The Last September (32 page)

Francie was lying down with “a head”; Hugo was talking over old times with the coachman, who had been pensioned off and brooded all day in the harness-room, much at a loss. Lois, indirectly responsible for this outrage, was not to be found. She had not been herself at all, these last three days. Her aunt, after Gerald’s departure, had made a point of saying: “Well I hope, of course, you have not made a mistake. But we all have to settle these things for ourselves, you know.” Francie never failed to inquire if she were getting on nicely with the Italian; her uncle agreed it was high time she went to that school of art. This morning she seemed to be nowhere; shouting did not produce her.

Laurence, always unfortunate, was surprised on the steps with Locke. “Oh God,” he said as the Ford came round the bend of the lower avenue. He turned, too late, to escape; the girl wives were already shrieking and waving.

Betty said: “Denise, this is Mr.—(Oh dear, how awful!) This is Mrs. Rolfe of the Gunners; my great friend, you know.”

“Good,” said Laurence. Denise glanced up, apprehensive, at all the windows. Laurence stood looking at them with resignation; he forgot to open the door of the car though they brimmed out over it.

“May
we get out?” asked Betty, tittering up at him in the friendliest way from a perfect swirl of furs and red cr£pe de Chine. On their knees, two little pairs of hands curled like loose chrysanthemums over their kid pochettes. He let them out and they ran up the steps shaking out their dresses. “
Oh
, what a brainy book!” cried Betty, pouncing. “—My dear, just look what he’s reading—oh, you have got a brain! I mean, fancy reading… .”

“You’re at college, aren’t you?” said Denise, fluttered.

“Sometimes,” said Laurence accurately. Opening his mouth very wide, he shouted for Lois. They shrieked and covered their ears. “I expect,” he said finally, “I had better go in and look for—”

“Don’t go! I’m sure they will all come out … I did want Denise to see a lovely old Irish home.”

“Yes, we are quaint, really,” said Laurence, considering. “And you oughtn’t to miss the Trents; has she seen the Trents?”

“Well, I hardly know the Trents. Here, we always feel that Gerald is such a link.”

“Missing or otherwise,” Denise added.

“Exactly.” Betty smiled at him sidelong; but all the same it did seem a pity it should be Laurence that they had dropped in on with unintended accuracy.
This
was not at all what she had led Denise to expect. Laurence’s not quite rudeness was, in fact, rather international—she supposed, Oxford. She said: “I have a boy cousin at Reading University. That’s quite near Oxford, isn’t it?” Denise, plaintive, said that a wasp was bothering: Betty flapped with her pochette and the end of her fur. “She’s
terrified
of wasps!”

“So am I,” said Laurence, backing, “absolutely
terrified
… I think I’d better go and—better get a—” He disappeared through the glass door, shutting it.

Denise said: “Well, I do think people are extraordinary.” They both sat down and yawned. All these trees; it was quite extraordinary. “Is that Lois’s cousin?”

“More or less.”

“Well, I always did think she was an odd girl.”

“Ssh, there’s Sir Richard writing in the library— Denise,
just
look through, sideways. He’s such a type.”

“O-oh … yes. Is he a knight or a baronet?”

“Well, I don’t see how he could have been knighted.”

“My dear, Ssssh!”

“He’s deaf. Oh, darling, look at those little teeny black cows. Those are Kerry cows. They farm, you know; they have heaps of cattle.”

“I always meant to ask you: are there Kilkenny cats?”

“Really,” said Mrs. Vermont, annoyed, as her friend yawned again and she felt her own jaw quiver, “when one thinks these are the people we are defending! I wonder if they’ll offer us any coffee. What I think about Irish hospitality: either they almost knock you down or they don’t look at you. Or I tell you what, we might go out to the garden and get some plums. Only I would like you to see the drawing-room. I wish these were Livvy’s people; the boys say her house smells—I hope you aren’t bored, darling?—I mean, what I mean about Livvy; she does grow on you. I can’t think what Gerald sees in this family, I must say. It isn’t even as if Lois—”

“Of course, I always did think she was an odd girl.”

