Let Me Alone Read online

  Lauretta told everyone that Anna was clever.

  ‘A most talented young lady,’ she said coyly, smiling at the girl with a sort of glancing, fictitious roguishness. ‘I’d have you know that she’s a fully-fledged authoress already. A book of her poems is coming out soon.’

  Anna was made extremely uncomfortable by these remarks.

  ‘Why did you say that?’ she asked Lauretta afterwards. ‘It’s not at all certain yet that Drummond will publish my verses.’

  ‘Of course he will publish them,’ Lauretta said. And from her quick, impatient manner it was obvious that she was determined that it should be so – or else there would be trouble. ‘Of course!’ she repeated, looking at Anna with a smiling mouth, but a hard, bright gleam in her eyes that was like a threat.

  Anna was very uneasy.

  Towards the end of May the weather became hot suddenly, and Anna needed some new summer dresses. She went into Lauretta’s bedroom to try them on. The big, lemon-and-silver room always fascinated her. With its silver walls and ceiling, its lemon silk curtains, its soft, soft carpet of slightly darker lemon, like lemon-curd, its sleek, silvery furniture, it seemed to exhale an actual perfume of femininity, an anima of female luxuriousness. The bathroom next door was like a laboratory with its pale gleaming purity and its rows of glistening bottles and appliances; a work-room of feminine beauty.

  Anna was uneasy and fascinated. This refinement of female elegance, this insistence on the actual mechanism of producing female beauty, was rather too much for her. It made her uncomfortable. But at the same time, she was attracted by it, in a way.

  She looked with a show of interest at the dresses, particularly at a dull green one, very simply made.

  ‘Don’t you like this blue frock?’ said Lauretta, holding up a frilled garment the colour of forget-me-nots, and watching the thin, straight figure in front of the mirror.

  A thin body, with sloping shoulders, underneath a pale, grave face. And straight brown hair, rather untidy, over a too-high forehead. An uncomfortable, unfeminine sort of creature, Lauretta thought to herself.

  But she knew that Anna was not unattractive. In that pale face, in those severely graceful limbs, was a strange potency that might draw a man, even draw him away from Lauretta herself.

  Over the back of a chair lay the dull green dress that Lauretta did not care much about. It was a bluish, arsenical green, beautiful, but rather unusual. Anna was fingering the smooth, fresh-feeling material.

  ‘I like this one,’ she said.

  ‘But you could never wear that. Green isn’t a young girl’s colour. It wouldn’t suit you at all.’

  Lauretta came forward and stretched out her hand with its flashing rings as if to take the dress away. But Anna held the cold, soft green against her neck, watching herself in the mirror, and a new light came into her eyes, greenish, as if reflected from the green stuff.

  ‘Yes!’ she said softly. ‘I like it immensely.’

  ‘Then I’m afraid your taste isn’t very good. Green is the last colour you should wear. Why, with your sallow skin it makes you look like a suet-pudding!’

  Lauretta could be swiftly roused to irritation if she was opposed in any way. She seemed to take the disagreement as a personal affront.

  Anna had almost forgotten her aunt, enthralled by the contrast of the lovely greenish stuff with the yellow-pale flesh. Now the angry, impatient voice brought her quickly back to earth. She put down the dress, smiling gravely at Lauretta.

  ‘I’m sorry you don’t like me in green,’ she said, with a hint of propitiatory gentleness. ‘I’m so fond of it. I think it suits my personality.’

  ‘Suits your personality! What an expression!’ Lauretta laughed a hard, tinkling, malicious laugh, as at some stupid absurdity. ‘What a mass of affectations you are! When I was your age, girls didn’t use words like that.’

  ‘Would you rather I spoke always in words of one syllable?’ asked Anna, in her calm, involuntarily supercilious voice.

  ‘There is no need to be insolent,’ said Lauretta, turning away.

  ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to be rude,’ Anna said, rather confused. ‘Please don’t be angry.’ She looked shyly at her aunt, not knowing how to behave.

  ‘Why am I not more careful what I say? I must think before I speak,’ she thought unhappily.

