The Silent Pool

Chapter Nine

Back at Ford House, Janet took her way along the left-hand corridor at the stair head. Knocking on the end door, she was bidden to enter by a voice which didn’t sound as if it belonged to Meeson. She came into a large L-shaped room with the sun pouring in through two of the four big windows.

Adriana Ford lay on a couch on the shady side. Cream brocade cushions propped her. She wore a loose wrap of the same material trimmed with dark fur. A green velvet spread covered her to the waist. Janet must have seen these things as she came in, because she remembered them afterwards, but at the time she was only aware of Adriana herself – the fine skin, very carefully made up, the great eyes, the astonishing dark red hair, cut short and square. There was no effect of age, there was no effect of youth. There was just Adriana Ford, and she dominated the room.

Janet came up to the couch. A long, pale hand touched hers and pointed to a chair. She sat, and Adriana looked at her. It could have been unnerving, but as far as Janet was concerned, if Adriana wanted to look at her she was welcome. She certainly hadn’t anything to hide. Or had she? Ninian walked in among her thoughts and angered them. Her colour rose.

Adriana laughed.

‘So you are something more than a brown Scotch mouse!’

Janet said, ‘I hope so.’

‘So do I!’ said Adriana Ford. ‘We’re a terrible household of women. That is what one comes to – we start with women, and we go back to them. And I’m lucky with Meeson – she was my dresser, you know, so we can enjoy ourselves talking about old times. And I didn’t think then I’d be cast for a part like this – the Interminable Invalid! Well, this doesn’t amuse you. Star sent you down here to look after her brat. Has it treated you to one of its screaming fits yet?’

Janet showed a dimple.

‘She only screams when she can’t have something she wants.’

‘It’s a simple code! I’ve told Star a dozen times the creature ought to go to school. She’s quite intelligent, and she’s too old for Nanny. Well, I suppose you’ve met everyone. Edna is the world’s worst bore and Geoffrey thinks so. Meriel wants the moon and she isn’t likely to get it. We’re an odd lot, and you’ll be glad when you can leave us. I’d be glad enough to get away myself, but I’m here for keeps. Do you see much of Star?’

‘Off and on,’ said Janet.

‘And Ninian?’

‘No.’

‘Too busy for his old friends? Or just the changeable kind? I hear he made a hit with that queer book he wrote. What was it called – Never to Meet. No money in it of course, and no sense, but just a flash of genius. All the clever boys who were at college with him patted him on the back and wrote him up, and the Third Programme did a dramatized version which I don’t suppose I should have listened to if it had been by anyone else. His second book has got more stuff in it. Have you read it?’

Janet said, ‘No.’ She had made herself a promise about that, and found it hard to keep. Not to read his book was a sign and symbol that she had turned Ninian from her door. Out of a corner of her mind there came the whispered echo from Pierrot’s song:

‘Ouvre moi ta porte

Pout l’amour de Dieu!’

Janet fetched Stella at half past twelve, and was presented with a programme for the rest of the day.

‘Now we go home, and you brush my hair, and look at my hands and say you can’t think how I get them so dirty, and I wash them, and you look at them again, and then we go down and have lunch. And after lunch I have my rest – only if it’s fine I have it in the garden on a li-lo with a rug. You can have one too if you like. Aunt Edna does, but Nanny says it’s a lazy habit. The rugs are in the nursery cupboard, and we must always remember to bring them in.’

They went out after lunch, across the green lawn and through a gate into a garden with a pool in the middle of it. There was a stone seat, and a summerhouse, and a yew hedge which kept the wind away. Beyond the hedge there were tall hollyhocks that topped it, and borders bright with phlox and marigold, snapdragon, gladiolus, a late tangle of love-in-the-mist, and the high plumes of golden rod. In the summerhouse there were garden chairs, and a locker full of cushions and li-los.

Stella directed the proceedings with zest.

