An Accomplished Woman (33 page)

‘Which is exactly what a
woman says when she does want one!’ shrilled Mrs Vawser, archly nudging her
husband. ‘Alas, you will agree, Mr Vawser, that we women are like that.’

‘Say one thing, and mean
another,’ he said, squeezing the words through his grin.

‘This may be so — but
duplicity is surely not the sole preserve of the female sex,’ Lydia said.
‘Don’t tell me, Mr Vawser, that you have never been guilty of a fib.’

‘Her, her, her.’

‘Oh, come, this will not
do,’ Mrs Vawser cried, a certain tightening in her gaiety. ‘Abusing the male
sex, you know, is too revealing. You must be careful, Miss Templeton, or you
will end up sounding like an old maid.’

‘I am not much
frightened by the character of the old maid. She is always figured as
contemptible; but I would sooner apply that term to the kind of woman who must
have a man, at any price to her pride and dignity.’

‘Lord, such things you
think of! I may as well tell you, Miss Templeton, that you will never catch
your beau with
that
sort of clever talk. I fear that may have been your
trouble!’

‘Perhaps so. I confess I
have always preferred cleverness to its alternative; but if the art of stupid
talk should turn out to be an essential requirement for my happiness, be
assured I shall know where to come for instruction in it.’

‘Her, her, her,’ said Mr
Vawser, not entirely to his wife’s pleasure.

Her grip on his arm grew
more custodial than fond; but she presented Lydia with a corroded smile,
remarking sorrowfully: ‘Indeed you really must be careful, Miss Templeton — it
is the absolute hallmark of the old maid that she flares up at the slightest
thing.’

‘Hallmarks?’ said Lewis
Durrant, appearing at Lydia’s side. ‘I know a thing or two about hallmarks.
Someone been buying dubious silver?’

‘Oh! you are here, are
you?’ Mrs Vawser said disdainfully. ‘I supposed you had cried off.’

‘No, I am only late.’ Mr
Durrant gave Lydia a short bow: Mrs Vawser a shorter.

‘And not in the least
sorry for it, I see.’ Mrs Vawser sniffed.

‘Oh, I always ration my
company: it is too strong a dose for people otherwise. My apologies,
nonetheless, where they are due, to Miss Templeton. Now where are these
hallmarks?’

‘We were talking of
human ones,’ Lydia said.

‘Ah. I was going to
suggest turning the thing over and having a good look at the bottom, but in
that case . . .’

Lydia covered her smile;
but Mrs Vawser looked with suspicion from one to the other, and then elevated
her head in sour triumph. ‘Oh, I see how it is. Oh, now I see why we are a
little
de trop,
my love. We should rejoin our own party. Always rise
from the table when the play becomes too deep.’

‘What did I say?’ Mr
Durrant asked, when she had tripped away. ‘I’m disappointed. I was just going
to ask where she had left her sheep.’

‘Hush, you must have a
care: Mrs Vawser has been arranging my affairs, and she will presently be doing
the same for you. Affairs of the heart, needless to say.’

‘Oh! those,’ he said
drably: then, after seeming about to say something more, fell silent.

From relief at seeing
him, Lydia fell back on her earlier irritation. ‘It is fortunate you were able
to find us, Mr Durrant. We waited at the gate as long as we decently could,
but—’

‘What?’ he said, coming
scowling out of abstraction. ‘Waited, what for? Oh! yes, that. Never fear, I
wasn’t detained by anything pleasant. I was about to leave when my landlady
came up with a letter she had forgotten to give me earlier. Been sleeping off
the brandy, probably. Or else she had some occult suspicion of how unwelcome it
would be. It was from Hugh, of course. The most scampish and impudent yet.’

‘Ah. And you needed a
little space to tear your hair and chew the furniture.’

‘Does that help, do you
find?’ he asked seriously. ‘No matter. I sat down and wrote a prompt reply,
which was probably too intemperate even for me to send . . . The young pup is
coming to Bath.’

‘Indeed? And not for his
health, I presume.’

‘No, alas. He is visiting
some fellow-wastrel at Cheltenham, and declares his intention of coming on to
Bath to see whether it is true that dear old Uncle Durrant has lost his wits
and is actually setting up for a gallant. His words, of course.’

