Caroline

Chapter One

CHARLES CUNLIFFE drew himself up to his full height, pulled down his waistcoat, and studied his reflection in the dressing-table mirror. No one would think he was over sixty. Fiftyish, people would say of him, and it was the early fifties they’d mean, not the later ones. Perhaps even fortyish . . . No, fortyish was a little too optimistic. Better leave it at fiftyish. . . . He studied with particular gratification the rich chestnut tints of his scanty hair. This was the result of a special preparation, which, its makers claimed, did not dye the hair but merely restored the natural colour. Its conception of what the natural colour of Charles’s hair had been was a flattering one.

His gaze—still with gratification—travelled slowly downward. He’d always been good-looking—regular features, fine eyes, perfect teeth. He opened his lips now and showed his teeth in a faint smile. Probably no one in the world except himself and his dentist knew that they were false. He hadn’t been to a Bartenham dentist, of course. He’d been to the best man in London and had cloaked the process by the story of a visit to the Continent. Certainly Maggie didn’t know, but that was little credit to his finesse, as Maggie never knew anything that wasn’t pointed out to her. It was possible, of course, that old Nana knew (he’d long ago given up trying to hide anything from old Nana), but one could be sure that even if she did she wouldn’t tell anyone. Nana never told anyone anything.

His gaze rested on his waist. The line was excellent. He had a good figure naturally, and he’d always taken care of it. So many middle-aged men let their figures run to seed. He’d been worried about his own a year or so ago, but the new belt (a bit complicated to get into but quite worth the trouble) had made a world of difference—that and his exercises. He felt a glow of virtue as he remembered the conscientiousness with which he rose early every morning to perform his exercises, conquering the temptation to enjoy the luxury of bed for quarter of an hour longer. One owed a duty to oneself and one’s appearance, and he’d never been a man to shirk his duty. He took up the hand-glass and studied the reflection of his back. No good taking care of one’s figure and going to a cheap tailor. The fellow he went to now was wonderful. Not a crease, not even the shadow of a crease. . . .

Again he drew himself up smartly. He’d always prided himself on his military bearing (the local beggars knew that they could get sixpence out of him any time by addressing him as Colonel), and he quite frequently thought of himself as a retired army man, though actually he had worked in an insurance firm before his retirement.

He glanced at his watch. Caroline had asked them to be there by four, and it was nearly half-past three now. He’d better go and see if Maggie was ready. She probably wouldn’t be. She’d probably have forgotten that she was going to Caroline’s at all. He wondered if there had ever been anyone else in the whole world quite as scatter-brained as Maggie. His mind went back to their childhood, and he remembered how her vagueness used to infuriate their father. The old man had had a ferocious temper and would fly into violent rages on the least provocation. Poor Maggie had always been so frightened and bewildered by his rages that she never knew what they were about and was as likely as not to repeat her offence the next minute with devastating results. Charles sometimes thought that it was the fact of having passed her childhood in a constant state of nervous terror that had made her just a little foolish now. Only a very little foolish, and even foolish was too hard a word. Some people called her simple, but Charles disliked that word even more. She was extremely sensible in most ways, and always so gentle and well-meaning that no one could help liking her. Charles himself was devoted to her. He could soothe her better than anyone when she was frightened or upset, and on the days when she was like a happy little girl he felt an almost paternal tenderness for her, though he was two years her junior. But, of course, she wasn’t any use at housekeeping, and it was a good thing they’d got old Nana for that. She was a wonderful old woman. Eighty, if she was a day, but as straight as a ramrod and still able to put the fear of God into an idle housemaid or a disobliging tradesman. She’d been grim and unbending to them when they were children, but she’d shielded them from their father’s tyranny as best she could, and they’d always been fond of her, despite her dourness. . . . He glanced at the portrait of the old man that hung over his mantelpiece—the square jaw with its fringe of whiskers, the thin tight mouth, the stern deep-set eyes—and the ghost of the old terror came back to him across the years.

