Nightingale Wood (24 page)

No, it won’t do, thought Victor twenty minutes later, pulling off the tie that Phyllis had arranged for him, and wishing that it would.

That was very rude of Phyllis, going off like that with Bill, thought Mrs Spring, lying in bed with her face thinly covered by a nourishing cream costing twelve and sixpence a pot and wishing that she did not feel so ill. Even if she was bored, and annoyed with Victor for dancing with that pretty girl in pale blue, she ought not to have gone. I couldn’t say anything, of course, but I think she saw I didn’t like it. Even with such old friends as we are, she ought not to have done it. It’s no use; she wears her things very well, of course, but I can’t really like her at all.

In fact, Phyllis was also regretting that she had given way to her boredom and irritation by going home. The rest of the party had returned to Grassmere only half an hour after she had, which had not only robbed her gesture of its effect but had done poor Bill, who was in love with her, out of an hour or two alone with her. She might just as well have stayed at the Ball.

It had been silly, too, to let Victor see that she minded his making a dead set at that girl with the curly hair. I ought to know by this time (thought Phyllis, covering her face with a thin layer of cream costing six and sixpence a pot) that Victor loathes me to behave as though we are married. But he needn’t think I’m going to stand for curly-haired lovelies when we are. Oh no. It makes me look a fool, and I won’t stand for that from anyone.

He’ll get over it. I can always tell when old Victorious is in a state; he tries so hard not to let one see! Shouldn’t think it’ll come to an affair; he surely wouldn’t start anything with a common little thing like that, living practically next door?

Anyway, he’d better not.

She got into bed and snapped off the light.

When the party arrived at The Eagles, the maids (with Mrs Wither’s permission) had gone to bed, but they had left a cool drink and sandwiches in the morning-room, whither everybody would repair to take a little something and discuss the evening’s events.

‘Good night, Saxon.’

‘Good night, sir; good night, Madam.’

He stood correctly by the door, holding it open as they came out one by one. Mr Wither, Mrs Wither, Madge, Viola, Tina.

‘Good night, Saxon.’

‘Good night, Miss Tina.’

She did not look at him. The moonlight, the stillness of the woods, the solemn glimmer of tiny stars, acted powerfully upon her senses. How pure the moonlit air smelled! moving very slowly across miles of country where hawthorn and bean-blossom, orchards and gardens, could yet out-perfume the towns and garages, as they had conquered the middens of Charles II’s day. The old earth keeps her sweetness. And I have to go indoors, to bed, thought Tina, with all this beauty outside. I should like to drive all night, away to the sea. She could hear, in fancy, the long waves rolling in.

Mr Wither shut the front door.

‘Oh dear, I
am
so tired.’ Mrs Wither patted away a yawn and ruefully bent to rub her evening shoe, wherein a faithful corn was undergoing martyrdom.

‘Polo didn’t bark,’ announced Madge wistfully, beginning on the egg sandwiches. ‘I expect he’s asleep. I wonder if I just ought to run down—’

‘Nonsense,’ said Mr Wither austerely, with his mouth full. ‘What do you want to do that for? Waking the dog up at one in the morning; you’d never get him to sleep again.’

There was a sleepy pause while everyone ate. Even Viola ate, for enjoyment had made her hungry; but Tina felt the sandwiches going down in dry lumps, and at last she put a half-finished one on her plate, murmured something about ‘… my bag …’ and slipped from the room.

I can’t go to sleep without seeing him. It won’t do any harm – just to go out into that light again, and see him, and say good night. It’s a perfectly good excuse – where is my bag, by the way – oh, on the hall seat—

She had heard the noise of the car’s engine retreat as Saxon drove it round to the side of the house where the garage was; he would be there now, putting it away.

She ran lightly down the old kitchen stairs that creaked where her feet touched their worn hollows; it was dark, but she knew them so well that she remembered the fifth one had the loudest creak, and stepped on the side instead of the middle. She used to climb down them laboriously when she was a baby girl to ask Cook for a piece of dough to make little men; and run down them when she was a schoolgirl to visit her dog (poor old King, dead these fifteen years) in the yard.

She hurried across the stone floor, shudderingly hoping that there were no cockroaches, and trying to silence the little voice in her head that insisted she was about to do a silly, undignified action. Giving yourself away, said the little voice. Nonsense, it isn’t as though I hadn’t got an excuse … and it’s so lovely out there, that blue light on the blue-green woods.

