Dark Angel (34 page)

“But of course. You have left Oxford now. You are quite the coming man—or so everyone says.”

“You believe it, do you—what everyone says?”

“Naturally. I trust gossip implicitly. I would lay down my life for a rumor. Acland the party-giver. Acland the golden boy of Balliol. Also …”

“Also what?”

“I make observations of my own. I record my data. No scientist could be more industrious. Of course, sometimes my findings do not tally with your reputation—”

“In what ways?”

“Ah, you are listening now, quite intent! What egoists you men are—you always want to know what we women think of you. Very well, I shall tell you. I write that you are older, less impetuous, that you have acquired a measure of caution, and that you fight life less—”

“A dull dog. I sound like a banker.”

“Perhaps I mean fight
me
less—for you have certainly called a truce there.”

“A truce? Is that what you call it? A tactical withdrawal, that’s all. Fighting is exhausting. Besides, you’ve changed. You’re a little less obnoxious than you used to be.”

“Thank you, Acland dear.”

“You have improved. You’d admit there was room for improvement?”

“Oh, yes. And I shall improve myself even more. Wait and see. I’m an anchorite when it comes to self-knowledge and self-improvement. Why, I’ve hardly begun! I shall work on myself, Acland, you’ll see—polish and hone away until I make myself quite dazzlingly perfect.” She paused. “However. I am beside the point. Don’t turn the subject. We were discussing you. How you have changed. I left out the most important thing of all.”

“Oh, and what was that?”

Constance gave a small smile. “Why,
Jenna
,” she said.

Acland stood up. He walked away. He was angry with Constance. He would have liked to slap her for her spying ways and her deviousness. He would have liked to slap her for her precocity, for the way in which—as and when it suited her—she made a provocative transition from young woman to young girl. Her words stung him, as she had known they would do—stung more, since he knew they were right. If he was changed, it was because of Jenna, and the ending of their affair.

Looking back over his shoulder at Constance, who had returned to her notebook without sign of concern, Acland thought (as he had thought before):
Constance sees too much.

It was not simply that Constance should know of an affair he believed secret, or even know that it was over—it had been over for almost two years. But Constance had seen more than that: She had seen that he had changed. For the worse, he assumed, since the end of the affair had been shabby.

He had gone up to Oxford hot with love and promises: eternal fidelity, unaltered love. That state of mind had not lasted three months. Jenna was, quite simply, eclipsed. He lost sight of her behind new friends, new intellectual challenges, new horizons, new books. When he had next returned to Winterscombe, already wary, already experiencing guilt, he found a Jenna unaltered, yet unrecognizable.

He could see that she was pretty, where he had believed her beautiful. The redness of her hands, the calluses on her fingers—these offended him. Her accent, the slow manner of her Wiltshire speech, these which he had loved before, now irritated him. Acland had a head full of new friends, new ideas, new books, none of which he could discuss with Jenna.

This disloyalty made him ashamed. Shame bred guilt; guilt eroded desire. Acland discovered a bitter fact: Love was not immortal, as he had believed, and neither was physical want; both were capable of vanishing overnight.

Jenna, who had probably seen the change in him before he did, said not one word of reproach. With an air of quiet resignation, explaining their plight in truisms that made Acland wince, she said she understood it was over, that it might be for the best, that she would settle to it, given time, that, no, he was not to blame; no one was.

There was a look in Jenna’s eye, when she said these things, that made Acland deeply ashamed. He saw himself as shallow, profligate, irresponsible, snobbish—yet, even then, at the very same moment that he despised himself, he was heaving a silent sigh of relief.

His friend Ego Farrell (and Farrell, to the mystification of many, for they appeared so unalike, was Acland’s closest friend) said Acland had been a boy, confusing love and sex—in love with his idea of a woman, not with Jenna herself. He implied, in his dry way, that Acland might profit from the experience, that self-flagellation was unnecessary, since the affair had been the means to grow up.

Acland could accept that this was sensible; however, a residue of guilt and self-dislike remained. It had occurred to Acland while at Oxford, and it occurred to him again, standing on the edge of the birch grove, that to grow up in such a manner might also be to diminish. Was he less now than he once was—or more?

