A Long Time Ago

by Margaret Kennedy

  Gradually I came to understand that his egotism, his cowardice, his cold puritanism, were to prevail.

  “I must go. It is my duty.”

  He dared to tell me that!

  “Go, then. But do not return.”

  From my grief and bewilderment he fled as though furies were pursuing him.

  And next day the little house, which had witnessed such moments of despair and rapture, stood deserted. The key lay once more upon the beam above the door. In my agony I had flown back to my first and only friend, my work. A beautiful movement in the symphony of my life had come to an end.

  I had nothing to regret.

  To life I say: Give me what you will! Give me your worst and your best! If I have accepted these gifts I shall have nothing to regret. The puritan, the coward, may fear the future and wish to see the past undone. But I, as long as I have power to suffer and to remember, refuse to regret anything that I have experienced.

  I give thanks for the little house where my driven soul was sheltered and renewed its strength.

  I give thanks for the island and the friendship that I found, for music and laughter, beautiful days and nights.

  I give thanks for the love which crowned this wonderful summer with a supreme glory.

  And for the art which drew me back, like a mother to her bosom, and healed my wounds, I give the deepest thanks of all:

  Du holde Kunst, Ich danke dir dafür!

  Du holde Kunst, I danke dir!

  3

  ELLEN’S brother, Kerran Annesley, had bought a small Queen Anne house at Morton, about five miles from Cary’s End. He lived there in an atmosphere of such retired distinction that even his family found it difficult to remember that he had never done much to deserve it. His beautiful library was just the setting for an ageing man of letters who might also have been a figure in the world. It was a civilised, rather feminine room, smelling of pot pourri and morocco leather, and, in the afternoons, of well-brewed china tea. There was an Aubusson carpet on the floor. The books, in their grey painted shelves, were cleaned twice a week with a vacuum cleaner.

  In this room Kerran sat and read detective novels. He had written nothing since the early days of the English Review, to which he had contributed several articles. Nobody could remember what they were about, but they were thought at the time to display great promise. When his nephews and nieces, ignoring the family legend, asked why he had done nothing since, their parents spoke vaguely of ill health and an unfortunate love affair. As a minor official in the House of Lords he had never worked harder than he was obliged, and he retired at fifty on a comfortable independence inherited from his great-aunt Harriet. But he was a man of many friendships, able to win and preserve the esteem of people who were a great deal more energetic and distinguished than himself. They continued to come and stay with him at Morton and their talk was generally of the past, of the period when they also had been promising young men. Their regard for him enabled them to forget that he had never shared with them any period of fruition or achievement—that he had done nothing in particular for thirty years.

  If he was alone upon a Sunday it was his habit to walk across the fields and take luncheon with Ellen, who was his favourite sister and who never tried to bully him into writing a book of reminiscences as Louise sometimes did. They would exchange the gossip of their respective villages and sometimes, after luncheon, they would do the crossword puzzle in the Sunday Times. Ellen always had a place laid for him, and if he did not turn up by one o’clock she knew that he was not coming. He generally arrived on the stroke of a quarter to one.

  But on this Sunday he was earlier, having walked a great deal faster than usual. His leisurely stroll across the fields had been spoilt by an unwonted perturbation of spirits. He had not stopped to look at anything, but pounded along over plough and stubble like a man in a great hurry.

  As he climbed the stile into the orchard he heard the sound of a trundled wheelbarrow and knew that Ellen must be gardening. This reassured him greatly, for it meant that life at Cary’s End was going on just as usual. He peeped over the quickset hedge into the kitchen garden and saw her up by the rubbish heap. She tipped out her barrow-load and came trundling back towards him along the box-edged path. In another moment, as soon as he could see her face, he would know how matters stood. He knew her look, when anything had happened to upset her. It was exceedingly grim. In trouble or sorrow her features had a way of hardening into a rigidity that was almost wooden. Timidly he came round the hedge and advanced up the path toward her. The trundling barrow stopped with a bump.

