B007TB5SP0 EBOK (28 page)

Carefully, she arranged the items in a list while waiting for the
School of Calvally
, Andrew who had failed to come.

From her writing-table, whenever she looked up, she caught the reflection of her car in the downstairs windows of the house opposite.

‘When I invited him to my fireside,’ she reflected, ‘no doubt he thought it was to roast him. But I was in such a tremor, I hardly remember what I said. I might have been bespeaking paste pearls—’

And she recalled the casual words of the master.

‘Andrew can’t draw,’ he had often said. ‘He gets into difficulties and he begins to trill!’

And on another occasion he had remarked: ‘All his work is so pitch-dark – that little master of the pitch-dark.’ … And had not she too foolishly mistaken his
Ecce Homo
loaned about at pre-impressionist shows for an outing of Charles I?

And here was she sitting waiting for him!

‘Poor Mary,’ she reflected, ‘I ought to have gone round to her before. Though, when I do … she is sure to set upon me! She will say I threw them together.’

And, perplexed, she picked up a pen, a paper-knife, a letter weight—

A postscript from Lady Twyford peeped at her.

‘In recommending to you Martin as chauffeur,’ she read, ‘I feel I should say that his corners are terrible
tout juste
.’

What could be better in her present mood! She would have preferred to fly.

‘I adore an aeroplane,’ she breathed; ‘it gives one such a tint—’

She rang.

‘Thérèse!
My things!
’

‘Oh, London. Native place! Oh, second string to my bow! Oh, London dear!’ she prayed.

Whose
uplifting was it?

As Martin sped along she was moved.

‘The way the trees lean … the way the branches grow …’ she addressed the park.

How often, as a child, had she sat beneath them, when, with hands joined primly across her solar plexus, the capital, according to nurse, was just a big wood – with some houses in it!

She found Mrs Calvally propped up by a pink pillow, shelling peas.

It brought to her mind her husband’s disgraceful defence.

‘How could I ever have been happy with her,’ he had asked, ‘when her favourite colour is crushed strawberry?’

‘I had no idea,’ Mrs Calvally said, ‘that you were in town.’

‘I felt I could not pass—’

‘Everyone has been so good to us.’

‘Yesterday,’ Raphael said, who was lying upon the floor, ‘a cat, a peacock-person, an old lion and a butterfly all came to inquire. And to-day, such an enormous, big, large, huge, terrific—’

‘Yesterday, dear, will do.’

Mrs Henedge raised an eyebrow:

‘I was afraid,’ she said, ‘I should find you in one of Lucile’s black dreams—’

‘Tell me all your news!’

‘In the country what news is there ever? This year we fear an epidemic of yellow flowers will spoil the hay …’

‘I am sure the country must be quite a sight.’

‘… I prefer my garden to everything in the world.’

‘There is a rumour that it has inspired an opera!’

‘I fancy only a consecration. Mr Brookes is certainly to be Rose. A Christmas one! He makes his début this winter.’

‘And
the other
, when is that to be?’

‘One can only conjecture … It occurred to me that very likely Andrew—’

‘Oh, Andrew! An-drew can’t draw. He never drew anything yet.’

‘Run away, dear; do.’

‘Besides, he’s going to Deauville to decorate
a Bar
… Scenes of English Life—’

‘My dear, all Europe is very much alike!’

‘And all the world, for the matter of that.’

‘I heard from George this morning.’

‘Really, what does he say?’

‘Oh, it’s only a line. So formal, with the
date
, and everything. And there is a tiny message, too, from her.’

‘Poor demoniac—’

‘Of course I haven’t seen you since!’

‘No—’

Mrs Calvally settled her pillows.

‘She came round like a whirlwind,’ she began.

‘… Manner means so much.’

‘A tornado. I was just putting on my
shawl
. You know how he loved anything strange—’

‘Well!’

Mrs Calvally paused.

‘I think there must be thunder about,’ she said. ‘I’ve been at the point of death all day.’

‘And where are they now?’

‘In Italy. Trailing about. And he went away with such an overweight of luggage …’

‘I expect he took his easels!’

‘This morning the letter was from Rimini. It appears it reminds them of Bexhill … and the hotel, it seems, so noisy.’

‘How painfully dull it sounds.’

‘Quite uninteresting!’

‘I think it sounds jolly.’

