But tonight, when the time came for them to separate, why shouldn’t he take her hand and, saying something of what her goodness had meant to him, take her gently in his arms and kiss her? He glanced at her again and this time both Grace and Pat turned to him and smiled. His heart seemed to swell with an easy warm happiness, very different from the storm of feelings Gemma Lawrence aroused in him. That had been a kind of madness, nothing more than lust brought about by frustration. How unimportant it seemed now!
Pat loved her aunt. If he married Grace she would return to him entirely. He put out his hand to his daughter and she, her earlier annoyance with him forgotten, skipped over to the sofa where he was sitting and snuggled close against him, her arms hard around his neck.
“Shall I show you my scrapbook?”
“What have you got in it?” said John, his eyes on the proof of his theorem. “Pictures of caterpillars?”
“Caterpillars are my summer hobby.” Pat spoke with great dignity. “You’re so ignorant you wouldn’t know, but in the winter they go into their chrysalises.”
“And even you couldn’t collect pictures of chrysalises. Here, let’s see.”
“You shan’t! You’re not to! It’s mine!”
“Leave her alone, John. Put that book down.”
John said in disgust, “It’s only dancers, old ballet dancers.
“Come and show me, love.”
Pat resumed her semi-suffocation of her father. “Can I have ballet lessons, Daddy? I do want to. It’s the great ambition of my life.”
“I don’t see why not.”
Grace was smiling at him, her letter completed. They smiled at each other like fond parents, happy in conspiracy, in contemplation of what they would do for their children.
“You see,” said Pat, “it’ll be too late if I don’t start now. I know I should have to work and work, but I don’t mind that because it’s my great ambition, and perhaps I could get a scholarship and be in the Bolshoi and be a prima ballerina assoluta like Leonie West.”
“I thought,” said her brother, “you were going to be a research scientist”
“Oh, that. That was ages ago, when I was a child.”
A cold shadow had touched Burden. “Who did you say?”
“Leonie West. She’s gone to live in absolute retirement in her flat and her house at the seaside. She broke her leg skiing and couldn’t dance any more, but she was the most wonderful dancer in the world.” Pat considered. “Anyway, I think so,” she said. “I’ve got masses and masses of pictures of her. Shall I show your’
“Yes, darling, if you like.”
There were indeed masses and masses of pictures. Pat had cut them out of magazines and newspapers. Not all of them were of Leonie West, but most were.
In the distant shots she was a beautiful woman, but time and perhaps too the exigencies of continual strenuous dancing showed the toll they had taken in close-ups. For Burden that heavily painted heart-shaped face with its smoothly parted black hair held no magic, but he made appreciative comments to please his daughter as he turned the pages.
There were stills of ballet films, shots of the star at home, at social functions, dancing all the great classical roles. He was nearly at the end now.
He said, “They’re very nicely arranged, dear,” to Pat, and turned to the last photograph.
A fan of Leonie West would have seen only her, a magnificent figure in a floor-length cloak stiff with gold embroidery. Burden hardly noticed her. He was looking, his heart knocking dully, at the crowd of friends from which she had emerged. Just behind the dancer, holding a man’s arm and smiling listlessly with a kind of shy anxiety, was a red-haired woman swathed in a black-and-gold shawl.
He didn’t need the caption to tell him anything, but he read it. “Pictured at the first night of La File Mal Gardee at Covent Garden is Miss Leonie West with (right) actor Matthew Lawrence and his wife Gemina, 23.” He said nothing, but closed the book quickly and leaned back, shutting his eyes, as if he had felt a sudden pain.
No one took any notice of him. John was repeating the proof of his theorem, learning it by heart. Pat had taken her book away to restore it to some secret treasure chest. It was nine o’clock.
Grace said, “Come along, my dears. Bed.”
The usual argument ensued. Burden put in the stern words which were expected of him, but he felt no enthusiasm, no real care whether his children got the required amount of sleep or not. He picked up the evening paper which he hadn’t yet read. The words were just a black-and-white pattern, hieroglyphics as meaningless as they would be to someone who has never learned to read.
Grace came back from kissing Pat good night. She had combed her hair and put on fresh lipstick He noticed and he felt a shrinking distaste, This was the same woman that, half an hour before, he had considered wooing with a view to making her his second wife. He must have been mad. Suddenly he saw clearly that all his imaginings of the evening had been madness, a fantasy of his own conjuring, and what they had made to appear as madness was his reality.
He could never marry Grace, for in gazing at her, studying and admiring her, he had forgotten what any happy marriage must have, what Rosalind Swan so evidently had. He liked Grace, was at ease with her. She was his ideal of what a woman should be, but he hadn’t a particle of desire for her. The thought of attempting to kiss her, of going further than a kiss, caused a shrivelling in his flesh.
She had brought her chair closer to the sofa where he sat and, laying aside her book, looked expectantly at him, waiting for the conversation, the adult exchange of views, which all day long she was denied. His feeling for her was so slight, his acceptance of her as someone content with the world he had provided for her so great, that it hardly occurred to him she would be hurt by anything he did.
“I’m going out,” he said.
“What, now?”
“I’ve got to go out, Grace.”
He saw it now. Am I so boring? her eyes said. I have done everything for you, kept your house, cared for your children, borne with your moods. Am I so boring that you can’t sit quietly with me for one single evening?
“Please yourself,” she said aloud.
Chapter 11
The rain had stopped and a thick mist settled on the countryside. Water clung to the trees in heavy drops and fell dully and regularly so that it seemed as if it were still raining. Burden swung the car into Fontaine Road and immediately made a U-turn out again. He was suddenly loth to let his car be seen outside her house at night. All the street would be on watch, ready to spread rumours and tell tales.
Finally he parked at the bottom of Chiltern Avenue. A footpath, skirting the swings field, joined this cul-de-sac with its neighbour, Fontaine Road. Burden left the car under a street lamp whose light the fog had dimmed to a faintly glowing nimbus and walked slowly towards the path. Tonight its entrance looked like the opening to a black tunnel. There were no lights on in the adjacent houses, no sound in the dark ness but that of water dripping.
He walked along between bushes whose branches with their wet dying leaves splashed his face and dragged softly at his clothes. Half-way through he found the torch he always carried and switched it on. Then, just as he reached the point where a gate in Mrs. Mitchell’s fence opened into the path, he heard pounding feet behind him. He swung round, directing his torch beam back the way he had come and on to a white face framed in flying wet hair.