The Echoing Grove

by Rosamond Lehmann

  ‘Did that friend of yours, that psychologist, teach you that?’

  ‘That’s why when each time the destruction is accomplished, they seem to us so calm. It’s a kind of death.’

  ‘That doctor—he was one, wasn’t he?’ insisted Madeleine. ‘I remember him too, that day. I met him on the stairs.’

  ‘Oh yes, so you did,’ said Dinah vaguely.

  ‘I can’t remember his name. You talked about him afterwards—about his theories.’

  ‘Did I? … Oh, we used to have discussions. He didn’t teach me.’

  ‘I thought he looked as if he might be mad, a little. Do you still see him?’

  ‘No. He died years ago.’

  ‘Everybody’s dead or mad. Everybody’s going mad. Cracking up. Going out of control. Perhaps everybody will go mad and that’s how the world will end.’

  Nursing their hot-water bottles, they stood facing one another across the kitchen table. The powerful lamp in the ceiling poured light down on to their hair, the pale, the dark brown, both sprinkled with grey but abundant, burnished, soft still; and on to their down-bent faces, both faintly lined and sunken, firm in bone structure; one tense with pain, the other with concentration.

  ‘Murder in the air,’ said Madeleine in a twanging thread of voice. ‘It did seem like that. It was like that—the aura of it, the smell … Such a calm face. Fixed. It may have been himself he was destroying, but it felt to me like me. Not that he was violent in any way—quite the contrary … He went out before me and left me there—he said she was expecting him. And before he went he looked at himself in the glass above the fireplace. Murderers are vain, aren’t they? Narcissistic. Have you ever come across one?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Rob?’

  ‘Rob did try to strangle me once.’

  ‘You mean really?—physically?’ Madeleine’s head lifted sharply; her eyes lost their film of beaten apathy.

  ‘Oh yes. Not in cold blood—or hot blood either. In his sleep. At least I think so—half asleep—I’ve never been quite sure.’ A smile, amused, sardonic, stretched her mouth. ‘I was asleep, anyway, having an appalling dream that I was bursting: and then I woke up to find his fingers were round my throat, I was having the breath choked out of me. What a grip!—he had very powerful hands. I remember thinking what a horrible corpse I was going to make—swollen, black in the face. I couldn’t even get a squawk out, but I struggled and clawed. And then just when I thought I was done for he suddenly pulled his hands off.’

  She heard again the harsh gasp, felt the leap he made away from her side, out of the bed; watched him, by first dawn light, dress quickly, noiselessly, open the dressing-table drawer, find her notecase, take the whole wad of notes out and pocket them. He looked about him. He looked into the dressing-table mirror, smoothed his hair, pocketed the comb, picked up the watch. He looked at his hands. He went out of the room, not once looking at the bed.

  ‘Were you terrified?’

  ‘Not really. I think my main feeling was: “This is it.” I suppose I’d been expecting it … Oh, he wasn’t a real killer. Lots of respectable couples have these nerve storms, I’m sure.’ She returned to the sink and gave a smart turn to the handle of a dripping tap. ‘Some women do get drawn into the aura, though. They get to be murderees. You can smell it in them. I know what you mean. I was pretty rank myself once. There’s nothing like that about you, don’t worry. You’re as fresh as a field of clover. But you need to get some sleep.’ Summoning the somnolent Gwilym, now toasting his stomach before the stove, she went to the door and stood with her finger on the switch till Madeleine joined her. ‘I love your kitchen,’ she said, putting it in darkness. ‘I love all this house.’

  Going ahead upstairs, she opened Madeleine’s bedroom door, ushering her within. The electric fire was on, the big bed turned down.

  ‘Shall I run you a bath?’ she said. ‘I had mine after tea.’

  ‘No. I’ll have one, but I’m not quite ready. I’m probably going to telephone. Thank you for everything. Good night. I’m glad you’re here.’

  It was nearly an hour later when, reading in bed, her ears on the alert, Dinah saw her door open. Madeleine, in a blue dressing-gown tied with a rose-coloured sash, stood on the threshold.

