And I know now that lack of love isn’t a matter of an unsatisfactory ending to a novelette, but that it has results which are beyond computation. I know that the withholding of tenderness in families, even where there is no actual physical neglect, can warp character, enfeeble initiative and spoil careers. It was, I feel sure, something of this truth that Alma Chilcot had meant to convey when she said that I might be looking for something sensational which was not there, guessing that the young demand a target, large and clearly marked, at which to aim its shots.
‘The Stonors make bad mothers.’ It was Great-aunt Jane Stonor who had said that, a woman whom we had never seen, who mattered to nobody, who had probably hit the nail squarely on the head and who was to exist for future generations through one short sentence.
III
We went to Alma Chilcot’s grave bringing a big bunch of flowers. James tipped the sexton to keep it neat ‘for as long as the money lasts out. I mean – it mayn’t be able to be a regular payment’.
The man looked at the khaki uniform and gently concurred, as he made out the receipt upon which was the cemetery number. I couldn’t afford anything, there seemed to have been a lot of unforeseen expenses, lately.
The problem of Myra’s grave was less easy of approach. We tracked it – incredibly – through uncle Maxwell, whose unconsidered existence was thrown in as makeweight upon James’s duty-round of family visits. Aunt Sophia’s conventional sprightliness had its tricksy uses. ‘You men will like to have a good talk,’ quite ignoring the fact that their very respective positions upon the family tree had to be tentatively re-established and stabilized. But Uncle Maxwell was an in-law – once removed from clannish considerations, eternally free by blood.
‘Old Max has quite the makings of a person,’ James put it to me, but we both guessed that this uncharacteristic smoking-room session would do no real spade-work for intimacy, and that when the doors of the Emperor’s Gate house-closed upon James, our uncle would fade once more into always-a-nose-in-the-paper, an alarmed retirement from feminine gaiety and into the eternal Mr. Jorkins whose caprices aunt Sophia worked whenever plans or pleasures not of her own contrivance were mooted. But his value for us was that he was an outsider, who, if not seeing most of the game, at least was willing to explain it without bias. Myra Vallant to him was sheerly an unknown and defunct sister-in-law, casual query about whom would be as casually dealt with and forgotten – another point in our favour.
James admitted to me that on going upstairs to the drawing-room to say good-bye to aunt Sophia (who, it seems, was at her desk, which made him grin), the fact of being in that large parqueted space in the morning almost robbed him of his bearings and gave him ‘a feeling of nudity and prying’, plus a genuine interest for the first time in his life as to what ‘these people’ were really like. Quite soon a gong would sound in the hall, and they would assemble and eat food. Just a family – and for ever obscured because they were relations, about whom we should never see clearly for anecdote and joke, disparagement and facetious rumour.
But for all that, it was a Seagrave who made quite plain to us where Myra was buried.
It was a very small grave, this marble-rimmed oblong of turf in Brompton Cemetery, and we exchanged surprised relief that it was not spoiled by abominable sentiment of stout angel pointing heavenward – though there might have been reasons for that omission. …
‘– and probably were,’ said James, although I had not said a word.
On the way, we had argued the question of flowers or no flowers. James thought that as she had never lived, for us, this years-late tribute would be as dead as an undelivered letter; I took the line that if all time is one and the present co-existent with the past, our offering could not be belated. We grew so interested over the argument that with no more than a glance at Myra’s grave, we strode past it altogether, by headstones and memorials to eminents – a Lascelles and some Victorian actor whose name I have forgotten. Also, when shepherded back, we had forgotten the flowers themselves, and when we approached the grave, there were flowers, a sheaf of lilies of the valley.
We looked at each other. ‘Somehow, I swear those weren’t there just now,’ he murmured. I didn’t believe they were, either, and said so. We tracked an official at the lodge. The Myra Vallant grave? He consulted the cemetery plan.
‘Oh yes, the lady brings flowers regular, very regular, though not always at the same time, like. She’s brought flowers for years. I’ve bin here sixteen years … She’s just come and gone.’
‘Excuse me, but who is she?’
‘Buchan, the name is. Mrs. Austen Buchan.’
