A Game of Hide and Seek (24 page)

‘I would rather talk to you. Besides, I should stand no chance against your influence.'

‘But she is lapsing; falling from grace,' Julia said, anxious to be rid of him. ‘She played Patience on Sunday instead of going to Evensong or whatever you call it.'

He leaned forward and picked a chocolate out of the box which she had once, with indifference, offered and had now forgotten.

‘Once I was in a room,' he said, wishing to talk about himself, ‘when, suddenly, and for no reason, I felt an evil presence.'

She laughed carelessly and glanced over her shoulder.

‘It was ten o'clock in the morning,' he said, as if this confirmed what he had said, which she felt it did.

He picked out a coffee-cream and dropped it into his mouth, brushing his finger-tips on a paisley handkerchief. ‘Perhaps,' he said, with his mouth full of chocolate, ‘in the light of her life here with you, Miss Bastable thinks that she can be good without religion. A greatly-shaking deception. She is up against what she thinks of as your goodness.'

‘I think I am good, too,' Julia said.

He picked out a caramel.

‘Don't
you
think I am good?' she asked.

He leant back and chewed and smiled and said, with his eyes shut: ‘I think you are presumptuous.' He would not open his eyes.

‘That means “taking liberties”,' she cried. And at last he opened his eyes. ‘I was using theological terminology.' His look rested upon her.

She seemed appeased.

‘Where is Betsy off to, looking so starry-eyed?' Kitty asked, as Harriet opened the door. ‘I saw her going off down the Terrace as if she were on her way to heaven . . . an exciting sort of heaven, I mean. When I called out, she gave a violent start. I often notice that when people smile, they look less happy than they did a second before. It can be rather saddening. I thought
her
smile . . . Betsy's . . . quite spoiled her happy look. I hope she got it back again.' She stripped off her gloves and, standing before the hall mirror, ran her fingers up through her hair, seeming to move in, to take possession of the house; led the way into the drawing-room and brushed some scattered lilac petals off a table into her hand as she passed.

‘It's a great occasion. She is going for a walk with Miss Bell.'

‘Will she go from one adoration to another, I wonder? A sort of emotional progress? Who could be sure, when they are terribly susceptible to other personalities, that it would all end after marriage? Once begun, it must surely go on a lifetime? Each one seeming in turn
the
one . . . that Natalie Slapdash or whatever her name was, whom Betsy so adored last year . . . do you remember? . . . one might find that one's husband was, after all, only taking his turn. Not that I wish to worry you . . .'

‘There's nothing I can do.'

‘I know. Playing a lot of games and having what people call a lot of interests can't help, because one is always capable of doing two things at the same time . . . especially if one of them is
feeling
 . . . I have never really been like that . . . perhaps I am too self-centred . . . but someone once told me about loving . . .' she glanced aside . . . ‘said that whatever she did, no matter how hard she worked, with every step she took and breath she breathed she thought of it and felt it and remembered. How is your hand?'

Harriet, for no reason, put it behind her back. ‘Oh, better.'

‘Were
you
like that, as a child? Always having to have somebody . . . those extravagant passions?'

‘No. I didn't enough get the hang of other people . . . the mistresses at school merely alarmed me.'

‘I so agree. And then they always had moustaches or spat when they talked. Though they scared the daylight out of me, I contempted them.' Kitty smiled comfortably; put her feet up on a stool and brought a cushion down behind her head.

‘But you loved Tiny . . . ?' Harriet said doubtfully. No one could pretend that Kitty did still, but once, surely . . . ?

‘Everybody has to get married,' Kitty said authoritatively. ‘And then, I am, as I said, a selfish person. Even children . . . even Ricky . . . I love with a sort of anguish, which is more to do with me than with him. I'm glad your hand is better. I was quite worried.'

‘There was nothing to worry about.'

‘I think when I was young I was flirtatious rather than passionate,' Kitty said, as if the previous conversation had justified, even demanded, this confession. ‘Therefore it is difficult for me to imagine that one person is all that much more important than another. If I was
fond
of someone, I had reached the heights.
My
heights rather. No one could hope for more.
Can
other people be so much more wonderful than I am myself, I used to ask. And one knows how very unwonderful one is oneself. Did you ever meet anyone who seemed more wonderful than yourself?'

