Crampton Hodnet (23 page)

Darling
[it began],
I shall never forget last night. It was heavenly wasn’t it? I never realised before how much I love you. It will be wonderful in Paris, just you and me… .

He would certainly have to go to Paris now. It was all settled. He wasn’t at all used to doing such things, but he would feel such a fool if he backed out. Darling Barbara, he thought, it would be wonderful in Paris with her. Youth and Beauty and Romance. The Right True End of Love. … He went on stolidly eating his eggs and bacon, trying to recapture something of what he had felt last night. Of course it wasn’t so easy at nine o’clock in the morning. But at nine o’clock
tonight
, well, that would be different, he thought hopefully… .

Of course, things weren’t
quite
the same in the cold light of morning, thought Barbara, as she stood in Elliston’s, fingering a pale blue chiffon nightgown. Of course she was going to enjoy it, it was going to be the most wonderful experience of her whole life. She had written to tell him so. This feeling that one would give anything to get out of it wasn’t
real
, it was only what anyone might feel before setting out on such an adventure. She mustn’t be a coward. She mustn’t, above all, be a cold fish.

Paris, she thought. Paris with Francis, she emended, for when she said just Paris she remembered being led round the Latin Quarter on a hot August morning, poring over a Metro map to find the best way to get to L’Opera from Cite Universitaire; the voice of a conscientious young American repeating over and over again, ‘I’ve
gotta
see the Mona Lisa’; a dreadful day at Versailles towards the end of the tour when the party was beginning to get quarrelsome and on edge. This was Paris as she remembered it. But Paris with Francis … she paused, unable to sort out the confusion that was in her mind at the thought of it. Oh, it would be wonderful, she told herself gaily. The beautiful city would become a thousand times more so when there was somebody one loved to share the beauty. They would be able to wander about Montmartre together, look at their favourite pictures in the Louvre, stand in the gardens of the Petit Trianon and remember Marie Antoinette, walk in the Champs Elysees and the Place Vendome. But the Place Vendome reminded her of the great couturiers who had their salons there, and that brought her back in a humble way to the blue chiffon nightgown. Because of course when one went away with somebody one loved there were nights as well as days; indeed, she believed that as far as some people were concerned the days could hardly be said to count at all. What a pity it was, she thought regretfully, that even Francis seemed not always to realise that there could be such a thing as platonic love and that the most beautiful relationship between a man and a woman was one in which they were in perfect spiritual harmony. Surely the poets had written about such a relationship? she thought hopefully, casting about in her mind for examples. But somehow she could think only of one quotation, the beginning of a poem by Abraham Cowley:

Indeed, I must confess,

When Souls mix ‘tis an happiness.

But not complete till bodies too do join.

Well, of course, she admitted reluctantly, one naturally wanted one’s love to be complete, although it was her private opinion that hers could hardly be more complete than it already was. Everything would be different in Paris. Oxford was too full of unsuitable associations: a wife, a family, a house in the Banbury Road. She quickly put all such uncomfortable thoughts out of her mind. It was too late now to go remembering things like that.

‘What time do we get to Dover?’ she asked quite gaily when they were on the road later that day.

‘I don’t know exactly,’ said Francis vaguely. ‘We can get the night boat, though, I’m sure of that. We’ll have a lovely time,’ he added in a soothing voice, which sounded as if he were trying to reassure himself as well as her.

He ought to have been feeling happy and carefree, but he had not realised till now how difficult it was going to be for a dull, virtuous, middle-aged don to change suddenly into a dashing lover. But he could hardly turn back now, and of course he really wanted to go, he told himself stoutly, and at least it would show
them
—which meant in his mind the female inhabitants of North Oxford—that he was something more than a doddering old man whose head had been turned by the admiration of a pretty young woman. But as they got nearer to Dover he began to think that that was just what he was, and that what he was doing now was only an additional proof of his dotage. It was an uncomfortable feeling, and he did his best to shake it off by making bright, unnatural conversation with Barbara, who responded in the same strain.

‘A pity it isn’t a nicer day,’ he said, when the first drops of rain splashed against the windscreen.

