The room into which Walter and Sally led the way was so lovely that Albert, who had half expected the usual green horror with sham eighteenth-century flower pictures, was thrown into a state of almost exaggerated rapture. For a London drawing-room it was a particularly good shape, with large windows and cheerful outlook. The walls were covered with silver tissue a little tarnished; the curtains and chair covers were of white satin, which the grime of London was rapidly turning a lovely pearl colour; the floor and ceiling were painted a dull pink. Two huge vases of white wax flowers stood one each side of the fireplace; over the mantelpiece hung a Victorian mirror, framed in large white shells and red plush. Albert, as he walked about this exquisite room, praising and admiring, felt blissfully happy; the depression which had been gathering force ever since he left his studio that morning now left him for good.
He had always experienced in Walter’s company a feeling of absolute ease and lack of strain. He now found, rather to his surprise, that the presence of Sally did nothing to impair their relationship; she gave him no sensation either of intruding or of being intruded upon. Walter and Sally together seemed almost like one person, and Albert realized at once how wrong he had been to oppose their union.
‘How I should like,’ he said, looking at her lovely face, ‘to paint a portrait of Sally.’
‘Well, why not? She’d love to sit for you, I know, and we’ve got a room with a perfectly good north light at the back of the house. Albert, do.’
‘My dear, impossible. I can’t work in London, you know. People think it an affectation, but I assure you that it is no such thing. I might even go so far as to say that I’m incapable of working in this country at all; a question, I suppose, of nerves.’
‘How like Walter,’ said Sally laughing. ‘Poor angel, he’s quite incapable of working in London, too. He gave up his last job after exactly three days.’
‘Shut up, darling. You know quite well who it was that begged and implored me to leave, now don’t you? Sally’s father,’ explained Walter, ‘got me a job in a bank. I can’t tell you what I suffered for three whole days. It was like a P. G. Wodehouse novel, only not funny at all, or perhaps I’ve no sense of humour. To begin with, I had to get up at eight every morning. One had much better be dead, you know. Then, my dear, the expense! I can’t tell you what it cost me in taxis alone, not to mention the suit I had to buy – a most lugubrious black affair. There was no time to get back here for luncheon, and I couldn’t go all day without seeing Sally, so we went to a restaurant which was recommended to us called “Simkins”, too putting off. Sally was given some perfectly raw meat with blood instead of gravy, and naturally she nearly fainted, and she had to have brandy before I could get her out of the place. By then we were so upset that we felt we must go to the Ritz in order to be soothed, which meant more taxis. In the end we reckoned that those three days had cost me every penny of thirty pounds, so I gave it up. I can’t afford that sort of thing, you know.’
‘Poor Father,’ said Sally, ‘he’s very much worried about Walter. He has a sort of notion in his head that every man ought to have some regular work to do, preferably soldiering. He doesn’t seem to understand about cultivating leisure at all, and he regards writing poetry as a most doubtful, if not immoral occupation.
‘And he isn’t as bad as your uncle Craigdalloch, who actually said in my hearing of some young man, “Ah, yes, he failed for the Army, and was chucked out of the City, so they sent him to the Slade.” Just think how pleased Tonks must have been to have him!’
Walter then asked Albert how long he intended to stay.
‘Can you keep me till the end of next week?’
‘My dear, don’t be so childish. Now that we have at last persuaded you to come, you must stay quite a month if you won’t be bored. I know London in August is very unfashionable, but it would cheer us up a lot to have you, and besides, think what a boon you would be to the gossip writers!’
‘Yes, indeed,’ said Sally, ‘poor old Peter seems to be at the end of his tether already. His page the last few days has been full of nothing but scraps of general knowledge which one assimilates quite unconsciously. I call it cheating … I mean, when I want to read about wild ducks sitting on their eggs at the edge of a railway line I can buy a book of natural history; but I do like gossip to be gossip, don’t you? This paragraph about the ducks was headed, “Observed by Jasper Spengal.” Well, I was quite excited; you know what a talent Jasper has for observing things he’s not meant to, and then it was only the beastly old duck after all. Well, I mean … if he’s come down to that sort of thing already, it will be the habits of earthworms by August, I should think.’
‘So you want me to stay and have my habits noted instead?’ Albert felt all his resolution slipping away. After all, it was nice to see his old friends again. It occurred to him now that he had been very lonely in Paris.
‘But you’ll be leaving London yourselves?’
‘Not until the end of August, anyhow, then we may go to the Lido for a little.’
Walter looked rather defiantly, like a naughty child, at Sally as he said this, and she pretended not to hear. She knew quite well, and had said so already more than once, that,
