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Seven
As they got into the car and Lewis shut the front door of the Harley Street house, Gerda felt the
pang of exile go through her. That shut door was so final. She was barred out—this awful weekend
was upon her. And there were things, quite a lot of things, that she ought to have done before
leaving. Had she turned off that tap in the bathroom? And that note for the laundry—she’d put it—
where had she put it? Would the children be all right with Mademoiselle? Mademoiselle was so—
so — Would Terence, for instance, ever do anything that Mademoiselle told him to? French
governesses never seemed to have any authority.
She got into the driving seat, still bowed down by misery, and nervously pressed the starter. She
pressed it again and again. John said: “The car will start better, Gerda, if you switch on the
engine.”
“Oh, dear, how stupid of me.” She shot a quick, alarmed glance at him. If John was going to
become annoyed straightaway—But to her relief he was smiling.
“That’s because,” thought Gerda, with one of her flashes of acumen, “he’s so pleased to be
going to the Angkatells.”
Poor John, he worked so hard! His life was so unselfish, so completely devoted to others. No
wonder he looked forward to this long weekend. And, her mind harking back to the conversation
at lunch, she said, as she let in the clutch rather too suddenly so that the car leapt forward from the
kerb:
“You know, John, you really shouldn’t make jokes about hating sick people. It’s wonderful of
you to make light of all you do, and I understand. But the children don’t. Terry, in particular, has
such a very literal mind.”
“There are times,” said John Christow, “when Terry seems to me almost human—not like Zena!
How long do girls go on being a mass of affectation?”
Gerda gave a little quiet sweet laugh. John, she knew, was teasing her. She stuck to her point.
Gerda had an adhesive mind.
“I really think, John, that it’s good for children to realize the unselfishness and devotion of a
doctor’s life.”
“Oh God!” said Christow.
Gerda was momentarily deflected. The traffic lights she was approaching had been green for a
long time. They were almost sure, she thought, to change before she got to them. She began to
slow down. Still green.
John Christow forgot his resolutions of keeping silent about Gerda’s driving and said, “What
are you stopping for?”
“I thought the lights might change—”
She pressed her foot on the accelerator, the car moved forward a little, just beyond the lights,
then, unable to pick up, the engine stalled. The lights changed.
The cross traffic hooted angrily.
John said, but quite pleasantly:
“You really are the worst driver in the world, Gerda!”
“I always find traffic lights so worrying. One doesn’t know just when they are going to change.”
John cast a quick sideways look at Gerda’s anxious unhappy face.
“Everything worries Gerda,” he thought, and tried to imagine what it must feel like to live in
that state. But since he was not a man of much imagination, he could not picture it at all.
“You see,” Gerda stuck to her point, “I’ve always impressed on the children just what a doctor’s
life is—the self-sacrifice, the dedication of oneself to helping pain and suffering—the desire to
serve others. It’s such a noble life—and I’m so proud of the way you give your time and energy
and never spare yourself—”
John Christow interrupted her.
“Hasn’t it ever occurred to you that I like doctoring—that it’s a pleasure, not a sacrifice!—Don’t
you realize that the damned thing’s interesting!”
But no, he thought, Gerda would never realize a thing like that! If he told her about Mrs.
Crabtree and the Margaret Russell Ward she would only see him as a kind of angelic helper of the
Poor with a capital P.
“Drowning in treacle,” he said under his breath.
“What?” Gerda leaned towards him.
He shook his head.
If he were to tell Gerda that he was trying to “find a cure for cancer,” she would respond—she
could understand a plain sentimental statement. But she would never understand the peculiar
fascination of the intricacies of Ridgeway’s Disease—he doubted if he could even make her
understand what Ridgeway’s Disease actually was. (“Particularly,” he thought with a grin, “as
we’re not really quite sure ourselves! We don’t really know why the cortex degenerates!”)
But it occurred to him suddenly that Terence, child though he was, might be interested in
Ridgeway’s Disease. He had liked the way that Terence had eyed him appraisingly before stating:
“I think Father does mean it.”
Terence had been out of favour the last few days for breaking the Cona coffee machine—some
nonsense about trying to make ammonia. Ammonia? Funny kid, why should he want to make
ammonia? Interesting in a way.
Gerda was relieved at John’s silence. She could cope with driving better if she were not
distracted by conversation. Besides, if John was absorbed in thought, he was not so likely to notice
that jarring noise of her occasional forced changes of gear. (She never changed down if she could
help it.)
