Authors: Barbara Vine
W
HEN SCHOOL,
both for Elspeth and Hope, broke up at the end of July, the former had still not made up her mind whether to accept Maud’s invitation. In some ways it was attractive. Elspeth would pay her way, but Maud had by now told her repeatedly that she wouldn’t want rent for the two or three rooms she would put at her friend’s disposal. Maud suggested too that Maud should buy a car. Both could drive it and Elspeth could use it to go to school.
“Like the headmaster,” said Maud, as if this would be a temptation.
What would happen to her, Elspeth wondered, if their new neighbour—he had asked them to call him Guy, as everyone did—fell in love with Maud, if he hadn’t already fallen in love with Maud, married her, and took her and Hope to live with him at River House. Elspeth would be without a home and with no means of getting one. Guy was a frequent caller at The Larches. He brought them fruit, strawberries and raspberries and red currants, from his kitchen garden. He had his own pew in St. Jude’s church and asked them to use it, which Maud sometimes did with Hope. Elspeth, an atheist who called herself a humanist, said she attended enough assemblies at school without the need to do so on Sundays, and Maud and Hope were welcomed on their own. This only confirmed Elspeth’s belief that Guy was choosing Maud for the second Mrs. Harding.
In August, when Elspeth had been staying for three weeks at The Larches, something changed all that. A note addressed to
Miss Elspeth Dean
was put through Maud’s letterbox early in the morning before either woman was up. Hope found it and laid it
beside Elspeth’s plate on the breakfast table. The postmark was noted, and Elspeth wondered who in Ottery St. Jude, where she knew hardly anyone, could be writing to her. She knew by now Maud was not much interested in other people. After watching Elspeth open the envelope, Maud, indifferent, went out to the kitchen to make a fresh pot of tea. He had written:
Dear Miss Dean, I have two tickets for a concert of Mozart and Vivaldi in Torquay on the evening of Saturday week. It would give me much pleasure if you would accompany me to Torquay. The concert begins at seven p.m. If you do me the honour of accepting, we would leave here at five thirty and I would call for you in my car.
Apart from business communications in respect of job interviews, it was the most formal letter Elspeth had ever received. Her first question to herself was, Why had he chosen her over Maud? Only, surely, because he knew she was a music teacher and the function was a concert. Her second, whispered in front of the mirror in the bedroom, was, Why do you make so little of yourself? She undid the chignon on the back of her head and let the mass of red hair fall about her shoulders. The man in Ashburton she supposed she would marry one day, a teacher like herself but in a different school, disliked the colour and preferred her to wear a hat. So might this man, she thought. What did it matter?
She put off telling Maud, then thought how cowardly she was being and came straight out with it.
“I wonder why he’s asked you,” Maud said. “He could have anyone. Good-looking, plenty of money, that house, he’s quite a catch.”
“He’s asked me to a concert, Maud, not to marry him.”
“Goodness, no. I should think not.”
“Anyway, I shan’t go.”
H
IS CAR
was a black Armstrong Siddeley with comfortable leather-covered seats. Being driven anywhere in a car was a treat to Elspeth. They glided smoothly along the narrow lanes, where the hedges in August were overhung with wild clematis and the reddening berries of the wayfaring tree, while Guy asked her about her music, the instrument she played, her pupils, her favourite composers. This drastic change of subject was perhaps inevitable in the climate of dread which was closing in on England, to revert to that day’s paper and the news that Hitler had a million men under arms. But when the sea came into view in a steep vee between the hills, they stopped for a while, and Guy said it always reminded him of the Amalfi Coast and was just as beautiful. Elspeth said she had never been abroad, then wished she hadn’t said it because it sounded like angling for an invitation—as if such a thing were possible.
Vivaldi’s
Four Seasons
came first, the Mozart being saved up for after the interval, and because it was warm even after sunset, they walked out onto a broad balcony from which the sea could again be seen. Guy saw someone he knew and introduced her to Elspeth as Alicia Imber, a friend of his. Elspeth immediately recognised the name as that of a woman who had been rude and patronising to Maud, or so Maud said. But Alicia was charming to Elspeth and said she hoped to see her again, though Elspeth found it embarrassing when Alicia said Guy must bring Elspeth over to Dartcombe Hall for tea.
