Claudia gently laid down her two blades of grass.
Then she said, with great sweetness:
“But of course, Anna dear, if you want to. Though I don’t know that I quite see what facts there are to face.”
“I do,” Sal Oliver irrepressibly broke in.
Claudia kept a careful silence.
It was Anna who turned to Sal and said:
“You know what I mean, don’t you? Taffy’s a splendid child, with any amount of personality, but she’s getting self-assertive and aggressive. She knows it too.”
“She’s very intelligent,” said Frances softly.
“Has she talked to you about what she wants to do?” Claudia asked quickly.
“As a matter of fact, she has.”
Claudia laughed, with a slightly impatient sound.
“For heaven’s sake, my dear, don’t sound so apologetic about it! Whatever else I may be, I’m not, and never have been, a possessive mother. What does it matter whether Taffy talks to you, or me, or anybody else? All that matters is that she should develop freely and on her own lines.”
“Which is just what she probably isn’t doing,” Anna observed in a detached tone. “You see, my dear, you’ve got a terribly strong personality, and with the best will in the world, you do dominate your surroundings, absolutely. You’ve told me yourself that Taffy’s attitude — her sort of defiance towards you — has worried you.”
“Yes,” Claudia admitted it thoughtfully. “That’s quite true. But it isn’t anything so very unusual, after all, in a rather self-willed, rather egotistical schoolgirl. Especially when her father — to be quite frank — doesn’t set her a particularly good example of courtesy or self-control. Besides, you’re all talking as if the alternative to Anna’s scheme was that I should tie Taffy to my apron-strings in the good old-fashioned style. Directly she leaves school she’ll go into a job, just exactly as Sylvia is going to do. Unless I can afford to send her to Oxford, or she gets a scholarship.”
“I wonder what you’d say if it was an indifferent case — somebody not in any way connected with yourself,” Anna observed.
“I should say exactly the same. Why, Anna, you know I should! I have always,” said Claudia with emphasis, “always refused to allow my own personal feelings to interfere with my judgment.”
“Darling, you haven’t. I know you think you have. But you haven’t. Honestly and truly, you’re deceiving yourself completely.”
There was absolute silence for a long moment. Frances Ladislaw’s hands gripped one another nervously.
Claudia, who had flushed deeply, opened her lips once as if to speak, and then closed them again firmly.
“Fly at me,” urged Anna childishly, “be as angry as you like. I know it’s an awful thing to have said. But it’s true.” She fixed her eyes tearfully on her sister.
“It’s this awful picture that you’ve built up of yourself in your own mind, as a bread-winner, and a wife, and a mother — and it’s all artificial and unreal. It never goes below the surface for one minute.”
With Anna’s outburst, Claudia seemed to recover her self-command — if, indeed, it had ever been in jeopardy.
“You know, Anna, I don’t think you’re quite a fair judge where I’m concerned. In fact I’m sure you’re not. I’ll tell you why in a minute. But first, I’d like to know if Frances thinks as you do.”
She turned her great eyes towards Frances Ladislaw.
“We’ve known each other all our lives, practically, and nothing is going to alter the fact of our friendship. Please tell me: Is there any truth in what Anna’s been saying, or is it just that she’s utterly biased, utterly fixed in some old, unconscious resentment that has its roots — we may as well face it — in the fact that I bullied her and domineered over her as a child and as a young girl?”
Never, it seemed to Frances, had her brilliant friend been so fluent, so outspoken, and so wholly unconvincing.
“Please answer me,” urged Claudia gently. “You see, if what Anna says is in any way true, I want to face it quite frankly and honestly, and accept it with my feelings as well as with my mind. That, really, is the only way to put things right, isn’t it? At the moment, naturally, I can’t accept any of it — Anna seems to me quite incapable of forming an impartial judgment where I’m concerned, and Sal — and I’m saying this quite without any kind of resentment — Sal doesn’t happen to like me very much.”
