“But not becoming prime minister, eh? Patriots?”
“Every Englishwoman is a patriot.”
“She is like the Spartan mothers, sending her sons to the war—‘with this or on it’—proud they die?—or in battle herself to die?”
“There was Edith Cavell.”
“Who said, ‘Patriotism is not enough.’ I am sad at you for your arguments. As for the arts, where, then, among women, are the major poets, the dramatists, the painters?”
“What about the great women novelists?”
“Ah, those, yes, but they are like the great actresses. They are interpreters only. The novel is not an art-form.”
“What about sculpture, then? What about Barbara Hepworth?”
“If you like big holes, yes, she is significant.”
“Henry Moore makes big holes, as you call them.”
“Agreed, but he is better—he is superb—when he do not make big holes.”
“You’re referring to his earlier work, of course.”
“Of course. By 1950 he is thinking like Picasso. Great pity.”
“Don’t talk such nonsense!”
“What, then, is Helmet Number Three? What, then, is Standing Figure with two little horn-heads and tilted pelvic girdle? Compare, please, with Picasso of 1929, Girl on the Seashore. No resemblance?”
“Not the very slightest. You can’t compare sculpture with painting, anyway,” said Mary stoutly, unwilling to acknowledge that she was not conversant with any of the masterpieces mentioned. Dame Beatrice intervened again.
“I think,” she said, “that to argue with the Greeks is profitless, my dear Miss Cowie. They are, by tradition, debaters, city-dwellers, rebels, whereas we slower-witted English are nostalgic for our two acres and a cow. This being so, we tolerate our neighbours only so long as they do not argue with us. Our utmost desire is to ‘keep ourselves to ourselves’ and to leave civilised disputation to the Order of Preachers.”
The slightly uncivilised disputation between the two girls was also interrupted by the entrance on to the balcony of Dick and the twenty-year-old Simonides.
“Not cold out here?” asked Dick.
“Miss Metoulides has been keeping us warmed up with a feast of reason . . .” began Dame Beatrice.
“If not a flow of soul,” said Mary. Simonides, a thin, wavy-haired, sinuous youth with sad but aristocratic features and large, expressive hands, seated himself on the basketwork settee beside Mary and exclaimed.
“I am all soul! Without soul I do not exist. What are your views, Dame Beatrice?”
“With regard to souls, I entertain none. Their existence I regard as doubtful, their possession, if they do exist, an encumbrance, their destination equivocal, it seems.”
“You are atheist?”
“Oh, no, I am open-minded, I hope, but I am not a lover of nebulae.”
“More of these astronomer’s stars!” said Hero, disgustedly.
“So you will come to Greece, to this cult of Apollo, and you are open-minded about him, too? It is a broad view, which I like!” exclaimed Simonides.
“Talking of Apollo,” said Mary, “I still don’t know what we’re going to do in Greece. What is our object supposed to be? My aunt is her usual enthusiastic self, but talks with her usual vagueness about what we’re after.”
“You come and help me make sandwiches for tea, and I tell you all about it,” said Simonides. “Also I disclose to you my soul.”
“He makes fun for himself,” said Hero, when the two had retreated to the kitchen. “Well, he thinks so. He will find the English rose has sharper thorns than he likes. Let us go inside. It is becoming cold out here. And you,” she added, stretching out an exquisite hand to Dame Beatrice, “I would like you to call me Hero. This is to make our friendship beautiful. I think old women are better than young ones. They are kinder; also, they do not compete, and one can be at rest with them.”
“They vary,” said Dame Beatrice. “Some are oil, some vinegar, and most of them are a mixture of the two in varying proportions. But let us go inside, as you suggest. Perhaps you will show me how to play the lyra.” She had noticed the small lute, instrument of ancient lineage but different from the classic lyre, lying on a side table which they had passed on their way out to the balcony. As they entered the room, Dick, finding himself de trop in the kitchen, joined them.
“Ah, yes,” said Hero, with a wide smile, “I will play and when I play Simon will dance, and then that little English rose finds she has to finish making the sandwiches by herself. Be seated, dear friend, in the armchair, and I shall switch on the electric fire for your ancient bones, like so, and clear a space in this nice large room for Simonides, a very vigorous dancer, and he will come in, and then you will see and hear.”
