The Late Breakfasters
Robert Aickman
I dedicate this book to
HERBERT VAN THAL
Magician
Part One
I
Griselda de Reptonville did not know what love was until she joined one of Mrs Hatch’s famous house parties at Beams, and there met Leander. Her brief and blighted association with Leander led rapidly, as a reaction, to her marrying the unsatisfactory Geoffrey Kynaston. After Kynaston’s death, she took up with an unpopular baronet, and lived with him very happily. There may have been one or two earlier episodes, none of them important. She is now twenty-five and has never wholly forgotten Leander; their ecstatic community of thought and feeling is something she fears she has lost for ever. She knew its worth at the time; she never for a single moment doubted it: but society was inevitably too strong for her, and ate her improper passion at a gulp. Leander doubtless never expected anything else, and therefore possibly suffered less, but of this there is little record.
A woman of less spirit would have blushed at being named de Reptonville; wearied of being called patient, and of the remarkably general assumption that by reason of her name she would always be so. De Reptonville, when Mr Repton assumed the name (early in the nineteenth century), was quizzed as the apogee of unwarranted pretentiousness; now it is written off as a meaningless relic of conquest feudalism. Griselda, however, merely smiled sometimes when she looked at her visiting card, newly printed in flawless italics by Parkin and Gotto. The repetitive jokes about her patience only led her to think that in the absurdity of human nature lies much of its charm.
Beams was not an enormous house but it was approached from the insanely noisy main road through Hodley village by a drive two miles long. There had been a car to meet her and the other guests at Hodley railway station; but the season had called to Griselda, and the other guests alarmed her. She had sent on her suitcase, and was now following on foot. As the weather looked settled for an hour or so, her jacket and handbag had gone on with the luggage: she was now wonderfully unencumbered. She wore a white silk blouse, a short skirt of black linen, and substantial shoes. She walked fast, swinging her arms and singing ‘Now that I have springtime.’ This song came from The Three Sisters by Hammerstein and Kern, which she had seen at Drury Lane the previous evening with a girl whom she had known since childhood. The drive was lined with poplars, slightly discoloured with dust from the new works of the North Downs Cement Company, which now gave good employment to the village.
Beams had a glorious situation (once or twice a year it was possible to see the English Channel from the top of the tower); but as architecture it was unremarkable. Run up by the Duke of St Helens, owner at that time of Hodley Park (since demolished), to provide accommodation for a great Belgian actress named Stephanie des Bourges, whom he had loved frenziedly until her premature death, it was soon acquired by Mrs Hatch’s grandfather, a rising merchant banker, called Eleutherios Procopius. His son John Procopius represented the Division in Parliament for the remarkable period of sixty-one years. At his death he left Beams to his only child Melanie, together with more than three million pounds, which would at that time have enabled either of them to live in something larger. The Procopiuses had never, it seemed, been lucky in love: of Mrs Eleutherios there is no record at all; Mrs John died in childbirth the year after her marriage to a man aged nearly sixty; Melanie married during the Boer War a certain Captain Hatch of the CIVs, who almost immediately proceeded to drift away from her and in one way and another to resist recapture during a period of time not expired at the date now under construction. Beams, none the less, had eighteen reasonable bedrooms and was a wonderfully comfortable place to visit. It was, however, haunted: quite seriously, even, on occasion, dangerously, by the apparition of Mademoiselle des Bourges, beautiful even in death.
After glancing at the view, which only burst upon the visitor as he or she reached the lovely gravel waste before the house, Griselda pulled the elaborate bell handle. Though apparently designed to operate an old-fashioned bell wire, the handle proved, in fact, to have been connected with a modern electric system. Before the servant could reach the door, it opened and an elderly gentleman passed out of the house into the garden. He was wearing rather shabby tweeds, leggings, and a black homburg hat. On seeing Griselda he jumped considerably, and nervously raised his black hat; then, without a word, linked hands behind his back and shambled off towards the rose garden. Griselda noticed that he was still shaking perceptibly with the shock of their encounter. By now a middle-aged footman had arrived. Griselda had never before seen a servant in appropriate livery except in musical comedy.
‘Good afternoon, miss.’
‘Good afternoon. I’m Miss de Reptonville. Mrs Hatch is expecting me.’
‘I’m sorry to have kept you waiting, miss. It’s the new bells. The Prime Minister got to the door first, I’m afraid.’
‘Was that Mr Leech?’ Griselda had thought there was something familiar about the quivering figure.
‘Regular visitor, miss. In office or out. Mrs Hatch makes no distinction. Would you care for me to show you to your room?’
‘Thank you.’ The front door closed behind her. ‘I sent on my luggage in the car. Also my handbag and jacket.’ After the spring sunshine, the house seemed cold.
‘They have been taken to your room, miss. This way please.’
The large hall, though filled with comfortable armchairs and sofas (a little like a furniture shop window, Griselda thought), was completely empty. She followed the footman up the wide staircase. A royal blue carpet completely covered the shallow risers. The mahogany balusters were expensively hand-carved. After the soft spring tumult outside, the house seemed silent.
‘We’ve only just ceased the central heat,’ remarked the footman over his shoulder as he trudged before Griselda down one of the passages which radiated from the gallery encircling the hall.
Griselda noticed the gilded pipes at frequent intervals.
‘You’ve got the Newman Room, miss.’ He opened the door.
‘Why is it called that?’
‘Cardinal Newman used to sleep here when he came to stay.’
‘Was that often?’
‘Often, they say. To write his books and that. Mr Cork’s got many tales of him. He’s our Head Gardener. You must get him to tell you.’
‘I’ll remember. Thank you.’
‘Thank you, miss.’ He withdrew.
The Newman Room was large, square, well-lighted by windows in two walls, well-heated by a coal fire in a modern grate of patented design. Neither beautiful nor particularly ugly, it had recently been entirely refurnished by a contractor. It had no atmosphere whatever; of its eminent former occupant, or of anybody or anything else.
Griselda began to unpack. The drawers slid on stainless steel runners; the innumerable hangers in the wardrobe rattled together like the bones of a dancing skeleton. In the corner of the room was a cabinet, which proved to contain a shower, with a bath adjoining. Griselda turned the tap: the water cascaded downwards with terrifying force, far exceeding the capacity of the wastepipe in the floor. It was difficult to imagine anyone standing beneath that cataract and emerging undrowned. The water began to flow out of the cabinet and soak the bedroom carpet in a rapidly expanding black blot. Griselda rotated the tap (it seemed to be geared very low, she thought); but all that happened was that the downpour suddenly became scalding hot. A great cloud of steam filled the bedroom, like a geyser suddenly blowing off.
‘Don’t mind my interrupting your bath,’ said a firm voice behind Griselda’s back.
Griselda rapidly rotated the tap in the opposite direction. It was difficult to see who had entered the room.
‘I’m Melanie Hatch. Just thought I’d say How d’you do?’ With a spasmodic crash of plumbing, the water stopped. It was as if it had been intercepted in the pipe.
‘How d’you do? I’ve heard so much about you from Mother.’
‘How is she?’
‘Still suffering rather a lot, I’m afraid.’
‘Bad business about your father.’
‘Yes.’
Mrs Hatch was a woman of middle height, considerably more than broad in proportion, but very healthy and active. Her chestnut hair was excellently dyed; but it had never been very beautiful hair. She was the kind of woman whose appearance, for better or for worse, changes surprisingly little with the years. Her expression indicated that a deficiency in imaginative understanding of the problems with which she had been faced, was so far as possible made good by conscious will to face them. She wore an extremely well-cut and expensive tweed coat and skirt; finely made woollen stockings; and a grey sweater with a polo collar enclosing her large neck.
‘Do go on with your bath.’
‘I wasn’t really having a bath. It was just curiosity.’
‘Well, have one now.’
‘I don’t think I want one. I might have one tonight.’ Griselda, as in the matter of her name, never lacked for spirit to resist attempts to order her doings.
‘I shan’t be here then to talk to you.’
‘I can’t talk and scrub at the same time,’ said Griselda smiling. ‘I’m a perfect simpleton by your standards.’
Mrs Hatch looked at her. ‘Do you mind if I sit down?’
‘Please do.’ Mrs Hatch seated herself in a large Parker-Knoll armchair at the foot of the bed, and watched Griselda putting away her stockings and underclothes in the ample drawers all lined with paper which smelt of a specially perfumed disinfectant.
‘You know your Mother fagged for me at Wollstonecroft?’
‘She has always told me how fond she was of you, I hope you’ll go and see her one day.’
‘Poor old Millie,’ said Mrs Hatch crossing her legs, ‘I easily might. In the meantime I expect to prefer your company.’
‘Thank you,’ said Griselda, hanging up her mackintosh. ‘It is very kind of you to ask me.’
‘Not really. I can always do with young girls about the house. The great men who visit me expect it. It helps them to relax. I’m very calculating.’
‘I see. I’ll try and do what is expected of me. It’s nice of you to ask me.’
‘I’ve got Austin Barnes here this weekend. In fact he should have come on your train. You must have met him in the car.’
‘I walked from the station. I couldn’t resist the weather.’
‘So you like walking?’
‘I love it. Particularly by myself.’
‘You must come for a walk with Austin and me. We’re both good for twenty or thirty miles still. Austin’s an old flame of mine, you know.’
‘I only know about his public life. And not very much about that. I didn’t know that Cabinet Ministers had any other kind of life nowadays.’
‘As far as I’m concerned, Austin hasn’t. Though he’s still game enough, I believe, when circumstances are more propitious. But let me see your dress. The one you’ve brought for tomorrow night.’
‘I haven’t brought any particular dress for tomorrow night. Should I have done?’
‘Didn’t your mother tell you?’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘My dear. Millie must have told you about the All Party Dance tomorrow. It’s the main reason I asked you – asked you now, I mean.’
Griselda had not been told and the reason was clear. Griselda so detested dancing that, had she been told, she would have declined Mrs Hatch’s invitation altogether, thus possible alienating a friend from whom Mrs de Reptonville hoped for much.
‘I’m terribly sorry. I don’t dance.’
‘Why not? Are you crippled?’
Griselda felt disinclined to explain.
‘Shall I go home?’
Mrs Hatch considered the proposal for a moment. Clearly she was much disturbed. ‘No, no . . . No, of course not.’ Then, taking control of the situaltion, she returned to her previous demand: ‘Let me see your dress.’ She added: ‘I do think Millie might have warned me.’
With some reluctance Griselda took from the mechanized wardrobe one of the two evening dresses she had brought. ‘I must clearly tell you: I won’t dance.’ The dress was made of coffee coloured taffeta and very simple. She held it up.
Mrs Hatch seemed surprised. ‘It’s far too old for you, of course, but delightful. Where did you get it, if I may ask a plain question?’
‘Nothing very distinguished. A friend of mine works in a dress shop. I think she has very good taste.’
‘Improbably enough, she has. My friend Louise will help you put it on.’
‘Thank you very much, but I don’t need help.’
‘You don’t know how much Louise will do for you. I’ll send her along. Now then.’ Unexpectedly Mrs Hatch smiled.
‘Yes?’ said Griselda, unexpectedly smiling back.
‘Before tomorrow night you must learn to dance. Oh yes you must. I positively owe it to Millie. In the meantime I’m glad to have met you, Griselda, and tea will be ready when you are. In the Hall then.’
And suddenly she had left the room, leaving Griselda rehanging her dress.
II
The party in the Hall had grouped themselves round an electrical space-heater, which raised the temperature of the atmosphere without anybody becoming aware of the fact. Mrs Hatch was manipulating a vast and heavy teapot, apparently without effort. As Griselda descended the stairs, two men rose to their feet.
‘This is Griselda de Reptonville,’ said Mrs Hatch, recharging the teapot from a silver kettle which must have held at least a gallon. ‘Her mother used to be my greatest friend at school. Griselda, let me introduce you: Pamela Anslack, you two should be great friends; George Goss; Edwin Polegate-Hampden, he runs the St James’s News-Letter, which tells us what is really happening in the world; and Doris Ditton, who lives in Hodley. Now let me give you a crumpet. There’s room for you on the sofa next to Pamela. You two must make friends.’
Griselda was rather regretting she had not put on her cardigan, but Pamela was wearing a slight (though obviously exorbitant) afternoon model and seemed perfectly warm enough. A wide diamond bracelet encircled her left wrist; a diamond watch, her right. She was indeed about Griselda’s age, but her perfectly made-up face was singularly expressionless, her dark hair like a photograph in Vogue.
She said nothing at all: not even How do you do?; and Griselda biting into her crumpet, stared with furtive curiosity at George Goss. The famous painter looked much older than he did in the newspapers; but his hair and beard, though now more grey than black, were impressively unkempt, his face exceedingly rubicund, and his general bulk prodigious (though augmented by his unyielding green tweeds). He drank, not tea, Griselda noticed, but something in a glass; probably brandy and soda, she thought, as it sparkled energetically. He drank it noisily; and even more noisily devoured huge sections from a lump of rich cake which lay on the plate before him; while he stared back at Griselda, delighting massively in the thrill his presence gave her. He was like a very famous hippopotamus.
Edwin Polegate-Hampden was discoursing upon the inside politics of Morocco. He had paused to greet Griselda with significant courtesy, even, it seemed, cordiality. About thirty-five, and beautifully preserved for his age, he was dressed equally beautifully in a black jacket, cut rather fancifully after a bygone sporting original, yellow trousers, a mauve shirt, a silk tie with large spots, and a beautiful rose from Mr Cork’s smallest and private conservatory. His hair was treated with a preservative pomade from a shop in New York.
He resumed.
‘But all I have been saying is of secondary importance. Quite secondary. What really matters is that the Atlas Mountains are entirely made of tin. You appreciate what that means in the modern world?’
George Goss nodded heavily, as painters do when interesting themselves in politics or sociology. Griselda looked bright and interested. Mrs Hatch looked from Pamela to Griselda, and back to Pamela. Doris Ditton continued looking into her empty teacup. Possibly she was reading her life’s pattern in the leaves.
‘The Sultan himself told me the inside story of the concessionaires. I won’t tell you the full details, but it comes down to a fight between Meyer Preyserling of Wall Street and a London firm of bankers whose name I can’t pass on. I’ve known Meyer for years, of course, and when I heard that he was interested, I at once flew over and had a talk with him. As a matter of fact, I stayed with him a week. To cut a long story short, he told me that Washington is behind him – secretly, of course, but up to the hilt; so that he has all the gold in Fort Knox to play with. Naturally the London people can’t compete with that. So you can take it that all the tin will go to America, as they can exchange it for gold. And that will mean new labour troubles in Bolivia, possibly even a revolution.’
George Goss nodded again. Mrs Hatch was lighting a cigarette. Pamela, Griselda noticed, was one of those girls whose mouth is seldom entirely closed.
‘So if you have any Bolivian investments, you’d better think carefully what to do. Of course, it may all blow over. The output from the Bolivian tin mines largely goes to Germany anyway, and I think the market may hold up for some time yet. But we must find out what the French are going to do about it all.’
‘Why the French?’ asked George Goss. His voice reminded Griselda of a porpoise.
‘Morocco.’
‘Oh yes,’ said George Goss like an undergraduate convicted of inattention. Noticing that his glass was empty, Mrs Hatch passed him a bottle, and added soda from a syphon behind him.
‘I’ve an engagement to talk matters over with Derriиre in Paris next week.’ Edwin’s French accent was incredibly good. ‘Derriиre is the one man who really counts in France at the moment, and, after all, the Moroccan business may easily end in a world war.’ He subsided affably.
‘Have some of our fruit cake, Griselda?’ said Mrs Hatch. ‘It’s one of our traditions. No other cake for tea but our very special fruit cake.’
‘Thank you very much.’
‘Have some more tea, Pamela?’
Pamela merely shook her head.
‘You’re not sulking are you?’
Pamela shook her head again.
‘What about you, Doris?’
‘Thanks, Mrs Hatch.’ Pamela looked at Doris scornfully; Griselda with some curiosity. Edwin handed her cup with precise courtesy.
‘You’ve had five cups already.’
‘I’m afraid I’d lost count, Mrs Hatch.’ Doris was a pale little creature, with intermediate hair and wearing a cotton frock, obviously her best but somewhat crumpled.
‘I just thought I’d tell you.’ Mrs Hatch had refilled the cup and Edwin returned it to Doris with pale hands.
‘The arranging must have made me thirsty.’
‘Doris has been helping with the preparations for tomorrow night,’ explained Mrs Hatch to Griselda. ‘The balloons haven’t been used for some time and a lot of dust had been allowed to collect. And that,’ she continued firmly, ‘reminds me.’
‘Must I?’ asked Griselda, rather charmingly, as she thought.
‘Would you believe it, Edwin? Griselda thought we could do without her at the dance.’
Pamela’s mouth opened another half-inch.
Edwin replied: ‘I do hope not.’
‘I can’t dance,’ cried Griselda a little desperately.
Pamela’s large eyes opened to their utmost.
‘Please permit me to teach you,’ said Edwin. ‘It would be delightful.’
‘Thank you. But, as I’ve explained to Mrs Hatch, I don’t really like dancing.’
‘Let me teach you,’ suddenly roared George Goss. ‘You’d like it well enough then.’
‘Neither of you will teach Griselda,’ said Mrs Hatch. ‘It’s much too important a thing to be left to amateurs. You’d be certain to start her on entirely the wrong lines. She’s a job for Kynaston.’
‘Who’s Kynaston?’ asked Griselda fearfully.
‘He’s a somewhat neurotic young man who none the less dances like a faun. He makes a living teaching dancing in Hodley.’
‘Only until he establishes himself as a poet,’ unexpectedly interjected Doris.
‘Doris is in love with Mr Kynaston,’ explained Mrs Hatch. ‘But it’s quite true that he writes poetry as well. Very good poetry too. If you spend the whole day with him tomorrow you should pass muster as a dancer by the evening.’
The project appalled Griselda, but to continue in her refusal seemed somehow gauche, and not only in the eyes of her hostess.
‘Doris will speak to Mr Kynaston to-night and you can go down in the car at ten o’clock tomorrow morning.’
‘And I very much hope,’ added Edwin as epilogue, ‘that when the time comes you will give your first dance to me.’
Griselda smiled at him rather uncertainly.
‘I wish Leech would come in. The tea’s cold.’
‘Let me go and look for him, Mrs Hatch.’ Edwin had sprung to his feet and was making for the door.
Pamela was staring at Griselda’s uncoloured finger nails.
‘And where’s Austin and the Ellensteins?’
Griselda supposed these to be the terrifying figures whose company she had evaded in the car from the station.
‘Send Monk upstairs,’ said George Goss. ‘Don’t look at me.’
‘Doris,’ said Mrs Hatch, ‘would you mind ringing for Monk?’
Doris rose and rang. The footman appeared who had shown Griselda to her room. Mrs Hatch despatched him to enquire after the missing guests. Soon he was back.
‘Mr Barnes asks you to excuse him, ma’am. He is lying down in his room. Their Highnesses are coming directly.’
‘Thank you. We’d better have some more hot water. I don’t imagine their Highnesses will require crumpets, or Mr Leech either. Though you never know.’
‘No ma’am.’ Monk departed with the vast kettle.
A fat elderly man was descending the stairs, followed by an equally fat woman of similar age. Both were immaculate; she in a dress younger than her years, in which, oddly enough, she looked much more attractive than she would have done in a more appropriate garment.
‘This is Griselda de Reptonville,’ said Mrs Hatch, ‘The Duke and Duchess of Ellenstein.’
The Duke clicked his heels and kissed Griselda’s hand; the Duchess, even more to her surprise, kissed her lips.
‘You two are late,’ said George Goss. ‘Tea’s over.’
‘For some time now it is during the afternoon that I make Odile mine,’ explained the Duke, in a high gentle voice with only the slightest of accents, and that adding greatly to his charm. ‘We both of us find it best at nights to sleep.’
‘I’ll look in tonight and see if Odile will change her mind.’
‘We make love while the sun shines, George,’ said the Duchess.
‘Only during the wretched war have we missed a single day,’ said the Duke, putting a piece of cake on his wife’s plate, and then taking a larger piece himself.
Monk returned with the recharged kettle, sustaining with difficulty his dignity and its weight.
