A Long Time Ago

by Margaret Kennedy

  “Only gradually. He’ll wonder why she doesn’t come, and at last you’ll have to tell him. But by then the deed will be done and he won’t find it so easy to make a stand. Besides, he’ll have had time to think things over and we can get Barny and Kerran, perhaps, to reason with him.”

  “Ye-es. You’re rather clever, Maude.”

  “I don’t see any other way. And I do think it’s time something was done.”

  “But there’s all the rest of to-day to be got through. I don’t want ever to see her again.”

  “Then don’t. Go to bed now with a headache. I’ll tell them. I’ll manage it.”

  “Do you think you can?”

  Maude nodded importantly. She was enjoying herself for the first time since she came to the island.

  “After all,” said Louise, a trifle uneasily, “she’ll have no right to call it a bolt from the blue, or anything like that. I did protest. I did show her that I was shocked.”

  “My dear, everybody will be grateful to you. Nobody likes her except Gordon and Dick.”

  “Dick sees through her,” said Louise immediately. “There’s no sort of attraction on his side. I’m convinced of that. I’ve been watching them, ever since…. Whatever she may feel about him, he laughs at her. He ignores all the openings she gives him.”

  “Oh, does he?”

  18

  THE keep was full of children standing about and waiting for the picnic to begin. Each child had been equipped with a mackintosh, in case it should rain, and a thick woolly coat in case it should turn chilly on the way home. These garments were continually being taken on and off. A nurse or an aunt would rush into the keep and exclaim:

  “Good gracious! Aren’t you children ready? We shall be starting in a minute!”

  Jenny or Michael would then be seized and muffled up and left until somebody else would come and cry:

  “Good gracious! We aren’t going to the North Pole!’

  And all the woolly coats would be peeled off again.

  There was an especial atmosphere of excitement and expectancy about this picnic. They were going to the Haunted Glen. Aunt Maude had come rushing in at breakfast time with the news:

  “Children! We’re all going to the Haunted Glen! Isn’t that fun?”

  The name was enough. Even the grown-ups seemed to feel it and they bustled about in a very special way. There was a tremendous amount to be done before they could all get off. The maids cut sandwiches and Aunt Maude ran up and down the courtyard with a list:

  “Eighteen cups … eighteen plates … where’s the bottle of methylated spirits?”

  This sort of thing went on for hours and hours, and the joys of anticipation began to pall. It seemed that the picnic would never start. A wave of naughtiness swept across the nursery. All the babies began to cry and Charles pulled Hope’s hair.

  “Unless you stop this very minute you shan’t go to the picnic,” was a threat dealt out to each in turn.

  Rosamund had a little haversack in which she had packed everything she would need for the day. Besides her mackintosh and her jersey, she had sketching things, The Old Oak Staircase, her knitting and an exercise book and a pencil, in case she wished to write poetry. Perhaps it might be as well to take another book, as she had read The Old Oak Staircase rather often. She had Countess Kate upstairs in her bedroom, and she would take that.

  As she climbed the stairs, loud yelps of laughter from the night nursery told her that the boys were up there, enjoying some unseemly jest. She pulled her face into a scowl of disapproval which became entirely genuine when she saw that Hope was there too. Peter was regaling them with the choicer anecdotes current last term at his preparatory school. These were mostly on the cloacal theme.

  “So the people at the lodgings couldn’t think what she meant. They’d never heard of one, you see. And at last they thought it must mean a Wesleyan chapel. So they wrote back and said there’s a lovely one three miles away …”

  Charles laughed in short, sharp yelps, Hope quivered and shook. They thought that nobody had ever been so funny as Peter.

  “… but at present they are all occupied …”

  “Oh! Oh!”

  Triumphant moral indignation upheld Rosamund.

  “I shall tell!”

  “What?”

  “It’s very naughty. You know it is. What would mother say? She’d be frightfully shocked. And so would Aunt Ellen. I’m the eldest and it’s my duty to stop you being naughty. If you don’t stop I shall tell. I shall tell mother.”

