Penhallow (25 page)

She gave a little sob, and buried her face in her hands, but raised it again quickly as she heard footsteps approaching.

Aubrey was wandering across the lawn in her direction, a lock of his overlong hair flopping across his forehead. He wore a pair of very beautifully cut biscuit-coloured trousers, a pale green sports-shirt with short sleeves, suede shoes and a large silk handkerchief which he had knotted loosely round his neck in an extremely artless fashion, calculated to offend his brothers. A cameo ring adorned the hand which he waved airily at Faith, and there was just the suggestion of an expensive scent about him. He paused by the seat under the tree, and said in his light, high-pitched voice: ‘My dear, why did no one warn me that Father had gone gaga? Too unkind of you all! But definitely unhinged, darling!’

‘What has he done now?’ she asked wearily.

‘It isn’t so much what he has done as what he would like to do. I’ve just sustained half-an-hour’s quite paralysing conversation — if you can call it that, for I’m sure I barely uttered — with him, in that grotesque room of his. Sweetie, why the Japanese screen of unparalleled meretriciousness, and why the tropical vegetation?’

‘I don’t know. He takes fancies to things, and then he has them moved into his room.’

‘But, precious, no one could take a fancy to an aspidistra!’ Aubrey objected. ‘It’s like pampas grass — too dreadfully apocryphal! And is it absolutely necessary to his comfort to place crimson and scarlet side by side? I thought it was a trick of the candle-light last night, but it hit me the rudest blow when I most reluctantly entered the room this morning. Do you suppose that disgusting dog of his has eczema, or just fleas?’

She made a gesture of distaste. ‘Oh, don’t, Aubrey! I’d rather not talk about it, if you don’t mind.’

‘My dear, I do so agree with you! Quite too quelling. But you would never guess the insensate plan he has conceived for my future career! Would you believe it? — I’m to study afforestation!’

‘Afforestation!’ she repeated blankly.

‘Oh, deforestation too! I mean, it’s definitely vertiginous! Couldn’t you have him certified?’

‘But are you going to?’ she asked.

‘Sweet, is it likely? At my time of life, and with my sacred art to consider!’

‘Did you tell him so?’

‘No, darling, certainly not. I wouldn’t be so tactless. Besides, I’m terrified of Father. I was unequivocally assuaging. But I do see that I shall be compelled to do something wholly desperate. So vulgar! I do hate active aversions, don’t you? Just think of poor dear Char — oh, I am being nice to Char! You must forget I said that. Let its instantly talk of something else! Don’t you think dicre’s a weird fascination about Father? He always makes me think of Henry VIII, an entrancing creature, mid hardly more intimidating. There’s a Tudor lavishness about him, and a general air of recklessness quite anachronous to the sordid times we live in. I’ve got to go and cash a cheque for three hundred pounds for him in Bodmin. I mean, just like that! Something really awe-inspiring about that, don’t you think? Like lighting a cigarette with a five-pound note, which I have never been able to nerve myself to do, though I’ve tried, often. What can he possibly want with three hundred pounds, do you suppose?’

‘He will squander it on things like that dreadful bed of his, or give it away, to people like Jimmy,’ she replied bitterly.

‘Of course I should have known that,’ he agreed. ‘I don’t know how you feel about it, darling, but I do rather grudge it to Jimmy. One begins to appreciate the probable feelings of the legitimate offspring of such persons as Louis XIV, which somehow had never come home to one before.’

‘If he has told you to cash the cheque, it must be because Raymond wouldn’t,’ she warned him. ‘Raymond will be very angry if you do it.’

‘Yes, lovely, I’m sure he will, but Father would be very angry if I didn’t, and of the two I prefer to face Ray,’ he answered. ‘If you don’t see me again, it will either be because I have absconded with the money, or because I have failed to control that dreadful limousine. Good-bye, darling: do cheer up!’

He walked away from her with another wave of his hand. She remained under the shadow of the big tree for a long time, thinking that it was easy for him, here only on a visit and with no intention of remaining, to recommend her to be cheerful. If Penhallow succeeded in forcing him to live at Trevellin, he would speedily lose his insouciance. She wondered what he meant, if he meant anything, by his talk of doing something desperate. She wished with all her heart that he would do something desperate, desperate enough to enrage Penhallow into bursting a blood-vessel. No one could think it a crime to put an end to a life so baleful; indeed, if Penhallow’s brain were going, it would almost be a kindness. She leaned her head back against the rough tree-trunk, closing her eyes, and letting her imagination stray into that halcyon world which lay beyond Penhallow’s grave. It was so real to her, down to the smallest detail of that little flat in London, that when she was roused, much later, by the sound of the gong, lustily beaten by Reuben in the hall, she felt as though she had really escaped for a happy hour from Trevellin, and had been wrenched back with a sickening jolt.