‘Bring Miss Ditton’s bicycle round to the front door, will you. Monk?’ said Mrs Hatch. ‘Now Doris, don’t forget. Mr Kynaston is to set aside the whole of tomorrow for Miss de Reptonville’s tuition.’
‘Tuition?’ said the Duchess. ‘In what, my dear?’
‘Griselda is learning to dance, Odile.’
‘But that is impossible in England. I learned for years when I was a girl and not till I met Gottfried was I anything but a carthorse. Believe me, my dear, I was mad to dance, just like you, but you cannot dance until you love.’
Monk’s liveried figure passed the window pushing Doris’s rattling bicycle. She slipped away.
‘It would be a weight off all our minds if Doris married Geoffrey Kynaston,’ observed Mrs Hatch.
Pamela took the opportunity to retire upstairs. The Ellensteins, George Goss, and Mrs Hatch were engaged in animated conversation about experiences they had shared in the past. Their memories seemed excellent; their relish for detail almost unlimited. No reason was apparent why they should not continue for days or weeks; and then start again at the beginning like a film programme. Necessarily, little attempt could be made to include Griselda. Though she did not much care for George Goss, she noticed even that he had ceased to look at her and was gazing instead at the Duchess’s fat but still not ill-proportioned legs. (He resembled, she thought, an inquisitive elephant.)
After about an hour and a half of it, Edwin returned and said that he had been having a really valuable talk with the Prime Minister upon the Indo-Chinese problem; and that Mr Leech had made his tea of a biscuit or two he had brought from his pocket. ‘I’m so sorry, Mrs Hatch,’ concluded Edwin. ‘I just couldn’t persuade him to leave his beloved roses.’
There were a number of cold dead crumpets on the occasional table in their midst, and some dregs of tea in the cups; but, Griselda noticed, the Ellensteins and George Goss had eaten the entire famous fruit cake among them.
‘Thank you, Edwin,’ said Mrs Hatch. ‘I quite understand. You’d better go back and pump the old man until dinner time. We’re perfectly happy without you.’
‘I’m sure you’re divinely happy every single hour of the day, Mrs Hatch,’ replied Edwin. ‘But I must admit I should be glad to have the true story of the railway strike. I have a great responsibility to my readers. They do trust me so completely.’
He was gone.
‘Is there a railway strike?’ asked Griselda. ‘I didn’t notice it.’
But the Duchess was recalling the night the four of them (and several others) started a bonfire in Leicester Square.
‘Do you remember?’ said the Duchess. ‘It was Austin Barnes’s idea.’
III
Dinner was not until 8.30; but Pamela gave the impression of having spent the entire interminable interim changing for it. Griselda, plainly debarred for tonight from the coffee-coloured taffeta, had put on her other dress, of pinkish organdie and very nice too; only for Pamela to make it immediately though silently obvious to her that the proper style for the occasion was that followed by herself, a blouse and long skirt. Mrs Hatch, when she appeared was similarly dressed; as, to Griselda’s complete dejection, was the Duchess, who came down last, skilfully made-up, with the Duke in a beautifully fitting dinner jacket. Edwin’s dinner jacket was of very dark red velvet; and his rose had been changed by Mr Cork for an even larger one in a more suitable colour. Mr Leech looked rather nondescript by comparison.
‘Where is Mr Barnes?’ asked Mrs Hatch when they were seated.
‘Mr Barnes asks me to present his compliments,’ replied Monk, ‘and to say that he is so fatigued that he has thought it best to retire completely to bed. I am to bring him a boiled egg later.’
‘There is nothing the matter with Mr Barnes, I hope?’ asked the Duke anxiously.
‘I understand nothing, your Highness. Mr Barnes did mention to me that his present condition was nothing out of the ordinary. Shall I request Mr Brundrit, ma’am, to serve Dinner?’
‘Please do,’ said Mrs Hatch; and under the superintendence of a tall, wasted-looking butler, Monk and a pretty parlourmaid called Stainer served the most portentous meal Griselda had ever attended. There was patй: there were truffles; there was a sorbet. There was a blanc-mange-like pudding with angelica and an undertone of rum insufficient to offset the otherwise total lack of flavour; which in turn was followed by a savoury (called Tails in the Air), and a choice of stilton cheese or dessert, or both for those (like the Duke and Duchess and George Goss) who wished. There had been no alcoholic preliminary, but, accompanying the food, four successive wines and a liqueur with the wonderful strong coffee. Mr Leech ate very little, but at the end brightened up enough to express a preference for brandy if any was available, and Mrs Hatch joined him. Pamela found tongue enough to indicate her various gustatory preferences; though even then appearing to force out words like stones from her mouth, and as if each single word was a disgusting thing to be shunned when uttered. Griselda did the best she could, seated between the Duke, who occasionally said something paternal to her, and Mr Leech, who showed little sign of the taste for young girls which Mrs Hatch had plainly implied to be his; but by the end she felt a little sick.
During dinner there were more reminiscences. Griselda noticed that the endless stories tended to begin admirably and to hold out real promise; but after a time it always became apparent that there was to be no climax, point, or even real conclusion. The stories were simply long rakes, designed to turn over as many memories as possible. There was little nostalgia, however, about the reminiscing quartet, Griselda observed with pleasure; they all in their different ways seemed as full of gusto as ever, especially the Duchess, in whom gaiety seemed positively a normal mood.
Replete, they migrated to the Drawing Room; an apartment of which the faultless and spotless comfort fell just short of elegance. There were a rosewood grand piano of German make; a white mantel some way after the Adam Brothers; and a number of French eighteenth century pictures, well and harmoniously selected. The general colouration was pink; which, as it happened, excellently set off Griselda’s dress. There was a real Aubusson carpet, like the cloths of heaven to walk upon. All that fell short was individuality, and perhaps vitality, however controlled.
Edwin at once suggested bridge. Mrs Hatch agreed with appetite; and the Ellensteins also volunteered. Mr Leech asked if anyone would mind his sitting quietly in a corner with an excellent book he had found in the library. He then half sank into an elaborate illustrated manual of horticulture, sitting semi-submerged for hours, every now and then turning the volume round and round on his knees the better to penetrate the botanical detail. Griselda noticed, however, that much of the time his mind seemed to be wandering and his expression strangely blank. He turned the pages much too infrequently and irregularly. Occasionally he could be heard sighing, almost groaning. It was remarkable how little any part of him moved: even the occasional blink of his eyelids seemed consciously decided upon and consciously executed.
The Duchess being occupied, George Goss seated himself on a sofa upholstered in couleur de rose flowered silk, beside Pamela. Pamela immediately moved to an armchair next to Griselda; whereupon George Goss making the best even of adversity, placed his feet on the sofa where Pamela had been seated, and lay bundled together like a giant chimpanzee in a dinner jacket. He continued smiling blandly before him, and soon, without asking Mrs Hatch’s permission, fired and began to draw on a huge inefficient pipe which had recently been presented to him by an admiring young woman. Later, again without enquiry of his hostess, he managed to reach a bell with his long arm, thick as the branch of a tree; and, when Monk answered, ordered a bottle of brandy to be brought to him with a syphon. Having appeased his thirst, he fell asleep and began to snore. Bridge had gripped the players into its own distinctive delirium; so that none of them noticed George Goss, still less Griselda and Pamela.
To Griselda’s surprise, Pamela, upon escaping from George Goss, spoke to her.
‘Are my eyes all right?’
Griselda looked at them with conscientious care. As well as being large, they were yellowy-green and ichthyological.
‘I think so. They’re lovely.’
Irritated with the familiar compliment, Pamela replied: ‘The mascara, I mean. It’s new stuff. Daddy brought it back from B.A.’
Griselda looked again. ‘It looks all right to me.’ A question seemed expected. ‘What was your Father doing in South America?’
‘You know that Daddy’s Chairman of Argentine Utilities. We practically own the country. You don’t use mascara much, do you?’
‘Not much,’ said Griselda.
‘I can tell by the look of the lashes. You’re probably very wise.’ The tone of the last observation suggested that the speaker thought the opposite. ‘Mascara’s frightfully bad for the eyes.’
‘Like staring too long at me,’ said George Goss.
‘Shall we look at this together?’ said Pamela to Griselda, ignoring George Goss, who continued smiling all over his face.
It was the latest issue of The Sketch. Griselda was not particularly interested, but something had to be done to pass the time, and Mrs Hatch had told her to make friends with Pamela. Moreover, Pamela was used to getting her way.
‘Where do you live, by the way?’ asked Pamela.
‘About twenty miles outside London.’
‘I thought I was the only one to do that. But perhaps you don’t mind?’
‘I haven’t much choice really.’
‘Daddy thinks the country air’s good for me and Mummy. It’s hell having to motor out after parties and having no friends.’
‘It’s surely easier to make friends in the country than in London?’
‘It depends what you mean by friends.’
Pamela began to explain the scandalous circumstances and backgrounds of the various people whose photographs appeared in The Sketch. The explanations were rendered lengthy by Pamela’s lack of vocabulary; and complex by her lack of all standards of references beyond her own changing impulses. Griselda noticed however, that Pamala was as much interested in the financial as in the sexual history of her friends, and as well informed upon it; also that she appeared as strongly to disapprove of homosexuality as if she had been an elderly pillar of some Watch Committee.
When they had finished The Sketch, Pamela produced The Tatler from the same heap; and before she had finished explaining The Tatler (her opinions of various current plays and films being now involved, and of certain recent Rugby football matches at Twickenham), George Goss had ordered his bottle and fallen into a slumber, and the bridge players had entered upon their inevitable row. It seemed to be mainly Mrs Hatch setting upon the Duchess (her partner). The Duke (though, of course, on the other side) loyally backed his wife (to whom, indeed, he seemed utterly devoted in every way), wheezing with exasperation and becoming much more Teutonic in delivery. Edwin was trying very hard indeed to smooth things over, so that the game could be resumed. When one expedient or line of argument was obviously unavailing, he never failed to produce another, surprisingly different. Griselda had noticed for some time that the partnership of which Edwin was one, seemed usually to win. The combatants stabbed their fingers at selected cards among the litter on the green topped walnut table.
Absorbed in an account of how well she knew Gladys Cooper, Pamela ignored the row as long as possible. When it became necessary almost to shout above the raised voices, she switched to details of the similar scenes which commonly attended the frequent bridge parties organised by her parents. ‘I can’t be bothered with the game myself,’ said Pamela, ‘though I’ve quite broken Daddy’s heart by not playing with him.’ An achievement of some sort seemed implicit in her words; a triumph of righteousness in some inner conflict. George Goss’s mouth had fallen wide open, but he was snoring less loudly in consequence.
Griselda looked at her wrist-watch.
Suddenly with a high-pitched squeal, the Duke had overturned the card-table, the top of which struck Mrs Hatch sharply on the ankle. ‘We are misbehaving ourselves’ cried the Duke, ‘let us kiss and once more be friends. I appeal to your warm heart, Melanie.’
‘I really think that would be better.’ It was Mr Leech who spoke ‘Of course I take no sides in the matter under dispute. But I do warmly endorse the Duke’s appeal.’ His finger remained fixed to a point in a large diagram of corolla structure.
Mrs Hatch had lifted her long skirt above her knees, and was rubbing her ankle while the blood rushed to her head. ‘I think you’ve broken a bone, Gottfried,’ was all she said. She certainly seemed more chastened than aggressive.
Griselda hurried forward. ‘Perhaps I can help. I’ve had a little first-aid training.’
The Duchess, absolved from offering succour beyond her competence, smiled gratefully at Griselda, and began carefully to attend to her heavy make-up. Edwin rushed to bring a cushion to support Mrs Hatch’s back.
Griselda began to take charge. ‘May I remove your stocking?’
‘Please do.’
Griselda undid the suspenders and rolled off the stocking.
‘Nothing’s broken. But it’s an exceedingly nasty bruise.’ The swollen place was already turning the colour of cuttlefish ink.
‘If that’s all, I’ll say no more about it,’ said Mrs Hatch.
‘Melanie, you are magnanimous,’ exclaimed the Duke. ‘I knew you had a great heart.’
‘You’d better put your leg up, and not take much excercise for a day or two.’ Griselda placed the injured foot on the chair vacated by Edwin, who immediately ran to fetch another cushion, to place beneath the foot.
‘My dear Griselda, what about the dance? What about the preparation for the dance?’
Griselda felt most strongly tempted to reply that the dance might have to be cancelled, when George Goss, whom she had not seen wake up, cried out:
‘Melanie won’t miss the dance. Melanie won’t miss a dance when she’s in her grave.’
In some ways it seems uncharacteristic that Mrs Hatch should be so fond of dancing; but all the evidence seemed to suggest that such was the case.
‘I’ll be there, George,’ said Mrs Hatch. ‘Gottfried has failed to break my leg.’
‘The idea!’ said the Duke tearfully. ‘It was only a gesture for peace between us. My very dear friend.’ He placed a plump hand on the shoulder of Mrs Hatch’s evening blouse.
Pamela was reading about Longchamps in The Bystander.
George Goss lumbered round to look at the bruise. ‘It’s like the night Austin Barnes gave Margot two black eyes.’ They laughed. George Goss subsided on a Pompeian red pouffe and sat leering at Mrs Hatch’s expensive underclothes still visible inside her lifted skirt.
‘Have you any liniment?’ enquired Griselda.
‘You shall apply it in my bedroom,’ said Mrs Hatch, rising to her feet and letting her skirt drop. She staggered and Edwin supported her. ‘You and Pamela shall help me to undress. The rest of you can stay here if you want to. Monk has gone to bed, but you’re at liberty to forage if you wish, so long as you conceal the traces from Brundrit and Cook, and don’t leave masses about for the mice. Come along, Pamela, you can’t read all night.’ Reluctantly Pamela let The Bystander fall upon the floor. George Goss remained seated, but the others grouped themselves solicitously. ‘Good night,’ said Mrs Hatch.
The Duke clicked his heels. Edwin said: ‘There must be something I can get for you.’ Mr Leech said: ‘I am so relieved that things are not worse.’ The Duchess kissed Mrs Hatch on the mouth; then said to Griselda and Pamela ‘I suppose I shan’t be seeing you two again tonight either,’ and kissed them also. At the moment of Mrs Hatch’s departure, George Goss floundered vaguely upwards; but his intentions had not been made clear before she had left the room with one arm round Griselda’s neck, and the other round Pamela’s. Edwin went before them and opened the door of Mrs Hatch’s bedroom.
‘Good night, Edwin,’ said Mrs Hatch, and he retired downstairs, having said Good-night to the girls in a tone which at once commended their charitable helpfulness and conveyed his own deep regard for them.
The bedroom was stuffed with clothes and lined with photographs, many of them signed ones of celebrities, with pleasant words of gratitude adjoined. A real fire burned in the grate, making the room close (the Dining Room and Drawing Room had been impalpably warmed by further space heaters). The single bed was white and simple. In the corner of the room was a large green safe.
Pamela’s assistance proved fairly useless. Not only had she become silent once more, but she more than once knocked something over, and even tore Mrs Hatch’s slip while trying to extricate her from the garment. Not unreasonably, Pamela seemed to fear the effect of the heat upon her complexion, and carefully kept away from the large fire. Griselda could have wished for the presence of Louise, that expert in putting on clothes: but in the end, and despite Pamela, inserted Mrs Hatch, masterful to the last, into her pyjamas, and was rubbing her leg as she lay sprawled on the bed. Pamela was now yawning ostentatiously.
Griselda rubbed diligently for what seemed at least ten minutes.
‘That’ll do,’ suddenly said Mrs Hatch, and began to roll down her pyjama leg. ‘But I may want you to do it again tomorrow.’
‘I shall be dancing,’ said Griselda, almost maliciously. The exertion and the rubbing against the bed had not improved her beautiful fragile dress.
‘So you will. But I expect you’ll be back for tea. People usually are. Tea at Beams is a daily event, you know. You can massage me, if necessary, between tea and dinner. I usually lie down before a dance anyway.’
‘I’m not really a masseuse, you know. It’s quite easy to do the wrong thing, I believe.’
‘You won’t do the wrong thing. Would you please give me my book? Over there on the banker.’
In the corner of the room was a big cabinet, with long shallow drawers.
Griselda brought the book. It was entitled ‘Warlock on Comparative Agriculture.’ Mrs Hatch was hanging from the other side of the bed and opening the door of the commode, apparently to confirm the presence of its contents. It was a distance to stretch and Mrs Hatch, at the very end of her reach, had to shut the door with a slam.
‘Thank you, my dear Griselda, for all your help.’
Griselda smiled.
Mrs Hatch opened the book at page 601. Griselda was about to say good-night and depart, when Mrs Hatch looked up.
‘Pamela is very pretty isn’t she?’
Griselda started. It was an extraordinary thing but she had not noticed Pamela’s departure.
‘Where is Pamela?’ Griselda felt she must be very tired to be so unobservant.
‘She slipped out while you were kindly attending to my injury. Never mind. She’s in the room next to yours. The Livingstone Room, we call it.’
A big brass clock above the large fire struck two. Griselda was surprised it was not later.
IV
Trouble began almost as soon as Griselda was back in her bedroom.
The house, formerly so quiet, not unlike a specialist’s waiting-room, now seemed full of noises. Nor was it only the noise of Pamela snoring like an ox and perfectly audible through the substantial wall, or that of some unknown making periodical clattering trips down a distant passage (could it be Austin Barnes? Griselda wondered). There were constant small disturbances which seemed in her own room, or at least only just outside the door: creaks and jars, of course; but also sudden sussurations, in among the window curtains, near the cabinet containing the shower, or under the bed. To Griselda, overtired as the incident in Mrs Hatch’s room had suggested she must be, it was almost as if some small animal were loose in the apartment. Rats and mice seemed extremely improbable in such a carefully ordered house. Griselda, used to living out of London, wondered whether some small creature could have entered during the day. She had removed her charming dress and was vaguely endeavouring to fluff up the organdie, flattened and pulled while she had worked on her hostess’s leg: it was certainly true that the garment no longer looked new, as it had looked so far every time she had worn it. Laying down the dress, she began to investigate the room, half-heartedly examining corners and peering into the angles of the ceiling, not very well illuminated by the conceiled lighting. Even a small bird was not out of the question, she thought. As the idea came to her, a screech owl cried very loudly outside her window. Griselda found that she was shivering, slightly clad as she was, and away from the excessive heat of Mrs Hatch’s bedroom. She drew her dressing-gown from the wardrobe and put it on. It had once been the colour of dying peonies, but Griselda had owned it since her last disastrous year at school.
Griselda hung up her dress, assumed her pyjamas, and faithfully removed her make-up. She cleaned her teeth, carefully and thoroughly as always, for she regarded her teeth as attractive. Then, still shivering excessively, she drew back the curtains, opened the window at top and bottom, and leaped from her familiar dressing-gown into her unfamiliar bed. Outside there was a misty moon, predicting, as usual, a change for the worse in the weather. Inside, the little noises had not abated, but Griselda resolved to ignore them.
The noises were difficult to define. Nor was it easy to know whether or not any particular one of them was a new noise. One of the worst, and surely a new one, however, was like that of voices muttering. It came and went like a radio set out of order and turned very low; with long pauses of silence. Another was like long nails destructively scratching at smooth hard paintwork. Once a silent bird struck the window very hard, so that Griselda felt surer than ever that another had flown in during the day and was now in the room with her, probably lying exhausted behind a piece of furniture. The sussurating noise was still audible from time to time: it rustled for seconds or minutes in one place, then was long silent before starting elswhere.
Griselda slept intermittently until she reached a condition of uncertainty whether she slept or waked. She continued disagreeably cold until she was merely shivering without any distinctive consciousness of being cold at all. At one moment when she was nearer waking than sleeping, she heard the sound of tears, a high-pitched sobbing, somewhat petulant it seemed, but distant and subdued. It was possible, she thought, that Pamela wept in her sleep. Before long the noise, which from the time she first heard it had been growing less and less, died away.
