It is no wonder that Victor had at the back of his mind a vague irritation about the inconveniences of living in the country, for the Spring Developments Association Ltd was gaily destroying the country, at the rate of some square miles a month; his irritation may have been the country getting back at him. He had no conscious scruples about the way he made his money; when artists and ancientry with one foot in the furnace attacked his company and others like it by threatening him with the dreaded secret police of the S.P.R.E. and the National Trust gang, he retorted that business was business and meant it. Yet he came of country stock, he was country born and bred, and perhaps his discontent with life in the country was actually a dim sense of guilt. If he went to live in London, he would not see the bungalows built by his company outside Bracing Bay creeping across the quiet and beautiful lands between Sible Pelden and the sea.
Anyhow, I’ll drop in at Buckingham Square and look at those flats on the way back from Hatfield, he thought, knotting a thick pale grey tie.
All his clothes were carefully thought out and perfectly executed, and gave the impression that it was not possible for any sane person to dress in any other way. He spent a good deal of money on his clothes, because he had so many activities and it was necessary to wear the correct clothes while doing any one of them, even while doing nothing, and none of the clothes, of course, were interusable. It was not possible to wear the golfing clothes for walking, or the punting clothes for tennis.
His clothes gave him quite two-thirds of his efficient, sophisticated and summing-up manner, which some people found alarming and women found attractive. No one saw Victor naked, except the masseur at his Turkish baths and certain obscure persons upon whom he chose to bestow that honour; and the masseur had no thoughts except that Mr Spring was in very good shape, while the thoughts of the other persons are not relevant to this story; but it may be said that Victor, naked, looked simple, warm-natured and kind, which (except when anyone missed a train or neglected to prune the roses) is exactly what he was.
The idea of a flat in town made him think of Phyl as he stood staring out of the window, softly whistling and clappering his hair with two brushes.
Old Phyl. What a dazzler she was, easy on the eye, the top, the smoothest thing yet. He reminded himself how much he liked kissing her, firmly pushing to the back of his mind a suspicion that she did not quite so much like kissing him. She was a sport, who never whined if she lost a game. But dammit, she hardly ever did lose. At least, she lost quite often to him but he had to go all out to prevent her winning. He did not like that. He liked a good fight with a man, but that was different. Phyl never seemed to tire, she might be made of steel. A woman oughtn’t to be like that. It was unfem— no, that’s absurd of course: sounds like old Phillips. But a man doesn’t like a woman to – oh well, I suppose some men don’t mind it, but I do, and she isn’t going to wear me for a mascot when we’re married, so the sooner that gets home the better.
I suppose we’d better get things fixed up definitely this summer. There’ll be the Bracing Bay business to get going in the autumn and I shan’t have time for that and getting married. Get engaged in July, and married early in September.
Through his mind drifted the phrase, ‘Oh, God, the whole ruddy works,’ but it never occurred to him that a wedding need not have the whole ruddy works. All his friends had groaned; but their weddings had been huge, gorgeous, reverberating, barbaric feasts. That was the only way of getting married. Besides, Phyl would expect it.
None of Victor’s set said that so-and-so was ‘in love’; they said he was crazy about, had fallen for, or was making heavy passes at, someone. He vaguely supposed that he felt like that about Phyl, but what he felt when with her was that mingling of irritation, admiration, and determination that she should not master him, that he had felt when he was sixteen and she a composed, elegant, dark child of eleven.
Oh, it’ll be all right when we’re married.
He slowly pulled on his jacket.
All I know is, I keep on putting off this business with Phyl, and that isn’t like me; I might try to get things fixed up with her when she comes down for the Infernal Ball (this was the name given by the local frivols to the Infirmary’s yearly benefit). She’s starting to get under my skin.
He went downstairs whistling.
She got under his skin like a spike of summer grass, he compared her to steel, and swore that he would not be her mascot. Admirable antagonism! Just what the late D. H. Lawrence, of whom Victor had not heard, would have ordered.
