No Love Lost (19 page)

‘What is it, boy?' I said, and at the same moment I heard from above us the clatter of footsteps on the parquet of the dining-room, and the school housekeeper, Miss Richardson, came bustling out on to the landing.

‘Oh, there you are, Mrs Lane,' she said. ‘I'm so glad to have caught you. I thought I should have to go without saying goodbye, and I did want to tell you what I've arranged.'

I stared at her. In all my time at the school I don't suppose we had exchanged half a dozen words. In the very beginning Victor had made it clear to me that one of the dangers of my position at the school was that the domestic staff, who were the employees of the governors, might suspect me of intrusion, with the result, of course, that I had avoided any contact with them. I'm afraid I had hardly dared recognize this plump middle-aged woman, with her strings of domestic science diplomas, as an ordinary human being. I had passed her occasionally in the grounds, looking very aloof in her black skirt and twin set, and we had shown our teeth at each other in polite mirthless smiles. Now I scarcely recognized her in a pale grey linen suit with a white flower on her lapel and a smart white straw set pertly on her glossy dark hair. She had a warm voice, I noticed for the first time, and, now that she was in holiday mood, real gaiety in her smile.

‘I couldn't find you anywhere this morning, and the Headmaster was engaged, so I couldn't ask when you were going off,' she rattled on. ‘I was a bit worried, but I've done what I think will suit you. Williams will be caretaking all through the holiday …'

‘That's the porter.'

She looked at me as if I were demented. ‘Yes, you know, the man at the lodge. He'll be there all the vacation and he'll have the keys. Mrs Williams is always very anxious to help, and if you should come back at any time you can always send her a card and she'll get the place aired and have a meal for you. But I was really worrying about the next day or so before you go. I've fixed up for Mrs Veal, who is the best of our charwomen, to come in tomorrow morning to see what you need. I've had some cold lunch laid here now, and if you'll just leave everything she'll see to it …'

Her voice trailed away and died before the expression on my face, which I suppose was utterly blank.

‘You did
know
, I suppose?' she demanded abruptly.

It was one of those purely feminine questions which seemed to have ‘I thought so' lingering somewhere in their depths, and it pulled me together at once.

‘If you mean, had I realized that the whole of the staff was going on holiday today, I'm afraid I hadn't,' I said, trying to sound easy and casual, as if minor items of this kind meant nothing to me. ‘I was thinking of last vacation.'

‘Oh but that was Easter, the short vac. We don't bother to disrupt the working arrangements for three weeks or so. But this is a long holiday, nearly nine weeks.'

‘Yes, yes, of course,' I said hurriedly. ‘Well, thank you tremendously. I'll look out for Mrs Veal and …'

‘How long do you expect to stay here, Mrs Lane?' She was watching me with black-fringed candid eyes.

‘I – I'm not sure at the moment'

She did not seem to hear me but went on as though she had made up her mind to say something and was going through with it at all costs.

‘I asked because some weeks ago when I mentioned the holidays
to the Headmaster he told me that he would be going off to the Continent almost immediately the term ended, and that you would probably leave at the same time to stay with friends in London. That's why I haven't consulted you before. Do believe me, Mrs Lane, it wasn't until last night, when I realized that you hadn't made any arrangements yet – about travelling, I mean – that I began to worry how you'd get on. This morning I tried to find you, but when I discovered I'd missed you I went ahead and made the best arrangements I could.'

‘It was very kind of you,' I said, and meant it.

‘Not at all. I feel terrible about it.' She gave up all pretences and was appealing to me for my confidence. ‘I wish I'd known you weren't going off somewhere at once. I'd have done anything, I would really. I'd have stayed myself.'

‘Don't be silly,' I said cheerfully. ‘You go and catch – your train and have a wonderful time. Where are you going?'

‘Devon,' she said, and made it sound like a prayer. Then she caught my eye and actually blushed, so that I got a glimpse of fuchsia hedges and bowls of clotted cream and someone waiting for her, no doubt.

She glanced at her watch and fled, but at the bottom of the stairs she looked back.

