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‘Yes, and she knows what to say.’
‘Ah,’ said Midge. ‘But it goes further than saying. Do you know, Lucy, that Henrietta actually knitted that pullover?’
‘Oh, my dear.’ Lady Angkatell looked grave. ‘And wore it?’
‘And wore it. Henrietta carries things through.’
‘And was it very dreadful?’
‘No. On Henrietta it looked very nice.’
‘Well, of course it would. That’s just the difference between Henrietta and Gerda. Everything Henrietta does she does well and it turns out right. She’s clever about nearly everything, as well as in her own line. I must say, Midge, that if anyone carries us through this weekend, it will be Henrietta. She will be nice to Gerda and she will amuse Henry, and she’ll keep John in a good temper and I’m sure she’ll be most helpful with David.’
‘David Angkatell?’
‘Yes. He’s just down from Oxford—or perhaps Cambridge. Boys of that age are so difficult—especially when they are intellectual. David is very intellectual. One wishes that they could put off being intellectual until they were rather older. As it is, they always glower at one so and bite their nails and seem to have so many spots and sometimes an Adam’s apple as well. And they either won’t speak at all, or else are very loud and contradictory. Still, as I say, I am trusting to Henrietta. She is very tactful and asks the right kind of questions, and being a sculptress they respect her, especially as she doesn’t just carve animals or children’s heads but does advanced things like that curious affair in metal and plaster that she exhibited at the New Artists last year. It looked rather like a Heath Robinson step-ladder. It was called Ascending Thought—or something like that. It is the kind of thing that would impress a boy like David… I thought myself it was just silly.’
‘Dear Lucy!’
‘But some of Henrietta’s things I think are quite lovely. That Weeping Ash-tree figure, for instance.’
‘Henrietta has a touch of real genius, I think. And she is a very lovely and satisfying person as well,’ said Midge.
Lady Angkatell got up and drifted over to the window again. She played absent-mindedly with the blind cord.
‘Why acorns, I wonder?’ she murmured.
‘Acorns?’
‘On the blind cord. Like pineapples on gates. I mean, there must be a reason. Because it might just as easily be a fir-cone or a pear, but it’s always an acorn. Mast, they call it in crosswords—you know, for pigs. So curious, I always think.’
‘Don’t ramble off, Lucy. You came in here to talk about the weekend and I can’t see why you were so anxious about it. If you manage to keep off round games, and try to be coherent when you’re talking to Gerda, and put Henrietta on to tame intellectual David, where is the difficulty?’
‘Well, for one thing, darling, Edward is coming.’
‘Oh, Edward.’ Midge was silent for a moment after saying the name.
Then she asked quietly:
‘What on earth made you ask Edward for this weekend?’
‘I didn’t, Midge. That’s just it. He asked himself. Wired to know if we could have him. You know what Edward is. How sensitive. If I’d wired back “No,” he’d probably never have asked himself again. He’s like that.’
Midge nodded her head slowly.
Yes, she thought, Edward was like that. For an instant she saw his face clearly, that very dearly loved face. A face with something of Lucy’s insubstantial charm; gentle, diffident, ironic…
‘Dear Edward,’ said Lucy, echoing the thought in Midge’s mind.
She went on impatiently:
‘If only Henrietta would make up her mind to marry him. She is really fond of him, I know she is. If they had been here some weekend without the Christows… As it is, John Christow has always the most unfortunate effect on Edward. John, if you know what I mean, becomes so much more so and Edward becomes so much less so. You understand?’
Again Midge nodded.
‘And I can’t put the Christows off because this weekend was arranged long ago, but I do feel, Midge, that it is all going to be difficult, with David glowering and biting his nails, and with trying to keep Gerda from feeling out of it, and with John being so positive and dear Edward so negative—’
‘The ingredients of the pudding are not promising,’ murmured Midge.
Lucy smiled at her.
‘Sometimes,’ she said meditatively, ‘things arrange themselves quite simply. I’ve asked the Crime man to lunch on Sunday. It will make a distraction, don’t you think so?’
‘Crime man?’
‘Like an egg,’ said Lady Angkatell. ‘He was in Baghdad, solving something, when Henry was High Commissioner. Or perhaps it was afterwards? We had him to lunch with some other Duty people. He had on a white duck suit, I remember, and a pink flower in his buttonhole, and black patent-leather shoes. I don’t remember much about it because I never think it’s very interesting who killed who. I mean, once they are dead it doesn’t seem to matter why, and to make a fuss about it all seems so silly…’
‘But have you any crimes down here, Lucy?’
