The Echoing Grove

by Rosamond Lehmann

  ‘No, I didn’t. Wasn’t too advantageously placed for that … No … I did rather want to once though: when he said he’d thought it so very friendly of Madeleine to come and visit her sister under the circs. The presumption of the twirp! How did he know what she’d come for?’

  ‘What had she come for?’

  ‘God knows … There was never any knowing what went on between those sisters.’ His voice had become loud, querulous.

  ‘You really don’t know?’

  ‘Oh, I was never told. Neither of them ever mentioned it to me. Oh, I suppose I did get hints … Oh well, that’s neither here nor there.’

  ‘I do see why you wanted to kick him.’

  He said in a normal voice:

  ‘I wanted to kick the lot of them. Very unfair on my part, most uncalled for. I’m sure it never occurred to him that he was treading on my toes. He was really talking about himself, which he did for two hours without drawing breath, saying he too had had a lovely sister who’d stood by him, taking the rap from his drunken old sod of a father, but she’d died young. He envied Dinah … All the same I felt, quite unjustifiably, they’d all combined to make a fool of me behind my back.’

  ‘What makes you think he was trying to say he loved her?’

  ‘Oh … I expect that’s nonsense. I expect it was just booziness, and being lonely … I think it was chiefly the way he laughed about her, a real sound it was, a good long chuckle. And the way he said suddenly: “Poor old Dine, she was a silly girl.” Girl, not cow or bitch, sounded strange on his lips, like a compliment,—or a tribute rather. “Always a sucker. Give away her last sixpence without a thought for herself.” He himself owed her one pound, he said. It had been on his mind a long time—that’s one reason why he’d been so anxious to see Madeleine: he wanted Dinah’s address, to give it back. Why this one pound should prey on his conscience I don’t know. I bet he’d set her back considerably more than that. It must have stood for something in his mind: perhaps Madeleine had happened to be present at that particular transaction.’

  ‘Did you give him her address?’

  He fingered the sheet of paper in his hand.

  ‘No,’ he said after a pause. ‘I didn’t. That’s rather on my conscience. I told him I wasn’t sure myself, I knew she’d moved, I’d send it later if he’d leave me his address; but he forgot to in the haze of the occasion. He wrote and gave me one a few days after’—he held the paper up, still folded—‘and thanked me for the only pleasant evening of his leave, he said. He was off to sea again, but he’d look for a word from me on his return. He didn’t return. He was killed in the Battle of Narvik—blown up with the rest of his gun crew, bombed from the air. I saw the whole report. I thought then I ought to write and tell Dinah the whole thing—but I somehow didn’t … I feel bad whenever I think about him. I couldn’t help being so relieved when I knew he was dead: I dreaded his coming back into my life—turning up again at the cottage for instance, and giving the whole show away to Madeleine. He was quite unaware of all the taboos attached to the situation—or impervious to them anyway. He’d have been the hell of a nuisance. On the other hand, I wanted awfully to do the poor chap a favour—such a simple one too—just send him an address he wanted. I couldn’t have let him down; but the thought of him sort of passing back to her through me appalled me. Almost like using my secret knowledge of her whereabouts to—to conjure with. Black magic … What wouldn’t I let loose? I told myself it was my duty to protect her from him. But I didn’t believe it. I knew I had it in my power to give her back something she’d value. Should I? Shouldn’t I? Hopeless predicament as usual. But he let me out—I was always let out somehow … I was curious to know who would have been informed as next-of-kin, so I checked up. The name was a foreign one: Selbig, that friend of his he told me about—the name that caused his face to twitch when he pronounced it. He must have written it in when he joined up, before he discovered there was no more Selbig. He said he’d knocked around the world for several years before the war—South Seas, America, all over the place—but he got back somehow in the September and enlisted in the navy straight away. And then what with being pushed about and one thing and another, he hadn’t found out for months that his friend had taken poison a few days before war was declared. Despair, perhaps … That’s me talking, not Edwards. Poor chap. I do hate to think of no one missing him when he went. So did he hate to think of it, I know he did. That’s why he wanted to find Dinah, and why … That sentence in his letter about looking for a word from me, that went on haunting me.’

  He got up, stretching his arms above his head, then with a sharp gasp bent forward, doubled up; sat down again.

  ‘Rickie, what is it?’

  ‘Sh!—Nothing. Bit of a stitch. I get it sometimes.’ He reached for her hand, held on to it tightly for a minute or two, then took a deep breath and sat up straight again. ‘Gone now … I’ve sometimes wished I’d come across that Selbig. He was a doctor, perhaps a quack, anyway a perfect wizard, according to Edwards—nervous complaints his speciality. My ulcers come from bad nerves, in case you didn’t know. According again to Edwards he performed miracle cures. He had this Dostoyevsky-sounding tenement—lodging-house—clinic—I don’t know what, down Stepney way, where he treated people free. I rather think he wasn’t allowed to practise officially in this country. It struck me much later that it was through him that Dinah managed to get enough phenobarbitone to do herself in one time she tried to. Keep that under your hat along with everything else, but even more so.’

