I was by no means clear what the time factor had to do with it and said so, but she headed me off, strengthening my impression that she was deliberating some plan of her own that directly or indirectly involved me and perhaps both of us.
“It all adds up to what we were saying the other day, Jan,” she chattered. “The local rag is all right in its way, but it’s … well, it’s stuffy and parochial. It can never give you the chance to develop the real you, if you see what I mean? Do you remember that talk we had years ago, up in the tower, when I told you the kind of man I admired?”
I remembered it far better than she imagined; I remembered every last word.
“I know you still prefer the Scotts of the Antarctics,” I grumbled, reflecting that, in spite of all the bold resolutions I had made on that winter’s afternoon, I had done little enough in the intervening period to model myself upon the heroic lines she demanded. True, I had learned to ride, learned to speak French and risen from furniture delivery boy to acting editor of a weekly paper with a circulation of about five thousand, but I was sure that all this fell far short of her exacting standards.
“I gather you’re in favor of selling the shares,” I said, “but how about the job itself? I shall have to make up my mind soon and it seems to me that one thing is dependent on the other.”
“Not necessarily,” she argued. “Sell out, keep the money in a deposit account and say you’ll stay on and run the paper just as long as you’ve a mind to, with a month’s notice on your side only!”
“They won’t wear that,” I protested. “It’s far too onesided.”
She stopped and caught hold of my hand, laughing and holding her head on one side.
“Oh Jan, Jan,” she chuckled, “you’re the world’s worst when it comes to business! Can’t you see this nephew is just drooling to get full control of that potty little outfit and that he’ll agree to anything, so long as you part with your holding?”
“Suppose that’s true,” I said, “doesn’t it indicate that he’ll get rid of me the moment he gets his hands on them?”
“Well it might, but I doubt it. You’re a jolly good reporter and it wouldn’t be at all easy to find anyone to do all you do for the pittance you get. And even if it does, what matters? What can you lose, apart from the few pounds a week they pay you? You might have started something else by then anyway, so do it—do it, Jan—sell out but don’t be stupid enough to sign any contract about staying on as an employee, d’you hear me?”
She said this so aggressively that I was quite convinced that she was holding something sensational up her sleeve, something that had a direct bearing on the subject we were discussing. I knew her sufficiently well, however, to realize that no amount of probing on my part would persuade her to divulge until the suitably dramatic moment arrived.
“I know you’re up to something, Di,” I told her, “and I don’t pretend to know what, but since we’ve gone this far we might as well go the whole damn way. I love you and I’m going to marry you—how or when I don’t know, but somehow, someday, and not all the obstacles your people will put in the way are going to make a jot of difference in the end! I haven’t harped on this subject before because I didn’t think you were settled enough to talk about it, but you’re more yourself again this afternoon than I ever hoped you’d be when I fetched you back here. Fine! I’ll do what you suggest. I’ll even explore the possibilities of getting a farming course at the Munhayes Agricultural College, over the river, but if I do then I think you owe me two things, one following on the other.”
“Well?” she said, looking a good deal surprised but not, I thought, in any way put out by plain speaking.
“First I’ve got to know if you really want to marry me, soon or a long way ahead, I don’t give a damn which. Secondly, if the answer is what I hope it is, I’m jolly well going to speak to your father and tell him the truth about how things stand between us!”
Laughter still lurked about the corners of her mouth.
“Jan,” she said, her eyes dancing, “that must be about the fourth or fifth proposal I’ve had from you. I’m beginning to lose count!”
“I’m not joking, Di,” I told her, stubbornly. “I want to know exactly how you feel about it, for since you’ve grown up I’ve never honestly known whether you’re serious, half-serious, or playing a long-winded game of bluff for both of us. Sometimes I thought I knew—that time after the dance, and again on the island, and again on your birthday, but every time something crazy happens. Now that I’ve got to make a decision about the paper I want something a bit more solid to decide me one way or the other.”
