Complete Short Stories (VMC) (9 page)

The car was open and the soft air flowed over them, lifting their hair, but none of the peace of the evening reached Muriel, who drove fast, noticed nothing, frowned at the road ahead. ‘You’ve had children, Beatrice, and you cannot
know
…’

‘Darling, you are overtired …’

‘No. For years it has been so improbable that I should ever have a child that I stopped thinking about it … I might have been shocked, perhaps, to find myself pregnant … but now, just lately, knowing for sure that I never could be, that in
this
lifetime, and for
this
woman, it couldn’t ever happen, I feel panicky, want to go back, be different, have another chance. I can’t explain.’ She changed gear badly, was driving carelessly.

‘Do slow down,’ Beatrice said.

‘I’m sorry.’

‘I never think about having children now,’ Beatrice said. ‘All the business bores me enormously, like some hobby one has discarded. When I hear of younger women having them, I even feel slightly surprised, for it all seems so finished with and
démodé
. They think they are being so clever and can’t know how I lack interest. I just think, “Goodness me, are people still doing
that
?”’

‘But you’ll have grandchildren and then you’ll be caught up in it again.’

‘I suppose so.’ She looked smug.

‘Where are we going?’ Muriel asked. ‘I
ought
to be going home.’

She drove on, brushing the cow-parsley in the ditch, swerving as a bird flew up suddenly from some horse-droppings on the road.

‘Very sorry! Then the holidays will soon come,’ she said, as if continuing the same plaint, ‘the three of us left alone together.’

‘Has nothing been done about her going?’

‘There is nowhere for her to go.’

‘You should go away yourself. I would come with you, if you liked. You need a holiday.’

‘And leave them together?’

‘Oh, no, of course.’

They laughed shakily. Muriel said: ‘It is as well one still has a sense of humour.’

‘Thank you, Hester, for all your help,’ Robert said. He handed her a drink and, taking up his own, asked if she had seen Muriel.

‘No.’ She had watched her driving away, but thought that Muriel could explain her own comings and goings.

‘And I heard her asking Hugh in for a drink. You look very smart, Hester.’ But it was too robustly said, not tender. ‘I suppose it all went off all right. At any rate, it went off. Muriel is splendid at that sort of thing. Never complains, as most women would, although I can see it all seems a great deal of nonsense to her.’

Before Hugh came, Robert was called away to the telephone and Hester was left alone. The day had tired and confused her, for she had never been quite sure of her duties. Ashamed to stand idle, she had tried to attach herself to the other workers, but Matron’s campaign of defence had not included her. She had managed to hand a few cups of tea and annoyed the senior boys by doing so. Few things are so fatiguing as standing by to help and not being called upon, and now her feet, her back, even her teeth were aching. She drank her sherry and put the glass on the chimneypiece. Wavering clumsily, her hand touched a china figure and knocked it into the hearth. She gave a quick glance at the door, then stooped down to see what damage was done. Muriel’s favourite Dresden girl lay in the fender, an arm carrying a gilt basket of strawberries was broken off at the elbow. Hester prayed for time, as if that could make the figure whole again; but in a school there are so many footsteps and any she could hear above the beating blood in her head might be Robert’s or Muriel’s coming to this room. She pushed the figure behind a bowl of flowers and put the broken piece in her pocket. If she were ever granted a few undisturbed moments she was sure she could have mended it; but now, although no one came and the waiting was unbearable, she could not be certain of being alone. She tried to find a nonchalant pose, sitting on the window-seat, far from the fireplace: then saw her sherry glass still there, incriminatingly near to and drawing attention to the empty place. She went to fetch it and on her way back to the window-seat thought of refilling it, to give a more natural look to her pose. As she was lifting the decanter, Hugh came in.

Her trembling guilt, the sherry slopped over the table, worried him. ‘They are turning her into a secret drinker,’ he thought; but her confusion touched him immeasurably, for he knew similar sensations, and had learnt new refinements of them at Muriel’s hands. ‘We are always mopping up for this girl,’ he thought, as he dabbed at the table with his handkerchief. Her misery had gone so far beyond accountable bounds that he began to wonder how much she had drunk.

