‘I don’t think I could bear to,’ said Everard, feeling that to be a fraction of an inch nearer Kate would make him say or do something that would banish him for ever from the society of honourable men.
‘If you really aren’t cold —’ said Kate doubtfully. ‘Oh, that button you wanted. I found it in the waste-paper basket.’
She fished in her work-bag and extracted the button.
‘They seem rather careless at your school,’ she said. ‘Fancy sewing a button that doesn’t match onto a waistcoat! But this one might come in useful for something, so I kept it for you.’
Everard took the button. The ineffable bliss of touching Kate’s fingers, if only for a moment, so wrought upon his senses that he immediately dropped it.
‘Oh dear,’ said Kate, ‘it must have fallen on the ground.’
Everard scrabbled among leaves and moss and twigs in vain.
‘Perhaps,’ said Kate, ‘it has fallen into the turn-ups of your trousers. Colin lost sixpence like that once, for ages.’
Everard rummaged round his ankles and rescued the button. As he wasn’t wearing a waistcoat he tied it up in the corner of his handkerchief.
‘They really are dreadful, Mr Carter,’ said Kate, her eyes flashing with honest indignation.
‘Who?’
‘The people who do your mending. Look at that handkerchief. The corner is right off!’
‘I think the rain has stopped,’ said Everard, getting up so suddenly that Kate was afraid she had hurt him by her criticisms of the school mending.
The rain had cleared as quickly as it came. Brilliant sunshine flooded the landscape, and the shouts of the returning travellers could be heard. The boat, with Swan, Colin and Philip on board, soon appeared, and the coracle, propelled by Morland and Lydia, followed hard upon it.
‘Did you get wet?’ asked Kate as the boat and the coracle drew up.
‘Not a bit,’ said Lydia. ‘We went into the cottage at the lock and had parsnip wine. And I didn’t fall in at all. And we picked Colin and this one up at the end of the island.’
‘You jolly nearly did fall in,’ said Morland, ‘if Eric and I hadn’t grabbed you. It all comes of drinking homebrew with the tenantry.’
‘Ass!’ said Lydia, in high good humour, nearly upsetting the coracle with the violence of the blow she aimed at him.
‘Well, we’d better get home,’ said Kate. ‘Oh, where are Mr Merton and Miss Birkett?’
‘I’ll find them,’ said Philip, springing on shore, damp and angry, and making hotfoot for the tree where he had last seen his beloved; but she was not there. The beloved, had he known it, was now some distance away, comfortably seated on Everard’s coat, her hat on her lap, Noel’s coat over her head like a shawl. Noel himself was leaning against a tree which protected him from the shower. He had amused himself quite sufficiently with Rose. Never in his life had he met anyone so entirely foolish, and seldom anyone so absurdly pretty. He had, for his own interest, tried at least twenty different conversational openings, to none of which had Rose made any response, till he wondered if she were really half-witted. Her entire vocabulary appeared to consist of the words Marvellous and Sickening, with a smattering of light badinage of the ‘You did’, ‘I didn’t’ description. In vain had he tried school, weather, the cinema, the Royal Family, boating, cricket, till at last, just as the storm was passing, he hit upon Shakespeare.
‘Oh, I do adore him,’ said Rose. ‘He’s marvellous. I saw him fourteen times.’
‘Saw whom?’
‘Shakespeare. At that theatre in London, you know. John Potter was absolutely marvellous in it.’
‘Oh, Hamlet.’
‘Yes. Of course it’s sickening the way Hamlet dies at the end, but it’s too marvellous the way he does it. I’d love to go again about fourteen times more. Don’t you think Shakespeare is absolutely sickeningly marvellous?’
‘Absolutely,’ said Noel, at which moment Philip surged out from among the bushes, and stood flaming in wrath.
‘I’ve been looking for you everywhere, Rose,’ he said, taking no notice of Noel. ‘Where have you been?’
