The Salvation of Pisco Gabar and Other Stories (11 page)

“Is there anything that you would particularly like, sir?” he asked.

“No, no, Widgeon. I leave it to you.”

“There is very little in the house, sir.”

“I quite understand, Widgeon. The shops are shut. But I could not let you know beforehand and I shall not complain.”

“I hope indeed, sir, that you will have no reason to,” answered Widgeon, professionally horrified by the suggestion.

The only shop open in the neighborhood was a greengrocer's in a proletarian street that squatted, lively, unashamed, and unnoticeable except from the back windows of a few top floors, among the majestic residences of the upper middle class. Widgeon kept the existence of this invaluable ally to himself and made a mystery of where and how he obtained his last-minute supplies. As Mr. Trimlake never asked but merely appreciated, the mystery stood.

The manservant bought a pound of mushrooms, and then, remembering that a cook on the ground floor had complained of her master's revolting taste in cheese, borrowed from her a half Camembert that she was sternly consigning to the dustbin. He warmed a bottle of the best claret, and at seven-thirty presented to his gentleman a large omelette, plump with mushrooms, its pale yellow exterior neither fried nor bursting, toast, fruit, and the rescued Camembert sitting upon a lettuce leaf and appetizingly offending the nostrils.

Mr. Trimlake looked up over his glasses at the tray, and longed to ask Widgeon how the devil he had managed such a meal; but, being a shy man, he felt such a question would be an unwarrantable intrusion into his servant's business. He expressed his good will towards Widgeon by deeds, never by words.

When Widgeon came in to clear away the coffee and observed the benign glances of his gentleman he judged that his moment had come. He picked up the coffee tray so that, by holding some badge of service in his hands, he might appear the more respectful.

“I wonder if I might speak to you a minute, sir?”

“Good Lord!” exclaimed Mr. Trimlake, startled. “Of course, Widgeon! Is anything wrong?”

“Oh no, sir! It was merely that I believe I did not mention to you that an aunt of mine passed away recently.”

“Did she indeed?” Mr. Trimlake was momentarily taken aback by the thought that his man possessed any relations—ridiculous, for Widgeon, he remembered, must have been born like everyone else. “A blow, eh? Yes. No doubt.”

“It had been,” said Widgeon, composing his face to a pious melancholy, “expected for some time.”

“Ah. Well. Statistics—but we must all come to it, Widgeon. Our sorrow. Less, of course, than a sudden shock. At least I hope so.”

“Yes, sir. She left me some small pieces of furniture, sir.”

“And very properly,” said Mr. Trimlake vaguely. “Very properly.”

“I also have”—Widgeon cleared his throat, as if apologizing for such a liberty—“a number of books, and I am afraid, sir, that what with one thing and another I am finding my room a little small.”

“Perhaps we could rearrange the flat somehow,” said Mr. Trimlake hastily. “Now if—”

“I could not dream of inconveniencing you, sir,” Widgeon interrupted—he knew quite well that his gentleman was about to offer him the spare room. “I would suggest that if you were to permit me to take a room outside, it might be the solution. Of course I would see that our routine was not interfered with in the least.”

“I hope everything will go on just as at present.”

“You will notice no difference, sir.”

“Well, that's all right then,” said Trimlake, relieved that nothing worse had come out of this unprecedented scene. “Oh, and by the way,” he added as Widgeon and the coffee tray approached the door, “let me know when you have found a place. I'll pay half the rent.”

“Thank you very much indeed, sir.”

Widgeon had a twinge of conscience, since Mr. Trimlake's ever-ready generosity had been called forth by a lie. But one couldn't go to one's gentleman and say straight out that one needed a woman from time to time. Or at least to some gentlemen perhaps one could. But certainly not to this. Widgeon was well aware that Mr. Trimlake had led a severely celibate existence ever since he had been with him, both inside and outside the flat. He did not deliberately avoid women, but their track never entered the precise orbit of his London life. Failing accidents, and unless some marriageable daughter of a fellow clubman decided that comfort and a well-groomed actuary in his late forties were well worth grabbing before the end of her last season, Mr. Trimlake was likely to remain celibate.

