‘I did go to you, as a matter of fact. Only you’d gone.’
‘Where? To Edwardes Square?’
‘I told you I’d called there once, the summer before last. That was why. I was at my wits’ end. I didn’t much like the look of this person Mrs Blaney’s friend had found … I didn’t know anyone to consult. I used to have a friend, Mrs Gray, but she’d left London. You were the only person I could think of. I’d always thought you so very good at being a mother. Your family … that time I was there … you all seemed so happy and so fond of one another. I used to talk about it to … to Elizabeth.’
So that had been her name. Kate had an impression that he had not uttered it to anyone for a long time.
‘She never had much of a home herself,’ he said. ‘Her mother … oh well! We wanted our children to be … we hadn’t either of us much idea how to set about it. When she was in a spot about how to manage them, or if they had a temperature, she used to say: so what would Mrs Benson do, I wonder?’
Since she had recently decided to dislike him, Kate was embarrassed at these tokens of regard; she must be, she thought, an ungenerous, cold-hearted creature to have felt no warmth where she had inspired it. She sat staring unhappily over the sea at Zagros while Selwyn sought in his wallet for another photograph, which he handed to her. At a first amazed glance she exclaimed:
‘But … how lovely!’
‘She was very beautiful. Everybody said so.’
A longer study convinced her of something else.
‘I’m sure,’ she said at last, ‘that I must have met her somewhere. I can’t think where. But I’ve seen this face before.’
‘You might have seen her picture in the newspapers when she had her big coming-out ball. She was photographed a lot that year.’
Not immediately did Kate take this in. She was struggling to remember, was sure that it had not been a photograph. They had met. They had spoken to one another.
‘She was the Contessina Colleoni,’ explained Selwyn.
Kate gave a faint squeak of astonishment. She sat stunned while he, after two years of frozen silence, poured out the story of his strange marriage, his flawless happiness, loving and beloved by a creature who had given him all that one human being can bestow upon another. As he spoke the lost Elizabeth emerged: her beauty, her wit, her constancy, her courage, her sweet temper and her warm heart. Every hour of their seven years together had been steeped in felicity; it had irradiated the commonest things and lent a zest to the dullest exertions.
He had been, she perceived, too happy for safety. No refuge was left to him in a world which had completely disintegrated. For the bereaved, who must nourish existence without joy, commonplace tasks and uncongenial company offer a kind of refuge; they provide a territory where lost happiness is least missed. For Selwyn there was no such harsh protection. The sun had shone full upon him wherever he had gone, whatever he had done. Now he was so totally severed from all contact with life that he had not even learnt how to be miserable.
She tried to tell him so, when he had finished his story.
‘You don’t mourn for her,’ she said gently. ‘That’s the first part of learning to live without her.’
‘I am living without her.’
‘Not really living.’
‘I keep on keeping on. I must do that, for the children.’
‘You drew something today. A lizard. Then you tore it up. I found it in the house. I think you tore it up because, when you were drawing, you forgot, for a little while, and lived without her. Then you remembered. Dear Selwyn … you’ve got to face it! That dreadful moment of having to remember. Face it again and again. That’s life. Is this the first time you’ve drawn anything since …?’
‘Yes. And if Keritha does that to me, I’m off.’
‘You should stay, if Keritha does that to you. And draw. And then you might get your job with Hagstrom back.’
‘No.’
‘You must. You must live in this world and know that it’s a changed world because she isn’t here any more. So you have to change. The more we love people the more we have to change when they die. If the dead could come back, those who loved them most would seem to them the most changed. Only those who cared nothing would be just the same, because nothing would have happened to them.’
‘If she came back she wouldn’t find me changed.’
‘She would. You are. Don’t tell me you’re now the man she loved. Are you?’
He thought it over, remembered the man she had loved, the man who had fashioned the Marigny bowl, scanned the shrunken, aimless creature who had replaced him, and muttered:
‘No.’
They said no more, and sat on together in silence, while the shadows lengthened. He, aghast, acknowledged the change in himself. She, with a resignation born of long practice, thought of those who had once loved her and who, mourning, had consigned her to Lethe.
PART FIVE
‘DE MORTUIS …’
Crossing alone the nighted ferry
With the one coin for fee,
Whom on the wharf of Lethe waiting
Count you to find?
HOUSMAN
1
The island hens had been well informed about the Latona. That unlucky ship, after many mishaps, had reached Venice thirty-six hours behind schedule. The Wanderers missed the train which should have taken them home. Some braved a rail journey without seats or reservations. Many waited for a day and took a plane from Milan which crashed in the Alps. There were no survivors.
Douglas never received Kate’s broadside. When she did not turn up by train the Benson family could only assume that she must have taken the alternative route. Miss Shepheard, and the Cruise Officer, with records which might have inspired a doubt, were both dead.
Newspapers seldom reached Keritha. Freddie habitually listened to a world news bulletin on the radio; mention of the disaster in that quarter gave him no grounds for connecting it with Kate, since it occurred three days after she should have been back in London.
