The Innocents

by Margery Sharp

  “Rucksack?” I led her on.

  “Rucksack,” echoed Antoinette.

  But when I came to “Ootacamund”—not much harder to pronounce, and in itself so fascinating—when I came to “Ootacamund, Antoinette?”

  “Hello.”

  In a moment of disappointment I felt I might as well have been trying to educate the trunk itself. For a moment, indeed, sharing Antoinette’s apparent consciousness of it as sentient, I felt the twin brass locks of its eyes regard me ironically. But however disappointed I would not pester the child with repetitious urgings, and so the experiment lapsed, and her vocabulary remained at—four.

  I do not often dream, but it must have been in dreams that for several subsequent nights I heard the words “Ootacamund, Delhi, Simla,” then “Delhi, Simla, Ootacamund,” pronounced in a deep, leathery voice.

  2

  Meanwhile Paul Amory continued painting Cecilia’s portrait with what I can only describe as might and main; for he often so vigorously scraped out what he’d just put in, the canvas—how I discovered this I will explain later—was quite holed; but he always primed a fresh one on the morrow. He laboured like Penelope at her web; and I for one had as much admiration for him as I had for Betty so near her time there was a bed booked for her in Ipswich Maternity. Though less a friend than Janice Pennon had become, we were always on very pleasant terms, and I thought she took her disappointment over the caftan remarkably well, especially since Cecilia was wearing it to sit in. Betty never said a word but in appreciation of Cecilia’s kindness, while as for the Admiral, he thought her too kind by half.

  3

  We met outside The Chantry—that ever-mysterious, abandoned house halfway up the hill between Woolmers and mine. (“Mine,” in East Anglian parlance, designating one’s customary habitation. In the unlikely event of Mrs. Brewer’s being invited to mine by the Queen, she’d have made straight for Buckingham Palace.) Sir David, with little to do in the mornings, wet or fine put himself under orders to patrol as far as the heath and back, and we had naturally met before, but only to exchange greetings and the usual remarks about the weather. Now, however, after agreeing that the summer was wearing on, and that after summer one must expect autumn, he paused, and so of course did I.

  “I don’t know what your own opinion is,” opened Sir David, “but in mine Mrs. Guthrie’s simply wastin’ her time, sittin’ to that poor gallant feller mewed up all morning in a garage instead of takin’ proper exercise.”

  I always felt a subtle distinction between the Admiral’s use of “Mrs. Guthrie,” instead of “Cecilia,” and Paul Amory’s. In Sir David it was quite natural.

  “She swims a great deal,” said I—not quite certain where our conversation tended.

  “With half-a-dozen other gallant fellers,” said the Admiral. “Of course one can’t wonder she’s popular, but she’s wearin’ herself out entertainin’ ’em. She shouldn’t be allowed to do it, after the punishin’ she took in New York. Remember how the first two days after she got here she had to spend practically in bed?”

  At least I remembered the note beginning “Darlings both,” and Mrs. Brewer saying she’d seen the Admiral about. After so brisk a beginning, even before he definitely had his eye on her (here I refer back to the Cockers’ dinner-party), Sir David must have felt himself a bit in the lead, and thus all the more frustrated when instead of tramping the heath Cecilia mewed herself up in a garage.

  “Too kind by half!” snapped the Admiral; and strode on uphill.

  4

  “And the portrait?” I asked Paul about this time.

  “How is it going?”

  “Splendidly!” declared Paul.

  I felt however that he lied. In fact I knew he lied. Besides having witnessed the deplorable commencement, I had also observed the Brewer rabbit-hutch newly roofed with canvas perfectly sound except for a few holes scraped as though by a palette-knife. They came from quite a stack, said Jessie, that Mr. Amory threw out. “Threw out, Jessie?” said I. Jessie said well, not exactly so to speak threw out, but he just put them stacked face to wall in the garage going to waste. He wasn’t using them. And only two, added Jessie, rather in the tone of Lord Clive surprised, when he considered his opportunities, at his own moderation. Of course she had no right to abstract even two, and even though I always suspected she washed Paul’s brushes for him along with the rest of Woolmers’ washing-up—how otherwise account for Miss Ponsonby’s complaint of hairs, at least not, apparently, human, adhering to the rim of a dinner-plate? Also Jessie and Mrs. Brewer had had sufficient grace to nail their booty back, blank, side up, exposing so to speak neither artist nor sitter, though whether from delicacy or fear of being spotted I wasn’t sure.

