“You must have seen so much. Your father——”
“No one under sixty will remember him.”
“Oh, come——”
“And he never had any great position, you know. He was not even a Minister.”
“But as chargé d’affaires in the —— incident. Weren’t you there too, acting as his hostess?”
“Yes, but that wouldn’t make a book.”
“You met Lubinsky, Prince Osric and the Duchess of Malfi. And I’m forgetting. It was your father who replied to the Emperor’s telegram. They say he saved us a war. Weren’t you there then?”
“Yes.”
“Then do think it over, dear Miss Carlice. And of course you must describe your lovely home. Make a start to-morrow and send me the first chapter or two.”
I began in bed the same night, with these sentences:
One very lovely afternoon in August, when I was six years old, I noticed a tall trumpet-shaped flower, in colour a velvety crimson streaked with bronze, growing in a border at the foot of our oldest wall. The gardener told me later that its name was salpiglossis. It stood quite still, for there was no breeze at all, and I stood still, too, for five minutes, which is a long time at that age, and watched it and enjoyed it. It gave me a feeling I hadn’t felt before, and made me love the wall that was its background, and the other walls, and the house and garden and the fields beyond. . . .
This might do, I thought. Only there mustn’t be too much of that kind of thing. It’s not really what people will want. They’ll be waiting for Lubinsky, Prince Osric and the Duchess of Malfi—for the important things. But my first conscious sight of a salpiglossis was far more important for me than any of my diplomatic encounters. The more I realised this divergence of values, the more convinced I was that I should never produce publishable memoirs. I began to argue mentally and somewhat cantankerously with my unknown readers.
“What you treasure most,” I imagined them saying, “is not necessarily what we want. You put sensation before action, but why should we care a hoot for your sensations—the sensations of one person?”
“Because,” I replied, “they may be your sensations, too, and enrich your lives.”
“Oh, we haven’t time for that. Give us the big things that affect the lives of millions.”
“You mean the temporary things, that make a good headline. My salpiglossis mood goes far deeper than any Emperor’s telegram. After all, the final object of all action is only to provide a background or means to sensation. . . .”
This seemed so clinching an argument—and still does to me—that here I would rest upon my laurels. My readers became speechless, if alienated. Nothing remained except not to bother with them—perhaps not to write at all.
But, for a time, I toyed with the idea. And the gunroom episode, the memory of which I could not lose, was my beginning.
It was in November, about nine and a half years ago. My nephew Ronnie was eleven years and two months old. His birthday is on the eighth of September. Dora, his stepmother, his sister Joan and I, who was hostess to the party, had gone to see him for half-term at his preparatory school. It was near Leamington and we were staying at an hotel there—an old-fashioned place, furnished as provincial hotels, till just recently perhaps, have always been furnished. Happily, it was almost empty. I remember my bedroom, with the wash-stand and its massive floral toilet-ware in front of the window. In the middle of the lounge there was a palm in a huge china pot. The chairs were fantastic and contorted—caricatures of these which my grandfather in his last phase had bought for home. I mean, for Carlice Abbey. It had already ceased to be my home four years before.
On the Saturday we went to see a football match at Ronnie’s school. He wasn’t in the eleven. None of us have ever excelled at games, except my brother at lawn tennis and his successes didn’t go very far. Ronnie’s school won, amid tremendous cheers. Ronnie cheered too, loudly, with an enthusiasm I was sure he did not feel. Boys’ schools are monstrously like totalitarian states. I felt thankful to have been a Victorian girl; for I believe even girls nowadays are made to cheer in chorus. He was self-conscious with us, and feared probably that Dora would kiss him in public. But I had warned her against that. He may have hoped that one of the older boys would be dazzled by Joan—“I say, Carlice, you’ve got a stunningly pretty sister”—though Joan was never dazzling. He was, I knew, longing for us to go, and we went early, soon after the misty dusk had fallen. Living in London as I did—and do—I relished the crackling of dead leaves in the drive.
The next day, Sunday, Ronnie came to tea with us in our hotel. The headmaster was one of those who resent the visits of parents in term-time and would not allow him to come over for luncheon—a relief to Dora, perhaps, who even then liked a nap in the afternoon. Four years at Carlice had made her lazy and relaxed the tension of her earlier suburban brightness. Joan complained a little that Ronnie didn’t spend the whole day with us. “No, dear,” I explained, “it isn’t because he would miss any lessons, but because Mr. Peters doesn’t like to see home-influences at work in term-time. He thinks it’s bad for a boy’s character to be too much in touch with his relations. It was the same in your father’s time. They were even stricter then.” “Then,” she said, “it was hardly worth coming here.” “I think,” I told her, “Auntie Dora”—(that was what we called Dora to the children)—“enjoys the change from home.” “Then you could have left me at home with Daddy.” “Nonsense, my dear, some day you’ll only be too eager to have these little holidays.” Joan was at school too, a school much nearer home, but it had been closed three weeks before by an epidemic, and she was to stay at home another fortnight before she returned. I had to caution both her and Dora not to mention the epidemic to Mr. Peters, or Ronnie might not have been allowed even to come to us for tea.
