The Ballad and the Source (42 page)

“Was
it?” I inquired, not optimistic.

“Well, taking it all round, it
was.
Yes, I must say we had a pleasant morning. She was all smiles and smoothness, and she examined every detail of the little houses as we passed, and made remarks about them. She said: ‘I do like this place, I'd like to live here. I've always wanted to live by a little river full of cresses and reeds and rushes and little fishes.' She talked about a wonderful farm in Bohemia where she'd stayed once when she was a girl; and a stream where she used to go fishing. I suppose that's where she learnt German—though it's funny she never sang those German songs to us when we were little. … The only what you might call realistic moment was when she glanced sideways at me and off again, and said suddenly: ‘That man won't come again, will he?' ‘Which man?
'
I said; and she said: ‘The bad one with the beard.'”

“The doctor.”

“‘Mm.' I said perhaps he would just come to see that her hands were getting better; and she said: ‘I don't want him. Keep him away.
You
can do my hands.' I said casually I thought he was really quite kind, it was only his beard that made him look nasty; but much to my relief she changed the subject. She said she was hungry again, so I rowed back, and when we got to the landing stage, there was Gil, looking very forbidding. He said good-morning to her politely, and gave her a hand out; and then on the pretext of helping me get the boat round into the boathouse, he jumped in beside me and muttered in a furious voice: ‘Maisie, you must be mad.' I saw he'd been frightfully anxious. I said: ‘But she's all right, I promise you. It's all over. You can see for yourself.' He said it was time to stop playing with the situation.
‘
Well, what do you suggest?' We snapped at each other rather. He said: ‘Today, Sibyl must be told.'
‘
Who's to tell her?' I said.
‘
I shall,' he said. But,” added Maisie slowly, “he didn't.”

I waited, silent. She went on:

“We landed from the boathouse—it's a wet boathouse with steps leading into the garden—and joined her. She stood, and looked up at him very, very searchingly. Just as much as she avoided looking at me she looked deep at him with her enormous dark eyes. I wonder what was in her mind. … He said in a friendly formal way he hoped she would have no objection to his joining us for lunch. As a regular customer at this inn, he would like to introduce her to the delicious
cuisine.
She said: ‘Do you live here?' and he said he was living temporarily near by. She said wistfully: ‘I wish I lived here. It's such a gentle place.' It sounded affected, I thought she was showing off to him. He said he'd go in and see Madame
Meunier
about an extra special lunch, and she and I went and sat in the summer-­house. And gradually the change began to come over her.”

“What sort of change?”

“She got silent. She didn't smile any more. She stared at the table and looked dejected. When the food came she wouldn't touch it.”

“Oh dear!”

“What a meal, my God! Gil and I exchanged some remarks about the weather. My heart began to sink into my boots. Not that she was violent or suspicious or anything. Just miserable. Suddenly she raised her eyes to Gil again, and said like an anxious pleading child: ‘I
wish
I could stay here. I
do
want to.'”

“What did he say to that?”

“Oh … Poor Gil! He put his head in his hands and ruffled his hair up, thinking hard. Then he began to ask her questions in a very kind way—where she'd come from, what sort of life she'd been living, had she any friends—questions like that.”

“Did she answer?”

“She answered quite simply and straightforwardly. She said that she'd had a very unhappy life for a long time; and that in the end she'd tried to kill herself. She said it was three years ago, but she didn't go into it. She'd been very ill, she said, and was nursed by nuns in a convent, somewhere in the south of France; and that when she got better she wanted to stay there, and never come out into the world again. So she stayed. She'd been very happy and peaceful at first, she said, and felt sure she had the vocation to become a nun and end her days there. But after a bit she began to have doubts and to lose her faith, and wanted to get back to the world; and finally they turned her out. When she came out she didn't know what to do. She went to Switzerland—Geneva, I think—where she thought she still had some friends. I've heard about them. The husband was a Cambridge don, and she lived with them for a time before she married, and went out to India with them. She was very fond of them, I think. But she found that the husband had died ages ago, and the wife had left Switzerland and gone away, she didn't know where. Then she decided to go to Paris to find a man who'd once loved her—who she thought would be glad to see her again. She called him Marcel.”

