“I can have a shut-eye, my darling, from two to four,” said Pappy, “and then if I feel up to it I can take a little walk. Pleydon said it would not hurt me to walk.”
“I don’t like your walking alone,” said Celia. “You are so vague, you are always thinking of something else. And there’s that wretched crossroad where the buses go so fast.”
“If it were the summer I could go to Lord’s and watch the cricket,” said Pappy. “I always enjoy watching cricket. I like sitting in that covered stand, next to the pavilion. Looking back, you know, I think I made a mistake in not sending Niall to Eton. He might have been a cricketer. It would have given me great pleasure to have watched Niall playing cricket for Eton.”
He was always talking nowadays, thought Celia, of the things he might have done. The houses they should have lived in, the countries they could have visited. It was a pity, he had said only that morning, that he had never taken up swimming really seriously. With his physique, he told Celia, he could easily have swum the Channel. He should have chucked singing directly Mama died, and gone in for long-distance swimming. He could have beaten all the experts. He might have swum the Channel twice, from either side. “But why, Pappy?” she asked. “Surely it’s much more satisfactory to have done what you have done?”
He shook his head. “My ignorance is profound,” he said, “about so many things. Take astronomy. I know nothing about astronomy. Why all those stars? Why, I ask myself?” And there and then she had to ring up Bumpus and find out whether there was a book on stars, a new book, a large book full of plates, and whether Bumpus could send it up in time for lunch by special messenger.
“This will keep me amused, my darling, while you are seeing Harrison,” said Pappy. “There is one planet, I never can remember which, Jupiter, I think, that has two moons. They circle about the planet night and day. A wonderful thought. Jupiter, alone amid the darkness, with two moons.”
She left him quite happy and contented, propped up in two chairs in the morning-room for his afternoon shut-eye, with the volume on stars beside him on the table. The maid was instructed to look in on him once or twice, in case he should need anything; and, of course, to go to him upon the instant should he ring the bell.
As she took a bus down the Wellington Road as far as Marylebone, where she found a taxi, Celia wondered if Maria had been able to manage Caroline, and her conscience smote her again for having failed Maria in emergency.
“I am tied to the house,” Maria had said, “literally tied to the house the live-long day, because of Caroline.”
“Only for this once,” Celia protested. “That nurse is really very good. She never asks to go out.”
“It’s the thin edge of the wedge,” said Maria. “Now she has started she will always be doing it. It’s a great responsibility, being a mother.” It was her grumpy, spoiled voice. She did not really mean it. Celia knew the voice so well. In two minutes she would have forgotten all about having asked Celia for the day, and would be planning something else. If only Maria lived a little closer, Celia could have shared the responsibility of Caroline. It would only mean two children to look after instead of one. Because Pappy was a child. He needed humoring, and coaxing, and taking care of in much the same way as a child.
She even found herself using a special voice to him these days, a gentle, half-teasing banter, a kind of “Come now, what’s the matter?” sort of voice. And if he picked at his food and grumbled, she pretended to take no notice. It was just a child’s trick to draw attention. But when he ate well she was careful to remark upon the fact and smile encouragement. “Oh, good, you’ve managed a whole wing of chicken. That does please me. Would you fancy a tiny scrap more?”
It was strange how a person came full circle. How a man was once a baby and a boy, and then a lover and a father, and now a child again. It was strange that once she had been a little girl, climbing onto Pappy’s knee, burying her head in his shoulder, clinging to him for protection, and he had been young, and strong, and like a god. And now it was all over, the purpose of his life. The strength had ebbed away. The man who had lived, and loved, and given the beauty of his voice to millions, was weary, and crabbed, and fretful, following with his eyes the daughter he had once protected and carried in his arms. Yes, Pappy had come full circle. He was back again, on the road where he had begun. But why? To what end? Would anybody ever know?
