‘Come along. You’re just in time for the first brew-up.’
Silvia held up her glass. ‘Champagne, Eve. Such a treat.’
She wore a dress of palest yellow, a dress that Eve had seen her wear often before, but which she thought particularly becoming. Her thick grey hair curled about her lively face like the petals of a chrysanthemum, and she had taken much time and trouble over her makeup. Gold studs shone in her earlobes, and around one wrist she had fastened her gold chain bracelet, jangling with old seals and charms.
Eve sat beside her. ‘Silvia, you are looking glamorous.’
‘Well, I felt I had to dress up for such an occasion. Where’s Gerald?’
‘He’s gone to fetch May. He’ll be here in a moment.’
‘And Laura?’ said Ivan.
‘She’s on her way. Alec phoned from Scotland, so that probably delayed her a little.’ She lowered her voice. The door of Drusilla’s cottage stood open. ‘Did you ask Drusilla?’
‘No,’ said Ivan. He poured a glass of champagne for his mother and handed it to her. ‘But she’ll probably appear,’ he finished comfortably.
At that moment they were joined by Laura, coming, as Eve had come, through the kitchen door and walking across the gravel towards them. She looked, thought Eve, deliciously pretty, in an airy dress of peacock blue lawn, delicately stitched and smocked. Her aquamarine earrings, set in diamonds, echoed this rich colour, and she had darkened, with mascara, her long, bristly lashes, which had the effect of making her eyes appear luminous and very large.
‘I hope I’m not late.’
‘Yes, you are,’ Ivan told her. ‘Dreadfully late. At least two minutes. I refuse to be kept waiting like this.’
She made a comic face and turned to Eve. ‘This is for you,’ she said.
She had been carrying what Eve thought to be a small handbag, but which now she saw was a parcel, wrapped in pink tissue paper and tied with pale blue ribbon.
‘For me?’ She set her glass on the table and took the package from Laura’s hand. ‘Oh, but how exciting. You shouldn’t have bought me a present.’
‘It’s really a hostess present,’ Laura explained, sitting down, ‘but I didn’t have a chance to get one in London, so I bought it today.’
With all of them watching, Eve undid the ribbons and the paper. First pink tissue and then white. The two little china figures were revealed. She had never seen anything so pretty and was wordless with delight.
‘Oh … oh, thank you.’ She leaned forward and kissed Laura. ‘Oh, how can I thank you? They’re enchanting.’
‘Let me see,’ said Silvia and took one from her. She turned it up, as Mr Coleshill had done, to inspect the mark. ‘Dresden.’ She looked at Laura, and Laura met her topaz-coloured gaze and silently begged her not to refer to their astronomical price. After a second, Silvia got the message and smiled. She turned the shepherd the right way up and set him down on the table. ‘They are very lovely. How clever of you to find them, Laura.’
‘I shall keep them in my bedroom,’ Eve announced. ‘All my most precious things I keep in my bedroom, because I can enjoy them first thing in the morning and last thing at night. Did you get them at Mr Coleshill’s?’
‘Yes.’
‘He’s a dreadful old rogue,’ said Silvia, ‘but he does have some good stuff mixed up with all that dusty tat. Even if you do have to pay through the nose for it.’
‘Well,’ said Ivan, ‘like I said, he has to make a living. And Dresden’s rare these days.’
‘I shall wrap them up again, before they get broken.’ Eve began to do this. ‘You really are a darling, Laura. Now tell me about Alec. How is he?’
Laura began to tell her, but before she had time to say more than the fact that Alec had arrived at Glenshandra safely, Gerald’s car came through the gate, drove past them all through the courtyard, and disappeared into the garage. In a moment he reappeared, with May at his side.
May was still wearing her woollen hat, but definitely gone in the legs. Eve, with a sinking heart, saw this immediately. She must have had a tiring day and walked too far, and seemed glad of Gerald’s support, his hand beneath her elbow. In her other hand she carried her bag and the Union Jack carrier, bulging mysteriously. Eve’s heart sank even further at the thought of what it might contain.
They halted.
‘Did you have a good day, May?’ Eve asked.
