They all gazed where Sue’s finger pointed.
Myra laughed. “That, my sweet, is a peacock, and this one’s a blasted nuisance. Name of Napoleon, or so the gardener said when we had to get help to stop the bird’s pecking at his reflection on the car door. Conceited, aggressive bird, like all males.”
She gave Harry a sideways look. He responded with an amorous chuckle and ran his finger slowly down her bare arm.
“I’ll snap Napoleon for you,” offered Igor to Sue, “but those iridescent blues and greens have been done to death. Too blatant. Still, they might suit
you,
Duchess. Shall I try them in a cocktail frock?”
Myra shrugged. “Thanks, dear Igor, but I don’t pay two hundred guineas for any cocktail frock, blatant or not, save your genius for the film stars.” She had almost added, “the Americans,” but even Myra’s egotism was penetrated by something odd about Mrs. Taylor and her daughter—their total silence, and on Celia’s small face a strained haunted look. Myra received a singular impression—a memory of one of the crofters’ wives on her father’s estate in Cumberland, a woman Myra’s mother always referred to as “tragic,” though Myra had never known why. Anyway, the woman had drowned herself in the River Irthing, and the ten-year-old Myra had heard snatches of the adults’ pity and horror. Myra disliked uncomfortable memories and dealt with this one briskly.
“The pubs must be open by now!” she said. “Let’s go and get fortified for the journey back to Medfield!”
They grouped themselves as before in the two cars and drove to the nearby village of Ivy Hatch.
By seven o’clock they arrived at Medfield Place. Richard came out of the house to greet them. “Enjoy yourselves?” he asked cordially. He was already dressed for the evening, and looked very handsome.
Myra instantly forgot Harry and gave Richard her lazy smile. “We missed you, darling,” she drawled. “I hope you built a
divine
pigsty!”
“Quite,” he agreed. “A sanctuary for super-sows. Celia, you seem a bit fagged, but I’m afraid the Bent-Warners’ll be here shortly.”
“Oh, yes,” she answered after a minute. “I’ll go and change.” The Bent-Warners? Who were the Bent-Warners? But, one must please Richard. There was danger in displeasing Richard.
Celia turned and mounted the steps into the house, treading very carefully as though uncertain of her balance.
Richard watched her, frowning; when they entered the house he drew Lily into his study. “Anything wrong with Celia?” he asked. “She acts very strange.”
Lily hesitated. “I don’t think so. Not really. She had a kind of fainting spell at Ightham Mote . . . but Dr. Akananda says she’s all right. I thought maybe it was . . .” She stopped, a flush sprang up on the plump, slightly rouged cheeks.
Richard’s gaze hardened. His eyebrows drew together. “You thought it was pregnancy? I assure you it’s not. Nor do I consider that Hindu an adequate medical opinion. If she’s not better when I go up, I’ll get old Foster from Lewes.”
“That’s a good idea,” Lily murmured, dismayed by his tone, and also by his leaving her so abruptly, standing on the study’s faded oriental rug. He acts that way because he loves her, Lily thought, and men can never bear illness. It was stupid to be hurt, or to magnify a fainting spell, stupid to catch some of the confused fear she now felt in her daughter. Lily shut her eyes and strove to clear her thinking. In her many religious questings she had once come across Sir Thomas Browne, and might have summed up her faith by one of his aphorisms, “Life is a pure flame, and we live by an invisible sun within us.” She stood now, trying to
feel
the interior sunlight, the glowing comfort which had never before really failed her—but it did now. And being a woman of action, she mounted the great oaken stairway and knocked on Akananda’s door.
He opened the door instantly and said without surprise, “Oh, Mrs. Taylor. Come in.” He was wearing a white silk dressing gown, and his black hair glistened from a shower. Lily had the impression of extreme order and cleanliness, noting absently that the room seemed very bare. He must have removed the knickknacks, the ashtrays, even the French prints which had hung on the walls. The only ornament was a bowl full of fragrant heliotrope and red roses.
“I just wanted to . . . to ask you . . . well, about Celia . . . and Richard was rude to me. Of course that doesn’t matter . . . but he never was until today, and what
really
made Celia faint? Everything is suddenly so mixed up and queer.” Her blue eyes filled with tears.
Akananda looked at her sadly. But it was not the time to give her what explanations he could. “We’ll both pray,” he said. “You in your way, I in mine. All heart-prayers are heard. All incense rises toward heaven, no matter the perfume it’s composed of.”
