There is the skeleton black hull, stuck on its side in the mud; and ah! There, a long way off, is that glimpse of a white house lifted up on a wooded slope, looking out across the estuary. To plunge into those bosomy secretive August woods, to be sealed up inside the core of that tender fecund blindness, to tunnel through it and be delivered out of it into open light and space, before that beneficent forbidding white façade: this is a latter-day interpretation of my violent and confused sensations about that symbolic landscape.
Now we are at the end of our journey. The paddles roar and thump. Noisily we back, advance, at last edge languidly up alongside the pier. Last pleasure: to watch the great coil of rope flung out across the dwindling strait, caught, pulled on, looped round the bollard. Now we are tied up and the paddles fall silent. Miss Mildred gathers us around her on deck, but Sylvia, tranced as usual, steps untimely forward upon the gangplank, and immediately begins to go down among a press of passengers and suitcases. ‘Mind out, Missy!’ calls Ham. Grinning, he retrieves her, picks her up, carries her on to the pier and sets her down with a flourish. Riding on his muscular arm, coy, blushing and confused, she, not I, is Little Em’ly.*
We sauntered up and down, waiting for the train to come in. There was nothing outstanding to look at, and Miss Mildred made no attempt to entertain us. Apart from dealing mildly and suitably with the infant caprices of my brother, she seemed dreamy, and I wondered if she was composing, or merely preparing herself, in wordless joy, for the sight of my father dismounting from his first-class compartment.
The little harbour described a shallow semi-circle. It was filled with pleasure craft at anchor and bordered by boatbuilding yards. Behind these the little town sat compact upon an incline. Smoke went up from household chimneys, hammering on wood sounded from the yards, the yachts, white, blue, red, green, bobbed at anchor and fluttered their flags. There was something festive, cosy and romantic about the scene; as if a life of small shops and lamps and teapots in back parlours, of church and chapel-going and allotments were blended with a life setting towards departures and the open sea; yet all the separations must be brief, the journeys domestic and propitious; and the people must be contented yet lightly restless, their sober pedestrian land rhythm just shaken by a tremor of the emotional swing of tides and gulls.
It was not long before the London train appeared, and out stepped my father, looking, as he always did, very much amused when he saw us, and doffing his hat to Miss Mildred with such stylish grace that I felt she must find it wonderfully gratifying. The high spot of the trip was still before us: tea on the boat going back. Bread and butter, shrimps, raspberry jam, Dundee cake, Mazawattee tea—tea the colour of Guinness, fiercer and more bitter than any I have tasted since, even at Paddington, or at Women’s Institute tea-parties. The weather had become chilly and overcast, and we remained below and played I Spy—with colours, not the alphabet, so that my brother could join in. When we got back Miss Mildred told my mother we had been models and a pleasure to take out.
This is all I can remember about the Daintrey family at the seaside.
Then there was a Sunday when some of them came down from London in an enormous hired Daimler to spend the day with us at our home by the river. It was a very hot day, and I see Ma in black satin prone in a garden chair beneath the walnut tree, fanning herself and gasping. I see Pa beside her. His lips a lurid blue, his hands shaking, completely silent, he seems in the innermost recess of his exhausted being to be intent on preserving the last flicker of himself. I remember a moment when, suddenly, the paralysis of alarm began to strive with the smiles of hospitality upon my mother’s features. What if they both died upon her hands before the day was out? She said later to my father: ‘It was a great mistake.’ These words rang painfully in my ears: I had assumed that having the Daintreys must be pure pleasure for all; it was not so. Children savour the company of their favourites with a simple direct and intemperate zeal which leaves no room for so chilling a concept as social inconvenience. To discover that the objects of one’s enthusiasm have been in the adult view merely a bore, or troublesome, is more than upsetting, it is shocking. It causes a sinking, almost nausea, like the first mutter of a thunderstorm, or the suspicion of cruelty in the world.
