To the North (14 page)

Their integrity was an asset; Peter seldom and Emmeline never lied. They said: “You may not enjoy it the whole time, but you’ll be glad to have been there… . You may be uncomfortable but the people have nice manners and you will never be bored… . Yes, the cooking
is
oily, but you know that is good for one’s inside… . No, if that is your wife you cannot take her to their theatres… . Quite right, if you don’t keep wrapped up at sunset you may die of pneumonia, but you can buy beautiful native shawls… . Well, yes, it
is
cold there, but you soon don’t notice. … It is hot there, even at nights, but they have such clean ice in the cafés… . Yes, it is unhealthy, but it’s the most beautiful place in Europe: I’d rather die of that than anything else… .” No one could have been more distressed than Emmeline at the misunderstanding about Silesia and Sicily. “I
told
him it was very abstract, but he kept on saying, ‘Yes, yes, that’s just exactly what I should fancy.’ “

The day on which Lady Waters and Julian had met in the office had been what Peter called a visiting-day: everyone seemed to look in. They had not done much that morning except dictate a few letters to the stenographer, who looked sceptical. Then a young man who had once tried to marry Emmeline and still hung about (he does not come into the picture) had looked in to say he had persuaded his aunt to go south that summer by means of Emmeline, and would they be sympathetic as she had never travelled without her husband, who was just dead. “Yes, yes,” said Emmeline. “Does she want to be quiet or noisy? Does she know she may be too hot?” … Then

Julian—happening, he said, to be in this part of the world— had looked in for another word with Emmeline about Central Europe. Sitting down by her desk he had had a good look at Peter who, seeing that this occasion was to be social, leaned away from them on the mantelpiece admiring his long fingers, cleaning up his nails with a nib. They discussed coeducation in Switzerland: Julian said at once that this would not do for Pauline… . Then Lady Waters looked in on her way to a lecture on ethics at University College. Emmeline introduced Julian and explained that they had been talking about his niece. Lady Waters, glancing from one to the other, had discounted the niece at once. She said that she did not believe in coeducation and soon went away with a rustle.

“Is that your aunt?” asked Julian.

“No, she’s my cousin by marriage.”

“But Cecilia speaks of her as an aunt.”

“She is Cecilia’s aunt, then she married my father’s first cousin. She married,” said Emmeline, explaining carefully, “twice, you see.”

Julian was left with a pleasant impression that if he married Cecilia Emmeline would be his relation twice over. He did not, however, desire to duplicate any connection with Lady Waters.

“I feel sometimes as though she were
my
aunt,” said Peter, who had been asked to tea to discuss Havelock Ellis… . Julian could not stay long: he admired a new poster and regretfully went away. Fortunately for business—though Julian’s Bentley and Lady Waters’ Daimler, lining the curb, must have given the premises quite an air—visiting-days were infrequent. Peter and Emmeline could regard the six pounds seven and ninepence as a bonus for unremitting effort and the entire sacrifice of their social life up to six o’clock.

This afternoon, Emmeline having done the accounts with such good results, they felt light-hearted: the office was so very pleasant without the stenographer that they were not anxious to go home yet. They cleared off the last letters and pinned up the finished graph; Peter politely rejected a sketch of Emmeline’s for a poster: a Handley Page looping the loop full of passengers. He ripped open another packet of Gold Flake while they discussed getting more closely in touch with Intourist with a view to doing more about Russia. An electric kettle arrived, a present from Markie who had complained that the place smelt of gas. Peter, depressed for a moment, said, would this mean getting re-wired for power? “Oh well,” said Emmeline cheerfully, “We can afford
that
. But perhaps it will boil on the light plug.” She tried and it did… . She got out her car and dropped Peter at Imhof’s, where he was going to buy some records to cheer up his poor friend.

