The Sleeping Beauty (19 page)

When Emily had gone, he said: ‘You were upset about the girl, Isabella.’

‘I hope I did not show it.’

‘Yes, you showed it.’

‘Then I wish I hadn’t,’ she said, remembering the advice in the women’s magazines, which she had only half-followed. ‘It was Laurence I was cross with, really.’

‘All that about his lack of ambition! You were trying to defeat her on two fronts – on the ground that he is too good for her because of his education, and also on the ground that he is not good enough for anyone because of his unpromising future.’

‘Both are true.’

‘You should have chosen one or the other, although a clever woman would have used neither. They are only children.’

‘But he has lied to me. If he had been frank about her in the first place, I could have advised him,’ she said, remembering the women’s magazines again.

‘Advised what?’

‘That they should give the matter time … not see too much of one another … wait … and find other companions.’

‘That would have been meaningless advice. It is lucky you did not give it. And you jump to the conclusion that they are to be betrothed. Is every girl Laurence brings to the house to be his future wife?’

‘He could have only one wife at a time,’ Isabella said, without looking at Vinny.

‘What did you say, darling?’

‘He could have only one wife at a time.’

‘Well, naturally.’

‘And he has never brought any girl here before.’

‘Nor will again, I imagine.’

‘Oh, you are very modern and broad-minded,’ she said quickly. ‘And no wonder, to be sure. How dare you criticise me! I have only behaved as it is natural for a mother to behave – however petty I was. Laurence is all I have left.’

They were the words Laurence himself had always felt hanging in the air.

‘Then you cannot risk him, as you risked him this afternoon.’

‘Suppose he should get the girl into trouble.’

‘I should suppose nothing of the kind. It would be intol erable to go about supposing such a thing of every young person one met. Is that behaving as it is natural for a mother to behave?’

‘I think so.’

‘You can do nothing beyond indicating to him the lines on which he should behave with the other sex. And that should have been done before this.’

‘Oh, I suppose Harry did. But it was always difficult to talk to Laurence. It was years before he learnt the facts of life, because he never asked those questions which children are expected to ask from their natural curiosity. We had to broach the matter ourselves – or Harry did. Laurence hardly listened. At the end,
he just said: “Whatever next!” It is easy for you to laugh, Vinny. For all your experience, you have never had to bring up a son.’

‘I haven’t had much experience either.’

‘Haven’t you?’

‘Isabella, why are you crying? It was all a strain for you and at the end there was nothing to cheer you up – nothing but my censure.’

‘It isn’t that.’

‘That what?’

‘I have to say something to you, Vinny.’

He waited.

‘I am so upset. It is about you and Emily. Your marriage. I don’t know what to think, or how to find the courage to speak.’

He was silent and, beyond her tears, she felt wariness steal over him.

‘I have always been so fond of you,’ she said hesitantly. ‘And I can understand that you are often sorry for women and might let your sympathy run away with you, put you in a false position. In the end, only you can know what is right for you to do.’

Vinny was appalled. ‘She is in love with me herself,’ he thought. ‘And although we cannot often help loving, we can sometimes help being loved.’ A great deal of her past behaviour seemed clear to him now, and his obtuseness filled him with remorse.

She raised her tear-stained face and he mistook anxiety for shame in her expression.

‘I must say this thing,’ she said, ‘or it will be on my mind for ever. And no one else can say it for me. They must be my own words, and I have rehearsed them so often that I know them by heart. A word from you could put me at peace. An answer to my question.’

Before she could abase herself further, as he thought she
would, he went behind her and put a hand on her shoulder. ‘Darling, I will never ask you such a kindness again; but for both our sakes, forget the words. No good can come of them and speaking them will only give them more reality. Let us forget that they were ever thought. I shall forget. And no one else shall know. I have never wanted to do any harm; but only Emily herself, or death, shall stop me marrying her. It is the only strong thing in my life, the only time I have felt passion or jealousy or despair or any of those other emotions which other people seem to come by so easily. It is my Wuthering Heights,’ he said, with a wry smile which was wasted, as her back was to him.

‘Your … concern … for me,’ he went on, choosing the words carefully, ‘must be a thing we shall both understand and never mention again. With that secret behind us, we could mean a great deal to one another … as dear friends,’ he added.

‘It is your guilt,’ she said in an astonished voice. ‘
I
have done no wrong.’

