Contango (Ill Wind) (31 page)

“There are some who seem to have,” she said quietly.

“Who?”

“Those who are supposed to be plotting to kill you.”

He laughed. “Oh, a few half-crazed survivors of the old
régime— yes, I grant you them. But theirs is only a sort of private
feud.”

“You despise it for that reason?”

“Well, I don’t think it’s big enough to
matter—taking the long view, of course.”

“Don’t you think it’s a big thing to have to begin life
afresh in a foreign country? Don’t you ever fear the hate of those
who’ve been driven to it?”

“If they begin life afresh, they have no time for hate. And if they
hate, it shows they aren’t beginning afresh. They’re merely
wasting time, letting memories turn sour inside them.”

“Yes, I know what you mean,” she answered, and gazed across
the table with new and darker perception. She was aware that she loved and
hated him simultaneously, with passion that clamoured equally for
satisfaction of either emotion. She felt him, more than ever, part of the
architecture of all her private and personal misery; yet as someone also who
held the power of magic cancellation. Until that moment she had looked
forward to the denouement, some time, of telling him who she was; but now,
she realised, there would be no point in it; he had diagnosed her position,
without knowing it was hers. She had let memories turn sour—it was a
true indictment. But what else, after all? Was every injustice to be
forgotten and forgiven in the cold radiance of this man’s benevolence?
Or must one always, like nations, be wearied by debts owed and owing?

Yet behind the stir of her thoughts her body was in many ecstasies. The
food, the Liebfraumilch ’21, the velvet glow of the lamplight on the
flowers, the murmur of voices and the brittle flan-flan of the
mandolin—all touched her with sheerly physical reminders. Life was
short; twelve years of exile, and then this night—how could one
balance them, or need they balance at all? Something he had once said
recurred to her: “The world is tired of gestures; it cries out for acts
that have a meaning in themselves.” She felt again a strange power in
him, reaching out in conquest that was partly rescue; and at that moment,
from below, came the slur of a tango, wistful, gently insinuating. It made
her lean forward across the coffee-cups and lay her hand over his wrist.
“I can’t stand much more,” she whispered.

“You’ve had enough of the music, Paula? If so,
I’ll—”

“No, no, it isn’t that.”

“Perhaps you’ve had enough of me and my continual
chatter?”

“No, nor that either.” She told him of his victory with her
eyes. “On the contrary, Paul.”

“That’s good news. And a good dinner, too…. What would you
like to do next?”

Her fingers tightened over his hand as she replied, in a slow, deliberate
whisper: “What would you like to do, Paul?”

A few hours later he said, almost crossly: “So you still won’t
tell me anything about yourself?”

“No,” she answered, with tender finality. He had been
questioning her relentlessly for some time. “No, Paul, no. Not even in
exchange for your own life-history. Let’s both do without
confessions.”

They were in the small first-floor bedroom whose pine furniture and
flowered window-boxes distilled a pleasant mixture of perfumes. All revelry
below had long since ended, leaving only the church-bell to sprinkle the
quarters over roofs that seemed to echo them almost metallically in the
silence. Those chimes had marked the seconds in the short moment of
ecstasy.

“And you won’t come back with me to Russia?”

“Good heavens, no!”

“I’m not joking, if that’s what you think.”

“My dear Paul, I don’t think and I don’t
care.”

“And I suppose you don’t love, either?”

“If this is love, then I do, for the time being. But don’t you
feel, Paul, that some things are only just to be touched? If you grasp them,
they either break or escape.”

“And that’s how it’s to be with you and me? Only the
touch?”

“Yes, if we’re wise. You don’t really care for women. I
don’t really care for men either. You have so many other
interests—so have I. It would be a great mistake for either of us
to—to exaggerate—this.”

“I see. You want me to regard you as if you were just any ordinary
woman who might have come along?”

“Much more sensible, Paul, if you did.”

“Except that any ordinary woman wouldn’t have even begun to
attract me. You’re quite right—I’m not particularly keen
on women, as rule. But YOU… well, I find I want more of you.”

“Perhaps if you are ever here at another of these big
conferences—”

“I said MORE, not again.”

“More? What makes you suppose there is any more?”

“I believe there is, and I intend to make sure. By knowing you, I
mean. I think we might find a fair amount of happiness in each
other.”

