The Beautiful Visit (37 page)

I said, ‘I do not think Peter should have told you.’

‘He had to,’ she cried fiercely, ‘it was too much for him to bear.
He’s
dead now, too. So I am the only one left, and Mummy goes on and on talking about it, and
Papa can’t bear talking about it, and they both say I take it too much to heart. I try not to think about it, but when I’m alone I remember Peter telling me, his voice, and the exact
words, and it seems as though I was there – I meant not to tell
anyone
, truly I did, but it doesn’t matter with you, does it? You won’t tell anyone, will you – You
won’t?’

I assured her that I would not. She wiped her eyes. ‘Most extraordinary thing,’ she said, ‘when other people talk about him it feels as though my heart is trying to break out.
It’s like a sudden burn; that sort of pain. I don’t expect you know what I mean. But I like to talk about him sometimes.’

‘I do know,’ I said. The contrast of her pale and tear-stained face, with the appearance she presented to her family, and indeed, until a few moments ago to me, was infinitely
touching. I wanted badly to comfort her, I felt she was a creature young enough to be comforted; but the things she had told me started such horrible fears in my own mind, that I dared not say
anything, I took her hand and held it in mine. I had been so stunned by the fact that Ian had been killed, that I had never until now imagined the circumstances of his death. I felt sick; my legs
seemed unable to support me. I sat on the ground, pulling Lucy down with me. For one moment I considered telling her about Ian, and then I knew that it would make no difference to me to tell
anyone. I looked at poor Lucy. It was she who was so unhappy with her first grief. Nothing would ever be so painful for her again; but, I reflected, I could hardly tell her that, she would not
believe it. She would not even believe that she would recover at all from this. Better tell her that, though. I told her.

‘I shall never forget it,’ she said.

‘No, but it won’t hurt so much.’

She stared at me disbelievingly, and then said, ‘Of course I do get better at concealing it from the others. But not to myself. Never that.’

I searched desperately about for some other consolation, eventually saying feebly, and at some length, that I was sure Gerald would hate her to continue so despairing on his account. He was so
gay, I added, he would think her wrong to grieve overmuch.

Lucy said with shining eyes. ‘It’s perfectly true. He would hate it. I will remember that. Thank you for telling me.’

She
was
capable of being comforted. She made me renew my promise to tell no one and we continued our walk.

‘I suppose,’ I said casually as we walked back down the park, ‘that hundreds of people died like that, or something like it?’

And Lucy answered with her eyes fixed on her home: ‘Hundreds I think. Of course not everybody. I don’t suppose we shall ever really know how many.’ She seemed calm again, calm
and almost happy. ‘We’re going to have tea in the nursery,’ she said. ‘I love that.’

It was exactly as though she had handed her grief over to me, to take care of until some little circumstance should force her again to suffer it. As we entered the house, I wondered which of the
spurious and meaningless little clichés would have comforted me, and when it should have been uttered, and by whom. Comfort, of any kind, seemed the most random affair.

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

On reaching the house, we went straight to the library where we discovered Rupert and Deb. They were sharing a large volume of
Punch
: Deb seated in one of the leather
chairs, and Rupert perched rather uncomfortably upon one of its arms. A fire burned; but there was no other light, and the room was deliciously warm and dusky.

Lucy flung herself into a chair. After a moment’s hesitation, I selected another. I felt we were intruding, and Rupert, at least, made no effort to conceal it. Deb had lifted her head when
we entered the room, had seen me and smiled, then continued to turn the pages of their book.

‘Aubrey not back yet?’ asked Lucy, breaking the silence.

‘I don’t know whether he is back,’ answered Deb.

Rupert reached out for his crutch and rose to his feet. ‘I had forgotten the mysterious Aubrey. I really think it is rather forward of you to ally yourself to a man I have not even
seen.’

‘None of us really saw him until after she was engaged to him,’ said Lucy cheerfully. ‘Good thing he’s so nice. He’ll probably be back for tea. He usually
is.’

‘He invariably is,’ said Deb. I knew that she was angry with Lucy. She shut the book, let it slide to the floor, and left the room. After a moment, Lucy followed, saying she would
call us when tea was ready.

Alone with Rupert, I remained very still, staring into the fire. I had a sudden desire to ask him whether he knew anything about Ian; but I could not think how to do so without arousing his
suspicion, or at least his curiosity.

