The Late Breakfasters (Faber Finds)

‘My tea’s waiting for me, you know.’

At this there was a burst of perceptibly forced laughter.

‘I’ll send for a policeman.’

‘Call out the Cossacks!’

Lena went up to the lodge-keeper and spoke in his ear. He stepped back. Lena raised her hand.

‘Sir Travis Raunds is dead. He died this afternoon,’ she said in her clear voice. ‘So go home.’

There were a few jeers, and a cry of ‘Why couldn’t you say so?’ but the group began to retreat, more or less content in the knowledge that they were alive and that the future was theirs. It seemed to occur to none of them to doubt Lena’s statement.

‘That was brave of you, Lena,’ said Griselda.

‘So it was, miss,’ said the lodge-keeper. ‘But, of course, I ’ad old Cupid up my sleeve all the time.’

‘Would Cupid have helped?’

‘Torn ’em apart, miss. Cupid only needed a word from me to tear ’em apart. Just one word. That’s Cupid.’ He indicated a vague black shape which looked too big for the white wooden kennel placed in the lodge-keeper’s miniature garden. ‘Sir Travis named him after a gentleman he used to know when he was in politics.’

‘Good old Cupid.’

It seemed unnecessary to pat Cupid, as he was asleep. He wore a collar with large spikes, like a drawing by Cruikshank; and his muzzle was matted with some sticky substance. When Griselda mentioned his name, he growled in his sleep.

‘It’s sad news about Sir Travis.’

‘Yes and no, miss. Times have changed since the Old Queen’s day. Not that either of you young ladies will care about that. But up at the house it’s just as if the Old Queen was still with us. Just like Windsor Castle, it is.’

‘You don’t say so?’ said Griselda sympathetically.

‘I expect you young ladies believe in being modern and up-to-date?’

‘You can tell at a glance,’ said Lena.

‘It’s the best thing. But Sir Travis, he never would see it.’

Outside the park, they found their way without particular difficulty to where they had left the rest of the party.

‘You’re good at it,’ said Griselda. ‘You must have what is known as a sense of direction.’

‘These little jaunts are symbolical,’ replied Lena. ‘Instead of leaving the organization to me, who, as you rightly say, am good at it, they will always leave it to Geoffrey, because they like him and because he’s no good at it at all, which saves them the anguish of envying him. Not that I greatly care,’ she added. ‘I really only come to watch.’

‘I’m not bad at finding the way myself, you know, Lena. Women often are better at things than men, aren’t they?’

‘Men have uses, all the same.’

Griselda said nothing; because at that moment the place where they had lunched came into view.

There was no sign of the party. Instead, a troop of Boy scouts were learning about the Arctic.

‘Was there anyone here when you arrived?’ asked Griselda. ‘Sitting on the grass?’

‘No one at all,’ replied the scoutmaster. ‘Only rather a lot of litter, I regret to say.’

A rustle went round the troop at Griselda’s good looks and Lena’s trousers.

‘Come to the pictures, miss,’ cried out one of the more precocious scouts.

So Griselda and Lena had to find their way back to London unattended; which they did with much pleasure. The day ended with Lena accompanying Griselda back to Greenwood Tree House for coffee and anchovies. It was after midnight when Lena departed, but there was still no sign of Peggy.

XXVI

Hugo Raunds was not in the Telephone Directory, and even in ‘Who’s Who’ he figured solely as his father’s heir, without even an address of his own. To Sir Travis were ascribed four different residences, one in each of the four kingdoms; but Griselda wrote to Sir Hugo at the one she knew. She asked simply if he had any knowledge of the possible whereabouts of a girl named Louise, whom she had met at Mrs Hatch’s house, Beams, had since lost touch with, and wished to meet again. ‘In the course of conversation she mentioned you several times; so I venture to trouble you.’

One day in the shop a pleasant young man made a really determined attempt to engage Griselda’s interest. Entering merely in order to enquire for a copy of The Last Days of Pompeii, he had not departed before, in Mr Tamburlane’s temporary absence, he had persuaded her to accompany him that evening to the Piccadilly Hotel for drinks.

‘We might dance somewhere afterwards.’

‘I don’t dance.’

‘Then we’ll go somewhere else and have some more drinks.’

It proved all too true. By the time they had migrated from the Piccadilly Hotel to Oddenino’s and from Oddenino’s to the Criterion and from the Criterion to the Bodega, Griselda had begun to feel faint.

‘Eat?’ said the young man. ‘Of course. Come back to my place and my girl will run us something up. She’s Italian, you know, or, more accurately, Sardinian.’

He was out of the Bodega (Griselda had felt faint between drinks) and into a taxi with such dexterity that Griselda could not escape without an absurd and embarrassing scene before the cynical eye of the taxi-driver.

‘By the way, my name’s Dennis Hooper. You’ve probably heard of me? I should have told you before.’

Griselda hadn’t. She said nothing. The motion of the taxi was suddenly making her feel really ill; and also there seemed a case for reticence.

He didn’t seem to mind that she hadn’t heard of him.

‘I bet your name’s Anne?’

‘How can you tell?’

‘Every single girl I meet’s called Anne these days. There’s a positive Anne epidemic.’

Griselda could for the moment do nothing but groan.

‘What’s your other name?’

Griselda clutched at a wisp of what she took to be worldly wisdom.

‘Musselwhite.’

‘So you’re Anne Musselwhite. One of the Brigade of Guards people?’

‘No.’

‘I say, would you rather have gone to Scott’s and had lobsters?’

‘No.’

‘Not under the weather are you?’

‘No.’

‘Shall we stop and have a drink? Might pull you round.’

‘No, thank you.’

‘We’re there anyway. There’ll be time for one or two quick ones before we eat. We might go somewhere afterwards and dance.’

The taxi drew up at an exceedingly splendid block of flats. Hooper gave the driver a ten shilling note and waved away the thought of change.

They ascended by lift to the top floor. The flat had fashionable furniture, no pictures, and a view.

‘Gioiosa! Do sit down.’

Griselda seated herself upon a geometrical sofa, upholstered in a strident, headachy green, and applied herself to watching the rotating dome of the Coliseum through the long low windows.

The Sardinian girl entered. She was brown and luscious, and, bearing in mind the characteristics of her people, could not have been more than fourteen. She wore a black satin dress cut alarmingly low, and no stockings.

‘We want to eat. What can you do for us?’

‘A spiced omelette with sauerkraut? Some hot meat served in oil?’

‘Anne Musselwhite. Which?’

‘You haven’t any fish?’

‘Some potted squille only, signorina. Non troppo fresche.’

‘Could I just have a little bread and butter with some warm milk?’

Gioiosa looked at her employer.

‘Anne Musselwhite, you’ve been deceiving me. You are under the weather. You must permit me to prescribe. All right,’ he said to Gioiosa, ‘anything you like.’

‘Anything you say, signore.’ She smiled bewitchingly and departed.

Hooper produced a bunch of keys and unlocked a vast antique cabinet bearing the Hat and blazon of some fourteenth or fifteenth century Prince-Bishop. He mixed a complicated drink, with ingredients derived from the interior.

‘This’ll make your blood run cold.’

‘No thank you. Could I just sit for a few minutes?’

‘Of course. I’ll leave it by you.’ He drew up a three-legged occasional table in cream aluminium.

‘I’m sorry to be such a nuisance.’

‘I expect you’ve been overdoing it in the shop. We’ll have to see about that.’ He poured himself a big round brandy-glass of neat whisky.

‘If I could be quiet for a while, I’ll be perfectly all right.’

‘I’ll leave you by yourself.’ She smiled at him gratefully. Taking his whisky he opened a door into the next room. The door was decorated with scarlet zig-zags. In the doorway, Hooper looked back and said ‘Darling Anne Musselwhite.’ Then he withdrew, shutting the door. Instantly there was the sound of dance music. Hooper’s gramophone was such a good model that it might have been in the room with Griselda.

Griselda removed her feet from the carpet (which was covered with representations of the Eiffel Tower in different colours) and placed them on the sofa. The dome of the Coliseum began to rotate faster and faster, and almost at once, despite the music. Griselda was asleep.

She first dreamed that she was climbing Mount Everest with Mrs Hatch, who was dressed as a lama; then that Epping Forest was ablaze and Sir Travis Raunds’s catafalque, four times life-size, reared itself incombustible in the midst; and lastly that she was dressed rather mistily in white and had just been married to Kynaston. Kynaston had insisted on removing her shoes in the Church Vestry; was embracing her and about to kiss her. It was, she felt, a perfectly agreeable prospect, because for some reason, not very clear, no responsibility attached to the transaction. But before the transaction was completed, Griselda awoke.

Hooper’s arm was round her waist. With his free hand, he was unbuttoning her blouse. Moreover, he had already removed her shoes. Griselda felt it was a situation which Lotus (for example) would have managed better than she.

As she awoke, Hooper sat back a little.

‘I do hope you are feeling cured.’

‘Yes, thank you.’ She was rebuttoning her blouse. ‘Well enough to go.’

‘But Gioiosa has prepared some food for us.’

‘Where are my shoes?’

‘Please don’t misunderstand me. I’m very fond of you, Anne Musselwhite.’

‘Where are my shoes?’

‘Sit down and let’s talk it over. I’ll get you a drink.’

Griselda crossed barefoot to the door.

‘You can’t very well go without your shoes.’

‘I’d rather not. I’ll have to explain what happened in order to borrow a pair.’

‘Anne Musselwhite, you’ve got things all wrong.’ He was recharging his big brandy glass.

There was a knock at the door. Griselda opened it. It was Gioiosa.

‘Ready to eat, signore.’

Looking Griselda up and down, whom previously she had only seen seated, and discovering that she lacked shoes, Gioiosa went into extravagant foreign laughter.

‘Grazie, signorina. Non conobbi.’

She was about to go, but Griselda caught her by the arm.

‘Lend me some shoes. Your feet are about the right size.’

‘You wear my shoes!’ She was giggling like an imbecile.

It seemed hopeless. Griselda dropped her arm and made for the front door. In a moment she was running down the pasage, shoeless like Cinderella at midnight. The carpet in the passage was thick and patterned like a tiger-skin. The walls bore large golden gulls in plastic relief. At the end, an under-porter had been working all day on a defective radiator, and the pieces lay scattered about until he could resume the next day. Some of them had already been kicked quite long distances by passing tenants and visitors.

As Griselda reached the corner where the stair-well began, there was a clatter behind her. She thought that Hooper was in pursuit; then realised that it was only a pair of shoes. She paused and looked back.

‘I tell you, Anne Musselwhite, I think very little to you.’

It occurred to Griselda that if she returned to pick up the shoes there might be further trouble.

‘If you think it’s fair,’ went on Hooper, ‘to take a man’s drink and hospitality, and let him pay for you all round the place, and then give him nothing in return, I for one don’t.’

Griselda turned her back.

‘Won’t you think again? We might go dancing somewhere.’

Griselda’s back was negative.

‘Oh, go to hell,’ said Hooper irritably and slammed the door.

All the same, thought Griselda, it was odd how after weeks and months of only Peggy, she should make so many new friends in so short a time.

Immediately she entered her room, Peggy knocked on her door.

‘Come in Peggy. Sit down. Do you mind if I undress?’

‘I have never thanked you for the picnic.’

‘No need to. I hope you enjoyed it?’

‘I found them interesting to observe.’

‘Lena said something of the same kind.’

‘I thought Lena was more than a little affected, I’m afraid.’

‘Who did you like?’

‘I haven’t known them long enough to like any of them.’

In view of Barney’s attitude, and the lateness of Peggy’s return from the jollification, Griselda thought that disappointing.

XXVII

Promptly, and on writing-paper which reminded her of Louise’s, Griselda received her reply:

Dear Miss de Reptonville,

Of course I know Louise. But I don’t know where she is. I wish I did. I’m sorry.

Very sincerely yours,

Hugo Raunds.

Kynaston, installed as custodian of the Liberator’s immortal memory, moved into an attic flat near his place of work. He had followed Days of Delinquency with Nights of Negation, but his publishers took the view that the receipts from the former work did not justify further adventures; and he was in a state of melancholy mania.

‘Why not try another publisher?’

‘They all work in together.’

