The Collected Short Fiction Part 5

The odd thing was that after that the calls ceased. Edmund never wrote to the Exchange. His inclination was to ask for the telephone to be removed from the studio as soon as possible, but he reflected that this might be unfair to Teddie, as it was understood that telephones were by most people both sought after and hard to obtain, and Teddie probably needed one in order that she might communicate with the parents of her sitters. So Edmund did nothing. None the less the call which came when Toby was there was the last unexplained call Edmund received for a long time.

It was when Christmas approached that the climate of unsuccess in which Edmund nowadays pa.s.sed too much of his life became annually most intolerable. Every year since the sale of the family's ancient manors and estates had so nearly extinguished his income, he had partic.i.p.ated in his aunt's sober Christmas celebrations, if only because she so clearly counted upon him to do so. Now, however, he seemed to have a measure of choice. It was unfortunate that the family debacle and his past feeling of obligation to his aunt had combined to terminate the previous modest influx of Christmas invitations; but at least he once more had premises where, to the extent his means permitted, he himself could offer hospitality.

Not that the position was unequivocal. He was, after all, only a superior caretaker, with love the consideration in place of cash; and the atmosphere of the studio remained Teddie's entirely. He looked carefully round, before making a list of friends who might join him for Christmas Dinner, bringing, if possible, some festive contributions of their own. Lacking the presence of Teddie to indicate that they were but stock-in-trade (the expression was hers), the pictures of children which covered all the walls made a scheme of decoration that was oppressively insipid. Conspicuously embarra.s.sing were the two biggest works: one a much enlarged reproduction of Reynolds's The Age of Innocence, specially photoprinted with the maximum fidelity accessible to science, and intended both as lure to parents and as rea.s.surance that Teddie's muse had strict principles; the other Teddie's own Children of Mr and Mrs Preston Brook. This work had been shown, upon Mr Brook's instructions, at a number of exhibitions; after which Mr Brook, a successful manufacturer of vegetable sundries, had so far failed to take possession of his property. The picture hung above the electric heater, and still bore a name-plate, with 'Edwina Taylor-Smith M.S.P.C.' in prominent capitals. Edmund could still hear Teddie saying, 'Edwina. It's a noise like a slowly squeaking wheel.'

Twenty-five minutes later Edmund had made little progress with his list. Most of his acquaintances were too rich, too distant, or too obviously provided already with better fare than his. Almost all were married; commonly to spouses who were either unknown or unsuitable. With many he had lost all touch. There were three or four men who were possible, being generally situated much as he was; but Edmund was shocked and disheartened by the specific demonstration that women, other than Teddie, had almost disappeared from his life. None the less a start had to be made if he was not to spend Christmas in solitude. Edmund lifted the telephone and dialled the number of his friend Tadpole, who had been at Oriel with him.

He could hear the bell begin to ring immediately. It continued ringing. Reluctant to acknowledge the evaporation of his first essay, he allowed it to ring long after the time had expired when his friend, who lived in chambers, could be expected to answer. He began to think of the exigent ringing which had marked the unexplained calls he himself had been receiving until about a month before; when the noise stopped and a voice spoke. By then the rhythmic thrumming of the bell in his ear had slightly hypnotised Edmund, and the voice made him start. Still, it seemed to him an unknown voice. And it said something quite unintelligible to him.

'I beg your pardon?'

Again the voice said something unintelligible, but this time longer. Edmund could hear only a rather high-pitched gabbling.

'I wanted to speak to Mr Pusey. Is he in?'

The reply seemed to be two short, sharp sentences, but Edmund could not distinguish a single word. It occurred to him even that the sounds might not be vocal, but might come from the telephone system itself.

'I'd better ring off and try again,' said Edmund, unsure that he was not merely speaking to himself.

There was a much softer gabbling, which diminished into silence.

Edmund rang off.

After a minute or two, he tried again. This time the bell simply rang, and went on ringing. Palpably though depressingly, Tadpole was out.

