The Eye of Love (6 page)

CHAPTER FIVE

1

Loyal to their sad vows, Mr Gibson and Miss Diver refrained from all communication. Mr Gibson's only solace, at this time, lay in remembering the hundred pounds put by April the Fifth into Dolores' Post Office savings account. He still wished he'd made her promise not to try her luck again; for it was inconceivable to him that the future held any more luck for either of them, in either great things or small.

Dolores, treading the round from agency to agency and from shop to shop, was of the same mind.

2

Alas that her romanticism wasn't more flexible, that she had seen herself too long as a Spanish rose to see herself now a Sleeping Beauty! It would have helped her, if only a little; the image more-over would have been a truer one—supposing Beauty waked not by the Prince, but by the vanishment of her enchanted palace. Essentially, for ten years, Miss Diver's life had been as sheltered as the sleeping princess's, and as cut off from all reality. When she needed money, Mr Gibson supplied it, and the common rubs of social life never bruised her, for she had none. She had sought no friends, because she didn't want any. (An early overture from Number 10, where there were so many rowdy parties, she'd snubbed at once. “Quite right,” said Mr Gibson. “I like my little woman to be particular …” Dolores basked in his approval, but in fact the gesture cost her nothing.) Even before the advent of Martha, the work of the little house, and a little small-talk in the local shops, and a novel borrowed from the library, easily filled each day until King Hal came at evening to his Spanish rose. Even when he didn't spend the night, he came each evening, for half-an-hour.

In their secret garden (5, Alcock Road, W.2), she'd dreamed away ten years; and woke ill prepared to face the world without.

She had lost, for example (dreaming in Mr Gibson's eye of love), all ideas of what she looked like to any other eye. The first time the girls in the queue laughed at her, she didn't even notice; the second time, she was panic-stricken.

There was always a queue, if any shop had a vacancy. One vacancy drew twenty or thirty applicants.

Dolores on this second occasion was well towards the front; and had dressed with particular care to make herself look as young as possible. Perhaps her skirt was on the short side—considering the boniness of her legs; perhaps her blouse too peek-a-boo, considering the salt-cellars at her collar-bones; but when the girls behind sniggered, she at first, again, didn't realise who was their butt.
“Skinny Lizzie,”
they'd been whispering; but no one behind, or indeed before (Dolores looked both ways), seemed to deserve the cruel jibe. Many of those queueing were certainly thin, but only with a thinness then regrettably commonplace; so that it needed a figure of fun indeed to attract ribald comment …

“
O Skinny Lizzie,”
breathed a wicked voice,
“how's Scraggy Sister Maggie?”

“Careful! You'll put Lizzie in a tizzy!”

“Careful! Sister Maggie'll come and scrag-you-all!”

They squealed with laughter, four young girls enchanted by their own wit, while Miss Diver looked about in perplexity. It was the kindest among them who enlightened her, a little creature of sixteen or so, suddenly moved to compassion. “Poor old thing, it's a shame!” Dolores heard her hiss rebukingly—and with astonishment felt a bag of peppermints pressed into her hand. “Go on, have one!” adjured the Samaritan. “And don't you take no notice—Skinny Lizzies themselves!”

After this Dolores was afraid to queue again. She had a valid excuse; even a week had taught her that there was no demand for shop-assistants over thirty—there was no demand for anyone, over thirty—and this saved her from examining her fear too closely, so that she was able to forget the incident quite soon. In fact, what had rightly terrified her was no less than a threat to her identity.

The queues of job-hunters found ways to keep their spirits up. Each familiar face—and how many grew familiar!—had its sobriquet; Miss Diver herself could already recognise Ginger, and Russian Boots, and Once-I-Had-My-Own-Shop; a hilarity in the circumstances admirable fixed them like characters in a comic strip. In such company there was a place ready-made for Skinny Lizzie; Dolores' instinct warned her to flee while she was still a Spanish rose.

Not to betray the past: not to shoddy (even though he would never know it) King Hal's image of his love, was now Dolores' only ambition; and not an ignoble one. That it led her to risk a more fatal metamorphosis still, by advertising for a lodger, was in the circumstances inevitable.

