‘I can’t breathe for the smell of flowers. Father Bernard said he might come.’
‘He won’t now.’
‘He might, he’s always late. You don’t like him, Pearlie.’
‘I feel he’s false somehow.’
‘That’s unfair.’
‘OK, it’s unfair.’
‘Don’t be cross with me.’
‘Do stop saying that, I’m not cross!’
‘Please don’t sew. What are you sewing?’
‘Your nightdress.’
‘You did enjoy being in London?’
‘Yes, of course.’
‘I wish you liked picture galleries.’
‘I do like picture galleries.’
‘You pretend to.’
‘Hattie — ’
‘I’m sorry, I’m awful. It’s such an odd light, the sun’s shining yet it’s as if it were dark. I feel so peculiar. I hope I’m not wasting my time.’
‘If you read those big books you can’t waste your time.’ By the ‘big books’ Pearl meant the major European classics which Father Bernard had indicated with a flourish of his hand that Hattie ‘might as well get on with’ pending John Robert’s views on her studies. She was now reading Tod in Venedig.
‘Pearl, my dear, now that Hattie is safely at the university I can at last reveal how deeply I care for you. You have been a great support and a great comfort and I have come to believe that I cannot do without you. May I dare to hope that you care for me a little?’ These words, uttered by John Robert, were part of a fantasy which Pearl was having as she talked to Hattie. In the end (this obscure conception had become important to Pearl of late) John Robert would turn to her, perhaps as a last resort.
These visions, which unfurled themselves automatically, co-existed with Pearl’s uneasy notion, which had lately grown stronger, that John Robert had a more intense interest in his granddaughter than he affected to have. Of course Pearl said nothing of this to Hattie.
Alex had a recurring dream in which she looked out of the window of Belmont in the early dawn and found the garden, which had become immense, with a lake and a view of distant trees, full of strange people moving about purposively. A sense of impotent outrage and fear and anguish came in the dream.
Now listening to the blackbird and gazing out from the drawing-room where she had not yet turned on the lamps, she felt a stab of this fear as she saw a motionless figure standing on the lawn. She recognized it almost at once as Ruby, but it remained sinister. What was Ruby doing, what was she thinking, standing out there alone? Earlier in the day Alex had seen the vixen lying warily, elegantly, upon the grass while four cubs played round her and climbed over her back. The sight had pleased her, but also caused her some obscure pain, as if she identified with the vixen and felt a fear which was always there in the vixen’s heart.
‘I can’t pray,’ said Diane.
‘Of course you can, silly,’ said Father Bernard looking at his watch.
Diane had come to evensong for once, but on that evening Ruby had not come. Father Bernard had asked Diane into the Clergy House afterwards and held her hand and given her a small glass of brandy, and after that it somehow happened that they went on drinking brandy together.
‘You can try to pray. If you say you can’t pray you must know what trying to pray is. And trying to pray is praying.’
‘That’s like saying if you can’t speak Chinese you must know what trying to speak Chinese is.’
‘The cases are different. God knows our necessities before we ask, and our ignorance in asking.’
‘That depends on believing in God, but I don’t. If only he’d give up drinking.’
‘Anything counts now as believing in God, feeling depressed does, feeling violent does, committing suicide does — ’
‘Then he believes in God.’
‘Just kneel and drop the burden.’
‘That sounds like a pop song. Does he believe in God?’
‘I don’t know. But you do. Wake up. Invent something. Perform a new action. Go and visit Miss Dunbury.’
‘How is she, poor old thing.’
‘Ill. Lonely.’
‘She wouldn’t want to see me, she disapproves of me. I wish you’d see George.’
‘Devil take George. The sooner he commits some decent crime and gets put away the better.’
‘How can you say that!’
‘I think you should cut and run.’
‘Oh, you upset me so.’
‘Get out of this dump. Get a train; any train, going anywhere.’
‘Have you seen Stella?’