The taxi drew up outside the building in the narrow street in Bloomsbury, and Celia, nervous suddenly, uncertain, paid off the driver and, going inside the building, asked at a door marked “Enquiries” for Mr. Harrison. A girl smiled over pince-nez, and said Mr. Harrison was expecting her. It was always surprising, and warming too, when people whom one did not know were kind. Like the girl with pince-nez. Or bus drivers. Or the fishmonger on the telephone. It made, Celia thought, such a difference to the day.
And Mr. Harrison, when she was shown into the room, rose from his desk at once to greet her, and walked towards her with a smile on his face. She had thought he might be hard and brisk, with a clear-cut, decisive manner, like a schoolmaster. But he was fatherly and kind. He pulled forward an armchair for her to sit in, and everything was made easy for her at once, because he began to talk about Maria.
“She has not given up the stage, I hope,” he said. “It would be a very great loss to all her admirers if she did that.”
Celia explained about the baby, and he nodded; he understood, he said he had a nephew who knew Charles.
“Your brother has written the music for this new revue, hasn’t he?” he said, and so from Maria they passed to Niall, and all that Niall had achieved during the past years in Paris, and Celia had to explain the muddled relationship between them all, that she was half-sister to each, and that Niall and Maria were nothing to do with one another. “They are very close, though,” she said. “They understand each other perfectly.”
“You are a very talented family, very talented indeed,” said Mr. Harrison. He paused after he said this, and he reached for some papers on his desk, and Celia saw her own handwriting on the stories, and the drawings beneath another sheaf of paper.
“Do you remember your mother well?” he said abruptly, reaching for his spectacles, and Celia felt nervous for no reason—he seemed suddenly like the schoolmaster she had feared.
“Yes,” she said. “I was between ten and eleven when she died. We have none of us forgotten her. But we don’t talk about her much.”
“I saw her dance many times,” said Mr. Harrison. “She had a quality about her that was entirely individual, and that no one, as far as I know, has ever been able to describe. It was not ballet. That was the extraordinary thing. There was no grouping, no set figures. Yet she told a story as she danced, and the dance was the story, and the pathos of the whole world would come suddenly with one movement, with the folding of her hands. She relied on nothing and on no one, not even the music; the music was secondary to the movement. She danced alone. That was the beauty of it, you know. She danced alone.” He took off his spectacles and polished them. He seemed quite moved. Celia waited for him to continue. She did not know what to say.
“And you?” he said. “Do you mean to tell me you don’t dance?”
Celia smiled nervously. He seemed almost angry with her for some reason. “Oh, no,” she said, “I can’t dance at all. I’m frightfully clumsy, and I’ve always been too fat. I can do ordinary foxtrots, of course, if I get asked to parties, but Niall says I’m heavy and trip against his feet. Niall dances beautifully, and so does Maria.”
“Then how is it,” said Mr. Harrison, “that you are able to draw like this?” He took one of her drawings from the sheaf of papers on the desk, and held it in front of her, in accusation. It was not one that Celia liked very much. It was the one where the child was running from the four winds, and he held his hands up to his ears, so that he could not hear the four winds call him. She had tried to make the child stumble as he ran, and she had never thought the stumble was effective. Besi
des, the background was too vague. The trees were dark, but not dark enough. And, anyway, she had finished it in a hurry because of Pappy calling to her, and the mood had gone when she had tried to do something to the trees the following day.
“The little boy is not dancing,” said Celia. “He is meant to be running away. He is frightened. It explains it, in the story that goes with it. But there are other drawings, better than that.”
“I know perfectly well he is not dancing,” said Mr. Harrison. “I know he is running away. For how long have you been drawing? Two years? Three years?”
“Oh, longer than that,” said Celia. “The fact is, I have always drawn. I’ve been drawing all my life. It’s the only thing I can do.”
“The only thing?” said Mr. Harrison. “My dear child, what more do you want? Aren’t you satisfied with that?”
He came and stood beside the fireplace, looking down at her.