Acland was unsure. He had excelled at Oxford; he had also learned to distrust that excellence. At the very moment when the quickness of his mind, his grasp of the abstract, had earned him plaudits, at the very moment when (as Constance said) that golden future was forecast, Acland doubted. He saw himself as tainted, flawed, and self-deceiving.
I lack will,
he would say to himself, and he would see himself as confined by his class, a prisoner of the ease of his upbringing.

Jenna might have freed me from that,
he would think, and the doubts would intensify. Yes, he was a fine sprinter (his First from Oxford told him that), but in the long term, did sprinters stay the course?

“Why did you say that?”

He had returned to Constance. He glowered down at her.

Constance closed her notebook and gave a shrug.

“About Jenna? Because it is true. You loved her once. You used to meet her here. I saw you kiss her once—oh, years ago, now. Then I saw her weep, one Michaelmas term. Now I hear she is to marry that horrible Jack Hennessy…. I told you: I collect my data. I make my observations.”

“You’re a little spy. You always were.”

“That’s true. Another thing to cure. I shall make a note of it. Thank you, Acland. And don’t scowl so. Are you afraid I’ll gossip? I shan’t, you know. I am very discreet—”

“Go to hell, Constance.”

Acland began to turn away. Constance caught hold of his hand.

“Don’t be angry. Here, pull me up. Now, look me in the eyes. You see? I meant no harm. You asked if you had changed. I answered you. You have, and for the better.”

Acland hesitated. Constance was now on her feet; she stood very close; her hair brushed his shoulder; her face was lifted to his.

“For the better?”

“But of course. You are harder now. Steelier. I like that. In fact, I sometimes think I like you best of all, even better than your brothers. Still, it’s useless to tell you that. You won’t believe me. You think me a hypocrite—or so you once said.” She paused. “Do you still think that, Acland?”

Acland looked down at her. Her face, serious now, was still lifted to his. There was a small bead of sweat on her temple, like a tear. Her nose intrigued him. Her wide flat cheekbones intrigued him. He was intrigued by the abundance of her hair. Looking down into her face, Acland was possessed by an extraordinary, an irrational thought: If he could only bend just a few inches, if he were to touch that springy hair, if he were to kiss those parted lips, he would have the answer to her question once and for all. Was she a hypocrite? The taste of her mouth would tell.

He turned away abruptly, releasing her hand. He said stiffly, “I’m going back to the house.”

“Oh, wait for me. I’ll walk with you.” She put her arm through his. Floss cavorted at her heels. Ignoring Acland’s silence, she chattered about Freddie, his birthday, the picnic, the present she had bought, what they might eat, whether Francis would take a photograph….

“Why do you call Boy that?” Acland said, out of a lingering irritation, a sense that he had been outsmarted and outplayed. “Why Francis, for God’s sake? No one else ever calls him that.”

“It’s his name. Why not?” Constance gave a skip and a jump.

“You do it so deliberately. You make such a point of it—”

“But of course.” She gave another skip. “Francis likes it. You must have noticed that.” She released his arm, then ran ahead of him, Floss barking at her feet. The distance between them widened. Acland, suspecting she meant him to chase her, slowed his pace.

They were out of the woods now, on the edge of the lawns. Acland stopped. Constance ran on, not once looking back. From a distance she was very much a child still, a tiny swift figure, a flirt of blue skirts.

On the terrace beyond, his family were gathering. Straight as an arrow to its target, Constance ran across the terrace to Boy.

Boy was given to sudden outbursts of coltish exuberance; Constance, Acland believed, liked to play on that. She did so then. As Constance launched herself at him, Boy gave a whoop of delight. He caught Constance up, swung her around in a blue circle, set her down on her feet again. It was the kind of horseplay an uncle might indulge in for the sake of a small child. Except that Boy was not Constance’s uncle, and Constance—in Acland’s view—was not a child.

From the edge of the lawns he glared at the spectacle: Boy making a fool of himself; Constance teasing Boy as successfully as she teased him.

Hypocrite,
he said to himself.

They began the picnic with a photograph.

This is how Boy arranged them: in the center, Denton and Gwen, with Freddie, the guest of honor, enthroned between them. Acland and Steenie were to flank their parents, balanced on one side by Maud and on the other by Jane Conyngham. There were two other male guests to be accommodated: Ego Farrell and James Dunbar, Boy’s friend from Sandhurst and now his fellow officer.

