Twenty Thousand Streets Under the Sky (52 page)

‘No, I can’t. But I should have thought it’d have been different at your age,’ said Mr. Eccles looking at her.

‘My age?’ said Ella, conscious of his look. ‘Why?’

‘Oh, nothing,’ said Mr. Eccles in a faintly unusual way, thus causing Ella instantly to anticipate that something else was coming. He was a terrific Oh nothinger, and his Oh nothings were certain omens of the utterance of anything but nothings. And his next remark proved her right.

‘I always thought,’ said Mr. Eccles, ‘that you beautiful young people liked to stuff yourself with pastries.’

Beautiful!
This was the last straw – the last of all the straws which the camel’s back of her blindness to his tendency had endured so far! Now, surely, there was no mistaking him. She was almost afraid of him. If he could say such things at tea-time, what was he going to say and do late at night? Would she be called upon to defend herself? Perhaps this was a mere ‘try-on’ – an elderly ‘Don Juan’ whose habit it was to take barmaids out, whose technique was the theatre and dinner, and who wielded his enormous economic power indiscriminately and unscrupulously. If that was so, she would ‘show’ him of course, but it might not be so.

In the meantime, she had been called both young and beautiful, and unless she was to pass it over, thereby mutely establishing immodest concurrence in his opinion, she had to make some protest. She paused, seeking the right words.

‘Eh? . . .’ said Mr. Eccles. . . .

‘Well,’ she said, ‘I daresay that
beautiful
young people do.’ (I.e.,
she
was
not
beautiful.)

‘What?’ said Mr. Eccles, still looking at her. . . .

‘
Oh nothing
,’ ‘
Eh?
’ ‘
What?
’ ‘
Eh?
’ ‘
Oh nothing
,’ ‘
What
?’ she was getting rather confused with these incessantly recurring yet mystic exclamations from a shy yet enveloping amorousness. She had thought she had made herself clear, but she would have to say it again.

‘I said,’ said Ella, ‘that no doubt if you
are
beautiful you
do
like eating pastries – but if you’re not beautiful it’s a different matter.’ That was clear enough she thought.

‘What?’ said Mr. Eccles.

Unless she was to go on repeating herself until the cows came home, Ella now had but one course open to her – that was, to look at the table and blush. This she did, colouring slowly and evenly under his gaze. Happily, the waitress here made a timely appearance and human thought was submerged for a moment or two in the brusque clatter of china upon marble and itself.

‘Shall I be mother?’ said Ella, and started to pour out the tea. But the episode was not closed.

‘What were you saying about beautiful young people?’ asked Mr. Eccles, as the teapot was yet poised in the air over the first cup.

‘What?’ said Ella. She could do some Whatting too, if she tried. She added, however,’ Do you take sugar?’

‘No, not for me, thanks.’

She passed him his cup and began to pour out her own.

‘You haven’t answered my question yet,’ said Mr. Eccles, stirring his tea.

‘Oh – what’s that?’ said Ella, successfully mimicking a young woman at once absent-minded and intent upon the fulfilment of her feminine duties.

‘I asked you what you were saying about beautiful young people.’

‘Oh,’ said Ella, ‘
That
. . . .’

She popped two lumps of sugar into her tea, hoping he would help her out by saying something else. But he did not.

‘You mean about beautiful young people liking pastries,’ she said.

‘Yes – that’s right.’

‘Well – what about them?’ She sipped at her tea.

‘Well – that’s what I was asking you.’ Mr. Eccles sipped at his.

‘Well, all I said,’ said Ella, ‘was that no doubt beautiful young people like eating pastries – but that if you’re not beautiful you don’t.’

‘Then what about the beautiful young people that
don
’
t
like eating pastries?’ asked Mr. Eccles.

‘How do you mean?’ asked Ella. Apart from everything else, she reflected, what unutterable
drivel
all this was! By degrees it had been assumed as an axiom that there was a famous universal law which governed beautiful young people on the one hand, and pastries on the other – which rendered each (in some obscure way) complementary to the other to all eternity, and which they were now arguing out with the seriousness of theologians.

‘I said,’ said Mr. Eccles, who was never afraid of repeating himself, ‘what about beautiful young people who
don
’
t
like eating pastries?’

‘Oh, well,’ said Ella, completely out of her depth. ‘I don’t know about
them
.’

‘But you must,’ said Mr. Eccles.

‘What?’ said Ella.

