Роберт Эйкман - The Late Breakfasters (Faber Finds)

‘Yes, darling. Beautiful.’

Outside the Hotel were motor coach parties drinking. When they set eyes on Lotus, they whistled and catcalled because she was so beautiful: but Lotus strode past, like a Queen on her way to execution, not increasing her pace or diminishing her poise.

‘Anyone know what that is?’ asked Peggy, taking no notice and pointing to Queen Elizabeth’s Hunting Lodge.

‘It’s one of the places where the upper classes get together to kill things,’ said Guillaume.

‘Damn good sport,’ said Freddy Fisher. ‘Done any beagling?’ he enquired of Griselda.

‘No, never,’ replied Griselda.

‘I beagled almost every day for a month last autumn. You can if you’ve got a fast car.’

‘What do you do with the rest of your time?’

‘Learn to paint. Animals and birds, you know. I’ve got to for a living, more’s the pity. Dad’s lost his last halfpenny. Horses, you know.’

‘But you’ve still got a fast car?’

‘Not any more.’

‘Oh dear.’

‘You’re terribly pretty, Griselda. I should have liked to ask you home. Mum would have taken to you no end.’

‘Perhaps I shall meet her sometime,’ said Griselda politely.

‘She’s dead. Drugs. Dad was to blame.’

‘I am sorry. But I don’t know that you should be so sure it was your Father’s fault.’

‘Of course it was Dad’s fault. He had to stop it all coming out at the inquest.’

‘Still it’s often hard to be sure.’

‘Of course I’m sure. It’s spoilt my whole life.’

‘Can we stop for a moment?’ asked Monica. ‘There’s a drawing-pin in my shoe.’

When Connaught Water came in sight, covered with boats, Florence’s sensitive face lighted up. ‘Oh I should like to go out in a boat.’

Guillaume’s brow became rigid with apprehension. ‘Hardly with so many other people, Florence. I am sure the boats must be dirty.’

Florence smiled gently and said ‘It just passed through my mind, darling.’ Married or not, Florence was suffering from that cancer of the will which Griselda had observed so often to accompany matrimony. She and Lena exchanged glances.

At the lake they left the road and entered the trees. Within five minutes the clatter had become inaudible. They passed several times from thicket to clearing, the change in temperature being each time overwhelming, and soon were among the hornbeams.

‘Everyone,’ cried Lotus over her shoulder, ‘must look for a parrot.’

Kynaston caught Griselda’s eye and looked deeply unhappy.

His distress of mind possibly accounted for the fact that within ten minutes from leaving the road, they were lost. Kynaston did not for some time admit this, but urged them on, with unnecessary expressions of confidence, along a rutty but diminishing track; they could make a right angle in any direction, but could not continue in their course.

‘I wonder which of these would be the quicker?’ soliloquized Kynaston. Clearly there should have been a path through the brambles which lay straight ahead.

‘Don’t be silly,’ said Lena. ‘they go in opposite directions. You’d better choose.’

‘I wish we had a map among us.’

‘We rely on you.’

Kynaston looked wildly from left to right and back again while they waited for him to decide.

Guillaume broke the long silence. ‘Both ways look equally beautiful,’ he said helpfully.

‘Does it matter?’ cried Lotus. ‘Do we really have to get anywhere?’

Peggy’s expression changed from aloofness to horror.

‘To travel is better than to arrive,’ said Guillaume.

‘To travel hopefully ,’ corrected Lena. ‘What hope have we?’

‘Surely we should enjoy ourselves?’ said Florence. ‘On such a lovely day?’

Monica had begun to knit. Freddy was brooding about his Father’s wickedness. Barney had been filling his heart with tears ever since the train.

‘The thing is, Griselda,’ said Kynaston desperately, ‘that I’m better at organizing picnics than walks.’

‘I remember,’ said Griselda, taking pity on him.

‘Remember what?’ enquired Lotus.

‘I’ve been on a picnic with Geoffrey before. I enjoyed it.’

‘Shall we go back to the lake?’ suggested Florence being constructive.

‘It’s true that you’re never actually lost so long as you can find the way back,’ observed Kynaston, hoping, like many greater men to preserve his leadership by retreat.

‘Surely we shouldn’t admit defeat?’ said Guillaume. He wished to keep Florence from the boats.

‘Besides,’ enquired Lena, ‘can you find the way back?’

‘Naturally, I can find the way back .’ The implication that he would rather they went forward contrasted so much with the attitude of his previous remark that it was obvious to Griselda that he could not find the way back, and had suddenly realized the fact. She wondered what he would do, thus totally trapped.

‘For heaven’s sake, let’s go somewhere ,’ cried Peggy. Her outburst made Monica drop a stitch.

‘Shall we toss for it?’ suggested Florence, still patiently seeking to advance the general well-being. It struck Griselda that Florence would make a wonderful mother, though possibly her hips were too small for easy childbirth.

‘Geoffrey!’ said Lotus. ‘Tell us what to do and we’ll do it. You can be so self-confident.’

‘This is the moment,’ said Lena.

Suddenly Kynaston resumed the leaderhsip. ‘Let’s have lunch. It’s just the place.’

Kynaston got very little. Peggy had at first said to Griselda that she had not walked far enough to acquire any appetite at all; but managed none the less to eat most of her share. Lotus, seated on a small mat, ate nothing but a little hothouse fruit (although it was summer) and some walnuts. Guillaume was on a diet which involved him in eating several times the normal amount of the few things he was permitted to eat at all. Barney almost surreptitiously unrapped some unusual but not unappetising comestibles approved by his community. He insinuated himself alongside a tree which Peggy was occupying, somewhat in the background; and, glancing from time to time at Peggy’s bust, began to cheer up.

At the end of the meal, the situation had once more to be faced.

After various desultory and generally unrealistic suggestions from the others, Lotus said ‘Why move from here? Are we not quite comfortable as we are?’ She sank her left hand into Kynaston’s hair as he lay on the ground beside her.

‘Perfectly comfortable,’ said Guillaume, yawning as his diet disagreed with him.

Monica began to knit at a different angle. Perhaps she was turning the heel. But the rapidly increasing product of her labours seemed without any such precise points of reference.

‘There’s the difficulty that we don’t know the way back,’ pointed out Florence.

‘We’ll be all right when the time comes.’ This was Barney.

‘I,’ said Lena, ‘want a walk. Anyone join me?’

‘I’ll join you,’ said Griselda, rising. ‘What about you, Peggy?’

‘It’s too hot.’ To her surprise, Griselda, now that she was on her feet, could see that Peggy’s ankles were tightly clasped in the crook of one of Barney’s arms.

‘Anyone else?’ enquired Griselda. She had not expected to have to walk alone with Lena.

‘I’d love to some other time,’ said Freddy regretfully. By this he meant that he would love to accompany Griselda, but he was frightened of Lena, whom he thought unsexed and a bluestocking.

‘Florence?’

Florence looked lovingly at Guillaume, who was begining to fall asleep. ‘I don’t think so, Griselda.’ There was something charmingly tender about her; something unusual and precious which Griselda felt was going to waste.