It was certainly hot. Lady Elfrida viewed the dark-green scene with regret as they slipped off under the beeches. At such an hour, similes were postprandial; like gooseberry fool the silence closed in behind them; their speed soon jumbled the brightness of afternoon, turning it like a salad…But she had the town-dweller’s love of going to town: Considine beside her was all complaisance, a panama and a chin. He could digest anywhere. Hedges crisp with budding wild roses, banks in a high foam of cow-parsley soon gave way to allotments. Hoardings rushed up eager for their attention; scarlet and yellow petrol pumps, like a civic procession, marched out to meet them more than a mile from the town.
“Market Keaton’s ‘developing,’ ” Considine said, regretful.
“It’s changed,” said Lady Elfrida. For the place had scandalous associations.
They had misgivings: Would the hairdresser be awake? Here the town hall clock struck three to an empty square, inattentive, pitted with pole-sockets: not a stall up yet for tomorrow’s market. A cat’s yawn gave the note of the afternoon. Pavements sleepily glared; over the butcher’s a piano played in its sleep. All down the streets the lettered awnings were low, and women, girls for the day in brief cotton dresses, crossed from shadow to shadow. The town did not know itself; it became a seaside town high and dry; in contradiction to nature some bright shadow, some idea of unreal pleasure trailed over it. Bow-fronted houses bulged here and there from the flat stucco; in shadow, the Gothic bank was cut out in slate on the glare; opposite, the brick “Plough” flushed in a bacchic dream.
The hairdresser must be awake; they had telephoned.
Considine had promised Anna an ice; the car slipped in low gear along the kerb; she prospected sideways. She could not say much for the town’s amenities: too many hardware shops full of zinc and fibre, buckets stacked painfully tight, carpet brushes dangling without invitation. Was life necessitous? She was glad when a lady stopped to buy two geraniums; she looked back; the pots were being wrapped up in blue paper; the lady and the florist yawned. The confectioners were meanly appointed: yes, there would be cornflour in the ices. Never the time and the place…For she passed Rumpelmayer’s so often, but with her father always, on the way to the London Museum.
Whereas to Simon the town seemed to sell only hats, thin-coloured ribbon, overmantles. His friend the A.A. man was not on point duty. The chemist’s window had baby foods in a pyramid, no cameras. There would have been no harm in showing Considine a camera like you wanted, in the chemist’s window.
But everyone knew who they were. Some fine brick houses fronted the High Street; Anna could be quite certain she saw the curtains twitch. Petunia was the colour of their grandmother’s hat; also, at one time she had been very much in the papers. The gratified hairdresser was at his door; the Tilneys, multiplied by importance, all got out of the car. In the hot vibration going up from the bonnet dogs were like minnows, doors moved like reeds under water and ladies swam. Considine shut off the engine and, arms folded, immediately dropped asleep in nodding confidence with his knees. Hot? Not as Considine knew it. To Anna, up at the window of the ladies’ saloon being buttoned into a starched cape, he looked down there, foreshortened, like a daddy-long-legs rather than a spider. Though she had his bad character on the best authority.
Lady Elfrida could see at once that the hairdresser was going to be stupid. “Cut it like a bell,” she said distinctly, “only not at the ends—more like a mushroom. Not like the Knave of Hearts, that would look dreadful, wouldn’t it? You do see, don’t you?—Wait, give me a pencil—”
Meanwhile, the hairdresser took off a safe inch along Anna’s fringe.
“I don’t think Mother would like me to have all this off my fringe,” said Anna when he had finished.
“Oh dear,” exclaimed Lady Elfrida, who had been reading the tariff. “It does make you look like a pony.” She said to the hairdresser in the friendliest way, “I see you permanent wave?”
“Certainly, my lady—”
“Oh no, thank you—I just wanted a pencil.”
“Mother likes it en Jeanne d’Arc,” said Anna presently.
