Gaudy Night Page 7

  ‘Though of course,’ Harriet reminded. herself, ‘a woman may achieve greatness, or at any rate great renown, by merely being a wonderful wife and mother, like the mother of the Gracchi; whereas the men who have achieved great renown by being devoted husbands and fathers might be counted on the fingers of one hand. Charles I was an unfortunate king, but an admirable family man. Still, you would scarcely class him as one of the world’s great fathers, and his children were not an unqualified success. Dear me! Being a great father is either a very difficult or a very sadly unrewarded profession. Wherever you find a great man, you will find a great mother or a great wife standing behind him – or so they used to say. It would be interesting to know how many great women have had great fathers and husbands behind them. An interesting thesis for research. Elizabeth Barrett? Well, she had a great husband, but he was great in his own right, so to speak – and Mr. Barrett was not exactly—The Brontes? Well, hardly. Queen Elizabeth? She had a remarkable father, but devoted helpfulness towards his daughters was scarcely his leading characteristic. And she was so wrong-headed as to have no husband. Queen Victoria? You might make a good deal out of poor Albert, but you couldn’t do much with the Duke of Kent.’

  Somebody passed through the Hall behind her; it was Miss Hillyard. With a mischievous determination to get some response out of this antagonistic personality, Harriet laid before her the new idea for a historical thesis.

  ‘You have forgotten physical achievements,’ said Miss Hillyard. ‘I believe many female singers, dancers, Channel swimmers and tennis stars owe everything to their devoted fathers.’

  ‘But the fathers are not famous.’

  ‘No. Self-effacing men are not popular with either sex. I doubt whether even your literary skill would gain recognition for their virtues. Particularly if you select your women for their intellectual qualities. It will be a short thesis in that case.’

  ‘Gravelled for lack of matter?’

  ‘I’m afraid so. Do you know any man who sincerely admires a woman for her brains?’

  ‘Well,’ said Harriet, ‘certainly not many.’

  ‘You may think you know one,’ said Miss Hillyard with a bitter emphasis. ‘Most of us think at some time or other that we know one. But the man usually has some other little axe to grind.’

  ‘Very likely,’ said Harriet. ‘You don’t seem to have a very high opinion of men – of the male character, I mean, as such.’

  ‘No,’ said Miss Hillyard, ‘not very high. But they have an admirable talent for imposing their point of view on society in general. All women are sensitive to male criticism. Men are not sensitive to female criticism. They despise the critics.’

  ‘Do you, personally, despise male criticism?’

  ‘Heartily,’ said Miss Hillyard. ‘But it does damage. Look at this University. All the men have been amazingly kind and sympathetic about the Women’s Colleges. Certainly. But you won’t find them appointing women to big University posts. That would never do. The women might perform their work in a way beyond criticism. But they are quite pleased to see us playing with our little toys.’

  ‘Excellent fathers and family men,’ murmured Harriet.

  ‘In that sense – yes,’ said Miss Hillyard, and laughed rather unpleasantly.

  Something funny here, thought Harriet. A personal history, probably. How difficult it was not to be embittered by personal experience. She went down to the J.C.R. and examined herself in the mirror. There had been a look in the History Tutor’s eyes that she did not wish to discover in her own.

  Sunday evening prayers. The College was undenominational, but some form of Christian worship was held to be essential to community life. The chapel, with its stained glass windows, plain oak panelling and unadorned Communion table was a kind of Lowest Common Multiple of all sects and creeds. Harriet, making her way towards it, remembered that she had not seen her gown since the previous afternoon, when the Dean had taken it to the S.C.R. Not liking to penetrate uninvited into that Holy of Holies, she went in search of Miss Martin, who had, it appeared, taken both gowns together to her own room. Harriet wriggled into the gown, one fluttering sleeve of which struck an adjacent table with a loud bang.

  ‘Mercy!’ said the Dean, ‘what’s that?’

