Crampton Hodnet (20 page)

As he got near the end of his journey he began to feel that he didn’t at all want to go to France. His friend, the Reverend Theodore James, was rather too serious a companion for a holiday. He couldn’t think now why he had suggested that he should join him. It wasn’t as if they had ever liked each other. Still, it was too late to do anything about it now, and at least they would be able to have a good talk about old times, rejoic-ing over those of their contemporaries who had not fulfilled their early promise and belittling those who had.

Ought one to dress up as if for a ceremonial occasion? Miss Morrow wondered, as she got ready in her bedroom. Was her brown marocain good enough, or should she have bought a flowered chiffon from Webber’s? They had been showing some nice ones in the window. She set her beige straw hat firmly on her head, took her gloves and a clean handkerchief out of a drawer, and hurried downstairs.

Miss Doggett was already waiting in the hall. She was dressed in black, and her sombre magnificence made Miss Morrow feel light and summery and somehow inadequate.

‘Have you got my smelling salts?’ Miss Doggett asked. ‘Give them to me. I may need them.’

‘Here you are,’ said Miss Morrow. ‘Would it perhaps be better if I didn’t come?’

‘Of course you must come,’ said Miss Doggett sharply. ‘Your being there will make no difference one way or the other.’

Miss Morrow walked meekly along by Miss Doggett’s side, a comforting neutral thing, without form or sex. There was something so restful in being somebody whose presence made no difference one way or the other.

‘There will be no need for you to say anything,’ said Miss Doggett, with her hand on the Clevelands’ gate, i shall confront Francis with the facts and then wait for him to defend himself. If he can,’ she added grimly.

Miss Morrow made no comment. She moved as if in a dream. Somehow, in spite of everything, she couldn’t believe that there was
really
anything in it. Things like that could happen and perhaps they even did, but not in North Oxford, to people one knew.

‘Well, Margaret,’ said Miss Doggett in a falsely cheerful tone, ‘we thought we’d come in and see you.’

‘How nice of you,’ said Mrs. Cleveland. ‘I’m sorry the room’s so untidy.’

‘Good evening, Aunt Maude and Miss Morrow,’ said Mr. Cleveland, who had come into the room carrying a large enamel bowl full of gooseberries. ‘Have you come to help with these things?’

‘I’m making Francis useful.’ Mrs. Cleveland laughed. ‘He’s going to top and tail gooseberries.’

‘I’m sure you women would do it better than I could,’ he said. ‘Everyone knows what a failure the academic mind is at anything like this.’

‘I think if you set all the Fellows of Randolph to do it they’d be quite as good as we are,’ said Mrs. Cleveland. ‘The academic mind is too often an excuse to get out of doing boring little jobs.’

‘I’ll help,’ said Miss Morrow.

‘Let’s put the gooseberries on this little table,’ said Mrs. Cleveland, ‘and all the bits must go in this basin. We shall soon get them done if we all help.’

‘Many hands make light work,’ said Miss Morrow happily. It would surely not be possible to discuss Mr. Cleveland’s infidelities now, and how much nicer to spend the evening topping and tailing gooseberries and gossipping of other things.

This is most unsuitable, thought Miss Doggett angrily. She sat stiffly upright, refusing to take any part with the others. Topping and tailing gooseberries, and in the drawing-room too! How like Margaret it was to have no sense of the fitness of things. It was going to be difficult for Miss Doggett to do her duty in such an atmosphere, but she was not going to shirk it.

‘I came here because there was something I wanted to speak to you about,’ she said firmly.

‘Oh, really, what?’ asked Mrs. Cleveland without looking up.

‘It concerns Francis, but of course it concerns you too,’ said Miss Doggett deliberately. ‘It is about Miss Bird.’

For a second Mrs. Cleveland faltered in her mechanical snipping of the gooseberries. Then, without glancing at her husband, she said casually, ‘Oh, you mean the declaration of love in the British Museum?’

Miss Morrow let out a nervous giggle. She knew it was a serious matter, but it sounded so funny put like that.

Miss Doggett seemed taken aback, disappointed almost. Margaret knew about it. So either Francis had told her or somebody else had. In any case it was most annoying. It meant that she had been forestalled. Her bombshell had not exploded. But Miss Doggett belonged to a generation which had been brought up to believe that everything happens for the best and that we in our turn should try to make the best of everything. And so she did not let herself be too easily put off by what might be only a temporary setback.