Half a mile away across the valley, Tina lay musing with arms behind her head, her large sad brown eyes staring through the open window. She looked prettier in bed than she did when dressed, because her nightgowns were softer in design than she permitted her day clothes to be; they were always white, decorated with narrow red or green ribbons. No one cared much how Tina looked, so she dressed to please herself.
Thoughts, quietly sad as she imagined the thoughts of the old must be, rose uselessly in her mind. They were all familiar to her, like worn paths; she experienced anger and boredom even while the well-known train unfolded. For so many years she had lain awake on spring mornings, while tea cooled on her little black lacquer bedside table, gazing through the curtains the maid had just pulled apart at the changing sky! Ten years ago there had been painful weeks when she waited in hope, her heart banging violently, for letters; and when they came she read into their friendly sentences meanings that were not there, and she had known, with her common sense, that they were not there, but had tried to deceive herself because she was so hungry to feel!
Other women – (oh, that path! it was very worn) – other women loved their families, or had their work. I did try to have a career; but a career just wouldn’t have me. And I don’t really see (another very worn path) why one should love one’s relations just because they are one’s relations.
We’ve never been a united family, that’s all. I suppose Mother and Father didn’t love each other properly or something; there doesn’t seem to be much love between all of us, anyway. I wish there was.
We don’t attract people, either.
For a little while her thoughts played with the half-forgotten pictures of men she had known at the Art School, who had told her she was charming or kissed her. Five times. Five men had kissed her. Well, six; only young Farquhar was drunk: I suppose that doesn’t really count, if one’s honest.
I wonder why (this path was so worn that she turned from it, in sick impatience, even as the thought came up) I’ve never had anyone in love with me? Other women do, not half as nice-looking as I am.
Of course, I’ve always wanted love very much; real love, for keeps, not just an affair, and I’m sure that puts men off. They hate you to be serious.
While she lay there with these old worn thoughts coming obediently into her mind, called there by habit and the familiar quiet of early morning, she was aware that at the back of her mind there was another thought that was not at all stale, but so fresh that it was nearly a feeling, with all a feeling’s delicious power to kill thought. She had not yet told Saxon that he was to teach her driving, and this morning she would speak to him about it.
Tina had stopped trying to be honest with herself, put Selene’s Daughters away in a drawer, and decided to be – not honest perhaps – but certainly sensible. Goodness and Doctor Irene Hartmüller only knew where she would end up, if she went on trying to be honest. Besides, there is a point at which honesty with oneself can become the mother to a wish; and she dimly felt this.
I’ve been too heavy, as usual, about the whole thing, she decided, sitting up in bed with soft lifeless brown hair falling against her thin cheeks. Just take it as a matter of course. Naturally I find him good to look at – stuck down here (thought Tina, vigorously common-sensible) without a man in sight for miles. She yawned, stretching.
Probably when I start the actual driving it’ll be such fun that I’ll stop being thrilled (deliberately she used the che
apened word, because she wanted to cheapen her emotion) about Saxon, and turn into a car-maniac.
She got energetically out of bed, ignoring the little voice inside her head that suddenly, with the driest possible intonation, observed, But I think not.
CHAPTER IX
What a scene of unharnessed libido there was in the courtyard of The Eagles about eleven o’clock that morning! Tina, sauntering out to have her little talk with Saxon, met Madge coming back from Colonel Phillips’s, followed by a fat, big-pawed, panting lump with a fondant-pink tongue; the Sealyham puppy. Madge’s face was shining with pleasure and excitement, but she was trying to look severe because the dog must be made to realize, from her first hour as its owner, that she meant what she said; and she was now trying to make him follow her across the yard.
‘Is that him? What a pet!’ exclaimed Tina, her own eyes bright with happiness. It was such an exquisite morning! She wanted to be off, away, flying through the thin blue air: and round at the side of the car, cleaning it after a dismal expedition yesterday with Mr Wither into Chesterbourne, was Saxon, smiling at the puppy and trying to look correct and get on with his work all at once.