She stopped walking then and stood looking at me, one leg crooked, with the sole of her shoe pressed against the last Scots fir in Teasel Wood.
We had now reached the point where the little rivet curved sharply westward, biting deep into the fringe of Foxhayes Common and forming a gully screened by young poplars, dwarf elms and flowering hawthorn. The water here was very shallow and the little shingle beach that sloped from the river bed to the sandstone overhang was as colorful as a fairy-tale bower. Primroses, periwinkles, windflowers, celandines and huge glowing dandelion grew there, against the whitish-green pattern of hedge buds. It was a favorite place for the blackbirds of which there were vast numbers in this part of Sennacharib. Their pipings rose shrilly above the steady wash of the stream and the whisper of Teasel firs. The inevitable buzzards were about: I had already seen them twice that afternoon. and now they were showing off over the distant larch wood, two wheeling, drifting specks, trying to pretend they were indifferent to admiration of their aerobatics.
After a long moment Diana took my hand and led the way down the cattle ford to the grassiest part of the beach under the hedge. There had been little or no rain for a month and the grass, facing sunwards, was as dry as straw.
“I’ve been a pig to you, Jan,” she said, seriously, sitting and hugging her knees, “and you shall have something more solid, as you say, even though it does sound a little like another helping of treacle pudding. Sit down, take that Jan Riddish scowl off your face, and listen!”
She waited while I sat down beside her. “Nothing the Doones could do would stop me loving you more than I’ve ever loved anyone, so hang on to that for a minute and give me time to sort out my thoughts. First of all, I’m going to town again … no”—as I opened my mouth to protest—“not for good and not even for a week, but there’s something I must do up there, something that has a bearing on us. It’s not the slightest use pestering me to tell you what it is because it’s still in the air and you’ll have to trust me just once more, for three or four days, do you understand? As regards the sale of shares, don’t do a thing until I get back, but keep it simmering. Tell them you want a day or so to think it over. If my idea amounts to anything, and I’m almost certain it will, then that little business will solve itself and we can settle the rest in five minutes.”
“Is that all?” I demanded, as suddenly she shot out her legs and lay back, clasping her hands behind her head and looking as if she was done with talking and intended to luxuriate in the warmth of the sun.
“No, Jan, but it’s all I’m going to say about business matters. I’ve got a lot more to add about loving you and needing you. I’ve been several kinds of a bitch to you over the last few years, and although I’m sorry for that, because you’ve been so wonderful to me particularly, when I was cracking up, I’m not promising that I’ll ever be any different, because I know jolly well I won’t be, not until I get the middle-aged spread, and by that time you won’t care, because you’ll be too busy reminding yourself that I wasn’t always lined and stringy, or bulging and shapeless. There’s something else—I wouldn’t admit it to anyone but you—I’m like I am, not because of Mother and the way she’s tried to push me since I was so-high, but simply because wildness and unpredictability are part of me. I’ve only got to be told that I must do something when a little imp pops up inside me and says ‘I’ll be damned if you do!’ and that goes
for settling down, and saying good-by to being young.”
All this had the effect of relaxing me, and I chuckled.
“Don’t talk as if you were getting in line for the Old Age Pension,” I joked, but she was not disposed to share my mood and continued, very solemnly:
“I’m serious, Jan! I’m not the same as most people our age, not at all the same. Every person our age is frightened of growing old, I imagine, but with me it’s not just the fear of growing old but the fear of growing up, and it’s not simply worry either, it’s a kind of blind panic that gives me nightmares. Sometimes, when I’m away from you, it gives me such a dreadful feeling of depression that I could run out and jump over Nun’s Head!”
She said this so earnestly that it was impossible to tease her. In a way, indeed, I recognized it as the truth, a limited truth, for the fear she spoke of was all mixed up with the freedom of wealth as well as freedom to remain irresponsible, to go where she liked, say what she liked, and, if necessary, ride roughshod over all standards of behavior in her own world as well as mine.
