Fog of Doubt

by Christianna Brand

  Except perhaps Raoul. Raoul was a Latin, and almost frighteningly cool and appraising and faintly cynical. He divided his relations with women into three pigeon-holes—devotion, a sort of flirtatious friendship, and something that he referred to as ‘eroteek leuve’. Matilda since her abortive adventure in Geneva into eroteek leuve had been relegated to the second category; but their desultory friendship had continued sufficiently over the years, to permit of her writing at once when Rosie was sent to Switzerland, to beg him to keep an avuncular eye on her. Poor man, he was doubtless now hastening to apologize for having failed in this unexpectedly arduous duty. Geneva was a little place and probably humming by now with the doings of the English Miss.

  Melissa was in her little basement kitchen making some pastry with thumpings and bangings and rollings that went to Matilda’s heart. No wonder she suffers from backaches, she thought; not to mention indigestion. She stood on the stairs and called down to her. ‘Melissa—have you been up to Mrs. Evans yet?’

  ‘No I haven’t, Mrs. Evans,’ said Melissa, thumping away.

  ‘Well, could you go soon? She must be wondering what’s happening.’

  ‘I can’t go yet,’ said Melissa. ‘I’m making some pastry.’

  ‘Couldn’t you make your pastry later on?’

  ‘No, I’m afraid I couldn’t,’ said Melissa. ‘It has to stand. You have to leave pastry standing, you see,’ she added kindly; Melissa was past-master at teaching her grand-mother to suck eggs.

  ‘Not that kind you don’t,’ said Matilda. ‘Only puff.’

  Melissa looked at her pityingly and immediately she was assailed by doubts. ‘In any case, Melissa, I really don’t think you can start making pastry before you’ve even been upstairs. Why must you have it to-day?’

  ‘Well, it’s my afternoon out,’ said Melissa, as though that explained everything. She took the war into the enemy’s camp by adding that she was very sorry but really she could not go changing her plans at the last minute and start cancelling dates and things, one had to consider other people too, and she was frightfully sorry but at the eleventh hour like this one couldn’t get out of one’s arrangements.…

  ‘Nobody’s asked you to,’ said Tilda, reasonably.

  ‘Oh? I thought you called downstairs. As the gentleman’s coming to dinner.…’

  ‘How do you know the gentleman’s coming to dinner?’

  ‘I thought you called downstairs,’ repeated Melissa, hastily.

  ‘It’s Monsieur Raoul Vernet,’ said Matilda, to cover her acute embarrassment at having caught Melissa out in listening on the office extension of the telephone. ‘He’s a Frenchman; at least he’s a Belgian actually. He knew Rosie in Geneva.’

  ‘Ah—quelle domage!’ said Melissa, shrugging in an excessively Gallic way. ‘Mais je suis.…’ She fumbled for the word and at last was obliged to resort to a literal translation. ‘To-night I am occupied.’

  ‘Oh, but I would not dream of inconveniencing you,’ said Matilda in inaccurate but tremendously rapid French. ‘It was merely that this very old friend of mine was on his way to Belgium by air and it would have been nice if I had been free to go out with him on the one night he was here; but of course if you’re occupied, you’re occupied, and I would not lower myself to ask favours of you and you don’t understand a single word of what I’m saying, do you, my precious French scholar?’

  ‘Of course, of course,’ said Melissa, smiling valiantly.

  ‘Well, please do go up now and help Mrs Evans get dressed.’ Granny, despite the exercise she got throwing things out of windows, could not raise her arthritic right arm sufficiently to do her hair; which, strictly speaking, was not her hair at all, but Thomas’s, since he had paid a great deal for it in a Bond Street shop. (If Damien could have seen how little remained of old Twm’s ill-gotten Capitalist gains, he would doubtless have despised the old gentleman heartily for having, out of so much opportunity, made so little disgraceful profit.)

  Thomas was out in the garden with Emma who had discovered a filthy old bundle of rags which had somehow got itself launched in a neighbouring tree, and, determined that it was a birdie, was hurt in her feelings because it would not fly away. He was a small, slight man; the autumn of life had got into his hair transmuting its sovereign gold to the dead brown colour of the falling leaves; his face was creased into a foolish smile and his fine, white, spatulate doctor’s hands encouraged the birdie to fly with a flurry of unavailing gesture. Tilda joined them. ‘Thomas—will you be in to dinner to-night?’

