“She’s maternal?”
“In her way, as deeply so as Sally. Seeing them with the twins I’ve envied them both. I’m not, you know. It’s one of the lacks in me that has made my life with George difficult. And I’ve noticed that Annie-Laurie has hard work not to dislike Sally.”
“I can’t see that that’s a proof of deep maternal feeling,” said Hilary dryly.
“Yes. It must be obvious to Annie-Laurie that Sally has been born into a social class where the chances are that she will be loved with honor, and bear children who will have a reasonable hope of happiness. For Sally nothing will ever be squalid.”
“Yes, I see,” said Hilary slowly. “Poor Annie-Laurie. Jealousy is one of the worst of the pains. It’s a point gained, I think, even though I gained it by a shocking lie, that she thinks you have known for some while more of her story than she actually told you.”
“Yes, that’s a great point. It will make her really talk to me, I hope. There’s not much I can do until she does. . . . Hilary, can you see any connection between woods and laughter?”
He started at the abrupt change of subject. Then he was grateful for it. It was one of Nadine’s social gifts that when a subject of conversation was finished with she would never allow the issue to be confused by too much talk.
“That man, now,” said Nadine, glancing around the walls. “He painted a wood and you can almost hear him laughing. And my family always come home laughing from the woods. And I read a lyric of Meredith’s the other day that seemed to take it for granted that there’s no whisper of woe under ‘foliaged sky.’ ”
“ ‘Where the foliaged sky is most sacred to see,’ ” quoted Hilary. “To many people a wood is a symbol of paradise, I think, and it’s the accepted belief that you laugh a good deal in paradise. . . . Where are all the others, by the way?”
“In the drawing room. I was on my way upstairs to fetch the twins’ new winter coats to show Grandmother, and then I slipped in here for a minute.”
“And then I wasted your time like this,” said Hilary, getting up. “You go on and fetch the coats and I’ll go to the drawing room and make our apologies.”
Nadine got up too, and stood smiling at him. “Not waste of time. A very profitable twenty minutes. Thank you, Hilary. I seem to have got to know you better these last few minutes than in all the years before. I used to be scared of you.”
“Of me?” ejaculated Hilary in astonishment. “I didn’t know you were ever scared of anybody.”
“I’m not as bold as I look,” said Nadine.
“We none of us are,” mused Hilary. “And doesn’t it strike you as strangely ridiculous that human creatures, scared rabbits as we all are at heart, should ever be afraid of each other?”
“Especially nowadays,” said Nadine. “Don’t you feel sometimes, with such doom seeming to hang over the world, as though we were all rabbits at harvest time, bolting further and further into the middle of the field where the corn still stands, with that awful machine coming nearer and nearer?” They were standing at the door of the chapel, and she laid her hand on the strong stone wall beside her, as once she had laid it on the warm paneling in her sitting room, seeking reassurance. “This old inn is like the standing corn.”
“It’s a good symbol, this house, like a fortress,” said Hilary, and turned to go down the turret stairs. Nadine heard him murmuring to himself as he went. “ ‘I will say of the Lord, He is my refuge, and my fortress: my God; in him will I trust.’ ” Though Nadine thought she never prayed she found herself going on with the psalm as she went upstairs. “ ‘He shall cover thee with his feathers, and under his wings shalt thou trust . . . the Most High, thy habitation, there shall no evil befall thee.’ ” A flashing moment of happiness came to her. Somehow, beyond the doom, it was all right. The fortress was not static, like the standing corn. It was an ark that carried you through.
— 5 —
Tea over, David had slipped away into Knyghtwood to avoid being alone with Sally. It was odd to find himself avoiding Sally when for weeks he had been clinging to her like a drowning man to a strong swimmer. But then during the past weeks his clinging had been unconscious. Now he was conscious of it and had abruptly let go, lest he drown her as well as himself in his wretchedness. He was fighting his way back to physical and mental health, but he had not got there yet; the moment he thought himself cured he was plunged back into hopelessness again; and the blackest moments now were those against which Hilary had warned him, when he could not believe the night would ever pass. One of them was upon him now. He did not believe he would ever be able to work again, and if he couldn’t, what then? There seemed no answer.
