The Echoing Grove

by Rosamond Lehmann

  ‘Oh, I don’t mind. Now you’re here.’

  Her tone seemed unequivocal, indifferent. She sat forward and lit a cigarette and while she did so Madeleine ventured a chary inspection of the room—books, ornaments, rugs, curtains, pictures. Pinned on one wall among miscellaneous paintings in oil and gouache which bore every mark of being the work of Dinah’s friends, was a profile sketch of a man’s head, life size, executed in red chalk. Rickie. A living line, distinctly a good likeness. She averted her eyes. Yet, she felt suddenly, it would have been an easy matter to comment critically: ‘That’s good of Rickie.’ One turn one click and all could have been re-established, it seemed to her, on the old footing; only irrelevancies dividing them from the old schoolroom, from hours that seemed beyond time and change secure, discussing their future fates or the behaviour of their callow suitors. She waited in silence, too confused to adopt a course in any one direction; or else the initiative, she told herself, had passed to Dinah.

  ‘He hadn’t a chance,’ said Dinah presently. She rose sharply to her feet and started to walk up and down, her head thrust forward, her hands pushed into the pockets of her overall. With every swerve in her pacing towards, away from Madeleine, her face seemed ground to a more harsh, a finer edge; and the broken sentences she laboured to bring forth fell heavily from her mouth like lumps of stone spat out. ‘They got their rotten rotting teeth in him. They’ve got the belts and ties and rings and bracelet watches. And all the words. Avant garde passwords. And the freedom of the hunting grounds. All the happy hunting grounds mapped out, combed over. Barracks, pubs, ports, tube stations, public lavatories. How could he possibly be missed! The classiest piece of goods on the market. Bought and paid for. A whizzing beauty! Really but really a knock-out. And really but really amoral and uncorrupted and out of the bottom drawer! A natural gangster, a natural innocent. A natural. An enemy of society. Done time!—actually done time—for housebreaking! Actually actively anti-bourgeois. A real moronic proletarian high-brow. And a judge of character—well, that’s true. He’s been brought up to know his onions, he looks romantic, but he isn’t—not he! Would you believe it?—he’s not interested in personal relationships! But his manners are very good, you saw that for yourself. He was prepared to do right by Bruce according to his standards, but poor old Bruce, he didn’t measure up. Rob thinks he made a monkey of him, parading him around one day and whisking him into purdah the next and sobbing and creating and turning sarcastic. It gave Rob the fair sick. Rob’s got his pride. Poor Bruce, he had none. To the end he believed in salvation. It was a clash really of two—irreconcilable—standards of unscrupulousness. Rob doesn’t know words like that. He just thinks we’re all shockers, bastards, bitches. He disapproves of our messy mushy sex lives and our filthy language. What does he like? He likes going to the pictures, and betting on the dogs, and all-in wrestling, and going dancing, and being taken for rides in supercharged open sports cars. And drinks he likes, and money: he likes to be given lots of both. And me he likes. And Selby … I can’t say I do. And he’s very fond of children; and he’s partial to a day at Brighton—and I meant to take him. We shan’t go now.’ She dropped into her chair, as if suddenly dead beat. Her lids sank. She said again: ‘He won’t come back’; then added listlessly: ‘You ought to be more careful.’

  ‘I ought …? You mean it’s my fault he’s not coming back? Why? I don’t know what you mean. I don’t understand. It all sounds mad. I …’

