Anne Weale - Until We Met

by Anne Weale

  Neither of them spoke during the short ride back to Connaught Street, and within ten minutes of finding her Dick was unlocking his front door and pushing Joanna ahead of him.

  "Now take off your mac and your shoes and I'll get a dressing-gown," he ordered firmly.

  The sounds of their arrival brought Margaret from the kitchen.

  "You're early, darling," she began. Then, startled: "Joanna!"

  "Get a dressing-gown and slippers, will you, Maggie— and some brandy, if there's any left," Dick said, without preamble.

  He bent to switch on the fire, and after looking bewildered for a moment, Margaret disappeared to do his bidding.

  "Please, Dick—I can't bother you," Joanna started dis- E tractedly.

  "Don't be silly. We're your friends, aren't we?" he I remarked cheerfully. "Now, come on, get out of that mac. You're flooding our valuable rug."

  When Margaret came back and saw that the rain had i penetrated to Joanna's dress, she insisted that it should come off too. So Dick went away to make coffee, and Jo- | anna, too weary to protest any more, slipped out of her I dress and peeled down her sopping nylons.

  "You're feet are like ice. I'll give them a rub," Margaret said matter-of-factly. "What a night! It's more like January than August. Dick wasn't keen on going out, but he's Secretary of the Archaeological Society, you know, so he's more or less forced to turn up. I shouldn't think the E meeting was very well attended tonight. Most of the mem- I bers are on holiday this month. Still, I think it does him good to get away from the domestic atmosphere as much as possible."

  She kept up a flow of light inconsequential chatter until Joanna began to look less pinched. Then, insisting that the ' younger girl should drink a sizeable shot of brandy, she went to find out how the coffee was progressing.

  Neither of them attempted to question Joanna, and it was without any prompting on their part that she finally told them a version of the truth. Dick seemed very shocked by the news of Mrs. Carlyon's death, but Margaret, although she looked sad, expressed no surprise.

  "Naturally, they're all very distressed and I'm sure they'd rather be alone," Joanna concluded. "I know that technically I'm one of the family, but I still feel rather an interloper… so I left them." She stared into her coffee cup for some seconds, then said diffidently, "I haven't any right to ask it, I—I can sleep on the couch, and it will only be for one night."

  "Of course you can stay, my dear—but don't you think you ought to let them know where you are?" Margaret suggested gently. "You can't just walk out of the house without a word. They'll be worried stiff."

  Joanna tensed. "No—no, they won't," she said tautly. "I—I told them "

  Margaret leaned forward and laid a hand on her arm. "Joanna, Charles has been here," she said quietly. "He came about nine o'clock. He'd already been on quite an extensive search for you, and he was at his wits' end."

  The words were hardly out of her mouth before a car came scorching down the street and there was a squeal of brakes.

  Joanna sprang up. "You've told him I'm here," she cried accusingly.

  "Yes, Dick phoned from next door a few minutes ago," Margaret admitted. "We had to tell him, my dear."

  Joanna moved swiftly towards the inner room, but was intercepted by Dick, who grabbed both her wrists. An instant later, the front door burst open and Charles appeared.

  In a faction of time before anyone spoke, Joanna knew exactly how it felt to be an animal at bay, or a criminal caught in his last refuge.

  Then, quite quietly, Charles closed the door behind him. "Thank God you found her when you did," he said tersely to Dick.

  "Charles, she's very tired and rather upset. Don't be———" Margaret began.

  "I can guess how she's feeling," he cut in. "I'll take her back to my place. Mrs. Howard will look after her."

  Dick was still holding Joanna's wrist, but only lightly now. She twisted free of him. "Do you mind not discussing me as if I'm an escaped lunatic?" she snapped furiously. She turned to Margaret. "You agreed to put me up for the night. Have you changed your mind about that?"

  "Why, no, of course not—but if Charles thinks…"

  "Charles has nothing to do with it," Joanna retorted harshly. "He isn't responsible for me." She fixed her eyes on the knot of Charles's tie. "I'm sorry if you've been anxious," she said coldly. "But you must have known that I'm perfectly capable of taking care of myself. There was certainly no need to start looking for me." Her voice shook slightly, and she cleared her throat. "If you will kindly arrange for my belongings to be sent to the station as early as possible tomorrow, I can pick them up when I catch the train for London."

