Statues in a Garden

by Isabel Colegate

  ‘I’m just going, Mummy. Where’s Kitty? I promised she could come and help me.’

  ‘I’ll come up in a minute, shall I? You have so many helpers.’

  ‘Yes, come and see if I’ll do before I come down. Oh, there you are, Kitty. We’re going up.’

  Kitty went with her, and so did all the other bridesmaids, to help her change into her going away dress.

  Philip thought as they passed him, Ida would be a good marriage for me, she is rich. The fact that one has felt at times vaguely lecherous about one’s aunt is neither here nor there. Perhaps I’ll go back to London tonight after all.

  ‘Cynthia, I am thinking that perhaps I might go back to London after all, as the others are going.’

  ‘Of course, Philip. Do just as you like. Lord Tamworth is showing up my ignorance about books. I haven’t read anything new. I wish you would talk to him instead.’

  She knows. She gave herself away, she wouldn’t have spoken so coolly as that if she hadn’t minded. She wouldn’t have spoken so coolly as that a week or two ago either. She knows.

  Bringing his conversation with Lord Tamworth to a barely polite close, he followed her, caught her up on her way across the lawn towards a group in which Aylmer was talking, and said, ‘It was because I thought it wasn’t safe for us to be left alone together that I said that’

  ‘Safe?’

  ‘You are married and I am your nephew.’

  ‘That exactly makes us safe. What do you mean, Philip? Are you teasing?’

  ‘No.’

  They had reached the group, and were obliged to join in its conversation.

  Cynthia thought that Philip was joking. All the same, she found herself asking Aylmer to stay.

  ‘Of course I will if you want me to But I’ve made all my arrangements, that’s the trouble. And it’s awfully short notice to cancel the meeting. I suppose I could telephone tonight and see if they could change it. I don’t know whether they’ll be able to, though, they’re all busy people.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter really. It was just an idea.’

  ‘I think in a way, unless you feel very strongly about it, I ought to stick to my original plan. It seems rather inconsiderate to the others, don’t you know?’

  ‘Of course I only meant, if it didn’t make any difference.’

  ‘That’s all right then. I’m sorry about being so busy lately, I’m looking forward to our holiday, aren’t you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  She had a busy life, too, days full of engagements of one sort or another. Lately he had felt that she was not as contented as usual, but in the summer recess they would sort it all out, iron out the little differences, give all their time to each other. That was what he wanted to do. He knew she understood.

  ‘It won’t be long now.’

  ‘I know.’ She turned away. She had to give her attention to her guests.

  Alice saw them gathering together to see. Violet and Wilfred leave Cynthia, who had been upstairs to see if Violet was ready, came down smiling. Kitty followed her. Edmund stood by his father at the foot of the stairs, looking up. Alice thought how alike they all looked, except for Philip, who had gone to stand beside Cynthia.

  Then Violet came down, followed by Wilfred, and everyone clapped and called out to them, and they kissed their parents, and made their way slowly towards the door, and climbed into the Silver Wraith which was waiting there, with Moberley at the wheel, to take them to the station. Mrs Weston had insisted that they should go in her car. She said it was so much nicer than Aylmer’s, which was true.

  And they waved, and drove off, and everybody waved and smiled and called out, ‘Good bye, good bye’, and Cynthia waved and smiled rather tearfully until they were out of sight, and then sighed, and, turning to Philip who was nearest to her, said, ‘Well, it is all over now.’

  17

  Before dinner, Cynthia rested on her bed. She was a little tired after the wedding, but happy, because it had gone so well.

  She lay on her back, wrapped in her Chinese dressing gown. Her bedroom windows were open, the curtains moving slightly in the warm breeze.

  She thought of her hands, in order to relax them, then of her arms, neck, head, torso, legs, feet, until at last like music which may convey nothing until unexpectedly one slips into the pat tern of it, the rhythm of her own resting body took her and she floated, in submission.

  A long time passed. She almost slept but did not sleep.

  At last she moved, turned, pressed her face into the pillow, stretched, crossed her arms over her bosom, hands on shoulders, hugging herself smiling. She said, ‘Philip Philip Philip!’ Like a cat with the cream.