‘Oh, it was all right.’ said May. But she did not smile. Her old eyes looked at them all, moving from one face to another. They took in the champagne bottles and the glasses. Her mouth folded over her dentures.
‘You must be tired. Would you like me to come and get you a little supper?’
‘No, no, I’ll manage.’ Firmly, she detached her arm from Gerald’s. ‘Thanks for coming to get me,’ she said to him, and then she turned her back on them all. They watched her make her slow way towards the house. She went through the door into the kitchen.
‘Cross old thing,’ said Silvia.
The door closed, with some firmness, behind May.
‘Silvia, you mustn’t say things like that. She’d be terribly hurt if she heard.’
‘Oh, Eve, come off it, she is a cross old thing. I’ve never been given such a look in my life. We might have been having an orgy.’
Eve sighed. It was no good trying to explain to anybody. As Gerald came to join them, she looked up and caught Ivan’s eye. Ivan knew what she was thinking, and he smiled reassuringly, before turning away and drawing up a chair for his stepfather.
His smile made Eve feel better, but not much. The occasion was so pleasant, the company so delightful, the champagne so delicious, the evening so beautiful, however, that it would have been morally wrong to waste it all in fretting over May. The present was now, and every precious moment of it to be appreciated.
The sun was sinking, the shadows lengthening. At this hour Tremenheere became a magic place. The blue hour. L’heure bleu. Eve recalled other, long-ago evenings spent with good friends and a bottle of wine on cool terraces after days of Mediterranean sunshine. Terraces wreathed in pink and purple bougainvillaea, the air resinous with pine. A full moon rising over a dark and silent sea. The sound of cicadas. Malta, where she had been married to Philip. The south of France on her honeymoon with Gerald.
She looked up and saw that Gerald was watching her. She smiled, and across the little space that divided them, he threw her a secret kiss.
Drusilla did not appear, but inside her cottage, as dusk gathered, she began to play her flute. By now, Ivan’s cocktail hour was in full swing. They all seemed to have drunk a great deal of his champagne, and Silvia had started to tell Gerald an old anecdote that she knew always made him laugh, but as the first sweet notes floated out into the evening air, the laughter and the voices died away, and even Silvia fell silent.
Mozart. The Eine Kleine Nachtmusik. Magical. Extraordinary to think that the outlandish Drusilla should have, locked within her, this amazing talent. Listening, lost in pleasure, Eve remembered Glyndebourne and the first time Gerald had taken her. She decided that this occasion was not all that different, and the heady enchantment of Drusilla’s music just as sweet.
When the little concert was over, they sat spellbound for an instant, and then spontaneously began to applaud. Gerald got to his feet. ‘Drusilla!’ A standing ovation. ‘Drusilla! Bravo! Come and join us. You’ve earned a reward for giving us so much pleasure.’
After a moment, she appeared in her open doorway and stood there, arms crossed and one shoulder propped against the lintel, a marvellously strange and picturesque figure, with her untamed mass of pale hair and her archaic clothes.
She said, ‘Did you enjoy it?’
‘“Enjoy” isn’t a strong enough word. You play like an angel. Come and drink champagne with us.’
Drusilla turned her head and, as May had done, looked them all over. Her face was never, at the best of times, expressive, but now it was impossible to guess what she was thinking.
After a bit, ‘No, I won’t,’ she said. ‘Thanks all the same.’
And she went into her cottage and shut the door. She did not play her flute again.
6
PENJIZAL
THE WEATHER WAS CHANGING, the barometer dropping. A wind had arisen, flowing in from the southwest, warm and blustery. On the horizon, clouds banked, in dark billows, but the sky remained blue, crossed by chasing banks of white cumulus. The sea, observed from the gardens of Tremenheere, no longer lay blue and flat as silk, but was whipped into flecks of surf. Doors slammed and windows rattled, and sheets and pillowcases and Joshua’s nappies flapped and bellied on the washing line, making a noise like badly set sails.