Although it was obvious that he was still seeing Lotus (on one occasion he appeared with a strange scar on the side of his neck), or she him, he became really industrious in paying court to Griselda. He would not come to the shop, for fear of Mr Tamburlane; but they would meet at the northern end of the Burlington Arcade, and Griselda would take him to Greenwood Tree House for a good meal and in order to listen to his difficulties and advise him.

‘If I’m not a poet, Griselda, what am I? Am I any more than a current of hot air?’

Unlike Mrs Hatch, Griselda herself did not care for Kynaston’s poems. ‘You dance very well. Why don’t you try to develop that?’

‘I find it empty. As you dance so little yourself, it’s hard to explain to you.’

‘I suppose so. Have some more stew?’

‘Please.’

‘And more potato?’

‘Please.’

‘And more seakale?’

‘Please.’

Griselda sat back. Fortunately Kynaston’s attacks of self-doubt seldom upset his appetite.

‘A piece of currant bread?’

‘If you can spare it.’

Later, when they were seated one on each side of the electric heater, and Kynaston had been describing the difficulties of his early manhood, and munching cream crackers, he said ‘This is what marriage would be like. I think it would be enchanting.’

Griselda could not possibly go as far as that; but, after her recent loneliness and unhappiness, she admitted, though only to herself, that worse things might easily befall her. Kynaston was not very much of a man, but life, she felt, was not very much of a life.

So before he went she let him kiss her on the eyes, and even neck, as well as on the mouth. It was one thing about him that he had never attempted to seduce her. She was quite uncertain whether he cared for her too much or too little.

There were several fogs in November, a rare thing in London. On the foggiest morning Mr Tamburlane arrived late at the shop, wheezing slightly but jubilant. He wore a thick scarf in the colours (a little too vivid, Griselda thought) of the Booksellers Association, and a black Astrakhan hat.

‘My waywardness has put you to the labour of taking down the shutters, Miss de Reptonville. I can but blame a higher power.’ He indicated the fog. ‘But your magnificent zeal is to be repaid a thousandfold. Yes, indeed.’ He sneezed.

‘There’s a new edition of the Apocrypha come in,’ replied Griselda demurely. ‘Shall I arrange some copies in the window?’

‘Work,’ cried Mr Tamburlane, sneezing again, ‘can wait. There are tidings of joy.’

‘What can they be? Shall I make you a warm drink?’

‘A splendid and original device. Let us split a posset. There’s nutmeg in a mustard tin behind the Collected Letters of Horatio Bottomley.’

Griselda set to work in the back room, while Mr Tamburlane sat complimenting her, his legs stretched out to the large gas fire in the shop. Soon the brew was prepared, and Griselda pouring it into large hand-thrown bowls, the colour of nearly cooked rhubarb.

‘Miss Otter has news.’

Griselda nearly scalded her uvula.

OфофофоЯ TофоЯ,’ exclaimed Mr Tamburlane sympathetically. ‘Let us go further.’ He swept across Griselda’s feet, and, unlocking a drawer, brought out a bottle. ‘We are warned against mixing our drinks, as the idiom is, but I think that on this occasion our common joy will absolve us. Here is finest coconut rum brought direct from the fever belt by one of my clients. It was all he had with which to meet his account, poor fellow. He described it as an antidote against cold feet.’

‘Thank you,’ said Griselda, taking the glass Mr Tamburlane extended to her. ‘What is Miss Otter’s news?’

‘That,’ said Mr Tamburlane swallowing his rum at a gulp, ‘I do not know. Miss Otter wrote to me that she will look in this morning to impart it in person. It must be something quite unconventional, because, as you know, this is not Miss Otter’s day.’

‘And that’s all you know?’

‘Enough is as good as a feast, Miss de Reptonville. I counsel you to watch and pray. Although unswervingly antagonistic to an anthropomorphic theogony, I often find purgatation in the precepts of the primitives.’

‘Some more posset, Mr Tamburlane?’

‘Thank you, no. Warmth is already reanimating the various segments of my trunk. Nor, I conceive, should we continue imbibing stimulants until incapacity overtakes us. We should recollect that the hour for toil has but just now chimed; and summon forth our full self-mastery. Or do you differ?’ He sat anxiously interrogative, with the bottle clasped motionless in the air between them.

‘Far from it, Mr Tamburlane. I agree entirely.’

‘What a reassurance that is to me. My inner demon has in it that which could so easily sweep all resistance away like chaff – which indeed on more than one occasion has swept it away like chaff – that I fear constantly the thickness of my own right arm.’ The bottle still hung in the air.

‘I think we have a customer.’

‘Then let all be apple pie and shipshape.’

Griselda drained her glass. She did not care for the coconut rum, because it tasted of coconut.

A young man had been standing outside the shop, looking in the window and hesitating. At first Griselda feared it might be Dennis Hooper, come with persuasive protestations of repentance; but it proved to be a young man looking for a chart of the Blackwater Estuary. From his demeanour outside and inside, it was clear that, like many of the customers, he seldom entered a bookshop.

‘Charts, Mr Tamburlane?’

Mr Tamburlane ran both hands through his upstanding white hair. ‘Try in there, Miss de Reptonville.’ Griselda suspected that he had decided entirely by intuition.

‘Nothing but almanacs,’ said Griselda rumaging.

‘I always like to keep a stock of almanacs for past years,’ said Mr Tamburlane to the customer in a spirit of affable salesmanship. ‘I am, I believe, the only London bookshop to do so.’

The young man simply nodded. He was in a subdued frenzy for a chart of the Blackwater Estuary.

‘It’s ideas such as that, I always like to think, which set one apart from one’s competitors.’

‘I want some idea where she dries out,’ said the young man anxiously. His eyes followed Griselda round the shop. It was clearly a matter of immense moment.

‘I’m so sorry,’ said Griselda. ‘I’m afraid we’ve sold out that particular one just at the moment. Shall I order it for you?’

‘My dear boy,’ said Mr Tamburlane, laying his hands on the customer’s arm. ‘For a sailor who has youth, there are always the stars.’

Miss Otter failed to arrive.

Griselda, although she had never, except at the very beginning, dared to take that particular ridiculous business in the least seriously, found by midday that she was taking it seriously enough to feel sick.

She had nothing for lunch but bananas and cream, and a cup of black coffee. When she returned through the fog to the shop, she was even more alarmed to perceive that Mr Tamburlane seemed really upset.

‘Miss Otter is invariably the very figurehead of punctilio. You could, if I may employ a daring concept at such an anxious moment, use her as a regulator for a clock.’

‘Did Miss Otter not mention any time?’

‘Tomorrow morning,’ said Mr Tamburlane. ‘Yesterday, you understand.’

‘What about telephoning?’

‘Out of the question. Miss Otter will have nothing electrical in the house.’

‘Perhaps she dislikes fog and has stayed at home.’

Mr Tamburlane’s face lighted up. ‘Miss de Reptonville!’ he cried. ‘I believe you have hit it.’

At a quarter past four, when it was quite dark, a stranger entered the shop and asked to speak to Mr Tamburlane. Griselda showed him into the back room and went on dealing with the arrears of orders sent by post.

About half an hour later, Mr Tamburlane emerged, wearing his overcoat and scarf and looking altogether distraught. ‘All is over,’ he exclaimed. ‘Kindly put up the shutters immediately. Miss Otter has been run over by a postal van. I am informed that it was behind schedule owing to adverse weather.’

‘Then,’ cried Griselda, ‘shall I never know—?’

Mr Tamburlane raised his hand. ‘Please say no more, Miss de Reptonville, lest it be taken down and used in evidence against me.’

‘Come along, please,’ said the visitor.

Griselda looked at his feet, which she had once read was the right thing to do; but could see nothing unusual. ‘What is the charge?’ she asked.

‘That has been under discussion with this gentlemen for the last half-hour,’ said Mr Tamburlane. ‘It appears that the authorities have visited Miss Otter’s house and drawn their own conclusions. Entirely false ones, I am sure I need not add.’

‘Come along, please,’ said the visitor.

‘Cut is the bough that might have grown full straight.’ Mr Tamburlane extended both his hands.

‘What can I do to help? Please tell me?’

Mr Tamburlane suddenly became transfigured with an idea. ‘Officer,’ he said, ‘may I write a letter?’

‘Time we was on our way.’

‘Only one line.’ Mr Tamburlane looked exactly like half-a-crown.

‘Make it short.’

It was very short.

‘Miss de Reptonville this is what you shall do. You shall not read this until five minutes after I am gone. Five minutes by any timepiece you choose.’ He had rolled the letter into a spill. Griselda took it. The visitor was looking vainly for his half-crown. ‘Promise.’

‘I promise.’

‘Get going,’ said the visitor sourly. ‘We don’t go for your class of offence, you know.’

A woman entered the shop. ‘I want a copy of Reader’s Digest for my little boy.’

Mr Tamburlane put on his astrakhan hat and cleared his throat. ‘Tell me,’ he said to his companion, ‘did you find time to visit Sing-sing this summer?’

When the five minutes were spent, Griselda uncurled the letter. Mr Tamburlane had spoken the exact truth. Apart from his signature it consisted of a single line.

‘I hereby give my shop and all its contents to Bearer.’

XXVIII

Griselda made diligent enquiries, partly in the forlornest possible hope that she might extract some news of Louise, partly out of gratitude to Mr Tamburlane. But she found all channels blocked; largely, it seemed, at the particular direction of the accused. In the end she realized that in his own way Mr Tamburlane had disappeared from her life as conclusively as Louise.

Often, however, as she served in the shop, her thoughts turned to him. She was advised in the particular circumstances to adopt another name for the business as soon as possible; and through much of a cold December week, the versatile Lena, clad in motorcycling costume, painted out ‘Tamburlane’ and substituted ‘Drelincourt’. This was because Griselda had invited Lena to go into partnership with her, and had no particular conviction that her own was a suitable name to place above a London shop. Already, after only a fortnight, Lena’s knowledge of literature had proved as valuable as her capacity for odd but essential jobs. Griselda had insisted on placing in the window ten copies of Inhumation (ordered without Lena’s knowledge) on the very first day; and, oddly enough, by the end of the second day all were sold, and another ten had been ordered, to the conspicuous vindication of Griselda’s commercial judgement and acquired experience of the trade.

The proposal of Kynaston’s which Griselda accepted, was made one snowy night on the Central London Railway, between Oxford Circus and Marble Arch. Kynaston proposed immediately they entered the train, as indeed the shortness of the journey rendered necessary.

‘I shall go to Canada, if you refuse,’ he concluded. ‘The Mounted Police are starting a ballet, and I’ve been asked to be rйgisseur.’

There was a tired desperation about him which was very convincing.

‘You don’t mind that I love someone else?’

‘Of course I mind. It’s bloody for me.’

‘But you’re willing to risk it?’

‘I don’t expect everything.’

Griselda sank her head on his shoulder. But it was Bond Street Station, and she raised it again. It would be pleasant not to have to conduct so much of her emotional life on and near the Underground. She waited for the train to restart. Her heart felt quite dead; like a dry sponge, or a cauliflower run to seed.

‘All right, Geoffrey, I’ll marry you if you want it so much.’

He said nothing at all and Griselda continued to stare before her.

‘Let’s make it soon,’ she said.

Kynaston still said nothing. From the corner of her eye, Griselda saw that he was quietly and motionlessly weeping. She laid her hand on his. He had attractive hands.

‘Thank you, Griselda,’ he said at last. ‘Could you lend me your handkerchief?’

They had reached Marble Arch. Ascending on the escalator, Griselda reflected that there were said to be wonderful mysteries attendant on marriage. Long before the top, a freezing atmosphere enveloped her from the world outside.

In the Edgware Road it was as if all the air held particles of snow in suspension. None the less, before they reached Greenwood Tree House, they had decided to marry before Christmas. It would, Kynaston believed, require a special licence, which would involve extra expense; but now that Griselda had the shop, extra expense might be less of an obstacle.

At the outer door, Kynaston showed no particular inclination to accompany Griselda upstairs.

‘My wretched shoes leak. I must buy some new ones before we marry. This snow could lead to chilblains.’

But Griselda had no wish to be left with her thoughts.

‘You can take them off in my room. It’s just the sort of thing you’ve always wanted.’

He did so. His socks were saturated with snow, and his feet were blue. They were, however, as male feet go, attractively shaped, Griselda was relieved to note.

‘I can’t lend you any socks because I don’t wear trousers.’

