The Four Beauties Read online

  I suppose it was half past ten or more before we got back to the café, having stopped to eat ham sandwiches at a pub on the way. The long hot day and much swimming had made her very tired and we didn’t stop in the churchyard.

  Much to my surprise the lights of the café were still on; but to my even greater surprise, when we went in, Mrs Davenport was standing tense-faced and white behind the counter, talking to a police sergeant named Baines, whom I had often had dealings with when on the paper. The sergeant was drinking a cup of tea and chewing slowly on a sausage roll.

  ‘She’s not back,’ Mrs Davenport said. Her voice, more distant than usual, was chill and wooden. ‘She’s been gone since midday.’

  Sergeant Baines swallowed a lump of sausage roll and looked rather hard at me and said:

  ‘You haven’t seen this young lady, I take it?’

  ‘Not since morning.’

  ‘Any idea where she might have gone? She spoke about dancing.’

  I thought of the old manor house; then suddenly my dark premonition about Sophie transferred itself to Tina and I thought of the river. All of my fright about Sophie transferred itself to Tina too.

  ‘I understand you went dancing with her sister last week. Where was that?’

  ‘The old manor house.’

  ‘Is there a dance there tonight?’

  ‘I rather fancy so.’

  ‘Oh! God, oh! God,’ Mrs Davenport said and suddenly burst into tears, her face in her hands. Sophie immediately went behind the counter to comfort her. ‘And you’ve been gone so long too. I thought you were never coming back.

  ‘Any more dances on tonight that you know of?’

  ‘There’s one at the Windmill Club.’

  ‘I’ll get down to the Manor House,’ Sergeant Baines said. ‘Would you nip across to the Windmill? You ought to find Constable Willis by the call-box at the corner of Charles Street and Denmark Avenue. It’s nearly eleven. You know Willis, don’t you? He’ll probably come with you.’

  The Windmill was about half a mile away and I ran most of the way. Curiously, and I suppose the sheer physical action may have been responsible, I hardly thought of Tina as I ran. I simply moved in a blind vacuum.

  Constable Willis wasn’t at the call-box but I met him half way up Denmark Avenue. After I had breathlessly tried to explain things he simply said ‘No need to run. No need to run,’ and we walked on together in steady, police-like solemnity. It was then that my nerves really started to fret and sharply I said ‘Where can the mad little fool have got to all this time?’ to which Willis merely said:

  ‘They don’t often do nothing desperate.’

  I then reminded him that he’d once before said something like that to me, on one of my routine visits to the station. That was the day Cathy Jacques had thrown herself out of a fifth floor window of a factory.

  ‘Yes, but very rare,’ he said. ‘Very rare.’

  To the din of fox-trots and quick-steps I suppose we spent about half an hour looking about the Windmill dance floor. I had a word or two with several men I knew, but Tina clearly wasn’t there. The strain of sheer desperation had now begun to make me feel in some way lost, almost light-headed, and at last I left and began to walk slowly back across the town.

  By the time I got to the churchyard I began to feel as if someone had tied a steel knot across my brain. In sheer physical weariness I stopped for a few moments and leant by some iron railings and then, at last, slowly went on. Then as I passed the porch of the church something made me turn my head and look in and there she was, sitting on the stone seat like some damned God-forsaken penitent, her two hands in her lap.

  In a situation both ludicrous and pathetic I hadn’t even the strength to be angry with her or, for some time, to say a word. I was in no state either to reproach or inquire and at last I merely said:

  ‘Come on. I’ll take you back.’

  For fully a minute she didn’t say anything. Then I heard her give an enormous consuming sigh.

  ‘Dance with me before we go.’

  ‘I’m in no mood for dancing, thank you. Come on.’

  She got to her feet, smoothing down her dress with her hands and then holding out her hands towards me.

  ‘Just a dozen steps.’

  I got up too and for half a minute danced with her about the stone floor of the porch. It was like dancing in a vault and my heart was cold.

  Finally when I took her back into the café Sophie and her mother were taking a drop of the eternal comfort, a cup of tea. There was no fuss, no reproach, no recrimination. Mrs Davenport merely stared with those distant uninspired eyes of hers and passed sentence in five mysterious words whose meaning I wasn’t fully to grasp for some long time:

  ‘I’ve made up my mind.’

