‘You don’t think it makes me look – old? I had thought of dyeing it.’
‘Certainly not! It gives you a sort of haute brutalité – the women will adore it. As for the men –’ Archie lifted his eyebrows and sucked in his cheeks.
My father shuddered. ‘You’ll forgive me, Archie, but at the moment I’m rather off men. Just in that way, you understand.’
‘How thoughtless of me!’ Archie smiled kindly. ‘Of course, your poor nerves must be in shreds. All those violent, uncultured felons vying for your favours! Mm!’ He fluttered his eyelashes. ‘But we shall bring you round between us, never fear.’
Actually, I thought Rupert and Archie were probably the perfect couple to be with when one’s tranquillity was overset. They were a wonderful blend of sly kindness hidden behind an unsentimental mocking toughness. I remembered with something almost like regret that this was our last day at Pye Place. Tomorrow we were returning to London, to resume our old lives. I asked myself why I did not feel positive joy at the prospect. Darling Pa would be once more at the centre of the family. That was such a marvellous transformation of events that I could not think of it without wanting to cry. Only – things could never be the same again. We must all have been changed irrevocably by the experience. For the first time I wondered why my father had not gone down to Cornwall to be with my mother. A small cloud drifted briefly over my happiness. Then it occurred to me that he had not been in a fit state to travel alone and I felt better.
‘Look, Archie!’ I held up the newspaper and tapped the photograph of Rupert. Archie took it and read. His normally sallow skin grew flushed. ‘Callooh Callay!’ he sang. ‘And he didn’t even mention it. The boy’s a genius. I must find him at once.’
But Rupert came in just then with the post.
‘Ave, Caesar, te salutamus,’ said Archie, bowing low.
‘Well done, Rupert.’ My father dabbed his eyes with his napkin. ‘I’m as proud of you as though you were my own son.’
‘Does it mean you’ll be able to boss everyone about?’ asked Cordelia. ‘Will they have to do whatever you say?’
Rupert smiled briefly. ‘I expect they’ll make it their life’s work to thwart me on every possible occasion.
‘It’s terrific news,’ I said feebly, seeing that he was not particularly enjoying the praise.
Rupert put a letter on the table by my plate. ‘Your post.’
‘It’s from Max.’ Cordelia had forgotten she was not speaking to me. ‘I recognise the writing. Can I read it?’
‘Max? You don’t mean Max Frensham?’ My father looked his astonishment.
‘Oh, you don’t know, Pa,’ said Cordelia. ‘Max has been staying here and making passionate love to Harriet. This is probably a proposal of marriage. Shall I open it and see?’
‘Don’t be silly. It’s nothing of the kind.’ I knew I was blushing.
‘Read it out then,’ taunted Cordelia.
‘Don’t be a pest, darling.’ My father tapped his youngest daughter on the head with the newspaper. ‘You’ll have lovers of your own before long. Then you’ll know how it feels to be teased.’
‘Oh, I’ve already had several.’ Cordelia looked smug. ‘In fact –’ Whatever she was going to say, she evidently thought better of it.
‘I think I’ll go and stretch my legs.’ My father got up. ‘I fancy a walk.’
‘Can I come?’ asked Cordelia at once.
‘Not, this time, darling.’ He smiled at her. ‘I need to be on my own for a bit.’
I had never, in twenty-two years, heard my father express a desire for his own company. Usually he complained that he was lonely if there were fewer than half a dozen people in the house. But, naturally, being mewed up day and night for weeks with unsympathetic strangers was bound to have affected him. I looked at him with eyes of love but he had turned away. He went into the hall.
‘Pa! Oh, my darling, darling pa!’ shrieked Portia’s voice.
Cordelia threw me a look of hate.
I was putting knives and forks round the table for lunch, brooding over the last paragraph of my article and trying to think of another word for ‘wraith’, which was a favourite of mine and therefore a little overused, when a tap on my shoulder brought me abruptly out of my abstraction. Mrs Whale, wearing her black coat, a black headscarf, black gloves and an expression suitable for a funeral, had coasted silently up and was standing behind me.
