by Ann Bridge
THE
GINGER GRIFFIN
Ann Bridge
Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
Chapter Twenty-two
Chapter Twenty-three
Chapter Twenty-four
Chapter Twenty-five
Chapter Twenty-six
Chapter Twenty-seven
Chapter Twenty-eight
Chapter Twenty-nine
A Note on the Author
“ Recollections, above all, of horses—of their courage and foolishness, of their light feet upon the cold December fields and of their sweet breath and eyes in dark and scented stables.”
A Journey from Peking
Chapter One
MJOURDAIN was astounded to learn in middle life that he had been speaking prose for half a century. And many people are surprised, and even a little indignant, on being told that in their relations with other human beings they generally act on a theory. They use, they say, their instincts, their emotions—a flair they have for such things. All this may well be true, but their flairs and instincts nourish and support their theories about other people. And the lamentable truth remains that we have, ultimately, only our theories to guide us. We can never know all; but upon the accuracy of our theorising will depend the measure of intimacy and fulfilment that we achieve. Though we are reluctant to realise it, the successful and perspicacious theorists are the brilliant, the satisfying friends. But the most brilliant may be baffled, be left in doubt—Time alone shows, very often, how far our theory was correct. Or Time may play us a bad trick—allow us to learn, too late, that our theory was all wrong, or—more bitter still, that though we did not venture to act on what we thought, we were really right all the time.
Perhaps, after all, the wisest are those who employ the minimum of speculation on the facts before them. At least they avoid disappointment. Mrs. Grant-Howard, whom we meet powdering her nose on one of those large shabby leather sofas which rather infrequently adorn the corridors of the Foreign Office, certainly belonged to this latter group. She dealt mostly in facts, interpreting these rapidly in accordance with a few well-cut ready-to-wear theories which her husband sometimes accused her of having bought at Selfridge’s. She was inquisitive and amused, but the obvious was her sphere—making very few outside shots, she made correspondingly few mistakes. “Certainty First” would undoubtedly have been her slogan, if she had felt the need of slogans.
The corridors of the Foreign Office might seem to some an odd place in which to powder the nose and otherwise restore the appearance. But Mrs. Grant-Howard was no respecter of places or persons. Neat, small, assured, her primary assumption about the world, made quite unobtrusively and nicely, was that it existed principally for the convenience of people like herself. Finding her nose in need of powder, and being in the Foreign Office, she powdered her nose. She was waiting for her husband, who was seeing the Private Secretaries about his next post. She waited without agitation. Nugent Grant-Howard was on excellent terms with the powers; he called the Private Secretaries Walter and Noel; he was able, personable, efficient and, above all, coulant; he was a rising and successful man. Not such as he are sent to Bogota against their will.
A door further along the corridor opened, and a man emerged—a tall good-looking man, neither young nor old, whose whole appearance and manner was of an extreme and accomplished smoothness. His left arm embraced a sheaf of papers, his right hand held a cigarette. Seeing Mrs. Grant-Howard, he went up to her with— “Hullo, Joanna! What are you doing here?”
“Waiting for Nugent—he’s seeing them,” said Mrs. Grant-Howard, nodding her head vaguely down the corridor.
“Oh, are you off again already? Do you know what you’ll get?”
“No.”
“Well, you and Nugent must come and lunch with me before you go,” said the smooth man. “Goodbye!”—and he titupped rapidly off down the corridor, still embracing his papers.
Mrs. Grant-Howard continued to wait. Other men, equally ageless and of a similar uniform smoothness, came and went, opening doors and carrying papers; messengers bearing red boxes passed to and fro on flat and silent feet. Joanna had had time to think—twice—that the Foreign Office was the stuffiest and ugliest place in London, when at last her husband joined her.
Nugent Grant-Howard was tall and thin, with brown hair brushed up rather stiffly above the ears, where it was turning grey, in the approved diplomatic fashion; his very small moustache was also brushed upwards. In his manner and general appearance he was every bit as smooth and ageless as the men with papers who opened doors, and like them he wore spats; but instead of papers he carried a soft black felt hat and a gold-topped cane.
