The Beautiful Visit (10 page)

‘There’s no need to marry anyone unless you love them. Of course there might be mistakes, but that’s nothing to do with pretending. A great many people may be utterly content.
You don’t know all the people. Enough people then,’ I added, feeling his laugh about to break.

We had turned off the lane into a bridle path, edged with dead blackberries, mottled hips and crackling grass stiffened by frost.

‘Let’s see who’s in the best position to generalize. How many married couples do you know intimately?’

I was not be caught again. ‘Not many. How many do you know?’

‘Not many. But I’m older than you so that my “not many” means more. Therefore I am better able to judge about marriage than you, and until you’re my size of mind
you must accept any statement I care to make.’

‘People aren’t an even age. I am older than you in some ways.’

‘Darling little creature, I was teasing you. Still able to quarrel about who’s the oldest. Not very old yet,’ he said in mock despair.

‘I don’t believe you about marriage.’

‘I was warning you.’

‘I don’t want to be warned. I
shall
love someone and I
shall
marry them. I will manage myself,’ I said sullenly.

‘Hooray, you have thought everything out.’

The path was now skirting a wood, a copse. The older trees were felled and lying in reckless attitudes, their bark blistering and ragged like wallpaper.

‘I’m tired,’ I said.

He glanced at me. ‘We won’t argue any more. I won’t tease you.’

‘I’m tired. Really,’ I repeated, some instinct telling me how to get the better of him.

‘Right.’ He lifted me in his arms, over a ditch, and into the wood where he seated me on a log.

‘How old are you?’

‘Sixteen.’

‘Ah yes. Sixteen, and there you sit, cold and tired and teased past all endurance.’

I looked up at him. He seemed kind. I was still aching and wondering what I should think alone, with my thoughts uncoloured by his interruptions.

‘Nothing is certain,’ I said rather shakily.

‘What a desperate little remark. Yes, we need to believe some things.’

‘You don’t leave much.’

‘There are too many things for belief,’ he said sadly. ‘The world’s too full. It has extended beyond any single mind. There are so many Gods, so many people, so many
ideas, so many creeds and convictions. We have simply to choose.’

‘How do we do that?’

I felt him groping along my thoughts with the fingers of his mind. ‘Don’t try to find out what is generally right. That’s mere condonement,
not
personal acceptance,
which means feeling, thinking and knowing until that belief will live with you from sheer love.’ He seemed to be telling himself. He finished suddenly. He sat down and pulled out a pipe.
‘And now, may I smoke this?’

I nodded, I did more or less understand him, and felt calmer.

‘Your family are musicians aren’t they?’

‘My father.’ I stared at his long bony hands loosely clasped round his knees.

‘I’ve heard some of his work. Influenced by Schumann isn’t he?’

‘Everyone says that.’

‘I’m sorry.’ He was mocking again.

‘Everybody is influenced by someone.’

He bowed and a long lock of hair fell over his face.

‘I should like to come and see them.’

‘No you wouldn’t.’

‘Yes, I shall accompany you on your day off, to visit your family.’

‘
No
.’

‘But what deadly secret have you to hide that you are so positive?’

‘No secret.’ I stared again at his hands. ‘I’ll come and see you.’

‘You will?’

‘Wherever you are living.’

‘You
want
to be my housekeeper?’

‘Rupert, I . . .’ Did he really mean that? What did he expect me to say?

‘I suppose it would be rather improper.’ I looked up at the sound of his voice and found him watching my face. ‘Did you think I was furtively asking you to be my
mistress?’

I had very little idea of what being a mistress implied, but I felt the blood rushing to my face; a wild desire to escape and stop everything or be someone else. He took both my hands in his: I
looked down at them warmly folded, and then back to his face again, and still I couldn’t speak. He stared at me intently; and there was such a depth of honesty in his eyes that my
self-consciousness melted as my face cooled, and I was unafraid.

‘That wasn’t very kind of me. Of course you didn’t. I’m afraid you can’t even be my housekeeper. But you shall come to tea, or whenever you haven’t anywhere
else to go, and want to come. I’ll tell you where I am, when I know, so that you won’t forget.’

‘I won’t.’

‘Now I’m going to kiss you to finish things off because we must go home.’

