The suburban audience of tired women and pipe-smoking men knew as little of hunting as the American producer, and so they accepted the film in silence, except when now and then a more than usually glaring improbability roused them to a murmur of amusement. Chitterne was so much taller than Sara that he could watch her without turning his head, merely by looking down on her, and so he saw little of the picture. She was particularly lovely to-night, he thought; that exhausted, colourless look left the beauty of her features in startling relief. Her eyes looked as though she had been crying; and his heart contracted at the thought of Sara crying. The thought of Sara in that gloomy house in that gloomy street was intolerable. But he must go gently. She couldn’t be rushed; he had learned that from Webb. She had a mind of her own, Sidney had opined; half proud, half resentful of Sara’s mind. One would have to convince Sara’s mind as well as her heart, it seemed. Sidney had almost hinted that she hadn’t a heart; but girls who hadn’t hearts didn’t cry.
When the lights went up she said: “Are you patient, or interested, or bored, or asleep, or what?”
“Why?”
“You’re so still.”
“I’m just pleased with myself.”
“What a disgusting condition, and how I envy you!”
“Aren’t you ever pleased with yourself?”
“No. I haven’t anything to be pleased about. I’m all wrong. I’m a misfit.”
As soon as she said it her pride revolted. She shouldn’t have said that; he might think she was touting for sympathy. “At least I feel like that to-night,” she added, “because so many people were unreasonable to-day. Two of the staff and four customers being unreasonable in one day is too much for anyone. Sorry to talk shop.”
“I’ve never been able to see why it was bad form to talk shop. Except in an institution, you know, where there is a danger that the inmates won’t be able to talk about anything else. Army messes, and places like that. Outside, where you are meeting strangers continually, surely shop is the most interesting thing a person can talk about—the thing they know best. What do you do when a woman has tried on everything in the shop and is still unsatisfied? I’ve always wondered.”
“I bring her the thing she tried on first and I say: ‘Of course you might care for this. It’s rather out of the common, of course, and not everyone’s model, but—’ And she usually forgets that she ever saw it before, decides that she’s out of the common, and that it suits her beautifully.”
“You know,” he said seriously, “I couldn’t do it! I’d bash them over the head with the hand mirror and call a taxi to take away the body.”
She smiled, and the joy he felt at having made Sara smile was as great as he had ever known. As great as pulling in to the pits at Brooklands knowing that he had broken a record; as great as seeing a horse he had bred canter home ahead of a good field.
At half-past nine she said that she must go, and he took her back to the corner of the street where he had met her. She would not allow him to come to the door. Her father, it appeared, was queer. He was not even to be told that she had been to the cinema, or there would be a row. Chitterne had not imagined that any of that kind were still living, but the expression on Sara’s face when she talked about him left one in no doubt.
“I say, you look as if some fresh air would do you good,” he said. “Wouldn’t you let me take you somewhere on Saturday afternoon? That’s your half day, isn’t it? We could go to the coast somewhere and get some sea air. Will you?”
She hesitated.
“We’ll ask Sidney and another girl, if you like.”
She expressed in a grimace both her distaste for Sidney’s company and her appreciation of the motive behind his suggestion. “No, all right. I’ll come. Thank you.”
They shook hands and parted.
Chitterne went away to see if he could get some dinner somewhere. He had forgotten all about food. And Sara slipped into Number Seventeen, and in the cold light of a naked electric examined the tweed she had made for herself last spring to see if it would possibly do to wear on Saturday.
Chapter X
He was waiting for her, fifteen minutes after noon, round the corner in Davies Street. He had been rather astonished to find what a sweat he had been in about the weather. For the last two days he had been haunted by the awful thought that it might be wet on Saturday. So persistent, so obsessing, had been the fear, that even he, the least analytical of men, had been forced to observe it and marvel. It was something new for Chit to find himself in a sweat about anything. His anxiety had not been for himself; after all, if it was wet they could be indoors somewhere together; but he didn’t want Sara to miss her day in the country. He had felt like smashing up something this morning in sheer relief at sight of the sunlight. “Where would you like to go?” he asked as he climbed in beside her.
“I don’t know. I don’t know many places. I thought you’d decide.”
“Well, you specify what you would like and I’ll supply it.”
