Good Behaviour

by Molly Keane

  Tommy Fox was smiling in genuine calm pleasure; tucking his ashplant under his arm, he tightened the girths and shortened my stirrup leathers before he jumped up and settled himself with neat ease in the saddle. As he walked him, jogged him, and rode him in circles and figures of eight the horse answered to his strong approach and complacent dexterity with the same good manners he had used to show with Hubert.

  My new fear was that Papa, gay executioner for my own good, would put me up on the horse again, just to steady my nerve. Fear repossessed me entirely. My stomach turned. Again, as Tommy rode back to us, I felt the sweat in my squeezed hands.

  ‘Ah, only gay in himself is all he is,’ he said. I could have struck him for those words. ‘Canter him down there slowly,’ Papa said. My reprieve. I loosened my hands. I prayed that he might take off and hop it with Tommy as he had with me. As we watched, it happened. No blundering hound puppy to give him a motive, only out of his wicked will he lengthened his stride, he set his cheek against the bit, and he was off. I remembered his neck, a pillar of fire against my hands, and a consuming gladness went through me, nearly a pleasure in Tommy’s danger.

  ‘The so-and-so –’ Papa was laughing again – ‘No brakes. No brakes.’

  How warm the hour became, how human and relaxed I was, standing there apart from the terror I had known so lately. Now they see he can do it. Tommy can’t hold him either. Can he turn him? Yes, just. They thundered over the stubbles past us, round again and back down the field. Tommy dropping his hands, smiling, pretending confidence as he passed us again. They might have gone six times round the big field before he tired. Tommy was driving him on now, up the slope, stopping him, and kicking him on again, dispossessing his memory of that power he had to take total charge, bringing him back to the habit of obedience; riding up to Papa and waiting for further orders.

  ‘A steady hack canter was what I ordered.’ Papa spoke lightly.

  So did Tommy. ‘Ah, that’s the lad, Major.’ He jumped off in his spry way, turned the reins over the monster’s head, put his stirrups up and loosened the girths. Hubert’s horse leaned down his sweating, itching head with a kind of innocence. A shudder ran through his whole dark frame, a haze trembled in the air over him and round him; he reached out a mild foreleg on which to rub his cheek while Tommy pulled his ears and waited, giggling, for Papa’s next orders.

  ‘That’s about enough for one morning,’ Papa said. ‘Walk him round till he cools off.’ He turned to Tommy again after we had started on our way back to the house. ‘Ask Rose to give you a Guinness when you come in.’ He looked at me. ‘He may need something to steady him. I do. What about you, sweetie? Let’s have one together, shall we? Just one.’ It was a cheerful idea. His pace quickened as we crossed the stable yard. On the level flags inside the back door he shouted for Rose in the empty kitchen. Her presence was in the beautiful smell of hot bread, swathed in a cloth and leaning against the low wooden tower of a sieve. ‘Where were you?’ He looked through her when she came in, gloriously strong and clean.

  ‘Killing the kitchen maid,’ she answered. Then, meeting his look: ‘Was there anything you wanted, sir?’

  ‘Give Tommy a bottle of Guinness when you see him. He’s had a bit of a doings with Mr Hubert’s horse.’

  ‘Is it pamper that little sauceboat?’

  ‘Lucky he’s not hurt.’ Papa spoke reprovingly. ‘And that goes for Miss Aroon too – come along, sweetie.’ Rose was excluded. She had her place.

  In the diningroom, quiet and orderly and sombre between breakfast and lunchtime, its silver shining down again into all the polished wood, Papa dived into the sideboard and brought out the meek sherry decanter with its silver label neatly hanging. He thought for a minute, and shook his head. ‘Better idea. Port and brandy.’ He sat down to pour out the drinks; on his legs he was a bit off balance. I sat down too and watched him pour the glasses, just not full. His hands were shaking. All on my account? Or on account of Hubert’s horse? We drank together.

  ‘And if I may say so, here’s to you, darling girl, and bloody well you rode him.’ It was nothing so vulgar as a toast, but I felt lauded and elated. We drank, and we looked at each other in confidence. Were we being rather naughty, rather in secret? Papa filled his glass again, and put another drop into mine, which was still three-quarters full. It was a show of affection and concern.

