Friends and Relations Page 4

  Willa, in the marabout boa, massaging over each thumb her carefully cleaned gloves, was so much relieved. “And you could take a dog, Theo.”

  “I don’t want a dog bought specially to go to school with.”

  “They all seemed to have pets.”

  “How extraordinary. Perhaps I could take a serpent.”

  “I think hardly—”

  “Show me the prospectus again.”

  A quiet, reserved prospectus. But Theodora, turning over the pages, said: “Oh my god!” Several people turned round in the bus. Illustrations: the girls running, at hockey, lacrosse and tennis, the girls preparing to dive, preparing to eat; the bathrooms, empty; the bedrooms, empty; the chapel, full; the swimming pool and the library. “Really, Mother, you’re touching…”

  The bus ground on. It trembled slowly past Evans, where bright-coloured handkerchiefs darted across the glass like humming-birds and a grand wheel of stockings turned ceaselessly. Three-and-eleven: Willa looked back to admire. And meanwhile, deliberating along the curb, three tall girls, all like Janet, were visible to Theodora successively. She took this for a portent.

  The very morning of Theodora’s departure, Janet herself appeared in the Gloucester Road flat. Exhortations from Cheltenham prompted this visit. So dear, so forlorn, the Thirdmans constantly darkened her mother’s moral horizon. One ought to do something, somehow…But with both her girls given over to love, such a large correspondence, the Lodge crowded…But the Thirdmans must not lapse. Hence Janet this morning, with nothing to say; an amiable deputation.

  His wife packing for his daughter, his daughter criticizing his wife, Alex Thirdman, reading nothing of interest, received the visitor with delight. (For a moment she had a glimpse of vacancy.) He congratulated the straightforward girl on her engagement, then brought out, by inspiration, Theodora’s new racquet to show her. Did she think this the best kind of racquet for Theodora? At Lausanne the girl had once just missed a junior championship. Janet made no pronouncement hastily, she stood looking down, weighing the racquet. Alex, melancholy, a shade self-derisive, awaited the verdict. Had he failed as a father? He knew he would know now for always. The flat doors all clicked in the summer wind.

  But Willa came in with an exclamation, plucking strands of darning wool from her dress.

  “Janet, this is delightful! Theodora is going away to school today!”

  “Then I’m afraid I have come on a bad morning.”

  “Oh, I don’t mean that at all. That is not at all what I meant— Where are you staying?”

  “With Lady Elfrida.”

  What a question, thought Willa, to have asked, when it was all so difficult. When the Tilneys had taken that line—could Rodney visit there? One did not know what was being said, one saw nobody; one longed to know what anyone else would have thought. “Let me see,” she said, “she lives near Harrod’s, doesn’t she? That must be very nice.”

  “Oh yes, it is,” said Janet, “very.”

  A silence hovered; Janet had forgotten her mother’s messages to the Thirdmans and had not the wit to invent others. She wondered what the Thirdmans would like to hear. These last weeks she had noticed someone who was herself for the first time, she could see nothing nowadays but herself, a figure she watched with fatalism. It was as though she had become shortsighted, almost everything was a blur and her looks to any distance naturally lacked direction. So she could not think of any news from Cheltenham except that all the dogs but one were being given away, as she would not be there to exercise them. She could have added, the fine weather for Rodney’s wedding had already set in ahead, or was rehearsing, giving the hills and trees round Corunna Lodge, on afternoons when he came to see her, an eager brightness.

  “School?” she repeated kindly. “I hope she will be happy.” And on Theodora’s coming in to shake hands, this was modified to: “I hope you will like it,” because the two were near enough in a generation for it to be impossible to speak of happiness to one another.

  “Of course, I have been to school before,” said Theodora. She had had time to stage her entrance; her hair was tied back with a bow of new stiff black ribbon. Hearing Janet’s voice she had changed her tie and remained a moment or two to project an “impression.” She now stood, square in her new coat and skirt, all spectacles, challenging Janet’s composure. “I daresay I may like it all right,” she continued. “One might as well see. They seem to have taken a good deal of trouble with chintz and radiators and things, and apparently you don’t have to work unless you like; it is individual development. The girls look rather foolish, but I suppose it is unfair to judge from a prospectus. Of course, a great deal will depend on whether I like them.”

  “And if they like you,” said Janet naïvely. Theodora looked sharply at her; they sat down on the sofa. “What are nature rambles?” Theodora continued.

  “Botany.”

  “Oh goodness, that. When are you going to be married?”

  “October.”

