The Beautiful Visit (25 page)

‘And she does it all out of her head,’ I said almost proudly.

‘Just so,’ he said uneasily. ‘Of course one can have too much imagination you know.’

‘Not for painting surely?’

‘Not for painting of course. Painting is an art. Perhaps for other things . . .’ He broke off and glanced at me anxiously: he seemed confused and searching for something to say.
‘Have you managed to get her out at all?’

‘Well no, I haven’t. But the weather has been so bad. She rests in the afternoons,’ I added painstakingly. (The thought of suggesting to Mrs Border that she do anything was
very alarming.) Nevertheless, although it had not previously occurred to me as strange. I realized that since I had known her she had not once been out of the house, and I began perforce to wonder
why not. I was interrupted from this anxious speculation by Mr Tyburn who had sighted a cottage into which he seemed to consider he might reasonably escape.

‘Ask her whether a visit would be acceptable next week,’ he said, thankfully backing into a fuchsia hedge. ‘Dear me, sorry to leave you of course, but I have more business
here. I hope yours will be a pleasant walk.’ And he disappeared.

At tea-time Mrs Border was in such an unapproachably fractious mood that I did not dare mention meeting Mr Tyburn. We ate muffins and seed cake, and I read to her, frequently interrupted by her
commanding me to put more coal on the fire, adjust a screen at her back, or move her footstool further from her chair. She retired earlier than usual to change for dinner, and I was left in the
over-heated room with the dreary prospect of playing all the evening with her a game that I disliked, but which I invariably won, with all the consequent bad feeling I had learned to expect from
this.

At dinner, however, she seemed in a much happier frame of mind. I had noticed that she always appeared more gracious when wrapped in her white lace shawl. We had a long leisurely meal, during
which she expatiated on painting, illustrating her views by many examples of her own work, which she compared favourably (and with an absolute assurance I could not but admire) with many specimens
by what I had been taught to call the Old Masters.

From her I learned that ‘they’ had invariably fallen into a selection of traps from which she personally had escaped. They had painted solely for money; they had indulged in a
variety of unpleasant subjects (she was particularly firm on this point); they had copied and even helped each other; they had painted pictures which were too large or too inaccessible; they had
painted too-much or too little; and, above all, their personal habits and private lives left so much to be desired that in a decent society they would never have been allowed to paint at all.
‘They would have been better employed mending roads. The roads abroad are dreadful,’ she finished grimly.

As I knew nothing about painting or painters, but very much more of Mrs Border’s disposition when disagreed with, I accepted these widespread recriminations whole-heartedly, with the
consequence that by the time we were seated again in the drawing-room in front of the backgammon board, she was thoroughly mellow. When I had successfully contrived to let her win a game, I gave
her Mr Tyburn’s message.

‘Where and when have you been meeting Tyburn?’

I told her.

‘That man. Messing about in lanes.’

‘He seemed to be working very hard,’ I ventured timidly.

‘Doesn’t know the meaning of the word. The only one I know who did his job properly worked himself to death. That’s more like it. Died before he was forty. He was a very good
man.’

‘Did he really die of overwork?’ I asked with some interest.

‘The doctors called it lung trouble, but I naturally knew more about it than they did.’

She paused, ruminated a while, and then heaving a deep sigh, said, ‘Ah well, he was not the only one to suffer, poor man.’

I waited silently, feeling sure that if I did so there would be further revelations; and there were. She made some trifling remark to the effect that surely I wasn’t interested in the
tragedies of life; and then with the very little encouragement required proceeded.

He was devoted to his work. I never knew another such man. He would hardly allow himself sufficient time for his meals. He was out and about at all hours of the day and night, never thinking of
himself, and never thinking that I, who perhaps needed him most, was so much without him. He was never very strong, and naturally, in time (so short a time!) his health was affected. You cannot
imagine what I suffered, watching his slow but certain decline, week by week. He did not give up until three months before the end. Then (he was terribly ill with a dreadful cough), we prevailed
upon him to rest, but it was too late. All the nursing in the world could not save him by then. He faded slowly away and in three months he was dead. He died when I was not there. I was not with
him at the end,’ she repeated; she seemed very much distressed by this.

