They drove along the narrow country road with intermittent bursts of speed and sluggishness, but whether that was at the whim of the driver or the questionable ability of the engine Titus could not tell. They didn’t talk but there was no sense of embarrassment in the silence. Ruth seemed abstracted and thoughtful, and not thinking of what impression she might be making on the man who sat next to her.
The landscape was changing from the rural richness of downland and fields and hedgerows to a more urban morose greyness. They had turned into a wider road and there was now a continuous cavalcade of cars in each direction, and no mercy shown to the moody car, which did not belong to the stream of rapid sleek machines that continually passed them.
‘It’s about another half-hour’s drive,’ said Ruth. ‘I hope you’re not too hungry. We can’t stop even if we wanted to, even if there were any food, even, if, even, only, even, even, un-even, even-tide, even-song, songbird and so on, and on, and on, until we get there, and how I want to be there. My home. Close the door and shut out the world, but take parts that I like with me. Oh, come on, car, take us home – quick, quick.’
Little grey houses now hemmed in the cars. Unlovely and all alike, except for an occasional burst of personality, when the window frames and door had been painted mauve or yellow, or red or green.
‘It’s not far now,’ said Ruth. ‘Soon we turn off, and although the studio has no architectural beauty, as soon as the door is closed we enter a new world, or rather one where I feel safe. Whatever you think of ‘‘Home’’, that’s what I think, love and the things that I love, you’ll soon see. What do you think ‘‘Home’’ means, Titus?’
‘Well, that is too big for me to answer in a short time. If you allow me to stay for a little while, I will tell you about my childhood and my name.’
‘Why should I query your name? You didn’t query mine.’
Ruth turned the car from the mean and ugly road into a much wider road, which seemed to be a cul-de-sac. It was not a particularly beautiful road, except that at the end of it there stood, almost as sentinels, a group of chestnut trees. The large building by which the car stopped, as suddenly and jerkily as it had taken off, was gaunt, grey and windowless. About eight steps led up to a door, which appeared to be permanently ajar and as Ruth opened the car door the cats flew out, up the steps, through the door and into the darkness beyond.
Dog, being a guest like his master, waited to be told what to do, and as Titus followed Ruth out of the car, so too did he.
‘We’ll go in first, and then I wonder if you could help me, Titus, bring in the treasure trove I’ve got in the car.’
‘I’ll take some now.’
‘No, I’d rather show you my home first, then we can bring it in.’
As they ascended the steps and went through the doors there was very little light, but Titus sensed a long corridor, with doors at equal intervals along it, for from under one or two of them appeared a light, and some sounds of music or laughter or argument seeped out, and from behind one door a smell of cooking, which reminded Titus that his last meal and that of Dog had been in an empty house in a dark, unfriendly yew wood, and he had a pang of remorse as he thought of his guide and his unknown fate.
At the end of the long passage was another door facing them and Ruth said, ‘Well, here we are.’
‘Where are the cats?’ asked Titus.
‘They have their own special door,’ said Ruth, as she fumbled in what must have been a letterbox and drew forth a long length of string, with a key attached to the end of it, with which she opened the door to her domain.
She switched on a light, and as the room was drained of its darkness Titus’s heart thumped at what he saw.
His memory flew back to a series of attic rooms, where his sister had collected all that she loved best in life, and which she had guarded fiercely from intrusion.
The room he looked at now was a ferment of so many things that he could take in no detail, only the overpowering ‘feel’ of the place. One wall was a huge window, divided into large rectangular panes of glass, and the other three walls were covered with paintings, framed and unframed drawings, books, photographs cut from papers of animals, birds, mountains, people’s faces, clowns, masks and spears. A piece of seaweed hung from some kind of hook on the wall, and there were stuffed birds on shelves and tables. Tables, with paints and brushes, stood near two enormous easels and on the floor were stones and carvings of wood and stone. Leaves and half-dead flowers in poor arrangements stood incongruously on a table that must have served for eating on, for plates and teacups stood on sheets of paper with writing and drawings on them, and sitting on a mound of paper was one of the cats who had been a passenger with Titus in the car. Another had climbed and found a niche on a windowsill and sat looking out, with teeth chattering at the sight and sound of small birds, flying from branch to branch outside, but not within range of the sudden pounce.
The ceiling was cathedral high and in one corner of the studio stood a large black stove, with a thick black pipe that disappeared far above into the ceiling. It was unlit, but it had so much character that it was a personality in its own right, standing ominous and full of potential. In another corner, almost incidentally, was a bed, covered with a patchwork quilt, on which lay another ubiquitous cat.
‘Oh, dear,’ cried Ruth, cigarette dancing up and down as her lip quivered. ‘You are hungry – I am hungry – Dog is hungry – cats are hungry, but I’m so tired too. Which comes first?’
‘Well, at the risk of seeming vulgar, I am hungry, first and foremost, and then tired. What is there to eat? Can I help – have you any food, is there a stove – is there anywhere to cook anything?’ asked Titus.
‘You haven’t seen quite all yet,’ answered Ruth. ‘I will show you what there is, then we can make what we can of it. Come on outside and you will see the extent of my domain.’
