Diana

by R. F Delderfield

  “What’s wrong with what we’re doing to Foxhayes Hollow?”

  “It’s chi-chi,” I said, offhandedly, “the sort of place a man would build if his idea of a farmer was of a chunky man in tweeds, buckskin leggings and a pork-pie hat.”

  “A farm doesn’t have to be a stinking midden, does it?” she said, rather snappishly.

  “No,” I said, “but it doesn’t have to be quaint and hey-down-derryish either!”

  We weren’t getting along so well and I’m afraid it was mostly my fault. The car, the sudden break from the tyranny of a weekly paper, the business I had bought, and my still-smoldering resentment of her plan to convert me into a yeoman tenant without first consulting me combined to make me sound arrogant and patronizing. I stole a glance at her as we whipped along the road and noticed that she now looked unhappy. All the gaiety she had shown as soon as she stepped off the train was gone and she seemed to be groping for words that would resolve the curiously tense atmosphere of the cramped space under the hood. I wanted very much to stop, kiss her and tell her that everything was going to be all right, providing she granted me my little triumph, but pride, or more cockiness, still held me on a tight rein.

  “What is it, Jan dear?” she said at last. “What’s the matter?”

  “You’ll see in a moment, Di,” I said, relenting a little. “Just have a little patience, five minutes’ patience.”

  She fell silent after that and made no comment when I took the left-hand fork toward Teasel Wood instead of dropping down to Shepherdshey. I was beginning to be a little anxious now and my heart was thumping. I sensed her surprise as we turned off the road and dropped into low gear to negotiate the unsurfaced lane leading down to Uncle Mark’s place. Then we were there and I was handing her out of the car and into the cottage. She looked around with a mixture of surprise and dismay.

  “Why have we come here?” she said.

  The expression of distaste on her face frightened me.

  “It’s mine—ours, Di,” I said. “That Foxhayes Hollow idea of yours is crazy. I don’t want your family to stake me and I don’t even fancy the idea of being their tenant. You ought to have discussed it with me before you did a slaphappy thing like that, and anyway, it can’t even be legal until your father approves of it!”

  Her face fell and for a moment she looked as if she were going to burst into tears; then her mouth hardened and her eyes blazed.

  “Have you sold out and spent your money on this dump?” she demanded. “Have you been idiot enough to buy those old screws from your crooked uncle and set up as a riding instructor?”

  “I’ve bought the stables, the stock and the cottage,” I said, “and even if it doesn’t look much now it will when it’s had a bit spent on it. There’s fifty acres and I won’t need more than half of it for the horses. There’s free grazing around here and I’m going to use the rest of the land for chickens. The cottage can be made very pretty and there’s a good living here, Di.”

  “A living!” she almost screamed. “An existence, you mean! Five pounds a week profit on horses and two more on eggs, if you’re lucky. You must be out of your head, Jan! Why, once Foxhayes Hollow is back in production—”

  “I don’t want Foxhayes as a bloody dowry!” I shouted, for suddenly I was hysterical with rage and disappointment. “Can’t you get it into your thick skull that I don’t want anything from your family but you?”

  She calmed down somewhat but the superior expression that replaced her angry look was not an improvement.

  “Do you really expect me to live here, like … like a Devon version of a poor white in the Deep South?” she said, calmly.

  “Yes, I did and I do!” I roared. “If what’s happened between us all these years means anything to you at all, you’d be happy to do it and help make a go of it. Damn it, you’ve always loved horses, and together we could build this place up until it was known all over the county. We could get more fields and better horses. We could do something together for once, free of all interference, and we should be doing what I always imagined you wanted to do—living together, in Sennacharib.”

  The look of disdain left her and she now stared at me with solemn, troubled eyes.

  “Jan,” she said, quietly, “this is real life. … Sennacharib was only a game!”

  It was the most savage thrust that I had ever received from her and it hurt like hell, far more than any of the old wounds that her abrupt changes of mood, her eternal unpredictability, her erratic comings and goings in my life had inflicted. For a moment I was incoherent with rage and grabbed her wrist, pulling her toward me.