‘I expect they’ll dry.’ He hung them on the bars of a bedroom chair and pushed the chair in front of the electric heater. At once the socks began to steam profusely and also to fill the room with a faint but individual stench.

‘I’ll fetch Peggy. She’d better hear the news.’

‘Peggy frightens me, Griselda.’

‘I expect we shall both find it difficult with the other’s friends, but Peggy’s got a right to know.’

If Kynaston had asked what right, Griselda would have found it hard to specify. But he merely said ‘I’d better put my shoes on.’

Peggy, however, proved to be already in bed.

‘Everyone at the Ministry has got a cold. I don’t want to take an unnecessary risk.’

‘Peggy! I’m going to marry Geoffrey Kynaston.’ Griselda came very near to the tone in which such announcements are made.

‘You said you weren’t the marrying kind.’

‘I’ve changed.’

‘Not at all. I never believed you. Remember? I hope you’ll be very happy, Griselda.’

‘Thank you, Peggy dear.’

‘I hope you’ll find in him all you wish.’

‘Of course I shall. He’s in my room now. I hoped you’d be able to join us.’

Peggy smiled with irritating scepticism. ‘You can do without me. Just pass me down the bottle of Formamints before you go back to him, would you please, Griselda?’

‘Is there anything else I can get you?’

‘No thank you. I don’t know how you’re placed, but I could borrow my sister’s wedding-dress if you’d like it. She was just about your size when she married and I know she’s kept it for my nieces.’

There was something about Peggy, fond though Griselda was of her, which tempted to the outrageous.

‘Thank you. I doubt whether white would be appropriate.’

But Peggy only smiled and said ‘That’s for you to say.’

XXIX

A special licence proved unnecessary, but there were difficulties of domicile, and it seemed that for the ceremony the only day convenient to all parties (but especially to the Registrar) would be Christmas Eve. Questioned as to his religion, Kynaston stated that he was loosely attached to the Baha’i Movement; and though Griselda belonged to the Church of England, she had small inclination for the chilliness of so many empty churches on a December morning. The Registry Office, though perhaps little warmer, offered a briefer ceremony, and one free from that undertone of morality still characteristic of so many churches.

As the day drew near, Griselda felt quite resigned. After Beams, her life had subsided into very nearly its former uneventfulness; so that for the present a change of any kind made an unconscious appeal. The only marked modification in her behaviour, however, was that she ceased to buy so many clothes. Also she spent two evenings a week trying to clean and decorate Kynaston’s attic flat, which was to be her home until something more suitable could be both found and afforded. Lena assisted: clad in a dun coloured boiler suit, and after a busy day at the shop, she distempered the ceilings in pink and blue, and made water come out of the tap, before returning to Juvenal Court to resume work on her new novel, ‘Legacy Grass’. Kynaston came to approve of her more and more until Griselda felt that she ought to feel jealous. Griselda, though good at walking, and good at the design part of interior decoration (she suggested they should try to instal some means of heating the water, even if obtained second-hand), was less good than Lena at implementing her suggestions. Kynaston had become radiantly happy, and restive about his terms of employment.

‘After we’re married, and now you two have got the shop,’ he said to Lena, who was laying a carpet which had been found rolled up behind some old stock in Mr Tamburlane’s former office, ‘I shall try again with my plastic poses. I often think they’re the only thing I’ve gone in for which has community value. After marriage one must think of that.’

Lena stopped hammering. ‘Think of what?’

‘Community value. After marriage I mean to be less of a parasite.’

‘It’s much more important for you to keep Griselda’s body happy. Concentrate on that.’

‘Зa va sans dire.’

‘No man’s quite a parasite who can do that for a woman. It’s your only hope, Geoffrey.’

‘Hadn’t we better change the subject? It’s in poor taste in Griselda’s own home.’

‘Griselda’s opening a tin. Go and help her.’ Lena resumed hammering. The carpet was difficult to penetrate and smelt dreadfully of the East.

As a matter of fact, moreover, Lena was wrong for once. Griselda had heard every word.

She eyed Kynaston across the tin of pilchards. She supposed there might be some joy in the relationship which so many sought for and hoped for and worked for and suffered for. It certainly could not compensate for the loss of Louise, but it might be not wholly barren. Griselda shuddered slightly. It was attractive and Kynaston kissed her.

‘Why pilchards, Geoffrey? Why not squille?’

‘Because pilchards are cheap.’

‘They seem very oily.’

‘The fish themselves are quite dry.’

There was no doubt he had a well-shaped body and much patient persistence in pursuit. It was necessary to hope.

On Christmas Eve it was foggier than on the day Miss Otter died and Griselda inherited the shop. Griselda and Peggy took forty minutes to find the Registry Office from Holborn Station; but fortunately (at Peggy’s suggestion) they had started very early. Of the two Peggy looked much more like a bride: at extravagant expenditure she had acquired a magenta woollen dress with a salmon-coloured belt. The gesture testified all the more to her warmth of feeling, because, as she explained to Griselda in the Underground, it would be out of the question for her to wear the garment to the office.

The occasion had attracted an excellent attendance from among the friends of both bride and bridegroom (whose friends, as it happened, were largely held in common), and from the people of the surrounding district. Among the latter was even a barrister, on his way from Gray’s Inn to Lincoln’s Inn, whose large black hat and resonant professional diction enormously raised the tone and spirits of all present. When Griselda arrived, he was explaining that he had just been consulting his solicitor on a normal routine matter and had since been lost in the fog. The contingent from Juvenal Court had shared the cost of a taxi (which the barrister explained was a breach of statute) and stood grouped together protecting the bridegroom. They all wore sapphire coloured orchids paid for by Lotus, who, dressed in black chiffon and a Persian lamb coat, and pale to the lips and ears, was a centre of speculation among all who did not know her. Guillaume wore a fashionable suit hired from a reputable but humble competitor of Messrs Moss Brothers; Florence a pale grey coat and skirt, home-made but none the less well made, and dark stockings sent as a Christmas present from Paris by an old admirer who had fled despairing her marmoreal devotion to another. Monica Paget-Barlow crotcheted away behind the Registry Office font. Freddy Fisher was interviewing the press, who took him for the bridegroom because he looked young and innocent and wore morning dress.

Kynaston entirely resembled Prince Charming in a midnight-blue suit he had salved from an unsuccessful production of a play by Maeterlinck.

As Griselda handed her raincoat to Peggy (she had followed Mrs Hatch’s precept and acquired a substantial one), Kynaston stepped forward from his ring of supporters, extended both his hands, and said ‘My love! This is our day. Let us not flinch.’

‘All right,’ said Griselda. ‘Shall we start?’

The Registrar’s wife ceased her voluntary, and the Registrar himself loomed through the fog which filled the precincts. He was an impressive figure with a cold and wearing a frock coat, at which Griselda stared with interest. It was exactly like that worn by Joseph Chamberlain in Herkomer’s portrait, a fine engraving of which hung above the sideboard in her Mother’s dining room. Griselda supposed that her Mother might have forgiven her as it was her wedding-day. On the whole, she was glad that the chance did not offer.

The sacristan, a sleek young man in a pepper-and-salt suit reminiscent of Kempton Park, arranged the bride and bridgroom into a procession. At that moment, Griselda’s eye fell upon Lena, for whom she had been searching. Lena, in a semi-polar outfit (she was much the most suitably dressed person present), sat in a corner of the Registry Office, obviously trying to comfort someone in distress, whose face was entirely concealed by Lena’s handkerchief. The distressed one’s clothes at once spoke for themselves, however. Before Griselda lighted up the entire half-forgotten panorama of society at Beams. Horror! It was Doris Ditton.

Now Griselda began herself to weep. The picture of Louise had projected itself with the rest in the so far greater intensity that memory offers than life.

Kynaston held out a twilight blue artificial silk handkerchief which went with the suit.

‘Be strong, Griselda,’ he said. ‘Soon we shall be alone together, and I shall be needing you.’ Lena waved to her slightly, affectionately. Kynaston had presumably not yet identified Doris. Or perhaps she was there by his invitation? Griselda could not see how else she had learned of the event; and had always understood that the bridgroom’s guests at weddings consist predominantly of his past passions. Then she realized the answer: Lotus.

‘Bride and bridegroom stand. All the rest sit,’ bawled the sacristan, his voice filled with the wind off Newmarket Heath.

Kynaston, in the hope of checking her tears, introduced Griselda to a small smooth man in a morning suit made splendid with orders and decorations.

‘Colonel Costa-Rica, darling,’ he said. ‘The Orinocan Commercial Attachй.’

Griselda transferred her handkerchief and extended the appropriate hand. The Colonel fell upon it with his lips. His movement was like that of a closing knife. His cold eyes looked straight through Griselda’s handkerchief and into her shivering soul.

‘Enchantй mademoiselle. Et trиs bonne chance.’ When he spoke, his lips scarcely moved.

‘English is the only European language the attachй doesn’t speak,’ explained Kynaston.

‘Excusez-moi?’

‘Yes, certainly. Mais oui,’ replied Griselda in reasurrance. The Colonel sat down and began to brood upon the state of trade.

‘All set,’ roared the sacristan. The bride and bridegroom were propelled forward to where the Registrar stood waiting, his book of runes in one hand, a small flask of eucalyptus in the other; there was a sound of military orders in the fog outside, and of rifle butts crashing on paving stones: and the greatest moment in Griselda’s life had begun.

For one presumably experienced in his work, the Registrar seemed strangely dependent upon his little book. That being so, moreover, it was difficult to understand why he had never acquired a larger volume with better print. As it was, the limited natural visibility and archaic lighting (by gas produced from coal) clearly caused him much distress. He peered at the minute screed, varying its distance from his eyes, and every now and then looking upwards at the burner above his head with a demeanour which in another would have passed for distaste. Sometimes he stopped for several seconds in the middle of a passage or sentence. Punctuation, indeed seemed a complete stumbling-block. In consequence of all this, however, the literal dreadful moaning of the words merged happily into a synthesis properly evocative of a half-forgotten rite. Behind the Registrar the east wall of the building was crudely painted with admonitions headed ‘Rules and Regulations Touching the State and Condition of Holy Matrimony,’ varied by long closely printed notices signed on behalf of the Home Secretary. The stained glass window above the Registrar’s head depicted a bygone Chairman of the London County Council kneeling before the goddess of fertility, represented traditionally. Doris’s intermittent sobs offered an emotional continuo. Every now and then the heating system rumbled towards animation. The Registrar forged ahead, his mind on higher things. Regarding the grave mysterious figure, all goodness and wisdom, and his richly significant background, Griselda remembered that this was something she must never forget, even though she had great-grandchildren. Again she shuddered slightly. The congregation sympathetically attributed it to the weather.

Suddenly there was an interruption. The great pitch-pine doors parted and someone entered with firm, stamping tread. Griselda could not but look over her shoulder. It was a fine figure of a man in naval uniform. Before seating himself in the back row of chairs (next to Lotus), he caught Griselda’s eye and waved breezily. Griselda stiffly inclined her head; then returned her attention to the service. Could this officer be responsible for the martial clatter outside? Possibly he was the next bridegroom, though he seemed elderly.

In the end the Registrar with a final ejaculation of disgust, decided to abbreviate the liturgy; Kynaston produced the ring in excellent order (he had been wearing it on his forefinger); Griselda made a rash and foolish promise; and all was over. The ring was much too big for Griselda’s particularly slender finger: it might have been made for a giantess, indeed probably had been.

‘Sign please,’ said the sacristan producing a mouldering book from under the front row of chairs.

‘Have your witnesses managed to get here?’ enquired the Registrar.

‘They’re all our witnesses,’ exclaimed Kynaston full of the beauty of the ceremony and gesticulating expansively. Instantly he was deflated. ‘Dad!’ he cried and looked quickly round him. The naval officer was thrusting forwards through the congratulatory crowd.

‘Bravo, my boy,’ he cried. ‘I never thought you had it in you.’ His hand was extended. He was examining Griselda closely and added ‘Indeed I never thought it.’

‘Hullo, Dad,’ said Kynaston. In his blue suit, he looked quite green.

‘Take your Father’s hand and say no more. Remember I’m waiting to kiss the bride.’ He wrenched his son’s hand.

‘You must introduce me, Geoffrey,’ said Griselda hastily.

