The Collected Stories

The maid returned with a tray of teacups, a teapot and biscuits on a plate.

‘Thank you, Mary.’

As he spoke, Margaretta put her hand up to her face. But already he had noticed.

‘What’s the joke?’ he politely inquired.

The maid left the room, and because she knew that she, too, would begin to giggle if she did not speak Laura said:

‘Margaretta thought her name was Ludmilla.’

‘Ludmilla?’

It wasn’t funny any more, as it hadn’t been when Dr Heaslip had not been cross. Politely, Ralph de Courcy handed them their cups of tea. He was right: they were children and he was not.

‘Have a Marietta biscuit?’

They each took one. They felt silly and ashamed. Margaretta said:

‘Are you feeling better these days?’

‘I never feel ill at all.’ He turned to Laura. ‘My heart was weakened when I stupidly caught rheumatic fever as a boy. I’m meant to go carefully in case I die.’

They wanted to gasp in wonder at this reference to death, but they did not do so. Margaretta said:

‘Are you getting better all the time?’

‘Indubitably. I’m reading Thomas Mann. Buddenbrooks. Do you like Thomas Mann?’

They had never heard of this German author. Vaguely, they shook their heads. They had not yet read, Laura admitted, the book called Buddenbrooks:

‘Shall I show you about the garden when you’ve finished your Marietta biscuits?’

‘Yes, please,’ Laura said. ‘If you don’t think the strain –’

‘Strain is just a word they use. Your father came here once or twice, Margaretta, when I was at death’s door – called in to offer a second opinion. It wasn’t as disagreeable as it sounds, you know, being at death’s door. Though nicer, perhaps, to be a few footsteps further off.’

His conversation was extraordinary, Laura considered. In a way everything about him was extraordinary, not least his detached smile and his eyes. His eyes did not flit about. They were the steadiest eyes she had ever seen, especially when he spoke of death.

‘Oh, yes,’ he said, ‘they make a frightful fuss. Do you play tennis? You could stay to lunch and then we might play tennis.’

‘But surely –’ Margaretta began.

‘I may play a little tennis. If I agree, and promise, not to sit about afterwards without a sweater and a blazer, then I may play a little tennis. Or at least that’s what I say.’

Suppose he dies? Laura thought. Suppose he falls down on the tennis court and is unable to get up again? Imagine having to tell about that! Imagine Dr Heaslip saying nothing, but thinking what fools they were and how much they were to blame!

He took them to the garden. He didn’t appear to know the names of any plants or flowers, but with his pale, cold hands he pointed about. He led them through a glasshouse full of tomatoes and out the other end. He pointed again: peaches flourished on a brick-lined wall. ‘A la Dean Swift,’ he said: they’d no idea what, he was talking about.

He sat between them on a wooden seat. A lawn stretched all around, bounded by white hydrangeas in front of towering cedar trees. Another dog, a brown spaniel, ambled from some corner and sat with them. Margaretta said the garden was beautiful.

‘Sergeant Barry does it. Did you see Sergeant Barry by the gate-lodge?’

They said they had.

‘He resigned from the force because he couldn’t learn the Irish. He feared they might demote him and he couldn’t bear the thought of that. So he resigned as sergeant.’

In the drawing-room, when she’d brought the tea and biscuits, he’d told the maid that they would stay to lunch. They hadn’t dared to say that there were salad sandwiches in Margaretta’s saddle-bag.

‘You must be starving,’ he said now, ‘after such a journey. Heaven knows what they’ve managed to scrape together. Shall we go and see?’

He led the way back to the house and to the dining-room. The blinds had been raised, and places laid at the table. He pulled at a bell in the wall and some minutes later the maid brought in three soup plates on a tray.

‘Crosse and Blackwell’s,’ he said. ‘Leave it if you don’t like kidneys.’

All through the meal he asked questions, about Buckinghamshire and Anstey Rye, and if bombs had fallen near by; about the De Luxe Picture House, which he had been to once. There was a larger town, nearer to the de Courcys’ house than their own, which had a cinema called the Palace, with Western Electric Sound. He’d seen Gone with the Wind there, which he described as ‘light’. He’d like to see some German films, which he’d read about, but he doubted that they’d ever come to the Palace or the De Luxe. He related the plot of one, to do with the crimes committed by a man who was not sane, and enthusiastically they both said it sounded interesting. Perhaps now that the war was over these German films might be on in England, Laura added, and he agreed that that might be so. Then, quite abruptly, when they had all three finished their sago and stewed gooseberries, he said he was feeling a little tired. His smile continued. He was supposed to rest after lunch, he explained. It would perhaps be asking for trouble not to, today.