by Anne Weale
"Yes, Monica is an excellent housekeeper—much better than I ever was," Mrs. Carlyon said warmly, as if feeling that her earlier remark might have been slightly disloyal. "She does all the cooking, you know. Alice only serves our meals. It takes her all her time to keep the house in order, poor dear. Considering what a barn of a place it is, we're lucky she stays with us."
"I didn't realize Aunt Monica cooked everything," Joanna remarked.
"Oh, yes, dear. She even insists on making this wholemeal bread—and I must agree it is much nicer than those insipid steam-baked lumps that the bakeries turn out nowadays. It's a pity in a way that she didn't take up domestic science when she was a girl. I sometimes think she would have been happier with a career. But of course your grandfather didn't approve of girls going out to work, so she married poor Edward Durrant. A nice man, but rather a weak character. Monica needed someone who would stand up to her—someone like Charles."
' You're very fond of him, aren't you?" Joanna said, smiling.
Mrs. Carlyon nodded. "I know one shouldn't have favorites," she admitted. "But Charles has always been especially dear to me. Perhaps it's because he is so much like your grandfather—but without John's hardness and moodiness." She smiled to herself. "You know, when I was very young I used to wonder what kept old people alive. I couldn't see any point in going on when one was past all the exciting things in life… falling in love and marrying and having babies. I expect you've wondered that, haven't you?"
Joanna hesitated, and before she could answer her grandmother patted her hand. "Yes, of course you have," she said, chuckling. "At your age, anyone over fifty seems a decrepit old fossil. But don't ever be afraid of growing old, Joanna. It isn't as depressing as it seems from a distance, you know. There are compensations. In fact, looking back on all the heartaches and uncertainties of youth, old age feels rather pleasant. One can still take a share in the young people's excitements, but one doesn't fret about the disasters. One knows from experience that no trouble lasts for ever. There's only one thing that I would like to happen before I die — and that is for Charles to marry." She paused to sip her tea. "I was afraid it might be too late for me," she said, more to herself than to Joanna. "But now… now I think I shall have that one last wish."
Joanna finished eating a raspberry conserve, but suddenly the feather-light sponge and pastry had less taste than sawdust. Perhaps her grandmother had also been expecting Charles to propose to Vanessa last night. Perhaps, when he had failed to do so, she had spoken to him about it. For unless he had confided to her that he did want to marry Vanessa, why should she sound so confident that her wish would soon be fulfilled ?
I suppose this morning's little exercise was in the nature of a final fling, Joanna thought furiously. Well, just try it again, Cousin Charles — I'll give you a positive reaction.
It must have been about five o'clock, and the others were not yet home, when Joanna realized that her grandmother was breathing in a queer way. Soon after tea, Mrs. Carlyon had fallen into a doze and, to take her mind off certain unanswerable questions, Joanna had written to Gustave.
She had just sealed the envelope when she became aware that her grandmother was breathing in a series of gasps. Looking up, she was alarmed to see that the old lady was gripping the arms of her chair and seemed to be struggling to speak.
"Grandmother! What is it?" she cried anxiously.
"M-my tablets… in… in bag." The words were scarcely coherent.
Joanna scrabbled in the big tapestry needlework bag beneath the old lady's chair, found the small white chemist's box, read the instructions and poured some of the now tepid water from the kettle. Surprisingly, her hands were perfectly steady although, inwardly, she was panic- stricken. Ought she to race into the house and telephone a doctor? No, she couldn't leave the old lady alone.
Please God, make the tablets work. Don't let her die. Not yet!
Ten minutes later, still rather blue about the lips but quite calm and cheerful, Mrs. Carlyon was berating herself for giving Joanna such a fright.
"Don't look so anxious, dear. It was only one of my silly little attacks. They aren't nearly as bad as they look," she insisted.
But Joanna was intensely relieved when she had helped her grandmother to walk slowly back to the house and made her comfortable on the sofa. However, Mrs. Carlyon refused to allow her to call the doctor, saying that there was nothing he could do, beyond advising her to rest, and she had no intention of disturbing the poor man's Sunday without a good reason. She also made Joanna promise not to mention the incident to her aunt.
