Statues in a Garden

by Isabel Colegate

  It was a result, indirectly, of Philip’s resolution to devote himself to Horgan and work that he found himself in a nightclub. They had had dinner in the Bayswater flat, Horgan, Leslie, and Philip, and after dinner Horgan had suggested that they should all go round to his hotel for a drink, but in the large and ugly hotel bar conversation flagged even more than usual and soon Horgan stood up and said, ‘I’m going to bed. See Leslie home like a good chap, would you Philip? Call in at a night club on the way, why don’t you? I know you know all the night spots, and she doesn’t get much excitement with me.’

  They demurred, but he said, ‘No, no, enjoy yourselves. Here you are.’ He handed Philip £1 with some grandeur, and said, ‘You needn’t stay long.’ He waved them off and turned back towards the lifts.

  Leslie was not exactly the companion Philip would have chosen, but he was willing enough to defer going to bed. At the back of his mind during all this time was the thought of the telephone ringing in his flat, and not being answered, and the cool voice of the office telephonist saying, ‘I’m afraid Mr Weston is not taking any calls this morning,’ which was what he had told her to say whenever Cynthia rang up. He had thoughts of himself as ruthless for some time, but this was in fact the first truly ruthless thing he did. He refused to speak to Cynthia until long afterwards, and as far as I know he never visited Charleswood again.

  He wanted to avoid people who knew him, so he took Leslie to Soho. As they walked down the stairs. Into the smoky basement, she surprised him by saying in a rather affected voice, ‘Why, what a divvy place!’

  She sat down and looked round her with interest, asked Philip about various of the people who were there, and generally seemed pleased.

  ‘Don’t you go out much with Horgan?’ he asked.

  ‘Hardly at all. He likes to go to bed early.’

  ‘You don’t find that dull?’

  ‘No I’m used to it. My friend Manou was the same, very quiet.’

  ‘Do you miss him?’

  ‘Manou? Oh yes. But Horgan’s very easy, you know I mean, he doesn’t ask much of anybody, does he, outside of business?’

  ‘But does he make you happy?’

  She looked at him kindly, and explained, ‘You have to take what you can get at my age, and with a daughter to support.’

  ‘Why couldn’t you go and live with your family?’

  She laughed. ‘You don’t know my family. I believe you’re sentimental.’

  ‘No I’m just wondering about you.’

  ‘I like sentimental people. Let’s talk about you instead. Have you a girl friend?’

  ‘No I don’t believe in regular relationships of that sort. Besides, I like variety. Would you mind if I got drunk?’ He was rather drunk already.

  ‘Of course not. It will remind me of my young days. They’re quiet living, these business men, as I say. It will make a change.’

  ‘I’ve had rather a shock recently,’ he said in excuse.

  ‘Horgan told me about your uncle.’

  ‘Did he? What did he say?’

  ‘That he’d committed suicide, that’s all. But I read about it in the papers. It must have been awful for her.’

  ‘For her?’

  ‘Lady Weston. You know, you’ll hardly believe this, but she’s always been a great hero of mine, or heroine I suppose. I should say I’ve got ever so many photos of her.’

  ‘Let’s dance,’ he said.

  The place was crowded. He drank rapidly. Once she said to him, ‘You’ll be sick before the night’s out,’ like a nanny saying, ‘it will end in tears’, but her expression remained serene, her general appearance neat and respectable. Her large face was an agreeable squarish shape, and though her complexion was poor her teeth were white and even. He said, ‘You must have been quite nice looking when you were younger.’ She took it as easily as she seemed to take everything. ‘They used to say so,’ she said. ‘Oh yes, I’ve had my successes.’

  He had a period of temporary euphoria, dancing with her. ‘This is jolly good fun,’ he said.

  That stage soon passed, and he began to lose touch, faces swirled round him, and he needed all his concentration to keep his equilibrium. Even sitting down he felt it wiser to hold on to the table. And then suddenly there was little Smallpiece’s face close to his, little Smallpiece, his erstwhile brother officer, whom he had hardly seen since he had left the Army.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ he said.

