The Visitors (34 page)
The two dons bridled; the third Girtonian friend, the ‘Clair’ Miss Dunsire would mention later, found this exchange hilarious. She laughed so much at Meta’s analysis, and my father’s horrified expression on hearing it, that she almost choked. It was the only moment during the lunch that she showed the least animation – but then she was a strange, brooding, unresponsive creature, who sat next to Miss Dunsire, sometimes muttering to her in a low voice, but otherwise maintaining a sulky silence.
One hour ticked by; too much wine was being consumed, and the conspicuously handsome poet Miss Dunsire had invited at the last moment appeared drunk. I had not caught his full name – it was Eddie something double-barrelled; he was rumoured to be an Apostle, and therefore one of the Cambridge elect. The heat was intense; it was hard to keep track of the fizzing hostilities at the table, as I was pressed into service, hastening to and fro, ferrying plates.
By the time I fetched the burnt creams, the atmosphere was curdling fast; everyone was arguing about Mount Everest, exactly how high it was, and whether Mallory’s expedition would succeed in conquering it… everyone except Eddie-the-poet, who had just dealt Tennyson’s reputation its death blow and was now intent on Wordsworth’s scalp. By the time I cleared the strawberry plates, it was babel: Irish Free State to my left, new divorce bill and its iniquities to my right; whether the Italian fascists would take Bologna and if so, where next… Meta and my father had locked horns again and were fiercely disputing the next eclipse of the moon, while poet Eddie, who’d mutilated Keats meanwhile, then diverted to the curious subject of tom-cats, was now launching a pincer attack on Coleridge.
Returning with a laden tray – gleaming silver coffee pot, fragile cups – I found a violent squabble concerning Schopenhauer and his essay on womankind,
Über die Weiber
, had broken out. Dr Gerhardt, I knew, revered this philosopher, but Meta was dismissing his misogyny as infantile, while Dorothy declared Schopenhauer’s aversion to women was so extreme it suggested psychological
abnormalities…
At these two offensive words, the dons decided they’d had enough. Declining coffee, off they marched, gibbering to each other; a distressed Dr Gerhardt and his sister followed them soon afterwards.
The poet watched them leave, his eyes narrowed; he downed another glass of wine in one gulp. Not sober when he arrived, he was now intoxicated – and the only person at the table enjoying himself. Having decimated the ranks of dead and buried greats, he scented a new quarry. Prompted by a mention of my travels, and perhaps by this lunch’s events, he began to tell us about Egypt – a country he had never visited. Within seconds he’d pounced on Shelley’s sonnet ‘Ozymandias’, fourteen familiar lines I’d come to dread.
‘“
I met a traveller from an antique land
.” Poor mad Shelley! Hits the wrong note in his very first line.’ He sighed. ‘Does the word “antique” suggest desert monuments to anyone here? Not to me, it doesn’t. To me it irresistibly
suggests furniture – nasty, wormy, outmoded, unnecessary bits of furniture: chiffoniers, escritoires and vile knick-knacks. In fact, now I think about it,’ he gave my father a waspish glance, ‘it suggests my spinster Aunt Agatha’s drawing room – or the Senior Common Room at Trinity. It suggests a damned great pile of pointless outdated belongings and similarly antiquated petty beliefs. I appeal to
you
, my beauteous Nicole.’ He winked at Miss Dunsire. ‘Does “antique land” evoke Egypt to you? Because I’d say it evokes somewhere
much
nearer to home.’
My father did not give Miss Dunsire the chance to reply. In a loud unequivocal voice, he said, ‘Christ in heaven, will this ass ever shut up?’
The three Girtonians could take a hint: Dorothy and Meta departed at once, dragging the offending Eddie with them. The odd, silent Clair was the last of them to leave. She had arrived by bicycle from the station, and went to fetch this bicycle now. She wheeled it across the lawns and came to a halt in front of us. ‘Thanks,’ she said, shaking hands all round.
‘Is that
your
bicycle, Clair?’ Nicola asked
.
‘How could it be? I’ve just come up from London,’ she replied, in faintly irritated tones. She inspected the bicycle and I inspected her: very small, very thin, her black hair cut in a bob, and a straight fringe above her brows; tiny monkey hands, an urchin face, an unyielding dark-eyed gaze. She was wearing a peculiar dress of patchwork colours that gave her a harlequin air. Nicola had said she was a painter and a bohemian – I noticed she had paint ingrained beneath her bohemian nails. Her expression was hostile: she seemed to dislike us, the garden, the house, the town of Cambridge, possibly the world.