‘You are very silent here,’ he said at last. ‘What do you think about all the time?’

‘About them. I – I am not very used to living with a lot of people. I think it makes me dull.’

‘You are not dull. Although, when one thinks about you, one cannot imagine how you escape appearing inexpressibly dull. You sit and watch everyone, and hardly say a word. You also
sometimes look extremely tragic. How did you get on with Lucy?’

‘Very well, I think. I like her.’

‘Which is more than her sister does.’

‘Has she said so?’

‘Oh come, sisters don’t do that. No, she has not actually said anything. She says remarkably little, don’t you think?’ Then, without waiting for a reply he went on,
‘Are you glad you came? Are you going to like it?’

‘Are you?’

‘Of course. I like anything new.’

‘But this isn’t new. It’s old,’ I cried.

‘Oh dear. Has the gloss worn off? Are you bored?’

‘No. I wish you would not ask me these questions.’

‘But seriously, do you only enjoy things or people who are entirely strange to you?’

‘I don’t think so. If I found the right people, or things, I don’t think I should want to change them.’

‘But you haven’t found them? Or found them and lost them?’

I did not reply.

‘Well, if you think I am the person you knew, you are wrong. I am entirely, almost entirely changed, and not even used to myself. I find the most extraordinary ideas running through my
head, which have nothing to do with what I was. You know, I don’t think they like each other.’

‘Who?’

He said ignoring me: ‘But if you want change for the sake of it, here I am.’

Before I could reply Elinor put her head round the door.

‘Tea is ready. In the nursery. Who lit the fire?’

‘Deb lit it.’

‘Oh, Deb – she lights them all over the house and never stays in one room and it makes so much work. Servants have been very difficult,’ she explained to me, as we slowly
ascended the staircase behind Rupert.

The day nursery (in which I had spent very little time on my previous visit), was quite unchanged, except that if showed signs of more use. The bears and dolls, which had before sat primly in
rows on the seat round the bay window, now lay on the floor in various attitudes of abject and clownish helplessness. The high brass fender was hung with innumerable white garments. The rocking
horse pranced well out in the room, instead of behind the screen covered by Mrs Lancing in her youth with scraps. For the rest, it contained the same pictures: Reynolds’s cherubs,
Millais’s Ophelia, and various Henry Ford dragons and fairies; the same cracked white paint, pink curtains, and wallpaper covered with fat blue buds and pale yellow butterflies; the same
bright brown chairs and table with Nanny’s sewing machine; the same yellow nursery cupboard containing everything one could possibly want for a rainy afternoon, a sickness, accidents,
boredom, or yet another baby. All this had not changed: only Nanny had shrunk a little, I noticed, her hair was whiter, her face more like a walnut, and her feet, which pointed outwards when she
walked, bulged more painfully in her sharp black shoes. She was folding paper napkins on to each plate laid round the table when we entered the room. Lucy lay on the floor, building a tower from
some bricks which she drew from a large canvas sack. Charles sat on his heels beside her taking no notice. Nanny seemed delighted to see Rupert, whom she placed in a large wicker chair between the
fire and the tower of bricks. Elinor fetched a plate of crumpets to be toasted in front of the fire. I offered to help her.

‘I have to put the forks out of reach because of Master Charles,’ said Nanny wrenching open one of the drawers in the yellow cupboard.

Lucy finished the tower, and called us to admire it; but immediately we turned round from the scorching fire, Charles put out his hand, and with one casual sweeping gesture reduced the tower to
ruins. Lucy said he was unkind (I think she was really disappointed), but he sat quite still smiling gently at her and not uttering a sound.

‘You’d better wash your hands, Miss Lucy. Take him with you. He always breaks them down, don’t you, Charles?’

‘I cannot think why babies are so destructive,’ cried Lucy. ‘Come on, Charles.’

Charles rose to his feet, and as she bent to pick him up he flung himself on her, his arms round her neck and his legs round her waist so that she was unable to stand upright.

‘That’s his new trick,’ said Nanny, prising him off the unfortunate Lucy as though he were a limpet. He opened his mouth to howl, when Deb appeared, and he changed his mind.
Brushing Nanny aside, he staggered across the room to his mother, and repeated his new trick. Deb, however, seemed perfectly equal to it, as she made no move to pick him up; and after clinging to
her legs for a few moments, he gave up, wheeled round, and made for the nursery at a heavy dangerous trot. Lucy dashed after him. ‘I shall never manage to wash his hands.’

