Snow and Roses Page 2

  “Don’t call this furtive.”

  “But it is, my love. It has to be.”

  “All right then it has to be. Cecily and Daisy must come first. I’ve never grudged it to them.”

  “You’ve always been most generous. But perhaps … I don’t know …”

  “What don’t you know?”

  “Whether that is right for you. Whether it’s too much of a strain.”

  “Do I look as if it was?”

  “Never, but strains sometimes tell later.”

  She brushed that away with a movement of her hand.

  “When would you have to apply for the Chair at Fordwick?”

  “By the end of the month. I’ve got to decide next week.”

  “Then don’t come and see me till you’ve decided.”

  “I was going to ask if you could make it the Saturday.”

  “Yes. And of course you must do what you think best. Only don’t ever imagine that our separating would be better for me. That’s nonsense. I don’t want anything better.”

  Something as uncontrollable as nausea surged up in her. She cried urgently: “Wherever you have to go, don’t altogether leave me.”

  He sprang up, and took her in his arms. “I shall never leave you wherever I go until you’ve had enough of me.”

  As he released her he looked at his watch.

  “You needn’t start yet, surely?”

  “No, not for another hour.”

  “Let’s forget everything except each other. Come upstairs again.”

  “So you see, Lal, it’s a body blow.”

  “I do indeed see. Damn the man.”

  “No.”

  “Yes. Why can’t he cut loose from the wretched woman, and marry you and be happy and make you happy?”

  “Because it would sink her.”

  “It probably wouldn’t. People so often react unexpectedly. She might be relieved after the first shock. She feels inadequate with clever people, they frighten her. Hugh, though he’s singularly bad at his own public relations, is very clever.”

  “I know he is. But he doesn’t frighten Cecily. He’s her life-line. She clings to him for protection. And what would become of Daisy left alone with her mother?”

  “Daisy would spend part of her time with you and it would probably be the making of her. Why on earth hasn’t Hugh taken Cecily to a psychiatrist long ago?”

  “He tried it twice, two different psychiatrists. It didn’t work either time. Cecily cried and got ill, and begged him not to make her go back to them.”

  “He should have insisted, or gone on until he found a psychiatrist who could deal with her. After all they must have a lot of patients in her condition. Cecily wouldn’t want to be cured, of course, it would mean abrogating her powers. She’s got Hugh where she wants him. I expect she really finds a lot of happiness in manipulating him. Don’t let him persuade himself that it will be different at Fordwick, because it won’t. The only difference will be that he will have far less to enjoy outside his home. The principal thing that he won’t have to enjoy being you. I hope if he’s fool enough to put in for that Chair he doesn’t get it.”

  “He will if he puts in for it. I know he will. Nobody as good is likely to apply.”

  “Sometimes these brand new universities like to decorate themselves with a well-known poet or novelist who has never taught anybody anything.”

  “Hugh will get it if he applies for it. I know he will.”

  “Isn’t that just because you so much hope he won’t?”

  “Perhaps. Yes of course I hope he won’t, for me. But for him I want whatever will give him most peace in his own mind. I would get the Chair for him if I could.”

  “You would be a bloody fool, then. What time is your brat coming for her coaching?”

  “Five.”

  “I’ll go in a minute.”

  Lalage got up from her chair and strolled to the window. Flora’s rooms were at one end of the new wing. Below the window the tennis courts where girls had been playing all the afternoon were now deserted. The field beyond them, field of winter games, stretched to the line of willow trees that bordered the river. Between their fountains of pointed leaves were bright glimpses of sliding water. The meadows on the far side of the river were yellow with buttercups.

  “Isn’t it Nan Coates you’re expecting?”

  “Yes.”

  “She’s going to be late for her coaching. She’s just sauntering down the path to the boathouse.”

  “Left something in a boat by-accident-on-purpose I suppose. She’s hardly sane at the moment. For her sake I shall be glad when this term is over.” Flora added with a sigh, “But probably not for mine. I expect I shall wish it could last for ever.”

