Cluny Brown (3 page)

“Can you put it right?” asked Mr. Ames anxiously. (Just as they all did.) “I'm expecting some friends about six, and I can't have this mess.”

“They'd smell you a mile off,” agreed Cluny cheerfully. “Got a coat-hanger?”

“Certainly,” said Mr. Ames, looking surprised. “Do you need one?”

“Not here,” said Cluny, “but you might put my coat on it.”

As soon as he had withdrawn to do so she undid her suspenders and rolled her stockings below the knee. (They were her best.) Then she rolled up her sleeves, hitched up her skirt, and got down to it. It wasn't difficult: all you had to do was loosen a nut, unscrew the joint, and let the foul water run out into a pail. In this instance the stoppage was considerable, but by working at it with a bamboo Cluny satisfactorily ejected the last gobbet. Then she turned the taps full on for a good sluice down, and to make a job of it scrubbed down the sink itself with Vim. Opening the back-door, Cluny further emptied the pails into a patch of derelict shrubs, and took in a couple of milk-bottles which happened to be on the step. It was at this moment that Mr. Ames returned, and it was a moment of peculiar significance. Cluny's tall thin figure, dark against the sunlight, was admirably balanced between the pail in one hand and the bottles in the other; as she turned her head the ridiculous pony tail of hair showed in a bold calligraphic flourish. She looked like no one on earth but Cluny Brown, and at the same time, stepping in with the milk, she looked as though she belonged intimately to her surroundings. For no reason that he could seize Mr. Ames thought suddenly of a blackbird at a window.

“There you are!” said Cluny. “Clean as a whistle!” She set down pail and bottles and looked at him. Mr. Ames looked back, and there was a short silence.

“If you don't think it's worth ten bob—” said Cluny uncertainly.

“Of course I do …”

“And the taxi was three-and-six. But I needn't take one back.”

“We'll call it a pound, and all square,” said Mr. Ames.

But Cluny would not. She took the note, but produced six-and-six in change, and began to repack her kit. In a few minutes she would be gone; Mr. Ames realized the lapse of every second, but the rapidly increasing pressure of his dishonourable intentions, acting like a mild concussion, held him speechless. For the first time in his life he didn't know how to begin. And yet there was one move so simple, so obvious, that Cluny herself advanced it in the most natural way.

“Can I have a wash?”

“Good God, yes!” cried Mr. Ames.

All his aplomb returned as he led her to the bathroom. It was the very place to arouse, as he now urgently desired to do, her wonder and admiration; he had confidence in his bathroom, and he was not disappointed. Before the enormous amber-coloured bath, the amber-tinted mirrors—the oiled-silk curtains and innumerable shiny gadgets—Cluny in turn was bereft of speech. She gazed and gazed, till her eyes were like pools of ink.

“Nice?” prompted the owner.

“Heaven!” breathed Cluny.

“I like it too,” said Mr. Ames, “though my friends say it suggests a love nest.” He made a practice of introducing this term into conversation with new young women, to see their reaction. Cluny's was unexpected.

“I do wish Uncle Arn was here!”

Slightly jarred, Mr. Ames asked why Uncle Arn.

“Being a plumber,” explained Cluny. With a professional air she examined the taps, the waste, the snaky hand shower; the yellow rubber cushion and fish-shaped ash-tray aroused an emotion more purely æsthetic. Laying the silkiness of the curtains against her cheek, she almost purred. “It's as good as the films!” she sighed at last. “Can I really wash here?”

“Of course you can. Have a bath,” said Mr. Ames.

He lit a cigarette while Cluny considered. The situation was unusual, owing to the fact that she really did need bathing; Mr. Ames, with his wider experience, was naturally more struck by this than Cluny. He felt he had never advanced this gambit in more favourable circumstances, and that it was a good omen.

“You
are
kind …” said Cluny.

“Not in the least. I'll get you a towel.”

But Cluny Brown had not yet made up her mind; in the Porritt-Trumper circles of her upbringing one did not take baths as lightly as all that. One planned them ahead, with due regard to when the boiler would be on, and who else wanted one; above all, after bathing, one assumed clean underwear. Cluny naturally had no change of linen with her, and this put her off. She also felt she could have almost as good a time in the hand basin.

“I'll just wash,” said she. “But thank you all the same.”

“Much better have a bath,” said Mr. Ames.

“Do I hum?” asked Cluny anxiously.

