A Charmed Circle E-Book

Anna Kavan

• Herausgeber: Peter Owen Publishers
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2014

Seitenzahl: 501

Beschreibung

Marooned in a country house in an ugly manufacturing town is an old vicarage of which expensive improvements have been undertaken. The house sits in the middle of the town where traffic buzz is accentuated by occasional rumbling of passing trams. So much that it is separated by high walls and trees and is encroached by the hustle-and-bustle, it is a lonely ark itself-or at least the occupants intend it to be. Steered by the father's morbidly morose, withdrawn and sinister nature, the Deanes immerse in a safe, profound secrecy of those in whom no one is interested. Life is meticulously edited to ensure minimal interruption of routine and to discourage any social intrusion of visitors. Fettered by some mental disability and limitation are the young Deanes who rebel and struggle to leave. Their attempts have always been futile that they fear the long, dull ache to follow when they have no choice but to return home. Amidst the staidness of the house is an unpleasant atmosphere that always seems to arise so easily and suddenly. That they rarely converge together constitutes this perpetual sense of warfare because hostilities are liable to burst out between family members. The family reaches a tacit understanding that Beryl, who sets her heart on leaving the house, is held responsible for this hostility that reigns the house. Resolved to break free from all the constraints, she never hesitates to cut to the core the misery of being deprived of freedom. Her ability to assert individuality in defiance of Mrs Deane's disposition, combined with this imponderable vitality, constantly remind her sister Olive of her being a failure. That her life has been a waster plunges her into an interminable distress of which she blames on Beryl, who in return despises her for being mentally dishonest, salving conscience by trying to talk her mother round a more lenient attitude toward Beryl. The grudge that embitters both of them repulses any overture of reconciliation. A young sculptor from London lets in a glimpse of light to Beryl's escape. What amazes her more than the job at an exotic hat shop is their increased intimacy made possible by premeditated meals and meetings. That he feels more than an obligatory sense of responsibility for her-the conscious longing, the dread of her absence-touches on his nerve, for the inimical nature of the Deanes has imparted in him a resolution to keep clear of them. In unconscious defense he begins to frame argument against being with her, for he feels his independence being invaded. A Charmed Circle is so well-written and penetrating, with a cold snap of a sterile voice that accentuates the hostile mood. The long narrative prose that pierces into the mind reinforces an atmosphere that under a superficial geniality runs a sinister current of tension and repression. It delves on the motives, the unspoken words that which justify the actions. Kavan meticulously metes out words that capture the passing thoughts that are often overlooked but are key to the actions. Despite the overall air of revolt and struggle for self-expression, the novel asserts a sense of hope of overcoming mental capitulation.

Leseprobe

Praise for A Charmed Circle

‘A powerful exposition of constrained lives’ — Times Literary Supplement

‘Not a word is wasted in her spare but painterly prose’ — Sunday Telegraph

‘A remarkable poetic writer who could transmute the most ordinary matter of life into a dangerous, haunting vision’ — Daily Telegraph

A CHARMED CIRCLE

This early novel tells the story of a family marooned in a country house near an ugly, expanding manufacturing town of the 1920s. The atmosphere of the house is heavy with repression, and the sinister influence of the father dominates the lives of his family. The young people are desperate to escape the malign environment, but remain enclosed in the charmed circle of their own limitations. Kavan achieves a masterly contrast between the English countryside and the brittle London life of the era.

ANNA KAVAN, née Helen Woods, was born in Cannes in 1901 and spent her childhood in Europe, the USA and Great Britain. Her life was haunted by her rich, glamorous mother, beside whom her father remains an indistinct figure. Twice married and divorced, she began writing while living with her first husband in Burma and was initially published under her married name of Helen Ferguson. Her early writing consisted of somewhat eccentric ‘Home Counties’ novels, but everything changed after her second marriage collapsed. In the wake of this, she suffered the first of many nervous breakdowns and was confined to a clinic in Switzerland. She emerged from her incarceration with a new name, Anna Kavan, the protagonist of her 1930 novel Let Me Alone, as well as an outwardly different persona and a new literary style. She suffered periodic bouts of mental illness and long-term drug addiction — she had become addicted to heroin in the 1920s and continued to use it throughout her life — and these facets of her life feature prominently in her work. She destroyed almost all of her personal correspondence and most of her diaries, therefore ensuring that she achieved her ambition to become ‘one of the world’s best-kept secrets’. She died in 1968 of heart failure, soon after the publication of her most celebrated work, the novel Ice.

CHAPTER I

FOR fifty years the Vicarage of Hannington stood uneventfully among its elm trees and flat fields. It faced the ugly grey church, but was hidden from it by high walls and a row of trees. Round about was open country, level, cultivated, uninteresting; dotted here and there with labourers’ cottages.

In time builders came. They set up houses of a different kind; neat, ugly little boxes strung together in rows. The rows, too, strung together. Surprisingly, they extended and met, forming mean streets that devoured the unresisting land. Fields were eaten away almost in a night. People went for their yearly holidays and returned four short weeks later to find the landscape strangely altered. Everywhere was an alien and unwelcome activity. Steam-rollers crawled over the endless new roads; workmen swarmed everywhere, combining with the inhabitants of the new houses to overwhelm the natives of the place. The ancient population dwindled and vanished. A new people took possession of Hannington; a people which teemed in the poor streets, demanding numberless shops, public-houses and chapels.

Only a few fields were left now round the church. Even here were alterations. A new and hideous lych-gate was built, and a new vicar, finding the vicarage too large, moved into a smaller, meaner house of the now prevailing type. Rather surprisingly the vicarage – now known as the Old Vicarage – was not pulled down. A family, strange to the neighbourhood, bought it and settled there, making expensive improvements, living a secret, unguessed-at life behind its screening walls.

The fields dwindled, endured a long sickly survival as a kind of spurious village green, then vanished altogether. The streets crept closer, the tide of squalid little houses swept on till it surged round the very boundaries of the Old Vicarage; and the Old Vicarage heightened its garden walls, thickened its screen of trees and stood obstinately firm, like a sullen rock that refuses to be submerged by the tide.