  Theodora said with some satisfaction: “I shall be quite accustomed to school by then.” A bride seemed to her very unexperienced beside a girl in her second term. Willa wondered, meanwhile, whether one could wear the same hat for Janet’s and Laurel’s weddings. Perhaps some slight alteration, a rose for a wing. She did not think anybody had noticed her hat much. Only Alex—so scrupulous, so ineffectual, watching the scene, apart from his own sex through little denials of life at every juncture, apart from this feminine interaction, the competitiveness they all set up—Alex had eyes for his wife’s cousin, who sitting so gracefully upright among the hard satin cushions appeared withdrawn, never among them, a positive no-presence. He had a pang for those calm lips and saluted a woman he would have feared to love. He went over to shut the clicking door. For the chicken browning in the gas oven for Theodora’s last luncheon was beginning to make itself known in the little drawing-room.

  Theodora was aware of the chicken with pleasure; for the moment, home life had its compensations. “This is my last day,” she said royally. “Please will you stay to luncheon? I am having everything that I ask for.”

  But alas, Janet could not. She was lunching with Laurel, Edward and Rodney at the Ionides. She must be off now.

  “And Lady Elfrida?”

  “No, not today.”

  “Have Rodney and Edward met before?”

  “Never,” said Janet.

  Possibly Lady Elfrida was disappointed. Possibly, thought Theodora, she, excluded, wept. For herself, she could not have imagined such disappointment. “I am being put out of the way,” she thought of Mellyfield angrily. “I am like a dog going to the lethal chamber.” She went with Janet to the door of the lift.

  “Write!” she shouted.

  But Janet only called up “Good-bye,” disappearing.

  Soon the chicken was eaten and Theodora, by her own specific wish unaccompanied, was in the train for Mellyfield.

  5

  Edward and Rodney arrived at the Ionides some minutes before either Laurel or Janet. Janet had miscalculated the distance from Gloucester Road and Laurel had changed her dress twice. Across the small vestibule Edward observed Rodney: with each a suspicion of the other’s identity deepened. Rodney, so fair and square, had the advantage of looking impassable. Finally, it had to be Edward who spoke.

  Rodney shook hands cordially. His calm look took in nothing of Edward; he seemed content to be put off with Edward’s rather too easy good manners. Possibly he may have felt he already knew him well. Responsibility remained with Edward, who remarked: “I’ve got a table.”

  “Good.”

  It was at all times difficult for Edward to conceal his natural fussiness. “I ought,” he said, “to have told Laurel one-fifteen for one-thirty. She’s always late.”

  “Janet is always punctual,” said Rodney tranquilly. “I suppose something’s delayed her.
She went to look up some people in Kensington.”

  “The Thirdmans.”

  “I daresay,” agreed Rodney, as though it struck him that Edward was full of information.

  They might have had a drink, but Edward knew Laurel would never find the table. She would sit down distractedly at someone else’s, and reproach Edward afterwards for the mistake. They had both thrown cigarettes away and now brought their cases out simultaneously; Edward had one of Rodney’s, but Rodney preferred his own. He seemed likeable, a scrupulous, slow young man, without the disengagedness of Considine, that light-hearted, light-handed seducer who (Edward had come to believe) even shot lions negligently.

  A taxi ground off and Laurel, beautifully flushed, appeared in the doorway in summer green. Not for nothing had she hesitated among her wardrobe. “The traffic,” she said. “You have no idea. And Sylvia kept me—oh!”

  During the introduction she was, involuntarily, defensive, startled. But the nephew of the destructive uncle smiled, already possessive. Already the brother-in-law. Beyond this, she could get no grasp of him; could guess at nothing but that he was certainly pleased. Meggatt men, she thought, get what they wanted calmly, in the course of their day. They had got Batts Abbey and abbey-lands out of Henry VIII.

  “It is delightful to meet,” she said, still with faint resentment, while Edward, in implied reproof of the future Mrs. Meggatt, again glanced at the time. While Rodney still conveyed a serious amiability, Janet, getting out unhurried, paid off her taxi. Rodney’s look narrowed; love became momentously present and the young Tilneys, obliterated, wanted to walk away. Recollecting their own passion they rallied and were benevolent. Janet greeted them all equably; she had had no idea she was so late.

  Edward ordered an excellent lunch but was, as politely as possible, not hungry. Laurel, who was greedy, enjoyed herself. Though she had groaned to Edward in the black of last night, “What on earth shall we all talk about?” (when he had replied, his face in her hair: “You are lovely”) she forgot herself—an objective in manners her mother had constantly put before her—in the determination to set them all at ease. Edward, watching her critically, thought it must take Cheltenham to produce such a deep sense of social responsibility. Smiling a little wildly under her green hat she sipped Chablis, allowed no pause and dug little pink scoops out of her canteloupe. She presently caught Edward’s eye and put down her spoon. There they all were, animated. But oh dear, had she overdone it?

  “There is Owen Nares,” said Rodney, directing her attention politely. And presently there was the arrival of the sole.

  One could not say Edward was less amiable than Laurel, but he remained guarded. Janet once or twice looked speculatively at him. Was he going to be difficult? Surely he could not wish one to take up “a position”? In this restaurant full of determinedly “interesting” people, Edward provoked other glances of speculation: his youthful haggardness, that smile with the rather delightful broadening of the nostrils, so misleadingly sardonic…His eyebrows, arching and contracting, became fretful under any too prolonged regard. “No, no, you’re quite mistaken; I am a civil servant. My sensibility is my own affair. Look elsewhere, please.”

