by E. H. Young
“We’re locked out too,” Flora said, approaching laughingly.
“We shan’t be locked out for long,” said James and, stepping back, both he and Felix traced the route to the balcony as their father had done long ago, but he had traced it with the eyes of love; these two saw it with eyes which hereafter would never look at a rock or a quarry without planning how to reach the top of it; even a distant window ledge would inspire them to speculation. They were in possession of a new craft and, resigning this chance of practising it, Felix said regretfully, “The area door’s sure to be unlocked.”
It was not locked and they disappeared, but Flora had hardly time to feel aggrieved at being left thus unceremoniously on the pavement before Felix, and she was glad it was Felix, returned to ask whether he could do anything to help her.
“At least you can come and sit in our house,” he said, “and we’re going to have some tea.”
“I’m dying for tea,” Flora said, her head dropped pathetically sideways. “We’ve just come home. From France,” she added.
Ignoring this interesting remark, Felix glanced across the road where Mr. Blackett’s head and shoulders had an extraordinary effect of being detached from the rest of his body. What could be seen of him might have been a life-size, painted bust, his beard all the blacker for the red spots on his cheeks and, in this colour and lack of animation, Flora suddenly recognized a likeness to one of those plaster saints she had seen in the churches in France. It seemed impossible that it could speak, but Felix optimistically approached it with an offer of hospitality. Flora heard and admired his pleasant, courteous tones and waited, without much anxiety, for her father’s reply. He had to choose between being pinned in that area for an indefinite time and accepting a favour from a member of a family he had always disparaged, between an absurd and an inconsistent situation. She was almost sorry for him, though she knew he was able to explain any action to what ought to be other people’s satisfaction. She had learnt a good deal about him, in these past weeks and, except that he held the purse strings, she knew he was not really much more formidable than one of the plaster saints. But it immediately appeared that he was a more genial man in France than he was in Upper Radstowe and he found a way out of his difficulty by accepting hospitality for the suitcases and taking Flora out to tea.
“I wish we hadn’t come back,” Flora said viciously.
“Not much of a welcome, certainly,” Mr. Blackett agreed.
But Flora could not have asked for a better one. It had been spoilt by her father who had been so pleasant with strangers and could hardly be civil to his neighbours, who had adopted the manner of a person without prejudices, delighted to let his daughter enjoy the company of a charming woman’s son while he enjoyed the company of the charming woman, but treating the Frasers as though they had offended him unforgivably. And they were much more attractive than the charming woman’s son, who had been at no pains to hide his preference for being alone with his sketch book. He had been duller than James who had at least mitigated the boredom of his farming talk with an occasional attention until, so she had taught herself to explain things, she had decided that these little oases occurred too rarely in the desert to make the journey bearable. She had always admired Felix more, she told herself, and she glanced at her father with annoyance as she walked beside him and thought his very face had changed. It was as tightly shut as his own front door.
“I don’t think this climate suits you,” she said. “You don’t look nearly as happy as you did in France.”
“It was of the greatest importance to seem cheerful there,” he said.
“Were you pretending all the time?” she asked with admiring surprise, and without waiting for an answer she stopped to buy a newspaper outside the teashop and it struck her as curious and absurd that in his company, a few weeks ago, she would never have acted with this mild independence, nor would she have heard with indifference his scornful certainty that she was unlikely to read the truth.
“But if we went back at six o’clock,” she said, “I expect the Frasers would let us listen to the news.”
“I have no desire to hear it and still less to hear it in their house,” Mr. Blackett said.
“Oh well,” said Flora, “I suppose it doesn’t matter so very much to you. Not like last time when you might have had to fight. You were lucky, weren’t you?”
“I don’t know whether it’s lucky to do one’s duty,” Mr. Blackett said severely.
“Lucky if the duty happens to be nice though,” she said, speaking in all innocence for, in his place she would have acted in the same way, “And horrible,” she said, “to get all messed up like Cousin Piers.”
“You need not waste any pity on him,” said Mr. Blackett, pushing aside his plate and practising scales on the table cloth.
“I don’t,” said Flora, smiling sweetly at him. She had made him even crosser than he was before and it served him right.
Chapter XXXVIII
“Drive slowly,” Mrs. Blackett said.
She was alone for a moment beside the car which had crunched up Piers Lindsay’s rough bit of road to take the party home and, as she spoke, her lips trembled and she had to shut her eyes to keep back her tears as she realized the futility of that command. Throughout the afternoon, since their arrival at the cottage, she had been in this emotional state, after nearly twenty years of rigid self-control. Rosamund was not the only person who could read Lindsay’s face and though what Mrs. Blackett saw was a new page to her and it was turned immediately, it was quite legible for an instant to a woman who might have received that message, or something like it, long ago and knew that, soon now, she would read in Herbert’s face, his bland certainty of his right to her person and his assumption that where his mind went hers would be sure to follow. And when she looked back at that afternoon which was to have been a last snatched happiness under the double threat of war and a returning husband, she could not remember whether, actually, the sun had shone or clouds had lowered: she supposed she had behaved like a reasonable being but she had not felt like one. She had not been roused to jealousy of Mrs. Fraser for evoking that swift look; it was too late to want it for herself; she knew enough to doubt whether it meant happiness for anyone. What it had done for her was to light into emotion the dead fuse of unhappiness which had twisted itself round all her thoughts and many of her actions and, with that coil now hot inside her, the rest of the world seemed dark and the people round her unreal. She was like a person who had received and must not acknowledge a shock which had made her slightly light-headed, and now, standing beside the car which was to carry her into the endless future, she said, “Drive slowly,” and could have wept at the necessity for such an order and the folly of it.
