‘What kind of dress?’
‘Oh, cocktail sort of thing – a little smarter than daytime. It’s a pandering to suburbanism I encourage because it prevents general slackness. In the country one can so easily get into squalid habits.’
She went to the door, and Norah turned to open her case, but Althea stopped.
‘And Robert?’
‘Oh that,’ said Norah, and hesitated. ‘It’s over.’
‘Really?’
‘Absolutely . . . A major break. We – ran into a complete dead end.’
‘Are you sorry?’
‘Well . . . I think maybe sorry’s the wrong word. Licking my wounds.’
‘As bad as that?’
‘Well . . . Naturally one doesn’t emerge without a few flying splinters.’
Althea stood with her hand on the door. ‘Tell me about it sometime.’
Norah smiled. ‘I don’t know . . .’
‘As you please, my dear. I can tell you my own feelings are a bit mixed on the subject. I only met him a couple of times. But there was something that suggested to me that you were neither of you particularly right for the other. I’d never have said so; but if it is over I can say so now.’
‘We were right and we were wrong,’ said Norah. ‘It’s probably the most dangerous mixture.’
‘Don’t I know,’ said Althea Syme.
When she had gone Norah reflected that the last sentence had been spoken with some feeling, and that she had in fact heard little of her friend’s own marriage. That was a confidence that had not come yet; Althea usually talked only of her life since she became a widow.
The girl looked out of the window. The front of the house might be without a garden but the land at the back sloped away from the house and the cliff in a high degree of cultivation, with steps and rocky eminences and sunlit grassy levels, towards a small ornamental lake bordered by flowering plants and fringed with reeds. As the last sun faded behind the hill the lake mirrored every detail of tree and sky and rock.
She looked about her bedroom. Her coming had obviously been the occasion for some re-furnishing. The chocolate and cream chintz curtains looked as if they had been hung that day and matched the counterpane on the bed. Two white rugs on the floor smelt new. Yellow roses in a vase. The furniture was Victorian but shone with polish.
The sitting-room was about the same size, but renovation had not extended this far. As Althea said, it was rather a mess: horse-hair chairs, a sagging sofa in worn velvet, a rocking-chair, much scratched; even a rocking-horse. The whole room smelt musty and neglected. There was a bookcase full of formidable old books: Darwin’s Descent of Man, Crockford’s Chemical Dictionary for 1916, The Metallurgy of Lead by J. Percy; and on a dark side-table was a frame with big beads on rails such as children once used for learning to count. These must be long pre-Gregory, surely Edwardian at the latest.
She thumped the window open – the smell was rather unpleasant – and went to take a bath. In a room which clearly had been a boxroom the bath stood on tall crabbed feet in one corner as if left there temporarily while the plumbers went to lunch, but she tested the tap marked ‘hot’, and found it as good as its word.
IV
Forty minutes later something rattled in the depths of the house, and Norah put down her book, tightened the belt of her frock, flipped at the upstanding collar tips, and went down the two flights to where a maid, called Alice, was waiting to show her into the dining-room. Only Althea was there, in regal purple, newly powdered and smiling.
‘That’s nice. I’ve not seen it before, have I? Warm yourself before the fire. The evening’s turning chilly.’
Norah murmured a compliment about the room and Mrs Syme said: ‘The picture over the mantel is Watts’s painting of my grandfather. It was his father who built this house, at the time when the valuable lead mines were extending all around the district. Jonathan Syme and Daniel Nichols owned three mines in this vicinity and between them they built this house to accommodate their increasing families. Jonathan had eleven children and Daniel eight – it was a vigorous age. Jonathan’s eldest son, whose portrait that is, bought the Nichols out and made the two houses into one. Of course the mines are long since derelict. If I wanted to sell the house I could scarcely give it away, but it suits me well. Ah, Gregory darling, come and be introduced to Miss Faulkner.’