  Lauretta was really offended. Her eyes rested upon Anna with disapproval.

  ‘I put up with a lot from you,’ she said, with her cold, almost cruel brightness, like a beautiful, cruel bird darting and flashing with vivid, brilliant plumage and vicious, stiletto-sharp beak. ‘I put up with a lot because Rachel says you are clever. I believe in what she tells me. Otherwise I should not be so lenient with you.’

  Anna felt that she was being threatened. Lauretta’s words contained a warning and a threat. Something definite; almost some one specific thing. She thought she knew what it was. To herself she said: ‘She is thinking about my verses. If my book of verse is published, she will be nice to me. Otherwise she will not. Everything depends upon that.’ The book of poems was being made an issue, between them. Anna sighed, thinking of the future.

  She began to make a definite effort to please Lauretta. She felt that after the long security of her Haddenham life, her existence was again becoming precarious, and that if she were not careful some disaster would overtake her. It was the end of security and the beginning of something dangerous and uncertain; a new life, new dangers. It was Lauretta, the hard, bright, beautiful Lauretta, with her brittle, tinkling laugh, who threatened her. Lauretta had the power in her delicate, fluttering, be-ringed hands to call down disaster upon Anna’s head. So Anna had to try and please her, to placate her, and avert the disasters.

  She had her hair waved, and wore the dress with the blue frills that made her feel clumsy and uncomfortable. And she tried to make herself pleasant to everyone, to the complacent young-old people, and the rather febrile old-young people with their curious bright faces that seemed strained in an effort to be always smiling; to everybody she met.

  She made a tremendous effort. But it was not much good, really. She might just as well have spared herself the pains. She simply could not get on with them, any more than they could get on with her. There seemed to be no possible point of contact between them. Anna would dance with them, and play games with them, with the best will in the world. But as soon as she tried to talk to them, an invisible, impassable barrier seemed to slip into place, like a glass dome over an old-fashioned clock, shutting her off, absolutely on her own little pedestal of isolation.

  It was at the same time dreary and discouraging; a tedious round of discouragement. After the congenial fullness, the completeness of her life at Haddenham, this futile pursuit of amusements which failed to amuse was both irritating and distressing. Only the thought of going to Oxford in the autumn helped her through the days. That, and her correspondence with Sidney.

  Now that Anna found herself in an unsympathetic atmosphere, she relied more and more on the consciousness of Sidney’s affection. From day to day she was made to feel that the atmosphere of Blue Hills was one of covert, undeclared but growing hostility towards herself. She was, in some way, in complete, basic, involuntary opposition to the whole life of the place. And in some way, everyone seemed instinctively to be aware of her opposition, though she tried hard to conceal it.

  Anna knew that Lauretta was aware of the distaste, the slight involuntary contempt, which she felt for this empty, aimless existence, of the sort of faint horror which it inspired in her. She knew that Lauretta bitterly resented her attitude, that she thought of her as conceited, supercilious and affected. But for the life of her she could not conceal her feelings. By her silences, by her expressions, by the very inflexions of her voice she seemed, against her will, to reveal the truth. And the hostility mounted against her day by day.

  So that now, for her consolation and support, she had only her letters from Sidney, and those which she wrote in reply. Sidney w
rote almost every day, short, disjointed sentences that were like her conversation, but full of encouragement for Anna, full of Sidney’s own wild, proud charm, reckless and half savage, faithful in a shy intensity of love. A sort of wild strength of devotion behind the abrupt phrases.

  Anna wrote back daily, long, carefully-worded, rather consciously-clever letters, analytical and introspective. A certain pathos in the well-selected phrases; and also a soullessness, a hardness, rather repulsive. But nevertheless a vast sincerity.

  She was always writing or reading. Whenever she could snatch a few minutes from the exacting, boring social round, she would slip away into some corner or other with a book, or a block of writing-paper. A habit which annoyed Heyward Bland.

  He couldn’t bear it. It made him indignant. And immediately, he had to swoop down upon her, when he saw her sitting quietly somewhere, furious that she should be quiet.

