A Night of Errors (3 page)

‘Things should be settled when they turn up. Otherwise there is uncertainty and suspense, and new problems arise before one has at all made up one’s mind about the old. Oliver has a great many problems now – business problems for which he is not perhaps very fitted by temperament. Of course my brother-in-law is a help.’

‘Mr Sebastian Dromio?’

‘Yes. My father-in-law had three sons, of whom Sebastian is the only survivor. He did not get on at all well with my husband, I am sorry to say, but after – but subsequently he was very helpful indeed. Perhaps you have never met him? He is coming down to visit us this evening. But here is Lucy with the supplies we have been waiting for.’ Lady Dromio reached out a hand for the caraway cake. ‘Lucy, have they remembered about Sebastian’s room?’

‘Yes, mama. Everything is being done to placate him and assuage.’

Mr Greengrave felt that this called for a jolly laugh. ‘And is your uncle,’ he asked, ‘so formidable a man?’

‘He will be very cross because Oliver is not yet back. His absence was to have been for not nearly so long.’

‘Then let us trust that Sir Oliver is enjoying himself.’ And Mr Greengrave turned to Lady Dromio. ‘Your latest news of him is good, I hope?’

With some deliberation Lady Dromio cut the cake. ‘Oliver,’ she said, ‘always enjoys himself abroad.’

‘Even on a business trip?’

Lucy advanced the plate of sandwiches. ‘We cannot positively say that it is that.’

‘Oliver’s trip to America is certainly prompted by business considerations.’ Lady Dromio spoke as if this were a sort of moral extenuation for visiting so doubtful a country. ‘Although he is, of course, at the same time staying with friends.’

‘Or so we believe.’ Lucy took a sandwich herself. ‘Actually, we haven’t heard for nearly–’

‘Lucy, dear, do you know that there is neither salt nor pepper in these? How careless everybody has become.’

‘It is the influence of Swindle’s slumbers, mama. But Oliver, at least, is not being careless. Indeed, he is being very prudent, is he not?’

‘I hope he will always be that.’

There was an awkward pause. Mr Greengrave, although hardened to hovering on the edge of family enigmas, began to wonder when he could take his leave. Between these two ladies not much had passed – but, in what had, more was meant than met the ear. And why did the protracted absence of Sir Oliver abroad mean that he was being very prudent? Was he keeping out of the way of something? What was the difference between a business trip and a trip prompted by business considerations? Why must Sebastian Dromio be placated and assuaged? And why had Lady Dromio, commonly so reticent, allowed herself those mysterious rambling sentences about the past? Why should she have been puzzled for years?

On all these questions, thought Mr Greengrave, the oracles are dumb. And as for the project of drawing out Miss Dromio – well, that had got nowhere. A blameless and pastoral project, while being at the same time humanly intriguing. Perhaps it might yet be possible.

Mr Greengrave rose. ‘How unfortunate,’ he said, ‘that I have calls yet to make in the village. But since the afternoon is so fine perhaps Miss Dromio…?’

‘Yes, indeed.’ Lucy spoke with decision. ‘I will take the letters. That lawn-mower has made William so sulky that he would be quite certain to forget on purpose. Have you anything more to post, mama?’

‘No!’ Lady Dromio uttered the word with unexpected vigour. ‘I think the post is really a dangerous institution. It invites one to rash communications. I have sometimes written letters that I very much wanted to recall.’

There was no doubt that the old lady was behaving a trifle oddly. Mr Greengrave could see that Lucy, who knew her well, was looking perplexed.

‘Yes, to be sure.’ The vicar found himself making random conversation while Lucy departed for the letters. ‘Or at least the penny or twopenny-halfpenny post has destroyed one of the most delightful English literary forms. For who will treat seriously as a work of art something that one simply drops into a red box at the end of a lane? And consider too the speed of transmission. In the days of mail-coaches and packet-boats a letter had time to acquire patina on its journey. When Horace Walpole wrote to his friend Mann in Florence–’

‘Of course – how very interesting.’ Lady Dromio as she made this scarcely civil interruption once more fell to flicking the lid of the hot-water jug. ‘But tell me – how long does the airmail take to America?’

‘From here in the village? I am afraid I scarcely know. Not more, I should imagine, than two or three days.’

‘I wish–’ Lady Dromio checked herself. ‘But here is Lucy and she will be the better of a walk. Recently she has been rather restless, dear child.’

