The Drowning People (6 page)

“Oh one of my metaphors again. I see what you’re talking about.”

“Then tell me what it looks like. So far you’ve only said it’s uninteresting, though it hardly seems so.”

There was a pause. I could now see the faint outline of Ella’s nose and jaw opposite me. When she opened her mouth to speak I saw a tiny flash of white teeth.

“Forget islands,” she said. “I’ve done something I shouldn’t have done, something I certainly shouldn’t be telling
you
about.”

“Go on.”

“I’ve allowed events to overtake me, I suppose. And I don’t know what to do about it.” She waited, lulled by the darkness, and then moved abruptly. “I should be going down now,” she said quietly and I heard the rustle of her dress as she got up to leave.

“Aren’t you going to tell me what you’ve done?”

“If you really want to know, you haven’t got long to wait.” And I heard the creak of the banister as she felt for it and began her slow descent of the narrow staircase.

I didn’t hold her back; I didn’t think it right to do so. Instead I sat in the dark, completely still, listening to her cautious retreating footsteps, smelling the smoke from her cigarette, giving her time. I heard the door of a bathroom two flights down open and close and open again after a few moments; and I imagined her, radiant once more, walking down the final broad sweep of the staircase into the Boardmans’ hall, tranquil above the chaos of dancing and farewells.

I myself was not tranquil. The incomplete feeling of curiosity almost but not quite satisfied burned in me. But I waited, as I had waited earlier in the alcove; I waited until I was certain that she had had time to lose herself in the crush of guests and then I got up and made my own way gingerly downwards. Ella had told me that I didn’t have long to wait, that I would find out soon enough; and I was content with that, content and interested in the precise way she would choose to tell me.

Remembering it now, I see myself on some kind of vantage point, presumably the stairs. In front of me is a narrow hall, black and white marble, highly polished. Through a set of double doors, jammed open, I can see the drawing room and the groups of tired, laughing people ranged on its chairs, drinking the last of the champagne cocktails. It is past two. The younger sisters have disappeared with their friends to the basement, where their own slumber party is presumably in progress. The door to the dancing room is closed, but the music is clearly audible nevertheless—loud, frenetic, insistent. It dies suddenly and I hear a raised voice I recognize, cheerful, excited, asking everyone if they wouldn’t mind moving into the drawing room, for it has an important announcement to make. The closed doors open soon after this and I watch a stream of people, flushed with exertion, flood the hall and then the drawing room. Among them I see Ella, with Charlie Stanhope still in attendance. Excited ripples of exclamation spread outwards from Camilla Boardman, and I see her tapping her nose with her finger in a gesture of complicity. She is beaming; the party is going
fabulously
; it is past two and almost nobody who matters has left. She is delighted by the forthcoming announcement: delighted because she has been told all it is to contain in advance. She looks forward tomorrow to telling everyone that she could barely
control
herself last night but that she knows when a secret is a secret. I read all these thoughts clearly in her unwrinkled brow and in the victorious gleam of her brown eyes. I see the girl with the villa in Biarritz smiling vacantly, a little drunk, her champagne cocktail in one hand, the other anxiously touching the back of her hair to make sure that a vital clip is still in place. She sees someone she knows, forgets the hair, and throws an arm around him. It is only when I hear the same loud, excited voice that spoke before asking everyone for a moment’s attention that I realize that it belongs to Charlie Stanhope. It surprises me momentarily that he should have something to say, but then I remember that his engagement has not yet been announced and instead of going into the drawing room I stay where I am on the stairs in order to get a good view of the proceedings. I scan the women near him as I hear him tell the crowd that as a collection of his greatest friends he wants it to be the first to share his happy news.

It is only when I see his hand in Ella’s that I know the worst; and even then I struggle to believe it. The proof is conclusive, however, when I see Charles lean down and kiss her long and publicly and I watch her return his kiss as everyone’s glasses rise in a heartfelt toast and someone starts singing “For They’re Two Jolly Good Fellows.” Both pull apart, flushing with happiness; and Ella looks up, smiling her thanks, and sees me on the stairs.