‘Excuse me, miss. I’m off to Bunton now. If it isn’t taking a liberty, I thought your father might find this helpful. I know how hard it is.’ She thrust a slim red book into my hand and was sliding away to the door before I could do more than call my thanks after her.
The volume was entitled The Christian Way to Redemption. Prayers for the Sorely Afflicted. It was well worn and some particular sentences were marked with a cross. I was deeply touched by this act of thoughtfulness from one whose reserves of strength were continually drained by her own spiritual struggles. I was confident that my father would know how to thank her for the book with melting charm. Also that he would not read a word of it. How hard it is to know our fellow men and women, I reflected. I was thoroughly ashamed of my former dislike of Mrs Whale.
THIRTY-THREE
‘“I have be-dimmed the noontide sun,”’ my father made a sweeping motion above his head with spread fingers, ‘“called forth the mutinous winds, And ’twixt the green sea and the azured vault Set roaring WAR. To the dread rattling THUNDER Have I given fire, and rifted Jove’s stout oak With his own bolt.”’ He drove his hand swiftly downwards in imitation of lightning.
The applause, after he had finished Prospero’s speech, was enthusiastic. Even Sir Oswald woke long enough to clap his pudgy hands together, making sounds like pistol-shots.
‘That was lovely!’ Maggie’s eyes were glistening behind her spectacles. She had dressed and come down for lunch, protesting that she felt as right as rain. She was sitting in the comfortable chair by the drawing-room fire, Miss Tipple having graciously accorded precedence to the invalid. It was mid-afternoon and a light snowfall had kept us all indoors so my father had offered to entertain us. ‘You make it come alive, Mr Byng. I could see the storm just as you said.’
‘Waldo, please!’ My father bowed gracefully.
‘Wonderful!’ Archie held his handkerchief to his eyes. ‘Quite wonderful!’
‘Bravo!’ cried Miss Tipple, shaking her many chins with fervour.
Portia, Cordelia and I gave rousing cheers and Jonno whistled and stamped his feet.
My father acknowledged each of us in turn in a courtly fashion. Then his eye fell on Rupert. His expression grew doubtful. I did not recognise that look but it was consistent with his altered manner. Rupert handed his cup wordlessly to me. I got up to fill it. I would willingly have flown to China and picked the tea-leaves myself if only he would give a positive verdict.
Rupert nodded. ‘Magnificent, Waldo!’ My father continued to gaze at him anxiously. As Prospero he had been lordly, fiery, mischievous. Now his hands hung limply by his sides, the palms turned slightly out, which gave him an appearance of helplessness that cut me to the heart. Rupert nodded again. ‘There is no actor alive who has your emotional range.’
‘Encore!’ called Jonno from the sofa where he had been entwined with Portia since lunch.
My father shook his head modestly and came to sit down next to me. I took his hand. It was cold and trembled slightly as I squeezed it. ‘Cordelia!’ he called gaily, in an attempt to recapture the Waldo of yore. ‘Sing for Papa. One of Ariel’s songs.’
Cordelia went to stand upon the hearth rug, her feet buried among the sleeping dogs and gave us ‘Where the bee sucks’ in a sweet soprano. Sir Oswald remained fully awake, staring at her, his eyes crossing and recrossing with desire.
‘I haven’t seen Annabel all afternoon,’ I heard Maggie say to Rupert in an undertone. ‘Not since she ran off in a pet.’
There had been several rows at lunch. Archie and Suke had quarrelled, y
et again, about the morality of eating purely for pleasure. Archie maintained that a refined and inventive cuisine was the mark of a civilised nation.
‘If there were enough food in the world for everyone then I might allow that. But,’ Suke had turned in her chair to look at Sir Oswald, ‘when half the world suffers from malnutrition, it ill becomes richer nations to fuss about soufflés and court bouillons. Gluttony is a moral crime.’
Sir Oswald, happily splashing through Archie’s crème de concombres, felt all eyes upon him. He rubbed with his napkin at a spot of pale green that had fallen on to his paunch. ‘A very good soup. Delicate flavour.’ He smiled vaguely round the table. ‘My congratulations to the cook.’