She stooped to unbolt the yard door. Through its frosted pane she could see the pale glow of moonlight, and hear muffled noises; the car’s engine running, the yapping of Polo, then Saxon’s voice reassuring the dog.

She got the door open and stood on the step, looking down at Saxon.

He was stooping to pat Polo, who looked very white in the moon-rays, as he lay on his back with his legs in the air.

Saxon glanced up. He was laughing, but his face went serious at the sight of her.

‘Miss Tina! Is anything wrong?’ He stood up, and his long shadow ran across the yard.

‘No.’ Tina’s heart was banging against her side but she spoke coolly. ‘Nothing much, that is … only my bag. I just wondered if you’d seen it?’

She stepped down on to the dusty cobblestones, a bunch of brown and silver dress gleaming as she held it up in one hand. Her feet looked very small, dark in their satin slippers, on the moon-whitened stone.

Saxon went towards the open door and she strolled after him. How still the night was! The moon poured her rays from a remote height with an enormous brown moonbow round herself, and not a star within the circle.

Saxon opened the car and put on the light. She slowly approached the shed.

‘It’s not here, Miss Tina.’

She could see his face, serious and a little concerned, as he lifted up cushions, peered into cubby-holes full of dusters and maps.

‘Was there much in it?’

‘Oh no, only about five shillings. A silver bag with a tortoiseshell handle,’ in a murmur, standing by the open door, ‘and a lipstick I’m rather fond of.’

‘Nice find for some lady,’ said Saxon, turning to smile at her. ‘Perhaps you left it at the Rooms? I can run down there tomorrow morning, I’ve got to go into town for Mr Wither, and ask, if you’d like me to.’

‘Yes, thank you,’ faintly.

Saxon shut the door, the light went out. He turned, and Tina moved towards him with a breath of sweet scent.

‘Oh, Saxon, about tomorrow—’ she was beginning in a quick, shaky voice, when her perfume, the look on her face and the note in her voice went straight to Saxon’s head. He smiled, put his arms round her even as she drew back, and took a long kiss.

She heard a muttered ‘dear little thing’ or ‘little Tina’ before his mouth pressed hers, but she thought nothing clearly. She only struggled violently to get away from the body of a stranger who frightened her, yet even while she battled, saw with a pang of tenderness how youthful was the line of his cheek.

‘What’s the matter?’ he whispered, the Essex lilt strong in his voice. ‘Don’t you like me?’

‘Don’t, don’t,’ turning her head distractedly from side to side, ‘oh please,
please
let me go.
Please
, Saxon, let me go.’ She was weeping.

He let her go, and stood looking down, slowly jerking the cuffs of his jacket while she tidied her hair with shaking hands. He seemed neither sulky nor disconcerted, only thoughtful.

In the silence a bird began to sing in the wood across the road. The wild, sharply sweet notes made Tina feel unbearably miserable. She was glad when it stopped abruptly.

‘I must go,’ she said at last. She could not leave him like that; she must say something.

He looked up.

‘If you won’t tell your father about this, I’ll give in my notice tomorrow,’ he said. ‘I’d be … obliged’ (she saw him struggling with
grateful
and decide not to use it) ‘if you wouldn’t. If you do, I shan’t get a reference, and I’ll have to have one, to get another job.’ He spoke to her, for the first time, as to an equal.

Her heart seemed to turn over.

‘Oh, but …’ she began.

He misunderstood.

‘All right, if you must, you must. I got what was coming to me, that’s all. It was mostly your fault, though. Coming down here’ (the Essex lilt again) ‘at this time o’ night, dressed like that, and expecting me not to think you wanted … me to do something about it.’

‘I know. I’m sorry. I did want you to,’ said Tina, while a burning blush began to creep from the top of her head slowly down to the tips of her slippers, ‘only somehow when you did, it was so different … I …’

‘Didn’t like it, eh?’

She shook her head.

‘Maybe I was a bit sudden,’ said Saxon, with a quick delightful smile. ‘I knocked the breath out o’ you, is that it?’

Nod.

‘Not used to it, are you?’

She shook her head.

‘That’s funny. You’re nice to kiss,’ watching her under his eyelashes.

‘Am I?’ A murmur.

‘Yes. You’re so … kind of small.’