Our eyes meet, I think.

CHAPTER 4

T
HE DETAILS OF HOW
I
LEFT THAT OVER-LARGE HOUSE
; of how I submitted to Camilla’s fervent embrace as I said my good-byes; of how I avoided Ella and Charles in the crowds of guests, kissing and coating each other in the hall; all are blurred. What I remember after all these years is the exhilarating sensation of clarity I took away with me that night, the complete understanding of a situation which I felt myself uniquely equipped and placed to change.

I knew now what Ella’s island looked like: dutiful, untroubled, endless; the security of a loveless but socially acceptable marriage. Barren indeed. I could see the current that had washed her up on it, could picture the subtle stages by which she had succumbed to the tides dragging at her feet, could imagine the gradual weakening of her strength to resist. How nineteenth century her dilemma was, I thought; but then how nineteenth century she was herself in some respects. And I remembered her talk of ancestors and tradition with the fascination of the uninitiated. My own family might know families which had such things, but we had no direct experience of them ourselves, however much might be implied to the contrary.

I could speculate about the intimate conversations Ella had endured with her mother; about the number of times she had been asked whom she liked best of the young men she knew; about the delighted way in which her family would have pounced on so blandly well bred a young man as Charles Stanhope. And to please them she would have begun to see more of him; would have allowed him, perhaps, to imagine that she felt more than she did.

And then events, as she had told me herself, had overtaken her in a spectacular fashion and before she knew what was happening her engagement was being announced by a high-spirited Charles and she was being subjected to the congratulations of her friends and the rejoicings of her family. It was a romantic dilemma and one which held for me the romantic role of Ella’s savior. I clung to it in the weeks after Camilla’s party and nursed romantic plans of private rescue like the schoolboy I was.

Had I had any idea quite how far wide of the mark my conclusions had fallen, my feelings would doubtless have been very different. As it was, I threw myself into my day-dreams with a vigor which carried over into the rest of my life and surprised my parents, for no longer was I a sulky companion at the breakfast table. On the contrary, I now had a goal which was quite distinct from my battles with them and I was prepared to be conciliatory. Instead of warring with my family I focused my attention on a more immediate goal: the liberation of Ella from the clutches of convention. And I daresay that had I had any opportunity to execute my long pondered-over designs, I might have embarrassed myself seriously. Even now, as I look back on that time, I shudder with embarrassment. But I also chuckle at my own naïveté. I cannot bring myself entirely to pity the earnest figure I was, with the shuffling gait and furrowed brow. I envy that lost self his passion; for he was in love, and in hopeless love at that. It is not an unpleasant sensation.

It was not a sensation which persisted long either, at least not in its initial form. For six weeks my mind was filled with daring plans but little action. My one concrete success was in obtaining Ella’s telephone number from Camilla Boardman on the pretext that I had had no opportunity to congratulate her friend on her engagement. “Jamie
darling,
”Camilla cooed at me down the telephone, “it’s
just
like you to be so sweet. Wherever
did
you get such
perfect
manners?”

But the gruff voice that answered the telephone at the Harcourt house in Chester Square regretted to say, on each of the weekly occasions on which I scraped together the courage to call, that Ella was not at home. Thus thwarted, I considered writing and rejected it; considered waiting and accosting her on the street and rejected that too, at least as an initial measure; considered flowers; a dramatically phrased telegram; an engagement gift with a meaningful card; and rejected them all. For days I was in the sweetest of black despairs as I imagined the date of Ella’s wedding drawing ever nearer, with me helpless to do anything about it.

I was brought down to earth with a jolt one afternoon by seeing the object of these dreams, her nose in a book, sitting under a wide-brimmed straw hat on a deck chair across the water from me. I was in Hyde Park once more, having walked from my own home and made the long detour via Chester Square in the hopes of seeing her. They had not been realistic hopes, I knew, and I had settled myself by the Serpentine to enjoy the sun and to indulge in idle contemplation of how things might have been. Confronted so unexpectedly by the reality of my musings I was taken aback. Then I thought that I must have been mistaken and looked again, my pulse quickening. Over the water sat the girl on whom my thoughts had focused exclusively for more than a month, which at that age is an eternity. There was no mistaking the delicate oval of that face, the slightly upturned tilt of that small nose; only the glow in her cheeks was new. For a damsel in such distress, she looked irritatingly healthy.

