Miss Fisher put on her sun-glasses (the glare was beginning to be uncomfortable) and went back into the garden again. After all, she thought, the Winters might not have been leaving till after lunch; the afternoon would be the time for anyone to come back who might be hoping for a bit of peace. The end of the afternoon (she added to herself an hour later) in time for tea. The time passed slowly; she wondered whether the heat was making her wrist-watch lose.
Only one more event, however, broke her siesta before teatime; and, somnolent with boredom and sun, she gave it the briefest attention. It was the arrival of a young woman with a rucksack and traveling grip, who crossed the garden to the front door. She was slight, with a fair skin and intermediately coloured hair; neither short nor tall, nor striking in any way. She had on a grey flannel suit, evidently worn to save bulk in packing; this had made her hot, and she had sought relief by opening at the neck a blouse not designed for it. Her hair was limp with the heat and falling across her forehead; a few highlights, bleached by the sun, saved it by a shade from being classified as mouse. The general effect was timid, neutral, and untidy.
As she came up the path she saw Miss Fisher, and for a moment turned hesitantly towards her; shyness seemed to check her, and she passed on to the door. Miss Fisher took her at a first glance for twenty-one, and at a second for twenty-five; the expression, rather than the contours of her face misled. It had something left of the adolescent’s defensive uncertainty, which her carriage bore out; but whereas some women of this age seem to repel maturity with a religious conviction, she had an odd, wavering air of having somehow lost herself on the frontiers, as if a good push might send her either way. Her grey eyes, when they met Miss Fisher’s, were direct, but turned away quickly. A fine skin, and a clear shapeliness of the cheek and jawbones, redeemed her from plainness: but Miss Fisher’s verdict, which she arrived at without disturbing herself to full wakefulness, was “Very-ordinary.” She had been looking at Lettice Winter only a few hours before.
The girl had apparently come alone; as Miss Fisher settled down into torpor again, she thought this might be very nice company for Miss Searle; the college type; they could talk about books together.
In fact, when she came down for tea after repairing the effects of lethargy in the sun, she found them already in conversation. Miss Searle had said distinctly that she did not intend to be back till evening; Miss Fisher, whose afternoon now looked in retrospect more pointless than ever, greeted her without warmth. The result was a certain restraint between them, which both relieved by talking mainly to the girl.
She looked, by this time, a good deal more presentable; and, indeed, she had evidently made some effort about it. She had changed into a plain dress of light green linen, had brushed her hair (its length, like so much else about her, was intermediate, reaching the nape of her neck) and had put a little make-up on. The result was a freshness concealed before; she could have seemed delicate, even fragile, with a little poise. Now that she was less covered in loose clothes it could be seen that she had good slender bones, a well-shaped neck and neat little breasts above a small waist: but she was ill at ease (she was evidently very shy) and this had induced an awkwardness which had set her arms and legs in hard angles, cancelling all structural grace. By separate internal processes, both Miss Fisher and Miss Searle decided that by contrast with Miss Winter she seemed very pleasant and harmless. Her nervousness impressed them as a likable quality. They proceeded to draw her out.
She was neither secretive about herself, nor particularly expansive. Miss Fisher’s guess about college had somewhat overshot the mark; she had sat the entrance exam for Oxford, she told Miss Searle, but had been prevented from going up by the war. She had worked in an aircraft factory; she added that her mother (of whom she spoke in the past tense) hadn’t wanted to be left alone.
“How extremely interesting,” said Miss Searle. “Did you work in the drawing office, or at some kind of research?”
“No, I just worked on a lathe.”
Miss Fisher, warming at once, noticed that Miss Searle looked at a loss, and took over. It turned out that the factory nurse had trained at her hospital; the girl seemed shyly pleased by this link.
Tea came in, and was amicably taken. No addition to their number appeared. Both Miss Fisher and Miss Searle had almost forgotten to notice it. Each felt that she had gained in some sort an ally, a support not irritatingly intrusive, but comforting in reserve. At the same time each felt that here would be someone on whom the other could be dumped without difficulty or the creation of resentment. She had a foot, as it were, in both their camps.
