The Beautiful Visit (7 page)

‘Silly thing,’ she laughed, delighted. ‘Cut what you like.’ I grasped the lock firmly and hacked away, the little scissors protesting, squeaking weakly until they
collapsed on air with a final gasp.

‘There.’ I held it up.

‘Yes.’ She seemed doubtful. ‘It’s left a funny end and I don’t know whether he’ll want quite so much. Still it will be a surprise.’ She folded it away
in crumpled tissue paper and pushed it into one of the shallow drawers. ‘Good. I knew you’d help me.’ A bell rang. ‘Time to dress.’

‘What shall I wear?’ I had never changed for dinner in my life, and I suddenly felt rather tired, and afraid of new things.

‘Oh, a frock. I shall wear this.’ She pulled out a mass of dull green silk. ‘See you at dinner.’

In my room, I wrenched off my clothes. My hands were cold and I began to worry about the way to the dining-room and always being called Mary, and Nanny noticing my hair, newly washed and utterly
out of control. There was a gleaming brass jug standing in my basin, the steam very white and noticeable in the cold room. Better warm my hands. The jug was very heavy and I slopped some water on
the marble washstand and nearly chipped the basin.

I washed my face and neck and hands, using an unyielding new cake of soap, rubbed myself dry, first with a rough scratching bath towel, and finally with a fragile slip of linen with embroidered
initials that became bumpy as the cloth grew wet. I stepped into the red frock with black braid. I should be late, and they would all have gathered in the drawing-room, or worse still, be sitting
in their places at table, all waiting for me to come into the room. Thank goodness Nanny was coming; I could never have managed all the buttons up the back. I pulled my hair down, and was breaking
the teeth of my comb when Nanny came in. She started by fastening my buttons with huge cold fingers and ended by doing my hair with an impeccable parting and a bun so tight that the hairs were
strained and tweaking behind my ears. She noticed that I had a hole in one of my stockings, so I changed them. My shoes were rather tight and slippery. Nanny cleaned my brush with the comb and
clicked her tongue over the broken teeth, but I was still immeasurably grateful to her. She was a perfect woman. She sent me down tidy and assured and luxurious. She would draw the stocking
together, and I need have no fears about being late. I think she must have been understanding enough to have encompassed the world she served, Deb and Lucy’s world, and that house and their
friends, and wise enough never to venture further so that she always remained mistress of every situation she encountered. Dressing for dinner held the same importance for her as it did for me. She
was infinitely kind.

Dinner was long and gay, ending with oranges and nuts and a sip of port because I had never tasted it before. It burned my tongue, but it was a beautiful colour. Deb smiled at me, sweetly
conspiratorial. I told Gerald about Michael although he wasn’t very interested except in the expelling part. He told me much more about his school than my brothers had ever vouchsafed about
theirs. He was very anxious to assure me of the narrowness of his own escape from expulsion, and my interest and surprise must have pleased him, as he grew bright red and very friendly.

After dinner we played charades. I’d played them before, but this was different. I was picked by Gerald to act. We jostled out into the hall, which was flickering with a dying fire; and
everyone talked simultaneously with choleric speed, decrying and applauding each other’s efforts without apparently interrupting their own flow of ideas; collecting walking sticks, summer
hats, overcoats, and Nanny’s glasses the while. I could think of nothing, my self-conscious apprehension rose in my throat, and my heart bumped against my new red dress as I took refuge in
weak general approval.

It was not so terrible. I was to be a shop assistant, which entailed an apron, secured from a maid who giggled and resisted at first, investing our designs with a delicious mixture of wickedness
and importance. I was to arrange the hats on the piano, and Gerald was to bring Deb, his wife, to choose one; and at one point I must implore her to observe the back, so they told me again and
again. Gerald went to clear the scene, and we heard the impatience of our audience through the door. He came back. Deb was not ready, but finally floated down the stairs in a long white fringed
shawl with her hair miraculously different. I was pushed forward. Nervously, I arranged the hats and waited. Nothing happened, and I was deeply conscious that my audience now knew as much of the
situation as I did. In a minute I should forget the bit about the back of Deb’s head. I surveyed the hats. ‘That looks stylish,’ I said aloud, and felt the quickening of attention
in the room. Emboldened, I selected an old straw hat with artificial roses pinched together, and tried it on. At that moment Gerald and Deb came in and from then on the whole charade went with a
swing. The audience guessed it, of course, but nobody cared as long as enough people dressed up, and the waits between the scenes were not interminable.

