‘Are you sure, old man?’ said George. Dudley didn’t answer or even look at him, but crossed the hall with uncertain dignity, flung open the door and disappeared into the cow-passage, the door swinging loudly shut behind him.
‘You go on out,’ said Daphne to the others. With a familiar resolve she went after Dudley, but with a newer sense looming beyond it that it wasn’t just repetition, it was getting much worse.
She found him in the washroom, and his dripping face as he raised it from the basin was alarmingly red. The veins in his temples stood out as if he’d been throttled. But when he had dried himself and sleeked back his hair the colour receded and he looked almost normal. Daphne thought of various futile reproaches and suggestions. She watched him dab at his lapel with the damp towel and then throw it on the floor, as he always did. Then she found he was smiling at her in the mirror, just a moment of doubt as he hooked her glance, the old trick he did without thinking. ‘Oh my god, Duff’ – he turned and lurched into her, his teeth moist and gleaming, his arms went heavily round her shoulders not her waist, he was kissing her and kissing her, squashing and probing as though to get at something; she didn’t know what if anything she gave: all she got from it herself was a compounded sequence of discomforts, the sour flare of drink and cigars into her face. He hadn’t done this for ages, it was like a violent little visit from the days when they still made love. He stood back, shaking her lightly, encouragingly, like a good old friend, then he was limping off, head down, head up, with the oblivious sense of a new mission, the unspoken agreements of the demented and the drunk. ‘Come on, Duffel,’ he called over his shoulder as he opened the door into the hall. She stood where she was, and watched the door swing closed again behind him.
‘Oh, my dear, isn’t Dudley joining us?’ said Eva, when she got out on to the flagged path.
‘No, he can’t,’ said Daphne, with some satisfaction, pulling her wrap round her. ‘You know, he doesn’t go out at night.’
‘What, not at all?’ said Eva. ‘How very funny of him . . .’ She sounded archly suspicious, and then Daphne wondered if Eva had in fact been out at night with Dudley, though she could hardly think when.
‘You know, he doesn’t talk about it, but it’s one of his things.’
‘Oh, is it one of his things.’
‘Dud not coming out?’ said Mark, suddenly behind them, and now with a hand round her waist – round both their waists.
‘He doesn’t, darling, as you know,’ said Daphne; and then she explained, for Eva’s benefit, and trying to ignore Mark’s quite purposeful grasp for a moment: ‘It’s a thing from the War, as a matter of fact. I probably shouldn’t say . . .’ – and on the hard path, finding her way in the long spills of light from the drawing-room windows, which only deepened the shadows, she made a little mime of her hesitation. ‘You know, it was a great friend of his who was killed in the War. Shot dead by a sniper right beside him. They’d seen him in the moonlight, you see, and that’s why he can never bear moonlight.’
‘Oh Lord,’ said Eva.
Daphne stopped. ‘He heard the shot and he saw the black flower open on the boy’s brow, and he was dead, right beside him.’ She’d rather muffed the story, which Dudley told, on very rare occasions, with a shaking hand and choked throat, and which wasn’t really hers to tell. She felt the horror as well as the rather striking poetry of it all so keenly that she hardly knew if she was Dudley’s protector or betrayer – she seemed inextricably to be both. ‘And then of course Cecil, you know . . .’
‘Oh, was he killed in the moonlight too?’ said Eva.
‘Well, no, but a sniper, it all connects up,’ said Daphne. In truth, other people’s traumas were hard to bear steadily in mind.
In a minute Mark left them – she saw him running at a crouch behind the low hedges to ambush Tilda and Flo, who were walking together between the moonlit chains of clematis. She didn’t much want to be alone with Eva; she looked around for Revel, whom she could hear laughing with George nearby . . . still, it presented an opportunity. ‘I was never sure,’ she murmured, ‘well you’ve never said, you know, but about Mr Riley.’
‘Oh, my dear . . .’ said Eva, with a quiet smoky laugh, amused as well as embarrassed.
‘I don’t mean to pry.’
‘About old Trev . . . ? There’s not a very great deal to say.’
‘I mean, is he not still alive?’
‘Oh yes, good lord . . . though he’s, you know, a fair age.’
‘I see,’ said Daphne. Of course no one knew how old Eva was herself. ‘I thought perhaps he’d been killed in the War.’
