From this higher ground you could see Lowis Manor and most of the gardens. Half a mile to the west was the village, with its church and its pub and its cluster of cottages, and beyond that were the telegraph poles of the road that ran to Tonbridge.
I moved myself carefully, to avoid the sore places. ‘‘Is this wood yours?’’
‘‘Yes. Our land ends at the gate. Down there—you can’t see the stream but there is one; where the bushes grow in a line—down there was the old mill and the spinney that Bonington painted. You can still see a bit of the wheel and the stonework. This wood was full of bluebells six weeks ago. I used to come up every year and pick them.”
‘‘Used to?’’
‘‘Well, until this year. This year the weather was so bad and—somehow one slips into a habit or slips out of one for no particular reason.”
She was lying against the trunk of a fallen tree, her cream silk blouse open at the neck. Her hair was ruffled, and the ride had brought a flush of colour to her cheeks. She didn’t look as unapproachable as usual—or as I imagined her usually to be.
I said suddenly, on the impulse: ‘‘Are you happy, Sarah?’’
Her eyes flickered up to my face, then she looked, away again over the fields. She sat up and rubbed a finger along her boot.
‘‘Well, that certainly changes the conversation, doesn’t it?’’
‘‘Drastically.”
‘‘What d’you mean by happy? Consciously, permanently feeling good about myself? No.… Who does? There are times when I’m happy, times when I’m not. Doesn’t that happen to everyone? I’ve been like that all my life.”
I said: ‘‘ But doesn’t one ever strike a balance?’’
She straightened her brows. ‘‘Look down there. You can see them coming out of church. I hadn’t realized you could from here. A balance?’’ She drew at her cigarette and then seemed to dislike the taste and threw it away. ‘‘ It sounds like the text for a sermon. Prepare to meet your Auditor face to face. Very solemn.”
‘‘Very suitable.”
‘‘My accounts,’’ she said, ‘‘ would be untidy—as usual. I’ve an untidy mind, Oliver; it doesn’t always know whether to put an item on the debit or credit side—and often changes the entry after it’s been made. There’d be a lot of spilt milk—sorry, ink—on the book. Blots and crossings out. Red ink too—and purple. Horrible! A tidy person like you—expecting a balance—would be quite dismayed.”
I let my cigarette smoulder.
After a minute she added: ‘‘Well?’’
‘‘Well, it’s a nice enough answer, as answers go.”
‘‘It was a nice enough question—as questions go. Look at that hawk. See him hovering over the hedge. After a field mouse, I expect.”
‘‘As a man who at one time was suspected of pinching your bracelet …”
She looked at me quickly and smiled, but didn’t speak.
‘‘… You were my mascot during the war, weren’t you? Sort of. That half crown. You brought me luck.” I hesitated, and then decided to go on playing with fire. ‘‘It entitles me, don’t you think?’’
‘‘To what?’’
‘‘To take a few liberties.”
‘‘I haven’t noticed any. Are they to come?’’
I stared at her profile. ‘‘ Well, that question.… But sometimes one wonders …”
‘‘Wonders?’’
Her eyelids were half closed. I wasn’t sure if she was peering more closely at the remote figures near the church.
‘‘If there isn’t a sort of frustration in some people’s lives—who seem to have so much that isn’t used, that doesn’t have a chance to express itself.… That’s why I asked.”
‘‘Was it?’’ she said in a small cool voice.
‘‘Perhaps I’m wrong but—— The way you ride, the way you drive a car. Sometimes even the way you walk …”
‘‘Shows what?’’ she said, turning her eyes full on me. ‘‘I’ve always wanted to know how a frustrated woman walks.”
