A Game of Hide and Seek (33 page)

Betsy whitened and then frowned. ‘You can't,' she suddenly said.

‘I am afraid it is rather disappointing.'

‘How
could
you? What can I do? What will happen to me?'

‘You'll be all right now.'

‘I won't be. I'm not. I can't ever be left on my own like that. Why? Why must you?'

‘I think I should make a change.'

‘Where are you going then?'

Miss Bell stared ahead of her at the long, deserted street which appeared as dull as her own future.

‘I don't know.'

Betsy walked on in a stubborn silence.

‘I know I can trust you,' Miss Bell said. ‘None of the others must know . . . I have no choice, you see. Miss Anstruther has asked me to – to make a change.'

‘Why should she?'

‘Learning and teaching are two different things. I could learn, but I cannot teach; so there is nothing I can do with what I know.'

‘You taught me everything.'

‘But the others learnt nothing, and you would have done as well, or better, with someone else . . . the results were bad and discipline worse . . . you know yourself how noisy the classes have sometimes been . . .'

‘But I didn't guess . . . if we had known . . . I wish I had made them stop . . . but sometimes I was as bad myself. How can you forgive us?'

‘Easily. There is scarcely anything to forgive. You only took advantage of a fault that was in me. Girls don't respect learning. It was all I had.'

She would not say that Miss Anstruther had complained of Betsy's high marks – ‘not that one is never satisfied . . . but a better
average
result . . . one doesn't care to see favourites made . . . and it has been bad for the girl's nerves. Never concentrate on one child to the exclusion of the others . . .'

One afternoon Betsy was seen leaving school late, red-eyed: Miss Bell soon after. Miss Anstruther liked to have her girls going about the school safely in droves and was annoyed that one should be seen in the town with a swollen face and wearing the school hat-band.

‘But if you aren't good at teaching here, why should you be better at it somewhere else?' Betsy asked, brutal in her dismay.

Miss Bell gave a faint, prim smile. ‘I must put more into it next time, I can see that.' ‘And will never grow fond of any of them,' she thought.

At the sight of the room, Harriet felt a dismay so private, so profound that she could scarcely breathe: it was a fit culmination to such a journey; a destiny, as well as a destination.

An ancient gas-fire stood in front of a coal-grate, without concealing the litter of match-sticks and cigarette-ends behind. She found a shilling for the slot and put a match between the broken ribs, but she felt that for all the blue, roaring light that shot upwards the room would never warm.

She knelt on the mangy rug and shivered, certain that not Vesey or anybody else would ever be able to stop her doing so.

The meeting with him after so many months had been a pain in itself; the first shock of non-recognition, and his altered looks. She had thrown her suitcase into the back of his borrowed car with a shamed self-consciousness. ‘It is all so awkward and premeditated,' she apologised.

‘It certainly could not have been
more
premeditated,' Vesey said. ‘Or not, at least, by me.'

He was a bad driver. She began to wonder how often he had done it before, he so quickened his pace at corners as if to get round them quickly. She held to the side of the car and thought how sad and humiliating it would be for Charles if she were killed in such circumstances. ‘I haven't much petrol,' Vesey said. ‘In which direction have you fewest friends? Berkshire? Oxfordshire?'

‘All my relations live in Oxfordshire, and Charles has friends in Reading.'

‘Surrey?'

‘Surrey would be lovely. There is only Aunt Ethel at Camberley, and she is bed-ridden.'

It had begun to rain. When they stopped for a drink, he ordered large ones as if in despair. She noticed his shortness of breath, his fagged look. Worry seemed to lie down in her like a tired animal.

‘Well, Harriet, cheer up. Surely with such wickedness in mind, you should be gayer?'

‘I think you look ill, Vesey.'

‘Yes, I had 'flu.'

‘How long ago?'

‘I think it was about yesterday,' he said carelessly.

A drizzling rain veiled the countryside. As they drove on, the architecture grew more depressing, thrusting out gables and turrets amongst monkey-puzzle trees and laurels.

