Rae was sitting on the grassy bank by the roadside, one hand pulling listlessly at the nearby tufts. Richard walked towards her, and as he came near, she looked up and met his eyes. He saw in hers the traces of tears, and without a word, went up and sat quietly beside her. There was no sound for a long time but the steady rhythm of Bianca’s shoes scraping the ground as she swung to and fro on a gate.
“Rae,” said Richard at last. He stopped and looked at her, his brow furrowed with worry. “You shouldn’t have cried,” he said.
“No,” agreed Rae.
“Rae—I’ve nothing to say. I’ve been a fool.”
“Both of us,” said Rae. “Did the General send you back?”
“In a way. We had lunch, and Hollis came in and we—well, that was that. I’m sorry, Rae.”
“It was my fault. I should have told you the truth. I mean, the whole truth.”
“I should have known without being told.—I went to see your aunts.”
Surprise roused Rae.
“My aunts?”
“Yes. I wanted to tell them the whole thing and bring back some sort of message from them. I was even prepared to bring them back bodily. I wanted. ... I was afraid to come back and. . . . But your aunts and my uncle got on to Colin Fitzroy and Dorothy Fitzroy, and after that he took off his coat and prepared to mend the chair—and so I came back.” He put out a hand and drew her to him. “Do you love me, Rae?”
“Yes, I do,” said Rae.
“And always will, in spite of anything I may or may not do?”
Rae sighed gently.
“And always will.”
“My darling. .. . You’ve got such soft lips. . . .”
There was a long silence, and then from behind came a triumphant cry.
“Look—I’m thwimming! ”
“Quick, Richard, quick! The pond,” cried Rae. “Wade, darling, wade....”
The Castle grounds stretched for many miles beyond the vast, gloomy building, but a rope had been placed across the drive, and two footmen were on duty to inform visitors that their shilling’s-worth took them no farther. They might look at the terraces and the lawns, but they must keep out of the Park.
The Art students, standing about in disconsolate groups, wondered why they had come. They had been bidden by a Duchess, but their hopes of entertainment had died in the chill of their reception, and even the thought of the collection of Art treasures inside the Castle failed to rouse them.
Mart and Reeny, paying their shillings at the gate, strolled about without any of the restlessness which moved those who had had no previous experience of the Duchess’s hospitality. It was a pleasant day, and they were content to enjoy a distant view of the Park and a closer one of the interesting-looking students.
There was a stir in the Castle doorway, and the Duchess came on to the terrace, followed by two or three members of her staff.
“Where’s Mr. Ferris?” she asked sternly. “He’s keeping everybody waiting. Where is he?”
There was no sign of Mr. Ferris. The Duchess turned to a footman with a word of command, and he hurried indoors to obey.
“Now, everybody inside,” she commanded. “Come along, come along; up the steps, everybody. Hurry, please—hurry!”
She turned as the footman returned, and held out her hand.
“Give it to me,” she said, “and go along and see that everybody comes inside at once.”
Mart stared for one horror-stricken second at the thing the Duchess was holding and then, with a choking cry, started forward.
“Excuse me, your Grace—”
The Duchess gave her a stony glare.
“Out of my way, my good woman,” she ordered. “Oh— there’s Mr. Ferris. Come along, come along, Mr. Ferris— we’ve been waiting for a long time. I was just about to ring a bell to summon everybody. Is anybody else out on the lawns there? Perhaps I had better ring.”
“Your Grace,” implored Mart earnestly, “I—”
The Duchess ignored the interruption. Raising the bell, she shook it vigorously, and the terrace resounded to a loud unmusical clanging.
“Now then,” she began.
“All in line, all in line,” screamed a parrot-like voice. “All in line there—go along.”
The students, after one glance, went along. Reeny got them into a straight line and surveyed them with a keen glance.
“You boy, there—back—that’s right.”
“How dare—” began the Duchess in a terrible voice, and stopped abruptly as Reeny advanced upon her.
“Into line—and you,” said Reeny, waving towards Mr. Ferris. He took the arm of the paralysed Duchess and urged her towards the line.
“That’s right,” said Reeny. “No—put the little girl in front—she’s the smallest. Now—attention! Mark time, left right, left right, left right—feet up nicely, feet up, left right, left right, left turn!”
The line turned. Mart, looking round wildly, saw a familiar grey coupé drive slowly past the iron gates, and raised a hand in desperate summons. Thankfully she saw the car swing into the entrance and approach rapidly.
“Left, right, all together, left right, left right, now inside, boys and girls, quick march. Left, right....”
The boys and girls, led by the Duchess, marched into the Castle.
A bell had rung at almost the same moment at the Lodge. The General came out of the library and walked across the hall to answer the telephone.
“This is Sheafton Abbott 4,” he informed the caller.
A familiar voice came over the wire.
“This is Miss Lee speaking. Miss Rosanna Lee,” it informed the General. “Can I speak to Mr. Ashton?”
The General’s moustache quivered. Lifting the receiver from his ear for a moment, he stared at it as though it had been a snake which had bitten him. Replacing it against his ear, he summoned his fighting spirit. If she thought she was going to disarrange everything just when he had got it shipshape…
“Mr. Richard Ashton?” he asked, playing for time.
