Unclouded Summer (29 page)

“I'm very sorry to have disturbed so romantic a moment,” she said lightly, “if it is a romantic moment, that's to say. It's always so hard to tell with you Americans. I don't know if this means that it would ordinarily mean here in England that we are about to welcome a new son-in-law into the family or whether it is a variation of the American national custom of what is, I believe, called ‘the petting party.'”

To that there was for Francis one answer only; one answer only that could save the situation; one answer only that would make it possible for him to look Marion in the eyes again.

There was only one thing for him to do, to speak as light-heartedly as Judy had, “I'm afraid I can't answer that completely. I'm afraid you came upon the scene too soon. I was just trying very hard to get Marion's permission to ask you to accept me as a son-in-law, but I'm afraid I haven't had time to get the answer yet; it's up to Marion.”

That was the only answer. It was the answer, too, that with one part of himself he would have given anything to make. He could not make it though; there was no possibility of that. He stood there silent, the eyes of all three turned on him, Judy's, challenging and belligerent, Sir Henry's aloof, but watchful like the old diplomatic fox he was, Marion's fond and trustful, confident that he would say that one thing which would not only save the situation, but open for her a way of life in which she could take pride and happiness.

It was at Marion that Francis looked, watching, as he stood there, silent, that look of trust change first to one of bewilderment, then to a shocked misery which seemed near despair, but which then very quickly, as she realized that he was not, after all, going to say the one thing she had longed to hear, changed to a steely resolution.

The whole change of expression did not take thirty seconds, but in that half-minute, there had come into her eyes the look of someone who had seen momentarily the Gorgon face to face. Something died in her that moment. The moment had forged for her the first scales of the armor that would defend her against the disillusionments of life, against too ready a readiness to except the best. The new person that Marion had become laughed lightly.

“Dear Judy, how very mid-Victorian. Of course it wasn't anything. It was the moment and the mood. Too much champagne, I think. In fact, I'd be very wise to go straight to bed. Good night, Francis dear. I'll see you in the morning.”

It was an effective exit. As she walked up the stairs, Sir Henry flashed at Judy a quick interrogatory glance. Such a glance as he had flashed at her at that first lunch party when the Renans had seemed about to quarrel. This time Judy did not appear to notice it. She changed the subject.

“In that case, I suppose we had better go back and give the other team a chance of doing a better charade than we did. I'm sure they will never have guessed our word. I do congratulate you, Francis. It was most successful.”

She slipped her arm through his, as they walked back to the drawing room.

It was the showdown right enough.

Francis was up the next morning early, in the knowledge that no one except Sir Henry would be down to breakfast before half-past nine; Sunday being, as he had learned, the one morning on which Sir Henry made a solid breakfast.

He was correct in his supposition. Sir Henry was alone, with
The Sunday Times
propped before him on a paper rest. His welcome was not, as Francis also had foreseen, any the less cordial on account of the incident of the previous night.

“Good morning to you. I trust that you slept well. I think that you will find everything you need upon the sideboard. Sausages are the traditional English Sunday breakfast dish, but I can recommend the kidneys.”

There was the usual profusion of dishes along the electric heater. Francis helped himself to kidneys, bacon and a soft-boiled egg.

“I'm afraid that I have the only copy of
The Sunday Times
,” Sir Henry said. “But there's
The Observer
there, and
The News of the World
if you feel frivolous.”

It was obvious that Sir Henry was in no mood for talk, but it was for that precise purpose that Francis had risen early.

“I've been thinking that it was almost time for me to be moving on,” he said.

Sir Henry raised his head. His dignified handsome features expressed the concern appropriate to such a statement.

“Of course, my dear fellow, if you feel you must. It's very good of you to have devoted so much time to us. I appreciate it very much and so does Judy.”

Sir Henry listened thoughtfully, nodding from time to time as Francis set out his reasons.

“I ought to do a certain number of London pictures, so that if I'm to go to Spain too, as I had hoped this summer …”

Sir Henry nodded sympathetically.

“I couldn't agree more with you. We shall miss you very much. But we can't interfere with your career; one must always put one's work first, always. When did you think of leaving us?”

“Tomorrow.”

“So soon? Well, perhaps you are wise. Provided, of course, you regard it as a breaking rather than an ending of your visit. You might for instance like to leave some of your things here, to regard this as a
pied-à-terre.”

“That's very kind of you, but I travel light.”

“And very wise of you, but if we can be of any help to you…”

It could not have been arranged more smoothly. If Sir Henry had felt any relief at his guest's departure, he had not betrayed it by one flicker of a muscle. He had given no indication of what he felt; but then he never had, he never would. Had he ever, Francis wondered, felt any jealousy, any resentment at his wife's absorption in a young foreigner, or had he, knowing that he held all the cards, been content to play a waiting game? What had he thought? What did it matter what he had thought? It was over now.

With a heavy heart Francis walked out into the garden. It was a bright May morning. The sky was blue with pale flimsy clouds, drifting lazily across it. The copper beech by the rose garden was not yet in leaf, but the chestnuts were in full blossom in the drive. The daffodils at their roots were dead, but the gray-green water of the pond reflected the white and red and mauves of the rhododendrons flanking it. The archery with its tulip beds looked like a scene from a Dutch painting. It had been a wet bleak April. Morning after morning Judy had said, “If only you could see Charlton at its best, just once.” This was really the first time he had. The stucco walls shone in the morning sunlight, with an aspect of white gold that he had not yet seen on them; the same glow of gold that
had been reflected in the picture over the mantelpiece at Mougins. Mougins, how long ago that seemed and tomorrow he would be on his way to London.

