Sir!' She Said Read online

  This slight that she imagined she detected in the attitude of the shop’s clientele had made her sensitive and punctilious. People spoke to her in a shop as they would never speak to her in private life. They had no respect for her because she was working in a shop. That was how she argued the matter with herself. And so when some of the men who came into the shop spoke pleasantly to her she imagined that there was behind that pleasantness the same lack of respect that there had been behind the unpleasantness of their wives and sisters. “Because I work in a shop,” she had thought, “they think nothing of me. They don’t consider that I should be treated in the same way as the girls they meet in their mother’s house. They look on me as fair game.”

  Julia had done her best to laugh her friend out of that attitude.

  “Men don’t think about girls in that way nowadays,” she had said. “They don’t divide them into two classes: the kind they meet at their parents’ home and the rest: they’re just as likely to try and start an affair with one of their sisters’ friends as with the girl at the tobacconist’s. People don’t make those distinctions now.”

  Jean had shaken her head, however. “That may be so,” she had said. “But I’m not going to run the risk.”

  She was free, but she was not going to abuse her freedom. She was her own chaperone. She was as particular as her Victorian parents would have been as to what men she went about with. She had never run the risk of being treated cheaply. She never went out with men for the mere sake of going out: nor would she ever let men take her to parties for which she had received no invitation from a hostess. Some people were inclined to think her priggish. “You’ve got to be,” was her retort, “if you’re going to keep your self-respect.” Never in her life, though she was twenty-two, though she had been earning a living for eighteen months, had she accepted an invitation as casual as Gavin Todd’s.

  “And probably in two hours’ time I shall be regretting it,” she thought, as she climbed the stairs.

  For she did not believe that it had been to ask her advice that he had invited her to his flat. That was simply an excuse: so that he would be able to explain her to his friends; to say “here is Jean Ryland, who’s going to tell me what screen to buy.” She would be presented as a shop girl to his friends, though it was not really as a shop girl that she was being invited there. She was being placed in a hopelessly false position. The temptation to turn away from St. James’s to the tubes and buses of Piccadilly was very strong, as she hesitated on the mat outside his door. What was the use, she asked herself. Todd only thought of her as one of these modern girls with whom it was always worth trying to see how the land lay. He had success and money. There had been, there were probably at this very moment numberless women in his life. It was absurd to imagine that she meant anything to him. It was on his part no more than a casual attraction. Probably this cocktail party would be the last she would ever see of him. He must know so many attractive women. He would think nothing of her when he saw her side by side with them, in comparison with them.

  The most that it could lead to would be a dinner, a misunderstanding, unhappy memories. And she didn’t want to quarrel. She didn’t want to have unhappy memories of him. He was so nice. It would be much better to go away before she began spoiling things, and she would have gone if she could have mustered the courage to face Julia’s mockery the next morning. But that she could not do. She would rather make a man hate her than a girl laugh at her. She had got to see it through.

  She pressed on the bell more firmly and more lengthily than ordinarily she would have done. She was nervous: with a nervousness that made her truculent. But she was more curious than nervous. She wanted to know more about Gavin Todd: what he was like: how he lived: what friends he had: what people and things he had about him. She looked inquisitively at the hatchet-faced butler who opened the door for her: the one person who rumour had it would be respectless for her host: from whom she could have learnt, had she dared to ask and he to tell her, all that puzzled her.

  If only she could ask him, she thought, as she followed him down a narrow passage out of which doors opened on either side, to a door from behind which came the sound of voices. “Will it be an awful crush?” she wondered.

  Actually there were fifteen to twenty people in the long high Georgian room from whose bowed window frames the deep brown and gold of a brocade fell in dusky folds. But the room was large enough to seem neither noisy nor crowded, so that she was spared that wretched feeling of arriving at a party where you know scarcely anyone and that is so full of noise and people that you do not expect your host to realise that you have arrived. She had scarcely walked into the room before Todd had jumped to his feet from the stool he had been sitting on and come across to her.

