An Afternoon to Kill

by Shelley Smith

  ‘I thought in the circumstances it was rather “fast” of this Miss Falk to have written to Papa when she had not been introduced to him.

  ‘“Perhaps,” said Papa vaguely, thinking of other things.

  ‘On Sunday as we came out of church into the sunshine, little Mrs Livingstone came hurrying up to Papa, putting her gloved hands together as if in prayer, and said:

  ‘“Oh, Mr Sheridan, I really must be allowed to thank you for your very great kindness to my niece the other evening. Such consideration!”

  ‘“Ah, your niece!” said Papa.

  ‘“Yes. Sophia dear, come here! Such a dear girl! So artistic!” confided Mrs Livingstone; but I was watching Miss Falk come with modestly downcast eyes past the throng at the porch with a swift graceful walk, in the cream-coloured tussore with the black bands and the demurest little velvet bonnet imaginable, beneath which were folded two wings of smooth red hair. She carried aloft a white lace parasol, like a trim little sail. She did not raise her eyes to Papa’s when Mrs Livingstone introduced her but put out a small kid-clad hand and said with a tiny smile: “We meet again,” in a way that made me feel she was inviting Papa to laugh with her at her aunt, who all this while was still uttering a stream of banalities.

  ‘I thought she was astonishingly beautiful, and I could not imagine why I did not like her or why she made me feel afraid.

  ‘Papa said, “These are my children: Blanche Rose, Lucy, Harry. You must come and take tea with them one day, if you will; they are dull. My sister-in-law will write and arrange a convenient day.”

  ‘Miss Falk made no reply because she was looking at me, or rather at my clothes and hair, so that I became instantly flamingly aware of my dowdy black dress and the absurd straw hat with marguerites that was so much too childish for my serious young face, I was conscious of my awkward long limbs, that I had not yet learned to use with grace, and the frayed tip of my black cotton glove where I chewed it habitually during the sermon, and the dust on my shoes because I still scuffed them like a child as I walked. I felt intolerably foolish and ugly under Miss Falk’s cool gaze that did not trouble to meet mine but passed on to Lucy and, meeting her smile of candid admiration, responded with the beginnings of a smile whose full flower was only received by Harry. Whereas I was clumsy and long-limbed as a boy, Harry was a pretty schoolboy with a girl’s delicate complexion and Father’s black curling hair. For just a moment Miss Falk looked full into Harry’s eyes and her smile was tender and understanding and a little amused. Harry blushed till his ears were red as roses. Poor Harry! He was hers from that moment.

  ‘“Whew! Isn’t she a stunner?” he breathed to me as we walked away.

  ‘I didn’t answer. I didn’t want to have her to tea, but I was careful not to say so, hoping that if nothing was said, Papa might forget about it. I could not imagine what had made Papa ask her; no one had been to tea since Mama died. It was a strange impulse of his, that with luck would pass away. But he mentioned it at Sunday dinner to Cousin Nell, and a week later Miss Falk came to tea.

  ‘She wore a dove-grey silk, I remember, and a green bonnet with a feather. I coveted that bonnet though I knew I should have looked absurd in it. She did not speak much, but looked around her under her eyelids, appraisingly. I walked her about the grounds. She said she thought the house charmingly pretty.

  ‘“We don’t think so,” I said scornfully.

  ‘She assured me she was quite a judge of houses, and added with a little modest air, hanging her head: “I paint houses, you see.”

  ‘I burst out laughing involuntarily, so unused was I to the niceties of social intercourse. Faint rose stained her ivory cheek. She bit her lip. I apologised through my mirth. “It sounded as if ... ” I attempted to explain stupidly.

  ‘“It pleases you to make fun of me,” she said, with such sharpness that it almost brought tears to my eyes.

  ‘“I didn’t mean ... ” I began with a look of horror, but she took no notice and went on icily:

  ‘“How should you know what it means to be obliged to earn your own living with something so fragile as a pencil and a box of colours? Because you have a father, does that give you the right to sneer at me, as though I was not as respectable and well-bred as yourself?”

  ‘“I didn’t, I didn’t,” I stammered, that quiet voice turning like a blade in my breast. We were sauntering so gently across the lawn that no one would have guessed the rage and mortification that consumed us.

