Vanishing Point (3 page)

She was the great lady condescending. It pricked him. He said, “No thank you,” and got to his feet.

“You must be getting on your way? Perhaps we can direct you. Where are you making for?”

He had been aware of Rosamond in the grey room behind him. She came forward now, threading her way between the tables. Resistance sprang up in him. He was being dismissed, and he was in no mind to take his dismissal. He said with a kind of pleasant firmness,

“Thank you very much. Perhaps you will tell me how to get to the village. I suppose there is one, and that it has an inn of some kind. I can’t have much farther to go, and there’s no real hurry. I don’t feel like wandering in any more lanes tonight. Then, if I may, I could perhaps see Jenny again tomorrow. If she really wants to write she ought to start on a regular course of reading.”

Lydia Crewe lifted her puckered lids and gave him a long cold look. Her eyes were deeply set, and deeply shadowed by the arch of the brow. He thought they must once have been fine. She said with abrupt irrelevance,

“Are you related to the Lesters of Midholm?”

“Why, yes.”

She nodded.

“You have a look of them. They were all big men. There is some slight family connection. My great-grandfather married Henrietta Lester in 1785. She died young.” Her tone dismissed Henrietta as a failure.

He was surprised, therefore, when she said quite graciously,

“Very kind of you, I’m sure, to take so much trouble about Jenny. She will naturally be delighted to see you. Rosamond will show you the way out and direct you to the inn. It is quite small of course, but Mrs. Stubbs is a very good cook. She used to be with the Falchions at Winterbourne. Good-bye, Mr. Lester.”

He touched the cold hand again and made his farewells. He found himself outside in the passage with relief.

“Do I see Jenny again now?”

Rosamond shook her head.

“Better not, I think. If she is too excited she won’t sleep. Can you really come back in the morning?”

“Oh yes. What time shall I make it? Ten—half past?”

As they went back towards the hall, she gave a sudden soft laugh.

“Are you really related to those Lesters?”

“I really am.”

“And do you know exactly how? Because Aunt Lydia will certainly cross-examine you. She knows everybody’s family tree much better than they do themselves.”

He laughed.

“I’m word perfect. My grandfather was a brother of old Sir Roger Lester’s. The present man is my cousin Christopher.”

She had opened the front door and was saying, “If you turn left at the foot of the drive, the village is not much more than a quarter of a mile. The name is Hazel Green, and the inn is the Holly Tree. Mrs. Stubbs is a pet,” when he broke in after the manner of someone who has not been listening.

“Do you dust all that damned china?”

When she thought about it afterwards it occurred to her that she ought to have snubbed him. Rosamond wasn’t very good at snubbing people. She said in an apologetic voice,

“The daily women aren’t careful enough. Aunt Lydia wouldn’t trust them.”

There was quite a cold air coming in, but neither of them felt it. He said with anger,

“Do you know what I would like to do? I’d like to put all that stuff in the middle of the floor and smash it with the poker!”

And all she did was to look at him and say, “Why?”

He obliged with a copious answer.

“Because you’re a slave to it. There isn’t a speck of dust on the wretched stuff, or anywhere else that I could see. And who does the dusting? You every time! And mind you, I know about dusting. My sister and I had to help at home. My father died, and the first thing my mother did was to get rid of practically all that sort of stuff. She said there wouldn’t be anyone to do anything except ourselves, and she wasn’t planning for us to be slaves to a lot of irrelevant crockery, so she made a clean sweep of it. This house is cluttered till you can’t move, and you’re worn to a shadow trying to cope with it.”

It was the most extraordinary conversation, and perhaps the most extraordinary part of it was that she found it quite impossible to be angry. Strangers oughtn’t to speak to you like that. He didn’t feel like a stranger. He broke all the rules and he broke down all the fences, but it wasn’t for himself, it was for her. He was angry because she was tired—because there was too much china and too much furniture and her work was never done. It was so long since anyone had cared whether she was tired or not that she was shaken, but not with anger. She felt a weakness and a warmth, and got no nearer to an answer than a faint tremulous smile.

He said, “Why do you do it?” and she lifted her head and spoke gently.

“Most women have a good deal to do in their houses nowadays, you know. It doesn’t hurt one to be tired at the end of a day’s work.”

“It hurts to be given a hopeless task and keep at it till it breaks you! Three quarters of that stuff should be put away! Why don’t you say so and go on strike until it’s done?”