‘I stole it at the station,’ she went on, mounting the bicycle. ‘I suppose I’d better return it before it’s missed. Not that I care two hoots. Salmon in aspic! The most interesting lunch I’ve attended in a
very
long time. Goodbye, Dr Payne.
Au revoir
, Nicole.’
She rode off along the garden path, ducked beneath the rose arch, exited the gate onto the lane to the Backs and, without a wave or backward glance, disappeared.
I considered these happenings – and those that came after them. I felt there must be a thread that connected all these events. Why had my father accused me of deceit? What word had Nicola Dunsire whispered to him? But I couldn’t perceive the links; it was as if there were some key information I lacked. I gave up the attempt, made myself a sandwich, and took up a tray with toast and scrambled eggs for Miss Dunsire. She made no reply when I tapped at her door. I listened, and thought I could detect the sound of her breathing: she couldn’t have bled to death then, she was alive and probably asleep… I left the tray by her door. It would be there for her when – if – she awoke.
I retreated to my attic and in the cool decline of the evening began on my letters. I assembled the writing paper, the blotter, my dipping pen. I filled the inkwell with blue-black ink. I’d wait until I was sure of our holiday before writing to Rose, so decided to reply first to Frances. But what to say? Where to begin? What to censor, what to express?
I can’t come to Maine. No news from Cambridge
, I scratched
.
The pen, as usual, was giving problems. I was sworn to tell Frances the truth at all times. I inserted a new nib. I wrote:
I learned something today.
I found the ink flowed after that.
Twelfth birthdays were momentous events for a girl – or so Nicola Dunsire said. She did not explain why; my own twelfth birthday at the end of July passed uneventfully. My father sent a postcard from Greece that arrived three days late. Miss Mack sent me a volume of Rudyard Kipling’s short stories, and my Aunt Foxe a manicure set containing many surgical tools, sharp and of obscure function. ‘Maybe that will persuade you to stop biting your nails, Lucy,’ Miss Dunsire remarked acidly, from the depths of another black mood. Later she seemed to repent, and took me out to Fitzbillies, her favourite of Cambridge’s many tea shops.
‘Why is a twelfth birthday momentous?’ I asked, munching one of their famous Chelsea buns. We were both sipping Gunpowder tea. ‘You’ll find out. In due course,’ she replied. ‘Have you finished? May we go? My head aches.’
She led me along King’s Parade, complaining at my slow pace. ‘Why don’t you go ahead, Miss Dunsire?’ I suggested. ‘It’s such a lovely afternoon. I’d like to walk back the long way through the colleges. Look at some bookshops, perhaps.’
‘Oh, very well. As it’s your birthday.’ She shrugged impatiently and glanced at her watch. ‘I’ll expect you home in one hour. Don’t be late.’
She set off at a swift pace towards the Silver Street bridge; I ducked into a side street where I was safe from sight. Miss Dunsire was an efficient watchdog, but over the summer she’d occasionally become careless. Perhaps she resented the fact that curtailing my freedom meant curtailing her own; perhaps she simply grew bored – and who could blame her – at yet another long day in my company; maybe, now my father was abroad, she felt less inclined to zealousness.
Whatever the reason, I’d begun to steal an hour here, an hour there, and when there was no sign that these stolen hours resulted in any mishap, Miss Dunsire grew even more lax. I learned I was more likely to get my way when her black moods gripped her, or if she herself wished to be elsewhere. In June, she had left me in the care of Mrs Grimshaw for an entire day, while she went to London to see some art exhibition at the Tate. A few weeks later, she went to London again and stayed overnight; her friend Eddie, the poet my father had so disliked, was giving a reading that evening, and she wished to attend it. Again, Mrs Grimshaw was pressed into service – and she, an amiable gaoler, was easy to escape. Now I had one whole hour of freedom, just enough for my purposes.
I hurried along, into the maze of Cambridge’s alleyways and backstreets, and, ignoring the bookshops for once, came to a halt outside Mr Szabó’s shop.
Jewellery and Curios,
it announced, in gilded curlicues above the bellying shop-front. I inspected its display window beadily: silver snuffboxes, pairs of candlesticks, a Russian icon so ancient – or so doctored – that one could scarcely discern its blackened saint; fat velvet pads displaying rings and bracelets, some rubbishy-looking, some good. Stirrup cups, a stuffed owl, drinking flasks, stock-pins, dress studs, cufflinks. The locket and chain had gone, I saw to my relief.