‘We’ll have lots of cushions. You can sit on the seat, and I’ll have my li-lo by the pool. It’s my favourite place. Sometimes there are dragonflies, and nearly always there are frogs, but Nanny doesn’t care about them. And when we are quite comfortable you can tell me about getting lost in the mist.’

The sun was warm, the sky was blue. A green dragonfly hovered above the pool like a quivering flame. Janet saw these things with the eyes of her body, but with the eyes of her mind she climbed and stumbled in a mist on the slopes of Darnach Law with Ninian’s hand on her shoulder steadying her.

Stella’s high voice chimed in.

‘Wasn’t Star there?’

‘No. She had a cold. Mrs Rutherford wouldn’t let her go out.’

‘What a pity.’

‘She didn’t think so. We were wet through. There is nothing that soaks through everything like a mist.’

Stella said in a sleepy voice,

‘Star doesn’t like to get wet.’ She yawned and snuggled down among her cushions. ‘I do. I like to get all soaked – and come in and have a lovely fire – and hot – buns – for – tea-’ Her voice trailed away.

Janet watched her, and saw the sleeping face relax, the cheeks softly rounded, lips parted, and eyelids not quite shut. With all that restless energy gone, there was a defenceless look. She wondered whether Stella was climbing Darnach Law in a dream.

She began to wish that she had brought a book. She had not expected to have time for reading, and she did not care to go and fetch one now, in case Stella should wake and find herself alone. She fell to watching the dragonfly. It had settled now, and clung motionless to a sun-warmed stone. She had never seen one so near before – the brilliant eyes, the gauzy wings, the long apple-green body, and all that shimmering motion stilled.

There was a step on the paved path. Ninian Rutherford came through an arched gap in the hedge and said with a question in his voice,

‘Nature study?’

It was an extremely charming voice – fit, as his old Scotch nurse used to say, to wile a bird from her nest. It had wiled Janet once, but she was armed against it now. Or was she? She looked up and met his laughing eyes. If there was something behind the laughter it was gone before she could be sure of it. They might have met yesterday and parted the best of friends. The two-year gap was to be ignored.

He came round the pool and sat down beside her.

‘Well, how are you getting on, my jo Janet?’ It was the old jesting name, the old jesting tone. ‘And what were you looking at?’ He sang under his breath:

‘Keek into the draw well,

Janet, Janet.

There ye’ll see yer bonnie sel’,

My jo Janet!’

She said in her most matter-of-fact tone,

‘I was watching a dragonfly. I had never seen a green one before. Look!’

But he was looking at her.

‘Have you been slimming? You’re a bit on the thin side.’

‘If I’m here for a fortnight I shall probably have to slim. The milk is practically cream, and Mrs Simmons is a wonderful cook!’

He laughed.

‘It’s the one bright spot. Honestly, darling, you’ll be bored stiff. It was like Star’s nerve to push you into looking after her brat! But whatever possessed you to let her do it? I’d have seen her at Jericho! But you never did have any sense.’

The colour rushed into her cheeks.

‘If there’s one thing I’ve got, it’s just that!’

‘Sense?’ His eyes teased her. ‘You haven’t got as much as would lie on the edge of a sixpence – not if it means looking after yourself and seeing people don’t exploit you, and not working your fingers to the bone for them!’

She lifted a pair of small brown hands and let them fall in her lap again.

‘I wouldn’t just call them worked to the bone myself.’

‘Metaphorically speaking, they are. It’s just what I said – you’ve no sense. You let Star foist this job on you, and you let that fellow Hugo work all the flesh off your bones, the damned ass!’

‘He is not a damned ass!’

‘He is – and a poseur into the bargain!’

He was as dark as Star was fair. Janet suddenly realized that Stella was like him. There was the same nervous energy, the same black frown, and the dark spark of anger in the eyes. It danced there now as he leaned towards her and said,

‘You don’t know how to fight for yourself- that’s the trouble with you! You would be a bonnie fighter if you’d give your mind to it – I give you that! But you don’t! You’re thinking about the other person all the time, or you’re being too proud to bother!’