  ‘My cigarette-case,’ said Harriet. ‘I thought I’d lost it. I remember now. I hadn’t a pocket yesterday, so I shoved it into the sleeve of my gown. After all, that’s what these sleeves are for, aren’t they?’

  ‘Oh, my dear! Mine are always a perfect dirty-clothes bag by the end of term. When I have absolutely no clean handkerchiefs left in the drawer, my scout turns out my gown sleeves. My best collection worked out at twenty-two – but then I’d had a bad cold one week. Dreadful insanitary garments. Here’s your cap. Never mind taking your hood – you can come back here for it. What have you been doing to-day? – I’ve scarcely seen you.’

  Again Harriet felt an impulse to mention the unpleasant drawing, but again she refrained. She felt she was getting rather unbalanced about it. Why think about it at all? She mentioned her conversation with Miss Hillyard.

  ‘Lor’!’ said the Dean. ‘That’s Miss Hillyard’s hobby-horse. Rubbidge, as Mrs. Gamp would say. Of course men don’t like having their poor little noses put out of joint – who does? I think it’s perfectly noble of them to let us come trampling over their University at all, bless their hearts. They’ve been used to being lords and masters for hundreds of years and they want a bit of time to get used to the change. Why, it takes a man months and months to reconcile himself to a new hat. And just when you’re preparing to send it to the jumble sale, he says, “That’s rather a nice hat you’ve got on, where did you get it?” And you say, “My dear Henry, it’s the one I had last year and you said made me look like an organ-grinder’s monkey.” My brother-in-law says that every time and it does make my sister so wild.’

  They mounted the steps of the chapel.

  It had not, after all, been so bad. Definitely not so bad as one had expected. Though it was melancholy to find that one had grown out of Mary Stokes, and a little tiresome, in a way, that Mary Stokes refused to recognise the fact. Harriet had long ago discovered that one could not like people any the better, merely because they were ill, or dead – still less because one had once liked them very much. Some happy souls could go through life without making this discovery, and they were the men and women who were called ‘sincere.’ Still, there remained old friends whom one was glad to meet again, like the Dean and Phœbe Tucker. And really, everybody had been quite extraordinarily decent. Rather inquisitive and silly about ‘the man Wimsey,’ some of them, but no doubt with the best intentions. Miss Hillyard might be an exception, but there had always been something a little twisted and uncomfortable about Miss Hillyard.

  As the car wound its way over the Chilterns, Harriet grinned to herself, thinking of her parting conversation with the Dean and Bursar.

  ‘Be sure and write us a new book soon. And remember, if ever we get a mystery at Shrewsbury we shall call upon you to come and disentangle it.’

  ‘All right,’ said Harriet. ‘When you find a mangled corpse in the buttery, send me a wire – and be sure to let Miss Barton view the body, and then she won’t so much mind my hauling the murderess off to justice.’

  And suppose they actually did find a bloody corpse in the buttery, how surprised they would all be. The glory of a college was that nothing drastic ever happened in it. The most frightful thing that was ever likely to happen was that an undergraduate should ‘take the wrong turning.’ The purloining of a parcel or two by a porter had been enough to throw the whole Senior Common Room into consternation. Bless their hearts, how refreshing and soothing and good they all were, walking beneath their ancient beeches and meditating on and the finance of Queen Elizabeth.

  ‘I’ve broken the ice,’ she? said aloud, ‘and the water wasn’t so cold after all. I shall go back, from time to time. I shall go back.’

  She picked out a pleasant pub for lunch
and ate with a good appetite. Then she remembered that her cigarette-case was still in her gown. She had brought the garment in with her on her arm, and, thrusting her hand down to the bottom of the long sleeve, she extracted the case. A piece of paper came out with it – an ordinary sheet of scribbling paper folded into four. She frowned at a disagreeable memory as she unfolded it.

  There was a message pasted across it, made up of letters cut apparently from the headlines of a newspaper.

