A Day in the Life of a Smiling Woman

by Margaret Drabble

  The Dower House was derelict. Patterned curtains hung tattered and drooping from bare rails, broken-springed chairs sprouted feathers, and feathers drifted under the kitchen door from a vast woodshed full of nesting doves. The wiring dated from between the wars. I had not seen such Bakelite plugs, such furred and twisted flex since my childhood.

  We talked of the difficulties of the landed gentry as we sat around the scarred paint-stained seventeenth-century kitchen table. What should one do? Turn the stately homes into venues for pop concerts, into miniature zoos, into hotels? The Big House at Uppercross was now an expensive retirement home. The National Trust would not accept properties as gifts unless they were heavily endowed. I knew of these problems, but I had never met anyone who faced them in person. I had never felt much sympathy with them. But there was something touching about Bill Elliot, rinsing out a glass and drying it on a tea towel covered with garish pictures advertising Lyme Regis and its dinosaurs.

  I said I had never been to Lyme. We wandered back into the drawing-room with our coffee, and Bill showed us his grandfather’s battered dusty cabinet of treasures. There were little drawers of fossils and minerals, all labelled, and drawers full of pinioned butterflies and moths, and dried leaves from the rare trees in the pleasure gardens. Bill said he preferred the minerals. He had added specimens of his own, some of them collected at Lyme. He loved Lyme. He said I should go there one day.

  At Bill’s suggestion, we took a turn in the gardens. It was hardly dark, but Bill courteously took my arm as we stumbled through the undergrowth. There were nettles waist high, overgrown rhododendrons, Himalayan balsam, wild garlic. It was a wilderness. The mild air was heavy, rank, lush, erotic, sad.

  We went back to the house for a last glass of wine. Bill told us that he was leaving the country. There was, he said, no freedom for him here. Penny, who was not hearing this news for the first time, said nothing. She watched a spider walk along the wall. They had two daughters, both at boarding school in Exeter. There would be no more Kellynch Elliots. A Shropshire Bridgewater Elliot was next in line, would inherit the title and the debts. Bill said he was off to Alaska, to a place called Anchorage. I asked why. ‘Because it sounds safe there,’ he said, and we all laughed. He said that he had been there once, briefly, changing planes on the way to Japan. He had liked it. It was as far from Kellynch as you could get. It was all snow and minerals. He would study minerals there in the long nights. He had sold a couple of paintings – a flood-damaged Hudson, a doubtful Reynolds – to finance his expedition. You could live for ten years in Anchorage on a gentleman in brown velvet, a lady in blue satin.

  I did not know whether he was being whimsical or speaking the truth. It is difficult to know the difference with that kind of person.

  On parting, he kissed my hand. The gesture was more intimate than a peck upon the cheek. ‘Dear girl,’ he said. ‘Goodbye. Wish me well.’

  Rose was very quiet on the way home. I think she had once been a little in love with him.

  I heard no more of Kellynch for seven years. I somewhat lost touch with Rose: she sold her farm and took off to the South Seas to do a book on tropical flora, and this broke the rhythm of our friendship. In those seven years much happened. My imprudent early marriage came to a final end in divorce, but my career prospered. I had been no more than a promising actress in those early days, and not even I had thought I would be able to do more than scratch a living: but a lucky break in the form of a film role – as Juliet in a freely adapted version of Fanny Burney’s The Wanderer – had come my way and since then I had been able to pick and choose. Tragic heroines from rustic romances were offered to me regularly, and most of them I declined. I had become well known and lonely.

  I was sitting one evening in my flat off the King’s Road reading a Thomas Hardy screenplay when the phone rang. I picked it up – which I might well not have done – and an unfamiliar voice said ‘Is that Emma Watson? Emma? You won’t remember me, but this is Penelope Elliot. Do you have time for a word?’

  Of course I remembered her. I could see her face as though it were yesterday – her silver-yellow hair, her pale high brow, her girlish Alice band, her freckled nose, her little breasts, her faded jeans, her long thin bare feet.

  ‘Penny,’ I said. ‘Yes, of course. How are you?’

