Cool Repentance

For Fred and Simone and Laverstock where Jemima Shore was

'And with th
e morning cool repentance came.’

Sir Walter Scott

Contents

1

Spring Flowers

'Glad to be back?'

The questioner sounded urgent but the woman putting spring flowers carefully into a low vase merely smiled in reply, said nothing. The deep window to her left was open and from time to time the wind stirred her hair gently as she worked - hair the same colour as the daffodils at her feet. The flowers too stirred in their glass container, when the breeze touched them. The newspaper on the floor held white narcissi with bright red perianths, as well as trumpet-shaped daffodils, whose colour ranged from pale yellow to ochre, and other delicate flowers of the spring; sometimes the newspaper rustled. Everything was bright. Nothing was still.

The curtains of the drawing-room at Lark Manor also appeared to have been chosen with spring in mind. Hanging thickly to the floor, lined and interlined, they were made of yellow and white chintz, while twin gold mirrors, with brackets containing fresh white candles on either side, further reflected the lightness of the sunshine outside. The carpet, patterned and Victorian-looking, was grass green: it matched the colour of the grass exactly, just as the daffodils, blowing and rippling on either side of the drive to the hills beyond, were perfectly co-ordinated with the yellow and white chintz. Where the hills drew back like curtains to reveal a small but distinct patch of sea, that colour was pale azure. But the sea was not forgotten in the Lark Manor drawing-room: small bright-blue cushions, piped in white, reposed on the big yellow sofas by the fireplace, reminding you pleasantly but inexorably of its part in the view.

'Glad to be back?' the person repeated. 'You must be glad to be back.'

Christabel Cartwright gave another smile, not quite as marked as the first, and lifted her eyebrows. She picked up the garden scissors and shortened the stem of a jonquil. There were spring posies and pots of 
clear blue hyacinths everywhere in the large drawing-room. The flowers which Christabel was arranging stood on
a highly polished Sheraton table
and would form a centrepiece of the room when they were finished.

'Those are pretty, aren't they? A new variety. Or new to Lark. You were surprised to find them out there by the woods when you went picking, weren't you?'

Christabel Cartwright, a jonquil in her hand, hesitated and then put it down. She continued to inspect the glass vase with concentration.

'Perhaps you wouldn't have planted them? Or if you had planted them, perhaps you wouldn't have planted them just there. By the wood, I mean.'

'I think they're beautiful,' Christabel said at last. Her tone was surprisingly deep for a woman, without being at all husky; it had a charming melodious timbre. 'I noticed them at once.'

'It's just the sort of thing you do notice, isn't it? Flowers, and dogs.' The voice sounded increasingly pressing about it all. 'Didn't you go to the corner of the wood, where they buried Mango, at once? Immediately, I mean. Straightaway? Dreadful smelly old dog.' The person questioning Christabel gave a sudden violent shudder of disgust and the person's tone grew rougher. 'I wasn't a bit sorry at what happened to him.' Perhaps there were tears, one tear, in Christabel's eyes. The person continued in a more satisfied calmer tone: 'Didn't you notice that the trug was waiting for you, and the scissors, your special scissors, all bright and clean?'

Christabel, who had picked up the scissors again, put them down. She did so fastidiously. But then all her movements tended to be precise, as well as graceful. With the modulated beauty of her voice, and her careful management of all gestures, however small, it was easy to believe that she was - or had once been - a famous actress. The tear - if indeed it had been a tear - had vanished.

'What was the first thing you did when you came back?' went on the voice, as though Christabel had given it some sort of answer.
^‘
Do you remember? Can you think back? Oh, do try.' There was a pause.

Christabel looked at the floor. The pile of flowers, with their long thick pale-green stems ranged on the newspaper, had diminished. Out of the glass vase their white and yellow heads were now springing airily like the quills of an ornamental hedgehog. Christabel bent her soft golden head which gave the impression of a kind of halo; in her bright-blue clothes, contrasting with the grass-green carpet, with the white flowers in her hand, she might have been part of an Annunciation scene by Rossetti. Then she picked up the corner of her blue skirt and rubbed the half-moon table on which the vase stood; despite all the care taken, the paper laid down, a drop of water had fallen on the polished wood. Christabel eliminated it.

