The Echoing Grove (42 page)

‘I don’t give a damn whether he is or not. And you won’t either in the end. I only care about you getting to the end—to where you’ll find his reactions are a matter of complete indifference to you. He’ll have been painlessly expelled—after a lot of bloody pain and struggle, which seems entirely wasteful. Perhaps it isn’t. Anyway, it can’t be avoided.’

‘Clinical prognosis.’ Madeleine got up and stood with her back turned, wiping her eyes. After a long pause she said more calmly: ‘He asked me to forgive him, but I couldn’t answer that.’

‘It’s really the best we can do,’ said Dinah. ‘Out of pure self-interest.’

A tune, an echo, started sounding in her head.
And throughout all Eternity …

Presently Madeleine turned round, her face composed.

‘What are you reading?’ she said. She picked up the new library novel from the bedside table, put it down again. ‘I haven’t read it yet. Do you still read without glasses? I wish I could.’ She pushed aside the enamel cigarette box and bent down, examining the surface of the table with a frown. ‘Did you ever come here?’ she suddenly inquired.

‘Did I ever come here?’ Dinah was amazed.

‘Yes. In the war.’

‘What on earth do you mean? Of course I didn’t.’

‘All right, I believe you. Sorry!’ Her look and smile were almost normal, almost deprecatingly mischievous. ‘I haven’t suddenly gone out of my mind. Do you see this mark?—you almost can’t, the man took a lot of trouble—a local man, he’s frightfully good. You’d never think so, but it was an absolutely monstrous cigarette burn. I found it after I’d been away one week-end during the war. Rickie was alone here. I thought
he
’d
done it—though I never knew him to smoke in bed. When I asked him he was rather funny—first he said no, of course he hadn’t, then almost at once corrected himself and said he supposed he had. He sounded a bit guilty—as if I’d caught him out. It was only afterwards it suddenly occurred to me—thinking about his manner—you might have been here. Come down for the night—to get out of London, or something.’

‘No, I did
not
,’
said Dinah indignantly. ‘Can you imagine me? And I’ve never burnt any article of furniture with an unstubbed cigarette in all my life. I’m not so fussy as you, but it’s a habit I can’t endure. Rob used to do it—he ruined a writing-table I had once.’

‘Ah well, a mystery,’ sighed Madeleine vaguely. ‘I didn’t really think it could be you … Well, good night.’ But she lingered by the door.

‘I wish there was
something
not acutely painful I could think about,’ she said. ‘Thinking about Clarissa is truly terrible, I don’t know why.’

‘What about Colin?’

‘Ah, Colin, yes, bless him. Poor old boy.’

‘He’s not painful, is he?’

‘Not in the least. He’s a comfort—should be, at least. Terribly nice, good, kind. Much fonder of me than I deserve. I haven’t been beastly to him, but I always feel I haven’t done much about him. I’ve never really got to know him. He writes such good letters too—sends me parcels. He’s an angelic character. I wish he wasn’t so far away. He’s always asking me to go out.’

‘Why don’t you?’

‘I might—next year perhaps, with Clarissa.’

‘Why don’t you go now?’

‘I can’t go till Clarissa leaves school.’

‘Why not? You can afford it, can’t you? Go by yourself—I bet that would suit Colin. Clarissa can go later. I’ll look after her in the holidays, if you like. I’ve got room for her in London—she might enjoy it; and I could come down at week-ends. Go on. Think about it.’

‘Yes, I will.’ She brooded, then said less heavily: ‘I will think about it.’

‘I don’t say travel is a solution: one takes oneself along. But it does do something. You
have
to take a step—and then another, and another. And new places and new faces, without associations; and all the practical things … Everything does help. Getting plenty of sun and food helps enormously, I promise you. Good God, if I had a nice grown-up son waiting for me in South Africa, you wouldn’t see my heels for dust.’

Leaning against the door jamb, Madeleine thought about Colin—tried to. Quiet, tall, slender young man with a quizzical expression, a nice voice—not charming but very likeable. Sensitive accomplished player; not a star personality, but absolutely reliable in minor
r
ôles.

Dinah’s hand went out to the drawer of the bedside table. Opening it with an appearance of particular caution, she took out a small white cardboard box with an elastic band round it.

‘And while I think of it,’ she said, ‘I’ll give you this. I was going to leave it on your dressing-table. I couldn’t quite see myself handing it over gracefully. I’ve had it such a long time.’ She sat up straight in bed, holding it out.

‘What is it?’

Madeleine took the box, opened it.

‘Cuff-links,’ said Dinah, her face blank.

‘Rickie’s … Aren’t they?’

‘Yes. I don’t know if he ever missed them.’

‘Yes. He thought they were lost. How very extraordinary.’ She took them out and laid them out in her palm, examining them. Circles of green jade, a Maltese cross in tiny diamonds set in the faintly concave surfaces. ‘I remember when he lost them.’

