30: Spectator’s Paradise
WE were busy that winter sketching out a new project, and on many nights George Passant and my secretary worked later than I did at the office and then went on to my flat to get a draft finished. At the flat they met some of my acquaintances; George, whose eyes brightened at the sight of Vera Allen, did not know what had happened to me, nor speculate much about it.
It would not have occurred to him that I was getting consolation from being a looker-on. It would have occurred to him even less that, just occasionally, when I was listening, trying to give sensible advice, there came thoughts which I had to use my whole will to shut out. In that rational, looking-on, and on the whole well-intended existence, I would suddenly have my attention drained away, by something more actual than a dream, in which a letter was on the way from Margaret, asking me to join her.
George would have believed none of that. To him I appeared quieter and more sober than I used to be, but still capable of high spirits. He assumed that I must have some secret source of satisfaction, and often, if we were left alone in the flat, he would say with an air of complacence, correct and smug: ‘Well, I won’t intrude on your private life.’
Then he would walk happily off up the square, twiddling his stick and whistling.
On the nights she came home with us, Vera Allen used to leave when she thought George was still occupied, so that he would not have an excuse to walk with her to the bus. He remained good-humoured and aware of her until one evening, when they arrived at the flat half an hour before me, there was a constraint between them so glaring that it was almost tactless not to refer to it. That evening it was George who left first.
When I heard his steps clumping defiantly along the pavement, I gazed with amusement at Vera. She was standing up ready to hand me papers, not showing any tiredness after the night’s work, her figure neat and strong as a dancer’s. It was that figure which made her seem so comely, for her face, with features flattened and open, was not beautiful, was scarcely even pretty; yet behind the openness of her expression, there was some hint — often I had thought it illusory, but that did not matter — of hidden hopes which tempted men, which made a good many speculate on how surprising she might be in one’s arms. But most men, unlike George, knew it was futile.
She was a simple, direct, and modest young woman. Although she was only twenty-seven, her husband had been killed four years before. Now she was in love again, with an absolute blinkered concentration of love, so that she seemed to breathe and eat only as means to the end of having Norman to herself. They were not lovers, but she had not a second’s recognition of the flesh to spare for any other man. She was — as far as I could guess about her — both passionate and chaste. I smiled at her. She trusted me now. I asked: ‘What’s the matter with Mr Passant?’
Vera’s eyes, clear and unblinking, met mine: there might have been a tinge of colour on her cheeks and necks, as she considered.
‘I should have thought he was a little highly strung, Mr Eliot.’
She paused, like a politician issuing a statement, and added: ‘Yes, he is on the highly strung side. I don’t think I can put it better than that.’
I nearly told her I did not think she could have put it worse. Vera, although not sophisticated, was also not coy: but she had a knack of finding insipid words which satisfied herself though no one else, and then of gripping onto them as though they were so many umbrellas. Highly strung. From now on she would firmly produce that egregious phrase whenever George was mentioned. What did it mean? Amorizing, importunate, randy, gallant? Something like that: I doubted if she had made a distinction, or could recognize at sight the difference between a violently sensual man like George and some of her flirtatious hangers-on. She just put them impartially aside. For a woman of her age, she was curiously innocent.
But there was one authority who did not regard her so. Soon after I had asked her about George — she would not give away any more — I let her out, and, as I was returning along the hall-passage to my room, heard an excited, insinuating voice from the next landing.
‘Mr Eliot! Mr Eliot!’
‘Yes, Mrs Beauchamp?’ I called out irritably. I could not see her, this was early in 1944, the black-out was still on, and the only light was from the blue-painted bulb in the hall.
‘I must have, that is if you can spare the time of course, I must have a little private word entre nous.’
I went up the stairs and made her out, in the spectral light, standing outside her own closed door.
‘I think I must tell you, Mr Eliot, I’m sure I shouldn’t be doing my duty if I didn’t.’
‘Don’t worry too much.’
‘But I do worry when it’s my duty, Mr Eliot, I’m the biggest worrier I’ve ever met.’
It was clear that I had not yet found a technique for dealing with Mrs Beauchamp.
‘You see, Mr Eliot,’ she whispered triumphantly, ‘before you came in this evening the door of your room just happened to be open and I just happened to be going upstairs, actually I had just been doing a bit of shopping, not that I should ever think of looking in your room if I didn’t hear a noise, but I thought, I know Mr Eliot would want me to pay attention to that, I know you would, Mr Eliot, if you’d seen what I’d seen.’
‘What did you see?’
‘Always respect another person’s privacy, Major Beauchamp used to say,’ she replied. ‘I’ve always done my best to live up to that, Mr Eliot and I know you have,’ she added puzzlingly as though I, too, had sat under Major Beauchamp’s moral guidance.
‘What did you see?’
‘Écrasez l’infâme,’ said Mrs Beauchamp.
In a whisper, fat-voiced and throbbing, she broke out: ‘Oh, I’m sorry for that poor friend of yours, poor Mr Passant!’
This seemed to me an absurd let-down; to imagine that George, having been turned down, was going out heartbroken into the night, was too much even for Mrs Beauchamp.
‘He’ll get over it,’ I said.
‘I’m sure I don’t quite follow you,’ she replied virtuously.
‘I mean, Mr Passant won’t worry long because a young woman doesn’t feel free to have dinner with him.’
Speaking to Mrs Beauchamp I often found myself, as if hypnotized by her example, becoming more and more genteel.
‘If it were only that!’
Dimly, I could perceive her hands clasped over her vast unconfined bust.
‘Oh, if only it were that!’ She echoed herself.
‘What else could it be?’
‘Mr Eliot, I’ve always been afraid you’d think too well of women. A gentleman like you is always apt to, I know you do if you don’t mind my saying so, you put them on a pedestal and you don’t see their feet of clay. So did Major Beauchamp and I always prayed he’d never have reason to think different, because it would have killed him if he had and I hope it never will you, Mr Eliot. That secretary of yours, I don’t like to speak against someone who you are so good to, but I’m afraid I have had my eyes on her from the start.’