Half of the Human Race Page 19

  ‘Beg pardon, ma’am, I was told to open the shutters …’

  ‘That’s all right,’ replied Connie, gesturing at her job already done.

  ‘Very good, ma’am,’ said the maid, blushing. ‘Will that be all?’

  Connie had a sudden inkling that the girl had perhaps mistaken her for a daughter of the house, and rather than correct her into further blushes, she simply smiled and nodded. The girl bobbed a quick curtsy and withdrew. It was time to join the fray. Just before she closed the door she considered the room again, and imagined the sort of life that would offer one the leisure to play billiards. A married life, it would have to be.

  Her descent into the hall coincided with the rowdy entrance of several men, toppered and tailed and so loud-voiced they could only be Lionel’s friends. In the ballroom the musicians had settled into a polite minuet. She proceeded out through the garden doors; the sun, invisible up to now, was idly communing with the high wispy clouds. At the end of the terrace Connie saw a familiar stooped figure, and, led by a tug on her heart, she sidled up to him. On hearing her salutation, the old man turned and offered a crinkly sort of smile. She bent down to kiss his papery cheek and smelt cigars mingled with Penhaligon’s cologne. His dark-hued morning suit, mutton-chop whiskers and watch chain were so unconstrainedly old-fashioned he might have passed for a representative of the mid-Victorian gentry in a street pageant.

  ‘Ah, my dear girl,’ he said in his friendly, hoarse-throated voice. ‘I was just asking feller-me-lad where you’d got to.’ Feller-me-lad was Fred.

  ‘How are you, Grandpa,’ she said, giving his arm a companionable squeeze. Roger Callaway was Connie’s only surviving grandparent, and since the death of his only son – her father – he had drifted to the very periphery of family life: nobody quite knew what to do with him. A widower for many years, he lived in a remote manor house in West Sussex with a lady who was formerly his housekeeper and now de facto his spouse, though no official announcement had ever been forthcoming. When Olivia had been compiling the wedding-guest list, she had paused over the problem of ‘Grandpa’s helpmeet’ (their late father’s droll soubriquet) and asked her mother, ‘Ought we to invite Mrs Rhodes?’ Mrs Callaway gave a moue of uncertainty, and as the silence lengthened Connie said, with a disbelieving gasp, ‘Of course you should! She’s been living with him for however many years.’

  ‘That doesn’t make her his wife. We don’t even know this … woman,’ said Olivia.

  ‘Try to consider it from Grandpa’s point of view. Think of the discourtesy to him.’

  Olivia frowned, and said, ‘I suppose,’ but in such a reluctant tone that Connie suspected the helpmeet would have to whistle for an invitation.

  Now a vicarious guilt needled her as she asked the old man, ‘Is Mrs Rhodes keeping well?’

  ‘Oh, very well. She asked to be remembered to you,’ he added, with no trace of irony. Connie felt so awful then that she was suddenly tempted to explain her abortive efforts on the lady’s behalf, but her grandfather had forgivingly moved the conversation along. ‘Doesn’t seem a moment ago,’ he said, his eyes glazed in faraway reminiscence, ‘we saw Donald and your mother at the altar. Eh?’ Connie smiled patiently at the interrogative note, forbearing to mention that she was not alive to witness her parents’ nuptials.

  ‘I suppose they were very much in love,’ she said, thinking again of her father’s amused but rather disobliging quotation from Mill.

  ‘Oh, yes, yes,’ he replied, with the accompanying nyuff-nyuff sound his mouth made when in ruminative mood. ‘Though he married late, Donald. Thirty, at least, I should say.’ Connie tried to imagine her father at thirty; the odd thing was, he had never seemed very old to her even at fifty. His energy, always formidable, lent him the slightly impatient air of a man who had to slow down for everyone else, including his wife. In a friendly, even a loving sort of way, he had bullied her. Her grandfather was still revisiting old scenes. ‘I used to argue with him about it. I’d say, “You cannot be without a woman.”’ He spoke with remembered emphasis, and clenched his gnarled old hand to hammer the sentiment home.

