Lucy Carmichael

by Margaret Kennedy

  “Spring shall come, come again…”

  Suddenly everything went flat and her spirits came tumbling down. Comus was, after all, merely another job of work. It might be quite pretty, quite a success, but then it would be over, and then she would do something else, and then she would do something else, and then she would be old, and then she would die. Whither was she bustling so busily, year after year, and why did she bustle? What did she want?

  It must be the spring, she decided. The darned old spring which was supposed to cheer people up, but which could make one feel lonely and wasted. Was she never to be wildly happy? Never give wild happiness to anybody? Spring came along and other people were happy. Other girls were married. Other girls went courting. Other girls had a tumble in the barn or at least got kissed. But not Lucy! Oh, no! Lucy merely bustled about looking for car parks and would go on doing that for fifty springs until she bustled herself into her grave.

  Then worms shall try

  That long-preserved virginity….

  The grave’s a fine and private place,

  But none, I think, do there embrace.

  She shivered, as the words passed through her mind, and thought suddenly of McNab. Where was he now? Still probably in the ottoman, where she had tossed him on that night which she had thought to be the last of her maidenhood. Poor little old McNab! And poor old Lucy, who had once been that artless child.

  A Ravon Roadster came roaring through the forest, braked violently, and slowed to a standstill a little way beyond her. Its occupant climbed out and walked back. She had known that he would, as soon as she recognised the car. They had not met since the Christmas party and it was said that he had been in the United States. She watched him, as she sat on the log with the daffodils in her lap and her long legs stretched out in front of her.

  “Can I give you a lift?” he asked, as he came up.

  “No, thank you,” said Lucy. “I’m waiting for the bus to Ravonsbridge.”

  “I could run you back to Ravonsbridge in five minutes.”

  She shook her head.

  “Better not,” she said. “If I’m seen driving around in your car, they’ll all have their eyes on sticks. Have you forgotten the Christmas party?”

  “No,” said Charles, and sat down on the log beside her.

  Sit on a log and wish for a man, thought Lucy, and along one comes. What a pity I don’t love him. What a pity he is not the man. Such millions and millions of men in the world, and lots of them very nice, and I daresay the man is in the Antipodes.

  “Lucy!”

  Ho! Lucy! We’re coming on!

  “I was thinking about you as I was driving along. And then I saw you.”

  What does a girl say to that? Rickie could do better. My dear Charles, your brains is dead — and you with a First in Greats!

  “One often does,” she said. “Think of a person like that, I mean, for no reason, and then suddenly meet them.”

  “Yes,” agreed Charles. “Or they telephone.”

  Imbecile! Melissa was talking through her hat about his love life; he can’t ever have had any.

  “Lucy! I wish you’d look at me,” cried Charles in desperation.

  She turned and looked at him and was moved by his expression.

  “You’d much better not think of me,” she said gently, “if it makes you unhappy.”

  “I know.”

  He had been trying not to think of her for months, with varying success. He was sure that he would do well to put her right out of his mind. She was lovely and strange and agitating, but he did not want to turn his life into a three-ring circus.

  “Were you … waiting for anybody …?”

  “Yes.”

  And if he’s in the Antipodes, thought Lucy, he’s just under my feet probably. Just several thousand miles beneath my feet, upside down, making love to an Australian girl. Oh! I could make a better world than this one with my eyes shut!

  “Who?” demanded Charles, seared by jealousy.

  “Unfortunately, I don’t know,” said Lucy. “They’ve got rather a long way to come, and are taking their time about it. Do you hear a distant growling? That’s my bus, changing gears on the opposite hill. It’ll be here in three minutes, full of people with their eyes on sticks. So please drive on.”

  “Look at me again first?” he entreated.

  She looked at him again. It was a shame that he should feel so miserable. Poor Charles! Leaning over, she kissed him, thinking that, if a kiss would cheer him up, no harm would be done, and feeling guilty about the Blue Danube.