  Then she dressed, slowly. She liked dressing. She went down to dinner.

  She had not yet had one consciously adulterous thought.

  18

  Cynthia wore her green tea gown. Philip had changed into a dark blue smoking jacket.

  Old Mrs Weston had a light meal upstairs on a tray. Kitty and Alice had their supper in the schoolroom, as usual.

  They left the curtains undrawn because of the sweet dusk, but needed to light the candles. They talked agreeably, two people charmed by one another.

  After dinner she said, ‘I think I’ll go up.’

  ‘Oh no, it’s much too early, you can’t be tired.’

  ‘I’m not exactly tired. But it’s been a long day. Will you do the lights?’

  ‘Yes. But I wish you wouldn’t go.’

  ‘Good night.’

  She wasn’t tired. She had left him because of some sort of feeling that the evening couldn’t last, that it might go wrong, that she didn’t know how, but felt it might have gone wrong. She felt that because her relationship with Philip was so extraordinarily precious to her she had to take care of it, and the closeness of that evening, their shared enjoyment of it, the excitement even of the sort of flirtatious tone they sometimes adopted – well, she felt that after dinner it might have gone wrong, he might have grown bored, buried himself in a book, and she might have been disappointed, or she might have said or done something foolish, something which would have spoilt everything, she did not want Philip to know how fond of him she was.

  She was sure she had been right to come upstairs. But as she undressed she regretted it. As she sat in her dressing gown brushing her hair she thought, I might go down again. But she did not go down again.

  All the same she did not want to go to bed.

  So when she had finished brushing her hair she walked up and down in front of her bedroom windows, the brush still in her hand.

  He came in, shutting the door behind him.

  ‘I must talk to you.’

  She turned towards him, surprised that he was there, surprised that she was so pleased that he was there.

  ‘I must talk to you.’

  She saw that he looked distressed and moved at once towards him.

  He embraced her.

  His lips on hers were a tremendous shock.

  She dropped the hairbrush. Her mouth gave in to his.

  She thought, This is impossible. At the same time came the purifying thought. This is Philip, whom I love. But much stronger than that was the deep impulse in her belly which proclaimed her need and therefore, it seemed, her right.

  ‘But Philip, Philip.’ Soft protestations. Why protest? He consumed them as he kissed her.

  They were possessed by passion, fell on to the bed, and made love.

  Their act was many acts. Had it had no before or after it would have been only two handsome people on a bed. She was still in her prime, and healthy, she had fine great breasts and soft skin, even her long lovely throat had hardly a line across it, and he, built on a less grandiose scale, had youth on his side. The first consummation was so quick and violent that it seemed to them as if they had been struck by a thunderbolt. It was only by repeating it that they remembered the details.

  It was she who, after the thunderbolt, chose their direction. When they moved, turned, looked at ea
ch other, he was frightened, but she could only think of love. Seeing his look, which was one of fear of torment to come, she put her arms round him to comfort him and said, ‘Don’t speak.’ They lay side by side, and he could only feel amazement that she was not angry, and she could only feel gladness and love. He put his hand on her breast, remembering now how he had longed to do that, and bent his head to kiss it slowly, and she turned slightly, fitting her body against his, and they recalled, and repeated more slowly, their former passion, and it was she who said, ‘I love you.’

  When she slept, she had said no more than that ‘I love you.’ He lay awake, wondering what would happen, or what had happened. Then, remembering that Beatrice would come in to call her in the morning, he went back to his own room, leaving Cynthia sleeping.

  19

  Philip got up early and walked round the garden before breakfast. When he came in, he found Kitty and Alice already in the dining-room (it was only their supper which they had in the schoolroom). He helped himself to coffee and scrambled eggs.

  ‘You look gloomy,’ said Kitty. ‘When are you going back to London?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Aren’t you going today? I wouldn’t let them send me away if I’d known you were going to be here.’

  ‘Send you away?’

  ‘We’re going to the Tammies, don’t you remember? Alice and I. It’s because I’m supposed to be pining for Violet.’

  ‘How odd. Why should you pine for Violet?’

  ‘I don’t know. It was Enid Tamworth’s idea.’

