Statues in a Garden

by Isabel Colegate

  ‘What bad luck. No doubt he misled her. We’ll go on a little bit, drive about. Mrs Maidment has depressed me. My life is pointless. All I can do is interfere in your affairs and prepare myself for death. Do you realize that? I am prepared for death, too, sometimes. Prepared to embrace it. But not always, not when I have been with Mrs Maidment. Do you believe in God, Moberley?’

  ‘I do, ‘m.’

  ‘Do you find it difficult to sustain that belief?’

  ‘No, ‘m, I can’t say I do. Anything else would be terrible to me.’

  ‘It is terrible,’ said old Mrs Weston. ‘You are quite right. And quite right to stick to it Sometimes I despair. My definition of despair is recognition of one’s own incapacity to create God I can create Him sometimes. When I can’t I despair. It is the worst sin I know, worse than anything poor little Ellen did with the baker. If she did do anything.’

  ‘That’s it, you see, that’s the problem,’ said Moberley gloomily.

  ‘But you receive Him ready made at the hands of others. In their own image. What if they should let you down?’

  ‘They won’t do that, ‘m,’ he said reassuringly, though not at all clear as to what she might be trying to say.

  ‘If she is fond of you I think you should forgive her her adventure with the baker. I think you would do well together.’

  ‘That’s what I tell myself sometimes, but the trouble is it’s not so simple as that I mean, it’s a fundamental thing in a man, isn’t it? And Beatrice, whatever her faults, is a good woman.’

  ‘She thinks she is, anyway I dare say she has many good qualities – endurance for instance, and reliability – but the other is such an affectionate sweet-natured creature. Ah well, you’re in a lucky situation. But don’t let Beatrice bully you into anything. I shouldn’t be in a hurry at all if I were you.’

  ‘I shan’t rush into anything, ‘m. I’ve never been impetuous.’

  ‘And you won’t commit yourself finally without discussing it with me? It helps to talk about it, you know I don’t expect you to take my advice.’

  ‘I certainly value it very highly, ‘m.’

  ‘I feel better now. We can go home, if you please. She’s going well, isn’t she? You found out what the trouble was the other day, I see. Was it the plugs?’

  They discussed the engine all the way home. Old Mrs Weston liked the technical details.

  Alice writing home again. ‘He has lent me a book called Principia Ethica by a certain G. E. Moore. Does Father know about him? Edmund knows him and admires him very much. The point of the whole thing seems to be that the highest values in life are those involved in human relations and the appreciation of beauty – and all one has to do is to deal with those beautifully. Now that I come to think of it, it seems an awfully long and difficult book to say just that, so I expect I have not got it quite right – I must read the book to find the subtleties, but it sounds nice, doesn’t it, and so entirely right a philosophy for a character like Edmund’s? He is such a fortunate person and so nicely aware of it that it is delightful to be with him (no, I am not with him too much, and I do not overreach myself in any way, and my bearing is everything that is proper for a person in my position). At Whitsun the house is going to be full – they have all asked people to stay – Kitty says it will be ghastly, nothing but games – but I am sure to be entranced, and after that she and I are to have a week in London to be spent in improving activities. Please will Father send me a list of things I should take her to see, apart from obvious ones like the National Gallery?’

  8

  The Guards’ Club. Captain Smallpiece in the smoking room, his feet up, snoring slightly over the Field. They are small feet, spankingly shod by Lobb. The whole small form in the armchair is neat as anything, even the head, though it lolls, has carefully brushed hair and a carefully trimmed moustache (by Trumper). Captain Smallpiece is Captain Weston’s best friend in the regiment – in fact almost his only friend. He finds old Philip an amusing chap and besides, he says, the Westons are all right – there was old Charlie Weston who used to be in the regiment and old Gummy Weston in the Blues and old Hugo Weston who was sacked from Eton and became a general, and Aylmer Weston’s said to be a very decent fellow and awfully brilliant and all that – so that when Philip sits suddenly down beside him he opens his slightly bulging eyes obligingly (revealing himself to be a good deal younger than one might have supposed) and hardly reproaches him for waking him, merely murmuring, ‘What? What?’ with mild irritation.