We moved on.
‘That was a close shave,’ muttered James. He had turned rather white, and my hands were beginning to shake.
IV
During James’s leave, Dolly Verdune married her ‘Arthur’, whose non-committal surname turned out to be Hillman.
Once more there was a tendency for the younger generation to ring up its contemporaries and for the elders to proceed in semi-secret to shake heads in each other’s drawing-rooms. Or perhaps I am judging by the telephone calls to our little house, and the visits directed to our door. There seemed, as in the old days, a universal wish to converge upon mother, who gave us the cream of the debates at meal-times and said, with her pleasant sub-acidity, that she felt ‘catastrophically honoured’.
Aunt Emmeline was sunk in pessimism; there was a rumour that aunt Sophia had ordered a new hat and had been heard to say that the wedding was ‘such a solution’, which we all dispassionately and instantly interpreted as a backhanded allusion to aunt Emmeline’s upbringing of the Verdunes. The views of uncle Bertram were, if formulated, drowned in the voices of his females in Palace Green and Dolly herself tackled me upon the bridesmaid question.
‘Mother, of course, is against my having any … she’s being too chrewnic!’ and then with the Verdune candour, ‘I wanted you for one, m’ dear, but I suppose we’d have had to ask Lalage, as she’s the elder.’
It was mother herself who settled that question, putting on her hat and flitting on foot to Palace Green, telling us all at night, ‘I told Emmeline she must let the poor child have her bridesmaids’. Sophia, plumed and Daimler’d, had failed to gain the point, although, always good-natured, she had made the attempt, and nobody else, including Lady Vallant, had tried at all. And after all it was I who played bridesmaid; Lalage shrank from the publicity, which concerned without surprising either James or myself. Dissatisfied, he argued the point.
‘But … is it usual for girls to balk at that kind of tamasha? After all, it means a new frock and a present and flowers, and so on.’
I shrugged. ‘It’s all of a piece, Jamesey. You know what mother was about parties, and look at the uncles! Lalage is one of the family.’
He was impatient. ‘Not a fair analogy. There was a reason for that, with Vallant snubbing them all round and throwing her weight about.’
I said, suddenly and to myself unexpectedly, ‘Lalage will never be herself until she’s out of our family.’
He stared through me. ‘You mean, married to Hugh?’
‘Hugh being Hugh, yes, though I think the same result might be achieved in other ways.’
‘You mean – to cut loose from all of us? … Somehow, I can’t see her on her own, or as one of a gang of female hearties in khaki calling each other by surnames …’ He propped an elbow on the mantelpiece. The appearance of Lalage, I knew, had shocked him, seeing her anew after all those months in France, although he had said nothing, even to me.
‘Vere, this about never being herself,’ he began again. That was the price one paid for James, for the instant understanding he gave; it also meant that he had noted all one’s vague gropings, letting nothing pass as unimportant because it was incoherently expressed. Like a barrister, he allowed witness no margin for ill-considered remarks.
‘I sometimes wonder who she is to be,’ I brought out unwillingly.
‘You feel t
hat, too? That she’s a mould into which any personality could be poured?’
And then mother came in, to tell us with a schoolgirl giggle that uncle Julian had sent Dolly a bronze stag paperweight. ‘Out of stock,’ said mother. ‘Lor! don’t I remember it! It used to stand on the Pater’s writing-table in his study.’
‘Then its vibrations are low and I shall tell her to pop it,’ said James. It was an unwritten law that one could ‘out’ with that type of thing, where Lady Vallant was even indirectly in question. Mother accepted it that we were anti-Vallant on her own account. And upon principles more or less carefully general.
Dolly Verdune drew James into her immediate affairs with that direct courage which was part-innate, part-careless. She quite simply wanted her Arthur vetted. Her family, it seemed, were no use. ‘It’s uncle Bertram’s job,’ James told her at once. She agreed, and stood her ground. ‘You never knew, with father.’ Besides, Arthur mightn’t get a fair opinion owing to the possible influence of aunt Emmeline. Dolly’s sisters were sympathetic, with reservations, to the Hillman cause, but, Dolly insisted, negligible as social referees. In short, no member of the family –
(‘But, I am one of the family’, put in James.)
