The man in the ditch, unable to endure the hatred in her voice, uttered a loud jeering laugh as he heard the one word he could recognize and said something to his companion, who, after a moment, began to laugh too. Vartouhi was now beside herself with rage, and none of the three noticed a man making his way quickly towards them across the freezing meadow. As he reached the ditch and called angrily “What’s going on here?” a car came round the corner behind Vartouhi and was pulled up sharply by its driver. The next instant he exclaimed, “Vartouhi! What on earth are you doing?” It was Kenneth Fielding, and behind him were the surprised faces of his sister, Betty and Richard.
CHAPTER 12
AS VARTOUHI TOOK no notice but went on shouting, Kenneth got out of the car and went up to her and shook her gently by the arm.
“Vartouhi! steady on! What on earth’s the matter?”
She gasped, stopped short in the middle of an abusive sentence, and turned and stared up at him as if she did not know him.
“What’s the matter? Did these fellows—er—annoy you?” jerking his head at the Italians.
“No.” She shook her head and seemed to come to herself. “I annoy them. I stop on my bike and tell them how I hate them, dogs and pigs and sons of she-dogs!”
“I say—I say! Steady on, you know!” said Kenneth, but his voice was gentle and an admiring smile was beginning in his eyes. “Can’t have a little girl like you going for two men, you know—hit one your own size is the rule in England!”
“Kenneth,” called Miss Fielding authoritatively, “what is the matter?” And she began to descend from the car, at the same time calling to the Italians, “Cosa è seccesso? Parlare lentamente.” (What’s the matter? Talk slowly.)
The two burst forth together, not talking at all slowly, and Miss Fielding’s small knowledge of Italian was completely swamped. She was on the point of repeating her question, this time to Vartouhi, when the man who had been hurrying over the meadow jumped across the ditch onto the road, and said roughly:
“You’re not supposed to talk to these men, madam. They’re prisoners of war employed on Hallett’s Farm and I’m in charge of them. The young lady started it; I saw the whole thing.” He turned to the two men, who were still explaining, and said slowly with gestures, “All right; go back to work. Non far nienty,” then went over to them and said something in a lower tone, and Miss Fielding caught the words donna and la follia. The men laughed again and returned to the ditch but did not take up their work; they rested on their spades and watched the group in the road, on which the last light of the sunset lingered.
“This young lady is a refugee, and does not yet understand our ways,” explained Miss Fielding winningly. She shook her head at Vartouhi, who was looking from one embarrassed face to the other with her usual polite smile, now touched with defiance. Richard and Betty, who were taking no part in the affair, both thought that the scene looked like one on the stage, with a backcloth of dark trees against blue mist.
“She is in my employ,” continued Miss Fielding, “and I can promise you that this will not happen again. She is a Bairamian—and as you know, the—the relations between Italy and Bairamia are temporarily most unhappy.”
“Took it in 1938, didn’t they?” said the labourer, nodding.
“Er—yes, if you like to put it that way. And I suppose our little friend here,” Miss Fielding put her arm kindly about Vartouhi’s rigid shoulders, “was carried away by the—er—the sadness of it all and unfortunately said more than she meant.”
“I mean it all,” put in Vartouhi, smiling more politely than ever, while Kenneth shook his head at her with a delighted frown.
“Well, I don’t know anything about that. All I know is she went for Tony and Jessuppy here, and the public isn’t supposed to talk to the prisoners. It’s lucky for her these two are good-tempered, she might have had a nasty time. It’s time for them to knock off now, anyway.” He turned to the two Italians, whose jeering expression had quite vanished and who were gazing yearningly at the handsome car and the generally prosperous appearance of the English group. “Come on, Tony, Jessuppy. Good night, madam; good night, sir,” and with a touch of his forehead that included the silent two in the car, he tramped away across the misty fields. The Italians shouldered their spades and followed him, but first one of them turned and made a sweeping bow to Vartouhi in which was all the mockery of Punchinello. In return, Vartouhi silently made the gesture of one who spits, but Miss Fielding was conferring with Kenneth and fortunately did not see.
