Lucy ran down the steps and jumped into the seat beside Charles. The car set off cautiously along the avenue. She was so much engrossed by this suggestion of new lodgings that she scarcely noticed the honour of her position. The rooms in Sheep Lane certainly sounded very nice: but she did not like being ordered about in this way. Yet it would be foolish to refuse a good arrangement merely because Lady Frances was peremptory; and Emil had been going through a lupine phase just lately, catching hold of her and kissing her, not behind Nancy’s back, but in a jocular manner before Nancy’s face, which was unfair and difficult to repel. But what would poor Nancy do without her?
She sat revolving all these questions while Charles pushed warily through the drifts. Conversations and smothered giggles sprang up on the benches behind them. Rickie was humming: If thou let this man go thou art not a friend of Caesar’s….
They nosed through the avenue gates into the silent village street where all the roofs were white, and light from an open door threw an orange patch on the snow. Then they took the long, lifting road up the hill. The valley and the shadowy woods and the white roofs fell away. Slane forest, chequered in black and white, came into view under a fitful gleam of moonlight, the bare ridges rising like blanched ghosts of familiar hills, very beautiful and strange.
All white under the moon, thought Lucy — all England under the snow, which has fallen so silently everywhere, making all places look alike, and all the places where I have been, on Oxford and Ravonsbridge and Gorling and London, and where I am now and where he is now, living his life at every moment away from me, for ever away from me, and with no thought of me….
She shivered a little and Charles asked if she was cold. She assured him that she was quite warm and asked hastily if this was Gibbet Hill where Bob Mantrip, the highwayman, was hanged. Charles said that it was and commended her for not confusing him with Dickon Salter, as some people did.
“Oh, that mangy Robin Hood!” exclaimed Lucy. “But he was in 1350! I was thinking of him, coming through Slane Bredy in the bus.”
“What a lot of local history you know!”
“Old Mr. Meeker tells me. He knows a lot of local things.”
“Meeker?”
“He’s the father-in-law of Mrs. Meeker, who is on the Town Council. He’s blind, and lives with them.”
“It’s a pity he doesn’t teach local history to his daughter-in-law.”
“Oh, you mean the monument? He does, but she never listens. Have you seen Mr. Finch’s pamphlet?”
“Oh, Finch wrote it, did he? You mean Canon Pillie’s curate?”
“Yes. And he’s written a play about Dickon Salter. He sent it to Mr. Thornley and wanted the Institute to put it on, but it was really too silly. Mr. Meeker says he’s mixed Dickon Salter up with at least three other people.”
Charles decided not to post that letter. He had supposed himself to be the only person in Ravonsbridge well informed enough to have written it. And he asked for more about Mr. Meeker.
“He went to school with your father,” said Lucy. “I think they were great friends when they were boys. Did your father never mention him?”
Charles reflected and remembered that his father had sometimes spoken affectionately of “Harry Meeker” when recalling old times.
“Blind?” he said thoughtfully.
“Yes,” said Lucy. “He was a schoolmaster, away in the north, till he went blind. Now … Oh, I suppose they look after him all right, but he’s very lonely. He has nobody to talk to. He loves talking about your father. He’ll want to know everything about my visit to Cyre Abbey today. I’ve promised to go in tomorrow and tell him about it.”
And what will she tell him about me? wondered Charles. That I made a surly exhibition of myself.
For he knew that he had behaved badly all the afternoon. He said quickly:
“I’d like to go and see him, as soon as this election business is over. I didn’t know he’d come back to Ravonsbridge.”
“Oh, if you would!” cried Lucy, turning to him. “He’d be over the moon. You can’t think how pleased he’d be.”
She beamed at Charles, almost ready to forgive him for his bad manners, in her pleasure at the proposed treat for Mr. Meeker.
A nice girl, decided Charles. Not a damp brunette. Not even a bright blonde. A cut above most of the poor girls with sad stories. But not exciting.
