This Was the Old Chief's Country (19 page)

But this substratum of feeling was not reached that evening. Here was no tragedy. Mrs Sinclair might choose to repeat, sadly, that she was not cut out for the life; Mr Sinclair could sigh with humorous resignation as much as he liked; but the whole thing was regarded as a nicely acted play. In corners people were saying tolerantly: ‘Yes, they'll be much happier there.' Everyone knew the Sinclairs had bought another farm in a district full of cheque-book farmers, where they would be at home. The fact that they kept this secret – or thought they had – was yet another evidence of unnecessary niceness of feeling. Also, it implied that the Sinclairs thought them fools.

In short, because of the guards on everyone's tongue, the party could not take wings, in spite of all the drink and good food.

It began at sundown, on Old John's veranda, which might have been designed for parties. It ran two sides of the house, and was twenty feet deep.

Old John's house had been built on to and extended so often, by so many people with differing tastes and needs, that of all the houses in the district it was the most fascinating for children. It had rambling creeper-covered wings, a staircase climbing to the roof, a couple of rooms raised up a flight of steps here, another set of rooms sunk low, there; and through all these the children ran wild till they began to grow tired and fretful. They then gathered round their parents' chairs, where they were a nuisance, and the women roused themselves unwillingly from conversation, and began to look for places where they might sleep. By eight o'clock it was impossible to move anywhere without watching one's feet – children were bedded down on floors, in the bath, on sofas, any place, in fact, that had room for a child.

That done, the party was free to start properly, if it could. But there was always a stage when the women sat at one end of the veranda and the men at the other. The host would set bottles of whisky freely on window-ledges and on tables among them. As for the women, it was necessary, in order to satisfy convention, to rally them playfully so that they could expostulate, cover their glasses, and exclaim that really, they couldn't drink another mouthful. The bottles were then left unobtrusively near them, and they helped themselves, drinking no less than the men.

During this stage Mrs Sinclair played the game and sat with the women, but it was clear that she felt defeated because she had been unable to dissolve the ancient convention of the segregation of the sexes. She frequently rose, when it was quite unnecessary, to attend to the food and to the servants who were handing it round; and each time she did so, glances followed her which were as ambiguous as she was careful to keep her own.

Between the two separate groups wandered a miserable child, who was too old to be put to bed with the infants, and too young to join the party; unable to read because that was considered rude; unable to do anything but loiter on the edge of each group in turn, until an impatient look warned her that something was being suppressed for her benefit that would otherwise add to the gaiety of the occasion. As the evening advanced and the liquor fell in the bottles, these looks became more frequent. Seeing the waif's discomfort, Mrs Sinclair took her hand and said: ‘Come and help me with the supper,' thus giving herself a philanthropic appearance in removing herself and the child altogether.

The big kitchen table was covered with cold roast chickens, salads and trifles. These were the traditional party foods of the district; and Mrs Sinclair provided them; though at that first party, two years before, the food had been exotic.

‘If I give you a knife, Kate, you won't cut yourself?' she enquired; and then said hastily, seeing the child's face, which protested, as it had all evening, that such consideration was not necessary: ‘Of course you won't. Then help me joint these chickens … not that the cook couldn't do it perfectly well, I suppose.'

While they carved, Mrs Sinclair chatted determinedly; and only once said anything that came anywhere near to what they were both thinking, when she remarked briskly: ‘It is a shame. Really, arrangements should be made for you. Having you about is unfair to you and to the grown-ups.'

‘What could they do with me?' enquired Kate reasonably.

‘Heaven knows,' acknowledged Mrs Sinclair. She patted Kate's shoulder encouragingly, and said in a gruff and friendly voice: ‘Well, I can't say anything helpful, except that you are
bound
to grow up. It's an awful age, being neither one thing or the other.' Kate was thirteen; and it was an age for which no social provision was made. She was thankful to have the excuse to be here, in the kitchen, with at least an appearance of something to do. After a while Mrs Sinclair left her, saying without any attempt at disguising her boredom, even though Kate's parents were among those who bored her: ‘I've got to go back, I suppose.'

Kate sat on a hard kitchen chair, and waited for something to happen, though she knew she could expect nothing in the way of amusement save those odd dropped remarks which for the past year or so had formed her chief education.

