people and making them feel cheap. If
“You sound quite passionate!” said Dora. “Pass me the towel.”
“Yes, I am a bit worked up,” said Noel. “Don’t get cold, sweetie. I’ll make you another drink and put on my new long-player. It’s just that I hate to think of those people making you feel a miserable sinner when in fact it’s not all that much your fault at all. And the idea of old Paul playing the aggrieved and virtuous spouse makes me want to vomit. I wonder has that place got any news value. Potty communities are good for a feature. Shall I come and give it the once over?”
“Oh dear no!” said Dora, shocked. “You certainly mustn’t! They’re getting a new bell soon, the Abbey, that is, a big bell to hang in the tower, and I think there’ll be a statement to the press about that. But otherwise nothing happens at all and they’d be awfully upset if anyone came to write them up. They really
“Well, if you say so,” said Noel. “Listen to this, angel.”
As Dora slipped into her clothes she heard the steady expectant beat of a drum. Then into the deep rhythmic sound were woven the unpremeditated and protesting cries of a clarinet and a trumpet. The beat, more insistent than ever, was hidden in the increasingly complex golden nostalgic din. The music flowered, rampageous, irresistible. Dora issued eagerly from the bathroom and joined Noel who was already pacing panther-like about the room. They began to dance, very slowly at first, solemn, holding each others’ eyes. Slight movements of head and hand and hip expressed their communion with the rhythm. Then their feet began to move faster, weaving a complicated pattern upon the carpet as Noel, moving to the beat, expelled the chairs and tables from the middle of the room. Then he reached out his hand to Dora, swung her towards him, tossed her away again, turned her and twirled her until she was a kaleidoscope of rippling skirts and flashing thighs and golden brown hair tumbled across the face.
When the record ended they fell exhausted to the floor, laughing with triumph after the ritual solemnity of the dance. Then when their laughter ended they regarded each other, sitting entwined upon the floor, still hand in hand. “Fight!” said Noel. “Don’t forget, fight! And now, dearest creature, I must leave you to go and get the only thing which is missing,,which is a bottle of wine. I won’t be a moment. You know, the off-licence is just round the corner. Let me fill your glass again. You can amuse yourself meanwhile getting the things out of the fridge.”
He kissed Dora and went away down the stairs singing. When he had gone she sat for a while on the floor, sipping her replenished drink and enjoying the sense of sheer present physical being which the dance had given her. Then she got up and went to the kitchen and opened the fridge. A delicious meal seemed to be pending. She took out several kinds of salami, stuffed olives, pate, tomatoes, pickled cucumber, various cheeses, a hand of bananas, and a large thin piece of red steak. Dora, who liked her meals to tail away in a series of small treats, looked at the scene with satisfaction. She put the things on the table, and assembled round them the garlic, pepper, oil, vinegar, French mustard, sea salt, and all the apparatus she knew Noel liked to cook with. At his simple and appetizing repasts he was always the chef and Dora his admiring assistant. She felt extremely gay.
The telephone began ringing in the living-room. Absently Dora went back and lifted the receiver. Her mouth full of a handful of cocktail biscuits, she was not able to enunciate at once, and the caller at the other end had the first word. Paul’s voice said: “Hello, is that Brompton 8379?”
Dora froze. She swallowed the biscuits and held the phone away from her, staring at it as if it were a small savage animal. A silence followed.
Then Paul said, “Hello, could I speak to Mr Spens?”Dora could just hear him speaking. Cautiously she brought the phone back to her ear. “This is Paul Greenfield. Is my wife there?”
Dora knew that voice of Paul’s, stiff, trembling with nervous anger. She hardly dared to breath in case it should be audible. It seemed that Paul must know that she was there at the other end of the line. She couldn’t bring herself to put the phone down. If she kept quiet perhaps Paul would think the number was unobtainable.
Then Paul said “Dora.”
As Dora heard her name her eyes closed, and her face wrinkled up in pain. But she kept icily still, scarcely breathing.
“Dora,” said Paul again, “Dora, is that you?”
Suddenly in the silence that followed another sound could be heard along the wire. For a moment Dora could not think what it was. Then she recognized it as a blackbird singing. The bird uttered a few notes and then was quiet. The telephone box at Imber was downstairs in the hallway by the refectory. The blackbird must be just outside on the terrace. It sang again, its song sounding clear and intolerably remote and strange in the silence after Paul’s voice. Dora put the phone down noisily on the table. She went into the kitchen. She looked with a sort of amazement at the collection of food, at the half-open door of the fridge, at her own half-finished drink. She went back and replaced the receiver.
She returned to the kitchen. The piece of steak, uncurling from its frozen state, lay raw and oozing, its wrapping paper, stained red, adhering to it. The garlic, the olives, the oil, suddenly looked to Dora like part of some dreary apparatus of seduction. Here too, she felt, she was being organized. The sense of unreality returned; after all, there were no meetings and no actions. She stood for a while miserable and irresolute. She no longer wanted to stay and have lunch with Noel. She wanted to get away from the telephone. She picked up her coat and her bag, scribbled a note to Noel, and began to trail down the stairs. She knew Noel wouldn’t mind. That was a wonderful thing about Noel, and made him so unlike Paul; he never bothered about little things such as one’s coming to lunch with him and then suddenly deciding to go away.
Dora reached the corner of the road and hailed a taxi. As the taxi was turning round to join her at the kerb she saw Noel running towards her with the bottle in his hand. He reached her just as the taxi drew up.
“What’s got you now?” said Noel.
“Paul rang up,” said Dora.
“My God!” said Noel. “What did you say to him?”
“I said nothing,” said Dora. “I put down the receiver.”
“Is he on his way here?”
“No, he rang from the country. I heard a bird singing. And I didn’t reply so he can’t know.”
“Well, what about our lunch?” said Noel.
“I don’t feel like it any more,” said Dora. “Please forgive me.”
“I thought you were a fighter,” said Noel.
“I can’t fight,” said Dora. “I never could tell the difference between right and wrong anyway. But it doesn’t matter. Sorry to rush away. I enjoyed our dance.”
“Me too,” said Noel. “All right, off you go. But don’t forget, what these people believe isn’t true.”
“O.K.,” said Dora. She turned to the taximan and said the first thing that came into her head, “National Gallery.”
Noel called after the taxi, “Don’t forget! No God!”
Dora hadn’t especially intended to visit the National Gallery, but once she was there she went in. It was as good a place as any other to decide what to do. She no longer wanted any lunch. She wondered if she should try telephoning Sally again; but she no longer wanted to see Sally. She climbed the stairs and wandered away into the eternal spring-time of the air-conditioned rooms.
Dora had been in the National Gallery a thousand times and the pictures were almost as familiar to her as her own face. Passing between them now, as through a well-loved grove, she felt a calm descending on her. She wandered a little, watching with compassion the poor visitors armed with guide books who were peering anxiously at the masterpieces. Dora did not need to peer. She could look, as one can at last when one knows a great thing very well, confronting it with a dignity which it has itself conferred. She felt that the pictures belonged to her, and reflected ruefully that they were about the only thing that did. Vaguely, consoled by the presence of something welcoming and responding in the place, her footsteps took her to various shrines at which she had worshipped so often before: the great light spaces of Italian pictures, more vast and southern than any real South, the angels of Botticelli, radiant as birds, delighted as gods, and curling like the tendrils of a vine, the glorious carnal presence of
