” said Daphne.

“Listen,” he said. “Take my advice and clear out now before she comes back. If you tell her this to her face there’s bound to be hell.” He giggled weakly, poured himself a drink of brandy which his mother had watered, and said, “Shall I get you a taxi now? She’ll be back in half an hour.”

“No, I’ll wait,” said Daphne, and ran her hand nervously through the poodle’s curls.

“There was nearly a court action one time,” said Michael, “about another girl. Mummy was supposed to have given two balls for her, but she didn’t or something, and the girl’s people got worked up. I think Mummy spent the money on something else, or something.” He giggled.

“Oh, I see.” Daphne went and telephoned to Mole and asked him to call for her when he left his office.

Greta arrived, and when she had taken in the situation she sent Michael from the room.

“I must tell you,” said Greta to Daphne, “that what you are proposing is illegal. You realize that, don’t you?”

“I can give you a week’s money in lieu of notice,” Daphne said, “and a little extra.”

“You agreed to stay till the end of June, my dear. I have it in black and white.” This was true. Daphne realized how deliberately her letter of confirmation from the country had been extracted from her.

“My uncle has had some unforeseen expenses. My cousins were murdered by the Mau Mau, and their sons –”

“I’m sorry, my dear, but one just can’t be sentimental. It’s not like taking in ordinary lodgers. A Season is a Season, and one can’t get another girl at this time of the year. Look what I’ve done for you. Parties, the races, meeting important people … No, sorry, I can’t consider releasing you from the obligation. I’ve arranged a cocktail party at Claridge’s for you next week. After all, I don’t make anything out of it. Mercy Slater charges fifteen hundred to bring a girl out.”

This put Daphne off her stroke, it prompted her to haggle: “Lady Slater gives balls for her debs.”

Greta rapidly got in: “You surely didn’t expect the full deb process in your position?”

“Mole is calling for me,” Daphne said.

“I don’t want to keep you against your will, Daphne. But if you leave now you must compensate me fully. Then, if you want to go away, go away.”

“Go’way. Go’way, go to hell,” said the budgerigar, which had now risen to its perch.

“And then there’s the bird,” said she. “I bought it for you this afternoon. I thought you’d be thrilled.” She began to weep.

“I don’t want it,” said Daphne.

“All my girls have adored their pets,” Greta said.

“Come here darling,” said the bird. “Go’way, go to hell.”

Greta was doing a sum. “The bird is twenty guineas. Then there’s the extra clothes I’ve ordered –”

“Go’way. Go’way,” said the bird.

Mole arrived. Daphne placed a cheque for twenty pounds on the hall table and slipped down to his car, leaving him to cope with her bags. “You will hear from my solicitors,” Greta called after her.

Michael was hanging about in the hall. He took the scene calmly. He giggled at Daphne, then went to help Mole with the luggage.

They had been driving for ten minutes before they had to stop for a traffic light. Then, when the engine stopped, Daphne heard the budgerigar chirping at the back of the car.

“You’ve brought the bird!” she said.

“Yes. Isn’t it yours? Michael told me it was yours.”

“I’ll ring the pet shop,” she said, “and ask them to take it back. Do you think Greta Casse will sue me?”

“She hasn’t a hope,” said Mole. “Forget it.”

Daphne rang the pet shop next morning from the country.

“This is Mrs Casse speaking,” she said with a nasal voice. “I bought a budgerigar from you yesterday. So silly of me, I’ve forgotten what I paid you, and I’d like to know, just for my records.”

“Mrs Greta Casse?”

“That’s right.”

“I don’t think we sold a budgie yesterday, Mrs Casse. Just a moment, I’ll inquire.”

After a pause another, more authoritative, person came on the line. “You’re inquiring about a budgerigar, Mrs Casse?”

“Yes, I bought it yesterday,” said Daphne through her nose.

“Not from us, Mrs Casse – oh, and by the way, Mrs Casse …”

“Yes,” twanged Daphne.

“While you’re on the phone, I’d like to mention the account.”

“Of course. How much is it? I’ll send a cheque.”

“Eighty guineas – that’s of course including the toy poodle.”

