Point Counter Point, Page 30

  The last straw was Beatrice Gilray. The cup of Miss Cobbett’s bitterness overflowed when Beatrice was installed at the office—in the editorial department, what was more, actually doing some of the writing for the paper. Miss Cobbett comforted herself a little by the thought that the writing was only Shorter Notices, which Were quite unimportant. But still, she was bitterly resentful. She was much better educated than that fool of a Beatrice, much more intelligent too. It was just because Beatrice had money that she was allowed to write. Beatrice had put a thousand pounds into the paper. She worked for nothing—and worked, what was more, like mad; just as Miss Cobbett herself had worked, at the beginning. Now, Miss Cobbett did as little as she could. She stood on her rights, never arrived a minute early, never stayed a minute past her allotted time. She did no more than she was paid to do. Burlap was annoyed, resentful, distressed; he would either have to do more work himself or employ another secretary. And then, providentially, Beatrice turned up. She took over all the subediting which Miss Cobbett now had no time to do. To compensate her for the subediting and the thousand pounds he allowed her to do a little writing. She didn’t know how to write, of course; but that didn’t matter. Nobody ever read the Shorter Notices.

  When Burlap went to live in Beatrice Gilray’s house, Miss Cobbett’s cup overflowed again. In the first moment of anger she was rash enough to give Beatrice a solemn warning against her tenant. But her disinterested solicitude for Beatrice’s reputation and virginity was too manifestly and uncontrollably tinged with spite against Burlap. The only effect of her admonition was to exasperate Beatrice into sharp retort.

  ‘She’s really insufferable,’ Beatrice complained to Burlap afterwards, without, however, detailing all the reasons she had for finding the woman insufferable.

  Burlap looked Christ-like. ‘She’s difficult,’ he admitted. ‘But one’s sorry for her. She’s had a hard life.’

  ‘I don’t see that a hard life excuses anybody from behaving properly,’ she rapped out.

  ‘But one has to make allowances,’ said Burlap, wagging his head.

  ‘If I were you,’ said Beatrice, ‘I wouldn’t have her in the place; I’d send her away.’

  ‘No, I couldn’t do that,’ Burlap answered, speaking slowly and ruminatively, as though the whole discussion were taking place inside himself. ‘Not in the circumstances.’ He smiled a Sodoma smile, subtle, spiritual and sweet; once more he wagged his dark, romantic head. ‘The circumstances are rather peculiar.’ He went on vaguely, never quite definitely explaining what the rather peculiar circumstances were, and with a kind of diffidence, as though he were reluctant to sing his own praises. Beatrice was left to gather that he had taken and was keeping Miss Cobbett out of charity. She was filled with a mixed feeling of admiration and pity—admiration for his goodness and pity for his helplessness in an ungrateful world.

  ‘All the same,’ she said, and she looked fierce, her words were like sharp little mallet taps, ‘I don’t see why you should let yourself be bullied. I wouldn’t let myself be treated like that.’

  From that time forward she took every opportunity of snubbing Miss Cobbett and being rude. Miss Cobbett snapped, snubbed and was sarcastic in return. In the offices of the Literary World the war was open. Remotely, but not quite impartially, like a god with a prejudice in favour of virtue—virtue being represented in the present case by Beatrice—Burlap hovered mediatingly above the battle.

  The episode of Romola Saville gave Miss Cobbett an opportunity for being malicious.

  ‘Did you see those two terrifying poetesses?’ she enquired of Beatrice, with a deceptive air of friendliness, the next morning.

  Beatrice glanced at her sharply. What was the woman up to? ‘Which poetesses?’ she asked suspiciously.

  ‘Those two formidable middleaged ladies the editor asked to come and see him under the impression that they were one young one.’ She laughed. ‘Romola Saville. That’s how the poems were signed. It sounded so romantic. And the poems were quite romantic too. But the two authoresses! Oh, my goodness. When I saw the editor in their clutches I really felt quite sorry for him. But after all, he did bring it on himself. If he will write to his lady contributors…

  That evening Beatrice renewed her complaints about Miss Cobbett. The woman was not only tiresome and impertinent; one could put up with that if she did her job properly; she was lazy. Running a paper was a business like any other. One couldn’t afford to do business on a basis of sentimentality. Vaguely, diffidently, Burlap talked again about the peculiar circumstances of the case. Beatrice retorted. There was an argument.

