Dark Angel

by Sally Beauman

  This is what she wrote:

  August 4, 1914

  How good to begin a new book, on a new clean page. Do you see, Papa I have found some journals exactly like yours! The same size, the same paper, the same covers. I was so happy to find them! I wanted them to match.

  It is so very hot again today. Francis measures the temperature every morning. I am helping him to keep a chart. At eight o’clock it was seventy-five degrees Fahrenheit, imagine that! I put the mark in, and joined up the graph. It looks like mountains. It looks like the Himalayas. Up and up and up. So hot. And the house is full of that hot word ‘war’, so I ran away here, to the birch-grove to write. It is cool under the trees. Floss is licking my leg. Acland used to meet Jenna here, but now he is changed, and they do not meet, not here, not anywhere. I am interested—a little interested—in that.

  Now, shall I make my list, Papa—the one I promised you? Here it is. The ones on the left had a motive, and the ones on the right had the means.

  Denton (jealousy) Denton

  Gwen (guilt) Cattermole

  Francis (if he knew) Hennessy

  Acland (he did—hate) Acland

  Jack Hennessy (jealousy—not of you) Francis

  Gipsies (a mistake) Gipsies???

  There. Does that help? Please tell me, Papa, what you think.

  Today, on the way here, Floss and I found a hedge-sparrow nest. There were seven eggs, of the most beautiful hue. They were as blue as your eyes, Papa, and no bird to sit on them. Floss said the nest was abandoned.

  Abandoned is a good word. It has two meanings. You would like that. Some words have three, and a very few have four. Maybe I will make lists of them too. Would you like that?

  It is very quiet here. The bushes are stealthy. Oh, Floss is beginning to growl. He says, Be careful, Constance. Stop now. Someone is watching.

  Acland paused, just beyond the gazebo. Through the trees he could see a patch of blue. He hesitated, then walked a few paces farther forward. There, in the center of the birch grove, her back against a silver tree trunk, sat Constance. Floss was with her, stretched out at her feet. Constance’s attitude was one of concentration, her dark head bent toward her lap.

  Acland took another step forward, a quiet one. She was writing, he saw, writing in a slow and painstaking way, as if completing a lesson. Every so often she would break off, stroke Floss in an absentminded way, then continue. She wrote in a notebook, he saw—a notebook with a black cover.

  She seemed absorbed. Even when his foot cracked a small dry branch, and the dog’s ears pricked, Constance did not look up.

  Acland was fascinated by Constance. Sometimes he resented this. He liked to watch her (especially if she did not know she was being observed); he liked watching her as a child likes to look down the tube of a kaleidoscope. He liked to see her patterns shift, re-form, and scintillate; he liked the patterns for their brilliant hues and their complexity. They tricked his eye with their iridescence, so that each pattern seemed new and never repeated. There must be a finite number of these patterns, but the speed and the dazzle with which they altered and re-formed pleased him; he preferred to believe they were infinite, and infinitely arbitrary.

  Acland knew about kaleidoscopes; he had been given one as a child. Once, in an effort to resolve its mysteries, he had taken it apart. He had been left with a cardboard tube and a handful of glittering particles, mixed together in his palm, the colors muddied. All the variety and contradiction were gone. He had learned his lesson. Constance fascinated, he told himself, precisely because he watched, and from a safe distance at that; he did not intend to investigate further.

  In four years Constance was greatly changed. The fact that Gwen now chose her clothes, and Jenna—now Constance’s maid—tended both her clothes and her unruly hair, had made a difference, of course. But the chief change was one Constance had wrought: She was then, as Acland watched her, in the process of inventing herself.

  Later, when she had herself down to a fine art, Acland would still admire her, for the defiance and the energy of her artistry. But in some ways he admired her more when she was younger, still rough around the edges, as she was then, in 1914. Constance’s energy, always formidable, was then as tangible as a force field. She bristled with it—so much so that Acland sometimes felt that if he put out his hand and held it above her hair, his hand would tingle with static electricity.