There was no going back now. It was fight or go down. ‘‘A frustrated woman walks with funny little steps, usually with her heels a bit inward and a good deal of weight on each step. It’s aggressive and nervy—like everything she does——’’
‘‘Well, I’m sorry to get aggressive and nervy about those people coming to lunch——’’
‘‘You walk,’’ I said, ‘‘with a long vigorous stride. If a stranger sees you he probably thinks: that girl’s got that walk because she’s a swimmer, or a runner—or a ballet dancer.… And when you drive a car a man would think the same sort of thing. He’d think a girl who drives like that must have an unusual ability for it. Perhaps she’s been trained or perhaps it comes natural, but either way it’s an expression of her temperament, and either way she’ll do. Because of that——’’
Sarah got up. After a second she said: ‘‘But will she do, Oliver, will she do? Hasn’t she compromised in the good old-fashioned way by getting married and sticking to her contract and living comfortably with her husband in the country, just as she was brought up to do? … And you seriously think——?’’ She turned on me rather angrily—‘‘D’you seriously think the other way would have been the better way? By now I should have been a prima ballerina earning six pounds a week in the back row of the corps de ballet. Is that the sort of fulfilment you’d have prescribed?’’
I got up beside her. ‘‘You couldn’t have been.”
‘‘That’s all you know. Have you ever even been to the ballet in your life?’’
‘‘No. Not ever. I’d like to go with you sometime.”
‘‘It’s so easy to criticize, to give advice, to sit back and talk about frustration and fulfilment and—things. But nobody’s life works out to a pattern; we don’t slip into ready-made slots. There’s always wastage.… Isn’t there? We make the best not the worst of our lives—and use what we can. D’you suppose if you put the same test to any woman … Or most men. Everybody’s life is in some sort of a rut—if it wasn’t it wouldn’t be a life at all. And the things that we don’t do, can’t do, because of the pattern we’ve chosen, seem important if we brood on them, magnify them.…” She stopped for breath, and I waited, wanting so much to touch her, not daring to. ‘‘Anyway, why should you care; why should you question me?’’
I said: ‘‘I wasn’t criticizing—or giving advice. God forbid. All I asked you was, are you happy?’’
‘‘The answer’s no,’’ she said. ‘‘ Do you propose to do anything about it?’’
‘‘If you’ll tell me something I can do.…”
She bent and picked up her crop, straightened up, turning it round in her fingers. Then she raised her hand to push back her hair. She said: ‘‘That’s Victor arriving now. I must hurry.”
The first I saw of Victor was coming down the stairs after having changed. He was standing half way down discussing with Tracey whether Barber & Curry had made a good job of the Constable, and whether Clive Fisher approved of the new place for hanging it. Victor was a bigger man than Tracey and might well have been the elder. On the surface he was an altogether more distinguished man: a sleek well-shaven face, tweeds of a newer cut, put on, one felt, for the country visit, a prosperous good-tempered voice, a physical ease about him.
But all the people who came to lunch that day, with one exception, were of the same breed—comfortable, confident, well groomed, healthy-looking. They’d never been alone in a strange town with tenpence in their pockets or packed their shoes with paper to keep out the wet; or suffered from anæmia or pimples or rheumatism.
Nor, I thought, seeing myself suddenly in the glass, had they ever—probably—accepted a man’s food and drink and then made a pass at his wife. Even an ex-jailbird might have some standards. Not that there seemed much risk of my stealing Sarah’s affections—it was only my own which had gone overboard. Tracey was safe.
Before I could resolve the unresolvable, Sarah came in with Clive Fisher and Amb
rosine and Clive’s girl friend. This latter was a tall blonde with a good figure, and I hadn’t realized how tall she was because I’d only seen her once before and that was in bed.
Chapter Eight
She sat opposite me at lunch. We’d been duly introduced, but neither of us said a thing about having met before.
When I looked at them together I knew it was no great coincidence that Clive Fisher should be a friend of Vere Litchen, the girl whose husband had lost his Georgian silver. They were the sort of people who would move in the same circles and who would attract each other: artistic in a fashionable way, amoral rather than immoral; good-timers living on their nerves.
