by Iris Murdoch
'IT'S good of Felix to be so kind to Ann, said Hugh.
He was standing with Mildred Finch in the big bow-window at Seton Blaise while Mildred arranged in a blue porcelain bowl the old-fashioned roses which Ann had brought her. Outside across the lawn, under the shadow of the huge cedar tree, Ann could be seen sitting on a seat with Mildred's brother. Here the sun had dried the garden and the open window let in a warm rich smell of mown grass and satisfied earth. The dark green shadows of the trees were just becoming fatter and longer and the colours more intense with a hint of evening. The glossy surface of the slow stream, like dark lacquer, could be seen beyond the cedar, disappearing from view where a thick clump of bamboos almost hid the little eighteenth-century bridge. In the foreground near the house Humphrey, thin and elegant in white shirt sleeves, inspected the flower-beds, occasionally casting an eye to where across the stream in the grove of chestnuts Penn and Miranda could intermittently be seen running: two strange half-grown creatures, uneasy with each other, unable to rest and yet unable to play.
'Yes, he's a kind-hearted boy, said Mildred absently. She thrust a white-quartered green-eyed Madame Hardy in between two lilac shaded pink-scrolled Louise Odiers and stood back to admire the result.
'All the same, she said, 'I must admit no one arranges flowers like Ann. I hope she'll do the flower-arrangement competition at the Women's Institute again this year! It always gives me a special pleasure to see her beat Clare Swann hollow.
Hugh, who was feeling very tired and more than usually troubled with the buzzing in his head, which today sounded like a perpetual distant murmur of voices, said defensively, 'Clare's been very kind to us. Mildred's mild but almost universal malice depressed him sometimes.
'Why wouldn't she be? said Mildred. 'It costs her nothing and satisfies her curiosity. But however much she clicks her tongue, she wishes really that poor Douglas was a wild violent man like Randall.’ Was Randall a wild violent man? Hugh did not know. He sat down on the Ann of a chair and contemplated through the window the back of Humphrey's pure white copiously furnished head:. deplorable but happy Humphrey.
'Do you think Randall is going to leave Ann? asked Mildred. She added two Belles de Crecy to the left-hand side of the bowl.
'No, certainly not, said Hugh. 'He makes a fuss, but he'll stay. Ann irks him, but only Ann consoles him for it. He resented her casual curiosity. But he was not just putting her off; he believed what he said. He had seen his son like that before. He shifted his view to the scampering children across the stream. He recalled for a moment Randall's curious words of this morning: I need a different world, a formal world, and You managed all right without fading away. For a second, obscurely, he found himself envying Randall. Then it occurred to him paradoxically that perhaps Randall envied him. Randall saw him as a man who had overcome his difficulties.
'To prevent further discussion of Randall he said to Mildred, 'How's Beryl? That always set her off.
Beryl was the Finches’ daughter and only child, never apparently forgiven by her mother for not being a boy. Beryl, now in her thirties, was the principal of a teachers' training college in Staffordshire. Hugh, at their rare meetings, had liked her, appreciating her evident cleverness. He had been, he felt naively, unable to decide whether Mildred's show of contempt for her daughter was sincere or not.
' Always the same! said Mildred. 'That girl will never marry. She's always being the self-conscious vanguard of something or other; and men hate that. I suppose there wasn't much chance for her to be normal, with Humpo as queer as a coot all his life. But I doubt if she's the other thing either. I'd like to think she had some fun. She stripped a papery pink and white Rosa Mundi of its leaves and thrust it into the centre.
Hugh was constantly shocked at a liberality of speech in Mildred which bordered, he sometimes felt, on the vulgar. Of course, he had known her a very long time, ever since Humphrey, then his fellow- student at Cambridge, had produced her as his fiancйe. Humphrey had lint a better first and Humphrey had made a richer marriage. Hugh contemplated her now. She was not exactly a feminine type herself. Not feminine as dear Fanny had been. Mildred had an acute face of a powdery paleness, tightened and much marked about the brow and eyes by quizzical horizontal lines, as if bound about by fine threads.
