The Summer House Party

by Caro Fraser

He went downstairs and through the drawing room to the terrace, where he found Sonia sitting with Meg and Gerald Cunliffe. Sonia procured a whisky and soda for Dan and introduced him to the great poet. Cunliffe was a little deaf – Sonia murmured to Dan that he was awaiting the arrival of a new hearing-aid in the post – so Dan’s initial attempts at conversation proved somewhat awkward. He persevered nonetheless and, having disposed of the subject of travel from London and Cunliffe’s liking for the countryside thereabouts, ventured some vaguely topical remarks on the subject of modern poetry, in deference to the great man’s standing. Cunliffe cupped his ear and asked him to speak up, and Dan repeated in a roar his enquiry as to whether the great poet had read and liked the works of the new young poet, Dylan Thomas.

  ‘Thomas? Detestable! Rhymeless, pretentious meanderings!’

  Meg caught Dan’s eye and gave him a wink, and Dan returned it with a smile. She looked quite delightful in her evening dress of rose silk.

  ‘Edith Sitwell thinks him a perfect genius,’ remarked Sonia. ‘She’s quite taken him under her wing. He’s very poor, of course, so she tells me she has been writing to any number of people trying to find work for him.’ She glanced towards the French windows. ‘Oh, Madeleine, there you are.’

  Seeing Madeleine close to for the first time, Dan was struck by how lovely she was, with clear-cut, delicate features, pale, almost translucent skin, and blue eyes so dark as to be almost violet. She made her entrance hesitantly, darting shy glances at everyone. Dan guessed she could be no more than sixteen. Bustling in behind her came Gerald’s wife, Elizabeth, a portly creature clad in bottle-green velvet. Sonia rose to usher her on to the terrace with tender concern.

  ‘How are you, Elizabeth? Did you manage a little sleep?’

  ‘I’m afraid not. The flies were buzzing at the window so, and with the state my nerves are in, it was all I could do to close my eyes for ten minutes. No, no – just plain soda water for me, thank you.’

  Sonia had looked in on her guest twice in the past hour, and had found her on both occasions slumbering peacefully, and snoring lightly. When Elizabeth was settled in her chair with her soda water, Sonia introduced her and Madeleine to Dan, and half an hour or so drifted by in idle conversation, which Sonia deftly steered into mundane waters, knowing Gerald Cunliffe’s tendency to irascibility on matters of the day, politics in particular.

  Madeleine sat with a glass of untasted sherry in her hand, glancing from face to face, not daring to venture any remark, but with some strange kind of ardour shimmering within her. With her fair hair pinned up and in her pale blue evening dress, she looked curiously like a sophisticated child, excited to be among adults.

  The shadows began to lengthen across the lawn, and Dan was just wondering whether he could help himself to another whisky and soda when Henry Haddon made his appearance. The hitherto languid atmosphere coalesced into attentiveness and expectation. Haddon was in his late fifties, tall and broad-shouldered, and strikingly handsome. He wore his thick, silver hair long over his collar, and his contrastingly dark brows gave him a somewhat menacing aspect, even when he smiled. He was an impressive, charismatic figure, conscious of his own powers of attraction to men and women alike. When he was in good spirits, his ebullience and enthusiasm could light a room; when in a rage, his cold fury could freeze and terrify those around him. Tonight, however, his temper was tranquil and mildly playful, and he greeted the company with smiles and a couple of dry remarks. Drinks were refreshed, and after a few more minutes of conversation on the terrace, dinner was announced.

  Madeleine was seated on Dan’s right, Elizabeth Cunliffe on his left. Elizabeth immediately began a testy little discourse with Sonia on the vagaries of servants, so Dan, searching for a topic on which to converse with Madeleine, remembered Meg’s remarks earlier about how Madeleine always had her head in a book, and asked her what she was reading at the moment. Her eyes brightened, and she responded with an enthusiasm which was like dawn breaking over a still pool. They talked on and off about books and poetry for the entire meal, with occasional interruptions when etiquette demanded that Dan should turn to his left to converse with Elizabeth Cunliffe, which involved listening to her diatribe on the inadequacies of Harley Street specialists. During these intervals Dan was aware that Haddon, who was seated at the head of the table on Madeleine’s left, paid not the slightest attention to the girl, preferring to continue with Cunliffe an apparently mutually agreeable grumble on the subject of the new King. Dan wondered if Haddon thought it infra dig that the nanny should be part of the company; even so, his behaviour to the girl seemed rude.