  ‘What are you up to now?’ he snapped, snarling at Anna’s book as if it had been a deadly insult offered to him, personally. ‘Always reading and lounging about! Why can’t you behave like other girls of your age – Be a bit more coltish instead of going about with your nose in the air all day!’

  And Anna, quietly but definitely, would walk away to escape the old man’s bullying rudeness, eyeing him contemptuously with grey, stone-like eyes, not saying a word.

  One morning the expected letter from Sidney failed to appear, and Anna went about the house disconsolate and wondering, till, in Lauretta’s room, she saw the familiar square white envelope addressed in Sidney’s small writing, lying on the silver quilt with its incrustations of pale flowers. And Lauretta sitting up in bed in her lacy wrapper with a kind of pointed, bird-like ferocity on her pretty face where the slackness of middle-age was just beginning to show itself.

  Queer, the sharp, bright malevolence on Lauretta’s face, as she sat and looked at her niece. A cruel, tormenting look, with something ugly behind – jealousy, perhaps.

  ‘My letter –’ Anna began, and put out her hand to pick it up.

  But Lauretta was quicker. With a pouncing, darting movement, her hand with its small, sharp, pink-tinted nails flashed out, and took the letter away.

  Anna’s arm dropped to her side. She stood quite motionless, as if paralysed.

  On Lauretta’s face a slight smirk of ferocity came, as she touched the letter.

  ‘Yes, your letter,’ she said, with a peculiar sharp insolence, like the jab of a bird’s beak. ‘Your letter,’ she repeated: and paused.

  ‘What about it?’ said Anna, suddenly angry. ‘Give it to me, please.’

  Lauretta’s eyes gleamed with malevolent ridicule, watching her.

  ‘I have read it,’ she said, not making any move, but watching, watching, her eyes fixed mockingly on Anna’s face, with a kind of satisfaction.

  ‘Why did you read it?’ asked Anna coldly. ‘What right have you to read my letters?’

  ‘As your guardian I have the right to watch over your morals. More than a right – it is a duty.’

  The subtle gleam of satisfaction lurked in Lauretta’s eyes as she spoke. She was doing her best to get her own back, to trample over Anna.

  Anna was very quiet. She would not show her anger. She knew how to stand very still, isolating herself from the woman in the bed.

  ‘I don’t approve of your friendship with this girl – Sidney, or whatever she calls herself.’ The strange, vicious insolence of the tone!

  ‘Sidney is her name.’ Anna’s voice dropped, cold as a stone, into the silence.

  Lauretta made a faint, insulting grimace.

  ‘It would be something like that, of course.’

  There was a little blank pause, heavy with anger. Then:

  ‘Perhaps you think that because I don’t say very much I don’t notice what is going on, in my own house, under my very nose. Perhaps you imagine that I haven’t seen you creeping off day after day to write your secret letters. And this girl’s letters that come for you every day.’

  Anna did not want to speak. She would rather have kept silent. But since the mocking, insulting voice had paused as if for a reply from her, she said:

  ‘Well, why shouldn’t we write to one another? We were friends at Haddenham for a long time, and no one there objected to our friendship.’

  A peculiar light flashed in Lauretta’s eyes. Her whole face assumed a secret and somewhat blenched expression, a sly look of wicked, secret cunning and knowingness, like an evil little bird.

  ‘I’m beginning to think that Haddenham was not a very desirable place. It seems to have had a remarkably bad effect upon you.’

  Anna felt herself beginning to tremble inwardly. An irritable disgust had fallen upon her, so that she wanted to make some violent gesture, to smash something, and to run out of the room. But outwardly she remained perfectly calm.

  ‘I don’t know what you mean,’ she said.

  ‘I hope for your sake that is true; that you don’t understand me.’

  It was perfectly clear that Lauretta was enjoying herself. She rejoiced because she had been able to bring that pale, disgusted look to Anna’s face. Her eyes were bright points of malice in her soft face.

  ‘But, anyhow, your friendship with this Sidney must stop. It’s unhealthy, and I won’t allow it to continue.’

  ‘Unhealthy!’ cried Anna, in a voice quivering with anger. ‘Sidney’s the healthiest person alive!’