CHAPTER II

AT half-past nine on a fine June evening there was plenty of activity in Hannington. Children were shouting over the last game of the day, a buzz of gossiping voices filled the streets, and a more staid hum rose from the tiny garden-strips of the better houses. All the noises of the town merged together in a heavy, senseless murmur, accentuated every few minutes by the hum and clatter of a tram or the grind of a motor ’bus. Trees and walls could not shut out the murmur which welled in through the open windows of the Old Vicarage and clung impalpably about the rooms. Every now and then some trick of the wind carried the sound of a tram thudding up the Freetown Rise with peculiar distinctness, so that even Beryl Deane, who was so accustomed to it that she might have been expected not to notice, remarked upon it.

‘How clearly we can hear the trams to-night,’ she said.

Her mother nodded without looking up.

The two women were sitting in a room which for some reason was called the breakfast-room, though breakfast was never eaten there. Like all the rooms in the house, it was bright and pretty, with a slightly faded prettiness. It was easy to see that a good deal of money had been spent on it in the past, but now there was a general air, scarcely more than a hint, of very faint deterioration, as though the owners had lost interest in the place, which was in its turn growing discouraged, like a living creature. In spite of this suggestion (which, after all, was barely noticeable) the room was really quite charming with its clean chintzes and light blue carpet. A tall standard lamp threw a pool of light over mother and daughter. Several bowls of flowers, some bright water-colours and a gay cushion or two made splashes of pleasant colour. It was quite a small room and inclined to be overcrowded, but this only intensified the effect which the whole house gave of being compact and self-sufficing. It was like a nest, a little ark, a tiny island, self-contained and isolated. It remained there, shut within the circle of its walls and trees, in the middle of the teeming life of Hannington. The mean streets surrounded it, the rows of squalid houses pressed against it, yet it was hidden from them, utterly separated from them, cut off as effectually as if its walls and trees had been leagues of land and water. The inhabitants of those streets of houses knew nothing of the family at the Old Vicarage. They were neither curious nor interested. Very few people had given even a casual thought to these lives, so close to their own, yet so fantastically remote. The Old Vicarage walled them in seclusion; they were immured in the safe, profound secrecy of those in whom no one is interested.

CHAPTER III

BERYL was working at a piece of embroidery. She sat close under the lamp, so that the light fell full on the tiny stitches and soft-coloured silks. It lighted up one side of her face and left the other in shadow, so that it was difficult for anyone looking at her to describe her appearance. Curiously, that was always the case. At the moment, the freak of lighting obscured her, but even a person who had had opportunities of watching her in clear daylight would not easily have been able to describe her.

She was young, perhaps twenty-one or twenty-two, dark, rather tall, with a pale skin and a flat, strong body. So much was obvious, but her face was difficult. When her eyes were down there was nothing but a blank, wide V under the two waves of her hair, which flowed smoothly from a centre parting. The eyes were large and dark and revealed nothing; they were quite without the wistfulness associated with large eyes, but held an obscure expression, sullen and elusive as the face itself.

Part of her mind was occupied with the intricate pattern of her embroidery, but numbers of other thoughts passed through it in a rapid, restless chase. She wished that it were ten o’clock, but the hands of the enamelled French clock still pointed to a quarter to. She moved restlessly, glanced up at her mother, who appeared to be absorbed in her book, sighed, and resumed her needlework with obvious boredom.

Mrs. Deane read steadily with the air of one who reads with a set purpose and not merely for amusement. On a small table beside her chair was a pile of three or four heavy volumes, and she occasionally took up one of these and looked up some reference or made a note in the margin. There was something important in the way she did this which was amusing, because in spite of the determined, business-like way in which she was reading, she was such a dainty little thing. Her wavy hair was like a silver wig over her pink, fresh face, and she was altogether pleasantly plump and rosy, and far more girlish-looking than her daughter. A pair of horn-rimmed spectacles gave her the air almost of a child ‘dressing-up.’

She, too, wished that it were ten o’clock, but she would not have admitted it. So intent was she on presenting the picture of a lady thoroughly absorbed in her reading, that she really thought she was absorbed. In the same way she had convinced herself that she was really interested in the big books beside her. If anyone had dared to suggest that her reading and the book she was writing on English Folk-Lore were merely an impressive pose, she would have been offended and genuinely indignant.

CHAPTER IV

AT five minutes to ten the door opened and Dr. Deane came in, followed by his elder daughter Olive. He was always referred to as ‘the doctor,’ though he had not practised for many years. His children could not remember a time when he did so. All their lives he had occupied the same peculiar position in the household. He was at the same time the centre of the family and a person of no importance in it. He never interfered in any way with their domestic plans or arrangements. He submitted to their decisions without criticism, argument or complaint. His opinion was rarely asked, even on important matters, as it was known that he would probably refuse to give it. For days at a time he scarcely spoke, and yet he exerted a strong mental influence in the household. His health was not good, and his pale face and tall, thin, stooping figure gave him rather the appearance of an invalid. He came in now, glanced at the clock, sat down without speaking, and began at once to read a small brown book which he had brought with him.

Mrs. Deane also looked at the clock over the top of her spectacles, but in a deliberately inquiring manner. She then turned her questioning look towards Olive, who said explanatorily:

‘It’s ten o’clock by my watch.’

She held out her wrist with a challenging movement.

‘You’re five minutes fast,’ her mother retorted, and taking up her book again, she went on reading. Her pose showed resentment at being interrupted five minutes too soon in her important task.

‘The church clock hasn’t struck yet,’ remarked Beryl.

Mrs. Deane frowned slightly without looking up. A disagreeable silence settled on the room.

Olive, who was still standing in a rather defiant attitude, suddenly relaxed and sat down beside her sister. There was not much likeness between them beyond the fact that both were dark, and in a general way resembled their father more than their mother. Olive, particularly, inherited his stern profile, softened and blurred by her youth, but obvious none the less behind the warm-tinted flesh. She was five years older than Beryl: maturer, softer, and no more definite. Her hair was drawn back into an unbecoming twist. She had almost the air of someone who deliberately makes the worst of her appearance; but this uncompromising, even aggressive attitude was contradicted in the strangest way by an expression which she habitually wore of discomfort, anxiety and diffidence. Her eyebrows had a barely perceptible lift, as though she were constantly bewildered.

She took up a handful, now, of Beryl’s silks, smoothing and arranging the delicate colours. With an impatient movement her sister snatched them away.

