A Fugue in Time

by Rumer Godden

  The Dane family know nothing about Midsummer’s Day but they are aware, from the family next door, of the Jewish feasts; in return for the branches, at the Passover a present of unleavened bread is sent in. Rolls when he first saw Ry-Vita was irresistibly reminded of that bread. Then there is August Bank Holiday: once Pelham takes Roly to see Greenwich Fair to the annoyance of Selina. A few days later, every year, comes the beginning of the summer holiday. Other people go away in August but the Eye takes September for better fishing. Every year it is the same, to Locheven in Argyll; the furnished house, St Mynns, that the Eye takes every year. There are trunks and valises in the hall; there are baskets: lunch and tea baskets, travelling baskets, Nurse’s Japan basket, the Eye’s fishing basket; there are his rods and landing net; there are camp stools and strapped umbrellas and plaid rugs. The carriage is at the door for the Eye, and Griselda with, perhaps, Selina and one of the boys; the cabs stand behind it and Athay is sent ahead to take up the bookings, and to arrange the compartments, three, reserved by the Eye to Stirling. Some families, as Lena says longingly, have their own trains.

  Then with the autumn come bonfires –

  Remember, remember,

  The Fifth of November.

  ‘Street-boy games,’ Selina tells Roly scornfully, but Roly and old Athay let off fireworks in the garden. On this day, on the whole five days from the first of the month, a license to pester is given to all boys; guys are dragged in soap on wheels: ‘Penny for the Guy. Penny for the Guy’ – and there is the sound of bangs and sizzlings from the fireworks, rockets and crackers and Catherine wheels let off in back gardens, and a crude exciting smell of gunpowder.

  On every anniversary of their wedding day, the Eye gives Griselda violets and a piece of jewellery. She kisses him thoughtfully.

  ‘What are you thinking of Griselda?’

  ‘Dear, did you remember to tell Athay about the wine?’

  There is always a dinner in the evening but the Eye knows it is not that of which she is thinking.

  ‘You like the earrings Griselda?’

  ‘Yes dear, very very much.’

  The Eye sighs.

  There have been birthdays of course all through the year. On Selina’s, which comes in December, the Danes give their annual children’s party. From half-past three, carriages and cabs drive up and children in coats and shawls are set down with their governesses and nurses, carrying their party slippers in bags. The coats and shawls are left in Griselda’s room; the dining-room has added little tables to its large one, and there are jellies in glasses and cream puffs and mince pies and Roly’s favourite pink meringues with raspberry jam. The birthday cake gives out a smell of hot wax from the candles and damp icing. The drawing-room is cleared for dancing and games and there is a conjuror on the landing. ‘Is there a rabbit in this hat? There is. I put it there myself. No deception. Now – Abracadabracadabra. No? No! Odd! It is a Union Jack.’

  Then comes Christmas. It begins by Mrs Proutie’s making the puddings and by the puddings’ being stirred. During the weeks after that the Eye, and later Pelham, brings back from the office wooden drums of fruit, raisins and dried figs, and Carlsbad Plums in long boxes, and once some Chinese dried lichees; Chinese too are the jars of ginger. They may bring a case or two of wine and tea, and a special blend of coffee; these are mostly mysterious business presents. Then comes the holly and the mistletoe, and wreaths are made and mantelpieces decorated; a piece of mistletoe is hung in the kitchen passage and there are scufflings and squeaks when anyone comes to the back door.

  From the grocer’s come oranges in silver paper, and chestnuts and other nuts and all-spice, and from the poulterer’s the turkey arrives and is exhibited, naked and enormous, a few black spines of feathers sticking out from it, its neck hanging down and a bluish tinge showing in its flesh colour where the skin is stretched over its bones. ‘I won’t eat it,’ says Roly but he forgets when the Christmas tree is bought and an old German lady in the Square, Gräfin von Schey, sends, as she sends every year, Leb-kuchen, honey cakes, baked in old moulds in the shapes of scenes from the life of the Holy Family; she also sends fat china angels to hang on the tree.