“I’d like something that wasn’t just like every other place. Something that isn’t just another edition of Brighton.”
So he took her to Rye; and was pleased and touched by her joy in it. To Chitterne its artificiality, its air of preciousness and preservation was “amusing”, but to Sara it was a fairy tale. From the moment that she saw it, a rosy hill above the green levels of the marsh, Chitterne was aware that he had a rival; it had been a mistake to take her there. She explored every corner of the town, ecstatic and indefatigable, and Chitterne accompanied her, a little jealous of Rye but gloating secretly over the brightness of Sara’s eyes, her happiness and self-forgetfulness.
“You know,” she said, turning round to look at him striding with his indifferent gait over the cobbles a pace or two behind her, “you’re a size too big for this place.”
“One good kick would send it all out to sea,” he said. “Aren’t you ready for tea?”
“Oh, just let’s see what’s down here.” And he followed her, smiling and wordless. She had been surprised to find him so quiet. She had unconsciously expected a person with his highly-coloured reputation to be highly-coloured, if not even parti-coloured, in private. Chitterne had not been in the least “dashing”, he was not even “breezy”; he was just quiet, and very efficient, and very thoughtful.
There was a blazing fire on the inn hearth, and they had the place to themselves. It was a little late in the year for golfers, and the Americans had all gone home. They sat in the shadows, with their toes to the fire, while the strip of pale sunlight on the floor by the open door shortened and faded and died. She sat facing the window, and he marvelled a little at the contrast between the elegant sophistication of her appearance and the enchanting simplicity of her spirit. She looked as if she should view life from the weary eminence of a throne, and she viewed it like an eager child. He was sub-consciously aware of the significance of the attitude of the inn-keeper and the waitress towards her. Chitterne, in his twenty-seven years, had entertained all kinds of women from all strata of society, and he was aware, without examining the knowledge, that the inn people accepted her as his natural companion. From all those subtle shades of manner which their kind employ to customers they used the one they would have used to Ursula. Her clothes were fashionable and well cut, of course; but clothes alone would not have produced that tribute. There was an aloofness in her beauty, a stillness, something that was almost scorn.
They talked about her people.
“When they started with Matthew and Mark why didn’t they go on with Luke and John?
“They did, but Luke died, and when John arrived father remembered that the brother he had quarrelled with was called John. The fact that he hated his brother was much more important than that a disciple was called John, so ‘John’ was called Joseph. I think even calling him Joseph didn’t make father forget that he was John by rights. He gave him a much worse time than the rest of us.”
“You don’t like your father much, do yo
u!”
“Like him! If I told you about him you would simply think I was making it up.
“But he preaches, doesn’t he?”
“Yes, once a week, and as often as they will allow him to on Sundays.”
“They?”
“The other members of the meeting. They like to have a chance of preaching too, you see. But father is a bully there just as he is at home, so we have to put up with him about every third Sunday. It’s awful to have to sit there and listen to him. He talks such nonsense, and he loves himself so.”
“But you don’t have to go if you don’t want to, surely?”
“Yes, of course. We all have to go as long as we stay in his house. And we stay for the sake of mother, more or less.”
“I think Mark sounds interesting.”
“You say that because he’s a mechanic. Yes, Mark’s all right, but the youngest one is the nicest.”
“What’s his name?”
“Gareth. He’s a dear. He’s mother’s favourite, too. She thinks we don’t know, but we all do, of course. Only Gareth’s such a decent sort that none of us mind.”
“I’m not awfully well up in the Bible—I used to spend my time in chapel reading the wrong bits—but I don’t remember a Gareth.”
“No, I don’t think there is one. Mother sort of liked him on sight, I think, and she chose his name. He’s a sort of changeling, Gareth. He’s the only fair one in the family.”
“What does he do?”
“He’s the violinist in Regan’s dance band.”
“But—but that chap’s name’s Tavender.”
“It might have been once upon a time, but Gareth’s been it for a week now. It was rather funny, really. We were all waiting for him to commit suicide—he had wanted to be a sort of Kreisler, you see, and playing ‘Waiting for you at twilight’ and things like that was against his principles. But he seems to be as happy as a lord. Are lords happy, by the way?”
“Either that or tight, it seems.”
