Adrian Glynde (2 page)

The maid hesitated for a moment and then lifted up the tray.

“No, not everything,” said his mother sharply. “I said the
tea
… the teapot. Goodness knows what has happened to Mr. Glynde.”

Janet went to the door carrying the teapot.

“Bring some fresh tea when he comes in,” his mother called after her. She had resumed her staring at the fire and Adrian, becoming, at his mother's remark, suddenly anxious about his father, had stolen over to the window. At that moment he had caught sight of his father coming down the street. A lady was with him. Adrian knew the lady.

“Here's Father with Mrs. Lexington,” he had shouted, and his mother had jumped from her chair and run to the window. Adrian saw his father fumble in his waistcoat pocket for his latchkey, and next moment he had stopped, raised his hat to Mrs. Lexington, and was opening the front door. His mother returned quickly to her chair near the fire and sat as she had sat before.

Adrian felt immensely relieved. His father's return was always a blissful moment, and now it meant not only the usual happiness but the end of his recent anxiety. He had been vaguely afraid, after what his mother had said to Janet, that some mysterious accident had befallen his father. Besides, now they would be able to have tea.

The door opened and his father came in, bringing with him, as he always did for Adrian, a warm gust of life and colour and cheerfulness. Adrian ran to him and his father put a large, affectionate arm round the little boy's shoulders.

“Well, old man!” he said, patting his back and smiling down at him. Then he turned to the immovable figure by the fire. “I'm afraid I'm awfully late. I was kept at the office for nearly an hour.”

“Again?” said his mother's voice, cold, incredulous, from her chair.

“Yes, again, worse luck.”

He saw his mother turn her head and shoot a quick, hard glance at them. “What a fool you must think me if you really imagine I believe that,” she said.

Adrian felt his father's arm twitch. “I should think you more of a fool if you didn't,” he replied with a curtness that surprised Adrian. His father was generally very patient when his mother attacked him; too patient, Adrian always felt. He was glad now to hear his father stand up to her.

But his mother was not quelled. “Well, I don't. That's all,” she retorted.

His father ignored the reply. He came forward into the room and his eyes fell on the tea-table. “Why, you haven't had tea yet,” he said.

“Of course we haven't,” said his mother indignantly, “and the poor child's almost starving.”

His father did not reply, and Adrian, glancing at his face, could see that he was keeping his mouth tight shut so as to keep in the words he wanted to say.

“And I suppose that you'll pretend, next, that I'm to blame for it,” persisted his mother.

“We'll discuss that later, Minnie,” his father replied coldly, and Adrian intercepted a glance at his mother
which said as clearly as words that they were not to quarrel in front of him.

But his mother ignored the glance and flared up.

“We'll do nothing of the sort,” she said. “I won't have you making use of the child to shut me up.”

His father had sat down near the tea-table, his arm round Adrian, who had climbed on to an arm of his chair. He replied with a dry, joyless laugh. “Shut you up?” he said. “Nothing in the world would do that, Minnie, when once you get going. But it takes two to discuss, and I refuse to discuss it now.”

“Because you daren't,” she replied in a quiet, breathlessly furious voice; “because you know you're in the wrong; because you've lied to me and are frightened of being found out.”

“I simply don't know what you're talking about, Minnie,” said his father wearily, “I've told you the plain truth. Do you wish me to neglect important business in order not to be late for tea, and do you mean to pretend that there's anything to stop you giving Adrian his tea at the proper time, even though you yourself prefer to seize the opportunity for martyrdom?”

All the while he spoke his arm was round Adrian and his large, comforting hand was gently stroking his side.

“What I mean to say,” she persisted stubbornly, “and what I have said already, is that you are lying to me. I'm not quite such a fool as I look, Sandy.”

“Very well. Then, for heaven's sake, let us leave it at that: I'm a liar and you're not such a fool as you look.”

Adrian saw his mother's nostrils suddenly contract. “You'll drive me mad one of these days, Sandy,” she said in an intense, exasperated whisper.

“I can trust you to do that for yourself, Minnie,” he answered bitterly, “and not only yourself, but me into the bargain.”

“And Mrs. Lexington too, perhaps.” She paused. Then with a quiet, fierce, cynical amiability, which so shockingly transformed her face that Adrian felt frightened and horrified as if in the presence of some half-perceived indecency, she continued: “I happened, you see, and so did your child here, to be at the window when you arrived just now.”