  “How early you are!” she exclaimed.

  She was not looking grim at all, only rather red and hot, for this was the sixth barrow-load that she had wheeled up to the rubbish heap. A wave of relief went over him. He could have spared himself all this distress. He need not have spoilt his walk. He need not have lain awake last night wondering what on earth he should say to her. It was quite evident that she had heard nothing. On this occasion, at least, they were safe.

  He was overwhelmed with admiration. It was so like her to have managed to hear nothing, to remain successfully outside the family cyclone. Now he could feel himself outside it too. Louise might send peremptory telegrams, Maude might pester him with long, indignant letters by every post, but as long as he had Ellen’s support he would refuse to put himself out. It was just like them to have made her their excuse for troubling him. We have Ellen’s feelings to consider, Maude had written. And Louise’s last telegram had run: For Ellen’s sake please use influence suppress book immediately. Even Gordon had seemed to think that Ellen needed protection of some kind; had, indeed, rung up from Oxford on Saturday morning, and had taken the joke very badly when Kerran asked if he was expected to fight a duel with Elissa Koebel.

  For it was plain that there was nothing to be done. Any effort to suppress the book now would only mean a great deal of odious publicity. Dick was dead. Only a very small section of readers would be interested in the disinterment of that long-forgotten scandal, which had, in fact, less news-value than any episode in Elissa’s career. Amid so much that was startling, where so many famous names were involved, it was likely that the chapter called A Summer in Ireland would be overlooked. But the family would never take that view of the matter. They talked about Ellen’s feelings and enjoyed themselves, just as they had enjoyed themselves twenty-five years ago, when it all happened. They had put up Ellen’s feelings as a kind of stalking horse for their own pleasure and excitement.

  And Ellen, meanwhile, had no feelings at all apparently. She was gardening, and her tranquil smile of welcome told him that in her house he would, at least for the present, be safe from these importunities.

  Taking the wheelbarrow from her he trundled it back to the place under the apple tree where she was conducting her weeding operations. Hawkins had been ill that autumn and parts of the garden had been sadly neglected. The orchard was overrun not only with innocent groundsel but with all the worst kind of weed, docks, dandelions, couch grass and ground elder. Ellen’s cherished violet bed was lost underneath a great mass of sodden and dying vegetation. But she had cleared several square yards and in the newly-dug soil she proudly displayed several disconsolate-looking columbines which Hawkins would never have taken the trouble to save.

  “I suppose, as you’re so early, you wouldn’t like to get a fork and help me?” she said. “I’ve made a vow to get as far as the path before lunch.”

  “No, Ellen, I shouldn’t. I’ve got my Sunday trousers on. I think I shall go indoors and read the paper.”

  “Umph!” said Ellen, grasping the fork again. “You’ll find Hope in the drawing-room. She’s here for the week-end.”

  “Oh, is she?”

  He spoke without enthusiasm. He liked Hope better than he liked his other nieces, but he would rather have been alone with Ellen. He wanted to tell her about the Vicar of Morton, who had provided a new chapter in the parish drama by reading Benediction in Latin. There had
been a very good scene when old Major Trefusis had not only walked out of church himself, but had also obliged his cook to come with him. The presence of Hope at the luncheon table would a little spoil this fruitful topic. She had a way of wanting to talk about things which had nothing to do with Morton or Cary’s End, and sometimes, with an irritating suggestion of patronage, she would ask him intelligent questions about Campbell-Bannerman, not as if she really wanted to know, but as if she thought that he could only discuss statesmen who were dead and public affairs which were a trifle out of date.

  But he would have been very much more downcast had he known what was going to happen to him in the drawing-room. As soon as he pushed open the window he was aware that he had stepped back into that very cyclone which he thought to have escaped. It had come to Cary’s End after all, and only Ellen, wheeling her barrow up and down the garden paths, was outside it. Hope, it appeared, was quite in the middle of it. She sprang towards him with such an expression of indignant horror that he scarcely needed to glance at the book which she brandished before his eyes.

