The Echoing Grove

Afternoon

Directly Madeleine came to the door, Dinah said, without looking at her:

‘You’ve got the blue tubs.’

Holding a dog tight on the lead, she went on staring at the pair of baroque objects in peacock-blue glazed pottery set one on each side of the porch; tracing the convoluted garlands, shells,
tritons,
dolphins with an intent expression of amusement and surprise.

‘I never heard the bus,’ exclaimed Madeleine, aggrieved. ‘I was listening for it too.’ Her rather loud voice, impulsive yet uncertain, flurried, seemed to get pinched off at the back of her nose. Head averted, she stepped out on to the flagged doorstep beside her sister, touched the dog’s head, scraped a morsel of earth off the rim of the right-hand tub and said frowning: ‘Yes. Mother had simply put them in the cellar. When I asked her what she’d done with them, she was so pleased. I mean … Well, you know how she … Pleased I remembered them.’

‘
And
,’
put in Dinah almost under her breath, ‘that she could produce them out of her hat and hand them over. When you would naturally be suspecting her of having disposed of them.’

‘Well, you know how queer she was about everything to do with the house when it was sold. She didn’t seem to want to think about it.’

‘She gave away a good deal. I had … she gave me … some things …’

‘Oh, did she? When? I mean … Of course—I didn’t need—though I’m sorry now. She sold a lot, I remember all the stuff out of the spare rooms going into a sale. Anyway … When I asked what had happened to the tubs, I’d always loved them, she was thrilled. She said Papa bought them on their honeymoon in Italy, but she’d always thought them so very ugly. She couldn’t imagine anybody wanting them.’

‘I didn’t know,’ murmured Dinah, ‘they went to Italy for their honeymoon. I can’t remember their ever mentioning it. Can you?’ Her eyebrows went up. ‘How odd … I wonder why she thought them ugly. I always thought they were beautiful. And now I see they are. They had hydrangeas in them.’

‘No,
palms
.’

‘I could swear, pink and blue hydrangeas.’

‘
Never.
You’re mixing them up with Granny’s conservatory. They were on the landing, in the window, surely you remember, and they had revolting spiky palms in them.’

A scolding irritable note appeared in Madeleine’s voice. She crouched to caress the dog in an automatic way, while he pranced on the lead and strained at her in ecstasy, marking his sense of deferred recognition. He had a loose silken black and white coat with a flouncy ruff—a mongrel with Welsh sheepdog predominant in him. ‘Anyway,’ she went on, still stroking, ‘she made me take them
then and there.
You can imagine how she would. We’d just bought this cottage and I was furnishing. So I lugged them up and heaved them into the back of the car and brought them straight down.’

For a split second her mother stood at the top of the cellar stairs, breathing with some difficulty, calling careful, child, you’ll strain yourself, throwing down a cloth to take the worst of the dust off. Intensely lit by the naked bulb at the bottom of the steps, her face had blazed out transfigured, its puffiness and fatigue dissolved in an almost incandescent animation, to herald the resurrection of the tubs. When they were set down in the hall, she began to chuckle. Satisfaction, amusement? … Yes. But then something else, climbing from the depths to be heard out loud in another moment. So urgent, thought Madeleine with a pang of misery, that I made my departure as brisk, as joking as possible.

‘I’ve stuffed them with bulbs,’ she said. ‘They’ve had geraniums all the summer—those magenta ones.’

‘They must have been a treat.’ Dinah’s eyebrows went up again. ‘Are you a gardener?’

‘I do garden,’ said Madeleine. She straightened up and rubbed her eyes and forehead hard with the fingers of both hands—a gesture that rolled back more than twenty years for Dinah … Early married days, mornings in Montagu Square, the hours turning towards the evening climax—another successful dinner party. All over the household a disciplined increase of tension, not a fray in the glossy texture; and then at my coming into the room—I the unmarried sister, being given an opportunity to meet some suitable young man—at something I said: should I write the place cards for the table, do the flowers, or some of them?—she would rub her forehead and eyes hard thus for a moment. Quite a new trick, revealing a hostess’s tension and preoccupation … and something more. Rubbing me out of her line of vision. And after that she would decline my offer, saying: ‘I do it all,’ or words to that effect, in the same voice, as if stifling a yawn.

