by E. H. Young
“No, it wasn’t funny,” she said to Rhoda, who questioned her next morning because it seemed a pity to miss a joke when so few cropped up in the family. “I thought it was, just for a minute, but,” she said with truth, “it wouldn’t bear explaining.”
“All right,” said Rhoda, quite sure she would have understood very well and a little hurt at not being trusted, but just as the look she had once seen her mother give her father had shown her that there might be dark and dangerous corners for those who seemed to travel easily on an open road, she realized now, for she had grown much older lately, that there might be unexpectedly lovely and amusing ones for those who made an apparently weary pilgrimage. Loyally, she tried not to make guesses and there were other matters to occupy her mind.
“Don’t you think,” she said, “the Frasers’ is a very nice house? They have the balcony for one thing and that room leading into the garden.”
“Yes, those are great advantages,” Mrs. Blackett agreed.
“Then why don’t we just go and take it? Why should they have what we like very much?”
Puzzled for a moment, Mrs. Blackett soon took her meaning. Rhoda had been studying the newspapers as well as sitting at Miss Spanner’s feet. “Yes, why indeed?” she said.
“And I’m sure Father would say we are superior people and ought to have what we want. He would, wouldn’t he?”
“No, I don’t think he would say we ought to have what we want.”
“What he wants, then.”
“No Rhoda, that isn’t fair. He doesn’t get everything he wants—far from it.”
“Well, let’s leave him out. You and I think we’d like that house.”
“But unfortunately,” said Mrs. Blackett, “we haven’t the excuse of pretending they are ill-treating some of our relatives who live there.”
“No, only Cousin Piers, and he doesn’t seem to go there now. I should have thought he’d have liked Miss Spanner. But we could easily make up something else. When you’re telling lies it doesn’t much matter what they are. We could say—well, what could we say?”
“Spying on us from the balcony might do.”
“Yes, and jumping on to our flat roof. Only I don’t think we’re strong enough to frighten them, not when they’re all at home, so we’ll just have to let them keep it. I’m rather glad. D’you think they’ll ask us to Chloe’s wedding? Flora will be furious if she’s not back in time for it.”
“She’ll be back long before that,” Mrs. Blackett said. Already a fortnight had gone by.
“Unless things begin to happen,” Rhoda said hopefully, “and they get caught somewhere.”
“They would have to happen very quickly and of course we shan’t be asked to the wedding, but I want to give Chloe a present, something, if I can find it, as pretty as she is. Shall we go and look in the shops?”
“I’m not much good at shops,” Rhoda said, “I wouldn’t mind, though, if we could leave Mary at home. I think three people are awful in a street. There’s always one in front of the others, or behind, and it’s so straggly and uncomfortable.”
“Then let’s go into the country,” said Mrs. Blackett. “Let’s fill the next few days with going to places we haven’t seen.”
“But nothing instructive,” said Rhoda. “And what about Cousin Piers? Why shouldn’t we go there?”
“Yes, we can do that too.”
“It’s a long way, though. I don’t think you could walk there and back.”
“I can walk much farther than you think,” said Mrs. Blackett. “But I shall hire a car. Yes,” she said recklessly, “I’ll hire one every day if we want one and we’ll do exactly as we like.”
“And not bother about picnic lunches but go to hotels for meals,” Rhoda said.
“And have the very best of everything,” Mrs. Blackett said with enthusiasm. “I’ll go over and see Mrs. Fraser. She will be able to tell us the best places. And it won’t matter how early we start or how late we get back,” and she was delighted to find that Herbert had left his latchkey in his stud box.
Chapter XXXV
Chloe had left the shop with the good wishes of Miss Pringle who was to be transformed from an employer into an aunt and was glad to remember she had always been kind to the girl who was marrying her nephew, and she accompanied the good wishes with a generous contribution towards the trousseau, but Chloe, preparing her own home, was often absent, cheered or depressed, Rosamund was not sure which, by her mother-in-law’s boundless faith in the nobility of man and the benevolence of Providence. Paul was still away, so Sandra was the only child at home and though she had her little pleasures, for she had many friends, her mother, seeing her sharp little face rather pale under her freckles, wished she could have a holiday in a keener air than that of Upper Radstowe.