'Did you take a photograph of Lark with you when you went, by the way? Do cast your mind back. You're getting so forgetful these days. I don't want to sound horrible, but perhaps it's your age, your time of life. You would have taken a special one, your favourite angle perhaps, the corner of the wood, Mango's grave, taken it with your own camera. No, wait.
¹
There was a sharp intake of breath and another laugh. But the roughness had also come back into the voice: the person talking to Christabel looked heated, either in anger or triumph.

'No, wait, it wasn't Mango's grave then, was it? You would hardly have known that corner of the wood was going to be Mango's grave. Seeing as that awful old Mango was still alive when you left him, left him to die. Still, you always did love that corner
..
.' The voice trailed away and there was quite a long pause.

'Otherwise,' it resumed briskly, 'there were always the photographs in the press. Newspaper photographs. There were plenty of those.'

Christabel was picking up the last flower from the newspaper. It was a narcissus. She touched her cheek with the fluttery white petal and smelt it. Then she inserted the narcissus deftly into the vase like a bullfighter inserting a banderilla. She stepped back and gazed at her work.

'No one can arrange flowers like you,' said the person thickly: the voice now sounded admiring, almost gloating. 'I've always said that. It's been my firm contention all along.' There was another long pause.

'What a pity it is, a great pity, that you have to die.'

For the first time in the conversation - if such it could be called -Christabel Cartwright gazed directly at her interlocutor. Her eyes were enormous, blue like the distant sea, just a little less vivid than the cushions on the sofas. Round her eyes a network of tiny but distinctly visible lines radiated outwards so regularly that they might have been drawn on to her face; the effect was not unbecoming. Her strongest feature, an indisputably Roman nose, scarcely noticed beneath the radiance of the big eyes.

Otherwise there were no hard lines or planes on her face; everything was soft, some of it a little too soft perhaps - her small chin was almost lost in the folds of the blue and white chiffon scarf which ruffled at her neck. Together the frills and the daffodil hair, waving lightly back from her forehead, gave a slightly eighteenth-century effect: the powdered head of a Gainsborough portrait perhaps. The light powder and delicate patches of pink on her cheeks contributed to this illusion.

Christabel Cartwright, in the sunlight of the Lark Manor drawing-room, no longer looked young: but she did still look oddly girlish. With her pink and white complexion and the pronounced lines on forehead and chin as well as round her eyes, she gave the impression of a much younger woman made up to look old.

Even her figure - although she was quite plump in her soft blue cashmere jersey and skirt - was not exactly middle aged. For her legs remained excellent, really quite astonishingly pretty legs, and in their patterned navy-blue stockings, they commanded attention from the slight heaviness of the hips and bosom which the years had brought.

'No,
really,' the voice went on, 'yo
u
didn't expect to get away with it, did you? Surely not that. Just to say you were sorry, just to
repent.'
The voice put a very nasty emphasis on the word repent as if describing a most unpleasant activity. 'Was it going to be like the song then,
his
song, cool, oh so coo-ool repentance?' The person picked up a long-stemmed flower and pretended to use it as a microphone: then the voice crooned the last four words slowly, mockingly, gloatingly. 'Was that what you thought - that you would come back, come back here to beautiful Lark, and
get away with it,
did you expect that? I can hardly believe it, even of you
...

'So you see, one of these days I shall really have to kill you. Just to teach you a lesson. A lesson you'll never forget: that you can't just get away with things. I shall probably kill you before the spring flowers are over. Then we needn't have all those ghastly wreaths at the funeral. Just cut flowers only. Just what you would have wanted.'

Christabel continued to stare with her lovely eyes wide open; they were pools of pure colour: there was no expression in them at all.

'We need some more flowers, don't we - for the study?' Christabel said at length in her low musical voice; she sounded perfectly nor
mal. 'I
should have thought of it before. I'll go out and pick some more. There's plenty of time before lunch.'

