Between the acts, p.9
Between the Acts, page 9
She had been born, but it was only gossip said so, in Tasmania: her grandfather had been exported for some hanky-panky mid-Victorian scandal; malversation of trusts, was it? But the story got no further the only time Isabella heard it than “exported,” for the husband of the communicative lady—Mrs. Blencowe of the Grange—took exception, pedantically, to “exported,” said “expatriated” was more like it, but not the right word, which he had on the tip of his tongue, but couldn’t get at. And so the story dwindled away. Sometimes she referred to an uncle, a Bishop. But he was thought to have been a Colonial Bishop only. They forgot and forgave very easily in the Colonies. Also it was said her diamonds and rubies had been dug out of the earth with his own hands by a “husband” who was not Ralph Manresa. Ralph, a Jew, got up to look the very spit and image of the landed gentry, supplied from directing City companies—that was certain—tons of money; and they had no child. But surely with George the Sixth on the throne it was old fashioned, dowdy, savoured of moth-eaten furs, bugles, cameos and black-edged notepaper, to go ferreting into people’s pasts?
“All I need,” said Mrs. Manresa ogling Candish, as if he were a real man, not a stuffed man, is a “corkscrew.” She had a bottle of champagne, but no corkscrew.
“Look, Bill,” she continued, cocking her thumb—she was opening the bottle—“at the pictures. Didn’t I tell you you’d have a treat?”
Vulgar she was in her gestures, in her whole person, oversexed, over-dressed for a picnic. But what a desirable, at least valuable, quality it was—for everybody felt, directly she spoke, “She’s said it, she’s done it, not I,” and could take advantage of the breach of decorum, of the fresh air that blew in, to follow like leaping dolphins in the wake of an ice-breaking vessel. Did she not restore to old Bartholomew his spice islands, his youth?
“I told him,” she went on, ogling Bart now, “that he wouldn’t look at our things” (of which they had heaps and mountains) “after yours. And I promised him you’d show him the— the——” here the champagne fizzed up and she insisted upon filling Bart’s glass first. “What is it all you learned gentlemen rave about? An arch? Norman? Saxon? Who’s the last from school? Mrs. Giles?”
She ogled Isabella now, conferring youth upon her; but always when she spoke to women, she veiled her eyes, for they, being conspirators, saw through it.
So with blow after blow, with champagne and ogling, she staked out her claim to be a wild child of nature, blowing into this—she did give one secret smile—sheltered harbour; which did make her smile, after London; yet it did, too, challenge London. For on she went to offer them a sample of her life; a few gobbets of gossip; mere trash; but she gave it for what it was worth; how last Tuesday she had been sitting next so and so; and she added, very casually a Christian name; then a nickname; and he’d said—for, as a mere nobody they didn’t mind what they said to her—and “in strict confidence, I needn’t tell you,” she told them. And they all pricked their ears. And then, with a gesture of her hands as if tossing overboard that odious crackling-under-the-pot London life—so—she exclaimed, “There! . . . And what’s the first thing I do when I come down here?” They had only come last night, driving through June lanes, alone with Bill it was understood, leaving London, suddenly become dissolute and dirty, to sit down to dinner. “What do I do? Can I say it aloud? Is it permitted, Mrs. Swithin? Yes, everything can be said in this house. I take off my stays” (here she pressed her hands to her sides—she was stout) “and roll in the grass. Roll—you’ll believe that . . .” She laughed wholeheartedly. She had given up dealing with her figure and thus gained freedom.
“That’s genuine,” Isa thought. Quite genuine. And her love of the country too. Often when Ralph Manresa had to stay in town she came down alone; wore an old garden hat; taught the village women not how to pickle and preserve; but how to weave frivolous baskets out of coloured straw. Pleasure’s what they want, she said. You often heard her, if you called, yodelling among the hollyhocks “Hoity te doity te ray do . . .”
A thorough good sort she was. She made old Bart feel young. Out of the corner of his eye, as he raised his glass, he saw a flash of white in the garden. Someone passing.
The scullery maid, before the plates came out, was cooling her cheeks by the lily pond.
