Here Be Dragons Read online

  Nell naturally did not share the native Londoner’s resentment of a thick fog in March, four months out of season, and found it pleasantly exciting. Having an excellent sense of direction she turned to the left without hesitating, and walked quickly on under the big wet bushes and leafless lime-trees hung with silent glittering drops, and was so busy resenting Aunt Peggy’s interference while telling herself she ought to be grateful, that she did not begin to hear, until she had come almost to the end of the row of smart brick houses with their blue shutters, the leisured, curiously individual, tread of feet keeping pace, on the hidden other side of the road, with her own. They sounded full of meaning, somehow, in the quiet.

  She glanced across into the yellow dimness. Could she see someone there? a tall black someone? She thought that she could just make out a white face. And then, as she looked, it was no longer there. Had the footsteps stopped? It didn’t matter now if they hadn’t; she had reached the main road, and cars were crawling cautiously along, hooting and sending their glaring headlights into the writhing yellow mist, within a few feet of her. No-one would knock her on the head now, though a car might knock her down. Her mother had remarked before she left, with a surprise not untouched by distaste, that people seemed to get knocked on the head all the time in Hampstead nowadays; there were three cases this evening in The Hampstead and Highgate Express, which Anna’s family had always taken, and which she had ordered to be delivered at the new house, with a reckless disregard of its costing threepence a week, soon after their arrival there.

  Nell forgot the footsteps as she walked on, for if her imagination had not been slightly stirred out of its constitutional sobriety by the move to London and glimpses of London’s size and strangeness, she would not have thought them meaningful or even noticed them; yet her inward ear had heard faithfully. Full of meaning they were, and meaning for herself.

  Parsons’ children are seldom fervently religious, and Nell was no exception, but she had almost unwittingly absorbed one Christian tenet. Years of wearing shabby cast-offs, eating plain food in humourless company, and general going-without, had schooled her in taking no thought for the morrow. She went on up the broad sloping pavements of Fitzjohn’s Avenue, bordered with magnificent Edwardian mansions of red brick in decline which had once given it the name “Park Lane of North London”—with her brief depression put behind her, and thinking only of the prospects ahead, while following her mother’s instructions to just keep straight on, both going to St. John’s Wood and returning. The cars glared and hooted and crawled in the choking mist; homeward-bound workers passed her with handkerchiefs held over their mouths, and soon Hampstead’s big trees began to loom and drip overhead.

  But she was finding it difficult to keep her thoughts on one subject. First she would think about Miss Lister, and recapitulate the story’s details to tell to her mother, who preferred to be primed about people’s backgrounds; then she would run over the warning about Charles Gaunt’s designs upon the top flat, and then, always with the same small shock, remember that she had a job. She started on Monday. She would have to spend most of the week-end doing shorthand. Her typing was not so neglected, because she was accustomed to banging out the Vicar’s Letter and list of psalms and hymns for the Parish Magazine on her father’s thirty-year-old Remington, but her shorthand was really weak. Oh damn Aunt Peggy, thought Nell, as she went past the long narrow passage with the nostalgic name of Shepherd’s Walk, which leads through to Rosslyn Hill, I wanted to find a job for myself.

  The fog was thicker here than ever, and the road much quieter, for the homeward-bound procession of cars was dying down and they crawled past at less frequent intervals. She was walking quickly past a row of small houses with silent tree-filled gardens, when she heard the footsteps again. They were unmistakable. But this time they were on this side of the road and they were immediately behind her.

  Nell was a little frightened. But she was far more cross. She whirled round and stared into the yellow haze which shut her in like a writhing impalpable wall on all sides. Yes, there was the tall dark shape and the white face. It was standing still, looking at her. She could just make it out by the hazy orange light of a lamp some distance away.

  “What do you want?” she called, rather threateningly, in her thin pure tones with the note that seems to shut ladies off from the warm and vulgar world. She actually took a few steps towards the motionless shape.

