Gallions Reach Page 4

  “Sorry. I’ll give thanks for my dogfish then. I found a new parasite in the liver of one yesterday. Might be the same as the truth in literature.”

  “You stick to your protozoa, my lad,” said Doris.

  “Yes, I must. It seems as if anything more than unicellular is probably fake.”

  “No, not fake,” wisdom assured him. “There again you are imputing idealism where it cannot be found. Why name it?”

  Colet moved as if to ask the critic a question, but relaxed again. He refrained. The conversation continued, facile and inconsequential as an air-balloon to the touches of children. Were these people serious? Very likely such evenings were only the desperation of empty existences. But he looked again at the critic to confirm a sense of loss. He felt as if something of value had been withdrawn, by an authority who was able to declare, if pressed, that literature has nothing of more importance to say than a dado. Choose your dado to taste. Yet he had always read that critic’s contributions to the more serious reviews with respect, if bewilderment.

  Walcott, who had evoked this disillusion, saw Colet’s interest. The critic was now, in ironic humour, elaborating his views to Helen and Doris, tapping the edge of the table with a forefinger. The young ladies were as attentive as though he were a priest.

  “Look at his tie-pin,” whispered the biologist.

  Colet looked. It was an opal, but it was an opaque blue. There was no light in it.

  “Even his opal looks like the eye of a dead fish. Now he’s giving the girls the outlook of Bloomsbury.”

  “Don’t know it. What’s that like?”

  “The prospect of a dead fish. Nothing really matters. That’s all. But you ought to show good taste, though, and that is fairly easy if you consider other people’s preferences are very funny.”

  A girl danced languidly down the room between the tables as if she were expected to do it and were getting it over. She avoided the eyes of the diners, but only a few of the men looked at her as she approached, and the elder women glanced after her critically when she had passed their table. Colet watched her go by, and felt still more humiliated. Helen saw his detachment, and his dislike as the dancer swam past. The critic had not amused her. Things, she understood, were certainly good if you thought they were, and if you thought they were poor they could be entertaining, sometimes. She was glad Jimmy was different. He was not an intellectual. You could hold on to him—more like a coarse man. She had mocked his beard, but after all it was the only one in the room. Just under the reddish cheekbones it was golden, but it was grizzled already by the sides of the mouth, and under the lower lip. She had not noticed this before. When he turned his head to young Walcott—they seemed very friendly this evening—a muscle stretched like a strong cable from his ear to his throat. He looked solid, and as if he would last. There he was. The evening could be a success after all.

  But when Colet chanced to see her face Helen had turned it, in the idleness of contentment, to the Russians. She was an admirer of that critic, he thought. Used to recommend his stuff to him. She was part of this place. He was an outsider. Better be off. Most of these people were a little queer, like the pictures painted on the walls. Over their table was a puzzle of heterogeneous yellow and crimson geometry, in which he could make out a one-eyed woman who would have been nude but for the chance intervention of a greenish rhomb. There were no vitals to the room. It was heartless. Night was outside, and you could wander there alone, and would not have to listen to anything clever. He rose, and squeezed the shoulder of the biologist. “I’ll be off. I’ll leave you to it.”

  Outside, the look of the stars above the parapets of the houses opposite, and even the smell, on a still night, of London’s pavements that had been heated all day by the sun, were better. Nothing ingenious about that, even if it had no meaning. No false contact. He stood by the kerb, free again, deciding which way he should turn.

  “I’m coming too, Jimmy, I could see you were bored. So was I. Come along.” Helen laid her hand on his arm.

  “You were?” He hesitated.

  “Of course. Did you think you were going to escape like this?” She laughed quietly, in confidence. She could rely on Jimmy.

  He, though, was suspicious that the friendly night was being taken from him as soon as he had found it. He was reluctant to share the street with any one. It surprised him that she had left her friends. Why was that? He could trust himself, when alone. There was safety in the night, but he knew he could not be sure of himself if she were close to him. Then he was largely in abeyance. It was as if most other human creatures were inimical. They were so remarkably not the same that they were uncanny. He felt strongly drawn to that clever, supple woman beside him, and resented her for that reason. There was no privacy with a woman. The soul got mauled about.