There were times, Gerda knew, when she changed gear quite well (though never with
confidence), but it never happened if John were in the car. Her nervous determination to do it right
this time was almost disastrous, her hand fumbled, she accelerated too much or not enough, and
then she pushed the gear lever quickly and clumsily so that it shrieked in protest.
“Stroke it in, Gerda, stroke it in,” Henrietta had pleaded once, years ago. Henrietta had
demonstrated. “Can’t you feel the way it wants to go—it wants to slide in—keep your hand flat till
you get the feeling of it—don’t just push it anywhere—feel it.”
But Gerda had never been able to feel anything about a gear lever. If she was pushing it more or
less in the proper direction it ought to go in! Cars ought to be made so that you didn’t have that
horrible grinding noise.
On the whole, thought Gerda, as she began the ascent of Mersham Hill, this drive wasn’t going
too badly. John was still absorbed in thought—and he hadn’t noticed rather a bad crashing of gears
in Croydon. Optimistically, as the car gained speed, she changed up into third, and immediately
the car slackened. John, as it were, woke up.
“What on earth’s the point of changing up just when you’re coming to a steep bit?”
Gerda set her jaw. Not very much farther now. Not that she wanted to get there. No, indeed,
she’d much rather drive on for hours and hours, even if John did lose his temper with her!
But now they were driving along Shovel Down—flaming autumn woods all round them.
“Wonderful to get out of London into this,” exclaimed John. “Think of it, Gerda, most
afternoons we’re stuck in that dingy drawing room having tea—sometimes with the light on.”
The image of the somewhat dark drawing room of the flat rose up before Gerda’s eyes with the
tantalizing delight of a mirage. Oh, if only she could be sitting there now.
“The country looks lovely,” she said heroically.
Down the steep hill—no escape now. That vague hope that something, she didn’t know what,
might intervene to save her from the nightmare, was unrealized. They were there.
She was a little comforted as she drove in to see Henrietta sitting on a wall with Midge and a
tall thin man. She felt a certain reliance on Henrietta, who would sometimes unexpectedly come to
the rescue if things were getting very bad.
John was glad to see Henrietta too. It seemed to him exactly the fitting journey’s end to that
lovely panorama of autumn, to drop down from the hilltop and find Henrietta waiting for him.
She had on the green tweed coat and the skirt he liked her in and which he thought suited her so
much better than London clothes. Her long legs were stuck out in front of her, ending in well-
polished brown brogues.
They exchanged a quick smile—a brief recognition of the fact that each was glad of the other’s
presence. John didn’t want to talk to Henrietta now. He just enjoyed feeling that she was there—
knowing that without her the weekend would be barren and empty.
Lady Angkatell came out from the house and greeted them. Her conscience made her more
effusive to Gerda than she would have been normally to any guest.
“But how very nice to see you, Gerda! It’s been such a long time. And John!”
The idea was clearly that Gerda was the eagerly awaited guest, and John the mere adjunct. It
failed miserably of its object, making Gerda stiff and uncomfortable.
Lucy said: “You know Edward? Edward Angkatell?”
John nodded to Edward and said: “No, I don’t think so.”
The afternoon sun lighted up the gold of John’s hair and the blue of his eyes. So might a Viking
look who had just come ashore on a conquering mission. His voice, warm and resonant, charmed
the ear, and the magnetism of his whole personality took charge of the scene.
That warmth and that objectiveness did no damage to Lucy. It set off, indeed, that curious elfin
elusiveness of hers. It was Edward who seemed, suddenly, by contrast with the other man,
bloodless—a shadowy figure, stooping a little.
Henrietta suggested to Gerda that they should go and look at the kitchen garden.
“Lucy is sure to insist on showing us the rock garden and the autumn border,” she said as she
led the way. “But I always think kitchen gardens are nice and peaceful. One can sit on the
cucumber frames, or go inside a greenhouse if it’s cold, and nobody bothers one and sometimes
there’s something to eat.”
They found, indeed, some late peas, which Henrietta ate raw, but which Gerda did not much
care for. She was glad to have got away from Lucy Angkatell, whom she had found more alarming
than ever.
She began to talk to Henrietta with something like animation. The questions Henrietta asked
always seemed to be questions to which Gerda knew the answers. After ten minutes Gerda felt
very much better and began to think that perhaps the weekend wouldn’t be so bad after all.
