The Weather in the Streets (The Olivia Curtis Novels)

by Rosamond Lehmann

  Rollo took the glass.

  “Just a minute,” he said mildly. “Olivia wants one.”

  “Sorry, sorry, Livia! … Manners.” She shook her head.

  “I don’t want anything, thank you,” said Olivia.

  “Try a drop of this,” said Rollo, firmly, pouring out Irish whisky. “Good for you. Warm you up for your drive. Look, I’ll mix it with a dash of ginger ale and you’ll love it.”

  “Gimme the same,” said Marigold, sitting in a high-backed arm-chair, with her eyes shut.

  “Right.”

  He poured out half a glass of neat ginger ale. “Here.”

  She took it, drank it, waited a moment and suddenly laughed.

  “You old stoat,” she said. “You’re enough to make a cat laugh.”

  “Marigold, I must go now.”

  “Is Rollo going to take you?”

  “Yes, I am.”

  “If it isn’t too much bore.”

  Marigold lay back again, eyes shut, rolling her head to and fro on the chair back.

  “Oh, no, it’s not a bore for Rollo. He’s looking forward to it. And you’ll be perfectly safe with him because he’s dead sober—and never does anything he oughtn’t. He’s so tactful too—quite extraordinarily tactful and temp—temp—what’s the word?”

  “Temperamental,” said Rollo. “Tempestuous.”

  “No. Not that. That’s petticoats.”

  She opened her eyes, sat up and smiled sweetly at all their watching faces.

  “Well, I don’t give a hoot,” she said, “you’re a lot of old cows. You ought to wear caps and mittens. I don’t want a drink anyway. And when I do I’ll have one.”

  She sat there smiling to herself, curving and lifting her spine, her long full neck, serpentine, secretive—like a smooth-fleshed strong serpentine white and green plant—indescribably shrouded and somnolent-looking—like an arum lily …

  “Must you really go, darlin’?” She got up, stumbled a little and giggled. “I wish you wouldn’t go.”

  “I’ll just look in on Daddy,” said Rollo, “and bring the car round. While you do the good-byes.”

  “Don’t hurry the girl,” said Marigold. She put an arm round Olivia. They were the same height, dark and blonde. “We’ll go entwined,” she said, “like two dearest female friends—as we are, as we are. Livia, you might keep your arm round me unob—unobstentatiously. I don’t want to fall down at Ma’s feet. Do I reek? Give me a cigarette. There now.” She went off into helpless laughter. “Don’t look so helpful and understanding. I’m as sober as an owl. Good-bye, George! The party honestly is over, darlin’, and you might as well stagger off to bed.”

  “Right you are,” said George equably. “Good-night. Just help myself to a night-cap.”

  “My aim is to lose George,” murmured Marigold, glancing backward as they left the hall.

  He looked lonely all by himself, receding at the other end of the enormous room, his simple round oil-sleeked head gleaming, his stiff shirt stark and blank, his neat shoulders rigid above the table, patiently squirting a siphon—expecting nothing after all these years of being in love with Marigold; waiting for nothing but his drink.

  In the drawing-room, Sir Ronald was playing a gentle Scarlatti tinkle upon the piano. Madame de Varenne had gone and so had Mary. The sisters were still at the backgammon board, but play was over. They were piling and putting away counters, and talking in low sisterly gossiping tones.

  “Olivia’s come to say good-bye,” said Marigold.

  “Oh! … Olivia dear …” Lady Spencer got up and took Olivia’s hand in both her own. “My dear, this has been such a very great pleasure. Now we’ve found you we’re not going to lose sight of you again so easily—are we, Marigold? Next time Marigold’s with us we must try and arrange … we must telephone …” She looked a little vague. “I expect you’ll be coming down quite often, won’t you, dear—to see your father?”

  “Yes, I shall try.”

  “That’s good. Your mother must be so glad to have you within reach. I know what a difference it can make … Now I wonder if the car … Marigold, does Benson know, dear?”

  Marigold, leaning on the piano, absorbedly watching her uncle’s hands, was deaf, and Olivia said, with some loss of confidence:

  “I think—Rollo said very kindly—he’d take me home.”

