Less Than Angels (28 page)

‘But what should I
do
with all my notes if I didn’t write them up?’ he asked.

‘Oh, we’d soon think of something,’ said Catherine gaily.

The
first meeting between Miss Clovis and Miss Lydgate after the fatal week-end was a stormy one. Things were said on both sides which might be regretted afterwards, and both felt the perverse satisfaction which is to be got from saying things of precisely that kind. It is very seldom that we can tell our friends
exactly
what we think of them; for some the occasion never presents itself, and they are perhaps the poorer for not having experienced the exultation of flinging the buried resentment and the usually irrelevant insult at a dear friend.

Afterwards they were both exhausted and hungry. They went together to the kitchen and, with hands still shaking. Miss Lydgate attempted to open a tin of pilchards. Miss Clovis took over from her with rough affection.

‘I’m sorry, Gertrude,’ she declared. ‘I can see now that this was none of your doing.’

Miss Lydgate was bending over the bread-bin to get out the loaf. ‘Let’s have a strong cup of Nescafe,’ she said, ‘we both need it. I can’t help feeling,’ she went on as she filled the kettle, ‘that I might have been a little more intelligent, though. That day when we were having lunch, he
hinted
in that sly way of his — you know how he does—that he might be getting funds from somewhere. Perhaps I should have
known?

‘But if you
had
known, what could you have done?*

‘I could have warned you and Felix. I could have spared you the strain of the week-end.’

‘Well, the young things had some good meals, better than they usually get, I’m sure. That is something to the-good»*

‘Gemini—twins—there is something two-faced even about his name,’ declared Miss Lydgate in a disgusted tone.

They sat down at the table, both rather subdued.

‘I suppose this has been a purging, a catharsis,’ said Miss Clovis. ‘It has had the effect on us that a Greek tragedy might have. We are drained and exhausted of all feeling now.’

‘This means the end of our linguistic collaboration. And I know what I shall do.’ Miss Lydgate laid down her knife and fork and thumped the table. ‘We were writing an article together, but it was not finished.
I shall withold my material on the Gana verb
,’ she declared harshly, ‘without that the whole thing will fall to pieces, but
he shall not have it!’

Miss Clovis paused, then said, ‘Yes, Gertrude, I can understand your feeling like that and I am grateful for your loyalty. But you are too great a scholar to be able to carry it through. That material on the Gana verb is too important to be withheld and it must be published in conjuction with Father Gemini’s researches.’

‘Yes, I see what you mean. It is greater than any of us and through it we must somehow rise above our petty squabbles.’

‘That’s it.
F
loreat sciential’
cried Miss Clovis.

They rose from the table making no attempt to do anything with the dishes, for it was not their custom to.

‘I am worried about Alaric,’ said Miss Lydgate. ‘I telephoned him last night and he was not in. Mrs. Skinner didn’t seem to know where he had gone.’

‘I suppose he didn’t tell her-he may not have thought it necessary,’

‘But she told me that he was in the house when she went out to evening service at the chapel and when she came back he had gone without leaving any message. She didn’t know what to do about the meal.’

‘Well, he is a grown man,’ said Miss Clovis with a bark of laughter. ‘I’d always imagined he might break out sometime,’

‘You don’t think it could be anything like that, do you?’

Miss Lydgate looked worried. ‘I am fifteen years older than he is and have always felt responsible for him. Mother always used to say that he was weak.’

‘He may just have gone out to the cinema,’ said Miss Clovis reassuringly, ‘but if you’re anxious let’s pay him a surprise visit. He will surely be back now, twenty-four
hours
later.’

‘Yes, let’s do that. We’ll go on the bus.’

As they got out of the bus and walked along the road, they heard a number of explosions, some in the distance, others startlingly near, and once the night sky was illuminated by a rocket which broke in a shower of green and golden stars. There was a smell of gunpowder in the cool frosty air.

‘Why, it’s Guy Fawkes night,’ said Miss Clovis, ‘what fun!’

‘I hardly think that Alaric will be celebrating it in any way,’ said Miss Lydgate, as they walked up the path to his front door.

‘I don’t know about that,’ said Miss Clovis, peering round the side of the house. ‘It looks almost as if he has a bonfire in the garden, unless it’s next door.’

