‘Of course not. I think I’ll wear that black and white dress with the velvet collar.’
‘So we just invite Angela and Leonard back here afterwards? It’s almost a clandestine wedding! I forgot to tell you I saw Tamar round at Leonard’s place. Conrad Lomas was there and that trendy priest from Boyars.’
‘All religion did for her was get rid of her mother.’
‘I don’t know,’ said Gull, ‘I think it was something deep.
Anyway she and the priest were having a jolly good laugh together! And Violet’s rumoured to be happy.’
‘That’s impossible, she can’t be happy.’
‘Well cheerful or gleeful or something. Pat and Gideon don’t know what to do with her, Leonard says she’s eating them!’
‘They’re not edible,’ said Lily, ‘not like Tamar was. Gideon will pension her off.’
‘I say, look at us, we’re gossiping about our friends just like in real life.’
‘Are they our friends, have we friends?’
‘Yes, and we’ll have lots of new ones too, and we’ll invite them to dinner, just like ordinary real people do!’
‘But do we want to be ordinary real people?’
‘Are we capable of it?’
They both looked doubtful.
‘I wonder if Gideon will invest in our Box Shop?’ said Lily.
Lily and Angela Parke had decided to set up a shop, well to begin with a stall, selling matchboxes. It had been Angela’s idea, though Lily had supplied the managerial enthusiasm and financial backing. It was, according to Lily, bound to succeed. Every tourist will buy a pretty matchbox, the cheapest and most picturesquely ‘typical’ of all gift souvenirs. From matchboxes the idea spread to other boxes, hand-painted wooden boxes in the Russian style, carved boxes with Celtic designs, boxes charmingly decorated with images and designs stolen from museums and art galleries all over London, attractive arty stuff not pretentious and not kitsch. Angela was sure she could collect together a lot of unemployed talents. ‘Art students aren’t all grand,’ she said, ‘they don’t all think it’s beneath their genius to make pretty things!’
‘I hope so!’ said Gulliver in answer to Lily’s question. He had not yet met the formidable Angela Parke, and he feared that ‘the project’ would simply swallow up the rest of Lily’s money. As soon as they were married he would see Lily’s accountant, he would ‘go into the matter’ and if necessary ‘put his foot down’. After all, he had to play the husband! ‘I look forward to meeting Angela!’
‘Yes, and I’ll meet your miracle-working Newcastle friend, Mr Justin Byng!’
This was a young American stage-designer who had promised Gulliver a job in a stage design studio he was hoping to set up in London, where Gulliver was to be his secretary and guide to the London theatre. ‘You still haven’t told me how you met him,’ said Lily, ‘or what really happened in Newcastle. We’ve been in such a state since you came back.’
This was a moment which Gulliver had been putting off. He was suddenly full, choked, with all the fears which the excitement of his new relation with Lily, much of which had taken place in bed, had temporarily eclipsed. Lily would lose her money, Gulliver would lose his job, he was tomorrow to
take on
a wife whom he would have to
provide for
; and there was now the more immediate anxiety about how Lily would receive what he was about to tell her.
‘Lily, I’ve got to tell you something. I never went to Newcastle.’
‘What?’
‘I didn’t get farther than King’s Cross station.’
‘Then
where were you
all that time?’
‘To begin with in a cheap hotel near King’s Cross, and then – staying with Justin Byng.’
‘Oh
God
,’ said Lily, ‘
that’s
started already!’ She got up from the table and marched to the mantelpiece where she picked up a jade tortoise, considered throwing it across the room and decided not to. Gull was looking so attractive tonight, recent events had improved, even beautified him. He was wearing his pale brown corduroy trousers, resplendently cleaned after the skating disaster, with a new aquamarine sweater from Simpson’s, and new dark brown leather boots.
‘Don’t be so bloody,’ said Gull, ‘nothing’s started! Justin lives with a beautiful girl from Michigan who’s married to him! He took me in out of kindness and because he wanted to work with me. And I didn’t tell you sooner because I wanted to be sure it was all real and I really had a job.’
‘All right, go on, tell me, and tell me
everything
.’
‘A most extraordinary thing – well, an odd thing –
happened to me at King’s Cross station. I know this is absurd, but this is how it is. I found a snail.’
‘A
snail?