It was only a step, from this, to recommending walks or excursions which they felt sure she would enjoy. Each was privately considering an invitation when better occupation failed, but awaited the absence of the other in order to avoid an awkward threesome. At this point, however, the girl’s shyness seemed to descend with more than its first acuteness. She said she had brought a map and things with her, and had a few plans worked out. Her voice was suddenly like a civil boy’s when his arrangements are intruded on by well-meaning adults. Had her nervousness not been so evident, they would have thought her rude. As it was, they renewed their efforts to put her at her ease.
Miss Searle, who had unearthed a remote mutual acquaintance at Oxford, was making the running, when Mrs Kearsey opened the door. She was talking charmingly over her shoulder, and patting her hair.
It may be that in Miss Searle’s subconscious this gesture had formed one of those linked associations which Pavlov demonstrated in connection with dogs’ dinners. Her voice trailed off. Miss Fisher, in whom the association was a fully conscious process, looked up with a smile already forming on her lips. However, the young man who followed Mrs Kearsey in was a stranger to both of them. He was thirty or a little less, fair-haired and buoyant; at the moment he was receiving Mrs Kearsey’s promise of tea with warmly expressed thanks. One had immediately the feeling that servants would do anything for him. Miss Fisher thought he looked attractive and good fun. Miss Searle, used to moving in an unregarded ocean of young men, dissociated him with Oxford by some instinctive process of which she was scarcely aware. She had an open mind about Cambridge, and indeed about everything else. His good looks, which were not insignificant, rang no bell for her. He had not in her view, an interesting face.
He acknowledged Miss Fisher and Miss Searle with graceful courtesy. It could somehow be sensed that he was a success with old ladies, too. Miss Searle did not take this in ill part; she liked good manners, and her work had inured her to deference from people not vastly remote in years. Miss Fisher was less pleased. Neither, however, had time to form conclusions; for the young man’s next acknowledgment had resolved itself into a start of surprise.
“Well, it can’t be! Ellen Shorland! I don’t believe it. Don’t tell me you’re actually staying here?”
“Yes,” said the girl. Her shyness, Miss Searle thought with sympathy, was really quite painful; she had blushed to the roots of her hair. After a pause she added, “Are you?”
“Just this moment arrived.” The young man swung himself with casual ease on to the arm of her chair. “Don’t tell me you’re on the point of leaving, or I shall howl like a dog.”
“No. I came today, too.”
“Of all the coincidences. Well, look here, if you’re not booked solid we simply must organise something. I’m quite non-attached; just came here on impulse, really. Don’t know this part of the world at all.”
“I’ve got quite a good map. Inch to the mile.”
“Oh, good work.” His approval was just a shade too prompt and practical; he added quickly, “I mean, they’re hard to get; I tried everywhere. Can I take a look at yours sometime?”
“I’ve got it here.” Before settling down to it he remembered to smile nicely at Miss Fisher and Miss Searle and to say, “You will excuse us, won’t you?”
“Of course,” said Miss Searle, “I have to go out now, in any case.” It was tru
e that she felt a little cramped after the motorcoach; besides, they were a well-mannered couple and, she thought, deserving of tact. As she withdrew, she felt a little glow of selfless pleasure on their behalf. It must be delightful for them to meet like this, after the damping expectation of a holiday alone. Finding that Miss Fisher had followed her out, she said, smiling, “One of those happy coincidences that often lead to an engagement, don’t you think?”
Miss Fisher gazed at her, momentarily stricken dumb. One had grown used to making allowances for an almost unbelievable naiveté, but really! Of course, she was as blind as a bat without her glasses; but even if she had failed to see the look the young man had given the girl, just too soon, behind them, anyone who was all there would surely have felt it.
She remarked, with meaning, “Quite a surprise for both of them, I’m sure.”
