Westwood (24 page)

Indeed, as they crossed the hall she felt discontented with her presence at the party, the prospect of the evening’s noisy fun, and all the people whom she would meet there. There had been a time, three months ago, when a party at Hilda’s home had provided material for anxious consideration; she used to dream of meeting interesting people there, and brood afterwards over the uninteresting ones whom she did meet, feeling the impact of their personalities too strongly upon her own, as socially inexperienced people often do. But since her meeting with the Nilands and the Challises she felt nothing but impatience and boredom with Hilda’s parties and her friends; it was all so insipid, so hopelessly inelegant, compared with what went on and who was entertained at Westwood!

She opened the door into a small, brightly lit, crowded room in which the heat was too great to be pleasant, where two groups of people, seated at either end, were excitedly racing to beat each other at a game of ‘Subject and Object.’

‘Margaret! We want you!’ shouted the young soldier who was in charge of one group. ‘We need the best brains; you have them!’

A groan went up from the other party as Margaret went across and joined the circle. Mrs Steggles stood by the door, glancing about her with a smile which she tried to make pleasant, and in a moment Mrs Wilson came in and took her arm and drew her away, laughingly explaining that Margaret had brought her into the wrong department and that there was whist going on for the quieter guests in another room (
as though I didn’t know it’s the dining-room
, thought Mrs Steggles,
such nonsense
). Mrs Wilson said ‘quieter,’ but she meant ‘older,’ and although she referred to her daughter’s friends as Noisy Monkeys, it was clear where her own tastes and sympathy lay.

‘Will Mr Steggles be able to come?’ asked Mrs Wilson, as she settled Mrs Steggles at a table with three elderly pleasant people. ‘Mr Wilson is so looking forward to a little chat with him about the war; there’s nothing he likes better than getting hold of a newspaperman; down at The Woodcutter, you know –’

‘Oh yes, he hopes to, but it may not be till about ten,’ interrupted Mrs Steggles, who did not want to hear what went on at The Woodcutter, ‘and he said he hoped you wouldn’t mind, he might bring a friend. I did tell him it was only one more mouth to feed, but you know what men are!’

Mrs Wilson assured her the more the merrier, and having seen her settled and comparatively content, went away to make sure there was still plenty of beer.

The evening rolled on – ‘but oh! how heavily it rolls for some!’ as Mrs Hungerford points out so truly in her novel
Doris
; and Margaret found it increasingly tiring to laugh, to glance with smiling interest from one face to another, to make suggestions and jokes and to laugh at other people’s suggestions and jokes, while the heat grew steadily greater, and the beer in the thick glasses grew lukewarm, and the cigarette smoke made her eyes smart; while all the time, beneath the noise and heat and laughter, her thoughts dwelt upon the mansion standing on the hill less than a quarter of a mile away; its windows gleaming darkly in the winter starlight, and within it
the elegance, the peace, the flower-filled silence, and above all the blue eyes that were like the eyes of the Roman Augustus. Perhaps he was writing in his study, his beautiful profile outlined against the radiance of the lamp on his desk, while his long hand moved steadily across the paper, and behind him in shadow was the gleam of gold lettering upon brown, ancient books, the noble sightless eyes of some marble bust, the play of firelight over the rich folds of velvet curtains (velvet curtains she
knew
there were, because Zita had told her which was his study, and she had caught a gleam of crimson at the long windows). How warmly, how deeply from her heart, did she wish him a Happy New Year! – but perhaps he did not want one; his plays were all so sad.

While she was huddled up against Hilda in the warm darkness of the linen cupboard waiting to be joined by the other Sardines, her feelings found expression in a long, deep sigh.

‘What on earth’s the matter?’ asked Hilda, who was so exhausted with heat, laughter and beer that she was quite glad to be silent for a little while. ‘You’ll blow the door open if you sigh like that.’

‘I was thinking about a poem by Mrs Norton.’

‘Never heard of her.’

‘You wouldn’t have. Never mind.

‘
I do not love thee! no! I do not love thee!

