The Silent Pool (7 page)

Adriana came down to lunch with plans made for all of them. It annoyed her a good deal to find that Geoffrey was not there.

‘I shall rest for an hour and then take Mabel for a drive. If Geoffrey intended to go off like this he should have let me know. I suppose he hasn’t by any chance taken the Daimler?’ She fixed a demanding stare on Edna, who fidgeted with her table-napkin.

‘Oh, no – of course not. I mean, how could he, when Ninian had it to meet Mabel?’

Adriana gave her short red hair a toss.

‘Implying that nothing else stopped him from taking my car without so much as asking whether I wanted it myself! And don’t say he couldn’t have known I was going to use it, because that is merely aggravating! If you leave me alone, I shall probably have got over being annoyed by the time he comes home. I suppose he took the Austin. For all he knew, I might have wanted to let Ninian have it. Where has he gone?’

Edna crumbled the bread beside her plate.

‘I really don’t know. I didn’t ask him.’

Adriana laughed.

‘Perhaps it was just as well – men hate it. Especially when they’re up to mischief. Not, of course, that Geoffrey—’ She left the sentence in the air and laughed again.

Ninian struck in with a light ‘Aren’t you being a little severe, darling?’ to which she replied, ‘Probably,’ and helped herself to salad.

‘Anyhow,’ she continued, ‘if Geoffrey isn’t here he can’t drive us. Meriel will have to. No, Ninian – I want you for something else. We will drop you and Janet in Ledbury, and you can change the library books and do some shopping for me. That is to say, Janet will do the shopping and you will carry the parcels.’

Janet said,

‘I shall have Stella to fetch.’

‘It’s the dancing-class, isn’t it? It doesn’t matter how long she stays at the Vicarage. We can pick her up on the way back. Now that’s all fixed, and I don’t want to hear any more about it’

Mabel Preston spoke in a resigned voice.

‘I do usually rest in the afternoon, you know.’

Adriana said briskly,

‘And so do I, but an hour is quite as long as is good for us. One mustn’t let oneself get into bad habits. Well then, it’s all settled, and everyone must be ready punctually at a quarter to three.’

Ninian was allowed to drive the car as far as Ledbury. There was a horrid moment after they got there when Adriana seemed to be in some doubt about letting him go.

‘Meriel is such a jerky driver,’ she said. ‘Yes, you are, my dear, and it’s no good your looking like a thunderstorm about it.’ She beamed at Janet. ‘I hope you are grateful to me for letting you have our only young man. Now, Mabel, I’m going to take you round by Rufford’s Tower. I shan’t attempt the climb myself, but Meriel will go up with you. The view should be perfect today.’

Mabel was still protesting that she hated heights and that nothing would induce her to climb the tower, when with a noisy change of gears they drove away.

Ninian laughed.

‘Adriana at her most peremptory! What’s the odds the wretched Mabel will be made to toil up to the top?’

They changed the books and worked through a dull list of household shopping. There really seemed to be no good reason why they should be doing it, since with the exception of the books everything could have been ordered by telephone.

However, as Ninian said, there wasn’t any point about looking the gift-horse in the mouth.

‘Actually, you know, I think Adriana is trying to throw us together.’

Janet said, ‘Nonsense!’ and was admonished.

‘Now there you are being hasty. And not the first time I have had to tell you about it either! A spot of matchmaking would be a diversion for Adriana, and it would have the added attraction of being quite certain to annoy Meriel.’

‘Why should she want to annoy Meriel?’

‘Darling, don’t ask me, but it is quite obvious that she does. At a guess I should say that she just plants a dart wherever she can. No real harm intended, but a distinct pleasure in seeing whether she can’t make any of us rise. If we do, it’s a point to her. If we can ward it off or throw it back, well, that’s a point to us. It’s a kind of game.’

Janet said soberly,

‘It’s the kind of game that makes people hate you.’

Ninian laughed.

‘Do you know, I’ve got an idea she would find that quite exhilarating.’

They were to be picked up by the corner of the station approach at a quarter past four, Adriana declaring that five o’clock was quite early enough for tea, and that anyhow they would be home by the quarter to. But at twenty to four Ninian declared that only immediate refreshment would save him from an ingrowing anti-shopping complex which would probably become chronic.

‘And just think how inconvenient you are going to find that!’

Janet looked at him in what she meant to be a repressive manner.

‘I?’

‘Naturally. You wouldn’t be able to risk bringing it on. No little shopping-list pressed into my hand with a farewell kiss as I rush off to the office in the morning.’

Ignoring all but a single startling word, Janet caught her breath and said,

‘The office?’

‘Of course. Didn’t I mention it? On the first of October I become a wage-slave in a publishing firm. I shall have a pay-packet, and an office desk in a back room looking on to a mews.’

