Джозефина Тэй - To Love and Be Wise

Then the vicar asked Searle if he fished. Searle did not, but the vicar did. The vicar’s other interest, a short head behind demonology, was the dry fly. So for the rest of dinner they listened to the vicar on flies, with the detached interest that they might bring to cement-mixing, or gum-chewing, or turning the heel of a sock; a subject of academic interest only. And each of them used the unoccupied half of their minds in their own fashion.

Walter decided that he would leave the little white packet of chocolates on the hall table, where he had dropped it as he went in to dinner, until Liz asked about it; when he would tell her casually what it was. She would be full of compunction, he decided, that he had thought of her while she had entirely forgotten him.

As they walked out of the dining room he glanced sideways to make sure that the little packet was still there. It certainly was. But Liz, too, it seemed, had dropped something on the table on her way in to dinner. A great flat box of candy from the most expensive confectioners in Crome. Four pounds weight at the very least. ‘Confits,’ it said in dull gold freehand across its cream surface, and it was tied up with yards of broad ribbon finished in a most extravagant bow. Walter considered the ‘confits’ affected and the ribbon deplorably ostentatious. The whole thing was in the worst of taste. So like an American to buy something large and showy. It made him quite sick to look at it.

What made him sick, of course, was not the box of candy.

He was sick of an emotion that was old before candy was invented.

As he poured brandy for Searle, the vicar and himself to drink with their coffee he looked round in his mind for comfort, and found it.

Searle might give her boxes of expensive sweetmeats, but it was he, Walter, who knew what her favourite sweets were.

Or – did Searle know that too? Perhaps the Crome confectioner didn’t happen to have dragées.

He tilted the brandy bottle again. He needed an extra spot tonight.

If Emma Garrowby could ever be said to be glad of any connection of Leslie Searle with Trimmings, she was glad of the plan for the book. It would take him away from the household for the rest of his stay in Orfordshire; and once the Rushmere trip was over he would go away and they would see no more of him. No harm had been done so far, that she could see. Liz liked being with the creature, of course, because they were both young and because they seemed to laugh at the same things and because, naturally, he was attractive to look at. But she showed no signs of being seriously attracted. She never looked at Searle unless she had something to say to him; never followed him with her eyes as girls in love did, never sat near him in a room.

For all her apprehensiveness, Emma Garrowby was an imperceptive woman.

It was the semi-detached Lavinia, oddly enough, who observed and was troubled. The trouble welled up and overflowed into words, almost against her will, some seven days later. She was dictating as usual to Liz, but was making heavy weather of it. This was so rare that Liz was puzzled. Lavinia wrote her books with great ease, being genuinely interested in the fate of her current heroine. She might not remember afterwards whether it was Daphne or Valerie who had met her lover when she was gathering violets in the dawn on Capri, but while Daphne (or Valerie) had been in the process of that meeting and that gathering Lavinia Fitch watched over her like a godmother. Now, contrary to all precedent, she was distrait and had great difficulty in remembering even what Sylvia looked like.

‘Where was I, Liz, where was I?’ she said, striding up and down the room; a pencil stuck through the bird’s nest mop of sandy hair and another being chewed to pulp between her sharp little teeth.

‘Sylvia is coming in from the garden. Through the French window.’

‘Oh, yes. “Sylvia paused in the window, her slim form outlined against the light, her large blue eyes wary and doubtful–”’

‘Brown,’ said Liz.

‘What?’

‘Her eyes.’ Liz flipped back some pages of the script. ‘Page 59. “Her brown eyes, limpid as rain pools lying on autumn leaves–”’

‘All right, all right. “–her large brown eyes wary and doubtful. With a graceful movement of resolution she stepped into the room, her tiny heels tapping lightly on the parquet floor–”’

‘No heels.’

‘What d’you say?’

‘No heels.’

‘Why not?’

‘She has just been playing tennis.’

‘She could have changed, couldn’t she?’ Lavinia said with a touch of asperity that was foreign to her.

‘I don’t think so,’ Liz said patiently. ‘She is still carrying her racket. She came along the terrace “swinging her racket lightly.”’

‘Oh. Did she!’ Lavinia said explosively. ‘I bet she can’t even play ! Where was I? “She stepped into the room – she stepped into the room, her white frock fluttering” – no; no, wait – “she stepped into the room” – Oh, damn Sylvia!’ she burst out, flinging her chewed pencil on to the desk. ‘Who cares what the silly moron does! Let her stay in the blasted window and starve!’

‘What is the matter, Aunt Vin?’

‘I can’t concentrate.’

‘Are you worried about something?’

‘No. Yes. No. At least, yes, I suppose I am, in a way.’

‘Can I help?’

Lavinia ran her fingers through the bird’s nest, found the pencil there, and looked gratified. ‘Why, there’s my yellow pencil.’ She put it back again in her hairdo. ‘Liz, dear, don’t think me interfering or anything, will you, but you’re not by any chance getting a little – a little smitten with Leslie Searle, are you?’

Liz thought how like her aunt it was to use an out-of-date Edwardianism like ‘smitten.’ She was always having to modernize Lavinia’s slang for her.

‘If by “smitten” you mean in love with him, be comforted. I’m not.’

‘I don’t know that that’s what I do mean. You don’t love a magnet, if it comes to that.’

‘A what! What are you talking about?’

‘It isn’t a falling in love, so much. It’s an attraction. He fascinates you, doesn’t he.’ She made it a statement, not a question.

Liz looked up at the troubled childish eyes, and hedged. ‘Why should you think that?’ she asked.

‘I suppose because I feel it too,’ Lavinia said.

This was so unexpected that Liz had no words.

‘I wish now I had never asked him down to Trimmings,’ Lavinia said miserably. ‘I know it isn’t his fault – it isn’t anything he does – but there’s no denying that he is an upsetting person. There’s Serge and Toby Tullis not on speaking terms–’

‘That is nothing new!’

‘No, but they had become friends again, and Serge was behaving quite well and working, and now–’

‘You can hardly blame Leslie Searle for that. It would have happened inevitably. You know it would.’

‘And it was very odd the way Marta took him back with her after dinner the other night and kept him till all hours. I mean the way she appropriated him as her escort, without waiting to see what the others were doing.’

‘But the vicar was there to see Miss Easton-Dixon home. Marta knew that. It was natural that he should go with Miss Dixon; they live in the same direction.’

‘It wasn’t what she did, it was the way she did it. She – she grabbed .’

‘Oh, that is just Marta’s lordly way.’

‘Nonsense. She felt it too. The – the fascination.’

‘Of course, he is exceedingly attractive,’ Liz said; and thought how utterly the cliché failed to convey any quality of Leslie Searle’s.