‘You find it soothing?’ said Dinah.

‘I find it a job of hard work,’ said Madeleine, sharp and light. ‘But I’ve quite taken to it. Had to.’

‘Vegetables and all?’

‘Of course. I don’t potter about in embroidered hessian with a dainty trowel and a raffia basket, if that’s what you mean,’ said Madeleine, thinking: She hasn’t changed. Still the cocked eyebrow, the guarded mouth firing off remarks designed to cause discomfort; as if to say no matter what the answer, she knew its fraudulence beforehand and would transfix it. She glanced sidelong at Dinah and was struck by her expression. Tired? Sad? … Shaky, certainly, under the film of composure. Changed, though the same; greatly changed. As I am, I suppose. It’s time we looked at one another. This was a ridiculously bad start. Altering her voice to cheerfulness, she added: ‘No, it’s a tie and a strain and all the things we all say nowadays, but I do like it. I’ve let the orchard and I’ve got a pensioner for the digging. That did get me down.’

‘It seems to suit you,’ said Dinah. ‘You look fine.’

They looked at one another at last, they smiled, they dropped their eyes, unable to bear the weight and meaning of what for a moment they fully exposed to one another. Flushing, Madeleine stooped to pick up the shabby suitcase, saying:

‘Come in. Bring him in. Why do you keep him on the lead? You told me you were bringing him but it went out of my head. I’m sorry you had to carry this. Was it all right in the bus—with him? What’s his name? I really ought to have come to meet you, only this blasted petrol business, I’ve only got two gallons left for a month …’

‘Oh
no.
’
Dinah followed her over the threshold, into the long, large living-room. ‘I didn’t expect you. We agreed … In fact I preferred …’ She fumbled with the dog’s lead, let it drop as if bemused, watched him start a tentative exploration of the furniture, trailing the lead behind him. ‘His name is Gwilym,’ she said. ‘He’s Welsh, he was given to me. He’s perfectly house-trained, of course.’ They found themselves standing in front of the log fire, lighting cigarettes unsteadily.

‘Well you must have thought it odd when I wasn’t at the bus stop,’ said Madeleine almost crossly. Her voice expired again.

‘Why on earth? It was only a step. My bag isn’t that heavy, as you will have noticed. I only brought slacks and night things, and a scrap of rations. My meat for him. He sat on my lap in the bus and was as good as gold. What a heavenly road it is, coming down into the valley. I haven’t been in the country for weeks. It rather goes to my head—and his. That’s why I kept him on the … Here!’ He came obediently and she reached for the lead, snapped it off and stuffed it in her pocket. ‘Directly I looked along the lane,’ she said, ‘I knew which was your house. I didn’t need to ask.’

‘Well, there aren’t many to choose from.’

‘It’s such an eligible little affair,’ said Dinah, making a sketching motion with her hand. ‘Such a
character
.’

‘I wouldn’t call it distinguished.’ There was a pause, during which Madeleine threw more logs on the fire.

‘You love it?’ The tone suggested less of query than assertion.

‘Well, yes … It suits—for the present anyway. One must live somewhere.’ She rubbed her eyes. ‘Clarissa likes it.’

‘Oh, Clarissa.’ Dinah nodded rapidly. ‘Does she?’

‘Well, she’s got her pony, and friends … She never seems to want to go away in the holidays.’

‘Do let me see her room.’ She stopped. Her eyes travelled from object to object within the four walls, as if she must now start deliberately to take them in. ‘I want to see everything. You’ve made it lovely. Of course. This is lovely. One could work here.
And
relax. Oh, you’ve got a piano.’

