The Beautiful Visit (24 page)

‘I don’t know really how she was before.’

‘Of course,’ he replied. ‘Naturally. Most suitable that you should be here to keep her interested in things. Not good for people to be too much alone.’ He turned to the
fire again.

We continued a rather desperate stilted conversation for another ten minutes or so, from which I gathered there were several beautiful walks; that the village was small and straggling (he seemed
to resent this); and that the church was in an advanced state of decay (he seemed proud of that). At exactly a quarter past four Mrs Border appeared.

‘
You
are punctual at any rate!’ he began apologetically, rising out of his chair.

‘One of us must be punctual, or there would be no point in time,’ she said settling herself.

‘Of course,’ he murmured as tea was brought.

During this meal she questioned him minutely as to the affairs of the parish; closing his replies either with some alarming contradictory statement, or with a significant silence, implying
strong disapproval. He sat there, patient, nervous and conciliatory, with crumbs of shortbread all over his knees, and a cup of cold tea balanced on them. Every now and then he made desperate
efforts to bring me into the conversation, and she waited until he had, so to speak, finished with me; then resumed her examination of his business.

After tea she suddenly sent me to post a letter, remarking that the air would do me good, and I escaped.

Outside it was still very oppressive, and I walked down the drive with great warm drops from the trees falling portentously on to the back of my neck. I had been told to turn to the right at the
bottom of the drive and to follow the lane until it forked, when the post box would be found a little way up on the left.

On the way back I came across a tall, bony, elderly woman collecting sticks. She walked along the grass verge in little bursts of haste, intermittently swooping down upon a stick which she put
in a rush bag, and exclaiming continually to herself until we drew level, when she ceased speaking, stopped, and stared at me in a burning and penetrating manner until I was past her, when she
broke out again in some eager but inaudible speech.

When I returned the vicar had left. Mrs Border was seated alone, with her hands spread out to the fire.

‘That man’s a fool!’ she remarked on seeing me. ‘The whole parish going to rack and ruin. Wearing out that church of his with tourists and services, until, mark my words,
it will be nothing but a ruin. He hardly ever comes, did he ask you anything about me?’

‘He asked if you were well.’

‘He wouldn’t have cared,’ she retorted. ‘Perhaps you had better read to me. Third book from the right on the bottom shelf.’

It was some novel set in India and had a religious background. I do not know clearly what it was about, because I was told to start half-way through the book; the place, I remember, was marked
by a parrot feather.

After dinner when we were seated over the hot milk which I no longer had the courage or heart to refuse, Mrs Border asked me whether I should have behaved as the heroine had behaved (she had,
for some reason unknown to me, written a long letter refusing to marry the man to whom she was engaged, and with whom, judging by the subsequent description of her failing health and declining
spirit, she was deeply in love); and whether I considered that either she or her fiancé would abide by her decision? I replied that I didn’t know why she had written the letter, but
that, as it was a novel, I was sure that she would change her mind.

‘And what makes you think the girl would behave so differently in a novel?’

‘Because I don’t think things turn out so conveniently in real life.’

‘What, never?’

I hesitated a little, ‘Not always.’

‘You
have
been crossed in love,’ she cried triumphantly.

Blushing deeply, and disliking her not a little, I denied this, and prepared to continue reading, but the page was uncut.

‘Mantelpiece, to the right of the paperweight and behind the peacock feathers,’ she said instantly.

I cut the uncut page, and began looking for others following it, when she said: ‘And what do you think of my knife?’

It was a metal knife, the handle a cobra’s hooded head adorned with two red stones for eyes. It was not beautiful and I did not know what to say about it.

‘Strange, isn’t it?’ she said watching the knife in my hands. ‘I expect you wonder how I came by that.’

I looked up inquiringly. She was in a gentler mood, and seemed to be thinking deeply. There was a short silence, then she held out her hands for it and said: ‘It belonged to my beloved
husband. I expect you wonder how he came by an Indian paper knife,’ she added a little defensively.