‘Where is everyone?’ he asked. He passed his handkerchief under the bottom of the glass before he gave it to her.

‘Robert is telephoning.’

‘And … Madam?’ For Muriel set up such awkwardnesses in people that they could sometimes not even give her her proper name.

‘Went out in the car.’

‘Who went out in the car?’ Robert asked, as he came from the hall.

In Hester’s shattered face, her lips moved stiffly, as if from some rigor, and at last formed the name.

‘Oh, I wondered where she was. She’ll be back. Sherry, Hugh?’ Robert’s bustling about could not conceal his perplexity. ‘If people are liars, who makes them be?’ he was wondering. ‘Everything went off well, Hugh,’ his voice wavered upwards. ‘Nothing untoward? No one insulted Matron? Mrs Vallance seemed incensed at something.’

‘The wretched boy’s cricket-boot. She kept saying she would much rather both were lost than only one.’

‘People often say that – particularly about gloves,’ Muriel said, hurrying into the room. She went to the mirror and smoothed her hair. ‘Sorry, Robert! Sorry, Hugh! Oh, and Hester, too! I didn’t see you hiding in the window-seat. I went for a little drive with Beatrice. May I have a drink, darling; and, Hugh, your glass is empty. God, what a day! Never mind, another year until the next one. Darling, Hugh’s glass! Dinner is cold and can wait for us for once. I went into the Science Room, Hugh, just to see if you had been up to anything sinister, and I was charmed. The heavenly demonstration of cross-pollination. I do think you are to be congratulated.’

Hugh gazed intently into his glass as Robert filled it. He looked as if he were parched with thirst, but sherry was a long way from his thoughts. He knew he was being ridiculed but could not sort it out sufficiently to make an answer. ‘Meaningless innuendo,’ he decided. ‘And the very worst kind, too; because it finishes the game.’

‘I did Botany at school,’ Muriel said. ‘That was considered ladylike even in those days – particularly in those days, when we drew no conclusions from it. Purple loosestrife seemed to have nothing in common with us.’

‘Muriel!’ Robert protested. ‘Your Victorian girlhood doesn’t convince us, you know.’

She went close to the mirrored over-mantel, leant forward to her reflection and once more smoothed her hair. Hester watched in terror the long white hands moving then from hair to flowers, tidying them, too. Then the room froze. Muriel picked up the Dresden figure, seemed surprised by genuine grief, paused; then turned to face them, looking dazed and puzzled.

‘What a beautiful … thing!’ Hugh said, stepping forward, as if she were only asking him to admire it. ‘The dress is just like real lace.’

‘Robert!’ Muriel cried, ignoring Hugh. ‘Her grief is out of all proportion,’
Hester thought, remembering the same stunned look of wives in old newsreels, waiting at pit-heads as the stretchers were carried away, or of mothers lifting their babies across the rubble of bombed streets.

Robert asked sharply – as if he foresaw hell for all of them: ‘How did that happen?’ He took the china figure and examined it. Muriel turned back and began to search the chimneypiece.

‘Is it broken?’ Hugh asked, but no one answered. He was accustomed to that. Hester began to tremble, and clutched the fragment in her pocket as though she might be searched.

‘It must be there,’ Robert said. ‘One of the maids must have done it without knowing, or they would have told you.’

Hester, falsely, went over and looked into the flower-bowl.

‘Not there?’ Muriel asked. ‘No.’

‘Quite a clean break,’ Robert said. ‘It could be mended easily.’

‘If we find the other piece,’ said Muriel.

‘What is it we are looking for?’ Hugh asked. ‘I shall have to question the maids,’ Muriel said. ‘It has been hidden purposely. They have never deceived me before.’ She was proud of her relationship with domestic staff, to whom she was always generous and considerate: they saw a side of her which was hidden from most people and they were loyal to her. She delayed the task of questioning them, refilled her glass with sherry and as she drank it went on searching, lifting cushions and rugs and thrusting her fingers down the sides of stuffed chairs until the backs of her hands looked bruised.

