Fortune's Lead

by Barbara Perkins

  I went upstairs feeling confused, and trying to convince myself that Henry’s remarks had merely been kindly. Limping into my room, I decided to sit for a while before accomplishing the labour of getting undressed—and labour it would be in my present condition. Even sitting was far from comfortable ...

  I was still sitting, trying to decide academically just how many parts of me I had strained, when a knock came at the door. Essie, perhaps: as I called to her to come in I tried to look less as if I was suffering. It was just as well I did, since the door opened to admit a much larger and very unwelcome form. Kevin Thurlanger walked calmly in and stood regarding me grimly. If I had hackles, they would have risen. His first words increased the effect.

  ‘As I was saying, a valiant attempt to fit in. But a remarkably stupid one. Now, let me look at that wrist.’

  ‘I’ve already told you—’ I began icily.

  ‘Then don’t bother to tell me again. I’m a qualified doctor, whether you like it or not. There are others, admittedly, but I happen to be the nearest, so you might as well accept it.’ Without so much as a by-your-leave, he pulled up a chair and sat down in front of me, putting out his hand to take mine. Short of pulling it away—which would have been painful—I could only let him take it, though not in silence.

  ‘Forcing medical treatment on someone who hasn’t asked for it seems a little unethical, doesn’t it?’ I snapped. He began to unwind the bandage. ‘I’ve probably seen quite as many sprains as you have, and I know perfectly well—ow!’

  ‘Sorry,’ he said, not looking it. In fact his hands were surprisingly gentle. ‘Where have you seen all these sprains, may I ask? No, it doesn’t look as if you’ve broken anything. Essie trying to get away with the damage I can understand, but you’re old enough to know better.’ He glanced up at me, his eyes—a very dark grey, I realized—impersonal. ‘Can you move your fingers? Thumb?’

  His professional attentions were entirely unwelcome, but I moved my fingers with automatic obedience. A second later I found my voice as an idea occurred to me.

  ‘Where have I seen sprains?’ I asked in a voice I barely recognized as my own. ‘Oh, if you come from surroundings like mine, you see a lot worse than this. When the men get drunk on a Saturday night, you know. Black eyes—broken arms—well, if you’d lived amongst that lot you’d understand a girl trying to wangle herself into a house like this. After all—’

  ‘Move your thumb again,’ he ordered, but there was a slight gleam in his eyes this time as he glanced at me. I wondered if I was going too far. Never mind: he had started it. Recklessly I consigned my extremely respectable family to limbo and let my imagination warm up—with several years’ experience in casualty departments to draw on.

  ‘Then there were the knife fights. I was used to seeing blood all over the place before I was five. My father had the carving knife out every time he got drunk. Then he disappeared—no one ever knew where. We used to go round and beg outside the pubs to make ends meet. The child care people never dared come down our way, it was too rough. I learned to spin a story about being poor at a very young age. Picking people up on trains came later—’

  ‘Yes?’ Kevin enquired dangerously, beginning to reapply my bandage with an efficiency which annoyed me.

  ‘You can make quite a business out of it if you know how. You’re quite right, of course, it doesn’t do to look as if you want something—that’s why I spent every last penny I had on making sure I was well dressed. And—er—you h-have to learn to speak properly. I spent pounds on elocution lessons. I thought you’d like to know, since we’re having this conversation,’ I said between my teeth, ‘that I’m thoroughly professional about it. Have you finished? Oh, what a pity, I was quite enjoying telling the truth for once, after all these weeks of careful pretence!’

  ‘Were you, now?’ He gave me my wrist back, stood up, and towered over me. ‘Go on. I’m most interested. You seem to have led a very full life.’

  ‘Oh, I could go on all night. But I shan’t,’ I added hastily, looking up at him and trying not to quail. ‘I c-can’t give away all my secrets, can I? And now, if you’ve quite finished doing something I never asked you to do, and for which I suppose you even expect to be thanked, perhaps you’d go away, and let me get to bed!’

  ‘Out of character,’ he said coolly, making me gasp, but he did move away to the door. ‘Incidentally, you’re going to be even stiffer than you are now by tomorrow morning. I’ll leave some liniment for you. And since living by your wits requires intelligence, presumably you’ll be too intelligent to throw it at me. Oh, how much of your ... life story have you told Essie, by the way?’

