Angel (24 page)

Theo received her kindly. He guessed something of the difficulties of her life without being able to imagine the compensations. She glanced round the office nervously, and seemed reassured by the sight of a row of Angel's novels in a bookcase.

“And how is Angel?” Theo asked. He looked tired and his beard was full of silver hairs. Willie Brace was in the Army and Hermione in the suburbs at work as a V.A.D. He was left in London with a great many worries: Angel was not the least of them.

“She is thinking of buying a motor-car,” Nora said, as if this told him what he wanted to know.

“And who will drive it?”

“She is getting a chauffeur, in fact, she had really arranged for the chauffeur before she thought of the car. He can help in the garden as well, you see.”

“Is he a very old man?”

“No, he is middle-aged. He was called up, but luckily he had an abscess on the brain . . . yes, I think it was that . . . something, anyhow, which has left him a little odd in the head.”

“How very fortunate. A part from the motor-car, her health is good?”

“She is never ill. I have never known anyone so strong. But she is so restless in her mind. If only Esmé could get home on leave; yet sometimes I think that it might only make it worse for her. I shall never forget the day he went away—how inconsolable she was.”

“Miss Howe-Nevinson, would you think that you have any influence over her?”

“None,” said Nora honestly.

“Then I don't know what we are to do. I asked you to come and see me—and I realise how justly angry she would be if she knew—because I think I know something of your position there. She confides in you over business matters?”

“I look after them for her.”

“So I thought. Then you realise how things are. Her last book—it has been worse than a disappointment.”

“Yes, I realise. I thought it was because of the war.”

“I am afraid it is because of the book. She will never listen to reason from me. I wondered if she would from you.” Nora shook her head.

“Well, then what are we to do? There is a different public now and she does not attract it; her old public is baffled and antagonised by all this pacifism: not only do they not agree with it in principle, but they see no place for it in a romantic novel and I am afraid that they are right. I have said so, but she will not listen.”

“She is a great writer all the same,” said Nora, lifting her chin high and blushing. “Nothing can alter that.”

“She is a writer with increasing commitments, too,” Theo said sternly. “Commitments that are not my affair, perhaps; but as her friend I feel great anxiety and some responsibility. Quite frankly, I don't like the sound of her new book: in fact, I dread its arrival. I wish that she would go back to her old style and give people something to excite them and enliven them and take them out of this wretched present: if she does not, I wonder what will happen.”

Nora looked into her lap, like a little girl who is being scolded.

“I am not only speaking as her publisher; but as her friend as well,” he said.

“She won't listen to me. I dare not speak to her about it. She hates criticism, and you can't imagine how fiery and obstinate she is.”

“I think I can, as well as anyone.”

“If the war could end and Esmé come home again, all the bees in her bonnet might stop buzzing.”

“And it might be too late.”

“We must hope for the best,” said Nora.

He thought her extraordinarily placid. He sent for a cab and took her to tea at Gunters; the least he could do, he supposed. She was arch and gay as if she had come to London solely for this treat, and he wondered if she had ever been taken out to tea before; with that moustache, he rather thought not. There were so many officers there with young women that she felt she had edged up to the war as close as she was likely to get.

“Another thing,” Theo said, “I cannot have that photograph of her as a frontispiece. That is her latest idea. But why should I bother you? It is most unfair of me. It is I who must tell her. You know the one I mean. She is standing on a sort of plinth, with some drapery blowing about her . . . taken in Greece . . . rather crooked . . . not that it couldn't be straightened; but it just won't do.” I suppose I ought not to speak to her like this, he thought. Very disloyal and not her friend's affair anyhow. He just hoped that some of it might seep through to Angel. Nora had fallen silent, and her face was turned at a strange angle, sideways to him, as if she were averting it from someone. She shielded her pale cheek with her hand.

“Will you please take me away?” she asked him, as soon as he stopped speaking. “I feel faint. It is so hot in here.”

“Shall I send for some water or sal volatile?”

“Oh, no no! Please, if I could just go quickly and with as little disturbance as possible. I am sorry.”

