Friends and Lovers (7 page)

“Mother seems to think that painting is only some kind of social accomplishment, like being able to play a sweet little piece of music on the piano after dinner. And Father just doesn’t like painters. He says they are as bad as actors. Not respectable.

“Bohemian” is what he calls them.”

T didn’t know people still used that word,” her grandfather said, with a smile, and checked her rising indignation.

“Your father reminds me of George the First, who hated all ” boets and bainters.”

” You are just an old Highlander. I suppose the Stuarts always pronounced English correctly?”

“Well, they at least could speak it.” He paused.

“Even if that was just about all they could do,” he added.

“So your father dislikes all boets and bainters, does he?”

Penny regained her seriousness, but the anger had left her face. Her grandfather settled back in his chair, now ready to listen.

“Well,” she said, ‘he hates having them in his family. He says that painting is no good for a career if I want a career. You see, either I stay comfortably at home until I get married or I choose a career that can support me instead of a husband.”

“It is either-or, I suppose?” How like Charles, he thought.

“That is how Father seems to see it. And Mother thinks it a waste of time studying for any career, because women generally have to give up a serious career when they get married. But I thought that painting—well, that’s one thing that I–-” she hesitated.

“That you could go on with even after you marry?” her grandfather suggested.

“If you do marry.” He looked at her mischievously. He would be willing to wager that Penelope wouldn’t have to worry very much about a career.

And yet it was good for a woman to have trained her mind: that was something that was never lost. It was so typical of Charles Lorrimer to think that education was only valuable in relation to its earning power.

“Yes,” Penny said.

“Only, Father says painting is not a wise investment for the future. That is, in ease I don’t marry— after all, you just don’t marry any man who asks you: you’ve got to find one you really want to marry as much as he wants to marry you. So Father says that painting is too precarious for a career.”

“Well, it is. In that he is being very practical. It is like all the arts—a good walking-stick, but a bad crutch.”

“But if I don’t mind risking all that? Why can’t I at least try?”

Why not, her grandfather wondered. If she was serious and willing to work, why not?

“What do you intend School?” he asked.

“If I am good enough Please don’t laugh. And i I wouldn’t have a chanci she raised her eyes, an least I can try.”

Why not, he wondered “Well,” he said at last, you?”

She sensed his approval and enthusiastically. She about entrance into the S lations about the cost of it would be more ex pens for Moira, when you coi parties.

“Does that matter? Sui ” He is always worrying That was what he and N chance to go to Paris wit! respectable ones, too.” St. an edge of bitterness in father.

“Or perhaps they did the family. Oh, nonsensi chair in sudden anger.

”’ to let you go to the Slad Damn these Lowlanders of guilt.” He ceased ab happy. She was a loyal cr

“Sorry, Penny,” he sai impatience on my imprai a very wise man in his agree to let you go to ] you really are serious ab “Then you will back n-” Yes.” He came forwal to her feet, and they wa The sun was now low i turned the red cliffs acre Dr. MacLntyre was thi she gets to London, to any place where she can have a chance to be free. If she stays with her family she will have all the life crushed out of her. She will be filled with inhibitions. She will be blackmailed by security. And all her vitality will be drained out of her, and her mind will become a dead thing, and she will be—charmingly, sweetly, prettily—only half alive. Charles Lorrimer has moulded Mary. He is not going to repeat that pattern with Penelope if I can help it.

“You will find London hard, you know,” he said.

“You will be less comfortable than you are at home. And you may be lonely at first.

England can be a lonely place.”

T know.” She hugged his arm.

“But there are other things too. If I don’t make a fight for them now, then I’ll never get them. Later on I’d be too old to fight. Or I would have forgotten how.”

“I imagine you have still quite a way to go before you reach that stage. But it is just as well to make up your mind early in life. One life is too short. Penny; two would be much better. In the second one you could put into practice what the first one had taught you.” He turned away from the window, and he walked back to the fireplace. His voice became serious. “Now remember, my girl, if you go to London and have this freedom you are crying for, don’t confuse freedom with foolishness. You won’t, will you?”

Penny shook her head solemnly. And then she smiled, with so much humour in her expressive face that she smiled too.

