B007TB5SP0 EBOK (29 page)

‘My dear, you’re always wondering.’

‘But now that Effie has begun her Tuesdays—’

‘So often the mood only takes me as the gong sounds for dinner.’

Viola Neffal moved her lips as if she were counting.

‘Well, that Mortlake tapestry,’ she said, ‘pierced with nails and overhung by mirrors, is enough to make one weep!’

The Biographer clasped nervously her long, expressive hands.

‘I sometimes think,’ she ventured, ‘that Modern things, rightly chosen, accentuate the past.’

Through the open windows, a line of trees, leaning all one way, receded across the garden like figures escaping from a ball.

‘Who was that woman, dear, who put her lover’s head into a pot of basil?’

‘You mean Isabel. But nothing shall ever dissuade me! Besides, after Princess Orvi I need a change. Two Italian women …’

Miss Neffal sprayed herself liberally with ‘Lethe Incarnate’.

‘… Here’s luck!’ she wished.

‘Somehow I feel it may be a failure. I saw the new moon with my left eye.’

‘You never told me quite what there is to admire in Mrs Kettler. Why she attracts you.’

‘It’s hard to explain … As a man of rare weight once remarked, she was like some radiant milkmaid.’

‘Are milkmaids so radiant as a rule?’

‘She was. And then she was so English! Even from her earliest utterance: “I would worship,” she said, “to spend a summer in a hut in a hollow of Old Sarum.” She was then barely two.’

‘She appears to have been a gipsy.’

‘After all, very little about her is known! There’s not much material. Hers was one of those flickering shadow-lives … You catch her in flashes. In her hey-day she is said to have grown weary of her world and gone to Ceylon.’

‘
Ceylon?
’

‘Well, if it wasn’t Ceylon— With these constant changes one is bound to get mixed. I’m not sure if it wasn’t Greece. I’ve an idea it was Athens!’

‘At any rate she was insular.’

‘Soul is as rare as radium.’

Miss Neffal revealed her mind.

‘The persons whom I should most have cared to meet were Walpole and Sappho,’ she said.

‘If you aren’t contented now you never will be!’

‘That’s vain.’

‘I was referring only to Hugh.’

‘Hugh! I am marrying him, Geraldine, as you know, mainly for his conversation. And of course I shall be very glad to be married …’

‘My dear Viola.’

‘When one is nearing the
end
of the twenties—’

‘Nonsense!’

‘Tell me more about the little milkmaid.’

‘Oh, well, very soon, now, I hope to be setting out again on my travels. I intend making a fairly extensive trip in
her
footsteps.’

‘You’re off to Greece?’

‘I’m going wherever she went.’

‘Perhaps you’ll wander round by Cannes!’

Geraldine O’Brookomore, the authoress of
Six Strange Sisters
,
Those Gonzagas
, etc., unlocked a sombre lacquer case: a work of art, in its way, with its many painted labels all on tinted pearl.

‘Reminiscences. Anecdotes. Apologias. Crimes. Follies. Fabrications. Nostalgia. Mysticism. Trivia. Human Documents. Love Letters. His to Me: Mine to Him,’ she read.

‘It’s Nostalgia you need …’

Miss O’Brookomore raised her eyes.

‘I’m sure I’m willing to hope so.’

‘Isn’t it difficult often to be impartial?’

‘It depends so much upon one’s health. When one is tired a little or below par—’

‘How I wish you were more sensible.
Is
it wise when the gong goes—’

‘I know. But Effie spoils me … Only a moment ago she sent me a peach that tasted like a dark carnation …’

‘Effie overdoes her hospitality I somehow think. Placing rouge in all the bedrooms. Even in Mr Fairmile’s room, poor boy!’

‘Who is there downstairs?’

‘Such gold-wigged Botticellis – playing bridge. They’ve sent me up to look for you.’

‘For me?’

‘To watch them.’

‘I won’t. Because where would be the good?’

‘Then they’ll come trooping here instead. After dinner it’s usually Effie’s way to take a candle and drag everybody to gaze at the children in bed and asleep.’

‘Here comes someone now!’

‘Were I to look in should I bother, weary, worry you?’

‘It’s Miss Collins.’

‘Mabel!’

‘I’ve been waiting for you ever so long. This is quite the dullest house—’

‘You poor little dreary cat!’

Miss Collins, who had never gone out before, seemed to believe a soirée to be a succession of bons-mots, songs and bursts of laughter.

‘One should try to be happy always!’

