Having thus delivered himself, Rickie attacked his supper, unaware that Lucy and Melissa were both shaking with laughter and that John was crimson with rage.
As soon as she could control her voice, Melissa began to assure him that she did not wish to leave London. He was not easily quenched. He repeated all that he had already said and added, as an inducement, the suggestion that he and she would be able to spend all their free time together. But at last he understood that she was serious. Her refusal so mortified and astonished him that he said little more for the rest of the meal.
Not much passed between the others. John was outraged at the impudence of the whole idea. Melissa and Lucy had to do what talking there was, and reminded one another languidly of a performance of Comus in Worcester Gardens and how Sabrina, played by a girl whom they particularly disliked, fell into the lake instead of rising from it.
“The Provost of Oriel had to fish her out,” mused Melissa, “and I believe he got pneumonia. It was very sad.”
“I wasn’t there,” stated Rickie, gloomily disposing of the topic.
When they went upstairs for coffee Melissa commanded him to play. His normal response would have been a Bach Fugue, played very loud and rather too fast. But he was feeling miserable and wanted this fact to be known. He sat down at the piano, sought a suitable vehicle for despair, and began to sing.
“Home no more home to me …”
“Oh no,” cried Melissa, starting up. “Not that, please, Rickie! It’s too sad.”
“I’m feeling sad,” Rickie informed them. He went on.
“This,” whispered Melissa to John, “is the final horror.”
“What is it? It’s a good tune.”
“Mmhm … Vaughan Williams … but very mal à propos.”
“Cold blows the winter wind over hill and heather;
Thick drives the rain and my roof is in the dust.”
Rickie mourned a lost childhood through six long verses. They both stole a glance at Lucy, but she did not seem to be listening. She stood at the window, looking out into the square and apparently sunk in some kind of inward debate.
“Spring shall come, come again, calling up …”
“Nearly over,” murmured Melissa. “The moment he stops I shall insist on playing Rummy. Back me up.”
“He sings rather well.”
“Yes, he does, curse him!”
“Fair the day shine as it shone on my childhood;
Fair shine the day on the house with open door.
Birds come and cry there and twitter in the chimney …
But I go for ever and come again no more.”
“And now let’s play Rummy,” cried Melissa.
But Rickie was sulky and said that he hated cards. He was going to sing them Lully’s Bois épais. Melissa was obliged to be really uncivil before she could get him away from the piano. He then said that he was tired and would go home to bed. He must catch a 73 bus from Kensington High Street to Richmond. Melissa might walk over the hill with him to the bus-stop. This she refused to do, and when Lucy, turning from her post by the window, offered her company instead he was not very gracious.
He could not, however, refuse it and they set off together as soon as she had got a coat.
Rickie would not talk. He strode along with his shoulders hunched up, humming Lully.
“Je ne dois plus voir ce que j’aime …”
He was not used to disappointments. The little that he asked of life had always fallen into his lap.
When they were half-way over the hill Lucy spoke.
“Do you think I could apply for that job?”
“At Ravonsbridge? You?”
“I have the same qualifications as Melissa.”
He did not think she had at all the same qualifications.
“They want somebody permanent,” he said. “Aren’t you engaged or something?”
“I was, but it’s off.”
“Oh yes, I remember. Melissa told me.”
“So I’ve got to get a job, and I don’t want to be a school ma’am. I’d like a job in the country.”
Rickie peeped for a moment over the prison walls of his own depression and perceived that Lucy seemed to be in low spirits. She never used to speak in that flat, weary voice. He recalled Melissa’s warning and surmised that Lucy must have taken a knock. He reflected gloomily that they were both in the same boat. And then a new idea occurred to him.
“Of course,” he said, “if Melissa really won’t take it, you would be better than nobody. We could talk about her.”
“We could,” agreed Lucy with a faint smile.
“And she’d come to see you.”
“I’d ask her.”
