Judith

by Betty Neels

  Judith went pink. ‘It—it rained,’ she said, quite unnecessarily, and whisked herself away without looking at Charles. She told herself fiercely that she was a fool as she showered and got into clean clothes, but that didn’t stop her from putting on her make-up with extra care and brushing her hair to a shining perfection and then at the last minute changing her dress for one she hadn’t worn before; handkerchief lawn in blue—it matched her eyes exactly.

  The Professor and his mother were deep in talk when she went downstairs and they both turned to look at her as she joined them. He handed Judith a glass of sherry and when she had sat down, sat himself. He said quietly: ‘I asked you to marry me just now, Judith, but you didn’t believe me, did you? So I’ll ask you again before a witness.’

  Judith put down her glass with such speed that she spilt the sherry. She tingled with excitement and delight strongly tempered with resentment that this, another proposal of marriage, should be a public one. Was she never to have the romantic occasion so familiar in all the best romantic novels? She looked at Charles, who was looking at her pleasantly enough, but quite lacking that same romantic air she would have liked. The temptation to say yes at once was enormous, but she had no intention of being too eager—he had asked her to marry him, but he hadn’t said he loved her…

  She glanced at Lady Cresswell and saw that that lady’s face was alive with happy anticipation. ‘It’s the dearest wish of my heart,’ Lady Cresswell smiled at her. ‘I’ve been hoping…but of course it’s for you to decide, Judith.’

  Judith emptied her glass and Charles filled it again without asking. ‘Suppose you think about it for a bit?’ he suggested. ‘Maybe our trip to Monchique will help you to decide.’

  And later, sitting beside him as he drove up into the mountains, she changed her mind a dozen times. Perhaps she was expecting too much, perhaps in real life men didn’t say and do the things they did in books? She had always prided herself on being modern and matter-of-fact, but she suspected that she was neither. And what about Eileen Hunt? She had forgotten the wretched creature. She stared at the winding uphill road ahead.

  ‘I have always supposed,’ she said carefully, ‘that you were going to marry Eileen Hunt.’

  He showed no surprise at the unexpectedness of her remark. ‘I can’t recall ever wishing to do so,’ he told her, ‘I’ve never wanted to marry until I got to know you, Judith.’

  And with that she had to be content. He began to talk about the country they were passing through, pointing out the cork trees lining the road and the great sweep of country below them with the sea in the distance. And when they reached Monchique village he drove slowly, allowing her to see its tiny square and the handful of shops before turning into a steep uphill road; the last stage of their drive.

  Lady Cresswell, dozing on the back seat, woke up as they left the village, declaring that the scenery was as beautiful as ever and she longed for a cup of tea.

  ‘Which we will have in a very few minutes now,’ her son assured her, and presently pulled into the side of the road overlooking the forest below. The estalagem where they were to have tea was built into the mountainside on the opposite side of the road, a charming little inn with a terrace overlooking the road and the view beyond and a friendly proprietor who ushered them to a table and brought tea and little round cakes. They sat for some time in the warm sunshine while Lady Cresswell talked about her previous visits, and presently she insisted on taking Judith into the inn to look around its elegant sitting room and pretty dining room with the small bar beyond. ‘I’ve stayed here—oh, years ago,’ she explained. ‘The bedrooms are charming and it’s so peaceful, although in the summer it’s always full, of course. It would be a splendid place for a honeymoon,’ she added hopefully.

  ‘I’m not sure that I’m the wife for Charles, Lady Cresswell.’

  ‘But you are, my dear. I knew that the moment I set eyes on you. He’s difficult, I know, and wrapped up in his work; he doesn’t suffer fools gladly and he hides his feelings. He can be ill-tempered and arrogant too, but I think you could deal with that. He can’t bear to be fussed over, and you never fuss.’ She smiled gently. ‘You mustn’t think that because he isn’t demonstrative he doesn’t care.’

  Which was precisely what Judith had been thinking.

