Section twenty six. Since it was a very hot night, and the paper
boys went by with placards proclaiming in huge red letters that there was a heat
wave. Wicker chairs were placed on the hotel steps, and there, sipping,
smoking, detached gentlemen sat. Peter Walsh sat there. One might fancy
that day, the London day was just beginning, Like a woman who had
slipped off her print dress and white apron to array herself in blue and pearls.
The day changed, put off, stuff took gauze, changed to an
evening, and with the same sigh of exhilaration that a woman breathes tumbling petticoats
on the floor, it too shed dust, heat color. The traffic thinned,
motor cars tinkling darting succeeded the lumber of vans, And here and there,
among the thick foliage of the squares, an intense light hung. I
resigned, the evening, seemed to say, as it paled and faded above
the battlements and prominences molded pointed of her hotel, flat and block of shops.
I fade. She was beginning I disappear, But London would have none
of it, and rushed her bayonets into the sky, pinioned her, constrained
her to partnership in her revelry, for the great revolution of mister Willet's summer
time had taken place since Peter Walsh's last visit to England. The prolonged evening
was new to him. It was in spiriting rather, for as the young
people went by with their dispatch boxes, awfully glad to be free, proud
too, dumbly of stepping this famous pavement, joy of a kind, cheap,
tinsely if you like. But all the same rapture flushed their faces.
They dressed well too, pink stockings, pretty shoes. They would now have
two hours at the pictures. It sharpened, it refined them. The yellow
blue evening light, and on the leaves in the square shone lurid, livid.
They looked as if dipped in sea water, the foliage of a submerged
city. He was astonished by. The beauty was encouraging too, for where
the returned Anglo Indians sat by rights, he knew crowds of them in the
Oriental Club, biliously summing up the ruin of the world. Here was he
as young as ever, envying young people their summer time and the rest of
it, and more than suspecting from the words of a girl, from a
housemaid's laughter, intangible things you couldn't lay your hands on, that shift in
the whole pyramidal accumulation, which in his youth had seemed immovable, on top
of them, it had pressed, weighed them down, the women, especially
like those flowers Clarissa's aunt Helena, used to press between sheets of gray blotting
paper with a Lichray's Dictionary on top, sitting under the lamp after dinner.
She was dead now he had heard of her from Clarissa, losing the sight
of one eye. It seemed so fitting one of nature's masterpieces, that old
miss Parry should turn to glass. She would die like some bird in a
frost, gripping her perch. She belonged to a different age, but being
so entire, so complete, would always stand up on the horizon stone,
white eminent, like a lighthouse, marking some past stage. On this adventurous,
long, long voyage, this interminable, he felt for a copper to
buy a paper and read about Surrey and Yorkshire. He had held out that
copper millions of times. Surrey was all out once more. This interminable life.
But cricket was no mere game. Cricket was important. He could never
help reading about cricket. He read the scores in the stop press. First,
then how it was a hot day, Then about a murder case.
Having done things millions of times enriched them, though it might be said to
take the surface off the past, enriched and experience, and having cared for
one or two people, and so having acquired the power which the young lack
of cutting short, doing what one likes, not caring a rap what people
say, and coming and going without any very great expectations. He left his
paper on the table and moved off, which, however, and he looked
for his hat and coat, was not altogether true of him, not tonight,
for here he was starting to go to a party at his age,
with the belief upon him that he was about to have an experience. But
what beauty, anyhow, not the crude beauty of the eye. It was
not beauty, pure and simple Bedford Place leading into Russell Square. It was
straightness and emptiness, of course, the symmetry of a corridor. But it
was also windows lit up, a piano, a gramophone, sounding a sense
of pleasure, making hidden but now and again emerging when through the uncurtained window,
the window left open, one saw parties sitting over tables, young people
slowly circling, conversations between men and women, maids idly looking out a strange
comment theirs when work was done, stockings drying on top ledges, a parrot,
a few plants, absorbing, mysterious of infinite richness this life. And
in the large square were the cabs shot and swerved so quick there were loitering
couples dallying, embracing, shrunk up under the shower of a tree that was
moving, so silent, so absorbed, that one passed discreetly, timidly,
as if in the presence of some sacred ceremony to interrupt, which would have
been impious, That was interesting, and so on into the flare and glare.