They rang the bell but nobody came for some time. Then Mrs. Skinner opened the door. She looked even more worried than usual and the large flower ear-rings she wore contrasted incongruously with her pinched anxious little face.

‘Oh, Miss Lydgate,’ she cried, ‘Mr. Lydgate is in the garden, and Miss Oliphant is there.’

‘Miss Oliphant? Who is Miss Oliphant?’

‘We met her that Sunday afternoon,’ Miss Clovis began to explain, but Miss Lydgate was already striding through the hall and out of the back door. ‘Alaric!’she called. ‘What are you doing?’

There was no answer so they ventured further into the garden, then stopped in the middle of the lawn to gasp at the sight that met their eyes. A large bonfire of sticks and garden rubbish was blazing beyond the vegetable patch. Two figures, a tall man and a small woman, were poking at it vigorously with long sticks, pausing from time to time to throw on to it bundles of paper which they were taking from a tin trunk which stood on the ground nearby.

‘Alaric,
what are you doing
?’ Miss Lydgate’s voice had now risen to a screech.

‘Why, hullo, Gertrude,’ he said, ‘we’re having a bonfire.’

‘Yes,’ said Catherine, her face shining in the firelight, ‘Alaric had so much junk up in his attic and Guy Fawkes night seemed just the time to get rid of some of it.’

She is calling him Alaric, thought Gertrude irrelevantly.

‘But these are your notes,’ screamed Miss Clovis, snatching a half-burned sheet from the edge of the fire. ‘“They did not know when their ancestors left the place of the big rock nor why, nor could they say how long they had been in their present habitat …”’ she read, then threw it back with an impatient gesture. ‘Kinship tables!’ she shrieked. ‘You cannot let
these
go!’ She snatched at another sheet, covered with little circles and triangles, but Alaric restrained her and poked it further into the fire with his stick.

‘Esther, it’s no good,’ he said. ‘I shall never write it up now. If Catherine hadn’t encouraged me, I don’t think it would ever have occurred to me that I could be free of this burden for ever.’

‘Miss Oliphant, you are a wicked woman!’ cried Miss Clovis, making as if to strike her.

‘The bonfire was my idea,’ said Alaric, ‘and now we are all going to have some mulled wine.’

‘What, even Mrs. Skinner?’ asked Miss Lydgate, again with seeming irrelevance, but the idea of drinking with Mrs. Skinner was certainly a startling one.

‘Yes, she will be joining us.’ He threw another bundle from the trunk on to the fire. Some of it, eaten by white ants, fell away like a shower of confetti.

‘Oh,
pretty
!’ Catherine cried.

‘But what will you do now?’ demanded Miss Lydgate.

‘I don’t really know. I shall be free to do whatever I want to. I shall still review books, of course, but I could even write a novel, I suppose.’

There was a shocked silence.

‘He has the most wonderful material,’ Catherine said.

Mrs. Skinner appeared on the lawn. ‘The wine is ready,’ she announced uneasily.

‘Then let’s go in and drink it,’ said Alaric. ‘We can come out again afterwards to see how the bonfire is getting on.’

It was ‘afterwards’ that Rhoda, stationed at her uncurtained window in the darkness, saw them, dancing, or so she thought, round the fire. She imagined, though she could not really see clearly enough to be certain, that some were wearing masks. One figure, a small person, it might have been Catherine or even Mrs. Skinner, appeared to be wrapped in some kind of native cloth or blanket.

Rhoda had been out to supper at the vicarage earlier in the evening, so had not seen the beginning of the bonfire, only this strange ‘ orgy’, for really it did seem to be almost that.

‘Didn’t you see them earlier?’ she asked her sister accusingly.’

‘Well, no, I was getting supper, and I can’t see their garden from my room.’

‘You should have gone into mine.’

‘But how could I have known that anything was going on?’ asked Mabel a little peevishly. ‘Malcolm brought Phyllis in to supper and there was quite a lot to do.’

‘I don’t know what to make of it,’ said Rhoda. ‘I thought perhaps Deirdre might be with them, seeing Catherine there made me feel it.’

‘Oh, Deirdre is across at the Lovells’ helping them with their fireworks. She went after tea.’

‘Oh, I see.’ Rhoda appeared to hesitate as if wondering where her duty lay. ‘Perhaps I’ll go across to the Lovells’, then,’ she said.