’
‘Yes. Wasn’t it peculiar? Well, I suppose snails are everywhere but one doesn’t expect to find one in a London main-line station.’
‘Good heavens! Go on.’
‘I was just checking the trains to Newcastle and I saw this thing on the ground, it was rolling about, someone must have kicked it, I didn’t know what it was, I thought it was something quite peculiar, I picked it up. Of course the little fellow was well back inside his shell, but I assumed he was alive and I sat down with him on a seat, and sure enough after I’d been holding him in my hand for a moment he came right out and unrolled his eyes and started waving his front part about and I put him on the back of my hand and he walked and – do you know – he
looked
at me.’
‘Oh Lord!’ said Lily.
‘What’s the matter? Anyway I didn’t know what to do with him. I couldn’t just leave him there, or keep him in my room at the hotel and take him with me to Newcastle, and as I’d developed this sort of personal relationship with him I felt I had to look after him properly. I’m sorry, this sounds daft–’
‘It doesn’t,’ said Lily.
‘So I set out with my snail, I felt by then he was my snail, to find somewhere safe to put him. But, honestly, round about King’s Cross –’
‘I can imagine.’
‘I walked about a lot of streets looking for a decent park or garden but I couldn’t find one. So I went back to the station and took the tube to Hyde Park Corner.’
‘Well done.’
‘I put the snail inside my handkerchief in my trouser pocket and I kept my hand over him all the time, fortunately the train wasn’t crowded. Anyway I set off into the park – but you know, even there, at that end of the park it’s all great vistas of trees and grass and I couldn’t just put him down in the open
where a blackbird might scoff him, so – I was pretty obsessed by this time – I went on walking until I came into Kensington Gardens. I knew it was no good in the flower-beds where he’d be unpopular with gardeners. I thought of the Peter Pan area but of course lots of people come there to feed the ducks and there are a lot of birds about. So I fixed on a place beside the Serpentine, nearer the bridge, you know, where there’s a low railing, and I got over the railing and started looking about to find a really bushy place to hide him. Well, while I was ferreting about among the shrubs, holding the dear old snail in my hand, a tall chap stopped on the path and started watching me, he couldn’t think what on earth I was doing. Then he got over the railing and came down and asked me. And then, there was really no other way of explaining it, I told him the whole story. And do you know, he was so nice, he was so amused and quite delighted, he said he cared about little animals too. Then he helped me to find the absolutely ideal spot and we left the snail there with our best wishes and went back to the path and began to walk toward the bridge.’
‘That was Justin Byng.’
‘Yes. I’d told him I was just going to Newcastle to look for a job and he asked what sort of job and did I know anybody there and where was I living now and lots more questions, and then we went and had a drink at the Serpentine restaurant, and then we had lunch and he told me the story of his life and I told him a lot of mine, and then he insisted I forget about going north and get out of my mouldy lodgings and come and stay with him and Martha while we discussed the job –’
‘And one day you suddenly turned up here and said you’d been in Newcastle!’
‘I never said I’d been in Newcastle,’ said Gull, ‘I let you think so. I’m sorry. It was a kind of lie. But I was in such a daze and I wanted to be
sure
about the job before I – and then we –’
‘Yes, yes.’
‘I’m sorry. I hope it doesn’t make you feel I’m no good – you were a bit romantic about my going all the way to Newcastle and coming back with a job.’
‘What you’ve told me,’ said Lily, returning to the table, ‘is
far far more romantic and far more to the point. But this Byng sounds too good to be true.’
‘Well, you see he’s a Baptist.’
‘A what?’
‘A Baptist. You know what that is. So is Martha. He’s a good egg, he’s one of the nicest men I’ve ever met, he’s very high-minded.’
‘We seem to attract high-minded people, I hope he can make money too. Does he know that I exist?’
‘Of course, I’ve told him all about you.’
‘Oh! What did you say?’
‘I said there was a girl I wanted to ask to marry me as soon as I got a job.’
‘Oh Gull – Gull –’ Lily wiped confused tears from her eyes, tears of laughter, of joy, and of some deeper mystical emotion. ‘I can imagine how touched Justin was! Of course you didn’t do it on purpose.’
‘No, I didn’t – but naturally he was interested, and so was Martha. She keeps referring to you as my bride.’
