The town councillor limped slowly back again. As he passed Mrs. Miniver, he made some grunting remark about the weather. She uncoiled with a bright laugh, then coiled up again.
Evie grabbed her glass and drained it.
“Same again please, Mrs. Miniver!”
“Here, Evie—let me—”
“No.”
The councillor who had limped back, leaned forward in his chair, one hand cupped round his ear.
“Ay? Speak up, Jim!”
“So long as we don’t let the contract go elsewhere!”
“Oh. Ah.”
Evie pressed her hands on her cheeks, shook out her bob, then turned to me.
“We had some good times, didn’t we Olly?”
I laughed automatically. Evie drank some more scotch and water, then spoke with a kind of determination.
“Yes. We did. Good times. And now—coming back—”
I finished my pale ale and looked at Evie’s stocking’d legs. They were all right. I held out my empty glass and Mrs. Miniver filled it. Pale ale was all right.
Evie went on talking.
“People one’s been brought up with—boys and girls—together—”
She exhaled in my direction, at once arch and wistful. I laughed, and took a long drink of pale fire. I remembered things, too, and had a vague feeling that this evening might be led.
“And Robert, Evie! Don’t forget Robert—”
Evie’s wistfulness vanished into archness.
“Bobby! My first sweetheart!”
I drank some more, thought of Miss Dawlish’s two seater and choked.
“Same again, Mrs. Miniver, please!”
“—and me.”
Evie was silent, staring into the mirrors behind the bar. She was all right.
“Tuesday.”
“What d’you mean, Evie?”
“I go back on Tuesday.” She flashed her smile sideways at me. “Hold my breath till then.” She snatched her glass and drained it. “Same again, please!”
“Cheers.”
“Have to look people up, first of course.”
“You? What people?”
A gorgeous idea occurred to me. I grinned at her.
“How’s Freddy Wilmot keeping?”
Evie said nothing for a time, staring into her glass. She drank, and put it down.
“I’ve just come back from Sweden with my boss.”
I put an extra meaning into my grin.
“And what’s he like?”
“David’s a dear. Everybody says so. I’m devoted to him.”
She giggled suddenly. Within ten seconds she had changed to something impish, not arch, Evie of the Old Bridge.
“He’s good at everything. Everything!”
The tall stool moved under her so that she grabbed the counter.
“Whoops!”
“Cheers—”
“Let’s go and pay your parents a visit.”
“Come off it, Evie!”
“Or Dr. Jones—now there’s a man! We could call on them!”
“I don’t think—”
“No wonder Stilbourne has so many pubs. How else—I wish David was here. ’Nother whisky please!”
“Good at everything.”
Evie gave a loud giggle.
“He’s very good in bed. Everybody says so.”
I was not going to be outdone in sophistication, warmed as I was by my flames of pale fire.
“And is he?”
But I was still nowhere near knowing Evie.
“Yes he is,” she said. “He’s better than you are.”
The grumbling conversation from the corner stopped. There was a hush. I got half off my stool and did a kind of dance by the bar.
“We’ve never been to bed,” I said with a laugh about as natural as a plastic box. “Never! Come off it, Evie!”
“Never been to bed,” she said nodding. “Never out of it after half-past seven. Cheers!”
I raised my own glass, laughing; and made my great Stilbourne mistake.
“Bottoms up!”
Evie put down her empty glass very carefully on the counter. She looked into it as if she could see a fly there or something. The glum couple nodded to each other, got up quickly and went away without a word. Evie made a half-gesture as if she were about to put back her bob, then dropped her hand again. She looked sideways at me along the bar, looked round the silent room, stared through the walls at the town. The lopsided sneer appeared.
“It all began,” she said, “when you raped me.”
A nightmare singing started in my ears. There was nothing to say—no plain statement that would bear the indisputable imprint of truth. And indeed, what had I done, we done? The four town councillors got up as one man and made for the door, past an uncoiling and coiling up Mrs. Miniver.