  Presently Mummie came in. She stood a moment in the doorway while the dogs flew across the room to Papa. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘rather early for it?’ It was more of an acceptance than a question.

  ‘Not a bit.’ Papa was restored now. There was no shake in his hands as he measured out a glass for her. She sat down on his right hand and looked at him, deeply amused. A whole relationship was in her eyes. It expelled me from any secrecy with Papa.

  ‘I think I’ll go and change,’ I said.

  ‘Yes, you must be hot – you were a funny sight – scampering round that field.’

  I stood for a moment waiting for Papa to say a word in my praise or favour. I stood there stupidly, betrayed in his silence. I saw her looking up at him, with something else to say. I saw her hand folded mouselike on the table’s edge. It was the paw of a small animal. He gave it a look that as much as covered it with his own hand. I turned away, my loneliness walking with me, taller than my own height as a shadow is tall – and irremediable as my height was.

  Back in my bedroom I knew myself suffered and accepted among my own possessions and habits. Here I was isolated from denial or dismissal. Possibility was actual. After all there they were, Richard’s presents, undeniable – the scent, the bath essence, the bird’s-eye scarf. Soon it would be cold enough to wear the Jaeger coat. And what did they tell me? All these expensive objects told me plainly that I was loved although still untouched by that thing men do. Untouched, because no doubt he had held me too dear. Out of the charged memories of disappointment, I flowered to myself, a desired, a forbidden, an enchanted creature. I took the cold scent bottle between my hands and kissed it.

  The moment went past, and I still faced the afternoon. While I reconsidered the long hours to come, the scent bottle warmed in my hands.

  18

  At luncheon Papa decided for me. He said: ‘Got to go to the Wine Cellars. And the car’s not her burning best either. Care to come along in case she stops with me? We’ll get her sharpened up while we’re busy in the Cellars.’

  ‘So long as we don’t have to go to tea with the Crowhurst girls.’

  The girls lived near the Wine Cellars and he had often been known to call in and bask for an hour in their acidulated adoration. I can only suppose the girls and their lives were like a comic strip to Papa. He followed their activities, some of them rather shady; it was a game, laughing at their contrivances. Their bitter, nipped tongues kept him guessing at what they might say next. He liked to nose out their small scandalous escapades – nothing like love affairs, poor things, of course not, more likely a sharpish bit of horse dealing. One of their pleasures was not telling. It put an edge on everything they did or said. Poor unhappy things. Much as I pitied and faintly despised them, they had the knack of making me feel I was lolling helplessly through an objectless, boring life. I never wanted to see them, or listen to them, or even to eat any of the delightful food they produced from air, or sea, or garden.

  Papa, I knew, felt very differently about their ways of overriding poverty, rejecting its limitations. He was fascinated by all they had taught themselves about horses, and never tired of analysing the curious theories they accepted from that wild tinker fellow they employed as a part-time groom. He could charm warts, or go up to any horse, where another dare not lay his hand. Besides being so knowledgeable on horses and horse lore, they knew the cures for all the diseases from which dogs could suffer. They despised vets. Even when one of their viperous miniature dachshunds was in hideous whelping difficulties, they used their own clever fingers, and an hour after achieving a safe delivery for their darling they would be sitting on a
sofa at their petit-point, their hands as elegantly and carefully employed as those of any ancestress. They were very well born and never forgot it.

  Today I could sense Papa making his way wordlessly towards a cup of tea with Nod and Blink; it was a delayed action. At the garage he ordered work on the car which must take hours to accomplish. At the Wine Cellars we stayed a long time ordering good things in the dark drift of smells in the grocery department. After that came the real matter of the visit, wines and their years and qualities, their prices unimportant when compared with the delights Papa was accumulating.

  When, at half past four, I heard him ask for a bottle of Gordon’s gin, a bottle of Noilly Prat, ‘and, of course, a lemon,’ I knew we were bound for tea with the Crowhurst girls, bringing a little present with us. ‘Calling for this lot later,’ he indicated his purchases.

  The elder of the two gentlemanly old gnomes who owned the Wine Cellars was ushering us out. ‘And if it would be convenient, Major,’ he said, laughing a little, ‘we were wondering could you let us have something on account.’