  She was well. The girls were well. Bill was well. She had left her fish man and married a lawyer. She knew I was well as she had seen me on TV. She was ringing about the Dower House. Bill’s picture money – did I remember the picture money? – was running out, and he was thinking of letting the Dower House. They seemed to remember I was rather taken with it, and Rose had thought so too. Would I consider renting it for six months, for a year? Would I like to ring Bill in Calgary, or should she get him to ring me?

  Whatever is he doing in Calgary? I asked. Oh, she said, he has fallen in love with the mountains and the everlasting snows. He says that Somerset is full of putrefaction.

  We both laughed, and she gave me Bill’s number. I tried to work out what time it might be in Calgary and what hours a man like Bill might keep, but I do not think I got it right because he sounded way out of all things when I spoke to him. Nevertheless we struck a bargain. I would take Kellynch Dower House for six months, renewable at six-monthly intervals. He said it had been done up slightly since my last visit. Not too much, I hoped. Oh no, he did not think I would find it over-restored. Any problems I could put through Penny and her husband. So useful to have a lawyer in the family.

  This time I could detect the irony.

  He was right in assuming I would not find the Dower House too much modernized. There had been attempts at improvement: the roses that had climbed in through the windows had been cut back, the roughly hacked dog-door had been blocked, the kitchen range had been given a coat of black lead, and loose covers had been fitted on some of the chairs. There were two new lavatories, though the bath still stood on claws in the centre of a three-doored bathroom. There was a second-hand refrigerator and a washing machine in an outhouse.

  I was enchanted by my new retreat. How well I remember my first night there, as I stared at the flames of the log fire I had finally managed to light, and listened to some early Italian opera on the crackly radio. (Reception was never very good in that deep valley.) I was as safe as Bill in his snowy eerie.

  As I sat, a strip of wallpaper, disturbed by my presence, slowly unpeeled itself. A quarter of an hour later it began to rain and the chimney began to smoke. Rain fell down the chimney and onto the hissing logs. Smoke billowed at me. Coughing, I left the room, and found a rivulet of red water running through the back door, across the red tiles, through the hallway and out again under the front door. I opened the door and saw the water disappearing into a grate partly blocked by twigs and moss. I cleared the grate, and watched with satisfaction as the bloody trickle drained away.

  I was by now muddy, so thought I would take a bath. The hot water was boiling, and gushed forth bravely. But alas, the cold pipes had developed an airlock. I sucked and blew but to no avail. I had to wait for the water to cool. I assisted it with ice cubes. When I got to bed, I could hear the sound of scrabbling in the rafters. Rats, mice, pigeons, owls, squirrels, doves? I fell asleep, content.

  Each day brought some new disaster. It is extraordinary how many faults an old house can develop. I lived as in the nineteenth century. I became expert with bellows and stirrup pump, with mop and bucket, with toasting fork and balls of string and clothes pegs. Electricity cuts occurred almost daily. At times, tormented by the cooing of a hundred doves, I thought of buying a shotgun, but contented myself by throwing stones.

  I arrived in a wet March, and stayed through most of the summer. My agent despaired of me and sent me threatening messages. Friends came to see me, were appalled by the discomfort, and went away. I wandered the hedgerows, climbed the hills, lost myself in the woodlands. I trod in the footsteps of the Wordsworths and Coleridge and Lorna Doone, I made my way through a thousand pages of The
Glastonbury Romance. I studied the landscape and its history. I discovered that one of the oak trees in the avenue was the second tallest in Britain – Quercus petraea, thirty-six metres high, and more than six metres in girth. Once I went to Bath, but I did not like it there – it was full of young men drinking beer from cans, and the car parks were crowded and expensive. I never got to Lyme. I made acquaintances – a young woman up the valley called Sophy Hayter who kept goats, a retired vet who told me where to watch for the red deer. I dined with the Wyndhams at the Elms, had a drink with Dominic the blacksmith, and spoke, once, to the vicar. I often called in the church to see the Elliot ancestors. One lay helmeted and cross-legged on his crumbling sandstone tomb. There was a plaque to the Lady Elliot who had been so ill for so long.