“Up at the top of the hill,” said Evie, loudly, and circumstantially. “In the clump.”
“I didn’t!”
“Never stood a chance,” said Evie. “I didn’t want you—I was only just fifteen.”
The door of the saloon bar closed. We were alone. I felt the Stilbourne tide again, but this time not whispering and tittering. The waters roared clear over my head. I slammed down my glass and flung away, to stand outside in the sodium light by the corner of the Town Hall. Evie appeared at my side, laughing; and with an effort, I kept my hands from her neck.
“Old Olly!”
“You’ve done me, haven’t you? Done me properly, now!”
“That’s right.”
“And you’ve done yourself!”
She giggled.
“What, both of us?”
“And all you can do is laugh and laugh and—”
“Lil’ Audrey. That’s me.”
She swayed forward towards me, exhaling; but the quarter moon and the sodium lights of the square were all that lit her. She was corpselike in complexion, her eyes and mouth black as liquorice. Rage misted my spectacles.
“Oh—go to hell!”
Evie was still for a moment. Then she began nodding solemnly.
“Ah.” She said. “That. Yes. Well—”
She turned away, still nodding, then stopped. She turned back.
“Olly—”
“What?”
“I’m sorry! But—”
“Bit late.”
All at once she became a washerwoman again, face thrust forward, little fists clenched. “You! Aren’t you ever going to grow up? This place—You. You an’ your mum and dad. Too good for people aren’t you? You got a bathroom. ‘I’m going to Oxford!’ You don’ know about—Cockroaches an’—Well. Tuesday. Never come back. Not if I can help it. So you can go on telling an’ laughing, see? Telling an’ laughing—”
“What the devil d’you mean?”
“Telling.”
“What about?”
She breathed the words in my face with hate.
“Me ’n’ Dad.”
She turned away and began to walk unsteadily across the Square. She was past Miss Dawlish’s bow window before her feet were under control. I stood, in shame and confusion, seeing for the first time despite my anger a different picture of Evie in her life-long struggle to be clean and sweet. It was as if this object of frustration and desire had suddenly acquired the attributes of a person rather than a thing; as if I might—as if we might—have made something, music, perhaps, to take the place of the necessary, the inevitable battle. So strong was this feeling, despite my fury, that I cried out to her in the empty Square.
“Evie!”
She was pacing again; and since the fair made it probable she could not hear me, I was tempted for a moment to follow her, even into the dark jaws of Chandler’s Close. But I saw a light switched on in my father’s cottage and the shadow of my mother pass across the curtain. I also saw—or thought I saw—a flash of the eye from Evie and fingers wiggled over her left shoulder. Then she was gone. I went home confounded, to brood on this undiscovered person and her curious slip
of the tongue.
At the end of my first Oxford term I came back to Barchester by train, then took the bus out to Stilbourne. I had hung about in Barchester, scarcely knowing why—mooning round the cathedral close, or browsing in the bookshops, until I saw from the clock that if I did not hurry I should miss the last bus; so I caught it, and hid myself in a book. It was as though by this means I might prolong something. The ‘something’ could not be Oxford. Chemistry had engulfed music, and was regarded, I found to my surprise and indignation, as a full-time job. It left me little leisure for the indulgence of my private vice of music, though interesting enough in itself. Moreover I was eager to see my parents, exhibit the fashionable width of my grey trouser legs and tell them all about everything. Evie was gone, Imogen married; and I was a proper student with a proper sense of values and duty and therefore no worries.
All the same, I concentrated on my book.
After the old landfall
Comes the new windfall
Length without breadth
Position without magnitude
Prayer without tears.