It almost seemed, thought Frances, rather dazed, as if Claudia was unable to stop talking.
At last she drew breath.
“Well, Frances dear? Is it true that I dramatize myself all the time, that I’m not honest as to my own motives? That’s really what Anna has been saying, isn’t it? Is it true?”
“It isn’t all the truth,” Frances answered, “but I believe it’s part of the truth. I’m sorry, Claudia. You asked me to tell you what I thought.”
Claudia unexpectedly broke into a ringing, oddly febrile, laugh.
“But why be sorry, my dear? As you say, I asked you. It’s interesting if it’s nothing else. Besides, you may be absolutely right. Anyhow, all I can do is to look the whole thing straight in the face as dispassionately as I can. I do promise you that I’ll do that.”
She got up with a resolute movement.
“I don’t want to break this off at all. It is, quite honestly, extraordinarily interesting. But if I don’t go and see about making the tea, we shan’t get any. Come when you’re ready.”
She smiled at them calmly and walked away.
“Poor darling,” said Anna, frowning a little. “She’s angry.”
“Very angry indeed,” Sal Oliver responded tranquilly. “But I don’t think she knows it.”
IX
1
Sylvia was an admirable tennis-player, Adolf Zienszi good, although never brilliant, and Copper played a nervous, erratic, spectacular game. Quarrendon, as he had rightly told them, was very bad indeed. In whatever combination they played, Quarrendon and his partner invariably lost the set. It constituted, he gently pointed out, a discouraging coincidence.
“Let’s leave Daddy and uncle Adolf to have a single,” suggested Sylvia.
They crept quietly past Mrs Peel, whose head had fallen on one side, but whose hands, encased in white wash-leather gloves, were still neatly folded in her lap.
“She’s asleep,” Sylvia murmured. “Do you know, now, I feel I can’t bear to waste a single minute in sleep. I want to be awake every minute of the time, just to realize how happy I am. I never knew life could be anything like this. Do you mind, Andrew, if I say all the things that have been said before by novelists and people like that? You see, I never realized before that they could actually be true.”
She turned her shining eyes towards him, and he thought he had never seen anything so lovely.
“Where are we going, darling?”
“I was going to take you to a lane behind the orchard. No one ever goes there — it isn’t a proper lane at all. I’m not sure that even Mother knows about it, although this was her home when she was a child. That’s why we came here, of course. We lived in Hampstead before.”
“You ought to live in the country. You’re so like a flower.”
“What a lovely thing to be told! But I shall have to live in London soon — at least, except for the week-ends, I suppose. I may be going to get a job almost at once. Andrew — are you ever in London?”
“I’m going to be,” said Andrew promptly. “Quite often.”
“Let’s talk about what we’ll do.”
Instead of answering, he took her hand in his and held it lightly. Thus they walked down the slopes of the cherry-orchard, and then Sylvia showed him a steep bank thickly covered in cow-parsley.
“We can get over that, and then we’re in the lane. I’ll go first.”
She was up and over the bank with the grace of a wild young animal. Quarrendon blundered after her, regretfully conscious of his weight and his awkwardness.
The lane was a disused bridle-path, deeply sunken between hedges and with the trees meeting overhead in a dense canopy.
“If we go here — —” said Sylvia. She guided him to a tiny mound at the foot of a great beech-tree, and they sat down on the ground.
It was a long while before either of them spoke. Then Sylvia said:
“What are we going to do, about seeing one another again?”
“I can meet you in London. When do you go to see about the job?”
“Tuesday.”
“The day I go. I’ll drive you up.”
“That’ll be lovely. Andrew.”
“My dear.”
“I’d like to ask you something. Don’t answer if you don’t want to.”
“I think I know what it is. Of course I’ll answer. We ought to talk it out, if it’s what I think it is. Why did I say that I shouldn’t ask you to marry me. Is that it?”
She nodded. Her very child-like face expressed no anxiety — only complete trustfulness.