Several times during the later part of the night Griselda woke from nightmare; but not a detail could she remember even in the first moments of consciousness. She might have been dreaming of things so horrible that the mechanism of repression was forced to clamp down once more on her consciousness in the very instant of waking. But the nightmare had each time seized and penetrated her whole body and mind; it was as if she had been twisted into another identity, mysterious and horrible, which, when she returned, there could be no question of remembering since the two beings had no capacity for memory in common. She shuddered to reflect that this second identity, totally unreachable lay always behind her face and beneath her thoughts. The strain of having perpetually to maintain the ascendancy over it weighed upon her. Now that she no longer loved her Mother, perhaps it was getting possession of her mind and affecting her gait. In the end none the less, she returned to slumber.
The worst occurrence of the night was perfectly natural and commonplace. Griselda woke to hear a dog howling. It howled on an unusually shrill whining note. It continued howling for a very long time; for long after Griselda was fully and entirely awake. She lay with her back towards the window listening to the distressing sound and unavailingly searching her memory for a dog in the house. In the end, she was almost reduced to leaving her bed and investigating; but desisted when she saw that the dawn was near. This circumstance, she felt, might be related in some way to the unknown dog’s behaviour; moreover, she had once more started to shiver and shunned the silent chill of the large room. She was uncertain whether the dog had ceased to give tongue before she once more fell asleep.
With the first symptoms of daylight, the tension in the room melted into appeasement. Griselda subsided into deep quiet sleep, the little noises ebbed, a measure of warmth returned.
Griselda slept steadily for the time which remained. At the last moment before waking, she seemed to have a dream of a different order. The earlier dreams she never remembered; this one she never forgot. She dreamed of a strange perfect love; a great good, unknown to the waking world; an impossibly beautiful happiness. The rapture of her dream was something new to her. It stayed with her while she rose to wash and dress; and longer.
V
A housemaid brought her tea and two rusks on a tray.
‘Pity it’s raining. It’ll spoil tonight.’
Filled with her dream, Griselda felt happily combative.
‘I don’t see why it should.’
‘All the lovely dresses’ll get sopping wet. And lots won’t come at all if it’s raining.’
‘Perhaps it’ll stop. Rain before seven. Fine before eleven.’
The housemaid laughed. ‘Not round ’ere.’ Then, looking at Griselda accusingly, she said, ‘Will I run a bath for you?’
‘No, thank you. I’ll manage it myself if I want it.’
‘The shower’s tricky.’
‘I’ll risk it.’
‘Just as you say.’ She went.
Without resorting to the shower, for she hated getting her head wet, Griselda washed carefully all over. She felt that there was no knowing where the day’s events might take her. To meet the changed weather, she put on her coat and skirt, and a woollen jumper.
Mrs Hatch was already seated at the head of the breakfast table, dressed precisely as on the day before; but there was no sign of any of her other guests. Monk and Stainer were both in attendance. Before Mrs Hatch was an enormous congregation of eggs, all so green that they looked as if disease had struck them.
‘Good girl,’ said Mrs Hatch. ‘Up in proper time and prepared for the weather, I see. You sit next to me. Pamela can sit the other side of me when she chooses to appear. Have some eggs? At Beams we have duck eggs every morning for breakfast. It’s one of our traditions. Take as many as you like. And have some cocoa. We don’t rot our guests with tannin or caffeine until later in the day.’
‘Thank you,’ said Griselda. ‘I’m hungry. May I take two?’
‘For breakfast at Beams no one ever takes fewer than four. Except Mr Leech, perhaps. I’m sure you don’t want to follow after him. Take another two.’
Monk raised a huge bowl-like cup containing about half-a-pint of cocoa and conveyed it to Griselda.
‘I think I’ll eat these two first, if I may.’
‘Afraid for your liver?’ enquired Mrs Hatch. ‘You needn’t be, you know, if you make sure of enough exercise. That reminds me, I plan to take Austin for one of our walks tomorrow. It’ll set him up and blow away all the fug from the dance as well. As you’re a walker too, I’m sure you’d like to join us.’
‘Thank you,’ replied Griselda, battering her second egg. ‘If I’m not too tired after dancing.’
Mrs Hatch glanced at her, but at that moment one of the windows was raised from the outside, and Mr Leech entered over the sill. He looked very tired and dingy.
‘Good morning. I trust I’m not late. I’ve been trying out my old limbs on the trapeze in the garden.’
‘Fine exercise for men,’ said Mrs Hatch. ‘Useless for women, unfortunately. Help yourself to eggs.’
With a hand which trembled slightly, Mr Leech took a single egg.
Monk, who had departed for the toast, now returned bearing also an armful of mail. He proceeded to sort it and to distribute it among the various places. Most of it seemed to be for Edwin: a vast heap of letters in flimsy envelopes with foreign stamps, and large official packets. The correspondence for the Ellensteins seemed mostly to bear penny and halfpenny stamps. George Goss received a single letter: in a very thick violet envelope, bigger and more massive than usual, and threaded down one side with a fragment of carmine ribbon. The handwriting of the superscription, Griselda could not but observe, was proportionate in size to the envelope. Mrs Hatch received a few nondescript items, all of which she opened voraciously with the bread-knife before reading any. Griselda, to her surprise, received a letter from the girl she had known since childhood, and who liked to write to someone sojourning at so distinguished an address as Beams. She had nothing to say and Griselda felt faintly bored by the obligation to reply. Pamela received nothing. Probably, Griselda felt, Pamela never replied to letters, so that people gave up writing. More surprisingly, Mr Leech seemed to receive nothing either.
‘Mullet is taking Mr Barnes’s letters up to his room,’ remarked Monk.
Mrs Hatch said nothing.
Soon Edwin appeared full of apologies and newspapers. At least six of the latter were under his arm in various stages of mutilation and decomposition.
‘I do hope you will also forgive my taking the liberty of cutting up all your morning papers. I shall, of course, replace the copies later, but Miss Van Bush, my secretary, will be calling immediately after breakfast, and it is best if I can pass the really relevant items on to her right away.’ He flourished a little packet with a large red seal. ‘Clippings. The result of my labours before breakfast. Ah, how really wonderful to see a Beams breakfast again. There is nothing quite like it anywhere else.’ Edwin wore a brand-new light grey suit, a dark grey silk shirt, and Old Etonian tie, and an orchid. He began to wade through the expected clutch of eggs.
George Goss entered in his hairy green tweeds.
‘Good morning, Melanie. Gottfried and Odile ask me to tell you they won’t be down until later.’
He put his letter to one side unopened, and began to smash away at a bevy of eggs. Immediately he had entered, Monk, Griselda noticed, had slipped away.
‘George,’ said Mrs Hatch. ‘Would you please put that billet-doux in your pocket or somewhere? No one cares for a good scent more than I do, but that isn’t a good scent. It makes the whole room stink.’
‘The poor little thing hasn’t the cash for the sort of stuff you’d go in for,’ remarked George. Inserting a thick finger, he rather clumsily ripped open the envelope.
Monk returned with a bottle of brandy, about two-thirds full, which he passed on to Mrs Hatch. Taking a syphon from the sideboard, he placed it on the table next to George. This seemed the usual method, Griselda observed: Mrs Hatch normally maintained control of the bottle.
‘Why do you keep her so short?’
‘My dear Melanie, now that I’ve got on in the world, so to speak, I don’t have to keep anyone. There’s always a long line eager to take care of me.’
He began to read the letter, looking, Griselda thought, like a monstrous sheep which had been dyed green.
Edwin was working methodically through his heap, opening the letters neatly with an ivory and gold paper-knife which had been given him by the King of Roumania, and making three piles, one of matter to be handed over to Miss Van Bush, one of items to be answered in his own holograph, and one of empty envelopes.
A number of the packets containing whole newspapers, often with marked passages. Glancing at one of these, Edwin suddenly rose, and saying to Mrs Hatch ‘Excuse me. Something rather unexpected,’ bore it round the table to Mr Leech, pointed out the significant passage, and said something quietly in Mr Leech’s left ear. The Prime Minister, who had apparently sunk into a light coma (he had not even finished his egg), stirred very slightly and began to read. After some time had passed with Mr Leech staring unwinkingly at the paper, Edwin spoke again in his ear.
At last Mr Leech slowly nodded twice. ‘I suppose there’s no help for it,’ he said.
‘I imagine that a couple of divisions would suffice, sir,’ said Edwin. His voice was still low, but this time fully audible. All of them could appreciate the urgency of the matter.
‘I don’t really know,’ said Mr Leech, still without blinking.
‘Better make it three, perhaps,’ said Edwin as before.
‘I’ll consult Mr Barnes,’ said Mr Leech almost in the tone of one nearing a decision. ‘Can’t be swayed by the press, you know,’ he added roguishly.
Edwin returned to his place, looking as if a weight had been lifted off his mind. ‘Sorry Mrs Hatch,’ he said. ‘So many things happen at the most inconvenient moment.’ He began to assault his fourth egg.
‘Melanie,’ said George Goss. ‘Could I have a drink?’ He was still less than half way through the prodigious letter. Mrs Hatch passed him the bottle. He looked round for a tumbler, and, when Monk had brought him one, filled it liberally, passing back the bottle. He resumed reading the love letter, belching every now and then as food reached his empty stomach.
‘Do have some more to eat, Griselda?’ said Mrs Hatch.
‘No thank you very much.’
‘How is Barnes this morning, Mrs Hatch?’ enquired Mr Leech.
Mrs Hatch looked at Monk.
‘Mr Barnes asked for his breakfast to be taken to his room as you know, madam. Also his letters. Beyond that I know nothing, madam. Shall Stainer ask Mullet?’
The parlour-maid glowered. Mrs Hatch turned to the Prime Minister.
‘Would you like that to be done, Mr Leech?’
‘Please do not go to any trouble,’ replied Mr Leech. ‘I’ll find my way to his room and enquire myself later. I must consult him on some business; urgent, alas!’
George Gobs looked up. ‘Never could see why Austin gave his time to politics at all. Should have thought he had too much red blood in his veins if you know what I mean.’
Mr Leech stared at him. ‘That is just why, Mr Goss,’ he said with unusual fire. ‘I believe you once painted Barnes’s portrait. You cannot have overlooked the main fact about your sitter: that he is a patriot.’
George Goss chuckled gutturally. ‘Poor old Austin,’ he said.
‘Austin Barnes is also a magnificent administrator,’ said Edwin reprovingly. ‘A first class man to put in charge of any Department in the Government; is he not, Mr Prime Minister?’
‘A leader,’ replied Mr Leech, ‘Certainly a natural leader of men.’ He discarded the remains of his egg and began to look round for the marmalade.
Pamela arrived. She was wearing a simple white silk nightdress and a lilac satin wrapper. The large yawn with which she entered suggested, however, that this costume implied less of coquetry than of the possibility that she had only just awakened. Then Griselda noticed that Pamela was made up with her usual time-consuming elaboration. At her entrance George Goss had actually dropped the letter (he was still far from having completed reading it). Mrs Hatch was also staring at Pamela, though less noticeably.
‘Don’t want anything to eat. Just a cup of coffee.’
Mrs Hatch seemed alarmed. ‘Are you ill?’
‘Slept too long. I’m always doing it.’
George Goss guffawed.
‘Sit in your place,’ said Mrs Hatch, ‘and see what you can manage.’
Pamela subsided into her seat and silence. Monk brought her the usual bowl of cocoa. Edwin began to converse with her on subjects suitable to one who has overslept.
There was a knock at the door which gave access to the kitchen, and the head was poked in of the housemaid who had awakened Griselda.
‘What is it, Mullet?’
‘Maghull waiting for ’is orders.’
‘Good gracious!’ cried Mr Leech. ‘It’s no business of mine, I know, but I do think it rash of you still to retain in your employ a man who played such a catastrophic part in the Irish disorders. You will recall that I thought it my duty to warn you on a previous occasion.’
Edwin tried to indicate that this topic should perhaps be left until the servants were absent.
‘Common enough knowledge,’ muttered Mr Leech, subsiding considerably, however. ‘But no business of mine, I know.’
‘Tell Maghull,’ said Mrs Hatch, ‘that he is to take Miss de Reptonville to Hodley immediately, to Mr Kynaston’s. Then he is to return for further orders. I expect we shall all be very quiet today, preparing for the dance.’
Mullet went.
George Goss flipped a fragment of eggshell across the table to Pamela, who was looking particularly disagreeable.
VI
It was an unremarkable speculative builder’s two-bedroom bungalow; one of about a dozen lined up along the fiendishly noisy main road through Hodley. Geoffrey Kynaston himself opened the door, explaining that though he called upon a certain amount of casual assistance, it had at the moment all failed him, so that he was alone in the house. He closed the front door, thin, narrow, ugly, and with small panes of glass at the top to light the little hall; and suggested coffee. It was early and Griselda had just swallowed an excessive quantity of cocoa; but she offered to make it. Kynaston thanked her pleasantly, but said that that would be unnecessary as he had some just off the boil awaiting her arrival. This statement did not increase Griselda’s inclination.
‘Come into the studio.’
It was what the builder of the bungalow would have called the lounge: in fact, the only sitting-room. Now the floor was bare; a bar extended round the walls; and there were photographs of Karsavina, Lifar, and Genйe. There was also a rather larger photograph of Doris Ditton in a white shirt and black tie, the walking-out uniform of some women’s organization.
‘It’s not very much,’ said Kynaston, glancing round. ‘I’ll talk about myself over our coffee.’
‘It looks very interesting.’
‘Sit down.’ With his foot he pushed towards her a small round stool covered in scarlet artificial leather. He departed for the coffee.
Griselda soon rose and began to examine the photographs. Lifar, every feather in position as the male Blue Bird, particularly took her fancy. Doris Ditton also, she thought, looked more self-sufficient than at the tea party the previous day. There was a heap of copies of a paper she had not previously heard of. It was called The Dancing Times
‘Do you read poetry?’
This was something Griselda had forgotten about her teacher.
‘Not as much as I should.’
Kynaston had returned with two large mugs and a small dun-coloured book.
‘I don’t know about that. But some of these might amuse you while I fill the jug.’
He departed once more. The book was entitled Days of Delinquency by Geoffrey Kynaston. It contained about thirty short poems. Somewhat to her surprise, Griselda seemed quite able to understand them.
Incubus
Can you hear my feet approaching?
Can you bear my heart encroaching?
No hope to hide when I am coming
Straight into your soul I’m homing.
There were about twenty more lines but Kynaston had returned with a steaming jug and a milk bottle.
‘White, I imagine?’
‘Please.’
The mug was very heavy and very hot. It was in peasant ware and bore an inscription in Breton.
‘What are you making of your own life?’ He sat on the floor at her feet.
‘Very little.’
‘Good. I dislike womanly women. They’re the only ones who make a success of it. Of being a woman I mean. It’s hell, isn’t it?’
‘It varies.’
‘Do you read Rilke?’
‘Yes.’
‘I don’t altogether care for his work but he had a lot in common with me as a man. I have the same utter dependence on a strong woman.’
Griselda looked up at Doris’s photograph.
‘I didn’t mean Doris. Though she can look rather splendid, don’t you think?’
‘Very attractive.’
‘It’s only skin deep, though, or clothes deep. She lacks guts, little Doris.’
‘I rather liked her.’ This was not true, but Griselda disapproved of Kynaston’s comment.
‘Of course. Don’t misunderstand me. I adore Doris. She’s the sweetest girl in Hodley.’
‘How long have you lived in Hodley?’
‘Eighteen months. Ever since I left the Shephard’s Market Ballet. They chucked me, you know. After that I was done. You don’t get another shop when you’ve been chucked for the reason I was.’
Griselda thought enquiry was unnecessary.
‘I refused to go to bed with Frankie Litmus.’
‘Oh.’ Griselda took a resolute pull at the interminable coffee.
‘I’m not that way at all, believe it or not. And look what’s become of me in consequence! Let that be a lesson to you. Ditched in this pigstye teaching the lads of the village to caper. Have some more coffee? It’s actually Nescafй, as you doubtless perceive.’
‘No thank you.’ The vast mug was still more than half full.’
‘Pupils like you are rare. Do you mind if I make the most of you?’
‘I hope you will.’
‘We’ve got all day. Will you come for a picnic with me?’
‘I’m under orders to learn to dance.’
‘That won’t take you all day. By the way, why can’t you dance?’
There was something about him which enabled her to tell him.
‘I dislike being held.’
He rose dangling his empty mug.
‘Even by someone you’re fond of?’
‘I’ve never been fond enough of anyone.’
He considered. ‘In that case clearly, I must first win your confidence.’
She smiled.
‘More coffee?’
‘No thank you.’
‘Do you think the preparations for a picnic are the best or the worst part? Cutting the sandwiches. Filling the thermoses. Counting the knives.’
‘The worst part.’
‘In that case we’d better not set about it until later. I haven’t told you much about myself yet. That’ll fill the gap. Or better still I’ll read you some of my poems. I’ve given up serious dancing you know and am trying to establish myself as a poet.’ Griselda noticed it was the phrase Doris had employed the day before.
‘I shall be sent home if I don’t dance.’
‘If they are cruel to you at home, you can always come and live here. But more of that later. And, by the way, I’m coming to the Ball myself, you know.’
‘Mrs Hatch didn’t mention that.’
‘I’ll be able to keep an eye on you. And hands off you, so to speak. Other hands than mine, of course. Apropos of which—’ He began to read aloud.
‘Disclaimer
Other loves than mine may kill you;
Other hates than mine fulfill you;
Other saints through grief atone you;
Other sinners crowd to stone you—’
He continued through the poem, then read several others. Griselda, a fair judge of verse, was not very much impressed by Kynaston’s poesy, but more than a little charmed by his excellent delivery. His attractive voice and skilful accentuation made far more emerge from the verses than had ever entered into them.
‘I won’t ask you what you think,’ he said at the end. ‘A poet I believe must heed only his inner voice.’
This, on the whole, was a relief.
‘May I say,’ enquired Griselda, ‘how very much I enjoyed the way you read?’
‘I was taught by Moissi,’ replied Kynaston. ‘And much good has it done me.’
‘That was before you took up dancing?’
‘I have many gifts,’ he answered, ‘but none of them has come to anything at all. I need a suitable woman to manage my life for me. Without that, even my poetry will be still another dreariness and misery.’
‘You’ve at least achieved publication. Many poets don’t.’
‘True. And against really passionate opposition by Herbert Read. Still, fewer than a hundred copies have sold. Well, well. Before we pack the picnic basket, will you help me with the washing up?’
There were not only the coffee adjuncts, but the remains of Kynaston’s breakfast and of another vague meal which had seemingly involved the consumption of some very fat ham or boiled bacon. Griselda hung her jacket on the door of the little kitchenette and applied herself, while Kynaston dried on a small, discoloured tea-cloth. The tiny room became hot and steamy.
When it was all over, Kynaston, from a box-like cupboard in the hall, produced a large wicker picnic-basket.
‘Now for the awful preliminaries.’
‘Must we have the basket? Are there going to be enough of us?’
‘If we don’t take the basket, the picnic will turn into a walk, and with you, I couldn’t stand that.’
From the dilapidated meat-safe he produced the knuckle end of a Bath chap, a bottle of French mustard, and half a stale loaf. ‘Better than no bread,’ he remarked. ‘Will you please do your very best with the ingredients provided? Here’s a knife. I’m going to pack the tinned apricots and the opener.’
Griselda began to make sandwiches. Kynaston hurried about packing the basket with heavy, and, in Griselda’s view, superfluous objects. ‘I’ll just get the stove for coffee,’ he said.
‘What does Doris do?’ enquired Griselda at one point, for something to say, and in the capricious and destructive spirit in which women ask such questions at such times.
‘Part time nursing,’ replied Kynaston, packing plates. ‘She’s no use at the bedside, but the clothes are good. Mostly, she’s waiting of course. Waiting for experience of the male. Shall I put in some bottles of beer?’
‘I dislike beer.’
‘You sound as if you dislike me too? Would you rather not come on the picnic? I can always go unaccompanied.’
‘I have to stay here until it is time for tea. You’re supposed to be teaching me dancing, which I don’t want to learn. We’d better use up the time somehow.’
‘Yes,’ he said, lining up the cutlery they were to take. ‘You’re at my mercy, aren’t you? I should so much prefer the situation to be reversed.’
After a round of complicated preparations, remarkably onerous in view of the smallness alike of the bungalow and of the undertaking before them, they at last found themselves on the doorstep.
