The Feast (18 page)

‘Ask Mother,’ he said, ‘I know nothing about it.’

‘… Who told me? That slut of a housekeeper told
me…. What’s her name … Ellis. I’d hoped she was lying….’

‘Sir Somebody Bevin came over, or somebody like that. Surely Mother told you,’ persisted Robin.

‘… Been at it again, have you? I thought I’d put a stop to that sort of thing. While you live in my house you’ll behave decently. Yes, even if I have to lock you up! Creeping out of the house at night like a …’

‘Mother never tells me anything,’ yelled Gerry
furiously
. ‘Ask Duff. Perhaps he’ll know. She writes to him.’

‘… Who is it this time? I mean to find out. Make no mistake about that. So you might as well save time by speaking up. Who is he? …
Mrs.
Paley
?
… You’re a fool, Evangeline, as I know to my cost. But you can’t be quite such a fool as to expect me to believe that….’

‘I’ll ask your mother some time, when she’s not busy,’ said Sir Henry, retreating into the house.

Gerry abandoned the umbrella and began to collect his tools. He felt that the terrace was unbearable. He scowled at Robin, who was listening with horrified attention.

‘… Ask her? I certainly shall ask her. And I shall tell her what she ought to have seen for herself…. I’d have thought it was only too apparent to everybody, after the exhibition you made of yourself in church….’

‘I say, Gerry! He
is
an old …’

‘Shut up and come away.’

As they left the terrace the voice pursued them:

‘… Only one alternative … to put you under some kind of restraint….’

Robin went to the kitchen, where he found his mother and Duff. He began immediately to tell the sad story of the black amber and he was in the middle of it when Gerry, who had gone to put away the tools, joined them in a belated fit of anxiety about the cracks on the Other Cliffs.

‘What cracks are they?’ demanded Gerry. ‘Where are they? Why wasn’t I told?’

He had to repeat these questions several times before anyone would listen to him. But at last Mrs. Siddal said:

‘They’re all right. Sir Humphrey Bevin heard about them and came to look at them.’

‘When?’

‘Some time in May, I think.’

‘Why wasn’t I told?’

‘Why should you be told?’ said Robin, who was annoyed at the interruption to his story.

‘Did he say the cliff was safe?’ asked Gerry.

‘He’d surely have said if it wasn’t,’ said Mrs. Siddal.

But Gerry was not satisfied.

‘He mightn’t have said so to us. We don’t own those cliffs. How do we know it’s safe to walk on them?
Perhaps
we ought to warn people not to go up there. I think we ought to find out.’

‘Old fuss pot,’ muttered Robin.

And Mrs. Siddal exclaimed:

‘I do wish you wouldn’t fuss about everything so, Gerry. I’ve got quite enough on my mind as it is. Miss Ellis has gone on strike because I won’t sack Nancibel.’

Gerry shrugged his shoulders and went out to oil the engine of the boat. This was kept at the top of a slipway cut in the rocks above the creek at the back of the house, and it could be launched when the tide was high, on a calm day.

Nobody ever went to the creek unless they wanted the boat, for it was not attractive. The towering mass of cliff kept it in shadow for the greater part of the day, even in summer. The rocks, never dried by the sun, were slippery and slimy, and covered with bright green weed where the little stream came down. Occasional spaces of coarse sand were always dimpled, at low tide, by great drops of moisture falling at regular intervals from the cliff above. And there was a smell of rotting weed.

Gerry shivered as he pulled the boat out from under its little tarpaulin roof. He had never liked the Other Cliffs, and to-day it seemed to him that they were looking unusually black and grim. He supposed at first that this must be a fancy, but, when he took a second glance at them, he realized it to be a fact. They were blacker than they had ever been before because there were no gulls there. In other years this whole cliff face had been a famous nesting place; every crevice and ledge had been splashed white with their droppings. Generations of chicks had taken their first swim in the creek, pushed callously off the lower rocks by their parents. Now there was not a gull to be seen. Patches of discoloration showed where former nests had been, but there were no recent ones.

He could not remember that such a thing had ever happened before. And an uneasy inference was
beginning
to take shape in his mind when the door from the house flew open and Evangeline Wraxton came running down the steps to the creek.