“I’m not the right man to marry anybody, my sweet. I shouldn’t make any woman happy for long, and I shouldn’t be at all happy myself. I suppose that’s really at the bottom of it. I’m too selfish. And I hate the domesticities. The pram in the hall — the weekly budget — the inevitable monotony that must creep into any kind of orderly, shared life — and yet the horrid results when people try to do without it — It’s no use, Sylvia, my loveliest one. I can’t delude myself into thinking that we should be different — that those things needn’t overtake us. They would. Even us.”
“Even us?” she echoed, a kind of piteous entreaty in her voice.
“Yes. Am I hurting you by talking like this?”
“A little bit,” said Sylvia, her eyes full of tears. “But I want you to go on. We’ve got to be honest with one another.”
“You know, Sylvia, you’re rather wonderful. Such a lot of people say they want the truth — but they don’t really. You, I think do.”
“Go on,” she repeated.
“There’s my work. I’m not only interested in it, but I want complete freedom for it.”
“Couldn’t you have that with me? I’m not trying to persuade you against your own convictions — only I want to understand.”
“I know. You see, I’ve seen too many of my friends — men with, as it seemed, a career ahead of them. They’ve married. It’s been wonderful at first. And then, bit by bit, one has seen it — hampering them at every turn. There’s the eternal economic question — a man with others dependent on him can’t take risks — experimental work that may or may not succeed — that’s not for him any more. He’s got to think in quite other terms about his work.”
“Sometimes the woman works too.”
“Yes. I think she should, if she wants to. But even that doesn’t solve everything. And there’s the question of children. Almost every normal man or woman wants to have children, sooner or later.”
“I wouldn’t want children if you didn’t, Andrew,” she said in a low voice.
Deeply moved, he kissed the hand that he was holding.
“You can’t realize how every word you say makes me feel more utterly and completely ashamed of myself. No — that’s not absolutely true. I have, at least, told you the truth.”
“I’m glad you have.”
“Darling, darling Sylvia. Will you forgive me? You know I love you. More and more every minute we’re together.”
After a time she said:
“Then what’s going to happen, Andrew? Are we going to become lovers — just for a little while?”
“Would you, Sylvia?”
“Yes. I think so. Not yet, though.”
“No. Not till you want to. Not ever, unless you want to my darling.”
“There’s something else, Andrew. Sooner or later, my mother will have to know. I couldn’t tell her lies, or deceive her. She’s always been sweet to us, and terribly uninterfering and modern, and she’s always said we were to make up our own minds about everything. She’s been like that from the time we were little.”
“But my sweet — could any mother, however modern, understand about this and not try to influence you — at your age especially?”
“I don’t know, quite,” Sylvia admitted. “But she wouldn’t do more than try to influence me. I mean, she wouldn’t make fearful scenes — or forbid me to see you again, or any of the things that I feel sure poor dear Grandmama would certainly have done. She’d be rational and kind. She always is.”
“You love her very much, don’t you?” said Andrew, watching her.
“Yes, I do. I shall hate thinking I’ve made her unhappy. But she’d rather — and I would too — that she was made unhappy than that I should try and deceive her.”
“What about your father?”
“He doesn’t count nearly so much. He’d make much more fuss, of course, but probably Mother would manage him. She generally does. Anyway he couldn’t stop me, poor darling.”
“You’ll have to do as you think best about telling them,” Andrew said. “Only warn me first, won’t you? The least I can do is to give them an opportunity of saying to my face some of the things they’ll certainly say behind my back.”
“I suppose it means you won’t come here any more, once they know,” said Sylvia wistfully.
“Yes. It’s bound to mean that, of course. One could hardly expect anything else. But then, I couldn’t come here any more anyway. Not to make love to you, sweetheart, in your parents’ own house, without their knowledge. That would be too unfair.”
“It’s got nothing to do with anyone, except you and me!” Sylvia cried with sudden spirit.