‘I suppose you’ll say it’s silly, but I want so much to l-i-v-e! I want to go flitting about the world like you.’

Miss O’Brookomore became pensive.

‘My work,’ she said, ‘lies largely among the dead.’

‘Is it imperative?’

‘The worst of modern biography, you understand, is, one is never quite sure to what one is entitled—’

‘If only to avoid the pitiful consequences,’ Miss Neffal theorized, ‘we should go through the world neatly and compact.’

Miss Collins turned from her, oppressed.

‘Effie sends a fresh supply of fruit. She is coming up very soon to look at the children.’

‘Raspberries!’

‘Are there raspberries in Chaldea?’

‘You astonish me! Why do you ask?’

‘For information. Naturally, living continually in the same place—’

‘Do you never go away?’

‘From home? Oh yes … Sometimes, in winter, we go to Scotland.’

‘Surely Scotland in winter would be a desolation! Stone, and slate, and asphalt, and the wrong red hair …’

‘You see, we cannot get rid of our house.’

‘Indeed. And why not?’

‘Because it stands in a valley. Although, of course, at times one gets some surprising effects of mist …’

Miss Neffal leaned back in her chair with listless arms and fingers interlaced.

‘Why attack the scenery?’ she inquired.

Miss Collins shuddered.

‘All that waving green,’ she said, ‘before the windows … Why, the Chase looks haunted even in the sun.’

‘Poor child!’

‘You’ve no conception … I assure you there isn’t a creature in all the countryside to interest one except, perhaps, Madame La Chose, who’s an actress, although she has nothing to do with the stage.’

‘How can one be an actress without anything to do with the stage?’ the Biographer wondered, drawing Miss Collins to her.

But Miss Collins did not seem to know.

‘I love that ripple in your throat,’ she said. ‘It isn’t a second chin. It’s just a … ripple!’

‘Mrs Kettler had the same.’

‘Are you perpetually pondering your great men?’

‘Naturally, those in hand.’

‘Often they must haunt you.’

Miss O’Brookomore smiled.

‘Occasionally,’ she said, ‘they do. In my dream last night I seemed to hear all those whose lives I’ve lately written moaning and imploring me not. Let the editions die, one good woman said to me. Let them be cancelled!’

‘Ingratitude!’

‘Dreams, have you never heard, go by
contraries
.’

‘Still, I’m sure you must need a change.’

‘Am I getting cloddish?’

‘Quite otherwise.’

‘Once again in a
wagon-lit
—’

Miss Collins slipped to her knees.

‘What would I not give,’ she said, ‘to go with you!’

Slightly startled, Miss O’Brookomore took from a cardboard box a cigarette.

‘Supposing …’

‘… supposing?’

‘Supposing – I only say “supposing” – supposing you were to accompany me to Greece …’

Sparkling, Miss Collins rose.

‘Only at the thought,’ she cried, ‘I could clap my feet in the air.’

The Biographer considered her. Dark against the brilliance.

‘My chief amusement,’ she explained, ‘has always been to exchange ideas with someone. And to receive new ones in return.’

‘At Corinth! …’

‘At Aulis!’

‘At Athens!’

‘At Epidauros!’

‘At Mycenae!’

‘In Arcadia!’

‘It would be like a fairy dream.’

‘So long as you’re good-humoured and sunny!’

‘They say I’m rather silly sometimes at home.’

Miss O’Brookomore dropped a sigh.

‘Few of us are born mellow,’ she declared.

Miss Collins sank again to the floor.

‘I suppose we should stifle all our emotions,’ she said. ‘And hide things … But I never do. I just let my heart speak. And so—’

‘I’m reading Lady Cray’s
Travels
,’ Miss Neffal broke in. ‘ “In the desert,” she says, “once, I tried to cook a partridge with a string, but the fire burnt the string and the partridge—” ’

‘Better to be foolish at home than—’

‘Here’s Effie!’

Candlestick in hand, and quite alone, their hostess appeared at the door.

‘I knocked, but could get no answer!’

‘I never heard you.’

‘Wild, interesting woman! Have you been doing
much
?’

‘Not a great deal. One’s best work is always unwritten.’

‘What she needs most,’ Miss Neffal reflected, ‘is the forsaken wing of a palace.’

‘Are you coming, Viola, to look at the children?’

‘Dare I, I wonder, in these shoes …’

‘Is there anything wrong with them?’

‘They might wake little Phillis …’

‘In any case, Mrs Orangeman, I fancy, is destined to do that.’

