Nuns and Soldiers (22 page)

‘Daisy, we may have to try it.’

‘The flat’s cheap, OK nothing’s cheap if you’re penniless, but it’s rent-controlled and I’d never get another one at that price.’

‘You can let it, you did before.’

‘The lodger’s only got to say “it’s mine” and it is.’

‘Well, you could find a -’

‘Oh yes, a rich American spending three weeks in London who wants to live in a stinking little room in Shepherd’s Bush and share a bathroom with a lot of smelly bastards!’

‘You managed it before.’

‘That was a bit of luck and it was the tourist season. Besides, you don’t want me here, I don’t want myself here, you couldn’t work, I couldn’t work.’

‘You could sit in the public library.’

‘Fuck the public library. You know it isn’t on.’

‘Well, what
shall
we do?’

‘You could try Ebury Street.’

‘I’ve told you, there isn’t any Ebury Street any more. They’ve dropped me. Guy was the only one who bothered about me. Now I’ve vanished, they’ve forgotten me, they wouldn’t remember my name!’

‘Well, remind them. Ask the Count for a loan. It’s not all that long till September.’

‘Daisy, I
can’t
-’

‘Oh you’re so spineless. Can’t you do
something
for us? They’re all rolling in money -’

‘They aren’t -’

‘And we haven’t any. It stands to reason. It’s natural justice. God, if I had a gun I’d bloody go and
take
it off them!’

‘I can’t see it is justice,’ said Tim, ‘I mean expecting them to help us.’

‘Well try, try to see it as justice!’

Tim tried. He almost could. After all, he had always been somehow like a child among them.

‘I’m sure they swindled you out of that money, that trust fund money.’

‘They didn’t.’

‘Oh, I’m so tired of these arguments. Can’t you
do
something? Go and see Gertrude.’

‘I can’t.’

‘Why not? You’re frightened of her.’

‘All right, I’m frightened of her.’

‘I bet she was head girl of her school.’

‘Anyway, she’s a liberated woman, you ought to approve.’

‘Gertrude, liberated!
Laissez-moi rire!
She’s just a new style of slave. Is she still away?’

‘She should be back by now. But I’ve never had any dealings with Gertrude. Guy was the one who cared for me. But he’s dead and I can’t go and bother Gertrude now, it’s out of the question. I’m finished there, I’m past history, there’s no connection any more.’

‘You mean she’d show you the door?’

‘No, but I just mustn’t go there any more, not unless I’m invited, and I won’t be.’

‘So, for a social nicety, we starve!’

‘Darling, don’t exaggerate our sorrows, we shall survive!’

‘I think you don’t understand. I am asking you to do, for you and me, something which is
dead easy.
What have you got to lose? OK, she may just stare at you with her glassy eyes and change the subject, but
what have you got to lose
?’

‘I don’t want to be glassily stared at - and - oh I can’t explain - it’s to do with Guy.’

‘With
Guy
? But he’s
dead
!’

‘Oh - Daisy -’ Tim could indeed not explain, and scarcely to himself. It was something to do with his special relation with Guy, his respect and affection for Guy, his private farewell to Guy. These things concerned nobody but Guy and Tim. He could spoil all that now by going cap in hand to beg from the widow.

‘You’re afraid of that fat female.’

‘She isn’t fat.’

‘She’s podgy and stodgy.’

‘In any case -’

‘So you admit you’re afraid?’

‘No - Oh Daisy, do stop. Let’s go to bed. There’s always that.’

‘There’s always that! Oh
Jesus
!’

 

 

‘You mean you’re short of money?’ said Gertrude.

‘Well, yes -’ said Tim. That did about sum it up.

Daisy had at last persuaded him. He hated it. He had put on a tie, and one of his suits from better days, the one he used to wear to those Ebury Street ‘evenings’ which now belonged to an ancient and vanished past. It was six in the evening and they were standing beside the fireplace in the drawing-room holding sherry glasses. Tim put down his glass and toyed with a china monkey flautist. He had hoped that cold Anne Cavidge would not be present. She had given him a very chilly look when she had found him, before Christmas, rifling Gertrude’s fridge and stuffing things into his plastic bag. There was no sign of her at the moment, thank God.