Zena was going to dancing class now and had just had a new frock. Gerda described it at length.
Also she had found a very nice new leathercraft shop. Henrietta asked whether it would be difficult
to make herself a handbag. Gerda must show her.
It was really very easy, she thought, to make Gerda look happy, and what an enormous
difference it made to her when she did look happy!
“She only wants to be allowed to curl up and purr,” thought Henrietta.
They sat happily on the corner of the cucumber frames where the sun, now low in the sky, gave
an illusion of a summer day.
Then a silence fell. Gerda’s face lost its expression of placidity. Her shoulders drooped. She sat
there, the picture of misery. She jumped when Henrietta spoke.
“Why do you come,” said Henrietta, “if you hate it so much?”
Gerda hurried into speech.
“Oh, I don’t! I mean, I don’t know why you should think—”
She paused, then went on:
“It is really delightful to get out of London, and Lady Angkatell is so very kind.”
“Lucy? She’s not a bit kind.”
Gerda looked faintly shocked.
“Oh, but she is. She’s so very nice to me always.”
“Lucy has got good manners and she can be gracious. But she is rather a cruel person. I think
really because she isn’t quite human—she doesn’t know what it’s like to feel and think like
ordinary people. And you are hating being here, Gerda! You know you are. And why should you
come if you feel like that?”
“Well, you see, John likes it—”
“Oh, John likes it all right. But you could let him come by himself?”
“He wouldn’t like that. He wouldn’t enjoy it without me. John is so unselfish. He thinks it is
good for me to get out into the country.”
“The country is all right,” said Henrietta. “But there’s no need to throw in the Angkatells.”
“I—I don’t want you to feel that I’m ungrateful.”
“My dear Gerda, why should you like us? I always have thought the Angkatells were an odious
family. We all like getting together and talking an extraordinary language of our own. I don’t
wonder outside people want to murder us.”
Then she added:
“I expect it’s about teatime. Let’s go back.”
She was watching Gerda’s face as the latter got up and started to walk towards the house.
“It’s interesting,” thought Henrietta, one portion of whose mind was always detached, “to see
exactly what a female Christian martyr’s face looked like before she went into the arena.”
As they left the walled kitchen garden, they heard shots, and Henrietta remarked: “Sounds as
though the massacre of the Angkatells has begun!”
It turned out to be Sir Henry and Edward discussing firearms and illustrating their discussion by
firing revolvers. Henry Angkatell’s hobby was firearms and he had quite a collection of them.
He had brought out several revolvers and some target cards, and he and Edward were firing at
them.
“Hallo, Henrietta, want to try if you could kill a burglar?”
Henrietta took the revolver from him.
“That’s right—yes, so, aim like this.”
Bang!
“Missed him,” said Sir Henry.
“You try, Gerda.”
“Oh, I don’t think I—”
“Come on, Mrs. Christow. It’s quite simple.”
Gerda fired the revolver, flinching, and shutting her eyes. The bullet went even wider than
Henrietta’s had done.
“Oh, I want to do it,” said Midge, strolling up.
“It’s more difficult than you’d think,” she remarked after a couple of shots. “But it’s rather fun.”
Lucy came out from the house. Behind her came a tall, sulky young man with an Adam’s apple.
“Here’s David,” she announced.
She took the revolver from Midge, as her husband greeted David Angkatell, reloaded it, and
without a word put three holes close to the centre of the target.
“Well done, Lucy,” exclaimed Midge. “I didn’t know shooting was one of your
accomplishments.”
“Lucy,” said Sir Henry gravely, “always kills her man!”
Then he added reminiscently, “Came in useful once. Do you remember, my dear, those thugs
that set upon us that day on the Asian side of the Bosphorus? I was rolling about with two of them
on top of me feeling for my throat.”
“And what did Lucy do?” asked Midge.
“Fired two shots in the mêlée. I didn’t even know she had the pistol with her. Got one bad man
through the leg and the other in the shoulder. Nearest escape in the world I’ve ever had. I can’t
think how she didn’t hit me.”
Lady Angkatell smiled at him.
“I think one always has to take some risk,” she said gently. “And one should do it quickly and
not think too much about it.”
“An admirable sentiment, my dear,” said Sir Henry. “But I have always felt slightly aggrieved
that I was the risk you took!”
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