  ‘It was because she thought you might feel an anticlimax after the wedding,’ said Alice. ‘It was very kind of her.’

  ‘Yes, I know,’ said Kitty. ‘But it’s quite kind of us too be cause she’s got an ugly French relation there that she can’t think what to do with, and we’re to have conversation lessons and tell each other about our customs.’

  ‘I remember hearing something about it,’ said Philip. ‘A female relation, isn’t that it?’

  ‘She’s called Berthe,’ said Kitty ‘Berthe aux Grands Pieds. Oh Mother, fancy you coming down to breakfast.’

  ‘I felt so well this morning that I thought I would. Good morning, Miss Benedict. Good morning, Philip.’

  Philip jumped up quickly and went to the sideboard saying, ‘I’ll get you some coffee.’

  Cynthia sat down. She looked well, in some sort of pale muslin. She smiled at Philip as he gave her her coffee, a smile which seemed absolutely as usual.

  He had not expected her to be so cool. He admired her, feeling himself quite incapable of matching her assurance. At the same time he was intrigued to know what she would say when they were next alone together. She would surely not pretend that nothing had happened? But nothing she did now would surprise him, or perhaps, rather, everything would.

  Kitty and Alice had to be embarked. It seemed to take most of the morning. When they had left, Cynthia walked into the garden, and after a few minutes Philip followed her. She was taking the dead heads off the rose bushes. Philip stood on the lawn watching her.

  ‘What shall we do?’ he asked finally.

  ‘I don’t know,’ she answered.

  ‘Shall I go back to London?’

  ‘Could you – not?’ she said, bending over a rose bush.

  ‘I suppose I could telephone.’

  She said nothing.

  ‘When is?’ he began. ‘When are they all coming back, the others?’

  ‘On Friday.’

  ‘Would you like me to stay?’

  She was dropping the dead roses on the ground as she walked through the rose bed. ‘It’s as you like,’ she said. Then she said, ‘I must go and see how Mama is,’ and went back into the house.

  He sent a telegram to Horgan saying that he was ill but that he would telephone later in the day. He had to do something about Aylmer’s shares.

  Mrs Weston came down to lunch, and they talked about the wedding again.

  After lunch Cynthia went up to her room to rest.

  She was not yet lying down when he came in. They embraced. Then they began to laugh.

  He held her away from him, his hands on her shoulders, and they looked at each other and laughed. Why? They did not really know. Pleasure in each other? Release of the tension which had mounted all day? Or were they laughing at themselves for being made ridiculous by their physical desires? They were not laughing at Aylmer. Or was it in fact just that that it did amount to? They did not know. And all their week of love they did not know, or ask.

  They had a week, because Aylmer did not come down for the week end because he was too busy doing preliminary work for the Buckingham Palace conference, and Edmund did not come because he had managed to get himself asked to stay with the Tamworths, where Kitty and Alice were, so they were alone except for old Mrs Weston, who spent most of the time in her own rooms in another part of the house.

  Cynthia had been going to London, where she had several engagements. She sent messages to say she was not coming. No one was surprised. It was supposed that she was worn out after the wedding which had come, after all, in the middle of such a busy season.

  Aylmer sent her a note. ‘My dear, I think you are quite right to stay there and rest. How I wish I were with you London is intolerable in this heat I hope to be able to get away early on Thursday. Things are very exciting here at the moment. No time for more, but all news when I see you. All my love, Aylmer.’

  His writing reminded her of him. She spent the morning his letter came at her desk, doing the household accounts, but by the afternoon she was back in her dream of Philip.

  Because it was a sort of dream. A dream of love, simplicity and physical joy. She was able to sustain it by telling herself that she loved Philip. She had always loved him, and by a sort of ruthless simplicity she would not allow the shock of discovering that that love involved also physical desire to change its nature. She had loved him for years and now at last she knew him. She had a husband and a duty to her husband, but he was away, and when he came back she would return to being only his wife, and her physical relationship with Philip would have to stop. This was how she saw it in the rare moments when she allowed herself to think Aylmer was away and would never know, and in the meantime what was impelling her was her love for Philip, a love she had never concealed and which had never been incompatible with her love and respect for Aylmer.

