That produced no right effect, either.
“What’s been going on here since I left Washington?” he asked. “You’re worried sick about Sylvia, Sylvia’s worried about you.”
“About me?” And her face suddenly showed that she knew the reason for that, at least. Stewart Hallis. Why was Sylvia so much opposed to Hallis recently? Even Stewart must have felt it. Sylvia never invited him to dinner, now. She never invited him to anything. And when he called to take Kate out for an evening, Sylvia was decidedly cool. It was almost too obvious. And stupid. Sylvia was taking Hallis much too seriously. Last night, for instance.
Last night, Sylvia had come to Kate’s room. She had been moody, uneasy. Suddenly she had said, almost desperately, “Kate—please—don’t ever let yourself be persuaded into marrying a man like Stewart Hallis.”
Kate could only stare at her. Half-annoyed, half-amused, she answered sharply, “Marriage? Who’s talking of marriage? Look, Sylvia, that’s really exaggerating. Stewart is only helping to entertain the little stranger in Washington.”
“I’ve never seen him entertaining so decidedly.”
“We’re only friends. I like him; yes. But I’m not in love with him. He knows that.”
“It won’t discourage him.”
“But he isn’t in love with me.”
“Isn’t he?”
And Kate hadn’t found an honest answer to that. She turned away, saying, “It’s stupid, all completely stupid.” And embarrassing.
But it wasn’t altogether stupid, and she knew it. It had even begun to trouble her. How did you deal with someone so insistent as Stewart Hallis? By saying “No” repeatedly, determinedly? It was difficult. He was older, for one thing: and he was thoughtful, too. How could you snub someone you liked, someone who had gone out of his way to be kind to you? When you refused an invitation, he asked again. He always had another suggestion, another plan, to counter any refusal. Perhaps rudeness, frank and brutal, was the only answer that Stewart would listen to. “No” wasn’t a word he could recognise. Excuses were something he brushed gracefully aside. There was something almost frightening in the way he always seemed to get exactly what he wanted. At first, that had amused her. Flattered her, she admitted bitterly to herself. Sylvia had been right about that. But marriage?
Kate broke away from her thoughts, from the embarrassment and resentment that had touched her for that long minute’s silence. She looked at Bob Turner. “Sylvia is exaggerating,” she told him. “Now, let’s forget all the worries. Let’s enjoy ourselves tonight.”
“That’s a good idea,” Bob replied, and offered her a cigarette. As he lit it carefully, he was still studying her face. She’s unhappy about a lot of things, he decided. And he remembered, then, the night he had arrived for the dinner party and found Sylvia and Kate in a fit of laughter. “What about turning back and having dinner in town?” he suggested.
“No,” she said quickly. “It would be better in Georgetown.” And if Payton Pleydell returned earlier than planned, she would be there to give him the excuse about Sylvia’s visit to Whitecraigs. In spite of herself, she made a wry face.
Bob stared at her and then burst out laughing. “Hell,” he said, “you’re stubborn. Do you hate that house so much?” He leaned over to speak to the driver. “Turn around and drive—”
She touched his arm. “No, Bob. Please...let’s go to Georgetown. You can show me how to squelch Walter. We’re having a struggle for power, and I’m afraid he’s winning.” She began to tell him, as amusingly as she could phrase it, the beginning of the battle of the breakfast tray.
“And you mean you eat at a corner drugstore each morning?” he asked incredulously.
“Peace at any price. You don’t approve?”
He shook his head. “We’ll see about that,” he promised.
She began to smile.
As they approached Georgetown, he was talking about music, a nice safe subject with no worries attached. The Pleydells’ record collection was good, he informed her. She noticed the ill-disguised enthusiasm in his voice. “I don’t know much about music,” she admitted.
“Then we come out even. You teach me to look at abstract art without feeling I’ve got to catch a train some place, and I’ll choose you some music.”
“What do you like? The three B’s?”
“Just about it. Bach, Boogie and Bartok.”
“Where did you learn that?”
“Wherever there was a record shop, or free listening booth, and a clerk who didn’t expect me to buy.”