‘I must ask your forgiveness.’

‘I could not forgive you,’ she said in alarm; for she thought that bigamy was more a matter for the Quarter Sessions. ‘We must hope that God will,’ she murmured, not liking to mention Judge or Jury.

‘I hope you will pray for that,’ Vinny said coldly. ‘Now dry your eyes and have a drink, and we will never have this conversation again, or any part of it.’

His intention had been to save her pride; but she thought that he was saving himself. Neither seemed as grateful as the other expected.

On the telephone, a little later, Isabella said to Evalie: ‘I tried to speak to you-know-whom?’

‘What did he say?’

‘He wouldn’t let me put it into words, but he said that nothing would stop him, and he begged me to secrecy.’

‘Do you mean he is going ahead with the arrangements?’

‘Yes.’

‘And has he no conscience?’

‘None, it seems.’

‘I don’t think you have managed very well.’

‘I did my best.’

‘Does Emily
know
?’

‘He said that no one must ever know, but he and I.’

‘He cannot bind you to such a thing.’

‘He can. Especially when it is what I want to be bound to.’

‘I am shocked at you, Isabella.’

‘Yes, I suppose you must be.’

‘It is sure to come out. Those things always do.’

‘Sometimes after so long that it makes me think that often they never come out. If people can hide such a thing for ten or twenty years, as I have read of them doing, others are likely to hide it for thirty or forty years, and die with it hidden, and then one never reads of them at all.’

‘But it is a crime, and you are condoning it.’

‘It is better than committing it. But we shouldn’t talk of it any more on the telephone.’

‘I shall be round in the morning. Did you see that Stream of Consciousness is running tomorrow at Brighton?’

‘No,’ Isabella sighed. ‘There has been too much on my mind.’

‘We’ll talk of it tomorrow.’

‘And not a word, to anyone, ever?’

‘Of course not,’ Evalie said.

Betty and Laurence stood at the kerb watching the cars flashing by. Every now and then Laurence jerked his thumb in the direction he had to go.

‘You’d stand more chance if I left you now,’ she said. ‘They think we both need a lift.’

‘Well, go if you want to.’

‘There’s no need to be bad-tempered with me. I haven’t done anythink, except listen.’

‘If you are to go so far in life as you indicate, you must learn not to say “anythink”,’ Laurence said, in his most wounded and wounding voice.

‘Don’t you criticise me!’

‘Before this evening, I shouldn’t have thought of it. But, then, I had no idea of your ambitions. Now I know it is my duty to give you a leg-up if I can. What would have seemed perfect to me – and did seem perfect – may not do in an ambassador’s wife. And it would be nice if someone could benefit from my education, as I have not.’

‘You don’t know what poverty is like. Your mother is right. You would be wasting yourself.’

‘And wasting you? My mother is always right. All my friends think so. One glance at her puts me in the wrong immediately. And one glance at
them
makes her see how unsatisfactory
I
am.’

Laurence was fighting desperately before he acquiesced, so that in his own mind he could look back and see that he had fought. Vinny alone had understood this, and he had meant to tell Isabella to let him have his rope; but Isabella had given another turn to the conversation and Laurence was forgotten.

It was very hot and the cars flashed by, their tyres licking the tarry road, gravel rattling under their mudguards. Laurence looked so fagged standing there at the kerb, so cruelly hot in his harsh khaki and great boots.

‘It was only that you hadn’t said anythink to me,’ she said gently. ‘Not beforehand.’

‘Anything.’

‘Anything.’

He had not done so, because it was not a serious enough intention: only a dream, a half-desire, an escape. To make him defiant and tenacious of the idea was a disservice his mother had done him.

‘You’ve always lived in luxury, so how can you imagine the other thing?’

‘I hope a car soon comes to take me back to my luxury.’

‘You can bear anything if you’ve got a nice home to go back to, with a bathroom and so on.’

‘I can see myself wasting my life in some office so that I can occasionally take a bath.
My
life!’ He suddenly laughed. ‘Who am I to call it that?’

This time, as he jerked his thumb, a car slowed down.

‘Not a perfect choice, but it will do,’ he said, moving towards it.

He climbed into the back and turned to wave, as curtly as he could; but she had already begun to walk away.

‘We shall be full of beans tomorrow,’ Benjy said.

