At three o’clock that afternoon the ceremony of the tree was rehearsed.
It was all very thoroughly planned. The guests would assemble in the library, Troy’s portrait and impedimenta having been removed for the occasion to Hilary’s study. Vincent, with umbrella and a charming little baroque car on runners, loaded with Christmas boxes, would be stationed outside the drawing-room windows. At eight o’clock recorded joybells would usher in the proceedings. The children would march in procession two-by-two from the library across the hall to the drawing-room, where they would find the golden tree blazing in the dark. The adults would follow.
These manoeuvres executed, Colonel Forrester, fully accoutred as a Druid, would emerge from the little cloakroom next the drawing-room, where Cressida had helped to make him up. He would slip through a door into the entrance porch and from there into the wintry courtyard. Here he would effect a liaison with Vincent. The recorded music, sleigh bells, snorts and cries of “Whoa!” would be released. The french windows, flung open from within by Blore and Mervyn, would admit the Colonel towing his gilded car. To a fanfare (“Of trumpets also and shawms,” Hilary said) he would encircle the tree and then, abandoning his load, would bow to his audience, make one or two esoteric gestures, and retire to the limbo from whence he had come. He would then pick up his skirts and bolt back through the hall and into the cloakroom, where with Cressida’s help he would remove his beard, moustache and eyebrows, his wig, his boots and his golden gown. In due course he would appear in his native guise among the guests.
The rehearsals did not go through without incidents, most of which were caused by the extreme excitability of the Colonel himself. Troy became very anxious about him, and Mrs. Forrester, whose presence he had feebly tried to prevent, finally put her foot down and told Hilary that if he wanted his uncle to perform that evening he must stop making him run about like a madman. She would not be answerable for the consequences, she said, if he did not. She then removed her husband to rest in his room, obliging him, to his mild annoyance, to ascend the stairs backwards and stop for ten seconds at every fifth step.
Cressida, who seemed to be extremely unsettled, drifted up to Troy and watched this protracted exit.
The Colonel begged them not to wait, and at Cressida’s suggestion they went together to the boudoir.
“There are moments,” Cressida said, “when I catch myself wondering if this house is not a loony-bin. Well, I mean, look at it. It’s like one of those really trendy jobs. You know, the happening thing. We did them in Organic-Expressivists.”
“What are Organic-Expressivists?” Troy asked.
“You can’t really explain O-E. You know. You can’t say it’s ‘about’ that or the other thing. An O-E Exposure is one thing for each of us and another for each of the audience. One simply hopes there will be a spontaneous emotional release,” Cressida rapidly explained. “Zell — our director — well not a director in the establishment sense — he’s our source — he puts enormous stress on spontaneity.”
“Are you rejoining the group?”
“No. Well, Hilary and I are probably getting married in May, so if we do there wouldn’t really be much point, would there? And anyway the O-E’s in recess at the moment. No lolly.”
“What did you yourself do in the performances?”
“At first I just moved about getting myself released and then Zell felt I ought to develop the yin-yang bit, if that’s what it’s called. You know, the male-female bit. So I did. I wore a kind of net trouser-token on my left leg and I had long green crepe-hair pieces stuck to my left jaw. I must say I hated the spirit-gum. You know, on your skin? But it had an erotic-seaweed connotation that seemed to communicate rather successfully.”
“What else did you wear?”
“Nothing else. The audiences met me. You know? Terribly well. It’s because of my experience with crepe hair that I’m doing Uncle Fred’s beard. It’s all ready-made and only has to be stuck on.”
“I do hope he’ll be all right.”
“So do I. He’s all uptight about it, though. He’s fantastic, isn’t he? Not true. I’m way up there over him and Auntie B. I think he’s the mostest. You know? Only I don’t exactly send Auntie B, I’m afraid.”
She moved gracefully and irritably about the beautiful little room. She picked up an ornament and put it down again with the half-attention of an idle shopper.
“There’s been a row in the kitchen,” she said. “Did you know? This morning?”
“Not I.”
“About me, in a sort of way. Kittiwee was on about me and his ghastly cats and the others laughed at him and — I don’t know exactly — but it all got a bit out of hand. Moult was mixed up in it. They all hate Moult like poison.”
“How do you know about it?”
“I heard. Hilly asked me to look at the flowers that have been sent. The flower-room’s next the servants’ hall only we’re meant to call it the staff common-room. They were at it hammer-and-tongs. You know. Yelling. I was just wondering whether I ought to tell Hilly when I heard Moult come into the passage. He was shouting back at the others. He said, ‘You lot! You’re no more than a bloody squad of bloody thugs,’ and a good deal more. And Blore roared like a bull for Moult to get out before one of them did him over. And I’ve told Hilly. I thought he might have told you, he likes you so much.”
“No.”
“Well, anyway, let’s face it; I’m not prepared to marry into a permanent punch-up. I mean it’s just crazy. It’s not my scene. If you’d heard! Do you know what Blore said? He said: ‘One more crack out of you and I’ll bloody block your light.’ ”
“What do you suppose that means?”
“I know what it sounded like,” Cressida said. “It sounded like murder. And I mean that. Murder.”
It was at this point that Troy began to feel really disturbed. She began to see herself, as if she was another person, alone among strangers in an isolated and falsely luxurious house and attended by murderers. That, she thought, like it or lump it, is the situation. And she wished with all her heart she was out of it and spending her Christmas alone in London or with any one of the unexceptionable friends who had so warmly invited her.
The portrait was almost finished. Perhaps quite finished. She was not sure it hadn’t reached the state when somebody with wisdom should forcibly remove her from it and put it out of her reach. Her husband had been known to perform this service, but he was twelve thousand miles away and unless, as sometimes happened, his job in the Antipodes came to a quick end, would not be home for a week. The portrait was not dry enough to pack. She could arrange for it to be sent to the framers and she could tell Hilary she would leave — when? Tomorrow? He would think that very odd. He would smell a rat. He would conclude that she was afraid and he would be dead right. She was.
Mr. Smith had said that he intended returning to London the day after tomorrow. Perhaps she could leave with him. At this point Troy saw that she would have to take a sharp look at herself. It was an occasion for what Cressida would probably call maintaining her cool.
In the first place she must remember that she was often overcome, in other people’s houses, by an overpowering desire to escape, a tyrannical restlessness as inexplicable as it was embarrassing. Every nerve in her body would suddenly telegraph “I must get out of this.” It could happen, even in a restaurant, where, if the waiter was slow with the bill, Troy suffered agonies of frustration. Was her present most ardent desire to be gone no more than the familiar attack exacerbated by the not inconsiderable alarms and eccentricities of life at Halberds? Perhaps Hilary’s domestics were, after all, as harmless as he insisted. Had Cressida blown up a servants’ squabble into a display of homicidal fury?