High Rising (VMC)

by Angela Thirkell

  ‘Never,’ said George Knox, hitting the table with his fist. ‘Could I see you oiled and curled like an Assyrian bull?’

  ‘No, you couldn’t. Not that I’d look like a bull in any case, and I have no intention of following Stoker’s advice. I never do. But she likes giving it.’

  Conversation then, in a not unusual way, took its course towards George Knox’s new book, and Laura was able to enjoy her very expensive liqueur in peace, while George’s booming periods rolled over her head. That they attracted the attention of most of the diners did not at all upset Laura, who was used to the publicity which George’s presence conferred upon his guests, and she let him roll on till it was time to go to the theatre, when she remarked, ‘Time, George,’ and beckoned the waiter.

  George stopped abruptly and paid the bill.

  ‘What I do like about going out for a treat,’ said Laura, ‘is that someone else does the tipping. I shall never stop being frightened of tipping. When I have made a fortune I shall over-tip everybody, just to show off, and to obtain servility from them.’

  ‘There should be no difficulty,’ said George, struggling into his overcoat. ‘Ten per cent, on the bill, and more if you feel generous. Get me a taxi.’

  ‘But I can’t do ten per cent,’ said Laura piteously. ‘If I had a pencil I could, but otherwise it is too hard, and they see my lips moving while I calculate, and despise me. I do hate being despised.’

  ‘You couldn’t be despised, Laura,’ said George, pushing her into the taxi.

  ‘Oh, couldn’t I? And talking of tips, what did you give the commissionaire?”

  ‘A shilling, of course.’

  ‘Don’t say “of course” at me like that. What is a shilling ten per cent of? Ten shillings. Why are the commissionaire’s services worth a capital sum of ten shillings?’ said Laura, with an extremely business-like manner.

  ‘My dear Laura, I am tempted to apply to you an expression which Coates once used of you, but that it would hardly become me, as your host.’

  ‘Heavenly fool, do you mean?’ asked Laura, much interested. ‘You needn’t look sheepish, George. Adrian told me himself. I rather like it.’

  George Knox kissed her hand with as much gallant courtesy as can be shown in a rather jolting taxi. ‘Thus,’ said he, ‘I express my devotion to the heavenly fool.’

  ‘Thank you very much,’ said Laura, as the taxi drew up at the theatre. ‘And what is ten per cent on one and threepence?’

  ‘It will be ninepence when I have a lady with me.’

  ‘Oh, gosh,’ said Laura as they reached the entrance to the stalls. ‘It’s begun. We shall disturb everyone, and be hated.’

  ‘Not if I know Shakespeare,’ said George sardonically.

  He was perfectly right. If all the trumpets had sounded for Laura and George as they walked down the aisle, their entrance would have passed entirely unnoticed in the blasting, ear-splitting noise that was coming from the stage. As George had said, not a single word was distinguishable, though the actors were taking infinite pains to give the impression of saying something. As they sat down Laura whispered to George, ‘Shakespeare tradition.’ George rather liked to have her hair so close to his ear, and nodded his head violently in approval. After some ten minutes their ears began to be accustomed to the peculiarities of Shake speare, and they could enjoy the play, so far as King Lear can be said to be a play that one enjoys. Laura, who rarely went to a theatre, became entirely absorbed in the scene, sitting bolt upright on the edge of her seat, her eyes glued to the stage, feeling herself each character in turn. Unobserved, her gloves and bag slid to the ground. George, who never felt stage illusion very strongly, divided his attention between the actors and Laura’s profile, young in the subdued light that came from the stage, eager and intent. When the first act came to an end, Laura’s tension relaxed. She sat back, and for the first time noticed the loss of her gloves and bag.

  ‘Oh, my goodness, I’ve dropped everything,’ said she wildly, and began rummaging on the floor.

  ‘What is it, Laura? Let me get it,’ said George Knox, also stooping down, but Laura had already retrieved her property and arisen from the depths, considerably dishevelled.

  ‘It’s all right, George. I’ve got them, but if you see any hairpins, I’ll be glad. They all fell out when I was under the seat.’

  George Knox dived again, and emerged with several large tortoiseshell pins, which Laura twisted into her hair, appearing to be quite satisfied with the result, though George was a little disturbed.

