The Solitary Child Page 6

  “How d’you do?” He held my hand warmly. “I’m not a welcoming committee, so you needn’t be afraid I’ll stay. Just dropped in on business.”

  Ann gave me a glass of sherry. “We’ve known Cyril since we were children. He’s almost one of the family.”

  “But not quite.” He gave me a huge, unsubtle wink. “How’s Maud, Ann?”

  She said, defensively, I thought, “Not too well. She started one of her bad heads this afternoon, so I put her to bed with a light supper.”

  “As well as can be expected, eh? Surprised she allowed you out for the evening.”

  “That’ll do,” she scolded. “No more sherry, Cyril. You’ve had enough.”

  “Don’t you talk to me in a Woman’s Institute voice. Hallo, James. Nice to see you.”

  “How are you, Sully?” James sounded cold and rather formal. “How’s the veterinary business?”

  Cyril put down his glass and yawned, the waistcoat gaped over a dirty woollen shirt. “Not so bad, not so bad. My patients don’t sue me. I came about that little mare of yours. Ran into a barbed-wire fence the other day in a storm. Tore the flesh off her foreleg, nasty sight.”

  James looked weary. “I’d better see her, I suppose.”

  “No need. I’ve seen Evans. She’s comfortable enough.” He sounded casual. “I’ll be getting along. Nice to meet you, Mrs. Random.”

  “Harriet, please.”

  “Well, well. Harriet, then.” He eyed me approvingly. “Hope we meet again soon.”

  He picked up his mackintosh. James said, “I’d like to see the mare, if you don’t mind.”

  His voice was icy. Cyril looked at him.

  “Certainly.” He twinkled at me. “Harriet, you’ll find a farmer’s life is one long round of worry.” In spite of the smile there was an edge to his voice. “Come along, James. We’ll visit the sick-bed.”

  As he went out he looked, beside James, small and shabby and very middle-aged. I wondered why James disliked him.

  Ann poured herself a glass of sherry. She perched uncomfortably on the edge of her chair. Her voice was nervous and staccato.

  “You’ll be too tired to look round the house now. It’s quite pleasant, really—the rooms on this floor are all fairly compact. And there’s a small kitchen—it used to be a butler’s pantry and mother put in a stove so that she could cook when she wanted to. So you don’t have to use the big kitchen on the ground floor.…”

  “Is there another floor?”

  “Yes. But it has always been used as servants’quarters and you can’t reach it from this one. There’s a cupboard stair from the downstairs kitchen; if you lock it you can seal off that part of the house. The ground floor is the problem—you can’t shut it off and you won’t want to use it, there’s no central heating down there and in the winter it’s pretty uninhabitable.…”

  I crouched on the sheepskin rug and held out my hands to the fire. I was tired, my body ached with weariness and cold. The bright, nervous voice went on and on as if silence were an enemy to be kept at bay.

  “English country houses haven’t progressed since the time of the Saxons—really, I wonder why people live in the country.”

  “Don’t you like it?”

  “I haven’t any alternative. I gave up my flat in London because I couldn’t afford it.…”

  There was a faint asperity in her voice. I remembered James’s slightly different explanation of her departure from London and wondered if this was a sore subject between them.

  There was a silence. I looked up, she was leaning forward, clutching her sherry glass. Her face was scarlet.

  “Harriet, I must tell you how brave I think you are to come here with James. How much I admire you.… It was a lot to ask of you, I don’t think he can have known how much. It wasn’t fair to you.…”

  She was apologising for James. For a moment, the other implication did not strike me.

  “Oh, but he didn’t.” I was too tired to prevaricate. “I wanted to come.”

  “Harriet, but why?” She was completely off her guard. Unprepared, dismay showed in her face.

  “You think it was the wrong thing to do?”

  She sighed, a little sherry slopped out of her glass on to the pale carpet. She scrubbed at the stain with her handkerchief.

  “It comes out quite easily if you do it at once,” she said in an absorbed, housewifely voice. She tucked the damp handkerchief in the sleeve of her jersey.

  “I don’t know. I must admit that I thought it unwise. Of course it would have been a wrench for James to leave the house.…” She smiled. “Even when he was a little boy, he loved it quite passionately. Once, he cut his wrist with a razor and smeared it on to the wall. He wanted me to do the same and swear that we would both live here till we died, but he was bleeding so much that I was frightened and ran for mother. I remember she was angry with me, not with James at all. I thought it very unfair. James was her favourite, you know. He was never very strong and they were always extremely close.…”

  She stared vaguely at her hands. I thought she was really rather good-looking in a haggard, aristocratic way.

  “When he wrote and said he was getting married I hoped he’d make a clean break, start a new life for himself.” She looked at me helplessly. “Evans could have run the farm. In some ways it might have been the best idea. He’s an excellent man. Mother took him on when he was very young—I think on the understanding that he would have complete control eventually. James’s interest has always been rather gentlemanly though he would hate me to say so.…”

  Pulling at the tangles in the skin rug, I persisted, “I knew he was fond of the house. Are you afraid that people will talk because he has come back here with me? That doesn’t matter, surely.…”

  “No … of course not. I suppose there will be people who will think it a little”—she hesitated over the word—” brazen. But they don’t matter. I’m sorry I said anything. It was clumsy. You mustn’t worry. It’s difficult for anyone to understand anything outside their own experience.” She paused and added conventionally, “I’m sure you will be happy here.”