“She’s a good friend of mine,” he said to Elspeth when they went back into the concert hall. “A widow now. Her husband was the dearest man. She has two sons, Christian and Julian, and she had a daughter, called Charmian. The poor child died of tuberculosis when she was twelve.”
“Some say that’s the worst thing that can happen to anyone,” said Elspeth, “to lose a child.”
“I can believe it.” He hesitated. “Would you come with me if I drove over there one day? I know how much Alicia would like it.”
Elspeth found herself blushing but she managed to speak firmly. “Of course. I’d like to.”
The Mozart transported Elspeth to joy. It was rare for her to hear live music apart from that which she—sometimes with the school orchestra—made herself. She was aware of her companion’s eyes once or twice turned to her face, appreciating perhaps her rapt expression. On the return journey she found herself, perhaps too effusively, she thought, thanking him over and over for the concert, but he seemed to like her enthusiasm.
Next day, persuading herself that her decision had nothing to do with Guy and the concert and his invitation to a small party he was giving on the following Wednesday, she told Maud that she would give up her flat in Ashburton and come to live at The Larches.
W
AR WAS
averted for just a year, though how short the postponement would be had not been known or even imagined when Neville Chamberlain had returned in triumph from Munich in September 1938. He carried with him a sheet of paper signed by Hitler and expressing the wish that the English and the Germans should “never to go to war together.” All over the country the usually phlegmatic English gathered in the streets, cheering and dancing, drinking and congratulating each other. At River House in Ottery St. Jude, Guy’s housekeeper asked him if he planned to have a party, but he said celebrations were premature. Hitler was not to be trusted, and after Czechoslovakia, who knew which country he would invade next?
If the residents of Ottery St. Jude knew that Maud had never been married and Hope was illegitimate, no attempt was apparently made to ostracise her. Not then. Not yet. Maybe they accepted her because of the frequency with which Guy visited The Larches, giving as it were his seal of approval to the woman who had bought the house from him. Another reason was possibly that she was known to be well-off, in possession of a private income derived from an inheritance. Unmarried mothers with nameless children were usually poor, obliged to work at menial jobs such as a maid or charwoman. Not that Maud made friends in the village. She was thought to be standoffish with airs above her station.
Elspeth’s decision to move into The Larches, and before the autumn term began, was what Maud had wanted, and if she failed to greet the news with an outburst of delight, this was probably because she never showed much enthusiasm for anything. Going to bed for the day was becoming, if not a habit, an indulgence of hers when anything even mildly unpleasant happened, even rain’s falling in the morning. For all that, her already handsome looks improved as her twenties progressed, and she was even better dressed now she could afford more expensive clothes. Her neighbours stared when she walked to the post office in a smart tailored suit with a fox fur and a pillbox hat, while Elspeth continued to dress in a jumper and skirt and the only coat she possessed. But Maud believed that men are attracted by smart clothes. While John was alive, she could never think of marrying because she was supposed to be married to him. She could never think of being attractive to men because she was a married woman. Things were different now. She had no wish to be married, but she would have liked men to want to marry her.
She appeared not to notice the friendship or something more that was growing between Guy and Elspeth. Plainly, she rather disliked Guy, whom she continued to call by his style and surname in spite of being asked not to. Yet Elspeth noticed—she doubted if Guy did—that Maud dressed with the greatest care in her newest garments when he was expected to call, even going to the village hairdresser that morning. Elspeth was aware too, much to her dismay, that Maud believed Guy was attracted to her, was perhaps in love with her, even when he called to take her friend out. Maud even explained that these outings were all to musical events (though they were not) because music bored her while Elspeth liked it and indeed taught it.
“I told him I’d fall asleep if I had to sit through a—what’s it called? An oratorio, is it?” Maud told Elspeth.
She and Guy had been to hear
Messiah
in Exeter Cathedral, a
source of wonder to Maud. Christmas came, and this time Guy did have a party. Maud refused to go, saying she had always hated the season and longed to have a quiet time at home by herself. And “by herself,” increasingly frequent, seemed less and less to include Hope. Elspeth took Hope to the party, where she renewed her old, brief acquaintance with the Imber boys, Julian, who had just started at Oxford, and Christian, who was home for the holidays from Stowe. When Maud heard that Alicia Imber had been there, she was furious.