‘But there are so many worse things than overeating,’ I said, hoping to give the conversation a more general direction. ‘I really think it’s a venial sin. At least it doesn’t hurt anyone else. Discounting the things that are actually against the law – well, there are awful cruelties like neglecting old people and letting them die of cold and loneliness, and making animals perform in circuses and –’
‘Naturally those things are bad too.’ Suke was relentless. ‘But they don’t cancel each other out. Besides, you’re temporising again, Harriet. Trying to smooth things over. You’d do or say anything to avoid confrontation.’ Yes, I jolly well would, I thought. ‘I call that dishonest,’ Suke continued with an earnest expression that I recognised was zeal for my good. ‘Preferring to please people rather than tell the truth is a weakness. It will impede your spiritual and intellectual growth. Lies are fetters. Unless you’re brave enough to make truth a priority you’ll never be effective in fighting injustice.’
I caught Rupert’s eye. It was amused. He raised a questioning eyebrow, waiting to hear my answer. I crumbled my roll while I tried to think of something to say in my own defence. It was most unfair. I had not on this occasion told a lie. But then I knew I would certainly have done so if it had suited me. Suke had unerringly put her finger on one of my chief defects, damn her.
‘Harriet is deeply committed to social change.’ My father’s expression was solemn but I had seen mischief in his eyes. ‘For two years now she has been a fully fledged anarchist.’
Everyone at the table had looked surprised, as well they might.
‘If Harriet’s an anarchist, I’m the Winter Queen of Bohemia,’ said Archie.
Rupert continued to smile at intervals for the rest of lunch, as though recalling some private joke. Suke said nothing. But every time I glanced up her eyes were fixed on me with a look I can only describe as wondering.
After that the conversation had turned to Rupert’s first venture as artistic director of the English Opera House, which was to be Un Ballo in Maschera. It seemed to have the most complicated plot, full of coincidences and mistaken identities. Rupert said it was far from his favourite Verdi opera but none the less it offered some interesting possibilities for interpretation. He and my father had an argument about whether jealousy was an indication of a deeply passionate temperament or of a cold, shallow one.
Everything had been going well until Suke told Annabel to think of starving children in India and finish her plateful of stewed chicken legs and beetroot, which was Suke’s own contribution to the feast. Annabel had declared that it was disgusting – which indeed it was, containing not only grey pimply skin but also, on my plate anyway, a sad, scaly foot – and anyway she wasn’t going to be bossed by a woman who looked like Telly Savalas. Rupert had been very sharp with her and Annabel had run from the room threatening to make us all sorry. We had heard the front door bang.
So when, after Cordelia’s song, Maggie reminded us that Annabel had been missing for several hours, we began to feel worried. Cordelia went to look for her.
‘That child is an infernal nuisance,’ muttered Rupert when she returned to say that Annabel was nowhere to be found. ‘As for that stupid, meddlesome girl – by rights she should be sent out into the snow to look for her.’
I understood he meant Suke, who was in the library, working on HUFF with, I was prepared to bet, a delightful sense of being all square with the world. I looked about to see who might make up a search party. Jonno and Portia had disappeared, probably to bed. Sir Oswald and Miss Tipple were dozing by the fire. Pa had gone for a walk. Certainly Maggie should not be allowed to go out and I knew it was no good asking Archie. Cordelia, with her customary canniness, had melted away. Mrs Whale was busy with Father Terry’s underpants in Bunton. That left Rupert and me.
He gave me a speaking glance before saying, ‘I wonder if Annabel had any food on her.’
Dirk was sleeping before the fire, his muzzle quivering as he dreamed.
‘It’s worth a try. Let’s find something of Annabel’s to get him going.’
Dirk was reluctant to wake but ruthlessly we dragged him to the front door, thrust his nose into Annabel’s riding boots and made noises of encouragement. I ought to have known. Just as I was fumbling with his lead, intending to clip it to his collar, Dirk went in half a second from a state of being hardly able to stiffen his legs to speedway racer.
‘I’m awfully sorry,’ I said as we watched him galloping down the drive.
We threw on coats and boots and went after him. Rupert refrained from comment on my stupidity but enlarged on Suke’s until I began to fear for her safety, should we fail to find Annabel within the next hour. The falling snow inserted itself between our skins and our clothes with a fine disregard for our comfort. One of the standing giants shed its white mantle just as Rupert was passing, ennobling his shoulders with ermine.