“Well,” he said, ‘that’s that!” and settled into his armchair.

“Thank you. You are a darling,” Penny said. But she still did not leave.

Dr. MacLntyre looked pointedly at his abandoned newspaper.

“Did you have a nice afternoon?” Penny went on.

What’s coming now, he wondered.

“Very pleasant, thank you.”

“I’m afraid your work was badly interrupted today.”

To have one’s simple pleasures interrupted is worse, her grandfather thought.

He answered casually, “Oh, I rather enjoyed it. Bosworth is interesting. What we call ” good material.” I can see why Chaundler takes such an interest in him. The most rewarding thing about being a teacher, you know, is to winnow the grain from the chaff.”

“Then you did like him?”

The rich light from the western window filled the room.

Its colours now became alive, warm and soft, as they la-bathed in the golden rays. It was the best moment of th day, he thought.

Penny said anxiously, “Or didn’t you like him?” He roused himself.

“Like whom? Young Bosworth? 0’ course I liked him. Would I have spent two hours with him if I hadn’t?” He closed his eyes. Time for forty winks .. one of the rights of advancing age … very pleasant, too. Hi stretched his legs comfortably as the door closed behind Penny, and settled in his chair contentedly.

In the hall, square-shaped and furnished like a sitting-roon so that the visitors would not be eternally in the study, Moir; was sitting with more comfort than elegance on the smal couch. Some official-looking periodicals and Blue Books lai beside her, but on her lap was a fashion magazine. She lookec up guiltily, and then, seeing it was only her sister, openec the magazine again.

“Don’t work too hard,” Penny said.

Moira glanced at the periodicals.

“I’ve some notes to makf before supper,” she said.

“Provided, of course, that I am no interrupted.”

She looked pointedly at Penny, who had sa down on the arm of the couch and had picked up a Leagui of Nations pamphlet on minorities in Europe.

“You’ll manage it,” Penny told her.

“You still have fiyi minutes left.”

“As late as thatt Moira looked indignant. She said sharply ” What on earth were you talking about in the study? I wai timing myself by you.”

“About London. I say, Moira’—Penny had picked up i bulletin on white-slave traffic, hidden under the other) pamphlets, and opened it with interest—‘you do have to reac pretty widely for modern history, don’t you?”

Moira took the bulletin quickly out of her hands and replaced it under the others.

“I wish you’d leave things alone, she said crossly.

“And what about London? Do you mean yoi really are trying to go there next winter? You could ver^ well put in another year in Edinburgh and go later.

As I an doing.”

“Are you?”

“Look, stop fiddling with my papers and let me do som< work! I’ve done absolutely nothing all month, and I have so much to do.”

Penny picked up the fashion magazine, and turned over its glossy pages. For a moment she had been afraid that Moira would jump to the right conclusion.

And then Moira trust Moira looked up again and said, “Don’t tell me you and David Bosworth were talking economics!”

“Of course not.”

“He is taking a degree in something like that, isn’t he? Wasn’t that what George Fenton-Stevens told us?”

“Did he?” Penny seemed not in the least interested.

“Look, Moira.

Isn’t that a marvelous dress? I’d love one like that.”

Moira glanced at the advertisement.

“Black,” she said.

“Much too old.

You’d never be allowed to have it. What did he talk about, then? You were an awfully long time with him.”

“Oh, nothing very much. Just this and that.” Penny’s voice was bored.

Moira waited, but there was no more information. Had he really been dull, after all? Her irritation with Penny began to pass. She said, her voice dropping into the usual tone of one-sister-to-another, “You know, he is rather attractive, isn’t he? Which is strange, because he isn’t what you would call good-looking. Of course, he is very tall.

Tall men don’t have to be handsome, somehow.” “Here is some one still taller,” Penny said, showing her sister another advertisement.

“The women in these drawings are always eight feet tall, always absolutely slender, always young and beautiful. Do you think that real women imagine they will look like that if they could only buy these dresses?”

“Well, you ought to know. You rather fancied yourself in that black dress, didn’t you?”

