Now Cordelia chewed her lip and looked thoughtful. ‘I think my blue thing is a bit babyish. Darling Hat, will you lend me your beautiful black dress that Rupert bought you?’
‘But it’s miles too grown-up for you. It’s almost too grown-up for me.’
‘I think I’ll get up now.’ Cordelia threw back the bedclothes. ‘And I shan’t eat that cake Maggie’s making specially for my tea. I shall ask her to take it away because I’m too upset. I bet Elinor Dashwood would have lent Marianne her entire wardrobe if she’d wanted it because she was so sad that her favourite sister was nearly dying.’
‘Oh, goodness, all right!’
Cordelia drew the bedclothes over her again. ‘Now that’s settled, what game have you thought of for today, Max?’
‘It’s called five senses. We each have to write down the five things that we would like best to see, to hear, to touch, to smell and to taste. I’ve brought pencils and paper. We’ll start with sight. It’s quite good fun, I promise you.’
It was surprisingly hard to decide on the things we really, really wanted to see. Cordelia’s list was: Richard III, Mark Antony when a new-born kitten, a flying saucer landing in the garden, Shakespeare (so she could tell him exactly what she thought of him for writing all those long boring plays) and a vanity case exactly like mine with her initials on it. Mine was cautious and deliberately unrevealing: John Keats, eighteenth-century London, a polar bear cub, an angel, Michelangelo at work on the Sistine Chapel. Max’s were typically masculine, except perhaps the last: Fangio winning the world championship, a Nuremberg rally, the earth from the moon, the Battle of Trafalgar, a look of love (from whom unspecified).
When it came to hearing it was even harder. Cordelia had gasps of admiration (at what she didn’t say), the rustle of a hundred Christmas presents on the end of the bed in the middle of the night, a lion purring, Richard III’s limp and the announcement of her name at an Oscar ceremony.
‘How come you’ve both got Mozart playing his own piano concertos?’ she complained. ‘What’s with this Mozart? I think God’s voice is good, Hat. I wish I’d thought of that. But a sigh of love is cheating, Max. At this rate you’ll be saying the touch of her lips, the taste of her skin and the smell of her armpits for the other senses. I mean these are all things you could easily have. You said they mustn’t be ordinary things like money or a sunny day.’
‘Love isn’t quite as commonplace as you seem to think.’ Max glanced at me. ‘Unfortunately.’
I sucked my pencil and examined my piece of paper, then suggested we got on with the five things we wanted to touch. An hour went by during which we were pleasantly amused.
‘I’d better take Dirk for a walk before it gets dark.’ I looked out of the window at the sky, which was beginning to lose its brilliance.
‘I’ll come with you,’ said Max.
‘You can’t both go,’ said Cordelia. ‘Anyway, Max, you promised you’d finish reading Far From the Madding Crowd. I must know whether she goes back to that stupid Gabriel Oak. I hope Sergeant Troy turns out not to be dead, after all.’
‘Yes, stay and read,’ I said. ‘It’ll be horribly cold. I shall be twenty minutes at the most.’ I knew that Cordelia had already finished the novel that morning but I had no intention of giving away her stratagem. Having accepted that Rupert was incapable of turning over a new leaf as far as women were concerned, she had made up her mind to be in love with Max. I thought he could be trusted to deal kindly with her infatuation.
Out of doors the wind left off its plangent wailing and became savage. The light, reflected by the snow, which had ceased falling, was still bright enough to hurt one’s eyes. Though I had put on a quilted coat of Maggie’s and wrapped a woollen scarf round my ears my extremities became numb almost immediately. After three days Dirk and I had established a route that took us down the drive to the cattle-grid and then left, following the line of a tumbled-down stone wall, to the most staggering view at the edge of a vertiginous drop. Whatever the weather I always paused by the cattle-grid and turned back to admire the house.
Pye Place was built of grey stone and was E-shaped, with a projecting wing at each end. The central porch was surmounted by two oriel windows, one above the other, making a shorter middle stroke. It had five handsome gables surmounted by ball finials and the roofline was broken by chimney stacks. On the central gable was carved the date of its construction. Later, when memories of the cow-herding had faded, someone had added the family’s coat of arms between the first – and second-floor windows. The façade, three storeys high and roughly four times as long, was the embodiment of Beauty and Truth. It seemed to me as lovely a dwelling as man could have made for himself and yet it had withstood whatever Nature could throw at it over several centuries, with no sign of injury.