His light overcoat blew open. He stepped with indescribable idiosyncrasy, leant a
little forward, tripped with his hands behind his back and his eyes still a
little hawklike. He tripped through London towards Westminster, observing was everybody dining out?
Then doors were being opened here by a footman to let issue A high
stepping old dame in buckle shoes with three purple ostrich feathers in her hair.
Doors were being opened for ladies wrapped like mummies, in shawls with bright flowers
on them, Ladies with bare heads and in respectable quarters with stucco pillars,
through small front gardens, lightly swathed with combs in their hair. Having run
up to see the children, women came. Men waited for them with their
coats blowing open, and the motor started. Everybody was going out. What
with these doors being opened, and the descent and the start, it seemed
as if the whole of London were embarking in little boats moored to the bank,
tossing on the waters, as if the whole place were floating off in
carnival. And Whitehall was skated over, silver beaten as it was skated over
by spiders, and there was a sense of midges round the arc lamps.
It was so hot that people stood about talking. And here in Westminster was
a retired judge presumably sitting four square at his house door, dressed all in
white, an Anglo Indian presumably. And here a shindy of brawling women,
drunken women. Here only a policeman and looming houses high houses, domed houses,
churches, parliaments, and the hoot of a steamer on the river,
a hollow, misty cry. But it was her street. This Clarissa's cabs
were rushing round the corner, like water round the piers of a bridge,
drawn together, It seemed to him because they bore people going to her party,
Clarissa's party. The cold stream of visual impressions failed him now, as
if the eye were a cup that overflowed and let the rest run down its
china walls unrecorded. The brain must wake now, the body must contract.
Now, entering the house, the lighted house, where the door stood open,
where the motor cars were standing, and bright women descending, the soul
must brave itself to endure. He opened the big blade of his pocket knife.
Lucy came running full tilt downstairs, having just nipped into the drawing room
to smooth a cover, to straighten a chair, to pause a moment and
feel. Whoever came in must think how clean, how bright, how beautifully
cared for. When they saw the beautiful silver, the brass fire irons,
the new chair covers, and the curtains of yellow chintz. She appraised,
each heard a roar of voices, people already coming up from dinner. She
must fly. The Prime minister was coming, Agnes said, so, she
had heard them say in the dining room, she said, coming in with
a tray of glasses. Did it matter? Did it matter in the least
one prime minister more or less? It made no difference at this hour of
the night to missus Walker. Among the plates, saucepans, colanders, frying
pounds, chicken in aspic ice cream freezers, pared crusts of bread, lemons,
soup tureens, and pudding basins, which, however hard, they washed
up in the sculleries, seemed to be all on top of her on the
kitchen table, on chairs, while the fire blared and roared, the electric
lights glared, and still supper had to be laid. All she felt was
one prime minister more or less made not a scrap of difference to missus Walker.
The ladies were going upstairs already, said Lucy. The ladies were going
up one by one, Missus Dollaway walking last, and almost always sending back
some message to the kitchen, My love to missus Walker. That was it.
One night. Next morning they would go over the dishes, the soup.
The salmon. The salmon Missus Walker knew as usual underdone, for she
always got nervous about the pudding and left it to Jenny. So it happened
the salmon was always underdone. But some lady with fair hair and silver ornaments
had said, Lucy said about the entree, was it really made at home?
But it was the salmon that bothered missus Walker as she spun the plates
round and round, and pulled in dampers and pulled out dampers. And there
came a burst of laughter from the dining room, a voice speaking, then
another burst of laughter, the gentlemen enjoying themselves. When the ladies had gone,
the toukay, said Lucy, running in. Mister Dollaway had sent for
the touquet from the Emperor Sellar's, the Imperial Touquay. It was borne through
the kitchen over her shoulder. Lucy reported how Miss Elizabeth looked quite lovely.
