by Miss Read
The two ladies made their farewells, one moving off to Thrush Green, and the other setting out yet again, to try her luck with the interrupted cat-taming in the log shed.
Dimity Henstock's dinner party was an outstanding success right from the start.
Betty Bell was in charge of the kitchen that evening. She was a first-class cook, even if her cleaning and dusting were sketchy, having been trained in a ducal establishment in the north, under a dragon of a cook who had terrified young Betty but had taught her supremely well.
To be able to engage Betty Bell for the evening was a sure foundation for the success of a dinner party, as Thrush Green and Lulling hostesses knew well.
As Dimity looked at the seating arrangements in the dining-room, she could hear Betty singing cheerfully as she coped with leg of mutton, onion sauce, roast potatoes, cauliflower, peas and young Brussels sprouts. She had also made some attractive shrimp and grapefruit cocktails and set them in place, and insisted on adding a vast apple pie to the delicate orange mousse which Dimity had made and privately thought quite adequate, for the sweet course.
'You wants more than that for men,' maintained Betty stoutly. 'No body to mousse. Men likes a bit of pastry.'
'There will be cheese and biscuits,' Dimity pointed out, 'if they are still hungry.'
'Not the same,' asserted Betty. 'Mrs Furze,' she added, referring to the she-dragon who had taught her all she knew, 'wouldn't dream of putting but the one sweet on the table.'
'Very well,' agreed Dimity. She knew when she was beaten. 'Certainly make an apple pie. I'm sure it will be delicious.'
The dinner table pleased even her over-anxious eye. She had polished the rector's silver candlesticks herself and the light of six candles fell upon the bowl of orange dahlias which formed the centrepiece. For once, the bleak lofty room looked warm and inviting. The carpet was thin and worn, the furniture shabby, but the kindly candlelight hid these things, and Dimity felt proud of her arrangements.
Dimity longed to furnish the rectory as she knew it should be furnished. It needed thick velvet curtains at the tall narrow windows to mitigate the draughts and the gauntness of design. It was a house which cried out for soft carpets and central heating, but there was no money for such luxuries on the rector's stipend, and Dimity loved him far too well to ask him for the impossible. The floors of the bedrooms and the long draughty passages were covered with the dark brown linoleum chosen by a predecessor of Charles Henstock's. It was badly worn, but gleamed with years of polishing. Nevertheless, it wrung Dimity's heart to see her beloved Charles walking barefoot on a winter's morning upon such an inhospitable surface. The few small rugs available lay like tiny rafts upon the glassy sea. Sometimes Dimity envied her husband his Spartan attitude to their surroundings, and there were times when she thought, with secret longing, of the small cosy bedroom under the thatched roof opposite, where she had slept snugly for so many years.
Eight people sat down to enjoy the leg of mutton. The guests were Edward and Joan Young, Doctor Lovell and his wife Ruth, Harold Shoosmith and the newcomer, Phil Prior.
Dimity had selected her visitors with considerable care. She wanted to introduce Mrs Prior to people much of her own age. The Lovells and Youngs were in their early thirties, but try as she might Dimity could find no unattached male of that age to balance her dinner table.
'What a blessing Harold is single,' she said to her husband whilst making her preparations. 'We could do with half a dozen more men really in Thrush Green. I mean, if one were going to have a really big affair it would be simple to find a dozen single women - Ella, Dotty, the three Lovelock sisters and so on - but where are the men?'
'Safely married,' replied Charles smugly. 'Like me. You can't have it both ways, my dear.'
'And even dear Harold is a little older than I really wanted,' mused Dimity to herself.
'He's no older than I am,' the rector pointed out mildly, and was amused to see the contrition on his wife's face as she strove to make amends.
In any case, thought Dimity, looking happily about her dinner table, Harold was easily the most handsome man there, and by far the best dressed. Why was it, she wondered, that young men these days appeared so scruffy compared with their elders? Their wives looked so pretty in their silk frocks; one sister in green and the other in striped grey and white, while the newcomer wore a softly-draped frock of very fine wool starred with tiny flowers. A Liberty print, guessed Dimity correctly, thinking how beautifully it set off the girl's dark looks.