  She was interrupted by a chorus:

  “Tell tale tit!

  Your tongue shall be slit!

  And all the puppy dogs in the town

  Shall have a little bit!”

  “Very bad taste!” added Charles, in a ridiculous falsetto.

  Rosamund flushed and her eyes filled with tears. They had given her no peace since she had unwisely repeated that comment which her mother had made about Aunt Maude’s silver buckle with the angels’ heads.

  “Cry baby! Cry baby!”

  She burst into loud sobs while her tormentors jumped up and down and shouted. More wails were heard from the floor below where the little ones, exasperated by their woollen mufflers, had all come to the conclusion that they did not want to go for a picnic.

  Into the middle of this confusion came Ellen, all ready to start, in a long tussore dust-coat and a motor veil which tied up her head. She quelled the racket downstairs and sent the babies off to be stacked into a boat with the two nursery-maids. And then she came up to investigate the trouble there, arriving at the top of the stairs a little breathless and impatient.

  “Children! Children! What is the matter with you? We’re starting. Have you got all your … why, Rosamund! Was it you making that noise? What’s the matter?”

  “They’re being very naughty,” gulped Rosamund. “I said I’d tell if they went on. They would keep committing adultery.”

  Ellen’s face stiffened suddenly. It grew wooden with displeasure, and there was a look in her grey eyes which terrified them all. The unthinkable thing had happened. Rosamund had broken the greatest of all unwritten laws.

  “What do you mean?” asked Ellen icily.

  “Peter committed adultery.”

  “No, I didn’t,” said Peter, recovering himself a little.

  “Yes, you did.”

  “I did not.”

  “He was, Aunt Ellen. He was talking about … about …”

  “That isn’t committing adultery, is it, mother? Committing adultery is taking somebody else’s wife. You said so.”

  “Yes,” said Hope. “And you said it was a commandment we needn’t bother about, because we simply couldn’t take other people’s wives yet awhile.”

  “So I couldn’t have been …”

  “My mother doesn’t think so,” persisted Rosamund. “She said it was telling dirty stories …”

  “No, it isn’t. Is it, mother?”

  “Be quiet, all of you. Peter! What exactly have you been saying?”

  “I began it,” said Charles, hastily, feeling that Peter should not be singled out for blame. “We were only …”

  “Be quiet. I’ll have Peter’s answer first.”

  There was a horrible pause. Peter looked at his mother. And then suddenly his eyes began to dance. He, too, had grey eyes, but the flash in them had come from Dick. He was a very long, thin child, and his childish face, at the end of this long, thin body, was disarming. When he laughed, and when he wished to make other people laugh, he stretched his neck up like a young cockerel trying to crow. He began to giggle. After all, this fable about the Wesleyan chapel was, in his opinion, a very good one. He thought it the best that he had ever heard. It would stand on its merits.

  “There was once a lady who wrote for some lodgings,” he began.

  The other children stared as if their eyes would drop out. But Peter’s boldness was too much for them. They began, in spite of themselves, to giggle too, all but
Rosamund, who had found a handkerchief and was mopping her eyes.

  Ellen’s expression changed from wood to marble. And then it became confused. Its severity was disintegrated. The spectacle of her son, with his dancing eyes, his audacity, his thin neck and his high, childish giggles, had broken her down. She could not frown on him, whatever he said. And there was no harm in this little jeu d’esprit, though it was undoubtedly very vulgar, and she ought, really she ought, to keep a straight face if she could. She drew her mouth down, looked flurried, shook her head, but they all saw that she was trying not to laugh.

  “Really, children! Really! How can you be so vulgar? I don’t think that’s amusing.”

  “Oh, mother! Oh, yes, you do! You’re laughing!”

  “Very vulgar. How you could have the face to tell me such a story … come along! The boats are waiting.”