A great insistence on private-property spread about a rash of white notices. In every copse, trespassers were warned; every bank of rhododendrons was protected; little patches of grass were enclosed with posts and swinging chains; public-houses united in an onslaught of hostility to charabancs. Little tea-shops called ‘Pantries' or ‘Kitchens' abounded. It could not have been more disenchanting. Vesey was nervous for her: she, for Vesey. Both dreaded the other's depression.

Crouching over the gas-fire, she was near to tears, and felt that soon she would be nearer. To steady herself, she began to walk about the room. At every step she took, the great wardrobe creaked. She could see herself in its filmed mirror; anxious; tense; her hands clasping her elbows tightly; her shoulders hunched up. She saw so clearly that her youth was gone. Her body had bloomed and had faded. She brought to Vesey all the signs of middle-age, the blurred outlines and the dullness of the flesh. She thought of undressing at night, her waist pinched, her sides creased and reddened from her corset; the brightness of girlhood softened, dimmed.

When Vesey came in, she could not glance at him, but kept her eyes on the fire and her hands spread out before it. She was afraid lest he should mention signing the hotel register or discuss plans. She was conscious of a curious dichotomy, and felt that one half of her must shield the more sensitive: her mind spoke with both a brutal voice and with pleading.

Vesey sat in one of the uncurling wicker-chairs and stared at her.

‘It is a funny place,' he said. ‘Or I hope it is funny. If you could see the funny side of it, Harriet, it would be a great help to both of us. That long laurel drive tempted us here. We thought we should be hidden and safe here, just because it lay well back from the road.'

Harriet began to walk about the room.

‘We are behaving with infinite absurdity,' Vesey said.

‘Why?'

‘We are frightened of one another.'

‘If Charles telephones, I shall say I was at Kitty's . . .'

She pushed open a window and looked down into the garden. Rain fell loudly on the laurels. Below were some wet bushes with soft white fruit like camphor balls all over them. She could hear cars swishing past on the main road. It was a dead part of the day and seemed to be no time at all.

‘How different when we were young,' Vesey said. ‘We never had weather like this . . .'

‘I walked past Caroline's house in the summer. There were new people there. They had painted it outside and mended the fence. Different curtains seemed strange . . . it was all somehow snubbing and upsetting . . . people always seem bumptious and inconsiderate when they move into someone else's house . . . I mean, a house where someone else has lived a long time.'

‘Every lick of paint is a reproach,' Vesey agreed. ‘Darling, I am going to take you home again.'

She turned away from the window and stared at him.

‘You don't really want to stay, do you?' he asked.

‘I'm sorry, Vesey. Oh, I am only nervy. It has been so difficult to arrange. I kept thinking that at the last moment Charles wouldn't go: Betsy would come back too early; or Elke. There were so many things that could go wrong . . .'

‘There still are, you think.'

She sat on the edge of the bed, and looked so disconsolate that he went over and sat beside her.

‘If only we were young again!' she said in a tired voice. ‘And might have a second chance.'

‘I think perhaps this is supposed to be it,' he said doubtfully.

‘There aren't second chances; except by ruining other people . . .'

‘Someone has to be ruined.'

‘I can't choose that it shall be someone else.'

‘I hate self-sacrifice. Of all things, I suspect it most.'

‘That's just the sort of thing people say.'

‘This pink sooty bedroom doesn't help us,' he tried to comfort her. ‘All the same, I won't allow you to stay. I don't know how I ever thought I could. I just wanted to have you till the last moment.'

‘I don't know what you mean by “the last moment”.'

‘Dear Harriet, I'm going away. My father is sending me to South Africa.'

‘To South Africa!'

‘You may well be amazed. I used to say it would be the last place I would go to; I do hope that's not so. My father, of course, is naturally inclined to such a business-man's paradise and to those squalid politics. When I see other people treated badly, I shall begin to be glad that he was not much worse to me than he was.'

‘This isn't true!'

‘Yes.'

‘Then why tell me only now?'

‘This week-end is too great a risk to run, for someone who must go away so soon. Even I find I cannot allow you to throw away so much, for nothing.'

‘I didn't know you'd seen your father. Are you so ill?'

‘The part I thought I might get, I didn't get. Yes, I am rather ill. I hope I seem pathetic to you. I hope I arouse your maternal instincts . . .'