  “Oh, Lucy!”

  He returned her salute with ardour. And now nicely!

  Melissa was right after all, thought Lucy. He’s had a lot of practice. And then she thought: It’s catching! And then she was sorry that the bus would be coming so soon.

  “You must go,” she said, pushing him away. “That’s my bus just coming round the corner.”

  There was no time for him to get to his car again. He retreated into a thick screen of holly bushes just behind them. The bus came growling up, was hailed by Lucy, and stopped. In she jumped and it started again. When it had gone, Charles emerged from his grove. The ground by the log was strewn with wild daffodils. In her agitation she had dropped and forgotten them.

  *

  Not until the bus emerged from the forest did Lucy begin to recover any sort of equanimity. The discovery that Charles, whom she did not love, could arouse such feelings made her wonder if she had ever known herself. But as her racing heart subsided, and her face grew cooler, she decided to blame the spring, and the thoughts which spring had put into her mind when he chanced to come by. Also he had, as Emil would have said, technique. She had never believed in it much before, since she was sure that nothing of that sort could evoke the tender passion she had felt for Patrick Reilly, hitherto her yardstick for love. Now she was bound to admit that it could evoke something, inferior perhaps, but far from unpleasant. She could not be sorry that she had kissed Charles, sitting on that log, for the next few seconds had been as good as a first-class ski run.

  She concluded that she must have a very sensual nature and was surprised at herself for not being shocked by this. But when she had got back to Sheep Lane, and made herself a cup of tea, she resolved to meet Charles no more. It was with something of an effort that she took this decision, for the mere thought of seeing him again made her pulses beat more quickly. But if so much could happen to her in two minutes, less than two minutes, she might, on some other occasion, completely lose her head. And that, she felt, would be treason to Lady Frances.

  For it would be known. Even if she did not lose her head, some blasting publicity would be certain to fall upon any dealings which she might have with Charles. The Christmas party had taught her what to expect, and she knew from experience her own inability to conceal anything. However careful they were, some Ravonsbridge gossips would notice them together. Nothing would have power to wound Lady Frances more cruelly than a scandal connected with the Institute, nor could any scandal underline the failure of Matt Millwood’s hopes more cynically. Contemptuous things enough were said about that mausoleum of good intentions. Matt’s wife was accused of exploiting it in order to give the town’s money to her toadies. But nobody had as yet found an opportunity for describing it as a seraglio for Matt’s son.

  If it were anybody else, thought Lucy, one might throw one’s bonnet over the windmill, in a lonely and restless moment. But in this case no bonnet could be thrown without hitting Lady Frances in the eye, and she could not do this to a woman whom she so much liked and respected.

  She washed up her tea-things and forbade herself ever to think of him again, ever to let her mind rest on those moments by the roadside. It should be easy, for she had learnt how to rule her thoughts. And if he tried to see her she would tell him quite frankly why it could not be. He would be very unhappy, but not so miserable as he might be, later on, if he broke his mother’s heart.

  She began to frame
sentences in her mind and then realised that she was looking forward to the delicious agitation of another interview. This would not do. This was thinking about Charles, which she must not do. She must let that occasion look after itself when it arrived, and what she had to say was very simple; she need not plan her speeches, in order to have an excuse for imagining replies from him. She must not think about him. She must get on with Comus.

  The habit of concentrating was easy to her. She got on with Comus for an hour until a knock brought her to the street-door. Charles again!

  Help ho! My virtue! thought Lucy, so much flustered that she was on the point of giggling. But she might as well get it over now, as he was here. She conducted him to her sitting-room in silence and shut the door. His first words so much astonished her that she sat down on a small hard chair close to the door, because her knees gave way and it was the nearest.

  “Lucy! We must get married! You must marry me!”

  “What?” cried Lucy, collapsing onto the chair.