  ‘It will all be down again in a moment, Laura,’ said he, anxiously. ‘And there’s a large piece sticking straight out behind. Could you do anything about it?’

  ‘You haven’t got a spare hairpin on you, have you?’ said Laura hopefully.

  ‘My dear Laura, do I carry hairpins?’

  ‘Yes, sometimes, to clean your pipe with. I’ve bought penny packets for you at Woolworth’s before now. But never mind, I’ll manage.’

  With considerable exertion she retrieved her back hair and skewered it down triumphantly, before the lights went out. As the play passed from gloom to gloom, Laura sat like a carved figure, till the moment arrived when Gloucester’s eye is to be put out, when she startled George and her neighbours by saying urgently, ‘Tell me when it’s over,’ and putting her hands over her ears, while she shut her eyes tightly. So firmly was she entrenched in her determination neither to see nor hear that George had to shake her arm violently to recall her to the world. In the interval she apologised.

  ‘I’d rather forgotten the eyes part,’ she said earnestly. ‘Is there much more, George?’

  ‘Aren’t you enjoying it, then?’

  Laura struggled with politeness. ‘It’s a wonderful play, George, but it takes a lot out of one, don’t you think?’

  ‘Would you like to go?’

  ‘Oh, George, could we really?’

  With alacrity she bundled herself into her coat, seized her loose property and forced her way out through the stalls, followed by her host. They left the theatre and picked up a taxi.

  ‘You’ll come back and have a drink, George, won’t you?’ said Laura. ‘Tell the taxi to go to my flat. George, I’m terribly sorry to be such an unworthy guest. I did mean to enjoy it, but what with the noise at first-hand then that awful eye scene, I really couldn’t. Do you mind?’

  ‘No, I don’t,’ said George Knox in his loudest voice. ‘If there is one pleasure on earth which surpasses all others, it is leaving a play before the end. I might perhaps except the joy of taking tickets for a play, dining well, sitting on after dinner, and finally not going at all. That, of course, is very heaven.’

  The taxi drew up at the block of flats where Laura lived. George Knox over-tipped the driver to that extent that the grateful creature detained him, to give him a sure thing for the two-thirty next day. When he rejoined Laura in the hall, he found her majestically annoyed.

  ‘I do wish, George, you would remember that I am a defenceless widow,’ she said plaintively. ‘There you were, consorting with greasy mechanics, leaving me to be murdered.’

  ‘Were you murdered?’ asked George Knox anxiously.

  ‘No, but I might have been. I was waiting patiently for you while you were showing off to the taxi-driver, and someone came hurtling downstairs and nearly knocked me down, and I’ve dropped my bag again and my gloves.’

  ‘Who was it?’

  ‘I didn’t notice. Just someone scurrying downstairs in a frightful hurry, and the hall is rather dark. I’ll turn the light on, and you can find my bag and things for me. If you hadn’t preferred the society of a taxi-man to that of a cultured woman of uncertain age, this wouldn’t have happened.’

  George Knox penitently collected Laura’s scattered property and they went up to her flat, where the good Stoker had left out food according to directions, and banked up the fire.

  ‘Give it a poke, George,’ said Laura, dropping her coat on to a chair and sitting down. ‘You’ve k
nown me for more than seven years, so it’s all right.’

  ‘To one it is ten years of years,’ said George gallantly, hitting the fire violently with the poker as he spoke. The mass of coal collapsed and settled down into a clear blaze.

  ‘What do you mean?’ asked Laura. ‘I suppose it’s a compliment, but it might have been better put. Give me some coffee, George, and you can have a whisky and soda.’

  They ate and drank in comfortable silence for a few minutes, by the glowing fire.

  ‘Golly, what a play,’ said Laura suddenly, alluding to the masterpiece of the Bard from which they had just fled, ‘but very unfair to daughters. I never had one, but I am sure they are very nice, really. Darling Sibyl is sometimes nearly as silly as Cordelia, but one can’t imagine her behaving like Regan, whatever the provocation.’

  As she said the words, it flashed across her mind that Miss Grey might be capable of very Reganish behaviour. Whether the same idea occurred to George she could not guess, but in any case neither of them made any allusion to it.