All the way out to the street, she whispered apologies. He called a taxi and went with her to her aunt's house. As they drove towards Kensington, he patted her gently on the knee and said: “You needn't pretend. I saw what you saw. I shall keep it to myself.”

“Esmé?” she whispered.

He nodded.

“Oh, dear, what am I to do?”

“Nothing: be careful to do simply nothing, put it out of your mind, for ever; no matter how difficult it may be to do so or however provoked you sometimes may be.”

“Oh, I should not speak from provocation; but only if I thought it best for her.”

“It wouldn't be.”

When they reached her aunt's house, he asked: “Do you think he saw you?”

“I don't know. I looked away at once.”

He saw you, Theo thought. “Pretend that he didn't,” he said. “Say nothing to him when you meet. And don't worry. They are strange times and people behave in war as they wouldn't in peace.”

“But Angel wouldn't see it at all like that.”

Neither did Theo. He said: “That is why we must protect her from knowing. I wish that I had not brought you to London. I have worried you and let you in for this shock.”

But Nora had recovered. Her cheeks now burnt quite brightly as she shook hands with him and went up the steps towards her aunt's front door.

Much more sadly, Theo got back into the cab. He knew that Esmé had seen them, and hoped that he would trust in their discretion, not lose his head and confess to Angel when there was no need; but he hoped, too, that, knowing himself discovered, he would try to make amends. He will ruin her with his callous ways, he thought angrily.

Esmé had been sitting, half-turned away from them, gazing intently across the table at the girl with the fluffy hair and the grey velvet hat. She had shaken her head at him as if he were behaving like a naughty child; then her face grew serious, with a pensive, a sympathetic look; then she blushed. He has not seen me, Theo had assured himself, with a hand on Nora's elbow as he steered her towards the door. They see only one another. At that moment, Esmé had looked up. His glance had skidded past Theo to Nora, whose back was just, but too late, Theo thought, disappearing from view.

“We will pretend that it never happened,” Angel said on Armistice Day. Esmé, hunched up on his crutches, looked ruffled and disgruntled. On some days, when it rained, especially, his leg ached more than usual. His trousers were pinned up neatly above the knee where the limb was severed. “If it hadn't happened to me, I'd have done it myself,” he had said at the time. “I had just about had enough of flaming France.” Now, he longed to walk freely about the garden again: he was not adept with his crutches and Marvell, the chauffeur, had always to be at hand to help him. “My Nannie,” Esmé said.

So they were to forget the war, he thought. “I do so hope that I shall not be a reminder,” he told Angel, who smiled fondly at him. This fond smile was sometimes more than he could tolerate: it made him feel quite vicious towards her. Now she will pat my head or tousle my hair, he thought. Instead, she came to him and laid her hand on his shoulder. If it weren't for Nannie, I should go mad, he often thought.

There did not seem to him to be anything dim-witted about Marvell; on the contrary, he was brisk and spry; he had used his loaf, he told Esmé, and was still using it, to make for himself the snuggest, most leisurely life he could, camping out in cosy squalor in rooms over the stables, and cooking for himself on a primus-stove: there was a perpetual smell of onions frying or onions fried when Esmé went to see him, as he often did to pass the time. It suited them both to sit and talk about horse-racing; the garden, in which Esmé had once taken such pride, was a disheartening sight. He had come back from hospital to find it overgrown, unrecognisable, and he had lashed out pettishly at some nettles with one of his crutches and called Marvell out to do some weeding, cursing him. They still, if it were a fine day, would fill a wheelbarrow or two with thistles, Esmé sitting on the grass or shuffling along on his bottom like a toddler, and Marvell moaning and gasping about his rheumatism. He was certainly no gardener and was content to break the thistles off at the root. At the first spot of rain, he would help Esmé to his feet and back they would go to the rooms over the stables where he would make some cocoa and bring out the racing papers.

“You ought to make the effort and go one day,” he told Esmé. “It would take you out of yourself. Could get to Newbury all right; maybe Cheltenham.”

“How the deuce can I go like this?”

“I could take you in the motor and see you were all right. Chum you into Tattersalls, if need be.”