‘I am full of beans now,’ Constance said, standing up on the swing. ‘This is a dangerous thing to do, you know.’

‘You could break your neck if you fell,’ he agreed.

‘No one can do such dangerous things as me. And they aren’t funny either.’

‘Is there a swing at home?’

‘You know there is. And a sandpit.’

‘There are some frogs in the sandpit. I shall see them tomorrow. I sometimes hit them with my spade.’

‘Then you are a cruel, wicked boy,’ Betty said, but without conviction or interest.

‘I don’t mind.’

‘It is a cowardly thing to do.’

‘No, it isn’t, because I am not afraid.’

‘I don’t know what your father would do. He would stand you in the corner,’ Betty said, supplying her own answer.

Emily and Philly came from the kitchen-garden with a basket of sweet-peas.

‘What a heavenly perfume!’ said Betty.

‘Are you going to the Regatta?’ Emily asked them.

‘Madam said to take the children down after their rest.’

‘And there are fireworks tonight,’ Emily said in the voice – over-charged with anticipation – which she used with children who slightly alarmed her. Constance stared back, standing up very straight on the swing.

‘Won’t that be lovely?’ Betty said.

Philly tugged pettishly at Emily’s skirt, urging her on towards the house.

‘I don’t like that silly lady,’ Benjy said in a clear voice, as they walked away.

‘How dare you talk like that!’ Betty hissed. ‘I don’t know what your mother would say, if she could hear you.’

She spoke as if she could only see their behaviour through other people’s eyes, and dismissed her own scandalised reactions as of no account.

‘We don’t give a damn,’ said Constance.

Rose was in her sitting-room, writing out the Tillotsons’ account.

‘That stupid Evalie Hobson telephoned,’ she said to Emily, ‘to ask me to help her with some fête or bazaar she is running. She knows that I never do such things. It was only to try to get into conversation with me about your wedding, which seemed to be food and drink to her. Mrs Siddons has arrived. I suppose I shall get used to the name.’

Mrs Siddons was a clergyman’s widow, obliged to find some light employment; and to look after Philly when Emily was married had seemed to her to be that.

‘She can have this room,’ Rose said. ‘It has never seemed to be mine. If I have time to sit down, I can do so in the kitchen or my bedroom.’

‘In the winter, there is plenty of time.’

Then Emily saw in her mind the house on a December day
drawing towards the dark, buffeted by the wind. Rose would be sitting in her bedroom, alone, staring out at the bare branches – never consenting to comfort, cosiness or intimacy.

‘I feel such a sense of my own treachery,’ she said.

‘Why? You have your own life to live.’

Rose folded the account and put it in an envelope. ‘There! That is the very last one I shall write for them.’ She was a person made indifferent by defeat.

‘Philly, will you fetch me a vase for the sweet-peas?’ Emily said, speaking slowly and touching the flowers in explanation.

Rose’s eyes followed the girl from the room. She said: ‘In the last few months she has changed so. She looks like a middle-aged woman – and uncouth and clumsy.’

‘Oh, darling!’ Emily said, and turned quickly aside.

‘I think she feels that something is wrong … I mean that something is different, or going to be. I wonder if Mrs Siddons will ever understand her. I hid nothing from her, about Philly. But she has hidden something from us. She is really very deaf, you know, and hoping we shall not discover it.’

‘How terribly sad! Thank you, Philly dear. Now can you fill it at the tap outside and bring it carefully to me? I wish you had done as Evalie Hobson suggested, Rose. It would have been a change for you and something to be an interest to you outside the house.’

‘I could never bother myself with women like that – she and that silly Isabella. They have never grown up.’

‘It was meant as a kindness.’

‘Yes, perhaps.’

Mrs Siddons tapped on the door and came in. She was a small, elderly woman, with thin, short hair. A hand-knitted jumper was stretched tightly to her flat chest. She looked, Emily thought, like a rather studious little boy about nine years old. A tangle of veins on her cheeks gave her a rosy appearance, and
her expression was that of a child – timid and eager to be loved. This eagerness, and her timidity from being alone in the world for the first time and unprotected, had given her movements an uncertainty, too faint to be called clumsiness, but still unnerving to other people.

‘Oh, never knock,’ said Rose. ‘This is your room. I am moving out.’

