She sat down upon the bed, one stocking in her hand. The wall in front of her was blank. Caroline had no pictures hanging on it. She had taken them with her to boarding school. Why send a little girl to school? She wished to go, said Maria, she was bored at home. Celia could not ask the thing that she wanted. She could not turn to Maria and say, “If Caroline is bored, why not let her come to live with me?” Someone to love, to cherish. A reason for existence. The moment had come, and gone, and now of course it was too late. Caroline was happy at her school, and here was Celia, sitting on Caroline’s bed, staring at the blank wall. A blank wall.
It had been a foolish sort of day. That, really, was the trouble. Too much rain. Not going out, not taking exercise. Charles moody and depressed. She pulled on her stocking. Then she turned down her bed, and folded the cover. It would save somebody else doing it later. She laid her nightgown on the pillow, and the woolly bed-jacket, and the bed-socks, and the rabbit with the torn ear. The rabbit was one of the many things she had salvaged when the furniture went into store, after Pappy died.
“There is so much junk,” said Maria. “You can’t possibly want a quarter of it. I’d like that desk for the flat, and the round table from the drawing room, and there is a little old rocking-chair I’ve always loved. But don’t burden yourself with a mass of stuff. It will only be bombed.”
Niall wanted nothing, except some books and Sargent’s drawing of Mama. Celia wanted everything. But how could she keep everything, where could she put it? Living as she must, from day to day, until the war was over. It hurt so much to throw away familiar things. Even old calendars and Christmas cards. One calendar had hung in the downstairs lavatory the year Maria was married. And Celia had never changed it afterwards, because the picture of apple-blossom in the spring had seemed so right. She had bought little tags in the New Year, and stuck them on the bottom. The picture never failed to cheer her, even in moments of depression. And so, when the house was sold, things like the calendar had to be thrown away. Into the wastepaper basket went the apple-blossom. But there were still trunk-loads of things that had not been thrown away. Trunk-loads of useless objects. Cups and saucers, plates and coffee urns. Pappy always liked his coffee from that urn. The green vase must be kept. Truda chipped the edge once, when she was filling it, because Niall ran into her, wanting a drink of orange from the pantry. The green vase was a symbol of Niall, aged sixteen. Keep the paper knives, the trays, the old coal-scuttle with the brass bands. They were in use once, every day. They served their purpose. They spelled a moment, and a time.
And now the maisonette at Hampstead, where she had lived for the past year, was filled to overflowing with the things she did not need. But she was glad to have them by her all the same. Like the rabbit with one ear, upon her pillow now.
That was another reason, of course, why she had neglected her drawing and her stories. She had been busy moving into the maisonette. “Don’t call it maisonette, it sounds so common,” said Maria. But what else could it be called? It was a maisonette.
She was only there during the week, because at weekends she always came to Farthings. At least, she had always come to Farthings up till now. She paused, as she buttoned up the Mandarin coat Maria had given her because it was much too big, and why is it, she wondered, that everything today seems so uncertain, as it does on a summer’s evening when a storm is brewing, or when one of the children gets a temperature and the mind jumps instantly to infantile paralysis?
When she arrived down yesterday, the place was the same, as always. She had caught the usual train, on Saturday. Maria had come down in the evening, of course, after the play, with Niall. Celia and Charles and Polly and the children lunched together, as they always lunched on Saturdays. Charles had gone off somewhere in the afternoon, and Celia had walked with Polly and the children. Dinner with Charles was not more quiet than usual. They had switched on the wireless, listened to Music-hall, listened to the News. Celia had mended a cushion cover that Maria had torn the weekend before. Then she had seen about getting the supper for Maria and Niall, who would arrive hungry. It saved Polly if she did this, and it saved Mrs. Banks, it meant that they need not wait up, but could go to bed. Besides, Celia liked doing it. It had become routine. She cooked better than Mrs. Banks. Made things more tasty, so the others said. Perhaps she had taken too much upon herself, by doing these things? Perhaps Charles resented it, and was offended?