‘No.’
‘He can’t have killed her. Where’s she gone?’
‘To Tokyo, go to Tokyo, go anywhere, do anything.’
‘I bought a new scarf.’
‘A new scarf can be a vehicle of grace.’
‘I’m drunk.’
‘So am I.’
‘I heard someone say you don’t believe in God.’
‘There is God beyond God, and beyond that God there is God. It doesn’t matter what you call it, it doesn’t matter what you do, just relax.’
‘I think George would do anything Professor Rozanov said.’
‘I’ve got to go to the Slipper House, I’m terribly late.’
‘You can’t go now.’
‘I can and will.’
‘Are you going to see that girl, Professor Rozanov’s niece?’
‘Grand-daughter.’
‘Funny little girl, little prissy white-faced thing. Couldn’t you ask Professor Rozanov to be nice to George?’
‘No. Come on. I’m off.’
‘I’ll walk with you as far as Forum Way.’
It was nearly closing time at the Green Man. As I think I said earlier, centuries of non-conformism has left Ennistone rather short of pubs. There is the Albert Tavern in Victoria Park and a new pub called the Porpoise in Leafy Ridge. There is a rather posh establishment, the Running Dog, which is also a restaurant, in Biggins, near the Crescent, and a pub called the Silent Woman (with a sign portraying a headless female) in the High Street near Bowcocks. In Druidsdale there is the Rat Man, and in Westwold the Three Blind Mice. There are also a few tiny shabby houses of less note in the St Olaf’s area, and the ill-reputed Ferret in the ‘wasteland’ beyond the canal. The Little Wild Rose on the Enn beyond the Tweed Mill hardly counts as being in Ennistone, but makes a pleasant walk in summer. However, Ennistone is not a town for an easy drink, and a surprisingly large number of Ennistonians have never entered a pub in their lives. The resistance to serving alcohol at the Institute remains firm, though this may change in time with the altering mores of the younger generation. This younger generation in the form of the classless jeunesse dorée, who had ‘taken over’ the Indoor Pool at the Baths, had lately ‘moved in’ in a similar manner upon the Green Man, to the annoyance of Burkestown regulars like Mrs Belton.
Tonight the cast of The Triumph of Aphrodite, many of them still wearing their costumes, were gathered there, after a rehearsal in the Ennistone Hall. The over-excited cast and their camp-followers had made a noisy procession from the Hall to the pub, and were now standing in a large chattering group spread along the counter. (The pub had lately been redecorated, abolishing the old distinctions between public bar, saloon and snug.) Tom and Anthea were there, and Hector Gaines and Nesta and Valerie and Olivia, with their pet Mike Seanu, and Olivia’s brother Simon who was to sing the counter-tenor part, and Cora Clun, daughter of ‘Anne Lapwing’, and Cora’s young brother Derek, star of St Olaf’s choir, who had the charming role of Aphrodite’s page, and Maisie Chalmers and Jean Burdett, tuneful sister of the St Paul’s organist and of Miss Dunbury’s truthful doctor, and Jeremy and Andrew and Peter Blackett and Bobbie Benning and other young persons who have perhaps not yet been mentioned such as Jenny Hirsch and Mark Lauder who were both animals, and young Mrs Miriam Fox (divorced) who worked in Anne Lapwing’s Boutique and was helping Cora with the costumes. Derek and Peter were both under age but plausibly tall. The masque was in that stage of penultimate disarray when (in any production) it becomes clear to the director that it will never be fit to be seen. The cast, however, remained carefree, filled with absolute irrational faith in Hector (who was now a popular figure, his vain love for Anthea being common knowledge) and in Tom, who had some vague reassuring authority as co-author. Scarlett-Taylor, after making some valuable historical pronouncements which it was too late to do anything about, had distanced himself from the operation; he was in Ennistone that weekend, but not in the pub, having declared himself for a quiet evening of work at Travancore Avenue.