  ‘Weston! My dear fellow!’ And then the joy was clouded ‘But look here, I mean, I say, aren’t you? I mean.’

  ‘You think it is too soon after my uncle’s death for me to be throwing myself so whole heartedly into the whirl of London night life?’ said Philip very clearly.

  ‘Well, it did occur to me, old fellow, since you say so.’

  ‘Since after all he was as good as a father to me,’ said Philip.

  ‘Quite,’ said Smallpiece.

  ‘Quite,’ said Philip, nodding several times.

  ‘Oh well, I must be getting back to my table,’ said little Smallpiece, evidently embarrassed. He bowed politely to Leslie.

  ‘Captain Smallpiece – Miss, er –’ said Philip rather belatedly.

  ‘Miss Fowler. Pleased to meet you,’ said Leslie.

  ‘Look here,’ said Smallpiece, turning back to Philip. ‘If you want to get back in again any time, just let me know I mean, into the regiment. Most of our chaps think the war’s bound to come now, and you want to get in quick if you don’t want to miss it. They all seem to think it’s not going to be a long affair. Just let me know, won’t you?’

  They watched him thread his way neatly back to his table and join an obvious brother officer and two obvious chorus girls, of whom one was tall and one small.

  ‘Which do you think is his, the big one or the little one?’ said Philip.

  ‘The big one, I expect,’ said Leslie. ‘People never choose what’s suitable, do they? If my Lucile was a boy I’d be worried.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘This war business.’

  ‘She’ll be all right. She’ll be able to be a real twentieth century woman when she grows up.’

  ‘So there’s going to be another new woman. What will she be like, then, poor thing?’

  ‘She’ll have much more emancipated ideas about sex.’

  ‘I’ve had some pretty emancipated ideas about sex myself in my time, and I’m no new woman.’

  ‘I like you,’ he said, gripping the table. ‘I like you very much.’

  ‘I think it’s time I saw you home. Hey, you, let’s have the bill, shall we?’

  In the cab he insisted that they should go to her flat in Bayswater first. ‘I promised Horgan to see you home,’ he said, obstinately.

  When they arrived he said he would come in with her.

  ‘You could make me some coffee,’ he said. ‘You will make me some coffee, won’t you? It would just sober me up and then I could get home. Not that I’m at all drunk, I just feel drunk.’

  The first thing he saw when he went into her sitting room was a photograph of Cynthia. It was on a postcard on the mantelpiece.

  He said, ‘What’s that? What are you doing with that?’ rather aggressively

  ‘I told you,’ she said. ‘I’ve got hundreds of them. You know, there are shops where you can buy them. I’ve got some of Mrs Cornwallis West too, but not as many as I have of Lady Weston. Want to see them?’

  She pulled out a drawer in a little writing table.

  ‘Look.’ She knelt on the floor and began to lay them out as if she were going to play some sort of game of Patience with them. ‘I cut some of them out of the Tatler or the newspapers. Look at this one. Isn’t it beautiful?’

  ‘I didn’t know you could get so many of these things.’

  ‘Of course you can. Some people sue, to stop them being sold, but she wouldn’t bother with anything so petty, I shouldn’t think. Besides, why not give a bit of innocent pleasure? Isn’t that a lovely one, in that hat? I d
o think she’s a wonderful person. You can look at them while I make the coffee.’

  He stood swaying and looking down at all the images of Cynthia spread at his feet. I could tread on them, he thought. He remembered the crunch of her bedroom mirror under his feet; the photographs swirled slightly below him as he tried to fix his gaze on them, they seemed to merge, they were a lady in a white dress and a large hat, in a brownish photograph, no more. Fumbling with his buttons, bracing his legs like a pony, he thought he would pee on them.

  ‘Gerroutofit!’ It was the sort of cry one would use to a pony that was misbehaving. She took him by the shoulders and pushed him into the lavatory. ‘That’s the place for that sort of thing.’

  Even so she was not shocked. When he came back into the room the photographs had gone, even the one which had been on the mantelpiece, and she was pouring out the coffee.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said.