Hugh did not dine with them, and Muriel said nothing during the meal. When dishes were brought in, she helped herself and ate without raising her eyes, feeling awkwardness with the maid and guilt at her own suspicions.

After dinner, Hester went out into the garden and walked in an opposite direction to the church – down an azalea walk to a ferny grotto. The dark, dusty leaves parted and disclosed a little Gothic summer-house, which was locked so that the boys should not damage it. No one came there – the dark rockiness of the place was chilling, the clay paths slippery in wet weather; the creaking trees were clotted with rooks’ nests, and the rooks themselves filled the air with commotion, restlessly calling, circling, dropping again and again to the branches.

Robert had brought her here on her first day when he had shown her round; he had taken a key from his pocket and unlocked the door for her. The cave-smell was unpleasant to breathe, but she had marvelled aloud at the interior. The walls and domed roof were encrusted with shells in fan patterns set in cement. Light from the coloured glass in the windows shone in patches.

Now she could only stand on tiptoe at the door and look through the
wire-covered glass-panel. The piece of china from her pocket she forced through the wire and broken pane. It struck the stone floor inside.

‘Were you trying to get in?’ Hugh asked her; shouting rather, above the noise of the rooks.

‘No, it is always locked.’

‘Did I surprise you? I saw you come this way when I was down at the nets with some of the boys. I meant to ask you before dinner if you’d come for a walk, but there was all that rumpus about the ornament – put it out of my mind; I mean I hadn’t a chance. Of course, she has some nice things – Madam, Muriel, that is – and she thinks a lot of them: naturally.’

‘They were her mother’s.’

‘Nice diamonds, too, Rex was saying.’

‘Yes.’

Hugh began to perceive that Hester lacked interest in Muriel’s possessions.

‘Never having had anything very valuable myself,’ he said, ‘it is hard for me to understand anyone being as upset as she was tonight.’

‘It is because she hasn’t anything valuable,’ Hester said. ‘And she knows it.’

‘Children, you mean?’

‘Partly.’

They walked down the winding path. Two boys were kneeling by some flint steps, looking for lizards under the stones. Hugh had a little patronising chat with them, then he and Hester walked on again. The boys exchanged slow winks.

‘Did you ever see that horrible old baggage again?’ Hugh asked. ‘The one with the cat.’

‘No. Not again.’

‘Are you happy here?’

‘Not very.’

This was so promising that he made no answer until they reached the seat in the laurel walk where Muriel and Beatrice had sat and talked; then, when he was sitting at Hester’s side, he asked, ‘Why aren’t you happy?’ Looking round carefully, he made sure there were no boys about, and took her hand.

‘I am in the way, you see,’ Hester said gravely. ‘I ought not to be here.’

When he took her other hand and drew nearer to her, she seemed not to notice. Although her indifference was in a sense discouraging to him, it allowed him to proceed without hindrance. He kissed her, but still looking rather mopishly before her, she said: ‘I didn’t want to harm anyone. Not even someone I hate.’

‘You couldn’t harm anyone,’ he said. ‘You are so entirely gentle.’

Some boys shouted in the distance, and he moved promptly aside, leant forward, his elbows on his knees, in an attitude of serious but impersonal discussion. But the voices faded and no one came. A bell rang, and he muttered, ‘Thank God for that,’ and turned again to Hester and took her in his arms.

In the morning, Muriel questioned the maids, Lucy and Sylvia. One showed transparent surprise and concern; the other haughty offendedness: and since both reacted in their own ways as their innocence dictated, Muriel said no more. She often boasted that she knew at once when people were lying, not realising how little this endeared her to anyone, least of all to Hester who, never very honest in the easiest of times, was lately finding it almost impossible to tell the truth.

One thing Hester was determined on and it was to avoid being left alone with Muriel. She managed this all morning and was about to manage it after lunch as she followed Robert to his study, when Muriel, letting her reach the door, said: ‘Oh, Hester! If you wouldn’t mind … I won’t keep you a moment.’