6
Hysteria suppressed goes to the head like wine, but all the same this was more than she bargained for, for the thing about her wrist was real, she knew the corner of the street, the name of the street, the name of the other rectangular street and she knew where she was but a gold circlet had clasped her wrist, just one gold circle, just the circle of fingers, not hurting, just catching her wrist as she lifted her hand to straighten her hat, for she thought out of the fog someone looming toward her looked familiar, but it wasn’t. . anyone she knew. All the same this was a very clear thing, not anything she had made up. It might be that I’m hungry. We are all hungry. Is God hungry? Did God being hungry have hallucinations like they had or was this something different, quite other, out of another world? For it was outside herself. . what happened.
Hermione turned the corner (on the way home from Euston) in the fog and noted the names of streets and thought, yes I promised Mrs. Lechstein that I’d stop in for she was worried and asked me if I thought we could manage to put some of Lechstein’s things down in our cellar. They always seemed to hit near us, near her, but we were safer as we were the other side of the great square where the little plaster Flora had spilled her plaster flowers and that is why they had come here. She and Jerrold had come because the plaster Flora was like the real Flora (but was it a robed Ganymede?) but you know the one in the Signora’s garden at Amalfi. The one that spilled things, fruits or flowers, girl or boy, and the oranges had dropped petals and star-blossoms and the scent was paradise. So every time you (or she) saw the plaster Flora, blossoms spilled, they did really but in imagination like the carpet that had spread (this early morning) under her bare feet, the feet Darrington had for a moment caught in his hunter’s palm and she hadn’t found the words for Darrington. A message, a signal that should have flared, didn’t flare and it was over the top. . over the top. . was she over the top? For this thing was real and she looked at her wrist pulling back the sleeve that had slipped back into place. As the wide sleeve had fallen from her uplifted arm (as she lifted her arm to straighten her hat, thinking it was someone looming out of the fog, but it wasn’t) a space had been left free, free against the chafe and rub of thick sulphur fog and that naked space of meagre wrist had been caught for a moment but it wasn’t imagination. Someone, something had caught her wrist at the corner of Guildford Street and Old Queen’s Square, that old street, for the Lechsteins lived two houses below and she was remembering that Milly Lechstein, now that Isaac was gone, wanted to keep the statues safe, treated them all like so many babies. Milly Lechstein loved the statues. Isaac was gone. Jews loving beauty. No country. Like Hermione no country. But she had a country. She had a husband. This thing out of the fog that placed a bracelet about her meagre wrist. . my husband. . the gods, you see, were alive. The mist was full of shapes and odd looming creatures and you never knew in the darkness (day dark or night dark) what might or mightn’t loom up at you. This place was blanketed down and it was wrong about their treating the war like a mid-night revel. It was wrong and it was the other way round, the war was treating them like dolls and puppets and painted dolls and she had painted her cheeks but had managed to smudge it off afterwards and she was glad it smudged off for out of the mist someone had caught at her, caught at her. She was no Penelope. Cassandra maybe. She had known he was there. But he had never taken form before, never taken her wrist, caught it, made a circle of fire about it, so that even now with her arm hanging naturally, under her coat, she could feel, feel. . did it mean Darrington wouldn’t come back? What did it mean? There are no fields of asphodel this side of the grave. But there are. There are. Must go in. This is Milly’s and I said I would. But I don’t want the responsibility for the things, can’t have it. The statues are live things to them, they love them and Isaac is gone into a sort of kosher regiment, but all the same in it, gone, in it over the top. . I must have it now, must see it now, the bracelet. But when she pulled out her thin wrist as if to examine a wrist watch that wasn’t there, small wrist bone showed, flesh looking phosphorescent under that half light. Night and day. Night and day. Death and life. And Lechstein’s famous statues. . “Milly. Yes. I know it’s too early or too late for lunch or tea. What time is it? Let me have something. You darling. How right and simple they all look. I’m glad you didn’t send them away. Keep them here. Don’t go scattering the things all over London. The risk’s too great. Yes. No. No. Yes. Gone back. Yes. Yes. When is Isaac due over? Gone back. No. Nobody’s fault but we don’t want them smashed. Don’t be so nervous for the statues.” War. War. War. Statues. Imagine it’s going on, going on. . in France. All London a night club. Over the. . over the. .
He looked at her in a curious quizzical way and she had seen him before but where had she seen him? He loomed at her across the room, out of the room among the statues, someone not in khaki, not in horizon blue, coming simply toward her, had he been there all the time? She didn’t seem to notice things. “Have you been here all the time?” He smiled at her. Where had she seen him? He was a stranger but she had seen him. Was it at her own house at one of those ribald parties? She couldn’t remember, facing him, while Milly bustled with some trouble below stairs and bells ringing and he was looking at her. Things had happened, were happening, were going to happen but he was like a mist of gold dust, flower dust in that meagre room furnished with nothing but Lechstein’s statues and the few low stools, the low stool she was seated on and another or so and nothing in the beautifully proportioned room, big room full of statues and the day and the night merged here, was it morning or afternoon? He was speaking to her and she had seen him before and certainly at one of her own parties and he was asking her to come out to lunch as he believed Milly would forget them, wouldn’t remember them, she was always in trouble, it would be someone to collect a bill and he had only come on business. He was asking her to go out to lunch with him and as Milly came back, he said he believed it would be all right and he was paying Milly, it appeared, for the statue, someone’s bust, some friend of his, a commission from long ago, but he had been away and would she see that the thing went straight to Cornwall? He was paying in a lordly manner for a statue and one did pay for Lechstein’s statues sometimes, it seems, and he went on talking and how had he got there? Had he been there all the time? “Isaac wants to do your head,” and Hermione smiled at Milly but she couldn’t imagine what a head of hers would look like now, now that she was gone. . over the top. Had she a head? Milly was appealing to the other person, “wouldn’t it be interesting,” and he was assenting of course, he was politely assenting. “I must take Mrs. Darrington out to lunch. Promised I’d not be late,” as if it was arranged but she had not come here to meet this person, what was his name, Vane, now she remembered, wealthy, heart trouble, dabbled in the arts, helped Lechstein. She had met him here at Lechstein’s and she had had him among others at her house, their house, over the top. . Vane. Cyril Vane. Wealthy. How marvellous to be wealthy. “Yes. I promised Mr. Vane.” What had she promised? Milly was tactful, thought they had arranged to meet, had they arranged to meet? Why had she turned into Milly Lechstein’s this morning, why had that swerve made her mount the steps and the gold bracelet, all in a dream and now she was seated in a restaurant, where was it? Late in the afternoon, over coffee, coffee, good coffee. Her clothes were shabby but there was something Victorian and “genteel” about it for the right kind of woman looked shabby now and Vane with his distinction and his pallor might have been an officer, a wounded officer on leave. Everyone rushed about, made a fuss, how were they to know it was only heart-trouble and he had never been in it? How were they to know that his words came right with no merging and blurring of filth, no “Fritz,” no “that’s the stuff to give ’em.” People didn’t talk that way, not officers and gentlemen, only Darrington, but after all, he was her husband and she was no Penelope. “Quaint of old Milly to call you that.” “Me? What.” “Shouldn’t have thought she could have so far penetrated—” “Me?” “Didn’t she? Or did I dream it. Morgan le Fay.”