It was no use, I couldn’t understand him however good he was. I was a scientist with one private vice. I was expecting too much if I thought myself clever enough for two. I put the book away and braced myself for whatever it was, until in the darkness the bus heaved itself with a cowlike sway over the Old Bridge. I carried my two suitcases from the bus stop to our cottage and found it in darkness. While I was groping for the key under the mat I heard my mother’s voice coming through the Square from the Town Hall. She embraced me with great affection and enthusiasm; and before we were properly settled indoors I understood what was up, for my father was carrying his violin in its black, wooden case. I, as it were, stepped right back into a piece of understanding as by nature, for when my father switched on the light I saw that my mother was wearing her best grey dress and gold brooch and a faint pink flush under each cheek bone. She was laughing and glittering and excited. I did not need my father’s violin, nor his dark grey suit to tell me that Stilbourne Operatic Society had achieved its biennial or triennial resurrection. I believe it was always a time when my mother came to some quite extraordinary level of life. She had cornered the piano; and with the bandmaster from the college OTC on the trombone, the incumbent of Bumstead Episcopi with his double bass, a type-setter on the viola and my father as first and only violin, she controlled a theatre orchestra. The tenuity of this orchestra was not explicable only in terms of talent or its lack. If we had had more people who could play instruments we should have had no room for them. The same inadequacy limited the size of cast and chorus; so that The Country Girl, Merry England, Lilac Time, and Chu Chin Chow operated in very reduced circumstances. But even if we had had a mass of talent and a vast stage, orchestra pit and auditorium, there would still have been an overriding limitation, the social one. No one of the college’s closed society was available; and Sergeant Major O’Donovan helped us only because he was right on the fringe of it. Then again, at least half of Stilbourne’s population was ineligible, since it lived in places like Chandler’s Close and Miller’s Lane, and was ragged. Though Evie sang and was maddeningly attractive, she would never have been invited to appear, not even as a member of the chorus. Art is a meeting point; but you can go too far. So the whole thing had to rise from a handful of people round whom an invisible line was drawn. Nobody mentioned the line, but everybody knew it was there.
The SOS rose from a vein that wandered through society beneath the surface. We had no ritual except mayoral processions. We had no eloquence, no display. We were our own tragedy and did not know we needed catharsis. We got our shocked purging from The News of the World. Yet every now and then, the vein became inflamed by pressure and we stirred uneasily in our sleep. The SOS, laid to rest after the last performance, would wake and lick its wounds. There were many; for after a performance, few of the cast would speak to each other again. With diabolical inevitability, the very desires to act and be passionate, to show off and impress, brought to full flower the jealousies and hatreds, meannesses and indignations we were forced to conceal in ordinary life. Casting a light opera removed half our potential at a stroke, since there were always three or four people who thought themselves so insulted by failure to get the hero or heroine’s part, that they withdrew their services; or worse still, sulkily accepted minor roles and embarked on a career of theatrical sabotage. By the end of our three nights’ run, the other half of the cast would have been so mortally affronted they would vow never to subject themselves to such humiliations again. It was for this reason that the SOS did not perform annually. A certain period was necessary for scar tissue to form. The strife would die down, enemies return to a nodding acquaintance; and then, just too late for the next year’s performance, the vein would begin to ache again. A committee would assemble, revive the society, inspect the damage done last time; then announce that the SOS, in aid of some charity, Dr. Barnardo’s perhaps, would present such and such a musical in the Town Hall. Directly I saw the pink flush on my mother’s cheeks I knew that I should not have to say anything about Oxford. My mother was exalted and would do the talking.
“What is it this time, then, Mother?”
“We’ll have some tea, I think,” she said. “Put the kettle on will you, Father? My goodness, I’m quite—It’s very good, you know Oliver. I don’t think we’ve ever done anything as good!”
She hummed a bit, then laughed.
“What’s it called I mean?”
“The King of Hearts. Some of the music is very pretty. You’ll like it.”
“I’m not going. No fear.”
“We’ll talk about that later,” she said. “D’you know dear? This time we’ve got a professional producer. Have you heard about him at Oxford? Mr. De Tracy. Mr. Evelyn De Tracy. I’m sure you’ve heard of him!”