“In Dallas?”
“Partly. Mostly in Cleveland.”
“Oh yes—Case. That was your college, wasn’t it? Why did you go there?”
This is much better, he thought, as he watched her face. “A scholarship was a help. And they teach good engineering. And then I heard they were including a compulsory course on books, literature, that kind of thing: read Plato and argue about politics. Read Hamlet and learn about the Oedipus complex.”
“Is this what you call civilising the scientists?”
“Yes,” he said quietly. “I guess you could call it that. And I guess, too, you’ve been seeing a lot of Lawyer Hallis in the last three weeks.”
“Is that his kind of phrase? Oh no!”
“I liked the way you said ‘Oh no!’ It sounded just the right amount horrified.”
“I am,” she admitted weakly. “Are phrases catching, like measles? I suppose they are, or slang wouldn’t spread so easily.” But why, she was asking herself, why was I so horrified if I like Stewart Hallis as much as I do?
Bob Turner had his own thoughts. She had been seeing Hallis. That was Sylvia’s worry, probably. And Payton Pleydell was too busy as usual to see any trouble starting right in his own house. Or perhaps he wouldn’t see all this as trouble that really mattered. “How’s Pleydell, by the way? Don’t look startled. I’m just remembering my manners.”
“Oh, Payton’s busy. As always.”
“Does he ever worry about anything except his work?”
“He has other worries, too. Let’s not under-estimate Payton. I did, at first. I thought he was self-centred and cold. A difficult man. Reserved. But now—”
“You’ve decided he’s the life of any party?”
She looked amused for a moment. “Hardly.” Then she was so serious that Turner cut off the joke he had been about to make. “I’m sorry for Payton,” she said. And then, quickly, as if she felt she had been disloyal, “And I’m sorry for Sylvia, too.”
“No one ever gets sorry for me,” he said cheerfully. “I’m just not the type, I guess. What about you—do you make people feel sorry for you?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Fine. Let’s form a club. The Uncomplicated Club. You and I are charter members. So’s Geoff; although if you have to go around feeling sorry for anyone, then you might start with him right now on Heartbreak Ridge.”
“When are you being serious, when are you being funny?” she asked. “You make a joke and your face is solemn. You say something that is serious and you smile.”
“That’s what they call keeping a balance.”
She looked down at her neatly gloved hands, then up at the grey-blue eyes that had been watching her curiously. Now they were impassive; friendly, sympathetic and uncurious. “I believe you’d keep that,” she said, “even if you were sitting on top of a volcano.” Then she glanced quickly out of the taxi window: she had opened the door to her own worries just a little too much.
“We’re almost there,” she said quickly, her eyes determinedly on the narrow Georgetown street.
12
Across the Potomac, south of the white gleaming buildings of Washington, the highway followed the river’s curve. It was easy driving, once you had come through the busy streets of Alexandria, once you left the suburban developments which reached out beyond the town to eat up the rolling fields and woods of Virginia. Whitecraigs lay roughly twenty miles from Washington, on a quie
t road that branched up a gentle hill from the highway. As you climbed the road, there was little view of the river, for the cordon of trees was thick and the hedges were high; and then, suddenly, as you approached the post-and-rail fence that marked Whitecraigs’ boundary, you found you had reached the crest of the hill, and you could look down over fields and trees to see the Potomac and, beyond it, the wooded banks of Maryland.
Here, at the entrance of the driveway to Whitecraigs, Sylvia always thought the best view of the river was to be found, better than that from the house itself. She glanced at Whitecraigs, almost a quarter of a mile away on its own small knoll, flanked by trees, white pillars marking the porch where her father no doubt was watching the green slopes falling in their gentle curves down towards the water. It was practically all he did, nowadays. Even in winter when the weather was mild enough, he was to be found bundled up in heavy coat and travelling rug, sitting in his high-backed chair on the broad porch of Whitecraigs, a sketching pad on his knees although his cold fingers were only able to grasp the pencil clumsily.