She picked up the tray and walked in her careful graceful way towards the french windows. At the steps she paused and said with the air of one delivering lines at the end of an act: 'Yes, darling, in answer to your original question, I am glad to be back. Of course I'm glad to be back. I've come back to look after everybody. Everybody - including you.'

Then she walked away into the garden.

The person who had been questioning Christabel Cartwright decided to leave her alone for the time being. Let her vanish alone into the greenness, through the trees, before reappearing on the verge of the drive where the daffodils grew. The person realized that Christabel had forgotten her scissors. It was not too late to do something about that. The person decided to think hard about the scissors and what they might do to Christabel when she came back to fetch them.

2

Back to Normal

The enormous bedroom upstairs was still quite dark, although everywhere in the garden at Lark Manor the sunlight was seeking out the grass beneath the tall trees.

Regina Cartwright, guiding her white horse down the path from the stables to the drive, careful of the surrounding flowers, could see that the bedroom curtains were still drawn. She patted the horse's neck, pulled his head up where he had decided to chomp the grass, and said, rather
self-consciously
: 'You see, Lancelot, everything's back to normal.'

The remark was caught by her sister Blanche, emerging or rather slouching out of the open french windows of the kitchen. Blanche was dressed in tight white cotton trousers and a sun-top. She wore one sandal, and held the other, which seemed to be broken, in her hand.

'Really, Rina, you are a baby. Still talking to that horse at your age. And does he answer back, then?'

'
I
may be a year younger than you,' retorted Regina, 'but I used to be in the same form at school, don't forget, so who was the baby then? And by the way Blanche you're far too fat for that sun-top,' she went on more automatically than scornfully. Then her voice changed. Those are my trousers, my white trousers, give them back you thieving little bitch, you've swiped them.'

Blanche starting to scream back in her turn at one and the same time turned and fled in the direction of the kitchen windows. Regina on Lancelot thundered after her, now careless of the paths. The shrubs shivered, and shed flowers as the big white horse passed. A host of fallen red camellias lay to mark his tracks.

Even when she reached the kitchen where Blanche had taken refuge, Regina did not dismount from Lancelot but simply urged the horse in through the french windows. Uneasily he stepped onto the cork floor, 
placing his hooves carefully on the surface as if aware of the heinous nature of the gesture. The animal's enormous shoulders filled the opening making the large airy room, with all its polished wood surfaces, seem quite dark.

It was at this moment that Julian Cartwright, yawning slightly, entered the kitchen by its inner louvred swing doors. He wore a navy-blue silk dressing-gown, piped in white, over blue pyjamas. His dressing-gown was firmly belted in the centre. His dark hair - the same thick dark straight hair which Regina had inherited, but flecked with grey - was neatly combed and his feet shod in dark-red leather slippers. He looked gentlemanly and rather relaxed, despite the early hour, and gave the impression that he would probably always bear himself with similar distinction, whatever the hour of the day.

His words, however, were not relaxed,

'Oh really girls, really Rina, really Blanche, haven't you any consideration at all? You know how Mummy likes to sleep on in the mornings. That noise would wake them in the church at Larminster.'

He did not seem to have noticed the presence of the horse.

'They're awake in the church at Larminster,' pointed out Blanche from her position of advantage behind the polished wood kitchen bar; her tone was extremely reasonable. 'It's Easter Sunday morning. Are you and Mummy going to church?'

'Don't be so silly, Blanche,' Julian Cartwright sounded even more irritated, although whether at the idea of going to church himself or at the idea of anyone going at all, was not quite clear,

'I expect Daddy meant: wake the
dead
at Larminster Church,' suggested Regina from her station on Lancelot at the window, 'Wake Grannie Cartwright and old Mr Nixon and Cynthia Meadows' little sister - that's all the most recently dead we know, and the ancient dead are probably more difficult to rouse. But there could be others from the village—'

'Regina!' Julian Cartwright suddenly shouted in a very loud voice indeed. 'Get that horse out of the kitchen!'

Regina hastily backed Lancelot out of the french windows; he trotted off in the direction of the drive. She shouted something over her shoulder which sounded like 'my trousers', but could not be heard clearly.