  I took a tight grip on my temper. ‘None, so far,’ I said, as sweetly as I could. ‘I shouldn’t think she’s going to need to know that kind of thing, is she? She hasn’t got to claw her way up out of the slums, like me!’

  ‘No, she’s fairly well endowed. But don’t put ideas into her head.’ He gave me an ironic look, added, ‘Goodnight, Charlotte,’ and went. He left me seething. After a moment, with the attack of lunacy which had led me to say the things I did ebbing away, I began to feel horrified at my own impulses. Probably, being Kevin Thurlanger, he had believed every single word I said. The fact that his own original odious behaviour had led me into this fit of invention was no excuse ... except that I was sick to death, I suddenly realized, of keeping out of his way, avoiding him in the passage outside our rooms, and feeling him watching me whenever we were in the same part of the house at the same time.

  If he told Henry what I had said, Henry would undoubtedly appreciate the joke. Still, I couldn’t help feeling ashamed of myself—and wondering what on earth had happened to Sensible Charlotte.

  Kevin was right about my being even stiffer in the morning. Moving at all was torture. Essie, perhaps in a fit of penitence, offered to apply the liniment Kevin had left as promised, and little as I wanted to accept anything from Kevin I had to do something to make myself feel human. Essie’s rubbing was a little rough and ready, but did help; though I could have done without her assurance that the best way to get over stiffness from a first riding lesson was to have another. I rolled a grim eye at her (my eyes were the only things I could move with impunity) and she caught my expression, and grinned.

  ‘Oh, it’s all right—I won’t try and teach you. I don’t remember how much people don’t know, y’see. But I suddenly thought—that girl-friend of Kev’s, Rosalind whatever-her-name-is, over at Whatham Hall. She’s running a riding school over there. I can’t think why I didn’t think of it before. You could learn properly from her, and—’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Oh, but you don’t want to give up, Shah! Kev’s quite right, I s’pose, being so tall and thin, you might have broken something with only me keeping an eye on you, but this Rosalind does it as a job, so she must know what she’s doing. I must say,’ Essie added frankly, ‘I think she’s dreary, myself, and as prim as nobody’s business—you’ve never seen anything so solemn as the way she goes round organizing things!—and when Poppy Tetley got in a rage because her pony wouldn’t jump at the Bessemer Show and started swearing her head off, which was terribly funny, this Rosalind got so disapproving I thought she’d burst. I suppose she just hasn’t got a sense of humour, poor thing. Still, when it comes to teaching beginners—’

  ‘No,’ I said again, firmly. If ‘this Rosalind ‘was a girl-friend of Kevin’s I could imagine myself disliking her very much. Besides, I had no wish to have any attempts I might make to ride discussed with Kevin—if I ever went near a horse again, which I couldn’t see myself wanting to do. I rolled over, winced, and told Essie drily, ‘I’m a towny, remember? You—ouch—have to make allowances for us poor inferior beings, and let us—ow!—live in our own way!’

  ‘You can’t be the worst sort of towny, or you wouldn’t get on so well with the dogs,’ Essie said cheerfully, ignoring my sarcasm. ‘They positively follow you around. There, I think I’ve rubbed all the right bits. Oh, by the w
ay, Kev said take some exercise, if you can manage it, because it’ll make the stiffness clear off quicker. And Pa wants to take you out to lunch, if you feel well enough. He’s in one of his frets, in case you up and off and leave him with only me for company for the rest of the winter. He’s had to promise Aunt Cath and the rest of the family to set to and take a proper interest in me, I expect—it must be a dead drag being a parent!’