  ‘There’s such a thing as being too kind,’ Beatrice sharply concluded.

  ‘Is there?’ said Burlap; and his smile was so beautifully and wistfully Franciscan, that Beatrice felt herself inwardly melting into tenderness.

  ‘Yes, there is,’ she rapped out, feeling more hard and hostile towards Miss Cobbett as she felt more softly and maternally protective towards Burlap. Her tenderness was lined, so to speak, with indignation. When she didn’t want to show her softness, she turned her feelings inside out and was angry. ‘Poor Denis,’ she thought, underneath her indignation

  ‘He really needs somebody to look after him. He’s too good.’ She spoke aloud

  ‘And you’ve got a shocking cough,’ she said reproachfully with an irrelevance that was only apparent. Being too good, having nobody to look after one and having a cough—the ideas were logically connected. ‘What you need,’ she went on in the same sharp commanding tones, ‘is a good rubbing with camphorated oil and a wad of Thermogene.’ She spoke the words almost menacingly, as though she were threatening him with a good beating and a month on bread and water. Her solicitude expressed itself that way; but how tremulously soft it was underneath the surface!

  Burlap was only too happy to let her carry out her tender threat. At halfpast ten he was lying in bed with an extra hot-water bottle. He had drunk a glass of hot milk and honey and was now sucking a soothing lozenge. It was a pity, he was thinking, that she wasn’t younger. Still, she was really amazingly youthful for her age. Her face, her figure—more like twentyfive than thirtyfive. He wondered how she’d behave when finally she’d been coaxed past her terrors. There was something very strange about these childish terrors in a grown woman. Half of her was arrested at the age at which Uncle Ben had made his premature experiment. Burlap’s devil grinned at the recollection of her account of the incident.

  There was a tap at the door and Beatrice entered carrying the camphorated oil and the Thermogene.

  ‘Here’s the executioner,’ said Burlap laughing. ‘Let me die like a man.’ He undid his pyjama jacket. His chest was white and well-covered; the contour of the ribs only faintly showed through the flesh. Between the paps a streak of dark curly hair followed the line of the breastbone.’do your worst,’ he bantered on. ‘I’m ready.’ His smile was playfully tender.

  Beatrice uncorked the bottle and poured a little of the aromatic oil into the palm of her right hand. ‘Take the bottle,’ she commanded,’ and put it down.’ He did as he was told. ‘Now,’ she said, when he was stretched out again unmoving; and she began to rub.

  Her hand slid back and forth over his chest, back and forth, vigorously, efficiently. And when the right was tired, she began again with the left, back and forth, back and forth.

  ‘You’re like a little steam engine,’ said Burlap with his playfully tender smile.

  ‘I feel like one,’ she answered. But it wasn’t true. She felt like almost anything but a steam engine, She had had to overcome a kind of horror before she could touch that white, full-fleshed chest of his. Not that it was ugly or repulsive. On the contrary, it was rather beautiful in its smooth whiteness and fleshy strength. Fine, like the torso of a statue. Yes, a statue. Only the statue had dark little curls along the breastbone and a little brown mole that fluttered up and down with the pulsing skin over the heart. The statue lived; that was the disquieting thing. The white naked breast was beautif
ul; but it was almost repulsively alive. To touch it…She shuddered inwardly with a little spasm of horror, and was angry with herself for having felt so stupidly. Quickly she had stretched out her hand and begun to rub. Her palm slid easily over the lubricated skin. The warmth of his body was against her hand. Through the skin she could feel the hardness of the bones. There was a bristle of roughness against her fingers as they touched the hairs along the breastbone, and the little paps were firm and elastic. She shuddered again, but there was something agreeable in the feeling of horror and the overcoming of it; there was a strange pleasure in the creeping of alarm and repulsion that travelled through her body. She went on rubbing, a steam engine only in the vigour and regularity of her movements, but, within, how quiveringly and self-dividedly alive!

