“There’s only one parasite,” said Niall. “Don’t flatter yourselves he was blowing off at either of you.”
He went over to the window.
“Charles is a man of action,” said Niall, “a man of purpose. He possesses authority, he has bred children, he has fought in wars. I respect him more than anyone I have ever known. Sometimes I’ve wanted to be like him, to be that sort of man. God knows I’ve envied him… for many things. Just now he called me a freak, and he was right. But I’m even more of a parasite than a freak. All my life I’ve run away from things, from anger, from danger, and above all from loneliness. That’s why I write songs, as a sort of bluff to the world. That’s why I cling to you.”
He threw away his cigarette, looking across the room towards Maria.
“We’re all getting morbid,” said Celia restlessly. “This introspection doesn’t do us any good. And it’s nonsense saying you’re afraid of being lonely. You love being alone. Look at those mad places you go and bury yourself in from time to time. That leaky boat…”
She heard her voice becoming fretful, the voice of the child Celia who called, “Don’t leave me behind. Wait for me, Niall, Maria. Wait for me…”
“Being alone has nothing to do with loneliness,” said Niall. “Surely you’ve learned that by this time.”
From the dining room we could hear the sound of the tea-trolley being laid. Mrs. Banks was alone. She trod heavily, and, being ham-fisted, she jingled and clattered the cups. Celia wondered whether she should go and help, half-rising, then sank back again as she heard the brisk, cheerful voice of Polly saying, “Let me give you a hand, Mrs. Banks. No, children, don’t finger the cakes.”
For the first time Celia dreaded the communal tea. The children chattering about their walk and what they had done, Miss Pollard—Polly—smiling behind the teapot, her healthy, attractive face dusted with powder for the occasion—Sunday tea—the powder a shade too pale for her complexion, and her conversation (“Now, children, tell Aunt Celia what you saw out of the window, such an enormous bird, we wondered what it was—don’t drink too fast, dear—more tea, Uncle Niall?”) always rather nervous when Niall was present, coloring a little—she never knew where she was with Niall; and today of all days Niall would be difficult, and Maria more bored and silent than usual, and Charles, if he were present, grim and taciturn behind the monstrous cup that Maria had once given him for Christmas. No, today of all days communal tea was something to be avoided. Maria must have had the same thought.
“Tell Polly we won’t be coming in to tea,” she said. “Get a tray and we three will have ours in here. I can’t face the racket.”
“What about Charles?” said Celia.
“He won’t want any. I heard him go out through the garden door. He’s gone for a walk.”
The rain had come on again, a melancholy drizzle, pattering thinly against the prison panes.
“I always hated them,” said Maria. “They take away the light. Little, ugly squares.”
“Lutyens,” said Niall. “He always did it.”
“They’re right for this sort of house,” said Celia. “You see them dozens of times in Country Life, generally in Hampshire. The Hon. Mrs. Ronald Harringway—that sort of name.”
“Twin beds,” said Maria, “the kind they push together to look like a double. And the electric light, disguised, comes from the wall above.”
“Pink guest towels,” said Niall, “and exquisitely clean, but the spare room is always cold and faces north. There’s a very efficient housemaid who has been with Mrs. Ronald Harringway for years.”
“But she will put the hot-water bottles in too early, and they’re tepid when you go to bed,” said Maria.
“Miss Compton Collier comes down once a year and photographs the border,” said Celia. “Masses of lupins, very stiff.”
“And corgis, with their tongues out, panting on the lawn, while Mrs. Ronald Harringway snips at the roses,” said Niall.
The handle turned, and Polly put her head round the corner of the door.
“All in the dark?” she said brightly. “It’s not very cheerful, is it?”
She flicked on the main switch by the door, flooding the room with light. No one said anything. Her complexion was glowing and fresh after her brisk walk with the children in the rain, and the three of us were haggard in comparison.
“Tea’s ready,” she said. “I’ve just been giving Mrs. Banks a hand. The children have such an appetite after their walk, bless them. Mummy looks tired.”