  Her cheerful words startled me, but she went away without giving me a chance to made any kind of answer. She seemed to take it as natural that her father would only take an interest in her if forced to do so—and I remembered that he had sent her to be brought up elsewhere after his wife died, while he did... goodness knows what, though travelling a great deal seemed to come into it. It was, I had gathered, not much more than a year since he had brought Essie to live at Thurlanger. She seemed happy enough, as long as she had her ponies to occupy her: her father certainly seemed to have attempted to supply her needs. She had come into a ready-made home after ten years’ absence from it, with Mrs. Mott to housekeep and run things if Henry was away—as the Motts had done during all the family wanderings. I wondered, thoughtfully, whether there was more than mischief behind Essie’s disinclination to become what her father expected of her. However, she seemed extremely well adjusted and far from neurotic—and fond of Henry in her own way—so I could save myself from imagining more than a quite ordinary adolescent rebellion. I remembered that Henry himself was waiting for me to go downstairs and be taken out to lunch, stopped trying to work out the feelings the Thurlangers might have for each other, and got painfully off my bed. Yet another Thurlanger had commanded me to take exercise, I remembered grimly, wishing with uncommon meanness that Kevin felt as stiff as I did. It was unfortunate that I knew perfectly well he was right.

  Henry made a great fuss of me and gave me a lot of his company for the next few days. Embarrassingly, I caught myself remembering Gypsy Rose’s predictions for my future and feeling confused. I would not be credulous—no, I most certainly would not! Ardently, with the cocktail party on Saturday as an excuse, I tried to behave like an efficient social secretary—and was reproached by Henry for being serious. It was, he assured me, the worst thing one could possibly do—I had only to look at Kevin to realize it. Since Kevin was present when the words were spoken, I promptly tried to look as unserious as possible.

  It seemed advisable to make sure Essie was keeping to her promise about what she would wear for the cocktail party, so when I had dressed myself on Saturday evening, feeling glad most of my stiffness had worn off, I went down to her room to see if she needed any help. I found her in front of her mirror, though she seemed uninterested in the fact that she looked lovely in the pale coffee-coloured lace dress I had picked out for her. The dress was very short, young-looking but stylish, its simplicity emphasising the perfection of her face and slender figure. I felt relieved to see her dressed, but wondered if I could persuade her to brush her hair. However, she seemed minded to be amiable, turning round to grin at me as I came in.

  ‘Sar’Ann dropped a hint or two, but what I sez I does. Have you come to smarten me up? Mottie saw me a moment ago, and her eyes nearly dropped out, so I s’pose there are some rewards. If I was at Ballyneelan I’d freeze in this, and the Holy Father’d say it was indecent to show so much of my knees, but then Uncle Joe never gave cocktail parties, thank goodness!’

  ‘I didn’t know your cousins were Catholics.’ Kevin wasn’t: I’d seen him in Tyzet church on a Sunday.

  ‘Besides,’ I objected, ‘that’s not as short as all that, and my fa—er, no one I know would say you looked indecent!’

  ‘Protestants every last man of them, but they give up fighting about it when they want to talk horseflesh,’ Essie said calmly, fortunately not noticing my slip. The question of what my father did had somehow never been raised, and in view of the mendacious description of my family I had given Kevin I felt disinclined to let fall the truth: it was more satisfying to let him be so totally wrong.

  ‘I suppose,’ Essie added, studying me, ‘that’s what Pa means about dress sense, is it? That blue you’re wearing matching your eyes so well? You look nice. If you like that sort of thing. Now, what am I supposed to do about the rest of me? Wear a chemist’s shop on my face, as Mottie calls it, or can I do without that?’

  The compliment she had paid me, if mixed, had startled me, but I assured her hastily that she didn’t need to get over her avowed distaste for make-up beyond, perhaps, wearing a little lipstick. She seemed willing to do whatever I suggested—because it had been a bargain—and, in an odd way, I sensed an uncertainty which was very unlike her, behind the resignation with which she allowed me not only to brush her hair, but also to put it up on top of her head, an idea which came to me when I discovered how unruly the thick curls were. I remembered that she was only seventeen, and an unusual seventeen at that, judging by today’s standards: my sister Cleo, for example, had already been a lot more sophisticated three years ago than I was even now. Thinking of Cleo reminded me how surprised both my sisters would be if they could see dear dull Charlotte being considered an authority on clothes ... and dear dull Robert (as I remembered him for the first time in weeks) would probably not have recognized this frivolous and well-dressed person at all. It was both odd and pleasant to find what a dim memory Robert had become. I finished Essie’s hair, and stood back to admire the effect. The small head piled with dark brown curls looked positively queenly. When I turned her round towards the mirror I saw a startled flicker in her eyes—though she rallied quickly.

