Concluding (1948) Read online

  "He said he'd come over early," she explained.

  "You get back into the house, then," he told Liz, all the more certain she had only come out to leave the way free for Master Birt to get off. "I'll see if I can't fetch you breakfast presently."

  "But how about, I mean you've been up all this time, have you had some, oh, now Gapa, you can really try one so, what about you?"

  "I'm all right. It's never hurt me to do without," he said, his self pity allowing him to forget what Mrs Blain had provided. "But you've been ill," he generously added, and felt tired.

  "Hullo," she then exclaimed, in such a well known accent of pure gaiety that Mr Rock knew, before he could turn round. It was Sebastian Birt, in a neat brown suit.

  "Hullo Sebastian," he said.

  "And the light of their camp fires went out to meet the dawn," this young man announced, pretending to quote Herodotus, in a reference to the fire under the copper in which Daisy's swill was being cooked.

  "You're up then," Mr Rock said, looked shortsightedly to see whether Sebastian was shaved and, when he found that the young man had done so, having to admit to himself, with a gloating reluctance, that the prating idler could not have spent the night in her bed unless, as was just possible, he had been slippy enough to bring his razor or depilatory with him. The worthless fellow would have had to do it on cold water though, which was very unusual in such a quarter, Mr Rock thought.

  Meanwhile Elizabeth Rock, who had realised how unattractive she must look in her state of undress, was off back to the cottage.

  "Wait for me, now," she called, "I won't be a moment, really." And Sebastian, who did not answer, just stood there in a daze at the chance which bound him to these two strange people by the love he had for the granddaughter, the love, he thought, of his life.

  "Well?" Mr Rock enquired, not for lack of more he might have said. Sebastian brought himself out of himself with a jerk.

  "They've mislaid one of their girls," he mentioned as casual as could be, speaking in his own voice, as he almost always did to the old man.

  "Who have?"

  "Miss Edge and Mistress Baker," Sebastian replied, about to break into eighteenth-century speech, but he checked himself. "In fact they're looking everywhere for a couple, a brace," he added.

  "Bless my soul," Mr Rock commented, his eye on the swill. The news did not at once disturb him.

  "And they've left Ma Marchbanks to hold the baby."

  "How's that?"

  "They've gone up to Town as per usual. Our misguided rulers have put both on separate Commissions which sit Wednesdays. Of course, they can't miss those."

  "Good," Mr Rock said.

  Sebastian barked a laugh. "What in general is good about it, sir?" he asked. "There's hell to pay up at the house."

  "I always feel easier when those two State parrots are safe off the premises," Mr Rock said. "I don't know what they put in the food now, but these last few weeks I can't seem able to boil your swill."

  "Preservative," Sebastian promptly replied. "For what we are about to receive may it be ever fresh," he misquoted in his falsetto, then immediately controlled himself. "Tell me, does she do well

  on it, sir?" he enquired with deference, as though Mr Rock might suppose the question to be sarcastic.

  "So long as I'm allowed to keep the animal," Mr Rock nervously answered, "and I think I've a reasonable prospect. But if I were a younger man there's one thing I'd do." And he looked with savagery at Birt. He was in earnest. "I'd have a shot at this filth of a swine fever," he said. "Next to the system we live under each one of us nowadays, it's the curse of our time," he ended, stirring the swill once more.

  There was a silence.

  "You haven't seen Merode and Mary, then?" the younger man asked. He was anxious again.

  "Me? No. Why should I?"

  "They're the pair of students we can't find."

  "So you said," Mr Rock admitted, horrified.

  There was another silence.

  "It's going to be a magnificent day," Sebastian suggested.

  "When you get to my age you'll appreciate it."

  "You mean the weather?" Sebastian asked, respectfully.

  "Did you say 'end of her tether,'" Mr Rock demanded in a wild voice, thinking of Mary and turned to face the younger man who explained, "I spoke indistinctly again. No, I mentioned the weather."

  "Oh I see," Mr Rock commented. "It's my ears," he said.

