The Beautiful Visit (29 page)

I had known that I should probably be forced to do it, but it was with desperation bordering on despair that I eventually crept to my sister’s room, knocked and then entered to find it
empty. She had for some time been engaged upon making herself a new blouse to wear at the Annual Church Bazaar, but I was not even sure that she had completed it. For the second time in my life I
opened her wardrobe, searched and discovered her new confection. It was an extravagant affair of soft cream-coloured lace and net, beautifully made, achieving an elaborate and fashionable air
wholly inconsistent with the rest of her nature. I seized it, shut the wardrobe and fled.

I then proceeded to dress with an utter concentration I had never formerly achieved. I did not think of Ian: he did not once enter my mind. I did not even consider the canteen where I was
supposed to be that evening, or worry about my mother or sister returning to discover me. I simply dressed; with a care and thoroughness, a pleasure even, which had never before seemed necessary or
possible. My hair came down and went up again perfectly, there seeming not one hair too few or too many. I changed my stockings, my shoes, my camisole; then slipped into the exquisite blouse. The
collar was high and boned, surmounted by a crisp frill which just touched the lobes of my ears. The sleeves were a fraction too long, but otherwise the thing fitted perfectly. I hooked up my skirt
and buckled the shining black belt my mother had given me as a birthday present. I had by then achieved the dignity of a small powder box, from which I powdered my nose and forehead. I washed my
hands and scrubbed my nails. I selected a pocket handkerchief, and an exceedingly pretty bag of brown and grey beads, into which I put the handkerchief and a little money. I had no scent, and no
gloves fit to wear. In a moment of inspiration I remembered my mother’s small round brown fur muff, which was all that remained of what once had been a cape she had been given on her
marriage. I knew where it was; but a second raid was an unnerving prospect. I looked at my watch; it was a quarter past seven. Only fifteen minutes remained in which to secure the muff.

This time, however, I met my mother coming out of her room.

‘I have just met someone I knew at the Lancings’. He’s a soldier,’ I said. Her face cleared a little. ‘I’ve promised to go to a theatre with him, he is just
going out again.’

‘What about the canteen?’

‘I haven’t missed a single evening before. I do so want to go to the theatre. Only I haven’t any gloves, I was wondering whether . . .’

‘Is not that your sister’s blouse you are wearing?’

‘It is, it is. Please don’t tell her. I’ll explain to her in the morning, I really will. I haven’t had a party for so long,’ I said, simulating a pathetic gaiety
which I hoped would divert her from the immediate situation.

She smiled, patted my shoulder, and said: ‘I hope you are not going to be late, and he is a suitable young man. I won’t tell your sister, unless she asks me about it.’

‘Do you think I could possibly borrow your muff?’

Going to her room, she returned with it.

‘It will look much better than gloves,’ I cried.

She put it into my hands and said: ‘You had better keep it, darling. Have you enough money?’

‘Oh yes. Oh thank you.’

‘Don’t be too late.’

‘No, no. I won’t be. I promise.’ I kissed her, almost hysterically; I could think of nothing to say.

‘Have a lovely time,’ she murmured.

‘I am awfully grateful for the muff. I
am
,’ I repeated and ran back to my room. She had been so kind. She had made no difficulties. She had not even asked his name. Suddenly I
remembered that he would be coming; the whole evening opened out before me, and I stood inside my clothes, trembling, with my heart on the brink of the hours ahead.

I sat on my bed to wait, remembered the tam-o’-shanter, and heard his cab. I immediately resolved to meet him on the doorstep, or at least to open the door a moment after he had rung the
bell, as he would not then see more than a glimpse of the hall, which was anyway almost pitch dark with only one gas lighted. The bell rang as I reached the bottom of the staircase, and, hearing
footsteps upstairs, I almost ran to open the door.

As we walked to the gate he said: ‘I am so very glad you have come. It isn’t kind of you, is it?’

‘Why should it be kind of me?’

‘You
are
kind. I thought perhaps it might be.’

