Читать книгу Blind Man's Year - Warwick Deeping - Страница 5

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Launcelot Gerard and his wife had been dead for many years, and ever since she could remember, their youngest daughter had been trying to forgive her parents for that birth-mark, and her Christian name. Rosamund, Rose of the World! How ironical!

There had been no sons in the Gerard family, and she had been the last of three daughters, and always she had had the feeling that her father had regarded her disfigurement as a personal affront. She remembered him vividly for his vanity, and his Mincing Lane manners, for his love of display, and the perfect creasing of his trousers. As a child she had thought of him as possessing tin legs, and eyes that had regarded her as though kindness was, like his trousers, a very artificial product. He had left her ten thousand pounds on trust in Government stock, and the echoes of a conversation she had overheard: “It is one’s duty to provide for Rosamund. The inevitable spinster, my dear sir. But one must take steps to insure that no cad will ever make a fool of her for her money.”

Her memories of her mother were more happy, but Irene Gerard had died during Rosamund’s first year at school, that dreadful school where her secret soul had suffered so many repressions and so much humiliation. Life had not allowed her to become unaware of her disfigurement. She could remember appealing to her father: “Must I go back to school?” and he, absorbed in the excitements of a middle-aged man’s pursuit of a second marriage, had been irritated by her emotional sensitiveness. He had stood up and harangued her. Of course she must go back to school. She must learn to outgrow this absurd self-consciousness. She must try and forget that discoloration of her skin, which, after all, was not so obvious as she imagined, and she had gone back to school feeling bitter and frightened, to find there the one friend to whom her disfigurement was not a stigma.

“Why didn’t it come in the middle of my back, Margaret?”

“For other reasons, perhaps. The beauty inside you.”

It was Margaret Hayle who had helped her through those school years, beautiful Margaret, with her deep brown eyes and her serene forehead. She had never been jealous of Margaret or grudged her her beauty, for Margaret was lovely within as well as without, and to her over-sensitive friend she had uncovered a mystical mirror.

“Make your own world, Rose.”

It was Margaret who had helped her to make it, Margaret the fastidious feminist, who, launched on her own career as a healer, had taken Rosamund into her little London flat and given her that precious, personal room where she could scribble. Margaret an M.D. London! How strange life was! Margaret doctoring other people’s babies, and not caring, apparently, to possess one of her own. And Margaret was still with her, both in the spirit and the flesh. She would drive down to the Sussex farm for occasional week-ends, and Rosamund would let loose a tongue and a soul that had been dammed up through weeks of silence. Margaret remained her one live link with the outer world, the one live person who understood her.

But in other ways the outer world was intimately hers. She, the most uncommercial of creatures, had found her public pouring wealth into her lap, and sometimes she would smile and think of her father. She, the family failure, the inevitable spinster, was to be pensioned off, and she could suppose that the income she enjoyed from a world sale of her books was ten times that which her father had earned. How his mouth would have watered! What dinners he would have given had he been the recipient of such an income, how sumptuous would have been his triumphal chariot, and what Piccadilly adventures he would have purchased! Eros in tinplate trousers! Money. It had given her this beautiful retreat and an ironical consciousness of power, and a sense of compassion that was responsible.

People wrote to her for money, and for other things, and being human and somewhat lonely she preferred those who wrote to her for other things. Her correspondence, seriously accepted, filled two hours of her day. Wives wrote to her about their husbands and their sons, daughters about their lovers and their parents, worried women about their struggles and their fears. She, who was so profoundly understanding in her books, was made to listen to the confessions of her public. She was a kind of literary priestess and seer.

She had three gallant old ladies who were part pensioners upon her bounty. She intervened many times a year to turn the bitter edge of some desperate domestic crisis. She did nothing sentimentally or blindly. She employed a confidential agent, recommended by her London lawyers, to investigate tactfully the appeals that reached her. He had saved her from hundreds of ingenious spongers. She gave Margaret Hayle £100 a year to help send her convalescent children into the country. Nor did she congratulate herself on her charitable condescension. It was just a giving back to humanity something of what humanity gave to her. When she was feeling in a difficult mood and was tempted by self-pity, she reread some of the letters that other women had written her.

