North Face: A Novel

by Mary Renault

“I wonder,” she said, “who we’ll get instead of the Winters.”

  “Why, are they going?” He did not attempt to veil his cheerfulness, judging from her tone that it would not give offence.

  “Yes, tomorrow, so Mrs K said.” She added, regretfully, “I don’t know who’s coming, she had to go before I could ask her.”

  “Oh, well, we’ll soon know,” said Neil, successfully hiding his indifference on this head. He was tired of having dinner in hotels, which was incidentally expensive, and of inventing excuses to Mrs Kearsey for his absence; he felt grateful for the information. They parted cordially.

  Upstairs, hooking up the floral art silk which she had decided to wear this evening after all, Miss Fisher considered the all-day expedition which had been almost settled for tomorrow between herself and Miss Searle. It would be, the forecast promised, very hot; too hot, probably. Miss Searle had told her, once, that she was one of those people who never dreaded solitude, so it could not disappoint her to go alone. It would be nice, Miss Fisher had decided for her own part, to take a lazy day, just sitting about reading; or talking, at the most.

  Downstairs in the Lounge, Neil, still anchored by indolence to the sofa, put his climbing guide safely in an inner pocket, got out his pipe, decided that there would not be time, and started a cigarette. He was tired, and bored by the prospect of going out again. The Winters, on their last evening, would almost certainly be out too; he would have stayed in, if he had not told Mrs Kearsey this morning not to expect him. He felt, too, an unacknowledged regret, as people sometimes do for a perverse sensation they have rejected. The dream in which Lettice Winter had appeared to him last night had been unpleasant, but irritatingly incomplete … He gave his mind an impatient shake, and got up.

  “Oh, Mr Langton, are you going to be in?”

  It was Mrs Kearsey, looking disconcerted; her voice was pitched in the tone which, as the Latin textbooks say, expects the answer “No.” He supplied it; adding with relief, “But I shall be in tomorrow.”

  She seemed pleased; he had thought she would be glad to save the food, but, realising that she must have begun to think he despised it, improvised a little flattery, which was well received. He liked people who took a pride in their jobs; perceived that her rather trying refinement hid a quite real sensitivity; and was sorry to have upset her. The result, however, was a little too good.

  “Now I knew there was something I’m meant to ask you,” she exclaimed in the conscious manner of one who has just thought of it. “These people who are coming tomorrow; I didn’t promise any definite room. I was thinking, you could just as well come down to Mrs Winter’s room on the first floor. It’s nice for ladies to be near the bathroom; but one of these that’s coming is a gentleman, so I don’t see, really, why he should have the choice before you.”

  “That’s extremely kind,” he said hastily, “but I couldn’t be more comfortable than I am.” His room in the Tower, furnished with Victorian pine displaced by the improvements below, was much less hideous than those he had glimpsed on his way downstairs. He liked, when he could not sleep, to look through the open door at the sky. Perhaps Mrs Kearsey, who had a passion for locking things at night, had noticed this habit and deplored it. He found her several good reasons for staying; and ended, as one often does in such a case, by finding one too many. “Besides, if they’re together I daresay they’d like to be on the same floor.”

  “Oh, no, Mr Langton. There’s nothing of that kind about it at all. They booked quite independently.” Neil listened with half an ear as she explained, with intricate circumlocutions, her feelings about what his former colleagues would have called “the tone of the House.” He found slips of the kind he had just made very undermining; it had not been like him, once, to make clumsy faux pas. He was never sure, now, when his brain would slip a cog, or he would become too much enclosed in himself to measure other people. When she ran to a stop, he explained that he had thought they might be brother and sister, or mother and son. This was so readily, indeed remorsefully, accepted that he felt quite ashamed of it.

  By the time she had gone, it was getting on for dinner-time. Without troubling to change the disreputable tweeds he had walked in all day, he went out to the Barlock Arms.