Edmund made three more calls. One of his friends was spending Christmas in Paris; one would have to let him know later (Edmund was certain that he was hoping for something better to offer itself); and one, like Tadpole, did not reply. Edmund decided to write off to the remaining names on his list. If only he could write, 'Evelyn Laye will be there, so we'll be sure of some good talk!'

During the following seven days, Edmund used the telephone more than was his wont. He began to ring up everyone he had met, however casually, during the previous year. Probably because his contact with them had been so casual, none of them seemed to want to spend Christmas with him. In the course of one of these, usually brief, calls, the somewhat uneasy conversation was at one point intruded upon by a repet.i.tion in the background of the indistinct gabbling talk.

'Can you hear that sound?' asked Edmund, interrupting his acquaintance's meagre trickle of explanation.

'What sound, old boy?'

'Like someone talking gibberish.'

'Some woman on a cross-line, I expect.'

'You think it's a woman?'

'How do I know, old boy? But look here, as I was saying, Nell and I but of course, you've not met Nell we always go to stay with her people up in Galloway '

By the end of the week, his friend who had wavered decided against him. Something better had duly appeared. Of those Edmund had written to, one had replied pleading a previous commitment by return of post. The others had not replied at all. Upon Edmund descended a colourless suffocating fog of loneliness.

Suddenly, in his despair, Edmund thought of Queenie. Queenie was a girl of whom he had seen much when, twenty years before, he had first lived in London. Even at that period, though fortified with a private income which sufficed, he had been commonly unsuccessful in reaching the hearts of the girls who really appealed to him; and in retrospect he perceived that Queenie had much in common with Teddie. He had been fond of her, and she had been more than fond of him. In those days Edmund's remarkable linguistic apt.i.tude had served to make smooth the highways of the continent, instead of as now merely bringing him an undependable stipend as a translator; and Queenie had travelled many of the highways with him. She was well formed, and had been carefully nurtured (her baptismal name was Estelle; Queenie had attached itself to her at Newnham, reflection, perhaps, of something within her); and Edmund might well in the end have married her, had not ruin supervened. In fact she had married a man much older than herself, who had almost immediately afterwards fallen into invalidism. During the previous summer, in Victoria Street, Edmund had walked into an old friend of Queenie's named Sefton, a civil servant. They had not met for many years, and their only common subject of conversation was Queenie. Sefton told Edmund that Queenie's husband was now dead, and Edmund wrote down her new address and telephone number.

That number he now dialled for the first time.

'Who is it?' There had been no sound of ringing. The enquiry seemed to come immediately Edmund had dialled the last figure. The voice sounded warm and eager. It surpa.s.sed Edmund's recollection.

'You'll be surprised. It's Edmund. How are you, Queenie?'

'Edmund! Edmund St. Jude?' It was delightful. There was real joy in her voice.

'I am glad you sound pleased. I wasn't sure...'

'You don't know how lonely I've been. No one knows.' Her voice had a slight throb in it which was charming, and also new.

Edmund's own recent experience made it impossible for him to offer easy commiseration. Instead he offered specific aid. 'I want you to dine with me on Christmas Day.'

'Are you giving a party?'

'I meant to originally. But I've thought better of it. Just the two of us, Queenie. If you will.'

She said nothing. Edmund could hear a light intermittent humming on the wire, like the sound of a very distant mult.i.tude. He spoke again. 'Please come, Queenie. I'm living in a friend's studio, and '

She had apparently been gathering resolution, because now she burst out, 'I'm not Queenie.'

Edmund's heart would have fallen further than it did, had it not already premonished him.

'Then I should certainly apologise.'

'For asking me to Christmas Dinner?'

'Yes.'

'To dinner, perhaps. Surely Christmas Dinner's entirely different?'

The implication was perhaps too blatant, but Edmund was desperate, and, blatant or not, she sounded pleasant.

'In that case, will you come? Perhaps you would accompany Queenie, if she's not otherwise engaged?'

'Queenie is otherwise engaged.'

'Oh.' Edmund was not sure whether to feel disappointed. 'In that case '

'I'd love to. But I can't.'