In the meantime she watched the cook pile the pieces of chicken on platters, and hand trays and jugs and plates to the waiters, who were now hurrying between this room and the veranda. The sound of voices was rising steadily: Kate judged that the party must be moving towards its second phase, in which case she must certainly stay where she was, for fear of the third.

During the second phase the men and women mingled, pulling their chairs together in a wide circle; and it was likely that some would dance, calling for music, when the host would wind up an old portable gramophone. It was at this stage that the change in the atmosphere took place which Kate acknowledged by the phrase: ‘It is breaking up.' The sharply-defined family units began to dissolve, and they dissolved always in the same way, so that during the last part of each evening, from about twelve o'clock, the same couples could be seen together dancing, talking, or even moving discreetly off into dark rooms or the night outside. This pattern was to Kate as if a veil had been gently removed from the daytime life of the district, revealing another truth, and one that was bare and brutal. Also quite irrevocable, and this was acknowledged by the betrayed themselves (who were also, in their own times and seasons, betrayers) for nothing was more startling than the patient discretion with which the whole thing was treated.

Mrs Wheatley, for instance, a middle-aged lady who played the piano at church services and ran the Women's Institute, known as a wonderful mother and prize cook, seemed on these occasions not to notice how her husband always sought out Mrs Fowler (her own best friend) and how this partnership seemed to strike sparks out of the eyes of everyone present. When Andrew Wheatley emerged from the dark with Nan Fowler, their eyes heavy, their sides pressed close together, Mrs Wheatley would simply avert her eyes and remark patiently (her lips tightened a little, perhaps): ‘We ought to be going quite soon.' And so it was with everyone else. There was something recognized as dangerous, that had to be given latitude, emerging at these parties, and existing only because if it were forbidden it would be even more dangerous.

Kate, after many such parties, had learned that after a certain time, no matter how bored she might be, she must take herself out of sight. This was consideration for the grown-ups, not for her; since she did not have to be present in order to understand. There was a fourth stage, reached very rarely, when there was an explosion of raised voices, quarrels and ugliness. It seemed to her that the host and hostess were always acting as sentinels in order to prevent this fourth stage being reached: no matter how much the others drank, or how husbands and wives played false for the moment, they had to remain on guard: at all costs Mrs Wheatley must be kept tolerant, for everything depended on her tolerance.

Kate had not been in the kitchen alone for long, before she heard the shrill thin scraping of the gramophone; and only a few minutes passed before both Mr and Mrs Sinclair came in. The degree of Kate's social education could have been judged by her startled look when she saw that neither were on guard and that anything might happen. Then she understood from what they said that tonight things were safe.

Mrs Sinclair said casually: ‘Have something to eat, Kate?' and seemed to forget her. ‘My God, they are a sticky lot,' she remarked to her husband.

‘Oh, I don't know, they get around in their own way.'

‘Yes, but what a way!' This was a burst of exasperated despair. ‘They don't get going tonight, thank heavens. But one expects …' Here Mrs Sinclair's eyes fell on Kate, and she
lowered her voice. ‘What I can't understand is the sameness of it all. You press a button – that's sufficient alcohol – and then the machinery begins to turn. The same things happen, the same people, never a word said – it's awful.' She filled her glass liberally from a bottle that stood among the denuded chicken carcases. ‘I needed that,' she remarked, setting the glass down. ‘If I lived here much longer I'd begin to feel that I couldn't enjoy myself unless I were drunk.'

‘Well, my dear, we are off tomorrow.'

‘How did I stick two years of it? It really is awful,' she pursued petulantly. ‘I don't know why I should get so cross about it. After all,' she added reasonably, ‘I'm no puritan.'

‘No, dear, you are not,' said Mr Sinclair dryly; and the two looked at each other with precisely that brand of discretion which Kate had imagined Mrs Sinclair was protesting against. The words opened a vista with such suddenness that the child was staring in speculation at this plain, practical lady whose bread and butter air seemed to leave even less room for the romance which it was hard enough to associate with people like the Wheatleys and the Fowlers.

‘Perhaps it is that I like a little more – what? – grace? with my sin?' enquired Mrs Sinclair, neatly expressing Kate's own thought; and Mr Sinclair drove it home by saying, still very dry-voiced: ‘Perhaps at our age we ought not to be so demanding?'

Mrs Sinclair coloured and said quickly: ‘Oh, you know what I mean.' For a moment this couple's demeanour towards each other was unfriendly; then they overcame it in a gulp of laughter. ‘Cat,' commented Mrs Sinclair, wryly appreciative; and her husband slid a kiss on her cheek.

