Taking the basket from the dresser she found it unexpectedly heavy, and faltered in a half-formed plan to take it up to Pendizack Point herself. To climb the hill and scramble along the cliffs with such a load would be no light undertaking; she was too tired and too old. They would send back for it. They had not gone so very far away. When the omission was discovered, they would send somebody. They would only have to wait for about twenty minutes. Gerry would be sent. Of that she was certain. It had been his fault in the first place, and in any case it was always Gerry who ran errands for the rest. At any time now she might hear clattering feet in the kitchen passage and see Gerry’s worried face coming round the door. Here’s your wine, she would say to him. He would only be gone for twenty minutes. He would only miss twenty minutes of the Feast. And he had not much wanted to go to it, according to Dick. So that she could not understand her extreme reluctance to let him come back.
Listlessly she began to stack dishes in the sink and to make efforts to tidy the kitchen. But this conviction, that nothing signified, so grew upon her that she could almost have thrown the whole dishes out after the broken ones. Only the basket on the dresser nagged at her with the positive insistence of an urgent task. It stood out, among all these lifeless things, as though it had been illuminated or making some loud noise. It implored her, it commanded her, to go out and climb the hill.
At last she lifted it up again, feeling its weight. A compromise had occurred to her. She need not go all the way. She could take it a little way, up the drive to the beginning of the cliff path, and meet poor Gerry as he rushed back on his tiresome errand. Thus he would be saved some time and trouble. He need not come right back to the house, and the feasters would not have to wait so long for their supper.
But she did not want to meet Gerry just now. Some kind of reconciliation, some tenderness, was bound to arise when he should find that she had taken so much trouble, and she was still angry with him.
‘Bother you!’ she said to the basket of wine.
She hauled it out of the front door, thinking that she would not go very far. Having climbed as high as she felt able, she could sit down and rest in the cool air until Gerry came. Anything was better than the house. And she stepped out into the drive, just as something shot past her, out of the door, across the drive and uphill into the shadow of the tress. It startled her so much that she gave a little cry. Dick’s voice answered her. He came shuffling round the house.
‘What is it?’ he asked anxiously.
‘Hebe’s cat. It nearly knocked me over. Something must have frightened it.’
‘It’s all these mice,’ said Mr. Siddal.
‘What mice?’
‘Haven’t you seen any? I never saw so many before. Lots and lots of mice. On the terrace. Where are you going?’
She explained her errand and he astonished her by saying that he would come with her. It was years since she had seen him so active.
‘But Dick! You can’t get as high as the cliff path.’
‘Oh, I might. I might. If you give me your arm.’
He seized her arm and leant upon it heavily. This, with the wine basket, was more than she could manage. She protested. But he clung to her, panting, and together they crept up to the first turn of the drive where they both had to sit down and rest. He kept pausing to listen, and glancing up at the cliffs, in a restless way.
‘It’s my ticker,’ he said. ‘It must be in a shocking state. I need a change. To-morrow I shall hire a car and drive up the hill. I shall go and stay at the One and All. This place gives me claustrophobia. I’ll stay up there till Tuesday … or Wednesday….’
‘Oh, plague …’ said Mrs. Siddal.
From where they sat the house below them was just visible, through the tress. She could now see a faint splash of light from the windows of the garden room.
‘There’s Anna gone out and left her light on! What a waste! Do turn it out, Dick, when you go back.’
‘She hasn’t gone out. She’s there. I saw her in there when I was strolling around.’
‘I thought she’d gone with the others.’
‘No. She must have changed her mind.’
So that is another one down there, she thought. All alone. All shut up alone in their rooms, yet none of them at peace.
Having recovered her breath she got up, saying that she really must go a little higher for she would save Gerry nothing if she stayed down here.
‘I should think he’d be along any minute now,’ she added.
‘It’s not Gerry that I’m expecting to see any minute,’ said Mr. Siddal. ‘It’s Duff.’
‘Duff? Oh, no! Duff never runs errands.’
