by Sara Seale
To smother his unhappiness, he flung himself into the work of running the estate, proving very quickly that he had an excellent grasp of such matters. The tenants liked him. He was considerate and conscientious, and he paid good wages. Charles had not been popular, although the Bredons had been squires of Hammertye for generations. He was abroad so much and had never bothered to effect personal contact with his tenants. Nicky would have been surprised to learn that her own success was due largely to the fact that she was Simon’s wife, and not because she was Charles’s daughter.
Nicky herself missed Charles badly. There was little enough companionship in her relations with Simon, and with his grave preoccupation with the estate, he already seemed older than Charles. Restless and unhappy, Nicky made sudden escapes to London where she picked up the threads of old relationships and danced her boredom away in nightclubs. She began filling the house at weekends again with the old rackety crowd and when Simon protested at last, Nicky flared up into one of her old childish tempers.
“You can’t have it all your own way, Simon. You’ve got Nye to play with now and you can hardly begrudge me my small amusements. After all, this used to be my home.”
“I hope it’s still your home,” Simon countered gravely. “And I certainly don’t begrudge you any fun, my dear. But half of the people who come here only come for what they can get out of us.”
“What do I care? They’re good value, putting it at its lowest, and that’s more than can be said for your sticky north-country friends who come here,” she retorted.
Simon regarded her thoughtfully. “I’m sorry if you find my friends dull,” he said quietly. “They don’t come very often, you must admit. But if we’re going to discuss values, I can’t say that I agree that most of these people are good value. I dislike spongers, especially when they are pretty shaky morally as well.”
“Oh, don’t be so priggish and bourgeois," she cried, and he replied as once before:
“I come of bourgeois stock, and I look at things differently, it appears.”
But he wondered rather wearily if he was perhaps a prig. Up to a point, he could refuse to entertain people whom he considered undesirable, but it was useless under the circumstances to stop Nicky going out with her friends. It would only precipitate another crisis, and in these early, difficult days he was anxious to avoid anything that would further widen the breach between them.
Mary Shand, if her wise eyes saw more than they were meant to see, said nothing. She liked Nicky, who was always charming to her, and she had a certain sympathy for any young girl marrying into Shand traditions. Simon would never be as stiff necked as his father, but Nicky was young and untried, and as yet not adaptable. Mary wondered a little about that brief honeymoon, though she never discussed it with her husband.
But Mouse saw further than any of them. She had never approved of the marriage in the first place, but she had come to respect Simon and was of the opinion that Nicky might have done a great deal worse. She was worried. They didn’t behave like a newly married couple and it clearly wasn’t right for a young bride to go off and jolly with Tom, Dick and Harry, leaving her husband sitting at home.
“You’re not behaving yourself, Nicky,” she said once after a particularly noisy weekend was over. “It’s plain to see Mr. Simon doesn’t like your friends, and small wonder; but you’re doing it on purpose, just as you and Michael used to let your white mice run all over poor Mrs. Bredon-Thomas because she didn’t like it. It’s not right.”
But Nicky didn’t flare up.
“You don’t understand, Mouse,” she said in a dispirited voice. “If it was just as simple as white mice ... If Michael were here now, perhaps ... it would be someone to laugh with at any rate. I wonder if he’ll remember to write for my coming of age. He never took any notice of the wedding.”
Nicky’s coming of age! Simon smiled as he superintended the preparations. After all, she wasn’t very old. He remembered his own coming of age, unheralded by any feudal pomp. There had been a strike in the factory and he had spent that day working overtime with the few older employees who had carried on.
Nicky’s wedding day had been disastrous. At least her birthday should be perfect. Invitations went out wholesale. Simon spared no expense in the arrangements. A first-class band was engaged for the evening, and while the guests danced in the great hall, the villagers were to do the same in a large marquee to be erected in the park. Charles had promised to come back for the occasion, and as the time approached, Nicky began to realize how much she was counting on his return. He had been her constant companion for so long that she missed him unbearably. His short, infrequent letters filled her with nostalgia for the little foreign towns that they had visited so often together.