‘Shall we evoke Morocco with a rose and lilac shoe!’

‘What would be the good of that?’

‘No good at all, my treasure, only it might be fun.’

Mrs Henedge struggled to her feet.

‘Evoke Morocco!’ she said, ‘I fear I haven’t time. I’ve a dentist and a palmist, and—’

She surveyed half-nervously the shoe.

There was hardly any rose and scarcely any lilac. It was
a crushed strawberry
.

‘To-day I’ll have threepennyworth!’

In a flowing gown tinged with melancholy and a soupçon rouged Mrs Shamefoot stood ethereal at her gate.

She laughed lightly.

‘And, perhaps, I’ll have some cream …’

With the movement of a princess she handed him a jar.

‘That jar,’ she said, ‘belonged, once, to … So mind it doesn’t break.’

And while the lad ladled she studied with insouciance the tops of the chimneys across the way.

The sky was full of little birds. Just at her gate a sycamore-tree seemed to have an occult fascination of its own.

Whole troops of birds would congregate there, flattening down each twig and spray, perpetually outpouring.

‘Before I came here,’ she inquired, ‘were the birds so many?’

He shook his head.

‘There was only an owl.’

‘It’s extraordinary.’

‘Shall I book the cream?’

‘What is the matter with the bells?’

‘They’re sounding for the Sisters.’

‘Are they ill? Again?’

‘They died last night – of laughter.’

‘What amused them, do you know?’

‘They were on the golf links …’

‘Death, sometimes, is really a remedy.’

‘Soon there’ll be no call for a dairy. What with the river—’

‘Indeed, it’s more like somewhere in
Norway
now!’

‘Not that, in milk—’

‘Crazes change so, don’t they?’

‘A nice deep pail of—’

‘Since yesterday, has anyone else … ?’

‘It’s a pretty jar,’ he said, in a subdued voice. ‘What is it?’

‘That’s Saxe,’ she said, as she carefully closed the door.

The long flaying room was flooded by the evening sun.

‘One needs an awning!’ she murmured, setting down the cream.

Before the house stretched a strip of faint blue sand. There were times when it brought to mind the Asz.

Only last night she had trailed towards the window, and with the tip of her toe …

She turned, half charmed, away. There could still be seen the trace …

‘I think the house will be the greatest success!’

Of course, the walls were rather carpeted with pictures—

There was the
Primitive
, that made the room, somehow, seem so calm. And the
Blessed Damozel
– that fat white thing. And a Giorgione, so silky and sweet. And a Parma angel. And the ‘study-of-me-which-is-
such
-an-infamy!’

‘I must have blinds,’ she exclaimed.

It was tiresome there were none now since Georgia was coming in to tea.

How prim the cups were upon their china tray!

She had placed them there herself …

In a bowl beside them floated a few green daisies with heavy citron hearts.

And if they chose to make eyes at the cherries, what did it matter, since the background was so plain?

She glanced at her reflection.

‘
O mon miroir, rassure-moi; dis moi que je suis belle, qui je serai belle éternellement!
’

She paused, causelessly sad.

Even here, the world, why … one was still in it—

‘We should pray for those who do not comprehend us!’ she murmured. And, of course, that would end in having a chaplain. Or begin by having one.

A camera study of her sister, Mrs Roy Richards, a woman whose whims would have made the theme of a book, or a comedy
en famille
, with her seven children standing round her nearly naked, had arrived, only lately, as if to recall her to herself.

‘Not since the last famine …’ she murmured, tucking it into a drawer.

‘Ah, there!’ One could hardly mistake that horn …

She lifted the wooden pin in the door and peered through the grill.

‘Who knocks?’

‘A sinner.’

‘A couple,’ Lady Castleyard corrected, ‘of the very worst. Regular devils.’

‘Come in. Unfortunately, my Gretchen has gone out.’

‘I hear you are achieving sainthood by leaps and bounds!’

Mrs Shamefoot embraced her guests.

‘I fear … it’s far more gradual.’

‘It must be so desolate for you, dear, here all alone, cut off from everybody.’

‘I love my solitude.’

‘Whatever do you find to do, in the long evenings?’

‘I’m studying Dante—’

Lady Georgia rolled her eyes:

‘I imagine you keep a parakeet,’ she said. ‘Where is it?’

