Gallions Reach · Chapter 4 (1/2)

IV

No diner at the Gridiron should flatter another diner by noticing his capriciousness. That would betray his surprise, which he ought not to feel. If he were not singular, he would not be there. For that restaurant is not only in Soho, but it is hard to discover unless one who knows it is clever enough to think you are equal to it, and so conducts you to its primrose door between a dubious tobacconist’s shop and a large window of many small panes that are screened by dark-white curtains. No outside symbol betrays the Gridiron. Its frequenters are so pleased with the secret of its choice attractions that they take their friends to it. It is sufficient that it should be known to those who deserve it. If you should enter that restaurant with the bare guess that it is a place for refreshment, and because you have noticed that one place where food is sold is much like the others in any neighbourhood, you will be stopped in a narrow passage by a sinister waiter, who will slyly question you. Should you answer him in any way you will be admitted; should you not answer him at all you will be allowed in.

Even though your nature is so mild that it would permit without impatience a casual policeman to scatter the contents of your bureau as rudely as would a burglar, that is nothing. It is sure to be the sport of gay caprice at the Gridiron. For it is but just to allow the deserving some protest against conformity after they have suffered it virtuously all day; and caprice for an evening in a secluded chamber which we trust is Bohemian is all the revolt most of us can manage against the spell cast over us by custom and habit. The Gridiron is the only place in London where you may get Italian dishes you do not want.

So the proud voice of the great musician Suvretta, as he conversed there with a lady noticeable because of the distance between her burst of orange-coloured hair and the upper margin of her green frock, drew no attention. Everybody behaved as though the musician had the place and the lady to himself. Yet Suvretta knew that the best of his harsh drollery would appear presently, neatly glossed by a journalist who then was missing nothing of it, in one of those illustrated papers which give us the soothing illusion that we are not far from where the important people move in the brightness of their wit with better manners amid their improvements on life.

Helen Denny, at the other end of the saloon, while watching the door, could not help a glance idling occasionally towards the musician. She knew the vulgarity that face betrayed, but it was a masculine face. That arrogant mouth would never soften in surrender to a gentle appeal, except in condescension. And condescension is savoury, especially to those who themselves compel others with a show of pride and indifference. His sullen eyes were arbitrary and poaching. He knew she had been looking at him. The lines of his broad face were as definite as those of a mastiff’s. He was a savage, but savages had their way. Jimmy had not come. It was getting late. Would the duffer remember where they would be that night? Jimmy was a strange fellow. It was not easy to see whether he was as simple as a child, or was as experienced as sin, and so was not particularly interested. No, not experienced; that was unfair. She liked his quiet informality. That looked very like wisdom. You could be sure of Jimmy. But his restraint was tantalising. Restraint was a puzzling attribute of informality.

She turned, in a petulant dismissal of Jimmy, to her companions. She was wasting her evening. It did not matter where he was. He reserved too much. He would never be touched by life. Probably he was still dutiful at the office, making quite sure the things that worried him went their proper roads. You could never tell what was in his mind. He only looked as if he knew. His usual answer to any bright word of a friend was a happy chuckle. He might say something about it to her, hours later. But if his comment was surprising then, it was too late, and was wasted. Jim was either careless of the opinions of others, or else he was unaware that people were curious and critical. It was not easy to see which it was in a man whose eyes were often fixed elsewhere and distantly when his friends were drawn together by something which had aroused them, and who, if he spoke at all then, did so as one who was good-humoured but had something else to think about. If he had anything better, what was it? She wished she knew.

Doris Oliver was looking at Helen with her black eyebrows arched over her childish face in an expression of querulous languor. Her elbows were on the table, and her pale hands drooped towards each other like two lilies which had been communing on their stalks, but had fallen asleep. Doris was a wily elf, Helen thought. Helen wondered whether a girl ought to wear her hair like that. It was as smooth as an Indian carving in ebony, and so coaxed down to her thin cheeks that it left only a white triangle of forehead, and was coiled into neat bosses over her ears. Could there be a prim wanton? Doris looked like it, fastidious but hungry. A pallid little Quakeress with florid lips.

“I saw Jimmy this afternoon.”

“Yes? What had he to say? Haven’t seen him for a week.”

