The Expensive Halo: A Fable Without Moral

by Josephine Tey

  His wife took hold of his arm. “Father, I know where Sara was, and it’s all quite harmless. I allowed her to go, and I shouldn’t have allowed her if it wasn’t harmless.”

  He shook her off. “You allowed her! What right have you to allow her to do anything, I’d like to know! I’m master in this house, and no one will indulge the flesh and consort with the devil while they live in my house!”

  A bubble of hysterical laughter rose in Sara. He was really too ridiculous, gesticulating away there at the top of the stairs. “You’ve no idea how funny you look,” she said. “I wish you could see yourself.” She pointed a forefinger, unsteady with laughter, at his shirt tails.

  He choked for a moment, words deserting him. Before Sara could move he had descended the steps between them. He clutched at the collar of her coat, and wrenched it down, exposing her bare arms and neck.

  “You Jezebel! You wanton Jezebel!” His wheezy voice in its anger was like the scream of escaping steam. “Showing your body for any man to look at! Get out of my house this minute! Get out! And never let me see your face again. To think that I brought you up in the fear of God and you repay me by—by—Get out, I tell you, and never set foot in this house again!”

  “I will, with the greatest willingness,” Sara said. Her hysteria had dropped from her at her father’s touch. She was trembling violently and struggling with a feeling of nausea.”

  “Alfred,” her mother said, and although she said the word quietly he turned to her. “Alfred, take care. If Sara goes, I go. There aren’t any babies to keep me now.”

  He stared a moment. “Don’t be ridiculous! You have your duty to me. You’re my wife, and you’ll oblige me by keeping it in mind. You go back to bed where I told you to stay. I’ll talk to you presently.”

  “I haven’t any duty to you if you order Sara out of the house because she has been to a harmless party that her mother knew about. You’re self-love is making you crazy, Alfred. I warn you I shall go with Sara if she goes.”

  Sara felt someone behind her, and out of the dark pit of the ground floor came Gareth’s surprised pale face.

  “What on earth’s all this about?”

  “It’s only father receiving the returned jezebel,” Sara said.

  Gareth slipped an arm round her waist and gave it a comforting squeeze. “You mean bully,” he said cheerfully, “can’t I take Sara to a party without you cutting up rough about it! We’ve stood a lot too much from you all those years, and this is about the limit. Now don’t say anything insulting to me, or I’ll just walk out. And if you try to thrash me it won’t be a thrashing but a free fight, and I know who’ll get the worst of it. I’m not fourteen now! You’ve had your own way a darn sight too long, and this is the finish, see?”

  Alfred Ellis spluttered incoherencies, but they sounded more baffled than angry; and his eyes kept going uncertainly to his wife.

  “I am surrounded with enemies in mine own house,” he finished, with a theatrical gesture of despair. “The Lord chastened me when he gave me children forward and deceiving. Why didn’t you tell me that you had been out with your brother, girl? Eh? Why?”

  “Why should I? Let me pass. I’m going to bed, and in the morning I’ll see about getting rooms somewhere.”

  “Oh, is it as bad as that?” Gareth said.

  “Yes, he’s ordered me out.”

  “I’ll come too,” Gareth said promptly. “Where shall we go? Hampstead’s rather nice.”

  “When I told you to go I didn’t know you had been out with your brother. That makes a difference.”

  “It may to you,” Sara said, as they passed, “but not to me. I’ve had more than enough of Seventeen.”

  She paused to throw her arms round her mother’s neck and whisper: “Don’t worry, mum, we won’t go. But make it hot for him.” And she and Gareth climbed the flight to their attic, leaving their parents staring after them, their father still spluttering, their mother still and quiet except for her twisting hands.

  “Somewhere where we can have a view of London might be nice, don’t you think? A bit far out after Camden Town, but it might be worth it. And with our combined screws we could manage quite a nice place.” Gareth kept it up until they were out of ear-shot.

  At her door he stopped with a “whew!”

  “Poor Sis!” he said, looking at her tired face, and added: “Isn’t he a swine!”

  “There are times when I don’t think he’s quite sane,” she said uncertainly.