She waited with impatience, with anxiety, with mounting bitterness, with a broken heart, for some word from her family. As time went on she hardened. She would not be the first to break this cruel silence. Had they loved her they would have written. There was no excuse for them, even if her letter had gone astray. They would, in that case, have been surprised when she did not return and would have made inquiries of Wanderers Ltd. She had not trusted entirely to Miss Shepheard. The Cruise Officer could have told them where she was. There could only be one explanation for their silence: they had got her broadside and were going to ignore it.
Thus she fed her own resentment until the prospect of Christmas broke it down. She had only to recall other Christmas days to know that, whatever they did, they were still very dear to her. In a burst of agony she wrote. She took the blame upon herself and offered no excuses as she implored them to write, to tell her that they were all well and happy.
She was still reminding herself that it was far too early to hope for a reply when a maid came knocking at her door one morning. Two lords, the husband and the son, were in the hall. Douglas and Andrew had lost not a moment when her letter arrived. They flew to Istanbul and chartered a fast launch to Keritha. They arrived while telegrams from them and from everybody else dallied in the post office on Zagros.
Down she ran and fell upon their necks. They snatched her from Keritha in a tempest of questions, answers and confused explanations. They had come to take her home, home, home as fast as ever they could. No, they had not been angry with her. Why should they? No. They had had no letter from her. No letter at all. They had thought her dead, dead, thanks to that arch idiot, Brian Loder.
He had been the only person to blame. It was he who flew out to Switzerland, to the little village where charred bodies, brought down from the still-smouldering wreck on the mountain side, were laid out for identification. Had he made any real attempt to carry out his mission efficiently some doubt might have ar
isen as to Kate’s presence on the flight. There would have been further inquiries. The scattered travellers who had returned by rail might have been rounded up and questioned. Although she had not mixed much with her fellow cruisers, one of them might have remembered that she left the Latona long before it reached Venice.
That Brian had volunteered for the errand was now remembered against him, as an instance of his cocksure officiousness, although Douglas and Andrew had been thankful at the time to escape such an ordeal. He had declared it to be necessary and had overruled any inclination to accept Kate’s failure to return by train as certain evidence of her death. Having checked at the Malpensa Airport the names of passengers taking the flight, and failing to find any record of her, he had insisted upon further investigation. He bustled off to the scene of the disaster, spent five minutes in that grim morgue, hastily identified something in a familiar white tweed coat as his mother-in-law, and rushed out to vomit.
It was all, complained Andrew and Douglas, typical of Brian. After a blustering display of thoroughness and efficiency he had, when it came to the point, made a spectacular fool of himself. Little was said, save abuse of him, during the first part of their flight back to London. Kate was at last driven to take his part and declared that she would, probably, have been sick herself. Moreover, the coat had been hers, since she had lent it to poor Miss Shepheard.
‘If you can forgive him,’ said Andrew, ‘I suppose we must.’
He gave her arm an affectionate squeeze. Ever since their reunion they had been catching hold of her and squeezing her as though to make sure that she was quite solid. Their manner, awestruck, almost reverent, made her wonder if she had changed very much.
‘But you always were an angel,’ he murmured.
Nobody in the world had ever called Kate an angel before, except Bridie when she wanted a blouse pressed in a hurry. Now the word matched those solemn looks. She supposed that it would wear off when they grew calmer.
‘Stop abusing poor Brian,’ she commanded, ‘and tell me some news. What have you all been doing?’
There was a pause, as though they could not remember what they had been doing, or could not decide which of their doings would be likely to interest an angel. Andrew then recollected that Hazel was expecting a baby in March. She was, he declared, very well but had had a tough time of it, getting out of the flat when she was feeling very sick. The move had been a nightmare without Kate to help and advise. They had missed her dreadfully. Hazel’s Mummy, who came to lend a hand, fell off a step ladder and got concussion.
‘And will your new flat,’ she asked, ‘be large enough for a baby?’
‘A flat? We’re not in a flat. It’s a house … in Chiswick. That house, you know, that you always wanted us to take. Chiswick. Where you’re coming to stay with us now.’
‘Oh? We’re going to Chiswick?’
‘Yes, Mother! We told you. Father and you are coming to stay with us for a bit. We told you.’
Perhaps they had. She could not remember much of those first bewildered moments. They had said they came to take her home, and home, for her, was Edwardes Square.
‘Then,’ she ventured, ‘you gave up the Bruton Street flat?’
‘Bruton Street?’
He stared as though he had never heard of it. Then he remembered and flushed.
‘Oh, that! No. That job fell through. I’m still with Mortimer and Tyndale.’
And what had become of Pamela? wondered Kate, but did not ask. It was safer to say how nice it was that they had gone to Chiswick.
‘But why didn’t you and Hazel stay in Edwardes Square while the move was going on?’
Andrew looked accusingly at his father. Douglas cleared his throat.
‘I’m afraid this will be rather a shock for you, Kate. Edwardes Square is sold.’
Sold? They had lost no time! Ah well … six months … it was her own fault that it had been six months.
‘I had a very good offer for it,’ said Douglas, ‘in August. It was much too big for me. I’m … I mean I’ve been sharing a flat in Chelsea with Ronnie Sinclair. It seemed a good idea … the two of us …’
‘Yes. Yes, I see. A very sensible idea. I hope you have somebody capable looking after you?’