His father nodded. “I see,” he said. Then he burst out in exasperation: “What unmitigated lunacy! Do you expect me to cut Mrs. Lexington when I meet her in broad daylight a few yards from my own house?”

Adrian had listened in agonised amazement to this seemingly inconsequent wrangle. Why had Mrs. Lexington suddenly come into the argument? It was a mystery which his six years could not fathom.

The horrible change again came over his mother's face. “How curious, isn't it,” she said in the same soft, mock-amiable tone, “that on the very day you are kept so late at the office you should happen to meet Mrs. Lexington a few yards from the house?” Her voice changed. The sham graciousness faded out of it and it became cold and hard again. “No, Sandy. That won't wash.”

Adrian had remembered that phrase, because it had introduced yet another mystery. What could his mother mean?

“Very well,” said his father, “then ring up the office and ask Scott what time I left. That's simple enough.”

His mother gave a short, scornful laugh. “A little too simple for me, thank you.”

“Perhaps it is, Minnie. Simplicity was never your strong point, was it?”

“I was simple enough until I met you,” she replied, searching suddenly for her handkerchief. “It was you
that forced me to be … to be …” She rose from her chair, her handkerchief to her eyes, and to Adrian's horror began to whimper.

“Run away to the nursery, old man,” said his father with a sigh, and Adrian went miserably towards the door.

But his mother suddenly burst out into hysterical incoherence:

“No!” she screamed. “No! You shan't drive my child away from me.” She rushed over to Adrian, dropping her handkerchief on the way, and seized him in her arms. “I won't stand it any longer,” she screamed. “You're driving me mad. I'm going, and I'll take him with me. I'm going, do you hear? Now, at once.”

Still clutching Adrian, she made for the door. But Adrian, filled with fear and hatred of her, struggled and kicked and at last escaped and ran to his father.

Then his mother turned furiously on his father.

“There!” she shrieked. “There! Look what you've done now. You've turned my child against me.”

She snatched the door open and it slammed behind her, and in a few moments they heard her footsteps in the room above. Adrian, after standing for a while silent and appalled, had suddenly burst into tears. His father's arm closed round him. “All right, old man. Don't you worry,” he said, and he sat down and took Adrian on his knee. “Let mother go. It's only one of her moods.”

He kissed Adrian, and then, putting him down, stood up himself. At that moment Janet entered with a pot of fresh tea. When she had gone, his father went to the teatable. “Come, let us have our tea,” he said. “Aren't you ravenous? I am.”

He poured out Adrian's milk, handed him some bread and butter, then poured out a cup of tea for himself.

As they began to eat they heard a door slam overhead; then hurried footsteps descended the stairs, crossed
the hall; the front door opened and was violently closed.

And then it seemed that a blessed silence fell upon the house. Adrian felt suddenly happy and care-free. He had looked across the tea-table at his father and smiled. “We haven't had tea alone together,” he said, “since my birthday.”

These things had happened years ago, and yet he remembered them with such clearness that they seemed more real than the things of to-day; and, living them over again as he had just been doing, he had been so absorbed by them that he had forgotten that he was sitting on the platform of Wilmore Junction and had not even noticed that he had finished the sandwich and got half way through the bun.

Sparrows were hopping about on the asphalt round his feet, picking up the crumbs that the wind had blown to what they considered a safe distance. Adrian watched them, noticing for the first time how bold and decorative a sparrow's plumage is, in spite of its sober colours. The wind flattened or ruffled their feathers and blew the little birds about like toy ships in a pond. There were a few crumbs beside his left shoe, and he watched a sparrow fussily trying to make up its mind to dart in and snatch one. It had gone thin with apprehension and was stretching out its neck to its full extent in an attempt to reach a crumb. Then its courage failed it and it swerved away. Adrian chirped at it, but that only increased its nervousness. At last with a sudden bold dash it grabbed a crumb and shot away with a loud flutter of wings, and, seeing this rashness rewarded, the others at once began to make cautious inroads till all the crumbs were finished.

Suddenly there was a loud mechanical chirrup of pulleys followed by the hollow, woody sound of the fall of the signal at the top of the platform. With a rapid purr
of wings the flock of sparrows vanished. Adrian opened his coat and took out his silver watch. It was twenty to two. The branch-line train would be coming in; and soon with a metallic clanking it coiled round the bend and ran lazily into the bay, the little tank-engine pushing behind.