“I daresay I’ll grow out of this silliness sometime, and maybe it’s as much a stage as every other stage a woman goes through from the pony craze onwards,” she went on, “but in the meantime, and because I love you so much, Jan, I want to … well … to kind of insure against it in my own special way. What I’ve got in mind is a kind of insurance, as I hope you’ll see after I’ve been up to London and back.”
I chewed a grass stem, waiting for her to continue, but she fell silent and when I looked at her again I saw that her eyes were troubled and that her hands, freed from the clasp that had given her so relaxed a pose, were now nervously plucking at the leaves of some periwinkle stalks that clustered beside her. Suddenly, with a movement that was a kind of reflex, she twisted on her side and threw her arms around me.
“Jan, dear Jan! Don’t ever leave me, not altogether! Not for good! Always come back, always be there! And love me now, Jan, love me in this heavenly place! Let it be a sort of marriage, our marriage, in Sennacharib! That would mean so much more to me than all the fiddle-faddle ordinary people have to go through … just love me, and make it certain, no matter what happens!”
I was to recall and ponder on that final qualification a great deal in the future, but I hardly heard it at that moment. My love for her and for the place we were in now mingled like two great streams, converging after independent courses down the steep hill. I gathered her up and covered her face with kisses, straining her to me as though we would merge ourselves with the very soil and fibers of the bank. It was much more than desire on my part, it was a consummation of all the years of longing and hoping and scheming to possess her. It was as she had demanded, a marriage before the altar of Sennacharib, a ceremony in which the setting assumed a personality, for as we clung together the hills and woods and valleys of Sennacharib seemed to reach out green and golden arms to enfold us in a vast, sensual embrace.
So vivid was this impression that to me the physical act was almost insignificant. It was immeasurably transcended by a spiritual accomplishment that gave me a sense of possessing her far more completely than anything stored in my memories.
We lay there in one another’s arms until the sun passed beyond the big larch wood and its warmth left us for the estuary on the far side of the hill.
Then at last, we climbed back to the footpath and went along under the steep edge of Teasel Wood to the steppingstones, saying nothing and, for my part, conscious of nothing but a surfeit of tenderness and gratitude.
Chapter Ten
AFTER THAT events followed one another with the speed and improbability of a dream; indeed, in some ways the period that followed was more dreamlike than real in that I lost all sense of time. Even now days and weeks are jumbled together and events group themselves in what I know to be a perverse and inaccurate sequence.
Diana went to London on Monday, promising to return by the weekend at the latest but probably before. On Wednesday morning the phone rang in the office and when I answered it a soft, slightly sibilant voice asked to speak to Mr. John Leigh. When I told the caller that I was the person he sought there was a long pause; then the voice apologized rather gravely, and went on:
“This is Gayelorde-Sutton here, speaking from Heronslea.”
I was so surprised that it took me a moment or so to recover but the caller had evidently anticipated this, for he allowed a period of grace. I could imagine him sitting there, erect in the study chair, his big head balanced on the long, thin neck, his mild eyes blinking at nothing.
“Are you sure I’m the person you want?” I asked at length, and when the voice assured me that this was so, I had to fight down a brief spasm of panic. It was no more than a spasm, for almost at once fear was succeeded by irritation and finally by a spurt of defiance. I felt that I had had more than enough of the Gayelorde-Suttons and their feudalistic notions. I was sure of Diana and that was all that mattered. If her father wanted a showdown then he could have one, and her mother too if she was standing behind her husband’s chair, making the bullets that he was told to fire.
“Well?” I demanded, bluntly. “And what can I do for you, Mr. Sutton?”
His response disarmed me. If anything the voice was milder and more amiable than before.
“Ah, Mr. Leigh—I—er I—wonder if you would be good enough to call at Heronslea at your own convenience, and perhaps have a drink with me?”
“Well … yes,” I managed to stutter, “I should like to, Mr. Sutton. I could come now if that suited you.”