  So Janet, deliberately not looking, thought with her cold dispassionate passion, “I could hold you, yes, and make you run about, in the palm of my hand.”

  At a point half-way through luncheon it became evident to the watchful sisters that Edward and Rodney liked each other. The young women almost exchanged glances. The atmosphere became less conscious and the conversation was allowed to relax. Edward and Rodney discovered so many acquaintances in common, it appeared to Edward extraordinary that they had not met before. “Odd,” he repeated. Rodney nodded; you could not tell what he thought. He had quite liked Edward from the moment they met, and perhaps more than ever wondered what all this fuss had been about. Once or twice Edward, a trifle put off by his manner, again recollected his mother weeping in Paris. For it must be remembered that Rodney had in no way repudiated, or authorized Janet to repudiate, his uncle Considine.

  “Janet tells me your house is charming,” Rodney said to Laurel. “Nobody else thinks so,” she replied with feeling. And after lunch, when Edward had got to get back to Whitehall, it was arranged that Rodney should drive the sisters back to Royal Avenue.

  Laurel watched Edward hurry away with regret; she longed to know what he thought, how the lunch had gone off, whether Rodney had seemed at all embarrassed; if the green hat had really looked nice. With Janet so much was impossible…But while Rodney delayed a moment with Edward, the sisters getting into the taxi hastily kissed, as though in explanation.

  6

  Lady Elfrida was glad to infer the lunch had gone off well.

  Rodney came round to Trevor Square about six, to find Janet still out. (For Laurel’s curtains the afternoon was to be decisive; hurrying round London the sisters had brought back many more patterns to Royal Avenue and still sat among them.) Lady Elfrida had just come in from nowhere particular. Her gloves in her hand, she stood regretting the bright streets, at war with silence. The drawing-room, a plane tree in the court at the back flickering in its well of bright shadow, seemed in spite of her presence remarkably empty. She was delighted to see Rodney, her world resumed its tempo. They had met, of course, last night.

  “So you all had lunch. How was Edward?”

  “Very well,” said Rodney, with his pleasant formality. Very large, he took up his position before her fireplace: she, a man’s woman, looked up in appreciation. For his part, he had been prepared for her as unfortunate: he had had no idea she would be amusing. Though, knowing his Considine, Rodney might well have guessed.

  “Well, that was that,” she said. “Edward, you know, finds things so difficult.”

  “Oh?” said Rodney. He recollected having heard that she was impossible. She was certainly feminine, and because she chose to appear rather charmingly muddled and inconsequent he set her down as astute, more astute than she was. Brought up on Considine’s cheerful ruthless generalizations as to the Sex, Rodney reacted towards a careful slowness of judgement on any woman. The Sex did not interest him; till now they had, as persons, appeared alarmingly like one another in only one particular: an aptness to set stages out on to which one stepped unawares and where it was impossible to behave without consciousness. Janet had pleased him by a rather masculine unawareness of “situation.”

  Though he stepped carefully, Rodney could not help enjoying Lady Elfrida’s company. More alive than a young girl, pulling down the cushions round her, she communicated a delight in her own indiscretion. Rodney could see how it was that one came to gossip.

  “And Laurel?”

  “How very attractive and pretty!”

  “Oh, don’t underrate her; she has a character of her own.”

  “She looks very happy.”

  “She loves being married.”

  “She certainly isn’t at all like Janet.”

  “Beautifully unlike,” she said with emphasis. The Siamese cat slid past Rodney’s legs as he slowly looked at her in surprise.

  “I mean otherwise Janet ought not to have a sister at all. I always feel, with women, the mould should be broken, not used again and again.”

  “Oh?” said Rodney.

  “Do tell me, where are you going to live?”

  He hesitated, but this was bound to come up. “Considine wants us to live at Batts. His idea is to make the place over to me. He’s abroad so much and hates to think of the place shut up.”

  “I’d no idea he cared so much for it—”

  “Well, perhaps he thinks I hate to think of it shut up,” said Rodney accurately. “He promises he would make his home with us when he’s in England. He seems determined Janet—”

  “But Janet told me you were going to live in London.”

  “I think she feels I ought to. We neither of us want to. B
ut then we neither of us quite see how we—”

  “Oh, take Batts if he offers. Much better let him do what he wants.”

  She spoke decidedly and might well, he could see, have made an excellent wife—perhaps for Considine. She went on: “I mean your work here isn’t, is it? as interesting as it sounds. And it can’t be necessary. I’ve known What’s-his-name for years and he’s never advanced anybody. I hear he thinks highly of you, but I’m not sure that is to be encouraged; he’s been the coming man himself for too long.”