  ‘Why d’you say that, Grandpa?’ she asked.

  ‘Why,’ he replied, with a bemused pause, ‘because without a woman it’s only half a life.’

  Connie was so moved by these words that she sensed again how close to the surface her tears were. She was saved by the arrival of Louis and Fred, who both chorused ‘Hullo, sir!’ to the old man. She looked on approvingly as they made respectful overtures, like schoolboys with an indulgent housemaster, asking after his health and whether he’d got up to Lord’s this summer. Louis had casually lit a cigarette in the meantime.

  ‘May I have one of those?’ Connie said, dropping her voice.

  ‘Better not let Ma see you,’ said Fred. She had ceased to chafe at the absurdity of her mother’s disapproval, though she conceded that secrecy would be tactful for the moment. With a sly bit of legerdemain that again reminded her of the schoolroom, Louis slipped her a cigarette and a box of matches.

  ‘Nyuff, nyuff, don’t so often see a gel smoking,’ murmured her grandfather, who had perhaps a beadier eye than his doddery demeanour suggested. Connie raised an admonitory finger to her lips and went off in search of a hideaway. The terrace had filled up by now, and guests were spilling onto the wide crescent-shaped lawn. Through the doors she could hear the party’s rising babble. Without looking back, she trotted the fifty yards to a rambling vegetable garden where a decrepit greenhouse seemed to provide cover. A trellis had been raised over the narrow cinder path between a row of pear trees and the aged brick wall that demarcated the garden from Holland Park. A small cane love seat hid beneath, and with a grateful sigh she sank down on it. She had just taken her first rasping lungful of the cigarette when she heard the giveaway snap of a twig announcing footfall on the path. Her seat, situated at a right angle to the trellis, made her invisible to passers-by, and she held herself still in the hope that whoever it was would not cast a glance sideways. The footsteps approached, and stopped.

  ‘Er … Constance?’

  She let out her breath, and bent her head around the seat’s enclosure. Will was standing there, looking slightly bewildered.

  ‘Hullo,’ she said with a mock-rueful grin.

  ‘Are you hiding from someone?’

  She shook her head and held up her cigarette in explanation. ‘Only my mother.’

  ‘May I … join you?’

  She smiled her acquiescence and moved along the seat to give him room. He looked somewhat preoccupied, she thought.

  ‘I don’t suppose you know many people here,’ she said.

  ‘Oh, one or two. There’s Louis, of course …’ He hesitated, sensing a guest’s obligation. ‘The wedding service was splendid, really.’

  ‘Do you think so?’ she said non-committally, drawing on her cigarette.

  ‘Yes,’ he blundered on. ‘Weddings always make one rather sentimental. Don’t you agree?’

  Connie frowned, considering. ‘They exercise some effect on me, but I’m not sure precisely what. My grandfather’s just been reminiscing about my parents’ wedding, and it made me wonder …’

  ‘Yes?’ Will leaned forward slightly.

  Connie hesitated, realising it might not be the moment to start lecturing on the moral infirmities of marriage. ‘Oh, nothing – I’ll tell you another time, perhaps.’ Will felt cheered at the mere suggestion of a time when he might again be a recipient of her confidence: on such scraps does the hopeful heart feed. Her eyes were narrowing on him. ‘But you surprise me. Why do weddings make you – susceptible?’

  ‘Oh … I suppose it’s the idea of two people committing themselves, you know, absolutely to one another, with all their friends and family standing witness – willing them on, as it were.’

  While he was talking he had picked up one of her gloves, discarded on the seat while she smoked, and was now absently tracing his fingers over the buttons. Connie watched him curiously;
the distracted way in which he had spoken, and his nervous fiddling with the glove, inclined her to think he might be hiding something. At that moment he looked up, and said, apropos of nothing, ‘That’s an amazingly lovely dress you’re wearing, by the way.’

