by Sara Seale
“Not good-bye, only au revoir,” he said. “I’ll see you again soon, Sarah, and in the meantime don’t forget I have these.” He tapped his breast pocket and she bit her lip. James’s first present to her; somehow she must find that hundred pounds as quickly as possible.
He was watching her curiously.
“I tell you what I’ll do,” he said suddenly. “I’ll make a small investment for you. If it turns up trumps, then you’ll be able to pay me off, and get your pearls back; if it doesn’t, then we’ll have to meet again and talk about it. That’s a fair offer.”
She looked at him doubtfully.
“If it doesn’t, I shall owe you still more,” she said, and felt the desultory snow-flakes settle on her hair and shoulders.
He shrugged.
“That’s a chance we all have to take. But it’s worth a gamble, isn’t it? I know of something pretty gilt-edged, as a matter of fact, so I’m practically making you a present out of it.”
She was getting cold again and wanted to reach the warmth and comfort of Peronel’s flat.
“All right,” she said. “I can’t lose much more by it, I suppose, and I would like my pearls back.”
He smiled and turned towards the waiting taxi.
“It’s a bet. But remember, in the unlikely event of your being unlucky, we may have some more business to discuss. Good night, sweet.”
She didn’t stop to watch him go, but ran up the warm staircase to the flat, and inserted her key in the lock with a sense of release.
Bill had gone, but Peronel, ready for bed, was still sitting by the fire in a mulberry velvet house-coat. The inevitable Russian cigarette was between her lips, and she stretched delicately as Sarah came into the room.
“Hullo!” said Sarah. “You look like one of those impossibly elongated beauties on the cover of Vogue. It’s snowing and I’m frozen.”
“There’s some hot milk in that thermos,” said Peronel lazily. “Did you settle your differences with Mick?”
“Oh, it’ll straighten out,” Sarah said carelessly, arid sat down on the floor clasping the thermos to her. She didn’t want to go into details with Peronel.
But Peronel was in an inquisitive mood, which was rare for her.
“I hope you don’t take Mick’s—propositions—too seriously, my sweet,” she said, and Sarah paused in the act of pouring out the milk to glance at her sharply.
“What sort of propositions?” she asked guardedly.
Peronel threw her half-smoked cigarette away and lit another.
“I know Mick very well, my dear,” she said. “I know the way his mind works. Be careful, that’s all. Better to face the music with that guardian of yours than get seriously involved with a man like Mick Fennick.”
“You’re being awfully unlike yourself, darling,” Sarah said, looking puzzled. “I thought your creed was never to interfere.”
“So it is. I expect I’m a fool, but you’re different, somehow. You’re the type to go and do something damn silly out of all sorts of mistaken motives. You’re a bit mixed up now, aren’t you, Sarah? Growing pains can be dangerous.”
Sarah didn’t answer, but as she sipped her drink, she was reminded of the quiet evenings at Fallow, of the hot milk that was always a penance, of James ever watchful for her wellbeing, and she was glad that tomorrow he was coming for her.
“We met Clare Rosenheim tonight,” she said, reminded unpleasantly that James was also seeing Clare tomorrow. “J.B.’s giving her lunch before he fetches me. Do you think she’ll tell him she saw me with Mick?”
Peronel answered as Mick had done:
“If it suits her. If she’s adopting the Fallen Idol pose I imagine she’ll leave you out of the conversation, but if she’s still on the ‘let me help with dear little Sarah’ line, then she may tell him for your own good. Is this thing in any danger of becoming serious, Sarah?”
Sarah looked disturbed.
“I don’t know. She came for that week-end, and he’s seeing her tomorrow, and I think she writes. But it’s difficult to tell with J.B.”
“Well,” drawled Peronel, “a man who settles a woman’s debts can’t be entirely disinterested.”
Sarah stared at her unbelievingly.
“J.B. settled Clare’s debts? Oh, no, Peronel, surely.”