  “I’ve been thinking it over. I’ve been driving about. Ever since you left me. I’ve been driving about. I’ve been thinking. We must marry. I can’t possibly live without you, and you … I believe you’d very soon feel as I do if …”

  “But Charles! We aren’t suited. It would never do. We …”

  “I know. I know we aren’t suited. That’s what has been holding me back. But I’ve been thinking it over. There’s no other way.”

  “But I don’t love you,” expostulated Lucy.

  “Oh, yes, you do. Oh, yes, I think you do.”

  Lucy jumped up and evaded him.

  “No, no,” she said. “Sit down here, by the fire, and tell me calmly. You … you’ve taken me so entirely by surprise. Since this afternoon, of course, I … but I never thought for a minute you’d ever want to marry me.”

  “But will you?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t think I love you. I don’t understand. I can’t imagine us…. married…. I can’t see how you can imagine it.”

  He took the chair she pointed out to him, and she sat down opposite. After a moment of staring at her, he began again, more collectedly, but still with considerable agitation.

  “I can see that we aren’t suited, in a way. You are very talented, very gifted; you have a great career in front of you. A conventional marriage would never be enough for you. You’d loathe having to live at Cyre Abbey, for instance.”

  “I don’t know that I should,” said Lucy, surprised. “If that were all, I should like to live at Cyre Abbey.”

  “Oh, no, you’d be stifled there,” Charles assured her.

  I should go into the glass-houses and eat the peaches, thought Lucy. And then she remembered that the Millwoods never ate the peaches, which were reserved for the Poor when they had shingles.

  “Well … perhaps …” she conceded.

  “Whereas, in London …”

  “Oh, I hate London!”

  “No, but listen, Lucy. I’ve thought it all out. You needn’t give up your career. You could have your own theatre. I’ll finance it. You can have your own theatre and put on any plays you like.”

  “I thought you said … marry you …” said Lucy, bewildered.

  “Oh, yes, marry me as well. We’ll have a flat, and I’ll come backwards and forwards between London and Ravonsbridge.”

  “But why couldn’t I live in Ravonsbridge?”

  Charles was perfectly determined that she would not like to live in Ravonsbridge. He did not want her in Ravonsbridge where, he dimly perceived, she might join forces with his mother and badger the life out of him. He intended that all this vehement vitality, which repelled as much as it enthralled him, should be diverted elsewhere. He continued to talk about her gifts, her talents and her career for some minutes until she interrupted him.

  “But Charles, you know you’ve got me all wrong. I’m not a career girl at all. And I’m not particularly gifted. And I’m not all that devoted to the theatre.”

  “You can’t say that. Your work on Hamlet …”

  “Was nothing out of the way. Just schoolgirl’s work. You’re deceiving yourself. Compare it with any really good production you’ve seen.”

  Charles visibly wavered and then looked obstinate.

  “I think you did a very distinguished piece of work.”

  “I’m quite bright sometimes. I took the Ravonsbridge job because it was a job, and I do it as well as I can. I have to earn my living. But … but if I married, I’d want to be a wife.”

  A wife was just what Charles did not want, though he was resolved to marry Lucy honourably in the sight of God and man before setting her up in her theatre.

  “If you can do so well, in such a short time, with the material you have here,” he told her, “you ought to try your hand at something bigger.”

  “No, Charles. What on earth would I do with a London theatre? I wouldn’t know the first thing … everybody would laugh. You must be demented. And I wouldn’t like it. I wouldn’t be interested. You talk of the material here … it’s just that which does interest me.”

  “What? Owen Rees? And that girl with the accent … Kitty?”

  “Not exactly. It’s Ravonsbridge. It’s trying to see how much can be done by quite ordinary people in a small place. You don’t understand that?”

  “No. I can’t say that I do. Ravonsbridge is a provincial backwater.”

  “Your father didn’t think so.”

  “And you’ve not been here two years. I can’t understand this devotion to it.”