Curiously, I remember nothing about the girls that day. Two came. One was certainly Miss Mildred, for it was on that occasion that we were each presented with a little attaché case stamped with our initials: Jess’s was blue, Sylvia’s green, mine red. I still have it. I trace her by the gift, but cannot see her. Is it Viola or some other swan-like young woman—for they abounded, in white, with parasols, by the river in those days—standing on the bank, her face under a wide straw hat lucent with reflected light, watching the swans as they come hissing to the raft? This must be towards evening when it grew cooler, and Pa and Ma were conducted down to the boathouse to watch us swim. Ma said we were pretty dears; the sight of our bonny limbs seemed to cause her sorrow and foreboding. She felt Sylvia’s calves and said with a sigh: ‘She’s very firm.’ She asked my mother whether she felt quite happy about the effects of immersion upon us in our overheated condition. She herself never trusted river water. The only son of a dear widowed cousin of hers had swallowed a fatal mouthful of bacteria while bathing. He was gone in a week.
The wax-skinned reed-pierced olive river flowed by, carrying the swans, and the skiffs and punts, and the incandescent midge-swarms. Oars thudded in rhythm, blades tore the polished surface silkily, an excursion steamer went by crammed with people dancing on deck to the thump of a strident piano. They leaned over the side and waved. A man’s voice shouted: ‘Hallo, Grannie!’ Then the glittering wash came running in level waves and smacked the bank and gurgled beneath the raft. Incongruous element in the light, shifting scene, the black bulk of old Mr. and Mrs. Daintrey sat on the boathouse bench, shored up with cushions in the cool of the evening.
‘We’re a happy family,’ she sighed, plunged in her inner vision. ‘They’re all very good children to their old Ma and Pa.’
She took up Pa’s crumbling, speckled-fungus hand, and held it in hers.
We went next summer to the island. It was the last week in July, 1914. The Daintreys were to come in August. On August 5th the shore was totally deserted. Acting upon the assumption that the German fleet would immediately steam up the Channel and open fire upon the bay, everybody had fled to the mainland. We stayed on and had our holiday much as usual. Of the world crisis I remember only that sudden emptiness of the beach and the expression on my father’s face as he sat reading the papers all day, and his saying to my mother: ‘It’ll be over by Christmas.’ Khaki figures and barbed-wire entanglements appeared round the fort on the downs. Battleships steamed by, gun practice shook us several times a day, once or twice an aeroplane bumbled across the straits and toppled about and landed for a few hours. Sylvia and I spent a long broiling afternoon stalking a German spy who turned out to be a well-known elderly author walking over from his house in Freshwater Bay to visit my parents. We waited for the Daintreys, but they did not come. The island never saw them as a family again.
Did we ever see them thus again? Yes, once. At Miss Mildred’s wedding.
It was in the middle of the war years that she wrote to tell us that she was engaged to be married. She was doing war work in some Government office, and he was the head of her department and love had gradually grown up between them. She called him her man and said she was very, very happy and might she bring him down to lunch one Sunday?
They came; and the shock was that he was remarkably handsome, like a diplomat on the stage: tall, faultlessly dressed, with wavy grey hair and regular features. His name was Mr. Martin Chisholm, and he was a widower. We expected to see Miss Mildred transformed into something more like the popular notion of a bride, but no, she was exactly the same, only worse if anything, so to speak. She had aged and looked worn and lined and paler than ever. Pince-nez still clasped her nose, her hair was co
mbed up in the same governessy way and her hat was frumpish. We did not really see how he could so discredit himself. We valued Miss Mildred, but we deplored his taste. And love beautified, we knew: it was a worry. I thought then in a confused way that the effort of pulling off so sensational a coup, the aim and hope, long-deferred, of her life, had taken it out of her to the point of exhaustion. We watched avidly for signs of passion, and in so far as, nourished on Daily Mirror serials, we expected burning glances, mingling of hands, kisses behind the shrubbery, we were doomed to disappointment. Two or three times we did see them exchange a gentle resting look and smile. It seemed like mere affection, not romance; and though this was a blow for us, we had to admit that anything more violent would have been unsuitable.