‘… You hear her sad mind when she sings!’

Miss Collins looked shrewd.

‘Her worries aren’t enough,’ she prophesied, ‘to keep her going …’

‘Unless you are more careful,’ Miss Neffal threatened, ‘I will write you down in my
Book of Cats
.’

‘Have you kept it long?’

‘Since I became engaged.’

Their hostess tittered.

‘Even we! …’ she said. ‘Usually now on a dull day Jack likes to touch up his will.’

‘Doesn’t it make you
nervous
?’

‘Why should it?’

‘I’d be afraid of his painting me out.’

‘That’s because you’re over highly strung. When people are pale and tired like you they need a rest.’

‘Well, I’ve finished almost for to-night. Perhaps I may come down presently when the curate’s gone. The last time we met he referred to poor Kettler as a Hospital Case …’

‘Have you no sketch of her at all that we could see?’

‘Only a replica. The original, if I recollect, is in the Liechtenstein Gallery.’

And with her long and psychic fingers Miss O’Brookomore smoothed out a scroll.

‘As a portrait,’ she said, ‘of course, it’s a miracle of badness. But I think her face is so amusing and so alight.’

Miss Collins gazed at the likeness sadly.

‘I’ve seen so few good pictures,’ she lamented; ‘although an artist did come one autumn to Bovonorsip. He took a room at the Wheat Sheaf and trespassed all day at the Chase.’

‘Some artists can be very insinuating.’

‘So was he! It was impossible not to share this man’s joy when he said he had captured a whole mood with a little grey paint … “Do not be too anxious to be like Corot, young ladies,” he would say when we went sketching too. And before he left he gave me a little wood scene with naked peasants.’

Her hostess took up her torch.

‘Poor Mr Fairmile seems so miserable, Mabel, since you’ve disappeared!’

‘How is he to show what he feels when—’

‘When?’

‘Oh, Effie, why did you tempt him? …’ Miss Collins asked as she darted out.

‘I wonder at anyone sitting down to pen the life of a woman so baggy about the eyes!’ Miss Neffal exclaimed, returning the engraving.

‘… Hark to Mrs Orangeman. Well, Viola, will you come?’

Alone, Miss O’Brookomore wandered leisurely to the window and leaned out.

Beneath her a landscape all humming with little trees stretched away towards such delicate, merest hills.

‘Was it solely Vampirism that made me ask her,’ she queried, ‘or is it that I’m simply bored?’

She looked up.

There was a suggestion of azalea in the afterglow that recalled to her the East.

‘Either way,’ she murmured, ‘her mother most likely would never consent.’

And seating herself before her mirror she began an examination of her raspberries for fear of little worms.

‘When people are pale and tired like you …’ had not Effie said?

She paused to dream.

How it tallied with Kate Kettler’s description:

‘Hair almost silver – incredibly fair: a startling pallor …’

A beehive in Brompton, a tray of gleaming fish, the way the wind blew – everything that morning seemed extraordinarily Greek.

As Miss O’Brookomore made her way towards Harrods she rejoiced.

Miss Collins actually was in town!

‘Take her and keep her,’ Mrs Collins somewhat unexpectedly wrote. ‘Who better than Miss O’Brookomore could break my child of her tomboy habits? Athens, I imagine, must be a sweet spot. Those glorious noses! Fancies fade, but a portrait of Byron on horseback,’ etc.

And now, as Miss O’Brookomore strolled along, for some reason or other she screwed up her eyes and smiled.

All about her in heroic strips of green showed pastoral plots. Dark shrubberies …

‘Of course she will need a few new frocks,’ she mused, pausing before a – ‘Robes – Artistic Equipments’ – at the corner of Ygdrasil Street, from whose folding doors at that same moment stepped the famous Mrs Asp.

The veteran Biographer held out a hand.

‘Your extensive acquaintance,’ she said, ‘I fear, has almost destroyed you for myself! They told me you had gone.’

‘I shall be leaving town now in about a week.’

‘Are you to be alone?’

‘I shall have a maid – and a little Miss Collins, who is not yet fifteen.’

Mrs Asp began to purr.

‘Should you need a really reliable maid,’ she said, ‘I could
tell you of an excellent woman. Nine weeks with a Mrs Des Pond and two … A treasure! Or, should you be requiring a becoming blouse, or an eerie hat, or anything … Mrs Manwood in there … It would be a charity! Silly thing … She put all her money on Quiet Queenie, or was it Shy Captain, and lost …’