In front of the house lay a broad sweep, gradually declining towards the valley. This was now uniformly white but presumably some combination of grass and gravel lay beneath. Springing out of this plateau were odd excrescences, their lower halves showing dark green, their summits piled with snow. Some were like crouching giants, others like fabulous beasts. One was lean and slanted like a rocket-ship aimed at the stars. These were the yews Maggie had mentioned that had grown out of shape. Incontrovertible proof of the first Oswald Pye’s genius in choosing this spot on which to build his house was its proximity to a projection of rock, some twenty or thirty feet high, which lay to the right of the house. A waterfall plummeted from its apex to disappear with a smoky fury into a dark and mysterious hole behind the yews. The spur was not near enough to cast the house into shade, but was sufficiently close to make the crashing of the water audible from the front door.
The study of noble architecture was Dirk’s least favourite part of the walk. He liked to get into the field where he could dig holes. On the grounds of mutual incompatibility we agreed to separate. He continued with his excavations and I went on alone to admire the view. This we did twice a day. As Dingle took Dirk out for a good run every morning with Sir Oswald’s corpulent pointers, Bouncer and Blitzen, my conscience was almost clear.
Approaching the cattle-grid on this particular afternoon I saw a crouching figure ahead, examining something on the ground. It was Vere, Freddie’s husband. Though we only met at dinner, for he always had breakfast early and was out of the house all day, I felt I was beginning to know him. He was a man of moods, sometimes talkative, sometimes taciturn, but he was always very friendly once he was aware of you. I wondered what he found to occupy his thoughts so much of the time.
‘Hello, Dirk.’ Dirk, who rated Vere highly among his acquaintance, rolled over so Vere could rub his stomach with the toe of his boot. Dirk’s stomach, I mean. ‘Now, steady on or you’ll scuff up the prints. Hello, Harriet,’ as I came panting up, lead at the ready.
‘Sorry, is he being a nuisance?’
‘No, he’s all right. I was just wondering if these were the tracks of an otter.’
I stared at the marks that looked to my untrained eye like cat’s paw-prints. ‘Don’t otters live in water? Surely not in the waterfall?’
‘Listen.’ Vere held up his finger for silence. I heard only the shushing and phewing of the wind.
‘What am I listening for?’
‘Come and see.’
Vere set off and I had almost to run to keep up. The surface of the snow was iridescent with sparkling points that changed colour as I approached. Round the boles of trees lay pools of deep violet shadow into which dropped clumps of snow blown from naked branches. The crystals crunched satisfyingly beneath my boots like sugar. Dirk ran ahead, clods of ice flying from his heels. Our path became a crevice, constricted by overhanging trees, their trunks distorted by the interminable gales.
‘Look at that!’ Vere said as I clambered, puffing, over rocks glazed with ice to see within yards of me a torrent of water slipping between boulders down a ravine and tumbling into a silver and black river below. ‘This is where the waterfall by the house comes out. I’d like
to follow its path underground, wouldn’t you?’
‘Mm!’ I enthused untruthfully.
‘There’ll be caves and stalactites. Derbyshire limestone is the perfect medium. There might be narrow places where you’d have to go under water. I suppose a canoe in summer when the riverbed’s at its driest,’ he mused, ‘but you’d have to be careful not to get swept over this drop when you emerged.’
Somehow I could not get excited by the prospect. ‘Do shut up, Dirk.’ Dirk had been prompted by the energy in Vere’s voice to bark loudly. The sound bounced off the cliffs and echoed about the valley.
‘Listen,’ said Vere again. ‘A fox answering.’ I heard a harsh scream that seemed to come from miles away. Vere took my arm and pointed up at the sky. ‘Look! A mountain bustard!’ I saw something black against the pearly sky before the brightness and coldness blurred my vision. ‘I think I’ll go after it. Perhaps there are some others. Want to come?’
He looked so eager that I felt I should disguise the sad truth that it would not be the most wonderful treat for me. ‘I’d love to but I’m afraid Dirk would alarm them.’
