Miss Silver pulled on the pale pink ball in her knitting-bag. The silence had lasted quite a long time before she broke it.
‘And now?’
‘He wants me to marry him at once without saying anything to my mother. He has got a licence. I think we ought to tell her. But it will be the same thing all over again if we do.’
‘Miss Graham, what is the real state of your mother’s health?’
Althea lifted a hand and let it fall again. The acanthus leaf had marked the palm. She said,
‘I don’t know. If she upsets herself she has an attack. Dr Barrington says she mustn’t be allowed to upset herself.’
Miss Silver said gravely,
‘It is a doubtful kindness to encourage a selfish course of action. May I inquire whether the cousin you spoke of would still be available as a companion for your mother?’
‘I should think she would. I know that she has had losses and is finding things difficult. She has a couple of rooms in a friend’s house, but I don’t think the arrangement is being a great success. The friend has recently taken up table-turning and automatic writing, and my cousin doesn’t approve of it. We could pay her a salary, and I think she would be quite good with my mother. The trouble is that if I write to her and wait for her to make up her mind and let me know, it will get round the family and come back to my mother. Cousin Bertha writes reams to all the relations every week. None of them could keep a secret if they tried, and of course they don’t try.’
Miss Silver found her sympathies warmly engaged. She stopped knitting, rested the now considerably lengthened pink frill upon her lap, and said,
‘Emily Chapell!’
Althea repeated the name in an inquiring voice.
‘Emily Chapell?’
Miss Silver beamed.
‘She would be extremely suitable.’
‘I don’t think…’
The knitting was resumed. Miss Silver inclined her head.
‘She is not a trained nurse, but she has had a good deal of nursing experience. A very dependable person and, most fortunately, disengaged. If you decided on an immediate marriage, she would be able to move in as soon as you had broken the news to Mrs Graham.’
Althea could say nothing but ‘Oh…’
Miss Silver’s needles clicked.
‘I have known her for twenty years, and I have never known her to fail in tact and good temper.’
Althea had a picture of Miss Silver and Emily Chapell as twin angels shooting back the bolts of her prison doors and throwing them wide. She heard Miss Silver say,
‘Your cousin would naturally require a little time to consider your offer and to give notice to her friend. Miss Chapell would, I am sure, be prepared to remain with Mrs Graham until her arrangements had been made.’
Althea leaned forward. The doors were opening, but could she – might she step across the threshold? She looked at Miss Silver with piteous intensity and said,
‘Oh, do you really think I could do it?’
THIRTEEN
ALTHEA RETURNED HOME to find Mrs Graham in an extremely fretful mood. She held forth for some time on the congenial theme of selfishness in the young, with particular application to a daughter who left her mother alone whilst she wasted time and money on going to town.
‘And if it was to shop, I am sure there are very good shops here in the High Street.’
‘I didn’t go up to shop.’
Mrs Graham looked at her suspiciously.
‘Then what did you go up for?’
‘To see a friend of Sophy’s.’
‘A friend of Sophy Justice’s – of course she’s Sophy Harding now, but it seems so much easier to say Sophy Justice – why on earth should you go and see a friend of Sophy’s?’
‘I thought I should like to see her again.’
‘Oh, you’ve met her before?’
Althea said, ‘Yes, I’ve met her,’ and then hurried on with, ‘I thought Nettie Pimm was lunching with you. You told me she was, and I left everything ready.’
‘She rang up at the last moment and said she couldn’t come. She said she wasn’t feeling well.’ A delicate sniff expressed Mrs Graham’s opinion of Nettie’s ailment. ‘Most inconsiderate I call it, and I let her see I wasn’t pleased. And then on the top of that Mr Jones rang up again about the house. He said Mr Worple had withdrawn his offer of seven thousand five hundred. You know, there’s something about Mr Jones that I don’t like at all. He sounded quite pleased about the price having come down. And I told him that it wasn’t any good his going on worrying us, because I didn’t like Mr Worple and I didn’t feel at all inclined to sell to him. He reminds me of someone we saw in a film. I can’t remember who he was, but Mr Worple reminds me of him, and in the film he really wasn’t at all the sort of person I should care to sell a hosue to. After all, one does owe a certain duty to the neighbourhood, and we have been here for more than twenty years. And with my health what it is, I shouldn’t like to feel that I hadn’t got a home to come back to. I did think the cruise we were planning might be good for us both, but one couldn’t be sure of congenial companionship, so I have really given up the idea. A few weeks in a nice hotel by the sea would be quite a different thing. One would have one’s own comfortable home to come back to at any time. I really think that is a necessity. I am sorry that you should be disappointed about the trip, but my mind is quite made up. For one thing I shouldn’t care to have to call in a strange doctor. Dr Barrington understands me, and that is everything. So I told Mr Jones it wasn’t any good thinking I would sell, and I rang up Mr Martin and told him too.’
She had talked herself into a better humour, and Althea left it at that.