And yet when thou art absent I am sad
;

And envy even the bright blue sky above thee
,

Whose quiet stars may see thee and be glad
.’

– and I can’t remember the next two verses, but it goes on:

‘
I do not love thee! yet thy speaking eyes
,

With their deep, bright and most expressive blue
,

Between me and the midnight heaven arise
,

Oftener than any eyes I ever knew
.’

‘It’s rather nice,’ said Hilda sleepily. ‘Go on.’

‘
I know I do not love thee! yet alas!

Others will scarcely trust my candid heart;

And oft I catch them smiling as they pass
,

Because they see me gazing where thou art
.’

‘I don’t see why that should make you sigh like a grampus – whatever a grampus may be.’

Margaret did not reply, and Hilda was too sleepy to be very curious; she leant her faintly scented head against Margaret’s shoulder and said drowsily:

‘What have you been up to?’

‘Nothing much.’ A pause. ‘Oh, Hilda, Westwood is such a wonderful place!’

‘Wherever
is
everybody?’ demanded Hilda sleepily. ‘Have we got to sit here all night? I’m slowly roasting. Why is it so wonderful?’

‘Because it’s beautiful and the people who live in it are exciting and different. And Gerard Challis, the dramatist, you know, oh, he’s
marvellous
!’

‘So that’s it. I thought you were very wrapped-up in Finkelsfink or whatever her name is.’

‘Zita Mandelbaum. She’s nice, truly, Hilda.’

‘She’d better be, with a name like that. Well, I’ve got a new boy friend.’

‘You always have.’

‘Ah, but this one isn’t a boy, he’s rather old really, and ever so rich. I
dined
with him last week and my dear, where do you think we went? I’d never heard of it, but it’s called Jones’s Hotel and it’s miles away at the back of nowhere near Hyde Park, and the bill came to five pounds; I couldn’t help seeing – I
ask
you.’

‘That’s a new departure for you, isn’t it – rich old men.’ Margaret spoke dreamily, gazing out at the darkened landing, where the only illumination came up dimly from the hall.

‘He isn’t really old and he’s quite harmless and rather boring.’

‘Why go out with him, then?’ asked Margaret.

Hilda did not like to admit that she was sorry for her admirer, so she said vaguely:

‘Oh, I’ll try anything once.’

‘Was the food marvellous?’

‘Not particularly. It was all bits of things.’

‘And I suppose you had champagne?’

‘No, we had some Italian stuff. Muck, I thought it was, but he fairly lapped it up.’

‘Did he kiss you?’

‘Not yet.’

Margaret smiled at the picture of a gross elderly stockbroker being kept at arm’s-length by Hilda, but she was also a little repelled, and her sense of estrangement from her friend increased. She said, no more than civilly and pretending to an interest she certainly did not feel:

‘What’s his name, Hilda?’

‘Marcus.’

Margaret was about to say, ‘Oh, a Jew,’ when a man’s figure came quickly and stealthily up the stairs, glanced round the dim landing, and darted over to the linen cupboard and opened the door.

‘Ah-ha!’ he exclaimed, and sat down next to Hilda.

‘Hey-hey!’ she protested. ‘Who are you? I don’t seem to know your face.’

‘Dick Fletcher – friend of Jack Steggles,’ he said, still in a whisper. ‘It’s all right, lady, I’m not gate-crashing.’

‘Pleased to meet you, I’m Hilda Wilson,’ whispered Hilda, ‘and this thing here,’ nudging Margaret, ‘is Mr Steggles’s only daughter, Margaret Mabel.’

‘How do you do, Margaret Mabel,’ he whispered, and put a hand out in the darkness which Margaret (who disliked characterless handshakes) firmly pressed, whispering, ‘How do you do.’ She had never met him, in spite of her father’s friendship with him, and now glanced curiously towards him. She could make out a high forehead faintly reflecting the light, and the dim outlines of a clean-shaven face, and he seemed to be of slight build and medium height. His presence was accompanied by an odour of tobacco and beer which she found offensive.

