by Sheila Burns
They gave a small dinner party, asking Mr. Cooper from the rectory and his sculptress wife Elisabeth, Dr. Felix Archer and Ronald Forbes, and the old friend of Simon’s, Joan Headley. Lindy had not met Joan but remembered everything that Ronald had said about her that evening when he had dined with them.
On the morning of the dinner-party there was some disturbance. Coming down the stairs Lindy saw Davies at the door talking to someone outside. He showed him into the little library and came to her as she got to the hall.
‘It’s him, m’Lady. That cousin of yours!’
‘Not Alan?’
‘The one what turned up at the other place,’ Davies announced with a dejected look.
‘But what’s he doing here?’ and then, ‘I’ll come.’
In the library there was Alan noticeably tired and with a fawn mackintosh bundled over his arm, and wearing one of his ugly suits. He had a suitcase in his hand which gave fresh horror to her heart.
‘I happened to be in the neighbourhood, Lindy, and thought I’d pay you a surprise visit,’ he said.
Involuntarily she lied as one always does. ‘How nice!’ she said, and was instantly ashamed of herself for doing it.
‘Is Simon here?’
‘He’s shooting along the cliff with the dogs. You ‒ you’ve had breakfast, I suppose?’
He had had it in Colchester where he had spent the previous night. He was, he said, having ten days off and had been doing a tour of the east coast, which he liked. Plainly he had come for the night (or more), and expected to be accepted, and already there was one man too many for dinner tonight. She did not know what to do. ‘Why didn’t you let me know?’
‘I thought there was no need. Big house, pack of servants and all that sort of thing. I see you’ve got that fellow Davies here, and can’t think why you chose him. Frightful chap!’ Then apparently he noticed something about her, and said more quietly, ‘I only hope I’m welcome.’
‘Of course! You’d like some coffee?’
‘I’d like a good strong drink much more.’ They went into the dining-room for Ethel was busy doing out the drawing-room, which meant they could not go there.
‘I do wish you’d warned me about this, Alan.’
‘But why? Surely we are relations and can appear and stay with each other? You’ve got a big house. I admit mine is just a one-room bedsit., so I couldn’t ask you, but you can ask me, I can’t see what the trouble is.’
She said, ‘No,’ rather dimly.
Davies appeared with a big silver tray and the decanter on it and a large silver cigarette box. Alan brightened considerably. He helped himself to a good strong whisky, and re-filled his own case from the cigarette box.
‘I’d like to stay for a long week-end. This place is in a jolly good position, lots of nice fresh air. I like that. It’s a bit far from the shops and the station, of course, but I managed to get a lift.’
He would! she thought.
‘A nice chap brought me along, he lives in the thatched bungalow on the edge of the path and saw me waiting, so offered. I do appreciate kindness when I meet it, and I don’t get it all the time. I told him you were my cousin.’
‘But you are not my cousin, Alan.’
He screwed up his eyes, something he always did when he was getting slightly agitated about matters. It was an attempt to hide his own feelings, and she guessed that privately he was worried as to what Simon’s attitude to him might be. He went on. ‘Oh well, I don’t know about that. My aunt brought you up, and that makes you my cousin, whatever you say about it. But why bother about trivialities? Have you a spare room?’
Davies had come in with the matches and he heard the enquiry. He was the man who never missed the chance of a good ‘listen-in’, and he appreciated the difficulties immediately.
‘Sir Simon and her Ladyship are entertaining tonight, sir,’ he said rather grandly.
Alan spluttered. He had been lighting a cigarette.
‘How nice!’ he said, ‘I shall enjoy that.’
Lindy was rapidly losing her head, and knew it, but one thing you could rely on was the fact that Davies never lost his. Alan had intended to come down here to spend a whole week if he got the chance, and in that one dreadful suit of his, with the too short jacket which poised just atop his behind and looked quite ghastly.
She said, ‘Look here, Alan, I’m not at all sure that we can manage this just now. You really should have let us know. I daren’t settle you in until I have asked my husband.’
