The Balliols (3 page)

She was spared that necessity, however. Before she was again fit the bicycle and the record book had been superseded. From a
September holiday at Deal, Balliol returned with the announcement that he had taken up golf. That was not strictly true. Golf had taken him up. He argued that golf combined such pleasures as bicycling, fresh air, open country, pleasant companionship with professional advantages; that a great deal of business could be done “at what I believe the younger members call the nineteenth hole.” But neither was that argument strictly valid. Golf had captured him and the extent of his submission would have been no less complete had the list of his firm's clients provided him with not a single partner or opponent to excuse the abandonment of an office desk at noon.

On returning from an afternoon of golf he would discuss scores over bogey, stymies and shanked approach shots with a minute elaboration of detail and theory. His handicap remained rooted in the lower teens, but a comparative study of his recent performances always convinced him that he was playing at least two strokes better than he had in the preceding month. And he invariably completed half an hour's putting practice on the drawing-room carpet with the comforting pronouncement that he would be in single figures within a year.

Golf was the one subject that he did not discuss impersonally.

It was only indeed to the failure of a golfing partner that the present expedition was due. A telegram had arrived shortly before eleven. “Returning lunch. Will go walk country afternoon. Edward.”

Which was very typical of Balliol. It never occurred to him that what he wanted, his family would not too. Jane was convinced that he had refused to install a telephone simply so that he might send such messages.

He described the telephone, which he had only had installed at his office with considerable reluctance, as an extravagance and a nuisance. Actually, from the financial point of view it would have represented a considerable economy in telegrams, of which he rarely sent less than a dozen every week. While the nuisance, as far as he was concerned, would consist in the opening that it would afford his friends to alter the plans that he had made by telegram and letter. If they could have reached him by the telephone they would have rung up to question his decisions; and suggest alternatives. As it was, they shrugged their shoulders, thinking, “It's a nuisance, but it's less trouble to do it the way he says.”

In an unobtrusive way Edward Balliol was an extremely selfish
man. He got his own way without appearing to force it upon other people, without apparently knowing that he was doing so. Jane was well aware of this trait in him. She smiled at it, knowing it was simple to deal with selfish people who knew their own minds and made up yours for you.

She had made other plans, as it happened, for that afternoon. She was going to have taken Francis, her second and five-year-old son, to sail his boat on the Serpentine. But Francis would be just as happy really with his nurse. And it was a long time since she had done anything alone with Edward. A long time, when it came to that, since she had really talked to him.

That was one of the strange things of marriage. You could see so little of a husband. You were never allowed to be alone. He returned from his office at the day's end. He told you in brief outline what had happened during the day, whom he had seen, what he had been told; which in Edward meant a précis of the main contents of the evening papers. It would then be time for him to take his bath. Most evenings they would either have friends to dinner, or be going out. From their first guest's arrival or the servant's announcing of their names they would not see each other till the final farewells had been exchanged. Husbands and wives were not allowed to sit together; to be near each other; to join in the same conversation. At the end of the evening they had barely enough energy for the exchange of a few tired comments. Next morning there was the hurried rush of a busy man starting for his office.

“One sees less of one's husband during twenty years of marriage than one does during the twenty weeks of an engagement,” she had once remarked to Stella Balliol.

The retort had been the kind of thing that she was accustomed to expect from her husband's sister.

“That's the only reason why marriage lasts. If wives and husbands saw as much of each other as they think they are going to when they get engaged, the divorce courts would be as crowded as the police courts.” Which was what one would expect of Stella. She could be trusted to take the unconventional view on any subject.

All the same, this little trip, the train journey to Hendon, the walk through the fields to Golders Hill, trivial though it might be, was the most intimate afternoon they had had for months.