She cleared a wide space, then settled Dame Beatrice solicitously in a comfortable position by the fire, pulled forward a chair for Dick, seated herself on a stool, and, picking up the lyra and its bow, began to fiddle on the strings with great rapidity and furious energy, producing a strongly rhythmic tune. In less than two minutes the door opened and in came Simonides.
“Good, good!” he exclaimed. “Excuse! I take off my trousers.” He shed these at lightning speed and flung off his jacket, his shirt, his shoes, and his socks. “Begin again. I wish all of the tune. My soul demands it.”
The door, which he had slammed shut, opened again. Mary, like some outraged Clytemnestra, stood framed in the opening, breadknife in hand. At the spectacle of a young man clad in nothing but a pair of bright golden underpants, however, she blenched and retreated. Simonides nodded to Hero and poised himself for the dance.
Mary’s indignation at being left so summarily to finish the task in hand resulted in her producing a bad tempered mountain of sandwiches, far too many, Dame Beatrice thought, until she saw the inroads made on them by Edmund, Roger, and their tutor when they came in. Edmund Owen was a chunky, swarthy boy, broadshouldered, of average height, and interested in nothing but Rugby football. He played prop forward for the Welsh village nearest to his home, for the Owens lived in Wales. For him, Dame Beatrice thought, to be privately taught would not amount to a handicap, since some aspects, at least, of his education would be attended to by the other members of the team, dedicated in equal parts to dismembering their opponents, attending chapel on Sundays, making certain that the landlords of “home and away” pubs remained solvent, and seeing that the local girls did not carry the stigma of virginity to the grave.
His brother, the fourteen-year-old Roger, was of a make and shape so different that it was difficult to believe they came of the same parentage. He was slightly taller than his elder brother, fair, whereas Edmund was as dark as a Spaniard, and so slightly built as to give an appearance of fragility. Later, Dame Beatrice was to discover that he could run like a hare and climb like a mountain goat, but all that was apparent at tea-time to give the lie to his looks was that he had the appetite of a boa-constrictor and a warped sense of humour. Towards his elders, apart from this, he displayed the wary defensiveness of a stray cat in a strange alley.
The brothers, it was clear, formed a mutual admiration society, Roger informing Dame Beatrice with pride that Edmund had had to begin shaving nearly two years previously and Edmund reciprocating with the information that Roger had “done” the thirty-three peaks of the Cuillins, including Sgurr Alasdair, before he was thirteen. Neither boy paid the slightest attention to either of the girls, but their tutor was less inhibited. Unfortunately for Mary, both Julian and Simon found Hero the more attractive of the two, and paid her more attention than was either strictly necessary or, in Mary’s presence, particularly polite.
Julian Suffolk was a tall, brown-haired man aged twenty-three. He had a quirky, lop-sided smile, blue eyes, and a manner of speech so slow that it seemed an affectation. He had tried teaching in a prep. school and then had entertained thoughts of joining the police, but Henry Owen’s advertisement had tempted him into deciding that by becoming a private tutor
there was a chance he would be able to combine the more desirable aspects of both these professions while being free from the disadvantages of either.
His pupils tolerated him and proved to be untroublesome and reasonably intelligent, his employer gave him a free hand with them, and he found himself with enough spare time to go in for a little free-lance literary work. He was looking forward to the excursion to Greece chiefly because he had seen in it the opportunity of obtaining copy for a novel he was planning. When he met Hero Metoulides it occurred to him that the jaunt might have other possibilities of an equally desirable nature but of a different kind, and he was not overjoyed when Simonides also showed a marked preference for the Greek girl.
Tea was over before the last two members of the party came back from their expedition, so Ronald Dick bustled about to provide for them, and it was not long before Dame Beatrice realised that another scene in this springtime comedy was about to be played, the participants being the two older men.
