in private, Felicity had organized a debate that “this House will abolish outrageous laws that purport to interfere in the private sexual behavior of adults.” Lady Thinnesse had had some other old woman guest with her and this person had immediately said that if this kind of thing were to be discussed it would be “above her head” and she would go to her room. Lady Thinnesse had soon followed her. The debate had gone on until three in the morning, only breaking up when one of the children was heard crying upstairs.
On that occasion, Elsa said, the people from the cottage had come up for the evening and had taken part. They were friends of Felicity. Silas Sanger had in fact been an old boyfriend of Felicity’s, they had parted on the best of terms, Felicity to be courted by, become engaged to, eventually marry Esmond Thinnesse, Silas Sanger to live with and later marry (or not marry, as Lady Thinnesse appeared to believe) Christabel. He was a painter, but not the sort who ever made much money by his painting, not the sort of “artist” that Lady Thinnesse had known and approved of in her younger days. He had had nowhere to live, had been through some kind of breakdown, and Felicity had persuaded Esmond to let him and his wife, or nonwife, live in one of the cottages near the house, the one that was in the better state of repair.
There he continued to paint, feverishly sometimes, at others sporadically, gloomily, from time to time doing nothing, lying on his bed all day, suffering what Felicity rather inaccurately called a dark night of the soul. He was a ferociously heavy drinker and the substances he drank were bizarre. What Christabel did no one seemed to know, at any rate no one said, and she appeared as something of a mystery. These people were due to come up to the house for dinner—a dinner that would be cooked by a woman who cycled over from Abridge—and remain to join in the debate, scheduled to be on the subject: This House deplores the present divorce law and would make divorce possible between consenting parties after two years’ separation. Such a provision was to become law in 1973. I couldn’t imagine there would be any dissenting voices, unless Lady Thinnesse and Julia Dunne consented to take part, which they had already declared with shudders to be out of the question, and I was surprised when Esmond said in his mild way that as an Anglican he must disapprove of any kind of divorce in any circumstances. Did Felicity remember that gently uttered but decisive statement when she ran away to Cosette’s?
The painter’s wife I had already seen. Reading to Miranda, the two of us sitting on the window seat in her bedroom, I could see the garden below and around us, the fans of high elms full of chattering starlings, the small meadow with the two horses and the big meadow shorn of its barley crop, the giant conifers that hid so much, that were always, at any time of the day, black silhouettes. I could see all this without raising my head and it was all curiously like what I was reading, all like the illustrations to Samuel Whiskers, the same sleepy windless pastoral, the same birds going to rest, the same sky of very high, small myriad clouds. To the right, on the slope of the hillside, stood Silas Sanger’s cottage and its garden, a fenced plot of shaggy grass with nothing in it but two clothes posts with a length of dark gray rope sagging between them. The cottage and its surroundings had an air of neglect. If Beatrix Potter had drawn it and been faithful to its true appearance, she would have used it as an illustration of the home of some villain of her animal world, a fox perhaps, or Bad Mouse. Curtains were at the windows, but these were torn or coming down or, in the case of those at one downstairs window, apparently refusing to be drawn back, had been looped to either side of the frame with what looked from my vantage point like string.
Out of this hovel and into this small wilderness, as the
On that occasion, Elsa said, the people from the cottage had come up for the evening and had taken part. They were friends of Felicity. Silas Sanger had in fact been an old boyfriend of Felicity’s, they had parted on the best of terms, Felicity to be courted by, become engaged to, eventually marry Esmond Thinnesse, Silas Sanger to live with and later marry (or not marry, as Lady Thinnesse appeared to believe) Christabel. He was a painter, but not the sort who ever made much money by his painting, not the sort of “artist” that Lady Thinnesse had known and approved of in her younger days. He had had nowhere to live, had been through some kind of breakdown, and Felicity had persuaded Esmond to let him and his wife, or nonwife, live in one of the cottages near the house, the one that was in the better state of repair.
There he continued to paint, feverishly sometimes, at others sporadically, gloomily, from time to time doing nothing, lying on his bed all day, suffering what Felicity rather inaccurately called a dark night of the soul. He was a ferociously heavy drinker and the substances he drank were bizarre. What Christabel did no one seemed to know, at any rate no one said, and she appeared as something of a mystery. These people were due to come up to the house for dinner—a dinner that would be cooked by a woman who cycled over from Abridge—and remain to join in the debate, scheduled to be on the subject: This House deplores the present divorce law and would make divorce possible between consenting parties after two years’ separation. Such a provision was to become law in 1973. I couldn’t imagine there would be any dissenting voices, unless Lady Thinnesse and Julia Dunne consented to take part, which they had already declared with shudders to be out of the question, and I was surprised when Esmond said in his mild way that as an Anglican he must disapprove of any kind of divorce in any circumstances. Did Felicity remember that gently uttered but decisive statement when she ran away to Cosette’s?
The painter’s wife I had already seen. Reading to Miranda, the two of us sitting on the window seat in her bedroom, I could see the garden below and around us, the fans of high elms full of chattering starlings, the small meadow with the two horses and the big meadow shorn of its barley crop, the giant conifers that hid so much, that were always, at any time of the day, black silhouettes. I could see all this without raising my head and it was all curiously like what I was reading, all like the illustrations to Samuel Whiskers, the same sleepy windless pastoral, the same birds going to rest, the same sky of very high, small myriad clouds. To the right, on the slope of the hillside, stood Silas Sanger’s cottage and its garden, a fenced plot of shaggy grass with nothing in it but two clothes posts with a length of dark gray rope sagging between them. The cottage and its surroundings had an air of neglect. If Beatrix Potter had drawn it and been faithful to its true appearance, she would have used it as an illustration of the home of some villain of her animal world, a fox perhaps, or Bad Mouse. Curtains were at the windows, but these were torn or coming down or, in the case of those at one downstairs window, apparently refusing to be drawn back, had been looped to either side of the frame with what looked from my vantage point like string.
Out of this hovel and into this small wilderness, as the
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