“Is that Kate?”
“Yes, Mama.”
“You’ve seen him, then. Weren’t you astonished?”
“Yes.”
“Run down to the stables, my dear, and tell Reynolds the carriage won’t be wanted.”
Kate made a little face. She didn’t want to run down to the stables at all. Why on earth couldn’t one of the servants go?
She dared not object aloud, but she made no answer, and remained beside her brother.
Lucy was smiling at her with one eyebrow cocked, just as though he knew exactly what she was feeling.
Cecilia rustled down the stairs and into the hall. Her fair, still handsome face was alight with happiness and excitement.
“My dear boy, you’re looking thin! Well — but thin.”
“You always say that,” returned Lucy. “It’s only an excuse for bringing up the vintage port at eleven o’clock in the morning to keep me alive. At least, I hope so.”
Cecilia laughed, looking at him with proud delight.
“We’ll drink some champagne to-night, in your honour, at all events. And when Fred comes, we’ll open a bottle of your poor father’s Clicquot.”
Cecilia referred almost indiscriminately to either of her two husbands as “your poor father” when speaking to her children. It was as though she felt her own maternity to be of such supreme importance that it really scarcely mattered in what relation to them had stood either Frederic Lempriére or Lorimer Charlecombe.
“When is Fred due?”
“Not till June. About the fourteenth, he thinks he ought to be in London. I shall go up then, of course, to meet him. He wants to spend at least a week there, poor boy, after being all by himself all those months on the plantation.”
“Waste of time, when one might be getting some cricket down here,” declared Lucy.
“Oh, Lucy! There’s a cricket-match here on Saturday, and you’re to play against Cousin Joe Newton’s side — for the village eleven, and — —”
“Kate,” interrupted Cecilia, “what are you doing? I told you to run down and tell Reynolds to unharness the horses, didn’t I?”
“Yes, Mama.”
“Then go at once. Prompt obedience.”
It was Cecilia’s catchword, always used to her daughter and never to her sons.
Kate went, looking as sulky as she dared.
It was just like Mama, to send her all the way down to the stables the minute Lucy had arrived and when she’d hardly had two seconds with him, whereas Mama had seen him already and would anyway sit up talking with him in the drawing-room for hours after Kate had been sent to bed.
Thank goodness Fred was coming home, and then Mama wouldn’t pay much attention to anybody else in the world.
Outside the front door, Kate raced at full speed down the avenue partly so as to get back the sooner, and partly as an outlet for her excitement, which was diffusing itself between rapture at Lucy’s return, irritation with her mother, and an unreasoning sense of panic fear lest any shade of disappointment should mingle with her happiness.
2
The Newton Players arrived in a big two-horse brake, with Joe Newton’s wife in a stiff white piquè skirt and shirt, and the Newton Players’ cricketing colours — blue and gold stripes on grey — on the band of her straw hat and man’s tie.
She always kept the score.
The fine weather was still unbroken and Cecilia had decided to have the luncheon out of doors, on long trestle tables in front of the conservatory, through which the servants could pass to and from the kitchen premises.
“Kate, run and get some flowers. Go to the kitchen-garden entrance, and the avenue — there are plenty of bluebells and summer snowballs and rhododendrons, and then you won’t spoil the look of the borders.”
“Yes, Mama. But I think Rosalie will be here early. You said I might — —”
“Then she can help you. Run along. You’ll find plenty of jam-jars in the pantry. Or tell Emily to fill them up with water and carry them out to the tables for you.”
Kate liked picking and arranging the flowers, although she hated being told to “run along” as if she were seven years old.
She went first to the drive, where the rhododendron bushes were pink and red and purple mounds of colour, some of them too thickly covered in blossom to show any green at all.
As she had expected, she heard wheels on the gravel and saw the Merediths’ pony-cart arrive, with Rosalie in a pale-green frock and a straw hat with white roses driving with a strange lady — who must be the aunt — beside her.
Kate crammed down the flowers in her basket and dashed up to the front door.
Rosalie and the aunt got out, the reins were hitched up until the garden-boy should come and take the heated, panting pony to the stables, and Kate was introduced.
