Here Be Dragons

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Here Be Dragons Page 33

by Stella Gibbons


  “To get my knitting.”

  “Well don’t get it, please; I like to see a girl doing nothing; knitting is only a form of nervous tension,” but this time she ignored him.

  When she returned he was leaning out of the window. He turned and looked at her dreamily.

  “I wonder what they’re feeling, driving along those dark roads under the rhododendrons towards London? Mrs. Falconer sounded so pleased … she could hardly speak … of course, Nello, because I’ve been so kind to Nerina and arranged to put her back in her proper place, it doesn’t necessarily mean that I approve of the way she’s been carrying on.”

  He left the window and came to sit beside her. Nell was knitting swiftly. “Doesn’t it?”

  “No. … It’s bad luck on Chris, you know. Now he’ll be saddled with two of them. And he won’t be able to paint properly, because he’ll have to earn money to keep the baby. They’ll starve, I should think, unless Doctor Falconer and Chris’s father allow them something.”

  “He could go back to being a gardener,” Nell said.

  “Go back to being a gardener? Really, Nello, will nothing cure you of being so hopelessly and painfully prosaic? Chris is a painter. Most of this trouble has arisen from the fact that no-one will recognize that he’s a painter.”

  Nell said nothing, and in a moment he went on:

  “Of course, if it were me I should simply curse, in spite of Flaubert and his ‘Ills sont dans le droit’. But Nerina’s pleased about it already; I knew that, when she forgot about his painting things when we were coming away from that wonderful house. … You ‘mark my words’, Nello; in a few years the baby will come first and Chris will be a rather bad second.” He turned restlessly to the window again. “I say, hadn’t we better wake her up? It’s getting on for ten.”

  Nell did not want to spend any more time with him in this mood. It was an odd one. She never remembered having seen him in it before. He seemed pleased, yet bitter over something, triumphant, yet disapproving too. She agreed that it was time to wake Nerina up.

  There was not time to make more coffee. As soon as Nerina had come back into the room and was sitting on the sofa again—this time John said nothing about putting her feet up—the minutes began to pass quickly, filled with a little gossip about mutual friends, and the coming journey—and quite soon the Falconers were due to arrive. The room began to be charged with the feeling of anxiety.

  “You won’t mind if I don’t ask them up, will you, Nerina?” John said suddenly, and Nell realised that he had not called her ‘Nino darling’ since she had awoken from her sleep. “It’s such a climb up all these stairs … and I’m sure they won’t want to see strangers or to talk … I’ll take you down to them in the hall.”

  Nerina said that she quite understood. But now her calmness did seem to be slightly troubled, and she was beginning to look a little apprehensive. She said that her parents would certainly want to thank him.

  “It was kind of me, wasn’t it?” He was at the window again, watching for the car. “I think I’ve managed everything very well … and it wasn’t ‘nothing’ because I only had three pounds and I’ve spent nearly two of them on getting you back into the garden in Surrey again. … Go on thanking me, Nerina. I love to be thanked.”

  He drew in his head from the window. Nell was laughing, but Nerina’s expression was absent. She was listening.

  “I believe that’s them,” she said, suddenly standing up.

  “Not necessarily. This road has plenty of inhabitants with cars. Don’t be in such a hurry to leave us,” John said, “when once you’ve gone you’ll be lost to The Coffee Dish and Bunjie’s for ever, you know. There won’t be any coming back. Eyes, look your last! Arms, take your last embrace! …”

  “I’m sure it’s them, John.” She ran to the window and leaned out by his side. “Yes—that’s the car. Oh …” She drew back. She looked imploringly at him.

  “You needn’t be so nervous,” he said, suddenly and angrily, “you’re going to be all right. They love you in the right way. I’ll go down and let them in. Nell, help her on with her coat, will you?”

  He caught up the cases and hurried out.

