The Feast (36 page)

Somebody came round the corner of the house. It was Dick Siddal, and he was shuffling along quite fast as though in a hurry. But he stopped when he saw her.

‘Why, Barbara,’ he said, ‘are you better?’

‘Yes.’

His appearance surprised her, for he was neatly dressed, almost spruce. But he looked very ill and he was breathing heavily.

‘Where are you going?’ she asked. ‘Where were you off to in such a hurry?’

‘Oh, strolling … strolling….’

He looked round him uneasily and added:

‘Thought I’d take a turn on the sands, but the tide is up.’

She remembered the boiling kettle and turned back into the house.

‘So I started up the drive,’ he panted, as he shuffled after her. ‘But my ticker isn’t too good, Barbara. I was done before I’d got to the first turn.’

‘Well, it must be years since you’ve climbed that hill. Look, Dick. Such a sad thing has happened. The
picnickers
have left their wine behind.’

She showed him the basket, and he chuckled.

‘Poor Gerry!’

‘Why poor Gerry?’

‘He’s the one who’ll catch it. He and his Angie. Gifford contributed the wine; Gerry and Angie were to bring it, but they stayed spooning in the passage outside
my boot-hole, and forgot all about it. I heard ’em. Cursing the picnic and wishing they didn’t have to go.’

‘Why? I thought they were so set on it.’

‘I expect they’d prefer one another’s company
undiluted
. When it came to the point it turned out to be rather a fag. But they trotted off at last, like good little scouts, and forgot the wine.’

‘I wish we could send somebody after them … but there’s nobody left but Mrs. Cove and Miss Ellis and Lady Gifford. They’re no use.’

‘Paley and Wraxton are still here,’ he said. ‘You might try them. Wraxton is writing letters in the lounge. He’s writing about his will. He told me so. He means to disinherit his daughter. She’ll lose a pretty penny, if he speaks the truth. Perhaps you’d better not ask him. But Paley is looking out of his bedroom window.’

‘I might as well ask Hebe’s cat to help me.’

Lady Gifford’s bell rang again and Mrs. Siddal took up the Horlicks. It was an effort to climb the stairs. The knowledge that the house was really not empty at all, that there were people on every floor, did not raise her spirits.

‘Oh … it’s you,’ said Lady Gifford. ‘How nice! I was just wanting a little company. Do sit down. I don’t see half enough of you. I’d so looked forward … Oh, my nice Horlicks! How kind of you.’

‘I’m afraid I have rather a lot to …’ murmured Mrs. Siddal.

But Lady Gifford put out a claw and detained her.

‘You do too much, you know. I think you’re
wonderful
. But you mustn’t turn yourself into a Martha. That’s a thing I so often feel, lying here. I want to be up and doing. I get so impatient. And then I think … well … isn’t it
meant
,
in some way? If I could get up I might do a great deal, but miss the one thing needful. Lying here I’m just forced to be a Mary, whether I like it or not….’

The claw still clutched. But she will have to let go,
thought Mrs. Siddal, when she drinks her Horlicks. And Lady Gifford seemed to think the same, for she glanced fleetingly at the cup in her other hand. But her need to talk was greater.

‘I always feel that material things aren’t really
important
. Love is all that matters, isn’t it? The people one loves … and what’s best for them. Of course, I’ve been very lucky. I’ve been surrounded by love all my life. I was an only child and my parents adored me. And then I married … a perfect marriage. Harry is a wonderful husband. So I suppose I just took it for granted that if I gave love I should receive it. I never doubted it. People said, when I wanted to adopt a baby: Isn’t it a great risk? I said I like risks. They’re
fun
. I loved the little thing. It never occurred to me, for a moment, that my love wouldn’t create a return.
Everybody
had always loved me. But Hebe does not, and it has given me a great shock.’

‘Oh, children go through phases…. Isn’t your
Horlicks
getting cold?’

The suggestion gave obvious pain to Lady Gifford, but still she clutched.