  ‘Sorry. Did I make you jump? Take a few deep breaths. Want a drink?’

  ‘Wouldn’t mind some more of that port, it’s not half bad. How’d you get on?’

  ‘Exactly as I expected to. Aylmer was charming. Horgan duly bowled over. Aylmer did a bit of his usual lightning grasp stuff, which went down pretty well. Horgan on the other hand was quite tough and business like and refused to be overawed. The only person who came out of it badly was me.’

  ‘What happened? Get a bit squiffy?’

  ‘Wish I had. No. Just general ineptitude. Furious with Aylmer for being patronizing, furious with Horgan for being so common and awful.’

  ‘What is he? Jew, I imagine?’

  ‘Just South African.’

  ‘Course he’s a Jew. All South Africans are Jews. Can’t think why you go on with it if you don’t care for the fellow. Far better stick to this sort of life, hunt with your own pack, don’t you know?’

  ‘It’s all very well for you. You’re rich, apart from anything else.’

  ‘Don’t know about that. Income tax going up all the time. And death duties. If your uncle’s Party stays in power much longer there’s no knowing what will become of hereditary wealth.’

  ‘And a good thing too. There’s going to be a great upheaval. There’s a whole new force coming up, based on everything that’s been suppressed up till now, based on bad taste if you like. A whole new wave and I’m on the crest of it.’

  ‘I can see that it might appeal to you. Still, rather you than me. Going in there, meeting the Jews on their own ground, damned courageous thing to do if you ask me.’

  ‘But there’s money in it, Buffy. And anyway that sort of thing’s not going to matter any more, being a Jew I mean. Class barriers are going to break down and in the process there’ll be gains to be made. Gains, Buffy.’

  ‘Not a question of class really. I’d have said I mean a Jew’s a Jew, isn’t he, not some sort of damned middle class muck? A Jew’s a Jew. And proud of it I dare say. More a question of race really, isn’t it? And you can’t tell me race barriers are going to break down. What I mean to say is, a Jew’s a Jew and a black’s a black and an Englishman’s an Englishman, and more power to their elbow, I say, all of them. And I know which I’d rather be. Yes, well, anyway, I dare say I’d look a pretty good ass as a black fellow. Haven’t got the physique, sort of thing. All that naked dancing. So you think power is slipping from the hands of the hereditary ruling classes, is that it? Good God, what a frightful thing.’

  ‘Is it?’

  ‘Of course it is. Well, I mean, who’s going to take over? Who’s got the experience? The sense of responsibility?’

  ‘I don’t know. Who cares, so long as there’s a change, a chance for a bit of real life to creep in?’

  ‘I suppose you want the middle classes to take over God, how dreary. Let’s get that over as quick as possible and get the working classes in. At least they like gin. Sort of thing. Or am I quite wrong? I dare say I am. But what I mean is, what’s wrong with the present chaps?’

  ‘They’re corrupt, inefficient, money mad, immoral, unjust, based on falsehood. Their whole creed’s a pack of lies.’

  ‘Oh lor’. But look here, what about your uncle? You can’t say all those things about him. I mean he’s a bit of a rebel, a bit of a revolutionary idealistic kind of dangerous politician, but no one’s ever said there was anything wrong with his motives.’

  ‘He’s the worst of the lot. The worst of the lot. H
e pretends to understand, he ought to, he thinks he does, but he doesn’t.’

  ‘Really? Oh dear. How rotten. Thought he was a good chap.’

  ‘Oh he’s a good chap. And I’ll make him suffer for it.’

  ‘What’s wrong with being a good chap?’

  ‘Nothing. As long as he doesn’t discount the bad chaps. And the bad chap in him.’

  ‘Oh you mean Aylmer’s got another side to him. Vice and all that. Really? What bad luck. Look here, what about a game of backgammon?’

  ‘All right. I shall beat you, though.’

  ‘I know. You always do. We might have another glass of that port, don’t you think?’

  9

  At Whitsun the house was full of people I haven’t described the house because I know it too well, as one cannot describe one’s mother’s face. But if ever you have had dreams of a beautiful house they were dreams of Charleswood.

