The effect was instantaneous. Annette’s eyes suddenly clouded over with a look of hurt indignation. ‘Oh!’ she said, ‘How can you be so — ’, and then with a violence which took Rainborough by surprise she began to struggle.
When he felt Annette struggling Rainborough automatically tightened his hold, and for a moment they rolled madly to and fro upon the floor. While this was happening, Annette’s blouse, which had been half off when the fight started, came off completely, and Rainborough felt her twisting and turning in his grip like a powerful fish. Remembering the incident later, he could recall only a confused impression of the pliancy of her body, the thinness of her arms, the smallness of her breasts, and the enormous furious surface of her eyes which in memory seemed to grow and grow until they filled nearly the whole picture. Rainborough had risen to one knee and was pressing her fiercely down on to the ground when the front door bell rang — and immediately after came the sound of someone walking into the hall.
As if touched by a wand, Annette and Rainborough froze into a silent immobility, arrested in the wild gestures of the struggle. For an instant they stared terror-stricken into each other’s eyes. Then Annette sat up. She was naked to the waist. Of course, thought Rainborough, I left the front door open. The girl came in that way. Without drawing another breath, he regained his feet, pulled Annette up by her shoulder, and opened the door of a china-cupboard which was just behind her. He threw her in and threw her clothes and her handbag after her. There was just room inside for her to stand upright. Then he closed the door on her. The footsteps were coming across the hall. Rainborough straightened his tie and set the rugs to rights.
Someone knocked on the drawing-room door and then entered. It was Mischa Fox. Rainborough stared at him open-mouthed. At any other time he would have felt joy, even triumph, at having Mischa in his house; but now the sight of him afflicted Rainborough with an emotion of pure terror. He recovered himself instantly.
‘Mischa! How splendid!’ he cried, and as he rushed forward to usher him in he deftly pushed Annette’s sherry glass, which was lying inconspicuously upon the floor, in under one of the armchairs with his foot.
‘How good to see you, Mischa!’ Rainborough continued, and shepherded his friend along, one eye nervously upon the china-cupboard door.
Mischa stood politely in the middle of the room, smiling. If only I can get him out into the garden, Rainborough thought, the girl may have the sense to slip away, or I might come back myself on some pretext and put her out of the house. He felt that somehow if he could only get Annette right out of the house, never to return, everything would be all right — and if he could have shrivelled her to nothing at that moment by the sheer power of his thought he would have done so. As it was, he felt her bodily presence a few feet behind him, weighty, inexorable and accusing.
‘Come and see my garden, Mischa,’ cried Rainborough, ‘I’ve got some new rock plants that would interest you!’
‘Thanks, John,’ said Mischa. ‘I think I’ll just sit here for the moment and see it through the windows.’
He made for the armchair which Annette had been occupying, opposite to the door of the china-cupboard, and settled himself in it comfortably, crossing his legs. Rainborough groaned inwardly. He walked uncertainly to the other chair and sat down. He hoped he was behaving naturally. In order to make things more normal he said, ‘Have a drink?’
‘Please,’ said Mischa.
Then it occurred to Rainborough with a further jolt that the only glasses in the house were in the china-cupboard with Annette. He thought at breakneck speed, and then poured some sherry into his own glass, which was still on the table, and handed it to Mischa.
‘Thank you,’ said Mischa, and added after a moment, ‘Aren’t you drinking, John?’
‘No,’ said Rainborough desperately, ‘I’ve given it up. I mean, I’ve got a bad stomach these days, the doctor says I’d better cut down on alcohol.’
‘I’m sorry to hear that, John,’ said Mischa. His eye dwelt upon the sherry decanter. ‘Then you were expecting company?’
‘No, yes,’ said Rainborough. ‘I thought a man from the office might drop in, but now it’s too late. I’m sure he won’t come now.’ After saying this, he cursed himself for not having said the opposite, so that he might have used the expected guest as a lever to get rid of Mischa. A thousand plausible fictions, now all spoilt, crowded into his head.
‘Well, I shall be selfish and say that’s excellent!’ said Mischa. ‘We shan’t be disturbed. We can have a good long talk.’
