Concluding (1948)

by Henry Green

  * * *

  Miss Edge, when the gramophone stopped a second time, once more found herself the centre of a slightly panting group plying her with invitations. She shooed them off towards the buffet, and stalked to the dais that she might rest herself. She had not gone far before she perceived Mr Rock up there again, alone, as though lionised. She paused. But, after all, it would be too absurd if the man's presence hindered one of the Principals taking her rightful place. So she glided over despite him.

  With an acute struggle against his old joints, he rose to this approach.

  "My congratulations, ma'am," he said. "A memorable sight we have tonight."

  "My dear Mr Rock. Sweet indeed to bother."

  "I trust your exertions will permit, later, your partnering an old man."

  "My dear Sir, how could I forget? I shall hold you to it." In no time they were seated side by side, Miss Edge delicately inclined towards the sage. Her eyes roved over the Hall of her girls, in stiff pairs as if bereft at this interruption of music. He, for his part, looked on the old fashioned dancing pumps he wore, while he leaned in her direction to minimise the deafness.

  "Takes me quite back to my young days," he persisted.

  "And mine, if you please," she countered.

  In this he lied, however. It was true the more distant past now made a sharper picture; the time at school, hard work, then six months chasing girls and finally the signal triumph; but he was concentrated now on his granddaughter, on how best to approach Miss Edge. "I do know a little about these things. It is your powers of organisation, if I may say so, which I especially applaud," he said.

  "You understand our Tamashas are traditional," the lady condescended. "They run themselves. All Baker and I must do, is to watch that there are no departures."

  Departures? Escapes? Was this a reference to poor Mary, he wondered?

  "Ah, the sudden, the unexpected," he tested her.

  The sudden, she asked herself? Could he be aiming at that unfortunate child? The whole trouble really was, too many knew about Merode and Mary.

  "The odious deviations from what is usual," she corrected, dashing him a glance. "One of the things we should provide here is memories, which is why I strive for the repetitive. It is a minor function, of course, in a great Place like this, but we must send them out so they can look back on the small pleasures shared. I dare say there are several reunion parties to celebrate Founder's Day in many a State Recreation Room this selfsame moment. You know, it is not long since that Baker and I were privileged by the State to create the Institute out of a void. Believe me, Mr Rock, it was a vacuum indeed when we first came. But already our old girls would be distressed to hear of change in any shape."

  "It is a sadness in old age," he agreed. "One's contemporaries die. One can no longer share one's youth."

  "Ah, you have lived the lonely life," she said.

  Now what could she mean? He wondered. He waited.

  "But there have been compensations, surely?" she continued. "Of course, no-one can speak for another, life has at least taught me that, I hope. Yet to remain on in this beautiful Place, as a reward for great work well done, must be a remarkable privilege I cannot help feeling."

  "One has a pride in achievement," he answered, to show that he, at any rate, need not be modest. "Still, old age is a lonely condition, as you'll find in due course, Miss Edge."

  What could the wily old man be hinting, she impatiently asked under her breath?

  "Yet you do have company," she insisted.

  He reminded himself to be careful. Doubtless she intended a sly reference to his habit of speech with certain students when they strolled down to the cottage.

  "Not the life shared, memories in common," he brought out, conscious of his deep, pathetic tones.

  "But your granddaughter?"

  "She's only here when ill."

  "I have noticed, Mr Rock, how much improved she seems in herself."

  Now, what was she after? Was this to be the clean sweep, to rid herself of Elizabeth and him at the single, Machiavellian stroke.

  "I wish I could think so, ma'am," he said, with anxious care.

  "Just look at Moira," Miss Edge then changed the subject without warning. The old man wildly raised his head, in guilt. "Really she stares out of those great eyes of hers as though she were going to be ill."

  He said not a word. Did these two blockheaded Principals never have any idea of the strains and stresses, he wondered? And what was all this about sickness? He kept his face a blank for the child's sake.

  "Yes, I'm sure she's ever so much better."

  "Moira, ma'am?"