  “Don’t be so absurd,” a beautiful deep young voice said petulantly out of the fog, “don’t you recognize me? I’m your cousin, John Gaunt,” and the figure began to move leisurely forward.

  “Oh,” said Nell, relieved but still cross, “hullo. How could I possibly recognize you? I’ve only seen you once about ten years ago.”

  “I recognized you. By your walk.” He was holding out his hand, and, having pulled off her worn glove, she put hers into it and received a firm shake. “How you do tear along; I’ve been behind you all the way up Fitzjohn’s Avenue and I could hardly keep up with you. I saw you come out of my mamma’s house, and you were darting along in just the same way that you did that afternoon.”

  “Then why on earth didn’t you speak to me, instead of …”

  She head a low amused sound. “I didn’t want to frighten you.”

  “But surely it was much more frightening to prowl along like that …”

  “Need we go on about it? It is so boring. Let’s walk on, shall we?” and he gently touched her arm and began to move forward.

  Nell went too, and for some moments they did not say anything. She was still annoyed, and now she was shy as well. This was the first time that she had ever walked beside a young man, unless that occasion were counted when Nicholas, Elizabeth Prideaux’s brother, had taken her to the marquee for lemonade one Open Day at Claregates, and although she was not looking at him now, she had taken such unconscious pleasure in the sight of John’s white skin, fair hair cut in a manner quite unfamiliar to her, and sleepy-looking eyes whose colour she could not distinguish, by this light, that the image was still floating before her mind’s eye …

  ‘Young man’, indeed! He was quite two years younger than herself. He was a little boy. And although his mother said that he was brilliant, she had also hinted that he was giving his parents trouble, while his behaviour this evening had been of the kind always dismissed by Nell’s own mother as tiresome.

  Having replenished her self-respect, which had shown surprising and unexpected signs of being depleted, she turned to him intending to say something amiably patronizing, and experienced precisely the same shock of helpless delight as before.

  “How are you liking Hampstead?” he was asking in a social voice, “My friend Benedict Rouse says that Camp But Enchanting ought to be embroidered on its municipal banner. You must meet him soon. You’d like him. He’d like your bones, too. They’re awfully small, aren’t they, Nell, like some delicate bleached baby rabbit … and don’t, whatever you do, let anyone persuade you to do anything to your hair. It’s the kind that ought to hang in a straight little curtain like that and it’s absolutely my favourite kind. I say, are you all right? You look quite green.”

  “I’m all right, thanks. Perhaps it’s the lamps,” said Nell, who had in fact suddenly become very hungry, “what a weird light, isn’t it.”

  “That’s exactly the right word.” He glanced at her approvingly. “How Edgar Allan Poe would have liked them, wouldn’t he? (I adore that kind of anachronism. I find them all day long.) Didn’t you think dear little Gardis is like someone out of a poem by Poe? Ligeia, or the girl in the ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir? She’s already in some of Benedict’s poems.”

  “Are they engaged?” said Nell.

  Afterwards, she realized that she had known before she asked it that it was a silly question, but the truth was that almost every remark, assumption, phrase and circumstance outside her family circle which she had encountered during the last two days was strange to her, and the only way in which she could meet each o
ccasion was by making some pleasant, ordinary comment. She could not continually betray ignorance; she could not continually demand to be enlightened. If much of what her aunt, Gardis, and now John, said, was unintelligible to her, she could at least congratulate herself on having concealed bewilderment beneath a brisk, sensible manner. This time, however, the method brought shattering results.

  “Don’t be so bloody suburban,” he said coldly. “They’re lovers.”

  There was a pause. They had reached Hampstead Tube Station. People were wandering or scurrying in and out of it, or hanging about waiting for their dears. The lamps and shop windows of the steep narrow High Street glowed through the thinning fog and the cafés were full. Nell saw to her slight dismay that the station clock said ten minutes past eight; she had been told not to be later home than a quarter past seven. Putting the recent shock out of her mind, she turned to John.