  Besides, she had not left that dinner-table because its talk was glib and sparkling. She liked that. She’d brought that atmosphere with her. She admired those people in there. They were all clever, and he felt a slow fool. But if they were clever, perhaps that only meant they could justify their hollow insides. They could make their dry and dusty cavities seem more like nature than having guts. Lord, they could make a heart feel ashamed, compared with an interior that had a thick settlement of knowledge on its hard ledges. If that was Bloomsbury, give him Billiter Avenue. You knew there where you were.

  “It’s better out here, Jimmy.”

  He found it hard to believe she meant that. She meant it at the moment; that was all. But what an autocrat she was in that cloak. He wanted to believe her. If he could do that he would surrender. Here was luck, for a woman like this to show she wanted him. Helen was as clever as they were made. Then why did she want him? Even the pictures she painted were malicious, as if her insight were diabolical. Sometimes her designs and figures were as though she was contemptuous of the world, and wanted to expose it. He would sooner look at the traffic now, and have no reason to talk. He would not accept her; she did not belong to him. It didn’t do to look at that full throat of hers, and then at her eyes. Common sense went then. Was it time it did?

  As they walked, and she stepped in unison with him no matter how in irritation he broke his stride, for she was nearly as tall as himself, he felt her intended touch now and then, and was stirred. She pointed to something comic in the upturned faces of a crowd that was watching an electric sky-sign, a baby’s feeding-bottle that constantly emptied and refilled to the joy repeated as intermittent jerky lights in the face of a gigantic cherub, and Jimmy stopped and laughed aloud. The crowd might have been watching the heavens unroll as a scroll.

  They got into a taxi-cab. Helen could see his profile, salient and thoughtful, in an occasional light, and his nearness was evident to her. He suggested faintly—what was it?—tonka beans. That was Perriam’s warehouse. Or his tobacco. She remembered it. She broke into gaiety over what they had heard at dinner. He heard, in surprise, his own dubiety expressed in positive wit. Was that what she was thinking while listening to the critic with such apparent respect? Poor man of letters! Perhaps women were like chameleons, and could swiftly assume the colour which circumstance required. But he liked it. It was pleasant to feel a woman so close who could be as comically shrewd as that over people who had mocked his verities.

  Helen knew he was coming over to her. “How’s the ogre? How’s old Perriam?” she asked. “You haven’t said a thing yet. Talk to me.”

  He outlined the latest manifestation in the city. He put his hand on hers. “So, you see, if I’m to go on, they’re to get out.”

  She took possession of his fist. “Don’t let those people trouble you. That’s what you always do.”

  He did not answer.

  “You are ridiculous. You want to treat a crude earth as if it were porcelain. You waste feeling on what will never know it. No doubt about it, men are the sentimentalists. Haven’t you learned yet that the art of commerce is the art of doing without more feeling than you need for luck? ”

  His fis
t was clenched on her knee. She opened his hand, and laid it limply flat.

  “If it were daylight, I’d read your fortune. You’re too easy with those men. No daylight wanted to read that. If they hurt you, get others who won’t.”

  The cab bumped. His hat fell to the floor. He withdrew his hand to pick it up, and then folded his arms.

  “Those men knew well enough, of course, that either they would win, or else you would. They asked for it. Why let them win?”

  He could not answer that. Such an argument came from a different order of assumptions. That was the way Perriam looked at it.

  They went up to her rooms. There she was, cool, clever, and luxurious, with her books and pictures about her, the best that London could offer a man. And here he was, like a grey long-eared one, out of sympathy. She welcomed him with a restrained little gesture, and for a second met his eyes in candour and intimacy. They might have been alone in the city. He was sure her eyes could look the Lohan serenely in the face, though that disciple of Buddha were in the flesh. That would give the Lohan something to do.

