The Feast (27 page)

‘I say …’ stammered Gerry.’ I say … but how do you know?’

‘We watched you coming back.’

Robin, meanwhile, had bestowed upon Evangeline a cordial hug which astonished her so much that she gave a loud squeak and waked Mrs. Paley, inside the shelter.

‘Is that them?’ called Mrs. Paley, sleepily.

Gerry hastened in and squatted by her mattress to tell her the news.

‘Angie,’ he assured her, ‘is wonderful. She’s
marvellous
. She’s not a bit what you’d think. She’s …’

He lowered his voice and confided in a solemn whisper:

‘Really she’s got a very passionate nature.’

Mrs. Paley gave a choked guffaw and wished him joy. He hurried back to tuck his love up on her lilo. Soon they were all asleep save Angie, who lay and watched the moon climb the sky. She was too happy to accept oblivion. This return to a world which had no hostile greeting after all, which showed her, for the first time, a kindly face, had been like an awakening, an escape from
nightmare
. All her fears and tremors fell away from her. She lay awake, serene, encompassed by her faithful guard.

Nancibel found Brace’s letter on the kitchen table and read it while she made the early morning tea. It upset her so much that she forgot the tea leaves and carried round pots of hot water to all the inmates of Pendizack. The tears were trickling down her cheeks as she set to work on the lounge.

Even last night her anger against him had been diluted by pure grief, and now she was sure that she would never be able to forget him. Though she had only known him for four days, and though she had so much against him, he had caused her to feel more sharply and keenly than Brian, her first love, ever could. For her emotions, where Brian was concerned, had been expected and
comprehensible
. He was a nice boy, steady and sensible, and he was refined and he knew how to kiss a person. Whereas Bruce had suddenly opened a window upon some strange region in her heart of which she had not been aware before—a wild and troubled territory through which some future Nancibel might travel towards new and nameless horizons. She had felt that life and human beings are very
important
and that everybody is lonely, and that nobody really knows much about anybody else.

The first pang had subsided, but it had struck a note which persisted in her relationship with Bruce so that in their mutual attraction, their mirth, and their quarrel there was this sharp, strange sadness, and a perception of Bruce as somebody real, somebody three dimensional and existing on his own, not merely a feature in her landscape. Now he had gone away and she would never see him again; but she felt that she would always be aware of
his life going on somewhere, and that reality was as firmly focused in him as in herself.

A lot of bells began to ring all at once. The Paleys, the Giffords, Canon Wraxton and Miss Ellis had all
discovered
that there was no tea in their teapots. For twenty minutes she had to run up and down stairs,
rectifying
this error and repeating that she was ever so sorry. By breakfast time she had got so behindhand with the work that she was too busy to cry. She had to leave the lounge half done and rush to the service room to help Fred. Through the kitchen door they could hear a nice shindy going on among the Siddals who were all talking at once. Mrs. Siddal was saying that the girl was a nervous wreck, Gerry was saying that he intended to live his own life, Duff was saying she sings like a bird, Robin was saying why couldn’t he leave school at once, and Mr. Siddal was saying that for all he knew his law library had been bombed.

‘No,’ said Gerry. ‘Mr. Graffham wrote about it. He said you’d had an offer. Somebody wants to buy it.’

‘Whatever’s up?’ whispered Nancibel to Fred.

Fred whispered back that the Siddals had lost a library. Neither he nor Nancibel could imagine how they had contrived to do so, for the word conveyed to both of them either a large public building or else a handsome room in a gentleman’s house furnished with desks, leather chairs and book-cases.

‘Couldn’t we find the letter?’ Gerry was suggesting. ‘The offer might still be open.’

‘Couldn’t it be sent down here?’ asked Robin. ‘Then we’d know how large it really is.’

Fred’s eyes grew round, and he asked Nancibel if she thought the Government had pinched it for a food office. That, in his experience, was a common fate for libraries.

‘You go on in the dining-room,’ admonished Nancibel, with a glance through the hatch, ‘the Coves have come down.’

She herself went to the kitchen to bring the Coves’
food and coffee to the serving hatch, where Fred would take them from her. At the kitchen door she collided with Mr. Siddal who was flouncing out to his boot-hole in a manifest rage. His pasty face was flushed and he was muttering:

‘I’ve had quite enough of it … quite enough of it….’

And Gerry, in the kitchen, was positively storming.

‘He wouldn’t even have to read the damned letter. If he’d give it to us, we’d deal with it.’

‘I don’t suppose he could find it,’ said Mrs. Siddal. ‘There are thousands of letters in the boot-hole. Millions. He doesn’t even open them….’

‘Well, then, we must. This can’t go on….’