There was a flicker of enthusiasm or possibly relief.
“You could? Splendid! I’ll expect you in half an hour, shall I?”
“Yes,” I said and only just prevented myself adding “sir.”
I backed out the old Morris and drove to Shepherdshey at about twenty miles an hour. I wanted time to think. I had known this family now for a number of years but this was the first occasion I had exchanged a word with Diana’s father. I had no real quarrel with him, for as far as I was aware he had taken no active part in his wife’s callous treatment of Diana after the island episode. From what I could piece together from Diana’s conversations about her parents, he was the purely passive force in the ordering of her life. She had often spoken of him contemptuously, as a man hopelessly under his wife’s thumb, and I remembered now how helpless and pathetic he had looked when they hoisted him up on that big horse at the Heronslea meet. Quite apart from the summons, I was surprised to learn that he was in the West Country, having taken it for granted that Diana had gone to see him in London, and I could not imagine why he should suddenly take it into his head to invite me into his house for a drink, as though I were one of his daughter’s friends whom Mrs. Gayelorde-Sutton approved and accepted. It occurred to me that this might be the result of Diana’s “something concerning us,” and that perhaps she had said something that caused him and his wife to hurry down to Devon in order to interview me, but I dismissed this at once; his manner on the phone had certainly not been that of an irate father, driven by a nagging wife to take the offensive.
I drove up the main approach and parked the car beside Gayelorde-Sutton’s Bentley. Limousine and two-seater looked like a vehicular parody of the picture “Dignity and Impudence.” I was hoping to demonstrate my determination by a fierce tug on the bell chain, but I was cheated of this by the sudden appearance of Mr. Gayelorde-Sutton on the doorstep. He had evidently been awaiting me and had come out as soon as he heard the car. We shook hands, casually on my part, limply on his, and crossed the hall to the study adjoining the pretty room that I remembered as being Mrs. Gayelorde-Sutton’s morning room.
What struck me as unusual was that there seemed to be no servants about the place. Inside the study it was very quiet, so quiet indeed that I could hear a farm tractor bubbubbing on the arable slope south of Teasel Wood almost a mile away. Mr. Gayelorde-Sutton’s manner was so subdued that I thought at first that he was giving me the silence tre
atment and hoping thus to put me at a disadvantage. When I looked at him more closely, however, I soon realized that he was by far the more nervous. His hand shook as he poured a brandy from a Waterford decanter and his aim with the soda-water siphon was grossly inaccurate.
“You’ll have brandy, Mr. Leigh?” he said, suddenly.
“Thank you,” I said, sitting on a ribbon-backed chair near the tall window. I felt I could do with a brandy, and his was a very generous one.
He took his glass over to the desk, set it down and stood stiffly beside one of the bookcases. It was several years since I had seen him and the very first occasion that I had had an opportunity to study him at close quarters.
At this range the size of his head and thinness of his neck did not appear so ludicrously unlikely, but the overall impression he gave was one of timid, secretive flabbiness. Face to face with him it was impossible to be awed by his presence, and I remember thinking how strange it was that a man with such a nervous disposition and possessing such an undistinguished physique had made his way so successfully in the city jungle. Yet when you thought about this perhaps it wasn’t so strange. It was easy to imagine him sitting in board rooms listening to loquacious chairmen and accountants, saying nothing, blinking, drumming his long fingers, and then going away and sorting through the information he had acquired, filing it, weighing it up, discarding all irrelevancies before making a few telephone calls and going home the richer by several thousand pounds. He was the kind of man who would neither encourage nor discourage people but would let them talk and talk and writhe under his stolidity. Then he would use them, laughing drily at their weaknesses, so less apparent than his own but infinitely more vulnerable.
Perhaps I have been unfair to him. These were my first impressions and they were to be modified greatly as the interview proceeded. The moment my stubbornness emerged he became more human, and I think I helped to thaw him by taking the offensive.
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