She had learned a lot about the boy from the talk of a doting mother; so reality was a shock. He was like an unflattering replica of her friend: the same largeness, the look of clumsiness about the feet, the dull opacity of skin, the shag of coffee-coloured hair, the spectacles; but all exaggerated so that, while his mother in spite of all had distinction and looks, he was almost ugly.
‘How d’you do, Miss Faulkner.’ His voice had broken late, still cracked as he spoke. When she took his hand it lay in hers like a dead animal, and she had a moment’s revulsion, which she was careful not to show as Althea was watching her.
He was like his mother physically but seemed the reverse in temperament. While she was assertive and outgoing, ever talkative and extrovert, he was ingrown, quiet, closed off from the world, stood with shoulders bent and hands clasped listening, listening. The spectacles pointed the contrast. Mrs Syme’s small, alert, friendly eyes were always visible, her glasses were a pane through which she observed everything more clearly. Gregory’s were a wall. Lenses twice as thick cut off his eyes from the outer world, caught the light and reflected it, never let it through.
They sat down to dinner at a long table. This did not encourage easy conversation particularly because of the two oil lamps down the middle. Althea was at one end and Norah at the other, and in order to see her hostess she had to bend her head to one side and peer past the lights.
Nor did Althea’s cousin, the Reverend Rupert Croome-Nichols, add to the occasion. He was tall and thin, with one of those jack-knife bodies that always seem to be either folding or unfolding, grey silky hair growing in a peak low on his forehead, and a face deeply indented with ravines so dark that one speculated whether soap and water had recently penetrated them. Throughout the earlier part of the meal he was silent, but when his hunger had been appeased he turned to look at Norah and asked her if her father had been to Oxford. Surprised, she swallowed hastily and answered, yes.
‘Ah, I thought you looked as if your father had been up. Can usually tell in the children. I hope when you have children you’ll send them there.’
Other conditions favourable, Norah thought it possible.
‘Ah, I was up in 1911–12. Vintage years, those. Lassiter was up with me. Not that I approve of this movement he’s founding. All these movements: Buchmanism, Toc H, Salvation Army; they all take people away from the Church proper. What good does it do? Prior was up at the same time, too. Bishop Prior. What year was your father up?’
Norah couldn’t remember.
‘Ah. ’11, ’12 and ’13 were good years. A lot of good people up at that time. Most of ’em wiped out, of course. All fine young chaps. Remaking the world. Never had a generation like it since. And – er – hm . . .’
‘Gregory,’ said Mrs Syme, ‘is going to Oxford. Aren’t you, duck?’
‘Yes, mother.’
‘If he can get in,’ said Mr Croome-Nichols. ‘All these examinations these days. Often keeps out the right sort. I was a Westminster boy. Westminster and St John’s. It always tells.’ He put a large forkful of food into a deep corner of his mouth and reluctantly withdrew the fork, turning his eyes up as he did so. ‘But there’s a lot of favouritism in the Church – always has been. Your father a clergyman, did I hear?’
‘No. He was in NATO.’
‘Ah. The Church isn’t what it was. Panders too much to public taste, tries to keep up with the latest fads. Panders. The lower classes are well catered for. What I say is, after all, the upper classes have souls. It’s the Church’s duty to cater for them. I told the diocesan conference so last time. Didn’t please the bishops. What did your father die of?’
‘His heart.’
‘You should have written,’ came Althea’s voice from behind the lamps. ‘I mightn’t even have heard.’
‘I have pains at my heart sometimes,’ said Mr Croome-Nichols. He put another large forkful of food deep into a corner of his mouth. ‘Have often thought I ought to see a doctor about them. After all, sixty-three is sixty-three. But chief trouble is my chest. Get phlegm in the mornings. Cold weather doesn’t suit me. I dread the cold.’
‘It’s mild here generally,’ said Althea, ‘but sometimes we have frightfully hard weather for a short time. This is now mainly a sheep-farming district, and last year one farmer lost fifty sheep in the snow. It’s interesting to see how well some of my half-hardy shrubs survive these cold spells. I’m convinced with such shrubs it’s very much more the quality of the ground they are in than the air temperature. Round the lake at the back of the house there’s an acre or more of fine loamy soil, and almost anything will grow there.’
