ELLEN NAPIER came downstairs with a piece of brown paper in her hand. From time to time she paused, for she was trying to remember where it was that she had secreted a particular piece of string which she had taken off a parcel of Parish Magazines.
It was not in the hall drawer, for she had looked, but it might be in the ginger jar on the dining-room mantelpiece. The whole thing would come back to her if she could only remember where she had been when the magazines had arrived. Was it the day before yesterday? What else had she done that day?
She came to a standstill on the half-landing and began methodically to live her life backwards, minute by minute. Yesterday evening, yesterday afternoon, yesterday morning … no magazines or string occurred in any of them. Well then, Friday evening …
Her daughter, who had just come into the hall, looked up at her and laughed.
“You ought to have your portrait painted like that, Mother. You ought to have your portrait painted standing on some stairs, just like that, holding a piece of brown paper. I wish I could paint!”
“What, dear?” said Ellen. “Was Friday the day before yesterday? Which day did we have kedgeree for breakfast?”
“Kedgeree? I wasn’t here….”
“No! That’s all right. I remember. I put it in the top drawer of the lacquer cabinet.”
She came down the rest of the stairs and vanished into the drawing-room.
Hope, who knew the workings of her mother’s mind, reflected:
“Now what … oh, string, probably! But why kedgeree? Because they always have it for breakfast on Saturdays, because they have fish on Fridays, because Maggie is a Catholic….”
She looked up again at the empty staircase and thought of the picture which she would have liked to paint. The idea had been conceived in a sudden rush of affection, of admiration for her mother’s character. For such a portrait there could be no better background than the hall at Cary’s End, which was large and square and lighted by a long north window. The colouring would be a trifle austere, for the walls, the doors and the banisters were all painted white. Twelve broad and leisurely stairs led to the half-landing, where Ellen had stood, and twelve more went up, at right angles, to an upper gallery. In spite of all the dog baskets, gardening scissors, newspapers and walking-sticks which littered the hall, there was a general effect of whiteness, space, and straight lines. The cold, prosaic northern light distributed itself impartially over the whole scene.
But it would not be a cold composition because the central figure would give it warmth. Even in her still pose, as she mused on the landing, she had been full of vitality and purpose. And the piece of brown paper in her hand would provide the final clue, both to character and to composition. It would make a pattern, breaking up the column of her black dress, seen against the whiteness of the walls. It would tell the beholder who she was and what she did: that she was a widow, living in the country, and that she had children and grandchildren to whom she was continually sending parcels.
“As good as bread!” thought Hope, as she went upstairs for her library book. “It would be a great picture, if anybody could bring out just that quality of goodness.”
Ellen had found her piece of string in the top drawer of the lacquer cabinet. She did up her parcel and wrote the address, clearly and firmly, in two places. Then she put it on the hall table in order to remind herself to have it posted on Monday morning.
Straightening herself, she pushed the untidy grey hair out of her eyes. What was the next thing to be done?
“Dick is dead,” she thought.
She looked round the hall with an expression, timid and forlorn, like a woman who has reached an island in a crowded thoroughfare and who pauses, as if afraid of a new plunge into the dangers of the traffic. For a few seconds she was quite at a loss. Then she remembered, took refuge in the next thing. There was a place under the apple trees in the old orchard where the weeds had got very bad. If she did not clear it, Hawkins would, and he would be sure to dig up all the violets which she had planted there last year. Hawkins was much too drastic with that fork of his. But she would forestall him.
It was only in these empty moments, when she had finished some task and could not remember what came next, that her widowhood overpowered her. For Dick had been dead seven years and she had got used to being alone. There was always a great deal to be done, in the house and the garden and the village. After one thing there was sure to be another.
She went upstairs and presently reappeared with her thick boots on. From the hall drawer she took a pair of leather gloves and from the cloak cupboard a sacking apron and an old black hat. Hope, who was reading by the drawing-room fire, protested:
“Why do you always wear your hats on the very top of your head?”
“Because they make them so small nowadays,” complained Ellen. “I haven’t had a hat for ages that didn’t give me a headache. Which reminds me … do you think I ought to have a new one for Rosamund’s wedding?”