  There was another taut silence. Then, in a voice so quiet and even that it was far more unnerving than an angry roar, Charles said to Margaret, "Will you please tell Joanna that, in the circumstances, you can no longer accommodate her?"

  Margaret's eyes widened. "But, Charles, if she doesn't want to…"

  "Tell her, please, Margaret." His tone was still perfectly controlled and polite, but his eyes—as Joanna flashed a glance at him—had the glitter of total ruthlessness in them.

  The Drurys exchanged a brief glance, and it was Dick who spoke.

  "I'm sorry, Joanna, but if Charles thinks you'd be better at his place, we can't keep you here," he said slowly, looking very embarrassed.

  "Dick—you can't mean that!" she exclaimed, aghast. "I —I thought you were my friends too. Why should you let him browbeat you?"

  "We are your friends, Joanna," Margaret insisted. "But I'm sure Charles knows what's best for you."

  There were tears of outrage and despair in Joanne's eyes, and she was almost choking on an uprush of impotent fury. But if she had been hanging from thumbscrews, she wouldn't have cried in front of Charles.

  "Very well," she said quiveringly. "I'll go to an hotel."

  "At this hour? In Margaret's dressing-gown?' Charles enquired mockingly.

  "I think you must have been trying to get a room at the Grand, weren't you?" Dick said, more gently. "As Charles says, it's pretty late. You haven't a hope, my dear."

  Suddenly Joanna knew that she couldn't go on fighting. The spurious flare of vitality engendered by the double brandy and coffee was flickering out, and she felt almost sick with fatigue.

  "Oh, all right," she muttered hoplessly. "I'll go with him."

  Five minutes later, after Margaret had insisted on wrapping her in a camel coat with a rug to cover her legs, she was driven away.

  Charles spoke only once on the journey.

  "When did you last eat?" he asked flatly.

  "I—I can't remember. Oh, at lunch-time, I suppose," she answered uncaringly.

  He did not comment.

  By the time they reached his house, Joanna was afraid that she was actually going to be sick. There was a gnawing ache in her stomach and her head was swimming. So when Charles half lifted her out of the car, and then swung her up in his arms, she was too intent on fighting down her nausea to make even a token resistance.

  Almost immediately after he had carried her inside, his housekeeper appeared from a back room. She followed them up the stairs and, dimly and without recognition, Joanna heard the little concerned clicking noises she was making with her tongue.

  Then she was being lowered on to a blessedly soft bed and Charles was giving instructions about bread and milk and some aspirin.

  What followed was only a blur. Somebody—not Charles —insisted that she tried the bread and milk, and fed her like a child. Then gradually the ache and the feeling of sickness went away, and she was helped into a nightdress. Finally, with her feet on a hot water bottle and her head on a pillow as soft as a cloud, she was tucked up. After that… sleep.

  When Joanna woke up next morning, a plump little grey- haired woman, whom she seemed vaguely to recognize, was standing beside the bed.

  "How do you feel this morning, Miss Allen?" she asked cheerfully.

  "Oh… fine," Joanna replied, with some surpri
se. "I feel fine."

  She struggled to sit up, and the woman gave her a helping hand and expertly plumped up the pillows.

  "Perhaps I'd better introduce myself," she said, with a smile. "I'm Mrs. Howard, Mr. Carlyon's housekeeper."

  "Oh, yes… the bread and milk," Joanna said, trying to recollect the events of the previous evening in greater detail. "What's happened? Was I taken ill?"

  "No, no. You were just very tired and rather overwrought. I don't think you'd had much to eat," Mrs. Howard said casually. "However, I've brought you a nice breakfast, so you won't feel like that today."

  She handed Joanna a pretty turquoise silk bedjacket, helped her to slip it on, then placed a light wicker bed-table across her knees. On it, attractively set out on the immaculate linen tray cloth, was a glass of freshly-squeezed orange juice, a covered silver dish, a graceful Wedgewood coffeepot and a matching cup and saucer. There was also a single yellow rosebud in a tiny crystal glass, and an untouched copy of a morning newspaper.

