The Hollow

CHAPTER 5

In the dining-room the child Terry made another scientific statement.

‘Lead salts are more soluble in cold water than hot. If you add potassium iodide you get a yellow precipitate of lead iodide.’

He looked expectantly at his mother but without any real hope. Parents, in the opinion of young Terence, were sadly disappointing.

‘Did you know that, Mother?’

‘I don’t know anything about chemistry, dear.’

‘You could read about it in a book,’ said Terence.

It was a simple statement of fact, but there was a certain wistfulness behind it.

Gerda did not hear the wistfulness. She was caught in the trap of her anxious misery. Round and round and round. She had been miserable ever since she woke up this morning and realized that at last this long-dreaded weekend with the Angkatells was upon her. Staying at The Hollow was always a nightmare to her. She always felt bewildered and forlorn. Lucy Angkatell with her sentences that were never finished, her swift inconsequences, and her obvious attempts at kindliness, was the figure she dreaded most. But the others were nearly as bad. For Gerda it was two days of sheer martyrdom—to be endured for John’s sake.

For John that morning as he stretched himself had remarked in tones of unmitigated pleasure:

‘Splendid to think we’ll be getting into the country this weekend. It will do you good, Gerda, just what you need.’

She had smiled mechanically and had said with unselfish fortitude: ‘It will be delightful.’

Her unhappy eyes had wandered round the bedroom. The wallpaper, cream striped with a black mark just by the wardrobe, the mahogany dressing-table with the glass that swung too far forward, the cheerful bright blue carpet, the watercolours of the Lake District. All dear familiar things and she would not see them again until Monday.

Instead, tomorrow a housemaid who rustled would come into the strange bedroom and put down a little dainty tray of early tea by the bed and pull up the blinds, and would then rearrange and fold Gerda’s clothes—a thing which made Gerda feel hot and uncomfortable all over. She would lie miserably, enduring these things, trying to comfort herself by thinking, ‘Only one morning more.’ Like being at school and counting the days.

Gerda had not been happy at school. At school there had been even less reassurance than elsewhere. Home had been better. But even home had not been very good. For they had all, of course, been quicker and cleverer than she was. Their comments, quick, impatient, not quite unkind, had whistled about her ears like a hailstorm. ‘Oh, do be quick, Gerda.’ ‘Butter-fingers, give it to me!’ ‘Oh don’t let Gerda do it, she’ll be ages.’ ‘Gerda never takes in anything…’

Hadn’t they seen, all of them, that that was the way to make her slower and stupider still? She’d got worse and worse, more clumsy with her fingers, more slow-witted, more inclined to stare vacantly at what was said to her.

Until, suddenly, she had reached the point where she had found a way out. Almost accidentally, really, she found her weapon of defence.

She had grown slower still, her puzzled stare had become even blanker. But now, when they said impatiently: ‘Oh, Gerda, how stupid you are, don’t you understand that?’ she had been able, behind her blank expression, to hug herself a little in her secret knowledge… For she wasn’t as stupid as they thought. Often, when she pretended not to understand, she did understand. And often, deliberately, she slowed down in her task of whatever it was, smiling to herself when someone’s impatient fingers snatched it away from her.

For, warm and delightful, was a secret knowledge of superiority. She began to be, quite often, a little amused. Yes, it was amusing to know more than they thought you knew. To be able to do a thing, but not let anybody know that you could do it.

And it had the advantage, suddenly discovered, that people often did things for you. That, of course, saved you a lot of trouble. And, in the end, if people got into the habit of doing things for you, you didn’t have to do them at all, and then people didn’t know that you did them badly. And so, slowly, you came round again almost to where you started. To feeling that you could hold your own on equal terms with the world at large.

(But that wouldn’t, Gerda feared, hold good with the Angkatells; the Angkatells were always so far ahead that you didn’t feel even in the same street with them. How she hated the Angkatells! It was good for John—John liked it there. He came home less tired—and sometimes less irritable.)

Dear John, she thought. John was wonderful. Everyone thought so. Such a clever doctor, so terribly kind to his patients. Wearing himself out—and the interest he took in his hospital patients—all that side of his work that didn’t pay at all. John was so disinterested—so truly noble.

She had always known, from the very first, that John was brilliant and was going to get to the top of the tree. And he had chosen her, when he might have married somebody far more brilliant. He had not minded her being slow and rather stupid and not very pretty. ‘I’ll look after you,’ he had said. Nicely, rather masterfully. ‘Don’t worry about things, Gerda, I’ll take care of you…’

Just what a man ought to be. Wonderful to think John should have chosen her.

He had said with that sudden, very attractive, half-pleading smile of his, ‘I like my own way, you know, Gerda.’

Well, that was all right. She had always tried to give in to him in everything. Even lately when he had been so difficult and nervy—when nothing seemed to please him. When, somehow, nothing she did was right. One couldn’t blame him. He was so busy, so unselfish—

Oh, dear, that mutton! She ought to have sent it back. Still no sign of John. Why couldn’t she, sometimes, decide right? Again those dark waves of misery swept over her. The mutton! This awful weekend with the Angkatells. She felt a sharp pain through both temples. Oh, dear, now she was going to have one of her headaches. And it did so annoy John when she had headaches. He never would give her anything for them, when surely it would be so easy, being a doctor. Instead he always said: ‘Don’t think about it. No use poisoning yourself with drugs. Take a brisk walk.’