‘Oh, no, darling. He’s in one of those funny new cottages—you know, beams that bump your head and a lot of very good plumbing and quite the wrong kind of garden. London people like that sort of thing. There’s an actress in the other, I believe. They don’t live in them all the time like we do. Still,’ Lady Angkatell moved vaguely across the room, ‘I dare say it pleases them. Midge, darling, it’s sweet of you to have been so helpful.’
‘I don’t think I have been so very helpful.’
‘Oh, haven’t you?’ Lucy Angkatell looked surprised. ‘Well, have a nice sleep now and don’t get up to breakfast, and when you do get up, do be as rude as ever you like.’
‘Rude?’ Midge looked surprised. ‘Why! Oh!’ she laughed. ‘I see! Penetrating of you, Lucy. Perhaps I’ll take you at your word.’
Lady Angkatell smiled and went out. As she passed the open bathroom door and saw the kettle and gas-ring, an idea came to her.
People were fond of tea, she knew—and Midge wouldn’t be called for hours. She would make Midge some tea. She put the kettle on and then went on down the passage.
She paused at her husband’s door and turned the handle, but Sir Henry Angkatell, that able administrator, knew his Lucy. He was extremely fond of her, but he liked his morning sleep undisturbed. The door was locked.
Lady Angkatell went on into her own room. She would have liked to have consulted Henry, but later would do. She stood by her open window, looked out for a moment or two, then she yawned. She got into bed, laid her head on the pillow and in two minutes was sleeping like a child.
In the bathroom the kettle came to the boil and went on boiling…
‘Another kettle gone, Mr Gudgeon,’ said Simmons, the housemaid.
Gudgeon, the butler, shook his grey head.
He took the burnt-out kettle from Simmons and, going into the pantry, produced another kettle from the bottom of the plate cupboard where he had a stock of half a dozen.
‘There you are, Miss Simmons. Her ladyship will never know.’
‘Does her ladyship often do this sort of thing?’ asked Simmons.
Gudgeon sighed.
‘Her ladyship,’ he said, ‘is at once kind-hearted and very forgetful, if you know what I mean. But in this house,’ he continued, ‘I see to it that everything possible is done to spare her ladyship annoyance or worry.’
CHAPTER 2 (#ue4f54643-8678-5c1a-94bc-947cbe91ae18)
Henrietta Savernake rolled up a little strip of clay and patted it into place. She was building up the clay head of a girl with swift practised skill.
In her ears, but penetrating only to the edge of her understanding, was the thin whine of a slightly common voice:
‘And I do think, Miss Savernake, that I was quite right! “Really,” I said, “if that’s the line you’re going to take!” Because I do think, Miss Savernake, that a girl owes it to herself to make a stand about these sort of things—if you know what I mean. “I’m not accustomed,” I said, “to having things like that said to me, and I can only say that you must have a very nasty imagination!” One does hate unpleasantness, but I do think I was right to make a stand, don’t you, Miss Savernake?’
‘Oh, absolutely,’ said Henrietta with a fervour in her voice which might have led someone who knew her well to suspect that she had not been listening very closely.
‘“And if your wife says things of that kind,” I said, “well, I’m sure I can’t help it!” I don’t know how it is, Miss Savernake, but it seems to be trouble wherever I go, and I’m sure it’s not my fault. I mean, men are so susceptible, aren’t they?’ The model gave a coquettish little giggle.
‘Frightfully,’ said Henrietta, her eyes half-closed.
‘Lovely,’ she was thinking. ‘Lovely that plane just below the eyelid—and the other plane coming up to meet it. That angle by the jaw’s wrong… I must scrape off there and build up again. It’s tricky.’
Aloud she said in her warm, sympathetic voice:
‘It must have been most difficult for you.’
‘I do think jealousy’s so unfair, Miss Savernake, and so narrow, if you know what I mean. It’s just envy, if I may say so, because someone’s better-looking and younger than they are.’
Henrietta, working on the jaw, said absently, ‘Yes, of course.’
She had learned the trick, years ago, of shutting her mind into watertight compartments. She could play a game of bridge, conduct an intelligent conversation, write a clearly constructed letter, all without giving more than a fraction of her essential mind to the task. She was now completely intent on seeing the head of Nausicaa build itself up under her fingers, and the thin, spiteful stream of chatter issuing from those very lovely childish lips penetrated not at all into the deeper recesses of her mind. She kept the conversation going without effort. She was used to models who wanted to talk. Not so much the professional ones—it was the amateurs who, uneasy at their forced inactivity of limb, made up for it by bursting into garrulous self-revelation. So an inconspicuous part of Henrietta listened and replied, and, very far and remote, the real Henrietta commented, ‘Common mean spiteful little piece—but what eyes… Lovely lovely lovely eyes…’
Whilst she was busy on the eyes, let the girl talk. She would ask her to keep silent when she got to the mouth. Funny when you came to think of it, that that thin stream of spite should come out through those perfect curves.