‘They’ll be disappointed,’ said Lily. ‘They probably think I’m a fresh young thing!’
‘I’ve told them you’re eccentric.’
‘Thanks!’
‘But, Lily, they’re so nice. They’re not frightening people at all! You’ll like them and they’ll like you. And isn’t it strange, it all depended on an extraordinary series of coincidences, if the snail hadn’t been there, if I hadn’t seen it, if I hadn’t failed to find anywhere to put it, if I hadn’t gone exactly to that place in Kensington Gardens, if Justin hadn’t happened to be passing at exactly that moment – Chance is really amazing!’
If it
was
chance, thought Lily to herself. ‘So,’ she said aloud, ‘we shall have some new friends to show off to our old friends – when we are married – after we are married – tomorrow.’
Gulliver was thinking, it’s all worked out marvellously. All the same, I wish I
had
been to Newcastle, as I pretended to Lily I had. It was such a brave exciting idea, and
anything
might have happened up there, awful disasters or else wonderful things, even better than Justin, if one could see the future.
My God, there’s the future too! I wonder if I’ll ever regret meeting that dear old snail? That idea of just walking out and going away meant a lot to me, it was a kind of ordeal, a trial of strength, a test of courage which now I’ll never have – not that particular one anyway – and I was ready for it. Of course I didn’t funk it, it was all an accident, that I didn’t go, and that I’ll never know. I might even have met a girl up there… But Gulliver soon checked this treacherous and disturbing line of thought. Then he thought, well, I never got to Newcastle and poor Jenkin never got to South America. Were these good dreams that we had or bad dreams, I wonder? And what about that man at King’s Cross station, where is he now, and will I have to go and look for him?
Lily was reflecting that Gulliver might have told her everything but she had not told him everything! She had not revealed that that very morning, when she had said she was going shopping, she had run to offer herself body and soul to another man. She had indeed never revealed to him, or to anyone, that she loved Crimond. He might have gathered, she thought, that I was proud of knowing Crimond, but I’m sure it never occurred to him that I was mad about him. And I was mad about him at the start, and then I cooled down and he was simply the most important person in the world, and then just now I’ve become mad again, I’ve fallen in love again because – because of Gull and because of marriage and the marriage bond and that sense of an irrevocable change. As soon as I saw
that
ahead of me, as soon as I had settled down to loving Gull, I realised how terribly much and differently I loved someone else. Perhaps that often happens to people. I had to go to him, I had to try. If I hadn’t gone to him on my last day of freedom I would have regretted it ever after. I’d have grieved forever thinking how perhaps, after all, he might have needed me and wanted me, and I’d been afraid to try. Other people are so mysterious, and who knows? As it is…
As it was, she felt that a great weight had been taken off her mind, and that she had been liberated into a new space of peace and freedom, which was also a serene surrender to fate. Now what would be, would be, and she could hope to meet it
bravely and without mean remorse. Of course Crimond must remain for her, as she had told him, an absolute, and for his sake she would perhaps carry round her neck a little painful amulet. But she knew, even now, that it was a harmless dream object which would fade with the years, and that she had received a freedom which only he could give her. Now it was time to become real and be happy. I think I’m happy, she thought, but am I real? Anyway Gull is real and I really love him, so I suppose that’s a good start.
As for that extraordinary story about the snail: could that be just a chain of coincidences? Why not, were not human lives just chains of coincidences? But really it was too odd. Lily too had, as she had told Rose on the evening of the snails’ dance at Boyars, found a snail in an unusual place, inside her flat, in fact walking upon her dressing table. As she took it out into the garden, worrying about Gull, she had mumbled to it some words from an old snail-charm which her grandmother used to recite. Of course telepathy was something real, but how could one snail instruct another snail –? I’ll swear there’s something in it, she thought, something strange happened and I brought it about! How utterly mysterious the world is! She was on the point of telling her thoughts to Gull but decided not to. It sounded too mad. Besides, in the vicissitudes of family life, a little extra secret power might come in handy sometimes; and as her grandmother had told her, power depends on silence. I’m a witch, I’m a witch! thought Lily – grandma did say it was hereditary! But somehow I know that if this was a trick, it worked through love, and if I ever have any magic it will only work through love, and I’ll be
that
kind of witch. Oh what a mysterious world we live in!