‘You’ve just told me that you yourself
don
’
t
like eating pastries.’

Of course she knew really what he was leading up to, and she could evade the issue no longer.

‘Well,’ she said, ‘
I
’
m
not beautiful.’ And blushed again.

‘Ah,’ said Mr. Eccles. . . .

That, and no more. Ella was a little disappointed. Having been forced to fish for a compliment, she would have liked to have seen something a little more exciting than ‘Ah’ at the end of her line. However, there was no real doubt of his meaning. Beautiful. She had never dreamed of getting near to being called such a thing in her life. Could
he really mean it? With this man there was no telling.

‘That was a wonderful play, wasn’t it?’ she said, changing the subject. ‘I don’t know when I’ve ever enjoyed one so much.’

‘You liked it, did you?’

‘Liked it? I should say I did.’

‘Oh well,’ said Mr. Eccles. ‘We’ll have a lot of that.’

She thought she was inured now to the appalling suggestiveness of his casual remarks, but this last one yet had the power to stimulate her to a fury of speculation. Nevertheless, she successfully concealed this, and again changing the subject by telling him she thought that his tea looked too strong, which led to a disinterested discussion on tea in general, she managed thenceforward to keep the conversation on a disinterested basis, until the waitress gave them their check, and it was time to go.

‘W
ELL NOW, LET
me see . . .’ said Mr. Eccles, as soon as they were outside again. ‘Which is our best way. . . .’

They had agreed upon a little walk in the Park as the next item in their programme; and there they were to ‘decide’ where they were going to have dinner. Mr. Eccles had now resumed all his pieces of clothing one after another, and was looking more like his old self.

‘I think we’d better walk to Piccadilly, and then take a bus along,’ said Mr. Eccles, and this they did.

They said little to each other as they made for Piccadilly. The crowds on the pavements were too thick, and there was too much traffic to wait hours on end for or dash in front of on the roads. And they said less in the bus, which they caught at the top of Waterloo Place, and which was packed inside and out. A seat was found for Ella, but Mr. Eccles was left strap-hanging. For this he kept his head low, in case his new
hat should collide with the ceiling, lurched a good deal on the quiet, and put what polish he could upon his dignity by peering and looking back in a critical way out of the window, rather as though London was being partially managed by him, and he had to see that the buildings were in their right places. Ella pretended that she was his assistant, and looked roughly where he looked. He only spoke once, and that was at one of the stops, where a lot of people got out and in. ‘A Veritable Sardine Tin,’ he murmured, leaning over. But Ella did not catch the words. ‘Pardon?’ she said. Mr. Eccles was just about to repeat himself, and had got as far as Veritable, when he was bumped into by a person. He looked sharply round at the bumper and Ella, in order to pretend that nothing had happened, asked him again what he said. ‘A Veritable Sardine Tin,’ repeated Mr. Eccles, but all the spontaneity and gaiety had gone out of the observation. Also he had that glassy look in his eyes, and after having taken another look at the offender he murmured something about Some People. Ella didn’t quite catch what, but knew that when people start calling other people Some, they had nothing nice to say about them. She therefore nodded in an ambiguous manner, which conveyed sympathy with Mr. Eccles, and anger at the person.

By the time they reached the Park, then, a complete, and not very enjoyable hiatus had been made in the flowering process of their friendship, and as they went in by the Wellington Gate, Ella felt as though they had to start all over again. They were walking alongside Rotten Row at a brisk pace, and he was again monosyllabic. She knew by now that he was a very touchy person, and she could see that the Veritable Sardine Tin casualty was still weighing on his mind. She braced herself to entertain him.

‘What part of the world do
you
live in, then, Mr. Eccles?’ she said, glad to call him ‘Mr. Eccles’ thus, and to begin again on a more formal basis, almost as though she had him across the bar.

‘Well, I’m living over at Chiswick at the moment. But I don’t fancy I shall be there much longer.’

‘Chiswick, eh? That’s a very nice part, isn’t it? I’ve never been there myself.’

‘Oh, yes, it’s all right,’ said Mr. Eccles, and added, in a rather forced way, ‘I have my sister-in-law staying with me at the moment.’

‘Oh yes?’ said Ella, and tried to create some mental picture of Mr. Eccles at home. Chiswick, an ‘infernal girl,’ and a sister-in-law – there was little enough to go on. And what attitude did (or would) sisters-in-law adopt towards new hats and matinées with barmaids?