‘You'll have to order some milk,' she called up to me. ‘Mrs Veal will get it if you tell her how much you want. Good-bye.'

The door closed behind her and the house became so quiet that even the warm sunlight seemed eerie. I had never known a place to feel quite so empty. I sat down on the top step of the, stairs because I happened to be standing there, and Izzy sat beside me. My first thought was that it wasn't true. ‘Men don't behave like that,' I said aloud. But they do to their wives, said a voice in my mind. Don't be silly; you read it every day in the newspapers. Besides, it's so like Victor, isn't it? Just quietly arranging to get his own way without considering anyone else in the world. Victor doesn't get involved in arguments or explanations. He just fixes up to avoid giving any. Sometimes he goes to considerable lengths in this direction, getting married for instance. By all accounts that must have avoided one father and mother of an argument.

I felt myself growing very hot and presently I got up slowly and mounted the stairs to my own rooms. Sitting before my dressing-table, I looked dispassionately at the pale, thin-faced creature in the glass until I awoke a gleam of courage in her eyes. After a while we even laughed at each other.

‘Well, he'll be in for lunch in a minute and this is the one argument he isn't going to avoid, my dear,' I said. ‘I'd go and get a rolling-pin – if we had a kitchen.'

That was just before one o'clock. By a quarter past three it had become evident that wherever Victor was lunching it wasn't at home. He'd side-stepped again, very neatly, very completely. It was typical.

Izzy and I had some of the cold food which Miss Richardson had so kindly left for us, and afterwards I stacked the two plates and left them on the minute sideboard and tidied the table. There was nowhere to wash up unless one used the bathroom.

By this time I had begun to hate myself and the house even more, so I thought I'd walk it off. Just round the school the fields were dull and highly cultivated but about half a mile farther down the road there was a lane that led to the water meadows which cradled our local river. It would be cool down there and lonely, I thought, a good place to think things out and get myself reorientated. Everyone in Tinworth who was not actually infirm owned a bicycle and I was no exception. I got it out of the shed next to the stable where Izzy had lived so long and put him in the basket. He was too big for it and he made the handlebars wobble, but his legs were rather short for fast running and the main road was very hard for his pads. He was used to this form of transport, so he sat very still, his ears flat, and tried, I was certain, to adjust his weight to the balance. One of the gardeners was sweeping near the back gates and he swung them open for us. I saw his surprise as we appeared and his grin as we passed him. Taking advantage of the pause, he pulled a watch out of his pocket and glanced at it to see how much more he had of the afternoon. It was an insignificant incident. I don't know why I noticed it.

There was very little traffic on the high road and once we entered the lane we did not see a soul. I rode on until the going
became too rough, and afterwards left the bike in the hedge and walked on to the stile. Izzy was delighted and showed it in his own sedate way, by taking short meaningless runs through the lush grass, his head ploughing up and down through the green as if he were swimming.

It was Andy who, long before in a London park, had pointed out that Izzy was like a very small old-fashioned railway engine, squat, rusty, and quite incredibly heavy. I smiled at the recollection and dismissed it hastily. I was determined to put Andy right out of my mind. He had loved me and I had jilted him and he had got over it. That was all there was to that story and to think about it now would be to complicate things quite unbearably.

‘
I did love you once
' The line from
Hamlet
came back unbidden, the most cruel thing man had ever said to woman, my English mistress had once remarked in a moment of uncharacteristic self-revelation. A whole classful of girls had gaped at her, but she had been right. I knew it now. Andy had said that, almost in as many words, and he'd made it worse by not even meaning to be unkind. I did not blame him. I was just going to forget him, that was all.

I wandered on beside the running water and Izzy puffed and grunted beside me. It was a glorious afternoon, sleepy and golden, and I discovered that I was being careful to think only of immediate things, like the moor hen I disturbed or the lark I tried to see high in the white-flecked blue. It would not do. There was one vital issue I had got to face and the sooner the better if I was going to have it out with Victor. Was it to be divorce, or was I going to sit down under this slow-starvation marriage for the rest of my life?