  ‘I’ll be discreet. When was it?’

  ‘Umm … round about the time we went to Wales. I was sent for suddenly … I had to take her away, try to get her on her feet again. She—she’d been played the devil with, left alone in London. I was no use to her, I’d … And then she took this blighter in and looked after him, and a rare rewarding job that turned out to be. What staggers me still is the cold-bloodedness—walking off as if he’d just dropped in for a bit of a sit-down in a station waiting room. Not once, but twice …’

  ‘Did she talk about Selbig to you?’

  ‘Never mentioned him. She wouldn’t let on to a soul where she got the stuff. Not that I pressed her … I suppose he was—well, part of her secret life with Edwards. Otherwise she would certainly have described the set-up. She loved curiosities, and loved describing them. And this must definitely have been one of the minor fun-fairs of our late blasted civilization. I still can’t picture her in it.’

  ‘Do you have to?’

  ‘It’s not imperative, but I do sometimes: merely, I mean, because that’s where she was. It was there that she retired with Edwards after I was carried off to hospital—I don’t know how long after … but there she was in purdah, while I lay spooning up my sops and seeing her skip over oceans and dance over lands … Yet I don’t know … It strikes me now, this minute, I may not have been so far out? Granted that you believe, and I do, in the possibility of telepathy, and that she was still—well, tied up with me, as I was with her, and trying, as I knew she would—ferociously—to root me out of her and tear me up … there must have been some moments—in her sleep perhaps—when she’d have been—oh, meeting tidal waves and lions and wandering through ruins and falling over precipices …’

  ‘How long did that go on, her life in Stepney?’

  ‘That I don’t know … Well, in a sense it’s gone on ever since. She never came back as you might say, to the West End. Very odd story, isn’t it? I’ve never understood what precipitated that leap to Stepney.’

  ‘Craving for the absolute,’ said Georgie reflectively. ‘Could it have been? Part of the pattern of her fanaticism. It does seem as if’—he looked at her suspiciously, but she went on: ‘as if she couldn’t break the pattern, couldn’t let it go. Always trying to get back to where she started. I don’t see her as that free independent breast-forward marcher you describe. I see her driven; trapping herself over
and over again because she hadn’t found out her own enemy—the one inside herself …’

  He looked glum, obstinate, and she added: ‘If that seems unacceptable, presumptuous, forget it. I know I’m inclined to type casting, as Jack calls it—it irks him too. But I can’t help identifying myself with her, a bit: suspecting our shadows might be the same shape …’

  ‘Oh, I don’t mind. You do rather remind me of her—in one or two ways. I suppose everybody’s more or less the same … with variations.’

  Frowning at the carpet, he did not notice her expression, which was melancholy.

  ‘She was extremely domesticated,’ he said presently, in a constricted way. ‘More so than Madeleine: more like her mother. She wanted to settle down—she always wanted to. I know how it must sound to you, but she really did revel in—well, making a home for me. Whatever you may have heard about her reputation, she was a settling person.’

  She said untruthfully: ‘I know nothing of her reputation.’

  ‘Oh, don’t you? She was considered promiscuous and unscrupulous. But you can take it from me, however reckless, misguided, ridiculous she sometimes was, she never was corrupted, never could be. No doubt a more ingratiating figure would have got away with more. She was very uncompromising—ruthless perhaps. It was her innocence.’ He jerked his head up, said with a look of exultation: ‘She burned in the flame.’

  He did not observe the shudder that her body gave, or catch what darted at him from her eyes. All the same, when he spoke next, his tone, though stiff, was tentative.

  ‘I suppose she went to Stepney to make a home for Edwards. She always had a feeling …’ He stopped. A look of surprise suddenly broke up the aggressively triumphant mask he had been wearing. ‘Well, it might have been,’ he exclaimed in a natural voice, appreciatively amused. ‘I see what might have made her … This curiosity she had—great curiosity about animals. Non-human creatures. Respect for them, you might say. Pity. Rather what I felt myself about him … Wish to let him be himself on his own level. Make him feel at home, that’s more like it—acclimatize him to his environment or artificial habitat. Her naturalist’s—no, her keeper’s instinct. She was always inclined to treat people as if they needed handling … as if she were saying: “My poor fellow, you require a more humane approach than people realize. You may not even realize it yourself.” It was apt to irritate sophisticated people. And Edwards would have suspected a trick in it: it was too respectful, too careful, for the likes of him.’ His faint smile broadened to a grin, self-mocking yet not ungratified. ‘It suited me all right.’ Glancing at her in expectation of response and getting none, he sobered quickly; said after a pause: ‘I’m afraid it was what always caught her out. If you put it into people’s heads they may be dangerous, they’re apt to be so.’ Then, with a diffident inflection: ‘Is that what you meant by being one’s own enemy?’