  At this moment the swill began to boil with mustard bursting bubbles and, as a result, a stench rose from the copper harsh enough to turn the proudest stomach. Birt would have gone off at once but did not like to leave at a moment of awkwardness and incomprehension. Because, also, of his love for Elizabeth, he did not wish to antagonise the old man, so put up with the smell. Besides, he had promised to wait.

  "At last," Mr Rock said, and came to Sebastian's rescue by moving away on his own. "Have you had breakfast?"

  "Oh yes, thanks all the same, I had mine up at the Institute," Birt lied, so as not to saddle the sage with the need to prepare an extra portion. For his part Mr Rock showed no sign of what he felt as, with simplicity, he waited by the kitchen entrance for Sebastian to pass first. Even in this room Sebastian imagined he could taste the stink of swill. But just then Elizabeth entered, and the young man forgot in anxiously watching to find how she might be. Much could, as a rule, be told from the clothes she wore, from her manner when she set out.

  "What's it to be?" Mr Rock asked, as he took a saucepan off a nail.

  "Why Gapa," she said, eyes smiling upon Sebastian. "How sweet you are to us, but you mustn't bother, not on a day like this. I couldn't now," she said.

  "Sebastian, you talk to her," Mr Rock suggested. The young man looked gravely at him.

  "Don't think there's anything I can do, sir," he said with a sort of adolescent's smiling courtesy, out of place in a beak.

  "Now Elizabeth . . ." Mr Rock began at once, but she interrupted.

  "No," she said. "It's no use, I won't listen, either of you. Come on Seb, the weather's too good to waste inside." She took his hand, led him out. "Don't you ever smell anything besides your pretty students?" she asked in a low voice. "I believe you don't, and that's what makes you lucky," she said, as they turned into the ride by which Mr Rock had gained the big house earlier. It was noticeable how, when with her love, she no longer hesitated with her spoken feelings. "Darling, you're the luckiest man," she said, and sniffed fresh air.

  "You're looking so much better," he told Elizabeth as they dawdled up the ride, holding hands. She was not tall like Winstanley, yet came head and shoulders above him.

  "Oh Seb, I don't know that you'll ever forgive me; all my stupid hesitations," she said.

  The sun, which was not high yet, came aslant between trees with a smoky light, much as it had through Mrs Blain's great window, and struck their blue shadows sideways.

  "Most of it's my fault, I do know that." He spoke sincerely.

  "Why no," she murmured back. "You're perfect."

  "If we hadn't met," he said, "you’d never've had your breakdown, would you?"

  "I might. You can't tell. Now I've had one, I know," she said. "Actually, I believe you saved me, my reason I mean."

  "Oh Liz, it was hardly as bad, come now."

  "That's how it felt," she answered. "And I've been such a fool all this time not realising my own mind."

  He did not dare ask whether he was to understand she had at last decided what she wanted of him. His experience with her had taught Birt that she took refuge in a vast quagmire of vagueness when at all pressed. So, heart beating, because it was genuinely important how she would put it, he waited.

  "Sometimes I wonder if you'll ever forgive," she began again. "Oh I can't imagine why you picked me out," she said. "I get frightened sometimes you won't ever see me the way I really am. But one thing I'm sure now. I worried so at the start. D'you think I'd better tell? Well, I will. It was about Gapa. He's very famous. You see, I thought it
might all be because of him."

  He again felt he must at all costs make her right.

  "What d'you mean?" he asked patiently.

  "When you first showed an interest," she said. "Last Christmas. The time you began coming across the park to see us. Oh, for quite a long while I was sure you only did it to be by Gapa."

  "Did you?" he said, indulgently.

  She bridled, rather, at his tone. "Well, if you do want to understand I'm not so entirely certain even now, sometimes," she said.

  "You're jealous," he said, trying to make it into a joke.

  "Of my own grandfather?" she asked, and laughed. "No, but I might be if he had a great granddaughter. That would be different, right enough."

  "Liz, don't be absurd."

  "Oh but I'm so much older'n you."

  "Liz darling, we've been into this before."