“Of course you must. You’d better let me choose it for you or you’ll be getting ostrich feathers again.”
“I thought ostrich feathers were supposed to have come in again.”
“Not as you wear them. Standing up like a hedge all the way round a high crown. You mustn’t go to Rosamund’s wedding looking like a District Councillor.”
“But I am one. And I sit on D.C. meetings much oftener than I go to weddings. If I get a new hat …”
“I’ll choose one that’ll be right for both,” promised Hope.
Ellen pushed open the long window and disappeared into the foggy November morning. She went up to the potting-shed for a fork and a wheelbarrow. Every twenty minutes or so she went rumbling past the window again, with a load of weeds for the rubbish heap.
And Hope was able to go on reading The Story of My Life by Elissa Koebel, which she had brought down with her to enliven the week-end. It was only just published and she had been longing to get hold of it for two reasons: because it was said to be very scandalous and because it revived an episode in her own past.
Some twenty-five years earlier the Napiers had spent a summer holiday in the North-West of Ireland, sharing a house there with a tribe of aunts, uncles and cousins. It had been a memorable and romantic summer, especially for the children, since the house was really a small castle on an island in the middle of a lough. Their nurseries had been in the old Keep and they had gone to bed up winding turret stairs. It had been like living in a fairy tale. And part of the legend had been Elissa Koebel, who was suddenly of their party, and who was, as they all believed, the greatest singer in the world. She lived, like a witch, in a little cottage on the mainland, and nothing that she did was in the least like anything that anyone else ever did.
When they left Ireland this glamorous being vanished from their lives as suddenly as she had come. But Hope continued secretly to worship her. From time to time she heard stories of Elissa which were all fuel to her flame. As she grew older she realised that certain of her childish impressions might have been, perhaps, a little extravagant. There might be greater singers. But she was still sure that there had never existed a more remarkable woman. That brilliant and tragic progress, the colossal misfortunes, the equally colossal success, the string of world famous lovers, could not belong to anybody but a genius.
Even now, when she thought of these things, Hope could not quite escape from an odd little pang of envy and regret. For as a child she had confidently expected to be just like Elissa when she grew up. She too had meant to be a great woman, ravishingly beautiful, to flout the world and to live a free, adventurous life. She had never asked herself how this was to be managed, and she never knew at what moment the fantastic expectation began to crumble. She had been a stout, plain, uncharming child. She grew into a handsome, practical young woman, prudent in money matters and disliking insecurity of any sort. At twenty-six she married. She had three children. Neither before nor after her marriage had she felt inclined to take a lover. Yet there were still occasions when she felt that her life had been mismanaged in some way, that she ought to have been somebody quite different, that she would have been somebody quite different if only she had tried hard enough.
So that she looked forward to the publication of Elissa’s autobiography with an eager, half-bitter curiosity, scarcely knowing whether she was going to envy or censure the woman who had lived and written so frankly. Of the frankness there was no doubt; the reviewers in the week-end papers had already made that perfectly clear. They could talk of nothing else, though one or two of them had been dispassionate enough to complain also that the translation was poor, and that Elissa, who spoke seven languages, would have been better advised to make a translation of her own. But their criticisms, as a whole, were meek, slightly dazed, as though they needed a little more time to recover from the shock of Elissa’s experiences.
There were no pictures in the book, no portraits of the Diva in her principal roles. Elissa had always refused to be photographed, just as she had never allowed any records to be taken of her voice. It was possible, as one of the critics hinted, that she had been wise. Neither her features nor her voice had the qualities which survive mechanical reproduction. It was a question of the indwelling soul. Both her beauty and her art were articles of faith, to herself, and to her admirers.
But Hope was disappointed to find no pictures. She had wanted to remember exactly how Elissa looked. After hunting in vain through the volume she turned back to the list of chapters at the beginning. A title caught her eye: A Summer in Ireland. She stiffened with excitement.
“It must be about Inishbar,” she thought. “It must be about us!”
She found the place and began to read.