  ‘Come in.’ Dinah sat up briskly. ‘Sit down.’ She moved her feet and Madeleine came to sit down on the end of the bed.

  ‘I thought I’d tell you,’ she said. ‘I’ve rung him up.’

  ‘Oh, you did. You got him?’

  ‘Yes. He was asleep but … It was all right, he was quite on the spot. Not drunk.’

  ‘It was him who telephoned?’

  ‘Yes, it was. He.’ A smile touched the corner of her lip.

  ‘Had he got anything special to say?’

  ‘He’d been worrying.’

  ‘Just as you thought.’

  ‘Yes. No, not really. Anxious about me, he said. Not quite so … Not what I said. Better, I suppose, in a way. And worse, I suppose. I mean, it is over.’ Her huge eyes, fixed on the wall, consumed her face. ‘But he wasn’t like stone any more. He was like himself. We were able to talk to one another.’ A long unconscious sigh lifted her breast. ‘He wanted to tell me that he’d been to see her and it’s all fixed up. They’re going to be married as soon as possible. He wanted to tell me that he would always love me. That I could be sure—whether it helped at all or whether it didn’t—that he was thinking about me all the time. It will not help, needless to say, it’ll be one of the tortures: it is already. I thought I’d just tell you now, then we needn’t mention it again.’

  ‘You’ll be glad he said it one day. Sooner than you think perhaps.’

  ‘That’s what he said. He knows too much, it’s awful. I do see it should be better to feel I never did him any harm.’

  ‘It will be better.’

  ‘You do see he isn’t worthless—infantile … Do you? Despising doesn’t help. I’d rather you didn’t.’

  ‘I don’t.’

  ‘Though it’s only a temporary relief. He thanked me for coming: he said it was the most wonderful of all the things I’d ever done him. He said he was very unhappy.’

  ‘I do hope so.’

  ‘But he thought he was going to be very happy.’

  ‘Well …’ said Dinah. Her voice was non-committal. After a pause she added: ‘I suppose he begged you to be happy too.’

  ‘Yes. I told him he always seemed to prefer me when I was unhappy.’ She laughed, a dry vestigial sound. ‘That’s true. He was perfect to me when Anthony was killed. And when Rickie …’ Her breath caught. ‘Deplorable, but true. He said he’d never been any use to me. I told him it was no good talking like that, he needn’t falsify … I shan’t. Though of course it would be agreeable to feel I was lucky to get rid of him. Lucky to lose my happiness!’ Her mouth quivered, pale, swollen, ugly without lipstick. ‘And how can he possibly be happy,’ she wailingly protested, ‘with this ghastly girl? Do you think he will be?’

  ‘I don’t give a damn whether he is or not. And you won’t either in the end. I only care about you getting to the end—to where you’ll find his reactions are a matter of complete indifference to you. He’ll have been painlessly expelled—after a lot of bloody pain and struggle, which seems entirely wasteful. Perhaps it isn’t. Anyway, it can’t be avoided.’

  ‘Clinical prognosis.’ Madeleine got up and stood with her back turned, wiping her eyes. After a long pause she said more calmly: ‘He asked me to forgive him, but I couldn’t answer that.’

  ‘It’s really the best we can do,’ said Dinah. ‘Out of pure self-interest.’

  A tune, an echo, started sounding in her head. And throughout all Eternity …

  Presently Madeleine turned round, her face composed.

  ‘What are you reading?’ she said. She picked up the new library novel from the bed
side table, put it down again. ‘I haven’t read it yet. Do you still read without glasses? I wish I could.’ She pushed aside the enamel cigarette box and bent down, examining the surface of the table with a frown. ‘Did you ever come here?’ she suddenly inquired.

  ‘Did I ever come here?’ Dinah was amazed.

  ‘Yes. In the war.’

  ‘What on earth do you mean? Of course I didn’t.’