  He did not sit down. He stood with an elbow on the mantelpiece, and examined a Tanagra figurine. It was not unlike Helen in miniature.

  “There you are, Jim. Where’s your pipe?” She lifted an arm, which would have delighted him in Grecian marble, and pressed his shoulder. He noticed the turquoise on her white hand. He sank into the chair. She sat on the arm of it, and he did not hear what she was saying, for her voice was as far as something just remembered. The bold curves of the thigh beside him, instead of satisfying him, as would that of a statue, so disturbed him that its proximity gave him anxiety. It was dangerous; and she had said “get rid of them.” He could not forget that. He was not going to blaspheme life. There was no fellowship here. He stood up and met her glance. She was patiently watching him in enchanting perplexity.

  “Why, aren’t you going to stay?” She looked down, and paused. “You’ve only just come,” she said very quietly. He did not answer, and she said more. He vaguely wondered whether he rightly understood her. The courage of this woman! He dared not look at her. His own sensations were baffling, but somehow he remained rigidly outside himself, so that his body could not act, as though he were afraid, not of her, but of coming too close to himself. There was something more important. She took a step back, and her arm, which had been raised towards him, fell to her side, as though she had forgotten it was raised. He had no sense.

  Chapter V

  At Brixton on Monday evening, Mr. Perriam was trying to leave his house. It was his address, or his house; he never called it his home. He had but just come from Manchester, and the fact that the train had been late gave him the impression that he was an overtasked man to whom even time was an enemy. But he could do it all. He was a strong man. He could continue till he had steeled the indecision into which his affairs had softened in his absence. But it was imperative that he should go to Billiter Avenue at once. He was incensed by the impediments placed by the stupid in the straight course of a just man single-minded in his devotion to good order and commonsense. His menservants, with an air of solicitude, and in swift obedience to his peremptory exactions, were silently cursing him, and doing things awry. Mr. Perriam had been in a hurry when he arrived, he was in desperation to leave, and was moving about the hall with an abrupt and heavy celerity which could have been mistaken for craziness, or at best black temper, except that he was so evidently controlling with dignity his righteous impatience over the follies of inferior creatures.

  His wife was not there. She had withdrawn unnoticed to a secluded upper room at the first wave of disturbance sent before Mr. Perriam’s car as it entered the outer gates of his residence, as it passed in fact between the two giant pineapples in stone which guarded their Brixton privet hedge. Mrs. Perriam was represented in the hall by the silently protesting surrogation of some Chinese silk tapestry, and a few comforting rugs and prints. They did not accord with the magnificent Indian furniture of Mr. Perriam’s importation, but they did give something on which the eye could rest. But Mr. Perriam’s eye did not rest upon them. He was unaware that his wife was in any way represented. The reproach he felt because she was not there to assuage for an anxious man the torment of the foolishness about him gave his countenance a shadow of proud resignation. His thoughts concentrated on his grave decision, that he must ignore his dinner, and go instantly to his office to examine his letters. He knew his fear was both natural and scrupulous, that ignorance and folly, while he was away, had deflected the orderly directions of his authority.

  Jimmy was wondering when his chief would come. The offices of Perriams were deserted. It was past six o’clock. The only light was in his room. Jimmy had to wait. The church clock in St. Mary Axe chimed a quarter-past, half past; and its echo in the empty office where the shadows were deepening was like the memory of things gone in a place where the stir of men would be seen no more. Colet’s surviving light might have been a meaningless obstinacy in the face of advancing night. The desks in the big room were cleared of their books, and the bare mahogany surfaces gleamed in cold patches in the dusk. One of the cats of the building strolled across the linoleum. Jimmy stood up and nervously stretched himself. He saw that cat. Ah! another creature was alive there. He called to it. But the cat only twitched her tail and went on. She was nothing to him; she was only a familiar, native to the desert.