Henry Owen had certain advantages over Ronald Dick. Dick was small (physically insignificant, in fact), spectacled, and nervous. Owen was not only tall; he was magnificently leonine, fair (like his younger son), bearded in a dashing manner, deep-voiced, self-confident and full of strange, if innocuous, oaths. Against this (as it happened), Dick had been left a considerable fortune by his grandmother, whereas Owen was, by comparison, only fairly comfortably endowed; and whereas Dick stood an even chance of disposing of his human encumbrances in the not-so-far distant future, for both were twenty years old, Owen, for some years to come, would be hampered by having to share his home with his sons. Apart from these considerations, whether, supposing she intended to marry either of them, the widowed Chloe Cowie would prefer to walk rough-shod over the solicitous Dick or be bullied and ruled by the magisterial Owen was anybody’s guess at the moment. That Chloe herself was prepared to enjoy the contest, however, was clear enough and could not be disputed.
She was a tall, powerfully-built woman with dark-brown hair and cold, grey eyes, and she had a clear laugh which she employed often, sometimes unnecessarily. She was apt to refer to herself as a business-woman and it was true that her novels brought her more than a competence and that her investments were always well-advised. She cultivated (unconsciously, perhaps) the streak of cruelty in her nature and was full of guileless self-approval, the more so in compensation for the lack of approval extended to her novels by certain reviewers and by some of her fellow-authors. She was adept at re-hashing the plots of others with just sufficient skill to avoid the stigma of being labelled plagiarist, composed her books at great speed and with only moderate attention to grammatical accuracy, had extremely beautiful hands and feet, and possessed considerable animal magnetism for certain types of men. Women, on the whole, disliked her, and with some justification, although, paradoxically, it was mostly women who read and enjoyed her novels. Dame Beatrice had a feeling that she knew her.
Hero had abandoned her music and Simonides his dancing before Chloe and Owen appeared. The table and chairs had been put back into their accustomed places and Ronald Dick had gone into the kitchen to make a fresh pot of tea for the newcomers.
“We do have a maid,” he said, in response to a laughing enquiry from Chloe, “but this is her free afternoon. At least, it isn’t, because she usually takes tomorrow, but she particularly asked for today, so I let her have it.”
“She is a lazy creature,” said Hero, “and I think she invents an excuse when she hears of so many visitors. Never mind! Miss Cowie cut all the sandwiches and I shall leave our nasty lazy woman all the washing-up after dinner, so I hope you will use lots of knives and forks and spoons and plates, and we pile the dishes right up to the ceiling, so that there is a great deal for her to do. We cannot have two lazy people in this flat, and I am the other one.”
Dame Beatrice had declined an invitation to dine at the flat and soon took her leave. Before she made her farewells, however, Ronald Dick took her aside and asked her whether or not she had made up her mind to join the expedition to Greece.
“You have now met the full strength of the company,” he said, “but, if you would prefer time to consider, I could arrange another meeting. The Cowies live in Christchurch, and so are near at hand and would make themselves available, I am certain, but Owen’s party have come from Wales especially for this small social occasion and have booked their hotel rooms only for the rest of this week, so another meeting, if we are to include everybody, would need to be very soon.”
“So far as I am concerned,” said Dame Beatrice, “my mind is fully made up. I shall be delighted to make one of your number. If you will let me have some idea of a possible date for the beginning of our pilgrimage, I will arrange to book my passage to Piraeus in time to meet your deadline. I shall go by sea. I much prefer cruising to flying, and I dislike railway travel, except for short journeys in England. By the way, I have a curious feeling that I have met Mrs. Cowie somewhere before, but my memory refuses to aid me.”
“I do not think you have met her before,” said Dick, looking somewhat embarrassed. “She probably reminds you of Megan Hopkinson, whose niece she is. Olwen, Megan’s older sister, married a man named Bosfield. They had one child, this charming Chloe, who so closely resembles her aunt. As for Chloe herself, I am told that she is the widow of someone called Cowie. That is—er—well, that is the whole story.”
“I see,” said Dame Beatrice. She made no comment, but decided in her own mind—for she had marked the hesitation—that it might be the story, but that it was anything but the whole story, and the thought intrigued her.