We went to bed at eleven o’clock, general good-nights being exchanged in the drawing-room. Lucy took me up to my room and left me tired and happy. I had just undressed when there was a tap
on my door.

‘Oh,’ she said. ‘About the wood. I mean what you said in it. Of course I haven’t told anyone, but are you all right now?’

‘Yes, quite all right, thank you.’

‘I just wanted to know.’ We were both rather embarrassed.

‘Well, good, I just wanted to know,’ she repeated, and then clumsily, she kissed me, my ear and a good deal of hair.

‘Good night,’ she said, and smiled, brightly sweet.

‘Good night,’ I replied.

Having fumbled with the gas lamp, which shot up like a train coming towards me, then subsided, I felt my way into bed.

The sheets were cold and different; there was a knife edge of air cutting through the crack of window and it was very silent. Lying there, I reviewed the day which had begun with getting up, my
trunk bumping corners down the stairs, and a choking tasteless breakfast (travellers’ pride, someone had said). My father’s rough blue cheek; the carriages upholstered like short thick
grass; my mouth sore from the pear drop; rain; cows; people, black purposeless specks since I never saw them achieve their destinations; the gate open, the door shut, the hedge reached; arriving,
waiting for the trap; cold, damp and apprehension, Lucy, Gerald, the whip making a greasy line on the pony’s heavy coat, Lucy’s smile, laughing; then the house, and the parrot’s
eye of the groom. Lucy’s mother; the smell, oh yes the smell; lunch, a gleaming table and Deb; Nanny, and the darling little house. I dwelled on that until it became almost animate. I had
enjoyed it so much. Perhaps we should go and see if it were still there; whether it had stood the weather and the night and the silence – of course it would be noisy in a wood I supposed,
rather frightening. I remembered running in the dusk, and the sparks of windows, orange, like the slug. Deb, and her cherries at tea, what a secret I knew, all about an engagement; her hair, her
jewels. There must be stars in the sky, should I look at them? I remembered the high hedge and the moon. What extraordinary things happened to other people!

Still, I notice them, I notice a good deal more than some people, and something exciting must happen to me. Lucy kissed me, she must like me. I love it: I want this time to last. I don’t
care if nothing else happens; I’ll have this as my loveliest time. Really, it’s only a beginning, I’m sixteen. I want everything, every single thing.

In the dark, almost asleep, I embraced the wonderfully welcome unknown; slept, hugging every change, and all the time I had, with this one lovely day, slipping out of my body into my mind.

CHAPTER SIX

That was the beginning of the best Christmas that I remember. I think one of the most delightful aspects of the house was that it was made up of fascinating ceremonies and
expeditions. They made every day and moment taut with excitement or sprawling with pleasure: the house accepted me, and the people unfolded like tulips.

The mornings were exquisite: beginning with pure white mist on the ground, which had been secretly inlaid with sparkling hard frost, glittering and twinkling like stars in a morning sky, as the
palely elegant sun rose and devoured the drops, broke the ice-like paper on the river, and touched the copse to red with its spidery rays. Porridge poured down our throats like molten lead, heating
us for the day. Other people’s breakfasts seem so infinitely richer than one’s own; even their marmalade seems rarer, and the toast is a different shape. Then there were things like
honey and mushrooms and pears that I had never before eaten for breakfast. And what were we going to do today? Lucy’s mother always asked.

‘Picnic.’

‘Silly, far too cold.’

‘I’m going to ride. Gerald, shall you ride?’

‘I don’t know. Where’s this ice?’

‘Papa, who is to have Tufty?’

‘Someone has to get holly for the church.’

‘It’s not a good year for holly.’

Elspeth opened her eyes wide. ‘It’s an excellent year for holly.’

Well
you
find it.
You
find enough for the pulpit and all the windows.’

‘Papa, who is to have Tufty? Gerald had him last time.’

‘Elinor, run up and ask Aunt Edith whether she’d like half a pear. Wait a minute, take it.’

‘Who’s going to the village?’

‘The vicarage children are pining to play French and English.’

‘
Papa
. Please may I ride Tufty? In a snaffle. I won’t hurt his mouth. May I? Papa, please.’

‘I’ll take you.’

‘Oh!’ Lucy was delighted.