‘My Father. Admiral Sir Collingwood Kynaston. This is Griselda, Dad.’

‘Delighted to meet my daughter.’ He kissed her overwhelmingly. ‘My boy and I have fought like tigers ever since he was born, but that’s all over and you mustn’t believe a thing he says about me.’

Griselda thought it might be discourteous to say that Kynaston had never mentioned him (as was the case); and all the witnesses were waiting to sign.

‘A good hard cudgelling on both sides hurts neither,’ affirmed the Admiral, scrawling his name ahead of the rest. ‘And the old man’s made full amends. Wait for them. Just wait.’

Freddy Fisher took the opportunity to ask for the Admiral’s autograph. ‘I only collect leaders of the services,’ he said.

‘Lucky to find one who can write,’ replied the Admiral jovially. ‘Is that one of your bridesmaids, my dear?’ he enquired of Griselda, indicating Lotus.

In the end everyone had signed and the Registrar had come forward with his account.

‘Leave it me,’ said the Admiral. ‘It’s only once in a man’s life that his boy gets himself spliced and he must expect to pay the piper. Though that reminds me,’ he continued, while the Registrar stood respectfully in the background, ‘what about you, my dear? Are you an orphan?’

‘My Father died of Spanish influenza,’ replied Griselda. ‘I never knew him. From my Mother I have long been estranged.’

‘Lone wolf, eh? See yourself in the same galley with Geoffrey. Never mind. You’ll grow. Being a widower I’m always persuasive with women of my own generation.’ He made a handsome settlement on the Registrar, who became profuse with improbable felicitations before retiring into his vestry.

‘Now then,’ said the Admiral. ‘Just you see.’

The sacristan threw back the big shining doors and Griselda saw. Outside, drawn up in the fog, were two lines of bluejackets. As the doors opened, an order rang out, and they crossed carbines.

‘I really must protest,’ said Guillaume, his face grey with inner conflict, ‘at the use of force. Surely the occasion is sacramental?’

The Admiral only beamed at him. Then he glared at Kynaston.

‘Well, my boy, get on with it. Give her your arm, like a man. If you don’t, I shall.’

The reconciliation between father and son seemed already strained.

Kynaston was white to the finger-nails. For a moment there was silence, broken by one of the bluejackets tittering.

‘No, Dad,’ cried Kynaston. ‘I refuse.’ He gathered strength. ‘Come on Griselda. Let’s find another way out of this place.’

‘Oh, well done,’ said Guillaume under his breath. Florence drew closer to him.

The admiral seemed unexpectedly taken aback. ‘You can’t refuse,’ he cried in a shrill voice. ‘I’ve ordered luncheon for everyone at the Carlton.’

‘Sorry, Father,’ replied Kynaston. ‘Griselda and I have another engagement.’

Peggy had drawn back some time ago, embarrassed by the Admiral’s display of emotion, and had somehow got into what seemed mutually satisfying intercourse with Doris, who was regarding Kynaston’s heroism with soft wondering tear-soaked eyes. By this time all the strangers had withdrawn to form a crowd outside.

The Admiral looked with some anxiety at the guard of honour. Clearly he felt that the situation could not be much longer continued without becoming legendary on both lower and upper decks for years to come.

He glared at his son. ‘Boy,’ he said sotto voce, ‘I have only one thing to say. Be a man.’

‘That’s just it, Father. I am a man.’

‘Oh I say,’ interposed Freddy Fisher, who had lost sympathy with Kynaston. ‘Surely you can compromise?’

Outside, the Petty Officer cleared his throat. The men were tiring under the strain of the crossed carbines.

The admiral wheeled. ‘Dismiss your men.’ Then amid the necessary bellowing and stamping, he cried to the party ‘Those who wish for luncheon may follow me. There are cars outside;’ and, ignoring the newly married couple, he left the building.

There was another pause.

‘Go on,’ said Kynaston. ‘Have lunch. Griselda and I will see you later.’ Lena’s eyes were moving round the group. The sacristan was waiting to lock up.

‘I would rather beg my bread on the Victoria Embankment,’ said Guillaume. He was in a passion of indignation. The guard of honour could be heard marching away. Soon the fog hushed them.

‘Please go and enjoy yourselves,’ said Griselda.

A motor-horn blared commandingly. Florence looked out into the murk. ‘That lawyer’s got in,’ she reported.

Among the rest of them Guillaume’s opinion seemed to prevail. Even Freddy Fisher, though horribly disappointed by the turn of events, abided by an unconscious loyalty, to none could clearly say what.

After another minute or two the cars drove off; the Admiral in the first of them, with his only guest; the remainder empty.

Griselda felt still further cut off from the world which had been hers until she visited Beams; a feeling enhanced by Peggy coming up to her, thanking her for the wedding, wishing her happiness, and then departing, her new dress hardly displayed, clearly much upset. Doris, after quietly congratulating the bridal couple, departed with her.

XXX

They lunched at the Old Bell Restaurant, recommended by Barney, who now appeared. He had been delayed by the completion of a commission, his work being much in demand about Christmas time.

‘You can depend on a Trust House for a sound middle of the road meal,’ he said. ‘Besides there’s a dome of many coloured glass: the finest thing of its kind in London.’

In the Ladies’ Room, two things happened. Griselda found that she had already lost her overlarge ring (and Kynaston, of course, had been unable to afford an engagement ring: indeed there seemed, in retrospect, to have been no very clear period during which Griselda had been engaged). Then Lotus pinned her in a corner and said ‘Remember.’ It was just like the ghost of Hamlet’s father. Griselda wondered what would come out of it all.

At luncheon (where Monica would eat nothing but salad) Barney enquired after Peggy; Lana, ostensibly for Barney’s information, told the story of the Admiral’s intervention; Kynaston kept feeling for Griselda’s hand; and Freddy Fisher became drunk with extraordinary rapidity. Lotus seemed increasingly out of it. Griselda wondered whether she was contemplating a final disappearance to a wealthier milieu; then supposed that she could not be, in view of her reminder in the Ladies’ Room. Lotus’s beauty and passion and sense of dress would make her rather a forlorn figure in any modern environment that Griselda could conceive. After a while, Lena, who, unlike Freddy, was drinking heavily, removed her polar outfit, and emerged in her usual shirt and trousers. As well as drinking, she was talking continuously, and without adapting her talk to the particular listener. Griselda looked at her a little doubtfully. Lena often seemed hightly strung for a business partner.

Luncheon ended with Carlsbad plums in honey, halva, black coffee, and (at Lotus’s expense) Green Chartreuses all round. There was some disputation, more or less affable, as they allocated among themselves liability for their respective parts of the bill; during which one of the business men who constituted the main element among the customers, approached Griselda and insisted on presenting her with a large bunch, almost bouquet, of Christmas roses.

‘You look so happy,’ he said, ‘that I should like you to have it.’ Since the beginning of their meal, he had spent his luncheon hour searching the cold streets and stuffy shops. Instantaneously and for an instant it almost made Griselda feel as happy as she looked.

Then Barney was making a speech, and all the waiters and some of the bar and kitchen staff, had entered the room to listen to it. Lotus sat sneering slightly, which only made her more seductive than ever; and indeed it was not the best speech which even Griselda had ever heard. The business men listened like professionals, and at suitable moments led the applause. The speech ended by Barney announcing that now they would leave the happy couple alone together; at which, despite the hour, there was a pleasant round of cheers. Barney then spoke to a waiter, who flashed away. In a moment he was back and speaking in Barney’s ear.

‘I have ordered,’ said Barney, ‘a taxi; and what is more, paid for it. It is yours to go anywhere not more than ten minutes away, or a mile and a half, whichever is the less.’

Everybody leaned from the windows of the Old Bell and cheered as the happy pair entered the taxi, which, having been decorated with white streamers at lightning speed by the driver, was already surrounded by a cluster of strange women, haggard as witches with Christmas shopping.

‘Best of luck,’ screamed Freddy Fisher and threw a toy bomb which he had acquired next door at Gamage’s for the purpose. Considering its cost, it was surprisingly efficacious.

‘Where to?’ enquired the driver.

There seemed nowhere to suggest but back to the attic flat.

XXXI

Griselda wondered when the mysteries would begin.

It seemed not immediately. In the taxi, Kynaston concentrated upon his achievement in routing and evading his father (which had, indeed, impressed Griselda considerably); and in the flat, having changed his suit, he continued alluding to the same subject. He described the wretchedness of his childhood for more than an hour and a quarter, a topic with which Griselda was fairly sympathetic; then unexpectedly said ‘I think we’d better go to the pictures. I feel we should celebrate, and all the cinemas will be shut tomorrow.’

Griselda quickly made tea (neither were especially hungry after their platesful of venison at luncheon) and they found their way through the fog to a double-feature programme which did not come round again until past nine o’clock. Most of the time Griselda sat with Kynaston’s arm round her. She found it pleasant, but detrimental to concentration upon the films. However, it being the programme immediately before Christmas, the films were undemanding.

‘Let’s go to Lyons,’ said Kynaston. ‘You’ll have plenty of opportunity for home cooking in the years ahead.’ He smiled at her affectionately. Griselda smiled back, though suddenly she had wondered what the food was like at the Carlton.

At Lyons, however, the big new Corner House at St Giles’s Circus, the food was, as usual, unlike the food anywhere else, though the ornate building was full of fog, through which the alien waiters called to one another in little-known tongues above the tumult of the orchestra. Griselda and Kynaston ate Consommй Lenglen, turkey and Christmas pudding, followed by portions of walnuts; so that it was nearly eleven before they left.

When they emerged, their heads spinning with Viennese music, the fog was so thick that the busmen had gone on strike, leaving their vehicles standing about the streets and blocking most of the other traffic. In some of the buses passengers bearing holly and rocking-horses, were defining and proclaiming their rights; in some, mistletoe was being hoisted; and in some, tramps were beginning to bed down for the holiday. Every now and then a bus became dark, as its battery failed or miscarried. Over all could already be felt the spirit of Christmas.

‘Let’s look for the tube.’

But when they found it, the Underground had ceased to run. Across the entry was a strong iron gate, bearing the notice ‘Special Christmas Service’, surrounded by little figures of Santa Claus.

‘Let’s walk. Do you mind, Griselda?’

‘Of course not, Geoffrey.’

‘Fortunately I’m good at finding the way.’

‘I can’t see my feet.’

Allowing for errors of direction, and the further time consumed in retracing their steps, the walk took until a quarter to one. By the time she reached their attic flat, Griseida’s legs were cold, her respiration clogged, and her spirits chastened.

Kynaston left her alone in their bedroom (where his single divan bed had been supplemented by its double) to undress. Almost at once she was in bed. Rather charmingly, Kynaston then appeared with a glass of hot milk and some bread and treacle.

‘Would you like a hot water bottle?’

‘It’s lovely of you, Geoffrey, to work so hard, but I don’t use them.’

‘I do.’

‘That’s all right.’

Kynaston disappeared again and was gone some time. After the hot milk, Griselda felt not anticipatory but comatose. Ultimately Kynaston returned. He wore pyjamas. He must have changed in the sitting room.

He crossed to Griselda’s bed, where she lay with her eyes shut.

‘You look tired, darling. I suggest we just sleep. There’s all day tomorrow.’

Griselda opened her eyes. ‘Yes, darling, let’s just sleep.’ He kissed her lips fondly.

All the same it was disappointing. Griselda could not resolve how disappointing.

Kynaston put out the light.

‘I think we’d better keep to our own beds. For tonight. Else we might spoil things. Because I’m sure you must be cold and tired.’

‘I agree.’ But Griselda was now perfectly warm and, for some reason, much less tired.

She rolled round and round in her bed several times.

Then without warning in the darkness Kynaston said ‘Are you a virgin?’

And when Griselda had explained the position, he said ‘I expect we’ll be able to manage;’ then sighed and began to snore.

On Christmas Day Griselda became quite fond of Kynaston. He performed unending small services, and seemed to be filled with happiness every time she smiled. He spent the morning writing a sonnet, while Griselda made a steak-and-kidney pudding. In the afternoon he attempted to codify some new plastic poses, while Griselda mended his clothes. At about the time of the King’s broadcast, however. Griselda became aware of an undefined, unacknowledged strain. At dinner it seemed to have affected Kynaston’s appetite: a very unusual circumstance. Griselda herself continued more cheerful than she had expected. Kynaston’s slight nerviness seemed to make him more attentive than ever, almost anxiously so; and the immediate future aroused interest and curiosity.

