The Innocents (15 page)

Paul added a curlicue to the top of the grate. (This time burnt umber. It ran at once.)

“Well, I wouldn't say so myself,” he told me, “but she's so pleased with it just as it is, she's afraid if I go on I'll spoil it. She's going to have it framed just as it is …”

3

I thought Cecilia had handled the situation very well; but with nothing to occupy her mornings she naturally grew bored, and now indeed would have been the Admiral's opportunity to carry her out of the doldrums on the brisk wind of a definite proposal. Whether or not to accept him must at least have given Cecilia something to think about both before lunch and after—for though she obviously wasn't going, in the vulgar phrase, to jump at him, I felt the odds about even. However many strings to her bow Cecilia might have left slack in New York, a bird in the hand is always worth two in a bush, and no far wealthier transatlantic suitor could have made her My Lady …

The thought had actually occurred to me before. Neither of the August FêTes I have referred to was, to my regret, actually opened by Cecilia; our M.P.'s wife, and a local Mayoress, naturally took priority, whereas as Lady Thorpe Cecilia might well have trumped either. She was still by far the most striking feature of the scene, and the most photographed, smiling above the sheaf of gladioli that had been her first purchase.—Sir David at her heels gallantly offered to carry them for her, but not for worlds would Cecilia risk offending the least of market-gardeners. Badged with gladioli as once with carnations, Cecilia swanned between the dripping stalls far more observed and admired than at the first FêTe the M.P.'s wife or at the second the Mayoress; but her pictures were printed only on the back page of the East Anglian
Courant
, not alongside the other two ladies' on the front. That any leader of New York society should even notice such relegation in a provincial newspaper quite surprised me, until I remembered how Cecilia with her carnations once hadn't been photographed at all.

Of course she made a great joke of it.—“My darling, isn't this absolute
fame?”
cried Cecilia, descending on us a day or two later. “I must order half-a-dozen copies to send back home!”—though whether or not she did so I never knew; only it was about this time that she began to refer to America as home more and more.

With hindsight I see I might have handled matters more cleverly. The Admiral's courtship was still going strong. He was always at Cecilia's heels, always available to post her letters for her, run errands for her, escort her to the swimming pool; but still hung back from any open declaration of intent. I should have liked to think he was too downy an old bird to be easily caught, but was regretfully forced to put it down to an innocent modesty. Looking on myself—the innocent!—as Cecilia's particular friend, he took any opportunity to talk to me about her; it was like hearing a boy talk about some unattainable star of the early cinema. Cecilia's beauty, which was undeniable, made him feel so humble, that he could offer the title of My Lady as a quid pro quo never seemed to occur to him. He was a delightful old bird, but not downy.—Perhaps if I'd encouraged him to go in and win, perhaps Cecilia might have accepted him and Antoinette found a kind stepfather, and home, in East Anglia; but I had grown too fond of him; and so unluckily Sir David was still beating about—no extra wind in his sails from any encouragement of mine—when his daughter-in-law reappeared to take him back to Richmond.

He went I think not unwillingly. As I have said, he was a simple soul, and like all simple souls, and most Navy types, felt happier under firm command. The daughter-in-law was extremely nice to Cecilia, and after a last (shared) dinner at Woolmers, in a tactful aside over coffee thanked her particularly for all her kindness to the old pet—thus defusing, so to speak, any amorous relationship. (For once I was dining there myself, and from table to table in the lounge one cannot help overhearing.) Cecilia returned politeness with politeness, declaring what a delightful companion he'd been—yet with a suppressed yawn in her voice that declared him also an uncommon old bore. I for my part had the impression that both young women understood each other very well.