  ‘“Do you suppose because one has the misfortune to be poor, one’s feelings are less sensitive than people’s whose pride is banked about with money?” she ground out bitterly, in a tone that left me in no doubt as to her feelings.

  ‘I could not understand why my stupid remark should have made her so angry with me.’

  ‘Resentment,’ murmured Lancelot Jones, cracking a peach-stone with his teeth.

  ‘Oh, of course. But then, you see ... I was so appallingly ignorant. Girls were, you know. Moreover, I was frightened by her. People had been cross with me often enough, sometimes unjustly, but no one had ever, really never, spoken to me with hatred before. It made my knees shake. It made me want to bolt indoors and hide myself in the attic among the trunks and broken chairs and Mama’s clothes.’

  ‘It didn’t make you want to hit back?’

  ‘Oh, no. It made me feel ashamed.’

  ‘So already, you see, there was this reluctance in you to face life and come to terms with it. Your impulse was to retreat, back, back to the womb, to undisturbed privacy and the aroma of Mama,’ he delineated pleasurably,

  ‘All the same, I didn’t go,’ she reminded him. ‘I walked miserably beside her listening to the bitter contempt in her voice, as though it was my fault that she had taken a pleurisy executing a commission in the spring, which had obliged her to waste the height of her “season” recuperating down here at her aunt’s. We were walking through the shrubbery at the time and I pulled at the leaves as I passed and crushed them in my fingers. The scent of bay brings back that feeling of puzzled guilt even now.

  ‘That evening when Papa asked how the tea-party had gone, I found myself asking him if he wouldn’t commission Miss Falk to do a water-colour of The Grange.

  ‘“She’s dreadfully poor,” I murmured, fingering his watch chain, “and she’s been ill besides.” He seemed pleased with me for suggesting it. I suppose he was glad of the excuse.

  ‘So he arranged it. And presently from the front windows could be seen her little figure in a fawn dust-coat sitting very upright on her stool every fine afternoon, glancing up at the house and marking what she saw on to the block on her knee.

  ‘“You mustn’t bother her,” I said, but the children would run down directly lessons were over; and from the schoolroom window I saw her laughing with them.

  ‘Harry’s great hobby was photography, and he spent hours with his apparatus fussing about to get a picture at exactly the angle from which she was working, to help her with the drawing and perspective. And then hours more in his dark-room fiddling about with “washes” and trying to enlarge the print to the same size as her painting. Sometimes I wished I had never been so stupid as to suggest the work in the first place. Often she would still be there industriously “at it” in the late afternoon when Papa returned. And he would have his Madeira brought out to him on the lawn and a glass for her as well. He must have thought he was merely being courteous to a gallant young woman, asking kindly questions which she lobbed back to him in all discretion. What amazed me was to hear him laughing. I could not ever remember having heard him laugh before, and the sound chilled me to a standstill. There is this little picture frozen in my memory of him sitting on the grass at her feet laughing up at her like a boy with a look of astonishment at himself in his eyes; and she with bent head trailing her brush along the bottom of the paper, so that I could not see the expression on her face.

  ‘I was jealous and afraid of he
r and at the same time she fascinated me with her elegance and something else that I could not recognise but was a suggestion of cruelty. Like the others, I wanted to follow her about all the time. I did often follow her secretly (secretly because I knew she did not like me, and I thought she would despise me for wanting to be with her). But it was not true, as she afterwards accused me, that I was spying on her. That time I was not even following her, it was pure chance that I came across her among the dunes with this young man. They were seated on the ground and she was digging the tip of her parasol in the sand as she talked. I turned and walked away at once, so how could she have thought I was spying on her? She must have seen me in retreat. I never said anything about it to her. And if there was nothing in it why did it matter me mentioning it to Papa?

  ‘We did meet her coming out of church after Evensong with her aunt and the young man. He was tall and rather alarmingly haughty in a willowy aristocratic way, and he managed to bow in my direction without appearing to notice me when she introduced him. His name was Oliver Bridgewater, and he was a cousin of hers, she said. Papa didn’t like him either, he called him “a jackanapes”. He did not come down again.

