The Unicorn (8 page)

‘I can’t, I’m afraid,’ said Marian. ‘I’m just on my way to Mrs Crean-Smith. We’re going to read some poetry together.’ It sounded like a lie although it was the truth.

‘A bit late for that sort of thing, isn’t it?’

It was indeed rather late by Gaze standards, being nearly ten o’clock in the evening. Marian had been delighted by the suggestion, made by her employer earlier that day, that they should meet after dinner and read the
Cimetiere marin
together. Marian was beginning to find the late evenings at Gaze rather hard to live through. She had so often yearned, cried out, simply for time, time to read, time to write, time to think, time quietly with a cigarette to
be,
to commune with objects, to expand into being herself. But now that there was time it was time with a difference, as if it had been spoilt or crossed out or used by somebody else before it reached her. She could do nothing with those late evenings. She had tried occupying herself in one of the little downstairs sitting-rooms, hoping that someone would come and talk to her. But no one came, and the oil-lamps, which she could not relight, went out. So now she usually retired to her own room and tried to stop herself from listening to the quiet house and tried to stop herself from thinking about Gerald Scottow and tried to fall asleep early. Sometimes she stood for long in the darkened room looking out at the constellation of the lights of Riders and trying to read in them some hopeful message. But they remained enigmatic. The promised summons from Alice Lejour had not come. Marian could not read or work in these hours, and while not sleepy felt exhausted, as if her energy were sapped simply by resisting some influence upon her of her too silent surroundings. So she was glad now of a chance to shorten the night. She was glad too, in quite a simple way, of the prospect of once again instructing somebody. There was no doubt that she was a little pedagogue.

‘I don’t know, Miss Evercreech. Anyway, we’re going to read tonight and if you’ll excuse me I must be getting along.’ She wondered guiltily if Violet Evercreech had noticed that she had taken all the pictures down from the walls of her room. Possibly one of the maids would have told her.

Miss Evercreech drew her hand along Marian’s forearm as far as the elbow, which she held in a gentle hold as if cradling an egg. ‘It’s nearly time for you to call me Violet. After we’ve had our little talk perhaps.’

‘You’re so kind.’

The fingers pressed and released her elbow. ‘Not kind, must fond of you. We have so little here to be fond of. Good night’

Something touching in the words though not in their manner of utterance made Marian for a moment attend more closely to the long pale half-illuminated face; some shudder from childhood went through her, and she reflected that if she strangely lacked curiosity about Violet Evercreech it was simply because she was afraid of her. She watched the tall figure recede into darkness through a curtained archway. A light passed in the distance as a maid emerged and followed carrying a lamp.

Marian could now find her way about all the parts of the house that concerned her in the pitch dark. Sometimes lamps were lighted when darkness fell and sometimes not, and sometimes the ones that had been lighted went out and one found one’s way about through blackness to intermittent glows and distant pinpoints of light. She sped now along the murky corridor toward Mrs Crean-Smith’s room. A faint last evening twilight showed through tall windows the intermittent hangings.

‘Come in. Ah, hello, Marian, it’s you. I thought it might be Gerald.’

‘Shall I fetch him?’

‘No, don’t bother. Come near the fire. The wind is high tonight. Come and see what we have here.’

As Marian advanced she saw a movement and noticed someone else in the room. It was Denis Nolan, who had been standing in the shadow just beyond the mantelpiece. He shifted into the lamplight and darted her a cold ray from his very blue eyes.

Hannah Crean-Smith, who was wearing a dress tonight instead of her usual dressing-gown, was kneeling on the hearth rug scrutinizing something which lay before her on the floor.

‘What is it?’ said Marian.

She joined them and looked at the thing on the floor. It was a little brown thing, and it took her a moment to make out, with a slight shudder, that it was a bat.

‘Isn’t it a dear?’ said Hannah Crean-Smith. ‘Denis brought it. He always brings me things. Hedgehogs, snakes, toads, nice beasts.’

‘It has something wrong with it,’ said Nolan gloomily. ‘I don’t suppose it’ll live.’

Marian knelt down too. The bat, a little pipistrel, was pulling itself slowly along the rug with jerky movements of its crumpled leathery arms. It paused and looked up. Marian looked into its strange little doggy face and bright dark eyes. It had an almost uncanny degree of presence, of being. She met its look. Then it opened its little toothy mouth and uttered a high-pitched squawk. Marian laughed and then felt a sudden desire to cry. Without knowing why, she felt she could hardly bear Mrs Crean-Smith and the bat together, as if they were suddenly the same grotesque helpless thing.

‘Dear, dear little creature,’ said Mrs Crean-Smith. ‘Odd to think that it’s a mammal, like us. I can feel such a strange affinity with it, can’t you?’ She stroked its furry back with a finger and the bat huddled up. ‘Put it in its box again, Denis. You will look after it, wont you?’ In some way she could hardly bear the bat either.

‘There’s nothing I can do for it,’ said Nolan. He picked the bat up quickly with one hand, gently. His hands were small and very dirty. He put the creature in a box on the table.

‘Help yourself to some whiskey, Marian. Have you brought the books? Good. I hope you won’t mind waiting a few minutes. Denis is just going to cut my hair.’

This surprised Marian. She had connected Nolan, in so far as she had thought of him at all, with the out-of-doors. She had thought of him as something rather elusive and muddy to be associated with the mysterious horses which were kept somewhere at the far end of the rhododendron slope. She would have thought him ill enough fitted to the role of
valet de chambre.

