Less Than Angels Part 18

'Gemini-twins-there is something two-faced even about his name,' declared Miss Lydgate in a disgusted tone.

They sat down at the table, both rather subdued.

'I suppose this has been a purging, a catharsis,' said Miss Clovis. 'It has had the effect on us that a Greek tragedy might have. We are drained and exhausted of all feeling now.'

'This means the end of our linguistic collaboration. And I know what I shall do.' Miss Lydgate laid down her knife and fork and thumped the table. 'We were writing an article together, but it was not finished. I shall withold my material on the Gana verb,' she declared harshly, 'without that the whole thing will fall to pieces, but he shall not have it!'

Miss Clovis paused, then said, 'Yes, Gertrude, I can understand your feeling like that and I am grateful for your loyalty. But you are too great a scholar to be able to carry it through. That material on the Gana verb is too important to be withheld and it must be published in conjuction with Father Gemini's researches.'

'Yes, I see what you mean. It is greater than any of us and through it we must somehow rise above our petty squabbles.'

'That's it. Floreat sciential' cried Miss Clovis.

They rose from the table making no attempt to do anything with the dishes, for it was not their custom to.

'I am worried about Alaric,' said Miss Lydgate. 'I telephoned him last night and he was not in. Mrs. Skinner didn't seem to know where he had gone.'

'I suppose he didn't tell her-he may not have thought it necessary,'

'But she told me that he was in the house when she went out to evening service at the chapel and when she came back he had gone without leaving any message. She didn't know what to do about the meal.'

'Well, he is a grown man,' said Miss Clovis with a bark of laughter. 'I'd always imagined he might break out sometime,'

'You don't think it could be anything like that, do you?'

Miss Lydgate looked worried. 'I am fifteen years older than he is and have always felt responsible for him. Mother always used to say that he was weak.'

'He may just have gone out to the cinema,' said Miss Clovis rea.s.suringly, 'but if you're anxious let's pay him a surprise visit. He will surely be back now, twenty-four hours later.'

'Yes, let's do that. We'll go on the bus.'

As they got out of the bus and walked along the road, they heard a number of explosions, some in the distance, others startlingly near, and once the night sky was illuminated by a rocket which broke in a shower of green and golden stars. There was a smell of gunpowder in the cool frosty air.

'Why, it's Guy Fawkes night,' said Miss Clovis, 'what fun!'

'I hardly think that Alaric will be celebrating it in any way,' said Miss Lydgate, as they walked up the path to his front door.

'I don't know about that,' said Miss Clovis, peering round the side of the house. 'It looks almost as if he has a bonfire in the garden, unless it's next door.'

They rang the bell but n.o.body came for some time. Then Mrs. Skinner opened the door. She looked even more worried than usual and the large flower ear-rings she wore contrasted incongruously with her pinched anxious little face.

'Oh, Miss Lydgate,' she cried, 'Mr. Lydgate is in the garden, and Miss Oliphant is there.'

'Miss Oliphant? Who is Miss Oliphant?'

'We met her that Sunday afternoon,' Miss Clovis began to explain, but Miss Lydgate was already striding through the hall and out of the back door. 'Alaric!'she called. 'What are you doing?'

There was no answer so they ventured further into the garden, then stopped in the middle of the lawn to gasp at the sight that met their eyes. A large bonfire of sticks and garden rubbish was blazing beyond the vegetable patch. Two figures, a tall man and a small woman, were poking at it vigorously with long sticks, pausing from time to time to throw on to it bundles of paper which they were taking from a tin trunk which stood on the ground nearby.

'Alaric, what are you doing?' Miss Lydgate's voice had now risen to a screech.

'Why, hullo, Gertrude,' he said, 'we're having a bonfire.'

'Yes,' said Catherine, her face s.h.i.+ning in the firelight, 'Alaric had so much junk up in his attic and Guy Fawkes night seemed just the time to get rid of some of it.'

She is calling him Alaric, thought Gertrude irrelevantly.

'But these are your notes,' screamed Miss Clovis, s.n.a.t.c.hing a half-burned sheet from the edge of the fire. '"They did not know when their ancestors left the place of the big rock nor why, nor could they say how long they had been in their present habitat ..."' she read, then threw it back with an impatient gesture. 'Kins.h.i.+p tables!' she shrieked. 'You cannot let these go!' She s.n.a.t.c.hed at another sheet, covered with little circles and triangles, but Alaric restrained her and poked it further into the fire with his stick.