  “You listen to me!” I thundered. “It might have been a game to you but it was never one as far as I was concerned! You say living here wouldn’t be practical and you. make it all sound childish and stupid, but I’m not going to let you walk out on me just like that, not after all I’ve been through on account of you! You can turn me and this place down with your mother’s brand of arrogance but you won’t forget me that easily. You’ll remember me for at least a month every time you sit down, damn you!”

  I had her fast with my left hand and with my right I reached out and snatched up a short switch nom the windowseat. It was a light, improvised crop that had been overlooked in the general turnout. I pushed hex away and flourished the crop like a dancing dervish, cutting the air with it and cursing her at the top of my voice. I was beside myself with rage and, for a brief moment, there was real fear in her eyes.

  “Jan!” she said, and her voice seemed to come from the far side of Teasel Wood. “Jan, don’t, don’t!”

  I struck her then, a single blow across her shoulders, and she shivered, pressing her hands flat against the wall and staring at me, her eyes wide with incredulity. The action did more to sober me than anything she could have said or done. I threw down the switch and for several seconds we stared at one another without moving. Then the fear left her eyes and her mouth began to pucker. She put up one hand and slowly rubbed her shoulder, without taking her eyes off me.

  “You hit me!” she whispered, so quietly that I lip-read rather than heard what she said. “You hit me, Jan … nobody, ever … nobody …”

  Her voice trailed away to nothing but her lips continued to move and her hand went on massaging the smart. Then, still without taking her eyes from me, her expression changed again, passing from utter bewilderment to a kind of savage intensity that I had never seen in the face of anyone, man or woman. The tears that had brimmed the moment before remained static in her eyes, giving them a kind of glaze and somehow magnifying them, as if I were looking at her through a powerful glass. Her mouth, which had crumpled like a child’s, twitched into a firm line and two bright spots of color glowed on her cheeks, pulsing through the make-up. Her breast was heaving and she stood so tensely that, for a moment, I thought she was going to project herself forward and fly at me, clawing and biting, but suddenly her body relaxed and her head went back, her chin shooting up like the chin of a person suddenly and immoderately amused.

  All my rage was spent. I ran to her and threw my arms around her, kissing her cheek and neck, burying my hands in her hair.

  “Oh, God, why did you make me … why, Diana …? What’s happened to us? What is it?”

  “Don’t talk, don’t say anything, Jan!” she said, and her voice sounded harsh, almost guttural. “Don’t worry—fuss—we belong—always, so take me, for God’s sake take me!”

  She began kissing me then, not as she had in the dell beside the Teasel, and not even as she had kissed me when she was Emerald in the tower, but like a predatory savage, starved and desperate. Her straw hat slipped off and was trampled underfoot and we clung together in a frenzy for how long I do not know, perhaps for a few minutes, perhaps an hour.

  At last I lifted her and set her down in the deep window seat, lowering my head to kiss her hands and wrists, fearful of breaking contact and conscious, as my lips touched her fingers, of their steady pressure on my face. Then I laid my head o
n her lap and she stroked my hair, gently and regularly, each sweep beginning at my temples and ending on the nape of my neck.

  “I was mad, Di,” I said, at length. “I felt like killing you and it scared me more than it scared you. I’ve never felt like that about anyone before.”

  “Forget it, Jan, I asked for it and I’ve always asked for it from you, right from the very beginning.”

  I looked up at her and saw that she was crying now. She looked about fourteen, no more, and I felt closer to her than at any time since we had stood together beside the island bonfire awaiting the arrival of the pilot boat.

  “I’d really set my heart on the farm,” she said, presently. “I’d got it all worked out and I felt terribly Machiavellian. It was because of that I was so beastly about this place, but I suppose my disappointment wasn’t nearly as keen as yours.” She looked around the half-furnished room. “It was a wonderful thing for you to do, quite wonderful, but then, why should I be surprised? You’ve always done things like this and I’ve always repaid you by being me.”