‘Forgive me if I double-lock the front door,’ said Kynaston. Griselda reflected that the whole woodwork would yield like cardboard to any housebreaker.
They set out along the distractingly noisy main road through Hodley, carrying the ponderous basket between them. The traffic made conversation impossible, and the preservation of life, weighed down as they were, a matter calling for constant attention. After about a hundred yards Griselda wished she could change hands with their burden. After about a hundred and twenty-five yards she arranged with Kynaston to do so. After about a quarter of a mile Kynaston shouted: ‘Up there for the Woods. Up the steps to your left.’
Griselda was realizing that her left arm was by no means as strong as her right, and she transferred the basket once more as she struggled up the steps ahead of Kynaston. Hodley Woods, though a well-known beauty spot, were neither as extensive nor as dense as Griselda had expected from the descriptions she had often read of them in advertisements; but they appeared unpopulated, it being a time of the day and week when all but the anti-social were at work. The road now ran in a cutting which much diminished its uproar. The sun, moreover, had begun to shine, falsifying Mullet’s forecast; and among the undergrowth Griselda noticed a yellow-hammer.
‘Places like this are only beautiful when they’re near a town,’ remarked Kynaston.
‘I don’t think I follow.’
‘When there’s no town, the landscape should be more startling. Miles of this sort of thing and nothing else, would be intolerable.’
‘It’s what I’m used to. I haven’t travelled much. Where do we settle?’
‘What about here? You can just see the main line through that gap in the trees. At least you will be able to, when there’s a train. I like trains.’
It was a spot where several trees had been cut down. Generations of pine needles warmed and cushioned the dead roots. Griselda began to convert one of the stumps into a table. Kynaston lay on his back.
‘I suppose you work.’
‘Not at the moment. Or not in the way you mean. I had to give it up owing to troubles at home.’
‘You mean they took exception to the nature of your employment?’
‘No. I had to return home and help.’
‘Why? What happened?’
‘Things went wrong. Have a sandwich?’
Still regarding the tree-tops he reached about with his arm. ‘You’re not very informative. Never mind. It’s unlikely that I’d be able to assist much. Even with advice.’ His hand, roving through the air, struck the arm of her jacket. He took her arm between his fingers and thumb and followed it down to the wrist. Then he took the sandwich. ‘I detest mustard, by the way. I should have mentioned that.’
‘There’s no mustard. I forgot to ask you. I don’t like it either.’
He began to drop bits of the sandwich into his upturned mouth.
‘As we’ve carried plates all this way, perhaps we’d better use them,’ said Griselda.
‘Am I eating swinishly? After all, it’s swine I’m eating.’
‘Here you are,’ said Griselda firmly. ‘Take it.’ She held a plate before his face.
Kynaston sat up. He placed the remains of the decomposing sandwich on the plate. ‘I am a creature of moods,’ he said. ‘As you see. But I like women to know their own minds.’
For the remainder of the meal his behaviour was irreproachable.
After they had consumed the final tinned apricot, Kynaston busied himself making Nescafй on the little stove. The stove was slow to light and laborious to sustain. ‘It’s getting old,’ he remarked. ‘I’ve had it since I was at school. I was at Stowe, you know,’ he added, as if alluding to a matter of very common knowledge. ‘It’s supposed to be better than the usual reformatory. We were allowed to have a few possessions of our own. This was mine. I used to make Bantam in the grounds. Nescafй hadn’t been invented, I think, at that time.’ He was striking matches and blowing the minute flame. ‘Don’t get me wrong all the same,’ he went on. ‘At the best Stowe’s only a vulgar makeshift. It was built for another purpose.’
‘Wasn’t it the house of the Duke of Buckingham?’
‘It was, Griselda. May I call you Griselda? I think one should ask. Oh, curse.’ He had burned himself rather badly.
‘You may call me Griselda. I like you to ask. Can I do anything helpful?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Cold tea would be good for that burn.’
‘We’ve only got Nescafй . . . How did you know about the Buckingham’s?’
‘I read.’
‘About the history of architecture?’
‘Family histories.’
‘What else?’
‘Almost everything else. You can’t define. You know that.’
‘I know that. I was trying to trap you into an admission.’ The stove was now flaming merrily; almost hysterically, Griselda thought. ‘I was trying to trap you into an admission of anything.’
‘I have little to conceal.’
‘Are you awakened? I think not.’
‘You think the same of others, I notice.’
‘Doris, you mean? It’s true. Have you read Casanova?’
‘Yes.’
‘Oh, You have. Then you’ll recall his remark to the effect that most people never receive the initial jolt which is required to bring the mind to consciousness.’ The water boiled over, extinguishing the long yellow flames. There had been a good blaze and little of the water was left.
But they made the best of it and somehow began a conversation about books and the psyche which continued until Griselda noticed that her wrist-watch showed half-past three.
‘What about my lessons?’
‘You’ve too many brains to make a good dancer, but I’ll do what I can in the time.’
‘Whose fault is it about the time?’
‘Blame it on life. It’s hard to know where to begin else. Living in Hodley I cannot be expected to regard someone like you only as a source of income.’
Griselda wondered what there was about her to elicit a compliment from a man who, however irritating in his habits, yet undoubtedly had seen much of the world. She wondered but smiled. Then she thought of the ordeal before her.
They returned with the picnic basket to the bungalow. Entering the studio immediately, Kynaston put a record on the gramophone.
‘Leave that outside,’ he said, referring to the basket. ‘Anywhere.’ Soft music trickled forth.
‘There’s a note for you,’ cried Griselda, staving off events. ‘It was behind the front door.’
‘Read it. Out loud.’
‘“I have put your shirt in the top left hand drawer on top of the others.”’
‘For tonight. Doris has been washing it. She has to wash her own shirts the whole time and she’s become very good at it.’
‘I’m looking forward to meeting her again tonight.’ This remark could hardly do more than gain time.
‘Doris won’t be coming. I’m asked only for professional reasons.’ The music was murmuring on. Kynaston was in the centre of the room. He spoke with a touch of impatience. ‘I’m ready.’
There seemed no help for it.
VII
Immediately Griselda re-entered Beams, the Duchess clutched her by the arm.
‘You have returned at the right moment, my dear,’ she said. ‘I have something I want to ask you. Tell me the truth. Did you hear Fritzi last night? Were you awakened?’
This last question seemed to recur.
‘I don’t think so,’ replied Griselda, courteously but cautiously. Could the Duchess be referring to the noisy frequenter of the distant passage?
‘I am so very glad to hear it. The lovely Pamela was not awakened either, and, of course, George it is always utterly impossible to awake. But everyone else, it seems. Even that Irish assassin, who sleeps outside above the motor-cars. And poor little Fritzi he could not at all explain to me what was the matter with him.’
Griselda realized that Fritzi was the Duchess’s dog. She remembered. She was a little frightened.
‘Have you no idea yourself?’
‘No idea at all. Gottfried and I woke up together. There was little Fritzi crying his poor heart out. We could not see him as there was no light. Gottfried, you know, will never allow there to be a crack of light in the room when we are in bed. I clutched Gottfried very tightly. What could it be? Gottfried kissed and caressed me. Then he got out of bed and turned on the light. Fritzi was standing up in his basket, quite erect and stiff as a statue. I got out of bed too. I went to Fritzi and asked him why he was crying. And do you know, my dear, what happened then? He growled at me as if he didn’t know me. Fritzi has never growled at Gottfried or me in all the eleven years we have had him. But Gottfried made it better for me again and in the end Fritzi stopped crying and fell asleep quite suddenly. I asked him again in the morning but he couldn’t tell me what it all meant.’
Palpably the Duchess had related the story many times, presumably at intervals throughout the day. None the less, Griselda for some reason was not surprised that she still seemed much upset. The Duke came to her, and, saying nothing, put his arm round her shoulder. Suddenly Griselda realized that the dog was dead. She recalled that the Ellensteins had not appeared for breakfast; and, with unreasonable shame, her own confident inner explanation of their absence.
‘How perfectly dreadful!’ she said to the Duchess. ‘I am so very sorry.’
The Duchess kissed her gratefully. ‘Thank you, Griselda,’ she said. ‘Fritzi was only an animal, but the death even of an animal that has been a long time—’ She left the sentence unfinished, as the Duke led her to a sofa. She looked up brightly, and the more engagingly for what had gone before. ‘I am absolutely determined not to spoil the dance.’ The Duke kissed her left hand. Griselda was pleased that the Duchess had remembered her Christian name aright and called her by it.
The others present, Mrs Hatch and Mr Leech, had doubtless, with the rest of the house, expressed their grief already. Mr Leech none the less looked exceedingly distressed as he nibbled at a chunk of the unique cake.
‘Come and have your tea, Griselda,’ said Mrs Hatch. ‘I shan’t require massage, after all, but I daresay you could do with a short rest before you change. Pamela has gone up already.’
Griselda advanced and sat down with an enquiry after her hostess’s affliction.
‘I’ve been so busy all day that I’ve not had time to think of it. In consequence it has now quite ceased to trouble me.’
‘How splendid!’ said Mr Leech quietly, ‘Would that all our ills could be cured so readily.’ He sighed.
‘Several men have already asked me for dances with you.’ remarked Mrs Hatch to Griselda, ‘and I’ve booked some of them on this card.’ She took a dance programme from her handbag. ‘Only some of them, of course.’ She passed the programme to Griselda. ‘I won’t ask whether Geoffrey Kynaston was pleased with your progress; but I’ll ask whether you were. Were you?’
To her alarm and mortification Griselda felt that her brow and neck were hot.
‘I did my best,’ she answered. ‘But Geoffrey tells me I’m too much of a bluestocking to make a dancer.’
‘You’re starting late. But you’re starting under excellent auspices. It’s much too soon to despair.’
‘Of course it is,’ said the Duchess, ‘Griselda may meet her affinity this very night. Then she’ll dance better than all of us.’
‘I don’t know about that,’ said Mrs Hatch. ‘But the All Party Dance is certainly going to be an occasion. We shall be making history tonight.’
Griselda felt very ignorant. ‘Is it such a very special dance?’
Mrs Hatch looked at her. ‘You cannot have been reading the newspapers lately.’
‘Not very much, I’m afraid. I prefer books.’
‘Good thing too. Provided you choose the right books. Millie always had dreadful tastes: Tolstoy, von Hьgel, and rubbish like that. Still you ought to know about tonight.’ Mr Leech nodded gravely several times.
‘The country’s on the rocks,’ continued Mrs Hatch. ‘That I’m sure you must know.’
‘More than usual?’ asked Griselda.
‘Much more. You’ve heard about the Roller Report?’
‘I’ve seen the name on the newsbills.’
‘The Roller Committee has presented a Report showing that we’re bankrupt.’
‘And after sitting for only six months,’ interpolated Mr Leech. ‘That’s where much of the seriousness lies, you know. Mrs Hatch. Things are really urgent.’
‘Well, you know what that means?’
‘Not a revolution?’ This was the Duke.
‘I suppose it means we must all make some more money,’ suggested Griselda rather wildly.
‘It means a coalition.’
Mr Leech nodded again more gloomily than ever.
‘I see. The dance is to celebrate?’
‘Certainly not.’ Mr Leech almost snatched the words from his hostess’s mouth. ‘I will explain.’ It was clear that his life mainly consisted in explaining the same thing to a succession of careless audiences. ‘When Lord Roller came to me, my first thought, after consulting my colleagues, was to get in touch with Mr Minnit, though it’s never pleasant to have to ask favours of the Leader of the Opposition. Still one must put the country first, of course. After we had talked things over, Minnit said that he and some of his people would come in with us; but we both thought that something more was needed than a merely administrative change of that kind. After all, Miss de Reptonville, not everybody nowadays even knows who is or who is not in the Cabinet at any particular moment.’ He smiled. There was a complete silence. Mrs Hatch was wriggling her foot in the thick carpet. The Duke’s arm was still round his wife’s shoulders, his hand on her breast. ‘Something more seemed to us to be needed.’ repeated the Prime Minister, blinking. ‘Something more – so to speak – emotional. In a popular sort of way. Something which appealed to the underlying unity of the nation, the readiness of the people to make sacrifices for patriotic reasons. For sacrifices will certainly be called for. A heavy burden. Oh yes—’ He paused again, then pulled himself together. ‘My first thought was a Mass Meeting in some suitable place, to be addressed by Minnit and myself in turn. Considering the country’s need, I thought we might prevail upon the L.C.C.—’
‘Then fortunately Mr Leech consulted me,’ interrupted Mrs Hatch. ‘I happened to be calling in at Downing Street for tea. I saw the answer at once. I offered Beams for an All Party Dance. The press response has shown how right the idea was. Everyone is coming. Not only Minnit and all of them, but representatives of the splinter parties too. Half way through the evening Mr Leech and Mr Minnit are going to make their speeches – short speeches, of course – as hostess I insist on that; and everyone will think well of the coalition from the outset, instead of the whole thing falling flat.’
‘Will there be enough people to listen to the speeches?’ asked Griselda. ‘I don’t mean to be rude. I’m sure there’ll be everyone there’s room for. But will there be quite enough to achieve national unity?’
‘People don’t actually need to hear the speeches on these occasions,’ replied Mrs Hatch. ‘In many cases it is better if they do not. All the press will be coming, and, of course, the speeches will be broadcast. Those are the things which matter nowadays.’
‘I was more than a little doubtful myself at first.’ remarked Mr Leech, ‘whether we should avail ourselves of Mrs Hatch’s wonderfully generous offer. But she soon quite won me over.’
‘Melanie,’ observed the Duke, tightening his hold upon his wife, ‘will persuade the Recording Angel to let her organize a dance at the Day of Judgement.’
Monk entered and began to pound with a gong in the sight of them all.
‘The dressing gong,’ said Mrs Hatch, rising smartly. ‘Dinner will be in exactly an hour.’
VIII
In her bedroom Griselda found a tall thin girl seated in one of the armchairs, who rose as she entered.
‘Who are you?’
‘Louise. If you like, I’ll help you to dress.’
She was wearing a costly dress of pale grey silk, which tightly fitted her long neck up to her chin and ears, and was buttoned with many small buttons from the waist to the top of the collar, and girdled with a shiny black belt. Her long hair, the colour of smooth water under a grey sky, was drawn into a tight ballet-dancer’s bun. Her face was exceedingly pale, and made paler with a suggestion of powder almost green in tinge; but her features made an unusual blend of resolution and sensibility, a large nose and small firm chin combining with a slightly sensual mouth and huge dark-brown eyes, full of life and beauty, behind very large and expensive black-rimmed glasses. Her voice and accent were contralto and cultivated.
Griselda recalled her hostess’s words: ‘You don’t know how much Louise will do for you.’ To have Louise about one, would, she thought, be charming and beautiful. It was the first luxury she had really desired.
‘Hadn’t you better help Mrs Hatch first? She’ll have to be down to receive people, I expect.’
‘No one outside the house party will be here until nine. Mrs Hatch particularly wanted me to help you.’ Louise smiled delightfully.
‘Thank you.’ There was a silly pause. Griselda had placed her handbag on the bed. ‘I must tell you I’ve never met a lady’s maid.’
‘I’m not exactly a lady’s maid.’
Griselda blushed. ‘I’m so sorry. Mrs Hatch—’
Louise waved away her apologies. ‘We’ll have to learn from one another. About each other, I mean.’
They were standing in the middle of the floor, looking at each other, about three feet apart.
‘Are you coming to the dance?’
Louise shook her head. ‘Political dances are not my thing. Not that kind of dance. Therefore I’m not asked.’
‘What do you do?’
‘Various things. But now it is time that I help people to dress.’
‘For dances you don’t go to?’
‘And for some I do.’
‘Do you like the work?’
‘I have a certain natural apptitude, I think,’ Louise answered solemnly. ‘And little alternative. I am destitute and unqualified. But I don’t give satisfaction, I’m afraid.’
‘I think that Mrs Hatch might be hard to please. From what little I’ve seen of her, of course.’
‘It’s I who am hard to please. At least, harder to please than Mrs Hatch.’ Again she smiled.
‘I see.’
‘Shall we begin?’
Louise helped Griselda remove her jacket, and pulled her jumper swiftly over her head.
‘I expect you would like a bath?’
‘I’m afraid of the machine.’
‘I’ll try to protect you from it.’ Louise began to operate the formidable equipment, while Griselda removed her remaining garments.
In a remarkably short space of time Louise was announcing that the bath was ready. ‘Hot,’ she added. ‘And deep. We’ve won. It’s a beautiful bath.’ She stared for a moment at Griselda’s naked body. The steam of the bathroom had made her face glisten very slightly, despite the careful make-up. ‘Given the right dress, you will be the belle of the ball,’ she said.
For the second time that evening Griselda felt herself blush; this time, it seemed, all over her body, making her look absurd.
‘Fortunately,’ she replied, ‘I have exactly the right dress.’
Likewise the bath was the right temperature, the right depth, accompanied with the right accessories, a new cake of heavily scented soap and a huge white bath towel. Griselda entered it, letting the water rise above her shoulders.
‘Which dress?’
Griselda shouted back. ‘The taffeta.’ It was wonderful.
Louise appeared in the bathroom door, which Griselda had left open. ‘Your dress is good. Really good.’ Griselda felt flattered and pleased that Louise did not seem surprised, she whose taste, it was obvious, was unapproachably high.
‘I told you it was.’
Louise was withdrawing to the bedroom, but Griselda stopped her.
‘Come and talk to me.’ She had never spoken like that before. ‘Or is it too hot and steamy?’
Louise shook her head and sat on the bath stool, an inappropriate throne.
‘Undo the collar of your dress. Make yourself comfortable.’
Louise shook her head again. ‘My dress must be worn severely.’
‘It becomes you.’
‘I have no wish to look like everyone else. It is one thing about my life here that it enables me not to. Soon even nuns and nurses will be wearing little cotton frocks from Marks and Spencer.’
Griselda remembered what Kynaston had said about the photograph of Doris. She thought for a moment.
‘Cotton frocks are comfortable.’
‘But do they appeal to the senses? Are those who wear them satisfied?’
‘Does what one wears affect that?’
‘Very much indeed. One’s body needs to be always conscious of its clothes. One reason why there are so many more unsatisfied women than there used to be, is that they have forgotten that.’
‘I fear my clothes are very commonplace. Except that dress.’
‘I will help you to do better if you like.’
‘Thank you. But I have very little money.’
‘That matters more than it should, but less than you think.’
‘Then I should like you to help me.’
‘Of course there are limits to what I can do. But if you are seriously interested, I might later introduce you to Hugo Raunds. He lives entirely for clothes. He designed this dress. You’ve probably heard of him. As it happens, his father, Sir Travis, is coming tonight. Not that all this matters much, as I’ll be leaving here at any moment, and that will be that.’
‘Where will you go?’
‘I shall try to find someone amenable to my ways.’
Griselda began to fill the bath with strongly smelling soap.
‘I know so little of life. Oh, curse.’
A sud had entered one of her eyes. Louise rose and carefully removed it with a handkerchief, which she took from a pocket in the skirt of her dress. It was a silk handkerchief and soothing: though the pain remained, therapeutic in sensation, but curing nothing; probably, in fact, Griselda feared, damaging slightly the conjunctiva. Louise had resumed her seat. She was wiping her large glasses on the handkerchief.
After thanking Louise, Griselda continued: ‘All I know comes from books. It’s a wonder I keep my end up as well as I do.’
‘Books are better, I think, most of the time,’ replied Louise. ‘The more you know of life outside them, the less it’s like them. But there’s one problem that you have to solve if you’re to go on profiting from books, and books won’t help you much to solve it.’
‘And that is?’
‘The problem of finding someone, even one single person, you can endure life with. To me it’s acute.’
Inadvertently Griselda knocked the large slippery cake of soap on to the floor, where it slid out of sight.
‘I always thought that difficulty was peculiar to me,’ said Griselda.
Louise had laid her glasses on the stool and was groping for the soap.
‘Please stop,’ cried Griselda. ‘I should be getting out anyway. It was selfish of me to ask you to sit in all this steam.’
Louise returned the soap to its lair and resumed her glasses.