The four occupants of the room sat in hostile silence while the faint murmur of Hannington came in through the open windows. The French clock began to strike the hour in quick, thin strokes, and as it reached the fifth stroke the harsh, melancholy chime of the church clock joined in. On the last stroke of the breakfast-room clock, and while the one outside was still laboriously striking, the door opened and the parlour-maid came in with a tray. She put it on the table beside Mrs. Deane and stood quietly to attention.

‘Will there be anything else, ma’am?’

‘No thank you, Doris,’ said Mrs. Deane without looking up. She did not move for some moments after the girl had left the room.

The sisters sat motionless, awaiting her pleasure. The doctor seemed not to have noticed the appearance of the tray. Finally, she closed her book and laid it on the table; then with deliberation took off her spectacles, folded them into their brocade case and laid them on the top of the book. With an air of satisfaction she smiled at her family and turned her attention to the tray. On it were two cups of Ovaltine and a plate of sweet biscuits.

‘Take this cup to your father, Beryl,’ she said.

Beryl looked up sulkily, her dark eyes scowling.

‘All right, I’m nearer, I’ll take it,’ Olive said hastily, anxious to keep the peace, and she carried the cup to the doctor, who received it with a nod.

Mrs. Deane lifted the other cup herself. She felt that she needed this stimulant on the evenings when she worked. With care she selected two biscuits, one coated in pink sugar, the other in white, then handed the plate to Olive, who took it to her sister. The two girls munched. Olive greedily, choosing each biscuit with discrimination; Beryl carelessly, taking the one nearest to her hand. Their mother sipped her Ovaltine daintily, holding the cup in her right hand and the saucer in her left. After each sip she replaced the cup on its saucer and looked at it with the air of a connoisseur considering some rare vintage. The doctor gulped his down hastily and set the empty cup on the floor.

No one seemed inclined to speak, but Mrs. Deane, having laid aside her reading, was graciously prepared for a little relaxation. She was ready for some talk and expected to be entertained.

‘Well, girls?’ she began expectantly.

‘What, mamma?’ said Olive.

She knew quite well what was expected of them, and also that Beryl was in a bad mood and would not help her out. She felt aggrieved. Why should Beryl always shirk her share of the conversation? The two girls had long ago established a sort of silent agreement in regard to their parents, under the terms of which each was to give them the requisite amount of daily attention. The doctor fell more particularly to Olive’s share, while Mrs. Deane was chiefly Beryl’s responsibility. In point of fact, Olive devoted more than her share of time to both of them, and this was a perpetual grievance to her and a cause of quarrelling between the sisters.

Mrs. Deane moved impatiently in her chair.

‘Well,’ she insisted, ‘haven’t either of you anything to talk about? Any news to tell me?’

She sat there glancing brightly from one to another of her daughters. On her face was the falsely cheerful expression of one who, out of the generosity and goodness of her own nature, hopes to receive the response she merits, but anticipates disappointment.

‘There’s nothing special that I know of,’ Olive replied.

Beryl remained obstinately silent, her eyes fixed on her embroidery.

‘What a mean creature she is,’ her sister thought, glancing sideways at her averted face.

‘You were in the town this afternoon, weren’t you?’ Mrs. Deane pursued, with growing impatience.

Beryl suddenly stabbed her needle viciously into the work and threw it aside.

‘You know nothing interesting ever happens in that wretched old town, mamma,’ she cried irritably.

Mrs. Deane was hurt.

‘I don’t understand you two girls,’ she said with dignified restraint. ‘You never seem to have a word to say for yourselves. I should have thought that after scarcely speaking to me all day, you might have been ready for a little chat in the evenings.’

‘But, mamma, you know the reason we don’t bother you more is because you’re working and don’t want to be disturbed.’ Olive was distressed and anxious to avert unpleasantness. An unpleasant atmosphere always seemed to arise so suddenly and easily, and once there was so difficult to disperse.

Beryl did not mind these hostilities, but they always made Olive unhappy.

‘Oh, I’m not complaining,’ replied her mother with determined cheerfulness.

At this moment the doctor rose and went to the door. When the conversation reached this point he usually left the room.

Beryl sprang up eagerly.

‘I think I’ll go to bed too,’ she exclaimed in a voice made cheerful by the prospect of escape. She went over and kissed her mother lightly on the cheek. Olive followed her and did the same. The nightly ritual of kisses could not be disregarded.

As they kissed her, Mrs. Deane was thinking how disappointed she was, how misunderstood and how much to be pitied. She could not imagine why her daughters were so hostile and aloof. Other girls were cheerful and affectionate and amusing: full of chatter and gaiety. She thought how much she wanted to be intimate with them, and how completely they shut her out of their lives. She was really very sorry for herself.

‘Well, I think I’ll stay here and work a little longer,’ she said as they left her, bravely hiding her disappointment.

The doctor was still in the hall when his daughters emerged.

‘Another day over,’ he remarked as they went upstairs together. It was the first time he had spoken that evening.

CHAPTER V

BERYL went into her bedroom, and the door closed behind her with its peculiar muffled click that was different from the sound of any other door in the house. Her room had been the nursery, and still contained some childish white furniture, painted with birds and animals. The chest of drawers had a parrot painted in vivid colours in the middle and on each drawer between the handles.

She went straight to the window, pulled back the curtains, and flung up the sash as far as possible. The old wood was beginning to rot and a little shower of splinters fell after the abrupt movement. Resting her elbows on the window-sill, she leaned out into the warm night. The garden below was grey and indistinguishable, but a little further back the trees stood out in a bold black mass against the sky. They shut off the view completely. Not a house could be seen, though the sky was pallid with the reflected lights of the town. Her room was on the side nearest to the trams, and the noise of them, which she had noticed earlier in the evening, was here more distinct. About every five minutes the whirr could be heard approaching, growing harsher and more uneven as it grated up the Rise, slackening speed towards the top, then clanging off again with renewed vigour into the distance. Two or three went past, and Beryl still stood at the window, vaguely aware of the general murmur of Hannington, now growing more subdued.

She heard the door open behind her, and turned. Olive came in wearing a dressing-gown. She looked at Beryl in surprise.

‘Not undressed yet? I came to borrow a pair of shoe-trees.’