At a little after nine o’clock Nicholas Carey rang up. The telephone was in the dining-room, with an extension in Mrs Graham’s bedroom. On the not infrequent occasions when she felt a disposition to rest she was thus able to enjoy long gossipy conversations with her friends. She could also listen in to anything Althea said when using the instrument in the dining-room. With this in mind Althea, lifting the receiver and hearing Nicholas Carey’s voice, had to consider what chances there were of being overheard. Mrs Graham was in the bathroom. If the taps had been running when the bell rang, she probably wouldn’t have heard it. If her mother was already in her bath she wouldn’t get out of it to answer the telephone. The chances were that it would be safe enough to talk to Nicky, but prudent to keep the conversation on noncommittal lines. She began with a quick,
‘I told you not to ring me up.’
His voice came back, lazy and teasing.
‘Counsel of perfection, darling. I want to see you. No don’t say you won’t, or you can’t, or you don’t want to.’
‘I wasn’t going to.’
He went on as if she had not spoken.
‘Because it’s perfectly easy – you let the cat out and come out with it.’
She could not help her voice laughing a little as she said,
‘We haven’t got a cat.’
‘Very remiss of you! But the principle remains the same. The operative words are “You come out”.’
‘Oh, Nicky, I can’t.’
‘Darling, I warned you about saying that. If you don’t come out, I shall come in.’
‘You can’t do that!’
He said, ‘Watch me!’
She had a perfectly clear picture of what he was looking like at the other end of the line – frowning brows, eyes with a spark of malice, lips just curling into a grin. When Nicky was in that sort of mood he didn’t really care a damn. He was perfectly capable of marching into the house and saying what he wanted to say. If she didn’t open the door, he was capable of breaking a window. She would have to slip out. She said in a hurry,
‘Well, just for a moment.’
‘Me come in, or you come out?’
‘I’ll come out.’
‘Good girl! Half past ten. In the gazebo.’ He rang off.
The hand with which she put the receiver
back was not quite steady. Half past ten was too early – her mother might not be asleep. She had her bath at nine, her cup of hot Ovaltine between a quarter to ten and ten o’clock, and as a rule she would be fast asleep before the quarter past. No – half past ten ought to be all right. But suppose it wasn’t – suppose her mother was still awake. Part of the picture of herself as an invalid was the belief that she lay awake for hours, suffering but unwilling to disturb Althea. Suppose that for once she really did lie awake, not for hours, but even for one half hour. Althea turned quite cold at the thought. She wanted to see Nicky every bit as much as he wanted to see her, but they oughtn’t to risk it. A scene or an upset now would be a danger which mustn’t be risked – not now, at the very minute when the prison doors were opening to let her through. She had meant to ring Nicky up from the call-box at the corner as soon as her mother was in bed. She had meant to ring him up and to tell him that she would marry him at once – tomorrow if he wanted her to. Then they could get Emily Chapell down and have her handy and choose their time for breaking the news. It was all beautifully planned in her mind. She had a perfectly clear picture of it with everything going smoothly to a beautiful climax in which her mother resigned herself to the inevitable and gave them her blessing. It hadn’t seemed incredible when she planned it, but it did seem incredible now. If only Nicky hadn’t rung up…
Something in her which would always take his part began to defend him. It was her own fault. She ought to have said, ‘I can’t talk now – I’ll ring you up at ten o’clock,’ and just put the receiver back. Even Nicky couldn’t have come banging at doors and bursting in after that. He would have waited half an hour, and she could have slipped out to the call-box after washing out the empty Ovaltine cup. She would have to meet him at the gazebo now. It was where they always used to meet. It was where they had met five years ago to say good-bye. Tonight would blot that parting out. She wouldn’t stay a moment, but it would be a wonderful moment for them both. She would say, ‘I’ll marry you tomorrow,’ and they would kiss, and she would send him away for the last time.
She went out into the hall and up the stairs. When she came to the bathroom door she stood there for a moment, listening. When she could hear nothing, she knocked gently.
‘Are you all right, Mother?’
There was a slight splashing sound. Mrs Graham said fretfully,
‘Of course I am all right! What is it?’
‘I couldn’t hear anything.’
‘Really, Thea! Am I a noisy person? I am enjoying my bath, which is making me feel sleepy. I should like my Ovaltine a little earlier than usual tonight. I really feel as if I might drop off.’
She repeated the words later on when she had drunk the Ovaltine and was handing the cup to Althea.
‘Be as quiet as you can. I really do feel as if I might drop off.’
Althea said, ‘I hope you will.’ She had a guilty feeling as she said it.
She put out the bedside light, felt her way to the door, and turned on the threshold to say goodnight. Her mother’s voice sounded quite sleepy as she answered her.