  15

  1

  As Sir David and I had agreed, summer was wearing on, and after summer one must expect autumn. Far from attempting to persuade Cecilia not to wear herself out entertaining our gallant Allies at the pool, through August and September I was extremely glad she, had the opportunity; for in those months, as all country dwellers know, social effort tends to give place to a general resting-on-oars. With no one’s garden looking at its best, naturally no one gives garden-parties; the last Outdoor Fête occurred in August, bringing very welcome rain, but after that in an organized way of festivities there was nothing to look forward to until Christmas. (I do not count Guy Fawkes Night. Though indeed after being so long suspended owing to the blackout, it had become more popular than ever.) So to the period of gaiety that welcomed Cecilia home—and which she herself did so much to promote—succeeded a more typical period of rustic dullness. But at least she had the swimming pool to keep her from being bored, and I fear the Admiral found me a false friend.

  However, he was soon able to stop distressing himself over Cecilia’s being mewed up in the garage all morning. On September the fourth Peter and Janice Pennon drove Betty to Ipswich Maternity, and on the eleventh brought her back with an eight-pound son.

  2

  The whole village rejoiced. There had never been a more popular birth, nor a more popular father than Paul Amory. In pagan times, I felt, his wheelchair would have been garlanded with sheaves of wheat, if not drawn by sacrificial rams. Betty took quite second place, but she and Janice, now become her gossip, giggled together apparently unoffended.

  All of which meant that for a period of about a week portrait-painting was suspended. Paul didn’t go himself to Ipswich, and from the fourth to the eleventh had indeed laboured doggedly on—as he said, to take his mind off Betty. He said it to everyone, including Cecilia.—There is no doubt that Jessie loitered about the garage-studio far too much, and whether to eavesdrop or purloin, the one is as bad as the other; indeed to eavesdrop whilst waiting an opportunity for purloining doubles the offense. But eavesdrop, or overhear, Jessie undoubtedly did, and told Mrs. Brewer, who told me, Mr. Amory told Mrs. Guthrie right out, he was just taking his mind off.

  Already an accessory in crime by not having cut Mrs. Brewer short, I enquired how Mrs. Guthrie responded.

  “Sweet as honey,” reported Mrs. Brewer. “Just like on the movies, Jessie said; rising up from her chair she laid her hand upon his cheek for comfort, and then told how much she’d like to be godmother and called after. Hello,” added Mrs. Brewer automatically.

  After Betty’s return, however, for a week Paul abandoned his artistic career altogether in favour of the joys of fatherhood and, I must say, to look after Betty. (Not that with Janice there all day, and every woman in the village eager to lend a hand, he was much needed, in fact he was mostly in the way, but Betty bloomed like a rose.) So there was a definite break before the sittings were resumed.

  Of course Cecilia came to see the baby, bringing hothouse grapes and a toy lamb woolly in cashmere. (I possibly cast a recognizing eye on it; she in parenthesis reminded me that Antoinette had a very pretty little purse, too good to be lost.) For I happened to be at the Amorys’ myself, engaged along with Peter and Janice, also present, in the highly
important matter of the infant’s naming. So nearly born in the Pennon car as he’d been, we all felt Peter appropriate, also such a smooth run up to Amory, Janice already saw PETER AMORY in lights over the West End theatre where he was playing Hamlet.

  Or Romeo or Othello or Peter Pan or Charley’s Aunt. Or even if the squirming atomy in Betty’s lap turned out to be no more than an embryo Prime Minister or Governor of the Bank of England, we all agreed that Peter Amory would fill the bill.—It was a gay, consciously ridiculous discussion—Betty and Janice, as I have said, at this time tending to giggle over anything—until Cecilia’s gracious entry made us all behave ourselves. Peter Pennon, flapping like a fish on the floor (originally in imitation of Ophelia), got up; Paul, rehearsing the christening ceremony with a pair of long johns for stole, hastily pulled them off; and Betty and Janice stopped giggling.