‘You’re afraid of him, of course! I thought that would happen, and let me tell you it is a great mistake to start that way.’
‘I’m not afraid of him, I’m very much in love with him, but this is his house, and he has to be consulted.’
‘It’s your house, too, surely? And with all those spare rooms.’ At this moment Davies discreetly withdrew for he saw what was coming. ‘Look here, Lindy, you take a tip from me. Don’t let this man bully you.’
‘Please Alan, do you mind letting me run my own life?’
He blinked hard at that. ‘Well, I AM your cousin.’
‘You aren’t really, but you want to act like it, and this is my own life.’ She was actually surprised at her own temerity of purpose.
It was then that the door opened and Simon came in. Obviously he had had bad luck on the cliff. A couple of spaniels burst in before him, ever enchanted to meet friends, and they bounced up to Lindy and Alan with their tails nearly wagging off.
‘Hello!’ said Simon with commendable calm, but his blue eyes were clouded. Lindy knew exactly what he was thinking.
‘Alan came along hoping to stay with us, but …’ and her voice faded to nothing.
Simon went over to the table and helped himself to a drink. She knew that he was summing up what was the best way to tackle it. ‘If you ask me it is a bit tricky just now,’ he said.
There was something quite pathetic about Alan’s lardy face, it twitched uneasily. He came straight to the point, a habit on which he prided himself.
‘Do you mean that I’m not wanted? I’ve known Lindy ever since she was a little girl, gave her piggy-backs and that, I was her cousin then, now when she has married neither of you want me.’
‘It isn’t that.’ Simon was all Eton and Wuggins with that gaily carefree charm he could put over so readily. ‘Next week most certainly yes, and we should be delighted to have you, but today, no. We are having a party tonight, and you would be rather out of the picture.’
‘Not good enough, you mean?’
‘Of course not, nothing of the sort. The numbers are all made out and it is too late to change them.’ To himself he was saying ‘Let him come for a night and he’ll stay for a month, I know his sort, alas, too well.’ Helplessly Lindy watched the two men, afraid to interfere, sorry for Alan but truly worried that somehow or other he would manage to get in here, and then what on earth would she do? That was when Alan turned.
‘There’s something funny about this house, something darned funny. As to that girl over the mantelpiece, I don’t like the look of her.’
‘She was my wife,’ said Simon very coldly indeed, ‘and she’s dead.’
Alan was still furiously angry. ‘Well, if you ask me, since we’re talking plainly, you’re well out of it. You’re a very lucky fellow, I’d say.’ Simon opened the door, he did it rather majestically and did not overdo it.
‘Would you please go?’ he asked, and stood there like some imperious footman born to the job.
Alan turned on Lindy.
‘You let him do this to me?’ he asked, ‘and you the little girl I used to pick up, and kiss the place to make it well when you were hurt! The little girl I hoped to marry myself, and I’d have been a good husband to you, I’d have been a very good husband. It’s too bad.’
Lindy could do nothing, for the awful part was that she did not want him to stay; she simply did not want him. She watched him go to the door, with one of the Waterford cut glasses in his hand, and that
awful cheap suit of his and the loping way in which he walked because he was too fat. I ought to do something about this, she thought rather desperately, for she had a highly sympathetic nature, then knew that she could do nothing.
She looked up at the portrait of Edna over the mantelpiece and saw there the dominant, almost flaunting defiance in her eyes, the something which Alan had resented.
‘It’s too bad,’ he said again as he got to the door.
Simon put out a hand and took the Waterford glass from him. ‘Thanks, that’s mine!’ he said, and put it down on the table. To himself Alan muttered ‘Tst! Tst! Tst!’ and then walked out into the hall. Davies was waiting there at attention with the suitcase.
For a moment, in a blurred half whisper, Lindy began to speak, trembling a little, half-ashamed, half-glad in that curious contradiction of emotions which come to all people. ‘Oh Simon, we can’t do this! We just can’t do this,’ but he waved her aside and went out into the hall after Alan, carefully shutting the dining-room door behind him.
