Illyrian Spring Read online

  ‘This is the most intelligently escapist novel – and scandalous for its time. What astonishes is its freshness. Reading it is like taking a holiday – although it is a serious sentimental education too.’ Kate Kellaway

  ‘Few people can evoke the spirit of a place more vividly than Ann Bridge.’ Linda Kelly

  ‘The glorious landscape of pre-tourist Croatia is the backdrop for Bridge’s charming 1935 novel about marriage, motherhood and self-discovery.’ Daily Mail

  Illyrian Spring

  ANN BRIDGE

  DAUNT BOOKS

  To all the Linnets

  To one Nicholas

  and to Frances and Patrick

  Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  NINE

  TEN

  ELEVEN

  TWELVE

  THIRTEEN

  FOURTEEN

  FIFTEEN

  SIXTEEN

  SEVENTEEN

  EIGHTEEN

  NINETEEN

  TWENTY

  TWENTY-ONE

  TWENTY-TWO

  TWENTY-THREE

  TWENTY-FOUR

  TWENTY-FIVE

  TWENTY-SIX

  About the Author

  ALSO BY ANN BRIDGE

  Copyright

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  The spelling of the name Komolac has presented something of a problem. On the spot it is called ‘Komolatch’; this pronunciation would properly demand an accent on the final c. The best Yugo-Slav authorities, however, leave the c unaccented, and I have followed their usage.

  A.B.

  Place names in Illyrian Spring

  Pola Pula

  Spalato Split

  Traü or Trogir Trogir

  Ragusa Dubrovnik

  Salona Solin

  Clissa Klis

  River Giadro Rijeka (river) Jadro

  Mount Mossor Brdo (mountain) Mossor

  The Stradone Stradun

  Monte Sergio Monte Srdo

  Mont Peline Peline

  Porta Ploce Luka (gate) Ploce

  Porta Pile Luka Pile

  River Ombla Rjeka Ombla

  The Borgo Tro

  Piazza delle Erbe (marketplace) Gunduliceva Poljana

  Bocche di Cattaro Boka Kotorska

  Cannosa Trsteno

  San Biagio (St Blaise) Sveti Vlano

  Duomo Dom or Katedrala

  San Salvatore Sveti Spa

  Dance Chapel Dance

  ONE

  Lady Kilmichael took her seat in the boat train at Victoria hurriedly, opened The Times, and hid behind it. When another passenger got into the carriage, she peeped out furtively to see who it was – but it was only an archidiaconal-looking clergyman, a total stranger, and she relapsed behind The Times again, with a sense of guilt. Women in the early forties who have been wives and mothers for over twenty years are liable to suffer from a slight sense of guilt whenever they embark on any purely self-regarding activity; but Lady Kilmichael had better reasons than this for her desire to avoid the eyes of acquaintances on her journey. She was leaving her home, her husband and her family – possibly for good. In a way it is rather a mistake, in such circumstances, to travel by the Simplon Orient Express; but Lady Kilmichael was going to Venice, and she lived in a world which knew no other way of getting to Venice than to travel by the Simplon Orient Express. The King’s Messenger, she had observed with relief, was one of the ones she didn’t know.

  When the train pulled out and began to lurch through the south-eastern suburbs of London, she put her paper down with a slightly increased sense of safety, and sat staring out over the chimney-pots of the poor. It was right to have come away, she told herself; there was really nothing else to do, in the circumstances. And no one really needed her any more. The boys were both at Cambridge; Nigel had his fellowship practically secure; and when Teddy had finished with college, Walter had only to lift his little finger to get him into a job. The best of being an economist, and a rich one, was that you had the commercial kings in your pocket. As for Linnet – Gina was going to chaperon Linnet this season – for what that was worth! Linnet would get on as well, or really better, without her mother. A delicate contraction emphasised Lady Kilmichael’s fine clear brows at the thought of her daughter. Why, oh why, had she and Linnet got so hopelessly across one another? She loved the child, she admired and even respected her; up till a year ago she had thought Linnet very nearly perfect. And Linnet, most comfortingly, had seemed to think the same about her mother; absurdly, touchingly, undeservedly fond of her, the child had been. But for the last year, hopeless! She had tried so hard not to ask, not to grasp, not to criticise; she hardly ever did anything but praise and agree. But even that was wrong; whatever she said or did was wrong. Linnet’s criticisms, Linnet’s neat derision, were really what she minded most, though she hesitated to admit so much, even to herself. The fact was that Lady Kilmichael was not very good at thinking clearly. As, the suburbs left behind, the train ran smoothly and steadily across Kent, fair and complacent in its thin April green, she tried to think where she had gone wrong with Linnet. And she could not contrive to accuse herself of much. Of course she knew that, broadly speaking, it is always the mother’s fault when daughters are ‘difficult,’ but really, what had she left undone or done amiss with the child? She could not see it; and, suspecting herself of moral stupidity, she relapsed into a vague sense of pain and failure.

