Mr Leech took his place beside the musket: the footman beside the driver. There was a moment’s uncertain silence as the four bodyguards whispered among themselves, in the manner of Becket’s murderers. Then one of them without a word opened the car door and, seating himself next to Mr Leech, manned the lethal object. He fiddled about with the mechanism like a wood-wind player tuning his instrument. The weapon still pointed directly at Griselda.
In the moment the car started Mrs Hatch cried out ‘What shall I do about Austin Barnes?’
It was no good. Already the Prime Minister’s eyelids were drooping into slumber. Mr Leech had been having a strenuous time of it.
‘It’s all very well, but what am I to do about Austin?’ Mrs Hatch seemed seriously to be seeking Griselda’s advice.
‘Everything’s in order, Mrs Hatch,’ said Edwin’s voice in the doorway. ‘I deeply regret to say that Austin Barnes has felt it his duty to offer the Prime Minister his resignation.’ The moist air wafted the distinctive perfume of Pamela, heavy on Edwin’s black suit, the very essence of fashionable mourning.
‘Resigned?’ It was a cry from Mrs Hatch’s heart.
‘Quite resigned.’
‘I must go to him.’
‘I think that would be best. The Prime Minister asked me to tell you after he had gone; and to apologize on his behalf for his inability to tell you himself. He was sure you would understand that the emotion involved was too much for him at the present time.’
Without a word, Mrs Hatch had re-entered the house.
‘Permit me to escort you.’ Edwin, who had not risked getting wet a second time in the same morning, also disappeared into the gloom within. The three surviving murderers had previously likewise vanished, their grim countenances set for food from Mrs Hatch’s groaning granaries.
Griselda was left by herself waiting for luncheon in the rain she had learnt to love. Before going in, she put back her hood and raised her face towards the discouraging heavens. She was startled to see the head and shoulders of Louise projecting from an upstairs window. She was wearing a perfectly white mackintosh. There was no knowing how long she had been there. She threw Griselda a kiss with one hand and a letter with the other. Then she withdrew indoors, shutting the sash window with a marked slam.
Overwhelmed, Griselda looked at the letter. On a thick sheet of deckle-edged hand-made writing paper, it had been folded and sealed, in the fashion of the days before Sir Rowland Hill, with a big medallion of bright yellow wax. It was superscribed simply ‘Griselda’ in black ink and a large well-proportioned hand artistically simplified. Letting the heavy rain uncurl her hair, Griselda split the seal and unfolded the letter. In such a hand there was not room for many words upon a single side of a sheet of hand-made paper.
‘Never forget, dear dove, that the sky into which you soar is full of falcons and that falcons fly higher than doves. As I listen, your heart is softening towards the falcons. Beware of the falcons! They not only kilclass="underline" they disfigure. Their nests are matted with blood. The streets and fields are filled with bodies whose vitals the falcons have eaten. The falcons eat only the hearts, the brains, and the livers of their prey; whom, bored, they then return, like bottles, Empty. The Empties clutter our lives: they break easily, and becoming worthless become also dangerous.’
The letter ended with a single tender sentence which made Griselda very happy. Though dated it was unsigned. Raindrops, like tears, were beginning to spoil it. Griselda put it into a pocket of her borrowed mackintosh.
‘We are waiting.’
Mrs Hatch had reappeared in the doorway. Some time must have passed, for she had changed into a skirt. Griselda, though extremely hungry after her walk, had forgotton about luncheon. There was no knowing how long Mrs Hatch had been standing there.
‘I’m so sorry. You’ve taught me to enjoy rain. I’ve been enjoying it.’
She thought that Mrs Hatch’s expression was equivocal and, for some reason, not very likeable.
‘You need to take proper precautions.’ Griselda raised her hand to her head and realized that her hair had become very wet. ‘If you don’t mind us starting to eat without you, I think you’d better go upstairs and dry yourself.’
Griselda entered the house. She opened the collar of her mackintosh. ‘How is Mr Barnes?’
Mrs Hatch glanced at her sharply. ‘I’m finished with Austin Barnes.’ Something was obviously wrong with her: and presumably this was it.
Griselda wondered what to say.
‘One of your oldest friends? Surely not?’
‘Old and new, the world’s much of a piece,’ replied Mrs Hatch with intense bitterness. She turned from Griselda and entered the dining-room.
Upstairs, Griselda removed the heavy mackintosh and suspended it in the bathroom to drip and dry. After hours of it, she felt so underclad without it that she more clearly understood how little related to any consideration of utility is the quantity of clothes people wear. She towelled her short curly hair into a bewitching disarray. She put on a red pullover. She would have liked to remove her boots, but time pressed.
She descended to an extremely late luncheon. From inside George Goss’s bedroom came an intermittent soft mooing as of a cow in her last labour before retirement from maternity. Griselda realized that her period of communion with the rainfall had among other things spared her from having to hold George Goss’s sick head and necessary basin.
The party for luncheon was indeed depleted, in spirit more than in number. George Goss and Mr Leech were absent: and Pamela should have been, for she had contrived to contract a most unpleasant cold. Despite this malady and the inappropriate weather, she had refused in any way to wrap up, but sat sniffing and sneezing in a delicate eau-de-nil crepe-de-chine blouse, sleeveless and conspicuously open at the throat. It was noticeable that Mrs Hatch had apparently now washed her hands of all responsibility for Pamela’s welfare and happiness. Even Edwin had seated himself as far as possible from the source of infection, where he was discoursing, as Griselda entered, upon the subject of the main item in the next St James’s News-Letter.
‘We all found ourselves in complete agreement,’ said Edwin, ‘that an attempt must be made – on a world scale, needless to say – to vitalize the inner life of the working man. Happily the means came at once to hand. That very same evening I spoke of the need to the wife of a certain Polish Prince, a woman having great wealth of her own – invested outside Poland, of course: who at once suggested that the answer was a film, but of an entirely new type, not a specifically religious film, you understand, but a film aiming in the same general direction though stated in contemporary terms, a film that would really penetrate through the top-dressing of propaganda and take root in the wholesome soil beneath.’
‘So to speak, a non-religious religious film?’ suggested the Duchess helpfully.
Mrs Hatch, Griselda noticed, was really looking very sour indeed: almost baleful.
‘You might, I suppose, put it like that,’ said Edwin rather doubtfully. ‘At least in sophisticated society such as this. Anyway, the Princess (I am sorry I cannot tell you her name, but she particularly wishes to remain entirely nameless in this matter, which she conceives in the light of a high spiritual duty), the Princess is not only prepared to arrange finance for the whole project, but actually has access to an entirely suitable director for the film, a man who treats the cinema almost as if it were a true medium for art. The Princess has assisted in the birth of many of his past productions, and has often been very close to him in a number of different ways. She told me that the two of them together could do things that neither of them could do apart. It is true that the man’s a Galician Jew, but the Princess says he has more of the real thing in him than any other Christian she’s ever met. And, after all, it’s her money,’ concluded Edwin, descending to the world of fact.