The Unicorn (10 page)

It was a warm still evening, after dinner but not yet very late, and they were sitting out at one of the little white ironwork tables, sipping whiskey and trying on some of Hannah’s jewels. An unclouded sun, very soon to be quenched in a level golden sea, had turned everything on the land to a brilliant saffron yellow. Marian felt as if she and Hannah were on a stage, so violent and unusual was the lighting. Their hands and faces were gilded. Long shadows stretched away behind them; and the big rounded clumps of wild sea-pinks which grew in the cracks of the pavement, having each its shadow, dissolved the terrace about their feet into a pitted, chequered cloth. The sense of play-acting was increased too by the fact that they were both in evening-dress. At last Marian was wearing the blue cocktail dress which Geoffrey approved of, and Hannah was wearing a long dress, one which she had selected from the collection which came on approval. It was a light mauve dress of heavy grained silk with a tight high bodice and vaguely medieval air. With a golden chain about her neck she looked, thought Marian, like some brave beleaguered lady in a legend or like some painter’s dream of ‘ages far agone’.

Hannah had suggested that they should have, tonight, to inaugurate the dress, a little celebration, with some champagne and a better wine than usual, and that Marian should dress up to match. Gerald Scottow and Violet Evercreech had joined them for the champagne, and conversation had been animated though singularly impersonal and polite. They had dined à
deux.
Hannah had complained playfully that Gerald was neglecting her, and Marian had had the thought that Gerald was avoiding
her.
She did not know what to make of this thought. She had enjoyed the novelty of the little dinner, but it had had somehow a slightly forced pathetic air.

Now they were playing with Hannah’s big box of jewels which she had insisted on bringing out and spreading carelessly about on the table. Marian had already rescued an earring which had fallen to the ground and rolled into a crevice in the cracked pavement. She knew little about jewels, but she felt sure that these ones were very good indeed.

Hannah had just clipped round Marian’s neck a necklace of little pearls and rubies set in gold. She stared at herself in the mirror. The necklace was like something out of the Victoria and Albert Museum. She had never even remotely coveted such an object. It seemed to change her, to change even the blue dress. Something, whether it was the necklace or the golden light or the mirror itself, enchanted by so often reflecting the lovely face of its owner, made her for a moment see herself as beautiful.

After having been silent too long she said, ‘Yes, wonderful.’

‘Yours!’

‘You mean -?’

‘The necklace. Please have it. I have so many, you see, and I hardly ever wear them. It would give me real pleasure to give you that one.’

‘Oh, I
couldn’t
- said Marian. ‘It’s far too - too grand, too expensive for me!’ The words sounded suddenly mean.

‘Nonsense! Let me bully you a little. You shall have the necklace. No, no more. And don’t start to take it off. It’s meant to be worn.’

Marian mumbled her thanks, upset and blushing. Yet she could not help being delighted at receiving so wonderful a present. She fingered it nervously.

They both fell silent, Marian troubled and Hannah seemingly rapt into some other train of thought. She seemed tonight, Marian thought, more alert, less somnolent than usual. The sun, round and reddening, had sunk to the horizon and was descending now into a burning sea. The golden radiance faded into a vivid blue twilight and a huge figured silver moon, which had awaited its moment, became visible above the roof. Something in the scene caught Marian’s eye. It was the lights appearing at Riders. She half turned her head and saw Hannah looking in the same direction. She began to try to think of some way of at once and naturally alluding to the other house.

Hannah forestalled her. ‘I shall ask Effingham Cooper over to see my new dress. You must meet him.’

Marian was stunned. After such a prolonged silence on the subject of Riders this casual direct allusion surprised and confused her. And yet she realized at once too that the allusion was not really so casual. Hannah’s manner was the slightest bit awkward, as if the remark had been premeditated and a little hard to get out.

Marian tried to reply smoothly. ‘Is Mr Cooper there now?’ The words confessed to knowledge.

‘He’s arriving tomorrow.’

Then after tomorrow Alice Lejour might summon her. The two women did not look at each other. Marian desperately wanted to keep the conversation going. She said, ‘Old Mr Lejour must be glad of visitors. Mr Scottow said he was a scholar. Do you know what he studies?’

‘Greek, I think. Plato. He’s writing a book on Plato.’

‘I wish I knew Greek. What is he like, the old gentleman?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Hannah. ‘I’ve never met him.’ She turned to face Marian.

Completely routed by this reply she hardly dared now to meet her employer’s gaze. When she did she realized that Hannah was once more thinking hard about something else; and it took her another moment to understand that the much-ringed hand which was urgently thrust out towards her amid the finery was intended to be seized. She seized it.

This was the first time that Marian had looked at Hannah directly in this way. Indeed such looks, anywhere, had been rare in her life. She was suddenly aware of a vast claim being made upon her and she stiffened and lifted herself to be ready for whatever was demanded. The anxious tired beautiful defeated golden-eyed face blazed at her for a moment in the half-light as if it had been literally illuminated.

‘Forgive me,’ said Hannah.

‘For what?’

‘For so shamelessly crying out for love.’ She kept Marian’s hand a moment and then released it, glancing up at the house. But she returned her urgent look to the girl’s face as if signalling to her that there was no breaking off and that the conversation was to continue in the same key.