  “I say, I must get back. They’ll be wondering where I am.” But she was remembering as she spoke, it’s absolutely my favourite kind.

  They were standing near the newspaper man on the corner. Looking up at her cousin she realized both how tall he was, and that a look of uneasiness, almost of distress, had come on to his face.

  “Oh, don’t go yet. Can’t you telephone them and say you’re with me? We’ll go and drink coffee at an Espresso.”

  “I don’t know the number. You see …”

  “Oh really, Nell. It’s under Palmer-Grove. Here, I’ll look it up for you.”

  She followed him into the station. As he strode ahead of her she studied his clothes, odd indeed to eyes accustomed to the soft rough tweeds of the true country, rather than the duffel-coats and jeans of the Home Counties. He had trousers of dark green corduroy, and a thick blue polo sweater showed above the collar of a very dirty trench-coat. Under his arm he carried a worn and bulging portfolio of good leather. His head was bare. That was an odd haircut. Nell did not know that much of her wish to go on looking at him came from the beautiful shape of his head which the odd cut so well displayed.

  “Here,” he said, indicating a number with a finger, long as his mother’s, but dirty, “and do hurry up. I want to show you an Espresso bar.”

  While she made the call and re-assured the not-very-active fears of Anna, who seemed only anxious to get back to the Mémoires d’Outre-Tombe, Nell was feeling, rather than thinking, how singularly at home she was with John.

  They had been together now for perhaps twenty minutes. They had exchanged none of the customary exploratory remarks. His manner was neither friendly nor attentive, and his conversation was largely incomprehensible and could be brutally shocking. (She was still tingling from the revelation about Gardis … if it meant what Nell supposed it did mean … or was it only the London way of saying that they were in love …? But she thought not.) She was pleased that they were going to be together for a little longer. How hungry she felt. The slice of home-made cake and cup of weak tea swallowed four hours ago might never have been, yet her appetite, fed from babyhood on starch, which is cheap, rather than proteins which are dear, was generally content to skip supper altogether. Could this unusual appetite be due to the Hampstead air?

  When they had taken the last two seats in a long, bright, hot room crammed with youngish people wearing bright untidy clothes and all staring into each other’s faces while they talked at an immense pace without stopping, he said:

  “I’m terribly sorry but can you pay for yourself? I’ve only got a shilling and this marvellously good coffee costs ninepence a cup.”

  “Oh—yes, of course—only I’m afraid I’ve only got a shilling, too.”

  “That means we can’t have any cakes. Cakes are sevenpence each. Oh well …”

  “Couldn’t we …” Nell’s lack of experience in issuing invitations to young men caused her, in spite of feeling so surprisingly at ease with him, to pause and swallow, “… have our coffee here and … go home and have something to eat there? There is … some cake, I think.”

  “We might. I’ll see … oh, there’s someone over there I know. I can probably borrow from him.”

  While he was bending persuasively over the beard, red face, and rough coat which was all that Nell could see of the someone, she looked curiously round at the young, bold, alive, and sometimes—she saw with sheer disbelief; it must be this peculiar light—dirty faces of the Espresso drinkers, set off by brilliant checked shirts, white jackets fastened by wooden links, black ‘jumpers’ (as Nell called them) and, in the case of the women, exaggeratedly severe or flowing manner of arranging the hair. Coiffures and beards played a large part in the exhibiting of their personalities, and did not always look quite clean. Were these, Nell wondered, artists? and felt slightly awed.

  “That’s all right.” John sat down again opposite her. “Chris lent me half-a-crown. His woman is in work this week. You must meet her; she’s very beautiful and she washes-up for a living.”

  “Does she?” Nell’s bewilderment with the world now being revealed to her expressed itself in a tone slightly tart and cautious.

  “Yes, she does. Don’t sound so suburban. Now … isn’t that a wonderful taste?”

