year,” she said, “I am supposed to be returning to Africa.”
Earlier Chakata had written, “Old Tuys has had a stroke. He is up now, but very feeble in his mind.” Since then, he had seemed less keen on Daphne’s return. Daphne thought this odd, for previously he had been wont to write when sending her news of the farm, “You will see many changes when you return,” or, when mentioning affairs at the dorp, “There’s a new doctor. You’ll like him.” But in his last letter he said, “There have been changes in the educational system. You will find many changes if you return.” Sometimes she thought Chakata was merely becoming forgetful. “I’m trying to make the most of my stay in England,” she wrote, “but travelling is very expensive. I doubt if I shall see anything of Europe before my return.” Chakata, in his next letter, did not touch on the question. He said, “Old Tuys just sits about on the stoep. Poor old chap, he is incapable of harm now. He is rather pathetic on the whole.”
At the end of the summer Daphne’s lover took his wife to Torquay. Daphne wandered about Kensington alone for a few days, then went back to Pooh-bah. She took him for walks. She asked him to lend her some money so that she might spend a week in Paris. He replied that he didn’t really see the necessity. Next day the housekeeper told her of a man in the village who would give her thirty pounds for the poodle. Daphne had grown fond of the dog. She refused the offer, then wrote to her lover in Torquay to ask him to lend her the money to go to Paris. She received a postcard from Martin, with no mention of her request. “Will be back in London 1st week October,” he wrote on the card.
Term started at the beginning of October. That week Martin’s wife turned up and demanded of Pooh-bah Daphne’s whereabouts. She was directed to the school, and on confronting Daphne there, made a scene.
Later, the headmistress was highly offensive to Daphne, who straight-way resigned. The headmistress relented, for she was short of staff. “I am only thinking of the girls,” she explained. Hugh, the visiting art master, suggested to Daphne that she might find a better job in London. She left that night. Pooh-bah was furious. “Who’s going to attend to things on Mrs Vesey’s day off?” Daphne realized why he had not wished her to go to Paris.
“You could marry her,” Daphne suggested. “Then she’d be on duty all the time.”
He did this in fact, within a month. Daphne settled in a room in Bayswater, poorly furnished for the price; but on the other hand the landlady was willing to take the poodle.
Martin Grindy traced her to that place.
“I don’t like your wife,” she said.
“I’m afraid she got hold of your letter. What can I give you? What can I do for you? What can I possibly say?”
* * *
Besides teaching art to schoolchildren, Hugh Fuller painted. He took Daphne to his studio in Earl’s Court, where she sat and reflectively pulled the stuffing even further out of the torn upholstery of the armchair.
Quite decidedly, she said, she would not come and live with him, but she hoped they would always be friends.
He thought he had made a mistake in putting the proposition to her before making love, so he made moves to repair his error.
Daphne screamed. He looked surprised.
“You see,” she explained, “I’ve got nerves, frightfully, at the moment.”
He took her frequently to Soho, and sometimes to parties where, for the first time, she entered a world in the existence of which she had previously disbelieved. Here the poets did have long hair, and painters wore beards, and what was more, two of the men wore bracelets and earrings. One group of four girls lived all together in two rooms with a huge old negress. Among Hugh’s acquaintance were those who looked upon him with scorn for his art teaching, those who considered this activity harmless in view of his lack of talent, and those who admired him for his industry as much as his generosity.
Daphne found this company very relaxing to her nerves.
No one asked her the usual questions about Africa, and what was more surprising, no one made advances to her, not even Hugh. Daphne was teaching at a Council school. On half-holidays in spring she would sometimes meet Hugh and his friends, and regardless of the staring streets, would straggle with them along the pavements, leap on and off buses, to the current art show. There, it was clear to Daphne that Hugh’s friends occupied a world which she could never penetrate. But she came to be more knowing about pictures. It may have been the art master in Hugh, as one of his friends suggested, but he loved to inform Daphne as to form, line, light, masses, pigments.
Her cousin Mole looked her up one day. He told her that Michael, the silly son of that Greta Casse at Regent’s Park, had married a woman ten years his senior, and was emigrating to the Colony. Daphne was affected with an attack of longing for the Colony, more dire than any of those bouts of homesickness which she had yet experienced.
“I shall have to go back there soon,” she said to Mole. “I’ve saved enough for the fare. It’s a good thought to know I can go any time I please.”
One night Daphne and Hugh were drinking in a pub in Soho with his friends, when suddenly there fell a hush. Daphne looked round to see why everyone’s eyes were on a slight very dark man in his early forties, who had just entered the bar. After a moment, everyone started talking again, some giggled, and continued to glance at the man who had come in.
“That’s Ralph Mercer,” one of Hugh’s friends whispered to Daphne.
“Who?”
“Ralph Mercer, the novelist. He was at school with Hugh, I believe. Rather a popular writer.”
“Oh, I see,” said Daphne, “he looks as if he might be popular.”
Hugh was collecting drinks at the bar. The novelist saw him, and they spoke together for a while. Presently Hugh brought him to be introduced. The novelist sat next to Daphne. “You remind me of someone I used to know from Africa,” he said.
“I come from Africa,” said Daphne.
Hugh asked him, “Often come here?”
“No, it was just, you know, I was passing …”
One of the girls chuckled, a deep masculine sound. “A whim,” she said.
When he had gone Hugh said, “He’s rather sweet, isn’t he, considering how famous …”
“Did you hear him,” said an oldish man, “when he said, ‘Speaking as an artist …’ Rather funny, that, I thought.”
“Well, he is an artist in the sense,” said Hugh, “that –” But his words were obliterated by the others’ derision.
A few days later Hugh said to Daphne, “I’ve heard from Ralph Mercer.”
“Who?”
“That novelist we met in the pub. He writes to know if I’ll give him your address.”
“Why’s that, do you think?”
“He likes you, I suppose.”
“Is