When the sunlight had faded out of the doorway and the buttered muffins were all gone, they went out once again to hang over the wall and watch the sunset over the levels far below. Over the high pale-green sky to the west were scattered every kind of cloud that has ever been seen: pale pink fluffy bunches, mustard-yellow woolly things like the chickens in Easter eggs, long greasy black trails like the smoke from railway engines, lumps of sentimental mauve from celluloid Christmas cards, shreds of flaming gold like clippings from a dressmaker’s shears, grey, delicate wisps like torn veils; all separate and distinct, like a lot of samples thrown across the heavens. Below was the silver windings of the Rother going to sea, and on either side the wide sands purpling in the fading light. It was very quiet and windless; by the river a man hammered at a boat, and two children called to each other in thin excited cries like those of a sea bird. The sounds came through the evening air very small and distinct, like things seen through the wrong end of a telescope.
Sara was thinking: “Just now mother will be preparing tea and the street will be beginning to get dark.” But she found it difficult to believe in the existence of Sark Street. In a world as lovely as this the thought of it was incongruous, grotesque. What had her father’s hypocrisies to do with this wide quiet, so rich with colour, so rich with content? If only she could stay here; stay in the quiet and not have to wrestle any more with life; be alone and not have to worry about her relations to people, be at peace and forget her own vague longings and fretfulness.
“I’ve never seen anything lovelier than this,” she said aloud.
“No, it is good, isn’t it? But there’s lots of this in England. I know a place further west in Sussex, in the downs, that is just as good as this. Let’s go there to-morrow.”
“To-morrow! Oh, I couldn’t. There’d be too much explanation. You see, to-day I’m supposed to be out with one of the girls in Brook Street. I’ve sometimes gone out on a Saturday with one or two of them. But that explanation wouldn’t do for Sunday.”
“But why couldn’t you say you were coming with me to-day? I’m not an ogre!”
“Because father would make a row, and because mother would be worried. Father would make a row on principle; he always objects to my going out with anyone, even people like Sidney, that he knows. And mother would worry because she would be suspecting the worst all the time. She wouldn’t understand that anyone like you would take a shop-girl out for the day just for kindness. It’s much better to tell a few fibs than have all that happen.” There was a pause. “Don’t think I don’t hate telling them. I do. I loathe it. But I should loathe it far more if my day to-day was going to be all ruined by a beastly, degrading row when I got home. It may be degrading to have to fib about it, but not as degrading as having something as—as lovely as this spoiled by having a lot of dirt thrown over it.”
He relented. “Then you have enjoyed it.”
“Enjoyed it!”
“Come somewhere to-morrow, then, even if you have to tell a few fibs about it.”
“No amount of fibs would be any good to-morrow. I’ve got to go to evening meeting. Nothing but pneumonia or sudden death would excuse me from that.”
“Oh, Lord!”
“It isn’t often I hear anyone call on the Lord so heartfeltly. You’d be a great success at the meetings.”
“Well, you know, Sara, it’s hardly credible. A tyranny like that in these days. You’re all grown up and earning money. You can surely please yourselves in what you do!”
“Yes, I know it sounds ridiculous. It is ridiculous. You couldn’t understand it unless you had been brought up with it. There is a limit to one’s capacity for rows, you know. There comes a time when you’re only too ready to sacrifice something for a quiet life. We’re all sort of keeping the peace until we can get out honourably. We’d all go now if it weren’t for mother, She’s a victim too, but she has to stay, and it would be sort of walking out on her if we all went. Joe ran away, practically—he married a girl he had been too frightened to tell father he was engaged to—but he was always the no-account one anyhow. Don’t let’s talk about all that. It’s spoiling this.”
“But won’t they know about me indirectly. Sidney might tell them.”
“Oh, no, he won’t. I’ve seen Sidney.”
He smiled. “I’m afraid you’re a practised deceiver.”
“Of course I am. Everyone brought up in a house like ours is a past master at that. It’s inevitable.” After a moment she turned to look at him where he leaned smoking against the wall. “I promise never to tell you anything that isn’t true,” she said.
“You darling!”
“I suppose it is time we went.”
“There’s no hurry. We can have dinner somewhere on the way up to town.”