She was more animated than Dimity had ever seen her. Among these old friends, so easy with each other, she showed no shyness.
'And how many committees do you find yourself on?' asked Harold.
'Why, none yet.'
'Amazing! I was on five before I'd been here a month,' said Harold. 'You see, your turn will come. Which reminds me, Charles, I haven't been able to type the minutes of the Entertainments Committee. My typewriter has collapsed.'
'What's the matter with it?' asked Mrs Prior with genuine interest.
'Asthma, I should imagine, from the rhythmic squeaks it gives out. It's gone in for an overhaul. Poor old thing, it's well over thirty years old and spent most of its life in the tropics, so it's not done too badly.'
'I could type the minutes, if you'd like me to,' offered the girl.
'Do you type too?' asked the rector, in open admiration. 'How clever of you! Without looking at the keys?'
'Of course,' she said, laughing. 'I should have been thrown out of my typing class pretty smartly if I'd dared to look at the keyboard.'
'Well, I've never been able to master a typewriter,' confessed the rector. 'I once tried to type "How doth the little crocodile" on Harold's machine, and it made an awful lot of 8s and halfpennies, I remember. Do you use yours much?'
'I do a column for a girls' weekly,' said Mrs Prior. 'About five hundred words. And a few book reviews.'
This modest disclosure brought forth a buzz of excited comment. Thrush Green had no writers among its inhabitants, and to meet someone who not only wrote, but who actually had those writings published was indeed thrilling.
'I've always thought I could write,' observed Edward Young, adding predictably, 'if I only had the time.'
'I couldn't,' said his brother-in-law honestly. 'It's quite bad enough writing prescriptions. Anything imaginative would floor me completely.'
'When you say "a column",' said Dimity, 'do you mean a short story?'
'A brief article,' answered the girl, 'on some topical matter which would interest girls. Sometimes I make one of the books the subject of the column - that's cheating, I feel, but the editor approves.'
'You must enjoy it.'
'Not always - but it's well paid, and the editor is a sweetie.'
'Mary has just learnt to hold a crayon properly,' said Ruth Lovell proudly, 'and has scribbled on every page of the laundry book.' The company agreed that this might, conceivably, show literary promise.
The orange mousse and the apple pie were eaten to the exchange of news about children, and no more was said about the writing until the company were enjoying Dimity's excellent coffee by the drawing-room fire.
Harold Shoosmith, who settled himself next to the girl, asked if she would find it a nuisance to type the minutes.
'Or I could do them myself, if I might borrow the typewriter for half an hour,' he said. 'Whichever is simpler for you. They only take up a page of quarto-size.'
'Bring them in tomorrow,' said the girl. 'I shall be in all day.'
And so the matter was left, and the evening passed very pleasantly in general conversation, except for ten minutes of television news which Edward Young asked if he might see as he had heard that a house he had restored for a wealthy pop singer had just been burned out and it might be shown on the screen.
The company obligingly sat through a student demonstration, plentifully sprinkled with bleeding noses and blasphemies, a multiple car crash on a motorway from which a stretcher, ominously bl
anketed, was removed, an interview with a distracted mother whose child had been abducted, and the arrival at London airport of a half-naked film star whose long unkempt hair was something of a blessing in view of her neck-line. But Edward Young's burned-out masterpiece was not included among the attractions, and everyone was thankful when the set was switched off.
'I don't call that news, do you?' said Charles Henstock. 'Not by Thrush Green standards anyway. What I mean by news is hearing about Dotty Harmer's kittens, or Albert Piggott's prize onions or meeting a charming newcomer to the village,' he said, bowing slightly to his guest of honour.
'And why should one be subjected to all these, horrors on one's own hearth rug?' agreed Doctor Lovell. 'To think we pay for it too! It's galling.'
'Too bad about your house,' said Dimity to Edward, 'it probably wasn't ghastly enough to compete with all that violence. I suppose nobody was burned?'
