When Blackbirds Sing (6 page)

“You’re impossible,” she said crossly, but she laughed.

Her parents stopped talking about the boiler and the conversation became general, pleasant, but a little dull. It was difficult to imagine Maurice taking part in any other kind of talk. When Lady Dilton and Sylvia left the room it became duller than ever. Lord Dilton seemed to find difficulty in calling his son-in-law by his Christian name, and slipped back into saying: “Having some port, Wesley-Maude?” Everything Maurice said and did was absolutely correct. He did not appear self-conscious but he inhibited any natural ease. He was, as Lady Dilton said, “a gentleman” and this was his religion. He would not dream
of holding any view-point which was not correct, and so, though naturally honest, his character was at the mercy of the increasingly powerful forces that controlled opinion.

When they came into the drawing-room Maurice went correctly to pay attention to Lady Dilton. Lord Dilton talked for a few minutes to Sylvia and Dominic, then said: “I haven’t had a chance to look at
The Times
,” and left them together. Sylvia sat down on a gilt and yellow sofa on the far side of the fireplace, with a shaded lamp behind her.

Dominic was not used to much alcohol. At home he drank practically none, and in the mess very little, as he thought that he should not spend money that Helena might need. At dinner he had drunk a modest amount of claret and two glasses of port, and this was enough to stimulate his senses, and give him a glowing satisfaction with his surroundings.

“How do you like being home again?” asked Sylvia. She used the word “home” as when they had last met he had been their neighbour. Most Australians still called England “home”, and Dominic would not have noticed the word if it had been used by anyone else, but coming from Sylvia it gave him a particular feeling which she had not intended.

He said that it was wonderful to be back, and that he hoped that the whole family would return to Waterpark after the war. She gave an involuntary exclamation of pleasure. Something passed between them. Dominic said, without knowing why: “I’m married too, you know.”

“Yes. D’you like being married?”

“Of course. Don’t you?”

“Naturally.”

They laughed and suddenly stopped talking. Their old intimacy was reviving too quickly, in a way they had not foreseen, and now it had something added to it, an adult knowledge. They had never talked in this way before. They were both conscious that they might have been sitting here as man and wife. Dominic, like most people, hated losing anything that he had once had, but in him this feeling was very strongly developed. His childhood was spent in an atmosphere of loss, his family’s losing money and leaving their house. Twice they had left Waterpark in an atmosphere of defeat. He had been a misfit at school and had failed in his army examination. Only on his farm in New South Wales did he escape this sense of loss. There they were gaining and building up. But at the moment it seemed very far away, a life so remote in every detail that it was more like something in his imagination than a reality. The present actuality always had most power for him, and his present actuality was extremely potent, even the purely material aspect of this magnificent room which could almost contain his whole farmhouse, but most of all, Sylvia, its living golden focus.

He was aware that if he had wanted it, she could have been his wife. He did not say to himself “if he had not been foolish”, as he knew that his life with Helena was the best thing that could have happened for him. But he had lost his life with Sylvia and in a vague kind of way he wanted to make up for it, to retrieve some of the loss, in fact to have his cake and eat it. Flushed as he was with good wine he did not think this entirely impossible, though he had no conscious intentions. Part of his feelings was a simple pleasure at being
friendly again with the Tunstalls, and the knowledge that at least one blot on his copybook was erased.

But mere friendship with Dominic would have bored Sylvia. Their fundamental views and interests were different. This had shown little during their engagement, and when it had, the gulf was bridged by physical attraction and their mutual interest in horses. She did not want men friends as cosy reminders of the schoolroom, and Dominic looked as if he could be far more than this. She too regarded him as something she had lost. If he had been as scrubby and colonial as her mother had said, she could have borne it, and one meeting to satisfy her curiosity would have been enough. But he was not scrubby or scruffy or whatever the word was. His dark eyes were lively with pleasure and admiration as he looked at her. The eyes of her husband, now talking to her mother about the connection between his family and the Wellesleys, never changed except to become red when he made love. She remembered how she used to feel when Dominic kissed her. One afternoon when they came in here after tennis—why, it was on this very sofa! Suddenly, in spite of herself, she gave an exclamation which sounded like annoyance, but was something deeper.