Titus followed her as she opened the door of the studio and led him into the corridor, and on the opposite side to the door went up three or four dark stairs to another door, which opened on to a smallish room with a huge window, with no outlook, but a steep brick wall. There was what appeared to be a bath, covered by a large wooden board, and a black cooking stove. Ruth made for a green-painted cupboard, which she opened almost hesitatingly. Some apples, onions, bread, butter, a dark cake, eggs – not exactly haute cuisine – but enough to satisfy the hunger of two adults and one large dog. The cats, being cats, made sure that their needs had already been seen to.
Without finesse, both Ruth and Titus made use of what there was to hand, and fed themselves and Dog. When all three needs were satisfied, they went back to the studio and, without question, without coyness or sensuality, they threw off their clothes and dropped exhausted on to the low and rather lumpy bed.
21
An Affectionate Welcome
When Titus awoke, he was aware of a slight weight on his chest and, opening his eyes, he met the steady gaze of two yellow ones and a sound of what he thought had been a distant beat of drums. His feet were also constricted, and as he moved to free them a cat sailed gently into the air and landed in a hollow of the bed, which might have been a ready-made cats’ nest. He slowly remembered where he was and with whom.
As he turned his head to see if Ruth was awake, he thought that he was in a pale mist, until he saw, first of all a cigarette, then that it was attached to her lower lip.
‘Good morning, Titus.’
‘Good morning, Ruth, and good morning, room.’
‘How wonderful it is to be alive, to be home, even for a bit, not to be alone.’
‘But you have your friends.’
‘Oh, yes, they’re my best friends. They know all my secrets, and what’s more, they never divulge them. They won’t tell a soul you’re here if you don’t want them to.’
‘I don’t think I know a soul, but Ruth, thank you for having me, or perhaps I should say thank you for letting me stay.’
‘But what else could you
have done? Where could you have gone? Besides, you haven’t really told me who you are.’
‘Perhaps if I do, you won’t believe me. There is so much to tell, so much that I almost don’t want to remember, so many people I crave to see, whom I cannot. So much that I have done, and so much that I have not done. Perhaps, in time, I may be able to tell you a fraction, but I feel a tenderness for you, which is something to do with some of my past. My sister Fuchsia had a room, or rooms, something like yours. Full of love, her love. The only way she could express her abundant loving was for her things that she had collected: her books, her paintings, the flowers she picked and forgot to look after . . .’
‘Titus, why don’t you put your arms round me, and forget or remember with me? I believe you. I would like to enter your world. Come closer, gently and slowly. Close your eyes again.’
As Ruth’s voice grew softer and her body closer, Titus felt not so much passion as tenderness, and it was with an infinite gentleness that he made love. A mutual loneliness ached through their bones, and their fulfilment ushered them back into a dreamless sleep.
They slept again for several hours, and it was the restless movement on the bed from hungry felines that woke Ruth, and a soft paw on Titus’s face, which brought them back to a reality where, although they had few responsibilities, one was certainly to feed the creatures in their care, and see to all their other basic needs.
As they threw on the clothes so carelessly discarded the night before, neither felt embarrassment, but a kinship that drew them to each other.
‘Well, Titus, although I am not a very practical person, one thing we can’t do is to live very long without money. I’m sure that there isn’t much in your pockets, and there’s very little in mine. I have my emergency shelf for the moment, and I think after we’ve fed the cats, we’ll take Dog for a walk and have some breakfast in a little place I know.’
As she was talking, Ruth climbed on to one of the tables, underneath a triangular corner shelf, and as she dislodged enough dust to cover a billiard table, there was the sound of coins being heaped together and pushed on to the table, falling and clattering like hailstones, and landing on the floor as well. She climbed off the table, pushed a strand of hair out of her eyes and left a grey track of dust from chin to forehead. Gathering up the coins and counting them, her light-heartedness returned, and with her cigarette almost dancing with excitement on her lower lip she said, ‘Well, at least there’s enough here for a day or two, or three or four, what’s more, oh Lor’, hee-haw – come on, Titus, let’s go and spend it, thrift not, and then we’ll talk about what you must do, and mustn’t do, what you have done, and what you haven’t done, because if you stay a little while with me I can help you meet some people who might give some work for some money.’
‘I want to stay for a little, but you’ve already given me so much.’
‘Let’s not talk any more, but go out. Poor Dog, he’s so patient and so loving and I’m so hungry now. Come on, Titus.’
The cats were fed and they left the studio, leaving the key hanging on the string, Ruth knowing that none of her possessions was of much interest to an intruder.
* * * * *
TITUS SAW HIS anchorage in daylight. The long corridor was not attractive: dark walls, where the paint had long ago flaked away, and at intervals double black doors, which opened, he assumed, on to other studios. The floor was of an undistinguishable colour, with what must have been paint stains making shapes that were not intentional. The open door through which they had passed the night before led to the steps on to the pavement, and there stood Ruth’s ancient car, which they had forgotten in their tiredness to empty of its pictures and stones and branches and flowers.