‘I saw it from my bedroom window. It looks lovely.’
‘And all done in six years,’ said Althea Syme. ‘Seven years ago it was a wilderness of bracken and birch saplings.’
‘Simon will be surprised,’ said Mr Croome-Nichols. ‘I shouldn’t be surprised if he were astonished. And – er – hm . . .’
His habit of ending sentences this way was disconcerting. It was as if a sudden impulse of discretion had just stepped in to prevent him saying something he should not: Conversation was left in the air, suspended over a precipice.
Alice relieved them of their plates and set the dessert in front of them. Norah looked up to find Gregory’s shining round spectacles turned speculatively towards her, but after a quick stare he looked away.
‘Simon,’ said Althea, ‘is my nephew. We’re expecting him on Wednesday. He’s been abroad for some years and won’t have seen the improvements. I’m sure he’ll like them.’
‘No one knows what Simon will like,’ said Mr Croome-Nichols. ‘Not even Simon.’
‘What time is he coming?’ asked Gregory.
‘We haven’t heard. Probably in the evening.’
They went on talking for a few minutes, but now between the exchanges there were silences which did not stem from Mr Croome-Nichols.
After dinner she was shown some of the rest of the house, but still didn’t get a very clear impression of its layout. There were too many portraits in all the principal rooms, and on the whole they were not an engaging flock. A part of the house, Althea explained, was no longer used, for it was simply too big to keep it all up, and this accounted for the uncurtained windows.
Bed early; and up in her own rooms stare down through the casement window over the sloping roof towards where the lake had borrowed tinsel from the stars. The bulk of the mountains gloomed behind.
The depression that had been quietly waiting to pounce all day suddenly fell on her like a kidnapper’s cloak. She struggled with it, knowing from the experience of the last few weeks that it must be fought off before it could gain a proper hold. This invitation of Althea’s was only for a month’s trial. If, in spite of Althea, one found her environment too depressing it would be easy enough to make an excuse and leave.
But come. Why make decisions and then regret them? Her hostess was as likeable and as kind as ever, and, thank goodness, being a woman, understanding – the rest of the company could well improve with a little effort. It was early days yet. A month would pass in a flicker. Must try to get to know Gregory. Tomorrow the sun would be shining. Gorgeous country! One hardly imagined anything left so wild and untouched in this crowded world.
She turned into the sitting-room. It was a peculiar smell, the one attaching to this particular room, half stale, half antiseptic. Probably the furniture. More than ever it contrasted with the freshness of her bedroom. The lamp she had set down on the table when she came in was not far from the rocking-horse, and so the rocking-horse cast a giant shadow on the wall behind. As she turned from the window some trick of her eyes or of the light deceived her, so that it looked as if the horse and its shadow were moving slightly. Very slightly the shadow seemed to move on the wall.
She picked up the lamp and all the shadows lurched about like drunken men. She went back into her bedroom, stared a moment closely at herself in the mirror, fancying a blemish on her cheek, then seeing it was not. She searched her face for signs of the self-doubt that she thought she detected in her character. Heavy-lidded thoughtful eyes stared back at her. Weakness, indecision? How did they show? She began to undress, hanging her frock, folding her underclothes more carefully than usual, as if to delay the moment of nakedness.
Where was Robert now? It all stemmed, of course, this depression that hovered, it stemmed from her loss not of one man but of two. Her father’s wise, urbane companionship, his elegant good humour was something she would be short of for the rest of her life. ‘I am not resigned to the shutting away of loving hearts in the hard ground.’ Who had written that? An American: Milleis was it? Well, she was not resigned. ‘Lovers and thinkers, into the earth with you . . .’ To Hell with life.
But the choice had not been hers. Robert was someone she was going to miss, differently but distinctly, if not for the rest of her life, at least for a while yet. All very well to be flippant with Althea, talk of flying splinters. But it was more than that. And the choice in this case had been hers . . .