To Mr Greengrave’s ear the tone of this was not affectionate. At present the two ladies must be living rather a solitary life. Ought he to recommend prayer, some serious and improving book, a tennis party? Might he even venture to suggest an informal dance? And was he justified in making off with Lucy, who was attractive, after rather a perfunctory call upon Lady Dromio, who was difficult? With these questions unresolved, he found himself walking down the drive. And Lucy spoke. ‘This,’ she said, ‘is a really ghastly hole.’

Mr Greengrave was shocked. ‘Good gracious,’ he said lightly, ‘we all feel like that about Sherris Parva! There should be a law giving us a long holiday at least twice a year.’

‘I mean Sherris Hall. Home.’

‘I think young people often feel like that about home from time to time.’

‘I’m not young. I’m over thirty.’ She turned her head and regarded him sombrely. ‘Intellectually my life is completely futile. Artistically it is null. I do not subserve even the simplest biological purposes.’

A large part of Mr Greengrave wished that this walk had not taken place. But another part of him was encouraged. For here, at least, was a job – a hitherto elusive sheep suddenly revealed as in decidedly poor fleece. The vicar, as an honest shepherd, decided that a thoroughly drastic dipping was needed at once. ‘Of course,’ he said, ‘we all get out of spirits from time to time. But if you set up in a settled discontented way your chances of ever serving simple biological purposes are quite remote. A man has no use for a sulky wife. Nor, for that matter, has God for a sulky creature.’

Lucy had stopped in her tracks. ‘Mr Greengrave,’ she cried, ‘I didn’t think you could be so horrid!’

‘And now, my dear, you are being quite childish. And what is wrong with Sherris Hall, anyway?’

‘Wrong! Swindle is always asleep and mama – for I call her so – is always awake. When it gets to half past eleven and we are still at piquet I could scream aloud. Or rather I could do something much more effective. I could take a brand to the whole place.’

‘Take a
what
?’

‘A firebrand, Mr Greengrave. And raze the whole place to the ground this time. Not just an inconsiderable nursery wing.’

For some seconds the vicar was silent. ‘Lucy,’ he said presently, ‘think of what you say. In that fire two infant children perished – and you were in a sense brought in to fill the empty place in Lady Dromio’s affections. And in Oliver’s, I suppose.’

‘No doubt I was.’ Lucy Dromio suddenly flushed darkly. ‘But I shall never forgive that fire. It brought me here.’

‘And where should you have been brought in life without it?’

‘I don’t know; I have no idea. I know nothing of my parentage. I know only that my adoption brought me to – to an impasse. I hate…I
hate
Sherris and all it stands for.’

Mr Greengrave looked at her. ‘No,’ he said slowly; ‘no, it isn’t true.’

And Lucy shuddered. ‘Love turns to hate if it isn’t let get anywhere. I was prepared to do a lot of loving. But the place has no use for me, really. I’m an outsider, after all. And I ought to have
got
outside – and right away – as soon as I was old enough to recognize that it was no go. Of course what you say is quite true. It’s filthy and weak to fall into a chronic discontented way. But there it is.’

Mr Greengrave considered. ‘But isn’t this,’ he asked, ‘just a phase? Your brother is away–’

‘Oliver is not my brother and I hate to hear him called so.’

‘I see.’ Mr Greengrave thought this information worth meditating. ‘Sir Oliver is away and you and Lady Dromio are much alone. That may well generate little frictions. And, indeed, I seem to sense some quality of suspense–’

‘There’s that, all right.’ Lucy spoke grimly. ‘Everything is in a bad way, you know. The firm is in difficulties and the investments are shaky – that sort of thing. I think I know what Oliver is up to in America, and a certain amount of anxiety is natural.’

‘Am I right in thinking that for some time there has been an absence of news?’

‘You certainly are. We can’t understand it. Oliver is usually not a bad correspondent in a non-committal way.’

‘Then here is an explanation of much of the sense of strain which has been upsetting you, my dear.’ Mr Greengrave spoke confidently. ‘It is natural that Lady Dromio should feel anxiety. She is a most affectionate mother.’

Lucy laughed and – all the more because it was unforced and natural – the laughter grated on her pastor’s ear. ‘Really, Mr Greengrave, it is mama you should have picked on for a walk full of cosy confidences. You might have begun to learn the elements. Why ever should you suppose her affectionate?’

