One thing followed another, and soon Griselda was accompanying Peggy to other entertainments: a production by students at the Rudolf Steiner Hall of a seldom performed Elizabethan tragedy; and a recital at Friends House of works by lesser members of the Bach family, the performers being partly professional and partly amateur. One Sunday afternoon they ambled round the Tate Gallery, where Peggy was much addicted to Mr Graham Robertson's Blakes.
‘Have you read that book of his? His reminiscences?’
‘I found him an exhibitionist. He's not my period, of course.’
‘Shall we go and see the surrealists some time? At the Zwemmer? I'd like to.’
‘Once is enough for surrealism; just like Madame Tussaud. You go, Griselda, and you'll see what I mean.’
‘But the critics say that the surrealists are the modern equivalent of Blake, and you say you like Blake?’
‘Blake had belief. The surrealists have no belief. Surely that is fundamental?’
‘Have you belief, Peggy?’
‘Not yet. But I am prepared to have.’
They passed on to some water colours in the basement, with which Peggy was clearly well acquainted, as she discoursed upon them most convincingly and exhaustively, though water colour landscapes were not Griselda's favourite kind of picture.
Peggy seemed to live in a general condition of contingency: her prevailing attitude was the provisional. Thus although a permanent civil servant, and apparently well advanced in the service for her years (though remarkably ill paid, Griselda thought, considering her Honours Degress and years of youth devoted to passing difficult examinations), yet Peggy’s attitude to her job was merely, as she put it, ‘marking time’. Where she aimed to go when her march was resumed, was, however, indefinite. Equally her sojourn at Greenwood Tree House was described by her as a ‘passage through’; while even her health she referred to upon Griselda once enquiring about it, as ‘under observation.’ She accumulated almost no possessions, and seemed content to have Griselda as her only friend. There were times when Griselda wondered whether Peggy was not in a state verging upon suspended animation.
One evening towards the end of June, they were seated in Hyde Park. Peggy was reading The Listener; Griselda a book from Mr Tamburlane’s stock. Peggy suddenly spoke.
‘I’m taking some leave in August.’ It was the first time Griselda had heard the military term applied to civil life. ‘I’m going to Italy. Not the big towns and tourist centres, of course; just some of the smaller places in the south. Right off the beaten track. I try to visit a new country each year. I suppose you wouldn’t come with me?’
‘I can’t afford a holiday yet. Nor am I entitled to one, I think,’ It was difficult to imagine Mr Tamburlane raising an objection; but, oddly enough, it was equally difficult to imagine the job being still there, or even the shop upon return from a holiday. ‘I’m terribly sorry. Of course I’d have loved to come.’ Griselda’s regret was tempered inwardly by a distinct reservation in favour of the big towns and tourist centres: particularly, she felt, in Italy.
‘I could find the money for both of us, if that’s what it is. You could repay me later. Or not at all, if you couldn’t.’
‘That’s terribly generous. Thank you, Peggy.’ Griselda touched her hand, which Peggy slightly withdrew. ‘But as things are with me, I don’t see how I could ever repay you.’
‘You needn’t. I said that. Only if and when you can.’
‘I couldn’t agree to that.’ Griselda knew that she could agree quite easily had she wanted to visit tiny poverty-stricken Italian villages with Peggy. ‘But thank you again. It is a very kind idea.’
‘Not particularly, I want you to come with me, Griselda. Do think it over. Believe me I’m quite good at digging out just the places no one else ever gets to.’
‘There are many better people than I am for that sort of holiday.’ But Griselda thought with guilt of her fondness for long walks, of how difficult she was to tire, her prima facie suitability for the undertaking. ‘What about the people you’ve gone with before?’
‘I’ve usually gone alone. But I’d like you to come.’
Griselda glanced at her: at her big bust, her rather dull hair, her indifferent clothes, her face already drawing on its iron mask of frustration, only to be removed by death.
‘I’d like to come, Peggy. But I mustn’t. I really mustn’t. Please don’t tempt me.’
‘I thought we could have a good time.’
It occurred to Griselda as possible that Peggy, despite appearances, really cared for her: not in the least as Louise cared for her, and she cared for Louise, but in some other way, not necessarily the less authentic because probably approved by society or because completely unaccompanied by any display of feeling. Griselda was incapable of feeling very much without showing that she felt something; without tendering her affection. It seemed a simpler way than Peggy’s.
‘Next year, perhaps. Where do you plan to go next year?’
‘Finland. I don’t think you’d care for that.’
Peggy resumed The Listener. In the end they went to the Marble Arch Pavilion together, as if nothing had happened.
Later, while washing stockings in Peggy’s room, Griselda said: ‘Would you like to borrow Old Calabria before you go? Doesn’t it deal with just the part you’re visiting? It’s a book Mr Tamburlane always has in stock, and I could easily lend it to you for a week or two.’
‘Thank you. Griselda, but I think I’d rather form my own impressions. I don’t know that I’d care to see things through Norman Douglas’s eyes.’
Griselda began to squeeze out a wet stocking. ‘Peggy,’ she said. ‘What do you want most in the world?’
Peggy looked faintly hostile, as in the Park.
‘I don’t think the question has much significance for me.’ she replied. ‘I don’t think I see life in quite those terms.’ Then she added, obviously trying to please: ‘What do you want most in the world?’
But, contrary to Peggy’s notion, Griselda had neither expected nor desired that the question should be thus lobbed back at her. She was merely trying to enter into a corner of Peggy’s mind; fractionally to explore an outlook which she believed to be as habitual among her neighbours as it was alien to herself. ‘I want to know about you.’
‘Really I’m remarkably content as I am.’
‘I’m not content as I am.’
‘I know you’re not. And of course I know why you’re not.’
‘Why am I not?’
‘Griselda, we’re not schoolgirls. We don’t have to go into all that at this hour of the night.’
Her attitude was so impossibly aloof, that Griselda became momentarily filled with a younger than schoolgirlish urge to shock. ‘What I want from life is ecstasy.’
‘What will you do when you’ve got it?’ Peggy had taken off her dress and stood in her knickers and brassiиre. ‘I mean after you’ve got it?’
‘I shall reconsider the whole subject,’ said Griselda.
Peggy smiled slightly, relieved that the conversation was apparently being dropped. By way of farewell gesture she said: ‘If you really want to know, Griselda, I’m not the marrying kind.’