To the North (24 page)

“Quarrels,” said Lady Waters, “are terrible things.” Drawing Pauline’s damp little hand through her arm she swept her into the morning-room. “Never quarrel,” she said. “Have you many friends?” She shook up a jar of bull’s-eyes, gave Pauline one for each cheek and recorked the bottle: having made this concession to youth she went on to tell Pauline much of Marcelle’s difficult life, and how it was said that she and her friend Diana had gone for each other with fire-irons. Though her version of this was modified, Pauline was greatly surprised: as her hostess’s darkling accents bore in on her, more and more clearly did it appear that almost everything was improper.

Before dinner Cecilia arrived, a shade guilty, resolved within limits to be at her best. In the half hour before the dressing-gong she walked round the garden with Lady Waters.

Pauline, with a child called Loretta who had been asked to tea to amuse her, went cheerlessly round the garden the other way; whenever she heard Lady Waters she steered the surprised Loretta off down another path. Loretta, daughter of what Lady Waters called a retired actress, who lived in the village and was devoted to church work, had danced last winter in a sublimated kind of a pantomime, in which the fairies in purple chiffon had been more like some people’s idea of a Greek chorus; she expected next winter to be one of the Lost Boys in
Peter Pan
. She had the finished naivety of the stage child, appeared to be a born dancer and could not keep off her toes. Her behaviour surprised Pauline: springing backwards and forwards across the wet flowerbeds, tossing back her hair like a little victory, Loretta talked about boys. Did Pauline know many boys, did she think them funny? Pauline said she knew no boys. Loretta said this seemed funny; kneeling down by the pool and smiling at her reflection between the lilies she brought a lipstick out of her knickers ana made up her mouth: her mother, she said, would be furious. No doubt she looked like a fairy, with bare legs and arms beside the pool in the rock garden where the late-spring flowers had fallen and the sundial, sad with no shadow, was streaked with rain… . Pauline, patient, wondered when she would go.

“There is no view this evening,” said Lady Waters, who stood with Cecilia looking out through the arch.

“No,” agreed Cecilia who had forgotten the view. Scents of pollen and lime flowers trailed through the steamy garden; she yawned again, she had been up too late. Jarred by the late cry of a cuckoo, Cecilia found in the cloudy low arch of the sky, in the distant country like something reflected in water, the halt, the chill, the not quite oblivion of death. Pacing the garden, she never quite listened to what Georgina was saying, but looked at the roses battered apart by rain. Rainy petals littered the earth; more white roses, loose globes of colourless shadow, were still to fall; the La France were blanching. But glowing in early dusk the dark crimson roses, still close and perfect, drank in the sweetening rain: on their spined stems and dark leaves the crimson were like a painting—that drop so bright, so real on a petal’s lip—but these were live roses, living through to the heart. Hoping that crimson roses might be her affinity, Ceciiia resolved to go quite soon to America.

She resolved to go to America, where she saw confusedly many white porticoes in the sun. No more summer ghosts, no belated cuckoo deforming all the remembered sweetness of spring in his spoilt cry. In that continent bare of her youth she saw herself as a girl again. He won’t come with me, she thought of Henry; we shall forget one another, she thought of Julian. Exhilaration possessed her; she saw a motor-boat cutting across a lake in the solid sunshine, horses hitched to a gate-post under the full moon. Strangers, the kindly touch of the unforeseen— it was high time she was abroad again. The heart is a little thing and one can coerce it; she would step up the cheerful gangway and go abroad. She saw the bright decks and gilt saloons, heard the bugles and silent throb of the liner steaming rapidly west: so one leaves behind one’s little coffer of ashes.

“Surely,” she said, “the cuckoos are late this year?”

“Cuckoos?” said Lady Waters who had been thinking of Marcelle. “No.”

“But it’s June.”

“ ‘In June, he is out of tune.’ But I understand that he stays till August.”

Outstaying by months his welcome. “Terrible,” cried Cecilia.

“Yes, poor Marcelle!”

“Poor cuckoo! Does it all begin over again when it gets to Africa?”

“If you want to “know about birds,” her aunt said with some displeasure, “you had better ask Graham Watts. He allows us nothing but birds; he has no idea whatever of general talk. He has taken out Robert to look for a ring ousel; they will be both sneezing all night. But I do not think you will care for him.”

“Never mind: let’s cheer up Marcelle.”

