Eight
He was out of his depth: too intelligent not to know it, too proud to admit it. He needed to talk to Elinor, who knew Teresa better than anybody else, but it was difficult to get hold of her. At last though he managed to corner her in the Antiques Room and she invited him to tea at her lodgings after college.
Prompt at six o’clock, he knocked on her door. He heard his name called and stepped back to see Elinor leaning out of a window on the third floor, her heavy dark gold hair swinging forward in two sharp points on her cheeks. ‘Hang on a sec, I’ll come down.’
Footsteps, quick and light, and then the door was thrown open and she looked out at him, smiling.
‘Doesn’t your landlady mind men calling?’
‘
Men
?’ She peered round him. ‘Oops, he’s brought the regiment. No, she’s down in the basement. As long as there’s not too much noise, she lets us get on with it. She’s even letting us redecorate.’
Elinor led the way up a broad staircase whose dark green carpet had a beige strip in the centre where the pile had worn through to the backing. She was clearly in the thick of decorating – he smelled distemper the moment she opened her door. Lolling tongues of rose-trellised wallpaper lay on the floor where she’d simply seized it and pulled it off the wall. A bucket of grey, glutinous sludge, a table and a stepladder occupied the centre of the room, but a sofa and two chairs had been pushed together at the far end so that some kind of normal life could continue.
‘What colour are you doing it?’
‘Stone. I thought grey might be a bit too depressing.’
‘And you’re doing it all yourself?’
‘No, Ruthie comes round to help. She’s on the floor above. We’re doing mine first and then we’ll do hers.’
‘It’s a big job.’
‘Oh, I don’t mind, I like it. Anyway, there’s no choice. I can’t work with that stuff on the wall. There’s another room, if you’d like to see?’
The bedroom. Elinor’s bed under a patchwork quilt, a chair, a wardrobe. Nothing else. Sunlight came in through the smeared window and crept in parallelograms of light across the faded carpet. From below came the hum and rumble of traffic.
‘I’m leaving this till last.’
He scarcely heard her. He was staring at a painting she’d propped against the wall: a female nude, facing away, rubbing a bath towel down her left arm. The ends of her glossy black hair stuck in wet coils to her white shoulders. ‘Teresa.’
‘She modelled for me. I said. Don’t you remember?’
He did, now she mentioned it, but still it came as a shock. They gazed at the painting together. He felt a surge of desire, not for Teresa, but for Elinor. He imagined kissing her, and the image was so vivid that for one crazy second he thought he’d done it, and was groping about in his mind for some way of repairing the damage.
‘That’s the one I won the scholarship for.’
He realized she’d brought him here into her bedroom to show him this, but he didn’t know why. A natural pride in a good piece of work? Or something more fundamental: a demand that he should recognize her as an equal? Well, if that was her motive she needn’t have bothered. There could be no question of
equality.
If he stayed at the Slade another ten years he’d never be able to paint sunlight on wet flesh like that.
‘It’s wonderful. I’m so glad I’ve seen it.’
She smiled. ‘Come on, I’ll put the kettle on.’
‘Can I do anything to help?’
‘No, I don’t think so. There’s only room for one.’
He stood in the kitchen doorway while she boiled water and made salmon-and-cucumber sandwiches. He wanted to say more about the painting, but he’d always found it difficult to praise an artist to his face,
her
face, or even to accept praise gracefully himself. Though that hadn’t been much of a disability so far.
‘Right, I think that’s it,’ Elinor said, wiping her hands on her sides. ‘Here, you can carry the tray.’
He set it down on a small table, which she cleared by sweeping piles of books on to the floor. They sat facing each other, the sofa and chairs so squashed together their knees were almost touching. She offered him a plate and a sandwich, but didn’t immediately pour the tea. He noticed there were three cups.
‘I got a note from Teresa saying her husband was prowling round.’
‘Ye-es.’
‘Poor Teresa. She must be terrified.’
Her eyes had gone black with anger. Her sympathy reminded him how very much he liked her, and he was reaching out to touch her hand, when –
‘Elinor.’
Neville, gasping for breath after the long walk upstairs. He stopped in the doorway, registering the scene, and his face changed colour – not a flush, but the most extraordinary darkening, like a male fish that finds itself unexpectedly confronted by a rival. ‘Oh, hello, Tarrant.’