Simon, observing Nicky’s mounting excitement with a mixture of sadness and understanding, said, when, for the hundredth time she prayed that Charles would be back in time:
“Have you missed him very badly, Nicky?”
“Yes,” she said simply and with unconscious longing. “Simon, you don't think he’ll forget at the last minute?”
“Of course not. How could he?” Simon said, impatient with Charles for causing so much anxiety. It was a curious, and to his business-like mind, an irritating trait that no Bredon ever considered it necessary to announce his arrival or departure, but simply appeared and disappeared at his own convenience. “He’ll turn up tomorrow when the rest of them begin to arrive.”
Nicky smiled at him gratefully and slipped a hand through his arm.
“You’re awfully good at all this,” she said half-ruefully. “Much better than we are at the feudal stuff, in fact. I should never have thought of high jinks for the tenants, and speeches and everything, and I’m quite sure Charles never would.”
Simon smiled. He was quite sure too that Charles never would. Left to themselves, he and Nicky would probably have thrown a wild party at some London restaurant, finishing up at a nightclub in the small hours and never giving the tenants a thought.
“Well, we have a duty to Nye in these matters, don’t you think?” he said.
She looked at him curiously, her wide brilliant eyes a little puzzled.
“And yet, Nye doesn’t really mean anything to you,” she said slowly.
He looked down at the dark red head almost touching his shoulder.
“I married you, Nicky, so Nye obviously means something to me,” he said.
Below them, where they stood on the stairs to admire the great banks of flowers that decorated the hall, the warm May sunshine streamed in at the open front door, giving promise of long contented summer days.
Simon felt the girl’s body relax against him in one of her rare moments of ease with him.
“I often wondered why you married me at all,” she said unexpectedly. “It couldn’t have been plain pig-headedness.”
“No, it wasn’t plain pig-headedness,” he said with a faintly bitter smile.
“And yet you couldn’t really have been in love with me.”
“Why do you say that?”
“You wouldn’t have made me go through with it if you had,” she said quite simply and with evident conviction.
For a moment he was tempted to pour out all his bitterness and disappointment, the frustration of his hopes, to shake her into an understanding of his needs. Would she always take life at its face value, he wondered? Had she no conception of the complexity of a man’s nature? He turned her around to face him, and as she raised a startled face to his, he realized for perhaps the first time that she didn’t look well. Her face was thinner and there was a nervous intensity in all her gestures that betrayed her troubled spirit.
“Nicky—” he began gently, and even as he spoke he saw a shadow cross the square of sunlight below them.
Nicky with an urgency that immediately communicated itself to him, turned from his arms and hung over the banisters, then with her glad cry of: “Michael! Michael!” ringing in his ears, he watched her race down the stairs tw
o at a time, and fling herself into the arms of the young man who stood just inside the hall.
CHAPTER TEN
So Nicky’s birthday party was complete. Charles arrived the next day, removing all further anxiety, and standing a little apart at Nicky’s dance, Simon watched her dancing with her cousin, her pale face tilted up to his with such complete happiness written on it that Simon felt a stab of pain. Only once had he been able to bring that look into her face, when he had told her that her marriage would not mean leaving Nye. He went over again that little scene of two days ago. He could see Michael Bredon, slim, red-haired, almost a replica of Nicky herself, standing in the square of sunshine looking up at them. Simon wondered with a little quirk of bitterness what he might have said if Michael hadn’t arrived when he did. As he slowly descended the stairs he listened to their rapid fire of talk.
“Michael, is it really you? Have you really and truly come back?”
“You didn’t think I’d really let you have a coming of age without me, did you, my pigeon?”
“I never thought you’d remember.”
“Silly child! Let me look at you after all this time.”
He swung her around to face the light.
“Just the same funny little Nick that I left four years ago. What times we’ll have again! How dare you think I’d forget your birthday!”
