Friends and Relations Page 17

  “Very much. So we talked: then Lewis rang me up.”

  “How did he know you were there?”

  “He had heard from Marise who’d heard from Willa who went round to look for Theodora after lunch. So he rang up and asked me to dine somewhere. Laurel couldn’t have me because she’d sent the cook out with the children to Kensington Gardens; so I said I would. Then I went back to the hotel and had a bath, but when Lewis called for me I was still so tired I didn’t want to go out; I asked him to stay and dine there.”

  “I shouldn’t have called that a very tiring day: didn’t you shop? You generally do so much. What sort of a dinner did they give you?”

  “The hotel? Oh, bad.”

  “They always do. I can’t think what made you—”

  “So then we looked at Marise’s novel.”

  “Oh, can Marise write novels?” said Rodney, impressed. “What was it about? Was it good?”

  “Oh…women’s difficulties, difficulties about women: I don’t remember. I didn’t think it seemed very good.”

  “Did Lewis think it was good?” pursued Rodney.

  “He didn’t say. Then Edward came round to look for Lewis.”

  “How did Edward know Lewis would be there?”

  “You see, Lewis had rung up when I was at Laurel’s—then after that Lewis and Edward walked home.”

  “Good for Edward; he never gets enough exercise. So then you came home?”

  “I was meaning to go to bed, but then I decided I wouldn’t stay, after all. I remembered all this down here—the Mothers coming—and London was so stuffy; my room was so stuffy when I was dressing for dinner. So I decided to come home. Of course, I had to pay for my room. But the midnight train was beautifully cool, Rodney.—Oh, yes, I know, I’m sorry: I’ve been an idiot. I won’t do it again. Yesterday wasn’t really a good day for me to go up.”

  “But you did enjoy yourself?”

  “Oh, yes; I’m glad I went.”

  “What are you going to do with the Mothers’ Union?”

  “There’s a treasure-hunt, and Hermione is going to take them out on the lake. I think perhaps, Rodney, I might sleep for half an hour.”

  “I do wish you would. I say, Janet, it wasn’t awkward with Edward in any way?”

  “I don’t understand,” she said, helplessly.

  “The Elfrida business.”

  “Oh, no; I think that has quite passed off.”

  He kissed her.

  “Dear Rodney…”

  “I’m glad you’re back,” he said, and crept out as though she were asleep already. Outside, his step quickened: this was a busy day for him. “That was how it all was, you see,” said Janet aloud. She lay still, there were no more footsteps. Getting up, she looked out between the curtains. Hermione dragging a long flag over the grass, the lawn, the beeches…Had there been some mistake? Janet asked herself: “What can Hermione be doing with that flag? It belongs to Colonel Gibbons; it ought to have gone back after the fête.” Hermione, tripping and tweaking like a sparrow, dragged at the yards of tri-colour bunting; the French flag writhed on the grass behind her.

  Hermione was lining the punt with flags, for the Mothers: this soon became evident; she was up again from the lake for another flag. “What ideas she does have,” thought Janet. Lying down again, she repeated, “What ideas we all have; we do all have ideas. We do each other no good. Oh, my darling, we do each other no good.” In the lonely room, turning over, she pressed her cheek to the pillow.

  * * *

  —

  Elfrida appeared to be giving Janet her diary which, she said, had never been written. “There’s a good deal you will not be able to read,” she added. “You remember when you were in Paris—” Janet remembered when she had been in Paris. “He went out. Though he might be there again, I knew he would never come back.” Elfrida went away, dragging across the floor of the Ionides, over Laurel’s carpet, the long French flag. The red-and-blue flowed and writhed; Janet could not prevent her. “To decorate my life,” explained Elfrida.

  * * *

  —

  Rodney would not have the mistress disturbed; she slept through lunch-time, into the afternoon. At three, it was Hermione who crept up to listen to the silence behind her door. But at half-past, with Rodney absent, having received no orders, the household rustled, coughed, tapped and at last broke in in consternation. This was without precedent. Her death only, which they more than half expected, would have appeased them. And so, indeed, she lay: no wind now, the room heavily quiet, the Tilney photographs staring along the mantelpiece.