The mutton! Staring at it, Gerda felt the words repeating themselves in her aching head, ‘The mutton, the MUTTON, THE MUTTON…’

Tears of self-pity sprang to her eyes. ‘Why,’ she thought, ‘does nothing ever go right for me?’

Terence looked across at the table at his mother and then at the joint. He thought: ‘Why can’t we have our dinner? How stupid grown-up people are. They haven’t any sense!’

Aloud he said in a careful voice:

‘Nicholson Minor and I are going to make nitroglycerine in his father’s shrubbery. They live at Streatham.’

‘Are you, dear? That will be very nice,’ said Gerda.

There was still time. If she rang the bell and told Lewis to take the joint down now—

Terence looked at her with faint curiosity. He had felt instinctively that the manufacture of nitroglycerine was not the kind of occupation that would be encouraged by parents. With base opportunism he had selected a moment when he felt tolerably certain that he had a good chance of getting away with his statement. And his judgement had been justified. If, by any chance, there should be a fuss—if, that is, the properties of nitroglycerine should manifest themselves too evidently, he would be able to say in an injured voice, ‘I told Mother.’

All the same, he felt vaguely disappointed.

‘Even Mother,’ he thought, ‘ought to know about nitroglycerine.’

He sighed. There swept over him that intense sense of loneliness that only childhood can feel. His father was too impatient to listen, his mother was too inattentive. Zena was only a silly kid.

Pages of interesting chemical tests. And who cared about them? Nobody!

Bang! Gerda started. It was the door of John’s consulting-room. It was John running upstairs.

John Christow burst into the room, bringing with him his own particular atmosphere of intense energy. He was good-humoured, hungry, impatient.

‘God,’ he exclaimed as he sat down and energetically sharpened the carving knife against the steel. ‘How I hate sick people!’

‘Oh, John.’ Gerda was quickly reproachful. ‘Don’t say things like that. They’ll think you mean it.’

She gestured slightly with her head towards the children.

‘I do mean it,’ said John Christow. ‘Nobody ought to be ill.’

‘Father’s joking,’ said Gerda quickly to Terence.

Terence examined his father with the dispassionate attention he gave to everything.

‘I don’t think he is,’ he said.

‘If you hated sick people, you wouldn’t be a doctor, dear,’ said Gerda, laughing gently.

‘That’s exactly the reason,’ said John Christow. ‘No doctors like sickness. Good God, this meat’s stone cold. Why on earth didn’t you have it sent down to keep hot?’

‘Well, dear, I didn’t know. You see, I thought you were just coming—’

John Christow pressed the bell, a long, irritated push. Lewis came promptly.

‘Take this down and tell Cook to warm it up.’

He spoke curtly.

‘Yes, sir.’ Lewis, slightly impertinent, managed to convey in the two innocuous words exactly her opinion of a mistress who sat at the dining-table watching a joint of meat grow cold.

Gerda went on rather incoherently:

‘I’m so sorry, dear, it’s all my fault, but first, you see, I thought you were coming, and then I thought, well, if I did send it back…’

John interrupted her impatiently.

‘Oh, what does it matter? It isn’t important. Not worth making a song and dance about.’

Then he asked:

‘Is the car here?’

‘I think so. Collie ordered it.’

‘Then we can get away as soon as lunch is over.’

Across Albert Bridge, he thought, and then over Clapham Common—the short-cut by the Crystal Palace—Croydon—Purley Way, then avoid the main road—take that right-hand fork up Metherly Hill—along Haverston Ridge—get suddenly right of the suburban belt, through Cormerton, and then up Shovel Down—trees golden red—woodland below one everywhere—the soft autumn smell, and down over the crest of the hill.

Lucy and Henry… Henrietta…

He hadn’t seen Henrietta for four days. When he had last seen her, he’d been angry. She’d had that look in her eyes. Not abstracted, not inattentive—he couldn’t quite describe it—that look of seeing something—something that wasn’t there—something (and that was the crux of it) something that wasn’t John Christow!

He said to himself: ‘I know she’s a sculptor. I know her work’s good. But damn it all, can’t she put it aside sometimes? Can’t she sometimes think of me—and nothing else?’

He was unfair. He knew he was unfair. Henrietta seldom talked of her work—was indeed less obsessed by it than most artists he knew. It was only on very rare occasions that her absorption with some inner vision spoiled the completeness of her interest in him. But it always roused his furious anger.

Once he had said, his voice sharp and hard, ‘Would you give all this up if I asked you to?’

‘All—what?’ Her warm voice held surprise.

‘All—this.’ He waved a comprehensive hand round the studio.

And immediately he thought to himself, ‘Fool! Why did you ask her that?’ And again: ‘Let her say: “Of course.” Let her lie to me! If she’ll only say: “Of course I will.” It doesn’t matter if she means it or not! But let her say it. I must have peace.’

