Authors: Elizabeth Jane Howard
‘Shut up! Mind your own business – go away!’ There was a second’s pause, while Gavin battled with his reflexes, and then she said: ‘Actually –
don’t.’ She sat up again.
‘I might need you.’
In spite of himself, he took a step nearer the bed. ‘What for?’ He felt wary and sounded sullen.
‘I’m not supposed to be here.’
‘I should think not.’
‘I don’t mean
here
,’ she patted the bed, and the coverlet slipped, revealing bare, very bony shoulders the background to which was a lot of dark tangled hair. ‘I
mean at this party.’
‘Why did you come then?’
‘Love,’ she said resentfully. ‘It’s so awful – that the quite awful things one does because of it don’t seem so bad, don’t you find?’
‘Don’t they?’ He had the sensation of being treated as though he was somebody whom he hadn’t even begun to be. ‘I don’t know,’ he finished more
honestly.
‘Don’t
know
?’ Her high, rather childish voice rose to a squeak, and he moved towards her again making a movement of his hand to quieten her.
‘There are some people in there.’
‘I
know
! That’s why I’m here. I sent a message to him. I wrote it because those Filipinos can’t take messages. I told him to meet me in here and then I hid, to
be a lovely surprise for him. But then he came with – with someone else – ’ her voice tailed off: ‘and they had an awful time on this bed for ages, and then they went in
there.’ To Gavin’s dismay, large pear-shaped tears began slipping down her face. After a moment, he said: ‘But why are
you
in bed? I mean you can’t have hidden in
it, surely?’ The thought appalled him.
But she retorted: ‘Of course not! What an idiotic idea! I got into bed to cry. I can’t cry properly unless I’m lying down. My heart was broken,’ she added as an
afterthought. He noticed that she looked at him intently as she said this. Her eyes were pale blue, wide apart and nearly round. He also noticed that the coverlet had slipped so that one very small
naked breast with an apricot nipple showed; he noticed the apricot because of the pink coverlet. Wondering how on earth young she was, he said accusingly: ‘Aren’t you wearing
anything?’
She looked defiant. ‘Of course not. It’s dirty to get into people’s beds in your clothes. How would
you
like it?’
‘I wasn’t wearing much, anyway,’ she added. ‘And when I heard you come in – of course I didn’t know it was you. I hid under the bedclothes. I stifled my
sobs.’
She was looking at him again – again intent. When, because he couldn’t think of anything to say, he said nothing, she said: ‘Well, you couldn’t hear them, could you? So
they must have been stifled . . .’
‘I think you’d better get dressed.’
‘All right.’ She replied – almost gaily. Then, without any warning, she threw herself face downwards on the bed and wailed: ‘You’re taking my
mind
off
it!’
‘Off what?’ One incredibly thin arm – well, skinny, really – was clutching the top of her head, and she moaned: ‘It’s hopeless! He’s the most beautiful
man I’ve ever met in my life. When he smiles! I thought, if you really loved somebody, the fact that you don’t speak the same language doesn’t matter. They automatically loved you
back! You bet they don’t. All the things you read about let you down when you come to the point. But he didn’t even give me a chance! It’s juvenile to go thrashing about with a
stupid common jerk when there’s a perfectly good girl. That’s what it is –
juvenile
!’ She said this last as though it was an unanswerable insult that gave her some
satisfaction. ‘He ought to grow
up
. High time,’ she finished, but as she seemed to have done, Gavin decided to be brisk.
‘If you’ll tell me where your clothes are, I’ll give them to you, and wait next door while you put them on,’ he said. He had decided that if it was Spiro she thought she
loved, and the smile and lack of language seemed to indicate that, the sooner she got over him the better.
‘I want to wait till he comes out.’
‘That’s up to you, but I’m not going to wait with you.’
‘Please do. I beg you to.’ She put a bony little hand on his arm, and he noticed that she bit her nails. ‘He’s got some awful olive-skinned boy with him; it’s two
to one; I won’t stand a chance on my own.’
‘Look here, if it’s Winthrop you’re so keen on, you won’t get anywhere.’
‘How do you know?’
‘Because the person he lives with is a friend of mine. Honestly. He’s not interested in girls at all.’
‘You might be telling frightful lies: people do, if it’s worth their onions.’
‘Well, I’m not,’ he said, too anxious now to take her up on the onions. ‘Where’s your dress?’