  I was on good terms with the people who ran the Hall, who said I could take my guests round whenever I wished. The Elliot coat of arms, with a date of 1589, was engraved over the three-storeyed porch of the south front, and the great magnolia still blossomed. Occasionally I would wander in to admire the lofty plaster ceilings, the polished floors (which smelt more of the schoolroom now than of the country house), the quantities of gilt-edged looking glasses, the paintings, the charming light rococo staircase. It was hard to think the house unworthily occupied and fallen in destination as one watched the peaceful pursuits of the students who came on botany or geology or painting courses. Some of them were very mature students, grey-haired, tweed-suited, rain-bonneted. They were usefully employed, and they kept the roof on, which was more than the Elliots had done. The whiff of carbolic and shepherd’s pie was a small price to pay.

  Sometimes I indulged a fancy that Bill Elliot was walking down the grand staircase with a new bride upon his arm, but this image derived more from Daphne du Maurier than from the house’s own history. I could not help wondering how he felt about the place, and my proximity to it. Since I had become his tenant, he had taken to sending me enigmatic postcards. One mentioned the Chicken-of-the-Woods; he had drawn a little map of its whereabouts, so he too had remembered the details of our meeting. I did not have an address for him, so could not have responded had I wished.

  There was a portrait of Bill in Kellynch Hall, by an undistinguished member of the St Ives school. He was wearing a sailor suit, and had gold ringlets.

  In my Dower House, there was another portrait that interested me almost as much. It was of a woman dressed in the style of the 1820s, wearing a blue-and-yellow-striped dress with a low neck. She stared out of the frame boldly and with a certain effrontery. Her hair was auburn, her smile slightly crooked. Her largish hands – not well painted – were clasped in front of her bosom, holding a posy of primroses. I liked her. I wondered if she had been banished from the big house, or stolen thence by one who loved her. She seemed to smile at me with encouraging complicity.

  In August I wrote to Bill’s agent in Taunton renewing my lease. I was growing more and more attached to my solitude. I dreamed of Bill quite often.

  One fine evening in late September I took myself up to the deserted kitchen gardens behind my house in search of rosemary. Some of the more tenacious herbs still grew there, though the beds were overgrown, the espalier fruit trees untrained, and the glass of the greenhouses broken. Mr Shepherd at the Hall told me that once fourteen gardeners worked there, growing asparagus and beans and lettuces and peaches for the Elliots. Why did they not put the gardens back into cultivation, I asked, to provide food for the students? Nobody would do such work these days, he said. It was cheaper to shop at the supermarket. Why did they not run a course on kitchen gardening, I suggested, and let the students grow their own supper? A good idea, he said. But I knew nothing would happen.

  So I was the only ghost who haunted the garden. I came down with my handful of herbs, watching the evening light slant and flatten over the cedar of Lebanon, the tall hollies, the yellow Bhutan cypress, possessed by a luxury of self-pity and self-admiration so intense that I was consumed by it. I almost ceased to exist. And as I stood there, in a trance, I heard someone speak my name. I started with surprise – yet I was not wholly surprised, for was I not always expecting an audience, and did I not know that I was, that autumn evening, after a summer of fresh air, in particularly good looks?

  ‘Miss Watson?’ I heard, from the terrace. There was a man standing there, my binoculars in his hand. I had left them on the little writing table in the outdoor alcove, along with my book, my pack of cards and my glass of whisky – a glass covered, alas, inelegantly, by a postcard, to protect it from the flies. He had been watching my hawk.

  ‘Yes?’ I hazarded, a little coldly. Was he some intruder from the world of commerce, some angry messenger from my agent? But no, he was a gentleman.

  ‘Miss Watson, I apologize for my intrusion. I could not pass without seeing the old house, and I was told I would find you here. And then I saw you, up in the walled garden. So I waited. Please – ’ he stretched out his hand – ‘let me introduce myself. I am Burgo Elliot.’

  ‘Ah,’ I said. ‘You must be Burgo Bridgewater Elliot. From Shropshire.’

  ‘Indeed, from Shropshire.’

  We shook hands. I was in some confusion. For this was the heir, and I was the usurper.

