‘I’m not asking you to ignore me,’ said Rosa, ‘but just to continue your conversation.’ She turned her chair round so that she faced the bookshelves and began to examine the books. She selected a volume, and leaning a plump hand on the back of the chair, began to read. The two men looked at her back.
‘What are you so cross about, Rosa?’ asked Rainborough.
Rosa turned round far enough for him to see her profile. ‘That man Calvin Blick is with Hunter,’ she said.
Rainborough was very interested. ‘Whatever did he want?’ he asked.
‘He wants to buy the Artemis for Mischa Fox.’
Rainborough exclaimed. ‘How extraordinary! What is Fox plotting now?’
‘Must he always be plotting something?’ asked Rosa.
‘Yes,’ said Rainborough, ‘I think so. Don’t you think so?’
Rosa shrugged her shoulders. ‘I don’t like Calvin Blick,’ she said, ‘and poor Hunter is terrified of him.’
‘Blick is the dark half of Mischa Fox’s mind,’ said Rainborough. ‘He does the things which Mischa doesn’t even think of. That’s how Mischa can be so innocent.’
Rosa made a contemptuous gesture. Then she tossed the book she had been reading on to the ground.
‘Pick it up,’ said Peter Saward, ‘and put it where you found it, or I won’t know where it is.’ Rosa replaced the book.
‘But why in heaven’s name should Mischa want to have the Artemis?’ asked Rainborough. He was fascinated.
‘Why indeed?’ said Rosa. ‘What is the Artemis good for?’
‘I didn’t mean that.’ said Rainborough, ‘as you well know. But why the Artemis?’
‘The Artemis is a little independent thing,’ said Rosa, ‘it’s very small, but it goes around on its own. There aren’t many completely independent periodicals these days. Perhaps the sight of a little independent thing annoys Mischa. It’s like the instinct to catch fish or butterflies. To feel the thing struggling in your grasp.’ She stretched out her hand and closed her fingers slowly.
‘Rosa,’ said Peter Saward. He murmured her name like a magic charm to protect not himself but her.
‘All the same it’s odd,’ said Rainborough. ‘Hunter won’t sell, of course.’
‘I’ve no idea,’ said Rosa, ‘what Hunter will do. It’s nothing to do with me.’
‘Come, Rosa,’ said Rainborough. ‘You know Hunter will do whatever you say.’
‘That’s why I’m not going to say anything,’ said Rosa.
‘I only hope Hunter will be arrogant enough,’ said Rainborough. ‘It’s not often anyone is in a position to be thoroughly disobliging to Calvin Blick. It’s a chance not to be missed.’
‘I don’t see why Hunter shouldn’t sell if he wants to!’ said Rosa. Her hair hung in loops over her brow like a cloud of black thoughts and was wound upon her neck into a long heavy knot. She still sat turned sideways to the two men, looking at the bookshelves on the opposite wall. ‘He’s being offered a good price for the shares, and a compensation for the loss of a job he hates. I don’t see why he should refuse just because some people think Calvin Blick ought to be taught a lesson!’
‘Hunter should be too proud to sell!’ said Rainborough.
‘What do you mean, “too proud”?’ asked Rosa. She was taut with irritation.
‘Well,’ said Rainborough, ‘I mean -I should have thought you would have cared too much about the Artemis, Rosa, its traditions and so on.’
‘It’s clear you’ve never had to run a review,’ said Rosa, ‘or you wouldn’t talk nonsense about “traditions”. The Artemis is a wretched thing, it just manages to drag itself along from month to month. It’s painful to watch. Perhaps it would be a good thing if Mischa Fox were to put it out of its misery. If he can turn it into a glossy magazine and make it pay, good luck to him.’
‘You astonish me, Rosa,’ said Rainborough. He was beginning to sound really angry. ‘If I were you I’d rather kill the Artemis than let Mischa Fox have it. Whatever will the shareholders say?’
‘They’ll say what Hunter says,’ said Rosa.
‘If it’s a matter of pumping some money in,’ said Rainborough, ‘I’m surprised you haven’t approached the shareholders long ago with some sort of appeal. One or two of those old trouts are rolling in wealth. Camilla Wingfield, for instance. She’s made of money. She could easily put Artemis in the clear. Have you never thought of that?’
‘No,’ said Rosa, ‘I haven’t. The old woman you mention is mad, incidentally.’
‘She’s not mad,’ said Rainborough. ‘I admit that she seems to be under the impression that she did in Mr Wingfield. But who are we to call her deluded? In any case, I think you ought to fight Mischa Fox.’
