Five Little Pigs

The door of the Battery opened just as we drew abreast of it, and Caroline came out. She looked disturbed-but not unduly so. She smiled rather absently at me, and said they had been discussing Angela. Elsa came down the path at that minute, and as Amyas clearly wanted to get on with the sitting without interruption from us, we went on up the path.

Philip blamed himself severely afterwards for the fact that we did not take immediate action. But I myself cannot see it the same way. We had no earthly right to assume that such a thing as murder was being contemplated. (Moreover I now believe that it was not contemplated.) It was clear that we should have to adoptsome course of action, but I still maintain that we were right to talk the matter over carefully first. It was necessary to find the right thing to do-and once or twice I found myself wondering if I had not after all made a mistake. Had the bottle really been full the day before as I thought? I am not one of those people (like my brother Philip) who can be cock-sure of everything. One’s memory does play tricks on one. How often, for instance, one is convinced one has put an article in a certain place, later to find that you have put it somewhere quite different. The more I tried to recall the state of the bottle on the preceding afternoon, the more uncertain and doubtful I became. This was very annoying to Philip, who began completely to lose patience with me.

We were not able to continue our discussion at the time, and tacitly agreed to postpone it until after lunch. (I may say that I was always free to drop in for lunch at Alderbury if I chose.)

Later, Angela and Caroline brought us beer. I asked Angela what she had been up to playing truant, and told her Miss Williams was on the warpath, and she said she had been bathing-and added that she didn’t see why she should have to mend her horrible old skirt when she was going to have all new things to go to school with.

Since there seemed no chance of further talk with Philip alone, and since I was really anxious to think things out by myself, I wandered off down the path towards the Battery. Just above the Battery, as I showed you, there is a clearing in the trees where there used to be an old bench. I sat there smoking and thinking, and watching Elsa as she sat posing for Amyas.

I shall always think of her as she was that day. Rigid in the pose, with her yellow shirt and dark-blue trousers and a red pullover slung round her shoulders for warmth.

Her face was so alight with life and health and radiance. And that gay voice of hers reciting plans for the future.

This sounds as though I was eavesdropping, but that is not so. I was perfectly visible to Elsa. Both she and Amyas knew I was there. She waved her hand at me and called up that Amyas was a perfect bear that morning-he wouldn’t let her rest. She was stiff and aching all over.

Amyas growled out that she wasn’t as stiff as he was. He was stiff all over-muscular rheumatism. Elsa said mockingly: ‘Poor old man!’ And he said she’d be taking on a creaking invalid.

It shocked me, you know, their lighthearted acquiescence in their future together whilst they were causing so much suffering. And yet I couldn’t hold it against her. She was so young, so confident, so very much in love. And she didn’t really know what she was doing. She didn’t understand suffering. She just assumed with the na1?ve confidence of a child that Caroline would be ‘all right’, that ‘she’d soon get over it.’ She saw nothing, you see, but herself and Amyas-happy together. She’d already told me my point of view was old-fashioned. She had no doubts, no qualms-no pity either. But can one expect pity from radiant youth? It is an older, wiser emotion.

They didn’t talk very much, of course. No painter wants to be chattering when he is working. Perhaps every ten minutes or so Elsa would make an observation and Amyas would grunt a reply. Once she said:

‘I think you’re right about Spain. That’s the first place we’ll go to. And you must take me to see a bullfight. It must be wonderful. Only I’d like the bull to kill the man-not the other way about. I understand how Roman women felt when they saw a man die. Men aren’t much, but animals are splendid.’

I suppose she was rather like an animal herself-young and primitive and with nothing yet of man’s sad experience and doubtful wisdom. I don’t believe Elsa had begun tothink -she onlyfelt. But she was very much alive-more alive than any person I have ever known…

That was the last time I saw her radiant and assured-on top of the world. Fey is the word for it, isn’t it?

The bell sounded for lunch, and I got up and went down the path and in at the Battery door, and Elsa joined me. It was dazzlingly bright there coming in out of the shady trees. I could hardly see. Amyas was sprawled back on the seat, his arms flung out. He was staring at the picture. I’ve so often seen him like that. How was I to know that already the poison was working, stiffening him as he sat?