He arrived about four o’clock in a four-wheeler, bringing his friend Bunny Andrews, a bright boy more talkative than Ronnie, and, I thought, with better manners. A drizzle was falling, and it had become damply cold outside. Dora, who was a conscientious stepmother, made both the boys take off their shoes and dry them, though they could hardly have got wet. Her solicitude reminded me of a summer’s day, two years before, when we had been staying together at Tunbridge Wells and she saw Ronnie making a boat out of a piece of newspaper he had picked up on the common. “Put that down at once, dear,” she had said. “You don’t know who touched it before you. It may be covered with germs for all you know.” It was the doctor’s daughter speaking. She may have been quite right, but I could not help feeling that such an attitude must make life seem very formidable to a child of eight. There has been a good deal of “You don’t know who touched it before you” in Ronnie’s life since then. It explains, up to a point, what he is now.
So the two boys sat with their stockinged feet near the hearth, while the panting waiter brought in tea. We had the drawing-room to ourselves. A tall woman looked in once, but the children’s voices drove her away. One by one the Venetian blinds were lowered. Dora made up the fire, and a smell of hot buttered teacake filled the big room. A grandfather clock struck half-past four.
“You’ll remind Mrs. Carlice,” Bunny said to Ronnie, “that Mr. Peters said we must be back by six.”
Was he bored already, I wondered? But Ronnie supported him so strongly that I felt that it was probably fear of Mr. Peters and not boredom. “Oh yes, dear, you shall be back,” Dora said. “Now put on your shoes and come to this nice big table.” Ronnie was used to such adjectives, but I think they lowered Dora a little in Bunny’s eyes.
The boys ate largely. One would have been alarmed if they had not. Then, when the remains of the meal had been cleared away, they sprang a surprise on us—some parlour fireworks which they had made themselves. Apparently the school had a firework display on the fifth of November, and one or two of the bigger fireworks had failed to go off properly. A
search next day had disclosed a wealth of “stars” and unexploded powder lying about the games field. One of the bolder spirits had put some of these ingredients in a burnt-out Roman Candle, and let it off, with great success. It was not long before most of the boys had imitated him.
Ronnie and Bunny produced their creations with great pride and caressed them with their fingers.
“It gives me a lovely taste in the mouth,” Ronnie said, “whenever I touch fireworks.” I remembered the taste too and the strange exultation which it engendered. Dora did not, but she hadn’t the strength of mind to ban the display.
“You must promise only to let them off in the hearth and stand well away,” she said, despite all their assurances that there would be no explosion and no danger. Indeed, the fireworks were harmless enough, though they made ugly marks on the dark green tiles of the hearth. When it was too late, Dora noticed them. “Oh dear,” she said, “look what you’ve done. They may make us pay for a new hearth.” “How much would that cost?” Bunny asked. “Far more than all the pocket-money you have in a year,” she replied. “Well, if any harm’s been done, we’ve done it now,” said Bunny. “And there’s only one more. This one should have coloured stars.” I ought, I suppose, to have helped Dora, but I was very conscious in those days of only being the children’s aunt.
The last firework was let off, but the anticlimax was not yet. Both the boys and even Joan had become filled with an excitement which they could no longer contain. They began to chase one another round the room, to jump from the sofa to an armchair, to fight with cushions. Dora watched them with helpless dismay, and I watched Dora, wondering what her own children would have been like if she had been able to have any. We had forgotten the time till the hall-porter came in to tell us that the cab was waiting for Master Carlice.
Then Dora asserted herself. “Please tell him to wait another ten minutes,” she said. “Master Carlice and his friend will not be ready till then.”
“But, Auntie Dora, we must go. We shall be late.”
“You must sit down and get cool first, dear. I can’t let you go while you’re so hot. You would both catch your deaths of cold. Now sit down quietly for a few minutes.”
“But we must go. Mr. Peters said——”
“Tell Mr. Peters I said you were not to go.”
I feared that Ronnie might be going to appeal to me, and looked away from him, at an oil painting of a bearded old man who was carrying a young girl on his shoulder through a flood. In the background stood the deserted cottage, already lapped by the rising waters. Then Joan whispered loudly to me, “They’ll get into a row, Auntie Isabel.” Dora overheard and looked at me nervously, as if fearing that her one firm stand of the afternoon would be broken down. “After all, we pay Mr. Peters,” she murmured. Bunny blushed, while Ronnie gazed resentfully at the hot fire, and the hearth strewn with traces of the firework display. It was a contest of wills, though we all agreed, except Joan, that Dora must win.
When the good-nights were said, I noticed that she gave each of the boys five shillings. Joan stood waving after the cab for a long time, by the swing door in the hall, and Dora and I went back to the drawing-room, to open the windows and tidy the fireplace.
“I think Joan rather liked Bunny,” Dora said. “You do agree, Isabel, don’t you, that I was right to make them stay and cool down? You know what awful colds Ronnie catches. They had him in bed for a fortnight in the school sanatorium this time last year.”
“Yes,” I said, “but we should have thought of it before.”
