“I say I can’t go on forever eating your soup.”
“Drink it then for a change my child.”
“No but really.”
“This is special soup; there is a charge; one guinea a basin.”
“Use of room two guineas.”
“Intellectual conversation—”
“One and eleven three.”
Miriam flung out delighted admiring glances and laughed unrestrainedly. Mag’s look saying “it does not take much to keep the child amused” took nothing from her mirthful joy. Their wit, or was it humour?—always brought the same happy shock … they were so funny; there was a secret in it.
“It’s awfully good soup.”
“Desiccated—”
“A penny a packet.”
“Thickened with pea flour.”
“Twopence a packet.”
“Was she your favourite schoolfellow?”
Miriam’s jarred mind worked eagerly. The girls thought this was a revival of some great school friendship … they would not be in the least jealous; they were curious and interested, but they must understand … they must realise that Alma was wonderful … something to be proud of … in the strange difficult scientific way; something they knew hardly anything about. Mag almost not at all and Jan only in a general way in her neat wide education; but not in Alma’s way of being rigid and reverent and personally interested about, so that every other way of looking at things made her angry. But they must understand, they must in some quite certain way be quickly made to understand at the same time that she was outside … an extra … a curious bright distant resource, nothing whatever to do with the wonderful present … the London life was sacred and secret, away from everything else in the world. It would disappear if one had ties outside … anything besides the things of holidays and weekends that they all three had and brought back from outside to talk about. It would be easy and exciting to meet Alma if that were clear, and to come back and tell the girls about it.
“I don’t think so.”
They both looked up, stirring in their quick way, and waited.
Miriam moved her head uneasily. It was painful. They were using a sort of language … that was the trouble … your favourite flower … your favourite colour … it was just the sort of pain that came in trying to fill up confession albums. This bit of conversation would be at an end presently. Her anger would shut it up, and they would put it away without understanding and Mag would go on to something else.
“No—I don’t think she was. She was very small and pretty—petite. She had the most wonderful limpid eyes.”
Mag was sitting forward with her elbows on her knees and her little hands sticking out into the air. A comfortable tinkling chuckle shook her shoulders. Miriam tugged and wrenched.
“I don’t think she cared for me, really … she was an only child.”
Mag’s chuckle pealed up into a little festoon of clear laughter.
“She doesn’t care for you because—she’s—an—only—child,” she shook out.
“One of the sheltered ones.” Jan returned to her chiffon pleats. She was making conversation. She did not care how much or how little Alma mattered.
“She’s sheltered now anyhow—she’s married.”
“Oh—she’s married. …”
“She’s married is she?”
Polite tones … they were not a bit surprised … both faces looked calm and abstracted. The room was dark and clear in the cold entanglement. It must be got over now, as if she had not mentioned Alma. She felt for her packet of cigarettes with an uneasy face, watching Mag’s firm movements as she rearranged herself and her dressing gown in her chair.
“How old is she?”
“About my age.”
“Oh—about nine; that’s early to begin the sheltered life.”
“You can’t begin the sheltered life too early; if you are going to begin it at all.”
“Why begin it at all, Jan?”
“Well my dear little Miriam I think there is a good deal to be said for the sheltered life.”
“Yes—” Mag settled more deeply into her chair, burrowing with her shoulders and crossing her knees with a fling—“and if you don’t begin it jolly early it’s too late to begin it at all. …”
Then Mag meant to stay always as she was … oh, good, good … with several people interested in her … what a curious worry her engagement must be … irrelevant … and with her ideas of loyalty. “Don’t you think soh?” Irritating—why did she do it—what was it—not a provincialism—some kind of affectation as if she were on the stage. It sounded brisk and important—soh—as if her thoughts had gone on and she was making conversation with her lips. Why not let them and drop it … there was something waiting, always something waiting just outside the nag of conversation.
“I can’t imagine anything more awful than what you call the sheltered life,” said Miriam with a little pain in her forehead. Perhaps they would laugh and that would finish it and something would begin.
“For us yes. Imagine either of us coming down to it in the morning; the regular breakfast table, the steaming coffee, the dashes of rishers … dishers of rashes I mean, the eggs. …”
“You are alluding I presume to the beggs and acon.”
“Precisely. We should die.”
“Of boredom.”
“Imagine not being able to turn up on Sunday morning in your knickers with your hair down.”
“I love Sundays. That first cigarette over the Referee.”
“Is like nothing on earth.”
“Or in heaven.”
“Well, or in heaven.”
“The first cigarette anyhow, with or without the Referee. It’s just pure absolute