‘I’m not all that short-sighted,’ she remarked. ‘Though I am, of course, a little short-sighted I don’t have to wear glasses. It’s just that glasses suit me. We may as well get something from modern inventions.’
Griselda was out and towelling.
She found that Louise had laid out new underclothes for her.
She submitted to being dressed by Louise, to having Louise brush her short hair, even to being made up by Louise; all with a strange remote pleasure, possibly recalled from childhood, though certainly not consciously, for Griselda could recall little of her childhood that was pleasant, except books.
It all took a long time, and as they worked, they talked.
The remarks they exchanged became shorter and rapider; varied with occasional longer passages such as in normal converse no one listens to. They began, without any feeling of guilt, to talk about the people in the house.
‘Have you ever set eyes on the mysterious Austin Barnes?’
‘No.’
‘Why does he never appear?’
‘The coalition. He hates it.’
‘Oh yes. I heard about the coalition during Tea.’
‘Also he thinks he ought to be Prime Minister and not Leech.’
‘I see.’
‘Also he’s afraid of Mrs Hatch.’
‘I like the Ellensteins.’
‘Yes,’ said Louise. ‘The Ellensteins are good. One could not endure living with them, but they are really good. And that is most unusual.’
‘What about the Duchess’s dog?’
‘It was Stephanie.’
‘Who’s Stephanie?’
‘Stephanie des Bourges. She’s a ghost.’
‘So the house is haunted?’
‘Only occasionally. Stephanie comes only at certain times.’
‘I could wish the times weren’t the present.’
‘I could not. Stephanie was my only friend until you came.’ This now seemed to Griselda not even to call for acknowledgement. ‘In fact she came because I was here.’
‘Do you talk to her?’
‘Oh yes, often. She’s a lonely ghost.’
‘When did you last talk to her? Last night?’
‘This afternoon.’
‘Where?’
‘Here. I was talking to Stephanie just before you came in. I talked to her here yesterday too.’
‘Do you mean that I’ve been given the haunted room?’
‘Dear Griselda, you couldn’t expect a beautiful woman like Stephanie – for she is beautiful, fortunately – to come to my little turret and probably wake up the servants below into the bargain? Now could you?’
‘I suppose not,’ said Griselda. ‘But it explains why I slept badly last night.’
‘I don’t think so,’ said Louise. She was drawing on one of Griselda’s stockings and now paused for moment, kneeling at her feet. ‘It is not that this is the haunted room or anything so vulgar, if you will forgive me putting it so. You think of it like that because you think a ghost must be bad. This is merely the room where Stephanie and I meet because, being at the end of the corridor and usually unoccupied, it is quiet and seldom disturbed. And you mustn’t think of poor Stephanie as bad either. Ghosts only harm those who fear them. Stephanie is one whom I find it easy to love. And you must do the same, Griselda.’
‘I’ll try.’ Louise began attaching the stocking to its suspender. Griselda felt curious. ‘Do you see her by daylight?’
‘No. It is true that you can only see her at night. But I can talk to her sometimes by day.’
‘Could I?’
‘I don’t know. It depends.’
‘On what?’
But Louise was reflecting and did not answer directly. ‘Yes, Griselda,’ she said. ‘I think that you could see and talk to Stephanie. It occurs to me that it may have been because you also were here that she has come at this time. She hadn’t been seen or heard of before, they tell me, for more than twenty years. Not since the time something happened during that bloody silly war. I don’t precisely know what.’ She was on her feet again.
‘I’m afraid,’ said Griselda, ‘that nothing you say makes me very much less frightened of Stephanie. I’m not sure that I shall find thought very enjoyable – I mean, even after the dance, to which I’m not looking forward at all. She was even responsible for the poor Duchess losing her dog,’ added Griselda as an afterthought.
‘It’s difficult about animals,’ replied Louise. ‘But you can’t say that ghosts really treat them worse than we do.’
‘What colour is her hair?’ asked Griselda.
‘A gorgeous golden red,’ answered Louise. ‘And her eyes are, of course, green.’
‘I have never seen really green eyes outside a book.’
‘I think that Stephanie must be a mixture of races,’ said Louise. ‘Probably she has some Jewish blood. I should say quite a lot.’
She lifted Griselda’s dress from the bed where she had laid it. ‘Now for it,’ she said.
It was done.
‘You are truly beautiful,’ said Louise.
‘The girl who designed the dress should get most of the credit,’ said Griselda, looking away from Louise, and into the mirror.
‘What was her name?’
Griselda told her.
‘I might have known it,’ said Louise. ‘In fact, I really did know it. One of Hugo’s.’
‘I haven’t heard her mention him.’
‘No. Hugo is a very secret man.’
‘Oh. Anyway I don’t know her very well. I wish I were a better dancer.’
‘Don’t worry about that.’
‘I wish something else. I so much wish, Louise, that you were coming to the political dance with me.’
Stretching out her hand, she touched Louise’s grey silk neck.
‘Yes,’ said Louise gravely. ‘To my utter surprise, I wish that too.’
IX
‘We mustn’t let things go to our heads,’ remarked Mrs Hatch as she seated herself at the dinner table. They settled to a substantial meal.
Griselda, for some reason, had come down rather late, and Mrs Hatch, whose practice as hostess it was always to appear for dinner last, had entered the dining room only just behind her. The absence of Louise might in any case have retarded her preparations.
Griselda, to whom Louise’s good opinion of her dress had given more confidence, carefully examined the company. The Duchess, in a very tight dress which, it had to be admitted, suited her much better than something looser would have done, was certainly the most striking; but Mrs Hatch, in a sense (not a sense that Griselda particularly cared for), ran her close, wearing a dress after the style favoured by Madame Rйcamier, but dark blue, and elaborated, perhaps somewhat inappropriately, with a full display of the famous Procopius jewellery, a fabulous, multi-coloured mкlйe. Pamela, in one of the quieter garments approved by Vogue, seemed slightly outshone by her seniors; and to be in a state of sulky suspicion, though her appetite remained good. Altogether Griselda felt rather pleased.
With the men it was simple: the Duke (bearing on his dress coat a tiny but conspicious token of some ancient chivalrous Order particularized in the Almanach de Gotha), and Edwin (in a dress suit the colour of night on the Cфte d’Azur, and wearing a rare flower in his buttonhole, which Mr Cork said grew only on the island of Tahiti and in his conservatory at Beams) were well-dressed; Mr Leech and George Goss were not. George Goss had not even brought a tail coat.
There was soup with wine in it; a large, but excellent, sole; roast duck, with apple sauce, and salad; a confused but rather rich concoction described as ‘Summer Pudding’ (though, as someone pointed out, it was not yet quite summer); mushrooms on toast; and dessert. ‘No cheese tonight,’ announced Mrs Hatch, ‘in view of what is before us. Those who are still hungry must make do with nuts; or go and see Brundrit privately in his pantry.’
Pamela had refused to take duck on the ground that her Father had always said that ducks were garbage eaters; and had had to have a small exquisite point steak specially cooked for her. When it came, she ate it, without a word, almost in a couple of mouthfuls.
It was not the gayest of meals. The Duchess, upon whom so much depended in that direction, was cast down by the death of Fritzi, though she struggled pathetically hard with her feelings, and though the slight air of grief (like most things) distinctly became her. The Duke, though he did all that could be expected of him with Griselda, complimenting her upon her dress and describing clothes worn by beautiful women he had met at now extinct German courts, was concerned about the Duchess. Mr Leech was concerned about his speech, apologizing to Griselda for his inattention to her remarks, apologizing to his hostess for making notes during dinner, dropping his food on his clothes, and from time to time muttering a possible rhetorical effect under his breath, then changing it with a stub of pencil and muttering it again. Edwin seemed almost more concerned than the Prime Minister, and his concern seemed more active or transitive; it was not that he deflected in the slightest from his habitual perfection of appearance and behaviour, but that a score of unconscious details disclosed his inner distress, and made him less than a contributor to the sodality of the occasion. Once even he had to ask for a second access to the salad, being unable to eat any more duck. Pamela was as negative as usual: and even Mrs Hatch seemed strung up, in her not very suitable dress and dangerously valuable jewels. It hung over all of them, perhaps, even over Mrs Hatch, dearly though she appeared to love a dance, that the gaiety ahead had an ulterior, and presumably important, end. George Goss merely leered at the Duchess’s bare bosom and ate, crouched over his plate like an octopus.
Mrs Hatch left the table early in order to receive the first guests, commanding the others to remain and give their digestions time to work. Edwin, however, sprang up, and, exclaiming ‘I am sure there must be something I can do,’ followed his hostess, having bestowed a final uncertain glance upon Mr Leech.
‘It’s bad news about our friend Austin,’ remarked the Duke, after a pause.
‘I hadn’t heard, darling,’ said the Duchess.
‘Same old trouble,’ grunted George Goss.
Griselda had meant to enquire further of the Duke, but after George Goss’s remark, felt quite unlike doing so.
‘I hope we have a schottische,’ said the Duchess, brightly making conversation. ‘Mentioning Austin made me think of it.’
‘I doubt whether the younger generation have ever heard of it,’ said Mr Leech. He was at his very gloomiest.
Griselda had to admit that she had not.
‘I’ve heard of it,’ said Pamela, gnawing round an imported nectarine. ‘All those Victorian things are coming back in, you know. Chaperones, petticoats, and all that.’
For Pamela it was quite a speech.
X
‘Hallo, Griselda. What a dress!’
The first person she had met was Kynaston, and she was not as pleased as immediately after she had last left him, she would have expected to be.
‘Hullo, Geoffrey. Don’t think me rude, but I’m on my way upstairs.
Probably it was rude, but she could not help it. Her mood was expansive, something she could not recall having previously felt; and about Geoffrey there seemed an enclosed and private air unsuited to a large convivial gathering. Though, she recollected, she did not know him very well; so that possibly this was wrong.
Approaching her room she felt unreasonably agitated; and entering it, much more unreasonably disappointed. The room was empty. From one of the dressing-table drawers she took the dance programme Mrs Hatch had given her; and looked at it for the first time. There were three names inserted in Mrs Hatch’s clear handwriting (one of them twice), none of them known to Griselda, except that of Edwin Polegate-Hampden, inserted not, as he had hoped, for the first but for the supper dance. There were no names inserted after supper. Griselda was wholly ignorant of the procedure on these occasions, but had thought that dance programmes were obsolete. She wondered whether it was usual for the hostess, unasked, to arrange in this way partners for her guests. It might be important to ascertain whether it was the custom or merely a peculiarity of Mrs Hatch’s. Then Griselda thought of Stephanie des Bourges and hurried from the room, her final preparations abbreviated. This, she felt, was no time to meet a ghost. She wondered where Louise was; and shivered slightly.
Suddenly hundreds of people had arrived. The hall was full and quite a queue extended down the long passage, lined with palms and baskets of flowers, which extended to the resuscitated ballroom, recently the scene of Doris’s dusty labours. At the entrance to the ballroom Mrs Hatch was shaking hands with people, and introducing them to Mr Leech, who stood on her right, himself looking rather in need of a dust, and to another man, standing on her left, whom Griselda divined to be Mr Minnit, the Leader of the Opposition. Mr Minnit was a determined-looking elderly man with sparse black hair and a raucous penetrating voice. His evening suit made an even poorer impression than Mr Leech’s, because, besides having been worn for longer, it had cost less in the first place. Grouped round the trio were a number of men whom Griselda, identifying one or two of them, took to be some of the new Cabinet. Few of them made a more favourable impression than did either of their leaders.
‘I’ve been waiting for you to come down.’ It was Kynaston again. ‘I’m quite as terrified by all this as you are.’
Griselda realized that she wasn’t terrified at all. She considered herself much better dressed than most of the other women; and, quite possibly, no less generally attractive. Looking round her, she even began to wonder whether she would show herself much inferior as a dancer. She smiled at Kynaston to give him confidence, and because she still felt she might have been rude to him.
Just then the band struck up. ‘You hear that?’ said Kynaston. ‘You’d better get your hostess’s money’s worth.’
They began to make their way along the crowded passage. Kynston shook hands with Mrs Hatch, who asked after his poetry. Then they entered the ballroom.
It was a fine large room, though not very inspired architecturally, and expensively decorated not only with vegetation of various kinds but also with a number of patriotic motifs. At one end of the rectangle, the platform occupied by the band was banked with hundreds of carnations which pleasantly perfumed the otherwise already slightly smoky air. At the other end was another, smaller platform, now unoccupied but the purpose of which was clear, as it was swathed in red, white, and blue fabric, and bore an ominous green baize-topped table, with three hard chairs. Above this platform were two oval plaques, edged with laurel, and bearing lively messages from Lord Beaconsfield and John Burns. Presumably many of the guests were not expected to take the floor, as round the walls was ranged a triple rank of gilt chairs with crimson seats, their thin red line becoming disordered as people sat upon them; but already the enthusiastic and the impetuous were in action, their faces settling down to ecstasy or boredom. The long far wall of the room contained a line of big French windows, uncurtained against the chance that later the growing heat might require them to be opened. Griselda wondered who might be without these windows, unseen but all-seeing.
As Kynaston led Griselda on to the floor, they encountered Edwin with a fascinatingly beautiful young partner. Briefly he introduced her as the Marchioness of Wolverhampton. ‘See you later,’ he said to Griselda, in an accent of warm significance. Griselda watched them glide away. Obviously Edwin’s dancing was as flawless as everything else about him. Griselda wondered why he should elect to sup with her instead of with the incomparable Marchioness; or whether this also was Mrs Hatch’s doing.
Griselda danced three times with Kynaston, not precisely with elation, but certainly with competence. Her ancient inhibition against being intimately clasped by a little-known male had not disappeared, but was perhaps in abeyance. In practice, the whole curious transaction seemed, at least with Kynaston, unexpectedly impersonal. They said little, the monotonous music thrummed in Griselda’s brain, and she felt completely mistress of the situation, while still unclear why such store was commonly set by the pastime. Possibly things would be different in the circumstances advocated by the Duchess; but surely it must be only occasionally that the habitual dancer could dance with a partner whose body inspired to passion? Griselda wondered whether possibly she suffered from some physiological deficiency akin to tone-deafness. She then listened with her conscious ear to the music, and deemed that the matter was not worth undue concern.
The business had its social problems, however. Griselda’s fourth dance had been allocated by Mrs Hatch to an unknown named Mr Coote. She did not know who Mr Coote was, but when she announced his imminence to Kynaston, she was startled to learn that Kynaston had taken it for granted that she would be dancing with him (Kynaston) throughout the evening.
‘You said you wanted me to ward off other males.’
‘Not exactly.’
‘You couldn’t abide being pawed.’
‘Mrs Hatch has arranged the next dance for me.’
‘What do you think I’m going to do? I don’t know a soul here – if anybody here has a soul; and they’re not the kind of people I want to know. Not that I’m likely to be introduced. I’m a mixture of a poor relation and the local tradesman.’
‘What would you have done, if you hadn’t met me?’
‘Contrived to bring Doris. Of course, I much prefer you, but I’ve made a very fair dancer out of Doris, and she’s vastly better than having to talk about the state of the nation with a string of politicians.’
The situation was dissolved by Mrs Hatch appearing with Mr Coote.
‘Let me introduce Mr Coote, Griselda; your next partner. This is Griselda de Reptonville. I told Mr Coote about you while you were out of the house and he asked me for a dance with you.’
‘The reality exceeds the description,’ said Mr Coote.
It was a waltz and Mr Coote was heavy on other people’s feet. While dancing, however, he maintained a steady flow of conventionally complimentary verbiage, of a type which Griselda was surprised to find still existed, but which began heavily to pall in an astonishingly short period of time. Griselda had always understood that men preferred to talk about themselves and tried to direct the conversation in that likely direction. But Mr Coote was unexpectedly reticent. Griselda could only gather that though not in the political limelight, he occupied an entirely indispensable position far behind the scenes.
‘Sort of Chief Foreman, you know. The chap who sees that the roundabout is oiled. Poor sort of job at times, I find it. Let’s talk about something pleasanter. Our excellent hostess told me you had short hair but I never knew short hair could be so attractive.’
Suddenly Griselda noticed something odd. Mrs Hatch was dancing with (and much better than) Pamela.
Mr Coote was, Griselda recollected, the one of her three allotted partners who recurred. He was due to reappear for the next dance but one. Apart from anything else, it seemed poor planning, like selling all the adjoining seats in a theatre, instead of spacing the audience about.
This little trouble solved itself, however, in the very instant that Griselda had thought of it.
As the dance number (it was a bagatelle entitled ‘Mooning with the Moon’) neared its point of cessation, Mr Coote suddenly crumpled up in the most dramatic possible way. He dropped his partner, clutched the lower part of his belly with both hands, became instantly green in the face, and lurched groaning to one of the gilt chairs which had strayed out among the dancers. There he sat, odd pairs of dancers occasionally navigating round the back of him, until two muscular and efficient footmen assisted him away, their hands under his armpits. Now that the music had stopped, his dreadful groans were clearly audible above the hubbub of talk; but so expertly was the incident disposed of, that few were clearly aware of what had happened, and none sustained any notable setback in jollity.
Griselda had been left isolated not far from the centre of the floor, and, so thick were the dancers, could not reach Mr Coote before he was whisked away.
‘If that doesn’t teach you, I cannot imagine what will. You see what happens when you try to fraternize with the people.’ It was, of course, Kynaston. Griselda could have struck him. Then she saw the large shape of George Goss coming towards her, solitary and menacing.
‘Better me, don’t you think, after all?’ said Kynaston, comprehending the entire situation. Griselda, really furious at his deliberate or careless misunderstanding of the need for her to dance with Mr Coote, placed her hand on his arm; and the music started once more, this time a number entitled ‘You Twisted Me Before I Twisted You.’
‘You don’t have to do this the whole time, of course,’ said Kynaston.
‘Indeed no. Later I am partnering a Mr Mackintosh, and after that Edwin Polegate-Hampden for the supper dance.’
‘To hell with them. I didn’t mean that. I meant that we could sit out sometimes.’
Absurdly, Griselda had overlooked this possibility.
Out of the corner of her eye she observed George Goss lumber off the floor disappointed.
‘Don’t I seem to know your unlucky friend?’
‘George Goss,’ said Griselda.
‘I’m flattered that you prefer me. George Goss is the only really first-rank painter now alive in England. Probably in the world. When I looked at his Holy Family at the Leicester Gallery last autumn. I cried like a child.’
It was by no means the end of George Goss, for immediately the dance was over, there he was again.
‘Could we please do what you said,’ appealed Griselda to Kynaston, ‘and sit this one out?’ It was to have been Mr Coote’s second dance, and Griselda considered that even he would have been preferable to George Goss.
‘Let’s look for the refreshments,’ said Kynaston. ‘I expect there are some.’ He put his arm round her waist to lead her away. It was hard on George Goss and Griselda smiled at him as she departed. He stood looking after her, fixed like a toad.
But it was not to be. Mrs Hatch appeared.
‘As Mr Coote has been taken away, I should like you to meet Lord Roller.’ Mrs Hatch’s memory for the details she herself had organized, was appalling.
The great Lord Roller, whose revelations had just shaken the entire world and lay behind the present festivity, was tall and stout, though dignified and wearing the most perfectly cut clothes.
‘Melanie suggests that we should dance,’ he said in an attractive cultivated voice. ‘But I should prefer to sit and talk for just the few minutes allotted to me.’
Griselda consented with relief. Kynaston prowled away, presumably after liquor.
‘It’s not that I never dance. On the contrary, twenty years ago I used to be considered rather good. But I’ve been having a tiring time lately and this evening, as you know, is rather a strain on some of us.’
Griselda said she could well understand. They sat. They had moved round the perimeter of the dance floor looking for two empty chairs and had reached the comparatively inaccessible and deserted window side of the room.
‘However, no more of that. Let us talk of something else. What do you do in the world?’
‘Very little. For various reasons it’s difficult for me to leave home.’
‘That’s bad. The days when women stayed at home are over. For better or for worse. But over, I assure you. What are the reasons, or ought I not to ask?’
Griselda hesitated. But Lord Roller had achieved his position in the world by being under all circumstances unfailingly reasuring.
‘My Mother, mainly.’