  The toys are very largely German too; bricks in flaky wooden boxes: pillars and squares and oblongs and half-circles, and there are always magenta half-corners and emerald-green half-cubes; there are wax dolls; trumpets with red tassels; a drum with white lacings; diabolo; a shuttlecock and bat. Cards come with every post; some have real frosting and robins; others are a delicate egg-shell blue with hawthorn and dog-roses in hand painting. There are carol singers, and the bells ringing; and stockings; and morning service; and a quiet private afternoon; and the tree lit in the evening before a Christmas dinner.

  On Boxing Day the servants, the tradesmen, the postman, the policeman, the dustman and the crossing sweeper get their Christmas boxes. The Eye brings home a roll of new half-crowns for this.

  The Wednesday after Christmas is kept for the pantomime from the time Pelham is five years old. Soon the Eye finds it necessary to take a box, and the box is increasingly filled and then gradually emptied. It dwindles to the Eye, Selina and Roly; and then once to the Eye and Lark. He never takes her again and she lives on the memory until, ten years afterwards, Pelham takes her. ‘Would you like to come Lark? We always used to go,’ asks Pelham wistfully. ‘It is Cinderella.’ ‘Cinderella!’ says Lark. ‘I should adore it.’ ‘Will you come Selina?’ ‘No thank you,’ says Selina, ‘I outgrew pantomime before I was sixteen.’

  And then, very loudly, tumultuously, at midnight, the bells ring in another New Year’s Day and another year begins.

  There are other occasions in the house, not seasonal – unforeseen; and they are capable of disrupting the house and altering, if only temporarily, its appearance and its tone. There is the bustle and stir of a birth – the suspense of it, and sometimes that is prolonged. The Eye waits downstairs but often comes up to the landing; Dr Flower’s carriage with its greys waits in the Place; Mrs Proutie who is sympathetic becomes upset and clashes the pots and pans. It may be daylight, or night when the carriage lamps are lit; once it was dawn and the sleepy coachman had just extinguished the lamps, when, from the door of the convent, two nuns slipped out on their way to the food markets where they begged for their orphans; they saw the Doctor’s carriage and the lighted windows at Number 99 and looked at each other and nodded. ‘That will be Mrs Dane.’ And they each, under their breath, said a prayer for Griselda and on that moment Elizabeth is born.

  As there is birth, so there is death. In their turn, Freddie, Elizabeth, Griselda, the Eye and Juno die in the house. The light is diluted with the dimness of drawn blinds and the air smells differently; sallow little avid-eyed women come from the dressmaker’s to measure the mourning, and sallow artificially solemn young men come from the undertaker’s to measure the body: the length of the Eye, the little Elizabeth, for the coffin. Wreaths and crosses and flowers are delivered with a subdued knock at the front door, and another young man calls with samples of black-edged note-paper. Death so soon becomes cluttered with life; but in the house, each time, there is true grief, as unalloyed with the years as it is in the first moment of its experience. Griselda rages over Elizabeth with fits of dreadful weeping; the Eye shuts himself into the study and will not open it; Rollo, when the Eye dies, is filled with sorrow and remorse because he remembers the barrier between them and thinks that he had made it; Selina, who has experienced these deaths, finds out that she was only on the fringe of understanding when Juno dies: Juno the pug dog, aged seventeen, adipose, with a pitiful film over her eyes, but with the plush of her coat as glossy and her wallflower markings as brilliant as when Selina first saw her. Juno dies peacefully, comfortably, with a long wheeze and a sigh that, in the quiet room, is curiously like a sudden whirring of wings, as if Juno truthfully had a soul and the soul is taking flight. After she is dead Selina cannot bear the house; she shuts it up and goes to Scarborough and soon after dies herself.


  There are other occasions: some large, some small, some serious, some light. The day when the Eye wins seven thousand pounds in a sweepstake; the day when he loses seven thousand pounds in the Glasgow Bank smash; the day Lark comes; the day the boiler explodes in the kitchen maid’s face and nearly kills her; Mafeking Day. There are christenings and confirmations; white cakes, white veils; silver mugs, and silver rattles; gold crosses on gold chains and new prayer-books. There is no wedding day; among all the occasions found in the house, there is no wedding day.

  On one occasion Selina gives a Christmas party.