“This is Kate Charlecombe, Aunt Maude. My aunt, Mrs. Troyle, Kate.”
How beautifully Rosalie did everything. She was never shy and awkward, and she was never what Kate’s mother called “forward.”
The aunt, of whom Kate only knew that she was a widow and rather poor, looked exactly like a widow, and that was really all that one noticed about her.
“I think Mama is on the terrace. Isn’t it a lovely day?” Kate said politely, and she took them to find Cecilia. “Shall I finish the flowers, Mama?”
“Yes, do, dear. Perhaps Rosalie would like to help you?”
“Yes, I’d love to,” Rosalie replied.
They went off together, leaving Mrs. Troyle — looking rather frightened — on the terrace with her hostess.
“Mother was very sorry she couldn’t come,” said Rosalie.
“It isn’t easy for her to get away, she’s always got so much to do.”
The Merediths were very badly off, and kept only one maid. It was known, although not mentioned, that Mrs. Meredith did a good deal of her own housework, and could if necessary cook the family meals.
“So long as you’ve come — —” began Kate, and then corrected herself. “I mean, I’m very sorry about your mother not being able to, and so will everybody be, but I’ve been so looking forward to seeing you again.”
“So have I,” said Rosalie, and she smiled into Kate’s dazzled eyes as she said it.
Could it really be true that Rosalie — someone like Rosalie — really cared so much as all that about seeing one? Cared as much as one did oneself?
“Miss Kate, the Reverend Williams and the men is coming across the park now this minute. You’ll have to be quick,” said the black-and-white-clad Emily, the starched streamers of her cap fluttering out behind her as she put down her tray of jam-jars.
“Quick!” echoed Rosalie. “I’ll help.”
They rapidly arranged the flowers and placed the jars at intervals along the tables.
Just as they were finishing, calling out to one another, chattering and laughing without reason, Lucy strolled out from the conservatory in his white flannels and striped blazer.
“This is my brother, Rosalie,” began Kate, too much excited to feel shy and remembering how Rosalie had introduced her to Mrs. Troyle. “Lucy, I want to introduce you to Miss Meredith.”
“I can’t shake hands,” said Rosalie, laughing, and showing fingers sticky from the rhododendron buds and glistening with spilt water.
“We can say ‘Pleased to meet you’ instead, as the Yankees do,” Lucy suggested.
“I really am pleased to meet you. I’ve heard such a lot about you from Kate.”
“And I,” said Lucy, “am pleased to meet you, and should be, Kate or no Kate.”
They all laughed.
Then the Rector hailed them from the foot of the terrace steps, signalling that his men were crossing the park to the cricket pavilion, Cecilia with Joe and Edith Newton and Mrs. Troyle came onto the terrace, and Kate swept up the litter of leaves that they had made on the white table-cloths and took them away in her basket.
3
It seemed to her that no cricket-match day h
ad ever been as perfect as this one, not even in that summer of four years ago when Fred and Lucy had been at home and played regularly for Joe Newton’s side, and Tom Ballantyne had come over from Redbrooke where he was staying with a house-party for a cricket week, and he and Fanny, at the end of August, had become engaged, to the astonishment of everybody — especially to that of poor Fanny, to whom nobody had ever proposed before.
Cousin Joe Newton won the toss and sent the other side in. Lucy was fifth man in, and remained beside Kate and Rosalie on the grass outside the pavilion while the red-headed village carpenter, facing the Wesleyan minister, knocked up a score of three-and-twenty off some indifferent bowling.
“Hasn’t old Joe got anyone who can bowl a fast ball?” enquired Lucy. “What’s happened to Whitfield?”
“He’s gone to Canada. Cousin Joe is sure to take the bowling himself, later on. He always puts himself on about half-way-through.”
“I’ve seen your brother-in-law bowling,” Rosalie put in. “I saw him do the hat-trick, last summer, up at St. Brinvels.”
“Tom’s good,” Lucy agreed, looking up at her. “He’s a good wicket-keeper, too.”
