And that the whole effect was good, she knew by the way Elissa looked at her.
“Darling, you have put on weight,” said Elissa sympathetically. She herself was wearing blue, a deep, deep blue like the sky on a summer night; and when given time to arrange her thighs, looked as thin as a toothpick.
Without attempting any defence (for really there was none possible) Lesley took herself and her finery down to the drawing-room. It now had a bar in it permanently, and a bar-tender on occasion, and since this was an occasion par excellence, he was just reporting for duty as Lesley came down.
They entered together, and he at once offered to mix her something; but Lesley, no longer sure of her head, declined politely. He seemed a nice little man, very anxious to oblige, and in case her refusal had hurt him, she now said the first thing that came into her head. She said,
“I’ve just been seeing my small boy off to school.”
The bar-tender at once looked interested.
“Indeed, Madam? May I ask which?”
“Bluecoat.”
“Ah, that’s a good school, that is,” said the bar-tender with enthusiasm. “A neighbour of mine, Madam, who works in an insurance office in the City, had the good fortune to get his boy there—very brilliant boy, I believe—and they tell me he’s doing wonders.”
“How old is he?” asked Lesley quickly.
“Fourteen-and-a-half, Madam.”
“Oh, dear! Mine’s not quite nine. Would they ever come across each other, do you think?”
“Well, as to that, Madam, of course I can’t say; but if you’d like me to give you his name—”
Lesley would have liked it very much indeed, for a brilliant and really bigger boy—Jackson was only twelve—was just the person she wanted to keep an eye on Pat’s career; but at that precise moment their conversation was interrupted by Elissa herself with a bunch of first arrivals. The barman was at once busy, Lesley swept away; and before she had time even to look at herself, the party had begun.
And never, thought Lesley, was such a party before.
Never in her life had she seen so many attractive women: never in her life met so many brilliant men. And not only brilliant, but charming as well; they came and talked to her one after another while she listened fascinated. Mr. Poullett in particular, could hardly tear himself away; he begged, he urged, he implored her with passion to come and look at his snakes.
“I’d love to,” said Lesley sincerely; and indeed the thought of Pat’s missed opportunity went straight to her heart.
“When?” asked Mr. Poullett.
“The Christmas holidays, perhaps,” said Lesley.
And after Mr. Poullett came a man called Ribera (but he was obviously American), who spoke for a full fifteen minutes on modern Italian art; another man lectured on Nacktkultur; a third, with a small beard, on the history of the gold standard. Lesley drank one cocktail after another, and felt herself getting more and more intellectual: whenever she asked a question, they at once called it intelligent. At the end of an hour or two, however, she began to need air, and by a good deal of tact and a little swift movement managed to escape alone to the tiny balcony. But she had not even been there more than a few minutes, thinking restfully of the cottage and wondering how Pat slept, when a very tall man was suddenly standing beside her. She had noted him earlier as looking distinguished but cross, and was now relieved to observe the distinction predominate.
He said,
“Tell me what you’re thinking about.”
“Rose-bushes,” answered Lesley truthfully.
Subtly his face changed.
“In that frock, of course,” he said; and there was a difference in his voice too, a sudden infusion of boredom.—‘Like picking up a book and finding you’ve read it,’ thought Lesley vaguely. Then realising for the first time the implications of his remark, she woke up and defended herself.
“But I mean real rose-trees,” she explained, “not—not the conversational sort. Three Barbara Richards, one Etoile de Hollande, three Madam Butterfly, three Mrs. Barraclough, and a Rev. Page Roberts. Is that eleven or twelve?”
“Eleven,” said the man.
“Then I can have one more. Do you know anything about Julien Potin?”
“He’s a sort of hybrid-tea. But why have another one? Wouldn’t it be more original to have eleven?”
“At the place where I’m going,” explained Lesley, “they have them at so much a dozen—assorted, you know. I believe they practically throw one in. And it’s silly to waste a rose bush just to be original.”
“You don’t know how I agree with you,” said the man, quite fervently. “By the way—my name’s Bentall.”
“The architect,” supplied Lesley. She had heard about him from Elissa. “Do you like cottages?”
“If they’re old enough, I do.”
At once she told him all about hers, stepping back inside the room to make a comparison of floor-space, indicating with gestures of the hands the girth of its outside walls. Mr. Bentall said they sounded marvellous, and expressed so hot a desire to see them for himself that it was only common kindness to invite him, if ever he should be in Bucks, to pay them a visit.
“May I, really?” said Mr. Bentall eagerly. “What sort of a day? Sunday?”