“He paid my bill, long outstanding, and pretty considerable, and knowing Clare, I imagine he settled the others.”
Sarah felt a little sick, then she said bravely:
“If he did, then he was just being kind for old times’ sake.”
Peronel’s lips twitched in a mirthless smile.
“I’ve never yet met the man who settled a woman’s debts for her and got nothing out of it,” she said. “No, he means to marry her, or he’s having an affair with her.”
Sarah sat back on her heels, and even the firelight couldn’t soften the sudden sharpness of her cheek-bones.
“An affair wouldn’t matter—not much,” she said wretchedly. “But marriage would matter terribly.”
“To you, you mean?”
“And to him, too. She’s stupid and cold and out for what she can get. Oh, Peronel, he wouldn’t be caught again.”
Peronel moved a little restlessly. Perhaps she shouldn’t have told Sarah. In a sense she was betraying a confidence, although James had demanded no promise of discretion from her. He had simply enclosed Clare’s account in one of Sarah’s and written a cheque covering both amounts.
“You may be right at that,” she said slowly, following her own thoughts. “If a man is fool enough to write a cheque direct to a shop instead of giving it to the woman concerned, there may be nothing in it at all.”
“Of course there’s nothing in it,” said Sarah, but as she undressed in the solitude of Peronel’s tiny guest-room, the knowledge returned to torment her.
Why hadn’t J.B. told her? But of course he wouldn’t tell her; Clare’s debts were not her concern. But they weren’t James’s concern any longer, either. Her thoughts flew to Mick. Mick was willing to cancel a debt, but he wanted something in return. Did James want something in return? But James would never make demands of that nature; it was out of character. As she wearily kicked her clothes into a heap on the floor, Sarah realised how little she knew of James. She had seen only one side of him. Divested of his responsibilities might he not be a very different kind of person with desires and ambitions of which she knew nothing? She put a hand to her throat and missed the familiar smoothness of her pearls.
Long after she was in bed she remembered that she had never asked Mick about her father. Oh, well, J.B. knew; she would ask him. She tossed restlessly for a little while, then fell into an uneasy sleep, the bedclothes bunched about her ears.
It was still snowing half-heartedly when James got to the flat, Peronel was busy at the shop and Sarah was still in the throes of packing when she heard him arrive.
“Is that you, J.B.?” she called from the bedroom. “I’m nearly ready.”
“Hullo!” He stood in the doorway, watching her, “Enjoyed your visit?”
“Um...” She didn’t run to meet him as she would have done only a few weeks ago. For some reason she felt suddenly shy of James. She ducked her head into her suitcase and extracted a pair of shoes with ferocity.
“They won’t fit,” she complained. “Nothing fits. I’ll have to start again.”
He knelt down on the floor beside her, and surveyed the chaotic contents of the suitcase with humour.
“Nothing ever will fit, hurled in like that,” he remarked “Here, let me do it. I want to start as soon as possible. We won’t get home before dark as it is, and the roads will be freezing.”
She watched while he repacked her case with speed and deftness, folding underclothes, smoothing out creases, and she noticed what well-shaped hands he had. She was still watching them as he snapped the locks together and said:
“Is that the lot? Well, let’s be going then.”
The drive down to Sussex was rat
her a silent affair. Sarah’s head was filled with unspoken questions. She longed to ask how he had enjoyed his lunch with Clare, but she herself was not supposed to have seen Clare, and he didn’t enlighten her. James himself seemed preoccupied and beyond enquiring about the play that Sarah had gone to, didn’t seem curious as to how she had spent her time.
Once out in the country, the fields and hedges were white with snow and gravel had been thrown on the roads. Darkness had fallen by the time they reached Heronsgill, and the Downs glimmered faintly in their sheeting of white. James dropped Sarah at the front door and went to put the car away.
It was pleasant to be welcomed by Pepper, and to see Sophie standing m the open doorway of the library, a bright fire behind her.