'Are you engaged too?'

'Not engaged. I just can't.' There was something a little hysterical about the way she made this plain statement. The humming sound had stopped. No less hysterically she added, 'I'm very sorry... Please don't ring off.'

'I'm sorry too,' said Edmund.

'Don't ring off,' she said again. 'I really am sorry.'

'Prove it by coming some other time,' suggested Edmund. 'What about tomorrow night?'

'You've never seen me. You don't know what I look like.'

'I can hear you,' replied Edmund, smiling into the telephone. 'Your voice speaks for you.' He hoped it did.

She made no reply, but suddenly began to sob. There was no doubt about it. Edmund could hear each separate gulping intake of breath. It seemed an unusually good line.

'Well, come some time,' said Edmund, embarra.s.sed and slightly raising his voice.

'I may never be able to.'

It seemed unwise to probe. But Edmund thought that she would continue and explain.

'You've been so kind to me. May I ring you up again?'

'Of course.' Edmund gave her his number, but she seemed too overwrought particularly to take note of it.

'You'll really let me?' Her grat.i.tude was embarra.s.sing, but somehow not ridiculous.

'I might even ring you,' Edmund said gallantly.

'No. Just let me.'

'What about Christmas Day?'

'Oh yes.' She sounded like a schoolgirl.

The humming had resumed.

'And what about Queenie?'

She said something which he could not distinguish.

'Sorry. This humming noise.'

It was now quite loud. He realised that she was gone.

The afternoon post brought a still further rejection of Edmund's hospitality. Face to face with the unpleasing prospect of spending Christmas Day entirely alone, he again dialled the number which Sefton had given him. He reflected that Queenie might have returned by now, or that he might at least find out where she was from her curious friend. This time the bell began to ring at once. It continued to ring. Edmund let it ring for an interminable time before he capitulated. Then he rang up Sefton at his Ministry.

'I haven't actually seen her myself since her husband became so bad. In fact I can't have seen her for more than three years. To tell you the truth, I only got her address off another mutual friend. I meant to look her up, but you know what happens.'

'She doesn't answer the telephone.'

'Christmas, I expect. You know what it is. Sorry I can't help, but if you'll excuse me, I must go to a meeting.'

Civil servants at least have 'meetings', thought Edmund. The pink and blue children on the walls smiled at his plight, winsomely, cheekily, plethorically, according to character. Edmund settled to translating the first chapter of a Dutch work on the technological revolution of our time.

Christmas Day was the first of the many days which Edmund spent waiting for the telephone to ring. The morning post had brought a woolly scarf from his aunt (she had gone to the trouble of procuring one in his college colours), two Christmas cards, and a cablegram from Teddie:LOVELY XMAS HERE ALL LAID ON STOP HAPPIEST GREETINGS DARLING STOP CAN'T WAIT FOR CHRISTMAS NEXT YEAR. After that there was nothing except to attend upon the horrid little bell.

The fact that Edmund was far from sure that it would ring at all made the waiting much worse. He had several times attempted to telephone Queenie's number, but there was never a reply. The worst thing of all was the dreary knowledge that he who had dined tete-a-tete with Fritzi Ma.s.sary, and been accounted a man of insight and judgement in certain high affairs, was now wholly preoccupied with and dependent upon the favours of an unknown with whom he had upon one single occasion exchanged some unintended remarks upon the telephone. He was fond of Teddie, but no more; and the thousands of miles which separated her from him tended also, to his real regret, to obliterate her as a living image in his thoughts. The unrest which the voice on the telephone had certainly created within him seemed to prove both the tenuousness of poor Teddie's hold on him and the general aridity of his days. It was absurd and out of proportion, but certainly true that the unknown, and the doubt whether he would hear from her again, had affected his nerves and further diminished his already sketchy appet.i.te. On Christmas Day systematic translation seemed impossible. Edmund found it difficult to settle to occupation of any kind, and constantly caught his attention wandering into the evolution of persuasive verbal gambits. Before it was time for lunch, he was wondering whether his Christmas malaise would have been any worse if he had never heard from her at all.

