The Eye of Love Page 16

  “That’s right,” said Mr Phillips, watching her. “I see I’d better make your mind up for you.”

  6

  “Word of six letters first two f, 1,” ordered Mr Phillips.

  He was engaged not in solving a cross-word, but in composing one. The mysterious, silent occupation of his early days as a lodger, upstairs in his bedroom, was at last disclosed; as a contriver of these ingenuities Mr Phillips made half-a-guinea a time. They weren’t eminently ingenious, Mr Phillips not catering, as he frequently pointed out, for highbrows; the journals that employed him bore such reassuring names as “Home Hints” and “Snippets”. Now he brought the dictionary down to the sitting-room and turned it over to Dolores, training her to assist him.

  “Floral,” offered Dolores.

  “Too fancy,” objected Mr Phillips. “I keep telling you.”

  So the evenings passed as it were in a foretaste of domestic ease. Mr Phillips had made up Dolores’ mind for her—or rather he had made his own mind up, and took hers as read. Indeed, Dolores never spoke out to disabuse him; she was afraid of the consequences. When Mr Phillips said they’d be married at a registrar’s, cheaper and less fuss than in church, she said nothing at all; when he suggested that a month should see everything straight, by which he meant that a month should see Martha settled in an orphanage, Dolores said nothing to that either. Her tongue was heavy in her head; she was too worn out—her sleep broken and unrefreshing, each day a long miserable toil—to think at all, with any real coherence …

  Sometimes he was quite kind.

  “You’ll be able to go and see her, don’t forget,” said Mr Phillips.

  “See who?” asked Dolores vaguely.

  “Martha. They’ve days when the kids can be taken out.”

  Dolores’ consenting silence was on this point almost rational. When her mind was working best, and remembering her own fruitless attempts to find work, it sometimes occurred to her that Martha would have to be sent to an orphanage in any case—supposing Mr Phillips in some way escaped. When the lease of the little house ran out, without a house how could she even look for lodgers again? Dolores felt incapable of fending even for herself, unless someone looked after her …

  Once or twice, when the thought of being looked after again came uppermost, she nearly opened this subject of the lease to Mr Phillips, so that he could tell her what to do. But she didn’t, because it was too much effort. She had no idea that in time she might be accused of chicanery; having no idea how confounded Mr Phillips would be, and how justifiably angered, by the discovery that his wife didn’t own a house.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  1

  Miranda took no chances, that next Friday evening, but waited until she saw Harry Gibson leave. (She knew where he was going. On Fridays, because he left early, he always took his mother to a cinema before dinner. It was all right.) Miranda waited from just after five, behind a chestnut-tree at the corner of Almaviva Place—not a very dignified station, but the nearest cover, and she was too well furred to suffer much discomfort from the cold. (Her hands were in fur-lined gloves; only her feet gradually numbed.) No one remarked her, in that quiet cul-de-sac. A stray pigeon or two waddled up as though looking for crumbs, but that was all her distraction.

  Mr Gibson came out at twenty-five to six, and took a taxi off the rank. To occupy the next ten minutes, and restore her circulation, Miranda walked briskly down Kensington High Street, as far as an artist’s supply-shop, and briskly back. Her calculations proved exact; within, she crossed first the charwoman bundling downstairs, then Miss Harris on the flight above. Miss Harris, like the charwoman, was already hatted. “Don’t forget to put the lock down, don’t get me sacked!” breathed Miss Harris—a gay accomplice. Miranda nodded gaily in return.

  2

  It gave her, immediately, such pleasure to have penetrated into Harry’s sanctum, behind Harry’s back, that for the first few minutes she almost played. Miranda’s girlishness was perfectly genuine; alas that only to the eye of love could it have seemed engaging. As she sat herself in Harry’s chair behind the desk—opened Harry’s blotter, laid a finger to Harry’s telephone—how endearing the spectacle might have been, to a lover! But even her Dadda would have told her not to meddle, for however he indulged his daughter, old Joyce saw her objectively; and every action which performed by Miss Diver would have driven Harry Gibson to rapture, had he seen Miranda performing them would have driven him to fury.

