‘She wouldn’t be comfortable, for one thing.’
‘But why not? Because of our horrible class system. Archie, it isn’t right. Intelligent people do menial unrewarding jobs in factories while the idiot sons of the rich spend their lives in pleasant places. It’s so unfair!’
‘I don’t see why we shouldn’t feel sorry for idiot sons as well.’ He looked across the room to where Jonno and Portia sat together, talking in low tones as they had done throughout dinner, unable to drag their eyes from each other’s face.
‘I wouldn’t call Jonno an idiot.’
‘No, he isn’t stupid, he just behaves stupidly. But what an improvement you’ve made! I hope you aren’t sore at being cut out?’
‘Not in the least. In fact it’s a relief. And I find I can’t begrudge Jonno his luck in being heir to this wonderful old house. It’s different when you know someone and like them. But the flagrant immorality of the rich man in his castle and the poor man at his gate ought to be our first concern, shouldn’t it? Of course I’ve never done anything to deserve having a family which values art and loves books.’
‘I shall choose you an elegant hair shirt,’ Archie said teasingly. ‘Or better still, a sanbenito.’
‘What’s that?’
‘A sort of yellow dressing gown with a red cross on the back, worn by penitents heretics during the Inquisition.’
I smiled in an absent kind of way because I was still contemplating with a jaundiced eye the swamping injustice of the world.
‘You’re depressed, Harriet. I wonder why.’
‘What, me? No.’
‘I’m a little depressed myself. I miss Rupert. Perhaps you do too.’
‘Oh, Archie, I completely forgot! I’m so sorry. He rang this morning to say he’ll be back late tomorrow night.’
A slow smile of satisfaction spread across Archie’s face. He had remembered to renew his lipstick after eating, something I always forgot to do. It was an appealing shade of rich peony red. ‘I hope not too late. I find anything after midnight really takes it out of me.’
‘Actually, he asked me to wait up for him – alone.’
‘Oh?’ Was it my imagination or had Archie’s face changed from cordial to hostile? His eyebrows sprang up towards his widow’s peak. ‘And why?
‘He wants to talk to me. About Maggie, I think.’
Archie frowned, considering. ‘Mm. That sounds dull. Not worth bags under the eyes. Very well.’ He smiled at me, serene once more. ‘Did he say how the meeting went?’
‘He seemed to be in the middle of one. Is it important?’
‘It could be. Very. Rupert’s extremely ambitious. Yes, really,’ he added, seeing my surprise. ‘Not for money, of course. As you may know, his father left him enough capital to keep him in underpants, if not in yachts, until he dies. I think he’d be quite content with a lot less, materially, than he’s already got. But he wants to succeed. He has things to prove to himself. Probably it has something to do with his childhood. He doesn’t talk about it. But apart from your dear papa, it seems to have been singularly lacking in love.’ I knew the passionate worship of a plain, fat toothless child was worth less than nothing in anyone’s tally of love received, so I did not interrupt. ‘Rupert hates to look driven and striving,’ continued Archie. ‘It’s possible he may be ashamed of it. And, like everyone else, I suppose, he’s afraid of failure, so he keeps his ambition under wraps. I love him for it. It’s part of his complex nature.’
‘It’s never occurred to me that Rupert might have doubts and fears. Or even hopes. He seems so – confident. Invulnerable.’
‘That’s what he means people to think. He’s the most secret, unfathomable, protected person I know. But that’s not generally the sign of an invulnerable man. Rupert’s as assailable as anyone, perhaps more than most, but he’s adept at disguising his feelings.’
I tried to imagine Rupert as uncertain, even afraid. I had to give it up. For one thing, since my father’s arrest I had come to depend on Rupert for my own sense of safety.
‘I’m afraid I’ve come to rely on him rather a lot,’ I confessed.
‘Oh, I am as symbiotic algae on Rupert’s coral reef. That’s my weakness, if you like.’
‘You know, I think something should be done about the drains.’ Suke strode up to me and stood with her hands on her hips, a dark patch on the front of her trousers where water from the sink had splashed. ‘There’s a truly appalling stink in the corridor outside the kitchen.’