Again the vicar was shocked – as also rather nonplussed. A substantial majority of mothers are on the whole affectionately disposed to their offspring. Lady Dromio’s manner was affectionate. His judgement had been founded on nothing beyond this.

‘She can’t forgive him, you know.’ Lucy tipped her letters into the pillar-box as she said this, and turned to look the vicar straight in the eyes.

‘But whatever for?’ Oliver, Mr Greengrave recalled, had not as a young man been of unblemished moral character, but he had always supposed Lady Dromio to bear if anything too broad a mind in matters of that sort.

Lucy raised her eyebrows. ‘Well, what is it that a mother can’t forgive her son? That son’s father, I suppose.’

Very seriously, Mr Greengrave shook his head. ‘My dear, gobbets of the new psychology do none of us any good. It is an infant science, full of half-truths dangerous to our faith and happiness. After that fatal fire nothing was left to Lady Dromio but this one baby son. She must have been devoted to him.’

‘Not a bit of it. She showed how she felt about her Dromio son by first waiting to have a good look at him and then adopting a non-Dromio daughter. And what I say isn’t just a gobbet from an infant science. You’ll find it in your own textbook as well, Mr Greengrave.’

‘My textbook?’

‘Yes. The sins of the fathers shall be visited upon their children to the–’

‘Lucy, this is bad – very bad, indeed. We know nothing about Sir Romeo’s sins.’

‘Don’t we know that he died quite mad because of something dreadful he had done?’

‘We know that rural communities are always full of evil gossip.’ Mr Greengrave raised his stick and pointed down the little village street before them. ‘You see those cottages – so picturesque, so peaceful, so suggestive of the comfortableness of calendars and Christmas cards? There is scarcely one about which some foul story is not current among its neighbours. And about the gentry they have all sorts of extraordinary beliefs. But our own minds surely we should keep clear of such stuff.’

The vicar’s brow had darkened as he spoke and his words had come with unusual energy. Lucy seemed impressed and anxious to make herself understood.

‘You think me cynical and ungrateful. It all isn’t easy to explain. But this waiting for Oliver during the past few weeks is only an intensification of something that has been going on for years. There is a queer perpetual expectation about mama, and it spreads to Oliver and myself without our at all understanding it. We’re like Mr Micawber – always expecting something to turn up. Not Dickens’ cheerful Mr Micawber, of course. If you can imagine a Micawber invented by Chekhov and given touches by Dostoievski–’

Mr Greengrave frowned; he disapproved of serious conversation being given these literary embellishments. ‘Beneath Lady Dromio’s placidity,’ he said, ‘I have more than once felt something of the sort. I confess that I have hoped that it might be a scarcely recognized craving for deeper spiritual experience.’

‘Well, it isn’t just that she became very early a widow and obscurely feels that she has always been cheated of something.’ Lucy delivered this by way of concession. ‘Rather it has been a constant muted expectation of some definitive event, as of somebody coming in at the door or – or of a skeleton coming out of a cupboard. I have always had the feeling that I was brought in just to pass the time until something
happened
– and that I fell down on the job. Mama stroked my little curls in a very becoming way and we were the admiration of visitors. But her eyes were on that cupboard all the time. They are on it still. And I almost believe that she has lately done something to – well, to make the door give a preliminary creak.’

‘Lucy, my dear, this is mere mystery-mongering.’ But the vicar’s voice lacked confidence. ‘We must find better things to think about.’

‘I don’t agree. If one
could
think – but can one? – this would be a very useful thing to think about. It ought to be cleared up. I should be less of a mess – more of a credit to you as a parishioner, Mr Greengrave – if it were got out into the open. And I think it would help Oliver. Won’t you try?’

‘You like finding out about people. I can see that.’

‘Try, Lucy?’ The vicar was startled.

‘I don’t at all like doing anything of the sort. It is apt to seem officious and impertinent, even in a priest.’

‘Yes, I know that too. You find personal relationships rather a trial. But you happen to have the sort of brain that does eventually piece people together and see what a thing is all about.’

Mr Greengrave laughed. ‘You seem already to know much more about me that I can ever hope to learn about you – let alone about this rather hypothetical skeleton in Lady Dromio’s cupboard. But of course if I could help it would be my duty to do so. And I should be very pleased to help you, my dear. I am afraid I spoke to you rather crudely at the beginning of our walk.’