‘Well, Francis,’ she said, ‘how do you explain this?’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ he said shortly.

‘You see, Margaret, he is still trying to keep up this deception,’ said Miss Doggett. ‘He has been leading a double life since Christmas,’ she added dramatically. ‘Miss Morrow and I saw him having tea with Miss Bird in Fuller’s, Michael and Gabriel saw them together in the Botanical Gardens, Edward Killigrew heard their conversation in the British Museum, Miss Gurney saw them on Shotover and we cannot know what may have happened on other occasions,’ she added in a dark tone tinged with regret at her inability to produce a witness who had seen them in bed together.

‘I don’t know why you’re telling me all this,’ said Mrs. Cleveland with admirable calmness. ‘I know all about Francis’s friendship with Miss Bird.’

Miss Morrow could see that Miss Doggett was having a more difficult time than she had anticipated, and she could not but admire her persistence as she plodded on. Some of the undergraduate generation at Oxford might well take a lesson from her. Miss Morrow could not help feeling glad that both the Clevelands were behaving so calmly. She liked exciting scenes in films and novels but found them embarrassing and distressing in real life. She knew that, when all is said and done, fiction is really stranger than truth, and was glad that it should be so. Margaret looked perfectly composed, while Francis showed none of the agitation one might have expected, except that he occasionally put the tops and tails of the gooseberries into the wrong bowl, but then even Miss Morrow found herself doing this sometimes, so she did not think it could very well be taken as a sign of a guilty conscience. Everything is going to be all right, she thought happily, and waited for the conversation to go on as if she had been listening to a play.

‘Well, if you know about it, I suppose it is all right,’ said Miss Doggett in a resigned tone. ‘I know that one should never interfere between husband and wife, but I thought you ought to know how people have been talking about this affair. Gossip is not always entirely unfounded,’ she added hopefully.

‘No, no, of course not,’ said Mrs. Cleveland soothingly. ‘Francis has admitted that he likes her very much, haven’t you, dear?’ she added, as if speaking to a child.

‘Of course I like her,’ he said sulkily. ‘I make no secret of it. Why is everyone making such a fuss?’

What exactly did they know? he wondered uneasily. Various people had seen them together. Well, there was nothing in that. And they evidently knew about what had happened in the British Museum. But the way Margaret had spoken about it showed that she did not think much of that. She probably thought it impossible that he should have a love-affair, he thought, feeling suddenly aggrieved.

‘Well, you know how people are,’ Margaret was saying. ‘They gossip about everything. Even I have heard gossip from various sources,’ she added, ‘but I didn’t say anything to you because I knew that the whole thing was so fantastic. Why, the idea of you having an affair with Barbara Bird is quite ridiculous! I couldn’t believe it.’

So it was ridiculous, was it? he thought resentfully. That was their idea. It was fantastic to suppose that a young woman should find him attractive.

‘Of course,’ said Miss Doggett, ‘I have always thought it a great mistake for women students to go to men tutors. It is asking for trouble. Everyone knows how an older man’s head can be turned by a little admiration from a pretty young woman. It is a known thing that middle-aged or elderly men often fancy themselves in love with young girls, who in their turn are flattered by their attentions,’ she continued. ‘No doubt there may have been something of the kind between you and Miss Bird,’ she added disparagingly.

Oh, why doesn’t she stop? thought Miss Morrow, feverishly topping and tailing gooseberries. She could see that Mr. Cleveland was getting more and more angry at the way she was talking, and she was afraid that Miss Doggett might easily goad him into saying something which he would afterwards regret.

A doddering old man fancying himself in love with a pretty girl! thought Francis, who was now in a fury. So that was what he was. He remembered the happy times he had spent with Barbara, the intelligent conversations they had had, the harmonious love-making—here he exaggerated a little but nobody could blame him for that—the many ways in which they were in sympathy with each other. He knew only that he was angry with Margaret for her attitude of good-natured ridicule and with his aunt for her interference and for the fact that they were treating him at one moment like a child and at the next like an old man who was not quite right in the head.

‘I love Miss Bird and she loves me!’ he said hotly. ‘It is just that, since you insist on knowing.’ And then he went out of the room and dramatically slammed the door.