“Oh, he didn’t see me. Jimmy never sees anyone.” Doris picked at her necklace of limpid crystals and swayed it with a tired hand. “I’d been to hear the ‘Twelfth Mass’ at Saffron Hill. He was in Ludgate Circus, looking as if he’d just come away from an interview with his Maker, and was dissatisfied. Then a bus intervened. He vanished. Translated in a fiery motor, perhaps. All gone.”

A plump young man sitting next to Doris, whose happy grin, which never left him, suggested that he was cherishing a ridiculous world because it was so amusing, leaned forward eagerly, as though he were going to add a jocund comment, but he saw that Helen’s attention had wandered. He checked himself, with his mouth a little open. His good teeth, and his fair hair which stood upright as if in constant astonishment, made it right for him to smile with his mouth a little open in cheerful interest. He thought, as he appreciated Helen, that Jim Colet must be a cool customer. Helen distinguished their table. She was the picture of the place. That is, if you liked ’em heroic. Too classical for him. She might be warm, but not cosy. A little haughty, except with those she acknowledged. He did not think she had accepted him. It was hard to learn that from a woman whose profile was like⁠—it would have been like Brynhild’s, only she was too quick for a Teutonic goddess. She was wasted on a chap whose game was bales and casks and all that. Such a fellow could do nothing with a bosom which was meant for privileged joy. Beside her, Doris was a peevish child. All the same it would not be pleasant to annoy Helen. Those little lines were not at the corners of her mouth for nothing. Things had fallen a bit flat this evening. He must talk.

“I say, Doris,” he said, “I’ve been reading that book of new poems you lent me. Many thanks. But what’s it about?”

Doris was swaying her beads. “I wondered whether you’d ask that when I lent it, but I might have known you would. You ought to get some change from biology.”

His grin broadened. “All I can say is, my dear, give me the old songs, though I can’t sing them, if they’re the new. What does poetry want with footnotes about psychoanalysis and negro mythology?”

“Suppose,” someone asked him, “that you don’t know anything about them?”

“Well, I couldn’t get them out of footnotes and the poetry all in one stride, could I? But Doris, they were very clever and insulting poems, I think. Sing a song of mockery. Is that the latest? But it was a surprising little book, though it smelt like the dissection of bad innards.”

There was a quiet chuckle above him.

“Hullo, Jim. We’ve been waiting for you. Come on. Only as far as the soup, and no hope of progress much before midnight.”

“This place is only known to the elect,” said Doris.

“And so the waiters have no time,” continued the lighthearted young man. “Sit down and let Suvretta refresh you. Look at the Princess Olga. And there’s a table full of Russian dancers over there. Hors d’oeuvres all over the room.”

Jimmy blinked obediently towards the princess, but saw no distinguishing back in that direction. The Russian dancers, entertained by a newspaper proprietor, were very engaging. The long room, with its vistas deepening into a sort of maroon haze, was warm and chromatic, and sparkling with eager noises at the level of the table lights. Everybody seemed to be enjoying it. He looked at Helen with some concern, but she was talking calmly to Doris. The biologist was relating a story happily to a girl Colet did not know. Plenty of cheerful common sense about that scientist. A healthy boy. A waiter came, performed some legerdemain at the table swiftly but noiselessly, bent over him in confidential and unexpected solicitation, and left him. He could hear only fragments of the conversation.

“Got no time for him. When I open that man’s books, only a little lymph comes out,” said the biologist.

Helen was gazing absently into her wine, rotating her glass reflectively on the table, as if admiring the gleams of its ruby light. It sent a flush upwards to drift about her throat.

“What would you expect, Walcott? blood, these days?”

“Don’t be silly. But I’d like to know why you literary critics are so keen over those morbid symptoms. Why not cut up dogfish with me?”

The critic looked sadly but tolerantly at the biologist, and smiled. Walcott was so young that he was lively. The kindly critic did not appear to think it was necessary to answer. He guarded the secret of literature with a pleasant but superior smile.

“Well, give me something I can enjoy. I’ve always thought literature was above my laboratory, but from the modern books Doris presses on me for my good I’ve been thinking it must be the same thing as the dissecting slab, only more smelly.”

“If you are able to find books you can enjoy, why not enjoy them? There’s something for all of us,” the critic murmured.

“I know. But consider the young learner. Isn’t the best meant for enjoyment, these days?”

“Obviously it depends on what you can enjoy.” The critic’s gentle but deprecating smile showed that he was not to be idly provoked. “Why not keep, for a time, to Lamb and Dickens and⁠—and the approved entertainments?”