‘Oh, yes, you’re right. I’d forgotten him. Can find your way back to the house all right?’
I could see he was desperate to be off. ‘Absolutely. Go on, don’t worry about me.’
I was not as certain of my route back as I had pretended, and the uniform whiteness made each boulder and tree look much like its neighbour. Dirk romped about, pleased to have our walk extended and stopped occasionally for a furious dig. After a while I realised we were lost. A fairly anxious few minutes later, I was relieved to see a woman trudging ahead of me, head down against the wind.
‘Hello!’ I shouted. ‘Do wait a moment!’
Through watering eyes I saw her stop and turn. It was Jonno. We had had little to do with each other so far. He was pretty drunk when he came down to dinner and extremely drunk by the end of it. After that first morning he never came to breakfast, or lunch.
He waited for me to come up to him. ‘Hi! You look cold.’
‘I’m frozen, actually. And lost.’
‘We aren’t far from the house. I was going back anyway. Want a drag?’ he waved a hand-rolled cigarette at me. ‘It’s good stuff.’
‘Oh, all right. Thanks.’ It seemed unsociable to refuse. Many of my parents’ friends smoked cannabis and I had shared a few joints with Bron. I did not disapprove of it, but smoking anything seemed inappropriate in such unpolluted surroundings.
‘Bloody awful here, isn’t it?’ Jonno shambled along, his eyes on the ground.
‘I think it’s extraordinarily beautiful.’
‘Oh?’ He lifted his head and looked around. ‘Oh yeah, it’s OK scenery. But I was born here. I can’t fuss about what I’ve always known.’
‘That might make it more precious. Memories of childhood, that sort of thing.’
He gave a laugh that sounded bitter. ‘Maybe, if those memories were anything but hell.’ He laughed again, the cry of the tortured soul.
I was used to melodrama so I did not smile. ‘However awful something’s been, surely it’s better to have it happen in a place that’s beautiful rather than somewhere squalid and ugly? Imagine being unhappy in an inner-city slum with cockroaches and wailing police sirens. Or slaving underground in a Siberian salt mine.’
Jonno managed a proper laugh this time. ‘You’re a chick for extremes. Yeah, well, anyway, don’t take any notice of me. I just get depressed sometimes. Particularly when I come home.’
‘What’s it like at university?’
‘OK. The lectures are boring and I hate writing essays but there are some good clubs and bars. Only,’ he hesitated and then went on in a rush, ‘I bust up with my girlfriend last term. She went off with a mate of mine. I really miss her,’ he added in a softer tone and my heart, previously granite where Jonno was concerned, was touched. ‘And him.’ He sucked hard at the reefer. ‘It’s a bitch, actually.’
‘Certainly sounds like one.’
‘I don’t know why anyone lets themselves get fond of people. They always fuck off in the end, leaving you on your tod, bloody miserable.’
‘Aren’t you exaggerating? You aren’t alone. You’ve got a father and a sister for a start. And I can’t imagine Maggie deserting anyone.’
‘Oh, great!’ he spoke with heavy sarcasm. ‘My father doesn’t care about me. He’s too busy caring about him. And Annabel’s just a silly kid. As for Maggie – you aren’t seriously suggesting she could be a friend? She’s barely literate.’
‘I’d have thought that mattered a lot less than loyalty and decency.’
‘Cant!’
‘No, it isn’t. I really like Maggie, as well as being grateful for everything she’s done for Cordelia and me. I admire her. She works hard and she has tremendous self-discipline. She’s utterly unselfish. And I know when I talk to her she’ll always be truthful. She feels things deeply. That’s important, isn’t it? People might be able to recite all of Newton’s Laws but if they’re shallow everything’s more or less the same to them. They just do or think or feel whatever seems most immediately attractive. Those are the people who rat on you when you need them.’
‘Uh-huh.’ Jonno kept his eyes trained on the ground.
‘Yesterday Maggie said she was worried about you. She thinks you’re unhappy.’
‘Ten out of ten for observation.’