  But why should he wait? There was really nothing to wait for. He did not want to see Perriam. And perhaps the boss was not coming after all. It was impossible to do any work. If Perriam came there was no report he could make which could be called good. He could give nothing to the place; and it had nothing for him except a cat which considered he was a stranger to the time and the occasion. By going now he could save London from one little eddying turmoil, make one quarrel the less in its vast meaningless jangle. That was worth thinking over. It was impossible to know by how much the air was kept sweet through saving it from but one quarrel.

  Jimmy, in abstraction, was placing Kuan-yin so that he could consider her from various angles. Then the telephone bell menaced. (Yes, yes.… Certainly… He was waiting.)

  The office no longer seemed so abandoned now he had heard Perriam’s voice. But he was not thinking of his chief. He was considering the Chinese image. Kuan-yin was meek and passive, however she was viewed. She accepted just what happened to her. At whatever angle she was seen her grace was distinguished only by its gentleness and composure. She was not like the cat, which flicked an insulting tail. Kuan-yin was possibly a mistake. This passive acceptance might be all right in the East, or in Jerusalem, but it was a poor substitute for assertion among western steam-engines. He had been passive all his life. He had never felt himself other than an outsider, watching the show. Somehow, the show never seemed to have much to do with him. He had taken the place in it to which chance had led him. He was sitting in that chair because his father pushed him that way. One place was as good as another. If he had followed his instinct ten minutes ago he would not have been there when Perriam was at the telephone. Which was right, the cat or Kuan-yin? There he was now, waiting for something unpleasant to happen, through a sense of duty no more admirable than the reason the cat had for crossing the floor.

  And there was Helen. To her he had, without knowing why he did it, casually declined life. He had got out of its way. Actually, in its most adorable form, he had refused it. That would be hard to explain, when the sense of his distance from what was warm and living, from what was shaping the world, was like a drouth. The outer office was the picture of what he had done; cold and empty. But it is not always easy to tell whether one is accepting or declining, whether one is going with the tendency of life, or against it.

  Perriam was late. He would be glad to get this over. Then he would be free from two perplexities. He would escape into another existence which, whatever it might prove to be, would be free from the worst consequences of the past. He would be born again. That Chinese image of accept
ance had her back turned to him. Should he turn his back on her? Perhaps not. These little things might mean a lot. She might represent something better than he knew. Perhaps the damned steam-engine was on the wrong line, after all.

  Eh? There at last was Perriam. He was coming up the stairs in heavy deliberation, like destiny. No escape now; might kill the beggar, though. Jimmy smiled at the thought. But to fling a bomb into Moloch’s fiery belly and do in the brute god would be decrepit backsliding. Not much spiritual acceptance, in that act, of the ultimate unimportance of material bellies, fiery or otherwise. Let the fiery belly burn itself out.

  Mr. Perriam was filled, in fact, with resolute calm. He was not burning. He was content, for now he knew that control of his affairs was in his hands again. He and they were safe. He walked slowly to his door. Jimmy heard it close. The reflections of another light confused the darkness of the outer office.

  Jimmy considered it. Should he go in? No. Better to wait until he was called. He heard his principal moving about. Then there was silence, a long silence. Then his bell rang. Jimmy was glad to hear it.

  Mr. Perriam was sitting at his table, magisterial, but at his ease. His hands were spread on the arms of his chair. He did not look at his assistant. He was as if inspecting the central air, his eyes half-closed, in the sad knowledge that there could be no right answers to his searching inquisition; as if slovenly men could never satisfy demands that were so austere and irrefragable. He was anticipating, in weariness, a coming dissatisfaction.

  He asked some questions about the drift of the office; and, as no fault could be found with the answers, he made no comment. He merely took his eyes from their inspection of the invisible to look at his signet ring. He rubbed his nose. He leaned forward, with his arms on the table, and he himself began to surmise that he had wasted his time. He might have left all this till the morning. Jimmy began to feel more at his ease. The boss seemed almost human, after all. He had been exaggerating this problem.