The Admiral thus (not unwillingly) shanghaied, and Paul Amory out of court, naturally the whole scene began—how else can I put it?—a little to dwindle to Cecilia. Not only had she become used to us, we were becoming used to Cecilia. Even at Woolmers they became so used to her, she was once asked to shift tables so that her own might be incorporated into a gala spread for the British Legion Old Comrades Association.—Again, Cecilia made a great joke of it, she said afterwards that she'd never seen anything funnier than King and Country, and Our Gallant Allies, being solemnly toasted in Algerian plonk; but the jest, when it got about, was rather unappreciated, especially by the American Colonel (guest of honour), who with his usual delicacy had refrained from supplying bourbon. In any case, Americans treat such occasions with great respect, as Cecilia must have known. I do not suppose she ever expected her flippancy to reach the Colonel's ears, but of course it did, and whether for this reason or another his attendance on her at the swimming pool rather dropped off, so that—to look ahead—the last time Cecilia swam there was in company with only the young Pennons and myself.

So naturally Cecilia grew bored with us, and suddenly impatient to return to New York; and was so clever, and had so many connections, achieved the practically impossible in securing places for herself and Antoinette on a westbound transatlantic flight scheduled for no more than five days later.

16

1

She came in to tell us quite radiant. Antoinette and I were in the sitting-room—I at my desk, Antoinette squatting in the middle of the floor, her nearest cover, so to speak, the settee. It was quite easy for Cecilia in almost the same movement of swift entry to scoop her up into a close, delighted embrace.

“Word from the airline at last!” cried Cecilia, over Antoinette's stiff neck. “Only five days more and we'll be off!”

By her tone she might have been bringing the good news from Ghent to Aix. (Another poem I had been brought up on: “
I sprang to the stirrup and Joris and he;/ We galloped, Dirck galloped, we galloped all three.”
) Only I felt no more apt for the part of Joris than did Antoinette, all too obviously, for that of Dirck. She was such a dead weight in Cecilia's arms, the latter had to drop her almost at once, but still without loss of impetus.

“At
last,”
went on Cecilia enthusiastically, “at last, after waiting and waiting, at last I'll have my baby back with me, just the two of us by ourselves! You mustn't ever think I don't appreciate all you've done for her—but just wait till I get her quite to myself and she'll be a different child!”

For the matter of that Antoinette was a different child already. She looked a hopeless sort of child, dropped back onto the carpet at Cecilia's feet and now huddling like a young rabbit bereft of its burrow. It astonished me that Cecilia couldn't see what she was doing—Antoinette before our eyes retreating back into being a little animal. But of course this was the very thing Cecilia intended to prevent with psychiatry and speech-therapy, once she had Antoinette back with her, just the two of them together, in New York.

—“Remember New York, honey?—Well, I guess not,” cried Cecilia, “but you're going to just love it!”

She talked happily on. She had the knack, I have described it, of presenting a monologue as a conversation—providing her own responses, covering any silence with fresh chatter, racing on to ever fresh topics before a last fell flat. Anyone simply overhearing (as once Mrs. Gibson across a hedge), might well have been excused for believing it Antoinette or myself who responded, even if by no more than brief interjections of pleasure and gratitude. Of course Cecilia was by now accustomed to Antoinette's muteness, so it could not disappoint her, especially as there could be no doubt that the child took in every word.—“Look at her great big eyes!” cried Cecilia. “Is it like a dream coming true, baby? But it isn't a dream, and it's going to come true!”

All this while, since she'd been dropped and returned to her squatting position, Antoinette hadn't moved, only listened, and as I believed—I no less than Cecilia seeing her eyes widen—understood. Now she rather clumsily scrambled to her feet and took a tentative step towards the french window, then halted and considered the door to the hall, as though casting about for a way of escape. But what I told Cecilia was that it was time for her nap, which explanation Cecilia readily accepted; she was bound for an auction, a proper auction in the Estate Agent's rooms, where she had heard there was some quite good silver going.

I did not want her to leave. I had failed in my duty to Antoinette once before, in the bedroom at Woolmers, through sinful pride; had in a way failed her again, during the last half-hour, by an implicit, tacit falling-in with all Cecilia's plans. But how could I have reasoned or pled in the child's presence? When any sort of argument or high words so distressed her? I was afraid lest even from her cot (should I be drawn on to speak my mind to Cecilia), she might overhear and be frightened. So before tucking her up I told Cecilia to wait for me; I was going to the auction too.