  “Don’t you worry! No one who can make the money he makes selling groceries is anything but sane. You been out on the razzle? That’s something new for you!”

  So he didn’t know that she had been at the Deanes’! She debated with herself for a moment whether to tell him everything or nothing. Years of bitter training in the advisability of telling the minimum made her decide to say nothing; to leave her relations with Chit and her knowledge of his friendship with Ursula a secret. If he wanted to tell her about Ursula’s taking him up he would tell her himself. She would not butt in where she was not wanted.

  “Yes, Mum knew about it and let me have her key, and this is how it turned out. It was lovely, and he’s made it all beastly.”

  “What can you expect? Look at the mess he makes of God! Are you feeling all right now? You don’t look very chippy.”

  “Yes, I’m all right. You’re very happy to-night, aren’t you?” Perhaps he would tell her now.

  “I’m sitting on top of the world, and terrified I’ll slide off,” he said. But that was all.

  Sara, disappointed and a little wondering (Why shouldn’t he tell her?) said good night and turned to her room.

  Chapter XVI

  It was almost a week later that Sara began to suspect that Gareth’s happiness might have strange foundations. She had gone next door, to the Rayners’, with a remnant of silk which she had bought on Molly’s behalf. It was after dinner and Mrs. Rayner, foiled of her bridge by the defection of the schoolmistresses, was considering patterns of coats and wondering delightfully which would suit her best. She still thought of herself as slim, and found it difficult to discard a style she liked because she was “a little too plump for it.” Sara asked where Molly was.

  “Up in her bedroom, I think. She’s always in her bedroom nowadays. Headaches, she says. When I was her age I never had headaches. What do you think of this for line? Rather nice, don’t you think? I like that flare there.”

  “Yes, it’s nice. But I think you want something that gives you more height. Flares are very shortening.”

  “Do you think?” She had great faith in Sara’s taste; Sara designed dresses for some of the best people in Britain. But that phrase about giving her height lingered unpleasantly in her ears. Automatically her mind flung out a sentence with a sting to it.

  “We haven’t seen very much of your brother lately.”

  “No, he’s kept on the go. Regan rehearses at all hours of the day. Even meals are nothing to him when he’s rehearsing. Gareth eats when he can, and we hardly see him at all.”

  She knew this to be truth, but she also knew Mrs. Rayner; and she wondered at the back of her mind what the woman had meant to convey. She had never liked Gareth much—surely the only person in the world who didn’t!—and she had always passively disapproved of Molly’s engagement to him. (Mr. Ellis was in trade, and their religion was of a distinctly low brand; not much better than Hyde Park really.)

  “I’ll go up to Molly’s room with the silk, then. I want to explain about the flaw in it. That’s why it’s so cheap.”

  “A great bargain it seems, my dear. I only hope she’ll be able to get the width out of it without showing the flaw anywhere.”

  Molly had the attic at the back of the house which corresponded with Gareth’s at Number Seventeen. In fact, in times of stress they had painfully communicated with each other by means of a home-made morse rapped out on the dividing wall with a hair brush. As Sara carne to the door she heard something that sounded like t
he distant whine of a vacuum sweeper, and wondered that the housewife Molly should reverse the day’s proceedings so drastically. But as she paused by the door she realised that the sound was too small for anything like that. It was a human being crying.

  Her first impulse was to go away at once. Sara hated being mixed up in emotions, either her own or another’s. Tears moved her not to pity but to embarrassment and exasperation. But there was something in the sound of the crying, an abandonment of despair, that kept her rooted to the spot. She could not go away without doing something. She retreated down the last flight of stairs, and came up again whistling “Leaning on my window” at the top of her breath and drumming with her feet on the stairs. “Mol-lie!” she called, and beat a tattoo on the door.

  After a moment there was a muffled “Come in” and she breezed in with a bonhomie which she hoped Molly would be in no fit state to criticise; bonhomie was so definitely not her habit. “Well, I’ve got the stuff for you. I think it’s a huge bargain—five and eleven the yard. But there’s a small flaw at the end of the first yard that will have—I say, what’s the matter?”