The white skin of the cheeks by contrast had now a soft old look. The very blue eyes and the mouth were long, amused, often sarcastic. Her hair, a yellowish grey, had a short sensible cut which quite failed to control or even offer suggestions to its natural fluffiness, and her coiffure, never, the same from day to day or even hour to hour, had often a positively unkempt appearance; for Mildred was not always impeccably turned out. Yet she was the handsome, clever, bustling Mildred still. And his mind groped again for details of that kiss; but he could still remember nothing except that it was summer at Seton Blaise and he had kissed her. That had been just before the Emma business started; so perhaps it was not surprising that the record had been erased. Mildred had known Emma too, long ago; they had been eccentric lady students together, with beribboned straw boaters and chaperones and skirts that brushed the ground. But they had quite lost touch later, and Hugh was satisfied that Mildred had received no confidences touching himself.
'I think that'll do, don't you? said Mildred. She put the bowl of roses carefully on the mantelpiece. 'It's not up to Ann's standard, but it's not bad for poor me. Now, where's your drink? No more? Well, let's pretend we're an ancient pair, Shall we, and take a turn on the gravel? She took Hugh rather formally by the Ann and led him out towards the garden.
Everyone had felt relieved at coming to Seton Blaise. After the slightly damp, slightly sinister, and more than slightly Randall-ridden atmosphere of Grayhallock, Seton Blaise seemed a haven of innocence and warmth. Here the summer was more established and more complete. The pretty Queen Anne house, with its pitted rosy red bricks and its blunted grey stonework stretched its bland length with a certain luxuriant confidence, surrendering itself to the garden whose proportions were perfectly attuned to its own. There were no large views, as Seton Blaise was low-lying, surrounded by water meadows. But the little park afforded its own vistas: the avenue through the chestnut grove to the lake, the turn of the river, a miniature reach, between the cedar tree and the bridge, the lawn sloping, with little copses of feathery shrubs, towards the main gates. The place was small, but beautifully composed; and seeming to have everything it appeared neither large nor small but merely perfect. Hugh had coveted it once; but that too belonged with needs and longings that had died.
He crossed the drive with Mildred. The very dark blue Mercedes stood at the side of the house, its handsome glistening form standing out in the more intense evening light against a long bed of yuccas and tree peonies. As Mildred led him diagonally across the lawn in the direction of a distant deck-chair, he saw that Miranda had ceased her scuttling and was hovering about Ann and Felix. As he watched he saw her throw a big armful of grass mowings on to Ann's lap. There was distant laughter. Outlined against the heavy leafy chestnut boughs, which at this point almost swept the ground, Humphrey was talking to Penn on the far side of the stream. Watching them as they moved off Hugh remarked, perhaps for the first time, a certain coltish grace in the boy. The pair disappeared between the chestnuts in the direction of the lake.
Mildred reached the chair and sank into it. Hugh sat down on a rug on the grass beside her, averting his eyes while she adjusted her skirt, Mildred often managed to have some untidy piece of petticoat showing. He poked gloomily into his ear in a vain attempt to mitigate the buzz. 'Sorry, what did you say?
'I said, «Hugh, come with us to India», said Mildred.
He looked up with surprise. 'India? Are you going to India?
'Felix and I are, said Mildred, 'or so we hope. I can't get Humpo to come. He wants to go back to?RAhat? when the weather gets colder to stay with an old diplomat friend, and doubtless for some other fell purpose. Felix is between jobs at the moment, as you know. His next one is probably
recruiting Gurkhas. He adores that. And I thought I might travel out with him. It would be such fun if you came too.
'How kind of you! said Hugh. 'But I'm afraid I couldn't possibly — Then he reflected: in fact there is realy nothing to stop me.
'Nonsense, dear, said Mildred, with the quiet assured smile of one following his thought. Her long intent blue eyes were alight with humour and with a familiar air of friendly bossiness.
Hugh laughed. He rubbed his bald head. 'Of course it would be possible. And I think it's an attractive idea. But it would cost a great deal. And I think I ought to stay here to — to keep an eye on things, you know.