'Esther, it's no good,' he said. 'I shall never write it up now. If Catherine hadn't encouraged me, I don't think it would ever have occurred to me that I could be free of this burden for ever.'

'Miss Oliphant, you are a wicked woman!' cried Miss Clovis, making as if to strike her.

'The bonfire was my idea,' said Alaric, 'and now we are all going to have some mulled wine.'

'What, even Mrs. Skinner?' asked Miss Lydgate, again with seeming irrelevance, but the idea of drinking with Mrs. Skinner was certainly a startling one.

'Yes, she will be joining us.' He threw another bundle from the trunk on to the fire. Some of it, eaten by white ants, fell away like a shower of confetti.

'Oh, pretty!' Catherine cried.

'But what will you do now?' demanded Miss Lydgate.

'I don't really know. I shall be free to do whatever I want to. I shall still review books, of course, but I could even write a novel, I suppose.'

There was a shocked silence.

'He has the most wonderful material,' Catherine said.

Mrs. Skinner appeared on the lawn. 'The wine is ready,' she announced uneasily.

'Then let's go in and drink it,' said Alaric. 'We can come out again afterwards to see how the bonfire is getting on.'

It was 'afterwards' that Rhoda, stationed at her uncurtained window in the darkness, saw them, dancing, or so she thought, round the fire. She imagined, though she could not really see clearly enough to be certain, that some were wearing masks. One figure, a small person, it might have been Catherine or even Mrs. Skinner, appeared to be wrapped in some kind of native cloth or blanket.

Rhoda had been out to supper at the vicarage earlier in the evening, so had not seen the beginning of the bonfire, only this strange ' orgy', for really it did seem to be almost that.

'Didn't you see them earlier?' she asked her sister accusingly.'

'Well, no, I was getting supper, and I can't see their garden from my room.'

'You should have gone into mine.'

'But how could I have known that anything was going on?' asked Mabel a little peevishly. 'Malcolm brought Phyllis in to supper and there was quite a lot to do.'

'I don't know what to make of it,' said Rhoda. 'I thought perhaps Deirdre might be with them, seeing Catherine there made me feel it.'

'Oh, Deirdre is across at the Lovells' helping them with their fireworks. She went after tea.'

'Oh, I see.' Rhoda appeared to hesitate as if wondering where her duty lay. 'Perhaps I'll go across to the Lovells', then,' she said.

Next door she found the firework party in full swing. Mr. Lovell was enjoying himself enormously, sending up rockets and setting off the more elaborate pieces. It was perhaps a grief to him that his little boys, Roy and Peter, did not seem to share his enthusiasm, but he soon forgot his disappointment in his own enjoyment. The boys cowered at a safe distance, occasionally lighting a sparkler and watching it burn with a kind of fearful delight Jenny was terrified and clung to Deirdre who, remembering her own childish fear of fireworks and dread of Guy Fawkes night, comforted the little girl and tried to draw her attention to the beauties of the scene. Mrs. Lovell was in the house with s...o...b..ll, the old sealyham, who was allowed to be frightened because it had been given out on the wireless that pets should be kept indoors. He sat complacently in his usual chair by the fire, covering it with his stiff white hairs.

'I don't know what's going on at Mr. Lydgate's,' said Rhoda, stumbling across the lawn. 'They're burning papers on a bonfire and dancing round it. It seems so '-she hesitated for a word-'unsuitable'> she brought out. 'We don't usually have things like that happening here, do we?'

'High time we did!' said Mr. Lovell jovially. 'Come on now, the last one. Who's going to set it off? Roy? Peter?'

The boys hung back. 'Oh, well, then I suppose I must do it myself. Look out, everybody I '

Cries of mingled delight, terror and relief were heard as the last rocket swished up into the sky. It broke in a shower of gold and silver stars.

Mr. Lovell then invited them into the house for refreshments, and they drank cocoa and ate sandwiches in the cold bare sitting-room, full of shabby Scandinavian furniture. As the dog was sitting in the only comfortable chair, they were obliged to crouch round the fire and soon took their leave, for Mrs. Lovell had to put the children to bed and Mr. Lovell to take s...o...b..ll for his evening walk.