“You think so?” she cried, mockingly. “You think
I
could?” Suddenly she broke into hysterical sobbing. “Oh,
no, no, no—I couldn’t possibly stand you like that! Already
you’ve made nothing else matter to me for days and
days—you’ve made me forget everything—why, I even forgot
to-night—last night—something that was always on my mind before
I met you—”

She told him then about her brother in America, and his confident,
dominating manner changed at once to a pacifying tenderness. He took her into
his arms and comforted her with intimacies that were childlike in their
simplicity. “But, my dear Paula, why on earth didn’t you mention
it? I had no idea you were so worried. We could easily have called at the
post office on our way. But we’ll go there first thing in the morning,
anyhow.”

He was so kind, and she hated him for it almost as much as she loved him.
“But I FORGOT—don’t you see?” she cried, with sombre
emotion.

In the morning they drove back through spring sunshine and showers. He put
her down at the post office and then drove himself on to the Conference. She
had promised a further meeting, but had declined to fix any definite
arrangements.

When she asked if there were any letters and the clerk handed her one, she
went very pale. It had the New York postmark.

She opened and read it. Then she went out into the street and walked along
past the shop-windows.

An hour later she was still walking, vaguely from street to street. Her
mind gave her questions that were like hammer-blows. Why had he ever gone to
Maramba? Why had he gone to Rio, to America at all? What had driven him so
far from his own home, to these fantastic places? Oh, if only… if
only…

She came to the post office again and went to the counter with the
envelope. “Can you tell me when this arrived?” she asked.

“Yesterday afternoon,” replied the clerk, glancing at it. He
knew her by sight and added: “It was here at the time you usually
call.”

She went out, trembling in a way that attracted attention from several
persons who saw her.

All that night the letter had been there waiting for her… all that
night.

A half-crazed survivor… and Leon dead….

When Elliott came downstairs on the morning of his sixtieth
birthday, he felt glad to have been born at the right side of the year. It
was all very well when you were young, having birthdays in late summer or
autumn; but when you entered the seventh decade you wanted the leaves to be
fresh on the trees and no sign of decay to greet you. There was enough of
that in your own body, even if you were what was called a
“well-preserved” man. Elliott, taking a mirrored glimpse of
himself as he crossed the hall to the breakfast-room, could certainly
congratulate himself on being that. He was tall, with not even the beginnings
of a stoop, and no trace of a paunch either; and his hair was even more of an
adornment than before it had turned grey. “I ought to be good for
another ten years,” he reflected, blinking in the sunlight that poured
through the mullioned windows. After all, Disraeli was premier at
seventy-four, Gladstone at eighty-four… and Pitt at twenty-four, for that
matter. Good heavens, think of it. It all proved, if it proved anything at
all, that age didn’t matter.

As he entered the breakfast-room the Sealyhams scrambled around him, and
his host’s children, John and Rose and Elizabeth, got up rather shyly;
the two girls smiled, but John, who was eleven and the eldest, spoke up:
“Good morning, Mr. Elliott. Many happy returns of the day.”

“Thank you, John, thank you,” he answered, in his rich, mellow
voice; and then he bowed to his hostess, a tall, fair, beautiful woman of
scarcely middle age, and said, with the quietness of old friendship:
“Good morning, Fanny.”

“Morning, Harry. I say the same as John, you know.”

He smiled and thanked her, and saw that the children were still shyly
standing. “Do please sit down,” he added, and then, with a laugh:
“No, no, Fanny—I’ll serve myself—I’m not an
old crock yet.”

Thank goodness, he thought, as he gave himself an egg and some bacon, he
could still eat like everybody else—no fads about orange juice and
rye-biscuits and that sort of thing. He carried the plate to the table and
then saw that the cloth nearabouts was heaped with parcels tied up in
coloured ribbon and each with a little label on it. He was surprised,
scarcely realising what it all meant, at first; it hadn’t somehow
occurred to him that this would happen. “To Mr. Elliott, with love from
John.”

“To Harry, from Fanny, with best love.”

“To Harry, from Bill….”

He knew that the children’s eyes were intent on him.
“I’m not going to open a single one till your father comes
down,” he said, “and then we’ll all look
together.”

“Father’s in his bath,” said John, with pluck.

“I know he is. He wished me many happy returns before any of
you.” And he laughed again. He was happy, and a little sad, because of
all this birthday business.