The Coves’ tray was waiting on a side table. They were always down first. Nancibel took it to the hatch and made a face at Fred who was standing in the middle of the dining-room in a sort of coma. Probably he was still pondering upon the mystery of the disappearing library. Starting to life again he came and took the tray just as the Paleys made their appearance. So Nancibel went back for more food and again collided with Mr. Siddal. This time he was coming out of the boot-hole, and he carried a drawer full of papers. She made way for him to pass her, but the kitchen was not his goal. He went on down the passage towards the boiler room.

‘I’m sorry if I’m disrespectful,’ Gerry was saying. ‘But we must do something. There may be important letters … business letters … God knows what … I’ll sort them. But it’s time we insisted …’

‘Mr. and Mrs. Paley,’ said Nancibel. ‘And Miss Ellis.’

‘Miss
Ellis
!’ exclaimed Mrs. Siddal, serving out the Paleys’ bacon. ‘What do you mean … Miss Ellis?’

‘She’s sitting at her table,’ declared Nancibel.

‘She ought to be in the service room. This isn’t her breakfast time. I shall send nothing out to her. Nothing whatever. We seem to be a teapot short.’

‘I’m ever so sorry, Mrs. Siddal. Canon Wraxton broke one this morning. Well … he threw it at me
s’matter of fact, so I had to fetch up another. That’s why. It was my fault. I’d forgotten to put any tea in.’

‘I don’t know what’s happened to everybody this morning,’ exclaimed Mrs. Siddal. ‘How could you be so stupid, Nancibel? Lady Gifford was complaining.’

‘I’m ever so sorry, Mrs. Siddal. And I’m afraid the teapot hit a picture on the wall and broke the glass. You know … that religious picture of the Virgin Mary with all the cupids.’

Nancibel took the Paley’s tray and set off for the serving room thinking that she would go bats if she stayed in this house much longer. Mr. Siddal was coming out of the boiler room with an empty drawer. If he had thrown all those papers on the boiler fire, she reflected, he would put it out. And there was something awful happening in the dining-room. Mrs. Cove was shouting and creating and waving her coffee pot about and asking for Mrs. Siddal to be fetched, and all the Giffords, who had just come in, were giggling.

‘It’s your great-grannie’s image,’ whispered Fred through the hatch. ‘he’s just found it in her coffee pot.’

Batty! Thought Nancibel, as she escaped from the ensuing uproar. The Plymouth blitz was a Sunday school picnic beside this; we all knew where we was going and what we was doing. But in this place the only ones with any sense in them are those little Coves, and they haven’t much. Everybody else is bats, including me, wanting to howl myself sick for a crazy boy like Bruce….

She flew through the bedroom work and came at last to the Gifford attics where she found Hebe, looking very bilious.

‘Not want any breakfast?’ she cried. ‘Children that don’t want breakfast want Eno’s.’

‘What I want,’ said Hebe, ‘is to die. Then everybody would be sorry.’

‘Not so sorry as you think. They’d get over it after a while and you’d still be dead.’

‘Does everybody know … about yesterday?’

‘Not a soul, ducks, only me and … and Bruce. And we’ll hold our tongues.’

‘Was I drunk?’

‘Yes. And it’s nothing to boast about. It was
disgusting
. So we’d better hurry up and forget about it. There’s something ever so nice going to happen on Friday.’

As she made the beds Nancibel described the plans for the Feast. But Hebe received the news without enthusiasm.

‘I shan’t go,’ she said languidly.

‘Why ever not? It’ll be lovely.’

‘Everybody is horrid to me.’

‘Not the Coves. They’ll be terribly disappointed. It’s you they want to ask more than anybody. They think such a lot of you.’

‘I shouldn’t enjoy it. Why should I go to a picnic I shall hate just to please the Coves?’

‘Because you’d be a nasty little toad if you don’t. There’s not much anybody can do for them, poor little souls; but you’re the one that can do most, because you’re the same age, see? I don’t expect they ever had any good times till they met you.’

‘I’m supposed to have tried to murder them.’

‘Oh rats. Nobody thinks that. It wasn’t a bad idea, trying to teach them swimming. Only you acted silly when you chose such a dangerous place. Honestly I think you’ve been wonderful with them, only you’ll spoil it all if you don’t go to their Feast. Now you take a big dose of Eno’s, Hebe, and wash your face, and you’ll feel a lot better.’

‘I haven’t got any Eno’s.’

‘I’ll find you some.’

Nancibel ran off and borrowed some Eno’s Fruit Salts from Mrs. Paley. When she came back Hebe was looking brighter.