‘For heaven’s sake!’ said Rosa. ‘Under what banner?’ She was rubbing her eyes and combing her hair with her fingers as if her thoughts were anywhere but with the present conversation. ‘It’s Hunter’s business,’ she said.
‘Then why are you so upset about it?’ asked Rainborough.
‘I just feel ill from having had Calvin Blick in the house,’ said Rosa. ‘He is a horrible person.’
‘I don’t know — ’ said Peter Saward suddenly. ‘He has a pleasant smile.’
‘Peter, your good nature sometimes approaches imbecility,’ said Rosa. ‘Anyway, I don’t want Blick to get wind of Annette.’
‘Ah, Marcia Cockeyne’s daughter,’ said Rainborough.
‘Yes,’ said Rosa. ‘Marcia wanted Annette kept out of Mischa’s way. Mischa doesn’t know the child’s in England. And there’s no reason why he should know, unless Blick smells her out.’
‘I never met the legendary Marcia,’ said Rainborough, ‘but I remember meeting Annette when she was a child of fourteen, with that peculiar brother of hers. She was a striking kid. Her mother used to be a great friend of Mischa’s. Have they quarrelled?’
‘Of course not,’ said Rosa. ‘It’s just that Marcia doesn’t think Mischa would be the best chaperone for Annette in London.’
‘I remember too,’ said Rainborough, ‘hearing someone speculating about whether Mischa wasn’t really Annette’s father. Do you believe that story?’
‘I know it to be untrue,’ said Rosa. ‘Annette was about seven when her mother first met Mischa Fox.’ She turned and looked at Rainborough, pushing her hair back out of her eyes. She was calm and grave now, the irritation was gone. ‘Besides,’ she said, ‘Mischa would be too young.’
‘Who knows?’ said Rainborough. ‘No one knows Mischa’s age. One can hardly even make a guess. It’s uncanny. He could be thirty, he could be fifty-five. Have you ever met anyone who knew? I’m sure even Calvin Blick doesn’t know. No one knows his age. No one knows where he came from either. Where was he born? What blood is in his veins? No one knows. And if you try to imagine you are paralysed. It’s like that thing with his eyes. You can’t look into his eyes. You have to look at his eyes. Heaven knows what you’d see if you looked in.’
Rosa yawned ostentatiously. ‘John, would you mind going?’ she said. ‘I want to talk to Peter.’
Rainborough got up. He still looked furious. ‘You drive me mad, Rosa!’ he said. He picked up his coat. ‘I must get back to the office anyhow.’
‘And I have to be at the factory at four,’ said Rosa.
‘Oh!’ said Peter Saward. During the foregoing conversation he had sat contemplating Rosa’s profile, and seemed not to be listening. ‘So you’re only giving me three-quarters of an hour!’
‘That’s right,’ said Rosa, ‘and Rainborough has already taken up twenty minutes of it.’
‘All right, all right, I’m going!’ said Rainborough. He moved to the door. Without looking up, Rosa held out her hand. He pressed it and then laughed. ‘You drive me mad!’ he repeated.
After the door closed, Rosa sat for some time still rubbing her eyes and rubbing her hand over her face. Peter Saward sat looking at the paper-knife. He heard her get up. Then she began to wander about the room. She a
lways did this. It was a kind of dance. Peter Saward felt the whole room suddenly stiffen. The walls were full of consciousness and jerked themselves upright. The ceiling trembled. The space flung itself out like a fisherman’s net and hung poised in an expanse of significant points. Still Rosa moved. She touched the green plant and drew her finger along the window pane. She stepped upon the books and breathed upon the pictures. It seemed to Peter Saward that she walked about in the air, and her shadow fell upon him from far above. He waited patiently. The circle grew smaller and smaller. At last he felt Rosa’s fingers touch his hair. They touched it lightly at first, like birds not daring to land. Then they came back and plunged deeply in. Rosa drew her hands down the two sides of his face and lifted his head. She was standing above him. For the first time since her arrival they looked into each other’s eyes. They looked gravely for several minutes, each scrutinizing the other, not with tenderness but with a puzzled curious intentness. ‘Hmmm!’ said Rosa, and she threw away his head as if it had been a ball. Peter Saward caught her by the wrist as she was moving off.