  They drove on after a while, along the gently winding road, past an occasional villa standing in a sea of flowers, and always orange groves on either side of them and the mountain rose covering everything. There were no villages, though looking down the mountainside it was possible to see a great sweep of country running down to the sea, dotted with houses and an occasional town. And finally at the top, they came out on to a broad stretch of land, strewn with great boulders and housing a radio station. There was a restaurant there too and several houses, built in a rough square, and it all looked rather lonely. Judith, invited to get out and have a look, did so, climbing an outcrop of rock so that she could get a better view. The mountains sloped away to the plains beyond and the late afternoon sun sparkled on the distant sea. Beautiful, but quite unlike England, but then England seemed so far away, as did her life there. She knew now that she could never go back to it, even if she didn’t marry Charles, and although she longed to do just that, she still wasn’t certain if he loved her.

  He came and stood beside her on the rocks and flung an arm around her shoulders. ‘Lonely, isn’t it?’ he observed, ‘and beautiful too. When will you marry me, Judith?’

  His voice hadn’t altered at all, he could have been making some further remark about the view—moreover, wasn’t he taking her for granted?

  ‘The future will be bleak without you, my dear.’ And now his voice was warm. To her own surprise Judith heard herself saying: ‘As soon as it can be arranged, Charles, and providing your mother keeps well.’

  He dropped a light kiss on her cheek. ‘I think we’ll have to make our plans as and when we can—it does depend on the next report, doesn’t it?’

  And with that she had once more to be content. If she hadn’t loved him so very much she would have resented his matter-of-fact attitude. Perhaps he would get better as time went on—after all, he had spent a good many years with his nose in books and manuscripts, none of them romantic.

  But if Charles lacked romantic ideas, his mother made up for it. She was delighted when they told her presently, and the whole of the return journey was taken up with her excited plans for the wedding, although when they reached the villa she declared contritely: ‘I’m being a silly interfering old woman, my dears. Of course you’ll make your own plans, only I’m so happy…I shall go to bed early, I think, and have my dinner in my room. I’m tired.’

  So presently Judith went downstairs to find Charles in the sitting room waiting for her. She felt a little shy of him for a minute or two, but he greeted her with a casual friendliness, which dispelled that almost at once, enquired after his mother and went on to tell her that he intended seeing the doctor on the following morning.

  ‘I must go back in a couple of days,’ he told her, ‘and it might be as well if you and Mother returned some time next week. Until then we’d better not make too many plans. Would you agree to a quiet wedding, Judith?’

  She sat a little to one side of him, watching his face. He was really very good-looking, and distinguished with it—not that that mattered; she loved him with all her heart and she longed to tell him so. When they knew each other better, she would be able to do that, but not just yet; she had a feeling that he was holding her at arms length. She didn’t know why, and it puzzled her a bit. He had been so anxious for her to say she would marry him, and now that she had, he seemed to have lost all interest.

  ‘I’d rather be married quietly,’ she told him.

  And there the matter ended, what should have been a romantic tête-à-tête turning into a most disappointing evening, with the Professor describing mediaeval churches over dinner and going on to mediaeval bridges with sharp cutwaters. Judith, not having a clue as
to what they were, looked intelligent and hoped she sounded as though she knew what he was talking about. The moment she got back to England, she would have to read up all she could about the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, because they were obviously of more importance to Charles than the present one; but she loved him so much that she was prepared to get interested in everything to do with his work. She reflected a little sadly that probably married life wouldn’t be quite what she had imagined it to be. Charles would forget birthdays and anniversaries and invitations to dinner; he most likely wouldn’t utter a word during breakfast and the children would have to be hushed whenever he was bogged down in a particularly sticky bit of research. But none of that mattered as long as he loved her.

  She said goodnight presently, and he kissed the top of her head and hoped that she would sleep well—then suddenly swept her close and kissed her fiercely, sweeping away all her doubts.

  The next morning, with Lady Cresswell settled on the patio and Charles in Silves with the doctor, Judith telephoned her mother, to be instantly engulfed in that lady’s delighted exclamations. ‘And when is the wedding to be?’ asked her mother. ‘Here, of course, darling, such a lovely church…what’s your ring like?’

  ‘I haven’t got one yet—we’re coming back to England in a week or ten days, I expect I’ll get it then.’ She added: ‘It’s all been rather sudden.’

  ‘We’ll see you soon?’

  ‘I’ll let you know, Mother—I’m not sure what’s going to happen. I expect we’ll discuss it today; Charles isn’t going back until tomorrow.’