Raymond did not come in to lunch, but Bart was present, and said that he did not know why Ray should not have returned, since as far as he knew, he had not had much to do that morning. Bart was out of spirits; ever since his interview with his father he had been restless, alternating between spurts of energy, and a moody listlessness until now foreign to his cheerful temperament. He hardly spoke until Aubrey entered the room, midway through the meal, and he for the first time beheld his attire. That did rouse him, and he expressed himself with brutal freedom. Eugene added his less brutal but more deadly mite, and as Charmian considered herself in honour bound to come to Aubrey’s support, the usual state of warfare soon reigned over the dining-room. Clay, who should have known better, joined in the condemnation of Aubrey’s sartorial taste and effeminate habits, and was promptly told by Bart that he was a cheeky young hound, and bidden to shut up. It was at this point that Faith began to cry, quite silently, but so uncontrollably that after a moment of biting her lips, and twisting her hands under the table, she got up, and hurried out of the room, leaving her pudding untouched on her plate.

‘I suppose,’. said Vivian viciously, ‘that you’ll all of you be satisfied when you’ve driven Faith into a lunatic asylum!’

Bart looked a great deal surprised. ‘But what’s the matter with her? No one said anything to her!’

‘You shouldn’t have set on Clay,’ said his aunt. ‘You know she doesn’t like it. Not but what he shouldn’t criticise his elders.’

‘Good lord, I only told him to shut up! Here, Clay, you’d better go after her, and tell her it’s all right! I didn’t mean to upset her.’

‘Tell her you’ve kissed, with tears,’ recommended Eugene, drawing a dish of strawberries towards him.

Charmian waited until Clay had left the room before delivering herself of her opinion. Then she said, leaning back in her chair, and driving one hand into the pocket of the slacks she was wearing: ‘It’s amazing to me that you none of you have the wit to see what’s happening under your noses. It’s my belief that Faith is heading for a nervous breakdown. I never saw her so much on edge in my life. She looks as though she hasn’t had a proper night’s rest for months.’

Eugene, who could not bear anyone to encroach on his prerogative, said with light contempt: ‘My dear Char, we have all been sufficiently bored by the recital of Faith’s so-called insomnia already. If she had ever been called upon to suffer one tenth of what I go through nightly, she might have some cause to complain!’

‘There’s nothing whatsoever the matter with you, Eugene,’ retorted his sister. ‘You are fast turning into a hypochondriac, and Vivian can apparently find nothing better to do than to encourage you. Don’t bother to rush to his defence, Vivian! I haven’t the slightest interest in either of you. But unless I’m much mistaken Faith has reached a breaking-point, and will probably have a complete collapse one of these days. When I look at her, I am reminded of the terrible time I went through with poor Leila once, when she had been living on her nerves for months, and they gave way under the strain.’

Bart broke into a roar of laughter. ‘Oh, gosh! I should think they damned well might! Anything would give way under the strain of having that lump of Turkish Delight living on it!’

Aubrey intervened before Charmian could blister Bart for this irreverence. ‘Of course, I don’t suppose any of you will be at all interested, but I must inform you that Faith is not the only person in this house threatened with a nervous breakdown. And I do hope that when I so far forget myself as to render this board untenable by bursting into tears at it, you will remember that I am not uncountable for my actions.’

‘I expect,’ said Clara wisely, ‘that she needs a change of air.’

Clay came back into the room, with the news that his mother was lying down, so no more was said. Faith reappeared at tea-time, but from the look of dismay which came into her face when she paused on the threshold of the Long drawing-room it was plain that she would not have done so had she been informed that Penhallow intended to make one of the tea-party.

He was wrapped in his aged dressing-gown, and it was evident that it had cost him an effort to get up at all. His eyes held a look of strain; his colour was bad; he eased himself in his wheeled chair from time to time, as though he were suffering a considerable degree of discomfort. He was quick to see Faith’s instinctive recoil. He said in his roughest, most derisive voice: ‘No, you wouldn’t have come down if you’d known you were going to find me here, would you? A fine wife you are! I might be dead for all the notice you ever take of me! Why haven’t you been near me all day? Eh? Why haven’t you?’

