Returning to the rosewood sofa had a feeling of homecoming. She sat down and experimented with the alarm clock, hastily snapping it off as soon as she had proved it worked. Only a few minutes before, she had longed to draw attention to her plight; now she was determined not to. She used her torch very guardedly and, after finding her biscuits and chocolate, snapped it off. The windows along the gallery seemed lighter now; she guessed that a moon had risen, though no moonlight shone in on her.
She could dimly see the gallery railing. It reminded her of the gallery at Dome House. Not much more than twenty-four hours ago, she had stood there taking a last look down. She felt years and years older now, but that was an illusion and a dangerous one. In her letter to Richard she had said: ‘I am older, in myself, than any of you know.’ Was she not, rather, younger than she herself knew? Twice she had fallen asleep on duty and panicked on waking up. She had checked the second panic, but—
An inner voice, her own but weightier, kind but extremely firm, addressed her: ‘It is normal that anyone of your age should need plenty of sleep. You should have known that and been on guard. And there will be other things to be on guard about because you are still so young. Remember, however mentally grown-up you may feel, physically you are only fourteen and a half. You must learn to think of yourself as an adult in charge of a child.’
The voice ceased – because she was so impressed with its last words. Brilliant! Undoubtedly, she was unusually intelligent – and was she not, at the moment, behaving most shrewdly, turning disaster to advantage, saving the expense of a night at a hotel? And what admirable forethought, to have found an alarm clock and set it for seven a.m.
She also praised herself for not being afraid, in this place of dim shapes and musty smells. She would rather like to see a ghost – or would she? A tremor in her solar plexus warned her to think of something else. And an attractive topic had suggested itself through comparing her mental and physical ages. She would explore it after settling down to sleep – if sleep she could, after all those hours of it.
She made a pillow of some sweaters and covered herself with her dressing gown. A clock struck one.
This question of her age: in one respect she was in advance of it physically as well as mentally – very much in advance, compared with Betty. True, Betty had been attracted by a locum tenens who had replaced the Vicar for a month, but she had refused to imagine being kissed by him. Even Clare, tumed twenty-one, had only admitted (under cross-examination) to having imagined being kissed by Charles II – or rather, she’d tried to and failed; Clare could read imaginatively but couldn’t imagine anything all on her own. Merry was apt to imagine being kissed by every attractive man she met, saw on the stage or on television – and by some quite revolting men, too. (The revulsion was part of the exercise in imagination.) At no time had anyone kissed her amorously; but imagination, thank goodness, didn’t have to wait on experience.
She had been falling in love since the age of nine and had recently been in love with three men at once: two famous actors and a waiter at a hotel in Ipswich. And nowadays her imagination went beyond merely kissing men; she considered the implications of going to bed with them, though hampered by being none too sure what the implications were, having found Weary Willy’s biology lecture so dull that she had (a) not listened carefully and (b) discounted much of what she heard. No doubt the rough outline was correct but as to the details … well, Weary Willy’s knowledge was likely to be purely academic.
And sex couldn’t really be dull or it wouldn’t be so popular. Anyway, Merry felt it wasn’t dull – and the still remaining veil of mystery made it all the more exciting. And one could hardly be a great actress unless one had a passionate temperament. She was sure she could count on one; the question was, just how soon should one make use of it, in practice as well as in imagination? Not before she was seventeen, she had decided – but that was when she hadn’t expected to be let loose in the world until she was seventeen. Now that she intended to live as an adult …
But she had promised Richard she would return unblemished (provided she wasn’t hounded) so she must indeed consider herself as an adult in charge of a child, particularly when she sought interviews with the two famous actors she was in love with. (She waved a mental goodbye to the Ipswich waiter; he’d never been more than a poor third.)