Peter Saward was well aware that it is the illusion of the lover that love always consoles. Yet he could not help hoping that in some way his love was a benefit to Rosa. He had sometimes found, or imagined that he found, in her lately an increase of concern about him; but this might very well be a reverence for his illness and not a tenderness for himself. That ambiguity would go with him to the end of his life. It sometimes seemed to him that the continuity of his work in some way pleased her or healed some restlessness in her. When she expressed, as she constantly did, irritation with his obsession with the Kastanic script, he liked to flatter himself that this was the reflection of his own dissatisfaction, detected by the sensitive instrument of a true affinity; though at other times he was more inclined to believe that her annoyance with the hieroglyphs was simply annoyance with him and not an attachment to him that went deeper than consciousness.
He sighed and tried to look up at her, but Rosa moved behind him, and reaching over his shoulder pulled one of the hieroglyphic sheets into the centre of the desk. For a moment they both looked at it together.
‘What does it say, Peter?’ asked Rosa.
‘I wish I knew,‘ said Peter Saward. ‘Perhaps it’s a great poem.’
Rosa always asked this question and Peter always gave the same answer, although in fact he did not think that it was perhaps a great poem.
‘It’s more likely to be someone’s laundry list,’ said Rosa.
‘People don’t carve their laundry lists on the backsides of stone lions twenty feet high,’ said Peter Saward.
‘Well, then, it’s the dreary boasting of some king,’ said Rosa — ‘so many cities destroyed, so many men killed. I wish it were all over with I But maybe it’ll all come to you in a flash.’
In such moments, with Rosa looking over his shoulder, Peter Saward did indeed feel that it might all come to him in a flash. But he shook his head. ‘It’s not like breaking a code, Rosa,’ he said. ‘Even if I got the elementary things right, I’d still have to build up the vocabulary bit by bit. Nothing can happen quickly. But I’ve told you this at least a hundred times.’
‘Well, I can’t listen,’ said Rosa. ‘I try to, but it bores me to death. Oh, I hate all this stuff, I hate it! Peter, why do I hate it so?’
Peter Saward wished that he knew. He sighed, and captured her hand again where it lay lightly on his shoulder. ‘O Rosa— ’ he began.
‘I see you’ve cut yourself shaving again,’ said Rosa, who knew what was coming. ‘Your face is covered with blood.’ She could be very prompt in creating a distraction when Peter Saward wanted to say something serious.
‘Rosa, I love you,’ said Peter.
Rosa stroked his hair in a mechanical way with her free hand and said, ‘I wish I had half a crown for every time you’ve said that.’
Peter, who was used to this, only replied, ‘Stop hiding behind me. I want to look at you.’
Rosa ambled round his desk, picking her way between the books. ‘I’ve got to go in five minutes,’ she announced cheerfully.
‘I wish you wouldn’t come for these short times, Rosa!’ said Peter Saward. ‘You don’t know how much your visits upset me. I lose hours of work. And then you’re only here for a moment. And you leave me thoroughly distressed!’
Rosa turned on him at last the full power of her face, lit up suddenly with irony and delight. The love of Peter Saward was her only luxury. She never tired of forcing him to display it and lay it out for her like a rich cloth; but only when she had first protected herself by mockery and laughter.
‘What!’ she said. ‘Isn’t it worth it, to see me for half an hour? Think how much you can see of me in half an hour. I sneeze, I open and close my eyes, I stand up, I sit down, I walk, I talk! Even if you lost ten hours’ work, wouldn’t it be worth it for half an hour of me?’
‘It would be worth it!’ said Peter Saward. She gave him both her hands. Her smile came to him like a flame catching.
‘Would it not be worth it for ten minutes?’ asked Rosa. ‘Think how much you could experience in ten minutes! Enough to think about for days!’
‘It would be worth it for ten minutes, Rosa!’ said Peter Saward.
‘Wouldn’t it be worth it for a second?’ said Rosa.’ Suppose you were just to see me for an instant as a door was closing, just like a snapshot. Wouldn’t that be well worth ten hours work?’ Her smile had dissolved into a look of delighted tenderness that pinned him down like an arrow.
‘It would be worth ten hours’ work, Rosa,’ said Peter Saward; ‘a hundred hours, a thousand hours!’