‘Were you . . . did you care for him very much?’

‘He was my husband. He was my life,’ she said simply.

I was aghast.

‘What a terrible life you have had!’

’You see that? You see that it
has
been terrible? He was so anxious about me. I tried to conceal my feelings, but he knew, he knew what I was undergoing. He had said he would have
to leave me, but I had never really believed it. I dung to every shred of hope, until there was no more left. None at all. Every dream I had had shattered. No one realized what he had meant to me.
I don’t think he realized himself. Afterwards I cannot remember very much, I was so paralysed with grief.’

I felt so passionately sorry for her that I could not speak for a moment, but she remained so still, so broodingly silent, that I felt I must say something.

‘It seems so desperately unfair. Most people don’t seem to have one tragedy, and you have it twice.’

‘Twice?’ She looked up suddenly.

‘Your husband in India and then this,’ I faltered. I was a little afraid of her.

‘That is over, and I do not wish to think or speak of it,’ she cried sharply, and then, seeing my startled expression, added more gently, ‘It was an entirely different
experience. I was young then but this was the end of my life. You are too young to understand, but to contemplate them both at one and the same time is more than I can bear.’

I tried to say how sorry I was. She dismissed the apology kindly enough, and announced another game before we retired for the night. I was so much upset by this dreadful tale that I was scarcely
able to play. She reprimanded me in tones of gentle but courageous reproach; winning the game easily, and eventually even allowing me to help her from her chair, which I was more than eager to
do.

I remained awake for many hours that night, bewailing her appalling tragedies; justifying her present eccentricities and tempers; reproaching myself for the lack of sympathy and imagination I
had privately used towards her. One could not possibly live through such terrible times and remain totally unaffected. It explained her retired life, her painting and probably much else. It
explained the wig. That night I concentrated entirely on what my new knowledge of her explained.

CHAPTER TWENTY

The real difficulty is in attempting to explain how it all ended. It is hardly enough simply to say that Mrs Border and that house got slowly more and more on my nerves. I
should have to add that nothing (or nothing very much) happened to induce any hysteria on my part. How did I stand it as long as I did, and why should I suddenly find the situation and atmosphere
so hard to endure? I was very proud, I suppose, and obstinate; I did not want to go back to my family confessing failure. I think, however, that the monotony was a chief cause of my increasing
nervous anxiety; paralysing and detailed monotony, where the trouble lay not so much in nothing happening, but in the endless succession of tedious and insignificant events, repeated day by day and
week by week, until leisure and freedom became a kind of mirage. Eventually I ceased to feel free even when I was alone out of doors. The knowledge that I could only escape from the house so far as
the distance it was possible to walk in an hour and a half, added to my sense of confinement and depression. I ceased to go out very much.

Then one day Mrs Border announced that her brother was coming to stay. She seemed in a high state of excitement and displeasure at the prospect; making endless arrangements in the house which
she interspersed with vituperative remarks about his character; ‘Dull dog, my brother, never has a word to say for himself,’ or ‘Dead lame, and stupid as an ox; can’t think
what he does with his time,’ and, most frequently: ‘Cannot imagine why he’s coming at all. Haven’t had anything to say to each other for twenty-five years.’

Nevertheless I was set to clearing a spare room of Mrs Border’s paintings (they were stored there, I discovered, in hundreds, even thousands). The room, being a small one, contained a mere
thirty-seven framed specimens. The unframed paintings filled every drawer, every shelf, and at least three dozen large cardboard boxes. They were all signed, quite illegibly, by a scrawl which I
could not with any effort of imagination construe as Border. Spalding and I were directed to remove this quantity of genius to the library, which was on the ground floor. I do not know why it was
called the library; it contained no books, but boxes of parrot seed, piles of thick white paper, and walking sticks bracketed to the walls. It had a dark green wall paper and black paint; smelled
of damp and was unutterably gloomy – the very last place where one would wish to read.