‘Oh, damn,’ thought Henrietta with sudden frenzy, ‘I’m ruining that eyebrow arch! What the hell’s the matter with it? I’ve over-emphasized the bone—it’s sharp, not thick…’
She stood back again frowning from the clay to the flesh and blood sitting on the platform.
Doris Saunders went on:
‘“Well,” I said, “I really don’t see why your husband shouldn’t give me a present if he likes, and I don’t think,” I said, “you ought to make insinuations of that kind.” It was ever such a nice bracelet, Miss Savernake, reely quite lovely—and of course I dare say the poor fellow couldn’t reely afford it, but I do think it was nice of him, and I certainly wasn’t going to give it back!’
‘No, no,’ murmured Henrietta.
‘And it’s not as though there was anything between us—anything nasty, I mean—there was nothing of that kind.’
‘No,’ said Henrietta, ‘I’m sure there wouldn’t be…’
Her brow cleared. For the next half-hour she worked in a kind of fury. Clay smeared itself on her forehead, clung to her hair, as she pushed an impatient hand through it. Her eyes had a blind intense ferocity. It was coming… She was getting it…
Now, in a few hours, she would be out of her agony—the agony that had been growing upon her for the last ten days.
Nausicaa—she had been Nausicaa, she had got up with Nausicaa and had breakfast with Nausicaa and gone out with Nausicaa. She had tramped the streets in a nervous excitable restlessness, unable to fix her mind on anything but a beautiful blind face somewhere just beyond her mind’s eye—hovering there just not able to be clearly seen. She had interviewed models, hesitated over Greek types, felt profoundly dissatisfied…
She wanted something—something to give her the start—something that would bring her own already partially realized vision alive. She had walked long distances, getting physically tired out and welcoming the fact. And driving her, harrying her, was that urgent incessant longing—to see—
There was a blind look in her own eyes as she walked. She saw nothing of what was around her. She was straining—straining the whole time to make that face come nearer… She felt sick, ill, miserable…
And then, suddenly, her vision had cleared and with normal human eyes she had seen opposite her in the bus which she had boarded absent-mindedly and with no interest in its destination—she had seen—yes, Nausicaa! A foreshortened childish face, half-parted lips and eyes—lovely vacant, blind eyes.
The girl rang the bell and got out. Henrietta followed her.
She was now quite calm and businesslike. She had got what she wanted—the agony of baffled search was over.
‘Excuse me speaking to you. I’m a professional sculptor and to put it frankly, your head is just what I have been looking for.’
She was friendly, charming and compelling as she knew how to be when she wanted something.
Doris Saunders had been doubtful, alarmed, flattered.
‘Well, I don’t know, I’m sure. If it’s just the head. Of course, I’ve never done that sort of thing!’
Suitable hesitations, delicate financial inquiry.
‘Of course I should insist on your accepting the proper professional fee.’
And so here was Nausicaa, sitting on the platform, enjoying the idea of her attractions being immortalized (though not liking very much the examples of Henrietta’s work which she could see in the studio!) and enjoying also the revelation of her personality to a listener whose sympathy and attention seemed to be so complete.
On the table beside the model were her spectacles—the spectacles that she put on as seldom as possible owing to vanity, preferring to feel her way almost blindly sometimes, since she admitted to Henrietta that without them she was so short-sighted that she could hardly see a yard in front of her.
Henrietta had nodded comprehendingly. She understood now the physical reason for that blank and lovely stare.
Time went on. Henrietta suddenly laid down her modelling tools and stretched her arms widely.
‘All right,’ she said, ‘I’ve finished. I hope you’re not too tired?’
‘Oh, no, thank you, Miss Savernake. It’s been very interesting, I’m sure. Do you mean, it’s really done—so soon?’
Henrietta laughed.
‘Oh, no, it’s not actually finished. I shall have to work on it quite a bit. But it’s finished as far as you’re concerned. I’ve got what I wanted—built up the planes.’
The girl came down slowly from the platform. She put on her spectacles and at once the blind innocence and vague confiding charm of the face vanished. There remained now an easy, cheap prettiness.
She came to stand by Henrietta and looked at the clay model.
‘Oh,’ she said doubtfully, disappointment in her voice. ‘It’s not very like me, is it?’
Henrietta smiled.
‘Oh, no, it’s not a portrait.’
There was, indeed, hardly a likeness at all. It was the setting of the eyes—the line of the cheekbones—that Henrietta had seen as the essential keynote of her conception of Nausicaa. This was not Doris Saunders, it was a blind girl about whom a poem could be made. The lips were parted as Doris’s were parted, but they were not Doris’s lips. They were lips that would speak another language and would utter thoughts that were not Doris’s thoughts—