“It’s such a waste,” she said, “to have those raw-boned aunts of yours in Scotland and make no use of them.”
“Oh, I don’t want to go away now!” Sandra exclaimed.
“Why not?”
“Well, there’s Chloe’s wedding.”
“You could come back for that.”
“And I don’t know those aunts.”
“You haven’t missed much. But I’m not going to write a humble letter asking them to have you for a visit, only in the case of dire necessity.”
“And in that case,” Sandra said, “I’d stay with you. Miss Spanner says she doesn’t understand what they’re saying when she listens to the wireless, but then, she doesn’t need to. She says it’s the nastiest noise she’s ever heard.”
“She must have forgotten what it was like to hear her dear old father talking intimately to the Almighty.”
“She says they howl,” Sandra said with grave disgust.
“And that’s what I wanted to do the only time I heard him.”
“How you hate him!” Sandra said. “You won’t forgive him, will you?”
“Never,” said Rosamund.
“And you won’t be serious.”
“Not very. Not yet.”
“Like a pack of wolves, Miss Spanner says.”
“Now how does Agnes know that? She’s never heard a pack of wolves.”
“And,” Sandra went on, knowing that it was for her benefit that her mother uselessly adopted this light manner, “I think it’s horrible for human beings to go on like that.”
“It’s not nice,” Rosamund agreed.
“It’s frightening,” Sandra said, “and I wish we were all together.”
“I don’t know that it would be much good, to sit about all in a cluster, like playing clumps. And the boys are having a glorious time. I’m glad they wrote to Agnes and thanked her for it. She’s very pleased. And I don’t want them to come back yet.” But she knew it was her father of whom Sandra was thinking. She was thinking of him herself. She had heard nothing more from him since he had sent his message. He must, she thought, have found that his congenial surroundings could be enjoyed without her help, or he had tired of them or, as seemed more likely, he was too much absorbed in the developments of the European situation, too much excited, for thought of anything else. His nature needed excitement, it always wanted things a little in excess. There had never been a snowstorm when he had not hoped it would be a heavy one, or a fog when he had not wanted it to thicken and, if she knew him, he now hoped for war. The repulsion of an intelligent being for such waste and misery, the consciousness that it was being deliberately provoked, that there was no real quarrel anywhere except the perpetual one between good and evil, would not overcome his instinct to defy a threat, his pride in his country and his primitive liking for a fight. And in such circumstances, she knew he was at his best, thoughtful for others, forgetful of self, displaying virtues which failed him in the domestic sphere where they were as badly needed. And Heaven alone knew, she said to herself, what he was doin
g now; prying about, perhaps, in places where he had no business to be and offering his services to people who did not want them.
“Do you know where he is?” she heard Sandra saying in a thin, timid voice.
“I know where he was. I wrote to him a little while ago.”
“Did you?” said Sandra with a flash of pleasure. “Then write again and tell him to come back.”
“That would be the most successful way of making him stay where he is.”
“Then tell him to stay there, of course,” Sandra said, but Rosamund could not bring herself to write again, not even to please Sandra. She had already fulfilled her promise to Piers and she would do no more. She did not want Fergus back—how could she?—and if he came she would not know what to do with him, nor would the children. Probably he would not know what to do with her or with them, for he must have changed too, and with a certain reluctant tenderness she wondered whether he would still be able to make her laugh, not at his wit, though he had his share of that, but at the nonsense he could not have produced without it. It was a long time since she had really laughed and she wondered too whether Felix, smarting under satire or a snub, had ever heard these sounds of silly merriment and been enraged by them. And yet again she told herself that Sandra was quite right. Somebody else always paid. No doubt she had often made Fergus happy at the cost of Felix and she knew who now had the first claim. Fergus had forfeited his and, in the past, perhaps Felix had persuaded himself that, in her view, he had none. She had sailed along too carelessly, avoiding rocks on one hand and forgetting the sandbanks on the other, yet, if she had gone more timorously, would the results have been any better? No, she decided impatiently, life had to be a dangerous affair. The wrong people might and did get hurt, but it was not her business to protect them or to lick their wounds; they must do that for themselves. She wanted no one to lick her own.
