* * * *
When he called at a quarter past seven Georgina, with a dressing gown over her underclothes, was making up her face. She went to the door and let him in, saying, “I won’t be more than a few minutes. Go into the sitting room and fix yourself a drink. It’s all there.” Then looking over his shoulder and seeing the car outside, she said, “My goodness! A Rolls . . .”
He grinned. “Well, I am a diamond dealer and you a beautiful woman. Are you afraid of what the neighbours may think?”
“The nearest one is half a mile down the road. You go and make yourself comfortable while I get on with my make-up. Poke around and look at the drawings if you want to.”
Back in her bedroom, she sat for a moment or two looking at herself in the mirror. She liked fun as much as any woman did. A good-looking man, a Rolls Royce and a pleasant evening to look forward to and even the possibility, if he were like that, not caring to drink and drive, that she could take the wheel on the way back, and then as soon discounted the idea. He was not the type who did the dirty shuffle on a girl who liked her drink as much as he did. Richard Seyton would, she bet, have some old-fashioned virtues. How many, she wondered? And not for her own sake. Stupid Daddy, and self-sacrificing daughter. Still, there was no Birdcage law to say that it had to be all work and no pleasure. Tonight, as far as she was concerned, she would wish it to be all pleasure. If work cropped up . . . well, too bad.
Not taking a drink since the evening was still young and driving after too much drink now a thing of his past, Seyton sat on the settee and picked up from a near table a portfolio of her drawings. Again he was impressed by her talent. . . perhaps genius . . . but certainly a kind of magic which appealed to him largely because she had the almost breath-taking felicity of catching and marking animals and birds in a precise instant of time, arresting it so that some fractional moment of truth lay exposed. Two lapwings caught falling through the air in courtship display above a field of young corn; and then a dabchick—quite a few of them around but not often seen—moving up a stream, oddly more reptilian looking than water bird . . . between the eyes and the hand no faltering on her part. And then suddenly old Shipley’s face filling the paper, cap pushed back, sweat shining on his cheeks, grinning, his old pipe sticking out of the corner of his mouth, made him chuckle. (Later, when he asked her, he was to learn that she had watched Shipley working through her glasses and then done it from memory, a memory sharp with retained truth.) After Shipley there was a drawing of the fourteenth-century pigeon-house in the Dower House garden, a great cloud of the doves hanging in disturbed flight above its roof. . .
She came in to him, a fur cape held in one hand, a small black silk evening bag in the other, her dress black, too, and simple, leaving her arms bare but coming close about her neck, the demureness challenged by the soft, full burgeon of her breasts, and to one side a small gold brooch, a multi-rayed star. Her auburn hair, a smouldering fire making him fancy—to his surprise for he was not so given—that the first touch of wind would tease it to flames. And, anyway, whatever his fancies, he felt within him the undeniable response of his body to the living presence of beauty . . . the nerve kick of his senses overmastering him, a thing that lived its own life and—though quiescent for so long—now moved independently and seeming to challenge him to deny it living room.
He said, “You look absolutely marvellous.” The words banal but undeniably sincere.
“Thank you, sir.” She made a little curtsey, and then went on, “You’ve not had a drink.”
“There’ll be enough of that later. But what about you?”
“No, I can wait, too.”
He said, “Miss Collet——”
She shook her head. “You get a choice. Georgy or Georgina. Then tomorrow, if you like, we can go back to the Miss Collet. Which is it to be?”
“Georgina.”
“That pleases me . . . Richard.”
He laughed and said, “And no return to formalities tomorrow.” Then, to ease the unexpected, almost immature emotional impediment to naturalness between them, something so far distant in his past that he would have thought it beyond rejuvenation, that adolescent pause which came between first attraction and first kissing, he held up the drawing of the pigeon-house in his hand still and said, “When did you do this? It’s so good.”
“One morning some time ago.”
“There are a lot of these old pigeon-houses in this part of the country. In the old days the birds were a good source of food. Now . . . well, they are ornamental. And a bit of a nuisance. They breed so much we have to cull them.”