At this point Sir Richard, who was not deaf, came out in despair. He said this was too bad; he couldn’t think what could have become of Lois. “We might shout,” he said helplessly.

“Your nephew has been shouting.”

“Still,” said Sir Richard, and shouted again. “How are you all getting on?” he said kindly, when he had recovered his breath.

Betty said with dignity: “There may be going to be an offensive.”

“Sssh,” whispered Denise, pinching her elbow.

“Though I ought not really to tell you.”

“Never mind,” said Sir Richard, “I don’t suppose it will come to anything. Besides, now the days are drawing in— But this is too bad really; most unfortunate that my wife should not be here to receive you. She will be most distressed.”

“Oh, but we just dropped in. As I said to Denise, what is the good of being in Ireland if one isn’t a bit unconventional?”

“She will be most distressed.”

“Don’t bother! We’ve been admiring your darling cows.”

“I’ll just go in and inquire,” said Sir Richard firmly and disappeared, shutting the glass door.

Denise said she would get the giggles: a seizure did seem to be imminent. “Well, I must say, Gerald is well out of this family.”

“But my dear,
is
he?”

“Something’s happened. He’s
black
—even Timmy noticed. I said to Timmy: ‘You
must
find out’— ‘cause I think, don’t you, that when men get together …
You see, I can’t—though I can’t bear to see the boy suffer.”

“But I thought you said you—”

“Well, I’ve seen him in the distance and he didn’t look like himself at all. But he hasn’t been near us, or to the Club, or into the Fogartys’. And as I was saying to Mrs. Fogarty—”

“It seems to me he’s been treated rottenly. If it were one of our boys, my dear, I should be fur-rious.”

“All the same, I do want to
see
Lois… .”

“What he sees in her, I cannot imagine. She’s what I should call rather affected—”

“Sssh—Oh, hullo, Lois!” they cried in unison.

Lois, unbecomingly bright, came up from the beech walk.

“Oh, hullo,” she said. “Splendid!”

“We’ve just been talking about you.”

“O-oh.
Can’t
you stay to lunch?”

“No can do; we’re off to the Thompsons’. My dear, aren’t you thrilled about Livvy and David! Isn’t it marvellous?”

“Thrilled, it’s absolutely marvellous.
Do
stay to lunch—I mean,” she said agitatedly, “do come back to tea? Oh no, we shall all be out. Oh, how rotten. Or come to tennis—no, I believe there won’t be any more tennis; Laurence is going back to Oxford and the rain’s washed all the marking off the court. Perhaps we could have a dance or something—”

The two young wives eyed her lightly and curiously; their looks ran over her form like spiders. They were so womanly, she could have turned and fled back down the beech walk. “
Donne ch’avette intelletto d’amore
,”
she thought to herself wildly. And the pause, the suspicion of some deformity that these ladies produced in her became so acute that she smiled more widely. She buttoned her cardigan up to the top, then unbuttoned it.

“Oh, but don’t go
now
,” she said, but looked at the Ford, longingly.

“Oh, we must, we have been here hours, watching your darling cows.”

“I’m afraid they’re very much in the distance. Does Aunt Myra—?”

“Oh, we’d hate to disturb her. Unless we might all run around the garden—?”

“It’s locked and I’ve lost the key. I feel quite an outcast. That’s what has been the matter the whole morning. Do have something to eat—have some biscuits?”

“Unless we just come into the drawing-room for one moment?”

“I always think drawing-rooms in the morning are so depressing.”

Denise said she did not see how the same room could be much different, but it was no good; Lois seemed determined to keep them out. From the way she shifted her feet and stared round you would have said she was expecting bad news momentarily; she talked so much that they hadn’t a chance to express themselves. She went in for a tin of
petits beurres
and offered it with an odd air rather propitiatory. Lady Naylor called from an upstairs window that this was too bad, that she was so much distressed, she would be down immediately. “She spends whole mornings with the cook,” said Lois, “I cannot think what they do. I believe they fence verbally. More biscuits?”

