by Sara Seale
“Oh, I hoped you might miss me.”
“I shall miss you,” she said, and turned to look at him. “Michael—”
“Yes?”
“I don’t know what I was going to say.”
He looked down at her without speaking for a moment, and there was a gentleness in his face that was unfamiliar.
“You have a curious kind of defenselessness at times, Nick,” he said thoughtfully. “The Bredons are a tough take-it-or-leave-it lot as a tribe.”
“And so am I,” she said defiantly. “I’m as tough as either you or Charles, and I don’t give a damn for anyone.”
He smiled, that crooked, puckish smile that made him look like Charles. “You’re not tough, my pigeon,” he said gently, “though you like to think you are. But you’re like all the Bredons in this respect. No one’s going to have what belongs to you. But don’t let it lead you astray. You’d never be happy with someone with different fundamentals to yourself.”
She hadn’t time to ask him what he meant for at that moment the train drew up in the station, and he turned to find an empty carriage.
He leaned out of the window, and the softness had gone from his face. His bright eyes smiled down at her in the old tantalizing way.
“I shall come back for you, Nick,” he said. “Any day, any night—when you’ve had enough of boots and shoes. I told you I could wait—but not for too long. We’ll be dead a long time.”
The train began to move. Nicky remembered suddenly how she had seen him off the last time. Then he had said: “I shall come back,” but it had been four years before he had kept his promise.
“Michael—don’t go!” she cried childishly, beginning to run along the platform, but he gave her the old nursery salute and was gone from the window. She stood forlornly on the platform, watching the train out of sight.
Stella had gone when Nicky got back. Simon was standing at the window, a glass of sherry in his hand, watching the rain descend.
“What a couple of days!” he exclaimed disgustedly. “I hope we’re not going to have a wet July.”
He turned to look at Nicky. Her red hair was dark with rain and hung in straight childish strands against her neck.
“You look cold.” he said. “I’ll tell Bates to light a fire in here before dinner.”
He poured her a glass of sherry and watched her as she stood sipping it, and as he watched her his heart contracted. She seemed very young to him and he was aware that she wasn’t happy. What was it she had said last night at dinner? “I’m learning to pay my debts.”
It seemed so long ago now that he remembered Nicky saying in that hard, desperate little voice: “I’m afraid I’ve come to beg.” He hadn’t made it easy for her then. He had never made it easy for her ... And later: “What security have I? There’s only myself.” His own voice asking: “In what capacity?” And her reply, defiantly, recklessly. “Any capacity you like. There’s only one really, isn’t there?” Nicky, a beloved child, bargaining with him in the only way she knew. He had wanted to spank her and gather her into his arms all in the same breath.
On impulse he stooped suddenly and kissed her, and was a little puzzled by her eager response.
“What a cold little face,” he said gently. “You ought to have let Simpkins take Michael to the station.”
“No, I wanted to,” she said, and he was silent, wondering just how much the young man’s departure meant to her.
“Did Stella enjoy her afternoon?” she asked idly.
“Yes, I think she did. I said we’d take her along to the Colemans with us on Wednesday. She hasn’t anyone to go with.”
“Oh!”
“Don’t you like her, Nicky?” He sounded a little puzzled.
“Oh, she’s all right,” said Nicky in a rather flat voice. “I think I’ll go and have my bath now.”
It seemed strange to be dining alone again with Simon. She was very conscious of him sitting gravely at the head of the table, the dim Bredon portraits looking down on him from the walls, and she realized with a slight sense of shock that it was no longer incongruous that the head of the house of Bredon should be absent. Simon was indisputably master of his estate.
There was comfort in the final shutting out of this dreary day. The library looked kind and familiar with its drawn curtains and small wood fire. Nicky curled up on the floor and rolled one of the dogs over on to its back so that she could tickle its stomach.
“Have you taken your tonic?” Simon asked as he joined her.
“Oh, no, I forgot,” she replied, as usual, and he went back to the dining room to fetch it. It had always been Michael who had remembered her tonic.
She sat on the floor beside Simon’s chair and wished he would touch her. A wave of desolation swept over her and she wanted the comfort of personal contact. Perhaps, unconsciously he was aware of her need of him, for he stretched out a hand and began playing with her hair. She turned her face abruptly into his knee and broke into a storm of weeping.
All at once he was very still. She had been so quiet all through the evening. Was it possible that after all, she really cared for Michael? But Nicky, in the throes of a grief she didn’t understand, was remembering that Simon had called her a cheat. “I shan’t come near you unless you ask me to yourself,” he had told her. In that moment, she might have cried to him: “I was wrong, Simon. Give me another chance. Teach me to give you what you want.” But looking up through her tears, she saw his eyes look over her head with an expression that chilled her, and she drew away from him, her tears checking immediately.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I suppose it’s because I haven’t been well.” She tried to smile. “It’s been such dreary weather, hasn’t it?”
Before he had time to stop her she was on her feet.
“I think I’ll go to bed now, if you don’t mind, Simon,” she said. “I’m awfully tired.”
He rose and stood looking down at her, his quiet face giving her no clue to his thoughts.