Just where were they going? They both knew well enough what he meant when he said she was too proud to fight. She had been too proud to fight for him. If he wanted Anne Forester, it wasn’t Janet Johnstone who would crook a finger to beckon him back.

‘Ninian, you’re talking nonsense.’

‘And why not? I can talk better nonsense than that if I’ve a mind to!’

He had leaned near enough to give her the feeling that she was hemmed in, his arm along the back of the seat, his slim length easy. She put out a hand to hold him off, and he laughed.

‘Ninian, you’ll wake Stella.’

He said in a laughing voice,

‘Well, I don’t want to do that! Let sleeping tigers lie! How do you get on with her?’

‘Very well.’

‘Had one of the famous screaming fits yet?’

‘She only has them when she’s bored.’

‘So she won’t have one with you – is that it?’

‘Of course.’

‘Our sainted Edna is enough to bore anyone. No wonder Geoffrey strays. And her face was her fortune, you know. At any rate it was all the fortune she had. So why on earth Geoffrey married her just has to take its place as one of those insoluble mysteries along with the Man in the Iron Mask and Who Killed the Princes in the Tower! It’s pretty certain Richard didn’t, because if he had, Henry VII would have tumbled over himself to accuse him after the battle of Bosworth. I hope you admire the versatility of my conversation. Or perhaps Hugo is so brilliant that no one else can compete!’

Janet allowed the dimple to come out. It was an attractive dimple.

‘You don’t get much brilliant conversation when you are taking things down in shorthand.’

‘You don’t mean to say you take down all that tripe in squiggles and dashes!’

‘Dashes are Morse, not shorthand.’

‘Darling, I can’t believe it. Shorthand! The only thing I can think of that would be worse would be a clattering typewriter, or Bernard Shaw’s reformed spelling! It would dry me right up!’

The dimple remained. Janet said nothing.

He struck the back of the seat with his hand.

‘This is where you ask me how I do my stuff!’

‘But I know – on odd bits of paper, all up and down and across, and someone has to sort it all out for you.’

‘I have to do it myself, darling. Janet, it serves you right!’

‘How does it serve me right?’

‘You might have had the job for keeps, but no, you went into a huff and walked out. I’m not angry you know – I’m just sorry for you having to take down that stuff of Hugo’s.’

‘It’s very good stuff.’ She spoke soberly. The dimple had disappeared.

Ninian ran an enraged hand through his hair and said,

‘All right, it is, then! And so what? You work for him, and you don’t have to bother with my wretched bits and pieces! He’s a best-seller, and I’m not and probably never will be, so it’s all for the best! And you wouldn’t change your job for the world!’

Janet looked at him calmly. There was something gratifying about being able to put Ninian in a rage. She said,

‘It’s a good job.’

‘Oh, quite a labour of love!’ The hand that had been laid along the back of the seat shot out and took her by the wrist. ‘Is it?’

‘Is it what? Ninian you’re hurting!’

‘Is it a labour of love? I don’t mind in the least whether I’m hurting you or not! Does he make love to you – does he kiss you?’

She looked down at the brown hand, which felt more like a handcuff than reasonable flesh and blood. But then, when was Ninian reasonable? Her lips trembled, but she would not let them break into a smile. There was a decided increase in her Scottish lilt as she said,

‘It wouldn’t be your business if he did.’

The grip on her wrist tightened. She wouldn’t have thought it possible, but it happened – quite painfully.

‘Does he?’

‘You’re breaking my wrist!’

He laughed.

‘That would put a stop to the shorthand!’ He let her go as suddenly as he had snatched at her. ‘You shouldn’t make me angry! You’ve got the trick of it, and I suppose you like playing cat-and-mouse with me!’

‘I do not!’

‘Well, you’d better be careful, or one day you’ll go too far!’

He looked past her and saw Stella’s eyes fixed on him. That she had only just opened them was apparent. They were still dark with sleep, the pupils contracting visibly as the light reached them. She said, ‘Ninian-’ in a wavering voice. She had come out of a dream, and he was there. She stared, scrambled up, and flung herself upon him.