From time to time I called Dirk’s name and once he answered with a distant bark. We orientated ourselves by that bark and headed in the direction of two hills Rupert said were called The Cullions. The sky and snow-laden ground were indistinguishable, the horizon lost in shades of luminous grey from bone to lead. We walked briskly until I was glowing like the element of an electric fire. The snow melted on my heated forehead and ran into my eyes and my nose dribbled. Rupert walked a little ahead of me, muttering imprecations like an angry druid.
‘Can I borrow your hanky?’ I called in desperation, my gloves having reached saturation point.
Rupert stopped and gave it to me. While I blew and mopped he stamped his feet impatiently. ‘This is a wild-goose chase. That bloody child is probably hiding somewhere, laughing her head off. Anyway, I don’t know why I should feel obliged to take my hangover across inhospitable terrain in appalling weather to look for her, while her father and brother are snugly indoors, fornicating with your sisters.’
‘You don’t mean –’ I began in alarm.
‘No, not really.’ Rupert looked exasperated. ‘Do you honestly think I’d let that happen? Or, more to the point, that Cordelia would? Oswald’s an idiot but he’s a harmless one.’
‘I hope so. But I do worry.’ I told him what had happened in Sir Oswald’s bedroom.
Rupert seemed to find it amusing. ‘Even as a child you had an overdeveloped sense of danger. When Cordelia was a baby you were like a hen with one chick, following her about in case she stuck her finger in an electric socket or drank bleach. Clarissa wasn’t the slightest bit interested in her until she grew some hair and could be shown off. A very pretty Italian au pair was supposed to look after her but she was in bed with Bron most of the time. Clarissa sacked her when she got pregnant.’
‘Really? I never knew. Fancy you remembering that.’
‘Bron came to me for help. He was very young. I didn’t blame him. You used to carry Cordelia about everywhere, like Sindbad and the Old Man of the Sea. I don’t suppose you’ve stopped worrying about her since.’
‘Perhaps not.’
It was hardly a memory that flattered, but my vanity was gratified by Rupert remembering anything at all about me. I wondered how the problem with the au pair had been resolved and whether Bron had returned the money that must have been provided for its solution but before I could ask, Rupert said, ‘It’s stopped snowing.’
It had. The landscape, a moment ago a live, resisting, turbulent thing, was tranquil.
‘Would you like it back?’
Rupert looked at the sodden handkerchief. ‘Thank you, I prefer to drip. Call that blasted dog, would you?’
I wished, not for the first time, that we had found a name other than Dirk. He responded with several excited yips.
‘He’s found something,’ I said with conviction. ‘I recognise that note of self-congratulation.’
And indeed he had. As we climbed to the top of a bluff we found my father sitting on a rock, with Dirk prancing about him.
‘Do take this animal away,’ Pa said when we were near enough to speak. ‘He has many square miles of emptiness to disport himself in. I can’t see why he must do it exactly where I am. I’ve never liked dogs.’
He frowned at Dirk, who interpreted this as an instruction to bark in his ear.
‘Sorry, Pa. He’s thoroughly bad, I know. We’re looking for Annabel. I don’t suppose you’ve seen her? I could have sworn I heard a cry just then.’
‘That was probably me. I was exulting in the silence and communing with extravagant, tempestuous Nature when I felt a pang of hunger. Lunch being unsatisfactory I had provided myself with a small pabulum before setting out. I’d just put a chocolate biscuit to my lips when this great brute sprang out of nowhere and snatched it from my mouth. Naturally I yelled.’
‘Listen! There it is again.’
Borne on the wind was a faint cry.
‘I heard it that time.’ Rupert set off towards it.
I clipped Dirk’s lead to his collar and urged him to follow but he was reluctant to leave the contents of my father’s pocket. In the end I persuaded Pa to part with a custard cream and by this means enticed Dirk onward. Several hundred yards ahead, in a deep gully, Annabel lay half-buried by snow. Rupert was leaning over her. I slithered down to join them. He had brushed away the snow, now a sinister pink in places, to expose the shining teeth of a mantrap that bit into the child’s ankle and seemed to close through to the bone.
Clouds among the Stars Page 51