Why does she do it? Paul wondered. Obviously she’d invited them both to tea, at slightly staggered times, implying, though not promising – for when did Elinor ever promise anything? – that each was to enjoy a tête-à-tête. Now she avoided looking at either of them.
After an awkward pause, Neville produced a bottle of wine from the green bag he was carrying. ‘I thought you might like to celebrate the scholarship.’ He glanced at Paul. ‘You know about this?’
‘I’ve just been admiring the painting.’
‘Oh, you’ve got it back?’
‘Yes, this morning. Come through, I’ll show you.’ Paul listened to the murmur of voices from the bedroom. Neville loved her. It was unmistakable. He always spoke to her with a kind of clumsy, affable superiority, making the most of his extra years and his fame, but increasingly the mask of confidence slipped to reveal lust and pain and fear.
‘I couldn’t have done it without Teresa,’ Elinor was saying, as
they came back into the room. ‘A model makes all the difference.’
‘Yes, and she’s a good model too, isn’t she?’ Neville sat down next to Paul. Are you painting her?’
‘No.’
‘I’ll get some glasses,’ Elinor said.
The two men were left alone. After a pause, Neville asked, ‘How’s the life class going?’
‘Oh, you know. I’ve more or less given up.’
Elinor came back with three glasses and a bottle opener. Neville uncorked the bottle and poured. After they’d toasted Elinor’s success, there was silence. Then Neville said, ‘Oh. I’ve got something to celebrate too. I’ve bought a motorbike.’
He looked so pink and glowing, so insufferably pleased with himself, that of course they had to troop downstairs and admire the gleaming monster. Another craze, Paul thought, dismissively, another fad. That was the kind of reaction Neville provoked. Not contempt, exactly, but something close to it. The vanity of the man. The
wealth.
And yet you had to share his delight in his new toy. He was such a child.
‘I don’t suppose I can tempt either of you to have a ride?’
‘No,’ Elinor said.
Paul raised his glass. ‘Not at the moment.’
Back upstairs, flushed with wine and triumph, Neville became more expansive, reverting to the subject of Teresa’s husband. He seemed to have forgotten Elinor was there. ‘Why does she live in that wretched little basement? There’s no need. She’s not that poor. And even if she was, some man or other would always fork out. If she was half as frightened as she says she is, she’d be only too glad to move. Look at it. No proper locks on the windows. Anybody could hide in that coal-hole, the bolt on the back door doesn’t work … One screw –’
Too late, he stopped, stared into his glass and emptied it in one gulp.
‘She seems very happy there,’ Elinor said.
Nobody replied. Paul smiled and stood up. ‘I think I ought to be going.’
Elinor was looking up at him with some concern. He shrugged, then bent and kissed her, rather enjoying the expression of pain that flickered across Neville’s face. ‘Shall I see you in Lockhart’s tomorrow?’
‘Yes.’
‘One o’clock?’
‘Yes.’
‘Right, then.’
‘No, wait, I’ll see you out.’
They walked downstairs together. ‘Are you and Teresa coming to the Café Royale tonight?’ she asked, as he opened the front door.
‘Yes, I’m meeting her there. Are you coming?’
‘Don’t know.’ She jerked her head towards the stairs. ‘I’ll see how things are.’
She was hugging her upper arms, though it wasn’t cold. For the first time since he’d known her she seemed vulnerable, not dashing at all, a little half-starved cat. He put his arm round her. ‘I’m really pleased about the scholarship.’ He hesitated. ‘Elinor …’
‘I know what you’re going to ask and the answer is I don’t know.’ She looked uncomfortable. ‘
Yes,
probably. But it was ages ago. Nev’s a troublemaker, you know that.’
He nodded. ‘Yes, I know. I’ll see you later.’
It was nothing to be miserable about, he told himself, walking off down the street, merely the confirmation of something he’d suspected since their first evening. What happened before they met didn’t matter. It was far less important than the threat – if there was a threat – from Halliday.
Nine
That Saturday there was a fair on Hampstead Heath. He asked Teresa to go with him but he wasn’t surprised when she refused. Instead, he arranged to go with Elinor and Ruthie, and with Ruthie’s friend Michael Abbott, a cheerful, sociable, self-confident young man who spent hardly any time in classes and yet never seemed to doubt his ability as a painter.