“I talked just now about your mother,” he said, “and a certain quality she possessed. I have not seen that quality before or since, in any other form of art, until this week. Now I have seen it again. In these drawings of yours. Never mind the stories. I don’t care a pin about the stories. They are effective, and charming, and will do very well. But these rough drawings of yours are in a class by themselves.”
Celia stared up at him, bewildered. How very odd. The drawings had not been difficult to do. But she had taken hours and hours over the stories. What a fearful waste that Mr. Harrison did not think much of the stories.
“You mean,” she said, “you think the drawings are the best?”
“I have just told you,” he said, patiently. “They’re in a class by themselves. I don’t know anyone today who does that sort of work at all. I am very excited about them, and I hope you are too. You have a great future ahead of you.”
It was very kind and very nice, thought Celia, to make such a to-do about her drawings. It would hardly have happened had he not been a friend of Pappy’s, and a member of the Garrick, and an old admirer of Mama’s.
“Thank you,” she said, “thank you very much.”
“Don’t thank me,” he said. “I have done nothing except look at your drawings, and shown them to an expert who agreed with my opinion. Now, come on. Have you brought any more with you? What are those things you are carrying in your bag?”
“Well, they are more stories,” Celia apologized. “There are only two or three drawings, not awfully good. These stories may be better, though, than the ones you have seen.”
He waved them away. He was bored stiff with the stories.
“Let’s have a look at the drawings,” he said.
He examined them carefully, one by one; he took them to his desk, under the light. He might have been a scientist with a microscope.
“Yes,” he said, “these last were done in a hurry, weren’t they? You have not taken so much trouble.”
“Pappy hasn’t been well,” said Celia. “I’ve been rather bothered about Pappy.”
“The point is,” said Mr. Harrison, “we have not quite enough drawings yet for the book I have in mind. You must do some more work. How long does it take you to finish one of these? Three days, four days?”
“It depends,” said Celia. “I can’t really work to plan. Because of Pappy.” Mr. Harrison brushed Pappy aside, as he had brushed away the stories.
“Don’t you worry about your father,” he said. “I’ll talk to him. He knows what work means. He’s been through it himself.”
Celia said nothing. It was difficult to explain to Mr. Harrison what it was like at home.
“You see,” she said, “I am really in charge. I order the meals and things. And Pappy is not very strong these days. You must have noticed that. I don’t get a great deal of time.”
“You must make time,” said Mr. Harrison. “You can’t treat a talent like yours as though it did not matter. I won’t allow it.”
He was like a schoolmaster after all. It was just as she had feared. He was now going to make a fuss about her drawings, and write to Pappy, and worry Pappy, and say that time must be set aside for her to work, and everything would become a performance, and a ritual, and be difficult. Drawing would become a burden instead of an escape.
It was nice of Mr. Harrison to take so much trouble, but she wished now she had not come. “Well,” she said, getting up from her chair, “it’s been most terribly nice of you to take all this trouble, but…”
“Where are you going? What are you doing?” he said. “We have not discussed your contract yet, we have not talked business.”
It was after half-past five before she got away. She had to have tea, and meet two other men, and they made her sign some terrifying form like a death-warrant, promising to give any work that she might do to Mr. Harrison. He insisted, and so did the other men, that the stories were no good without the drawings, and they wanted the other drawings as soon as possible, in four or five weeks’ time. She knew she could never do it, she felt trapped. She wondered what would happen if she failed them, now that she had signed the contract. Would they sue her?
Finally, she tore herself away, shaking hands twice over, and forgetting, in her haste, to say good-bye to the girl with the pince-nez in Enquiries who had smiled. There was not a taxi to be seen. She had to walk almost as far as Euston before she found a taxi, and then it was close on six o’clock, and getting dark. The first thing she noticed when she reached home was that the garage door was open. And the car was not inside. Pappy had not driven the car for several weeks. Not since he had been unwell. Either she had driven him, or he had taken a taxi. She ran up the steps to the house, her heart beating, fumbling for her latchkey. She opened the door and ran inside, calling for the maid.
