Starmouth Cove was a beautiful little place, all red rocks and blue sea and pink thrift. Comparatively few visitors came there.
“What a day, what a day! What a place!” shouted Harry Hancock. “Look at that sea! Look at it!”
“Can we bathe at once?” screamed the children.
“Can’t you wait a minute?” said their father.
He continued ostentatiously to gaze at the sea while the children crept off, not running or shouting until they reached a distant point.
There they began to dig a canal in the sand. Just as it was nearing completion their father summoned them, in a jovial, imperative way to get ready for bathing.
Reluctantly they tore themselves from the canal.
The bathing was a success, to the untold relief of Mrs. Hancock, who hurried out of the water before anybody else in order to make certain that tea should be quite ready by the time the bathers were.
Presently they were all sitting on the warm sand, eating and drinking after only one migration to a particular spot declared by Mr. Hancock to be more free from flies than any other spot.
“You don’t get anything like this in America, I’ll be bound,” said Harry Hancock, chaffing his sister-in-law.
Millie only smiled in reply, but there was something in the nature of the smile that Fan hoped would pass unperceived by Mr. Hancock. It did.
“The Americans,” said Mr. Hancock, “may be all very well in their own way. But don’t you go and get married to an American, Millie, whatever you do.”
He got up and stretched himself.
“Coming for stroll, any of you? Always move about after a meal.”
“I think I’ll pack up the things, Harry.”
“Fan, you’re hopeless. You simply don’t know how to enjoy a day like this. One of the loveliest days God ever made, and you’d rather spend it muddling about over cups and saucers — well, well, well! Where are the kids?”
The children had, strangely, disappeared. Their mother, carefully abstaining from looking round, could see out of the tail of her eye three little scurrying figures, scantily clad in their bathing-suits, vanishing amongst the pools and rocks.
“I’ll come with you, Harry,” said his sister-in-law.
They moved off.
The stroll was not a very long one.
“A cigarette, Millie?”
“Thank you.”
He stopped to light it for her, and imperceptibly passed the successive stages of standing still, leaning against a rock, and sitting down at the foot of it. Millie, as though playing Follow-my-leader, kept pace faithfully with these gestures.
“No, no,” said Mr. Hancock, after a silence, “you mustn’t go and settle down over there, Millie. I’m sure there are plenty of nice young English fellows for you to choose from.”
“I’m not going to marry anybody.”
“That’s what girls always say.”
“Is it?” said Millie coldly.
“Of course, I know you young women have a splendid time nowadays, but that can’t go on for ever. The day comes when you’re bound to want a home of your own, and a nice little family circle, and all that sort of thing. Look at Fan!”
“I have.”
“Well,” said Mr. Hancock indulgently.
“Well,” said his sister-in-law, drawing a long breath. “Fan might have great fun, I quite agree — but she just doesn’t. The children are darlings — the house is adorable, and the garden — and you’re all in reasonably good health. But she never does what she likes, or has anything for herself. Her whole life is spent in considering you and the children.”
“But naturally—”
“There’s no give and take. Life,” said Millie sententiously, “really only consists of the little things. We can all of us cope with the big ones, when they come. But as far as women are concerned, what matters most are the tiny, personal things of every day life. If you’d sometimes tell Fan she’s looking pretty, or offer to help her with a deadly dull job like cutting sandwiches, I believe you could thrash her and she wouldn’t mind.”
“But you’re making her out to be a perfect fool.”
“So she is, poor darling,” said Millie, “but not for that reason. She ought to have stood up to you years ago, and told you that you’re spoiling everything for her and for the children, because of your perpetual nagging and grumbling and petty bullying.”
“Do you know what you’re saying?”
“Yes, Harry, I do. I’m leaving to-morrow, anyway. But I was determined to tell you first that I’m simply horrified at what you’ve done to Fan. If it wasn’t for the children, I should do my very best to try and persuade her to leave you.”