After dinner, Kynaston began to read The Faery Queen aloud. Fortunately he did this very well. Every now and then he broke off while Griselda made some more coffee in a laboratorial vessel of glass and chromium which Lotus had given them as a wedding present. On one of these occasions Griselda noticed that Kynaston’s hand shook so much that he spilled the coffee into the saucer.

‘Is anything wrong, darling? You’re shaking like a leaf.’

‘I’m not used to so much happiness.’

‘Does happiness make you tremble?’

‘Of course. Now I’ll go on reading.’

His explanation was convincing but unsatisfying. Griselda felt that happiness precluded while it lasted the thought of its own fleetingness. Kynaston, moreover, every now and then between stanzas, flashed a look at her which was positively panic-stricken.

After several hours of reading, and several rounds of coffee in the pretty shepherdess cups which had been Peggy’s wedding present, Kynaston reached the lines:

‘“Or rather would, O! would it be so chanced,

That you, most noble sir, had present been

When that lewd ribald, with vile lust advanced,

Laid first his filthy hands on virgin clean,

To spoil her dainty corps, so far and sheen

As on the earth, great mother of us all,

With living eye more fair was never seen

Of chastity and honour virginal:

Witness, ye heavens, whom she in vain to help did call!”’

At this Kynaston broke off, thought for a moment, while Griselda continued mending a sock, then, with glassy eyes said ‘Darling. Would you care to take off your sweater and skirt?’

‘Of course, darling. If you wish.’ Griselda laid aside the sock and complied with Kynaston’s suggestion.

He looked at her doubtfully, his eyes still glassy. ‘You won’t be cold?’

‘That depends.’

‘You mean on how much longer we go on reading?’

This seemed not to require an answer, so Griselda simply smiled.

‘I’ll finish the canto.’

Griselda sank to the floor and sat close to the heater. Lena had given her a quantity (much greater than Lena could afford) of attractive underclothes as a wedding present, and she felt that she looked appealing as long as she could keep warm. Kynaston resumed:

‘“‘How may it be,’ said then the knight half wroth,

‘The knight should knighthood ever so have spent?’

‘None but that saw,’ quoth he, ‘would ween for troth,

How shamefully that maid he did torment:

Her looser golden locks he rudely rent,

And drew her on the ground; and his sharp sword

Against her snowy breast he fiercely bent,

And threatened death with many a bloody word;

Tongue hates to tell the rest that eyes to see abhorred.’”’

At the end of the canto, Kynaston looked at the floor and said: ‘Magical, isn’t it? And so modern.’

‘How much more is there?’ asked Griselda. She liked The Faery Queen, but was increasingly troubled by the draught along the floor.

‘We’re less than a third through. There are six books. Spenser actually hoped to write twelve. Each is concerned with a different moral virtue. We’ve only just begun Book Two. On Temperence.’

‘I remember,’ said Griselda. ‘What’s Book Three about?’

‘Chastity.’

Griselda’s bare arms were beginning to make goose-flesh.

‘Shall we go to bed, darling? It’s past midnight.’

Kynaston nodded. Griselda put away her pile of socks. Kynaston crossed the room like a man heavily preoccupied, and replaced The Faery Queen on her shelf. Then, pulling himself together, he said ‘Shall I bring you some hot milk? To make you sleep?’

‘I don’t know, darling. Should you?’

Kynaston turned, if possible, a little paler.

‘Or should we both have a stiff drink?’

‘Would that be a good thing?’

‘I’d like you to have what you want.’

‘I want bed. I’m frozen.’

‘I’m terribly sorry. Really I am.’

‘I didn’t mean that at all.’

The sudden turning on of the light emphasized the quantity of fog which had entered the little bedroom. Griselda realized that it was the only day for many mouths on which she had taken no exercise. With shaking hand, she cleaned her teeth, and fell into bed exactly as she was. She lay in the foggy freezing room (for the heater had not yet begun to take effect) with the light on, waiting for Kynaston.

He took much longer to appear than on the previous night. When he entered his face was set in a way which recalled to Griselda his repudiation of Lotus and his defiance of his father. Without a word he turned off the light and the heater, and climbed into his bed. He had not even bidden Griselda good night, or kissed her.

In the foggy darkness there was silence for a while. Then Kynaston said ‘Shall I turn on the heater again? We might leave it on.’

‘We can’t afford it, darling.’

‘Of course I’d rather not get up, but I don’t want you to be be cold in bed, darling.’

‘I don’t want to be either.’

This time there was a really long silence. Griselda, who was positively rigid with wakefulness, wondered if Kynaston had fallen asleep. Then she recalled that when asleep, he snored. Suddenly he spoke. ‘Griselda.’

‘What is it darling? I was thinking about The Faery Queen.’

‘On the subject of any physical relationship between us.’

‘Living together as man and wife?’ Griselda elucidated helpfully.

‘I imagine all that’s of secondary importance to you.’

‘Why?’

‘Because you have always said you don’t love me.’

It was odd, Griselda reflected, how few people seemed to know the condition of being to which she would refer that word. She supposed she knew, and would always know, something that few knew, or would ever know. She felt to Kynaston as she had once felt to Mrs Hatch: very superior. Though she had lost, she had loved. All the same it was difficult to explain to Kynaston that lack of love as she understood the word, did not necessarily imply precisely proportionate lack of love as Kynaston understood it.

‘I married you.’

‘Yes.’ He sounded as if it was a case of forebodings being fulfilled.

‘I knew what I was doing, Geoffrey darling.’

‘Of course, darling . . . I’d better go on with what I was saying.’

‘I’m sorry not to be more helpful.’

‘No, it’s I who am sorry. You’re utterly in control.’

‘Go on, darling. What do you want to say?’

He gulped; and sucked at the bedclothes. ‘First, it’s marriage. At least I think it is. You know how it is with men?’

‘Not very well, darling, I’m afraid.’

‘A man sees marriage in terms of affection, domesticity, and inspiration.’

‘I understand that.’

‘With me it’s particularly true. I need a woman – a woman of character, like you, Griselda – to mould my life.’

‘I remember your saying so.’

‘You’ve seen Lotus. You understand that there’s been something between us?’

‘I guessed there had.’

‘You don’t mind?’ It was as if he hoped she did.

‘You say you love me.’

‘Passion’s possible with Lotus, great drowning seas of it, but none of the other things.’

‘Whereas with me—’ A hard shell was beginning to enclose Griselda’s entire body; beginning with her still cold feet.

‘With you the situation is further complicated by what you said last night. Whatever Lotus is like in other ways, she is good at making things easy. I hope you’ll let me put it clearly. Because I love you so much.’

‘Do you mean, darling, that you married me just because I don’t love you?’

‘Of course not, darling. I’m utterly determined to make you love me. I don’t think it would help for us to begin with a physical misunderstanding.’

That, however, was what they did begin with, Griselda, her new shell hardening and tightening all the time, had supposed that now for certain she would be spending the night alone, and an uncertain number of future nights, until (she surmised) she broke down in health or espoused a good cause. But, instead, Kynaston almost immediately entered her bed and gave her ample and unnecessary proof that his hints of unease and inadequacy to the circumstances were firmly grounded. Things were not made better by a continuous undertow of implication that it was all to please Griselda. At the end, there was very little mystery left, and less wonder.

After similar experiences at irregular and unpredictable intervals on twenty-eight occasions, Griselda, when a twenty-ninth occasion offered, felt positively but indefinably unwell. It would be deplorable, she spent much of the time reflecting, if, moreover, nature, despite counter-measures, took her course. She began to wonder more than ever whether she was truly suited to marriage.

Energy, thwarted of satisfactory direct outlet, expended itself obliquely, as is the way in marriage. Griselda began to apply herself more steadily and more forethoughtfully at the shop; and also to see that Kynaston applied himself as efficiently as his temperament and his job permitted. Soon the shop became the subject of a note in The Bookseller, and Colonel Costa-Rica was holding before Kynaston the possibility of a position, at higher pay, in the Orinocan Intelligence Service. Not only did they become richer, their increase in income being coupled with a diminished desire to expend; but they began to scent the first faint sunrising of social approbation renewed.

Before long Kynaston was losing interest in both poetry and his plastic poses, in favour of a projected Anthology of Curatorship, for which he hoped to obtain a Foreword from the Editor of Country Life. Sometimes they found themselves invited to visit homes of repute and to mingle on equal terms with the enbosomed families. More and more the shop stocked books which might sell, instead of minority books. Lena, over whom, of course, hymeneal happiness had yet to hover, regarded this last tendency disapprovingly; though the proceeds conveniently augmented the slight returns from her own new book. A climax was reached when Kynaston received an invitation to stand in the Labour interest at the Parish Council Elections. He declined, because he deemed politics to obstruct full self-realisation; but he declined politely, conscious that, far more than any other party, the Labour party gives careful heed to the morals and probity of all it permits to join its pilgrimage.

When she had been married nearly a year, Griselda one morning realized with surprise that Lena, to judge by some remarks she made, regarded her state with envy.

‘But, Lena, you don’t have to marry a man in order to enjoy him.’

Lena leaned back against the counter, her hands in her pockets. ‘There are times, Griselda, when your superficiality is equalled only by your smugness.’

She had never before spoken so to Griselda, though given to the style when speaking to certain other people. Griselda had observed, however, that Lena’s censoriousness, though seldom judicious, was seldom wholly undeserved.

‘Am I becoming smug, Lena?’

‘I apologize for what I said. I’m a bitch.’

‘But am I becoming smug?’

‘As a matter of fact, you are.’

‘What should I do about it?’

‘I wish I knew.’

Before the matter could be taken further, they were interrupted by the arrival of a thousand copies of a book describing the atrociousness of the new German government.

Not the least remarkable change in Kynaston was his sustained firmness in dealing with the problem of Lotus. Quite soon Lotus was reduced to supplicating Griselda: a procedure which Griselda considered superfluous and irrelevant, though, with a perverseness new to her nature, she did not say so to Lotus.

‘You gave me your word,’ cried Lotus, her beauty rising from her tears, like Venus from the flood.

And instead of simply pointing out that she had in no way broken it, Griselda replied reflectively ‘Things are never quite the same after marriage as they were before it,’ and offered Lotus another glass of lemon tea.

After weeks of apparent rebuff and equivocation Lotus tumultuously capitulated at the end of February.

‘You’ve won him and I’ve lost him,’ she said to Griselda over morning coffee. ‘You’ve been stamping out my body like wine beneath your little feet. I need renewal. I always find it in the same place.’

‘Where’s that?’

‘Sfax.’

In due course, a picture postcard of a grinning Arab under a palm tree laden with dates, confirmed Lotus’s decision; but Griselda wondered what in Kynaston’s life had replaced the satisfactions, however limited, which, even by his own account, Lotus had given him. She looked at the sky of Sfax, almost unnaturally ultramarine, at the camels on the horizon, at the Wagons-Lits official in the foreground; and supposed that Kynaston must at last have found a purpose in life. Really it was most unlike him.

About a week after Lena’s outburst in the shop, Griselda received a visit from Guillaume. It was a Saturday afternoon; and Griselda was lying on her back, gazing at the ceiling, and eating Pascall’s crкmes-de-menthe. She and Kynaston had not yet found a better place to live; indeed lately the search itself had flagged.

‘Sorry Geoffrey’s out. How’s Florence?’

Guillaume was wandering about the small sitting-room collecting cushions.

‘Losing weight just a little, I’m afraid. She strains you know. I try to open her eyes to the wonder of life, but I doubt if the brightness of it all is ever wholly clear to her.’

He filled an armchair with his accumulation and sank his large body slowly into the midst of it.

There followed a long silence. Guillaume looked like a dingy Mother Goose.

He restarted the momentum of intercourse. ‘I thought I’d take a chance of finding you in.’

‘Have a crкme-de-menthe?’

‘May I take a handful?’ He nearly emptied the small green tin. ‘I’m engaged on research at Soane’s. The work of years. Probably my very last chance. The final brief passage before the volume closes.’

‘Surely not?’

‘I’m a disappointed man, you know, Mrs Kynaston.’ He smiled like the last sunset of autumn. He had difficulty in extracting the sweets entirely from their papers, so that every now and then he ejected a tiny moist scrap which had accidentally entered his mouth.