  Miss Fisher, before putting on the floral crepe, had found a bathroom free and taken her best bath-salts into it. Dusting herself afterwards with talcum powder, she looked in the mirror with a dim sense of injustice. Why was it, she wondered, that it was never till she got her clothes on that her hips looked too heavy, or her waist too thick? Her search for an answer to this recurring question had not taken her as far as the National Gallery, which she might have found comforting. But, humble before the proportions of Vogue, she had never thought of seeing in herself a Ceres with neglected altars in the reign of unfruitful Artemis. She only turned her smooth dimpled hips from the unkind glass, wishing they were of the kind to set off a pair of well-cut slacks.

  As she opened her door to go downstairs, another door opened. She and Miss Searle almost collided on the landing. Miss Searle gave a little smile, and passed on. If Miss Fisher had known it, it was the smile with which Miss Searle would have acknowledged, if absolutely obliged, an undergraduate wearing a fancy pin in her academic cap.

  The door of the Lounge had been open when, on leaving the garden, she had gone upstairs to change. She had had a brief but full view of Miss Fisher, whose manner had been not only ostentatious and crude but almost personally embarrassing. By it the little exchange of amenities on the lawn, which had been pleasant and civilised, was indefinably cheapened; at least, if a definition was possible, Miss Searle did not attempt it. Her inner censor was almost faultlessly efficient. Comfortably unaware of its activities she failed also to define her pleasure in the fact the roses on Miss Fisher’s dress were crimson, and her earrings scarlet.

  Allowing, by mutual consent, an interval of a few yards to separate them on the stairs, they entered the dining-room almost simultaneously. Miss Searle, who was last, heard Miss Fisher say, “Well, this is a surprise,” and hung back distastefully; a repetition of this evening’s performance, she thought, would really be too much. It was Mrs Winter, however, whom Miss Fisher had rallied in this friendly way. For the first evening this week, both she and her daughter were in.

  Miss Searle disliked Mrs Winter for the reasons which had caused Miss Fisher to pity and like her. She was a comfortable matronly body who, determined to be a social asset to her family, had self-sacrificingly made herself smart. Miss Searle thought her peroxide and rouge and built-up stays both vulgar and ridiculous; Miss Fisher thought so too, but recognised in them also, as Miss Searle did not, the pious pelican’s bleeding breast. Mrs Winter had once confided to Miss Fisher that she wanted to give her little daughter every chance, and it had nearly made Miss Fisher cry, when she had stopped herself from laughing. After years of drudgery in the Services, Mrs Winter had gone on to explain, it was time the poor child had a little fun.

  The poor child was beside her now, her silk hair brushed back from a satin tan, her mouth, like red velvet, scroll-shaped in a face composed of fine flourishes and curls. She was leaning back in her chair, a pose which showed, under her cambridge-blue dress, breasts that lifted like those of an angel at the prow of a ship. Miss Fisher was ready to allow that she was fond of her mother. She was smiling at her now; a considerate, daughterly smile which seemed to say that nothing had really changed, that if the bedtime confidences had ceased these last few years it was only because there was, after all, so very little to tell.

  Miss Searle, assenting politely to Mrs Winter’s opinion of the weather, wondered why young women spoiled their natural charm with artificiality. She thought this quite sincerely; to her, naturalness in young women implied obliviousness of their sexual function, the more oblivion, the closer to nature. Consciousness was artificiality; emphasis she would have described as vulgar, her vocabulary not including a more exact term. It will be seen therefor that her estimate of Miss Wi
nter (whose taste in dress was much better than Miss Fisher’s) was quite a charitable one. Part of the blame, Miss Searle thought, attached to the mother.

  It was at this point of her reflections that Mrs Kearsey, coming in with the sweet, said to the company at large, “I wish I’d thought to ask Mr Langton if he was going to be late back. He tells me, you know, when he remembers, he’s really very good about it. But he forgets sometimes, and then one doesn’t know what to do about the locking-up.”

  “He’s been out walking all day,” said Miss Fisher, forestalling Miss Searle’s diffidence by half a second. “He didn’t sound to me as if he meant to make a night of it. I shouldn’t think he’d be long.”

  Perhaps from an instinctive avoidance of one another’s glance, they both looked across the table. Miss Winter had been displaying the suspended animation of fish when the water freezes, and highly charged young women surrounded by their own sex. Now, she did not look up or move; she was merely all there. It was as if a little light had been quietly switched on under a crystal shade. Her mother had not altogether missed it. One could see the pelican conquer, not for the first time, an unformed questioning. All was well, her eyes concluded; and, in fact, very nice.