Rainborough looked at him hollow-eyed. He was beginning passionately to want a drink. If he could only have a drink to steady his nerves, he felt, he could carry anything off. In torment he watched Mischa Fox, who was sipping his sherry like a cat.
‘I saw a sad thing as I was coming along,’ said Mischa.
‘What was that?’ asked Rainborough.
‘A bird with only one foot,’ said Mischa. ‘How would it manage with only one foot to hold on to a branch in a storm?’
Rainborough neither knew nor cared. He was beginning already to have that uncanny feeling which he remembered having had so often in the past during conversations with Mischa. He never knew how to take Mischa’s remarks. It was as if Mischa were deliberately reducing him to a state of hypersensitivity and confusion. It also appeared to him, but doubtless he was imagining it, that Mischa was staring hard at the door of the china-cupboard — and then he recalled that the door didn’t fasten very well and sometimes came ajar even after it had been firmly shut. He had a terrible vision of the door opening slowly and revealing to Mischa the semi-nude figure of Annette. He could not prevent himself from looking round. The door was fast shut. Rainborough got up and fetched the cigarette-box, which he offered to Mischa, and then as he returned to sit down he moved his chair back so that it pressed hard against the door of the cupboard. He seemed to feel something yielding inside. He sat down vigorously and lighted a cigarette with trembling hands.
‘How peaceful it is here!’ said Mischa, who evidently did not feel sufficiently encouraged to pursue the topic of the bird with one foot. ‘How quietly you live, John. I love the silence of this room and garden. One would hardly believe it was London.’
‘Yes, it’s very peaceful,’ said Rainborough, casting a cautious eye about to see that nothing else had been displaced or broken in the course of the struggle.
‘And what a beautiful moth there is over there on the wall,’ said Mischa. ‘Have you seen it, John?’
‘Yes, I saw it,’ said Rainborough without looking round. ‘It’s a wood leopard. You don’t often see them around so early in the year.’
‘You’re looking tired and strained though,’ said Mischa. ‘How are things at SELIB?’
‘Oh, hellish!’ said Rainborough, glad to find a topic on which he could let fly some of his suppressed fear, anguish and fury. ‘Beastly! Intolerable! Nauseating!’
‘But why?’ asked Mischa.
‘It’s the women,’ said Rainborough. It hadn’t occurred to him quite like this before, but suddenly he saw it. A vast legion of clever and provoking females, each one looking like a combination of Annette and Miss Casement, spread across bis inner field of vision. They infested everything. They made life at the office impossible. Now they were even pursuing him to his house. He felt a deep need to explain this to Mischa.
‘What are these women?’ asked Mischa.
‘They’re furies masquerading as secretaries and so on,’ said Rainborough, ‘and things called Organizing Officers. There are dozens of them, dozens and dozens. They take one’s work away. It’s not that they do any work, they just make the place pointless by being there.’ He knew that he was talking wildly, but Mischa seemed to understand and was nodding his head encouragingly.
‘And I suppose they’re pretty girls?’ said Mischa. ‘It is the beautiful birds that have the sharpest beaks.’
‘Ravishing girls,’ said Rainborough. ‘Exquisite and hard as iron,
with cruel eyes.’
‘Such beings can fascinate all the same,’ said Mischa.
‘Fascinate, yes,’ said Rainborough. ‘They’d enslave one if they could, they’d eat one.’
‘But, of course, you struggle against the fascination?’ said Mischa.
‘I struggle,’ said Rainborough, ‘but what’s the use? I can’t get away by struggling. I’m alive with the things. What can I do?’ I’m raving, he thought to himself, but without caring much. He felt a strange relief in talking like this to Mischa.
‘It depends,’ said Mischa, who seemed to have taken his last question very seriously. ‘Not every woman is worth struggling with. Only a woman with some complexity of structure is worth struggling with.’
Rainborough wondered to himself, had Miss Casement got complexity of structure? He wasn’t sure.
‘Many women,’ said Mischa, ‘have no form at all. They are like the embryos in biological experiments, any organ will grow anywhere. Place a leg where the eye should be and it will grow into an eye, and the eye will grow into a leg. At best they are formless, at worst monsters.’ Rainborough shuddered.