  Nell helped Nerina into the shabby schoolgirlish coat. Nerina murmured something about seeing them again soon and Nell said yes, she expected so; she expected nothing of the kind and did not grieve at the prospect of parting for ever with Nino darling; but with some idea of cherishing a prospective mother, she went with her to the top of the stairs.

  The upper part of the house was very silent. But up the well came the murmur of voices.

  “Don’t come down. There’s no need to,” said Nerina, quickly turning to her.

  “All right—if you’re sure you can manage,” Nell stood with her hands tucked into the sleeves of her jersey; it was chilly out here on the landing.

  Nerina hesitated. She was standing on the top stair, looking down into the shadows, keeping her head turned away.

  “It’s awfully queer, isn’t it,” she began quickly, “when we were working together all this summer at The Primula, we never thought all this would happen, did we? I mean …”

  Nell shook her head. She could think of nothing to say but Don’t keep them waiting. Haven’t you hurt them enough?, but she hardly realized that she was keeping the words back. She said briskly:

  “Good luck with everything. Good-bye,” and at that Nerina looked round and smiled her sweet chilly smile, and said “Good-bye, Nell, and thanks most frightfully for the coffee,” and ran lightly down the stairs.

  Nell leaned over the well. She could see the brightly lit hall, and someone wearing a camel-hair coat and someone, a man, she thought, in a dark one. John seemed to be waving his arms about a good deal: perhaps he supposed that would help. Then she saw the top of Nerina’s yellow head join the group.

  She drew back. It was rather sneaky, watching people like this. She went slowly down the stairs and into her bedroom. She thought that she would have a boiling bath and go to bed; it was only half-past ten, but her feet ached and she felt rather concerned about Robert.

  It was nice to think that she would not have the little pain any more; at least, it was nice until she realized that she would not have it any more about Nerina. She just shut her mind in time upon the thought that while there was John and while there was Nell there would always be the little pain.

  She did not hear the Falconers’ car drive away. But when she came out of her bedroom some ten minutes later with her spongebag and towel, she ran straight into John coming up the stairs.

  He looked very black. He just turned his head towards her as he passed—then stopped, and came slowly down again.

  “Darling Nello,” he said, as if to himself, and put his hand gently on her sleeve, and they stood for a moment together while he looked down at her, “how small you are in your little blue dressing gown. Is it flannel?” He moved the stuff lightly between his fingers.

  “No, it’s seersucker.”

  “What a fascinating name. It makes one thing of honey-suckle and suckling babies and sheer delight … talking of fascination, I am going to see Angie soon, at the house I rescued Nerina from. I’m glad you can’t see Angie, Nello. You would be so narrow about her. You would say she’s horrible.”

  “What’s the matter, John?” Nell asked.

  He looked away. “Oh … of course you think I’m in a state because I’m in love with Nerina. Well, I’m not. (My life isn’t as simple as that.) It was her parents. If you could have seen them and heard them. Awful semi-county types trying to keep a stiff upper lip and inwardly drooling with joy over the prodigal daughter … but rather ashamed too, of course, and wondering what the neighbours will say … I was almost sick. And both so plain. At least, I suppose that Mrs. Falconer must be conceded some remnants of prettiness, but him—! No wonder Nerina ran away. And you could almost see Mrs. Falconer trying not to ask her when she and Chris were going to be married.”

  Nell did not say anything. What
use to tell him that the Falconers had only behaved naturally? She put her own fingers over the ones clasping her sleeve.

  “Why need we have parents?” he said, still keeping his head turned away. “Why can’t we just bud off, like plants … or whatever it is they do. Bloody parents, I hate them.”

  Nell kept her fingers closely over his own. She did not clasp or stroke them, and suddenly he caught her up against him and pushed his face down into her neck. She could hear mutters—something about “wanting to get this over” and “liking you so much”, and something as well about “a damned nuisance”, and then she knew what he was asking.

  Oh no, was her first and only thought. Never that. If I do that, I’ll never get away again.

  She said, as well as she could with her mouth pressed against the hard young head under the soft stiff brush of hair—“No. No. I can’t. I’m awfully sorry, John, but I can’t.”

