A Game of Hide and Seek (13 page)

‘You do know how to brandish a fan,' Vesey said with steady admiration.

Terrible shrieks were coming out of the loud-speaker horn. Caroline put her hands to her ears. Harriet's eyes were stars.

‘The rose looks dreadfully theatrical,' Lilian said.

‘You must allow me to dress myself, mother.'

Harriet broke off the red thorns and tucked the rose into her bosom where it scratched uncomfortably.

‘If you pinned it to your shoulder, perhaps,' Lilian went on.

But Vesey had said ‘tucked' not ‘pinned', had said ‘bosom' not ‘shoulder'.

‘There is Charles,' Lilian said. She hurried downstairs to open the door.

Charles came into the hall bringing a smell of frosty air with him.

‘These are for Harriet,' he said, holding out a spray of pink carnations and maiden-hair fern, ‘and the chrysanthemums are for you.' He kissed her cheek and put the flowers into her arm. ‘You look unwell, Lilian.'

‘You shouldn't kiss me,' she said. ‘I think I have a cold, a chill. As soon as you're gone, I'll get to bed; but don't say anything to Harriet. How kind of you, Charles! What a lovely bouquet!' She gave him a glass of sherry she bought at the village shop and took the flowers out of the room.

Charles poured the sherry back into the decanter and sauntered about. He loved the photograph of Harriet as a little girl. Anxiously, her eyes looked up at him; a Persian kitten struggled in her embrace. The camera had barely clicked in time, he felt.

The fire was very low. He stooped to put a log on, then remembered that Lilian was going to bed.

‘Oh, God!' Harriet groaned, staring at the carnations. ‘I can't wear
those
.'

‘What
do
you mean?' Lilian said. ‘Of course you
can
wear them, and
must
wear them.'

‘But they're not right.'

‘They're perfectly right, much more suitable than that rose, which will fade at once, and even if they were completely wrong, it doesn't matter in the least.'

‘It matters to me,' Harriet said tragically. She took the rose from her breast and flung it on one side.

‘But, Harriet, only
people
matter, and not hurting them.'

‘You say that to
me
!'

Trembling with vexation, she pinned the carnations to her shoulder.

Lilian sighed. Try as she might, she could not remember ever having made such a fuss over a triviality when she was young. ‘I must have forgotten,' she thought sadly, going round the room gathering up Harriet's clothes.

‘How lovely you look!' said Kitty, stooping to kiss her. She always seemed so Edwardian when she kissed other women: it was the merest inclination, the softest touch, cheekbone to cheekbone. While she was being kissed, Harriet glanced over Kitty's shoulder at the room. She did not want to be seen looking for Vesey. She wanted him to find her.

Kitty, Charles, the Elliots, even Tiny, were like home to her, safety; but her adventure was elsewhere. One dance with Vesey would be enough; the thought that she might be under the same roof and meet his glance across the room filled her with the happiest anticipation. She was glad of the others, who gave her confidence – dear Rose Elliot, whose shiny satin exposed her sad shape so cruelly – highlights drew attention to her little rounded stomach, her spreading hips. ‘If I were like that!' Harriet thought, ‘for Vesey to see.' She felt gay at the absurdity of the idea.

Kitty's face seemed altered. Such a radiance, a transfiguration that Harriet could only think of flowers – that Kitty would make them bloom by just lifting her hands. She had all magic in her. That no one else saw this, could only amaze: that Tiny should say: ‘The old girl's getting fat,' and only Harriet know that bliss was in the air, that Kitty was a tree in blossom!

‘Come, Harriet!' said Charles.

She stood up and put her hand on his arm. While they were dancing, she was glancing over his shoulder at the door.

‘I can't be bothered to change,' Vesey said to Caroline. ‘I'll go for a walk instead.'

‘Is something wrong?' Caroline asked, embarrassed and distressed. ‘Nothing at home? Of course, we love to have you here,' she added. ‘It was a lovely surprise. You know that.'

‘Oh, yes, yes,' Vesey said, hoping to avoid thoughts of home.

He had come down from Oxford in the afternoon. Letting himself into his parents' flat, he felt its emptiness. There was no one at home and letters lying on the mat: the usual little sounds of an empty house – clocks rustling, curtains moving, the water in the pipes. Then he heard a door gently open and shut. A young man came out of his mother's room, hesitating in the dark passage. ‘Are you Vesey?' he asked.