“Well?” asked his wife.
“Peking,” he replied briefly.
“Peking!” said Mrs. Grant-Howard, with the accent on the last syllable. “I never thought of that. What a curious idea! Will it do for Dickie? And is there riding?”
“They say it’s a very healthy post, and perfectly suitable for children,” replied Grant-Howard in the completely colourless tone which in diplomacy implies doubt. “The riding,” he went on more briskly, “is first-class, and the cheapest in the world. Quite average ponies for a tenner, and plenty of polo.” As they talked Mrs. Grant-Howard had risen from the sofa, and they now moved away along the corridor, descended some stairs, and still discussing this new venture, emerged on to the Horse Guards’ Parade, and strolled across it in the direction of Jermyn Street and lunch. “Well, we’ll take Dickie, then—that’s settled; and Jane must look after the others, as usual,” said Mrs. Grant-Howard at length, in a tone of finality. Dickie was her son, aged seven— “the others” were her two daughters, both of school age, and continually succoured during their parents’ prolonged absences by Nugent’s sensible and devoted sister, Lady Rosemere, otherwise Jane. The children thus disposed of, she reverted to the new post—“Who’s there?”
“Boggit—do you remember him?”
“Vaguely—a nice fat man. But I can’t remember his wife.”
“He hasn’t got a wife—he’s a bachelor.”
“Oh, what a let-off!” Joanna breathed quite deeply in her fervour. “No chef-ess means such a saving of wear and tear. Who else?”
“Rupert’s there—the greatest possible luck! And George Hawtrey is Second Secretary.”
“A tall rather unclever one, who’s mad on sport, and talks about Uganda?” Mrs. Grant-Howard’s slighter diplomatic acquaintances were usually ranged in her mind with these small, concise and frequently rather pungent verbal labels attached to them. Rupert Benenden’s was on the tip of her tongue—“that clever quarrelsome young man, who writes”; but he had also a warning tag in her mind, with “Nugent’s friend” on it—and the labels of people who bore this tag were seldom uttered aloud.
Grant-Howard at once rose in defence even of Mr. Hawtrey. “George isn’t half bad—in fact, he’s really very nice, as you’ll find out when you’ve had the chance of getting to know him. But it will be marvellous to have Rupert there.”
“Yes, rather,” said Joanna, amiably. But her mind darted back to the practical—“And we start when, do yo
u say?”
“They want us to sail on January the fifth. Oh, and by the way, I believe you’ll have to chaperone a girl on the way out.”
“A girl! What girl?”
“Her name is”—Grant-Howard as he walked removed one pair of horn-rimmed spectacles and substituted another; then he extracted a slip of paper from his pocket-book and read out—“Miss Amber Harrison.”
“Who is she, and why have we got to take her?” asked his wife, as he replaced his pocket-book and reversed the order of his spectacles again. The frequency, skill and speed with which he performed this operation was still, after fourteen years of marriage, an unfailing source of incredulous amusement to Joanna.
“She’s going out to stay with an uncle in Peking—old Bill Harrison. He’s a brother of that consul who died after being shot up, a few years back—do you remember?”
“Is he a consul?”
“No—in business. But Anstruther says he’s a tremendous horse-coper, so he’s quite a useful person to put under an obligation.”
“Why is she going out to him? Hasn’t she any parents?”
“They didn’t tell me why,” said Grant-Howard, who always took questions in their order, as if they occurred in a memorandum. “Yes, she’s got a mother all right—her father died round about a year ago. Do you remember Lady Julia Harrison, who has that lovely house in the Cotswolds? You’ve been there with the Free-mans. This is her girl.”
“The woman who gives the parties!” said Joanna, suddenly illuminated. “Yes, I remember, perfectly well. But I thought she married the girl to some peer.”