A clock struck two. The sofa now seemed very hard. She was restless and thirsty and her teeth felt guilty of biscuits. The alarm clock, close to her ear, ticked noisily. Obviously she wasn’t going to sleep another wink …
She woke soon after eight, without benefit of the alarm clock, which had not fulfilled its promise. Looking over the gallery rail, she saw that the front doors of the building were still closed. They would be open at nine, she guessed, and she must be ready to rush out and catch the nine-twenty train mentioned by Daurene. Swiftly she re-packed her suitcase and carried it down to the cloakroom – which, by the light of day, was even more dilapidated than she’d realized, but reasonably clean. Having brushed her teeth and washed, drying herself on handkerchiefs, she studied her face.
How much younger she looked without make-up! She put on a tactful amount, carefully considering it in juxtaposition to her hair, which still delighted her. She spent a long time combing it and admiring it in the misty old pier-glass. Suddenly she heard sounds in the auction room. Opening the door a crack, she saw that a man was now sitting in the office. The front doors stood open but how was she to reach them unseen?
Her best plan would be to crawl. She stuffed her sponge-bag and damp handkerchiefs into her suitcase, closed it and laid it down flat; then, on her knees, she opened the door wider. If only the man would not look round! For three or four yards she had no cover whatever. Crawling, she pushed the suitcase in front of her as fast as she could … thank heaven, she was now behind a row of wardrobes … now sideboards … now a dangerously low settee … now three blessedly high-backed chairs … nearly at the doors now but no cover worthy of the name … She sprang up, bruised of knee, grabbed the suitcase and ran without looking back – and as she dashed between the pillars of the portico she heard the alarm clock, left beside the rosewood sofa, going off at last at the top of its very loud voice.
Treacherous of it – still, it might have done worse by her; perhaps it had been bottling itself up until she was free, as she certainly was now. But a clock was striking nine – and she had forgotten which way the station was. Frantically she looked round for someone to ask.
It was then that she saw, across the square, in front of J. Birdswell, Seedsman, a large glittering bus which, unlike the bus she had boarded yesterday, stated where it was going. A splendidly clear sign on the front said LONDON.
A bus would take longer than a train, but the bus was there and she was sure of catching it – or was she? It was already almost full and the driver was at the wheel. She started to run – oh, heavens, it was moving! Then the driver saw her, slowed down and waved reassuringly. Another minute and she was on.
Unlike local buses, this one had no conductor. Merry paid her fare to the driver, then sank into a seat. She had just time for one look back at the Assembly Rooms. She would always remember them and this town. She was glad she still didn’t know the town’s name; she wished it to remain a mystery town, anyway for the present. It would be fun to come here again quite by accident, when driving through Suffolk; perhaps she’d find out the name then. And perhaps she’d die so famous that Posterity, reading about last night in her journal, would put a plaque on the Assembly Rooms saying ‘Merry le Jeune slept here’.
Sad they never put plaques up while one was living.
Now the bus was out of the town and gathering speed. She was going to get very hungry and she’d finished her biscuits and chocolate. Perhaps she could pick up some more on the way, and she’d have a real meal at the end of the journey, before finding a cheap hotel or bed-sitting-room. Anyway, hunger didn’t matter – nothing mattered now, because now nothing could stop her getting
to London.
4
Green Lane to Crestover
The bus broke down soon after ten o’clock, in deep country two miles from the nearest village. Never, according to the driver, had it done such a thing before and he could not find out what was the matter with it. Merry could have told him: she was aboard. Obviously she had no more chance of getting to London than the three sisters in Chekhov’s play had of getting to Moscow.
By then many passengers had got off the bus. Of those who remained, four were bound for the next village; they decided to walk on. The driver decided to walk back for a mile, to an inn from which he could telephone for a relief bus. Only Merry and a fat, elderly woman were bound for London. They would just have to wait.