  “Nothing,” said Molly. She was sitting in a collapsed heap on the edge of her bed, and a hollow on the pillow showed where she had been lying. “At least, nothing to worry about. Only one of my beastly headaches.”

  “I never knew you had any.”

  “I hadn’t until just lately. They’re awful. S’pose I must go and see a doctor.” She avoided Sara’s eye. “Thanks awfully for getting me the silk. It looks lovely. It’s just what—”

  “Look here, Molly, I don’t believe you’d howl your eyes red like that for a headache. What’s really wrong? I wish you’d tell me.”

  There was a pause as if Molly was on the point of being frank, but she evidently decided against it. “There isn’t anything really. It’s only that I’m tired—I’m sick of this house and the work and everything, and I’ve got a blazing headache. That’s all.”

  And from that point Sara could not move her. She went away very thoughtful. She had never associated Molly with strong emotions of any sort. She was such an equable person. That was why she was such an ideal partner for Gareth. When Gareth was up in the clouds Molly stood underneath to break his fall, and when Gareth was down in the depths she hauled him up, shook him, brushed him, and generally “set him to rights”. What could be worrying Molly to this extent? Gareth? But she had said that she had had no row with Gareth. So what explanation was left?

  She went home marvelling, to help her mother as usual with the tea things. Several times she was on the point of asking her mother what could be wrong with Molly; her mother and Molly were closer in some ways than Molly and her own mother were. But each time the reluctance to interfere in other people’s business restrained her. As she stood working beside her mother, it occurred to her that her mother, too, was looking unhappy and weary. Father, probably, in her case. But it was a little distressing that when she herself was so happy because Chit loved her the other members of her family should seem so down on their luck.

  “Why so gloomy, Mum?” she said. “Mrs. Marsden broken an egg-cup?”

  But her mother did not smile. “I’m a bit worried,” she said; and then, as if she could no longer contain her trouble: “terribly worried, Sara. And I don’t know where to turn for help.” She lifted her hands, dripping, out of the water and leaned against the sink in a helpless way that was new and alarming in Mary Ellis.

  “What is it, Mum? Don’t worry. Is it money? I have heaps. I was saving for a frock I’ve decided not to have.”

  “It isn’t money, dear. It’s Gareth.”

  “Gareth! Good heavens, what’s wrong with him? I thought he was on top of the world!”

  “Yes. Yes, in a way that’s what’s wrong. I was so glad when he took that job, so glad that he was happy about it. I was afraid he’d be miserable in it, and I was so glad, so relieved, when he seemed so pleased after all. I never thought, it never occurred to me at the time, that he might meet people who’d—who’d—turn his head.”

  “Oh, Mother, what nonsense! Gareth is about the levellest-headed kid I know. Look at all the praise he got at the Academy, and all he ever cared about was sausages for tea!”

  “I don’t mean that way. I mean—Oh, dearie, don’t you see! He’s met some girl there, and he’s just crazy about her. He hasn’t more than passed the time of day with Molly for more than a fortnight now. Not that he’s been nasty to her. Just avoiding her. He avoids me too. You and Gareth have always been such good friends that I wonder you don’t notice it. He’s avoiding you too.”

  “But what is there to notice? What makes you think that?”

  “I don’t think; I know. Twice the post’s brought a note from her. He couldn’t hide what he felt about it. He’s just a baby about things like that. He tried to pretend they were notes anyone might get, but he couldn’t do it. He isn’t happy either. Not really happy. He doesn’t sleep at nights—I wonder you don’t hear him pacing the floor. I expect he’s thinking about Molly.”

  “Mother,” Sara begged, although the memory of Ursula was vivid in her mind (of course it was Ursula; no one could be within hail of her without falling in love with her) “aren’t you exaggerating? Aren’t you afraid of that happening, and so you exaggerate little things till you think that it must have happened?”

  “Sara, dear, if you weren’t so wrapped up in yourself you’d have seen what was the matter long ago. Mollie going about looking like a ghost, and Gareth avoiding everyone and going about looking strung up the way he is!”

  “Has Molly said anything?”