He saw her face change. It became warm and eager. She said,

‘Oh, Ringan!’ And then in a hurry, ‘Do you mind dreadfully?’

He slipped a hand inside her arm and gave it a squeeze.

‘I wouldn’t be doing it if I did. Actually, I think it’s going to be quite interesting. It’s Firth and Saunders, you know. You remember Andrew Firth. We’ve always been friends, so when I found there was an opening with his people I thought I’d put in old Cousin Jessie Rutherford’s money. Andrew said they’d probably take me, and they did. I’ve finished another book, so I’ve got something in hand.’

Janet did not say anything for a moment. They walked along past the shop windows. The town was full, people brushed past them. This wasn’t public property. He was telling her what he hadn’t told Star. He had always told her things, but he had generally told Star too. She said,

‘I thought your book did well – the second one?’

‘It did. And the next is going to do better, and so forth and so on. But this doesn’t mean I’m going to stop writing – I’ve made quite a good plan about that. Now this is where we turn off and get our cup of tea. It’s a good place to talk.’

A stone’s throw down the narrow crooked street there hung the sign of a golden kettle, very bright and new. The place it advertised could hardly have been much older without falling to pieces. It had windows dim with bottle-glass, interior visibility of no more than a couple of yards, and beams which threatened anyone over six foot with concussion. As they threaded their way across a floor thick with small tables, Ninian bent to whisper,

‘Actually, The Kettle is a joke. People come here if they don’t want to be recognized, and then find themselves bumping into everyone they most want to avoid. But there are some really good hide-outs down at the far end.’

They achieved a table in a nook discreetly screened from the public gaze. A faint light smouldered overhead in an orange bulb. Janet wondered how bad the tea would be. In her experience medievalism very often failed to cover a multitude of sins. But when it came, in a squat orange teapot very difficult to pour from, it really wasn’t bad at all, and the cakes were good. Ninian ate four, and went on talking about his publishing job.

‘You see, I don’t want the books to be a matter of bread and butter. I think it’s fatal – or it would be for me. I want to be able to say I don’t care what the public likes, I’m going to write what I damn well choose. If I choose to hammer at a thing for a year, I don’t want there to be anything to stop me. And if I have an urge to do a firework and let it off in everyone’s face, I want to be able to do that. The only trouble is that I’m a pretty regular eater, and the sordid soul of commerce does expect to have its bills paid. In fact, darling, there simply has to be something one can use for money. So I thought this publishing idea was rather a brainwave. A life of honest toil doing the fellow author in the eye or giving him a helping hand, according to which end of the stick you are looking at, and quite a reasonable pay-packet. It’s a good investment for the money too. I don’t suppose anyone is going to bother about nationalizing publishing for quite a long time yet, and meanwhile there will be the pay-packet.’

Janet put down her cup. Now that her eyes were getting accustomed to the gloom she could just see where the saucer was. He said,

‘No comment? Don’t you ask me what I want with a nice regular pay-packet?’

‘Am I supposed to?’

‘Oh, I think so. But I’ll tell you anyway. I’m thinking of getting married, and all the best statistics go to show that wives prefer a regular income. It saves awkwardness in the fish queue. They don’t like waiting until the cod has been tied up in newspaper and then having to ask the fishmonger to let the bill stand over until the next book comes out. It tends to lower the social standing and prevents other people giving you tick.’

Janet poured out another cup of tea. The pot burned her finger and she put it down in a hurry. Ninian said,

‘Still no comment?’

‘No one expects credit for fish. At least not unless you run a weekly or a monthly book, and you’ve got to be a very good customer for anyone to let you do that.’

‘Well, I’m not so hot on fish anyhow, so just make a mental note not to give it me more than twice a week.’

There was a pause before she said, ‘I don’t like that way of talking.’

‘No?’

‘No. And the girl you’re going to marry wouldn’t care about it either.’

He said in a laughing voice,

‘Well, you ought to know! Let’s change the subject. There are more romantic things than fish. Let us consider the question of a flat. I have secret advance information about one that I think would do. The chap who is in it has been offered a job in Scotland, and he has agreed to let me take over his lease. We can’t argy-bargy over it — that’s why I’m telling you this now. I thought we could run up to town tomorrow and get it clinched.’

Janet looked straight in front of her. The screened recess which had seemed so dark when they felt their way into it now appeared to offer her very little shelter. She felt his eyes on her, with just what look she thought she knew or could guess – mocking, teasing, darting here and there in search of a joint in her armour. And even if she could close her face against him, defend eye and lip, breath and colour, he had brought with him from the days before she had known any need to defend herself a trick of entry, a way to beguile her from her guard. She said in the most matter-of-fact tone she could manage,

‘When it comes to taking a flat, it will be for the girl who is going to live in it to say whether she likes it or not.’

‘Naturally. But I would like you to see it.’