‘Don’t talk to him now, please,’ said Madge quickly, as Tina stopped and held out a finger which the puppy was only too delighted to bite. ‘It’s frightfully important to begin training them from the very first moment you have them, and I do want him to be decently trained; a badly behaved dog is ghastly, I think.’
She rammed her fists deeper into her tweed pockets and, standing with her legs slightly apart, called in a low, carefully controlled voice: ‘Come here.’
The puppy lumbered off and smelled Saxon.
‘Come here,’ repeated Madge. The puppy lumbered off and smelled Tina.
‘Come here.’
‘Bless him! He’s nothing but a wuzzer,’ protested Tina, laughing. ‘Come and kiss your Aunt Tina, then.’ She lifted him up.
‘Oh, don’t do that, please, Tina,’ said her sister urgently, ‘he must learn to come when I call, and he’ll never get the idea if you keep on distracting his attention. Put him down, please.’
Tina put him down.
‘Come here,’ said Madge, in the same quiet, firm tone, and this time the puppy strolled over to her and smelled her brogues.
‘There!’ radiantly. ‘He’ll soon learn. It does pay to persevere with them.’ She bent and gave the puppy one short, controlled pat. ‘Good dog.’
‘What are you going to call him?’
‘Polo.’
‘What?’
‘Polo.’
‘Polo the Game, or just Polo?’
‘Don’t be an ass, Tina,’ laughed Madge good-naturedly, ‘you couldn’t call a dog Polo the Game. Just Polo, of course. I think it’s rather neat myself. One gets so sick of Jerrys and Whiskys and Pats.’
She went off to Polo’s large new kennel, standing as near to the back door as she could put it, and began to instruct him how to get into it, in what Tina foresaw was going to be her Polo-voice.
Nice to see poor old Madge so happy, thought Tina, strolling over to the car. It’s pathetic, of course, that a puppy can make her look ten years younger and as pleased as a child, but she doesn’t know it’s pathetic, so that doesn’t matter.
She herself felt easy and cheerful; her intense mood of the early morning had vanished. When Saxon stopped polishing as she approached, and stood upright, respectful and inquiring, she looked at him without even the faintest shock of emotion and said pleasantly,
‘Oh, good morning, Saxon. I want you to teach me to drive. Can you fit that in, do you think, with your work and the garden and everything?’
‘Oh yes, Madam,’ said he, looking nothing but correct. His voice was pleasing; he neither spoke Essex nor tried to talk like gentry. It was just a naturally nice voice that would have been attractive in any young man, and Tina did not realize how anxiously she had been waiting to see if it really were as nice as she, in one or two humiliating reveries, had believed it to be.
‘Good. Well, can we have the first lesson soon, please? It’s such lovely weather now, and later on it may get hot and dusty and I hate motoring in the dust.’
How true all this was, how sensible and practical! Things were going quite normally; they could not be going better. My true love hath my heart and I have his, suddenly said that little voice in her head, as she looked calmly into Saxon’s calm grey eyes. Shut up, Tina told it fiercely, that’s pure hysteria and doesn’t mean a thing.
‘Yes, Madam, it does get dusty later on. Would you like a lesson this morning, Madam? I’ve nearly finished cleaning the car, and perhaps I could just show you how it works.’
His respectful but easy voice was quietly taking charge of the situation, and Tina did not like that much, because she wanted to feel that she was managing the affair, but she could not bear, after this little talk with him, to re-enter the chilly quiet house and watch the cloud shadows for the rest of the day while she buffed her nails and wondered what in heaven she should do about that little voice in her head, so she answered:
‘Yes, that’s a good idea. I’ll come back in fifteen minutes, then.’
‘Very good, Madam.’
Tina walked competently across the yard and into the house, feeling efficient and briskly serious. It would be useful to know how to drive, one never knew when a knowledge of driving might come in handy. It’s high time I did learn, really, she thought as she went upstairs to her room. I ought to have learned years ago, only somehow – (no … her thoughts sheered away like a flock of frightened sheep) I was just lazy, I suppose.