‘She said, “I’d give my eyeteeth to know what I could do for the poor lamb.”’ Jonno gave me a look of angry impatience. I knew I was taking a risk but I pressed on, in hope of doing good. ‘She said it was hard watching you what she called “turning in on yourself” but that you wouldn’t allow her near you.’
‘Well, I like that! I let her pin a pair of cords on me the other day that she’s taking in down the seams. How much nearer does she want to be?’
‘Not like that, silly. You don’t talk to her, take her into your confidence.’
‘It’s never occurred to me. What point would there be? Our worlds are quite different. She’s just a village drab Dad married to pay the bills and drudge for him.’ He glanced at me then and looked a little ashamed. ‘OK, I know that sounds snobbish.’
‘Not only revoltingly snobbish but stupid as well.’
‘Hey, you don’t mind making enemies, do you?’
‘I hate it, actually, but I’m fond of Maggie and I won’t hear her spoken of disrespectfully.’
We walked up the drive towards the house in silence, Dirk running round us in circles. Suddenly Jonno gave a mirthless laugh. ‘She called me a “poor lamb”, did she? And I’m supposed to be grateful!’
‘She also called you a “lost weakly lad who drinks more than is good for him to cushion his misery.”’ Having gone so far there seemed little point in holding back anything.
‘Well, bloody hell! It’s nice to know I’m treated so deferentially behind my back. Weakly! What the fuck did she mean by that? I may not be Mr Universe but I’ve my fair share of musculature.’
‘You know perfectly well she meant morally.’
‘Fucking cheek!’
As he maintained an offended silence, I went on, ‘I don’t suppose any of us would like it if we knew what other people said about us. A village drab, indeed! Only Maggie thinks so little of herself she’d probably just accept it. It’s those of us who put on airs and graces whose pride is apt to be hurt.’
‘Thanks very much. So now I’m affected.’
‘I didn’t say that, exactly. I know I am.’
‘You? You’re little Miss Perfectly Pretty and Pretty Perfect. I suppose all good-looking chicks are vilely conceited, though. It’s unfair to blame you.’
I was moved by this tribute to my looks to feel I might have been a bit hard on him.
‘The thing is, how many people do you care about?’ I asked. ‘I mean, you can’t expect it to be all one way.’
‘I care about plenty of people.’ His tone was injured. I waited while he stood still an
d thought. ‘Well, I suppose I wouldn’t like anything to happen to Annabel, even if she is a pain in the arse. And I was keen enough on Kate before she dumped me.’ He thought some more. ‘Ah!’ he said triumphantly. ‘I was in love with the prep school matron when I was a kid. Her name was Miss Prosser and she had untidy brown hair and reminded me of Tufty, my guinea pig.’
I smiled, relieved that on occasion he could forget the Dostoevskian pain and strike a note of self-mockery.
‘I suppose it isn’t exactly an impressive list,’ said Jonno. ‘But then I’m not into bleeding hearts. So, what about you? Who rates in your book?’
‘Well, my parents and my three sisters and my brother, for a start. Naturally I really, really love them.’
‘Naturally,’ said Jonno drily.
‘No, truthfully. They frequently drive me to utter despair but if it was my life or theirs, I’d give mine without a second thought. Or only a brief moment of reflection.’
‘As I said, you’re a girl of extremes.’
‘Then there’s Maria-Alba. She lives with us and I love her dearly. There are three girls I was at school with who I don’t see much of because they’re not living in London any more but none the less I’m deeply fond of. And there are plenty of people I know, like Ronnie, my mother’s friend, who I’m always pleased to see. And Rupert and Archie –’
‘All right, all right. You’re a marshmallow, in love with the human race.’
‘You asked me. Actually, when I meet people for the first time I’m much more inclined to hate them than love them. Just in case they hate me, you know.’
‘Yeah. I know.’ He inhaled deeply and handed the soggy joint to me but I shook my head. ‘That sounds a prim, wholesome sort of list to me.’ He mimicked a girlish, upper-class voice. ‘Mummy, Daddy and all the nice people I know. My former headmistress, dear Miss Bodily-Function, and Reverend Lickspittle, the vicar. Not forgetting Brown Owl, who taught me that singing round the campfire can bring on a nice clean orgasm with no danger of getting up the spout.’
Clouds among the Stars Page 34