‘Illness?’
‘Not exactly. Though she suffers a lot.’
‘I won’t enquire further.’ Changing the subject, he said kindly, pointing out a well-known figure: ‘You know that’s George Goss the painter?’
‘Yes. He’s staying in the house.’
‘I’ve known him since we were at Winchester together. Then he was a splendid young chap. Full of life. Quite irresistable. He did a drawing of me a year or two ago and I must say I thought he’d become something of an ox. When I saw the drawing I realized that he thought the same of me.’
‘You’re not at all like him,’ said Griselda.
‘Our lives have been different. Mine has been spent in the City, like the rest of my family. I haven’t been able to let myself go in the way a great painter can. Despite appearances, I suspect I’m very much the man I was when I was at school. I observe that the Prime Minister hasn’t been provided with a water bottle.’ He pointed to the bare green table at the end of the room. ‘That’s bad. Later I’ll have to see that something is done about it.’
The Duchess passed dancing with Edwin. Seeing Lord Roller, she smiled radiantly; then, observing that he was in conversation with Griselda, smiled again, a little ruefully.
‘I’ve been in love with Odile for twenty years,’ said Lord Roller. ‘To attempt concealment would be quite unavailing.’
‘You know you said you wouldn’t enquire further?’
‘Yes. I said that. Do you want me to enquire further? If so, I shall.’
‘Am I a pest? I should like advice.’
‘I know very little about the world outside business and politics. For that reason I should be honoured to advise you. I have all the confidence of ignorance. What is it about?’
It was the next dance and Griselda looked round for Kynaston, but there was no sign of him. She and Lord Roller went on talking.
‘I have decided to leave home. My Mother will have to get on as best she can.’
‘I can see that this is an entirely new resolution. I hope it is not based on what I just said. You must not take an old man, ignorant of life, too literally.’
‘No, Lord Roller. It is a new resolution, but I made it before I met you. The question is what best to do afterwards.’
‘I hardly know you well enough to advise you upon that. In any case, it is the most useless thing it is possible to advise upon. If you have no clear and conscious vocation in life, I advise you to marry and have children as soon as possible. Of course, I speak as a bachelor.’
‘I want your advice on something much more definite. I have few claims to a job of any kind, and, of course, a job I must have. A friend of mine has offered me one in the Secretariat of Sociology. It sounds pretty dull, because all the good jobs go to people with degrees, and I have no degree; but I have to promise to stick to it for three years. I don’t want to do that unless the result amounts to something, however small my contribution. I am sure you know all about the Secretariat of Sociology. Does it amount to anything?’
‘To save a young woman from the Secretariat of Sociology,’ replied Lord Roller, ‘I would offer her a job myself. With all the new regulations the coalition will introduce, we shall be able to carry more passengers in the business. I quite understand that you wish not to be a passenger, but that is unusual, and you can take over the work of someone on our staff who does. If you care to write to me, I’ll see what can be done. It will at least be somewhere near productive employment.’
‘But I have no capacity. I cannot even type.’
‘If typing is necessary and you do not learn to type within a month of our engaging you, we shall, of course, engage you no longer. You said you wanted to do work which amounted to something. That is the sort of obligation which work amounting to something involves.’
Griselda said: ‘Naturally.’
He rose.
‘I have enjoyed our talk. Now I must see that the Prime Minister is given his water-bottle, because the speeches will be soon, I regret to say. Have you a partner for the next dance?’
It was Mr Mackintosh’s turn.
‘Please do not wait, Lord Roller, if time is getting on. I’ll find him myself.’
‘We may meet again.’
‘Thank you for your advice.’
He bowed and departed. His gait was full of distinction, his expression of confidence. As he passed through the throng, he nodded affably from time to time.
There was still no sign of Mr Mackintosh, and Griselda, feeling isolated, and still fearing George Goss, began, faute de mieux, to look round for Kynaston. Almost at once, she saw him. He was dancing with Pamela. Where previously Griselda had resented his attaching himself so calmly and firmly to her, she now resented his having anything to do with Pamela. In both cases resentment was only one of many feelings jumping about in Griselda’s mind, most of them without rising to consciousness: and in both cases she felt that resentment was unreasonable.
Not wishing Kynaston, or Pamela either, to see her sitting by herself, she removed to a less conspicuous chair in the back row near a window. She recalled the term ‘wallflower’ and wished someone nice would speak to her. She still thought her appearance compared favourably with the appearance of the other women present, but all her immediate neighbours were dull looking people seated in small groups, indifferent to the dancing, but talking among themselves, sometimes acrimoniously. Griselda desperately wished that Louise could be there.
She began to study the scene impersonally. Though there were some beautiful women and distinguished looking men, the majority impressed as rowdy but dreary. They had, of course, Griselda recalled, been largely assembled for political rather than social reasons. There had been no sign of Mr Leech since the fun began and Mrs Hatch had now also disappeared, after a sequence of strenuous dances, doubtless in order to settle final details of the feast of rhetoric which impended. Mr Minnit, on the other hand, was dancing energetically with, as Griselda supposed, his wife. The Duke was now partnering the ravishing Lady Wolverhampton; and the Duchess one of the better dressed among the new Cabinet Ministers. In one corner there had been a minor disturbance for some time. Griselda had been only vaguely aware of the turmoil; now she perceived that it arose from attempts to prevent one of the splinter parties from posting propaganda bills on the ballroom wall. Mercifully George Goss was not to be seen. Possibly he was gone for a drink.
‘Do you think it was wise of us to exclude the Communists?’
One of the group around Griselda had dried up conversationally and a member on the outskirts of it addressed her. He was elderly in the extreme and resembled a distinguished nonconformist dignitary.
Griselda considered the question.
‘I don’t see what else we could have done.’
‘I think our appeal should be to all groups in the nation: to forget the past and think only of the future.’ The speaker’s voice and accents were great-grandpaternal. ‘I’ve always been a radical; and what are the Communists but today’s radicals? I’d be a Communist myself if I were still a young man.’
‘Hardly Zec. Not with your collection of fine old stocks and shares,’ said a hard-faced woman in his group, almost Zec’s contemporary.
‘It’s Travis Raunds who’s responsible for their not being invited,’ Zec grumbled on. ‘The man’s nothing but a despot. What do you think, young woman? Let us heed the voice of youth.’
‘I’d rather leave it,’ replied Griselda prudently, ‘to whoever issued the invitations. But tell me about Sir Travis Raunds. Is he here?’
‘Over there,’ said Zec stabbing a desiccated forefinger towards the opposite side of the room. ‘The old deathshead to the right of the centre mirror. Most reactionary man in the country. I’ve fought him all my life and he’s fought me.’
‘You flatter yourself,’ said the hard-faced woman.
Griselda stared at the man mentioned by Louise, father of Louise’s friend, Hugo Raunds. Though obviously very old, Griselda found him the most striking-looking man in the room. He had a considerable quantity of white hair, fine aristocratic bones, and a yellowish skin. Despite his years, he sat very upright and his expression was that of a censorious Buddha. His long mouth had finely shaped lips, his nose was magnificently powerful, he was clean shaven, and his eyes, Griselda, whose sight was excellent, could see across the room, were a clear yellow.
‘Is his son Hugo here too?’ asked Griselda.
The effect was unexpected. Zec stared into Griselda’s eyes, his own the colour of granite setts and as unyielding, then said: ‘Young woman, it is time you learned that to shock and insult your elders is never amusing.’
‘I’m sorry,’ said Griselda calmly. ‘Hugo Raunds is only a name to me. I know nothing whatever about him.’
‘I think,’ said the hard-faced woman, ‘that you’d be well advised to leave it at the apology.’ Clearly she supported Zec in aggression though in however little else.
Griselda was about to rise from her chair and walk away when she became aware of tapping on the high French window behind her.
‘I told you Hugo was a very secret man,’ said the voice of Louise.
Griselda nearly fell off her chair with surprise.
The window had been opened and stood slightly ajar. Louise’s pale face and large glasses were just visible through the gap.
‘Have you got a partner?’
‘No. I’m a wallflower.’
‘Come away.’
Louise’s hand entered through the gap, took Griselda by the wrist, and with unexpected strength drew her outside into the garden before she had time to consider. Louise shut the window and fastened it as easily as she had opened it. The two of them looked through the glass at the disgusted faces of Zec and his friends. A few of the other guests had noticed the brief draught; and it was clear that already, seconds later, they had forgotten it. Even Zec did not consider the incident worth rising from his seat to investigate.
‘Louise, I’ll be cold.’
‘I think not. If you are, there’s a cloak.’
‘Where?’
‘In the Temple of Venus.’
‘What’s that?’
‘One of the Duke of St Helens’s follies. We’re going there.’
Indeed it was one of those precocious spring days which anticipate or excel Midsummer. There were stars and a moon. How very wrong Mullet had been!
Louise had changed into a simple but elegant black coat and skirt and a white silk shirt. The night was full of her perfume.
‘You can see the Temple of Venus at the end of the vista. But the Water of Circe lies between us and it; so, as we have to go round it, the walk’s longer than it looks.’
‘Circe lived on an island.’
‘There is an island. In the middle of the lake. It’s where she’s buried.’
‘Circe?’
‘No. Not Circe.’
‘Stephanie?’ Griselda almost whispered.
‘Of course.’
They set out. It was a broad grassy way, cut wonderfully short. In lines parallel with the grass were beds of flowers just coming into bloom, but drained of what colour was theirs by the moon.
‘What about the dew?’ Griselda’s shoes were for dancing.
‘There is no dew. That means it will probably rain tomorrow. We must make the most of tonight.’
‘Yes, you can smell in the flowers that rain’s coming.’
‘This morning’s rain also.’
‘It would be nice if it sometimes stayed fine for longer on end,’ said Griselda.
‘Nice. But, like most nice things, probably unnatural,’ replied Louise. ‘What do you think of dancing?’
‘I’ve never danced before tonight – or rather today.’
‘I know.’
‘Was it so obvious?’
‘It came out. Never mind. How do you like it?’
‘I think that much depends on one’s partner.’
‘When does it not?’
They walked in silence the few more steps which brought them to the edge of the lake.
‘Don’t look back till we’re round the other side and have the lake between us and the house,’ said Louise; and Griselda never thought of disobeying.
‘Give me your hand,’ continued Louise. ‘The path round the lake is wooded and much rougher. There are roots.’ Griselda placed her warm right hand in Louise’s chilly left one.
As soon as they had entered the trees the music from the house rapidly faded away.
‘The path twists,’ said Griselda.
‘The Duke did not intend the shortest way between two points.’
‘But the trees grow very regularly.’
‘They do not grow. They were planted. This is called the Grove of the Hamamelids because every tree bears a fruit.’
Griselda did not know what Hamamelids were or had been, but the new blossom was ubiquitous, claiming alike the senses of sight, smell, hearing, and touch.
‘It’s an orchard.’
‘No, Griselda, it’s a grove. It’s believed to be the only grove of its kind anywhere.’
After many swift sinuosities the path reached and crossed a wooden bridge in what appeared to be the Chinese style. The blossom, the moon, and the bridge compounded a scene very like to the Orient before one got there, thought Griselda.
‘This is the stream which feeds the lake,’ said Louise.
‘Where’s the path?’ asked Griselda, looking round. Beyond the bridge it appeared simply to stop, although hitherto it had been wide enough for the two of them abreast.
‘The path ends here. After they crossed this bridge, the Duke and Stephanie had no need of it; nor were others desired to follow them.’
Griselda and Louise found their way hand in hand among the trees along the edge of the lake until they rediscovered the vista.
‘Now you can look back.’
Across the water and up the other half of the vista the house, normally a trifle obvious in aspect, appeared unbelievably mysterious. The misty moonlight blurred all detail, but across the line of long lighted windows the keen eyes of Griselda could see the moving figures metamorphosed into beauty by night and distance. Looking at them as they danced, it was impossible to believe they were the people Griselda had just left. At that distance she could imagine herself longing to join them.
‘If it were all like that,’ she said, ‘we would neither of us ever wish to leave.’
Now they were out of the grove, the music just reached them.
Turning their backs on the sound and once more retreating from the populous house, they continued towards the Temple of Venus, now black before them at the other end of the vista.
‘I want to see you again, Louise,’ said Griselda. ‘After I leave Beams.’
‘We will talk about that when we get to the Temple. It may not be possible, Griselda.’
If there was any doubt, Griselda did not want to talk about it. She changed the subject.
‘Do you often come to the Temple?’
‘Only at night, when I can’t be seen. I wear black and it is not difficult to remain unobserved.’
‘Did the Duke build the Temple for Stephanie?’
‘Yes. She lived in the house, but she was happiest in the Temple. She was seldom happy, poor Stephanie.’
‘Like you, poor Louise.’
‘Like us, poor Griselda.’
‘I’m happy tonight.’
Louise did not reply.
They walked the short distance remaining in silence.
At first sight in the darkness the Temple seemed to consist of a portico, surprisingly lofty, and with Ionic columns. Up three broad steps was a chamber open to the garden and appearing semicircular in the moonlight.
‘Before you enter,’ said Louise, stopping Griselda at the foot of the steps, ‘I think you had better put on this mask.’ She produced a black velvet domino from a pocket of her jacket. Griselda was about to demur or enquire further, but thought better of it, and consented without a word to Louise putting the mask round her eyes and tying it tightly at the back of her head. Louise knew how to do this so that the wearer had no uncomfortable sensation that the mask was about to slip.
‘I like it,’ said Griselda; and immediately ascended the steps.
Inside, a seat ran the length of the curved back wall, broken only by a large door in the centre, which gave access to an inner apartment of the Temple. In the middle of the floor was a huge marble bench, wide and long, and curving up at both ends into Ionic flutings. On the Bench were a number of large cushions, looking darkly purple; over which was spread a huge black cloak.
‘Put it on,’ said Louise. ‘Put it on and sit down.’
Griselda again did as she was told. The cloak seemed the right length, and was a businesslike garment with simple black buttons, which Louise proceeded to fasten, shutting Griselda in. Griselda realized that she was now nearly invisible. For no clear reason she felt a sudden palpitating rush of excitement, bereaving her of all reasonable thoughts.
‘Now sit down.’
Griselda’s normally strong legs were weak and she was glad to obey. Louise sat at the other end of the bench, her beautiful neck whiter in the smoky moonlight than her white shirt.
‘What about you?’
‘What about me?’ Louise’s tone was warm but enigmatic.
‘You’ll be cold.’
‘Oh . . . No, I shan’t be cold. But we’d better speak softly.’
‘Why?’ This question Griselda knew to be absurd, but her excitement was such that she had no difficulty in restraining a wild hilarity.
‘It’s better.’ Louise paused, then again began to speak, very low. ‘I’ve kidnapped you and brought you here so that we can make some plans. It was necessary that we could be sure of being alone, and also this is the best place.’
‘The best place in which to plan?’ enquired Griselda, equally softly. She had either to shout or to whisper. She felt she might easily faint.
‘Yes, Griselda. If you wish to plan. I don’t know whether you do or not. You said you did, but perhaps it was only the beauty of the night or a reaction from other people.’
‘Will it be difficult?’ Griselda’s voice was barely audible.
‘It will be very difficult, Griselda. I love you.’
Immediately Griselda felt completely calm; an entirely and absolutely different person. She would never be the same person again.
‘I love you, Louise,’ she replied in a level voice, still pitched low.
After a moment’s silence, Louise said ‘It’s a pity that the world instead of being at our feet, has to be about our ears.’
Griselda replied: ‘As I said in my bath, I know very little about the world.’
‘That, though a good thing.’ said Louise, ‘is also a bad thing. It makes the next step difficult.’
‘No,’ said Griselda. ‘I think it makes the next step easy. I’m so innocent that whatever the next step is, I’ll take it without a second thought.’
‘Will you live with me?’
‘I’ve decided to leave home. Where else should I go?’
‘We could share a loft.’
‘That would be rather expensive for us. I’ve very little money. At least until I get a job.’
‘What sort of job?’
‘Lord Roller offered me something.’
‘Are you going to take it?’
‘If it would enable us to share a loft.’
Louise looked her in the face. Louise’s smile was full of tears and anguish: she took Griselda’s hand.
‘The air is, I am sure, full of nightingales,’ she said, ‘if only we could hear them.’
‘This is their night,’ said Griselda. ‘Tomorrow it’s going to rain.’
‘Does that stop them singing?’
‘Unless they are very imprudent nightingales.’
‘I can’t see your face,’ said Louise. ‘It is entirely overshadowed by a column.’
‘Of course you can’t. Am I not totally invisible?’
Griselda thought that when she said this Louise looked round the Temple in a way more anxious than she cared for. Then Louise said: ‘For my part I have no money at all. And not only that but I hate work of any kind. I hate not to be free.’
‘I’ve never yet had a real job,’ replied Griselda. ‘I am not looking forward to that particular part of it at all.’
‘I wonder if Hugo would give us an allowance? He understands people like us.’
But Griselda noticed something.
‘Look Louise. That door’s open. It was shut when we came in.’
Louise started up. The black door interfered with the columnar pattern on the carpet of moonlight.
‘And there’s someone coming.’
Louise’s perfume was suddenly heavy on the air. Louise stood quite upright, her back to the garden and the moon, her eyes on the open door. There were undoubtedly footsteps.
But it became clear that the steps were outside the temple. A figure appeared between the columns.
‘What’s going on in there?’
It was a policeman. He flashed his lamp, ineffective in the moonlight, upon Griselda’s dark figure.
Louise wheeled round.
‘Officer,’ she said, ‘please return to your fireside. No one is in need of help.’
‘Sorry miss,’ the policeman replied. ‘I thought you might be reds.’
‘You can see at a glance,’ said Louise, ‘that we’re not.’
‘Yes miss,’ said the policeman.
‘I don’t know so much,’ cried Griselda, rising to her feet. ‘Look at me.’ Cloaked and masked, she was the perfect operatic conspirator.
‘I can see you’re nothing you shouldn’t be, miss,’ replied the officer. ‘Just like the lady said. Still we have to be careful. The whole house and garden’s surrounded.’
‘Surrounded by what?’ asked Griselda.
‘By the force, miss. We have our orders. There’ve been half a dozen of us on duty all the evening not a quarter of a mile from this outhouse. Spread about of course. Well, I must be getting back to them. Good night, ladies.’
At this moment the door of the inner apartment of the Temple banged shut as unaccountably as it had opened. The policeman jumped.
‘I’d better have a look round.’ The beam of his lamp made a dim circle on the heavy painted woodwork of the door.
‘There’s no one there,’ said Louise. ‘It often happens.’
‘If you say so, miss – ’ He thought for a moment, then looked at Louise searchingly. ‘Quite sure, miss?’
‘Quite sure, officer. I often come here at night.’ Her tone was unbelievably patrician.
‘Very well.’
Again he bade them Good-night. They reciprocated; and this time he departed.
‘We must go back,’ said Louise. ‘Soon they’ll be looking for you.’
‘Shall I leave my cloak?’
‘No. When we reach the house I’ll take it.’
Silently they returned upon their tracks.
They were only a few paces from the shore of the lake.
Louise remarked. ‘I don’t know how Stephanie is going to behave about this. She is, after all, a Belgian.’
Griselda shivered inside her warm cloak, but said nothing. They entered the Grove of the Hamamelids.
‘You know,’ said Louise after a while, ‘you know that Stephanie was at the Temple?’
‘Yes,’ said Griselda. ‘I know.’
‘It was a mistake. I didn’t expect her tonight. But I knew she was there even before we got there ourselves. Her scent is the same as mine. I fear she may go after revenge. Though that would be rather absurd of her.’
‘Revengeful people don’t think of that.’
‘Poor Stephanie! But, after all, Griselda, she is only a ghost.’ Louise suddenly laughed very musically.
‘I don’t want at all to be gloomy, but do you think I shall be all right alone in the haunted room?’
Immediately she had spoken, she jumped violently. They had crossed the wooden bridge. The figure of a man was visible among the trees. His back was towards the two women and he appeared much occupied at some labour.
The women stopped for a moment; then Louise held Griselda’s hand very tightly and they advanced together. Not until they were right up to the man, did he learn of their presence.
