Westwood

by Stella Gibbons

  ‘Have you?’ she murmured.

  ‘Yes. Would you like me to pay you at the ordinary model’s rates?’

  ‘Oh no!’ she cried, horrified.

  ‘I don’t see why not. It’s all taking up your time.’

  ‘I’d much rather have just the honour, Mr Niland.’

  ‘If you go on being as green as you are now,’ pronounced Alex, giving her one of his disturbing looks, ‘you’ll have a hell of a time. Honestly, I mean it. Go on, you let me pay you. You can buy something special and keep it to remind you.’

  ‘Yes – well, that would be nice,’ she admitted. ‘All right then, you’ll tell me at the party when I can come. Mr Niland –’ and then she paused.

  ‘Don’t be so bourgeois,’ he said, grinning. ‘Just call me Alex.’

  But this she was not capable of doing. ‘Am I green?’ she blurted.

  ‘Green as grass,’ he said cheerfully, patting her on the back and opening the front door. ‘Only I have seen grass look pink, and purple. You run along now. Your name’s Margaret, isn’t it? Try calling yourself Maggie. Good-bye,’ and he laughed and shut the door.

  She walked slowly homewards, glad of the evening coolness and thinking about him a little before letting her thoughts return to her grief. She was not sure that she liked him. He had no dignity, and his manner was mocking – no, perhaps teasing was a better word – and never had she imagined that a genius could be so unlike the conventional idea of one. Of course, there was Oliver Goldsmith, she thought vaguely, who wrote like an angel and talked like poor Poll. But I am glad that he is going to draw my head.

  Then her thoughts returned sadly to the events of the afternoon. She remembered every detail with painful vividness; her first glimpse of the couple seated upon the grass, her startled recognition of them, her incredulous feelings and her pang at the sight of his hand clasped in Hilda’s; the expression upon his face (ah! that she would never forget), her vain attempt to prevent the children, who had recognized him at the same time, from running towards him; and then the look of rage he had darted towards them, which had so shocked her.

  In that moment the disillusionment which (she now realized) had been gradually approaching, was completed. She had reluctantly suspected the value and genuineness of his philosophy for some time, and now she saw with her own eyes that he was as other men; a disloyal husband, a weak admirer of pretty faces. He could even stoop to carrying on his flirtation under a false name; that was actually sordid, like some story in the evening papers, and it sickened her more than all the rest.

  She was not angry or disgusted with Hilda. In the brief moments of privacy when they had been able to talk, she had understood that Hilda had been deceived, and was blameless. She had only been impatiently kind to him (oh, the pain of that thought!) and believed him to be dull but respectable. But how could she have resisted him, thought poor Margaret, as she opened the gate of her home. I suppose it wasn’t until this afternoon that he came out into the open. As if he were tracking something! Ugh!

  And then she remembered his attempt to be dignified and to carry the situation off smoothly, and suddenly she felt sorry for him; as she would have been for anything weak and unhappy. Sorry for Gerard Challis! If anyone had told me eight months ago that I should ever be that, she thought.

  30

  The harvest of suffering which Mr Challis had enthusiastically anticipated did not ripen. He went home feeling not full of tortured romantic yearnings, but very cross; in fact, he began to feel cross as soon as he was out of sight of the party on the grass and all the way home in the bus (he was unable to get a taxi) he got crosser and crosser. Stupid little fool! Sitting there with her mouth open when he declared his love, and then refusing such an offer; the chance of her narrow suburban lifetime; the one opportunity she would ever get to broaden her horizon and enjoy luxury and the society, the devotion, of an educated (and gifted, thought Mr Challis modestly) man!

  I was mistaken in her, he thought, gazing at the woman seated opposite to him with such a bitter expression that she felt quite uneasy. Lovely as she is (the memory of that loveliness came with its familiar pain), she is shallow. She is an Undine, lacking a soul.