  ‘Of course, of course – what a terrible pair you are. Why haven’t you sent it in long ago?’

  ‘We did, Major. Excuse us, but we have it furnished a few little times now.’ It was an extreme apology and he accepted it, royally.

  ‘That’s right.’ He hobbled away, very lame, still talking. ‘Times are awful, always are awful, send it in again at once, do you hear me? Don’t delay, never delay, and I’ll let you have a cheque by return of post.’

  Out in the sunny street he was soon walking more soundly, heading for the Crowhursts without any unnecessary explanations to me. I went along beside him, the gin under one arm, the vermouth under the other, the lemon in my handbag.

  ‘Can you manage, darling, bless you? Poor things, they do need it so.’ He put me on his own level, while they sank to the position of being simply pitiable.

  I was less able to pity them as we clicked open the neat iron gate, painted by themselves, and walked towards the house, past groupings of electric blue hydrangeas. ‘How do they do it?’ Papa paused to admire. ‘And they won’t tell a soul.’ His admiration of the cruel electric blue and the girls’ secrecy was equal. Round the corner of the little Regency house, a blazing autumn border caught his eye. ‘Good girls, good girls,’ he murmured, ‘redhot pokers – my favourites.’

  Blink opened their door to us. She was close-lipped and elegant and nearly thirty. I thought the twins hopelessly aged. ‘How awfully kind,’ she said to Papa, taking the gin away from me. Then: ‘Oh, Aroon,’ as if she only now saw I was there.

  The hall, where we delayed, was that of a small country gentleman. Leather-covered sticks and hunting whips lay on an oak chest. A series of good prints hung on the walls. A water dish marked DOG and a trug of clean garden tools and powerful secateurs stood together in a corner.

  In the drawingroom, where dachshunds lay like a nest of serpents in a round, well-cushioned basket, tea was laid for four. The position of the teatray commanded a splendid view of the blazing border, where huge, meaty dahlias (fit flesh for cannibals I always think) were divided, and given added value, by fish-shaped drifts of Michaelmas daisies, and grey-blue pools of agapanthus lilies. Blink looked away from her border with affected indifference, giving Papa time to admire and wonder at its perfection. Presently Nod (Papa’s favourite one) came in with a trayful of beautiful food.

  ‘We heard you were in the Wine Cellars,’ she said unaffectedly, ‘so we hoped you would come to tea.’

  ‘You made all these sandwiches just on the chance?’ Papa said gratefully. ‘Just for us? Good girls.’

  ‘Well, Blink and I could have finished them for dinner –’ they never talked about supper – ‘the more we eat, the thinner we grow.’ She looked at me as if she were going to apologise for an unfortunate remark, and under her veiled glance I felt my bosoms and bottom swelling up through my head. I was so conscious of their size and presence they could have toppled me off my legs.

  We had China tea out of thin, shallow cups, and I found the fish pâté sandwiches irresistible. The dachshunds crawled out of their basket to join in the pickings, and one of them almost took my hand off when I gave her a tiny piece of buttered scone.

  ‘Please don’t feed the brutes,’ Nod said gently. Then with chill command: ‘Basket, girls, to your basket.’ They slunk away, remorseful and vindictive. ‘The postman won’t come here any more,’ she told Papa with great amusement. ‘They’ve bitten him twice now and one bite festered. Blink’s making a letter-box for the gate.’

  ‘Big enough to take garden catalogues and the Times.’ Blink spoke seriously of her project. ‘They gave me a lovely old brass slit or slot at the post office, and I picked up a beautiful piece of teak on the beach – just the thing.’

  ‘You’ll make a job of it,’ Papa said, approvingly. ‘You should use copper nails.’

  Now and then they spoke to me politely and handed me plates of food or filled up my tiny cup. But I knew their joint unjealous interest focused entirely on Papa. Tea over, Papa provided us each with a cigarette from his never-empty case. ‘I knew I meant to ask you something,’ he said to Nod. ‘How’s Fred Astaire’s leg?’

  ‘I’m afraid he’s finished,’ she said.

  ‘Oh, that’s a great pity. Best hunter in the country. Shall I go and put my hand on it?’. There was nothing he liked more than fiddling round lame horses. Now there would be an hour of suggestion and counter-suggestion. When I got up to follow them out of the room Blink spoke unhurriedly from behind the teatray.

