The Hollow

She interrupted him.

‘I only want to understand some of the terms you use—enough so as to understand you without making you stop to explain everything the whole time. Go on. I’m following you all right.’

‘Well,’ he said doubtfully, ‘remember Scobell’s unsound.’ He went on talking. He talked for two hours and a half. Reviewing the setbacks, analysing the possibilities, outlining possible theories. He was hardly conscious of Henrietta’s presence. And yet, more than once, as he hesitated, her quick intelligence took him a step on the way, seeing, almost before he did, what he was hesitating to advance. He was interested now, and his belief in himself was creeping back. He had been right—the main theory was correct—and there were ways, more ways than one, of combating the toxic symptoms.

And then, suddenly, he was tired out. He’d got it all clear now. He’d get on to it tomorrow morning. He’d ring up Neill, tell him to combine the two solutions and try that. Yes, try that. By God, he wasn’t going to be beaten!

‘I’m tired,’ he said abruptly. ‘My God, I’m tired.’

And he had flung himself down and slept—slept like the dead.

He had awoken to find Henrietta smiling at him in the morning light and making tea and he had smiled back at her.

‘Not at all according to plan,’ he said.

‘Does it matter?’

‘No. No. You are rather a nice person, Henrietta.’ His eye went to the bookcase. ‘If you’re interested in this sort of thing, I’ll get you the proper stuff to read.’

‘I’m not interested in this sort of thing. I’m interested in you, John.’

‘You can’t read Scobell.’ He took up the offending volume. ‘The man’s a charlatan.’

And she had laughed. He could not understand why his strictures on Scobell amused her so.

But that was what, every now and then, startled him about Henrietta. The sudden revelation, disconcerting to him, that she was able to laugh at him.

He wasn’t used to it. Gerda took him in deadly earnest. And Veronica had never thought about anything but herself. But Henrietta had a trick of throwing her head back, of looking at him through half-closed eyes, with a sudden tender half-mocking little smile, as though she were saying: ‘Let me have a good look at this funny person called John… Let me get a long way away and look at him…’

It was, he thought, very much the same as the way she screwed up her eyes to look at her work—or a picture. It was—damn it all—it was detached. He didn’t want Henrietta to be detached. He wanted Henrietta to think only of him, never to let her mind stray away from him.

(‘Just what you object to in Gerda, in fact,’ said his private imp, bobbing up again.)

The truth of it was that he was completely illogical. He didn’t know what he wanted.

(‘I want to go home.’ What an absurd, what a ridiculous phrase. It didn’t mean anything.)

In an hour or so at any rate he’d be driving out of London—forgetting about sick people with their faint sour ‘wrong’ smell…sniffing wood smoke and pines and soft wet autumn leaves… The very motion of the car would be soothing—that smooth, effortless increase of speed.

But it wouldn’t, he reflected suddenly, be at all like that because owing to a slightly strained wrist, Gerda would have to drive, and Gerda, God help her, had never been able to begin to drive a car! Every time she changed gear he would be silent, grinding his teeth together, managing not to say anything because he knew, by bitter experience, that when he did say anything Gerda became immediately worse. Curious that no one had ever been able to teach Gerda to change gear—not even Henrietta. He’d turned her over to Henrietta, thinking that Henrietta’s enthusiasm might do better than his own irritability.

For Henrietta loved cars. She spoke of cars with the lyrical intensity that other people gave to spring, or the first snow-drop.

‘Isn’t he a beauty, John? Doesn’t he just purr along?’ (For Henrietta’s cars were always masculine.) ‘He’ll do Bale Hill in third—not straining at all—quite effortlessly. Listen to the even way he ticks over.’

Until he had burst out suddenly and furiously:

‘Don’t you think, Henrietta, you could pay some attention to me and forget the damned car for a minute or two!’

He was always ashamed of these outbursts.

He never knew when they would come upon him out of a blue sky.

It was the same thing over her work. He realized that her work was good. He admired it—and hated it—at the same time.

The most furious quarrel he had had with her had arisen over that.

Gerda had said to him one day:

‘Henrietta has asked me to sit for her.’

‘What?’ His astonishment had not, if he came to think of it, been flattering. ‘You?’

‘Yes, I’m going over to the studio tomorrow.’

‘What on earth does she want you for?’

Yes, he hadn’t been very polite about it. But luckily Gerda hadn’t realized that fact. She had looked pleased about it. He suspected Henrietta of one of those insincere kindnesses of hers—Gerda, perhaps, had hinted that she would like to be modelled. Something of that kind.

Then, about ten days later, Gerda had shown him triumphantly a small plaster statuette.

It was a pretty thing—technically skilful like all Henrietta’s work. It idealized Gerda—and Gerda herself was clearly pleased about it.

‘I really think it’s rather charming, John.’

‘Is that Henrietta’s work? It means nothing—nothing at all. I don’t see how she came to do a thing like that.’

‘It’s different, of course, from her abstract work—but I think it’s good, John, I really do.’

He had said no more—after all, he didn’t want to spoil Gerda’s pleasure. But he tackled Henrietta about it at the first opportunity.

‘What did you want to make that silly thing of Gerda for? It’s unworthy of you. After all, you usually turn out decent stuff.’

Henrietta said slowly:

‘I didn’t think it was bad. Gerda seemed quite pleased.’

‘Gerda was delighted. She would be. Gerda doesn’t know art from a coloured photograph.’

‘It wasn’t bad art, John. It was just a portrait statuette—quite harmless and not at all pretentious.’

‘You don’t usually waste your time doing that kind of stuff—’

He broke off, staring at a wooden figure about five feet high.

‘Hallo, what’s this?’

‘It’s for the International Group. Pearwood. The Worshipper.’