  But how did it come about that she was apparently an intimate friend of this Margaret girl’s? Was it a conspiracy? (women were always plotting). Had he been the victim of a plot? And if so, what was its object? No, it was probably not a plot; it was just the ironical way in which events shaped themselves. Now Hilda would endlessly discuss him with that other young woman, and the latter would be shocked. She was shocked already. He had seen it in her eyes, that afternoon; a shocked wounded look which caused him to make literary comparisons with trapped fauns, rabbits in gins, etc. Every time she came to the house she would look at him like that. He would no longer have upon her character the – er – the refining and civilizing influence which he had hitherto possessed. He hoped she would not come to the house often if she was going to look at him like that. He might drop a hint to Seraphina that she was an undesirable influence on the children; and so forth.

  Even if I had taken Daphne to South America, he thought, I doubt if the experience would have deepened her nature. Later on she will become a shrew. It is as well, perhaps, that the affair has ended as it has.

  But that same evening, about half-past nine, when he was sitting in his study alternately glancing over a history of the French Romantic Movement and gazing apathetically out of the window, he heard the telephone-bell in the hall begin to ring. He waited, assuming that Cortway or Zita would answer it, for Seraphina and Hebe were out, but it continued to ring, and at last with an impatient exclamation he got up and went out into the hall.

  ‘Hullo?’ he said – being one of the many who refuse to announce their telephone number on lifting the receiver.

  ‘Marcus? Is that you?’ said Hilda’s voice. ‘Aren’t you ashamed of yourself? And you with all those lovely grandchildren?’

  He was very angry with her, but her voice revived his passion.

  ‘That has nothing to do with it,’ he answered coldly, his heart beating fast; he was already hoping to arrange a meeting.

  ‘Oh, hasn’t it? Well, if that’s the way you feel, that’s the way you feel. Only I made up my mind to give you the works and here we go. You buck up, and make the best of what you’ve got. I don’t like to think of it being wasted and –’ she hesitated, her voice grew softer, ‘good things are scarce in this world, you know –’ her voice became indistinct and he thought he heard her murmur, ‘I’ve been so lucky,’ but the next thing he heard was a cheerful ‘Bye-bye,’ and then the click of the receiver being replaced.

  ‘Daphne,’ he exclaimed, actually moving closer to the telephone as if to clasp her to him, but she had gone. He got up with a sigh, and went back moodily to the study. Silly, impertinent, shallow little girl! common as a daisy or a blade of grass. How humiliating it was that in spite of all he still desired this daisy, this child, who had given him back his youth!

  The next week passed quietly. Alex was busy arranging the details of his show; giving an interview to the Press at the Dorchester for which some space was found even in the miniature newspapers of war-time England; superintending the lighting and the arrangement of the room in which The Shrapnel Hunters and other pictures were to be displayed; and taking the bus to St John’s Wood, where Hebe was wandering contentedly among blackened timbers and fallen bricks with a tape measure in one hand, accompanied by a local builder. It seemed possible, in spite of enormous difficulties, that the house might be sufficiently repaired within the next three months for them to live in. ‘After all, we are bombed out,’ she kept reminding the builder.

  ‘Is there a studio?’ shouted Alex to his wife, as he stepped over the fallen gate and walked up the uneven stone path, where tiny purple horns of fading lilac were scattered. He had not previously seen the house.

  ‘You bet,’ shouted Hebe from somewhere inside the blackened shell. ‘In the garden, round the back.
I did tell you.’

  Presently she heard him shouting, ‘My God, this is splendid,’ and then there was silence. She smiled, and continued her conference with the builder. It would be enough for her if the place were warm and watertight, with room for plenty of children, but some of the velvet curtains had been salvaged from Lamb Cottage and when they were joined together and put at the large windows, they would look magnificent – when there was glass in the windows. I expect he will go away again, she thought, but this time at least he won’t – she glanced up at the exposed laths of the ceiling fifteen feet above her head – he won’t be able to say there wasn’t enough room.

