‘We’ll do the flowers too, of course,’ said Barbara. ‘It will be wonderful if she comes to the party,’ she added encouragingly.
Henry said, ‘Yes,’ and, ‘Thanks. Nearly home.’ Turning the car into the drive, he said, ‘There are your intendeds wondering where I carried you off to. Shall you delay telephoning your respectable parents until after breakfast?’
Antonia said, ‘Before breakfast would be fatal. My father is not human until his digestion has worked and he’s been to the lavatory.’
‘Mine, who has given up smoking, has to have a surreptitious cigarette. He’s all right after that,’ said Barbara. ‘Ten-fifteen is a good moment.’
‘We’d better toss for who telephones first,’ said Antonia, waving to Matthew standing on the doorstep with James. Matthew waved back. Barbara, watching Henry’s dogs, who had been drooping despondently in his absence, prick up their ears and wag their tails, said, ‘How dearly your dogs love you. Look, they are rushing to meet you.’
Henry, slowing the car to a walking pace as the dogs galloped to meet him, said, ‘Ah, dogs.’
Comparing Henry’s dogs’ unstinting affection with his wife’s apparent lack of it, Barbara asked pertly, ‘Don’t you admire us for not rushing as you did into a romantic trap? We shall probably have happy, stable marriages.’
Letting this impertinence pass, Henry said, ‘Such hard little heads on teenage shoulders.’
Barbara said, ‘We are almost twenty, Henry, not quite the prototypes you thought us.’
Henry laughing, said, ‘I agree I got you wrong there.’ Bringing the car to a stop, he said, ‘I wonder what sort of children you will have.’
EIGHT
‘HERE, GIVE ME THE secateurs. Crying like that, you can’t see what you are doing.’ Antonia snatched the secateurs from her friend. The girls were in the walled garden cutting flowers from a border which ran along one wall. Here flowers grew separately from the vegetables, but whereas the vegetables were tended with exactitude, the flowers had to fend for themselves, springing up through disorderly weeds. ‘These are marvellous.’ Antonia snipped at some nettles and reached towards a clump of Regale lilies. As she cut she laid each stem horizontally in a trug half-full of Mrs. Simpkins pinks. As she picked, she sneezed; prone to hay fever, she was affected by their scent. ‘These are marvellous,’ she repeated. ‘I shall make an arrangement backed by artichoke leaves.’
‘They’ll make it look heavy. And you can’t put those on the dinner table, they smell too strong,’ said Barbara disagreeably.
‘Then I shall put my arrangement on the bar,’ said Antonia equably. ‘Why must you be so negative? Honestly, Barbara, do stop crying, your face will be a mess. You know your nose swells when you cry.’
Barbara whimpered, ‘O-o-o.’
‘Nor can I grasp what there is to cry about,’ continued Antonia, snipping at the lilies. ‘Oh, delicious.’
‘My mother—’
‘But you said she took it well. And your Pa is pleased, too. Oh, I say, look at these lilies of the valley.’ Antonia pushed away some invading buttercups.
‘They also smell too strong,’ said Barbara morosely.
‘Oh, there is no pleasing you. They will do beautifully for a centrepiece, we don’t need a “cache-mari”.’
‘What’s a cache-mari?’ Barbara snuffled.
‘A tall arrangement the Edwardians had on dinner tables to conceal their flirtations from their husbands and vice versa; my great-aunt told me.’
‘Husbands—’
‘Why don’t you walk it off, Babsie? Leave the flowers to me,’ said Antonia, kindly.
‘I—’
‘Go on. But come back in time to try Margaret with the dresses. I’m not braving that woman on my own. Here, take my handkerchief.’
Barbara took the handkerchief and left, blowing her nose and mopping her eyes.
Left to herself Antonia muttered, ‘Some people!’ and crouched down to pick lilies of the valley.
Barbara let herself out of the garden by a door in the wall, crossed a stable yard and climbed a gate into a field of buttercups. As she walked she repeated to herself what her mother had said on the telephone. ‘Such a nice young man,’ she mimicked her mother. ‘Your father and I used to know his family. In a good job, too! Your grandparents will be pleased. A sensible age, not too young. We liked him so much when we met him (she said graciously). I am sure you will be very happy—No, I can’t tell your father this minute, he’s in the—Of course he will be pleased, darling (voice rising optimistically). Such a relief to know you will be safe.’