‘One’s relations can get very trying at times, can’t they?’ said Mr. Eccles.

‘Yes, I should say they can,’ said Ella, a little pleased and flattered that he should have taken her into his confidence so far.

‘But then these Army people are often like that,’ said Mr. Eccles, gazing ahead of him in the feeble light of the Park lamps, ‘so I suppose one shouldn’t complain.’

‘Oh yes?’ said Ella, in an even tone, but knowing inwardly that he had opened the bombardment again with a frightful, devastating shell. Army people! It was impossible to take in all the implications of those words at once. She didn’t quite know what Army People meant: technically privates (like her brother who was killed in the war) were Army people. But from the painful yet unctuous way in which Mr. Eccles had dragged the phrase in, it here obviously covered some remote and haughty area between subalterns and Field Marshals, and left her humbled. So his people were Army People! She wondered (half ironically) that he condescended to speak to her!

‘They can be awful, can’t they?’ said Mr. Eccles.

‘Yes,’ said Ella. ‘I suppose they can.’

She could not help wishing that he would refrain from making a fool of himself (and her) by pretending that Army People were all in the day’s work, and that she was so wearily familiar with the company and stale goings-on of Army People that she must naturally agree with him that they were ‘awful.’ At the same time his pains to impress her
were so transparent that she could barely take offence; indeed from one point of view she felt inclined to like and pity him for all this, as being pathetically symptomatic of his homage for herself. And Army People! It was certainly a feather in his cap, whatever you said. There was a pause as they walked along.

‘So your people are Army People, are they, Mr. Eccles?’ she said. . . .

‘Oh yes,’ said Mr. Eccles. ‘
Old
Army People.’

Mr. Eccles brought out the word Old in a manner which put all Young, or New Army People out of the picture for good and all, and Ella, glancing at him, observed that he was striding beside her with the brusque determined air of an Old Army Person himself.

‘Were you in the Army, then, Mr. Eccles?’ said Ella, meaning to be polite, but quickly regretting her impulse.

‘No . . .’ said Mr. Eccles, judicially, ‘I wasn’t. As a matter of
Fact
.’

The inference was that he was as a matter of principle, as a matter of opportunity, as a matter of temperament, as a matter of everything, indeed, save as a matter of Fact – Fact being a concern one left to scientists, and other materialists, and didn’t bother one’s head about while walking through Hyde Park with a young lady.

Ella wished she hadn’t brought the subject up, and again changed it.

‘
AH – BUT ONE
does
get lonely – that’s the point,’ said Mr. Eccles, swallowing the remains of his white wine, and wiping his mouth with a serviette; and Ella realized that yet another Mr. Eccles was coming on the scene, a slightly wined, loquacious and confiding Mr. Eccles, who might at any moment accidentally drop some clue as to why he had taken
her out, why they were having dinner together, and what the whole business was about.

They were seated opposite each other at a table for two on the basement floor of Lyons’ Coventry Street Corner House. The time was about half-past nine. The orchestra was playing, drowning Mr. Eccles’ voice; and nearly every table in this vast, marble, subterranean Versailles for London’s hungry and teeming nondescripts, was engaged. Ella had at first been a little disappointed that he should have brought her to the Corner House; for she had been here before of an evening, and after the terrific splash he had made at the theatre, and what with Army people and one thing and another, she had somehow got it into her head that when he spoke of Dinner he had in mind somewhere a little more intimate, original and exciting – one of those little restaurants in Soho, say, which she had so often wondered about. But she at once reproved herself for greed in pleasure, and was in a way relieved to be on her own ground, where she knew how to behave and where she was suitably dressed. Besides, she was intensely fond of Lyons’ Corner House – with the fondness of all healthy-minded beings for palaces – and Mr. Eccles took a broad-minded view of the menu which made her gasp. He ordered two cocktails at once, and burst into the dizziest soups and lobster extravagances without turning a hair. He also ordered wine for himself, and persuaded Ella, much against her will, to take a little. Ella reckoned that what with the theatre and all the rest he had spent little less than thirty shillings on this jaunt already; and as one who seldom spent more than thirty pence on an outing altogether, she had a peculiar sense of being wasteful, and wanted to stop him. At the same time she had a peculiar sense of enjoying herself, of merely physically revelling, for the first time in her life, in the brilliant sunshine of his financial plane, and she wanted to do anything but stop him.