  Flushing darkly, Madeleine jumped up, seizing her handbag and dropping her gloves. Shocked pride, indignation contended in her with a painful sense of rejection, of mortification that seemed allied to guilt. Her enterprise, so arduous, resolved upon with such selfless intent of generosity, had foundered. She was a bungler, a humiliated figure; once again proved unacceptable by Dinah’s standards, summed up, contemptuously walked out on by one of this crew, her Betters. And suddenly as she stood pulling on her gloves, she had an explosion of memory; that hated, hating voice rasped in her ears again. ‘You’re a great big gorgeous girl, you Madeleine, aren’t you?—and of course I want to go to bed with you, damn you, but you’re not a patch on little sister, are you? Are you now? Look at her! Look at that modelling. Plain one of the family, I take it? Aha! Ha! Ha! My God, if I could get that head on canvas …’ and so on and so forth. What gross, red-kerchiefed, corduroyed, unshaven drunk of a so-called artist, utter stranger; what outrageous, beer-and-sex-stained party years ago? Dinah’s studio period, after she’d broken off her engagement and gone to live seedily on her own among raffish intellectuals; and after lying low for months started to invite us, just for the hell of it, to meet her interesting set; and Rickie became the rage and paid for all their drinks and bought at Dinah’s prompting their ghastly daubs … Amusing that Dinah should have classy relations with money, amusing to make suckers of them … Going up to Rickie at that party, wishing to say: ‘Look after me, take me away’; but able only brightly to suggest the lateness of the hour, a headache; and someone screeched: ‘Oh, my dear! What can you be getting up to? You naughty double-faced disloyal thing you—making off with Rickie. Honestly, come come now, is it cricket? He’s just your dish, we all know, but we must learn not to be a greedy girl, now mustn’t we?’ And Rickie with sheepish endearments, his eyes sliding, let me go away alone. We only had one latchkey. ‘My dears, stop fussing. Darling Madeleine, cross my heart, I’ll buckle him into his chastity belt and tuck him up myself, if it’s romps in the dorm you’re worrying about. Now don’t be governessy, there’s a good girl, I’ll brush him down, the madcap, and get him along to you fresh as a rose for breakfast.’ Thus we avoided the stigma of being the kind of stuffy bourgeois couple who left a party together. Thus amid the plaudits of the conspirators Rickie compassed his objective: swirled out, bemused, in the amorous maze, turning, turning, turning, embraced with the Belle of the Ball … The truth was under my nose like a thing under a stone. I didn’t lift the stone. It was forced up at last by what was breeding under it: the Thing, worm-generating, bedded in blood, roots, clay.

  ‘I must apologize,’ said Madeleine, ‘for not being more careful. What you wish me to feel is that my tactlessness has been inexcusable. I just hoped—expected—to find you alone. I’m sure I don’t know why. And I see that my turning up like this without warning must seem to you simply one more typical example of my utter insensitiveness and bad taste. I won’t attempt to justify it. I’ll go now.’

  ‘Oh, come off it,’ said Dinah still languidly but with a touch of something that might have been compunction in her voice. ‘You don’t need to justify it. There’s obviously something—God knows what—you felt you had to say to me; and if you’d written or telephoned beforehand I should have had the option of saying no; and you couldn’t risk that, you felt. So you plumped for shock tactics.’

  ‘They were a risk too.’ Madeleine went to the window and remained with her back turned, blindly looking out. ‘You’re not the only one to be subjected to shocks. I’m not the only one to inflict them.’

  ‘No—o …’ drawled Dinah in a judicial tone. ‘The shocks have been pretty evenly distributed.’

  ‘Your friend, for instance. His shock appears to have been total.’

  ‘Don’t take it personally.’ There was a hint of amusement in her voice; but turning from the window, Madeleine saw her face still clarified and stamped with its cold inward naught. ‘I’m sure he thought you were a smasher. If I saw him again he’d rave about you—you really embody his ideal of womanhood. But I shan’t see him again … or not for God knows how long. You see …’ She stopped, shrugged her shoulders; then said peremptorily: ‘Sit down again.’

  Madeleine resumed her chair. Dinah’s eye ran over her, an appraising glance. She said partly to herself: ‘That’s a good suit. Who made it?’—then as if cutting in on her own frivolous train of thought, continued hurriedly:

  ‘What was I saying? Yes. I’ll tell you. We were trying to start up some sort o
f a life together—look after one another, keep ourselves ticking over—see? It wouldn’t make sense to you perhaps—I can’t go into it. You see, we were drinking. We drink when we’re in trouble—very weak of us, very unconstructive. He was in trouble too. It started about three weeks ago. I was sitting on a bench in Regent’s Park; and he came by. I hadn’t seen him for a long time. He was in very bad shape, that was obvious at a glance. I called out to him and then he went stiff all over, like an animal in danger. I thought he was going to bolt. But then suddenly he recognized me, he didn’t bolt, he came straight up and sat down beside me. He’d been kicked out of—someone’s flat, for stealing; and then the police had got on to him and picked him up; and some wealthy nobleman or other he’d expected would rally to him and bail him out had refused to help him—denied him thrice, in fact, to the police, as one might have expected. All very sordid. He was hysterical and melodramatic. He was going to blow the gaff on the lot of them, give ’em the works—blackmail—God knows what.’ She paused to light a cigarette. ‘I’d been sitting there seriously considering doing myself in—bringing my life to an end. But now here was someone as lonely as myself: it seemed meant I should go on living. So I brought him back … He didn’t exactly jump at the idea; on the other hand he didn’t say me nay. And here we’ve been mewed up ever since in this eccentric fashion. Not a very solid ground plan, I suppose. But it’s been company. I love his stories, they make me laugh—he’s got such an eye, such an ear for—well, human behaviour. We understand one another. He’s fond of me, I think. Is he my lover? That’s what you’re wondering, aren’t you? Mr and Mrs Masters didn’t envisage that when they discussed my case. Flat on my back of course, among the empty bottles, but not another man sharing my enseamèd bed. I was to be put in my place—put on probation—or in a Home for Inebriates.’ With every sentence her voice grew quieter, flatter, as if driven back further, further towards total concentration of energy without release. She put a hand up, forbidding interruption. ‘I know, know. He folded up on you, he passed the buck. I saw it all, I heard it as if I was in the room with you—that night he shook off my miasmic presence and scuttled back to you crying help, help!’

  ‘Shut up! Don’t be ridiculous. He didn’t.’

  ‘Oh yes, he did.’

  ‘He was so worried …’

  ‘Oh, I know all about his worries. We both know all about them now. He betrayed me to you.’

  ‘He did not betray you. He was in despair …’

  ‘I’d sooner he’d kicked me in the teeth. Cleaner … He thought I’d cracked up, he was scared. Poor brute, who can blame him? Poor Rickie. He’s handed over, you’re to be his conscience. I never would be that! He’s the one who’s done for, not me. You can tell him so from me.’

  ‘You’re wrong, you’re mad. It’s wicked of you. It’s not like that.’

  ‘Isn’t it? What is it then? He sent you to see me, didn’t he?’

  ‘No, he did not. It was my own idea.’

  ‘Begged you to take pity on me. Lend a helping hand. Oh, and he’d make it clear you could afford to. Because at last he’s come to his senses, he’s quite himself again. You can see eye to eye about me at long last. A drunken tart, pretty well past praying for.’

  Covering her face with her hands Madeleine said: ‘I can’t stand this any more.’

  It was the low thick almost guttural sound of the voice that she meant, rather than the horror of what was being said. But the sound ceased. Dinah sat still, upright, in a characteristic attitude, knees crossed, one high-arched foot in a green leather mule slanting downwards at its own odd steep angle. Still with her face buried, Madeleine brought out with heavy sighs, reluctantly: ‘If you think that of Rickie, you can’t love him.’

  Her hands dropped down. Her eyes and those of Dinah met; they stared together, surrendering at last to one another the image, helpless and threatening, of the undone man between them. Presently Dinah said in a faint light voice:

  ‘Where is he? When is he coming back? … No, don’t tell me, what’s the use? How are the children?’

  ‘Very well.’

  ‘I hope you’re all right, all of you—will be. I’m not. But there’s nothing to be done. Thank you for coming—whatever you came for.’

  ‘Where has he gone?’ Dinah raised apathetically inquiring eyes. ‘Him, Rob.’ She hesitated over the semi-anonymous truncated name, feeling it stick suddenly in her throat, become a symbol for all she feared and hated—the levelling de-individualizing new order to whose massed ranks something in Dinah was committed.

  ‘Oh, Rob … God knows. I only know I’m sure he’s hopped it. Given me the bird.’ Her smile was wintry, wry.

  ‘But why? Aren’t you—surely you’re being morbid? Why should he?—if he and you … You talk as if he was an escaped prisoner. I thought you said it worked—that you were getting on together …’

  Passionately she wanted Dinah to have this life with Rob. If it would do to go on with, it must be restored to her: they must all be immunized against the dire possibility of Dinah being left with nothing.