‘Here, of course,’ said Rose, opening her large eyes wide. ‘Mr Merton simply adores Shakespeare. Are you wet, darling? I’ve had a marvellous time with Mr Merton’s coat.’
‘Well, you’d better come along now,’ said Philip, ‘before it rains again.’
He held out his hand to Rose, but she got up lightly, without assistance, and taking the coat off her head handed it to Noel.
‘Thanks most awfully,’ she said. ‘Philip, you were sickeningly silly not to bring a coat.’
Philip, who would willingly have flayed himself alive to provide a shelter for Rose, had to bear the sight of the gilded stranger callously putting on the coat that was hallowed for ever by the warmth and fragrance of his lovely idol.
‘Come on,’ said the idol, ‘it’ll be dinner-time soon, and I must get the bath before Mummy has it. There are only two baths at the Rectory, Mr Merton. Isn’t it sickening?’
‘You didn’t bring my coat, did you?’ asked Everard, as Rose and her admirers came down to the water.
‘No. Where is it?’ said Rose. ‘Oh, I was sitting on it. Philip, be an angel and fetch it.’
But Noel, with a fellow feeling for that nice chap Carter, who had also had to do without his coat to please a silly little sparrow-wit, had already run back and fetched Everard’s coat. When the owner put it on, everyone could see a large, damp, greenish stain on the back.
‘Oh, Mr Carter’s coat must have got wet,’ said Rose.
‘Yes, isn’t it sickening?’ said Noel politely.
Everard said nothing, but his dislike for his headmaster’s daughter became perceptibly stronger.
Rose and Philip were landed at the Rectory steps, and the rest went back to the Manor, only to discover that Mrs Keith had asked the whole Rectory party to come in after dinner.
‘Now I know why people leave home,’ said Colin to Noel and Everard, as they were having a drink before going up to dress for dinner. ‘As if it weren’t bad enough to have Rose for tea. Now we’ll all have to dance with her. If I weren’t a so-called gentleman I could say a great deal.’
‘Anything you could say is simply nothing compared with what I’ve got to say,’ said Noel. ‘I had to stand bare to the blast under a tree in a thunderstorm while that Beautiful Pink Devil sat on all the coats and drivelled about Hamlet being marvellous till I could have thumped her on the head.’
‘Anyway, she was only wearing your coat,’ said Everard, ‘not sitting on it. I always wondered what Sir Walter Raleigh really felt like, and now I know. How Philip can stand it I can’t think.’
‘He’s smashingly in love just now,’ said Noel. ‘I hope he won’t marry her, because if he does he will very rightly murder her, and though his manners are not very good I wouldn’t wish a dog to swing for the pink fondant. Let’s have a sweepstake. Half a crown each, and whichever has to dance with her most gets it.’
The three half-crowns were handed over by the conspirators, who bound themselves by an oath to use no unfair methods of avoiding Rose.
‘Although,’ said Everard, ‘I’ve never seen a seven and six I would more willingly forgo.’
While Everard was dressing for dinner there was a knock at the door and Palmer came in.
‘I beg your pardon, sir,’ she said, not looking at Everard, who was all dressed but his dinner jacket, in a way that made him feel like a professional seducer, ‘but Miss Kate asked me to ask you for your coat. She says there’s something nasty on it.’
Everard gave her the stained coat, and was so moved that he parted his hair on the wrong side and had to do it all over again. From his other trousers pocket he took his handkerchief, unknotted it, took out the button, looked lovingly at it, and put it away in the box where his pearl studs lived.
Dinner was languid. Mr Keith was sleepy after the picnic, and the three younger men annoyed at the prospect of Rose an
d her difficult admirer being thrust on them. Kate was thinking how very sorry she was for poor Mr Winter, and how best she could get the stains out of Mr Carter’s coat, and whether there would be enough drinks for the evening if everyone came. Lydia, a healthy but hideous sight, red with sunburn on every visible inch of skin, was thinking of further arguments of a knock-down nature to use against that horrid Mr Winter. Mrs Keith, hospitably pleased at having invited the Birketts and their pretty daughter and her fiancé, noticed nothing, and gave Everard a very interesting account of her grandfather’s family by his second wife.
