'What is it, dear, dear? murmured Lindsay. She caressed his back.
'I'm not going to be any good, said Randall. 'God! I was afraid of this.
'It doesn't matter. Embrace me.
He stretched himself out almost stiffly and buried his face against her. His Anns pinioned her with violence.
After a little while she said again, 'There. Relax. It doesn't matter.
'It does. I wish I hadn't talked so much about Emma. I'm poisoned.
'Emma's not important here. She's not important any more.
'Ah — not important anymore. You know, Lindsay, I don't think I really like Emma.
'I don't think I like her either. In fact I think I dislike her.
'I dislike her too.
'In fact I think I detest her.
'And I detest her. Oh Lindsay —’
It was a few minutes later that he said, 'Do you know, I think it's going to be all right after all.
Chapter Sixteen
'SOME more coffee? Another biscuit? said Ann. 'Thank you, my dear, said Emma.
It was nearly lunch-time, but she was still at it. She seemed to have been eating ever since she arrived, as if she had been starved before. Or as if, it occurred to Ann, she wanted to eat up the whole scene.
Ann had been surprised, even shocked, when Hugh had announced that he was going to bring Emma Sands to Grayhallock. It seemed a little soon after Fanny's death. However, her sense of the visit as improper soon merged into her sense of it as a perfect nuisance. Nancy Bowshott was ill, or pretending to be, and Miranda, in quarantine for German measles, was at home the whole week. It was as much as Ann could do to keep her outfit going at all, without having to cope with state visits. The house had become dusty and untidy and it had taken her several days of getting up half an hour earlier to put it into tolerable order. She refused Clare Swann's offer to do the flowers for her, and then regretted it. By the time her guests actually arrived she was in a state of irritated exhaustion.
Emma too had behaved in an odd and not very reassuring way. Instead of wandering about with Hugh, leaving Ann free to deal with the lunch, she had attached herself to Ann. She had installed herself in the drawing-room, beside the window, smoking innumerable Gauloises and eating cakes at the same time, and had there positively summoned for interview all the available inhabitants of Grayhallock, not even excluding Bowshott. She devoted particular time and attention to the children. During the actual interviews Ann had absented herself to put in some feverish work in the kitchen, only to be summoned from there by the outgoing interviewee. It was like having a government inspector in the house.
The only person banished from her presence was Hugh. This unfortunate was to be seen outside on the sunny lawn, walking up and down in front of the beech trees, biting his nails and casting aggrieved glances at the windows; while like personages in a play the other members of the household came and went at the double on errands connected with Emma. Miranda at this moment was crossing the lawn in a series of leaps, armed with secateurs, dispatched to the rose slopes to cut a bunch of gallicas for the distinguished visitor. Penn ran along, behind her like a starling after a blackbird.
Ann was walking up and down the room in the haze of Gauloise smoke. Emma affected her strangely, with a sort of easy restlessness. She had felt previously no particular hostility towards her father-in-law's mistress, merely a certain curiosity; and she had expected the day to be for herself a tiresome and un-noteworthy business of rushing about in the background. She was surprised to find that, on the contrary, she was to occupy the centre of the stage. She was even more surprised to find herself invigorated by, positively enjoying, the atmosphere of relaxed drama which surrounded Emma. It was as if Emma made her exist more, and cast upon her, out of her own more vivid personality, a certain light and colour.
The appearance of the well-known authoress had been at first sight disappointing. Ann had vaguely expected something more dashing; and there was at first something almost pathetic in this slow crumpled elderly person, with her air of a determined valetudinarian, seeming older than her years could possibly warrant. Yet the face was clever. The face was also in some curious way alarming. Ann had not shaken off the alarm; but she had not been long in company with Emma before she found herself cheered by her guest's intelligent friendly curiosity, and made to talk as she had not talked in years. She felt herself relax, as in a warm salty bath. She had an agreeable sense almost of being seduced.
Yet their talk had been random, disjointed, even trivial. Emma had questioned her about the children, about the nursery, about her friends in the village, about the Bowshotts' television, and about a recipe for quince jelly which Ann promised to get for her from Clare Swann. The only subject which had not arisen was Randall.
Since Mildred Finch's momentous visit Ann had been in a state of considerable wretchedness. Mildred had given her two shocks, one concerning Randall and one concerning Felix; and these two concerns worked in her mind somewhat absurdly jumbled together. Ann had been sincere in saying that she did not want to know what Randall was up to in London. She thought it better that her imagination should not entertain images of her husband's unfaithfulness: and in a way which was obviously incredible to Mildred she had not even felt curiosity about Randall's doings when he was away from home. How true her instinct had been she had occasion to know after Mildred had suddenly crystallized the situation by mentioning a name. The knowledge of a particular named rival made her whole situation seem different and at moments intolerable; and round the object named there flickered, casting upon it a vague but lurid light, intermittent flames of anger and jealousy which had been absent before. Ann suffered. She did not ask herself whether she was still in love with Randall. Her disillusionment about her husband had been, even before Lindsay, in a sense complete. Perhaps after: so many years it hardly made sense to speak of love save as a blind yet powerful experience of their belonging irrevocably to each other. What had so grown together she had not yet in her imagination begun to set asunder.
Yet there was Felix. The extent to which there now indubitably was Felix she had also had occasion, since Mildred's visit, to observe. Ann had, and she admitted it to herself with some shame, averted her attention from what had certainly been for some time an increasing interest in Mildred's handsome brother. Ann had become aware, even years ago, that Felix was partial to her. She had accepted his exceedingly discreet homage, so discreet that it was, she was sure, invisible to all other eyes, with a warm and amused gratitude, as the sentimental foible of one who was by now a confirmed bachelor. She and Felix were, after all, dreadfully old. But she had liked it; and when, during the last year, Felix had been, when alone with her, the smallest bit more frank, as if taking for granted a hazy and never actually mentioned something between them, she had liked that too. Then there was an occasion at Seton Blaise, when they had wandered away from the others along the shore of the lake, and in a moment of silence he had taken her hand. She had let him then look at her with eloquent eyes; and although she remembered the occasion with a certain alarm she remembered it too with a certain joy. There had been, she saw to it carefully, no development or recurrence of the scene: but Felix, both pleased and penitent, had drawn a step nearer. She knew of course that it would be insane of her to fall in love with Felix. But as soon as she had got as far on as to say these words to herself her heart began to flutter. She and Felix were, after all, dreadfully young.