And here they were now, seated on the terrace; a large tea, of watercress, meringues, strawberry jam, new-cut bread and butter set before them, with the breeze, after the long walk, cool upon her cheeks, the sky a luminous pale blue, the lawns green and dappled
in the April sunlight sparkling towards the pond; with children tumbling over each other in the grass, their nurses, in prim blue uniforms, starched linen and white caps, seated on the wooden benches, slowly rocking at their prams with one eye upon their charges, the other upon the blurred print of a novelette, conducting at the same time an animated exchange of confidences, opinions and impressions with colleagues at their side; with tethered dogs, apparently asleep, waiting with cocked ear for the moving signal that would mean freedom and the sandy stretches of the heath.

“It's just as it used to be,” he said.

She knew what he meant by that; just as it had been eighteen years ago, in their days of courtship, when they had escaped from chaperons. And a little sob rose in her throat, because it was the same and yet not the same; because there was the sunlight and the grass; the blue sky, the nurses, the dogs, the tumbling children; and in her heart the sense of spring and poetry.

There was all that here. But the elegant young man whose Bohemian attire had made him conspicuous but had charmed her, since it seemed right on him, had exchanged that loose elegance of dress for a modish dapperness; because a drawled voice that had said such absurd fond things as “How wise of you to wear eyes that match an April sunlight;” that had indulged in elaborately subtle sophistries over trifles, developing world philosophies from the cut of a waiter's waistcoat, was no longer self-consciously but unconsciously affected. A pose had become a manner. With the direction of its wit altered, so that he spoke facetiously about what mattered, instead of seriously about what did not matter. The lavish tea that was spread before them was no longer a gesture to placate a waiter. “Let's order a great deal so that we can sit here a great while. I couldn't think of food when I am with you,” he used to say. But the high-piled plates were now very sturdily employed in the assuagement of a hearty appetite; while she herself, though her heart was light, stung with the sense of vanished winter and budding life, was no longer the reflection of a young man's mood; was no longer to that young man as is a garden to the sun; bright and gay and coloured, when the sky is cloudless; lifeless and toneless when its light is hidden. Indeed, she was not thinking of that man, at all, but was wondering about the evening's dinner party; was thinking of the low bowl of flowers, the clustered primroses and pansies that she would set in the centre of the table; of how the high-tapered candles would be reflected on the polished walnut; of the large bowl of tulips that she had set in the window to catch the eye of the guests as they arrived, so that they
would feel, in spite of the dimming light and greying sky above the house tops, that spring had indeed returned. Of that she thought, and in particular of the frock with the long folds of turquoise blue that she would be wearing that night for the first time, that she was still half afraid would look too young for her.

And she felt sad suddenly on this April day because things were the same and yet not the same; since the world had the same look but the eyes and the heart were changed.

“I think I shall put Mr. Rickman on my left,” she said.

It was six o'clock when she returned to the large Bayswater house in the oblong rectangle of houses that in residential London is called a Square. She had lived in this house for sixteen years, since within a few months of the birth of her first child, Lucy, she had realized that she was again to become a mother. The face of London had changed greatly during those sixteen years, but no sign of that change had disturbed the formal quiet of the Square from which not only bagpipes, monkey-men and barrel organs, but all symbols of the new age, were rigorously excluded. The basemented, three-storied row of houses with their flight of seven white steps leading to a heavy portico, their flat stucco fronts, bright with sun-blinds and flower boxes, had faced steadily for fifty years the long strip of railinged garden whose branches for a few moments in early May were brightly emerald. A few yards away the crowded thoroughfare of the Edgware Road had reflected hour by hour along its jostled pavements, in its packed shop windows, on its high-flared hoardings, the rapid advance of the twentieth century. But over Easton Square a Victorian calm still brooded.

As her husband pushed open the front door, Jane hesitated on its threshold, as though something had occurred to her; but after a pause that was momentary she passed on in silence.

From the top of the house came the sound of a slammed door, a girl's voice shouting, “Yes, it's they,” and the door slammed. There was a clatter of footsteps on stairs, a girl of thirteen, bright-eyed, her cheeks flushed, was flinging herself into Jane's arms. “Mummie darling, how late you are.”

A moment later a tall girl, thin and unformed at a girl's awkward age, was self-consciously welcoming her father.

