«You'll be turning nasty in a minute.»
«Roger, please relax, please just talk to me quietly, let's be gentle and reasonable with each other. I'm very sorry I was so unpleasant to you both down in Bristol. I was upset for Priscilla, I still am, but I don't regard you as wicked, I know how these things happen.»
Roger grimaced at Marigold. She beamed back. «I wanted to put you in the picture,» he said. «And I want you to do something for us, if you will. First of all, here's this.» He put a large gaping carrier bag onto the floor beside my feet.
I peered down and then began to dig into it. Necklaces and things. The enamel picture. The little marble, or whatever it was, statuette. Two silver cups, other oddments. «That's good of you, Priscilla will be so pleased. What about the mink?»
«I was coming to that,» said Roger. «I'm afraid I sold the mink. I'd already sold it when I saw you last. I agreed with Priscilla it was a sort of investment. I'll let her have half the proceeds. In due course.»
«She mustn't worry,» said Marigold. She had advanced her smartly shod blue patent-leather foot up against Roger's shoe. She kept moving her arm so that her sleeve lightly and rhythmically brushed his.
«All the jewels are there,» said Roger, «and the little things from her dressing table, and Marigold has packed all the clothes and so on into three trunks. Where shall we send them?»
I wrote down the Notting Hill address.
«I didn't pack all the old cosmetics,» said Marigold, «and there were a lot of old suspender belts and things-«And could you tell Priscilla we want the divorce to get going at once? Naturally I will make her an allowance.»
«We won't be poorly off,» said Marigold, sweeping her sleeve across Roger's. «I shall go on working after the little one is born.»
«What do you do?» I asked.
«I'm a dentist.»
«Good for you!» I laughed out of sheer joie de vivre. Fancy, this charming girl a dentist!
«You've told Priscilla about us, of course?» said Roger, sedate.
«Yes, yes. All shall be well and all shall be well, as Julian remarked.»
«Julian?»
«Julian Baffin, the daughter of a friend of mine.»
«You must go, my children,» I said, rising. I could not bear any longer not being alone with my thoughts. «I will arrange everything for the best with Priscilla. It remains to wish you both every happiness.»
«I confess you've surprised me,» said Roger.
«Being beastly to you two won't help Priscilla.»
«You've been sweet,» said Marigold. I think she would have kissed me, only Roger piloted her off.
«Cheery-bye to my favourite dentist!» I shouted after them.
«He must be drunk,» I heard Roger say as I shut the door.
I went back to lying face downwards on the black woolly rug.
«Guess what I've got in this bag!» I said to Priscilla.
It was the same evening. Francis had let me in. There was no sign of Christian.
Priscilla was still occupying the upstairs «new» bedroom with the rather tattered-looking walls of synthetic bamboo. The oval bed, which had black sheets, was tousled, doubtless just vacated. Priscilla, in a rather clinical white bath-robe, was sitting on a stool in front of a low very glittering dressing table. She had been staring at herself in the mirror when I came in, and returned to doing so after greeting me without a smile. She had powdered her face rather whitely and reddened her lips. She looked grotesque, like an elderly geisha.
She did not reply. Then she suddenly reached out to a big jar of greasy cold cream and started plastering it upon her face. The red lipstick merged into the grease, tingeing it with red. Priscilla spread the pinkish mess all over her face, still gazing devouringly into her own eyes.
«Look,» I said, «look who's here!» I put the white statuette onto the glass top of the dressing table. I laid the enamel picture and the malachite box beside it. I drew out a mass of entangled necklaces.
Priscilla stared. Then without touching the stuff she reached out and took a paper tissue and began wiping the red mess off her face.
«Roger brought them for you. And look, I've brought you the buffalo lady again. I'm afraid she's a bit lame, but-«And the mink stole? Did you see him?»
«It's no good. I should never have left him. It isn't fair to him. And I think away from him I'm literally going mad. All chances of happiness are gone from me. Just being with myself is hell all the time anyway. And here in this meaningless place I'm with myself more. Even hating Roger was something, it meant something, being made unhappy by him did, after all he belongs to me. And I was used to things there, there was something to do, shopping and cooking and cleaning the house, even though he didn't come home for his supper, I'd cook it and put it ready for him and he wouldn't come home and I'd sit and cry watching the television programme. Still it was all part of something, and waiting for him at night in the dark when I went to bed, listening for his key in the door, at least there was something to wait for. I wasn't alone with my mind. I don't really care if he went with girls, secretaries in the office, I suppose they all do. I don't feel now that it matters much. I'm connected with him forever, it's for better and worse, worse in this case, but any tie is something when one's drifting away to hell. You can't look after me, obviously, why should you. Christian's been very kind, but she's just curious, she's just playing a game, she'll soon get tired of me. I know I'm awful, awful, I can't think how anyone can bear to look at me. I don't want to be looked after anyway. I can feel my mind decaying already. I feel I must smell of decay. I've been in bed all day. I didn't even make up my face until just before you came, and then it looked so terrible. I hate Roger and the last year or two I've been afraid of him. But if I don't go back to him I'll just dissolve, all my inwards will come pouring out, like people who are just going to be hanged. I can't tell you what the misery's like that I'm in.»
«Oh Priscilla, do stop. Here, look, pretty things. You're pleased to see them again, so there's something that gives you pleasure.» I plucked up a long necklace with blue and glassy alternate beads out of the pile and shook it free and opened it out into a big O to put round her neck, but she gestured it violently away.
«Did he send the mink?»
«Well-«
«He wants to get married-« Her mouth had become flabby and her speech blurred.
«Yes, Priscilla-«
«He's had this girl for a long time-«Yes.»
«She's pregnant-«Yes.»
«So he wants a divorce-«Yes. Dear Priscilla, you've understood it all and you must face it all-«
«Death,» she murmurred, «death, death, death-«Don't give way, my dear-«Death.»
«You'll soon feel better. You're well rid of that heel. Honestly. We'll make a new world for you, we'll spoil you, we'll all help, you'll see. You said yourself you'd go to the cinema more. Roger will give you an allowance, and Marigold is a dentist-«And perhaps I could pass my time knitting little things for the baby!»
«That's better, show a bit of spirit!»
«Bradley, if you knew how much I hated even you, you'd know how far beyond any human hope I am now. As for Roger-I'd like to stick-a red-hot knitting needle-into his liver-«Priscilla!»
«I read about it in a detective story. You die slowly and in terrible agony.»
She had turned on her side and was sobbing quietly, rather breathlessly, her mouth shuddering, her eyes awash with tears. I had never seen anyone so inaccessibly miserable. I felt an urge to put her to sleep, not for good of course, but if only one could have given her a shot of something just to stop this awful weeping, to give some intermission to the tormented consciousness.
The door opened and Christian came in. Gazing at Priscilla she greeted me inattentively with a sort of «holding» gesture which, it occurred to me, was the height of intimacy. «What is it now?» she said to Priscilla sternly.
«I've just told her about Roger and Marigold,» I said.
«Oh God, did you have to?»
Priscilla suddenly started to scream quietly. «Scream quietly» may sound like an oxymoron, but I mean to indicate the curiously controlled rhythmic screaming which goes with a certain kind of hysterics. Hysterics is terrifying because of its willed and yet not willed quality. It has the frightfulness of a deliberate assault on the
