1
By nightfall the headlines would be reporting devastation.
It was simply that the sky, on a shadeless day, suddenly lowered itself like an awning. Purple silence petrified the limbs of trees and stood crops upright in the fields like hair on end. Whatever there was of fresh white paint sprang out from downs or dunes, or lacerated a roadside with a streak of fencing. This occurred shortly after midday on a summer Monday in the south of England.
As late as the following morning, small paragraphs would even appear in newspapers having space to fill due to a hiatus in elections, fiendish crimes, and the Korean War-unroofed houses and stripped orchards being given in numbers and acreage; with only lastly, briefly, the mention of a body where a bridge was swept away.
That noon a man was walking slowly into a landscape under a branch of lightning. A frame of almost human expectancy defined this scene, which he entered from the left-hand corner. Every nerve-for even barns and wheelbarrows and things without tissue developed nerve in those moments-waited, fatalistic. Only he, kinetic, advanced against circumstances to a single destination.
Farmers moved methodically, leading animals or propelling machines to shelter. Beyond the horizon, provincial streets went frantic at the first drops. Wipers wagged on windshields, and people also charged and dodged to and fro, to and fro. Packages were bunged inside coat-fronts, newspapers upturned on new perms. A dog raced through a cathedral. Children ran in thrilling from playgrounds, windows thudded, doors slammed. Housewives were rushing, and crying out, "My washing." And a sudden stripe of light split earth from sky.
It was then that the walking man arrived at the path, and stood. Above him, four old houses were set wide apart on a high curve of hill: holding down, like placed weights, the billowing land. He had been given their names in the village-the names, not of masters but of dwellings. Brick walls were threadbare, tawny; one showed a side of ivy, green as an upturned lawn. The farthest and largest house stood forward from a wood, claiming supremacy.
The man observed from a decisive turn of his own stillness, as if on some great clock he saw the hand fall to the next stroke before his eyes. He turned off the road on the first wave of rain and gale, put his suitcase down, took off his soaked cap, beat it on his side, and stuffed it in a pocket. His hair sprang up like the crops between the gusts and, like them, was quickly, wetly flat. He climbed the hill in the rain, steadily and with no air of wretchedness. Once he paused to look back at the valley-or vale, it might be sweetly, tamely called. Peal on peal of thunder swept it, up and down, until the pliant crops themselves reverberated. On an opposing hill there was a castle-grey, tumid, turreted, and not unsuited to the storm.
Approaching the farthest house, he paused again, looking with as much plain interest as if the weather had been fine. Water ran in his collar from his tilted head. The house darkened, but stood firm. Through two or three centuries of minor additions, Peverel had held to scale and congruity like a principle; consistent except for one enlarged high window-an intentional, frivolous defect like the piercing of an ear for an ornament.
Mud was streaming over gravel and beaten clay. Ledges of clipped privet were shaking all over. The man waded up into the entrance of the house as if from the sea, and pulled a bell. Quick footsteps were perhaps his own heartbeats. The woman who opened the door was old, he thought. Had he himself been a few years older, he might have promoted her to middle age. Age was coiled in smooth grey hair, was explicit in skin too delicate for youth and in a tall if unmartial stance. She drew him in over the paving of what had been a fine hall. Her eyes were enlarged and faded with discovering what, by common human agreement, is better undivulged.
How calmly they exchanged names, ignoring the surf at his back and his saturated clothes. The cheap suitcase oozed orange on the black and white floor while Ted Tice took off his raincoat and hung it on a stand, as directed. A smell of wet wool, of socks and sweat was pungently released in the coldly soaped and well-waxed void.
All these slow matters had taken seconds, and in that time it could be seen, too, that the hall was circular, that a bowl of roses stood on a table beside a usual newspaper, beneath a dark picture framed in gold. Under the curve of a stair, a door was open on a corridor of Persian runner. And above, on the arc of stairs, there was a young woman, standing still.
Tice looked up to her. It would have been unnatural not to. He looked up from his wet shoes and his wet smell and his orange blotch of cheap luggage. And she looked down, high and dry. He had an impression of her body in its full dimensions-as if he had passed at her back and seen her strong spine, the black hair parting on the prominent cord of the nape, the fragile crease behind the knee. Her face was in shadow. In any case it would have been too pat, too perfect, if she had been seen to be beautiful.
"I was looking for Tom," she said, and went away.
Ted Tice took up his dissolving suitcase: a new arrival who must keep his counsel among initiates. Who would soon himself look for Tom, or know why others sought him.
"My husband," said Charmian Thrale, "is so much better, and will be down to lunch." Ted Tice was to work with Professor Sefton Thrale, who was so much better, for the months of July and August. In the meantime he was being led by Mrs. Thrale down the Persian carpet, past old photographs and a framed letter with a gold crest, and a series of engravings of the ports of Britain. Now Mrs. Thrale would say, "This is your room," and he would be alone.
She remained in the doorway as he crossed his new floor to put the suitcase where it would do least harm.
"Those double doors at the end of the passage, that is the room where we sit. If you wait in there when you're ready, one of the girls will look in." As if he minded being left when, at all times, he welcomed it.
She also mentioned the bathroom. She then said she would go and set the table. Eventually he would learn this too-to speak confidently and leave a room.
In the single low window there were blurred, divergent shrubs and a glimpse of wet palings-all aslant, truncated in the window-frame, like an inept photograph. Scabs of blackout paint remained on the glass. The bedroom was plain, and might have done once for an upper servant. Tice thought these words, upper servant, without knowing what they had signified in their time. He had been sent here to help an eminent, elderly, ailing scientist write an opinion on the site of a new telescope, and for all he knew might be himself an upper servant. He was young and poor and had the highest references-like a governess in an old story, who marries into the noble family.