  “Oh, Uncle Kerran …”

  “Good morning, Hope. How is Alan? How are the children?”

  “Oh! They’re quite well, thank you. Uncle Kerran, have you read …”

  “No, I have not.” He waved the book away. “And I’m not going to. There’s nothing to be done, that I can see, and the less we talk about it the better.”

  “Nothing to be done?”

  She stared at him in amazement. She had not got as far as that.

  “But is it true?”

  “True? Why …”

  “Do you realise that I knew nothing about it? I never had the slightest idea …”

  “Oh!” said Kerran.

  He began to feel very uncomfortable. To face a niece who had heard of the business for the first time was much worse than anything he had expected. Really he could not blame her for displaying emotion.

  “But is it true?” She insisted. “Did … did they … did my father? …”

  She paused, and began also to look uncomfortable.

  Her father had been dead so long that he had lost that blurred outline which softens a living individual in our thoughts. His image had set into a definite mould and she was unable to detach from it certain irrelevant characteristics. For some reason she always pictured him in the top-hat which he had worn at her wedding. And all her memories of him belonged to London, where they had lived until his death. She could stand at an upper window in Devonshire Place and watch him jump into a car from the pavement below. He would come out of the house in a tremendous hurry, putting on his hat. His reddish hair grew very thick all round his head, but there was a little bald spot on the top. And she could see his splendid profile as he sat beside her in a box at the theatre, a profile like a portrait on a coin. And she could feel again that little chill of dismay which his disapproval could evoke—the horror of having said something which he thought childish or stupid. His formidability was the chief feature in the image which remained: she hardly knew which had been the more formidable, the devastating silence with which he listened to most people or the deadly little sentences which he addressed to the very few whom he thought worth answering. Formidability, coldness, immense activity, a bald head and a top-hat—these things made up the man whom she must fit into Elissa’s story.

  “Is it true,” she asked at last, “what she says about my father?”

  “My dear Hope,” spluttered Kerran nervously, “how can any of us possibly tell? It happened a long time ago and we’ve all forgotten about it. If only this tiresome woman hadn’t …”

  “But why on earth have I never heard of it before?”

  She looked at him accusingly, as though she blamed him. He realised that she was furious at having been kept out of it all, at having missed the excitement all these years. And his heart was hardened against her. If she cared no more than that, there was no great need to consider her feelings.

  “In any other family,” she stormed, “it simply couldn’t have happened—my being kept in the dark like this, I mean. To think that I should hear of it for the first time, merely by chance, out of a library book. A thing which must have been common talk for years!”

  “Oh no.”

  “What?”

  “I don’t think it’s been common talk. Nobody ever knew of it outside the family. There was nobody but the family there, you see, and naturally we all held our tongues.”

  “But good heavens! Am I not the family? I’m his daughter. Why on earth wasn’t I told?”

  “Well, you were rather young, weren’t you?”

  “But, why wasn’t I told later on?”

  “I couldn’t say, my dear Hope. You’ll admit that it wasn’t my business.”

  “No. But somebody ought to have. As important a thing as that.”

  “Important?”

  Kerran went over to the fireplace and stood there, warming his hands while he considered the word.

  “I don’t see that it’s so very important,” he muttered defensively.

  In the course of their conversation his voice had sunk lower and lower, as if in protest against hers, which was over-loud. He would have disliked her egotism far less if it had not been so boisterously displayed and if she had not kept striding up and down the room like a whirlwind. Had she taken things a little more quietly she would have won a larger measure of his sympathy.

  “But of course it’s important. It must be. It affects us all tremendously. I can’t tell you what a shock I got! When I opened the book I hadn’t the slightest idea! Even now it seems almost incredible. It simply can’t have happened.”