Four
ROSA ran down the road towards the factory. The big square building with its square windows grew larger and larger until it was looming over her. A tall chimney held a motionless trail of white smoke over three streets and the width of the Thames. Rosa’s thoughts were moving as rapidly as her feet. At that moment everything in her life seemed to be a source of desperate anxiety. O God, as if it were not enough! she thought. Not only was there the problem of Hunter’s future and the distressing decision about the Artemis. Her hair began to come down and she could hear the hairpins one after another pattering on to the pavement behind her. Not only were there the lies she had felt herself compelled to tell, by implication and omission, to Peter Saward. Not that in a way she minded lying to Peter Saward occasionally. He knew her so well that she assumed he always knew when she was lying and so that made it all right. She was late for the four-o’clock shift. Her life was in disorder. Her hair was in disorder. Would the handkerchief hold it? It would get caught in the machine. Caught in the machine. Not only was there the perpetual vague anxiety about Annette, who lived in her house as quietly as an unexploded charge of dynamite. Now there was Mischa Fox, whose rare presences in England never failed to disturb her even if, as usually happened, she did not meet him but was only distantly and indirectly aware of his coming. And there were the Lusiewicz brothers, which was the worst thing of all. They would be expecting her this evening, they would be waiting for her now. The last hairpin fell. As if it were not enough.
Rosa clocked in. Her hair was hanging down her back, still in a precarious knot. She supported it with one hand behind her and went to find her overall. Then she lifted her hair on to the top of her head and balanced it there like a bundle while she tied it securely about with a handkerchief. Then she ran into the workroom. The rhythmical din burst upon her as she opened the door. ‘You’re late, Miss Keepe,’ murmured voices, which perhaps she imagined, amidst the machinery. She ran down an alleyway of contorted steel. The machines at the factory were in perpetual motion day and night. If the attendant of a particular machine was late the person on the shift before was supposed to stay on until he was relieved. So lateness was frowned upon not only by the management but by the workers. Rosa’s breath came in gasps. The workroom was more than a hundred yards across, and her bench was on the far side. She ran upon a soft carpet of pape
r and steel shavings.
As she drew near her bench, she slowed down. Her predecessor had left, and her place had been taken temporarily by Jan Lusicwicz, who was tending the machine and looking out for Rosa at the same time. When he saw her coming, he waved to her not to hurry. His smile shone out like a neon sign. Rosa could see nothing else. She arrived panting.
‘So. You hurry,’ said Jan. ‘Wait. Not yet. Sit.’ He still usually spoke in monosyllables, except at peaceful moments when he had time to relax and think out sentences. Rosa could not hear his voice in the din, but somehow she knew what he said. Rosa seated herself at the bench and got her breath, and Jan continued to smile down at her while his left hand operated the machine.
‘I’ll take over now!’ shouted Rosa. ‘Thanks, Jan!’
‘Don’t say it!’ shouted Jan.
‘You mean, “don’t mention it”!’ shouted Rosa.
‘What?’
Rosa shook her head violently. They were laughing into each other’s faces. Jan still had his left hand on the lever; Rosa’s hand covered his, and for a moment she felt the steel of the lever through his flesh. Then his hand had slipped away and he turned.
‘What about it?’ he called into her ear. ‘Tonight, yes?’
Rosa nodded vigorously, and a sound rose up inside her head. She supposed it was ‘yes’. Jan smiled and receded, waving, down the steel alley. Rosa glued herself to the machine, and the rhythm of it filled her body.
She called the machine ‘Kitty’ because it made a repetitive rhythmical noise which sounded to Rosa like Kitty Kitty bang click Kitty Kitty bang click. Kitty was rather tall and rose well above Rosa’s head when she was sitting down — and as she sat, looking up through the steel body of the machine, Rosa would often try to find Kitty’s face. But she could never decide what the face of Kitty was like. Sometimes she seemed to be all face, the big safety shields were her eyes and the shovelling back and forth of the tray was the insatiable movement of her jaw. At other times Rosa’s attention fixed upon the motion of the steel arms above the tray, and the Kitty would seem like a contorted curling many-limbed creature with a tiny circular head, low down on the farther side, which spun madly round and round. At other times she looked different again. Only her voice never altered. When this became too monotonous, Rosa could produce a syncopated effect by introducing the suction device, which removed the steel filings a little off the beat; but she didn’t like to do this too often, as it put a strain on the mechanism. An alternative way of distracting herself from Kitty’s well-known diction was to try to listen instead to the din which the whole factory was making and try to understand its rhythm. But out of this deafening chaos of sounds Rosa was never able to draw any harmonious or repetitive pattern, although she felt sure that it was there, and that if only she could remember long enough and listen in the right way she would find out what it was. But it never emerged, and the only result of this entertainment was that she began to make mistakes with Kitty.