Nolan seemed rather embarrassed and surly at the prospect of a witness. Hannah Crean-Smith, however, had settled herself into a chair and drawn a towel round her shoulders and there was nothing for him to do but to begin. He picked up the comb and scissors and began to handle the plentiful mass of red-golden hair.

Marian felt embarrassed too, as if she were being forced to be present at too intimate a rite. Yet she noticed with a sort of admiration the feudal indifference with which her employer treated the odd little occasion.

Nolan was surprisingly competent. Once he had started, his face softened into a dignified intentness as he flicked the silky stuff this way and that and snipped at it busily. The bright golden clippings furred the towel and sifted quietly to the floor. Marian observed for the first time that he was quite a good-looking man. The dry shaggy locks of blue-black hair framed a firm, ruddy, small-featured face, wherein now the surly look could be seen as a look of cautious watchfulness. And then there were the very striking eyes. Marian met them now with a sudden shock as Nolan, aware of her scrutiny, took her gaze for a moment over the red-golden head. His glance was like the flash of a kingfisher. She shifted her attention hastily to Mrs Crean-Smith’s face. It wore a dreamy expression.

‘I really don’t know what I’d do without Denis.’ Mrs Crean-Smith, her head immobile under the still-active scissors, reached a hand back and took hold of Nolan’s tweed jacket. Her hand nuzzled into his pocket. Marian looked away. Her averted gaze took in the photograph upon the desk.

‘You’ve been singeing your hair with those cigarettes again.’

‘I am bad, aren’t I!’

Marian had noticed the curiously frizzled appearance of the front hair.

That’s done now.’ Nolan whisked away the towel and shook the cuttings into the fire, where they flamed up. He knelt and gathered the pieces from the floor. As he grovelled at her feet, Mrs Crean-Smith caressed his shoulder with a light almost shy touch.

Marian was troubled. Yet the scene had a great naturalness about it and she sensed that it had happened, somewhat like this, many times before.

‘Now my shoes and stockings. I may want to go out later.’

Nolan brought her stockings and watched expressionlessly while, with a hint of petticoats and suspenders, she put them on. Then he knelt again to put on her shoes.

Marian saw that the soles of the shoes were unworn. She said, in order to break the silence which distressed her, ‘What pretty new shoes.’

“They are not new,’ said Mrs Crean-Smith. They are seven years old.’

Nolan looked up at her.

Marian had again the rather uncanny feeling of puzzlement with which her employer often affected her. She could still not make out whether Mrs Crean-Smith were not somehow ill, or convalescing from some grave ailment. The way the people of the house treated her sometimes suggested this. The idea had also at one point come into her mind, put there by something scarcely definable in Gerald Scottow’s manner, that Mrs Crean-Smith might be not always, entirely, absolutely right in the head. She was certainly an eccentric lady.

To pass off the strangeness of the moment Marian said, ‘You’ve kept them very well !’

‘I don’t do much walking.’

It occurred to Marian that indeed Mrs Crean-Smith had not been outside the house since her own arrival here. She must be ill, thought Marian.

Nolan stood back, preparing to be dismissed. He was a trifle shorter than either of the women, and seemed smaller still, almost dwarfish, frowning now and bunched up.

‘Stay, Denis, you shall read too.’

Marian was surprised. She said thoughtlessly, ‘Oh, can you read French?’

‘Yes.’ He gave her a hostile look.

Marian thought, he is a little jealous of me. He sees me as an intruder here.

‘Denis is very clever,’ said Mrs Crean-Smith. ‘You should hear him play the piano and sing. We must have a musical evening soon. Do stay.’

‘No. I must go and see to my fishes.’ He picked up the
box
with the bat in it. ‘Good night.’ He retired abruptly.

‘Look after my little bat,’ said Mrs Crean-Smith after him. She sighed. ‘Has he shown you the salmon pool?’

‘No,’ said Marian. ‘I’ve hardly talked to Mr Nolan. Are there salmon then? Mr Scottow said they’d gone.’

They’ve come back. Only don’t tell Mr Scottow.’

Ill - or deranged, thought Marian.

‘He
will
show you the salmon pool, I expect. Have you ever seen salmon leaping? It’s a most moving sight. They spring right out of the water and struggle up the rocks. Such fantastic bravery, to enter another element like that. Like souls approaching God.’

As Marian reflected upon the slightly unexpected simile, her employer rose and began to glide about the room. She was much given to looking at herself in mirrors. She moved now from glass to glass. ‘Listen to the wind. It can blow dreadfully here. In the winter it blows so that it would drive you mad. It blows day after day and one becomes so restless. What do you think of my page?’

‘Your - Mr Nolan? He seems very devoted.’

‘I think he would let me kill him slowly.’

There was a startling possessive savagery in the words which was oddly at variance with the accustomed
douceur.
Yet her manner, it struck Marian suddenly, was that of a sort of despair. Ill, or deranged, or in despair.

‘But everyone here is devoted to you, Mrs Crean-Smith.’

‘Please call me Hannah. Yes, I know, I’m lucky, Gerald Scottow is a tower of strength. Shall we read now? You shall start, you have such a lovely accent, and later we’ll see if I can translate it all.’

Transported immediately, forgetting all else, into a familiar world of delight Marian began to read.