He undressed her, and an incident occurred which she was to remember always. She stood in her slip, shy and unaccustomed, and as he began to remove his own clothes, she turned to get into the bed. But he caught her by the arm, and, removing the slip, stepped backward and looked long at her nakedness.
“You must get used to being looked at,” said he. “It is beautifying to be seen naked by those we love, and the body grows ugly if it is always huddled under clothes. Nakedness is always honesty, and sometimes it is beauty: but even the finest clothes have a hint of vulgarity. Never make love with your clothes on; only very common people — really common people — do it.”
It was a long night of love, and when at last Revelstoke slept, Monica lay beside him feeling triumphant and re-born. He was hers. Though he had spoken coldly to her, and bargained, and said flatly that he did not love her, she was confident. She would win him at last. He should be brought to say it. He would love her, and tell her so.
[THREE]
What the critics said was a matter of concern to all of the menagerie, and it was during the week that their opinions appeared, and were chewed over at Thirty-two Tite Street, that Monica’s new relationship with Giles became apparent to the inner circle of Lantern.
It was Persis who was first to learn of it. The day after the party in Dean’s Yard she strolled round to Tite Street at about four o’clock in the afternoon, expecting a brief quarrel and a reconciliation. But when she climbed the stair to Giles’ apartment she found the outer door closed.
This was something unknown to her. Giles never closed that door except as a signal that he was working, and was not to be disturbed under any circumstances. Since she had known him, he had never closed it except when she was in the flat, and very rarely then. She could not conceive that it was meant to exclude her, so she tried the handle. The door was locked. This certainly did not mean that Giles was from home, for he seldom troubled to lock his flat. She knocked, peremptorily. There was a stirring inside, so she gave the door a hearty kick. It opened, and Monica appeared in the crack, dressed in slacks and with a scarf tied around her head; in her hand was a mop.
“Shhh!” said Monica laying a finger to her smiling lips.
“What d’you mean, ‘Shh!’ ”
“I mean Giles is sleeping, and you’ll disturb him.”
“Sleeping! And what are you doing, may I ask?”
“Cleaning the kitchen,” said Monica; “somebody’s left it in an awful mess. If you like to come back later this evening, I’m sure he’ll be pleased to see you.”
The door closed. If Persis had been the swooning kind, she would have swooned with rage. As it was, she gave the door a few more kicks, and stamped down the stairs.
The encounter gave a new dimension to Monica’s happiness. She had driven Giles from Courtfield Gardens that morning before seven o’clock, for she did not want him to be found there by Mrs Merry, and she had no idea how long the landlady would sleep. Shortly after the shops opened she had followed him to Tite Street in a taxi, bearing with her brooms, soaps and cleansers, as well as the necessaries for a splendid breakfast. She served him his food on a tray, kissed him, and told him to go back to sleep, as she meant to be busy for several hours. He was too astonished to resist.
“My God, I have fallen into the hands of a Good Woman,” he said, as she left the room, but she merely smiled as she closed his door.
Then began such a ridding-out as the flat had never known since Giles had lived there. All Ma Gall’s hatred of slopdolly housekeeping, transfigured by love, was unleashed in Monica; she shook things, beat them, scrubbed and scoured them, rubbed, polished and dusted them; wearing rubber gloves, and using lye and a knife, she scraped the rancid and inveterate grease out of the stove; she washed every dish; she got rid of a large, reeking jam-pail, which had been the flat’s principal ash-tray for some months and had never been emptied. She washed Pyewacket’s dish, to the cat’s astonishment and displeasure. She raised an extraordinary dust, and worked miracles. When she was finished, after six hours’ toil, the flat was only moderately dirty — which was cleaner than it had been since she had known it. It smelled better. It looked better. But except for the dirt, nothing in it was altered.
Monica was too wise to move things about, or attempt to impose order on Giles’ chaos. She was content to clean up the chaos, but not to alter it. Music and books still heaped the top of the piano, but they no longer blackened the hands. The large trestle table which was covered with Lantern papers was still heaped high, but the heaps were neater around the edges. The bathroom was gleaming, and some underthings of Persis’, which customarily hung on a piece of twine from corner to corner, had been removed, and were awaiting removal in a bag in the kitchen. And the kitchen — its stench no longer caught at the throat, the dirty linoleum and the foul grey mess beneath it had been removed from the drying board; two tins of cleanser had gone into the waste-pipe so that when it belched (as it did whenever water went down it) it belched a harsh, carbolic smell, and not a breath from the charnel-house. All the things for which Giles cared nothing had been cleaned and put straight; all things for which he cared had been cleaned and left in familiar disorder.
And to cap it all, Persis had come and been repulsed. Monica was happy as any bride in her dream house. She drew a bath in the clean bathroom, lay down in it, and sang a few snatches recollected from The Discoverie of Witchcraft.
“I have been gathering Wolves’ hairs
The mad Dog’s foam, and the Adder’s ears;
The spurgings of a dead man’s Eyes,
And all since the Evening Star did rise.”
It was not ideal as an outpouring of the joy of love (though it was not without some reference to her house-cleaning work) and she did not sing it in the hope of catching Giles’ ear. It was a simple burst of delight. But Giles put his head around the door.
“Didn’t know you could sing any of that,” said he.
Remembering his words of the night before, she did not make a show of concealment, but lay still in the water.
“I can sing all the soprano part. Do you want tea? I’ll be out in a minute.”
She could not bring herself to use the unpleasant towel, nor yet the shower curtain, so she had to dry herself on her head-scarf and her handkerchief, and remain damp where these would not suffice. She did not care. She sang as she mopped, patted and fanned herself dry:
“A Murderer, yonder, was hung in Chains,
The Sun and the Wind had shrunk his Veins;
I bit off a Sinew; I clipp’d his Hair,
I brought off his Rags, that danc’d i’ th’ Air.”
“You’ve been busy,” said Giles, when she took tea into the workroom.
Monica made no reply. She had made several resolutions as she worked, and one of them was that she would never draw attention to anything she did for him, or seem to seek praise. Patient Griselda was only one of the parts she meant to play in the life of Giles Revelstoke and it was certainly not the principal one. Nor did she mean to camp in that flat. So when she had fed him the sort of tea he liked — large chunks of thickly buttered bread smeared with jam, strong tea and soggy plumcake — she said that she would have to go, as she had work to do for Molloy.
“There’ll probably be people looking in during the evening,” said she. “Shall I get the papers and see if there is anything about the broadcast? Persis was here earlier, and I gathered that she will be back again.”
“Very likely,” said Giles. But as soon as she had gone, he burst into loud laughter. He was thinking of Persis.
[FOUR]
When Monica returned at nine o’clock, the menagerie was assembled, and it was characteristic of them that they all said they wanted to see the papers, but none of them had bought any. When she appeared with all the principal ones, fresh and clean, they fell upon them eagerly, and rumpled them, and read pieces aloud derisively, to show how superior they were to the events of the day. But of the lot, only two papers had brief references to the broadcast.