“Oh, ten minutes can’t matter. Besides, you can walk to the school in half an hour. I did with Claude when we came down in the summer last year. It was Ronnie’s first summer term.”
She knelt by the hearth, like a housemaid, her blonde little head nodding as she tried to polish up the tiles. I wondered how long she would continue to wear black which, oddly enough, didn’t suit her. Her father, Dr. Payne of South Mersley, London very much S.W., had died less than a month before. She had spent several weeks in the summer hovering round his death-bed. A dutiful daughter. But when Claude asked her to marry him, four years before, she had seemed enchanted to leave home. Or had I assumed that she must be?
Once more she said, “I think Joan rather liked Bunny.”
“But not so much as she likes the under-porter,” I said. “You may be sure she’s talking to him now, hoping to see him swing the revolving door.”
She looked up at me with the fear of my disapproval in her face—an expression which made me want to bully her whenever I saw it.
“Do you think I ought to fetch her away?”
“Oh no! She’ll be all right. The porter won’t . . .”
I was going to use what Claude called one of my mannish phrases, when there was a sound of steps coming to the door.
“Here is Joan,” Dora said, continuing to burnish the hearth. But it was the young page-boy. “Trunk call for Mrs. Carlice, please.”
She got up hurriedly, rubbed her hands, smoothed her dress and hair, and looked at herself in the mirror over the fireplace, all very quickly.
“Oh dear, I hope nobody will see me in the lounge. What can it be, Isabel?”
“The ’phone box is behind the reception office in the hall,” the page-boy said shrilly.
“Well, you must show me the way,” she said. Then turning round to me, as she was just going through the door, she added: “I expect it’s you they want, not me.”
The page-boy slammed the door behind her, leaving me alone, while I tried to think of any reason why anyone who knew we were in Leamington should wish to ring us up. Despite the opening of the windows, there was still a smell of fireworks in the room, and as I noticed it, the old exciting taste, which Ronnie had mentioned, came suddenly into my mouth and reminded me of those Novembers when I had to let off fireworks for Claude, though he loved them more than I did. But when it came to letting them off . . . “How the devil will the boy ever learn to use a gun?” my father used to say. But, somehow, he had learnt. . . .
Then Joan came bundling in.
“Auntie Isabel, will you go at once to Auntie Dora? She’s at the telephone-box. She opened the door and said I was to fetch you. I was watching her through the glass. Something’s upset her. What do you think it can be? . . .”
I shook her off at the door and told her to stay in the drawing-room.
I don’t think Dora was crying, but she was white enough to faint.
“Oh, Isabel . . . you speak! It’s about Claude.”
I shut myself in the box and took up the receiver.
“Eames, this is Miss Carlice speaking. What is it?”
“It’s the master. There’s been an accident. He’s been shot. In the gunroom.”
“Been shot? Is he dead?”
“Yes, miss, I’m afraid so. The gun was between his knees.”
“Was it you who found him?”
“Yes, miss. Not a quarter of an hour ago.”
“Have you sent for Dr. Machin?”
“Yes, miss.”
“And the police?”
“Not yet, miss.”
“Then you’d better. We shall come home at once—to-night if we can. I’ll send a message when I know the train. And, Eames . . .”
“Yes, miss?”
“Caution everyone to say nothing, or as little as possible, to Miss Joan when we arrive. You understand? I, or Mrs. Carlice, will tell her what we think she should be told.”
As I opened the door of the telephone-box, Dora fell against me heavily.
3
I have had, sometimes, to tell this story, and when I do, I feel I have made myself out as too heroic or too heartless. And each time afterwards, when I have imagined my listener going away with a disapprovingly murmured “Remarkable woman that!” I
have asked myself whether I really ever did love Claude—despite our girlhood and boyhood spent together, and the three years I kept house for him after his first wife died. I make no secret that those three years were happy—till I saw he was set on marrying again.
He picked Dora up—I have allowed my friends to put it like that sometimes—at the Grangeleigh tennis tournament. Poor Claude! Having been such a duffer at all school games, it was an unexpected joy to find himself up to small tournament tennis form. At thirty-nine too and even over forty. It gave a new zest to those three summers for him. I enjoyed watching, too, and would often drive over with him on those long bright days, and hobnob with people whom otherwise perhaps one wouldn’t have known very well—a cheery set, tending a little to drink, and flitting from town to town along the coast, housed in the attics of friends or on special terms in second-rate hotels. Even I, a non-player, thought it was all great fun, like a cruise or prolonged picnic, something outside the ordinary scheme of one’s life and incapable—as I wrongly thought then—of interfering with it.
Needless to say, we did it all from home. We didn’t bother our friends or stay in those hotels, except once in Eastbourne. But Claude was outclassed there too hopelessly to make the visit worth while. He kept to the smaller gatherings after that—Mickleton, Swan Sands, Ivemoor and Grangeleigh—where, in 1922, Maud McEwen, who was to have been his partner in the doubles, sprained her ankle in the station yard as she arrived, and Dorothea Payne, flushed with a triumph in the mixed doubles at South Mersley and, like Claude, let down by her proposed partner, was given Claude instead and led him to victory.
Birthday Party Page 2