  She didn’t play the childish game more than a few minutes. She wasn’t there to play, she was there to hunt for some clue that would lead her to Harry’s Past.

  As Miss Harris could have foretold, she wasted a great deal of time. The safe was inviolable, the drawers of the desk were so casually unlocked as to quench curiosity. Miranda went through them nonetheless; and learned only that Harry for some reason hoarded a quantity of Gibson-and-Son-headed notepaper. A file of invoices headed Joyce of Bond Street and Kensington testified to an increasing if modest prosperity; another, of old letters, to certain extramural follies on the part of Mr Gibson senior. (It wasn’t auctions alone had been old Mr Gibson’s undoing: upon splendidly-monogrammed notepaper equerries to certain princely names thanked him for his visit and enclosed a receipt.) Miranda observed that there were no autographs worth having, put the file back where she found it, and returned to the desk.

  The uppermost sheet in the blotter showed only a repeated scrawl, too evidently Mr Gibson’s signature to be of interest; and none of the undersheets had been used at all. By the telephone lay a list of numbers, obviously those Mr Gibson most frequently used; but as obviously all connected with the business, for each had a name alongside, and each name Miranda recognised; and when she checked them in the Directory, all were correct, not one was a cunning alibi. She put the telephone directories back too, resentfully.

  It was hard to admit that she had drawn blank.

  It was so hard to admit that as a last, foolish resort Miranda looked about for a mirror, intending to read Mr Gibson’s signature through the glass, to make certain (what indeed she knew to be certain) it was that and nothing more. There was a mirror hooked behind the door, beside a second hook from which depended a tweed jacket—Harry’s office jacket, thought Miranda; she didn’t remember seeing him in it. Until that moment, concentrating on the desk and the files, she hadn’t consciously noticed it. Nor did it now seem probable to her as a hiding-place for anything Harry wished to conceal. Miranda took it down and went through the pockets without any particular hope, simply because it was there; and so found a receipt for a quarter’s gas at an address in Paddington.

  Mr Gibson had forgotten it.

  At a certain moment, as he bade his beloved farewell, it had been a sensible comfort to him. Then he forgot all about it. He had worn the jacket since, without finding it. It was in the inside breast-pocket.

  Only his own name appeared, as the official occupier: Miranda learnt nothing but an address. But it was enough, she dropped the lock behind her and ran downstairs, well satisfied with the results of her excursion.

  Dinner was usually a little late on Fridays, on account of Harry taking his mater to the cinema; it was also, usually, steak-and-kidney pie—as less susceptible than roast beef to the hazards of over-cooking.

  “Jolly good grub all the same,” commended Mr Joyce.

  “First chop,” agreed Harry Gibson.

  “Am I never to cook goulash again?” complained Auntie Bee.

  “So much the boys enjoy their pie, don’t they earn it?” cried old Mrs Gibson.

  Miranda said nothing. She was exceptionally quiet all evening—busy with her thoughts.

  3

  In Miranda’s elegantly-appointed bedroom stood a particularly elegant little writing-desk furnished with particularly recherché notepaper; and of this, over the week-end, she wasted a great deal.

  The time was over when Miranda wished merely to know the facts about Harry’s Past, just in case Harry needed help. She now ur
gently required some personal encounter from which she, Miranda, would come off best.

  “Dear Miss—” (wrote Miranda)

  “As an old friend of Harry’s, and I am sure truly interested in his welfare, may I say how much I should like to pay you a visit? It would be so nice to have a friendly chat. Please telephone me if you agree, as I sincerely hope you will, and believe me,

  in all sincerity,

  Miranda Joyce”

  Then she tore it up. Though she had her own telephone by the bed, it was only an extension: suppose Dadda took the call!

  “Dear Miss—” (began Miranda again)

  “As a woman of the world, I have no hesitation in saying how much I should like to make your acquaintance. May I call, or would you prefer lunch at the Ritz? I hope for a line from you very soon.

  Sincerely,

  Miranda Joyce”

  She tore that up too, as too stodgy, and wrote very fast:

  “Dear Miss—

  “Oughtn’t we to meet? After all this IS the Twentieth Century! Drop me a line!