And suddenly, the things she had taken for granted through the years, like staying at Farthings, like mending cushions for Maria, like darning the socks for the children, became unstable; they were no longer part of her life, and permanent. They would cease to be, like the war, like Pappy. She buttoned the Mandarin’s coat to the chin, and powdered her nose. As she looked into the glass she saw the old telltale frown between her brows, and she powdered on top of it, but it would not go.
“Will you stop frowning?” Truda used to say. “It’s not right for children of your age to frown.”
“Smile, my darling, smile,” said Pappy. “You look as though you have the cares of the world upon your shoulders.”
But the frown had become ingrained. It would never go. Not now… Like the pain in the solar plexus. So often, on and off, during the war, though it had started really during the time she was nursing Pappy, she had had the little nagging pain. Nothing intense. Nothing severe. But nagging. It meant indigestion if she ate certain foods. Anyway, those X-ray photographs would prove if there was anything wrong. She would have them next week. But the pain would probably continue like the frown. Once a woman was over thirty, and she was not married, she was sure to have something wrong, some sort of pain, somewhere.
If she went downstairs now, to the drawing room, and made up the fire before the gong sounded, would Charles be there? Would he look at her, thinking, “Why must she treat the house as though it belonged to her?” Yet the fire would need seeing to, and Polly would be in the kitchen dishing up, with Mrs. Banks. Whatever I do now, thought Celia, will seem like interference. Mixing the salad, I’ve always mixed the salad, nobody else knows how, they will forget the sugar—but Maria ought to do it herself, Maria or Charles. Whatever I do now will seem presumptuous, in my own eyes, if not in anybody else’s; the serenity is gone; and Farthings is not a home any longer, it’s a house where I am staying as a guest for the weekend.
She left her room, and went down the back stairs, in case she should meet Charles by the front. In this fashion she could go into the dining room by the other door, and be waiting there, anonymously, with Polly when the gong rang. But the plan was frustrated, because Charles himself was standing in the pantry, with the door open, talking on the telephone. The extension to his study had gone wrong, he had been complaining about it the day before.
Celia drew back into the shadow of the stairs to wait until he had finished. Many times she had herself gone into the pantry to telephone, to the station, perhaps, about trains, or to the garage in the village, for a car, and when she lifted the receiver she would hear a voice on the bedroom extension, Maria’s voice, talking long-distance, to somebody in London, and she would know by the sound of that voice whether the call was business—or something else. Quite often it was something else. Celia would put down the receiver in the pantry, and wait, leaning against the sink, until the click in the telephone system on the wall warned her that the call was over. She was reminded of this tonight.
“It’s quite definite,” Charles was saying. “I made up my mind this afternoon. It’s hopeless to go on like this any longer. I shall say so, tonight.” There was a pause, and then he said, “Yes. The whole outfit. All three of them.” Another pause, and then: “Pretty bad all day. But better now. Things are always better when one has the courage to come to a decision.”
Turning round, he saw the open pantry door. He lunged at it with his foot. The door swung to and crashed. His voice became a murmur, soft and blurred.
And Celia, crouching against the wall on the back stairs, felt suddenly cold
. Something is going to happen. Something none of us has known about is going to happen. The anxiety about her own status as intruder did not matter anymore. It swung now to a larger, wider apprehension. She slipped past the pantry into the dining room, and, with the color ebbing from her cheeks, began to mix the salad.
The sound of the gong echoed through the house like a summons.
22
The dining room at Farthings was long and narrow. The table was mahogany, with leaves that lifted at either end, and the chairs were mahogany too, with straight, stiff backs, and narrow spindle legs. The carpet was gray, deeper than the soft gray of the walls. There was never a log fire in the dining room, only an electric fire, turned on and off before and after meals, burning with a single bar. Once, in a careless mood, Maria had toasted a kipper before the bar. The oily fat from the smoking kipper splashed and sizzled onto the pure, unstained steel of the fire, and, in spite of Polly’s rubbing with a cloth, the marks had never entirely disappeared.