The fat woman sat in the bus, reading a paper. Merry, attracted by the sunny morning, strolled along the lane for a little way. As she sauntered hack towards the bus, the fat woman lowered her paper and stared; then ducked behind the paper. Merry walked past the bus for a few yards, then turned her head quickly. The fat woman had turned hers too, and was again staring. Instantly she turned back to her paper. Merry was close enough to see it was a Suffolk paper and there was a photograph reproduced on its front page. She went on walking away from the bus.
‘Keep absolutely calm,’ she told herself. ‘Remember how your hair has changed you.’ But might not red hair look the same as brown, in a photograph? What photograph was it? She tried to recapture her glimpse of it. A girl in a white dress – that last snapshot, taken in the summer. Oh, she’d never forgive Richard!
She must escape – but not without her suitcase, and let that fat woman try to stop her taking it! She turned and marched towards the bus. Just before she reached it she noticed a weather-beaten signpost saying: ‘Green Lane to Crestover’. If she could get between the high hedges of the green lane without being seen getting there, she would have vanished as if by a conjuring trick. The woman was at the front of the bus, the suitcase was at the back. Merry tip-toed forward, seized the case, and sprinted for the green lane. Before dashing into it, she gave one look back. The woman had not turned back.
Marvellous! And such a beautiful green lane. Merry had always loved them and there were so few left now, when farm workers cycled to work instead of walking. Soon ‘Green Lane’ would be as obsolete as ‘Bridle Path’. And the hedges would either be cut down or just grow together and form a thicket. But this lane was obviously still used. The hedges, though tall, scarcely encroached on the grass, which was as lush as summer grass. And the mild, windless day might have been a summer day. Only the hedges, tangled with bryony and old man’s beard, were autumnal.
She swung along quickly, barely troubled by her suitcase – at first; within five minutes it had become, as it always did, an exhausting burden. How far was Crestover? The signpost had given no clue; and as the lane kept twisting and the hedges were too high to see over, there was no chance to get the lie of the land. She might have to go on for hours, and she was hungry and very thirsty – with every right to be. The voice of the adult in charge of a child told her: ‘Since dinner at home nearly forty hours ago you have only eaten two sandwiches, some chocolate and biscuits, and only drunk a glass of milk, and some water from the palm of your hand. It is not enough!’
Suddenly weak, she sat down on the grass. It was thirst that troubled her most. If only she could find a stream! She must struggle on while she still had a little strength left.
Round the next bend – and still the lane continued. But now one of the hedges was broken by a gate. It only led to a ploughed field but across the field and a stretch of parkland she could see a large house, which must surely be near some road where she might get a bus – or a lift from a passing car (strictly forbidden but no holds were barred now Richard had betrayed her). And she would go to the house and ask for water; no one could grudge her that. Climbing the gate, she quoted from The Taming of the Shrew: ‘Beggars that come unto my father’s door, upon entreaty have a present alms’; then choked with self-pity.
Walking across the ploughed field was hell and she had to scramble through a deep ditch to get into the park surrounding the house, which she could now see was a really vast house. On the side nearest her, tall sashed windows looked onto a terrace. No doubt anyone needing alms ought to go to the back door, but she couldn’t see a back door and she could see the double flight of steps which must lead to the front door, so she went straight to them. She found they were of white marble and the door at the top of them stood open onto a white marble hall. The grandeur was intimidating. Still, she rang the bell – or rather, hoped she had rung it; she heard no sound but, with a house of this scale, it probably rang a quarter of a mile away.
She waited several minutes. Nobody came. It then occurred to her that the open door might indicate that the house was on view to the public and the custodian might be showing people around. She stepped across the threshold. On her left were tall closed doors and a white marble staircase. On her right, tall doors stood open onto a room she could not see. A vast mirror above a console table reflected a white expanse of marble walls and floor.
‘It’s like a tomb,’ she thought. ‘Perhaps I shall lie down and die in it.’
But before dying, she must get a drink of water. She approached the open door on her right, then stopped short, staring in amazement.