“Oh, I believe that,” said Lily, her face clearing. “I guess I’ll go to church tomorrow morning. It always makes me feel better. But you don’t believe in Christianity, do you, Dr. Akananda?”
“Of course I do,” he said laughing. “The Lord Christ was sent from God to show the way, the truth and the life, to the western world. But there’ve been other enlightened Sons of God. Enlightened Beings who redeem mankind. The Lord Krishna was such a one, and the Lord Buddha. None of their basic teachings are incompatible with each other. Because they come from the same source. You understand this intuitively, Mrs. Taylor. And that’s all you need. I’ll gladly accompany you to that charming village church tomorrow. One can more easily touch God in appointed places of worship. Christian cathedrals, Hindu temples, in mosques and synagogues. To many souls beauty of surroundings is helpful, to some essential, and yet for those of a different temperament the spirit may more readily be felt in a bare Quaker Meeting House. It doesn’t matter.”
Lily agreed with him, now that she thought about it; as she instinctively agreed with any optimistic philosophy. She smiled and said, “Yes, you make me feel quite comforted, and I really do know that prayers are answered. I don’t know why I got upset in the study.”
“Prayers . . .” he said gravely, “are always
heard.
They are
answered
according to Divine Law. Prayers are really desires. And desires, good
or
bad, are fulfilled according to their strength. Good desire reaps good action. Evil also has great strength. Violent desires inevitably set the machinery in motion. This earthly plane is run by passions flaming through, and yet always part of the delusions of Maya. As long as there’s violence there will be retribution in this life or succeeding ones. I believe you understand this?”
“Well, yes,” said Lily, “in a way.” Though she wondered what a grave speech about violence had to do with a little fainting spell, or the unexpected sharpness of a son-in-law. “I read somewhere lately,” she said thoughtfully, “that this generation of hippies, the flower children who want to drop out from the whole social structure, the article said they were all reincarnations of those who were killed young in the last war. Do you think that’s possible?”
“Quite possible,” he answered smiling. “At least in part. And their demonstrations against war, hatred and greed, though often misguided, are signs of spiritual progress. However, dear lady, the forces threatening us here in Medfield Place originated further back in the past than the last war and are of singular
personal
intensity.” He might have continued trying to prepare and strengthen her, as he had her daughter, but Lily started.
“Heavens!” she said, “I heard a car on the drive. Must be those Warners. I’ll be late.” She smiled at him and hurried to her room.
Celia’s vagueness and look of strain had vanished when Richard came upstairs to her bedroom saying, “I hear you fainted at Ightham Mote, what happened?”
She was sitting at her dressing table, brushing green iridescent eye shadow on her lids, brown mascara on her already thick lashes. “Nothing special happened,” she said with a cool smile. Far away and closed off by an iron door, something stirred. Hostility to Richard. She still had no memory of Ightham Mote, and very little of the ride home; but she was aware of a shift in feeling.
Richard stared. That chill remoteness, instead of her usual eager warmth. “Well, I’m glad you’re all right again,” he said uncertainly. “You didn’t look it when you got back. I was worried.”
She turned around on the stool. Her gray eyes, now made much longer by the make-up, examined him quietly. “Were you, Richard? Were you really?” She rouged her lips a deep cherry red, which further astonished him. She had always worn the fashionably pale lipsticks. She stood up in her brief lacy slip, went to her closet and took out a simple tangerine chiffon sheath. She dropped it over her head.
“Zip me up, please!” He obeyed clumsily, and when his fingers touched her soft tanned back, she shuddered and drew away.
She brushed her curly dark hair into a high pile on her head, clipped on earrings as big as golf balls, made of masses of crystal chunks. There was a matching heavy crystal bracelet. The crystals had a grayish sparkle, like dull diamonds, and gave her a strange, exotic look.
“I thought you didn’t like wearing heavy stuff like that,” he said frowning.
“Not my ‘image’?” asked Celia sweetly. “Igor brought them as a guest gift. He says they represent a ‘mass of petrified tears.’ I think that rather suits me.”
“Good God, Celia. What a bloody morbid remark! What
is
the matter with you?”
“Nothing at all,” she said, opening a sealed bottle of Shalimar and rubbing some on her wrists and neck. The perfume had been an untouched Christmas present, for she used only the lightest floral scents. “I think,” she added, “that I’ll seduce Harry, be fun to take him from Myra.”