‘I have Stella to look after.’

‘She can stay at the Vicarage for lunch. She always does when Nanny has a day off. Star has an arrangement with Mrs Lenton. We can catch the nine-thirty and be back by half past four. You see, it really is important for you to see if the flat will do. He wants to leave some things like linoleum, and a lot of curtains which haven’t got an earthly chance of fitting the place they are going to in Edinburgh. It’s part of an aunt’s house, and he says the windows are nine foot high.’

A heartening flash of anger enabled Janet to face him with colour in her cheeks.

‘I told you before I don’t like that sort of talk!’

‘But, darling, we’ll have to have linoleum and curtains, and suppose I got them and you said you couldn’t live with them—’

‘I have no intention of living with them.’

His face changed suddenly. His hand caught hers.

‘Haven’t you, Janet – haven’t you?’

‘Why should I?’

His laugh shook a little.

‘Part of the worldly goods I’ll be endowing you with. No, that’s out of date. The last wedding I went to the chap said “share”. Rather a pity, don’t you think? I rather like the sound of that “I thee endow”. A bit archaic of course, but so is marriage.’

‘No one was talking about marriage.’

‘Oh, yes, darling, I was – definitely. I’ve been laying my pay-packet and the linoleum and things at your feet for at least ten minutes. Hadn’t you noticed it?’

She said, ‘No.’ At least she went through the right movements for saying ‘No’, but they didn’t seem to result in any recognizable sound.

Ninian said, ‘Come again!’ still in that laughing, shaking voice. And then all at once his black head was bent down over the hand he was holding and he was kissing it as if he would never let it go.

There was a moment when everything seemed to go round, there was a moment when everything stood still. With the touch of his lips on her hand Janet knew very well that she couldn’t go on saying no. But she could at least stop herself from saying yes. It was, in fact, not really possible to say anything at all.

And then someone spoke on the other side of the screen which divided them from the nook on their right. It was Geoffrey Ford, and he could not have been more than a yard away from them. He said comfortably, ‘Well, no one is going to see us here,’ and a woman laughed.

Janet snatched away her hand, and Ninian presented the unmistakable appearance of a young man who is saying, ‘Damn!’ Not aloud of course, but with a good deal of feeling. On the other side of the screen two people could be heard settling themselves.

Janet got up, collected her bag, and skirted the table. Ninian followed her, put a hand on her arm, and was shaken off. As they emerged into the general gloom, the woman who had laughed said in a low but perfectly distinct voice,

‘I’m not going on like this, and you needn’t think so.’

Janet woke up in the night. She had been dreaming, and the feel of the dream came with her out of her sleep like water dripping as you come up out of a stream. She sat up in bed and waited for the feeling to go. It was an old dream, but she hadn’t had it for a long time now. It came when her mind was troubled, but she did not know what had troubled it tonight. Didn’t she? Ninian and this talk of all the things she had told herself she must and would forget! In sober earnest, how much of it did he mean? Nothing – something – anything? And what kind of fool would she be to be lured back into the passionate moments, the light uncertainties, the day-in, day-out companionship which had been between them? She had said, ‘Never any more,’ and he had only to look at her and kiss her hand and her heart broke with longing to take him back again.

In the dream she was fording a burn – just a shallow, pleasant thing with the pebbles shining through the brown water and the sun turning them to gold. Only she couldn’t get to the other side, and with every step it was deeper. The water was dark and drumly, and the sun was something she had forgotten long ago. Sometimes she woke then, but once she had waded so deep that the water was up to her mouth and the roaring filled her ears. It hadn’t been so bad as that tonight. The stream had been no higher than her knees, and here she was awake. It could rise no farther now.

She looked at the windows standing open with the curtains drawn back and the shape of them just discernible against the denser blackness of the walls. She slipped out of bed and went barefoot to the right-hand one of the two, feeling her way past the dressing-table which stood between them. The night was still, and warm, and very dark, with a feeling of low cloud and not a leaf that stirred. She knelt down and leaned out with her elbows on the sill. There was an autumn smell abroad. Someone had had a bonfire. There was just the tang of wood-smoke on the air, and there was the scent of all the ripe and ripening things that were coming on to their harvest time. The softness and the silence touched her thought and stilled it. The dream wouldn’t come again. She could stay here for a little while longer and then go back into bed and sleep.

Quite suddenly there was a streak of light across the gravel under the window – a long, thin streak lying crookedly across the path and slanting over the tall musk roses in the bed beyond. It was there, but it did not stay. It moved, ran backwards, and was gone. And then a moment later there it was again, but much farther to the right. The curtains in the room below didn’t quite meet, and someone had just walked across that room with a light. Whoever it was had now gone on through the connecting door to Edna’s own little sitting-room. There chintz curtains veiled the light, and it was no longer a streak but a dull glow upon the path.