She could never accustom herself to being rated in public, and the colour rushed to her face as she answered in a low tone: ‘I have not been very well, Adam.’

He gave a sardonic bark of laughter at this. ‘Oh, you’ve not been very well!’ he said, mimicking her. ‘That’s always your bleat!’

Bart crossed the room with a plate of sandwiches, which he offered to Penhallow. ‘Hit one of your own size, Guv’nor!’ he said briefly.

Penhallow looked up at him under his brows. ‘You, for instance?’

Bart grinned. ‘Sure! Go ahead!’

Penhallow put up a hand, and pulled his ear. ‘Coming out as a champion, are you?’ His glance swept the room, and alighted on Clay for an instant. He took a sandwich, and addressed his wife again. ‘I notice it isn’t your own brat who stands up for you, my dear,’ he remarked.

Clay turned scarlet, and tried to look as though he had not heard this sally. It was at this moment that Raymond entered the room.

Penhallow forgot about his wife. He seemed to straighten himself in his chair when he saw Raymond. ‘Didn’t expect to find me up, did you?’ he demanded challengingly.

Raymond’s face was always impassive; it showed no change of expression now. ‘I don’t know that I thought much about it either way,’ he replied. He walked over to the table, and waited to receive his tea-cup from Clara’s hands.

‘You’re lookin’ tired, Ray,’ she remarked.

‘I’m all right,’ he responded shortly. Conscious of his father’s gaze, he looked up, and met it squarely, his jaw hardening a little. Penhallow grinned at him, but whether in mockery, or in appreciation of his self-command, it would have been difficult to say.

Penhallow began to stir his tea, in a way which made Aubrey exchange a pained glance with Charmian. ‘I shall sit up to dinner,’ he announced.

This piece of intelligence was greeted with such a marked lack of enthusiasm that Aubrey felt it incumbent on him to say: ‘How lovely for us, Father dear!’

‘I don’t know which of you gives me the worst bellyache, you or Clay!’ said Penhallow, with a look of disgust. ‘I don’t want you slobbering over me!’ His fiery glance again swept the room; his lip curled. ‘A nice, affectionate lot of children I’ve got!’ he said scathingly.

‘One hates to criticise Father,’ murmured Eugene in his sister’s ear, ‘but one cannot but feel that to be a most unreasonable remark.’

‘Considering you mean to sit up to dinner tomorrow, you’d better be in bed today, I should have thought,’ said Clara.

‘You keep your thoughts to yourself, old lady!’ retorted Penhallow. ‘I daresay there’s a lot of you would like to see me keep my bed, but you’re going to be disappointed. By God, I’ve let you get so out of hand, the whole pack of you, it’s time I showed you who’s master at Trevellin!’ He stabbed a finger at his wife. ‘And that goes for you too!’ he said unnecessarily. ‘Don’t think you’re going to take to your bed with a headache, or any other such tomfoolery, because you’re not! And as for you,’ he added, directing the accusing finger at Charmian, ‘you can make what kind of a guy of yourself you please in London, but you won’t do it here! You let me see you in those trousers again, and I’ll lay my stick across your bottom!’

‘Oh, no, you won’t!’ said Charmian, with a look quite as fierce as his. ‘You’ve no sort of control over me, so don’t you think it! I’m not dependent on you! I shan’t burst into tears because you choose to shout at me! You’ll get as good as you give if you go for me!’

‘Oh, don’t! Please don’t!’ Faith gasped, shrinking back in her chair involuntarily.

Neither of the combatants paid the slightest heed to her. Battle was fairly joined, and had anyone wished to speak it would have been quite impossible to have done so above the thunder of Penhallow’s voice and the fury of Charmian’s more strident accents. Eugene, lounging on a sofa, lay laughing at them both; Clara went on drinking her tea in perfect unconcern; Clay found that his hand was trembling so much that he was obliged to set his cup-and-saucer down on the table beside him; and Conrad, entering the room when the quarrel was at its height, promptly encouraged his sister by calling out: ‘Loo in, Char! Loo in, good bitch!’

Reuben Lanner, who had come in behind Conrad, crossed the room to his master’s chair, and shook his arm to attract his attention. ‘Shet your noise, Master, do!’ he shouted in his ear.