  She spoke very quietly and presently extricated one of her hands, opening the bag beside her and dabbing her eyes. While she applied lipstick I sat down beside her. Inside the cottage it was very quiet but outside the thrushes in Teasel Wood were singing their early evening chorus. I noticed Uncle Mark’s switch on the floor and turned my eyes away.

  “Did it hurt very much, Di?”

  “Just enough, Jan!”

  She smiled and then looked quickly away and I saw that she was blushing. “It’s funny,” she said, as though in explanation, “I’ve always heard that it’s true, though I can’t honestly say I really believed it when I read about it. Women like brutes but just in short, sharp bursts, I imagine. I’ve never wanted you so much in my life. If you’d run out of the cottage, as I thought for one awful moment you were going to, I should have run after you, shouting that you’d forgotten your stick! I wonder just how much of our trouble in the past has been due to that? I wonder if the primitive part of me is terrified of your inclination to overplay your strong suit, Jan, and it’s that that makes me want to run away every now and again?”

  “What exactly is my strong suit, Di?”

  She laughed and ran a hand down my cheek. “I told you years ago! Male gentleness—‘Jan Ridd’ gentleness—and only the really hefty men have it.”

  She got up and retrieved her hat, studying it ruefully.

  “This is a write-off, like the farm idea. Wait here a minute.”

  She went out into the kitchen and a moment later appeared beside the car. Through the window I saw her gather up the armful of flowers that I had bought and carry them into the kitchen. Then she brought a large bowlful into the living room and put them down on the table. The gesture blew on the small spark of hope that remained in my heart.

  “Why did you do that, Di?”

  She gave one of her sly, mischievous grins and began combing her hair, glancing into her handbag mirror propped against the flower bowl. As she stood there, tugging at the knots, I was reminded very vividly of how she had looked during our island adventure, when she had combed out her hair in front of a handbag mirror propped on stones.

  “I hate seeing flowers out of water,” she said, “and anyway, this place needs color.”

  “Does that mean you’ll give it a go?” I asked, trying to keep the tremor from my voice.

  She went on combing. “This is how I see it, Jan,” she said. “The thing I said that made you so angry—about Sennacharib being a game—well, that’s a fact, you know, whether you like it or not. But there are other facts, and now seems to be the time to face them. What have you and I got in common, apart from our physical appetites and kind of spiritual hunger for the few square miles in which we grew up?”

  “I believe we’re in love with each other, Di,” I told her. “That isn’t a game, or is it?”

  “You’re in love with me, Jan, I’m sure of that, and whenever we’re together in this place I’m very much in love with you. When I’m away from you I’m not, but for all that, I lust after you, the way I did just now. What qualifications have I got to marry a decent person like you? I can’t cook, I haven’t the faintest interest in housekeeping, I’d make a hopeless mother to children, and there’s nothing I can do with my hands apart from spend money like water, the kind of money you’ll never have! Mind you, I think it’s damned sporting of you to want to take me on, and you do, don’t you? You do, in spite of everything?”

  “More than anything in the world,” I said, “but not at the price of being financed by your family.”

  “Then your personal independence is more important than just marrying me?”

  I considered this. I wanted to give her an absolutely honest answer. There was no point, at this stage, in bluffing her or myself.

  “Independence wins by a short head, Di.”

  “You wouldn’t have our maintenance staff up here to renovate the place and you wouldn’t let me borrow from Daddy to restock the stable and lay out the rest of the place as a poultry farm?”

  “No,” I said, more definitely, “I wouldn’t! I’d sooner risk waiting another five years and then make another pounce, by which time, I think, you might have found out what’s worth having and what isn’t.”

  “But you’d still be willing to risk it now? You’d still risk starting us off on the wrong foot and maybe making a terrible hash of it?”

  “Yes, I would, Di! Taken all around, I believe that to be the lesser risk.”

  She was silent for a moment. Finally she tossed back her hair and carefully replaced the comb in her handbag.