FOURTEEN
ALL THE EVENTS of that evening were to be gone over with a microscope. The slightest word, the most unconsidered action, the time at which Nicholas Carey had left the Harrisons’ house, the time at which he returned to it, the time at which young Mr Burford rang up Miss Cotton from the call-box at the corner of Lowton Street, the time that Miss Cotton left her cottage in Deepcut Lane, the time that it would take her to arrive at that point on Hill Rise where it skirted the back garden of No. 2 Belview Road, the movements of Mrs Traill who had been baby-sitting for Mr and Mrs Nokes at 28 Hill Rise – all these were to be worked out and compared. All that was spoken and overheard, all that the people concerned had seen or done, was to have a bright and terrifying searchlight turned upon it. But from Althea, letting herself out softly by the back door and leaving it ajar so that there should be no click of the latch to betray her, these things were hidden. It was not the thought of the future that came to her as she went softly up the garden in the kindly dark. It was the past which came back with every step she took. This meeting might be any one of the many meetings which she and Nicky had snatched five, six, seven years ago. Her foot trod the same paved pathway. The same scent came up from the thyme which she bruised as she went. There was night-scented stock in the right-hand border. It liked the place and seeded there, to come up every year and fill the dark with fragrance.
There were three steps up to the gazebo. She took them. Someone stirred in the black shadowy place and she was in Nicky’s arms.
Mrs Graham was not asleep. She hadn’t intended to go to sleep. She was much too angry to feel sleepy. But she had been clever – she hadn’t let Althea see that she was angry. When she was a girl she had had quite a taste for private theatricals. They were enjoyable, and everyone said she ought to go on the stage. She had even toyed with the idea herself, but she had got married instead. She felt a good deal of complacency in thinking that she could still act well enough to prevent Althea knowing how angry she had been. And still was. She wasn’t in her bath when the telephone bell rang. She was still in her dressing-gown, and she had slipped across to her bedroom and lifted the receiver just as Althea lifted the one in the room below. If you used both hands and moved the receiver very gently, the other person who was telephoning would have no idea that you were listening in. She heard everything that Nicholas and Althea said, and she laid her plans accordingly. She would have her bath and she would have her Ovaltine, and she would say how sleepy she was, and she would beg Althea not to make any noise. She wasn’t afraid of going to sleep – she was much too excited and angry for that. She would just stay propped up amongst her pillows and wait until it was half past ten.
She must have dozed a little, because she was suddenly aware of the wall-clock striking in the hall below. There was a stroke that had waked her, and a second which came as she listened for it. She glanced sideways at the table by her bed and saw that the luminous hands on the small ornamental clock were pointing to half past ten. She counted up to twenty before she got out of bed and felt her way to the door. There was always a light on the landing. She couldn’t sleep with one in her room, but she liked to feel that it was just outside the door. Standing there listening, she was aware of the silence and emptiness of the house. Thea had already gone to her meeting with Nicholas Carey. She had gone out, leaving the house unlocked and her invalid mother alone in it. A drenching wave of self-pity broke over Winifred Graham. Anything may happen to a woman alone in a house with an open door – anything may happen to an invalid in a delicate state of health. Thea didn’t care what happened to her. All she cared for was slipping out to meet her lover like any girl who has not been brought up to behave herself. It was not only callous and heartless, but exceedingly ill-bred.
She went back into her room, turned on the bedside light, and dressed as she had planned to do. Stockings and outdoor shoes – gardens are always damp at night. A pair of warm knickers pulled right up over her filmy nightdress, a fleecy vest, a cardigan which buttoned up to the neck, a skirt and a long black coat. She tied a chiffon square over her head and wound a fleecy woollen scarf about her throat. Then she went into the bathroom without putting on the light, drew back the curtains, and looked out of the window. The bathroom was at the back of the house. If they had a light in the gazebo, she would be able to see it from here. Her eyes searched the shadowy darkness. There wasn’t any light. She listened with all her ears, but there wasn’t any sound. Everything in the garden was dim and quiet under the arch of a windless sky.
She went down the stairs and through the house without putting on any of the lights. The backdoor was ajar. Her anger flamed afresh, her self-pity deepened. It was wicked of Thea – wicked, wicked, wicked.
Her eyes had become accustomed to the darkness. Once she was clear of the house she could see well enough. She passed between the two cut hollies, each screening a dustbin, and made
her way as Althea had done along the paved walk and up the slope to the gazebo. It was not until she came to the foot of the steps that the murmur of voices reached her. That was really all it was – a murmur. The sound had no words for her. If words there were, they passed from lip to ear, or between lips that met. She was filled with an anger which stopped her breath. She had to gasp for it, stumbling up the steps of the gazebo, catching at the jamb of the door.
It stood open. The sound of those stumbling feet and that catching breath came into the dream in which Althea and Nicholas stood and startled them apart.
‘Mother!’
‘Mrs Graham!’
Winifred Graham found breath for her anger. Her voice came high and shrill.
‘How dare you, Nicholas Carey – how dare you!’
‘Mother – please! You’ll make yourself ill!’
‘You wouldn’t care if I died! You wouldn’t care if you killed me! You only think about yourself!’
Nicholas said in a controlled voice,
‘I’m sorry, Mrs Graham, but you wouldn’t let me come to the house, and I had to see Allie. I’ll go away now and come back and talk to you tomorrow.’
She was clutching at Althea and sobbing.
‘No – no – you mustn’t come – I won’t see you! Send him away, Thea! I can’t stand it – he’ll kill me! Send him away!’
The Gazebo Page 9