“Yes.” There was something peremptory in the tone which stiffened the General. Would she, by Jove? Not if he could do anything. No, b’Jove. He gave a defiant snort.
“Is that you, Richard?” cooed the voice.
“Eh? No. This is General Fitzroy speaking—Mr. Ashton’s uncle. Yes. I’m extremely sorry, but Mr. Ashton has gone to Kenya. Yes. . . . No, he was called away. . . .Yes, extremely short notice indeed… I beg your? Oh, where can you get hold of him? His address is Care of Post Box Number three hundred and—What’s that? Oh, the name of the ship! Oh no, no, no—he went by air … Yes—oh yes, he must be half-way there by now. I’m so sorry. . . . What’s that?—Oh, good-bye.”
The General replaced the receiver and stroked his whiskers. Humming a little tune, he went into the library and shut the door.
THE END
The Friendly Air
“Why do you have to? It’s your father’s problem. If you do manage to persuade her to come to London instead of going to York, how do you know she won’t get into your hair instead of his?”
“She has no claim whatsoever on me. I suppose you could say that she hasn’t much claim on my father either, but she’s always held him responsible for what she calls her disastrous mistake in leaving Edinburgh and burying herself in a bleak Yorkshire village. She said she did it on his advice—and so she’s felt entitled to badger him ever since on every matter, big or small, that she wants cleared up.”
For the first time, Emma’s interest quickened. She hung the drying-up cloth on a hook, slid back the concealing panel and turned to look at him.
“Advice? You mean it was simply because he advised her—”
He frowned.
“You don’t listen. I’ve tried to make it clear that she’s not a woman who’d take anybody’s advice.”
“But she did take his advice about leaving Edinburgh and coming down to York?”
“Yes, she did,” he answered, gratified to find th
at she was at last evincing some interest in the subject. “It was about the only occasion on which she listened to him. But that’s all ancient history. The only thing that concerns us now is to prevent her from—”
“You don’t like talking about the beginning of it, do you?” she broke in. “Why on earth not?”
“Because I see no reason to rake up an episode that shows my father in a rather unfavourable light. It was all over six years ago, and—”
“I know that. What I’m asking you is what happened before it was over.”
“I don’t want to discuss it.”
Her patience splintered.
“Well, I do,” she stated. “I’m sick of the way you’ve always skated around the topic. Six years ago, your father made a fool of himself. So what? Old men frequently do. I was eighteen at the time, an age at which you’d suppose a girl could be told some of the more sordid facts of life without swooning, but all I got out of my grandfather was the bare fact that your father had remarried. The village talked, of course, and I had good ears. I listened to all I could.”
“Then you probably got a completely garbled version.”
“I probably did. So ungarble it. Tell me the terrible truth. Unveil your father’s shame.”
“Shame?”
“As you said, garbled. How can you get any help from me in this affair if I am not put into the picture?”
He hesitated.
“Very well,” he said at last. “I’ll tell you what happened, but I shall not, now or in the future, allow you to—“
“—wallow. Mud, mud, glorious mud. Go on—tell me the worst.”
“There was no worst. It was simply a case of a man of mature years losing his head over an attractive young girl”
“Where did he meet her?”
“In Edinburgh. He and I went up from York for the Edinburgh Festival. I was twenty-eight and working, as you know, in my father’s firm of lawyers. The hotels in Edinburgh were charging what he considered inflated prices, so he was pleased when a friend of his told him about a lady—an elderly lady, English, widow of a Scottish baronet—who had a large house in Edinburgh and was prepared to receive one or two guests for the period of the Festival. Screened, of course.”
“Of course.”
“I resent your tone, and I don’t like your insinuation that my father’s a snob. He—”
“—just likes carefully screened people round him. Do go on,” she urged impatiently, “and leave out the unessentials.”
“After an exchange of letters, my father and I went up. It wasn’t at all what we’d hoped to find. The house was quiet enough, but it was extremely uncomfortable. There was only one maid, and the food wasn’t up to much.”
“Cheap?”
“It was very expensive, but then — ”
“I forgot. Scottish baronet’s widow. So?”
“I went to concerts. My father preferred to go to plays. If our tastes had been similar, if I’d been with him more than I was, if he—”
“You sound like Kipling. Shouldn’t the heroine enter at this point?”
“If you persist in—”
“Where was this attractive young girl?”
“Staying in the house—the only other guest. She was Lady Grantly’s great-niece.”
“How attractive?”
“She was rather small, very pretty, and had auburn hair. Her name was Morag.”
He paused and brooded, and she went to join him at the fire. Reluctantly, he moved his chair an inch or two farther away from it, and she brought a footstool and sat at his feet. This was the time, she mused, when couples coupled—united after absence, warmed and fed, with coffee bubbling at the end of its electric tail. This was the moment for him to seek response from her relaxed body. Who wrote all those books and plays about characters jumping the matrimonial gun? she wondered. They’d never met Gerald. But even if he did decide to jump, he wouldn’t dream of jumping in this room, which acted on him like an extinguisher. And while his cousin Claud continued to entertain a succession of women in the flat they shared in Chelsea, he couldn’t jump there either, so she was probably fated to be that despised and derided commodity, a virgin bride—and she rather liked the idea, she decided, though she wouldn’t have cared to admit it and risk being looked down on as under-sexed, instead of being looked up to as over-sexed. There didn’t seem to be a norm.