Adrian made haste to finish his bun: he did not like strangers to see him picnicking. He crumpled together the paper bag with the two bananas in it and pushed it into his overcoat pocket. He would eat them later, in the train. Five or six leisurely country-folk got out and drifted towards the station exit, and soon Adrian was alone again. The little engine unhooked itself and trundled off to have a drink. Adrian chose a carriage, hoisted his bag into it, and placed it in a window seat. Having done this, he climbed down on to the platform and went to watch the engine return and join up with the train again.

When the train started, he had the carriage to himself, and he sat looking out of the window and wondering tremulously what sort of a holiday he was going to have at his grandfather's. Aunt Clara and Uncle Bob were driving from Yarn: it was a long way, and very likely they would not arrive till after him. The thought added to his anxieties. Who would meet him at the station? Perhaps, he thought with a little spasm of apprehension, his grandfather. He felt unsettled, unhappy. It was more like the end than the beginning of a holiday. When the train landed him at Abbot's Randale an hour later he had quite forgotten to eat his bananas.

By dinner-time that evening Adrian already felt reassured. The strangeness he had dreaded turned out to be of a very different kind from what he had expected. Although he was still rather afraid of his grandfather he was also very much attracted by him, and instead of feeling alienated and dismayed by the unfamiliar life at Abbot's Randale, he already found himself in various subtle ways interested and thrilled. He no longer regretted Yarn.

The pleasant old Georgian house with its airy hall, its wide, leisurely staircase and the lofty, large-windowed rooms, was full of rare and lovely things, many of which Oliver Glynde had collected during the half-century he had lived there. The place seemed to Adrian a fairy palace. Its restrained richness enchanted him. He kept discovering that he was in the presence of beautiful things. The blue and silver brocade hanging in the hall and the great Oriental rug, a figured medley of fawn, straw-colour, and soft blues, with touches of faded orange here and there, fascinated him: so too did the red lacquer in the drawing-room—the great chest, its glossy scarlet decorated with golden leaves, flowers, and birds; the small scarlet writing-desk in the window, the great red and gold-framed mirror over the mantelpiece, all of them glowing against the silvery grey of the walls and curtains. The walls were bare except for a long hanging of coral-coloured silk brocaded with lilies and leaves of scarlet, pale blue, and pale green, and two pictures in heavy gilded frames in which grim, richly robed
saints stood against a background of tarnished gold. A Chinese priest, a serene figure of gilded wood, brooding cross-legged on a golden throne, stood on a table in a corner of the room, and from the ceiling hung a glass chandelier that looked like the formal showers of a fountain frozen into a crystal immobility.

One of his fears had been that he would feel lonely, one isolated boy among three grown-ups. With Aunt Clara and Uncle Bob he had always felt himself one of a trio, but he had feared that they would change when they were away from home, that they and his grandfather would be the trio and he himself would be left out. But this, he saw already, had been as false as his other fears. One of the nicest things about his grandfather was that he treated him and talked to him just as he did to the others, and Aunt Clara and Uncle Bob were just the same as they were at Yarn. There was no question of being grown up or not grown up; he himself was simply one of a party of four. The only difference was that Uncle Bob, instead of changing into an old grey flannel suit in the evenings, dressed himself up like Grandfather in a white shirt and dinner-jacket, and he himself too changed into his best suit with the black coat and waistcoat. As for Aunt Clara, she had always dressed for dinner, but here she was even smarter than at home. Adrian enjoyed the solemn formality of dressing for dinner and the spectacle of them all sitting, so grand, round the dinner-table. In the centre of the table stood a glass bowl like a green bubble, and round it were four green glass candlesticks like slim plants whose stems and leaves had become transparent; their candles had lemon-coloured shades. On either side of him sat his aunt and uncle, and opposite to him, beyond the glass bowl and framed by the glass candlesticks, his grandfather, an impressive figure, with his shock of white hair, the thick
grey brows under which the blue-grey eyes shone keenly in the candlelight on either side of his eagle's beak of a nose, and the rather full, luxurious, yet fastidious mouth, unhidden by the grey moustache and pointed grey beard.