“Good God,” said Mr. Hancock — but thoughtfully, rather than angrily.
It was seven o’clock before they got into the car again to go home.
The children, pleasantly tired, were quiet, and their aunt and their father were quiet too. Mrs. Hancock looked anxiously at her husband once or twice.
When they reached the house he took the damp bundle of bathing things out of the car.
“All right,” he said gruffly, “I’ll hang them up on the line. You want to be getting the kids off to bed, I expect.”
He was looking at his wife as he spoke. If astonishment flashed into her face it was gone in a moment, and was succeeded by an expression of pleasure and gratitude that returned again and again through the evening.
Mr. Hancock remained thoughtful.
When he joined his wife upstairs that night he suddenly said:
“Do you ever think how — how frightfully lucky we are, Fan? This house, and the kids, and none of us crocks or anything, and — and every now and then a glorious summer day like this one?”
“Yes, indeed, Harry.”
“Nothing to complain of, eh?”
There was a second’s hesitation, during which Mr. Hancock held his breath — and then the loyalty of years asserted itself.
“Nothing, Harry dear.”
Mr. Hancock released his breath — and with it a heavy grunt of satisfaction.
“What made you — ?”
“Nothing. Some rubbish of Millie’s. What that girl needs is a husband and children of her own.... I’ve said so all along.... Did you remember to put out that wretched cat?”
“I — I’m almost sure I did.”
“Almost sure! I wish you’d be quite sure. If the brute comes miaowing about the stairs I shall take it out and drown it first thing to-morrow morning. It’s an extraordinary thing that nothing is ever properly done in this house, unless I do it myself....”
MY SON HAD NOTHING ON HIS MIND
Epilogue
“BEFORE the hews to-night there is one police message: Missing from his home at Whitlow, near Plymouth, since last Tuesday: Gilbert James Catto, aged twenty-three. The missing man is five-foot eleven, of slight build, white complexion, with blue eyes and very fair hair, and clean-shaven. It is thought that he may be suffering from loss of memory. Will anyone who may have knowledge of his whereabouts communicate with the Plymouth Police or with Scotland Yard, telephone number Whitehall 1212.”
In accents at once solemn and refined, a young gentleman in the employ of the British Broadcasting Corporation sent forth this sinister pronouncement, immediately following it up by an appeal to someone last heard of in Hornsea seven and a half years earlier, now required in North Wales.
Many persons in the small country town of Whitlow heard the announcement with awe and excitement, some with horror and surprise, and several with a morbid gratification at the thought of how well they knew Gilbert Catto and how little they had ever expected to hear of his disappearance two days before his wedding.
There were two distinct schools of thought.
“It isn’t,” said the more conservative thinkers, “as though he hadn’t known Rhoda Taverner for quite a long time. Why, the engagement was announced nearly six months ago! He could have broken it off, surely, if he’d wanted to. Bu
t she’s quite a good-looking girl — and clever, too.”
The others — composed of the flippant-minded of both sexes — just said:
“Disappeared two days before his wedding to Rhoda Taverner? My God, so would I!”
Everybody, however, agreed that it was all very terrible indeed for Gilbert’s devoted mother.
It was indeed reported that she showed marvellous fortitude under the strain, and that it was she who had insisted on the broadcast appeal. She knew, she said, that Gilbert, from some fearful and inscrutable cause, must have suddenly and completely lost his memory. In no other way could his disappearance be accounted for — unless, indeed, he had met with some fatal accident that had mysteriously escaped discovery. But this was scarcely probable, for the police had been active in their researches ever since Sunday evening.
Mrs. Catto, naturally, had been anxious to give them all the help in her power.
She had, it was said, received several visits from the police and many more from the press.
