She played the trick of staring up with the expressionless black circles in her eyes, like a blind cat. Then she looked away, numb and patient.
“And Grace, you’re filthy. You must have a bath.”
Her feet were dirty, her fingernails, her ears. Passively she allowed herself to be scraped and scrubbed with the loofah; dried, curried, chafed, and sprinkled with nice astringent eau de Cologne. She took no notice, but practised this peculiar evasion, which one found so exciting. Afterward in my parrot dressing gown she cocked her little finger at me over the coffee cup. In that tinny voice she gave me a few particulars about herself. She was eighteen and lived at home. Out of work. She was interested in Gary Cooper. But all this was a kind of elaboration of her inner evasion. By giving her a dressing gown and a cup of coffee one had merely brought upon oneself the few social tricks she knew how to perform. She was not interested, merely polite. For services rendered she returned the payment of this lifted little finger and a vague awakening over a cup of suburban coffee. One was afraid that at any moment she would become urbanely ladylike, and revive the Nelson touch which one finds so painful in the ladies of Anerley and Penge. (Preserve us from the ostrich.)
“Tell me”, one said, by a fluke, “about your family. Where they live and how and everything.”
This interested her. It almost made her face wake up; her gestures became alive and instinctive. Only her eyes could not wholly achieve the change — narrowing, widening, the rim of the blackness. Really, to look at her was as senseless as looking into the shutter of a camera.
Her family, she said, lived in a villa in Croydon. Father had a job at the gasworks. He was a card. Her four brothers were all working. They were cards, too. Her two sisters were on the telephone exchange. They were real cards. Mother was a little queer in the head, and she, Gracie, was the youngest. Mother was a treat, the things she said! Laugh? They fairly killed themselves at her in the parlour. You see, she didn’t know what she was saying, like. A bit soppy in the top story. Made them yell, the things she came out with, specially when she was a little squiffy. Laugh? They howled. If you could only write them in a book, it would be wonderful.
One tried to imagine her in the bosom of this roaring family — this animal waif with the voice running along the thin edge of sanity — but failed. There was nothing Elizabethan about her, to suggest that she would fit in with this pack of yelling cards — Pa with his watch chain and clay pipe, Mother with her bottle of Wincarnis. The parlour overflowing with brothers and sisters, and the port overflowing in mother’s brain cells.
Her father was a bad man when he was in drink, she said at last. Always having tiffs with Albert. Always mucking about with her and Edith the eldest one. Only on Saturday nights when he wasn’t himself, however, and Ted the eldest brother was the same. They knew it wasn’t right but what could you do if it was your own father? She coughed a little.
“Do you live at home?”
“When I’m there I’m there,” she said patiently. “When I don’t go back they don’t worry. Glad to be free of me. Not earning me keep any more, see?” I saw.
She finished her drink and put the cup down. Then she strolled over to the bookcase and quizzed the titles. Sniffed, turned to me, and said, “Fine lot o’ books you got here.” But with a gesture so foreign, so out of character that I was forced to laugh. She was actually being seductive; and above all, not seductive by the ordinary formulae, but by the dashing hectic formulae of the cinema. It was astonishing. Posed like that, her hip stuck out under the palm of one hand, her slender, rather frail legs Venus’d — one knee over the other — she had become that cinema parrot, a dangerous woman. Even her small face was strained to an imaginary expression before an imaginary camera. Only the awful sightlessness of her eyes betrayed her. One became embarrassed; as at a theatre where the famous comedian fails to raise the most fleeting of sniggers from his audience.
“Come off it, Grace,” one said uncomfortably. “Come off it. You’re not an actress.”
She was suddenly chastened and dumb, like a reprimanded pet. The pose was shattered. Slipping off the dressing gown she lit a cigarette and sat herself down on my knee; began to kiss me in a businesslike way, pausing from time to time to exhale clouds of smoke from her small dry mouth. Her eyes might have been covered in cataracts for all the meaning they held in them. Her kisses were tasteless, like straw. “Do you like me?” she inquired at last with stunning fervour — the great screen star taking possession of her face for a second. “Do you reely like me, mister?”
From that moment there is the flash of a sword, dividing the world. A bright cleavage with the past, cutting down through the nerves and cells and arteries of feeling. The past was amputated, and the future became simply Gracie. That peculiar infatuation which absorbed one, sapped one by the fascination of its explorations. Gracie stayed on, and days lost count of themselves: so remote was that world in which I wandered with her, so all-absorbing her least mannerism, the least word, the least breath she drew.
After the first ardours were tasted and realized, she became even more wonderful as a sort of pet. Her vocabulary, her great thoughts lit up the days like comets. And that miserable tranquillity she retired into when she was ill made one realize that she was inexhaustible. What a curious adventure another person is!
I phoned Tarquin: “My dear fellow, you must come down to my rooms on Tuesday and meet Gracie. I’m giving a little party for her. You must come. I’m sure you will be great friends. She spits blood.”
They all came. Perez, the gorilla with his uncouth male stride and raving tie; Lobo agitatedly showing his most flattering half profile; Clare, Tarquin, Chamberlain with his bundle of light music and jazz. They sat about uncomfortably, rather ghoulishly, while I, revelling in the situation, made them drink, and helped Grace to perform her tricks. It was a cruel tableau, but she was far too obtuse to realize it. She played the social hostess with a zeal and clumsiness which would have made one weep if one were less granite-livered. I congratulated myself on my skill in gathering together such a collection of butterflies for their mutual embarrassment. Yes, I chuckled inwardly as I caught their eyes over their glasses. The comedy of wheels within wheels. It was a society of pen-club members who, after being invited to meet a celebrity, had been presented with a mere reviewer. Scandalized they were by the performance Grace put up, cocking her little finger over the teacups, and talking with the hygienic purity of an Anerley matron. (Preserve us from the ostrich.) How their eyes accused me!
Poor Grace was obviously an embarrassing bore. They relaxed a little when the gramophone was started and Chamberlain was compelled by punctiliousness to gyrate with his hostess. He was the least affected by Gracie, I suppose because he was the most natural person there. But Perez and Lobo conferred in a corner and decided that they had an important engagement elsewhere. Lobo said good day with the frigidity of a Castilian gentleman dismissinga boring chambermaid. No manners like those of the really well bred.
Later, however, Clare danced with her and she seemed to like it. He alone of all of them seemed to speak a quiet language which was really familiar to her, which thrilled her from the start. In fact they danced so well together, and so intimate were their tones of conversation, that Tarquin began to fidget about and behave clumsily with his glass.
Chamberlain, who didn’t live in the hotel himself, followed me to the lavatory, and kept me talking, his eyes shining with excitement.
“What do you think of Gracie?”
“Good enough fun. Not much of you, though.”