The smile was gone. She straightened herself a little.

“Please, please—you mustn’t. My aunt has been most kind in taking Jenny in, and it has meant everything for her. We really had no claim. Anything I can do in return—”

“I know, I know—and it’s not my business, and all the rest of the conventionalities! Let’s take them as said and get down to brass tacks. It is really impossible for you to have a sensible talk with Miss Crewe? After all, she can probably remember how many women it used to take to do what she expects you to take on single-handed.”

“It was a different world, a different life. She hasn’t the least idea how long anything takes to do. There was a cook, and a kitchenmaid, and a between maid, and a woman up from the village three times a week to scrub, and a butler, and a parlourmaid, and two housemaids. And everything went like clockwork.”

“She tells you all that, and she can’t see?”

“No, she really can’t. She just thinks they were lazy and overpaid, and that there is no entertaining now, so of course it is all quite easy.”

A light shiver went over her.

He said impulsively, “You’re cold—I mustn’t keep you. But I haven’t said anything like all I’m going to.”

A big warm hand swallowed hers up, held it a moment, and then let go. He went out on to the porch, and down the steps, and into his car and drove away.

Mrs. Stubbs’ cooking was all that Miss Crewe had said. The parlour at the Holly Tree was warm and bright and comfortable—old leather chairs well broken in, a red tablecloth to replace the white one when his meal had been cleared away, and a row of fascinating objects on the shelf over the fireplace. Craig sat gazing at them and considering how much he preferred this homely warmth and comfort to the dreary bygone grandeurs of Crewe House. Sèvres and ormolu were all very well in their time and place, but for everyday fireside comfort give him the yellow cow with a lid in her back which was really a cream-jug, the milk being put in at the lid and pouring out of the mouth; the cup and saucer of copper lustre with its bands of raised fruits and flowers on a ground of bright sky blue; the mug with Queen Victoria and Prince Albert in lilac and grey, the Great Exhibition in the background, and the date 1851 displayed in silver. There were also some rather intriguing wooden candlesticks with what looked like little heaps of cannon-balls piled at the four corners of the base, and a tall pottery jar with a picture of a khaki-clad soldier of the South African War and the dates 1899-1901. Below on either side of the hearth there were two very large pink shells which took him back to his boyhood, when he used to stand in front of a dreadful little muddle-shop which he passed on his way to school, looking in and coveting just such another pair.

Mrs. Stubbs came in, hoped he had everything to his liking, and stayed for a cosy little chat. The shells were brought back by a great-uncle who had taken to the sea. The cow and the lustre cup and saucer had come down from her great-grandmother. “And I don’t hold with all this throwing out and putting in a lot of silly rubbish. New it may be, and the fashion it may be, but I don’t hold with it. When the young people come in they can do as they choose, and I suppose when I’m in my grave I shan’t mind, not even about my granny’s yellow cow that she used to allow me to stroke Sundays for a very particular treat. Oh, well, every dog has his day, as the saying is, and no use troubling oneself that I can see. Makes your blood go sour, and then what are you like to live with! Better laugh as long as you can and hold your tongue when you can’t!”

He went up to Crewe House in the morning, and Rosamond let him in. He found Jenny bright-eyed, flushed, and very grown-up indeed.

“How do you do, Mr. Lester? You must have thought it very silly of me yesterday to mistake you for a doctor, because of course you are not in the least like one. Rosamond has told me about your coming down from Pethertons, and she says I mustn’t expect you to publish anything. But then I never did— not really. Only you will talk to me about it, won’t you, and not just say it’s no use and I must wait till I’m older. You don’t know what a curse it is being young and have everybody say you can’t do any of the things you want to do because of it.”

He said,

“I shan’t do that, because there’s quite a lot you can do now, and I’d like to talk to you about it very much.”

Her hands were at her breast, painfully clasped. The brilliant eyes answered. Rosamond, leaning over to lay a hand on her shoulder, was vehemently pushed away.

“Well,” he said, “writing is a trade. If you want to write you’ll have to learn it. Take any conversation. There are the words, there is also the way the people look and move, and the tone of voice they use, and when you come to write that conversation down all you have got is the words. And they are not enough. Somehow, by hook or by crook, you have got to make up for the colour, the life, and the sound which you can’t transfer to paper.”

“How?”