‘Of course. Well, in one
sense you are to be congratulated, Mr Durrant. He may phrase it how he likes,
but the plain fact is you have shaken him. Which was part of your intention,
was it not?’

‘Aye, so it was . . .
But I cannot like the prospect of the young whelp descending on me to, as he
put it, talk some sense into my head.’

‘No, I can see that:
especially as you have, after all, no success to show in your project as yet.’

His lips twitched. ‘Hugh
cannot be sure of that; and what is more, Miss Templeton, you cannot be sure of
that either.’

‘No, I suppose not,’ she
said, aggrieved at his tone, in which she found something sharper than his
familiar rudeness.

Phoebe turned to them
just then, and with a smile of welcome introduced him to the Allardyces. Soon
the party was complete — and no less uncomfortable than before. Mr Durrant took
just as much notice of them as suggested he would have difficulty recognising
them again in the morning. Preoccupation made him more distant than ever. He
walked about dutifully, offering no one either his arm or his conversation.
Lydia understood that he was brooding on Hugh Hanley’s arrival — the news did
not lack its piquancy of interest for her — but she resented his so blatantly
not caring to disguise it. He was here because he was her acquaintance, after
all. Whyever did Miss Templeton bring along that stuffed dummy? It was nonsense
to suppose the Allardyces thinking any such thing, no doubt, and nonsense to
care even if they did; but still, something had touched her upon the raw. She
did not like to think it was the idiot aspersions of Mrs Vawser.

It was Mr Beck who
proposed that they go into the maze. His companions being spiritless made him
sparkish; and the protests of both Mr Allardyce and Juliet that it was best tried
in daylight, that they would only be blundering about, made him more insistent.

‘This is precisely the
point of a maze — to be deliciously lost,’ he cried. ‘And look, they have hung
those ridiculous lanterns at the opening, so there must be more inside. Miss
Rae, you will not shrink from the experiment, I know. There is always some
amusement to be found even in the greatest dullness, and here it is.’

‘Well —’ Phoebe
hesitated, smiling’— I dare say if we do become very lost, we can always
shout.’

And what is to prevent
us being heard, save the noise of half a thousand people and an orchestra?’ Mr
Allardyce said lightly.

‘Oh — that is a
consideration indeed,’ Phoebe said. ‘If you really think—’

‘Shout, nonsense,’
chuckled Mr Beck. ‘If it comes to that, there is a key to all mazes, and that
is to keep bearing either left or right.’

‘Well, let us try it,’
said Lydia, who felt that there was little material difference between
wandering aimlessly round the open gardens, and trooping aimlessly between tall
box hedges.

They went in, Mr Beck
and Phoebe leading the way. The maze was very dark. Snatches of laughter from
further within suggested that they were not the only ones to make the attempt;
but they soon faded, and so too, uncannily, did the noise from the gardens. The
smell of thick leaves and rich earth grew stronger, until it hardly seemed
possible to Lydia that the town of Bath lay all around them. Their own voices
took on a husky, furtive note that blended with the shushing of gravel
underfoot to make something oddly suggestive of poachers and danger. In
daylight there would have been ample room to go two abreast, but in the
darkness the brushing prickle of twigs — imagined cobwebs and moths also —
nudged them into single file. Somewhere behind her, she knew, was Mr Durrant:
ahead of her, Mr Allardyce. She could hear his breathing, a little sharp; and
when she bumped into his back, he gave a start.

‘I do beg your pardon,’
she said. ‘At least, if you are Mr Allardyce. If you are a stranger, I don’t
much care.’

He gave a short,
impatient laugh. ‘Not at all. Inevitable consequence of, if you’ll forgive me,
a very wrong-headed notion.’

‘I dare say you have
often been in this maze — in the daylight, that is.’

‘Once or twice. And in
the daylight, as you say Juliet!’

‘Yes, I’m here,’ came a
voice from somewhere ahead.

‘Mr Beck is still
confident of leading us out, I collect?’ Mr Allardyce called out.

‘Not at all, sir!’ came
Mr Beck’s laughing voice from further on. ‘But let me just find the next right
turn, and then I think I shall know where we are.’

