‘Dead as old mutton, Laura says. The war, y’know.’
‘Ah, yes. The horrible war. But at least the Allies won. You’re pleased, Laura?’
He had a precise way of speaking, his Irish accent drawling out his sentences, a smile rarely absent from his face. Set in hollows, his dark eyes were fixed on Laura’s, insistent that his interest in all she had to say was genuine.
‘Well yes, I am pleased.’
‘I used to listen to Lord Haw-Haw. He’s most amusing.’
The maid returned with a tray of teacups, a teapot and biscuits on a plate.
‘Thank you, Mary.’
As he spoke, Margaretta put her hand up to her face. But already he had noticed.
‘What’s the joke?’ he politely inquired.
The maid left the room, and because she knew that she, too, would begin to giggle if she did not speak Laura said:
‘Margaretta thought her name was Ludmilla.’
‘Ludmilla?’
It wasn’t funny any more, as it hadn’t been when Dr Heaslip had not been cross. Politely, Ralph de Courcy handed them their cups of tea. He was right: they were children and he was not.
‘Have a Marietta biscuit?’
They each took one. They felt silly and ashamed. Margaretta said:
‘Are you feeling better these days?’
‘I never feel ill at all.’ He turned to Laura. ‘My heart was weakened when I stupidly caught rheumatic fever as a boy. I’m meant to go carefully in case I die.’
They wanted to gasp in wonder at this reference to death, but they did not do so. Margaretta said:
‘Are you getting better all the time?’
‘Indubitably. I’m reading Thomas Mann. Buddenbrooks. Do you like Thomas Mann?’
They had never heard of this German author. Vaguely, they shook their heads. They had not yet read, Laura admitted, the book called Buddenbrooks:
‘Shall I show you about the garden when you’ve finished your Marietta biscuits?’
‘Yes, please,’ Laura said. ‘If you don’t think the strain –’
‘Strain is just a word they use. Your father came here once or twice, Margaretta, when I was at death’s door – called in to offer a second opinion. It wasn’t as disagreeable as it sounds, you know, being at death’s door. Though nicer, perhaps, to be a few footsteps further off.’
His conversation was extraordinary, Laura considered. In a way everything about him was extraordinary, not least his detached smile and his eyes. His eyes did not flit about. They were the steadiest eyes she had ever seen, especially when he spoke of death.
‘Oh, yes,’ he said, ‘they make a frightful fuss. Do you play tennis? You could stay to lunch and then we might play tennis.’
‘But surely –’ Margaretta began.
‘I may play a little tennis. If I agree, and promise, not to sit about afterwards without a sweater and a blazer, then I may play a little tennis. Or at least that’s what I say.’
Suppose he dies? Laura thought. Suppose he falls down on the tennis court and is unable to get up again? Imagine having to tell about that! Imagine Dr Heaslip saying nothing, but thinking what fools they were and how much they were to blame!
He took them to the garden. He didn’t appear to know the names of any plants or flowers, but with his pale, cold hands he pointed about. He led them through a glasshouse full of tomatoes and out the other end. He pointed again: peaches flourished on a brick-lined wall. ‘A la Dean Swift,’ he said: they’d no idea what, he was talking about.
He sat between them on a wooden seat. A lawn stretched all around, bounded by white hydrangeas in front of towering cedar trees. Another dog, a brown spaniel, ambled from some corner and sat with them. Margaretta said the garden was beautiful.
‘Sergeant Barry does it. Did you see Sergeant Barry by the gate-lodge?’
They said they had.
‘He resigned from the force because he couldn’t learn the Irish. He feared they might demote him and he couldn’t bear the thought of that. So he resigned as sergeant.’
In the drawing-room, when she’d brought the tea and biscuits, he’d told the maid that they would stay to lunch. They hadn’t dared to say that there were salad sandwiches in Margaretta’s saddle-bag.
‘You must be starving,’ he said now, ‘after such a journey. Heaven knows what they’ve managed to scrape together. Shall we go and see?’
He led the way back to the house and to the dining-room. The blinds had been raised, and places laid at the table. He pulled at a bell in the wall and some minutes later the maid brought in three soup plates on a tray.
‘Crosse and Blackwell’s,’ he said. ‘Leave it if you don’t like kidneys.’
All through the meal he asked questions, about Buckinghamshire and Anstey Rye, and if bombs had fallen near by; about the De Luxe Picture House, which he had been to once. There was a larger town, nearer to the de Courcys’ house than their own, which had a cinema called the Palace, with Western Electric Sound. He’d seen Gone with the Wind there, which he described as ‘light’. He’d like to see some German films, which he’d read about, but he doubted that they’d ever come to the Palace or the De Luxe. He related the plot of one, to do with the crimes committed by a man who was not sane, and enthusiastically they both said it sounded interesting. Perhaps now that the war was over these German films might be on in England, Laura added, and he agreed that that might be so. Then, quite abruptly, when they had all three finished their sago and stewed gooseberries, he said he was feeling a little tired. His smile continued. He was supposed to rest after lunch, he explained. It would perhaps be asking for trouble not to, today.
They stood up. They thanked him and hoped he would be completely better soon. It was as though tennis had never been mentioned; it was as though he had never said that people made a fuss. He did not move from where he sat at the head of the long table, but said that he had enjoyed their visit, that they were good to come all this way to bore themselves with the company of an invalid. Would they come again? he almost meekly asked.
‘Yes, of course,’ Laura replied, her assurance only moments ahead of Margaretta’s.
‘Please be careful,’ Margaretta said. ‘Please take a good rest.’
They rode in silence down the avenue, past the gate-lodge, where Sergeant Barry was reading a newspaper in his garden. He looked up from it to scrutinize them, another cigarette in the middle of his mouth. Again he wagged his head at them but did not attempt to speak.
‘God!’ Margaretta said when they were out of earshot. ‘God, did you ever!’
‘I hope we didn’t cause a strain.’
‘God, I know! I thought of that.’
When they next saw Dr Heaslip they asked him. ‘Oh no, no,’ he said. ‘Company probably does the poor fellow good.’ But neither Laura nor Margaretta could think of Ralph de Courcy as a poor fellow. A fortnight later they rode over to the de Courcys’ house again, and Sergeant Barry, apprehending them as they turned into the avenue, told them the de Courcys were all away in Dublin.
‘When will they be back?’ Margaretta asked.
‘Ah, not for a while. Not till the end of the month.’
A week later Laura returned to England. This time among the images she carried with her were ones of the hours they had spent in the de Courcys’ house and in their garden. The indistinct tapestries, the key of the clock hanging in the alcove in the hall, the black-and-white dog asleep on the hearthrug: such images came and went in her mind, giving way to the face of the maid, and the sergeant at the gate-lodge, and Ralph de Courcy in his flannels and green tweed jacket. She dreamed that she and Margaretta walked among the white hydrangeas and the cedar trees, that they sat again on the pink-striped sofa. In her dream the hands fell off the clock in the hall, which Dr Heaslip said sometimes happened, owing to strain.