  ‘Let’s not talk about me, or what I meant.’ She turned her face away.

  An unaccountable nip in the air dismayed him. He said regretfully: ‘I’m sorry. It’s all very boring. You shouldn’t have let me go on.’ He took her hand.

  After some moments of silence she said: ‘I like you to go on.’

  He shook his head. Presently their fingers yielded to one another with a reconciling pressure. He shifted his position to take her hand more comfortably into his lap and began to stroke it in an abstracted, gentle way.

  ‘What are you thinking about?’ she said, knowing the question this time a safe one; seeing beforehand the way he smiled and started, like someone rousing from a pleasant dream.

  ‘Oh, wool-gathering,’ he said apologetically. ‘Matter of fact I was thinking about the country. My old home.’

  ‘Do you often think about it?’

  ‘Quite a lot.’

  ‘Miss it?’

  ‘Oh always … I generally try not to think about it much because it’s rather painful. I mean I’ve never got over regretting that I sold it. At the time it seemed the only thing to do—my economic crisis was acute. And Madeleine didn’t fancy living there, quite understandably. However, spilt milk and all that …’

  ‘Tell me about it.’

  ‘I’ll show you some pictures of it.’ He made as if to pull his wallet out again; then withdrew his hand and replaced it over hers. ‘Not now. Some other time … No, I was only thinking how extraordinarily lucky I was. Since the war particularly, the whole thing has often come back to me—come over me so strong and sharp it’s quite uncanny. Not as a craving exactly … more as if it was in me, as if I was still there … Perhaps one never does leave really … I can really smell the smell of the woods in winter, where I used to spend blissful days alone with Marshall, our angelic keeper. And the smells: Frost. Ferns and brambles—all those heavenly smells. And the smell of fishing—and of lake water. I used to go fishing with Charlie; he was the chauffeur’s youngest, a year or two older than me—my father’s godson. I used to have high tea afterwards with his mum and dad. I always wished I didn’t have to go home: cottages were cosier and I preferred Charlie’s mum to mine as a mother-figure, and the taste of Mazawattee tea to ours. Charlie made up for not having a brother; I always deplored my status of only son. I adored him—I think he liked me too. Once when we were sitting on the bank of the lake he suddenly put his arm round my shoulders. My heart beat like a sledgehammer, I can’t vouch for his. Anyway there we sat, quite dumb. I couldn’t take my eyes off his hand. For some reason I was thinking about it just now … It must have been about November. Clear green sky, beginning to get dark. Presently we heard a sound above us, coming out of the east … oh, if you’ve ever heard it!—but it’s indescribable. Rushing, creaking, unearthly … Geese flying over. It was the first time I’d ever heard it. We counted them. Charlie said: “Greylag”. He knew a lot about birds, far more than me. Can you imagine what it was like?—waiting, bursting with expectation—then that sound? It was the Annunciation. I mean that’s how it took me. Charlie had simply had the luck to see the geese, I should imagine, and in my company, which made it even more jollier. That’s all that happened. We started to walk home—five miles to go, and I began to feel horrible—horribly low. He whistled and I bit his head off. I could hardly wait to get away from him—be alone—be sick—be nothing. I don’t know if he noticed. But he wouldn’t have held it against me: he wasn’t one to crawl away bleeding if a chum told him to shut his beastly row. He was a nice chap, awfully good-looking too. Talking about poor Edwards made me think of him—I don’t know why, they weren’t a bit alike … except that Edwards had the same kind of hands—broad, rough, open-air hands, blunt fingers. I noticed them that night, and they reminded me … Not that he put his arm round my shoulders. In the end we were both nodding in our chairs. In fact he was snoring heavily. Yes, it was a rum start, that evening.’

  ‘Did he stay on?’

  ‘Yes, he stayed the night. I shoved him into my dressing-room and removed his shoes and stretched him on the bed. It’s where I sleep as a rule, but Madeleine being away I slipped into the nuptial couch. I looked in on him pretty early next morning with a cup of tea, but he’d flitted: he must have slipped off at crack of dawn—leaving no trace beyond some creases in the bedspread. Oh no, I’d forgotten …’ He gave a chuckle. ‘He did leave a trace. I never spotted it, but Madeleine did in no time. Wrote to me about it.’ Again he chuckled. ‘How could I be so careless, since when had I taken to smoking in bed? Well, I hadn’t; that’s never been one of my vices. It seems a burning cigarette had been placed on the rather good Regency pedestal beside my bed—ruined it. I had to take the rap—couldn’t give him away. So he managed to leave her a memento: jolly funny I think, don’t you? I saw why she had to get on to me without delay; some other poor innocent chap might have come to stay and got the blame. See?’