‘I’m going to stand up,’ announced Hilda, ‘or there won’t be room in here for any more. What ages they’re taking to come up.’

‘They’re still eating,’ said Dick Fletcher, but even as he spoke another form came noiselessly up the stairs and was soon pressed up against the group in the cupboard, and after this the numbers increased rapidly until the final moment when they were discovered, and the hot, giggling, closely com pressed mass burst into a simultaneous shout of laughter and someone
turned on the lights, revealing flushed faces and laughing eyes bewildered by the sudden brilliance.

‘Thank heaven, another minute and I should have melted,’ sighed Hilda, pushing back her hair. ‘Now, who’s for more beer? Come on, folks,’ and she led the way downstairs.

Margaret stood a little to one side to let the others precede, and glanced up to find that Dick Fletcher was regarding her with friendly curiosity. He smiled.

‘This seems rather a good party, don’t you think?’ he said.

Her nerves were irritated by the boredom which she had endured throughout the evening, and she had found her recent close bodily contact with strangers very distasteful. His question proved too much for her self-control, and it was with a full curl of her lip that she answered:

‘Do you think so?’

His pleasant expression changed to one of impatient gloom, but he only said:

‘I’m enjoying it, anyway. Shall we go down?’ and stood aside to let her pass.

He made no further attempt to talk to her, and moved away among the crowd where she soon saw him laughing with two girls. She found a seat in an alcove and sat down with a drink and a sandwich, realizing thankfully that the time was now nearly ten minutes to twelve and that in a short while the ordeal would be over.

For lack of more interesting occupation she studied Dick Fletcher as he stood laughing and talking with the two young women. She disliked him because she had betrayed her ill-temper to him, but she admitted that her dislike was unreasonable; all that she actually had against him was his appearance, which suggested the typical journalist of an earlier day, with shiny, shabby clothes exhaling an odour of beer and tobacco, and the touch of his hand, which was disagreeably moist. The fine skin of his face was deeply lined; more, she thought, by worry than by time, for he appeared to be only in the late thirties and the remnant of a brilliant youthful colouring lingered in his cheeks and hair, the latter being of a peculiarly bright brown and growing thickly at the sides of his head, but tending to baldness above the forehead. His large grey eyes were liquidly bright, his mouth long and thin and his nose pointed, with wide nostrils. She found his air of eagerness and ill-health unattractive, and turned away.

Shortly afterwards the company linked hands to sing ‘Auld Lang Syne,’ and after the darkest young man present had been made to step over the threshold to bring in the New Year’s luck, the party broke up.

Margaret and her mother came down into the hall in their outdoor clothes to find Mr Steggles and Dick Fletcher standing with their hosts.

‘I shall be all right,’ Dick Fletcher was assuring them, turning up the collar of his overcoat. He had no hat and his forehead looked damp. ‘No, really, old man, I don’t want to put you out.’ Mrs Steggles glanced sharply from her husband to his friend; what had Jack been suggesting?

‘Mabel, Dick must come back with us, mustn’t he?’ demanded Mr Steggles. ‘He’s lost the last bus and it’s a beastly night, we can’t let him – nonsense,’ putting his hand on Fletcher’s arm, ‘of course you’re coming.’

‘I can get a taxi, Jack. You know me; taxis run when I whistle,’ said Fletcher.

The Wilsons laughed, and then Mrs Steggles said, ‘If Mr Fletcher doesn’t mind waiting while the sheets for the spare room are aired – and there’s no blackout, I’m afraid – but if you’re sure you don’t mind –’

Her husband gave her one glance of fury, then immediately looked down at the floor and was silent. It was as if he could not trust himself to speak lest he should break into abuse. Margaret
keenly felt her mother’s lack of hospitality, and suddenly moved forward and broke the awkward silence: ‘Do come, please, Mr Fletcher. You must have some of my special after-midnight coffee. It’s good, isn’t it, Dad?’ She put all the warmth of which she was capable into the words, and her voice rang richly with it.