The Beautiful Visit (36 page)

‘Hullo,’ she said. We stood observing one another. Then she said, ‘I’m so glad you’ve come. It will be just like it used to be at Christmas. It was awful all
through the war and one couldn’t even
pretend
it was the same. The hunting’s wonderful, and we’re going to have a dance. Elspeth’s coming, and she’s bringing
two strange
new
men with her. We don’t know them at all. Have you got everything you want?’

While I answered her, she stood regarding me with her kind eyes and eager smile; the tip of her nose a delicate pink, as though she had been out.

‘I’ve been exercising. Deb won’t do it. Would you like to see her babies? Deb hasn’t been out all the morning. Some mornings she lies in bed till the lunch bell rings,
and father gets furious. He likes everyone to
scald
themselves with soup. And some mornings she is up before any of us and gets through two horses by twelve o’clock. Simply wears them
out, and doesn’t cool them off or anything. They come back covered with sweat. She won’t say where she has been.’

‘Is she as beautiful as ever?’

‘
More
beautiful,’ said Lucy, with a kind of triumphant despair.

She led me down the passage, stopped at a white door, and opened it. I had thought it was going to be the nursery, but it was simply a rather empty little white room.

‘Gerald’s room. You know he was killed – Father can’t bear talking about it. It’s just the same as when he had it. I wanted it for my room, but they wouldn’t
let me. Even his brushes.’ The windows were open, and the curtains floated over the silver-topped brushes on the dressing-table. An old tweed jacket hung on the back of the door. It was very
cold.

‘I put flowers in here,’ said Lucy. She had become very white and a tear rolled down her face.

‘I thought you would like to see his room,’ she said, watching me anxiously, lest I feel as unhappy as she.

I nodded. She was still the kind transparent creature who judged everyone more exactly and honestly to be like herself than anybody I had known.

In the nursery, Nanny was seated in a basket chair feeding one infant on her lap while an older and more responsible baby sat strapped in a high chair beside her, eating something brown and
sloppy with a short-handled spoon.

Nanny greeted me in a courteous, but abstracted manner. It was plain that she was engrossed in her charges.

‘He hasn’t stopped since a quarter past eleven. I don’t know what it is, I’m sure. Not a tooth in sight . . .’ Then to the baby in the chair, ‘Put it in your
mouth, Charles.’

‘Can I feed him?’said Lucy.

‘Give the young lady a chair and you can finish him off. Give her the spoon, Charles, there’s a good boy.’

Charles watched me to my chair; but when Lucy approached him he dropped the spoon, and seizing the bowl before him turned it carefully upside down over his head. In the commotion which followed,
he remained impassive, staring at me in a gentle, reproachful manner, with broth streaming down his face.

‘Showing off at meal times,’ muttered Nanny, as she carried him, stern and indifferent, into the night nursery.

Richard, cheated of his bottle, began to cry. He began quietly, in the manner of the real expert, and worked himself slowly up to a shattering volume, arching his back and screwing up his toes,
in spite of Lucy’s frantic efforts to appease him.

Then the door opened, and Deb appeared. Her hair was elaborately dressed; she wore the most ravishing and ethereal negligée, edged with swansdown. When she saw me, she smiled, walked over
to the fender, and began talking to me as though nothing was happening. She was incredibly beautiful.

‘Oh, Deb – I can’t stop him,’ cried Lucy almost beside herself.

Deb looked at Richard.

‘He’s a bore,’ she remarked, picked him up, and threw him over her shoulder. Instantly he stopped, and began picking at the swansdown round her neck, cramming it into his
mouth, choking with laughter.

‘You can always stop him. I don’t know how you do it,’ said Lucy, half resentful, half relieved at the peace.

Deb with her back to Lucy, met my eye for an instant. She was smiling, but there was a faintly ironical, almost bitter expression in her smile. She did not reply.

A gong boomed for lunch.

‘I’ll take him,’ said Lucy. ‘Father will be so furious.’

‘Why we should have the entire household upset for a little boy I fail to see,’ observed Deb.

‘It is only a quarter of an hour early. He has to rest afterwards. If we have lunch later there isn’t time for him to get to the Westons’,’ pleaded Lucy holding out her
arms for Richard.

‘All this resting is absolute nonsense, anyway,’ said Deb, and, ignoring Lucy, dropped Richard on his back in a blue cot, where after a shocked silence, he instantly began yelling
again. ‘I shall now get dressed,’ Deb said calmly, and left the room.

Lucy cast agonized glances at Richard, the open night-nursery door and at me. Finally she gasped: ‘We’ll
have to
go. Can’t all be late. Father has got much
fiercer
since the end of the war,’ she explained, as we sped down the broad shallow staircase, almost colliding with Rupert at the foot.

‘Hullo, Rupert. Frightfully sorry.’ Then seeing his leg, ‘
Frightfully
sorry,’ she repeated.