  They all trooped after her as she led the way out of the night nursery. Neither then nor afterwards did they discuss this incident, but not one of them ever forgot it. And they felt very comfortable, without knowing why, as if they were on surer terms with the world.

  The only comment made was a long nose pulled by Peter, behind his mother’s back, at the indignant Rosamund.

  19

  THE picnic was being a success.

  The sandwiches sufficed and the kettles boiled and Maude was able to say complacently:

  “I always begin by making a list, even down to teaspoons.”

  They took photographs of each other, sprawling in the heather; the kind of groups which are amusing to rediscover after twenty-five years. These children, so dowdy-looking in their sailor suits and long holland smocks, would some day find it impossible to believe that aunts and mothers, dressed like that, could ever have been quite human. Such hats could only have been worn by women without taste, without passion and without a sense of humour. Only a snapshot of Dick, in profile, kneeling over the picnic fire, remained timeless and Ellen kept it for ever afterwards in a small silver frame on her dressing table.

  It was their first picnic without Elissa, and for some of them this fact alone was a relief and a source of pleasure. For others, who knew of the little intrigue behind it, there was an undercurrent of excitement, so that they all seemed to be in particularly high spirits. And it was a pleasure to see Dick so much himself again. He seemed at last to have shaken off the lethargic depression which had weighed upon him for the last weeks. Louise, radiant at having secured her own way, felt that now at last she had got them all into harness.

  They lunched close to the lake, for the little children could not walk far and there were heavy baskets to carry. But afterwards all those who felt inclined to do so would explore the glen while the two nursery-maids packed the hampers, washed up and guarded the babies.

  “Though it will be a very hot walk,” said Louise, turning dubiously to Ellen, “shall you come or would you rather stay down here?”

  She was so well satisfied that she was even prepared to make some concession to Ellen’s condition.

  Ellen, infected by the general exhilaration, laughed a little.

  “Stay with my leetle vons? No, thank you! I’d rather get away from them.”

  A swift shock ran through the company. Ellen was a good mimic; she had a gift of verbal parody which was wasted upon so unsatirical a nature. Louise had often grudged it to her. This time her butt was obvious: Elissa never spoke to Ellen without some reference to the “leetle vons,” implying that so good a Hausfrau could have no other interest.

  They felt as though Balaam’s ass had spoken. Was this malice? Was it innocence? How much did she know, and had she heard of the incident on the bathing beach? A few of them laughed uncertainly. Guy Fletcher swallowed a greengage stone, and only the guileless Gordon protested.

  “Oh, I don’t think Elissa’s accent is as pronounced as that.”

  They kept themselves from looking at Dick.

  “Time to get off,” cried Louise, hurriedly dealing with an awkward moment. “We’ve got to get to the top and back before tea. Rosie, you’ll have the tea kettles boiling by half-past four, won’t you?”

  “Eat a lot of bread! Eat a great lump of stale bread,” said Maude to the choking Guy.

  Singly or in groups they struggled off. Dick and Gordon, who walked quickly, soon got far in front. The children ranged all over the glen. So that Maude and Louise, walking slowly behind with Ellen, were able to return to the engrossing topic.

  How much did she know?

  “My dear, you know what we’ve done?”

  Ellen now learnt of the note which they had left behind for Elissa. She was surprised and uncomfortable, and sorry that she had laughed at Elissa’s accent. It must have sounded ill-natured.

  “But what is the matter, Louise? Are you vexed with her about something?”

  “Did … didn’t Dick tell you what happened yesterday?”

  “No. What?”

  Maude made a warning grimace, but Louise ignored it. She was too eager to see what Ellen would say. She gave the facts and Ellen blushed.

  “How … horrid!”

  “That’s what I felt. I don’t wonder Dick … said nothing about it. He must have been disgusted.”

  Ellen walked more quickly. Her lively spirits had begun to fail her. She had enjoyed the beginning of the day so much, and getting away from the island, and seeing Dick look almost well again. He had said something that morning about his paper for the Hunterian Society, and it was clear that his mind was beginning to swing back towards his work. She had almost been able to believe that the threatened storm would never break, and that the weeks of leisure and sunlight on the island were going to cure him. This labour of living through it would not go on much longer.

