by Ursula Bloom
There was tea, with an Easter cake and a yellow fluffy chicken atop it, Lisa’s idea of a festivity, and afterwards they walked out pleasantly, down to the river, with the palm still in blossom, and the primroses in the hedgerows and the water coming flurrying down from the mill, for it had been a wet April.
She and Max stood on the little bridge together, looking down at the water; across the fields they could see the distance blurred by haze, and the curves of the river like some geometrical pattern marked by the fresh red shoots of the willows.
‘I’m getting so old,’ he said quietly. Calmly, because he was stating a fact. ‘So much older.’
‘Darling, please don’t. You’ll never be old to me. You are always the same.’
‘I snap at you sometimes. I’m sorry about that. I think you know that I don’t mean it, my dear, it is just that my body gets so very tired, and my mind grows indignant with it for its slowness. I hate being like this.’
‘I don’t notice anything,’ she said, and held his arm closely, ‘you are imagining it.’
‘No, I’m not. Surely you needn’t think that I don’t know? It would have been better if I had had the dignity to die before Piers went away, then you could have gone with him. It would have been wiser.’
‘I shouldn’t have been happy, dearest; always, as you said, your ghost would have haunted me. How could I have been happy when the man I really loved had killed himself?’
‘But now it is his ghost that haunts you. Youth, spring. All those things you might have had.’ He indicated the meadows lying before her, speckled silver with the daisies, and above them the sky apricot and blue. ‘All that,’ he said.
‘I don’t suppose I ever thought of such a thing.’
‘That isn’t true.’ He took her arm again and put his through it, hugging her closer to him. ‘Ask your friend Daisy down. There is a dance in Aylesbury early in May, why not get her to come to stay for that?’
‘But what about you?’
‘Damn me! Oh, my dear little kid, I am so sick of myself, so sick of everything appertaining to me. Surely you can see that? I want you to be with young people, I want you to be happy, and it hurts me to think that I do so little for you.’
He leaned against her and she knew that he despised the fact that he had to lean upon her.
‘I’ll fix it up,’ she said, ‘I’ll write to Daisy to-night.’
4
He was satisfied then and they walked back, very slowly because she was afraid that he might be doing too much. There had been that early service and it meant a long day. They met Mr. Tite coming away from Muriel’s party and with him was Mrs. Wellby and her nephew Donald Hine. Dinah had heard a lot about Donald Hine but had never actually met him before. He was twenty-eight, young and good-looking, obviously the gay type. There had been scandals about him in the neighbourhood, which always did its best to magnify any scandal that was running round. There had been one particularly refreshing one about a certain housemaid at the rectory who had had to leave in a hurry. The story had been tattled about the village, delighting everyone, although they had pretended to be profoundly shocked by it.
‘It was a sickening party,’ said Mrs. Wellby, who was angry at being dragged to it on an Easter evening when she liked to have her Sundays free. She saw little enough of her husband anyway, and it was a poor look-out if she couldn’t get her evenings to herself once a week. Like a maid’s half-day. And not even the luck of the maid. ‘I don’t think you know my nephew Donald Hine. This is Mr. and Mrs. Hale.’
‘How do you do?’
He looked at her and she knew that he wasn’t thinking of her as Mrs. Hale, but as herself. She flushed, trying to pretend that she had noticed nothing, but all the time that they stood there talking, she realised that his eyes were upon her, and decided that she dared not look at him again.
‘I must say,’ said Mr. Tite, who was a pedantic old man, wearing curious collars like Hannen Swaffer, and mincing as he walked beside a tall ebony stick, ‘I must say that Muriel’s music goes a long way. I wish I were lucky enough to have heart attacks to keep me away from it!’
‘It would give most people a heart attack!’ said Donald Hine.
‘We must get back.’ Mrs. Wellby was impatient. ‘We really must get home because we are very late now. Muriel would play that beastly concerto, the one that there are fifteen pages of. Some people cut out the rondo, but of course she didn’t. She isn’t the cutting out sort, you know; she gave us our full dose, knowing we couldn’t get away. She was not leaving anything to luck. I think it is a positive imposition having to go there and listen to her horrid music.’