It was a few minutes later that Christabel Cartwright appeared at the entrance to the kitchen, swinging the doors open with both hands so that she stood for a moment as if framed. She wore silver mules edged with swansdown and a thin wool kaftan of a very pale blue, embroidered in white. Her hair, which stood up becomingly round her head, looked as if it might have been blown in the wind, rather than combed. She wore no make-up at all and her face had a slight shine on it. Without concealment of powder, she looked very beautiful, if haggard, and slightly dazed.

Blanche's plump face, with its lack of contours, and mass of fine hair surrounding it, as well as its too-strong nose, showed what Christabel had perhaps looked like long ago - but Christabel must always have had beauty. Blanche at the present time had none.

'What a frightful row!' Christabel began. 'You woke me up.'

'It was all Rina's fault,' said Blanche in a voice which suggested sobs might be on the way if its owner were harshly treated.

'No, not you darling, though by the way Blanche, it's far too cold for those kind of clothes today. It's only April, you know. As for that top -well, we'll talk about that later. No, Daddy woke me up. Yes you did, darling. I was having a beautiful sleep at the time. I know I was. I didn't even need to take a second pill. Seriously, I thought the bull had escaped from the top field.' Christabel, who had sounded rather faint when she first spoke, was now coming back quite strongly. She went on: 'Well, as I am awake, shall we all have breakfast together? Blanche darling? Julian?'

Her eyes fell on a breakfast tray already laid on the bar. The service was of bone china, ornamented by sprigs of lily of the valley, with the exception of the coffee pot, which had a dark-green and white ivy pattern. The voile tray-cloth and single napkin were embroidered with lilies of the valley.

'Whatever happened to the coffee pot belonging to this set?' Christabe! demanded quite sharply. There was a silence.

'It got broken,' said Blanche.
'I
think Mrs Blagge broke it.'

'Then I think I'll have the ivy-leaf set for the time being,' Christabel broke off and gave a little laugh. 'Sorry, darling - I'm being quite ridiculous. I know I am. But you know how I feel about things that don't match. I just can't help it.'

Julian put his arm round his wife's shoulders and kissed her cheek.

'Goodness, you do look pretty this morning,' he said. 'Doesn't she, Blanche? Eighteen, going on nineteen. Blanche's age exactly. And Blanche is looking pretty good this morning too.'

'She isn't eighteen though', said Blanche in a sulky voice. 'She's forty-seven. At least that's what it says in
Who's Who
in the Theatre
and Ketty says actresses always lie about their age. You're only forty-three, Daddy. You're nearer to eighteen than Mummy is.'

'If you're going to be in that kind of mood, I shall feel nearer a hundred,' said Julian. 'Cut it out, Blanche, will you.'

'I really am forty-seven, darling.' In contrast to Julian, Christabel spoke in a pleasant rather amused voice. 'Exactly four years and five days older than Daddy, if you want absolute accuracy.'

'Look darling,' Julian gave Christabel another hug, 'don't worry about the lily-of-the-valley coffee pot. I'll order another one from Goode's or wherever it came from.
1
should have thought about it before.'

'We did think about it!' exclaimed Blanche, sulkiness suddenly abandoned. 'Ketty and I thought about it. We discussed it for hours. Whether you would want your own tray without the proper coffee pot or another set, all matching, and Ketty thought—'

'A silver coffee pot might have been the answer.' But Christabel's attention had manifestly wandered. 'Where
is
Ketty?' she enquired, that sharper note returning to her voice. 'Isn't she supposed to look after breakfast on Sunday mornings when the Blagges are off? What's wrong with her?'

'Easter Sunday. That's what's wrong with her. Ketty's at her own church in Larminster praying for us all. Especially for
you,
Mummy. She says God never loses sight of any one of us sinners, just like the newspapers. Those were her exact words. She's terribly religious these days; I think it's something to do with the new Pope and the fact he was once an actor. She made something called a novena for you, Mummy. To be forgiven.'