They talked on, desultorily, about cricket, every now and then interrupting themselves to exclaim,
“Run, you ass, run! No! Don’t run! Go back.”
“It’s a catch! No, it isn’t — he’s missed it.”
At last the carpenter, stepping out too recklessly to meet a fast ball, was clean bowled.
He walked off the pitch, grinning, and heartily applauded by the spectators as his score went up on the board.
Within the next three overs, two more wickets fell — one to the bowling, and the other to an easy catch at cover-point.
The Wesleyan minister, a sturdy, middle-aged Welshman, was still at the wicket when Lucy, taking the bat from his predecessor, and cramming his cap down on his black head, sauntered onto the pitch.
“Is he a very good player?” Rosalie asked Kate.
“Yes,” said Kate simply. “Fred hits harder, and plays a much faster game, but he’s not half as steady as Lucy. And Lucy can run faster than anybody I ever saw. No wonder, either, when one looks at the length of his legs.”
“Is the other one as tall as that?”
“Taller,” said Kate. “Fred is six feet four, and he’s much heavier than Lucy.”
“He makes Mr. Jones look quite tiny, doesn’t he?” said Rosalie, screwing up her eyes in the sunlight to look first at the Welsh minister and then at Lucy Lempriére.
Lucy and the minister had piled up a dozen runs between them when a ball, hard-hit by Mr. Jones, was cleverly stopped and flung in by Joe Newton, and the little Welshman, lacking speed and length of limb, was run out.
The lunch interval followed.
“That was a good bit of fielding,” said Mrs. Joe Newton contentedly, as she rose from her score-sheets at the little table outside the pavilion.
She was inordinately proud of her husband, of the shrewdness, the sportsmanship and the kindness of heart, that most people overlooked because he was inarticulate, and looked like a grey monkey.
Mrs. Joe herself was no beauty.
She was spare and dried-up-looking, with a brown skin roughened by exposure, small blue eyes set in wrinkles, and faded hair that, confined in a thick hair-net, yet always contrived to look unbrushed and uncombed.
She had never had children of her own, and her nephews and nieces were long since grown-up. Cecilia Charlecombe’s children called her “Cousin Edith” and she was fond of them.
Kate was her favourite.
She gave her a curt nod and smile now, and said: “Lucy seems pretty well set. Hope luncheon don’t put his eye out — though I suppose I ought to hope it will.”
Kate smiled back, radiant.
The cricketers had a table to themselves. Lucy carved at one end and Joe Newton at the other.
At Cecilia’s table, where sat the guests who had come to watch the match, she went to her own place at the head and asked everyone to be seated as they pleased.
Rosalie looked an invitation at Kate, who had been eagerly watching for it, and they sat down next to one another.
“What a wonderful lunch!” said Rosalie.
There was cold beef, cold pigeon-pie, cucumber salad and new potatoes.
“There’s cherry-tart and gooseberry-tart afterwards, and clotted cream,” said Kate with childlike satisfaction.
The sun shone down through the drooping branches of the weeping ash and threw a dappled pattern on the table. Kate thought that everything was lovely and that she had never known a summer like this one.
“I wish Fanny was here,” she suddenly said.
“Why?” asked Rosalie.
“Because it’s all so nice,” said Kate inadequately. She could not, even to herself, explain her urgent need to share what she enjoyed with the people whom she loved most.
Jokes were presently heard from the cricketers’ table. There was noise and laughter and friendliness.
When Cecilia rose, she gave Kate the significant glance that meant Show the way upstairs — and Kate obediently asked Mrs. Troyle in a discreet murmur if she would like to come indoors for a moment.
The ladies, in twos and threes, moved towards the house. As Kate passed Lucy he sketched an almost imperceptible wink at her. For some reason it made her feel absurdly exhilarated.
“Enjoying yourself, my love?” he murmured, this time not looking at her at all, but gazing serenely after the retreating ladies.
“Yes, awfully … Are you? And oh! what do you think of Rosalie. Isn’t she pretty?”
“You and she set one another off rather well,” said her brother judicially.