‘On the other hand,’ said Mischa, ‘take a young girl, a child of nineteen or so — ’
Rainborough crushed his chair savagely against the cupboard door. He suddenly felt afraid that Annette would break out with a wail like an affronted ghost.
‘Take a very young girl,’ said Mischa. ‘With such it is not worth struggling either. A woman does not exist until she is twenty-five, even thirty perhaps.’
‘Not worth struggling with. No, I’m sure you’re right,’ said Rainborough.
‘Young girls are full of dreams,’ said Mischa. ‘That is what makes them so touching and so dangerous. Every young girl dreams of dominating the forces of evil. She thinks she has that virtue in her that can conquer anything. Such a girl may be virgin in soul even after much exprience and still believe in the legend of virginity. This is what leads her to the dragon, imagining that she will be protected.’
‘And what happens then?’ asked Rainborough.
‘The poor dragon has to eat her up,’ said Mischa, ‘and that’s how dragons get a bad name. But that’s not the end of her.’
‘Isn’t it?’ said Rainborough. He felt a cold sweat coming on his brow and a frantic desire for a drink.
‘After the unicorn girl,’ said Mischa, ‘comes the siren, the destructive woman. She realizes that men have found her out, that she cannot save men, she has not that virtue in her. So she will destroy them instead. She is dry, a bird with a woman’s head. Such women are dangerous too, in a different way.’
‘Are they worth struggling with?’ asked Rainborough. He had noticed that Mischa’s sherry was standing in front of him practically untasted. He lit another cigarette.
‘It depends,’ said Mischa. He was leaning back reflectively and taking his time. ‘Women are Protean beings. One may develop through many stages before becoming stabilized; and in such a case you may transform a woman by struggling. Others remain all their lives in a first or second stage. There are perpetual virgins as there are perpetual sirens.’
Rainborough wondered what Miss Casement would be transformed into if he struggled with her. He reflected that his last state might very well be worse than his first.
‘But if a woman is a siren by nature,’ said Mischa, ‘it is better to leave her alone. You cannot conquer such a woman, you can only wound her, and then she will poison you, like the toad whose skin exudes venom when attacked.’
‘And if in doubt — ?’ asked Rainborough. He wondered if he dared go out to the kitchen and have a quick drink from one of the bottles in the larder. But he was afraid to leave Mischa alone with the contents of the cupboard. He felt that unless he positively kept his chair braced against the door Annette’s nerve would fail her.
‘Perhaps one should always fight,’ said Mischa. ‘The way to overcome Proteus was to hold on to him until he finally took on his real form. You must tire a woman out, even if it takes years. Then you will see what she is.’
Rainborough noticed that the sun had gone in and it was becoming chilly and a little dark in the room. Mischa’s voice continued monotonously like the pale dreaming voice of a priest. Is he mocking me, Rainborough asked himself, or is he mad, perhaps? Then he remembered how often he had wondered in this way inconclusively about Mischa in the past.
‘Has it ever struck you that women are like fish?’ Mischa was saying. ‘The female equivalent of Pan is the sleek mermaid. Their bodies are streamlined. They are proud of this, not ashamed as the psychologists say. A real woman is proud of this.’
‘A real woman,’ said Rainborough. ‘Where is that to be found?’
‘There is a kind of wise woman,’ said Mischa; ‘one in whom a destruction, a cataclysm has at some time taken place. All structures have been broken down and there is nothing left but the husk, the earth, the wisdom of the flesh. One can create such a woman sometimes by breaking her — ’
Rainborough felt that Mischa was watching him closely as he spoke. He looked up quickly, but it was already too dark to see Mischa’s eyes. Rainborough felt his old fear of Mischa and a sort of disgust.
‘Why are you talking this rubbish, Mischa,’ he said, ‘and making me talk it too? If what you say were true, women would be either poisonous or boring!’
‘Ah,’ said Mischa, and Rainborough could see his very white teeth flashing under his moustache, ‘but there is always the possibility of finding a free woman.’
‘What’s that?’ asked Rainborough. How can I get rid of the man, he wondered frantically.
