The Old Man and Me (12 page)

“See you seven-thirtyish then,” said Lady Daggoner indifferently and left.

Now we were alone. “You go up and get some rest,” the mother told me rising. She lived in a little cottage in the grounds. She would love me to visit it but something had gone wrong with the electricity that week. It was in a primitive state, she wouldn’t dream of inflicting it on me. But before she went, she wanted to tell me about the Abbey. The Abbey was in the grounds, not too far away, I could see it from the corner of my window. The Abbey, or rather its ruins, was a twelfth century one that had been razed to the ground during the reign of Henry the Eighth and all the monks slaughtered and I was in the Blue Room, Clara’s—she’d insisted on that because from there, if one was lucky, one could sometimes hear the ghostly voices of the friars at their matins. Clara hadn’t. It was one of their big disappointments. She devoutly hoped I might. And then she was off too. And now I was totally alone.

After a few false starts I found my way back to my room and looked for my suitcase to begin unpacking. Gone. Wrong room? Nope, it was undeniably blue. What had happened was that invisible fairy hands had pressed, folded, and hung up every stitch of my clothing, polished my shoes, laid out my toilet articles on the washstand and my make-up on the dressing-table, drawn my bath, made off with my suitcase and disappeared without a trace. I looked out of the window at the afternoon splendour, located the Abbey ruins pink in the sun’s reflection and lay down on the fourposter bed. A neat little fire had been lit in the fireplace. The peace, the quiet, the perfection—it was all rather exhausting. I relaxed with a sigh of defeat: the English did this sort of thing better than we did, they made us look like a bunch of apes. But as I curled up to doze off, my eyes happened to fall upon my wrist watch. I got up and let the water out of the tub. Could be that maybe they
overdid
this sort of thing? Or—could be that this was my hot water for the day? Hurriedly I turned on the hot water tap. Hot water came out of it. I wandered around the room trying to find fault with it. The furniture was beautiful. I sat down at the dressing-table and noticed a small but complete sewing kit and a pin-cushion as well. Ah, these happy, happy thoughts. A candle, a gorgeous green jade-coloured candle in the shape of a fat Buddha, was sitting there too. He looked not unlike C. D. I thought, he really was too beautiful to use. But there were other candles, equally lovely, one on the desk, one on the chest of drawers, and one on the bedside table. Hah! Electricity failures, disguise them as they may. Wasn’t the old lady having just such trouble in her cottage? I rushed to the main switch and on went the lights without a moment’s hesitation.

I gave up. I went back to the bed, found the John Dickson Carr book—it all took place in a country house too—and soon became absorbed in it. Suddenly it was time to bathe and dress. I ran the bath again hoping the water would warm up the bathroom for now a chill had fallen upon it. Then I noticed three things: an electric heater clamped to the wall high over my head with a long chain dangling down which you pulled to turn it on, a hot water bottle on a hook behind the door, and the separate hot towel-rail for the large bath-towel. What infinite pains the English took to avoid heating their homes centrally!

I dressed in a pale grey chiffon clinging in Grecian folds, bound my hair in a matching grey ribbon, spent a lot of time on my make-up, and emerged on the dot of 7.30 entirely satisfied that my stark, jewel-less simplicity looked on purpose. I descended the stairs and entered the drawing-room feeling equal to anything. What were the other people like? I had hardly met them, couldn’t even recall their faces. No matter, in my present mood I felt my charm and wit easily up to breaking through their stony reserve.

I was the second. Besides the dogs, I mean. A Rossetti-looking girl with long thickly waving hair, a thick chain with a heavy pendant hanging from her neck, pendant earrings hanging from her ears, and heavy bracelets hanging from her wrists was sitting in a corner of a sofa in long trailing skirts sewing away at what looked like a piece of tapestry. Very picturesque she was with only the slightest suggestion of horsiness—a touch around the teeth.

I smiled at her. She looked up vaguely and went back to her fine seam.

We sat in silence until I decided I’d had enough of that. “I’m Honey Flood,” I said in a clear voice that boomed into the silence. “I didn’t catch your name this afternoon.”

Another silence. A rustle. “Ann,” she murmured just audibly. But the sewing stopped and she offered “What a lovely day it’s been.”

“Has it? I wouldn’t know; I wish I did. I didn’t get a chance to go out.”