‘And what’s Toby going to do?’

‘Balloons,’ he answered, and plunged into his milk.

‘What about the vicarage children?’

‘Gerald can ride Golden Plume.’

‘Oh!’ Lucy was rather dashed. ‘Gerald, you lucky thing. May I tomorrow?’

‘You’re having Tufty . . . When creeping murmur and the something dark. Seven letters.’

Lucy’s mother paused. ‘Whispering. No. I don’t know, dear. I never can do the Double Acrostic. It’s a quotation . . . Now,’ she summed us all up. ‘Gerald and
Lucy are riding. Gerald, run and tell Parker. Elspeth’s going to get holly, and you’re all going to play French and English with the vicarage children before tea. I can’t help it,
my dears, think of their poor mother. Pouring, darling, pouring dark.’ And so on.

I spent the day with several of them. I watched Lucy go off for her ride, radiant, on a wicked black pony who sidled about like a crab with a grin; and then collected holly with Elspeth, who
talked much more when one was alone with her. Climbing a gate she stood on the top bar, apparently quite comfortable, and slashed at the holly, throwing down branches to me.

‘What are you going to do when you’re grown up?’ was her opening gambit.

‘I don’t know.’

‘Don’t know! You’ll have to think soon, won’t you? You’re nearly grown up now.’

‘Yes.’ I must think I supposed. ‘What are
you
going to do?’

‘I shall keep a small
zoo
,’ she said stretching out for a branch, ‘and – hold my legs, will you? – I shall write a great many books. They will be about
different things.’

‘What sort of things?’

‘Mostly about people. I want to find out where they start being different. Now you’ – she sat down on the gate swinging her legs – ‘now you’re quite different
from Lucy. And Gerald and Lucy are more alike than any of us. And I’m different again.’

‘What about Elinor?’

‘She’s a wishy-washy little thing,’ she said impatiently. Elinor was far older than Elspeth, at least fifteen, so I was impressed. ‘She is so careful to be the same as
other people. She can’t think beyond her school. And she does her Holiday Task. Poetry.’

‘Perhaps she likes poetry.’

‘She doesn’t know anything about it. It’s the Task. In the summer holidays it was painting blackberries. Well, she did it. So that they’ll be pleased with her at school.
She just wants to be a mother and have babies.’ This seemed to me a lot to want, but Elspeth was so scornful that I didn’t dare say so. ‘And if you ask her who she wants to marry,
she doesn’t say a pirate or a lord or anything interesting like that, she simply says a nice man. Well, I
ask
you. She says she wants to live in London because they have nice clothes.
I said, now that
you
’ve come she can see there’s nothing in that, is there? You don’t have specially nice clothes. I mean, they’re all right, but not feathers and
things.’

‘You could have feathers if you wanted them. You don’t like Elinor.’

‘Not much, I like older people. I like people to be ahead of me.’

‘What about Deb?’

‘Deb.’ Elspeth considered her. ‘Well, she’s different. I mean you can’t decide about Deb. Because the moment you start, you think, well, she’s beautiful, so
it means you can’t count the bad things she does much, and the good things seem better. Deb wants what she thinks is everything, but she can’t see very far. So really they’re
fairly dull things and she’ll get them, I should think. Now you’d want far harder things.’

‘What?’

She considered me wisely, with her head a little on one side.

‘I don’t
know
you.’

‘Do you like me?’

‘I think so, you’re rather pretty. Good heavens, I didn’t mean to embarrass you.’

‘It’s all right,’ I mumbled, feeling a fool. It had been such a very stupid question. No one had ever said anything like that. ‘You’re cold,’ Michael had
said, and now, ‘You’re pretty, rather pretty.’ Some awful fascination led me on. I gripped the gate.

‘Elspeth, in what way am I pretty?’ It must be an important thing to know, because Deb had minded so much. ‘It’s not as silly as it sounds. At least, I’ve never
thought about it before, but it seems suddenly to matter. I don’t know many people. So I haven’t asked anyone else. I don’t do things very well. I want to start, and if I were
pretty – rather pretty – it ought to help, oughtn’t it? I mean a person should have something interesting or nice about them. I play the piano a bit, but not well enough to count.
I seem to have so much
less
than other people. It’s an awful feeling, because you have it by yourself just as much as with other people. So in what way would you say I was
pretty?’ I stopped. Everything I had said sounded inexpressibly foolish.