This was worth considering. Also he remembered a drawback which he had put out of his mind when urging Melissa to come. There was a great shortage of comfortable accommodation in Ravonsbridge; in fact there were, he knew, no rooms to be had at the moment. The women’s hostel was full, and if Melissa had come she would probably have had to go as a paying guest to Emil Angera, the Art Director, who had a half-witted wife and lived in such squalor that nobody stayed there for longer than a term. This would not have been good enough for Melissa, but it would do for Lucy very well.
“It’s not a bad idea,” he decided at last. “I really can’t think of anybody better, if Melissa won’t come.”
“To whom should I write?”
“To Poole … to The Secretary, The Arts Institute, Ravonsbridge, Severnshire. State your qualifications and send copies of any testimonials you may have.”
“I can get those from the Prink and my tutor. And I have a stage one too … one vacation I worked as assistant stage manager for the Bradstowe Rep.”
“Splendid. Well … you send them along. And I’ll speak to Hayter and get him to support you on the Council.”
“Thank you, Rickie.”
“You don’t, by any chance, play the bassoon, do you?”
“No. Why?”
“I’m short of bassoons. But you could learn. You’d better start learning right away. I’ll borrow one for you; they’re expensive. It’s really providential,” said Rickie, who was growing quite enthusiastic. “Because one couldn’t ask Melissa to play the bassoon, could one? She’s so sort of fairy-like.”
“Where does one live?”
“Wherever one can. But I can get you lodgings with the Angeras. He’s the Art Director … he’s a refugee; very interesting chap. But his wife is English.”
“Look, Rickie! There’s your bus. Run!”
Rickie ran, with a hasty good-night.
Lucy turned and plodded up the hill again, her hands plunged in the pockets of her loose coat. She decided to write to Ravonsbridge that very night. It would be better than a school. And of all her friends perhaps Bess Turner would be less of a trial than any. She was a nice old donkey, completely good-natured and without a spark of imagination. The things about her which used to irritate Lucy did not signify now. She thought it funny to call anemones annymoans and a telephone a tephelone; but her comment on her friend’s disaster would be soothing.
“I say, Lucy! What sickening luck! I mean, how perfectly sickening. But you’ve got your trousseau and you’re sure to marry somebody else, you’re so pretty, and then you’ll have two trousseaux. I mean, there’s a bright side to everything, if only you can see it. But I expect you’re still feeling awfully sick about it, and it’s easy for other people to say cheer up. Have a peppermint!”
Lucy felt that she would rather be with stupid and insensitive people than with a friend like Melissa, who was feeling away on her behalf and hating it. Sympathy was like a reverberator, like a looking-glass, in which she was perpetually confronted with the spectacle of her own wretchedness.
Pain swept over her — such a tempest of grief and desolation as seemed more physical than mental. It was sheer feeling, in which thought played little part. Every limb ached. Nothing could help her. All was hostile — the pavement upon which she plan
ted her weary feet step by step, the quiet houses, the vast and cloudy sky. Her footsteps rang in an empty universe.
*
Je ne dois plus voir ce que j’aime.
She had got used to these spasms. They came on suddenly but after a while they went away again. There was nothing to do, when they seized her, save walk about until the anguish slackened and exhaustion, beneficent apathy, took its place.
When she came to the square again she went down the other side of the hill to the Bayswater Road, where arc lamps burned among the trees and the noisy traffic roared past her to the west. She paced for half a mile under the flickering tree shadows, and then, knowing the crisis over, turned homewards. She had forgotten how tired she was. By the time that she again reached the square she almost shrank from the effort of climbing the hill.
She paused for a moment, leaning against the square railing, and a sly voice murmured, close to her ear:
“Good evening! Where are you baound?”
Since the age of fifteen she had been able to deal with such prowlers, but tonight she had not her wits about her. She turned puzzled eyes upon the shadow by the square railings.
“I beg your pardon?” she said vaguely.
The leer vanished from his face. With a muttered apology he walked off.