  “No. We’ve been pretending to each other that there was nothing wrong. I was hoping, you see, that it might all come right without anything happening. Sometimes, before, I’ve worried myself nearly sick over things and then found that there was nothing to worry about at all.” She smiled, a little wanly. “When he was at the Academy, I remember, he took to shutting himself in his room for hours at a time, and I was very worried. He kept one of his drawers locked, too, and I imagined all sorts of things. And then one day he forgot to lock it, and I found a bottle of stuff for taking off freckles, and that was all, and I felt so relieved and foolish. But oh, Sara, this time I’m so afraid. I’ve had real trouble in plenty in my life, but I’ve never been so afraid of one as I am of this. Perhaps I’m growing too old to shake off things the way I used to. Everything seemed settled so nicely—just like a dream coming true; Gareth and Molly happy and all their lives in front of them. It was the one thing I felt I had achieved properly in my life, if you know what I mean. You haven’t been happy the way I’d like you to have been, and the other boys have been restless and looking for more than I could give them. But I gave Gareth what he wanted—his music—and he didn’t want anything else but Molly, and Molly was there for him, and I felt, somehow, that I’d justified my life because these two were happy. And now”—her voice shook and she finished almost in a whisper—“it all seems to be coming to pieces.”

  Sara comforted her awkwardly. It was seldom that her self-contained mother sought help or consolation from her; and at the back of her mind was the certainty, the sickening certainty, that her mother was right. Gareth was in love with Ursula Deane. And, what was more important, and infinitely more dismaying, Ursula Deane was interested in him.

  Sara went to bed and lay awake, thinking about Gareth. She lay awake the next night, too, having in the meantime talked to Gareth and learned all she wanted to know, and in the middle of the night she came to a decision.

  It is not wise to come to a decision in the middle of the night. One’s decisions at that hour have a clarity, a quality of logic, which consorts ill with the daytime atmosphere of muddle and conventionality in which they are to be put to the test. But sometimes, once in a long while, one of these midnight decisions has luck in the testing.

  Chapter XVII

  Florence was explaining to Ursula why she would never desert her, and Ursula was tidying up
the little lacquer secretaire in her bedroom. Florence was thinking of marrying one Ernest, who attended to the grosser wants of Captain Grierson, and she had been hoping (vainly) for some hint that there might be a combined establishment in the near future.

  “Of course, I’d never leave you in the lurch, my lady. I don’t forget if it hadn’t been for you I’d still be in the scullery.”

  “If it hadn’t been for your funny face, you mean. I could never have let it waste its cuteness on the kitchen air.”

  She swept a heap of torn paper into the waste-paper basket.

  “You like to put it like that, my lady, but I’m grateful all the same. It altered my life a whole lot when you sent me to be trained. Altered my whole life, it did.”

  “Come, it wasn’t as drastic as that!”

  “You don’t know, my lady,” Florence said darkly. “When I was in the scullery I was mad keen on the coalman that used to come from Robertses. Sort of engaged, we were. Just funny to look back on now, that is.”

  “I suppose you don’t even see a coalman when you meet one nowadays.”

  “Oh, it wasn’t just because I’d done well for myself. I’m not a snob, my lady, say what you like. It was mostly because I forgot all about him. just clean forgot him. Funny, isn’t it? I don’t even remember what colour his eyes were. And I used nearly to suffocate with my heart beating when I’d hear his boots on the area steps!”

  Ursula paused with her hand over the waste-paper-basket, as if something had arrested her attention. Then she dropped the pieces in with an impatient movement.

  “There’s someone prowling about in the sitting-room, Florence,” she said with unwonted testiness. “See who it is and don’t stand chattering there.”

  It was Lady Wilmington.

  “Hullo, darling. So glad to find you, I was afraid you might have gone out. Such a fine morning and you’re so energetic these days. I’ve had a letter from William, the dear creature.” She caught sight of herself in a mirror. “Heavens, what a face! Lend me your lipstick, darling. And I wanted to see you about it. Is yours carmine darling, I always forget? It’s an invitation. Florence, your cap isn’t on straight.”