  “All right, Jan dear, we’ll do it! All I’m promising is that I’ll try, I’ll try damned hard, but you’d better keep this handy. You may need it oftener than you think!”

  She picked up the crop and laid it on the table, regarding it seriously before turning and smiling down at me.

  “Failing that there’s always bed,” she added.

  I had imagined, over the years during which I had dreamed of this moment, that it would have the glow and excitement of an elopement, but now I discovered that it was far more like taking the first step of a journey into a remote corner of the world. Nothing was certain about it save that Diana was coming with me and nothing was certain about her beyond the fact that she only had to enter a room or pass within yards of me, to paint my world with the rainbow colors of joy and adventure. I did not ponder with these uncertainties but let go, happy to drift and careless of the quicksands and rapids that almost surely lay ahead. I got up and kissed her on the tip of the nose.

  “Come on, Di,” I said, “let’s go down to Shepherdshey and put up banns before you change your mind!”

  4.

  We saw the vicar, an eager, gnomish little Welshman, and put up banns for a wedding in Shepherdshey Church on the Saturday following her twenty-first birthday. She did not regard the date as being of much importance, commenting on the certainty of her mother’s continued absence in France, but I was taking no chances. If the vicar was taken aback by our frank discussion in front of him he had the good manners not to show it. He was a comparatively new man in the parish and his knowledge of the Gayelorde-Suttons was based almost exclusively on hearsay. We should have had a great deal more difficulty with the old vicar, who had been a regular diner at Heronslea.

  We had high tea at a farm over on Nun’s Head and when I took Diana back to Heronslea at dusk she suggested that we should wet the banns with a bottle of champagne.

  “Hardly anyone’s there,” she said. “Most of the staff have been given a holiday, or shuttled up to the town house for some do or other. Anyway, I bought a record for you in London, and I’d like to play it. It’s part of what you might call the Sennacharib overture, so I’m quite sure you’ll approve.”

  The big house was oddly quiet. There seemed to be no one about but two or three living-in maids. The butler and chauffeur were missing, and for this I was grateful, but it seemed to me t
hat, tonight of all nights, our healths should have been drunk by dear old Drip. When I asked Diana what had happened to her, she told me that soon after the island business Miss Rodgers had been pensioned off and now shared a bungalow with her sister in a remote part of North Wales.

  “I write to her sometimes,” she said, “but not as often as I ought. Before I found you, Jan, she was the only real friend I had. I tell you what. We’ll honeymoon up that way and look her up. I’ve been everywhere on the Continent and never even seen Wales, or the Lake District. How about that?”

  I said I should like that very much. Just to hear her use the word “honeymoon” was bliss.

  She found some champagne, of the same year as that brought up to the bedroom the night of her party, and we opened it with a good deal of difficulty and laughter. Then she put the record on and sat watching me as music dripped from their impressive-looking radio phonograph. It was a more modern recording of the record we had burned on the island to start the signal fire, and I loved her for remembering. The nostalgic effect of the harmonies was so powerful that I could have wept, and seeing that her little surprise had succeeded, she came and sat on the arm of my chair, so that her nearness, her perfume, and the wildly improbable end to a very difficult day made me almost drunk with delight.

  “I always thought those Student Corps’ bellowings were a funny kind of theme song for two crazy kids marooned on an island,” she said, “but I could never hear them afterwards without picturing you on your hands and knees in that leaky old cabin, puffing away at damp driftwood and trying to boil the kettle. Why, Jan, about a year after I was sent abroad, Yves’ family, the French people I stayed with, took me to Heidelberg and I disgraced myself at a concert by bursting into tears and refusing to explain why.”

  As the record began to run down the phone rang and she got up to answer it. I was so deep in my trance of delight that I missed the first part of her conversation and only began to pay attention when I heard her say, “Is he in the hospital, then?” in a crisp, anxious voice.

  “Who is it, Di?” I asked and, as though I had known that this phone call was going to shatter my dream as casually as a gale strips the petals from a rose, I scrambled up and hurried across to her. She made an impatient gesture, devoting her full attention to the phone.