"Let's go down," Nicholas said.
The door opened and Rudi Bittesch stood watching them for a moment. Rudi was always sober.
"Rudi!" said Jane with unusual enthusiasm. She was glad to be seen to know somebody in this milieu who had not been introduced by Nicholas. It was a way of showing that she belonged to it.
"Well, well," Rudi said. "How are you doing these days, Nick, by the way?"
Nicholas said he was on loan to the Americans.
Rudi laughed like a cynical uncle and said, himself he too could have worked for the Americans if he had wanted to sell out.
"Sell out what?" Nicholas said.
"My integrity to work only for peace," said Rudi. "By the way, come and join the party and forget it."
On the way down he said to Nicholas, "You're publishing a book with Throvis-Mew? I hear this news by Jane."
Jane said quickly, in case Rudi should reveal that he had already seen the book, "It's a sort of anarchist book."
Rudi said to Nicholas, "You still like anarchism, by the way?"
"But not anarchists by and large, by the way," Nicholas said.
"How has he died, by the way?" said Rudi.
"He was martyred, they say," said Jane.
"In Haiti? How is this?"
"I don't know much, except what I get from the news sources. Reuters says a local rising. Associated News has a bit that's just come in ... I was thinking of that manuscript _The Sabbath Notebooks__."
"I have it still. If he is famous by his death, I find it. How has he died ... ?"
"I can't hear you, it's a rotten line ... I say I can't hear, Rudi ..."
"How has he died ... by what means?"
"It will be worth a lot of money, Rudi."
"I find it. This line is bad by the way, can you hear me? How has he died ... ?"
"... a hut . . ."
"I can't hear . . ."
". . . in a valley . . ."
"Speak loud."
"... in a clump of palms . . . deserted ... it was market day, everyone had gone to market."
"I find it. There is maybe a market for this Sabbath book. They make a cult of him, by the way?"
"He was trying to interfere with their superstitions, they said. They're getting rid of a lot of Catholic priests."
"I can't hear a word. I ring you tonight, Jane. We meet later."
5
Selina came into the drawing room wearing a high hoop-brimmed blue hat and shoes with high block wedges; these fashions from France, it was said, were symbols of the Resistance. It was late on Sunday morning. She had been for a seemly walk along the pathways of Kensington Gardens with Greggie.
Selina took off her hat and laid it on the sofa beside her. She said, "I've got a guest for lunch. Felix." Felix was Colonel G. Felix Dobell who was head of a branch of the American Intelligence Service which occupied the top floor of the hotel next door to the club. He had been among a number of men invited to one of the club's dances, and there had selected Selina for himself.
Jane said, "I'm having Nicholas Farringdon for lunch."
"But he was here during the week."
"Well, he's coming again. I went to a party with him."
"Good," said Selina. "I like him."
Jane said, "Nicholas works with the American Intelligence. He probably knows your Colonel."
It was found that the men had not met. They shared a table for four with the two girls, who waited on them, fetching the food from the hatch. Sunday lunch was the best meal of the week. Whenever one of the girls rose to fetch and carry, Felix Dobell half-rose in his chair, then sat down again, for courtesy. Nicholas lolled like an Englishman possessed of droits du seigneur while the two girls served him.
The warden, a tall grey-skinned woman habitually dressed in grey, made a brief announcement that "the Conservative M.P. was coming to give a pre-election discussion" on the following Tuesday.
Nicholas smiled widely so that his long dark face became even more good-looking. He seemed to like the idea of giving a discussion, and said so to the Colonel who amiably agreed with him. The Colonel seemed to be in love with the entire club, Selina being the centre and practical focus of his feelings in this respect. This was a common effect of the May of Teck Club on its male visitors, and Nicholas was enamoured of the entity in only one exceptional way, that it stirred his poetic sense to a point of exasperation, for at the same time he discerned with irony the process of his own thoughts, how he was imposing upon this little society an image incomprehensible to itself.
The grey warden's conversational voice could be heard addressing grey-haired Greggie who sat with her at table, "You see, Greggie, I can't be everywhere in the club at once."