  "No, your granddaughter Elizabeth, naturally. Tell me, what are your plans for her?" This was to come out into the open with a vengeance, he thought.

  "It is in the hands of the doctor, of course," he replied, with a sidelong glance.

  "Sick notes seem quite to govern all our decisions these days," Miss Edge agreed, to abandon the subject. She fell silent, the better to watch her girls at rest.

  This silence made the old man increasingly nervous.

  Then, with no further word exchanged, the Principal made a sign to Inglefield, who at once restarted the gramophone.

  The crowd of girls in white poured back. Even before they were in one another's arms they twirled in doorways.

  This music was heavy, stupendous for Mr Rock.

  "May I have my honour now, ma'am?" he enquired.

  "How kind," she answered. "But I wonder if I might rest a little."

  "I never knew you had trouble with your eyes, ma'am," he said. 'How blind', was what he had heard.

  "Kind," Miss Edge shouted, with a brilliant, fixed smile at her circling throng of children. It will be such a tiresome bore if I have to try to make him hear above this perfectly heavenly valse, she thought.

  "You did not catch what I said. Only Tired, want to Rest a minute," she explained in a great voice.

  Why must Moira watch him like it, as if he had done her injury, he asked himself? The foolish little intriguer. She was perilous. Because Edge who had noticed already, might end by getting it into her narrow skull.

  Then, at that precise moment, Elizabeth came just below, dancing, as he thought, in a manner which could not be permissible in any era, so as to flaunt the fact of Sebastian no doubt. He assumed an idiot look of pride, in the way he could the swill man's cry, and turned towards Miss Edge to note her reaction. He saw she had not bothered to see them, which was a relief, though at the same time he resented the culpable blindness. Perhaps she is really having trouble with her eyes, as I with my ears, he wondered.

  Edge may have sensed he watched, because she swung her head round with a dry smile.

  "The dears," she said. "They must and shall enjoy themselves."

  Now the music was in full flood he could not be sure of what he heard. When he thought he caught what had been said, he was often wrong; and the few times he was confident he had the sense, he still knew he hardly ever did have it when, as now, under a difficulty. So he assumed she was speaking of Liz.

  "Thanks to you, the time of her life," he assured Miss Edge.

  Why cannot the sad man realise I will not be bothered tonight with individuals, she asked herself?

  "There must not be a child who does not take a happy memory of this away in her, for the rest of her days," she answered.

  "And so they ought," he agreed stoutly, leaving the Principal in ignorance as to whether he had heard.

  Another silence fell between them. But there was a deal he had to tell her yet. He was determined to have it out. Accordingly he tried to bring the conversation back somewhere near the more immediate topics.

  "Is this correct, what I hear about pigsties, like mushrooms after rain, over the magnificent grounds?" he asked.

  "Why, whoever gave you that idea, Mr Rock?"

  "A flat idea? I don't quite follow, ma'am."

  Really, the man was intolerable. It was indeed time for him to go where
he could be properly looked after with his deafness and everything, she thought.

  "I never question a decision of my Superiors," she reproved. "No, I asked how you had learned?" She yelled this at an ear. He took it in.

  "Amazing the way things get about a community such as ours, ma'am," he replied. She wondered at his effrontery, that he should claim kinship with their Work. "No," he went on, "of course I have given a hand with the swill in the past, and now, I suppose, you will want all of it for yourselves? But to tell you the truth, ma'am, time has lain a bit heavy on my hands. In fact I don't know that I've been pulling my weight. It is a privilege to lead my existence," he said with an irony just sufficiently controlled to escape her notice.

  "What I had wondered, since you don't seem to be too keen that I should give them a few plain talks on pigs, was whether I could not, after all, work up a little course of lectures on what I may have done. Something along the lines of the joy, and reward, of achievement," he ended in great bitterness, effectively disguised behind a mandarin smile.

  Of all bores, Miss Edge moaned to herself, the persistent ones are worst. He could not have appreciated then, what she had told him on this very subject in the Sanctum.