  Madeleine was scarcely conscious of being slighted. Since her arrival at Woodbourne House she had become deeply infatuated with Henry Haddon; he seemed to her the epitome of manhood, a romantic and thrilling figure, but the idea of being made to converse with him terrified her. What could she possibly have to say that would interest him? She was happy to be seated near him, to be able to observe him at close quarters, to listen to his deep, confident voice, watch his expressive hands, and steal occasional glances at his face.

  2

  THE FOLLOWING MORNING Dan took himself off to the library to wile away a couple of hours until the Latimers arrived. He was deep in a leader on the Spanish Civil War when Sonia came in.

  ‘Dan, may I ask you to do a small chore? I’ve had to send Meg into Chidding in the car to fetch the meat, because the butcher’s van has broken down, and I have a million things that need to be done.’

  ‘Yours to command,’ said Dan, folding the paper and getting to his feet and putting out his cigarette.

  ‘Henry likes to have some barley water and biscuits around eleven. Would you be a dear and take them down to him?’

  ‘Of course.’

  Dan followed Sonia to the kitchen, where a jug of barley water, a glass, and a plate of plain biscuits were laid out on a tray. ‘There you are. I hope you find Henry in a good mood.’

  Dan carried the tray down through the orchard to the studio. The large wooden door was ajar, but Dan knocked. Haddon’s voice boomed for him to enter. The barn was spacious, with large windows set in the sloping roof, so that light spilled in. Half of the roof space was occupied by a loft area, from the days when the barn had been used to store hay, with a long ladder leaning against the upper storey. Against one wall of the barn stood two trestle tables, their paint-splashed surfaces littered with brushes, jars, tubes, rags and artist’s debris. Canvases of all sizes lay stacked on the stone floor and against the walls. On a raised dais stood a red velvet divan. The air was filled with the reedy smell of oils and turps. Haddon himself was strolling about, dressed in loose, paint-spattered trousers and a disreputable old jumper, charred in patches from pipe-droppings. Even in this attire he managed to look majestic.

  ‘Ah! Young Daniel comes to the lion’s den. Welcome.’

  ‘You have a marvellous space here,’ said Dan, setting down the tray.

  ‘I like it. A decent size, a good, mellow atmosphere – those beams are at least two hundred years old – and far enough from the house for me not to be troubled by women and servants.’ He pulled up a chair for Dan and settled his own tall frame into a creaking cane armchair. ‘So, how is the world of journalism? Sonia tells me you’ve been made arts correspondent.’

  ‘I only got the job because I know a bit more about art than anyone else on the paper, which isn’t saying much. Still, it’s a job, and it will do till I write my great novel.’

  ‘A man needs to live. I must have started off with some creative ideals, I suppose, but money gets in the way. This house, Sonia, and all the attendant expenses, have to be paid for somehow. Still life is what I like to paint best. That’s what I was fiddling with back there. I’ve even been experimenting with some of the newer techniques. There’s a veritable Rue de la Paix of movements out there. But it’s not where the money is. Not for me, at any rate. I turned my hand to portraiture twenty years ago, not because I especially care for it, but because
I found I could make a decent living out of it.’ He ate a biscuit and drained a glass of barley water. ‘I am but a humble servant of Whistler.’

  ‘I hear you’re painting Mrs Cunliffe at present?’

  ‘Not one of my easier commissions. Blasted woman’s a fidget. Can’t sit still. But it’s nearly finished.’

  Dan took his cigarettes from his pocket and lit one, as Haddon filled and lit his pipe. They smoked in silence for a moment, then Dan said, ‘If I were an artist, I rather think I would want to paint that girl Madeleine.’

  Haddon raised a dark eyebrow. ‘What, the nanny?’

  ‘She has… she has a sort of radiant quality, don’t you think? As though she were lit from within.’

  As Haddon was reflecting on this, there came a scratching tap at the door, as though from some invisible rodent. A face peeped round, that of Elizabeth Cunliffe. Dan and Haddon got to their feet, and Haddon knocked out his pipe, his face a mask of courtesy.

  ‘My dear Elizabeth, have you come for a sitting?’

  ‘Why, I thought I would just pop down, as Sonia said you were here. I’m sure you must be keen to get on. You artists, once you get the bit between your teeth!’ She gave a little laugh and fanned herself with a lace handkerchief. ‘Warm in here, as ever.’