“Then don’t tell them,” rejoined Quarrendon. “Listen, darling. Whatever you do I shall know is right, and I want you to decide. But if you feel your mother has got to know, it’s going to make things much more difficult for all of us. Wouldn’t it be possible to wait till you’ve got your job, and are living in London independently? If you like, I won’t see you again till then.”
“I couldn’t bear that,” whispered Sylvia, and with a sudden unexpected movement she turned and threw herself into his arms. “I love you so terribly, darling Andrew. I can’t ever do without you any more.”
Holding her slender weight against his thumping heart, Quarrendon was sorely tempted to echo the words.
2
When they came back to the house, it was after five o’clock.
A languid tea was drawing to a close. Mrs Peel, regarding it as a serious meal, had folded and eaten one or two thin slices of bread and butter, but most of the others drank tea or lemonade and ate nothing.
Anna Zienszi refused everything, and sat on a garden seat just outside the window, nursing the old black cat. He had crawled on to her lap and lay there contentedly, occasionally digging a still sharp claw into the thin, pale silk of her dress.
Anna was the first person to notice Sylvia’s return.
She moved to make room for her.
“Sit down here with me,” she urged. “You haven’t got the awful English tea habit, have you? It’ll ruin your lovely figure in the end.”
“Couldn’t I drink something?”
“Professor Quarrendon would get you some lemonade. They’ve got some inside.”
She smiled at Quarrendon, and he obediently stepped across the low sill into the room beyond.
Claudia was sitting at the head of the table. He wondered whether it was the strong sunlight, filtered through half-drawn blinds, that made her face seem unusually pale and full of strange shadows.
She looked at him as he came in, smiled, and suggested tea.
Nothing in either the look or the words held any but the most ordinary significance. Andrew Quarrendon told himself ruefully that probably it was a guilty conscience that caused him to feel as if something faintly sinister, resembling a vague threat, was in the atmosphere about him.
3
Claudia was, indeed, extraordinarily tired.
It was a
sensation to which she was for the most part unaccustomed, for it was true that she was, as she said, a strong woman and one not at all given to dwelling on her own minor symptoms. She thought that it must be partly the heat that was upsetting her, and the trouble of her increasing anxiety over Sylvia’s affair with Quarrendon. The talk under the willow-tree she had resolutely determined not to think about until later. She knew that it had hurt her, and would hurt her more when she came to dwell upon the remembrance of it.
What Sal had said didn’t matter. Sal was unjust because she was prejudiced. Claudia had always known that.
Frances — poor Frances — could be dismissed, although with a little pang for her failure in loyalty. Sal Oliver, with her easy effect of slick, modern cleverness, had perhaps slightly dazzled the simple, old-fashioned Frances. She was not — and never had been — a judge of character.
It was Anna’s criticism that hurt and rankled — Anna, who as a little girl had so uncritically admired and adored her elder sister.
Why couldn’t that childish relation — so happy, so uncomplicated — have been maintained between them? It was not Claudia who had changed. It was Anna. Resentment, anger, and bewilderment surged in Claudia. She found continually that in despite of her determination to the contrary her thoughts were circling round and round the same subject. Again and again she resolutely checked them. Her mind turned restlessly hither and thither, nowhere finding solace.
Sylvia and Quarrendon! They hadn’t come in — they were somewhere together.
She felt that she had too much to bear, but still she went on mechanically talking and even laughing, and when Quarrendon at last appeared, she smiled at him.
After all, she wasn’t angry with him. There was no cause for anger.
Claudia even began to wonder why she had been so deeply troubled by the realization that he and Sylvia were mutually attracted.
Perhaps they would marry.
But no — Quarrendon was too old. He wasn’t the right type of man for little Sylvia. He didn’t, she was nearly sure, really want to marry anyone. He was the kind of man to find emotional satisfaction in a close friendship with a clever woman of his own age. …
Collected Works of E M Delafield Page 434