  Yours,

  Miranda Joyce. (Harry’s fiancée.)”

  Many more such drafts did Miranda pen—some formal, some informal, some sympathetic, some almost menacing, but all ending in her paper-basket. None of them did. None of them, Miranda felt, properly projected her personality. Quite apart from the awkwardness of addressing an envelope to Miss Blank, this difficulty again and again baffled her—and was a cardinal one: insufficiently impressed, Miss Blank might snub. Certainly handwriting alone was known to tell much, and Miranda took pride in her curlicue script; but could Miss Blank read handwriting? Could she read from Miranda’s elaborate capitals, for instance, how free from prejudice Miranda was? From her long-tailed y’s, how attractive and well-dressed? Could even a practising expert, to put it plainly, deduce Miranda’s new skunk coat from the loop of an f? Miranda fancied not; and equally mistrusted her own literary skill …

  By Sunday night she had made up her mind to the only certain course; and early on Monday morning, unheralded, set out for Paddington.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  1

  At the corner of Alcock Road Miss Joyce was passed by a plain, stocky little girl who looked at her, she felt, suspiciously. In fact, the eye of Martha was caught merely by Miranda’s hat; its shape exactly duplicated, on a larger scale, the lid of Mr Punshon’s tobacco-jar. Miranda however quickened her step. She in any case felt conspicuous in Alcock Road, a natural target for conjecture and suspicion, because in so seedy a little thoroughfare she was aware she must look out of place.

  The seediness of Alcock Road in fact quite disconcerted her. She had never imagined Harry’s Past housed in extravagant luxury, but she did expect something smarter than Alcock Road—simply as the scene of illicit amours in general. (If illicit love hadn’t chic, hadn’t glamour, thought Miranda, what had it?) In Alcock Road, she noted with distaste, the inhabitants didn’t even clean their brass properly; all about the plate of a Miss Taylor, chiropodist, smears of dried metal polish marked the paint. Even the municipal authorities, it seemed, neglected Alcock Road; its letter-box still carried VR for monogram, and there were bits of newspaper unswept. As for the taste of those inhabitants—passing an open front-door Miranda glimpsed within a china-frog umbrella-stand almost perverse in its hideousness …

  She didn’t notice the grating in the gutter, that Martha’s eye of love could turn into a Greek temple. If she had, she would have observed only that it was blocked by two banana-skins and a sucked orange.

  Miss Joyce walked rapidly, nervously, distastefully on.

  The number five clear in her mind, she had kept to the opposite, the even-numbered side, to reconnoitre first at a sufficient distance. Actually opposite Number 5, she was disconcerted again by a seedy little house with faded pink curtains. The card in the window advertising apartments struck her as pathetically in keeping; but that such an establishment could be the target of her Harry’s thoughts was unbelievable. “It’s a mistake,” thought Miranda Joyce. “I’ve made a mistake …”

  She would have turned and walked back again, and found a taxi to take her home again, only at that moment the door opened and a woman came out.

  2

  She wore, the woman, a dirty overall, and a duster tied over her hair. Since her purpose was to shake the front-door-mat, the costume wasn’t unsuitable; it was in fact a uniform—the uniform proper to the landlady, or servant, of so seedy an establishment, at that hour of the morning.

  It was also a uniform peculiarly unbecoming to Miss Diver. The overall, tying behind, was so tightly knotted about her lean shape, that her hip-bones showed prominent through the flimsy cotton: the yellow duster at once concealed her jetty hair and jaundiced her sallow cheeks. At that moment she didn’t look like a Spanish rose, nor even like Old Madrid; her sole achievement in the way of appearance was that an on-looker such as Miss Joyce took her for landlady rather than servant.

  It still didn’t for a moment enter Miranda’s mind that this scarecrow, this poor creature so denuded of all feminine grace, could be the rival she feared.