‘What must happen first,’ said Mischa, ‘is the destruction of the heart. Every woman believes so simply in the heart. A woman’s love is not worth anything until it has been cleaned of all romanticism. And that is hardly possible. If she can survive the destruction of the heart and still have the strength to love — ’
With a desperate movement Rainborough reached out and raised the decanter. He tilted it back and poured a quantity of sherry partly into his mouth and partly over his face and neck.
‘Poor John!’ said Mischa kindly. ‘I am evidently boring you to distraction.’
‘Sorry,’ said Rainborough, ‘this twilight is getting on my nerves.’ He leaned over and switched on an electric lamp.
Startled by the change of light, the wood leopard left its place on the wall, blundered once round the room, and then alighted upon the back of Mischa’s hand. Rainborough stared for a moment at this strange portent and then made a gesture as if to protect the moth, for his immediate thought was that Mischa was going to crush it. Mischa, who understood the gesture, laughed and got up. ‘Don’t worry,’ he said, ‘I love all creatures.’
He walked through the french windows into the garden, which was still well lighted with a rich twilight which seemed to draw colour and perfume together out of the flowers in a powdery haze. Very gently Mischa persuaded the moth to walk off his hand on to a leaf. He stood for a moment in the doorway, his face and his hands caught in the lamplight. And then Rainborough noticed something appalling. He had been vaguely aware that Mischa, as he talked, was holding something in his hand, which Rainborough had taken to be a handkerchief. Looking at it now in the light of the lamp, he saw what it was. It was Annette’s scarf.
Rainborough leaned against the door. ‘Mischa, you must go now,’ he said weakly. ‘I have to go out and see someone.’
‘Don’t worry, John, I’m just going,’ said Mischa. ‘Do you mind if I let myself out by the garden gate? I did enjoy our talk. But don’t believe a word I say. I love all creatures.’ As he spoke he was going away down the path into the twilight. He was nearly at the gate. ‘I love them all’ he called. Laughing as he spoke, and waving Annette’s scarf, he disappeared through the gate, and for a moment Rainborough could hear his laughter in the street before it died away.
Rainborough turned back into the drawing-room — and it was a second or two before he remembered A
nnette. When he remembered her he rapidly pulled the curtains, and said cautiously ‘all clear now!’ He didn’t imagine that Mischa would come back, but he didn’t yet feel quite safe. There was no movement from the cupboard door. A terrible panic seized Rainborough. Supposing the girl had been suffocated? How would he ever explain it? He rushed forward and pulled the door open.
Annette fell stiffly forward and Rainborough had to catch her in his arms to prevent her from crashing to the ground. He noticed, with an absurd surprise, that she was still half naked. He took her by the shoulder and shook her violently. She was certainly alive. She even had her eyes open, but she appeared to be in some kind of trance. Rainborough noticed that she had been crying, her face was stained with tears — and the idea that she had been crying silently in the cupboard during his conversation with Mischa struck him as disagreeable and almost uncanny. ‘Annette!’ he cried into her ear, ‘Annette!’
He put his arms round her and pummelled her in an attempt to bring her back to consciousness. Her flesh felt cold and rather soft and flabby, like putty or uncooked pastry. She gave a moan and put her hand to her face.
‘That’s better!’ said Rainborough. He opened the china-cupboard and pulled out a thick velvet table-cloth from a lower shelf and wrapped it round the girl. Then he turned on the electric fire and led Annette towards it. He came and put his arms round the bundle of Annette and the tablecloth. He remained for some time holding her like that, and it gave him an obscure comfort. Then he poured a good deal of sherry into Mischa’s glass, drank some himself, and gave some to Annette.
She was by now sufficiently recovered to start crying again. She started hunting on the foor of the cupboard for her blouse, her tears dropping steadily in front of her feet. Rainborough found it and helped her into it, and then into her coat. She took her handbag and prepared to go. Rainborough was relieved that she did not ask for her scarf. She said nothing until, when Rainborough had conducted her to the front door, she said huskily, ‘It wasn’t your fault, John.’
‘It was,’ said Rainborough, ‘but never mind.’ He kissed her cold cheek. She went out and he closed the door at once behind her.