Then he relented, as she looked disappointed.
“She’s got a good figure,” he admitted, “and I like her voice.”
“But she is pretty, Lucy.”
“Well,” said Lucy, suddenly smiling at her, “so are you, my love.”
Kate, left behind by the visitors whom she was supposed to be escorting, ran after them with a dancing heart.
Nobody but Lucy could have said a thing like that to her.
Kate knew she was not pretty: her mother said so, and even Fanny, consulted on many occasions on the point, could only reply that Kate’s eyes were large and bright and that curly hair always looked nice. But Kate at the moment felt that she didn’t mind in the least if she wasn’t pretty, so long as Lucy told her that she was.
Presently she was sitting on the grass again, anxiously watching Lucy at the wicket.
Joe Newton, a fast and formidable left-hand bowler, had taken the other batsman’s wicket in the second over after the luncheon interval and now Lucy was facing him.
He was playing a bold game, stepping out to meet every ball, hitting them fair and square.
“He’s got his eye in,” said Kate. Rosalie’s aunt, Mrs. Troyle, was sitting next to her now. Rosalie herself was near Mrs. Joe Newton at the scoringtable.
“Is your brother very devoted to cricket?”
“Yes,” said Kate, thinking how tiresome it was to have to reply to silly questions when she wanted all her attention for Lucy’s game.
“Does your other brother like cricket, too?”
“Oh yes, quite a lot. There! That was a wide”
“It will be very nice for your mother to have them both at home. And which is the elder son?”
“Fred is older than — Oh, take care!” cried Kate in an agony, as Lucy cut a ball round to leg and the fieldsman made a dash at it, stopping it and throwing it in with what looked like one movement.
But Lucy had not stirred from the crease, although the man at the other end had started forward, ready to run.
“I see,” said Mrs. Troyle.
What did she see, Kate wondered, unable to remember a word that had been said.
“And I think my sister — Rosalie’s mother — told me that he was coming home from Barbados soon. That will be nice.”
&n
bsp; The last ball of the over. Kate relaxed. Lucy wouldn’t be run out, whatever else he was. His long legs covered the ground too swiftly.
“My married sister may come here for a visit too, and bring the babies. Then we shall all be at home together.”
“Very nice indeed,” repeated Mrs. Troyle. “I suppose your sister is much older than you are. Your half-sister, isn’t she?”
It occurred to Kate at last that Mrs. Troyle was asking a good many questions and that the last one, especially, was an annoying one.
She decided to ignore it.
“The children haven’t ever been here except the elder one, Cecil, when he was very tiny. He’s three years old now, and the baby is eighteen months. She’s got red hair, like Tom — my brother-in-law.”
“Poor little mite!” said the intolerable Mrs. Troyle. “But it will probably darken as she gets older. Though if it’s in the family — What did you say their name was, dear?”
“Ballantyne,” answered Kate resentfully, “and they’re partly Scottish, and it is in the family, and it’s a lovely bright red — not in the least carroty. And anyway, little Cecil’s hair is quite brown.”
“It’s often the way,” mournfully returned Mrs. Troyle. “The boys get the looks instead of the girls, to whom it really matters.”
To think that Rosalie should have an aunt like this! Mrs. Meredith, whom Kate had often met, was quite nice though not very interesting. She didn’t ask questions, or make idiotic remarks about Fanny’s babies. She was just an ordinary old person, thought Kate.
“And have you ever been out to the West Indies?” enquired Mrs. Troyle.
“No.”
“Ah, you look like a little English rose. But the others were born out there, I suppose?”
“Cousin Joe is moving the field,” cried Kate wildly. “Look, he’s putting long-stop much further back. Of course, he knows Lucy’s batting is — Oh, if you don’t mind, I want to go and look at the scoring a minute.”
Ignoring Mrs. Troyle’s suggestion that she could see the telegraph-board, Kate sprang up and hurried away. She did not return.
Ten minutes later Lucy hit a boundary and pulled his score up to thirty-one before a spectacular catch in the deep field brought his innings to a close.
Collected Works of E M Delafield Page 499