The Unicorn (21 page)

I must stop now, I’ve got such a pile of IV A’s nasty inky little exercises to wade through. Devil take all children, why can’t their parents keep the scrofulous little blighters at home! Do write, Marian, you know I love hearing from you. Your last two letters were so short, I feared you might have been hurt by my silence. But just recall that you’ve got more time than I have I With best wishes to you, you lucky girl, and love as usual from your old pal

G.

Marian pushed Geoffrey’s letter into a drawer. It filled her with gloom and irritation and a frightened little homesickness. Since she had learnt from Denis Nolan the true nature of what was happening at Gaze she had not been able to write frankly to Geoffrey. She had screwed out, for the sake of appearances, two limp missives about the scenery. It would have been impossible to tell him what was really going on; he would have found it all quite insane and would have given her very crude counsel. But it
was
all quite insane, and was she not giving herself very crude counsel?

She looked in the mirror. She was wearing a new terracotta-coloured shot silk evening dress which Hannah had insisted on giving her, after ordering it, with several others, secretly on approval especially for Marian. Marian had felt uneasy at accepting the present, but the idea and the charming way the dress fitted her and suited her had delighted Hannah so much that the girl had not in the end had the heart to say no; and of course it was a wonderful dress, and one which, quite apart from its price, she would never have had the discrimination and the nerve to buy herself. Since the ruby and pearl necklace didn’t look quite right with it, she was wearing, as a finishing touch, a collar of irregular amber beads which Hannah had selected, after minute research, from her own store, and which she patently intended Marian to keep, though she had tactfully not said so yet.

Geoffrey had always quite rightly told Marian that she did not know how to dress. She favoured a formless exoticism, he favoured a muddy simplicity: in fact neither of them had any taste at all. But now already Marian was aware, since she had been at Gaze, she had by some process of osmosis acquired certain elements of good taste from Hannah. These elements existed in Hannah in a state of unconsciousness, but they were infectious; and although Hannah was now careless of her appearance and surroundings she had long ago, in respect of both, been beautifully trained. So it was that Marian had quietly put upon the retired list quite a number of the garments and accessories with which she had arrived, including the sensible but she now saw quite horribly ill-cut blue dress in which Geoffrey had expressed such great confidence.

Marian had lately found that she was living to an alarming degree upon two different levels of mind. Upon one level she entered brightly into the tiny dramas and gaieties which made up life at Gaze, and which seemed so totally to occupy Hannah’s consciousness. Marian had never seen anyone live so entirely in the present; and she too lived in the present, looking forward to her meals and to the ritual of the evening whiskey, making little ceremonies out of views of sunsets or walks to the fish ponds, and enjoying literature as those alone enjoy it who have little else to enjoy. There had been a lot of reading aloud. There had been a lot of looking at reproductions of paintings. There had been a little phase of rhyming games and drawing games. There had been a phase of trying on hats, of which Hannah had a great store from some years ago. There had been talk of fancy dress, there had been talk of charades, there had been talk of a musical evening. Tonight, in fact, was the musical evening, which was why Marian was thus arrayed. After dinner, which was shortly to take place downstairs with all present, a rare enough treat, there was to be music in the drawing-room.

So things went on in this curiously childish Marie-Antoinetteish manner; and so, with half of her mind, Marian took part in them, joining gaily with the tirelessly cheerful and prankish Jamesie in being the life and soul of the party. But the rest of her mind was concerned furtively with other things. Since her talk, now some days ago, with Effingham Cooper about the possibility of a rescue she had felt so upset and agitated that she could not sleep properly and sometimes found it difficult to behave normally with Hannah, with whom she would find herself suddenly breathless and blushing. She had spoken to Effingham with vehemence and decision as if she had thought all these plans out beforehand, but in fact they had only become really clear to her while she was actually talking to him. His very presence, his big, intelligent, rational,

familiar sort of face, the splendid ease of their pupil-teacher relation, all this made what had seemed nightmarishly difficult and obscure suddenly, for her, crystallize; and she had seen with an appalling clarity what ought to be done.

She had not since then wavered much. She had thought about the problem continually and she felt fairly sure that the shock tactic, the attempt to shatter the spell by a piece of planned violence, could do no harm and might do much good. Even supposing, at Blackport, Hannah asked piteously to be taken back to Gaze: well, they would take her back. No one could blame
her
for what had happened; and the insidious idea would have been planted in her head that she could leave the place with impunity. She
could
leave the place.

The horrible aspect of the thing was of course the strong possibility, which Effingham had brought to her attention when they talked again on the following day, that should Hannah return to Gaze the perpetrators of the
coup
would be forever banished from her. Effingham had refused, on this ground and on many other grounds, to have anything to do with the idea; but Marian thought it possible that, if she decided to go on, she might yet talk him round. He had already confided to her that a friend of his had once told him that a clever woman could convince him of anything. She would probably go on though, she now felt with a kind of fatalism, with or without Effingham. As she had pointed out to him in the argument, he or she or anyone else might at any moment by an obscure fiat be expelled from Gaze. It was not as if one at all liked or even understood the status quo; and for all they knew the sands might be running out.

Effingham had not liked this metaphor. He enquired what she meant, what sands were running out, had she any real reason to think that time was short or that the situation was becoming dangerous or urgent? What positive harm, surely none, could come to Hannah from the continuance of things as they were? No, Marian had no real reason. Yet she did feel in her bones a kind of urgency, a sense of being now in a position of power or trust which she must exploit while she could. She felt above all, as a sort of categorical imperative, the desire to set Hannah free, to smash up all her eerie magical surroundings, to let the fresh air in at last; even if the result should be some dreadful suffering.