‘Good evening, miss,’ he said, seeing Griselda’s long cloak. ‘Didn’t expect any of the guests to walk this far from the house.’ His voice was sombre.
‘Good evening,’ said Griselda.
He was leaning on a spade. He was elderly and enormous.
‘For her Highness’s dog.’ He indicated a pit he had dug. ‘The best place for ’im on the ’ole property. And if you listen you can ’ear ’em knocking up the little chap’s coffin.’
Through the still moonlight night came indeed a very distant hammering.
‘Poor little Fritzi,’ said Griselda. Louise was lurking indistinctly among the foliage.
‘Dunno about that, miss,’ said the Gravedigger. ‘Reckon ’e was ripe.’ Lifting his spade he plunged it up to the haft into the soft black earth. Though hideous, he was still hale in the extreme.
‘Good night,’ said Griselda, who found the subject distasteful.
Louise drew further into the bushes.
‘Goodnight, miss. I must get on with things.’ He was again digging rhythmically.
Louise rejoined Griselda as if she had been her shadow. The coffin makers appeared to be working somewhere in the Grove iself.
‘The policeman began it,’ said Louise. ‘Now the whole garden is polluted. Let’s get back as quickly as possible.’ She walked faster.
‘But before they came,’ said Griselda, ‘we were happy.’ She remembered her unforgettable dream of the night before.
Worse was upon them. As they left the Grove they saw that the vista up to the house was spotted with guests. Several of the long windows had been thrown open. Through them came a certain sound, not of music Griselda realized. The speeches were afoot and most of the guests had left the ballroom. It was incredible that it was not later and the speeches over. But then she had no idea how long they had been continuing, despite Mrs Hatch’s injunction of brevity. After all, she recollected, it was a turning point in history, and enthusiasm might well have carried the orators much beyond the dictates of deference to their hostess.
A man in evening dress seemed in hopeful spirit to be approaching the two lone women.
‘The cloak,’ said Louise brusquely. ‘I shall need it to get away in.’ Unbuttoning it, she had it off Griselda’s and about her own shoulders before Griselda could utter the enquiry of all lovers.
‘When shall I see you?’
The man in evening dress was near.
‘I’ll contrive. Bless you.’ On the words, Louise was gone. Her black figure flitted for a second in the moonlight and had vanished.
‘Good evening,’ said the man. ‘You look very romantic. Can we go further away from the sound of the human voice?’ He tried to take Griselda’s arm.
‘Thank you,’ said Griselda. ‘But I want to hear the speech.’
‘Then what are you doing out here?’ Frustration made his tone didactic and patronizing.
‘I felt faint and needed some air.’ No excuse could be too conventional for the commonplace creature.
‘Minnit’s hour-long pronouncement of his own righteousness had that effect upon many of us. His objective, you know, was to cut Leech out of his broadcasting time.’ Presumably the man now hoped to gain his end through general conversation. ‘Pretty low trick, don’t you think? Or are you perchance one of Minnit’s supporters?’ He smiled; and his tone again reminded Griselda of Stephenson’s remark that foremost in the character of every man is the schoolmaster.
‘No,’ said Griselda. ‘I have no politics. Will you please excuse me? I must go back to the house.’
He was so startled by the failure of his charms that, writing Griselda off as in some way peculiar, he did not even propose to escort her. Griselda could not feel that his observations boded well for the new coalition government. But possibly he was unrepresentative. Soon she would see. She crept in at the window through which she had joined Louise in the garden.
The scene was transformed. Most of the gilt chairs were ranged in irregular rows across the dance floor in front of the speakers’ platform. Though by no means all the chairs were occupied, many of the remaining audience were drooping packed together on their feet behind the backmost row. The emptiness of the chairs and the crowd standing behind them combined to make an effect of desolation. Many of the women looked bored. Many of the men looked aggressive. It was plain why Mrs Hatch had demanded brevity. Amplifiers had been lowered from the ceiling and every now and then emitted a resonant croak as the technicians dismantled the broadcasting aparatus, the end of the time allotted to the feature being long past. Each time the amplifiers croaked, Mr Leech stopped short in his flow of words and glowered momentarily upwards before resuming. Often this resulted in his losing the place in his notes.
Even without foreknowledge, it would have been obvious that the Prime Minister had been speaking for some time. His sparse colourless hair stood straight on end, his face was the colour of cheese, and he was thumping continuously when he had a hand free, in the effort to awake from slumber the long defunct interest of his auditory. ‘Time presses,’ he cried, ‘and the festivities offered by our splendid hostess will soon once more be calling us. We have already addressed you for far too long.’ Mr Leech, while one eye roamed from table-top to audience, glared momentarily with the other at Mr Minnit, who sat slumped forward upon the green baize, his head upon his arms. As with Lady Macbeth, it was impossible to deduce from Mr Minnit’s eyes whether he slept or waked. He was, Griselda realized, a man of very unusual appearance. ‘But,’ continued Mr Leech, ‘it would be improper indeed were I, for any reason whatever, to bring these remarks to an end before coming to the dire and daunting circumstances which have prompted me to begin them.’ This time Mr Leech did not thump, but it made little difference.
‘I have spoken,’ he continued, ‘of our great traditions, our unique heritage, of literature, art, and science, of our public school system, our mercantile genius, our sportsmanship, our village hostelries, our ancient monuments, Magna Carta, the noble City of London, the late terrible world conflict, our aircraft and balloons, our love of animals, and the faith we repose in our young folk. Shining through and igniting the whole splendidly coloured picture is one theme peculiar to our people alone: the theme of initial failure transmuted into ultimate success, immediate disaster into final victory.’ There was an unexpected burst of cheering. Not even the prevailing need for food could wholly deaden so conditioned a reflex.
‘And what has been the philosopher’s stone which has wrought the miracle? Always it has been one thing only: our readiness for sacrifice.’ Some of the older people nodded their agreement. ‘I venture to say before you all, that no other people has so often had demanded of it so many sacrifices. As page follows page of history we read the same story: the story of final ruin averted by ruinous sacrifice. And on too many of those pages we see that the writing was in sacrificial blood. Tonight it may appear that the need is less; not for blood, but for toil and taxes and toil again, to rebuild the sinews of greatness.’
But, if so, it appeared wrongly. For when Mr Leech came to these words, there was a flash and a detonation; and the ballroom momentarily took on the aspect of a battlefield. The Communists had contrived to throw a bomb.
A group of about a dozen classless figures had appeared from nowhere, screaming slogans and distributing leaflets. One of them even had a banner, bearing a highly coloured portrait of Engels on one side, and a quotation in German on the other (the article having been salvaged from a sympathetic foreign organization recently dissolved by the authorities).
Griselda, whose first political meeting this was, looked around terrified. Fortunately, however, there appeared to have been no loss of life, or even major injury, and what blood the historian could have drawn upon, had come mainly from noses. There was, however, a terrible smell of poor quality chemicals and burnt cardboard. The victims of the outrage were setting themselves and their chairs upon their feet, adjusting their garments and calling for redress. Those who had not been bowled over, were even more belligerent, having more available energy.
Immediately a flood of policemen armed with batons poured through the french windows, and made a series of arrests. The Communists were borne off into the scented night, twisting and biting. One of them had been standing close to Griselda, screeching out vilifications, his face that of a modern gargoyle. In the rough and tumble with the police he was knocked out and dragged from the ballroom by the legs.
‘Ladies and gentleman. Supper is served.’
Mrs Hatch had resumed control. Griselda was startled by the volume of the cadaverous Brundrit’s voice, as he stood at the other side of the ballroom, just inside the door from the passage.
For the most part, the guests pulled themselves together smartly, and another long queue began to form. The Communists had provided everyone with something to talk about. A small group, however, remained round the platform, and between the heads Griselda could see that both Mr Leech and Mr Minnit lay recumbent in their chairs. Recalling for the second time during the visit her slight knowledge of first-aid, she was about to go forward and offer assistance, when a handsome figure detached itself from the group and approached. It was Edwin.
‘How entirely that mask becomes you.’
Griselda had forgotten. She groped at the knot behind her head.
‘No. Don’t take it off. Unless, of course, you wish; in which case you must allow me to assist.’
‘Clearly it is no disguise.’
‘Were you seeking to escape supper?’
Griselda remembered. It was appalling.
‘I went out in the garden. I am dreadfully rude.’
‘Not at all. The speeches, you know, were to have been after supper. The broadcasting arrangements were responsible for the change. It’s late, but at least we’ve now nothing to do but enjoy ourselves.’ He offered Griselda his arm. They moved towards the tail of the queue.
‘What about poor Mr Leech?’ Edwin’s lack of concern seemed inconsistent with his usual attitude to Cabinet Ministers.
‘He’ll be better soon. One becomes used to these things in politics.’
‘I didn’t know that.’
‘They’re all to the good really. They bring the sediment to the surface so that it can be skimmed off instead of seeping all through society.’
‘How did they get in?’
‘In the BBC van. This is going to take a long time.’ The queue was advancing at a pace so irksome to the ravening guests that, here and there, some of them had to recall to others the conventions of behaviour. ‘If you’ll excuse me for just a single minute, I’ll see if something can be done.’
With a precise movement Edwin replaced Griselda’s arm by her side, then disappeared out of the ballroom and into the passage, leaving her alone in the queue. Shortly afterwards he returned.
‘I’ve made arrangements.’
Ignoring the queue, he took Griselda into a little book-lined study, where the Duke and Duchess, together with a group of elegant people Griselda had not met, were eating and drinking in privacy. Everybody was speaking German, in which language Edwin immediately gave every appearance of being word-perfect, though Griselda could not be sure. He conversed animatedly with her, every now and then throwing out a remark in German to the others; and looked after her needs with delightful punctiliousness. She was introduced to the strangers, who made her welcome in broken English, and complimented her upon her mask. The Duchess, radiant in her tight dress, kept a kindly eye upon her welfare. Though Griselda understood little of the general conversation (Edwin was discussing the year’s books with her), the atmosphere was friendly and delightful. Griselda had become very hungry in the night air. She ate happily, and drank luxuriously from a glass with a hollow stem.
Suddenly the Duchess cried out in her attractive voice ‘Shall we have a game?’ She had been speaking German so much as a German does, and now spoke English so much as does an English-woman long married to a foreigner and resident abroad, that Griselda was at a loss to decide her nationality, whether English, German, or Ruritanian.
Conversation ceased and there were guttural cries of assent. They all seated themselves round a large polished table and the Duchess explained to Griselda the rules of an extremely simple card game. They began to play. The game was neither dependent on chance nor exigent of skill: it demanded a degree of intelligence which Griselda, in the circumstances, found perfectly appropriate and delightful. The language difficulty seemed strangely to vanish once they were all immersed, giving Griselda a dreamy illusion of brilliant communicativeness. Small sums of money continually passed, the women every now and then turning out their gay evening handbags for change. Edwin continued to ply Griselda with champagne, nor were the other players backward in drinking. From time to time Griselda wondered what was becoming of the dance, but decided that if the others were unconcerned, she would be unconcerned also. It had been obvious that the main business of the evening was over by the time she had left the ballroom.
No one had interrupted them, but, at the end of a round, suddenly one of the men, a fair youth, resembling Lohengrin, said something in German, and, rising, locked the door. Several of the women (whose ages were unusually disparate), thereupon embarked on motions apparently preliminary to removing their clothes.
Griselda was a little drunk, but not too drunk to observe that her new friends seemed unanimously to turn to some new pursuit upon a word from one of them.
The women were wearing little and the present process could not last long. Almost before it started, however, the Duchess realized that Griselda, as a stranger among them and of a different nation from the majority, might wish to leave. Probably the young man, in making his proposal, had forgotten about her. But at a word, he unlocked the door, they all ceremoniously bade her Good-night, and Edwin escorted her into the hall. The door shut behind them.
Outside the little room it was cool and quiet. Griselda found that all the other guests had apparently departed.
‘I expect,’ said Edwin, ‘that you must be ready for bed. Or can I do anything further?’
‘Nothing, thank you,’ said Griselda, drowsy with drink. ‘You have been really very kind to me. I enjoyed the Duchess’s card game.’
‘I think the others have gone up already.’ Edwin and Griselda were drifting towards the staircase.
‘I am sure they have. Good night. And thank you again.’
‘Good night, Griselda.’ It was obvious that, in the most considerate possible way, he wished to be rid of her. She ascended.
Even at this distance the air was loaded with the smell of the banked carnations in the ballroom. It had long since overpowered the smell of cordite.
XI
Griselda did not again see or hear of Louise until the following evening. It was a desert of time; and a desert with few oases. However, she had happy thoughts and bright, vague prospects: things often preferable to the presence of the being who inspires them.
Back in her room she felt tired and contented, though her mask would not slip over the top of her head and the untying of the knot proved tedious. In the end, however, the labour was accomplished and the velvet strip lay on the dressing-table before her, loading the air with the smell of Louise. Griselda sat resting her arms, looking at the mask, and thinking. How and when, she wondered, would the late guests return to their homes? How had Edwin, although still quite young, achieved welcome ingress into every single one of the world’s innumerable diverse sodalities? Was Mr Leech alive or dead? What would become of her and Louise, once they had left Beams? Louise’s scent wafted strongly to her brain: more strongly than the faint vapours from the mask could account for. Either it was Stephanie; or it was Griselda’s first experience of a lover’s hallucination of the sense of smell. The memory of her ecstacy in the garden swept even fear from her.
She put the mask in a drawer and soon she was in bed. Immediately she slept. There was no other sign of Stephanie; and the room and the night were quiet. Griselda dreamed of a posse of policemen dancing rapturously with the late guests.
In the morning it was again raining. In the muddy light water slapped against the glass of the windows in frequent protracted spasms. Griselda looked at the wrist-watch on the table beside her bed. Despite appearances, it was half-past nine. There was no evidence that she had been called, but clearly it was time to rise. She lay for a moment remembering her happiness. She saw that there was a puddle on the carpet. The rain had been entering for hours through the window she had carefully opened the night before.
She shut the window and dressed. She put on the clothes in which she had arrived, because she imagined that Louise would prefer them to the only other day clothes she had, those she had worn the day before. The silk blouse and linen skirt, though white and black respectively, which Griselda was sure would be taken as progress in the right direction, were far from warm. It was remarkable that such a morning could follow such a night. But the weather would surely deter Mrs Hatch from the proposed walk of which Griselda retained an indistinct though menacing recollection. Griselda decided to put appearance before comfort for as long as the circulation of her blood permitted. She was sure that Louise would approve of this.
Exactly as on the previous morning, Mrs Hatch was seated at the breakfast table alone. She wore the same grey sweater. She was talking in an unusually low voice to Brundrit and Monk, both of whom were stooping towards her, one on each side of her chair.
‘Excellent,’ said Mrs Hatch, as Griselda entered. ‘You’re first again. Sit down and take some eggs.’ She went on murmuring to her retainers. Griselda could catch only parts of sentences and thought it would be impolite to occupy her former breakfast seat next to her hostess. Taking two eggs, she proceeded towards the other end of the table.
The conference ended with the retainers straightening up and walking away, one on each side of the long table, looking remarkably gloomy, which came easily to Brundrit, but to Monk only with effort.
‘Whatever happens,’ called Mrs Hatch in her usual clear tones, ‘I cannot be kept hanging about in the house after half-past-eleven. Everybody concerned must clearly realize that this is Sunday.’ It was a fact Griselda had forgotten. Tomorrow she was to return.
‘I perfectly understand, madam,’ said Brundrit, in his reverberating croak. ‘We shall see to it that everyone is apprised.’
‘Do,’ said Mrs Hatch. They departed. The room, for the first time in Griselda’s experience, was without a domestic to assist with the eating.
‘Good morning, Griselda,’ continued Mrs Hatch. ‘I should have said that before. Please forgive me and have some cocoa.’
‘Good morning, Mrs Hatch.’
‘You are somewhat distant.’
Griselda started; then realized that the allusion was spatial.
‘Shall I move?’
‘I think that would be better. Come and sit next to me, as you did yesterday, and tell me what you thought about the dance. Politics apart, I fancy everything went like a circus, do not you?’ Griselda was transporting two eggs, one of them opened and liquid, a plate bearing a slice of bread and butter, and a heavy bowl of cocoa. Before she had time effectively to reply Mrs Hatch continued: ‘You’re not very appropriately dressed. The clothes you were wearing yesterday would have been more suitable. You don’t mind my speaking practically? Your Mother wouldn’t be pleased with me if you were to go home with a streaming cold after our walk.’
Griselda looked at the windows. A curtain of water cataracted down the glass, completely isolating the room from the grey world outside.
‘Are we walking in weather like this?’
Seated next to her hostess, Griselda saw that today Mrs Hatch was wearing a pair of waterproof trousers from Burberry’s and knew that the game was up.
‘You won’t take any harm if you wrap up, and if you’ve never walked in the rain you should take this opportunity of making a start. It’s enjoyable. But naturally you must not come if you would prefer not to.’ Mrs Hatch said this perfectly kindly, and without any intent to shame; and Griselda responded accordingly. She never had walked in the rain except reluctantly, uncomfortably, and under the stress of need; but at Beams she had already liked a number of things which she had not thought to like or had never liked before.
‘I’ll come if I can borrow some suitable clothes. When do we start?’
‘I usually start at half-past ten. But today we’re burying Odile’s dog first. I’ve just been settling the arrangements with Brundrit and Monk. I don’t think we’ll get away much before an hour after the proper time. Still we must think of Odile’s feelings. We don’t usually call our guests on Sunday. As I’m not prepared to stay at home and entertain them, I think it’s only fair to let them sleep if they can. But today everyone’s coming to the ceremony. Except, unfortunately, Austin Barnes, who has been really not at all himself after last night’s incident. I have reluctantly come to the conclusion that Austin is no longer the man he was. It’s a pity, because otherwise he’d be coming with us. Many’s the hard tramp I’ve taken with Austin Barnes during the last thirty years. I cannot believe he’ll be much further use to the country if he’s really leaving me to go alone.’ Mrs Hatch seemed genuinely upset by the Cabinet Minister’s defection.
‘I expect he’s run down,’ said Griselda sympathetically. ‘Perhaps he’s been in office too long.’
‘I’m very fond of Austin,’ replied Mrs Hatch after a moment’s thought, and gulping a draught of cocoa. ‘I’ve always been his inspiration, I believe; and through him I’ve inspired the course of events from time to time. Otherwise I prefer the company of women, in the main. They both feel more and have more common sense. So you gain both ways.’
Yet again Griselda felt herself blushing; this time darkly and hatefully.
‘Though it’s rarely enough I find myself having anything much in common with anybody. Another egg?’
‘No thank you. I’ve had enough.’ But suddenly Mrs Hatch’s character had been enlightened to Griselda, far beyond anything Mrs Hatch had actually said; and Griselda, to her surprise, did not dislike what she saw. It had been the same with some others at Beams, she realized. The dreadfulness of people was possibly a product not only of their isolation, but also of their community and likeness to one another. Griselda, while pitying and even liking Mrs Hatch, felt curiously superior to her.
No one else appeared for breakfast.
‘I’ll lend you a waterproof. A proper one,’ said Mrs Hatch, as she wiped her mouth. ‘I’ll send Mullet. The funeral’s arranged for eleven. In the shrubbery down by the large pond. Among the fruit trees. You’d better meet me in the hall, and we’ll go together.’
It was sad to miss a possible chance of seeing Louise. But in a short time Mullet appeared in Griselda’s room with an enormous mackintosh and a pair of dark brown boots lacing to the knee.
‘Mrs Hatch says will you try these for size.’
Griselda inserted her feet.
‘Mrs Hatch keeps all sizes for her Sunday walkers. But she’s good at guessing people’s feet.’
‘They fit perfectly.’
‘Will I help you lace them?’
‘I’ll be lacing all day if you don’t.’
The boots were wonderfully warm. They supported Griselda’s calves in a manner which was new and unbelievably comfortable. She donned the vast mackintosh and drew the hood over her head.