'No one, as far as I know.'
'That accounts for it,' said Dimity reasonably. 'An item of news like that, without so much as a few charred bones, or firemen falling screaming into the blaze, wouldn't stand a chance.'
At eleven o'clock the guests began to make their farewells. Only the Lovells drove home, for their house was a mile away. The rest of the guests lived round the green and walked across the grass together.
Already most of the houses were in darkness, for country people have to be up betimes and midnight is considered a very late hour indeed for going to bed.
But a light shone still at Tullivers, where Winnie Bailey sat sewing, her young charge fast asleep in the bedroom above. She heard his mother's light footsteps on the path, and put down her needlework.
'My word,' she said, looking at the girl's glowing face in the doorway, 'I can see you've had a lovely evening. And so, my dear, have I!'
7 A Question of Divorce
THE next morning Harold Shoosmith crossed the green to Tullivers.
He found Mrs Prior alone, her typewriter already on the table and an appetising smell of steak and kidney casserole floating from the kitchen.
'Jeremy gets home at twelve,' she said, 'and we have our main meal then. It gets cooking over and done with for the day, and I boil an egg or have some cheese and biscuits when Jeremy's in bed.'
'I do much the same,' said Harold, 'though Betty Bell is always willing to come and fatten me up, if given half a chance.'
He put the hand-written minutes on the table.
'Are you sure it's not an imposition?' he asked.
The girl laughed.
'It will be a change from the perils-of-Pauline stuff I'm attempting at the moment. I'm trying to sell some short stories to magazines.'
'Here, or overseas?'
'Here, and in America. They pay most generously over there, but I doubt if my stuff will be suitable.'
Harold Shoosmith gazed thoughtfully through the window.
'I've an editor friend in one of these magazine combines. If I could be of any help—?'
'You're very kind. If I get too many rejections, I'll remember. I'm sorting out old material just now, and trying to bring it up-to-date.'
'Wouldn't it be better to start again?'
'I need some money pretty quickly,' replied the girl frankly. 'This house - as always - has cost far more to put to rights than I bargained for, and if I can sell some stories now, I can get down to some really new stuff while they are being considered. Editors seem to take an unconscionable length of time to make up their minds.'
'If you think I could help by looking through any of your stories to see if they seem to be on the right lines for Frank, I would be only too happy to do so,' said Harold.
'I might be very glad indeed,' replied Phil, 'but let's see how my luck turns out in the next few weeks. In any case, I've always got my column to keep the wolf from the door.'
'Yes, indeed,' said Harold, but there was doubt in his tone.
'And my husband is very generous,' the girl added, a shade too swiftly. 'But, of course, one likes to feel independent.'
'Of course,' echoed Harold, obviously bemused, but doing his best to cope with the situation. There was a slight pause. The clock struck eleven, and brought Harold to his senses.
'Well, I must be off. When shall I call for the minutes?'
'Oh, don't bother. I'll pop over after tea, if I may.'
'That would be very kind of you,' said Harold gravely, making for the door.
He crossed the green thoughtfully.
'That devil's left her!' he said to a startled blackbird on his gatepost.
Harold Shoosmith had guessed correctly, but it was Winnie Bailey who heard the truth first from the girl herself.
It was a fine October afternoon, clear and vivid, and Winnie noticed how auburn the chestnut avenue had become since the first few frosts. Her spirits were high as she breathed the keen air.
It was quite two weeks, she told herself, since she had talked to Phil, but this was not surprising. One's next-door neighbours, however dear, tend to be neglected for the plain reason that they are next-door. It is the friends at a distance whom one makes the effort to meet. But she had caught a glimpse of her at the typewriter, and knew that she was busy.
She was calling now to see if she could persuade her to collect for Poppy Day. The Misses Lovelace who had quartered Lulling and Thrush Green between them for decades, had decided that their arthritis and general frailty would not allow them to continue the good work. To find one noble soul willing to turn out in November to rattle a collecting tin, is hard enough. To find three was proving a headache.