Slowly I got up and made my way around the lake and through the crowds on the bridge: stalking her; wondering what she would say when she saw me. As I approached I saw her reach into a large basket at her feet and extract a packet of cigarettes and a small silver lighter. I paused and watched her fingers as she attempted to light the long, thin roll of tobacco in her hand. Her lighter needed to be refilled, I noticed; I noticed too that she was smoking a different brand from the one she had smoked before. When I was sufficiently close but still behind her and so out of her view I stopped, coughed and called her name. The pale blue of the eyes that turned to face me warned me, though no other feature did, of my mistake. They were eyes I did not know then, but which I have come to know intimately since.

“I’m afraid that I’m Sarah Harcourt, not Ella,” the girl said, turning towards me and taking off her sun hat, shaking out a wave of dark brown hair. “There’s no need to be embarrassed.” She smiled at me, sensing my awkwardness. “We were often mistaken for each other as children. Until my hair darkened, in fact.” There was, nevertheless, an embarrassed silence. “We both look like our grandmother, you see,” she continued, filling the void between us before it reached unpleasant proportions.

I nodded. Privately I thought this a strange fact to offer, but a moment’s reflection convinced me that it was precisely the sort of allusion which Ella herself might have made; so I responded to it, thinking as I did so that Sarah’s accent, very English, betrayed no trace of her cousin’s American lilt.

“You’re almost identical from a distance,” I said. “Apart from the hair of course.”

The faintest suggestion of irritation passed over the face that looked up at me from under its wreaths of hair; but Sarah’s thin lips composed themselves hastily into a polite, if slightly chilly, smile. “I’m told it’s unusual for cousins to look so similar,” she said.

Again there was a pause, which she seemed to expect me to fill this time. I mumbled something about her grandmother probably having had very dominant genes.

She nodded at this. “Yes, she was a remarkable lady. She affected a great many people. I never knew her, but I’ve read some of her letters. She was terribly funny about the English.”

“But wasn’t she English herself?” I thought that polite inquiry was the best course to follow in this unlikely situation.

“Oh no, she was American. My family’s long had American connections. But then you must know that if you know Ella. She’s one of them, in a way.”

“I thought she was English,” I said.

“By birth, yes,” said her cousin. “But by education she couldn’t be more foreign. And I think you’ll agree that it’s education which counts in such cases.” She spoke of foreignness as she might have spoken of a benign but unsightly growth: one of life’s little unpleasantnesses, regrettable of course, but not seriously threatening. Such things as having a virtual American in one’s family, Sarah’s tone implied, had to be taken in one’s stride.

As she spoke I looked closely at her and saw that she was not quite as like Ella as I had at first thought. Her hair, which fell in a neat shiny sheet to the middle of her back, was the most obvious point of difference between her and her cousin. But Sarah’s face was different too: it was longer; her lips were thinner and more set than Ella’s; the bridge of her nose was more severe than her cousin’s. She belonged, I thought, to a different generation; and although I took her to be about my own age, I felt instinctively deferential towards her without quite knowing why. Sarah Harcourt, it seemed to me (and in this I was correct), was not a person with whom liberties could be taken lightly.

“Can I do anything for you, or will only Ella do?” She looked up at me politely.

I hesitated.

“I’ll tell you where you can find her if you’ll buy me an ice cream.” Clearly Sarah was feeling conversational “I’m completely out of change,” she went on, still looking up at me from the striped canvas of her deck chair. The note of command in her voice, though faint, was unmistakable; and I complied. To make conversation as we walked towards the kiosk on the bridge I asked her how she came to have an American grandmother.

“It’s a long story,” she said.