Kissing Kin (10 page)

Virginia said at once that Sir Quentin Ffolliott was the man for Raymond’s arm, and machinery was set in motion for Raymond’s immediate transfer to England, though that meant separating him from Calvert, who could not be moved. A little reassured by Bracken’s letter, Camilla resigned herself to a Christmas without her brother, and found that she was able to breathe again. As usual, she craved the piano for comfort, an indulgence she had had very little time for since her arrival in England.

Finding the drawing-room deserted on a rainy afternoon, she began to play over to herself some of Calvert’s favourites in his quieter moods—Strauss, and Brahms, and Schubert—German music, though the Germans had done their best to kill him. That was one of the things it was useless to puzzle over. They had written music that he loved, that he and she had learned together in the cool, shaded drawing-room in
Richmond
. She began to sing softly, intermittently, mindful of the silent house where people were having a mid-afternoon rest—pretending that Calvert was there to hear, lying on the sofa as he might be some day before long—remember this?—and this….

The
Cradle
Song
faded into silence in the middle of a bar—she turned, her hands still on the keys—Sosthène stood in the doorway, listening. Camilla felt the helpless blush surge upward across her throat to her hair.

“I—didn’t know anyone was there,” she said breathlessly, and her lips were not steady, while her fingers turned cold and damp on the keys.

He came on into the room slowly, and Mimi pattered
importantly beside him, having been for her outing along the herbaceous border.

“You have a beautiful voice,” he said, not casually as one pays a compliment, but almost reluctantly as though rendering judgment. “It has been trained.”

“Well—only in Richmond. I was—just singing some of the things Calvert likes.” The words were hurried and uncertain in her own ears, and she had to choke back an impulse to deny again that she had sung for anyone’s benefit, for she had truly believed that he was upstairs with Sally, and her newly
self-conscious
pride would have forbidden her to set any such obvious schoolgirlish trap for his notice as to be found singing to herself on a rainy afternoon. She struck a few notes at random, and rose awkwardly from the bench.

“Ah, no—please go on—unless you would rather that Mimi and I should go away?”

“Not at all, I—I had just finished.” It sounded ungracious. She dropped back on the bench again, her hands in her lap. The very rims of her ears felt hot, as though with a fever. “What would you like to hear?”

“While we were outside in the drive we thought we heard Solveig’s Song,” he said, seating himself with deliberate ease on the near end of the sofa. “But only scraps of it reached us. Could we have that again, please? Mimi—
écoute
donc!
Ici.”
The little dog subsided at his feet. They were waiting.

A sudden third-person serenity descended on Camilla. Her fingers found all the right notes, her voice rose clear and steady from a throat she would have sworn was paralysed. She sang as at a début, possessed by the born performer’s magical reflexes surmounting panic and the weakness of the flesh. The song ended and she sat quietly, her head bent, not daring to meet his eyes though she knew he watched her.

“That was—exceptional,” he said quietly after a moment. “I had no idea you had such a voice. Do you intend to use it professionally?”

“I don’t know, I—wanted to once, but the family is against
it. And now with the war and all, I—don’t think much about it any more.”

She heard him rise, felt him approach, looked up to find him leaning on the corner of the piano at her left, his thin hands loosely clasped, his head bent sidewise to see her averted face.

“It breaks your heart a little—not to be allowed to sing,” he said.

“Well, I thought so once. But now it doesn’t seem to matter so much. Why did you say that?”

“When one has a great gift one suffers not to use it. Your voice is a thing to be shared. It would be very stupid of anyone even yourself, to deny that.”

Self-consciousness dropped from her like a cloak. She raised her head and looked him in the eyes, her own self looked out at him, without foolish barricades and pretences. Worship sat in her gaze, for anyone to see, the blind, unreasoning, humble devotion which the first sight of him had kindled in her
uninitiated
heart. It was Sosthène who was startled now, for she had been to him so far only an angular, unawakened girl with haunting eyes. He saw her suddenly as a woman, willing and aware of him. And there was no place in his life for such a woman. His life was ordered and complete, without impulses or urges or uncertainties. His life, beyond its present unvarying routine, was over. He had been content to have it so. Apart from Sally, he had no life. This girl, just by lifting her face to him, had knocked out a window in a solid stone wall. The sun shone through, but there was also a draught. What she said was commonplace enough, though, and he groped hastily for the commonplace answer.

“Then you think,” Camilla was saying, “that I should go on studying when the war is over?”

“I have no right to advise you,” he managed to reply in the same casual tone. “It is always a mistake, I think, to encourage anyone to become a professional artist. The odds are too heavy against recognition, the work is too hard. And you don’t look very strong.”

“Oh, but I am,” she assured him. “I’m strong as a horse, really. Calvert’s just the same. Thin, but indestructible.” She smiled. It was a confidential smile, the first he had ever had from her without some sort of apology in it. Her music had released her, at last, from her dread of self-revelation. Let him know. He had to know some time. She couldn’t live, and never let him know. She felt lightheaded with relief, and freedom. Her cap was over the windmill. She was through pretending with him. She had delivered herself into his hands. There was no need for him to answer, nothing for him to say. He had seen. She was quite sure that he had seen, though he had made no response. They need never speak of it, she had no desire to drag it out in the open. For her it was enough that now she had nothing to hide from him. She had no idea that she was laying upon him a burden he would not know how to bear.

“Perhaps you would do best to forget all of this,” he was saying compassionately, and then as the quick shadow fell across her face, “All except when I say that to me it is a lovely voice—young—fresh—very warm and real. May I hear it once more, or are you tired?”