Emmeline—who, liking life better than ever, took no chances —crawled sedately west for a little, in second gear, down the Euston Road, in the lee of a lorry clattering with steel girders. Leaving the hoarse dingy clamour, the cinema-posters of giant love, she turned into Regent’s Park, swept round under lines of imposing houses and, out of the park again, steadily mounted to St. John’s Wood. First the stucco villas, smoky, sunk in their gardens, had the air of pavilions mouldering after an exhibition, retreats forgotten and disenchanted, unkindly eyed from the rasping buses. She bore left from the bus-route; the houses brightened along roads silent and polished, the air freshened: this was a garden. The glades of St. John’s Wood were still at their brief summer: walls gleamed through thickets, red may was clotted and crimson, laburnums showered the pavements, smoke had not yet tarnished a leaf. The heights this evening had an airy superurbanity: one heard a ping of tennis-balls, a man wheeled a barrow of pink geraniums, someone was practising the violin, sounds and late sunshine sifted through the fresh trees. Someone was giving a grand party: more gold chairs arrived; when they flicked lights up a moment in the conservatory you saw tall frondy shadows against the glass. Emmeline wished them joy—but it depressed Cecilia to hear the music of parties to which she was not invited.

At Oudenarde Road the drawing-room windows were open. Cecilia, surrounded by cushions, sat out on the iron steps overlooking the lawn. She was not going out tonight and had had, since lunch, her hair shampooed and re-set: soft waves round her face made her look very young and she wore a pink cotton frock. “Darling?” she said, as Emmeline, having put the car away, came round the house and, sitting down on a lower step, pulled her hat off and gazed down the garden. In the foreground Benito sat washing himself thoroughly, one leg up like a mast. “Don’t …” Emmeline said and pulled at the leg gently: he had all day to wash in.

“Tired at all?” said Cecilia.

“No, it’s been a good day. I did the accounts and they came out.”

“Why not make Peter do them?”

“He can’t add.”

“I see no point in that young man— Emmeline, I haven’t seen you for ages: where did you go all yesterday with that horrible Connie Pleach? I don’t like her, she thinks I’m a parasite: if I am, that’s not her affair. Anyone can see her affection for you is unholy—where did you go?”

“Into Sussex, to see her father.”

“Oh, has she a father? If her affection is
not
unholy, she likes you because you have got a car. I’ve had an awful day: I went to lunch with Georgina.”

“Oh, she asked you?”

“No, I asked myself: it was madness, as it turned out. We had a rather nice egg thing for lunch—remind me to get the recipe from her. There was a sort of girl there, like a bad illustration to Hans Andersen.”

“Gerda Bligh. She’s not bad really: she’s unhappily married.”

“Gilbert smokes in bed. Did I tell you I’m getting a new evening dress? Orchid-green: ravishing with the skin, though you might not think so— Oh,
listen
: Georgina’s convinced you think I’m in love with Markie!”

Emmeline, who was stroking Benito, paused with her hands on the kitten and said nothing. A sort of vigilance in her attitude caught Cecilia’s attention.

“Guilty,” she said; “the back of your neck’s blushing. I thought you said no one had talked about me. It’s so lovely and like you, darling, to be fifty years out of date when you do gossip!”

“I didn’t say anything …”

“Angel, why should I mind?” laughed Cecilia, leaning down, in a haze of fragrance from the shampoo, from the upper step. “You left poor Georgina so perfectly happy for more than a week. Unwisely—as it turned out—I did disillusion her, saying, of course, that I never saw Markie nowadays, that he was too fat, a bore, a bounder, an egotist, altogether a frightful young man—”

“—Stop!” said Emmeline passionately.

“Why?” asked Cecilia, caught up in mid air.

“Don’t say that. You should take the trouble to see that it’s not true!”

“What’s not true?”

“He’s my friend: I like him so much, I see him so often.”

“Whatever on earth do you mean?”

“I like him,” repeated Emmeline, quivering.

Up to a point Cecilia made quick adjustments. “Well,” she said equably, “if you do, you do. It seems to me a peculiar taste, but I can’t help you.” Countering what she took to be hysteria, she put on a motherly air, very concrete and sensible. “Don’t for heaven’s sake,” she commanded, “get into a state of
mind
? Her tone, her manner patted the quivering Emmeline: she had seldom to cope with Emmeline, but had coped, so far, admirably. This was nice of Cecilia, whose best Georgina-story for years had just fallen remarkably flat.

“I’m sorry,” said Emmeline, much more calmly. “But I did think you were unjust.”

“No doubt I am,” said Cecilia. “After all, your precious Markie practically cuts me dead— Do you really see him? How odd: how often? What a dark horse you are!”

She could not have said anything more unfortunate. “I haven’t been meaning to be,” said Emmeline, miserable. “It’s worried me very much.”