“You have rings round your eyes, Cecilia.”

“Oh dear yes: I look forty.”

“All the same, it’s a pity that Julian could not come.”

“Oh yes, yes; he’s so popular— What will you do with Pauline all day long?”

“She seems quite at home.”

“Oh yes, but she’s like a rabbit. Shall I wear a rose at dinner?”

“Just as you like,” said Lady Waters disheartened. There would be no one at dinner for her Cecilia to shine at: she thought of her as a light, or at least a reflector; always in relation to someone else. Sir Graham might be discounted: in a few words she warned Cecilia against Marcelle. “Thought you might,” she said, “persuade her to play the piano; it works off her feelings; otherwise she will wait till we’ve gone to bed.”

“But I should hate to hear her feelings. No, let’s play jumbled birds with Sir Graham, or some round game with Pauline.”

“That would be very nice of you,” said her aunt, surprised.

“Not at all,” said Cecilia sweetly: wrist-deep in wet leaves she was picking a rose.

“Much as I like Marcelle, she would be no friend for you.”

“Oh, that’s all right, Georgina: I shall be in America.”

Lady Waters received this with equanimity. Spattering on the rose-leaves, another shower began to fall.

Cecilia had been quite right, the place was a morgue, she had been here too much; old hopes and fancies lay with their faces upturned. Indoors, the red rose lost colour. The room where Cecilia slept was grander than Emmeline’s; a high triple mirror reflected the rain falling, the four-poster’s chilly chintz curtains were looped and tasselled: a widow keeps her prestige though she lie with a ghost. Cecilia’s black evening dress was spread out on the sofa; viewing its shabbiness with compunction she felt how badly she had behaved. Hearing Pauline bumping about next door like a little moth in a lamp, Cecilia went into the passage. “Hullo?” she said, tapping on Pauline’s door.

“Hullo?” replied Pauline, appearing askance.

“It was just—I have hardly seen you.”

“No,” agreed Pauline, not raising her eyes.

“I’m so glad you’re here this weekend.”

“So am I,” said Pauline politely.

Pauline, only anxious to please, did not know what to do next. What could have brought to her door this elegant, haggard young woman? Cecilia saw with dismay that the child was like Julian—that dolorous hesitation—though at the same time, poor little thing, so much more like a rabbit. She lacked his turn of the head, that charming, attentive smile and quick look that belied discretion… . Something rose in Cecilia’s throat as she thought of the wide Atlantic.

She said: “Does your dress do up at the back? Perhaps I could hook it.”

“Thank you ever so much, it does up at the side.”

“In my day, they did up at the back. Would you like your hair brushed?”

“I brush my own hair, thank you ever so much.”

“Was that a nice girl you were talking to in the garden?”

“No,” said Pauline in a burst of confidence, “she was a perfectly awful girl.”

“I thought so,” Cecilia said, nodding. Without further embarrassment they succeeded in parting.

“I SHOULD LET YOUR UNCLE BE QUIET,” said Lady waters, “he will be tired after his drive.” Pauline, who had been hanging about the door of the drawing-room, disappeared hurriedly.

It did seem a long way for a man to drive for Sunday lunch on a showery morning. They had all been gratified when he rang up to propose this: only Cecilia was half-hearted. As Pauline and Lady Waters melted out of the doorway, Cecilia said satirically to Julian: “Georgina seems to think you should lie down.”

Julian, who had hardly got clear of London before beginning to wish he had never started, hoped she would not be difficult. He was distressed to find her so nervous and melancholic. But he liked the house, the kind easy air of the rooms in which a quality Lady Waters admired in table-talk seemed no more than a jarring gramophone record, at any moment to be switched off. He liked Sir Robert, also the meal’s conclusion with excellent brandy: he had, in fact, been feeling better since lunch.

Seeing no reason to sit in a draught, Julian got up and shut the door. In the morning-room Lady Waters, hearing the drawing-room door shut, smiled and got out the chess-board for Pauline.

“But I can’t play chess.”

“Sir Robert would like to teach you.”

Sir Robert, however, had shut himself in the study with
The Observer
. His friend worked his way round the shelves, taking books out, sighing, and piling them on the floor; he digested easily and was anxious to be about again. Marcelle Veness, in a circle of cigarette stubs, stood chafing under the lime; good food and air having done, as her hostess predicted, their healing work with her, a raging boredom was beginning to set in. Magnificent in her pose of exasperation she was not unaware of Cecilia and Julian, whose eyes through the drawing-room window were fixed in awe on her. Oppressed by their segregation they clutched the idea of her presence.