  Lucy pondered, crouched in the firelight, while Charles racked his brains for an alternative solution, should she really reject his plan.

  “If it wasn’t for this currency nonsense,” he said regretfully, “we could have lived in Paris. You’d like Paris.”

  “There are some soft currency countries,” suggested Lucy. “Australia and South Africa. You might park me in Cape Town or Melbourne.”

  “I’m not trying to be funny,” said Charles, when he realised that she must be laughing at him.

  “You mayn’t be trying, but you’re succeeding. You don’t really want to marry me one bit. You want me for a sort of honourable concubine.”

  “Oh, no, no!”

  “Oh, yes! But listen, Charles. Let me try to explain about Ravonsbridge, because that will show you the sort of person I am, and how little we should suit. You see … I was very unhappy when first I came here.”

  She paused and looked up at him. He nodded.

  “You know about that?”

  “Yes. My sister told me. Penelope.”

  “Oh, dear. I suppose a lot of people know really. It can’t be helped.”

  “I’d known half the story already,” he said. “I’d known that Mrs. Lucas snatched Reilly away from some young girl he was going to marry. It’s one of the stories people tell about her. But I’d never heard the name of the girl. And I had had the idea that you’d been in love with a botanist.”

  “So he was.”

  “What? Reilly? I thought …”

  “He’d have been a botanist if I’d married him.”

  Charles felt a slight tremor of sympathy for Reilly.

  “Didn’t it put you off me?” asked Lucy.

  “No.”

  Yes it did, she thought, looking at him. Yet he’s ready to marry me. He must want me very much in his way, poor Charles!

  “Well, so I was unhappy,” she repeated, “and this is the sort of person I am; I suppose I am very feminine, but I can’t bear not to have somebody to love and work for. I’m the very opposite of a career girl, if you only knew. But I had nobody. So I suppose I kept myself up by making a sort of romance out of your father.”

  “Good God!” said Charles.

  “I know it sounds hen-witted.”

  “But you never knew him!”

  “Mr. Meeker tells me about him.”

  “Oh, Meeker goes in for hero-worship. My father was a great man, certainly. But
he was human. He had his faults.”

  “I should hope so. But I was fascinated by his ideas for the Institute, trying to guess what they had really been, and trying to carry them out.”

  Charles frowned impatiently. The Institute bored him to frenzy; he had never sympathised with his father’s ideas, and the continual chatter about it, which pervaded Cyre Abbey, had driven him to loathe the very thought of the place.

  “When quite ordinary people get together to do anything for its own sake,” said Lucy, “they sometimes do something remarkable. That’s what I had in mind with Hamlet. I knew it wouldn’t be very much; nothing near to what your father wanted. But if something real and lively could be started, it might grow; and then if somebody great turned up, some day, they could make something great out of it. I … I wanted to serve your father by getting something started.”

  “If you’d prefer to run some amateur group …”

  “No, no, no! I’m trying to explain the sort of person I am. If I marry a man I’ll want to … to help him and use all my brains and capacities to help him, in anything he wants to do with his life. I’d be quite happy in a small town, or the North Pole, or anywhere, as long as I could share his life. But that’s just what you don’t ask, Charles.”

  “There’s nothing in my life that could interest you. Very little in it interests me.”

  “I know. That’s why we aren’t suited. Honestly, now we’ve got it straight, I find it easier to say I won’t marry you than …”

  “Than what?” he asked quickly.

  “Say I won’t see you again. I was going to say that when you came in. It will only be the Christmas party over again, and people will talk, and that wouldn’t be good for the Institute.”

  “Oh, damn the Institute.”

  Charles wished that a bomb would fall on the Institute, and said so. He was growing angry with her and less in love than usual. The wild, strange quality in her, which so troubled him, was in abeyance. When he saw her sitting in the forest, with her tumbled curls and the flowers in her lap, he had felt that the world could not hold her equal. But now she sat beside the fire prosing away like a governess about the Institute.