She was reported in the papers as having asserted: “My son had nothing whatever on his mind. He was very happy in his engagement and looking forward to his wedding. Yes, Miss Taverner is a very sweet girl. I understand she is quite prostrated from distress. No, my son had no financial worries. I’ve always seen to that side of things for him. Yes, he had published two novels and was engaged upon a third. I am quite unable to say more at present. I am completely prostrated with grief. My own theory of my son’s disappearance is that he is suffering from complete loss of memory. There can be no other explanation. No, my son had no girl-friends at all. He always said that his mother was his best pal. There were no women in his life excepting myself and latterly Miss Rhoda Taverner. He had no worries of any sort, and nothing whatever on his mind. A mother knows.”
1
“And I have none of the trouble of the wedding: that’s all managed by Rhoda’s family. So far as my tiny home is concerned, nothing happens except a little of the love-making — which is rather agreeable than otherwise.”
As Mrs. Catto uttered these benevolent words, two days before the wedding-day of her only son, she smiled indulgently, and also rather proudly, at the circle of her interested and attentive contemporaries.
The ladies all smiled in return and made suitable ejaculations.
“Well, if you ask me, she’s a very lucky girl, is Miss Rhoda! Gilbert is a dear.”
“Dear Gilbert! To think that I remember him in a little linen smock, running in and out of the garden. I really believe he thought of our house as home almost as much as his own — he was for ever popping in through the garden-gate. He did so adore our children, having no brothers and sisters of his own.”
Mrs. Catto’s strong, middle-aged face slightly altered its expression. She seemed pained, and her very straight-gazing blue eyes turned a chilly look upon the last speaker.
“I don’t think you’d find Gilbert would say he ever missed the companionship of other children, for one moment,” she said coldly and firmly. “He was always absolutely happy with me. Mother, he used to say, as long as I have you, I don’t care about anybody else in the world. Not really.”
“Let’s hope he doesn’t say that to his Rhoda!” cried the spinster Miss Baddeley, in a merry — but entirely misjudged — attempt to dissipate the slight constraint that had arisen.
“Naturally,” said Mrs. Catto, more gravely than ever, “naturally I used to encourage Gilbert to play with other children as much as possible. As you’ve just said, dear Mary, your John and Marjorie simply adored him, and he spent quite a lot of time with them. I remember saying laughingly that we really ought to have two extra places laid at the tea-table as a regular thing, they ran in and out so naturally — and very glad I always was to see them, dear little things. But as Gilbert always used to say, Mother dear, he’d say, why do people pity me because I’m an only child? If I had a little sister, I should have to share you!”
“Poor Gilbert,” said the mother of John and Marjorie — a Mrs. Whitaker — rather acidly.
Mrs. Barclay, who was old and peaceful, interposed.
“I’m sure your devotion to Gilbert has been a wonderful thing, dear Maud, and it’s so very splendid of you to rejoice, as we know you do, now that he’s going to get married. Even the most unselfish mother in the world must feel rather a pang at not being first with her son any longer. And here are you, welcoming Rhoda so generously!”
“I feel,” said Mrs. Catto solemnly, “that I’m not losing a son — but gaining a daughter.”
At this sublime, though unoriginal, sentiment the ladies uttered a sympathetic murmur.
Miss Baddeley, although joining in it, added an enquiry.
“You’re not really thinking of actually having them to live with you though, once they’re married, are you?”
Mrs. Catto drew her thick dark brows together.
“No,” she said crisply. “No, no, no. Certainly not. That kind of arrangement is always risky. Though Gilbert, as a matter of fact — well, he said to me outright, Mother, he said, you mustn’t think that this is going to make the slightest difference to us. Dear boy, I knew what he meant. And Rhoda’s been very sweet about it. ‘Muggie,’ she said — that’s what we’ve settled that she’s to call me—’ Muggie,’ she said, ‘you and Gilbert have been everything in the world to each other ever since he was born, and I’m not going to come between you now.’ So we’ve arranged that they’re to come straight back here after the honeymoon, and pay me a long, long visit while Gilbert gets his new book written. (He can’t really work in any atmosphere but his own, as I always tell him.) And then, later on, they can see about a little nest of their own.”