“Then mind you don't bid against me!” said Cecilia gaily. “You mustn't run me up like bad Paul for my caftan!”

2

It wasn't silver I hoped to bid against Cecilia for. She could have taken back all the Georgian forks in England, so long as she didn't take back a child; for as we walked down the hill together I suddenly discovered this to be the real crux of the matter. No power on earth could make Cecilia loose hold on her daughter; she had too many plans for Antoinette, a whole future had been built up in Cecilia's imagination that centered on the child. (Antoinette so to speak taking the place of Bundles for Britain. As this thought occurred I did not even hope I was doing Cecilia an injustice.) But if Cecilia could be induced to remain in England, especially in East Anglia—especially, I admitted it, near myself—surely the worst of the disaster might be prevented? And it was just as this thought crossed my mind that Cecilia herself spontaneously paused, halfway down the hill, at the rusted-together gates of The Chantry.

Beyond them, the unpruned roses riotously enfiladed a shaggy lawn, beyond which, behind the balustrade of a crumbling terrace, the arches of three tall windows still displayed a cool Georgian assurance …

“What a lovely, wasted place! Can't even you, darling, remember when it was lived in?” asked Cecilia.

I told her no, I'd always known it empty: but believed there was a music room.

“The silver won't come up till four; let's get in and see,” proposed Cecilia.

With such thoughts in mind as I entertained, I readily agreed. Between gate and post was a sagging gap we could both squeeze through quite easily; though each tall window stood stout to its hinge a lesser entry-door leaned ajar, and within, actually opening off the triple-windowed saloon we found the music room indeed—its frescoes to be sure rather peeling, but still identifiably of harps and violins moulded in what once had been gilt on what had once been white plaster. Under our feet, as we adventured in, what had once been parquet sagged to the point of splintering, and I think we saw a rat, but Cecilia had eyes only for the harps and violins, and as I looked at her upturned face, for once completely unselfconscious, I glimpsed a last chance, suddenly put in my hand by the accident of our trespass.

Cecilia gave me the opening herself.

“But it's perfectly beautiful,” she said slowly. She turned and walked to look out through one of the long windows, across the garden. “The whole place could be made perfectly lovely. Why for heaven's sake doesn't someone with money take it and live in it?”

“Why don't you?” I asked. “You've money. Why don't you take it yourself and live in it with Antoinette?”

She had had her back to me. When she turned, her expression was completely changed.

“Here?”
she said coldly.
“Live
here? Why did I ever marry an old man, except to get away from here?—Not that I wasn't utterly devoted to Rab,” she added quickly. “I gave up my whole life to him. But sooner than come back and live here, I'd honestly, darling, rather die.”

I believed her; for what she told me was what I'd sometimes suspected. I saw that she wouldn't have married the Admiral even if he'd offered. She had got away once, and now meant to get away again, and no eloquence of mine had any chance of swaying her.

“Of course it's understandable,” said I weakly.

“Yes, darling; I thought you'd understand,” said Cecilia. “You never got away at all, did you?”

In the event I let Cecilia go on to the Auction by herself. So much scrambling about had tired me; moreover there was nothing, on my part, left to say, as I think Cecilia realized; she helped me back through the hedge with a sort of ironic kindness, and even suggested (my forces so obviously spent), sending Alfred with his taxi to pick me up and take me the quarter of a mile home. This offer I refused; but still, after Cecilia had swung on downhill with her light borzoi-stride, needed to rest more than once on my way home.

I wanted also a little time to consider how I had best, now that her fate seemed finally inescapable, talk to Antoinette. Thinking back, I was happy to remember that never once had I implied any criticism of Cecilia; even such a false phrase as
“Your pretty mummy”
now returned rather comfortingly—for might I not have been oversensitive, imagining that the child too detected its falsity?
“Here's your pretty mummy,”
I repeated to myself.
“Now you're going to stay with your pretty mummy
…”

“Now you're going to
live
with your pretty mummy,” I heard myself rehearse—as so too did Jessie, on her way to set the Woolmers tea-tables.