Westwood (36 page)

‘Yes, I do think that most people would like her. But it’s a big thing to ask your mother to do, all the same.’

‘I’ll telephone you later and tell you what we’ve arranged,’ she promised.

Twenty minutes later she was flying, skimming like some released bird, down the road under the may bushes and breathing the delicious evening air. Oh! that house! That miniature fairy palace of eternal childhood that was no true childhood just because it was eternal! I
must
get Mother to say ‘yes,’ she thought. I don’t think I can bear to go back to-morrow for another day of it, sorry as I am for him. Poor, poor Dick.

Mr Challis had paused on his way through the hall of Westwood-at-Highgate that evening and was standing by the window, apparently casually, but in fact completely, absorbed with the evening paper. As he read, he gradually began to frown and compress his lips, for the journal’s Dramatic Critic did not think highly of
Kattë
; indeed, there was a peevish note in his remarks which suggested that he had not enjoyed his evening at all. Mr Challis did not mind that; he did not write plays for people to enjoy; he wrote out of the creative fire in his soul and hang everybody (and in this he was an artist and to be respected), but he did mind when dramatic critics hinted that he meant well but it hadn’t quite come off, and that was what, with a dismaying unanimity, they one and all hinted about
Kattë
.

He made a pretence of never reading the notices; did not subscribe to any press-cutting agency, and affected indifference to the critics’ opinions, but he could not resist reading them in secret, and in secret he cared very much what they said.

While he was standing there, his mind busily refuting the critic’s accusations and his frown growing deeper, he became aware that someone close at hand was carrying on an irritable telephone conversation.

‘Ach! it iss all excuses! All day I wait, und never one wort from you! Too much it iss!’

A pause, while the person at the other end of the line evidently tried to explain.

‘Dick Vletcher, Dick Vletcher! And who iss he, I would like you to say, that all day you go with him, when we here are in such great sorrow and trouble. Yes, yes, you haf let me down!’

Another pause. Mr Challis only half heard what was going on, for he was absorbed in what he was reading, but what he did hear jarred harshly upon his already strained nerves; the speaker (it is Zita, he decided distastefully) evidently thought herself alone and therefore under no obligation to control her voice or temper.

‘No, I am angry, Margaret,’ he heard her say next. ‘You are not a goot friend. I haf said to Mrs Challis that perhaps you might here come and help us to-day, and when I ring up your home, you are gone out, where? Your mother she does not know!’

Pause.

‘The line was not engaged all the day!’ snapped Zita, after another listening silence.

Mr Challis thought that this noisy scolding had gone on long enough. It was apparently being carried on in the morning-room with the door open. Putting down the paper, he strode across the hall and looked in at the morning-room with an expression of grave inquiry. Zita, who was sitting at the table with a cup of coffee before her, smoking a cigarette and looking furious, gave a little gasp when she saw him and at once said into the receiver:

‘Here iss Mr Challis wanting me and now I must go. Good-bye, Margaret,’ and hung up.

‘Yess, Mr Challis, you want to speak –’ she was beginning eagerly, getting up and putting out the cigarette, but he merely gave her another grave look and withdrew. He had always found that look, and silence, very successful in dealing with women and inferiors.

He picked up the newspaper again and went across the hall to his study, avoiding on his way a little cart filled with bricks which stood forlornly in the middle of the vast expanse of carpet. Mr Challis frowned; already the house was showing signs that his grandchildren were in residence. One of them could be heard crying upstairs, and that morning there had been a rubber monster lying stranded in the bath when he went to take his own bath; and all day there had been nothing but talk about the damage to the cottage, and people coming in triumphantly or despairingly from visits to the ruins, and people running up and down stairs with bedding and cups of tea.

He glanced up and saw his wife coming down the staircase, looking as disturbed as her naturally gay expression permitted.

‘Hullo, darling. Nice notice in the
Banner
?’

‘I have not looked,’ he answered coldly, and was going into his study when she went on:

‘Gerry, I’m afraid Grantey’s really bad. I’ve just been talking to Dr James, and he says we must have a nurse to live in, at least for a week or two.’

‘Really?’ he said, pausing, shaken out of his self-absorption by her tone. ‘What is the matter?’

‘Heart. He says she’s worn it out with lifting things and carrying heavy babies up and down stairs for forty years. He told her weeks ago that she would have to be very careful, and she wouldn’t, of course, and then there was that shock last night –’ she ended, and went into the morning-room, whence Zita had fled, to try to arrange about the nurse.

Mr Challis went into his study and shut the door. The massive dog-grate was filled with little picotees from the garden which scented the air with cloves, and fuzzy crooks of young fern. Long rays of evening sunlight shone into the stately room with its grey-green walls – the colour of the picotee foliage – and red velvet curtains. He went to the window and stood looking out into the garden, where the flowers on the magnolia tree were dying, their widely expanded cups streaked with brown. The world seemed to him immeasurably old, as it sometimes does on summer evenings; a vast, ancient mass pitted with valleys and ocean-beds, and every forest, lake and plain covered with layers of human bones; deep, deep under the moss and the fresh rippling water and the rank wet tangles of black seaweed and the blue ice of crawling glaciers. There was no answer. He had been turning lately to the East for an answer, but there was none; none, at least, that satisfied him. A long time ago, so long ago that he could not clearly remember how he had felt when he had possessed it, he had known happiness. It had been when he was a very little boy, less than nine years old, and slowly, like an angel driven out by a fiend, it had gone away; and in its place reigned the fiend; the sad, ever-searching fiend who could find no satisfaction in all the world, and who was always yearning for the angel-happiness that it had driven away.