‘No, you aren’t. You know what I mean! So be a saint. …’
James was a saint for a week, dining, golfing, theatreing and bear-leading the Verdune-elect … he gave Dolly his findings, retailing them to mother, Lalage and me no less frankly.
‘Quite a harmless chap. Will pass along, though not off the top shelf. Pleasant, bawdy sense of humour which will suit her a treat. Snags: that he can’t wear all kinds of hat and get away with it, and plus-fours search him out. Rather a half-sir run. Isn’t it odd that men who aren’t quite grade A can’t move properly? I notice it so much in France. We’ve got some perfectly A.I temporary gentlemen in my outfit, good discipline, game as you make ’em, good company – everything, but oh God! when they walk or sprint! …’
V
From my subsidiary place in the procession, partnered by a Seagrave and preceded by Barbara and Evelyn Verdune, I had an excellent view of church events. It was impossible not to be physically proud of my kinsfolk, as I scanned their fine-drawn, hawk profiles and damned them all for this reason or that! The Seagrave cluster provided the relief of stuff to all that steel. Aunt Sophia was ‘in’ her new hat, inevitably bought at the oldest-established and most traditionally ladylike of the Knightsbridge shops. I knew the model of old; to Mrs. Seagrave all hats (like the three persons of the Trinity) were one hat, and that meant an almost exact reproduction of the headgear carved upon the periwig of William of Orange in Kensington Gardens.
It delighted James who, officiating in the aisle, tiptoe’d to me in the porch, wreathed in grins, or full of query. He took it for granted that anyone he indicated in the pews must be a relation and therefore a potential humour.
‘That,’ I would mutter, ‘is uncle Stuart.’
‘Hah … what’s his dossier?’
‘Refused whisky to two Hampshire neighbours,’ I rapidly hissed, ‘and says the War will be over by Christmas,’ and James, suffocating, returned to his post.
Or:
‘Who’s the Godfearing geyser in mauve bits and pieces?’
‘Lower, brother, i’ God’s name! A Stonor cousin, I think, but am not sure. Judge by the nose when next you pass, and keep the thoughts clean.’
As we advanced up the aisle James said to me, ‘The complete Vicar’s daughter’, as he looked at my frock.
‘I know shut up’, I answered all in one sentence. We had long mastered the trick of ventriloquial conversation – it consists in keeping the lips stiff and using only your tongue, and it is absolutely possible to let off any insult behind the barrage of a fixed and brilliant smile. My dress was a failure and I knew it. It had been conceived to suit alien and majority-taste. It contrived to look too ingenuous for me while appearing far too rusé on Helen Seagrave; also, it clashed with my hair, in which Bertram Verdune was taking a non-avuncular interest, to judge by the things he was doing with his eyebrows whenever he caught my glance, plus a tendency to hum at me under his breath when he was near.
Aunt Emmeline drew into my view as we neared the chancel; aquiline, in steel-grey, she was looking stonily ahead. Dolly, pale, competent, striking and determined, was summing up her groom’s best man and finding him a give-away, as we all did. He would probably commit facetiousness later and I would warn James to stage-manage him, for Dolly’s sake. Mother, with quiet, masochistic pluck, had selected a place next aunt Emmeline, and Lalage, noted, I saw, by many eyes, the obvious subject of confabulation, was at her side.
In the vestry I was kissed – thoroughly – by my uncle Verdune, and said ‘Don’t be a chump, Bertram’, counting on many factors to get away with the remark. It was a kiss I recognized at once; also, I was disgusted at the petty bad taste of the business.
The Stonor-Vallant uncles and great-uncles were round mother, speechless as usual, and we drifted to the porch and began to await cars. James was surrounded by three of the Seagrave girls, and I wondered once again how it was that they always contrived to suggest a mob, just as they would, probably, look frizzed and Edwardian for life, follow they the current and future fashions never so madly. I edged James into a car with the best man, from whose painstakingly convivial expression I judged he had begun already, found a nameless Stonor for Lalage and managed to include a woman as well, against accidents, and let mother chance her luck – she was a match for anybody.