  Lady Cresswell went to rest after lunch and Judith and Charles went into the garden and stretched out on the grass. It was hot, but in the shade of the trees the air was cooler. Judith lay back, her sunglasses perched on her pretty nose, her hat perched on the top of her head, shading her face. Arthur panted beside her, and Mrs Smith and the kittens lolled in their box. It was very quiet except for the crickets, and she felt a little sleepy, but she came awake at once when Charles rolled over and spoke.

  ‘I’ve had a talk with Dr Sebastiao, he seems quite satisfied with Mother, but of course she’s due for a check-up in a couple of weeks, isn’t she? I’ve chartered a plane for Thursday week—that’s ten days more or less. I’ll come over the evening before that and drive us all to Faro—I’ll arrange quarantine for the animals when I get back the day after tomorrow. We’d all better go straight to London and stay at Mother’s flat until she’s had her tests. We’ll decide what to do next while we’re there.’

  She waited for him to say something about them getting married, but he had rolled over again and closed his eyes. She said meekly: ‘Very well, Charles,’ because of course he couldn’t make plans yet, he would have to wait until he knew more about his mother. All the same, she stifled hurt feelings.

  It was the following afternoon as she was coming downstairs after seeing Lady Cresswell settled for her nap when she heard the telephone in the sitting room ringing and crossed the hall to answer it. But Charles had come in from the patio and was already there; she heard his voice clearly saying, ‘Hullo, Eileen,’ and despite all her better instincts, she paused to listen—but only for a moment; eavesdroppers were on a par with other people’s letter readers, and she would have no part in that. But she had taken no more than two steps when she stopped again. Charles’s voice, rather pedantic and decisive, was only too easy to listen to.

  ‘Oh, yes,’ he was saying, ‘I’ve arranged everything, although we can’t make final arrangements until we’re back in England. But it couldn’t be more convenient. She’ll be there to look after my mother, day and night, and of course mother is very fond of her. She took some persuading, but after all, she’ll get a home and security for the future.’ He glanced up and saw Judith standing in the open doorway and added very deliberately: ‘I’ll see you when I get back tomorrow.’

  He put the receiver down and sauntered towards her, his hands in his pockets.

  ‘You were talking about me,’ said Judith. Her heart was hammering in her chest and she felt a bit sick.

  ‘And…?’ He was staring down at her, his face bland.

  ‘Is that why you’re marrying me?’ she whispered from a dry throat. ‘Though I think I knew that already—you see, you forgot to say that you loved me, and I wondered… But I thought that perhaps—well, being a historian and—very engrossed in your work, you’d got out of the habit of saying things like that.’

  She thought in a detached way that he looked exactly as he had looked on the very first time they had met—furiously angry. But when he spoke there was nothing to indicate rage in his voice. Indeed he spoke very softly. ‘You really believe I would use you in such a fashion?’

  She wasn’t thinking straight any more. ‘Yes, I do—you see, it’s such a sensible arrangement. Later on, when you—Lady Cresswell—doesn’t need me any more, we can go our own separate ways.’

  He said silkily: ‘And why should I go to all this trouble?’

  ‘Because of Lady Cresswell, of course. We both know that she’s going to die soon—you want her to be happy at all costs, don’t you?’

  Charles looked away from her, staring into the bright sunshine through the open door. He said at length very evenly: ‘I don’t think there’s much point in talking any more at present.’ He gave her a bleak look that wrung her heart. ‘Or in the future, for that matter. Marriage to someone you don’t trust is about the worst mistake one can make in life, don’t you agree?’

  She nodded dumbly, to speak seemed an impossibility, but presently she managed it in a voice she tried to keep steady. ‘You mean you don’t want to marry me now?’

  His face was impassive. ‘Let me put it another way; we made a mistake and most fortunately discovered it in time. But there is one thing, Judith—my mother mustn’t know, not yet, and it shouldn’t be too difficult to let her go on dreaming. I leave tomorrow, and when I come again in ten days to fetch you both, there’ll be too much to do for her to notice anything. Once we’re in England and her tests are satisfactory, she might go back to her flat. Would you go with her, Judith? We shan’t need to meet.’

  ‘Yes, of course.’ She raised troubled eyes to his. ‘Are you very angry, Charles?’