  Connie plucked at the lavender silk, an extravagance from Selfridges, and canted her head in thanks – though his little gallantry had been awkwardly bestowed. ‘Are you quite all right?’ she asked him. ‘You seem rather agitated.’

  Will smiled weakly, and dropped his gaze. ‘I do beg your pardon,’ he said, haltingly. ‘It’s not easy – under such – circumstances …’

  Connie looked puzzled. ‘What circumstances?’ she began, and then her face cleared as her speculation finally clicked into place. She pulled back to take a measuring look at him. ‘Would I be correct in thinking you’ve – formed an attachment?’

  His stricken expression confirmed it. But why had he been so circumspect in confessing it? She spoke again, more lightly. ‘So – may I ask the lady’s name? Would I have met her?’ She fleetingly recalled Will introducing certain female acquaintances during her weekend on the coast. Now he was staring at her.

  ‘Would you have met her?’ he said, repeating her words with a disbelieving scowl. Did she really not understand? He watched her as she raised the cigarette to her mouth, and just as it touched her lips he plucked it out of her hand and threw it to the ground. Then he leaned forward and abruptly pressed his mouth to hers. She was so startled that an indistinct exclamation (unnph!) escaped her lips, which adjusted and then, slowly, yielded to his own. He had never cared for tobacco, but the taste of her mouth, smoky and sweet at once, was enrapturing. After some moments she detached herself, not unkindly, and gave him a look that mingled doubt and astonishment. He still held his face close, and his eyes searched hers, avidly, imploringly.

  ‘Have I made a mistake?’ he said in an undertone.

  Connie felt herself colouring. ‘I – I’m surprised –’

  ‘I know that I haven’t,’ he broke in immediately. ‘I know that in some way you felt it, too.’ She wasn’t sure what ‘it’ might constitute, but she didn’t quite trust herself to ask. Will took her hand in his, and said, very seriously, ‘I love you, Constance. I love and admire everything about you. I love your face, and your clothes and your hair. I love the way you gaze at things, and the way you smile – as if you’re forgiving someone. I love –’ he shook his head, briefly confounded, and saw her hand in his ‘– I love your very hands!’

  These hands? thought Connie, splaying her long fingers uncertainly. ‘Really?’

  ‘Really and truly. I love everything about you.’ She returned his gaze, still at a loss, though the warmth that rose through her seemed to answer his passionate avowals. Other men had been amorous with her before, had kissed her – in the case of poor Mr Nairn had even gone on bended knee to her – but none had ever come close to stirring her as Will was doing. Tentatively, she leaned into him, eyes half closed, and found his mouth again with hers. The dry firmness of his lips caused her body to tremble; it was a giddying sensation, like sitting in a motor car when it suddenly accelerated, and one’s stomach took a leap to catch up. He had put his arms about her. There didn’t seem quite enough air to breathe, and yet the constriction within her chest felt madly, intoxicatingly pleasurable.

  ‘Connie,’ he whispered, so close she could feel his breath on her skin, ‘please tell me it’s as true for you.’

  She put her hands on his shoulders, and nodded. ‘It is. It is.’

  They were still gazing earnestly at one another when voices drifted into earshot. She jumped away from him, as if something had scalded her touch, and cocked an ear. The voices were coming this way. She stood up and smoothed down her dress, composing her features into a look of businesslike indifference. Will watched her, half amused by this dissemblance and half exasperated by the intrusion that had prompted it.

  ‘There you are!’ cried Jecca on spying Connie from the end of the path. ‘We’ve been looking everywhere.’

  ‘What are you actually doing here?’ asked her younger sister, Flora, with disconcerting directness.

  Connie gave a shrug, and gestured casually at Will. ‘You remember Mr Maitland from last summer? He was playing cricket?’

  Will bowed as the girls looked at him neutrally. Then Flora bent down to pick up the end of a cigarette, still smouldering. ‘Someone’s been smoking …’ she said, in an imitation of disapproval.

