The Hollow

CHAPTER 6

Midge Hardcastle came downstairs about eleven on Saturday morning. She had had breakfast in bed and had read a book and dozed a little and then got up.

It was nice lazing this way. About time she had a holiday! No doubt about it, Madame Alfrege’s got on your nerves.

She came out of the front door into the pleasant autumn sunshine. Sir Henry Angkatell was sitting on a rustic seat reading The Times. He looked up and smiled. He was fond of Midge.

‘Hallo, my dear.’

‘Am I very late?’

‘You haven’t missed lunch,’ said Sir Henry, smiling.

Midge sat down beside him and said with a sigh:

‘It’s nice being here.’

‘You’re looking rather peaked.’

‘Oh, I’m all right. How delightful to be somewhere where no fat women are trying to get into clothes several sizes too small for them!’

‘Must be dreadful!’ Sir Henry paused and then said, glancing down at his wrist-watch: ‘Edward’s arriving by the 12.15.’

‘Is he?’ Midge paused, then said, ‘I haven’t seen Edward for a long time.’

‘He’s just the same,’ said Sir Henry. ‘Hardly ever comes up from Ainswick.’

‘Ainswick,’ thought Midge. ‘Ainswick!’ Her heart gave a sick pang. Those lovely days at Ainswick. Visits looked forward to for months! ‘I’m going to Ainswick.’ Lying awake for nights beforehand thinking about it. And at last—the day! The little country station at which the train—the big London express—had to stop if you gave notice to the guard! The Daimler waiting outside. The drive—the final turn in through the gate and up through the woods till you came out into the open and there the house was—big and white and welcoming. Old Uncle Geoffrey in his patchwork tweed coat.

‘Now then, youngsters—enjoy yourselves.’ And they had enjoyed themselves. Henrietta over from Ireland. Edward, home from Eton. She herself, from the North-country grimness of a manufacturing town. How like heaven it had been.

But always centring about Edward. Edward, tall and gentle and diffident and always kind. But never, of course, noticing her very much because Henrietta was there.

Edward, always so retiring, so very much of a visitor so that she had been startled one day when Tremlet, the head gardener, had said:

‘The place will be Mr Edward’s some day.’

‘But why, Tremlet? He’s not Uncle Geoffrey’s son.’

‘He’s the heir, Miss Midge. Entailed, that’s what they call it. Miss Lucy, she’s Mr Geoffrey’s only child, but she can’t inherit because she’s a female, and Mr Henry, as she married, he’s only a second cousin. Not so near as Mr Edward.’

And now Edward lived at Ainswick. Lived there alone and very seldom came away. Midge wondered, sometimes, if Lucy minded. Lucy always looked as though she never minded about anything.

Yet Ainswick had been her home, and Edward was only her first cousin once removed, and over twenty years younger than she was. Her father, old Geoffrey Angkatell, had been a great ‘character’ in the country. He had had considerable wealth as well, most of which had come to Lucy, so that Edward was a comparatively poor man, with enough to keep the place up, but not much over when that was done.

Not that Edward had expensive tastes. He had been in the diplomatic service for a time, but when he inherited Ainswick he had resigned and come to live on his property. He was of a bookish turn of mind, collected first editions, and occasionally wrote rather hesitating ironical little articles for obscure reviews. He had asked his second cousin, Henrietta Savernake, three times to marry him.

Midge sat in the autumn sunshine thinking of these things. She could not make up her mind whether she was glad she was going to see Edward or not. It was not as though she were what is called ‘getting over it’. One simply did not get over any one like Edward. Edward of Ainswick was just as real to her as Edward rising to greet her from a restaurant table in London. She had loved Edward ever since she could remember…

Sir Henry’s voice recalled her.

‘How do you think Lucy is looking?’

‘Very well. She’s just the same as ever.’ Midge smiled a little. ‘More so.’

‘Ye—es.’ Sir Henry drew on his pipe. He said unexpectedly:

‘Sometimes, you know, Midge, I get worried about Lucy.’

‘Worried?’ Midge looked at him in surprise. ‘Why?’

Sir Henry shook his head.

‘Lucy,’ he said, ‘doesn’t realize that there are things that she can’t do.’

Midge stared. He went on:

‘She gets away with things. She always has.’ He smiled. ‘She’s flouted the traditions of Government House—she’s played merry hell with precedence at dinner parties (and that, Midge, is a black crime!). She’s put deadly enemies next to each other at the dinner table, and run riot over the colour question! And instead of raising one big almighty row and setting everyone at loggerheads and bringing disgrace on the British Raj—I’m damned if she hasn’t got away with it! That trick of hers—smiling at people and looking as though she couldn’t help it! Servants are the same—she gives them any amount of trouble and they adore her.’

‘I know what you mean,’ said Midge thoughtfully. ‘Things that you wouldn’t stand from anyone else, you feel are all right if Lucy does them. What is it, I wonder? Charm? Magnetism?’

Sir Henry shrugged his shoulders.