She couldn't take her eyes off her in her pink dress, wearing the necklace
mister Dollaway had given her. Jenny must remember the dog, Miss Elizabeth's fox
terrier, which, since it bit, had to be shut up, and
might Elizabeth thought wants something. Jenny must remember the dog. But Jenny was
not going upstairs with all those people about. There was a motor at the
door. Already, there was a ring at the bell, and the gentlemen
still in the dining room drinking toquay. There they were going upstairs. That
was the first to come. And now they would come faster and faster,
so that Missus Parkinson, hired for parties, would leave the hall door ajar,
and the hall would be full of gentlemen waiting. They stood waiting,
sleeking down their hair, while the ladies took their cloaks off in the room
along the passage where Missus Barnett helped them. Old Ellen Barnett, who had
been with the family forty years and came every summer to help the ladies,
and remembered mothers when they were girls, And though very unassuming, did shake
hands, said milady very respectfully, yet had a humorous way with her looking
at the young ladies, and ever so tactfully helping Lady Lovejoy, who had
some trouble with her underbodice. And they could not help feeling Lady Lovejoy and
miss Alice that some little privilege in the matter of brush and comb was awarded
them. Having known Missus Barnett thirty years, m Lady Missus Barnett supplied her
young ladies did not use to rouge, said Lady Lovejoy when they stayed at
Burton in the old days. And miss Alice didn't need rouge, said Missus
Barnet, looking at her fondly. There Missus Barnett would sit in the cloak
room, patting down the firs, smoothing out the Spanish shawls, tidying the
dressing table, and knowing perfectly well in spite of the furs and embroideries,
which were nice, ladies which were not the dear old body, said Lady
Lovejoy, mounting the stairs Clarissa's old nurse, and then Lady Lovejoy stiffened.
Lady and miss Lovejoy. She said to mister Wilkins, hired for parties.
He had an admirable manner as he bent and straightened himself, bent and straightened
himself, and announced with perfect impartiality, Lady and miss Lovejoy, Sir John,
and Lady Needham, Miss Weld, Mister Walsh, his manner was admirable.
His family life must be irreproachable, except that it seemed impossible that a
being with greenish lips and shaven cheeks could ever have blundered into the nuisance of
children. How delightful to see you, said Clarissa. She said it to
everyone, how delightful to see you. She was at her worst, effusive,
insincere. It was a great mistake to have come. He should have
stayed at home and read his book, thought Peter Walsh. Should have gone
to a music hall. He should have stayed at home, for he knew
no one. Oh dear, it was going to be a failure, a
complete failure. Clarissa felt it in her bones. As dear old Lord Lexham
stood there apologizing for his wife, who had caught cold at the Buckingham Palace
garden party. She could see Peter out of the tail of her eye,
criticizing her there in that corner. Why, after all did she do these
things? Why seek pinnacles and stand drenched in fire? Might it consume her
anyhow? Burn her to cinders? Better? Anything better? Brandish one's torch
and hurl it to earth, and taper and dwindle away like some Ellie Henderson.
It was extraordinary how Peter put her into these states just by coming and
standing in a corner. He made her see herself exaggerate. It was idiotic.
But why did he come then merely to criticize? Why always take?
Never give? Why not? Risk's one little point of view? There He
was wandering off and she must speak to him, but she would not get
the chance. Life was that humiliation renunciation? What Lord Lexham was saying was
that his wife would not wear her furs at the garden party, because my
dear you ladies are all alike, Lady Lexam, being seventy five, at
least it was delicious how they petted each other, that old couple. She
did like old Lord Lexam. She did think it mattered her party, and
it made her feel quite sick to know that it was all going wrong,
all falling flat. Anything, any explosion, any horror was better than people
wandering aimlessly, standing in a bunch at a corner like Ellie Henderson, not
even caring to hold themselves upright. End of section twenty six, read by
Hannah Dormer, London, twenty fourth of October twenty twenty one