‘It’s not a phase. There is something abnormal about her. Something which frightens me. And lying here I’m having to face it. It’s not only her attitude to me. It’s her influence on the other children. That business on Tuesday…. She is not developing normally. I believe a complete change of surroundings … if she went right away … right away from all of us … began life, as it were, all over again among new people … of course, it would be a great grief to us. To me especially, for she’s as much my child as if I’d borne her. But, if I felt about Caroline as I do about Hebe, I should do exactly the same thing. I should say: love is the only thing that matters. If I love her enough I’ll do
anything
that is best for her, even to giving her up….’

At this point the Horlicks won. Lady Gifford released her prisoner and lifted the cup to her lips.

‘Oh, don’t go,’ she cried, after one sip. ‘I do so want to consult you. You’re a mother … and I feel so lonely to-night….’

‘To-morrow … another time …’ promised Mrs. Siddal, escaping. ‘I really must …’

The forgotten wine was still uppermost in her thoughts. She hurried back to the kitchen to eye the basket and bewail the mishap. Dick was not there, and not in his boot-hole. He must have gone out upon another of his harassed little strolls.

Taking the basket from the dresser she found it
unexpectedly
heavy, and faltered in a half-formed plan to take it up to Pendizack Point herself. To climb the hill and scramble along the cliffs with such a load would be no light undertaking; she was too tired and too old. They would send back for it. They had not gone so very far away. When the omission was discovered, they would send somebody. They would only have to wait for about twenty minutes. Gerry would be sent. Of that she was certain. It had been his fault in the first place, and in any case it was always Gerry who ran errands for the rest. At any time now she might hear clattering feet in the kitchen passage and see Gerry’s worried face coming round the door.
Here’s
your
wine
,
she would say to him. He would only be gone for twenty minutes. He would only miss twenty minutes of the Feast. And he had not much wanted to go to it, according to Dick. So that she could not understand her extreme reluctance to let him come back.

Listlessly she began to stack dishes in the sink and to make efforts to tidy the kitchen. But this conviction, that nothing signified, so grew upon her that she could almost have thrown the whole dishes out after the broken ones. Only the basket on the dresser nagged at her with the positive insistence of an urgent task. It stood out, among all these lifeless things, as though it had been illuminated or making some loud noise. It implored her, it commanded her, to go out and climb the hill.

At last she lifted it up again, feeling its weight. A compromise had occurred to her. She need not go all the way. She could take it a little way, up the drive to the beginning of the cliff path, and meet poor Gerry as he rushed back on his tiresome errand. Thus he would be saved some time and trouble. He need not come right back to the house, and the feasters would not have to wait so long for their supper.

But she did not want to meet Gerry just now. Some kind of reconciliation, some tenderness, was bound to arise when he should find that she had taken so much trouble, and she was still angry with him.

‘Bother you!’ she said to the basket of wine.

She hauled it out of the front door, thinking that she would not go very far. Having climbed as high as she felt able, she could sit down and rest in the cool air until Gerry came. Anything was better than the house. And she stepped out into the drive, just as something shot past her, out of the door, across the drive and uphill into the shadow of the tress. It startled her so much that she gave a little cry. Dick’s voice answered her. He came shuffling round the house.

‘What is it?’ he asked anxiously.

‘Hebe’s cat. It nearly knocked me over. Something must have frightened it.’

‘It’s all these mice,’ said Mr. Siddal.

‘What mice?’

‘Haven’t you seen any? I never saw so many before. Lots and lots of mice. On the terrace. Where are you going?’

She explained her errand and he astonished her by saying that he would come with her. It was years since she had seen him so active.

‘But Dick! You can’t get as high as the cliff path.’

‘Oh, I might. I might. If you give me your arm.’

He seized her arm and leant upon it heavily. This, with the wine basket, was more than she could manage. She protested. But he clung to her, panting, and together
they crept up to the first turn of the drive where they both had to sit down and rest. He kept pausing to listen, and glancing up at the cliffs, in a restless way.

‘It’s my ticker,’ he said. ‘It must be in a shocking state. I need a change. To-morrow I shall hire a car and drive up the hill. I shall go and stay at the One and All. This place gives me claustrophobia. I’ll stay up there till Tuesday … or Wednesday….’

‘Oh, plague …’ said Mrs. Siddal.

From where they sat the house below them was just visible, through the tress. She could now see a faint splash of light from the windows of the garden room.