  If she pleased—? they said. The Mothers from the village were already arriving. She had not slept like this since the birth of Hermione. As she woke up, a baby wailed and voices came up from the lawn where in the deepening sunshine, among a few shadows, the Mothers were already assembling.

  6

  Laurel also had watched this Wednesday in. Cutting out the Chelsea roof-line, feeling about her bedroom with cold fingers, it made an extraordinary demand on her faith, her religion almost: a dependence upon the usual. Edward was still absent.

  Past midnight, waking, startled by his smooth bed, going down in vain to call through the house where in room after room his absence made itself palpable, she had understood: Edward had not come in. She returned to her room. Such hours it is not desirable, not possible to record. First she found herself dreading each step, each taxi for its deception, then she longed for any step, any taxi for its very deception’s sake, the stirring of hope. At half-past four—by the stroke of three clocks imperfectly synchronized, so that the moment was in itself protracted, deformed—Laurel ceased to expect him. By now there was daylight enough, the lamps ghostly, the street too plain—she turned from the window. After this no more clocks struck, something had died down somewhere or been arrested. She rang up the exchange to hear a voice, to be told the time. This verified the solidity of the hour. It was next day without him: such things happened.

  Laurel dabbed her face with skin-tonic, ran a comb through her hair and went down again to the drawing-room. Here desolation gave her a curious lightness and liberty; she could have played patience or played the piano. She sat down, then took up an Evening Standard Edward had brought home. The telephone remained silent. It was clear she must not ring up anybody before seven.

  She would not speak to Janet direct: at seven she rang up the hotel porter and asked him to have Janet waked and given a message. “To come round to Royal Avenue as soon as she can.” The porter told her that Mrs. Meggatt had given up her room and left about midnight.

  “Oh, of course. Did she leave a message?”

  “Mrs. Meggatt left no message, madam.”

  Was the porter concerned for her or was that sleep in his voice? Had she not sounded natural? “Oh, yes, gone?” she should have said, “of course; I remember.” She shivered. How much she had wept, all her life; how kind tears had been!

  Anna, hearing her mother on the telephone, came downstairs in her pyjamas eating a piece of Genoa cake. The floor was in squares of early sunshine. Her mother, looking like a schoolgirl in her nightdress, sat on the sofa by the window, the Evening Standard spread out over her knees. She must be cold, she shivered; the newspaper rustled.

  Annoyed, Anna said: “Mother!”

  “What are you doing with that cake?” her mother countered, mechanical.

  “What one does do with cake,” said Anna calmly.

  “Filling up your inside with currants at this hour.”

  “I don’t see it’s worse than telephoning!”

  “Oh, please, please, Anna!”

  Anna had some sensibility. “Your feet must be cold,” she said, “bare and everything.” And without more ado she went up for Laurel’s slippers. Laurel thought: “What can I say?”—“Bring down my dressing-gown too,” she shouted. Th
e child, reappearing, asked: “Where’s Father? He hasn’t slept here.”

  “He’s out.”

  “How extraordinary. Why?” Anna wrapped Laurel up in the blue dressing-gown, then stood, with her square calm face so like Janet’s, munching her Genoa cake and dropping crumbs on the floor. “Why?” she repeated. Her mother did not reply. Anna had an immediate sense of emergency; she entertained several possibilities, all of them dire, without either relish or horror.

  “What does Aunt Janet say?”

  “Oh, but she’s gone, you know, Anna.”

  “But she was going to stay in London,” said Anna, aggrieved. “Suppose we telephone Grannie.” (Mrs. Studdart was “Grannie.”)

  “No,” Laurel said violently. Anna, having finished her cake, sat down on the sofa close to her mother and brushed some crumbs from her pyjamas, implying: “Then we are deserted.” Laurel, feeling the warm young shoulder against her own, thought: “What a comfort Anna would be to anyone else.” But love, with any faculty for relationship, had quite gone out of her. Anna suddenly asked: “You are speaking the truth, aren’t you?” Drawing sharply away, scarlet, she said: “Has he been arrested?”

