Bramton Wick

by Elizabeth Fair

  “It’s lovely up here!” Laura called from above. “Come and look at the view.”

  “Don’t believe her,” said Gillian. “People who have got to the top of anything always pretend there’s a better view. It’s just as good from the mound.”

  Toby drew a deep breath. He shut his eyes, but when he opened them again the symbolic moment was still with him.

  Without saying anything, he began to scramble upwards.

  Unaware of the tremendous importance of Toby’s action, Gillian turned away and wandered out through the broken walls. She had enjoyed the picnic, but she wished they would come down. The colour had faded from the beechwoods, the breeze had strengthened, and there was an autumn chill in the air. When she had regained the river bank she turned round, meaning to wave and call to Laura, to remind her that it was getting late.

  Toby and Laura were standing close together. Toby had his hand on her arm, and they were not looking at the view.

  “Dear me,” Gillian said to herself, “has it come to this?” She gazed at them with interest, but they were too far distant for her to read their faces.

  Toby had not intended, when he climbed to the top of the wall, that it should come to this. But finding himself at Laura’s side, and still elated by his conquest of the symbolic moment, he suddenly thought how splendid it would be, now that he had made his choice, to have it settled and approved.

  For a vacillating nature like Toby’s, impulsive action is much easier than premeditated action, and he was quite accustomed to making big decisions on the spur of the moment. So, with no preliminaries beyond an ardent look, he laid his hand on her arm and said:

  “Laura!”

  Laura had been brought up to believe that you should not let a man propose to you if you did not mean to accept him. But since no one had yet attempted to propose to her she had not realized that there might be difficulties in living up to this admirable precept. She had supposed that womanly intuition or plain common sense would give one fair warning of what was coming and enable one to take evasive but tactful steps to prevent it.

  Toby’s behaviour gave her no warning at all, and by the time she recovered from her surprise it was too late to be tactful.

  “Laura,” he repeated, speaking rapidly and yet in a voice which did not lack confidence. “I’ve often thought about this, and perhaps you have too. I mean, I hope you have. We know each other so well, I’m sure we should be very happy. Together. Well—how about getting married?”

  “No!” cried the demon who always spoke while Laura was struggling to find the right words. “No, I couldn’t!”

  The demon’s utterances were invariably loud and clear, but never louder or clearer than in the present crisis. Laura was overcome by contrition and she at once tried to mitigate the harshness of the demon’s refusal.

  “Oh, Toby!” she cried, “I’m so dreadfully sorry. You took me by surprise or I wouldn’t have said that. I mean, it isn’t that I don’t like you. I’m very fond of you. Only I hadn’t thought about marrying, and I’m afraid it wouldn’t do.” (Untrue, untrue, whispered the demon, mocking her well-intentioned lies.) “Toby,” she continued, regaining a measure of calm, “please, don’t say any more now. Let’s go back to the boat before Gillian comes to look for us.”

  Both Laura and Toby were fortunately unaware that they were silhouetted against a fine October sunset.

  There was a long pause, a reproachful stillness in which the cawing of the rooks in the distant woods sounded unnaturally emphatic. Then Toby turned to climb down from the wall.

  It was just as well that Laura had besought him to say no more, for at that moment he was quite incapable of saying anything. Whether he was unusually conceited or whether his dream-fantasies had unfitted him for coping with the hardships of real life, the fact remains that it had never occurred to him that Laura might reject her destiny. The choice was to be his, the approval was to come from his mother, the chosen one had only to play her part in the role assigned to her; and it was not the harshness of her words, but their incredible meaning that deprived Toby of his powers of speech.

  He was more bewildered than wounded. It was as if the scene on the abbey wall had been a distorted and unrecognizable projection of the truth, and as he followed her down to the boat he was already beginning to make the changes, the small adjustments, which would be necessary to bring the picture back into focus.

  Gillian had packed away the tea things and folded up the rug. “My tiny hands are frozen,” she said, “and my tiny feet too. Hurry up, Toby, let’s get away before the monkish ghosts appear. It’s a lovely abbey in daytime, but I don’t care for it when the shades of night are falling.”