'Don't give me these Civil Service answers, Hugh dear, said Mildred. 'You've got quite enough money to spoil yourself and still leave those children more than's good for them. And we shall be talking to our beds forever soon enough. And as for keeping an eye on things — “things» being Ann and Randall I presume — you said just now that you thought there was nothing to fear. In any case, you know quite well there's nothing you or anyone can do for those two. Leave them alone and they'll come home, bringing their tails behind them.
Hugh was silent. The idea was certainly tempting. He had never travelled much. Fanny had detested foreign travel. And to be free, to get right away. Yet did he really want to travel with Mildred.? — We'll see the Taj Mahal by moonlight! said Mildred. 'Why not?
— It's a tragic country. It would make you sad to see it, Mildred.
— Don't be so stuffy and old, said Mildred. 'It's a wonderful exciting country. Did you know Delhi was Humphrey's next assignment when that Marrakesh thing happened? It would have been his first big job.
Hugh had not known this, and he reflected that if he had never for a moment thought of Humphrey's broken career as a tragedy, that was a tribute to Humphrey.
'I bought so many books on India, Mildred went on, practically a library. Then when we didn't go I was so terribly disappointed. I've never really got over it. I've had a thing about India ever since.
And if it had never occurred to him to think of Mildred as capable of disappointment, as capable indeed of being put out by anything, that was a tribute to her.
'I don't have to decide now, do n' he said. 'I doubt if it's possible. But I'll certainly think about it.
'Of course there's no hurry! cried Mildred. 'Felix's job isn't even definite yet. I thought we might go by boat, you know, if Felix still had a bit of leave left. That would be a nice rest for you. But anyway, think it over. And now, let's walk to the bridge, shall we, before dutiful Ann starts hurrying back to her spouse? She's already stayed longer than she threatened to.
Hugh got up stiffly. India. Why not? As Mildred said, their travelling days would soon enough be over. Yet in the sudden whirl of possibilities which her suggestion had evoked he felt that somewhere, though he could not at the moment discern it, there was an authoritative reason why he could not go.
'The midges down by the river are something dreadful, said Mildred. 'Let me give you some citronella to keep them off.
She picked up a little bottle from beside the deck-chair, and reaching up, dabbed some on to Hugh's neck. The strong curious smell invaded his nostrils; it invaded his mind. Mildred took his Ann and they began to pace slowly towards the river. The smell citronella troubled Hugh exceedingly. What a muddled state he seemed to be in today. Why was that particular smell in that particular place so oddly disturbing?
They reached the grey humped bridge with its two tiny circular arches and its crumbling balustrade yellow with lichen the middle of the bridge they looked back down the little reach of blue haze of forget-me-nots growing out of the water, tangled the verge of the tall flags and bulrushes which almost hid them from view. The clump of slender bamboos, their thickly crowded stems as straight as spears, their drooping delicately fingered tops even on such an evening never still, enclosed the view towards the house. The robust chestnut foliage leaned to touch the stonework on the other side. The little sheet of murmuring water was screened and private.
Hugh leaned on the parapet and looked down. He descried in the sunny water the long waving tresses of the green weed. Then moving his gaze, and by a change of focus, he saw just below him in the stream the reflection of himself, and of Mildred who was leaning close beside him and also looking down. With that, and with a wild rush of distressed emotion the memory came up and he recalled the kiss. It had been here, exactly here, and at just such a moment I hey had both paused and seen their reflections in the glass below them. They had seen their reflections; and then, as if prompted by those shades below, turning to each other, with a naturalness, paIlidly and in silence they had kissed. It must have been the citronella that made him remember; and he somehow knew, though he could not see it with the eye of his memory, that on that evening twelve years ago Mildred must, in exactly the same way, have dabbed the citronella on his neck. But the kiss, that he saw again in all its detail.
Hugh gazed. Their two faces, in the blurred reflection, looked young again. Then with a start he moved away from the parapet. Mildred was looking surprised at his abrupt movement. He could not, he felt, credit her with remembering. The accident of the citronella had been a charm which had worked for him but not for her. For a moment he was disappointed. Then he was relieved. They began to walk back towards the house.
Anil was coming across the grass now, vigorously pulled by Miranda, laughing and trying to talk to Felix who followed just behind her.