  ‘I should think so. Here, drink this.’

  ‘I really am sorry. I am ashamed of myself. I mean, that’s what I am. I am not ashamed of being ashamed of myself.’

  ‘I can’t think why not. Drink up your coffee, and then you must go home.’

  ‘I am a failure. Things haven’t gone at all as I meant them to go.’

  But he was too incoherent to be able to communicate with her, and she was not quite interested enough, or perhaps too tired, to try to find out through his drunkenness why he had begun his little gesture. Trying to approach her with vaguely amorous intent, he knocked over a small table, and she said, rather sharply, ‘Be careful, you’ll wake Lucile!’ But she sent him home quite kindly, patting him on the shoulder and saying, ‘You know, you’ve got a lot to learn.’

  He said he would learn it.

  And did learn a good deal.

  23

  It killed old Mrs Weston. But then she was old and would have died soon anyway.

  The day after Aylmer’s death she went for a drive with Moberley in the afternoon she had to, she had so much on her mind, and he was the only person to whom she could talk It was that morning, early, that she had gone into Cynthia’s room and said, ‘Was Philip your lover?’ and Cynthia, who had just managed to fall asleep for the first time since the death, turned a puffy face deeper into the pillow and said, ‘Oh yes, yes,’ almost irritably. ‘And he found out?’ ‘Beatrice told him.’

  Mrs Weston stalked on, black booted, into Edmund’s room, where she found him half dressed, and said to him, ‘This is a terrible thing to have to tell you, but I think it right that you should know. Your mother and your cousin Philip were lovers. It was not the money.’ And she stalked out again.

  All morning she was shut in her room and would speak to no one, though Edmund came to knock on her door several times. She refused lunch, but in the afternoon rang for Moberley and the car.

  He drove slowly, avoiding the village, speaking only a little in soothing commonplaces When she noticed that he had avoided the village she said, ‘Why don’t you take me through the village? Do you think I am afraid of them?’

  He did not answer.

  ‘Do you think I am afraid of them?’ she repeated harshly. ‘I don’t mind being peered at’

  ‘I thought you might prefer to see the countryside,’ he said.

  She resented his tact.

  ‘The whole thing’s your fault anyway, for behaving so badly to Beatrice,’ she said aggressively. ‘If you hadn’t treated her like that she would never have turned bitter. She caused all the trouble, did you know that?’

  ‘I’m very sorry to hear that,’ he said.

  ‘She went to Sir Aylmer with some terrible stories.’

  As if to end the conversation she picked up The Times which she had brought with her, and held it at arm’s length, frowning at it. She had forgotten to bring her reading glasses. Even so, she seemed to see enough to confirm her worst suspicions. She put down the paper and went on attacking him.

  ‘If you hadn’t led her on she would never have got into such a state,’ she said. ‘Men always do that. How can you expect women not to turn nasty? You were perfectly unscrupulous about it.’

  ‘I was undecided in my own mind,’ he said apologetically. ‘You yourself did advise me to make the choice I did.’

  ‘Why should you take my advice?’ she snapped. ‘What use is it likely to be? I am a failure, am I not? Two sons dead, one in some foreign country before he’d proved himself at all, one by his own hand. By his own hand. What could be worse than that?’

  ‘It is a terrible tragedy,’ he said. ‘But one thing I do know Sir Aylmer was a good man.’

  ‘Of course he wasn’t a good man,’ she rasped. ‘Good men don’t kill themselves. Can’t you drive any faster?’

  ‘We shall soon be at the main road,’ he said. ‘We shall be able to go faster there.’

  ‘I thought I should die quietly,’ she said, ‘at peace, with the sun shining outside and my duty done. What sort of death can I die now? He allowed himself to be overcome, totally overcome. He didn’t have the strength to bear the knowledge, to bear the requirements of love, to bear the imperative upon man to create out of chaos and out of carelessness his God in his own image. If anyone should have known, Aylmer should have known. But he didn’t know. And so the others win, the other impulses in his own blood. That was what shook him so, you see, that Philip and Cynthia were his own blood. What a failure. What a failure.’

