No Fond Return of Love (26 page)

The things I see, thought Senhor MacBride-Pereira, moving away from the window and sitting down at his desk to compose a reply to Mrs Beltane’s letter.

Aylwin Forbes, meanwhile, after standing undecided in the road for a moment, walked briskly away as if he had made up his mind to take a certain course of action – which, indeed, he had. He would go and see Marjorie and her mother now, while his thoughts were still of Laurel and how pleased she had been to see him again. They had met accidentally in Quince Square – he just back from Italy and she on the way to the suburb where her aunt lived. What a dutiful niece she was, he reflected, not noticing that it was the next-door house she had run into when they parted. It had perhaps been foolish of him to suggest that he came with her on the bus, but there was something peculiarly sweet in being together in such ordinary circumstances. Their conversation had been a little constrained, but that was only to be expected when they had met so seldom and she was shy by nature. It would be a great mistake to rush things, and unthinkable, of course, to
say
anything before the situation with Marjorie was ‘clarified’.

After a few minutes’ walking, he saw a cruising taxi and hailed it, giving the address of Mrs Williton’s house in Deodar Grove. He leaned back, took out his cigarette case, and found to his annoyance that it was empty. He had not thought about smoking when he was on top of the bus with Laurel. The taxi began to slow down and stopped a little too soon, so that he got out by the next-door house, the one with the stone squirrel in the garden.

Aylwin hesitated for a moment, automatically looking for the animal, though it had long ceased to have any meaning for him. He had been thinking that Laurel might have liked it, forgetting for the moment, as men sometimes do, that it had been one of the shared sentimental details of his courtship with Marjorie. But the place on the rockery where it had stood for so long was bare – the squirrel had disappeared. He felt a moment almost of panic and began looking in other parts of the little front garden to see if it had been moved elsewhere. But there was no trace of it. Then he saw that the house had an estate agent’s board fixed to the wall, announcing that it had been sold, and he remembered that it had been for sale on his last abortive visit. Had the squirrel been removed by the previous owners, he wondered. He felt he must know.

Hardly realizing how ridiculous he might appear, he opened the gate and walked into the garden. The front door of the house was open and some rather highbrow music – Bach, he thought – was coming from one of the rooms. A youngish-looking man in spectacles was standing in the hall, unpacking a crate of books. When he saw Aylwin he moved towards him and they stood staring at each other, both equally embarrassed.

‘I’m so sorry,’ Aylwin began, ‘I think I…’ He hardly knew what he could say.

‘Oh, you’re looking for the Fullaloves,’ said the young man, with a sudden burst of inspiration. ‘I’m afraid they’ve left here. We moved in last week.’

‘Yes, I see,’ said Aylwin. The Fullaloves – that had been the unsuitable name of the dried-up elderly couple who used to live there. But did it seem likely that he – Aylwin Forbes – would be looking for them? ‘There used to be a stone squirrel in the garden,’ he said, making his tone slightly ironical.

‘Oh,
that
object!’ The young man laughed unkindly. ‘It was one of the first things my wife got rid of. She can’t bear stone animals of any kind.’

Aylwin murmured, not entirely sympathetically.

‘She’s a lecturer at the London School of Economics,’ the young man went on, hardly explaining her abhorrence of stone animals, Aylwin thought.

‘What did she do with it?’ he asked.

‘Threw it in the dustbin, I think.’

‘Oh, I see.’ No doubt one of the dustmen had taken it home. Odd to think that it might now be in some other garden, though exactly where was beyond Aylwin’s imagination. He thought of ‘mean’ little houses in Fulham, Hammersmith, or Wandsworth – districts he had sometimes motored through. ‘Actually, I’m calling to see the people next door as well,’ he explained, backing out of the garden.

‘Then I’m afraid you’re going to be unlucky again,’ said the young man. ‘They’re away.’

Aylwin looked up at the windows of Mrs Williton’s house. They were all tightly shut, the net curtains appearing to be of an even more impenetrable denseness than usual.

‘Oh, I see,’ he said lamely. ‘I must be going, then.’

‘Sorry about the squirrel!’ the young man called after him.