We had finished toasting the crumpets and sat at the table.

‘Where is your mother?’ asked Nanny, the steaming kettle poised in her hands over the gigantic tea-pot.

‘She has gone over to Charrington. Lady Voyle sent a message.’

‘There, Miss Elinor, and you never told me. Well there is nothing to keep us is there? I am sure you won’t say no to your nice hot tea,’ she added kindly to me. ‘To tell
the truth, I’d be glad to start before Master Richard wakes up. That’s right, Miss Deb, you pour out for us.’

Deb who had also seated herself at the table, made a little
moue
of horror when she discovered that she had placed herself before all the tea cups.

‘The big one is for Mr Hurst. He likes a good big cup Like all die gentlemen.’ Nanny was clearly in her element.

‘What about me?’ cried Rupert. ‘Aren’t I a gentleman, Nanny?’

Nanny bridled and burst into a peal of dried-up laughter. ‘There, Mr Rupert. So many people I was forgetting.’

‘He’ll have to have a mug,’ said Deb.

‘Anything so long as it holds a lot.’

Elinor fetched a mug from the yellow cupboard and put it in front of Rupert.

‘Goosey Goosey Gander, whither shall I wander, Upstairs and downstairs and in my lady’s chamber,’ Rupert read out, turning the mug in his hands. ‘Will you fill my mug for
me?’ He handed it to Deb. Their eyes met for an instant, and Deb, after a moment’s hesitation, put the mug on the table.

‘All in good time.’ She began filling the cups.

Lucy and Charles emerged from the night nursery pink and speechless.

‘He’s sort of washed,’ said Lucy.

Nanny stuffed him into his high chair, strapped him in, and tied a huge feeder round his neck. Then she placed a piece of bread and butter in front of him cut in fingers.

‘Take no notice of him and he’ll eat his nice tea,’ she commanded.

We all ate our nice tea. Deb immediately asked me about London, and what I had been doing. I felt that she expected me to have led a delightful life of continuous gaiety, and was at a loss how
to answer her. I explained that I had been out of London much of the time, stretching the weeks I had spent with Mrs Border into months, but that did not do.

‘What were you doing in the country?’ asked Lucy.

‘Oh, looking after an old lady.’

‘How awful! Did she die or something?’

‘No, she didn’t die,’ For a moment my mind flashed back to the dense hot house, and my terrifying employer. I realized, with a shock, that that life was probably continuing,
with my successor, whoever she might be.

‘Was it fearfully dull?’

‘Yes. Fearfully dull. So I left.’

‘And came back to London?’ persisted Deb.

‘Yes, and got a very dull job.’

‘Oh
work
.’ She managed to convey worlds of contempt when she said that. ‘But the evenings. Did you not dance a great deal? Even Elinor had hospital dances.’

‘Only for the convalescents,’ Elinor put in.

‘I didn’t, you know. My father died, and somehow we didn’t go out much after that. I used to go to the theatre sometimes.’

‘Deb has a romantic view of London which she can only preserve by absolute ignorance of it,’ observed Rupert. I think he thought these questions were embarrassing me, but they were
not (although they would once have reduced me almost to tears).

‘I do go to London.
When
I go, I have a very gay time,’ Deb retorted, like a child.

‘I should think it is perfectly possible to have a very gay time,’ I said.

‘Well! Of course I remember you were very serious about things, like music,’ said Deb. ‘Perhaps that makes a difference.’

‘I cannot think what you
do
in London,’ said Lucy, helping herself to cake.

‘Hand it round, Miss Lucy.’ said Nanny, who, having no interest in the conversation, was well able to preserve the proprieties of nursery tea.

‘Sorry. Cake anyone?’

Charles stretched out his arms for the cake. When Lucy handed it to him, he paused, picked off a cherry, and swallowed it whole.

‘Just like his mother,’ said Nanny hastening to bang his back. He choked; the cherry came up intact, and bounced across the table. Lucy put it back on his plate, where he regarded it
with an air of stately disapproval. Nanny chopped up a small piece of cake, whipped the cherry away, and told him to finish his tea. ‘He’ll get hiccups if he goes eating
cherries,’ she explained severely to Lucy.