‘Under the bed,’ she said sulkily.
He bent down and it was. A rather skimpy dress of red cheesecloth.
‘Stay while I put it on.’
‘All right.’ If he didn’t stay, she might
not
dress, and he still felt that he owed it to Joan to get her out of the bed.
He walked over to the Laurencin – the heads of three doe-eyed girls.
‘What’s your name?’
‘Gavin,’ he said, without turning round.
‘Gavin what?’
‘Lamb.’
‘How old are you?’
He told her.
‘What do you do?’
‘I’m a hairdresser.’
‘Oh good.’ She seemed mysteriously pleased. ‘Okay, I’m dressed.’ She giggled, an unexpectedly pleasing sound, and said: ‘It’s quite easy, because I
don’t wear knickers.’
When he turned round, she was sitting on the side of the bed fastening her very high-heeled red sandals. Then she stood up and held out her hand. ‘I’m Minerva Munday; how do you do?
Lady,’ she added. She was looking straight at him again – to see if he was impressed, he thought. What
did
impress him about her was her thinness; she was about the thinnest
person he’d ever seen in his life – far thinner than Jenny at work whom he had always thought too thin for her own good. He remembered that Joan had said there was a lot of food laid
out somewhere, and then he remembered that Minerva (Goddess of Wisdom, his foot; she seemed to him no Goddess, and ridden with folly) had not been asked to the party at all – was a
gate-crasher – still, perhaps with all those people, she would not be noticed . . .
‘. . . seem to be rather impressed. Haven’t you ever met a Lady before?’
‘I cut their hair from time to time; I don’t suppose you’d call that meeting them. Anyway,’ he ended kindly, ‘of course I’m impressed.’ He was moving
towards the study/library door having considered making the bed – nicer for Joan – and discarding the idea on the grounds that Winthrop and Spiro might make an appearance, and a scene
ensue – nastier for Joan.
‘Where are we going?’
‘To find some food.’
‘How do you know I want any?’ But they were safely out of the bedroom and he had shut the door.
‘
I
do,’ he said in his new, firm voice.
‘Oh – all right.’
‘Don’t you think you’d better comb your hair?’
‘Haven’t got a comb.’ She turned back to the bedroom.
‘You can borrow mine.’
She seized it, and dragged it through her hair so violently that it broke. She held a piece in each hand and made a hideous – and very funny – face at him. ‘Some comb,’
she said.
He took the larger broken piece and started to deal with the tangled mass. Even with her heels, she was not taller than he, but they were so high that, however gently he combed, she seemed to be
in danger of losing her balance. ‘You’ll have to sit.’
She perched on the arm of the sofa he had sat on with Joan a hundred years ago. ‘Pity you didn’t let me do this in the first place,’ he said after a bit. ‘You’ve
got very thick hair and you’ve got it in a right old mess.’
‘I forgot you were a hairdresser. Are you really one?’
‘I told you I was.’
‘You might have been making it up.’
‘I’m not given to that kind of thing.’
‘Oh, nor am I. But what actually happens is much duller than it need be a lot of the time, don’t you think?’
While he was still thinking that, this evening, no, it certainly wasn’t, she said: ‘Or are you frightfully grownup about it – contented with your lot and all that?’
‘I’m not bored, if that’s what you mean.’
‘I am. And I’m never sure what my lot is, but I must say I dread finding out.’
‘Why?’
‘Because then I’d be stuck with it, wouldn’t I? Ow!’
‘Sorry.’ He’d been combing the full weight of her now untangled hair back from her forehead where it grew in a sharply defined widow’s peak a little off centre.
‘It’s all right; you’re pretty good, really. I once bit somebody who combed my hair. I was much younger, of course. My nursemaid – ’
The door opened and three people, two men and a woman, came into the room carrying plates of food and glasses of wine. ‘Plenty of room here,’ one of them – the one who opened
the door – said. They smiled guardedly at Gavin and Minerva as a way, Gavin felt, of not having to do anything else about them, and the woman said earnestly: ‘But can’t somebody
tell
Christopher that that sort of behaviour simply isn’t
on
?’
‘My dear Mollie, he’s got Production behind him!’
The second man said: ‘Well I just hope I’ll be on location before Jake finds out – that’s all.’
As Gavin reached the door, Minerva put her hand in his and said:
‘Do you know a lot of people at this party?’
‘No.’
‘Let’s just go; let’s not eat.’