  They were familiar sensations. Walter had criticised and derided her, with a cool friendliness that was almost more wounding than real unkindness, for years. She had got accustomed to that from Walter. Of course he was very brilliant, and she was only just fairly intelligent, except in her own line. It was rather enervating, but she had more or less accepted it, from him. But when it came to trying to accept it from Linnet, her own child, she just couldn’t do it. The pain had become overwhelming. Why, if she was a failure, should she stay there to eat her humiliation like bread, day in and day out? Indignant tears sprang to her eyes. No! she was right to go.

  Wiping her eyes behind The Times again – it would be awful to let a strange parson see her cry – she restored her pretty nose skilfully, and looked resolutely out of the window. It would really be better not to think of all these things in the train; they upset one, and it was part of her careful plan that neither she nor anyone else should appear in the least upset. While Walter made up his mind, everything was to seem quite normal. She began to read The Times once more; glancing vaguely down the social column, a paragraph caught her eye:

  Lady Kilmichael has left England to visit her mother, Lady Grierson, at Antibes. No correspondence will be forwarded.

  Oh! They had been very quick about putting it in. Well, it did look absolutely normal. And she had told Mother to expect her later, but that she was going to sketch a little first, wandering about as the whim took her. Gina had been told the same thing, and had willingly agreed to cope with Linnet; Mrs Hanbury liked and admired Linnet; she thought her strong-minded and intelligent, not like the usual run of vapid chits. And the servants had all been told the same story, and accepted it. Nobody knew – except Walter, who would know most definitely when he came back from New York next week and got her letter. But by then she would be clear away, in Dalmatia, which no one had ever heard of and where nobody ever went. She looked again at the decorous paragraph in The Times, with a certain satisfaction in the completeness of her arrangements. All perfectly normal.

  But in her comfortable room at her Aunt Gina’s, Linnet was at that moment writing to her dearest fri
end as follows:

  I’m here. Mums has gone abroad. She has given out that she is going to Gags at Antibes, but it’s my private belief that she has rootled off alone to paint somewhere, and that she won’t come back for a good long time. She and Poppy have got frightfully on each other’s nerves. This is to be kept entirely under your hat, and I know I can rely on you, but I think Mums has heard a bit too much lately about Our Mrs Barum. I don’t myself believe there’s anything in it, but Poppy is a most frightful fool about some things, and doesn’t seem to see that Mums might well think there was, the way he trails the woman round and parades her intelligence. Personally I don’t think women should be economists; it makes them awful to look at; and those professional women are nearly always the most frightful vamps at heart – haven’t you noticed it? I don’t know what means they use.

  Poor Mums – I am sorry for her. She and Poppy are both darlings really, but so incompetent about one another. And really it will be a bit of a relief to be with Aunt G. this season. I don’t know why I find those two such a strain – Mums especially. She doesn’t interfere, she doesn’t cut one out with one’s boyfriends, like your hag of an Aunt does poor Angela; and she’s pretty good about one’s clothes and hair. I give her all that. But she watches one. I think what I can’t bear is her trying to say the right thing to me, and waiting to see if she has – and then thinking she hasn’t. Whereas Aunt G. doesn’t give a blow for me, or what I think or feel – so restful.