‘Oh, that’s all right,’ said Aylwin, not knowing what to say. But really the whole episode had upset him. It was obviously an omen of some kind, though it was difficult to guess what it might mean. He continued walking until he came to a pub, into which he went. He ordered a Guinness, feeling that he had need of the qualities it was said to give. While drinking it he decided that Mrs Williton and Marjorie had probably gone to Taviscombe. He would go there the next day and get everything settled once and for all.

He took the morning train from Paddington, travelling first class in a carriage which was already occupied by a clergyman and a woman who looked like his sister. He would have preferred an emptier carriage, and had seen one with only a single lady in it, but just as he was about to enter it he had noticed that the lady was Miss Randall, who had brought him a cup of early-morning tea at the conference last summer. She in her turn, and of course without his knowing, had avoided
him
at an earlier stage in the journey when she had seen him standing at the bookstall. She had not known exactly which train he was getting on, but the thought of a whole journey with Aylwin Forbes talking about ‘some problems of an editor’, or the equivalent in train small-talk, had been too much for her, especially as the girl at The Times Book Club had that morning given her the latest novel by her favourite female author. Thus, there may be mutual avoidance between men and women, the men not always realizing that they are not the only ones to be practising the avoidance.

As soon as the train started moving, Aylwin opened the literary weekly he had bought at the bookstall and tried to become absorbed in it, or at least to seem to be absorbed, for he suspected that the clergyman and his sister might well be the kind of people who would try to get into conversation with him. But as he turned the pages he was thinking of Laurel and the charm of her youth and freshness – à l’ombre des jeunes filles en fleurs – though of course that sort of thing didn’t last for ever. Some women never seemed to have had it. Miss Mainwaring (Laurel’s aunt), Miss Randall, Miss Foy, even Vi Dace – or Viola, as she liked to be called – one could not imagine these women, working on the seedier fringes of the academic world, sparkling with that exciting freshness. True, he had not know any of them at the age of nineteen, so perhaps he wasn’t really being fair to them. It was just possible to imagine that Dulcie, who was of course younger than the others, might have had it. Indeed, she still had that trusting, vulnerable look in her eyes which some women never lost, however unsuitably it went with their age-ing exteriors.

Aylwin now turned to
The Times
and found himself confronted by an obituary notice of a man well known to him, cut down in his prime, as it were. And of course a contributor, identified only by his initials, had quoted Marlowe’s lines from
Dr Faustus
:

Cut is the branch that might have grown full straight,

And burned is Apollo’s laurel bough …

Perhaps not the happiest of lines if one remembered the whole play, Aylwin thought, wondering if anybody would do the same for him. As he amused himself by thinking of suitable and unsuitable quotations, he was conscious, so sensitive and imaginative was he, of a sweet, almost sickly, smell that immediately took him back to his childhood, to the room in Eagle House banked with wreaths and ‘floral tributes’, which had been sent for his father’s funeral. Then he realized that the smell was in the railway carriage, now, more than thirty yars later, and that it seemed to be coming from the luggage rack in the opposite corner. Looking up he saw two shrouded bundles, bunches or sheaves of flowers, judging by the shape. Could it be that the clergyman and his companion were going to a funeral, Aylwin wondered. He was still not anxious to start a conversation with them, so he turned to his reading again and had become absorbed in it when he was aware that the woman was saying something.

‘Freda never did have a sense of proportion,’ she said, ‘and after all it’s only for a cousin whom she probably hasn’t even seen since the war – I’m sure of that. She and Basil were never very close, anyway.’

‘I suppose she thought it was the thing to do,’ said the clergyman mildly.

‘But the notice in
The Times
distinctly said “cut flowers only”.’

‘Quite – and you picked something out of the garden, mostly leaves, as far as I remember,’ said the clergyman, with a hint of malice.

‘That’s far more what poor old Basil himself would have wished,’ said the woman firmly. ‘A few
natural
flowers – whatever there happened to be in the garden, even if it wasn’t very much – rather than an expensive sheaf of
wired
flowers from a Kensington florist. He would have hated the idea of wired flowers – he
abhorred
cruelty in
all
its forms

Aylwin, listening quietly, thought again of the
Times
obituaries and wondered if there had been one for cousin Basil.