Richard was breathing the frosty, smoky scents of the evening, and watching the delicate red light shining on Vartouhi’s face. His senses were charmed but his conscience, the judging power, was uneasy and disturbed. How enchanting she seemed, among the brown branches and the grass already white with frost and the blue and grey mists—but was she enchanting, herself, her spirit? He simply did not know. He loved her with pain and enchantment, but he had never been able to love anyone so deeply that his reason went to sleep, and it was not asleep now. He had just heard her screaming with fury, and had seen her spit to express her hatred; and then she had become silent, and once more she was lovely to him, and mysterious as a leaf or a stream. Yet she had screamed; she had made that ugly gesture; and he knew that he would not be able to forget it.
His extremely sensitive face was not so fully under his control as he supposed it to be, and although his mother was far too wise a woman to make the boast that she could “read him like a book,” she could read his face with far more intelligence and interest than she bestowed on most books, and she read it now.
Let’s hope that will cure him of fancying her, she thought. She’s a charming little thing, but there’s something about her that gives me the shivers. I should think she could be very unkind. It was Betty’s strongest term of disapprobation.
“Well, Vartouhi, I’m afraid you’ll have to ride home after us,” said Miss Fielding heartily, turning away from her colloquy with Kenneth, “we can’t fix the bicycle on the car, Mr. Fielding says. But we’ll go quite slowly, we’re only about eight miles from home and we shall be back before it’s quite dark.” She gave her a pleasant smile and returned to the car, which Kenneth was already starting up, and Vartouhi slowly mounted the bicycle and set off down the road through the deepening dusk.
“Deplorable,” began Miss Fielding, leaning back comfortably and addressing herself to Betty. “She must be a very young soul——”
“A very plucky soul,” put in Kenneth unexpectedly, who was frowning over his negotiation of the downward road, obscure in the twilight. “It isn’t every girl who would have gone for a couple of great louts like that. All alone, too.”
“They were unusually small even for Italians, didn’t you think?” put in Richard mildly. “They are a small race, of course, chiefly because of their farinaceous diet.”
“Ugly-looking pair of toughs, I thought,” retorted Kenneth. “Damned plucky of her to speak up like that. Shows patriotism. I know patriotism isn’t the thing with your friends, of course.”
“No; it is ‘not enough,’” murmured Richard.
“But I like to see it myself,” concluded Kenneth, sweeping the car out into the main road.
“It is the root of all evil,” put in Miss Fielding solemnly.
This stopped the conversation, as Miss Fielding’s remarks had a way of doing, and in this case it was just as well. Betty felt relieved as the car passed Vartouhi, slowly cycling at the side of the road, and nothing more was said. The absence of emphasis in Richard’s tone had been insolent, and Kenneth’s voice had been heated, and she had feared that a disagreeable argument might ensue. She disliked arguments, and could never see why human speech should not be confined to the expression of innocent requests, the recital of amusing incidents, and endearments.
Unfortunately, Miss Fielding reopened the subject.
“I was not at all surprised to see Vartouhi attacking those men,” she announced. “Bairamians are a revengeful
race with a long history of bloodshed and warfare behind them.”
“Who hasn’t?” said Richard absently, staring at the misty fields gliding past.
“And all that politeness of hers is only the custom of her country,” Miss Fielding went on firmly, “it means nothing. I should never be surprised to find out that she hates us all.”
“They must be a delightful people to live among, if their manners are all as pleasant as hers.” Richard was displeased by the turn the conversation had taken and resolved to end it. “I think it was Dr. Johnson—or was it Bacon?—who said that cheerfulness is the least regarded and the most necessary of the virtues of daily life. When we consider how much worse the world would be if no one were ever cheerful, and how much pleasanter it would be if everybody were cheerful, we see how true that observation is. Cheerfulness is taken for granted where chastity” (Miss Fielding and his mother both stiffened slightly) “is constantly suspect, as if it were more important. Cheerfulness—though you accuse Vartouhi’s of being assumed—cannot be suspect because it cannot, according to Bacon—or it may be Dr. Johnson—be successfully counterfeited. A man is either cheerful or he is not——”
“I’m not,” said Kenneth. “It’s damned cold and I want a drink.”