'Look, the party seems to be breaking up,' said Rhoda eagerly, for voices could be heard in Mr. Lydgate's front garden and when they came a little nearer it was possible to see Miss Clovis and Miss Lydgate by the front door. Catherine was somewhere in the shadows by a laurel bush and when the others had gone came over to talk to Deirdre.

'What news of Tom?' she asked.

'Oh, I've just written to him,' said Deirdre. 'It's difficult to know how he really is. He seems busy,' she added doubtfully.

'Don't I know those letters?' said Catherine. 'So terrifyingly occupied with such momentous things. But darling Tom, we wouldn't really have him any different, would we?'

Deirdre did not much like the 'we' but could hardly do less than agree with her.

'Don't forget that you must send Christmas greetings horribly early,' said Catherine. 'Almost now, I believe,'

'Yes, I know,' said Deirdre a little stiffly.

'Tom always sends such curious cards, scenes of African life, that only make him seem even farther away and they always arrive weeks before Christmas.'

Catherine did not know, indeed how could she, that before Tom could post his Christmas cards, he would be lying dead, accidentally shot in a political riot, in which he had become involved more out of curiosity than pa.s.sionate conviction.

The hara.s.sed young administrative officer, who had been in charge of the proceedings, had quite enough to worry him without the added anxiety of protecting anthropologists who meddled in politics. But he had liked Tom Mallow-they had often had an evening's drinking together-and it was he who found the Christmas cards, stamped and ready to be posted, lying on the table in Tom's hut. He had thrown them away, feeling that his friends would only be distressed to receive them now. There had also been an unfinished letter on the table-obviously to a girl-and he had not known what to do with that. He remembered that Mallow had once brought out a photograph of a girl sitting on a seat in a garden with two dogs-retrievers, he thought-lying at her feet. But later, when he was gathering up some more papers, he had come across letters from two different girls. Which was the one with the dogs, then? And had she been his girl friend or the only one he happened to have a photograph of? Well, it was none of his business, and perhaps it was better not to meddle in things that might become too complicated. So he bundled up the letter with the notes on kins.h.i.+p and land tenure and sent the whole lot back to Mallow's family in England.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE.

Mark and Digby received the news from Professor Fairfax, who, perhaps because of his nervousness, had seemed almost facetious, as if Tom had been caught out in some childish prank.

'Anthropologists don't usually die in the field,' Mark pointed out. 'It's hardly surprising that Fairfax didn't rise to the occasion. He may do better the next time it happens.'

They talked together in their usual way, for they did not know how otherwise to express their feelings or even yet what their feelings were. Digby thought first of Deirdre and the effect that Tom's death might have on her; Mark of the 'unexpended balance' of Tom's field grant and who was likely to get it.

'The money can't die with him,' he pointed out sensibly. 'Obviously it will be given to somebody else-why not you?'

'But why me particularly?'

'I may not be needing it myself. I've been meaning to tell you sometime that I may be giving up anthropology,' said Mark quickly. 'Susan's father talks of offering me a position in his firm.'

'Well, perhaps you're the most fitted of all of us to wear the bowler hat and carry the rolled umbrella,' said Digby. He spoke lightly but inwardly he was shocked to think of Mark deserting like this, leaving their life of struggle and poverty for the prospect of ease and luxury. It was as if a monk should forsake his cloister to embrace the riches of the world.

'What about Catherine?' he said suddenly. 'Will anybody have told her? Perhaps we should try to comfort her.' He did not mention the comforting of Deirdre, feeling that Mark's presence would be unnecessary here.

It was the middle of the afternoon when they went to her flat. She came to the door, her hair rough and wild, and with no make-up on her face, and offered them beer from a quart bottle which had been opened but not corked up again. It tasted flat and sour. A teapot and cup stood on the table and there was a sheet of paper in her typewriter. Mark craned his head round to read what she had been writing; it seemed to be an article about how to give an 'inexpensive' c.o.c.ktail party.

'Yes, darling, "inexpensive" or cheap, really,' said Catherine brightly. 'Don't get the best French vermouth and put more and more ice with the drinks so that as time goes on people will be drinking coloured melted ice-water and they won't even know! And if they suspect, then they're horrid people and not the kind you'd want to have at your party anyway. Writing is such a comfort, isn't it, that's what people always say-it really does take you out of yourself. I sometimes feel it lets you more into yourself, though, and really the very worst part.'