I frightened him, she thought, as she began to toil up the hill. I frighten everybody, even the corner-boys.
*
The party had been such a failure that Melissa and John could not recover from it, even when they were alone. They laughed a little over Rickie, but they did not enjoy their tête-à-tête as they had expected. Presently they heard Lucy come in. She put her head in, for a moment, to say that she had letters to write, and went upstairs to her room. But her presence was felt by them, even after her slow footsteps were heard no more. They could not forget that she and her sorrow were in the house, and secretly each of them wished her away. They were ashamed of the wish but it was there. At this period of their lives they had a right to be gay and light-hearted. Before them were all the sober years of marriage, when they must often endure disagreeable evenings and be worried about their friends. This was their Spring and Lucy was making it seem like Autumn.
“Anyway,” said John, snatching at a cheerful suggestion, “perhaps there’ll be a chance now for Hump!”
Melissa laughed and quoted:
“One shoulder of mutton drives another down. Lord, how the Colonel will chuckle when he hears of this!”
“I suppose that’s a quotation from Jane Austen.”
“If you marry me you’d better learn her by heart, and then I needn’t explain who said what. But I’ve no hope that Hump will marry Lucy now. He wouldn’t want to. Who would? You didn’t think her at all attractive, did you?”
“Well … not this evening. But she’s unhappy. When she gets over it, perhaps …”
“When she’s got over it she’ll be a different person. She won’t be my Lucy. Hump would have adored my Lucy. But she’s gone. She’s gone for ever … and …”
Melissa could not finish. She laid her cheek for a moment against John’s shoulder.
PART II
THE LUMP
1
Extracts from Lucy’s letters to Melissa
Oct. 4th
I SAW my fate 10 miles away, as I was coming in the train up the Ravon valley. What is that unsightly lump on the top of that hill? I wondered. Can it be a building? Who could have done a thing like that on purpose?
The train wound up the valley and the hill with the Lump on it kept disappearing and reappearing, and each time it was nearer, until I realised what it was — the Ravonsbridge Institute. I suppose Matthew Millwood had the Acropolis in mind. But he didn’t find anyone to build him a Parthenon. It is just a great lump of masonry, and it dwarfs the town, which is a nice little old country market-town, going up a steep hill from the Ravon valley, with an early perp. church on top, which must have been a pretty landmark before they went and put the Lump on rising ground just behind it.
The station is in New Ravonsbridge, which fills the whole valley and is hideous. I’ll never go down there if I can help it — miles and miles of nasty little houses built for the workers at M.M.M. So I got a taxi and came to Angera Heim. He is the baldest man I ever saw. His wife says his hair all fell out in one night in 1940 when France capitulated. He was interned here and thought Hitler would win. I can’t imagine what he looked like before; his head is so enormous that it looks top-heavy even without hair. His nose is the shape of an electric-light bulb and he has Jewish eyes — i.e. dark and mournful as if he’d been persecuted for centuries, which he has, I suppose, and has learnt to expect the skinny leg of the chicken. He is 37.
He opened the door when I arrived, clutching a frying-pan in his hand, I can’t think why, for he can’t cook. And he looked at me very, very sadly and said: “Zis is terrible!”
It was, rather, because they had made no attempt to get my room ready, though they knew when I was coming. Mrs. A. is The Bottom as a housekeeper. She is an apple-cheeked little ninny with humble brown eyes and a blue plastic hair-slide in the shape of three daisies. They have a baby which she calls ‘baby’ and he ‘ze child’. It is a dribbly object; I wish I was a womanly woman and could think it sweet.
Well so I cleaned this room I am to have, for the first time in its life, and wrote home for some bed linen as the A.’s have not got any — their other pair is at the wash. It’s not a bad room; a big attic with a view east over Slane forest, which stretches all the way between here and Severnton. And at about 9 we had a meal in the kitchen: tea, stale swiss roll, 5 sardines, 4 tomatoes, and some cold porridge. Why this house should reek of cooking I cannot think. Nobody cooks. Mrs. A. said forlornly that she had tried to get kippers but there weren’t any so Mr. A. said of course there were, but the fishmonger is anti-semitic.