“No, I’m afraid we can’t. I must get home at a normal hour. I mean, at an hour I’d have got home at if I’d been out with Stella or one of the others. I think we’d better go.” She stood for a moment looking down on the river and the flats and the darkening channel under the brilliant sky, as if she were gathering them all in a last embrace. “Thank you for the nice party,” she said, and turned away.
Chapter XI
“Darling, who is Ursula’s latest?” Julia Strange said, collapsing on the couch beside Daphne, and meeting her excellent teeth through a sandwich with an incisive snap which would have done credit to a crocodile.
“Latest? I don’t know what you mean,” said Daphne, who hated Julia and had been given the wrong kind of cocktail.
“Oh, darling, don’t be sniffy and pretend you don’t know. Connie Markham said she saw them at the Wigmore Hall together, at Jan Vek’s recital, you know. Too frightfully artistic, she said he was. I said if it was the Wigmore Hall she saw them at he must be still on the lunging rein. And then Connie turned peevish, of course, and shut up like a clam. Connie is too silly over music! And between you and me, darling, she doesn’t know a scherzo from a sonata. But I didn’t mind. I knew you’d know all about
it. Now, darling, tell Julia. Who is he, and what does he do, if anything, and where did she pick him up?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“It’s not the slightest use making a mystery of it, darling. You can’t possibly hide a thing like that for more than three days at the very outside. And anyhow, Ursula never bothers to hide her affaires. If anything, darling, you know she flaps them in your face like a flag. So don’t imagine you’re being loyal to her or any Joan of Arc nonsense of that sort, because it’s quite redundant.”
“What on earth has Joan of Arc to do with it?”
“I’m sure I don’t know, darling.”
“I wish you wouldn’t use words you don’t know the meaning of, and I wish you wouldn’t eat sandwiches in my face.”
“If you think you’re going to distract me by being rude, darling, you’re frightfully off the mark. I want to know about Ursula’s new one, and I’m going to find out.”
“Well, why don’t you go and ask her?”
“You might at least tell me if he’s here. I’ve looked them all over several times, but none seems to have that co-respondent look that Ursula goes in for. And none of them looks the Wigmore Hall kind except Riscoe, and it can’t be Riscoe because no musician ever goes to hear another play.” Her big bright brown eyes darted over the scattered figures in Ursula’s lamp-lit sitting-room in search of one she might have missed.
It was between five and six o’clock; and the usual motley collection of notabilities; notorieties and nonentities were gathered in Ursula’s big room, whiling away an hour until they should depart to get ready for the evening’s entertainment.
It was a delightful room to come into on an October evening; pale-coloured and gracious, warm with firelight and sweet with the scent of white lilac. A year or two previously, when the craze for Victorian things had been at its height, the room had been the finest museum of atrocities in London. People still talked with amused appreciation of’ it. “Do you remember Ursula’s wallpaper?” they would say. “With the chrysanthemums as big as cabbages! My dear, wasn’t it a triumph!” But Ursula had tired of the joke as soon as the last antimacassar had been collected, and the crowd had helped her smash it all up one glorious night, when they had all been drinking enough to bring them to the god-like state of being indifferent to consequences. There was still a slight inequality in one corner of the ceiling where Cedric Byron had offered up the aspidistras on an altar made of the green-and-crimson woollen crochet doileys from under the plant pots all piled into a chafing-dish. Peter Ridson, the novelist, had recited an impromptu ode (which to his chagrin he could not recall next morning) while he poured a libation or neat brandy over the sacrifice; and Daphne, having performed a ritual dance which was the apotheosis of burlesque, put a taper to it. The result had been very satisfactory as a spectacle, if rather bad for the ceiling. And next day the decorators had come in, and the Victorian drawing-room gave place to the present room, in which bare straight lines, and cool colours were a natural reaction. The carpets, chairs and curtains were now a dove grey, the walk panelled in cream and without pictures, and here and there were cushions of plain silk, each one of an enchanting colour: blue or yellow or rose or green or flame; colours as clear and pure as the hue of stones at the bottom of a brook. They were completely unrelated, like beads run from a broken string, but the eye found each with a new delight. Peter Hudson, on viewing the new decorations for the first time; said that at last the room had been allowed to express Ursula herself instead of a fashion. It just was Ursula: cold as a nun, but given to purple patches.
The Expensive Halo: A Fable Without Moral Page 9