“I understand,” he said gently. “Get a good night’s rest, my dear. You’re living on your nerves too much.”
“Good night.”
“Good night. Don’t forget I’m next door if you want me. You sleep better alone, don’t you, Nicky?”
She didn’t answer, but when he stooped and kissed her, she resisted an impulse to fling her arms around his neck, and went quietly out of the room.
There began for Nicky a period of intense unhappiness. Simon’s aloofness seemed more marked now that there was no Michael to bridge the gaps. Nicky developed a reserve of her own. She was very quiet these days and seemed unwilling to go out and meet people. She made no further advances to Simon, but she took to accompanying him on his rounds to the tenants, and seemed to like being with him. Indeed she came to know an entirely different side of him. She learned that he could be human as well as efficient. He seemed to have made it his business to take a personal interest in the tenants as well as in their needs, and they clearly liked him. Nicky began to realize that in her father’s time there had been no personal touch. His bailiff had seen to the entire running of the estate, and Charles could never have said how many children lived in one of his cottages. Simon knew them all, remembered their names and their habits and brought them little presents from time to time.
Watching him, Nicky knew humility for the first time. Here was a man who was strong enough not to compromise, but who tempered his justice with humanity. He was very like his mother, she thought with surprise, and then she wondered if the hard Shand streak was only reserved for herself. Wearily, Nicky wondered why he had married her. It seemed so long ago now since that first day he had told her he loved her. Even then he had said it grudgingly: “I happened to fall in love with you, you little fool. God knows why, for you’ve little enough kindness.”
No, they hadn’t much kindness, the Bredons. Charm they had, and a facile carelessness, but kindness was a quality that had seldom been demanded of them. You’re not very kind your
self, Simon, Nicky thought, but without resentment, aware that she had earned little enough consideration from him. And yet he was always that. She thought that perhaps he had never really loved her, and she wondered what kind of lover he would make to a woman who desired him.
The fine weather arrived and Nicky decided to spend a day in London. She had the half-formed intention of seeing Michael when she arrived. But instead she rang up Hilary Bredon and demanded to be taken out to lunch.
Sitting opposite him and watching his shrewd, cynical face, she realized suddenly how little she really knew him. He had always seemed an older and more sober edition of Charles, but she wondered now as she talked to him, if he was so typically Bredon as she had always assumed. Had he, as a young man, been just as gay and irresponsible as Charles or Michael, long years married to Aunt Alice, wearing him down to a half-cynical philosophy of life?
Or had he always possessed some deeper quality that had made him a little different?
“Uncle Hilary,” she asked on impulse, “what was my mother really like? What would she be like if she was alive now?”
He regarded her thoughtfully.
“Your mother was a delightful creature,” he said deliberately. “But she had all the need of order and security that is in you, Nicky, though you don’t like to think it. If she had lived, Charles would have broken her heart.” Long ago, Mouse had said those self-same words. “The Bredons don’t give security.”
“But in your case—” Nicky said.
He smiled a little crookedly.
“In my case, I found security,” he said. “Would it surprise you to know, Nicky, that I’ve been extremely happy with your Aunt Alice? You and I, my dear, need roots. If you had been my daughter, and Michael Charles’s son, we would all have understood each other so much better. The Bredon tradition is so much accepted now that we’re all apt to take each other for granted.”
Nicky was silent. Was there a covert warning in what he said? How much had this shrewd old lawyer guessed of her relations with his son?”
He smiled at her suddenly.
“You wouldn’t do in the witness-box, Nick,” he said. “Your face is far too revealing.” He leaned across the table and his expression was half-serious, half-mocking. “You’ve got the right man. I’ve told you that before. Don’t be carried away by charm. It’s an insidious thing, charm, and all the Bredons have it. But it’s the roots that count—don’t you forget that. A man can be a vagabond all his life, but not a woman. She demands something more in the end. Now I must be getting back to my chambers.”
Nicky parted from him with real affection and an uneasy suspicion that he was right.
A few days later Simon went north for a couple of nights on business for his father, and scarcely an hour after he had left, Michael walked in.
Nicky greeted him with a mixture of pleasure and suspicion.
“Did you know Simon was going to be away?” she asked and felt annoyed when his eyes tilted in mirth.
“Darling, be reasonable!” he protested charmingly. “How on earth could I know? Still it’s rather fun he’s away, isn’t it? It’ll seem like old times again.”
It was an enchanting two days, and for Nicky the charm of older and more carefree times was almost recaptured. Riding with Michael in the freshness of early morning, swimming in the river, lying in drowsy silence in the warm, bee-loud meadow grass, she was a little girl again. Michael never spoiled it—in a moment of cynicism she supposed he was too clever for that—and the hours were ladened with the old spell. Once again they were the young Bredons, happy, graceless, united together against all comers. Mouse watched with disapproval as they idled away the hours. She didn’t think Nicky was taking life seriously enough for a young married woman.
Only once did Michael refer to Nicky’s marriage. He came to her room the night before Simon was to return, and asked her to tie up a cut finger.
“It’s not a very bad cut,” she said suspiciously. “Couldn’t it have waited till the morning?”