Then Mr. Ames made his mistake. He should have told her the truth, that she did indeed smell pretty foul. But he wasn't used to people who took their truth neat.

“Good heavens, no.”

“Then I'll just wash,” said Cluny. “Run along.”

There was no key to the lock, but this did not worry her, because of course Mr. Ames knew she was inside; removing the upper part of her dress Cluny sluiced herself vigorously in the lovely hot water and worked up a glorious lather of geranium-scented soap. (Mr. Ames, quietly reopening the door, saw nothing of her but her long, thin, ivory-coloured back; and Cluny, her eyes full of suds, did not see Mr. Ames.) The sweet spicy scent enchanted her, it easily over-rode the last of the cabbage-water, and she readjusted her dress with well-founded complacency. Her nose was of course shiny again, but by some fortunate chance the toilet appliances included a large bowl of powder. Cluny was never one to spoil the ship for a ha'p'orth of tar. When she returned to the studio Mr. Ames, mixing cocktails, smelt her before he saw her.

He did not immediately speak. A moment was repeating itself (Mr. Ames was a connoisseur of such moments). As he had been struck before by the peculiar intimacy of Cluny's entry by the back-door, so now he was struck by the intimacy of her entry from his bathroom. He gave her a long look; then the ice clinked in the shaker as he set it down.

“Cocktail or tea?” asked Mr. Ames.

“Cocktail,” said Cluny promptly.

He handed her the small ice-cold glass—the first cocktail of Cluny Brown's experience. It was a dry martini, and it went down her ivory throat in one long ripple.

“Good God!” exclaimed Mr. Ames. “You don't drink it like that!”

“Beer you do,” said Cluny simply.

Strangely moved by this unsophistication, Mr. Ames made her sit down on the divan and waited with almost paternal anxiety for the effects. There seemed to be none. To his enquiry how she felt Cluny replied that she felt fine, and asked for another to drink it properly. Mr. Ames poured her a small one, and one for himself, and under his guidance Cluny tried again, taking delicate sips, and setting the glass down, between times, on a low coffee table. The divan too was low, very wide and soft, backed by a pile of cushions: Cluny settled comfortably back, happy in the belief that as cocktails were so much more relaxing than orange juice, so no doubt they superiorly toned the system. Mr. Ames leaned on one elbow and watched her. It was by now incredible to him that he had ever thought her plain: he could see only the extraordinarily fine texture of her white skin and the extraordinarily clean cut of the lids over her long black eyes.

“What about your party?” asked Cluny suddenly.

“You're staying for it.”

“Do you think I ought?”

“Positive.”

“Thank you very much,” said Cluny.

Mr. Ames took a firm hold on himself. His desire to make love to her was by now extreme, but time was against him. At any moment some of his friends might arrive—the Drake woman, for instance, who always came at least an hour early in order to tell him her troubles … and to drink a preliminary cocktail, and to recline, just as Cluny was doing, on that wide divan.… The memory was so unwelcome that Mr. Ames recognized, with a thrill of pleasure, one of the first symptoms of a genuine affair: the desire to obliterate the past. He could afford to wait—at any rate until the party was over, and Cluny was staying behind to help him clear up. To avoid temptation Mr. Ames therefore thrust himself away from the cushions, and Cluny too started erect in the belief that it was time for another sip. She leant forward to take her glass, their shoulders touched; and at that instant a step sounded in the scullery. Some one had come in through the open back-door, some one was on the threshold of the studio; and remembering the Drake woman's horrible habit of giving him surprises Mr. Ames forced himself to look round with a pallid smile.

But it wasn't the Drake after all. There, with a brow like thunder, stood Mr. Porritt.

IV

Cluny, who was really fond of her uncle, jumped up with every sign of pleasure. Mr. Ames rose too, but more slowly. He later made a very good tale of it, but at the time the situation was hardly humorous at all. Mr. Porritt looked curiously formidable.

“Uncle Arn!” cried Cluny. “Have you come to see the sink?”

Mr. Porritt did not reply. Instead he advanced, took the glass out of her hand, smelt it, and threw the contents onto the floor.

“I say!” protested Mr. Ames. (He was a man noted for his presence of mind, his quick wit, his
savoir faire;
such was the aspect of the plumber that for the moment all three deserted him, and this feeble ejaculation was all he could find.) “I say! What's wrong?”

“That is,” replied Mr. Porritt grimly. “Giving a young girl strong drink. Cluny Brown, come here.”