She telephoned just when the fleeting and dreamlike December day had finally subsided into darkness. Although their conversation was disturbed by various cracklings and rumblings on the line, Edmund was astonished to notice, when it was over, that it had continued for at least half an hour. During this period, Edmund and she seemed to discover several points of sympathy. For example, when she said that her name was Nera Condamine, Edmund became certain that she belonged to the ancient and distinguished family of that name, and that she had descended in the world as he had. She took a critical and informed but appreciative interest in his remarks upon the eighteenth-century English poets, about whom he was an authority, and who entered the conversation when he quoted topically from Thomson's 'The Seasons'. Above all, Edmund felt, they had loneliness in common: each of them (he deprecatingly, she eagerly) seemed to throw out feelers of interrogation at which the other clutched. Only questions which were direct and personal she refused to answer: where she lived or why she must remain inaccessible. At the first sign of persistence on Edmund's part, she became hysterical.

'Please don't ask me, Please. Please.'

'Naturally I understand if you'd rather not tell me. I only thought '

'I'll have to ring off if you ask me.'

'Then I'll certainly not ask you.'

In the end, however, she did let fall one minor fact.

'Of course I understand that very well,' she said. 'Because I'm a painter.'

'Do I know your work?' asked Edmund. All the children on the walls looked interrogative.

'I only paint for myself. There used to be others, but now there's only me.' The telephone croaked in mournful confirmation. Edmund dared not ask what had happened to the others.

By the end of their talk, in fact, a curious change had taken place. Originally it had been Nera, as Edmund at her request had begun to call her, who had repeatedly besought him not to ring off; now the fear lest they stop talking seemed to be primarily his. He perceived the change before he could think about it and account for it. On the whole, by the end of their talk, he was delighted with her.

'I'm glad we have made one another's acquaintance.' (He had almost said 'found one another'.) 'You have transformed Christmas Day for me.'

'We have a lot to say yet,' she replied lightly. 'But we've both time to burn.'

There was a click; without a farewell she was gone; and the Exchange was speaking: 'What number do you want?'

'That same number again,' replied Edmund with unusual resourcefulness.

'What number was it?' asked the Exchange, not without petulance.

'I'm afraid I don't know. Can't you please trace it? I'd be most obliged if you could.'

'Sorry you've been troubled,' replied the Exchange.

Edmund looked at the electric clock, then sat for a long time staring at the small square electric heater. Thinking it over, he was unable to determine very clearly what indeed they had said to each other which had consumed so much time. There had been the eighteenth-century English poets (it was remarkable indeed to make a casual acquaintance who knew Addison's Cato); but otherwise there seemed to have been little but an interchange of remarks which barely amounted to conversation, because his preoccupation had been curiosity, hers a seemingly almost desperate reaching out for a response, for friendship. Edmund was not one of the many men whose response to an emotional need is inversely proportionate to the degree of that need. On the contrary, he tended by temperament to fall in with any demand made upon him. For this among other reasons, he now felt that, despite the queer circ.u.mstances, a new and important factor had entered his life. He had certainly been swept and ready...

At this time the oddness of the circ.u.mstances seemed to Edmund to come within the probable boundaries of such familiar concepts as 'discretion', 'gaining time', or even 'coquetry'. It was not until a later call that Nera's mysterious elusiveness began significantly to perturb him. Because during this particular conversation, in the course of which she took a clearer initiative than before, she stated, most unmistakably, that she loved him; and he, instead of proceeding as if he thought her remark was meant partly or mainly in jest, replied almost seriously, 'I think I love you too.' And when after that, and after sundry strange endearments between these lovers who had never set eyes upon one another and who often found themselves at cross purposes on the telephone, she still refused to say where she lived, Edmund was naturally aghast. He was able to notice, however, that whereas previously his more direct approaches had made her hysterical, she now refused him quite tranquilly.

'Am I, then, never to see you?' he cried.

'I haven't said that.'