She started moving off, and Dinah knew that Donald Hine looked back. He was one of those men who always make a woman feel uncomfortable.
‘We might as well go on together,’ said Mr. Tite.
They walked up the lane, and Dinah knew that she had the sudden longing to run. Her legs felt loose and free, she wanted to race across the meadow away from these old men who compared complaints. She wanted to go down to the brook again, with the willows and the palm, and the marsh marigolds flaunting their brass gold at the very water’s edge. She wanted to paddle in that water, and then run barefooted on the grass. She must be mad.
They pottered to the gate and she saw contritely that Max was looking tired out. It was that early service; he oughtn’t to have done it.
‘No strength to draw on,’ he muttered, ‘that’s the trouble, no strength to draw on.’
‘I always say that after my hay fever,’ said Mr. Tite.
‘I’ll get inside and rest.’ Max opened the gate and went inside, grateful for Dinah’s arm.
‘Don’t hurry too much,’ she said, ‘you must save yourself, you know. I’ll go on ahead and get your chair ready.’
She shook up the cushions, and held it ready for him to slump into.
He said, ‘Poor old Tite! I don’t believe his hay fever is really as bad as he thinks. Nothing like my asthma of course, not in the least like my asthma.’
5
Piers wrote that the Lion was at Gibraltar.
‘A bit of a hectic life here. The old man is too darned keen on poodle-faking, a proper old snob, if you ask me. Got a passion for a party at the Rock Hotel, and we are going up there every day and all day. The going is intense, so you must forgive me if letters are few and far between. I’m sending you a shawl by this same post, and only hope the customs don’t kick up a fuss at Mount Unpleasant. Let me know if there is anything to pay on it.’
The shawl came two days later, a white one, with large-eyed marguerites upon it. She took it out of its wrapping, and it smelt sweetly of a Spanish shop, where scent jostled herbs and a joss burned. But the shawl was not like her, and she knew it, and was in a way disappointed that Piers should have forgotten her. This was too sophisticated and smart. She was the type for the sunbonnet rather than the Spanish shawl, and he should have known it.
As it happened it was lent to Daisy when she came to stay.
Daisy arrived swiftly in response to the invitation. She wore a slick suit with heels that were ridiculous, and a hat that one could only excuse as being ‘quaint’. It was a saucer perched on the side of the head, giving no shade, and fulfilling none of the common uses of a hat, and it was fastened with an impertinent ribbon. Daisy was living up to the promise of her time in Germany. She was pert, sophisticated, smart. There was no doubt about it that to-day she would not have made any of the major mistakes such as upsetting a box of petunias on her lover, but she would have had her lovers just the same.
‘I want you to meet my husband,’ Dinah told her, and took her into the sitting-room.
Max stood up to welcome her. He was exceedingly good-looking, tall, with hair that still retained its wave though it had lost its colour. It rippled over his head, and his eyes were deeply expressive. He was recovering a little from the last attack and he held out a friendly hand to Daisy.
‘So you’re Dinah’s husband,’
she said, ‘well, I am surprised.’ She glanced hurriedly round the room. ‘I say, this is rather choice. Did you buy it as it stood? I mean lock, stock and barrel?’
‘You can’t buy places like this as they stand,’ said Dinah, hoping that she did not sound too icy. Daisy had always been flippant, but Dinah hoped that she wouldn’t be too flippant for Max.
‘Oh, I see, it was a ruin and you remade it. What fun!’
‘It was the greatest fun,’ said Max, but his tone was grave and Dinah knew that he had seen through Daisy.
‘Don’t you find it a bit remote?’ She had gone to the window and was looking up the garden where they were trying to naturalise the narcissi in the orchard. ‘I mean, who else lives in this place, and what is there to do?’
‘There are three families,’ said Dinah, ‘the Wellbys, and the Stephens and the Tites; that’s about all. We live on one another and the scandals we can provide, which, seeing that we are all very much past the age of consent, aren’t many.’ She did not know what made her say that, but she was nettled. Quickly she added: ‘Somehow in the country you become part of it, and you don’t want to be always doing things in the same way.’