As he came back into the house, he met Marion in the hall. She was wearing a dark-blue coat and skirt and a wide-brimmed hat. She was carrying gloves and a small leather-bound prayer book. If last night's scene had been staged in any other place, at any other time, he would be joining her now, to walk across the fields, to stand at her side in the small dark Norman church beneath whose rounded arches for eight centuries young couples had plighted their troths to one another.

She checked at the sight of him, but she did not flush. Her color was a little high. He fancied that she had put make-up on so that no one would notice that her cheeks were pale. She raised her hand, as he came towards her.

“No, please don't say anything about last night. I don't want you to feel badly. We've had such happy times. I've so much to be grateful to you for. I want you to have happy memories of me. You mustn't feel badly because it meant more to me than … because it meant something different to me from what it did to you.”

Her voice was controlled and firm. There was a new strength, a new dignity to her this morning. Her refusal to pretend that last night had not meant something real to her was proof of it. She had become an adult person. You certainly are fine, he thought, as he watched her walk out through the front door, over the lawn, to the path across the fields. Had they met anywhere else, at any other time each might have been the answer to the other's problems. A voice of premonition warned him that never again would he pass so close to the possibility of a lifetime's happiness.

Sadly he crossed into the drawing room. Judy was there alone, arranging a bowl of flowers in the window. She was wearing a summer frock, one of the frocks that she had worn at Mougins. It was the first time that he had seen her in a summer frock since then.

“You wore that at Vence,” he said.

She nodded. She looked at him very steadily.

“I'm sorry that it should have turned out this way,” she said.

Into her voice had returned the glow that he had thought never to hear again, in her eyes was the fondness for which he had been so long nostalgic. The feeling of premonition that had oppressed him as he watched Marion cross the lawn,
was dissolved, obliterated by this new sensation, by this rediscovery of the Judy that he had thought lost forever. She was just as she had always been. It was just as it had been at Mougins. All was not lost. Surely all was not lost then after all.

He took a quick step over to her; he caught her hand.

“Listen,” he said, and his voice was desperate. “I'm going tomorrow and it'll be forever. I can't ever come here again, not after last night. I can't join you in Mougins either. But surely that needn't mean … you remember what I said to you in that letter.”

“Darling, you said so many things.”

“I know, but the main thing I say about its being impossible if I once came down here … I said that then, but now it's different. It needn't be too late. We could still start a life of our own together. We could go to Spain.”

“No, no we couldn't.”

Her voice was firm, the glow gone out of it. She pulled away her hand.

“It's impossible. I've always told you that that was quite impossible.”

“Then What on earth did you think was possible?”

She shrugged. “Is there any point in our going into all that now?”

She had become once again the watchful defensive Judy that he had known over the last month. At the reappearance of that now familiar Judy, his rancor rose. He had been humbled and humiliated. He had been trapped into a false position. In this last moment he had to reassert himself.

“You kept on talking about the sweet time we could have, that we would have together. How did you think that we were going to have that time unless we ran away?”

Again she shrugged.

“Does it matter now what I thought?”

“Your eyes lit up that day when the Wessex Galleries took those pictures. You suggested I should take a studio in Chelsea. Do you remember that?”

“Yes, I remember.”

“You looked at me so strangely, challengingly, as though you were saying, ‘I told you there was a solution, didn't I?' What were you thinking when you looked at me that way?”

“Perhaps what you think I was.”

It was said as a challenge, or rather as the acceptance of a challenge, but it was said wearily. Her voice was haughty but in her eyes was the appeal unworded, “Why go on with this,
why tear our nerves to pieces?” But the strain of the long separation, the accumulated irritations of the past four weeks, the humiliation he had had to face in front of Marion would not let him stop.

“Did you imagine that I was going to spend months down here, that I was going to join you in the South of France, that for half my life I was to be your husband's guest, maintaining a facade behind which we, you and I, would sneak away every so often surreptitiously for a few snatched moments in a beach hotel or in a Chelsea studio? Was that your idea of a sweet time together?”

He was angry and his voice had risen, but she retained her calm.

“Anything I said now you'd just misinterpret but if you still insist on knowing just what I thought …” She checked. “No,” she went on, “I can't explain; you wouldn't understand, not in your present mood. But this you should know, this you must know. I couldn't act a lie. I'm the last person in the world to act a lie. I'm a straightforward person, you should know that … that night at Villefranche. It was a mistake, I see it now. But at the time I thought, as far as I thought anything … afterwards, at least, I thought, ‘He must know now the kind of woman that I am, he knows the real me. I've given him all I have to give. I've given him a proof.' I thought that after that proof you might find it easier to wait.”

“Easier to wait?”

“Aleck Moore waited twenty years for Lillian Russell.”

At that he lost his temper. It was, he felt, the most outrageous suggestion that had ever been made to any human being. Wait twenty years! What did she think he was: a lap dog? Was that what she thought American men were like? Had she fallen for that European twaddle about the enslaved American male? A torrent of angry words poured out; words that once spoken cannot be forgotten, for which the question of forgiveness cannot, exist, since they have poisoned at the root each flower of friendship. Wait for twenty through the succession of heavyyears! What did she think he was, that she should arrogate to herself the right to place a man's life in chancery, denying him his inalienable right to freedom, to the pursuit of such a life and such a happiness as Marion or an equivalent of Marion could have given him. The conceit, the arrogance of such a proposition. The rancor of weeks poured out in a flood of tempestuous abuse. “To keep me dangling from your
finger tips, to keep me your slave for twenty years, for twenty years!”

He repeated the words on a crescendo of mounting indignation, as though the very remoteness, the inaccessibility of that date stressed and explained the enormity of her offense. “For twenty years,” he said.

She raised her hand, checking him. “Sh,” she whispered. “There are people coming.”