Titus Awakes

25

At Mrs Sempleton-Grove’s

TITUS JOINED HERBERT on the outside steps and they made their way down quiet side roads, past rather mean little terraced houses with blankets at windows, and broken panes of glass, peeling paint and neglected children looking out. From these dreary houses they turned at the end of the road and the whole house-scape changed to an elegance of white-painted houses, each front door painted a different colour and window boxes, a fantasy of colour and plant, set off like jewels by the whiteness of the bricks. An orderly world, at least from the outside, beautiful and cared for.

‘Well, it’s not far, old boy. I don’t think I’ll stay long – she won’t care anyway. She doesn’t fancy me – I’m a bit old hat – long in the tooth or what have you, but she’ll be an experience anyway.’

‘I’ve met many rich women, you know.’

‘I dare say you have, old boy. Still you never know, you never know.’

They made their way down a cul-de-sac, which was bounded by a very large four-storeyed house with an imposing portico and steps leading up to the front door, wrought-iron grilles at the windows, and a brass door knocker shaped like a tropical fish.

‘Here we are, old boy,’ said Herbert, as he tugged at the bell-pull, which sounded on the other side of the door with an imperiousness worthy of a dowager.

The door was opened by a youngish dark man, dressed in black tights and a black leather jacket. He was small and lithe, with the body of a dancer, and possessed what Titus thought was a rather withdrawn dignity, until he spoke, and his voice was high, thin and nasal.

‘This is Henry, Titus,’ said Herbert.

‘She’s expecting you,’ said Henry, with a rather unpleasant leer. ‘Go on up, ’erbert’ll take you. I’ve ’ad ’er malarkin’ about all day – spent the morning looking for a dress, upstairs, downstairs, in and out the window, she accused me of pinching it, as near as. Two hours, I was, lookin’ for the thing, and then you know what? She’d got it on all the time. I said to ’er, I’ve got better things to do than go looking all the morning for a dress you’re wearin’, but she said she thinks she’s in love. Well, you’ve a treat in store, Titus, and no mistake.’

Saying this, Henry did a little pirouette and a twist and a turn and, with an elegant gesture of his hands, pointed the way upstairs.

The hall was pale, the carpet was pale. The walls had alcoves in which were dark paintings, ornately framed. Huge vases of flowers, a spinet and a harpsichord, and delicate small tables of rosewood were scattered with consummate taste, and a lack of anyone loving or caring for them. A museum of taste and money, but no home.

A curved carpeted staircase with wrought-iron banisters led upstairs, and Herbert, whose exuberance seemed to have disappeared, led Titus up the staircase to the third door, on which he knocked.

A rather husky-dusky voice was heard. Whatever it said was not intelligible, but obviously enough for Herbert to obey its order.

He pushed open the door. The house seemed full of silence.

‘Come in, Titus,’ he said, in a voice so subdued that it was not recognisable.

They entered a very large room with four windows of excellent proportions which reached from floor to ceiling. This room was also full of furniture of great beauty and rarity.

The husky voice spoke again and at first Titus couldn’t make out where it came from. At the far end of the room was an enormous painted screen, which almost made another room, and Titus traced the voice to behind the screen.

Herbert led him over, then said, ‘I’ve brought Titus Groan to see you,’ and gently pushed Titus behind the screen.

Propped up on an ornate chaise longue, shaped rather like a royal barge, was Mrs Sempleton-Grove, with her feet crossed.

Titus saw a woman whose beauty seemed to be draining away almost by the minute. He thought she was about seventy years old, with bright yellow hair dragged back into a ponytail and little curls arranged with disorder on her forehead, and drifting like gossamer around her ears. Black eyelashes of an inordinate length and thickness fluttered as she lifted her eyes (which were of a surprisingly pale blue) to Titus. She didn’t speak, but gestured to him to sit on a frail gold chair that stood at the end of the chaise longue. She took no notice whatsoever of Herbert, who, with all personality dead as the bee when its sting has gone, drifted out of the room as silently as a priest reading his breviary. Titus sat without speaking and looked at his hostess more closely. She was dressed most inappropriately in what looked like a little girl’s pink blouse with big puffed sleeves and incongruously she picked up a large pair of knitting needles and began to knit with what Titus could only think was more show than expertise.

‘Well . . . I’m in love, you see,’ said Mrs Sempleton-Grove, or that is what Titus thought had been said, for her voice was husky and slurred, as though from drugs or drink.

‘Ring the bell, Titus.’

Titus looked around for a bell and found one at the side of the marble mantelpiece. He walked to the other end of the room and pushed the bell. He heard no sound, but his quick perception obviously satisfied Mrs Sempleton-Grove, for she made no remark as he regained his frail golden chair.

‘Oh, do give me my reticule,’ she said, pointing to a large oblong bag of gros point, which lay by her feet at the end of the chaise longue. As he handed it to her she let fall her ponytail, and her rather sparse hair drifted untidily around her face, not adding to the youthfulness that was being so desperately nurtured. She sought in her reticule and after a few moments of objects being stirred round and round as though they were ingredients of a stew, she brought forth a small hairbrush, a large comb, blue ribbon and a silver hand mirror.