Instead she had said nothing for some time. Her eyes had gone dreamy and abstracted. She had frowned a little.

Then she had said slowly:

‘I suppose so. If it was necessary.’

‘Necessary? What do you mean by necessary?’

‘I don’t really know what I mean by it, John. Necessary, as an amputation might be necessary.’

‘Nothing short of a surgical operation, in fact!’

‘You are angry. What did you want me to say?’

‘You know well enough. One word would have done. Yes. Why couldn’t you say it? You say enough things to people to please them, without caring whether they’re true or not. Why not to me? For God’s sake, why not to me?’

And still very slowly she had answered:

‘I don’t know…really, I don’t know, John. I can’t—that’s all. I can’t.’

He had walked up and down for a minute or two. Then he said:

‘You will drive me mad, Henrietta. I never feel that I have any influence over you at all.’

‘Why should you want to have?’

‘I don’t know. I do.’

He threw himself down on a chair.

‘I want to come first.’

‘You do, John.’

‘No. If I were dead, the first thing you’d do, with the tears streaming down your face, would be to start modelling some damned mourning woman or some figure of grief.’

‘I wonder. I believe—yes, perhaps I would. It’s rather horrible.’

She had sat there looking at him with dismayed eyes.

The pudding was burnt. Christow raised his eyebrows over it and Gerda hurried into apologies.

‘I’m sorry, dear. I can’t think why that should happen. It’s my fault. Give me the top and you take the underneath.’

The pudding was burnt because he, John Christow, had stayed sitting in his consulting-room for a quarter of an hour after he need, thinking about Henrietta and Mrs Crabtree and letting ridiculous nostalgic feelings about San Miguel sweep over him. The fault was his. It was idiotic of Gerda to try and take the blame, maddening of her to try and eat the burnt part herself. Why did she always have to make a martyr of herself ? Why did Terence stare at him in that slow, interested way? Why, oh why, did Zena have to sniff so continually? Why were they all so damned irritating?

His wrath fell on Zena.

‘Why on earth don’t you blow your nose?’

‘She’s got a little cold, I think, dear.’

‘No, she hasn’t. You’re always thinking they have colds! She’s all right.’

Gerda sighed. She had never been able to understand why a doctor, who spent his time treating the ailments of others, could be so indifferent to the health of his own family. He always ridiculed any suggestions of illness.

‘I sneezed eight times before lunch,’ said Zena importantly.

‘Heat sneeze!’ said John.

‘It’s not hot,’ said Terence. ‘The thermometer in the hall is 55.’

John got up. ‘Have we finished? Good, let’s get on. Ready to start, Gerda?’

‘In a minute, John. I’ve just a few things to put in.’

‘Surely you could have done that before. What have you been doing all the morning?’

He went out of the dining-room fuming. Gerda had hurried off into her bedroom. Her anxiety to be quick would make her much slower. But why couldn’t she have been ready? His own suitcase was packed and in the hall. Why on earth—

Zena was advancing on him, clasping some rather sticky cards.

‘Can I tell your fortune, Daddy? I know how. I’ve told Mother’s and Terry’s and Lewis’s and Jane’s and Cook’s.’

‘All right.’

He wondered how long Gerda was going to be. He wanted to get away from this horrible house and this horrible street and this city full of ailing, sniffling, diseased people. He wanted to get to woods and wet leaves—and the graceful aloofness of Lucy Angkatell, who always gave you the impression she hadn’t even got a body.

Zena was importantly dealing out cards.

‘That’s you in the middle, Father, the King of Hearts. The person whose fortune’s told is always the King of Hearts. And then I deal the others face down. Two on the left of you and two on the right of you and one over your head—that has power over you, and one under your feet—you have power over it. And this one—covers you!

‘Now.’ Zena drew a deep breath. ‘We turn them over. On the right of you is the Queen of Diamonds—quite close.’

‘Henrietta,’ he thought, momentarily diverted and amused by Zena’s solemnity.

‘And the next one is the knave of clubs—he’s some quiet young man.

‘On the left of you is the eight of spades—that’s a secret enemy. Have you got a secret enemy, Father?’

‘Not that I know of.’

‘And beyond is the Queen of Spades—that’s a much older lady.’

‘Lady Angkatell,’ he said.

‘Now this is what’s over your head and has power over you—the Queen of Hearts.’

‘Veronica,’ he thought. ‘Veronica!’ And then, ‘What a fool I am! Veronica doesn’t mean a thing to me now.’

‘And this is under your feet and you have power over it—the Queen of Clubs.’

Gerda hurried into the room.

‘I’m quite ready now, John.’

‘Oh, wait, Mother, wait, I’m telling Daddy’s fortune. Just the last card, Daddy—the most important of all. The one that covers you.’

Zena’s small sticky fingers turned it over. She gave a gasp.

‘Oh—it’s the Ace of Spades! That’s usually a death—but—’

‘Your mother,’ said John, ‘is going to run over someone on the way out of London. Come on, Gerda. Goodbye, you two. Try and behave.’