‘I see. Moss grows.’
‘That’s it,’ Dinah assented, ‘moss grows.’ It was so true that she would willingly have hit Daisy for it, if she had dared. ‘Now what about coming up to the room that Lisa has got ready for you?’
They went upstairs to the guest room, Dinah’s colour scheme of amethyst and delphinium. Daisy did not notice it because she was entirely self-centred. Dinah could not think how it was that she had missed this when she had known her in Germany. She went over to the glass and began to prink before it, coquetting with her hat, eyeing herself as though the reflection pleased her very well.
‘About this dance?’ she said. ‘Is your husband coming to it with us?’
‘Max? Good heavens, no! He isn’t at all well and he is getting on. Be nice to him, he is rather sensitive about his age and his illness, although he pretends that he isn’t. You have got to be careful.’
‘Well, wasn’t I careful? I know that I’m always dropping bricks. It is one of my worst failings. If I do it again you must just nudge me, then I’ll know. I’m one of those people who always take a hint; that is one mercy about me. I know my weakness, like the lady said when she gave birth to her tenth in eight years.’
Dinah ignored that. ‘Max and I are terribly happy,’ she said.
‘Are you?’ Daisy was taking off the small pert hat, disclosing a perm, which was in its prime. ‘I always thought you were the sort of little mouse who would marry a lively fellow. I was so surprised.’
She opened a light dressing-case, and took out handsome brushes and combs which must have been very expensive, and were noticeably ostentatious. There was one of those nightdresses which Dinah had always envied, but had thought were rather extravagant and definitely indecent. Daisy laid it on the bed.
‘It’s years since that time in Germany; a lot of water has gone under London Bridge since then. What a little fool I was! Green as a July apple. Remember the window box falling on Otto’s head? Poor Otto! Thank heaven his cranium was made of cement like most Germans’. Remember the day I slipped out in the Fräulein’s best hat and the student blew kisses to me across the Heimgarten? It was all fun, wasn’t it?’
Dinah warmed. ‘Remember the day you carried old Herr Schmidt off his feet when he came to teach us music, and he started saying the most idiotic things? That was fun too.’
‘Darling Dinah, how can you bury yourself here when there is so much fun that you could be getting? You are only young once and if you don’t make the most of it nobody else will for you. You must come and stay with me and we’ll have some real high jinks. There is a stockbroker who is keen on me, ponderous, rather a sobersides, but very rich. You must come.’
‘Yes,’ said Dinah, but she knew very well that she never would. It wasn’t possible to leave Max, for angina is a difficult complaint and she never knew when another attack might come on. Sometimes she was angry with herself for having been blind to his trouble for so long. Even when they had been engaged he had had symptoms that she should have noticed; that numbness in the arm, that queer pain which came at times in his chest. She ought to have realised then, and could have persuaded him to go to a doctor, only somehow she hadn’t noticed it. She had thought that it was just indigestion; so many of the fatal symptoms in life turn out to be really indigestion, and vice versa. She hadn’t bothered, and he had always been willing to gloss over the trouble and treat it as a mere nothing.
All the time it had been something insidious, which threatened his life, an enemy who was bound to win in the end. She felt that obviously she could not leave him whilst this enemy stalked beside him.
‘One of these days,’ she said ambiguously.
‘If you ask me you’ll be old before you are young here,’ said Daisy cheerfully, ‘and then it won’t be any good crying over what you have missed! How many times have you been out dancing lately?’
‘Not since ‒ oh, I don’t really know when.’
‘And affairs? No affairs? You really ought to have a lover up your sleeve. There’s not much fun in life if you don’t have a little um-tarara.’ Then she must have detected a change in Dinah’s face for her voice altered. ‘There was somebody once then? Somebody really young?’
Ordinarily Dinah would not have confided in anyone. Once in a moment of desperate loneliness she had thought of telling Aunt Lydia, then that idea had been quickly dismissed. Now she knew that unless she did tell somebody she would scream.
