From that night Susanna began to change. Watching her was like watching a thaw break its way through a long frozen countryside: the ground softens, the streams move, each leaf and blade of grass is freed from its stiff white coat, and the whole land can ruffle and flutter once more before the slightest breeze. So it was with Susanna. The hard, bitter expression left her face, and it seemed as though her whole body were softened; and though she still had her oddly aloof manner it no longer suggested unhappiness and boredom, but rather that she was under an enchantment.
She spent all her spare time with Bill. On weekdays she had endless dress shows, and was seldom free till the evenings, but on Sundays they went out in his small car, and sampled every inn within reach of London, and together watched autumn come. They saw the leaves turn from green to red and gold, and from red and gold to brown, and watched the hedges light up their candles of winter berries.
“Funny,” said Susanna. “I must have seen the autumn come every year, but this is the first time I’ve noticed how lovely it is. I’ve never liked it much before.”
Most of their evenings they spent at a pet restaurant, where they got squatters’ rights at a certain corner table. They liked the feeling of being welcomed nightly by the same commissionaire and waiters, and they liked being greeted by Jean, the maitre d’hôtel who gave Susanna sprays of flowers to tone with her frock. And Bill liked seeing Susanna’s head outlined by the gold walls of the place, and Susanna liked the homely feeling of eating daily in the same room, almost as though she and Bill were married.
One Sunday in November they went to Hampton Court. It was a miserable, cold, blowy day, and they didn’t waste many minutes walking round the gardens.
“Come on,” said Bill. “This is too awful; let’s go and sit by a fire. We’ll have one of our own; we’ll take a private room. I do hate Sunday lunch crowds.”
After lunch Bill suddenly pulled Susanna on to his knee.
“I’m afraid I’m falling in love with you, Sukey.”
She smiled at him happily. He drew her face to his and kissed her mouth. When at last he released her she stared at him with unfathomable eyes.
“What is it, Sukey?”
“I don’t quite know, Bill.” But her heart was singing. “He loves me, and I love him; some day we’ll marry and I shall be able to look after him always.” A long-drawn sigh of happiness whistled through her lips. “Oh, Bill,” she said.
He didn’t know what she meant, but he did know that she was adorable, and that the afternoon mustn’t be wasted, so he kissed her again.
After that Sunday he became very possessive, and sulked if she had to be away in time which he felt should belong to him. Sometimes she worked in the evenings, and then they nearly quarrelled.
“I’ve got a dress show two nights this week, Bill.”
“Oh, I say, that really is too thick. Must you?”
“I’m afraid so, not really because of the money, because we are better off again now, Mother says, but she thinks a girl ought to have something to do. Besides, if I wasn’t doing anything, they might expect me to come home.”
“Good lord! They mustn’t do that. But you might try not to fix things up in the evenings.”
“I will”
Beatrice came to her in triumph.
“That agency we sent our photographs to has got us both a day’s filming. There’s a p.c. for you about it.”
“When?”
“Tomorrow night, filming all night on Victoria Station. I know a lot of people who are going to be in it; ought to be rather fun.”
“Oh, I don’t think I want to do it.”
“Why?”
“I don’t want to film.”
“Well, you poor cow, you put your name down at the agent’s to say you did.”
“I know, but I thought they made films in the mornings.”
“Oh, so that’s it. Well, let me tell you, you’re going to film tomorrow. I introduced you to the agents, and I’m damned if I’ll have them annoyed.”
“But thousands of people will love to do it instead of me.”
“Well, they aren’t going to.”
“I can’t come out to dinner tomorrow,” Susanna said nervously to Bill. “I’m doing a bit of filming; it takes all night.”
“Good lord, films now! You seem to love filling up our evenings.”
“Oh, Bill, I don’t. I tell you what: come with me. I expect there’ll be such a lot of people there, they’ll never notice an extra one; and we could talk.”
“What! Stand in a draughty station all night? Not if I know it.”
Susanna looked surprised. “Men are odd,” she thought. “I’d stand in all the draughts in the world if I could have Bill to talk to.”
“Well, what did that long bit of trouble of yours say when he heard you were filming tonight?” asked Beatrice, as the two girls set off on a bus for Victoria.
“Do you mean Bill?”
“Do I mean Bill? You poor fish, who else? I can’t think what you see in the man. When does his leave finish?”