  In a moment he let her go.

  “Sorry,” he said, not looking at her. “I didn’t really want you to. I’m glad you said no. I like you for other things. But it’s such a damned nuisance. All right, let’s forget about it. Good night, Nello dear.”

  But as he turned away without kissing her and ran down the stairs, and she heard the front door shut as she went into the bathroom, she thought that she would never forget about it.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  WRECK OF A HAPPY SHIP

  ON HER WAY to the café next morning, although not precisely setting in her mind the pleasures of hard and absorbing work against the pains of personal life, she was more than usually looking forward to the day’s toil. She put John, and Robert too, out of her thoughts while planning some scheme about new tea-towels.

  She had managed somehow to put John’s request of the last evening right away. She simply did not let it come upon her at all, now. Each return of the memory during a restless night had brought a turning over of the stomach which she had so strongly disliked that she exerted all her will to banish the recollection; it was like slamming a door quickly; and it went.

  As she went down the side lane that led to the back premises of The Primula she was whistling under her breath.

  She turned the handle of the garden gate, and pushed. It resisted her; it was locked. That was funny; had Tansy and Mary, both of whom always arrived before herself every morning, been taken ill together? She lifted out the brick in the wall, behind which the key to the gate was always kept; it was not there. Funnier still.

  She looked up at the tall, white rear of the house. The fresh chintz curtains appeared demurely drawn back in the morning light. She went round to the front and peered in; the tea-room looked forlorn and neat, as always at this hour. After a prolonged ringing at the bell which met with no result, she was going round to the back again when Tom, a local character who served in the butcher’s in the side lane, called to her from the shop door:

  “Ah-ha, the birds have flown! Gone up to Tansy’s, I saw ’em about a quarter of an hour ago.”

  Nell made a gesture of thanks, and skimmed off in the direction of Tansy’s cottage, pursued by the shout of: “Key’s been pinched, I reckon.”

  Highly unlikely. And why should they have gone up to the cottage? And where was Miss Berringer? She couldn’t be stewing herself in the tea which any ‘state of affairs’, however small, demanded that Tansy and Mary should brew, and which was almost certainly now being drunk at the cottage.

  The cottage was two hundred years old, just round the corner in the narrowest possible lane at the top of a steep slope overlooking all London. Those on either side of it had a blue door and a yellow door, and cultural objects in their windows, and through these doors, which usually stood open for small children to totter in and out, there floated cultured voices, but Tansy’s ‘front’ was always tightly shut, and on her windowsill between the plastic curtains there was a statuette of a lady in evening dress bending herself backwards.

  When Nell tapped at the door, which had no knocker, it opened at once, revealing Tansy in her coat and turban.

  “Come in, Nell,” she said importantly, “I guessed you’d be round. Mary’s here. I’ll just shut the door.”

  She did so. Nell, returning a businesslike “Hullo, Mary,” in response to a tragic and portentous gesture from Mary sitting at the table surrounded, of course, by tea, found herself in a tiny dark room furnished mostly in dark green, spotlessly clean, and smelling strongly of mould. The blind white eye of a television set stared inimically at her through the dimness.

  “Sit down, Nell. My Julian’s at school. Just as well. There’s not much he don’t miss.” She filled a cup and pushed it towards her. “There. You get that down you. You’ll need it.”

  Nell, who disliked tea on the whole and had finished breakfast less than an hour ago, wondered why. She began to sip it, however, knowing that time and argument would be saved by doing so, while looking at Tansy over the cup. Then she said:

  “What on earth is all this about?”

  Mary made one of her gestures.

  “Have ye not seen the paper?” she demanded. “’Tis all there, every word. Would ye not think she would have come to her common-sense at that age?—forty-six?”

  “What is it?” Nell spoke sharply, and put down her cup with the air of one who is drinking no more.

  Tansy whipped out a newspaper from a drawer.