  The sole reason she crossed the road was because she had inherited her father’s instinct to make perfectly sure before cutting a loss. The address was undoubtedly the address on the receipted gas-account; however seedy the actual dwelling, it was still within the bounds of possibility that Harry’s ex-mistress either lodged, or had lodged, under its roof …

  “Good morning,” said Miranda. “I see you let rooms?”

  Dolores let the mat drop. The long-hoped-for enquiry, the words she’d given up expecting to hear, took her so completely by surprise that she even glanced backward over her shoulder, as though for confirmation, at Martha’s beautifully-lettered card. It was still there, it hadn’t, as it so easily might have, dropped down inside unnoticed. Dolores had heard aright—and looked back at the enquirer.

  In old plays, old romances, they’d have recognised each other at once. But no more than Miss Joyce did Dolores know her rival. She too, in fact, saw a scarecrow—one very well-dressed, indeed, but as regarded general boniness and unappetisingness, a scarecrow. “Buyer,” thought Dolores swiftly. “Ladies’ and Children’s Wear; West End—with that coat …” It never for a moment crossed her mind that this poor creature so denuded of all feminine grace could be the rival to whom she’d ceded all rights in her King Hal. They were so far on equal terms.

  “Or don’t you take ladies?” suggested Miranda. (It was all she wanted to know.)

  “I’m sure I could make a lady very comfortable,” said Dolores. Her brain had started to function again—feverishly. Another lodger, and Mr Phillips could go or stay as he pleased—could be given notice!—what a wonderful, what a miraculous issue from her troubles! “Either with lunch or without,” elaborated Dolores eagerly. “Even a packed lunch, if it suited, or hot supper if late. For three pounds a week, I’m sure I could make a lady very comfortable indeed!”

  “But have you ever taken one before?” pressed Miranda—it was all she wanted to find out.

  “No,” admitted Dolores. It didn’t surprise her to see a look of withdrawal, she never now expected anything to be easy. “But the gentleman here at present,” she added recklessly, “if you don’t care for a gentleman in the house, mayn’t be staying much longer—owing to his business calling him away.”

  She spoke just like a landlady. Miranda at least had excuse for blindness: tragically, Mr Gibson’s, King Hal’s Spanish rose now talked just like a landlady. She behaved like a landlady. Miss Joyce, having learnt all she needed, desired merely to end the conversation and go. Dolores wouldn’t let her.

  “Thank you, I won’t come in,” said Miss Joyce. “Perhaps another time—”

  Dolores edged between her prospect and the gate.

  “As you’re here, I would just like you to see the room … It’s really quite exceptional.”

  (So it was indeed. It was her own. Within the last few seconds Dolores
had made up her mind to surrender her own bedroom, if by doing so she could get rid of Mr Phillips.)

  “I’m afraid I haven’t time,” said Miranda, making a movement towards the gate. But Dolores stood firm in her path.

  “It won’t take a moment. Now that you’re here.”

  Simply because it now seemed her shortest way out of Alcock Road, Miss Joyce allowed herself to be shepherded within. It was entirely Dolores’ doing, that she entered the house.

  3

  At least the small bare hall offered nothing to detain her; nor did her tiresome cicerone linger in it. Dolores being at least as conscious as Miss Joyce that the hall looked bare: her trump card was the bedroom, and she hurried on upstairs. “I’m sure any lady would be comfortable here,” said Dolores, throwing open the door.

  Miss Joyce admitted it freely. The comforts displayed—the big double bed, the commodious dressing-table, the long mirror centring the commodious wardrobe—were unexpected. “It’s certainly very nice indeed,” said Miss Joyce. “Perhaps I’ll come back later.”

  “The bathroom’s just across the landing. With lavatory separate,” persuaded King Hal’s Spanish rose.

  “Perhaps I’ll come back later,” repeated Miss Joyce.

  Dolores recognised defeat. Even her own beautiful room, her ultimate sacrifice, hadn’t availed. Sadly she stood aside at the door.

  “Thank you for letting me look,” added Miranda kindly.

  She was actually half across the threshold, when her eye fell on the photograph beside the bed.

  Miranda paused.

  It was unmistakably a photograph of Harry Gibson—younger, in uniform, but unmistakable; on the table by the bed.