Westwood (38 page)

Her mother vaguely realized all this, but the relationship between herself and her daughter was tender and gay, rather than highly articulate.

Seraphina’s early married life had been so full of interest and the delightful experiences of motherhood, without any of those anxieties due to lack of money or an over-anxious maternal nature, that she had little experience of unhappiness and not much wisdom to deal with it. She had been amused at Mr Challis’s spiritual infidelities rather than wounded by them (although there was a growing, suppressed sense of injury now that both he and she were older, and he still showed the same romantic heart to everyone but herself) and she did not know what to make of Alex’s departure, or what to advise Hebe to do about it. Men were always rather a nuisance, in Seraphina’s opinion; one liked them around, of course, and they were lambs and it would be a dull world without them, but, really, they were always either trying to make love to you or upsetting you by making love to somebody else, and the best thing to do was just to be nice to them and not take them too seriously.

She took out the tiny mirror again, glanced into it and sighed, and at that moment Cortway came to announce the taxi.

‘Good-bye, sweetie,’ said Seraphina, relieved at being able to get out of it all for a few hours but glancing uncertainly at her daughter, who was still sitting staring at her shoes. ‘Have a nice dinner, and
don’t
sit up half the night listening to whosit on the gramophone.’

‘Bartok.’

‘Well, don’t, anyway, will you? Cortway, have you got something really
nice
for dinner?’

‘There’s fish, madam,’ answered Cortway disapprovingly. ‘Haddock, Zita said, and she’s done it in one of those German ways. With herbs and all that.’

‘It sounds delicious,’ said Seraphina, trying to catch her daughter’s eye, but Hebe’s face remained sullen and pale, like a child’s who has been crying. ‘Good-bye, darling, I must fly.’

‘Good-bye, Mummy. Have a nice party.’

After she had gone, Hebe remained in the chair staring at the fading sunset. What had happened to her darling friend, Alex, with whom she had shared jokes and love and her quick angers with the children and her bear-like hugs for them when their sweetness overcame her? Alex had said that she and the children were a damned nuisance; all over him when he wanted to paint and getting on his nerves and in his way when he wanted to be quiet and read the paper. Hebe had set her soft mouth, after saying, ‘Don’t talk such –; it’s as bad for me as it is for you,’ and then said no more except: ‘All right, then, you’d better go,’ after he had said that he was going away for a while. She had neither cried nor made a scene, although this was their first serious quarrel.

Presently she went upstairs and washed her face and put on a fresh dress and came down to
dinner, ignoring the sounds from the children’s room which suggested that someone was dragging someone else by the legs across the old wooden floor. Blast him, he’ll get splinters in her seat, thought their mother resignedly, going on downstairs.

There was not one shred of solacing romantic misery in her heart as she sat opposite to her father in the beautiful room full of rich shadows and peaceful evening light; such feelings only sustain the inexperienced or the eternally young in spirit, like Mr Challis, and are of no use to a woman who has had three children by a man. Her happiness is as real as her own body, and its loss is as uncomfortable as if she were suddenly to become a ghost. The only feeling which kept Hebe from being wretched was sulky, smouldering anger with her husband.

What with Alex and the dramatic critics, Mr Challis and his daughter dined in almost complete silence.

Far in the West of England there is a tract of country on the edge of the moors, soaked in frequent rains, its deep woods thick with hart’s-tongue and lady-fern and the rich green lace of bracken, and seldom out of the murmuring sound of a mild, long arm of the inland sea. Its hills are covered in pink heather, and upon the farthest horizon, like the dark threat of a storm that never breaks, are the mountains of Wales. Here there is one hill, lower than the immense, rounded bare hills that are the beginning of the moors, but far lovelier.