  “These things never do.”

  Flora looked at the back of Lalage’s dark head and wanted to throw something at her. But she guessed that she was thinking about herself and Martin Croft.

  “Here’s Nan coming back. I couldn’t say she is exactly hurrying. Wouldn’t it have been nice to have been dons in the days when the young went in awe of their tutors?”

  “Judging by my father’s stories some of them never did. Nan is so keen on her work that I don’t have much trouble with her as a rule. Once this boy goes down she’ll be all right again.”

  “What foolish lives we all lead, don’t we? Women, I mean. The energy we waste and the feeling we squander. I don’t wonder men so often get bored with us.”

  “Do they?”

  “Oh, yes, and I sympathize with them. I often get bored with myself, don’t you?”

  “No. I expect I ought to but I hardly ever get bored at all. What can we do about it, anyhow? That’s just how life is, our kind of life.”

  “You’ve always had yours so well organized up to now. I’ve been full of admiration, and sometimes of envy.”

  “It looks as though you soon won’t be.”

  “Oh, no. You weren’t designed for frustration. You’ll make it work somehow. Perhaps you’ll get a job at Fordwick.”

  “I must admit that the idea had crossed my mind.”

  “Of course it had. But I hope it won’t be necessary. Well, I must leave you. Are you free after dinner?”

  “No. I’ve got a lecture to go over for tomorrow. I haven’t looked at it for a year. Come back for a quick drink before dinner if you like, but it will have to be a very quick one. I’ve got another coaching after Nan.”

  “I’ll look in at 7.15.”

  As Lalage turned and swung out of the room Flora admired as often before her slender body and light graceful movements. Lalage’s face was too sharp for prettiness, not quite shapely enough for beauty, but the very clear whites of her fine dark eyes gave it a most attractive brightness.

  They had made friends on their first evening as undergraduates at St Frideswide’s. When they came down Lalage had gone to do a year’s post-graduate work in America. Flora, after spending a godmother’s legacy on a rapturous six months in Italy and Greece, had come back to St Frideswide’s as a lecturer in English; Lalage a term later as a lecturer in history. They had worked side by side for ten years. It was a solid friendship based on congeniality that had ripened into a strong affection, seldom expressed by their casual manner, but part of each day they wanted to be together, and both recognized that it was often the best part.

  Flora slapped the essay down on the table.

  “You knew this was rubbish, didn’t you?”

  There was no reply from Nan, slumped in her chair, her face hidden by the heavy curtains of russet hair that looked as if she had not brushed it that morning.

  “Why didn’t you tear this up and do it again? You knew I should ask you to. To turn in work like this is letting yourself down.”

  A mumble came from behind the hair.

  “Doesn’t matter.”

  “Yes, it does matter. You tear up your poems when you think they are bad. It’s one of the things that has made me so sure you’re going to write real poe
try.”

  “I’m not going to write any more poetry at all.”

  “If I believed that for a minute I should be very much disappointed.”

  Nan did not answer except by a shrugging movement of her shoulders. Today her face looked sullen and heavy, her eyes half shut. No one seeing her like that would have any idea of what she could look like.

  “You’d better take this back and do it again. Let me have it on Thursday. Is there anything in it that you want to discuss?”

  “No.”

  Flora would have liked to shake her.

  “Look Nan, sometimes when things are difficult in one’s private life it helps to concentrate on a piece of work.”

  “I don’t want to do this kind of work any more. There’s no point in it. I wish I’d never come here.”

  When Nan was sullen and miserable the Yorkshire accent which was being rubbed off her without her noticing, returned. She said “coom here”, and the homely sound made her seem younger, more like the farouche schoolgirl who had come up to St Frideswide’s two and a half years ago to sit for a scholarship, and had glared at them all as if daring them to offer her one.