  "If you want more toast or more coffee, just ring the bell," said the housekeeper, indicating a push-button by the headboard.

  It was not until she had eaten every morsel of the deliriously buttery scrambled eggs which she had discovered in the warming-dish, and had spread a slice of the crisp yet not brittle toast, that Joanna took stock of her surroundings.

  Last night, she had had a muddled impression of flowered chintz and a warm-colored carpet. Now she saw that she was in a most delightful bedroom, so feminine and pretty that it could only have been planned by a woman, or a professional decorator.

  The bed in which she was lying was a modern divan, but it had four white-and-gold posts supporting a quilted silk canopy, and a matching coverlet was folded over an ottoman. The furniture was reproduction Louis Quinze with triple mirrors on the spindle-legged dressing-table, and there was an elegant chaise-longue upholstered in lemon velvet by the windows. Yes, definitely a woman's room in every detail from the Redoute flower prints and painted porcelain fingerplates to the fluffy white scatter-rugs and pleated voile lampshades.

  Having examined the room, eaten some more toast—the butter was curled in dewy rolls, the marmalade vintage Oxford—Joanna inspected the bedjacket. It tied at the neck with hand-stitched silk rouleaux and the collar and cuffs were edged with narrow lace.

  Underneath, she discovered, she was wearing a matching nightgown of double nylon, the under-layer splashed with white flowers, the over-layer sheer as gossamer.

  Not the kind of garments which would normally be kept at hand for an unexpected and unprepared visitor—and certainly not in a bachelor household, she thought, puzzled.

  She was drinking her second cup of coffee and trying to concentrate on the latest world news, when there was a light tap at the door and Charles walked in. Joanna jerked upright, almost dropped her cup and let the paper fall over the butter-dish.

  "Good morning. Mrs. Howard tells me you're feeling much better," he remarked, coming to the bedside and pulling up a chair.

  "Yes… yes, I am," Joanna said, flustered. She had not expected to have to face him till later—certainly not while she was still in bed, her hair uncombed and without a speck of make-up.

  "Good. Do you mind if I smoke? I've only just finished breakfast myself."

  "Not at all."

  Charles lit a cigarette, reached for an oyster-shell ashtray and crossed his legs. Apparently he was not going to the factory today as it was already after ten and he was wearing a linen shirt, open at the neck, and whipcord slacks.

  "As you doubtless realize, I want to have a talk with you," he said presently. "However, if you don't yet feel up to it, you have only to say so."

  Joanna remembered how relentlessly he had forced the Drurys' hand the night before. Pleasant as her surroundings might be, they were not of her own choice. She had been forced to come here, and so was under no real obligation to show gratitude.

  Her tone was cool as she answered, "It depends on what you want to talk about."

  "I should have thought that was obvious—what happened yesterday afternoon, of course."

  She shifted slightly and he leaned forward and lifted the table from over her.

  "Personally I think yesterday afternoon is better left alone," Joanna said flatly. "As I told you last night, I'm leaving Merefield—today. I think the best thing for all of us is to try to forget that I ever came here."

  "Can you forget it ?" he asked bluntly.

  She fidgeted with the end of the sheet. "Perhaps not at once," she answered, in a low voice. "I don't expect you to believe it, but I grew very fond of… Mrs. Carlyon, in the short time I knew her."

  "Why shouldn't I believe it? It was obvious. And she was very fond of you. Your coming here made all the difference to her," he said quietly.

  Joanna stared at him. "But yesterday——- "

  "What happened yesterday was as horrifying to us as it was to you. You must know that, if you think about it. But when someone has been bottling up a grudge for more than twenty years, they aren't responsible for their actions when the repression finally snaps," he told her gravely. "Monica has been working up to this point since she and your mother were young girls. Her grief for her mother—which was perfectly genuine, of course—got all mixed up with her life-long resentment against Nina and the frustrations of her marriage. It was extremely unfortunate that you had to bear the brunt of the inevitable eruption, but it's probably just as well that it happened when it did. Now, after a spell in a good nursing home and a holiday well away from Merefield, she'll probably be much happier and more balanced than she's been since she was a child. If there hadn't been that scene and her subsequent collapse…" He concluded the sentence with an expressive gesture.