Had it? Was there a true element of choice in rejecting his complete unreasonableness? That was, if she wanted to remain a person in her own right. Unreasonableness on her side too? He thought so. But this was no lover’s tiff. The gap was unbridgeable. She was sick of men and their ways. To Hell with them too . . . Young men anyhow. Why were older men so much more understanding? Had they too been impossible when young?
With a shiver, avoiding sight of herself in the glass, she dropped her nightdress over her head. And her other friends? Margery and Daphne living it up in their bedsitter. Olga doing her usual tour of the theatre agencies. Pete playing New Orleans jazz. Mark tuning his car.
A last look out of the window, then she went to the door to see if there was a key. There wasn’t. Nor to the door leading to the sitting-room. Although it was not important to have a key to either she would, illogically, more have preferred to cut herself off from her sitting-room than from the house downstairs.
She slipped into bed. Good sheets. She had expensive tastes in sheets and used them extravagantly at home. A cool fresh sheet was halfway to a good night’s rest.
She thought she heard something move in the sitting-room. Silly. She had just been in there herself, and floorboards often reacted after being stepped on. She blew out the lamp and lay a few minutes looking up at the dark. As her eyes adjusted themselves the square of the window lightened and let in an oblong foot width of night sky between the parted curtains.
This had all obviously once been someone’s nursery. Many young Symes. Generations of them, growing and fading. Girls and boys hurtling up and down the narrow stairs. Clear young voices. Childish cries, childish ailments, childish fears. Childish deaths. Climbing on and off the rocking-horse. Laughing and quarrelling, sulking and dreaming. The patter of little feet. She must remember to ask Althea all about it tomorrow. Why did the thought of little feet pattering in the room next door seem vaguely disturbing?
It was not until she was on the verge of dozing off that she thought she recognized the peculiar smell in her sitting-room as the same smell her father had brought into the railway carriage in her dream on the train.
CHAPTER TWO
I
Gregory said in a querulous voice: ‘How long is he coming for? Everyone is so close about these things.’
‘I can’t enlighten you, boy. No concern of mine. And – er – hm . . .’
‘I think it’s a concern of us all! If he intends to come and settle here and upset everything . . .’
‘Simon’s not the sort to settle. You’ll see. He’ll be off back again in a few weeks. He’s n
ever been able to stick it here. Not since the war.’
‘Mother’s so pathetic at times; she still treats me like a child. As if I didn’t know all about her anxieties.’
‘Then you know more than I do, boy . . . Look, these declensions will never do . . .’
A firm hand closed on Norah’s shoulder. She started as Althea Syme said: ‘I see you’re looking in on my dear infant’s studies.’
Norah went red. ‘I stumbled on them. I can’t find my way round this house yet. Where is the library?’
Althea laughed and led her across the passage. ‘You’re not the only one. When I first came here as a girl I was for ever walking by mistake into the downstairs lavatory. Come and see my garden.’
It was the second day. Unfortunately there had been no sun yesterday, a fine drizzle had set in early and they had all stayed indoors and it had been very depressing. But this morning, Wednesday, was brilliant, the rain had washed the atmosphere, and the mountains had a Mediterranean clarity.
So for the first time they walked around Althea’s well-publicized garden, the one that served her as copy for so many of her articles. Norah suitably admired, and not disingenuously. She liked gardens, and she esteemed someone who knew so much about, and was so passionately concerned in, their creation and upkeep. Her friend talked learnedly but amiably about telopeas and aralias and mahonias, and they wandered down to the lake.
‘The nyssa sylvatica is nothing much yet, but in a month if the weather holds, it will be the most brilliant thing in the garden . . . It may have occurred to you to wonder, my pet, why it is that I, whose married name is Syme, should appear to claim the family as my own.’
‘No, it hadn’t . . .’
‘In fact it is my own. I happen to be the only child of Henry Syme’s fourth daughter. My husband, Captain Syme, was also my cousin. So I can’t escape, you see.’
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