‘There’s a pair on the chair,’ said Beryl, without moving from the window.

The elder girl picked up the trees and stood playing with them nervously. Her hair hung in a plait now, and she looked prettier and less aggressive. She was wondering why her sister had been in such a bad temper all the evening. She had really come into the room to ask her about it, but now she could not make up her mind to risk the question in case it should make Beryl angrier than ever. Instead she asked:

‘Why don’t you go to bed? You’ll get cold standing by that open window.’

While she spoke she kept doubling up the shoe-trees and letting them spring out again with tiny whirring noises as she debated in her mind the advisability of questioning her sister about her mood.

‘It’s quite warm,’ Beryl answered, but she turned away from the window all the same and began languidly undressing.

‘The paper says there’s going to be a heat-wave,’ Olive went on. She felt obliged to stay in the room, but could not screw up her courage to the point of asking the important question.

Beryl seemed suddenly enraged. She kicked off her shoes with a sort of frustrated savagery, and tore the ribbon straps violently from her shoulders.

‘I hate the summer!’ she exclaimed furiously.

‘Why on earth?’ asked Olive in astonishment.

‘Oh, I don’t know. The dust and everything. Hannington’s beastly.’

In Beryl’s mind was a picture of baking pavements and tar oozing up viscidly in roads where orange peel and dirty scraps of paper collected at corners and in the gutters. She could smell the hot, breathless smell of the tar and the stale smell of the people in trams and shops.

Olive sighed. She was always trying to be diplomatic with her family, and in spite of her efforts hostilities were always breaking out at the most unexpected moments. She did not in the least understand what had made Beryl flare up in that extraordinary way just then, but since she was angry and could not well be made angrier, there seemed no harm now in questioning her about the reason for her crossness. Besides, Olive herself was beginning to feel exasperated.

‘Look here, Beryl,’ she exclaimed hotly, ‘what on earth’s the matter with you, anyway? You’ve been in a vile temper all the evening, and now when I’m being perfectly friendly and pleasant, you get furious with me, and go off like a rocket for no earthly reason that I can see. It’s not only to-night, either,’ she went on, irritated by the recollection of past grievances, ‘for days now you’ve been behaving as if you hated everybody.’

‘Well, so I do,’ said Beryl sombrely. Her rage disappeared as suddenly as it had come, leaving her bored and depressed. She sat down listlessly on the bed.

Olive stared at her with the uneasy consciousness of some disagreeable thought waking at the back of her mind.

‘Do you really mean that?’ she asked slowly; ‘that you hate me and papa and mamma? Really hate us?’

Beryl was uncomfortable under her sister’s seriousness.

‘Oh, I don’t hate you,’ she muttered awkwardly. ‘But you know perfectly well we’re all enemies in this house.’

She got up and lounged aimlessly about the room, her dark, frowning face in strange contrast with the frivolous furnishings. Suddenly she stood still opposite Olive and began to talk rapidly and with emphasis.

‘Why do you pretend to like living like this? You’re not happy really. No one with any guts could be happy shut up here in this vile house. Look at papa and mamma – are they happy? We’re all of us miserable, and we all of us hate each other. The atmosphere of this place is positively black with hostility.’

She paused and Olive lowered her eyes. She felt afraid to meet her sister’s savage look, and yet she knew that these thoughts were not new to her. Only she did not want to confront them yet.

‘I didn’t know you felt like that,’ she murmured vaguely.

Beryl made a gesture that might have been of contempt.

‘What sort of a life do we have here?’ she went on impatiently. ‘We never go away, we scarcely see a soul from one year to the next, we have no interests, no occupations. Even mamma’s writing is a sham.’

Olive made a movement as if to interrupt, but Beryl swept her aside.

‘Look at you, Olive; you yourself. Do you realize that you’re getting on for thirty, and you haven’t begun to live yet? You haven’t even begun to think about living. You’re asleep. We’re all asleep. There’s no one alive here.’

The energy left her. She felt suddenly flat and indifferent and sat down again on the bed, yawning.

‘I’ve talked a lot,’ she said in a quite different, bored voice. ‘It must be late.’

‘Yes,’ said Olive, ‘I’ll go now.’

She wandered to the door with a preoccupied, harassed expression.

‘Well, good night.’

‘Good night,’ Beryl echoed mechanically as the door closed.

She sat for about ten minutes longer without moving; then she heard a door open and close downstairs, and knew that her mother was coming up to bed. She finished undressing quickly and turned out the light.

CHAPTER VI

MRS. DEANE breakfasted delicately in bed as befitted a person who has worked far into the night. The doctor had a tray brought to him in his study. Beryl seldom came down till late. Thus it happened that Olive frequently had breakfast alone in the dining-room at nine o’clock.

On the morning after her conversation with her sister she had no appetite. She poured herself out a cup of coffee and helped herself to the food on the table mechanically, which was unusual, as she generally enjoyed her meals; particularly breakfast, when there was no one to make trying demands on her tact or conversation.

The day was clearly going to be very warm, and the dining-room windows were wide open. Only the neat garden with its boundary of trees could be seen. Hannington might have been miles away, and a stranger would have been puzzled by the sounds of traffic.

Olive felt worried and dispirited, and the warm weather increased the sense of oppression that weighed upon her mind. Things were always worse in the summer, somehow. If only they could get away from Hannington! But she knew her parents would never leave the Old Vicarage.

Beryl’s words kept coming back to her; she could not get them out of her head. It was quite true that she was nearly thirty and that her life was being wasted. For a long time she had recognized the fact, but it seemed inevitable, so she had accepted it and ignored it as much as possible. Now it was painfully brought forward to her notice again. She was forced to acknowledge it and suffer all over again the distress which she had more or less succeeded in stifling. It was useless to go on pretending and deceiving herself. They were all unhappy and discontented, shut up in this horrible place. They were all miserable and they were all enemies.

Really she had known this for years. Beryl had not revealed to her anything new or startling, but it shocked her to realize that her sister also discerned the truth.

Because Beryl was aware of it, everything seemed to become more urgent and vivid, and of immediate importance.

‘I must do something,’ she thought wretchedly, and then, because she could not think of anything which she could possibly do to improve matters, she felt angry with Beryl for causing this upheaval in her mind. ‘She’s always upsetting everyone,’ she grumbled resentfully to herself.