She stared critically at Maria, her manner a strange mixture of concern and disapproval. The children stood beside her, saying nothing.
“Mummy should have come for a walk with us, shouldn’t she?” said Polly. “Then she would have lost her London look. Never mind, Mummy shall have a big slice of that lovely cake. Come, children.”
She nodded, and smiled, and went back into the dining room.
“I don’t want any cake,” whispered Maria. “If it’s the same as the kind we had last time I shall be sick. I hate it.”
“Can I eat your slice? I won’t tell,” said the boy.
“Yes,” said Maria.
The children ran out of the room.
“Uncle Niall would prefer brandy, neat,” said Niall.
He went into the dining room with Celia, and together they fetched a tea tray, and a second tray of drinks, and then came back into the drawing room, closing the door behind them, shutting off the domestic sounds of Polly and the children.
Niall turned off the light, the comforting darkness enveloped us again. We were alone, and quiet, and undisturbed.
“It wasn’t like that for us,” said Niall, “all bright, and clean, and purged and commonplace. Plastic toys. Things that go in and out.”
“Perhaps it was,” said Maria; “perhaps we don’t remember.”
“I do remember,” said Niall. “I remember everything. That’s the trouble. I remember much too much.”
Maria poured a spoonful of brandy into her tea, and into Niall’s cup also.
“I hate the schoolroom here,” she said. “That’s why I never go to it. It’s prison again, like the windows of this room.”
“You can’t say that,” said Celia. “It’s the best room in the house. Due south. Gets all the sun.”
“That’s not what I mean,” said Maria. “It’s self-conscious, pleased with itself. It says, ‘Aren’t I a nice room, children? Come on, play, be happy.’ And down those poor little things used to squat, on shiny blue linoleum, with great lumps of plasticine. Truda never gave us plasticine.”
“We never needed it,” said Celia. “We were always dressing up.”
“The children could dress up in my clothes if they wanted to,” said Maria.
“You haven’t any hats,” said Niall. “It’s no fun dressing up unless you have hats. Dozens and dozens of them, all piled on the top of a wardrobe, just out of reach, so that you have to get on a chair.” He poured another spoonful of brandy into his teacup.
“Mama had a crimson velvet cape,” said Celia. “I can see it now. It fitted around her hips, swathed, I believe you’d call it, and a great belt of fur round the bottom. When I dressed up in it the whole thing touched the ground.”
“You were supposed to be Morgan le Fay,” said Maria. “It was so stupid of you to put on the red cape for Morgan le Fay. I told you at the time it was not right. You were obstinate, you would not listen. You started to cry. I nearly hit you.”
“You didn’t hit her because of that,” said Niall. “You hit her because you wanted the red cape for yourself as Guinevere. Don’t you remember we had the book on the floor beside us, and were copying the Dulac pictures? Guinevere had a long red gown, and golden plaits. I put my gray jersey back to front for Lancelot, and some long gray socks of Pappy’s on my arms to look like chain mail.”
“The bed was very big,” said Maria, “simply enormous. Larger than any bed I’ve ever seen.”
“What are you t
alking about?” asked Celia.
“Mama’s bed,” said Maria, “in that room where we were dressing up. It was in that apartment we had in Paris. There were pictures of Chinese people round the walls. I’ve always looked for a bed as big as that and never found one. How very queer.”
“I wonder what made you think of that suddenly?” said Celia.
“I don’t know,” said Maria. “Was that the side door I heard just now? Perhaps it’s Charles.” We all listened. We heard nothing.
“Yes, it was a big bed,” said Celia. “I slept in it once, that time I pinched my finger so badly in the lift. I slept in the middle, and Pappy and Mama on either side.”
“Did you really?” said Maria, curious. “Just the sort of thing you would do. Were you embarrassed?”
“No. Why should I be embarrassed? It was warm and nice. You forget, those things were easy for me. I belonged to both of them.”
Niall pushed his cup back on the tray.
“What a bloody thing to say,” he said, and he got up and lit another cigarette.