Then there were her sisters, Norah and Phœbe. Yes, Norah and Phœbe! Both were married, both had families and ambitions and delicate bank balances, and both were of the opinion that a successful, odd, and unattached sister was a person to be exploited. Aunt Rosamund was rich. Absurd, but it was so. Rosamund had duties to perform. Rosamund was obviously the family wet-nurse and social godmother. Rosamund could write a cheque whenever bank balances were wilting. Her sisters could not ask her to come and nurse their children or mind their houses when they went for holidays, or take John or Dulcie when the other children had whooping-cough. Rosamund was too eccentric and too wealthy to be exploited like the Victorian unmarried aunt, but she was expected to understand that blood was thicker than water.

“What can she do with all her money?”

Miss Gerard disliked both her sisters with equal sincerity, and she kept them at a distance. Norah with her cold blue stare and hard-boiled egg of a chin, was married to a doctor who practised in a north-country town, and so was not too near a neighbour. Norah had evolved subtle methods of compulsion. She had concentrated that blue stare on the disfigured side of her younger sister’s face. People should pay for their blemishes.

Phœbe was florid and fat and voluble, and as full of Phœbe as a ripe peach is full of juice. She had three children and a golfing husband, and a house at Oxshott in Surrey. Phœbe was inconveniently near. It had been very much her custom to crash down upon Rosamund in a voluble little car. Phœbe drove as she lived, with a delightfully jocund and florid disregard of other people’s necessities. All the road was Phœbe’s, but upon one of her speedings she had killed a cyclist, and with such characteristic indiscretion that her licence had been withdrawn for three years. Hence Phœbe was not quite so mobile and so prevalent.

Jane knocked gently at her mistress’s door. Between the hours of eight-thirty a.m. and eleven Miss Gerard was not to be disturbed. This making of books might seem to Jane to be a mysterious business, but it fed the cat and paid Will’s wages, and made life comfortable for an elderly woman whose philosophy was that of staying put.

“Sorry, miss. Telegram.”

Miss Gerard rose from her chair. Her writing-desk stood in the window of an upper room, and from it she could look down the twin valleys to the sea.

“So sorry, miss. The boy came to Will’s gate.”

“I was only writing letters, Jane.”

Miss Gerard opened and read the telegram.

“My dear, must see you. Expect me lunch. Phœbe.”

Jane, waiting with the silver salver held naïvely against her tummy, watched Miss Gerard’s face. It was a very sensitive face, and it had a trick of fluttering its lashes when it was troubled or worried.

“Mrs. Prodgers, Jane. Lunch. Can you manage?”

“Yes, miss. Will there be a chauffeur?”

“If there is, he can go to Feldhurst.”

She was not feeling friendly towards her second sister. She was wise as to Phœbe’s “Oh, my dear.” Such exclamatory preludes promised exploitation. And somewhere in Sussex Phœbe was explaining to an idle young man whose car and person she had borrowed, the ridiculous sensitiveness of her sister.

“I don’t think I can get you in, Archie.”

“Why not?”

“Well, you see, she’s not quite normal. One half of her face is all right, the other, half all nævus.”

“What’s that?”

“A port-wine mark, my dear. Born with it. Norah always says that nævus and genius must be synonymous.”

“How woozy! Won’t she see people?”

“No. Keeps a large Alsatian. And you’d frighten her to death, or the dog might bite you.”

He was a very stupid but good-looking young man, save that his lower lip was too pendulous.

“What do I do?”

“Better drive down to Westbourn and lunch yourself. I’ve got the tea-basket, and we’ll do a little picnic in Ashdown Forest going home.”

The young man shot his lower lip at her.

Phœbe Prodgers had a provincial mind and her father’s vanity, minus his Mincing Lane manners. People who liked her called her a good sort, though in what her goodness lay was not easy to define. She displayed her virtues, like her clothes, played a selfish and noisy hand at bridge, quarrelled with the tradespeople, left her bills unpaid for months on end, and said frankly that she knew just how to manage her husband and her children, though the success of the delicate manipulations was not very patent to the world. Her children were rowdy little exhibitionists; Tom Prodgers so little under her control that he ran away from her whenever he could find an excuse for doing it. Indeed, she belonged to a Victorian, Champagne Charlie period, and might have functioned as the typically flavicomous Victorian barmaid confronting a cad’s world with full bosom and flowery face, and a candour like unrefined sugar.