There had always been lilies there, self-sown from wind-dropped seed, floating red and white on the green plates of their leaves. Water, for hundreds of years, had silted down into the hollow, and lay there four or five feet deep over a black cushion of mud. Under the thick plate of green water, glazed in their self-centred world, fish swam—gold, splashed with white, streaked with black or silver. Silently they manoeuvred in their water world, poised in the blue patch made by the sky, or shot silently to the edge where the grass, trembling, made a fringe of nodding shadow. On the water-pavement spiders printed their delicate feet. A grain fell and spiralled down; a petal fell, filled and sank. At that the fleet of boat-shaped bodies paused; poised; equipped; mailed; then with a waver of undulation off they flashed.
It was in that deep centre, in that black heart, that the lady had drowned herself. Ten years since the pool had been dredged and a thigh bone recovered. Alas, it was a sheep’s, not a lady’s. And sheep have no ghosts, for sheep have no souls. But, the servants insisted, they must have a ghost; the ghost must be a lady’s; who had drowned herself for love. So none of them would walk by the lily pool at night, only now when the sun shone and the gentry still sat at table.
The flower petal sank; the maid returned to the kitchen; Bartholomew sipped his wine. Happy he felt as a boy; yet reckless as an old man; an unusual, an agreeable sensation. Fumbling in his mind for something to say to the adorable lady, he chose the first thing that came handy; the story of the sheep’s thigh. “Servants,” he said, “must have their ghost.” Kitchenmaids must have their drowned lady.
“But so must I!” cried the wild child of nature, Mrs. Manresa. She became, of a sudden, solemn as an owl. She knew, she said, pinching a bit of bread to make this emphatic, that Ralph, when he was at the war, couldn’t have been killed without her seeing him—“wherever I was, whatever I was doing,” she added, waving her hands so that the diamonds flashed in the sun.
“I don’t feel that,” said Mrs. Swithin, shaking her head.
“No,” Mrs. Manresa laughed. “You wouldn’t. None of you would. You see I’m on a level with . . .” she waited till Candish had retired, “the servants. I’m nothing like so grown up as you are.”
She preened, approving her adolescence. Rightly or wrongly? A spring of feeling bubbled up through her mud. They had laid theirs with blocks of marble. Sheep’s bones were sheep’s bones to them, not the relics of the drowned Lady Ermyntrude.
“And which camp,” said Bartholomew turning to the unknown guest, “d’you belong to? The grown, or the ungrown?”
Isabella opened her mouth, hoping that Dodge would open his, and so enable her to place him. But he sat staring. “I beg your pardon, sir?” he said. They all looked at him. “I was looking at the pictures.”
The picture looked at nobody. The picture drew them down the paths of silence.
Lucy broke it.
“Mrs. Manresa, I’m going to ask you a favour—If it comes to a pinch this afternoon, will you sing?”
This afternoon? Mrs. Manresa was aghast. Was it the pageant? She had never dreamt it was this afternoon. They would never have thrust themselves in—had they known it was this afternoon. And, of course, once more the chime pealed. Isa heard the first chime; and the second; and the third—If it was wet, it would be in the Barn; if it was fine on the terrace. And which would it be, wet or fine? And they all looked out of the window. Then the door opened. Candish said Mr. Giles had come. Mr. Giles would be down in a moment.
Giles had come. He had seen the great silver-plated car at the door with the initials R. M. twisted so as to look at a distance like a coronet. Visitors, he had concluded, as he drew up behind; and had gone to his room to change. The ghost of convention rose to the surface, as a blush or a tear rises to the surface at the pressure of emotion; so the car touched his training. He must change. And he came into the dining-room looking like a cricketer, in flannels, wearing a blue coat with brass buttons; though he was enraged. Had he not read, in the morning paper, in the train, that sixteen men had been shot, others prisoned, just over there, across the gulf, in the flat land which divided them from the continent? Yet he changed. It was Aunt Lucy, waving her hand at him as he came in, who made him change. He hung his grievances on her, as one hangs a coat on a hook, instinctively. Aunt Lucy, foolish, free; always, since he had chosen, after leaving college, to take a job in the city, expressing her amazement, her amusement, at men who spent their lives, buying and selling—ploughs? glass beads was it? or stocks and shares?—to savages who wished most oddly—for were they not beautiful naked?—to dress and live like the English? A frivolous, a malignant statement hers was of a problem which, for he had no special gift, no capital, and had been furiously in love with his wife—he nodded to her across the table—had afflicted him for ten years. Given his choice, he would have chosen to farm. But he was not given his choice. So one thing led to another; and the conglomeration of things pressed you flat; held you fast, like a fish in water. So he came for the week-end, and changed.