The next day was characterised chiefly by rows and dissension. Throughout lunch, Archie and Suke argued about what to cook for dinner. Suke approved the vegetarianism but she thought seakale en robe de chambre with gugelhopf – bread made with eggs and raisins – followed by a pudding of praline and cherries, an unnecessarily complicated bill of fare. She liked to show solidarity with the oppressed by dining simply. A cabbage stew or boiled potatoes and a lump of hard cheese was all that was necessary to sustain the body sufficiently to right wrongs. She was a girl of extraordinarily high principles. She was bossy – there was no other word for it – but it was very difficult, if not impossible, to refute her arguments.
‘But it’s so dull,’ complained Archie to Suke’s suggestion of steamed Brussels sprouts and a milk pudding. ‘I am sensitive to being bored. It makes me ill.’
‘Boredom is a symptom of profligacy.’ Suke folded her arms across her chest and looked calmly at Archie. ‘You wouldn’t be bored if you were combing gutters for grains of rice for your starving children to eat.’
‘If I couldn’t feed them I shouldn’t be so irresponsible as to have any children to starve,’ retorted Archie. ‘And can one comb gutters? You can comb fields and woods –’
Suke was not to be deflected. ‘If sex was your only relief from grinding misery, I doubt if you’d show such marvellous self-control. Anyway, as a homosexual, you can afford to take this superior viewpoint because you run no risk of reproduction.’
Suke generally got away with laying down the law because most people, and this included me, were too intimidated by her plain-speaking to argue.
Archie, however, delighted in a call to arms. ‘Though I cast my seed upon stony ground I claim an equal right to champion the downtrodden, the shiftless and the witless, if I choose. A head like a ripening pumpkin and the dress-sense of George Bernard Shaw does not give you the moral high ground.’
The argument continued in this vituperative vein. One could hardly blame the children for giggling irritatingly throughout the rest of lunch.
After washing up I lit the fire in the Little Parlour and settled myself to work. It was astonishing that the sentences I had liked best the day before now seemed dull and derivative. I began my article again, from the beginning, working all afternoon absorbed by the agonies and joys of creative effort, in the ratio, roughly, of five to one, stopping only to take Dirk for a walk.
During dinner, while we ate Suke’s rissoles and boiled turnips, a brutal contrast to Archie’s delectable first course of oeufs Pascal, Suke and Miss Tipple continued to discuss the History of the Union of Female Franchise. Suke proposed to write it herself, using Miss Tipple’s material. I suspected that an uneasy debate was going on in Miss Tipple’s mind. Her great labour – HUFF for short – had probably become, like poor Mr Casaubon’s Key to All Mythologies, a troublesome, intractable burden. She was afraid she might not be able to bring it to a triumphant conclusion. But then, who was Ernestine Tipple, if no longer the author of a great work in progress? Just another feeble old woman waiting to die. A cipher, a recipient of charity and pity, perhaps even a downright nuisance. I wanted to urge Miss Tipple to battle on with HUFF, no matter what the final outcome, so she could face each day with a sense of purpose – until for her there were no more dawns. But I was much too frightened of Suke to contradict her.
I wondered where Suke got her self-assurance from and her enthusiasm for reform. A strict adherence to truth and principle was clearly no more effective a shie
ld from the anguish of existence than my dissembling and equivocation. I had found her in tears in the kitchen before dinner and assumed she was crying about Portia.
‘It is misery when things don’t quite work out, isn’t it?’ I had said hesitatingly, not daring to be more explicit, certainly lacking the courage to put an arm round her. In my experience soft words, far from turning away wrath, frequently invite it.
She had pointed with her knife to a pan of onions stewing on the stove. ‘They’re a particularly vicious sort.’ I was not convinced the onions were to blame. ‘If you mean, am I wretched because Portia’s gone off with Jonno,’ Suke continued, ‘I am not. Though I deplore her taste, she has every right to find her satisfactions where she likes. I don’t believe in relationships held together by the glue of guilt and obligation. We’re all free.’ She blew her nose hard. ‘Anyway, Portia basically likes men. I realise now she was just experimenting with me.’