  "A whole eight years, Seb. It's not fair. When you're forty I'll have a Gapa head. Think of that."

  "I have," he said, and sighed.

  "There you are you see, you sigh, which is just what I mean," she pointed out. "And, if you're like you are now, what will it be when our time really comes. Isn't it extraordinary? One starts out light as a feather, then everything gets difficult." Her voice was despairing.

  "If you care to know, I can't abide him."

  "Who?" she asked, for, in her distress, she had lost track of the conversation.

  "Your grandfather."

  "Don't be so ridiculous," she said in a most friendly way. "You know you dote on Gapa."

  "What makes you say?"

  "Why, it's in everything you do when you're together. Even if you're both just chatting, hard at it, your own voice drops you respect him so much and, poor dear, he's got to such a state of deafness he doesn't catch what's said."

  "Do I?" he asked, guardedly.

  "No-one has any idea of how they are," she explained. "And he adores you."

  "Are you sure?" the young man enquired, not at all convinced.

  "There you go, you see. The moment I tell, I can judge from your voice you're delighted. Oh darling, am I being very difficult, again?"

  "Of course not, Liz, but I would like to get this untangled."

  "Sometimes I can't imagine how you put up with me," she said, putting his arm in hers to press it to her side. "And who am I to be jealous of my own dear, dear Gapa if he is, even in part, the reason why you come over so often? Because I've a lot more to be grateful to him about then, haven't I? Oh when I'm well again I shall make things up to him, you've no notion how much, and should everything go right, when I come through this, I'll make it up to you too, my darling, even if it takes me the rest of my life, and all my breath."

  He kissed her as they walked on. "Don't take this so hard, Liz," he said.

  "You're such a brute," she said tenderly.

  "What's this?" he asked.

  "To make me love you like I do," she said.

  "That's my whole point," he took her up. "We can't help ourselves, can we? Things happen. When two people fall in love it's not their fault, surely? They can't help it."

  "It must be the fault of one of them."

  "How can you say that, dear?"

  "When the girl is so much older, then she's to blame."

  "You know I'm a fatalist," he said with an effort. "I don't know any serious economist who isn't. It's an occupational risk with economists." He used a sort of bantering tone with which to speak of his profession. The trick he had with a conversation whereby he would bring it to what he considered to be the level of the person he addressed, was more highly developed when with Elizabeth than it was when he spoke to Mr Rock; in other company, it was the impulse which led him to do his imitations. She was aware of this. She did not approve.

  "You say that just for me," she told him.

  "I don’t. Why should I?"

  "But you can't pretend about us, and that we know each other, was just luck," she complained. "With all we might mean," she added. "You cheapen it."

  "Well to go on as we do is cheap," he said, apologetically.

  "Oh you'll never forgive once all this is over, I know you won't," she cried out, then stopped so as to face him. He turned away in distress. "Well?" she said. "You see, you can't even look. My darling, I'm so beastly." But she stood on there, and did not kiss him. Misery paralysed her.

  "I'm so worried for you," he said at last, bringing out the truth.

  "Because you're an economist, or why? Because you think if it wasn't me then it might just as well be another girl?"

  "Now Liz," he said. "There was nothing further from my mind."

  "What in particular are you worried about, then?"

  "About your grandfather and you," he said, weakly.

  "Why, what d'you mean," she demanded. "He's everything, I worship the very ground he treads. He works his poor old fingers to the bone for me. Without him I don't think I could go on." She, in her turn, swung round to show her back to Sebastian.

  "Look," he said, "please be sensible," and his voice grated. "I can't imagine what you suppose I'm trying to make out. It's Miss Edge and Miss Baker's the trouble."

  "Oh?" she asked, faced the man once more, with an expression of great vagueness.

  "You're both of you a brace of innocents where those two women are concerned."

  "My dear," she said. "You don't know Gapa very well if you think it. He's a match for two old spinsters!"

  "He's not of this world, Liz," Sebastian objected.

  "He's forgotten more of her twists and turns than you'll ever learn," she said. "There."

  "I know, but so rash."

  "Careful Seb, you can go too far, you know."

