‘Twenty-one,’ came from lips that seemed to Victorine quite far away.
‘I’m thirty-two. They say our generation was born so old that it can never get any older. Without illusions. Well! I never had any beliefs that I can remember. Had you?’
Victorine’s wits and senses were astray, but it did not matter, for he was rattling on:
‘We don’t even believe in our ancestors. All the same, we’re beginning to copy them again. D’you know a book called The Sobbing Turtle that’s made such a fuss? – sheer Sterne, very well done; but sheer Sterne, and the author’s tongue in his cheek. That’s it in a nutshell, Miss Collins – our tongues are in our cheeks – bad sign. Never mind; I’m going to out-Piero Cosimo with this. Your head an inch higher, and that curl out of your eye, please. Thanks! Hold that! By the way, have you Italian blood? What was your mother’s name, for instance?’
‘Brown.’
‘Ah! You can never tell with Browns. It may have been Brune – or Bruno – but very likely she was Iberian. Probably all the inhabitants of Britain left alive by the Saxons were called Brown. As a fact, that’s all tosh, though. Going back to Edward the Confessor, Miss Collins – a mere thirty generations – we each of us have one thousand and seventy-four million, five hundred and seventy-three thousand, nine hundred and eighty-four ancestors, and the population of this island was then well under a million. We’re as inbred as race-horses, but not so nice to look at, are we? I assure you, Miss Collins, you’re something to be grateful for. So is Mrs Mont. Isn’t she pretty? Look at that dog!’
Ting-a-ling, indeed, with forelegs braced, and wrinkled nose, was glaring, as if under the impression that Victorine was another bone.
‘He’s funny,’ she said, and again her voice sounded far away. Would Mrs Mont lie here if he’d asked her? She would look pretty! But she didn’t need the fifteen bob!
‘Comfortable in that position?’
In alarm, she murmured:
‘Oh! yes, thank you!’
‘Warm enough?’
‘Oh! yes, thank you!’
‘That’s good. Just a little higher with the head.’
Slowly in Victorine the sense of the dreadfully unusual faded. Tony should never know. If he never knew, he couldn’t care. She could lie like this all day – fifteen bob, and fifteen bob! It was easy. She watched the quick, slim fingers moving, the blue smoke from the cigarette. She watched the little dog.
‘Like a rest? You left your gown; I’ll get it for you.’
In that green silk gown, beautifully padded, she sat up, with her feet on the floor over the dais edge.
‘Cigarette? I’m going to make some Turkish coffee. You’d better walk about.’
Victorine obeyed.
‘You’re out of a dream, Miss Collins. I shall have to do a Mathew Maris of you in that gown.’
The coffee, like none she had ever tasted, gave her a sense of well-being. She said:
‘It’s not like coffee.’
Aubrey Greene threw up his hands.
‘You have said it. The British are a great race – nothing will ever do them in. If they could be destroyed, they must long ago have perished of their coffee. Have some more?’
‘Please,’ said Victorine. There was such a little in the cup.
‘Ready, again?’
She lay down, and let the gown drop off.
‘That’s right! Leave it there – you’re lying in long grass, and the green helps me. Pity it’s winter; I’d have hired a glade.’
Lying in long grass – flowers, too, perhaps. She did love flowers. As a little girl she used to lie in the grass, and make daisy-chains, in the field at the back of her grandmother’s lodge at Norbiton. Her grandmother kept the lodge. Every year, for a fortnight, she had gone down there – she had liked the country ever so. Only she had always had something on. It would be nicer with nothing. Were there flowers in Central Australia? With butterflies there must be! In the sun – she and Tony – like the Garden of Eden!…
‘Thank you, that’s all for today. Half a day – ten bob. Tomorrow morning at eleven. You’re a first-rate sitter, Miss Collins.’
Putting on the pink stays, Victorine had a feeling of elation. She had done it! Tony should never know! The thought that he never would gave her pleasure. And once more divested of the ‘altogether’, she came forth.
Aubrey Greene was standing before his handiwork.
‘Not yet, Miss Collins,’ he said; ‘I don’t want to depress you. That hip-bone’s too high. We’ll put it right tomorrow. Forgive my hand, it’s all chalk. Au revoir! Eleven o’clock. And we shan’t need this chap. No, you don’t!’