Charles Snow - The Light and the Dark

The papers had not yet arrived, and I drank my tea watching the motes dance in a beam of sunshine. It was a warm, hushed, shimmering morning.

The butler came and spoke to me. His tone was hushed, but not at all sleepy. He looked harassed and overburdened.

“Her ladyship sends her compliments, sir, and asks you to make your own way to the picnic site during the morning.”

“I haven’t any idea where the site is,” I said.

“I think I can show you, sir, from the front entrance. It is just inside the grounds, where the wall goes nearest to the sea.”

“Inside the grounds? We’re having this picnic inside the grounds?”

“Yes, sir. Her ladyship’s picnics have always been inside the grounds. It makes it impossible for the party to be observed.”

I walked into the village to buy some cigarettes. At the shop I overheard some gossip about the new vicar. Apparently a young lady had arrived the night before at one of the hotels. She had gone to the vicarage that morning. They were wondering suspiciously whether he intended to get married.

On my way to the site I wondered casually to myself who it might be. The thought of Rosalind crossed my mind, and then I dismissed it. I went into the grounds, through the side gates which opened on to the cliff road, down through the valley by the brook. It was not hard to find the site, for it was marked by a large flag. Lady Muriel was already sitting beside it on a shooting stick, looking as isolated as Amundsen at the South Pole. The ground beside her was arrayed with plates, glasses, dishes, siphons, bottles of wine. She called out to me with unexpected geniality.

“Good morning. You’re the first. I’m glad to see someone put in an appearance. We couldn’t have been luckier in the weather, could we?”

From the site there was no view, except for the brook and trees and wall, unless one looked north: there one got a magnificent sight of the house of Boscastle: the classical front, about a mile away, took in the whole foreground. It was a crowning stroke, I thought, to have chosen a site with that particular view.

But Lady Muriel was on holiday.

“I consider that all the arrangements are in hand,” she said. “Perhaps you would like me to show you some things?”

She led me up some steps in the wall, which brought us to a small plateau. From the plateau we clambered down across the road over to a headland. Below the headland the sea was slumberously rolling against the cliffs. There was a milky spume fringing the dark rocks: and further out the water lay a translucent green in the warm, misty morning.

“We used to have picnics here in the old days,” said Lady Muriel. “Before I decided it was unnecessary to go outside our grounds.”

She looked towards the mansion on its hill. It moved her to see it reposing there, the lawns bright, the house with the sun behind it. She was as inarticulate as ever.

“We’re lucky to have such an excellent day.” Then she did manage to say: “I have always been fond of our house.”

She tried to trace the coast line for me, but it was hidden in the mist.

“Well,” she said briskly, in a moment, “we must be getting back to our picnic. All the arrangements are in order, of course. I have never found it difficult to make arrangements. I did not find them irksome in the Lodge. I have found it strange not to have to make them — since my husband’s death.”

She missed them, of course, and she was happy that morning. We had begun to leave the headland, with Lady Muriel telling me of how she used to climb the rocks when she was a girl. Then, in the distance along the road, I saw a woman walking. I thought I recognised the walk. It was not stately, it was not poised, it was hurried, quick-footed and loose. As she came nearer, I saw that I was right. It was Rosalind. She was wearing a very smart tweed suit, much too smart by the Boscastles’ standards. And she was twirling a stick.

I hoped that she might not notice us. But she looked up, started, broke into a smile open-eyed, ill-used, pathetic and brazen. She gave a cheerful, defiant wave. I waved back. Lady Muriel did not stir a muscle.

When we saw Rosalind’s back, Lady Muriel enquired in an ominous tone: “Is that the young woman who used to throw her cap so abominably at Roy?”

“Yes,” I said.

“What is she doing here?”

“She is a friend of Ralph Udal’s,” I said. “She must be visiting him.” To myself I could think of no other explanation. So far as I knew, she had given up the pursuit of Roy. In any case, she could not have known that he was staying at Boscastle that week. It was a singular coincidence.

“Really,” said Lady Muriel. Her indignation mounted. She was no longer genial to me. “So now she sees herself as a clergyman’s wife, does she? Mr Eliot, I understand that the lower classes are very lax with their children. If that young woman had been my daughter, she would have been thrashed.”

She continued to fume as we made our way back to the site. It was too far from the house for Lady Boscastle to walk; she had been driven as far as the path would take a car, and supported the rest of the way by her maid. Lord Boscastle was sitting there disconsolately, and complaining to Roy. Roy listened politely, his face grave. It was the first time I had seen him that day, and I knew no more than the night before.

Lady Muriel could not contain her disgust. She gave a virulent description of Rosalind’s latest outrage.

“You didn’t know she was coming, Roy, I assume?”

“No. She hasn’t written to me for a year,” said Roy.

“I’m very glad to hear it,” said Lady Muriel, and burst out into fury at the picture of Rosalind walking “insolently” past the walls of Boscastle.

Roy said nothing. I fancied there was a glint — was it admiration? — in his eye.

“I hope this fellow Udal isn’t going to be a nuisance,” said Lord Boscastle. “There’s a great deal to be said for the celibacy of the clergy. But I don’t see why the young woman shouldn’t look him up. I always felt you were hard on her, Muriel.”

“Hard on her?” cried Lady Muriel. “Why, she’s nothing more nor less than a trollop.”

Soon after, Joan came walking by the brook. Her dress was white and flowered, and glimmered in the sunshine. As she called out to us, in an even voice, I was watching her closely. She was very pale. She had schooled herself not to do more than glance at Roy. She made conversation with her uncle. She was carrying herself with a hard control. She had all her mother’s inflexible sense of decorum. In public, one must go on as though nothing had happened. How brave she was, I thought.

A file of servants came down from the house with hampers, looking like the porters on de Saussure’s ascent of Mont Blanc. Cold chickens were brought out, tongues, patties: Lady Muriel jollied us vigorously to get to our lunch. Meanwhile Lady Boscastle’s lorgnette was directed for a moment at Joan, and then at Roy.

“I don’t for the life of me see,” said Lord Boscastle, gazing wistfully at the house, “why I should be dragged out here. When I might be eating in perfect comfort in my house.”

It sounded a reasonable lament. It sounded more reasonable than it was. For in the house we should in fact have been eating a tepid and indifferent lunch, instead of this delectable cold one. Lady Muriel had bludgeoned the kitchen into efficiency, which Lady Boscastle did not exert herself to do. It was the best meal I remembered at Boscastle.

We ended with strawberries and moselle. Lady Boscastle, who was eating less each month, got through her portion.

“It’s a fine taste, my dear Muriel,” she said, “I recall vividly the first time someone gave it me—”