Originally it was a blow to Miss Diver to discover that she couldn't after all sub-let. The terms of the lease, of the little house in Alcock Road, she found didn't allow it. This now appeared a rare piece of fortune. Only behind those pink curtains could she find refuge from the unkind world; and luckily she hadn't, speaking to the agent, mentioned lodgers.

3

Martha lettered the card beautifully—the single word “Apartments” in a fancy script copied out of a
Tatler
. It was her first encounter with Indian ink, and to employ its turgid blackness on smooth white pasteboard ravished her. That she made more cards than one was still due mainly to a search after perfection; when the fourth and last appeared in the dining-room window, it was a master-piece.

Miss Diver meanwhile arranged the empty bedroom opposite her own, under Martha's attic, as the hybrid known technically as a bedsit. This involved the purchase of a bed, but the rest of the furnishings came from the dining-room—two oak chairs, one with arms, and the sideboard translated into a bureau-cum-dressing-table—and the hall, denuded of its coat-cupboard. Miss Diver wished to lay out as little cash as possible, and was prepared, so long as the sitting-room remained inviolate, to strip the rest of the house to the bone. Actually nothing was missed, in a practical way; only twice a week had the dining-room been put to its proper use, in honour of Mr Gibson, the hall-cupboard was always kept empty, sacred to Mr Gibson's big overcoat. Dolores and Martha ate commonly in the kitchen, and the lodger was to be fed from trays …

“Put ‘With Service,'” instructed Dolores.

Martha willingly took down the card and made another more beautiful still. It looked practically irresistible.

“What happens if we get
two
lodgers?” asked Martha.

“Then we must let the dining-room as well,” said Dolores, looking brighter than she'd done for days.

“Suppose we get
three?
”

“Then we must let your room,” said Dolores, “and you must come in with me.”

Martha liked this less. The lettering (and the furniture-shifting, as an unusual employment) she'd enjoyed; the prospect of surrendering her privacy she couldn't. But she was very anxious not to see Dolores relapse, and so raised no objection.

In fact the point remained academic. No lodger came at all.

4

As regarded his own fortunes, on the other hand, Mr Gibson had been over-pessimistic. In Kensington, things were looking up. The shop over the tailoring establishment was discovered to be not such a dead duck after all. In fact, Joyces decided to keep it going.

“For a year, maybe two, making a little experiment,” explained Mr Joyce. “Why not?”

Mr Gibson's response to this reprieve was less welcoming than resentful. His spirit was so thoroughly attuned to self-immolation, he was so ready to throw up the sponge and bury himself in some subordinate post at Bond Street, he even entered into argument. What was the point, demanded Harry Gibson, of a show-room without a clientèle? Admittedly certain old customers used to return year after year for re-modelling, but even this trade had been killed by the depression. “Why not show 'em something new?” suggested Mr Joyce. “Could they buy even lapin?” countered Harry Gibson. “With my label in it, they might,” said old man Joyce.

Which was of course the point; and as the scheme developed Miss Harris and Miss Molyneux began to back it. They saw the shop in Kensington a branch of Joyces in Bond Street, whereat ladies of more taste than means (but whose cheques didn't bounce) might befur themselves in guaranteed Bond Street style. “Truly, Mr Gibson, I believe we could make a very nice thing of it,” said Miss Harris. “I'd looked forward, I admit it, to working on skunk, but if musquash means bread-and-butter, I for one shan't quarrel.” “There'll be skunk to show, dear,” said Miss Molyneux consolingly. “Mr Joyce promised …”

Already they quoted Mr Joyce as though they'd worked for him all their lives.

Harry Gibson saw the scheme's advantages himself. What the Kensington business lacked was prestige. Any woman with money to buy a fur naturally preferred a Bond Street label in it: the new sample tabs displayed by Miss Harris took care of just this idiosyncrasy.
Joyce of Bond Street and Kensington
, ran the silken legend—sinking Gibson and Son without trace. “And as Mr Joyce says,” added Miss Harris encouragingly, “the depression can't last for ever. Think how nice it will be, Mr Gibson, when we're all going strong again in the old home!”