For a week after the Aggs had left, Widgeon had no communication with the pale and shrinking companion of his thoughts. Then he received a rose-pink envelope with gold deckle edges, into which Mrs. Agg had inserted about a teaspoonful of black narcissus perfume and a message, written in loudly discreet block capitals, that she missed he knew who, and would call for a letter at the Baker Street Post Office on Monday. Widgeon, not to be outdone, bought a manly sheet of thick parchment with envelope to match and replied that he would be outside the Dominion Theatre at two o'clock on Saturday. He felt a fine sense of independent manhood in putting off their reunion to the end of the week. He had finished with those teasing back-street meetings once and for all.

A place of his own was hard to find, however. There were chauffeurs' rooms in various mews, but they were noisy and had little privacy. There were plenty of lodgings in and about the street where his greengrocer lived, but, after years spent in modern flats, his taste was trained to comfort. Being himself, in his motive for taking a room, removed from the limitations of a solid social stratum, he was led against his will and by the logical forces that govern the housing of any community into Bohemia. Widgeon was puzzled by this local world. At one moment he was walking down a street of dirty little brown brick houses with iron railings in front of them; at the next moment, for no apparent reason, the same dirty little brown brick houses were sporting nasturtiums in window boxes, and their railings, doors, and drainpipes had blossomed into the gayety of cheap paint.

One of these residences of the idle poor exhibited in the window a notice of “Studio to Rent.” Widgeon misread it as Study, and since the word connoted a pleasantly masculine room where one left the whiskey and sandwiches he rang the bell. The door was opened by an angular woman whose peasant blouse and strings of beads vainly demanded a rounded bosom on which to rest. She disappointed him by referring to the room as a studio, but it turned out to be neither studio nor study; it was a plain room, built out into the back yard, with a gas fire, running water, and a moderately private entrance down a passage which he would share, the landlady explained, with the tenant of another studio that had been carved out of the former kitchen and pantry.

In spite of a feeling that his respectability was somehow compromised, Widgeon took the place at a rent of fifteen shillings a week; that included the essential furniture, a grey carpet, and curtaining of magenta sponge cloth. For five pounds he bought at the Rising Sun—where everyone either had or knew someone who had an honest perquisite waiting to be turned into cash—bed linen, a radio, and an old luxurious club chair. On the Friday evening, having seen his gentleman off for the week end, he settled into his new room and was surprised to find himself enjoying his ownership as much as his anticipation of future favors from Mrs. Agg.

He slept soundly, breakfasted at his own expense,—a conscious extravagance,—and walked over to Mr. Trimlake's flat. He felt it his duty to turn up, though there was nothing to do; as a sop to conscience he unnecessarily pressed a suit. His continually recurring thoughts of Violet Agg had a sensual beauty that shook him. He had never experienced a similar sensation; his idyllic loves of boyhood had not been so directly connected with the mechanism of his own body, and his later philanderings had been affairs either of money or of opportunity—passing adventures in the various houses where he had begun his service and the buildings where Mr. Trimlake had rented flats. This sense of conquest over a girl who gave so vivid an impression of aching yet fearing to be conquered was entirely new. He paced across London to his meeting with her in an ecstasy of desire, single-minded as that of an animal seeking its mate over half a county.

He had waited ten minutes outside the cinema before he caught sight of Violet standing by a pillar a little behind him. She was twisting a crepe-de-Chine handkerchief between her fingers and staring with frightened, tearful eyes at the passers-by. Her pose was touching. He was overwhelmed by pity for her defenselessness.

“Oh, Dolf! I thought you weren't coming!” she exclaimed.

“I've been waiting for you. I don't see how—”

“I didn't see you. And two men tried to speak to me.”

Widgeon looked truculently over the bystanders. A spotty-faced youth plucking up his courage to address a pretty child who had twice smiled at him caught Widgeon's eye, blushed on general principles, and moved away.

When Mickey Mouse had given place to the searchlights, trumpets, and stupendous lettering that announced the names of the camera men, scene shifters, and assistant supervising sound engineers who had given the main feature to a feverishly expectant world, Widgeon put his arm round Mrs. Agg. To his surprise she daintily removed it.

