A Note in Music

by Rosamond Lehmann

  She gave Robin a pat, and, passing by David, lightly smoothed his head.

  Was it fond and foolish to imagine, seeing the white embossed moulding of his forehead and his dreamy eyes, that he was going to be different from other little boys? If David were to be an artist, his father would understand and cherish him; Gerry would be appeased in his long gnawing grievance against the world.

  But she sighed. Robin had asked her yesterday whether it was at all likely that he could ever have a pony, and she had not been able to give an encouraging reply.

  She went down again, to the little sitting-room in which her treasures—her piano, her old embroidered screen, her walnut tallboys, her Chinese plates and bowls—were perforce huddled together in the small space among more necessary objects, and did little more than serve to make the room look overcrowded.

  Gerald had put aside his books and was lying back in his armchair. She went to him and whispered, close to his ear: “Relax. … Relax. … Relax.”

  She put her hand on his contracted forehead and he closed his eyes. After a moment he put up his hand and gripped hers, and she felt some of the tautness begin to yield and flow out of him.

  She took her work-basket and sat opposite him and began to sort stockings and wools.

  He would be all right now. There would be no scenes, no explanations after all. After supper she would ask him to read aloud to her, and they would sit one on each side of the fire, looking what they were—a harmonious couple.

  Yes, she thought, hidden deep beneath the discord, known only to each other, was the place of union where husband and wife could still pluck from each other the essential note. Her marriage was a reality, a success, in spite of all.

  The secret was to look to the present chiefly, the future a little, the past scarcely at all; to let old days depart in peace, to break the last threads of irrecoverable associations; to give up trying to alter people who would be, to their lives’ end, unalterably themselves; to fill up every day with a variety of practical occupations; to remember, with harshest self-discipline, that Jimmy was dead and God knows where, well out of reach, probably nowhere; and that her concern must be with the living. …

  Yes, he had reminded her, that boy: not really in the least like, of course, but he was the same sort of person. … What about his morals, she wondered: he was so debonair and independent; it would take a lot to cramp his style. What could he and Grace have made of their tête-a-tête. … It really had been funny to see Grace sitting with his coat on her lap, and him sprawling beside her at his ease.

  What joy, what utter bliss if one had come suddenly upon a young man walking alone, ahead of one in the dusk, and he had turned round and been, not that one, but Jimmy. It would not have seemed so over-poweringly­, insanely impossible—not for a moment … quite, quite natural: simply the instantaneous, long-deferred re-establishment­ of sanity, faith, truth. She would have cried out “Oh! … I knew …” and then she … what peace and …

  She took up a half-knitted stocking and carefully counted the stitches.

  “Thanks most awfully,” said the young man. “That’s marvellous.” He bent down and examined the mended coat with admiration.

  “It isn’t,” said Grace with a smile. “But I think my enormous stitches will hold it together.”

  He put it on again and straightened himself.

  “Splendid,” he said.

  There was a pause; but she did not feel uncomfortable, she told herself, in spite of this phenomenal event of a strange young man in the house.

  “Well, good-bye,” he said, and he held out his hand.

  She wondered if she would ever see him again.

  “Are you going to be long here—in this town?” she said.

  “Oh, I don’t know … not very long. … Perhaps just till the autumn … it depends.”

  “I hope you won’t have to stay if you don’t like it,” she said impulsively, and blushed.

  He leaned on his shoulder-blades against the mantelpiece, and looked down at her with a kind of humorous guardedness in his expression, as if to say: “Now why should you be interested in what I do?”

  “Oh, I probably won’t stay if I don’t like it.” He repeated the words with a little laugh.

  “Be warned in time,” said Grace.

  “Don’t you like it, then?” He spoke awkwardly, as if the question had been forced out of him against his will.

  “Oh, I …” she said contemptuously, shrugging her shoulders.