Next door she found the firework party in full swing. Mr. Lovell was enjoying himself enormously, sending up rockets and setting off the more elaborate pieces. It was perhaps a grief to him that his little boys, Roy and Peter, did not seem to share his enthusiasm, but he soon forgot his disappointment in his own enjoyment. The boys cowered at a safe distance, occasionally lighting a sparkler and watching it burn with a kind of fearful delight Jenny was terrified and clung to Deirdre who, remembering her own childish fear of fireworks and dread of Guy Fawkes night, comforted the little girl and tried to draw her attention to the beauties of the scene. Mrs. Lovell was in the house with Snowball, the old sealyham, who was allowed to be frightened because it had been given out on the wireless that pets should be kept indoors. He sat complacently in his usual chair by the fire, covering it with his stiff white hairs.

‘I don’t know
what’s
going on at Mr. Lydgate’s,’ said Rhoda, stumbling across the lawn. ‘They’re burning papers on a bonfire and dancing round it. It seems so ‘—she hesitated for a word—
‘
unsuitable’
>
she brought out. ‘We don’t usually have things like that happening here, do we?’

‘High time we did!’ said Mr. Lovell jovially. ‘Come on now, the last one. Who’s going to set it off? Roy? Peter?’

The boys hung back. ‘Oh, well, then I suppose I must do it myself. Look out, everybody I ‘

Cries of mingled delight, terror and relief were heard as the last rocket swished up into the sky. It broke in a shower of gold and silver stars.

Mr. Lovell then invited them into the house for refreshments, and they drank cocoa and ate sandwiches in the cold bare sitting-room, full of shabby Scandinavian furniture. As the dog was sitting in the only comfortable chair, they were obliged to crouch round the fire and soon took their leave, for Mrs. Lovell had to put the children to bed and Mr. Lovell to take Snowball for his evening walk.

‘Look, the party seems to be breaking up,’ said Rhoda eagerly, for voices could be heard in Mr. Lydgate’s front garden and when they came a little nearer it was possible to see Miss Clovis and Miss Lydgate by the front door. Catherine was somewhere in the shadows by a laurel bush and when the others had gone came over to talk to Deirdre.

‘What news of Tom?’ she asked.

‘Oh, I’ve just written to him,’ said Deirdre. ‘It’s difficult to know how he really is. He seems busy,’ she added doubtfully.

‘Don’t I know those letters?’ said Catherine. ‘So terrifyingly occupied with such momentous things. But darling Tom, we wouldn’t really have him any different, would we?’

Deirdre did not much like the ‘we’ but could hardly do less than agree with her.

‘Don’t forget that you must send Christmas greetings horribly early,’ said Catherine. ‘Almost now, I believe,’

‘Yes, I know,’ said Deirdre a little stiffly.

‘Tom always sends such curious cards, scenes of African life, that only make him seem even farther away and they always arrive
weeks
before Christmas.’

Catherine did not know, indeed how could she, that before Tom could post his Christmas cards, he would be lying dead, accidentally shot in a political riot, in which he had become involved more out of curiosity than passionate conviction.

The harassed young administrative officer, who had been in charge of the proceedings, had quite enough to worry him without the added anxiety of protecting anthropologists who meddled in politics. But he had liked Tom Mallow—they had often had an evening’s drinking together—and it was he who found the Christmas cards, stamped and ready to be posted, lying on the table in Tom’s hut. He had thrown them away, feeling that his friends would only be distressed to receive them now. There had also been an unfinished letter on the table—obviously to a girl—and he had not known what to do with that. He remembered that Mallow had once brought out a photograph of a girl sitting on a seat in a garden with two dogs—retrievers, he thought—lying at her feet. But later, when he was gathering up some more papers, he had come across letters from two different girls. Which was the one with the dogs, then? And had she been his girl friend or the only one he happened to have a photograph of? Well, it was none of his business, and perhaps it was better not to meddle in things that might become too complicated. So he bundled up the letter with the notes on kinship and land tenure and sent the whole lot back to Mallow’s family in England.

Mark and Digby received the news from Professor Fairfax, who, perhaps because of his nervousness, had seemed almost facetious, as if Tom had been caught out in some childish prank.

‘Anthropologists don’t usually die in the field,’ Mark pointed out. ‘It’s hardly surprising that Fairfax didn’t rise to the occasion. He may do better the next time it happens.’