On the day when they had discovered the frescoes, the terrible sense of isolation had taken itself off forever. At the time that had seemed a blessing, but now he was not so sure, for he was now so painfully conscious of the emotions of other people. Before the people about him had seemed to move like figures in a dream, and he had fought to come near them and could not do it, but now it was the other way round; they pressed in upon him and all that they felt he felt too, almost to the point of suffocation. Above all did he feel now, almost unbearably, the weight of Sally’s sorrow in her love for him. He had hoped he would get free, come alive again and love her, give even as she gave. Well, he couldn’t. Nadine had set him free; brutally, he thought, for he was still staggering from the shock of it, yet he remained numbed and powerless. He had nothing whatever to give Sally. Nothing whatever except the burden of himself.
Yet how desperately he longed for her, and how much he missed her. They were together, of course, while they were working at the walls, but that was a companionship without intimacy, for her father and Ben were there too, and the work absorbed them. He ought to have been thankful for that, for it had made it possible to drop their walks and rides together naturally and inevitably. But he wasn’t thankful. He wanted her to himself again, this girl whom he did not love. . . . It was odd.
Mere selfishness, of course. He had said to himself, on that day when he had first met her in London, that there was no way that he knew of to recapture the vision and strength of a child. Yet, with Sally during the weeks that they had been together, he had thought that there was; the way was to be with a strong and visionary child and share the vision and the strength. He had done that with Sally. . . . Almost. . . . He might have done it altogether if he had not cut himself off from her.
Long ago, at Damerosehay, walking for the first time along the road of denial and pain, he had discovered something: that it was a road, not a quagmire, a real road, strong and hard, leading somewhere. He had discovered the reality of the way and the end, and though he had passed through several different kinds of hell since then his faith in that reality had never quite failed. That had been a sort of rebirth. “That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the spirit is spirit.” Those words were the signpost. He had ground down his flesh then, and discovered his spirit. . . . He would never forget that day. He had stood in the wild garden at Damerosehay with the bluebird in his hand, and it had flown up from his hands, singing.
And now he was once again at the crossroads, but he was not alive and vibrant, as he had been before; he was like a man blind and paralyzed. If he had been able to see which road to follow it would have done him no good, because he would not have been able to follow it. Nothing to be done about it but carry on from day to day, bearing as best he could the wretchedness of uncertainty and inaction, trying to let the burden of himself weigh upon himself only, and deny himself Sally. That was all he could do.
In even the smallest of selfless decisions there is a liberation from self, and David suddenly found himself noticing the wood. No wood in the world would ever mean as much to him as that scrap of an oak wood at Damerosehay, but this was an excellent wood, all the same, and extraordinarily beautiful on this still day of early winter. He walked very slowly, aware
of the immense age of this wood. It was the same wood that the artist had painted on the chapel walls centuries ago. . . . The same wood. . . . Centuries ago, and it still patiently endured “the heat of the sun, the furious winter rages, the lightning flash, the dreaded thunder stone.” Shakespeare meant so much to him that half the time he thought in the words of Shakespeare without knowing that he was doing it. “What freezings have I felt, what dark days seen! What old December’s bareness everywhere!” The old wood seemed talking to him now, telling of its immensity of patience. Patience. The last lines of the sonnet of patience slipped into his mind.
Till whatsoever star that guides my moving
Points on me graciously with fair aspect,
And puts apparel on my tattered loving,
To show me worthy of thy sweet respect:
Then may I dare to boast how I do love thee;
Till then not lift my head where thou mayst prove me.
Tattered loving. That exactly described his feeling for Sally. Not a proper loving, nothing yet worth giving her. He could not yet shake off the yoke of inauspicious stars. He must wait.