  ‘Oops! Mine, I’m afraid,’ said Will, gently plucking it from her fingers and swapping glances with Connie: both of them registered its confused symbolic resonance from the previous scene.

  ‘Aunt Julia sent us to fetch you,’ said Jecca in a responsible voice. ‘There’s a lady going to sing.’

  ‘A fat lady,’ supplied Flora helpfully.

  ‘That will be Olivia’s friend,’ Connie explained to Will. ‘I ought to go.’ Her eyes silently expressed regret at this untimely interruption.

  ‘May I accompany you?’ asked Will, reading her look.

  They all walked back across the lawn towards the house. Connie heard herself conversing with her young cousins as they went, but had little idea of what was being said. She could only think of what had just passed between herself and Will, ghosting at her side. He had said he loved her, and with such meaning in his eyes that she could not doubt him. He loved her! She felt quite dazed by the knowledge, the surprise of it. That she could speak her mind and yet still be … irresistible to him.

  They entered the hall and joined the excitable press of bodies crowding towards the ballroom. Will, his own nerve ends thrumming, felt a swagger that was almost vertiginous in its illusion of power. He was observing Connie as she walked slightly ahead of him, musing on how queer it was that people could be so unheeding of her presence. Didn’t they notice how beautiful she was? Even now there was a guest, a presentable fellow of about his own age, who glanced at Connie – and then unconcernedly looked away. How? How could that man have failed to swoon at the woman he had just set eyes upon? How could anyone? As they filed into the ballroom, where the quartet had been joined by pianist and soprano, he saw Mrs Callaway beckon to Connie across the room, where a seat had been reserved for her. Connie turned back to Will, and gave a helpless shrug – familial duties, it seemed to say.

  He returned an understanding smile, and edged his way through the crush; he found a spot from where he could continue to gaze at her unnoticed. A hush had settled. The first slow notes of the soprano’s aria began, and Will listened to her voice as it floated aloft, pure and crystalline.

  Ombra mai fu …

  He had no idea what the words meant, but the aching sweetness of the melody seemed to play on his own heartstrings and plunged him into another reverie. Loving Connie as he had never thought to love, he still brooded anxiously over her absolute surrender. He admired her independence of mind, yet he also feared it, and while she was still fired up with the righteousness of her cause there was no telling what troubles she might bring on herself. He had cornered her, but not caught her – not yet. He had to make sure. As the soprano warbled on, Will watched Connie whisper something to the ancient cove with mutton-chop whiskers sitting next to her, who beamed back a look of almost blissful agreement. Ah, thought Will, approvingly – that old man knows he has the best seat in the house.

  Another aria came to an end, and gave way to a shuffling interlude of exits and entrances. Connie rose and, after a reassuring word to the old fellow, made for the door. Will’s gaze, and then his footsteps, followed her. She crossed the hall past loitering guests, smiling at this or that one, before mounting the staircase. He waited until she passed out of sight, then began climbing the stairs himself. At the top, he gravitated down the wood-panelled corridor towards the door at the far end, and tried the handle. It admitted him to a billiards room, where the green baize of the table immediately flooded the eye. Light fell in slanting bands through the pair of tall sash windows, and there, seate
d on a bottle-green chesterfield, was Connie. She did not look surprised to see him. Her eyes had returned to the brimming pathos he had seen at the church.

  He came to sit by her. ‘Something’s upset you.’

  Connie gave a half-laugh and shook her head. ‘I seem unable to stop crying today. The Handel just set me off again.’

  ‘I told you – weddings make us sentimental!’ He illustrated his remark by taking up her hand and holding it to his lips. A tear bulging at the corner of her eye now rolled down her cheek, but the sobbing laugh that followed it assured him all was well. He moved closer and noticed, to his delight, a pale dusting of freckles across the bridge of her nose. There seemed to be no end to how beautiful she was.