‘Well - you know that I love you,’ said Marian. She was surprised to hear herself saying this. It was not the sort of thing she came out with usually. Yet it seemed quite natural here, or as if it were compelled from her.

‘Yes. Thank you. I think, don’t you, that one ought to cry out more for love, to ask for it. It’s odd how afraid people are of the word. Yet we all need love. Even God needs love. I suppose that’s why He created us.’

‘He made a bad arrangement,’ said Marian, smiling. Since uttering the word she felt that she did love Hannah more: or simply that she did love her, since she had given no name before to her affectionate feelings.

‘You mean because people don’t love Him? Ah, but they do. Surely we all love Him under some guise or other. We have to. He desires our love so much, and a great desire for love can call love into being. Do you believe in God?’

‘No,’ said Marian. She felt no guilt at this admission, she was too firmly held in the conversation. She had not realized that Hannah was a religious person. She never went to church. •You do?’

‘Yes, I suppose I do. I’ve never really questioned it. I’m no good at thinking. I just have to believe. I have to love God.’

‘But suppose you’re loving - something that isn’t there?’

‘In a way you can’t love something that isn’t there. I think if you really love, then something
is
there. But I don’t understand these things.’

It was almost dark now. The outline of Riders had faded from the sky, leaving the constellation of lights. A figure crossed the end of the terrace and descended the steps, vanishing in the direction of the fish ponds. The silver moon had shrunk into a pale golden coin and was already melting its light into the last twilight. A small breeze was blowing from the sea.

Hannah shivered and drew on her shawl. ‘I hope that wind isn’t going to start again.’

‘Le vent se lève - il faut tenter de vivre.’

‘Ah -‘ She paused, and then went on. This is a sad time of day - of night. How mysterious day and night are, this endless procession of dark and light. The transition always affects me. I think such sad thoughts - of people in trouble and afraid, all lonely people, all prisoners. Well - I’ll go in now. You take a turn in the garden.’

‘Won’t you come too? Let’s go out on the cliffs and see the moonlight.’

‘No, you go. I’d like to think of you there. Go out that way, it’s quicker. Good night. Forgive me.’ She rose quickly and faded before Marian could get to her feet.

The girl stood awhile, puzzled and moved. She was glad as at the breaking of some barrier. She was touched by some appeal. She had wanted to say: I don’t know what you require of me, but I’ll try to do it, to be it. Only she had not at all understood the conversation.

The moon was now in full possession of the sky. She began to walk slowly through the garden. When she reached the gate which Hannah had indicated, she tried to pull it open, but it resisted her as if someone were holding it from the other side. For a moment she was nervous. Then she tugged again and it came open, spattering her with earth and sand. She tried to go out.

The moon cast behind her in the garden the black shadow of the stone wall. The smooth sheep-nibbled lawn of grass that led to the cliff top lay clear before her, empty, shadowless, appallingly stilled by the dim cold illumination. Marian stood in the doorway. Something behind her, something that she feared, seemed yet like a magnet holding her back. The garden was thick and magnetic behind her. Her desire to go out was gone. She was afraid to step outside. She stood paralysed in the gateway for some time, keeping her breathing quiet. The great lawn at the cliff top remained cold and attentive, visible yet unreal, waiting to see what she would do.

Some while later Marian began to walk back through the wrecked gardens. The moon had been quenched in cloud. She had not been outside. She had had to detach herself from the archway almost by pulling her hands off the stone, so alarming did everything seem both in front of her and behind her. She had never felt quite like this before, alone in her own mind; and yet not quite alone, for somewhere in the big darkness something was haunting her. She said to herself, I can’t go on like this, I must talk to somebody. Yet to whom and about what? What had she to complain of, other than the loneliness and boredom which was perfectly to be expected? Why was she suddenly now so frightened and sickened?

She saw ahead of her a small light moving in the darkness of the garden and she stopped in a fresh alarm. The light moved, questing, hesitating. It vanished for a moment and reappeared, a little round spot of light moving over foliage and stone. Marian decided that it must be an electric torch. She moved forward silently upon the gravel path, now grown so grassy and mossy that her feet made no sound. The light was a little to the right of the path, and the breathless girl had no thought but to glide quickly past it and then run in the direction of the house. Her heart fluttered violently and she increased her pace.

The light suddenly darted at her and she stopped in her tracks, seeing her feet, her dress, abruptly illumined. The gravel crunched under her heels. It was the first sound for a long time. The light moved up to her face and dazzled her and she gasped, caught.

‘Miss Taylor.’

It was Denis Nolan’s voice. She should have remembered that he sometimes went out late at night to look at his fish by torchlight.

‘Mr Nolan. You frightened me.’

‘I’m so sorry.’

They had remained on these formal, slightly hostile, terms. As Marian stepped towards him on to the rough grass she recalled the story of his ‘jumping on’ Alice Lejour. Yet now she did not feel afraid.

They stood for a moment, the circle of light between them on the grass. Then she said, ‘May I see the fish? I’ve never looked at them properly.’

He guided her, laying the light at her feet, to the cracked stone verge. The three oval lily pools had once formed part of an Italianate ornamental garden, but the paving round about them had long ago been overgrown with broom and ash saplings and all kinds of wild flowers. The white and dark red lilies still flourished, and the torchlight now skimmed the big dry leaves and the folded heads. Then the light plunged downward.