Crampton Hodnet (21 page)

So they’d had breakfast, he thought resentfully; they hadn’t waited for him, he grumbled, forgetting that they never did. Quite a hearty breakfast they’d made, too; they had left him only one piece of toast. He got up angrily and pressed the bell very hard.

Ellen appeared in the doorway with fresh coffee and toast, i heard you come down, sir,’ she said. ‘Perhaps you’d like an egg?’

‘I see they’ve had their breakfast.’

‘The mistress and Miss Anthea have gone up to London,’ said Ellen rather stiffly. ‘They had to catch the ten-ten train.’

‘To
London
?’ said Francis, with as much amazement as if Ellen had said Buenos Aires or Baffinland.

‘Yes, sir, the mistress wanted to do some shopping at the Sales.’

‘
Shopping
? Well,
really
… .’

‘Did you say you’d have an egg, sir?’ asked Ellen patiently.

‘Oh, yes, I don’t mind what I have,’ said Francis crossly. Going to the Sales at a time like this, he said to himself indignantly. And then he noticed a letter in Margaret’s handwriting by his plate. With an unconscious feeling of pleasure at the drama of the situation, he tore it open.

‘Dear Francis’ [it said], ‘Anthea and I are going up to London for a day or two. There are several things I want to get at the Sales. It will be such a good opportunity to buy sheets, blankets and towels, as you know, and also to think over that little matter that cropped up last night.

‘We shall stay at Amy’s, probably over the weekend, but shall be back on Monday or Tuesday. Don’t worry about us. Margaret.’

Disappointment and exasperation filled him as he read it. The greatest crisis of their lives
—for so he had come to regard it
—referred to as ‘that little matter that cropped up last night’ and lumped together with the sheets, blankets and towels.

He crumpled up the letter in disgust and put it into his pocket. So that was all the thought Margaret had given to the events of last night. Oh, well, if she didn’t care, neither did he. Two could play at that game, he thought, delighted with his wit.

He looked around for the Daily Mirror, which he always liked to read at the breakfast table, but they had taken it with them, and so he had to be content with the Times. He was soon in difficulties with its large pages and in the end had to read one small folded section. His grapefruit spurted up into his eyes, and he read over and over again:

The Earl and Countess of Gnome have returned to London from New York.

The Hon. Mrs. Arnold Younghusband was among those present at the 

Memorial Service for Alicia, Lady Spoute.

Lady Beddoes has left 175 Chester Square for the Lido.

Beddoes, he thought. We know somebody called Beddoes, don’t we? …

Of course, thought Anthea, leaning back in her corner, it didn’t necessarily mean that Simon had gone too, though he
might
have done. If only he would write! She had only had a postcard from him since term ended, and that was weeks ago. She had written him three long letters, and he hadn’t answered any of them. But perhaps he would be in London. She might even see him there. Hope springs eternal, especially in the breast of a young woman in love.

‘What are you going to buy, dear?’ asked Mrs. Cleveland brightly. ‘Have you made a list?’

‘Oh, I’ll see when we get there,’ said Anthea absently. ‘I’d rather like a tweed suit and a summer coat.’

Like a pair of old broody hens we are, thought Mrs. Cleveland, when she realised that they had not spoken for half an hour. But then there was so much to think about. Her one idea was to go somewhere where she could think in peace. And where better than her sister Amy’s house in Bayswater? Poor Amy was always so splendidly taken up with her own troubles that she never asked any questions. They need only be away a day or two, and, as they often went up to London for shopping, nobody would think it unusual. It was important to think things out sensibly. To face facts.

Francis and Barbara are in love with each other. She said the words over in her mind and would even have liked to say them aloud, as if by so doing she could better understand what they meant.

