To the North (16 page)

“Why?” But he mellowed: Cecilia’s coffee was excellent.

“Well, perhaps not… . Cecilia is sorry there’s no bacon.”

“You look lovely,” he said, “though your nose is a little shiny.”

“Oh dear… .”

“Still, it’s a nice colour—why don’t you write to me?”

Emmeline was surprised, she had understood men avoided recriminations at breakfast and that it was women who erred in this way. Perhaps, however, this was not breakfast for Markie: she felt she was living his day and her own at once. “But I did,” she said.

“No, you didn’t,” said Markie, taking more black coffee.

“I just have. I’ve just been writing to thank you for that electric kettle.”

“Oh yes,” scoffed Markie, “that’s what
I
always say.”

“Why should I tell you I wrote if I hadn’t written?” said Emmeline, colouring.

“All right,
all
right,” he said, pacific. “Then give me the letter now.”

“
No
,” exclaimed Emmeline, startled by her own vehemence.

“Why?”

She could think of nothing but: “It was meant to be posted.”

“Well this will save you the stamp.”

“Anyhow,” said Emmeline, “it’s a foolish letter.” She looked at him thoughtfully, pushing back her hair from her face: that Markie should read her letter became impossible. His presence, his black-and-white bulk above the breakfast tray, made what she had written meaningless. Till now, she had offered to no friend her hours outside time: now the budding magnolia, plucked and discarded, breathed its unmeaning fragrance among the fumes of coffee. Not a question, less than a smile—her hour, her letter faded, unanswerable. Not to speak was her instinct: she should not, in most secret ink, ever have spoken. But she had not yet spoken: the letter was still unread. Yet, embracing once more her integrity, Emmeline’s heart smote her. For here Markie was: in his presence—within reach, if he cared to kiss, of his kiss, within reach, if she dared to put out a hand, of his hand—this idea of pleasure is isolated, arctic, regarding its own heart only, became desolating to Emmeline as a garden whose flowers were ice. Those north lights colouring the cold flowers became her enemies; her heart warming or weakening she felt at war with herself inside this cold zone of solitude. She desired lowness and fallibility, longing to break the mirror and touch the earth.

“All the same,” she said, “I’ll give it you if you like… .”

“That’s very sweet of you, angel,” said Markie, touched. But his thoughts had wandered, he was regarding himself in the flank of the silver kettle, in which he appeared like the Frog Footman, shockingly globular. “I don’t look much,” he said, “to write letters
to
.”

Some idea he had had of wresting her letter from her had vanished before she answered, leaving him moderately ashamed. Her odd shyness and her reluctance of fancy had, before now, provoked him; he did not know how much or whether pleasantly. His feeling for her, held up, found its way out in a kind of boisterousness and toughness on a plane where these were likely to be supportable; he had wit enough to be inflamed by his own bad taste. On the whole, he was nastier to his other friends than he was to Emmeline: the perpetual adolescent in sensitive natures remained his victim, but in her the adolescent was still unborn. An idea of tussling with her for a letter she would not give him, uncertainly taken up, had quite soon bored him… . Besides, he valued her sweet, lame letters.

“Quite a picture …” said Markie, and looked round the room where between the window and mirror he and she hung like fishes in bright water, equably opposite each other in daylight. Not quite eye to eye, pairs of gold-fish in those little crystal aquariums poise for hours together over the shells and glass ornaments, hardly more animate than the unrippling water, making a pattern. In Markie, prickly and strident nervousness evaporating from his manner, this piscine acquiescence to the bright stillness became apparent, while to Emmeline these lucid minutes were native and kind as an element. It was their first breakfast together.

A rose dropped petals; almost as silently past the window a bicycle spun downhill. The postman began to come uphill, knocking from door to door. Big with fate for the sleeping Cecilia, were it only an invitation to dinner, the letter bag bumped up their steps.

“Post …” said Emmeline, snapping the silence idly.

“Expecting anything?”

“No.”

“I should like there to be a letter from me, but there’s not.” Groaning into his coffee cup, Markie soliloquised: “
How
on earth am I going to get home?”

“You telephone for a taxi—but there won’t be any taxis up here yet. When one’s catching an early boat train one orders one overnight… .” Her voice trailed off, it hardly mattered; Markie was not listening.