  ‘Sibyl is as loving as Cordelia,’ said George Knox with dignity, ‘but no one could be such a fool.’

  ‘Of course they couldn’t, George. I only meant she was a darling, clinging creature without many brains. The Cordelias always have to have someone to cling to. If it isn’t their father, it is France. Not, of course, that you would turn Sibyl out of doors. But France might be there all the same.’

  ‘France?’ said George, still rather dignified. ‘France who? Or perhaps I should say Who France?’

  ‘Nobody France, George. But there always might be Somebody France.’

  ‘Dear Laura, my mind is still enfeebled by the grave indisposition which I have not yet fully shaken off. Somebody France? Could you, in pity to an ageing man whose intellect is clouded by disease, make yourself a little clearer?’

  ‘Well,’ said Laura patiently, ‘Cordelia married France, didn’t she? The King of France, you know, but Shakespeare calls him France, to save time, or because it is what one calls kings, like Cleopatra being Egypt.’

  George Knox looked, if possible, more confused than before.

  ‘So,’ continued Laura, ignoring his studied air of bewilderment, ‘if Cordelia, who adored her father, married a king because she was turned out of doors, Sibyl might marry too, mightn’t she? Not a king, of course, because you have to be turned out of doors to do that, but some nice commoner.’

  ‘Laura,’ exclaimed George Knox, theatrically, ‘what are you saying?’

  ‘You heard perfectly well. I said Sibyl will probably get married before long. She is very attractive and if she is rather silly, that is no bar to matrimony. You needn’t look offended.’

  ‘But the child is yet in her teens.’

  ‘No, she isn’t. She’s twenty. Of course, if you like to say twenteen you can, but no one will understand you. Do you ever think that she is grown-up, George?’

  George Knox stared at her, poured himself out another drink, stared again, and exploded.

  ‘But you are right, Laura. So right. I had never thought of my child as grown-up. Child, friend, companion, yes: grown-up, no. And it needs a stranger – no, Laura, forgive me, no stranger, for have our paths not lain side by side ever since your very uninteresting husband first brought you as a bride to Rutland Gate and Mamma was so rude to him? – let us say a dear friend, though we are not bound by ties of blood, to point out to me that my own child is grown-up. Why have I never seen it?’

  ‘Well, you could have any day, if you had looked, George, but you are so dense.’

  ‘Why,’ repeated George Knox, ignoring this interruption, ‘have I never seen it? What kind of father am I? I go on my own way, selfish, unheeding, while this exquisite bud comes to blossom in a single night. The child is marriageable, nubile—’

  ‘That’s enough, George,’ said Laura firmly. ‘A little more and you’ll be Shakespearian, or even Biblical, which is worse. I merely wished to point out to you that Sibyl can’t be expected to stay at home all her life, so you might as well get used to the idea.’

  George Knox rearranged himself as the pathetic, ageing greybeard, alone by a desolate hearth. Already, Laura could see, he had a vision of himself, living only for the rare visits of his married daughter and the patter of childish feet. Fresh young voices brought life into the old home, and in their joyous youth he renewed his own, till they faded away, those Dream Children, and left him solitary as before. But no, not altogether solitary, for who was the gracious figure who advanced towards him from the house, as he stood straining his eyes after the departing dear ones? A noble, matronly figure, in heavy draperies, her still abundant hair sprinkled with silver. ‘George,’ she cried, in the low but resonant tones he loved so well, ‘come in. The night dew falls fast and the air grows chill.’ He turned, and accompanied her to the house.

  ‘Laura,’ said George, with a jolt, ‘does dew fall? I thought it came up from the ground.’

  ‘How should I know? You are as bad as Tony with your questions. It falls in poetry, but I have never felt it falling myself. One would be apt to mistake it for rain. Perhaps one has often been in a dewfall and only thought it was a shower. Why?’

  ‘Just a thought I had,’ said George Knox absently. ‘Laura, when Sibyl is married, I shall be very much alone.’

  ‘You’ll have to get used to that. And even when Sibyl does marry, it won’t mean that the Black Death has come to Low Rising. There is the vicar, and Dr Ford, and Anne Todd, and me if you come to that, and Lord Stoke not so far off, and—’

  ‘Yes, Laura, my friends will still be there, and you not least among them. You won’t desert me, will you?’

