Fantails

by Leonora Starr

  Alison said quietly, “Then won’t you stay here for a night or two? You could have Andrew’s room.”

  He hesitated. “That’s very charming of you, but I really should be going on—”

  “Well, think it over.” (Make him stay ... Oh, God— please make him stay!)

  When they had finished lunch Logie and Jane began to clear away. Alison said she would make coffee, but Logie, saying, “No, you sit down, I’ll do it,” disappeared into the kitchen, followed by Jane.

  Alison joined Sherry on the window-seat. She sensed a tension in him, something taut and strained and restless, and wondered sympathetically what was at the root of it. Following the direction of his eyes, she had begun to tell him, “That’s the back of Swan House, where we used to live,” when footsteps in the yard below made her lean forward and look down. “Old Mr. Chiffin come about the bottling plums. I must go and have a word with him—I shan’t be long,” she apologised, and left him.

  Sherry stretched his long legs and lit a cigarette. How nice they were, he thought. How natural and friendly, kind and uncalculating—as he might have known Andrew’s family would be. People had wondered at the friendship that had grown between himself and boyish Andrew, who were so different in every way: a friendship that would never have begun but for the circumstance that for a few months they had been the only British officers attached to an Indian battalion, and so had had unlimited opportunities of growing intimate; a friendship based on differences rather than similarities, each bringing something to it that the other lacked.

  Why not stay on here for a few days, as the older girl had suggested, instead of going north to cousins in Scotland, as he had intended? There was no reason why he should not change his hasty plan; he hadn’t warned them to expect him. And, besides, he didn’t feel like facing anyone he knew just yet, meeting carefully uninquisitive eyes and the studied avoidance of any topic that might prove embarrassing. Yes, he would stay a while. Not here, for a household of women wasn’t at all his line of country. And, besides, it looked as though they didn’t have much help; he’d known that they were hard up, but had had no idea they had no servants. Probably that little brown-eyed one, Alison, had cooked the lunch ... He’d stay at that pub in the market-place. Then he could take them round a bit—he’d gathered that they had no car—give them a good time, if that were possible in this back-of-beyond part of the world.

  His eye fell on the Daily Echo that was lying on a table, still crisp and unfolded. All of them too busy of a morning to have read it, he supposed. Idly he picked it up and opened it.

  A headline caught his eye. Two faces looked back at him from the front page, blurred, but recognisable. One of them was his own ... He might have guessed, he might have known they’d make a front-page story of it!

  Sherry’s eyes narrowed and his mouth became a grim, hard line. He paused a moment, staring at the paper. Then deliberately he ripped it into narrow strips and then across until it was unreadable. Beside a bureau was a large waste-paper basket. A few envelopes were in it and some torn-up letters. Sherry took them out, thrust in the shreds of newspaper, dropped the rest on top. When Logie came in with the coffee a moment later he was sitting in the window-seat watching a wagtail running on the lawn of Swan House.

  “Black or white?” asked Logie as she set the tray on a low table near him.

  “Black, please. Look, if I stayed on in these parts for a day or two, should I be able to see something of you? Would you be free to bear me company occasionally? There must be somewhere we could have a meal and dance, or something of that sort. Or are you all booked up?”

  Oh, bliss and joy and rapture! Logie tried to keep her voice steady and unconcerned as she replied: “No, I’m not all booked up. Not in the evenings, anyhow. I’m busy most of the day, but not at week-ends. And there’s a country club quite near where they have dinner dances.”

  “Oh, good!”

  Alison had come in as they were talking, and to her he said, “You very kindly offered to put me up for a night or two and, of course, now that I’m here at long last, I should most awfully like to see something of you all. Only in these days one can’t inflict oneself on people at a moment’s notice. So I thought of asking at that inn in the marketplace—the Painted Something-or-other.”

  “The Painted Anchor.”

  “That’s it—if they’d let me have a bed.”

  Alison protested that he must stay here, they’d love to have him; but Sherry had begun to use his imagination and to realise the extra work he would unwillingly create. He stuck to his suggestion of staying at the inn. Alison and Logie were secretly relieved, thinking of sheets turned sides to middle and frail at that, scarcity of hot bath-water owing to fuel cuts and the cost of coke, the impossibility of sitting down this large young man, used to a three-or four-course dinner, to their one-course evening meal.