‘It’s the piano—you remember it. Rickie’s mother’s wedding present.’ Now the name was said. Perfectly simple. Now the tension would begin to drop. She went on pleasantly: ‘There aren’t many rooms. I’ll show you after lunch. Come and eat now, you must be famished. It’s a picnic, I hope you don’t mind. If you’re going to ask: Are you a good cook? the answer is no. I can cook, but I don’t enjoy it. Clarissa does it in the holidays—she spends hours poring over cookery books and inventing variations. It’s an obsession.’

‘Oh, is it? Does she? I’m like that,’ exclaimed Dinah, following her sister towards the kitchen.

‘Oh, you are. So are most of my friends. When they start exchanging tips for sauces I could scream—their voices go into a sort of tranced hum of sensual communion. But I suppose it’s just envy. Clarissa’s cooking makes me feel awfully inferior. You and she had better meet.’

‘Yes, I do want to. I was just thinking—I don’t know any girls. None of my friends seem to have daughters. What is she like?’

‘Rather peculiar. Forceful.’

‘Nice looking?’

‘Very. So everybody says.’

‘Like you?’

‘Not in the least.’

No more just now about this girl, dead Rickie’s daughter. Girls generally took after their fathers, so one heard.

They sat down to a lunch of eggs
au gratin
and baked apples. Unspoken, the challenging testing exchange went on beneath the ripple of superficial commentary and question, the small bursts of laughter that exploded between them like bubbles released under pressure. They were meeting to be reconciled after fifteen years. This present mood in which they sat relaxed was nothing more than the relief of two people coming back to a bombed building once familiar, shared as a dwelling, and finding all over the smashed foundations a rose-ash haze of willow herb. No more, no less. It is a ruin; but suspense at least, at least the need for sterile resolution have evaporated with the fact of the return. Terror of nothingness contracts before the contemplation of it. It is not, after all, vacancy, but space; an area razed, roped off by time; by time refertilized, sown with a transfiguration, a ruin-haunting, ghost-spun No Man’s crop of grace.

After the meal, after a rapid tour of the house, they prepared themselves to take a walk.

‘Your shape is exactly as it always was,’ said Madeleine.

‘The same to you.’ Dinah looked with appreciation at her sister, tall and trim in old but well-cut tweeds.

‘No, not really. My legs … Not that it matters tuppence. But I hate myself in slacks now. Mother couldn’t bear me wearing them; she said I looked like a female impersonator. You know how she had a muddled idea that women must dress to preserve the mystery of sex. However,
you
look all right in them. Fine.’

‘Thanks.’ Dinah’s voice was dry; she smiled. ‘But the mystery of sex was never my strong suit.’

‘Well …’ said Madeleine vaguely, with a sense of muffled collision. ‘I don’t know …’

‘Mother turned in her hand about my clothes when I was seventeen.’

‘Nonsense.’

‘Yes. You’ve forgotten. It was only yours she fussed about. After my coming-out frock, God help me, I was scratched from the arena.’

‘Only because you were so obstinate.’

‘You weren’t exactly malleable, if I remember rightly.’

They looked at one another in the mirror above the mantelpiece, tentatively familiar, their smiles retrospective; turned away.

‘Poor darling, she had such awful taste,’ said Madeleine, staring out of the window. ‘It was based on a principle: what the
jeune fille
should look like. Mine was equally execrable I suppose. Based on a fantasy, an ideal image from the fashion mags.’

‘You might have done worse than hope to look exactly like yourself.’

‘I never thought so,’ said Madeleine, curt and vehement.

‘How odd. I did,’ said Dinah slowly, also staring out of the window, her eyes blank, her nostrils faintly dilated. ‘You were a perpetual reminder of how much better one might have done oneself.’ She added: ‘I used to console myself reading
The Ugly Duckling
in my bedroom. Also that bit in the Bible about being able to remove mountains if you believed you could.’