  What can I say to her? If I say, you’ll have Ralph again when he comes back to England, I shan’t believe myself and she won’t believe me. He’s pulling out already and she knows it. Wretched half-hearted young snob, he is. No, he’s just a very good-looking young light-weight. No use to Nan. He’s her first sighting shot and very wide of the mark; but that doesn’t make it less painful.

  “I don’t think you really wish you hadn’t come here. Even the painful parts of experience are valuable to a poet.”

  “I told you I’ve finished with all that.”

  “You did but I don’t believe you.”

  “I mean it. I’ll show you. I’m not coming back here next term. I’ll get a job in a shop or a mill near home.”

  “Won’t your family be deeply disappointed?”

  “You reckon they don’t want me around at home, do you? You think they were glad to have me away down here? That’s because I told you about That Baby that was born dead. I wish I’d never said anything about her. I’ll tell you another thing. I’m glad she died, that other baby.”

  “Oh, shut up about that other baby. You bore the pants off me with her.”

  There was a spurt of laughter from Nan before she could stop it. She hastily composed her face into sullenness again. With the air of one achieving a final triumph, she said,

  “I’ve written a poem about her, about that other baby, but you’re tired of hearing about her so I won’t show it to you.”

  “All right. What I do want you to show me is a good essay on Matthew Arnold. You’d better let me have it by dinner time on Wednesday, and then we’ll arrange a coaching for Thursday evening. Let’s see.”

  Flipping over the leaves of her diary, Flora became aware of growing agitation in her pupil.

  “What’s the matter? Had you some special plan for Thursday evening?”

  “I might have.”

  “With Ralph?”

  “Could be.”

  “I understand how you feel about seeing as much of him as you can in his last term. But what are we to do? You’re a scholar of this college, you’re here to work, and I’m here to help you. I’ll try and fit in with your plans for going out with Ralph as much as I can, but I can’t make my whole time-table depend on him. He’s got his own final Schools in a week or two. He must be working hard himself, surely?”

  The first scholar of her year said with decision,

  “He won’t get more than a Third whatever work he does now.”

  “Then don’t let him prevent you from getting a First. You’d better come at four-thirty on Thursday. If you have some really valid reason for not coming then, let me know first thing on Thursday morning and I’ll see what I can do.”

  “I might not know first thing in the morning.”

  “Nan! I won’t put up with any more of this nonsense.”

  Nan’s head went down and her shoulders heaved. She began to cry noisily, sobbing and knuckling her eyes like a child.

  “I want to see him. I want to be with him every minute we can of the time there is left. But he doesn’t. He stood me up last night; we were going up the river together, and I waited an hour by the boathouse. He never came. I haven’t heard from him since. It makes me so angry. He loves me, I know he does. It’s just as good as ever when we’re close. But he won’t let us be happy together now. He pushed me off. He’s scared I’m going to hold on to him.”

  She lifted her head and Flora saw her blubbered face and the big grey-green eyes brilliant with tears.

  “I want to hold on to him. Of course I do, but he’s just thinking about going to America and the good times he’ll have there. There’ll be lots of girls there, different from me, smart, pretty ones, the kind he’s used to. I shan’t see him any more. I can’t bear it. I wish I could die at the end of this term. Everything else is so dull. I don’t care about work or writing any more. I can’t even be bothered to write to Ben. I just feel as if I was dead except for that one thing.”

  “Don’t you think Ralph probably feels a lot for you too, but is holding back because he’s frightened of his own feelings?”

  “He doesn’t have the kind of feelings anybody need be frightened of. He’s frightened of mine.”

  The sardonic appraisal in the middle of the burst of young grief suggested to Flora that Nan would really find it possible and even enjoyable to go on living after the end of term, which did not alter the fact that she was wretched now. Flora could only say,

  “I’m very sorry that you are so unhappy. I wish there was something I could do to help.”

  “Nobody can.”

  “No. It’s only between you and Ralph. So we’d better try and do some work for the rest of this hour. Would you like to go into my bathroom and wash your face and get a drink of water? There’s some paracetemol on the shelf if you want one.”