  Her voice faltered. The extent of her distress was reflected in her face and manner. She was very shy and muddled, the sort of person to whom a small blunder would appear of immense importance.

  “I know we shall be happy,” I said. I wanted to tell her not to worry, that James and I loved each other and beside that nothing mattered, but she got up abruptly to offer me some more sherry. And then James came in.

  We ate roast chicken and apple sauce in a small dining-room on the same floor; we drank two bottles of wine.

  At first the conversation was deliberate and wary. We had spent so little time with other people, James and I, that we had no character as a unit. Most couples acquire such a character early on so that if they are often together it is a shock to meet them separately and find that they behave quite differently alone, show a different, public face.

  I noticed this when we were talking to Ann about Switzerland; we were unused to talking to someone else about an experience we had shared together so that from time to time we would find ourselves speaking in unison and then fall silent and wait for the other to go on. Ann was not the most encouraging of listeners. She meant to be kind, I think, but she held herself somehow aloof so that the intention appeared rather as a duty which she had not sought but had had imposed on her. But the wine encouraged us, and by the end of dinner we had discovered the rare pleasure of recapturing happiness by talking about it. The days we had spent together became alive and real; we had a shared memory and were closer because of it. I smiled at James across the dinner table and knew he was thinking the same thing. It was a warm and friendly feeling.

  We made coffee and carried the tray into the drawing-room. The Boxer bitches sprawled across the hearth rug; one of them was due to have a litter in the spring, and Ann said I must choose a puppy as a wedding present.

  James twiddled the knobs of the television set th
at stood in the corner of the room. They were playing a panel game; there was a line across the screen and the top half showed no picture so that all we saw of the question-master’s face was a gnomic, benevolent grin.

  He said, to Ann, “You needn’t have moved this upstairs. I’ve bought another one.”

  She glanced at him and said, a little tartly, “I’m surprised you can afford it. I can’t.”

  He turned it off and winked at me behind her back.

  The dregs in the coffee cups congealed; James ate spoonfuls of the coloured sugar crystals and the French clock under the glass dome swung its circular weight round and back again.

  It was about ten-thirty when the telephone rang. It didn’t ring like a London telephone; it had a long, single note that shrilled and stopped and shrilled again.

  James moved sluggishly in his chair.

  “I’ll get it.” Ann got up swiftly. “It’s probably Maud. She’ll be wondering where I’ve got to.”

  She went out, leaving the door ajar. I leaned against James’s knee and he stroked my hair. We heard the footsteps going down the oak stairs and then her voice as she lifted the receiver. Too sleepy to talk to each other, we listened, but we couldn’t hear what she said, only the low murmur of her voice. Once it rose as if in interrogation, and then there was a ping as she replaced the receiver. There was a silence and then she called, “James.”

  Her voice sounded a note of alarm. People call like that when something has happened that doesn’t fit into the ordinary day, when there has been an accident, a death.

  We went to the top of the staircase. At the bottom of the long stair, her lifted face shone palely in the dimness of the hall. She moved slowly towards us, one hand on the polished banister.

  She looked at James. I think she had forgotten I was there.

  “It’s Maggie,” she said. “She’s run away. They think she is coming home.”

  Chapter Four

  “They thought she was here,” Ann said.

  The fire had died in the grate. She threw a log into the ashes; it was damp and the green smoke curled slowly round it, without warmth.

  “Why?” said James. “Why should she come here?” His hands were thrust deep into his pockets, his shoulders slouched.

  “It’s her home. You are her father.”

  It was not a new issue, merely a renewal of an old anger. Looking on, I was aware of an enmity which astonished, not because of its sudden violence but because they had managed to keep it hidden until now. Clearly it had been, all along, so near to the surface that it could not have been easy. There had been no evidence of any particular affection between them, but neither had there been any suggestion of an arranged truce. There was not, now, any deliberate goading one of the other; the spur to anger was immediate and apparently familiar.

  I saw how alike their faces were, touched by the same emotion; antagonism gave them both the same harshness, the same angularity of feature. The things they said sounded worn and unoriginal as if they had said them many times before.

  “You knew she would never be happy there.”

  “It is not—it never was—a question of happiness. I knew she would be safe.”

  “You know that is a shabby evasion. You are responsible for her.”

  “So is God.” His voice was flat and bitter and final.

  “James, that is no answer. You know it is not.” Her face was thin and pinched, the bones stood out beneath the skin.

  I could only guess at what had gone before. It was like coming into a theatre, during the second act of a play and they were both as unaware of my presence as the actors on the stage.

  He slumped into a chair, his head sunk between his shoulders.

  “We have been into this before. You know where I stand.”

  “I know how you once thought and felt. I believed you to be wrong then, as I do now.”

  “Then there is no need to discuss it. We remain on opposite sides of the fence.”