  Margaret actually went back to the school on Monday morning with some relief. It was the first time in her experience that she had done so, and she supposed the dullness of the routine was welcome because it supplied an anodyne for pain. The faces of her colleagues, usually half-noticed by her as she went through her day’s work, now appeared those of individual women not without interest, who were mostly well-disposed towards her and had their own problems and satisfactions, while the members of her form, now that she could give them an attention not bemused with day-dreams and memories, even seemed attractive. It struck her that all this youth, expressed in smooth cheeks and bright eyes, could be helped by her to avoid the worship of false gods. She pitied them. They were so young, and they did not know. But what she herself came to know, after a few days of this sentimentalizing over the twelve- and thirteen-year-olds, was that they were not likely to worship false gods because they would not worship any gods at all. Not one of them possessed imagination of the dreaming, intense, yearning type that was her own, and so far as she could discover, there had only once been a pupil of the Anna Bonner who had possessed imaginative fire; the famous writer Amy Lee, from whose brain had trooped the series of strange, Poe-like tales that had ceased abruptly after her marriage. Miss Lathom often talked of her, and regaled the staff with anecdotes about her, and Margaret thought how wonderful it would be to discover another Amy Lee in her own form. But if there were one, she thought, I probably shouldn’t discover her. No one noticed that Amy Lee was any different from the others; they just seem to have thought she was rather dull.

  Well, if I can’t teach them not to worship false gods, I can at least teach them how to add up their change quickly when they’re shopping, and the geography of the British Isles, she thought impatiently, and I will. She began to take more pleasure in her teaching, and to feel satisfied when her classes showed clearly that they were learning from her lessons and enjoying them. To her embarrassment, one skinny little creature, who had long been looking at her solemnly from corners, took to bringing her posies of flowers and loitering outside the school, waiting to walk down the road with her. I must be getting nicer, thought Margaret.

  But life seemed dull now that she was no longer needed at the one Westwood and the romantic glow had departed from the other. Zita, who of course did not know of any change in her friend’s feelings, continued to ring her up every two or three days whenever she was unusually hard-pressed with the children or there was a concert on the air which she wanted Margaret to hear, and sometimes Margaret would go, but sometimes she excused herself (to Zita’s indignation) and went for a walk with Hilda instead.

  Hilda’s behaviour was rather mysterious lately; she was irritable, a most unusual mood with her, and sometimes absent-minded, an even more unusual mood – and on two occasions she telephoned Margaret at the last minute and broke an appointment without giving a reason. Margaret resignedly supposed that her friend had altered during the months of their estrangement, and thought that it was only just that she, who had for so long shut Hilda out from her confidence, should now be shut out from Hilda’s. Nevertheless, she was hurt.

  She saw and heard nothing of Earl Swinger during the fortnight following on their expedition to Kew, and altogether it was a time with her of sober reflection and the making of good resolutions, more suitable to the end of December than the end of June.

  A few days before the end of the fortnight, she received her invitiation to the party at Westwood. It was to be on Saturday evening at nine o’clock, and as she stood in the hall, holding the card carefully between her fingers which still felt dry from blackboard chalk, she almost decided that she would not go. It will be so hot, she thought, and sighed. I did tell Mr Niland I would, though. I’d forgotten that.

  A blackbird was singing and the lilies in the garden next door gave out their rich scent, and a stir and murmur of pleasure seemed to hover over London, full though it was of tired people and ruined buildings. It was no more than the spirit of summer, but it was delightful. I am too tired to enjoy a party, anyway, she thought. And I don’t want to see him. I can’t bear it.

  Nevertheless, on the evening of the party Margaret, carefully dressed and even perfumed, stepped out of her own gate at a quarter to nine, and began to walk slowly up the hill. (… We know well that nowadays it is not the done thing to give descriptions in novels of what women are wearing. It is assumed that either the reader knows, or can guess, or will derive more insight into the heroine’s character from a casual reference to some grubby mackintosh or holey vest; and, being slavishly willing to bow to literary fashion, we have endeavoured to suppress our natural inclination to describe our female characters’ clothes; with varying success, we admit, but nevertheless we have tried. However, this evening we intend to describe all the women’s clothes and hang the done thing.)