Downstairs, dawdling through the sunlight and looking only half-awake came another lazy one, her silly but rather sweet sister-in-law, with an open novel in her hand. A pang went through Tina; dawdle, idle, be silly as she might, how young she was!
‘Where are you flying off to?’ inquired Viola, rather sulkily; few sights are more annoying when we feel lazy than that of somebody bounding upstairs.
‘Just going to have a driving lesson,’ over her shoulder as she went into her room.
‘Oh, who with? Saxon?’ Viola followed her in and plomped on the bed, a habit of hers that Tina disliked. She nodded. She knew, in a fury of impatience and dismay, that Viola would say, ‘Oo, can I come too?’
‘Oo, can I come, too?’ said Viola.
‘No, you can’t,’ pronounced her sister-in-law lightly, summoning her extra fifteen years of experience and firmly grasping the situation. ‘I’m serious about it; I really do want to learn, and if you’re at the back, breathing down my neck and giving me advice, I shan’t be able to concentrate.’
Pause. Tina put on her beret.
‘Oh, all right,’ said Viola amiably, getting up. She added, going slap into the heart of the situation with devastating simplicity, ‘I don’t want to butt in.’
‘Butt in?’ repeated Tina, pulling on her gloves, and trying to be haughty. ‘My dear child, it isn’t a question of—’
But the mildly inquiring look on Viola’s face, with just the hint of a laugh in the eyes, defeated her. She giggled angrily, shook her fist, and went quickly out of the room,
It was delightful to be teased about Saxon! She ran downstairs singing. How easy life was if you took it lightly!
Viola stood by the bed, a little forlornly.
It did not occur to her primitive mind that Tina could want to learn to drive the car for any other reason than to be near Saxon. No one had taught Viola that ladies did not fall in love with chauffeurs. Had she asked Miss Cattyman, Miss Cattyman would have said that some ladies did; there was that awful case in the papers; and the aunts would have said that of course ladies, real ladies, didn’t. But her father, that romantic whose irritable yet rose-coloured view of life had coloured her own childish outlook, would have pointed out what a lot of ladies in Shakespeare’s plays had fallen in love, quite uninvited, with the most unsuitable and surprising people: and Viola went by what her father would have said. It seem
ed to her quite funny, natural and exciting that Tina should be keen on Saxon.
She had felt, for weeks, Tina’s interest in Saxon floating between herself and her sister-in-law every time his name was mentioned. Her feeling was vague but strong: when Tina admitted, by her laugh and her shaken fist, that she wanted to be alone with Saxon, Viola experienced no surprise; she felt that she had known for weeks how Tina felt.
But Tina’s happiness made her feel both lonely and sad.
After all, she thought, going slowly downstairs, she has got Saxon on the spot, and she can see him and be with him and that’s something; it isn’t like having absolutely no one, and the only person you’re at all keen on being frightfully rich and having a gorgeous time and engaged, I expect, to someone simply marvellous, like a film star.
She stopped at the back staircase that led down into the yard.
‘Come here,’ floated up a low, controlled voice. ‘Polo. Polo, come here.’
This glided off Viola’s mind without interesting her: she was not inquisitive. I’ll go out the front way, she thought, in case Tina’s down there with him. I don’t want to make her laugh.
Love, in Viola’s opinion, was a matter for giggles. Her practical experience of it had never made her want to giggle, but it made Shirley giggle, and The Crowd (in public, at least), and here was Tina, giggling like the rest. It was a matter of pride to giggle. Don’t let it Get You Down, The Crowd earnestly advised any one of its members who might be in love – rather as though Love were an allin wrestler with a lot of patent holds which it was the victim’s job to dodge.
But Viola herself did not feel like giggling.
‘I’ll go for a walk in the wood,’ she decided, and tiptoed past Mr Wither’s den and out through the front door.
She saw the car’s glossy backside just dwindling down the road, and waited until it was out of sight; then she wandered off into the wood with her hands in her pockets, thinking that she only had five pounds of her money left and wondering if, when that should be gone, she dare ask Mr Wither for some more.
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