Angel (21 page)

“But, ma‘am, there's nothing down there—only Paradise House and that's empty and all overgrown.”

Angel shook the reins impatiently, staring ahead of her, until the old man went back to his cart, dratting and spitting, and began to lead his horse down the lane.

“Do we have to go?” Esmé asked again and this time she nodded.

At the bend of the road they were able to pass the cart, and Esmé called out his thanks to the old man as they went by.

“A lovely old face,” he said.

“I didn't notice,” said Angel.

As they descended the slope into the valley, branches shut out the light and the vegetation was more lush; great ferns edged the rutted, grassy lane and there were leaves of a size she had never seen before. They tunnelled through dark foliage and came at last to a gateway. There was no longer a gate, but two posts and deer carved in stone surmounting them. The drive was mossy and the pony stumbled on rough flints that had broken the surface like the fins of sharks. Fir trees creaked and clashed their branches in the wind: there was a resinous, heavy smell and a continual commotion of rooks overhead.

“I think it is all rather eerie,” Esmé said and he hunched up his shoulders and shivered. Eerie, said his echo.

Then the trees parted and they drove into a cobbled space before some stables. They had come by a back entrance and the real drive lay ahead of them, a short avenue of lime-trees whose pale leaves had begun to fall over the tussocky grass. The house stood on a slight rise: a grey, Italianate façade with a broken balustrade. The stone above two of the windows had been blackened as if from a fire, and some of the dusty panes had stars of broken glass.

“Shan't we be very late for dinner?” asked Esmé, as she stepped down from the trap, leading Czar.

“I have wanted to see this house since I was a child.”

“But why?”

He followed her towards the entrance. The pony was tugging at the coarse grass where they had left him: there was the peaceful sound of creaking leather and ringing bit. “I used to hear about it from one of my relations,” Angel said, as she went on in front. “As a child I was always trying to imagine it.”

But how different it was from her dreams and from the house she had described in her first novel. The ashen look of the stone was a great shock to her. It was all built the wrong way about and was not big enough or decorated enough, and there were no peacocks. On the terrace, an urn had toppled over and spilt earth in which groundsel and shepherd's-purse had rooted. In a semi-circle behind the house the high woods were turning yellow. There were snatches of rain in the air and it would soon be dark. Esmé thought disconsolately of his dinner; tomorrow he would be returning to London and the good food would all be over. It was dismal to think of going back to Chelsea, to the scrappy meals and the lonely room. He would have to begin working hard again to get some money, for what he had earned from Angel had been melting away. He had hair-raising stories of his phenomenally bad luck, of fortunes lost by a short head or by his own disastrous second thoughts, or information he should never have listened to. But he had no audience for the stories. He knew much better than to tell them to Angel, and there seemed to be no one else. “You and your everlasting horses,” the young girl from the tobacconist's always said, stroking his hair as if he were a child. Ah, yes, he thought, there is the girl from the tobacconist's. And new lessons in evasiveness to learn, or leave the district once and for all.

Shutters were drawn across the downstairs windows, but he could peer in through the letterbox into the hall. It was, as far as he could see, hexagonal, with white panelled walls and some empty niches. “For Ming vases, I daresay,” he told Angel.

“Do let me see.”

He moved aside so that she could look through the letter-box.

“Those niches,” he said. “It could be charming.”

One side window was unshuttered, and they could see the whole room, with the oblong patches where pictures had hung on the yellowing walls. The fireplace was carved in a silvery fruit-wood in a high relief with roses and ribbons. There was a rusty basket-grate in which lay a dead bird.

The back of the house was more overgrown than the front, and the brick paths and yards were mossy and silvered with the tracks of slugs. A huge boot-scraper rose above a bed of nettles at the kitchen door. The St Bernard seemed quite impervious, ignoring these surroundings, keeping close to Angel and obeying all she said. “He feels at home already,” she said.

“But he hasn't
been
home yet,” said Esmé.

“I meant here,” she answered.