  All the following week I kept away from the Davenports and instead played tennis with the plain beefy girl with the plain beefy name: Doris Plumpton. It wasn’t until we had been knocked out of the semi-final of the tournament on the following Monday that I called round again at the little café, there to find the blinds, dark blue dusty ones, all drawn, and a notice on the window which read simply These Premises to Let.

  So the Davenports, the golden lioness, the tiger-lily, the mischievous imp and Mrs Davenport, so often gay but sometimes not so gay, walked out of my life: as I thought, for ever.

  It must have been five years later, perhaps nearer six, when on a fiery afternoon of Indian summer I was motoring across a stretch of chalk downland where a vast cathedral of beech trees smouldered vivid orange against a pale blue sky. Suddenly the day seemed altogether too good for motoring and I parked the car by a woodside and started walking instead. After about half an hour the beech-woods gave way to a gap in which lay a village with a squat towered church of black-and-white flint, a few houses, a couple of shops, a pub called The Fat Ox and, at the far end of the street, a wayside café set in a biggish garden in which big banks of flowers still bloomed.

  The afternoon was still warm and it suddenly struck me that a cold drink, perhaps a cup of tea, would be a good idea and I walked up to the café. The yellow-and-white hanging sign outside read The Saffron Cake, with another notice underneath it: Closed.

  I stood for some moments incredulously bemused, slightly frustrated. Then I looked over the garden hedge. The garden stretched away quite large, laid out in enviable good order with big rose beds, lawns beautifully trimmed, great banks of dahlias, sunflowers and michaelmas daisies, and a pool with a white stone goddess in the centre of it, spilling a gentle fountain of water. Suddenly I caught sight of a woman sitting on a long blue-cushioned chair just beyond the pool, hatless, reading a book. It struck me at once that her hair might well have been a spray of autumn beech-leaves; it was almost, but not quite, that same splendid shade of orange red.

  There was, I suddenly thought, no mistaking that hair. I opened the garden gate, walked across the lawn, beyond the pool and up to the blue-cushioned chair. As she heard my footsteps the woman in the chair sharply turned her head and gave a great start, staring at me with unbelievably bright brown eyes.

  ‘Good God, it isn’t Sophie.’

  ‘Oh! my heavens you startled me.’ She gave a puzzled sort of smile, at first uncertain and then of recognition. ‘Oh! it can’t be you. Where on earth have you sprung from?’

  ‘I’m sorry I startled you. I was so sure it was Sophie.’

  ‘No, it isn’t Sophie. It’s me.’

  It was Mrs Davenport: a Mrs Davenport immensely, incredibly, miraculously changed, in fact transfigured. Her hair had been dyed not quite to that glorious tiger-lily shade of Sophie’s, but almost; her lipstick matched it well; her two small pearl earrings and her plain pearl necklace, that might well have once been Christie’s, were just right, suiting her perfectly. Her pale lime green summer dress, with white collar and belt, gave her a remarkable freshness and in the same way so did her white pointed shoes. She might well, I thought, have been a fourth sister.

  ‘But how ever did yo
u find me? How did you know I was here?’

  I said I didn’t; it was just one of those things that happened sometimes.

  ‘But you of all people to turn up. I still can’t believe it. I’ve so often thought of you. I always meant to write.’

  I said the garden was very beautiful and she said yes, she had really spent a great deal of money on it since she’d come there two years before. At first she had been in the Chilterns but it was coldish there and she hadn’t liked it much. Then she had seen this place advertised. It was a bit of a wreck at first but it had been fun, great fun, putting it right.

  ‘It all seems to have been very successful.’

  Oh! yes it had been very successful. She couldn’t deny that. From the first the saffron cakes had gone with a bang. She now specialised in all sorts of other things too: cheese cakes, lard cakes, flead cakes, all manner of things, all from old recipes. She ran a mail order business. There was enough to keep four cooks busy and people came from far and near.

  ‘I’m awfully glad. But I’m sorry you’re closed.’

  ‘Yes, I’m sorry about that too. But we always close on Wednesdays. It means we can open all day on Sundays. Sunday’s the great day.’