Somewhat to the surprise of Dame Beatrice, some of the party had also chosen to travel by sea. She found that she was to be accompanied on the voyage by Chloe Cowie and Mary, and by Hero, Roger, and the tutor.
The ship was to leave from Southampton and would call at Gibraltar, Naples, Palermo, and Iraklion before it turned north to Piraeus for Athens, where Dick, Owen, Edmund, and Simonides would be waiting. Their flight had been so arranged as to give Dick time to complete the plans for the Apollo pilgrimage before the ship’s party disembarked.
Dame Beatrice was still incompletely informed as to the extent and object of this pilgrimage. Apart from a vague impression that it was to start from Delos, the legendary birthplace of the god Apollo and his sister Artemis, who were the children of Leto by Zeus and born under a palm-tree on the island, she neither knew nor cared to what bournes the party would travel after that, nor how many of the shrines and temples on the islands and the mainland were to be visited. Her own object was to spend a slightly unusual holiday in interesting if not necessarily compatible company, and she looked forward, in any case, as much to the voyage as to its aftermath.
She embarked at a quarter to four on the appointed day to find that tea was being served in the most spacious of the lounges. The passengers’ luggage was still being lowered in huge nets on to the main deck, and a glance into her cabin indicated that her own trunk and suitcases had not yet been delivered, so she went into the largest lounge, wondering how soon she might find herself encountering the rest of her party. Chloe, Mary, and Hero would drive to the docks in hired cars from Christchurch and Poole respectively, she supposed. Roger and Julian, who had spent a few days in London after seeing Dick and Henry, Edmund, and Simon off from the airport, would come in from Waterloo on the boat train.
There was a fair sprinkling of passengers at tea, but a cursory glance around convinced her that she was acquainted with none of them. This was all to the good, since she held that an essential ingredient of any enjoyable holiday is to avoid those people with whom one is constantly or even only intermittently in contact during one’s ordinary life, but among these she did not include her fellow-pilgrims, for, apart from meeting with them at Ronald Dick’s flat, she had no knowledge of them whatever, except for the cursory illusion that somewhere and at some time she had met Chloe Cowie; but Dick had explained that.
With the arrival of the boat-train f
rom London the lounge filled up rapidly, and she had just accepted a second cup of tea from an ample and prosperous-looking woman who had constituted herself “mother” at the table for four where Dame Beatrice had settled herself, when in from the promenade deck came Roger and Julian. The tutor said a word to his charge and then retreated. Dame Beatrice waved a skinny claw to indicate to the boy that there was a vacant seat at her table. Roger smiled with relief, waved back, and she made room for him on the settee beside her.
“Your grandson, I assume,” said the ample woman, beaming. “Milk and sugar, young man?”
“Yes, please, two lumps,” said Roger. “Dame Beatrice isn’t my grandmother. I only wish she were.”
“Well, I’m sure that’s very charmingly put,” commented the beaming woman. “Perhaps we should introduce ourselves. I am Amelia Dearwater and this is my husband Percival.”
“I am Beatrice Lestrange Bradley. This is my friend, Mr. Roger Owen,” said Dame Beatrice, dignifying the boy in a way she knew he would appreciate.
“Dame Beatrice? Oh, I know your name quite well. Do you play bridge? No? What a pity. I want to make up a foursome as soon as I can find the right people. Percival doesn’t play, either, but I think the time between lunch and tea, and between tea and dinner, can be so dreadfully dull, don’t you, on board ship, if one doesn’t find something to do?”
Dame Beatrice observed mendaciously that she thought she would be taking a short rest during those periods which had been mentioned. Shortly after this, Mrs. Dearwater, having ascertained that her husband had finished his tea, took him away to their cabin.
“I say,” said Roger, helping himself to potted meat sandwiches, “do we have to know her? I don’t think she’ll be much fun.”
“As there are at least a thousand passengers on board, I doubt whether we shall set eyes on her again,” Dame Beatrice assured him. “What about Mr. Suffolk? Would he not like some tea?”
Lament for Leto (Mrs. Bradley) Page 2