Ancient and enormous pine trees grow upon its summit, with massive trunks and matted, spreading branches of darkest green, throwing their dense shade upon the heavy, pale, unripe cones and the grey and white feathers of birds that lie scattered among the red pine needles on the ground. Below this hill roll away miles of valley filled in summer with fern, waist high, curled and stiff and fresh with sap from the rich and ancient soil whence it springs; the walker must wade through it as if through a heavy, motionless sea or follow the narrow tracks that wind through it; opening now and again upon a space of turf where tiny flowers grow, the pale yellow lady’s bedstraw and the deep yellow crowsfoot; where the stag leads his does to browse, leaping away into the bracken when the stranger approaches. Here are wider valleys, where beech trees climb the hills, every valley ending in the flat shore and pale purple or grey boulders of the inland sea; and here, in the moist sweet air, among glossy ferns which might be the houses of fairies, the legend of Arthur is rooted deep as one of the ancient pines, and yet it is also like the scent of wet fern and fox-lair on the wind; it is a spirit haunting the region; the spirit of old, green, wild England, lingering on, lovely and lonely and wreathed with mist, in the heart of the northern seas.

On this night in early summer Alex Niland was lying under the pine trees in a sleeping-bag with his mouth full of bread and cheese, watching the darkness come down, and not thinking about anything, except that he was rather sorry he had been angry with Hebe, and hoping that rain would not fall before morning. Tomorrow he would go on down to Minehead, where his father was a stonemason. The family had been in the trade, and that of building, for many generations, and there was a tradition that a Niland had been among the medieval workmen who had carved the rood-screen of Dunster Church. Afterwards, he planned to return to London and stay with a painter who was very poor and lived in one of the squalid turnings off Tottenham Court Road. He was not fettered by deep need of anyone or anything except by the need to paint, and when he felt that need he indulged it, not so much pushing obstacles aside as never noticing that they were there.

Above him was clear grey air, going up millions of miles to the trembling silver drops that were stars, and under his back, hard yet comforting, was the earth. The dim purple sea was below his line of vision; all that he could see was black foliage with stars darting between, and all that
he could hear was the occasional long, soft sigh of the wind through the pines. The air smelled of warm earth and young leaves, and coolly touched his forehead and cheeks. Presently he shut his eyes, and soon he was asleep.

Margaret hurried home in a bad temper, disturbed by the fear that she might have lost Zita’s friendship and with it the precious privilege of visiting Westwood-at-Highgate. She suspected that Zita was likely to throw away a friend as easily as she would an old newspaper or anything else that had ceased to be useful to her; her moodiness and her jealous fits all pointed in the same direction, and Margaret (who was determined
not
to be thrown away) arrived home in a state of exhaustion, irritation and worry, anxious to arrange Dick Fletcher’s problem for him, and to be reconciled with Zita, and ready to quarrel with her mother on very slight provocation.

Within a few moments of her arrival they were quarrelling, for Mrs Steggles was so eager to hear all about Margaret’s day that she followed her upstairs, questioning and exclaiming. At last Margaret interrupted, and bluntly asked her if she would have Linda in the house for a fortnight?

‘What! Look after an idiot?’ exclaimed Mrs Steggles. ‘No, thank you, I’ve something better to do. I never heard of such a thing! I hope you didn’t tell him I would!’

‘I said I’d ask you. And she isn’t an idiot; she’s just backward,’ snapped Margaret, who was pulling off her dress and putting on a house-coat.

‘It’s the same thing. Ugh! I can’t bear anything like that. I’ve always thanked God that you and Reg were normal, bonny babies.’

‘I can’t bear it either, as a rule, but Linda isn’t like that at all; there’s nothing repulsive about her, and he does love her so, you can see it when he looks at her.’

Mrs Steggles shuddered. ‘Can’t he send her into a home, just for the time being?’

‘Mother!’

‘Well, I don’t see why not. They make them wonderfully comfortable at these places, so I’ve heard.’

‘I do think you might have her,’ said Margaret, tying her girdle tightly round her waist. ‘It’s the first time I’ve ever asked you to do anything of the kind for me. We’ve got plenty of room, and Dad and I are out all day –’

‘A nice thing, your dad coming home in the evening and finding an idiot slobbering round the place!’

‘She does
not
slobber, Mother. I tell you she’s almost perfectly normal.’