“Don’t take things so
hard
,” cried Cecilia, exasperated. “Markie’s your friend, not mine: you see him, I don’t, we’re both pleased: what more do you want? Naturally I don’t think you’ve been making mysteries: why ever should I? If I hadn’t been so insanely self-centred I might have noticed. I am sorry I was unpleasant: consider it all unsaid. They say he’ll go far, and he certainly is amusing— Though I don’t mind telling you, Emmeline, I wouldn’t trust Markie an inch: I don’t like his mouth. However, no doubt you’re good for him— Now are you calm again?”

“Yes,” said Emmeline humbly.

“Because if you are, I should like to go on talking about myself—I said it was madness to lunch with Georgina: I’ll tell you exactly why. Deprived of Markie she was after me like a lioness: I went to pieces completely. So she took the bloom off something I wanted to tell you—I don’t know that it has much bloom really, in fact it has no bloom: I’m worried. Julian’s proposed to me.”

Emmeline, startled, said: “You didn’t tell
her
that?”

“Oh no. But I do~v know how much she may have gathered.”

“Oh,
Cecilia
… .”

“It was a most wretched affair. What is the matter with Julian?”

“So you said—?”

“I was furious—naturally I said no. He sounded as though he just thought he might as well. Something a child said at tea put it into his head.”

“At tea where?”

“At that school, darling: don’t ask silly questions!”

“I hope,” queried Emmeline, raising a gentle face of concern, “you weren’t unkind?”

“Well, I hope not. I seem to remember saying something rather nasty about a fly. He seemed rather low afterwards— not disappointed but mortified. Perhaps I was unkind… . But Julian’s little perfunctory way of saying things as though he felt they might be expected always has made me see scarlet. The idiot!” exclaimed Cecilia. “Why have men got no background? Nothing they say ever seems to have any context. What do they think about all day long? One hears all this about the City, but I cannot believe Julian really does very much. He is naturally rich and attracts money, but I know he spends half his time in that office simply fussing about.”

“One can’t help fussing about in an office, I’ve noticed that.”

“But you’re not important about it.”

“There’s so much time one cannot account for.”

“Not at all,” said Cecilia. “If I don’t know what I’m doing at every moment I do at least know what I’m trying to do. But half the time one is asked to believe men are working, I think they must simply exist in a kind of stupor.”

So much that Cecilia thought had never occurred to Emmeline that their talks kept, after all these years, freshness, and topics were inexhaustible. Disturbed, and sorry for Julian, Emmeline sat silent.

Cecilia, wound up and angrily beating together the tips of her fingers, continued: “A man can’t tell you sanely about himself; he either knows nothing at all or goes all morbid— Oh yes, I know you think I am horrid about Julian, but really he has annoyed me. It was like someone blowing his nose before he kisses you… . There’s so much to be said for Julian, he is in a kind of way lovable, when he doesn’t propose, and he’s been charming to me. Wealth does make me feel rather
éblouie
—do you think I am wrong, Emmeline? There’s a feeling of being tucked in all the time, which I like, when one’s going about with Julian, as though he were carrying round a rug. I don’t think I hurt his heart but I’m sorry I hurt his vanity. In a way, the less he wanted to, the nicer it was of him to propose if he felt he ought: I suppose one should look at it that way. Can I really have been unkind— Do
say
something, Emmeline!”

Emmeline started. She had sat staring so fixedly at Cecilia that Cecilia had disappeared; instead, she had seen spinning sentences, little cogs interlocked, each clicking each other round. She sat blinking at this machinery of agitation that a word spoken two days ago had only now set going. She was an earnest but not an intelligent listener… . “So you said no?” she said finally.

“That’s what I keep telling you.—Don’t say you only hope I may not regret it.”

“That’s what I was thinking,” said Emmeline candidly. “Shall you see Julian again?”

“Of course: I should miss him fearfully.”

“Mayn’t it be difficult?”

“Why? From the fuss you make, darling, one would think no one had ever clone this before. It won’t be so nice, naturally; once a man has begun to propose it is always unsettling.”

“But if you think he didn’t mean to, why should he do it again?”

“It sets up a train of thought,” said Cecilia wisely. “You really are very young, Emmeline: I suppose I ought to take better care of you than I do. Do be sensible about Markie. I suppose I should ask him to dinner, it gives the thing countenance.”