Upstairs, Cecilia woke up again. “
Emmeline
!” she called, urgently.

Emmeline looked at Markie as though their days together were over, as though she had only the moment in which to speak. “I’m glad you came,” she said hurriedly, and brushing the back of his chair with her hand ran upstairs. He sat staring at her empty place, at a heap of petals that, while she sat saying nothing, her long fingers had gathered, turned over and sifted one by one.

Cecilia, now very wide awake, sat up pulling her pink dressing-gown round her shoulders with an air of immense resolution: a splash of daylight fell into the room. “Was I dreaming,” she said, “or did you come just now and tell me that Markie was in the house?”

“He’s just having breakfast.”

“Well, I must say I think this is very bohemian of Markie. I’d have said so before if you’d given me time to wake up. I suppose he’s not shaved or anything.”

“He didn’t mean to come in.”

“I still don’t know what he’s doing in St. John’s Wood.”

“I’m going to drive him home.”

“You can’t drive round London with Markie looking the way he probably does. Besides, you’re not dressed yet. If there aren’t any taxis he’d better ring up a garage. Really, darling, I don’t see how you can run a travel-bureau if you can’t get a man back to Sloane Square without all this fuss.”

Emmeline strolled off into the bathroom and turned her bath on. If Cecilia and Markie did not meanwhile arrange otherwise, she still proposed to drive Markie home. Her two friends’ communication seemed to be brief and angular; through the bathroom door she had a glimpse of Cecilia in pink ruffles, still rather angry, leaning over the banisters… . Going back to her bedroom, Emmeline found her letter to Markie behind the blotter. She put a match to the corner and watched it burn. A very little of Emmeline quivered off in hot smoke; she blew down the flame and brown ash fluttered on to air spinning already with sound and sunlight: the day was in full bloom.

IT SOMETIMES STARTLED CECILIA to think she and Julian might now be engaged, kissing each other officially, much on the telephone, trying to find a house. To Julian, who was very busy, this realisation occurred in sharp gusts, disarranging his habit of mind, like some wind through a room full of papers: he endeavoured to keep himself closed against the disturbance. At the same time, his one halting impulse—linked with the speed of the car through the glowing country—began to take on a roughness, the whole prestige of savagery: something seen, as it were, by the tail of his rational eye but never looked at quite squarely. He was on the nervous edge of feeling and almost suffered: he moved cautiously, always preparing to wince, as though stiff from a first day’s riding. Chagrin played some part in his mood: he felt a born minor character. In the course of that week after Saturday—in which, besides the unusual pressure of business he had a good many engagements —he received, with some books of his she sent back, a pleasant note from Cecilia, saying how much she had enjoyed the school and their day in Buckinghamshire.

Julian’s sister returned from abroad: on Thursday, as she requested, he met her train at Victoria. Her greeting expressed that deprecating affection to which, from his family, he was accustomed: they all felt he should do more. Too much exhausted to speak, as they drove to her club, she suggested that they should lunch together to-morrow: she had three days in London on her way through to Shropshire… . Julian, having extracted himself from another engagement with a good deal of embarrassment, wondered where he should give her lunch. Wherever he took her she never seemed to enjoy herself; on the other hand, she liked to feel everything possible had been done. When once they had lunched at his flat she appeared more depressed than ever, saying: “Of course you are right to live very simply.” He decided to give himself, at least, a good lunch.

Julian’s sister, a pale tall woman dressed with neutral English good taste, appeared to be handsome, though her features were indistinct as though seen through wrappings of gauze. Her head drawn in like a duck’s on her long neck when she smiled gave the smile a disconcerting quality of indulgence. A discouraging woman to meet for the first time, she seemed at all times to be smothering mild resentment at what one had done or said: she appeared to endure life with laudably little fuss. She was some years older than Julian, lived in Shropshire and seldom said or did anything actively unkind.

Slipping off her suéde gloves before lunch on Friday she looked about her, appraising the restaurant without comment. Julian said he hoped this place would amuse her, and she said it seemed to be very bright.

Julian asked after Cadenabbia: she said it had been much as always and she did not think she would go again. She told Julian he did not look well, and enquired after Pauline: her manner at this point took on a slight air of reproach, resembling Cecilia’s.