(And not old? thought Tina, desperately. You didn’t feel, when you were holding me, that you were holding someone much older than you are?) She did not at all like his suggesting that she was unused to kisses, but of course she could not register indignation about that.

‘I was going to say,’ she began, trying to recover a cool, light, friendly but ladylike tone, ‘that I won’t tell my father. You see, as it was partly my fault … I mean, I suppose I felt silly or it was the moonlight or something,’ laughing in a most unconvincing manner, ‘I feel that you ought not to take all the blame.’

‘That’s only fair,’ said Saxon, making, at a single stroke, the conversation again one between equals.

‘Yes,’ said Tina, dropping the ladylike voice and realizing with alarm that Saxon had the situation perfectly in hand, ‘yes, I suppose it is.’

He knows I love him, of course. That’s why he’s being so bossy, and laughing, though he’s pretending not to. How awful. Now he thinks he can do anything he likes, because I love him. He thinks he’s only got to say he’ll leave, and I’ll implore Father to ask him to stay, and raise his salary. It’s horrible, it’s an impossible situation, and I won’t put up with it. What I must do (trying to plan coolly) is to say that I won’t have any more lessons, as I’m going away soon, and tomorrow I’ll write and ask Joyce if I can go to her for a week or two.

But when I come home, he’ll be here and things’ll be as bad as ever. Oh what
shall
I do? Why did I ever let myself get into this mess? Who’d have thought, when I used to see him rushing around in his old red jersey, that I’d ever feel like this about him?

‘Better shut the door,’ said Saxon, moving, and deftly slid it to. A quarter past one struck muffledly from within the house. Their whole conversation had taken less than ten minutes.

Of course, I ought to have gone in the minute he let me go, thought Tina desolately, bunching up her draperies again.

‘What about your lesson tomorrow?’ inquired the young man, in a calm friendly voice. No ‘Miss Tina’ now; no subtle inflection of respect. Will he talk like that in front of other people? Surely he won’t dare!

‘Oh, I don’t know. I think perhaps I won’t—’

‘I think you’d better, don’t you? You’re getting along so nicely now, it ’ud be a pity to stop half-way.’ (Was this an unpardonable double-meaning?)

‘Oh, very well then,’ sighed Tina tiredly. ‘Eleven o’clock, as usual.’

‘I’ll be there,’ said he cheerfully. They had crossed the moonlit yard, and now stood by the open door leading into the dark house.

Polo came out, inspected their shoes, and waddled in again.

Beauty isn’t fair, thought poor Tina, looking at Saxon. It gives people such an advantage.

‘Good night,’ she said distantly, turning to go in; but he took her hand in his, pulled her unwilling face towards him, and dropped the gentlest of kisses on her cheek.

‘Good night, you funny little thing,’ whispered Saxon: and went home whistling through the moonlight.

Tina crept rather than walked up to bed, so tired that she could think of nothing. She could still feel the warm soft touch of his lips on her cheek. Oh, where is this going to end, she thought, her hand on the knob of her door.

‘Tina!’ Madge’s cropped head was poking urgently half-way out of her room. ‘Where on earth have you been?’

‘Hunting in the car for my bag.’

‘But it’s on the hall chair.’

‘I know.’

‘But – oh well, so long as you’ve got it. Did Polo come out?’

‘Yes.’

‘How did he seem?’

‘Oh God, Madge, he seemed all right. How could he seem? You’ve got that dog on the brain.’

‘Well, I only wondered. He’s just at a critical age, of course; growing so fast, and learning—’

‘Yes. Good night.’

Tina went into her room and shut the door. As she opened a jar of cream costing two and sixpence, she felt so wretched that she was surprised to see in her mirror that she looked pretty. Her eyes were very bright, her face had an alive, transparent look. She turned away angrily.

Just before she dropped asleep it occurred to her that she had at least fallen in love with a young man of character.

A floor higher up, Viola was already dreaming, with her face covered with a cream at sixpence a tube and a dance programme under her pillow.

CHAPTER XIV

The blankness and boredom that fell upon Viola after the Ball was over were very hard to endure, and she therefore made no attempt to endure them, but grew more depressed and discontented as the hours drew into days, the days into a week, a fortnight. She had been so sure, in spite of her small knowledge of men, that Victor was strongly attracted to her that she expected him to telephone to her or write on the day after the Ball; and when he did not, she was as puzzled as she was miserable.