  Thus casually, thus directly, the rising generation put its scarlet-tipped finger on the sorest secret spot in the older generation’s mind. On the Channel steamer, wrapped in a white coat of clipped lambskin, standing at the rail where the sea-wind made one’s eyes stream anyhow, Lady Kilmichael stared at the pearly receding buttresses of the English coast and thought about Mrs Barum and Walter. There is something about crossing the Channel which for people of a certain type (and especially for the non-seasick) promotes melancholy reflections, or deeper reflections anyhow. One leaves one’s home so definitely by sea! No crossing of a land frontier gives the same sense of severance. Those white cliffs, fading mistily behind her in the April sunshine, made Grace Kilmichael wonder if she were really leaving England for good.

  It all depended on what Walter decided. If – if he really did care about Rose Barum, she wouldn’t stand in his way. It was so glaringly indecent to hold on to one’s husband if he wanted someone else. The trouble was that she didn’t know what Walter did want, and this was one of those questions you really couldn’t ask. Perhaps Walter would merely have said, coldly, that she had worked herself up. She ought to have been able to tell by observation, but she couldn’t bring herself to observe! She simply looked the other way – had been looking the other way for months now. And anyhow Walter was so undemonstrative, so terribly detached – he was a bad subject for observation. Rose Barum – her mind, in pain, shifted unwillingly to Rose Barum – she seemed a strange person to be attractive. In spite of her dark complexion – naughty Linnet would call her ‘the swarthy phenomenon,’ because Walter had once said that Mrs Barum’s brain was a phenomenon in a woman – she wasn’t a Jewess; only married to a Jew. That was the worst of being an economist, Lady Kilmichael thought – Jews sort of cropped up all round you. No – that was a Nazi way of thinking; she ought not to think that. She must be fair. Only Mrs Barum was really plain; and she was worse than plain, she was rather fat, and hadn’t the wits to realise that fat women ought to wear their clothes very loose, to look at all possible. Her sleeves! (Lady Kilmichael’s expression at that moment became one of very decided distaste – the irrational and unconscious contempt of the slender woman for the stout.) And her voice, so metallic and loud, enunciating facts about currency in dominating streams at the dinner table; and her jerky, abrupt manner. No one could imagine her the sort of person to attract Walter. But she was incredibly able, she worked like a horse, he said – no doubt she was very useful to him. He said that, and one must be fair.

  Better not think about Mrs Barum either; it was really such a strain going on being fair. She strolled round the deck, went below and attended to her face, came on deck again. She was relieved when they manoeuvred into port, and she could think about the Customs and find her sleeper, and pay a huge tip to get it changed, because it was over the axle. The mere sound of French in her ears, the blue-bloused porters, lightened her mood, shifted her thoughts; the sight of the white notices on the long coaches, with names which led the mind right across Europe – Milan, Trieste, Beograd, Istanbul – gave her a little thrilled sense of space and travel. At least she was going to get far away from it all, and see lovely places.

  Sitting in the dining car, eating a late lunch, she watched the landscape of North France, so simplified, so definite in its greenness and whiteness, with a clearer, a more Latin light over it than England knows, compose and recompose itself into pictures which in turns cried out to be painted. Oh, no wonder the French landscapists had got where they had – further than anyone else in the world! The very countryside would teach one to paint, in France. Well, now she would be able to paint, as much as she liked, and without perpetual teasing comments; as soon as she felt like it, she would get her things from Mother’s and begin again. But for the moment she would just rest, and content herself with those little line sketches of places, with a short paragraph of description, for which three American papers had made her such a startling contract. Another instance of the completeness of her arrangements, she thought, with a faint touch of complacency, that contract; for the next six months those two or three little sketches a week would cover her expenses anywhere she chose to go, and if by ill luck she did run into people, the contract would give her a marvellous excuse. It was wonderful to be so independent, at last. Not that she had ever lacked for anything, these last years – Walter gave her plenty of money; but he was so critical of how she spent it. Perhaps being an economist helped to make one economical.