‘Many people.'

‘You are being modest.'

‘I have nothing to be modest about.'

‘It is true modesty to believe that. One might even call it humility,' Kitty said disdainfully. ‘You have too low an estimate of yourself. So low that one begins to think you are dissembling. Would you be lit up, transported, at the idea of another person's company . . . as your daughter is?'

Harriet, standing before the fire, her hands clasped behind her back, looked gravely ahead, knowing it was useless to answer. Kitty twisted her pearls, brought them up over her chin, but kept her eyes cast down.

‘Why are you doing this to me; Kitty?' Harriet asked in a tired voice.

‘Because I love you . . . am fond of you, I mean.'

‘What is it you want to know?'

‘Nothing. I know it all already.'

‘Then . . . ?'

‘I only want to say “no one is worth anything”. We are all the same. One is as good as another. It will pass.' She spoke rapidly and as if one thought cancelled another and all of it was nonsense. ‘You've been married to Charles fifteen? . . . sixteen? years. And you were quite happy. About other people you have to ask yourself, “Could the same have been true with them? How would those sixteen years have passed?” How can marriage be exciting that lasts so long? And don't we love for ever the one we didn't marry? Requited love is just as good as the other kind, and
that
may be requited in the end, leaving you no better off than you were before. Match sixteen years against the newest love, or imagine it after sixteen years. Isn't the result calculable? I am sorry my commonsense is so common, but I have to be cruel to be kind. You don't mind my taking my shoes off, do you, darling, for they're giving me merry hell. Suede
draws
so.'

She kicked her shoes across the floor and stretched her toes. A ladder ran up her stocking and she tried to stop it with a blob of spit. She was growing negligent and untidy. She smoked in the bedroom, dropping ash into the handbasin; her brushes were fringed with hair: she used her crushed-up scented handkerchiefs to mark her place in novels; in her kitchen, the cats drank milk out of Rockingham saucers.

‘Those magazines in hairdressers',' she went on. ‘Those letters readers write in about their problems. “Is this love? Am I in love?” As if love were a special kind of fish one catches in one's net . . . sorting through a handful of weeds, wondering “Is this the right thing? Is this what I am after?” But how can you catch what is only a mood, or a reflection of yourself? Forbidden fruit would be just as boring as the other kind if we ate it all the time.'

‘Fruit! Fish! Reflections!' Harriet said restlessly, turning to face the fire, her hands on the chimney-piece.

‘Then let us come to Vesey. Let us call everything by its proper name. I shall be very harsh, I warn you. I shall use words like “infatuation”.'

‘Everything I feel is beyond words, so none can affect me.'

‘You are letting yourself drift into difficulties.'

‘Yes, I know that.'

‘Very difficult difficulties.'

‘What does “infatuation” mean? Or any words like it? I loved him when I was a child, I know . . .'

‘And the
idea
of him ever since . . . Our feelings about people change as we grow up: but if we are left with an idea instead of a person, perhaps that never changes. After every mistake Charles made, I expect you thought: “Vesey wouldn't have done that.” But an idea can't ever make mistakes. He led a perfect life in your brain. When he turned up again, the climate was right for him, tempered by your imagination. But his climate isn't right for you.'

‘His climate!' Harriet thought, staring down at the fire until her eyes smarted. The word expressed something of her feelings at being with him: how she had loved, when she was young, merely to stand close to him. When he had drawn away, he took something miraculous from her.

‘I won't remind you of your child,' Kitty said.

‘And I won't mention the fact that I find this conversation painful.'

‘Always laughing at nothing, those two!' Elke thought passing in the hall.

‘But painful or not,' Kitty said, ‘I must say, darling, do be clear; don't drift. Think of consequences. Remember Madame Bovary. No, I'm sorry, I don't mean to be offensive, only – well, Charles snapping and snarling, everything uncomfortable, storms in the air; glasses crashing to the ground; blood flowing . . . because someone's face, or voice, obsesses you. When really everybody is the same.'

