‘I’m going in,’ said Mrs Pettigrew, rising and brushing down her neat skirt. ‘Whether she likes it or whether she doesn’t, I’d better keep my eye on her in any case, that’s what I’m here for.’
When Mrs Pettigrew entered the drawing-room she said, ‘Oh, Mrs Colston, I was just wondering if you were tired.’
‘You may take the tea-things away,’ said Charmian.
Instead Mrs Pettigrew rang for Mrs Anthony, and, as she piled plates on the tray for the housekeeper to take away, she knew Charmian’s guest was looking at her.
Charmian said to Mrs Anthony, ‘Thank you, Taylor.’
Mrs Pettigrew had met Alec Warner sometimes at Lisa Brooke’s. He smiled at her and nodded. She sat down and took a cigarette out of her black suede bag. Alec lit it. The clatter of Mrs Anthony’s tray faded out as she receded to the kitchen.
‘You were telling me …?’ Charmian said to her guest.
‘Oh yes.’ He turned his white head and grey face to Mrs Pettigrew. ‘I was explaining the rise of democracy in the British Isles. Do you miss Mrs Brooke?’
‘Very much,’ said Mabel Pettigrew, blowing out a long puff of smoke. She had put on her social manner. ‘Do continue about democracy,’ she said.
‘When I went to Russia,’ said Charmian, ‘the Tsarina sent an escort to—’
‘Now, Mrs Colston, just a moment, while Mr Alec Warner tells us about democracy.’
Charmian looked about her strangely for a moment, then said, ‘Yes, continue about democracy, Eric.’
‘Not Eric — Alec,’ said Mrs Pettigrew.
Alec Warner soothed the air with his old, old steady hand.
‘The real rise of democracy in the British Isles occurred in Scotland by means of Queen Victoria’s bladder,’ he said. ‘There had, you know, existed an idea of democracy, but the real thing occurred through this little weakness of Queen Victoria’s.’
Mabel Pettigrew laughed with a backward throw of her head.
Charmian looked vague. Alec Warner continued slowly as one filling in the time with his voice. His eyes were watchful.
‘Queen Victoria had a little trouble with the bladder, you see. When she went to stay at Balmoral in her latter years a number of privies were caused to be built at the backs of little cottages which had not previously possessed privies. This was to enable the Queen to go on her morning drive round the countryside in comfort, and to descend from her carriage from time to time, ostensibly to visit the humble cottagers in their dwellings. Eventually, word went round that Queen Victoria was exceedingly democratic. Of course it was all due to her little weakness. But everyone copied the Queen and the idea spread, and now you see we have a great democracy.’
Mrs Pettigrew laughed for a long time. Alec Warner was gazing like a bird-watcher at Charmian, who plucked at the rug round her knees, waiting to tell her own story.
‘When I went to Russia,’ said Charmian, looking up at him like a child, ‘the Tsarina sent an escort to meet me at the frontier, but did not send an escort to take me back. That is so like Russia, they make resolutions then get bored. The male peasants lie on the stove all winter. All the way to Russia my fellow-passengers were opening their boxes and going over their belongings. It was spring and …’
Mrs Pettigrew winked at Alec Warner. Charmian stopped and smiled at him. ‘Have you seen Jean Taylor lately?’ she said.
‘Not for a week or two. I have been away to Folkestone on my research work. I shall go to see her next week.’
‘Lettie goes regularly. She says Jean is very happy and fortunate.’
‘Lettie is —’ He was going to say she was a selfish fool, then remembered Mrs Pettigrew’s presence. ‘Well, you know what I think of Lettie’s opinions,’ he said and waved away the topic with his hand.
And as if the topic had landed on Charmian’s lap, she stared at her lap and continued, ‘If only you had discovered Lettie’s character a little sooner. If only …’
He rose to leave, for he knew how Charmian’s memory was inclined to wake up in the past, in some arbitrary year. She would likely fix on those events, that year 1907, and bring them close up to her, as one might bring a book close to one’s eyes. The time of his love-affair with Jean Taylor when she was a parlour-maid at the Pipers’ before Charmian’s marriage, would be like last week to Charmian. And her novelist’s mind by sheer habit still gave to those disjointed happenings a shape which he could not accept, and in a way which he thought dishonest. He had been in love with Jean Taylor, he had decided after all to take everyone’s advice. He had therefore engaged himself to Lettie. He had broken the engagement when he came to know Lettie better. These were the facts in 1907. By 1912 he had been able to contemplate them without emotion. But dear Charmian made the most of them. She saw the facts as a dramatic sequence reaching its fingers into all his life’s work. This interested him so far as it reflected Charmian, though not at all so far as it affected himself. He would, nevertheless, have liked to linger in his chair on that afternoon, in his seventy-ninth year, and listen to Charmian recalling her youth. But he was embarrassed by Mrs Pettigrew’s presence. Her intrusion had irritated him, and he could not, like Charmian, talk on as if she were not present. He looked at Mrs Pettigrew as she helped him on with his coat in the hall, and thought, ‘An irritating woman.’ Then he thought, ‘A fine-looking woman,’ and this was associated with her career at Lisa’s as he had glimpsed it at intervals over twenty-six years. He thought about Mabel Pettigrew all the way home across two parks, though he had meant to think about Charmian on that walk. And he reflected upon himself, amazed, since he was nearly eighty and Mrs Pettigrew a good, he supposed, sixty-five. ‘Oh,’ he said to himself, ‘these erotic throes that come like thieves in the night to steal my High Churchmanship!’ Only, he was not a High Churchman — it was no more than a manner of speaking to himself.
He returned to his rooms — which, since they were officially described as ‘gentlemen’s chambers’, he always denied were a flat —off St James’s Street. He hung his coat, put away his hat and gloves, then stood at the large bow window gazing out as at an imposing prospect, though in reality the window looked down only on the side entrance to a club. He noted the comings and goings of the club porter. The porter of his own chambers came up the narrow street intently reading the back page of an evening paper. With his inward eye, Dr Warner, the old sociologist, at the same time contemplated Old Age which had been his study since he had turned seventy. Nearly ten years of inquisitive work had gone into the card indexes and files encased in two oak cabinets, one on either