  Before dinner she brings her guests up on the landing and there by the window is a little Christmas tree decorated, lit with candles, hung with tinsel and witch balls and gifts. Selina has brought these decorations down from the attic; there is the glass bugle that Roly loved; the little glass bells, coloured ice-blue and magenta and holly-red; there is even one of the Gräfin’s angels.

  ‘Hullo! Hullo! Hul-lo!’ says Mr Baldrick.

  ‘Oh!’ says Miss Toft softly and she clasps her hands and her pince-nez glitters. ‘Oh! Let me see too! Oh, we are having a lovely party!’

  ‘A happy thought,’ says Father Douglas, ‘so like you dear Miss Dane’ – and he demands loudly: ‘Now isn’t this a happy thought?’

  Selina has suddenly a feeling of sharp regret. I was sentimental, she cries silently. Oh I wish I hadn’t been. She watches Mr Baldrick tinkle a little magenta bell.

  ‘Hullo! Oh, I say! Ha ha!’ says Mr Baldrick.

  Lady Mott is examining the tree through her lorgnettes, horn-rimmed lorgnettes on a wide black ribbon; they are very pronounced but not more noticeable than Lady Mott herself. The lorgnettes examine the tree. ‘Sweet,’ says Lady Mott acidly.

  The Professor has wiped his cheeks with his handkerchief quite openly. ‘Not since I left Chermany—’ says the Professor.

  ‘I am so excited,’ says Miss Toft. ‘Which do you suppose is for me?’

  Selina begins to cut down the parcels with a pair of scissors. ‘A little gift for each of you before we go down to have our drinks,’ she says, forcing the words to be gay.

  ‘Cocktails?’ asks Miss Toft. ‘In those sweet little glasses with the red and black cocks? Oh what a lovely party we are having!’

  ‘Ha!’ says Mr Baldrick. ‘Oh I say, you are spoiling us you know.’

  ‘I never touch them,’ says Lady Mott. ‘My sciatica—’

  ‘Yes? No?’ says the Professor. ‘Yes. Now I haf discofered that nuts and orange peel—’

  Selina’s hands are very shaky to-night she notices, and if she lifts her arm to cut the higher parcels off the tree she has, and knows she will have, like Mrs Sampson, a twinge of pain. Proutie knows that too, forestalls her, and cuts them down for her. Selina feels a surprising response of warmth and gratitude. Dear familiar Proutie, is Selina’s thought, and she realizes that she is feeling desolate and more alone amongst her guests than if she were there solitary. I wish I were solitary with the tree. The tree is shining there, its boughs held out holding the bells, the tinsel and the balls and the tiers of lighted candles. It is so pretty. I made it look so pretty, says Selina and yet there is something curiously flat about this bestowing of presents from the tree on these grown-up guests, and the more enthusiastically they respond the more flat it becomes. Selina prefers Lady Mott and the Professor to Miss Toft.

  Father Douglas offers Lady Mott a cracker.

  ‘What is it?’ asks Lady Mott through her lorgnettes.

  ‘A cracker.’

  ‘No thank you.’

  Miss Toft and Mr Baldrick are pulling another. ‘It is mine. I have it,’ cries Miss Toft.

  ‘No! No! I say! That is damned unfair. What? Ha! Ha!’

  ‘Never mind,’ says Miss Toft. ‘I shall crown you.’ And she puts a tall red crown on Mr Baldrick’s head.

  ‘Look here. Someone else must too. It isn’t fair. You must all wear caps,’ says Mr Baldrick. ‘You must all do it you know. Mustn’t they?’

  The Professor puts a lemon-yellow peaked cap on his dignified head; Father Douglas has a pale pink one; Miss Toft a blue sunbonnet; even Lady Mott, after scrutinizing it, puts on a little white one shaped like a jam tart.

  Selina hands the presents round. Miss Toft kisses her and the kiss is dry and very quick. ‘A nightdress case! How original!’ cries Miss Toft. Lady Mott has a set of bridge cards.

  ‘Ha! Now I can show you a trick. One. Two. Three. Hey presto!’ But the trick fails.

  ‘They are my cards,’ says Lady Mott.

  ‘One. Two. Three. Hey presto!’