“Here’s the postman,” Sandra said. “Perhaps there will be a letter. No, there’s only one for Felix, for Mr. Felix Fraser. I don’t think that’s the right way to address a full-blown lawyer. And what a grand envelope! And purple ink! That makes it worse. And squiggly writing and Please Forward with a squiggly line underneath.”
She handed the letter to her mother who tried not to see the postmark. She could not help seeing, with disdain, the unnecessary precaution of a large blob of mauve sealing-wax on the back of the envelope.
“Redirect it, Sandra,” she said, “and post it at once.”
“I feel,” Sandra said, as she carefully copied the address on Rosamund’s desk, “as if there can’t really be places with awful names like this. There’s plenty of time before the post goes and here are Mrs. Blackett and Rhoda coming across the road.”
“But Agnes is coming down the stairs.”
“Oh!” Sandra laughed. “You think I’d better get rid of it? Yes. All right. I’ll let them in and then I’ll post it. I expect, you know, it’s from a client,” she said.
“Perhaps it is,” Rosamund replied. It was from someone who did not know his address and that both puzzled and pleased her. Purposely, she had not redirected it herself. Felix would be less vexed at seeing Sandra’s writing on the envelope, but she felt sure it would be an inappropriate message from a world he had forgotten for a time and the lavender-scented envelope would be painfully irrelevant in a climbers’ hut, amid nailed boots and coils of rope and festoons of shabby clothing, while outside the sun brought different odours from the warm earth or a fierce rain pelted them back again.
“Yes, I’ve had a letter from both the boys,” Miss Spanner was telling Mrs. Blackett, “and James has done some rather funny sketches. They might amuse you. I’ll go and fetch them. Oh no, here they are, in my pocket.”
She knew they were there. She had taken care to have them handy ever since they had arrived. This was her first chance of showing them to anyone outside the family and Rosamund found it pathetic to guess how often Agnes had read them to herself. It was quite sad, her pleasure in them, and they were good letters, not mere hurried acknowledgments of what they owed her and much longer than any they had written to their mother, a fact which ministered to Miss Spanner’s enjoyment. “But if Chloe or I had written them,” Sandra remarked shrewdly, “she wouldn’t have made half such a fuss.”
They described the life in the hut, the cooking and the washing up in which they were well practised already, the fetching of groceries from a distant shop and of butter and milk and eggs from a neighbouring farm and how, on this errand, some cunning was necessary to avoid a bad-tempered bull. “Felix,” James wrote, “is better on the rocks than I am, but I’m better with the bull.” Early in the morning they bathed in the stream close by, still with a wary eye for the bull, and on fine evenings they bathed again in the shadow of the mountain on which they spent their days.
“Of course I don’t approve of it. I think it’s tempting Providence,” said Miss Spanner, showing the sketches to Mrs. Blackett who, having looked with proper interest at these scrawled indications of steep rocks with figures that might have been flies on them, proceeded to make her inquiries about suitable expeditions and Miss Spanner handed the letters to Rhoda, telling her she could read them if she liked.
“I wonder what breed of cows they have up there,” was what Rhoda said when she had done. “Would they be Highland ones, do you think?”
“I haven’t the faintest idea. I’m terrified of the creatures, but I’ll ask him when I write. Good letters, aren’t they?”
“Yes, and it must be fun there,” Rhoda said.
