“You’re so young,
So attractive—”
“I am several years older than you.”
Lydia: “You were always a baby.”
Philip: “And always the lady.”
Philip really said that, and when Scylla giggled, the string that tied them burned through and snapped. She remembered Picus at home: under Gault. A cup in a welclass="underline" in a house. Out of India: in a book out of no man’s land.
Most men steer there, and away before they have properly landed. ‘Land me where my friend and her fancy-man are waiting to bite.’ She noticed how they hunted a single line as a double technique—Lydia wanting to find out, Philip to defame. It infuriated her that she should be hurt.
Lydia was saying:
“I am awfully fond of those boys, Scylla, but they’re mal vus.”
“What is that?” (Don’t defend.)
“Well, you know—”
“No, I don’t. Try again.”
Lydia did:
“Why did you break up so soon? You said Felix had gone to Paris and you don’t seem to know about the others. Where’s Clarence?”
If she knew even that, she would have something to keep the old heart-break company.
Philip was saying:
“Scylla, why don’t you marry Clarence: People say he’s a beauty, and it’s time you picked up a husband—”
“She wouldn’t,” said Lydia,—“despises Clarence. But she can’t go on like this.”
“Go on like WHAT?” Philip answered her.
“You know what people say about a set with no real men in it.”
“What is a REAL MAN?”
“They don’t amount to anything, and you know it. I’ve seen the world in my little way, and that sort don’t count. I think I’ve got Lydia out of that kind of thing. We mean to make a good business of things as we find them. Can’t finnick about with white hands, old standards, and fancy words these days. Don’t mean to, do we? And we shan’t get into quite the messes we might find if you asked us down South. Perhaps that’s why you don’t. And, honestly, I don’t know if I’d let Lydia go—”
“If you mean that you’d find Ross having an affair with Nanna, you can go and look.”
Philip went on:
“You know we don’t mean that. If you’ll excuse me, but Lydia said the other day that you’re getting to think of nothing but sex—”
Insolent little cub. She had a last look at Lydia, twisting her wedding-ring.
“Of course, I am,” she said. “I know something about it. Very naturally, now. I’ve been trying to tell you. We have all separated now because (not my brother, of course) we can’t decide which one of them shall marry me, and we’ve run away to think; I can’t make up my mind. Not Ross, or Picus. But I’ve decided not to look outside our set.”
She saw the blood rising in Lydia’s face. Not a blush, a tide to the brain.
‘Now I’ve done it. I’ve lied. I’ve hurt her. Considering my present relations with Clarence—’
Lydia was saying:
“I don’t know. There is something fatal about your life, Scylla.” She noticed that it excited Philip to think of her desired.
A gulf had opened between them, on whose widening edge they shouted brutal farewells. They were telling her that her brother had given dishonoured cheques: that Picus had syphilis: Carston blackmailed: Ross was a satyr and a stunt painter. And Philip that Clarence had shewn cowardice at the front. Then his wife turned on him a look of insanity, and Scylla saw a tiny thread of blood run out of her nostril. A posy stood in Felix’s wedding-present, a bowl of flint glass. Philip dashed the water of it on her forehead, and held the sweet scented names to her nose. Lydia struggled up and the bowl was knocked out of his hands and splintered. Scylla had to force herself to laugh, and not to say: ‘It’s a camp story I told you: invented it, spite for spite.’ “I’m going,” she said.
Lydia cried: “Is that all that happened?”
Again she almost meant to say ‘No, it’s a long business. I came here to ask what you thought.’ Then was damned if she would.
She said: “What’s the good of my staying here? We shall all be back there soon. I’ll ask about the syphilis and the satyriasis. Does one put a notice in the papers about Felix’s cheques? Shall I tell Clarence to let you know how he escaped court-martial in spite of his seven wounds?”
CARSTON
He was struggling with the branch line of a remote english railway. He got to a place where people changed, and was in the mood to bear with the proceedings of another century.
He had plenty of them before he reached the village called Tambourne. Plenty of fine old women in black-beaded bodices, one button always missing where the strain came over the breasts. Plenty of young live-stock being shifted up and down the line. Plenty of the porters’ family party. Plenty of a plate of macaroons locked alone in a glass box in a deserted refreshment room.
Plenty of superb trees, and white nettle-scented dust. At the inn called the Star at Tambourne, plenty of regret for Nanna’s fine darned linen and china tea. A night of stars and bats came very slowly. Once out of the wood and away from his relations he asked himself why in Christ’s name he had come to see old Mr. Tracy. An ancient of days was living a stroll away from him at Tambourne House. He fetched the cup from his suit-case and put it on the red baize parlour table, a dumb circle of pale green. Why couldn’t the thing speak? Just once. Dumb was the word for it. He got rather tight all by himself, but without inspiration. He would have to go and call, have to go call. All up that yellow drive by himself.
LYDIA
She was alone next morning. Philip had gone out to meet a Jew whose favour they were nursing. She had refused, felt she no longer cared if he mismanaged it. She had not spoken since an hour after Scylla had left, and in that hour they had said worse things to each other than they had said to her. But Philip, who had almost cried with fear, in the morning was not dissatisfied. One does not leave the gutter without a few knocks. He had his own plans, his own adventure. Hoped from his heart Scylla was marrying the man. That would get them out of his way for good.
Lydia sat at her writing-table, without her mask, either of love or make-up. Her head, still disfigured, did not belong to this age. She wrote:
My dear Clarence,
How are you all?
Scylla is up and dined last night. She seemed very well and a little mysterious. I understood, though I may have got it quite wrong, that you’re thinking of marrying each other.
Please let Phil and me know if it’s true. It almost hurts one’s feelings not to be the first to wish you luck.
No chance of getting away until Phil has pulled off some more business, and then he wants to go to Eastbourne!
She went out herself and posted it to Tollerdown.
Once, down South, one of the boys had called Scylla “bird-alone.” They had all asked for names. Picus had been cat-by-himself. Felix, l’œuf sur le toit. Ross, bird-catcher. They had quarrelled a little that morning, and she had not been pleased when Ross had said, grinning: “If Scylla’s the bird, one might call you ‘wolf-alone’.”
FELIX
Felix sobbed in the taxi: “Can’t you see we are all damned.” And that love and death were one.