‘Not a bit,’ said Eva. She sounded cagey but somehow excited. Bare-bosomed nymphs raised their arms above them as they turned, by some silent consensus, into the path towards the fishpond. There was no colour, but the garden seemed more and more on the brink of it in the moonlight, as if dim reds and purples might shyly reveal themselves amongst the grey. Daphne turned and looked back at the house, which appeared at its most romantic. The moon burned and slid from window to window as they walked.
‘So: Trevor . . .’ she said, after a minute. ‘And you’re not divorced or anything.’ It was slyly amusing to stick at the question, and after quite a lot of drinks you didn’t care so much about good manners.
‘Not actually,’ said Eva, ‘no.’ Daphne supposed she must have married him for money. She saw Trevor Riley as a man who owned a small factory of some kind. Maybe the War, far from killing him, had made him a fortune. She found Eva slipping her arm through hers, and with her other hand giving the long-fringed scarf she was wearing a further twist round her neck – she felt the silky fringe brush her cheek as it whisked round. Eva shivered slightly, and pulled Daphne against her. ‘I do think marriage is often a fearful nuisance, don’t you?’ she said.
‘Well . . . ! I really don’t know.’
‘Mm?’ said Eva.
‘Well, it’s something that sometimes has to be endured, I dare say.’
‘Indeed,’ said Eva, with a throb of grim humour.
‘I don’t know if Trevor was unfaithful,’ said Daphne, and shivered herself at the closeness of the subject. They paced on, in apparent amity, whilst Eva perhaps worked out what to say. Her evening bag, like a tiny satchel slung down to the hip, nudged against her with each step, and evidence about her underclothes, which had puzzled Daphne a good deal, could obscurely be deduced in the warm pressure of Eva’s side against her upper arm. She must wear no more than a camisole, no need really for any kind of brassière . . . She seemed unexpectedly vulnerable, slight and slippery in her thin stuffs.
‘Can I tempt you?’ said Eva, her hand dropping for a second against Daphne’s hip. The nacreous curve of her cigarette case gleamed like treasure in the moonlight.
‘Oh . . . ! hmm . . . well, all right . . .’
Up flashed the oily flame of her lighter. ‘I like to see you smoking,’ said Eva, as the tobacco crackled and glowed.
‘I’m starting to like it myself,’ said Daphne.
‘There you are,’ said Eva; and as they strolled on, their pace imposed by the darkness more than anything else, she slid her arm companionably round Daphne’s waist.
‘Let’s try not to fall into the fishpond,’ Daphne said, moving slightly apart.
‘I wish you’d let me make you something lovely,’ said Eva.
‘What, to wear, you mean?’
‘Of course.’
‘Oh, you’re very kind, but I wouldn’t hear of it,’ said Daphne. Having her redesign her house was one thing, but her person quite another. She imagined her absurdity, coming down to dinner, kitted out in one of Eva’s little tunics.
‘I don’t know where you get your things mainly now, dear?’
Daphne laughed rather curtly through her cigarette-smoke. ‘Elliston and Cavell’s, for the most part.’
And Eva laughed too. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, and snuggled against her again cajolingly. ‘I don’t think you know how enchanting you
could look.’ Now they had stopped, and Eva was assessing her, through the fairy medium of the moonlight, one hand on Daphne’s hip, the other, with its glowing cigarette, running up her forearm to her shoulder, where the smoke slipped sideways into her eyes. She pinched the soft stuff of her dress at the waist, where Daphne had felt her eyes rest calculatingly before. In a hesitant but almost careless tone Eva said, ‘I wish you’d let me make you happy.’
Daphne said, ‘We simply must get back,’ a tight stifling feeling, quite apart from the smoke, in her throat. ‘I’m really rather cold, I’m most frightfully sorry.’ She jerked herself away, dropping her cigarette on the path and stamping on it. The lights from the house threw the hedges and other intervening obstacles into muddled silhouette, but it was hard to retreat with complete dignity; nor was the moonlight as friendly as she’d thought. She cut across the grass, found her heels sinking in loam, stumbled back and around an oddly placed border. It was like a further extension of being tight, a funny nocturnal pretence of knowing where she was going. She felt Eva might be pursuing her, but when she looked over her shoulder she was nowhere to be seen – well, she must be there somewhere, lingering, plotting, blowing thin streams of smoke into the night. Daphne reached the firm flags of the path by the house, and in the second she noticed the dark form curled sideways on the bench beside her, her hand was grasped at – ‘Don’t go in . . .’