“Oh, I shouldn’t mind about that in the country; I should just have it nice and neat. Do you really give face massage, Mr. Hesketh?”
She had been going to add: “I didn’t know people round here had faces.” Certainly what she hoped to meet when she looked over a gate or went to a door would be something ruddy and various, not to pattern, a free surface for pleasure—more of a “countenance.” But now she went anxiously to the top of the stairs. “I hope,” she said, “they are not putting anything on the little boy’s hair down below?”
But it was too late, already in the gentlemen’s saloon they had anointed Simon with violet oil. Lady Elfrida quite lost her nerve and said they must all go as soon as possible, to the grocer’s. “Just finish the best way you can,” she said, eyeing, beyond disparagement, Anna’s reflection. “So long as it’s all the same length it looks quite nice.”
“I think I look worse than I did,” said Anna gloomily.
“Oh no, lovely. Now come and we’ll choose the fish.”
“I think Uncle Considine wants me to have an ice.”
“Oh no, Anna darling, because we’ve got to go to the chemist’s. And Uncle Rodney wants all that wire-netting ordered—Some other day.”
“But some other day I might be having some other ice.”
Considering that the child’s appearance was ruined she did seem at least to be owed this. What Theodora was certain to say would be most uncalled for: Theodora herself had been a hideous little girl. Nowadays, though her figure was nice, something must be the matter. She pounced: it was curious—could she have wanted to marry Edward? She had been quite disqualified by that blue hat. Besides, she was then fifteen—and had they not met the first time at his own wedding? So it could not have been that. Besides, she had passions for women—awkward, such a tax on behaviour, like nausea at meals. Or was this perhaps for effect, did she mean to be funny like that? Because she made Elfrida feel quite hysterical. Surely people were odder, or was it just that one met them? Had these years, with their still recent sense of catastrophe, brought out curious people, like toads after rain? Perhaps she was anxious to please—but could that be cause for anxiety?
Lady Elfrida made her way distractedly to the car.
“Oh, Anna’s ice, Considine.” By reflex action he put out a half-crown. “Can you smell poor Simon? Someone will have to wash him. He’d better have an ice too.”
“We wouldn’t like to go in alone,” said Anna modestly.
It would have been better for Considine if Edward himself, in the first place, had never been born; all the same, tipping back his hat from his face he got out of the car with docility and smiled at the Tilneys. Watching, aware of his charm, she had once more to account for that stupefying cessation of love, positive as the passion itself and like a flood not arrestable, coming down on them both when they were both entirely for each other at last, in Paris. That inquiry, that just perceptible pause of his, face to face with her, when he had gone for less than a moment into abeyance—she had let that less than moment eternalize itself and harden till, though so fine, it could be driven down through living heart and body without swerving. His metamorphosis? She had no place for the living dog: there could have been honey in the mouth of the dead lion.
“The car?” Anna prompted. (For they might well be arrested.)
“I park anywhere,” said Considine. The three went into the teashop. In the inside, full of sun, marble tables looked warm to the touch; in the window flies thrust their long proboscises through muslin swathing the pastries and loitered, wistful, over the glass bells.
“I shall go to the grocer’s, then to the chemist’s,” Elfrida called after them. “Then you bring the car along and pay, if we find we must.”
The grocer’s went off triumpha
ntly; Janet’s clear writing caused her no hesitation. (When she shopped from her cook’s list at Harrod’s she was continually humiliated.) She bought a blue crock of ginger on her own account, for Hermione, cheerfully dropped her gloves in the sawdust, thanked everybody and was much reassured. A dear cat fawned on her parasol, sorry to see her go.
But at the chemist’s, a dark shop like the inside of a camera, she immediately felt apprehensive and wished she had not come into town at all. As the chemist came round a weighing-machine with a particular air of importance she nearly said: “Don’t—” But she could avert nothing: there was a message. Mrs. Meggatt had telephoned. “Oh?” said Lady Elfrida. His manner, the antiseptics, the assistant’s ferret-like bundling behind the counter, the Kodak lady, démodée in stripes in a perpetual high wind, had unnerved her before he could speak again.