  ‘The summer went slowly over. The picture, in a gilt frame too ornate for its pastel tints, hung between the windows in the drawing-room. I learned to put up my long heavy hair. I was eighteen. Miss Falk returned to Town.

  ‘In September Papa went to Switzerland for a month. From time to time we received coloured postcards with affectionately non-committal remarks on the reverse side. It was unlike Papa not to write a proper letter. As a rule when he was away his letters to us were long and full of accurate geographical and historical local-colour. And now there were only these silly, highly-coloured postcards with only Poste Restante addresses. Harry steamed off the stamps for his collection, Lucy copied the views into her album, and I was left with the bald little messages in his small dear handwriting.

  ‘At the beginning of October I came in one early evening as dusk was falling, with a great bunch of leaves and berries and twigs I had been gathering, to find Cousin Nell waiting for me in the hall with a face like ash.

  ‘“Thank God, you’ve come,” she whispered, grasping me by the arm and pulling me into her sanctum. “The children don’t know yet.”

  ‘I said in a high breathless voice:

  ‘“Something’s happened to Papa!”

  ‘“Yes! Oh, yes! Dear child, you mustn’t mind! He will be happier, you know; and it is of his happiness that we must think.”

  ‘“He’s dead!” I said in a sickening fright.

  ‘“Oh, no, not that!” she cried in a genuine horror of pity. “How could you think it? Not dead! Oh, look! Read it for yourself,” she begged, thrusting a letter into my hand and putting a handkerchief to her face,

  ‘“Dear Nell,” Papa wrote,

  ‘“Miss Falk has done me the honour of becoming my wife. We were married five weeks ago by special licence, and will be returning home on the 7th, arriving on the 5.25. Please see that Thomas is there with the carriage. Sophia is very fond of carnations, will you see that some are in her room? She will use Laura’s room of course.

  ‘“I wish you would give these tidings to Blanche Rose for me and she can tell the others in her own way. You, my dear Nell, who have served us all so faithfully, must not feel in any hurry to leave us; you shall suit your own convenience entirely.”

  ‘I did not bother to read any more. I crumpled the letter in my hand and stood up.

  ‘“There, dear!” said Cousin Nell, blowing her nose, “I’m sorry to have wept; it was the shock. I’m sure I do hope they’ll be very happy. I shall write to Elspeth at once, to ask if I can come to her.”

  ‘“You’ll not leave us?” I cried, suddenly finding my voice. “You mustn’t leave us now! I don’t want to be alone with her!”

  ‘“Why, Blanche, dear, you won’t be alone with her. And just to begin with of course I’ll be here. Your father would expect it of me. He’d think me ungrateful if I turned on my heel now, and I wouldn’t want him to know I was hurt by his lack of confidence.”

  ‘I knelt down and put my head in her lap to hide my tears.

  ‘“Don’t leave us, dear, dear Cousin Nell,” I said desperately. “I know I’ve often been hateful and thoughtless, but I will be better. I didn’t understand. I couldn’t bear for you to go!”

  ‘I could feel her movement of surprise, but she only said evenly: “It is not possible, dear. You must see that your — that — that — ” she sought the word helplessly and then said — “that she will want to run her house in her own way; and there will be no room in it for me. One could not expect it to be otherwise. And it will be better so, you will find; you will all be young people together.”

  ‘“Except Papa,” I said. “Oh, how could he have done it? How could he, at his age?” I cried bitterly, and my heart was sick with disgust.

  ‘“You are too young to understand these things. You must think only of his happiness, Blanche,”

  ‘“But what about mine?” I cried childishly. “What about mine?”’

  CHAPTER THREE

  IN THE COMPANY OF MRS SHERIDAN

  ‘I hope I am not boring you,’ Miss Hine suddenly broke off to say.

  ‘Not at all,’ he assured her politely. ‘But do you mind if I smoke?’ For now that the meal was over he was feeling at the same time sleepy and fidgety, and his hostess had become aware of the slight restless movements he made with his legs and shoulders.

