The Transit of Venus (22 page)

In the government office where Caroline Bell worked there was a young woman called Valda. That she was called Valda was to the point, for she objected to this. None of the other women there objected to being Milly, Pam, or Miranda with their appointed Mr.

Smedleys and Mr. Renshaw-Browns. None of the other women objected, for that matter, to being girls.

By that epoch the men themselves were no longer Bates or Barkham to one another, but instant Sam or Jim. Those who had irreducibly formal names, such as Giles or Julian, even seemed to be lagging dangerously and doomed to obscurity. There was one older man in Planning who would say Mister to his subordinates

—"Mister Haynes," "Mister Dandridge"—like the skipper of an old ship with his first mate or boatswain. But he too, among the women, permitted himself an occasional Marge or Marigold; although at home calling his charwoman Mrs. Dodds.

When Caro asked, "If they make a true friend, what will they call him?" Valda told her: "They're hoping to put true friendship out of business."

New, compulsory congeniality among males was at least, however, in Valda's view, a loss equally shared. Unlike the outright seizure of June or Judy.

Soon after her arrival Valda had drawn attention to herself. Her little Mr. Leadbetter, the administrative officer, had come out of his hutch, ears up, holding a button, and asked if she would sew it on.

This, he estimated, would not take a minute. Valda politely con-sented. And, laying aside her papers, brought from a desk drawer a housewifely pouch of needles and coloured threads. With Mr.

Leadbetter's jacket aswoon in her lap, she narrowed her own eye to the needle's and was soon stitching. Leadbetter stood to watch her. His shirt was striped and blue, his trousers came to his armpits, depending from canvas braces, also striped, that had long ago been made to last. It was pleasant to doff his armour and watch the handsome Valda at her humble and womanly task. When she had done, when she had wound the thread and broken it off, he was grateful.

"Thank you, Valda. I am not handy with such things. And would jab myself to pieces." It was important to show appreciation.

To this, Valda replied, echoing his own benevolent thoughts:

"These are small things to do for one another."

The following week Valda came into his office, where he was reading over a penultimate draft, and asked him to change her typewriter ribbon.

Mr. Leadbetter stared.

She said, "I am not handy with machines."

He was baffled and displeased. "Have you never needed a new ribbon before? Were you not trained to do these things?"

"It will not take a minute."

"You had better get one of the girls to show you." It was incomprehensible.

"They will dirty their hands." She said, "It is a small thing to do."

Now he understood. He went out and got one of the other girls

—the real girls—in a rage. "Miss Fenchurch needs help with her machine." It was the first time he had not called her Valda, but respect was accorded only from pique. The second girl looked with ingratiating timidity at him, and with terror at Valda, and at once bent to the machine as if over a cradle.

When the time came, Mr. Leadbetter wrote in Valda's file that she tended to be aggressive over trifles. "Tended" was official code for going the whole hog.

There was a small inner room like a cupboard where, morning and afternoon, these girls took turns to make the tea. A list was tacked to the wall, of all the men and their requirements: Mr.

Bostock weak with sugar, Mr. Miles strong and plain. Valda's Leadbetter had an infusion of camomile flowers, which he bought at Jackson's in Piccadilly; these were prepared in a separate pot and required straining. Another notice cautioned against tea-leaves in the sink. The room was close and shabby. There were stains on the lino and a smell of stale biscuits. On one spattered wall the paint was peeling, from exhalations of an electric kettle.

Sometimes when Valda made tea Caro would set out cups for her on a scratched brown tray.

It was something to see the queenly and long-limbed Valda measure, with disdainful scruple, the flowers for Mr. Leadbetter's special pot (which carried, tied to its handle, a little tag: "Let stand five minutes"). To hear her reel off the directions: "Mr. Hoskins, saccharin. Mr. Farquhar, squeeze of lemon." She filled the indeterminate little room with scorn and decision, and caused a thrill of wonderful fear among the other women for the conviction that, had one of these men entered, she would not have faltered a moment in her performance.

When Valda spoke of men more generally, it was in an assumption of shared and calamitous experience. None of the other women entered on such discussions—which were not only indelicate but would have mocked their deferential dealings with Mr.

This or That. Furthermore, they feared that Valda, if encouraged, might say something physical.

Watching the office women file towards the exit at evening, Valda observed to Caro: "The lowing herd wind slowly o'er the lea."

There was another male faction in the office, of ageing young men who spoke bitterly of class divisions and of the right, or absence, of opportunity. For these, equally, Valda had no patience.

"They don't quite believe they exist, and are waiting for someone to complete the job for them, gratis." She would set down the biscuit tin, switch off the electric kettle. "Oh Caro, it is true that the common man is everlastingly embattled, but he has a lot of people on his side. It's the uncommon man who gets everyone's goat."

Valda would tell Caro, "You feel downright disloyal to your experience, when you do come across a man you could like. By then you scarcely see how you can decently make terms, it's like going over to the enemy. And then there's the waiting. Women have got to fight their way out of that dumb waiting at the end of the never-ringing telephone. The
receiver,
as our portion of it is called."

Or, slowly revolving the steeping teapot in her right hand, like an athlete warming up to cast a disc: "There is the dressing up, the hair, the fingernails. The toes. And, after all that, you are a meal they eat while reading the newspaper. I tell you that every one of those fingers we paint is another nail in their eventual coffins."