He himself had been his father’s favourite, but that had not saved him from savage punishment for the most trivial misdemeanours. It was against Gordon, however, that the old man’s ill-humour had been most consistently directed, perhaps because he was, in a way, not unlike the old man, and it was inevitable that their temperaments should clash. Oh, well, they were dead now, both his father and Gordon. Poor old Gordon hadn’t had too easy a time. His first wife had deserted him after five years of marriage, leaving him with two children, Caroline and Marcia, to bring up; and his second wife, after bearing Robert and, five years later, Susan, had died, six years after that, at Fay’s birth, leaving him with the five of them on his hands. He only survived her by one year, and when he died it turned out that he had speculated foolishly, mortgaged his life assurance to cover his losses, and that his assets would do little more than pay his debts. Charles had experienced some hasty qualms at that time, seeing himself responsible for the orphans, but the nineteen-year-old Caroline, who had just won a scholarship in Modern Languages at Girton, had quickly shown the stuff she was made of. She had resigned her scholarship and set to work at once to earn money for the young family. She had canvassed the local schools for coaching and obtained a contract from a publisher, to whom a friend had given her an introduction, for some French translations. Her success in both fields was assured from the first,for she was clever, charming, and tremendously hard-working. She had sent Robert to a public school and paid all his expenses till he was fully qualified as an accountant. Susan she had sent to the local High School and then to Girton, and Fay was still at school. They were lucky to have a sister like Caroline, thought Charles for the hundredth time (Charles himself felt a secret gratitude to her for relieving him of that nightmare of responsibility), and they knew it. He would say that for them. They realised what they owed to her and were grateful. More than grateful. They adored her. Had done ever since they were children. Once when Susan was a little girl she had been discovered sobbing desolately because she was sure she would go to hell when she died for loving Caroline more than God. . . . She couldn’t help doing, she said. She always had done and she always would.

Susan had been appointed modern languages mistress to a local school after leaving college, but she had given up the post on her marriage about three months ago. Charles suspected that Caroline was not too pleased by the marriage. She had been ambitious for Susan and had wanted her to have a career. She had, of course, always looked on the three of them as her children. She often said that she felt like a grandmother now that Robert had youngsters. Oddly enough, she got on better with Gordon’s second family than with her own sister Marcia. The two had never had much in common, and, now that Marcia had married and gone to live in London, they saw little of each other. Idly his mind went to her mother, Philippa—the woman who had run away from Gordon after five years’ of marriage. None of them had seen her or heard from her since she went away, though the news had reached them that she had married again several years after leaving Gordon, but not the man for whom she had left him, and that she now lived in the South of France. Charles wrinkled his brows as he tried to remember her. He knew that he had thought her beautiful, but he couldn’t recall a single feature. Catching sight of his frown in the mirror, he hastily banished it and leant forward to examine his face carefully. He’d go up to that fellow again soon and have another massage treatment. It certainly improved the texture of the skin and kept the lines down.

He took a clean handkerchief from his drawer, sprinkled it with eau-de-Cologne, and arranged it neatly in his breast-pocket. Then he walked slowly downstairs, his shoulders squared, humming lightly to himself.

Nana was in the hall. She wore a black dress, with white collar and cuffs and a long white apron. Her face was yellow and wrinkled, but her eyes seemed as keen as ever, her sunken mouth as firm. Her eyes flicked him over from head to foot in the way that always made him feel he might be sent back to wash his hands or brush his hair. He laughed and held out his hands for her inspection, palms up, then palms down, as they had had to do when they were children.

Hands washed—nails cleaned, he said.

Her grim face lightened somewhat, but she did not smile.

I hope Miss Maggie’s not forgotten that we’re going to tea to Miss Caroline, he went on.

I reminded her, said Nana. She went up to get ready at three.

He wandered into the drawing-room. It was as uncompromisingly Victorian as it had been in his father’s day—whatnot, fire-screen, china-cabinet, silver table, even a tête-à-tête sofa in faded pink brocade, trimmed plentifully with plush balls. There was a highly ornamental fern-stand in the window, holding six ferns, and on the draped mantelpiece an ormolu clock ticked sedately between two bronze equestrian groups. The wall was covered by water-colours of indifferent execution.

Maggie’s desk stood near the fireplace. It was piled high with papers and bits of needlework. She would frequently burrow among the accumulation of odds and ends like a terrier after a rat, but she seldom found anything.

On the top of the desk stood a small gilt cage, containing a not very lifelike mechanical bird that hopped about and sang when it was wound up. This had been the best toy of Maggie’s childhood (the solitary present of a rich but neglectful godmother) and had had for her always a strange and potent fascination. Her parents considered it too elaborate for ordinary use, but on Sunday evenings, when she had been officially good during the week (a very rare occurrence), it was brought out and wound up in her presence. Even then she was not allowed to touch it. It was still invested for her with the glamour of her childhood, and on Sunday evenings she would wind it up and watch it with a kind of fearful delight. She never wound it up on a weekday, and even the Sunday winding was accompanied by secret feelings of guilt. She called it Sweetie and treated it with awed respect, moving the cage out of the sun on hot days and putting it near the fire when it was cold.