She halted the car and lit a cigarette and sat, her head turned away from Whitecraigs, looking down to the distant river. Through the skeleton trees, she could see the brick chimney of Straven, the nearest neighbour to Whitecraigs. Below Straven was Strathmore, which lay almost on the highway. Whitecraigs, Straven, Strathmore, the three houses built by the Scotsmen who had settled here, bringing their Scots names with them, the three houses that were now fighting a losing battle to keep their lands.
Strathmore had lost: most of its fields had been sold to builders last year; and soon a new and more crowded colony would come to live there. Straven had won its battle, so far: its present owner was a practical farmer and a hard worker. She had driven past its fields on the way to Whitecraigs, and they were black-furrowed and rich, waiting for the spring sowing. But Whitecraigs, she thought, looking round at the white house on its green hill, Whitecraigs refused to accept new ways, refused to admit its own defeat.
She started the car, wondering why she had stopped for the view on a day when she was already half an hour late. Traffic through Washington had been heavy and Bob Turner’s telephone call, just as she had been setting out, had been another delay. A welcome one, though. Kate needed someone like Bob, someone to make her stop being so solemn and serious. What on earth was making Kate talk so much about Santa Rosita and the Sierras? Twice, recently, she had suggested Sylvia ought to visit the ranch in California. And this morning there had come a warm letter of invitation from George and Margaret Jerold at Santa Rosita. So Kate must have enlisted her parents’ help in this mad plan of hers to see Sylvia safe in California. Or was Kate’s persuasion all a kind of inverted homesickness?
She swung the car into the driveway, or rather the trail— for that was all it could be called nowadays—to Whitecraigs. As she passed the bleached cypress cabin, sheltering behind the grove of live oaks, she waved her hand. Ben’s Rose would see her, or one of the children would go running in with the news that Miss Sylvia was making a visit. And when Sylvia, on her way back, stopped at the cabin as she always did, there would be a cup of coffee and a talk with Rose and Ben about the problems of running Whitecraigs. Rose was always full of problems. But so was Whitecraigs.
And suddenly she knew why she had stopped the car down on the road, and wasted a precious ten minutes by smoking a cigarette and watching the river, smooth, deceptively still, grey-shadowed under its wooded banks. If she had been wise, she probably would have turned the car around and driven away: here, she’d find no help with her own problems. She had come for advice, and instead of help she’d be given more problems to face. Or was that too cruel? Perhaps, this time, she would find help. This time, it might be different.
“But that is what you always tell yourself,” she said, as the driveway, rutted and grass-grown, ended abruptly, and she came to the stables which now served as a garage. She left the car there, and seeing it stand so lonely in the empty yard she remembered the summer of 1939, just before her sisters had got married within a month of each other as if Annabel couldn’t bear the idea that Jennifer had married first.
Annabel had been twenty-four, then, and Jennifer twenty-two. And Sylvia, eighteen, refusing to be a part of their world, standing aloof beside her father, watching this yard filled with bright-coloured cars and gay voices and young men who liked a good time; and who could give them a better time than Annabel and Jennifer Jerold? But now, the laughing voices and bright-coloured cars were all gone from the yard; and the young men were gone; and the gay summer of 1939 was gone; and Annabel, separated from her fourth husband, had come back to Whitecraigs; and Jennifer, a widow with two children, was living here too.
Sylvia turned away from the lonely car and walked through the screen of elms and cypress towards the house. She wondered where the children were—usually Cordelia and Peter would welcome the arrival of her car as if it were a major excitement. But today, the house was as silent as the stable yard.
Whitecraigs had gleamed white from the distance, but its paintwork at this close view was stained by rain and dew, and cracked by the sun. The broad porch, raised by three wide steps from the grass, ran the full length of the building as if it were a stage where four white pillars supported the deep overhang of roof. On the porch, at the far end and towards its outer edge, sat her father in his high-backed chair. Today he had brought out an easel and his tubes of colour, and he was still working by the fading light.