Full of hope, Winnie knocked with the late admiral's great brass dolphin on Tullivers' front door. It was opened by Phil herself, white of face and red of eye. Winnie Bailey, used as a doctor's wife to seeing men and women in misery, thought she had never seen quite such a tragic face.
'Phil, tell me!' she said impulsively, and then checked herself. 'No, my dear, let me creep away. You won't want to be bothered with callers just now.'
'Do please come in,' cried the girl. 'I need a friend badly.'
She led the way into the little sitting-room and motioned the older woman to take a seat. Winnie watched her as. she put two logs on the dying fire. Her hands were trembling and tears were running unheeded down her cheeks.
'What is it?' begged Winnie. 'Someone ill? Or worse?'
'Worse,' choked the girl. 'It's my husband.'
'Not dead!' Winnie whispered.
'Oh no, thank God!' She gave a high, cracked laugh, frightening to hear. 'Though why I should thank God, I don't know. He's left me.'
'You poor dear,' said Winnie, patting the arm that was near her. She felt the gnawing pity and the tragic impotence which captures those who are in the presence of grief which they are powerless to assuage.
The girl fumbled for a damp handkerchief, mopped her eyes, and took a deep shuddering breath.
'He left me almost six months ago. Another woman, of course. A French woman - a buyer for one of the Paris houses. I met her once.'
She stopped, and mopped her eyes again.
'Perhaps it's just an infatuation,' said Winnie. 'Is she very attractive?'
'Not a bit,' cried Phil. She smiled damply. 'Well, I know I'm biased, but I don't think anyone - except John - would find her attractive. She's one of those bony Frenchwomen with a long face like a disapproving horse. Marvellous figure, of course, and dresses superbly, but no glamour-girl, I assure you.
'When he wrote and said that they were in love, I laughed out loud. It seemed so ludicrous, I just couldn't believe it - like some awful unspeakable joke.'
She helped herself to a cigarette, and lit it shakily.
'But it was no joke, as you can imagine. He came back several times to the flat, and was more determined each time to break with me. I tried desperately to keep my head. I was sure he would get tired of her - that it was, as you said, an infatuation. But the day came when he told me flatly that he was going to bring her to live in our house, and I must g
et out.
'Then I really did grovel! I told him I loved him still. I pleaded for Jeremy's sake. I swore I'd never throw this affair in his face if he'd think again. All useless!'
She stood up and walked restlessly about the little room.
'When I saw it was hopeless, and that she'd won, we made a scratch agreement to part. He gives me a regular amount each month, and he let me take the things I wanted from the Chelsea flat. But I absolutely refuse to give him a divorce. I still hope that he will come to his senses - or she will. Meanwhile, I try to keep it all from Jeremy. He adores John. It turns the knife pretty keenly, as you can imagine, when he prattles on about Daddy.'
She rolled the damp handkerchief into a ball and thrust it into her cardigan pocket.
'But this morning I had another letter. It's so terrible - so terrible—' She shook her head desperately, and a tear flew into the fire and sizzled.
'It's brought it home to me. We simply can't go on like this. I think I must make up my mind to go forward with a divorce. I suppose I've been evading it really - hoping, just stupidly hoping. The very idea of solicitors and courts and settlements and all the other beastly details absolutely revolts me. But I see now I must face it. He's only too pleased to give me grounds,' she added bitterly.
She sat down beside Winnie on the couch and took her hand.
'What would you do? What would you do if you were wretched me?'
Winnie put a comforting arm round the girl's shoulders.
'I should wait until tomorrow before doing anything. You've been brave and patient for so long, keep it up for a little longer. By that time it won't hurt so much and you'll tackle things better.'
The girl nodded dumbly.
'Don't write,' cautioned Winnie, 'don't telephone, don't talk to anyone about it until you've slept on it. No one will learn anything from me, I promise you. Then why not talk it over with your parents?'
'They died some years ago. I was an only child:'
'Is there someone else? A cousin, say, or a family friend?'
'Not that I could discuss this with. I would sooner tell our old family solicitor. He's wise and kind ... a real friend.'