‘What will you bet? Will you bet me the price of my car up to St. Sody’s to-morrow that you don’t meet Duff coming back along the cliffs?’
‘Oh, yes. But I won’t bet the price of a room for you at the One and All. I think that is a silly idea.’
She turned to go, but he exclaimed:
‘Wait a minute, Barbara! If I rest here a bit longer I might be able to do another turn. I’m not high enough.’
‘High enough? For what?’
‘High enough out of this. I keep feeling … I keep feeling … as if it was all going to come down on me! Pure nerves!’
He laughed uncertainly.
‘Honestly, Dick, I can’t wait. And I don’t think all this climbing is good for you, after years and years of immobility.’
‘No. But I think I could get a little higher. I’ll rest here and then have another try. I might get all the way, in time.’
‘All the way to Pendizack Point?’
‘No. To St. Sody’s. If I could get up there I wouldn’t come down. I should stay.’
She left him and toiled round a couple of steep bends to the place where the cliff path turned off, through a tunnel among the rhododendrons. She had meant to wait here, but it had grown dark and gloomy under the trees, while at the end of the short tunnel she caught a last sunset gleam. So she crept a few yards further and came out upon the open cliff side. Here she could rest peacefully until Gerry came. She thought she could see him coming round the cliff path, but in the soft bloom of dusk she could distinguish nothing very well. Somebody was moving in the landscape.
She put down the basket and peered across the cliff slopes. In spite of the gathering darkness she could perceive a great deal of movement—more than she had ever noticed before in that wild and furzy place. A flicker of white suggested that it might be some unusual activity among the rabbits. There were many of them on the cliffs, but at this time of night they generally stayed in their burrows. Now they seemed to have decided on a mass exodus. White scut after white scut flickered and vanished.
There really was a man coming along the cliff path. He was too tall for Gerry. He looked like Duff. He walked like Duff. But he was bald. Nevertheless he was Duff, as she saw when he got quite close. It was all part of the strangeness which had invaded life and driven her out here.
‘Oh, Duff …’ she said. ‘Your head!’
He was very much startled.
‘Mother! Mother! How did you come here?’
‘But what have you done to your hair. You look awful….’
He put his hand to his head and pulled the bald wig off. His own yellow hair emerged.
‘I forgot I had it on,’ he said. ‘I’m supposed to be a pobble.’
‘Have you come for the wine? I’ve got it.’
‘What wine?’
He had known, she discovered, nothing at all about the wine. Its loss had not been noticed when he left the Feast. They had not started supper, he said: they were playing Hunt the Slipper. He was coming back because he had had enough of it. And he did not look too pleased when she asked him to take the wine for her.
‘I can’t go back there now,’ he said impatiently. ‘You’ve no idea how slow it is. I mightn’t get another chance to slip off.’
‘I won’t carry this basket any further,’ said Mrs. Siddal. ‘It’
s very heavy, and I think it was nice of me to bring it this far.’
Duff lifted it up and agreed, with some remorse, that it was heavy.
‘Gerry will be chasing along for it in a minute,’ he urged. ‘They’ll find out soon. Can’t you wait till he comes?’
‘Why should he come? Poor Gerry! When it’s not a bit necessary. I do think we are all very selfish to Gerry.’
‘Nothing will get me to that picnic again,’ he declared. ‘But I’ll do this. I’ll carry the basket to the top of the Point for you, and slip off before they see me. You can take it the last few yards, and get an eyeful of Fred dressed as a Toreador!’
But that, she complained, would force her to join the picnic. And she rejected impatiently his plea that she should do so. It would bore her, she said, quite as much as it bored him. She wanted to go home to bed. They stood on either side of the wine basket, disputing, unsettled. Duff was afraid that she might guess his real reason for returning to the house. She shrank from revealing her real reason for avoiding the Feast, and that she would have fallen in with his plan if Evangeline Wraxton had not been up there. They were growing quite angry when a frightened cry among the bushes startled them:
‘Oh … oh … a snake!’
It was Blanche Cove, who had been hurrying along the path as fast as she could.