“Don’t think you can bring that woman here,” she shouted at Elspeth. “You don’t know how she insulted me.” Elspeth had been told many times. “My daughter wasn’t good enough for that child of hers who died, that Charmian, if you’ve ever heard such a ridiculous name.”
Elspeth said quietly that she wouldn’t dream of bringing anyone to The Larches without asking Maud first. “It’s your house, Maud.”
“I’m glad you realise that.”
Elspeth took the bus into Ashburton every weekday morning and sometimes back again. But Guy had begun meeting her in the Armstrong Siddeley after school and, instead of dropping her at Maud’s gate, driving her back to River House or taking her out to dinner. Maud seemed to have no objection to Elspeth’s going out two or three evenings a week, and Elspeth wondered why Maud had wanted her to share the house with her. An efficient daily woman called Mrs. Newcombe kept The Larches clean, did all the washing and ironing, and even cooked if Maud had taken to her bed. But she seldom spoke and, when she did, offered no opinions. She never seemed to gossip. Hope often spent the evenings in her mother’s bedroom, doing her homework and listening with Maud to the wireless. The newspapers carried frightening stories about “storm clouds gathering over Europe,” and extracts from
Hitler’s rants, but the BBC’s broadcasts were anodyne, avoiding European news. Maud enjoyed the comedians and the serials.
One Saturday evening in April—it was Guy’s forty-second birthday—he and Elspeth drove over to Dartcombe to have tea with Alicia Imber. Elspeth expected to be taken back to The Larches, but instead Guy drove her up to River House, asking her if she remembered the champagne he had brought over when Maud moved into her new house. Of course she did. Elspeth thought she remembered every occasion spent with Guy.
“I’m hoping you and I are going to have another bottle tonight,” he said.
“You’re hoping? You mean you’re going to have to buy it or find where it is?”
He laughed. “I mean the circumstances may not be propitious but I’m hoping they will be.”
She had to be content with that. As to the circumstances, she had no idea what they might be. At River House they went into the drawing-room, where, to her astonishment, he went down on one knee (with ease) and said, “Elspeth Dean, I love you very much. Will you marry me?”
She was surprised but not stunned or made awkward. She had never dared allow herself to hope for this, but she didn’t hesitate. “I will. I love you too. I think I have from the start.”
He had held her hand but never kissed her before. It was a very satisfactory kiss. The champagne then appeared. Guy was the only person she knew who possessed a refrigerator, and the bottle was ice-cold, frosted with water drops. Mrs. Grendon, the housekeeper, was called in and Susan, the little maid of all work, to share it.
“To celebrate my engagement,” Guy said, raising his glass, his other arm round Elspeth’s waist. “Miss Dean has done me the honour of promising to be my wife.”
Until she became engaged to him, Elspeth had read only one of Guy’s books, and that from the Ashburton public library before she had even met him. She had enjoyed it but been unable to find any more of his work and had never been able to bring herself to ask. When he drove her home that evening, she took with her all the remaining five, signed by him and inscribed to
my beloved Elspeth.
M
AUD HAD
to be told. Priding herself on knowing the unwisdom of putting off the evil day, for she was sure that it would be an evil day, Elspeth nevertheless waited until she and Maud were alone and Hope had gone to see the newborn puppies at Greystocks’ farm.
Turning round slowly to face Elspeth, Maud said, “You mean he has proposed to you?”
“Yes, he has. Of course I mean that.”
“But why?”
Not knowing how to answer, Elspeth said something very unlike her: “What a question, Maud.”
“I don’t suppose it will come to anything,” Maud said, as if Elspeth had spoken of some holiday planned for the distant future.
Maud made no comment on the diamond which appeared on the third finger of Elspeth’s hand in the following week and grew quiet when Guy called to take Elspeth out and invited Maud to congratulate him. She said, “Congratulations,” in an ungracious way and was waiting up for her friend when she was brought home at eleven that night.