  “This is nice,” he said. “I was so afraid as I watched the clock go round that you’ld not be coming. Come over and join us. There’s room here on the chesterfield. Let’s see, do you know any of us?”

  She did not. Introductions were rattled throught and, “we were just discussing,” he went on, “whether negroes ought to be allowed in restaurants.”

  “And I was just saying,” a girl cut in, “that colour prejudice was just absurd. That if a negro’s nice, he’s as nice as any white man, and that there’s no reason why we shouldn’t have them round us.”

  “But I’ve been in the Southern States,” a man retorted, “and I know that the negro you see over here is just one in about eighty thousand: that the average negro is little better than an animal; that it’ll be a good many centuries before he’s anything more than one, and that unless he’s kept thoroughly in his place we’re going to have a precious lot of trouble with him.”

  “I don’t see,” said the girl, “that that need worry us.”

  “Needn’t it!” the American retorted. “You’ve got most of the West Indies, a big chunk of Africa, and though there’s all the difference in the world between a negro and a Hindoo or Malay, what do you imagine that they’re going to think in India and Singapore when they read about negroes dancing with white women, and hear negroes boasting of their success with them?”

  The girl shrugged her shoulders. “I suppose from the Empire’s point of view that’s very tragic. But you must consider us. You can’t blame us, you know, when three quarters of the men we know are fairies.”

  There was a laugh at that. A laugh in which Jean Ryland joined. She was happy and at ease. She felt that she was accepted, absorbed into the group, a part of the conversation though she had not spoken. Todd was smiling at her; friendlily encouraging. “Don’t worry,” his smile said, “you’re among friends here.” And a cocktail had been brought to her. Its cool sweetness warmed her veins. “It’s not in the least as I was afraid it was going to be,” she thought. “He treats me just as he’s treated all the others. He’s not tried to explain me. He was too nice for that.” Gratefully she smiled back at him, not telling herself that that not explaining was no proof of Todd’s particular and peculiar pleasantness: but the idiom of the hour. The day had passed when people had to be explained: life was too diffuse, too cosmopolitan; there were too many people; the standards too relative and temporary. In the third decade of the twentieth century people only had to look all right to be thought all right. That Jean Ryland had not the experience to realise. She was content to sit there, joining in the talk now and again, interested in it, glancing round the room, appreciating the quality of its unostentatious taste, the solitary book-case, the steel engravings, the deep pile carpet, the lacquer cabinet: appreciating, too, the unostentatious skill with which Todd controlled his party, moving from group to group, seeing that the glasses were kept filled, only joining in the conversation when the conversation flagged, or to draw into it some guest or other who had not spoken.

  He’s charming, she thought, really charming. And she was glad and happy that his eyes should turn so often in her direction to make sure that she was at home there, that she was enjoying herself among people that she was meeting
for the first time. He was so nice that it was hard to believe that he was so famous.

  At her side they were discussing a challenge match that he would be playing on Thursday against Merivale, the American champion. “Gavin ought to win,” one of them was saying. “Think of the smashing he gave him at St. Andrews two years ago!”

  “Yes, I know,” the answer came. “But Gavin’s out of practice. Two years ago he was playing seven days a week. Now he’s in the city and working pretty hard there.”

  Jean gave a start. She had not known before that Gavin had a job. She had thought he did nothing except play golf and amuse himself. She was glad he worked. It was amusing to compare him as he really was with the lounge lizard for which Julia had taken him. How glad she was that she had come. What an idiot she would have been not to have. She should have known that he would be nice to her. She was only sorry when the party began to disperse that she should have seen so little of him.

  “I’ve so enjoyed myself,” she said as she went up to say good-bye. “It has been fun. It was nice of you to ask me.”

  “But you are not going. You’ve only just arrived.”

  “I’ve been hours.”