Miss Gerard heard the car climbing the steep lane. It was not a car that concealed its coming, nor was Phœbe’s young man of the order of quietists. Miss Gerard, in a playful moment, had described him and his likes as “bowler-hatted bounders of the baser sort.” The dog had been shut up in the kitchen and, accepting the inevitableness of Phœbe, Miss Gerard walked down to the gate. It was padlocked, and she had the key.

Conversation was in progress beyond the barrier.

“I say, does she keep that locked?”

“Yes, my dear.”

“What a wooze! Then, I shall have to back all the way down this lane.”

“You will.”

“What time shall I come and pick you up?”

“About three. I expect we shall have bored each other sufficiently by then.”

“Righto.”

He proceeded to reverse the car down the lane, and Phœbe Prodgers stood outside the blue gate with a smile ready to break through her very natural sense of irritation. She understood the absurd ritual of the place. Her sister provided no means of communication. You either waited for the agreed moment to arrive, or you shouted until that old crab of a gardener heard you. What a place, what a life! And then, one leaf of the gate swung open unexpectedly, for the mechanical clamour of the small car had smothered the sound of Miss Gerard’s footsteps.

The Phœbe smile was turned on like artificial sunlight.

“Oh, my dear, I simply couldn’t give you longer notice.”

She would have kissed Rosamund carefully on her undiscoloured cheek had not Miss Gerard long ago made it evident by a certain flinching coldness that she did not wish to be saluted. Phœbe might boast of her robust and affectionate frankness, but nothing was more transparent than her attempts to conceal ulterior motives. She could be so like a child on its best behaviour, trying not to look too patently at the cake dish.

“Have you sent your chauffeur away?”

It was important that Rosamund should not assume that Prodgers and Co. could afford a chauffeur.

“Oh, it’s only young Archie Sugden. Such a nice lad. He had to come and see an aunt at Westbourn and he drove me down. Oh, my dear, isn’t the garden lovely!”

They were in the drive, and the garden as a garden was not yet visible, but Phœbe, when once she had chosen her record and got it started, had to let it run. Why did women like Phœbe always lie, even when the plain issue needed no embroidery?

“I’m afraid there is only cold lunch.”

“Oh, just anything will do for me, my dear. I never mind what I eat. Isn’t Sussex just marvellous on a day like this? And how’s dear Jane?”

Miss Gerard was trying not to be rendered inarticulate by her sister, for Phœbe had that effect upon her, of making her close every secret window and sit in a kind of cold fug of ruthless cynicism.

“Jane’s just Jane.”

“And where’s the dear dog? You don’t mean to say you have shut him up? He’s such a darling. Oh, I simply must tell you what Rex said the other day. Rex is just five, you know, and of all the little bits of mischief—We were giving a bridge party, and he came in to say good night. And what do you think he asked Tom?”

Miss Gerard, perhaps with some inward waywardness, kept her disfigured cheek towards her sister.

“What did he ask Tom?”

“ ‘Daddy, what is a har-lot?’ ”

Miss Gerard smiled faintly.

“And did Tom tell him?”

“My dear, how could he? My partner got giggles and we missed a grand slam. Oh, but the garden! It’s simply a picture. I really want to look at it. You must have spent a fortune on bulbs. But then you can afford it. Simply marvellous, just by writing books. I can’t think how you do it.”

Miss Gerard was wondering just when the basic inspiration of Phœbe’s visit would begin to display itself. Her sister’s diplomacy was very much that of carnal woman. “Give a man a drink before you tell him the kitchen boiler’s worn out.” In all probability Phœbe would begin her pathetic story after lunch over coffee and a cigarette. And what would the particular plea prove to be on this occasion? Had Tom had to pay one of his many indigent sisters’ nursing-home and doctor’s bills, or had the family car suffered more damage, or the moment arrived when the whole interior of “The Cedars” had to be redecorated? “Oh, my dear, business, you know, is awful.” Or had Phœbe been buying too many new clothes, and had Tom exploded?