  Joanna stared intently at the blanket. "But you looked so angry… as if you hated me," she said, at last.

  Although it was only half smoked, Charles crushed out his cigarette with three short sharp jabs. "I don't hate you, Joanna," he said evenly. "I find you extremely exasperating at times, but I certainly don't hate you. If I looked angry, it was because I hated having to let you go through that ordeal. But it wouldn't have been wise to put a stop to it."

  There was another silence.

  "All the same I am leaving Merefield," Joanna told him. "I haven't mentioned it before, but I'm starting a season of cabaret at a hotel in London next month. I have to go down for rehearsals and fittings and so on."

  "Was that arranged before you left Paris ?"

  "Yes, it was. To be frank, it was the chief reason why I agreed to come with you. My agent thought it would be a good idea for me to absorb some English atmosphere beforehand."

  "I see," Charles said thoughtfully. But she couldn't tell whether the information displeased him or not. "But if Grandmother hadn't died, you wouldn't have left yet, would you?"

  "Well, no—not quite so soon," she conceded.

  "Then why change your plans?"

  "Because I think it's the wisest course," she said flatly. "I—I don't want to go back to Mere House now."

  "Then you can put up here," he said smoothly. "Mrs. Howard is a perfectly adequate chaperone."

  "You want me to stay?" she asked, puzzled. A tiny flicker of hope was kindling inside her.

  But it was swiftly dispelled by his reply. "Yes, I do. Frankly, I think Cathy should have someone with her—at least for the next few days. Grandmother was a very important person in her life, and she's at the age to take a sudden loss very hard. Vanessa will be spending most of her time at the nursing home—and she and Cathy have never been very close—so, unless you're around, the poor kid will have no one to distract her."

  "I see," Joanna said dully. "But she'll have you. She… she adores you."

  "I shall be pretty taken up with the arrangements for the funeral," he said tonlessly.

  Suddenly Joanna realized that, in spite of his impassive manner, he too must be grieving for the old lady.

  "Very well," she said swiftly. "I'll stay on a
little longer."

  "It might be a good idea if Cathy moved in here too," he suggested. "A change of surroundings is always a good idea in these circumstances."

  "But what about Neal ?" Joanna asked.

  "He'll have to remain at Mere House. We can't leave Alice alone there. She has no family to go to, and it may take some time to find her another post."

  "You're dismissing her?"

  "No, of course not. But she doesn't want to stay now that Grandmother is dead, and the house is far too big for Monica's use—particularly when the children are all off her hands. I shall put it up for sale—probably as being suitable for offices—and find somewhere more compact for her." He paused and gave her a rather keen glance. "By the way, Neal will be leaving as soon as the funeral is over. He's decided that he can't stand the factory any longer and is going in for serious art."

  Joanna drew in her breath. "Oh, Charles, that's wonderful," she exclaimed delightedly. "You mean you've agreed to finance him?"

  "He'll have enough money to fix up a small studio and provide the bare necessities. But he certainly won't be in clover," Charles said dryly.

  "Oh, I'm so glad. I'm sure you won't regret it. He's shown me some of his work and, although I'm not an expert, I'm sure he has real talent."

  "Maybe when you go to London you'll see something of him," Charles remarked.

  "I doubt it. I'll be busy working and Neal will be painting furiously."

  "Perhaps he ought to start by painting you. Once you've gone back to your career we're unlikely to see you again, I suppose, and if you become an international star, a portrait might be quite an asset," he said lightly. Then, getting up, "I must be off. I'll bring Cathy round for lunch, and pick up your belongings."

  He was turning towards the door when Joanna called him back.

  "Charles… I'm sorry I was so… so difficult last night. I didn't mean to make this time harder for you."

  "That's all right," he said crisply. Then, his mouth curving slightly, "Oh, by the way, if you're wondering about this room and those night things—this is Maureen's bedroom, and the nightdress was to be her next birthday present."

  "Maureen?" she asked blankly.