He took my face in his hands and bent his head. I put my arms round his neck; his hair felt silky at the back.

‘What a convulsive little gesture,’ he said and kissed me. His lips were cool and firm; and when he stopped, my mouth felt strange, separate and alive.

He held out his hand, pulled me to my feet, and we set off out of the wood, back down the mysterious dead path to the road.

The snow was falling more thickly, into our faces, but I did not mind it. I was in an unquestioning exhilarated mood where I needed no more or less of the road and snow and company than was
provided.

Half-way home we found a young cat, almost a kitten. It followed us desperately, falling behind and then running round our feet, its ears flattened with dislike of the weather. Rupert insisted
on buttoning it into his coat in spite of my saying that cats always found their way home.

‘Nonsense,’ he said decisively. ‘Almost as silly a saying as the one about the English always being kind to animals.’

I felt rebuffed and faintly jealous. The cat was secure and drew the warmth of Rupert’s presence away from me. Instantly my mood deserted me. I felt really tired; my legs ached, my boots
rubbed my heels, and my skirts were heavy and dank.

The village appeared, its street ribbed with wheel tracks, and my knowledge of Rupert slipped away as we approached it.

‘Nearly home.’ said Rupert cheerfully. ‘We’ll have an enormous scorching tea. You’ll feel rested, warm and tired and full of food. It’s the best part of a
walk.’

Numb with a lack of reality I turned towards the house.

CHAPTER EIGHT

I remember lying rigid on my back having been sent to rest on the afternoon before the dance.

Nanny had drawn the curtains, and padded away to mull the afternoon suitably for the others. Telling me to have a nice rest, she shut the door. There ensued the most still and lasting silence.
This is how to lie I thought when one is dead. Stiff and narrow amid complete silence. A cock crowed and I jumped out of bed and drew back the curtains again. I remember Rupert had looked at us at
lunch, at Deb, at Lucy and at me, agreeing that we should rest, and the thought flitted across my mind, that we were to emerge from the artificial dusk of our rooms to dance a few hours in the
light, like butterflies, for his pleasure.

I became very sad lying there because I could not imagine what was to happen after the dancing, when I went home. My pride would never let things be the same; so there would be decisions to
make, life to be wielded, and too many people drifting with time to watch. I thought of my sister; she had refused this visit; she had no desire for anything new: she could sew and read and go to
church, and for walks, and stay the same size, and complete herself within that tiny sphere. I wanted things before I knew what they were. I wondered what Rupert would do when he went back to
London. I had not asked him. There were so many things I had wanted to ask him, but had not dared or had forgotten. The time I had spent with him had been choked with talk, and yet now it felt so
short. Of course one would not have had one’s fill of anybody in a single afternoon. Perhaps he would not want to talk to me again. I numbered on my fingers the few days left. Christmas could
not count, it needed the day for itself. I tried to imagine Rupert with my father. They would talk about music, of course; my father’s face would light up, and he would use boyish
exclamations coined in his youth. Rupert would be perfectly at home. I would sit and watch them both and occasionally Rupert would smile at me. But the house! I could not bear Rupert to see the
house. He was fastidious. The dirt and decay would not please him. I could never let him come there. I would not see him at all. I must wait for him to invite me. It was not possible to collect
people just because you wanted them. If you were a woman, you must wait until they came to you.

The doctrine vaguely dissatisfied me: I got out of bed again to look for a book and found
The Wide Wide World
. It was full of very interesting information, and religion, and a little girl
cried on nearly every page.

‘Roland is coming,’ said Deb.

‘And I shall have Rupert,’ I thought to myself with a little arrow of excitement. ‘It will be quite different from the wood. I shall wear my beautiful frock and it is a
dance.’ And all the while I dressed I was conscious of a new delight in preparing myself for a single person’s approbation.