  ‘All right, I believe you. Sorry!’ Her look and smile were almost normal, almost deprecatingly mischievous. ‘I haven’t suddenly gone out of my mind. Do you see this mark?—you almost can’t, the man took a lot of trouble—a local man, he’s frightfully good. You’d never think so, but it was an absolutely monstrous cigarette burn. I found it after I’d been away one week-end during the war. Rickie was alone here. I thought he’d done it—though I never knew him to smoke in bed. When I asked him he was rather funny—first he said no, of course he hadn’t, then almost at once corrected himself and said he supposed he had. He sounded a bit guilty—as if I’d caught him out. It was only afterwards it suddenly occurred to me—thinking about his manner—you might have been here. Come down for the night—to get out of London, or something.’

  ‘No, I did not,’ said Dinah indignantly. ‘Can you imagine me? And I’ve never burnt any article of furniture with an unstubbed cigarette in all my life. I’m not so fussy as you, but it’s a habit I can’t endure. Rob used to do it—he ruined a writing-table I had once.’

  ‘Ah well, a mystery,’ sighed Madeleine vaguely. ‘I didn’t really think it could be you … Well, good night.’ But she lingered by the door.

  ‘I wish there was something not acutely painful I could think about,’ she said. ‘Thinking about Clarissa is truly terrible, I don’t know why.’

  ‘What about Colin?’

  ‘Ah, Colin, yes, bless him. Poor old boy.’

  ‘He’s not painful, is he?’

  ‘Not in the least. He’s a comfort—should be, at least. Terribly nice, good, kind. Much fonder of me than I deserve. I haven’t been beastly to him, but I always feel I haven’t done much about him. I’ve never really got to know him. He writes such good letters too—sends me parcels. He’s an angelic character. I wish he wasn’t so far away. He’s always asking me to go out.’

  ‘Why don’t you?’

  ‘I might—next year perhaps, with Clarissa.’

  ‘Why don’t you go now?’

  ‘I can’t go till Clarissa leaves school.’

  ‘Why not? You can afford it, can’t you? Go by yourself—I bet that would suit Colin. Clarissa can go later. I’ll look after her in the holidays, if you like. I’ve got room for her in London—she might enjoy it; and I could come down at week-ends. Go on. Think about it.’

  ‘Yes, I will.’ She brooded, then said less heavily: ‘I will think about it.’

  ‘I don’t say travel is a solution: one takes oneself along. But it does do something. You have to take a step—and then another, and another. And new places and new faces, without associations; and all the practical things … Everything does help. Getting plenty of sun and food helps enormously, I promise you. Good God, if I had a nice grown-up son waiting for me in South Africa, you wouldn’t see my heels for dust.’

  Leaning against the door jamb, Madeleine thought about Colin—tried to. Quiet, tall, slender young man with a quizzical expression, a nice voice—not charming but very likeable. Sensitive accomplished player; not a star personality, but absolutely reliable in minor rôles.

  Dinah’s hand went out to the drawer of the bedside table. Opening it with an appearance of particular caution, she took out a small white cardboard box with an elastic band round it.

  ‘And while I think of it,’ she said, ‘I’ll give you this. I was going to leave it on your dressing-table. I couldn’t quite see myself handing it over gracefully. I’ve had it such a long time.’ She sat up straight in bed, holding it out.

  ‘What is it?’

  Madeleine took the box, opened it.

  ‘Cuff-links,’ said Dinah, her face blank.

  ‘Rickie’s … Aren’t they?’

  ‘Yes. I don’t know if he ever missed them.’

  ‘Yes. He thought they were lost. How very extraordinary.’ She took them out and laid them out in her palm, examining them. Circles of green jade, a Maltese cross in tiny diamonds set in the faintly concave surfaces. ‘I remember when he lost them.’

  ‘He left them in the flat. I found them after he’d gone, the last time I saw him. I meant to send them back, but I never did. I mislaid them again as a matter of fact.’ In the pocket of my coat, thin black coat I was wearing, in my clenched hand in my pocket, crushed …

  ‘What’s on the box? Some initials.’ Screwing her eyes up, Madeleine frowned at the lid. ‘I can’t read them, they’re so tiny. E.S., is it?’

