Concluding (23 page)

Less satisfactory was the crush of fortune hunting children, with more fabulous gems for eyes, round Baker and Miss Edge, both of whom affected to ignore their riches as, oblivious yet well aware, they danced out together the dull year that was done. One after the other they would be tapped on a hard, black garmented back. But, as was traditional on these occasions, they lingered in one another's orbit, until at last Edge had had enough. When that moment came she simply opened eyes, from which long years had filched the brilliants, said "Why Moira," in simulated wonder, and so chose this child who, of all the suitors, was the first she saw in her hurried tiredness.

"Oh, ma'am," the girl said, delighted, while they drifted off on music, Moira leading.

"Isn't it wonderful?" the child asked, when she proudly noted the Principal had once more closed her eyes.

"I could go on for ever," she murmured further, when there was no response.

Then, as was usual at these Dances, but which came, as it always did, in all parts of the room at one and the same time because it occurred to almost everyone at once, there was mooted the project of a gift to their Principals.

"Why don't we get up a sub for Edgey and Bakers?"

"I think we ought to do something for both. They're sweet."

"This is too marvellous. We must manage a present in return."

"Ma'am," said Moira to the dreaming guv'nor like a black ostrich feather in her arms. "You're wonderful. So good."

The music was a torrent, to spread out, to be lost in the great space of this mansion, to die when it reached the staff room to a double beat, the water wheel turned by a rustling rush of leaf thick water. It was so dispersed and Winstanley, seated alongside Sebastian, could, for the conversation of her fellow teachers, hear no breath, neither the whispering in the joists from a distant slither of three hundred pairs of shoes, nor the cold hum of violins in sharp, moonstruck window glass. She did not know until Sebastian, who could not tell why, other than that he was restless, got up to open a door, when at once she realised the house had come to life, and recognised the reason. He would never listen for me, she accused Elizabeth.

It came to all the staff along the outside passage, first as a sort of jest, a whispered doublemeaning almost, then as a dance master's tap in time with music. After which, at any rate for the women, a far rustling of violins once recognised called as air, beaten through stretched feathers, might have spoken to the old man's goose, that long migratory flight unseen. So they rose, as Ted had never yet, and, with a burst of nasal conversation, made haste toward their obligations in the excitement of a year's end; not without a sense of dread in every breast which, in Sebastian's case was even more, for him it was the violin conjured, sibilant, thin storm of unease about a halting heart.

While they hurried closer the whole edifice began to turn, even wooden pins which held the panelling noiselessly revolved to the greater, ever greater sound. Thus they almost ran to their appointment, so giddy they were fit to tumble down; but, once in the room, paired off quietly, decently as best they might.

Sebastian stood against a wall, Winstanley could only take on Marchbanks, and Dakers was left with the last woman he would have picked.

"He's here," Miss Rock said to her grandfather, but he did not catch on.

"Care? Of course I care," he replied, in the deepest voice. Yet she took her hand out of his, was slipping from his arms.

She detached herself and, not unnoticed, made her way to where the young man waited. As for Mr Rock, when he saw himself abandoned, he moved clumsily over to the dais. Moira steered past with Miss Edge, whose eyes were tight closed. The child's lips sent "Later," at him, and he read them. Then, when he reached the sort of throne he had picked out, he climbed up and sat himself heavily where none but the Principals had a right to be seated. He was proud.

It was such a grand sight Mr Rock was almost glad he had attended.

Miss Winstanley noticed Elizabeth make for Sebastian, and it turned her sick as she circled about Marchbanks.

"How are you, dear?" she asked the older woman, thinking of herself.

Miss Marchbanks danced with great concentration, and the little smile of a martyr.

"Thank you, my shoulders are broad enough," she replied.

"There is something presumptuous in all this," Winstanley said of the evening with what was, for her, an unusually sad voice. She was watching Elizabeth give herself over, dance as one with Sebastian, deep in his arms. They moved as though their limbs had mutual, secret knowledge, were long acquainted cheek to cheek; the front of their thighs kissed through clothes; an unconscious couple which fired burning arrows through gasping music at her.

