CHAPTER 5

      In the dining-room the child Terry made another scientific statement.

      ‘Lead salts are more soluble in cold water than hot. If you add potassium iodide you get a yellow precipitate of lead iodide.’

      He looked expectantly at his mother but without any real hope. Parents, in the opinion of young Terence, were sadly disappointing.

      ‘Did you know that, Mother?’

      ‘I don’t know anything about chemistry, dear.’

      ‘You could read about it in a book,’ said Terence.

      It was a simple statement of fact, but there was a certain wistfulness behind it.

      Gerda did not hear the wistfulness. She was caught in the trap of her anxious misery. Round and round and round. She had been miserable ever since she woke up this morning and realized that at last this long-dreaded weekend with the Angkatells was upon her. Staying at The Hollow was always a nightmare to her. She always felt bewildered and forlorn. Lucy Angkatell with her sentences that were never finished, her swift inconsequences, and her obvious attempts at kindliness, was the figure she dreaded most. But the others were nearly as bad. For Gerda it was two days of sheer martyrdom—to be endured for John’s sake.

      For John that morning as he stretched himself had remarked in tones of unmitigated pleasure:

      ‘Splendid to think we’ll be getting into the country this weekend. It will do you good, Gerda, just what you need.’

      She had smiled mechanically and had said with unselfish fortitude: ‘It will be delightful.’

      Her unhappy eyes had wandered round the bedroom. The wallpaper, cream striped with a black mark just by the wardrobe, the mahogany dressing-table with the glass that swung too far forward, the cheerful bright blue carpet, the watercolours of the Lake District. All dear familiar things and she would not see them again until Monday.

      Instead, tomorrow a housemaid who rustled would come into the strange bedroom and put down a little dainty tray of early tea by the bed and pull up the blinds, and would then rearrange and fold Gerda’s clothes—a thing which made Gerda feel hot and uncomfortable all over. She would lie miserably, enduring these things, trying to comfort herself by thinking, ‘Only one morning more.’ Like being at school and counting the days.

      Gerda had not been happy at school. At school there had been even less reassurance than elsewhere. Home had been better. But even home had not been very good. For they had all, of course, been quicker and cleverer than she was. Their comments, quick, impatient, not quite unkind, had whistled about her ears like a hailstorm. ‘Oh, do be quick, Gerda.’ ‘Butter-fingers, give it to me!’ ‘Oh don’t let Gerda do it, she’ll be ages.’ ‘Gerda never takes in anything…’

      Hadn’t they seen, all of them, that that was the way to make her slower and stupider still? She’d got worse and worse, more clumsy with her fingers, more slow-witted, more inclined to stare vacantly at what was said to her.

      Until, suddenly, she had reached the point where she had found a way out. Almost accidentally, really, she found her weapon of defence.

      She had grown slower still, her puzzled stare had become even blanker. But now, when they said impatiently: ‘Oh, Gerda, how stupid you are, don’t you understand that?’ she had been able, behind her blank expression, to hug herself a little in her secret knowledge… For she wasn’t as stupid as they thought. Often, when she pretended not to understand, she did understand. And often, deliberately, she slowed down in her task of whatever it was, smiling to herself when someone’s impatient fingers snatched it away from her.

      For, warm and delightful, was a secret knowledge of superiority. She began to be, quite often, a little amused. Yes, it was amusing to know more than they thought you knew. To be able to do a thing, but not let anybody know that you could do it.

      And it had the advantage, suddenly discovered, that people often did things for you. That, of course, saved you a lot of trouble. And, in the end, if people got into the habit of doing things for you, you didn’t have to do them at all, and then people didn’t know that you did them badly. And so, slowly, you came round again almost to where you started. To feeling that you could hold your own on equal terms with the world at large.

      (But that wouldn’t, Gerda feared, hold good with the Angkatells; the Angkatells were always so far ahead that you didn’t feel even in the same street with them. How she hated the Angkatells! It was good for John—John liked it there. He came home less tired—and sometimes less irritable.)

      Dear John, she thought. John was wonderful. Everyone thought so. Such a clever doctor, so terribly kind to his patients. Wearing himself out—and the interest he took in his hospital patients—all that side of his work that didn’t pay at all. John was so disinterested—so truly noble.

      She had always known, from the very first, that John was brilliant and was going to get to the top of the tree. And he had chosen her, when he might have married somebody far more brilliant. He had not minded her being slow and rather stupid and not very pretty. ‘I’ll look after you,’ he had said. Nicely, rather masterfully. ‘Don’t worry about things, Gerda, I’ll take care of you…’

      Just what a man ought to be. Wonderful to think John should have chosen her.

      He had said with that sudden, very attractive, half-pleading smile of his, ‘I like my own way, you know, Gerda.’

      Well, that was all right. She had always tried to give in to him in everything. Even lately when he had been so difficult and nervy—when nothing seemed to please him. When, somehow, nothing she did was right. One couldn’t blame him. He was so busy, so unselfish—

      Oh, dear, that mutton! She ought to have sent it back. Still no sign of John. Why couldn’t she, sometimes, decide right? Again those dark waves of misery swept over her. The mutton! This awful weekend with the Angkatells. She felt a sharp pain through both temples. Oh, dear, now she was going to have one of her headaches. And it did so annoy John when she had headaches. He never would give her anything for them, when surely it would be so easy, being a doctor. Instead he always said: ‘Don’t think about it. No use