Peculiar Ground. Lucy Hughes-Hallett

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СКАЧАТЬ all they knew he could have been killed by an elder brother of mine. I was very polite and so were they. We didn’t talk about the war. We didn’t talk about the occupation, or about bombing, or about my hostess’s nervous tic. We talked a little bit about politics, but only as if it was an entirely theoretical subject on which none of us could possibly hold a personal opinion. We certainly certainly certainly weren’t going to talk about German nationhood.’

      Nicholas looked quizzical. ‘Conversation must have been a little bloodless.’

      Antony laughed. ‘It’s unbelievable, isn’t it. Already we’re so bored of peace that “bloodless” is a pejorative term. Of course it was bloodless. That was the point.’

      ‘But seriously, you’re such a flâneur. Whatever you did or didn’t talk about over the dumplings at home, you went out. I know you. You must have met people.’

      ‘No. Sorry. Up early for a walk. The Pinakothek every morning. Library every afternoon. No dumplings, but an awful lot of pork and mushrooms. Then evenings writing my paper on Altdorfer. To which I owe the job that allows me, as you say, to gad about now.’

      A pause. Nicholas, thwarted, casting around for a more promising approach. Antony – smooth, obliging, emollient Antony – opaque.

      Ticket collector. Antony’s second-class ticket. Embarrassment masked by jollity. And, soon, the car awaiting them at Finstock Halt.

      *

      Nell and her father went up to the big house after tea. Daddy drove the Land Rover, with Wully’s chin resting on his left shoulder. Nell was on the bonnet, sitting in the spare wheel, her small hands scrabbling for a purchase on the rubber, her hair tangling in front of her eyes. Her mother didn’t know she did this. Nell, constantly aware of how she might be jolted out and tumble under the front wheels and be squashed, was terrified, but she never said so. Fear was the price she gladly paid for the privilege of being her father’s fellow-conspirator.

      Summer after tea was the best time. As the sun descended the flowers turned luminous. And the grown-ups grew brighter and strange too, changing into their evening clothes. Mr Rossiter met them on the steps, already dressed in a silk smoking jacket patterned with twisty petal shapes. Paisley – a new word for Nell.

      They looked to see, as they always did, whether the giant brown dog-statues flanking the door had a present for Wully. There was a sugar lump between the left-hand one’s front paws. Then they went through the house, and out onto the terrace that overlooked the part of the park where the land swept down to the lake and up again to the double row of conker trees screening the village nearly a mile away. This was the Rossiters’ special bit of park, where ancient oaks stood isolated in deer-nibbled grass and where any rider was exposed to the stare of all the house’s high sash windows. It was grander and plainer than the expanse behind, where Nell’s family picnicked between the avenues and played kick-the-can around stands of bracken, or where she could ride her pony through the copses alongside her father, hidden from anyone who might laugh at her still needing the leading-rein.

      ‘They need feeding, Nell,’ said Mr Rossiter. Down the middle of the terrace ran a canal, where giant goldfish lurked. They were immeasurably old, their shell-like pallor uncanny. Nell suspected them of cannibalism – why else would the little red and orange fish flashing above them never get a chance to become as gross and slow as they? She had a recurring dream, from which she would wake screaming, in which someone she couldn’t see would say, in a gentle, insinuating voice, something she could never afterwards remember. These bloated fish, glimmering in murky water, were ominous in the same kind of whispering way.

      She went to the little building at the end of the canal, where the fish food, smelling of cowpats, was kept in an enamel bin. With its frilly arched windows and stone pinnacles, this pavilion was Nell’s architectural ideal. Wychwood itself, its garden front a pilastered cliff of grey-tawny stone, was too grand for her to comprehend it. In all her daydreams the princess with waist-length golden hair and the ever-sympathetic identical twin sister lived in a palace that was the fish-food house built large.

      ‘Who’ve we got so far?’ her father was saying. He knew, and so did Nell, that house-parties were Mrs Rossiter’s treat, and that Mr Rossiter was apt to slip away from them after dinner to go fishing. Nell’s father was Mr Rossiter’s agent but also his ally in wife-teasing, guest-dodging and – up to a carefully judged point – making fun of the people Mrs R asked down from London.

      ‘You’ve met Flossie.’ That was the girl who had swum with them that morning. ‘Jolly girl. There’s two more just come off the train. Antony.’ He was another regular visitor. Nell liked him because he always spoke to her but she could never understand his jokes. ‘Nicholas. And there’s a couple Lil took to in Scotland last year. Helen and Benjie. Lovely woman. Husband runs a restaurant and wears suede shoes.’

      Nell’s attention was on the fish. The faded monsters lay still while the brilliant tiddlers snapped at the smelly flakes. The insects, called water boatmen although the whole point of them was that they didn’t need boats, skated over the meniscus, as confident as Jesus. So that story might be ordinary-true as well as deep-down-true. (Nell’s mother had explained the difference, but only the Bible was allowed the latter. If Nell said anything that wasn’t ordinary-true, then it was a lie.) Perhaps Jesus had the same kind of special feet. She stared as hard as she could at the insects, but even when she opened her eyes so wide they felt they might pop out she couldn’t see their feet at all. Looked at under a microscope, might they be like tiny canoes?

      ‘We won’t use the pool after this weekend,’ said Mr Rossiter. ‘Get them to empty it on Monday, will you, Hugo, and refill it ready for when we get back? It’s turning into weed soup, isn’t it, Nell?’

      Her father was nodding, but Nell couldn’t say a word. It was true that the walls of the pool were coated with green slime, and the pine needles floating on it clustered into fairy log-jams, but wouldn’t it be rude to admit it? And anyway she was dismayed. She knew that refilling the pool took two whole days, and afterwards the water was much, much colder. ‘Oh can we swim tomorrow, then?’ she said.

      ‘No, Nell,’ said her father, quick-sharp. They never came up to the pool when there were weekend guests. But ‘Yes,’ said Mr Rossiter, and when her father looked awkward he went on, ‘just this time. Flossie said she had fun with the children this morning.’

      Helen

      When people first meet us they think, what can Helen see in that buffoon. And then after a while, not long at all usually, they think, how can he stand her. She’s so dull. Next they’re inviting us to stay. And then they’re never going to invite us to stay again because Benj has made a pass. At the hostess, or the host. Or the dog, for goodness sake. When he became besotted with that absurd white fluffy thing of Cressida’s. Wouldn’t leave it alone all weekend. But more likely the teenage daughter, or the au pair. And then they begin to think, she’s so dignified. And clever. And you don’t notice it at once, but isn’t she beautiful. What can she see in that clown.

      Lil understands, I think. She and Christopher aren’t an obvious pair either. I like coming here. I’m glad she took me up, as one might take up petit point, or the clarinet, or a pretty orphan. Relationships based on caprice suit me. I take what comes my way. Benj floated in and scooped me up as though I was a small hairy dog. No one had ever treated me with such disrespect, and I found it restful. I don’t suppose we’ll be together for ever, even though he depends on me more than he knows. In bed, we are harmonious.

      He drove down today, with Guy in the front, so they could talk, he said. He likes being the raffish uncle. He offers the boy cigarettes, which he refuses, and takes him out to Muriel’s or the French Club. СКАЧАТЬ