The Kennersleys—Lord and Lady Kennersley—were among his
oldest friends. The family had helped him as a boy; it was in this same
house, in the library, that he had received his first big encouragement. He
had been a junior clerk in the company office then, at twenty-four—the
same age that Pitt was premier. “I hear you’re working for a
scholarship to Oxford, Elliott. I hope you do well. And if it would help, you
can take time off from now till the examination—with pay, of
course.” That had been the old man, whom everyone had supposed to be so
ferocious. Elliott had been very nervous of HIM, and nervous, too, of the big
rooms and the fine furniture. And now, he reflected, the old man’s
grandchildren were actually nervous of him. They kept looking at him over the
rim of their cups, and looking away when he caught them at it.

Lord Kennersley entered, crisp, jovial, plus-foured for the day’s
activities. “Hullo, kids. Undone the parcels yet, Harry?”

“I’m waiting for all of you to help me,” Elliott
answered.

Kennersley was five years his junior; they had been friends at Oxford, and
during Elliott’s early career had shared bachelor rooms in London. Not
until ten years after succeeding to the title had Kennersley married, and
then, rather surprisingly to his friends, he had chosen a musical comedy
actress, very much younger than himself, of no family, small education, but
immense vivacity and charm. She had (it was currently reported) been his
mistress first of all, and then, a eugenist malgré lui, he had very sensibly
made her the mother of his heirs. The marriage had proved a quite astounding
success. She had fitted herself to aristocratic domesticity as easily as to a
new part in a play that was going to run for ever, she made an excellent wife
and mother, and she had become delightfully popular amongst all
Kennersley’s intimates. Since his own wife’s death, Elliott could
certainly count her his greatest woman friend.

Breakfast was held up indefinitely by the opening of the parcels. There
was a gold cigarette-case from Bill, a leather wallet from Fanny, a tie-press
from John, Blake’s poems from Rose, and a leather-bound address-book
from Elizabeth. Elliott thanked them all. How nice they were to him, but he
wished the children weren’t so shy. John blushed when Fanny said:
“He WOULD buy you a tie-press, Harry. He said you needed
one.”

“There seem to be about a million other things for you in the
hall,” said Kennersley, grinning. “You’ll have to get
Jevons to help you through with them afterwards. I had them all shoved on one
side, so that you wouldn’t be detained on the way clown. After all, we
think we ought to come first.”

“You do,” said Elliott sincerely.

Then they all went on with their food, excited and happy after the little
scene. Kennersley helped himself to enormous quantities of eggs and bacon and
kidneys and sausages. “Well, what’s the programme to-day?”
he asked, at length.

“I’ve got the meeting at Sibleys at eleven. Then the executive
at half-past five. To-night, of course, there’s the big
dinner.”

“Not much of a birthday for you.”

“Never mind. It’s begun well.”

He saw the cyclist newsboy pedalling up the drive with the morning papers,
and a minute later the butler brought them in. Kennersley gave him his
choice; he took The Times, but only glanced at the middle page. Kennersley
took the Mail. “Anything fresh?” called out Fanny, as she poured
more coffee. “No, doesn’t seem to be anything,” muttered
her husband, chewing hard.

Elliott smiled to himself. War in China; Revolution in Salvador;
Conference Hitch…. No, doesn’t seem to be anything. Staring out of
the window again, he could understand. It really did look as if Chilver were
in the middle of a world in which nothing happened. The lawns sloped down to
a belt of trees beyond which, at a mysteriously unreckonable distance, a line
of wavy green-brown hills met the blue. There was no sound except the distant
clank of a horse-drawn roller. Exquisite world! For centuries there had been
no war at Chilver, no revolution, no hitch of any kind; but could one be sure
that none was now threatening? Elliott felt suddenly oppressed with all the
knowledge that these people did not share. This fine, friendly fellow, not
much more than an overgrown boy, with his income of many thousands a year
derived largely from coal-mining royalties, which he spent profusely on
running model farms that did not pay and on giving employment to grooms,
harness-makers, and jockeys; this charming girl-woman, daughter of a Notting
Hill tobacconist, whose chief interest in life, next to her three lovely
children and her husband, was the breeding of Sealyhams—how casual and
planless their lives were, and how unsure of survival in a world that might
decide to take itself with scientific seriousness! Perhaps that sort of a
world was coming. And then, whimsically, it occurred to him that even if it
did come, England might, as usual, contrive some queer compromise, some
amazing non sequitur like the British Commonwealth or the Thirty-Nine
Articles.