Toby was already sitting at the table. ‘I had my place laid round me,’ he said, ‘I’ve been waiting ages.’ He was not fat at all now; he seemed to be about twice as
tall, and his face was finely powdered with freckles. ‘I say, did you fly an aeroplane?’ he almost shouted at Rupert.

‘I did not.’

Mrs Lancing arrived, to settle Rupert and me next to each other and near her. Gradually the remaining members of the family appeared. Aunt Edith supported by Elinor; Mr Lancing with a sheaf of
papers in his hand – all of them except Deb. When we had been greeted and everyone was settling to the very good hare soup, Mr Lancing inquired: ‘Has anyone informed Deborah that we are
lunching?’

‘She was kept by the babies, Papa,’ Lucy said. ‘Richard has been crying,’ she added.

‘Ah.’ Mr Lancing’s expression softened to one of almost professional concern. ‘It is my considered opinion that the child should be fed earlier.’

‘Dear, we’ve tried that, and it throws the whole routine out, and poor Nanny doesn’t get a wink of sleep.’

‘Feed him when he’s hungry. He knows when he is hungry.’

‘But dear Alfred, one must consider his digestion.’

‘Nonsense. When I was a child I was fed when I howled. I howled when I was hungry. Nothing wrong with my digestion.’ He launched forth on a long and complicated story, the gist of
which was that he had even eaten Stilton cheese and herrings at the age of eleven months and thrived on them.

‘Have you
ever
flown an aeroplane?’ persisted Toby.

‘Never once been in one.’ Toby fell back.

Half-way through the second course, Deb appeared, entirely and charmingly dressed in brown.

‘Hullo Rupert, ’Fraid I’m rather late.’

‘You are very late, Deborah.’

‘Is Richard all right now?’ asked the loyal Lucy.

But Deb answered, sweetly perverse, ‘I don’t know. I left him when you did. I expect so.’ She yawned elaborately, and began on her soup.

Rupert had sat very silent, but now he began to talk to Deb, admiring her, as he had done before, in tones of mock despair. ‘
Why
didn’t you wait for me?’ he
finished.

Deb lifted her head. I noticed the faintest blush, but she replied evenly, ‘You never asked me.’

‘What does this dreadful Aubrey
do
?’

‘Something deadly dull in an office.’

There was a chorus from the others of ‘Oh,
Deb.
Poor Aubrey – Really, Rupert.’

‘It
is
deadly dull,’ persisted Deb. ‘So, poor Aubrey, I suppose.’ She seized a piece of brittle toast, and began crushing it between her fingers.

‘Have you ever been in a submarine then?’ asked Toby. Rupert spread out his hands and shook his head. ‘What a waste.’ Toby was thoroughly disappointed. ‘I’m
going to fly an aeroplane in the next war.’

Everyone, in the brief pause which followed, instinctively looked at Mrs Lancing, and then, baffled by her immobility, and perhaps a little embarrassed by the discovery that they were not alone
in their glance, looked away.

‘There isn’t going to
be
another war, anyway,’ Lucy explained to Toby. Mrs Lancing drank a little water. The tension snapped.

After lunch, there was the usual discussion round the table of what everyone was going to do until they met for the next meal. Toby must rest for an hour and a half before he repaired to the
Westons’, who, I gathered, were possessed of a fives court, in which he and the younger Westons were to roller skate. Mrs Landing was going to finish off invitations for the dance. Elinor
offered to help her.

‘What about a walk?’ suggested Lucy.

‘Where to?’ said Deb; and Lucy, taking her literally, proceeded to outline a walk. Deb yawned again, stretching her hands over her head. ‘There’s no point in going
out.’

‘I think,’ exclaimed Mr Lancing looking firmly at Rupert, ‘that you would be interested in my collection of letters to various newspapers. If you have nothing better to do, I
propose to show them to you now . . .’

This left Lucy and me for the walk.

‘Would you like that?’

I said I should like it. During lunch I had hardly spoken at all, not because I had been frightened, but became I could think of nothing to say. When I had stayed with them before, I had been
nervous lest I prove unable to fit in with their very different and to me extremely hectic and glamorous existence; but after this fear had shown itself to be unnecessary, I had been able to throw
myself into this Lancing life-in-the-country-house-at-Christmas and I had been very happy. I had, so to speak, poured myself eagerly into their large and decorative mould. Now, I was stiffened with
experience, no longer nervous, but isolated in some curious manner by the reality of my own struggles from the reality of theirs. They were not to me any longer the easy happy collection of a
family I had known; but they were not, so far as I could see, aware that they had changed. Gerald’s death was the only change they were aware of that I could understand, and in some
inexplicable manner this merely accentuated their apparent notion of the sameness of everything else.

