Brother Death Page 10

  “You have chosen a queer enough time of year to make the trip,” he said.

  “I didn’t choose at all. Question of money: I have to see solicitors and so forth about my inheritance.”

  Rumbold paid and tipped the porter. “Soda?” he said, and filled her glass. “I take it that your proposition is of a business nature,” he said drily.

  “Certainly. I have the income, you the strength of character and . . .”

  “And a suitably murky background?” he supplied.

  “Well, I don’t wish to hurt your feelings, you know, but that about expresses it. I need a partner in a certain enterprise.”

  “What enterprise?” he said.

  “Oh, that we shall keep, like the good wine, until a little later. First, as in every business contract, there must be a short period of probation.”

  “I am sure you do not mean to be insulting,” he said, “but in case you do, let me reduce the matter to terms which you will understand. I, too, have money . . . and quite a lot of it.”

  “Yes,” she said contemptuously. “You have what you made on the Black in Marseilles. But how long will that last? Where is your income, and what prospects have you?”

  Rumbold sipped his whisky. He sipped in silence. A potted palm threw its long shadow across his face and shoulders.

  “I apologise,” she said. “I had forgotten your quite legitimate masculine vanity. Well . . . let it be said, then . . . you are very far from ugly, and I want you for reasons other than those I have advanced.”

  She paused, laying her hand upon his own. “But we are neither of us, I think, people to waste time in useless sentiment or in polite evasions. It was in that spirit that I spoke.”

  “Then I reply in the same spirit,” he said. “You are damnably good-looking but women are not scarce. Is it a lover or a porter that you want?”

  “Neither,” she said. “I want a man who will stop at nothing and I think I’ve found him.”

  Habitually, Rumbold slept for eight, for nine, for sometimes even ten hours of a night. This sleep, deep and dreamless, he regarded as essential to his health, being in this respect something of a faddist. Nor, when finally awake, did he respond quickly to the renewed exigencies of life, and herein lay some part of the explanation of his failure in the banking world, of his complete inaptitude for all business conducted between fixed hours.

  Upon that night . . . or in what remained of it when he returned to his hotel . . . Rumbold slept poorly. He awoke, plagued by a shaft of winter sunlight, and lay for some moments in meditation. Then he threw back the bedclothes and, after tasting the coffee brought up to him some hours before, crouched upon the icy floor in performance of certain exercises: ten press-ups, forty knee-bends, twenty oscillations of the trunk. He did not do this every morning, but when he did so the exercises never varied: strong biceps, stronger calves, a narrow waist-line . . . these were his requirements. In other attributes he was uninterested.

  Shaved, dressed and bathed, he was about to pass the reception desk when the cashier, smirking, requested his attention:

  “A young person has been enquiring for you, Señor. She is waiting in the lounge.”

  The lounge was empty of all residents. In a corner, upon Louis Quinze, sat the girl, Mañuela.

  “Yes?” he said. “How did you find me?”

  “I saw you going in. I have come to return you the two hundred pesetas which you very kindly lent me, because I am now able to do so.”

  “How is that?” he said. “What’ve you been up to?”

  “It is not what you think,” she said with dignity. “I have been so fortunate as to obtain a position as a parlour-maid. In a very good family, too: the uncle is a Bishop. I explained the position to my employer. He made me an advance upon my salary.”

  “The money,” he said, “as you well know, was not a loan but a present. Therefore you don’t need to pay it back, still less to come here and persecute me.” He returned the money to her.

  “I didn’t mean to persecute you. I thought you might be pleased to see me.”

  “And I suppose to-day is your day off?” he added, brutally.

  “Yes,” she said. “It is.”

  They walked across the road to the Retiro.

  “You like parks?” he said.

  “I like the ducks and winter flowers,” she said. “But not the swans. The swans are far too proud.” She gazed at him obliquely.

  But he glanced at his watch, then pointed to the Japanese bridge across the ornamental lake.

  “I have to meet a lady there in twenty minutes,” he said.

  “An English lady?”

  “Correct. First we shall have lunch, then we are going to the Prado. You shall come, too, if you like. There is no need to be frightened.”

  “I am not frightened,” she said. “Only sad, because I am too young for you.”

  He was much struck by this remark. “You find me old, then?” he enquired.

  “Old in sin,” she said. “Yesterday I lit a candle for you.”

  “Do you like your work?” he said, to change the conversation. “Somehow, I don’t see you carrying coffee trays.”

  “The trays are nothing. The trick is to be demure and look at no one. Much worse is to clean silver. My father had some silver, too, but not as much as these people. Rub . . . Rub . . . and then you polish till your fingers stiffen. The most dreadful are not the soup tureens, but the little angled things like milk jugs. The husband is a Falangist: he eats ham and eggs for breakfast, just like you do. Meanwhile, the Mother Superior at Saragossa is perhaps looking for me. I should like to go to Portugal with you.”

  “And how would you get there without a passport?”

  “When we came near the frontier you would lock me in the lavatory and pretend to tie your shoe-lace just outside.”

  “You have worked it all out very nicely, haven’t you! But I think you would do better to go under the seat, as usual.”