It was Saturday, and Eve for once had her kitchen blissfully to herself. May had taken a pile of mending up to her room and, hopefully, would not appear again until lunchtime. Drusilla had gone down to the village to do her shopping, pushing Joshua in the old pram. In deference to the wind, she had wound a woollen shawl about her shoulders and as well, Eve was glad to notice, had put clothes on to Joshua: a nappy and a felted sweater that his mother had bought at a jumble sale.
Because it was a Saturday and the factory was closed, Ivan had placed his free day at the disposal of Laura and taken her off in his car to show her the north coast in general and Penjizal Cove in particular. Eve had packed a picnic for them and warned Ivan about letting Laura do too much or walk too far.
‘She’s been ill; you mustn’t forget that. That’s why she’s here.’
‘You are a fussy old hen,’ he told her. ‘What do you think I’m going to do? Take her on a ten-mile hike?’
‘I know what you’re like, and I have a responsibility to Alec.’
‘What am I like?’
‘Energetic,’ she told him, thinking that she could have said a great many other things.
‘We’ll have a picnic and we’ll maybe have a swim.’
‘Won’t it be terribly cold?’
‘If the wind stays in this quarter, it’ll be sheltered at Penjizal. And don’t worry. I’ll take care of her.’
So, she was alone and it was eleven o’clock and she was making coffee for herself and Gerald. She put two cups on a tray with the milk and sugar and a ginger biscuit for Gerald and went out of the kitchen and down the passage to where he had his study. She found him sitting behind his desk, dealing with the paper work that nowadays seemed inevitable if one were to run any sort of an establishment. As she appeared, he laid down his pen, leaned back in his chair, and took off his spectacles.
He said, ‘The house seems quite extraordinarily quiet.’
‘Of course it does. There’s nobody in it except you and me and May, and she’s upstairs darning your socks.’ She put the tray in front of him.
‘Two cups,’ he observed.
‘One is for me. I shall sit and drink it with you and we shall have a companionable five minutes together with no interruptions.’
‘That’ll make a nice change.’
She picked up her cup and carried it over to the big chair by the window, where Gerald sometimes took an afternoon snooze or read the papers in the evening. It was a very comfortable and masculine chair, in which her small form was lost, but then this was a comfortable and masculine room, with panelled walls and photographs of ships and various other mementoes of Gerald’s naval career.
‘What’s Laura doing?’ he asked.
‘Ivan’s taken her off for the day in his car. I’ve given them a picnic. I think they’re going to Penjizal to look for seals.’
‘I hope he behaves himself.’
‘I’ve told him not to let her get tired.’
‘I didn’t mean that,’ said Gerald. He was fond of Ivan but had no illusions about him.
‘Oh, Gerald, you must give him some credit. He’s just being kind. Besides, Laura’s Alec’s wife, and she’s older than Ivan.’
‘That’s what I call an alternative defence. She’s very pretty.’
‘Yes, she is, isn’t she? I didn’t think she’d be pretty. I thought she’d be rather a mouse. I think she was probably rather a mouse when Alec found her, but it’s marvellous what a bit of loving care and some expensive clothes will do to even the plainest of women.’
‘Why do you think she was a mouse?’
‘Oh, just things she’s told me over the course of the last few days. An only child, parents killed in a car crash, brought up by an aunt.’
‘What, a spinster aunt?’
‘No, rather a jolly-sounding aunt. A widow. They lived in Hampstead. But then when she grew up, she got herself a job and a little place of her own, and as far as I can gather, that was her life for the next fifteen years. She worked for a publisher’s. She ended up as an editor.’
‘Which proves that she’s not unintelligent, but doesn’t prove that she was a mouse.’
‘No, but it does sound a little unadventurous. And Laura is the first to admit it.’
Gerald stirred his coffee. ‘You like her, don’t you?’
‘Immensely.’
‘Do you think she’s happy with Alec?’
‘Yes. I think so.’
‘You sound doubtful.’
‘She’s reserved. She doesn’t speak all that much about him.’
‘Perhaps she’s just being private.’
‘She wants to have a child.’
‘What’s stopping her?’
‘Oh, mysterious female complications. You wouldn’t understand.’