“Oh, she’s very well,” Julian said, with the briskness his sister always provoked. “I was down there on Saturday.”

“Oh yes, at the school? She wrote that you were expected.”

“She seemed quite pleased to see me,” said Julian doubtfully.

“With girls of that age,” said his sister, “it is impossible to be certain. Pauline is painfully shy; it is impossible for her to express her feelings in any way.”

Julian looked round the tables at couples lunching, so gay and intimate. Among all this mirrored pleasure, these lights and faces, he missed Cecilia acutely: blurred by the inhibitions of Pauline, upon which his sister dwelt with such gusto, their last bright Saturday seemed to recede… .
Hors d’oeuvre
appeared; his sister took up her fork doubtfully: though he assured her these were a speciality it soon appeared she would eat nothing but radishes and an olive. “You took Mary down with you?” she resumed (Mary was their sister-in-law). “Pauline said, “
They
will be coming.’”

“No, a friend came with me, a Mrs. Summers: she was anxious to see the school.”

“She thinks of sending her daughters?”

“No.”

“She did not care for the school?”

“She has no daughters.”

The strain of this interlocution—in which every question by taking the form of a statement made it clear that only one answer would be acceptable—was beginning to tell on Julian. He felt he had never said “No” so often; each time he received from his sister a faint vibration of outrage, as though she suspected in him some quite gratuitous impulse to contradict. She paused when he told her Cecilia had no daughters, her long dim face like an uninspired Madonna’s becoming strained with the effort to put something difficult delicately. “Julian,” she began—

“Yes, Bertha?” said Julian boldly.

“Julian, you must not be hurt … I am sure this white wine is excellent, but do you think I might just have some Vichy water?” Nothing was easier (Bertha had “an inside”), but Julian, who had been bracing himself agreeably, went flat, as though Cecilia had disappeared. Spinning one glass on its base till it clinked wildly on another, he said: “Look here, do you still think I ought to marry?”

“Oh yes, a man’s life is so empty … I’m afraid,” she said, looking round, disconsolate, “my Vichy water is giving a good deal of trouble.” Julian turned irritably to the waiter. “But, of course,” she said, “as you did not marry, you can always take Pauline abroad when she leaves school. It would be nice for her to travel a little, and I think she is fond of you.”

“I’m afraid I couldn’t do that, possibly.”

“I should take her myself to Florence, but the climate is so uncertain. All the same, Julian, you must not become too set in your way of life; one does become set in one’s way of life about middle age, I have noticed that in myself, I quite see it in you. There is a great deal, I am sure, in taking an interest in younger people: I am sure you will find Pauline an interest as she grows older. … Of course we all felt it a pity you did not marry, though I quite see you may not feel you could do so now. A young wife would be unsettling, and a woman of your age might not fall in with your life as you might expect.”

“Exactly… . Here comes your Vichy.”

“There is no one at present that you …”

“Nobody,” snapped her brother.

“Then I do not see how you can marry,” she said placidly.

Devastated by the correctness of this opinion Julian turned moodily sideways, just not to catch at the moment, Markie’s eye. Markie, pulling in his chair opposite Emmeline’s at a corner table, had been explaining to Emmeline why her appearance, the first night of all at Oudenarde Road, at dinner, had been such a surprise: he had heard of her as a sister-in-law. But what, asked Emmeline, did a sister-in-law look like? Markie’s eye, travelling round the restaurant, settled on Julian’s sister, who illustrated his point perfectly. “
That
,” he had said, directing Emmeline’s happy unfixed gaze.

Emmeline put on her spectacles. “Why,” she exclaimed, “there’s dear Julian!” She radiantly smiled and nodded. Markie knew Julian slightly but did not connect him with Oudenarde

Road. “Oh,” he said, “do you know him? Who’s that he’s lunching with?”

“I’ve no idea.”

“Obviously,” said Markie looking again, “it is not his idea of pleasure.”

Heads together over the table, they both laughed. She still felt sorry for Julian, but he was far off, at the small end of a telescope. In a sort of ecstatic distraction she took off her spectacles, glanced once more round the room that swam with reflections of her own happiness, then back at Markie, who did not again let her look away. Fans whirring silently made icy discs on the air: she dropped her gloves and sat listening.