'Ah, they're going — said Mildred. She slowed down, and Hugh mended his pace to hers.
'Hugh, she said, 'may I come and see you in London soon? I shall be there mostly for the next few weeks. I haven't seen the Tintoretto for such a long time. That would give me such pleasure.
'You are very kind to me, Mildred, said Hugh. 'I'll give you a ring in London, shall I, and we can fix a day.
'And, Hugh — do come to Vishnuland.
He was feeling thoroughly disturbed, and anxious only to take his leave. India, yes, he would think about that. And in the not altogether painful turmoil of his spirit he tried again to discern what the reason was, the powerful reason, why he could not go. O spare me a little, that I may recover my strength: before I go hence and be no more seen.
They turned the edge of the house, beside the very dark blue Mercedes, in whose shining flank he saw reflected Ann and the tall figure of Felix Meecham who were following close behind. Miranda, who seemed to be more merry and prankish than usual, had raced ahead and, was trying to swing on the door of the Vauxhall in a way which would do it no good.
'Did you see Emma Sands at Fanny's funeral? he said suddenly to Mildred.
'Ah — said Mildred. 'My old college chum. Was she there? No, I didn't see her.
'Yes, she was there, said Hugh. 'Odd, wasn't it. I mean, she hadn't seen Fanny in years.
'Emma always showed shocking taste, Mildred murmured. 'Except perhaps once. Now if you'll excuse me I must go and find those two babes in the wood.
This speech, which left Hugh with intimations of more knowledge than he had credited her with, was the last which, on that occasion, she vouchsafed him tкte-а-tкte.
Chapter Five
'OF course most of these things are rather too young for you, said Ann. 'Steve just never threw any of his old toys away. She opened the door of the big cupboard. 'You're sure you — Penn murmured. He stood awkwardly behind Ann, stooping with an air of ineffectual helpfulness, while she rummaged in the cupboard.
It was the following Saturday. Afer breakfast Ann had asked Penn if he would like to look through Steve's old room to see if there was anything there that might amuse him. She couldn't think why she had not thought of this before, she said.
Penn was fascinated and troubled by this suggestion. Steve's room, till so called, the first-floor room over the front door, next to where Grandma had been, which was now only occasionally in use as an emergency spare room, had always been an object of somewhat, eerie interest to Penn. He had never entered it before.<
br />
He looked round it now while Ann began to spread out the contents of the cupboard on the floor. It was a big room, airy and plain and modem, not like most of the cluttered-up rooms at Grayhallock.
It had a big window and a window-seat and the view of the beeches. Still, it wasn't worth a dash compared with his own tower room. His tower room was much smaller, only half the size of the lower tower rooms which Ann and Randall had, and a third the size of this room. But it was so marvellously high up, with windows on both sides so that he had what he called the light view and the dark view. The light view was the south view towards the invisible yet somehow present sea over the flat faded Marsh where low aeroplanes continually nosed in towards Ferryfield Airport, and this could not be seen at all from Steve's room. The dark view was the northern view over a big hop field which he had watched become in these last months the greenest thing he had ever seen, to another darker plantation of mixed conifers beyond, as if the North itself were coming into their backyard. He wondered why Steve had not had the tower room. Perhaps he hadn't been let. In those days, he had gathered from Nancy Bowshott, there had been 'living-in servants', and perhaps one of these 'servants' had occupied the undignified but wonderful little room.
'Well, it's a lot of junk really, said Ann. 'But do just root about for yourself, Penny. Those are Steve's books in that bookcase. And the cupboard's all yours. I'll leave you to it, shall I?
Penn, who was Penny in Australia but preferred to be Penn in England, knew that Ann called him Penny out of the kindness of her heart to make him feel at home, but he wished she wouldn't, especially since Miranda had said mockingly, 'But it's a girl's name! —’Thank you so much, Ann, he said. 'Please don't wait. I'll just look round. If you're sure you don't mind —’
'Of course I don't mind' said Ann. she looked at him in a sad affectionate way. 'I wish I'd thought of it before. It's a good idea. Though I don't think you'll find much. It's child's stuff'. She lingered at the door. 'Penny, are you sure you want to stay with Humphrey in London?