Patience. It was all about him in the still old wood, smiling at grief, waiting once more for spring as the painted wood within the Herb of Grace had waited for so many years for its rebirth.
CHAPTER
14
— 1 —
Caroline sat on the edge of the railway-carriage seat, breathless with joy and excitement. The most absolutely glorious thing had happened. She’d had measles at school, had been considered unfit for the end of term festivities and examinations, and had been sent home a fortnight early. It was only the beginning of December. The Christmas holidays were lengthened by two whole weeks. She was going home a whole two weeks or more before Tommy. She was going home to Mother and Daddy, to Ben, Jill, and the twins, to Grandmother and Aunt Margaret and Uncle Hilary, to David, Malony, and Annie-Laurie, a whole fortnight early. . . . Home to the Herb of Grace . . . Home . . . The grinding train wheels beat out the glorious words. . . . Home . . . Home . . . Their first Christmas at the Herb of Grace . . . Home . . . the Herb of Grace . . . It was their first real home. She had not liked the Chelsea house at all. It had seemed small and dark and there had not been a garden. And it hadn’t had a welcoming feel about it. Always it had seemed to draw back a little, as though afraid of getting its smart polish scratched. And it was connected in her mind with air raids and not feeling safe. Caroline was secretly afraid of many things, but at the Herb of Grace she always felt safe. It was like a strong stone fortress and it welcomed you with a mighty laugh. How it would laugh at Christmas! She could just see and hear it laughing, with a lighted Christmas tree in the hall and holly everywhere, and log fires roaring, and everyone singing carols at the top of his voice.
She opened her eyes, which she had shut to see the Herb of Grace laughing at Christmas, and looked joyously out of the window. She was alone in the carriage, for this was only a branch line and not many people traveled by it. She had been escorted to the last junction by Matron, and then, to her joy, left in charge of the guard to do this last bit alone. She was glad, for this was the first time she had done the journey from school to the Herb of Grace, and she wanted to be alone so as to get the landmarks well into her mind. That was one of the chief joys of home-comings, watching for the familiar landmarks and greeting them one by one as they came trooping to meet you. Caroline didn’t really care about school very much. Victorian child that she was, strayed into the twentieth century by some peculiar mistake, it was her opinion that woman’s place is in the home. . . . Especially when home was the Herb of Grace.
She glanced from the window to her little wrist watch. They were due at Radford in ten minutes. Who would meet her? Mother had said that somebody would come with the car, but not who it would be. It might be Mother herself in her fur coat, smelling of violets, and that would be lovely. Or it might be Malony, which would be very nice. Or it might—perhaps—be Daddy in his rough tweed overcoat that smelled of tobacco and wood smoke. At the thought that it might be Daddy—alone—her ecstasy was so great that she could hardly bear it. She had to go back to watching the landmarks again or she would have burst. It was almost sunset now, still and cold and beautiful. She saw a group of pines outlined starkly against a lemon-colored sky, a farmhouse with higgledy-piggledy roof and lights in the windows, a white wooden bridge crossing a stream, and knew that she would not forget them as long as she lived.
