The Complete Short Stories. Muriel Spark
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1st week October,” he wrote on the card.
Term started at the beginning of October. That week Martin’s wife turned up and demanded of Pooh-bah Daphne’s whereabouts. She was directed to the school, and on confronting Daphne there, made a scene.
Later, the headmistress was highly offensive to Daphne, who straight-way resigned. The headmistress relented, for she was short of staff. “I am only thinking of the girls,” she explained. Hugh, the visiting art master, suggested to Daphne that she might find a better job in London. She left that night. Pooh-bah was furious. “Who’s going to attend to things on Mrs Vesey’s day off?” Daphne realized why he had not wished her to go to Paris.
“You could marry her,” Daphne suggested. “Then she’d be on duty all the time.”
He did this in fact, within a month. Daphne settled in a room in Bayswater, poorly furnished for the price; but on the other hand the landlady was willing to take the poodle.
Martin Grindy traced her to that place.
“I don’t like your wife,” she said.
“I’m afraid she got hold of your letter. What can I give you? What can I do for you? What can I possibly say?”
* * *
Besides teaching art to schoolchildren, Hugh Fuller painted. He took Daphne to his studio in Earl’s Court, where she sat and reflectively pulled the stuffing even further out of the torn upholstery of the armchair.
Quite decidedly, she said, she would not come and live with him, but she hoped they would always be friends.
He thought he had made a mistake in putting the proposition to her before making love, so he made moves to repair his error.
Daphne screamed. He looked surprised.
“You see,” she explained, “I’ve got nerves, frightfully, at the moment.”
He took her frequently to Soho, and sometimes to parties where, for the first time, she entered a world in the existence of which she had previously disbelieved. Here the poets did have long hair, and painters wore beards, and what was more, two of the men wore bracelets and earrings. One group of four girls lived all together in two rooms with a huge old negress. Among Hugh’s acquaintance were those who looked upon him with scorn for his art teaching, those who considered this activity harmless in view of his lack of talent, and those who admired him for his industry as much as his generosity.
Daphne found this company very relaxing to her nerves.
No one asked her the usual questions about Africa, and what was more surprising, no one made advances to her, not even Hugh. Daphne was teaching at a Council school. On half-holidays in spring she would sometimes meet Hugh and his friends, and regardless of the staring streets, would straggle with them along the pavements, leap on and off buses, to the current art show. There, it was clear to Daphne that Hugh’s friends occupied a world which she could never penetrate. But she came to be more knowing about pictures. It may have been the art master in Hugh, as one of his friends suggested, but he loved to inform Daphne as to form, line, light, masses, pigments.
Her cousin Mole looked her up one day. He told her that Michael, the silly son of that Greta Casse at Regent’s Park, had married a woman ten years his senior, and was emigrating to the Colony. Daphne was affected with an attack of longing for the Colony, more dire than any of those bouts of homesickness which she had yet experienced.
“I shall have to go back there soon,” she said to Mole. “I’ve saved enough for the fare. It’s a good thought to know I can go any time I please.”
One night Daphne and Hugh were drinking in a pub in Soho with his friends, when suddenly there fell a hush. Daphne looked round to see why everyone’s eyes were on a slight very dark man in his early forties, who had just entered the bar. After a moment, everyone started talking again, some giggled, and continued to glance at the man who had come in.
“That’s Ralph Mercer,” one of Hugh’s friends whispered to Daphne.
“Who?”
“Ralph Mercer, the novelist. He was at school with Hugh, I believe. Rather a popular writer.”
“Oh, I see,” said Daphne, “he looks as if he might be popular.”
Hugh was collecting drinks at the bar. The novelist saw him, and they spoke together for a while. Presently Hugh brought him to be introduced. The novelist sat next to Daphne. “You remind me of someone I used to know from Africa,” he said.
“I come from Africa,” said Daphne.
Hugh asked him, “Often come here?”
“No, it was just, you know, I was passing …”
One of the girls chuckled, a deep masculine sound. “A whim,” she said.
When he had gone Hugh said, “He’s rather sweet, isn’t he, considering how famous …”
“Did you hear him,” said an oldish man, “when he said, ‘Speaking as an artist …’ Rather funny, that, I thought.”
“Well, he is an artist in the sense,” said Hugh, “that –” But his words were obliterated by the others’ derision.
A few days later Hugh said to Daphne, “I’ve heard from Ralph Mercer.”
“Who?”
“That novelist we met in the pub. He writes to know if I’ll give him your address.”
“Why’s that, do you think?”
“He likes you, I suppose.”
“Is he married?”
“No. He lives with his mother. Actually I’ve sent him your address. Do you mind?”
“Yes, I do. I’m not a name and address to be passed round. I’m afraid I don’t wish to see you again.”
“You know,” said Hugh, “I’m glad it never came to an affair between us. You see, Daphne, I’m not entirely a woman’s man.”
“I don’t know what to say,” she said.
“I hope you will like Ralph Mercer. He’s very well-off. Very interesting, too.”
“I shall refuse to see him,” said Daphne.
* * *
Her association with Ralph Mercer lasted two years. Her infatuation was as gluttonous as her status as his mistress was high among the few writers and numerous film people who kept him company. She had a grey-carpeted flat in Hampstead, with the best and latest Swedish furniture. Ralph’s male friends wooed her, telephoned all day, came with flowers and theatre tickets.
For the first three months Ralph was with her constantly. She told him of her childhood, of Chakata, the farm, the dorp, Donald Cloete, the affair of Old Tuys. He demanded more and more. “I need to know your entire background, every detail. Love is an expedition of discovery into unexplored territory.” To Daphne this approach had such force of originality that it sharpened her memory. She remembered incidents which had been latent for fifteen years or more. She sensed the sort of thing that delighted him; the feud, for instance, between Old Tuys and Chakata; revenge and honour. One day after receiving a letter from Chakata she was able to tell him the last sentence of Donald Cloete’s story: he had died of drink. She offered him this humble contribution with pride, for it showed that she, too, though no novelist, possessed a sense of character and destiny. “Always,” she said, “I would ask him was he drunk or sober, and he always told the truth.” Later in the day, when the thought of Donald’s death came suddenly to her mind, she cried for a space.
News came that Mrs Chakata had followed Donald to the grave, and for the same cause. Daphne laid this information on the altar. The novelist was less impressed than on the former occasion. “Old Tuys has been done out