The driver did not reply to that remark. He said gloomily, “The King’s back in London. Yes. And I’ve got sons.”
She looked at him then, and instead of a sort of Charon, ferrying her from one world to another, she saw an elderly man with more to lose than she had, whose possible sufferings for and through his children made her own private trouble insignificant, no worse than being forced to eat distasteful food and having to discipline herself to stomach it.
“Yes, three sons,” he said.
“I have no sons,” she confessed humbly, but he was not interested in her lack of them.
“I reckon we’re going to reap what we’ve sowed,” he said, “and a nasty crop it’ll be, war or no war.” Suddenly he seemed to recollect his duties. “Yes, I’ll drive slowly, Mum,” he said.
“No, no,” she said. “It doesn’t matter, but don’t get too far ahead of the bicycles.”
Thus it happened that Mr. Blackett, who had recovered the suitcases and resumed his seat, popped up at the sound of an approaching car and saw his second daughter, her skirt well above her knees, pedalling furiously behind it and nearly beating it at the post with a littl
e shout of triumph. Then she saw him, saw Flora sitting on the doorstep and, tumbling from her bicycle, she stared at him in frank dismay and he would have remained accusingly immobile if Mary, first out of the car, had not saved the situation from Mrs. Fraser’s mocking glance and Miss Spanner’s sharp one, by throwing her arms round his neck, instinctively playing the part of her father’s pet.
“Oh Herbert, have you been waiting long? Couldn’t you get in? How unfortunate!” Mrs. Blackett said calmly, and turned from him to pay the driver.
“That will do, that will do,” Mr. Blackett said indulgently loosening Mary’s grasp but glad his face had been momentarily hidden by this onslaught. He managed to remove his hat, to smile awkwardly at his wife’s unsuitable companions and to reply to Mrs. Fraser’s inquiries about the Channel crossing, before she was diverted by the appearance of her sons and hastened towards them.
“I’d give a good deal,” said Miss Spanner a little later, “to be inside that house for the rest of the evening. But still,” she was thankful for small mercies, “I call it a very good finish to the afternoon. And a dull time I should have had of it if it hadn’t been for George. I had a good talk with him while you were looking at the cows.”
“You mean you asked him a lot of questions.”
“No,” Miss Spanner said with candour. “I saw at once he was the kind of man who would know how to dodge them, but with more Georges in the country we shouldn’t be in this mess now. As if,” she said, giving her nose a specially violent knock, “this Noah’s ark business is going to get us out of it. It’s childish. Poor old Noah, had to get his information somehow, I suppose, but we know well enough the flood’s rising all the time and it’s ridiculous, it’s shameful, to pretend we’re going to do any good by flapping about in the air and politely asking those villains to turn the taps off. And if that man comes back with the dove’s message we’ll know he has been hoaxed, we’ll know it’s an artificial olive leaf in his beak. I shall, anyhow. So will George, so will you, so will everybody who hasn’t shut their eyes and stuffed up their ears and been full of brotherly love and stupidity for the Lord knows how long. I can’t understand it!” Miss Spanner exclaimed. “All this trust in the false and tenderness for the ruthless. Why? We’ll believe any lies those crafty devils tell and laugh at the people who know the truth—or say it’s they who are wicked. Upon my word, it’s just as though we’ve been drugged. And why don’t you say something?” she asked sharply.
“You’re saying it for me,” Rosamund replied. “You know that, and saying it very well.”
“Very well!” Miss Spanner echoed derisively. “I haven’t the proper language at my command.”
“And you’d better save up what you’ve got. You’ll need it. I’m frightened, Agnes. Of being ashamed,” she added.
“You needn’t explain. And I suppose you didn’t get a chance of talking to Mr. Lindsay?” Miss Spanner asked artfully, for there was no knowing what had happened while she was occupied with the satisfactory George.
“That wasn’t necessary either,” Rosamund replied.
“Oh, you know what he thinks, do you?”
“Yes, I know what he thinks,” Rosamund said, and in her voice there was a quietly possessive note she did not trouble to control, the one she had been repressing all that afternoon which for her, as for Mrs. Blackett, had been a strange one and not quite real, overhung by a great anxiety and yet fretted by little jealousies, little desires, of which she had not thought herself capable, to assert her claims. After that first look Lindsay did not know he gave her—a momentary flash of contentment—she received, quite rightly, no more attention than any other of his guests. She would have been disappointed if he had behaved less than perfectly and it was the very perfection of his behaviour which had made her childishly eager to acknowledge him as her own.