  ‘You’ve seen darling Fred often enough, dear fellow, wouldn’t you rather look at Heidi’s puppies? They’re very sweet.’

  ‘Shouldn’t we call Papa?’ I said, after a lingering examination of Heidi’s litter. ‘The garage will be shut soon.’

  ‘Oh yes, if you must. Nod’s so upset about Fred Astaire, let’s give them a few minutes while I get hold of some glasses.’

  Blink took another ten minutes to find and polish the right glasses, and the only knife suitable for paring zest from a lemon. In the drawingroom, where we carried the tray of drinks, she said: ‘Oh, wouldn’t it be nice if we cleared away tea? Could you feed Heidi while I tidy it up?’

  ‘No,’ I said, ‘you feed Heidi, let me do this.’

  ‘You can’t really be afraid of her; she’s so gentle.’ She left me blushing with rage as I piled up the doll-size cups and plates.

  ‘Oh,’ Nod said, coming in with Papa, ‘that awful Blink – she always finds someone else to do her work.’ She spoke with indulgent approval.

  ‘You want to watch it,’ Papa said. ‘Aroon’s champion cup smasher.’ Nod took the tray from me immediately and carried it away. ‘I don’t know about you, sweetheart,’ Papa said, when she had gone, ‘but I need a drink. Martinis for us all – sort of – no ice.’ When the girls came back he was paring lemon peel. ‘Perfect blade,’ he said, ‘worth anything.’ He pinched the peel into their glasses and handed them with grave concern that the drinks should be absolutely as they liked them. They might have been glamorous women. He was far too kind, I thought. After two powerful martinis Papa roused himself out of a pleasant lull to say to Blink: ‘I haven’t seen your letter-box yet, have I?’

  ‘Oh, Papa.’ Kindness was one thing, but this was silly. ‘The garage will be shut. We can’t walk home.’

  ‘No,’ he agreed, ‘of course not. The old leg, you know. Look – you nip down to the garage, child, and bring the car up here, if you’ll be so sweet. I’ll be waiting at the gate.’ ‘I’ll be waiting at the gate’ – the words had a dying fall, a promise to me alone, the chosen companion.

  At the garage, the owner was ready to tell me that nothing whatever had been done about the car. It was more than one afternoon’s work and an expensive job. Would the Major call at his convenience to discuss it, and would I remind him about the account?

  ‘The Major will call on his way home,’ I said. ‘Will you be here?’
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  ‘I will, if there’s any chance he’ll call.’ He sounded as though he doubted the likelihood. I felt he ought to have said ‘the Major,’ not ‘he.’

  Of course there was no one waiting at the gate. I had hardly expected it. Papa wasn’t in the drawingroom either. Nod was snuggled down on the sofa with five dachshunds and her petit-point. She glanced up as I came in. ‘I expect they’ll be here soon,’ she said, settling down again.

  Presently they came, walking slowly together over the perfect grass, almost more brilliant than the awful border around which it curved, neat and level as water. Papa stopped and stooped (always a job for him) to pick something out of the grass. ‘Look what I’ve found,’ he said when they came in, as unhurriedly as though it had been three o’clock. ‘Plantain in the lawn. It’s disgraceful. I am shocked.’

  They did not deny the plantain. ‘Have a drink,’ they suggested amiably.

  ‘I’m not sure if Aroon will allow it.’ He looked at me remorsefully. ‘And what about the car, pet? All right?’

  ‘Not all right,’ I said. ‘He’s done exactly nothing and he wants you to call and see him this evening.’ All the ease and pleasure went from Papa’s face and attitude. Suddenly he was a tired, middle-aged, worried gentleman, with bags under his eyes, licking his lips uncertainly. A gentleman on a stick, gaiety spent, his son dead – a thought to be escaped: Hubert’s horrible death never confronted.

  ‘I’m awfully tired,’ he said. ‘Take me home. We’re going to be late for dinner and I ordered a soufflé. Why did I? Let’s be off, darling. No, I don’t want it,’ he refused the offered drink rather crossly, then picked up the glass. ‘Oh, you are naughty,’ he said to the girl who gave it to him.