Why had he said Miss Bird? Why not Barbara? thought Miss Morrow, missing the real significance of his statement and concentrating only on trivialities. ‘I love Miss Bird and she loves me!’ … Miss Morrow felt her mouth curling at the corners. When she had controlled an impulse to giggle, she raised her head and saw that Miss Doggett looked grimly triumphant, while Mrs. Cleveland was sitting still with an expression of amazement on her face. And, indeed, she was amazed. Francis speaking like that! She could hardly believe her ears. It was as if something entirely out of the course of nature had happened, as if a chair, a table, a cat or a dog had spoken with a human voice.

‘Well, Margaret, I hardly know what to say now,’ began Miss Doggett. ‘What are you going to do?’

‘Do?’ echoed Mrs. Cleveland vaguely. ‘I don’t know, I shall have to think about it. There’s probably nothing in it,’ she added, but her voice faltered a little.

‘But, Margaret, if what Francis says is true, you will have to divorce him. You cannot possibly keep up this farce of marriage, this hollow, empty thing,’ said Miss Doggett grandly. ‘It is possible that there may be even more than we know about in this affair. I think it is very probable. Young women nowadays are not content with mere
declarations
of love.’ She paused significantly. ‘I don’t know
what
you are going to do,’ she went on in a wailing tone. ‘You and Francis can hardly go on living together after this. And yet the scandal of a divorce will ruin him. And think of Anthea,’ she added, piling it on. ‘It may ruin her chances. I don’t know
what
Lady Beddoes would say. I’m sure she is a very high-principled woman.’

At the mention of Anthea, Mrs. Cleveland suddenly gave up behaving admirably and burst into tears. ‘She mustn’t hear of this,’ she sobbed. ‘What a good thing she’s gone to the pictures. I’ll go to my room and pretend I had a headache; then she needn’t know.’

‘Well, we shall see,’ said Miss Doggett, who had hopefully taken her smelling salts out of her bag. ‘Of course if there is to be a divorce you cannot very well keep it from her, but for the present it will certainly be better to say nothing about it. Come, Margaret,’ she said, taking her arm. ‘I think you had better go to your room now.’ Miss Morrow, left alone in the drawing-room among the gooseberries, felt more strongly than ever that she was not a woman of the world. She had thought that there was nothing in the affair, and now Mr. Cleveland had declared before them all that he and the young woman were in love with each other. Even she could hardly fail to realise that this was something rather serious. She looked around her hopelessly, feeling useless and out of place in such a situation. Then she saw that the bowl of gooseberries was still unfinished, and it comforted her to know that there was something she could do.

When she had finished the topping and tailing she took the gooseberries into the kitchen, where Ellen, who had just come in from her evening off, was finishing the washing-up.

‘I’ve brought the gooseberries,’ said Miss Morrow, feeling that her presence required some explanation but not being able to think of a convincing one.

‘Well, Miss Morrow, fancy you being here,’ said Ellen, looking surprised.

‘Oh, I’ve been helping with the gooseberries,’ she said gaily. ‘We’ve all been doing them. Many hands make light work, you know.’

‘Too many cooks spoil the broth’s more like it,’ said Ellen uncompromisingly.

‘Oh, well, that’s another way of looking at it, isn’t it,’ said Miss Morrow, feeling rather snubbed. ‘Good night.’ 

It was remarkable, Mrs. Cleveland thought when she woke up next morning, how well she had slept. She had gone to bed expecting to lie awake half the night in tears and worry. But thanks to Miss Doggett’s excellent bromide, she had gone off to sleep almost at once and had not even woken when Francis had looked in to attempt some sort of explanation.

So she had just gone off to sleep, he thought resentfully. She didn’t care enough to stay awake and listen to what he had to say. He looked round the room and saw that she had even folded her clothes neatly on a chair by the bed. There was no sign that she had been any more agitated than she was on any other night, he thought, as he went sulkily to his own room, undressed and got into bed. And so it was he who had lain awake, not exactly worrying, but working himself up against what seemed to be his wife’s apparent indifference towards the whole affair.

He came down to breakfast very late to find the table in a wild, desolate condition, as it is when people have already eaten. There were hollowed-out grapefruit skins, empty egg-shells, one piece of toast in the rack and two cups full of dregs and coffee grounds.