“Ah, yes. What exactly was the sum for the poodle? I’m so scatty about these things.”

“The poodle was sixty. Then there was an amount last October –”

“Thanks. I’m sure it’s quite correct. I’ll send a cheque.”

“You have stolen that bird, I know,” said Aunt Sarah that afternoon, giving the cage a shove.

“No,” said Daphne, “I paid for it.”

In the spring of 1947 Linda died of a disease of the blood. At the funeral a short man of about forty-five introduced himself to Daphne. He was Martin Grindy, the barrister who had been Linda’s lover.

He gave Daphne his card. “Would you come some time and talk about Linda?”

“Yes, of course.”

“Next week?”

“Well, I’m teaching. But when school breaks up I’ll write to you.”

She wrote during the Easter holidays, and met him for lunch a few days later.

He said, “I miss Linda.”

“Yes, I’m sure you must.”

“The trouble is, you see, I’m a married man.”

She thought him attractive and understood why Linda had always felt urgently about keeping her appointments with him.

In the summer she started to replace Linda as Martin’s lover. They met in London at weekends and more frequently in the summer holidays.

Daphne was teaching at a private school in Henley. She lived with Pooh-bah and a middle-aged housekeeper whom they had persuaded into service, the old servant, Clara, having died, and Aunt Sarah having been removed to a nursing home.

Mole had married, and Daphne missed his frequent visits, and the long drives in his car. Until she met Martin Grindy her life was enlivened only by the visiting art master at the school, who came down twice a week.

Martin’s wife, several years older than he, lived in Surrey and was always ill with a nervous complaint.

“There’s no question of a divorce,” Martin said. “My wife’s against it on religious grounds, and though I myself don’t share these principles I feel a personal obligation towards her.”

“Oh, I see.”

They spent their time in his flat in Kensington. There was a heatwave. They bathed in the Serpentine.

Sometimes, if his wife was specially ill, he would be summoned to the country. Daphne stayed alone in the flat or wandered round the shops.

“This year,” said Martin, “she has been more ill than usual. But next year, if she’s better, I hope to take you to Austria.”

“Next year,” she said, “I am supposed to be returning to Africa.”

Earlier Chakata had written, “Old Tuys has had a stroke. He is up now, but very feeble in his mind.” Since then, he had seemed less keen on Daphne’s return. Daphne thought this odd, for previously he had been wont to write when sending her news of the farm, “You will see many changes when you return,” or, when mentioning affairs at the dorp, “There’s a new doctor. You’ll like him.” But in his last letter he said, “There have been changes in the educational system. You will find many changes if you return.” Sometimes she thought Chakata was merely becoming forgetful. “I’m trying to make the most of my stay in England,” she wrote, “but travelling is very expensive. I doubt if I shall see anything of Europe before my return.” Chakata, in his next letter, did not touch on the question. He said, “Old Tuys just sits about on the stoep. Poor old chap, he is incapable of harm now. He is rather pathetic on the whole.”

At the end of the summer Daphne’s lover took his wife to Torquay. Daphne wandered about Kensington alone for a few days, then went back to Pooh-bah. She took him for walks. She asked him to lend her some money so that she might spend a week in Paris. He replied that he didn’t really see the necessity. Next day the housekeeper told her of a man in the village who would give her thirty pounds for the poodle. Daphne had grown fond of the dog. She refused the offer, then wrote to her lover in Torquay to ask him to lend her the money to go to Paris. She received a postcard from Martin, with no mention of her request. “Will be back in London 1st week October,” he wrote on the card.

Term started at the beginning of October. That week Martin’s wife turned up and demanded of Pooh-bah Daphne’s whereabouts. She was directed to the school, and on confronting Daphne there, made a scene.

Later, the headmistress was highly offensive to Daphne, who straight-way resigned. The headmistress relented, for she was short of staff. “I am only thinking of the girls,” she explained. Hugh, the visiting art master, suggested to Daphne that she might find a better job in London. She left that night. Pooh-bah was furious. “Who’s going to attend to things on Mrs Vesey’s day off?” Daphne realized why he had not wished her to go to Paris.

“You could marry her,” Daphne suggested. “Then she’d be on duty all the time.”