Mrs. Meggatt would be glad if Lady Elfrida Tilney would telephone to her as soon as possible. The chemist offered his telephone and, in advance, his solicitude. With a strong sense of being attracted to something fatal, she squeezed in behind the bottles. The chemist’s assistant stopped bundling, she heard a voice in the street; then, in the street, in the shop, between the houses, the hot urban silence disintegrated in motes under her anxiety, like indoor air with sun suddenly upon it.
Janet must have been waiting: she came at once.
“Edward has come; he is here. He wants to take the children back to town with him at once, this afternoon. Can you all come back as soon as possible? Perhaps you had better tell them.”
“Whatever’s the matter?”
“I don’t really know.”
“Is he—is it being tiresome, Janet?”
“Yes.”
“I am telephoning from the chemist’s.”
“I know,” said Janet, and rang off.
There should have been more. Was this one of her silences, an aversion of her look from yours, too eloquent; or had Edward come in? Returning to the counter, Lady Elfrida delivered her orders from Janet’s list. “We will call back for the parcels,” she said. But they never did.
* * *
—
The ices, bright pink, tasting of their colour, were clapped between wafers. Anna with numbing stomach was well into her third; she knew that this must be pleasure. Her face of angelic insensibility tilted over her saucer. Simon took large bites out of a macaroon, then quickly sucked up raspberryade through two straws and let them go down together. Considine had asked Anna to eat his ices for him; he sat, feet apart, on the iron feet of the table, thinking what little beggars they were. Elfrida had placed no restrictions upon his hospitality and he saw no reason why the children should not be allowed to kill themselves. He almost regretted no satisfaction of his own could be so agreeably fatal.
Simon paused. “There are two currants squashed on your elbow,” he said to Considine. Someone at the table before them had eaten Banbury cakes.
“They stain,” said Anna quietly, as he picked them off. “Uncle Considine, how many ices would you be eating?”
“Six,” said Considine promptly.
“Oh, I don’t think I could quite…”
“Grandmother would be furious,” said Simon tranquilly, stretching out for another cake.
His sister answered: “Not if it’s not her fault.”
Considine liked acuteness in women. “That’s no way to talk!” he said provocatively, and Anna, who had resented till now a certain lack of social surface, rallied to her sex. Leaning towards him, glancing from her hand to his chin, she said in confidence: “Hermione’s always being sick; have you noticed?”
“Your father was always being sick,” said Considine, idly reminiscent.
“He was unhappy,” she said with some pride.
“Indeed.”
“He had no real home—Simon, I don’t think you ought to take a new cake till you’ve finished swallowing.”
“Swallowing yourself,” said Simon excusably.
“Oo, tu quoque!—I’m afraid there’s another currant on your sleeve now, Uncle Considine. Your poor suit!—Were you fond of our father?”
Considine looked round for the waitress. “Another ice!”
“But you are fond of children, aren’t you? You gave him a bear.”
Simon, hastily swallowing, said: “Did you ever give him a camera?”
“Didn’t you give him a bear?”
“I expect,” said Simon, “he was pleased. Like I should be if anyone gave me a camera.”
“Oh, he liked the bear, did he?” said Considine. “You never know.” In fact, now he came to remember, Elfrida had never mentioned the bear since its mobled entry that night before Christmas. He had just heard, in some other connection, that Edward had been taken to bed in hysterics.
“He never liked animals much,” said Anna thoughtfully. “That bear was sent back here when Grandmother went to live in Paris. It’s got all moth-eaten now; doesn’t that seem a pity?”
“How do you know?” asked Considine rashly.
“Hermione told me. She showed me the bear.”
Simon sat bending one of the straws round his thumb. “I expect any present is nice,” he said wistfully.