‘Of course, Freda hasn’t got a garden, has she?’ asked the clergyman.

‘She has the
use
of the garden – she could easily have slipped down and got a few flowers. Mrs Wedge would certainly have raised no objection if Freda had explained … The whole thing is so …’ She stopped, at a loss for a word. ‘And then asking
us
to take them to the funeral – so awkward to carry, a big sheaf like that. And when people see the difference in size – so embarrassing – especially when you are taking the service – unfitting, somehow …’

‘Could you not exchange the cards?’ suggested the clergyman. ‘That might solve the problem.’

‘George! What a dreadful idea! For a clergyman’s sister even to
think
of doing a thing like that. Besides, the card might be rather awkward to remove …’

‘Well, in that case… and, as you pointed out, Basil wouldn’t have liked the wired flowers.’

Fortunately there had been no need for Aylwin to join in this conversation, and, rather to his relief, the brother and sister left the train at the next stop, taking their sheaves with them. Aylwin also saw Miss Randall hurrying along the platform after them, which gave him a double sense of relief.

The idea of death and funerals, which had so far been the theme of his journey, had depressed him, as if he might find death waiting for him when he arrived at Taviscombe. When the sea came into view there was nobody to exclaim to, no exchange of facetious quips about not being too keen for a dip in
that
, thank you, and his thoughts turned to Arnold’s poem, so appropriate to human relationships in general and to his own in particular   –  

Yes! in the sea of life enisled,

With echoing straits between us thrown,

Dotting the shoreless watery wild,

We mortal millions live
alone
.

Well, one knew that anyway. The years either brought people nearer together or drove them further apart.

A God, a God their severance ruled!

And bade betwixt their shores to be

The unplumb’d, salt, estranging sea.

But it was less noble than that – his relationship with Marjorie and their drifting apart. Nothing in common but a stone squirrel, he thought derisively, contemplating the rows of beach huts which they were now passing. One of them even had net curtains.

The train drew into Taviscombe. A taxi driver waiting at the station recognized Aylwin and, greeting him as ‘Professor’, took his bag from him. The small inaccuracy irritated him – these good, simple people, always so pleased to see him and with such exaggerated respect for any kind of book-learning! The last time he had arrived at a country station had been in Italy and he had taken a carozza, he thought, with what was surely an unreasonable feeling of irritation. But the contrast was painful. There had been sunshine there and noble architecture, even at the station. Here every building was repellent; there was nothing upon which the eye could dwell with pleasure.

Dulcie, seeing from the window the taxi draw up and Aylwin getting out and giving what seemed to be an over-large tip to the driver, thought, how wonderful if she were the person he was com-ing to see! Impossible that one’s heart should not turn over at the unexpected sight of him coming up to the door. Who would come out running, to be gathered to his heart, as it said in the poem so beloved by schoolgirls (and by all women who retained any trace of sentimentality in their make-up)? Not Marjorie, who had gone out for a walk with her mother, not Viola, who was sitting at the dark little table in the writing-room, composing a letter to Bill Sedge. Perhaps he would not be greeted by any woman but his mother, though Neville might well be loitering in the hall in his cassock.

And this was exactly what did happen. Neville had often imagined himself speaking ‘strongly’ to Aylwin should they come face to face with each other, but he had not thought out the precise words he would use on such an occasion. Something about the sanctity of marriage, the need for give-and-take in every relationship, the shame he was bringing upon his mother and upon himself in his position in the public eye (if it was that), the distress he was causing Mrs Williton and Marjorie. This last was surely the most important aspect of the situation. But here Neville was at a disadvantage, for, having now seen his sister-in-law after some time, he had been struck by her dreariness and found himself wondering how his clever and handsome brother could ever have chosen her as his wife. And Mrs Williton was, if anything, even drearier. Therefore, when the taxi stopped and he saw Aylwin getting out, Neville’s first feeling was one of simple pleasure at having another man to keep him company.