She was a good sort. So was Miss Molyneux a good sort. Miss Molyneux had thoroughly looked forward to peacocking about the Joyce
salon
, but she swallowed her disappointment so as not to spoil things for Mr Gibson. “
I
can see where style's needed,” declared Miss Molyneux nobly, “and it's
here
. You've been ever so thoughtful of
us
, Mr Gibson, and I'm sure I'm only glad to repay …”

Harry Gibson, ungratefully, wished he could simply shoot himself. In addition to all emotional distress he now suffered from a feeling that he'd somehow been diddled. He couldn't put a finger on it: old Joyce, taking over Gibson's lock, stock and barrel, had obviously every right to handle his new acquisition as he pleased: but if there was life in the old firm yet, if it wasn't the dead loss it had been accounted, in the preliminary negotiations—Harry Gibson felt he'd been diddled.

5

In Paddington Miss Diver paid half-a-crown to put up a card in the local newsagent's. Martha again lettered it splendidly: among its flyblown and faded companions—
“Gentleman interested in photography seeks congenial model,” “Young lady free evenings seeks congenial employment,”
besides a dozen other apartment-cards—it really stood out. Martha often stopped to look at it. But apparently no one else did.

It was now that Miss Diver's lack of social relations showed as such a serious handicap. She was on no grapevine. She had no one to recommend her. And it was too late to do anything about it, for as she had once been too happy to make friends, now she was too wretched. She hadn't even neighbours. Alcock Road, without being exactly raffish, was a rather secretive little street, as such little streets in London often are. Could its walls have talked they might have told many an interesting tale—one or two perhaps as romantic as Dolores' own; for whatever reasons its inhabitants (except for the party-giving extrovert long since vanished) kept themselves strictly to themselves. The single house Dolores ever entered was that of Miss Taylor, chiropodist—and there kept her distance, because everyone knew how that sort of person gossiped …

Dolores had in fact always been rather grand, at Miss Taylor's. Certainly she couldn't bring herself to appeal there for help in finding a lodger. Which was a pity, because Miss Taylor actually knew of one not a stone's-throw away—the dissatisfied occupant of a bed-sit in Praed Street—and thus through pride Dolores missed an excellent chance.

She had no luck.

Paradoxically, as lodgers continued absent, her face began to set more and more in the irritated, worried expression associated by Martha with landladies. It was as yet but a foreshadowing; Miss Diver would never be a Ma Battleaxe; but lodgers yet unborn (so to speak) might not impossibly (so that expression foreshadowed) come to know her as Old Madrid …

Of this second threat to her identity, Miss Diver was unaware.

CHAPTER SIX

1

The shop was taken over lock, stock and barrel; so was Harry Gibson.

No prospective 'groom had ever less to do: between them Miranda and his mother and Auntie Bee and Mr Joyce saw to everything. Even the engagement-ring, a handsome affair of diamonds, appeared as though by magic in his pocket—Mr Joyce bought it and old Mrs Gibson put it there; all Harry's part was to give it back to Miranda. (Almost to his admiration, she received it with surprise. “Oh,
Harry
!” cried Miranda. “It's beautiful!” Mr Gibson took a look himself: no doubt old Joyce had got it through the trade, but even so he must have put down a couple of hundred. “Dadda, see my ring!” cried Miranda—slightly overdoing things. Mr Joyce merely made a note to have it insured.) Nor did the question of where they should live, so often a problem to young couples, present any more difficulty; there was plenty of room in the Knightsbridge flat. “Naturally you and Miranda will have your own sitting-room,” explained Mrs Gibson. “You will not have to be all the time in that old Beatrice's pocket!” Her encouragements were superfluous; the last things Harry Gibson wanted was to be shut up alone with Miranda. If his mother had been coming along too, he'd have rejoiced—but the mater on this point was wiser. “It will be nice for you to have somewhere to visit,” she said slyly. “Even Miranda will not mind you visiting your old mother, boy!”

Mr Gibson surrendered all initiative willingly. Indeed, he felt it would have been beyond his powers to deal with any one of these matters himself, so poignant were the memories they stirred. The only jewel he ever gave Dolores was a garnet—but what pleasure he'd taken in choosing it! The leasing of the little house in Alcock Road—what a delicious, rash adventure! Mr Gibson did his best to set such memories aside; but only succeeded, he hoped, in not betraying them. “So much my Harry relies on Miranda's taste!” cried old Mrs Gibson—faced by his stubborn refusal to look at wallpapers for the new sitting-room. “Whatever Miranda chooses he will think perfect! She will have everything her own way!”