Mrs Shamefoot busied herself with the tea.

‘Have you noticed the birds?’ she asked. ‘Such battalions … And before I came there was only an owl!’

‘I admire your garden. Those tragic thickets of thorns—’

‘I think the autumn here should be simply sublime.’

‘I will witness it, I hope, from my roof-top! I’m like an Oriental when I get up there. I’m sure I was one, once.’

‘How, dear?’

‘Oh, don’t expect me to explain.’

‘Victor would still insist that you had saved the country.’

‘Locally, of course.’

‘He’s so enchanted with the window. He has got me to change our pew.’

‘When the sunlight comes it is too superb!’

‘Yes; and never a glare, dear – ; always tempered.’

‘Several young men in town seem struck by it too. They like to sit before it. I believe they even kneel … So annoying! Often, just when I want to be there myself—’

‘I’m glad you go somewhere. It’s wrong to withdraw yourself too completely. Without a servant even!’

‘My servant, Gretchen, ran, silly child, to the post-office about a week ago.’

‘I wonder you let her …’

‘I needed stamps.’

‘Stamps!’

‘Soco had scribbled …’

‘What are his views?’

‘He speaks of a visit. He has never seen St Dorothy. I received such a volume from him this morning, quires and quires and quires, all about nothing.’

‘You must bring him to Stockingham when he comes. We’re giving
The Playboy of the Western World
in the Greek Theatre … I don’t know how it will be!’

‘Julia’s Pegeen—’

‘I see she’s reviving
Magda
.’

‘So she is. But you know nothing lasts her long.’

‘And her strange maid, apparently, is going on the stage. She is to take a part of a duchess.’

Lady Castleyard yawned.

‘I love your room,’ she said. ‘It’s so uncommon.’

‘I want to show you my mourner’s lamps.’

‘Where are they?’

‘In my bedroom.’

‘Your bedroom, Biddy. I expect it’s only a cell.’

‘It overlooks the grave-ground.’

‘Oh, how unpleasant!’

‘I don’t mind it. I like to sit in the window and watch the moon rise until the brass weather-cock on the belfry turns slowly silver above the trees … or, in the early dawn, perhaps, when it rains, and the whole world seems so melancholy and desolate and personal and quite intensely sad – and life an utter hoax—’

Lady Georgia rubbed away a tear.

‘I don’t know!’ she said.

‘A hoax! You wonder I can isolate myself so completely. Dear Georgia, just because I want so much, it’s extraordinary how little I require.’

‘Don’t the neighbours tire you?’

‘I hardly ever see them! I am afraid I frighten Lady Anne … Old Mrs Wookie made me some advances with a
face-cloth
she had worked me for my demise … And I’ve become quite friendly with the Pets. He has such character. Force. I am leaving him a lock of my hair.’

‘S-s-sh! How morbid! Shall we explore the cell? I’ve never seen one yet.’

‘I’d sooner not be over-chastened,’ Lady Castleyard confessed. ‘It might spoil me for the antiquarians … and the last time I was here I unearthed such a sweet old chair with hoofs.’

‘Poor Mrs Frobisher found four Boucher panels there once.’

‘I’m quite sure it was once!’

Mrs Shamefoot slid aside some folding doors.

Ashringford, all towers, turrets, walls, spires, steeples and slanting silver slates, stretched before her in the evening sun.

‘I’ll come as far as St Dorothy with you,’ she murmured, ‘if you like. It’s just the time I go for my quiet half-hour.’

‘
Besides, I never ventured once to carry you with me to any conference I had with the Pope for fear you should be trying some of your coquettish airs upon him.
’

– Lady Kitty Crockodile to Miss Lydell.

‘ “Hair almost silver – incredibly fair: a startling pallor.” ’ Otherwise, unmistakably, there was a close resemblance.

It is true, whenever she began a new work she said the same.

There were the Ducquelin, the Pizzi, the Queen Quickly periods … and that curious autumn evening when she had experienced the impulse of an old and wicked Caesar …

‘And here am I rusting in Yorkshire!’ she exclaimed.

In the twilight her face showed vague and indistinct: an earring gleamed.

‘I adore your patience!’

‘She seems to have had eleven children.’

‘Who, dear?’

‘Mrs Kettler. Catherine. Kitty.’

‘I wonder you don’t get tired of going just on and on.’