by Ann Bridge
‘I know he is, rabbit,’ said Grace, amused, startled and touched at this démarche.
‘Is he coming to Netherstoke this summer, or are we too afraid of being involved in the General?’ Linnet went on.
‘Oh, I’ve told him he must come to Netherstoke – I don’t think we need worry about the General.’
Linnet continued to drape and re-drape the necklace across her Mother’s figure – Grace waited for what was to come next; she had never seen the child as shy as this. At last, in a sort of burst – ‘He says you’ve made him the man he is!’ she said, laughing.
Grace respected that laugh, a shield to cover embarrassment – she laughed too as she said ‘Nicholas talks a great deal of nonsense, as you’ll find out in time!’
The girl gave her a quick look, half-questioning, half-startled; she seemed to find some reassurance in her Mother’s face, for –
‘Yes, but not all the time, you funny Mums!’ she said. And with that she gave Grace a quick hug and ran off, letting the door slam in her haste to be gone. The next second she put her head in again – ‘So sorry – it was a accidents!’ she said, quoting an old baby phrase of Teddy’s – and was off again.
Grace went out onto her balcony – the bedroom, large as it was, seemed too small to contain her happiness just then. What a heaven on earth it was when the child treated her like that! This was like the old Linnet, the Linnet of a year ago, with whom all was happiness and ease, whose little silly sentences and jokes spelt love and tenderness, however carefully disguised. She leant on the rail of the balcony, looking across at San Lorenzo, immense and white in the moon, and remembering the astounding things that Nicholas had said to her two nights ago, when they looked at it together from the little promenade, she thought – ‘Nicholas has done this for me, the dear child. My dear child!’ What a complete, an overwhelming return this was for anything she had ever done or tried to do for him – to give her back Linnet’s love and approbation. For she was sure he had done it, somehow. Dear, darling boy!
She was still out on the balcony when she heard her door open. ‘Grace?’ Walter’s voice said.
‘Yes – come in. I’m mooning out here.’ She turned back into the room to meet him. How splendid he was to look at, Walter, with his distinguished face under his grizzled hair, and that curious combination of lordliness and sensitiveness in his expression. She gave him a cigarette – he lit it, and wandered about looking at her paintings, asking which were the two Breuil had just bought. ‘How long did that take you?’ he asked, indicating the one of the irises.
‘About three days – no, four.’
‘I call that easy money – a hundred and fifty pounds for four days’ work.’
‘You’re talking like the General!’ she told him.
Walter put the picture back in its place.
‘Linnet seems to be getting on rather well with that nice boy of yours,’ he next observed.
‘Yes, I know – I mean I think so too. But don’t watch them, Walter, even in your mind; let them be. It would be so lovely if anything were to come of it.’
Walter looked rather oddly and doubtfully at her, at that. She saw his face, and realised what he was thinking. ‘Yes, lovely,’ she repeated, going over to him as she spoke, and nodding her head at him. He threw his cigarette out through the doors onto the balcony and took her by the shoulders, studying her face; she faced him with such clear sincerity and security that he knew that she spoke the truth, though the tears gathered in her eyes. She nodded her head again, instead of speaking, and the tears fell. ‘He’s such a darling, Walter – that’s why I’m so silly,’ she said, still looking at him steadily. ‘Give me your hanky.’
He gave it her. ‘I think you’ve done both those children rather well,’ he said gravely, and putting his arm round her shoulders, he kissed her. The grave tone of approbation, the kiss – the first he had given her since they met again, the first real kiss for so, so long – moved her to an extraordinary depth of happiness.
‘You must have managed the boy rather cleverly to leave him so unscathed,’ Walter went on.
‘Oh Walter, I was so worried. I didn’t know what to do about him, and I’d no one to ask but the Professor, and he had such very foreign ideas. But I think it has worked all right.’
‘I think it’s worked all right, too,’ he said, and kissed her again. Then he looked amused. ‘Poor old Professor!’
‘What’s wrong with the Professor?’
‘The same trouble as Nicholas, my dear.’
‘Walter, what utter rubbish! No, how can you say such things?’ She was quite vexed. ‘It’s completely absurd.’
But Walter merely looked naughty. ‘You’ve had a thoroughly devastating journey,’ he said impenitently, his whole face sparkling with mischief, as it used to do – ‘it’s high time I took you home.’ In spite of her vexation the old teasing was music in her ears. Walter went on, in an altered tone – ‘He’s very good value, your Professor – he’s perfectly first-class. And he’ll be all right; he’s a philosopher by trade. You’ve done him nothing but good – he said so.’
‘Said so?’ She looked her astonishment.
‘Yes – he said you’d taught him quite a lot.’
‘Walter, that’s nonsense too – he was teaching me all the time.’ But she remembered the Professor’s words to her about Walter; they must have talked about her – the Professor and Walter being what they were, they had probably said everything in the world! He’s done us rather well, too! she thought – he’s shown me how to get freedom, and now I suppose he’s converted Walter as well. ‘Dear Professor,’ she said aloud.
‘Yes, he’s rather a discerning person,’ Walter said. Then he put his arm round her again and gave her another kiss – the kiss of strong abiding affection, such a kiss as anciens amants exchange through the completing years.
‘All the same, one wouldn’t really have expected you to be the person to ensnare a philosopher, would one, Miss Stanway?’ said Walter.
About the Author
Ann Bridge was born Mary Dolling Sanders in 1889. The wife of a diplomat who was posted around the world, Ann Bridge came to writing relatively late. Her first novel, Peking Picnic, published in 1932 was an immediate success and won the Atlantic Monthly Prize. She went on to have a distinguished and prolific writing career, and continued to travel the world. She died in 1974. First published in 1935, Illyrian Spring was a Book Society Choice and set a vogue for travel to the Adriatic, even inspiring the Prince of Wales to take his yacht there, on a much-publicised trip with Wallis Simpson.
ALSO BY ANN BRIDGE
NOVELS
Peking Picnic
The Ginger Griffin
Enchanter's Nightshade
Four-Part Setting
A Place to Stand
Frontier Passage
Singing Waters
And Then You Came
The House at Kilmartin
The Dark Moment
The Tightening String
Permission to Resign
JULIA PROBYN SERIES
The Lighthearted Quest
The Portuguese Escape
Julia Involved
The Numbered Account
The Dangerous Islands
Emergency in the Pyrenees
The Episode at Toledo
The Malady in Madeira
Julia in Ireland
NON-FICTION
Portrait of My Mother
The Selective Traveller in Portugal
Facts and Fictions: Some Literary Recollections
Moments of Knowing
Copyright
This electronic edition first published in 2013 by
Daunt Books
83 Marylebone High Street
London W1U 4QW
Copyright © Ann Bridge 1935
First published in Great Britain in 1935 by Chatto & Windus
The right of Ann Bridge to be identified as the author of the Work has been asserted by h
er in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, copied or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission from Daunt Books, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.
Ebook ISBN 978 1 907970 23 8
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