  I was getting ready to ask about the girls but she went on:

  ‘Do sit down, won’t you? No, not on the edge of the chair. It might tip up.’ She threw me one of the blue cushions. ‘Try that.’

  So I sat on the blue cushion, on the grass, and then, still not quite recovered from my amazement at that transfiguration of hers, was about for the second time to ask about the girls when she said:

  ‘Oh! yes it’s turned out well. Really well.’ She looked at me with warm directness, with eyes far removed from the uninspired distant gaze I had so often seen at the little café. ‘I suppose I ought really to say thanks to you.’

  ‘Me? Why me?’

  ‘Don’t you remember? That night you talked about inspiration?’

  ‘Oh! that. I didn’t think you took any notice of that.’

  ‘Indeed I did.’

  ‘But even then you didn’t make up your mind.’

  She suddenly gave the most engagingly mischievous smile, so that for a second or two I saw all of Tina in her face, just as I had already seen much of Sophie in her hair.

  ‘No, that didn’t come until later. Until I realised I’d somehow got to put a stop to your tormenting my girls.’

  I laughed aloud, hugely amused.

  ‘Well, you don’t deny it, do you? Making love to one one night and another the next. Dancing with Christie, swimming with Sophie. Driving young Tina up the wall.’

  ‘I tormenting them! And what,’ I said, ‘about their tormenting me?’

  ‘I suppose so. They were really very beautiful, weren’t they, say it as shouldn’t?’

  ‘Beautiful, my God? They were bewitching. If ever a man was led on.’

  At that we both laughed together and in her voice I heard some of the old ringing gaiety of the girls.

  ‘Yes, that was it. Inspiration and torment. And Davenport robbing the till every day. That was the last straw.’

  Now, at last, I got in my question about the girls. Were the girls with her here?

  ‘Oh! the girls. No, they’re not with me. I’m quite on my own. Christie married three years ago and emigrated to New Zealand. A young doctor. Tina’s a shorthand typist. Works her way round the world. Taking a job here and a job there. Not married. She always was the independent one.’

  She broke off and was silent for about a full minute, looking, I thought, rather pensive, with just a touch of the old distant air.

  ‘And what,’ I said, ‘about Sophie?’

  ‘It’s getting a little chilly, don’t you think? That’s the worst of these October afternoons. As soon as the sun starts to go down. Would you care to see the rest of the garden?’

  I said I would and she held out her right hand.

  ‘Pull me up.’

  Her hand was warm and smooth as I grasped it and I thought, instantly, of the warmth and smoothness of the girls. Then we started to walk across the garden and again I said:

  ‘Tell me about Sophie. I always think I was somehow fondest of Sophie.’

  We walked for some distance beyond big banks of scarlet dahlias, still untouched by frost, and massive golden clock-faces of sunflowers, before she answered.

  ‘Sophie isn’t with us any more.’

  ‘No, good God, no.’

  We walked the full length of the garden, not saying anything. My mind felt stunned with sorrow. What she was thinking I couldn’t tell and at last she said:

  ‘She was drowned one day last summer.’

  ‘Great God, not Sophie. She could swim like an otter.’

  ‘I sometimes think more swimmers are drowned than those who can’t swim.’

  ‘I’m terribly, terribly sorry.’

  We came at last to a halt at a holly hedge at the farthest end of the garden and then stood looking at the great orange towers of beeches flaming above the naked chalk in the last shafts of afternoon sun. That flare of colour suddenly took me back to the afternoon when Sophie had swum about the water-lilies like a fox among a crowd of pure white birds. I remembered how I had kissed her breasts and how, for one terrible moment, I thought she had drowned.

  For a minute or so I thought of telling Mrs Davenport about it and how, like a dark ghost, my premonition about Sophie had haunted me, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it and suddenly she impulsively grasped my hand.

  ‘Let’s not think about it. It’s one of my rules now never to go back into the past. Do you think that’s wise?’

  ‘It’s probably wise.’

  We started to walk back to the house. She was still grasping my hand and half way there she suddenly stopped and looked at me with a hint of affection in her bright brown eyes and said:

  ‘It’s very, very nice to see you. The girls were not the only ones in the family who always liked you. Shall we go in?’