"Monica does fuss so, dear, and it doesn't do the least good. If one has my complaint, one must learn to accept these little upsets from time to time. It's no use making a to-do about it."
Nevertheless Joanna was impatient for Mrs. Durrant's return, and only relaxed when she heard her aunt's voice in the hall.
* * *
Dick and Margaret Drury lived in one of a long row of terraced Edwardian villas. But while most of its neighbors had drab front doors and potted plants or panting plaster Alsations between the lace curtains, No. 17 had a vivid yellow door and white plastic blinds at the windows.
These were necessary, Margaret told Joanna, because the front garden was the size of a small tablecloth and the Drurys did not reserve their "front room" for special occasions. So, without the blinds, any curious passer-by would be able to note their activities.
"Not that we have anything to hide, but it makes one feel rather like a goldfish," Margaret explained.
In spite of the inconvenience of having a front door that led straight into the sitting-room, no bathroom, and a kitchen too tiny to take a refrigerator or any other labor- saving devices, the Drurys had managed to make their little house uncommonly cosy and attractive.
"Oh, I'd like one of those stainless steel kitchens and a glossy bathroom as much as the next woman," Margaret admitted, as she showed Joanna the two cramped bedrooms, and the even smaller box-room where Bunter lay sprawled in his cot. "But there's plenty of time for Gracious Living later, and this is at least ours. We spent the first year of our marriage in a furnished flat — and that was absolute hell!"
"I think it's a dear little house," Joanna said sincerely. "I suppose the only real drawback is that there won't be much room for Bunter to roam when he starts walking. Or have you a bigger garden at the back?"
"No — only a rather squalid yard, all dustbins and drains," Margaret said wryly. "But Charles insists that I use his garden. He lives on the other side of the factory recreation ground, it's about ten minutes' walk. So whenever I long for a bit of greenery, I push Bunter round there and he can crawl all over the place." She grinned. "I must admit I do feel rather envious when we spend an evening with Charles. His house is bliss, not a bit the typical bachelor establishment. Have you been there yet?"
Joanna shook her head. She didn't want to discuss Charles, so she changed the subject by asking more about Bunter.
After supper, the two men washed up and then they all played rummy. Joanna saw Charles flicker a glance at her when Dick suggested the game. Perhaps he thought she might have a phobia about cards because of her father. But there wasn't much relation between a hilarious game of rummy and the high-stake poker by which Michael had made his living, she thought.
Although she did her best to ignore Charles — at least in the sense of not looking at him except when he spoke to her, and not speaking to him more than was necessary to preserve an appearance of normality — it was not easy. Dick and Margaret were both on the short side and slightly built. But Charles's height and breadth of shoulder were doubly noticeable in such a tiny house. He had to dip his head to get through the doorways, and his long legs seemed to stretch halfway across the room.
Once, when they were sitting next to each other at the supper table, his knee had brushed against hers. "Sorry," he had said briefly, and she knew it had been accidental, but even that trivial contact made her pulses quicken.
T
owards ten o'clock, there were plaintive wails from upstairs. Dick and Margaret groaned.
"Bunter's been waking up every night since his teeth started coming," Margaret said, with a sigh. "He bawls the place down for half an hour and then drops off again. I'm afraid I'll have to bring him downstairs. It's all against the rules, but we've found it's the only way. Otherwise he'd go on yelling all night. Make some coffee, will you, darling?" she added to her husband.
Glimpsed in his cot, Bunter Drury had looked a cherubic infant. But when Margaret carried him downstairs he was purple with pain and anger, and glared tearfully round the room. It wasn't until he spotted the shiny silver beads that Joanna was wearing with her grey denim dress that his bellows subsided and a gleam of interest lit his eye. Leaning perilously over his mother's arm, he reached out to touch them.
"May he play with them if I take them off?" Joanna asked.
"Oh, no — he'll break them," Margaret said anxiously.
