“Here we are,” said Leo in the doorway. She had a tray with three plates on it, mounded with egg which just matched their colour; a juicy crest of fried tomato on top. It looked so good that Elsie ceased, on its appearance, to be anything more complicated than a hungry schoolgirl. She scarcely ever had such an appetite at home, even after bathing or the longest walk. Leo and Helen talked, in the loose disjointed way that arises between people each of whom knows that the other will have picked up the meaning before the sentence is half finished. The very fact that she could not follow half they said was curiously soothing; no explanations hammered home, no patient re-statements, no trembling verge of exasperation; only a kind of lazy shorthand. She felt herself growing warm and sleepy, lulled by the rare luxury of being able to concentrate entirely upon her food.
“Did you cook this?” she asked Leo, half-way through it.
“Yes, why? Does it taste peculiar?”
“No, it’s awfully good. But Mother used to say you’d never give your mind to it.” Many things of this kind were coming back to her.
“I taught her,” said Helen. She exchanged with Leo the kind of look which embraces many jokes too old to bear further repetition.
Leo picked up a crust of bread, and shamelessly polished her plate with it. “I suppose,” she said, “I ought to be asking after everyone. But I gather they’re much the same, only rather more so.”
“Yes.” It seemed, indeed, to exhaust the subject. She was a little shocked by the crudeness of the summary, but even more relieved by its brevity. Because Helen was there, she added rapidly, “Great Aunt Gertrude’s dead. She died of cancer. And Harriet—Aunt Eveline’s Harriet, you know—she’s married and has a baby. The place is a lot bigger since you went.”
“Has Father built it all?”
“Most of it. And some are bungalows.”
“It must look like the New Jerusalem.” Leo passed the crust again, critically, over her plate. Without looking up she said, “Are the Fawcetts still there?”
“No, Mr. Fawcett died and they moved to Bristol. Tom’s still at sea. He’s a first mate now.”
Leo ate her crust, and said when she had finished it, “I shall soon be owing him five bob. We had a bet he wouldn’t get a master’s ticket before he was thirty-five.”
Elsie was beginning to feel chatty, as she did at the rare times when she met an old school friend. “I always thought Tom was a very nice boy. I expect you missed him when he went to sea.”
Leo looked up from her plate. She seemed to Elsie to have lost the thread of the conversation, so she repeated her last remark to make it clearer. “Oh, yes,” said Leo. “Yes, Tom was a very good sort.”
Elsie was saddened by so slight a dismissal of so old a friend. It brought back again, now that her hunger had been disposed of, the doubts she had had before. Outside the uncurtained windows, which were now quite dark, vague dispersed creaks and splashes seemed to her like the sound of approaching oars. Presently even Leo noticed her strained attention.
“The river’s full of noises. Like The Tempest, you know. You’ll have earache if you listen to all of them.”
Shielded by the tablecloth, Elsie twisted her hand round and under her knee. Gripping a fold of stocking, she said, “I was wondering if you were expecting any visitors. I mean, if you are, I could do my unpacking. You mustn’t ever let me be in the way.”
“Visitors?” Leo stared at her, with that blankness which is the least easily simulated form of surprise. “At this time of night? It’s nearly eleven. This isn’t St. John’s Wood, my dear. Even Joe doesn’t often blow in as late as this.” She walked over to the window, looked out, and added, as if in comment on something she saw, “Besides, he’s working.”
She turned back into the room and gazed at Elsie, whose expressive face was full of half-hesitant relief. Suddenly she threw back her head and laughed. It was a clear, amused laugh, as open as a schoolboy’s; yet, Elsie thought, perhaps after all she had not remembered it quite right. “I see,” she said. “Of course, I should have thought. I was beginning to wonder what it was they had told you.” Elsie’s crimson face made her laugh, quietly, again. “Don’t worry. You’ve seen the household. All of it. No one belongs here except Helen and me.”