They remained still, the only stains on the clean and unblemished room. Never a room to dream in, never a room in which to browse and talk. The ritual of the Sunday supper lay spread upon the serving table behind Charles’s chair. Soup, in green earthenware pots, with little handles, stood upon heated soup plates; these last a tribute to courtesy alone, because the policy was to drink the soup straight from the earthenware pots, thus saving the washing-up of extra plates. A cold chicken, garnished about with parsley to make color; some sausage rolls; the remains of the luncheon joint shrunken in size since midday; these, and a vegetable dish filled with baked potatoes wrapped in a napkin, were among the more substantial offerings to the feast. There was, of course, the salad. An open tart (fruit of Polly’s bottling) and a trifle, and a great slab of blue Danish cheese.
Niall noticed, with relief, that the bottle of claret stood uncorked, but apparently as yet unwarmed, upon the sideboard; he noticed too that the bottle of London gin to which he and Maria had helped themselves before going up to change, and which they had left two-thirds full, was now empty. Charles, who waited always for his wine and never mixed a cocktail except for guests, had therefore finished it. Niall glanced at Charles out of the corner of one eye, but Charles, with his back turned, was sharpening the carving knife on steel, preparatory to work upon the chicken. Polly stood at his side, ready to hand the plates. Celia, seated already at the table, was unrolling her napkin from its silver ring. It was the ring she always used, but as she put it down upon the table Niall noticed that she stared at it, thoughtfully, as if she posed the ring a question.
The last of the bathwater ebbed away down the waste pipe outside the window. Maria could be heard moving in her bedroom overhead. Nobody spoke. Charles continued carving at the chicken. The puppy scratched at the door, and Celia, rising instinctively to let him in, paused halfway, hovering, uncertain, and glanced over her shoulder at the figure carving by the sideboard.
“What about the pup?” she said. “Shall I let him in?”
Charles could not have heard her, for he did not answer; and looking anxiously and indecisively at Niall, Celia opened the door. The puppy sidled in, and, worming its way across the room, crawled beneath the table.
“Who wants the breast?” asked Charles, surprisingly.
Now if the three of us had been alone, thought Niall, or if Charles had been Maria, this would be the moment for a merry quip, and the mood for supper set. I always want the breast, and get it far too seldom. But not tonight. To quip tonight was but to court disaster. Anyway, it was not for Niall to express a wish. He waited upon Celia.
“I would love a wing if you can spare one, Charles,” she said, speaking rather too quickly, her cheeks flushing, “and perhaps a sausage roll. A small one.”
It was unlike Charles to carve the second course before he had sat down to his soup. Nothing tonight, though, was as it should be. The ritual was upset. Only Polly remained blank and unaware. She came with the little tray, handing round pots of soup. Yet even she found something was at fault. She paused a moment, her head on one side, like a puzzled sparrow. Then she smiled.
“I have forgotten to turn on Grand Hotel,” she said.
She handed the last of the soup, and darting to the portable wireless in the corner of the dining room switched on the knob. The volume was much too loud. A throaty tenor split the air with pain. Niall winced, his eye on Charles. Polly had the sense to turn the knob over to the left, and the tenor subsided, his voice hardly above a whisper. For him, if not for those who listened, the Temple Bells Were Ringing. Still, the sound drugged feeling and helped to break the silence. The tenor was like another guest to supper, but less effort.
And soup, Niall thought, reveals the character. Celia takes hers out of a spoon, as Truda taught us all three to do, but she does not pour it into her plate, she spoons it from the pot, a wartime custom. Polly takes hers in tiny sips, one finger crooked. Each time she sips she puts the pot down onto the plate, then lifts it up again. In the old days the three of us would have called this mincy manners. Charles, like the man he was, like all the Wyndhams probably from the beginning of time, brought up since boyhood to massive great tureens handed by footmen, emptied his soup into a plate, oblivious of the washing-up, and spooned it sideways, tipping up his plate. Whereas I, thought Niall, I alone am greedy; and he put his mouth to the pot and drank the soup down in gulps.