So she had half decided to go on with or without Effingham. But without Effingham was impossible unless she found someone else. She herself could not drive a car, and she had to have somebody who could. Who? This brought her up against the continually puzzling question of her relations with the other inhabitants of Gaze. She had kept a constant but unprofitable watch upon Gerald Scottow. She noted his comings and goings, his frequent absences on estate business, his gay returns. She enjoyed his slightly bullying charm and the nervous badinage into which he spurred her. His physical appearance affected her with tremors. She had never before wanted so much to touch a man with whom she could not converse. For, alas, she could
not
converse with him, and her plan, if it had ever been a plan, of helping Hannah by subduing Scottow had certainly so far misfired. She did not despair of coming, somehow, to know Scottow, of coming to know him much, much better: but he was, for immediate purposes, irrelevant. Violet Evercreech was unthinkable. Denis Nolan would never approve. That left Jamesie.

Marian had by now seen a lot of Jamesie, laughed a lot with Jamesie, been driven by him here and there, without coming to know him really any better than she had on the occasion of their first drive to Blackport. There had been no repetition on Jamesie’s part of that little approach to a greater intimacy. It was as if Jamesie had been warned off or had decided, after the warmth of a first enthusiasm, that he preferred a simple, cheerful relationship with Marian. Simple and cheerful he certainly was with her, and she with him; but would he do as an ally?

Jamesie could drive a car, and had indeed complete control of the Land Rover and the old Morris which made up the mechanical establishment at Gaze. This would be handy, as it occurred to Marian that at the moment of flight all other means of transport had better be disabled. But could Jamesie be trusted, and even if he could be trusted was he not too vulnerable to reprisals? Marian on reflection decided that she was prepared to risk Jamesie if he was prepared to risk himself. She felt, with the brutality, already growing upon her, of a desperate general, that Jamesie would probably be better off anyway if he were fired out of Gaze. The place did him no good. The matter of his trustworthiness she could not yet decide. He seemed, in the midst of it all, oddly uncommitted, a jocose observer. His flippancy might indicate that he could be won. She wondered.

A bang on the bedroom door interrupted her reverie and she jerked quickly away from the mirror. Whenever anyone knocked on her door she was divided between the hope that perhaps it was Gerald Scottow and the fear that it might be, even now, the arrival of her order of banishment. She opened the door to one of the maids from whom, after several repetitions of a gabbled message, she understood that she was being summoned to see Miss Evercreech.

‘Come in, my child.’

Marian entered nervously. Ever since the unnerving promise of the ‘little talk’ she had been trying, with an uneasy conscience and no very clear mind, to avoid Violet Evercreech. She had never been near her room before, and was even now not sure where it lay in the house, so quickly had she been conducted and so agitated had she been on the way.

It was a corner room, high up on the north side of the house, facing towards the Scarren; and while most rooms at Gaze contained their share of junky relics, this room looked soberly modern. Marian took in white painted bookshelves, a white furry bedspread, wild flowers in a black vase. Violet Evercreech was sitting in a chintz armchair, dressed in a purple dressing-gown, with a bottle of sherry and two glasses on a small table beside her. Her evening-dress was laid out upon the bed, a gawky spreadeagled form.

‘I thought we might take a little glass together before dinner,’ said Miss Evercreech. She spoke as if this were something customary ,’ yet there was about the occasion, about the room, a strained sense of the impromptu.

Marian murmured her thanks and sat down in a chair which had been drawn close to Miss Evercreech’s own. She noticed, half with pity and half with a shiver, that the glasses were thick with dust.

‘What a pretty dress. Where did you get it?’

‘Mrs Crean-Smith gave it to me.’ Marian looked down, blushing with an immediate mixture of guilt and resentment.

Miss Evercreech said slowly, after a pause during which she savoured Marian’s blushes, ‘Well, and why not?’

‘No reason why not, Miss Evercreech.’ Her voice sounded sharp and grating, and she felt, already, almost ready to weep with annoyance. Miss Evercreech had a quality of sheer attention which made her writhe.

‘Please call me Violet.’ The glasses were smartly polished on the purple silk sleeve, and the sherry tinkled in.

‘Yes. All right. Thank you.’

‘Well, say it then. “Yes, Violet.” ‘

‘Yes, Violet.’

That’s better.’ Violet Evercreech, still seated, turned to look at Marian, and sat thus for some time, staring at her. Marian did not know where to look. She felt her profile being outlined as if a burning finger were being drawn down it from her brow. Her nose began to twitch. In desperation she turned tier face to Violet’s, and saw at uncomfortably close quarters the pale powdery skin, the dry colourless hair, and the long moist eyes which were fixed upon her with a hungry intensity.

‘My dear child,’ said Violet Evercreech, ‘give me your hand.’

Embarrassed and alarmed, quickly averting her gaze, Marian extended her left hand as far as the arm of the chair, gripping her glass firmly with her right Violet took the proffered hand in both of hers, gave it a slow hard pressure and retained it.

‘In a way I can only talk nonsense to you,’ Violet went on, ‘and if I talk about myself I can only talk in riddles. I didn’t ask you here to talk about myself, but one has needs, old needs.’