During our walk I asked Lucy more about her family, and she, without any hesitation, told me all she knew. Deb had married very soon after my first visit, and everyone liked Aubrey. ‘They
have a house about twelve miles away, but Deb wants to live in London. Aubrey doesn’t like London, he says he works there and that is quite enough, so I don’t know what they will do. I
think she would miss the hunting. It’ll be London in the end I suppose. Aubrey’s terribly kind, he does anything Deb wants. She’s frightfully lucky because Aubrey didn’t
have to leave her at
all
in the war. Deb’s rather – different these days. I think she must miss Gerald.’ I had never noticed any particular feeling in Deb for Gerald, or
indeed for anyone except the Roland she had not married. Perhaps he also had been killed. I did not want to ask.

We had been walking across the park, up the hill to the copse or little wood: the walk I had taken with Lucy and Elspeth on the first afternoon when we had made the house out of twigs. I
wondered how many hundred times Lucy had walked this way, and whether she ever grew tired of it and wanted to walk somewhere else. I reminded her of the house; she remembered more about it than I
did, and suggested making another. But I shrank from making another house.

I asked about Elspeth.

‘She’s an heiress,’ said Lucy gravely. ‘Her father died and left her all his money,
and
two houses. She lives with an uncle who lets her do anything she likes. She
was supposed to have gone abroad you know, but the war stopped that.’

‘Will her uncle let her go now?’

‘I don’t know. I believe he considers her ideas folly. But she’s coming. She’s bringing these men for the dance. Father says she is being spoilt,’ Lucy added rather
unexpectedly. ‘Would you like to walk through the wood?’ she continued. ‘I expect you’d like to see the place where we made your little house. Do you know what Deb said when
she heard you were coming?’

I did not know.

‘She said, were you engaged to Rupert!’

‘Oh.’

‘Of course, she thinks rather a lot about that sort of thing.’ Lucy seemed rather apologetic.

‘Well I’m
not
engaged to Rupert,’ I felt bound to add.

‘Of course not. Why should you be? I’m twenty-one and
I
don’t intend marrying anyone for years. Elinor does though. She is younger than you, and
she
has always
wanted to marry someone. Well, since she was ten. She was awfully in love with a man she looked after in the war. She is a V.A.D. you know, but he died. He was frightfully badly wounded,’ her
voice trembled, ‘but she doesn’t mind that. She says there will be an awful shortage of people to marry and she doesn’t mind looking after someone who has been wounded, so
she’d better marry one of them, because someone who
doesn’t
need looking after won’t want to marry her. I suppose there are a lot of people like that? I mean you
don’t think she is very unusual, do you?’

‘I don’t think so,’ I said doubtfully. ‘I don’t think many people are so honest – well, candid, about it.’

‘Oh, she’s frightfully honest. She was Head of her School in the end. She wanted that, too.’

‘What do
you
want?’

Lucy seemed rather at a loss.

‘Oh – I don’t know. I should like another horse, and I wish my hair wasn’t so straight. I wish Gerald was alive, most of all. I wish he was alive, and everything was
exactly the same. Like it was last time you came.’

‘Isn’t it the same, Lucy?’

‘Except for Gerald it is. But somehow,
nothing
feels right without him. Such a beastly way to die!’ She suddenly burst into tears. ‘I must tell you! I haven’t had
anyone
to tell. He had a friend who was at school with him. Peter . . .’ She was crying so much now that she was unable to walk, and leaned against a tree. I made some gesture inviting
her to sit, but she shook her head and struggled to speak, streaming with tears. ‘It doesn’t matter what his name was. I can’t tell you his name. He loved Gerald; they went out
together. They had an awful job to stay together. When Gerald had leave, he took me to a theatre and told me all about Peter, and asked me to write to him. He said Peter was the only person he
really cared about except me. After Gerald was dead he wrote to me, Peter did I mean, and said he wanted to see me. I went to London. He was dreadfully unhappy, he
cried
about Gerald. We
went for a walk; he told me about him and then cried. Then he said he had to tell me about him properly, because he couldn’t bear it by himself. That letter Mummy had was all a lie. He
didn’t die quickly at all. He was hit by a shell in his stomach. Peter found him after the attack. He was so bad Peter couldn’t move him. He tried, but Gerald just shrieked and shrieked
and – there was a lot more about it I can’t tell you, it is so awful,
so awful.
Peter tried to get help, but there wasn’t a stretcher. He tried to give him some water, but
whatever he did he said Gerald just went on moaning, and if Peter touched him, he shrieked, and stared about, as though Peter was trying to torture him. So Peter shot him. He had to. He said if he
hadn’t Gerald would just have gone on in that agony until he lost consciousness, and that might have been hours later. He had to do it. He kissed him, and told him he loved him first, but he
said Gerald didn’t know who he was. He said when he got out his revolver, he thought Gerald understood about that, because he tried to keep still and shut his eyes – Oh, I
shouldn’t have told you.’