They slithered downhill and crunched into Ravonsbridge market square, where the snow was all furrowed into blackened ruts. Charles drew up and everybody got out, thanking him and calling out farewells to one another and dispersing to their scattered homes. Lucy, Ianthe and Robin clustered together for a moment, talking in low voices. Then they came back to the car, just as Charles was starting up.
“We’re all going into the Swan for a bracer,” said Lucy. “Do come with us and have a drink before your drive back.”
He hesitated, and then got out, hardly knowing why he did so except that he wanted to give her something pleasant to tell old Harry Meeker, who would be glad to hear that Matt’s son put on no airs, and took bracers when invited. He was really anxious to modify the impression of insolence which he knew he must have given, and to make amends to this nice, dull girl for having, in imagination, saddled her with triplets.
Ianthe led the way across the square into the Swan, which was full of Sunday night conviviality. Room was respectfully made for them when Charles was seen, and many heads were furtively turned to stare at the four handsome young people, as they sat at a low table with a rum apiece. Robin hastily paid for all the drinks, knowing that the girls would later reimburse him for their share; money was short among the students and Dutch treat was the rule at such parties. But they did not want Charles to pay; he was their guest.
Lucy and Ianthe made a striking couple. By Ravonsbridge standards they were very well dressed and their poise was remarkable. Robin was, in this company, on his best behaviour. The rum warmed them. Conversation became unexpectedly easy.
Quite like old times, thought Lucy. She had not been to a party at the Swan before. But a year ago, less than a year ago, she had often sat with Melissa, smiling at agreeable young men, secure and gay, aware of being looked at with admiration and interest. Two pretty girls and their escorts! Two pretty girls who never knew, never knew that time rushes on to the spring, to the summer, to the end of everything. And then, after the end of everything, time went on until now … here were two pretty girls and their escorts.
But Ianthe is not Melissa, she thought, and I don’t really like her much, and we would never have dreamed of going out with a boy like Robin, nor would we have had much to say to Charles Cross-Mouth. And my heart is aching all the time. All the time. But, even after the end of everything, one goes on doing the same things, in a kind of parody, because there is nothing else to do.
She laughed a little too loudly at some joke of Robin’s, for the rum was taking effect. Charles, she could perceive, thought them all very provincial. His real friends, she supposed, must be among those people whose pictures she saw in the Tatler, in that world to which the Hallams did not quite belong but into which Melissa might possibly marry. I suppose he’s only happy among the Nobs, she thought.
In this she was mistaken. Charles despised the provinces but he was not really happy among the Nobs. The Ravonscleres were, in their superb way, as provincial as the Millwoods. They devoted themselves to Severnshire, ignored the Tatler and thought many of the Nobs rather vulgar. On both sides of the family there was a vein of idealism which Charles had inherited in a degree just sufficient to make him discontented in any kind of society.
He glanced at his watch and said that he must go. Lucy smiled at him over her glass and thought that nothing really mattered.
4
EVERY evening for the next fortnight a party from the Institute raided the new town between six and seven o’clock. It was like exploring a new country, and Ianthe christened their excursions: Expeditions into the Interior.
She was by far the most successful canvasser. She threw herself into the work with a zeal and efficiency which entirely justified Lady Frances, and she was the only one of them who ever got past a doorstep. On two or three occasions she actually got into a house, and once she was offered a cup of tea. The women especially seemed to like her.
“It’s snobbery,” she explained to the others. “Good old British snobbery. They won’t vote Tory, but they don’t like to be called the common people. So I’m selling Liberalism as the non-class party. When I make it clear I don’t think they’re working-class I get asked in. Well … they don’t think they are. They’ve got lounges, and three-piece suites, and television … and they think the class struggle is old-fashioned, something Dad and Mum went on about, they think it’s corny old stuff.”
Robin’s eyelashes also proved to be an asset to the Liberal Party. Few housewives slammed the door in his face. But nobody else made much headway, though Rickie had some interesting musical colloquies, for he was combining his political errand with a search for tenors. His first question, when a door was opened, was to ask if anybody sang in that house. If anybody did, the cause of Millwood was abandoned. If nobody did, he would exclaim: “Oh, bad luck! Well, actually I’m a Liberal!” And was seldom allowed to say more.