But the subject of Vartouhi’s behaviour and character was not returned to, for Richard’s homily and the increasing chill and discomfort of the party quelled any desire to talk. All were glad to enter the house in search of warmth and tea; and when they entered the drawing-room (Richard most reluctantly supported by Kenneth) they were so dismayed to find Miss Burton dreamily playing My Love had a Silver Ring with the fire almost out and no signs of tea that they were momentarily incapable of speech.
“Frances! No tea?” cried Miss Fielding, advancing upon her cousin, “and what a fire? We are all frozen!”
“Yes, it is cold.” Miss Burton slowly turned her head and smiled upon her, while continuing to play. “I had to put on this little jacket. Did you have a nice drive? I haven’t blacked out upstairs; perhaps Ken had better do it at once; they’re so fussy in the winter.”
Richard was lowered onto a sofa by Kenneth and sat there shivering while his host sped away in search of alcohol. Can’t let the fellow get a chill even if he is a squirt; he’s bound to have been pulled down by this foot, thought Kenneth.
“Well really, Frances, I do think you might have had tea ready for us!” exclaimed Miss Fielding; in many ways life with her was the simpler because she always spoke out her indignations. “Here we come in frozen and starving and the fire nearly out and you strumming away as if nothing mattered!”
“Isn’t Vartouhi back yet?” inquired Miss Burton.
“Of course not; we passed her on the road and she won’t be home for hours. And what do you think—” Miss Fielding was about to embark upon a recital of the afternoon’s adventure, when there were sounds in the hall, the front door opened and they heard Vartouhi saying prettily, “You are so good and kind to ride me all this way home——” and then a deep Canadian voice said earnestly, “You’re welcome,” and “good nights” were exchanged, and the door slammed. While Betty and Richard were still exchanging interrogative glances, and Miss Burton had turned away from the piano and was gazing at the door, it opened, and Kenneth came in grinning and carrying sherry, followed by Vartouhi.
“I get tea raddy?” she asked placidly.
“Yes, please, Vartouhi. How did you——” began Miss Fielding.
“Picked up a Canadian in a lorry, by George, and he drove her home!” burst out Kenneth, roaring with laughter.
“My wheel break and I am not knowing how to mend it,” explained Vartouhi.
“How very kind of him; how much goodness there is in human nature!” said Miss Fielding, frowning at Kenneth. “You might not have been home for hours, Vartouhi.”
“She mightn’t have anyway, and it’s strictly against regulations,” murmured Kenneth, giving sherry to Richard, who was chilled, and in pain with his ankle, and angry because it was not he who had driven her home, listening to her voice and catching glimpses of her long eyes and her smile in the winter dusk. He thanked Kenneth in a cold tone, for he did not find his remark amusing.
Betty was amused and also rather pleased. There was no harm in the incident, of course, but it was not the kind of conduct Richard’s usual young women indulged in: they might be free with their favours in their own social circle (Betty suspected that some of them were), but they did not allow themselves to be picked up on twilit roads by soldiers, and she thought that Richard’s disillusionment with Vartouhi would now be complete.
Richard sipped his drink and watched Kenneth carrying in logs for the fire (to which Miss Fielding at once extended her stout legs), and then pensively turned his gaze on Vartouhi as she wheeled in the trolley laden with the tea equipage. He was jealous of the friendliness and gaiety that had been wasted on that Canadian soldier. The soldier had called out, “Hallo, gorgeous!” or “H’ya, baby!” (Richard’s training as a Mass Observer had given him a familiarity with the current proletarian vocabulary and he knew precisely the phrases that Mass-men were likely to use in Mass-situations), and then he had slowed down the lorry, and Vartouhi had said something unguessable—her use of English could never be predicted—and been so friendly and childishly confiding that the Canadian’s better heart had been completely won, and Richard, realist as he was, felt sure that every word and gesture passing between the two might have been repeated without offence to Miss Fielding in the drawing-room. How unrestrained in some respects, how complicated and calculating in others, now seemed the young women whose company he used to frequent! She is like the Noble Savage of the eighteenth-century writers, he thought, watching her and forgetting to pass other people their tea until briskly reminded by Miss Fielding; and he imagined her in Turkish trousers and brilliant zouave and cap, working among the fruit trees in spring below the bald savage mountains of her own land, where life was simple and satisfying and nobody talked too much.