“Well I haven’t.”
“He’s a charming man! He’s taken all difficulties in his stride. You’d think a professional—”
“Difficulties?”
“The Mayor’s Parlour, I mean. Mr. De Tracy just said ‘Well boys and girls, we shall simply have to do a little rerouting.’ That’s all. Just that. Father, you’ve forgotten the strainer!”
“What about the Mayor’s Parlour?”
“Would you believe it! He said ‘No.’ And ever since, it’s been locked.”
“But surely you can’t—”
“Mr. De Tracy hung the cyclorama eighteen inches further out and arranged for the cast to go that way.”
“But why?”
“You may well ask. Here you are, dear. Father, I believe you took the kettle to the pot! You see, Oliver. It’s his daughter. Her nose was out of joint I can tell you—”
“She’s not—”
“She is!”
“No!”
“I’m telling you, Oliver. So you see.”
I saw indeed. The Mayor’s daughter, Mrs. Underhill, was a fixture. Many years before, she had appeared for a season on the professional stage and had a trained voice. Ever since, she had been our permanent ingénue, which simplified things. I had seen her in Persian trousers, Chinese trousers, Elizabethan skirts. Her voice could fill Drury Lane and made our tiny Town Hall seem no more than a boot box. Indeed, coming down from the woods towards Stilbourne I had once heard a high C of hers and had thought it was a patient in the nearby hospital. If Mrs. Underhill had been ignored by the committee, it was logical that her ancient father should refuse the use of his parlour; natural too that he should delay the announcement until it inflicted the maximum damage.
“How d’you manage?”
“The stairs at the back, of course. They tell me it’s an awful squeeze. Back stage left,” said my mother, proudly relishing the technicality. “Just the one entrance. Anyone coming on stage right goes along behind the cyclorama. You can see it quiver a bit sometimes.”
“More than sometimes,” said my father. “Young Johnson nearly put his elbow through it, tonigh
t.”
“But how—I mean—”
My mother understood.
“Well. She is nearer sixty than fifty, dear, and all good things come to an end, don’t they? It’s time she stepped down and gave way to a younger person,”
“What part is she playing then? A witch or something?”
“You don’t suppose Elsie Underhill is going to play anything but the lead, do you? My dear Oliver! She withdrew from the production. It’s been a thing, I can tell you. Some people say that Claymore didn’t handle it the right way—”
“Claymore? He’s still the lead then—”
Norman Claymore, owner and editor of the Stilbourne Advertiser; and now the husband of Imogen. My heart lurched, as I understood who was the ingenue displacing Mrs. Underhill.
“They make a very pretty pair, dear, even if Mr. Claymore’s voice is a little on the light side—”
“He sounds like a gnat.”
“And I suppose one must admit that he really doesn’t look much like Ivor. But Mrs. Claymore—Imogen Grantley that was—now she really looks like a princess!”
I could believe it; and tried mentally to retire to Oxford again.
“Her voice,” said my father, “is—”
“Now, Father! Have another cup.”
I knew that Imogen sang. It was perfection heaped on perfection and I made a mental note to go for a very long walk next day, lest I should hear her and be hooked again.
“I bet it’s a jam on those stairs!”
“Well of course, in the orchestra we don’t get to know much about the circumstances back there. You’ll be able to tell us, dear.”
I nodded absently, still thinking about Imogen. Then—
“What did you say, Mother? Me? Stairs?”
“It’s very near the beginning, dear. There’s a scene—”
“Hey! Wait a minute!”
“You haven’t heard what I’m going to say, have you?”
“Look—”
There’s a scene; I think it’s in Hungary or Ruritania or somewhere. It’s a restaurant, you see. She doesn’t know he’s the king in disguise and he doesn’t know she’s the princess of Paphlagonia in disguise. It’s very clever as an idea. I don’t know how he thinks of it!”