He was very pale.

‘Yes.'

‘Ba . . . your mother . . . would like to see you. We were lunching together and she was taken ill. She suddenly felt ill.'

Vesey waited.

‘She's lying down now.'

‘Oh, is she?'

‘Yes. I'm glad you're here. I didn't like to go . . .'

‘Of course not.'

‘We were having lunch together . . . “I don't feel at all well,” she said. “I won't stop for coffee”.'

Vesey watched him warming to his story.

‘But now I expect you'd . . . I'm late already . . . I'll telephone, tell her . . .' He put out his hand and Vesey sullenly took it.

The young man said some of the things over again and at last he was gone.

‘There's one thing I can't do,' Vesey thought. ‘I can't go in and see her.'

He went into the kitchen and wandered about. Then he had to go to her. He opened the door and she was lying on the bed, the curtains drawn. She looked drowned in the greenish light, a middle-aged Ophelia.

‘Is there anything you want?'

She turned her head wearily on her pillow.

‘Nothing, darling.'

It was true, then: she was ill.

‘Sure?'

‘Only not to worry your father with this. I'll get up in a little while.'

So it was not true, then? When had she ever tried to spare his father any worry?

He went out and shut the door. The next day he rang up Caroline and came down to stay.

‘I shall never be sure,' he thought now, walking along the dark lane, his fists tight in his pocket. ‘And I must never think of it again.'

At some point of the evening, Harriet abandoned hope. There had been the dismaying moment when doubt began, and then, much later, the moment when she could no longer even doubt, when she stopped looking at the door and into her mirror: she felt enervated, her vitality run down. ‘He will do this to me always,' she thought. ‘He only thinks of me when I am with him. What I wanted answered last night is answered now.'

The lights dipped down over the room and then, with great daring, flashed crimson, so that all the glasses seemed to hold red wine and all the white flowers became rosy.

Harriet danced with Henry Elliot. His grave, quiet manner soothed her. He said: ‘Kitty enjoys herself,' watching her dancing with Tiny. Then he said: ‘She works among us like yeast,' and he smiled at Harriet.

Tiny was not satisfied to be dancing merely with his wife. He wanted to dance with the whole room. He tapped other shoulders in passing; gave a phrase here, a wink there; squeezed elbows; slackened their pace past the tables of his friends; tried to rally them on to the floor; chid them for drinking. Kitty smiled with lovely patience; her eyes scarcely lifted; in a dream of her own. ‘The old girl's shot away,' Tiny explained. ‘Poor itty bitty Kitty. Me wife's drunk.'

‘God grant me patience!' Kitty thought.

The dance had been like all the others. Tomorrow in this room business men would eat their lunch: the gilt baskets of chrysanthemums would be gone. Already, wives were slipping out to fetch their furs from the camphor-scented cloakroom. When the band began to play God Save The King, Harriet and Henry stood side by side, the backs of their hands touching. Kitty half-turned her head and smiled. And Harriet smiled back. She was exhausted with disappointment.

Going home in the car, Kitty was sorry the evening was over. When Henry asked them in for a drink, she would have said yes; but Tiny had begun to think of the morning. His party mood dropped off him. But Kitty felt elated still; not ready for bed. She tried to lull herself, and, going through the dark streets, thought about her baby, imagined its strange progress towards life; a stranger journey, she thought, than any it will take after it's born; a more complicated evolution. May it make me patient and contented!

Tiny had slackened; all his good spirits gone. He drove in silence, as if he were alone. When she spoke to him, he started, seemed guilty at his own thoughts, leant forward and wiped the steamy windscreen with his glove, peered at the road ahead as if he were trying to find composure.

‘Tiny, I find I'm pregnant.'

She pressed her fist secretly to her knee.

‘You're what?'

But she would not say it again.

‘You're pulling my leg,' he said uncertainly.

‘It's true.'

He was ruffled, put out. She need not look at his face in the fleeting lamplight – indeed, could not, since he, each time they passed a lamp, looked hard at her.

‘You can't be serious.'

‘Is that all you have to say?' she asked wearily. (And it has only just begun, she thought.)