On the steps aunt Emmeline was saying, ‘We don’t know how it’ll turn out. Let’s hope it won’t be the most ghastly mistake … oh, we’re sick about it! …’
Lady Vallant had sent an empty brougham. The devil entered me and I got into it, and the coachman, nonplussed, flicked his horse. Somebody would catch it, later. …
From a passing car I received an incredulous grin from Barbara Verdune, aunt Sophia’s voice rang out from another. ‘That naughty puss! Alone, mah’ee dear!’ I leant out of the window.
‘Manners, good people! I am the Protestant whore,’ I called, and turned to the coachman. ‘Beech, we will take a turn in the park before returning.’
Bouquet’d and furbelow’d, I leant back and closed my eyes.
VI
There was much to think of, more which insisted on getting itself thought.
The War was being some ordeal of the spirit to Lalage that I could not even guess at; mother, overstrained herself, had this burden to bear, plus anything that Lady Vallant might be up to. There was my own job to hold down. A bunch of lilies of the valley in Brompton Cemetery, and the years of Myra-flowers brought by sister to sister, and the way that fact sapped one.
Miss Chilcot …
Mother and Lalage, I was certain, ought to be taken right out of London for months. Money question. And anyway, where could they go?
There was Vallant, in Hampshire. I would tackle the uncles at once about that, at the Verdune reception I must return to. It must be done openly, lightly, publicly – I mistrusted Stonor-Vallant capacity for nuances and finesse, must make the invitation seem the obvious, unremarkable thing it should be; after all, the place actually belonged to our grandmother until her death, a large, rambling house with plenty of room. The scheme seemed fool-proof. And yet the uncles, as we all agreed, had surpassed themselves over the honeymoon ideas of Dolly Verdune – even the Seagraves had jumped to the humour of it.
Dolly, a month before her wedding, had written to her uncle Stuart to sound him as to finding her a suitable cottage on the estate, the Hillmans to occupy it for a month with option of acquiring it permanently. Stuart Vallant wrote back (the letter was now a Verdune exhibit) that he ‘and your uncle Julian’ feared there was no cottage available, and a fortnight later bought up the two empty dwellings to make assurances doubly sure. It was a Stonor great-cousin ‘up for the day’ and lunching in Palace Green who had blamelessly given the show away. The Verdunes had preserved poker-fac
es (at least we have the tumbril spirit) and aunt Emmeline’s silence had acted as another reminder to Dolly that the marriage was ‘a pity’. It was to us Buchans that the Verdunes streamed hysterically, and mother who, half-laughter half grief, soothed poor Dolly down. ‘My dear, we’re like that. You’ve just got to accept it. I do apologize for my family!’
But, would mother leave me? One was cramped for the relief of open discussion about almost everything. But in any case we were a close-tongued lot to whom silence was second nature. James was my safety-valve, more so than ever since the Chilcot-Vallant-Myra affairs had come into our lives. And James’s leave would soon be up.
Uncle Bertram …
Enjoying kissing me because I was not his niece by blood, getting away with it because he was my official uncle.
Hugh Lyne and Lalage …
I prayed over my limp bouquet, there in that stuffy, odious little equipage of my grandmother’s, that Hugh would consider himself free to marry her soon. I saw, as it were, for the first time quite clearly what I had meant when I told James that Lalage would never be ‘herself’ until then. It was a continuance of that earlier discussion we had once held, when I suggested to him that our sister had lost her continuity, and I began to see Lalage’s marriage as literally a new life for her, a direct though possibly dangerous challenge to whatever her psychic malady might be.
One rejoiced, apart from that, in the prospect of Hugh. It was disturbing how few reliable men there were in our family; their swamping by the female element perhaps had something to do with it? Or did their women override them because their men were ineffectuals? But in case some girl one day took James from me, and because Hugh must be free of the lot of us to love and guard Lalage, it was essential that I should not obtrude any difficulties of my own upon him. I would be a good in-law, so that future members of the family in their dens and schoolrooms should have no additional story or inherited grievance against my name…
A Harp in Lowndes Square Page 17