“That’s what you’ll have to find out. For one thing, written dialogue has got to be better than the ordinary stuff that people talk. It must have more life and go in it. The colours must all be brightened. There must be more individuality. The clever people must be cleverer and the silly ones sillier than they would be in real life, or you won’t get them across at all, and your book will be dull. Then you want to watch your reading rather carefully. Don’t read too much of any one author, or you will find you are copying him, and that is fatal. You’ll have to read the standard authors, because they lay down a good foundation and you won’t be able to do without it. And as you read, just notice how they get people in and out of rooms, or from one place to another—how they produce what is called atmosphere—that sort of thing. They all do it different ways, so you won’t be in danger of copying any one in particular.”

Jenny nodded vigorously.

“And then—you probably won’t like this, but it’s important— write of things you know something about.”

Jenny’s already feverish colour deepened.

“If everyone did that, there would be a lot of dull books! I don’t want to write about the things that happen every day— I’m bored with them! What can I write about here?”

Dangerous ground. He hastened away from it.

“Well, you live in a village, and a village has people in it just the same as a town has, or a South Sea island, or a castle in Spain. It’s the people and what goes on in their lives that makes things interesting—or dull.”

For the first time her hands relaxed. The flush began to fade. She said slowly,

“Sometimes you can’t think what was in their minds. Nobody could with Maggie.”

“Who is Maggie?”

“A person in the village. She just walked out of the house one evening and never came back.”

Rosamond threw him an uneasy glance. He ignored it.

“Why did she do that?”

“Nobody knows why.”

He said, “Tell me about it in your own way—as if it was a story you were writing.”

“I don’t know how to begin.”

He laughed.

“That is always one of the difficult things.”

She thought for a bit, and then shook her head vehemently.

“I can’t do it like that. I can tell you what happened.”

“All right—go ahead.”

She nodded.

“You mustn’t think about it being a story—it’s just something that happened. But it’s not interesting, or romantic, or anything like that—it’s just a bit frightening. Maggie lived with her father and mother in a cottage in the village. You can see it from the bottom of our drive, only they don’t live there now. The father and mother were quite old, and Maggie wasn’t at all young, or nice-looking or anything like that. And about a year ago, at eight o’clock in the evening when it was quite dark, she finished her ironing and said to her mother, ‘I’m just going out for a breath of air. I won’t be long.’ And no one ever saw her again.”

“You mean she disappeared just like that?”

Jenny nodded.

“I told you it was rather frightening. And if I was writing it for a story I should stop there, because the end rather spoils it.”

“What was the end?”

“Oh, she wrote—twice. On a postcard to her mother, and to Miss Cunningham. She was the daily at the Cunninghams’, and their card just said, ‘Away temporary’. But the one to her mother was longer—something about being obliged to go away and coming back as soon as she could. That’s what she wrote, only she never did, and they never heard any more. The postmark on the card was London. And in the end they went to the police, but they couldn’t find her. Nobody knows what made her do it, because she had always been such a good daughter. And when she didn’t send any money or anything, the poor old Bells had dreadfully little.”

“You say they don’t live here any more?”

“Oh, no. They’re dead. Maggie oughtn’t to have gone away and left them.”

Over Jenny’s head Rosamond gave him one of those looks. All right, he was a blundering fool, and Jenny oughtn’t to be encouraged to dwell upon village tragedies. Let her stick to her Gloria Gilmores and life as it never was. Only if you were going in for fairy tales, he preferred Beauty and the Beast, Cinderella, and the Twelve Dancing Princesses, with the warp in folklore and the weft in fantasy. He gave back Rosamond’s look with as much hardihood as he could muster and said,

“Yes, that’s the sort of thing I mean. Only it needn’t always be tragedy, you know. Queer things happen in villages, just as they do everywhere—and nice things and interesting ones.” He even steeled himself to add, “Gloom is the hallmark of extreme youth.”

Jenny flushed. He felt that he had been a brute, but Rosamond’s eyes were thanking him.

She left him with Jenny after that, and presently brought in a tray with cups of tea and some of Mrs. Bolder’s biscuits which melted in the mouth. She found the party going with a bang and Jenny chattering away nineteen to the dozen, after which she ate a great many biscuits and drank what was practically a cupful of milk.