"Our dear girls must have a marvellous time," Marchbanks volunteered, with conviction. "But if you spoke of Mr Rock, the uninvited guest, then you knew of this fresh honour, that he is to be elected? I expect he feels sure of himself now."

The repetition of the beat, and her lazy misery about Sebastian, began to make Winstanley drowse.

"How goes your head?" she asked again.

There was a silence between them. Then Marchbanks murmured, "I'm so used to my heads I don't notice."

"There's anaesthesia in a valse."

"But I do wonder time and again, dear," Miss Marchbanks dreamily answered. "Do we not meet this modern music the same way, in the old days, as they used to go to fairs? You will have read of it. People plunging into the hurly-burly to forget their miserable condition, their worries."

"Ah, they weren't fools, then, they seldom are," Winstanley said at random, and shut her eyes tight. Through a blinding headache Miss Marchbanks guided the younger woman, who still had hope.

"Darling," Elizabeth said to her young man, out of shut eyes also, "I spoke to him. He'll do it."

"Oh Liz," he answered, looking over his shoulder. "But you should neither of you have come."

She smiled the little smile of satisfaction.

"Aren't you glad we came?" she asked.

He did not answer. Still from her closed eyes she thought how the hand she had on his shoulder must seem to him like his heart's white flower.

"I'd have imagined you'd be glad," she said, still satisfied.

Moira had long been succeeded in Miss Edge's arms by other partners, but Mr Rock had forgotten the girl in his wait for the Principal to be vacant. He sat on alone, a monument, determined to buttonhole Edge the first moment he might. But she was too popular. Even when he saw Moira come crabwise through the serious, frantic dancers, he did not imagine she was after him. As he concentrated on the guv'nor, he did not notice the child again until she stood below his chair, to make the usual offer of herself, to present, as she always instinctively did, the endless prize of her fair person.

"Are you ready?" she asked.

"Hullo," he said. "I've danced enough."

"Mr Rock, d'you mean to say you've forgotten?" she protested. "I was to show you," she lied. "Now, don't you remember?"

He did not wish to appear confused in a crowd, or by this music.

"Where do we go, then? Lead away," he said, blithe, and got up with difficulty.

"Over here," she told him, took the little finger of his right hand.

Once they were outside, the passages seemed quite deserted, although there was one girl yawned alone in the pantry.

"Not many down yet, Moira," she greeted, unlocking a door which opened onto a steep flight of stairs that led to the depths. There was no hand rail, only a length of rope looped to some rusted stanchions. Mr Rock's courage failed.

"Have I to negotiate these?" he pleaded aghast, unwilling to admit his disabilities. "I don't think I can manage."

Meantime, the other girl bolted the door through which they had entered.

"Oh, but you must," Moira said, calm but firm.

"You might tell them to hurry my relief," the first child suggested.

"It's my eyes," Mr Rock confessed, and put a foot forward as though about to enter an ocean.

"Come on," Moira begged, started to descend in front, still holding his finger. "We don't want to get caught, do we?"

When he thought over the episode a day later, Mr Rock felt this last remark, with its suggestion of conspiracy, had been the prime factor, squalid as it was to have to admit it, which induced him to embark on the first venture.

"Wait," he said, abandoning himself to the descent. As soon as he was fairly engaged on these stone steps, the other child locked the door above, and, with it, shut away a last murmur of the dance. So they haltingly crept down into blinding silence, lighted by dirty bulbs festooned with cobwebs.

"Where are you taking me?" he demanded, and awkwardly pulled the rope.

"Wait. You'll find out," she answered.

Age made a man very dependent, he thought, for this was like the pretty child that led the blind. Indeed his eyes were adequate, even if thick lenses distorted edges of vision, but it was his feet were blind, which fumbled air. Then, with a great feeling of relief, he had arrived; he stood on a level cellar passage, but nevertheless, still groped forward, with the forefingers of his free hand brushing a wall, and picked up more cobwebs. He was on the way to wet wine and dry coke, he thought, for this was the region of bins and boilers, and also, presumably, of somewhat else.