“Mummie,” Ruth was saying. “You
are
going to let us watch you arrange the flowers? You promised, didn't you?”

Schoolroom tea was not till half-past six. To watch their mother arrange flowers had been always one of the children's treats.

“Come along,” she said.

The two girls sat at the table, their elbows rested on it, while Jane filled the long oblong dish with primroses and pansies. As
always, Ruth was the most talkative. At thirteen years old she was still a child, with the eager, un-selfconsciousness of a child; with the slim prettiness of a Baumer drawing. She was alert, vivid, like quicksilver. Lucy, in her sixteenth year, on the other hand, was awakened, self-conscious. She was scraggy; her movements were abrupt. She always seemed to be wondering where to put her hands; usually they were fiddling with her collar, or at her belt. She was dark, with a pale skin. There was normally a slightly sullen look upon her face. Until you looked into her eyes you did not realize that she might become a very lovely woman. Then you saw more than that. Her eyes were of a brown that was very near to black. They were large and long-lashed. They were not only beautiful, they were brave. You knew that she was capable of deep feeling, of devotion, of selflessness. You would think that. Then she would look away. You would see only her sullen profile. You would think, “Whatever she may be in two years' time, I know what she is now: a bad-tempered, not very pretty girl.”

It was Ruth who received notice from the Balliols' friends. It was she who made the advances, who made friendship easy. Leaning forward across the table, she asked question after question about the evening's party.

“Tell me all about it. How many will there be? Eight in all, that's counting yourselves. And who'll they be? Aunt Stella. She's always here. I can't think why you ask her. I know Lucy thinks she's marvellous. But I think she's dull. Too serious. And who else? Mr. Rickman. Who's he? A friend of Daddy's. He's old, then. What? No, quite young? About twenty-five? Is he good-looking? You've never met him? How funny, asking someone that you've never met. Yes, I daresay, even if he is a friend of Daddy's. And who else? The Shirleys. Oh, but I think she's irritating. He's all right. I like him. But she's so la-di-da; sounds so kind and good, and really isn't that at all. Mummie, I think it's going to be an awful party. What'll you do afterwards? Sit about and talk?”

“Darling, what else could we do?”

“So many things. You could dance, you could go out somewhere. There must be places somewhere in London where people can enjoy themselves.”

“We shall enjoy ourselves, in our way.”

“But, Mummie, in what way? I shall never give that sort of party when I'm grown up.”

Lucy had taken no part in the conversation. She had let her
sister babble on. Now that Ruth's curiosity was in part assuaged, she interrupted.

“Shall I have a chance of seeing Aunt Stella to-night?”

“Darling, I don't see when.”

“Couldn't she come up and see me before dinner?”

“There won't be time. She'll arrive just before dinner's served. It would upset things.”

“Then couldn't she come up afterwards, when Daddy and the men are sitting downstairs in the dining-room?”

“It's rather difficult, that kind of thing breaks up the conversation. Besides, there's the coffee.”

“Couldn't she have the coffee with me? Mother darling, please, couldn't she? I haven't seen Aunt Stella for so long.”

“I can't see why you should want to see her,” Ruth interrupted. “I don't find her any fun.”

“You wouldn't. You're too young. Please, mother, you will try, won't you?”

“I'll try. But I can't promise.”

“You'll promise to tell her that I asked?”

“I'll promise. And now you must run along, both of you. I've got a great deal to do and I've got to say good night to Francis.”

Francis was already tucked up. He was the youngest by many years and had been actually born within the century. Jane had never thought she would have a baby after Ruth. Three were plenty. Francis coming after an interval of seven years touched feelings that she had thought never to know again. As a result he meant more to her than her other children. Yet with him she had the feeling she had with none of her other children that she loved him more than he loved her. He was a reserved child; not sullen as Lucy was, but secretive, as though he were harbouring grievances. Edward just shrugged his shoulders. “If I were the kind of man to let myself be worried, I should be worried about that boy. He'll be what the advocates of Montessori methods call ‘an interesting case':” which to a mother was not consoling.