‘Curious modes of
pleasure we do think up for ourselves,’ Mr Allardyce said, with a thin sigh.
‘Rather like sticking pins in one’s hand for the novelty of it. Really one
would suppose they would hang more lanterns. Mr Durrant is still with us, I
hope?’

‘I’m here,’ came Mr
Durrant’s voice, gruff and bored, but surprisingly close behind Lydia. She had
forgotten how noiseless a tread he had for a large man.

They shuffled on, led by
the sound of Mr Beck being spontaneous and irrepressible, and Phoebe joining in
his laughter, if a little more quietly. Lydia’s eyes, adjusting to the
darkness, made out Mr Allardyce’s slender shoulders raised high and taut. From
Mr Durrant behind her came an intermittent noise that she could only suppose
was his characteristic sniff of contempt. Well, she understood: as they rounded
yet another featureless corner, she found herself rather tired of the
amusement.

But not as tired as Mr
Allardyce who, stopping so short that she nearly collided with him again,
called out in a hard-edged, glinting voice: ‘Very well, Mr Beck, we have gone
around and about, and done all the things that people do in a maze: I think now
is the time when a man who says he can find the way out begins to prove it.’

‘Upon my soul, sir, I am
trying,’ came Mr Beck’s voice, a little yelping and dog-like in his hilarity,
‘but I am quite at a loss for the moment. Is it not monstrous refreshing,
though, not to know where you are? Just for once, eh? We mortals pride
ourselves on that knowledge, you know, but I think it does us no end of good
now and then to be lost — absolutely lost. Does it not, Miss Rae . . .?’

‘This fellow will lead
us nowhere — nowhere,’ lamented Mr Allardyce, his shoulders more angular than
ever. ‘Juliet — can you get some sense from him? I doubt it. Miss Templeton,
can you? Of course not. We must suffer it until — Lord knows — until the sun
rises, perhaps. And hark — no one else in the maze at all — ample evidence of
the nonsense of it ... Well, my apologies, at any rate, Miss Templeton, for
this wretched situation.’

‘No need, sir: you did
not build the maze, I assume, and you certainly did not bring us into it,’
Lydia said. She understood Mr Allardyce’s irritation, though she found its extent
rather excessive. Mr Beck was simply as silly as she expected him to be: Mr
Allardyce was less sensible than she had hoped. To be so thoroughly put out of
temper by such a thing ... Of course, it was not equal to Mr Beck’s fatuity,
but it disconcerted her. Let Phoebe choose Mr A or Mr B, she thought, there was
still something lacking for her own tastes in either case.

Not, of course, that her
own tastes mattered: these were Phoebe’s suitors, and
she
was not in
Bath to make any sort of choice. Reminding herself of this, she found that she
had come to a stop: that Mr Allardyce’s vague silhouette was shimmering away
from her, and that there was a close presence at her back.

‘If everyone can be
persuaded to turn round,’ Mr Durrant said, ‘we can all go out of this thing at
once, and be back in the gardens: the fireworks arc beginning soon.’

‘What do you mean?’ she
said, turning, and for the moment as irritable as Mr Allardyce, trying to make
out Mr Durrant’s face in the gloom.

‘I mean that I have
copied Ariadne, and have been laying a trail ever since we entered the
labyrinth.’ Mr Durrant found her elbow, and briskly turned her around to look
back at the path by which they had come. Drops of white, like a trail of
solitary blossoms, were dotted along the gravel.

‘What — where did you .
. . ?’

‘Hugh Hanley’s letter,’
he pronounced, with spidery distaste. ‘I loathed it so much that, as with most
such things, I had to bring it in my pocket; and then as we came in here I saw
a use for it, and began ripping it into little pieces.’

Lydia was surprised at
her own relief— at how oppressed she had been by the maze, by the exhilaration
of Mr B and the complaining of Mr A and her being trapped in the darkness with them.
Everyone else, it seemed, was glad likewise to learn of Mr Durrant’s ruse, and
began retracing their steps with alacrity — except Mr Beck, who was still in
exhaustingly high spirits. A cheat — oh, a shabby cheat. We should soon have
found our own way — and there was something so delicious about being lost —
something so very liberating . . .’