I could not deny this. ‘I know how much she respects you and values your good opinion.’ Suke sniffed and attacked a heap of earth in which lurked the turnips. There was a stiff silence. ‘I hope – I hope your feelings haven’t been hurt?’ I said, very stupidly.
She rounded on me with such savagery I knew they had been. ‘Didn’t I just say that I don’t allow possessive feelings to corrupt my relationships with other people?’
‘No. Right. Sorry. Shall I help you with those?’ I indicated the turnips she was scalping. I hoped she was going to remove the tough skins and blackened, frosted places.
‘Certainly not.’ Suke hurled them in their blotched, filthy state into a pan of boiling water reducing it to a thick, bubbling scum like a sulphurous geyser. ‘You’ve already done more than your fair share today. Sir Oswald, Jonno and Portia have not, as far as I know, done anything to help.’
This was certainly true. But I would always rather do things myself than have a row. Suke took me to task for this pusillanimity. She explained that this craven attitude reinforced bad habits, which ultimately were injurious for the people who had them. Suke was right, as always. She had worked out a rota for washing up and tonight it was Cordelia and Annabel’s turn. I looked forward to seeing what would happen the following evening when it was the turn of Jonno and Sir Oswald. The coffee rota appointed Portia as chief percolator.
As supper had not appeared by eight o’clock and Miss Tipple and Sir Oswald were starting to get tetchy I again offered my services in the kitchen but Suke, pausing briefly in the process of giving something that resembled Dirk’s Canomeat a punishing stirring, said they could manage. Archie gave me a meaningful glance behind her back and tapped his temple. Suke turned her head in time to see him do it. Her eyes became steely and her mouth a thin line. You would think that male and female homosexuals would be sympathetic to each other but it seemed not.
There was something to be said for Suke’s system. It meant I could slip up to the Little Parlour straight after dinner and get on with my work. Gradually the party below dispersed. Miss Tipple went first, her elbow supported by Suke, who warned her about steps and uneven flooring in a nannyish, possessive voice. Portia and Jonno, yawning noisily with a pretence of lassitude that I am sure deceived no one, left the room immediately afterwards.
I had always envied Portia’s ability to throw herself wholeheartedly into the business in hand. But I wondered if Portia’s evident passion for Jonno was wise. I had watched them from my bedroom window that afternoon, capering hand-in-hand across the snowy fields like Zhivago and Lara celebrating the overthrow of the Bolsheviks. Jonno had been admirably restrained as far as drinking was concerned for the last forty-eight hours. Anyone could see he was, for the moment, drunk on love. But then everyone knows that wisdom has nothing to do with love.
What has it to do with, then? If not reason, is it purely a synergy of two sets of loins? I could answer that one. No. I had certainly desired Max. But even before I had found out about Georgia I had not begun to love him. I had to confess to myself that I had probably never actually been in love. I had been very fond of Dodge. I had admired his evangelical spirit and his ascetic way of life. He had seemed to me like a purifying fire in a world of hoggish dissipation. It had not occurred to me in those days to attribute his enthusiasm for political regeneration to a desire to lift himself from the dreariness of the workaday world.
Perhaps, I thought sadly, altruism was incompatible with the state of being human. It might not be possible to withstand the cruel buffets of life without the soft garments of fantasy and self-deception. A footfall behind me made me spin round.
‘I’ll go to bed, now, miss, if there’s nothing more.’ Mrs Whale’s habitual look of faded suffering had been replaced by one of lively annoyance. ‘I’ve washed the dinner plates that the girls left greasy, glued the coffee cup back together, though I can’t say if it’ll be fit for use, unblocked the sink and cleared up the suds that was all over the kitchen floor. If you ask me, those Communists, or whatever Miss Suck calls herself, ought to learn to mind their own business.’
‘Oh dear. I am sorry.’
‘It’s not your fault, miss.’ I was pleased to detect a softening in her voice. Perhaps there was a chance we were on the way to becoming friends.
‘I could have a word with Suke,’ I suggested, without much conviction, ‘explain to her that we’ve got into the habit of managing things a certain way.’