‘Safe,’ Barbara shouted. ‘Safe!’
A flock of starlings pecking after ants flew up, startled, their wings rustling, and two horses standing nose to tail under a hawthorn pricked their ears and turned towards her in polite enquiry. Barbara walked up to them and stroked their noses. The comforting smell of horse mingled with the acrid smell of may. She said, ‘Oh, silly me,’ letting her fingers linger round the horses’ nostrils. ‘Silly, silly me.’ She had stopped crying. ‘I bet you never cried over parental approval,’ she said, fingering the whorls of hair on the horses’ foreheads, pressing her forefinger against the hard skulls.
One of the horses leaned forward and nibbled her shirt, its grey lips making a plopping sound. It tweaked at the shirt with yellow teeth.
Barbara picked at the hair on the bony skull, short and bristly as cliff grass, and remembered how, long ago when she was small, she could not have been more than three, her feet had been bare on the cliff-top and her father said, ‘Hold my hand, I won’t let you fall. Look at the waves smashing against the rocks; aren’t they magnificent?’ And, ‘Trust me, stupid,’ he had said angrily as she stuck in her toes and pulled back from the edge. ‘Nothing to scream about. Don’t be such a coward,’ he had said. ‘I have hold of you, you are perfectly safe.’ She could still in screaming nightmares feel the stiff grass between her toes as she dragged away from her father and the sheer drop.
‘Oh, don’t ring off,’ her mother had said. ‘Here comes your father, he’s out of the—It’s Barbara, darling, she has news for us. She’s engaged to James Martineau, she wants to tell you herself, here’s the phone. Tell your father, darling, he’ll be so pleased.’
And he had been pleased. ‘Congratulations,’ he had said. ‘Of course you are very young, but I suppose you know your mind or you wouldn’t—James Martineau is a sound chap,’ her father had said. ‘He will look after you. I knew his father, it’s a family firm, they say it’s likely to expand. And of course there is backing from his mother’s family, and someday he will inherit. There’s no male heir.’
She had said, ‘What?’ She was slightly bemused.
Her father had said, ‘It’s a family trust, hasn’t James told you? He will, of course. Of course the uncle is young, something like fifteen years younger than James’s mother. He was the result of an afterthought, a last fling,’ her father said, ‘but it’s understood he can’t have children.’
‘Was it love?’ she had asked.
‘Was what love?’ Her father sounded puzzled in his interrupted flow. ‘What d’you mean, love?’
She had said, ‘The last fling?’
Sounding grumpy, her father had replied, ‘I shouldn’t think that came into it, no.’
‘I hate my parents,’ she told the horse. ‘I absolutely loathe them. How dare they be so complacent and pleased? How dare they assume I shall be safe? I don’t want to be safe, there is no spice in safety.’
The horse, taking a shirt button between its teeth, jerked at it.
‘Don’t do that,’ Barbara sobbed, ‘you’ll choke.’
She pulled away but went on stroking the animal while she thought of her father.
‘He’s so bloody respectable,’ she told the horse. ‘He’s so boring. If he finds something even faintly amusing he says, “Oh! Ha! That’s good enough for Punch.” I despise him,’ she told the horse. ‘I have got to get away. Everything he does is right, my moth
er thinks. She’s just as boring as he is. I shall not be like them,’ she told the horse. ‘My life with James will be quite different. James is in love with me.’
Barbara now contemplated vaulting up, risking a bareback gallop. But a fall would cause bruises which might show at the party. ‘No,’ she said, ‘no, not today,’ refusing the risk.
She walked on, leaving the horses, through a belt of beech trees to find herself in the hayfield where, the night before, she had walked with Henry and James and had become engaged to James.
It need not have happened, she thought; it was I who precipitated the decision. It was my choice, I must abide by it now. I was happy last night, she thought; why am I not happy now? She walked quickly, leaving the hayfield and its sweet-smelling haycocks, climbing a gate which led to grassland sloping down to the lake she had seen that morning from Henry’s car.
Grazing sheep raised their heads as she passed. There was nobody about.
