A moment later she appeared again, pulling the celandines from her hair.
“Well?” she asked.
“Ianthe! It was … it was tremendous. I’ve never seen anything like it before.”
“I bet you haven’t.”
Ianthe sat down on the wall and began to eat a celandine. She was always eating things; anything she picked up she would nibble and chew.
“The singing was so frightening,” said Lucy. “How did you manage to get it just that much out of tune? It’s generally so bad; the Valentine song is such a jaunty little tune and they plod through all the verses, looking so embarrassed. Can you do the next bit?”
“No. I’m not sure of the lines.”
“How would you do: Rosemary, that’s for remembrance?”
“Oh … terrified. I wouldn’t linger wistfully … the way they do. She didn’t want to remember. She went mad so as to forget. I should fling the thing away as if I’d picked up a snake.”
“That’s what I think. But she’s supposed to give it to Laertes.”
“And why, pray? Why should she always have to deal those flowers round as if it were a hand at bridge? I shouldn’t.”
Lucy pondered and then said:
“I can’t imagine why you don’t go on the stage.”
“I can only act mad parts.”
“Oh, nonsense. If you worked hard, there are heaps of parts you could act.”
“I’d hate to work hard.”
“They’d have to be a bit morbid, of course. But I can’t wait to see you do them. Why don’t you go into the Drama School?”
“What? With the Frog? Not for Joseph!”
Ianthe jumped up and made an entrance in the Frogmore style, taking four quick steps, pausing, presenting the torso, and intoning in a resonant contralto:
“She geeves me a paaa-in in mai … guts!”
“But we’re putting on Hamlet in the autumn. I can’t bear to think of that little pink pig of a Wendy playing Ophelia when you’re in Ravonsbridge.”
“Honey pie! Would H. E. or the Frog ever let me play it? They like it like this:”
Ianthe became a pink pig and chirruped sheepishly:
“Said she: before you tumbled me,
You promised me to wed …”
“Well then, go to the R.A.D.A. You can’t have a gift like this and just do nothing with it.”
“Too much trouble,” said Ianthe, chewing a piece of moss. “I act when I feel like it. To go on, night after night, when I don’t feel like it … no, thank you!”
“Oh,” cried Lucy. “Then I despise you. I really despise you. When I think … Oh, I’d give anything to have such a talent.”
She had often wished that she had some marked gift, or some vocation, to which she might devote her life. It would have helped her through these months. But she had none.
Ianthe scowled. She wished to be admired, not scolded. Her performance had excited her; the strangeness of the afternoon had roused a devil in her which was inseparable from her genius.
Hitherto she had failed to impress Lucy, and knew it, and accepted the fact. Their relationship had been the sanest, the most friendly, affair of the sort that Ianthe had ever known. Never before had she become so intimate with anyone without deceiving them; she had told a few romantic tales to Lucy, had been openly disbelieved and laughed at, and had agreed to laugh at herself. She knew that their friendship depended on the maintenance of this integrity, and that she herself had never been happier than she was now. But some devil goaded her to experiment; to find out how much she could make Lucy believe if she really tried.
“If you knew everything about me,” she retorted sullenly, “you wouldn’t be surprised at anything I do. I … I had a fearful shock once … I don’t believe I shall ever get over it.”
“Saw something nasty in the woodshed?” asked Lucy unkindly.
Ianthe’s fearful shock was usually on those lines, though she never told exactly the same story twice. But, in view of Lucy’s callous incredulity, she decided that perhaps she had better not have been raped at a tender age. She would think of something perfectly new. A striking episode popped into her mind, of which she had never yet made use, though she had always meant to do so. Sometime last year she had seen a picture in a newspaper of a girl, a bride, sitting alone in a car. People crowded round and peered at her. The bridegroom had not turned up. She had forgotten, perhaps had never troubled to learn, names and details, but she had immediately pictured this girl as herself.
She hesitated for a moment, but only because she would have liked to think it out a little more. Then she said:
“No. It happened three years ago, in Yorkshire. Nobody in Ravonsbridge knows, except my family of course. You must please not tell anybody….”
In a low and trembling voice she began her story.
Lucy at first sat rigid. She thought that Ianthe knew the truth and was laughing at her. But a wild burst of sobbing bewildered her. It seemed so real. In spite of the acting which she had just witnessed on the terrace, it convinced her.
“But … why didn’t he come?” she asked in a low voice.
Ianthe had not made up her mind about this, so she did not answer.
“Was it … another woman?”
“Oh, no …” gasped Ianthe, making up her mind. “No. Not as bad as that. He was dead. Killed in an accident….”
Not as bad as that! thought Lucy, staring at her. Why … she couldn’t have loved him, then!
“How soon did you know?” she asked.
“They came and told me … in the church. I went out and got into the car. It was waiting outside. All the people kept staring at me through the window.”
But if she’s lying, thought Lucy, how does she know what it’s like? Oh, this is a nightmare!
“Where did you wait then?”
“Wait?”
“In the church … before they told you?”
“Oh, at the chancel steps.”