Mrs. Moreton sat next to her younger son. She might be able to take a detached view of Victor, but she doted on him just the same. He had that week been adopted as prospective candidate for a Sussex division at the next election; and talk centred round this for a time. But Clive in his usual assertive way began a rival topic by talking ballet across the table to Sarah. He had, he said, two tickets for Covent Garden next week but he was too deadly sick of these sentimental nineteenth century fairy tales; would she and Tracey like to use the tickets?
Sarah said: ‘‘Sometime when you have a spare ticket I think you should give it to Oliver. He boasts that he’s never been to the ballet, and I think he should be made to go.”
‘‘Never been to the ballet?’’
The whole table suddenly seemed to be listening, and everyone immediately stared goggle-eyed at me. It was mean of Sarah to let it out that way.
I said: ‘‘Rare animal from the South American jungle. Self-raised on raw meat. Do not touch.”
Vere Litchen yawned behind five scarlet finger-nails. ‘‘Does not breed in captivity,’’ she added.
‘‘Well, choosey at any rate,’’ I agreed.
After a minute Tracey said: ‘‘ What are they doing, Clive?’’
‘‘Sylphide, Swan Lake, Façade.”
‘‘You’d better take Oliver yourself then, Sarah,’’ Tracey said, fingering his signet ring. ‘‘There was a time when I could face Chopin, but every tone I hear him now I have to come home and play records of Bach to get the flavour out of my mouth.”
After a long second I said stiffly: ‘‘Thanks, but I can’t manage next week. Thank you all the same.”
Clive was still looking at me with his prominent blue eyes. For the first time I was an object of genuine interest to him. ‘‘You should make the effort, old boy. It won’t debauch you.”
I was already half way to regretting the refusal. ‘‘ I’ll make the effort when I can. May I hold you to that, Sarah?’’
‘‘Of course,’’ she said, but her smile was cool.
‘‘I’m out in any case because I get my monthly injection on Wednesday,’’ said Tracey wearily. ‘‘I couldn’t face London two days together.”
‘‘Do they do you any good, those things?’’ Victor asked, frowning.
‘‘No. But they keep me alive.”
There was a laugh. I wondered if Tracey’s wit was one of the things which had counted with Sarah when she married him. Perhaps still did count. I really hadn’t an idea what they felt for each other. I only knew that she and I had moved towards a new intimacy this morning but that my blundering had spoiled it at the start.
One loophole I’d left for myself; and the following day I went along to Covent Garden to do the thing in my own way. But to my disgust I found the season was ending on Saturday and no tickets were left. So the opportunity to repair the damage was gone, and I had thrown the chance away.
Looking back on the autumn and winter that followed, I seem to have spent the time in a sort of fitful dream; often restless and discontented but not having the initiative or the opportunity to do anything about it. I saw Sarah three or four times, but never alone, and she kept me at a distance, there was no doubt about that. Once I met Tracey and had a meal with him at his club.
So it was April again—a pretty fateful spring for us all—and I saw that a season of ballet was opening next week and that one night they were doing exactly the programme I’d missed. I dropped everything and went along and stood in a queue for an hour and got the tickets. Then I phoned Tracey and told him what I’d done and did he mind if I took up that invitation from last year? Would he let Sarah come and initiate me? He sounded amused and said he’d no objections; he’d call her. This was the point, and I chipped my pencil all round with teeth marks before he returned to say Sarah had her hands floured but sent a message she’d be pleased to come.
Then there was a week to wait.
That week a rather unusual case came in and took up a good bit of my time. Charles Highbury, the film star, was taken ill in the middle of a film and the whole production was held up.
As it happened the underwriters who instructed us hadn’t put any business in our way since the war, but Michael had heard they were dissatisfied with the people they usually employed, whose fees were a good bit less than ours.
It wasn’t the sort of case I’d had much experience of, nor did it seem likely to be one where we should have a decent chance to justify our higher charges. However, after a conversation with the producer, I went straight up to the Dorchester where Highbury was staying and saw him there along with the studio doctor and another doctor who called himself Mr. Highbury’s personal physician.