Simon was awful about hints, no one could either trace or suppress this terribly common trait: he was nearly always successful. Anna disowned him. Patting her shorn fringe she said socially: “Doesn’t it sometimes seem queer Hermione and I should be first cousins?”
“No,” said Considine forcibly.
“Oh, I think so. You see, I’m so lucky; I don’t get excited and I’m never sick. I think we have quite different characters…”
But she was nowhere—Considine had radiantly turned to the door.
Elfrida had come in. Down the long shop, narrow and cumbered like the past, with its dull mirrors, she came very tall, distraite, balancing nervously in her speed like a ship just launched. Her bright hat focused the sunlight; she disturbed the stale enclosed afternoon that like a cake under glass night after night had covered without renewing. She approached blankly, as though to await rather than to join them; and this unawareness, old in a thousand of her approaches, lending the ultimate meeting and greeting the whole charm of fortuity, was for the thousand-and-first time new to him. She called out the stranger in him to meet her; the children saw him accessible, hopeful, struck.
“So here you are,” he said, rising.
“Now we’ve all got to go home at once,” cried Lady Elfrida. “Come, Anna, come along, Simon: it’s such fun, your father is here.”
“Where?”
“Batts.”
“But he’s in London.”
Reaching round for their hats and jerseys, pulling anxiously at their chairs, she explained their good fortune. “Edward?” said Considine, blank. She frowned on his incredulity; the preposterous had become her element. “Oh Simon, come!” she cried. “All right, bring that cake along with you. You’re both going back to London.”
“How do you know?” said Anna suspiciously.
“Don’t ask silly questions.”
It became clear to the children, someone was in the wrong.
“Now?” said Simon.
“Why?” said Anna.
“For a surprise—won’t that be fun!”
“No,” said Simon, while Anna objected. “We’ve just settled down here.” No doubt this was a prank, and going up in the train their father would wish them to play American bandits. One would have preferred a father more like Mr. Darling, less like Peter Pan. Anna, who had re-read and was familiar with all her mother’s books on child management, could have told them that this was bad for children, being rushed about in the heat. Enough to bring one out in a rash, stop one’s inside or give one a complex.
“My clothes are all at the wash,” she said, getting up with dignity.
“I w
onder you aren’t excited,” exclaimed her grandmother. “Uncle Considine and I would love to be going to London as a surprise.”
“Then why don’t you go?” said Anna coldly.
“Oh, don’t be annoying, Anna!” Children were certainly at a discount. With their hats at curious angles, with some publicity she hurried them to the car. Anna hoped someone noticed how well they took it. While Elfrida reflected: at all events, one had the situation well in hand. “Children take anything naturally if one is calm with them,” she said to Considine. The children’s present appearance might well be a shock, a salutary shock, to Edward. And it would be for Laurel to disinfect Simon. How he would reek in the hot train, poor little boy.
Considine was not a support. “Well, it seems to me odd,” he kept saying placidly, and “Elfrida, do be calm with that child; she is full of ices.” He walked round the car, kicked each tyre, looked into the engine, and remained apparently doubled in speculation above the self-starter. He supposed, some resurgence of “fuss,” a hardy perennial. Well, Edward was fortunate; few young men had time for their feelings. So much for Whitehall…And yet one was always hearing, “Poor Edward is so overworked, so rushed…” Moral hyperaesthesia. “Thank God he was not my son: I was in Egypt.”
“We shall want more petrol,” remarked Considine to Elfrida.
“Really, you can be annoying!”
“My dear, it won’t further anything if we run out.”
“Perhaps our mother is dying,” thought Anna, in the back of the car.
“The parcels?”
“No—no—no—Yes, better call for the fish.”
As they turned in at the gates Lady Elfrida saw Edward ahead of them, walking hurriedly, nervously, on the avenue in a dark suit, straight from town. She made a movement to Considine—wishing perhaps to stop the car. But at the sound of the car, Edward took a line off through the trees, without waving.
Friends and Relations Page 10