“That was the elder one—this is another. And they want an escort for her.”
“Well, I don’t wonder she wants to go away!” said Joanna unkindly, reminiscences of Lady Julia and her parties beginning to crowd into her mind. “That woman is every sort of snob in one—social, intellectual, political! But I expect she’ll be a great bore. How old is she?”
“That you will be able to ascertain from her passport,” said Grant-Howard smoothly—“they didn’t tell me.”
“Amber—what a silly name!” said Mrs. Grant-Howard. As they passed into the discreet restaurant, “Gemma!” she exclaimed suddenly.
“What?” asked her husband, startled.
“The other sister—the one who married. Amber and Gemma! Isn’t that the nadir of affectation?”
“It is pretty steep, certainly,” said Grant-Howard. “But the girl didn’t christen herself, my dear.”
“No,” admitted Joanna, with grudging justice, as she stood looking about her, in search of the friends they had come to meet. “I wonder why she wants to canter off to China, though—whether she’s running away from all the Amber-and-Gemmering, or from a young man.”
“She may be trying to run away from herself,” said Grant-Howard. A woman standing next to him turned her pretty painted face towards him with a startled glance at this remark, but his wife paid no particular attention to it. She was accustomed to Nugent’s habit of suddenly spilling a wineglassful of his peculiar philosophy into the pool of ordinary conversation. “Here they are!” she said, as a couple entered the door. “Tom! Judy!” And between the handshakings she announced “We’re going to Peking!”
While the Grant-Howards were canvassing Miss Amber Harrison’s reasons for going to China, the subject of their speculations was riding slowly along a hill-track in Gloucestershire, munching a ham-sandwich, and deep in thought. She had ridden over to a house near Stow to show, and if possible sell Major, the efficient and companionable hunter which she rode, to a newcomer to the neighbourhood, and she had succeeded in her mission. Mrs. Crutchworthy had bought the horse, had promised her a good fat price for him, and had even agreed to take delivery of him a month later, just before Amber sailed. Nevertheless, Amber’s forehead was puckered with rather discontented speculation. She loved Major, and she wasn’t sure if she approved of Mrs. Crutchworthy. She liked the groom—a decent man; but she wasn’t sure about the mistress. Amber was very seldom sure about people. It didn’t take her long to make up her mind about a horse; if she kept her eye on one through a day’s hunting, she generally knew all she needed to know by the end of it. But people! You could keep your eye on them for weeks and months, talk to them and be talked to, and still not be sure about them. Amber was not very sure even about herself, ever. She knew she was not as beautiful as Gemma—lovely Gemma, with her Titian hair, her perfect, delicate profile, and her incredible skin. Amber’s hair was darker than Gemma’s, off the true and perfect red; her skin was a warm honey-colour—again, off the true and perfect white; there was a slight bump on the bridge of her honest nose, on which, to her mother’s disgust, a faint golden powder of freckles was liable to assemble in spring. Amber would not have minded all this much if it had not, so manifestly, disappointed her mother. She was always disappointing her mother. She couldn’t talk properly to the brilliant people who came to the house. She did try—hard; she wanted to please her mother, she wanted to please the people themselves. Amber was as innocently anxious to please mankind in general as a bob-tailed sheepdog puppy which blusters about, sniffing and wagging its foolish tail. She did please some people. But not the right ones, and not in the right way, she felt. She couldn’t make those little light witty remarks about books and pictures—if a book had interested her, she wanted, if she talked about it at all, to sit down and chew it over for twenty minutes, and get at the bottom of it. But the talk always sailed on ahead of her—one little light clever remark, or two at most, and off it skimmed, leaving her baffled, her contribution suspended. And she would glance furtively at her mother to see if she had noticed; nearly always, she had—nearly always, there was that half-closing of Lady Julia’s eyes, or that slight compression of her fine lips, which told Amber that she had failed again. And failure took the stuffing out of one so frightfully.