“Oh.” Elsie let out a long breath. “I’m so … I mean, of course—”
“We’ll tell each other the story of our lives in the morning.” Leo sat down across one of the chair-arms, and brought out a packet of cigarettes. “Do you?” she asked, holding it out.
“Well … not really, very much.”
“Quite right, they’re bad for your wind. I get into it when I’m working.” Helen, Elsie perceived for the first time, was no longer there; she had been vaguely aware of her absence without seeing her go. She had the power of putting herself, as it were, into soft-focus.
Leo struck a match. Across its spurt she said, slowly, “I suppose this is all pretty different from what you expected.”
“Well, I suppose in a way. …”
Leo smiled. The lamp was behind her; the flame of the match threw into relief, like the selection of a brilliant caricaturist, the odd slanting lines of her face. She looked, for a moment, different and subtly inhuman, like a mocking Oberon surveying one of the simpler attendants of his Queen. Then the match went out; she pulled at her cigarette, and Elsie saw that her smile was, after all, quite a kindly one.
“You look dog-tired,” she said. “Helen’s fixing up her room for you. You’ll be able to turn in in a minute.”
“Oh, no!” Elsie had forgotten this minor fear, preoccupied with the major one. “No, truly, I shouldn’t think of it. Please don’t let her. I’ll sleep here on the sofa. Really, I sleep awfully well.”
“That’s all right. We call it Helen’s room. She keeps some of her things in it. We always put people up there.”
These, Elsie knew, were the specious protests of hospitality and sisterly kindness; but she was too sleepy to argue any more. Secretly she had been nervous of being invited to share with Leo. Leo’s room at home had always been a kind of fastness, and the thought of invading it unnerved her even now.
“I’m sure it will be lovely,” she said.
It was Helen who took her up. Her room, Elsie decided, was very like her, quiet in its buff and green, neat without fussiness, giving the illusion of space in small compass. It was also entirely free from her personal trifles; even the cupboards and drawers were empty. Elsie admired the tact with which she had eliminated so completely all reminders of the fact that she had been turned out.
“I’ve put two bottles in the bed,” she said, turning down the green silk eiderdown. “I do hope it won’t be damp. It happens here so quickly.”
“I’m sure it won’t be.” Elsie looked, contentedly, round the room again. Her eye was caught by a charcoal sketch, pinned up unframed on the wooden panels of the opposite wall. “Why, it’s Leo,” she exclaimed.
“Yes. Do you think it’s like her?”
“Oh, yes,” said Elsie politely. Indeed, it was very like her at the moment when, just now, the light of the match had produced so disconcerting an effect. It was a head and shoulders, the face half-turned, the shoulders bare; the eyes had a look of keeping something amusing to themselves. The technique was spare, hard and bold, and had an odd effect of deliberate ruthlessness.
“It’s very clever.” Elsie had learned from her mother to shelve, with this adjective, unsettling ideas. “Who did it?”
“I did,” said Helen in her gentle indifferent voice. “I do hope you’ll sleep well. I’ve put you a tin of biscuits in case you get hungry in the night.”
“Are you an artist?” Elsie stared at her in awe and curiosity, mingled with satisfaction at having placed one of them, at least, against a practicable background.
“Goodness, no,” said Helen briskly. “There are too many artists; and not enough good ones. It’s just an amusement. I’m a technical illustrator.”
“Really? What do you il
lustrate?”
“This sort of thing.” She took a portfolio out of a rack against the wall.
Elsie opened it, phrases of admiration forming ready upon her lips. She stared at one diagram, then turned the page hastily and stared at another, wondering if she had got it the right way up. She had expected designs for jewellery, or evening gowns; not this meaningless, but somehow repugnant, arrangement resembling a nexus of interwoven worms, framed in what looked like folds of cloth. She gave up the effort to be suitable. “Whatever is it?” she asked.
“A tumour in the frontal lobe of somebody’s brain,” said Helen casually. “Just before they got it out.” She turned on to the next diagram. “This is a cross-section of an eye. Of course, that had been removed already.”