I climbed the steps, jangled the bell, and, teacups already in hand, Mr Szabó, a Cambridge institution for decades, of late my friend, emerged from the dark recesses of his shop. ‘Dealing
again
?’ he said, in his richly accented voice. I could hear in it his native Hungary, but also hints of Vienna, Italy, France and London. Mr Szabó was much travelled; he described himself as a wandering Jew, an eternal émigré; I loved the foreignness, the layers, the history in his voice. He dropped one sugar lump into my cup and three into his. ‘And what are we peddling this time, Miss?’
I’d learned from the souks of Cairo and Luxor, so I said, ‘You’ve sold the locket. I told you you would. Did you get a good price for it, Mr Szabó?’
‘Enough, just enough.’ He waggled his hand. ‘I have to make a
leetle
profit, you know. I have to subsist,
meine liebe junge Dame.
When a customer drives a cruel bargain, the way
you
do, I’m lucky if I make sixpence to spare. Look at me! Skin and grief!’
I looked at him. Mr Szabó, sixtyish, white-haired and wily, was rotund; one might say
fat.
I suspected his margins were generous, but felt his dealings were fair; besides, I liked him. Delving into my pocket, I produced a handkerchief. Inside were two more objects purloined from the spare-room boxes, from the museum of Marianne Payne. Once my mother’s: left to me in her will and now mine to sell or keep. Her collection was large, much of it bought as gifts for her by her parents, given prior to her marriage and the severance that caused; so far Mr Szabó had taken five pieces off my hands. Today, I’d brought him a narrow bangle and a brooch set with glittering stones. I was pretty sure they were diamonds, good ones. Having a mother born an Emerson had its advantages.
I placed them on a velvet pad, then sat down and sipped my tea.
Show no emotion. Make it clear you’re ready to walk away
, Frances’s voice counselled, and her mother chimed in:
Never, never take the first price they offer, Lucy – or the second, or the third. You absolutely
must
haggle – then honour’s satisfied all round and everyone enjoys it.
Their advice had related to buying: when selling, the same rules applied. Dealing was universal the world over, and I felt the techniques that worked in a Luxor souk worked extremely well in Bene’t Street, Cambridge. Mr Szabó adjusted his jeweller’s spyglass and with intense concentration began scrutinising the stones in the brooch.
‘Not bad,’ he said at last, in a grudging way. ‘A nice little trinket. Before the war, I could have sold one of these the second it went in the window… but now? Tastes change, women are fickle. These flapper girls in their strange dresses – they want platinum and silver, not gold; they want clips, not brooches. Pretty stones, these – but the setting is dated. The bangle? Gold again, alas. Could I find a taker for them? Oh dearie me – I doubt it. I might just stretch to… ’ And he named a figure. ‘But that’s a special price for
you
, young lady! Ah, I’m a foolish old man. Too soft-hearted for the harsh world of business: my problem all along.’
‘Mr Szabó, the brooch is a Tiffany piece. From Fifth Avenue. My grandmother bought it, and Tiffany’s was her favourite place on earth. In Paris, she liked Van Cleef & Arpels… ’ I hesitated. Hearsay evidence, but true: sort of.
‘A woman of discernment.’ Mr Szabó made a snickering sound.
‘That bangle is Van Cleef: it’s twenty-two carat. Those are fine diamonds in the brooch – look, that one’s a whopper. But never mind, I was thinking of taking them to London to sell anyway. I’ll be sure to get the right price there.’
We exchanged a combative glance. Mr Szabó said: ‘Not so fast, no need to be hasty, are you catching a train, young lady?’ And with these essential preliminaries over, we set to.
It took three-quarters of an hour. Both Mr Szabó and I enjoyed every minute.
Caveat venditor
: I was rooked, as I later understood, but not as badly as I might have been, and not as much as I merited. Clutching the banknotes, I ran to the Post Office, entered this deposit in my secret savings’ account book, and handed it all in. Adding up the entries, I saw I’d almost reached the total I needed – and that I’d calculated carefully. One more piece of jewellery should do it. Frances and her parents would be returning to Egypt in December; Miss Mack planned on a return journey there in November; I intended to go too. There were still minor obstacles in the way of this escape plan – my father, for instance, and Miss Dunsire. I’d deal with them in due course.
Money
had been the chief of my problems – and that was almost solved. Money was power; it bought freedom.