“You forgot my wedding.”
“Your what?”
“Didn’t you know? Uncle Hilary wrote to you.”
“I haven’t heard a word for about three months. I suppose it’s been following me around. What nonsense are you talking about, anyway?”
“It’s not nonsense,” Nicky said a little tremulously. “I’m married, Michael. Last month it was. This is my husband, Simon. You remember the Shands who built the Towers up on the hill.”
Simon, having reached them, found himself looking into a pair of eyes as slanting and brilliant as Nicky’s own.
“Shand’s Shoes,” said Michael Bredon slowly and there was a hint of laughter in his voice. “I see. Well, to think of you going and getting yourself all married and not waiting for me, my sweet. Supposing I’d had ideas in that direction myself?”
“You?” Nicky’s laugh was bright and light-hearted. Simon thought that in the space of ten minutes she looked an entirely different being. “You’ll never marry anyone. No wife would ever put up with your wandering habits—unless of course it was someone like me. Let’s go and find Mouse.”
Watching them now as they danced together with the perfect unity of two people in complete accord, he was not surprised to hear Mrs. Bredon-Thomas say in her penetrating accent:
“What a pity Nicky didn’t wait and marry Michael. They have always been such friends, haven’t they? Then there would have been no difficulty about the name.”
“Have you any reason to suppose that Michael wished to marry Nicky?” Alice Bredon asked in acid tones. She had never reconciled herself to a son who spent all his time in the far corners of the earth, nor yet had she forgiven him for coming straight to Nye on his return instead of to his parents’ house.
“No-o,” said Mrs. Bredon-Thomas doubtfully. “But it would have been very suitable. After all, Michael will inherit eventually and they seem very fond of one another.”
Simon moved impatiently, and almost at once became aware of Stella Lucy standing at his elbow, her small elfin face puckered in a fierce frown of resentment. It was obvious that she must have overheard the conversation, and he turned to her gravely and asked her to dance.
“I hate them all! I hate them all!” she said distinctly as she slipped into his arms.
He felt the old protective tenderness that had first made him take an interest in her over a year ago.
“Shall we go outside?” he suggested presently. “I’ll get you a wrap.”
They stood on the lawn listening to the music. In the distance the band from the marquee could be heard beating out its answering rhythm. All through the park, lanterns and fairy lights bobbed and twinkled from the trees.
“Do you like living at Nye?” Stella asked suddenly and a little angrily.
“It would be strange if I didn’t, wouldn’t it?” he replied with evasive lightness.
“No,” she said violently and unexpectedly. “It would be strange if you did. It’s not your home.”
He said nothing, looking away to the distant marquee, a still, rather forbidding figure in the soft May dusk.
Stella glanced at him a little timidly.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to be impertinent.”
He smiled then, and touched her cheek lightly with his fingers. “Silly child,” he said kindly. “Of course you weren’t.”
He saw the look of pain that crossed her face and turned to go back into the house. Nicky and Michael passed them.
“We’re going to join the tenants and see what they are doing,” Nicky said.
“Well, go back and fetch a wrap,” said Simon sharply. “The nights are still cool.”
But she only laughed, and ran across the lawn and into the park, her white dress a pale blur against the trees.
They wandered back an hour later, hand in hand.
“Let’s go down to the West Spinney and listen to the nightingales,” Nicky said, and breaking away from Michael, she kicked off her sandals and started to run.
Through grass drenched with dew she ran, her long skirt held high above her bare legs. As in the old days she ran, laughing, the wind in her hair, the turf springy beneath her feet, with Michael in pursuit.
He caught her on the edge of the Spinney and held her fast while he kissed her with a fierceness no man had ever before shown toward her. The laughter died on her lips and she was still and passive in his arms.
“Why did you do it?” he said as he released her.
“What? Run?” she asked, bewildered.
“Marry Shand.”
She was silent.
“You aren’t in love with him. That’s plain for anyone to see. Why did you do it?”