New Ravonsbridge was either voting Socialist or not interested in politics. The majority of the houses displayed a poster which said:
VOTE FOR PUGH AND SEE IT THROUGH
The Liberal candidate’s name was against him. This was not the case in the old town. Matthew Millwood was still remembered there with affection and pride, and so were the many benefactions which he and his family had showered on the town. But over the river the Millwoods were the Bosses, who had made a great deal of money which ought to be taken away from them, and who had built hospitals now run by the State. There was a persistent belief that they, and all rich people, would like to see widespread unemployment, in order to bring down wages.
“Shut down the Works, that’s what they’d like to do,” an angry woman said to Lucy, “and see us all back on the dole.”
“But they’d be ruined themselves if they had to shut down the Works,” protested Lucy.
“Oh, no. They’ve got plenty put by. But they’ll have to give it back one of these days — give it back to those they took it from. Redistribution is retribution. That’s what Jack Pugh said, Monday, and he’s quite right.”
“But the M.M. never did shut down, not even in the worst years of the Depression. Ravonsbridge was never on the dole.”
“That’s what I say. They managed to keep on making money when everybody else was starving.”
*
On the Saturday before the election Lucy and Ianthe bicycled over to Slane St. Mary’s, an outlying forest hamlet which had not been canvassed, and which burdened the conscience of the local organisation.
The day was mild and balmy. Spring had come with a rush on the heels of the thaw. Though patches of snow still lay on shadowy corners of northward slopes, the crocuses were out in the cottage gardens. The tapestry of forest trees had lost its uniform brown; beech, oak, chestnut, ash, elm and larch — each had now a particular tint as the sap rose and the buds began to swell.
Slane St. Mary’s was difficult to locate. They rode all over the forest, trudging up steep hills and skimming down narrow lanes to hidden valleys. In the end they found it by accident; they saw a cluster of thatched roofs in a hollow below and went down to ask the way.
“This is it!” called Lucy, who was talking to a woman by a garden gate.
It was a strangely quiet place. Thin threads of smoke rose straight into the air from the chimneys above the thatch. A cock crowed from time to time. All the men of the place were out at work, but the women listened civilly, so civilly that they might never have heard of the changed world beyond the forest ridges. They called the young ladies ‘ma’am’ and thanked them for the pamphlets. One old crone even dropped a curtsey. But there was no way of knowing how they would vote.
“No bus comes nearer than Slane Bredy,” said Ianthe, as they wheeled their bicycles along the rutted lane. “I believe they’ll vote for anyone who sends a car to take them to the poll. How on earth do they do their shopping? Hullo? Is this where wold Squoire lives?”
They had come to two rusty gates, half off their hinges, and were looking down a drive at a mouldering Elizabethan house.
“Yes,” said Lucy. “Mr. Meeker was talking about it. It used to belong to the Knevetts, but they’ve taken the roof off, to save taxes, and all gone away.”
They pushed a gate open and went down the weedy drive to get a closer look at it. Once it must have been lovely but, in its decay and neglect, it was not pleasant to see, and not sufficiently ruined to be romantic. The windows were dirty and broken, and an old bath-tub was propped up against the porch. Both the girls felt cold, as they surveyed it, though they stood in sunshine. Something of its desolation affected them. Lucy felt sadder and Ianthe madder than they had felt a few minutes before.
“Once,” said Lucy, “they enclosed the people’s grazing land and the people were angry, and some ricks were burnt, and some men were sent to Botany Bay. When the Knevetts rode through the village the people used to shake their fists and mutter curses. And now …”
The distant cock crew, faint and shrill, triumphant in the quiet morning. He was echoed by Ianthe, who crooned in a soft, high chant:
“They’ve all gone away! All gone away! The roof’s falling in and they’ve all gone awa-a-ay!”
In the silence, a loud noise came from the degraded house. Ianthe screamed and clutched Lucy.
“Oh … oh! There’s a ghost inside. It heard me. It’ll come out!”