‘He left them in the flat. I found them after he’d gone, the last time I saw him. I meant to send them back, but I never did. I mislaid them again as a matter of fact.’
In the pocket of my coat, thin black coat I was wearing, in my clenched hand in my pocket, crushed …

‘What’s on the box? Some initials.’ Screwing her eyes up, Madeleine frowned at the lid. ‘I can’t read them, they’re so tiny. E.S., is it?’

‘Yes. That man you were asking about—his initials. I told you. I lost them again. I’d no idea I’d left them with him.’
I dragged my hand out, forced it to open: they were stuck to my palm, the edges biting into it—agony. I flung them over his descending shoulder, anywhere, let them go, anywhere, I didn’t hear them drop … I never looked for them.
‘I left a few things with him one time when I was homeless for a bit. Clothes, books. But I lost sight of him. He died, I told you. As a matter of fact he committed suicide just before the war. He must have felt unable to bear his life any longer. I had the obsession once that I was the loneliest person in the whole world; but he cured me of that. He really was lonely—irremediably alone. In the way outcasts are—pariah dogs. I didn’t understand why until he told me: he once gave a woman poison—the woman he loved, or who loved him, he said: it was a pact. They were Jews, they were being rounded up by the S.S. She died, but he didn’t: he lost his nerve and didn’t take the stuff. He was put in a concentration camp, but he was got out, somehow, through influence, and came to England. That was his story. I’m the only person he ever told.’

‘He must have trusted you completely.’

‘That wasn’t the reason. I came to him to be put out—done in. I wanted to end my life, I thought he’d provide the means. He promised me once he would if I really meant it. I did mean it; but he wouldn’t. He thought we could be saved: save one another.’

‘Was it then that he told you?’

‘Yes. He thought I was his second chance, you see. He wanted to bring it to that, try conclusions with me—bring me to that pass. But it didn’t work out like that—not in the way he meant.’

‘What did he mean?’

‘Oh … Me to come asking him for death and him to give me back my life instead.’ Her voice was hard.

‘But that sounds rather wonderful,’ protested Madeleine. ‘Why wasn’t it?’

‘Because he was so …’ She stopped, with an effect of violence.

‘So what?’

‘Unlovable. I thought I was past caring what was done to me, but I found I did care. I got away.’

‘Perhaps he meant you to.’

‘Oh no, it was in spite of him.’ She shuddered, almost imperceptibly.

‘How do you know? He might have meant to force you to, in spite of him. Force you to live.’

‘Well, I did live.’ Her face set. She opened her lips again to speak, closed them again. After a long pause she muttered: ‘No, people aren’t so magnanimous …’

‘I suppose not.’ Madeleine stared at the links. ‘Though I should have thought, after what he’d been through, there was just a chance of his being capable of anything.’

‘He was.’ For a moment her face opened, vulnerable, with a look of inner doubt, distress and wonder; then closed, secretive.

‘How did these come back to you?’ asked Madeleine, still staring into her hand.

‘In a package through the post, addressed in his handwriting—no message. I got them the day he was found dead in bed.’

‘You’d no idea he’d got them—kept them?’

‘None.’

‘You must have had a shock.’

‘Yes.’

‘I should have felt horribly upset. He must have been thinking of you. He must have been asking you to remember him.’

‘Yes.’ Dinah lay down in bed, flat on her pillow, looking at the ceiling with blank eyes.

‘Why do you say unlovable? Didn’t you love him then? I should have. But we always, automatically, love the dead. Don’t you find that?’

‘Yes.’

‘It seems a waste.’ She touched the little buttons curiously. ‘Are you sure you want to part with them?’

‘I think Colin ought to have them. He’d wear them, wouldn’t he?’

‘Oh, yes, I’m sure he would. He’ll be pleased. Aren’t they pretty? I believe they belonged to Rickie’s father. All right—I’ll give them to Colin when I see him. Tell him they got mislaid, they’ve just turned up. Would that be best?’

‘That would be much the best.’

She closed her fingers over them, letting them slide into the hollow of her palm, feeling them nudge lightly, settle there; anonymous abstraction: questionable solid; cold, almost weightless weight.

About the Author

Rosamond Lehmann (1901–1990) was born on the day of Queen Victoria’s funeral, in Buckinghamshire, England, the second of four children. In 1927, a few years after graduating from the University of Cambridge, she published her first novel, 
Dusty Answer
, to critical acclaim and instantaneous celebrity. Lehmann continued to write and publish between 1930 and 1976, penning works including
The Weather in the Streets
, 
The Ballad and the Source
, and the short memoir 
The Swan in the Evening
. Lehmann was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire
 
(CBE) in 1982 and remains one of the most distinguished novelists of the twentieth century.

All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this book or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are
used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 1953 by The Estate of Rosamond Lehmann

Cover design by Andy Ross

978-1-5040-0315-5

This edition published in 2015 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.

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