‘Yes, there was a man once,’ she said.
It was a whole month since Piers had written, a solid month, and she had been aching to hear from him, watching every post, and breaking her heart when it passed the gate. It hurt so much that she had to tell somebody even though the story sounded like a lovesick schoolgirl’s, in the old days when they were in Germany.
‘Go for a cruise; why the dickens don’t you go out and see him?’ suggested Daisy. ‘Write and tell him you’re coming and surprise him. If you don’t, somebody else will. I’d go.’
‘I expect you would, but then we aren’t all alike. If I had been your sort, I dare say I should have run away with him.’
‘Yes, I should, and I think you were an awful fool not to do so. Look what you’ve missed.’
‘Conscience would not have let me.’
‘Conscience sounds vague to me. I always think it is another name for funk; still, each to his own course,’ said Daisy cheerfully, curling her hair round her fingers and setting it into exact place.
‘If I had gone I should have been haunted by a ghost,’ Dinah said rather whimsically. ‘Max would have haunted me. Whatever happens now I have laid that ghost of conscience good and hard, and that is all I ask.’
‘Yes, I expect he told you that one,’ said Daisy applying cream vigorously; ‘and if you ask me you haven’t laid it at all. You are simply bursting with the idea of an affair, and you’ll go barmy if you don’t have one. I should too. It may be primitive, but it’s dead sound all the same.’
Now Dinah wished that she hadn’t told Daisy anything at all about it. There is much to be said for keeping one’s own counsel, only it is one of the axioms in life that one discovers too late.
THREE
1
The dance should have been a success, yet it turned out to be nothing of the sort. She and Daisy and Max dined together by candlelight, because he liked it that way. He vowed that a meal tasted differently by the light of wax candles; it added dignity to the food. He waved them away afterwards.
‘Well, now for it,’ said Daisy; ‘you jolly well enjoy yourself whilst you get the chance. The mill will never grind with the water that is past, that is one certainty.’ She was wondering what the people they would meet would be like, and the party they were going with. ‘I’m going to enjoy myself.’
It was a lovely night. The windows were flung
open at the far end of the ballroom, and the scent of lilac was blown into the room itself, just as it had been at Dukeleys when she was a very little girl. There was the stir of the music, and Dinah felt that she had stepped back a decade. She was young really, but old in that she shared Max’s life. She was glad she had chosen white with paillettes, glad that she had put that plume of white lilac in her hair, and her grandmother’s pearl earrings, even if they did make her look rather older, more sedate.
To-night gave her the curious feeling of a child who has lost its way, and, retracing the steps one by one, finds not only the way, but some forgotten toys that were once dearly loved. She danced with the older men, they seemed to consider this in the light of duty; and she watched ‒ perhaps covetously ‒ the way that Daisy flew about the room. She was dancing with Donald Hine, Mrs. Wellby’s nephew, and Dinah did not know why but she felt jealous. She had thought of him a lot since that day when they had met. Mrs. Wellby had told her about him. Donald had a barn which he had converted into a cottage with lots of oak beams and very indifferent sanitary equipment; he painted.
‘You know one another, he says,’ said Daisy, bringing him across. Dinah looked at him. Young, with a bullet head, provocative with merry eyes.
‘How do you do?’ she said.
‘Forgotten our meeting? I bet you haven’t!’
‘No,’ she said rather quietly, ‘I haven’t,’ but she resented the teasing voice which treated her as a child rather than as a woman. ‘You paint, don’t you? Do you know Mr. Tite?’
‘Yes. Old as Methuselah, of the Dutch school and about as stodgy. I don’t do that sort of thing.’
Daisy was hanging on to his arm. She said: ‘I’m bursting to see what Donald paints. Futurist, I imagine.’
‘That’s the idea,’ said he. ‘Psyche at the bath, which might just as well be the bath at Psyche. I’m going to paint Daisy and she will sit for me. Daisy in the field, I fancy. What about a dance?’