They turned left down the steps and Ruth said, ‘What friends I have live in these studios, but I’ll take you to meet them later, after we’ve exhausted each other. Shall I exhaust you first, I wonder. I want to know of all the things that you have only hinted at. There is nothing I have to tell you that could in any way compete. Tell me your story soon, Titus.’
‘It is not my story. It belongs to a great many others, but Ruth, you keep saying let’s not talk, then talking and asking questions. It will only be in my own time that I can tell you, that is if I can, only a minute particle. It might take a lifetime and neither you nor I have time for that . . . Now let me say that I am hungry – poor Dog is hungry and you said we would have breakfast soon.’
‘Of course, poor Titus, yes, it isn’t far. Only about five minutes and we’ll be there.’
They turned at the end of the road into a wider street that had some houses set back, with high walls and long deep windows, shuttered, rich and silent.
They walked along, past a graveyard with ancient headstones, some ivy-covered, and the names of the sleepers obliterated by time and the elements. The grass and weeds were high enough to hide some of the stones. At intervals there were wooden benches, on which sat old men and women, waiting, it seemed, to join their confrères underground, so inert and lackadaisical did they seem.
‘That is a music hall,’ said Ruth, and Titus mistook her remark for a rather sinister joke.
‘Oh, no, not that. I mean that,’ as she pointed to a red-brick building just past the graveyard. ‘Perhaps we could go some time.’
As they passed this building Ruth said, ‘Here we are,’ and pushed open a door. It led into a little room, with stalls on each side and tables where eccentric-looking groups of people sat.
When Ruth entered, she was greeted by several of these people, with friendliness, and no curiosity at seeing her with an unknown man and his dog. ‘Some time, if you like, you can meet them, but let’s keep ourselves to ourselves just now, eh, Titus? Do you want to meet anyone?’
‘Some time.’
‘Some time, who?’
‘Some time, Ruth.’
Food and hot drinks were put before them, without th eir asking, and a full plate for Dog was put on the floor, where he had waited so patiently.
‘How nice they are here. They must know you well.’
‘When I’ve enough money I come here every day, and they always know what I like. As you may have noticed, I am easily pleased, gastronomically, that is. Now, then, but what does ‘‘now, then’’, mean? Should it be then, now? How can it be now and then then, except that as soon as now is said it’s then. But what I really meant to say was let’s begin.’
‘I like your flights of fancy. They seem to come from nowhere, but they linger in that dusty attic of my brain, and I come across them when I’m looking for something else. There, I’ve almost taken a leaf out of your book – why leaf, why book? Yes, let’s begin.’
They both ate with pleasure, but with a certain unconcern for what they were eating. There was just enough to satisfy, so that they could now turn their thoughts to other matters.
‘Let’s go back to the studio. I have to do some work, which I will be paid for, and we can try to think what you can do.’
Ruth paid, and the three got up to leave. As they were passing the last table, the man who was sitting there called out, ‘I say, fancy doing a bit of modelling?’
Titus was not sure if it were he or Ruth who was being addressed, but she said, ‘This is Titus Groan. That is Herbert Drumm. He’s a painter, and he’s doing a mural for an old woman who only wants men in her bedroom, I mean on the walls, as she doesn’t seem able to have them anywhere else. Herbert’s always stopping men and asking them to pose for him and he pays too. What about that for your first job, eh, Titus? B Titus, you are, C Titus, you do?’
‘Well, I can’t say I’m the best person for standing still; in fact, I don’t remember ever having done so. It’s against nature, but I’ve never turned down a new experience. When would you like me, where would you like me and how would you like me?’
‘Three good questions, old boy,’ said Herbert, who was nearer sixty than fifty, with black, bushy eyebrows that were in danger of impairing his vision, a grizzled moustache and be
ard that made up in quantity for what was lacking on his head. His nose was rather bulbous and his complexion decidedly mottled, and the impression he gave was not so much that of a man dedicated to creative activity as of one whose search for the meaning of life lay in more bibulous pastimes. His voice was baritone, and loud, with an intonation that was rather monotonous.
‘I’ve got to go and see the old bag now, to show her some more of her boys, her darling boys, as she calls them. My drawings – I’ll leave them with her, that’ll keep her quiet, and I’ll tell her about you, old boy. She likes them all, but most of all she likes the virile manly boys, like you, old boy. She has as much gold as double chins. But to get back to when, where and how, Ruth’ll tell you where, I’ll tell you how, and you tell me when.’
‘This afternoon, then. I’ll have to get into training for standing still, won’t I?’ said Titus.
‘That’s the idea, old boy, and bring your old hairy hound with you – she’ll like that too, the old bag. Well, see you this afternoon.’
Titus and Ruth turned for her home, and walked back past the graveyard.
‘Tell me about him,’ said Titus.
‘Who?’ asked Ruth.
‘Herbert Drumm.’
‘Well, nobody knows very much about where he came from, and he’s not all that helpful, but some say he was a sailor, which might be true, you’ll soon see when you go to his studio and he starts to sing – but I think I’ll leave that delight for you to find out for yourself.’