‘Oh, my god! – who’s that? Oh, Tilda . . .’
‘Sorry, darling, sorry . . .’
‘You frightened the life out of me . . .’ Tilda wasn’t letting her hand go.
‘Isn’t it a lovely night?’ she said brightly. ‘How are you?’ And then, ‘I’m just rather worried about Arthur.’
For a moment Daphne couldn’t think who she was talking about. ‘Oh, Stinker, yes . . . why, Tilda?’ She found herself sitting very temporarily on the bench, on its edge. As if with a child, she put away the unmentionable matter of Mrs Riley. She found Tilda was staring at her, her white little face had forgotten the gaiety of the earlier evening. Had the drink turned on her? In her anxiety she seemed to invest Daphne with unusual powers.
‘Have you seen him?’ she said.
Daphne said, ‘Who . . . ? Oh, Stinker . . . isn’t he wandering around, I’m sure he’s all right . . . darling,’ which wasn’t what she usually called her, any more than Stinker was Arthur. She’d always thought of Tilda as a youngish aunt, perhaps, silly, harmless, hers for life.
‘He’s so strange these days, don’t you think?’
‘Is he . . . ?’ In so far as Daphne could be bothered to think about it, she wished he was a good deal stranger.
‘Am I mad? You don’t think, do you, he might be seeing another woman?’
‘Stinker? Oh, surely not, Tilda!’ It was easy and allowable to smile. ‘No, I really don’t think so.’
‘Oh! – oh good’ – Tilda seemed half-relieved. ‘I felt you’d know.’ She flinched, and peered at her again. ‘Why not?’ she said.
Daphne controlled her laugh and said, ‘But it’s obvious Stinker adores you, Tilda.’ And then perhaps thoughtlessly, ‘And anyway, who could it be?’
Tilda half-laughed but hesitated. ‘I suppose I thought perhaps because we haven’t, you know . . .’And just then Daphne saw Revel step out through the french window and frown along the path to where he evidently heard their voices. She knew Tilda meant because they didn’t have children.
‘Come along,’ said Daphne, getting up, but now in turn grasping Tilda’s hand, to conceal her own brusqueness. Any more on this subject would be unbearable.
‘Well, I’m just going to sit here and wait for him,’ Tilda said, not seeing what was happening, still adrift in drink and her own worry.
‘All right, darling,’ said Daphne, feeling fortune free her and claim her at the same moment. She almost ran along the path.
‘Oh, Duffel, darling,’ said Revel, touching her arm as they came back in together, and taking a smiling five seconds to continue his sentence, ‘do let’s pop up and look at the children sleeping.’
‘Oh,’ said Daphne, ‘of course’, as if it were hopeless of her not to have offered this entertainment already. She gazed at him and her giggle was slightly rueful. She didn’t think she herself could have slept, even two floors up, through the ‘Hickory-Dickory Rag’. And then the earlier horror, at the real piano, came back to her – it was wonderful, a blessing, that she’d forgotten it for a while.
‘Dudley’s gone to bed,’ said Revel, plainly and pleasantly.
‘I see.’ After the garden the drawing-room was a dazzle; and in their absence, it had been perfectly tidied – everything was always tidied. ‘Now, have you got a drink?’ she said.
‘I’ve got a port in every one,’ said Revel, a bit cryptically.
‘I think I’ve had enough,’ said Daphne, looking down on the tray of bottles, some friendly, some perhaps over-familiar, one or two to be avoided. She sloshed herself out another glass of claret. ‘Oh, Tilda’s outside!’ she explained to Stinker, who had just come in, stumbling on the sill of the french window. ‘You’ve just missed her.’ He leant on a table and gazed at her, but found nothing immediate to say.
She led the way down the cow-passage and up the east back-stairs, Revel touching her at each half-landing very lightly between the shoulders. His face when she glanced at it was considerate, with inward glints of anticipated pleasure. She was excited almost to the point of talking nonsense. ‘All rather back-stairs, as Mrs Riley would say,’ she said.