He put me in the cab and we drove away. I wanted to ask why he considered me kind, but did not dare. He told me about the theatre to which we were going, and asked me if I liked plays and
whether I went often. I answered truthfully that I did like them, but went very seldom. Every single thing I said to him sounded unconscionably dull; but he listened carefully, intently, and gave
no sign that he considered them so. I had the impression that he was feeling for my mind, for the best in me, as though he expected to like what he found; and I began to find it easier to talk. In
Knightsbridge the cab stopped.

‘Will you wait a moment?’ he said, and jumped out.

He returned a minute later with two small bunches of dark red roses.

‘One for your jacket, and one for your delicious muff,’ he said, and the cab drove on.

I sat staring at the roses in my lap, so delighted that I was unable to speak. When I looked up to thank him, I found him watching me intently and could think of nothing to say, nothing which
would express this agonizing painful delight.

‘There are pins,’ I heard him saying, ‘but I expect they are inadequate.’

‘Would you pin a bunch on my muff?’

‘I will try. I don’t think I shall be very good at it, but I’ll try.’

When they were pinned, I did thank him and said that I loved them. ‘I have never had roses before,’ I added as general explanation.

‘I have never given roses before,’ he answered seriously.

I looked again at the little fiery patch of roses, like hot velvet on the fur; and it was as if my senses were slowly returning to me, or perhaps arriving for the first time, to pain and delight
me. Then suddenly I felt bound to ask, ‘Why did you do this?’

He was silent.

‘So much trouble . . .’ I murmured, a little afraid of him.

‘I thought perhaps they might please you,’ he answered at length. ‘You see, I want to please you, or at least I want you not to be so unhappy.’ Almost at once he began to
talk about flowers and trees, and where they originally came from. England was soon a vast forest of oak, and we reached the restaurant before there was time to plant anything else. ‘In any
case, I don’t know nearly enough about it, so your ancestors must make do with oak,’ he finished, helping me out of the cab.

A moment later we were seated in a tiny room with green walls, on a red plush seat placed in an angle between them, with a narrow table before us. A pale yellow wine was brought, sharp, light,
exceedingly delicious. It reminded me of Agnes and Edward, and Arthur who said: ‘Bring on the bubbly.’ I asked Ian whether it was champagne.

‘No. Would you prefer champagne?’ And he looked at me rather doubtfully.

‘No, no, I would not prefer it. But you see I am very ignorant in these matters, and once some people laughed at me because I didn’t know what champagne was called . . .’ And I
told him about the party and
The Mikado.
He listened so well that I began to enjoy the tale; to enjoy being interrupted for more detail, further description, and even an impersonation of
Agnes telling one of her stories. The oysters arrived before I had finished. I stopped to eye them rather anxiously.

‘Some people do not like them, and you may be one,’ he said, ‘but you must not decide until your third oyster. I will prepare them for you while you finish your story. I want
to hear what you wanted most in the world.’

‘I didn’t know. I made it up and said that I wanted to write a book.’

‘Do you write?’

‘Sometimes.’ I remember blushing.

‘What else did you tell them?’

‘I can’t remember. About wanting to know things, I think.’ I watched him squeeze lemon on to each shell. ‘Then I went to sleep. It was dreadful of me. They were very nice
about it.’

‘And then what happened?’

‘They drove me home in a cab.’ I felt my face beginning to burn.

He was silent, and suddenly I told him about Edward kissing me in the cab. I had never told anyone before: it had seemed a small shameful experience; the kind of thing one hugs miserably in
one’s mind; at the best with the poor comfort that one knows the worst of oneself, and at the worst blushing at one’s secret and unique capability for second-rate behaviour –
curiosity and half-baked sensuality and the like. Now when I told Ian, it seemed a small and unimportant thing, reflecting little, revealing less.

‘Oysters,’ he said when I had finished, and pushed the plate over to me with a friendly smile. ‘Some people swallow them.’

I looked at them with horror.

‘Only experienced oyster eaters,’ he said and began eating his.

‘I
do
like them,’ I said a minute later.

‘I am delighted,’ he replied.

The rest of the meal slipped away and I was startled when he said that we must go.

‘The theatre,’ he said, and then seeing my dismay, ‘What are you thinking?’

‘How fast the time has gone.’