  "I'm worried about this election. You understand what he is. He'll refuse what they offer, he'll simply disdain the whole thing."

  "After what he's done for everyone in this country, I'd say he had a right to do as he liked," she announced, for her own purposes ignoring the fact that she had pressed her grandfather to a certain course only the night before.

  "And I insist you can't, my dear girl. No-one can, these days."

  "Don't be so absurd."

  "But it's the State, Liz," he said. "What the old man will do is to wait till he's elected, then he'll refuse whatever they offer. And offend the powers that be very seriously. You know how he never even opens his correspondence."

  "Oh but he does over important things," she lied, to reassure herself. "Besides they would never dare, with men like Mr Hargreaves in the inner circles to protect the three of us."

  "It's his age, Liz. Any man as old stretches back to the bad times. He's suspect just because of the years he's lived. They won't like it."

  "Then they'll have to swallow their silliness," she said. "Why, he's famous, he's one of the ornaments of the State."

  "Look," he explained. "In the class of work your grandfather did they're just lyric poets. After twenty-five they're burned right out. He made his proof of his great theory when he was twenty-one. And he's seventy-six now."

  "All the more wonderful then, isn't he?"

  "Yes, but don't you realise his idea is poison to the younger men, who think they've exploded it?"

  "That's only jealousy."

  "I still maintain it would be very dangerous for him to go on as if everything was just plain sailing."

  "Oh, if you're going to lose your nerve now, my dear, what on earth, I mean can you imagine, of all the beastly things to happen ... oh what will become of you and me?"

  "There," he said, genuinely disturbed, "I've upset you and that was the last I intended, the very last," he added. But she was not done yet.

  "And what's all this to do with Miss Baker and Miss Edge?" she demanded, recollecting the way he had opened the conversation. She caught him out. He could not even remember how he had brought these ladies in. So he kissed her.

  Miss Marchbanks, with Mr Rock's Persian on her lap, sat waiting in the sanctum for one of the senior students, Moira. Extremely shortsighted, she
had taken off her spectacles and put these on Miss Edge's desk as though, in the crisis, at a time when she had been left in charge, she wished to look inwards, to draw on hid reserves, and thus to meet the drain on her resolution which this absence of the two girls had opened like an ulcer high under the ribs, where it fluttered, a blood stained dove with tearing claws.

  So that when Moira entered, and did not shut the door but stood leant against it, half in, half out of the room, dressed in a pink overall (this colour being her badge of responsibility over others), her bare legs a gold haze to Miss Marchbanks' weak eyes, her figure, as the older woman thought, a rounded mass softly merged into the exaggeration of a grown woman's, her neck and face the colour of ripening apricots from sun with strong eyes that were an alive blue, shapeless to Miss Marchbanks' dull poached eggs of vision, but a child so alive, at some trick of summer light outside, that the older woman marvelled again how it could ever be that the State should send these girls, who were really women, to be treated like children; she marvelled as Moira stood respectfully flaunting maturity, even her short, curly hair strong about the face with the youth of her body, that the State (which had just raised the age of consent by two whole years) should lay down how this woman was to be treated as unfunctional, like a child that could scarcely blow its own nose.

  "About the decorations, Moira," she began, dismissing certain uncertainties with a sigh, only to find she was unsure even of what she was about to say. "A thought came to me," she said, then forced herself on, "a thought for the alcove. Fir trees, Moira," she improvised. "And you know all that salt they delivered by mistake, well we could lay that for snow on the branches. It's what they used to do in films. So cool for dancing. Because it will be hot today, I think."

  "That would be lovely," the girl agreed with a low, lazy voice, the opposite to her looks.

  "Then you do think so, Moira?"

  "Oh, I wish you had the arrangements for everything, Miss Marchbanks. Only Miss Edge said it must be rhododendrons and azaleas. She wants huge swags, she said. What are swags, Miss Marchbanks?"

  "Great masses, child." Marchbanks for some reason began to feel reassured. "Loot, you see," she went on. "Well, that's that then. So you'd better take forty seniors to make a start."