  “For all that it matters, to anyone now, it didn’t happen. If only your aunts would …”

  “Have they read it?”

  “They have indeed read it.”

  “And what do they think about it?”

  “They want me to get the book suppressed.”

  “Oh, do they? They would! They’re fond of suppressing things, aren’t they? If there wasn’t so much suppression in our family I should have heard of all this before. But what’s the use of suppressing the truth? Is it true? That’s what I want to know. Did it really happen?”

  “It?” parried Kerran.

  Hope paused again. Once more her imagination had refused to cope with a picture of her father in a top-hat rowing away across the lough with Elissa Koebel. But, at last, with an effort, she brought it out.

  “That he … that he … committed adultery …”

  Kerran made a little groaning noise. This was the worst of nieces. They belonged to a generation which said these things. Louise, should she insist upon coming down to tackle him, might give him a very uncomfortable time of it, but she would never talk about adultery in the voice which she used when she talked of cheese. Whatever she might hint, whatever she might imply, his gentlemanly sensibilities would have been left unscathed. He did not believe that she had ever uttered such a word except in church.

  “But what else am I to call it?” insisted Hope. “Whatever else … do you think that he did?”

  Kerran replied in a whisper that he could not say.

  “But they went off?”

  “Oh, yes. They went off.”

  “Where?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “And then he came back? Just like that! But did everybody know?”

  “Oh, yes. I’m afraid everybody knew.”

  “Were you surprised? Had any of you foreseen it? And why did he come back? It all sounds so incredible. I can’t begin to imagine it or to see how it could have happened.”

  “Nor can I, at this distance away.”

  “But it’s not so awfully long ago. I can remember that summer perfectly well myself. I can remember the castle and the island.”

  All the things she could remember came crowding back upon her, in a hundred vivid little pictures. She could have described every room in the castle and drawn a map of the island. She could smell the
turf fires which burnt continually in the nurseries. She could see the courtyard and the well, and Muffy, her cousins’ old nurse, standing beside it, peeling an apple. The long red curl of peel hung down against her white apron, and little Harry Lindsay in a green smock, stood before her, holding up both his hands.

  But that was the only picture in which a grown-up person figured distinctly. The others, her parents and the tribe of aunts and uncles, were all blurred, unfocussed presences, a little larger than life, hovering on the outskirts of the scene. Disconnected and fragmentary details came back to her.

  Aunt Maude used to wear a motor cap tied with a veil. Uncle Barny had laughed very much when Charles Lindsay upset his money-box on the steps of the dininghall and a cascade of pennies came jingling down into the courtyard. There had been such yells and peals of laughter that everybody ran out to see, and there was Uncle Barny, choking and holding his sides, while poor Charles lamented: “My money! Oh, my money!”

  Aunt Louise had clouds of dark hair tossed up into great waves all over her head, and subsiding into a coil, low on the back of her neck. She used to run about with bare feet. She ran down the slope of grass in front of the castle, her white ankles twinkling under a long skirt of tussore silk, drawn in tightly at the waist to a belt with an enamel buckle. But it was Aunt Maude who had a buckle with angels’ heads on it in repoussé silver. Bad taste! A grown-up voice had pronounced that coldly on some forgotten occasion, because Rosamund said it afterwards, when Muffy was brushing their hair, and Muffy had instantly told her not to be affected, and for some days the other children teased Rosamund by talking about bad taste in a squeaky falsetto.

  And then there were photographs. Not so very long ago she had come across one that must have been taken at a picnic during that summer. She had made very merry over it. She could believe that her mother and aunts had put on those ridiculous hats and high-collared dresses in order to pay calls or go to church, but that they should ever have sat about in the heather, so bedizened, was incredible. Their ideas and their sentiments must have been as alien to posterity as were their hats. And the children were a depressing sight, especially one of herself and Rosamund, in bunchy holland with straw hats standing up like haloes all round their heads, posed on either side of a bucolic nursery-maid in a black boater.