He was right, of course, absolutely right, and she should let him deal with a situation which she herself had been going to muddle. It WAS his house. At the same time she felt rather sick.
When he came back, Simon said, ‘He’s gone! Davies is running him down to the pub., he can get a room there, so he won’t be stranded.’
‘But don’t you see, he doesn’t want to pay for his accommodation?’
‘Neither do I want to pay for his accommodation, haven’t you realised that?’ Darling Simon! He could be so gaily amusing even in a really difficult moment of life. ‘Look here, darling, this had to be, or we should have had him hanging round our necks on every possible occasion. I know the way it happens. It was horrid at the time but it simply had to be done. Don’t fret too much.’ He put his arm clingingly round her, and stroked her hair with a tender hand. He had most beautiful hands and their touch was inspiring. ‘I love you, my sweet,’ he said.
‘I’m sorry my people are so shocking, but thank goodness I have only the one hanger-on.’
‘And I hate agreeing with that.’ Again he kissed her.
She became conscious of Edna’s eyes watching her from over the fire, those purplish eyes, and yet there was something warning about them, something that could make her hesitate. As Simon turned, she asked, ‘Was Alan right about Edna?’
He froze at once. It was almost as if the heavy safety curtain to some show had dropped down with a crash to the ground. ‘Edna could be determined.’
‘You had divorced her when she died, and she had married somebody else?’
She felt that she was speaking to a statue not to a man.
‘No, I hadn’t divorced her. The proceedings had begun, she wished to re-marry, then she was killed. There was no point in going on with the divorce, it died with her, and I was free. I ‒ I wish you wouldn’t talk about it, the whole thing is over and done with, let it rest.’
‘Yes, of course.’
She knew that he hated speaking of the past, but she would have liked to ask more; then Mrs. Baker arrived to ask for further information about the menu for tonight, and the chance had gone.
Chapter Eleven
The first dinner party was a success.
It was the first entertainment that Lindy had given, and it worried her that she was still feeling quite awful about Alan. Davies had reported that he was staying at the Crown, they had had a free room, and he looked as if he would spend a week there. A week with Alan so close was a fairly horrible thought, she told herself.
She had a new dress for tonight, a light cinnamon gauze the colour of her eyes, and spotted with cream. The dress made her hair look different, light and reddy drifting about her shoulders like some of that bronze seaweed which washed up along the coast with certain tides. She looked quite lovely.
‘That’ll put our Ronnie Forbes into a seventh heaven,’ said Simon.
Mr. Cooper and his sculptress wife arrived first. Simon had expected that. ‘Trust a parson for getting in early where there is free food and drink!’ he said when they heard the over hale and hearty voice in the hall, for he was one of those men who boom with enthusiasm. Grey-headed and bright-eyed, he had a couple of extra chins over the dog collar. Simon had warned Lindy that he was a professional humorist.
Elisabeth was stolid. Simon had said that she was exactly like one of her own statues, and that unfortunately could be true. Lindy wondered how she had ever come to marry. Marriage must be impossible with a woman of stone, yet the parson chuckled and giggled, laughed at his own jokes, and indulged heavily in the drinks and did not seem to worry. Lindy tried to talk to her, but talking with Elisabeth was difficult. Her replies were ever brief.
She was glad when Ronald Forbes came in, a man who was always the same, and a chatterer. He could face a woman like Elisabeth. Lindy couldn’t. Before the doctor appeared, he had rung up to say that he had been called out on a visit and would be a trifle late, but he would do his best. Joan Headley arrived.
As yet Lindy had not met her, but Simon knew her well. The door opened and she came in. She was a tallish woman bigly made, she must have been a preposterous weight, and she wore a navy blue silk dress, possibly with the idea of concealing her weight. She had a single crimson rose pinned to the shoulder, and somehow the rose revealed in a strangely exotic way how lovely this woman had once been.
She had enchanting eyes, they were understanding eyes with a warmly friendly smile. If she was pale, she did not give the impression of illness, for it was one of those pearl skins through which the colour glows but little, and it had a nacre appearance, which frequently comes to the sea at evening. Lindy went forward.
