The Feast (15 page)

‘I’ve come to chaperone the boys,’ said Siddal, pulling up a deck chair, ‘and to ask what your new book is called, Anna.’

‘The Bleeding Branch,’ said Anna, in her slow, deep voice.

‘Thank you. It was the only detail I wasn’t sure of, and even that I should have guessed:
There
!
Let
thy
bleeding
branch
atone,
For
every
tortured
tear
!
Shall
my
young
sins
… Now I know exactly what your book will be, as well as if I’d written it myself.’

‘Really,’ said Anna. ‘Then how does it begin?’

‘It begins with the innocent, or quasi-innocent (because you couldn’t depict true innocence, Anna) little Brontës carving their names on trees. I don’t know why they chose branches rather than trunks, but they did. It’s
possible they then climbed the trees and sat in them, playing Gondals.’

‘Dick! What a devil you are!’

‘And it ends with a moribund and remorseful Emily hacking a branch out with an axe. And in between we have “a wildering maze of mad years left behind,” in which Bramwell writes
Wuthering
Heights
and she pinches it and rewrites it. Bramwell’s was a far greater book, but she murders it because she can’t stand the Truth. She will not allow Cathy to be Heathcliffe’s mistress. She will not allow the young Catherine to be their daughter, palmed off on Linton. Young Catherine, of course, was the heroine of Bramwell’s book and her
half-brother
, young Linton, the hero. But Emily changed all that. She pushed him right out of the picture, because of course he was a self portrait.’

‘There’s plenty of evidence,’ began Anna.

‘Oh, plenty. The build-up of young Catherine in the opening chapter, for instance. But you see, my dear Anna, I know it all. I know exactly what poor Emily’s young sins are going to be, and you shan’t tell me about them.’

‘I blame her for nothing,’ said Anna sententiously, ‘except for murdering that book. If there is a Last Judgment she’ll have to answer for that.’

‘I do hope there will be,’ said Siddal. ‘I shall enjoy hearing you answering for your books, Anna.’

‘I know you hate them. At heart you know, Dick, you’re a bit of a Puritan.’

‘And what do you mean by a Puritan? enquired Siddal.

‘You hate Sex.’

‘No, I don’t. I think sex is very funny.’

‘That’s a sign of frustration.’

‘Maybe. But I don’t think food is funny, and I don’t get enough of it nowadays.’

‘We all talk about food a great deal,’ said Robin.

‘Oh yes,’ said his father, ‘we are immensely
preoccupied
with it. And sex-starved people are immensely
preoccupied with sex. Much cry, little wool. I always suspect people who boast of their rich and various sexual experiences. I find myself doubting if they ever had any worth speaking of. Satisfied people hold their tongues. They know it’s an unlucky subject to discuss.’

‘What do you mean? Unlucky!’ asked Anna.

‘Terribly unlucky. When Psyche turned on the light, Eros flew out of the window. He’s a very touchy god and he can’t bear publicity. And that,’ he said to the three young men, ‘is why you boys will never be able to pick up much information at second hand. Those who know won’t talk. Those who talk don’t know.’

‘I talk,’ boomed Anna, ‘and I know. I’ve never rejected an experience.’

‘I never rejected a brief,’ said Siddal, getting up.

He shuffled over to the terrace parapet to look at the sunset on the water. The tide was half out and the sea as calm as glass, flecked here and there with gulls who seemed to sleep as they floated. In the wide tracts of wet sand the rosy sky was reflected. Nearer the cliffs, where it was dry, three figures crossed the bay. Gerry was staggering under a load of two mattresses, Evangeline carried a picnic basket, Mrs. Paley some pillows. They took the path up to the headland.

A cormorant came flying low over the water, its long neck outstretched. It flew inland, and Robin turned to watch it.

‘Look!’ he said. ‘It’s perched on the roof! There’s a whole row of them. Six or seven!’

But Anna was not interested in birds.

‘You know,’ she said, ‘I think your father would have been perfectly different if that affair with Phœbe Mason hadn’t ended so unhappily. He was so astonishingly brilliant, as a young man. Everyone thought he’d set the Thames on fire. And then, when he didn’t, you’d hear all sorts of explanations. People said he shouldn’t have gone in for the law, that it wasn’t the right profession, and he should have stayed in Oxford. But
everyone knew it was that he couldn’t be bothered to do any work. Now why?’

‘Who’s Phœbe Mason?’ asked Robin, pop-eyed.

‘Didn’t you know?’

‘Never heard of her,’ declared Robin.

‘How queer! It just shows what a queer frustrated family yours is. Everything hushed up, I suppose. But that’s probably Barbara’s … your mother’s doing.’