Gertrude was silent, seeming embarrassed. Tim’s heart was in his boots. It was going to be the glassy stare and the door after all. Of course Gertrude would be kind about it -

Gertrude could certainly not now be called ‘fat’. She was thinner and looked older. In some ways this suited her. She was wearing a dark coat and skirt with a high-collared white blouse and a yellow and brown silk scarf tied in a bow. She wore brown patterned stockings, and a smart brown leather shoe tapped on the fender. She had small feet. Her copious slightly-curling hair had been cut and swept in closer to her head. Her browncomplexioned fine-nostrilled face had, with the faint anxiety, its fastidious look. The brown eyes frowned at the blue eyes, the blue eyes flinched and turned elsewhere.

I’ve spoilt it, thought Tim, I’ve spoilt the past, I’ve sinned against Guy, against what just for a moment seemed to be my family ; and, in that belief, somehow they
were
my family. Why didn’t I
wait
? Gertrude
might
have written to me, asked me to come. Now I’ve upset and annoyed her and ruined it all and she’ll despise me. Even if she gives me a hundred pounds, it won’t be worth it. I don’t even want it. Why ever did I let Daisy persuade me? I’m a
creep
, and Gertrude must be seeing me as one.

Tim had laboured over a letter to Gertrude. Was it better to pretend he was proposing a social call, or should he at once strike the note of business? He tore up the letter, he could not write things. In the end he just rang up and said he would be near Victoria that evening and could he call in? Once there, and seeing Gertrude’s smiles, he could not bear to pretend. He at once, awkwardly, bluntly, rudely, made clear that it was money he was after. Oh God!

‘I see,’ said Gertrude. She began to finger a china monkey violinist. ‘But - well - if you don’t mind - I’d like to understand-I thought-I imagined - you had a teaching job - and you sell your pictures-I suppose -’

‘I should have explained,’ said Tim, ‘it’s just a matter of getting through the summer. I shall have employment in the autumn. I haven’t got a job at the moment -’

‘Have you tried? I suppose you could get
some
sort of job?’ said Gertrude.

Tim felt cold. Well, maybe he could. But what a world of experience separated him from Gertrude! Maybe Daisy was right about her after all! ‘I might be able to,’ said Tim, ‘but I want to go on painting.’ He realized at once that this was, in this room surrounded by the faces of hard-working Judeo-Christian puritans, the very worst thing to say. Was he then asking Gertrude to support him in a life of unpractical self-indulgence? It certainly sounded like it.

‘Then you can sell what you paint? Or can you?’

‘No, not much,’ said Tim. ‘I mean, there’s a time-lag you see -’

‘But you have paintings stored up-I mean ones you could sell? I believe painters sometimes don’t want to sell their work, they don’t want to part with it, I can understand that.’

‘I have some things,’ said Tim, ‘but I don’t think they’d fetch much. I’m not a very fashionable painter.’ That was one way of putting it.

Gertrude latched onto this. ‘I’m glad you say that. Of course you mustn’t try to be fashionable just to make money. What are you painting now?’

Tim wondered if he could explain to Gertrude about the cats. He decided he could not. He said, trying to be at least partially truthful, ‘I’m drawing at present - drawing people, people I see in - in parks and places - and animals and - and things -’

‘Drawing is like practising scales for a musician?’

‘Oh yes, very like, just like that -’

‘I expect you do it all the time while you’re waiting for the next big thing that you do?’

‘Oh - yes -’

‘And what will that be?’

‘I’m - not sure -’

‘But you don’t want to leave off and do art teaching? You
were
doing some teaching, weren’t you?’

‘Yes,’ said Tim patiently, ‘I
was
, but that job has folded up. All the art schools are short of money and the part-time staff are the first to go. I can’t get another teaching job at present, I’ve tried and tried, everyone is after these jobs. I’m unemployed until September unless I want to - er -’

‘Take something very uncongenial?’

‘Yes. And even that’s hard to get now. It’s just hard to get work. It’s a bad scene.’

‘I realize of course -’ said Gertrude.

Tim thought, now I’m exposing my sores and accusing her of being a sort of Marie Antoinette! No wonder she looks annoyed. I’ve got
everything
wrong! He began to say, ‘I’m sorry I -’

Gertrude said, ‘I suppose you can apply for unemployment benefit?’