“How?”
“Oh, Shipley shoots a few now and then. The old ones. But I remember that when Punch and I were young we used to go into the pigeon-house each spring with knitting needles and prick the eggs they’d laid. That kept them down fairly well——” He stopped abruptly, his mood suddenly changing, maturing with a certainty beyond doubt because he had been here before with other women, always knowing the moment when the words you were using bore no relation to the emotions you were feeling or the honest desire that began to demand expression. He grinned suddenly and went on, “I’m gabbling away about doves and they’re really the farthest thing from my mind.”
“What is on your mind?”
“I think you know—and I hope you approve.”
He stepped forward, put his hands gently on her shoulders, kissed her on the cheek lightly, and then moved back from her.
She laughed and said, “That was nice—and deserves a return. Since it reminds you of things you did with your brother I’d like you to have the drawing. No, no argument. And now I think we should be going.”
* * * *
Shipley was sitting in the Dower House kitchen waiting for his wife to finish work and walk the few yards home with her. Usually when Mister Richard was out for the evening she would stay on for a couple of hours, ironing or cleaning the silver . . . God knows what she did, he thought. Women always found something. She was gone now to answer the telephone which had just rung. He lit his pipe. Mister Richard out gallivanting. Well, that was something, anyway. Like old times. Over Clyro way—that would be the Harecastles. Well, it was about time Mister Richard got out of his rut. About time, if it came to that, that he got married again. Young Roger could do with a woman around. Something was eating into the gaffer. No doubt about that. What was all this then, too—taking that drawing young lady to Clyro? Maybe he fancied her. Worth fancying too. But. . . no more than that, he hoped. But you never knew. Things so often went by opposites. Look at Mister Punch. He’d have sworn that he’d have married soon. Randy enough as a young chap. Both of them. Hellions at times.
Mrs Shipley came back from the telephone, and said, “I told you not to light that pipe in here.”
“I knows you did. But I lit it, didn’t I?”
“Like that are we?”
Shipley grinned, pinched her bottom and said, “I ain’t so old that I have to stand back from anything I fancy. And neither be you. Fancy a glass of port?”
“You’ll get the back of my hand.”
“Don’t tell me you don’t now and then. What I smell on your lips sometimes you may call elderberry wine but it ain’t. Who was that then on the phone?”
“Miss Nancy.”
“All the way from France?”
“All the way from France, and not for a minute foolin’ me. Wanted to know if Mister Richard was gone over to Clyro.”
“Did she now, and quite right of her. What did you tell her?”
“What she wanted to know, of course. That he’d gone—taking that drawin’ young woman.”
“And what did she say to that? That you wouldn’t have the bother of making his bed tomorrow morning? Wouldn’t be the first time, would it? Aye, and Miss Nancy herself to blame in the past for it.”
“You’ve got a dirty mouth, Shipley.”
“Who, me? What’s dirty about the naturalest thing in the world—a man takin’ a woman, or tuther way
about?”
“Well, maybe. But he should marry. He owes it not only to hisself but to young Roger. If I was Miss Nancy I’d go after him harder than what she does.”
“Then you’d be wrong there. T’ain’t natural for a ewe to chase the ram. Miss Nancy knows that.”
“You and your ewes and rams.”
“Well, what’s the great difference? ’Cept they got four legs instead of two and don’t send one another Valentines. I’ll bet you he marries Miss Nancy in the end. But at the moment he’s got something more than weddin’ bells ringing in his mind. He’s been going around all over the place—not thinkin’ I notice, of course—mopin’ and pokin’ and peerin’ and pryin’ as though he’d lost something somewhere and not sure hisself what it is or where he lost it. Aye, he’s so taken up with something, I can tell you, that he won’t miss a drop of port or two from the decanter. So get us a glass, girl.”
“Well, just one.”
Shipley chuckled. “Aye, that’ll do to begin with.”