Dinner at the Rectory was not much better. Philip had quite lost his temper and made a scene in the garden after he and Rose had landed. It could not be called a quarrel, because Rose never listened to anything he said, and therefore was a merely passive, though highly exasperating, party to the affray. It began by Philip sneezing twice, which caused Rose to say for perhaps the tenth time that he was sickening not to have brought a coat. At this Philip had gone even whiter than usual and accused her of being heartless. Rose said, well, now he was sneezing, which showed, and it would be absolutely sickening if he got a cold, and not to come too near her as she didn’t want to catch it. Philip said if everyone caught cold and died it would be her fault, as she hadn’t the sense to bring a coat herself and took other people’s. He hoped Mr Carter and Mr Merton would both die, and serve her right, and serve them right, too. He added as an afterthought that he hoped young Keith would die too. Rose said she would never be ready for dinner in time and must have her bath, and blowing Philip a kiss went indoors. Philip’s gloom at dinner was so marked that the schoolgirl prattle of Geraldine Birkett, who had been let loose for the Whitsun holiday from Miss Pettinger’s school where she boarded, was for once gratefully encouraged by her parents.
When they arrived at Northbridge Manor Colin and Noel had cleared one end of the drawing-room for dancing. Lydia, who despised dancing, had retired to her room. For Philip the evening was an unmixed failure. His cold was getting worse every minute and he was turned down as partner on the ground of infection by Rose, who annexed Colin as a suitable victim. Colin could not very well refuse a guest who was his headmaster’s daughter, but he wished Rose were a better dancer. Everard had the displeasure of seeing Noel and Kate dance very exquisitely together for a long time. Colin, to his great relief, was presently cut out by his father who, a dancer of the old-fashioned bumpy style himself, did not mind Rose’s rather clumsy movements, and enjoyed the company of so pretty a child. Philip’s miserable appearance became so obvious that Mrs Birkett said she must take him away, and by eleven o’clock the party was over.
‘Your sister dances unusually well,’ said Noel to Colin over a drink, after Mr and Mrs Keith had gone to bed.
‘She’s pretty good,’ said Colin. ‘We practise a lot together. As for our Rose —’
‘Your father cut us all out,’ said Noel. ‘I think that bet is off.’
‘Fair play!’ said Colin indignantly. ‘I danced, if you can call it dancing, with that waxwork for a quarter of an hour at least.’
‘I think Mr Keith ought to have it,’ said Everard.
‘No, no,’ said Noel, ‘money will be returned at the doors. Half a crown each is not to be sneezed at. And talking of sneezing, Winter looks as if he would have your blood for dancing with Rose, Colin.’
‘I’d rather he had Father’s,’ said Colin, with great want of filial feeling. ‘I’ve got to live with Winter for the rest of the term. Father hasn’t.’
They all went to bed, Noel to reflect quite unemotionally upon Kate’s perfect footwork, Everard to try to believe that Kate’s happiness meant more to him than his own, and not succeeding. The prospect of one of his junior masters being quite foolishly jealous of the other, and all about a little feather-brain, with the summer exams and end of term irritation on the top of it all, was not helpful.
6
Tea at the Sports
Philip’s cold yielded to hot whisky and aspirin, and he was well enough to go back with the Birketts on Monday evening. Mr and Mrs Birkett were delighted with the Rectory, and decided at once to take it for August. Their kind hearts made them invite Philip for the first fortnight of the holidays, after which he had luckily arranged to visit Russia to see what it was really like; or rather, to confirm his impression that it was exactly like what he thought it was like. Their feelings towards their future son-in-law were a mixture of increasing sympathy and exacerbation which would make his stay with them extremely difficult and uncomfortable as far as they were concerned. Philip himself appeared for the present to be so eaten up with self-pity that he would be unhappy wherever he was. Little as Mr Birkett liked discussing his private affairs with an outsider, he found himself obliged to ask Everard if he couldn’t do something about his difficult assistant.