  He vaguely noticed that her eyes were pretty—long and narrow and in colour a blue-green; and he wondered more vaguely still what dissatisfaction or unhappiness her laconic answer might imply. She was rather an unexpected wife for old Fairfax to have. Perhaps they did not hit it off. She was not nearly such an easy, cheerful person as the other woman, Clare’s friend.

  He said with faintly defiant gaiety:

  “Oh, well, I generally manage to enjoy myself. I rather like being in a strange place.”

  She nodded.

  He added, preparing to go:

  “Besides, spring’s coming on, thank goodness, and summer. One can’t be bored in summer.”

  “Tennis, you mean, and fishing and—” she murmured.

  “Yes. And then one can always get out into the country in the evenings and walk or bathe or something.”

  Her heavy eyes were quite wide open this time as she looked at him and said eagerly:

  “Oh, yes! I used to do that.”

  He glanced down at her, and said rather reluctantly again:

  “Not any more?”

  “No,” she said, walking with him towards the front door. “But I miss the country.”

  Her voice faded on the last words, and she stood still in the hall, staring dreamily ahead of her. They both waited.

  Odd woman, he thought—she embarrassed him. He wanted to be gone, and she seemed to be keeping him here; and he could not help a flicker of curiosity about her. He felt the weight of the things she had not said.

  At length he said awkwardly:

  “I suppose you’re fearfully busy always.” For perhaps the trouble was that she had a lot of children to look after, and never any free time.

  “Oh, no!” She looked as if the idea of her being busy amused her intensely. “I do absolutely nothing at all.” She added after a pause: “I go to cinemas.”

  “Oh, I do that,” he said. “I go to them all.”

  “So do I.”

  They laughed together.

  No, he thought vaguely, she could not be a mother. Her large-boned frame was clumsy and somehow shapeless and immature, like that of a great girl in her teens. She moved as if she had not yet quite learnt how to manage her limbs. Yet one might imagine finding something restful about her appearance, something suitable to a mother; and her voice came out of her throat in a deep amusing way.

  Hearing the young man’s voice in the hall, Annie pressed forward from the kitchen with majestic speed, with solemn alacrity, to accord him the ceremonious showing-out due to such a young man, accustomed no doubt to the best houses; and to gladden her eyes with another look at him. But Mrs. Fairfax had already opened the door and was standing beside him, looking out and exclaiming:

  “Oh, the rain! What will you do?”

  “I like it,” he said.

  “Should we lend the gentleman an umbrella?” inquired Annie earnestly, stepping forward.

  “Yes, an umbrella,” cried Grace. Of course Annie would turn up and expose her helplessness.

  “No, no, no!” he cried in disgust. He ran down the steps and stood in the downpour, looking up and laughing at them both. The light from the hall lamp was on his face, and the rain enfolded his head and shoulders in a wreath of long silvery needles.

  “Lovely,” he said. “I’ve never used an umbrella in my life.”

&nbs
p; “Nor have I,” she called. “I haven’t got one.”

  So much, she thought, for Annie, who retired with a pensive smile to the kitchen and there meditated on the reckless endearing folly of young men; and asked herself unhopefully if Mrs. Fairfax had had the sense to ask him to come again.

  “Well, good-bye,” he said.

  “Good-bye.”

  The iron gate creaked after him, and he had disappeared.

  The rain seemed to increase as she stood listening to it. It came with an enormous whispering hurry, with a solid rhythm that prevailed above the noises of the town, flattened them out, drowned them almost.

  The street lamps were like a row of blurred incandescent chrysanthemums, and beneath their light the wet tram-lines gleamed sleek and serpentine.

  Tom would be back soon now. He would be fully equipped with umbrella and burberry, and he would remove his shoes at once and put them to dry by the fire, and altogether take every precaution. … What a good thing they had not met on the doorstep. Tom would have been too pleased and surprised, too cordial. He would have talked about the right things in not quite the right way, and striven a little too hard to create an atmosphere of good chaps together.