  “The lamb, the poppet!” cooed Cecilia. “What are you going to call him?”

  I awaited Paul’s answer with considerable interest. Only he and myself knew of Cecilia’s desire expressed whilst laying a hand to his cheek to stand godmother. What made me so certain he hadn’t mentioned it to Betty I cannot tell, but I was. However, Paul didn’t know that I knew, and so far had a free tongue. So I waited with considerable interest—for here, if he were ever going to, was an obvious opportunity to suggest “Cecil.” I fancied I could see the memory, and the notion, pass through his mind—though to be sure he had become a little flushed already, getting rid of the long johns. As I looked at him, so did Cecilia, half-smiling, pleasantly expectant; then he rather loudly replied, “Peter.”

  “Damn near born in my car,” explained Peter Pennon.

  “And doesn’t it go well with Amory?” said Betty.

  “Yes, indeed!” agreed Cecilia—but still with her eyes on the babe’s father. “Just Peter, then?”

  “Just Peter,” said Paul.

  I didn’t blame him. Quite apart from whether Betty would have welcomed Cecilia as godmother, “Cecil” in this day and age is not only out of fashion but definitely ludicrous …

  Cecilia didn’t stay much longer, but before she left Paul was insistent that the sittings should begin again next day, as so they did, and daily; almost another week elapsed before what was my surprise, walking down from mine to the shops, to see him stationary in his wheelchair outside the Chantry gate. This being set a little way back from the path between bayed brick walls, there was quite a nice little space for him; he had his sketch-book and paint-box out—water-colours, not the new oils—and was painting the vista through the bars. Like all his efforts it was a dreadful daub, but the strong black verticals rather pulled it together, and I had often praised far worse. Only what of Cecilia’s portrait?

  “That’s nice,” said I. As I have said, one of the signs of his ineradicable amateurishness was that he never minded people stopping and talking to him.

  “Anyway a jolly bit of colour?” suggested Paul.

  He always liked using red. But though the roses were red as—roses, for all Paul’s recklessness with crimson lake on paper they appeared no more than purplish. I suspected that he’d put in the bars too soon, probably using straight sepia; the path to the house might have been bordered with heather. However I was able to praise with no more than normal hypocrisy, and Paul looked gratified.

  “Actually I’ve thought,” he offered, “if I could get inside, there must be dozens of other angles; across the roses to the gate, for instance—so I could still work in the bars.”

  I felt quite encouraged on his behalf that he at last seemed to recognize his flabby washes in need of scaffolding.—But what about Cecilia’s portrait? At just after eleven the sitting should have been in full swing …

  “You don’t know who owns the place?” asked Paul.

  “I’m afraid not,” said I. “It’s been empty ever since I can remember. Someone died, someone whose wife gave musical parties, and now it’s just gone to rack and ruin.”

  “Sounds like something out of Dickens,” said Paul.

  Obviously he vaguely recalled Satis House and Miss Havisham, though Miss Flyte and the Count of Chancery would have been more apposite. We still had a very pleasant chat about Great Expectations before my curiosity got the better of me.

  “So Cecilia’s portrait is finished?” asked I.

  Paul added a curlicue to the top of the grate. (This time burnt umber. It ran at once.)

  “Well, I wouldn’t say so myself,” he told me, “but she’s so pleased with it just as it is, she’s afraid if I go on I’ll spoil it. She’s going to have it framed just as it is …”

  3

  I thought Cecilia had handled the situation very well; but with nothing to occupy her mornings she naturally grew bored, and now indeed would have been the Admiral’s opportunity to carry her out of the doldrums on the brisk wind of a definite proposal. Whether or not to accept him must at least have given Cecilia something to think about both before lunch and after—for though she obviously wasn’t going, in the vulgar phrase, to jump at him, I felt the odds about even. However many strings to her bow Cecilia might have left slack in New York, a bird in the hand is always worth two in a bush, and no far wealthier transatlantic suitor could have made her My Lady …