  The way in which she adapted herself to the new situation was amazing to Philip. She lost none of her assurance of her shining appearance of being at peace with her conscience. She set out on their adventure as if it were a picnic, wearing a pretty dress, smiling because the sun was out.

  Their days were spent in walking or reading, or expeditions about the surrounding countryside. Occasionally old Mrs Weston joined them, but not often, because her rheumatism was bad and she had sunk into one of her moods of depression. At night, or sometimes in the afternoon when Cynthia had her rest, they made love.

  Their love-making was passionate. It was different from anything she had ever experienced with Aylmer, because Aylmer had always thought of the sex appetite as a male one. Was it Lord Curzon who was supposed to have said, ‘Ladies don’t move?’ Aylmer would have agreed Ladies, as opposed to professionals, did not move. They submitted out of the generosity of their sublime natures to the regrettably gross, though natural, desires of gentlemen. Cynthia had more or less fallen in with this view. She was not very observant of her own emotions, nor even very good at recognizing what they were when she did observe them, nor had she the sort of relationship with Aylmer in which such things could be discussed with freedom. So that with Philip she discovered deeper delights than ever before. It made her feel extremely well and happy. Her happiness was of an immediate nature, and even the fact, of which she must have been aware, that it could not last, did not mar it. Her sense of physical wellbeing made her feel morally in the right.

  Philip was less happy. Unlike Cynthia, he could not fit the experience whic
h he was undergoing into his scheme of ideas, and, besides, he felt guilty about neglecting his office. His feelings towards Aylmer were a great deal more complicated than Cynthia’s were. In a way he loved Aylmer, he wanted to be Aylmer, and suffered from knowing that he never could be Aylmer. At the same time he felt that Aylmer was his enemy, and he wanted to undo him at the same time again he felt that Aylmer was meet to be despised, and could not altogether despise him. So that there was an aspect of Cynthia to him in which she appeared just as Aylmer’s wife. It was perhaps when she was in this aspect that when they were making love he seized her head in both his hands and forced it down between his thighs. But she always met him with her love. If there was anything at all which would give him pleasure she would in the service of love perform it. There was enough of the old relationship left for her to be able to spoil him. He became increasingly enthralled by her.

  It was hot. A light haze of heat lay over the garden. Time crept, softpawed Mrs Weston lurked, in black, behind the roses, but emerging only smiled and sent for Moberley, who took her off for another shaded drive. In the house the blinds were drawn, dust danced in the shafted sunlight, clocks ticked, feet on the stairs brought only another bowl of roses. The servants moved more slowly because of the heat and the relative lightness of their work, so many of the family being away. Talk of the weather and the village cricket match Ellen’s eighteenth summer Cynthia’s forty second.

  Mrs Weston, shrouded in chiffon scarves, spoke into the speaking tube about the abyss. It was opening, she said.

  ‘We have to cling to love,’ she said. ‘Our one talent, the shaping spirit of our imagination, our one hope. And we have hardly even tried to find out what it is. And why should they learn to wield it, these young things I now find all my interest in, these favoured children, Edmund, Alice, Kitty, Violet, Wilfred? Everything is on their side, circumstances are with them, even history might fall in behind them. But if they have any idea of what it is, this love, they should have done something about it already, they should be telling the world now, while they have time, while the world will listen to them and before they cease to matter. They don’t know how to. Perhaps their fathers have not told them. Perhaps they will die with their little piece of half knowledge undeclared, even to themselves, spilt on the sand. Or is it, like most messages, incomprehensible except to those who know it already? Well, you see, it is only in old age that the search for sanctions becomes all absorbing. In youth there are so many distractions. But your eyes change, you have to hold your book at arm’s length in order to be able to read it, and substances change, colours are sometimes brighter and sometimes darker, and you get this strange clarity of distance, men walking down a road a long way off, in the sun, between the trees, not knowing why they are going, they are as clear to me as the printed word held at arm’s length. The world on a summer afternoon, think of it, Moberley, think of it, doesn’t it make your head swim, don’t you find the abyss opening under your feet?’