  “Because you are older that is no reason for you to mock me,” she said.

  “Come,” he said, pointing to a seat. “Let us sit down here and wait.”

  And it was in this attitude of expectancy that Fiona found them.

  “But this is charming!” she said in English. “Only two days here, and already you have a little friend. Why didn’t you tell me?”

  Rumbold explained the presence of Mañuela, and her history. The contrast between the two women amused him: the one dark, sedate, with malice in her eyes; the other fair, politely waspish, of good carriage. He rose and seated himself between them, at once their buffer and their butt. He made his fashion notes: Fiona wore a red turban, Mañuela a mantilla of the poorest quality. The girl’s dress was black, her coat thin (no doubt her employer’s summer cast-off). Beneath the turban Fiona wore a tailor-made, half hidden by opossum, with opossum gloves to match. Her shoes were shapely, the other’s cracked and curving upwards like a Turk’s.

  “And so you met her in the train?” the Englishwoman was saying. Her voice was candid. Her attitude held nothing of the embarrassment for which he had been pleasantly prepared.

  “Yes,” he said. “Shall we go now and have lunch?”

  “Ah, not so soon, my friend. You have been hiding your light under a bushel. I didn’t suspect you of these generous impulses. Two hundred pesetas . . . just like that.” She snapped her fingers, and turned to Mañuela: “Was he good about it?” she said. “Were there no conditions?”

  “No,” said Mañuela, with the placid but deadly insolence of her race. “He did good by stealth, as I have heard the English always do . . . with ostentation.”

  Rumbold inspected his feet, the rare blades of grass. The mutual recognition of check-mate he felt could not now be long delayed.

  But he had r
eckoned without the feminine will-to-win, the search for any weapon, no matter how base and vulgar.

  “And so you are now in domestic service?” began Fiona sweetly. This remark was greeted by a silence. The tactical error, the lapse into fishwifery, was evident. She perceived it herself: “I am sorry,” she continued, “I should not have said that. I know you are a lawyer’s daughter, and deserve better. The times are hard, but it is not my fault that I am exempt from their full horror.”

  “That is one error,” interrupted Rumbold, “but another is your belief that this meeting was engineered in some way by myself. I had no appointment with this young person. She appeared, then followed me.”

  “Ah, thank you,” said Mañuela. “Now at least I know what to do.” She rose. He caught the tail of her coat as it swirled, and pulled her back upon the hard green seat.

  “Don’t go,” he said, touched by a warning of his very bowels. “Don’t go. We mean no harm. It is the desire to talk that is the enemy; the eighty thousand words a day, all of them waste of breath.”

  “Especially if they are couched like yours,” said Fiona. “In the rounded periods of Macaulay.”

  “Let us go and have lunch,” he said. “After all, it is nearly one.”

  “No oysters,” said Fiona. “I don’t care if there is an R in the month. I distrust oysters in Madrid.”

  “They come from Corunna, I expect,” said Mañuela. “You can tell by the black markings on the shells.”

  “Pilaf for me,” said Rumbold. “And you?”

  Mañuela ordered a Paella; Fiona, Canalones, followed by a Tortilla. So that in the end nobody had oysters at all, and the waiter, who had given them one of the best tables in expectation of a heavy booking, expressed his displeasure by the extreme slowness of his service.

  “Do you know,” said Mañuela, “that I have not been in a restaurant nor eaten a chocolate cake since I was eleven years old.”

  Rumbold regarded the menu. “No cake,” he said, “but there is a trifle made with rum. Would that do?”

  “Oh yes! But first, if you please, I will go to the toilet.”

  “But you’ve just been,” he said, surprised.

  She explained. There was a three-way mirror in the Ladies-room. She had always wanted to look at herself in a three-way mirror, but on the previous visit there had been someone else in front of it, and she had not dared. Now the place was empty.

  “Do you intend to persevere with this young person?” enquired Fiona, when Mañuela had departed.

  “I don’t know what you mean. To me the boot seems to be rather on the other foot.”

  “Don’t you think that she is a little too coy and teeny-weeny to be true? Or perhaps it is your Christmas gesture of good will . . . though I should be careful: offences against minors are punishable.”

  “If she has her little act,” he said, “I imagine it is a form of defence against your own.”

  “You don’t think, then, that you look rather silly?”

  “I think that any man sitting between two women looks rather silly.”

  “Your Canalones, Señora,” said the waiter.

  “Do you still wish to come with me to Portugal to-morrow?” she said.

  “Certainly. I know which side my bread is buttered.”

  “Then it’s time you knew that it can’t be buttered upon both sides. If you attempt to bring that girl with us the deal is off.”

  “Listen,” he said. “I’ve no interest in her, none at all, but she’s got a passport, and with us to help she could bluff about her visas at the frontier. In Portugal they’re very slack. Once there she’d have the chance she won’t get here. You could pass her through quite easily as your maid.”

  “You went back to her last night, I suppose?”

  “Jealous?” he said. “Are you really jealous? Well, this is fine. Meanwhile your meal is getting cold.”

  “Why didn’t you stay with me?”

  “I’m not a dog. I like acquaintances to ripen first.”