  ‘Why?’ said Thomas warily.

  ‘Raoul Vernet’s coming; that Frenchman from Geneva, you know.’

  ‘People from Geneva are Swiss,’ said Thomas.

  ‘Well, as a matter of fact he’s actually a Beige, so there. And don’t you be trying too. Except for trying to get home for dinner in time. He’s coming at half-past seven.’

  ‘What time’s he going?’ said Thomas.

  ‘How do I know when he’s going, darling? But if you’re bored,’ said Matilda, very offhand, ‘you can always pretend you’ve got a case and slope off into the office.’

  ‘Oh, can I? Good,’ said Thomas, innocently.

  ‘Well, then, look—I’ll start a build-up when he comes about how you will have to leave us after dinner; and then you can make an excuse and hop off. Only, don’t let me down; don’t forget to hop.’

  ‘I may be late, anyway,’ he said. ‘It looks as if there’s going to be a fog. If so, I’ll just have dinner on a tray in the office and not appear at all. Where’s Rosie?’

  ‘I don’t know—still hogging it in bed I expect.’

  Thomas picked up a ball and threw it for the poodle. ‘She doesn’t seem very well since she came back from Thingamajig.’

  ‘It’s the change of food, I suppose,’ said Tilda, quickly. ‘And Damien will take her out drinking beer at the Hammer and Sickle or whatever his pub is.’

  ‘On the contrary, she’s gone off alcohol altogether, she doesn’t even have a drink before dinner now. And that’s funny too,’ he said, thoughtfully; adding, suddenly: ‘Who did you say was coming to dinner to-night?’

  ‘Raoul Vernet, darling; that chap I had a flirtation with once, in Geneva.’

  ‘Oh yes, in Geneva,’ said Thomas, vaguely. ‘What’s he doing in London, all of a sudden?’

  ‘How do I know?—some business meeting or other.’

  ‘I see. And he’s coming here to dinner and you want me tactfully to leave you alone together afterwards.’ There was a strange light about the garden as though one were looking at the high brick walls and the narrow path and the pear trees and the mulberry tree, through clouded spectacles. ‘Anyway, if this fog gets going, I shall probably reach home after he’s gone and not even meet the gent.’ He gave her a brief smile; but he did not look much amused as he walked away into the house.

  ‘Well, what a bloody day!’ said Tilda to herself, following him. With this fog coming down, should she leave Emma in the garden, or make up her mind to a morning in the nursery? And had Melissa gone up to Granny yet? And what on earth could one give a fastidious Frenchman for dinner? And Rosie? She went upstairs to the little attic room with its frilly curtains and patchwork counterpane. ‘Rosie! Aren’t you getting up?’

  ‘I’ve been up,’ said Rosie, coming to the surface and poking out a round face unattractively covered with nourishing cream. ‘I got back.’

  ‘Are you feeling rotten?’

  ‘Morning sickness,’ said Rosie. ‘Me! Morning sickness!’

  ‘You haven’t been going and taking pills and things?’

  ‘No, I haven’t. Tedward won’t give me a thing and then he just pretends that they wouldn’t do me any good anyway, and only make me feel worse. As if I could!’

  ‘Well, I don’t know what to do, Rosie,’ said Matilda, moving round the little room and automatically picking up and tidying away the scattered things. ‘Thomas has noticed that you aren’t well and now he’s getting worried.’
r />   ‘You don’t think he’s guessed?’

  ‘Well, he’s a doctor,’ said Matilda, shrugging hopelessly. ‘Honestly, darling, I don’t know whether we ought not to tell him.’ And yet she was desperately reluctant to do so. Thomas’s heart was buried so deep, under so many layers of reserve and detachment and astringent unsentimentality, that if he broke it over this affair of his precious Rosie, there was no knowing how to apply the balms that might help to mend the heart of an easier man. ‘Oh, by the way, I don’t know how you’ll feel about this, but Raoul Vernet’s in London. He’s coming to dinner to-night.’

  Rosie sat bolt upright in bed and her jaw dropped. ‘Raoul?’

  Yes, I expect Raoul knows a thing or two about you, my puss! thought Matilda. Though what he could have to tell more shattering than Rosie’s own blithely shameless confession, it was difficult to imagine. Poor man, she thought, now that one comes to consider it, he’s probably coming here, trembling, to warn us of her affair with her student, never dreaming that she’s already quite gaily informed us herself. She said: ‘You needn’t see him if you don’t want to.’