“What a pity. We’ve had such a sky! I think the real drama of the English countryside is the drama of the sky, don’t you? Have you noticed how splendidly it contrasts with the calmness of the gently swelling land? Take today. What wild variety in the masses and shapes and colours of the clouds—bright silver white to soft silvery grey, some stretched like thin strands of hair blown across the sky, some in great thick puffs like smoke from a steam-engine. We crossed a glistening wet road and I looked up: the little cotton cloud-coloured moon with its ridiculous paper cut-out shape looked so absurdly prim and proper, so somehow
touching
amidst the pagan splendour. It was all so very moving I had to sit down for a moment. It quite took my breath away.”

“Gee, I’ll bet it was,” I said with soft enthusiasm, hoping my tone matched hers in gentle fervour. “I could kill myself for missing it.”

“Do by all means see Pamela’s Folly. I’ve just come in from it.”

“Her what?” I asked wondering if I was going to spend the whole evening flunking my vocabulary test.

“Her Folly. Oh sorry. I fancy that’s a specially English thing. Though actually I believe it’s from the French, you know,
folie
. It’s what you’d imagine the word means; we build mad little summer-houses, or personal idiosyncratic gardens without rhyme or reason, arbours, bowers, hiding places. That sort of thing.”

“What’s Lady Daggoner’s Folly like?”

“A cypress alley.” She clouded her eyes and sighed, letting the mood sink in. “An alley of cypress,” she mourned. “I passed through it at dusk and, as the evening deepened and I wandered amongst the trees lined up in rows, suddenly I understood: They were men. Yes: suddenly I was at a ball and these trees had become men. Tall men, short men, eager, aloof, sardonic, gaily, bending and stretching towards me, seeking my favours, imploring me to dance with them. I became as if caught in a dream. I found I was no longer walking. I was whirling, flirting, teasing, testing—then choosing; accepting—then refusing. And all the time their desire for me grew and their insistence increased and they became realer and realer until I feared for my sanity.” This pretty extraordinary speech, delivered in her mellifluous voice, was produced without a trace of self-consciousness.

By now I was genuinely impressed. “How poetically you express yourself! You should be a writer.” No sooner had the words left my mouth than I realized that that was exactly what she was.

“Actually I have done one or two little books,” she murmured deprecatingly.

“I’d love to read them. What are their names?”

Wordlessly she rose and left the room. Had I offended her? Probably I should have known their names. But how could I? I didn’t even know
her
name. I was beginning to fear for my own sanity when she reappeared as suddenly as she left and dropped two books in my lap. “I can’t sign them for you,” she said, still with that supreme lack of self-consciousness. “I can’t find my pen.”

“Perhaps there’s one around here,” I suggested getting up and starting to look around.

“Oh, no.” And now she was genuinely offended. “I couldn’t possibly use any pen but my own.”

“Well, thanks—uh, thank you very much,” I said staring down at them. I felt self-conscious as hell. Was I supposed to start reading them now or what? “I’ll go and put them in my room.” I gathered them up and excused myself. I was damned if I was going to cart them around with me all evening.

By the time I came back, rather breathless by now—it was no hop, skip and jump in that house from home base to the drawing-room—we were richer by one more. A gentleman had joined the ladies: the Colonel, an impeccably attired person with smooth thin hair and a long sharp nose. He rose and said something unintelligible to me. He had a way of clenching his jaw when he spoke that made it impossible for his words to exit. And then afterwards his face cracked into a ghastly grimace that made me wonder if he had not recently had a stroke.

I nodded and subsided into a chair. “...but then Greece has been terribly important to me,” the mellifluous Ann was continuing the monologue my arrival had interrupted. “I must have mountains
and
the sea. And I must have complete seclusion. Once I start working in earnest I eat all my meals alone. And interesting walks; that’s another necessity. One works, of course, equally hard when walking as when actually writing,” she explained to us pleasantly. And on she went allowing her placid egotism full reign; in constant communication with her own importance. It was literally impossible to tear her away from herself for a moment. “No, thank you I won’t: I don’t smoke
or
drink as a matter of fact. I find it dulls the senses. Every so often I go on a strict regime—a great deal of what we eat is just...”