He did this in fact, within a month. Daphne settled in a room in Bayswater, poorly furnished for the price; but on the other hand the landlady was willing to take the poodle.

Martin Grindy traced her to that place.

“I don’t like your wife,” she said.

“I’m afraid she got hold of your letter. What can I give you? What can I do for you? What can I possibly say?”

* * *

Besides teaching art to schoolchildren, Hugh Fuller painted. He took Daphne to his studio in Earl’s Court, where she sat and reflectively pulled the stuffing even further out of the torn upholstery of the armchair.

Quite decidedly, she said, she would not come and live with him, but she hoped they would always be friends.

He thought he had made a mistake in putting the proposition to her before making love, so he made moves to repair his error.

Daphne screamed. He looked surprised.

“You see,” she explained, “I’ve got nerves, frightfully, at the moment.”

He took her frequently to Soho, and sometimes to parties where, for the first time, she entered a world in the existence of which she had previously disbelieved. Here the poets did have long hair, and painters wore beards, and what was more, two of the men wore bracelets and earrings. One group of four girls lived all together in two rooms with a huge old negress. Among Hugh’s acquaintance were those who looked upon him with scorn for his art teaching, those who considered this activity harmless in view of his lack of talent, and those who admired him for his industry as much as his generosity.

Daphne found this company very relaxing to her nerves.

No one asked her the usual questions about Africa, and what was more surprising, no one made advances to her, not even Hugh. Daphne was teaching at a Council school. On half-holidays in spring she would sometimes meet Hugh and his friends, and regardless of the staring streets, would straggle with them along the pavements, leap on and off buses, to the current art show. There, it was clear to Daphne that Hugh’s friends occupied a world which she could never penetrate. But she came to be more knowing about pictures. It may have been the art master in Hugh, as one of his friends suggested, but he loved to inform Daphne as to form, line, light, masses, pigments.

Her cousin Mole looked her up one day. He told her that Michael, the silly son of that Greta Casse at Regent’s Park, had married a woman ten years his senior, and was emigrating to the Colony. Daphne was affected with an attack of longing for the Colony, more dire than any of those bouts of homesickness which she had yet experienced.

“I shall have to go back there soon,” she said to Mole. “I’ve saved enough for the fare. It’s a good thought to know I can go any time I please.”

One night Daphne and Hugh were drinking in a pub in Soho with his friends, when suddenly there fell a hush. Daphne looked round to see why everyone’s eyes were on a slight very dark man in his early forties, who had just entered the bar. After a moment, everyone started talking again, some giggled, and continued to glance at the man who had come in.

“That’s Ralph Mercer,” one of Hugh’s friends whispered to Daphne.

“Who?”

“Ralph Mercer, the novelist. He was at school with Hugh, I believe. Rather a popular writer.”

“Oh, I see,” said Daphne, “he looks as if he might be popular.”

Hugh was collecting drinks at the bar. The novelist saw him, and they spoke together for a while. Presently Hugh brought him to be introduced. The novelist sat next to Daphne. “You remind me of someone I used to know from Africa,” he said.

“I come from Africa,” said Daphne.

Hugh asked him, “Often come here?”

“No, it was just, you know, I was passing …”

One of the girls chuckled, a deep masculine sound. “A whim,” she said.

When he had gone Hugh said, “He’s rather sweet, isn’t he, considering how famous …”

“Did you hear him,” said an oldish man, “when he said, ‘Speaking as an artist …’ Rather funny, that, I thought.”

“Well, he is an artist in the sense,” said Hugh, “that –” But his words were obliterated by the others’ derision.

A few days later Hugh said to Daphne, “I’ve heard from Ralph Mercer.”

“Who?”

“That novelist we met in the pub. He writes to know if I’ll give him your address.”

“Why’s that, do you think?”

“He likes you, I suppose.”

“Is he married?”

“No. He lives with his mother. Actually I’ve sent him your address. Do you mind?”

“Yes, I do. I’m not a name and address to be passed round. I’m afraid I don’t wish to see you again.”

“You know,” said Hugh, “I’m glad it never came to an affair between us. You see, Daphne, I’m not entirely a woman’s man.”