If Francis really loved this girl and she loved him, perhaps he would want to leave his home and set up another one somewhere else, she thought, unable to help feeling a little amused at the idea of it. If he could be bothered to, for Francis was so lazy that it seemed completely out of character to imagine him taking the trouble to deceive his wife and fall in love with another woman. Unless, of course, she had been mistaken in him all these years. Perhaps there had been
others
? … But no, now that she came to think of it, she was sure that there had been no others. Dear Francis, he had really been such a good husband. She began to look back on her married life, remembering not all the loving things he had said or written to her, not romantic moonlight evenings or spring days, as a young girl does when she has been jilted, but silly, homely things: Francis shuffling about his study in his bedroom slippers, taking Anthea for a walk in Port Meadow on a Sunday afternoon, and, only yesterday, standing in the doorway with a bowl of gooseberries. Remembering all this, she was somehow reassured. But, all the same, Francis and Barbara are in love with each other, she thought, bringing herself back to the point. Well, there was nothing she could do about it now, at this very minute, she thought with a sense of relief as the train drew into Paddington.

‘I’d better telephone Amy,’ she said. ‘Then we can leave our suitcases here and do some shopping before lunch.’

When they got to the shops, Anthea brightened up a little and was carrying quite a number of parcels by the time they had found their way, weary, hot and rather dishevelled, to a restaurant where hundreds of women in a similar state were wondering whether they ought to have the slimming salad lunch or the something more substantial which they felt they had earned after A hard morning’s shopping.

‘I love my shoes,’ said Anthea. ‘Now I must try and get a bag to go with them.’

‘
Escalope de veau viennoise
,’ said Mrs. Cleveland in a dazed tone. ‘Why, that’s veal cutlet, isn’t it? I don’t think we want
soup
, do we?’ she said urgently, as she saw a waitress approaching. ‘We haven’t quite made up our minds,’ she said, looking round to see what everyone else was having.

All these women, do
they
have trouble with their husbands? she wondered. You, in your smart silly hat and silver-fox furs, you in your sensible navy felt and too-hot flannel costume, you with your calm face and dangling pince-nez … do your husbands have
lapses
, as Olive Fremantle calls them? And if so, what do you do about it? Perhaps you have lapses yourself, she thought, looking at the first woman’s long scarlet nails and full, red, sticky mouth. Well, that might be one way out of it. But hardly for Margaret Cleveland. She belonged with the other two, especially with the one in the sensible hat and costume.
She
looked an excellent woman, full of good sense. Her opinion would be worth having.

At that moment she lifted up her left hand to tuck in a stray wisp of hair, and Mrs. Cleveland saw that the hand was ringless. Then, presumably, she hadn’t got a husband. She was a comfortable spinster with nobody but herself to consider. Living in a tidy house not far from London, making nice little supper dishes for one, a place for everything and everything in its place, no husband hanging resentfully round the sitting-room, no husband one moment topping and tailing gooseberries and the next declaring that he had fallen in love with a young woman. Mrs. Cleveland sighed a sigh of envy. No husband.

The same could be said of her sister Amy, she realised later in the afternoon, as they sat drinking tea in the gloomy house in Bayswater, except that one didn’t, for some reason, envy poor Amy. One never had envied her. It was impossible to imagine her ever allowing herself to get into a position where she could be envied. One felt that she would not enjoy life at all if she were not continually enlisting sympathy for something or other.

‘Oh, Margaret, such a
sickening
thing happened!’ she said at tea. ‘You know that little dressmaker who always does things for me? Well, I went there last week with my pattern and material and everything, and what do you think? The house seemed to be all shut up, so I asked next door and they told me that she
died
a month ago. Isn’t it sickening?’

Mrs. Cleveland murmured that it was indeed.

‘Of course when Percy was alive I used to buy all my things at Marshall’s, but now
—well, there aren’t so many pennies.’

She became rather coy and babyish, and Mrs. Cleveland murmured with profound wisdom that one did indeed have to cut one’s coat according to one’s cloth.

‘Well, tomorrow we’ll have a lovely day shopping, won’t we?’ said Amy, brightening up. ‘I do so enjoy these little jaunts. You ought to come up to town more often. Of course Anthea does come up, don’t you, dear?’ she said, turning round and fixing her prominent pale blue eyes on her niece. ‘I’ve heard
all
about a certain young man who lives in Chester Square.’

Anthea smiled a sickly smile.

‘Is he
very
handsome?’ her aunt asked.

‘Oh, yes,’ said Mrs. Cleveland vigorously, ‘but of course he isn’t the only one. Anthea has so many friends.’