“How d’you do?” he said all round; nodded to the unknown guest; took against him; and ate his fillet of sole.
He was the very type of all that Mrs. Manresa adored. His hair curled; far from running away, as many chins did, his was firm; the nose straight, if short; the eyes, of course, with that hair, blue; and finally to make the type complete, there was something fierce, untamed, in the expression which incited her, even at forty-five, to furbish up her ancient batteries.
“He is my husband,” Isabella thought, as they nodded across the bunch of many-coloured flowers. “The father of my children.” It worked, that old cliché; she felt pride; and affection; then pride again in herself, whom he had chosen. It was a shock to find, after the morning’s look in the glass, and the arrow of desire shot through her last night by the gentleman farmer, how much she felt when he came in, not a dapper city gent, but a cricketer, of love; and of hate.
They had met first in Scotland, fishing—she from one rock, he from another. Her line had got tangled; she had given over, and had watched him with the stream rushing between his legs, casting, casting—until, like a thick ingot of silver bent in the middle, the salmon had leapt, had been caught, and she had loved him.
Bartholomew too loved him; and noted his anger—about what? But he remembered his guest. The family was not a family in the presence of strangers. He must, rather laboriously, tell them the story of the pictures at which the unknown guest had been looking when Giles came in.
“That,” he indicated the man with a horse, “was my ancestor. He had a dog. The dog was famous. The dog has his place in history. He left it on record that he wished his dog to be buried with him.”
They looked at the picture.
“I always feel,” Lucy broke the silence, “he’s saying: Taint my dog.’”
“But what about the horse?” said Mrs. Manresa.
“The horse,” said Bartholomew, putting on his glasses. He looked at the horse. The hindquarters were not satisfactory.
But William Dodge was still looking at the lady.
“Ah,” said Bartholomew who had bought that picture because he liked that picture, “you’re an artist.”
Dodge denied it, for the second time in half an hour, or so Isa noted.
What for did a good sort like the woman Manresa bring these half-breeds in her trail? Giles asked himself. And his silence made its contribution to talk—Dodge that is, shook his head. “I like that picture.” That was all he could bring himself to say.
“And you’re right,” said Bartholomew. “A man—I forget his name—a man connected with some Institute, a man who goes about giving advice, gratis, to descendants like ourselves, degenerate descendants, said . . . said . . .” He paused. They all looked at the lady. But she looked over their heads, looking at nothing. She led them down green glades into the heart of silence.
“Said it was by Sir Joshua?” Mrs. Manresa broke the silence abruptly.
“No, no,” William Dodge said hastily, but under his breath.
“Why’s he afraid?” Isabella asked herself. A poor specimen he was; afraid to stick up for his own beliefs—just as she was afraid, of her husband. Didn’t she write her poetry in a book bound like an account book lest Giles might suspect? She looked at Giles.
He had finished his fish; he had eaten quickly, not to keep them waiting. Now there was cherry tart Mrs. Manresa was counting the stones.
“Tinker, tailor, soldier, sailor, apothecary, ploughboy . . . that’s me!” she cried, delighted to have it confirmed by the cherry stones that she was a wild child of nature.
“You believe,” said the old gentleman, courteously chaffing her, “in that too?”
“Of course, of course I do!” she cried. Now she was on the rails again. Now she was a thorough good sort again. And they too were delighted; now they could follow in her wake and leave the silver and dun shades that led to the heart of silence.
“I had a father,” said Dodge beneath his breath to Isa who sat next him, “who loved pictures.”