“Oh.” Fascinated horror kept Elsie’s eyes glued to the page. Close behind her shoulder, Helen smelt faintly of some light scent, fresh and warm and silky. Elsie had a feeling that if one more incomprehensible thing happened she would burst into tears.
“Where did you draw them?”
“In the operating theatre,” said Helen, “of course.”
“But don’t you mind?”
“No. Why should I?”
“I’m sure it must be—very interesting.” Elsie’s mental picture of an operating theatre comprised chiefly a welter of blood and sawn-off limbs. She looked at Helen in a kind of daze. “But don’t you find it rather terrible?”
“A lot less terrible than commercial advertising. It’s honest, anyway. Besides, I’m a trained nurse, you know.”
“Are you?”
“Yes. Don’t I look like one?”
“Not at all,” said Elsie, with heartfelt truth.
“That’s fine,” Helen closed the folder and put it away. “Well, I won’t keep you up any longer. I expect you’re dropping on your feet. If there’s anything you want, knock on the wall. Leo and I will be next door, you know. Good night, and sleep well.”
Elsie undressed mechanically, and, when she was ready, switched off the bedside lamp. Going over to the window, she put her head out into the moist, murmuring night. The leaves of a willow-tree made a flickering whisper; water slapped stealthily below her; people were singing, to the strum of a ukulele, somewhere in the distance; an owl hooted and a gull cried. Down in the midst of the boat were voices, soft and intermittent, which did not argue or contend, like the voices at home, but went on, evenly and mysteriously, and ceased, and began again. A long way off, it seemed in the midst of the river itself, a solitary light burned. She remembered the island, with its low wooden house; it was too dark now to see its outline, but the light must be there. It winked sometimes, and twinkled like a star, as a branch of the tree close by swung across it in the light wind.
She began to think, as she always thought last thing before she slept, of Peter. She would write to him soon; not yet, but when the jumble in her mind had straightened. She thought how pleased with her daring he would be, how astonished to find that she was so near. The thought of his approval made her feel solid and real, and almost confident in the midst of so much that was lonely and strange. She would see him again! There was that; and there was Leo, who, though one might sometimes be afraid of her, though she still seemed like a creature of another race, had still about her some of the unwritten certainties of childhood; she had never broken a promise, or told tales, or, if she knew where one was hiding, given one away. For tonight, that was enough. She slipped into bed; felt, with her extended toes, beyond the warmth of the bottles, a faint dampness in a fold of the sheet; and, almost in the moment of feeling it, fell asleep.
CHAPTER IX
SHE WOKE TO A GREEN light of sun in leaves, and a sensation, curiously unterrifying, that the ground was shaking under her. The movement went on, a gentle rocking and bumping, and died gradually away. She remembered where she was, jumped out of bed, and looked out of the window. The river glittered in a clean, cool, early light. Two great, low barges, linked together, were passing down-stream; it was their wash which had shaken the houseboat. They were almost abreast of the little island, on which no life seemed to be stirring. She dressed quickly. At home she was a lazy riser; only the vague tenacious hopefulness of youth, mixed with the need to avoid trouble, had launched her sluggishly on each returning, motiveless day. She had no idea what time it was, having forgotten to wind her watch last night. It might well be several hours till breakfast, but she did not care. It was good to have this shining, empty world of leaves and water to herself. She curled her toes against the rough matting on the floor; happiness seemed to burst up within her and float out of her, like bubbles, into the surrounding air. It was to Peter, she thought, that she owed all this.
The little wooden door of her room gave out on to a matting-covered balcony, part of the original roof on to which the upper rooms had been built; ladders led from it, up and down. She climbed to the flat top, and stood there in the wind; her hair and clothes blew the same way as the willow-leaves and the waves on the water; she felt like a flag on a mast, floating in blue air above the world.