“Well, it’s true,” said Celia, surprised. “How silly you are.”
Maria drank her tea slowly. She held the cup in both hands.
“I wonder if we see them with the same eyes,” she said thoughtfully, “Pappy and Mama, I mean. And the days that were, and being children, and growing up, and everything we did.”
“No,” said Niall, “we all have a different angle.”
“If we pooled our thoughts there would be a picture,” said Celia, “but it would be distorted. Like this day, for instance. We shall each of us see it differently when it’s over.”
The room had grown quite dark, but the coming night outside seemed gray in contrast. We could still see the shadowy shape of huddled trees, shivering under the listless rain. A bent twig from the jasmine creeper growing against the walls of the house scratched the leaded pane of the french window. We none of us spoke for a long while.
“I wonder,” said Maria at last, “what Charles really meant when he called us parasites.”
The drawing room felt cold, suddenly chill, without the curtains drawn. The fire had sunk too low. The children and Polly who sat round the table in the brightly-lit dining room across the hall belonged to another world.
“In a way,” said Maria, “it was as though he envied us.”
“It was not envy,” said Celia, “it was pity.”
Niall opened the window and looked out across the lawn. In the far corner, by the children’s swing, stood a weeping willow, which in the summer made an arbor cool and leafy, the foliage twined and interlaced, blotting the hard glare of the sun. Now it stood white and brittle in the somber darkness of December, and the branches were thin, like the bleached bones of a skeleton. As Niall watched, a breath of wind came with the spitting rain and stirred the branches of the weeping willow, so that they bowed and swayed, sweeping the ground. And it was no longer a lone tree that stood there, outlined against the evergreens, but the wraith of a woman who stood poised against a painted back-cloth for one brief moment only, and then came dancing towards him across a shadowed stage.
4
On the last night of the season Pappy and Mama would hold a party on the stage. We would be dressed for the occasion. Maria and Celia in chiffon frocks, with cords slashed through the waist, and Niall in a sailor suit, the blouse of which always felt too big so that it sagged.
“Stand still, will you, child?” Truda would scold. “How can I ever get you ready in time unless you stand still?” And she would tug and pull at the rags in Maria’s hair, and then brush the hair itself with a stiff hard brush until it stood up around Maria’s head like a golden halo.
“Anyone that didn’t know you would think you an angel,” she muttered, “but I know better. I could tell them a thing or two. Now, then, don’t wriggle. Do you want to go somewhere?” Maria looked at herself in the wardrobe mirror. The door was half-open, moving slightly, so that the reflection of Maria moved with it. Her cheeks were flushed, her eyes were sparkling, and the wave of excitement that had been growing all the day swept upwards now to her throat, so that she felt like choking. But she had grown lately, and the dress that had fitted her so well a few months back was tight across the shoulders and too short.
“I can’t wear this,” she said, “it’s babyish.”
“You’ll wear what your Mama says you’re to wear, or you’ll go to bed,” said Truda. “Now, where’s my boy?”
My boy was standing in his vest and pants, shivering, beside the washbasin. Truda seized him, and, soaping the flannel in the scalding, lathery water, rubbed at his neck and ears.
“Where all the dirt comes from I don’t know,” she said. “What’s the matter with you, are you cold?”
Niall shook his head, but he went on trembling, and his teeth chattered.
“It’s excitement, that’s what it is,” said Truda. “Most children of your age would be in bed and asleep by now. It’s nothing but foolishness, this dragging you off to the theater, and they’ll be sorry for it one of these days. Hurry up, Celia; if you go on sitting in there much longer, you’ll be all night. Haven’t you finished? Coming, madam, coming…” and with a little click of exasperation she dropped the flannel into the basin, and left Niall standing there, the soapy water trickling down his neck.
“We’re off, Truda,” called Mama. “If you bring the children along after the interval it will be time enough.”
She stood for a moment in the doorway, cool and detached, and she was dragging long white gloves onto her hands. Her smooth dark hair was parted in the middle, as always, with a low knot in the nape of her neck. To-night she wore the collar of pearls round her neck, because of the party afterwards, and pearl earrings.