“Was this Morag sexy?” she inquired.
“I suppose you could say so. She certainly tried to engage my attention.”
“You mean she chased you?”
“If you care to put it like that, yes. I don’t have to tell you that I was of a serious turn of mind.”
“And still are. Then what?”
“The concerts took place at night. During the day, I went round Edinburgh, which I had never seen before, and which I found extremely interesting. It’s history—”
“I’ll read it up. You went to concerts, your father... How old was she?”
There was a pause.
“She was seventeen,” Gerald answered reluctantly at last.
“Seventeen!”
“And a half.”
“And your father was fifty-nine. And a half. You were right about mature years. It makes you think of those medieval marriages. What on earth could she have—”
She stopped, “—seen in him?” Why ask? He was her godfather and she knew the answer, and knew very well what a sexy seventeen-year-old would have seen. Tall, well-preserved, handsome, with crisp grey hair, blue, quizzical eyes, a kindly manner. He looked like an archdeacon —which was probably why he had chosen to retire to an historic little house in the very shadow of York Minster, a layman in an ecclesiastical setting, discreetly wealthy, respected, pitied for that brief episode during which a scheming girl had taken advantage of him.
“Go on,” she prompted. “You were enjoying the concerts and didn’t see what was going on. But where was the great-aunt? Where was the Scottish baronet’s widow?”
“Lady Grantly was never at home. If you believed her, she was running the Festival single-handed. That left my father and Morag together, and nobody knew the first thing about the affair until they announced that they were engaged and were going to be married without delay. You can imagine my feelings!”
“Never mind your feelings. Proceed.”
“They were married in Edinburgh, and then they came back to York, to my father’s house—which by that time I had left.”
“Weren’t you at the wedding?”
“I was not. I wasn’t even in York when they got back. That was when I transferred myself to a firm of lawyers in London. The marriage lasted four months. Then she found a younger man and went off with him. My father felt nothing but relief.”
Humiliation too, Emma thought. He wouldn’t have enjoyed the role of deserted husband.
“So how did the great-aunt, Lady Grantly, get to Yorkshire?”
“She made more fuss over the affair than all the other relations put together. She said that my father had ruined her position in Edinburgh. The parents were very well-connected and influential, and she said that they blamed her for everything. So my father advised her to sell her house and live near York. He arranged the sale of her house and found her a cottage in Oatfields, which as you know is unfortunately only thirty miles from York. She’s been there ever since, and she probably wouldn’t dream of leaving if this money hadn’t gone to her head. As it is, she decided to buy a house in York, and picked out one next door to the one my father’s been settled in so comfortably for the past two years. She was nuisance enough when she was thirty miles away, but if she comes to live next door, he’ll have to move. He couldn’t stand it. That was why he appealed to me—to us—to try and persuade her to find a house in London instead. And that was why I spent a freezing week-end up there, achieving exactly nothing.”
“She couldn’t have been poor before she got this money. Didn’t you say she owned a large house and — ”
“Too
large, and completely out of date. It sold very badly. Her husband hadn’t left her much—that was why she supplemented her income by taking in occasional guests. My father advised her to invest the proceeds of the Edinburgh house, but before he could advise her what to buy, she’d made her own decision and bought a packet of Terrazone shares—a tin mine God only knows where. She gave some of them to my father and his wife, but they weren’t worth the paper they were printed on. My father advised his wife to sell them at once.”
“And she did?”
“Yes.” He made the admission reluctantly. ‘‘She did. Two hundred shares in a tin mine which turned out...Two hundred shares which would have sold a month ago at...What the hell’s the use of thinking about it?”
“Is Lady Grantly crowing?”
“No. She’s too busy making plans to move. If you’d gone up with me, we might have talked her out of it. You could have met her as my future wife, we could have said we hoped she would consider moving to London instead of to York, we could have explained that we ourselves would soon be house-hunting and would put her in touch with any houses that might suit her. But you wouldn’t come, and so she’s still fixed on York.”
“What exactly did you say to her today?”
“Nothing. She doesn’t wait for anybody to say anything. She began, as I told you, by pretending not to recognise me. She went on to make disparaging remarks about my father. When I mentioned my engagement, she said that you had obviously not consulted the cards.”
“The what?”
“Cards.”
“What did she mean by that?”
“God knows. I didn’t ask her—I didn’t know how tangled it might get. She told my father that the cards had put her on to Terrazone. You see what I mean by being cracked? She was odd enough when we first met her, but I daresay her great-niece’s marriage, her great-niece’s subsequent elopement and her own recent lucky streak have all added up to send her over the edge.”
“What’s the house in Oatfields like?”
“Small, bleak, stuffed with furniture, most of it rather good. I would have liked to buy a couple of pieces. In fact, I suggested it—and wished I hadn’t. She—Are you listening?”
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