Gerald, that man of the world, accepted this sweeping statement with good grace. He said, ‘Would it matter very much if they didn’t have a child?’
‘I think it would matter to her.’
‘And Alec? Alec must be fifty now. Would Alec want a squalling brat about the place?’
‘I wouldn’t know.’ She smiled sweetly. ‘I haven’t asked him.’
‘Perhaps if…’
The telephone on his desk suddenly rang. He said, ‘Oh, damn.’
‘Don’t let’s answer it. Let’s pretend we’re out.…’
But Gerald had already picked it up.
‘Tremenheere.’
‘Gerald.’
‘Yes.’
‘It’s Silvia … I … oh, Gerald…’
Eve could hear her voice quite clearly and was appalled to realize, instantly, that Silvia was in floods of tears.
Gerald frowned. ‘What’s wrong?’
‘Something horrible … ghastly … vile…’
‘Silvia, what is it?’
‘I can’t … I can’t tell you over the telephone. Oh, will you come? You and Eve? Nobody else. Just you and Eve…’
‘What, come now?’
‘Yes … right away. Please. I’m sorry, but there’s nobody…’
Gerald looked at Eve. Frantically, she nodded.
‘We’ll come,’ he said. His voice was even, reassuring. ‘You just wait for us and try to calm down. We’ll be there in five minutes or so.’
Firmly, he replaced the receiver. Across the desk, before she could say more, he met his wife’s agonized, questioning gaze.
‘Silvia,’ he said unnecessarily. ‘So much for our companionable time together.’
‘Whatever was all that about?’
‘God knows. Damned woman. She’s hysterical about something.’ He stood up, pushing back his chair. Eve, too, got to her feet, still carrying the coffee cup. Her hand was shaking and the cup rattled in the saucer with a tiny tinkling sound. Gerald came and took it from her and set it down on the tray.
‘Come along.’ He put his arm around her, supporting her, urging her gently forward. ‘We’d better take the car.’
The road to the village was strewn with green leaves, blown from the trees. They turned into the gates of Silvia’s house, and Eve saw that the front door stood open. Feeling physically sick with apprehension, she was out of the car before Gerald had even switched off the engine.
‘Silvia.’
As she ran into the house, Silvia
emerged from the sitting room, her face distorted with distress, and the two women came together in the cramped hallway.
‘Oh … Eve, I’m so glad to see you.’
She fell into Eve’s arms, weeping and incoherent. Eve held her close, patted her shoulder, murmured words of comfort that didn’t really mean anything at all.
‘There … there, it’s all right. We’re here.’
Gerald, on the heels of his wife, firmly shut the door behind them all. He waited for a decent moment or two, and then said, ‘Now, come along Silvia. Calm down.’
‘I’m sorry … you are angels…’ With an effort Silvia pulled herself together, drew away from Eve, felt up the sleeve of her sweater for a handkerchief, mopped pathetically at her streaming face. Eve was deeply shocked by her appearance. She had scarcely ever seen Silvia without makeup, and now she looked exposed, defenceless, much older. Her hair was awry, her hands, sunburned and rough from gardening, shook uncontrollably.
‘Let us all go,’ said Gerald, ‘and sit down quietly. Then you can tell us all about it.’
‘Yes … yes, of course.…’
She turned and they followed her into her little sitting room. Eve, whose legs were beginning to feel like rubber, sat in a corner of the sofa. Gerald took hold of the chair by the desk, turned it, and settled himself there, upright and unflappable. He had obviously determined to bring some sense of order to the occasion.
‘Now. What’s this all about?’
Silvia told them, her voice unsteady, every now and then gasping with intermittent sobs. She had been into the town to do some shopping. When she returned, the morning post lay upon her doormat. A couple of bills and … this …
It lay on her open desk. She picked it up and gave it to Gerald. A small, plain brown business envelope.
‘Do you want me to open it?’ he asked her.
‘Yes.’
He put on his spectacles and took out the letter. A sheet of pale pink writing paper. He unfolded it and read its contents. It did not take a moment. After a bit, he said, ‘I see.’
Voices In Summer Page 14