  “But I’ve seen nothing of you. And you haven’t seen any of my toys. There are some books and pictures that might amuse you; this, for instance.”

  From the mantelpiece he handed her a small Chinese scent-bottle. “The figures are painted inside the glass,” he said. “I’ve never managed to find out how they got them there. That’s rather jolly, too: Limoges.”

  He showed her the things casually, as though they were less possessions than subjects for talk, for the exchange of ideas, for the comparing of mutual tastes.

  There was plenty to discuss.

  It was an Adams table that stood in the centre of the formal red curtained dining-room. On the walls were eighteenth-century racing prints. The long, low sideboard was bright with heavy candelabra. There were Persian rugs on the floor of the narrow hall. The solitary Chippendale book-case was bright with bindings: calf and vellum and morocco. The engravings upon the primrose-coloured walls were Fragonards. It was a man’s flat. But the flat of a man with a fastidious, almost feminine taste, and with the means to indulge that taste.

  As they strolled from room to room, chattering casually, she felt that the making of each indifferent remark was deepening that sense of intimacy between them of which she had been conscious from the first moment that he had walked into the shop. He made no reference to the screen. It had been an excuse that screen, then, as had been all those other things that he had bought. It was to see her that he had come into the shop. The knowledge thrilled her. She was happy, absurdly happy that it was to see her, not to have her advice that he had asked her to his party. It was regretfully that as they walked back into the hall she turned towards the door.

  “I really must go now,” she said.

  He looked at her quizzically.

  “Really?”

  “I’m dining at eight. It’s twenty to. As it is I shall be too late to dress.”

  “And it is as important as all that?”

  “I don’t know what you mean by it being important. My people don’t like being kept waiting.”

  “So you’ve parents, then?”

  “Naturally. What did you think?”

  “I don’t know that I did think.”

  “Didn’t bother to, I suppose?”

  She spoke quickly, irritably. But his smile was gentle and reassuring. “I thought you were nice,” he said. “I was content to leave it there.” And there was a softness in his voice that warmed her.

  “That’s nice of you,” she said, as she stretched out her hand in leave-taking.

  It was a small hand, compact and practical. He held it in his, turning the fingers over.

  “I wish you hadn’t got to go,” he said. “I wish that dinner wasn’t as important as all that. If it wasn’t, I’ld have asked you to stay and have some food with me. We’ld have gone out into the country. By the river somewhere. It would have been nice, you know.”

  He looked at her interrogatively, persuasively; not urgingly, but insidiously.

  “Is the dinner really as important as all that?” he asked.

  She hesitated. Important? Of course it wasn’t; not really. As far as she knew there would be just the family: not anyone certainly whom her people would expect her to be there for. And the grey eyes were mockingly affectionate, and the fingers were gentle that fondled hers.

  “It would be nice, you know,” that voice insisted. “Don’t you think that if it wasn’t too important you might ring up and make some excuse or other?” Had he pleaded more, it would have been easier to resist. And she did not want to resist. She wanted to drive away from the heat and dust of London into the cool sweetness of a country twilight. She wanted to know more of this man who had excited her curiosity for so long. She wanted to hear his voice and to watch his hands, to feel the warmth of his smile on her.

  “All right,” she said, “I’ll come.”

  His car was parked in St. James’s Square. It was a racing model, low and long, bronze painted with silvered fittings, and deep grey leathered seats. As they drove westwards along Piccadilly she watched admiringly the skill and sureness with which he guided his way through the traffic. He did not speak. And she was grateful to him for letting her savour in silence the moment’s glamour, the moment’s peace.