  And I can’t remember the names of the people who stayed there for those two weeks, it was too long ago, and if I looked them up in those now tattered scrap books they all used to keep with photographs and private jokes and mottoes grandly though illegibly signed, I should only become muddled. My memory would be jolted uncomfortably by finding that Margaret James wasn’t after all the one who flirted with Philip, she was the one with dark hair who later married John Abinger, and it was Margaret Pope Fairfax who was the flirt and Cicely was not Cicely Anderson but Cicely Carmichael, and it was Mildred Anderson whose cousin Hubert later married Cicely only the day before he left for France in 1915. And then, as I say, I should be muddled and remember the whole thing less clearly than I do now. Because it doesn’t really matter if I get their names wrong, we know that Violet and Wilfred were there, and Edmund and Philip and Alice and Kitty, and there was also Margaret, and Joan and Daisy and Ida and Cicely, and Robin and Gerald and the two Johns. Perhaps they were not all staying at the same time but came and went during the two weeks. A lot of them were there the day they played hide and seek while Aylmer worked in the library and Cynthia sat with her sewing in the shade and watched them. There are, of course, plenty of people alive now who were grown up then But not these.

  I think it was Cicely who suggested playing hide and seek. They were all out in the garden saying it was too hot to play tennis, suggesting croquet, a group walking off towards the wood, another sitting on the grass under the cedar tree continuing a conversation they had begun at lunch. Edmund and John said they would play a single in spite of the heat, Cicely, who was not much good at tennis and had hoped for a walk with Edmund, was disappointed, knowing that Edmund was likely to go on playing tennis all afternoon if once he started, and so she said, ‘Let’s play hide and seek – this would be a wonderful place for it,’ and Violet, who was all that time in a state of mild delirium brought on by the excitement of her engagement, jumped up and said, ‘I’ll hide!’ and ran across the lawn towards the orangery, disappearing in a moment behind the Portugal laurels, but Wilfred and John ran after her and it turned into a game of ‘touch’, and Cicely and Ida joined in and they ran round and round the small formal rose garden in front of the orangery, jumping the low box hedges, until Ida fell by the fountain and one of her feet slipped into the pool, so she took off her shoes and stockings, but by that time the others had all joined them and they went into the orangery to talk to the cockatoo who was 100 years old, but soon came out because Mason, the head gardener, was in there watering and they knew he was cross with them for having raided his greenhouse the day before and stolen peaches. Ida stayed behind to soothe him. Her hair was dark gold, her eyes sometimes green sometimes grey, she was tall, and nineteen, perhaps she had let her foot slip into the fountain on purpose, because she liked being barefoot it was always she who after they had danced all night and had evaded the chaperons to escape into the garden was the first to throw off her shoes and stockings and run barefoot across the dewy lawn.

  ‘He is subjugated,’ said Ida, having dealt with Mason, ‘but I am still frowned on by your grandmother I shall put on my best Sunday hat and walk up and down the terrace reading Schopenhauer.’

  ‘No, come with me and hide. The others must find us. They must count 200 first. I have got my Yeats, we can sit in an arbour and read verses till they find us.’ Cicely, long-faced, soft-voiced, subject to sweeping enthusiasms.

  Ida pretended to be an old Irish peasant woman. ‘The years like great black oxen tread the floor of time, and I am broken by their passing feet.’

  ‘To me, fair friend, you never can be old, for as you were when first your eye I eyed.’

  ‘We must all sit here until we have made a sonnet with two puns in it, then we will come and find you.’

  ‘That will be too long.’

  ‘Not clever games in the afternoons as well as in the evenings?’

  ‘Clumps is not clever.’

  ‘Nor is cock fighting. Let’s make your father play again this evening.’

  ‘If we are going to play hide and seek Kitty must play too. Where is she?’

  ‘Reading with Alice.’

  ‘Tell them both to come. Go on, you two, hide. We’ll paddle in the fountain until you’re ready.’