Thank God, the hostess. Poured into a long velvet evening dress that exposed her superb shoulders, and glittering with jewels, I saw she warranted a second thought besides the first “frump” one I’d dismissed her with. The room filled up. It was fuller than at tea I noticed without being able to pinpoint exactly how it had happened. Then the host Sir Rupert who Did Something in the City made his entrance; stern and handsome and very much the head of the family. The growing children flocked around him. The dogs bounced. Drinks were served. Subdued hilarity. C. D. winked at me.

Dinner in the vast Dining Hall. Footmen behind our chairs. I was accorded the signal honour of being seated next to the host—my elation dwindling away a little as I watched how pointedly (she had taken both by the hands with an exalted look as if joining them in Holy Wedlock) the hostess was seating Ann and C. D. next to each other and as far away from me as possible. And that was very far indeed. Children and all, we were about fifteen.

A youngish man, a somewhat calmer version of the Colonel, was on my right. I decided I had not seen him before—nor the roguish, ravishing Lady Bessemer, who was next the host opposite me. They must have arrived with Sir Rupert. I looked at him. He looked at me. First the Unfolding of the Napkins and then, like a good host, he took me on. “I’m worried about my eldest daughter,” he began, diving right in. “As you’re fairly close to her in age perhaps you can help me. It’s two years till she comes out and I can’t decide what to do with her.”

“How old is she?”

“Sixteen.”

“I’m way past that.”

“Oh, give or take a few years, that’s not what I mean,” he exclaimed impatiently. “You’re roughly what I’d call her generation, don’t you agree?”

For the sake of harmony, I agreed.

“Well then,” he complained, “I wish you’d explain this generation to me. I wish someone would. They’re going to rebel of course. Always have. I know all about that. That’s nothing new. It’s the shocking flabby form that rebellion takes nowadays that I can’t stomach. I’m not having her run off with some frightful rock-and-roll singer, or some delinquent film star, or some damn photographer. It’s all your fault over there, y’know. You started the whole thing. Gave those chaps too much money, too much publicity. Turned ’em into bloody heroes, worshipped ’em, that’s what you did. And then we had to set up our own tin-plated imitations and now look what we’ve got. In my day the worst that could happen was one of those writer or painter chaps. Starving in a garret and so forth. Always the chance that eventually you’d starve ’em out. Fat chance of that nowadays. Those holy rollers or whatever they are probably make more in a week than I get in a year. No, it’s all your fault, really. You must take the blame. You invented them.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Never mind. There it is. No use weeping about it. The Age we Live in, eh? I’ve been pretty fly though,” he went on craftily, lowering his voice. “I believe I’ve subtly instilled in my daughter the desirability of marrying a rich older man.”

“How?” I wanted to know.

“By being a model parent. Firm but sympathetic. Devoting lots of time to her. Always making certain I remained foremost in her affections. When she eventually settles down, I’m sure she’ll choose someone like me. Has to, don’t you see? Potty about me. Damn clever, what?”

“Fiendishly,” I smiled.

“D’you know, it occurred to me—might be a jolly good thing to send her off to America for a bit. Let her have her fill of all that nonsense and vulgarity. Get it out of her system. She’s bound to get fed to the teeth. What do you think she should do?”

“Join the Communist Party.”

“Ha, ha. That’s a good one! I say, I must remember that. But seriously, it might not be a bad idea. Did young Darlington a world of good, his two years with them. Discipline and so forth. He was a perfect jelly-fish before.”

These English. Didn’t they ever get
anything
right? The sole purpose of my remark had been to enrage him. It most certainly would have his American equivalent from whom I could have expected anything from a dead faint to ordering me out of the house. I felt like pouring my soup over his head. But that was out of the question. The soup was too good.

So. Over to my partner on the right: the young Colonel-substitute. He was a noisy boisterous soul, full of his new yacht, ship-shape and all set for a glorious Mediterranean cruise. If only he could lure old stick-in-the-mud Rupert aboard, what? Tiresome old Rupert. Lost cause, that one. Couldn’t move him off these grounds with a steam shovel. Wasn’t his
grounds
, gruffed Rupert, was his table, he said piling into his next course. Anyone know of a better one? Agreed, agreed, best in the land, clamoured the yachtsman. But he had a French chef, first class, on board. Would old Rupert care for a dry run?