Someone had forced the lock of the conservatory and they were able to push open the door and go inside.

The long shelves were full of flower-pots with the dead remains of plants all strung together in a network of cobwebs in which moths and flies had been entangled never to get free. A handful of rain hit the glass and there was a far-off sound of thunder.

“Will the pony be all right?” asked Esmé.

“I imagined this—the conservatory—exactly as it is,” she said triumphantly.

“With all these skeletons of plants?”

“No, no; but facing this way and at this end of the house.”

“It must have been empty a long time.”

“They lost their money and had to go away. Then there was a fire. No one knew how—perhaps a tramp who had forced his way in. Two of the rooms were burnt out.”

“Who would buy it?” he asked. “So hidden away and low-lying and overhung with trees; so costly to keep up, too.”

Angel walked to the end of the conservatory and tried a door, but it was locked.

“I shall,” she said.

He was too surprised to answer her.

She had found one living thing there among the flowerpots, a great cactus which had surprisingly survived, gross and bladdery; it looked as if it could keep itself going on its own succulence for years to come. She pinched its fleshy pads with curiosity. Then she smiled and said: “It is just like a dream. When I was a child, I used to make up stories about living in this house. People called them lies, because I sometimes forgot what was real and said things aloud which I would have done better to have kept in my dreams; but I was only willing myself towards the truth. All the same, it seems miraculous to me now that it is going to happen. Nothing shall stop me.”

“But so much is to be done. Such repairs and rebuilding. You haven't even seen inside. It might be a hollow shell for all you know of it.”

“Yes, it might be,” she agreed placidly. Then she said:

“Nobody else wants it, but that doesn't lessen my pleasure. When I was a little girl, I once went to a children's party and there was a Christmas-tree—a huge one, to the ceiling—they never seem so big nowadays. It was covered with presents and after tea they were to be given out to us. Near the top was a fan, one of those rounded, wooden ones, perhaps Japanese. It was black, with a scene of mountains painted on it, in rather frosty-looking paint. All through tea, I couldn't eat for anxiety. I wondered how I could be sure that I should get the fan. Then we sat round on the floor and took numbered tickets from a hat. There were nineteen children and I was number nineteen, so I had the very last choice of all. Oh, you can imagine how despairing I was. The first girl went up and chose a paint-box, but that didn't raise my hopes. There were so many dull things on the tree, like handkerchiefs and money-boxes and bags of sweets. As it went on, this torture, and children chose other things, I only felt more desperate. . . .”

“I can't bear it,” Esmé murmured.

“. . .and when it came to two away from my turn, I could hardly breathe and I wondered how I could endure losing when I had come so near. The girl before me went up to the tree and I shut my eyes. ‘Number nineteen,' they called out. The fan was still there. I shall never forget that moment. I went up and fetched it, and when I brought it back, a girl next to me whispered: ‘Hard luck! It isn't even new'. But I was in the seventh heaven. And now I am, about this house. I know that I shall have it. I am older now and better-off and can control things more, without enduring all that nervous strain.”

Esmé had been studying her face while she was talking. He thought: I wish that she would write of things like that, instead of all that dishonest nonsense. “What became of the fan?” he asked.

“I can't remember.”

“You know,
I
have sometimes had what I wanted and it hasn't been at all the best thing for me—as no doubt Nora has told you.”

“I expect a woman can manage to be more single-minded, not so waylaid by love.”

“I don't know about love. It seems a charitable word to use in my case.”

“But all of this running away,” she said boldly. “Did you never want a wife and a home of your own?”

“Unlike you, I dare not let myself dwell on improbabilities. You know I have no money.”

“Other people with very little money seem to marry.”

“Perhaps I should be too proud.”

“You must learn to make money from your painting, as I have with my pen.”

“Nobody believes in my painting but you. I have no faith in it myself.”

“Then I will have enough for both of us.”