  She was small, fierce, unpredictable, and quick. Her face had the natural plasticity of the actress: She could look as sad as a clown one second, as imperious as a dowager the next. Everything about her seemed to fly off from some center of energy; her hair, which Jenna brushed religiously and tried to tame, had a will of its own. Constance was still too young to wear it up, and so it tumbled and snaked across her shoulders and her thin back—black, thick, resilient hair, as coarse and abundant as a horse’s mane. Gwen despaired of this hair, which she felt in a vague way was impolite. It made Constance, even when on her best drawing-room behavior, look like a Gypsy.

  Constance never learned to be sedate and ladylike: If she could cross her legs, she would; if she could squat on the floor, she would; if she could run, she would. All the time—running, sitting, standing, talking—her hands moved. Constance had small hands; they gestured and spoke, and—since Constance had a magpie fondness for small bright pieces of jewelry—they glittered, for she wore too many rings, jamming them on her fingers with a carelessness Gwen found vexing. Gwen once examined these rings and found a valuable ring, of chaste design, given by herself, on the very next finger to a trumpery affair that had come from a Christmas cracker.

  Constance could not resist such things; she could not resist bright colors. It occurred to Acland, as he watched her through the trees, that he had never seen Constance wear muted shades or pastels. Her dresses were as bright, and often as clashing, as the feathers of a hummingbird’s wings: scarlet, fuchsia pink, an electric shade of violet, marigold yellow, an iridescent blue so bright it bruised the eyes—these were the colors Constance loved, and the dresses she cajoled from Gwen. When she had them, she would preen in them; then, surreptitiously, day by day, she would trick them out until they were more garish still. A fragment of lace, sequins, a bright square of embroidery, a diamante buckle on an otherwise irreproachable shoe; Gwen would sigh, and give in. She could see that, however much she disapproved, these things suited Constance. She took oddities and scraps and excesses, and out of them fashioned herself: a quick, bright thing of contradictions. Look at me, said this creature: I divert! You cannot tame me! Watch me—look how I sparkle when I dance!

  That day, in the birch grove, Constance wore a dress of blue material, acid as prussic crystals. It had begun life plain but was now adorned by a zigzag line of scarlet picot trimming, which marched around her tiny waist and navigated the now-discernible peaks of her breasts. Acland, looking at this trimming, wondered if its disposition—and the attention it drew to Constance’s figure—was accidental. He decided it was not. Constance might be many things; she was not an innocent. She was, that day, tranquil—and that was unusual. She wrote, paused, wrote again. Occasionally she would break off from her writing to stroke Floss.

  Floss, given her by Boy, was the first of Constance’s dogs: a pretty thing, a small tricolored King Charles spaniel with an impudent air and a tail as smart as a feather. He had an inexhaustible appetite for affection; he encouraged Constance’s strokes and pats unashamedly. After a while, he rolled over on his back and offered her his stomach, but he did so in a lazy way, as if he were a potentate and Constance was just another useful hand from the harem.

  To his own surprise, Acland was touched by this vision. Those who do not know they are watched are always, in some way, defenseless. Constance’s defenses were usually thick and impenetrable—she had discovered, Acland suspected, that charm was a better barrier than the sullenness she had displayed as a child. Now, because she did not see him and therefore made no attempt to tease, provoke, challenge, or please, as she
usually did, Acland felt drawn to her.

  She looked like a child, although she was close to fifteen, almost a woman. She looked sad and studious and lonely, this girl with her dog and her notebook and her pencil. What did she write?

  Acland was about to step forward when Constance, closing the notebook, looked up.

  “Oh, Acland,” she said. “You startled me.”

  “You looked busy.” Acland approached, then stretched out full-length on the grass, as he liked to do. He felt the sun on his face; he levered himself up onto one elbow and looked at her.

  Constance had curious eyes: They were large, a little slanted toward the corners, and their color was indeterminate; sometimes Acland thought they were navy-blue, sometimes a very dark green, sometimes black. He could see himself in them now: a tiny reflection. These eyes resisted interpretation; they rested upon him, yet they seemed, in their darkness, blank.