Phœbe drank half a bottle of white wine for lunch and, as Miss Gerard had expected, her sister warmed to the crisis over her coffee. She had been telling Miss Gerard how she had overheard someone at a dinner enthusing over Rosamund’s latest book. “It really did make me feel proud, you know, to be able to say ‘That’s my sister.’ ” Miss Gerard sat on the sofa with her back to the light and supposed that the dénouement must be very near. It was, but its appearance was prepared by a description of how bad things were in the City, and how worried Tom was about the future, and the children’s education. Almost Tom was proposing to give up golf.

“Of course, my dear, I oughtn’t to worry you with our affairs, but it does seem rather hard that when you are trying to be bright and busy people should let you down. Really, people do such dreadful things.”

And what was the dreadful thing that people had done to the Prodgers? Phœbe explained.

“Oh, Tom backed a bill or something for a friend in the City. Supposed to be quite a decent person and all that. Would you believe me, but Tom has been let in. It’s only for two hundred pounds, but Tom had just paid his insurance premium and it makes it dreadfully awkward.”

Miss Gerard made a most unsympathetic suggestion.

“Can’t Tom go to his bank?”

“Of course, my dear, but they would charge him eight per cent., and then it isn’t quite nice for a business man to go and cadge. Things get about so. And you know, my dear, it’s so important to appear prosperous. People talk. It’s really dreadful how men gossip in the train, and of course that sort of thing isn’t good for business. Social position, prestige, do matter. People are such snobs.”

Miss Gerard felt that the predestined moment had arrived, and she was wishing to get it over.

“Tom wants to borrow money without it being known?”

“Exactly. How quick of you to understand. Tom has written out a post-dated cheque. He wondered whether you could see your way to advance him something on it? Of course, it’s only a loan for three months and Tom wishes to pay interest.”

Phœbe’s fingers were busy in her bag. A cigarette drooped from one corner of her mouth. Miss Gerard held out a hand.

“There you are, my dear. I do hate worrying relations, but, after all, there are occasions.”

Miss Gerard scanned the cheque.

“Five hundred pounds! I thought you said two hundred?”

“Did I? Two, yes, but one must have a margin.”

Miss Gerard laid the cheque on the sofa and appeared to reflect.

“Phœbe.”

“Yes, dear?”

“Supposing I haven’t five hundred pounds to my credit?”

She was aware of her sister’s sudden suspicious stare.

“Oh, then, of course, you couldn’t. But, perhaps three hundred?”

“Phœbe, I happen to have all kinds of commitments that you do not know of. No, I won’t specify them in detail. Has Tom any security to offer me?”

“Security?”

“Yes, collateral, stocks or bonds. You see, if I am to act as a banker, this should be a business transaction.”

“But you have that cheque.”

“Just a promise to pay.”

“My dear, do you mean to suggest—?”

But Miss Gerard had decided that it was time to suppress too much sensitiveness. There had been too many occasions when she had assisted her sister, and the thing was becoming a habit.

“Tom is a business man, and I prefer this to be a business transaction. If your husband will deposit the proper securities with me I will make the advance against them.”

She folded up the cheque and, returning it to her sister, watched Phœbe’s fat fingers thrusting it back into the bag. It was obvious to her that Phœbe was feeling hot and insulted.

“Yes, I’ll have to tell Tom that you don’t trust him.”

“I should not tell him that, Phœbe. Explain that I should like him to approach me as he would approach another business man.”

“I’m afraid Tom will be so hurt.”

“Why?”

“Oh, you don’t understand. You’re so—so well off and safe. I’m sorry I ever mentioned the matter.”

Miss Gerard glanced at the clock on the mantelpiece. The hands stood at five minutes to three.

“I think Tom will understand, Phœbe. As a business man he may prefer me to be businesslike.”

Her sister also had glanced at the clock.

“The car must be there. No, please don’t bother to come to the gate.”

Miss Gerard did not propose to go to the gate.

“Get Tom to write to me.”

“I’m quite sure he will do nothing of the kind. After all, we’re not spongers.”

Miss Gerard did not argue the point, but she had a conviction that had she been able to listen in to “The Cedar’s” conversation that evening she would have heard hard things said about herself. Which was true.

“It’s a damned insult! Chucking my cheque back at me!”

“All right, all right, I did my best. Rosamund always was funny. It’s her face, of course, and it has made her more so. And living all alone like that. People without children and that sort of thing always get mean. It’s really horrible that money should make one so suspicious.”