  He didn’t answer her, his eyes were hard and cold and turned her to ice and she wanted to turn tail and run away, but it was he who walked away without another word.

  Lady Cresswell elected to stay up for dinner that evening and Judith spent the worst two hours of her life, laughing and talking and listening to Lady Cresswell’s description of her own wedding gown and discussing the probable dress she might choose for herself, and even worse was having to listen to Charles calling her his dear and speculating as to the best place for a honeymoon. There was no need, she thought fiercely, to have brought the subject up. He was a heartless monster, and far from loving him, he was the last man she wanted to see again ever. And if he thought to upset her by such conduct, then he could think again!

  This buoyed her up for the remainder of the evening and gave her a heightened colour and a glitter in her eyes which made her quite breathtakingly beautiful. If she could have brought herself to do more than glance at Charles she would have seen the look in his eyes and might even have accepted his terse invitation to walk in the garden after dinner. But she didn’t look, instead she went up with Lady Cresswell presently and didn’t go downstairs again, and in the morning when she went down to breakfast, Charles had already left for the airport.

  CHAPTER NINE

  JUDITH HAD SLEPT all night, something she hadn’t expected to do, but memory came flooding back the moment she opened her eyes; she had sat up in bed, remembering the coldness of Charles’s eyes and the awful travesty of a convivial evening, and in a way it was a relief to find that Charles had gone. She wondered what Lady Cresswell would say when she was told, but she need not have worried. He had gone to bid his mother goodbye in the early hours of the morning, seeing her bedside light on from his window. ‘I
expect he said goodbye to you too, dear,’ observed Lady Cresswell happily, ‘but it will only be for a few days, so you mustn’t look so downcast.’

  Judith schooled her features into cheerfulness, assured her that the days would fly and that yes, Charles had said goodbye to her, although naturally enough she supplied no details but entered wholeheartedly into a lively discussion as to whether a quiet wedding meant bridesmaids or not. It wasn’t difficult, she found; all she had to do was to pretend that they were discussing someone else’s wedding. The difficult part was banishing Charles’s loved face from her head.

  She had time to sit quietly and consider what she was going to do once Lady Cresswell had gone to take her afternoon nap. She had said that she would stay until she was no longer needed, but of one thing she was certain, she didn’t want to see Charles again—not once they were both back in England. She couldn’t for the moment see how this was to be done. After all, Lady Cresswell supposed them to be engaged and intending to marry as soon as possible. They would have to find a good reason for putting off the wedding, and somehow her unhappy head was unable to cope with that. The whole thing really depended on Lady Cresswell’s prognosis after her check-up, so there was no point in wearing herself to rags trying to think up something now. She lay back on the grass and closed her eyes and found herself thinking of Charles again. He would have to make other plans now, and be delighted to do so because he was free; he had told her that he had never wanted to marry Eileen, but he couldn’t have said anything else when she had asked him, could he? She began to wonder why he had gone to the trouble of asking her to marry him when she could have looked after his mother just as well in her own home.

  She frowned. Of course it would be much more convenient to have her at Hawkshead; he would be free to travel around, knowing that she was there with his mother and he would be near at hand if, and when, she took a turn for the worse; he would be able to get on with his wretched writing in peace. And see Eileen Hunt, added a small voice at the back of her head. She remembered too with enormous relief that she hadn’t told Charles that she loved him, and that was something to be thankful for. She longed to have a good howl, but Lady Cresswell had sharp eyes and nothing must give her the least suspicion… If she lay there much longer feeling sorry for herself she would be in floods of tears; she got up and went along to the swimming pool, where she took off her sundress and dived in. Arthur jumped in too, probably he wasn’t hygienic, but he made a pleasant companion paddling up and down beside her. Since they had been out in the storm together, he had become even more attached to her. They would have to be parted for six months’ quarantine, but after that he could stay with her for always, and Mrs Smith and the kittens too. Lady Cresswell would have to make room for them in her London flat, and afterwards she would find a job where they would be welcome. After all there was no need to get married, she could earn a tolerable living, she had loving parents and Uncle Tom. She drew an unhappy breath and began to tear up and down the pool, leaving a bewildered Arthur paddling round trying to catch up.