‘You can try if you like but I doubt you’ll do good. Once folks think they’ve got it in them to save the world it’s my experience there’s no doing anything with them. It’s nothing more than conceit, if you ask me.’ This summed up very neatly what my thoughts had been vaguely groping towards. ‘But I’m talking out of turn. That’s my pride speaking.’ Mrs Whale lowered her eyes, as though suddenly recalling the blots on her own copybook. ‘A haughty spirit goes before a fall, as the Bible says. It’s my afternoon off, tomorrow, miss. I shall catch the one o’clock bus into Bunton.’
‘Oh, good! I hope you’ll have a lovely time. Are you going to see The Four Musketeers? It really was quite funny.’
‘I’m going to see Father Terry at the deanery. He suffers badly from shingles, which makes him grumpy, and he can’t seem to keep domestic help. I always boil his smalls for him on a Saturday.’ Mrs Whale looked almost elated by this grim prospect. ‘And he wants me to scrub the scullery and worm the cat.’
After she had gone I drew spider’s legs round an ink stain on my paper while I thought about her strange life – a lovely, intelligent woman reduced by cruel circumstances to a gruelling existence of spiritual struggle and self-repression. I drew an intricate web for the spider. It looked quite gothic so I added a pointed doorway with a skeleton arm waving from within. This reminded me that I was supposed to be working. I was not expecting Rupert for another hour and I must use the time profitably. ‘A grey veil spun by long-dead spiders and thickened by the dust of ages draped the chained case like a pall …’
I was floating face down on a bed of snow. As I pushed my head into it I saw a whole world beneath, full of tiny people, getting on buses and hurrying into shops. It was not snow but cloud and I was the wind. I sucked in my cheeks and blew and the little people below me clutched at lamp-posts and ran after their hats. I felt guilty but it was fun. I blew harder and found that I could roar. Trees bent before the blast and chimneypots crashed from rooftops. A diminutive Dirk looked up at me, barking. I put down my giant hand from the sky and tapped him gently on the nose, hissing so sibilantly that people threw themselves flat on the ground with their hands over their ears. Dirk took hold of my finger between his teeth and pulled. I was falling from the clouds, faster and faster and the earth was spiralling up to meet me. I met it with a thwack on the side of my head and woke.
Something hard – the desk top on which my head had rested while I dozed – was hurting my jawbone, and my feet were numbed by cold. I sat up and looked at my watch. It was after twelve. I peered through the squint into the drawing room below. The electric light
s had been turned off and a three-branched candlestick left burning on the table by Old Gally’s chair. The fire had been recently tended and gave out a generous vermilion light. It stained the panelling with gold, put glints into the eyes of the faces in the portraits and lent warmth to the painted cheek. It required no effort to imagine the drawing room peopled by men in doublets and sugar-loaf hats, and women in embroidered coifs and farthingale skirts. Only a pile of paperbacks on the stool by Miss Tipple’s chair spoiled the illusion that I had gone back three hundred years as I slept.
I thrust my head a little further out to check that someone had remembered to put the guard in front of the fire. Mingled with the odours of furniture polish, flowers and burning logs was the smell of tobacco. Had someone left a cigarette burning in an ashtray? I turned out the lamp on my desk. As my eyes adjusted to the change in the level of light, the features of the room below became more distinct. Old Gally’s chair faced away from me towards the fire. From above its high back a long curl of smoke drifted upwards and feathered in the draught. I could just see the top of a head covered with very short white hair. I heard a creak as the occupant of the chair moved and a toe appeared as though the owner of the head had crossed one leg over the other.
An unexpected visitor had been left alone in the drawing room and had decided to pass the time with a cigarette, unaware that Old Gally’s chair was off limits. This, I told myself, was the most likely answer. But the wind would howl like a demented soul suffering the torments of eternal damnation, making it impossible to believe in sensible, everyday solutions. Suppose … just suppose … I debated with myself. I could stay where I was until Rupert’s return. Despite the cold, for the fire in the Little Parlour was out, this course of action, or non-action, recommended itself urgently. What I ought to do was to go calmly down and investigate. Was I a neck-or-nothing correspondent with a career to make or a contemptible coward?
Clouds among the Stars Page 49