  Miss Searle got up, and went over to the sideboard. “Miss Fisher,” she said, “these gooseberries look delicious. Do let me give you some.”

  “Thanks aw’fly,” said Miss Fisher with sudden warmth. “I don’t expect they’ve got enough sugar, though. Have a bit of mine; truly, I’ve got lots.”

  Miss Searle had strong principles about eating the rations of others. She dealt with them, this time; by accepting gratefully and making lavish passes with a few grains.

  “It must be a little inconvenient for Mrs Kearsey,” she said, “not to know if she can get to bed.”

  “Men never think, do they? It’s just the same in hospital; waste an hour of yours to save two minutes of theirs, if you let them get away with it. These things are sharp. Do have a spot more.”

  “Thank you, they’re just as I like them, now.”

  Lettice Winter was discussing a film with her mother. It seemed she had found it more stimulating than anything which had appeared in the conversation till now. At the end of the meal, she agreed that they must both have an early night in view of the journey tomorrow; yes, she would look into Mummie’s room on her way to bed. She slid a hand into the hip-pocket of her blue dress, produced powder and lipstick, and unconcernedly applied them. When the two had gone out, looking like a Siamese cat strolling behind a pomeranian, Miss Fisher and Miss Searle loitered, by some common impulse, behind.

  “At the risk of being thought conventional,” said Miss Searle, “I do feel that for a woman to make up at table is needless, and a little repulsive.”

  “What I always say is, it’s little things like that that give away the sort of homes people come from. Made their pile in the black market I should think, wouldn’t you? You know the sort—sit down with real pearls on, eating fish and chips off the grand piano.”

  “Er—very probably,” said Miss Searle faintly, but without rebuke.

  In the Lounge Miss Fisher got out her knitting, and Miss Searle her Trollope. Mrs Winter had already gone upstairs, for the early night or perhaps to pack. Lettice Winter, forsaking her usual sofa, had curled up on the divan at the other side of the room. It was, perhaps, more comfortable; it gave also more space, and a better light, to her long legs and silk stockings. Miss Fisher, who was an expert in these matters, decided that the stockings were from Cairo, and that Miss Winter had acquired them there. She had brought No Orchids with her from upstairs. Miss Fisher allowed herself a marked look from the book to Miss Searle, who, unable at that distance to read the title which would have conveyed nothing to her in any case, related the look to Miss Winter’s uncovered knees and gave a slight, corroborative nod. Miss Fisher liked her the better for this sporting admission of her lighter reading.

  This little exchange made them both miss the sound of footsteps on the path outside. Both of them, however, heard the slam of the front door. A moment later Neil Langton hesitated on the threshold of the Lounge, gave a quick glance at the empty sofa, and came inside. It was a windy night, and he was a good deal blown about. He must, Miss Fisher thought, have decided to do a little more walking after all; he had the interior glow, and a dark shine about the eyes, which distinctively comes with this exercise at night. Perhaps for this reason, or because of the high-necked pullover he had put on under his jacket, he looked much younger than he had seemed so far. It was possible to surmise that he had been a not unattractive young man, at a date not so very far remote. One could imagine him, now, in his twenties, physically saturnine over a basic good-humour, and superficially unkempt over a basic respect for razors and soap. He was a little out of breath; when Miss Searle and Miss Fisher looked up from their chosen pre-occupations, he distributed between them a smile which was nearly a grin.

  “Whew,” he said, “I thought I was sunk. Tried one of these spurious short cuts and had to spend half an hour picking my way out of a bog.”

  “I’m told,” said Miss Searle, “that some of them are really quite dangerous.” She felt, suddenly, almost protective.

  “Well, they need watching up on the moor. There wasn’t anything to this one but waste of time. It was Mrs K I was worrying about.” He had already picked up from Miss Fisher this abbreviation. “She’s a great one for knowing what to do about the locking-up.”

  “She was asking after you,” said a cool clear voice from the divan in the corner.