“Don’t be silly. It’s only some plaster falling.”
“No, no, they haven’t all gone away. They’re inside still. I’m frightened.”
“I don’t wonder. You frightened me. How did you manage to make your voice sound so horrible?”
“I’m very good in mad parts,” said Ianthe complacently. “Let’s go round and see what it’s like at the back.”
“I’m not sure I want to. I think we’d better get away.”
“Now it’s you that’s silly.”
Ianthe propped her bicycle against a wall and set off round the house, followed by the reluctant Lucy. For there was really something malign about the place, a chill which could not be shaken off, an expectant silence, as if invisible people were awaiting some inevitable catastrophe. Lucy remembered afterwards that she had known something bad would happen if they stayed there.
Yet at the back it was attractive. They found a mossy terrace, looking onto the remains of a garden with shapeless overgrown yew hedges. It was out of the wind and the sunshine was almost hot. Repelled, yet fascinated, they sat on a low stone balustrade and ate the sandwiches they had brought with them.
As they ate they amused themselves by imagining the Knevett family, inventing names and characters for them through the long centuries. A curious sharpening of perception, in both of them, made these pictures very real, so that they almost believed in their fantasy, and more than once they threw half-scared glances over their shoulders at the house behind. Very rustic and boorish these Knevetts must have been, they decided, shut away behind the forest ridges, secluded even from the urban amenities of Ravonsbridge. Ignorant, arrogant — lagging always behind the manners and morals of the age, they had ruled the hamlet in the hollow with an absolute power against which there could have been little appeal.
The wicked lord! thought Lucy, when Ianthe wandered off to explore the garden. Lord Ravonsclere did not hang Dickon Salter. But Sir Harry Knevett did send another Salter to Botany Bay. The wicked lord is a folk character and his name is of no consequence. He was real once, and he is remembered, and curses come home to roost.
The thought of all this unexpiated evil oppressed her. She could not detach herself from it or shake off the creeping melancholy which had weighed her down ever since
she pushed the gate open. Miserable as she had often been during the past months, she could not remember any moment when her courage had sunk lower. At the side of the terrace an almond tree was in blossom, lovely against the dark yew. Soon it would be spring. The leaves, the flowers, would come out, while she stayed where she was. It had been natural that the leaves should fall, those leaves which had seen the time of her happiness; winter had but reflected the desolation in her heart. But it was strange, strange and cruel, that this other spring should come, in which she had no part. She had again the feeling, first encountered when she had plodded over Campden Hill, of isolation and rejection.
If only it had been for a woman he loved, she thought sadly. For she had often felt that her sorrow would have been easier to bear if that were so, and if she had been able to think of Jane Lucas as another woman. But she could never picture her rival at all, save as a black mist which had enveloped Patrick and snatched him away — an abyss which had swallowed him up. He had told her very little about his former infatuation, but he had spoken of it with bitterness and disgust, as an association in which love, as Lucy understood love, had played no part. Jane Lucas was a vice which he thought to have shaken off and which had reclaimed him; she was as impersonal as a brandy bottle or a hypodermic syringe. Lucy could not imagine her; but the idea of his degradation struck her forcibly in this rotting place, so haunted by black thoughts.
A step on the terrace roused her. An extraordinary creature had emerged from among the yew hedges, a lunatic with wild black hair in which a few celandines were tangled. It swept up the terrace in a frenzy of anxiety, exclaiming:
“Where is the beauteous majesty of Denmark?”
Ianthe’s talent was phenomenal. She peopled the terrace with a king, a queen, a whole court, as she drifted from one to another, begging for counsel, dropping hints, swerving aside, nodding mysteriously. The horror which had crazed her was plain, her inability to tell it was piteous. Every word, every snatch of droning song, had, for her, some other import; she believed that she was telling the secret, though sometimes, assailed by confusion and doubt, she would pause, shake her head, and craftily bid them mark what she would say next. Not a word, not a gesture failed in effect, until she called imperiously for her coach, sank in curtseys to the sweet ladies, and swept from the terrace.
Lucy Carmichael Page 12