Cluny obediently approached a step nearer. The scent of sweet geranium hit him like a wave.

“How did he get you here?” demanded Mr. Porritt.

“He rang up because his sink was stopped.”

“Which is no business of yours, as you well know.”

“I thought I could fix a sink. And I did. You take a look,” said Cluny, rather proudly. “Besides, he offered ten bob.”

“Ten bob! And you swallowed it?”

With the mistaken idea of establishing Mr. Ames's bona fides, Cluny at once produced the note. Luckily Mr. Porritt did not look at it and see it was a pound, but took it too from her hand and cast it down. He was working up to the crucial question.

“Has he done anything to you that I ought to know?”

“No, I don't think so,” said Cluny.

This answer, so highly unsatisfactory to both her uncle and the now writhing Mr. Ames, was simply an attempt at the exact truth: Cluny herself thought there was nothing, but what her uncle would think was a different matter.

“Then get your coat,” said Mr. Porritt thickly.

Cluny looked at Mr. Ames, and the latter, with as much nonchalance as he could muster, went into the bedroom to fetch it. As he opened the door he could feel the plumber's inimical gaze boring into his back, piercing him, alighting (with furiously unjust suspicion) upon the double bed. Unjust now, at least; for the last few minutes had most thoroughly purged Mr. Ames of every indecorous thought.

“Uncle Arn,” said Cluny.

“Well?”

“Before we go, wouldn't you like to see the bathroom?”

Mr. Porritt had never in his life raised his hand to a woman, but he nearly raised it then. And Cluny knew it. Only Mr. Ames's return saved them both. Cluny seized and dragged on her coat, Mr. Porritt automatically picked up his tool-bag, and they marched together out of the studio, both furious, both spoiling for a row, taking no more notice of Mr. Ames than if he had been—a tiddly wink.

V

The row broke as soon as they got outside, raged all down Carlyle Walk, and reached its height on the Embankment. What chiefly infuriated Cluny was that she was six-and-six-pence down, the change from the pound note; and this attitude in turn exacerbated the fury of Mr. Porritt. He was more deeply shaken than Cluny realized; and her obtuseness driving him from his natural decorum of speech, he proclaimed in so many words his belief that Cluny had narrowly escaped being seduced, and the further belief that she had been asking for it. At that Cluny stood stockstill on the Embankment and turned first scarlet and then so white that her uncle thought she was about to faint. She did indeed feel qualmish, but that was because the cocktails, on nothing but orange juice, were at last taking effect. What she chiefly felt was an overpowering, hopeless sense of rage at the stupidity of the universe as represented by Mr. Porritt. It was so great as to be almost impersonal: it was the generous rage of ignorant youth; and Cluny had to steady herself against the parapet as it swept over her.

“All right, you didn't,” retracted Mr. Porritt. “I believe you. But as for him—”

“He isn't!” cried Cluny. “You only just saw him, and I was there hours!”

“And it don't take hours to fix a sink!” shouted Mr. Porritt.

“I had to have a wash, didn't I? I nearly had a bath, too—”

“You nearly
what?
”

“Had a bath. He said I could. It was lovely.”

“If I'd known that—” roared Mr. Porritt; and paused, because people were beginning to look at them. But his blood boiled. He had by this time entirely forgotten what Mr. Ames really looked like; he saw instead a huge bloated figure of wicked luxury. Cluny saw a kind little elderly gent; the midway truth eluded them both. But on the balance Mr. Porritt had acted on the safer hypothesis. “If I hadn't come!” he muttered continually, as they got into motion again; and the thought appalled him. It was by mere chance that he had left the Trumpers hours before his usual time; by mere chance that he had glanced at the order-book and seen the entry in Cluny's fist. After that of course he was bound to go after, to see that she didn't make a mess of things; but if he hadn't—

“Can't we take a 'bus?” asked Cluny suddenly.

She looked awful, all eyes and nose; once again in Mr. Porritt's breast every other emotion gave place to sheer astonishment. What did they see in her? What could any one see in her? Floss, he recollected, used to stand up for the lass, saying she wasn't as plain as people made out; but that was Floss all over. Kind. And Cluny had been fond of her; it was only since Floss went that Cluny had got so out of hand. “She's beyond me,” thought Mr. Porritt unhappily. He'd stood up for Cluny against the Trumpers, but in his heart he knew they were right: the girl had to be taught her place.