  "Well," she said genially. "Well! That will need thinking over. But how lucky for the Girls."

  "No trouble at all," he lied at random.

  "Shall we leave it till tomorrow, Mr Rock?" she suggested. "I hardly feel, just at the crux of our little jollification, that we can give your project the attention it deserves."

  Whatever you say, ma'am," he agreed. At least Elizabeth could hardly now make out that he had not explored every avenue, he told himself.

  Soon after, he got up and left Miss Edge. The lady was so obviously lost in happy contemplation of her charges. And he felt he had done enough. Honour was satisfied, he thought.

  Perhaps forty minutes later, Edge -was joined on the dais by her colleague who declared she could dance no longer, and sat herself heavily down, to fan a cheek with a lace bordered black and white handkerchief.

  "It is excellent, dear, quite excellent," she cried.

  "I think so, Baker" Miss Edge answered, in an exalted mood again.

  "What a good notion of yours, Mabel, to ask the Rocks," Baker, full of enthusiasm, gaily cried above the music. "It will give those two so much pleasure later, when they get home," she added.

  "I did no such thing," her colleague said, but did not seem to pay attention.

  "The old man really cuts quite a distinguished figure," Baker insisted, to all appearances not having taken in Edge's negligent reply, perhaps because of this great spring tide of music.

  "Nevertheless," Edge enquired, "what was it led you to ask them, Hermione?"

  "I?" Miss Baker demanded. "I never invited anyone, dear."

  Edge leaned over her colleague in one swift movement, as though to peer up Baker's nostrils.

  "Then you mean they are here unasked?" she hissed. "Oh no, Hermione, not that, for it would be too much."

  "I didn't," Baker promised. They looked wildly at one another. "Now careful, Mabel," she went on. "We don't wish to make ourselves conspicuous."

  "But this is preposterous persecution. It could even be wicked."

  "Mabel don't, I beg of you. Just when we were so enjoying ourselves. If you could only catch sight of your expression, dear. We shall have everyone look our way in a minute."

  "Hermione, they shall leave at once," Miss Edge proposed.

  "To brazen themselves like this," Baker hastily agreed. "Why, it's wrong."

  In time, however, both ladies gained sufficient control to be able to look straight out over the Hall with a glare above the dancers. But when Elizabeth came by once more, still in Sebastian's arms, hair still disarranged, still dancing as though glued to him, they both deflected their vision through the degrees necessary to take in this orgiastic behaviour, which they had not previously bothered to notice. They then followed the couple with palsied indignation, rooted to valse trembling chairs.

  "You saw?" Miss Edge brought out at last.

  "Yes, and alas I still do, Mabel."

  "Well, whatever else we may decide, dear, their little display of animalism must be stopped at once."

  "Whatever you think," Miss Baker agreed. But seemed hesitant.

  "Yes, Hermione, and why on earth not?"

  "Is it always wise to bring matters of this kind out in the open? The thought just flashed through my mind, that's all."

  "Hermione, I wish I could follow your reasoning."

  "It's just I can't quite make out that any of the children appear to have caught on, particularly. You see?" Miss Baker asked.

  "Should we wait for the girls to copy this themselves?"

  "It does seem a most ambiguous style to dance, I must admit, Mabel."

  "In a moment, when the first flush of this glorious music has worn off, I'm very much afraid the cat will be out of the bag, Hermione."

  "Where has Mr Rock got to, then? I don't see him," Miss Baker said, to draw a red herring across the trail. She was a cautious woman.

  "Oh drinking, undoubtedly drinking outside," Miss Edge proclaimed.

  "But there's no more than lemonade, dear."

  "He had a flask, Hermione. I saw the bulge myself, in his pocket."

  "You appal me."

  "Ah, if it were only that."

  "Oh surely, Mabel?"

  "I insist he is far too close to some of the girls."

  "Be that as it may," Miss Baker sternly said, pulling herself together, "I do beg you to take this fresh affront in a Christian spirit."