‘I think,’ she said, as Nancibel measured the salts into a glass, ‘that a secret society ought to be started in order
to give aid to the Coves. They have a lot of allies at Pendizack.’

‘The best aid you can give,’ said Nancibel, ‘is to go to their Feast and make it a success. Here. Drink up!’

‘Don’t you think it ought to be Fancy Dress?’

‘Depends on what they think. It’s their party.’

‘They’ve never given a party. They don’t know how. They’ll want a lot of advice. I’ve thought of a marvellous fancy dress. Where’s Bruce?’

‘Gone.’

‘Gone? Do you mean right away? For ever?’

‘Yes. He went last night.’

‘Oh Nancibel! What a pity! He was so nice. He’ll be a great loss. To the society, I mean.’

Nancibel turned away and went to make the twins’ beds. When all the rooms were done she snatched a moment to slip out to the stables. He had left his loft very neat. His sheets and pillow case were carefully folded and left on the end of the booby-trap bed, ready for the laundry. Perhaps he had guessed she would come for them and wanted to save her trouble.

She sat down on the floor beside the bed and buried her face in the sheets.

Duff was playing his gramophone in the loft next door, and throbs of music came through the thin partition. It was very sad music, fast and soft, each phrase an
exclamation
, a whispered protest, like the outcry in
Nancibel’s
bewildered heart. It poured out her dismay at this uncharted world of feeling into which she had tumbled—the pity, the uncertainty, the regret, and all the long vista of experience which must be travelled before she could be old and at peace. It rushed on, just as time rushes on, leaving her too busy to cry.

She could only stay for a moment. Then she gathered up the linen and took it back to the house. Ruthlessly she flung it into the laundry basket, knowing that, when these sheets came home, she would not be able to
distinguish
them from forty other sheets.

Not for years had Mr. Siddal exerted himself so
continuously
. Within half an hour he had carried every paper out of his room and stuffed it into the top of the coke boiler. He did it all while his family was at
breakfast
, before they could find out what he was up to and prevent it. Up and down the passage he crept with load after load, and at the eighth trip discovered that the fire had gone out. The mass of paper had choked the draught and quenched the flames.

This was an unexpected misfortune. To take the papers out and relight the fire would be a crushing labour. But it would be nothing to the exertions threatened by Gerry—the sorting, the answering, the decisions…. After some poking and swearing Mr. Siddal went back to the boot-hole for some shavings in a box under his bed.

A reek of expensive cigarette smoke met his nostrils and he found Anna waiting for him, a very much agitated Anna, with pale cheeks and anxious eyes. At the sight of her some measure of spirit returned to him. For his little window was an excellent spy-hole. People forgot that a habitable room lay behind it. Bruce and Nancibel had forgotten when they carried Hebe into the house the night before.

‘Anna! I thought you’d gone to Polly’s.’

‘So I did. I’ve just come back. I hired a taxi. My God, Dick! How your room stinks. Do you never open the window?’

‘It’s stuck. But I don’t mind the smell. It keeps intruders away. What do you want, my dear Anna?’

‘I’m in a spot of bother,’ confessed Anna, puffing at her cigarette.

He grinned.

‘We’re all in a spot of bother,’ he said. ‘There’s a great hullabaloo going on here. We’ve mislaid one of the children.’

‘Which one?’ snapped Anna.

‘I’ve forgotten. I don’t believe I heard which one.’

‘Hebe?’

‘Is that the girl with the cat? I believe it’s the girl with the cat.’

‘What happened?’

‘I really don’t know. They never tell me anything. But I heard something about Sir Henry going to the police.’

‘Oh Christ!’

He stared at her.

‘It’s very nice of you,’ he said, ‘to feel so much
concern
when you’ve got troubles of your own.’

Anna took a fresh cigarette from her bag and lighted it on the stub of the old one.

‘Where’s Antinous?’ he asked. ‘Why didn’t he bring you back? Why did you have to hire a taxi?’

‘This is appalling.’ She flung the old stub on the floor and ground it with her heel. ‘I’m afraid they’ll think I’m to blame. You see … I took Hebe with me yesterday….’

‘What? To
Polly’s
?
’

‘Yes. I … I was sorry for the child … everyone here has a down on her.’

‘Preserve me from your compassion, Anna. You’ll have an awkward time with Sir Henry. But if you’ve brought her back …’

‘But I haven’t,’ wailed Anna. ‘I haven’t.’

Mr. Siddal was not very helpful as she told her story. He was provokingly obtuse, so that she had to supply every detail. When she would have welcomed a question he simply stared and said nothing. When she would have preferred him to say nothing he asked awkward questions. But she wanted his help so badly that she was obliged to tell him everything.