‘Thank you, Philly,’ Emily said again, and she took the vase quickly before the water was spilt. She said: ‘I meant the flowers to be ready for you, as a welcome. There!’ She put them in the middle of the table. ‘Philly, would you like to show Mrs Siddons your shells, or your cutting-out books? And perhaps she will help you to water the ferns.’

‘Luncheon in half-an-hour,’ said Rose as she went out.

‘This is our special shell,’ Emily said. ‘But it was one we bought in a shop.’ Although talking to Mrs Siddons, she spoke so that Philly might understand. Mrs Siddons took the shell and held it to her ear, smiling at Philly as she did so. Her expression then was lovely and encouraging, and Emily guessed that, in her, self-confidence could only come from doing good.

Betty led the children past the pier, glancing at Isabella’s house as she went by, but venetian blinds were drawn down as if against the Regatta. The esplanade was crowded. To add to the confusion, shops debouched over the pavements stalls of souvenirs; revolving-stands of picture-postcards; trusses of straw-hats and canvas shoes and paper parasols. The bay was full of little boats. The paddle-steamer was leaving the pier, water tumbling furiously beside it. As it backed out and turned, the wake smoothed and widened like a fan. On deck, men had already knotted handkerchiefs on their heads and were leaning against the rails in the sun.

‘Why are there flags on the steamer?’ Benjy asked.

‘It is dressed over all for Regatta Day,’ Betty said.

‘How do you know that that is what it is called?’ asked Constance. ‘Over all, I mean.’

‘I happen to have a cousin in the Navy.’

‘You are always boasting. I think you are getting a bit too big for your boots.’

‘It is what Nannie said
you
were,’ her brother reminded her.

‘I bet you wouldn’t have the nerve to take us on a boat,’ Constance said, but casually and without optimism. Benjy looked quickly up at Betty’s face, and then away again, seeing that the idea had not had her attention.

The glittering pavements were hot through their sandals, the soles of which seemed to be melting.

‘What was that gun?’ asked Benjy.

‘It was the race starting.’

The yachts spread across the bay, rocking on the water like wounded butterflies.

‘I suppose your famous cousin told you that, too.’

‘No. My common-sense told me that.’

Constance blushed.

‘What is your cousin’s name?’ Benjy enquired.

‘Roger.’

‘Roger,’ Constance repeated, smiling.

‘Where are we walking to?’ Benjy asked, beginning to lag behind.

‘To see the decorations and the boats.’

He looked out at the bay, then up at the strings of flags, at the baskets of pink geraniums swinging on lamp-posts.

‘I would rather go in here,’ he said, stopping at the entrance to the fun-fair from which braying music and laughter and the clanging of slot-machines came forth.

‘I don’t think Nannie would like it,’ Betty said, pretending to a doubt she did not feel.

‘She wouldn’t know.’

‘What the eye doesn’t see the heart cannot grieve over,’ Constance said, using some more of Nannie’swords to suit her purpose.

Just inside the entrance was a wax image in a glass case. Shoddily draped, with jewelled
bandeau
, sickly-looking, this figure gazed down into a crystal. When Betty put her penny in the slot, a chipped, yellow hand was jerkily raised, then sank, and a card fell out of the machine. Suddenly popular, she read it out to the children. ‘You are the creative type and will make your mark as an artist or with your pen. Great changes and travel will be coming your way. Do not let your head rule your heart. Lucky colour: indigo.’

‘It is very true,’ said Constance, now amiable. ‘You are going all the way to London tomorrow: although travel doesn’t come
your
way; you have to go
its
.’

‘What is indigo?’ asked Benjy.

‘A colour,’ Betty said.

‘And you are not very artistic,’ Constance added.

‘No, they are wrong there,’ Betty agreed. She took no offence, for she had never been in circles where this would be felt a disgrace.

‘How can your head rule your heart?’

‘She knows,’ said Laurence, standing behind them.

The children swung round, a little frightened, and came closer to Betty, who was too confused to speak.

‘I was looking for you everywhere,’ Laurence said. ‘Let us go and have a cup of tea.’

‘No, of course not. I should be in dreadful trouble if I did. We ought not to be in here even.’

‘Let me give them a shilling’s-worth of coppers for the slot-machines while we go and have a chat.’

Benjy turned hopeful eyes on him, but Constance knew more of the world.