“They let you get up there! When he hadn’t come! Who was there? Was it a big wedding?”
“Oh, yes. Crowds.”
“Bridesmaids, I mean, and all that?”
“Oh, yes … I had four bridesmaids.”
“What did they do?”
“I don’t know.”
“But didn’t anybody do anything? I can’t picture it at all.”
“I didn’t notice,” said Ianthe, who found this catechism rather chilling. “When a frightful thing like that happens, you don’t notice details. You don’t notice other people.”
“Don’t you?”
“I expect they were rushing about and making a fuss,” conceded Ianthe, realising that this was probable.
“I expect they were.”
“I fainted. I remember the clergyman catching me as I went down.”
“You seem to have managed it all very gracefully.”
Lucy’s dry voice told Ianthe that her story had failed. It was disbelieved. She looked up, ready to admit that she had been lying, and to laugh it off. Confess I had you fooled for quite a long time, she would say.
But Lucy’s face, blanched, almost withered, with disgust, silenced her. She realised that she had made some dire and irretrievable mistake and that their friendship, such as it was, had come to grief. There would be no more laughter.
Lucy felt quite sick and bewildered. She was sure now that Ianthe knew nothing and had intended no malice. It was pure chance which had played this grotesque trick on them. Or perhaps it was not fortuitous; reflecting on the episode afterwards, she came to believe that her own name, seen for a moment and forgotten, had subconsciously influenced Ianthe and caused her to select this story rather than another.
But the sense of outrage was the same, however it had happened. She had thought that she knew all that she must endure. She had struggled with loneliness, with humiliation, with anguished memories, with spasms of wild longing to see Patrick, just once; she had plodded through the dreary days and faced the nights w
hen Melissa’s eyes, floating on the darkness, came to murder sleep. She had got used to it. She had learnt to bear it. But for this ludicrous parody of her own suffering, this exploitation of truth, she had not been prepared.
Unconsciously, she had always clung to dignity as her sole possession. She had asked for no pity, made no lamentation, and had endured each moment as it came, waiting patiently for release, because she believed that in all circumstances there must be some right way in which to think and act, which can lift them into a kind of beauty. But now it was as if the value of feeling itself had been cheapened; as if this tainted creature had made her own experience false, so that she could never again be free from Ianthe’s grimaces. Melissa’s eyes, she thought, snatching at truth, intolerable, healing truth. But she could not see them any more.
She sat on the parapet, stiff, white and bitter, looking, so Ianthe thought, as if she belonged to this ruined house. As I shall sit, mused Ianthe, when I act my next mad part. I’ll freeze everybody to stone, if I can manage to look as she does!
After a while they rose and went in search of their bicycles. Lucy looked back at the house as they pushed the gate open again. She had a sudden vision of its daimon; a little, old, cold, sly thing with no nose, utterly stupid and immensely powerful. They had lingered near it too long and it had put a spell on them.
They rode back to Ravonsbridge and parted with scarcely a word, each considerably the worse off for that afternoon’s work. Lucy banged into the Angera kitchen and tried to make herself a cup of tea. With the clumsiness of misery she managed to scald her hand. Her agonised yelp brought in Angera, who was unexpectedly kind and clever. He bandaged her hand, gave her brandy, and made her lie down in the sitting-room while he brought in tea. He was in a very good humour that afternoon.
“Poor Lucy,” he kept saying, as he ministered to her. “Poor little Lucy!”
“Not so little,” she said, when she had drunk the tea and felt better. “That’s the trouble. Poor women shouldn’t be tall.”
“That is true. Pathos is for little tiny women. How is your hand now?”
“Throbbing a bit, but better. Where’s Nancy?”
“She has gone out with the child.”
He sat on the sofa beside her and explained his good mood.
“Imagine! Today I have sold a picture. A party came to see the School and they have bought a picture.”
“Which one?”
“Of bomb damage in Severnton.”
Angera was fond of painting bomb damage.
“What will you do with the money?” asked Lucy, trying to show interest and pleasure.
“I shall give it all to Nancy. It’s she who needs money, not I.”
He put an arm round Lucy’s waist.
“At Easter,” he continued, “I shall take her to Leamington Spa.”
Who cares? thought Lucy drearily.
“Why Leamington Spa?” she asked.
“She is always vishing to go. She says it is beautiful.”
“She should know,” said Lucy drowsily. “It looks dull from the train.”
Angera might be as bald as an egg, but his caresses were expert. She submitted to them and wondered if she liked them.
“I shall take her,” he said grandly, “to an expensive hotel in Leamington Spa.”
Lucy suddenly pushed him away and got up.
“You’re quite good at it,” she said, “but it’s no use. I don’t like it.”
“You think I try to seduce you?” he asked derisively.
“No. I know it’s only slap and tickle. I don’t think you’d ever be really untrue to Nancy. I think you love her.”
“I also think so. But what then is the harm of slap and … and … what did you call it?”
“Slap and tickle. No harm in the world, I suppose. But it doesn’t do me any good. If it did, I’d thank you for it. If getting drunk could do any good I’d go out and get pickled.” Lucy’s voice rose and shook. “But nothing … nothing … nothing …”
“Ach, poor Lucy!”