‘Oh, Mrs. Siddal. Take care! There’s a snake….’
‘It’s all right,’ called Duff. ‘It’s only a grass snake probably. There are lots about this evening. They keep slipping up hill across the path all the time. They won’t hurt you.’
Blanche appeared, breathless and frightened, in a pink kimono.
‘Oh, I was trying to get back to the house without anyone seeing,’ she said. ‘To get the wine. They’ve forgotten the wine. We noticed just now and we didn’t want any of our guests to know … so Fred is keeping them amused while I run back….’
‘That’s all right,’ said Duff. ‘We’ve got it here.’
‘Oh, Duff! Did you go for it? How kind you are?’
‘No. My mother brought it….’
‘Oh, Mrs. Siddal! Are you quite better? We were afraid you would have to miss it. Now do come quickly because it’s really supper time.’
Blanche seized the basket and was quite distressed when Duff took it from her, because she did not think that her guest should be put to so much trouble.
‘You haven’t really missed so very much,’ she told Mrs. Siddal, as she herded them along towards the point like a vigilant little sheepdog. ‘Only some games. All the best part is yet to come.’
‘But I have no fancy dress‚’ protested Mrs. Siddal. ‘I didn’t know I was coming.’
‘Oh, that’s quite all right, Mrs. Siddal, you can be Duff’s Aunt Jobiska. Oh, Duff … where is your lovely head?’
Very reluctantly Duff pulled his wig out of his pocket and put it on. He could see no way of escaping the rest of the Feast, now, without insult to Blanche. He yielded, as everyone else had yielded, to the power of the Coves. He was angry and frustrated, but at the same time he knew that he had had an escape. For if his mother had not met him in the road he might never have remembered that bald pate. He would have descended, wolf-like, upon Pendizack and the expectant Anna in the guise of a pobble. A mistake like that, he reflected, might have such humiliating repercussions as could ruin a man’s sex life before it had even started.
6. The Feast
Supper had been delayed rather too long and the genial spirit of the Feast had begun to fizzle out, though all maintained a dutiful pretence of enjoyment. Most of the guests had arrived in low spirits. Gerry and Evangeline were over-tired and wanted to be alone together. Sir Henry’s gloom was scarcely enlivened by the cricket on his nose. Mrs. Paley concealed a tearful face beneath her hat; Paul’s contempt still had power to wound her. Caroline had been struggling with tears all the evening, for Hebe, while they were dressing, had announced that she had done something dreadful and was to be sent away for ever and ever. She would not say what it was, nor would she admit that she minded leaving them. So that Caroline was glad to hide her stricken face under the hood of a sheeted ghost, and Hebe made a very morose angel.
Fred, Robin, the twins and the three hostesses were genuinely happy, and Nancibel’s sorrows were so deeply buried that nobody could have supposed she had any.
When Mrs. Siddal and Duff were brought into the fold the whole party was sitting in a ring singing Ten Green Bottles to Fred’s accompaniment. Nobody much liked this song except the twins, who had suggested it, but there seemed no way of escape from any of its verses. At times the chant sank to a dispirited murmur, and then, under the spur of social conscience, rose to a forced yell. There were moments when Luke and Michael sang alone:
And if … one … green bottul …
Should ackserdently fall,
There’d be five … green … bottuls
A hangin’ on ther wall.
Karoo! Karoo! wailed the accordion, between each verse.
‘Sing up! Sing up, everybody‚’ adjured Robin. ‘FIVE GREEN BOTTLES …’
Room was made for Mrs. Siddal beside Mrs. Paley, and the wine was handed to Gerry, who made grimaces of horror and apology.
‘It’s an awful picnic,’ whispered Angie to Duff. ‘The best thing we can do is to get tight. Thank heaven for the wine! But the Coves are liking it.’
‘The Coves,’ said Duff, ‘are a menace. They look like white mice, and see what they’ve done to us all.’
Karoo! Karoo!
Three … green … bottles,
A hanging on a wall.
‘Sing up!’