  ‘With all this ironmongery keeping me in place I must be top-heavy! It’d put me over the weight for jockeying in no time. And all this for a couple of hours’ prosing. Oh well, let’s go and grab a place by the fire before people come pouring in. Pa’s asked half the county, if you ask me, which is idiotic when he doesn’t even like most of ‘em! Still, let’s get it over with!’

  She made me go ahead of her down the stairs—and though I recognized the self-consciousness behind her brusquerie, I went down fast so that she could be seen clearly as she followed me. Helping her get ready had taken longer than I realized, and amidst my concentration I hadn’t heard sounds of arrival, but there were already four extra people in the hall below—with Henry, and Kevin, who must have changed fast since he had still been out on a call from the hospital when I was dressing. I saw Henry look up, and keep his eyes on Esther for a moment of approval before turning back courteously to the man he was talking to: Kevin’s eyes touched his cousin, paused for a longer moment, and then flicked to me. By that time I had reached ground level and Henry was beckoning me forward to be introduced. When I had been shaken by the hand by Major Tetley, large and bluff, I managed to take a surreptitious glance over my shoulder for Essie—but she was looking perfectly composed, standing by a young man and a girl in her own age-group, talking, I could hear, with her usual nonchalance. About horses.

  It was some little time later, when a great many more people had arrived, that I found Kevin approaching me. I had been doing my best to converse with the people I had been introduced to, though I found they were apt to lose interest when they found I didn’t ride: most of the conversations I could hear were concerned with the hunting season, next week’s point-to-point, the vagaries of stable-girls, and the doings of mutual acquaintances who were unknown to me. (I felt even more glad that most of my stiffness had worn off and that my long sleeve made my bandage unobtrusive when I saw Mamie Laidlaw glance at me with a knowing grin). Feeling rather isolated, I wished that I could have busied myself with handing things round—but Sarah Ann and one of the other staff from the village were doing it, decked in the neatness of housemaids’ uniform. Essie was among a group of around her own age: the guests seemed mainly to be in their forties and fifties, or late teens. I was almost in a mood to welcome Kevin’s arrival beside me—if it weren’t for the wariness of wondering what he would choose to say—and I was unwillingly conscious that in other c
ircumstances I might have felt flattered that the tallest and best-looking man in the room sought my company. I reminded myself quickly that he was also several other things, and gave him a guarded look from under my lashes as he stopped beside me. A glint of mockery promptly came into his own eyes.

  ‘I’ve come to see that you don’t feel out of things. Have you met everyone? I haven’t more than a nodding acquaintance with half of them myself, but Henry does things very thoroughly, doesn’t he?’ He went on without giving me a chance to reply, ‘You’re to be congratulated on your handiwork. And Essie, you’ll be glad to hear, has just given that Laidlaw girl a firm warning against repeating any ... stories.’

  ‘She could hardly give a graphic description, since she wasn’t there,’ I said coolly—though I wondered how much Essie had told Mamie when she returned the Laidlaws’ horse. I gave Kevin a challenging look, and added, ‘I’m grateful, of course, that everyone shouldn’t be told how—how capably I made a fool of myself!’

  ‘It’s the interesting point of why you did it that Essie doesn’t want repeated. Very interesting.’ He studied me over the rim of his glass as he raised it to his lips. ‘Surprising, too. Could you look a little less as if you disliked talking to me? We should display household solidarity, I feel.’

  ‘Oh, was that why you came over?’ I enquired coldly.

  ‘Henry told me to talk to you.’

  ‘How kind of him. But unexpected. He told me to treat you as less than the dust under my feet,’ I retorted, feeling unreasonably annoyed that he had only sought me out because he had been told to. ‘However, if we’ve got to display household solidarity—which I’m sure you find as trying as I do!—I’ll do my best to look flattered by your company! Do tell me all about your job, Mr. Thurlanger—and I’ll do my best to look as if I understand what you’re talking about, though I’m sure I shan’t, because all that medical terminology must be so complicated!’