“Yes, it’s the only nice one I’ve got.
I thought it was too humiliating for you to have to be seen with such a little drab as I was looking.
After all, the least a handsome young man in beautiful clothes can ask is that when he goes into a restaurant with a woman people shouldn’t say: how can he go about with a slut who looks as though she were wearing the cast-off clothes of a maid of all work?
I must at least try to be a credit to you.”
Charley laughed.
There was really something rather likeable about her.
“Well, we’d better go out and get you something to eat.
I’ll sit with you.
If I know anything about your appetite you could eat a horse.”
They started off in high spirits.
He drank a whiskey and soda and smoked his pipe while Lydia ate a dozen oysters, a beefsteak and some fried potatoes.
She told him at greater length of her visit to her Russian friends.
She was greatly concerned at their situation.
There was no money except the little the children earned.
One of these days Paul would get sick of doing his share and would disappear into that equivocal night life of Paris, to end up, if he was lucky, when he had lost his youth and looks, as a waiter in a disreputable hotel.
Alexey was growing more and more of a soak and even if by chance he got a job would never be able to hold it.
Evgenia had no longer the courage to withstand the difficulties that beset her; she had lost heart.
There was no hope for any of them.
“You see, it’s twenty years since they left Russia.
For a long time they thought there’d be a change there and they’d go back, but now they know there’s no chance.
It’s been hard on people like that, the revolution; they’ve got nothing to do now, they and all their generation, but to die.”
But it occurred to Lydia that Charley could not be much interested in people whom he had not even seen.
She could not know that while she was talking to him about her friends he was telling himself uneasily that, if he guessed aright what was in Simon’s mind, it was just such a fate that he was preparing for him, for his father, mother and sister, and for their friends.
Lydia changed the subject.
“And what have you been doing with yourself this afternoon?
Did you go and see any pictures?”
“No.
I went to see Simon.”
Lydia was looking at him with an expression of indulgent interest, but when he answered her question, she frowned.
“I don’t like your friend Simon,” she said.
“What is it that you see in him?”
“I’ve known him since I was a kid.
We were at school together and at Cambridge.
He’s been my friend always.
Why don’t you like him?”
“He’s cold, calculating and inhuman.”
“I think you’re wrong there.
No one knows better than I do that he’s capable of great affection.
He’s a lonely creature.
I think he hankers for a love that he can never arouse.”
Lydia’s eyes shone with mockery, but, as ever, there was in it a rueful note.
“You’re very sentimental.
How can anyone expect to arouse love who isn’t prepared to give himself?
In spite of all the years you’ve known him I wonder if you know him as well as I do.
He comes a lot to the Serail; he doesn’t often go up with a girl and then not from desire, but from curiosity.
Madame makes him welcome, partly because he’s a journalist and she likes to keep in with the press, and partly because he sometimes brings foreigners who drink a lot of champagne.
He likes to talk to us and it never enters his head that we find him repulsive.”
“Remember that if he knew that he wouldn’t be offended.
He’d only be curious to know why.
He has no vanity.”