THREE GREEN BOTTLES,
A HANGING ON A WALL.
‘Sisters ought not to be parted,’ said Caroline to Hebe. ‘If you go away, I shall go away. Have you got a hankie?’
‘No. Blow your nose on your sheet.’
Nancibel sat on a rock looking very beautiful. The Spanish shawl and high comb endowed her with an unfamiliar dignity. For a moment her attention wandered from the scene and her expression was pensive. Then she perceived that Mrs. Siddal had come and her warm smile shone out.
THERE’D BE NO GREEN BOTTLES
A HANGING ON THE WALL.
The penance was over and they might have their supper. All the food was already set out on a white cloth, and Robin had been busy with a corkscrew during the last verses of the song. Beatrice rose, clutching her kimono, which was too large and long.
‘And now, Ladies and Gentlemen,’ she announced, ‘you are invited to partake of a cold collation and to imbibe some delicious hock kindly provided for us by our most honoured guest, Sir Henry Gifford.’
All gathered round the cloth where Evangeline and Robin were pouring the wine into glasses.
‘Are the children to have any?’ asked Gerry.
‘We all need it,’ said Duff, firmly. ‘Here you are, Nancibel!’
But Nancibel protested that she was Band of Hope.
‘This is non-alcoholic,’ he assured her. ‘Taste it and see. It’s white, not red.’
‘I wouldn’t know. So is champagne white.’
She took a sip and was sure that he was stringing her along. But secretly she was feeling so sad about Bruce that she welcomed stimulant and, after serving lobster salad, she finished her glass. A warm reassurance flowed through her veins. She ceased to mourn the past. A bright future beckoned through the sunset clouds.
He was kidding me, she thought. Lemonade never did this to me. I won’t take any more.
But she had to take more, for Maud Cove was proposing a toast.
‘Pray charge your glasses‚’ she cried, ‘and drink to the absent but beloved provider of the tomatoes: Mr. Bruce … Mr. Bruce … oh, dear!’
‘Partridge,’ said Nancibel, who was the only person to know.
‘Bruce …’ shouted everybody. ‘Bruce!’
A pleasant elation was sweeping over the party. Few of them had ever drunk hock before, and only Sir Henry was used to i
t. Angie had put very little in the children’s glasses but enough to enliven them. Caroline and Hebe began to giggle. They took the cricket off Sir Henry’s nose and put it in Fred’s salad to startle him. Gerry was telling a story and laughing loudly at it.
‘She said: “Who met a tarsal?” You did. Didn’t you, Angie?’
‘You’d think‚’ said Angie to Mrs. Paley, ‘that he’d get tired of that joke.’
‘He’ll never get tired of it‚’ said Mrs. Paley. ‘Make up your mind to that, Angie. Men have single-track minds. You’ll have to live with that joke all your life. He’ll tell it against you on your silver wedding day.’
‘What joke?’ asked Mrs. Siddal, leaning round Mrs. Paley’s hat to look at Evangeline.
It was the first time that she had spoken to the girl. Evangeline, swimming in vinous optimism, decided to take it as an olive branch.
‘Gerry was telling me‚’ she began, ‘about tarsals and meta-tarsals.’
Robin, on the other side of the picnic cloth, nudged Duff and made him look.
‘Girls are getting together‚’ he muttered.
Their mother and Evangeline both had their heads under Mrs. Paley’s hat, so that nothing could be seen of their faces. But a burst of chuckles could be heard behind the ribbon fringe.
‘They’re all a bit on,’ said Duff.
And Caroline told Hebe that she did not feel as if she was sitting on anything at all.
‘We’re drunk,’ explained Hebe.
‘Are we? How do you know?’
‘I’ve been drunk before. Much worse than this.’
Karoo! Karoo!
Fred struck up The Lily of Laguna, which Mrs. Paley had named as her favourite tune when asked. It was not, and she had meant to ask for Pale Hands I Loved, but had got muddled. The air was taken up with gusto by the whole company.
I know … she loves me!
I know she loves me,
The Feast Page 31