The dining-room was full of sunshine. Olive could feel it on her back through her thin frock. She knew that she ought to get up and pull down the linen sun-blinds to keep the carpet from getting faded, but she did not move. The sun brought out dazzling miniature suns on the sides of the silver coffee-pot and sugar-bowl, and these in turn cast watery, rippling reflexions on the ceiling. Olive watched them idly, busy with her uneasy thoughts. Suddenly she knew what she must do. She must persuade her mother to go away for the summer. It was beautifully simple and obvious. They would all get away from Hannington to some new, amusing place, and then something would happen.

CHAPTER VII

MRS. DEANE regarded herself as a most unfortunate woman. She dramatized this idea, as she dramatized all her thoughts about herself, until it seemed to her that a spectre of bad luck had pursued her all through her life and into all her undertakings. The fact that she remained cheerful, pretty and youthful in spite of it, showed the triumph of her gallant nature over fate. She took to herself full credit for this triumph, and saw heroism in her smiling face. Frequently, when things went particularly badly, she saw martyrdom there as well.

Nothing ever turned out as she expected. She was disappointed in her husband, disappointed in her children, disappointed in her home.

Who could have guessed that the doctor, who was so clever and enthusiastic in his profession and made love to her so ardently, should quite soon after their marriage have grown indifferent and morose? She recalled the dismay with which she had watched him withdrawing more and more into himself and shutting her out of his life with all the cheerful sympathy and understanding she had been so eager to give him. Then had come his illness soon after Beryl’s birth; the slow, tedious convalescence and the gradual realization that his nature was permanently changed and warped. From that time onwards he had grown more silent, more eccentric. He abandoned his practice and withdrew himself completely from his wife’s society, repulsing her efforts at reconciliation.

Her affection for him, driven back upon herself, she then extended to her children; and here also was only disappointment.

Then there was the matter of the house: who could have guessed that the Old Vicarage, which twenty years ago seemed a pleasant, quiet haven for herself and her family, would have become so hemmed in by the squalid expansion of Hannington? That all the good families should leave the district and thus deprive her of society?

In all these happenings Mrs. Deane traced the malignancy of fate singling her out personally for misfortune. She derived a sort of satisfaction from this distinction, and she was not defeated for an instant, priding herself on a face more brightly smiling after every blow.

She took up writing chiefly as a method of self-assertion. She thought that she was using it as a means of expressing her personality, repressed by her family’s lack of sympathy. Really it afforded her an excellent excuse for domestic tyranny.

‘Mamma’s work’ was an all-powerful fetish in the household.

Some years before, she had decided that various uninspiring duties were incompatible with her creative temperament, and had therefore arranged that her elder daughter should, under her supervision, be made responsible for the housekeeping. This was a satisfactory arrangement for Mrs. Deane because it allowed her full freedom without debarring her from interfering when she felt inclined. It also allowed her to take the credit when things were done well and to blame Olive when they went wrong, and gave her an excuse for bullying Olive at all times, which she was rather fond of doing.

This morning she was sitting up in bed after her breakfast, ready to consult with Olive about the day’s meals. In her lace cap and pink dressing-jacket she was conscious of looking exceedingly dainty, and aware of the contrast which her appearance presented with that of her daughter. She looked at Olive standing at the foot of the bed with a list in her hand, and sighed. It really seemed a pity that she made herself so plain; yes, she was actually plain this morning.

‘Why do you drag your hair back like that, dear?’ she asked.

‘Oh, I like it that way. It’s more comfortable,’ replied Olive casually. ‘Now what about lunch? There’s the beef-’

Mrs. Deane did not mean to abandon the subject so easily. She interrupted gently with a wave of her hand:

‘Really, I wish you would pay a little more attention to your appearance. After all, it is one’s duty to others to look one’s best.’

Olive said nothing. She hoped mamma was not going to be tiresome this morning. When she was personal it was so difficult not to get impatient, and it was most important that Olive should not get impatient just now when there was the vital question of the holiday to be discussed.

‘You might imitate Beryl a little in that way,’ pursued Mrs. Deane.

‘Oh, I know Beryl’s always fussing about her clothes,’ Olive replied good-humouredly. She was relieved when her mother sighed again and allowed herself to be led into a discussion of the menu.

All the time she was talking about rissoles and bread-and-butter pudding, Olive was wondering how it would be best to open the important subject. She was worried, and at the back of her mind there was all the time a sense of injustice: ‘Why is it that I always have to be tactful with everyone and try to avoid making them angry?’ she thought confusedly. She revolved several openings in her mind, then, as none of them seemed satisfactory, asked bluntly:

‘Mamma, couldn’t we go away somewhere this summer?’

Mrs. Deane was astonished.

‘Go away?’ she repeated. ‘What do you mean?’

‘I’ve been thinking we all ought to get away for a holiday,’ Olive went on. She was nervous and therefore spoke in her most aggressive manner.

Mrs. Deane having recovered from her surprise, eyed her suspiciously. She was always inclined to regard any new idea which was not her own as implying an insult to herself.

‘I don’t see why you think any of us need a holiday,’ she remarked coldly.

The opposition in her face discouraged Olive, but she could not abandon her plan just yet.

‘I thought the change would be good for papa,’ she ventured.

‘Did he speak to you about going away?’ Mrs. Deane asked quickly.

Olive’s heart failed her at the thought of all the argument, intrigue, persuasion, bullying and diplomacy that would be required if she were to keep to her plan; and even then she could not be sure of success. It no longer seemed worth the effort involved.

‘Oh no. It was entirely my own idea,’ she answered bleakly.

‘Well, I must say, I think it’s very inconsiderate of you, Olive,’ said her mother in an injured voice. ‘What do you think is going to become of my work while we are gallivanting about on holidays? You know perfectly well that I must stay quietly here if I am to get my book finished in time to be published in the autumn.’

‘I’m sorry. I didn’t think of it,’ Olive replied tonelessly. Her eyes were cast down and she wore the dull, mulish expression which her mother particularly resented.

‘Oh, of course, you never do consider me in the least.’

Mrs. Deane was prepared to be hurt and indignant at her daughter’s expense for some time, but Olive, with a muttered apology, went out of the room.

