'Has she told you so?
'No. She didn't have to.
No, thought Liz. She did not have to. Lavinia Fitch-dear, kind, abstracted Lavinia-manufacturer of fiction for the permanently adolescent, had after all a writer's intuition.
'I wondered for a while if it was that he was a little mad, Lavinia said.
'Mad!
'Only nor-nor-west, of course. There is an unholy attraction about people who are stark crazy in one direction but quite sane every other way.
'Only if you know about their craziness, Liz pointed out. 'You would have to know about their mental kink before you suffered any unholy attraction.
Lavinia considered that. 'Yes, I suppose you are right. But it doesn't matter, because I decided for myself that the «mad» theory didn't work. I have never met anyone saner than Leslie Searle. Have you?
Liz hadn't.
'You don't think, do you, Lavinia said, taking to doodling again and avoiding her niece's eye, 'that Walter is beginning to resent Leslie?
'Walter, Liz said, startled. 'No, of course not. They are the greatest friends.
Lavinia, having with seven neat strokes erected a house, put the door in it.
'Why should you think that about Walter? Liz said, challenging.
Lavinia added four windows and a chimney-stack, and considered the effect.
'Because he is so considerate to him.
'Considerate! But Walter is always —
'When Walter likes people he takes them for granted, Lavinia said, making smoke. 'The more he likes them the more he takes them for granted. He even takes you for granted-as you have no doubt observed before now. Until lately he took Leslie Searle for granted. He doesn't any more.
Liz considered this in silence.
'If he didn't like him, she said at length, 'he wouldn't be doing the Rushmere with him, or the book. Well, would he? she added, as Lavinia seemed wholly absorbed in the correct placing of a doorknob.
'The book is going to be very profitable, Lavinia said, with only a hint of dryness.
'Walter would never collaborate with someone he didn't like, Liz said stoutly.
'And Walter might find it difficult to explain why he didn't want to do the book after all, Lavinia said as if she had not spoken.
'Why are you telling me this? Liz said, half angry.
Lavinia stopped doodling and said disarmingly: 'Liz darling, I don't quite know, except perhaps that I was hoping you would find some way of reassuring Walter. In your own clever way. Which is to say, without dotting any I's or crossing any T's. She caught Liz's glance, and said: 'Oh, yes, you are clever. A great deal cleverer than Walter will ever be. He is not very clever, poor Walter. The best thing that ever happened to him was that you should love him. She pushed the defaced blotter away from her and smiled suddenly, 'I don't think, you know, that it is entirely a Bad Thing that he should have a rival to contend with. As long as there is no chance of the contention becoming serious.
'Of course it isn't serious, Liz said.
'Then suppose we get that moron out of the window, and finish the chapter before lunch, Lavinia said, and, picking up the pencil, began to chew on it again.
But a sense of shock stayed with Liz while she recorded, for the ultimate benefit of the lending libraries and the Inland Revenue, the doings of Sylvia the moron. It had not occurred to her that her awareness of Searle could be known to anyone but herself. Now it seemed that not only did Lavinia know very accurately how she felt about him, but she hinted that Walter too might know. But that surely was impossible. How could he know? Lavinia knew because, as she so frankly said, she too was a victim of the Searle charm. But Walter would have no such pointer to her emotions.
And yet Lavinia had been so right. Walter's first easy taking-for-granted attitude to the visitor had changed to a host and guest relationship. It had changed imperceptibly and yet almost overnight. When and why had it changed? There was the unfortunate coinciding of the two so-different boxes of sweets; but that could hardly have rankled in any adult mind. The buying of candy for a girl was an automatic reflex with Americans; of no more significance than letting her go first through a doorway. Walter could hardly have resented that. How then could Walter have guessed the secret that was shared only by her fellow sufferer, Lavinia?
Her mind went on to consider Lavinia and her perceptions. She considered the one count that Lavinia had left out of the indictment-the snubbing of Toby Tullis-and wondered whether Lavinia had not mentioned it because she did not know, or whether she was merely indifferent to any suffering that Toby might be subjected to. Toby, as the whole village knew, was enduring the finest tortures of frustration since Tantalus. Searle had refused, with the most unimaginably kind indifference, to go to see Hoo House, or to take part in any of the other activities that Toby was eager to arrange for him. He had even failed to show any interest when Toby offered to take him over to Stanworth and present him. This had never happened to Toby before. His freedom to trot in and out of the ducal splendours of Stanworth was his trump card. He had never before played it in vain. With Americans especially it took the trick. But not with this American. Searle wanted no part of Toby Tullis, and made it clear with the most charming good manners. He stonewalled with a grace that for all its mordant quality was delightful to watch. Intellectual Salcott watched it with open delight.
And it was that that excoriated Toby.
To be snubbed by Leslie Searle was bad enough; to have it known that he was snubbed was torture.
Truly, thought Liz, the advent of Leslie Searle had not been a particularly fortunate happening for Salcott St Mary. Of all the people whose lives he touched, only Miss Easton-Dixon, perhaps, was wholly glad of his coming. He had been lovely with Miss Dixon; as kind and patient with her endless questions as though he had been a woman himself and interested in the small talk of the film world. He had trotted out for her benefit all the light gossip of studio politics, and had exchanged with her reminiscences of films good and films bad until Lavinia had said that they were like a couple of housewives swapping recipes.
That was the night that Marta had come to dinner; and there had been a moment during that evening, when Liz, watching him with Miss Dixon, was seized with a terrible fear that she might after all be falling in love with Leslie Searle. She was still grateful to Marta for reassuring her. For it was when Marta commandeered him and carried him off with her into the night, and she felt no slightest pang at seeing them go, that she knew that, however strongly she felt Searle's attraction, she was in no bondage to him.
Now, recording the doings of Sylvia the moron, she decided that she would take Lavinia's advice and find some way of reassuring Walter, so that he went away on this trip happy and with no grudge against Searle in his heart. When they came back from Mere Harbour, where they were taking possession of the two canoes and arranging for their transport to Otley to await them there, she would think up some small exclusive thing to do with Walter; something that would be tete-a-tete. It had been too often a triangle lately.
Or too often, perhaps, the wrong tete-a-tete.
7
Walter had welcomed the idea of progression by canoe, not because he looked forward to folding himself into an inadequate small boat, but, because it would give him his 'story'. If the book was to be a success he must have 'adventures', and an unusual method of locomotion was the easiest way of providing them. It is difficult to garner quaint experience when being borne along comfortably in a car. And walking has lost face since it became universal in the form of an activity called hiking. Walter, who had walked over a great part of Europe with a toothbrush and a spare shirt in his burberry pocket, would have been glad to do the Rushmere valley on foot, but felt that he could not hope to satisfy any modern devotee. His toothbrush-and-spare-shirt technique would merely puzzle the masochistic enthusiasts who plodded, packed and hobnailed, to the horizon their glazed eye was fixed on, more Atlas than Odysseus. And to do the valley as an incidental accompaniment to puppets or a Punch and Judy might be productive of copy but was a little infra dig in one whose holding in the Open Air was of almost proprietorial dimensions.