  “Ah! … Rollo’s taking you. … That s all right then.”

  But did it quite do? … Not quite. Barely perceptible, the contraction of tone, the addition of emphasis to simple cordiality … Or is it my guilt?

  “I do hope he doesn’t mind. It seems such a bore for him.”

  “Oh, no, I’m sure it’s not. Rollo so enjoys a spin … and then I dare say he thought … Dear old Benson, he’s getting old. He’s been with us thirty years … it’s hard to realize … Rollo’s so considerate.”

  So considerate … All the same if there weren’t something not quite … not quite about me—something that’s such a pity and explains why I’m not living with my husband—I’d have shaken hands all round in grateful affection and been removed according to formula by the chauffeur.

  “How I wish,” said Lady Spencer, “you could have met our dear Nicola.”

  Rollo came in, looking large and powerful with his overcoat on; and she said, laying her firm, strong white hand on his shoulders:

  “I was just saying, dear, if only Nicola could have been with us. I should so have liked her and Olivia to meet.”

  “Yes,” said Rollo, in a filial uncoloured way.

  “She has such horrid headaches,” Lady Spencer sighed. “I want her to see this new Austrian doctor Aunt Blanche has been telling me about.”

  “Oh, really?” said Rollo pleasantly. “I should think she’d love to … Seeing new doctors is Nicky’s pet hobby.”

  “I hear he’s done some wonderful cures. He does all these modern scientific tests, you know. I always feel they must be on the right lines. I think they’d give her confidence. Well, Olivia dear—” She bent forward and bestowed a kiss briskly, closing that unfruitful passage. “My love to your mother—and dear Kate.”

  “Look me up in London some time, do,” said Aunt Blanche. “Be jolly to see you.”

  “Tell Parr not to wait up for me,” said Rollo to his mother. “I’ll let myself in and lock up.”

  Marigold, murmuring “Wait for me in the hall,” darted ahead and vanished.

  Olivia went out with Rollo at her side. Glancing back for a moment at the door (but Lady Spencer was not looking, not sending after her a last smile), she took in the scene once more as in a painting—static: interior with figures. Now I’ve fixed it, to remember. In case this is the last of it for me.

  “Marigold said wait,” said Olivia by the front door.

  “What for?” said Rollo. “This your coat?” He took up her mother’s musquash from the settee where it lay folded. “It goes against the grain to extinguish you,” he said, holding it, staring at her. “I love white. Dark ladies in white dresses.”

  He helped her into the heavy unyielding old coat and wrapped it round her.

  “I wonder how one acquires these tastes,” he said. “They seem to get into one’s system unawares.”

  “I expect you once had a nice dark nurse in a white apron.”

  “I never thought of that … Of course, that explains it.”

  Nicola wore white satin … with her knot of dark polished hair.

  Marigold came running downstairs, wrapped in a long mink coat, the broad full circular collar turned up over her curls in a kind of hood. She called out hurriedly as she ran, to counteract Rollo’s look of unwelcoming surprise:

  “Rollo, will you go out by the south gate and drop me?”

  “Drop you where?”

  “Just a little way on. I’ll tell you.”
r />   Avoiding their eyes she came on and opened the front door.

  “What d’you want to do? Go for a walk or something?” He was annoyed.

  “No. I want to see somebody.”

  “Who?”

  She turned on him irritably. “Oh, can’t you do what I ask without— It isn’t much to ask.” She went down the steps, got into the back of the car, and said from within, reluctantly but more quietly, “As a matter of fact I want to see Timmy. Now come on, do.”

  “Get in, Olivia.” He settled himself behind the steering-wheel, started the engine running, and said, still crossly: “Who on earth’s Timmy?”

  “Blind?” said Olivia.

  “Yes.” Her voice was grateful. “Olivia remembers. You know he’s ill, I suppose—or didn’t it penetrate?”

  “Oh, Lord, yes. The chap they were talking about at lunch to-day.”

  “Yes.”

  He said more mildly: “But, Marigold, surely you can’t go visiting an invalid at this hour?”