A lighted signal box slipped by the windows, and there was a row of houses beyond the line. Goodness, they were nearly there! She jumped to her feet and wondered if she’d got everything. Her box had been sent on in advance, but she had a little blue suitcase in the rack, and a paper bag holding some sandwiches which she had been too excited to eat, but had treasured for Mary. And she had a second, much battered suitcase that Matron had lent her, containing her Christmas presents for the family. There was a pochette for Mother, a cigarette case for Father, a wooden box to hold paintbrushes for Ben, a slightly larger box to hold bones for Tommy, a needlecase for Jill, two woolly rabbits for the twins, an egg cozy for Grandmother, a pincushion for Aunt Margaret, a holy bookmarker (holy because it was purple and had a cross embroidered on it) for Uncle Hilary, a little bunch of felt flowers for Annie-Laurie, and a penwiper for Malony. She had made all these things herself in the handicraft class and had not dared trust them in her box lest it be lost, sent on in advance as it was, and there wasn’t room for them in her own suitcase, so she had had to borrow one of Matron’s. Though she had not got a clever brain she had clever fingers, and she loved making things. She should have lived in the era of bazaars. They would have been the breath of life to her. One, two, three. Yes, she’d got everything. Was she tidy? Mother might meet her and Mother liked her to be tidy. There wasn’t a glass in the carriage, but she shook herself, brushing smuts off her gray school overcoat, pulling her long gray woolen stockings straight, settling her gray felt hat more firmly on her shining smooth gold head. Then she let down the window and hung out. She could see the platform now, with the lights, and the lovely blue dusk behind them, and figures moving about. There was one rather outsize figure, very upright. Was it? Was it? It was! She shrieked with delight. It was Daddy in his thick brown overcoat, his hands deep in his pockets, the yellow scarf that she had knitted for his birthday wound round his neck. His felt hat was set jauntily at an angle, as she liked him to wear it, and as he always wore it when she was about, just to please her, and his eyes were scanning each carriage window as it passed him with an eagerness that almost matched her own.
“Daddy!” she shouted, but he couldn’t hear her above the noise of the train. She opened the carriage door and yelled again, and this time he did hear. He raised his hat, then strode towards her and held out his arms, and she fell into them as the train glided to a stop.
“Hullo, my Elf! Hullo, my little Elf! Lord, how you’ve grown!” He hugged her, and laughing, she wound her arms round his neck and hid her face in his coat to sniff the familiar scent of tobacco and the smoky smell that was the smell of the tweed. He set her down and held her away from him; he saw her usually pale little face rosy with joy, and her gray eyes shining as she danced up and down in his grip. It was only in these home-comings, and only then if they were alone together, that she was so wildly loving and abandoned in her joy. By the time they got home her happiness, though sweet to see, would be demure and quiet, not this flaming thing. He doubted if anyone but himself knew that she could be like this. It was something that she seemed able to show only to him, just as he dared show only to her the full depth of his tenderness. She knew he wouldn’t laugh at her; he knew she wouldn’t suspect him of emotionalism. There was a strain of mockery in Nadine and Tommy, a touch of austerity in Ben, that forbade exhibitions of sentiment, but with each other George and his daughter could express their feelings and be the better for it.
“My things!” cried Carol
ine, and dived back into the carriage to retrieve them.
“I’ll take ’em,” said George, and relieved her of the suitcases. He always treated her like a grown-up lady, raising his hat to her and carrying her things. Clasping the packet of sandwiches for Mary, she danced beside him to the waiting car. He tucked her up tenderly in the seat beside him, and they slid slowly down the main street of Radford. The lights were lighted now, and in some of the shopwindows there were already a few festoons of colored paper, calendars and Christmas cards, and attractive cardboard cartons that hadn’t anything in them. Caroline could hardly remember the gay illuminations of the prewar days, and this extremely modest display filled her with excitement. “It’s lovely!” she cried. “Oh, Daddy, it’s lovely. And there are Christmas presents in the windows.” She lowered her voice to a very secret whisper. “Daddy, there are presents in that little brown case. Things I’ve made.”
George knew what was expected of him and drew up instantly beneath a lamppost. “Show me,” he commanded.
Caroline knelt up in her seat, reached into the back seat for the case, opened it, extracted her father’s cigarette case, and carefully stowed it away in her pocket, keeping an anxious eye on him lest he should see. But George had become extraordinarily interested in something on the other side of the street and the dangerous moment passed over quite safely. “There!” said Caroline, sitting down again triumphantly with the open case on her lap. “I made them. That’s for Mother. Do you think she’ll like it?”
“Great Scott!” ejaculated George. “You made all those, Elf? Good heavens, dearest, I’d no idea you could do that sort of thing. That for Mother? Never saw such a pretty thing. Fit for a dinner party. That for Grandmother? She’ll love it. I’m proud of you, Elf, I am indeed. Didn’t know you had it in you.”