“What a lovely dress,” said Maria. “It’s new, isn’t it?”
And she ran forward to finger it, forgetting her own dissatisfaction, and Mama smiled, opening her cloak to show the hanging folds.
“Yes, it’s new,” she said, and she turned so that it swung around her beneath the cloak, which was black velvet, and her scent was with us as she turned.
“Let me kiss you,” said Maria. “Let me kiss you and pretend you are a queen.”
Mama bent, but for a second only, so that Maria caught no more than a fold of velvet.
“What’s the matter with Niall?” asked Mama. “Why does he look so white?”
“I think he feels sick,” said Maria. “He always does before a party.”
“If he feels sick he can’t come to the theater,” said Mama, and she looked at Niall, and then, hearing Pappy call her from the corridor beyond, she turned, wrapping her cloak round her, and went out of the room, leaving her scent with us, stroking the air.
We listened to the sounds of departure, the voices and murmurs of grown-up people, so different from our own chatter and our own laughter. Mama was explaining something to Pappy, and Pappy was speaking to the chauffeur, and André was running down into the hall with a coat Pappy had forgotten—they were getting into the car, we could hear the engine starting, and the slam of the door.
“They’ve gone,” said Maria, and then, for no reason, the excitement died within her. She felt suddenly lonely and sad, and because of it she went across to where Niall stood shivering by the washbasin and began to pull his hair.
“Now then, you two, none of that,” scolded Truda, coming back into the room, and, bending over Niall, she peered into his ears. Niall was bent in two, undignified, a thing he hated, and he was glad Pappy had not come with Mama to say good-bye, magnificent in his evening clothes, with a carnation in his buttonhole.
“Now, keep quiet, the three of you, while I get myself dressed,” said Truda, and she went to the wardrobe in the passage where she kept her clothes, and took down her stuffy black dress that she wore when she was changed.
Already there was a sense of finality about the apartment. Tomorrow we were leaving, and it would be ours no longer. Other people would come and live the
re, or it would stand empty, perhaps, for several weeks. André was packing Pappy’s suits in the long trunk, the chest of drawers and the wardrobe stood wide open, with rows of shoes and button boots upon the floor.
He was talking in French to the little dark maid who had been hired with the apartment, and who was folding Mama’s things into sheet after sheet of tissue paper. Tissue paper was everywhere, strewn about the room. He was laughing and talking in rapid French to the little maid, who smiled and looked demure.
“That’s his trouble,” Truda would say, “he can’t leave the girls alone.” She always had her knife into André.
Presently they went away, off down the corridor into the kitchen for some supper, where Truda joined them. There was a goodly smell of cheese and garlic, and their voices came droning steadily from the half-open kitchen door.
Celia went and sat in the empty salon, and looked about her. The books and photographs were packed, and all the personal possessions. There was nothing left but the bare furniture belonging to the owners of the apartment. The stiff sofa, the gilt chairs, the polished table. On the wall was a picture of a woman in a swing, her petticoats showing, and a shoe falling from her foot, while a young man pushed the swing from behind. It was strange to think of the woman sitting there in the swing being pushed by the young man, day in, day out, month after month, year after year, ever since the picture was painted, and that after this night there would be no one to look at them, they would have to swing alone in the empty room.
“We are going away,” said Celia aloud. “How will you like that? I don’t suppose we shall ever come here again.” And the woman went on smiling her fatuous smile, kicking her shoe into the air.
Back in the bedroom Maria was changing feverishly. She had taken off her party frock and hidden it in the dirty clothes basket, and she was dressing up in the velvet suit that she had worn for fancy dress at the New Year. It was a page’s costume, hired at great expense, and Truda had packed it in a dress-box, tied and labeled, ready to return to the shop. There was a striped doublet and short, puffy trunks, and a pair of long silk hose, and best of all a cape that was worn thrown back from the shoulders. Round the waist was a sling, and stuck into it a painted dagger.