  There was always the temptation, with Constance’s eyes, to look closer, to look deeper, to surprise a truth they cloaked. Acland felt from time to time that he would like to touch Constance’s eyes, and to trace their shape with his fingers. Also her lips, which he suspected she brightened with some salve; the upper lip was sharply defined; the lower, softer and more sensual. Between her lips, which were slightly parted, were small, even white teeth. Acland drew back.

  “Aren’t you coming to Freddie’s picnic?”

  “Is it time yet?”

  “Nearly.” Acland lay down again on the grass. “I was just going back to the house.”

  “I’m avoiding the house.” Constance made a face. “War, war, war. That’s all anyone talks about. Sir Montague says it’s inevitable, then Aunt Maud argues, and your mother weeps, and your father brings out his maps again, and Francis talks about his regiment…. I decided to escape.”

  “What were you writing? You looked very absorbed.”

  “Just my journal.” Constance pushed the notebook beneath the folds of her bright skirt. Acland smiled.

  “You keep a diary? I can’t imagine that. And what do you write in it?”

  “Oh, my girlish thoughts, of course.” Constance gave him a sideways glance. “I write about serious matters. My latest dress. My new shoes. Whether my waist is now sixteen inches or sixteen and a half. My dreams—I never leave out my dreams! My future husband—I spend a great many paragraphs on him, as girls do….”

  “Do you indeed?” Acland, who believed little of this, continued to regard her, slightly lazily. “And what else?”

  “Oh, the family. I write about them. What Steenie said. What Freddie wants from me for this birthday of his. About Francis and his photographs. His wedding to Jane, and how it has been postponed yet again …” She paused and gave him a sly look. “Sometimes—not often—I write about you.”

  “I see. And what do you write then?”

  “Well now, let me see. I write about your progress in the world. The books you read and the things you say about them. I write about those you admire and those you don’t. I describe you, of course. I say you remind me of Shelley—you do look like him, Acland, you know—”

  “What nonsense.” Acland, who knew it was nonsense, was still flattered. “You’ve never even read Shelley, I’ll bet.”

  “Very well then, perhaps I don’t write that. Perhaps I write … that you are changed.”

  Constance’s voice altered as she said this. The teasing note left it. She gave him another sideways glance. Acland began to pull up tufts of grass. He said in a light voice: “Oh—and am I changed?”

  “But of course. You have left Oxford now. You are quite the coming man—or so everyone says.”

  “You believe it, do you—what everyone says?”

  “Naturally. I trust gossip implicitly. I would lay down my life for a rumor. Acland the party-giver. Acland the golden boy of Balliol. Also …”

  “Also what?”

  “I make observations of my own. I record my data. No scientist could be more industrious. Of course, sometimes my findings do not tally with your reputation—”

  “In what ways?”

  “Ah, you are listening now, quite intent! What egoists you men are—you always want to know what we women think of you. Very well, I shall tell you. I write that you are older, less impetuous, that you have acquired a measure of caution, and that you fight life less—”

  “A dull dog. I sound like a banker.”

  “Perhaps I mean fight me less—for you have certainly called a truce there.”

  “A truce? Is that what you call it? A tactical withdrawal, that’s all. Fighting is exhausting. Besides, you’ve changed. You’re a little less obnoxious than you used to be.”

  “Thank you, Acland dear.”

  “You have improved. You’d admit there was room for improvement?”

  “Oh, yes. And I shall improve myself even more. Wait and see. I’m an anchorite when it comes to self-knowledge and self-improvement. Why, I’ve hardly begun! I shall work on myself, Acland, you’ll see—polish and hone away until I make myself quite dazzlingly perfect.” She paused. “However. I am beside the point. Don’t turn the subject. We were discussing you. How you have changed. I left out the most important thing of all.”

  “Oh, and what was that?”

  Constance gave a small smile. “Why, Jenna,” she said.

  Acland stood up. He walked away. He was angry with Constance. He would have liked to slap her for her spying ways and her deviousness. He would have liked to slap her for her precocity, for the way in which—as and when it suited her—she made a provocative transition from young woman to young girl. Her words stung him, as she had known they would do—stung more, since he knew they were right. If he was changed, it was because of Jenna, and the ending of their affair.