“And if any of us was slimming, we shouldn’t be able to, should we? So what a good thing it is that we’re not, because Mrs. Bolder does make the most heavenly biscuits. I expect it will be years, and years, and years before Rosamond and I have to think about that sort of thing. She runs about too much, and I can’t run about enough. And anyhow it must be perfectly ghastly to think about everything you eat and feel perhaps you oughtn’t to. Miss Cunningham is like that, you know. She doesn’t eat this and she doesn’t eat that, and she gets fearfully hungry. And then quite suddenly she can’t bear it any more, and everything she’s taken off comes on again, so what’s the good? Anyhow she’s quite old, so I don’t see why she worries. Nicholas teases her about it, and she goes all pink and says, ‘Oh, my dear boy!’ ”

Rosamond walked down the passage with him when he had said goodbye. He wondered whether he was to be summoned to Miss Crewe’s presence again, but they passed her door in silence. As they came out upon a wide corridor which led directly to the hall, she said in a hesitating voice,

“Would you care to see the house?”

He made no attempt to soften the tone of his reply.

“No, I wouldn’t.”

Her lips quivered into a smile.

“People do come and see it. There are some good pictures.”

“No, thank you.”

“Two Leys and a Vandyck, and a pet of a Gainsborough-— Miss Louisa Crewe, three years old, in a white muslin dress and a blue sash, with a puppy.”

“Then in heaven’s name, why doesn’t she sell them, and give you a human life?”

The smile went out like a blown candle flame.

“Aunt Lydia will never sell anything,” she said. “And you— you mustn’t say things like that.”

“Then you had better not ask me to bow down to the idol which is destroying you all. I suppose it started as a perfectly good house put up to serve the needs of real live flesh-and-blood people. The sort of life they lived is over. The kind of houses they lived in just aren’t wanted any more. They’ve either got to be put to new uses, or they’d be better pulled down. You know as well as I do that this house is nothing but a mausoleum, and that it’s draining the life out of you. If you’re going to ask what that has to do with me, I’ll tell you.”

“But I’m not asking you.”

“I’ll tell you all the same. First of all, it’s everyone’s duty to prevent an attempt at suicide.” He grinned suddenly. “That’s not what you expected, is it? I’m on nice firm uncontroversial ground there. I see you about to leap from Waterloo Bridge, and I put out a restraining hand!”

“I think you are quite mad.”

“No—only metaphorical. But cheer up—it gets easier as it goes on. In the second place, you keep doing something to me. You make me angry, and you make me tired; If I’m not in a rage with Miss Crewe for making a slave of you, I’m in a rage with you for letting yourself be made a slave of. ‘A Sister’s Sacrifice’, that’s what you are—a living embodiment of one of those Gloria Gilmores that Jenny wallows in. Do you know, I haven’t been so angry half a dozen times in the last half dozen years! I wouldn’t have believed it of myself, but there it is, and I expect you know what it means just as well as I do. And now perhaps we had better change the subject.”

She had been watching him in a way that came across to him as aloof. Not exactly the Blessed Damozel looking forth over the gold bars of heaven, but perhaps the medieval damsel watching a furious lance being broken for her sake. There was a suggestion that men would play these rough games, and that there wasn’t anything you could do about it. What she said was a plain inexpressive “Yes.” And then, “I would like to talk to you about Jenny.”

She took him into the hall and across it into the small pale room where they had talked last night. They sat in the same chairs, and talked about what Jenny should read, and what she should be encouraged to write.

It was Rosamond who spoke about Maggie Bell.

“I don’t know what made Jenny bring that up. It’s a frightening story.”

“I don’t suppose she found it so. There has been time for her to get used to it.”

“I hoped she had never heard very much about it.”

“In a village? What a hope! Besides children always know everything.”

“Nobody has even known what happened to Maggie. It really is frightening, you know. She was such a good daughter. She would never have gone away and left her father and mother like that if she hadn’t been obliged to.”

She was echoing Jenny’s words. He guessed that they were not so much Jenny’s as everyone’s. They were what had been said so often that as soon as there was talk of Maggie Bell the words were there, all ready to be used again.

He said,

“I suppose it was the usual thing—some man, and she couldn’t face the talk.”

“But there wasn’t any man. She must have been forty, and she had never been about with anyone.”

“Axiomatic,” he said. “Girls who disappear or who get themselves murdered have never had any men friends—all their friends and relations say so. But that’s an old story. Let us now give our minds to Jenny.”