  “Yes, I can!” she cried in a frenzy. “You don’t suppose he sleeps, do you?—with a cough like he’s got …”

  “Is he expecting you?”

  She flung herself back in rigid screaming silence; and in silence they started off.

  The moon was near the full, the night was windless, clouded, grey, with a smell of mist in the air, and decaying leaves.

  Through the park, out by the south lodge, then between hedgerows along a narrow winding road.

  “Stop here,” said Marigold suddenly.

  He slowed down and pulled up.

  “This doesn’t seem to be anywhere.”

  “Yes, there’s a stile, look, and a path through the field into the side of the garden. I don’t want to stop with a flourish at the front door, do I?—and blow the horn?”

  “All right, all right.”

  She got out of the car and stood in the road.

  “What a queer night …”

  She lifted her head, breathed out a great sigh. Above the frame of fur her face floated insubstantial, a livid papery disc, phosphorescent-looking, marked in with black stains for eyes, lips, nostrils …

  “I don’t know yet if I’ll go,” she said. “I don’t quite know what I’ll do. I’ll just see … I might not feel like seeing him after all. You go on.”

  “Do you want to be picked up again?”

  “No, I don’t. I want to walk home.”

  Their voices dropped out flat on to the air, answering each other in the distilled, impersonal, mourning way of human voices at night. Still looking upwards, Marigold called absently:

  “Good-night, Olivia.”

  “Good-night, Marigold.”

  He put the clutch in and slowly, softly drew away from her. She stood by the roadside, not moving, and the corner hid her.

  “What’ll she do?” said Olivia.

  “God knows … There’s the house in there.”

  They saw a light burning in what appeared to be a kind of wooden hut or shelter on the lawn, and farther back the white shape of a small square house, half-concealed by fruit-trees.

  “There’s a light.”

  “I saw him once, I remember him very well. He came to that dance, and I danced with him. What’s the matter with him?”

  “Lungs. Started about a year ago. They’re frightfully badly off. Mother tried to get him to let her send him to Switzerland—or a sanatorium somewhere, but he refused point-blank. He won’t move. She had the hut built for him and he just lies there. Won’t be nursed or let anybody do anything for him. Won’t see his child and keeps his wife away as much as he can.”

  “Doesn’t he want to get better?”

  “Doesn’t sound like it.” He made a movement of discomfort. “He’s pretty bad, I believe. Poor devil. I never saw much of him, but he seemed an awfully nice chap … I don’t suppose he clings madly to life … Though you’re always told the blind are so cheerful.”

  “And consumptives so hopeful.”

  “I didn’t know she knew him as well as that …”

  “I don’t know how well she knows hi …”

  No one would ever know.

  A sudden impulse? … a deliberated plan! … Out of love? … pity? … curiosity? … No one would ever know what had been, what was between them. Emotional images, fragments of dialogue came to mind. “Timmy, it’s me …” “Marigold! I knew you’d come.” “Of course I came.” “I wouldn’t let them move me, in case you did …” “Timmy, darling, I love you, you’re not to die …” That kind of thing? Or was she hurrying away now, panic-stricken, from his death, from the destructive element? … —which is hers too, which she’ll never escape, which they recognised in each other, long ago, dancing and joking …

  “What a witless thing to do, though,” muttered Rollo. “Probably finish him.” He was silent, than added, “I’ll say for my sister, she knows how to make herself felt.”

  “What can it be like to be married to her?”

  “What indeed? Beats me how any one had the nerve to take it on. Plenty of quite sensible people seemed to want to though …”

  “Of course. Everybody would want to. You see, it’s the illusion she gives …”

  “What illusion?”

  “Of being free, I suppose. Escaping, getting free. People see she’s got loose, she’s off … They want to run after her, make a grab to catch her …”

  “You’ve been reading The Green Hat” he said after reflection. “Though I see what you mean … All the same she won’t really come a cropper. She’s a jolly sight too clever. Besides, she likes Sam. They hit it off, more or less. Couple of lunatics …”

  “Are the children nice?”

  “The children are divine,” he said briefly.