One or two of Mrs. Catto’s friends exchanged glances, but none commented aloud on the future prospects of Gilbert and Rhoda and the little nest.
“He’s doing quite well with his writing, isn’t he?” Miss Baddeley enquired cheerfully.
“Oh, very well, very well indeed. The reviews of his last novel were simply magnificent. Of course, he’s not making a great deal of money yet, but as I tell him, that will come. In the meanwhile, everything that I have in the world is his. Naturally.”
“Naturally,” said several of the ladies respectfully. They had all known for years that everything Mrs. Catto had in the world was Gilbert’s.
That is to say, in a way.
Strictly speaking, the cottage, the furniture, the two-seater, and the money — there wasn’t a very great deal of it, but it produced a respectable little income — all belonged to Mrs. Catto. The late Mr. Catto, abruptly dying of pneumonia six months before the birth of his only child, had left everything to his young wife. For twenty-three years she had lived on in the cottage. Neighbours had come and neighbours had gone, and a whole younger generation — Gilbert Catto included — had grown up, and Mrs. Catto had said at intervals that everything she had in the world was Gilbert’s. But it was Gilbert’s in posse rather than in esse.
Mrs. Catto’s old friends and neighbours would very much have liked to know whether she intended to make Gilbert financially independent on his marriage. But they were obliged by good manners to leave this interesting question unasked. Even Miss Baddeley only said that she hoped Gilbert’s fiancee had a little money of her own as it made such a difference, in these hard times.
“No,” Mrs. Catto answered in tones of almost unnatural serenity. “No. Dear Rhoda brings Gilbert nothing except her very charming self. And that’s more than enough, as I say to her. I’m afraid I’m terribly old-fashioned, but love, I always think, is more important than money.”
The ladies were neither bold enough nor cynical enough to dispute the statement. Or perhaps they, also, were old-fashioned.
They got up presently, one by one, to take their leave.
“We shall meet again on Thursday!” they said meaningly to one another and to Mrs. Catto.
“It’s to be a very simple little wedding, in the dear old church where I took my Gilbert to be
christened. Rhoda and Gilbert have been very sweet about it. There was some idea of their being married at St. Edward’s, at the other end of the town — where I believe her people sometimes go. But as I said to her: Rhoda dear, I said, it shall be exactly as you like. Not for worlds would I so much as breathe any wish of my own. But I think, dear, I said, you’ll find that Gilbert — in his heart of hearts — would like his wedding to take place in the church that’s so full of old associations, where he and I have worshipped together ever since he was a tot in a sailor-suit, and where I buried his dear father. That was all I said. Not one word more. But Gilbert told me they’d quite settled to be married at our own dear old church — so full of memories for us both.”
Mrs. Catto smiled sadly and gently and her visitors made sympathetic sounds.
Then they went away.
2
Whilst Mrs. Catto was telling her friends what a nice girl Rhoda was, Rhoda — the picture of a nice girl if ever there was one — finished marking the very last of her trousseau pocket-handkerchiefs and handed the neat pile to her cousin Shirley, who was helping her to pack.
“To think,” she said — articulating her words, as she always did, with great distinctness—” to think that I shall unpack all these things beside the Lake of Geneva! (D.V.) It all seems exactly like a dream.”
She leant back and gazed thoughtfully — and yet rather absent-mindedly as well — at Shirley, on her knees in front of the open suit-case.
Rhoda Taverner was twenty-five years old, with a large, handsome, statuesque head and a quantity of straight, fine hair. She had never cut it, but wore it in a huge, pale-brown knot in the nape of her neck. Her features were all good, in a classical style, but her colouring was pallid and she lacked animation, and even vitality.
Her worst point was her figure. Even when she was seated it was evident that her legs were too short for her body, and already she was showing a tendency to put on weight. It was not flabby fat: just an immense solidity.
Collected Works of E M Delafield Page 585