  Mañuela returned. “Do you know,” she said, “that not only is there the mirror and one of those towels which roll for ever, but also the glass in the door is made in such a way that I could see out of it without being seen. I saw a man just behind you spill some macaroni down his shirt. He looked all round him furtively, and thought that nobody had spotted him. But I had . . . and made a face.”

  “Splendid,” said Rumbold. “But won’t anybody eat?” He poked at his pilaf which, none too warm in the first place, now resembled the viscous surface of some dead sea.

  They munched, at varying speeds.

  “It seems queer,” said Fiona, “you want to go to the Prado yet I would never have imagined that you knew anything of painting.”

  “Oh, I’ve no technical pretensions,” he said. “I’ve read Wilenski. As a matter of fact, I stole him from Foyle’s. I was a kid then. I had a motor bike. On Saturday afternoons I used to go down to Dulwich. That’s the gallery to see the Spaniards . . . especially Ribera. I used to like lost causes then. You’d never catch me looking at a Poussin: I followed old Gaspard Dughet, his brother-in-law. Such a tangle! I wouldn’t care to walk through one of his woods. They say that Poussin put in the Pans and Shepherdesses for him, but I don’t believe that.”

  “Me, I like Ribalta,” said Mañuela. “And that Moor . . . what’s his name . . . who was a pupil of Velazquez? But my father was old-fashioned. He liked Murillo. ‘I never saw a beggar boy like that,’ I said. ‘No, nor you never will, but that’s what a beggar boy should look like.’ His favourite picture was the Assumption of the Virgin. ‘That’s heaven,’ he said, ‘the only glimpse you’ll ever get of it.’ It all looked very uncomfortable to me, like trapeze artists and only a cloud or two to sit down upon. I still think sometimes that my guardian angel must be a bird.”

  And, indeed, thought Rumbold, he might well have been. The luncheon had reached the coffee-brandy stage. Across the table he surveyed the two women whom, from curiosity as much as courtesy, he had caused to sit side by side upon the red plush of the banquette. They were talking. In the mirror immediately behind them he could see their necks, the one half hidden by a ragged bob, the other bared, the hair swept upwards and secured by unknown means within the russet mane upon her occiput.

  Vice does not destroy the body corporeal, but pickles it. The fires of hell fan and mummify the soul long before the last breath is rendered. In appearance there was little to indicate that sixteen years separated these two women. Sisters in God, the facial creams of one did for her that which glandular secretions still provided for the other. Yet, between the child, already more than half a woman, at the outset of her life, and the woman, more than half a child, he yet discerned a most distinct affinity.

  He desired to possess neither of them, and was bored by both. His own sensuality ran in darker corridors than these. Violence and sentimentality were his see-saw. Unpropped by principle, devoid of purpose, he was well prepared to link his destiny with that of Fiona, well aware that she required some service of him, the nature of which she did not yet possess sufficient confidence to formulate . . . but which he, already, had divined.

  In compensation for this baseness (for even the apostate conscience does not slumber) he required payment in the one currency that never varies. Gratitude he must receive, and would extract it from this girl, by a disinterestedness and a devotion which—had he, as usual, probed a little deeper—he would have seen as affecting nothing but his purse.

  The novelist must not cast his net too wide, lest he catch too many in its tangle. The good, the vile, those nuclear properties of “Eric”, of “East Lynne”, and “Middlemarch”, ça va toujours. Yet the ridiculous—ingredient of half our lives—we instinctively avoid, as I have seen mares in a field avoid a rabbit which ran between their hooves, by rearing. Of the
ridiculous there was certainly much in Rumbold, and still more of it in the woman whose name was to become so tragically associated with his own. Possessing neither point of departure nor lines of resistance prepared in advance; no bearings, no hope and no established rule of conduct, each was attracted by this girl who, fired with the certainty of youth, showed them what they themselves had been, half a generation earlier. And—inevitable corollary—each hoped to see her fail and crumble, to hear that whimper, birth-pang of the first wrinkle, herald of the first droop in her too generous mouth. Is it not so with all who have spoilt their lives?

  Meanwhile Mañuela, the object of their varied interest, sat nibbling a macaroon, the which she dipped from time to time into her glass of Cognac. Particles of sugar, released from the sweetmeat, floated free and formed a sediment at the bottom of the glass.

  “Taxi. . . . ”

  “We could all go to my hotel,” suggested Fiona.

  “Oh yes,” he said. “I know that we could all go to your hotel but, none the less, we are going to the Prado.”

  He pushed them both inside the vehicle.

  “The afternoon is lovely. Perhaps the Prado would be nicer,” suggested Mañuela timidly.

  “Here,” said Rumbold roughly. “I’ve bought you some violets.”

  Fiona gave a rather high-pitched laugh. “But how funny,” she said. “I thought I saw him talking to the head-waiter. I should have guessed, because I spoke to him myself. Here are some chocolates for you, child. The ones with silver paper are the soft ones.”

  “It only remains,” said Rumbold, “to ask her which present she prefers.”

  “Oh,” said Mañuela steadily, and without embarrassment, “I think that I prefer the violets.”