  Looking back over his shoulder at Constance, who had returned to her notebook without sign of concern, Acland thought (as he had thought before): Constance sees too much.

  It was not simply that Constance should know of an affair he believed secret, or even know that it was over—it had been over for almost two years. But Constance had seen more than that: She had seen that he had changed. For the worse, he assumed, since the end of the affair had been shabby.

  He had gone up to Oxford hot with love and promises: eternal fidelity, unaltered love. That state of mind had not lasted three months. Jenna was, quite simply, eclipsed. He lost sight of her behind new friends, new intellectual challenges, new horizons, new books. When he had next returned to Winterscombe, already wary, already experiencing guilt, he found a Jenna unaltered, yet unrecognizable.

  He could see that she was pretty, where he had believed her beautiful. The redness of her hands, the calluses on her fingers—these offended him. Her accent, the slow manner of her Wiltshire speech, these which he had loved before, now irritated him. Acland had a head full of new friends, new ideas, new books, none of which he could discuss with Jenna.

  This disloyalty made him ashamed. Shame bred guilt; guilt eroded desire. Acland discovered a bitter fact: Love was not immortal, as he had believed, and neither was physical want; both were capable of vanishing overnight.

  Jenna, who had probably seen the change in him before he did, said not one word of reproach. With an air of quiet resignation, explaining their plight in truisms that made Acland wince, she said she understood it was over, that it might be for the best, that she would settle to it, given time, that, no, he was not to blame; no one was.

  There was a look in Jenna’s eye, when she said these things, that made Acland deeply ashamed. He saw himself as shallow, profligate, irresponsible, snobbish—yet, even then, at the very same moment that he despised himself, he was heaving a silent sigh of relief.

  His friend Ego Farrell (and Farrell, to the mystification of many, for they appeared so unalike, was Acland’s closest friend) said Acland had been a boy, confusing love and sex—in love with his idea of a woman, not with Jenna herself. He implied, in his dry way, that Acland might profit from the experience, that
self-flagellation was unnecessary, since the affair had been the means to grow up.

  Acland could accept that this was sensible; however, a residue of guilt and self-dislike remained. It had occurred to Acland while at Oxford, and it occurred to him again, standing on the edge of the birch grove, that to grow up in such a manner might also be to diminish. Was he less now than he once was—or more?

  Acland was unsure. He had excelled at Oxford; he had also learned to distrust that excellence. At the very moment when the quickness of his mind, his grasp of the abstract, had earned him plaudits, at the very moment when (as Constance said) that golden future was forecast, Acland doubted. He saw himself as tainted, flawed, and self-deceiving. I lack will, he would say to himself, and he would see himself as confined by his class, a prisoner of the ease of his upbringing.

  Jenna might have freed me from that, he would think, and the doubts would intensify. Yes, he was a fine sprinter (his First from Oxford told him that), but in the long term, did sprinters stay the course?

  “Why did you say that?”

  He had returned to Constance. He glowered down at her.

  Constance closed her notebook and gave a shrug.

  “About Jenna? Because it is true. You loved her once. You used to meet her here. I saw you kiss her once—oh, years ago, now. Then I saw her weep, one Michaelmas term. Now I hear she is to marry that horrible Jack Hennessy…. I told you: I collect my data. I make my observations.”

  “You’re a little spy. You always were.”

  “That’s true. Another thing to cure. I shall make a note of it. Thank you, Acland. And don’t scowl so. Are you afraid I’ll gossip? I shan’t, you know. I am very discreet—”

  “Go to hell, Constance.”

  Acland began to turn away. Constance caught hold of his hand.

  “Don’t be angry. Here, pull me up. Now, look me in the eyes. You see? I meant no harm. You asked if you had changed. I answered you. You have, and for the better.”

  Acland hesitated. Constance was now on her feet; she stood very close; her hair brushed his shoulder; her face was lifted to his.