  Burlap lay with his eyes shut, faintly smiling with the pleasure of abandonment and self-surrender. He was feeling, luxuriously, like a child, helpless; he was in her hands, like a child who is its mother’s property and plaything, no longer his own master. Her hands were cold on his chest; his flesh was passive and abandoned, like so much clay, under those strong cold hands.

  ‘Tired?’ he asked, when she paused to change hands for the third time. He opened his eyes to look at her.

  She shook her head. ‘I’m as much bother as a sick child.’

  ‘No bother at all.’

  But Burlap insisted on being sorry for her and apologetic for himself. ‘Poor Beatrice!’ he said. ‘All you have to do for me! I’m quite ashamed.’

  Beatrice only smiled. Her first shudderings of unreasonable repulsion had passed off. She felt extraordinarily happy.

  ‘There!’ she said at last. ‘Now for the Thermogene.’ She opened the cardboard box and unfolded the orange wool. ‘The problem is how to stick it on to your chest. I’d thought of keeping it in place with a bandage. Two or three turns right round the body. What do you think?’

  ‘I don’t think anything,’ said Burlap who was still enjoying the luxury of infantility. ‘I’m utterly in your hands.’

  ‘Well, then, sit up,’ she commanded. He sat up. ‘Hold the wool on to your chest while I pass the bandage round.’ To bring the bandage round his body she had to lean very close to him, almost embracing him; her hands met for a moment behind his back, as she unwound the bandage. Burlap dropped his head forward and his forehead rested against her breast. The forehead of a tired child on the soft breast of its mother.

  ‘Hold the end a moment while I get a safety-pin.’

  Burlap lifted his forehead and drew back. Rather flushed, but still very business-like and efficient, Beatrice was detaching one from a little card of assorted safety pins.

  ‘Now comes the really difficult moment,’ she said, laughing. ‘You won’t mind if I run the pin into your flesh.’

  ‘No, I won’t mind,’ said Burlap and it was true; he wouldn’t have minded. He’d have been rather pleased, if she had hurt him. But she didn’t. The bandage was pinned into position with quite professional neatness.

  ‘There!’

  ‘What do you want me to do now?’ asked Burlap, greedy to obey.

  ‘Lie down.’

  He lay down. She did up the buttons of his pyjama jacket. ‘Now you must go to sleep as quickly as you can.’ She pulled the bedclothes up to his chin and tucked them in. Then she laughed. ‘You look like a little boy.’

  ‘Aren’t you going to kiss me goodnight?’

  The colour came into Beatrice’s cheeks. She bent down and kissed him on the forehead. ‘Goodnight,’ she said. And suddenly she wanted to take him in her arms, to press his head against her breast and stroke his hair. But she only laid her hand for a moment against his cheek, then hurried out of the room.

  CHAPTER XIX

  Little Phil was lying on his bed. The room was in an orange twilight. A thin needle of sunshine came probing in between the drawn curtains. Phil was more than usually restless.

  ‘What’s the time?’ he shouted at last, though he had shouted before and been told to keep quiet.

  ‘Not time for you to get up,’ Miss Fulkes called back from across the passage. Her voice came muffled, for she was half-way into her blue frock, her head involved in silken darkness, her arms struggling blindly to find the entrance to their respective sleeves. Phil’s parents were arriving to-day; they would be at Gattenden for lunch. Miss Fulkes’s blue best was imperatively called for.

  ‘But what’s the time?’ the child shouted back angrily. ‘On your watch, I mean.’

  Miss Fulkes’s head came through into the light. ‘Twenty to one,’ she called back. ‘You must be quiet.’

  ‘Why isn’t it one?’

  ‘Because it isn’t. Now I shan’t answer you any more. And if you shout again I shall tell your mother how naughty you’ve been.’

  ‘Naughty!’ Phil retorted, putting a tearful fury into his voice—but so softly, that Miss Fulkes hardly heard him. ‘I hate you!’ He didn’t of course. But he had made his protest; honour was saved.