‘There’s Anna gone out and left her light on! What a waste! Do turn it out, Dick, when you go back.’

‘She hasn’t gone out. She’s there. I saw her in there when I was strolling around.’

‘I thought she’d gone with the others.’

‘No. She must have changed her mind.’

So that is another one down there, she thought. All alone. All shut up alone in their rooms, yet none of them at peace.

Having recovered her breath she got up, saying that she really must go a little higher for she would save Gerry nothing if she stayed down here.

‘I should think he’d be along any minute now,’ she added.

‘It’s not Gerry that I’m expecting to see any minute,’ said Mr. Siddal. ‘It’s Duff.’

‘Duff? Oh, no! Duff never runs errands.’

‘What will you bet? Will you bet me the price of my car up to St. Sody’s to-morrow that you don’t meet Duff coming back along the cliffs?’

‘Oh, yes. But I won’t bet the price of a room for you at the One and All. I think that is a silly idea.’

She turned to go, but he exclaimed:

‘Wait a minute, Barbara! If I rest here a bit longer I might be able to do another turn. I’m not high enough.’

‘High enough? For what?’

‘High enough out of this. I keep feeling … I keep feeling … as if it was all going to come down on me! Pure nerves!’

He laughed uncertainly.

‘Honestly, Dick, I can’t wait. And I don’t think all this climbing is good for you, after years and years of immobility.’

‘No. But I think I could get a little higher. I’ll rest here and then have another try. I might get all the way, in time.’

‘All the way to Pendizack Point?’

‘No. To St. Sody’s. If I could get up there I wouldn’t come down. I should stay.’

She left him and toiled round a couple of steep bends to the place where the cliff path turned off, through a tunnel among the rhododendrons. She had meant to wait here, but it had grown dark and gloomy under the trees, while at the end of the short tunnel she caught a last sunset gleam. So she crept a few yards further and came out upon the open cliff side. Here she could rest peacefully until Gerry came. She thought she could see him coming round the cliff path, but in the soft bloom of dusk she could distinguish nothing very well. Somebody was moving in the landscape.

She put down the basket and peered across the cliff slopes. In spite of the gathering darkness she could perceive a great deal of movement—more than she had ever noticed before in that wild and furzy place. A flicker of white suggested that it might be some unusual activity among the rabbits. There were many of them on the cliffs, but at this time of night they generally stayed in their burrows. Now they seemed to have
decided
on a mass exodus. White scut after white scut flickered and vanished.

There really was a man coming along the cliff path. He was too tall for Gerry. He looked like Duff. He walked like Duff. But he was bald. Nevertheless he was Duff, as she saw when he got quite close. It was all part
of the strangeness which had invaded life and driven her out here.

‘Oh, Duff …’ she said. ‘Your head!’

He was very much startled.

‘Mother!
Mother
!
How did you come here?’

‘But what have you done to your hair. You look awful….’

He put his hand to his head and pulled the bald wig off. His own yellow hair emerged.

‘I forgot I had it on,’ he said. ‘I’m supposed to be a pobble.’

‘Have you come for the wine? I’ve got it.’

‘What wine?’

He had known, she discovered, nothing at all about the wine. Its loss had not been noticed when he left the Feast. They had not started supper, he said: they were playing Hunt the Slipper. He was coming back because he had had enough of it. And he did not look too pleased when she asked him to take the wine for her.

‘I can’t go back there now,’ he said impatiently. ‘You’ve no idea how slow it is. I mightn’t get another chance to slip off.’

‘I won’t carry this basket any further,’ said Mrs. Siddal. ‘It’s very heavy, and I think it was nice of me to bring it this far.’

Duff lifted it up and agreed, with some remorse, that it was heavy.

‘Gerry will be chasing along for it in a minute,’ he urged. ‘They’ll find out soon. Can’t you wait till he comes?’

‘Why should he come? Poor Gerry! When it’s not a bit necessary. I do think we are all very selfish to Gerry.’

‘Nothing will get me to that picnic again,’ he declared. ‘But I’ll do this. I’ll carry the basket to the top of the Point for you, and slip off before they see me. You can take it the last few yards, and get an eyeful of Fred dressed as a Toreador!’