Peculiar Ground. Lucy Hughes-Hallett
cold, and got out and put on sunglasses, which is something no child ever did so it was as though she had swapped sides. She couldn’t have been that cold because she didn’t go and change but sat down on the low wall between Antony and Nicholas. Daddy got out too and stood in front of them, and Nell had that lonely feeling again because they were all laughing, and Nicholas was teasing Flossie and making Daddy tease her too and it was lovely for them but horrid for her because they had all completely forgotten her and she was left with just Dickie, and the fact that you happened to be in the same family with someone and both of you children absolutely did not mean that that someone was the person you wanted to be left with. Dickie splashed her on purpose, and she was angry and grabbed his coracle and tipped him into the water, which was rather awful because she knew he couldn’t really swim.
‘For goodness sake, is no one watching that child?’
Mrs Rossiter arriving with two people Nell didn’t know. The man kicked off his shoes and jumped in the water with all his clothes on and got hold of Dickie, who was all right really because he was clinging onto the inner tube, just not inside it any more, and dragged him quite roughly to the side of the pool. Dickie was crying and swimming-pool water was coming out of his mouth and nose so he was much more blubbery than the crying by itself would have made him. Nell stayed still, and everything was happening very slowly in bright light. Quiet like her nightmare. Mrs R and Daddy were staring at each other across the pool. They both looked older than usual and as though they had to cling on tight to something or they might fall.
‘So. Lane.’
She never called him Lane. She called him Hugo. Calling people by their surnames meant they were less important. In a way Daddy was less important because he worked for the Rossiters, but usually you couldn’t tell that.
‘If you can’t do your job, you could at least take care of your son. And what on earth are you all doing here in the first place? Get rid of your bloody dog.’
The strange man had climbed out of the pool and Wully was licking his wet ankles. Daddy growled at Wully, and then shouted at Nell, ‘Come on out.’ Then he walked slowly round the pool and said something very quiet to Mrs R, and took Dickie by the hand and walked with him into the changing hut. Nell got out, and ran behind them, but she could hear Nicholas talking in his joking voice again, and saying, ‘Benjie to the rescue! There you were pretending to be a lounge-lizard and all the time we had a hero in our midst.’
She could see the man called Benjie taking off his wet trousers and she could hardly believe it. Underneath he wasn’t wearing bum-bags like the ones Daddy wore but tiny knicker-shaped swimming trunks like Dickie’s, but they weren’t all woolly, they were shiny and slithery like snakeskin, and the most amazing thing was that they were patterned with green and purple scales just like a snake.
*
So what about Nell’s mother? Why was she so seldom in evidence? Because she didn’t want to be, is why.
Chloe Lane had realised that to be inconspicuous was a precious pass to freedom. Chloe’s so sweet, said Lil. Chloe, could you be an angel and . . . Chloe, I cannot think what to do about . . . Why not ask Chloe? She’d do it (open the fête, chair the WVS, judge the school’s dressing-up competition) so much better than me . . . Chloe fits in so perfectly! I don’t know why I always look like a cockatoo . . . Chloe’s so clever with flowers . . . Chloe’s so clever . . .
Every single one of Lil’s compliments was an order, or a demand, or a subtle derogation. At Wood Manor Chloe was her own and her servants’ and children’s mistress. At Wychwood she was the agent’s wife. She stayed away. Dancing attendance was Hugo’s job.
*
The park was blond. Dry grass, exhausted by summer, lay aslant all one way, like the hair on an animal’s back. At midday the horse-chestnut trees were dark to blackness, the beeches purple. Bleached, the landscape became mineral – shining in shades of jet and copper and silver-gilt. Even the sun was sombre: light this bright and desiccating carried its antithesis within it. Only in the evening, the hour of Christopher’s liberation, would the light soften and waver, as the deer swam silently across the broad rides and the midges trod air above the lakes.
Antony left the noisy group by the pool and walked down, across the terrace, past the canal and on into the severe corridor of the double yew hedge. Halfway along was a trellised arbour with a stone bench and an unsteady wooden table. He sat. Directly opposite him was a gap in the hedge, framing a view of the park. Antony knew what would shortly appear there. He had seen it approaching. And there, sure enough, tightrope walking along the ha-ha’s stone lip, came Jack Armstrong.
This wasn’t a coincidence. He had seen, as he was seen. Seventeen years old, self-absorbed. Thin, slightly round-shouldered, long neck, vulnerable Adam’s apple, copper-coloured hair. He knew Antony was there. He didn’t look round, just paced past heel to toe, slow, arms outstretched for balance, back-lit. There’s a damp look to very young skin, a clamminess which is faintly repellent to all but those who lust after it, and for them, as marvellous as mother-of-pearl. Antony didn’t move. Jack crossed the gap. An interval. Deer fidgeted beneath the horse-chestnut trees in the middle distance. A Land Rover crossed towards the home farm. Antony remained still. Then Jack reappeared, upside down, walking on his hands, almost made it across the gap, arms visibly trembling, tumbled, attempted a somersault, botched it and rolled out of sight with a snort.
Between the cliff of the hedge and the precipice of the ha-ha was a strip of grass, walled with yew on one hand, with nothing but air on the other. Open to the park, concealed from the garden. Antony stood up and walked through the gap: found him.
Helen, walking wet-haired and barefoot along the green corridor, saw Antony go. Inquisitive, she followed onto the grassy ledge. Seeing what had drawn him, she stepped quickly back.
*
After lunch the grown-ups went quiet. Most of them were under the cedar tree, Helen and Antony on rugs, Benjie hogging the swing-seat. In the drawing room Christopher was dozing. Nell came in, silent in her sandshoes, took two pearl-grey damask cushions, and carried them off, as hasty and triumphant as a dog with a stolen cutlet, to the wedge of space between a high-backed sofa and the wall. Stillness. Nell’s small shuffling noises as she made her nest. A book sliding out of Christopher’s hand and down the slope of his thigh. Voices from the tennis court, as inconsequential and tinny as the chattering of mechanical toys. Nearer at hand the peacocks’ screaming, so eerie and yet so familiar to everyone in the household that they heard it not as sound, only as an intensification of atmosphere. In came Nicholas.
‘What’s going to happen?’ asked Christopher, opening his eyes, the rest of him still unmoved.
‘I don’t believe anyone, the main actors included, could tell you.’ Nicholas was leaning against a column, silhouetted against the French window and the deserted lawn. ‘Not a single one of them fully comprehends the possible options.’
‘Do you?’
‘No. But the ones I can think of scare me rigid.’
Like a nanny going off-duty, Nicholas had laid aside his teasing, bustling manner. He talked to Christopher as though continuing a long and searching conversation, even though this was the first time the two of them had spoken to each other directly that weekend.
‘But the bomb?’
‘It’s the tiger at the bottom of the garden and everyone knows the wise course is to leave it be, but everyone is itching to prod it with a stick just to see what happens. And at every point along the way towards whatever kind of climax we’re heading for, it’s possible to say, well, look, it’s all right so far. Until you reach the point where it really isn’t all right. But no one will know where that point is until they’ve passed it.’
‘Kennedy will want to prove how good his nerve is.’
‘Unfortunately.’
‘But what does Khrushchev want?’
‘Dear Christopher, if we knew that . . . Berlin is maddening for the Russians. It’s maddening for everyone.