Helen pushed open the door and found herself in a library where the only gaps in the walls not covered with books were filled with vast family portraits. In one corner on a revolving stand stood a globe of the world with the map of America turned towards her, the states all blurred together and sepia with age. A fire leaping in the grate gave off a sweet, tart smell of apple logs, reminding her of her grandmother’s house in the mountains, and filling her with such homesickness that she had to choke back her sobs and blow her nose several times on an overworked paper handkerchief.
Drawn instinctively towards the bookshelves, she was halfway across the room before she realized a man was sitting in an armchair in front of the fire, reading.
“I am sorry,” she said with a gulp. “I didn’t mean to disturb you.”
“You’re not. I’m hiding.”
“From Mrs. Greenslade?”
“Et alia. We weren’t introduced this afternoon. Malise Gordon.”
He put out his hand.
“Helen Macaulay,” she mumbled.
“Sit down. I’ll get you a glass of Algie’s brandy.”
“Please don’t bother.”
He didn’t answer and went over to the drinks trolley. He was wearing a pinstripe suit, threadbare but well cut across the shoulders, with turn-ups and a fob watch. She noticed the upright, military bearing, the thin mouth, the eyes, courtesy of British Steel Corporation. He was the kind of Englishman one used to see in old war movies, Trevor Howard or Michael Redgrave, who hid any emotion behind a clipped voice, a stiff upper lip, and sangfroid.
“What were you reading?” she asked.
“Rupert Brooke.”
“Oh,” said Helen in surprise, “how lovely. There’s one Rupert Brooke poem I really love. How does it go?
she began in her soft voice,
Her voice broke as she was suddenly stabbed with grief at the thought of Harold Mountjoy’s child that she had lost.
“It’s so beautiful, and so sad,” she went on.
For a second the color seemed to drain out of Malise Gordon’s face. Then he handed Helen the glass of brandy.
“How extraordinary,” he said. “I was just reading that poem. My father was at school with Rupert Brooke.”
“What was he like?”
“Oh, awfully nice, according to my mother.”
“Your father must have some marvelous stories about him.”
“Probably did. Unfortunately he was killed in 1918 in the last advance of the war.”
“That’s just terrible. You never knew your father. Did you go to Rugby too?”
He nodded.
“I so enjoy the Rugby poets,” said Helen. “Walter Savage Landor, Clough, Arnold, they have a deep melancholy about them which I find very appealing. I did the Victorian poets for my major. I think Matthew Arnold is by far the most interesting.”
Seeing her curled up on the sofa, having kicked off her shoes, the firelight flickering on her pale face, Malise thought she was the most beautiful girl he had ever seen. Her ankles were so slender, he wondered how they could bear the weight of her body, or her long slender neck the weight of that glorious Titian hair. Quivering with misery, she was like a beech leaf suddenly blown by the gale against a wall; he had the feeling that, at any moment, the gale might whisk her away again. He would like to have painted her, just like that, against the faded gold sofa.
“Where is Rupert?” he asked.
“Being enjoyed by his adoring public. Actually, he’s just been ‘borrowed’ by Lady Pringle.”
“She’s never been very scrupulous about giving people back.”
“She’s kinda glamorous, but very old,” said Helen. Then, realizing that Grania must be younger than Malise Gordon, added hastily, “for a woman, I mean — or rather a Lady.”
“Hardly,” said Malise, echoing Rupert.
“Oh, I know about the laxatives,” said Helen, “but all these ancestors?” She waved a hand round the walls.
“All fakes,” said Malise, cutting the end off a cigar. “I restore pictures as a sideline. Grania’s great- grandmother over there,” he pointed to a bosomy Victorian lady, “was actually painted in 1963.”
Helen giggled, feeling more cheerful.
“You and Rupert just had a row?”
Helen nodded.
“What about?”
“He wants to go to the max.”
Malise raised his eyebrows.
“In England I think you call it the whole hog.”
“Ah, yes.”
“He’s so arrogant. He ignores me all evening, selling some horse, then expects me to go meekly back and spend the night in his caravan. I said I was going back to London, so he told me to find my own way. I just don’t know what to do.”
“I’ll take you. I’m going back to London tonight.”
“But I live in Shepherd’s Bush; it’s way out. Rupert claims he’s never heard of it.”
“Rupert on occasions can be very affected. It’s about a mile from my flat. It couldn’t be easier to drop you off.”
Cutting through her stammerings of gratitude, he started to ask her about herself, about America, her family, her university, her ambitions to be a writer, and her job. He even knew her boss.
“Nice chap. Never read a book in his life.”
“But no one seems interested in books over here,” sighed Helen, picking up the Rupert Brooke. “This is a first edition and they haven’t even bothered to cut the pages. I don’t understand the British, I mean they have all this marvelous culture on their doorsteps and they’re quite indifferent to it. Half the office hasn’t even been inside St. Paul’s, and John Donne actually preached there. Rupert’s mother has shelves full of first editions. No one ever reads them. She keeps them behind bars, as though they were dangerous animals full of subversive ideas. They never even know who’s painted their ancestors.”
“Unless it’s a Gainsborough they’re going to flog at Christies for half a million,” said Malise. “Then they’re fairly sharp.”
“That lot out there can’t talk about anything but horses,” said Helen bitterly.
“You mustn’t blame them,” said Malise. “For most of the season, which goes on sadly for most of the year now, they’re spending twenty-four hours a day with those horses, studying them, schooling, worrying about their health, chauffeuring them from one show to another. That lot you met next door have battled their way to the top against the fiercest competition. And it hasn’t been easy. We’re in the middle of a recession; petrol prices are rocketing; overheads are colossal. Show jumping’s a very tough competitive sport and only a few make it, and unless they keep on winning, they don’t survive.”
He got up and walked over to the globe and spun it round, pointing to the tiny faded pink shrimp that was England.