He grinned at her and kissed the tip of her nose. “Since when has Nicky Bredon become conventional?” he teased.
“I’m Nicky Shand now,” she retorted. “And I’m not conventional either. “I’ll tie up your silly scratch.”
She tied up the cut with none too gentle fingers, and afterward he wandered around the room in his dressing gown, examining everything, and making absurd comments. He picked up one of the silver shoes she had been wearing that evening, and stood turning it over in his hands.
“I suppose, now you’re married to a shoe factory you have rows and rows of these for nothing,” he said.
Nicky, brushing her hair in front of the glass, moved impatiently.
“I wish you wouldn’t sneer at Simon,” she said shortly. He tossed the shoe down beside its fellow on the floor.
“I wasn’t sneering,” he said, and came and stood behind her with his hands on her thin shoulders. She saw his expression in the mirror as he bent over her, and she was suddenly very still.
“Nick, when are you going to stop kidding yourself?” he asked softly, and when she didn’t reply, he continued: “Why do you cling to an empty marriage, my sweet? What fun are you getting out of it? What fun is Simon getting, for that matter?”
“You’re always harping on how little Simon gets,” she said slowly.
“Well, it’s true isn’t it? You admitted it yourself. Why not cut loose? Come back to the life you were meant for.”
The life she was meant for ... How, thought Nicky a little despairingly, could she determine what that might be? Michael was speaking again above her head, meeting and holding her gaze in the mirror.
“Nick, I’m going away soon,” he said, still in that soft voice. “Are you going to let me go alone?”
“Away?” She couldn’t quite keep the dismay out of her voice and he smiled. “Out of England, you mean? Oh, no, Michael, not again—not for all that time.” It seemed to her then if Michael went she would be left with nothing.
He swung her around into his arms.
“Come with me,” he said and his eyes so like her own were bright with excitement. “I want you, Nick. I understand you. You can’t live for the rest of your life with a man who can give you nothing. Leave him for some little unadventurous thing who won’t expect too much. I can teach you more about love in one night than Simon Shand could in ten years, you strange, wild creature.”
“You’d make me love you and then break my heart,” cried Nicky violently. “Like Charles and my mother. I don’t want that sort of love, Michael. I want kindness, certainty—something that lasts.”
“And you think Simon will give you all that?” asked Michael with a curious expression.
“I don’t know,” she replied wearily. “I don’t think he can ever have loved me.”
He let her go, and crossed the room to the door.
“One day you’ll come to me,” he said very softly and was gone. She was alone on the terrace when Simon returned the next day. Michael was fishing the South Water, shamelessly poaching on old Shand’s bit of river.
“Hullo, Simon!” she said. “Michael’s here.”
“Yes, I know.”
He spoke shortly, and, glancing at his face, she realized he was annoyed.
Indeed, Simon coming straight from the Towers, where he had gone first upon arrival, was angry with the bitter sting of humiliation. It was his father who had told him of Michael’s presence at Nye and the old man hadn’t minced his words.
“It’s time you took a stand, Simon,” he had said harshly. “It was bad enough having the whole village gossiping because you allowed this young waster to stop here all this time, sponging on you, and making love to your wife. But when it comes to as soon as your back’s turned the two of them get together and make a scandal in the place, then it’s time for you to put your foot down. What, I should like to know, goes on up at the house there, and what sort of tales do you suppose the servants are carrying to the villag
e?”
“I’m quite sure,” Simon said in a voice as cold as his father’s was angry, “that whatever the village may say, I can trust Nicky.”
“Stuff and nonsense!” shouted old John. “You can’t trust any woman, or if you do you’re a fool. You clear that young man out of there or I’ll come and do it myself. I never approved of this marriage and I’m not going to have you made a laughing-stock in the place.”
Looking at Nicky now, sunning herself happily in the first spell of the approaching heatwave, he felt furiously angry with her. How dared she make a fool of him when she had already hurt him so bitterly?
“I want to speak to you, Nicky,” he said, schooling his voice to a courteous coldness. “I’ve just seen my father, who is very upset at certain rumors he hears in the village. He seems to think it’s a mistake for Michael to be here so much—particularly in my absence.”
“Your father’s a nasty-minded old man!” she exclaimed hotly. “Why, Michael and I were practically brought up together!”
“Yes, I know all that,” Simon said impatiently. “But the fact remains people are talking, and I don’t choose to have it. Did you tell Michael I was going to be away and ask him to come down?”
“Of course not. He just walked in like he always does.”
“I see. Well, it’s got to stop. Either you or I must tell him to go, and I think it would come better from you.”
She stared at him, and a faint color stained her cheekbones. “That’s not very nice, is it?” she said in a voice which shook a little.
“There are several things about all our relationships that aren’t very nice,” he said steadily. “Nicky, you once called me a hard-headed tradesman. Well you were probably right. I’m prepared to pay a price for what I want but I expect something for my money. I think you will admit that up to the present I’ve had very little. But at least I expect that you refrain from making a fool of me.”
There was a pregnant little silence. Nicky went rather white, then she said quietly:
“I understand perfectly. I’ll tell him to go.”
She got to her feet and turned and went into the house.