‘Well, hell, what am I supposed to say?'

‘Nothing, nothing.'

She had stopped trembling. She felt very still and quiet in her mind, at peace in her hatred, as once she had been at peace in her love.

Charles took the photograph of Harriet as a child and staring at the anxious little face and brushed-back hair, said to the real Harriet: ‘Would it seem too absurd to you if I asked you to marry me?'

She was unpinning the carnations from her dress.

‘Of course not
absurd
, Charles.'

‘But out of the question?'

He put the photograph back on the chimneypiece. She twirled the carnations round and round between her hands and could not answer.

‘I am much too old for you.'

She shook her head.

‘Well, of course I am. But I had wondered if we might not be happy all the same. Looking round at other people's marriages, I had come to the conclusion that the things which seem important may really not matter in the least . . . Why cry, Harriet? Why cry?'

‘I didn't think anyone would ever ask me to marry them.'

‘And now it's the wrong one. And why should no one ask you to marry him? You must have more confidence in yourself. Remember that you are gentle and lovely and honest . . .'

‘Hard working and sober,' she added, trying to smile. ‘But Charles, I truly could not.'

‘Heavens, how cold your arms are!' He looked wretchedly at the ashes in the grate. ‘I would always love you and cherish you . . . try to make you happy.'

The word ‘cherish' moved her deeply. She put her cold arms inside his coat and leant her head against his breast.

‘Is there some other sort of person you love?' he asked. He did not think there could be an actual person, but felt knowing about young girls and their romantic fancies.

‘No one else. No one else,' she said quickly.

‘It shan't be like Kitty and Tiny,' he promised her. ‘I would consider you and love you all the time; with other people, and when we were alone.'

‘I know,' she said.

He remembered the evening in the car, and her vehement embrace which had disturbed him then and often since.

‘Whom do you love?' he asked, feeling her now taut against him.

‘No one. No one,' she cried.

‘Hush, we shall wake your mother.' If only there were a fire, he thought, and we could sit beside it and talk. ‘You're tired, my darling. It's that damned shop and all those long hours you work there. I wish you needn't. I'm sorry I worried you.' He put his hands under her hair at the back of her head and tilted her face up and kissed her. ‘Go to bed. Forget it all.'

‘Yes.'

He chafed her arms gently and led her to the bottom of the stairs.

‘Goodnight, sweet Harriet.'

‘Goodnight, Charles.'

Halfway-up the stairs, she turned, remembering, like a child, and said: ‘Oh, thank you for taking me.'

‘Shush!'

He watched her go on up to the landing, then he turned off the hall light and let himself out of the front door.

As soon as the door shut, Harriet was aware of a soft moaning in her mother's room, as of someone very ill, turning and turning to evade pain. Very fearfully she opened the door upon darkness. Lilian lay on the bed in her day clothes, her body stiff, her face yellow. She turned only her eyes towards Harriet.

‘Mother, what is it?'

She dropped down on her knees beside the bed. Lilian's hands were like ice to her touch, though she was cold herself.

‘Don't come near. I think I have 'flu.'

‘How
could
you let me go out?'

‘I didn't know. It became worse afterwards. Don't come near me, Harriet.'

‘You're so cold.'

‘But my head is hot. If I could just have more hot-water bottles.'

‘Of course.'

Lilian had never before been so ill that she could not manage for herself. Harriet had no idea what to do. She darted off to fill kettles and then came back to undress her mother, whose stockings were stuck to her legs, cold with sweat.

‘I am sure I should call the doctor.'

‘In the morning, perhaps.'

‘I mean now.'

‘One doesn't bring doctors out in the middle of the night for 'flu.'

‘It may not be that.'

Lilian, trying to raise herself, was sick, her body concaved with pain.

Harriet banked her with hot-water bottles and knelt down by the bed, holding her hand. She could hear cocks crowing, but it seemed still in the middle of the night. Soon the violence of the pain alarmed her. She was afraid to leave Lilian, but there was no telephone in the cottage. She slipped out of the house and across the road. A steeliness in the sky was the beginning of the day. The ground was like iron, branches encrusted with rime. At the Old Vicarage windows glinted darkly. She tugged at the bell, then stood back on the path looking up at the house, striking her hands together in impatience.