‘Oh, well, it doesn’t really matter, does it?’ she said. ‘It’s sure to be fine in Paris.’

‘And even if it isn’t,’ he said, trying to say what was expected of him, ‘it won’t really matter. I mean, we shall be together,’ he finished rather lamely.

‘Do you know what time this boat actually goes?’ she asked.

‘I’m not
sure
,’ he said, ‘and it does seem to be farther to Dover than I thought.’

‘Yes, we aren’t nearly there yet,’ said Barbara.

They drove along in silence.

‘Well, here we are,’ he said. ‘This seems to be the Druid Hotel. I’ll get out and ask about the boats.’

It was raining heavily now. Barbara looked out and saw a square, yellowish building with a peeling stucco front and a general air of decay. Some servants hurried out to the car, old people, with shrivelled, birdlike faces and rusty black clothes too big for them.

After a few minutes Francis came back again. ‘We’ve missed that boat,’ he said. ‘I think we’d better stay the night here. It will be more comfortable, really.’

‘Oh,’ said Barbara in a colourless tone which seemed to express nothing.

‘You go into the lounge while I arrange about things,’ he said.

‘My friend Sarah Penrose lives near here—‘ Barbara began and stopped suddenly, for she had been going to say that she could spend the night with Sarah. But of course that would be quite impossible.

She stood in the lounge, nervously twisting her hands and looking around her with some agitation. She saw that the room was decorated with stiff palms in brass pots and that, grouped in a corner, as if for artistic effect, were a number of old people reading the newspapers. They looked as if they had been left there many years ago and abandoned. Or perhaps they were people who at some time long past had intended to go abroad and had then either not wanted to or forgotten all about it, so that they had stayed here ever since, like fossils petrified in stone.

The place seemed to have a calming effect on her, and she sat down on the edge of a green-plush-covered chair. It was still raining outside, and she was sure that if she were to touch the greenish wallpaper it would be damp or even mouldy. She had the idea that she was in a tank under the water or in a vault, and that if she spoke to one of the reading figures it would not answer her. She picked up a tattered copy of
Country Life
. It was dated 1932.

It gave her quite a shock when Francis came in. The occupants of the lounge looked up in surprise, as might corpses in a vault on hearing a live human voice.

‘I’ve settled everything,’ he said. ‘Perhaps you’d like to come upstairs.’

She followed him meekly up the dim stairs and into a large, gloomy bedroom.

‘Our weekend in Paris,’ he said, with an attempt at gaiety, but his voice had a hollow ring.

Barbara felt she ought to make some sort of response, but somehow her voice would not come. She sat down on the enormous double bed with its hot crimson coverlet and looked about her.

‘What a funny room,’ she said at last.

‘Yes, it’s very gloomy and Victorian, but we don’t mind that, do we?’ he said rather uncertainly. ‘I think I’ll go and have a bath,’ he added more briskly, ‘and then we can have dinner. It’s rather late, but they said they could give us a meal.’

He came to her and kissed her gently on the forehead.

I
can’t
, she thought, sitting still and unresponsive. The kiss seemed to have woken her out of the dazed calmness which had come over her in the lounge, and all her panic came rushing back. Once more she could think of nothing but escape. I must get out of here, I must go to Sarah, she thought.

When he had gone along to the bathroom, she thought, I must leave a note. One had to remember things like that. It was usual on such occasions. Oh, if he comes back before I have finished! My pen. Oh,
where
did I put my pen? I must write in pencil. It doesn’t matter as long as I let him know something.

She burst out of the room and ran down the stairs. But nobody followed her, nobody asked where she was going, nobody even noticed her. When she had reached the entrance hall with its stiff, unemotional palms she had calmed down enough to realise that she must try to look as if she were doing nothing unusual. By the time she was outside the hotel she felt almost light-hearted and was able to turn her mind to considering the best way of getting to Sarah Penrose.

I’m free, she thought; there won’t be any going to Paris. There won’t be any more love, or at least not
that
kind of love. I’ve run away from Francis. Not run away, I’ve left him, I’ve given him up. I’ve
renounced
him. There was nothing shameful about renunciation; on the contrary, it was noble. ‘I must not think of thee… .’ There was that poem in the
Oxford Book of Victorian Verse
about it. Barbara had often read it, but never before had she really understood what it
meant
.