Jane said to her companions, "That's the one fact that makes life bearable for us."
"That is a very original idea," said the American Colonel, but he was referring to something that Nicholas had said before Jane had spoken, when they were discussing the political outlook of the May of Teck Club. Nicholas had offered: "They should be told not to vote at all, I mean persuaded not to vote at all. We could do without the government. We could manage with the monarchy, the House of Lords, the ..."
Jane looked bored, as she had several times read this bit in the manuscript, and she rather wanted to discuss personalities, which always provided her with more real pleasure than any impersonal talk, however light and fantastic, although she did not yet admit this fact in her aspiring brain. It was not till Jane had reached the apex of her career as a reporter and interviewer for the largest of women's journals that she found her right role in life, while still incorrectly subscribing to a belief that she was capable of thought—indeed, was demonstrating a capacity for it. But now she sat at table with Nicholas and longed for him to stop talking to the Colonel about the happy possibilities inherent in the delivery of political speeches to the May of Teck girls, and the different ways in which they might be corrupted. Jane felt guilty about her boredom. Selina laughed with poise when Nicholas said, next, "We could do without a central government. It's bad for us, and, what's worse, it's bad for the politicians ..." but that he was as serious about this as it was possible for his self-mocking mind to be about anything, seemed to be apparent to the Colonel, who amazingly assured Nicholas, "My wife Gareth also is a member of the Guild of Ethical Guardians in our town. She's a hard worker."
Nicholas, reminding himself that poise was perfect balance, accepted this statement as a rational response. "Who are the Ethical Guardians?" said Nicholas.
"They stand for the ideal of purity in the home. They keep a special guard on reading material. Many homes in our town will not accept literature unstamped by the Guardians' crest of honour."
Nicholas now saw that the Colonel had understood him to hold ideals, and had connected them with the ideals of his wife Gareth, these being the only other ideals he could immediately lay hands on. It was the only explanation. Jane wanted to put everything straight. She said, "Nicholas is an anarchist."
"Ah no, Jane," said the Colonel. "That's being a bit hard on your author-friend."
Selina had already begun to realise that Nicholas held unorthodox views about things to the point where they might be regarded as crackpot to the sort of people she was used to. She felt his unusualness was a weakness, and this weakness in an attractive man held desirability for her. There were two other men of her acquaintance who were vulnerable in some way. She was not perversely interested in this fact, so far as she felt no urge to hurt them; if she did so, it was by accident. What she liked about these men was that neither of them wished to possess her entirely. She slept with them happily because of this. She had another man-friend, a business-man of thirty-five, still in the Army, very wealthy, not weak. He was altogether possessive; Selina thought she might marry him eventually. In the meantime she looked at Nicholas as he conversed in this mad sequence with the Colonel, and thought she could use him.
They sat in the drawing room and planned the afternoon which had developed into a prospective outing for four in the Colonel's car. By this time he had demanded to be called Felix.
He was about thirty-two. He was one of Selina's weak men. His weakness was an overwhelming fear of his wife, so that he took great pains not to be taken unawares in bed with Selina on their country weekends, even although his wife was in California. As he locked the door of the bedroom Felix would say, very worried, "I wouldn't like to hurt Gareth," or some such thing. The first time he did this Selina looked through the bathroom door; tall and beautiful with wide eyes, she looked at Felix to see what was the matter with him. He was still anxious and tried the door again. On the late Sunday mornings, when the bed was already uncomfortable with breakfast crumbs, he would sometimes fall into a muse and be far away. He might then say, "I hope there's no way Gareth could come by knowledge of this hideout." And so he was one of those who did not want to possess Selina entirely; and being beautiful and liable to provoke possessiveness, she found this all right provided the man was attractive to sleep with and be out with, and was a good dancer. Felix was blond with an appearance of reserved nobility which he must have inherited. He seldom said anything very humorous, but was willing to be gay. On this Sunday afternoon in the May of Teck Club he proposed to drive to Richmond, which was a long way by car from Knightsbridge in those days when petrol was so scarce that nobody went driving for pleasure except in an American's car, in the vague mistaken notion that their vehicles were supplied by "American" oil, and so were not subject to the conscience of British austerity or the reproachful question about the necessity of the journey displayed at all places of public transport.