  If that was a proposal, she thought, it has not gone according to plan, and what is needed now is a flow of sprightly conversation. Having made her diagnosis she set herself to apply the remedy. It was sometimes difficult for her to appear unaware of the frigid constraint which paralysed her companions, but she managed pretty well, and fortunately the stream was now in Toby’s favour and the return journey was much quicker than the outward one.

  In the car Gillian sat between them, and when they got back to Woodside she thanked Toby at great length and extolled the picnic in glowing terms, so that the meagreness of Laura’s thanks went unnoticed by Mrs. Cole, who had come down to the gate to meet them.

  Devoted mother as she was, Mrs. Cole could be remarkably obtuse, and neither Laura’s silence nor Toby’s rather hurried departure gave her an inkling of the frightful truth: that Endbury had been offered and rejected.

  Chapter Seventeen

  For the next few days Laura could think of nothing but the extreme awkwardness of her situation. She was ready to admit that it was largely her own fault, but that did not make it more endurable.

  When Toby proposed to her she had known at once that she did not want to marry him. It was a pity she had not discovered the change in herself a little sooner, instead of shutting her eyes and letting the weeks drift by. Although her plan for winning over Lady Masters had never really been carried out, it was clear now that Lady Masters must have made her own plans and must have had good reasons for supposing that she would approve of them. All this, the memory of her own scheming, the feeling of guilt, the humiliation of having behaved so foolishly, was hard to bear, but the particular sensation she described to herself as “awkwardness” made it worse.

  The awkwardness came of having to continue to live as though nothing had happened, of hearing her mother talk about Toby and Lady Masters and Endbury—it was curious how often the talk got round to Endbury—of meeting Gillian’s speculative glance and fending off her questions, and of fearing, when she went out, that she would meet Toby or Lady Masters.

  If she had been more accustomed to receiving offers of marriage Laura might have been able to bring herself to talk about this one, or at least to put it out of her mind. As the days went by she regretted not having told her mother about it at the time, which would at least have lessened the awkwardness. But it seemed too late to tell her now; the right moment had passed, there was never an opportunity of telling it naturally, and worse still, she gradually began to suspect the truth behind Mrs. Cole’s increasingly frequent references to Endbury and her changed opinion of Lady Masters. She had been wilfully blind, she told herself, not to have seen it before now.

  In the circumstances it was a relief that Mrs. Cole was at present too busy with the alterations to the garden to think about tea parties.

  Gillian, too, fortunately, had plenty to occupy her. Mr. Greenley, who seemed to like his holidays at very odd seasons of the year, was in residence at Cleeve Manor. With him was his widowed sister from Sunningdale, who was asked to Cleeve Manor only at such times as her children were at boarding school, children, in Thomas’s opinion, being positive dangers to rare and irreplaceable plants. Gillian was invited to stay with them for a few days and to go to the Hospice Ball at Bramchester. The Hospice Ball, which was given annually by an ancient
guild which now existed for no other purpose, was an important occasion in the social life of the county. Gillian recklessly extracted some money from her post office savings account and treated herself to a day’s shopping in Bramchester and a new evening dress, which was so décolleté that only to look at it made Mrs. Cole shiver.

  Gillian’s clothes were always clean, pressed, mended, and perfectly ready to wear. Nevertheless she busied herself with small alterations and finishing touches, and with washing her hair and manicuring her nails; and as all this kept her upstairs in her bedroom or in the spare room where the ironing board and sewing machine were kept, she and Laura were seldom alone together. When they were, Laura avoided dangerous silences by asking questions about Mr. Greenley and his sister. She was surprised to find that Gillian was quite easily beguiled into talking about Mr. Greenley.

  “Thomas is coming on wonderfully,” said Gillian. “Subscribing to the Hospice Fund, taking tickets for the ball—he’ll be thinking he has a stake in the county soon. And his sister is rather nice. Fat and silly, but nice.”