‘Oh yes, indeed. Mrs McKintosh. Cook housekeeper. A wonderful woman. I never …’
If he had been about to say that he had never lived so well before, he remembered in time not to say it. There was a light in his eye which Kate recognized. This Mrs McKintosh appealed to the sentimental streak in him. She might not be another Pamela but was probably quite as bogus.
‘Yes,’ he repeated happily, ‘we’ve been in luck, getting Mrs McKintosh.’
She glanced at Andrew, who made a face at her and then looked hurriedly out of the window at the clouds.
‘Edwardes Square was too large for us anyway,’ she commented. ‘I suppose you’ve stored most of the furniture?’
‘No. Well … there wasn’t anything to store. We’ve got Ronnie’s stuff at the flat. The children took anything they wanted from Edwardes Square, and I sold the rest and got rid of all the junk.’
She nodded and tried to smile as she envisaged this complete evaporation of her home. The junk must have included all those worthless little possessions, those pathetic oddments, which a human being accumulates as part of his existence. Such things, she reflected, are always thrown away when people die. Old letters and photographs are burnt. Much goes to the Parish Jumble Sale.
There had been a shabby dog-eared Shakespeare, which she had won at school as a prize. She could not imagine reading Shakespeare save in that old book, but now she would probably never see it again. Why should they preserve it? They all had their own Shakespeares. That scuffed object meant nothing to anybody save herself. It was a fragment of the living Kate, now for ever discarded. How much else was gone?
She must foresee these shocks and be ready for them, since the whole distressing business had been her own fault. Needless discomfort must be avoided. Since they thought her dead they had acted very sensibly; they had not been callous. Upon the whole the news was good, and she need not have suffered so much anxiety in the summer. Pamela seemed to be mysteriously out of the picture. Andrew was in the house she would herself have chosen for him and was still with Mortimer and Tyndale. No sooner did they believe her dead than they behaved, it seemed, exactly as she would have wished.
Changing the subject she asked cautiously about Andrew’s work. He talked readily and pleasantly; he had shed the sulkiness which formerly attended any reference to Mortimer and Tyndale. He volunteered the information that the firm had treated them very well. His resignation in June had been overlooked when the Bruton Street plan fell through. He had got a small community centre to design, on a new housing estate, and found it an interesting piece of work.
‘They mightn’t have been quite so nice about it,’ he added, ‘if they hadn’t been sorry…. I mean we were all in such trouble … thought we were, I mean, at the time.’
He was changed, and changed for the better. A certain chronic resentment against life had vanished. He had grown up. That peevish letter which she had received on Thasos was the last she would ever get from the Andrew she used to know. The umbilical cord was cut. Bonsoir, petit … Bonjour, Monsieur! she thought, recalling some lines in a French film which had once moved her. She sighed.
‘Are you all right?’ he asked anxiously, with another of those awestruck looks. ‘You seem to be tired.’
‘I am rather. It’s all been too exciting. I’m sleepy.’
Thankful to escape the pitfalls of further conversation, they settled to sleep. Little more was said until they were circling over the airport.
The mild damp of an English winter greeted them as they got out of the plane. They hurried through a light drizzle to the Customs hall. She had nothing to declare; she had brought nothing new back with her save some warm clothes which she had been obliged to buy when the cold winds of winter blew over the
Aegean.
They passed through a doorway. She was seized, clutched, and hugged afresh. All the family were there – Hazel bathed in easy tears, Bridie as white as a sheet, and Judith with the stiff expression of one who is determined not to cry. Mother! Mother! they kept saying. Dear Mother! Darling Mother! Oh, Mother! Mother …
Brian was shuffling uneasily in the background. As soon as she could she went up to him, kissed him, and murmured:
‘My poor Brian! You were perfectly right. It was my coat. I’m sure anybody would have thought it was me.’
He gave her a warm, grateful hug and echoed the universal cry:
‘You’re an angel.’
If she heard that word much oftener…. De Mortuis, she remembered. But that, surely, could not last for long? It pervades the first few months, when the bereaved are learning to get over it and faintly remorseful at doing so. Later they can revert, without embarrassment, to other memories. Really he was an old devil! … or … She was always a very tiresome woman! And later, much later, the final verdict: He had his points … or … There was this to be said for her.
The rest of the Bensons had their heads together. Andrew and Douglas were probably trying to explain to them why she had never written before. They must have forgotten by this time what had been said in those horrid birthday letters.
Then they came flocking round her again and carried her out to a waiting car. She was their angel, returned from Paradise, perforce a guest of the living, since she had, at the moment, no earthly habitation of her own at all.
2
They took her back to Chiswick for a late supper with champagne. The noise, the laughter, the inconsequent chatter, a dozen small, unexpected shocks, a flavour of hysteria in the atmosphere, made her feel quite giddy. At length this was noticed with concern; there seemed to be a tendency to suppose her in a delicate state of health. They declared that she must be exhausted and should go to bed.
The Forgotten Smile Page 16