The tenor sang “Pale hands I love” as Maria came at last into the room. She had dressed in a hurry, she wore nothing, Niall knew, under her dressing gown affair, which was velvet and the color of old gold. She wore it every Sunday, that and a jeweled belt he had brought her once from Paris. He wondered why it was that she always looked lovelier like this, with a comb run through her hair, and a smattering of powder, than when she took trouble, and dressed formally, for grand occasions. He wondered if it was oddity with him, approaching perversion, or the familiarity of years of love and knowledge that made him want her most when a little rumpled as she was now, or drowsy on first waking, or greasy with her hair in pins, her make-up wiped away.
“Oh! Am I late?” she asked, her eyes wide. “I am so sorry.” And she sat down in her chair at the end of the table opposite to Charles, and her voice was the voice of innocence, of the person who has not heard the gong, who does not know the time of supper. And this then, decided Niall, is to be the motif for tonight; this is the chosen role, we are all back again to Mary Rose, the ethereal one, the lost child on the island. Whether it works with Charles or not remains to be seen. Because time is all-urgent, time is getting short.
“Supper has always been at eight o’clock,” said Charles, “all these years, at your demand. It was at eight tonight.”
We are all lined up, thought Niall. We are under starter’s orders. The point is, how does Maria eat her soup? Does she sip, or tip? I’ve never noticed. It probably depends upon the mood. Maria took the green earthenware pot in both her hands. She held the pot lovingly, the warmth of the soup came to her, and she sniffed it, to see what it would be. Then she drank it from the pot, still holding it in both her hands, but she drank slowly, thoughtfully, not in great gulps like Niall. She looked across the table at him and saw him watching her intently, with a smile. She smiled back at him, because it was Niall, but puzzled too, not sure why he was smiling. Had she done something wrong? Or was it the tune? Was there some code significance in the tune that she had not remembered? Pale hands I love, beside the Shalimar. Where was Shalimar? What lovely, sensuous visions it conjured, anyway, despite the sickly tenor and the honeyed words. A river warm and limpid, the color of Chartreuse. The thing was, why had she never done a tour in India? There was always India. Rajahs, and moonstones, bathing in asses’ milk. Women in purdah. Or in suttee. Or in something… She looked round the table. The silence was oppressive. Somebody else must grapple with it. Not Maria.
“The children were so funny in the bath, Mummy,” said Polly, rising from the table, collecting the pots of soup. “They said, ‘I
wonder if Mummy and Uncle Niall still have a bath together, as they must have done when they were little, and if Mummy gets angry when the soap goes in her eyes.’ ” She laughed merrily at the children’s jest, and waited for comment. What an awfully stupid remark to make just at this moment, thought Celia wretchedly, and how very nearly it is the sort of remark I might have made myself, forgetting, or not minding, with the three of us alone.
“I can’t remember, can you,” said Niall briskly, “when all three of us last plunged into a bath? Maria was always selfish with the water. She wanted to have it all to herself. But I remember soaping Celia’s bottom. It was nice and squidgy, full of dimples. Would you take my soup plate, Polly?”
“Less than the Dust.” So sang the tenor now. And very apropos, to judge from Charles’s set expression. Less than the dust beneath his chariot wheels. Niall was less than the dust. Everyone was less than the dust. And Charles, cracking the whip in the chariot, rode above it.
The second course was served without further quotation from the children. Niall was given a long, lean thigh of chicken. Oh, well, a thigh could serve its purpose, but would Charles ever warm the claret? Would he, which was more important still, ever serve the claret?
Charles was occupied at the moment in handing round the salad. Anyone could hand the salad. The claret was up to Charles. If there was one thing that Niall could not do, it was to pour out the claret in Charles’s house. Onto the thigh instead. Do justice to the thigh.
Polly had the wishbone. Later on, there would be hell to pay, in all probability, with that same wishbone. She would pick it clean, then hand it to Maria. “Does Mummy want a wish? If Mummy could have her heart’s desire, what would Mummy wish?” Danger lay in the wishbone. Why could not Charles have kept it for himself?
Maria had all the breast. She ate it with unconcern. It was wasted on her. Charles ate the other wing. Well, it was his bird, when all was said and done, and he deserved it. Maria looked up after helping herself to salad.