At the far end of a long room, on a raised platform framed by a proscenium arch, was a group of people in eighteenth-century clothes. Her first thought was, ‘Amateur theatricals!’ But the group was completely silent and strangely still, and she saw that the clothes were genuinely old, such as she had seen in a museum, worn and faded compared with modern reproductions of such clothes.
In a flash, she remembered the two Oxford ladies who claimed to have seen ghosts at Versailles. Could she now be seeing …? Her legs went weak. Was she going to faint? A dreadful but interesting feeling; she had never fainted before. Blackness, like a curtain, descended in front of her eyes. She dropped the suitcase, dimly hearing the thud. Blackness became less intense and she saw that the frozen group had turned towards her in astonishment – at which her own astonishment completely vanquished the blackness. She was not going to faint. Oh, yes she was! But the blackness in front of her eyes now was an imagined blackness and her collapse onto the marble floor was a graceful stage fall.
Footsteps came running the long length of the room. She also heard footsteps in the hall. A woman’s voice called: ‘Binner, get some water, quickly – and brandy.’
‘Very good, my lady.’ Binner, presumably, was the butler, who had at last deigned to answer the doorbell.
A man’s voice said quietly, ‘What a lovely girl.’
Her dead faint became deader as she thought of the picture she must be making, with her red hair and black and white clothes against white marble. Still, she must come round before she was doused with water and dosed with brandy. She opened her eyes, looked piteously around her, and murmured, ‘Where am I?’
It was, she feared, a conventional speech with which to regain consciousness and it received a conventional answer. A man’s voice – not the one which had called her lovely – said, ‘Oh, among friends – of course.’
She thought the tone satirical but saw that the speaker was smiling down on her quite kindly. He was a slim, elderly man wearing his plum-coloured satin suit with great elegance.
‘Just relax!’ This was the voice which had sent for water and brandy, and it came from a beautiful but no longer young woman who had knelt down by Merry’s side. Just beyond stood two plain girls, and a pleasant-looking boy who was wearing ordinary modern clothes.
‘I’m so terribly sorry,’ said Merry, weakly.
‘No one can help fainting.’
That was the voice that had called her lovely. She turned her head and saw a tall, extremely fair man in blue brocade. She thought him handsome though almost middle-aged.
‘Seeing you all in those clothes….’ She let the words trail.
‘H
eavens, did you think we were ghosts?’ said the woman kneeling beside her.
‘Well, just for a moment.’
‘You didn’t notice our twentieth-century hair?’ Again the elderly man sounded satirical.
‘How stupid of me not to. But I was feeling faint when I got here. I came in to ask for water.’
‘Tom, go and meet Binner,’ said the tall, handsome man. ‘He allows himself ten minutes to walk from his pantry.’
The boy said, ‘Right, Father,’ and hurried away.
‘And could I please have something to eat? Just a little bread …’
Instructions were hurled after Tom. The kneeling woman said, ‘Hot soup!’ The tall man said, ‘Sandwiches!’ The two plain girls said, ‘Biscuits!’ at the same moment and in identical voices. Only the elderly man remained silent.
‘I got up early and didn’t have any breakfast,’ Merry explained. ‘And then the bus broke down and my suitcase was so heavy and the green lane went on for ever.’ She closed her eyes exhaustedly.
The woman beside her slid an arm under her shoulders, saying, ‘Claude, help me to get her to a sofa.’
‘I can walk,’ said Merry, bravely.
But the tall man picked her up and carried her.
‘You must be strong,’ she said admiringly, as he set her down. ‘I weigh a ton.’
They were now in the long room, a library; the walls were lined with old leather-bound books behind gilt grills. Looking at the stage at the far end, she asked if they had been rehearsing a play.
‘Tableaux,’ said the elderly woman. She had magnificent dark eyes and black hair with a streak of white. ‘For an entertainment we give every year. The village amateurs do most of it but we’re expected to put on some kind of an act.’