Highbury was the heart-throb of two continents, a handsome powerfully built chap in the late thirties who usually played the tough hero in adventure films; but a good bit of the glamour had been switched off when I saw him. He’d refused to be shaved that morning, and had a very sizeable black eye where he’d fallen down in a faint after getting back from the studios the night before. He was feeling ill and peevish and he took a poor view of me, so I slid out of his ice-blue satin bedroom and sat down in a corner of his sitting-room to make a few notes. It was fairly obvious that he’d have to have a few days off, at least until the black eye mended, but when the two doctors came out there seemed to be a good bit of dissension between them as to what was really the matter with him. His personal physician said he’d had a nervous breakdown and needed at least three weeks’ rest; the studio doctor couldn’t find anything the matter with him and was pretty unsympathetic, I thought. It was the same only more so with Victor Foster, the producer of the film, though you could understand his feelings, with, the production already £30,000 over budget and his leading lady under contract to go to Hollywood in six weeks’ time.
The following day I went to the studios to see what was being done to minimize the loss in the way of a re-arranged shooting schedule, but the trouble was the script had been written round Highbury, and there was hardly a scene in which he didn’t appear. One or two remarks that were dropped I filed away for reference. In time one gets into the habit of remembering small things just in case they should come in useful later on.
On the way back I called at the Dorchester again but got no farther than the private sitting-room. While his secretary was in with the Presence I admired the photo of Janet Vale, Highbury’s film star wife—who I gathered was in Edinburgh at the moment making a personal appearance with her new film—and then, certainly with no intention of snooping, went over to the handsome Louis the Something escritoire by the window. Open on it was Highbury’s engagement book and I saw that on the night he was taken ill he had had an appointment to dine with a Mr. W. Croft at Monk’s Court, N.W.8, and that the appointment was ticked. If he had kept the appointment it made nonsense of his story that he’d collapsed as soon as he got home from the studio.
That afternoon I happened to meet an underwriter called Charles Robinson, a good-looking youngish man with dark eyes, who said his own firm had been approached when the film was being mounted but that they had refused to write the risk because they had insured Charles Highbury’s last film and he had been ill in the middle of that and run them in for a large claim.
I decided to let the thing simmer over the week-end. Highbury might suddenly go
back, and there wasn’t a lot we could do about it even if he didn’t. If a man says he’s ill you can’t force him to work. You can only hope that he’ll have some thought for his own reputation.
It was Monday I was meeting Sarah, and I was grateful in a way to this case for taking my mind off her for a bit. It would be the first time I had been with her alone since we went riding together; and things hadn’t ever been quite the same since then.
I was at Covent Garden well ahead of time, watching the crowding faces carefully in case I should miss her. There was a beggar selling shoe-laces, and I bought a pair although I didn’t need them. It had been warm all day, and heavy clouds had hung over the city. Big spots of rain were splashing now and then on the stonework of the Opera House.
I caught sight of her long before she saw me. She was getting out of a taxi, and she glanced at her watch as I pushed down towards her.
‘‘Hullo!’’ I said. ‘‘You made it all right?’’
‘‘Yes. I was afraid I should be late.” She smiled at me, more with her eyes than her mouth, and that meant a lot. It meant that it was going to be all right.
We got to our seats as the orchestra was tuning up. The seats were at the extreme side of the lowest circle. She was wearing a scarlet frock I hadn’t seen before, buttoned to the throat, made of some silk stuff, waisted, with a skirt as wide as a gypsy’s.
I said: ‘‘I hope these seats are all right. I—remember you saying once.…”
‘‘D’you remember that? You don’t get the full depth of the stage but it’s like being in the wings, part of the company.”
‘‘Ever since last July.…”
She looked at me when I stopped. ‘‘What?’’
‘‘I’ve been trying to fix this evening. Ballet companies are capricious——’’
‘‘You mean since we talked of it at Lowis?’’