  ‘Don’t let me delay a work in progress,’ said Dan. ‘I’ll be getting back to the house.’

  Haddon gave Dan a conspiratorial glance as Elizabeth scuttled to take up her pose on the divan, and said, ‘Drop by again, my boy. We can continue our little discussion.’

  As he crossed the flagged courtyard, Dan saw Avril crouching by the fountain, peering intently at the ground. Dan wondered what it was that so engrossed her. Then as he drew nearer he saw winged ants pouring out from the crevices between the flagstones, a trembling mass of tiny black insect bodies twitching in excitement, wings shimmering in the sunlight as they rose into the air; he looked down at his jacket and saw some clustered there, and brushed them hastily away, then lifted a hand to his hair, in case any were tangled there. Avril glanced up as he came near. Dan smiled and, feeling in an amiable, pedagogic mood, squatted down beside her.

  ‘They’re male ants, looking for the queen so that they can mate with her. But only one of them will manage it. The rest will die. When the sun goes down at the end of today, they’ll all be dead.’

  Avril looked at him with wide eyes. ‘What about the one who finds the queen? Will he marry her?’

  Dan straightened up. ‘Queens never marry. They’re too jealous of their power. Like Elizabeth the First. The one who mates with the queen will die, too, but at least he’ll have achieved his purpose. He’ll die in the knowledge that he has fathered the next race of flying ants.’ Dan pointed to the ground. ‘Perhaps it will be him – or him.’

  Avril gazed speculatively at the ants for a moment, then suddenly brought her small sandalled foot down hard. ‘No, it won’t be him! Or him!’ She mashed her foot down on the clustered ants. ‘I’m going to kill as many as I can!’

  Dan was both amused and somewhat appalled. ‘I say, don’t do that. It isn’t kind, you know.’

  ‘They’re all boy ants! I don’t like them!’ She stamped on a few more. Then she glared at Dan. ‘You’re a boy! I’ll kill you, too!’ And to Dan’s astonishment, she started to deliver kicks to his shin. Resisting the impulse to deliver a smart flat-hander to Avril’s backside, Dan reached out and grasped her firmly by one small arm. Avril began to scream and wriggle. As he held her, uncertain what to do next, Sonia came hurrying from the house, her long jet beads bouncing up and down on the front of her smock.

  ‘What on earth is the matter?’

  ‘I’m not entirely sure. We were watching the ants, and she suddenly got into a bit of a state and began kicking me.’

  ‘Oh, Avril!’ Sonia knelt down in front of the child, who was still twisting in Dan’s grasp. ‘Avril, how could you? Mama has told you about kicking. It really will not do!’

  ‘I hate him!’ screeched Avril. ‘And I hate you!’

  ‘Darling! Darling!’ Sonia tried to gather up her errant offspring, and got handsomely pummelled for her pains, but eventually managed to restrain her. ‘I’ll take her inside. Oh, where on earth can Madeleine have got to?’ Winged ants clustered on Sonia’s dress, and she brushed them violently away. ‘Come inside, Avril. Quickly now!’

  As Sonia and Avril disappeared indoors, Avril still screeching, Meg pulled up in the Austin on the far side of the courtyard. As she got out of the car with the parcel of meat she flicked at the air to ward off the drifts of flying ants.

  ‘Lord, these ants are a pest!’

  ‘Your cousin Avril had a shot at eradicating the entire species a moment ago.’ Dan told Meg what had just happened.

  ‘So now you know what it’s like to receive a hack on the ankles from darling Avril. Isn’t she a perfect poppet?’

  ‘She’s a little savage.’

  ‘Don’t let my aunt hear you say that. To be honest, I don’t think she ever expected to have a child, not in her forties. Avril coming along was something of a surprise. One can’t help feeling sorry for the kid. There are no children of her age hereabouts to play with. Uncle Henry takes scarcely any notice of her, and Sonia hasn’t the first idea how to deal with her. As soon as Avril gets the slightest bit ratty or looks like throwing one of her famous tantrums, Sonia makes a smart exit, leaving her to Madeleine. And Madeleine’s not the type to discipline anyone. Anyhow, I’d better deliver this lamb to Cook. I believe she needs it for lunch.’

  Meg went inside, and Dan sat down on the edge of the fountain, contemplating the shimmering swarms of ants among the flagstones, and wondering about Avril, and what made her such a spectacularly obnoxious child. From the driveway came the purr of an engine, and a few seconds later a smart blue and black Wolseley pulled up in the courtyard, with Paul Latimer at the wheel, and three passengers. Dan crossed the courtyard to meet them.

