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Authors: Mary Renault
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soon as it came in sight. The collection was a hotchpotch of good stuff lent by private owners and the prize achievements of local art schools and amateurs.
In front of a surrealist exhibit called “Adventitious Agony” they both looked enigmatic for a long time.
“Well?” inquired Mic.
“Frankly,” she said, “I think the indigested contents of the subconscious, and those of the stomach, are about equally significant in visual art.”
“Speaking as an expert?” said Mic, laughing. “For all we know, there may be hosts of people on whom this propeller, with the toothbrushes and—er—so on, has exactly the same effect as Delius.”
“Make it someone else, will you? I like Delius, in a vague uneducated sort of way.”
“Do you? I’ve got the record of the Cuckoo. You must hear it sometime. Look, let’s go back to the flat for tea instead of having it out, and I’ll play it for you.”
“I’d like to,” said Vivian, hypnotised, she concluded next moment, by his complete simplicity and unexpectedness. After surrounding himself during the first half-hour with the caution of a Foreign Secretary in a European crisis, he had delivered this invitation as unequivocally as if they had both been twelve years old. His effect on her alternated between strain and an extraordinary restfulness. They talked easily until they reached the shop where he was going to get cakes, when he said with sudden awkwardness, “Going to the flat won’t make you late on duty? It’s farther away.”
It had just occurred to him, thought Vivian, that a convention exists. Unclassified creature, where had he lived? He seemed neither “advanced”, provincial, nor very innocent; and, when he forgot himself, assumed a certain charm as if he were used to it. Aloud she said, “No, I’ve another hour. I should like to see the place, now you’ve finished it.”
She decided that it was remarkably pleasant. He had got a gas-fire, some rough linen curtains and a couple of modern chairs which looked a little bleak but had been designed, she found, by a sound anatomist. There was a solid working table, and bookshelves making an angle round one corner. The room seemed larger and lighter than it really was, but it was so reticent in its display of personality that it would have been difficult to decide at a glance whether it belonged to a woman or a man. She set the table while Mic, in some hidden and, from the sound, very confined space, made tea. It was a comfortable meal.
“I think human beings need some place as an extension of themselves,” she said when they were smoking afterwards. “Even children do, if you can remember what it felt like the first time you had a room of your own.”
“That was when I went to Cambridge,” said Mic. She was on the point of asking him whether he had been one of a large family, and scarcely knew what it was in his face or voice that prevented her.
“Our rooms are almost fascist in their suppression of the individual,” she said. “Sometimes I think it’s the lack of anywhere you can pretend for five minutes is your own, quite as much as overwork, that makes us so callous about all the patients’ non-physical needs.”
“You say ‘us’?”
“Oh, yes. After six months I notice things much less. The ghastly gloom of the ward services, for instance, and the effect they have.”
“I’ve never known any nurses till now, except one when I had pneumonia at school. A very kind woman. But I can’t associate you with nursing, if you’ll forgive my saying so.”
“I see you’ve discovered already that no compliment pleases a nurse more. It’s illuminating, as a comment on the industry.”
“I hadn’t, but I’ll bear that in mind.”
“Take care you don’t get pneumonia again. This is a good place for it—inland and damp.”
“I’ve a very sound instinct of self-preservation. You’re used to Jan, aren’t you? “He smiled into his cigarette-smoke at a private memory. Vivian
In front of a surrealist exhibit called “Adventitious Agony” they both looked enigmatic for a long time.
“Well?” inquired Mic.
“Frankly,” she said, “I think the indigested contents of the subconscious, and those of the stomach, are about equally significant in visual art.”
“Speaking as an expert?” said Mic, laughing. “For all we know, there may be hosts of people on whom this propeller, with the toothbrushes and—er—so on, has exactly the same effect as Delius.”
“Make it someone else, will you? I like Delius, in a vague uneducated sort of way.”
“Do you? I’ve got the record of the Cuckoo. You must hear it sometime. Look, let’s go back to the flat for tea instead of having it out, and I’ll play it for you.”
“I’d like to,” said Vivian, hypnotised, she concluded next moment, by his complete simplicity and unexpectedness. After surrounding himself during the first half-hour with the caution of a Foreign Secretary in a European crisis, he had delivered this invitation as unequivocally as if they had both been twelve years old. His effect on her alternated between strain and an extraordinary restfulness. They talked easily until they reached the shop where he was going to get cakes, when he said with sudden awkwardness, “Going to the flat won’t make you late on duty? It’s farther away.”
It had just occurred to him, thought Vivian, that a convention exists. Unclassified creature, where had he lived? He seemed neither “advanced”, provincial, nor very innocent; and, when he forgot himself, assumed a certain charm as if he were used to it. Aloud she said, “No, I’ve another hour. I should like to see the place, now you’ve finished it.”
She decided that it was remarkably pleasant. He had got a gas-fire, some rough linen curtains and a couple of modern chairs which looked a little bleak but had been designed, she found, by a sound anatomist. There was a solid working table, and bookshelves making an angle round one corner. The room seemed larger and lighter than it really was, but it was so reticent in its display of personality that it would have been difficult to decide at a glance whether it belonged to a woman or a man. She set the table while Mic, in some hidden and, from the sound, very confined space, made tea. It was a comfortable meal.
“I think human beings need some place as an extension of themselves,” she said when they were smoking afterwards. “Even children do, if you can remember what it felt like the first time you had a room of your own.”
“That was when I went to Cambridge,” said Mic. She was on the point of asking him whether he had been one of a large family, and scarcely knew what it was in his face or voice that prevented her.
“Our rooms are almost fascist in their suppression of the individual,” she said. “Sometimes I think it’s the lack of anywhere you can pretend for five minutes is your own, quite as much as overwork, that makes us so callous about all the patients’ non-physical needs.”
“You say ‘us’?”
“Oh, yes. After six months I notice things much less. The ghastly gloom of the ward services, for instance, and the effect they have.”
“I’ve never known any nurses till now, except one when I had pneumonia at school. A very kind woman. But I can’t associate you with nursing, if you’ll forgive my saying so.”
“I see you’ve discovered already that no compliment pleases a nurse more. It’s illuminating, as a comment on the industry.”
“I hadn’t, but I’ll bear that in mind.”
“Take care you don’t get pneumonia again. This is a good place for it—inland and damp.”
“I’ve a very sound instinct of self-preservation. You’re used to Jan, aren’t you? “He smiled into his cigarette-smoke at a private memory. Vivian
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