‘She’s always been the same from a girl—only sometimes I feel it’s growing on her. I mean that she doesn’t realize that there are limits. Why, I really believe, Midge,’ he said, amused, ‘that Lucy would feel she could get away with murder!’

Henrietta got the Delage out from the garage in the Mews and, after a wholly technical conversation with her friend Albert, who looked after the Delage’s health, she started off.

‘Running a treat, miss,’ said Albert.

Henrietta smiled. She shot away down the Mews, savouring the unfailing pleasure she always felt when setting off in the car alone. She much preferred to be alone when driving. In that way she could realize to the full the intimate personal enjoyment that driving a car brought to her.

She enjoyed her own skill in traffic, she enjoyed nosing out new short-cuts out of London. She had routes of her own and when driving in London itself had as intimate a knowledge of its streets as any taxi-driver.

She took now her own newly discovered way southwest, turning and twisting through intricate mazes of suburban streets.

When she came finally to the long ridge of Shovel Down it was half-past twelve. Henrietta had always loved the view from that particular place. She paused now just at the point where the road began to descend. All around and below her were trees, trees whose leaves were turning from gold to brown. It was a world incredibly golden and splendid in the strong autumn sunlight.

Henrietta thought, ‘I love autumn. It’s so much richer than spring.’

And suddenly one of those moments of intense happiness came to her—a sense of the loveliness of the world—of her own intense enjoyment of that world.

She thought, ‘I shall never be as happy again as I am now—never.’

She stayed there a minute, gazing out over that golden world that seemed to swim and dissolve into itself, hazy and blurred with its own beauty.

Then she came down over the crest of the hill, down through the woods, down the long steep road to The Hollow.

When Henrietta drove in, Midge was sitting on the low wall of the terrace, and waved to her cheerfully. Henrietta was pleased to see Midge, whom she liked.

Lady Angkatell came out of the house and said:

‘Oh, there you are, Henrietta. When you’ve taken your car into the stables and given it a bran mash, lunch will be ready.’

‘What a penetrating remark of Lucy’s,’ said Henrietta as she drove round the house, Midge accompanying her on the step. ‘You know, I always prided myself on having completely escaped the horsy taint of my Irish forebears. When you’ve been brought up amongst people who talk nothing but horse, you go all superior about not caring for them. And now Lucy has just shown me that I treat my car exactly like a horse. It’s quite true. I do.’

‘I know,’ said Midge. ‘Lucy is quite devastating. She told me this morning that I was to be as rude as I liked whilst I was here.’

Henrietta considered this for a moment and then nodded.

‘Of course,’ she said. ‘The shop!’

‘Yes. When one has to spend every day of one’s life in a damnable little box being polite to rude women, calling them Madam, pulling frocks over their heads, smiling and swallowing their damned cheek whatever they like to say to one—well, one does want to cuss! You know, Henrietta, I always wonder why people think it’s so humiliating to go “into service” and that it’s grand and independent to be in a shop. One puts up with far more insolence in a shop than Gudgeon or Simmons or any decent domestic does.’

‘It must be foul, darling. I wish you weren’t so grand and proud and insistent on earning your own living.’

‘Anyway, Lucy’s an angel. I shall be gloriously rude to everyone this weekend.’

‘Who’s here?’ said Henrietta as she got out of the car.

‘The Christows are coming.’ Midge paused and then went on, ‘Edward’s just arrived.’

‘Edward? How nice. I haven’t seen Edward for ages. Anybody else?’

‘David Angkatell. That, according to Lucy, is where you are going to come in useful. You’re going to stop him biting his nails.’

‘It sounds very unlike me,’ said Henrietta. ‘I hate interfering with people, and I wouldn’t dream of checking their personal habits. What did Lucy really say?’

‘It amounted to that! He’s got an Adam’s apple, too!’

‘I’m not expected to do anything about that, am I?’ asked Henrietta, alarmed.

‘And you’re to be kind to Gerda.’

‘How I should hate Lucy if I were Gerda!’

‘And someone who solves crimes is coming to lunch tomorrow.’

‘We’re not going to play the Murder Game, are we?’

‘I don’t think so. I think it is just neighbourly hospitality.’

Midge’s voice changed a little.

‘Here’s Edward coming out to meet us.’

‘Dear Edward,’ thought Henrietta with a sudden rush of warm affection.

Edward Angkatell was very tall and thin. He was smiling now as he came towards the two young women.

‘Hallo, Henrietta, I haven’t seen you for over a year.’

‘Hallo, Edward.’

How nice Edward was! That gentle smile of his, the little creases at the corners of his eyes. And all his nice knobbly bones. ‘I believe it’s his bones I like so much,’ thought Henrietta. The warmth of her affection for Edward startled her. She had forgotten that she liked Edward so much.

After lunch Edward said: ‘Come for a walk, Henrietta.’

It was Edward’s kind of walk—a stroll.

They went up behind the house, taking a path that zigzagged up through the trees. Like the woods at Ainswick, thought Henrietta. Dear Ainswick, what fun they had had there! She began to talk to Edward about Ainswick. They revived old memories.