So we sat and he told me how much he hates England and how unkind we were to intern him in 1940, and how insensitive and stupid all the British are, and what hell Ravonsbridge is.
He says that Lady Frances Millwood, the Founder’s widow, knows nothing at all about Art, and simply uses the Institute to give jobs to her pets, and that the Council of Management all toady to her. All the Directors are hopelessly second-rate, except himself, and it is an insult for him to have to work with them. He mentioned that Mr. Thornley, my Boss, is sore because he had a little friend for whom he wanted the job. At 10.30, having said something nasty about everyone on the Staff, we went to bed without washing up.
Next morning I went up to the Lump. It’s not so bad when you get close up to it — rather stately. It’s the site that is wrong. There are 2 big quadrangles of Cotswold stone. I saw Mr. Hayter first, the Executive Director and the Eminence grise who got me the job, if Rickie is to be believed. I think I shall like him very much; he gives himself no airs, though he seems to be the big noise here. At first I thought he looked surprisingly young, quite a boy, but when he sits down you can see he’s going thin on top, and you think his wrinkles are smiles until he isn’t smiling. He was very agreeable and talked to me a lot about my work and everything. I got the impression that he doesn’t expect me to get on very well with Mr. Thornley, but hopes I’ll stick it, because he feels the place is going downhill and he’s anxious to get young blood in. I felt he was just a little apologetic about the level of the Institute Drama.
So then he took me to the theatre and introduced me to Mr. Thornley, who is dapper and dignified, with a quiff of white hair on the top of his head and, my dear, a monocle with a black ribbon! Altogether he looks quite as distinguished as he obviously thinks he is. And I realised I’d got off on the wrong foot, because I ought to have gone straight to the theatre, and not to Mr. Hayter’s office at all. I didn’t know. Nobody told me. Mr. Hayter’s office was the first place I came to. Mr. Thornley spent half the morning explaining to me that Mr. H. is junior to most of the Directors and that his job is the business side. There does seem to be an awful lot of jealo
usy.
We went to the theatre where I was permitted to watch Mr. T. rehearsing some students in She Stoops to Conquer. Mr. Hayter may well apologise, and I can quite believe about Rhubarb! It’s that sort of tradition. To call it Ham would be to insult nice food which we don’t often get.
But it seems that Mr. T. is the author of that play — His Eminence is Detained, which every amateur society has to act. You must have been in it yourself, some time or other. I have twice, once at school and once at a Village Institute. So he is called H. E. behind his back.
In the aft. I went to tea with my old school chum, Bess Turner. She works in the library, which is really lovely. It not only has every book anybody could want, but a very rare and valuable collection made by Matt. Millwood and presented to the Institute on his death. The head librarian is a sweet old tortoise of a man called Mildmay, a great bibliophile, who used to buy books for Millwood. He has promised to show me all the treasures sometime. He didn’t say anything nasty about anyone, perhaps because he never comes out of his library, and hardly knows the names of his colleagues.
Bess tells me everybody loathes Angera and I’m not to believe a word he says about anyone. She says it is particularly mean of him to be always crabbing Thornley, because Mr. T. got him the job here, and is a very good friend to him — always making the peace when Angera is silly and quarrels with people.
This letter is so sour I think I had better finish it. I had meant it to be sparkling with wit and humour but it hasn’t turned out that way. I’m not sorry I came, and I think that Slane forest looks most enticing. I mean to explore it.
Oct. 15
I seem to be settling and have got upsides with the work, which consists of running errands for Mr. T. and taking classes in English literature. I get on very well with Mr. T., who has quite forgiven me for going to Mr. Hayter first. He may be sore about my appointment, but he is a gent, and doesn’t take it out on me.
Lucy Carmichael Page 7