"I don't think so. They're on a specially strong thread." But before she could unclasp the catch, Bunter had wrestled out of Margaret's grasp and scrambled along the couch. Leaning over the .arm-rest, he reached up to tug at the necklace.
"Good lord! That's unusual," Dick remarked, coming back with the coffee to find his son ensconced on Joanna's lap and happily examining the beads. "Normally he's pretty leery of strangers."
"Perhaps Joanna has that special something which attracts small children and animals," Charles remarked negligently.
Joanna's mouth hardened. Ordinarily she didn't pay much attention to babies and toddlers. But there was something oddly touching about Bunter's plump form encased in a blue and white sleeping-suit, and the confiding way he leaned against her arm. His little button nose and fat
E
ink hands moved her to sudden tenderness. Now Charles ad spoilt that feeling. He spoke as if she were putting on an act, had consciously adopted a maternal pose with the child.
The baby must have felt her stiffen. He looked up, spotted her silver ear-studs and made a grab at them. His thumbnail, catching her cheek, left a long scratch.
"Oh, Bunter — now look what you've done," Margaret expostulated. She snatched him off Joanna's knee and dumped him on the couch. "I'm terribly sorry, Joanna.
I ought not to have let him loose on you. He's always gouging holes in people."
"It's hardly a mortal wound," Joanna said, laughing. "Don't look so horrified, Margaret."
"It's bleeding. I'll get you a tissue." Margaret dived into a cupboard and produced a box of Kleenex.
"You can't wonder the kid injures people. Look at the length of his nails," Dick remarked, retrieving Joanna's beads from his erring child.
"Yes, I know — but it's so terribly difficult to cut them," Margaret explained. "Usually I do them when he's asleep, but now the least touch wakes him up. I'll get you some antiseptic," she added to Joanna. "I really am frightfully sorry."
"Oh, calm down, Maggie. The girl isn't bleeding to death," Charles said lightly.
He took a tissue from the box, tipped up Joanna's chin and blotted her cheek. "It won't mar your beauty for more than a couple of days," he told her casually.
The touch of his fingers was like an electric contact. Joanna bore it for five seconds, then jerked away. "I can deal with it," she said tautly.
Charles had his back to the others and, for one instant, there was such a fierce glint in his eyes that she caught her breath. But it was only a momentary reaction and, in the space of a heart-beat, his face was impassive again.
After a drink of orange juice and a cuddle with his father, Bunter grew drowsy again. Soon after he had been put back to bed, Charles said they must be going.
"The party went on pretty late last night, so we could do with some extra sleep," he explained, when Margaret protested that it was barely ten.
"Oh, yes, I was forgetting," she agreed. She smiled at Joanna, still remorseful about the scratch. "Once you have a baby, it's like being Cinderella," she said. "You always have to be home on the stroke of midnight or you get blacklisted by the baby-sitters' union."
In view of Charles' remark, Joanna expected him to take her straight back to Mere House. Neither of them spoke as they drove away from Connaught Street, and in spite of the warmth of the evening, the atmosphere in the car was decidedly chilly.
It wasn't until they turned into an unfamiliar gateway, and Joanna realized that he was carrying out his original intention, that she broke the silence.
"I thought we were going to have an early night."
Charles brought the car to a standstill outside the grey- bricked Georgian house. "Another half an hour won't hurt us." He swung out on to the drive, strolled round the bonnet and opened her door.
Joanna didn't move.
"All the same, I don't think I'll come in this evening, thanks."
He said nothing, but continued to hold the door for her. After a few moments' pause, when she realized that he was quite capable of standing there indefinitely, she made an exasperated sound and slid out of the car.
The front door was unlatched and led into a small black and white tiled hallway with a white-painted staircase curving up to the first floor. The walls were papered with silver and white Regency stripes and there was bowl of dark red roses on an elegant Sheraton console.
"If you'd like to powder, the bathroom is the first door on the landing."
"No, thank you," Joanna said ungraciously.