The water when she reached it looked inviting; it was so still it reflected the yellow flags growing at its edge. She slipped out of her clothes and waded in. The lake washed the buttercup pollen off her shins. She dived. Cool water soothed her malaise, washed the salty detritus from her eyes, rinsed her hair, roared in her ears. In the middle of the lake she turned on her back and floated. As she floated she watched emerald dragonflies zip low above the water and listened to the distant cuckoo’s beguiling cry.
It is not like me, she thought, to swim naked. What would my parents think? What would James say? What would it be like if Henry was swimming, too? How would it be between us in this delicious peaty water? The mutinous thoughts which had circled her brain washed loose; when she turned and struck out for the bank she had regained her equanimity.
Henry, taking a short cut across the kitchen garden, espied Antonia. Coming to a halt beside her, he commented on Barbara’s absence. ‘Leaving you to do all the work?’
Antonia appeared to be stripping the border of blooms; he wondered whether the lilies of the valley would ever recover.
‘She is walking off her dudgeon,’ said Antonia, squatting by the lily bed, looking up.
‘Oh?’
‘Floods of tears,’ Antonia volunteered disloyally.
‘Engagement off?’
‘No, no, it’s on.’
‘Then why tears?’
‘She was expecting some parental opposition.’ Antonia stood up. ‘Hoping for it,’ she said maliciously.
‘She will get it later, perhaps?’ Henry suggested.
‘Not by marrying James.’
‘Ah. Parental approval can be a snare,’ Henry agreed. ‘And your parents?’
‘Oh, I put up with it. I am not romantic’
Henry laughed. ‘So James and Matthew are safe?’
‘James and Matthew are safe,’ Antonia agreed.
‘But you girls are on the wobbly side?’ Henry suggested.
Antonia said, ‘Well,’ drawing out the word, ‘well, sort of.’ She picked up the trug of lilies, Mrs. Simpkins Pinks and lilies of the valley.
She was well aware, Henry thought, of the picture she presented. He sneezed. ‘I hope you are not going to heap all that lot on the dinner table,’ he said.
‘I thought on the bar—’ said Antonia.
Henry said, ‘Good. I am puzzled by your motives.’ He took the trug from her and began walking towards the house. ‘Is all this—er—caution necessary?’
‘You were not cautious,’ said Antonia pertly, ‘and look where it’s got you. I mean, what were your motives when you married Margaret?’
‘None of your business,’ Henry answered coldly.
Antonia said, ‘Sorry.’
Henry said, ‘That’s all right,’ still chilly.
Antonia wondered how she could retrieve the earlier mood. ‘Perhaps,’ she said, risking a further snub, ‘you got healthy opposition from your family when you married and it spurred you on. That’s what Barbara would like. She objects to pushing at an open door.’
‘My mother was dead,’ said Henry.
‘And your father?’
‘It was his suggestion,’ said Henry sedately.
Antonia thought, Gosh, and tried to assimilate the idea of anyone, far less his father, urging Henry to marry Margaret.
They walked on towards the house while Antonia chased through the passages of her mind for something to say. Then Henry said, ‘Here she comes, your cautious playmate. Looks as though she has recovered.’
‘I have been swimming in your lake, it is absolutely fabulous,’ cried Barbara, coming towards them at a run. ‘What are you discussing? You look serious,’ she shook her hair, still wet from the lake.
‘A puzzle of motives,’ said Henry, smiling.
Barbara said, ‘Oh?’
‘As to why people marry,’ said Henry. ‘Whether it is to avoid or court boredom.’
‘Antonia and I are marrying for love,’ Barbara said, ‘and security of course and to get away from boring jobs and to get away from our parents. All the usual.’
Henry said, ‘I see.’ These girls were pretty appetizing, not as unintelligent as they made out. ‘Some day when you are older I might teach you to take risks,’ he said. ‘You might enjoy that.’
‘We may keep you to that,’ said Barbara lightly.
‘Are you all right now?’ asked Antonia, lowering her voice. She was not sure she was pleased that Barbara had rejoined them.
Barbara answered sharply, ‘Of course I am.’
‘You have weed in your hair, you smell of mud and you’ve ruined that shirt. Do you see yourself as Ondine?’ Antonia wished that she had had longer alone with Henry.