‘You see, you don't wear enough clothes.' Trying to convince them both that his negligence alone was the cause of his illness, she laid her hands against his thin shirt and could feel his warm chest through it. ‘October, and you have no vest! How could you, Vesey? And you are always catching cold. You worry me so very much. But I simply can't believe that you will go away.'

‘Suppose Charles telephoned tonight and you were not there; and returned home, and you were not there. What would happen to you then? If he found out about us being here in this horrid room?'

‘Don't frighten me!'

‘When I have to go away, and have nothing to offer, and cannot look after you, I mustn't endanger what little you have. That would have been clear long ago to an honourable person. And now even I have caught the idea . . .'

‘Please stop saying “even I”. Both you and I decide things . . . decided this . . .'

‘I have nothing to lose.'

‘We shall never be together then?'

‘Have you ever been happy when we were?'

‘Sometimes when we were children: when we danced: the night in the fog in London . . .'

He put his hands under her arms and drew her down to lie beside him, on the bed. The rain hit the windows like rice; the fire roared hollowly; the autumn afternoon discoloured into darkness. She shut her eyes and tried to go back to her girlhood and the empty house, with sun coming into the dusty room. Vesey had said: ‘I wish the bed were still here. We could draw the curtains round, and lie down side by side.'

They lay side by side and Vesey stroked her hair away from her temples. When they kissed, she could imagine, in the darkness under her eyelids, the evening sun, the empty air. Perhaps from below, in the tangled garden little Joseph would begin to call them. ‘Vesey! Harriet!' She saw him running on the rough lawns, his hands cupped at his mouth, calling ‘Coo-ee! Coo-ee!' as they did when they had played hide-and-seek.

‘What are you thinking?' Vesey asked. He took her wrist and shook it gently.

When Charles had gone, Kitty said: ‘I didn't understand one word of all that. I could only gather that he is rather angry with you.'

She insulated herself with boredom.

‘He has, I suppose, every reason to be.'

‘What will you do?'

‘If only we could have had a little longer. Do? I don't know. I'm as deeply in as Reggie Beckett.'

‘How did Charles find out?'

‘One of his clients . . . when nothing in the way of dividends was forthcoming, he threatened to go to Charles. Things promised no better; so he did.'

‘Poor Charles!' Kitty said easily.

‘I didn't mean any of this to happen. It seemed foolproof. A great shock to him, of course . . .'

‘Where has he gone now? I thought he was off somewhere for the week-end. A conference, was it?'

‘I think he went home instead.'

Kitty thought: ‘Well, I hope he won't get another shock there.' She said nothing. While they awaited catastrophe, she thought she would varnish her nails. She looked a picture of perfect calm; but she was inwardly disturbed by all the questions that she would not deign to ask. She thought: ‘I married Tiny for better, for worse; but I thought “worse” was just Tiny himself; not any added calamity. It will be too bad if I am to be poor, or disgraced as well.'

Charles had not looked forward to telling Harriet the bad news; but when he found that he could not, he was quite frustrated. Very rarely had he been in the house when it was empty. He discovered that his steps on the polished boards had a different sound and that a closed smell pervaded the rooms.

Threads of rain appeared on the windows. He could not understand why the fires were built in the grates, but were unlit, and wondered where Harriet was. He opened the engagement-book on her desk, but the week-end was blank.

When he found the cat shut in a shed with plates of food and her basket, he began to feel alarm. He went up to their bedroom and began to open drawers and look into the cupboards. Nothing seemed to be missing. Her pearls lay in their case; her diamond earrings in their box; her slippers by the fire. She had gone out, but perhaps only for a little while. As she was not at Kitty's, he telephoned his mother, whose insinuations tormented him.

He looked at the clock. He could not have a drink even, because it was not quite opening-time, and it would have seemed utterly debauched to him to begin before six o'clock. But as soon as the clock struck the hour, he poured himself a large glassful of gin and put it at one end of the piano and sat down to play. He played, he thought, with marked brilliance, although there were so many interruptions. He had to get up to draw the curtains and put a match to the fire, and fill his glass. At seven, his mother telephoned to ask if Harriet had returned. ‘You
are
a fool, Charles,' she told him. ‘I'll ring again in an hour.'