He sighed, and turned from the window. Was
Kattë
a success? Yes; the audience had proclaimed it one, even if the critics were doubtful. But this was the first time that the critics had been doubtful about a play of his, and he was chilled and depressed by their verdict. He wanted comforting, a sensation which was unfamiliar to him.

He glanced up as his wife came in.

‘The nurse is coming to-night,’ she said, looking distressed. ‘Poor old Grantey; isn’t it awful?’

‘Do you mean he thinks she’s going to die?’

Seraphina nodded, and sat down and opened the piece of gros-point work which she usually carried about with her and stared distractedly at it, and then she took out her handkerchief. ‘He warned me that she may go any time. She’s much worse than we knew.’

‘It is strange to think of her dying,’ said Mr Challis thoughtfully, after a pause. ‘She is one of those figures I have always taken for granted; a background figure, so familiar that one never thinks of her. It is as if she were – er – one’s toothbrush or something of that sort, such an unobtrusive part of life’s pattern that …’ His voice died away and he stared unseeingly into the sunset.

‘She used to say my hair would never “come to much,” ’ Seraphina said at last, smiling and blowing her nose. ‘I can smell that green soft-soap stuff she used on it now, and she used to curl it round her fingers, bless her, for hours.’

Mr Challis was silent, busy with thoughts of death. How would a narrow, ignorant old woman like Grantey meet that supreme experience?

‘It will be like offering a cup of superb wine to a creature without a palate,’ he said suddenly.

‘What, darling?’ Seraphina had now recovered herself a little, and was putting stitches in her work, but without much concentration.

‘I was speculating on how she will face death.’

‘Oh, well – she believes in Heaven, of course.’

‘They do, I suppose, even nowadays – the older ones, at least.’

‘Of course they do. And she prays for all of us every night, bless her; she let that slip when we were talking about the bomb.’

‘Pathetic,’ murmured Mr Challis.

‘Isn’t it sweet?’ Seraphina had only caught an apparently sympathetic murmur. ‘I must say it
comforts
me to think of Grantey praying for me. I’m sure God listens to her – dear, good, kind old thing,’ and she fairly burst out crying, ‘Oh, dear, it’s so awful to think of her dying, and we’ve taken her so absolutely for granted for forty years – I simply can’t
realize
it may happen.’

‘Does Dr James give no hope at all?’ he asked, after a pause in which he had gazed embarrassedly at her but made no attempt to console her; he was anxious to get on to the subject of the notices of
Kattë
, but did not wish to appear unfeeling.

‘Well, he
did
say that he can’t be
absolutely
sure, of course, but he’s as certain as
anyone
can be that her heart can’t last much longer. He said – he said – she – she was just worn out –’ and Seraphina broke down again.

‘Don’t distress yourself, my dear,’ he said, after a moment. ‘She has enjoyed giving her life to us, you know. She is a slave by temperament and has passed her life in slavery; therefore she is fulfilled.’

‘What a beastly thing to say!’ said Seraphina, indistinctly from behind her handkerchief. ‘Really, darling, you do say the most
swinish
things sometimes, anyone would think you were an absolute
brute
.’

Mr Challis shrugged his shoulders. Always, always, it was the same. Women could never face the truth about themselves or anything else. It did not detract from Mrs Grant’s undoubted merits to call her a slave. In the Ancient World slaves had frequently been figures of nobility and fidelity. Because he looked at the situation with detachment, Seraphina thought him brutal. It was typical of the way she had always misunderstood him.

‘And you’re
really
very sweet,’ said Seraphina, getting up and going over to a mirror to repair her face, ‘only you won’t
let
yourself be.’

‘What do you mean?’ demanded Mr Challis, shaken by this novel view of his character.

‘I look like the Wrath of God,’ murmured his wife.

‘I asked you a question, Seraphina.’

‘Darling, you sound like old Mr Barrett. All I meant was, you’re naturally much nicer than you
let yourself be. When I first knew you, you were an absolute
lamb
.’

Mr Challis for the moment had nothing to say.

‘
Frightfully
solemn and funny. Oh dear,
how
I used to laugh at you, after you’d gone, you know. (There, that’s better,’ powdering her nose.) ‘When we were engaged, sweetie –
you
remember.’

‘I cannot say that I do.’

‘You
were
such a pet, always wanting to improve my
mind
.’

‘My desire seems to have remained unfulfilled,’ said Mr Challis dryly.

‘Well, you
must
remember me trying to read all those
alarming books
you unloaded on me … I did try … only somehow there was never any time for
anything
; there never has been,
has
there? – ever since we’ve been married. It’s
years
since we really let our back hair down and had a good long talk like this, isn’t it? Look here,’ glancing at the clock, ‘I’m
supposed
to be dining with the Massinghams to-night and it’s after six now – do you think I can go, with Grantey in this state?’

‘Zita is here, I suppose, and Hebe? Is Alexander going to be in?’

‘I don’t know – no – I think he said something about going
away
– in fact, I think he’s
gone
.’

‘Isn’t that rather sudden?’

‘Yes, I suppose it is, really – but the fact is’ – she hesitated – ‘I think he’s been rather pining to get away and paint. Hebe says she and the children have been rather on top of him lately.’

‘I sympathize,’ said Mr Challis grimly.

‘Don’t be silly, sweetie. It isn’t the same thing at all. The cottage was simply
minute
; no room for
anything
.’

‘Have they quarrelled?’ demanded Mr Challis, thinking impatiently that in family life there was always something happening to irritate and disturb the creative mind.

‘I don’t think so, darling. He just thought he would go off, and Hebe said it was a good idea.’

‘But does she think it a good idea?’

‘I wouldn’t know, darling.’ Seraphina had no intention of exposing her daughter’s matrimonial difficulties to her father’s detached gaze.