Duff stirred uneasily on his cushion. He had at last made up his mind what he thought of Anna.

‘If only she’d had more generosity … more
frankness
… if she’d let the affair run its course instead of parting them….’

At this point Siddal returned from his stroll and passed them, observing:

‘Whatever you’re saying, Anna, it’s a lie. No. I
overheard
nothing, but I protest that I wasn’t and I didn’t. And if you write books about me before I die I shall sue you for libel.’

The Pendizack booby trap shut up with a crash, and Bruce’s oaths rang across the stable yard. He had
forgotten
Nancibel’s warning.

The noise woke the occupants of the big loft. Robin sat up with a start to hear chuckles from Duff’s bed.

‘It’s the high-class chauffeur,’ said Duff. ‘He didn’t know … or else he forgot.’

‘But what time is it?’ asked Robin, looking at the luminous dial of his watch. ‘Why … it’s half-past four!’

‘I know.’

‘Where on earth can he have been?’

‘I can guess.’

Robin reflected.

‘Not,’ he said at last, ‘… not with …?’

‘Of course. It’s obvious.’

‘Well! I call it pretty thick.’

There were violent bumps next door as Bruce extricated himself from the bed, opened it out again, and climbed in the proper way. Then there was silence.

‘It puts me,’ said Robin at last, ‘off the whole idea.’

Duff grunted non-committally and turned on his hard mattress. He disliked Anna, but he could understand her attraction and in part he responded to it. Her lure was that of Circe. In her company a man had leave to be as big a brute as he liked. She imposed no
sanctions
, asked for no loyalty, no delicacy, no tender
considerations
. She offered freedom of a sort. The brute in Duff yawned hungrily.

‘I say,’ exclaimed Robin, ‘where’s Gerry?’

‘Isn’t he here?’

Robin flashed a torch for a minute on Gerry’s bed. It was empty.

‘This,’ he said, ‘is a much stiffer guess.’

‘I shouldn’t wonder,’ said Duff, ‘if he’s cleared out. He was in a black rage before supper. I expect he’s so furious he’s just gone.’

‘What happened?’

‘He had a row with Mother.’

‘
Gerry
did?’

‘Mother gets a bit tired of advice from Gerry. He’s always telling her what she ought to do.’

‘Tells all of us,’ agreed Robin.

‘He was trying to dictate about Father’s Law Library. Mother got a letter from the people in his old Chambers. It seems it’s still there, and they’ve been writing and writing to know what he wants done with it. But you know him. He never even opens his letters. So at last
they wrote to her. It was none of Gerry’s business. Mother was livid.’

‘Do they want it moved?’

‘Yes. They’ve no room for it. He just left it there when he gave up practice. Mother’s giving orders to have it stored. She would before if she’d known anything about it. But Gerry wants to sell it. A good Law Library is very valuable nowadays, and it’s worth about five hundred pounds. Somebody did offer to buy it,
apparently
, but that’s off, because Father never answered the letters.’

‘Five hundred pounds would be very useful,’ said Robin.

‘If I go to the Bar I might like to have it myself. It’s no concern of Gerry’s. Infernal cheek of
him to say what’s to be done with Father’s books. Mother told him she’s storing it for me, and he proceeded to go right off the deep end. Just because he gives her fourpence
halfpenny
a week out of his screw he thinks he’s got the right to boss the whole family. He said he should go to South Africa and never come back.’

Robin considered this, and then said:

‘We should be in quite a hole if he did.’

But Duff was growing sleepy again, and did not answer.

‘I don’t see why you should have five hundred pounds,’ said Robin more loudly.

‘Wha-at?’ said Duff, rousing.

‘If all this family has left is books worth five hundred pounds, I don’t see why you should get it all.’

‘I’ll have to have a library if I go to the Bar.’

‘What about me?’

‘You aren’t going to the Bar.’

‘How am I to get educated?’

‘Get a brain specialist to operate on you, I should think. Do shut up. I want to go to sleep.’

‘I think Gerry’s absolutely right.’

‘You take a flying …’

There were thumps on the wall from Bruce, who was trying to go to sleep.

‘Thump back,’ said Duff indignantly. ‘What blasted cheek! He wakes us all up falling about in his bloody bed.’

Robin thumped and yelled: ‘
Shut
up
!
’ through the wood partition.

‘Shut up yourself,’ came in a faint answering yell from Bruce.

Robin and Duff continued to talk in voices aggressively raised until Bruce, losing patience, got out of his bed. There was another crash as it shut up. Yells of laughter came through the partition. Gerry, who was cautiously climbing the ladder, thought that everybody in the loft must have gone mad.

But the noise died down when he joined his brothers. Duff and Robin stopped laughing and stared at him.