Richard had gone up into his own flat and left her to wash and dress and
explore. He had told her she was to have Tiedeman's flat. Not knowing who
Tiedeman was made it more wonderful that God should have put it into his
head to go away for Easter and lend you his flat.
If you wanted anything you could ring and they would come up from the
basement and look after you.
She didn't want them to come up yet. She wanted to lie back among her
cushions where Richard had packed her, and turn over the moments and
remember what they had been like: getting out of the train at King's
Cross and finding Richard there; coming with him out of the thin white
April light into the rich darkness and brilliant colours of the room; the
feeling of Richard's hands as they undid her fur stole and peeled the
sleeves of her coat from her arms; seeing him kneel on the hearthrug and
make tea with an air of doing something intensely interesting, an air of
security and possession. He went about in Tiedeman's rooms as if they
belonged to him.
She liked Tiedeman's flat: the big outer room, curtained with thick
gentian blue and thin violet. There was a bowl of crimson and purple
anemones on the dark oval of the oak table.
Tiedeman's books covered the walls with their coloured bands and stripes
and the illuminated gold of their tooling. The deep bookcases made a
ledge all round half-way up the wall, and the shallow bookcases went on
above it to the ceiling.
But--those white books on the table were Richard's books. _Mary
Olivier--Mary Olivier. My_ books that I gave him.... They're Richard's
rooms.
She got up and looked about. That long dark thing was her coat and fur
stretched out on the flat couch in the corner where Richard had laid
them; stretched out in an absolute peace and rest.
She picked them up and went into the inner room that showed through the
wide square opening. The small brown oak-panelled room. No furniture but
Richard's writing table and his chair. A tall narrow French window
looking to the backs of houses, and opening on a leaded balcony.
Spindle-wood trees, green balls held up on ramrod stems in green tubs.
Richard's garden.
Curtains of thin silk, brilliant magenta, letting the light through. The
hanging green bough of a plane tree, high up on the pane, between. A worn
magentaish rug on the dark floor.
She went through the door on the right and found a short, narrow passage.
Another French window opening from it on to the balcony. A bathroom on
the other side; a small white panelled bedroom at the end.
She had no new gown. Nothing but the black chiffon one (black because of
Uncle Victor) she had bought two years ago with Richard's cheque. She had
worn it at Greffington that evening when she dined with him. It had a
long, pointed train. Its thin, open, wide spreading sleeves fell from her
shoulders in long pointed wings. It made her feel slender.
* * * * *
There was no light in the inner room. Clear glassy dark twilight behind
the tall window. She stood there waiting for Richard to come down.
Richard loved all this. He loved beautiful books, beautiful things,
beautiful anemone colours, red and purple with the light coming through
them, thin silk curtains that let the light through like the thin silky
tissues of flowers. He loved the sooty brown London walls, houses
standing back to back, the dark flanks of the back wings jutting out,
almost meeting across the trenches of the gardens, making the colours in
his rooms brilliant as stained glass.
He loved the sound of the street outside, intensifying the quiet of the
house.
It was the backs that were so beautiful at night; the long straight
ranges of the dark walls, the sudden high dark cliffs and peaks of the
walls, hollowed out into long galleries filled with thick, burning light,
rows on rows of oblong casements opening into the light. Here and there a
tree stood up black in the trenches of the gardens.
The tight strain in her mind loosened and melted in the stream of the
pure new light, the pure new darkness, the pure new colours.
Richard came in. They stood together a long time, looking out; they
didn't say a word.
Then, as they turned back to the lighted outer room, "I thought I was to
have had Tiedeman's flat?"
"Well, he's up another flight of stairs and the rain makes a row on the
skylight. It was simpler to take his and give you mine. I want you to
have mine."