  That boy now … probably he had never told himself that days must be got through, life must be lived to the end. He had never known that feeling which, like a dread familiar, dropped down each morning upon the waking pillow. His heart had never sunk as consciousness returned.

  It would upset him a little to know that a person was unhappy: he had a kind face. But of course he would be puzzled too; perhaps a trifle scornful. He would think there must be some simple remedy.

  If only she could find out from him. … He seemed to have a secret of mastery, of confidence, of being at home in the world. He would disregard inauspicious detail, and be lucky, and know how to manage his life as he wanted it.

  What past had shaped him, what experiences defined him so clearly? He was a creature compact of youth, but he was not a boy.

  Had he ever loved a woman, she wondered, or been loved?

  It had given her extraordinary pleasure to mend his coat, and to have him sitting there beside her. It had seemed somehow natural: a moment of saying peacefully to oneself: “this is what life is.”

  Anyway, he had enjoyed his coffee and his egg. He had been very appreciative.

  Just as he stood there in the rain, the moment before leaving, she had been brushed again with a sense of sudden but dim recognition. Now where could she have seen him before; or of whom did he remind her?

  That feeling of fear he had given her had soon passed off; but she could imagine feeling it again just as strongly next time she saw him.

  But perhaps—quite probably—she would never see him again.

  By the time he reached his lodgings he was dripping wet. He took off his clothes and flung them on the floor. No hope of a bath, of course; but he must have at least a can of hot water. He rang for Mrs. Veale, but there was no reply. And she had let the fire go out. Hateful room, he thought, looking round it: foul expression of Mrs. Veale’s festering soul. He put on his dressing-gown and crouched by the hearth, stuffing newspaper into the grate and applying to it match after match. No, it was no good: too much paper, no wood, damp coal. He desired fervently to break up all the furniture and make a roaring bonfire and burn the place down.

  All the fire-irons crashed down, and he collapsed with a smudged face among the knobs and lumps of the one armchair, and swore obscenely, aloud.

  What next?

  No, it was no good, he could not stand it, he would chuck up his chance and go. He would go abroad again, back to South America, or perhaps India this time.

  This was no life for him. It would be easy to go if the old man were not such a dear old boy: if his two sons had not been killed, so that there was nobody—as the old man so often tremulously said—but himself to carry on the name and inherit the great arduously-built business.

  Yes, but he had had quite other ideas for himself. He had told himself he would only stay if he liked it: and so he would. He had only come back because there did not seem any immediate chance of getting the capital to start out there on his own (and he must be on his own, could not stand being under authority); and because the old man kept on writing; and because … yes, really because he had been homesick, had missed England and his friends, and, chiefly, Clare. For he must admit it to himself: he was not proof against the appalling onslaughts of loneliness. Why had he come back to this damned town on a Saturday evening? Simply on the chance of finding some letters waiting. He had had none all the week except for one wretched invitation, and it was unbearable. Everybody had forgotten him. He had pictured the envelopes on his table—one from Clare, one or two from friends in London, and one other … the one he still expected by every post, although the likelihood of its arrival had long since vanished. Now he must wait in suspense till Monday.

  If there was no letter from Clare on Monday, he would wire to her and tell her off. Yes, he would. He could not stand these lodgings any longer. She must come and stay for a bit, and help him find something else. And he would buy a car somehow; and a gramophone. That would help. And he would send for his dog: it would be a rotten life for the poor chap by day, but he would smuggle him into the office or manage somehow; and have him for company in the evenings.

  His spirits rose. Now, what was he to do with himself? Saturday evening, no fire, no food.