I had
not
wondered, but she seemed to invite a respectful curiosity, so I murmured something and waited.

‘He was serving in India you see. He was in the Army.’

‘Were you with him?’

‘Not out there. I was never out there,’ she said hastily. ‘He was sent out shortly after we were married. Three months, I think it was. Yes, only three months.’

There was a curious uncertain suspension about everything she said, and also a sense of impending tragedy which I found irresistible.

‘He was sent out very suddenly, but he swore that I should join him. We had such a wonderful time. He was everything to me, absolutely everything; everything I had dreamed and imagined in
a man. He promised that as soon as he was settled and had found somewhere for me to live I should follow. He wrote to me almost every day, and I waited and hoped and wrote to him. After he had been
away a month (it seemed an eternity to me), he said that he had found a home for me, and that I might join him as soon as things were more settled. He said that the situation where he was stationed
was very unsettled. He wanted to be absolutely sure that there was no likelihood of trouble to which I might be exposed. Always devoted, you see.’

She had stopped speaking, and stared at the paper knife. I waited a moment for her to continue, but she seemed to have forgotten me, and after a long pause I ventured rather timidly,
‘Yes?’

‘He was stabbed,’ she said. ‘Stabbed in the back one night on his way back to the barracks. He had been dining with friends and he left alone at about eleven o’clock. He
was found next morning a few yards from their home.’ She recounted it all very quietly and without expression, almost as though it were a dream, and I felt tears starting in my eyes at the
thought of her dreadful grief.

‘I am so . . . How terrible for you.’

‘It was terrible. No one will ever know what I suffered. I was ill for a long time. For weeks I lay, unable to think of anything else but my great happiness which had so suddenly, so
cruelly been taken from me. No one understood. It was simply another young tragedy to them. To me it was my life in ruins. It is very hard for a young person to understand that. You are too young
to have suffered. Really suffered,’ she repeated unsteadily. ‘Or do you imagine,’ she continued, ‘that you also have suffered?’

‘Nothing like that,’ I exclaimed. My own anxieties and griefs contracted as I spoke, until I should have been ashamed to admit them at all. She drew in her breath deeply and looked
at me, almost as though she were pleased with this admission.

‘Well my dear,’ she said kindly, let us hope you never will.’

And there the conversation ended.

The days proceeded, each one seeming so long, so packed with ponderous detail, with monotony and rain and loneliness, that it was sometimes hard to believe that there would be another exactly
like it. It was an existence only broken for me by the brief illusion of liberty when at night I retired to my bedroom to undress and sleep. Then, while I shed my clothes, I could enjoy the respite
of being alone, without the strain of possible interruption, of a meal, of being told how to spend my time, of being observed while I spent it.

I was frightfully, almost unbearably lonely during that time. I think it was only my comparative inexperience, and perhaps, too, a certain pity for Mrs Border, that made it at all tolerable. I
suppose I always thought that something would happen. I know that in my room at night I would repeat endlessly to myself that I was earning my living, that Rupert was away, and that my home was
equally monotonous.

The outstanding feature of that house was the sense of complete isolation one experienced when inside it. The affairs of the world, the war, even the village were utterly outside the house,
which was fraught with its own daily routine, little tempers and accidents, domestic arrangements and confidences, heat and time and Mrs Border.

Since her revelation to me I was less afraid of Mrs Border. I successfully evaded the question whether I liked her, by a welter of conventional and very conscious emotion about her unhappy life.
I felt that my association with her was a precarious and temporary affair, based on mutual ignorance of our natures, on mutual and perhaps tragic need, with an impenetrable gap of generation: she
felt that her life was over; I felt that mine had not begun; and in each case we were surprised, and a little resentful that this should be so. I had to be sorry for her, because a great deal of
the time I found her repellent, overwhelming, not a little frightening, even sinister. This last aspect, however, did not at first intrude itself. Everything that happened was new to me and for
that reason often had very little other significance; it was not until I had thoroughly settled down that I had time and leisure to be afraid.