“I don’t know what to say,” she said.

“I hope you will like Ralph Mercer. He’s very well-off. Very interesting, too.”

“I shall refuse to see him,” said Daphne.

* * *

Her association with Ralph Mercer lasted two years. Her infatuation was as gluttonous as her status as his mistress was high among the few writers and numerous film people who kept him company. She had a grey-carpeted flat in Hampstead, with the best and latest Swedish furniture. Ralph’s male friends wooed her, telephoned all day, came with flowers and theatre tickets.

For the first three months Ralph was with her constantly. She told him of her childhood, of Chakata, the farm, the dorp, Donald Cloete, the affair of Old Tuys. He demanded more and more. “I need to know your entire background, every detail. Love is an expedition of discovery into unexplored territory.” To Daphne this approach had such force of originality that it sharpened her memory. She remembered incidents which had been latent for fifteen years or more. She sensed the sort of thing that delighted him; the feud, for instance, between Old Tuys and Chakata; revenge and honour. One day after receiving a letter from Chakata she was able to tell him the last sentence of Donald Cloete’s story: he had died of drink. She offered him this humble contribution with pride, for it showed that she, too, though no novelist, possessed a sense of character and destiny. “Always,” she said, “I would ask him was he drunk or sober, and he always told the truth.” Later in the day, when the thought of Donald’s death came suddenly to her mind, she cried for a space.

News came that Mrs Chakata had followed Donald to the grave, and for the same cause. Daphne laid this information on the altar. The novelist was less impressed than on the former occasion. “Old Tuys has been done out of his revenge,” Daphne added for good measure, although she was aware that Old Tuys had been silly and senile since his stroke. One of her friends in the Colony had written to say that Mrs Chakata had long since ceased to have the pistol by her side: “Old Tuys takes no notice of her. He’s forgotten what it was all about.”

“Death has cheated Old Tuys,” said Daphne.

“Very melodramatic,” he commented.

Ralph began to disappear for days and weeks without warning. In a panic, Daphne would telephone to his mother. “I don’t know where he is,” Mrs Mercer would say. “Really, dear, he’s like that. It’s very trying.”

Much later, his mother was to tell Daphne, “I love my son, but quite honestly I don’t like him.” Mrs Mercer was an intensely religious woman. Ralph loved his mother but did not like her. He was frequently seized by nervy compulsions and superstitions.

“I must,” said Ralph, “write. I need solitude to write. That is why I go away.”

“Oh, I see,” said Daphne.

“If you say that again I’ll hit you.” And though she did not repeat the words, he did, just then, hit her.

Afterwards she said, “If only you would say goodbye before you leave I wouldn’t mind so much. It’s the suddenness that upsets me.”

“All right then. I’m going away tonight.”

“Where are you going? Where?”

“Why,” he said, “don’t you go back to Africa?”

“I don’t want to.” Her obsession with Ralph had made Africa seem a remote completed thing.

His next book was more successful than any he had written. The film was in preparation. He told Daphne he adored her really, and he quite saw that he led her a hell of a life. That was what it meant to be tied up with an artist, he was afraid.

“It’s worth it,” Daphne said, “and I think I can help you in some ways.”

He thought so too just at that moment, for it occurred to him that his latest book was all of it written during his association with Daphne. “I think we should get married,” he said.

Next day he left the flat and went abroad. Now, after two years her passion for him was not diminished, neither were her misery and dread.

Three weeks later he wrote from his mother’s address to suggest that she moved out of the flat. He would make a settlement.

She telephoned to his mother’s house. “He won’t speak to you,” his mother said. “I’m ashamed of him, to tell the truth.”

Daphne took a taxi to the house.

“He’s upstairs writing,” his mother said. “He’s going away somewhere else tomorrow. I hope he stays away, to tell the truth.”

“I must see him,” said Daphne.

His mother said, “He makes me literally ill. I’m too old for this sort of thing, my dear. God bless you.”

She went and called upstairs, “Ralph, come down a moment, please.” She waited till she heard his footsteps on the stairs, then she disappeared quickly.

“Go away,” said Ralph to Daphne. “Go away and leave me in peace.”