  ‘I suppose,’ said Dinah after a moment, ‘he felt a prisoner. Well, I know he did. We both did in a way. But I hoped to make it work; and I suppose he had no hope. I could only deal with the material he let me deal with. What he was suppressing I could only—accept as being there and leave alone. There was plenty pushed down inside me too for him to leave alone. But for me it was different: I didn’t want to make a get-away; and sometimes he did want to. I’ve felt it more than once these last ten days. I hoped it was a phase that would pass once he got more confidence in—in his ability to lead a positive life.’ She paused, with a ghost of the forceful sniff that Madeleine had learnt in the schoolroom to associate with Dinah’s formulas for living: some plan or other laid down beforehand, expounded with this committee-woman’s sniff. Her face brightened for a moment, as if a gleam of curiosity, or of satisfaction in the untying of an intellectual knot were passing through her mind. ‘No, not hope,’ she murmured. ‘I just insisted to myself. I wanted it to work—and he was negative—he let me have a bash at it. He’s past wanting. Or never got as far as wanting …’ Her voice petered out on an edge of query; her face darkened again.

  ‘But you’re talking about him,’ said Madeleine, ‘as if it had all happened a long time ago. He’s only been out of the room about half an hour.’

  She felt the protest to be, if not altogether convincing, at least sensible and bracing; and was startled to see Dinah’s mouth drop open as if she had received a shock: like a person, she thought uneasily, brought brutally to see herself in unsuspected straits, cut off.

  ‘Yes,’ she said presently, now totally incurious. ‘Yes, he’s only been gone … What does it mean that I’m talking about him in the past? It means that I saw the end from the beginning. But you gave me a turn when you pointed it out.’ Again a wry amusement touched her lips. ‘I do get confused about time. If one loses one’s emotional focus’—she stopped, struggled, went on huskily—‘that’s what happens. Aeons—split seconds—they interchange. One gets outside the usual way of counting: you know—meal times, morning, afternoon, evening, night, if one goes on sitting in this … if one has nobody to check up with.’

  ‘Oh, Dinah.’ Madeleine leaned forward, impulsively stretched out a hand. ‘Darling.’ But Dinah, though her eyes followed the movement without hostility, remained sitting bolt upright, not a muscle relaxing; and there was nothing to do except withdraw the hand. ‘I don’t know, I can’t know, what it’s all about; but I’m sure he will come back.’

  ‘He? Which?’ The monosyllables were a pounce, the glance accompanying them a sudden glare, the smile a grin. Madeleine looked away, less with a sense of outrage than of dread. Silence fell.

  ‘Sorry,’ continued Dinah, in thin staccato tones. ‘Uncalled for. I go too far and no mistake. Everybody has always told me so; or if not told me shown me s
o. What does one do about it? I must resign. Then I can hurt nobody and nobody can hurt me. What makes you sure that Rob will come back?’

  The question was rapped out with no perceptible change of tone; yet Madeleine felt, or feared to discover, behind it an appeal for reassurance; as if even she, Dinah, might in the pass she had come to be willing to believe that her judgement might be faulty; and that someone coming fresh to Rob might have detected something she had overlooked or dared not build on.

  ‘It seems so dotty …’ she feebly began.

  ‘You mean, because if a visitor drops in unexpectedly and one offers them a drink and then finds one’s out of gin one naturally goes out to buy another bottle and naturally comes back with it?’

  ‘Well, roughly that. It all seemed to me quite natural—normal …? He didn’t appear in the least—upset or peculiar? You didn’t seem to mind. You gave him the money …’

  It was all she could say; but still it weighed on her that their last chance had gone of saving this situation on any deeper, equalizing level. ‘Might your being sure conceivably make sense?’ had been the unutterable cry or question. Frankly, she had answered, she had observed nothing beyond what had been apparent: that he had quietly popped out to remedy the most trivial of social predicaments. It was all she had found to say and it was the truth: or rather it was honest. Going further than was necessary in honesty, she could have added that she had been half looking forward to the reappearance of this unusually decorative male figure; personally regretted his non-return. But the truth required of her had been of another order. If only she could have said, for instance: ‘Because from the way he looked at you it was perfectly clear to me that he adores you.’ Even the opposite, some barely formulated conjecture told her, would have conferred grace, or the right prelude for it, upon this botched, maimed scene; if she could have said something on the lines of: ‘No, I was judging superficially. Looking back I see now that everything was abnormal—looks, words, the way he took the note and didn’t say thank you and made off. You are probably right when you say he won’t come back. We must face the probability.’ Ah yes, if she could have seized her cue and spoken the lines that would have led with artifice to ‘we’, not ‘I’ and ‘you’ … Insight, in fact, plus magnanimity were what had been required, not honesty.