Jane, observing Selina's long glance of perfect balance and equanimity resting upon Nicholas, immediately foresaw that she would be disposed in the front seat with Felix while Selina stepped, with her arch-footed poise, into the back, where Nicholas would join her; and she foresaw that this arrangement would come about with effortless elegance. She had no objection to Felix, but she could not hope to win him for herself, having nothing to offer a man like Felix. She felt she had a certain something, though small, to offer Nicholas, this being her literary and brain-work side which Selina lacked. It was in fact a misunderstanding of Nicholas—she vaguely thought of him as a more attractive Rudi Bittesch—to imagine he would receive more pleasure and reassurance from a literary girl than simply a girl. It was the girl in Jane that had moved him to kiss her at the party; she might have gone further with Nicholas without her literary leanings. This was a mistake she continued to make in her relations with men, inferring from her own preference for men of books and literature their preferences for women of the same business. And it never really occurred to her that literary men, if they like women at all, do not want literary women but girls.
But Jane was presently proved right in her prediction about the seating arrangements in the car; and it was her repeated accuracy of intuition in such particulars as these which gave her confidence in her later career as a prophetic gossip-columnist.
Meantime the brown-lined drawing room began to chirp into life as the girls came in from the dining room bearing trays of coffee cups. The three spinsters, Greggie, Collie and Jarvie, were introduced to the guests, as was their accustomed right. They sat in hard chairs and poured coffee for the young loungers. Collie and Jarvie were known to be in the process of a religious quarrel, but they made an effort to conceal their differences for the occasion. Jarvie, however, was agitated by the fact that her coffee cup had been filled too full by Collie. She laid the cup and swimming saucer on a table a little way behind her, and ignored it significantly. She was dressed to go out, with gloves, bag and hat. She was presently going to take her Sunday-school class. The gloves were made of a stout green-brown suede. Jarvie smoothed them out on her lap, then fluttered her fingers over the cuffs, turning them back. They revealed the utility stamp, two half-moons facing the same way, which was the mark of price-controlled clothes and which, on dresses, where the mark was merely stamped on a tape sewn on the inside, everyone removed. Jarvie surveyed her gloves' irremovable utility mark with her head at a slight angle, as if considering some questions connected with it. She then smoothed out the gloves again and jerkily adjusted her spectacles. Jane felt in a great panic to get married. Nicholas, on hearing that Jarvie was about to go to teach a Sunday-school class, was solicitous to enquire about it.
"I think we had better drop the subject of religion," Jarvie said, as if in conclusion of an argument long in progress. Collie said, "I thought we _had__ dropped it. What a lovely day for Richmond!"
Selina slouched elegantly in her chair, untouched by the threat of becoming a spinster, as she would never be that sort of spinster, anyway. Jane recalled the beginning of the religious quarrel overheard on all floors, since it had taken place in the echoing wash-room on the second landing. Collie had at first accused Jarvie of failing to clean the sink after using it to wash up her dishes of stuff, which she surreptitiously cooked on her gas-ring where only kettles were lawfully permitted. Then, ashamed of her outburst, Collie had more loudly accused Jarvie of putting spiritual obstacles in her path "just when you know I'm growing in grace." Jarvie had then said something scornful about the Baptists as opposed to the true spirit of the Gospels. This religious row, with elaborations, had now lasted more than two weeks but the women were doing their best to conceal it. Collie now said to Jarvie, "Are you going to waste your coffee with the milk in it?" This was a moral rebuke, for milk was on the ration. Jarvie turned, smoothed, patted and pulled straight the gloves on her lap and breathed in and out. Jane wanted to tear off her clothes and run naked into the street, screaming. Collie looked with disapproval at Jane's bare fat knees.