His face clouded, then became expressionless. But he only said, ‘Yes, I know.’

All the way to the theatre he was very silent, and, I thought, but I was not sure, very unhappy, almost as unhappy as he had seemed while we had waited for the bus; but because I was almost
certain of this, I did not dare to ask him why.

We sat in a box; another delight for me, as the only occasions on which I had ever done so in the past had been at concerts to which I had not wanted to go.

‘Are you very rich?’ I asked.

‘Oh, enormously rich,’ he replied gravely.

‘Of course. Rupert said you were.’

‘Rupert? Oh Rupert Laing. Did he?’

‘At the Lancings’, where we met. Have you seen him since?’

‘Yes – as a matter of fact we trained together. He told me he’d seen you.’

‘Did he tell you about my trying to run away?’

‘Yes. Yes, he did tell me that. Do you mind?’

‘No. What else did he tell you?’

‘That you were too sensitive,’ he said, staring at his programme.

‘What did he mean, too sensitive?’

‘Too sensitive for your own peace of mind, I think. He said that unless you could record it, or use it, he probably said express it, you would be unhappy.’

‘Oh.’

‘I would always try not to hurt your feelings,’ he said in a low voice. ‘Always. That isn’t much, but many people don’t attempt even that. I love you and I would
like to be very gentle with you. I would like to spend a great deal of time learning about you, being with you, and loving you more. I have always believed in the importance of love, that it should
be searched for, delighted in, and treated with seriousness, and now I have precisely two and a half days before I go away, and because I cannot say everything, there is nothing worth saying, and
the two and a half days seem no time at all. You see?’ He made a hopeless little gesture with his hands. Then the lights went down, the orchestra struck up, and we saw the first act of a
musical comedy that had been running for over a year.

All the while until the interval, I sat trembling, wondering, trying to adjust myself to the incredible idea that the man sitting by me loved me, or thought he was going to love me. I was
unwilling or unable to consider my feelings for him at all: as whenever I attempted to do so, my mind shied away in a kind of ecstasy of nervous excitement, back to his feeling for me, his caring
for me or not caring; my incredulity and his conviction, his solitary imagination of me as I began to think it must be. I stared resolutely at the stage. I did not want him to divine my thoughts;
which revolved in a dull complexity incomprehensible to me. I think that I must have become more sunk in apathy and unhappiness, more hopeless of experiencing any desire, even more of attaining it,
than I knew. At any rate those few hours succeeded in shocking me into some sort of life. I was quickened; my heart beat, seemed almost to enlarge itself; and my locked and silent sensibilities
streamed forth, an almost unbearable torrent flooding my mind.

In the interval we turned to each other. He smiled and said, ‘Would you like some lemonade?’

I nodded and he left me.

When he returned with the glasses I asked, ‘How long have you – when did you think . . .’

‘That I cared for you? When you left the Lancings’. No, I suppose not really until Rupert talked about you. I had thought of you often, but it was not until then.’

‘But
why
do you care for me?’

‘Do you mind not asking me that yet?’ he replied gently, then added, ‘I want to say one more thing. I do not expect you to love, to care for me. I do not want you to be anxious
and disquieted. I should very much like . . .’ He stopped and smiled at the inadequacy of his words, ‘Well, I should
very
much like you to like spending as much of my two and a
half days as you can with me. That is all. I am asking you to believe in my sincerity to that extent at least, and I should like the benefit of any doubt you may have. I am very serious, and shall
not abuse it.’

‘You will not be unhappy if . . .’

‘No. I shall not mind what you do. It will make no difference to me what you do.’

His last words gave me a sense of infinite release. I felt vulnerable, but less exposed to being hurt; calmer, and more simply at ease with him and myself. After the theatre he took me home,
having arranged that I should meet him at eleven o’clock the following morning at the place where we had drunk chocolate. He seemed to know that I did not want him to enter my home, and
accepted this without surprise or resentment. When we reached the house, he took my hand and kissed it, turned it over and kissed the palm, then looked at me. ‘You have such very beautiful
eyes,’ he said. ‘If you had nothing else they would be sufficient reason for loving you. Thank you for coming.’