“January.”
“And a damn good job too.”
Susanna grinned cheerfully, but said nothing. “She must be jealous,” she thought.
At the station they fell in with a large party of friends of Beatrice’s. They were all very vivacious and loud-voiced, with a currency of jokes and illusions amongst themselves which made their conversation puzzling to the outsider. They were all slightly attached to one or other of the arts: two of the girls played occasional small parts in the West End, one of the men painted a bit, two more wrote now and again. They all, as far as Susanna could judge, lived in studios in order to do such work as they did do, and all seemed to have a certain amount of money and a vast quantity of time, both of which were mainly spent on throwing parties. Beatrice introduced her, but none of them paid any attention; they merely settled themselves down in the middle of the station, cheerful and noisy, and proceeded to paint their faces yellow, while a group of porters stood and stared at them with interest and admiration.
“Chinese, are you?” asked one.
“No,” replied the young man whom Susanna had gathered was an artist. “Just the great British Public welcoming home its war heroes.”
“Well, if there was a war now,” said another of the porters with relish, “you’d ’ave ‘ter be in uniform, you would.”
“Too true. But God decreed that I should be a child throughout the hostilities, and I decreed that nothing would induce me to go down to a filthy studio in order to get into somebody’s old khaki, so here I am in my nice brown suit.”
A girl wandered across to them from the ladies’ cloakroom. She was dressed as a W.A.A.C.
“Oh, children, look at Lucia!” exclaimed the noisier of the two boys who wrote.
“My poor Lucia,” said one of the girls. “How did you let this happen to you?”
Lucia laughed.
“Aren’t you green with jealousy? Let me tell you, little ones, that I’m a star in this picture. ‘Young girl from village joins the ranks.’ Tonight I am being met by old and tear-stained parents—very touching, and an extra guinea for me, and two days’ work in the studio. Call that nothing?”
“And in whose bed did you have to sleep to win all that?” another of the girls queried.
“Meow, a saucer of milk for Marion, please,” Lucia retorted. She came nearer to them, and dropped her voice. “As a matter of fact—”
At this minute, to the bitter disappointment of the porters, the conversation came to an end, for a distraught-looking man appeared and yelled through a megaphone: “Everybody on the platform, please.”
“Lumme!” said the porters, as the party vanished. “ ’Ot stuff.”
As soon as they reached the platform, Susanna was separated from Beatrice and her friends, and was sent with a mixed collection of people to greet a General arriving at the back of the train.
“Who’s your detached little friend?” the artist asked Beatrice.
“I did introduce her, but none of you listened; you’re a damned rude lot.”
“Well, we don’t like outsiders much.”
“Susanna, her name is; she’s nice.”
“She looks our sort. Bring her along next time one of us throws a party.”
“I might some time; just now she’s properly tied up with a bit of no-good. Anyway, I’m not sure how she’d fit in with us.”
A whistle blew piercingly, various men shouted, a mass of arc lights flooded on to the platform, and the man who was directing the picture climbed up on to a lorry, and spoke to them all earnestly through a megaphone:
“Now I want tenseness, expectation, all your eyes fixed up the line, for you are waiting for the train to arrive which will bring you back your fathers, sweethearts, lovers. That’s it, plenty of excitement, they’re coming home! home! More excitement; that’s got it, grand. Cut.”
Three times they went through this scene, and on the fourth the cameras began to whirr. This sound put the actors off their animation, and carried their eyes away from the incoming train up to the cameras on the lorries.
“Cut,” shouted the producer furiously. When he had obtained silence, he talked to them once more through his megaphone. This time he was not so friendly, but rather hurt. “Now look here, folks, it’s a train you’re expecting, and not a fiery chariot from heaven, so I guess you’ll get a better view of it down the line than looking up at the perches. Now, all right, I’m not going to say any more, but let’s have it right this time. Right away.”
They were “right away” three times more, always being beseeched to show greater animation; but at last they got it, the cameras purred, and the first shot was taken.
“Cut,” shouted the producer. “Now, folks, that was great, that was fine. Now we’ll fix the first shot with the train.”
The train puffed into the station with a young man and his camera tied on in front of the engine. This sight so stimulated the crowd that only two or three rehearsals were needed, and in two shots they had it right. Then, to the great surprise of Susanna and anyone else unversed in film-making, the train shunted out of the station, the arc lights snapped out, and the producer and his staff and all the electricians climbed down from their lorries and vanished.