  Laurel kept this for Edward, a key to Anna.

  Then it was simply, Anna could see, that he had deserted them, taking away the tickets to France. She had heard of things of this kind, in Sylvia’s talk. She rejected her father, closing herself to him in every direction—the cool pleasure she took in his charm, his looks; her appreciation of his propriety; the countenance she gave to his pranks, to his versatility. For hours she had, for love, fatigued herself to amuse him, played hot, dishevelling games with him: pirates and so on. But now, he—her mind stretched tip-toeing up for some final fatal word—he is impossible. Then her mind ran down to the kitchen, to join their talk. It’s that Elfrida—they are a lot, they are! Not real fathers or grandmothers, not respectable. Mother has no idea. Now the Studdarts have always been respectable. Let us go back to Cheltenham. Let Uncle Rodney adopt us: we should never have come away. Aloud, she said to her mother: “I expect what you want is a nice cup of tea.”

  “—Anna, would you say I was stupid?”

  “If I was you,” said the child, “I should have a good cry—And do come away from the window, there is the milkman.”

  * * *

  —

  It was Lewis, if anyone, that Laurel ought to consult. He was the prepared surface, utterly confidential. Lewis, however, she would at all costs avoid. The morning rose like a flood isolating mother and daughter, with its wide view of desolation. Simon, who had escaped his bath, hung about saying: “What shall I do?” (Anna would tell him nothing.) “Some day,” said his mother, “I’ll teach you to play patience.”

  “Mother, when can I buy that gimlet to take to France?”

  About ten o’clock, while Laurel was in the kitchen (if the servants had even ever liked Edward it would not have been so difficult, but Sylvia had seen two homes broken up, there was nothing she did not know about gentlemen; it was unfortunate she had ever come back), Anna crept to the telephone in the drawing-room and on her own initiative rang up Lewis. (“He was telephoned for late last night, it was most urgent,” Laurel maintained, below-stairs, to heavy suspicious faces.)

  Anna asked Lewis if he thought it likely her father had been run over. Lewis was at pains to collect himself; for a moment he hoped this was some savage joke of which Anna might well be capable.

  “I don’t think that would happen, do you?” Anna continued. “He’s so very careful. Do you think we ought to advertise? Or do you know of any good police station?”

  “What does Aunt Janet advise?”

  “Oh, she’s gone off, too,” said Anna impatiently.

  “What do you mean, Anna?”

  “She went off in the middle of the night.”

  “How do you mean, gone off?” cried Lewis in great agitation. “Do you mean she’s gone home?”

  “I’ve no idea,” said Anna, indifferent. “The thing is, Mr. Gibson…”

  “Have you telephoned to Batts?”

  “Mother won’t; she won’t let me telephone to you, she won’t let me do anything. I think what she needs is a good lie down…No, she won’t do that on any account, either. I think she feels rather shy. As I say to her…”

  “Yes, but she should get in touch with Rodney…”

  “Perhaps if you did…”

  But at this point there was a break. Laurel had come in (wearing the pink cotton frock she had bought for Brittany—it must be all right; look at her pink cotton frock!). “What are you doing? How dare you!” she said. There was a scuffle, she snatched the receiver from Anna. “Who’s there, who’s Anna talking to?” she exclaimed.

  “It’s Lewis,” said Lewis guiltily.

  “Oh, Lewis…I expect there’s been some mistake. I wish Anna hadn’t—”

  “But look here, Laurel, you must do something. You can’t just wait there. You must get in touch with Rodney.”

  “Why Rodney? I don’t want to bother Janet.”

  “But is Janet—?”

  “Can’t you see it’s impossible? There must have been some mistake; I didn’t get some message.”

  “What do you mean, impossible?”

  “Nothing. I said nothing, Lewis…You saw Edward last night, didn’t you?”

  “Yes, we said good night at about eleven at the corner of Buckingham Gate. He said he was going to walk home. We had walked from the hotel.”