‘You know perfectly well,' said Mrs Sinclair, slipping her arm through her husband's, ‘that what I meant was …'

‘Well, we'll be gone tomorrow,' Mr Sinclair repeated.

‘I think, on the whole,' said Mrs Sinclair after a moment, ‘that I prefer worthies like the Copes to the others, they at any rate have the discrimination to know what wouldn't become them … except that one knows it is sheer, innate dullness …'

Mr Sinclair made a quick warning movement; Mrs Sinclair coloured, looked confused, and gave Kate an irritated glance, which meant: that child here again!

To hear her parents described as ‘worthies' Kate took, defiantly, as a compliment; but the look caused the tears to suffuse her eyes, and she turned away.

‘I am sorry, my dear,' said kindhearted Mrs Sinclair penitently. ‘You dislike being your age as much as I do being mine, I daresay. We must make allowances for each other.'

With her hand still resting on Kate's shoulder, she remarked to her husband: ‘I wonder what Rosalind Lacey will make of all this?' She laughed, with pleasurable maliciousness.

‘I wouldn't be surprised if they didn't do very well.' His dryness now was astringent enough to sting.

‘How could they?' asked Mrs Sinclair, really surprised. ‘I shall be really astonished if they last six months. After all, she's not the type – I mean, she has at least some idea.'

‘Which idea?' enquired Mr Sinclair blandly, grinning spitefully; and though Mrs Sinclair exclaimed: ‘You are horrid, darling,' Kate saw that she grinned no less spitefully.

While Kate was wondering how much more ‘different' (the word in her mind to distinguish the Sinclairs from the rest of the district) the coming Laceys would be from the Sinclairs, they all became aware that the music had stopped, and with it the sounds of scraping feet.

‘Oh dear,' exclaimed Mrs Sinclair, ‘you had better take out another case of whisky. What is the matter with them tonight? Say what you like, but it is exactly like standing beside a machine with an oil-can waiting for it to make grinding noises.'

‘No, let them go. We've done what we should.'

‘We must join them, nevertheless.' Mrs Sinclair hastily swallowed some more whisky, and sighing heavily, moved to the door. Kate could see through a vista of several open doors to the veranda, where people were sitting about with bored expressions which suggested surreptitious glances at the clock. Among them were her own parents, sitting side by side, their solidity a comment (which was not meant) on the way the others had split up. Mr Cope, who was described as The Puritan by his neighbours, a name he considered a great compliment, managed to enjoy his parties because it was quite possible to shut one's eyes to what went on at them. He was now smiling at Andrew Wheatley and Nan Fowler, as if the
way they were interlaced was no more than roguish good fun. I like to see everyone enjoying themselves, his expression said, defiant of the gloom which was in fact settling over everyone.

Kate heard Mrs Sinclair say to her husband, this time impatiently: ‘I suppose those Lacey people are going to spoil everything we have done here?' and this remark was sufficient food for thought to occupy her during the time she knew must elapse before she would be called to the car.

What had the Sinclairs, in fact, done here? Nothing – at least, to the mind of the district.

Kate supposed it might be something in the house; but, in fact, nothing had been built on, nothing improved; the place had not even been painted. She began to wander through the rooms, cautious of the sleeping children whose soft breathing could be heard from every darkened corner. The Sinclairs had brought in a great deal of heavy dark furniture, which everyone knew had to be polished by Mrs Sinclair herself, as the servants were not to be trusted with it. There was silver, solid and cumbersome stuff. There were brass trays and fenders and coal scuttles which were displayed for use even in the warm weather. And there were inordinate quantities of water-colours, engravings and oils whose common factor was a pervading heaviness, a sort of brownish sigh in paint. All these things were now in their packing-cases, and when the lorries came in the morning, nothing would be left of the Sinclairs. Yet the Sinclairs grieved for the destruction of something they imagined they had contributed. This paradox slowly cleared in Kate's mind as she associated it with that suggestion in the Sinclairs' manner that everything they did or said referred in some way to a standard that other people could not be expected to understand, a standard that had nothing to do with beauty, ugliness, evil or goodness. Looked at in this light, the couple's attitude became clear. Their clothes, their furniture, even their own persons, all shared that same attribute, which was a kind of expensive and solid ugliness that could not be classified in any terms that had yet been introduced to Kate.