Dunbar, a young man who wore a monocle and had no apparent sense of humor, was the heir to one of the largest estates in Scotland. Farrell was stationed by Jane, Dunbar by Maud; the two men knelt, to improve the composition. Maud promptly obscured Dunbar’s face with her parasol.

Since Montague Stern had remained at the house, awaiting news, the picture was then almost complete. Only one last component was missing: Constance.

Boy fussed; Maud complained that the sun was in her eyes. Freddie, who was eager to open his presents, had begun protesting volubly. In the end Constance appeared; she darted forward and seated herself right in the center of the group, in front of Freddie.

Since Freddie was tall and Constance tiny, this seemed to settle the matter. Boy disappeared beneath his camera hood.

“Smile!” he commanded, one hand snaking out, ready to press the bulb.

Everyone smiled; Freddie, leaning forward, put his hands on Constance’s shoulders; Constance, arching back a little, whispered something. Freddie laughed. Boy emerged from under the hood.

“I can’t take it if you talk.”

“I’m sorry, Francis.”

Boy retreated beneath the hood. The bulb was pressed; the Videx whirred; the picture was taken. It is in one of the old albums still, sepia, distinct, the corners dog-eared, the only photograph I have ever seen of Constance, with my family, at Winterscombe.

Constance holds her little dog Floss in her arms; she gazes directly at the lens; her hair flies out; her fingers are crammed with rings. Constance loved to be photographed; when you looked at a photograph, she used to say, you knew who you were.

Freddie liked to receive presents. It was pleasant, for once, to be the center of attention, pleasant not to compete with Steenie’s dramatics or Acland’s wit. By the time Boy began to unpack the picnic food, Freddie had a pile of the most satisfying gifts beside him. Constance’s present, the last to be given, lay on his lap: a flamboyant cravat made of Paisley silk, the kind of cravat Sir Montague might have envied. Freddie looked at it uncertainly.

“Don’t worry,” Constance said in a whisper. “That’s your public present. I shall give you your proper one later.” These words scratched away in Freddie’s mind, as Constance had probably intended. “Proper present.” “Later.” Freddie began to fidget.

“Constance,” Boy said in a stern voice, “would you prefer the chicken or the salmon?”

He looked up from the picnic basket in the manner of a man requesting that Constance make a serious and moral choice—between good and evil, salvation and damnation, perhaps.

“Oh, salmon, I think, Francis,” Constance replied in a careless way, and withdrew to the shade of a small clump of birch.

It was very hot. The air felt moist and steamy; the surface of the lake was without ripples. Freddie munched his way contentedly through the staple fare of Winterscombe picnics: gulls’ eggs, poached salmon, chicken in an aspic (which was beginning to melt).

He shared a cold steak sandwich with his father; he ate raspberries, then a slice of apple pie. His birthday was toasted in pink champagne. Freddie tilted his Panama hat over his eyes and leaned back against the bank. A pleasant somnolence began to steal over him.

Before this picnic, Acland had taken each person to one side; he had banned the topic of war, which so upset his mother. War might be uppermost in everyone’s mind, but consideration ruled. It was not mentioned. As Freddie lay back and began half to listen, half to dream, fragments of conversation drifted into his mind and out again. His father spoke of Scotland and salmon; Gwen and Maud discussed dresses; Acland and Jane talked about a book they had both read; Steenie gave a running commentary on the sketch he was making of the family group. Freddie half-closed his eyes. Steenie’s charcoal scratched on the drawing paper; Constance’s words scratched away in Freddie’s mind, like mice behind a wainscot. Constance, he saw (watching her beneath his eyelids), was laying siege to James Dunbar.

Boy’s friend was not promising material, but Constance was not deterred. She liked to practice her charms on the intractable, Freddie sometimes thought; she did so with an air of sweet perseverance, like a would-be pianist practicing scales.

After some while, Boy, who had also watched this display, began on a game. He picked up small twigs and pieces of branch and whittled at them. He began to toss them for Constance’s dog, and Floss chased after them. Floss was not an obedient dog; he had none of the instincts of a retriever. Once he had caught the sticks, he refused to return them to Boy. He pounced on them, toyed with them, flopped full-length, then gnawed at them.