‘I have so wanted to meet you,’ Joan Headley said. ‘You are going to be a great gain to this neighbourhood, where already everyone knows everyone else, and we are pining for new blood.’ Then with warmth, ‘You are every bit as lovely as I expected you to be.’
‘I told you she was sweet,’ said Ronald Forbes.
‘I wanted to meet you,’ said Lindy, and this was true. ‘You know Alderson Point well, you have lived here many years, and I am a newcomer. It rather frightens me, and this house … There are times when the house gets me a bit scared.’
‘But why? It’s a nice house. I knew it when the old family lived here. It’s a big house to run, of course, and takes up a lot of time.’
They went over to the sofa in the window. It seemed to Lindy that she had known Joan Headley for a great many years and had always liked her. In a low voice she asked, ‘What is the sound of a woman crying?’
She knew that Joan would understand. She took a champagne cocktail, smiled to Simon as he passed by, then she spoke. ‘I don’t suppose it is really a woman crying, or that there is a ghost, or anything like that. It is just the wind.’
‘But it comes when there is no wind at all,’ Lindy reminded her, and knew that it was strangely comforting to be able to speak to somebody about it.
‘I know, but it happens in some queer way. Others have said so. You would be foolish to let it worry you to death. You have just got married to a most lovely man, you have everything that life can give you to make you happy, and you are a lucky, lucky girl.’
That was when Dr. Archer came across to them. He apologised for being late. He had had to go round to the Crown to see a visitor staying there, a man who had arrived there only today, and instantly Lindy knew what had happened. This man had stumbled on a torn carpet and in falling had put out his left hand to save himself and had broken his arm. He had had luck for it was just a simple Colles’ fracture, and he could have put out his right arm, which would have been worse for him. But in that state no man thought that he was lucky, and you could hardly expect it of him. He laughed as he said it.
‘Will he be all right?’ Lindy had become deadly serious. ‘The man is Alan Pearce, I presume? He is my cousin by adoption.’
‘Yes, his name was Alan Pearce.’
Rather hopelessly she said, ‘This
is just the sort of thing that Alan does. He came here this morning, and Simon does not like him much. Oh, Simon is right, for Alan is so pompous, he is so difficult, and ‒ and anyway he went down to the Crown. What’s happened now?’
‘I got someone else to take it over for me, and he went off to hospital to get an X-ray. They’ll put it in plaster for him, and he ought to be back at the Crown again in time for supper. He’ll be right as rain, of course, a couple of sticky nights when it throbs, but he’ll have tablets to cover that for him. Being in a hotel is difficult, but they’re awfully nice at the Crown, there’s no need to worry.’
‘But it is awful for him.’
‘A Colles’ does not kill a chap. Anyway it is nothing like as bad as a broken leg. You just let it go.’
She did let it go. She had to.
They moved slowly in to dinner. As she entered the dining-room she had to admit that it looked perfectly lovely. The tide was coming in, and sitting here you could hear it beating against the foot of the earthy cliffs. There were Iceland poppies on the table, Davies had got them for her, as they were flowers which she had particularly wanted for this occasion. Lemon, orange and dead white in a blue bowl, they looked ethereally lovely.
Mrs. Baker had gone to town on the menu; Simon had told his wife that if she was left alone Mrs. Baker could do a party in a style that amounted to a fair treat! Lindy had left her to herself. She sat at the far end, facing the mantelpiece with the pansy eyes of Edna watching her. Simon was at the head of the table, but reigning over it all was Edna.
It was a strange thing that whatever happened Edna was still mistress of this house. She was the woman who reigned over it. Lindy felt that even if she had not known Edna, the girl had never left the place. I’m being silly, she told herself and turned to Dr. Archer on her right, with Ronald Forbes on her left. The doctor knew that she was worried about the incident at the Crown; he suggested that she got Davies to bring them a bottle of champagne, which he told her was the panacea for all ills. Champagne always put everything right.