“What’s the matter?” he asked.

“Nothing. I’d forgotten something.”

Sylvia, as regards outward appearance, was as correct as her husband. She realized that this would not do—at any rate not here, and not yet. She began to talk with deliberate conventionality, repeating what various generals had said to her about the duration of the war. She asked about his parents, but did not mention Helena. Although normally
there was no one of whom Dominic was more anxious to speak, he had no wish to do so with Sylvia.

Lord Dilton put down his paper and the conversation became general. When the parlourmaid brought in the whisky tray he said: “One for the road,” and soon after that they left. When Dominic shook hands with Sylvia it was almost as if there was some hostility between them.

As they drove back to the depot, Lord Dilton, comfortable with drink, said: “I’m sorry you’re not still at Waterpark.” He meant that he was sorry that Dominic had not married Sylvia. He thought Maurice a dull dog.

About a month later the Wesley-Maudes came down again, for Maurice to say goodbye as he was on embarkation leave. Sylvia wrote telling her mother to ask Dominic to dine, and again he drove over from the depot with her father. Sylvia was on her guard this time, but Dominic was never on guard. He might behave conventionally, but when his passions smouldered, either with anger or love, it was evident. During dinner he showed that he was stimulated by her presence, and her mother heard some of the bantering exchange between them, and gave them a brief glance. Later, when the men came into the drawing-room, Dominic again sat by Sylvia who said: “You shouldn’t reveal yourself so clearly.”

“What have I revealed?” asked Dominic.

She was a little disconcerted. She was not yet prepared to go beyond allusion.

She did not give him any more exclusive attention that evening until he was leaving, when she managed to say without being overheard: “Come to see me when you are
in London. I shall need cheering up.” She gave him her address, adding: “Don’t forget it.”

“If I do, I can ask Lady Dilton,” he replied.

“No. Don’t do that,” she said with a touch of irritation. “It’s in the telephone book.”

When next Lady Dilton saw her husband she said: “I think Dominic’s too interested in Sylvia. I shouldn’t bring him over while she’s here. She’ll probably be down quite a lot now Maurice has gone.”

“That will be a bit difficult,” said Lord Dilton. “I thought of putting him on the establishment.”

“Why? He’s young and healthy.” She affirmed the principle underlying the 1914 war, which seemed to be the survival of the unfittest. Lord Dilton did not like being told by his wife how he should exercise his military responsibilities, but so far he had not voiced this intention. Dominic himself might not like it. He had not left his wife and child on the other side of the world to come and settle down in an English country town. He had often kicked over the traces but he was touchy about his honour. He was both straight and unpredictable, which amused Lord Dilton and was one of the reasons why he liked him. Still, if there was the risk of a romance between him and Sylvia, perhaps Edith was right, and it would be safer to say no more about it.

Dominic continued to receive Helena’s letters, and his replies were more than ever like the schoolboy’s, except that instead of “our second eleven beat Weldon’s” he wrote: “Last night we were out on night-ops,” or: “This afternoon we were on the range.” He said no more about a return to Waterpark, and he told her that he had met Sylvia, who was married to a hussar, and living in London. He did not mention her a second time so Helena was at ease about the two things which had most worried her. She could write with more hope and spirit, trying, as she had begun, to keep before him their life together by giving the picture of its setting. He took his letters to his room to read, carefully absorbing every detail. Generally, he read them two or three times and he would sit lost awhile holding the letter and longing to be home. But he liked his army life. It interested him, and in an hour or two, or at any rate by the next
morning the picture had become dim, and the life on the farm seemed to belong more to his past than his future.