  Neil turned round. His eyes had still the half-focussed look of people who have come indoors from wide spaces and the dark.

  Lettice Winter did not smile. She looked at him, quite pleasantly and with perfect self-possession, as one might look at a hat in a shop-window which may possibly do: one will need first to turn it round and then perhaps, if it seems worth while, to try it on. It was not an arrogant look, but almost purely a conditioned sexual reflex. It said, in a voice as clear as the one in which she had spoken aloud: “Application received; state qualifications.”

  It had never probably, achieved so quick an effect. The relaxed casual air, which had given the brief illusion of youth, went out like sun in a room where someone has snapped down a blind. His loose stance changed, with a stiffening like that of age. No one would have taken him now for anything but a schoolmaster.

  “Thank you,” he said. “I’d better go and set her mind at rest.” The second sentence was addressed to Miss Fisher. He went out.

  Lettice Winter turned a page or two of No Orchids and stifled a yawn. When, half an hour later, the door of the Lounge closed behind her, two mouths opened simultaneously, as if a starting-gun had been fired to set them off.

  3 Novice

  THE WIND HAD DROPPED, and the fumed-oak barometer in the hall was set at Fair. Barlock, sheltered from what little breeze there was in its half-basin of hill and wooded cliff, shimmered in an autumnal heat-wave. The only coolness was to be found in the water, or high up on the precipitous jungly cliff-paths and overhung rides, approachable only through masked gaps in bramble hedges, beyond rough fields, after a hard perspiring climb. Neil, who had discovered for himself secret miles of such territory, found himself developing an adolescent secretiveness about it, and went perdu there all day. For climbing in the technical sense there was not much scope; this did not trouble him, since he had come neither expecting nor wishing any. His map was coming on well. The steep woods rustled in a breeze unfelt below; he found a new gully, overhung by an interesting rock-face, which he found his mind filing for reference. The hours slipped by, marked only by the slow shifting of the light-spars between the trees, and by the first respites of an extroverted peace, brief escapes into a contentment too instinctive to be broken by awareness of itself.

  Miss Searle endured without exaggerated grief the news of Miss Fisher’s defection from the day-trip. She had been truthful in saying that solitude within reason did not bor
e her; she preferred it, at least, to company sought for company’s sake. The effort to talk down to Miss Fisher’s understanding, without offensive obvious-ness, had increasingly become a strain; she was unused to carrying on such conversations for more than ten minutes at a time. Miss Fisher had, besides, a habit of bursting into comment at the wrong moments; sudden graces or light or landscape were transformed, before one had time to assimilate them, into terms of the Beauty-Spot or the View.

  Miss Fisher, who had been shielded from these reactions by Miss Searle’s good manners, watched her departure with a vague sense of guilt, which she did not acknowledge at a level conscious enough for argument. Still, in the guise of inconsequent thoughts, the arguments slipped in and out of her head. The trouble was that Miss Searle’s refusal (as Miss Fisher saw it) ever to get down to realities, made her such pathetically easy game. She was the kind of woman who, with more than enough intelligence to play her cards well, would play them badly sooner than admit to herself that she was playing at all. On the other hand she had been given what Miss Fisher described to herself in all good faith as Every Advantage; her helplessness was therefore of her own construction. Miss Fisher, as she walked down to bathe, signalled a clear conscience by humming Yours under her breath.

  The beach offered nothing of interest except itself and the adjacent sea. Indeed Miss Fisher had hardly expected it; the wet bathing-trunks always appeared on the tower steps at a discouragingly early hour. Miss Fisher’s constitution was equal to a seven a.m. plunge; but her self-confidence, social and physical, was not. That morning, as usual, she had heard his footsteps passing her door, considerately quiet but without fussy tiptoeing, and had turned over regretfully for another nap. Breakfast had been, as usual, disappointing. With unaccustomed hope, however, she settled herself in the garden, after her bathe and coffee, to wait for lunch.

  She was well-placed to witness the departure of the Winters, in an opulent hired car. After this nothing happened until the gong sounded, when she found she had the dining-room entirely to herself. The maid served her lunch with an air of patient reproach, on a tablecloth spread over one end of the table.