‘I don’t think this is quite what she had in mind, do you,’ said Revel coolly, so that a leap had been taken, several unsayable matters all at once in the air. Daphne’s heart was beating and she felt herself gripped at the same time by a strange gliding languor, as if to counter and conceal the speed of her pulse. She said,
‘I’ve got to tell you about the oddest scene just now, with old Mrs Riley. I’m absolutely certain she was making love to me.’
Revel gave a careless laugh. ‘So she does have good taste, after all.’
Daphne thought this rather glib, though charming of course. ‘Well . . .’
‘You see I thought she’d set her sights on Flo, who has a bit of a look of all that, doesn’t she.’
‘You see I thought . . .’ – but it was too much to explain, and now a housemaid was coming along the top landing with a baby, no, a hot-water bottle wrapped in a shawl. ‘You’re so sweet to the children,’ Daphne said loudly, ‘they’ll be thrilled to see you,’ giving the servant an absent-minded nod as she came past and thinking all would be explained by this, her virtue as a mother touchingly asserted after the frightful racket from downstairs. ‘If they’re not asleep, of course, I mean!’ She kissed her raised forefinger and pushed open the door with preposterous caution. Then she had the drama of the light behind her for a minute, before they both came in and Revel closed the door with a muffled snap. Now a sallow night-light glowed from the table and heaped large shadows on the beds and up the walls. ‘No, Wilfie darling, you go back to sleep,’ she said. She peered down at him uncertainly in the stuffy gloom – he had stirred and groaned but was not perhaps awake . . . then across at Corinna, by the window, who looked less than lovely, flat on her back, head arched back on the pillow and snoring reedily. ‘If only she could see herself,’ murmured Daphne, in wistful mockery of her ceremonious child.
‘If only we could see ourselves . . .’ said Revel. ‘I mean, I expect if you saw me . . .’
‘Mm,’ said Daphne, leaning back, almost feeling with her shoulders to where he was, feeling his left hand slip lightly round her waist, confident but courteous and staying only a moment. ‘Mm . . . well, there you have them!’ – stepping aside in a way that felt dance-like, a promise to return. She muttered into her wineglass as she swigged. ‘Not a terribly pretty picture, I’m afraid.’ She felt a run of trivial apology opening up in front of her, the children perhaps not pleasing to Revel. He must be aware of the smell of the chamber-pot, she se
emed to see Wilfie’s yellow tinkle. ‘Of course their father never looks at them – when they’re asleep, I mean – well, as little as possible at other times – when they’re awake! – they can’t contrive to be picturesque at all times of the day and night – ’ she shook her head and sipped again, turned back to Revel. Revel was picking up Roger, Wilfie’s brown bear, and frowning at the creature in the pleasant quizzical way of a family doctor: then he looked at her with the same snuffly smile, as if it didn’t matter what she said. Her own mention of Dudley hung oddly in the half-light of the top-floor room.
She went round to the far side of Wilfrid’s little bed, set her glass down on the bedside table, peered down at him, then perched heavily on the side of the bed. His wide face, like a soft little caricature of his father, all mouth and eyes. She thought of Dudley kissing her just now, in the cow-passage, all her knowledge of him that had to be kept from a child, their child, facing blankly upwards, one cheek in shadow, the other in the gleam of the night-light. She didn’t want to think of her husband at all, but his kiss was still there, in her lips, bothering away at her. She gently straightened and smoothed and straightened again the turned-over top of Wilfrid’s sheet. Dudley had a way of trapping you, he stalked your conscience, his maddest moments were also oddly tactical. And then of course he was pitiable, wounded, haunted – all that. Wilfrid’s head twitched, his eyelids opened and closed and he turned his whole body in a sudden convulsion to the right, then in a second or two he thumped back again, murmured furiously and lay the other way. He had bad dreams that were sometimes spooled out for her, formless descriptions, comically earnest, too boring to do more than pretend to listen to. He claimed to dream about Sergeant Bronson, which Daphne deplored and felt very slightly jealous of. She leant over him and straddled him with her arm, as if to keep him to herself, to say he was spoken for. ‘Uncle Revel,’ said Wilfrid sociably.
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