  “Is she very grand?”

  “Overwhelmingly grand, in mink, to look at. Her clothes are almost as awful as Thomas’s. Isn’t it peculiar that women with lots of money are so often guided to buy such frightful frocks and hats? It’s a sort of law of compensation.”

  The shortage of petrol never seemed to bother Mr. Greenley and he motored over to fetch Gillian, bringing his sister with him. Laura decided that her own views on niceness must be radically different from Gillian’s. Mrs. Cartwright-Brown was a large, plump woman, older than Thomas, more gorgeously apparelled, and even duller. She had a phlegmatic disposition and showed signs of animation only when she spoke of her children; at other times she seemed to relapse into a coma, sitting perfectly still and looking out on the world with lacklustre eyes and an expressionless face. She was a widow twice over, the children were the children of her second marriage, and she appeared so fixed in middle age that it was quite a shock to be told that her eldest boy was only twelve.

  It was also a shock when Gillian addressed her new friend as Trixie. This incongruous name, so ill-suited to her massive personality, amused Laura and antagonized Mrs. Cole, who decided that Mrs. Cartwright-Brown must be a very stupid woman. Anyone less stupid would have blushed to be addressed as Trixie and insisted on Beatrice, or whatever Trixie stood for.

  Mrs. Cole was perhaps prejudiced, for she resented having to entertain Thomas and Trixie to tea on a day when the operations in the garden had reached a crucial stage. They were Gillian’s friends, Thomas was taking Gillian to the Hospice Ball, and it was her duty to entertain them, but she did it under protest and was in no mood to make the best of them. Naturally they did not suspect this. Mrs. Cole’s manners were charming, and Thomas had already pigeonholed her as “one of the old school,” and Mrs. Cartwright-Brown’s faculties were probably not sufficiently developed for her to suspect anyone of anything.

  They had tea early, and in the midst of her pleasant, tranquil conversation Mrs. Cole kept hoping that the visitors would also leave early so that she could go out and inspect the work in the garden before it got dark.

  The hired labourers who were digging the new drains did not always see eye to eye with her about how the drains should run, and more than once she had had to appeal to Miles Corton for masculine support. She was not always right about drainage, but she was sure that the labourers knew even less about it than she did. Both she and they were willing to accept Miles’s advice; he had been several times, and each time she had kept him in the garden as long as possible and had been careful never to leave him alone with Laura. No Victorian chaperone could have guarded her child more zealously than Mrs. Cole. She was convinced that Laura was very much drawn to Toby, but she was not going to give Miles a chance to distract or distress her.

  It was unfortunate that Miles should call today, just as the visitors and Gillian were collecting their coats and preparing to leave. It delayed their leaving; Miles came into the hall and was introduced to Mrs. Cartwright-Brown, and exchanged a few casual and not particularly cordial remarks with Thomas, whom he had, of course, met on the day of the Misses Cleeve’s garden party. Gillian foolishly invited them all to come back to the sitting-room for a drink. She was in her gayest mood, and looking particularly pretty. Mrs. Cole was glad to see her happy, but she was glad too when Thomas said that they must be off. He said it kindly but firmly, and Gillian gave in at once.

  Afterwards Mrs. Cole wondered about this. It was not like Gillian to be so docile. In her fond heart this virtue was attributed to Laura, while Gillian had a charming talent for getting her own way.

  By the time they had gone it was almost too dark to look at the garden. After a perfunctory walk across the lawn to peer down at the trenches, the piles of earth, and the line of pegs which marked the position of the new path, she brought Miles back to the house. Laura met them at the door and reminded her that she had gone out in her thin slippers.

  “They’re wet through, Mummy. You’d better go and change them at once.”

  With misguided devotion her mother insisted that they were not wet—only the toes, and they would soon dry by the fire.

  “Well, come and have some sherry,” Laura said. “Come in, Miles. I haven’t seen you for ages.”