A Sunday, agreed Lesley, would do very well.
“Next Sunday?” said Mr. Bentall.
There was no reason against it.
“Now tell me something else,” said Mr. Bentall. “I’ve twice offered to get you a drink, and both times you’ve refused. But if you really don’t want one, why do you keep looking so anxiously at the bar?”
“I’m not,” said Lesley, stung. “I’m looking at the barman.”
“Then why him?”
“Because one of his neighbours has a brilliant boy at the Bluecoat School, and so have I. I mean—mine’s not brilliant, he’s only just got there; and I thought this other boy, who’s fourteen, might be a good person to keep an eye on him. And the barman was just giving me his name when everyone came in.”
Just as the barman himself had done earlier in the evening, Mr. Bentall at once looked extremely interested.
“But Elissa tells me you’re staying here,” he said. “Can’t you catch him at the end?”
“I shall if I can, but he may slip away. They do, you know, when the drink begins to run out. And with all these people here I don’t like to ask him now. He might feel it was unprofessional, and I’m sure Elissa would.”
“Well, I’ll help to keep an eye on him,” promised Mr. Bentall. “Now tell me about your boy.”
“Oh, he isn’t mine really,” said Lesley, conscious that she should perhaps have said that before, “I only adopted him. But I’ve had him nearly five years, and he went to school yesterday. That was really why I took the cottage, of course, and now it’s mine I somehow don’t want to leave it. When you see it on Sunday—”
“Darlings,” cried Elissa gaily, “I’m going to tear you apart and cast you to the lions. Everyone wants to make love to you, Lesley, and a good few would like Andrew to make love to them. Avanti!”
Resistance was useless. A moment later, and they were seated on opposite sides of the room, the architect with Elissa, Lesley in the power of a small and dapper Italian. His admiration was ardent, but his English poor, and she was extremely glad to be borne down on by a small plump-breasted Frenchwoman with enormous pearls.
“Lesley Frewen!” cried Mrs. Carnegie. “Let me look at you!”
She did so at length, and announced herself satisfied.
“You ’ave kept young,” she said approvingly. “So ’ave I. ’Ave you seen Sasha?”
“Not yet,” said Lesley.
“’E is of very-ry, very-ry good family,” explained Mrs. Carnegie. “I found ’im in Paris, and when I ’ave to do something for him—’e ’as no shirt even, poor boy—’e wept like a baby. You shall see ’im.”
She turned round and raised her voice.
At on
ce, from the group round the bar, there emerged a tall and strikingly handsome young man. He advanced toward his patroness, kissed Lesley’s hand, and immediately suggested that they should all go and dance.
“No,” said Mrs. Carnegie, “Miss Frewen, she is staying ’ere, so she must remain. But you and I, if you like, Sasha.”
Sasha considered.
“We will go, then,” he said at last, “and it would also be nice to have supper. Good-bye, Miss Frewen.” He kissed her hand again, while Mrs. Carnegie kissed her cheeks: they were a very affectionate couple.
‘But she has kept young all the same,’ thought Lesley, ‘younger than Elissa.…’
As the reflection indicates, she was no longer enjoying herself: and a moment later the party, which had been steadily losing its brightness, at last snuffed out. The moment of snuffing, for Lesley at least, was a quite definite one: it was the moment in which she glanced round the thinning room and saw that Andrew Bentall was gone. For the last hour and more she had, like everyone else, been drinking, chattering, and moving from one chair to another; but whichever way her moves took her, they had brought her no nearer to Mr. Bentall: he was being courted, cajoled, swarmed over by beautiful ladies, and whenever he broke free Elissa was on him like a flash. The pride of her party, it was his business to circulate; or if not in circulation, to devote himself to his hostess.
A ridiculous disappointment filled Lesley’s heart. She felt defrauded of something—simply of saying good-night to him, perhaps; she remembered that they had made no real arrangements for Sunday. And glancing round the room again she saw that in her second and fruitless preoccupation she had also missed the barman. It was three o’clock, the barman was gone; and as soon as the last few guests had gone too, Lesley left Elissa talking to the man called Ribera, and went slowly upstairs.
2
And at that moment her name was called from below. She turned, and looking down saw a tall dark figure standing in the hall.
“Miss Frewen!” called Andrew Bentall.
Lesley ran down to him.
“Name of brilliant boy—James Turner. Home address: 6, Green Lane, Sheen.”
“How did you find out?”
“Waylaid the barman on the way out. Look here, can’t I see you again before Sunday? To-morrow night, for instance?”
She thought of old Whittal, and shook her head.