  ‘Yes, I see.’

  ‘She’d always have held it against him, I’m afraid. He’d have been upset to know he’d done h
imself no good with her that time either. Rough justice, isn’t it?—seeing he’d come to eradicate a former bad impression—social impression, quite trivial, still weighing on his conscience. Whereas any bad impression he might have left on Dinah …’ His smile fading, he shook his head. ‘But it’s not for me to judge him. It’s scarcely a parallel, but I also wronged one of those girls rather more than the other. At least, I think so.’ He sighed. ‘But I don’t exactly feel guilty about her … and I always do about my wife. Odd, isn’t it? There must be something guilt-erasing about Dinah. Edwards seemed to think so.’

  ‘I call that a pretty high compliment.’

  ‘So do I. He didn’t.’ He got up suddenly, and stood with his shoulders hunched. ‘Oh no, of all the shits! His conscience didn’t trouble him a jot: because it was all her fault, if you please, that it ended as it did.’

  ‘Oh, you did discover how it ended?’

  ‘Yes, I did.’ His shoulders went higher: he paced up and down in front of her, burst out impatiently, reluctantly: ‘It didn’t last long the second time—not much longer than the first, I gathered. He couldn’t stick it, he said; he wasn’t cut out for that sort of life. It was her idea, not his, this setting up in Stepney. All he meant was to breeze in on her in a friendly sort of way when he got back to London in the autumn: that was after his cruising holiday—if you remember, he’d walked out on her earlier in the summer—on her and Madeleine. He’d left some shirts in the flat, and he needed them, he said. She was ever so pleased to see him … Yes, I can imagine she would be—she always was: she never had any bones to pick, no matter what … She made herself such pleasant company it came over him again he wouldn’t mind having her—see what came of it this time. But bless me if she didn’t say no to that! Quite a change. Reason: she’d shut up her bedroom. A friend that had been staying there a few weeks back had been taken very queer there in the night one night, the ambulance had come for him …’ He paused to glance at Georgie. ‘That would be you know who. I suppose he knew too: but he kept a poker face and so did I … Since when she hadn’t fancied that room to sleep in any more. She’d taken to dossing down on two chairs in the sitting-room, and he could see for himself there wasn’t room for two. Small low chairs she had with high sort of padded backs to them, hard—not his style (I remembered them too). He saw how she felt about that bedroom: he wouldn’t have fancied sleeping in it himself knowing an ambulance case had been there. Then it seems she got low in her spirits and told him to get out and leave her be: he’d never known her like that—quite sarcastic. But he hadn’t hardly got to the other end of the street when he heard steps coming after him in a hurry, and it was her. “I’m coming with you,” she said, just like that. You could have knocked him down. She seemed all worked up, like as if she’d seen a ghost. So he didn’t argue, he took her along back: not meaning for more than just the night. But he was stuck with her. Once she was there she wouldn’t budge: went up the other end once for a few clothes and came straight back. What’s more, after that she never stirred from his room except of an evening when she’d slip out sometimes to do a bit of shopping to cook him an evening meal—very tasty too, he’d give her that. He’d be out all day, of course, but when he came in of an evening there she’d be, sitting smoking cigarettes and listening to any old programme on the radio, and well, just taking big breaths as if she was short of air. Carrying on more like something moping in a gilded cage than a Christian. Though she’d always brighten up when they got talking—the evenings weren’t so bad: specially when his friend who owned the house—the doctor—dropped in late and got her to read aloud. Poetry mostly—bits of Shakespeare, Milton—his friend enjoyed it, and the fact was she did speak it nice. Then she and his friend would get talking, more after the philosophical style, or politics: they’d talk their heads off, he didn’t complain of that, but it couldn’t go on like it, could it? (I saw his point). Funny thing, in spite of her clinging on so, in another way she didn’t seem to take all that much notice of him; and whichever way you looked at it, it wasn’t like her. In the old days she was always after him to start leading what she called a constructive life—(can’t I hear her!)—even to getting a job somewhere in the country and setting up with him in a caravan she was going to buy, or some other such daft notion—but now she didn’t seem to trouble much what he did with himself. She’d stare through him with her great eyes like as if she was simple. Money was getting short too—not that he was having to keep her (no, you bet he wasn’t) but she’d always been the independent sort … That’s true enough. She’d never let me … except for the rent of the flat which I insisted … She had a bit from her father; and she did odd jobs of writing when I knew her—fashion notes or sketches or cooking hints or something, she never let on exactly what. But she had quite a flair as a journalist. She was the most frugal, saving, discreet little creature I ever knew. I suppose he took it for granted he only had to stretch his paw out … However, not my business … only when he mentioned money matters I felt upset. It was exactly what I’d suspected the last time I saw her …’