  Knowing that both her daughters had the modern habit of making exaggerated statements, Mrs. Cole was yet a little displeased by this remark. Miles Corton came to Woodside quite often enough. She sat down by the fire and asked Laura to fetch her old shawl, which she had dutifully discarded in honour of Thomas and Trixie.

  “Gillian is going to the Hospice Ball tomorrow night,” Laura told Miles.

  He answered coolly, “I hope she enjoys herself.”

  “I’m sure she will. Gillian loves dancing.”

  “I used to be very fond of it myself,” said Mrs. Cole, looking back into the past. She thought of her admirers, and of the young girls with whom she had laughed and gossiped. Thomas and his dull sister would have made a poor showing in that company.

  “Is she going?” she asked abruptly. Trading on her own vagueness she often managed to forget the names of people she disliked, as if to show how little they meant to her.

  “Who, Mummy? Oh—Trixie. Well, I suppose so.”

  “Trixie,” said Mrs. Cole, underlining it. Her faint air of surprise, of disbelief, made them laugh.

  “Parents can’t foresee the future,” Miles said. “But they ought to be more careful.”

  “She could change her name. People do. I knew a girl at school who called herself Stephanie because she couldn’t bear being one Anne among so many.”

  Mrs. Cole thought to herself that Laura was really quite as pretty as Gillian. When they were together Gillian outshone her because she was more at ease, more vivacious, and Laura was always ready to let her take the lead. It was perhaps a pity that they were so much together. But Gillian would be away till Monday.

  “I really must ask Lady Masters over,” she said. Her train of thought had led her to this conclusion quite logically, and she was slightly surprised to find that Miles and Laura were talking of something else and seemed to regard Lady Masters as an interruption.

  Laura said quickly that she was very busy just at present. “And there’s the garden, Mummy. You said you were too busy yourself to bother about entertaining or being entertained.”

  The garden was important to Mrs. Cole, but her dreams for Laura were even more important.

  “The men won’t be here on Sunday,” she said. “I could ask her to lunch then. And Toby too. If I write tonight, and send it by the first post in the morning—”

  “There’s the meat ration,” Laura protested.

  “A very good excuse,” Miles said, “for not having people to lunch if you don’t want them.”

  For some reason this annoyed Mrs. Cole very much. It certainly sounded as if Laura did not want Lady Masters or Toby to come to lunch. That was nonsense, of course; Laur
a was absurdly sensitive and had lately begun to shy away from discussing Toby—a very good sign, in her mother’s eyes, of the special interest she felt for him. But Miles must not be allowed to run away with the wrong idea.

  “The meat ration has nothing to do with it,” she said fretfully. “It’s just that Laura thinks it would be a bother for me. But, of course, it’s not a bother when it’s people you like—old friends.” She gave Laura a look which was meant to be admonishing, in a fond maternal way, but which only succeeded in adding a particular significance to the words “old friends.” Never had Laura come nearer to being one of those regrettable daughters who engage in acrimonious public disputes with their parents. She wanted to point out that Lady Masters, although technically an old friend, had never been entertained at Woodside except from a sense of duty, and that it was only in the past few months that Mrs. Cole had promoted her from being looked-down on to being looked-up to. But it was impossible to say this, and she felt that her protests had already given an unnatural importance to the discussion. Afterwards, when Miles had gone, she would have to find some better reason for not inviting Lady Masters to luncheon.

  Miles did not stay very long. He liked Mrs. Cole, but this was one of the evenings when he liked her less than usual.

  When he had gone, Mrs. Cole sat down and wrote to Lady Masters. Laura was washing up the tea things, and when she had finished she went upstairs to hunt for some knitting which had been put away uncompleted at the end of last winter and which she meant to unravel and start again. Laura’s belongings, unlike Gillian’s, were not neatly folded and systematically grouped, and it took her some time to find the knitting, which was hibernating at the back of her boot cupboard. While she was upstairs Mrs. Trimmer called to bring back the clean sheets.

  “Thought I’d drop ’em in as I was passing,” said Mrs. Trimmer, who did laundry work in her own cottage and at her own convenience.