unforthcomingly.
“Now I’m just running round making certain there are no air-locks.” He applied strength to a tarnished bath tap, which coughed twice then had a hemorrhage of dark-rusted water. “That will run clean, in no time.”
“And also hot?”
“A little tiff with the heater—you may have heard me?— but I’ve got it alight. Now better left, I should say, to its own devices.”
“ I , now, also,” pointed out Eva, “should like that better.”
“Whereas the refrigerator, a later model—”
“—Thank you. I expect that you must be going?”
“Toilet in order?” He reached past Eva and gave a tug to a chain. The resultant roar, cataclysmic, stampeded Eva, who pushed nay fought her way violently past him, shouting: “This is enough! Go—go away at once! You take liberties!”
Mr. Denge was no less outraged. He went crimson. What could or did she imagine, this she-Cossack? Cautionary stories raced through his brain. Fraught though his calling was with erotic risks, nothing had so far singled him out. A frame-up? Blackmail? This could be the end. This could be all round town. He should not have bought sheets with her without Mrs. Denge. Mrs. Denge was right—”You never know,” she often was known to say. But at other times she was equally known to say: “Whatever’s the matter with you?—she can’t eat you.” You could not win.
“You make too many noises in my house,” Eva, from a distance, deigned to explain.
“Just as you wish,” he stuttered, like a choked engine.
She indicated her one, imperative wish with a large gesture. “Out!” it wordlessly said.
He put a finger in to loosen his collar. “I had been intending to ask you: fuel?”
“No. Not now.”
“The heating-system requires—”
“—Have you set free my bicycle, my new bicycle?”
“Miss Trout …?”
“Have you untied my bicycle from your Rover?”
He stuffily said: “It is in the hall.”
“Is there no garage for my bicycle?”
Mr. Denge, in justifiable silence, brought out a key labelled “Garage” and, at extreme arm’s length, handed it over. Eva saw him off as far as the top of the stairs—bob, bob, bob went his head on its downward course. At the turn, he revengefully said: “Well, good afternoon!”
“Stop!—one thing you must show me!”
“And what might that be?”
“How a kettle is boiled.”
There was no kettle. There was certainly one on the inventory, Mr. Denge said, but by an oversight that was in his office. The kettle was in his office? No, the inventory—this would be seen to tomorrow. Meanwhile, could Miss Trout make do with a saucepan?”
“From that, how am I to learn how to boil a kettle?”
Once he was gone, Eva wheeled out the bicycle and rode figures-of-eight on the asphalt sweep. She experimented with the 4-speed gear, tested the brakes and tried out the bell. This was a springlike evening, the dusk falling—when and if she took her thumb from the bell, birds, temporarily astounded, began to flute again. No other sound came from any part of the promontory … Becoming hungry, finally, she dismounted. Having installed the bicycle in its quarters—as new to it as hers, tonight, were going to be to her—she then homegoingly turned indoors.
The bay window at the seaward end of the drawing-room contained a love seat—originally, a gilded one. Fetching provisions, she brought them to this camp. She drank milk out of one of the cocktail glasses and repeatedly brought the knife to bear on the swiss roll: still more, an abyssmal contentment filled her. Day darkened over the Channel, the skyline vanished—then, at a moment, the window at the other end of the room sprang into diaphanous, distant illumination: street lamps along the twisted, bosky, misty and empty roads coming alight. The faint shape of the window, enmeshed in branches, was cast over far-away chairs and parquet.
Eva was glad, later, of this ghostly give-off from civilisation, reflected
“Now I’m just running round making certain there are no air-locks.” He applied strength to a tarnished bath tap, which coughed twice then had a hemorrhage of dark-rusted water. “That will run clean, in no time.”
“And also hot?”
“A little tiff with the heater—you may have heard me?— but I’ve got it alight. Now better left, I should say, to its own devices.”
“ I , now, also,” pointed out Eva, “should like that better.”
“Whereas the refrigerator, a later model—”
“—Thank you. I expect that you must be going?”
“Toilet in order?” He reached past Eva and gave a tug to a chain. The resultant roar, cataclysmic, stampeded Eva, who pushed nay fought her way violently past him, shouting: “This is enough! Go—go away at once! You take liberties!”
Mr. Denge was no less outraged. He went crimson. What could or did she imagine, this she-Cossack? Cautionary stories raced through his brain. Fraught though his calling was with erotic risks, nothing had so far singled him out. A frame-up? Blackmail? This could be the end. This could be all round town. He should not have bought sheets with her without Mrs. Denge. Mrs. Denge was right—”You never know,” she often was known to say. But at other times she was equally known to say: “Whatever’s the matter with you?—she can’t eat you.” You could not win.
“You make too many noises in my house,” Eva, from a distance, deigned to explain.
“Just as you wish,” he stuttered, like a choked engine.
She indicated her one, imperative wish with a large gesture. “Out!” it wordlessly said.
He put a finger in to loosen his collar. “I had been intending to ask you: fuel?”
“No. Not now.”
“The heating-system requires—”
“—Have you set free my bicycle, my new bicycle?”
“Miss Trout …?”
“Have you untied my bicycle from your Rover?”
He stuffily said: “It is in the hall.”
“Is there no garage for my bicycle?”
Mr. Denge, in justifiable silence, brought out a key labelled “Garage” and, at extreme arm’s length, handed it over. Eva saw him off as far as the top of the stairs—bob, bob, bob went his head on its downward course. At the turn, he revengefully said: “Well, good afternoon!”
“Stop!—one thing you must show me!”
“And what might that be?”
“How a kettle is boiled.”
There was no kettle. There was certainly one on the inventory, Mr. Denge said, but by an oversight that was in his office. The kettle was in his office? No, the inventory—this would be seen to tomorrow. Meanwhile, could Miss Trout make do with a saucepan?”
“From that, how am I to learn how to boil a kettle?”
Once he was gone, Eva wheeled out the bicycle and rode figures-of-eight on the asphalt sweep. She experimented with the 4-speed gear, tested the brakes and tried out the bell. This was a springlike evening, the dusk falling—when and if she took her thumb from the bell, birds, temporarily astounded, began to flute again. No other sound came from any part of the promontory … Becoming hungry, finally, she dismounted. Having installed the bicycle in its quarters—as new to it as hers, tonight, were going to be to her—she then homegoingly turned indoors.
The bay window at the seaward end of the drawing-room contained a love seat—originally, a gilded one. Fetching provisions, she brought them to this camp. She drank milk out of one of the cocktail glasses and repeatedly brought the knife to bear on the swiss roll: still more, an abyssmal contentment filled her. Day darkened over the Channel, the skyline vanished—then, at a moment, the window at the other end of the room sprang into diaphanous, distant illumination: street lamps along the twisted, bosky, misty and empty roads coming alight. The faint shape of the window, enmeshed in branches, was cast over far-away chairs and parquet.
Eva was glad, later, of this ghostly give-off from civilisation, reflected
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