  "Why should I?" her colleague demanded. "When he flaunts our authority?"

  "You know how deaf Mr Rock is. Perhaps he misheard some time this week. Thought you had invited him?"

  "Oh no, no, that simply will not wash. You must realise all he misunderstands is just what he does not wish to hear. Besides I have not said two words to the man in months."

  "Of course there may have been . . . but I don't think . . . wait, I'm trying to remember," Miss Baker said. "He might have thought, when I mentioned, when we met by the Lake," she delicately hinted, to scale down Mr Rock's offence. "But of course I'm in no two minds. A member of the staff has no business whatever dancing with the misguided woman. If we don't pull together on occasions of this sort, what good are we, after all? And to go about it in that disgraceful way is too bad of Sebastian. As to her, I cannot believe she can be responsible for her actions. Oh no, don't think I don't agree with you, dear."

  "Then, Hermione, I am going straight onto the floor. I shall simply tap him on the shoulder, gesture him Off. I shall not say a word," Miss Edge announced, and made as though to get down from her chair.

  "But Mabel, is this wise?" Miss Baker asked, in a sort of shriek to pierce the double basses which, at the moment, held the recorded melody.

  "There is more to our duties than a kind of still-born native caution," Edge complained, but stayed seated.

  "Yes, dear," her colleague comforted, satisfied that she had, at least, held off immediate action.

  "If we see another woman ridiculed before our very eyes, are we to sit by without a word?" Miss Edge demanded. "There is a double obligation on us, surely. To call Elizabeth Rock to order, for she is leading him along to make a fool of her, to compromise herself with him, Baker; and, second, to show our girls we shall not turn a blind eye upon wrongdoing, which this disgraceful behaviour most surely is."

  "You are right, Mabel, of course. But how will Mr Rock react?"

  "He should be eternally grateful. You cannot tell me he wants his girl compromised with Sebastian Birt."

  "No, Mabel. But you know the way he is. He might take our reproof for an affront."

  "And if he did?"

  "My dear, he is such friends with Mr Swaythling. This can hardly be a moment to invite publicity, the attention of the Supervisor, just when we are face to face with the enigma of Mary, not to mention Merode."

  "Yes, but
there must be some justice in our affairs, Baker. If we are to harbour the informer in our midst, let us have nothing to hide, at least."

  "Leave sleeping dogs lie, Edge."

  "And what have we done? My conscience is clear. Can you point to any single circumstance under which we could possibly be said to have countenanced the girl's disappearance?"

  "Of course, this whole thing's absurd," her colleague answered. "At the same time, I didn't quite care for Mrs Manley's attitude. After she had seen Merode she rather made capital out of Mary's being such a favourite of ours."

  "I trust, whenever we make friends with one of the Students, that will not be considered sufficient justification for the child concerned to make off at dead of night, and in her pyjamas." Miss Baker laughed elegantly at this sally.

  Just then Sebastian bumped Elizabeth, through carelessness, into another couple and she opened hers to find herself gazing into the Principals' four eyes.

  "Look out Seb," she said. "They're glaring like a couple of old black herons down in the meadow, over the daisies."

  After this, they danced with more circumspection.

  "It is a matter of elementary justice, Baker," Edge insisted, but in so much calmer a voice, now Elizabeth was no longer dancing cheek to cheek, that her colleague could be satisfied the danger of an open breach was past. "If one sees wrong done, one cannot sit idly by, dear."

  "Of deportment, or behaviour? Even on a special occasion?" Miss Baker asked.

  "But really, sometimes you astound me," Edge said, mildly warming to the subject. "That sort of thing is like an infection, surely? I refer of course to the way those two have been dancing. If you find scarlet fever in a community, you isolate it. There is the fever hospital."

  "I dare not look at Winstanley" Baker replied.

  "Then I will do so for you," Miss Edge offered. "There she is, with a look on her washed out face of weariness, and disgust, poor child. I do not know if we should not get rid of her as well," she ended, but in an uncertain voice.