  Lauretta gave a little triumphant smirk. Her desire to wound and insult Anna was gratified. She had touched her on the raw.

  ‘I think not,’ she said. ‘This is an unhealthy letter. It is not at all a normal, harmless letter from one girl to another. It’s a love letter, neither more nor less!’

  Sitting up against her pillows she was staring at Anna with a sharp, evil enjoyment of knowledge, like a bird that had just picked a tasty morsel out of the dust-bin. Anna shrank from the bright, detestable knowingness of her gaze. She resented it furiously. And yet she had to stand quietly beside the bed. And still Lauretta stared at her, with the sharp, unspeakable look of secret evil knowledge, that seemed to smear her heart. She looked aside at the window, which had a patterned chintz blind. A quivering blankness had come upon her, as though she were going out of her mind.

  ‘You will not write to her, or receive any more letters from her,’ Lauretta said.

  Anna could hear the insolent satisfaction in the voice, the vicious delight in hurting and humiliating. She did not turn to her at once. It was horrible to her to see the slightly sagging face, on which was a tormenting, ugly look. She hated to see the cruel smirk of triumph on the relaxed mouth. And the bright eyes watching her like a wicked, predatory bird, with a sly gleam of ferocity, sinister.

  Anna went to her own room – sat there silent, trembling, with the ugly smear on her heart, and a numbness also: she who was so independent and so strong.

  She knew the sneaking, covert horror which is the world’s horror of evil. She knew that Lauretta had stabbed a venomous point of knowledge into her soul.

  And she had lost Sidney. The loneliness of being cut off from Sidney, the blank loneliness of isolation in a hostile camp; the self-reproach, the regret; the reproach of Sidney’s faithful, amber-coloured eyes, hurt and loyal and bewildered, left without explanation!

  Anna was bitterly defiant under her stubborn calmness. Only she knew that it was useless to fight against Lauretta. Lauretta had her in her power, utterly. She was forced to submit. But underneath surged such a tide of bitterness and revolt that she felt her heart almost burst.

  ‘I shall never forgive her,’ she said to herself, looking at Lauretta in her hard way, with a distraught, inward shudder of too-much enmity.

  It was not only the loss of Sidney that she had suffered at her hands. It was some sort of horror that Lauretta had inflicted upon her. The loathsome, creeping horror of the world’s evil. For the poisonous point of evil-knowledge had really stabbed her to the heart. There was a horrible smear now, unalterable, upon her
heart. And an uncertainty, a nightmare creeping back into her life. Her self-confidence had been undermined.

  When she spoke to Lauretta there was a new reserve in her cool voice, the reservation of sheer enmity.

  Lauretta herself didn’t care a bit that she had done these things to Anna. She felt no responsibility. She was rather disappointed that Anna was not more obviously distressed by the loss of her friend.

  ‘I don’t believe she really cared for the girl at all,’ she thought. ‘She seems incapable of any feeling whatever.’ At which her indignation and resentment increased.

  The life of Blue Hills ran on. But for Anna it had lost all interest and reality. She was waiting now, just waiting to get away. Waiting for her real life to begin. She was conscious all the time of a sense of impermanence. And the three of them, herself and Lauretta and Heyward Bland, were no more than spectres moving in the house, until such time as she could make her escape.

  ‘Oxford. Oxford,’ she said to herself, thinking of the autumn. The summer, the present, was no more. Blank and restless she waited for the days to pass, like someone on the eve of a long voyage.

  Drummond, the Oxford publisher, was taking an interest in Anna. He had written to her once or twice about her poems. He seemed to think they had merit in them. Then for a long time she heard nothing more. It looked as if she had been forgotten. But the manuscripts were not returned: she persuaded herself that this was a good sign.

  Suddenly a letter came. Drummond wanted to see her, to talk to her. In a drift of hidden excitement she started for Oxford. She would not let anyone see her excitement. Instead, she went in an off-hand way, deliberately casual, albeit somewhat unnatural. There was an eager, intent look at the back of her eyes, a look of concentrated anxiety. She did not know it was there. But she was aware that much more than the personal literary issue was at stake.