“Darling Sophie! It’s good to be home,” Sarah cried, flinging her arms round Sophie’s plump figure.
Once inside the house, that faint uneasy sense of something being wrong vanished. Muffins, dripping with butter, stood on the tea-table by the library fire, and the big silver kettle was already on the boil. Sarah was busy describing her doings to Sophie when James joined them, and she turned to include him in the story. All through tea she chattered to them both while she ate one muffin after another. James smiled several times at her racy descriptions, but he was more than usually silent, and once or twice she caught him watching her with a thoughtful expression. When the tea-things had been cleared away, Sophie went off to the sewing-room to finish some machining, and with her departure a sudden silence fell upon Sarah. She again became aware of that air of preoccupation in James and she wondered anxiously if he was going to tell her he was engaged to Clare.
She looked across at him and found him considering her gravely.
“Did you enjoy your evening with Fennick?” he asked her quite suddenly.
Sarah took a deep breath. So Clare had told! And if she had told, according to Peronel, it had only been for her own advantage.
“Of course, Clare had to tell you,” she said disgustedly.
“Yes, it was bad luck, wasn’t it, running into her like that?” he said.
She was puzzled by his manner.
‘They say your sins always find you out,” she said with a flippancy she was far from feeling.
A curious expression crossed his face; it might almost have been one of intense disappointment.
“Sarah, when I settled with Fennick a few months ago, it was on the clear understanding that you didn’t see him again. I thought you understood that at the time,” he said quietly.
She flushed and looked uncomfortable. “Yes, I did,” she said. “But something came up.”
“You gave me your promise, you know.”
“Yes, I know.”
“And yet”—the disappointment was unmistakable now—“at the very first opportunity you get away from me, you spend an evening with the man.”
“I told you,” said Sarah, setting her jaw. “Something came up.”
“I don’t see,” said James a little wearily, “what reason there Could have been for dining and dancing with Fennick besides your own wish to do so. I’m disappointed in you, Sarah.”
All at once she wanted to cry. J.B.’s loss of faith in her hurt unbearably. She wanted to tell him the whole miserable story, but she couldn’t while he sat there, accusing her with a gentleness that chilled her far more than anger. In a little while she would tell him. In spite of her declaration yesterday that she couldn’t go to James for money again, she saw it would be better than letting him think she had sneaked off for an illicit evening with Mick.
But his next words drove the thought from her mind.
“You’ve always been such an honest person, Sarah,” he said.
“I didn’t want to hear you try and lie to me, so I didn’t ask you if you had seen Fennick. For the same reason I’m not going to ask you if you’ve been gambling.”
She felt as if he had slapped her in the face.
“But I’ll tell you just the same,” she said with stiff lips, “I—I haven’t been gambling.”
“Haven’t you?” he said gently, and she knew that he didn’t believe her.
“Did Clare tell you that, too?” she demanded bitterly.
“Does it matter what Clare told me if I can’t get the truth from you yourself?” he replied, and all at once temper flared up in her. All right! If he chose to believe Clare’s twists and evasions of the truth, let him. If he was ultimately going to marry Clare, it didn’t matter, anyhow.
“You’ve been no more honest with me,” she said. “I don’t expect you to tell me every time you’ve seen Clare, do I?”
“That’s quite different,” he said gravely. “Don’t forget I’m responsible for you.”
“And responsible for Clare’s debts too, I suppose,” she cried recklessly.
For a moment he said nothing, then remarked quietly:
“I might have guessed that Peronel would gossip.”
“Well, naturally,” said Sarah, all her fear of the future I culminating in a desire to hurt. “A man doesn’t settle a woman’s dress bills unless he’s getting something for it. That’s elementary, my dear Watson.”
James froze.
“I’m quite sure that would be your friend Peronel’s viewpoint, but I credited you with better sense and better taste,” he said caustically.
“But—” she began miserably, “What am I to think? What’s anybody to think?”