My fears were precipitated about two weeks after my arrival by my again hearing the ghastly paroxysm of laughter in the middle of the night; again followed by complete silence. I lay petrified
as before, and then eventually managed to light a candle. My door was shut, but this time I lay waiting for it to open, to reveal some tall and hitherto unseen figure, dangerous and insane, or
ghostly. I imagined the click of the releasing lock, the little blow of air, and the doorway filled with this apparition, quite silent now, but smiling at the remains of the terrible laughter. I
imagined the figure pausing, watching me, and then slowly advancing into the room, while I lay, unable to move, even perhaps unable to scream. So I continued the remaining hours of the night,
watching the door; my mind a riot of horrible thoughts, until, as before, the grey light suffused the room and relieved me.

The next morning it was hard to believe that I had been so much afraid; the very routine, dull and distasteful (as, for instance, the ritual which took place in Mrs Border’s bedroom),
belied my fear. I was called; dressed, and breakfasted in the red dining-room which reserved its utmost gloom for me in the morning; repaired to Mrs Border’s bedroom (always an inferno of
heat and confusion), where she instructed me in my duties for the day, or simply talked at me about what she intended doing herself; and then was dismissed, sometimes having been told to fetch her
wig, sometimes without it being mentioned. I found this last particularly unnerving, as I dreaded the office, and the uncertainty of whether or no I would be called upon to perform it somehow made
it worse. During the morning I would mend her thick stockings; water the plants in the conservatory; feed the parrot; polish her sticks (she had a number of them, all already highly polished); and
fulfil numerous requirements attendant upon her painting. She would often demand painting water, saucers, even criticism (the amateur variety, which it was usually wise to resolve in heartfelt
approval). Paper had to be cut to the requisite size with the paper knife, and a significant silence prevailed while I cut it. Flowers had to be arranged: I spent nerve-wracking and wearisome hours
moving one flower and then another, and filling the vases to the brim with hot water, a practice upon which she always insisted although the water slopped over if anyone slammed a door.

All these things contrived to make the two frightful nights I had had seem quite unreal and exaggerated. If the servants had ever seemed in the least communicative and human, I might perhaps
have confided in them; in Spalding at least, as I saw very little of the cook. But throughout my time there I never got beyond the trivialities which Spalding apparently considered essential to our
respective positions in the house. I might, I suppose, have recounted something of my private experiences to my mother or sister, but our correspondence was mutually on the family basis where
nobody writes anything which anybody wishes to read. I wrote one stilted and inaccurate letter to Rupert, which I addressed to his studio; but I received no reply, and felt discouraged and too cut
off for any further efforts in his direction.

In the afternoon, Mrs Border invariably rested, and if it rained, which it usually did, I read the few books at my disposal (there were no newspapers at all). On the rare occasions when it was
dry I went out, trying in vain to discover the walks which Mr Tyburn had assured me existed. I trudged up and down tortuous little lanes sunk low between hedges, and once I actually encountered Mr
Tyburn himself.

He was coming out of a cottage. Before he saw me I watched the goodwill slowly ebb from his face as he hastened down the path until, when he reached the gate, it was entirely replaced by a weary
and distracted expression which I now saw he must commonly wear. Then he caught sight of me, his face lighted up, and he stood collecting something suitable to say as he waited for me to reach
him.

‘Are you going up the lane?
I
am going up the lane,’ he began, presenting me with a delightful coincidence.

I assented. We trudged up the hill together for a few moments without speaking, then he suddenly said: ‘How does she occupy her time these days?’

I was rather at a loss.

‘She paints a good deal you know’

‘Of course. And do you paint also?’

‘Oh no.’

‘I suppose one needs a dexterity of hand and a vivid imagination. Never tried myself. I haven’t the time. Oh no.’ He laughed cheerlessly. ‘Mrs Border produces a
remarkable quantity of work. Remarkable.’