  In the circumstances – which included my glass of whisky – I felt obliged to offer him refreshment, to invite him in to see the improvements. Yes, he would like that, but perhaps we could sit first for a while in the garden? So we settled together in the alcove, I with my whisky, he with a sherry (he was lucky there, I do not often have sherry in the house) and a bowl of Bombay Mix between us. I inspected him, and he inspected me. He was, if anything, younger than Bill, so perhaps there was not much chance of his inheriting anything unless Bill fell down a glacier quite soon. Was he married, did he have sons, and would the estate be entailed to them when Bill died?

  Such thoughts, which were quite unlike any I had ever had before I came to Kellynch, buzzed around in my head with as much determination as the wasps buzzed around the sherry. Where had they come from? Were they bred by the red earth itself, by the crumbling stone? They were not my thoughts at all. They had slept deep in the ancient masonry and had crept out at last into the late sun.

  Burgo Elliot did not seem to hold me responsible for the neglect of the gardens, the peeling wallpaper, the smoking chimney, the laundry-cupboard door. I was a paying guest, and apologies were due to me, not from me. But it saddened him to see how run down things had become. Did I not find it too melancholy?

  No, I said. It was the melancholy I loved. I did not care for fresh paint. I was a romantic.

  He smiled. This was fortunate, he said.

  We moved indoors, and he made the tour, even glancing into my bedroom with its embroidered counterpane. He stroked the scarred kitchen table, patted the settee as though it were an old family dog, and sighed. He said he had not been to Kellynch for years, not since he and Bill were boys. Poor Bill, he said. Did I know Bill well? No, I said, hardly at all, though even as I spoke I knew this was not quite true. I did know Bill Elliot. I had invested in him, and he had lodged in me.

  Burgo Elliot was, like his cousin, a handsome man, though in a different style. He was darker, he was taller, he had grey eyes, and a Roman – perhaps a Norman – nose. He was also very thin. His head was a fine skull of sharp planes and bone, he had worn thin with time like an antique silver spoon.

  He was, it appeared, a bachelor. He denied wife and progeny. He also denied Shropshire: although he was indeed one of the Shropshire Bridgewater Elliots, he lived in London. As, he believed, did I?

  We sat indoors and he spoke affectionately of the old days. Here they had played, he and Bill and Henrietta. He had been an only child, and had looked forward to his summer holidays, though Lady Elliot had been a sad lady, and the old man a monster. He it was who had let the Hall go to its final rack and ruin. He had stoked the fire with priceless manuscripts, buried the family silver in the pleasure gardens without marking the spot, and shot the local policeman. H
e had done nothing to restore the Hall after the war years, and in the bitter winter of 1947 the tanks had burst and the rococo staircase had been a cascade of ice. So Sir Henry and his lady had moved out to the Dower House, evicting old Boniface, who had been squatting there as the sole remaining gardener, and they had camped like gypsies. The children had learned to fend for themselves. Bill had shot rabbits for the pot, and cooked them in the garden on an everlasting bonfire. They had made great cauldrons of oatmeal and nettle stew. The last of the staff had deserted, and the empty Hall had crumbled. When the old man died and Bill came of age, it was too late to rescue it. Lady Elliot had gone into a nursing home in Chard.

  It was growing late, and my lamb cutlet would not feed two. So I fell silent, and he, being a gentleman, at once took his leave. He was on his way to see friends in Devon, who would be expecting him, he said.

  He was lying. He would go no farther that night than the Dalrymple Arms or the Egremont at Uppercross. But I accepted his fiction and let him go. I knew I would see him again. And I wanted time to think about his apparition.

  How could I not have been stirred by it? It would have taken a dulled, nay deadened fancy not to have been stirred by Burgo Elliot.

  Why, I wondered, had he remained single? In my experience there were two likely explanations – one, that he had liked those of my own sex too much, the other, that he liked them not at all. I pride myself on having a good eye in these matters, but Burgo baffled me.

  He had spoken with great fondness of Bill. Had he been in love with the beautiful boy? Or had it been his own childhood he mourned?

  Bill, he said, had always loved the inanimate. He had thought it safe. When I had finished my cutlet, I went and knelt down by the little cabinet and looked at the weathered fragments of ammonite, the fossilized starfish, the swaying stone flowers of the sea, labelled in Bill’s childish hand. And where was Bill now, perched on what ledge, huddled in what remote crevasse, while Burgo Bridgewater Elliot slept between clean sheets in a warm inn?