The Forgotten Smile

by Margaret Kennedy

  ‘They were … er … maidens … Good heavens! Look! Just look! There’s Potter dancing too!’

  4

  Two days later they bade farewell to Keritha. Dr Challoner had announced his decision to leave the house more or less fully furnished. He had no more time to waste; he had got the jewellery and would dispose of the rest at some later date.

  Kate and Selwyn did not exactly receive their marching orders, but he offered to take them with him as far as Thasos in tones which implied that his house thereafter would be closed to them. Since transport to Thasos was not always easy to secure they accepted the offer and made faces at one another behind his back.

  On the last morning Selwyn went up early to say goodbye at the home farm. The visit, and the task of looking cheerful, cost him some effort; his heart was heavy at the prospect of leaving Keritha. He went, however, because he felt grateful to his friends there. He stayed for half an hour, laughing and talking, and charmed the children by drawing a picture of their kitten.

  Coming home he made another sketch. A goat and her kid, on a high rock, were peering down into the ravine. These two had often posed thus, to the delight of Kate, who had remarked on it and declared that they were typical of the island. When he got back to the house he took the sketch to her room and gave it to her, saying:

  ‘Here’s some of our friends on Keritha.’

  Kate was charmed, but told him that he ought to send it to Hagstrom.

  ‘I did it for you. As a matter of fact it wouldn’t do for glass. It’s too solid.’

  ‘You were drawing all yesterday.’

  ‘Yes. I … I’m sending something to Hagstrom.’

  ‘You will? I’m glad. I was hoping …’

  ‘Yes,’ said Selwyn, sitting down on her suitcase.

  ‘Oh, don’t!’

  She spoke too late. The suitcase collapsed beneath him.

  ‘Now look what I’ve done!’

  ‘It doesn’t matter. We can tie it up. Get some rope.’

  He went off in search of rope while she salvaged the contents of her crushed case. The news that he meant to get in touch with Hagstrom so much pleased her that she could easily forgive him, although their intimacy was punctuated by mishaps of this kind, ever since the disaster to her table.

  The tie between them was not easy to define. His sorrow and his future were continually in her mind, and had become almost a personal concern to her, yet she was not particularly fond of him. The bond had not sprung from liking or preference, as is the case in most friendships. The effort to scan fully the life and lot of another person is seldom made unless attraction or sympathy lead the way. Once it has been made a claim is established. She had thought him disagreeable until she knew his story. Having learnt it, she ceased to ask herself whether she liked him or not.

  He came back with some rope which he had got from Eugenia and put her suitcase into an efficient strait waistcoat.

  ‘But what about the Customs?’ she complained. ‘It would be just like them to make me undo it all.’

  ‘I’ll be at your elbow, all the way to England, and I’ll tie it up for you again. In London I’ll buy you another. A lovely Potter-Proof Suitcase.’

  As he tied the last knot he added:

  ‘As a matter of fact I came to ask you a favour. Now I doubt if it’s a good moment.’

  ‘Ask anyway,’ said Kate, putting her passport into the bucket bag. ‘I’m in a softened mood.’

  ‘It’s two favours, really. First: when we get back, would you go and see the boys?’

  ‘Paul and John? At that place near Guildford? I certainly will.’

  ‘Thank you. Second: I think I ought to make a home for them again. But I’ll want somebody. Some woman. Could you tell me how to find someone?’

  ‘Some sort of housekeeper-nanny? Yes, indeed. You’ll need somebody like that.’

  ‘Just to start us off.’

  ‘I’m sure I can find somebody.’

  ‘It would have to be someone who didn’t mind going to Sweden for a bit. If Hagstrom will take me back I’ll have to go there for some time, I think.’

  ‘Why not? Sweden is a very nice country, so they say. I’ll start looking around as soon as I get back. And you must take me at once to see the boys.’

  ‘I knew you would. You’re very kind.’

  He stood up and tested his handiwork by swinging the suitcase about.

  ‘I’m so glad, so delighted,’ said Kate, ‘that you’ve …’

  ‘Come into circulation again?’

  ‘Yes. Oh, don’t! Don’t sit on my other suitcase. Sit on a chair. Good heavens! There are plenty of chairs in the room.’

  He came to anchor in a solid-looking chair.

  ‘Last week,’ he said, ‘when everybody was crying, I felt able to … I mean, I knew how they felt, and they knew how I felt. And then, on Sunday, when the sun rose and he shouted, I suddenly came to life.’

  ‘I know. I’ve felt that every year. It’s only here …’

  ‘I saw the sun rise, once, on Delos.’

  She went into the bathroom to look round it and make sure that she had left nothing behind. Only here! she repeated to herself, only here! With the wardens, through the Battle of London, in hospital with those other women, through pain and fear, she had known herself at moments to be absorbed into some other, mightier Person. Only here, on the eastern spur of Keritha, had she known it through joy.

  ‘What were you saying about Delos?’ she asked when she came back.

  Selwyn laughed and shook his head.

  ‘Had a funny feeling on Delos.’

  A bellow rose from the terrace below.

  ‘Potter! Mrs Benson!’

  ‘Hark at him!’ said Selwyn. ‘Where’s he going after Thasos?’

  ‘I think he’s going to Athens. He says he has some business with that Mr Tipton.’

  ‘What a horrible idea! Challoner and Tipton! I shudder to think of what goes on.’

  ‘POTTER!’

  ‘Adsum!’ said Selwyn, poking his head out of the window.

  ‘It’s time we started.’

  ‘Oh? Where?’

  ‘Thasos! Thasos! We shall miss that boat for the mainland.’

  ‘Oh well, there’s another next week.’

  He drew in his head and Kate reproved him.