In the afternoon, we tactfully allowed them to stroll round the garden, arm in arm. I thought: for the rest of her life she will have someone always to stroll with arm in arm. Later she came back smiling and drew Jess and me forth with her through the french windows, while Mr. Chisholm stayed behind and had a nice chat with my parents. ‘I want them to get to know him,’ she said. She put an arm round each of us, and thus entwined we wandered in loving converse, and everything was as usual. She asked us what we thought of him and we replied with embarrassment that he was very handsome, and she said with soft intensity: ‘Yes, and better than handsome.’ She told us what dears he thought us all: he’d summed us up already—Jess the sensible one, me the dreamy one, Sylvia the deep one—as she had known he would. She said his dear wife had died many years ago, and since then he had been so lonely, so unhappy. She was going to do her best to make it up to him now. She wanted us all to be great friends always. She had hoped to have us as bridesmaids, it had always been one of her dearest wishes, but owing to the war it must be a very quiet wedding and, though of course we must all be there to see her married, only wee Wendy and Peter would follow her to the altar. After war was over, and that must be soon, they were going on a long voyage, out to China where he had lived and worked as a young man. Then they would come back and settle in the country, and we were to come and stay with them, in turns, often and often.
After tea they went back to London. When she said good-bye to my mother she held her by both hands and said: ‘You know, we’re very sure’; and to my father she said with an extraordinary simple trustful smile: ‘I knew you’d be glad of my happiness.’ As for Mr. Chisholm he did what was fitting by wringing our hands hard and saying with warmth, in reply to my parents’ parting expressions of congratulation: ‘I am a very lucky man.’
Afterwards I overheard them discussing Mr. Chisholm. There was surprise in their voices while they rehearsed his qualities: well-read, travelled, good-looking, intelligent: a notable man. ‘What do you suppose … ?’ said my mother dubiously. My father shrugged his shoulders, looking amused. Knowing that our ears were agog they dropped into veiled and laconic allusions: nest-feathering, eyes to the main chance, and other financial circumlocutions. It had never occurred to me that Miss Mildred might be cynically wooed for her money: I now understood it to be so.
‘Poor woman,’ said my father. ‘Her face is not her fortune.’
‘Dear me, how plain she looked.’ My mother sighed. ‘And such a bad colour. I don’t believe she’s strong. I wonder what her age is. Nearly forty, I imagine.’
‘Well, I wish the old girl luck with all my heart,’ said my father. ‘She’ll make him a dashed good wife.’
Next month the wedding.
War-time it may be and concessions have to be made in the matter of bridesmaids, but Miss Mildred is determined to have a memorable ceremony: St. Margaret’s, full choral, lilies, white satin and all. Conscious of our wedding coat and hats we enter the church along a strip of red carpet; we catch a glimpse of Wendy and Peter in Kate Greenaway* garb, fidgeting and gnawing about in the shadows just inside, guarded by a sharp shiny black and vermilion wing that is Mrs. Norman; we see our boy Norman and our Arthur stepping forward, beaming, in morning dress, to conduct us to our seats: they seem to be in unnaturally high spirits, and I am surprised at this, but understand it now. We observe group after group of strangers noiselessly slipping into the places. We are impressed by the sight of old Mrs. Daintrey prone in a front pew, flowing with veils and chains and tears; of Rosie and Dolly beside her, looking patchy, woeful and bemused; of the graceful back and shoulders of an elegant woman sitting beside them, but with a suggestion of being separated from them. Slowly she turns her head and winks at us and it is Viola. The decorations consist of arum lilies and poinsettias in profusion: a winter wedding. The organ is pealing. Mr. Chisholm emerges from nowhere and stands waiting by the steps. At this, Ma Daintrey’s sobs redouble. Manly, superbly dressed, controlling emotion, he whispers to his best man, steps forward and bows over Ma gravely, with a filial kiss—damp for him—steps back to his place. Far down at the end of the aisle there is a stir; a lot of white and singing is coming up towards us. It is the choir; and, oh, goodness, following them, a fluid floating column of white, a long formal column of black: it is the bride upon the arm of her father. Miss Mildred, what has happened to you? She is transfigured, she is a Beauty. My throat contracts as she passes, her face half smiling behind the white veil covering it. She carries a white prayer-book and she has