Cecilia said vaguely: “She
is
in a state of mind.”

“What is the matter?”

“Oh, love—Georgina will tell you.”

“So Emmeline is in Paris?”

“She says she saw you lunching somewhere the other day.”

“Yes.” After a pause, in which his impression of Emmeline came back sharply, he said: “I was with my sister.”

“Were you?” she said with tremendous incuriosity. They both sat down on the window-seat, as near as possible to Marcelle. “She looks rather bored,” said Julian.

“Poor thing. But she wouldn’t think much of us.”

“I didn’t know Emmeline knew Mark Linkwater?”

“Oh yes; she has lunch with him sometimes.”

“Apparently, yes.”

Cecilia said rather touchily: “No one knows why.”

Julian looked at her oddly. “She may think she likes him,” Cecilia went on, “but Emmeline hasn’t the vaguest idea what anyone’s like. She may think he’s amusing, but anything more —quite impossible. She’s so fastidious and—well, if you knew Markie!”

“I wouldn’t be sure,” said Julian.

“To begin with, he’s got a Byron complex.”

“What’s that?”

“If you don’t
know
” said Cecilia impatient, “I can’t tell you. All this âme damnée is such a bore.”

“All the same, in his own line he’s exceedingly competent, not to say brilliant. Anywhere, he’s hard-headed.”

“Oh yes. But they all say he leads such a nasty life.”

“I really don’t know. He’s amusing, for which one is grateful, and there’s no doubt for some people he has got fascination.”

“If he has got brains, one has got to take them on trust: his manner with women is simply showy and tiresome. I wish I had never talked to him in the train— How fair you are,” she added, oppressed by his manner. These approximations of Julian’s to what he took for a mean in judgment appeared by turns to Cecilia either desolating or funny: in fact she had little sympathy with his point of view.

With a smile at which her blood rose, for it was indulgent, he said: “All the same, I don’t think, you know, you can quite dismiss him.”

“How can one dismiss such a raging bore?”

“That, of course, is just as you feel.”

“Why should one be tolerant?” said Cecilia. “Life is really too short.” At the same time she had to laugh at herself, and at the pretty example of feminine prejudice she presented. Leaning back, still laughing, against the window frame, she observed with her gentlest malice: “Of course, he is positive; that is always something.”

Aware of the dart, Julian did not quiver: looking thoughtfully at Cecilia he said: “He’s very much attached to her.”

“Did he tell you? How do you know?”

“I just thought so,” said Julian, losing some ground. Encumbered by a sententiousness of which her irony made him aware, he expected Cecilia at any moment to round on him. He must plead guilty to an excessive and even officious concern with her sister-in-law’s affairs, and felt, in fact, sadly like Lady Waters. But he could not forget Emmeline’s face as she nodded to him across the restaurant.

Cecilia did not round on Julian: eyelashes casting their pointed shadow on her pale cheeks which a brush of unreal colour made more transparent, she sat looking down undecidedly at her cigarette. After a silence to which an uneasy desire to speak and fear of the truth contributed, she said with elaborate easiness: “He’s in Paris to-day, you know: they flew over together.”

“Really,” he said startled. “Why?”

His manner confirmed her alarm; she said with marked concern: “I suppose because he wanted to be in Paris.”

“Why didn’t you go too? It would have been amusing.”

“My
dear
Julian—because I wasn’t asked. She only told me what she was doing when she was half out of the door. I cannot run round after Emmeline, making us both ridiculous; I might as well take down my knitting and sit in her office. Emmeline’s not a
jeune fille 
à
 marier
; ever since she was twelve she has done what she likes; she’s completely clear-headed, her head is better than mine. Because I’m older than she is and have been married, do you expect me to sit up at nights for her with a cup of hot milk? I might just as well have tried to chaperone Henry. What an odd idea men always have of women’s relations; you all seem to think we cry on each other’s chests. Suppose I sometimes do wonder about what she’s doing —questions one might ask another woman one couldn’t ask Emmeline: she does make one feel common. Not that she’d think one was common, she’d merely think one was mad. How can you expect me to interfere with her?”