“Oh, I too!” she exclaimed. Flurriedly, disconnectedly, she explained. She used to stay when she was a child, when she had the whooping cough, with an uncle, a clergyman; who wore a skull cap; and never did anything; didn’t even preach; but made up poems, walking in his garden, saying them aloud.
“People thought him mad,” she said. “I didn’t. . . .”
She stopped.
“Tinker, tailor, soldier, sailor, apothecary, ploughboy. . . . It appears,” said old Bartholomew, laying down his spoon, “that I am a thief. Shall we take our coffee in the garden?” He rose.
Isa dragged her chair across the gravel, muttering: “To what dark antre of the unvisited earth, or wind-brushed forest, shall we go now? Or spin from star to star and dance in the maze of the moon? Or. . . .”
She held her deck chair at the wrong angle. The frame with the notches was upside down.
“Songs my uncle taught me?” said William Dodge, hearing her mutter. He unfolded the chair and fixed the bar into the right notch.
She flushed, as if she had spoken in an empty room and someone had stepped out from behind a curtain.
“Don’t you, if you’re doing something with your hands, talk nonsense?” she stumbled. But what did he do with his hands, the white, the fine, the shapely?
Giles went back to the house and brought more chairs and placed them in a semi-circle, so that the view might be shared, and the shelter of the old wall. For by some lucky chance a wall had been built continuing the house, it might be with the intention of adding another wing, on the raised ground in the sun. But funds were lacking; the plan was abandoned, and the wall remained, nothing but a wall. Later, another generation had planted fruit trees, which in time had spread their arms widely across the red-orange weathered brick. Mrs. Sands called it a good year if she could make six pots of apricot jam from them—the fruit was never sweet enough for dessert. Perhaps three apricots were worth enclosing in muslin bags. But they were so beautiful, naked, with one flushed cheek, one green, that Mrs. Swithin left them naked, and the wasps burrowed holes.
The ground sloped up, so that to quote Figgis’s Guide Book (1833), “it commanded a fine view of the surrounding country. . . . The spire of Bolney Minster, Rough Norton woods, and on an eminence rather to the left, Hogben’s Folly, so called because. . . .”
The Guide Book still told the truth. 1830 was true in 1939. No house had been built; no town had sprung up. Hogben’s Folly was still eminent; the very flat, field-parcelled land had changed only in this—the tractor had to some extent superseded the plough. The horse had gone; but the cow remained. If Figgis were here now, Figgis would have said the same. So they always said when in summer they sat there to drink coffee, if they had guests. When they were alone, they said nothing. They looked at the view; they looked at what they knew, to see if what they knew might perhaps be different today. Most days it was the same.
“That’s what makes a view so sad,” said Mrs. Swithin, lowering herself into the deck chair which Giles had brought her. “And so beautiful. It’ll be there,” she nodded at the strip of gauze laid upon the distant fields, “when we’re not.”
Giles nicked his chair into position with a jerk. Thus only could he show his irritation, his rage with old fogies who sat and looked at views over coffee and cream when the whole of Europe—over there—was bristling like. . . . He had no command of metaphor. Only the ineffective word “hedgehog” illustrated his vision of Europe, bristling with guns, poised with planes. At any moment guns would rake that land into furrows; planes splinter Bolney Minster into smithereens and blast the Folly. He, too, loved the view. And blamed Aunt Lucy, looking at views, instead of—doing what? What she had done was to marry a squire now dead; she had borne two children, one in Canada, the other, married, in Birmingham. His father, whom he loved, he exempted from censure; as for himself, one thing followed another; and so he sat, with old fogies, looking at views.
“Beautiful,” said Mrs. Manresa, “beautiful . . .” she mumbled. She was lighting a cigarette. The breeze blew out her match. Giles hollowed his hand and lit another. She too was exempted—why, he could not say.
“Since you’re interested in pictures,” said Bartholomew, turning to the silent guest, “why, tell me, are we, as a race, so incurious, irresponsive and insensitive”—the champagne had given him a flow of unusual three-decker words—“to that noble art, whereas, Mrs. Manresa, if she’ll allow me my old man’s liberty, has her Shakespeare by heart?”