‘You can’t be serious,’ said Betty. ‘They are never allowed to do such things.’

‘I used to, when I was a child.’

‘Not so young, I am sure,’ she said firmly.

‘Oh, well! Now, George, would you like to put a penny in here and see a man hanged?’

‘No,’ said Betty quickly.

Benjy who had looked round quickly for George, then decided that it was himself, took the penny and forced it in the slot. At once, the prison-gates clicked open.

‘It isn’t much,’ Constance said, when it was over. ‘It doesn’t take long.’

‘No, I am sorry about that.’

Betty caught a glimpse of herself in a distorting mirror – her apron hideously widened, her legs shortened – and stepped quickly aside. The children and Laurence stood hand-in-hand and laughed at this new vision of themselves, then moved on to the next view of elongated bodies and domed heads. Benjy began to caper about and blow out his cheeks.

‘We have to go,’ Betty said. ‘We shall be late for tea.’

‘Is this soldier your cousin, as well?’ Benjy asked.

‘No, not my cousin.’

‘What then?’ Constance asked lightly, hoping to confuse her into a reply.

‘She may one day do me the honour of becoming my wife,’ Laurence said. ‘Although I doubt it.’

‘I should think she would jump at it,’ Constance said. ‘I should.’

‘I should, too,’ Benjy said.

‘She won’t do that. I shall have to work very hard before I ask her, and earn a lot of money.’

‘What for?’

‘To buy her as nice a home as she deserves.’

‘Would she leave us then?’

‘Of course.’

‘You could come to live with us. We have a nice home,’ Benjy offered.

Constance laughed. ‘I can see Nannie taking that with a pinch of salt,’ she said.

They walked homewards. When the road began to rise towards the cliff, and at the back of the cinema, Betty stopped. ‘Don’t come any farther. I’ll have to say goodbye now.’

‘Can’t you come out tonight?’

‘No. I have to help pack.’

‘Oh, damn!’

Betty glanced at Benjy; Benjy glanced at Constance. ‘Then give me your address.’

‘Four Bretton Gardens,’ Benjy said.

‘N.W.8,’ Constance added.

‘Do you forgive me? About last Sunday?’ he muttered, his glance away from the children, as he wished theirs was from him.

‘Yes, I suppose so.’

‘Have you had a quarrel?’ Constance asked. The more daring her questions this afternoon, the more they seemed to be answered; but this one was ignored.

Laurence and Betty looked at one another, trying to say what the children’s presence forbade. Inside the cinema, muffled giant-voices echoed – sometimes a phrase distinguishable, a lugubrious American cliché, embittered, self-pitying. A leaden tongue seemed to be rolling the words round an ogre’s mouth, launched them into the cinema. They sounded inhuman and meaningless. Coarse music engulfed them.

‘It will just be a different place,’ Laurence said. She smiled brightly, but she could not help asking herself, as she took the
children’s hands and walked homewards, if she would ever see him again.

‘You can rely on us,’ Constance said. ‘We shan’t breathe a word.’

‘We shall say we just walked along by the sea,’ Benjy added, his face assuming a look of innocence in readiness.

‘What a way to talk!’ Betty said. ‘Whatever would your mother say?’

Before it was dark, the fireworks began. The children knelt in their beds and watched the lights arching up over the misty opal sea and sky – all one now. Rockets went looping up, hanging for a second in bursts of light; golden ostrich-feathers, vanishing.

Emily went out to the garden-seat where Philly was sitting with Mrs Siddons. The girl leaned forward eagerly, more childish than Constance and Benjy, who did not withhold criticism and sophistication. (‘What a dud!’ Benjy kept saying. ‘What is happening now?’ Constance asked, as soon as there was the slightest pause.) They made room for Emily in the seat and, as she moved closer to her, Mrs Siddons took Philly’s hand.

‘We are soon replaced,’ Emily thought: and yet, for years, she and Philly had been one another’s lives.

Darkness grew. The crescent of lamps along the curving esplanade sprang into light. ‘Ah!’ sighed the crowd, as each rocket shook down its brightness. ‘Oh, Vinny!’ Emily suddenly thought; for next week they were to be married. She felt a sadness for her past life which was not nostalgia and had little of haunting sweetness in it. She imagined, with great relief, their honeymoon – they would drive inland, farther and farther into the heart of England, away from the sea.