But Gavin had started worrying about Harry, and whether he knew about Winthrop and Spiro, and whether he was feeling awful about it and needed support. ‘I can’t go until I’ve
seen one person I do know,’ he said, ‘and they’ll probably be eating.’ Harry was anyway fond of food, and he invariably ate when he was anxious which was the least Gavin
expected him to be.
It was quite clear where all the food was, since a trickle of people was emerging from a room down the passage, and each of them held a plate or was eating something, so he – very mildly
– dragged her in the right direction (he was surprised to find himself doing this, and surprised also that he
could
do it).
The dining room – if that was what it was – had a long table down one side of it covered with bowls and dishes and plates of food. A good many people seemed to have eaten (there were
about a dozen still in the room) and the food had that wrecked and plundered air: cold birds like shipwrecks; semi-spectral fish, ravaged mousses, a chocolate cake like some bombed building –
crumbling brown rubble pocked with cream; and various salads fainting gaily in their bowls. Gavin saw Harry at once – sitting in the corner with a plate piled high and talking earnestly to an
elderly man with a pointed beard. Harry registered Gavin’s arrival instantly and Gavin realized that this was because he was very much on the watch – had positioned himself so that he
could see whoever came into the room.
Minerva said:
‘He’s not here.’
‘Who isn’t?’
‘Winthrop.’
‘Never mind. You get yourself a plate of food. You could get me some too, if you like,’ he added, hoping to keep her busy. He had decided that it would be better if she and Harry did
not meet.
‘All right.’ She turned obediently to the table and he went over towards Harry. He was still talking.
‘. . . and
when
the 1945 Government nationalized the railways what they didn’t seem to recognize for quite some time was that they automatically took over thirty-five per
cent of the canal system, much of it of course unnavigable, and a lot
they
cared, since fifty per cent of navigable waterway in the British Isles had fallen into complete desuetude and it
had become fashionable to regard them as an outmoded form of transport. Oh, hullo, Gavin – you haven’t seen Winthrop, have you, by any chance?’ – his nose was twitching and
he was elaborately casual.
‘Not for some time. I know he’s here, though.’
‘Oh. Oh well, that’s all right, then. This is Eustace Parker, my friend Gavin Lamb. Eustace makes documentaries on popular holidays. At least, I don’t suppose he does that all
his life, but that’s what he’s doing at the moment. I was boring him a bit about canals – ’
‘Eustace! Good Lord!’ A squat and gnomic lady, in one springy pounce, had settled herself plum in front of Eustace, and by sitting cross-legged, and placing both her hands upon his
shrinking knees, made it impossible for him not to notice that she was there. He looked at her with alarm and distaste.
‘Biddy! Long time no see.’
‘Oh my dove, I
know
! Auntie keeps sending me all over the place doing these filthy programmes that I told you in Manchester I was afraid Cyril was going to wish on to me;
I’ve got contemporary poetry coming out of my
ears
! I feel if I have to record another poet, I’ll go out of my mind. I do hope neither of you are poets,’ she added,
including Harry and Gavin a bit. They said they weren’t and she turned her full attention back on to Eustace whose continuous smile, Gavin thought, was not unlike a cat’s purr –
it seemed effortless and he couldn’t think how on earth he could breathe at the same time. Harry telegraphed his desire to get away, but Gavin pretended not to understand him: he still shrank
from the idea of Harry and Minerva meeting. On the other hand, unless he escaped altogether, he began not to see how this could be avoided . . . unless he could manoeuvre the girl and the food to
somewhere else pretty quickly. He walked briskly over to Minerva who had assembled two plates, on one of which was a drumstick and a piece of the chocolate cake and on the other some of what looked
like very nearly everything on the table.
‘I thought you were never coming; I thought you were trying to ditch me.’ She did not sound accusing when she said this, but rather surprisingly humble.
‘Let’s go and eat it on the terrace,’ he said.
In the passage they met Noel and Stephen having a muted row. Noel seemed drunk as he looked at Gavin with no sign of recognition, but Stephen gave him an apologetic smile. But this meeting
renewed Gavin’s fears about uncomfortable encounters. They might meet Winthrop and Spiro anywhere, at any moment, and while Minerva seemed to have calmed down remarkably quickly about them,
there was no knowing how she might respond if they did. He led the way through the first large room he had been in, the one which had the open doors on to the terrace, and found a relatively dark
corner where they could sit.