Jimmy turned quickly to the speaker. The man seemed to mean it. Perhaps he would regard death with a gentle sneer. He did not appear to be expecting applause for an original remark.

The amusement of the biologist, however, was now a little embarrassed, as though he had become conspicuous with a childish enthusiasm. His forehead was pink. Doris watched him with a trace of affected weariness in her eyes.

“I should like to know what you think is important in literature⁠—if, of course, I may be told.”

“Important?” The critic was slow and deliberate. “I never said that literature has anything of importance to say. If you were to ask me, I should say that I don’t think it has. Its importance, if we were honest enough to admit it, is but in its manner, which is a matter of taste. One need not insist on one’s own taste.”

The critic was patient, and spoke as if this belief, like all else, afforded him no pleasure. If the truth was insisted, on, well, there it was.

“Sorry. I’ll give thanks for my dogfish then. I found a new parasite in the liver of one yesterday. Might be the same as the truth in literature.”

“You stick to your protozoa, my lad,” said Doris.

“Yes, I must. It seems as if anything more than unicellular is probably fake.”

“No, not fake,” wisdom assured him. “There again you are imputing idealism where it cannot be found. Why name it?”

Colet moved as if to ask the critic a question, but relaxed again. He refrained. The conversation continued, facile and inconsequential as an air-balloon to the touches of children. Were these people serious? Very likely such evenings were only the desperation of empty existences. But he looked again at the critic to confirm a sense of loss. He felt as if something of value had been withdrawn, by an authority who was able to declare, if pressed, that literature has nothing of more importance to say than a dado. Choose your dado to taste. Yet he had always read that critic’s contributions to the more serious reviews with respect, if bewilderment.

Walcott, who had evoked this disillusion, saw Colet’s interest. The critic was now, in ironic humour, elaborating his views to Helen and Doris, tapping the edge of the table with a forefinger. The young ladies were as attentive as though he were a priest.

“Look at his tiepin,” whispered the biologist.

Colet looked. It was an opal, but it was an opaque blue. There was no light in it.

“Even his opal looks like the eye of a dead fish. Now he’s giving the girls the outlook of Bloomsbury.”

“Don’t know it. What’s that like?”

“The prospect of a dead fish. Nothing really matters. That’s all. But you ought to show good taste, though, and that is fairly easy if you consider other people’s preferences are very funny.”

A girl danced languidly down the room between the tables as if she were expected to do it and were getting it over. She avoided the eyes of the diners, but only a few of the men looked at her as she approached, and the elder women glanced after her critically when she had passed their table. Colet watched her go by, and felt still more humiliated. Helen saw his detachment, and his dislike as the dancer swam past. The critic had not amused her. Things, she understood, were certainly good if you thought they were, and if you thought they were poor they could be entertaining, sometimes. She was glad Jimmy was different. He was not an intellectual. You could hold on to him⁠—more like a coarse man. She had mocked his beard, but after all it was the only one in the room. Just under the reddish cheekbones it was golden, but it was grizzled already by the sides of the mouth, and under the lower lip. She had not noticed this before. When he turned his head to young Walcott⁠—they seemed very friendly this evening⁠—a muscle stretched like a strong cable from his ear to his throat. He looked solid, and as if he would last. There he was. The evening could be a success after all.

But when Colet chanced to see her face Helen had turned it, in the idleness of contentment, to the Russians. She was an admirer of that critic, he thought. Used to recommend his stuff to him. She was part of this place. He was an outsider. Better be off. Most of these people were a little queer, like the pictures painted on the walls. Over their table was a puzzle of heterogeneous yellow and crimson geometry, in which he could make out a one-eyed woman who would have been nude but for the chance intervention of a greenish rhomb. There were no vitals to the room. It was heartless. Night was outside, and you could wander there alone, and would not have to listen to anything clever. He rose, and squeezed the shoulder of the biologist. “I’ll be off. I’ll leave you to it.”

Outside, the look of the stars above the parapets of the houses opposite, and even the smell, on a still night, of London’s pavements that had been heated all day by the sun, were better. Nothing ingenious about that, even if it had no meaning. No false contact. He stood by the kerb, free again, deciding which way he should turn.

“I’m coming too, Jimmy, I could see you were bored. So was I. Come along.” Helen laid her hand on his arm.

“You were?” He hesitated.

“Of course. Did you think you were going to escape like this?” She laughed quietly, in confidence. She could rely on Jimmy.