CHAPTER 13
ON THE FOLLOWING Tuesday Alicia set out to walk the quarter-mile through the bright moonlight to the Fieldings’ house to attend the first rehearsal of Little Frimdl. She was tired after her day’s work, as usual, but the cold air and the beauty of the night revived her. The moon’s radiance slightly dimmed the brightness of the stars and the frost glittered on the grass and the sky was lofty and purple above the grey fields. Her footsteps rang on the road with a challenge; she felt that she could have walked for miles with that motionless icy air going past her face.
Miss Burton opened the door.
“Do come in; isn’t it cold. I wonder if we shall get them to-night?” she murmured, peeping up at the remote sky before she shut the door. “Everybody is out. So tiresome—the first rehearsal.”
“Who? Oh—the Luftwaffe.” Alicia threw her fur coat on a chair and followed her into the drawing-room. “Too busy round Moscow, I should think. How do you do,” to Richard, who looked up from his book with a smile. Miss Fielding was sitting by the fire with the typed parts of Little Frimdl strewn about her, and glanced up over her glasses.
“Oh, there you are, Alicia. Come in, do. Isn’t it a nuisance, everybody is out. Kenneth has had to go to something at the Home Guard, or so he says, and Mrs. Marten is working late at the Ministry this week and Vartouhi has gone to the cinema. Slipped away on the bicycle, if you please, before I could prevent her; so annoying. It is her free evening, I know, but I do think she might have stayed in for the first reading; it isn’t even a silly symphony; it’s that man Gable—obviously a very young soul and I should say a low physical type, though of course allowances must be made for the distorting effect of the camera.”
She returned to her sorting of the parts, muttering, and Alicia, who always planned her campaigns as carefully as any German general, coolly sat down by Richard, leant back, folded her arms and smiled at him. Her long hands were faintly stained and scarred; all the preparations of Elizabeth Arden cou
ld not completely remove these signs of her daily toil.
“Is your ankle nearly well?” she inquired.
“It’s better, thank you, but it still gives me considerable pain and I shan’t be able to walk in comfort, so I am told, for at least another six weeks,” he answered, making no attempt to disguise the extent of his injury and his impatience with it.
Alicia studied her cigarette before replying. He’s the sort of charming ass who falls down in the road and I’m the sort of ass who can’t drive a crane without driving everything else like one. I shan’t say anything about it, she decided.
“What a bore; I’m so sorry,” she said. “What’s happened to the repertory company you were with? Acting isn’t really your job, is it?”
“I suppose they are managing as best they can. No. I’m an economist. I took a degree at the London School of Economics in 1938 and I was just going to get my first job when the war broke out. I knew these people, the Dove Players, very well and they wanted someone to produce and stage-manage so I went out with them.”
Alicia knew from his mother that he had first been refused for all three Services, and warned that he would be more trouble than use in Civil Defence.
“Did you like it?”
“Moderately well, so long as I didn’t have to act. I generally find the technicalities of any art more interesting than its intangibilities.”
“I knew a girl at the School of Economics, Marion Fabian,” Alicia said after a pause. “Did you ever come across her? I should think she would have been there in your time.”
“I knew her very well,” he answered, indifferently, but not meeting her eyes, and as Miss Fabian was not a girl of whom young men usually spoke with indifference, Alicia immediately thought Ho-ho! I hope you enjoyed her nasty temper, that’s all.
The Bachelor Page 11