  ‘Smoke by all means,’ the old lady said, ‘but not, I sincerely hope, one of those brief unfragrant machine-made affairs that epitomise for me all the horrors of our ersatz civilisation.’ (Mr Jones furtively slid his cigarette-case back inside his jacket and made a mental note of the chic of her disapprobation.) ‘Have you ever tried a hookah? If not, do me the pleasure of trying one now, and I think you will agree that it is more agreeable than the fusty inhalations of your little adulterated tubes of paper.’

  A servant in answer to her summons brought in the mechanism and lit it, and Miss Hine demonstrated to him how it was used. When it began to bubble he drew in the fragrant smoke and presently found himself pleasantly soothed and trancey. He was suddenly aware that he was enjoying this unwonted experience, and his irritation at the enforced loss of time spent listening to this prosy old lady’s meandering story of her far-away youth all vanished away and a drowsy contentment took its place.

  The old lady continued, folding her plump brown hands again loosely in her lap.

  ‘As soon as Papa and my stepmother returned I saw that Cousin Nell was right, she could not stay. Sophia meant her to go and showed it plainly with a cruel sweetness of manner that pretended she was reluctantly falling in with Cousin Nell’s own wishes. And when Papa declared that Nell must be in no hurry to leave them, must stay with them at least another month or two, Sophia gently interpolated, “But, Edward dear, you don’t understand. Cousin Nell will have made her arrangements and will be longing to get away and lead her own life. We must not be selfish and put our interests above her own. Men never understand these things, do they?” she said, turning to Cousin Nell with her pretty tinkling laugh.

  ‘And Cousin Nell with more wit than I expected answered smoothly that at any rate one could always rely on another woman to understand. Sophia smiled. And that was that. But Cousin Nell was deeply wounded, we all cried when she left and our easy tears sprung her own. Sentiment, I suppose you’d say; but we were sorry now to think we had ever been ungrateful and unkind. The young have such an abiding sense of justice; so that even Harry, who was boyishly enchanted with his stepmother, felt the injustice of it, yet was glad to have Sophia presiding as the goddess of the home.

  ‘I suppose it was natural enough to her, but I found it unforgivable that Sophia’s first step was to redecorate the house that still bore for us the imprint of Mama’s personality. The crape was whisked away, and there appe
ared new crimson carpet and walls of eau-de-nil satin paper or french-grey, with gilt-framed mirrors everywhere. It was much prettier, much gayer, and I detested it with all my heart. I, at least, would continue to wear mourning.

  ‘I must admit she was always kind to Harry and surprisingly tolerant, considering the way he used to follow her about. I think she found him amusing with his high spirits and his devotion. She would always find time to pose for his photographs, which was something Lucy and I found inexpressibly irksome. In those days posing meant remaining absolutely motionless for minutes together, there were no “instantaneous” photographs. Yet he was always developing pictures of her in some languid attitude in a basket-chair, or admiring a fall of wistaria, the lines of her dress a serene contrast against the trellis. Apart from the gratification of her vanity, I think she liked to tease Papa with Harry, using the boy deliberately to make Papa aware of her power over him. Consciously or no, she set us all against one another. For instance, Papa would come into a room and find Harry and his stepmother laughing together, and sharply order the boy upstairs to brush his hair or something, and Harry would flush and Sophia would pat his cheek in silent commiseration and see from the corner of her eye my father fume. As for me, I detested to see Papa’s eyes following her about always with that hungry look; he reminded me of Floss, our spaniel, who was so quickly cowed it was sometimes painful to see; they had the same darkly speaking eyes. Even in front of us he could not keep his hands from touching her, her body was like a magnet to him all the time, drawing him with its white aloof beauty. And she gave nothing. She was the Ice Maiden. Only sometimes I would see her eyes rest on him with a quiet smile and he would stir uneasily and the expression in his own eyes would make me look away in shame. I hated her for making him look like that. And I honestly think my hatred amused her as much as Harry’s admiration. I have already said that I was self-conscious and gauche, and it pleased her to seek out all my sore little spots of unconfidence and call my attention to them in public as dulcetly as one could imagine. At the end of an afternoon’s tea-party I would feel as full of pin-pricks as a dressmaker’s dummy and not half so handsome or useful.