  ‘Yes, let’s go in.’

  She smiled. The air was growing cooler. I turned to catch, for a second or two, a final glimpse of the flaming, immemorial beeches.

  ‘Good. It will,’ she said, ‘be much warmer inside.’

  The Chords of Youth

  ‘I would absolutely stake my life,’ my Aunt Leonora said ‘that it’s Otto. The same, same old Otto. Even after thirty years I’d know that marvellous forehead anywhere. That fine brow.’

  With a rising shrillness in her voice, never in any case an instrument much subdued, she brandished a copy of the Flimshurst Courier & Gazette in front of my face with all the excited ardour of a messenger arriving with news of some positive and splendid victory.

  ‘Look at that face. Look at it. Wouldn’t you know it anywhere?’

  With what I hoped was pointed if casual gentleness I reminded my Aunt Leonora that I had never met Otto. I had never, until that moment, even heard of Otto. Otto, for all I knew or could guess, might never have existed. He was yet another of those figures out of the vast social mythology that, over the years, Aunt Leonora conjured up so smoothly and sweetly to amuse herself and deceive and infuriate the rest of us. Otto, without doubt, belonged to those picnics she thought had been arranged but hadn’t, those couples she thought were in love but weren’t, to all those various misguided and tangled lives she thought ought to be re-moulded nearer to her particular heart’s desire simply in order to give her the serene satisfaction of feeling that their new-shaped destinies were her own.

  ‘We met,’ she suddenly said with that inconsequent entanglement of near-truth and near-falsehood, not quite downright lying, that formed the greater part of her charm, ‘in Switzerland. We climbed the Zugspitze together.’

  ‘The Zugspitze happens,’ I said, ‘to be in Germany.’

  ‘Well, wherever it was. I know it was somewhere near the frontier.’

  ‘The nearest frontier to the Zugspitze,’ I pointed out, ‘is Austria.’

  ‘Very w
ell, Austria then. I know it was somewhere there. Why on earth do you always have to split hairs?’

  I was about to point out, with all the blandness in the world, that there were times when some degree of accuracy helped, one way or another, when she smartly brandished the copy of The Courier & Gazette at me a second time. Didn’t I agree that it was Otto? That it couldn’t possibly be anyone else but Otto?

  ‘You see,’ she said, now baring her long teeth in one of those maddeningly disarming smiles of hers, ‘it’s so typical. I mean this twinning of towns idea. Adopting one another, one English and one German. He was all for that sort of thing, fraternity and so on. Aren’t you? You’ve heard of it, haven’t you?’

  One moment she was flashing her golden spectacles at me in insistent demand for an answer; the next she was wheeling round with affectionate vehemence on my Uncle Freddie, who was sitting with sublime comfort in his easy chair, sopping a slice of buttered toast in his tea.

  ‘I—’ Freddie said, ‘What?—’

  ‘That was Otto all over,’ she said. ‘That’s how we all were at the Hirschen. The Gasthof. At six o’clock in the evening none of us knew each other – German, Swiss, English, Austrian, total strangers, the lot – by midnight we were all in love. Next day we were all haring up the Zugspitze.’

  A gift for exaggeration is not the least of my Aunt Leonora’s charms. A sudden monstrous turn of phrase will serve to extinguish, as if by magic, all her tiresome, fibbing garrulity. In consequence, I loved the sentence ‘haring up the Zugspitze’. It endeared her so much to you that you forgave her all tedium, all chatter. It even made me smile.

  ‘I can’t think what there is to smile at,’ she said, ‘and keep those eyes of yours to yourself. They’re always wandering.’ She gave me one of those dark accusatory glares of hers, at the same time half-hinting that I was somehow corrupting Freddie. ‘It’s no use looking at Freddie, either. He’s all for it, too.’

  All for what I didn’t know and had no time to ask before she went on, with an almost blithe shrillness of joy:

  ‘That’s the thing that makes me so sure it is Otto. It’s so exactly like him. He’d have everybody blood-brothers in no time. I mean anybody, no matter. For instance this exchange of towns idea. The mayor of this in Germany and the mayor of that in England. Just like him. I think we really ought to try to love the Germans, don’t you?