CHAPTER VIII

BERYL came downstairs very late and hurried through her breakfast so that Doris could clear away. As she got up from the table she heard Olive speaking to the servant in the hall, and went out to join her.

Their conversation of the previous night had left her with a vague feeling of compunction towards her sister. She felt sorry for her, and also a little guilty, without knowing why. She saw the parlour-maid go into the dining-room, and Olive move towards the open front door.

‘Hullo, Olive,’ she exclaimed. ‘You look glum. Has Doris been giving notice?’

Olive shook her head.

‘No. Let’s go outside for a minute.’

The two girls strolled into the garden. Although it was early, the sun was already very strong and seemed to beat with peculiar fierceness on the enclosed garden. The thick trees stood motionless, walling it in. There was not a breath of air.

‘Heavens, how stuffy it is here!’ cried Olive irritably. She walked on ahead with jerky, impatient movements and sat down on a wooden seat in the shade.

Beryl followed, and leant against a lime tree beside her.

‘What’s up?’ she asked.

‘It’s mamma,’ said Olive wretchedly.

‘What’s she been doing now?’

Beryl was not particularly interested, but she felt kindly disposed towards her sister and wished to appear sympathetic. She stretched her arms above her head as though to embrace the tree trunk; her flesh seemed luminous in the yellowish-green light that filtered through the leaves. Olive glanced up at her and was unreasonably irritated. Beryl appeared so untroubled and aloof; the queer light made her look like some water-creature, superior and serene. And, after all, it was she who was chiefly responsible for the project of the holiday; if it had not been for her remarks of the night before she, Olive, would never have thought of it.

Sulkily, she remained silent.

‘You’d better tell me about it,’ said Beryl at length.

Olive snatched at a leaf and tore it viciously into shreds.

‘I told mamma that we ought all to go away for a holiday this summer, and she was annoyed.’

Beryl was startled into immediate interest.

‘You told her that? But why?’ She leant forward eagerly as she spoke.

‘Because of what you said last night about our all being miserable and hating one another here. I’ve thought the same thing, and we ought to get away, to wake up.’

‘But not that way,’ said Beryl. ‘Don’t you see that even if mamma agreed and we went for a holiday somewhere it wouldn’t be any good? As long as the four of us are together, things will always be the same.’

‘Well, what are we to do?’ muttered Olive moodily.

‘Go away on our own account,’ Beryl answered. She seemed suddenly to radiate suppressed excitement; her whole body tautened as if in preparation for some physical effort.

Olive was amazed.

‘Leave mamma and papa?’ she whispered, almost in dismay.

‘Yes,’ said Beryl. ‘It’s the only thing to do. If we want to live our own lives, ever, we must get right away. We haven’t a chance as long as we stay here.’

‘But, Beryl, we can’t go away like that and leave everything.’

Olive’s voice was pleading. Her irritation had left her and she felt frightened at what her sister was saying.

Beryl made an impatient movement and strode out into the sunshine.

‘You can do as you like,’ she said contemptuously, ‘but I mean to get away, and the sooner the better.’ She turned as if to go back to the house, but Olive jumped up and caught her arm.

‘They won’t let you go,’ she exclaimed. ‘You won’t be able to get away!’

‘Ronald did,’ Beryl answered in a hard voice.

Ronald was their brother, who had recently gone to a secretarial post in London.

‘Yes, but Ronald’s different. They’d never let you go, because you’re a girl.’

‘All the same, I mean to get away,’ replied Beryl in the same hard voice. ‘I shall talk to papa about it.’

She turned and walked back in the blazing sunshine to the house.

Olive stood still, her mind full of doubts and distresses. She felt tired and overburdened with anxiety. Suddenly the church bell began to ring, and the ugly, raucous clanging, which was such a familiar accompaniment to her life, seemed to bring all her cares to a head. She raised her arm as if to ward off a blow from some unseen hand, but lowered it immediately; and then she, too, went back towards the house.

CHAPTER IX

WHEN Beryl left her sister in the garden she was upheld by a novel kind of exalted excitement which was all the more intense because it had no outward sign. It carried her all the way to the house and to the door of the doctor’s study, but when she had knocked and was actually standing inside the room, it began to evaporate, leaving her rather diffident and alarmed. All the same, her determination did not falter, and her voice was quite firm and steady when she said:

‘I want to talk to you, papa. May I, please?’

‘Very well,’ said the doctor, and he moved his chair a little so that he could see her better.

The study was quite a small room, and it was the only room in the house on which Mrs. Deane had not impressed her gay and cheerful taste. The walls were entirely covered with books, making a sombre dimness which was rather grateful on such a hot day.

There was in the room a desk and a revolving chair, a table, and an easy-chair in which the doctor was now sitting. Everything was scrupulously tidy.

This was the room in which for many years now the doctor had passed the greater part of his life. Three times Mrs. Deane had put flowers on his desk, and on each occasion he had thrown them, vase and all, out of the window, and on none of the occasions had either he or his wife referred to the incident. No one bothered him now with flowers or anything else. He was left alone, as he desired to be, with his books, scarcely seeing his family except at meal-times. From early morning to last thing at night he sat there reading. He read insatiably, endlessly, drugging himself with the printed words. He had taken to reading as some men take to drink, but for him it assumed an even greater urgency. One had the impression that if he were deprived of books his life would automatically cease.

Several times a week heavy parcels of books arrived for him from the libraries; these were taken straight into his study and avidly absorbed. No one else in the house ever saw them. With the doctor, reading took the place of a narcotic. He had begun to use it so after his severe illness had left him wretched and unbalanced; then, as with the years his obsessions grew and he found himself unable to throw off the deadening inertia which had fallen on him, he embraced it more and more.

No one knew what dark grievances, regrets, passions, hatreds, frustrations were hidden behind the forbidding wall of silence which entombed the doctor’s soul. No one speculated about him, for no one was interested. His family, accustomed to his gloomy eccentricity, accepted him as a matter of course. To his wife he was quite simply a disappointment, a burden and a trial; a person towards whom she charitably endeavoured to extend kindness and toleration as to a difficult, ungrateful invalid. To his children he was just ‘papa,’ a mysterious, incalculable being to be placated with a certain amount of attention and avoided as much as possible.