  Easy to imagine Rollo as favourite uncle—tossing them up, stuffing their money-boxes, generally indulging them. Surely not Rollo’s choice, or fault, being childless? An obvious begetter … He doesn’t want to talk of Marigold any more. Dwindling now, she still obstructed them; left a vacuum they could not fill. They hung separated, cold and light—hollow people.

  Down into the valley. Far below to the left, a sprinkling of late lights still spoke in the mist, from village windows. On the right, the beech coppice ran down steeply to the road: when Kate and I used to come on our bikes with a picnic tea, and sometimes the Martins came; or Marigold was allowed to meet us, riding over on her pony. We cut our initials with a penknife, each choosing a different tree, and said we’ll come back to look in twenty years … And I climbed, and Kate dug up plants—she never cared for climbing; and we brought our books and ate nut-milk bars and turned somersaults over the railings, and free-wheeled home again down the hill in the evening with primrose and white violet roots in our bicycle baskets, and dead leaves stuck to our backs and stockings; and the sunset going on, different every time, the other side of the valley …

  … All that was important: had made an experience of emotion more complex, penetrating and profound, yes, than getting married …

  Round the corner on the hill known in the family circle as The Bad Turn: perennial object of foreboding and suspicion to Mother, though innocent still of disaster. Down, past the first cottages, round past grandpapa’s houses—those triple-fronted stucco eyesores. In the middle top window a light—the usual light that burned all night—the window of the youngest Miss Robinson. She was in there, hare’s face, soft, narrow, ignoble, peering perhaps from behind the lace curtain with her wild, full, harmless eye, or lying flat on her back, whispering to the ceiling; or pacing up and down her room, laughing, crying by turns. Not dangerous at all: only very trying turns. She wouldn’t do her hair or bother to dress. Go out, even for a second into the back garden, she would not; and write anonymous letters she occasionally did; only the post office Miss Robinson was generally able to intercept them: not o
bscene, but calvinistic, minatory, or in the style of warnings—straight tips from God’s confidential agent: certain damnation pronounced on Winnie Pratt, the stationmaster’s daughter, fornicatress; a message from the Lord to the young milkman; a hint, no more, to the vicar about Miss Sibley, his housekeeper, instrument of Satan … Also they’d had to lock up the piano with its rose-silk fluted bodice, she made such a din on it in the middle of the night, at dawn—waking the neighbours. She’d cried bitterly at that—oh! how she’d cried! They’d thought of doing away altogether with the piano to spare her feelings, only it had always been there like in Dad’s time and his father’s before him: the place would seem funny without it … Then she wasn’t to be trusted with scissors—not that she’d do herself a harm, but seemed as if she had to lay about with them on any bit of stuff—slicing, snipping, shredding—romping through the length and breadth of it. In fact it was with the cutting-out scissors the crisis had exploded five years back: Mrs. Uniack’s new black moracain victimised all of a sudden one morning, just after the second fitting; Miss Robinson’s professional career brought to an abrupt full stop … But she ate well: oh, yes, she enjoyed her food. Some days she felt a king.

  Dark crouched the two old cottages facing the green, housing on the one hand Miss Toomer and Miss Mivart, sleeping light, never quite warm enough in bed, poking their noses up at the sound of a late car (what faces if they could see one coming back at midnight with Rollo); empty on the other of Major and Mrs. Skinner.

  Oh, dear, awful Major Skinner, you’re under the earth, you were never allowed to teach Kate or me to play golf. We never went to tea in your cottage among Mrs. Skinner’s gold and purple cushions … Brazen Winnie, scornful, ruthless girl, finished him off—sapping his means and strength with trips to Tulverton—shops, movies, cafes, movies, shops. Seeing her home late on foggy winter evenings was what got him down at last. The chill settled in his kidneys. “Rubbish: fit as a fiddle,” he’d said the first week. “Cracked up, done for, good run for m’ money, look after the dogs,” he’d said the second; and during the third, Mrs. Skinner unostentatiously buried him, and vanished from Little Compton, leaving dozens of empty whisky bottles in the kitchen.