  ‘I think King Lear has gone to your head,’ said Laura, eyeing him suspiciously, as she stuck a few hairpins further in. ‘Why should anyone desert you? I’m not an unhatched, new-fledged – at least I mean a new-hatched, unfledged comrade, beware. I’ve known you for about a quarter of a century, and I’ve no intention of dropping you because Sibyl, who isn’t even engaged yet, may get married. Don’t be so silly, George.’

  ‘When I think what old friends we are,’ said George Knox, ‘and how you were the one bright spot of light in Mamma’s appalling dinner parties, and how gay and alive you always were, in spite of your suet pudding of a husband, and how gracious to my poor colourless wife, I feel that your continued friendship is all I have to live for.’

  He drained his glass moodily and gazed at the fire.

  Laura stood up in some dudgeon.

  ‘George Knox,’ she said, ‘poor Rhoda was certainly colourless, and you have a perfect right to say it, but in calling poor Henry a suet pudding, you go too far. I can only excuse you by reminding myself that people frequently go mad after influenza. Now you have made my hair come down and I shall have to go and do it up properly. When I come back you will apologise, and then,’ she added, melting at the sight of George’s miserable face, ‘we will go on as before.’

  Leaving George Knox sunk in gloom, Laura went out of the room. As she passed through the little hall, she looked automatically at the letter-box which hung on the front door, and saw something in it. Stoker had evidently gone out before the last post came, otherwise any letters would have been put on the hall table. She fetched the letter, which was apparently some bill or circular with a typewritten address and no stamp, and took it with her into her room, where she sat down before the dressing-table and began to do her hair again. When she had finished she picked up the envelope and opened it. Typewritten on a sheet of ordinary typewriting paper were the words:

  Mrs Morland,

  ‘The man you are thinking of marrying is no good at all. He would make love to anyone. Think of your family and have nothing to do with him.

  A FRIEND

  Underneath it the date, THURS., AP. 13TH, had been stamped with a rubber stamp.

  Laura sat aghast, going hot and cold. Her first feeling was fury against the anonymous writer. ‘But, you fool, I’m not thinking of marrying
anybody,’ she said aloud in an indignant voice to her own reflection. She was utterly at a loss. Could some person who was fond of Adrian have heard of his abortive proposal and written this note in a fit of jealousy? It seemed impossible. She had told no one but Anne Todd, and on Anne’s proved fidelity she would stake her soul. Adrian certainly would not go about telling the world what a fool he had made of himself, and in any case he thought of nothing but Sibyl now. For a moment her thoughts flew to that source of all troubles, the Incubus, but the Incubus knew nothing of it, and couldn’t be traipsing about London, putting anonymous communications into people’s letter-boxes while she was nursing Sibyl in the country. It was all most puzzling and uncomfortable, and Laura wished Anne Todd or Amy Birkett were at hand to consult. George would only fly into a verbose rage and probably tell everyone about it in his indignation. Poor Laura, hot, ashamed, angry, miserable, took up the letter furiously, crumpled it, and threw it into the waste-paper basket. Then she gave herself a shake and returned to the drawing-room, her cheeks flushed, and her eyes sparkling with impotent rage.

  ‘George,’ she said. ‘I’m very sorry, but I am going to turn you out. I have a fiendish headache, in fact I shouldn’t wonder if I were going to have influenza, and I must have a lot of aspirin and go to bed.’

  George Knox’s face showed genuine concern. ‘I don’t like to leave you all alone, Laura, if you are feeling unwell,’ he said. ‘Wouldn’t you like me to stay here till Stoker comes in? I wouldn’t disturb you.’

  ‘It’s sweet of you, George dear, but I don’t need anyone. It has been a lovely evening and I enjoyed it frightfully and thanks ever so much, but I shall go mad if you don’t go.’

  George Knox, roused for once from his usual self-absorption, was seriously concerned by her feverish appearance.

  ‘Very well, Laura,’ he said, getting up obediently. ‘I can’t tell you how sorry I am that our evening has ended so badly. And I had so much to say to you – things that it is difficult to say unless we are alone. When shall I see you again?’