“That one!” I exclaimed. “That you took a dislike to in Paris that time.”

“What a memory you've got. That one. And if I could hunt him down I'd murder him.”

“What did he do?”

“Fled from her like the plague, I suppose. She said: ‘He didn't want me. …
'
Well, she had changed. She'd lost her looks. I don't know who he is, or anything about him. I've just got it stuck in my mind, I don't know why, that he was a very prosperous well-known worldly man—a famous actor or something. Of course he'd be annoyed to have a wreck like her hanging round, doing him no credit.”

“What did she do then?”

“She lived with men, I think. Ones she picked up, who gave her money.” Maisie paused. “She didn't say so in so many words, she was very vague about it—or confused. And we didn't ask her, of course. But out of the blue, staring at Gil, she said suddenly that once, in Paris, she met what she called a terrible sad man: an Indian; and he had a skin disease; and in the whole wide world he had nobody at all. She stayed with him, she said, because he was so much—lower down than she was; and while she was with him she didn't need to pity herself. She was better off than
someone.
But he disappeared one day and never came back again.”

“He
left
her?”

“Perhaps,” said Maisie slowly, “he preferred not to be pitied. Or perhaps he killed himself.”

“Was she left absolutely alone after that?”

“I suppose so.”

“She must be very brave.”

“She was always brave,” said Maisie, pleased with me. “Gil said the same. He wanted to give her a bit of conceit of herself.” She paused; then added, judicial: “Not that it was really necessary. She sounded rather proud of it all. I think it's only in books that women are ashamed of being prostitutes. Her idea was to make herself interesting to Gil—dramatic, important.”

“What did she do next?” I said, matter of fact, hoping to conceal shock.

“What she told
him
was that she realised then that it was time to change her life—that she knew that
work
was the only real salvation. She decided to take up teaching again, she said. She told him all about her super qualifications, and how any seat of learning would be more than pleased to have her on their staff. But first she wanted to write a novel about her experiences—that's why she'd come down here: to dash off a stunning novel. Funny how writer's blood will out.”

“What? I thought she'd come to—” I saved myself. “But she didn't want to say that, I suppose.”

“Oh no. She'd washed all that out. It was only later, as I told you, that I found out she'd written to Auntie Mack for news of us.
And
begged her for a small loan. Which Auntie Mack sent by return. No—I'm perfectly
convinced
the real reason why she came down, poor thing, was to visit Cherry's grave in secret. And then I expect, she meant to come on to England and see Malcolm and me.”

“I'm certain that's what she meant to do,” I said earnestly.

“But it turned out she had too much to face when she got there: too many memories, I suppose, too many shocks. It brought on her madness again. And now she'd got a new brainwave: not to go away. To settle down where she was.”

“To be near you?” I hazarded.

“Near
me?
Good God, no!” said Maisie, with a coarse bark of laughter. “Presently she leaned over to Gil and whispered confidentially: ‘I do wish this girl would go away.'”

“Meaning
you?”

“Meaning me.”

I writhed in my chair.

“And then we saw Tanya. She was starting to cross the bridge, and Gil called out to her. She did look staggered when she saw us. She stayed at the bridge and beckoned to me. I went down to her, and told her the position as quickly as I could. And she said there was trouble brewing up at the house: I must go back immediately. Sibyl had appeared at lunch, on the war-path. The fact that I was down
again
at the river had been ill received. She'd said: ‘If that obsessed creature cannot be weaned from her addiction, I must personally inspect the water-weeds this very afternoon. I do not wish a fatality to mar her design of acquiring gills.'”

Once more, I could not refrain from laughter.

“At least, I bet that's what she said. I wasn't present. Tanya also said she'd remarked in a sharp though casual way that she presumed I had returned some time last night to lay my limbs on terra firma. Tanya said, oh yes, of course. She'd ruffled up my bed, she told me, to make it look slept in. I asked if Sibyl had rung her bell in the night. She said yes, twice. And that the second time she'd asked her to open the shutters wide so that she could see the moon; and said in a gentle reflective sort of way: ‘This summer moonlight has an intoxicating quality. I expect you find it so.'”