“Oh, Michael—” She shook the tumbled hair out of her eyes. “I don’t know. What does it matter, anyway?”
“Matter!” he exclaimed impatiently, and as a nightingale began to sing on a long exquisite note, he took her face between his slender hands. “Couldn’t you have waited?” he whispered. “Didn’t you know I would come back for you? Nicky, you were a child when I left you. You aren’t much more now. Shand’s taught you nothing. But I could teach you, you foolish little Nick.”
“You always did want what you couldn’t get, didn’t you, Michael?” she said a little shakily. “We always did, you and Charles and I. And you talk an awful lot of rubbish.”
He smiled slowly, his eyes and mouth tilting at the corners in that trick common to all three of them.
“You may be right,” he said then. “But for all that, my pigeon, Shand’s Shoes isn’t your cup of tea, as you’ll very soon find out, if you haven’t already. Better put your sandals on again, hadn’t you?”
He picked them up from the spot where he had dropped them when he caught her, and, kneeling on the thick pine needles, put them on for her.
He kissed each instep lightly, and stood up again. “Come away in, out of all this moonshine,” he said, and they ran back again through the trees to the house.
Simon, meeting them on the threshold, looked at Nicky’s sandals soaked with dew, then at her eyes, brilliant and excited.
“You’d better go and change your shoes,” he said quietly and walked out alone on to the moonlit lawn.
It seemed very natural that Michael should stay on after Nicky’s party.
“But of course you must stay,” Nicky had cried when he spoke, not very seriously, of leaving them. “When none of us have set eyes on you for over four years! Of course you must stay. Mustn’t he, Simon?”
There had been no valid reason why Simon should refuse, and indeed, in those early days, Michael’s presence was a relief. He was someo
ne with whom Nicky could laugh and play, and he eased the difficult tension between them. Nicky seemed a changed being. Here was the woman whom Simon had glimpsed at rare moments, the Nicky who had on brief occasions stretched out her hands to him and seemed to need him; not the hard, watchful young creature who now shared his name and his home. He liked to watch her sparring with Michael, laughing with unaffected spontaneity, and he was grateful to the young man for effecting such a change.
It would have amazed Nicky to know that Simon came to envy most bitterly her cousin’s knack of lighthearted raillery—that flow of nonsense threaded with a genuine store of shrewd knowledge; the gift of spontaneity, so precious and so strong in all the Bredons. How exhilarating it must be to ride across country on some ridiculous wager, sing lightheartedly as you swung along together through the woods, speak in the ancient secret code of nursery adventures. He knew then perhaps he had never learned to play. His education had been a serious matter, and the holidays had never been lighthearted affairs with parents as absurd as oneself. The Shands were sober north-country stock, honest and hardworking, with no time or patience for the follies of the idle classes. Better perhaps, as John Shand had said, to have married some decent, straight-thinking girl instead of this vital, untried, strange young creature.
Nicky never quite knew when it was that Michael began to make love to her. There were so many times when his charming overtures seemed a natural climax to an amusing episode. She didn’t realize that the circumstances of her marriage intrigued him mightily. He liked Simon, but presumed, in common with many people, that Nicky had married him for money, and Michael was quite convinced the marriage couldn’t possibly last. He had no fixed idea of breaking things up, but the whole situation was on the face of it absurd, and he saw no reason why he shouldn’t be first in the field. It wasn’t until much later that Nicky realized that Michael was only following the Bredon code of laying siege to what he wanted. How often had she watched Charles at the birth of an affaire, teased him about his prospects with the lady, never in any doubt that he was perfectly justified in his pursuit. It was only when she became aware of Michael’s intentions toward herself that she was pricked with a feeling of doubt. However empty her marriage, she was Simon’s wife, she owed him at least an outward allegiance, and she was not entirely immune to Michael’s attractions. The old glamor still persisted, but the beloved cousin who, in younger days, had seemed like a brother, now held an enchantment for her.