Her fingers moved again on the keyboard. She looked down, smiling to herself, choosing his song, basking in a strange, illusive happiness. She sang
Depuis
la
jour.

“And why was I not told that we had a singer in the family?” demanded Sally into the silence which followed, and they turned to find her standing where Sosthène had stood, in the doorway. Camilla frankly started, but Sosthène’s movement was casual and slow as he took his elbows from the piano and went to meet her.

“Perhaps because there has been so little to sing about, these days,” he said.

“You have been well taught, my child,” said Sally, advancing on the piano. “In Richmond, I suppose. We must find someone to go on with it here.”

“Oh, I mustn’t—not in war-time,” Camilla objected. “I go back to London to the hospital right after Christmas, you
know—and my time will be full then without singing lessons.” She sat still on the piano bench, looking up at Sally. Her back was very straight. She did not intend to allow Sally to pay for her training, in any case. The least she could do now was not to be beholden to Sally in any way. She was not jealous of her. That would be absurd. She was not a rival of Sally’s, for Sosthène. That too was absurd. She reserved to herself the right to love him, so long as it did Sally no harm. But it seemed to her bad taste in the circumstances to accept favours from Sally. Young and strong and ignorant, she stood apart from them both now, convinced that her life was her own to live as she saw fit, taking advantage of nobody, islanded in fierce honour and self-respect. Sally would never have anything to reproach her with, as long as she lived. As long….
No,
you must not think like that, I forbid it.

“Ah, yes, the war,” said Sally, as though she had forgotten it. “The war will not go on for ever. Then we will go to Paris. I know just the man.” She glanced at Sosthène and nodded. “Marinelli. If he is still alive.”

“You take a great responsibility, my soul,” said Sosthène. “You condemn her to a hard life.”

“That depends,” said Sally, “on what she wants to make of it.”

“I’m not afraid of work,” Camilla said at once. “But Calvert may need me. We’ll see what Calvert says.” The old,
comforting
formula. Calvert would decide.

Meanwhile, she devoted all her spare time to helping with the elaborate Christmas preparations at the Hall, Jenny, whose work was with the eye and head cases in Ward B—the blue drawing-room—was sewing the red gauze stockings which would be hung on each man’s bed on Christmas Eve, to
contain
cigarettes, fountain-pens, note-paper, chocolate, pipes, and similar small treasures a sick man finds comfort in. Camilla would go and sit with her, working on the coloured paper garlands which were to festoon Ward F—the ballroom—which had a small platform at one end for the entertainers and would
have the Christmas tree at the opposite end. The delighted wheel-chair people could all be pushed into one corner and a lot of cots moved in for those who were able, and the
convalescents
could have a group of gilt chairs. For the ones who had to stay in bed where they were, there was to be a
procession
, with carols, just before tea on Christmas Day.

Camilla found it very touching that the weary, overworked nurses and staff of the hospitals should give up their precious leisure to these additional chores designed to amuse and comfort the homesick, suffering men in their care. Sometimes her eyes would fill with tears when she glanced up at Jenny’s pale gold head bent above her needle, the soft belled hair falling forward along her jaw, her small, work-worn hands so deft and busy while she absentmindedly hummed a snatch of
King
Wencelas
or
Adeste
Fidelis.
Jenny was so vulnerable still, in her young armour of hard-won composure—so infinitely pathetic and so unbelievably brave, and would so have resented anything like pity. It was always Fabrice who bent charmingly above the men in the wards and their fumbling, earnest attempts at painting or cutting coloured mottoes and greetings, and the simple small tasks which could be delegated to them in assembling the decorations. It was Fabrice who rallied the discouraged and clumsy ones, and laughed at the bad jokes, and fanned the jealous rivalry in festive design between the wards. Ward G—surgical—was going to have an elaborate trellis effect of green ribbon and holly clusters. The
recreation-room
was to be graced with some highly-coloured humour in painted mottoes and devices more or less suitable to the Christmas Season, and had laid violent claim to a box of paper mimosa and wisteria which came to light when Clare and Winifred went up to rummage in the attics for the trunks where costumes for charades and private theatricals were kept.

Among the convalescents was a man with both legs off who had the knack of writing catchy little tunes with topical jingles, and a minstrel act was inevitable, and the piano in the
gun-room
went all day. It was Fabrice who rehearsed with them
tirelessly to the neglect of her other duties, and it was Jenny who sat in apparent contentment, humming scraps of carol music, among the patient forms of her blinded or bandaged head cases, sewing the endless red stockings.

Camilla found herself regretting that it was not Calvert’s injury which required the attention of Sir Quentin, so that he would have been sent to England instead of Raymond, who of course deserved the best and was expected to arrive in London a few days before Christmas, at the same time Bracken returned from France. If Raymond was well enough he was to be brought down to Farthingale for the Christmas festivities, and then sent on to the Hall for the operation, assuming that Sir Quentin would take the case.

No one knew yet whether Archie could get leave or not. Almost everyone—even Fabrice?—cherished a secret guilty feeling, perhaps not quite a hope, that perhaps Gerald wouldn’t. Bracken was due for a rest, and Phoebe and Oliver would come down from London for the day. There was to be a family party at Farthingale with all the children on
Christmas night after the hospital celebrations were over and the men tucked up for the night. They would roll up the rugs and turn on the
gramophone
and dance, said Virginia, who had begun to get about with a cane now. And after all, having Raymond there would be the next best thing to having Calvert, and they must all be very nice to him and make him feel from now on that it was his home too, because they owed Calvert’s life to him….

A letter from Calvert, dictated to his nurse at Boulogne, arrived for Camilla in the middle of December.