“And next year, why shouldn’t we go too?” said Sandra, who at home and in the holidays seemed quite a different person from a member of the sixth form at school. “There must be somewhere where we could stay. Would you like it?”
“Like it!” Rhoda cried. “But I’d never be allowed to go there,” she added gloomily.
“And what,” said Miss Spanner in her cheerful way, “is the good of talking about next year? I suppose the mountains will still be there, but I don’t know what else will,” and there fell on the little party one of those silences which it is more tactful to maintain than to break, until Rosamund suggested that they might have some coffee to cheer them up.
But Mrs. Blackett rose to go. She had left Mary alone in the house and must go back; moreover, though this was a private thought, she did not deserve the coffee. At present she did not need cheering up. Now, ashamed but not repentant in the presence of this woman with three sons, she could not share the anxiety Mrs. Fraser concealed so well. She had an anxiety of her own, comparatively tiny, completely personal and shockingly petty, but as persistent as the great one overhanging the world. Her honest desire for peace was inextricably entangled with her desire to keep Mr. Blackett far away.
Chapter XXXVI
Not until some days later did Rosamund remember that she had told Fergus nothing about Chloe’s marriage. It had not occurred to her to tell him. That was the measure of the distance between them and under her grief that this should be so, her sense of waste, the bitterness of wisdom acquired too late, there was her stubborn anger; there was pity for him too; though, as the days moved on, she had not much time to spare for him. On what should have been happy shopping excursions with Chloe, startling newspaper placards confronted them at the street corners; there was the usual noise as cars, in low gear, climbed the Slope but, in spite of it, there seemed to be a hush over everything, out of doors, in the shops, in people’s voices, and Mrs. Blackett, getting less frequent letters with no marked passages in them, wondered that Herbert did not return. Whatever happened, he would be in a strong position, either that of a man courageous to the point of folly, an aspect of himself which would make amends for a mistake in judgment, or of a man whose calculations had been correct. She read his letters rather more attentively. They had met some charming people and this was very nice for Flora. They were mentioned often, but a littl
e vaguely, and Mrs. Blackett knew he was sunning himself in more than a warmer climate. She knew, from her study of him, that he must be turning himself into a carefree holiday maker or a man who should have been an artist and had the attractive melancholy of frustration; into anything, in fact, productive of what he wanted from his companions. Mrs. Blackett smiled, a little surprised and not for the first time, that with this appetite for admiration he had not sought more opportunities for getting it, but she understood that too. It was better to imagine what he could have if he chose than to risk a failure which even he would find hard to explain away. And now he must be very happy. She was sure he would not put up with uncongenial companions for Flora’s sake and it was odd to think that the duration of her own happiness probably depended on these people whom she had never seen.
“Don’t you think,” Rhoda said, “we’d better ask Cousin Piers if we can go there soon?”
“Yes, I do,” Mrs. Blackett said.
They had had several little expeditions and twice Sandra had joined the party. Between her and Rhoda, frankly on Sandra’s part and cautiously on Rhoda’s, there was a growing friendship.
“And didn’t I tell you,” said Miss Spanner, “that you ought to make a friend of her?”
“Yes, and perhaps that’s why I didn’t do it,” Sandra said sweetly. “Besides, you can’t make friends with people. They just happen.”
“Thank you for the information,” Miss Spanner said tartly. She was a little jealous. It was not likely that Rhoda would seek her out when there was a friendly contemporary in the house. She was wrong there, however. Rhoda was faithful and for her Miss Spanner remained a fount of wisdom and a fascinating character.
The doors of both houses were now left on the latch; Mrs. Blackett might find Sandra in the garden with Rhoda and Mrs. Fraser often found Rhoda in hers and working busily there, for though the garden was tidy it had never been anyone’s special care and, delighted to have permission to do what she liked with it, Rhoda was only drawn from it by the chance of learning to ride Sandra’s bicycle. Round and round the Square she wobbled, becoming a little steadier each time and trying not to smile too broadly at a pleasure hitherto denied her.