“You aren’t asked to think,” said James. “After all, Sarah, whatever the truth of the situation, it’s scarcely any affair of yours.”
It was a direct snub. It was as if he had said to her plainly: “You have nothing whatever to do with my private life, and I’ll thank you to keep out of what doesn’t concern you.”
“Are you going to marry her?” she demanded, to which he replied gravely enough:
“You’ve done your best to see that I don’t, haven’t you?”
“I don’t mind, J.B., if you’re having an affair with her—at least, not much. Everyone has affairs—I don’t see why you should be different.”
Her distress reached him and he said more gently:
“And are you trying to have an affair with Fennick?”
But the moment for honesty was past. He hadn’t denied his possible interest in Clare; he had only told her plainly to keep out of his affairs. Very well, if he liked to believe the worst, let him. If he was going to marry Clare, the sooner she got out the better.
“I don’t think it can possible matter to you any more what I do with my life,” she said stormily.
He smiled then and held out a hand.
“That’s a blatantly silly remark,” he said, and the old kindness was back in his voice. “It’s part of my job to try and see you don’t make a mess of your life, so of course it matters to me.”
She jumped up, ignoring his friendly gesture.
“Then the sooner you’re rid of me as a responsibility, the better for everyone,” she said. “After all, I’m seventeen, J.B.—a mere child to you, I know, but if I really wanted to—to run off with someone, or—or anything—you couldn’t stop me. I don’t have to wait till I’m your age to have a private life of my own.”
She ran out of the room and upstairs, where she flung herself face downwards on her bed and burst into passionate weeping.
Left alone, James felt suddenly very tired. Ever since his lunch with Clare he had been worried. Clare hadn’t spared him, either by reticence or implication, and her final words had done nothing to reassure him.
“Mick’s reputation is well known,” she had said. “And young girls today think nothing of these things, Jim. Sarah is very attractive, and you know as well as I do that she has reckless blood in her veins. If you are really serious in your intention of marrying her, then you should do it with your eyes open. And who can say, perhaps it is best that she should—sow her wild oats before she marries you rather than after.”
Perhaps he had tackled Sarah the wrong way. He had expected her to
lie, so he had taken what he had thought to be the best method of circumventing her. But she had said nothing to alter his suspicions. That counter-attack on his own relations with Clare was merely childish and silly. She couldn’t possibly suppose, in her knowledge of him, that there was anything in his action but a friendly offer to help. Of course Peronel had talked, putting her own obvious construction of the affair into the child’s head, but that didn’t alter her own behaviour. Her manner throughout the interview had been purely defensive, and wearily James admitted to himself that she was right. If Sarah really chose to mess up her life, he couldn’t stop her.
CHAPTER TWELVE
The ensuing days were difficult. James had decided to ignore the whole affair until the opportunity arose for a friendly talk, but Sarah saw to it that there was no such, opportunity. She avoided James as much as possible, and on the few occasions when they were alone managed to produce such a polite air of indifference that it was difficult for him to become personal at all. He could only give up the attempt at a better understanding until her own attitude altered. This state of affairs couldn’t go on indefinitely, he knew. Sarah was both too young and too human to keep him perpetually at a distance.
But in the meantime he was exceedingly worried. He was afraid that the Fennick affair must go deeper than he had at first supposed, and it never once occurred to him that it was his own reticence in the matter of his relations with Clare which had produced the change in Sarah.
He had a talk with Sophie, hoping that she might succeed where he himself had failed, but Sophie was equally in the dark. For the first time in her life, Sarah was confiding in nobody.
“And that worries me,” James admitted. “The child has always been so transparent in her emotions that it hasn’t been difficult to deal with her. But this unnatural reserve defeats me, I can get nowhere.”
“I suppose,” said Sophie vaguely, “it hasn’t occurred to you that Sarah may be falling in love? Girls often get very secretive and difficult then—specially first love. I remember when I was a girl, there was a young man—”