There was a piece of paper under the desk. Charles stooped down to pick it up. It was the list Maggie had made out of the things she meant to do today. Water ferns. Match silk. Order coals. Mend gloves.

Each morning Maggie made out a list of things that she meant to do that day, but she never did any of them because she invariably lost the list.

He replaced the list on the desk, almost knocking over as he did so a little paper screw of sugared almonds. Maggie loved sugared almonds and generally bought some on Saturdays. Though she had now plenty of money, some influence from her repressed childhood prevented her ever spending more than a penny or twopence on them, and she never bought them on any other day than Saturday. He went to the window and stood looking out over the garden. At one side could be seen the square patch, outlined with shells, that was Maggie’s garden. It was the same one she had had as a child, and she still tended it, buying penny packets of seed in the spring, and sowing them thickly over every inch, allowing no one to thin them out because she said it seemed so unkind. She generally sowed Virginian stock and nasturtiums because she had sowed them as a child and they did well there. After sowing them she would come out every morning before breakfast to examine the ground minutely, and her excitement at the appearance of the first green shoots never abated. It always seemed a miracle to her, and she could never get used to it.

He heard a bedroom door opening and went out into the hall. Maggie was coming downstairs, hurrying, as she always hurried, wherever she was going, whatever she was doing, for even when she was merely going up to bed at night she gave the impression of being on her way from one piece of vitally important work to another, between which not a moment must be lost.

Her hat was a little on one side, and her face wore its usual harassed peering expression. Her manner was, as always, eager and deprecating. She was very small and seemed to be trying to shrink into herself all the time, so that she appeared to be even smaller than she was.

Am I all right, Nana? she said anxiously.

Nana straightened her hat.

One necklace will be enough, I think, Miss Maggie, she said.

Maggie looked down in dismay at the three necklaces she was wearing—one of amber, one of pearls, and one of red and green beads that she had bought at Woolworth’s.

Oh dear! she said, deeply distressed. Which shall I keep on?

It was clear that the responsibility of choosing which necklace to keep on was a distressing one, and that in another minute she would be in what Nana called a state.

Keep on the amber, said Nana, gently withdrawing the others; and have you got a clean handkerchief?

Yes, said Maggie, all her happiness restored by the knowledge that she had a clean handkerchief.

Nana’s gaze went to the gloves that Maggie was now drawing on.

Not those gloves, she said. There’s a button off. Whatever would Miss Caroline think of you going in gloves with a button off?

The dismay returned to Maggie’s face as she gazed down at the gloves.

But I mended it, she faltered. I know I did. I must have done. I remember distinctly putting it down on my list.

I got another pair out for you, said Nana. Didn’t you see it? . . . Harriet! A housemaid came out of the kitchen. Go up to Miss Maggie’s bedroom and get the clean pair of gloves that’s on the chest of drawers. One minute, Miss Maggie.

She began to tuck the straying ends of wispy grey hair into the bun, moving several hairpins to secure them. They all knew that this attention was useless. Maggie’s hair would never stay tidy for more than five minutes. It was straight and fine and thin and seemed to consist solely of short ends that detached themselves with quiet persistence from any structure in which they were incorporated.

But Maggie was still looking worried.

"Nana, I ought to have rung someone up about something this morning. What was it? . . . Oh dear, whatever was it?"

It’s all right, Miss Maggie, said Nana. It was the coals. I’ve seen to it.

Nana was in the habit of giving Maggie little household tasks to see to in order to keep her busy, because Maggie liked to be busy, but she was always ready to see to them herself if Maggie forgot or lost the paper she had written them down on, as generally happened.

Harriet came in with the gloves, and Maggie drew them on, then began to fumble with the buttons. In the end Nana took one hand to button and Charles the other, and Maggie stood between them, laughing her happy, breathless, little-girl laugh, as if she sensed something of the protective tenderness they both felt for her.

"Oh dear! Aren’t I stupid?" she said.

Now you’re ready, said Nana. Off you go! And be sure you’re back by six, then you’ll have time for a little rest before dinner.

She stood at the door till they were out of sight, just as she used to stand in their childhood when they went out to tea. She probably still saw them as a little boy and girl in their best clothes, thought Charles. He knew that she still frequently referred to them as the children.

