Heinrich was extremely pleased about his engagement. He wore a “Mizpah”
ring, which V.V. had given him, and a rather small Trilby hat which he
had disinterred from some forgotten cupboard himself. Arrayed in these
additions to his toilet, he called formally on Gillian that evening.
V.V. was not at home. She was working late in Bond Street all that week,
renewing the youth of the fashionable clientele before its final exodus
from town.
“I have taken ze responsibility for zis life,” he explained, as though
V.V. were another cat or sparrow. “V.V. has never enough money till ze
end of ze munz. For ze last two, tree, four, five days she does eat
nozzing.”
“Heinrich! What ever do you mean?” Gillian was startled. It had never
occurred to her to inquire into V.V.’s finances, but all sorts of
instances crowded into her mind at Heinrich’s words.
“I mean what I say. V.V. has not enough money for food for four weeks,
only for tree. In ze force week she starve. On ze first day of ze monz
she have fresh money. Zen she eat. So I marry her.” Heinrich was
delighted with the adequacy of this solution.
“Have you got married while I was away?”
“Not yet. It is to come. Now we food on love.”
This was beyond Gillian. “Will she live with you and Larry in the studio
when you do marry?” she asked, turning to practical matters for relief.
“No. I give ze studio to Larry for himself. V.V. and I we go in many
countries. Countries where it is warm. Italy and Africa and Hindustan,”
said Heinrich.
“You’ll have to wait then,” said Gillian with reference to the golden
liberty which was known to lie behind the clauses of Heinrich’s uncle’s
will.
“A little, yes. But not so much time as before. I go to my ozzer onkel,
and tell to him zat now I marry. And he say I may have some money out of
ze will, from him. He is not quite a good man—but there is in him a
little goodness sometimes. I sign him a paper so that he have twice as
much out of ze will by and then. And I get sree hundred pounds for each
year till ze will is over.”
Unversed though she was in the ethics of finance, Gillian had a distant
feeling that Heinrich’s uncle was being the not quite good man Heinrich
had admitted him to be in the question of that other uncle’s will on
which his future depended. But Heinrich had done his best for V.V.
And he looked taller and braver, more nearly a man, and rather
distressingly a little less like a fairy than he had seemed to her till
now.
“Does V.V. want to marry you?” she asked.
“Oh, very much.”
In the dark of her mind Gillian felt a jealous pang. V.V. then had
forgotten her.
“I go now to take her to dinner, in a restaurant: proper dinner,” said
Heinrich impressively, “wiz prrawns.”
* * * * *
Late that night there was a furtive knock at Gillian’s bedroom door.
Gillian called “Come in,” wondering who could be there. It was V.V. She
stood in the doorway smiling, excited.
“Oh, you darling,” she said in a hungry whisper, “oh, you darling.”
“V.V.! how did you get in? Gordon locked up hours ago.”
“I had your house-key copied while you were away,” said V.V., and did
not wait to hear how Gillian took this announcement, but strode across
the room and knelt by the bedside, thrusting her long, strong, bony arms
in under the bed-clothes and dragging Gillian to the edge of the bed in
an almost angry hug.
Gillian struggled out of the straining clasp and sat up, pulling the
ends of her long plaits from under the sheet and shaking out the
crumpled bows of blue ribbon with which they were tied.
“V.V., how thrilling!”
“Isn’t it! isn’t it!” said V.V., burying her face in Gillian’s shoulder.
Her hair smelt of brilliantine—a sweet, heavy smell like
scented-geranium leaves when you pinch them—and of fresh
Virginia-cigarette smoke, and she had been drinking liqueur. She was
shaking all over and Gillian could feel the quick, pushing beat of her
heart vibrate in the wire of the stretched spring-mattress of the little
iron bedstead.
“Goodness!” said Gillian, putting one arm round V.V.’s trembling
shoulder. “Are you as happy as all that?”
“Of course I am, you darling, aren’t you?”
“Well, no! You can’t expect me to be quite as excited as you are—or as
Heinrich is.”
“Hinerik? What’s he got to do with it?” V.V. sat back on her heels and
frowned. “I’m excited because I’ve got you back again. You know that,
you monkey.”
Gillian felt uncomfortable. She had not expected this pudicity in V.V.
“I’m sorry,” she apologized, “I thought you knew I knew. Heinrich told
me. So did Jane.”
“Oh, that,” said V.V., “that’s Hinerik’s funeral.”
“I thought it was to be your wedding.”
“P’r’aps. Some day. But we won’t bother about silly old weddings now
I’ve got you back again.”
“Get the basket-chair and a cushion and come and talk to me a minute,”
said Gillian, clasping her hands round her knees outside the bed-clothes
and preparing to conduct an inquisition. “You tell me such a lot about
your life, all in bits, and I can’t ever put them quite together in any
real plan.”
“Oh, mine’s not been a planny life,” said V.V., dragging the chair and
cushion close to the bedside.
“Well, never mind about the whole of it now,” said Gillian, “but try, if
you can, to tell me what Heinrich meant about you not having proper
meals some weeks.”
“Oh yes.” V.V. was frank as always, with a baffling and allusive
frankness that more often than not darkened the situation she attempted
to illuminate. “My brother, you know. He’s not quite all there—not mad
you know, but sometimes he drinks a little, and sometimes he goes out
and paints the town red, and then he can’t send me the whole of my
allowance.”
“I didn’t know you had an allowance. I thought you worked in Bond
Street.”
“Oh, that’s a debt. The rent for the flat at Ostend. I’ll be paid by
October and then I shan’t go to silly old Jacynthe’s any more.”
“But V.V., if your brother is like that he oughtn’t to have the money to
control. You ought to have it and send him his allowance.”
“Yes, I know. But he’s the eldest, and a man. He’s the trustee too, but
I don’t like him. If I marry Hinerik and he can get hold of his money
we’ll put my brother into a home and he can have it all.”
“How did Heinrich find out?”
“Oh, he just came to dinner and there wasn’t any. Old Mrs. Gordon
wouldn’t send any up because I’d not paid my book. She’s generally quite
good about waiting, but when she came up on Saturday with the books, I
was unpacking some bath-salts and she seemed to think I could have done
without them.”
“Oh, V.V., that’s why you’re so thin.”
“Oh, I was always bony, even”—V.V. did not intend to be enigmatic—“even
at Ostend.”
And then she yawned and Gillian said she was sleepy too, and V.V. kissed
her and went over to her own flat.