  At the end of the coaching, Nan, as she was leaving the room, slouched back, and pushed a page torn from an exercise book across the table.

  “You can look at that if you like.”

  “That” proved to be the poem about the other baby. To Flora’s surprise it was headed, Elegy for a Lost Sister. It was weaker than most of Nan’s verse, and had a sentimental streak unusual for her. Then came two last lines that nearly made Flora’s hair stand on end with pleasure. She couldn’t wait to show these to Hugh. As if a pain that had let up for a few minutes had returned, she remembered that she might soon have very few opportunities of showing things to Hugh, and saw a bleak, unflowering landscape stretching before her.

  If you have really learnt a job and have taken pains for some time to do it well, you have, when you run into trouble, a muscle of technique to support you. Flora had been a lecturer in English for ten years. During this week she believed that none of the students who attended her lectures or came to her for coaching knew that her deepest current was cut off from them, channelled into her anxiety about Hugh’s decision. Nan might have realized that there was something missing but for her own preoccupation. Nan was still slacking, and Flora had to get what work out of her she could. She believed that the girl could make up for it in the long vac, and that she would have enough horse-sense to do so. Nan was ambitious. “I’ll show them” was part of her attitude to her adoptive parents and perhaps to her real father who had disembarrassed himself of her so easily.

  Flora pointed out to her where, in her opinion, the Elegy for a Lost Sister was weak, and asked her if she could not bring the rest of it up to the standard of the last two lines. Nan, generally avid for any comment of Flora’s on her verses, was touchy about these. With a grim face she tore the paper into strips, and thrust them into her tutor’s waste-paper basket. Later with a sheepish grin she admitted that she had another copy and would look at it again when she had time.

  It was, of course, feeling and not work that was taking up
her time. Flora thought that perhaps it was not only Ralph, but love itself, her first experience of it, that she felt slipping away from her during these last days of May when the shadows of leaves on water, the warmth of sunlight on old stone, and above all the seething presence of so many other young people made it very hard for the victims who were approaching their final Schools to concentrate on their work. Flora had seven of these. Not only Nan but even Hugh had to recede while she tried to shore up their weak places. Late one evening, after a strenuous extra coaching, she was refreshing three girls with tea and chocolate cake when her telephone rang.

  “Flora? Walter here.”

  “Oh—Walter?”

  “Yes, Walter. Walter Brackley. Guy’s brother. What’s the matter? Were you asleep?”

  “No, I wasn’t. I’ve been coaching exam people all the evening.”

  “I hope you don’t make a habit of that every evening because I want to come and take you out to dinner tomorrow. I’ve got to come to Oxford. Where would you like to dine? Perhaps in this weather you’d like to go out into the country or tó one of those places on the river? Anyhow I’ll pick you up at St Frideswide’s at seven and you can tell me then where you want to go.”

  “Wait a minute, Walter, please. I must look at my diary.”

  She saw that she had no evening coaching down for the next day. She might as well go out to dinner as not.

  “Yes, I’m free tomorrow evening. Thank you very much, Walter. I should love to dine with you. I’ll be ready in the front hall at seven.”

  She rang off and dismissed the tired girls.

  “Now don’t think about work any more tonight. We’ve covered a lot of ground, and next week we’ll go over anything else you feel uneasy about. Go to bed and sleep well.”

  This was something that she herself felt unready for. She walked along the corridor, whose windows open at each end let in the summer scents of warm grass and flowers. She knocked at Lalage’s door.

  Lalage’s “Come in” sounded gruff. She was sitting on her window seat in the dark almost certainly thinking about Martin Croft. She was helplessly affected by his fluctuating moods, lacerated by his not infrequent sadism. She tormented herself about her rivals, who were not, Flora guessed, any nearer to getting what they really wanted from Martin than Lalage was. At least if that was what they really wanted. They knew him for a homosexual; it sometimes seemed as if each one cherished a secret conviction that in his relationship with her alone he might prove to be bi-sexual; but Flora thought that what they really wanted most was to come first with him.