Janet got up and went through to the nursery. The windows here were shut, but since they were casements they could be opened without making any sound. She leaned out, and the glow was still there. She looked over her shoulder at the nursery clock with its luminous face. It was between ten minutes and a quarter to two. Edna might have gone down – to get a book – or because she couldn’t sleep. Or Geoffrey. Or Meriel. Or Adriana, for the matter of that, only it really didn’t seem at all likely. No, quite definitely, if Adriana wanted anything in the middle of the night she would send Meeson down for it, and Meeson would expect to be sent. Only Meeson would have everything she wanted for making tea or coffee in the little pantry which was part of Adriana’s suite of rooms. Of course it might be any of the others – or it might be someone who hadn’t any business to be there. She couldn’t just go back to bed and leave it uncertain. Suppose she were to come down in the morning and find that all the silver had been stolen. But it didn’t seem very sensible just to walk in on a burglar by herself. She would have to call Ninian.

As the thought went through her mind, the window below her was opened. It was one of those long glass doors with a handle which controls the bolt. It made a faint sound as it swung wide, and at the same moment the light went out. There was a sound of footsteps on the gravel and a sound of whispering voices. She leaned out over the sill, and she strained to hear what the whispering voices said.

But they were just a rustling murmur. She could not tell whether it was man or woman who was whispering there below. And then the rustlings ran together into the syllables of a single sentence, and still she didn’t know whether it was man or woman who had spoken. First Adriana’s name – suddenly, like water splashing in her face. And then the sentence which she was to go over and over in her mind – and at the end know no more what it meant than she did at the beginning:

‘There’s nothing for anyone as long as she keeps hanging on.’

Someone went away along the path. Janet could hear the footsteps getting fainter, until in the end she could not hear them at all. The flicker of a torch receded with them. When it was quite gone someone stepped back over the sill into Edna’s sitting-room and shut the door. She got up on to her feet and went out into the passage and along to the landing at the head of the stairs. There was a light in the hall below, just a weak bulb, but coming out of the dark like this it seemed much brighter than it really was.

Janet looked over the stairs and saw Edna Ford in a grey flannel dressing-gown with her hair scraped back and done up in aluminium curlers. The light shone on her, on the tears that were running down her face. Janet had heard about people wringing their hands, but she had never thought of it as a thing that anyone really ever did. But Edna was wringing her hands as she walked and wept. The thin fingers clung and twisted, the hands were twined together and strained apart. She had the look of a woman who has been stripped of everything and left in a desolate wilderness.

Whatever had happened or was happening, Janet felt that it was not for her to see. She drew back into the dark passage from which she had come.

She had not reached the nursery door, when she heard a sound that brought her running back. It wasn’t loud, but there was no mistaking it. Edna had given a kind of choking gasp and come down. She could have tripped on the stair, or she could have turned giddy and lost her balance, but there she was, about five or six steps up, with an arm thrown out and her face hidden against it.

Janet ran down barefoot.

‘Mrs Ford — are you hurt?’

Edna lifted up her head and stared at her. Her face had a naked look, the pale eyes reddened, the sallow skin stained with tears.

‘Mrs Ford – are you hurt?’

There was a faint negative movement of the head.

‘Let me help you up.’

The movement was repeated.

‘But you can’t stay here!’

Edna said in an extinguished voice,

‘What does it matter?’

Janet had to guess at the words. She said firmly,

‘You can’t stay here. Let me help you to your room. I’ll make you a cup of tea. You are like ice.’

After a minute or two Edna began to draw long sobbing breaths and to sit up. Her room faced the top of the stairs. Janet managed to get her there and into her bed again. All the household knew that Mr and Mrs Ford did not share a room. He had a good large dressing-room separated from his wife’s by a bathroom. When Janet asked if she should call him Edna caught her hand and held it in an icy grip.

‘No – no! Promise you won’t do that!’

‘Then I’ll just get you a cup of tea and a hot-water bottle. I have everything in the nursery.’

When she came back in her green dressing-gown with the tray and the hot-water bottle, Edna Ford had stopped weeping. She thanked Janet, and she drank the tea. When she put down the cup she said,

‘I was upset. I hope you won’t speak of it.’

‘Of course I won’t. Are you warmer now?’

‘Yes, thank you.’

There was a long pause, after which she said,

‘It was nothing. I thought I heard a sound. I went down, but of course there was no one there. It was just that some thing startled me. I’m rather a nervous person, I’m afraid. It suddenly came over me that I had done a very dangerous thing going down like that, and I had one of my giddy attacks. I wouldn’t like anyone to know about it.’

Janet left the bedside light burning and took away the tray. As she came to the nursery passage, Geoffrey Ford was crossing the hall below. He was in his pyjamas with a handsome black and gold dressing-gown belted over them. She made haste to get back to her own room.