  ‘I don’t want to see anyone,’ said Rosie. She sat up in bed hugging herself and looking very white. ‘I’ve got a frightful pain.’

  ‘A pain? Where? What kind of pain?’

  ‘Well, just a pain, Tilda, all over. I mean, sort of all over here,’ said Rosie, making a circular movement with one hand in the general area of her stomach.

  Matilda looked at her dubiously. ‘What—all of a sudden, like this?’

  ‘Sudden! I like that,’ said Rosie. ‘I’ve been dashing back and forth to the huh-ha all morning.’

  ‘Well, stay where you are for a bit,’ said Matilda, not very sympathetically. She went down to the telephone with Gabriel, the poodle, at her heels, and rang up Thomas’s partner. ‘I say, Tedward, I’m terribly sorry to worry you, but Rosie doesn’t seem too well. You wouldn’t be passing this way, would you? Thomas has gone.’

  ‘I’ll drop in this morning, Tilda,’ said Tedward immediately.

  ‘Oh, bless your little cotton socks, Tedward, could you?’

  ‘I’ll be round,’ said Tedward, cheerfully.

  Melissa was coming downstairs from Granny’s room. ‘Is Mrs. Evans all right?’

  ‘Yes, she’s fine,’ said Melissa. ‘She’s in the desert to-day—I think she’s in an old silent film or something, ackcherly, The Shake or something.’ She added with a rare gleam of humour that that was rather a comfort because there was no chance of a flood in the desert and very little of earthquake or fire so they ought to have a quiet morning.

  Matilda sent her out shopping for to-night’s dinner, and lugged the baby in from the deepening fog. Tedward arrived and was closeted with Rosie. He came downstairs and accepted a cup of coffee in the office. ‘I don’t think it’s anything out of the way. What brought on this pain, do you know?’

  ‘I think it was the mention of a gentleman called Monsieur Raoul Vernet from Geneva. He’s coming to dinner to-night.’

  ‘From Geneva?’ said Tedward.

  ‘Yes, he’s suddenly turned up and says he wants to talk to me. I suppose she’s scared of him spilling the beans—though I should have thought she’d spilt enough herself, already.’

  ‘She’s told you everything has she?’

  ‘Yes, she’s perfectly frank about it; she doesn’t seem in the least ashamed.’

  ‘They aren’t these days,’ said Tedward, tolerantly. ‘Who is this Raoul Vernet?’

  ‘Well, he’s a chap I did a bit of bundling with myself four years ago; I met him when Thomas was at some conference at Lucerne or somewhere and I couldn’t bear the other wives and stopped off in Geneva. I sent Rosie over with an introduction to him and I suppose now he feels bad about what’s happened and he wants to talk it over.’

  ‘Well, that’s something,’ said Tedward.

  ‘To tell you the truth, my dear, I think Rosie was heading for this kind of thing anyway, whatever anyone did. However, I shall have a talk to him this evening; I’ll get Thomas to push off in here and leave us alone.’

  ‘He doesn’t know yet?’

  ‘I’m terribly afraid he’s beginning to suspect. He’s noticed her always being off-colour.’

  ‘Well, tell him I saw her this morning and I thought she’d had a touch of gastritis, probably due to food poisoning of some kind; that’ll put him off the scent; and meanwhile we’ll get cracking on it and think up something or other to do with her. We must fix her up in some job abroad or something; a year in Italy next time, learning Italian.’

  ‘I’m afraid Rosie’s going to talk the same language wherever we send her,’ said Matilda. ‘And we’ll have to think up somewhere further—Thomas would always be popping over to Rome or wherever it was, on visits.’ Upstairs, Emma started yelling and she got up and said, ‘I must go, pet.’

  He rose too, putting down his coffee cup on the mantelpiece, looking about for his coat and gloves. ‘I must go too; I shall take twice as long on my rounds with this bloody fog. It’s a filthy day out.’