Yet, though no one was aware of it, the silent man who sat all day long reading in his study exerted his influence over the household. The little study was like the heart of the Old Vicarage, from which the dark, heavy, influence emerged, circulating sluggishly through every room.

Beryl, of course, was quite unconscious of any sinister atmosphere as she stood leaning against the table on that warm summer morning. Mechanically her eyes took in the details of the room, with the latest consignment of books stacked in neat piles on the desk. She had not thought out in the least what she was going to say to her father, nor, indeed, was she very sure now why she had come to him at all. Still, as she had come, and was a girl of some determination, she plunged straight into the subject.

‘Papa, I’m too old to hang about at home any longer. I want to go away and do something on my own.’

The doctor showed no sign of surprise. His slow, rather monotonous voice was without feeling.

‘What do you propose to do?’

‘Earn my own living.’

‘I see.’ He relapsed into silence and sat calmly, impassively watching her.

Beryl wished he would not stare at her; it made her self-conscious and uncomfortable. Was he never going to speak?

‘Well?’ she said challengingly, at last.

The doctor made the tiniest interrogatory movement. Evidently he had considered the subject closed. Beryl was exasperated.

‘Haven’t you got anything to say about my going away?’ she asked impatiently.

‘No. Why should I say anything?’ he returned in an even tone.

His indifference was maddening, but Beryl felt a thrill of hope.

‘Then I may go?’ she asked eagerly. ‘You won’t try to stop me?’

‘You will not go,’ he replied in exactly the same tone as before.

The girl gave him a long, dark look. Her face set into its harsh, lowering scowl. He was taunting her, playing with her.

‘Why not?’ she asked sullenly.

‘You will not go,’ repeated the doctor pleasantly.

‘But why not? Why shouldn’t I go? What right have you got to keep me here all my life?’

He did not speak. His face wore what was for him an amiable expression. It was as if the exercising of his power to thwart his daughter had disposed him more kindly towards her.

Beryl suddenly realized the futility of argument. In a flash was revealed to her the absurdity of expecting her father to take her side. All at once she knew with absolute certainty that neither he nor her mother would ever voluntarily allow her to go. She must act alone; but there was Ronald in London who might help her.

Aloud she said:

‘All the same, papa, I mean to go.’

The muscles of the doctor’s mouth contracted in his secret, unpractised smile. He looked almost affectionately at his daughter, then took up his book again. As she went out Beryl thought, ‘I will write to Ronald to-day.’

CHAPTER X

THE next day was Wednesday, and a day on which it had been arranged for a long time that Mrs. Deane and her daughters should go and visit two old ladies, the Misses Newsom, whom they had known for years. These old ladies had lived most of their lives within a short distance of the Old Vicarage, but the expansion of Hannington had driven them out, and they had bought a house at Brackstead, a country village about twelve miles away.

They were almost the only friends whom Mrs. Deane had in the district, and she made rather a point of keeping up the acquaintanceship – particularly as both ladies had a deep admiration for her. They flattered and respected her, and she in her turn was able to treat them to a little good-natured patronage from which she derived much pleasure.

They were to make an early start in order to have as much of the day as possible to spend in the country, and Mrs. Deane had said that she would come down to breakfast with her daughters.

Beryl was surprised when she came downstairs to find the dining-room empty. Neither her mother nor her sister appeared, so she sat down and started her breakfast, wondering why they delayed so long. She had finished when Olive came in alone. She saw at once that something important had happened. Her sister’s face wore a grave, portentous expression which showed her to be the bearer of serious news.

‘What’s happened?’ she asked quickly.

A spasm of alarm shot through her. Could the doctor have told her mother what she had said to him in the study? Her parents never talked privately together; still, if by some amazing chance he should have repeated her words about going away, she knew that her mother would make it the opportunity for a battle royal. Independent as she was, Beryl quailed at the thought of all the scenes and excitements in which she would be forced to take part.

Olive’s reply reassured her.

‘It’s Ronald.’

Beryl’s immediate feeling of relief that she had escaped her own danger gave place to anxiety on her brother’s account. After all, she was depending on him to help her to get away from home. At that very moment, a letter addressed to him in London asking for his co-operation was in the pocket of her dress. She meant to post it on the way to the station. Any important event in his life might very well affect hers.

‘What about Ronald?’ she demanded impatiently.

Olive’s reply seemed interminably delayed. Beryl longed to take her by the shoulders and shake it out of her. At length it came:

‘He’s coming back here – to-day.’

‘For a holiday?’

‘No,’ said Olive slowly. She looked down at her fingers, fidgeting with the fastening of her belt before she added: ‘He’s given up his work.’

‘Do you mean that he’s not going back any more? That he’s thrown up his job?’

Olive nodded. Beryl stared at her, blankly, incredulously.

‘You’re absolutely sure? Certain? There’s no chance of mistake?’

‘Oh, it’s certain, all right,’ said Olive, speaking now with a sort of bitter relish. She enjoyed the impression her news was making. She had never expected her sister to be so horrified, and though she did not suspect the true reason of Beryl’s horror, it gave her a satisfactory sense of power.

‘Mamma’s had a telegram from him,’ she concluded.

Beryl’s face grew dark as her brain forced her to accept the full import of the disaster. It was the very worst thing that could possibly have happened. Ronald, independent and in London, was an invaluable ally; Ronald at the Old Vicarage under the dominion of her parents was worse than useless. The solitary aid on which she had been relying was taken from her. It seemed to give the death-blow to her hopes of escape.

A wave of bitterness and resentment swept her. At that moment she loathed her brother. Why had he decided just then to give up his job and deprive her of her only chance of getting away?

She walked quickly out of the room so that Olive should not see her consternation.

CHAPTER XI

ALONE in her bedroom, Beryl gave way to a paroxysm of rage. The thought of Ronald’s conduct maddened her till it was distorted to the magnitude of a personal betrayal.

‘Damn him, damn him, damn him!’ she muttered aloud, walking distractedly about the room.

She found the letter in her pocket and tore it viciously into tiny fragments. In her desperation she lost all consciousness of self and prowled about the room like a tormented animal.