  But now it all closed in on her again. Of course he had not told her about Elissa on the bathing beach. He never told her anything. They slept every night in the same room, but there might have been a seven-foot wall between them. And it was getting to be too much for her, this continual strain. She had got them all to accept her version of his moodiness, she had kept them off him, she had read books to keep herself from worrying, and she had abstained from prayer. But if it went on much longer she would have to tell somebody.

  Her body did not help her. It was languid, not her own. Wherever she went she seemed to be a troubled, doubting mind creeping cautiously along with a cumbrous body attached to it.

  “If Dick doesn’t speak to me soon I can’t bear it … I must know what he is thinking … what he means to do …”

  At last she got away from Louise and Maude and the dangers which seemed to lie behind their simple prattle. They were wanting to suggest some horrid reason why Dick had not told her. But it could never be worse than the real reason. She hurried forward to the safe company of Barny and Guy Fletcher, who were a little way in front and who waited for her.

  “She knows,” said Louise. “It’s quite obvious.”

  “Quite,” agreed Maude.

  “Thank heaven I’ve got rid of Elissa!”

  The Haunted Glen was a bare and stony place. Seen near to, it was more sinister and less majestic than it had appeared to be from the island. The steep screes of stones, which made such a deep trough in the landscape, had no beauty in themselves. They rose gauntly, on either hand, to a parapet of crags. The vegetation among the boulders grew sparser. It was strange that there could be enough soil to nourish the few shrivelled thorn trees which crouched, here and there, among the stones, like watchers overlooking the path. The oldest and the largest stood almost at the head of the glen, as if to bar the way.

  A curious silence and oppression filled the hot, stony trough. There was no longer the grateful sound of running water, for the little stream which trickled down the glen had disappeared underground. There were no echoes. The air was too opaque. The sound of boots on rocks, and the voices of the climbers, were immediately effaced by silence.

  It was stiflingly hot. The sun poured down and quivered on the stones. It seemed as
if the thorn at the head of the glen was as far away as ever. It became an effort to go on. Even the children stopped chattering and drew closer together. Yet nobody admitted to any mental discomfort. They complained of the heat, but of nothing else. Even the imaginative Louise could not bring herself to suggest that their progress was being resisted, though she said so afterwards.

  Dick and Gordon had got up to the last thorn and sat down in its shade to wait for the others. But their faces had no repose, like the faces of men who snatch a moment’s grateful rest on the hillside. They looked precarious and watchful.

  “The lake is very ugly,” said Dick.

  They could see the whole of it, a kidney-shaped piece of dull grey steel lying far below them, solid-looking, with no reflections. The island, in the middle, was dark and small. It did not float. It was a tuft of earth flung at random on to the flat, steely surface. And the mountains, rising up everywhere, were shapeless, uninteresting. It was as if all meaning had suddenly gone out of the landscape.

  “What’s that headland out there to the right?” asked Dick.

  Gordon got out his map and they both bent over it. Here was the same kidney-shaped lake with the lump of turf flung into the middle of it. And here in a mesh of contour lines was the Haunted Glen.

  There was a plop! Something hairy and repulsive fell out of the tree on to their map, on to the island. It writhed obscenely. Both men started away with a cry of disgust, almost of fear, as if their nerves had suddenly been caught on the raw. And then they looked very much ashamed of themselves, for it was only an enormous caterpillar. Dick threw it away into the grass.

  The others, when they reached the tree, did not want to rest there in the sultry glare. To get to the top of the glen was their only desire. They toiled on, and Ellen, who was getting tired, came last with Dick.

  “Sure you ought to go any further?” he asked.

  “Oh, yes. I want to get to the top. I want to see over the other side.”

  “It won’t be so bad coming down.”

  “No, it will be downhill.”

  “Like an arm?”