‘Florence told me.’

He seemed disturbed. ‘That she had no right to do. Even a failure has his pride.’

‘I shouldn’t have mentioned it. Where is it that you’ve failed?’

‘Can you look at the world around you and ask me that?’ he replied. ‘On the one hand the dream. On the other the reality. And I started with such hopes.’ He was feeling for his pocket handkerchief. Griselda feared that he was about to weep, but he only sought to remove some of the stickiness which his large moist hands had retained from the sweets.

‘Take only one case,’ he continued, ‘Take the state of affairs in denominational schools. Little children exposed naked to the blast of bigotry. Take the mines. Do you know that the faces of miners are black all the time they work? Men born as white as you or I. Take the so-called catering industry. Have you ever worked for twenty-four hours on end in an underground kitchen? Do you know that the world’s supply of phosphorus is being consumed at ten or twenty times the rate it’s being replaced? Look at the cruelty and waste involved in the so-called sport of polo alone! If you live in Wallsend, you have to walk ten miles to see a blade of grass. Is anything being done to harness the energy in the planets? Even though there’s enough to extirpate work everywhere. Think of the millions deceived by so-called free insurance schemes, paid for out of profits!’

‘I see what you mean.’ said Griselda.

‘And in other countries things are worse. What have you to say about the Japanese? Or the Andaman Islanders, who pass their entire lives in a prison camp? Or the so-called freed slaves in Liberia?’

‘Perhaps we’d better stick to England. At least to start with.’

‘There’s a great danger in parochialism. The aboriginal Tasmanians discovered that.’

‘How?’

‘Very simply. They were trapped, killed, and eaten by men of more progressive outlook.’

‘I think there is a lot in what Lord Beaconsfield said.’

‘Of course there is,’ said Gullaume unexpectedly. ‘But did he put it into practice?’

Griselda was far from sure. But almost certainly Guillaume was thinking of some other remark of the sage’s. In any case, he resumed speaking immediately.

‘Though who am I to throw the first stone?’ he enquired. ‘William Cook, the failure. You didn’t even know that my real name was William?’

‘It would never have occurred to me. I suppose you disliked being called Bill? I know I should.’

‘In those days no one would have ventured. I was a man of spirit then. I knew Hubert Bland quite well: and Hyndman too. No. I chanced my name, Mrs Kynaston, solely in order to appear to advantage with women.’

‘I’m sure you did impress them.’

‘Not one. I might have saved myself the cost. Never has one woman truly opened her heart to me, although my heart finds room for the whole human race.’ He looked into Griselda’s eyes and coughed back into his mouth a crкme-de-menthe which had involved itself with the lump in his throat.

‘You have Florence. She’s devoted to you.’

‘A mere Ahaviel. A simple handmaiden,’ he replied irritably. ‘If I could have made my own, utterly my own, a woman of spiritual power, comparable with mine, mountains would have moved.’

For some reason this remark annoyed Griselda. ‘I think Florence is one of the nicest people I’ve ever met.’

‘Nice is the just word,’ he replied bitterly. ‘But you speak to a prophet. My responsibility is wide. I seek the divine flame, not soapsuds.’

‘I won’t have this,’ said Griselda quietly and putting on her shoes. ‘I am fond of Florence. You’re lucky to have her.’

‘Florence is Florence. Naturally no one estimates her more justly than I do.’

‘She is beautiful and intelligent and devoted and faithful and kind. Kind people are rare. As a prophet you ought to know that.’

Guillaume eyed her through the gathering October dusk. ‘I understand why you set store by at least one of those qualities.’

‘I set store by all of them.’ Griselda suspected another attempted seduction.

‘We need not pretend. Your business partner still lives at Juvenal Court, you know. Florence has known Lena for years.’

Griselda thought quickly and clearly before deciding what to say next. Then she decided.

‘I’m sorry I can’t offer you tea. I’ve arranged to join Geoffrey.’

‘Like everybody else, you under-estimate me. Had you been taking tea with Kynaston, I should not have chosen today to visit you.’

Griselda had not expected that either. But for reasons she had not yet had time to determine, Guillaume’s surprising remarks had the effect of clearing rather than unsettling her mind.

‘I’m afraid I must ask you to go. Please give my love to Florence.’

‘I am quite used to eviction and condemnation, as to many other unpleasant things. I should be a poor creature if by now I had not my philosophy, strong as iron.’ Laboriously he rose from his cache of cushions, like the nook of an animal about to hibernate. Still sucking and spitting, he crawled across to the window and stared into the encroaching night. Griselda stood by the open door, waiting.

‘I was absorbing the peace of the lamplighter at work,’ said Guillaume after a while, ‘like a glowworm. Or, perhaps more nearly, a firefly.’

‘I often watch him,’ said Griselda, who had never previously noticed him.

‘“Like a good deed in a naughty world.” You are sensitive to the beauty of words?’

‘Of course. I own a bookshop.’

‘It would be pleasant to live so high up.’ Guillaume sighed and looked about in the twilight for his hat.

‘Here.’ Griselda extended the object. It was a close replica of that worn by Mazzini when in disguise.

‘Good-bye,’ said Guillaume, assimilating and retaining her hand. ‘I grieve for you.’

‘Quite unnecessary,’ replied Griselda, struggling slightly.

‘You mustn’t deny me that single luxury.’ He kissed her heavily and adhesively upon the brow and went away, reeking of charity and peppermint.

Griselda drew the curtains, turned on the lights, and prepared for herself a satisfying, solitary tea, including cucumber sandwiches, and custard creams, new and crisp. For the first time since before Christmas, she felt able to regard herself and find all her faculties present and functioning. Before long she wondered whether it was not even more than that: whether she was not in process of restoration against the consequences of losing Louise. It might be that her marriage to Kynaston had been required to achieve that.

The only awful thought was that Guillaume’s hints, bearing in mind Guillaume’s nature, might have been untrue.

XXXII

Griselda thereafter took particular trouble to be kind and understanding to Lena, despite provocations which steadily increased.

One morning, as the anniversary of her wedding drew near, Griselda sat in the little office after the shop had closed. She was writing and addressing Christmas Cards, designed by herself. Lena had been supposed to be keeping an appointment of some kind, but at the last moment had decided not to go. She was wandering about the shop examining the stock with dissatisfaction.

Just as Griselda decided that she was not called upon to send a specially designed Christmas Card to Mrs Hatch, Lena called out ‘Griselda. May I talk to you? Or do I interrupt?’ She was seated on top of one of the shop ladders.

‘Of course you don’t interrupt. I’ve hardly spoken to you alone for weeks.’

‘I think our books are frightful. There’s an entire shelf of Warwick Deeping.’

‘It’s right up under the ceiling. No one can see it.’

‘And under it Jeffrey Farnol.’

‘That’s just old stock.’

‘And under that J. B. Priestley.’

‘We’ve got to live.’

‘I’d rather live honestly.’

‘Come down and talk about it.’

Lena descended and entered the office. She had taken to wearing dresses; which did not suit her personality. Griselda reflected with interest upon the deterioration in her own clothes since marriage.

‘I want to hand back my partnership. With thanks, of course, Griselda.’

‘I can’t do without you.’

Lena upturned the wastepaper basket, and sat upon it. The floor was now covered with the transactions of the day.

‘I’m going to live abroad.’

‘Where?’

‘Somewhere warm.’

‘North Africa?’

‘Possibly.’

‘Dear Lena. Of course, it’s a man?’

‘The feeling when you haven’t got one is exceeded only by the quite different feeling when you have. But you don’t know about that.’

‘You don’t like it?’

‘Not this particular example of it.’

‘Then why leave the shop?’

‘I told you. I don’t like the books we stock. The books we have to stock. I admit that. I still don’t like them.’

‘Is it that he still chases you?’

‘Mind your own business, Griselda.’ Then she added ‘You’ll be much better without me.’ Griselda had never seen or even imagined her so distressed. She spoke very gently.

‘It’s Geoffrey, I think.’

Lena shook her head.

‘I recognized him from your description.’

‘It’s over, Griselda. At least for me. I’m not sure about him, I’m afraid. I feel a pig, pig, pig.’

‘You needn’t. I believe I’m grateful to you. Anyway I know very much how you feel. I feel some of it myself. Please don’t feel it any more. It’s quite unnecessary. I do know.’

‘You’re good to me Griselda.’ She looked at the pile of Christmas cards. ‘Shall I stick on stamps?’

Griselda smiled and nodded. Soon Lena’s tongue was inflexible with mucilage.

‘May I stay in the shop?’

‘I can’t do without you.’

XXXIII

Griselda felt more than ever that marriage did not suit her. She supposed that she should have a plan to extricate herself; since resignation, the other possibility, had never suited her either. The trouble was that Kynaston was clearly coming to depend upon her more and more. Worse still, his marriage had enabled him to acquire and develop a variety of social and professional responsibilities and entanglements, which he would be wholly unable to sustain unaided. Griselda found difficulty in deciding how far these were expressions of Kynaston’s personality, previously kept latent by restricted conditions, and how far mere substitute outlets for energy diverted by marriage from true and individual aims. Things were not made easier by Lena’s normal defence mechanism of aggression turning against herself, and manifesting as acute guilty embarrassment, whenever she came into contact with Kynaston. This led to Lena absenting herself from the shop whenever she thought Kynaston might appear; and to Kynaston making sour remarks about Lena whenever opportunity offered. In the end he suggested that he himself might take Lena’s place.

‘I could begin by organizing a display of ballet books. Give the entire shop over to it, I mean.’

‘It wouldn’t be fair on Lena, darling. After all she’s done nothing wrong.’

One day in November Griselda received a letter from Lotus. It was on a large sheet of paper in a large envelope, possibly because Lotus’s handwriting was so large; but the contents were brief. It simply invited Griselda to luncheon at Prunier’s the same day. It was the first she had heard of Lotus since the postcard view of Sfax. Apparently she was now staying at the Grosvenor Hotel.

Lotus was very brown, a little plumper, and even better dressed than usual. But her big green eyes were deep rock pools.

She lightly touched Griselda’s hand, swiftly looked her over, and led the way without speaking to a reserved table.

‘Is it true?’ Her voice seemed to Griselda softer and more stirring than before she left England.

‘Which particular thing?’

‘That Geoffrey loves Lena, of course.’

‘In a way.’

‘The only way?’

The waiter brought Lotus a large menu. Lotus, without consulting Griselda, ordered at length for both of them in rapid convincing French. The waitor, who was a Swede, departed much impressed.

‘Saves misunderstanding,’ said Lotus. ‘But you haven’t answered me.’

‘Is it necessary? You seem to know.’

‘Of course I know. Of course it’s not necessary. Things like that are always true. I knew it inside me. But I wanted to hear you say it. I needed to touch bottom.’ Two very large small drinks arrived.

‘All the same how did you know? Does Geoffrey write to you?’

‘Write to me! He never even thinks of me! Never once since I went away.’

‘Have you been in Sfax all this time?’

‘Sfax failed me.’

‘Where else have you been?’

‘Twice round the world.’

Mussels arrived.

‘I wish I had been once round.’

‘The world’s become very crowded.’ She was consuming mussels with enviable grace and firmness. ‘I’ve been in Johannesburg for the last six weeks. Buying clothes and buying men. Then throwing them away again. I couldn’t go back to Sfax while the hot weather lasted.’

‘I thought Sfax was always hot.’

‘It’s still hotter during the hot weather. After what you’ve told me I leave again tonight. I’m living on Victoria Station, you know. I sit all day at my window watching the boat trains and wishing myself beneath their wheels.’

‘You mean you still love Geoffrey?’

‘He is my god. I know that now.’

‘Take him with you Lotus.’

‘Please don’t laugh at me.’

‘He’s yours. I don’t want him and nor does Lena. Take him.’

‘You offer to sacrifice your whole life to my great love? You are pure, Griselda. You will go to heaven.’

Coquilles arrived. Two each.

‘Of course, I’m not sure that he’ll go. He’s become a little set in his ways.’

‘What am I now? Tell me, Griselda, where should we go, he and I? If I accept your sacrifice, that is. I feel you know both our hearts. Tell us where we should be happy.’

