Джозефина Тэй - To Love and Be Wise

He saw in his mind a picture of the Searle who walked round the farm with him; his hatless blond hair blown into untidy ends by the wind, his hands pushed deep into very English flannels. Lucifer. He nearly laughed aloud.

But there was, of course, a strangeness in Searle’s good looks. A – what was it? – an unplaceable quality. Something not quite of the world of men.

Perhaps that was what had suggested fallen angels to Serge’s fertile mind.

Anyhow, Searle seemed a good chap, and they were going to do a book together; and Searle knew that he was engaged to marry Liz, so that he would not–

He did not finish the thought, even to himself. Nor did it occur to him to wonder how a beauty that made one think of fallen angels was likely to affect a young woman engaged to a BBC commentator.

He drove home at a better speed than normally, put away the car, took Liz’s favourite sweets out of their place in the glove compartment, and went in to present them and be kissed for his forethought. He was also the bearer of the good news that Cormac Ross liked the idea of the book and was prepared to pay them well for it. He could hardly wait to reach the drawing room.

The baronial hall was very silent and cold as he crossed it, and it smelled, in spite of anachronistic baize doors, of sprouts and stewed rhubarb. In the drawing room, which as usual was warm and gay, there was no one but Lavinia, who was sitting with her feet on the fender and her lap covered with that day’s issue of the highbrow weeklies.

‘It’s a strange thing,’ said Lavinia, taking her nose out of the Watchman , ‘how immoral it is to make money out of writing.’

‘Hullo, Aunt Vin. Where are the others?’

‘This rag used to worship Silas Weekley until he went and made himself a fortune. Em is upstairs, I think. The others aren’t back yet.’

‘Back? Back from where?’

‘I don’t know. They went out in that dreadful little car of Bill Maddox’s after lunch.’

‘After lunch .’

‘“The slick repetition of a technique as lacking in subtlety as a poster.” Don’t they make you sick! Yes, I didn’t need Liz this afternoon, so they went out. It has been a glorious day, hasn’t it?’

‘But it is only ten minutes till dinner time!’

‘Yes. Looks as though they’re going to be late,’ said Lavinia, her eyes pursuing the slaughter of Silas.

So Liz hadn’t heard the broadcast! He had been talking to her and she hadn’t even been listening. He was dumbfounded. The fact that the old lady in Leeds, and the child in the hospital in Bridgwater, and the lighthouse-keeper in Scotland hadn’t been listening either made no difference. Liz always listened. It was her business to listen. He was Walter, her fiancé, and if he spoke to the world it was right that she should listen. And now she had gone out gaily with Leslie Searle and left him talking into thin air. She had gone out gadding without a thought, on a Friday, on his broadcast afternoon, gone out God knew where, with Searle, with a fellow she had known only seven days, and they stayed out to the very last minute. She wasn’t even there to have chocolates given her when he had gone out of his way to get them for her. It was monstrous.

Then the vicar arrived. No one had remembered that he was coming to dinner. He was that kind of man. And Walter had to spend another fifteen minutes with earthworms when he had already had more than enough of them. The vicar had listened to his broadcast and was enchanted by it; he could talk of nothing else.

Mrs. Garrowby came in, greeted the vicar with commendable presence of mind, and went away to arrange for a supplement of tinned peas to the entrée and a pastry covering for the stewed rhubarb.

By the time that the missing pair were twenty minutes late and Mrs. Garrowby had decided not to wait for them, Walter had changed his attitude and decided that Liz was dead. She would never be late for dinner. She was lying dead in a ditch somewhere. Perhaps with the car on top of her. Searle was an American and it was well-known that all Americans were reckless drivers and had no patience with English lanes. They had probably gone round a corner slap into something.

He played with his soup, his heart black with dread, and listened to the vicar on demonology. He had heard at one time or another everything that the vicar had to say on the subject of demonology, but at least it was a relief to get away from worms.

Just when his heart had blackened and shrunk to the state of a very old mushroom, the gay voices of Searle and Liz could be heard in the hall. They came in breathless and radiant. Full of offhand apology for their lateness and commendation for the family in that they had not kept dinner back for them. Liz presented Searle to the vicar but did not think of casting any special word to Walter before falling on her soup like a starving refugee. They had been all over the place, they said; first they had viewed Twells Abbey, and adjacent villages; then they had met Peter Massie and had gone to look at his horses and given him a lift into Crome; then they had had tea at the Star and Garter in Crome, and they had been on the way home out of Crome when they found a cinema which was showing The Great Train Robbery , and it was of course not in anyone’s power to refuse a chance of viewing The Great Train Robbery . They had had to sit through several modern exhibits before The Great Train Robbery appeared – which was what had made them late – but it had been worth waiting for.

An account of The Great Train Robbery occupied most of the fish course.

‘How was the broadcast, Walter?’ Liz said, reaching for some bread.

It was bad enough that she did not say: ‘I am desolated to have missed your broadcast, Walter’; but that she should spare for the broadcast only the part of her mind that was not occupied with the replenishing of her bread plate was the last straw.

‘The vicar will tell you,’ said Walter. ‘ He listened.’

The vicar told them, con amore . Neither Liz nor Leslie Searle, Walter noticed, really listened. Once, during the recital, Liz met Searle’s glance as she passed him something and gave him her quick friendly smile. They were very pleased with themselves, with each other, and with the day they had had.

‘What did Ross say about the book?’ Searle asked, when the vicar had at last run down.

‘He was delighted with the idea,’ Walter said, wishing passionately that he had never begun this partnership with Searle.

‘Have you heard what they plan, Vicar?’ Mrs. Garrowby said. ‘They are going to write a book about the Rushmere. From its source to the sea. Walter is going to write it and Mr. Searle to illustrate it.’

The vicar approved of the idea and pointed out its classic form. Was it to be on shanks’s mare or with a donkey, he asked.

‘On foot down to Otley, or thereabouts,’ Walter said. ‘And by water from there.’

‘By water? But the Rushmere is full of snags in its early reaches,’ the vicar said.

They told him about the canoes. The vicar thought canoes a sensible craft for a river like the Rushmere, but wondered where they could be got.

‘I talked to Cormac Ross about that today,’ Walter said, ‘and he suggested that Kilner’s, the small-craft builders at Mere Harbour, might have some. They build for all over the world. It was Joe Kilner who designed that collapsible raft-boat-tent that Mansell took up the Orinoco on his last trip, and then said afterwards that if he had thought in time he could have made it a glider too. I was going to suggest that Searle and I should go over to Mere Harbour tomorrow and see Kilner – if he has no other plans.’

‘Fine,’ Searle said. ‘Fine.’