“Oh! But surely not.” It was the tone, not the words, to which Miss Searle replied. She felt, after the first start, both distaste and resentment; she would have liked to point out to Miss Fisher that her calling, noble and indispensable as it was, did make for a one-sided view of life. A friend of Miss Searle’s, who was a welfare worker, often deplored the same tendency in herself; but she was decently aware of it.
“I don’t think,” she said, “that we really need to assume anything of that kind, do you? They seemed very healthy, natural young people, I thought.”
Miss Fisher was not given to the exact analysis of words: but Miss Searle’s serene and definitive use of these adjectives caused her to suppress a giggle. “I wouldn’t say no to that. The more health, the more nature, as you might say. But they’d better watch their step with Mrs K. She’s very fussy who she has here.”
Miss Searle decided that the conversation had become definitely unpleasant. (She also thought that it had become lower-middle-class, but did not register this supplementary opinion.) With a marked absence of reply, she walked out into the garden, where the deck-chair of Miss Fisher’s fruitless vigil still remained, looking restful in the late and relenting sun. Settling there comfortably and opening Henry Esmond, she entered a state where the wicked ceased from troubling. It was she, therefore, whom Neil greeted with half-absent friendliness as he came back, relaxed and momentarily released, from a day of exploration on the hidden cuffs. He was beginning to associate Miss Searle with the garden, like a summerhouse or a sundial, and to pause beside her as one might form a habit of pausing by a fountain to contemplate the fish.
To Miss Searle he came, quite genuinely, as a welcome surprise. She had been pre-occupied first by the effort to cleanse her mind of Miss Fisher’s innuendoes, and then by the concentration she still gave Esmond after however many readings. Now, by a happy prompting of instinct, she removed her glasses as she lowered the book; the effect that they were reading-glasses and unnecessary, even annoying at other times, was quite realistic.
Her wide-brimmed hat masked the premature strain-lines round her eyes, and left to the light a sensitive well-cut mouth. A civilised face, he thought, if a rather sterile one. He asked her what she was reading, and spent a comfortable half-hour with her discussing the novelists of the great age. Having had a strenuous day, he lowered himself on to the grass; Miss Searle considered offering her cushion, but refrained. What she believed herself to think was that it would break the flow of conversation; what she really thought was that, faced with a definite invitation to settle down, he would become restless and go away.
They had worked along to Anthony Hope, and were regretting together that The Prisoner of Zenda should have pushed the subtler King’s Mirror into undeserved neglect. “The psychology is so entirely convincing,” Miss Searle remarked. “It makes one realise how needless some of these unsavoury modern delvings really are.”
“I agree with you entirely.” He spoke, however, with that slight over-stress sometimes used by courteous people to hide a moment’s lapse of attention. Her work had sensitised her to such lapses; either this instinct, or a simpler one, made her look across the lawn in the same moment that he looked away. Ellen Shorland was standing at the end of the path. She had pulled on a white woollen sweater over her green dress. It was tight—with age and shrinkage, one could see, rather than by design, and indeed what would have been provocative on a woman more maturely formed only gave her slight body a schoolgirl’s look. She had one hand on the garden gate and was swinging it mechanically to and fro. Miss Searle thought her lacking in animation, almost sullen; it was certainly a great pity that want of confidence made her so defensive. The young man had obviously a cheerful open temperament, and few powers of introspection, she should really correct her manner if she wished to attract him, and judging by her blush when they met, Miss Searle felt justified in supposing that she did. He came at this moment out of the house, and ran down the path to join the girl at the gate. He said something in his lively assured voice—the words at that distance were inaudible—and they went out together. At the last moment the girl had returned his smile; but not, Miss Searle thought, with a really attractive spontaneity.
She was recalled by a nearer voice saying “We’ve acquired a honeymoon couple, I see.”