“No, we shall spoil our din-dins. Denise, we
must
go. I hear old
Mr.
Thompson is a terrible ogre. Any messages in Clonmore, Lois? Any messages to Gerald?”

Lois thought she must blush, but did not; even her blood stood still.

“I 
should ask him,” said Denise, “why he didn’t send 
you
a message.
I
think it was odd of him; I should be fur-rious.” Lois saw, with interest, a ripple of light down their dresses; they nudged each other. There must be something odd about her, really, if they had noticed; she must clearly be outside life.

“How is the gramophone?” she asked enthusiastically.

“Don’t
ask.
Gerald is going to Cork to bring back a new one … We thought we might all go too, it would be a rag.”

“Marvellous!”

“Look, I’ll just run Denise in to have a look at the drawing-room.”

“I shouldn’t, really. I haven’t done the flowers.”

“Gerald says all your looking-glasses make him feel sleepy. He’s a funny boy, in a way,” said Betty innocently. “You don’t think we ought to wait till we’ve seen your aunt? She won’t be offended?”

“I shouldn’t really; she’s probably been delayed.” Lady Naylor did, in fact, arrive on the steps in time to make exclamations of despair as they drove away. “Too bad,
too
bad!” she called. “You must come again soon! … Really, Lois, you might have found them some fruit or something. Fancy puffing them out with biscuits at this hour.”

“I tell you what I think it is about Lois,” said Betty cosily, nestling down in the car as the trees rushed over. ”I 
think he’s left her”

Denise agreed. “A boy needs keeping, if you know what I mean.” Betty also told her what she thought about the Naylor family: they were going down in the world. “I should not be surprised if they never used that drawing-room,” she said viciously. “It smells of damp. Myself, I do like a house to be bright and homy.”

The world did not stand still, though the household at Danielstown and the Thompsons’ lunch party took no account of it. The shocking news reached Clonmore about eight o’clock. It crashed upon the unknowing-ness of the town like a wave that for two hours, since the event, had been standing and toppling, imminent. The news crept down streets from door to door like a dull wind, fingering the nerves, pausing. In the hotel bars heads went this way and that way, quick with suspicion. The Fogartys’ Eileen, called to the door while she was clearing away the supper, cried, “God help him!” and stumbled up to Mr. Fogarty’s door, blubbered. Mr. Fogarty dropped his glass and stood bent some time like an animal, chin on the mantelpiece. Philosophy did not help; in his thickening brain actuality turned like a mill-wheel. His wife, magnificent in her disbelief, ran out, wisps blowing, round the square and through the vindictively silent town.

Barracks were closed, she could not get past the guards; for once she was at a loss, among strangers. She thought mechanically “His mother,” and pressed her hands up under her vast and useless bosom. Trees in the square, uneasy, shifted dulled leaves that should already have fallen under the darkness. The shocking news, brought in at the barrack-gates officially, produced an abashed silence, hard repercussions, darkness of thought and a loud glare of electricity. In Gerald’s room some new music for the jazz band, caught in a draught, flopped over and over. An orderly 
put it away, shocked. All night some windows let out, over their sandbags, a squeamish, defiant yellow.

Mrs. Vermont heard when Timmy had just gone out; he was to be out all night with a patrol. She was to sleep alone, she could not bear it. Past fear, she ran to the Rolfes’ hut. She spent the night there, sobbing, tearing off with her teeth the lace right round her handkerchief. Captain Rolfe kept bringing her hot whisky. “I can’t, I can’t, not whisky: it’s awful.” They all felt naked and were ashamed of each other, as though they had been wrecked. From the hut floor-where they had danced—the wicker furniture seemed to rise and waver.