It was growing dark outside; in this dim, aqueous light she could scarcely see his face. He was not trying to look at hers, but bent moodily over the St Bernard, fondling its ears. He seemed sulky and dispirited all of a sudden. Then he raised his head, and when he spoke his voice had managed to gather a new warmth. “It was an exciting story. I hope you get everything you want, always. This house and. . . .” He broke off as if he wondered what else there could be that she could possibly desire.

She turned her back to him, examining the cactus plant again, afraid for herself lest the house, just like another childish toy, was to be the sum of her good luck. When he saw this, he went to her and put his arm along her shoulders and turned her towards him.

“Tell me!”

“I comfort myself with material things,” she said in a muffled voice, her long fingers pressed to her brow, covering her eyes. He knew then that she was about to risk everything and say what he himself would now have no need to say.

“What other things do you want?” he asked gently.

“Love.” The word came with such a gasp that the St Bernard for the first time looked surprised.

“You have love,” Esmé said, “But perhaps it is not where you wish to see it. And such love must always be useless to you. But if it comforts you to know, it is none the less very true.”

“I don't understand.” She seemed confused and leant back against the bench.

“I mean that I love you,” he said quietly. “You can keep the knowledge, if you care to and it means anything to you. I didn't intend to tell you, but I am told that women like the thought of hopeless love; the more the merrier, perhaps. A little trophy for you, something to hang on your bracelet—like this!” He took off his signet-ring, kissed it and put it into her hand. “When you are an old lady, you can show it to your grandchildren, and say ‘That one was Esmé's—or was it Tom's, or Dick's or Harry's?' Never mind, it will all be forgotten, except that I told you my love when I meant not to, and you had that triumph—meagre as it was against all the others.”

She put one palm over the other, the ring safe between them, and wondered what to say. She wanted to clutch at some of his words before they faded, but already they were flying away from her. Lightning, when it filled the conservatory, flashed upon something bright in Esmé's hand. Thunder broke with a splintering noise above them. “What are you doing?” she asked.

“There! I have cut our initials in the cactus—as well as I could see to do it. A and E. It is to commemorate an occasion.” He clicked back the blade of his penknife and dropped it into his pocket.

“That poor pony!” he said.

It was the only time in her life that she had forgotten an animal. When the rain came, drumming and dancing on the glass roof, she was glad that they would have to stay there longer. He had his hand on the door and was peering into the darkness outside, waiting for the storm to pass over. As it began to ease off, she said in her flustered harsh way: “I haven't thanked you. For the ring, I mean, and for what you said. No words will come. All I can say is that I love you, too, and have for years and shall for ever.”

When he turned to her, the look of surprise on his face was wasted, for by now it was quite dark.

T
HEY
returned to Paradise House from their honeymoon. There was scaffolding over the front—the South side—and patches of new plaster, a smell of paint and putty and a sound of hammering. The balustrade had been mended and the fallen urn put back. Two peacocks had arrived. Angel had sent an order for them when she was in Greece, and Nora received them nervously. They moped on the terrace, which they covered with their droppings; they moulted; they sometimes screamed but never fanned out their tail-feathers.

Nora was worried about everything, especially Angel's increasing extravagances. The house was eating up money, she wrote to her; but Angel never had the letter. They had moved on; for everywhere was so disappointing. Greece was especially disappointing. It was nothing like her novels. There was so much fallen masonry, dazzling and tiring to the eyes; olive groves looked dusty and really there were only pillars to temples. The food was nauseating, plates of black octopus and black olives and black liver-sausage. She had had good food all her life and missed it. Esmé laughed at her squeamishness. They were both tired from travelling and he from seasickness. He tried to hide the fact of his nausea because it prompted her to make long speeches on will-power and morbid imaginings, on abandoning oneself to the rhythm of the boat and thinking of other things, not of oneself the whole time. “The food isn't wholesome and that is why you are sick. It is foolish to blame the elements or the sea. I was wiser than you knew when I refused the egg and lemon soup and that ghastly-looking squid lying in rancid oil.” Esmé stuffed his fingers in his ears.