She was sure she would never marry now, and there came into her mind the comforting picture of herself, a beautiful, cultured woman with sad eyes—she thought vaguely of Tennyson and the Pre-Raphaelites. She should have quoted Christina Rossetti in her note to Francis, she thought regretfully.

Better by far you should forget and smile

Than you should remember and be sad.

To smile, but never laugh—Barbara was not fond of laughing anyhow.

By the time she reached Sarah’s friendly red-brick house she was feeling very nearly happy.

She might have been surprised and even disappointed if she could have seen Francis sitting calmly in the lounge of the Druid Hotel, making conversation with the old people.

‘What’s happened to your daughter?’ asked an old lady. ‘Has she gone to bed? I didn’t know young people ever went to bed early.’

‘My daughter?’ For a moment Francis was puzzled. And then he understood. ‘Oh, she’s got a friend who lives near here,’ he said. ‘They were at Oxford together.’

‘Oxford? Do you know Oxford?’ said one of the old clergymen, pricking up his ears, i was at Oxford. I was up at Randolph in ‘eighty-five.’

‘Did you know Dr. Fremantle?’ asked Francis politely. ‘The present Master?’

‘Fremantle?’ mumbled the old man. ‘Let me see… . Oh, yes, there was a Fremantle up, but he was junior to me. A very gay young man. I remember… .’ And he went off into a confused reminiscence of something to do with a ‘lady of the town, a rather notorious person’.

But Francis was not listening. He was thinking of old Herbert Fremantle: a very gay young man. Somehow the idea of it filled him with an overwhelming sadness. It was as if he himself had suddenly become an old man with nothing to do but think exalted thoughts, with an occasional backward glance at a youth that was long past. For he realised now that he had tried to do something that was impossible. What had made him embark on this ridiculous escapade? He hesitated. What was Love, anyway? he asked himself, looking around at the old people. ‘Tis not hereafter.’ This place where he was now might very well be hereafter, and love, if it existed at all, would be nothing more than ‘calm of mind all passion spent.’

He sank into a kind of apathy, and the conversation lapsed. For a time there was complete silence, and then from somewhere quite near, he couldn’t exactly make out where, came the sound of somebody playing the piano. There was a jangle of chords, and he recognised the waltz melody from Offenbach’s overture
Orpheus in the Underworld
. It went on and on, sometimes hurrying and yet never seeming to get any nearer to the end. It became part of the surroundings, with the rain, the green wallpaper, the palms, and the heavy breathing of a deaf old lady who had fallen asleep.

After a while the old people roused themselves and went upstairs to sleep again. Francis followed them without a murmur. Indeed, he now felt himself to be one of them.

Barbara’s note was still in the pocket of his dressing-gown. Better not leave it there, he decided, coming back to reality for a moment. He lit a match and destroyed it and then got ready for bed. He felt melancholy now but not unhappy. After all, everything had happened for the best. Things generally did. Margaret always said so, and wives were usually right.

Aunts were right too, he thought, as he lay in bed looking round the overfurnished Victorian room. It was somehow like going to bed in Aunt Maude’s drawing-room, he felt. Well, they were all right and he was wrong. He would be back in Oxford tomorrow. He wouldn’t let them know he was coming early. He would give them a surprise. Life was very uneventful there and it would be nice for them to have a surprise, was his last thought before he put out the light and went to sleep.

The next day it was raining heavily, as it often does in the middle of an English summer. The trees with their thick, dark foliage were dripping. It ought really to have been a beautiful day, Francis felt, as if to reward him for his virtue. He had been going to Paris with a young woman and he had not gone. Surely that was virtue? But then he remembered one of Mr. Wardell’s sermons. He could see the vicar leaning eagerly over the edge of the pulpit, his red face beaming, saying, ‘And aren’t we
all
, each
one
of us, apt to think of goodness as something
negative
, something not done, rather than something
done
?’