  She was painfully excited. A fornight is not long in which to learn philosophy, resignation, devotion to duty and all the other qualities which are necessary in order to bear life’s pains, and she was twenty-four and owned a warm heart. Her one hope, stronger than all other feelings, was that she would not feel a return of her former devotion when she again saw Mr Challis. She dreaded this, for she knew that she could not admire what she did not respect; she needs must love the highest when she saw it; and if her feelings did return, they would do so in a debased form of which she must be ashamed.

  There was more than one taxi drawing away from Westwood as she came near to the house, and even a private car or two, with dark foreign faces inside, waiting their turn to go into the drive. The delicate iron gates were set wide open and on either side of them, in tubs, were blue hydrangea shrubs in flower. Margaret shyly dropped behind a group of people who had just alighted from a taxi and followed them towards the house.

  It was a calm evening, grey and still. Soft plumes of violet cloud lay along the west, where a little golden light broke through, wave on wave of cloud lying beyond the clear reaches of the light. Not a leaf stirred, and the pansies and roses, lifting their motionless faces in the flower-beds, looked as if their eyes were shut. There was a sweet cool smell in the air of freshly mown grass. A trail of blades and severed daisies had escaped as Cortway was carrying the heaped bin over the paths and lay along the ground; his sight was not so good as it used to be, and he had overlooked them when he was sweeping.

  She glanced up at the goddess above the portico, with full lips set in their pensive line and her face turned towards the west. A soft glow illuminated it, like a reflection of light rather than light itself. The door of Westwood was open and she could see massive jars filled with flowers, the glitter of lights, people standing about talking and laughing. She could hear a piano being softly played; it was a childish-sounding versioin of ‘Lili-Marlene,’ rendered with an expert touch, and she saw that the grand piano from the drawing-room had been brought into the hall. Some people were gathered about it, singing softly, and she recognized Hebe, in a white dress of net with a wonderful necklace of green stones which looked like emeralds (but surely, thought Margaret, they can’t be). In her brown hair, which to-night was dressed high on her head in a top-knot of curls, there was a quaint little tiara of the same green gems and in the low bosom of her dress there were pink roses, a stiff bunch stuck down her neck in such a way that the beholder felt that their thorns must be scratching her. She loo
ked like a little girl dressed up. Oh, what an hour of careful consideration had been bestowed upon that little-girl look, those ungraceful roses! All the young men there were dying of love for her.

  Margaret came into the house in the wake of a large woman in a fur cape who looked as if she must be Somebody and who was talking loudly in French to the men who accompanied her. Margaret’s own intention was to slip away to Zita’s room and leave her coat there before she looked about for Gerard Challis and got over the first shock of seeing him, but before she could even move across the hall, he suddenly came forward from the crowd, tall and slender in evening dress, with his hands held out to the large lady whom he smilingly greeted in French. Margaret’s heart leapt, her throat grew dry, but it was with shame for him. How could he look so dignified and at ease, when all his life was a lie? No; she was saved. Her feeling for him had not returned; she felt nothing but shame and pity. But her heart was empty as she turned away and she already wished that she had not come.

  ‘Hullo, Struggles, ducky, I’m tight!’ whispered a gurgling voice in her ear and she turned quickly to see Hebe at her shoulder, hand-in-hand with a young man. ‘I wish you wouldn’t always try to shock me, as if I were about fifty!’ Margaret was moved to retort tartly, and Hebe looked surprised and amused as she drifted away. The front door was now shut by Cortway, looking unfamiliar in a white jacket, and Margaret was making her way across the hall to the staircase when Seraphina, who was passing, stopped and put a kind hand upon her arm.

  ‘So glad you could come, my dear,’ she said. ‘Did you have too shattering a time at Kew? We’ve been wondering about you. Zita did say you had been in once or twice, but I couldn’t believe you’d really recovered. Go and leave your things and then come and have a drink.’

  She moved away smiling before Margaret could answer. The latter, who was already regretting what she had said to Hebe and wondering if she had been rude, thought how lovely she looked in a white lace dress, showing arms and shoulders which were only slightly too heavy and setting off the delicacy of her complexion. She had a necklace and bracelets of garnets set in gold.