  He would go out to an hotel and get a bath, and afterwards have a quiet dinner there. He would take a book and read while he ate. He glanced over the volumes of his library: Moby Dick, Mr. Sponge’s Sporting Tour, Tristram Shandy, The Life of Dr. Johnson, War and Peace, The Oxford Book of Prose, one or two modern anthologies of poetry, a Shakespeare, the translation of Rabelais, Milton’s Poetical Works. Oliver had read Milton aloud to him one long vacation. He remembered the voice of Oliver and the sound of Paradise Lost: he had revelled in it. Then there was South Wind and The Journal of a Disappointed Man, and a novel called Jacob’s Room, and a paper volume whose title haunted him, A l’Ombre des Jeunes Filles en Fleurs. These were Oliver’s. They had got mixed up with his own books long ago, and he had meant to return them, but he never had. He would some day—next time he saw him. He opened a cover and saw his signature, Oliver Digby, in a minute hand. Lastly there was Oliver’s own poem, just one, Transmutations, in a black and white futurist paper cover, inscribed on the fly leaf (in Greek) from the author: but the poem, unfortunately, he had never been able to understand.

  No, he did not want to read. He wanted entertainment, distraction. He would go to the Palace Hotel for a bath, and then perhaps look into the bar—gathering-place, so he had heard, of the clerks and the tarts—and see what was to be seen on a Saturday night. Then after dinner he would try a music-hall, or possibly a cinema.

  That odd woman who had asked him to tea! … Really, she and the other had looked a comic couple, sitting­ bolt upright in their incredible car. He had been absolutely aghast when he saw two women instead of some solitary male as he had hoped. But it had turned out all right. They were rather fun, and kind too, smiling away, giving­ him eggs, mending his coat. And he had got away all right, without­ any fuss; though Clare’s friend had come pretty near another invitation. Once was all right: Clare had asked him to be polite, and he had been. The queer husband­ had talked to him about travelling, and it had all been quite easy. But once was enough.

  So Hugh Miller went down to the Palace Hotel, and there, in the lounge, met Pansy, who decorously agreed to drink a glass of sherry with him.

  Afterwards they went to a popular café and dined to the strains of a jazz band so loud that conversation was mostly out of the question. He liked her small mask of white china, her mouth painted bright red, her eyes as empty, stainless, and unmoral as little blue flowers, her rounded delicate miniature figure dressed plainly and neatly all in black.
He was glad of the band, for her voice was rather awful. In between the tunes he solemnly teased her, and felt very cheerful.

  Afterwards he took her to a music-hall, and laughed at the funny man; but she considered him vulgar. During the intervals, he listened with an expression of mild benevolence to her inconsequent chatter. He could not help yawning now and then (for the day’s exercise had made him sleepy), but he nodded his head encouragingly while she told him about the cup of coffee that got spilt all over her new costume, and the pneumonia she had had last winter, and the moving dummy she had seen in a shop window rinsing clothes as an advertisement for washing soap.

  And after the show, feeling by now positively drowsy, he raised his hat and bade her a polite goodnight.

  “I’m afraid I must go,” he said. “Can I get you a taxi or something?”

  He saw her contented expression alter. He felt in his pocket for his note-case, and then held something unobtrusively out to her, and said, with his mixture of shyness and assurance:

  “Sorry. Please take this.”

  She glanced at his hand. There was a pause. Then “I don’t want it,” she said, low and hurriedly. She stood and stared up at him from her tiny height, with her sad blank face of a doll, as if there were something more she wished to say.

  “Well,” he said finally, rather embarrassed, “thank you for your company.”

  “Thank you for yours,” said she, and walked away.

  He went home and was sound asleep five minutes after he got into bed.

  The next day was a fine blowing blue and white day, and he went out of the town and tramped all day alone upon the moors, wearing his oldest tweeds, and singing, not always quite in tune, all the songs he knew.

  Part Three

  Now it was the middle of May. Spring had come in three days and nights to the North, and the last traces of the May snowstorms had vanished. Even in the midst of the town some stir from afar of orchards breaking into blossom stole upon the senses. With the evening light, spring came into the houses from streets that wore a fresh and happy air; and housewives mending their fires bethought themselves that soon might come the brief warm weeks when fires need not be lit till dusk; perhaps a brief surprise of summer heat when even after sunset an unlit grate would not seem frugal and comfortless.