The evening before her brother was due to arrive, Mrs Border favoured me with some startling revelations of his life and character.

‘Whole career ruined by women,’ she opened unexpectedly.

As we had been in the middle of discussing arrangements for meeting his train, I was thoroughly unprepared for this remark, and said nothing.

‘Can’t help himself. Perfectly all right for months until he meets some chit of a girl and then there’s an outbreak. Loses his head completely. Spends pounds. Careers all over
the world making a fool of himself.’

‘Is he not married?’

‘Not all relationships with the opposite sex end with marriage, you know,’ she said bitterly. ‘Oh dear me, no. That isn’t what most men want at all. My brother, for
example. He was not above attempting all kinds of unpleasant things with women who were already married. Ruined his career. It finished him in the Army. Frightful scandals wherever he went. One
can’t have that kind of thing. He did marry some woman once, a widow, a throughly irresponsible creature, but she left him. I always said that if
she
couldn’t stand it, and
Heaven knows she was disagreeable enough, nobody would. I was perfectly right. Nobody has. Can’t
think
why he’s coming here at all.’

‘He must be rather lonely,’ I ventured.

‘Well he won’t find himself any less lonely here,’ she said grimly. Then, after a moment’s thought, ‘A great many young women have considered Hilary to be lonely or
appeared
to consider him so.’ She said this so deliberately, and looked at me in so pointed a manner that I felt myself blushing, and at the same time inclined to laugh at the absurd
implication.

‘Well,’ she said, having eyed my discomfiture, ‘mark my words. Don’t believe a
word
they say,
any one
of them, and never remain too long alone in their
company. Unprincipled lout!’ she exclaimed, striking her stick on the floor. And leaving her brother at that, we retired to bed.

I woke suddenly during that night, horribly frightened. This time, however, I was certain that I had wakened
after
the laughter; that it had immediately preceded the dead unnatural
silence which then obtained. To make matters worse, I found but one match which extinguished itself before I had managed to light my candle from it. Briefly I saw my room in the second’s
wavering light; then I was forced to lie listening, listening through the dark hours, tense and exhausted with fear. I might, I suppose, have reflected that although I had heard these strange
sounds several times now, nothing very alarming had resulted and therefore have learned to be less afraid: but the experience was so unpleasant in itself that each time I expected some horrific
sequel; acquired, so to speak, a habit of anticipating something more and worse. I decided that night that I must tell someone what I had heard, if only to have my fears confirmed. The thought of
telling Mrs Border seemed so frightening in the dark, that I was forced to discard her as even a possible confidante; indeed I found myself becoming distinctly afraid of her at the mere idea. Then
who? Her brother? Mrs Border’s description of him made me far from sure that such a confidence to him would be received in a manner conducive to my peace of mind. After much disjointed
thought I was forced to fall back (rather uncertainly) on Mr Tyburn. He would, I felt, be discreet and reliable; and possibly reassuring. As soon as I had determined on Mr Tyburn, I spent the rest
of that sleepless night persuading myself that I could find no better or more suitable person to tell; these reassurances being punctuated by long periods of almost animal fear, when my mind froze,
and straining my eyes towards the bedroom door I simply listened.

I rose at length before I was called, with aching eyes and head, my resolution wavering, shivering in my mind. The practical difficulties were enormous. I was only able to go out if Mrs Border
approved my going, or alternatively when she rested in the afternoon. Today, however, she would be unlikely to rest, as her brother was arriving shortly after three. I could say that I required
stamps, but in all probability she would tell Spalding to buy them, and then make some embarrassing remark about my eagerness to escape, which I should not, in this case, feel able to
countenance.

The problem, however, like so many minor problems (after one has exhausted oneself with anxiety on their behalf), solved itself.

Mrs Border remarked, after breakfast, that she would be unable to take her usual rest, owing to her brother’s inconsiderate hour of arrival, adding that I had better take a good walk in
the afternoon as she preferred to meet him alone.