“
Oh!”

“Yes. Tanya had managed to get away herself by pretending she was going up to the dressmaker in the village for a fitting. I said I couldn't possibly leave Gil to cope, as things were turning out now. We paced despairingly back to them, absolutely stumped. No sooner had we reached the table than—”

Maisie stopped dead, as if suddenly choked.

“What?” I murmured, in fearful trepidation.

She sketched a curious gesture, holding up her hands.

“She did like this—Mother—to Tanya. She held her hands up and said plaintively: ‘Oh please, would you see to my hands? They do hurt me.' And she began to pull at the bandages and tear them off. Tanya was awfully good. She said at once in a bright way: ‘I expect you'd like them bathed again. We'll go and do that in a few minutes. Just for now, let me do them up again a bit looser. I expect the bandages were too tight, and made you uncomfortable.' And she did them up again very deftly, talking like a kind practical trained nurse.

“Mother fastened vampirish eyes on her and said: ‘You'll look after me, won't you? I know you're kind. You've got such a good face.' Then,” said Maisie in a light voice, “she looked at me over her shoulder, an awful vindictive look, and she said: ‘That girl is very cruel. I've been in such terrible pain and she wouldn't do anything for me. Send her away.'”

I looked down, down at the kitchen floor. The blood-tide of shame, mounting into my head, seemed about to burst me open, or sink me beneath the tiles.

“Perhaps you don't know,” said Maisie, “that when people go mental they nearly always turn against their nearest and—their nearest relations. It's one of the first signs.”

“Oh yes, of course,” I said, with huge relief, raising my head after all. “I've heard that.”

“Oh, you have. I hadn't at the time. If I had, I might not have been such a fool. As it was, it rather took the wind out of my sails. Gil put his arm into mine and led me a little way off and said: ‘Darling Maisie, you must go. You can't do anything here just now. Go at once; and tell Sibyl as best as you can. She'll come immediately with you, I expect. I'd like to spare you this, but you see that I must stay here.' I said I supposed the shock might kill her, but he said no, it wouldn't. He said he and Tanya would take Mother back to the mill and try to plug some pills into her that the doctor had left. He expected the doctor quite soon anyway. So I left them and started back for the house.”

In some inexpressible way, Maisie expressed in her voice the dragging, beaten, yet urgent way she had forced her feet, one step after another, up the long slope, through the gardens, up the terrace steps, up into Mrs. Jardine's house.

“Sibyl was in the hall. Dressed to go out, with her big white straw garden hat on, and a blue veil over it, tied under her chin. Remarkable sight. She said: ‘Ah, Maisie. You appear very much
à propos.
I have ordered the pony carriage, and my intention was to ask Blaise to drive me down to the river.' Blaise was a nice groom they had.
‘
But now you have come you will perhaps do me the great kindness of accompanying me in his stead. I do not feel altogether equal to taking the reins myself
. …”
So there she was, all prepared, with her nose lifted as if she could smell the battle from afar. As I knew she would be.”

“And then,” I said, putting my head down into my hands and closing my eyes, “you told her.”

“No,” said Maisie. “I didn't tell her.”

After a moment I looked up at her. She was staring fixedly at nothing, her face expressionless.

I repeated:

“You didn't tell her.”

“I said: ‘All right, I'm ready. Is the trap round?
'
She'd got this old-fashioned trap with yellow wheels she used to drive round the lanes in, with an adorable pony. It
was
a pretty little comical turn-out. She said Tanya had gone to the village, and I said: ‘Oh yes. For her fitting.' And we set off. … I loved driving that trap. It's a long winding way down by the road. We scarcely spoke. Once she gave me a piercing look and said: ‘You are flushed. Have you a fever?' I said of course I hadn't. She said: ‘You are accustomed, I know, to going hatless, but the sun is unusually powerful. To succumb to a heat-stroke, even for a few days, would interfere with your pleasures, so it would be sensible, would it not, to take a few elementary precautions?' I said I was all right. The word ‘pleasures' struck me as amusing.”