I had bathed and was drawing my heavy bronze silk stockings up my legs. They unrolled with a beautiful smooth precision over the bony whiteness, collecting my limbs in elegant silken lines. I
pointed my toe. Really they were a good shape. It was perfectly sensible to admire them, since nobody else would see them. I pulled down my petticoat. I was to brush my hair for Nanny to put it up.
Deb having invited me to her room I planned to ask her for a piece of jewellery to wear on my frock. I dipped my finger in water and smoothed my eyebrows until they were finely narrow like
Deb’s. When I looked in the mirror, a new face looked back, with little shadows lying on the bones, and enormous eyes startled with excitement. I felt very beautiful then; the fear of being
newly grown up and not knowing things slipped away because I could praise my own appearance from perfect intimacy with its shortcomings. The pink frock was laid out on the bed, with the pointed
pink shoes beside it. I scratched the soles with scissors, and my finger suddenly blossomed a thin line of blood, with a drop on the pink strap of the shoe. I rubbed the strap with my flannel. It
would not show, but the little moist circle was disquieting.

Nanny did my hair superbly with a narrow plait over the top of my head and the rest drawn waxen smooth. I raised my hands in bewildered delight.

‘Don’t touch it now,’ Nanny said. ‘Are you wearing any ornament in it?’

Despair engulfed me. ‘I haven’t got anything,’ I stammered. Impossible, of course, I must wear something; it looked so stiff and bare. Deb swept into the room.

‘You never came to see me.’ She looked at my head and hopeless face below it. ‘That’s lovely, Nanny. It suits you. Wait a minute. Nanny, fetch my roses like an angel. The
little pink ones.’ When they came she fastened them into the edge of my plait. ‘There,’ she said. ‘Three little pink roses.’ Our eyes met, amused and grateful.
‘All right?’ she said. ‘Nanny my stockings again,’ and flung something misty across the room. So those were the stockings one wore for dancing. Mine were hopeless thick
things – still they would not show. How absurd I had been. Nanny had disappeared. Deb was particularly charming to me. ‘Let’s put on your frock. Have you a locket?’

‘No.’

‘Come into my room. I’ll lend you one.’

I rustled after her feeling gracious and at least twenty years old in my dress. She slung the turquoise heart on a chain, and fastened it round my neck where it lay brilliantly in the hollow of
my throat.

‘Now sit on a chair while I dress.’

She looked wonderful of course, and she loved to be watched. I recollect yards and yards of pale yellow in an enormous skirt trimmed with green velvet ribbons. ‘He likes green,’ she
said complacently as she fastened that colour neatly round her white neck. I watched her fasten green leaves in her hair, green velvet round her wrists; slip her feet into green slippers; tweak her
shoulders, stroke her skirts and preen, and smile at me in the glass, all with a calm contented efficiency. This was really her life.

‘Find out what Nanny is doing. I don’t want her to come in here suddenly.’

Nanny was doing Elspeth’s hair.

‘Elspeth always cries when her hair is done. It takes ages.’ From the back of a drawer she took a box of powder and carefully powdered her nose. ‘Have some.’ I leaned
forward. ‘I’ll do it for you. Shut your eyes.’ A fine dust descended on me, gathered in the corners of my eyes and mouth. She put the powder away. ‘There it is if we want
it,’ she said with a gleam and again I had the feeling of a conspiracy. She pinched her cheeks and bit her lips and the colour flowed into them. Then she took a minute handkerchief gritty
with lace, and shook out two little drops of lavender water. This time I was not included.

‘Women can’t wear the same scent,’ she said, half apologetically. ‘How do I look?’

‘Wonderful.’

‘You are awfully pretty too,’ she said generously.

We rose from our chairs, shook out our skins, and descended.

Dinner was an unsubstantial affair; a dream of half-eaten dishes and desultory anticipation. Nobody’s mind came to the surface; nobody wanted to eat, but it was too old and established a
custom to be foregone. Elspeth sat next to me absently eating nuts. She was in crimson velvet, with puff sleeves showing her childish arms with a little stream of delicate blue veins in the crook
running down to her wrists. Her evening was darkened with the knowledge that she was to go to bed at half past ten. ‘Although I sleep very little nowadays,’ she said with scornful eyes
and a quivering mouth.’ Before the meal, we had been into the morning room, where Rupert was admiring Mrs Lancing’s pearls and Aunt Edith sat in black velvet with a marvellous white
silk shawl the fringes of which caught in her chair. Mrs Lancing had admired us, and Rupert had said ‘Beautiful,’ very firmly, with his eyes on Deb.