  ‘I’ve half a mind to feed him to the dolphins. Know what he did? He tipped Eugenia.’

  ‘He didn’t!’

  ‘He did. She was puzzled. She asked me what the money was for. I said to make those cakes … you know, the cakes they make for the dead. Sort of iced cakes. For Freddie and Edith.’

  ‘Koliva? Now that was clever of you.’

  ‘He’s a menace, that old brute. What say we tip him into the sea between here and Thasos? I’ve a funny feeling that we ought to. Nobody would know. Yorgos wouldn’t tell.’

  ‘Unethical, I’m afraid. But he has been intolerably rude.’

  ‘More than rude. You know, I think he hates Keritha. He’d like it to be dead.’

  ‘He certainly hasn’t a good word to say for it, I can’t think why.’

  ‘As long as it’s alive he’ll have to be afraid that there’s something dangerous about poetry. All his life he’s been pocketing the stuff on the assumption that it’s dead.’

  ‘I dare say, but I’m sure he sees nothing poetic about Keritha. Come along. We really must go. We’ve got to catch that boat ourselves.’

  He picked up her suitcases and carried them downstairs. Their farewells to Eugenia had already been made and she had retired to her own quarters, but all the maids were assembled in the hall. Kate kissed them and so, much to their amusement, did Selwyn.

  Dr Challoner was already sitting in the boat, furious at the delay, when they came down to it. Their luggage was stowed away. They shot off from the sweet-smelling slopes of Keritha. The house vanished, but they could still see the smoke, curling up through the trees, until they turned westward to round Zagros.

 
; Selwyn looked back no more. Sadness seized him again, as it often must upon the long hard road ahead. He endured it, waited for it to pass, knowing that, in time, it would release him.

  Kate, too, was silent, meditating upon his problems. A housekeeper-nanny should not be very hard to find. She knew exactly the kind of person for whom she must seek; not a young woman, not a fussy, conventional old one. To be ideal she should have some measure of education and intelligence, so as to give companionship of a sort to Selwyn until he picked up with his friends again. She must be used to living abroad and able to tackle housekeeping in Sweden.

  There was a danger that such a person might become a burden and an embarrassment to him later on. He would only need her for a year or two while that forlorn household was finding its feet. So soon as they no longer needed her she must fade out of their lives, nor must there be any likelihood that he should feel obliged to pension her off. Means of her own she must have, and kinsfolk, to whom she could eventually retire.

  People who share a bad time, she reflected, have a way of drifting apart when the bad time is over. There is no estrangement, no loss of regard; some instinct bids them take up separate paths. We live on several levels and there is one upon which nobody, save a saint, can live for long. A run-of-the-mill sinner can explore it for a brief period – a fact which had become painfully clear at those wistful Wardens’ Reunions. Selwyn, Paul and John must not be saddled with a saint, but for a time they would need a friend who could do more than cook their dinners and mend their socks.

  A clergyman’s widow, she thought, and dismissed the idea. A clergyman’s widow would do nicely for Douglas and Ronnie; she knew of an agency which dealt in them. Any kind of widow would be a mistake for Selwyn; there was too much bereavement in his household already.

  ‘Where is the oil bought, for this boat?’ demanded Dr Challoner.

  He was unusually talkative, and disturbed her meditations by asking a number of questions which he had never troubled to ask before. He wrote down the answers in a little book. What was Eugenia’s surname? Who owned those donkeys on which he and Selwyn had first ridden up to the house? How many beds were there altogether? Bed linen? Blankets? She answered him absently as they rounded Zagros and sped north again.

  Selwyn, she perceived, would need some explaining, even when she had found a suitable person. Paul and John were easy. Any woman with a motherly heart would understand what they needed. Selwyn might strike a stranger as unprepossessing. He looked peculiar and he broke things. Words must be found to explain how nice he really … Nice? She checked herself. This person must be able to understand that it mattered little whether he was nice or not. Such a question is superficial when we really consider what anybody else has to bear. Do we ask whether a drowning stranger is nice before we throw him a life-line? Yet it would be difficult to present him as she saw him herself. Nobody perhaps could do so who had not spent this week with him on Keritha.

  She must plead his cause through the children. Poor Paul! Poor John! They cry when they see their father, and he said: ‘It’s very sad.’ But soon, soon, that will be over. We’ll get you out of that bleak place and there will be a happy home for you in Stockholm … Stockholm … gold and silver eggs next Easter … the sun on the water always makes me sleepy.

  Selwyn, his grief easing a little, turned to her and asked:

  ‘Why are you smiling?’

  ‘Am I smiling?’

  ‘You were just now. You’ve got your Edwardes Square face. You’re planning something for your children.’

  ‘Ah no. My time for that is over.’

  ‘It never will be. “Fish gotta swim and birds gotta fly”.’

  ‘I was thinking about gold and silver eggs. Easter eggs. I promised to send some to Maroulla next year. Do remind me.’

  ‘If you’re there, next year. Or I’m there. I will. We must send them lots and lots so they can throw gold and silver paper down everywhere and make a gorgeous mess.’

  ‘That’s the idea, I think. On Keritha. Next year.’

  She turned to take a last look at it and saw nothing save dancing waves. The happy townland had slid beneath the rim of the world. Her lips formed the greeting: Ke tou chronou and her eyes suddenly filled with tears. She wiped them away indignantly as though refusing to believe that Time could be an enemy and she herself, perhaps, the first of the living to weep for Keritha.

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  Epub ISBN 9781473513044

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  Published by Vintage 2014

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  Copyright © Margaret Kennedy 1961

  Margaret Kennedy has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988 to be identified as the author of this work

  First published in Great Britain by Macmillan in 1961

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