Moira, in order not to dirty her frock, led the old man as if they had to pass through a tall bed of white and black nettles. She walked sideways, delicately, held his other hand high which seemed to protest in the traditional manner of the sightless.

"Isn't it awful?" she exclaimed.

"Now look, my dear," Mr Rock said, "All this is very flattering, I don't doubt, but we have to get back upstairs, some time. Surely we've done enough."

Then he saw the bare corridor turn to an upended empty crate and a green baize door.

"Stay two minutes," she said, going round one and through the other, to leave him alone.

"What foolishness is this?" he pettishly demanded aloud of his solitude, hard of hearing, yet with an idea he could catch whispers, even more the other side. Then she was back, and had closed the door. She looked sad, listened a moment. But she climbed onto the crate, so that the rajah's hoard of her eyes was on a level with the old man's spectacles.

"We're too soon," she said. "You mustn't look before they're ready. Come here," she demanded. He went up. She laid a cheek against him, and, before he knew what she was at, had rolled her face over until soft lips brushed his that were dry as an old bone.

"Stop it," he muttered, and stepped violently away until his back became covered with powdered whitewash. He rubbed a hand over his mouth, left a cobweb on the corner.

"You're mad, Moira. You did this for a bet," he said frightened.

"Yes," she lied. It was only part of the routine; also she had wanted to make up to him, of course, for the fruitless journey.

He hurriedly started off towards the stairs. Her eyes, as they turned to watch, hung out more diamonds.

"Come on at once, my poor girl," he ordered, and did not look for her. Mopping at his face with a handkerchief, as Dakers had at breakfast, he set the pace out of it. He trod high again, as though afraid of a wire that might trip him. She followed obediently, in immodest silence.

When Inglefield allowed the instrument its first interval, the usual twenty minutes, and that Banqueting Hall spun down to a flower hung cavern of still white couples, Elizabeth had the sense not to make at once for moonlight with Sebastian, but joined a sideways drift which had begun to the buffet next door. In front of the willow pattern, hand-basin of lemonade, however, they became quite a centre of interest. For word had gone round that at last they were engaged; the students, one and all, were in a giving mood; and the idea, which seemed to each gently panting chest to be unique, the possessor's very own, took shape, flowed spontaneously into a project of the wedding gift. But not so loud that it could be expressed, not yet at least, not all at once.

"Careful with the lemonade," they said to her.

"It's poison. I ought to know, I made it."

"Isn't your grandfather wonderful? I'm so proud he came."

"Sweet for us that Edgey asked you."

"Do try one of these."

Elizabeth simpered at the girls about, accepted all they offered with small cries.

"What of your Daise," a student began. "Will she like company?"

Liz took this up.

"What does one, I mean it isn't possible, is it? Animals you know. There's no way, can there be? But you see all I'm trying to say is, you may never tell, and not only with pigs when everything's told, you can't be sure of human beings, either?"

Sebastian hurried to the rescue.

"Surely this much could be assumed," he said, unaffected and serious, in his lecturer's voice. "That where waste occurs, and, mark you, waste as such, in normal times, is not so bad a thing, it can represent no more than the effect of a high standard of life, then, in those conditions, isn't it better that what waste may naturally exist should be diverted to a guise in which those who cause the self same waste may employ it to replace what has been wasted? I'm afraid I've got a bit involved, you know. In other words, if you are in a position to be able to afford not to eat potatoes in their jackets, why not feed the peelings to pigs?"

"But that's what happens, surely, Mr Birt," one of them objected.

"Daisy doesn't have all," he said. "The rest goes to pig farms, I agree, but here we touch on what might be termed the ethics of political economy. I wouldn't exactly recommend your using this in exam papers, but I do put it forward that, if there is waste, then you should keep your own pigs. Clean up so to speak, behind."

"Then what are they going to eat on pig farms?"

"But, surely, that is the affair of the State?" he asked. "A mass feeding of swine should not be haphazard. The surplus of a hundred thousand State factories must be made up into balanced pig foods."

"And what if the pigs don't like?"