  Thinking about Walter, her complacency faded again. His attitude to her painting had made her really unhappy, because, look at it as she would, she could not make it seem generous; and she hated to think of Walter as ungenerous. She had been learning to be a painter when they married; he knew that, he knew it was her chosen profession. Of course she dropped it then; it was only when the boys were nearly grown up and Linnet at school, and they had become rich, and Walter himself was so often away in America or Australia, organising people’s currencies and things for them, that she had really begun again; very tentatively at first. How he had laughed when he heard that she was working at the Slade! Well, she didn’t mind that – at least, she was accustomed to it; it was his attitude to her success that she minded. For after two or three years at the Slade, and a few stolen periods in Moru’s atelier in Paris, Lady Kilmichael had had a prodigious, a wholly phenomenal success. Her first important picture, ‘Conversation Piece in a Garden’, after being hung on the line in the Salon, had been bought by a big Paris dealer and sold to the Metropolitan Museum in New York; her second, ‘Business as Usual’ (inspired by Walter and some financiers smoking cigars and discussing the Gold Standard in the garden at Netherstoke), had won the ‘Femina’ Gold Medal, and was now being exhibited on loan in Australia. She had had the luck to create a new fashion in pictures, which had ‘caught on’; she could, if she had chosen, have spent all her time now painting statesmen and beauties in their everyday clothes, beside their own herbaceous borders.

  But she hadn’t chosen. That was why, she thought painfully, as she sat in the train, gazing out through fresh tears at the logically simple countryside of France, it was really unfair of Walter to have been so disagreeable about her success. She had kept her painting strictly subordinated to her main job, to being a wife and mother: entertaining economists for Walter, and chits for the boys; spending the holidays with them and with Linnet. It wasn’t as though she had neglected all that. And she had called herself ‘Grace Stanway’, her middle name, not Grace Kilmichael, and kept her growing fame
hidden as well as she could. But Walter hadn’t shown the pleasure she expected at this success which had come on her like something out of a fairy tale; he had been tepid, he had been teasing. ‘Where is your Mother?’ she would hear him say to Linnet, in his rich cultivated voice, coming in – ‘in pursuit of Art, I suppose?’ ‘Well Grace, how are the masterpieces getting on?’ he would ask her. And that made her feel guilty; try as she would, she couldn’t free herself from her dependence on Walter’s judgement and on her family’s attitude. Even Linnet, in these last unhappy months, had teased her about her painting, been wittily derisive, following her Father’s example. The boys were merely indifferent, except to the benefits which flowed from her work. ‘Buck up and finish the old picture, Mums darling – I want a new car’ was their very uncomplicated line. They gazed dumbly at her work on the easel, but raced off to the Academy to count the crowds in front of it when it was hung, at last, there too. ‘Well done the jolly old public – you couldn’t get near Mum’s latest spot of horticulture,’ they would proclaim triumphantly on their return. ‘Do you like it, darling?’ she would say sometimes, wistfully, to Teddy, turning from a nearly completed canvas to wipe her fingers on a rag, when the first gong summoned her, distractingly, to get ready for luncheon. ‘Looks all right to me – when shall you finish it?’ Teddy would answer. ‘Buck up and clean yourself, Miss Stanway; you know you’re coming to Hurlingham this afternoon,’ he would say, pushing her towards the door. Oh, the boys were rather sweet – a smile crept round her faintly, correctly reddened mouth at the thought of the boys; they weren’t very interested, but there was no edge on their teasing.

  So all across France, lying more picture-like than ever in the deepening afternoon light, she continued her reminiscent argument with herself; now wondering, with Walter as with Linnet, how she was in fault, where she had gone wrong, how failed him, to bring things to this unhappy pass, now thinking with faint resentment that she had done all she could; till the white dome of the Sacré Coeur loomed up on the hill above the city’s haze, like a snow-mountain or a gigantic pearl, and she knew that they were nearing Paris. She looked at it with the usual emotions – astonishment at its beauty, its height, and pleasure at the mere thought it always brought of being again in Paris, which she loved. She looked at her watch – there might just be time to get round to Rosenthal’s Gallery and see those new things of Gillani’s. She rang the bell for the sleeping-car attendant and told him that she would rejoin the train at the Gare de Lyon. The attendant, remembering the tip he had received at Boulogne, bowed and promised to lock Madame’s carriage.