* * * *
She lay awake, relaxed, warm and far from sleep or wanting it. The part-drawn curtains showed a few stars over the branches of an apple tree in the garden. If she had been a cat she would, she thought, have been purring. The two Hattons had been marvellous. A ploughman leading shire horses down a muddy lane, and—she guessed from his days in France—a charcoal and wash of two French peasant women washing clothes at a stream side. The drink and food delicious at the buffet supper, tempting her to a mild gluttony. What was it old Quint had once said to her? Mo one as lovely as you should show such obvious delight in eating. It’s like a sudden false metre in poetry. Sod Quint. She didn’t want to think about him.
Music and dancing and forgetfulness, taking the night right out of the calendar of discontent and the secret self-humiliations she had suffered for dear Daddy. Not sod him. But just for a few hours forget his existence. Right from the beginning the night had begun to delight her, detached from any before or after. Oh, the after would come. But to hell with that right now because the night had a few more hours to run before dawn and morning when she would pick up the telephone and report to Birdcage. She hoped it would be to the answering service for she wanted not even the most tenuous contact with anyone there personally.
Nothing had been planned, or pushed for, or even hoped for on either side. The night term had been set, she felt, by forces outside, benign to the point of sweet indulgence; everything going the way a drawing so often did, a limited miracle, controlling and bestowing a shared felicity . . . so much so a miracle that she had even known what he would say and do next, felt too that behind words and actions some other silent dialogue was moving between them, that the Gods had said, ‘Take this without question and enjoy it. The golden fruit of the Hesperides which must be plucked and eaten while it is still sun-warm.’ She giggled softly to herself, a hand to her mouth to muffle it, not wanting to wake him, knowing that wine and the night’s magic still lay potently in her. Perfection, in the only way human perfection could be, demanding nothing but giving everything with an open naturalness that was as swift and sure and gut-shaking as the high set and then breathtaking beauty of the falcon’s stoop. Nothing could go wrong, she had known; and nothing had gone wrong. Driving back, her head against his shoulder, the smoothness of the Rolls paced by the smoothness in herself. And knowing nothing would go wrong with the night. Nothing could go wrong because the Gods had ordained this night free for her so that each step, each move, each word, each caress she had known and welcomed from fore-knowledge as benison following benison. Time out from stinking bloody Birdcage.
He had loved her as few others had done, richly and tenderly, and then again with fresh passion and both of them fierce in their demands and breaking the night’s silence with their words and cries, and she lay now not caring a damn that it might only be for that night. He rested now with his back to her, sleeping, taking more than his fair share of the not too large bed, snoring now and then gently, his skin warm against her breasts and belly, and while he slept she kissed the back of his neck and her nostrils delighted in the smell of his skin. Dear Daddy, she thought, I’m going to save up for years and buy myself one like this to keep for ever. Dear Daddy . . . they sent me out a-whoring, but look what I’ve got. Isn’t it a pity it has got to go back in the morning . . .? And, dear Daddy, don’t think that in the midst of it all I didn’t try to do a little work. Oh, with the lightest of touches and while we had a last drink in the bungalow before going to bed. Just a tease so that the evening would not be all play and no work, saying: I was working in the spinney down river from the chapel one day and saw you go in. You were ages before you came out again. Have I got a praying man on my hands? And dear Quint—when you come to listen to this, send me a note telling how to mark truth or falsehood in the words of a man who is looking at you with the sure knowledge that bed and its delights are close, since you’ve already embraced and his hands have been given willingly a licence to rove and his dress tie is cocked up at an angle and in a moment he’s going to give it a tug and flip his collar stud free as he rises to come to you, and does rise, saying, already dedicated to other more important matters so close and fast coming to hand: I suppose you could call it praying . . . anyway, looking for the answer to a personal problem. Did you know that the colour of your eyes just now is like wet emeralds . . . or at least that’s what they make me think of? Wasn’t that nice? Though far from accurate. Yes, nice because he’s no poet or fancy speaker, but a plain honest John. The good news from Ghent to Aix about his limit. But he’s got some Hattons and loves them because they’re alive and so is he. Good with his hands be it horse or woman . . . gentle, firm or masterly to meet exactly the challenge and mood of his steed. Bawdy, yes. But nice bawdy, dear Daddy and you dear Quint. So that was that, and all that followed, my bloody business and nobody else’s, except to say that I was (to raise a little smile from you Quint) in nubibus—and still am.