‘I don’t think Geoffrey’s good at being happy. Men aren’t, do you think?’ The shells were rattling about on Griselda’s plate, making a noise like dead human hopes.

‘Then we’ll be splendidly, radiantly miserable. But where?’

Griselda considered the maps of the continents in her school atlas. Australia, of course, was out of the question.

‘I suggest the Isle of Wight. I’ve never been there, of course; but I believe it’s full of picturesquely wicked people.’

‘An island!’ cried Lotus. ‘Like George Sand. And Geoffrey like Chopin. He could play mazurkas to me. We could throw away our clothes and dance. And aren’t there coloured cliffs?’

‘And a Pier. It’s nearly a mile long.’

‘And great birds flying into the sun.’

‘And palm trees.’

‘There were palm trees at Sfax.’

Before the arrival of the bouillabaisse it was settled.

‘Where is Geoffrey?’ asked Lotus. ‘I must find him immediately. The Grosvenor’s gone and let my room to a parry of nuns.’

‘I’ll take you. He’s still with the Orinocans. There’s a reception this afternoon. The President’s in England.’

Lotus’s eyes were misty and mysterious. ‘No formality, Griselda,’ she said, clutching Griselda’s hand across the table. ‘Geoffrey and I will creep away like children; hand in hand into the dusk.’ Griselda was fascinated by the solid banks of emeralds in her bracelet. They were so nearly the colour of her eyes.

The Liberator’s birth-place was en fкte. All the windows were shut and fastened, and the lower ones additionally protected by closed iron shutters. There were swags and clusters of artificial flowers in the national colours; and a huge entirely new flag swirling in the November breeze which set the teeth of the spectators on edge with the chill foreboding of even worse weather inescapably ahead. Up the steps to the door was a red carpet showing even yet, and despite hard scubbing, marks left by the blood of an earlier notability. Above the line of the cornice could be detected the glint and reassurance of steel helmets. The shivering crowd was laced with detectives, chilled to the bone and waiting for trouble. One or two common constables stood grumbling about their pay and working conditions. They were conscious of being outnumbered and outclassed. Preliminary entertainment was provided by a small brass band which was accompanying His Excellency on his travels. As a compliment to England, they played the same tune again and again, being the only English tune they knew except only ‘The Holy City’, which they had learnt instead of ‘God Save the King.’ It was ‘Poor Wandering One’; and, what is more, no royalty was being paid to Mr D’Oyly Carte.

Lotus and Griselda arrived by taxi four and a half minutes before the climactic moment. Lotus ordered the taxi to wait, despite dissent from a section of the crowd which had been there since dawn and now found its view obstructed. Fortunately, however, the taxi-driver was very old and queer, and fell into a deep sleep every time his vehicle became inanimate. Lotus was shaking all over with nerves. Her face was so thickly veiled as to be quite invisible in the dim taxi; but her sable coat scented the stale cold air with wealth and the anticipation of desire fulfilled. The taximeter was defective and apppeared to be running downwards instead of upwards. Every now and then there was a little crisis, when a spring seemed to go; but each time the invincible machine recovered itself and recorded a sum smaller than ever. The watchers on the pavement went on complaining unpleasantly, but took no further action. Griselda found it impossible to withhold admiration for Lotus’s Johannesburg hat. Griselda herself wore a large black velvet beret, а La Bohиme.

‘Where is he?’ asked Lotus in a low voice, further muffled by layers of expensive veiling. ‘When shall I see him?’

‘I expect he’s inside. They may have lighted a fire as the President’s coming.’

‘When he comes out, what do you advise me to do, Griselda? I trust you absolutely.’

‘Wait until the end of the ceremony. Geoffrey usually makes himself some toast before he leaves. You can help him with the sardines.’

‘Will it be long?’ Lotus’s lovely voice was throbbing.

‘We’ll see. Here’s the procession.’

The common constables had been active and were thrusting people back behind invisible lines. Soon Lotus’s taxi was isolated. Griselda found it rather exciting. She supposed that Lotus and she must be taken for persons of privilege. Doubtless Lotus’s veil was responsible. She resolved to acquire a veil herself as soon as Geoffrey was off her hands. The watchers on the pavement could be heard expressing further resentment as they were lined up behind a huge pantechnicon which, having missed the diversion notices, was waiting for the crowd to clear, while the driver looked for a public house. The constables were quipping and appealing obliquely to the crowd’s common humanity in order to reconcile them.

Then from the other direction a scout from New Scotland Yard roared into being on his splendid motor bicycle; and some way behind him came a funeral Daimler, bearing a tiny silk pennant. Without a sound the Daimler ceased to move; the footman opened the door; and, as the crowd cheered half-heartedly, eight men alighted, in various different kinds of overcoat. Simultaneously the front door of the house opened with a deep clanking, as of heavy chains falling on to a deck; and Colonel Costa-Rica in a pale blue uniform and a feather at least two feet tall, descended the steps to greet the First Citizen of his homeland. After a moment’s confusion, the band rushed into ‘Sheep may safely graze’ which had been adopted as the Orinocan national anthem. Their performance would have been better if they had not been so unaccustomd to prolonged damp cold.

Then Lotus gave a suppressed cry. Behind the Colonel, Kynaston had appeared. He wore a frock coat, which Griselda supposed must be retained by the Embassy for such occasions; a discreet rose in his buttonhole; and pale grey spats. He carried a silk hat almost as tall as the Colonel’s feather; but could have done with a suitable overcoat. Griselda was surprised she had not before noticed that he was gathering weight. He looked anxious but determined, as at other turning points in his career at which she had been present Lotus clung to Griselda’s hand. Rapture made her speechless.

Among the men getting out of the car Griselda recognized the Under Secretary for Foreign Affairs, a raw youth whom she had met at the All Party Dance. She remembered him as suffering from a conclusive impediment in his speech. Now he was followed by a tottering figure from his Department, and by the Orinocan Ambassador, who looked as pleased and as unchallengeable as if he had just captured the national meat-packing contract (as was quite possibly the case). The Ambassador was accompanied by a Chargй d’Affaires, indistinguishable from Mr Jack Buchanan, and by the Military Attachй, who, though a small man, based his style on Field-Marshal Gцring, thus being entrusted with as many personal confidences as professional. Behind this brilliant figure, appeared the chef de cabinet and the President’s aide-de-camp, the former somewhat younger than the latter, which was opportune as the two looked so South American as to make distinction between them otherwise difficult. Griselda would have expected the President to appear first, but, in fact, he appeared last: possibly in consequence of having been the first to enter the well filled vehicle. He was a commonplace stocky man, in movement staccato from years of watchfulness, and with a head like a small round cannon-ball. His sharp nasal voice could be clearly heard, carried on the chill moist air as he addressed his entourage. He seemed dissatisfied with something. Griselda knew from Kynaston that he was of Irish extraction, a fact which he concealed under the name of Cassido.

Despite the autumnal weather, Griselda enjoyed looking on from the sanctuary of the cab. Indeed she found many of the conditions perfect for witnessing a spectacle of the kind. It was almost cosy. Lotus, however, had begun to pant slightly, filling the enclosed space with delicate vapour filtered by her veil. Quickly, as Colonel Costa-Rica was saluting, she lowered the window of the cab and, putting out half her body, ecstatically waved her handkerchief, executed for her by Worth’s South African branch. The draught in the cab was really appalling; and Griselda, moreover, was reduced to looking out through the unsatisfactory little panel at the rear.

The cab being, like most of its kind, old and almost in pieces, the sudden frenzied lowering of one of its windows was audible above ‘Sheep may safely graze’ and the fury of the President. The distinguished visitor still stood with his back to the saluting Colonel, so that Kynaston, waiting to be presented, permitted his attention to be drawn by the obstrusive clatter. Through her tiny window Griselda saw him go very white and drop his silk hat.

Lotus uttered a cooing cry of reunion. The President, his round Irish face black with passion, had begun to wave both arms above his head and to jump up and down on the pavement. Then there was a shot. The Military Attachй, secure in his diplomatic immunity, was effecting a coup d’йtat.

Griselda saw the President jump higher than ever. Clearly as yet he was little, if any, the worse. Kynaston was stooping for his hat, which had rolled down the red carpet. Then there was a second shot and Kynaston disappeared. By this time one of the common constables, who a second before had seemed to be standing a long way off, had covered the ground and, disregarding international law, thrown his arms round the Attachй’s middle. Colonel Costa-Rica, supposing all to be over with the Father of his People, continued at the salute. Then, looking much mortified, he lowered his arm as unobtrusively as possible. The President was intact, though in a worse mood than ever.

*

History, or such of it as was under proper direction, related that a young foreigner privileged to work at the shrine of the Liberator, had had the honour of offering his life to save the life of President Cassido. Even a gringo, indicated history, was thus exalted after only a single meeting with the Liberator’s great successor.

Occasionally Griselda wondered, not without remorse and self-questioning, whether Kynaston had not preferred death to Lotus; but on the whole she was convinced that his end had been sadly but entirely accidental.

To Colonel Costa-Rica it is to be feared that the incident presented itself mainly in the light of another contest with an obstructive charwoman upon the subject of once more cleaning up that unlucky carpet.

Part Three

XXXIV

One day between Christmas and Near Year Griselda and Lena were dusting some of the stock. The shop had just opened. They worked along the upper shelves taking out the books one at a time, dusting their top edges, and replacing them. Every now and then there was a long pause while one or other of them investigated a volume entirely new to her.

The door opened and a tall man entered in a Gibus hat and a black cloak covered with snow.

‘Good morning.’ said Griselda from the top of her ladder. She had just been dipping into Pears’ Cyclopedia.

‘Please don’t come down,’ said the visitor. ‘I’ll look round, if I may.’ He removed his hat. He had curling black hair, parted down the middle.

‘Certainly,’ said Griselda. ‘Won’t you take off your cloak?’

‘Thank you.’ He looked up at her. He was very pale; with large but well-shaped bones, and black eyes.

‘There’s a stand in the corner. Under the bust of Menander.’

‘I didn’t know there was a bust of Menander.’

‘It’s conjectural.’

‘Like so much else.’

Griselda thought he almost smiled.

He removed his cloak. He was wearing evening dress with a white waistcoat; and across his breast ran the bright silk ribbon of a foreign order.

He hung up his coat and hat, and began to examine the books. He went along the shelves steadily and methodically, noting every title and frequently extracting a book for similarly exact scrutiny of its contents. Some of the books he bore away to Griselda’s desk, where he had soon built a substantial cairn. Griselda and Lena descended alternately to serve other customers. Many of them seemed surprised by the distinction of the stranger’s appearance.

Before his circuit of the shop was three-quarters completed, he came to rest by the desk. ‘Alas, I must go. You see: I am awaited.’ He extended his hand towards the wintry morning outside the shop window. The snow clouds were so heavy that it hardly seemed day; but as Griselda followed his gesture, she saw that the dim and dirty light was further diminished by some large obstruction.

‘I’ll make out a bill and then pack up the books in parcels.’

‘Please don’t trouble. My coachman and footman will load them into the carriage.’

He went to the door and spoke briefly to someone outside.

A man of about thirty, with very long side whiskers, entered, and began to bear away armfuls of books. He wore a beaver hat, a long dark green topcoat with a cape, and high boots. Clearly he had been sitting on his box in the snow while his master shopped.

‘Don’t take them before Miss de Reptonville has accounted for them.’

Griselda put some shillings in the pounds column and Lena slightly damaged the dust-jacket of The Light of Asia; but both took care to display no surprise.

‘Ask Staggers to help you, if you wish.’

‘No necessity, sir. One more trip and I’ll finish. Staggers needs to hold the umbrella between the door and the carriage.’

‘Of course. Most proper.’

Griselda, being unproficient at arithmetic, could only hope that the grand total could be substantiated. It was certainly the grandest total since she had entered the shop.

The customer produced an unusually large cheque book from a pocket inside his cloak and wrote out the cheque in black ink. Griselda saw that the cheque, which was on a small private Bank previously unknown to her, bore the drawer’s coat of arms and crest. One glance at this last and she had no need to look at the signature.

The customer was regarding her. ‘I received your Christmas Card. Thank you.’

‘I was grateful for your letter.’

‘Nothing would have pleased me more than to have been able to help you’ He spoke with much sincerity.

An invisible hand lightly squeezed at Griselda’s throat.

‘I must give you a receipt.’