Maggie was chattering happily, excitedly, about nothing in particular. She generally kept up a stream of disconnected observations, and didn’t mind whether anyone was listening to her or not. He knew that she loved walking through the streets with him like this. She always enjoyed doing things and going to places. She liked her life to be a perpetual bustle. When she had nothing else to do she took up one of her odds and ends of needlework that lay about on her desk and worked at it feverishly. It was as if she were building up endless little defences against she didn’t quite know what. She was terrified of an unoccupied moment and didn’t seem to care how useless were the things she found to fill her time. She must have known quite well that not even the Poor could wear the socks she knitted, that not even the Heathen could accommodate their shapes to the shapes of the garments she fashioned from unbleached calico, but she continued to make both socks and garments, working in frantic haste, as though it were essential that they should be finished as quickly as possible. Sometimes Charles thought that this was the result of her having been chivied relentlessly from task to task throughout her harassed childhood. Their father had seen to it that Satan should find no idle hands in his household, at any rate. . . . She had been wound up in those far-off days and couldn’t run down.

He wondered what would happen to her when Nana died. She did nothing without consulting the old woman—never even went to bed till Nana had put her head in at the drawing-room door and said, Time you went to bed, Miss Maggie, adding generally, And I wouldn’t stay up much longer either if I was you, Mr. Charles.

Well, he’d just have to find someone else to look after her. And if he died . . .? He didn’t like to think of Maggie’s being left to strangers. She was so nervous and timid. She needed such perpetual reassurance. Strangers wouldn’t understand. But there would be Caroline to look after her then, of course. Caroline would shoulder Maggie with the rest of her burdens. She had a strong sense of duty and would never let Maggie be looked after by strangers while she was alive. He wished that Maggie weren’t so frightened of Caroline. He couldn’t understand it. No one could be kinder than Caroline was—she went out of her way to be kind to Maggie—but Maggie was always frightened of her. She wouldn’t even go to tea there without him. Something about Caroline’s brisk efficiency seemed to scare her, and she became silly and panic-stricken as she used to be with their father. Her eager gentle voice was going on and on by his side, like the burbling of a stream. "Such a lovely day. . . . The shops look so pretty, don’t they?. . . Such lovely colours. . . . Isn’t that pink pretty? . . . When I was a little girl I used to pray to have a pink dress, but I never did, of course, and it’s too late now. It would be unsuitable. . . ."

It was a perfect day in late September. The sun shone brightly, but there was a faint tang of autumn in the air that Charles found most exhilarating. It was all he could do to restrain his steps to Maggie’s slow scurrying pace. He glanced at himself covertly in a shop window and felt a thrill of pride in the knowledge that this handsome, upright, military-looking man was himself. He hoped he’d meet someone he knew. He liked to stroll through the quiet, old-fashioned streets of Bartenham like this, greeting his friends and replying to their greetings, feeling part of it all, aware that he contributed in a small degree to the general amenity of the little town. Young Mrs. Ludlow was passing them. He took off his hat with a flourish. She smiled at him, a subtly flattering smile, the sort of smile that a woman gives to a man who admires her, whom she in her turn admires. . . .

He’d had coffee with her in the town on Monday morning. He was going to tea with her next Tuesday. He enjoyed discreet (very discreet) flirtations with young married women—nice women in love with their husbands, who yet found a certain excitement in his attentions and thought him a dear. It was years since he’d been really in love. Once or twice when he was younger he had seriously considered marriage, but on each occasion he had saved himself in time. He hadn’t enough money to keep a wife in comfort, and married life without sufficient means was the devil. It might quite well be the devil even with sufficient means. And, of course, Maggie had always been the deciding factor in the situation. One could hardly expect any woman—even one’s wife—to put up with Maggie, and nothing would ever induce him to send Maggie away from home. After all, he frequently told himself, there wasn’t much in marriage once the glamour wore off, and it wore off pretty soon in most cases. Mentally he compared himself with his married contemporaries. They seemed a shabby careworn lot. They’d all let their figures go and looked years older than they were. No, sometimes he felt vaguely lonely and pathetic, but generally he was convinced that he had chosen the better part. He’d always liked women and been friendly with them, and, now that he was middle-aged (fiftyish), a pleasant avuncular quality had crept into the relationship. Avuncular—that brought him back to Caroline. He wondered if she’d ever marry. With her looks she could have married anyone if she hadn’t sacrificed herself so completely to her stepbrother and stepsisters. How old would she be? She’d been eighteen at the time of Gordon’s second wife’s death. (A colourless little creature—what was her name?—Oh yes, he remembered now . . . Nina.) That was eighteen years ago. Nina had died at Fay’s birth, and Fay would be eighteen this year. She must be thirty-six. Getting on. For a woman, he added hastily. Getting on, for a woman, certainly. He’d heard a rumour that Richard Oakley was in love with her, but he didn’t think that there was anything in it. Richard came to the house a good deal, of course, because he’d been Gordon’s solicitor (though he’d known nothing