'Are we or are we not going to have breakfast?' Julian Cartwright took the clean folded white handkerchief out of the breast pocket of his dressing-gown and blew his nose loudly. 'And if so, is there the faintest chance of a man having a cup of coffee and perhaps even some decent bacon and eggs before it's time for lunch? Are you, Blanche, going to make it, or am I?'

'I'll make it, darling,' cried Christabel, smoothing her hair back with one long-lingered hand. The nails were long, too, and unpainted, but her hands in general, unlike her face, were the hands of a middle-aged woman. 'Besides, Blanche is going to change into something warmer and more suitable. Yes you are, poppet, this minute and no argument.'

Christabel was already opening the fridge and getting out eggs and limp rashers of raw bacon. She certainly gave the air of knowing where everything was. Even the three attempts she made to find the jar of coffee were done so purposefully that she might have been performing some agreed ritual of opening and shutting cupboard doors.

'This reminds me of Sunday mornings in London,' she said over her shoulder to Julian. 'We just need some Mozart.' Her voice was tender, 'When I was in that long season at the Gray Theatre. We never used to come down to Lark on Sundays then; too exhausting. The girls had to go to school on Monday morning. Ketty went to church; my contribution to church-going was playing the Coronation Mass, and cooking us brunch. Do you remember?'

'I rather think that
I
used to cook it more often than not.' But Julian's voice too was tender. 'You used to sleep so late, the girls and I would have starved if we had waited for you to put one dainty toe out of bed - and shall I put some Mozart on for you now? Have it wafted in from the drawing-room?'

Christabel set down the frying-pan and faced him: in her high-heeled mules she still looked up at him.

'Happy?' she asked in her low musical voice. 'Happy now?' Her wide blue unblinking eyes met his; he had the illusion that there was moisture in them or perhaps it was in his own. He could smell the strong lily-of-the-valley scent she always used.

There's no one like you, Christabel.' His voice, unlike hers, was husky. 'You know that.' With one hand Julian grasped the back of his wife's head and pressed his lips hard to hers. His other hand went down towards her breast beneath its thin wool covering.

Christabel stayed quite still for an instant without responding or resisting. Then she gave a minute but quite unmistakable shudder of disgust.

'I'm sorry,' she said very low. This time there were definitely tears. Their eyes met again. They were both breathing quite heavily.

'Back to normal then,' Julian continued to hold her by her head. After a moment Christabel kissed him on the cheek.

'Hello, young lovers!' said a voice from the french windows. 'Happy Easter anyway to the two of you - but you look happy enough already. I've brought some eggs for the girls by the way - we've been having an Easter egg hunt here for the last few years, Christabel, and I thought you wouldn't mind if we continued the tradition.' An extremely tall man, at least six foot five or six, stood there, bending his head much as the horse had done.

'Gregory!' exclaimed Christabel, patting her hair. 'What an unearthly hour to come calling.' The gesture was not coquettish; and she made no attempt to sound pleased. 'And aren't the girls getting a little old for Easter eggs?' she added.

'Unearthly? I've just dropped Mrs Blagge back at the cottage after Mass. Miss Kettering drove herself but refused to drop Mrs B., so I suppose they've had one of their religious rows about the new doctrines again. Now to the Easter egg hunt, and then I'll be away back to the woods - no one is too old for Easter eggs by the way, not me, not Julian, not even you, Christabel.'

Christabel raised her eyebrows and smiled; she resumed her attention to the frying-pan.

'Look, old man, why don't you stay to lunch?' said Julian after a pause. 'After the hunt. You'd be a great help to us, as a matter of fact. You see we've got some people from television coming down; strange as it may seem, they're coming all this way for lunch. And frankly we're dreading it. But if you were here, with all your experience of television—'

'Yes, why don't you, Gregory darling?' added Christabel sweetly from the stove. 'Quite apart from television, you're so good at talking to everyone about everything, and finding out things—'

Gregory Rowan sounded, for the first time since his arrival, uncertain. 'I thought you'd said goodbye to all that kind of thing for good, Christabel. Or is it a retrospective?
Christabel Hcrrick Remembers? My Twenty Years a Star? No Regrets Herrick?
Something along those lines perhaps?'