'Catty, dear, we're so very sorry,' said Digby helplessly. 'We came to see if there was anything ...'

'Bless you both, but what can anyone do? It seems a n.o.ble way to die, doesn't it, fighting for an oppressed people's freedom against the tyranny of British rule? You can see now that it was all really justified, the breaking-away from his upbringing, the great house, the public school ... the last time he went home he was so upset-he thought he had done the wrong thing, leaving it all.'

'But surely it wasn't quite that, was it?' said Mark a little impatiently. 'He got involved in this crowd purely by accident. I don't think he intended to set himself up in opposition to anyone or anything, he just happened to be there, as any other anthropologist might have been.'

'Any other anthropologist!' said Catherine scornfully. "The others would all have been hiding in their huts behind their files of notes. You were always jealous of him, all of you, because you knew you could never hope to equal him in anything . . ,' she burst into tears and ran from the room. They heard her go into her bedroom and then leave the house, slamming the front door after her. Digby hurried to the window and saw her jump on to a bus which was just leaving the stop.

'I suppose she knows where she's going,' he said uneasily. 'Perhaps she'll just go for a ride till she's calmed down. It was a pity you had to argue with her, we should just have humoured her, whatever she said.'

'But it's going to be so tiresome if Tom is going to be built up into a kind of Lawrence of Arabia figure,' said Mark. 'I didn't mean to be unkind, but it seemed so very far from the truth.'

'I wonder if your regard for truth will be helpful to you in your business career,' said Digby sarcastically. 'It might even be a hindrance.'

They began to bicker in a senseless way and then left the flat. Digby had telephoned Deirdre to meet him and began anxiously to rehea.r.s.e what he was going to say to her. Mark went back to his room rather sulkily. He was sorry about Tom but in his experience it was only elderly and distant relatives who died. All this, as he put it to himself, was a bit much. By going to such extremes Tom had gone too far.

On the bus Catherine had time to calm down and even to feel sorry that she had spoken so sharply to Mark. She sank now into a kind of peace and began to think about Tom. But she found herself remembering not the things they had shared but the things that had kept them apart, and mixed with spontaneous grief for him was a more selfish and personal sorrow at the failures in their relations.h.i.+p which had been her fault. How annoying she must sometimes have been with her wild fancies and her quotations! She remembered the first and only time they had walked along this suburban road together, the house called 'Nirvana' and the stone lions with their blunted paws and noses. The gardens were bare and wintry now, the little front lawns dull and rough-looking; bulbs would be pus.h.i.+ng up under the earth but she could not see them yet. Inside the houses all was cosiness and security. In one, a woman bent down over a fire and toasted crumpets; Catherine imagined them charred at the edges but deliriously dripping with b.u.t.ter. In another, a child sat at a table with a green baize cloth, drawing in brightly coloured chalks. Some rooms already had their curtains drawn and she could only guess at the scenes inside. When she had nearly reached the Swans' house she happened to glance across the road and was in time to see a movement of the rust-coloured curtains and old Mrs. Dulke's head come peering out between them.

'Catherine! How nice to see you!' Rhoda came to the door in answer to her ring. ' You're just in time for tea.'

Obviously, then, they didn't know about Tom.

'Is Deirdre in?' Catherine asked, after she had acknowledged Rhoda's welcome in a suitable way.

'Well, no, she's just gone out-I'm surprised you didn't see her on your way from the bus-stop. You can only just have missed her. One of her boy friends rang up and wanted her to meet him for tea.' Rhoda's tone was full of satisfaction.

'Do you know who it was?'

'Let me see, now ... really, she seems to know so many boys and of course she doesn't always tell her aunt or even her mother who she's going out with, but I did just happen to hear her on the telephone, and I think it was Digby, that nice tall fair young man.'

'I'm glad she is with him,' Catherine said, 'I'm afraid we have had a piece of tragic news-Tom has been killed in Africa.'

'Oh, no... how terrible! By natives?'

Catherine saw past Rhoda's shocked face into her thoughts, the shouting mob of black bodies brandis.h.i.+ng spears, or the sly arrow, tipped with poison for which there was no known antidote, fired from an overhanging jungle tree.

'No, there was apparently some rioting at the time of the elections and the police had to open fire. Tom was mixed up in the crowd. It was an accident, of course-they couldn't have seen him.*