Scarlett-Taylor’s given name had a double meaning, so that he had even entered the world with a dual nationality, under two flags. His father was thinking of the great philosopher, his mother of the Redeemer. His father had regarded Anglicanism as a religion of the Enlightenment, at any rate as a rational protest against the foul superstition with which, in Dublin, he was surrounded. His mother was romantically pious and still attended the English Church in Brussels and sang the old hymns in her sweet fading voice. (She had a pretty soprano and used to do amusing imitations of Richard Tauber.) Emma resembled his father, whom he loved very much: the shock waves of that loss still stirred him. He was, like his father, tall, with straight straw-coloured hair and delicate pale lips and narrow light-blue eyes. He dressed, like his father, in smart old-fashioned suits with waistcoats. (Only, whereas his father had had the best tailor in Dublin, Emma bought his clothes second-hand.) He wore butterfly collars and cravats, and possessed (his father’s) a watch with a chain. He wore narrow rimless glasses in imitation of his father’s pince-nez. He looked like a scholar and a gentleman. He was also athletic. His father had been a good tennis player and had organized ‘the cricket game’ in Dublin. (For Emma’s father cricket, like Anglicanism, was a protest activity.) Emma was also good at tennis, and at school had been able to hit a cricket ball harder and further than anyone else. By now, however, he had given up athletic games, partly because he had become increasingly short-sighted. He had also, more lately, given up chess.
The next thing to give up was singing. Emma was not timidly modest about his accomplishments. He knew that he was, in the academic sense, very clever. He did not need to be told by his tutor that he would get a good first-class degree. Then some time after that he would become a historian. He also knew that he had an exceptionally good voice. Various people had urged him to become a professional singer. Emma regarded the exercise of his gift rather in the light of a temptation. He knew, and part of him clearly loved, the remarkable unique personal sense of power which a good singer experiences, something more psychosomatically personal, perhaps, than the exercise of any other talent. His pleasure in his vocal triumph at school seemed to him sinister, quite unlike the clean satisfaction of academic work. In any case, he now simply had no time for singing. Whenever possible he kept his talent a secret, and was angry with himself for having got drunk (which he rarely, but then extremely, did) and given himself away to Tom McCaffrey, whom he had thereafter sworn to secrecy. However, he had not yet broken off relations with his dangerous and charming gift. He still went to see his singing teacher, a gloomy man, a failed composer, once an opera singer, who lived near Harrods, and from whom he continued to take lessons, and conceal how little he practised. Emma had learnt some harmony from the music master at school; this represented another and different temptation into which also Tom tiresomely entered. Emma had first met Tom when Emma’s piano, being lugged up to his room by some cross removal men, had stuck on the stairs. Tom had never yet heard a sound out of the piano, but invented by himself the idea that Emma could compose music. Tom’s next idea was a pop group, music by Emma, lyrics by Tom, to be called ‘the Shaxbirds’. Emma certainly did not, even momentarily, hate music the way he hated Ireland; but he could not come to terms with it any more than he could with his sex life.
Emma’s first view of Tom was that he was a tactless nuisance. How had it come about that he had let Tom seem to ‘acquire’ him? Tom was indiscreetly anxious to show off his friendship with someone whom he regarded as so superior and difficile. Tom’s thoughtless assumption of the possibility of affection between them alarmed Emma, Tom’s capacity for happiness amazed him. At Christmas Tom had unexpectedly given Emma a book (Marvell’s Poems). To reciprocate, Emma had hastily given Tom a cherished knife. How had that come about? Tom positively wanted to look after him. The trip to Ennistone, awfully unwise perhaps, was part of this process. Emma could not help being moved by the sheer confidence of Tom’s friendliness to him, but he was not at all sure that he wanted to be looked after, or that Tom had the faintest idea what his new friend was really like.
When Alex had returned with Ruby from the Institute, with John Robert Rozanov’s letter burning away in her pocket, she had gone straight upstairs to the drawing-room but had not at once opened the letter. Standing in the bow window, looking out at the cold startled trees and the wet green roof of the Slipper House, she had given herself up to a tide of emotion. Or perhaps it was more like being on a slow dreamy switchback, flying down, then flying up, a sort of giddiness, a moment of anticipation felt in the entrails. There was slight nausea and a sense of being moved suddenly about as in some state of drunkenness. Alex was surprised at her sensations, yet she apprehended too that she had been in an emotional state for some time now, as if expecting something to happen. This was not just the melancholia of the ageing woman; there was something more positive, more like an exasperation with the world expressing itself as a desire for violent change. She recalled that she had dreamed of her nanny last night; that was a portent, not always a happy one.
She took out the letter, fingered it and at last hurriedly opened it. It read as follows:
16 Hare Lane
Ennistone
Dear Mrs McCaffrey,
I wonder if you could be so good as to come and see me? There is something I would like to ask you. Any morning would be suitable. Could you let me know when? I am afraid that I am not on the telephone.
With kind regards,
Yours sincerely,
J. R. Rozanov
Alex stared at this text for a long time. It remained opaque, as disturbing and impenetrable as a message in a foreign tongue suddenly flashed upon a wall. Its immediate effect upon her was of disappointment. What had she crazily expected? ‘Alex, you have always been in my heart. I feel I must … etc.’ This formal note ‘with kind regards’ was cold indeed. ‘There is something I would like to ask you.’ No passionate proposal would be heralded by such language. Alex felt, for a moment, intensely childishly let down. She crumpled the letter in her hands. Then she uncrumpled it again.
It was cool but was it not nevertheless sufficiently mysterious? After all, if John Robert did want to approach her in sentimental mood he would be far too proud to show his hand at once. In fact such a letter would be exactly the kind which he would write, suggesting a meeting, giving nothing away. He would want to look at her, converse perhaps with a show of indifference, make some estimate of her feelings. At the Baths he had seemed to be looking around in search of someone. Why had he come back to Ennistone? It could not just be to try the effect of the waters on his arthritis. Alex had met John Robert at a period of youth when deep and lasting impressions are made. Had John Robert, attracted by Linda, really loved Alex? He might well have thought that Geoffrey Stillowen’s daughter was beyond his reach. Had he vividly and regretfully remembered her all these years? And in a moment Alex was saying to herself: how could he not !