‘I am really at my wits’ end,’ said Mr Birkett, having taken Everard off for a Sunday afternoon tramp over the downs where no one could hear them, ‘and I shall shortly be at the end of my patience. I would like to thrash Rose.’
‘And I would like to thrash Winter,’ said Everard, ‘but I must say that he isn’t letting it interfere with his work. The Thirds and Fourths did extremely well in their test papers last week. But he makes up for it by being more than usually trying out of class. The boys are taking a broad view of it all, and I understand unofficially that Swan and Morland have said that Mr Winter is not to be baited because he is off his nut.’
‘Has Swan been looking at him through his spectacles lately?’
Everard laughed.
‘No. But if Winter can’t stop nagging at Keith, Swan probably will. Keith has somehow acquired the respect of Swan and Morland.’
Mr Birkett, who noticed a good deal, remembered the evening when Colin Keith had defeated Rose at supper, but did not give his daughter away.
‘Well, it’s only for a few weeks more now,’ he said with a sigh. ‘And next term I hope we’ll have Harrison back. I’m sorry it means more changes in your house, but it can’t be helped.’
‘Is Keith definitely not staying with us?’ asked Everard.
‘I had a talk to his father at the weekend. He is really anxious for Keith to stick to law, and I don’t think this is his right place. He does his work well and apparently from what you say the boys approve of him, but he’ll never make a real schoolmaster. If he didn’t give it up now, he’d give it up later, and that would be a waste of time.’
‘I’ll be sorry to lose him, but I dare say you are right,’ said Everard. ‘He’s a nice type of young man.’
‘They are a very nice family,’ said Mr Birkett. ‘By the way, Hacker has got the Montgomery scholarship.’
‘That’s good news,’ said Everard. ‘I can do without him nicely. His chameleon was lost again last week, and someone found it and tied it up in red paper with its head sticking out, and put it in Winter’s desk with a note to say that it had gone Red in sympathy with his political views.’
‘Devils,’ said Mr Birkett, in a loving voice.
As Everard strolled by the river after tea he came upon Philip, sitting on the edge of the swimming pool, moodily watching Morland and Swan saving each other’s lives. Philip looked at him with such a drawn, harassed expression that Everard stopped.
‘Mind if I sit here a bit?’ he said.
Philip said nothing, though it was obvious that he would shortly burst unless he said something.
‘Hacker’s got his scholarship,’ said Everard. ‘Lorimer will be unbearable. I shall tell him that it is all due to your grounding of Hacker when he was a junior.’
‘To hell with juniors,’ said Philip.
‘I’ve often thought so myself.’
‘I’m sorry,’ said Philip, plaiting some pieces of grass industriously as he spoke. ‘Look here, Everard, I’m going mad.’
‘No, you’re not,’ said Everard.
‘You don’t know how ghastly being engaged is,’ said Philip.
‘Odi et amo,�
� said Everard.
‘More than you’d think,’ said Philip. ‘Everard, I can’t go on like this; I can’t, I can’t!’
‘Don’t then,’ said Everard. ‘It isn’t worth it.’
‘I know,’ said Philip. ‘But there one is. Also one cares; very, very much. Thanks, though.’
Everard strolled on, intensely annoyed with love and lovers. If he had the felicity to be engaged to Kate – but he shook the thought off and went to congratulate Mr Lorimer on his pupil’s success.
‘Well, Lorimer,’ he said, ‘this is very good news about Hacker. I suppose he will now go like a meteor through the university, get a fellowship, and never be heard of again. Have you anything on hand at present?’
Summer Half: A Virago Modern Classic (VMC) Page 12