‘Who was Ondine?’ asked Barbara, who knew perfectly well. She tossed back her damp hair, ran her fingers through it and glanced sidelong at Henry. ‘I must tidy myself,’ she said, ‘before we go and see your wife. She tells us lots of things about you,’ she added.
‘That must be interesting.’ Henry took a lily from the trug and brushed its orange stamens across Barbara’s nose, then did the same to Antonia. ‘You must excuse me,’ he said, ‘I have much to do,’ and left them.
‘Treating us like children.’ Barbara was angry.
‘We must learn to grow up. Oh, Babsie,’ said Antonia, ‘are we doing the right thing? Are we wise?’
‘I thought I was the one to have doubts,’ said Barbara.
Antonia said, ‘Best friends share.’
NINE
‘WHERE DOES HENRY’S MONEY come from? D’you know?’ James and Matthew, having volunteered to collect ice for the party from the fishmonger and strawberries from a fruit farm some distance from Cotteshaw, were driving across country in Matthew’s car. Since Matthew failed to answer immediately James repeated, ‘D’you know?’, raising his voice.
Matthew, whose parents had brought him up to believe direct discussion of people’s incomes to be vulgar, replied, ‘Inherited, one supposes,’ in what he hoped were inhibiting accents. ‘Old money.’
Unaffected by Matthew’s tone, James said, ‘There must have been quite a lot. I‘ve seldom seen such well-kept fences. He’s a good farmer and he has super stock.’
Matthew said, ‘Oh,’ and, changing gear at a hill, ‘naturally.’
‘I am quite interested in farming,’ James continued. ‘My grandfather farmed in a big way. This was before one could offset one’s farm losses against income tax. He had an agent, of course.’
Matthew said, ‘Of course.’ If Antonia were with us she’d say, ‘Ho,’ and take him down a peg, he thought.
‘Of course the house is shabby as hell,’ said James. ‘All the money must go on the farm.’
Matthew said, ‘I dare say it does, apart from what’s spent on that wife.’
James said, ‘Has she got any money?’
Matthew said, ‘I wouldn’t know.’
James continued, ‘I gather that Trask has been here for ever; worked for Henry’s father. I don’t suppose Henry pays him much and I expect Pil
ar just gets bed and board. Then that son of hers puts in a bit of work when he’s here; I gather he’s into interior decorating.’
‘You gather quite a lot,’ said Matthew.
‘I am interested,’ said James. ‘I like to know how the other half lives.’
‘I would hardly call Henry the other half,’ said Matthew.
James said, ‘Really? Why not?’
‘Work it out for yourself,’ said Matthew grumpily.
James laughed. ‘If your girl, Antonia, were with us, she’d say, Ho to that.’
Matthew smiled. ‘Maybe.’
James said, ‘I’d like to live in the country but London is where the lolly is, and the work.’
Matthew said, ‘The country is OK for holidays.’
‘And weekends,’ James agreed. ‘D’you suppose Henry is lonely? He leads a queer sort of life.’
Believing himself unwilling to gossip, Matthew said, ‘I wouldn’t know,’ and increased the car’s speed.
James said, ‘I shall bring Barbara here again if she goes on hitting it off with Pilar. And it will help Henry if she gets to know Margaret; we could make a habit of it.’
And it won’t cost you anything, thought Matthew, who was himself proposing to come oftener, when invited of course, with Antonia. He said, ‘I thought you were into sailing.’
James said, ‘So I am, but Barbara isn’t keen. I have a boat. I was considering giving it up, but I could post Barbara down here when I have sailing weekends.’ He grinned at Matthew. ‘What are friends for,’ he asked cheerfully, ‘if not to take advantage of?’
Matthew laughed, admitting James’s honesty, then braked hard as a child dashed suddenly across the road. ‘You bloody little beast,’ he yelled, his voice hoarse with fear. ‘I might have killed you. God!’ he said. ‘Did you see it?’ The child raised two fingers and vanished into a cottage. ‘Christ,’ said Matthew, ‘think if I’d hit it.’
James said, ‘Well, you didn’t. It’s all right.’
Matthew said, ‘Aah,’ letting his breath out. ‘Gave me a fright.’
‘Does it put you off fatherhood?’ James asked as Matthew drove on at a more sedate pace.