“Somethin’s wrong with one of the cameras,” explained a little man next to Susanna, knowingly.
She looked down at him. His appearance was odd, for he was mainly dressed in uniform incredibly too large for him, but his legs, loosely looped with puttees, finished mysteriously with button patent boots.
“ ’Ave a cup of coffee?” he asked her, as the travelling station canteen was pushed by.
“Thank you.”
“Done much in this line?” he inquired, as they sipped at the queer-tasting but boiling concoction they were given.
“No, this is my first day at it.”
“Ah, the lure of the pictchers, but it’s ’eartbreakin’ work, that’s what it is. Take me, no one ’asn’t more talent than what I ’as, but I ’aven’t the influence, that’s what does it, influence. Why, the agent said to me when ’e offered me tonight’s work, ‘I know, Fred, a man of your ability shouldn’t be doin’ this, but it’s all I can offer, so take it or leave it.’ ”
“And you took it.” He nodded his head mournfully. Susanna looked at him compassionately. “Who are we supposed to be?” she asked, more to distract him from his sad thoughts than because she wished to know.
“Well, nothin’ and everythin’, so to speak. ’Ere’s a General comin’ ’ome from the war, and ’ere’s us, the great B.P. come to meet ’im, an’ the scene stands or falls by our rehactions.”
“Oh, does it?” Susanna looked nervously at the producer, his staff, and the electricians, who were at this moment climbing back on their lorries, but before she had time to really consider her reactions, the producer was talking to them once more through his megaphone:
“Now, folks, I want more than acting from you here; I want to see your hearts beat. Think! Think! Here’s a train coming into a station, full of loved ones who have been dragged from the jaws of death; that’s what I want to hear in your heartbeats and see in your faces. Don’t just stand around like so much cheese; here are men, and women too, who are waiting to fall straight out of the train into your arms. Don’t let’s just see it, let’s feel it.” As this remarkable speech ended, a low murmur of admiration crept out from the crowd, but the producer was not one to notice sounds made by inferiors, so he just shouted, “Right away.”
All night long the train shunted in and out, shoals of Tommies, officers and uniformed girls hurled themselves on to the platform into strange, but expectant arms. Sometimes the producer shouted, “Fine, fine! My word, folks, you’re fine!” But more often he groaned, and yelled through his megaphone, “Cut. Now, what do you folks think we’re at? Do you think we’ve hired a whole station and a doggone train to give you a nice sleep?”
But whether they did well or whether they did badly, Susanna was unable to detect the slightest variation in their massed performance. But to her little companion each shot was a new creation.
“See what I did then?” he asked her eagerly. “Tried to wave me ’and, then couldn’t; blew me nose instead, overcome—see?” And another time: “I’ve got an idea. I’ve served under the General in the war, and as ’e steps on to the platform, there I am standin’ at the old salute. Be a lovely bit of business if ’e could salute back.”
“Do we show much?” Susanna questioned doubtfully, looking at the distant cameras.
The little man looked at them too. He had a wistful eye; he also looked at some very large men between him and the foreground of the picture.
“Oh well,” he said in a would-be jaunty manner, “it’s all perfectin’ one’s art an’ any’ow they’re bound to take a close-up of this bit presently, and we’ll come out large in that and no mistake.”
But after one of the final shots, a girl in the crowd called out to the man playing the General:
“Are they doing a close-up of this, George?”
“No,” he said. “We did it in the studio last week.”
Susanna looked at the little man to see how he had taken this blow, but he was gazing away from her, pretending he hadn’t heard.
“Nearly through now,” he observed. “I don’t mind admittin’ I’ll be glad to see me bed.”
As soon as they were dismissed, Susanna found Beatrice and her friends, and with them joined on to the end of a long, weary queue of actors waiting to be paid. As they stepped out of the station the sun was rising. Beatrice put her money into her purse.
“Well, that was easily earned,” she said.