  So all afternoon they wandered in the garden, looking for each other, and some were found quickly and some more slowly, and some took the seeking seriously and some simply walked and talked, and Kitty when it was her turn to hide climbed a tree, and Gerald found her and climbed higher and then they all began to climb trees, but Kitty wanted to hide again and so they played ‘sardines’ until only Daisy wandered with her sweet blurred mermaid look between the rose strewn trees, not knowing they were all in the hayloft waiting for her. They had to give it away in the end by singing the Pilgrims’ Chorus from Tannhauser louder and louder until she heard them, and then it was Alice’s turn to hide. She came back towards the house and hid behind a weeping ash. Cynthia could see her from where she sat sewing. For a long time there was no one else to be seen. They had all scattered farther afield. Then Philip appeared, walking slowly, his hands in the pockets of his white flannel trousers. He was looking in the wrong direction. He did not seem particularly interested in the game. Cynthia thought, Perhaps he will come and sit beside me, and talk? But suddenly he changed direction, walked towards the ash, and round it, and discovered Alice. They stood together, hiding from the others. But the others were nowhere to be seen. It seemed a long time that Cynthia watched them standing close together, talking in whispers. How could the others be so stupid? Perhaps they had given up, decided to do something different, gone for a walk or a bicycle ride. Then at the other end of the lawn Edmund and Cicely appeared, but they walked so slowly, and the whispered conversation behind the ash seemed to be growing more and more engrossing Cynthia almost called out to Edmund, almost called to Philip, ‘They are coming’, almost stood up herself so that Alice and Philip might realize she could see them. But it was too late. He had kissed her. He had bent his head and kissed her on the cheek.

  It would have been better if she could have spoken to them about it or to Alice anyway, for Philip might have teased her (he had known that she could see them), but Alice would probably have been able to set her mind at rest by showing how little the incident had meant to her and how much more worrying to her was the idea that she might have incurred Cynthia’s displeasure.

  Nor did Cynthia mention the incident to Aylmer. He did not like unpleasantness.

  She sent for Alice and said, ‘I am a little worried about Kitty. Of course when there is a young party here she wants to join in, but we mustn’t forget that she is supposed to be still in the schoolroom. She will have time enough for social life when she is out I do want her to pursue her studies seriously while she can.’

  ‘Yes, of course.’

  ‘I think it is so important for a woman to have the balance that a good education can give, quite apart from the pleasure it will give to herself and to others. But you know how we feel about it I think it would be better if in the afternoons yo
u and she kept yourselves to the schoolroom.’

  Alice flushed slightly. ‘I did feel when Miss Weston came up yesterday to ask us to play hide and seek that I ought to have asked you first, but she said that it was a holiday and there was no need – but of course I should have asked all the same – I am so sorry. Kitty is getting on very well. She has such an eager and inquiring mind I don’t think she will ever stop educating herself. She is really a joy to teach.’

  ‘I have heard about your progress from my mother-in-law and I am very pleased that it is all going so well. It is just that I don’t want it to relax now that the house is full, and now that there are going to be other distractions because of the wedding. I don’t want Kitty to become purely frivolous like some girls of her age.’

  ‘No indeed.’

  Alice understood that this meant that the governess was not to join in too readily with the fun of the house party. She in no way resented the mild rebuke but wished only that she had done nothing to deserve it.

  To Philip Cynthia said nothing at all. Even when he said quite openly when they were walking together down towards the tennis court, ‘I am thinking of having a little flirtation with the governess,’ she turned to him a face of only mild reproach and said, ‘Is that kind?’

  ‘To whom?’

  ‘To the governess.’

  ‘Oh, I can’t be expected to consider her feelings.’

  ‘And I can’t be expected to take you seriously. Will you join me in a plot to foil Edmund of his design to play six sets running before tea? He does it so subtly that people don’t notice until too late that he has organized himself into every four.’

  ‘I will join you in any plot you care to propose to me.’

  ‘Then I must think of a really dashing one.’

  She ascribed the strength of the emotion she concealed to a desire like Aylmer’s to ‘avoid unpleasantness.’ She told herself that Philip’s behaviour was disappointing and unworthy of him. She was afraid that Alice might be turning out to be ‘light’. When she looked at the governess’s clear fine eyed face and saw the suitable unflustered politeness with which in public she replied to Philip’s conversational openings – or to anyone else’s – she was half comforted, but half even more disquieted. In case this was just a cool cover for a secret intrigue.