Muriel Spark - The Complete Short Stories

‘Absolutely charming.’

The reel came to an end. The lights went up and everyone shifted in their chairs.

‘What were those large red flowers?’ said the elderly lady.

‘Flamboyants.’

‘Magnificent,’ said her hostess. ‘Don’t you miss the colours, Sybil?’

‘No, I don’t, actually. There was too much of it for me.

‘You didn’t care for the bright colours?’ said the young man, leaning forward eagerly.

Sybil smiled at him.

‘I liked the bit where those little lizards were playing among the stones. That was an excellent shot,’ said her host. He was adjusting the last spool.

‘I rather liked that handsome blond fellow,’ said her hostess, as if the point had been in debate. ‘Was he the passion-fruiter?’

‘He was the manager,’ said Sybil.

‘Oh yes, you told me. He was in a shooting affair, did you say?’

‘Yes, it was unfortunate.

‘Poor young man. It sounds quite a dangerous place. I suppose the sun and everything …’

‘It was dangerous for some people. It depended.’

‘The blacks look happy enough. Did you have any trouble with them in those days?’

‘No,’ said Sybil, ‘only with the whites.’ Everyone laughed.

‘Right,’ said her host. ‘Lights out, please.’

Sybil soon perceived the real cause of the Westons’ quarrels. It differed from their explanations: they were both, they said, so much in love, so jealous of each other’s relations with the opposite sex.

‘Barry was furious,’ said Désirée one day, ‘— weren’t you, Barry? —because I smiled, merely smiled, at Carter.’

‘I’ll have it out with Carter,’ muttered Barry. ‘He’s always hanging round Désirée.’

David Carter was their manager. Sybil was so foolish as once to say, ‘Oh surely David wouldn’t—’

‘Oh wouldn’t he?’ said Désirée.

‘Oh wouldn’t he?’ said Barry.

Possibly they did not themselves know the real cause of their quarrels. These occurred on mornings when Barry had decided to lounge in bed and write poetry. Désirée, anxious that the passion-fruit business should continue to expand, longed for him to be at his office in the factory at eight o’clock each morning, by which time all other enterprising men in the Colony were at work. But Barry spoke more and more of retiring and devoting his time to his poems. When he lay abed, pen in hand, worrying a sonnet, Désirée would sulk and bang doors. The household knew that the row was on. ‘Quiet! Don’t you see I’m trying to think,’ he would shout. ‘I suggest,’ she would reply, ‘you go to the library if you want to write.’ It was evident that her greed and his vanity, facing each other in growling antipathy, were too terrible for either to face. Instead, the names of David Carter and Sybil would fly between them, consoling them, pepping-up and propagating the myth of their mutual attraction.

‘Rolling your eyes at Carter in the orchard. Don’t think I didn’t notice.’

‘Carter? That’s funny. I can easily keep Carter in his place. But while we’re on the subject, what about you with Sybil? You sat up late enough with her last night after I’d gone to bed.’

Sometimes he not only smashed the crystal bowls, he hurled them through the window.

In the exhausted afternoon Barry would explain, ‘Désirée was upset —weren’t you, Désirée? — because of you, Sybil. It’s understandable. We shouldn’t stay up late talking after Désirée has gone to bed. You’re a little devil in your way, Sybil.’

‘Oh well,’ said Sybil obligingly, ‘that’s how it is.’

She became tired of the game. When, in the evenings, Barry’s voice boomed forth with sonorous significance as befits a hallowed subject, she no longer thought of herself as an objective observer. She had tired of the game because she was now more than nominally committed to it. She ceased to be bored by the Westons; she began to hate them.

‘What I don’t understand,’ said Barry, ‘is why my poems are ignored back in England. I’ve sold over four thousand of the book out here. Feature articles about me have appeared in all the papers out here; remind me to show you them. But I can’t get a single notice in London. When I send a poem to any of the magazines I don’t even get a reply.’

‘They are engaged in a war,’ Sybil said.

‘But they still publish poetry. Poetry so-called. Utter rubbish, all of it. You can’t understand the stuff.’

‘Yours is too good for them,’ said Sybil. To a delicate ear her tone might have resembled the stab of a pin stuck into a waxen image.

‘That’s a fact, between ourselves,’ said Barry. ‘I shouldn’t say it, but that’s the answer.

Barry was overweight, square and dark. His face had lines, as of anxiety or stomach trouble. David Carter, when he passed, cool and fair through the house, was quite a change.

‘England is finished,’ said Barry. ‘It’s degenerate.

‘I wonder,’ said Sybil, ‘you have the heart to go on writing so cheerily about the English towns and countryside.’ Now, now, Sybil, she thought; business is business, and the nostalgic English scene is what the colonists want. This visit must be my last. I shall not come again.

‘Ah, that,’ Barry was saying, ‘was the England I remember. The good old country. But now, I’m afraid, it’s decadent. After the war it will be no more than …’

Désirée would have the servants into the drawing-room every morning to give them their orders for the day. ‘I believe in keeping up home standards,’ said Désirée, whose parents were hotel managers. Sybil was not sure where Désirée had got the idea of herding all the domestics into her presence each morning. Perhaps it was some family-prayer assembly in her ancestral memory, or possibly it had been some hotel-staff custom which prompted her to ‘have in the servants’ and instruct them beyond their capacity. These half-domesticated peasants and erstwhile smallfarmers stood, bare-footed and woolly-cropped, in clumsy postures on Désirée’s carpet. In pidgin dialect which they largely failed to comprehend, she enunciated the duties of each one. Only Sybil and David Carter knew that the natives’ name for Désirée was, translated, ‘Bad Hen’. Désirée complained much about their stupidity, but she enjoyed this morning palaver as Barry relished his poetry.

‘Carter writes poetry too,’ said Barry with a laugh one day.

Désirée shrieked. ‘Poetry! Oh, Barry, you can’t call that stuff poetry.

‘It is frightful,’ Barry said, ‘but the poor fellow doesn’t know it.’

‘I should like to see it,’ Sybil said.

‘You aren’t interested in Carter by any chance, Sybil?’ said Désirée.

‘How do you mean?’

‘Personally, I mean.’

‘Well, I think he’s all right.’

‘Be honest, Sybil,’ said Barry. Sybil felt extremely irritated. He so often appealed for frankness in others, as if by right; was so dishonest with himself ‘Be honest, Sybil — you’re after David Carter.’

‘He’s handsome,’ Sybil said.

‘You haven’t a chance,’ said Barry. ‘He’s mad keen on Désirée. And anyway, Sybil, you don’t want a beginner.’

‘You want a mature man in a good position,’ said Désirée. ‘The life you’re living isn’t natural for a girl. I’ve been noticing,’ she said, ‘you and Carter being matey together out on the farm.’

Towards the end of her stay David Carter produced his verses for Sybil to read. She thought them interesting but unpractised. She told him so, and was disappointed that he did not take this as a reasonable criticism. He was very angry. ‘Of course,’ she said, ‘your poetry is far better than Barry’s.’ This failed to appease David. After a while, when she was meeting him in the town where she lived, she began to praise his poems, persuading herself that he was fairly talented.