Though by now the opposing trenches were firmly fixed, like two jaws mangling the youth of Europe, everyone except possibly some senior officers who hoped for higher promotion, and the war profiteers, hoped that the war would be over within a year. Helena allowed a year as the furthest possible date for Dominic’s return. She put in plants that would bloom in a year’s time. She wondered, if she set a rosemary hedge, whether there would be anything to show by then. But she not only did things to improve the garden and the house. She managed the farm as economically as possible so that they would have something to spend when he returned. Trying to keep him within the orbit of her life, she asked his advice, though he seldom replied to her questions. He was one of those correspondents who absorb without feeling the need to comment on what they are told. Sometimes she wrote, underlined:

If he had replied, even disagreeing, she would have felt that he was
with
her. If he had said: “No, don’t get any sheep. You’ll have equal difficulty finding shearers. Buy bullocks. It would be wasteful to use the river flats for
grazing.” But he left the whole burden of management to her, when at least he could have shared the responsibility, if not the work. She tried not to blame him, as she knew that he could not express himself in letters, but she continued to feel that she was writing into a void. She did not know that her letters always created an hour or two of reverie and nostalgia in which he sent her all his love, though when the time came to reply he was back in the atmosphere of night-ops and rifle-ranges.

At last, towards the end of 1916, he was put on a draft for France, and given a week’s embarkation leave. English subalterns generally went home for this, but Dominic had now no close relatives in England, beyond Cousin Emma, and Josie Wyckham, a first cousin who had married an English soldier a week or so before war was declared. He had recently been killed. Josie was living with his parents in Dorset, and Dominic did not like to suggest himself for a visit. He went up to London, to the little hotel in Mayfair. He called on Cousin Emma, which was not very exhilarating. She criticized his relatives in Australia for their indifference to the “right thing” and told him discreditable tales about his grandfather. She said that at first she had thought that Dominic would be “Australian”, but now she nodded at his well-cut uniform with approval.

He then went to see Colonel Rodgers, who at last had been given a job at the War Office, but who had aged surprisingly in the last few months. He found himself quite unfitted for the office work of which it consisted. His memory was failing and a little later, after making innumerable blunders, he had to give up the job and return
to Waterpark. The war was still his obsession and only topic of conversation. He said: “If only they’d give me a battalion at the front I’d be all right.” If they had, he would doubtless have massacred it.

He asked Dominic to stay to dine at his club, and he moved the spoons and salt cellars about in battle formation. When they parted he said: “I don’t suppose you’ve seen Sylvia.”

“I saw her at Dilton with her husband,” said Dominic.

“You know he’s gone to the front? I shouldn’t go to see her.”

The white-haired angry old man turned and went off to the smoking room to find someone to fight the war with. Still with his wasp waist, his angular bony limbs, his eyes larger in his lean face, he was more like an insect than ever. As a boy Dominic had accepted his oddity, almost hero-worshipped him. Now for the first time in his life, looking at the colonel objectively, he thought that he was rather dreadful.

But with Colonel Rodgers and Cousin Emma he had exhausted his London friends, except Sylvia whom the colonel told him not to see. There were some more distant relatives, and that other colonel in the War Office, but he felt disinclined to look them up. For the first day he enjoyed the physical comfort of being on leave. It was nice to have his breakfast brought up by a pretty girl instead of being called by his soldier servant, and having to go across to the mess. He thought of asking the girl to go to the theatre with him; then he remembered Mrs Heseltine. He had lost her address but he remembered that her daughter was called Sherwood and lived at Wimbledon. He found her name
in the telephone book and rang her up. The telephone was answered by Mrs Heseltine herself. She sounded surprised and not very pleased at hearing Dominic’s voice. She was hurt that after their close friendship he had waited months to get in touch with her. Anyhow she could not possibly see him now, as her daughter had had a baby only the day before. Before ringing off she relented a little and said: “Let me know when you’re next in London.” He did not tell her that he was going to France, and they did not meet again.