What Happened at Hazelwood? Read Online Free PDF Page A

and Garrick. The play was running and an assured success when Christopher turned up. He had been at the theatre every night. And eventually he walked in on me and asked me to marry him.
    By this time Christopher Hoodless was somebody too. When people talked of Franz Boas and Ruth Benedict and Margaret Mead they sometimes mentioned him as well. Well, it seemed perfectly sensible. Brilliant young anthropologists do marry talented legitimate actresses. It is quite the sort of thing that happens. And in addition to being sensible it was delirious. All that. Dull sublunary lovers’ love didn’t seem to come in. And I just didn’t see anything sinister about this. I’d had enough of hasty sexuality in that one love affair.
    Christopher still stared – and sometimes from so far away that I felt it was a good thing that distance lends enchantment to a view. He might have been the poet Grey meditating his Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College. When one gets to this point in a story there’s nothing like a little joke.
    He got quieter – and then quieter still. One evening about a week before we were to be married we dined in a little place in Gerard Street that is all mirrors round the walls. Christopher said nothing at all. And then I saw him gazing at my reflection six depths of mirror away, and there was naked horror on his face. It was tough. I wanted Christopher, I wanted him so much that I would have taken him on any terms. But I knew he wouldn’t look at that. It was the simple truth that he wasn’t the sort who marry, he was the sort who go through a high window the night before.
    Well, I had a job getting Christopher out of where he’d got. Particularly as I wanted him. But I did manage it and he went back to his islands. Then I bolted to the country. I never guessed there could be such comfort in an old cocoa-drinking, puppy-raising, Girl-Guiding friend.
    We went riding and met Sir George Simney. He had a lad with him – it was Timmy – and from his features I thought it must be his son. ‘My groom,’ he said, and looked me straight in the eye. Well, of course I hadn’t been told that the Simney blood was there through the distaff side, and I supposed that he was boldly taking the air with his own illegitimate boy. There is nothing pretty about this, I’m afraid. But he looked at me, and somehow it was so much not Christopher –
    Anyway, that’s how I came to marry George.

 
     
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    And now to get back to these new Simneys – the ones from Australia waiting in the hall. It’s a very comfortable hall, with an enormous fire blazing in a great stone fireplace. Still, it will be civil to hurry out and make their acquaintance.
    Hippias Simney, his son Gerard, and Gerard’s wife Joyleen… I see that in trying to get a flying start with this chronicle I have landed myself with rather a crowded stage at the start. Perhaps it would be better to begin again and have all the characters drop in one by one for a drink, as they do in well-made West End plays. But, no, I’m not going back. I want to go right through with this and have done.
    I went out and George followed me. Owdon made as if to come after us; then he hesitated and motioned to Timmy to come instead. Something had taken Owdon. He looked much as if he was to be made to walk the plank there and then. And I remembered that George had picked up this unsightly retainer in Australia. Perhaps Owdon had once relieved cousin Hippias of a watch and chain? It would amuse George to take and cherish a butler who had first contacted the family in that way. And yet that watch and chain would have been a good seventeen years ago, and if backed up by George the ruffian was unlikely to go to gaol for it now. Perhaps Owdon’s Australian past held some secret altogether more considerable.
    Hippias was a great florid man about George’s age and he was standing beside the fire with an ulster thrown back upon loosely-worn tweeds. When he spoke it was with the