Titus watched, as he had watched other women of all ages and degrees of beauty. Mrs Sempleton-Grove brushed her lacklustre hair and pulled it into two bunches on either side of her face, and round each bunch she tied a blue ribbon, which might have been entrancing on a small girl.

As she finished, the door opened and a trolley appeared, rattling cups and plates. Henry manoeuvred it with evident distaste, rather as some men might on having to steer a pram containing their offspring reluctantly past their erstwhile drinking companions.

‘Don’t say thank you, then,’ he said, as he left the trolley, becalmed, by Titus’s side, and with a pout went to the door. Before closing it completely he put his head round the corner and stuck his tongue out.

‘Do pour the tea, Titus, and I’ll have some of that chocolate cake, and can you bring that cushion and put it behind my back too.’

Titus did all these things. It didn’t worry him in the least. Spoiled women were usually rapacious in their demands, particularly if they wanted something in return.

She didn’t suggest he should have some tea, or cake, but sat silently sipping and eating her own.

‘Herbert tells me you might sit for me.’ At least that is how Titus interpreted the rather blurred sentence addressed to him.

He really couldn’t be bothered to say yes or no, or why or when, so he stayed silent, which did not discomfort Mrs Sempleton-Grove at all.

‘After tea, I will show you my paintings.’

Titus had not known his hostess for more than half an hour but he was already managing to translate her muffled rather inconsequential conversation into intelligibility.

‘Thank you, Titus,’ she said as she handed him her cup and plate, which he took and replaced on the trolley. She held her hand out to him to help her off her chaise longue, then stood a little shakily by his side. As she turned, he noticed that her blouse, at the back, did not meet where the buttons should be, but was held together by one safety pin attached to another, until they met at the opposite edge where the buttonholes were, rather like a hastily constructed bridge. She was of moderate height, and as she walked further into the room Titus saw that she had the slim legs of a girl.

She went out of the large drawing room and walked along the corridor to another door. Titus followed her, assuming that that was to be his role.

The room they entered was very different from the elegant drawing room. It had the trappings of comfort: a thick carpet, warmth, and all the ease of a dilettante studio, compared to the working-living studio of Ruth’s. Magnificent easels and equipment, Titus imagined, for the many media an artist might turn to, and all of finest quality. On the walls were framed paintings, leaving little space between. Titus knew very little about painting, but enough to realise that the paintings on the walls were slight.

‘I’m a bad painter. Yes, I know you think so too. But I love painting, Titus. You are blaming me for having all these things, while real painters can’t afford them. Don’t judge me too soon. Even if I’d been poor, I’d have been a bad painter, but at least I’m a bad painter on good materials, and I know a good painter when I see one. Herbert is worse than I am, but he has to paint to live, so there you are. I’ll show you his murals in a minute.’

Titus realised there was very little need for him to speak, or even to listen, but despite any preconceived notion he might have formed of Mrs Sempleton-Grove as a rich spoiled woman, he felt it was wrong to do so. There was a kindness in her, and he felt he had little enough to be proud of in his own behaviour towards people to start judging others.

She led Titus out of her painting room up a small flight of stairs and into a room that in earlier days might have housed servants. Even so, its proportions were elegant, but what had been made of it was less so. The background colour was white, and the murals that enclosed the room, and made it rather claustrophobic, were crudely painted. Mainly figurative, and depicting men, all young, all handsome in their different way. Titus recognised Henry in some of them, in various dancing postures.

‘Herbert thinks this is what I want, you know, Titus. He’s done some drawings of you – that’s why I wanted to meet you. He can get a likeness, but he’s crude. Only it was because I thought you looked like a man that I wanted to see you. The only men I see now aren’t. The trouble is I can see myself as I really am, and it doesn’t make getting through the day any easier. I know I make myself into a freak. I’m trying to stay young, and the more I do, the more ludicrous I look, but I won’t give up. Once, when I went into a room, everyone looked at me, but it wasn’t to laugh. Every day was an adventure. I had an ulterior motive in getting Herbert to bring you here, but having met you, I know just how wrong I was. Whoever you are, you wouldn’t rise to my bait. I’m surrounded by Henrys. They come and they go, and they take all they can while they can. Not that I’m easy. I can make life hell for them and they don’t stay long, just long enough for us to hate each other, despise each other, then another Henry comes. How would you feel about staying for a little while? You won’t have to do anything of any sort.’

‘I’m not really someone who stays anywhere long, you know,’ said Titus, almost the first sentence he had spoken since coming to Mrs Sempleton-Grove’s.

‘My dear Titus, I had already realised that. That’s what makes you so attractive. All the same, won’t you let me do a painting of you? Apart from everything else it will make Henry so annoyed. He must fancy you himself. I know he put his tongue out at me when he left the room. He always does, and he thinks I don’t know. There have been so many Henrys. He’ll go when he’s got all he thinks he can get out of me. The trouble is I know it all, but they’re the only kind of people who’ll put up with me. I don’t like being alone. It makes me think too much. Even if I’d been ten or twenty years younger, I couldn’t have seduced you. When I was a girl a middle-aged man said he loved me for what I would become, and now I’m awaiting a young man who will fall in love with me for what I was!’

Titus remained silent.

‘You beast. I won’t say goodbye, then.’