  ‘Oh! How clever! Clever! Oh what a lovely lovely party.’

  Selina by the tree is watching her guests. Father Douglas gives a neigh of laughter. ‘… my cards!’ says Lady Mott. Mr Baldrick’s cap has slipped to one side showing the bald red spot on his head; Miss Toft’s face is turned up; under the blue bonnet it is withered into a little hard nut. ‘… absorbs the spittle and acts upon the lining of the stomach,’ the Professor is saying gravely under his yellow hat. Selina bends down and picks up her little dog Juno.

  Juno attracts attention.

  ‘Oh look!’ cries Miss Toft. ‘Oh look Juno. Here is a bowl with a bone in it for you.’ It is a bowl tied with a red ribbon. It seemed to Selina when she put it there, a simple joke; but now it is not a joke at all and she wants to cry, ‘Don’t touch it. Leave us alone.’ But Miss Toft has it in her hand. ‘You must beg for it, you sweetheart little doggie. You lucky girl.’

  ‘Something for the dog?’ asks Lady Mott.

  ‘Juno doesn’t beg,’ says Selina shortly taking the bowl from Miss Toft and putting it away behind the tree.

  There the Professor is examining the branches with the same thoroughness and gravity he would give to any examination. ‘But – this is not goot. There is nothing for Mees Dane.’

  ‘Nothing for Miss Dane.’

  ‘Nothing? For Miss Dane?’

  ‘Oh I say!’

  ‘Nothing for you? Oh Selina dear!’

  There is an awkward pause. Selina presses Juno closer, closely, to her side. ‘Let us go down and have our drinks,’ she says and they all begin to talk together as they move towards the stairs. Presently there is the usual cheerful noise and no one need listen or pause or think.

  Now like a tide through the house come the children, down from the nursery to the drawing-room. Verity turns the wireless on; he belongs to the International Young Listeners’ Friendship League and he has a very special reason for listening in to-day. He is punctual. As he switches it on: ‘… ’d evening boys and girls,’ says the very voice he is expecting. ‘This is Aunt Mona and Uncle Billy in the Children’s Hour.’

  Griselda, her skirts wide over the carpet as she sits in her chair, is reading to Freddie and Elizabeth. Selina, eight years old now, with her hair held back from her face by a tortoise-shell comb showing her high, intelligent, alert forehead, is leaning over the back of the chair; she is too old to be interested in the story but she stays near Griselda wilfully, partly because she has been asked not to, and partly because she cannot bear to go away. Freddie sits on a stool and Elizabeth is on Griselda’s knee, her bright head resting on Griselda’s shoulder and her eyes fixed on Griselda’s throat where, she has discovered, a little lump works up and down as Griselda speaks.

  In the study the Eye is dutifully reading to Roly; he makes a point, punctiliously, of being in from office in time every night to do this; he is punctilious to Roly because he cannot bear the sight of him and this is not because he does not love him but because it was Roly who robbed him of Griselda. No it wasn’t Roly, says the Eye. It was myself. It isn’t fair to blame Roly. It was my fault, only mine. And he hears his own voice again speaking words that now he will never forget. ‘Nine is my lucky number,’ says the Eye.

  The child Lark is on the landing; she is kneeling by the banisters, looking down into the hall. Presently she will see Slater going to the front door for the evening post, or perh
aps Selina will come in, alone or with friends, but certainly in some rustling handsome dress, with earrings and a little hat with flowers or with feathers and a veil, and a short fur jacket or a long coat trimmed with fur, and her voice, high-pitched and certain, filling all the hall. It fascinates Lark to kneel there and look down into the hall. Pelham comes in and gives his cane, his gloves, his coat, his hat, his paper perhaps, to Slater, and the sound of their voices, so different from Selina’s, makes a muffled growling sound down below. Sometimes, but not often, it is Rollo home from school who comes in; and the light from the gas in the china globes catches his hair and his tread sounds firm on the hall floor, and his voice, quick and warm and clear, and unmistakably boyish, comes up to Lark’s ears. He is as unapproachable as a young god to Lark, and she says over and over all the things he says with that innate lordliness that fills her with admiration and excitement and delight. ‘Dash it all Slater—’