Something had gone wrong, she thought worriedly. He only painted with that intensity when something troubled him. His pictures were crude and primitive: to Thomas Jerold, painting was less than an art—it was a release. Now, he heard the sharp sound of her high heels on the wooden porch. He stopped his work, half-turning his head. He wore a tweed cap on his thick white hair, his cheeks were weathered pink, but his thin face was pinched, and his hands were cold to touch. “I knew it wasn’t Jennifer or Annabel,” he said, unsmiling, calm-voiced as he always was, but there was welcome in his dark eyes.
“How?” She bent and kissed his brow. “Aren’t you frozen out here?”
He put down his brushes carefully on the easel’s work-stained ledge. “Jennifer stumps and Annabel clatters.”
“Well, it might have been Mother.”
“Milly’s taken to wearing sandals. Says that high heels ruin the spine.”
Sylvia exchanged a smile with her father. Millicent Jerold’s feet had walked around, for forty years at least, on three-inch heels to emphasise their smallness. “Shouldn’t we go inside?” she asked. The porch faced east and the wide-spreading roof increased its coolness.
Her father said, “Probably.” But he didn’t move. “It’s sheltered here,” he added; “the wind is from the south-west today.”
“But the light isn’t too good.”
He picked up the brushes again. “Probably not,” he agreed. He added a touch of white to the foreground.
She examined the painting. “Why, that’s Lightfoot and Blackie and Highstep and Sweetheart and Blondie and Whitestar, all in the paddock.” She looked then at the field lying to the side of the house, its fences fallen, empty. But in the painting, the post-and-rail fences were sparkling white, the grass was a brilliant mid-summer green, the horses were grouped as she had so often seen them standing, and the two elms—long since shattered by lightning—spread their soft shade.
“It is 1939,” her father explained, “when they were all there.” He pointed slowly to each horse in turn as if he were counting them.
“Well, we still have Whitestar,” Sylvia said.
He didn’t answer.
“Where’s everyone?”
“Milly’s writing. Annabel went out.” He stopped, held his brush in the air. “I think she went out. She always drives over to Blairton in the afternoons. Jennifer will be fussing in the kitchen. She fusses everywhere nowadays. Pity her husband got killed.” Jennifer, after a short and disastrous first marriage, had made a second, and this ti
me successful, attempt. But it had ended, on Omaha Beach, when Peter was only a month old and Cordelia barely two years.
“And the children?”
He paused and then said, “They’ve gone to the funeral. With Ben and the boys.”
“The funeral?”
He added another careful stroke to the small canvas in front of him. “Whitestar died yesterday. Ben and the children decided to give him a proper funeral. Down by the grove.”
She said nothing at all. She touched his arm briefly.
“And what is worrying you?” he asked, his voice suddenly sharp. “Besides the fact that you think it’s too cold for me here on this porch? I’m wearing a tweed coat and two sweaters. Jennifer knitted me one.”
“Did she? I’m glad someone’s here to look after you. But how did you know I’m worried?”
“I never could tell your thoughts, but sometimes I could make a guess at your feelings.”
Again she was silent. I can’t trouble him any more today, she thought. I was the daughter who was safely married: I was the only one who didn’t have to come back to him and remind him of still more unhappiness to be shared.
“They are starting to clear the land for building, down at Strathmore,” he said suddenly. “Did you notice?”
“Yes.” But that isn’t what worries me today, she was thinking.
“But Strathmore won’t be the pattern for Whitecraigs. Not as long as I’m still alive, Sylvia.”
“There are other patterns,” she said, leaving her own thoughts, choosing her words with care. “Straven is managing to survive.”
“I’m too old to learn practical farming. And so is Ben. Besides, you need money for equipment, money for extra help. Money, money, money.” He spoke half-humorously, but then he had never taken money seriously.
She didn’t reply. He knew her answer, anyway. Years ago, she had tried to persuade him to follow Straven’s example. “Ten years ago, or more,” he said slowly, “was the time to change. But then—” He shrugged his shoulders. It was the first time he had ever admitted he had been wrong about Whitecraigs. He stopped painting, and looked out over the calm fields.
I and My True Love Page 13