  “Hotel?”

  “Yes, Janet’s hotel.”

  A silence. “Oh, yes, of course.”

  “Janet seemed rather tired. I’d no idea she—”

  “Yes, she’s gone home, you know. She went last night.”

  “I didn’t know there was a train.”

  “Well, there must have been, mustn’t there, or she would not have gone.”

  “Of course. But, Laurel, you must let her know; it’s not fair to her. She’d send for you if—”

  “I tell you: no, Lewis. Are you there? Can you hear me? I tell you, no! This is my affair, you’ve got to let me decide—”

  “Look here, Laurel, let me come round.”

  “No, thank you, Lewis…I’m so sorry Anna bothered you.”

  “Have you rung up his department?”

  “Yes…He wasn’t there yet, but—Oh, there’s bound to be some message.”

  “Meanwhile,” said Lewis, “I shall at least—”

  “No, I’d rather you didn’t. Please, Lewis,” she finished sharply.

  She rang off. Her voice, sounding brittle, had splintered finally. Lewis thought: “This has never happened before: there is no way to proceed. Now if he were only dead there’d be some formula…” Lewis had seen Edward stop a taxi, seen the taxi swoop in the empty street and turn back to St. James’s.

  This was wretched. Discomfort to Lewis, an almost physical irritation, some itch or tightness about the skin, a clamminess in the hands. He got up, a shocked little man starting up with a cry still conciliatory; protest yelled to the darn bulging, cracking above. “No, look here, don’t! You mustn’t do that! Stop!” He met this catastrophic torrent like death with his vexation: small cup held up bravely to overflow with the first drops. Fear, anger, pride: these you dash to pieces empty: Death, these are me, they shall not contain you: they could not contain you!

  So Lewis, aggrieved, staring out of the window, rejected the summer morning, light fresh on high flanks of the houses. He had a pang too, but less than a pang, for the wretched lovers.

  Hating himself, and in direct contravention of Laurel’s desire, Lewis presently went round to the hotel. Edward (well known here) had, he heard from the porter, returned soon after eleven and left again about midnight. Janet had given up her room, had her things brought down, paid her bill and left about half-past twel
ve, just as a theatre party came in calling for drinks. Owing to this disturbance the porter could not recall what directions she gave him to give the taxi. Otherwise, Mrs. Meggatt had mentioned no destination. She wore day clothes, a dark wrap coat, looked and spoke as usual. A lady had rung up very early this morning, asking for Mrs. Meggatt; a second lady, annoyed, had rung up an hour later. The porter respectfully hoped there was nothing wrong? He knew Lewis and seemed surprised by his manner. They both knew the same Mrs. Meggatt.

  “Mrs. Meggatt has been called home,” said Lewis hurriedly: “I just wanted to know she got off all right and—oh, to see that any letters are forwarded.”

  There was a letter from Rodney for Janet.

  “Nothing serious, sir, I hope?” said the porter with unction. It was clear he still did not care for Lewis’s manner. “How badly I do this: they should have had different friends.” It struck him that a decision of this kind, after ten or more years, would be arrived at quickly, calmly. Much discounted itself, after all, as a letter, they say, long unanswered answers itself. There would be brief or no consultation, his nervous efficiency, her common sense. Still the snug hall with red-carpeted staircase offered itself as the scene of piteous and futile departure: their love was homeless.

  “Are we,” wondered Lewis—stepping out over the springy mat, standing still in the mounting glare of the street: a retired street with very white doorsteps and polished windows— “to act, or not act? They’ve got their cue, but they’re leaving all of us none.” Apart from this axiomatic selfishness of all lovers, Lewis told himself, Edward had been inconceivably heartlessly rude. He was never direct till now, thought Lewis angrily. He had moved in a haze of equivocations, all considered, all passably honourable. His charmingly adolescent reserve in love, his kindergarten paternity.—One would have said, at worst, your polite murderer. The violence of this departure, this outgoing from the self, appalled Lewis. A portrait had crashed down leaving, worse than a blank of wall, a profound recess in which there might or might not be eyes.