In spite of her intention to be markedly offhand, she couldn't repress a murmur of appreciation when he showed her into the sitting-room. It was long and narrow with two tall windows facing south-west so that the last lingering rose and gold streaks of the late summer sunset could be seen through the upper panes. Pale green damask curtains and darker velvet squabs on the window-seats contrasted with the bleached pine of the inside shutters.
Opposite the windows, an unobtrusive electric fire had been fitted into the grey marble fireplace, but beyond the chimney-brest, the entire wall space was taken up with bookshelves. Here and there the rows of books were broken by an ornament or bowl of flowers, and the lower shelves on one side were glassed in and held several hundred gramophone records.
The central furnishings were a skilful blend of graceful antiques and well designed modern pieces. There were two long four-seater sofas, one covered with silver-grey corduroy, the other with a pale tweedy fabric. The carpet was a thick close-fitted Wilton in a subtle shade of greige, and the lamp-fittings were probably Scandinavian. But one of Ae coffee tables was a graceful rosewood period piece, and there was a huge gilded looking-glass and a hanging cabinet filled with old porcelain on the end wall. It was the kind of room, Joanna thought immediately, which suited every mood. It would make a perfect background for formal entertainment, yet one could also relax here.
"Do you like it?" Charles asked, from close behind.
Joanna jumped slightly. She hadn't been aware of it, but she must have been standing inside the doorway and taking in every detail for at least two minutes.
"Oh, yes — it's a lovely room," she said warmly, momentarily forgetting her intended stiffness.
There was a modern metal cocktail trolley standing just inside the door. Charles pushed it towards one of the window seats and removed the napkins which had covered some plates of canapes.
"Come and sit down," he invited, tossing an extra cushion against one end of the seat and gesturing for her to sit there.
Joanna did so, and accepted a glass of sherry. There were some miniature vol-au-vents in a heated dish, his housekeeper's speciality, Charles explained. The crisp puff pastry cases were filled with a delicious spiced shrimp pate.
"You know," Charles said suddenly, "I've only just realized it, but this room might have been designed for someone with your coloring. That remarkable hair is the perfect finishing touch.
He had never spoken to her in quite that tone before, and a quiver ran down her spine.
"Do you think so?" she answered
lightly. Then, smoothing her pleated skirt, "But I don't think grey denim fits in very well. A room like this calls for chiffon… something more feminine."
"It isn't clothes that make a woman feminine," he said dryly.
Joanna looked out into the garden. "I should have thought clothes were sixty per cent of it."
The last light was fading from the sky and a pale yellow moon hung over the dark mass of treetops. She began to count the stars—it would distract her from being so aware of him.
"I don't agree," Charles said amiably. "I've seen girls is overalls and gumboots who looked far more feminine that other girls in full glamor rig."
"Well, if clothes have nothing to do with it, how would you define a really feminine woman?" Joanna asked curiously. Star-counting was not, she discovered, at all effective.
She had replaced her glass on the trolley, and Charles refilled it. He opened his cigarette case, changed his mind and slipped it back in his pocket.
"I'm not sure that one can define these things," he said slowly. "It's the senses they affect, not the intellect. I suppose the nearest definition might be a woman who makes a man feel more manly. Or maybe a woman who enjoys being a woman. Some women—and they aren't all tweedy types—seem almost to resent their own sex. Take your aunt, for example. She's superficially feminine, but I think she'd have been a much happier person if she'd been born a male. She has aggressive instincts, and a feminine woman hasn't."
"I must be unfeminine too. I often have some very aggressive instincts," Joanna said carelessly. "I wonder if you've ever considered what it's like to be a woman, Charles. Oh, I know we're supposed to have equal opportunities and equal status nowadays. But it isn't really true, you know. We're only equal to men until we marry them. Then instead of being individuals, we're wives and mothers. Whatever else we may want to do with our lives has to be fitted in between running a house and minding children. Even if a woman has genius, it can rarely survive that inevitable division of energy."
It was completely dark now, so she could not see his expression. He was probably laughing at her for the sudden outburst of speechifying, she thought with a flicker of resentment.