He had been talking, in the minutes before, with what for him was almost animation; she was a little jarred now by the dead emptiness of his tone. Probably he got enough of youthful spirits in termtime; she could sympathise with him in this. She was mainly concerned, however, with the unwelcome memory of Miss Fisher which his misconception had recalled. It lent emphasis to her reply.
“Oh, no. I believe little more than acquaintances. They met here just now, quite unexpectedly it seems. But the surprise was a pleasant one, I think.”
“I expect so.” His brief interest had evidently flagged. She tried, in vain, to remember where they had left the previous conversation; he was a man in whose presence pauses quickly became embarrassing. To bridge this one, she said, “They’ll certainly be late for dinner if they mean to go any distance. But perhaps they’re taking it out.”
“Which reminds me that I’m not. It must be time I thought about cleaning up.”
The same thought had occurred to Miss Searle, and reconciled her to his rather abrupt departure. Fifteen minutes later she paused at her glass and, after a moment’s hesitation, opened her handbag. The sun of the last two days was very trying to the skin. Her lips had become quite dry; she was glad she had remembered to buy a salve for them. This one, for the first time, was slightly tinted; but the assistant, a very helpful girl, had explained that though it was labelled as a lipstick, it was specially made for its soothing properties, in fact for practical purposes a salve; it was the type they called “Natural” and perfectly unobtrusive.
Peering carefully into the mirror, she put some on.
4 Guideless Ascent
NEIL HAD MADE HIMSELF a rule, which he had never broken, not to take medinal more than one night in three. Tonight was only the second; so at twelve-thirty he switched on the light again, and began work on a Torquemada crossword which he had saved for some such occasion. Without reference-books he would not finish it; but what he would do would take him longer, a compensating advantage.
There were three clues relating to his own subject, which he solved quickly. One from Shakespeare teased him with half-memory; he lay staring at it, and wishing it were the third night instead of the second. His rule was of some standing, and dated from a time when he could afford to stand no nonsense from himself. Now, as far as he was concerned, the box of tablets might as well have been in a safe of which he did not know the combination. He had had influenza in London and the landlady, growing alarmed, had sent for the doctor, who had prescribed the medinal—irrelevantly, Neil had thought, and had said so. When the doctor—an observant student of humanity—had assured him that medinal was not addictive, he had been very rude. The medinal had arrived next day without further comment. He wondered sometimes, though not oftener than he could help, what would have happened if it had not. Lately things had improved a good deal. Unti
l the night before last, he had had none for five days.
He applied himself to Torquemada again. “To lie in cold (eleven letters) and to rot.” Suddenly remembering, he pencilled in “obstruction” and was stone-walled again. He had never been defeated so quickly before, and felt that he was not going full out. It would be useless now to attempt sleep before three. The mechanism that settled these things was like a separate entity of which he had intimate, but quite external knowledge; as if somewhere in his brain lived a petty bureaucrat, a smug devotee of routine, to whose schedule he had to conform because argument was too wearisome to be worth while. At least he had learned how to entertain himself while he stood, so to speak, in the queue; he had a silly feeling that this annoyed the bureaucrat, withholding from him the spectacle of bored frustration which sweetened his sense of power.
His thoughts had begun to fly off at tangents, not in the looseness of coming sleep but with the wound-up busyness he knew too well. He put on his dressing-gown, sat up in bed, lit a cigarette, and set about the puzzle in a more systematic way. The needed effort still withheld itself. It often did. He was passing the time; and one does not, without some inner resistance, adapt oneself in a few months to a process one has despised for thirty years. Besides, it pointed out an inconsistency: if one was willing to kill time piecemeal, why jib at killing it altogether? This logic, since it seemed unanswerable, he let alone.
The few books he had brought were beside him on the table. The two thrillers he had read; the rest were major classics, large parts of which he knew by heart. Looking at them he felt the anticipatory staleness that comes with fatigue. “Very well then,” he said, almost aloud, as one speaks to an exasperating child, “what do you want to do? Think? All right, what about? Careful, now.”