  The sun had set, the air was cooling. The pale green of the sky was deepening to violet; a violet through which the first stars would soon be shining faintly. In a few moments they would be away from London; from the noise of its traffic, its trams and lorries, its crowded pavements. Soon they would have swung on to the curved concrete of the Great West Road, the roofs and chimney-pots would be at the back of them. They would know the freedom and the thrill of speed; with the needle flickering between fifty-five and sixty, with the engine sobbing softly, gratefully. On either side of them would be green spaces, shadowing trees and haystacks, and browsing cattle. In the west, growing brighter from mile to mile, would be a quarter moon: and lapping softly between the weeds against the willows, would be the Thames. In a happiness so complete that it trembled upon the edge of tears, she lay back against the cushions.

  Within three-quarters of an hour of leaving London they were at Bray. “It’s a Tuesday,” said Todd, as he swung the car through the gates of the Café Hongroise. “It should be emptyish. Let’s book a table and wander round the garden.”

  He was right. There were scarcely a dozen people in the restaurant; the café gardens were deserted. No cocktails were being wagered for on the many-bunkered putting course. As they drove past it, Jean touched his arm and pointed.

  “Do let’s play,” she said. “I’ve never seen real putting.”

  Todd looked at the course sceptically. It was an absurd course. There were tunnels and bridges and water hazards. “If you’re going to judge my golf on that,” he said, “you’ll wonder how I’ve managed to qualify for a single championship. Still, if you’ld like to have a shot, I’ll give you a stroke a hole.”

  The attendant from whom they took clubs and balls received Todd with a grin.

  “How’ld you like to play Merivale on this course, Sir?” he asked.

  “I’ld sooner toss for it.”

  “I hope that’s not the way you’re going to settle Thursday’s game. I’ve got two quid on you.”

  “I’ll have to be extra careful with my approach shots, then.”

  He spoke jokingly, but without false modesty, in a way Jean liked. She liked, too, the deference and admiration with which the attendant spoke to him. And though the Bray putting course was no more a test of golf than a village wicket is a test of batsmanship, she could not help marvelling at the precision and accuracy of Gavin’s strokes. The stroke a hole he had offered her was quite inadequate. “What a pity,” he said, “we didn’t have a bet on this. Let’s go and eat.”

  He had chosen a table at the
extreme edge of the balcony. Only a few feet away the river ran softly towards Kent. Punts drifted dreamily along it with girls in soft summer frocks lying among the cushions; happy and lazy-eyed, their fingers trailing in the water, with gramophones vibrating wheezily, and the water dancing below the violet of the sky, reflecting mistily the silver crescent of the moon: with the jazz band murmuring behind them: its cymbals muted: in harmony with the quiet evening.

  “I’ve never been as happy as this,” thought Jean, “never. Anywhere, with anyone.”

  And she was grateful to Gavin Todd for the flow of talk that he maintained; for saving her from effort, leaving her at peace to enjoy to its full the scents and sounds and beauties of this June evening. He talked of himself to begin with: of his early matches, his first championship.

  “Golf’s a funny game,” he said. “I suppose that it’s true of all other games, but golf is the only game that I know and it’s true of that, that as far as actual golf is concerned there is nothing to choose between a thousand people. Stroke by stroke there’s not a foot of difference. They can hit as straight and they can hit as far as any champion. Farther and straighter as often as not. They’ld stand, anyone of them, a fifty-fifty chance of winning any single hole off Hagen or Cyril Tolley or myself. But there’s something that can’t be taught or learnt that makes all the difference between the man who goes round day after day between 70 and 73 and the man who never goes under 76. I don’t know what it is. It’s concentration probably. You’ve got it or you haven’t got it. And you can’t be in the championship class without it.”

  Jean Ryland had not been round a golf course more than a dozen times. But any man is interesting when he is discussing his own shop, and it was the first time she had met upon such terms a man pre-eminent in his own sphere.

  She listened eagerly: comparing the Gavin Todd who sat there talking to her with the Gavin Todd who had bought scent-bottles in Brooke Street, wondering how they could be the same person, realising that they were; happy that it should have been in this way that they had met, that she had begun by liking him for himself, as himself; that she had refused to believe him to be the lounge lizard for which Julia had taken him.