“I wonder if their marriage was really a success,” said Maria.
“Whose marriage?”
“Pappy and Mama’s.”
Niall got up and started to draw the curtains. The mystery had gone now from the garden, there was nothing strange about the darkness anymore. Evening had settled in, and it was raining fast.
“They are both dead and gone. Let’s forget them,” he said.
He crossed the room, and switched on the lamp beside the piano.
“How can you, of all people, say that?” said Celia, pushing her glasses back on her forehead. “You think more about the past than either Maria or me.”
“All the more reason for forgetting,” said Niall, and he began to drone upon the piano, no melody, no song with a beginning or an end. It went on without interruption, like the sound of someone humming in a room upstairs.
“Of course their marriage was a success,” said Celia. “Pappy adored Mama, we all three know that.”
“Adoring a person does not necessarily mean you’re happy,” said Maria.
“It generally means you’re miserable,” said Niall.
Celia shrugged her shoulders, and went on darning the children’s socks.
“Anyway, Pappy was never the same after she died,” she said.
“Nor were any of us,” said Niall. “Let’s change the subject.”
Maria sat cross-legged on the sofa, and stared into the fire.
“Why should we change the subject?” she said. “I know it was terrible for you, but it was just as bad for Celia and for me. Even if she was not my mother, she was the only one I had ever known and I loved her. Besides, it’s good for us to delve into the past. It straightens things out.”
She looked suddenly forlorn, there alone upon the sofa, with her legs tucked under her and her hair rumpled. Niall laughed.
“What does it straighten out?” he said.
“I see Maria’s point,” interrupted Celia. “It brings our own lives into focus, and heaven knows, after what Charles said about us just now, it’s time we did that.”
“Nonsense,” said Niall. “Wondering whether Pappy and Mama’s marriage was successful doesn’t help us to decide why Maria’s has suddenly become a flop.”
“Who says it’s a flop?” said Maria.
“You’ve sat there hinting it for the past hour,” said Niall.
“Oh, don’t start that sort of thing,” said Celia wearily. “I never can decide which is the more irritating, when you two agree or disagree. If you must play the piano, Niall, play something real. I hate that droning, I always did.”
“I won’t play at all if it’s a nuisance,” said Niall.
“Oh, go on, don’t take any notice of her,” said Maria. “You know I like it. It helps me to think.”
She lay back again upon the sofa, her hands behind her head.
“How much do you two really remember about that summer holiday in Brittany?” she asked.
Niall did not answer, but his playing turned to discords, harsh and unpleasant.
“It was very thundery,” said Celia, “one of the most thundery summers we ever had. And I learned to swim. Pappy taught me to with infinite patience. He never looked his best in a bathing suit, poor darling, he was much too big.”
But, she was thinking, surely the only real thing we remember was the climax. Did not that overshadow all the rest?
“I played cricket on the sands with those frightful boys from the hotel,” said Niall surprisingly. “They would use a hard ball and I hated it. But I thought it best to practice because of going to school in September. I was much better at jumping. I beat them hollow at jumping.”
What, in God’s name, was Maria up to, raking back the past? What good could it possibly do, what use was it to anyone?
“We were discussing earlier on about us all having different angles on the same thing,” went on Maria. “Niall said we saw things from a separate viewpoint. I think he is right. You say that summer was thundery, Celia. I don’t remember a single storm. It was hot and fine, day after day. No wonder nobody knows the real truth about the life of Christ. Those men who wrote the Gospels all told a different story.” She yawned, and settled a cushion behind her back. “I wonder at what age I ought to tell the children the facts of life,” she said inconsequently.
“You are the last person to do that,” said Niall. “You would make it sound much too exciting. Leave it to Polly. She will model little figures in plasticine, and demonstrate.”
“What about Caroline?” said Maria. “She’s long past the plasticine stage. The Headmistress of that school will have to tell her.”
“I believe nowadays they do it very well in schools,” said Celia seriously. “They make it clean, and bright, and unemotional.”
“What? Drawings on blackboards?” asked Maria.
“Yes, I think so. I’m not sure.”
“Wouldn’t that be rather rude, though? Like those awful chalked figures on the front at Brighton, with ‘Tom goes with Molly’ scrawled underneath.”
“Oh, well… Perhaps it’s not on blackboards. Perhaps it’s things in bottles. Embryos,” said Celia.
“That’s much worse,” said Niall. “I couldn’t bear to see an embryo. Sex is tricky enough, without embryos.”
“I didn’t know you found it so,” said Celia, “or Maria for that matter. But, anyway, we’re wandering from the point. I don’t know what sex has got to do with that summer holiday in Brittany.”
“No,” said Maria, “you wouldn’t.”
Celia wound up the darning wool on the card, and put it back in the basket with the socks.
“It would be much more important, Maria,” she said severely, “if instead of worrying about whether to teach the children the facts of life you taught yourself how to darn their socks.”
“Give her a drink, Niall,” said Maria wearily. “She’s going to start that preaching, spinster thing. So boring.”
Niall poured out a drink for Maria, and for himself and Celia.
Then he wandered to the piano. He put his glass down on the ledge beside the keys. He was whistling something under his breath.
“What were the words?” he said. “I can’t remember the words.”
He began to play very quietly, and with the tune the three of us swung back into the past.
“Au clair de la lune,
Mon ami Pierrot,
Prête-moi ta plume,
Pour écrire un mot.
Ma chandelle est morte,
Je n’ai plus de feu,
Ouvre-moi ta porte
Pour l’amour de Dieu.”
Maria sang softly in her clear child’s voice; she was the only one to remember the words.
“You used to play it, Niall,” she said, “in that funny little stiff drawing room of the villa, while the rest of us sat out on the veranda. You played it over and over again. What started you?”
“I don’t know,” said Niall, “I can’t remember.”
“Pappy would sing it,” said Celia, “after we had gone to bed. We had nets, because of mosquitoes. Mama used to lie in a long chair, in that white frock; she used to have a fly whisk in her hand which she used as a fan.”
“It did thunder, I remember now,” said Maria. “The whole of the lawn would be flooded in five minutes. We ran up from the beach with our frocks over our heads. There were sea-fogs too. The lighthouse.”
“That man who wanted to write a ballet for Mama and never understood that she despised ballet, that she did her own individual form of dancing—what was his name?” asked Celia.
“Michel Something-or-other,” said Niall. “He was always looking at Mama.”
“Michel Laforge,” said Maria, “and he was not always looking at Mama.”
We remembered the house too clearly and too well. It stood back a little from the cliffs, which were steep and dangerous. A path wound down through the gardens to the sea. There were rocks and pools, and curious, dark, cold caves, through which the sun filtered slowly like a torch’s beam. Wild flowers grew upon the cliffs. Sea-pinks, and thrift, and celandine…