If she had suddenly hit him in the face he could not have been more shocked. Flippancy, though unlike her, might be understood. So might teasing, which had once been part of their love-making when they were close.
Had
been close. His face darkened. Mrs. Taylor had thought Celia pregnant. But he hadn’t touched her in—well—a long time. Why not? Because he hadn’t wanted to. Because sex had suddenly grown repugnant.
You should not have married!
He heard the words in his head.
“The seating arrangements tonight,” said Celia, pulling a stack of gold-rimmed cards towards her on the desk. “I’ll write them fast. Twelve is a nuisance since it won’t come out even. Ah . . .” she added, seeing his face, “you thought I’d forgotten this little detail, didn’t you? Despite my lowly American background I do occasionally remember my social duties. I shall put Harry beside me, and remove Myra.”
Richard swallowed. “If you’re being so childish as to try and make me jealous, the effort’s wasted.”
“Don’t flatter yourself,” she said. Their eyes met for a moment in anger. That behind the anger was fear they neither of them perceived.
They all sat down to dinner at nine. Medfield’s great dining room was always gloomy, the Victorian baronet had papered it with purple brocade, and painted the original oak woodwork a mud brown. He had also put in floral carpeting, snaky tendrils and blossoms of what might have been water lilies once but now also merged into mottled mud brown. It had worn all too well, and Richard did not want it replaced.
Fringed purple plush curtains shut out the evening sunlight. The light of thirty candles on the mahogany table and in sconces wavered over ten ancestral portraits, nine of them garish and ugly. The tenth had been painted by a pupil of Holbein’s in the reign of Queen Elizabeth and represented a Thomas Marsdon, Esquire, in doublet and hose. A dark lean young man, whose delicate hand rested on a greyhound’s head, and whose haunting melancholy eyes always seemed to follow the beholder. There was a slight resemblance to Richard in this portrait which always had made Celia vaguely uneasy, even though it was proof of the long established lineage which thrilled her.
The Bent-Warners who had expanded the house party were an ebullient young couple in their thirties. Pamela was a blonde, so pretty that one forgave her constant chatter about either her children or the theatre. Robin Bent-Warner sat on Celia’s right, and was most amusing. He looked and acted rather like a P. G. Wodehouse character, and capitalized on this. “My job being tourism, ‘Come to Britain and enjoy our quaintness’ you know. I don’t quite sport a monocle, but I hope that’s the general effect.”
Celia laughed. The laugh was high-pitched and shrill. Lily, across the table, scrutinized her daughter anxiously. What had come over the girl? Her cheeks were flushed, her eyes glittered like those extraordinary crystal hunks she wore on her ears and wrist. The tangerine dress clung to her very small breasts as it never had before. Or, could it be the way Celia was holding herself? Arched backwards, almost flaunting. And while she laughed at Robin Bent-Warner, surely her bare shoulder was pressing against Harry’s maroon-covered shoulder, for he looked startled and pleased. Lily put down a forkful of crab ravigote and pushed her plate back. Celia could not be tight, she had taken no cocktails, nor yet even tasted her wine. Then she was coming down with something. Flu made people act unnatural. Some virus, Lily thought, would of course explain the fainting and this change in her. Right after dinner we’ll see if she has a temperature.
Other people were also watching Celia. One was her husband. Richard made no pretense of listening to either Pam’s chatter or Myra’s husky blandishments until the latter flicked his cheek with her finger, saying, “
Must
you glower, my lad? It’s so tiresome. I’ve seen a side of you this weekend I never suspected.”
Richard turned to her slowly and smiled, not with his eyes. “Men are perhaps more complicated than you quite realize, dear Myra.” He raised his glass in a mocking toast.
She laughed. “Well, Harry isn’t complicated anyway. He’s just plain susceptible. I might be glowering a bit myself, seeing that he’s now giving that heavy-lidded bedroom look to your Celia, but actually, I think it’s funny.” And she did. She had all the assurance of beauty, position and experience. An unexpected move in the eternal game was zestful. Imagine that quiet little mouse of a Celia suddenly acting sexy, and looking it, too, Myra thought with critical interest. As though somebody had pressed a switch and a light bulb flared on. That this phenomenon was designed to pique the mysterious Richard, Myra had no doubt, since she was an adept at that ploy herself. And that the ploy seemed to be succeeding, Myra thought admirable. She shrugged mentally, retiring for the moment from the lists. She would deal with Harry later.