It had all been much easier while her father was alive. Either because he expected very little, or because they understood one another, he had never seemed to be disappointed in Amber. But then Daddy had not been much good at the brilliant people and the little light remarks either; Daddy, she said to herself, with a small giggle of amusement, had been a bit of a disappointment too! But he had been an impenitent disappointment, as she was not; and as they slipped away together, happy confederate truants, into the safe world of horses and the people who dealt with horses—“A lot of damned highbrows!” he would ejaculate. (It always amused Amber so much that when he made this and similar disparaging remarks about highbrows, he used to shove his own bushy and projecting brows up so far that they overtopped the Triplex spectacles which his short sight compelled him to wear, even out riding, by nearly an inch.) “Come on, my pretty!” he would call to her, as they swung towards some savage-looking obstacle—“let’s see what you can make of it!” And as often as not, what she made of it called forth the cheerful “That’s right!” which so thoroughly put stuffing into her.
Amber had been jogging absent-mindedly along the old green road in the pale winter sunshine, eating her sandwiches and occasionally slapping the reins confidentially on Major’s shining coppery neck. Having finished her lunch, she crumpled up her sandwich-paper into a ball and shot it over the dry-stone wall into the beech wood which bordered the track, brushed the crumbs from her shabby breeches and jacket, and put her horse into a canter. A quarter of a mile further on the turf track crossed the high road, and beyond it dropped suddenly into one of those deep-sunk valleys which intersect the Cotswold uplands. This was her direct road home—down into the vale, up the further rise, and a couple of miles along the ridge beyond, to drop again from it into her own valley. But she did not take it. She pulled up on reaching the road, and sat frowning in her saddle at the wavering columns of smoke which rose from an unseen house below her, hidden among a group of trees—then with an energy which surprised Major she turned his head to the left, and galloped like mad along the roadside turf for nearly a mile. “Fool!” she muttered as she gallop
ed—“Fool! fool!” Then drawing rein she crossed the road, and took a slanting lane which led down into the dip. “Cut it out!” she said aloud to herself, in a sort of anger, brushing the smarting tears from her eyes—“You must cut it out!”
Mrs. Grant-Howard’s chance shot about running away from a young man had not been wholly wide of the mark. Amber was going two or three miles out of her way simply to avoid passing a small Cotswold manor-house whose wrought-iron gates had been to her, for nearly a year, the secret portals of Paradise. It was a very simple story. When Captain Arthur Griffiths had come into Gloucestershire from, it was believed, New Zealand, three years before, he had met with a civil if slightly restrained welcome from the inhabitants. This, since he kept a pleasant bachelor establishment, a good table, and two or three decent hunters, had grown gradually into a rather complacent acceptance. He dined with his neighbours, he shot with them, and with them, regularly, he hunted. He rode straight enough to satisfy old Tom Harrison; he talked well enough to please Lady Julia. He was often at Riddingcote. And Amber had enjoyed him. She had felt curiously safe in enjoying him. People who satisfied both her parents were rare—so rare that it must be safe to enjoy them. The world of people and ideas and books was not closed to Amber, nor in the least without interest—it was only that, compared to her mother, to Gemma, she acquitted herself in it so deplorably; whereas in her father’s world of horses and woods and walls and stiff jumps she got on all right. She had been turned defeatist in her mother’s world by defeat—like a horse, she used to think, that has once been overridden and afterwards won’t race. But Captain Griffiths moved easily in both, and in either made her feel secure and adequate—more, successful, admirable.
Of course she had fallen in love with him. He was more intelligent and amusing than her hunting young men, more mature and somehow more solid than the youthful intellectuals from Oxford who flooded Riddingcote at week-ends. He had displayed first interest in her, then admiration; he had somehow brought a quietly increasing intimacy into being between them. On this for some months she had rested, happy and sustained, gaining confidence from a relationship obviously approved, veiling even from herself its secret possibilities of rapture.