‘Do you remember our squirrel? The one with the broken paw. And we kept it in a cage and it got well?’

‘Of course. It had a ridiculous name—what was it now?’

‘Cholmondeley-Marjoribanks!’

‘That’s it.’

They both laughed.

‘And old Mrs Bondy, the housekeeper—she always said it would go up the chimney one day.’

‘And we were so indignant.’

‘And then it did.’

‘She made it,’ said Henrietta positively. ‘She put the thought into the squirrel’s head.’

She went on:

‘Is it all the same, Edward? Or is it changed? I always imagine it just the same.’

‘Why don’t you come and see, Henrietta? It’s a long long time since you’ve been there.’

‘I know.’

Why, she thought, had she let so long a time go by? One got busy—interested—tangled up with people…

‘You know you’re always welcome there at any time.’

‘How sweet you are, Edward!’

Dear Edward, she thought, with his nice bones.

He said presently:

‘I’m glad you’re fond of Ainswick, Henrietta.’

She said dreamily, ‘Ainswick is the loveliest place in the world.’

A long-legged girl, with a mane of untidy brown hair…a happy girl with no idea at all of the things that life was going to do to her…a girl who loved trees…

To have been so happy and not to have known it! ‘If I could go back,’ she thought.

And aloud she said suddenly:

‘Is Ygdrasil still there?’

‘It was struck by lightning.’

‘Oh, no, not Ygdrasil!’

She was distressed. Ygdrasil—her own special name for the big oak tree. If the gods could strike down Ygdrasil, then nothing was safe! Better not go back.

‘Do you remember your special sign, the Ygdrasil sign?’

‘The funny tree like no tree that ever was I used to draw on bits of paper? I still do, Edward! On blotters, and on telephone books, and on bridge scores. I doodle it all the time. Give me a pencil.’

He handed her a pencil and notebook, and laughing, she drew the ridiculous tree.

‘Yes,’ he said, ‘that’s Ygdrasil.’

They had come almost to the top of the path. Henrietta sat on a fallen tree-trunk. Edward sat down beside her.

She looked down through the trees.

‘It’s a little like Ainswick here—a kind of pocket Ainswick. I’ve sometimes wondered—Edward, do you think that that is why Lucy and Henry came here?’

‘It’s possible.’

‘One never knows,’ said Henrietta slowly, ‘what goes on in Lucy’s head.’ Then she asked, ‘What have you been doing with yourself, Edward, since I saw you last?’

‘Nothing, Henrietta.’

‘That sounds very peaceful.’

‘I’ve never been very good at—doing things.’

She threw him a quick glance. There had been something in his tone. But he was smiling at her quietly.

And again she felt that rush of deep affection.

‘Perhaps,’ she said, ‘you are wise.’

‘Wise?’

‘Not to do things.’

Edward said slowly, ‘That’s an odd thing for you to say, Henrietta. You, who’ve been so successful.’

‘Do you think of me as successful? How funny.’

‘But you are, my dear. You’re an artist. You must be proud of yourself; you can’t help being.’

‘I know,’ said Henrietta. ‘A lot of people say that to me. They don’t understand—they don’t understand the first thing about it. You don’t, Edward. Sculpture isn’t a thing you set out to do and succeed in. It’s a thing that gets at you, that nags at you—and haunts you—so that you’ve got, sooner or later, to make terms with it. And then, for a bit, you get some peace—until the whole thing starts over again.’

‘Do you want to be peaceful, Henrietta?’

‘Sometimes I think I want to be peaceful more than anything in the world, Edward!’

‘You could be peaceful at Ainswick. I think you could be happy there. Even—even if you had to put up with me. What about it, Henrietta? Won’t you come to Ainswick and make it your home? It’s always been there, you know, waiting for you.’

Henrietta turned her head slowly. She said in a low voice:

‘I wish I wasn’t so dreadfully fond of you, Edward. It makes it so very much harder to go on saying No.’

‘It is No, then?’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘You’ve said No before—but this time—well, I thought it might be different. You’ve been happy this afternoon, Henrietta. You can’t deny that.’

‘I’ve been very happy.’

‘Your face even—it’s younger than it was this morning.’

‘I know.’

‘We’ve been happy together, talking about Ainswick, thinking about Ainswick. Don’t you see what that means, Henrietta?’

‘It’s you who don’t see what it means, Edward! We’ve been living all this afternoon in the past.’

‘The past is sometimes a very good place to live.’

‘One can’t go back. That’s the one thing one can’t do—go back.’

He was silent for a minute or two. Then he said in a quiet, pleasant and quite unemotional voice:

‘What you really mean is that you won’t marry me because of John Christow?’

Henrietta did not answer, and Edward went on:

‘That’s it, isn’t it? If there were no John Christow in the world you would marry me.’

Henrietta said harshly, ‘I can’t imagine a world in which there was no John Christow! That’s what you’ve got to understand.’

‘If it’s like that, why on earth doesn’t the fellow get a divorce from his wife and then you could marry?’