Mrs Hatch awaited her in the hall, wearing a tunic and beret matching her trousers. Most of the other guests were also assembled, unbreakfasted and varyingly ill-prepared against the climate. George Goss, who apparently had a really dangerous hangover, wore a shaggy dingy ulster, the bottom edge of which varied greatly in its distance from the ground. Pamela wore an allegedly protective garment more calculated to seduce the eye than to resist the rainfall. Even Mr Leech was there, looking little worse than usual. There was a group of servants attired like refugees, and no more enlivened by the project before them than anybody else. Only the Duke and Duchess were missing.
‘Shall I go up and offer a word of encouragement?’ asked Edwin.
But as he spoke the bereaved couple appeared at the head of the staircase, contained in elegant waterproofs of Continental cut. The Duchess wore a small black velvet hat with a large black feather, a purple silk mackintosh and black Russian boots. A veil was drawn tightly across her face and knotted behind her head. Through it her features appeared completely white and her eyes very large. Altogether she looked most striking. Grislda recalled her very different aspect on the last occasion she had seen her. Clearly the Duchess responded with a whole heart to all life’s different occasions, however contrarily they might succeed one another. The Duke carried a cherrywood box under his left arm, presumably containing the deceased.
‘It will be a shorter walk in the rain for those of us who dislike getting wet, if we go through the ballroom,’ said Mrs Hatch in a loud firm voice before the Duke and Duchess had reached the bottom of the staircase. Possibly she wished to save her guests from having to grope for further unconvincing commiserations. She began to marshall the cortиge.
‘Griselda and I will lead the way. Edwin and Pamela had better come next. Then will you, Mr Leech, follow with George? Then Gottfried and Odile. The rest of you can follow after. Would you like Monk to carry Fritzi?’
‘Thank you, Melanie. He is light as feathers.’
‘Very well. Then I think we had better go at once.’
They set off down the passage to the ballroom, their mackintoshes rustling in the silence, otherwise broken only by George Goss’s heavy breathing. Griselda noticed that the Prime Minister was carrying a club-like walking stick. In the ballroom, which now looked depressing in the extreme, the Duchess, who was bearing up wonderfully, broke step and, crossing to the platform occupied the night before by the band, bore back a vast armful of carnations, not as fresh as they had been but still far from dead, which she proceeded to carry in the little procession like a prima donna, her head sunk among the petals. Mrs Hatch had opened one of the french windows, and the party entered the garden.
It was indeed a dispiriting day: one on which it was equally difficult to believe that things had ever been otherwise or that they would ever be otherwise again. The party advanced up the soaking wet lawn and entered the group of trees. Griselda was surprised that the distance was not greater before they reached a large hole, surrounded with adhesive black earth rapidly turning to mud, beside which stood her elderly gravedigger of the night before, leaning on his enormous spade.
‘Is everything prepared, Hammersmith?’ enquired Mrs Hatch.
‘Ready it is, mum,’ replied Hammersmith. ‘Ready since midnight it’s been. Ready and waitin’ for yer.’
‘Never mind about that now. Though it’s always best to do things in good time, of course.’ She addressed the others. ‘There’s going to be a short ceremony. Will you all please gather round the grave? You too, Hammersmith. Don’t you go.’
Griselda, encased against the elements, glanced round her fellow guests. Pamela’s teeth were chattering rather audibly. George Goss, who had augmented his horrible ulster with an antique cloth cap, resembled a dyspeptic bison. Mr Leech wore an expression of extreme resignation. Edwin looked as if his mind were on other things. Mrs Hatch, impervious to the rain and efficient as ever, looked trim and attractive by contrast with the rest. The aspect of the Duke and Duchess, as chief mourners, was such as to touch the heart of any statue. The aspect of Hammersmith, his vast muscles outlined by his soaking shirt, his red-brown eyes glaring at the coffin, was likely to unman any young woman less resolute than Griselda in her new boots.
‘Proceed,’ said Mrs Hatch. Griselda, whose Mother went regularly to church, gravely doubted the canonicity of the whole affair.
The Duke pulled his wide-brimmed homburg hat further over his eyes and made a short speech. On his wife’s behalf he thanked them all for their attendance and even for their existence. When setting out for a weekend of joy with a lady beloved by all of them, their dear Melanie, they were unlikely to have foreseen an occasion to tragic as the present, and made so much worse by the weather. (At this point Mr Leech was seized with a spasm of sneezing, which continued to the end of the Duke’s remarks. He sneezed inefficiently; giving on each occasion the effect of unsuccessfully attempted suppression leading to rising inner dementia.) Though only a dog the one they mourned was as dear to those who loved him as any prodigal son. He had been with them eleven years and now he was gone away. (Here Griselda heard the terrifying Hammersmith vigorously expectorate.) Where he had gone or whether dogs had souls like the rest of them, it was useless to speculate. In gratitude to them all for their sympаthy, however, in particular to their dear Melanie for her gift of so sentimental a resting place, he had prepared a poem, such being the custom of his country, which he would like to read to them. He had to apologize for the poem being in German, but his Muse, not very ready even in her native tongue, was dumb in another. He hoped that most of them would have enough German at least to follow the general theme; and that the rest would appreciate that he was speaking from the heart. Here was the poem.
The Duke produced a fair-sized wad of paper from the pocket of his waterproof, and, at a sign from Mrs Hatch, Monk raised an umbrella. Pamela, who disliked poetry, had seated herself upon a wheelbarrow, where she rocked backwards and forwards quietly moaning. George Goss simply walked off towards the house. Shortly they all heard him being sick among the bushes. The Duke took a step forward as from a line of Imperial Guards; Monk followed him with the umbrella; and the Duke began. Fortunately Mr Leech had stopped sneezing, though he was beginning to look very wet.
Before the poem was far advanced, indeed during the first five minutes, the Duchess was weeping fluently; and by the time the final antistrophe was due, she was in an appalling state of dampness, though Griselda had been offering what comfort she could. Edwin, who clearly appreciated every word and nuance of the poem, listened throughout alertly, like one assessing its merits in a competition. Mrs Hatch stood as to the National Anthem. The Duke read remarkably well, in full and expressive accents of passion and woe. Griselda wondered whether he too had been trained by Moissi. At the end there was an extremely long silence, though Pamela could be heard grunting miserably in the rear. The heavy rain was making the vapours rise from the newly strewn manure.
Now it was time for the committal. The Duke clicked his heels and passed the coffin to Edwin, who, his features distraught with fellow feeling, transferred it to Hammersmith. The hole was very much to big (it was impossible to resist the idea that Hammersmith had postulated some larger occupant); and had been filling for hours with surface water. Before Mrs Hatch could stop him, however, Hammersmith had hurled the coffin into the grave, splashing and muddying the mourners from their hats to their shoes; and had raised his left arm, bare from the bole-like-elbow, towards the sky in a cosmic Niebelungenliedlike gesture. Instantly there was a thunderous salute, as a maroon, released at the signal by the garden boy (hidden behind some laurels for the purpose), tore apart the hopeless clouds until it vanished into the empyrean. Hammersmith’s face, neck, and shirt had been plastered with yellow subsoil from the grave, making him look more primeval than ever; but as Griselda averted her eyes, she saw that Mr Leech had fainted. He was not so used to loud bangs as Edwin the night before had implied.
They returned to the house: Edwin carrying Pamela in his arms: and Mrs Hatch and the Duke bearing Mr Leech (fortunately a lightweight) between them, as Mrs Hatch considered that Hammersmith had better fill in the vast grave before someone fell into it and damaged himself. The Duchess, distinctly more buoyant now that all was over, scattered the carnations in a wide circle round Fritzi’s resting place; to which Hammersmith returned a grimly abrupt acknowledgement, his rufus eyes rolling, his ropey muscles extending and contracting all over him as he shovelled.
‘Now that little Fritzi has been laid to rest, can we not once more be gay?’ enquired the Duchess in her curious interglossal accent. It was nearly 11.30. Edwin had carried Pamela upstairs; and Mr Leech, his sensibilities revived by Monk, sat quietly in a corner drinking, at his own request, a tumbler of warm water laced with a dessertspoonful of brandy.
Mrs Hatch was seen to hesitate.
‘I usually tramp until dusk,’ she said, ‘But today for your sake, Odile, I shall make an exception. I shall return for a late luncheon, if all of you are prepared to wait, and after luncheon we’ll play games. If that is agreed, perhaps, Odile, you’d be so good as to order luncheon for 2.15. Mr Leech had better only have arrowroot. Come, Griselda; let us return to our elements.’
Though Mrs Hatch walked very fast, Griselda, used to long lonely walks almost since childhood (for conditions at home had tended both to drive her afield and to compel her to solitude), was perfectly able to keep pace with her. Mrs Hatch, moreover, had been right about walking in the rain. A proper costume made all the difference (just as Louise had said). Whatever else Griselda thought of her hostess, she would always owe to her the introduction to a new pleasure, which was more than was usually owed to anyone. As they walk through the lanes (some of them in process of development into the avenues of a new housing estate), Mrs Hatch cross-examined Griselda about her life and Griselda schemed to find out more about Mrs Hatch. Neither was particularly successful, but each returned home with increased respect for the other, and a glow of joyous struggle. Griselda re-entered the house warm and dry, hungry and happy; also muddy to the tops of her boots, and healthy to the roots of her hair. She felt equal to anything: to Louise’s love; or, contrariwise, even to an afternoon of organized playfulness.
On the doorstep they met George Goss, still wearing his horrid blanket and untidy bonnet, but green as a chameleon on a faded billiard-table.
‘I say, Melanie, will there be a chemist in Hodley who’s open on Sunday?’
Mrs Hatch, pushing out health and unbuttoning her tunic, took in the seedy figure of her distinguished guest.
‘Nonsense, George, you don’t want a chemist. Six or seven mugs of cold water will flush you much more cleanly. Besides how are you going to reach Hodley? If you walk it, you won’t need any other remedy.’
George Goss shuddered all over. Then he said ‘I was going in Leech’s car.’
‘I didn’t know that Leech was leaving us?’
‘Cabinet Meeting or something. As if I care. But his car’s due any minute.’ He spoke quasi-sotto-voce.
Lurking about the hall were four strange doughty-looking men in ready-made tweeds. Mr Leech, wearing an overcoat and hat of the type favoured by important public figures, was seated on a hard chair in their midst, his official despatch-case, his botanical vade-mecum, and a large Gladstone bag on the floor at his feet. As Mrs Hatch entered, he rose and came towards her, looking his most imposing.
‘It is as Mr Goss says, Mrs Hatch. My hand is immediately and unexpectedly needed on the rudder of state. Now that we are subject to a Coalition, such sudden calls must, I daresay, be expected of us all.’
‘Who are these men?’ asked Mrs Hatch in a loud undertone.
‘A foolish precaution deemed necessary by our new Home Secretary,’ replied Mr Leech. ‘One of Minnit’s people, as you will recall. For my own part I should not only have preferred to take my chance, but should have insisted upon doing so. But it is necessary to tread softly in these early days, so I have subdued my natural inclinations.’ None the less, Griselda thought, the Prime Minister appeared distinctly to have gathered confidence from some source or other.
‘What about lunch before you go? Your arrowroot? After your misadventure, it would hardly be prudent to travel underfed.’
‘Thank you, Brundrit was good enough to lay me out some brawn,’ replied the Prime Minister a little stiffly, ‘and I helped myself to a couple of Abernethy biscuits. I am too old a campaigner, you know, to require more.’
A large black car had driven up outside. It was visible through the open front door. A footman dismounted and stood in the doorway holding a camel-hair rug. Griselda noticed that he carried two pistols in holsters attached to his belt. The pistols were large and old-fashioned, and made him look like a pirate.
‘I’m sorry you have to leave so suddenly,’ said Mrs Hatch, ‘but Griselda and I will see you off. As for you, George, you’d better go and lie down.’
‘Lying down only makes me vomit,’ said George. ‘I’d have you know I’ve a headache.’
‘Griselda knows about those things and may be able to help you,’ said Mrs Hatch. ‘All in good time. Do you think you have everything, Mr Leech?’
Griselda liked as little as ever the look on George Goss’s face; and she turned to bid the Prime Minister adieu, Mr Leech had made for the door with an unusually determined step, almost amounting, indeed, to a stride. In many ways he seemed a changed man. His henchmen had taken up positions from which the entire scene could instantly be raked with gun-fire.
‘Good-bye,’ said Mr Leech, smiling gravely. ‘And thank you. I know nowhere which offers such peace as the rose garden at Beams.’
‘My roses are sensible of your devotion, Mr Leech.’ At this point Griselda noticed the barrel of a musket projecting from the rear window of the Daimler.
‘It is ever and again to the ample silent things of life that we return for renewal,’ continued Mr Leech, his eye searching the watery clouds from under the brim of his important-looking hat. ‘Bur too soon we are recalled by the reveille of duty.’ A few big drops of rain fell from his hat on to the astrakhan of his lapels.
‘Too soon, indeed,’ replied Mrs Hatch. She began to rebutton her tunic. There seemed no knowing how long this might continue.
Griselda realized that she had greatly grown since she had first set eyes on Mr Leech two days before.
‘Good-bye,’ said Mr Leech again, suddenly pulling himself together and smartly returning the chauffeur’s salute. ‘Good-bye, Miss de Reptonville.’ Griselda remembered that success in public life is dependent upon remembering people’s names.
‘Good-bye, Mr Leech.’
The Prime Minister set aside the proffered camel-hair rug.
‘Thank you, no. Not on this occasion.’ The atmosphere was heavy with the crisis and the coalition as well as with the damp.
Mr Leech took his place beside the musket: the footman beside the driver. There was a moment’s uncertain silence as the four bodyguards whispered among themselves, in the manner of Becket’s murderers. Then one of them without a word opened the car door and, seating himself next to Mr Leech, manned the lethal object. He fiddled about with the mechanism like a wood-wind player tuning his instrument. The weapon still pointed directly at Griselda.
In the moment the car started Mrs Hatch cried out ‘What shall I do about Austin Barnes?’
It was no good. Already the Prime Minister’s eyelids were drooping into slumber. Mr Leech had been having a strenuous time of it.
‘It’s all very well, but what am I to do about Austin?’ Mrs Hatch seemed seriously to be seeking Griselda’s advice.
‘Everything’s in order, Mrs Hatch,’ said Edwin’s voice in the doorway. ‘I deeply regret to say that Austin Barnes has felt it his duty to offer the Prime Minister his resignation.’ The moist air wafted the distinctive perfume of Pamela, heavy on Edwin’s black suit, the very essence of fashionable mourning.
‘Resigned?’ It was a cry from Mrs Hatch’s heart.
‘Quite resigned.’
‘I must go to him.’
‘I think that would be best. The Prime Minister asked me to tell you after he had gone; and to apologize on his behalf for his inability to tell you himself. He was sure you would understand that the emotion involved was too much for him at the present time.’
Without a word, Mrs Hatch had re-entered the house.
‘Permit me to escort you.’ Edwin, who had not risked getting wet a second time in the same morning, also disappeared into the gloom within. The three surviving murderers had previously likewise vanished, their grim countenances set for food from Mrs Hatch’s groaning granaries.
Griselda was left by herself waiting for luncheon in the rain she had learnt to love. Before going in, she put back her hood and raised her face towards the discouraging heavens. She was startled to see the head and shoulders of Louise projecting from an upstairs window. She was wearing a perfectly white mackintosh. There was no knowing how long she had been there. She threw Griselda a kiss with one hand and a letter with the other. Then she withdrew indoors, shutting the sash window with a marked slam.
Overwhelmed, Griselda looked at the letter. On a thick sheet of deckle-edged hand-made writing paper, it had been folded and sealed, in the fashion of the days before Sir Rowland Hill, with a big medallion of bright yellow wax. It was superscribed simply ‘Griselda’ in black ink and a large well-proportioned hand artistically simplified. Letting the heavy rain uncurl her hair, Griselda split the seal and unfolded the letter. In such a hand there was not room for many words upon a single side of a sheet of hand-made paper.
‘Never forget, dear dove, that the sky into which you soar is full of falcons and that falcons fly higher than doves. As I listen, your heart is softening towards the falcons. Beware of the falcons! They not only kill: they disfigure. Their nests are matted with blood. The streets and fields are filled with bodies whose vitals the falcons have eaten. The falcons eat only the hearts, the brains, and the livers of their prey; whom, bored, they then return, like bottles, Empty. The Empties clutter our lives: they break easily, and becoming worthless become also dangerous.’
The letter ended with a single tender sentence which made Griselda very happy. Though dated it was unsigned. Raindrops, like tears, were beginning to spoil it. Griselda put it into a pocket of her borrowed mackintosh.
‘We are waiting.’
Mrs Hatch had reappeared in the doorway. Some time must have passed, for she had changed into a skirt. Griselda, though extremely hungry after her walk, had forgotton about luncheon. There was no knowing how long Mrs Hatch had been standing there.
‘I’m so sorry. You’ve taught me to enjoy rain. I’ve been enjoying it.’
She thought that Mrs Hatch’s expression was equivocal and, for some reason, not very likeable.
‘You need to take proper precautions.’ Griselda raised her hand to her head and realized that her hair had become very wet. ‘If you don’t mind us starting to eat without you, I think you’d better go upstairs and dry yourself.’
Griselda entered the house. She opened the collar of her mackintosh. ‘How is Mr Barnes?’
Mrs Hatch glanced at her sharply. ‘I’m finished with Austin Barnes.’ Something was obviously wrong with her: and presumably this was it.
Griselda wondered what to say.
‘One of your oldest friends? Surely not?’
‘Old and new, the world’s much of a piece,’ replied Mrs Hatch with intense bitterness. She turned from Griselda and entered the dining-room.
Upstairs, Griselda removed the heavy mackintosh and suspended it in the bathroom to drip and dry. After hours of it, she felt so underclad without it that she more clearly understood how little related to any consideration of utility is the quantity of clothes people wear. She towelled her short curly hair into a bewitching disarray. She put on a red pullover. She would have liked to remove her boots, but time pressed.
She descended to an extremely late luncheon. From inside George Goss’s bedroom came an intermittent soft mooing as of a cow in her last labour before retirement from maternity. Griselda realized that her period of communion with the rainfall had among other things spared her from having to hold George Goss’s sick head and necessary basin.
The party for luncheon was indeed depleted, in spirit more than in number. George Goss and Mr Leech were absent: and Pamela should have been, for she had contrived to contract a most unpleasant cold. Despite this malady and the inappropriate weather, she had refused in any way to wrap up, but sat sniffing and sneezing in a delicate eau-de-nil crepe-de-chine blouse, sleeveless and conspicuously open at the throat. It was noticeable that Mrs Hatch had apparently now washed her hands of all responsibility for Pamela’s welfare and happiness. Even Edwin had seated himself as far as possible from the source of infection, where he was discoursing, as Griselda entered, upon the subject of the main item in the next St James’s News-Letter.
‘We all found ourselves in complete agreement,’ said Edwin, ‘that an attempt must be made – on a world scale, needless to say – to vitalize the inner life of the working man. Happily the means came at once to hand. That very same evening I spoke of the need to the wife of a certain Polish Prince, a woman having great wealth of her own – invested outside Poland, of course: who at once suggested that the answer was a film, but of an entirely new type, not a specifically religious film, you understand, but a film aiming in the same general direction though stated in contemporary terms, a film that would really penetrate through the top-dressing of propaganda and take root in the wholesome soil beneath.’
‘So to speak, a non-religious religious film?’ suggested the Duchess helpfully.
Mrs Hatch, Griselda noticed, was really looking very sour indeed: almost baleful.
‘You might, I suppose, put it like that,’ said Edwin rather doubtfully. ‘At least in sophisticated society such as this. Anyway, the Princess (I am sorry I cannot tell you her name, but she particularly wishes to remain entirely nameless in this matter, which she conceives in the light of a high spiritual duty), the Princess is not only prepared to arrange finance for the whole project, but actually has access to an entirely suitable director for the film, a man who treats the cinema almost as if it were a true medium for art. The Princess has assisted in the birth of many of his past productions, and has often been very close to him in a number of different ways. She told me that the two of them together could do things that neither of them could do apart. It is true that the man’s a Galician Jew, but the Princess says he has more of the real thing in him than any other Christian she’s ever met. And, after all, it’s her money,’ concluded Edwin, descending to the world of fact.
The trouble was that no one seemed sufficiently interested, though the Duke and Duchess followed up politely.