  Paul got out and shook Dan’s hand. ‘How are you, old chap? It’s been an age.’ He was tall and well-built, with light brown hair, blue eyes and handsome, even features, and had an air of bluff, somewhat self-conscious manliness designed at once to be assertive and reassuring. He seemed the epitome of English masculinity.

  The passengers emerged from the car. Diana Latimer, tall and blue-eyed like her brother, was blonde and elegant, with a wide, amused mouth and a languid manner. She and Paul both carried themselves with the casual assurance of wealth and breeding. Diana’s friend Eve, was petite, with pale, soft skin, shining black hair swept up in a neat chignon, and dark, shrewd eyes. She was wearing a blue dress with a matching jacket, and with her crimson lipstick and matching nails, was every inch the polished, sophisticated city girl.

  Diana gave Dan a kiss. ‘Darling Dan – so good to see you. I don’t believe I need to introduce Eve, do I?’

  ‘No, we’re pretty well acquainted,’ said Dan, exchanging a smile with Eve.

  ‘And this is Charles Asher. Charles, Dan Ranscombe.’

  A small, wiry man in his early twenties, somewhat shabbily dressed in a jacket and grey flannels, stepped forward and shook hands with Dan. He had a narrow, handsome face with large, dark eyes and a profusion of black hair. His manner was guarded, and he seemed shy and somewhat ill-at-ease.

  ‘Well,’ said Paul, ‘let’s go in and find our hostess.’ Paul caught sight of William, Sonia’s odd-job man, on the other side of the courtyard. ‘I say,’ he called out, ‘would you mind fetching the luggage from the car and taking it in? There’s a good chap.’

  *

  After lunch, while Eve took a stroll down to the village, Meg and Diana settled themselves in the summerhouse to gossip and catch up on news. The summerhouse was set at the top of a slope and looked out across the garden and the far-off Surrey Downs. Diana stretched herself out on the cushions, took the last cigarette from a small shagreen cigarette case, and lit it.

  ‘I haven’t been down to Woodbourne in an age. Not since the parents
died.’ She drew on her cigarette. ‘Heaven to be in the countryside. London is so achingly dull at the moment, with everyone away. Mind you, I don’t think I could spend the entire summer here. Aren’t you frightfully bored?’

  Diana was twenty-two, and nineteen-year-old Meg was rather in awe of her friend’s superior wisdom and sophistication. She had to confess to her that so far the summer had been somewhat slow. ‘But it’ll be better now that you and Paul are here.’

  ‘I think you’ll like my friend, Eve, too,’ said Diana. ‘She’s terribly clever, but lots of fun.’ She cast a lazy eye at Meg. ‘How do you like Dan?’

  ‘I haven’t really got to know him yet. He only arrived yesterday. He seems rather nice.’

  Diana smiled and drew on her cigarette. ‘Nice’ was not necessarily a word she would have applied to Dan. ‘Good-looking, don’t you think? Such thrilling blue eyes.’

  Meg smiled and shrugged, glancing away.

  ‘And what of Uncle Henry and Aunt Sonia? All serene? Horrid old Henry not been chasing any more ladies’ maids?’

  ‘What on earth d’you mean?’ Meg looked startled.

  ‘Oh, darling, there was the most awful row last Christmas when Henry was caught in flagrante with one of the maids. Sonia tried to hush it up, but everyone knew.’

  ‘Oh,’ murmured Meg. ‘I had no idea.’

  ‘Not the first, and most probably not the last. He has quite a reputation, that old uncle of yours. Don’t stare at me like a wide-eyed infant! Time you knew about such things.’

  Meg made no reply to this. The child in her didn’t in the least like having such dark secrets about her uncle revealed, and she sought to change the subject.

  ‘Tell me more about this Charles Asher person. He didn’t say much at lunch.’

  Diana sighed as she blew out some smoke. ‘He’s another of those penniless intellectuals Sonia insists on collecting. Calls himself a writer, or a poet, or something. No doubt Sonia thinks it will help his career to meet Gerard Cunliffe. I don’t mind him particularly, but he and Paul don’t get on at all. They had an out-and-out row a few months ago, to do with politics and that man Oswald Mosley. There was something of an atmosphere between them in the car coming down. Not the most convivial of journeys.’