  She was not extending her caution to the sipping of the blackish-gold liquid in a transparent cup, which she indeed found wonderful. She nodded in enthusiastic silence, and an addict was born. John authoritatively selected two oozing cakes from a trolley wheeled up by a waitress, and for some moments, spinning them out, they ate in silence. This was the second time that he had called her suburban. What exactly did he mean?

  “How is it that you only have a shilling?” he asked, when the last blob of synthetic cream had gone.

  “Well …” beginning to colour, “we’re … rather hard up just now and my mother thought I wouldn’t need more than that to get down to Aunt Peggy’s—your mother’s, that is—but anyway I walked.”

  “You need not mind talking about money to me, you know. If you’re going about with me and going to meet all my friends, you must stop having false and silly ideas about that. We usually haven’t any money at all, and when we do have it’s very little. Most of the time we’re starving. You’ll be amazed at how little food and sleep one can do with.”

  “Shall I?” said Nell. She could think of nothing but the fact that they were to go about together. But then she remembered his age. And his manner could be offensive. “I’m starting a job on Monday,” she added in a busy tone, “so I don’t suppose I shall have much free time”—but he did not seem to have heard, for he went on—

  “You really must get out of that habit of answering in questions. ‘Does she?’ ‘Shall I?’ It sounds so bloody irritating and rude.”

  “You’re very rude,” she retorted, “and it sounds simply frightful to keep on … using that word.” Her voice tailed off. He was leaning forward with both hands in the air.

  “Your béret looks horrible on the back of your head like that.” He twitched it over to one side and set it at a terrific slant. “That’s how you want to wear it. Like Ewa Bartok?”

  “Who?” But Nell left the béret untouched.

  “Ewa Bartok the film star. If you can’t afford proper clothes; long full skirts and low heels and metal jewellery, you should copy Ewa Bartok. She knows how to make horrible little suits like the one you’re wearing and old raincoats look marvellously romantic.” He stopped. Then he went on in what Nell was already thinking of as his social voice, “By the way, how is Aunt Anna?”

  “Oh … very well, I think,” she answered, rather thrown out by this abrupt change of subject.

  “I was thinking … I’d like to see her again, and Uncle Martin too. I’m still hungry, aren’t you? I think I will come back with you after all. What sort of cake is it?”

  “Oh … home-made.” Pale crumbling slabs, sparsely set with sultanas as pale, floated in her mind’s eye. She did not want to risk his comments on them, but she did want him to come home. He was looking at her consideringly with now widely-opened, light grey eyes. A
nd, perhaps because his expression was candid and gentle, she remembered something.

  “Well, do come, then,” she said, “I know” (this was an exaggeration) “they would both like to see you. Oh, by the way, I’ve got a message for you; from your mother. She said if I saw anything of you would I ask you to ring her up, and she said …”

  Her voice tailed off again. He was looking exceedingly angry and she had said the very wrong thing.

  “Bloody parents,” he said violently. “I did ring her up ten days ago. Why can’t they leave one alone? I don’t want to hear what she said. She said she was my mother, I suppose. Well she is, but I didn’t ask her to be nor my father either. And as for you, Nello, you had better make up your mind here and now and once and for all whose side you are on.”

  “I’m not on anyone’s side,” she said, after a pause. But of course she was, after only half-an-hour.

  “How cowardly you are.” However, he did not sound cross with her; his tone had suddenly become absent. “Let’s go, shall we? There’s such a beastly strong light in here.”

  When they were walking up the dim, steep, leafy back streets into which he immediately led her, complaining that the glare in the High Street was even worse, he began upon his mother’s impertinence in finding her a job.

  “It was sheer interference, why couldn’t she leave you to find one for yourself? You would have. (You’ve got lots of character; I can see that. It makes me feel safe with you. Only you must never use it on me.) Why must she butt in? You’ll hate Akkro Products. I’ve met Gerry Hughes at one of her parties and he looks quite damned with trying to get on. You won’t get a thing out of being with him, you know. Must you turn up there on Monday?”