  She sat straight backed, gazing out of the window, speaking into the tube but never looking at Moberley’s broad uniformed back in front of her.

  ‘No one can say I don’t face facts,’ she said. ‘And if I am expected to face facts and not feel the bitterest anger, well, then too much is expected of me. Too much was expected of Aylmer, too, I know that, but Aylmer should have been equal to it. I am too old. But he had everything on his side. Too much was expected of him. Of course. But he should have been up to it What else is love for? How many times must I ask you to go faster?’

  ‘I shall be able to now,’ he said soothingly. He turned the Silver Wraith on to the main road.

  She leant forward urgently. ‘Now see what we can do. For God’s sake let’s have some speed.’

  He saw her face in his driving mirror.

  ‘Are you sure you’re feeling all right, ‘m?’ he said.

  ‘Of course I’m all right. Drive faster.’

  The car gathered speed. He felt the power of it, but it gave him no pleasure. She was behind him all the time, crying, ‘Faster!’

  He heard a sort of coughing sound, and said again, ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘Of course. Faster,’ gasped the voice.

  He drove as fast as he could, wanting now to get her home. They touched seventy-five, the main road empty, the lovely car, sedately chauffeur driven, the old lady in black behind seventy-five down hill and she still croaked, ‘Faster.’

  When he had turned off the main road he said, ‘Shall I stop a moment?’ worried about her. But she said, ‘No. Take me home. Don’t stop.’ And once on the way he heard her say again, ‘Faster.’

  When they reached home, she had fallen forward off the seat and lay in a heap of black clothes on the floor of the car. As soon as he lifted her out he knew that she was dead.

  He carried her upstairs to her room and laid her on her bed. The family were sent for. He told them what had happened. They stood round the bed. Moberley stood at the foot of the bed, his cap crushed in both his hands. In better times she had laughed at him, saying in her harsh voice, ‘You overplay the part of the devoted servant. I believe you have all sorts of black thoughts about me secretly.’ His cheeks were covered with tears.

  24

  The rumours about the war and the rumours about Aylmer’s death merged in our minds. They say Edward Grey will resign if we don’t support France – they say it was all to do with money – Lansdowne and Bonar Law have promised Asquith their support – if he hadn’t killed himself there’d have been another Marconi case – the German Embassy has
offered a guarantee – it was all something to do with his wife – no, it was the Irish – well, the Buckingham Palace conference has failed, hasn’t it? Doesn’t that just show?

  And then the Sunday newspapers reporting that German troops had crossed the frontiers of France and Luxembourg, and people pouring back to London, and Grey’s speech on Monday, and everyone agreeing he had done very well.

  They say there will be a run on the banks for gold – there will be bread riots – collapse of credit in November – they say Aylmer Weston foresaw it, couldn’t face it – it was his wife, she was a suffragette, she was having an affair with the nephew. And then the first of the Belgian refugees began to arrive.

  I never knew who else realized the cause of Aylmer’s death. Old Mrs Weston had told Edmund, and Edmund, much later, told Alice, but for Kitty the thing was always a mystery, an inexplicable collapse. It took her a long time to absorb it, and then there was the war. She was very pretty at that time. Charleswood was turned into a convalescent home and Kitty became a nurse. There are photographs of her taken at the time, her demure smooth face framed in her neat nurse’s cap, as good as gold. None of the little flirtations she had with the patients ended satisfactorily. The men went back and were killed, or stopped writing, or had not told her they were married. She turned, being passionate, a little sour, and, being sensible, a little tough, so that when, after the war, she did go into politics, she was not as effective as she might have been. She was an aggressive Labour Member, rather noisy and bossy, making tremendous issues out of small wrongs and failing somehow to match up to the requirements of large ones. She got fat too, she liked food. She did not marry. Men found her too uncompromising, and she ordered them about too much. She lived in a pretty cottage not far from Charleswood, and devoted herself to her various causes and to the rearing of a particularly ferocious breed of Norfolk terriers. She had a lot of friends, who used to come and stay with her. She was a loyal and witty friend.