All this was indisputable, even brave. But was a map, from which rooms, hours, and human faces did not rise; on which there was no bloom of generosity or discovery. The omissions might constitute life itself; unless the map was intended as a substitute for the journey.

These at least were the objections raised by Caroline Bell.

For her part, Valda considered Caro as a possibility lost. Caro might have done anything, but had preferred the common limbo of sexual love. Whoever said, "When you go to women, take your whip," was on to something deep, and deeply discouraging.

Valda would watch Caro, and think along these lines. She would think, Oh yes, let them show her their whip, or some comparable attraction.

W h e n Paul Ivory made a two months' trip to North America, he wrote from Los Angeles to Caroline Bell:

My dear, I shall be glad to move on from here—not because of film people and exhaust fumes and limitless cemeteries that make Stoke Poges look like headlines, but simply because I've discovered I can expect only one letter from you at each place I visit, and when I've had it I might as well move on. Having wanted all my life to come to this country, I now streak through it madly looking for your next letter. A diabolical plot on your part, for which I can never hope to get even.

The letters, when I catch up with them, move me to the heart—an organ which in my case you invented anyway. I find it strange to be affected by your wisdom when it stops so short in respect to me. From these letters I try to follow your moods, with the moon as an independent check; but always there is that fine solemnity—towards what? the world? me?—that acts as a degaussing belt (it's a thing they put on ships to demagnetize them against enemy mines and radar). I find I do not want you to retain any independence or protection from me, especially in the form of good character.

Having said this, I acknowledge that my unprecedented equanimity this past year derives from your own; as you must be aware. Contagion of a kind, one of the risks of venery.

This is being written at midnight in a big bed in a little room overlooking a garden—part of a suite provided by my masters here. It is precisely a room I have imagined, so much so that I attempt to put the final and most important factor into the picture—but it doesn't work.

There is also a white sittingrroom, a terrace with marvellous plants, a bathroom, and even a small kitchen. But the main thing is the bed, which puts the world in perspective.

I'm just back from the sort of dinner called stag. (How we rush to claim our horns.) The monarch of this glen scarcely addressed me, which is supposed to be a good sign. Everyone extremely tough in keeping with the tradition, and I did a lot of smiling of the kind you dislike. Things can be accomplished here, so long as you don't expect to retain your immortal soul—I was instantly parted from mine on arrival; presumably it, or something like it, will be restored to me by the hat-check girl at my departure. On the other hand there is not much listening or questioning, but a great deal of expounding. (Conrad, was it, who said the air of the New World is favourable to the art of declamation?) That is to say, there is a formula, and I must be fitted into it.

So far, California offers the greatest contrast imaginable between the works of God and the desecrations of Man. California is a beautiful woman with a foul tongue.

In the hotel in Washington last week I ran across Christian Thrale, who was there, as you no doubt know, for some conference. I liked him better than usual, but am not sure whether this was for intrinsic reasons or because I could say your name.

I am shocked and impressed by my love for you.

In August of the following year, Caro was sitting in a lofty tearoom waiting for Ted Tice. This restaurant of a London department store overlooked Piccadilly on one side, where light was discreetly veiled; some sound of traffic from the Circus was modified to pre-war rumble by walls of antebellum solidity.

Admitting only seemly sounds, the room sheltered none but the decorous. All tables were occupied by women. Waitresses like wardresses kept a reproving eye on performance, repressively mop-ping a stain or replacing a dropped fork. Something not unpleasant, a nursery security, came along with this. Yet in such a setting you might sicken of women—sicken of their high-pitched, imperious, undulant gender, their bosoms and bottoms and dressed hair, their pleats, flounces, and crammed handbags: all the appurtenances, natural and assumed, of their sex. In such density they could scarcely be regarded as persons, as men might be; and were even intent on being silly, all topics sanctified by the vehemence brought to them.

Caro felt her abnormality: to be the only one watching, the one not talking, the one who did not particularly want a car or carpet, or a service for twelve. The one who lacked place and protection, yet was not free. At the table next to hers there were two sisters

—slim, calm, distinguished, both with honey hair and long clear eyes; the older engaged to a little sapphire ring, the younger perhaps seventeen. Their manners with each other were perfect—

delicate, courteous, loyal. Offering menus and sugar as politely as if there were no blood tie. If you could be like this, the renunciation of temperament might be worth it.

When Ted came in, the room of women pulled itself together.

As he passed among them they were inclined to deny shallowness and to cease rummaging in bags. It was a power he was acquiring: part of a third possibility unforeseen by those who wondered if Edmund Tice would succeed or fail.

Since returning from France, Ted had been working at Cambridge, where once again he lived in furnished rooms. A measure of early recognition was unharmed by his attitude to the proposed telescope, for others had unexpectedly rallied to his position. A woman met through his work had been his mistress some months, but had recently returned tojodrell Bank. Throughout an autumn and winter they had made love on Saturdays, keeping aloof the rest of the week—an arrangement not unlike a dull marriage. When this young woman left for Manchester she had nearly cried, at the same time giving Ted a little smile and turn of the head, as if to say: Hopeless. He realized she had found him an uninspired and selfish lover, and had no mind to tell her why.