‘How absolutely mad!’ cried Madeleine. ‘Considering …’

Once more she came to a stop, as if checked in a tunnel too long, too dark and devious to pursue. At the same moment a scene, not from childhood, shot out of nowhere and presented itself before her, complete in every detail; a scene containing Rickie and his wife Madeleine in the first year of their marriage, one evening, by the fire in the small book-lined room known as the study; used for domestic evenings
t
ête-à-tê
te.
Would he, she suddenly inquired, say Dinah was attractive? Yes, he would—remarkably attractive. What ingenuous enthusiasm behind the evening paper! The shock of it!
‘
Really,
Rickie? I think I am surprised. What makes you think so?’ ‘I don’t think so. I just feel so.’ Worse and worse. Like one chap talking to another at the Club, out of earshot of wives—casual, masculine, sexually conspiratorial. ‘
Really,
do you? … I suppose women can never tell about other women. She’s not
pretty,
would you say? Or would you?’ He was going to say it was her figure and she would answer yes, not bad if only she wouldn’t go about so stiff and hunched; or her skin, and she would answer … But what he said, reflectively, was: ‘She’s mysterious.’ ‘Mysterious? What
do
you mean?’ she drawled. He laughed as if to himself. ‘She gives nothing away.’ ‘Oh, I see. No, I suppose she doesn’t.’ She added judicially: ‘What you really mean is she’s secretive. Likes to cover her tracks. That’s true. She always did. Cold natures are always secretive, don’t you think?’ To this he made no answer. Yawning—with ostentation?—he took up the paper again, while by the fireside, opposite him, she swallowed back the burning stuff and felt it settle on her chest—sediment of prophetic acid, indissoluble. What had happened?
Nothing.
Sudden destruction of security, accomplished in a trice, as if by mutual pact … No, not sudden but gradual, working in darkness from the beginning; and the pact was triple, long ago signed unread, sealed and shoved away … Mysterious Dinah, slyness personified, impassive, neat, small, colourless, mysterious to Rickie; different outside and in and altogether, utterly different from herself, the flowing sister, acknowledged affectionate, responsive, popular—therefore not mysterious, or no longer so, to Rickie. What he was saying, simply, taken off his guard, was that he had married the wrong sister. Moment of fatal lucidity, fatal hallucination—which? Had she, or he, in that very hour become the self-betrayed protagonist who never need have been but always was to be? Or in that hour conspiring to draw back together, had they assigned that
rôle
to the absent third? Nothing in fact had altered for a long time. Their marriage continued idyllic, as all their friends remarked. Dinah came and went. At the end of the first year Anthony was born; at the end of the third year, Colin. An unexpectedly difficult and exhausting birth. Dinah stayed on for weeks, was agreeable company. Then she declared her engagement to a young barrister, one of the most eligible of the possible husbands for Dinah at their dinner table; a solid chap, reliable, intelligent, well-off into the bargain. There was Dinah at last established with a sensible, a prosperous if not dazzling future, conforming to the right social pattern after all. Madeleine could congratulate herself. Did not Rickie think so? Yes, on the whole Rickie thought so. Charles was a good chap … Perhaps a bit cold-blooded. ‘But she’s cold-blooded too, Rickie. She always was. And very ambitious. She’ll make a good lawyer’s wife.’ ‘I dare say she will,’ said Rickie. ‘All the same I don’t feel certain somehow she’ll go through with it.’ From her sofa she watched him lean back in the armchair and close his eyes. A habit of his, to rest his eyes at odd moments by closing them. He had the kind of large blue eyes that easily got inflamed: Anthony had inherited them. A month later Rickie was proved right. Dinah declared the engagement a mistake and without further explanation broke it off; everybody was fed up with her; nobody could get her to confide or break her down; she went to live on her own in a cheap room in Pimlico; wrote a subdued, not very interesting or well-written novel, semi-fantastic, about a deaf girl and a blind man, got it published; enrolled herself as a student in some school of art; grew more and more cadaverous and uneven in her spirits; next went to live in Chelsea with a person called Corrigan—a woman as it turned out, a painter of only moderate talent and tendentious appearance, with whom she knocked around the pubs … And then, a thorough Bohemian, with a lot of impecunious, free-thinking-and-drinking, bright-witted disreputables in tow, she started to come back into their lives. And then … And then began the end that had been waiting in the beginning.