They met at Elinor’s lodgings and went up together on the bus, sitting on the top in the open air. This was the first day that felt like summer. Paul managed to sit next to Elinor. As she twisted round to speak to Ruthie, her knee pressed into his thigh under the rain apron. He glanced at her sideways but she didn’t seem to notice. She was full of life, carefree, and suddenly his affair with Teresa seemed limited, shadowed by the bitterness of her marriage that he pretended to understand, but couldn’t. The cabbage leaves and the dark hole behind the dustbins seemed to epitomize everything he’d begun to dislike. But then he remembered the sound of the trains, the vibration of the bed as they roared past, the way Teresa’s skin gleamed in the candlelight.
‘Hoy!’ Elinor waved a hand in front of his face.
‘Sorry I was miles away.’
‘I know where you were. Couldn’t she come?’
‘She wanted to go to the Café Royal. I fancied a change.’ His words hung on the air, silence giving them a weight he hadn’t intended. Say something. Anything. ‘How about Neville? I’d’ve thought a fairground was just the ticket.’
‘He’s painting a factory in Leeds.’
He sensed coolness, but whether directed at Neville or at him – perhaps she found the question intrusive – he didn’t know. It didn’t matter. It was a summer evening, and warm, and they were going to the fair together.
At the fairground they stood on muddy trampled grass, breathing in smells of candyfloss, roasting chestnuts, chips, beer from the beer tents where men queued and carried away bottles, two or three in each hand. On the boat swings girls hung on to their skirts, shrieks of laughter slicing the air. They went on the swings first. He handed Elinor in and sat opposite her as the chocks were pulled away. Hauling on the tasselled rope they rose higher and higher. He saw her open mouth and knew she was laughing but couldn’t distinguish her laugh from the roar around them. At one point her skirt flew up. She squealed, like any shop girl on an outing, and he caught the hem and pinned it down with his foot. By the time their go was over he’d had enough and so had she, jumping down and swaying against him, so that her nose bumped against his shoulder. He took hold of her arms to steady her, she looked up at him and for a second they might have kissed, but Abbott, waiting behind him, said, ‘Hey get a move on. It’s our turn.’
They waited. All around overtired children whinged, mothers snapped and slapped, fathers took refuge in the beer tents, gangs of youths roamed about, braying, jeering, contemptuous, excluded. Paul wanted to get Elinor somewhere quiet and alone, but she and Ruthie stuck together as they always did. As soon as Ruthie got off the boat swing they were arm in arm again, strolling towards the merry-go-round whose grinning, blue-eyed horses rose and fell. When it stopped, Elinor said, ‘Aren’t you coming?’ Her skin was orange in the light of the naphtha torches, which cast shuddering shadows over the heaving ground. ‘No, you go.’ You could only ride three abreast and so Abbott was in his glory, with a girl on either side.
As the music started to play again, they laughed and waved and set off, slowly at first as the man went from horse to horse collecting fares, then faster, rising and falling, rising and falling. They seemed at one point to ride him down, Elinor straight ahead, unseeing, as he slipped and fell under the hooves. He was shivery, too hot and too cold at once, the awful warm gassy beer lying heavy on his stomach. He would wait for them to get off, he decided, then find somewhere to sit down. For a moment, he stopped looking at the
horses and gazed through them to the other side. A man stood there, a tall man with a ginger moustache and a hat pulled down low over his eyes. What little could be seen of his face was a beaten bronze mask, expressionless in the light of the naphtha flares. Paul stared. The man stared back at him. He was alone, which seemed odd, but then perhaps he was waiting, as Paul was, for somebody to get off the ride. Aware that his stare was becoming confrontational, Paul made a deliberate effort to switch his gaze away. A second later, unable to help himself, he looked back and the man had gone, but so suddenly Paul was left wondering whether there’d ever been anybody there at all. It was all this nonsense with Teresa, he told himself. He’d spent so long staring at shadows, he was starting to imagine things.
By now he was feeling rather ill, but determined not to let it spoil the evening. The ride seemed to go on for ever, but at last he felt Elinor’s hand on his arm. He bought more beer because it was his turn, but the more he drank the worse he felt. They tried the Hall of Mirrors next, Elinor gazing at her reflection in the distorting glass, now tall, now short, now fat, now thin, all arms and legs one minute, all head the next. Like Alice in Wonderland. She even looked like Alice, with that short full skirt and her hair tied back with ribbon. Almost doll-like. He felt a spasm of dislike that came from nowhere and did nothing to lessen his desire.