He spread crumpled clothes about the room and rummaged for a comb. Even his wet hair gave off an auburn smell. On the table where he put his books there was an inkstand made of brass and porcelain, and two wooden pens. He hummed as he sat changing his shoes, occasionally substituting for the hum the words of an old song:
"Blow the wind southerly, southerly, southerly,
Blow the wind south o'er the bonny blue sea."
Then he put his fist to his mouth and thought, and stared as if he would only slowly believe.
The room with double doors was as cold as the passage. Chairs of ugly comfort, a rigid, delicate sofa, books elderly rather than old, more flowers. The wind shuddering in a frozen chimney, the storm a waterfall on the bay window. Ted Tice sat in one of the elephantine, shabby chairs and rested his head on the stale extra piece of plush; rapt with newness and impending newness. The room would have been a study at one time, or a morning-room-the expression Òmorning-roomÓ belonging to the same vague literary category as upper servant. Somewhere there was a larger room, blatantly unheatable, closed up for the duration. The wartime phrase came readily, even in peace; even as you wondered, the duration of what.
In the fireplace, below the vacant grate, there was a row of aligned fragments, five or six of them, of toasted bread smeared with a dark paste and dusted with ashes.
He was used to cold and sat as much at his ease as if the room had been warm. He could not physically show such unconcern in the presence of others because the full-grown version of his body was not quite familiar to him; but was easy in his mind, swift and unhurried. From all indications, his body had expected some other inhabitant. He supposed the two would be reconciled in time-as he would know, in time, that the smeared toast was there to poison mice, and that Tom was the cat.
A book beside his chair was closed on a pencil that marked a place. He took it up and read the spine: "Zanoni. A Novel By The Right Honourable Lord Lytton." Such a book might well have appeared on the shelves of such a room. That it should be out, open, and read was more improbable.
For an instant he thought it was the same girl who now came in, the girl from the stairs. The reason for this was that they were sisters, although the present one was fair, and shorter.
She said, "I am Grace Bell."
The young man stood and again gave his hand and name. She had a very good new woollen dress, colour of roses. They both knew-it was impossible not to-that he saw her beautiful. But both, because of youth, feigned ignorance of this or any other beauty.
"You've been left in here a long time."
"I didn't realize." Though no fault on his part was involved.
"The lights have gone out. I was sent to bring you."
He had been sitting there in the dark because of the storm.
"It's this way." She spoke in brief announcements. Assurance showed she had been pretty since childhood. "What a lovely little girl"; and then: "Grace is turning into-turning out-quite a beauty." Beauty had turned inward, outward. There had also been classes in deportment.
He admired her ability to walk smoothly with him at her heels. She was not at all plump but gave a soft impression, yielding. The dress was a rarity to him-the cloth, the cut. It was the first time Ted Tice had noticed the way a dress was made, though he had winced often enough for a brave showing in the clothes of the poor.
The rose-red dress had come from Canada by surface mail, having been posted by the son of this household, a government official to whom Grace Bell was engaged. He was bringing another dress to her when he returned to Britain from the Ottawa conference, and after that they would be married.
A little curled chrysanthemum of a dog was in heaven at her approach. "Grasper, Grasper." The dog jumped up and down, speechless. Someone was shaking a bell. Grace was opening a door. And the lights went up by themselves, as on a stage.
2
You could see the two sisters had passed through some unequivocal experience, which, though it might not interest others, had formed and indissolubly bound them. It was the gravity with which they sat, ate, talked and, you could practically say, laughed. It was whatever they exchanged, not looking at one another but making a pair. It was their eyes resting on you, or on the wall or table, weighing up the situation from a distance of events and feelings: their eyes, which had the same darkness if not the same distinction.
Because they were alike in feature, the contrast in colouring was remarkable. It was not only that one was dark and one fair, but that the one called Caro should have hair so very black, so straight, heavy and Oriental in coarse texture. Grace was for this reason seen to be fairer than she was-as she was judged the lighter, the easier, for the strength of Caro. People exaggerated the fairness, to make things neat: dark she, fair she.
Wearing a cardigan that had perhaps been blue, Caro was pouring water from a jug. You deferred to her future beauty, taking it on trust. In looks, Caro was as yet unfinished, lacking some revelation that might simply be her own awareness; unlike Grace, who was completed if not complete. Grace was smiling and handing corned beef and potatoes, innocently rehearsing a time when the meat and vegetables would be hers indeed. Ted Tice saw then that on her left hand she wore a ring set with diamonds. But had been loyal to Caro before he noticed this.
Caro did not necessarily belong here: Caro would decide at which table she belonged. She was young to have grasped the need for this. Her other discovery of consequence was also not original: that the truth has a life of its own. It was perhaps in such directions that her energies had flowed, leaving her looks to follow as they might.
What she had read had evidently made her impatient of the prime discrepancy-between man as he might be, and as he was. She would impose her crude belief-that there could be heroism, excellence-on herself and others, until they, or she, gave in. Exceptions could arise, rare and implausible, to suggest she might be right. To those exceptions she would give her whole devotion. It was apparently for them she was reserving her humility.
Some of this might be read in her appearance. Having not yet begun to act, she could indulge a theory. At the same time, her lips were parted, tender, impressible, as they might have been in sleep.
They had not yet addressed each other at table, the girls and the young man. He, with impenetrable simplicity, was listening to the old astronomer at the head of the table, the eminent scientist. Your eminence: a jutting crag on which a collar and tie, and spectacles, had been accurately placed. Together, the youth and the old man were to read the world's horoscope. Engrossed in listening, as was only suitable, Ted Tice nevertheless quickly learned that the two girls were from Australia, that Caro was staying here while awaiting a government job in London, and that the son at the Ottawa conference had the name of Christian.