She was unable even to stick on the stamp symmetrically.

‘Please introduce me to your friend.’

‘Of course. Please forgive me. Both of you. Lena Drelincourt. Sir Hugo Raunds.’

Lena descended. She looked a little startled. Their visitor removed a white kid glove, more than slightly discoloured with his recent work, and put out an elegant and well kept hand.

‘I like your shop. I used to know Mr Tamburlane quite well. I shall hope to visit you again. May I?’ It was if he were a caller rather than a customer.

‘As soon as possible,’ said Lena.

‘Lena writes.’

‘Of course. Her three books are by my bed, and I admire them more at every reading.’

Lena went slightly pink and looked charming.

‘Good-bye then, Miss de Reptonville.’

Griselda took his hand. It was firm and dry and cool.

She looked him in the eyes. ‘There’s no news?’

‘No news.’ He still held her hand. ‘I hope I need not say I should have told you?’

‘No . . . I couldn’t help asking.’

He said nothing for a moment; then silently released her hand. All the while he was returning her gaze. Lena was looking on flushed and fascinated.

‘All packed up, sir,’ said the footman from the exactly right distance between the group of them and the shop door.

‘I’m coming. You can tell Staggers to get back on his box.’

‘Very good, sir.’

Their visitor put on his cloak. He had reached a decision. ‘I propose,’ he said, ‘to ask you to come and stay with me. Both of you.’ He seemed to speak with hesitation. ‘But naturally only if you wish to do so. Please say nothing now. There will be a formal invitation; which if you wish to decline or ignore I shall entirely understand.’

At this moment Griselda recalled old Zec’s curious behaviour at the All Party Ball when Hugo Raunds was mentioned.

‘We’d love to come,’ said Lena casually.

He made no reply, but bowing slightly and saying ‘Your servant, ladies,’ departed into the London snow.

Griselda and Lena followed him to the door. His carriage was an immense affair, with the familiar crest upon the door and at the base of the massive brightly polished lamps. Drawn by two proportionately immense black horses, with wild eyes, nostrils steaming like volcanoes, waving manes, and long undocked tails, it was governed by an immense coachman, so rugged and round and red as to overawe all possible comment. His red hair stuck out horizontally from beneath his huge tilted beaver. His red beard was snowy as Father Christmas’s. His red ear was curiously round, like the top of a red toadstool.

As the equipage drove away into the thickly drifting snow, Griselda and Lena perceived that on the opposite pavement, previously obscured from them by the bulk of the carriage itself, had accumulated, even in the teeth of the weather, a small cluster of passing Londoners. Rage and contempt were in every face and posture. Griselda had seldom seen any gathering of people so much under the influence of their emotions.

XXXV

Griselda had told Lena about Louise and said that she had mentioned the family which dwelt in the house they had entered on the day of Kynaston’s final picnic. Now she told her about Zec and his wife, whom for a long time she had forgotten; and of Louise’s words ‘Hugo is a very secret man.’

‘You mean,’ said Lena, ‘that after Mr Tamburlane you’ve had enough of secret men?’

‘Not altogether that. I don’t think Hugo Raunds is like Mr Tamburlane, do you, Lena?’

‘Not altogether, I should say.’

‘I just thought that if we’re going to stay with him – are we, by the way?’

‘It’ll mean coffins for beds and tooth mugs in gold plate.’

‘If we are going to stay, perhaps we could find out just why people don’t seem to like him.’

‘I don’t know that that’s any great mystery,’ said Lena. ‘If you think what people are like. Still I agree we might dig about.’

But it was hard to know which piece of ground to turn first; so that by the time the invitation arrived, they had discovered nothing more about their host whatever.

They were invited to visit a house which seemed to be in the Welsh Marches; and no term was set to their stay. The brief letter ended with the words ‘Come and see for yourselves. Then please yourselves.’

‘Hell of a journey in February,’ remarked Lena, ‘and, I should say, doubtfully worth the expense seeing that we can’t both leave the shop for more than a day or two. Still, better than that mausoleum in Essex doubtless. I suppose I shall have to freeze in a skirt all the time as it’s a country family?’

‘Louise said that Hugo Raunds lived entirely for clothes.’

‘I can imagine what that means. Brittle women in models.’

‘Surely not in Montgomeryshire?’

‘Unlike us they travel wrapped in mink in centrally heated Rolls-Royces.’

‘Shall we not go?’

Lena thought for a moment. Then she said gently ‘You go, Griselda. They’d only eye me.’

‘I won’t go without you.’

‘It’s much the best thing. You could do with a holiday, and I could look after the shop. Stay a long time if you find you like it. As long as you want to. You’re beautiful and it’s a kind of thing you need. One kind of thing. Sometimes, anyway. So, please.’

‘You need a holiday too.’

‘Less than you.’

Griselda put her arm round Lena’s shoulders.

‘You’re good to me, Lena, I’m grateful.’

‘You gave me half a shop. I’m grateful. I’ll look you up a train to Montgomeryshire.’

Of course Griselda had to change at Shrewsbury, but she had never expected to have to change at Welshpool as well.

Darkness had descended long before she arrived. The minute but not inelegant Welsh station seemed high among the mountains. A small but bitter wind crept murderously along the single platform. There was one oil lamp, and otherwise not a light to be seen anywhere. Griselda was the only passenger, but two figures awaited her on the platform.

One was clearly the station factotum, though his aspect, demeanour, and even uniform seemed of an antique type. He came forward, touched his cap, and, though able to speak little but Welsh, bade Griselda Good evening, and took her bag. After a wait of only some seconds, the engine whistled, and the train drew out as if glad to be away.

The second figure was a woman. She was closely muffled in a hood and wore some long garment reaching to the ground. Her perfume hung on the cold air. She extended her gloved hand and, having confirmed Griselda’s identity, said ‘My name is Esemplarita. I look after things at the Castle. Hugo asked me to apologize for being unable to meet you himself. He turned his ankle yesterday fencing.’ When Griselda had greeted her and expressed her regret about her host’s misadventure, the woman continued ‘We have to go down a narrow path to the lane, where the carriage is waiting. But Abersoch will go first with the lamp.’

Abersoch lifted the single lamp from its bracket and led the way.

‘You go next,’ said Esemplarita to Griselda.

They descended a cinder way which zig-zagged down a high bank to a tiny sunken lane below. At the bottom of the path Abersoch’s lamp fell upon a small black cabriolet with a gleaming horse.

‘Good evening, miss,’ said another Welsh voice from the box.

Abersoch opened the door and handed up Griselda’s luggage, which the coachman placed in a high-sided cage on the roof.

‘Your ticket if you please, miss.’

Griselda had to grope by the light of Abersoch’s lamp, but in the end she found it and delivered it up.

‘Not all of it, miss,’ said Abersoch. He bisected the ticket and gave her half of it. ‘You may be wanting to go back.’

‘Thank you,’ said Griselda smiling: ‘So I shall.’

‘It’s entirely up to you, miss.’

Griselda stepped into the carriage. The interior was pitch black and filled with Esemplarita’s scent. Esemplarita followed her in. There was scarcely room for two on the seat. Abersoch shut the door and again touched his cap, the light falling on his face as in an old-fashioned coloured drawing. The carriage began to move.

‘I’m afraid the road is atrocious almost all the way.’

To Griselda this seemed to be true.

After a considerable period of compressed jolting silence, while Griselda tried to think of something to say, Esemplarita took up the conversation. ‘I believe you don’t know Hugo very well?’

‘No. He’s really a friend of a friend of mine.’

‘I know. Your friend gave Hugo a good account of you.’

‘When?’ Griselda’s heart was beating among the beating of the horse’s hooves.

‘Some time ago. As you know, we’re not in touch with her at the moment. But I wanted to speak of something else. You have heard, of course, that Hugo’s life – and the lives of all of us – differ from the lives people lead nowadays?’

‘I was told a little – by the friend we have in common. A very little. I have noticed – some small differences. I know almost nothing.’

‘The Castle is, so to speak, enchanted. Your friend gave Hugo to understand that you might like to know about it; to see for yourself.’

‘She was kind.’

‘The opportunity is mutual. We want suitable people to visit us.’

‘I see.’

‘There are very few suitable people.’

‘Can you define?’

The carriage had plunged across what Griselda took to be a series of deep diagonal ruts frozen to the unyieldingness of stone, before her companion answered ‘It cannot truly be defined. You will soon begin to see. There is only one thing.’

‘Yes?’

‘Your friend commended you for your acceptance of what life can offer. Your lack of surprise. You understand that?’

‘Yes.’

‘Lack of surprise is taken for granted at the Castle. That is what I wanted to say.’

‘I see . . . I love your scent.’

‘Thank you.’ Then she added kindly ‘That is the sort of thing not to be surprised about.’

For some time they compared tastes in books and music. Then the carriage stopped.

‘The Castle gates,’ said Esemplarita.

Griselda could hear the clanking and grinding as the lodge-keeper opened them. Remarks were exchanged in Brythonic between him and the driver. Then the carriage proceeded on a much better surface. Griselda could hear the gates closing behind her.

The distance up the drive seemed very long. Griselda and her companion turned to the subject of edible fungi: how to find and prepare them, and which of them to eschew. Esemplarita explained that she had known nothing of these matters until she came to live at the Castle, but that now they had fungi with almost every meal.

In the end Griselda felt the carriage following a huge arc, as if going round the edge of an immense circus ring. Then it stopped again and the driver was opening the door.

Griselda realized that the Castle was not, as she had supposed, mediaeval, but Gothic revival at the earliest. The long front before her was decked with three tiers of lighted windows. Clearly Sir Hugo was entertaining largely.

When the coachman had rung the ornate bell, the door was opened by a footman. Griselda entered, followed by Esemplarita. The coachman was getting down Griselda’s bag to give to the footman.

The big Gothic revival hall was hung with paintings, and lighted with hundreds, possibly thousands, of candles, in complex candelabra descending from the ceiling, and storied brackets climbing the walls. There was an immense carpet, predominantly dark green: and involved painted furniture. At one end of the hall was a fire which really filled the huge grate and soaked all the air with warmth. Round the fire was a group of men and women. They sat or lay on painted chairs and couches and on the predominantly dark green floor. Griselda thought at first that they were in fancy dress. Then she turned and saw that Esemplarita was dressed like them. She remembered that she must not be surprised.

Instead she smiled. She felt as one returned to life She was relieved of care and accessible to joy.

Esemplarita went round introducing her. Several of the names were known to Griselda. If she was not surprised, neither, it was clear, were they.

Then she heard herself greeted. She stood with her back to the the blaze, a huge portrait of Jeanne de Naples above her head, and saw her host standing at the foot of the wide staircase. He wore a dressing gown in mulberry silk and leaned on the baluster. Behind him stood a figure Griselda recognized. It was Vaisseau.

‘Are you pleased?’

‘It is beautiful.’

‘It is doomed of course.’

‘Of course.’

‘You are smiling.’

‘I am happy.’

The men and women round the fire had kept quite silent during this colloquy. Now a tall woman came to her and said ‘Would you like to change? There’s no need if you’d rather not. But if you’d like to, I could help.’

‘Thank you,’ replied Griselda. ‘I’d like to.’

Envoi

Before many days Griselda found that happiness unfitted her for the modern world; and, though the master of the Castle, as she knew, often travelled, as on occasion did most of the others, decided to give her half of the shop to Lena, who, despite the warmest of invitations, persisted in her attitude that Wales was a waste of oracles and oratorios.

Griselda was happy, though cognizant that sooner or later the spell would be broken by public opinion and Order in Council; but whenever there was mention of Hero and Leander, about whom one of the others was writing a poetic drama, and indeed whenever her thoughts were idle, she knew that if only Louise were there, then indeed would she be whole.

About the Author

Robert Fordyce Aickman was born in 1914 in London. He was married to Edith Ray Gregorson from 1941 to 1957. In 1946 the couple, along with Tom and Angela Rolt, set up the Inland Waterways Association to preserve the canals of Britain. It was in 1951 that Aickman, in collaboration with Elizabeth Jane Howard, published his first ghost stories in a volume entitled We Are for the Dark. Aickman went on to publish seven more volumes of ‘strange stories’ as well as two novels and two volumes of autobiography. He also edited the first eight volumes of The Fontana Book of Great Ghost Stories. He died in February 1981.