  The thought had actually occurred to me before. Neither of the August FêTes I have referred to was, to my regret, actually opened by Cecilia; our M.P.’s wife, and a local Mayoress, naturally took priority, whereas as Lady Thorpe Cecilia might well have trumped either. She was still by far the most striking feature of the scene, and the most photographed, smiling above the sheaf of gladioli that had been her first purchase.—Sir David at her heels gallantly offered to carry them for her, but not for worlds would Cecilia risk offending the least of market-gardeners. Badged with gladioli as once with carnations, Cecilia swanned between the dripping stalls far more observed and admired than at the first FêTe the M.P.’s wife or at the second the Mayoress; but her pictures were printed only on the back page of the East Anglian Courant, not alongside the other two ladies’ on the front. That any leader of New York society should even notice such relegation in a provincial newspaper quite surprised me, until I remembered how Cecilia with her carnations once hadn’t been photographed at all.

  Of course she made a great joke of it.—“My darling, isn’t this absolute fame?” cried Cecilia, descending on us a day or two later. “I must order half-a-dozen copies to send back home!”—though whether or not she did so I never knew; only it was about this time that she began to refer to America as home more and more.

  With hindsight I see I might have handled matters more cleverly. The Admiral’s courtship was still going strong. He was always at Cecilia’s heels, always available to post her letters for her, run errands for her, escort her to the swimming pool; but still hung back from any open declaration of intent. I should have liked to think he was too downy an old bird to be easily caught, but was regretfully forced to put it down to an innocent modesty. Looking on myself—the innocent!—as Cecilia’s particular friend, he took any opportunity to talk to me about her; it was like hearing a boy talk about some unattainable star of the early cinema. Cecilia’s beauty, which was undeniable, made him feel so humble, that he could offer the title of My Lady as a quid pro quo never seemed to occur to him. He was a delightful old bird, but not downy.—Perhaps if I’d encouraged him to go in and win, perhaps Cecilia might have accepted him and Antoinette found a kind stepfather, and home, in East Anglia; but I had grown too fond of him; and so unluckily Sir David was still beating about—no extra wind in his sails from any encouragement of mine—when his daughter-in-law reappeared to take him back to Richmond.

  He went I think not unwillingly. As I have said, he was a simple soul, and like all simple souls, and most Navy types, felt happier under firm command. The daughter-in-law was extremely nice to Cecilia, and after a last (shared) dinner at Woolmers, in a tactful aside over coffee thanked her particularly for all her kindness to the old pet—thus defusing, so to
speak, any amorous relationship. (For once I was dining there myself, and from table to table in the lounge one cannot help overhearing.) Cecilia returned politeness with politeness, declaring what a delightful companion he’d been—yet with a suppressed yawn in her voice that declared him also an uncommon old bore. I for my part had the impression that both young women understood each other very well.

  The Admiral thus (not unwillingly) shanghaied, and Paul Amory out of court, naturally the whole scene began—how else can I put it?—a little to dwindle to Cecilia. Not only had she become used to us, we were becoming used to Cecilia. Even at Woolmers they became so used to her, she was once asked to shift tables so that her own might be incorporated into a gala spread for the British Legion Old Comrades Association.—Again, Cecilia made a great joke of it, she said afterwards that she’d never seen anything funnier than King and Country, and Our Gallant Allies, being solemnly toasted in Algerian plonk; but the jest, when it got about, was rather unappreciated, especially by the American Colonel (guest of honour), who with his usual delicacy had refrained from supplying bourbon. In any case, Americans treat such occasions with great respect, as Cecilia must have known. I do not suppose she ever expected her flippancy to reach the Colonel’s ears, but of course it did, and whether for this reason or another his attendance on her at the swimming pool rather dropped off, so that—to look ahead—the last time Cecilia swam there was in company with only the young Pennons and myself.

  So naturally Cecilia grew bored with us, and suddenly impatient to return to New York; and was so clever, and had so many connections, achieved the practically impossible in securing places for herself and Antoinette on a westbound transatlantic flight scheduled for no more than five days later.