‘I have, I do,’ said Tim desperately. ‘It’s not much of course - but as you say - I’ll go again and get some more - of course I
can
manage perfectly well - it’s not as if I wanted to live in luxury - I’m sorry I bothered you, it’s not important really.’

‘Have you only yourself to support?’ asked Gertrude.

Tim had no difficulty with that one. ‘Oh yes - only me - no dependants.’

‘Forgive me for asking. I really know so little about you.’

‘Not at all -’

‘And this job in September, it’s part-time teaching? Is it certain or only possible?’

Tim hesitated. He was really not sure. He had told Daisy that it was certain, to cheer them both up. But with things as they were, nothing was certain. ‘Nothing is certain,’ he said, ‘but I hope-I mean I think -’

‘Have you any money saved?’ said Gertrude.

‘No - well, scarcely-I mean - No.’

‘It sounds a bad situation.’

‘Oh, it’s not so bad really,’ said Tim, ‘I rub along perfectly well, in fact I can’t think what I’m complaining about -’

‘Where do you live?’

‘I have a little sort of studio flat, in Chiswick, it’s cheap.’

‘Forgive me for asking all these questions,’ said Gertrude, ‘It’s just that if I’m going to help you, I’ve got to understand the situation, I’ve got to
see
it all.’

Tim felt his full dismay at the prospect of this relentless just scrutiny. Would Gertrude demand to see his studio, look at his pictures? Would it be a proper means test? Oh why why why had he come!

‘These are the questions,’ said Gertrude, ‘which Guy would have asked you.’

The truth of this touched Tim. He put down the china monkey flautist. He had been looking at Gertrude’s elegant brown foot. He raised his eyes now and met her intent worried gaze. He said, ‘Guy was very good to me. I miss him very much. I’m sorry -’ He wondered if he should now mention the fact that Guy had lent him money, but decided not to.

‘I was going to write later to ask how you were,’ said Gertrude. She put down the violinist with something of a clack. It sounded like a reproach. During the questioning she had been purposeful, business-like. Now she was embarrassed again, possibly annoyed.

‘I’m sorry I didn’t wait for your letter,’ said Tim. This now sounded rude.

‘I can’t think why Guy didn’t buy any of your pictures.’

Of course Guy had bought one, but he had evidently never shown it to Gertrude.

‘Oh - they’re not much good -’

‘Have you had shows, exhibitions?’

‘Good heavens no.’

‘Sorry,’ said Gertrude, ‘it sounds as if I’m saying it would be an act of charity to buy your work and I don’t mean that of course.’

This conversation is becoming terrible, thought Tim, and that ghastly Anne Cavidge will probably turn up in a minute and find me scrounging again. I’d better get out. He said, ‘I’m sorry to have troubled you. It’s done me good just to air my worries. Just talking about them has helped. In fact I now see that I can manage perfectly well. It’s only till September. I just wanted to see you, really, say hello. I thought it would be nice to - to see you - to be in this room again. I’ve thought so much about Guy - and how awful it - you know-I simply wanted to drop in. Forgive me for chatting about my little bothers. They’ve all blown away now anyhow. Thanks for the drink - and now - dear me it’s late-I must be off -’

‘Tim, please, just stop
fussing
me,’ said Gertrude. ‘Look come and sit down here and let me get you another drink.’

Tim obediently moved to an upholstered upright chair just beyond the edge of the Spanish rug.

Gertrude said, ‘I just want to
think.
’

Tim said to himself, she is trying to imagine what Guy would do now. He was right.

Gertrude gave him another dose of sherry in one of the cut-glass glasses which had so much excited Daisy’s scorn. He accepted it gratefully. The first dose had been insufficient. Gertrude pulled another chair up opposite to him. It was like a small business meeting. It was not exactly a social scene.

‘I could lend you some money,’ said Gertrude.

‘Oh no, no!’ said Tim, confused (he had already gulped the sherry). Daisy had impressed on him, ‘If possible don’t let her
call
it a loan - we probably won’t repay it, we can’t, but if it’s
called
a loan you’ll fret, you won’t raise a finger to pay it back but you’ll fret.’ Tim recognized the justice of this prognosis of his character. Then he thought, well, let it be called a loan, so long as it’s money. But he had already cried ‘No!’