Someone was moving on the boat; she heard quick, light feet, falling softly, and a creak and click which seemed to belong, not here, but at home. She remembered why; it was like the noise of the pump which, almost every day of her life till now, she had heard drawing up the sparse Cornish well-water to its high cistern. A familiar clear alto began singing quietly to the rhythm.
Says I to the pretty girl, How do you do?
To me way-oh, blow the man down.
Says she, None the better for seeing of you-oh. …
Elsie ran down the ladders to the after deck. The pump was real, and just like the one at home. Leo was swinging the upright wooden handle, her faded blue silk pyjamas blown close to her body by the morning breeze. Her bare feet were as brown as her hands. She looked slight, taut and effortlessly happy.
Elsie felt suddenly too neat, too tightly buttoned-up in too many clothes of not quite the right kind. At home, Leo had been the odd one; Elsie’s things, a kind of preparatory version of her mother’s and those of her mother’s friends, had always been in the picture. She hesitated, shyly, on the ladder.
“Hullo.” Leo stopped singing to smile at her. “You’ve made a pretty quick comeback. I was going to bring you your breakfast in bed.”
“No, really. I don’t feel tired at all. May I do some pumping?”
“If you like. Then I can get the breakfast. I want a swim first, though. I’ll wait if you’d like to come in too.”
Elsie eyed the coldly gleaming river. “Will it be out of my depth?”
“All but a couple of feet by the bank. You can swim, though. Damn it, I taught you.”
Elsie had, till this moment, forgotten it. She had never gone beyond knee-depth, after Leo went. No one else had succeeded (or, for that matter, tried to succeed) in coaxing her out among the Atlantic rollers. It had been Leo who had taught her to dodge their fall, and to launch a surf-board on the white, tumbling rush when they had broken. She had been too small, then, for all but the little ones. Afterwards there had been no one to go with, and the terror of finding one above her, piling itself up by stealth and hanging at its height, had overcome her when she was alone. For a moment she thought of mentioning her bronchitis; but Leo had had a way of looking at one when one made excuses, and, thought Elsie, probably had it still. “I’d rather pump,” she said. Leo received this untrimmed fact quite cheerfully; she always had.
“All right. Thanks. About fifty turns it wants now.” She stepped out of her pyjamas on the open deck, with an indifference which shocked Elsie though no one was about, pulled on an old swim-suit which had been lying there, and dived, capless, over the side. Elsie swung the pump-handle, watching her dark, wet head and the neat knife-cut of her overarm stroke. She was back just as the pumping was finished, hoisted herself on to the flat floating deck, and went in. Through the open door, Elsie could see her in the galley, naked, putting on a saucepan with one hand and drying herself with the othe
r. Her body was straight, firm and confident; it moved as though clothes were an accident about which it had no particular feeling, for or against. Her skin was creamy-brown all over, except for a belt of white round the loins, across one side of which ran a deep, puckered scar. It looked old, but Elsie felt sure she hadn’t had it when she went away. She did not like to ask Leo how she had got it.
“How are you getting on?” Leo came out into the cabin, rubbing her hair. “You must have done enough by now.”
“I’ve just finished.” Elsie came in too, and looked out of the window. She was embarrassed, not for Leo but for herself. There was a kind of arrogance in that slender, fluent shape with its small, high breasts, straight shoulders and narrow hips which made her feel as if it were she who had been stripped, and found to be pale and flabby and self-conscious in the light. Lest Leo should notice, she said, brightly, “I suppose all that water has to be boiled?”
“Boiled?” Leo stared, and burst out laughing. “Lord almighty, you didn’t think we were pumping up the Thames to drink? That’s the bilge. It seeps in a bit every day; you have to keep shifting it, to prevent the whole joint from sinking. We’re on Company’s mains. If you look on the land side, you can see the pipes running through the water, along with the electric cables. All the houseboats have it. Not Joe, of course; he has to ferry his drinking-water in every day, and use the river for everything else. Nobody lived there before he did. But he doesn’t notice that sort of thing.”