Suddenly the fierceness of her rage left her. She did not cease to be angry, but her anger lost its unrestrained quality and passed into a smouldering, submerged state which lent her superficial calm. She was aware all at once of several things: that she had been in her room a long time; that her dress was very badly creased and clung in hot sticky patches round her neck and arms; and that her head ached.

Quickly, with curt, controlled movements which contrasted queerly with her recent outburst, she changed her dress and bathed her face in cold water. Her head and eyes throbbed relentlessly, and when she looked at herself in the glass her face seemed like a mask. A queer fancy came to her that she had turned into stone. She felt heavy and insensible, as though she were encased in armour. Only the dull throb of her anger pulsated in accord with the pain of her aching head.

‘I must get out of the house,’ she thought heavily. All her mind was absorbed by the one urgent need of escape. If only for a few hours, she must get away; away from the excitement of her brother’s arrival and all the fuss and discussion attendant upon it. To be present at his return would be intolerable. She could not face him yet.

She put on her hat and left the room, hoping to get out of the house unobserved, but Olive came into the hall just as she got to the front door. Her sister looked at her suspiciously.

‘Hullo, where are you going?’ she asked.

‘Out,’ replied Beryl curtly, and opened the door.

Olive’s curiosity was aroused. All the morning Beryl had been behaving strangely, and Olive was intrigued and eager to find out the cause. She was also excited at the prospect of Ronald’s arrival, and she would have liked to discuss the matter with her sister. In order to do this she was prepared to be propitiatory.

‘It’s a pity our dear brother’s return has upset the expedition to Brackstead,’ she remarked conversationally.

‘I’m going all the same,’ said Beryl harshly.

Until that moment she had not troubled to consider where she was going, but at Olive’s words she suddenly decided that she would go to Brackstead after all. She had got up that morning with the idea of going to Brackstead, so why not go to Brackstead? It was as good a place as anywhere else.

‘You’re going?’ gasped Olive in amazement. ‘But you can’t go. Mamma’s sent a wire already to the Miss Newsoms to say we aren’t coming. She’ll be furious if you go off on your own like this without telling her or anything.’

‘I don’t care. I’m going,’ said Beryl stubbornly, and without waiting any longer she walked out into the hot sunshine and towards the gate.

Olive did not attempt to follow her or speak to her again. She was abashed by that blank and stony quality in her sister’s expression which Beryl had herself noticed in the glass.

CHAPTER XII

BERYL walked out of the Old Vicarage gate, and stepped straight from the bright, carefully-tended seclusion of the enclosed garden into the mean streets of Hannington. Instantly, the Old Vicarage seemed to become unreal. Impossible to believe that it was hidden only a stone’s throw away. She walked on, and in a few moments even the row of dusty trees that marked its boundaries had disappeared behind the ranks of ugly houses. It was as if she had stepped off an island which had been swiftly submerged behind her.

At the station she found that she had half an hour to wait for a train. She did not think of buying a paper, but sat down on a bench and stared, unoccupied, at the noisy station. It was very hot and dusty and full of clanging and hammering noises; in the distance the gleaming rails vanished in a dancing haze. After a few minutes she felt her hard mood begin to soften. Now that she had escaped from the depressing influence of the Old Vicarage, her anger and bitterness were assuaged by a sense of release. The prospect of a whole day’s liberty was like a soothing balm to her inflamed resentment.

By the time the train came in she was quite cheerful.

She got out at Brackstead uplifted by a sense of delicious freedom. Her headache had disappeared. She felt as if she had escaped from prison. She was young, she was happy, she was free. The whole day, the whole delightful summer day, was hers to do as she liked with. Even the thought of the retribution which would mark her return home was powerless to damp her enjoyment of the moment, and she put it resolutely out of her mind.

She walked away from the station in the opposite direction to that in which the Misses Newsom lived. To meet them would be awkward. Beryl was determined that no unlucky accident should mar her day’s happiness.

She passed through the village at a good swinging pace, climbed a long sandy lane and vaulted a stile into a quarry. As she went, she sang and whistled softly to herself. The dark, frowning look vanished from her face. Her whole expression lightened, losing its sullen quality and becoming simpler and more natural. She was satisfied and at ease at last; free from the constraints and enmities that hemmed in her daily life.

An inviting path skirted the quarry. She followed its long, meandering course through a grove of larches, round a steep, grassy hill, down into a mossy ravine brilliant with the green of fresh bracken fronds, across a field, and finally into a small sleepy village street.

Beryl had no idea where she was. She enjoyed the novel sensation of being lost, and carefully avoided looking at the post office in case the name of the village should be written there. She was thirsty, and asked for and received a glass of water from a woman who was hanging out clothes to dry on a thick hedge. Hannington, with its noise and dust and squalor, might have been hundreds of miles away.

‘If only we lived in a place like this!’ thought Beryl longingly. ‘Nothing could ever be so bad here.’

She bought two hard rock-cakes in a little shop and left the village behind her. This time she made for the hills. The path that led to the high ground was steep, stony, and made difficult by briars and overhanging bushes. It took her a long time to climb up, but when she finally reached the top she was not too hot or exhausted for appreciation. In front of her stretched a great open moor covered with bracken and heather and occasional clumps of flowering gorse bushes. There were pine trees here and there, and in the distance a great dark wood made a ridge against the sky. The distant hills were blue with heat haze.

Beryl sat down to rest on the springy tufts of grass with a sigh of satisfaction. It was the supreme moment of the day. For this it was worth while suffering whatever her family might choose to inflict in the way of bullying and abuse on her return.

She ate her two cakes and then lay back with her hands clasped behind her head, conscious of a tremendous sense of well-being induced by the warm sun, the aromatic scent of the moor and its small, soothing noises. A sort of animal contentment enfolded her. Her happiness allowed her to feel well disposed towards everyone, even Ronald. The Old Vicarage and its inhabitants seemed like some remote nightmare upon which she looked back almost with pity.

She was tired by her long walk in the heat, and finally she fell asleep.

When she awoke, the sun had moved considerably nearer to the west. She got up and stretched luxuriously. She did not know the time, and she did not intend to hurry. All the same, she realized that she had come a long way and ought to be getting back towards the railway. The question was, which way should she walk? She had no idea in which direction Brackstead lay; possibly there was some nearer station. Her instinct was against going downhill the way she had come, so she struck out across the moor in the direction of the distant pine-wood.