  “(Didn’t want my Julian to get hold of it.) She’s a correspondent. It’s all here—look. Muriel Berringer, of Planers Lane, in a divorce with Franklin Farmer, company director, of Reddington Road. It’s Mrs. Farmer. She must have known about it all along and charged her with it. So no wonder she isn’t down at the caff this morning. She must have known this would be all over the neighbourhood (Mary here and me both read about it over our breakfasts, didn’t we? We always read the divorces,” but Mary made a delicate repudiating gesture), “and gone off somewhere to stay until it’s blown over.”

  “If it does blow over,” Mary said.

  “To her sister in Cornwall.” Tansy was folding the paper together with a sharp rustle, while her lips were pressed into a thin line and her eyes were shining. “So now we know why there was all the tantrums and the pickings on everybody.”

  “Her poor sister,” put in Mary lugubriously; “she’s not married. It’ll be a terrible shock to her, you’ll understand.”

  “But isn’t—wasn’t the key there?” Nell was beginning to feel rather irritated; wasn’t there going to be an ordinary busy, pleasant, profitable day? She needed one: she knew it now; when there seemed the probability that she would not get one. “It might” (she made the unlikely suggestion firmly) “have fallen into the grass.”

  “It had not,” Mary said, “for Tansy and me looked all around, didn’t we?” and Tansy nodded.

  “She’s taken that away with her, of course,” she said sharply, “you can’t be too careful. They’re always about. Why, there’s some would be round there like lightning the minute they read the news.”

  “But how are we going to open up?” said Nell.

  Tansy shrugged her shoulders.

  “She must want us to open up and carry on.”

  Tansy shrugged again, and Mary said soothingly, “Sit down and drink your tea, dear. You mustn’t get all worked up. Naturally—a young girl, it’s been a shock to ye. …”

  “Not particularly,” Nell said. She turned again to Tansy. “There’s sure to be some kind of a message. She can’t just have … gone off like this. I’m going down to see if there’s anything … is the post in yet, do you know? … but of course we can’t get at the letters, even if it is, but she might send a telegram.”

  She paused. It had occurred to her that Miss Berringer might be in such a state that she had simply forgotten all about the café. But Miss Berringer was hardly that type. “Come along, Tansy,” she said.

  She was looking more cheerful; if anyone ran the café for a few days while Miss Berringer was away, it was certain to be herself, for neither Tansy
nor Mary was capable of it.

  “I don’t know … we’ll have the pleece round there before we can get the coffees started.”

  “Oh Tansy. Really. The police! What on earth should they come round for? You come with me and we’ll get the place opened up. I’m sure that’s what Miss Berringer would want us to do. If she’s … having a spot of bother … she’ll need the café running properly, to cheer her up. We’ll probably get a telephone message later this morning. I’ll take responsibility for everything.”

  “Oh all right. If you’ll be responsible.” Tansy set down her large stained cup half-filled with cool copper tea, and stood up.

  “Mary, you finish up your tea, and come down afterwards. Tansy and I will dash ahead,” Nell said, opening the front door.

  “The young ones are over-keen on dashing.” But Mary drained her cup and began to heave herself out of her chair, and by the time Nell and Tansy were hurrying over the steep cobbled slope, her large form was leisurely following. On the way down, Tansy explained to Nell that the police was mixed up in divorces, wasn’t they, and might be told to keep a watch on them what had been in them, and Nell explained to Tansy, her voice pitched lower than usual as they passed the open doors and windows of Miss Berringer’s neighbours, that it was not that kind of police. Her eyes were shining, for she was relishing the prospect of getting the running of The Primula, if only for a few days, into her own hands.

  But when the two came in sight of The Primula, Tansy stopped short and gripped her by the arm.

  The police were there. They had arrived in answer to a courteous, apologetic letter, and they had broken a door down. A small crowd—that usual small crowd which appears to consist of human beings and must in truth consist of ghouls—had collected, and it was watching two men slowly carrying her out: sensible, bright Muriel Berringer, of the perky blue feather hat.

 

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