“Lunch or tea, then? Lunch? I’ll call for you at one,” said Mr. Bentall.
Then she gave him her hand, and they said good-night to each other.
CHAPTER THREE
Having enjoyed almost every minute of her visit, Lesley returned to High Westover at the prearranged time. Elissa did indeed, over the very last cocktail, invite her to stay longer, but in so fleeting a parentheses that it slipped by almost unheard, and in no way impeded the flow of their last conversation.
“And if at any time you feel like the country, darling,” finished Lesley, “just wire and come down. There’s a bathroom now.” She hesitated: it was the opportunity she had for three days been seeking, the opportunity to tell Elissa about the cottage; but it had come too late. And if she did tell Elissa, what would Elissa say? ‘Don’t you get a pension as well, darling?’—something like that; amusing, of course, but not what one really wanted to hear said about Sir Philip. Old Whittal had been different.… So Lesley held her tongue, kissed Elissa for the last time, and about an hour and a half later was walking up Pig Lane in the company of Mrs. Hasty. They had met at the station, and Florrie with her usual good humour volunteered to carry a bag.
“I’m going that way meself, to see the old ’uns,” she said. “Did he get off all right, Miss Frewen?”
“Rather. There were lots of other boys, and a master to look after them. He didn’t seem a bit worried.”
“Ah! Pat was always like that, wasn’t he? Never turns a hair. But how you brought yourself to part with ’im, Miss Frewen, I just can’t think. I know I couldn’t part with my Gerald,” said Florrie earnestly.
A slight difference between the two cases did present itself to Lesley, but she forbore to mention it. Florrie’s sympathy was obviously genuine, and to a certain extent deserved; she would miss Pat very much indeed, and if at the moment she didn’t quite realise it, that was because her mind was as though preoccupied with something more important. What it was, she could not yet quite tell: but to be more important than Pat it would have to be very important indeed.…
“’N did you have a good time yourself?” asked Florrie.
“Very, thank you,” said Lesley. “I went to two theatres and a conjuring show with Pat, and Madame Tussaud’s and a cinema.”
Florrie was visibly impressed.
“My cousin George, he went to Tussaud’s once. He said it was ever so handy, just near the station. (Did I tell you the Pomfrets’ roller had come?) But you missed the Conservative Concert, Miss Frewen, it was last Wen’sday night.”
“Oh, dear!” said Lesley. “Was it good?”
“Ever so good, except for Mrs. Povey singing three times. They couldn’t stop her, you see, because old man Povey was doing the refreshments cheap.”
Thinking of the bird-bath, Lesley laughed aloud; and then for some minutes they walked in silence. The air, after the air of London, was like brown bread after white: from the hedges on either hand came the sweet warm scent of ripening blackberries. Lesley lifted her head, and saw bright between the trees the roof of the White Cottage.
“My! There’s a yellow leaf already,” said Florrie. “Whist-drives’ll be starting soon.”
2
A little later that same evening, but before she went up to see the Brookes, Lesley walked in her orchard. Mrs. Sprigg was just gone, happy in the possession of Nelson’s Column; she had had high tea on the table, and water for a bath.…
It was pleasant in the orchard. Leaves touched by autumn, and grass warm in the sun. Setting sun, and so with a peculiar softness in the last of its light. Lesley walked slowly between the trees, till she came to the Walpole fence. On the other side of the yard someone was making a bonfire, and with every puff of wind came the good smell of woodsmoke. So leaning, so looking, her thoughts came slowly; thoughts of Patrick when he should be older, thoughts of the garden next year: all thoughts with a future to them. And there was a thought amongst them that was quite new, yet like the woodsmoke pervasive; and as when woodsmoke blows through an orchard, the orchard becomes more lovely, so were Pat and the garden suddenly dearer for it.
‘To-morrow, when Andrew comes,’ thought Lesley.
About the Author
Margery Sharp (1905–1991) is renowned for her sparkling wit and insight into human nature, which are liberally displayed in her critically acclaimed social comedies of class and manners. Born in Yorkshire, England, she wrote pieces for Punch magazine after attending college and art school. In 1930, she published her first novel, Rhododendron Pie, and in 1938, she married Maj. Geoffrey Castle. Sharp wrote twenty-six novels, three of which, Britannia Mews, Cluny Brown, and The Nutmeg Tree, were made into feature films, and fourteen children’s books, including The Rescuers, which was adapted into two Disney animated films.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1934 by Margery Sharp
Cover design by Mimi Bark
ISBN: 978-1-5040-3429-6
This edition published in 2016 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
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The Flowering Thorn Page 26