“And I suppose,” said Miss Spanner, “you flatter yourself you know what the boys think too.”
“Pretty well.”
“And Fergus?”
“Oh yes, I know all about him.”
“Remarkable insight into the masculine mind,” Miss Spanner said tartly, “but I’m afraid we’ll have to wait till nine o’clock to get any more news of Noah.”
“Yes, I can’t help you there,” Rosamund said, “except to be sure there are plenty of good intentions, concrete blocks of them.”
Before nine o’clock, Paul, sunburnt and excited, had arrived unexpectedly. The young schoolmaster had considered it his duty to be nearer home and Paul, loudly applauding his brothers’ return, wanted to know what they meant to do.
“Shut you up,” Felix said, and left the house with a bang of the front door. A few yards away from it, he met Chloe without her lover. Each said “Hullo,” to the other, hesitated for half a minute, silently, with lifted eyebrows and raised shoulders, expressed all that was necessary and passed on and Flora, at her bedroom window, pausing in her unpacking and envying Chloe an opportunity that meant nothing to her, thought it unnatural that this brother and sister should not linger for a few words after a separation. Chloe and Felix, however, like all the other members of their family, could afford this apparent indifference. It came a little hard on Sandra but she had adapted herself to the independence and reserve and unspoken loyalty of her elders and though she was surprised to see Chloe arrive alone, she knew better than to ask a question.
“All the boys have come home,” she said.
“Yes, I saw Felix just now,” Chloe replied calmly and went upstairs.
Wondering at herself, she stopped outside Miss Spanner’s door. Queer sounds came from within but her knock was heard and she entered to find Miss Spanner on the floor beside her wireless set.
“I never took the Tower of Babel seriously before,” she said, “but it’s here, right enough. They’re jabbering in every language in Europe. Why couldn’t they have decided to speak English and have done with it?”
Chloe’s light, pretty laughter induced Miss Spanner to shut off these alien, uglier sounds. “What have you done with your young man?” she inquired.
“I’m not sure,” Chloe said. “Miss Spanner, if you were a girl—”
“Now it’s no good starting like that,” Miss Spanner warned her. “I never was a girl—not what you’d call one. I was born a plain spinster, somewhere about thirty years of age.”
“And never in love?” Chloe ventured to say.
“I was on the brink once, but cowardice saved me. Not mine. His. And I’ve lived to thank God for it. I was unhappy at the time but I’ve seen his children and as his wife’s a much better looking woman than I am, goodness knows what he and I would have produced. The queer thing about life, one of the queer things, is the way good and bad change places.”
“Is it?” Chloe asked. “Then what can we do about it?”
“Nothing,” said Miss Spanner. “Take your chance. Run your risks. And whether you’ve been wise or foolish you’ll find out later.”
“Too late,” Chloe said.
“That can’t be helped. And another queer thing,” said Miss Spanner who shared Chloe’s surprise and pleasure in this sudden intimacy, “is that though life’s a tricky business, it’s a mistake to be too pernickety with it. Use a broad brush and slap on the colours now and then.”
“Yes,” said Chloe, “I think you are quite right. So why don’t you?”
“Me?” said Miss Spanner. “I’m only a spectator.”
“But other people see you,” Chloe said, looking thoughtfully at this figure on the floor in a crumpled, dingy, brown dress who, but for her face which was unusually animated, was rather like a collapsed and neglected scarecrow. In good, unusual clothes, her hair arranged with calculated severity and her lips brightly coloured, she would have had a distinction of her own and Chloe longed to set to work on her.
“And perhaps big earrings,” she said aloud.
“S
o that’s why you’re staring at me! That’s what you’re thinking about!” Miss Spanner exclaimed. “You’re just like your mother. Here’s the world going to rack and ruin and you’re bothering about clothes!”
“Second nature,” Chloe said. “I can’t help it.”
“And I thought you were taking an intelligent interest in my remarks.”
“I was,” Chloe said. “I came on purpose to get them.”
“Did you indeed?” said Miss Spanner, trying not to sound mollified and flattered. “What’s the matter?”
“We’ve had a quarrel. At least I have. My young man doesn’t quarrel. He just listens patiently. So stupid! If he had any sense he’d get angry too. I’m not sure that I’m going to enjoy living with a man like that.”
“Oh, if it’s enjoyment you’re after!” Miss Spanner said.
“What else? And there are lots of different kinds. Being unhappy together might be a sort of pleasure.”
“So you’re prepared for that?”
“Of course.”
“Then what’s the trouble?”
“He thinks we’d better be unhappy without each other, because of the situation, if you please!” Chloe said in delicately mocking tones. “Because we don’t know what’s going to happen. Who ever does? Who cares? He’s so damned cautious and conscientious and he shouldn’t be.”