The dress parade season was finished, but both Beatrice and Susanna had endless engagements being photographed. Susanna, in fact, had for a time a weekly appointment for a whole series of photographs for a firm of Universal Providers called Edgars. First, she and a young man were seen looking yearningly at an engagement ring, the young man observing, “I got it at Edgars’,” and then they appeared actually in Edgars’, choosing furniture, and the third week they were seen in their wedding garments, apparently at the altar rails; but, undeterred by this, the bridegroom was stating, as he put the ring on Susanna’s finger: “You can guess I got it from Edgars’.” There were many more pictures of them both, and of their painfully suburban-looking home. The last of the series showed Susanna in bed with a property baby, and the young man kneeling by her side, and written under it was: “See wifey gets everything for herself and the little stranger at Edgars’.” Neither this series nor any of her other photographic engagements made much demand on Susanna’s time, and she was free to see far more of Bill. He kissed her a great deal now as a matter of course. Sometimes like a pin-prick the thought came to her: “When’s he going to ask me to marry him?” But, as a rule, she was too happy to worry about anything. “Things are so lovely as they are,” she told herself. “He doesn’t want to make them all formal by fixing our wedding.”
One night they were dining at their usual corner table. Susanna was feeling radiant, Bill was being even nicer than usual, she had on a new frock, and she knew it was becoming, and Jean had given her a spray of roses. She felt so rich wearing roses in December. She grinned across at Bill.
“Dear little Sukey,” he said. “What fun we’ve had; you’ve absolutely made my leave.”
She felt as though a cloud had blown across the sky, dimming the sun; it made her feel cold. She fumbled nervously with her bag. Bill looked across at her, and ordered himself a brandy. Usually she liked watching him drinking it—such a ritual he made of it, such fun using so big a glass—but tonight she was afraid to look at him.
“Sukey,” he said. “Do you remember the night we first met, and how I confessed to you that I was always running away from things?”
“Yes.”
“Well, I’m going to run away again now.”
“What from?”
“You, Sukey. I’m getting much too fond of you.”
“How too fond?” she whispered.
“When one is my sort of person, one mustn’t get too fond of anybody. I’m not the marrying sort, and, anyway, I don’t suppose you’d marry me.” He hurried on before she could have even shaped an answer. “I must be free; ties terrify me. You do understand, Sukey, don’t you?”
She looked up then, but not directly at him.
“I hadn’t thought of marriage as a tie.”
He shook himself, resentfully refusing to accept how crushed she looked.
“Well, there it is, I’m running away. I booked my passage this morning. I leave the day after tomorrow.”
That shook her; she stared at him wildly and repeated stupidly:
“The day after tomorrow.”
He took another brandy. Susanna steadied her voice:
“Bill, that day we first met, and you told me about running away, was this what you meant? From people? From girls like me?”
“I told you then you shouldn’t wrest my innermost secrets from me.”
“Was it?”
“Well, usually.”
“Oh! And I thought—” She broke off, remembering all that she had thought, in silence.
He looked puzzled.
“What on earth did you think I meant?”
“What’s it matter? I’m tired. Do you mind if we go home?”
She went into the lounge, and waited while Bill got his coat. Jean came up to her.
“Was it a nice dinner, Madame?”
She nodded; she couldn’t trust her voice.
“Shall we see you tomorrow, Madame?”
“No,” she whispered. “Mr. Tolman’s leave is over and he is going back to India; you won’t see us any more.” Bill joined them, and she swept out through the revolving doors with her head high, but Jean had seen that her eyes were full of tears.
In a mood of apparent gaiety Susanna got through the next two days. She helped Bill pack and shop, and ate with him in various noisy restaurants, and finally saw him off to Marseilles. Then she got into a taxi and allowed herself to relax; she felt suddenly too tired to sit upright, and she fell across the seat. She didn’t cry, she felt past that; all the accumulated gloom and despair of the last years overwhelmed her, and the name she whispered over and over again, as though there were help in its bare reiteration, was not “Bill,” but “Baruch.”
She arrived home to find Mrs. Cary had gone down to the country, and Beatrice waiting for her sprawled on the sofa. Beatrice knew where Susanna had been, and looked at her from under her lowered lids. “Down and out,” she said to herself. Out loud she remarked casually:
“I’m going to a bit of a party tonight: those people we filmed with will all be there. Care to come?”
Susanna looked ungracious.
“I don’t care a damn what I do.”
“And that,” observed Beatrice, swinging her legs off the sofa, “is exactly the mood in which to go to a party.”