removed her pince-nez, and she has been visited by a hairdresser who has done her hair low, close to her head, with a middle parting and soft waves. The veil has toned down the ginger to a tender brilliance. She wears a wreath of orange blossom, and you see that thus bound the shape of her head is beautiful. Also her body moulded in white satin looks young, noble and supple. Pa Daintrey is ashen, and there is an alarmingly collapsed look about him, yet he holds himself upright and paces on with unfaltering tread; he will get through it somehow and do them credit on this his last public appearance. As they pass the family pew Miss Mildred turns her head, and the most loving smile imaginable shines out of the veil on to the weltering mass of Ma. On they go. Now Mr. Chisholm, looking upset and no wonder, steps forward to meet his bride. The procession stops. The bridal pair stand shoulder to shoulder before a waiting surplice. Wendy and Peter lay down the long satin train and stand at either corner of it, scratching themselves from time to time and frowning at each other. Pa Daintrey having inaudibly delivered over his favourite daughter to her bridegroom, retires with stricken dignity to take his place beside her mother. A slow tear trickles down his long cheek and slowly he takes out a handkerchief and wipes it away. Ma takes his hand; and through the remainder of the ceremony she goes on stroking and patting it. The ritual proceeds. I cannot get it out of my head that Miss Mildred is a victim, and am unnerved by the pathos of the back view of her patient sacrificial white form. The ring is on. Her train sweeping majestically behind, they move forward alone to the altar, where another surplice receives them and begins to say something urgent and confidential in their private ear. We kneel, we rise, it is all over, they vanish into the vestry and so do the Daintrey family and some strangers on the opposite side of the aisle. Led by the choir we occupy ourselves in their absence by singing ‘O Perfect Love.’ Then they all come back. The organ bounces into the opening bars of the Wedding March, and down the aisle comes the radiant Miss Mildred on the arm of Mr. Chisholm.
Her veil is now thrown back, it is her own face and none other blinking without the pince-nez; but she looks so cheerful, rejuvenated and triumphant that the illusion almost persists. She has brought it off, she is a married woman, she has entrusted herself to the love of a good man.
We go to the reception and are announced by a stentorian butler, and find Miss Mildred and Mr. Chisholm arranged as a group in the middle of a very large room. She kisses us warmly but absent-mindedly as we file past in the middle of a long procession of wedding guests. Mr. Chisholm seems pleased to see us and wrings our hands to the bone. My mother has told us to say: ‘Congratulations,’ but naturally this is impossible and we can only look up at them with sheepish smiles. We are given an insufficient
helping of wedding cake and manage to spot our coffee set and card among the lordly array of wedding gifts. There is a moment when I see Miss Mildred with unknown friends around her, a champagne glass in her hand, throwing her head back to laugh in the jolliest way. It is the first time I have ever seen her laugh.
She did enjoy her wedding.
And that was the last time we saw the Daintreys. It was about then that my father embarked uncomplainingly upon the long course of his last illness, and we ceased to invite friends for week-ends.
I do not know how long it was after that—a year?—more?—the war was over—that my mother came to us with a serious face and a letter in her hand edged with black, portentous. ‘Girls, you remember the Daintreys—’ She looked and sounded terribly sorry. I recognised Ma Daintrey’s handwriting, which was strong, educated, flowing. Bad news. Miss Mildred was dead. Taken ill on the way back from China. Buried at sea.
We knew that they had carried out that cherished plan because she had faithfully sent us post-cards. No doubt she was on her way back to find her country home when death overtook her. Years of peace and contentment were ahead of her; but she had died, and been pitched overboard from the deck of a P. & O. liner. Vividly her family in bereavement were conjured up before us: the tears, the broken-hearted tears, the horror-struck unbelief, the Christian resignation. The aching void that none can fill. God’s will be done. She has gone before, she is waiting on the other side. Our right hand, so loving, the best of daughters, happiest of wives. Her husband, poor dear, another son to us, we must think of him. We all try to help one another, the dear remaining girls are very good, but my poor old dear is quite broken: his favourite daughter. We were such a happy family.
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