‘No,' Harriet protested. ‘All that makes life worth living is that we are completely different from one another and then – and it is always wonderful when it happens – see little likenesses; find some quickening, some response; some common ground.'

She spoke quietly. When a coal dropped on to the hearth, she started dreadfully. She seemed, Kitty thought, to be in a state of dazed convalescence, weakly remote, yet irritated by trifles.

‘Why don't you have a good cry?' she suggested. ‘Sooner or later, you must.'

‘Years fly by: at first, I couldn't believe I would ever be middle-aged, as my mother was: now I can't believe that I am. It has all melted away and meant nothing. Anything that comes now is much too late.'

‘Exactly!' Kitty said comfortably. ‘So don't jeopardise what you
have
got. Lovely word “jeopardy”. I always adored it. Since I was a child.'

‘I must see him again.'

‘Why not leave it as it is?'

‘It
isn't
. Nothing
is
. I know nothing. The other night was only confusing . . . dreadful for him . . . I couldn't tell him how sorry I was . . .'

‘Write it.'

‘We have only one life.'

‘The other night . . . if you left it there . . . it wouldn't be too bad to remember, surely? Charles behaving intolerably, no doubt, but only because he loves you. Vesey's love and sympathy was somehow conveyed in spite of us. I am sorry I am so full of good advice. Perhaps I am only trying to stop you having what I have never had myself.'

‘Whatever your motive, it could never be that.'

‘But I do love you. People I love I like to see nice and cosy and within my ken. I can't bear them to be ranging about, and having sorrows and adventures, and endangering themselves and being in jeopardy.'

‘You have always been wonderful to me,' Harriet said, in a light, bright voice. But she did feel remote and convalescent. Kitty was almost unreal. Isolated, she could see only blurred people moving about her, hear only muffled sounds; was, though approached, really unapproachable.

‘It's funny,' Kitty was saying. ‘We seem much more the same age now we're older. Though, of course, that's really for you to say, not me.'

Kitty had gone when Betsy returned. The lilac petals fell unheeded. The drawing-room fire was somehow between times; its beautiful afternoon crispness and energy gone, and the logs which had been put on for after supper hissing steadily. Although Harriet had plumped up the cushions and straightened the rug, the room still in some way looked awry; a window was widely opened to let out cigarette smoke, and the curtains shifted along their rods.

It was lucky, Betsy felt, that she did not need to be welcomed home or to be cheered. Standing with her back to the smoky fire, she suddenly put her finger-tips to each side of her brow, drew her hair back from the temples, and with a look of vacant stage-inanity, a hollow pathos, surveyed a chair which stood crookedly against the wall, then dropped a mad lopsided curtsey. When Charles opened the door, she was hastily tying her shoe.

‘Well!' he said, hitting his leg with the rolled-up evening paper. This was his traditional entrance.

‘Hallo, father.'

‘What are you doing down there?'

‘Tying my shoe-lace.'

‘You always do the simplest thing as if you were up to some mischief. Where's your mother?'

‘I haven't seen her. Upstairs, I expect.'

‘How've you been getting on?'

‘Oh, very well, thank you.'

Charles lifted glasses from a tray and held them to the light – two smeared with lipstick, the others clean. For an instant, before he was relieved, he felt a sensation of disappointment, almost as if he were cross at being baulked in his pursuit of pain, at being deprived of a beloved suspicion. He poured himself a drink and took it upstairs.

Harriet was sitting before her mirror.

‘You're doing your hair a different way.' He held his glass for her to take a sip as she usually did. This evening, she hesitated before she drank. ‘Aren't you?' he asked.

‘I was only parting it a little higher, but it doesn't suit me. I thought perhaps I should have a fringe.'

‘Then please think again,' he said coldly, as if she had outlined some immoral plan.

‘Kitty came,' she said.

‘You had a nice afternoon's chat about your hair-styles, then.' He liked that – to picture, when he was at work, the womenfolk gathered cosily by the fire eating pretty cakes, talking about trivialities. It gave him a feeling of safety.