  “It can’t rest there. Once it was, perhaps, a necessary cruelty. Now it is inhuman. What would mother have thought!” Her voice was loud, unexpectedly theatrical. A red spot burned in either cheek.

  James looked at her with eyes as cold and grey as the winter sea.

  “Leave mother out of this. I sent her to her grandparents because it seemed to be the only thing to do. There is still no alternative.”

  “How you hide behind these hypocritical, virtuous phrases. You sent her away because you couldn’t bear the sight of her. It was not for her own good—nothing was further from your mind. When I asked you why, you said your love for her had gone sour.”

  “Then more reason for her to go to people who wanted her and loved her.”

  “But not against her will. She adored you, trusted you. You could have hidden your own feelings, not let her see that she was distasteful to you.”

  “Is it so easy to hide one’s feelings? We are talking, you know, not of keeping them in control for isolated meetings but for long days together, sharing the same table, the same roof, the interminable evenings.…”

  His face, lifted now and white as paper, stared at his sister. His eyes looked beyond her at imagined horror.

  She said, “You didn’t try. Not once. You rejected her out of hand. It was ruthless.…”

  Almost visibly, he regained control of himself, sat upright in his chair. “Ann, be reasonable. I could not have looked after her. Not here. An adolescent girl.…”

  Somehow, there was falsity in the room. Even I, knowing as little as I did then, could feel it. She sensed it too, pressed home her triumphant advantage.

  “That’s not why you got rid of her. Were you afraid she would grow up like her mother? If it was that, wasn’t it the worst thing to do to send her away?”

  Quiet now, he said with sullen anger, “She was never like her mother.”

  “Then why?”

  “Must you always have a reason? Do you want me to say what everyone thinks? You must have heard it so often, whispered behind your back. Perhaps, even, said to your face at one of those cosy parties where everyone drinks too much and believes frankness to be a sign of sophistication. He can’t bear to be with her because she looked like his dead wife. Could anyone endure such a constant reminder of failure? And always, the excitement behind the eyes, the real thought unspoken. “Of course they let him off—but that’s no proof of innocence, is it? I suppose there wasn’t enough evidence to convict him. We can understand why he won’t see his daughter, it would be like living with the dead.”

  She said, in despair, “James, why do you hate everyone so? It destroys so much, love and trust.…” Her voice died, words were useless in the face of such bitterness, love without comfort. Her eyes searched the room and rested on me at first without recognition as if I were only an object in her field of vision. Then she flushed.

  “Harriet,” she said.

  They both looked at me, shocked and guilty. James got up from his chair, put his hand on my arm. His eyes were full of pain.

  “I am so ashamed,” he said.

  “It doesn’t matter.” I felt alone and very unimportant.

  “Of course it matters.” Then, “Don’t cry, Harriet, please don’t cry.”

  “I’m not crying.”

  He kissed my mouth hard and suddenly so that I bit my lip. Then he held me in his arms, his cheek against my hair. Over his shoulder, I saw Ann turn away. Their sudden solicitude was unbearable; stiffly, I released myself.

  “I’ll go and make some coffee.”

  “And have a good cry all alone? Sit down. I’ll do it.”

  He picked up the tray of dirty cups, balancing it on his knee while he opened the door.

  Ann was crouching on the hassock, her long legs in woollen stockings curled beside her. It was a schoolgirl’s position as if, under strain, she retreated into girlhood. There was a lumpy darn on one ankle; she picked at it with restless fingers.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “It was abominable ba
d manners. If not worse.”

  I dabbed at my lip with my handkerchief. There was nothing to say.

  “He makes things so much worse for himself. He provokes suffering.”

  “Can’t you understand that?” I asked, astonished that she should be so unpercipient.

  She raised her head. She looked ill, as if the life had been drained out of her. “I didn’t mean this to happen.” She looked helplessly round the pretty room. “I wanted things to be nice for you.”

  The pathetic inadequacy of the phrase made it impossible to be angry with her. She had tried so hard to make this a glad occasion; instead she sat, dismayed, among the ruins of her party. It struck me that both she and James had a tendency towards self-pity; angry at the faint disloyalty, I pushed it out of my mind.

  Ann sighed and smiled palely at me.

  “I’m sorry, Harriet. It’s something we hadn’t mentioned for a long time. It seemed kinder—I know I tried to be tactful and sympathetic. But it was impossible to pretend she didn’t exist. James knew how I felt about her. Sometimes we seemed to be on the brink of talking about it and James would stop, change the conversation, leave the room.… I suppose it had been crushed down for so long that we had to get angry to talk about it.”

  I asked practically, “What has happened to her?”

  She seemed startled, almost as if she had temporarily forgotten what had begun it all.

  “She left early this morning, before anyone was up. Her grandparents live at Oxford. She didn’t come back. They waited for a while and then they went to the police. This evening, they found a lorry driver who picked her up on the Worcester road. He took her as far as Leominster. He said she told him she was going home to her father. She didn’t say anything else and he didn’t ask any questions.”

  “They’re sure it was Maggie?”

  Her voice was flat and confident. “It couldn’t be a mistake.”