‘Well, I like people who are
quite
normal round me, thank you. It’s no use, Margaret, I won’t have her, and you’ll have to tell him I won’t. It’s like your cheek, anyway, taking it on yourself to say I would.’

‘Mother, I
didn’t
say so; I only said I’d
ask
you.’

‘Well, now you have asked me, and I’ve said no, so there’s no more to be said, is there?’

Margaret flung her head back so that the thick limp mass of her hair fell all about her flushed face. ‘I suppose not,’ she said bitterly at last. ‘But it’s going to make it very awkward for me.’

‘You should have thought of that before you told him. You got yourself into this mess, now
you can get yourself out of it,’ said her mother, going out of the room.

‘Mother!’ (calling after her) ‘what excuse can I make? He’ll think it so
horribly
unkind!’ she burst out, flinging the brush on the bed and thrusting her fingers into her hair. She was trembling.

‘Say I don’t want the responsibility of it. Who would? I ask you! He’ll understand.’

But Margaret, struck by a sudden idea had darted out of her room and was already half-way down the stairs.

‘Oh, Mother, do let me get past – I’m sorry –’ she exclaimed, pushing by her mother to get to the telephone: ‘I’m sorry I was rude – I’ve just thought of someone who might –’ and she began agitatedly to dial a number. Mrs Steggles glanced contemptuously at her, still annoyed but also curious to know what she would get up to next.

‘Oh, Mrs Wilson –’ Margaret began. ‘Is that you? This is Margaret. No, nothing’s the matter, it’s only that I wondered if you would look after a little girl, the daughter of a friend of mine, for a fortnight – let her come and stay with you, I mean. She’s a backward child – you know – but very sweet, and the housekeeper has been injured in an air-raid last night, and her father hasn’t anywhere to send her.’

‘I would have, and glad to, Margaret,’ replied the unruffled voice of Mrs Wilson from two streets away, serene in the possession of a genuine and cast-iron excuse, ‘but my sister’s staying with us for a fortnight and we’ve only got the one spare room. I’m ever so sorry. Whose little girl is she?’

‘Mr Fletcher’s – he came to your New Year’s Party. The little girl’s a sweet little thing, really, but of course she can’t be left, and he’s at the office all day –’

‘Yes. It is awkward nowadays, isn’t it, with everybody called up and working in factories, there’s no one to do all the little odd jobs, like looking after kiddies and invalids,’ said Mrs Wilson cheerfully. ‘Have you tried the W.V.S. or the Citizens’ Advice Bureau?’

Margaret explained the circumstances more fully, and as civilly as she could, but it was clear that there was going to be no help from Mrs Wilson.

‘You see, Mother doesn’t want the responsibility,’ she ended in a lowered tone, and Mrs Wilson answered:

‘Yes; well, it is a bit of a responsibility, isn’t it, somebody else’s child and a backward one at that; I expect he will find it difficult to get anyone.’

When Margaret replaced the receiver she had the disagreeable conviction that she had worked herself up into a state and quarrelled with her mother and flung herself upon the mercy of Mrs Wilson (for whom she had some contempt as an entirely commonplace woman) without having helped Dick Fletcher in the least.

Her mother was sitting by the open French windows of the drawing-room with the evening paper, enjoying the gentle sunset light and faint breeze coming in from the garden. She glanced up and said sarcastically:

‘Well, of course she’s going to have her?’

‘Of course she isn’t. I don’t know what to do about it; I’m at my wits’ end.’

‘That’ll be your permanent place, my dear, if you start taking on other people’s troubles,’ observed Mrs Steggles, glancing discontentedly at the clock. Mr Steggles was late, as usual.

Margaret sat down and swung one foot idly. Her mother returned to the paper.

‘Aren’t you hungry?’ she asked at last, without looking up. ‘We won’t wait for Dad, if you are.’

‘Not very,’ said Margaret, indifferently. ‘What have you been doing to-day?’

‘The usual things. I went to the pictures with Elaine this afternoon.’

‘Who on earth is Elaine?’

‘Mrs Piper. Her name is Elaine Sybil,’ retorted Mrs Steggles.