  YOU DIRTY MURDERESS. AREN’T YOU ASHAMED TO SHOW YOUR FACE?

  ‘Hell!’ said Harriet. ‘Oxford, thou too?’ She sat very still for a few moments. Then she struck a match and set light to the paper. It burned briskly, till she was forced to drop it upon her plate. Even then the letters showed grey upon the crackling blackness, until she pounded their spectral shapes to powder with the back of a spoon.

  4

  Thou canst not, Love, disgrace me half so ill,

  To set a form upon desirèd change,

  As I’ll myself disgrace: knowing thy will,

  I will acquaintance strangle and look strange,

  Be absent from thy walks, and in my tongue

  Thy sweet beloved name no more shall dwell,

  Lest I, too much profane, should do it wrong

  And haply of our old acquaintance tell.

  WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

  There are incidents in one’s life which, through some haphazard coincidence of time and mood, acquire a symbolic value. Harriet’s attendance at the Shrewsbury Gaudy was of this kind. In spite of minor incongruities and absurdities, it had shown itself to have one definite significance; it had opened up to her the vision of an old desire, long obscured by a forest of irrelevant fancies, but now standing up unmistakable, like a tower set on a hill. Two phrases rang in her ears: the Dean’s, ‘It’s the work you’re doing that really counts’; and that one melancholy lament for eternal loss: ‘Once, I was a scholar.’

  ‘Time is,’ quoth the Brazen Head; ‘time was; time is past.’ Philip Boyes was dead; and the nightmares that had haunted the ghastly midnight of his passing were gradually fading away. Clinging on, by blind instinct, to the job that had to be done, she had fought her way back to an insecure stability. Was it too late to achieve wholly the clear eye and the untroubled mind? And what, in that case, was she to do with one powerful fetter which still tied her ineluctably to the bitter past? What about Peter Wimsey?

  During the past three years, their relations had been peculiar. Immediately after the horrible business that they had investigated together at Wilvercombe, Harriet – feeling that something must be done to ease a situation which was fast becoming intolerable – had carried out a long-cherished scheme, now at last made practicable by her increasing reputation and income as a writer. Taking a woman friend with her as companion and secretary, she had left England, and travelled slowly about Europe, staying now here, now there, as fancy dictated or a good background presented itself for a story. Financially the trip had been a success. She had gathered material for two full-length novels, the scenes laid respectively in Madrid and Carcassonne, and written a series of short stories dealing with detective adventures in Hitlerite Berlin, and also a number of travel articles; thus more than replenishing the treasury. Before her departure, she had asked Wimsey not to write. He had taken the prohibition with unexpected meekness.

  ‘I see. Very well. Vade in pacem. If you ever want me, you will find the Old Firm at the usual stand.’

  She had occasionally seen his name in the English papers, and that was all. At the beginning of the following June, she had returned home, feeling that, after so long a break, there should be little difficulty in bringing their relationship to a cool and friendly close. By this time he was probably feeling as much settled and relieved as she was. As soon as she got back to London, she moved to a new flat in Mecklenburg Square, and settled down to work at the Carcassonne novel.

  A trifling incident, soon after her return, gave her the opportunity to test her own reactions. She went down to Ascot, in company with a witty young woman writer and her barrister husband – partly for fun and partly because she wanted to get local colour for a short story, in which an unhappy victim was due to fall suddenly dead in the Royal Enclosure, just at the exciting moment when all eyes were glued upon the finish of a race. Scanning those sacred precincts, therefore, from without the pale, Harriet became aware that the local colour included a pair of slim shoulders tailored to swooning-point and carrying a well-known parrot profile, thrown into prominence by the acute backward slant of a pale-grey topper. A froth of summer hats billowed about this apparition, so that it resembled a slightly grotesque but expensive orchid in a bouquet of roses. From the expressions of the parties, Harriet gathered that the summer hats were picking long-priced and impossible outsiders, and that the topper was receiving their instructions with an amusement amounting to hilarity. At any rate, his attention was well occupied.