“Don't, Dolf dear!” she whispered. “Not here. It's not refined.”

“Who says it isn't?” he asked

“Cosma d'Este.”

“Who's she when she's at home?”

“Well, reelly! Aren't you ignorant? She does the woman's page.
You
know.”

“Oh, her! I thought she wrote about the royal family.”

“Sundays, that is; Saturdays, she gives advice. She says the modern girl doesn't let her boy-friend take liberties at the pictures.”

Widgeon grunted, disappointed but impressed by Violet's public correctitude. He patted her hand. With a kittenish wriggle she wound her left foot under his right. He found the calf of his leg gripped and caressed between two silken shafts.

“Veeolett,” he whispered hoarsely.

“S'sh!”

She continued her shivering contact, seeming to produce as many legs as an insect out of the darkness.

Widgeon was mazed and enchanted. Her delicate shrinking from his coarseness and the innocent sensuality of her hidden movements—he was sure she had no idea of their effect on him—were so different from the hearty sighings and bussings which passed as currency of love in his own environment. It was as if one of the remote and passionate demi-virgins of the silver screen had suddenly come to life. She's a lady, he said to himself (though knowing it wasn't quite what he meant), and no mistake!

He felt it would be gross to announce boldly that he had taken a room. The inference would be too obvious—and if Cosma d'Este objected to necking at the pictures, she would probably have discouraged her readers from accompanying the gentleman-friend home afterwards. He glanced at his Violet. Though the tentacle-like legs reassured him, the face, primly intent on the show, was that of a stranger. Till the session ended he confined himself to tender exclamations and such conversation as the picture demanded.

“Shall we go and have tea somewhere?” he suggested awkwardly as they came out of the theatre. “You haven't got to be back yet, have you?”

“I mustn't be late. You'll get me home in time, Dolf, won't you?”

The pleading note in her voice was his good old Violet. Widgeon at once felt masterful and confident.

“We'll take a taxi,” he said.

He ceremoniously opened the taxi door for her and helped her in. From force of habit he nearly shut the door without getting in himself.

“You do have such lovely manners, Dolf,” she said.

“Got to in my job,” he replied.

Mrs. Agg removed her hat and sank back limply into a corner.

“The park,” said Widgeon to the driver, “and then I'll tell you where.”

He gathered up Violet in his arms. The taxi driver stared down the length of Oxford Street, an unwilling and resentful hearer of Violet's little screams and protests. He let in his clutch with a malicious jerk whenever the lights turned green.

“'E'll knock 'er bleedin' teeth out!” he muttered with satisfaction. “One of them little peewees,” he said. “‘Don't touch me, 'Erbert, or I'll die.' And she'd kill an 'orse. Kill an 'orse.”

He had taken an instinctive objection to Mrs. Agg. When he liked the feminine half of the couples who seemed to think his taxi was a blinkin' hotel bedroom, he drove smoothly.

“Oh, Dolf! I'm that glad you don't have a home of your own!” whispered Violet, expiring.

“What would you say if I had?” he asked.

“You haven't!” she exclaimed.

It sounded to both of them like a cry of surprise rather than anxiety.

“You wouldn't do such a thing to me, Dolf,” she moaned hastily.

“Can't a man take a place of his own without you getting all upset about it?” Widgeon genially replied. “Come and have a cup of tea with me—we're pals, aren't we?”

He gave his address to the driver, and spread Violet Agg's melting, clinging person all over the taxi and himself.

Mr. Trimlake found the new arrangement eminently satisfactory. Widgeon was there on time to call him, there—though sometimes showing signs of hurry—when he returned from the office, there when he went to bed. He had no doubt that Widgeon was happier. Under its professional calm the man's face was radiant. Mr. Trimlake felt a silent and fatherly pride in being responsible for so much content.

The house servants also found Widgeon even more obliging than usual, and Mrs. Hussey expressed the general opinion when she said:—

“Ever since that there Vi'let Agg went away, 'e's been a different man.”