Free A Game of Hide and Seek by Elizabeth Taylor, Caleb Crain Page A

life, though I would if I were not so ignorant. You and I must have some talks, and you shall tell me exactly what I have to do. What you once worked so hard for, I must not waste. And I should like to vote before I die.’ Her eyes misted. She put her hand flat to the base of her throat. There was a moment of nervousness in the room.
    Charles had taken Harriet’s hand and given it back.
    â€˜Tea,’ said Julia, sitting down on the sofa, ‘it always seems such an interruption and not very nice, nor worth . . . and one never knows how much, how little, to provide.’
    She had decided on a great deal, Harriet was glad to see, and every little table was laden with scones and layer cakes and Swiss rolls.
    â€˜However,’ Julia said, shaking back her bracelets, ‘if we didn’t have tea, we could never use the china.’
    While she was talking, Charles seemed gravely to await her conclusion and, as soon as she ceased, turned to Lilian with some polite and daunting question which, once answered, only could confer silence.
    Julia poured tea gracefully, but it all ran over into the saucers.
    â€˜My grandmother judged people very much by how they poured tea,’ Julia rattled on, as she emptied the saucers into the slop-basin. ‘She applied those arbitrary tests, like throwing witches into water. And being a lady ’ (her voice floated derisively at the word: she handed Lilian her cup) ‘that hinged on such little things – whether, for instance, one’s gloves were buttoned before one opened the front-door. Only the maids buttoned them on the way out. It is still a check, an inhibition, to me. Such trivial things. And what she knew about it all, I cannot say. She was not even what is called one of nature’s ladies.’
    Charles hitched his trousers over his knees, crossed his legs. Harriet, trying not to stare at his mother stared too much at him. As soon as she became conscious of this, she began to look about the room instead, at all the pink and grey cretonne, the cushions embroidered with delphiniums, the fire-screen with hollyhocks. In the tarnished brass fender lay all sorts of implements for doing things to fires: long-handled shovels, crooked loose-hinged tongs, pokers, bellows. Not a square foot of wall-paper but was covered with purple water-colours of moorland, or cows wading in ponds, or Persian kittens done in crayon.
    When Charles asked her a question, she violently started and he was obliged to repeat it. His mother suddenly lost interest and leant back, fanning herself with a bunch of peacocks’-feathers which she had taken out of a vase. But her smile was at the ready; her look alert. She rarely relaxed more than this, and never unless alone.
    After tea, Charles played the piano. The delicate music and his quick hands following one another up the keyboard only underlined his masculinity, as if he played some girls’ game with efficiency and despatch. His cigarette trailed smoke from its ash-tray; at the end of the piece of music, he crushed it out, half-turned towards them, paused, and then continued.
    Beating at the air with her improvised fan, his mother closed her eyes. Only Lilian and Harriet were left to look about uneasily. Harriet tried to put on a polite and considering look. She loved the music, but could not allow herself to enjoy it among strangers. Sunk too far back in her too large chair she felt helpless, like a beetle turned on its back; and as if she could never rise again, nor find the right phrases of appreciation.
    Lilian sat upright with her head slightly inclined as if it were burdened. It was true that music never delighted, only weakened, her.
    Imperviously, Charles went from Ballade to Waltz, from Waltz to Prelude. He played without music; mostly, his glance was sidelong down at the keyboard; but sometimes his jaw seemed to stiffen; he would glance out into the garden in an offhand way. Harriet had not imagined that