Muriel Spark - The Complete Short Stories

‘Yes,’ twanged Daphne.

‘While you’re on the phone, I’d like to mention the account.’

‘Of course. How much is it? I’ll send a cheque.’

‘Eighty guineas — that’s of course including the toy poodle.’

‘Ah, yes. What exactly was the sum for the poodle? I’m so scatty about these things.’

‘The poodle was sixty. Then there was an amount last October—’

‘Thanks. I’m sure it’s quite correct. I’ll send a cheque.’

‘You have stolen that bird, I know,’ said Aunt Sarah that afternoon, giving the cage a shove.

‘No,’ said Daphne, ‘I paid for it.’

In the spring of 1947 Linda died of a disease of the blood. At the funeral a short man of about forty-five introduced himself to Daphne. He was Martin Grindy, the barrister who had been Linda’s lover.

He gave Daphne his card. ‘Would you come some time and talk about Linda?’

‘Yes, of course.

‘Next week?’

‘Well, I’m teaching. But when school breaks up I’ll write to you.’ She wrote during the Easter holidays, and met him for lunch a few days later.

He said, ‘I miss Linda.’

‘Yes, I’m sure you must.

‘The trouble is, you see, I’m a married man.’

She thought him attractive and understood why Linda had always felt urgently about keeping her appointments with him.

In the summer she started to replace Linda as Martin’s lover. They met in London at weekends and more frequently in the summer holidays.

Daphne was teaching at a private school in Henley. She lived with Pooh-bah and a middle-aged housekeeper whom they had persuaded into service, the old servant, Clara, having died, and Aunt Sarah having been removed to a nursing home.

Mole had married, and Daphne missed his frequent visits, and the long drives in his car. Until she met Martin Grindy her life was enlivened only by the visiting art master at the school, who came down twice a week.

Martin’s wife, several years older than he, lived in Surrey and was always ill with a nervous complaint.

‘There’s no question of a divorce,’ Martin said. ‘My wife’s against it on religious grounds, and though I myself don’t share these principles I feel a personal obligation towards her.’

‘Oh, I see.’

They spent their time in his flat in Kensington. There was a heatwave. They bathed in the Serpentine.

Sometimes, if his wife was specially ill, he would be summoned to the country. Daphne stayed alone in the flat or wandered round the shops.

‘This year,’ said Martin, ‘she has been more ill than usual. But next year, if she’s better, I hope to take you to Austria.’

‘Next year,’ she said, ‘I am supposed to be returning to Africa.’

Earlier Chakata had written, ‘Old Tuys has had a stroke. He is up now, but very feeble in his mind.’ Since then, he had seemed less keen on Daphne’s return. Daphne thought this odd, for previously he had been wont to write when sending her news of the farm, ‘You will see many changes when you return,’ or, when mentioning affairs at the dorp, ‘There’s a new doctor. You’ll like him.’ But in his last letter he said, ‘There have been changes in the educational system. You will find many changes if you return.’ Sometimes she thought Chakata was merely becoming forgetful. ‘I’m trying to make the most of my stay in England,’ she wrote, ‘but travelling is very expensive. I doubt if I shall see anything of Europe before my return.’ Chakata, in his next letter, did not touch on the question. He said, ‘Old Tuys just sits about on the stoep. Poor old chap, he is incapable of harm now. He is rather pathetic on the whole.’

At the end of the summer Daphne’s lover took his wife to Torquay. Daphne wandered about Kensington alone for a few days, then went back to Pooh-bah. She took him for walks. She asked him to lend her some money so that she might spend a week in Paris. He replied that he didn’t really see the necessity. Next day the housekeeper told her of a man in the village who would give her thirty pounds for the poodle. Daphne had grown fond of the dog. She refused the offer, then wrote to her lover in Torquay to ask him to lend her the money to go to Paris. She received a postcard from Martin, with no mention of her request. ‘Will be back in London 1st week October,’ he wrote on the card.

Term started at the beginning of October. That week Martin’s wife turned up and demanded of Pooh-bah Daphne’s whereabouts. She was directed to the school, and on confronting Daphne there, made a scene.

Later, the headmistress was highly offensive to Daphne, who straight-way resigned. The headmistress relented, for she was short of staff. ‘I am only thinking of the girls,’ she explained. Hugh, the visiting art master, suggested to Daphne that she might find a better job in London. She left that night. Pooh-bah was furious. ‘Who’s going to attend to things on Mrs Vesey’s day off?’ Daphne realized why he had not wished her to go to Paris.

‘You could marry her,’ Daphne suggested. ‘Then she’d be on duty all the time.’

He did this in fact, within a month. Daphne settled in a room in Bayswater, poorly furnished for the price; but on the other hand the landlady was willing to take the poodle.

Martin Grindy traced her to that place.

‘I don’t like your wife,’ she said.

‘I’m afraid she got hold of your letter. What can I give you? What can I do for you? What can I possibly say?’

Besides teaching art to schoolchildren, Hugh Fuller painted. He took Daphne to his studio in Earl’s Court, where she sat and reflectively pulled the stuffing even further out of the torn upholstery of the armchair.

Quite decidedly, she said, she would not come and live with him, but she hoped they would always be friends.

He thought he had made a mistake in putting the proposition to her before making love, so he made moves to repair his error.

Daphne screamed. He looked surprised.

‘You see,’ she explained, ‘I’ve got nerves, frightfully, at the moment.

He took her frequently to Soho, and sometimes to parties where, for the first time, she entered a world in the existence of which she had previously disbelieved. Here the poets did have long hair, and painters wore beards, and what was more, two of the men wore bracelets and earrings. One group of four girls lived all together in two rooms with a huge old negress. Among Hugh’s acquaintance were those who looked upon him with scorn for his art teaching, those who considered this activity harmless in view of his lack of talent, and those who admired him for his industry as much as his generosity.

Daphne found this company very relaxing to her nerves.

No one asked her the usual questions about Africa, and what was more surprising, no one made advances to her, not even Hugh. Daphne was teaching at a Council school. On half-holidays in spring she would sometimes meet Hugh and his friends, and regardless of the staring streets, would straggle with them along the pavements, leap on and off buses, to the current art show. There, it was clear to Daphne that Hugh’s friends occupied a world which she could never penetrate. But she came to be more knowing about pictures. It may have been the art master in Hugh, as one of his friends suggested, but he loved to inform Daphne as to form, line, light, masses, pigments.

Her cousin Mole looked her up one day. He told her that Michael, the silly son of that Greta Casse at Regent’s Park, had married a woman ten years his senior, and was emigrating to the Colony. Daphne was affected with an attack of longing for the Colony, more dire than any of those bouts of homesickness which she had yet experienced.

‘I shall have to go back there soon,’ she said to Mole. ‘I’ve saved enough for the fare. It’s a good thought to know I can go any time I please.’