  ‘Excellent,’ thought Harriet; ‘nothing to trouble about there.’ She came home rejoicing in the exceptional tranquillity of her own spirits. Three days later, while reading in the morning paper that among the guests at a literary luncheon-party had been seen ‘Miss Harriet Vane, the well-known detective authoress,’ she was interrupted by the telephone. A familiar voice said, with a curious huskiness and uncertainty:

  ‘Miss Harriet Vane? . . . Is that you, Harriet? I saw you were back. Will you dine with me one evening?’

  There were several possible answers; among them, the repressive and disconcerting ‘Who is that speaking, please?’ Being unprepared and naturally honest, Harriet feebly replied:

  ‘Oh, thank you, Peter. But I don’t know whether . . .’

  ‘What?’ said the voice, with a hint of mockery. ‘Every night booked from now till the coming of the Coqcigrues?’

  ‘Of course not,’ said Harriet, not at all willing to pose as the swollen-headed and much-run-after celebrity.

  ‘Then say when.’

  ‘I’m free to-night,’ said Harriet, thinking that the shortness of the notice might force him to plead a previous engagement.

  ‘Admirable,’ said he. ‘So am I. We will taste the sweets of freedom. By the way, you have changed your telephone number.’

  ‘Yes; I’ve got a new flat.’

  ‘Shall I call for you? Or will you meet me at Ferrara’s at 7 o’clock?’

  ‘At Ferrara’s?’

  ‘Yes. Seven o’clock, if that’s not too early, Then we can go on to a show, if you care about it. Till this evening, then. Thank you.’

  He hung up the receiver before she had time to protest. Ferrara’s was not the place she would have chosen. It was both fashionable and conspicuous. Everybody who could get there, went there; but its charges were so high that, for the present at least, it could afford not to be crowded. That meant that if you went there you were seen. If one intended to break off a connection with anyone, it was perhaps not the best opening move to afficher one’s self with him at Ferrara’s.

  Oddly enough, this would be the first time she had dined in the West End with Peter Wimsey. During the first year or so after her trial, she had not wanted to appear anywhere, even had she then been able to afford the frocks to appear in. In those days, he had taken her to the quieter and better restaurants in Soho, or, more often, carried her off, sulky and rebellious, in the car to such roadside inns as kept reliable cooks. She had been too listless to refuse these outings, which had probably done something to keep her from brooding, even though her host’s imperturbable cheerfulness had often been repaid only with bitter distressful words, Looking back, she was as much amazed by his patience as fretted by his persistence.

  He received her at Ferrara’s with the old, quick, sidelong smile and ready speech, but with a more formal courtesy than she remembered in him. He listened with interest, and indeed with eagerness, to the tale of her journeyings abroad; and she found (as was to be expected) that the map of Europe was familiar ground to him. He contributed a few amusing
incidents from his own experience, and added some well-informed comments on the conditions of life in modern Germany. She was surprised to find him so closely acquainted with the ins-and-outs of international politics, for she had not credited him with any great interest in public affairs. She found herself arguing passionately with him about the prospects of the Ottawa Conference, of which he appeared to entertain no very great hopes; and by the time they got to the coffee she was so eager to disabuse his mind of some perverse opinions about Disarmament that she had quite forgotten with what intentions (if any) she had come to meet him. In the theatre she contrived to remind herself from time to time that something decisive ought to be said; but the conversational atmosphere remained so cool that it was difficult to introduce the new subject.

  The play being over, he put her into a taxi, asked what address he should give the driver, requested formal permission to see her home and took his seat beside her. This, to be sure, was the moment; but he was babbling pleasantly about the Georgian architecture of London. It was only as they were running along Guildford Street that he forestalled her by saying (after a pause, during which she had been making up her mind to take the plunge):