Had he not known the cause of her distress he must have thought her crazy, for she was grimacing and
muttering
to herself like a lunatic. She did not see him until she was halfway down the steps; when she did she turned and started to run up again. But he called to her to stop. He did not want her to go rushing about the house in this manner, giving further proofs of mental instability to anyone who should catch sight of her.

‘Stay here,’ he commanded. ‘Sit on the doorstep where it’s sunny. I’m only oiling the boat. I shan’t be a minute. And then you can have the place to yourself.’

She obeyed him. He turned his back on her and busied himself with his oil can, but he could feel that her agitation was subsiding. Presently she sighed and said:

‘I didn’t know the boat had an engine.’

She pronounced it
ingine,
like a little girl, and Gerry smiled. He had already been aware of a touchingly
childish quality that she had; he had felt it during the tea party in the shelter last night on the cliffs.
Encouraged
by Mrs. Paley she had been happy and at ease; the spinsterish mannerisms, the jerky movements, had vanished. She talked and laughed freely, and did not mind when they teased her. But she was like a very charming little girl—a child who had never been allowed to grow up. This tender creature had remained hidden and protected behind the battered front which she
presented
to an unkind world. And he had felt, dimly, that there was a certain valour in this refusal, at any rate, to grow up crooked. It was as though she was still wisely waiting for the climate to grow more propitious.

‘I thought you were on the terrace,’ she said presently.

‘I was,’ he agreed. ‘I was mending the umbrella.’

He paused, pondered, and then added:

‘I couldn’t help hearing some of what your father was saying. I’m so very sorry.’

She made a variety of grimaces before she could reply. But at last she burst out:

‘It’s not true! I used to sleep badly, and I felt better if I got up and went for a walk. He found out and thought I was going to meet some … some man. But it’s not true. I wasn’t. I … I don’t know any men.’

‘Has he forbidden you to go out with Mrs. Paley again?’

‘Oh yes. And he says he’ll shut me up in an asylum if I do.’

‘That’s rot, you know. He can’t, without a doctor’s certificate.’

‘He might get one. If he brought a doctor to me I should be so frightened I should be sure to do something silly. And a lot of people do think I’m mad.’

‘No qualified doctor would,’ declared Gerry.

‘You’re a qualified doctor, and I’m sure you did … on Sunday.’

This was disconcerting. The dangers of her situation began to be more clearly apparent to him.

‘You should get away,’ he said. ‘Why do you stay with him?’

Evangeline explained her rash vow. He argued with her until the luncheon gong roared inside the house. Evangeline grew very white.

‘I can’t go in,’ she whispered. ‘I can’t go into the dining-room. Everybody heard. I’m sure they did.’

Gerry stood up and wiped his oily hands on a piece of rag.

‘Wait a minute,’ he said, ‘and I’ll bring you some lunch out here.’

He ran up into the house. In a few minutes he was back again with a tray. He had snatched up two plates of cold tongue and salad, two rolls and four large plums from the serving-room hatch.

‘We can eat our lunch here,’ he said, sitting down beside her on the sunny step. ‘And then we’ll go fishing. Would you like to go fishing?’

Evangeline’s heart leapt with pleasure and then sank to extreme depths, as she became convinced that he had only asked her because he was sorry for her. She said
mournfully
that she would like to go fishing very much indeed. Gerry’s heart sank too, for he regretted the invitation even as he gave it. He had meant to get an afternoon in the boat, all by himself, away from his exasperating family; and now he had saddled himself with this depressing girl. He was extremely sorry for her, but he had, after all, troubles enough of his own. Sometimes he felt that his father would drive him crazy, and
he
did not rush about making faces.

He grew more and more morose as the meal proceeded. Evangeline’s timid little attempts at gaiety were not encouraged. As they finished their plums she said:

‘I think, perhaps, that I won’t come after all. Thank you very much for asking me. The … the sun on the water might make my head ache.’

Gerry knew that this was a lie and that she wanted to
come. But he was, by now, so sulky that he made no attempt to dissuade her.

‘I’ll take the tray in,’ she said, getting up.

She sounded so meek and humble that Gerry was
infuriated
. He said certainly not, snatched it from her, and hurried into the house. Evangeline followed him, protesting miserably:

‘I could perfectly well … it’s silly … I don’t see why I shouldn’t….’

In the kitchen passage they met Mrs. Siddal, who looked at them as though they were the last straw. When Gerry explained what they had been doing, she
exclaimed
:

‘So that’s where those two helpings went! And I’ve been scolding poor Fred. Really, Gerry … I can’t think what possessed you to do such a thing. To take the dining-room lunches….’