  Miss Fulkes went on with her toilet. She felt agitated, afraid, painfully excited. What would they think of Phil— her Phil, the Phil she had made? ‘I hope he’ll be good,’ she thought. ‘I hope he’ll be good.’ He could be an angel, so enchanting when he chose. And when he wasn’t an angel, there was always a reason; but one had to know him, one had to understand him in order to see the reason. Probably they wouldn’t be able to see the reason. They had been away so long; they might have forgotten what he was like. And in any case they couldn’t know what he was like now, what he had grown into during these last months. She alone knew that Phil. Knew him and loved him—so much, so much. She alone. And one day she would have to leave him. She had no rights over him, no claim to him; she only loved him. They could take him away from her whenever they wanted. The image of herself in the glass wavered and was lost in a rainbow fog and suddenly the tears overflowed on to her cheeks.

  The train was punctual, the car in attendance. Philip and Elinor climbed in.

  ‘Isn’t it wonderful to be here?’ Elinor took her husband’s hand. Her eyes shone. ‘But, good Lord,’ she added, in a tone of horror and without waiting for his answer,’ they’ re building a lot of new houses on the hill there. How dare they?’

  Philip looked. ‘Rather garden city, isn’t it?’ he said. ‘It’s a pity the English love the country so much,’ he added. ‘They’re killing it with kindness.’

  ‘But how lovely it still is, all the same. Aren’t you tremendously excited?’

  ‘Excited?’ he questioned, cautiously. ‘Well…

  ‘Aren’t you even pleased that you’re going to see your son again?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Of course!’ Elinor repeated the words derisively. ‘And in that tone of voice. I never thought there was any “of course” about it; but now the time has come, I’ve never been so excited in my life.’

  There was a silence; the car drove on windingly, down the lanes. The road mounted; they climbed through beechwoods to a wooded plateau. At the end of a long green vista the most colossal monument of Tantamount grandeur, the palace of the Marquess of Gattenden, basked far off in the sun. The flag flew; his lordship was in residence. ‘We must go and call on the old madman one day,’ said Philip. The fallow deer browsed in the park.

  ‘Why does one ever travel?’ said Elinor, as she looked at them.

  Miss Fulkes and little Phil were waiting on the steps. ‘I believe I hear the car,’ said Miss Fulkes. Her rather lumpy face was very pale; her heart was beating with more than ordinary force. ‘No,’ she added, after a moment of intent listening. What she had heard was only the sound of her own anxiety.

  Little Phil moved about uncomfortably, conscious only of a violent desire to ‘go somewhere.’ Anticipation had lodged a hedgehog in his entrails.

  ‘Aren’t you happy?’ asked Miss Fulkes, with assumed enthusiasm, selfsacrificingly determined that the child should show himself wild with joy to see his parents again. ‘Aren’t you tremendously exc
ited?’ But they could take him away from her if they wanted to, take him away and never let her see him again.

  ‘Yes,’ little Phil replied rather vaguely. He was preoccupied exclusively with the approach of visceral events.

  Miss Fulkes was disappointed by the flatness of his tone. She looked at him enquiringly. ‘Phil?’ She had noticed his uneasy Charleston. The child nodded. She took his hand and hurried him into the house.

  A minute later Philip and Elinor drove up to a deserted porch. Elinor couldn’t help feeling disappointed. She had so clearly visualized the scene—Phil on the steps frantically waving—she had so plainly, in anticipation, heard his shouting. And the steps were a blank.

  ‘Nobody to meet us,’ she said, and her tone was mournful.

  ‘You could hardly expect them to hang about, waiting,’ Philip replied. He hated anything in the nature of a fuss. For him, the perfect homecoming would have been in a cloak of invisibility. This was a good second best.

  They got out of the car. The front door was open. They entered. In the silent, empty hall three and a half centuries of life had gone to sleep. The sunlight stared through flat-arched windows. The panelling had been painted pale green in the eighteenth century. All ancient oak and high-lights, the staircase climbed up, out of sight, towards the higher floors. A smell of potpourri faintly haunted the air; it was as though one apprehended the serene old silence through another sense.

  Elinor looked round her, she took a deep breath, she drew her finger-tips along the polished walnut wood of a table, with the knuckle of a bent forefinger she rapped the round Venetian bowl that stood on it; the glassy bell-note lingered sweetly on the perfumed silence.