The Beautiful Visit (46 page)

‘Write to me about it,’ she said. ‘There is not very much time left. I should be glad to know as soon as you have made up your mind.’

So she left me.

It was not a difficult decision. It was really one of those decisions which are instantly decided; until the sheer size of it forces one to rally a few faint objections, in order to flatter
one’s initial judgement. I knew, the moment Elspeth had gone, that I would gladly leave this room. I could assure myself with a kind of triumphant self-pity that I had no ties beyond it, or,
if I had, they were ties I could easily break. I wanted just then to think of myself spinning away round the earth, unbreakable and separate from anything that I touched. Round the earth was,
perhaps, hardly the way to describe this desire.

I wrote to Elspeth that night.

CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

Two weeks later we left. The days were so hectically crowded with practical preparation and emotional spilt milk, that I was not able to record them. I spent most of the
mornings and afternoons ordering things, choosing things, buying things, fetching things, and having things altered. There were to be three of us; but the third was not to join Elspeth and me until
something obscure had been arranged between Elspeth’s uncle and some mythical eccentric elsewhere. Elspeth displayed remarkable ingenuity and intelligence, together with her customary
incomplete presence of mind whenever I saw her. The whole business was transacted efficiently, and with a comfortable disregard for money which made even the suppliers of our varied and incongruous
requirements treat us with astonished awe.

I spent the evenings alternately with Elspeth and my family. The family evenings were extraordinarily difficult. I had been pledged to a complete silence on the real reason for my departure,
which made the venture frivolous, incomprehensible and almost disastrous to my mother. I told her I was going to write: she looked suddenly anxious and said: ‘Not music, darling?’ I
answered: ‘No, only words,’ and she seemed faintly reassured. She did not feel that composing music was a very happy career, she said: for a woman, she added. She was unhappy about my
going: I felt helplessly sorry for her, but I knew that I should go. How long would it all
take
? she would inquire at intervals. I did not really know.

Eventually, the day before we were to leave London, I left my room in Paddington, and walked with a single light suitcase out into the street. Although I was leaving my room for ever, I felt
quietly unreal about it, as though my departure were merely imaginary (I had come very close to my imagination during the recent months), as though there were no real question of my leaving at all,
in spite of Mrs Pompey’s brisk decisive farewell.

I went home to sleep the last night in my old room. Having kissed my mother and sister (my sister seemed to feel that the solemnity of the situation required this), I lay awake in this earlier
bed that I knew so well, with the unknown prospect of the journey flooding my mind. In spite or because of the knowledge that I must rise at six o’clock the next morning, I slept very
little.

I quelled the alarm-clock almost as soon as it rang, but a minute later my mother stood in the door of my room, shivering in a faded pink dressing-gown.

‘I was awake anyway,’ she said. ‘I will get tea.’

This was the worst time to attempt any kind of social departure, I reflected, struggling into the garments the arduous labours ahead of me required. It was the time when memory is sharp,
everything is remembered, but there is nothing to say. The worst possible time.

When my mother returned with a tray she gasped faintly and said: ‘Darling! Are you going like that?’

For a second we both looked at my clothes, and then, both aware of the hopelessness of any argument or explanation, looked away.
She
had always prepared me for any previous journey, I
knew we were both remembering.

We said the things we had said the night before; of course they did not console her. When she had asked whether I should come back soon, and I had reassured her, she said: ‘We shall hardly
know you.’

Would she have felt like this if I had been marrying? I wondered. No, she would regard my marriage as a logical continuation, she would comfort herself with that. She would not regard this
venture as either logical or lyrical; nor could it seem a continuation of anything at all.

We drank the warm metallic tea from the thermos. I swallowed a piece of bread and butter to please her. The cab arrived. The man blustered silently with my trunks in the hall while my mother
hovered miserably on the stairs, catching cold and trying not to cry, not to utter one word against me.

Kissing her, saying good-bye, was a curiously formal affair. I felt very like saying: ‘Thank you for having me’, the kind of thing one says after a long disappointing visit. I simply
kissed her again and went. The feeling was no more than a shadowy echo of what I had felt before embarking on a fortnight in the country. But this was not a fortnight in the country.

In a few racing silent moments my home was left behind; the little span when there was no present, and I was strung between the last moments of my family and the enormous mysterious future, was
endured in the cab, until, meeting Elspeth, it began to be my present again.

The journey by rail to the ship took ten hours. I had to read most of the time, a manuscript of technical and, in consequence, chiefly incomprehensible notes.

I imagined that on arrival we should board our (unexpectedly small) vessel and relax. I was utterly wrong about this. The boarding itself took three hours with all our equipment, and the
suspicious hostility of all customs officials to be contended with.

On board, a great deal of unpacking was necessary. I was given a cabin to myself with a good small table for writing.

Tomorrow, however, I shall start my new book. I am so tired that I cannot see the lines on the paper, but I have finished the second exercise book from Mr Williams. I am very cold, and work on
the floor, wrapped in Etspeth’s magnificent rug.

The new book in which I am to write has no lines.

I have opened it and written the title across the first page.

I am calling it ‘The Four Corners of The Earth’.

Also by Elizabeth Jane Howard

The Sea Change

After Julius

Odd Girl Out

Something In Disguise

Getting It Right

Mr Wrong

The Lover’s Companion (ed)

Green Shades (ed)

Falling

The Light Years

Marking Time

Confusion

Casting Off

First published 1950 by Jonathan Cape Ltd

This edition published 1993 by Pan Books

This electronic edition published 2011 by Pan Books
an imprint of Pan Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited
Pan Macmillan, 20 New Wharf Road, London N1 9RR
Basingstoke and Oxford
Associated companies throughout the world
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ISBN 978-1-447-21153-2 EPUB

Copyright © Elizabeth Jane Howard 1950

The right of Elizabeth Jane Howard to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

You may not copy, store, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means (electronic, digital,
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liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

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