“Where is Mr. Delaney?” she said. “What has happened?”
The maid looked scared and nervous. “He’s gone out, miss,” she said. “We couldn’t stop him. And we did not know where you were, to let you know.”
“How do you mean, he has gone out?”
“He must have fallen asleep, miss, after you went. I went in twice, and he was quite still in his chair, and peaceful. And then, about five o’clock it was, we heard him come out into the hall. I came up from the kitchen, thinking he might want something, and he looked very strange, miss, not like himself at all, very red about the face and his eyes all queer and staring. I was quite frightened.”
“ ‘I’m going down to the theater,’ he said. ‘I’d no idea it was so late.’ ”
“I think he must have been dreaming, miss. He brushed past me, and went down the steps to the garage. I heard him start up the car. There was nothing I could do. We’ve been waiting here, miss, until you came back. Perhaps Miss Celia will know where he has gone, we said.”
Celia did not stop to listen to any more. She went into the morning-room. The chair was pushed back from the fire, as Pappy had left it. The book about the stars was on the table. It was not even open. There was no clue to tell her where he had gone. No clue at all.
She rang up the Garrick Club. No, said the hall porter, Mr. Delaney had not been to the Club today. She telephoned Dr. Pleydon. Dr. Pleydon was not in. He was not expected before half-past seven. Celia went back to the hall and questioned the maid again.
“What did he say?” she asked. “What were his exact words?”
The maid repeated what she had said before.
“Mr. Delaney said, ‘I’m going down to the theater. I had no idea it was so late.’ ”
The theater. What theater? Into what dim, dusty labyrinth of the mind was Pappy wandering? Celia telephoned for a taxi, and went down again to London, and on the way she tried to explain to the taxi driver what she wished to do. “The car is a Sunbeam,” she said, “and I think my father will have tried to park it outside the stage-door of a theater. But I don’t know what theater. It might be almost any theater.”
“Bit of a twister, isn’t it?” said the man. “You say any theater. West End or Hammersmith? What I mean is, there
are all sorts, aren’t there? Music-Hall, variety, Shaftesbury Avenue, the Strand…”
“The Adelphi,” said Celia, “go to the Adelphi.”
Was it not at the Adelphi that they had played, that last season, Pappy and Mama? That last London winter season, before Mama died?
The taxi twisted and turned in the stream of traffic, and the driver did not pick his way as he should have done, he took her the longest and most crowded way, right through the center of Piccadilly Circus, right through the humming heart of London. He cut across no by-streets, but went swinging down the Haymarket, and round Trafalgar Square into the Strand, and when they drew abreast of the Adelphi he stopped the taxi with a jerk and looked back at Celia through the window, saying, “Drawn a blank here, anyway. The theater’s closed.” He was right. The doors were closed and barred, and there were no bills posted on the walls. “That’s right,” the driver said, “the show came off last week, didn’t it? A musical.”
“I think I will get out, anyway,” said Celia. “I’ll walk round to the stage-door. Perhaps you would wait for me in the street behind.”
“It’s going to cost you something,” said the driver, “trying all the theatres in this way. Why not call in the police?”
But she did not listen to him. She was feeling the barred doors of the closed theater. They were firmly locked, of course. She turned away and walked up the street at the side, and into the alleyway, dark and sinister, where Bill Terriss had been murdered. There was no one there at all. The posters of the last play, torn and defaced, stared at her from beside the stage-door. A cat came towards her from the shadows. It arched its back, and mewed against her legs, and then prowled away again into the darkness.
She turned back again down the alleyway into the street. The taxi was waiting for her at the corner. The driver had lit a cigarette, and sat with his arms folded, watching her. “Any luck?” he said.
“No,” said Celia, “go on waiting for me, please.”
He muttered something and she hurried away once more, along another street, and then another, and all the buildings were the same, dark, blank, and impersonal, and she knew now, of course, that it was not the Adelphi that she wanted at all, but Covent Garden.