‘Oxford’s full of young men,’ said Anthea rather shortly. ‘I think I’ll go for a walk in the Park,’ she said, standing up.

Simon
might
be in town, she thought, even though he said that he never stayed in London for more than a week at a time. Lady Somebody might be giving a dance for her horrid debutante daughter, and Simon was very eligible. But it was nearly the end of July now.
The Times
and
Telegraph
were full of announcements of people leaving for Scotland or the South of France or, more simply, ‘abroad’ or just ‘the country’.

‘Lady Beddoes has left 175 Chester Square for the Lido.’ Poor Lady Beddoes. Was she enjoying herself in fashionable beachwear and red toenails? Whatever would she do with herself all day? Anthea wondered as she trudged through the Park in her not very comfortable high-heeled shoes.

It was such a long way to Simon’s house. Anthea got lost in the vastness of Belgrave Square and took the wrong turning out of it, so that she found herself walking nearly into Knightsbridge. She was very tired and had a blister on one heel by the time she reached Chester Square.

Anthea stopped and patted her hair. She wasn’t looking very nice but it didn’t matter now. For when she reached the house she knew that nothing mattered; it was so shut up that it might just as well not have been there at all. She could hardly have had a greater shock if it had been in ruins. She had been so sure he would be there.

But inside the dust would be collecting on the marble bust of Pilsudski, the flowers in Lady Beddoes’s little conservatory would be dying for want of water, Simon’s desk would be littered with notes and invitations days and weeks old.

Anthea walked slowly away. She found it soothing to count the houses and stare into the windows. Sometimes she saw an empty room and the notice CARETAKER WITHIN, and once she looked down into a basement kitchen and saw a prim-looking maid smoking a cigarette and a manservant in shirtsleeves reading a paper. She walked on and on until she realised that she was tired and wanted nothing so much as to get on to the first bus that was going to Marble Arch.

When Anthea reached the tall, dark house in Bayswater, Amy had got on to the servant problem. Mrs. Cleveland was listening. Not knitting or doing anything, just sitting there with her hands folded, a picture of resignation in a navy foulard dress with a small white pattern.

Francis Cleveland felt thoroughly at a loose end after his wife and daughter had gone. He pottered about the house and garden feeling vaguely resentful, as if he had been in some way illused. Margaret had just gone off in a huff without even listening to what he had to say about Barbara. If she wasn’t careful the whole thing might become far more serious than she had bargained for. It would serve them right, he felt—Margaret, Aunt Maude and all those gossipping North Oxford women—if he ran off with Barbara. He would show them, he thought defiantly. They would soon realise that they had been mistaken, he laboured, although he had no very clear idea
how
they were going to be made to realise it.

After tea he walked up the Banbury Road on his way to see Barbara. Nobody who saw him, a tall, stooping man with a handsome but mild face, would have guessed at the violent, defiant thoughts that were jostling each other in his mind. Miss Nollard and Miss Foxe, who passed him in St. Giles’, even remarked to each other what a nice man he was and how pleasantly he smiled when he said ‘Good evening’. Francis had imagined that his greeting was highly ironical in its honeyed affability and that it conveyed, very subtly of course, his contempt and dislike for all the female inhabitants of North Oxford. But we are often allowed to keep our illusions in small matters, and so he went on his way feeling very pleased with himself.

Barbara was living in lodgings in St. John Street, and was supposed to be doing some work on her thesis. When Francis came into the room he found her sitting at a table writing. He bent and gave her a perfunctory, almost husbandly kiss, but as this was in Barbara’s opinion the most bearable sort, she was perfectly satisfied and began to talk about the work she was doing.

‘They’ve gone away. They went this morning,’ said Francis, interrupting her rudely.

Barbara of course knew what he meant. ‘They’ always meant his family. She hesitated as if she did not quite know what was expected of her.

‘Now we can really enjoy ourselves,’ he said boldly. ‘We can do whatever we like.’

‘Oh, yes, that will be nice,’ she said vaguely, even a little apprehensively. ‘I don’t quite know what I’m going to do about my thesis,’ she said quickly. ‘I looked in Bodley this morning and found something about it in one of those American periodicals, but of course it hasn’t been done at all thoroughly… .’