‘One of them was Angie’s anyhow,’ protested Gerry.

‘
Whose
?
’

‘Miss Wraxton’s! One of them would eventually have been given to her in the dining-room, wouldn’t it?’

Angie
?
thought Mrs. Siddal. He calls her Angie? Oh, the sly creature! And she glared at Evangeline.

‘I really can’t have people walking off with their lunches like that,’ she told them. ‘I’m always ready to cut sandwiches if I’m asked.’

‘I’m so sorry, Mrs. Siddal….’

‘I’m very sorry, Mother. It was entirely my fault. I suggested we should have lunch on the rocks. I didn’t know there was any rule against it.’

‘But you weren’t having tongue for lunch, Gerry. That was only for the dining-room. You’ve eaten Canon Wraxton’s tongue. What can I give him for lunch?’

‘Can’t you give him whatever I was going to have?’

‘No. It was only bread and cheese.’

Mr. Siddal, who had been listening to all this from behind the boot room door, now intervened and called out:

‘Duff’s getting tongue, Gerry. Give the Canon Duff’s tongue.’

‘There wasn’t enough for everybody,’ explained Mrs. Siddal. ‘And it’s all very hard on poor Fred. I blamed him.’

‘Fred’s getting tongue,’ cried the voice from the boot room. ‘And Nancibel is getting tongue.’

‘Well, I’m very sorry,’ said Gerry again. ‘We were going fishing, and …’

‘Going fishing? In the boat?’

‘Of course we’re going in the boat, Mother. And Angie …’

‘But not this afternoon, surely, dear. I … I really can’t spare you. Miss Ellis has given notice. Perhaps … some other day, if Miss Wraxton really wants you to take her in the boat….’

‘I don’t,’ muttered Evangeline.

‘You asked me yourself,’ protested Gerry, ‘to try and catch you some mackerel for supper.’

‘I know. But I can manage. I’d rather you stayed here.’

‘But what do you want me for?’

There was a pause. Mrs. Siddal could not, for the moment, think of anything, though she was determined to stop the fishing scheme. The voice from the boot hole was heard to suggest that she wanted Gerry to catch a mouse, and she was too much flurried to be aware of any sarcasm.

‘Yes,’ she said, brightening. ‘There has been a mouse. In the pantry.’

Gerry lost his temper.

‘Borrow Hebe’s cat,’ he said. ‘Come along, Angie. The tide will be just right by now.’

He strode out of the house and down the steps followed by Evangeline, who saw that now he really wanted her to come.

‘I’m getting just about sick of it,’ he muttered as they pushed the boat down the slip-way.

‘You can’t think …’ he exclaimed, as they went chugging out of the creek, ‘… nobody could ever imagine what I have to put up with. All this fuss because I want to take you out fishing.’

‘You didn’t want to,’ said Evangeline, ‘until there was a fuss.’

He looked at her, a little startled.

‘Well,’ he said at last, ‘I do now.’

‘So you really ought to be grateful for the fuss,’ she pointed out. ‘But we’d better fish, hadn’t we? I mean, if we don’t catch enough mackerel for supper I don’t see how we can ever dare to come back.’

They fished, cruising up and down outside Pendizack and Rosigraille coves. In less than two hours they had caught twenty-seven mackerel.

Their progress was observed by the Paleys, who were sitting in their usual niche, a hollow on the headland looking towards Rosigraille Point. Nothing could have pleased Mrs. Paley more, for it was plain, even at that distance, that they were enjoying themselves. She had already wondered if she could not persuade them to take some little jaunt together, and now they had done so
without
any persuasion, apparently, from anybody. For it did not occur to her that Gerry’s mother might have supplied the impetus.

And in Africa, she surmised (for in her opinion they were already as good as married and despatched
overseas
) in Africa they will get a lot of fishing, so the sooner she learns how to manage a motor boat the better. But will they? Why do I think that Africa is full of enormous rivers? The Zambesi…. Perhaps their part will be swamps and crocodiles; too dangerous. And then there
is the veldt. That’s dry. We must get him to tell us some more about Kenya. But whatever it’s like they’ll enjoy it. Neither of them has ever had any fun. They’ll never get over the pleasure of being first with somebody … of being cherished and considered….