Angera jumped up, his eyes bright and compassionate.
“You are very bad tonight?” he observed.
“Yes.”
He was, she knew, curious about her past and had often asked impertinent questions. But he did not do so now. He balanced on the edge of a table, staring at her with unusual friendliness.
“Nothing,” he suggested, “is lasting for ever.”
“I suppose not.”
“Listen, Lucy. I have somesing to tell you. You won’t listen because I behave always so stupidly. You think I don’t have any sensible ideas. But I have been in moments as bad as yours, if you can believe that.”
“Yes, Emil, I can believe that. Worse, I should think.”
“And I have seen how one must bear them, though myself, I’m not doing it, because I’m a fool.”
He paused, trying to arrange his words.
“One must think: life is like a river and it is taking me places. All the time. Every day. Always somesing new, some new place, and each day I say: what is this place I’ve come to? And sometimes it’s very bad. Other times not so bad. And next day I say: Goodbye bad place! Goodbye sweet place. My life is taking me on. So! We can’t stay in the good places. We need not stay in the bad places. We must go on and always make ourselves interested, and we must not fight this river. For life … life …” said Emil, his dark eyes blazing, “that is everything. The river that carries us.”
“Old Man River,” said Lucy.
“How? I said nothing of an old man!”
“I know. I think I see what you mean, Emil. You mean we mustn’t think any place, good or bad, is the last place?”
“That is what I mean. If we think that, the river doesn’t go any more.”
“I see. Well, thanks. I believe I’ll go to bed, now.”
She climbed upstairs to her room and knelt for a long time at her open window, looking at a young crescent moon which had risen over the long humped hills of the forest.
Emil’s kindness had calmed her. He was not often kind, but when he did feel sympathy he accepted and expressed it as easily as he did the impulse for a bout of slap and tickle. He did not feel himself to be divided from the object of his compassion by some superior immunity.
His philosophy of Old Man River did not impress her, but it could not be written off as nonsense, for it had apparently brought him through wreck and disaster, through the stagnation of internment, in fairly good shape. He was a good artist and an inspired teacher, he did his share of work in the world, and his recurrent silliness was not, probably, a product of his misfortunes; he had been born with it.
Mr. Meeker, she remembered, also had an Old Man River. He had said that every experience of any value can be translated into the language of religious experience. This phrase conveyed nothing to her, but it must mean a lot to Mr. Meeker, who was blind, lonely and dependent, yet managed to be cheerful.
Life, mused Lucy, is not a river. It’s a race-course, where everybody rides his own little bit of nonsense. If you can’t find a bit of nonsense of your own to take you over your fences, you’re done. You can’t offer yours to anybody else, and theirs are no good to you.
I can’t find a mount. I had one. I thought it was noble to be brave. But that wasn’t a stayer. Nothing is noble. I’m done.
At last she went to bed and fell asleep at once, without having to dodge those eyes, which generally popped up when she began to grow drowsy. They were, as she discovered later, gone for good. The physical reverberations of shock ended at a moment when she believed herself to be defeated. In time, she came to look back upon that day at Slane St. Mary’s as a turning-point. In twenty-four hours she had grown much tougher, and very far removed from the vulnerable creature who had come to Ravonsbridge in the autumn.
5
RICKIE pushed the hair out of his eyes, raised his baton, and hummed a line of recitative:
“And all the more they cried out saying:”
&n
bsp; “CRUCIFY HIM!” yelled the Ravonsbridge choir.
Lucy, who did duty as a soprano when she was not playing her bassoon, thought that she must have injured her larynx, but Rickie was not satisfied. He rapped on his music stand and stopped them.
“No, no — that won’t do. You’re a mob, remember, out for blood. I want more of a howl. Now again … They cried out saying:”
Nobody howled. The choir was gaping at Robin, who had put his head in at the door and was making faces.
“Results?” cried somebody. “Not out already?”
“No,” said Robin. “Only grapevine telegraph. We’ve saved our deposit. That’s what they’re saying, down in the market-place.”
He vanished.
“I say,” spluttered Rickie, “I say! How marvellous! Well, let’s get back to it.”
But his choir was by now out of hand. Everybody wished to be in the market-place. Only Rickie would have tried to hold a practice on election night. All over the room people were jumping up, stampeding for the door. The quadrangle was full of groups making for Church Lane, the lights, the hubbub of Market Square.
“But the results won’t be out for hours,” cried Rickie piteously. “You can’t want just to go and stand …”
“Yes, we do,” said Lucy, seizing his arm. “Come along!”
He capitulated and came along. In Church Lane they met more news.
“They’re saying Millwood will get in.”
“Oh, no,” cried Millwood’s supporters in unison. “That can’t be true.”
“How could they possibly know, anyway?” asked Lucy. “They’ve only just begun the count.”
“Everyone in the square is saying it. A lot of people said they’d voted Liberal when they came from polling.”
Lucy Carmichael Page 13