  ‘It’s a filthy day in,’ said Matilda, holding his coat, with one ear cocked for real desperation to enter into the baby’s cries and force her immediate attention. ‘The poor wretched child’s been hoicked in and out of the garden like a jack-in-the-box, Melissa was making pastry at nine o’clock this morning, apparently on the general grounds that it was her afternoon off, though what that can have to do with it I simply can’t see; and Granny’s galloping about the desert in a Rudolph Valentino film. The din overhead is the sofa flat out under whip and spur. But I wish she’d let him catch up with her now; a long, long, silent kiss, the silenter the better, would suit my headache fine.’ There was a crash overhead. ‘Oh, now what? Either Adbul the Disgusting has fallen over the trip-wire outside her tent, or the Sheik has felled him to the ground, not a moment too soon.’ She went to the top of the basement stairs and yelled for Melissa to go up for goodness sake and see what was happening. Melissa yelled back that, sorry, Mrs. Evans, she couldn’t come now, she was just taking her pastry out of the oven.

  Tedward strolled out after her, laughing. ‘Never mind, Til! You cope with the old girl, I’ll see myself out.’ Gabriel followed him barking gaily, under the chronic delusion that anyone in an overcoat was necessarily about to take him walkie-palkies, and Annaran, the Siamese cat, who was very sillily called after the film Annaran the King of Siam, poised ready to dart out to certain death under the traffic wheels of Maida Vale. ‘Gabriel! Annaran!’ shouted Matilda, in despair, above the din. The telephone rang, Emma reached boiling-point, Rosie screamed out from her attic that if that was Damien on the ’phone she would come down and speak to him, and out of a first-floor window flew a long-sleeved woollen nightie. A strong smell of burning pastry arose from the basement. ‘My God, what a house!’ said Tilda. From the hall came a last shrill yelp of disappointment as Tedward shut the door in Gabriel’s face; followed by a squall as it closed upon Annaran’s shining tail. The fall of the nightgown had been followed by a heavy silence in Mrs. Evans’ room. To-day of all days!—Granny was always at her most impossible, after Worse than Death.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  SURE enough, it was Damien on the telephone. Matilda caught snatches of Rosie’s end of a long and intensely boring quarrel culminating in a slamrned-down receiver, more telephone calls, and a return to bed. She called up to the attic to know what Rosie wanted to do about dinner to-night.

  ‘I shall be out,’ said Rosie.

  ‘Out? I thought you were supposed to be so ill?’

  ‘Well, I am, but I shall be better by this evening and I’m going out.’

  ‘If it’s because of Raoul, you needn’t see him, darling,’ said Matilda, repenting of having been impatient and unkind when, after all, the poor child was worried and unwell; but people were so hopeless, they got themselves into muddles and then sat back and were aggrieved with everyone but themselves.

  ‘I just don’t want t
o see anyone—it’s not especially him.’

  ‘But there’s going to be an awful fog, Rosie, it’s as black as pitch already. Stay in bed, darling, and I’ll bring you up some dinner on a tray …’ (in the intervals of cooking a Ritzotel dinner for Raoul, putting the baby to bed, dealing with Gran’s post-seduction remorse and steering a safe course between concealing from Thomas that she wanted to be alone with Raoul for the purpose of discussing Rosie, and encouraging him to believe that it was from her own desire to be false to her marriage vow.…)

  But Rosie, muttering darkly about the general rottenness of men, insisted that, fog or no fog, she would get up and go out; meanwhile, could she have her lunch in bed please, now.

  ‘No, I’m damned if you can,’ said Tilda. ‘If you’re well enough to go gallivanting—with Damien Jones, I suppose? —you’re well enough to have lunch in the dining-room.’

  ‘Well, if you want to know,’ said Rosie, ‘I am not going gallivanting with Damien, so there; for the simple reason that Damien has a Meeting to-night, and would he leave his precious Meeting for me, oh, no of course not!—much as I might need his sort of support and things … I should think it would be better to do something about just the dull, ordinary person that you saw every day and who ackcherly needed your help, than sit around incessantly discussing a whole lot of people that you never set eyes on, who only might.’

  This accorded so closely with Tilda’s own conception of helping one’s neighbour, that she refrained from remarking that she, personally, had so far received little thanks for trying to help the one, dull, everyday person who actually needed it. She contented herself with saying that Rosie could come down to lunch in her jenking-gowns but to hurry up. Melissa produced the more ruined remnants of her scorched pastry and generously handed them round. ‘Who’re you going out with this afternoon—Stanislas?’ said Rosie, making civil conversation. Melissa gave her a warning grimace. ‘My dear child, if it’s me you’re worrying about, please don’t,’ said Matilda irritably. ‘If you were going out with the King of Greece, I couldn’t care less.’ Though why the poor King of Greece, she could not imagine. My God, what a day, she thought again.