He stirred then, came awake and turned to her and said sleepily, “I thought I heard a cock crow.”
“So you did—but once only.”
“Would you like some coffee?”
“Later.”
He put his arms around her and held her to him and, smiling at her, said, “Go or stay?”
“Stay.”
An hour afterwards his hand on her shoulder woke her. He was standing at the bedside, dressed.
“You’re going?”
“I’ll call you.”
He bent down and kissed her.
She said, “You’re a monster.”
“Beauty and the beast?”
“Could be. Don’t forget to take your drawing.”
“I’ll find a place of honour for it.”
She heard him go down the garden path whistling gently to himself, and then was reclaimed by sleep.
CHAPTER NINE
THINKING BACK ON it he realized that it had come to him with a slow inevitability as though it were being willed to him by some outside force. Maybe Punch clamouring from whatever realm he Inhabited, calling to him not to be a bloody, blind fool. Or maybe just the workings of memory as the night’s pleasures and joys, settling into place, left him with a clearer mind as he returned from Parnassus to the well-known surroundings of the Dower House. However it had come, though, he knew that fundamentally he owed it to her; that quite literally it had been her gift and his words which had followed his acceptance of it. . . words which had worked like slow yeast while he took his bath, memory haunting him while he dressed and there propped on the dressing table to one side of the mirror was the drawing of the dove house, and somewhere in his mind he could hear the echo of his own words . . . the whole thing so tenuous to begin with that he could not pin-point exactly what it was that his memory was trying to recapture, only knowing that it was important that he should—and willing to believe now that Punch in exasperation had shouted to him from some distant aerie not to be such a bloody, blind fool. And then the phrase swimming clear int
o his consciousness . . . each Spring with a knitting needle. And then that to be topped at once with Punch’s written words . . . look in that place where we used to each . . . And at once he was there; and within ten minutes had proof for he went down to the back hall with its long key board, each set neatly labelled, and the hook under Dovehouse barren of any key.
As it would be if Punch had hidden anything there for he would have taken it into safer keeping. Not that it was all that much safer. It had been put on the key ring in the cut glass bowl in Punch’s bedroom. Knowing Mrs Shipley to be busy with breakfast he had gone to the dove house and unlocked the door and had had to stand and let the dust and feathers settle as the birds had thrashed their way around and out of the house, only a few staunch early nesting hens holding their place, and on the small stage half-way up the house had found a large cardboard carton tightly taped and a medium-sized old suitcase, locked, but he guessed the key to be found where he had already found the dove house key.
He had left the cardboard carton and the case where they were, locked the house, and gone into breakfast, knowing that there was nothing to be done until he had the place to himself after dinner. But the gift, he knew, had been hers . . . first the drawing and then her asking how the birds were culled. His gratitude was not to be denied. He drove to Leominster, bought flowers, and took them to her.
* * * *
At four o’clock that afternoon Kerslake, summoned to Quint’s room, stood at the window. Although the sun shone clear from the western sky a fierce spring shower was pockmarking the surface of the lake and with the sun’s help putting a fierce burnish on the blooms of the stately tulips in their beds. Listening to Quint he found himself wondering if the man had long sensed some of his feelings for Georgina Collet and was now—as sometimes in the past he had—taking a sadistic but polite pleasure in making him uneasy. Not that anything in his, Kerslake’s, manner showed it, but then Quint had little need for outward marks of emotion; a man’s silence or stillness often spoke plainly to him. In his own thoughts and emotions Kerslake acknowledged a variety of reactions and made no attempt to curtain off his imageries or his sharp jealousies. It was a new situation to him, surprising him, and testing him—though he had no doubt of the final resolution of this passing weakness.
The Satan Sampler Page 19