“It's an idea,” Esmé said. “Quite an idea, Nannie, you artful old sod. I shall have to look into it.”

“Well, here's the racing-calendar if you want it. You can take your pick, sir.”

When Esmé mentioned going to the races, Nora said: “So you are starting all that again?”

“Well, God! I must pass the time somehow. The hours go so slowly in this drowsy, dopey place.”

“You should do some work. What about that fine studio? It seems rather wasted on you.”

“How can I paint like this?”

“I get tired of hearing you say ‘How can I do this?' ‘How can I do that?' Other men manage to. Are you going to make excuses for the rest of your life?”

In the middle of their now frequent disagreements, caution would suddenly silence him. He dreaded provoking her to a dangerous disclosure. If she had seen him in London when he was on leave, was she biding her time, waiting to be rid of him when the best opportunity arose? But he could not think why she should wait, unless it was a feline pleasure for her to do so, to keep him busy with conjecture. One day he would be quite sure that she knew nothing: he even dared to mention Gunters, tempting providence; not able to bear the uncertainty any longer. “Heavenly ices there before the war.”

“Have you seen my silver thimble anywhere?” Nora asked Angel. Her voice was so smooth, so casual. Surely she was not changing the conversation: she was scarcely listening to what he was saying—chatter about ice-creams, merely, which could not interest her. But he could not be sure. The next day she had said to Angel, who was talking about hats: “Why not have a grey velvet one? I saw such a pretty one when I went to London that time. It was ruched and trimmed with yellow osprey-feathers.” She described just such a hat as Laura had been wearing at tea that day in Gunters.

“Grey doesn't suit my colouring,” said Angel. “And I don't approve of women wearing osprey-feathers. They are torn out of the living birds.”

“Yes, I suppose it is rather cruel,” Nora murmured thoughtfully.

Angel's tranquillity was wonderful. The war had ended for her on the summer's day in 1918 when the telegram had come. She had been sitting on the terrace correcting proofs. Nora was cutting blossoms for her carnation wine, and their scent drifted into the scent of the lime-flowers on the avenue. The perfumes alternated as the breeze changed its direction. It was a humming, buzzing afternoon. The sound of Nora's scissors snipping away grew fainter as she moved farther along the herbaceous border. Angel had looked up at the new sound of a bicycle on the gravel drive.

She took the telegram fearfully and opened it. Nora, straightening her back and turning towards her, saw her read, then close her eyes. He is dead, she thought. He has been killed. She dropped the scissors into the basket and went towards her. As she drew near, she saw a look of rapture upon Angel's face. She held out the telegram to Nora and her hand was shaking. “He is wounded,” she said. “At last. And he is coming home.”

“Angel by name and Angel by nature,” said Esmé who was still a little drunk from before luncheon. From the library window he was watching Marvell putting some large cans of broth into the car. “Or the Lady Bountiful of Paradise House,” he added.

Marvell, who was also a little drunk, and from the same occasion, turned and winked at him and then assumed an obsequious expression even more impertinent.

“It is a good thing we are not all as selfish as you,” said Nora, who was sitting by the fire, darning Esmé's socks. Which I also knitted in the first place, she thought.

“I bet they pour the stuff down the sink as soon as she's gone.”

“You bet too much,” was all she said.

Now Angel went down the steps towards the car. She was wearing a tweed cape and carried a basket full of jars of jam.

“Pots of jam now,” Esmé said, watching.

I made the jam, too, Nora allowed herself to think just for a second before she brushed the disloyal thought aside.

I bet too much, Esmé thought. If only she knew.

His gratuity had gone long ago. He owed one of his army friends money, a great deal of money. They had met at Newbury and taken a long time on their journey home. Esmé had hoped to make good his racing losses at poker, but had not done so. The friend has made a fairly swift transformation into an enemy, had become cool and sarcastic, later had taken to writing insolent and threatening letters. Esmé now looked upon him with contempt: this made the insolence worse to bear. I really haven't a friend, I suppose, he thought, going through one name after another in his mind; but he meant, I haven't anyone left to borrow from.