I lay down on the bank where the turf was short and let my hand dangle in the water, and Izzy came and sat beside me, panting, until he found how to get his nose down to lap. Theoretically the thing was perfectly simple. I had made a hash of getting married and the sensible thing to do was to cut my losses and clear out and get a job. Any civilized young woman of the Western Hemisphere surely knew that by this time. Yet now that I was up against the reality I found there was a remarkable difference
between knowing and doing. It may have been just the failure I didn't want to face. Everybody, all my friends, anyone who had ever known me, knew that I was unreasonably terrified of divorce. What Andy had said about me was true. Mother's divorce had coloured my entire outlook from babyhood, and now, although I saw my foolishness, I also saw that one couldn't alter oneself just by knowing one was silly. I still hoped to cling to the crazy idea that somehow I could make it come all right. All the same … Victor would never alter. That was the conviction I'd been fighting off for weeks. People don't alter. They may with enormous difficulty modify themselves, but they never really change. I'd got myself married to an overbearing selfish man with a masterful personality, and unless I got away from him he'd reduce me to the colourless cipher he needed as a front-of-the-house wife.

But there again … was it so easy to
get
a divorce? This was England, not one of those countries where a thoroughly unhappy marriage is considered to be, by and large, fair ground for an appeal. If Victor did not help, and I did not think he would for a moment, then I might easily merely provoke a scandal which would ruin his career and leave me tied to him irrevocably for the rest of my life … or his.

Oh, dear God, I thought, it is difficult, too difficult. I put my head down in the warm grass and shut out everything from my mind but the sound of the gently lapping water. The sun was warm on my back. Izzy waddled over and settled his hard little body against my shoulder. The river sang softly, lipperty-lapperty, lipperty-lapperty….

I woke cold and stiff, and astounded to find it nearly dusk.

Doubtless it was the air, following all the emotional upset, which had put me out. At any rate, I had slept deeply and dreamlessly for heaven knows how long and might have stayed there half the night had not Izzy's patience given out. He prodded my ear gently until I sat up and stared about me. Even if one has nothing in the world to do, one feels guilty at dropping off to sleep unintentionally, and I got up in a fine flurry and set off back to the stile and the bicycle with as much haste as if I had a nurseryful of youngsters to feed. I had no idea what the
time was but when we reached the high road one of the cars which passed us had its sidelights on.

I had guessed the back gates of the school would be closed, but the big main ones in front were locked also and I had to rouse Williams in his lodge beside them to get in. He was astonished to see me, and apologetic.

‘I thought we was on our own, me and the missis,' he said, his little bright eyes peering at me from out of a mass of wrinkles. ‘Thought you'd all gorn. The Guv'nor's out, you know. Leastways, his car ain't in the garridge because I've been to look. 'E's not back.'

There was something in his manner, or else I imagined it, which was infuriatingly knowing. It seemed to epitomize the whole of Tinworth's attitude towards me, a sort of pitying condescension, an inquisitive commiseration. It got under my skin.

‘I didn't suppose he would be,' I said, and was shocked by something odd in my own tone. I had tried to sound casual and had changed it at the last moment for authority. Williams seemed interested.

‘Shall I leave the gates, then?'

I hesitated and he stood waiting.

‘What d'ye think?' he inquired at last, and added ‘ma'am' as an afterthought.

‘Yes, leave them open,' I said. It won't do any harm. Good night.'

‘Good night, m'm,' I heard him muttering as he bent down to fix the gate-stop. ‘Harm?' he was saying. ‘Harm?'

The house was dark and quiet as a grave. No one had been in. Everything was just as I had left it. I took Izzy upstairs with me. This was too bad of Victor altogether. I assumed he was punishing me for even daring to try to stand up to him on the evening before. The situation was crazy. I realized it now that I'd faced the problem and slept on it.

Meanwhile Izzy had begun to utter that distinctive Scotty mew which is at once the most apologetic and yet the most demanding sound in the world.