“It would look nice even on some one who was only five feet five and a half inches,” Penelope said stubbornly.

“And it takes a young complexion to wear black attractively.”

“Just try that idea on Mummy, and see how far you get with it.”

Penny discarded the magazine and wandered over to the front-door.

Then she walked out over the slope of green grass. She looked towards the Sound. I am as restless as the sea, she thought. How I wish I were old. At least twenty-five, perhaps even thirty. No, thirty was too old. Twenty-five was better. When you were old you wouldn’t have this crushed feeling inside you; you would not need to make up dreams about life. When you were young they always ended the wrong way somehow. How often she had sat on the west shore, painting, dreaming, talking inside to herself.

And she had always ended by thinking what a perfect place it was to have some one else to talk to, some one who knew what you wanted to be said, some one who didn’t interrupt or laugh at the wrong places and who would talk as if he knew what you were thinking. And sometimes he would not talk at all, leaving well enough alone. To-day had been that kind of day. And, of course, it had to be spoiled.

Perhaps David Bosworth had become bored: he must know so many girls in Oxford and London, pretty girls, amusing girls, girls old enough to wear smart little black dresses. Or who wore them, whether they were old enough or not.

She looked down at her woollen sweater and flannel skirt, at her flat-heeled brogues and smooth stockings. Bare legs were indecent, they said. She shook her head and sighed. If she were old, then she would never feel that she was being laughed at.

Had he been laughing at her?

“Oh, damn!” she said suddenly, and then looked quickly round. There was no one there to overhear.

“Damn and blast!” she said.

There was only one thing to be thankful for. Moira had not seen how happy she was when she came back from that walk. Then her sister would have questioned and teased her for days, until she would come to hate the sound of Bosworth. And how Mother would have lectured: silly ideas, romantic nonsense. Perhaps they were silly and romantic.

But that did not explain why she should have been so happy, and then, as David walked away with George Fenton-Stevens and Captain Ma clean not happy at all. That couldn’t be explained. And you couldn’t ask advice about it, either. Not even from Grandfather. This wasn’t something like going to London. This was something you hid inside yourself and never even let anyone guess about. And never, most of all, David Bosworth.

Betty was calling, “Penny, you are late again.”

Penny turned towards the house.

“What’s wrong. Penny? Are you all right? Supper is ready, and we are all waiting.”

“Of course I’m all right.”

Betty blew out the corner of her mouth at a heavy lock of fair hair, too short to be held in place. Last week she had cut a fringe to look like Cleopatra’s, and then she had not liked it. Now she was plagued by its refusal to be brushed back.

“I’ve finished another chapter of my book,” she announced. “It’s thrilling.

You will read it tonight, won’t you?” Penny would always read things when you asked her to, but Moira would always say that she would read them when they were published some day, Betty thought, I’ll be a writer, a real writer with words all in print, and I’ll show Moira.

“All right,” Penny said, hiding her amusement. For Betty remembered she was going to be a writer every two months or so, and then she would dash off another chapter. Its length depended on the time she had to spare.

“How long is this chapter?”

“Pages and pages—three or four. My hero is caught in the rapids.

He’s almost killed. And I have a new idea for the title. Perils of the Amazon. How do you like that?”

“What was the first one, again?”

“First it was Smugglers of the Orinoco, and then I thought of Dwellers of the Zambezi, and then–-”

” It is the same story, isn’t it?”

Betty looked at Penny in surprise as they entered the house.

“Why, of course!”

“Versatile …” Penny said. She restrained herself until they had entered the dining-room, and then she could pretend to be smiling to every one round the table.

“Betty and I were discussing titles. I say, Betty, why don’t you just list all the titles, and that would be a story in itself? You could call it Variations on a Theme.”

“Sh!” her mother said warningly, and inclined her head towards their waiting grandfather. Penny bowed her head as the others were doing, but her eyes were not closed, and she studied her mother’s face as it registered thankfulness. It was just as Penny had thought when she had first entered the dining-room: her mother had been crying. She remembered, then, that there had been no reproach for being late for supper. She looked quickly towards her grandfather. He had finished saying Grace, and he was now admitting nothing beyond the excellence of the food.