  ‘Yes. That man you were asking about—his initials. I told you. I lost them again. I’d no idea I’d left them with him.’ I dragged my hand out, forced it to open: they were stuck to my palm, the edges biting into it—agony. I flung them over his descending shoulder, anywhere, let them go, anywhere, I didn’t hear them drop … I never looked for them. ‘I left a few things with him one time when I was homeless for a bit. Clothes, books. But I lost sight of him. He died, I told you. As a matter of fact he committed suicide just before the war. He must have felt unable to bear his life any longer. I had the obsession once that I was the loneliest person in the whole world; but he cured me of that. He really was lonely—irremediably alone. In the way outcasts are—pariah dogs. I didn’t understand why until he told me: he once gave a woman poison—the woman he loved, or who loved him, he said: it was a pact. They were Jews, they were being rounded up by the S.S. She died, but he didn’t: he lost his nerve and didn’t take the stuff. He was put in a concentration camp, but he was got out, somehow, through influence, and came to England. That was his story. I’m the only person he ever told.’

  ‘He must have trusted you completely.’

  ‘That wasn’t the reason. I came to him to be put out—done in. I wanted to end my life, I thought he’d provide the means. He promised me once he would if I really meant it. I did mean it; but he wouldn’t. He thought we could be saved: save one another.’

  ‘Was it then that he told you?’

  ‘Yes. He thought I was his second chance, you see. He wanted to bring it to that, try conclusions with me—bring me to that pass. But it didn’t work out like that—not in the way he meant.’

  ‘What did he mean?’

  ‘Oh … Me to come asking him for death and him to give me back my life instead.’ Her voice was hard.

  ‘But that sounds rather wonderful,’ protested Madeleine. ‘Why wasn’t it?’

  ‘Because he was so …’ She stopped, with an effect of violence.

  ‘So what?’

  ‘Unlovable. I thought I was past caring what was done to me, but I found I did care. I got away.’

  ‘Perhaps he meant you to.’

  ‘Oh no, it was in spite of him.’ She shuddered, almost imperceptibly.

  ‘How do you know? He might have meant to force you to, in spite of him. Force you to live.’

  ‘Well, I did live.’ Her face set. She opened her lips again to speak, closed them again. After a long pause she muttered: ‘No, people aren’t so magnanimous …’

  ‘I suppose not.’ Madeleine stared at the links. ‘Though I should have thought, after what he’d been through, there was just a chance of his being capable of anything.’

  ‘He was.’ For a moment her face opened, vulnerable, with a look of inner doubt, distress and wonder; then closed, secretive.

  ‘How did these come back to you?’ asked Madeleine, still staring into her hand.

  ‘In a package through the post, addressed in his handwriting—no message. I got them the day he was found dead in bed.’r />
  ‘You’d no idea he’d got them—kept them?’

  ‘None.’

  ‘You must have had a shock.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I should have felt horribly upset. He must have been thinking of you. He must have been asking you to remember him.’

  ‘Yes.’ Dinah lay down in bed, flat on her pillow, looking at the ceiling with blank eyes.

  ‘Why do you say unlovable? Didn’t you love him then? I should have. But we always, automatically, love the dead. Don’t you find that?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘It seems a waste.’ She touched the little buttons curiously. ‘Are you sure you want to part with them?’

  ‘I think Colin ought to have them. He’d wear them, wouldn’t he?’

  ‘Oh, yes, I’m sure he would. He’ll be pleased. Aren’t they pretty? I believe they belonged to Rickie’s father. All right—I’ll give them to Colin when I see him. Tell him they got mislaid, they’ve just turned up. Would that be best?’

  ‘That would be much the best.’

  She closed her fingers over them, letting them slide into the hollow of her palm, feeling them nudge lightly, settle there; anonymous abstraction: questionable solid; cold, almost weightless weight.

  About the Author

  Rosamond Lehmann (1901–1990) was born on the day of Queen Victoria’s funeral, in Buckinghamshire, England, the second of four children. In 1927, a few years after graduating from the University of Cambridge, she published her first novel, Dusty Answer, to critical acclaim and instantaneous celebrity. Lehmann continued to write and publish between 1930 and 1976, penning works including The Weather in the Streets, The Ballad and the Source, and the short memoir The Swan in the Evening. Lehmann was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in 1982 and remains one of the most distinguished novelists of the twentieth century.