  “You must have meals with us as often as you can put up with such a bevy of females,” Alison told him, thinking that if the weather were kind they could picnic on the river as the easiest solution of the evening meal without involving much expense or trouble; wondering if they could possibly afford a bottle of gin or sherry; deciding the next moment that it would be silly to launch out into unaccustomed extravagances—he must take them as they were.

  “You’re all behind the times. Nowadays it’s the guest in the hotel who does the entertaining. You must eat with me.” He turned to Logie.

  “As a beginning, how about introducing me to this country club of yours this evening?” he suggested.

  Logie, trying to suppress the quiver of excitement in her voice, answered that she would like to.

  “What’s it called? I’d better telephone and book a table. When shall I call for you? Half-past seven?”

  “I’ll be ready. To get here in a car you go along the High Street, take the first turn left, then left again, and come in by the wicket door in the big door of the coach house. It’s got ‘Fantails’ painted on it. Goodbye for the moment—it’s high time I was getting back to work!”

  “Time I was moving along too, to see about a room and so forth,” Sherry said, and they went off together. Alison wondered whether Logie would go down the lane with him and enter Swan House by the front door, but she left him at the door in the wall and took her usual course through the garden.

  Only this morning as she came this way she had been singing to herself that “Something nice will happen today!”—and now it had.

  Alison, as she washed the coffee-cups, was torn between hope, anxiety, and exasperation with herself. She told herself she was a vulgar, scheming matchmaker and that of course nothing would come of it.

  And yet—and yet it would be very nice if something did!

  CHAPTER THREE

  Alison and Jane went out together presently to buy Jane’s tennis racket in Market Blyburgh’s largest shop. Over its door was painted the imposing legend, “W. Goffin. Sports Emporium,” although almost any other description would have been more accurate, since the only evidence of Mr. Goffin’s connection with the world of sport consisted of a box of ping-pong balls, two tennis rackets, a few secondhand golf clubs, and half a dozen catapults, while all the neighbourhood was supplied from here with china-ware and Ironmongery, poultry food and gardening tools, bicycles and enamel, paraffin and paint.

  Luckily one of the tennis rackets was exactly the right weight for Jane, who went off with it blissfully to practise back-hand strokes with her friend Mary Dawson at the Vicarage, where there was a satisfactory expanse of blank wall by the back door. Her solitary dreaming of the morning was forgotten as she hurried along the High Street. Jane lived on more than one stage, playing several distinct and separate roles with sincerity and enthusiasm. For the next hour or two she would be whole-heartedly a schoolgirl, her most cherished ambition to become a member of the tennis team. With Mary she would be absorbed in talk of friendships, quarrels, happenings, rumours in the world of school.

  Alison visited the butcher. He, b
ecause Miss Hamilton never expected more than her fair share of offal and was cheerfully resigned to endless corned beef, gave her the bones previously set aside for a more exacting customer. “A lady that could smile when for ten weeks running she had been refused a scrap of suet deserved encouraging, so she did!” So Alison, her basket heavy, turned contentedly homeward, planning that with the stock the bones would make she could contrive an aspic mould with hard-boiled eggs, tomatoes, peas, young beans, and chopped chives, to provide the main dish if to-morrow evening they took Sherry for a picnic on the river.

  Passing the post office, she nearly collided with Mrs. Kellway, who came out in a hurry.

  “Alison! What luck to meet you! I was on my way to see you now. Jim dropped me here on his way to a meeting of the Catchment Board. He’ll pick me up soon after five, with any luck. It’s maddening of you not to have a telephone—I couldn’t let you know—”

  “Well, as we’ve met, it doesn’t matter,” said Alison soothingly; “and, anyhow, I’m on my way home.”

  The Kellways had until a year ago lived next door to Swan House. In those days Alison and Marjorie Kellway, who was a few years her senior, had seen a good deal of each other. Then the Kellways had left Abbot’s Lodge for a small house in a village nine miles away, and since then there had been few opportunities for them to meet. No bus service ran between them, and Major Kellway, who was constantly busy with the County Council, British Legion, and so forth, used the car most days, so that his wife seldom had the use of it. Nor could Alison often spare the time nor energy to bicycle to see her.

  Though she was forty, Marjorie was lovely still after the fashion of a full-blown rose. She had no children, but a series of nieces came to stay and provided her with an outlet for her boundless energy and affection. In Alison’s amused and sympathetic ears she had many a time poured forth the latest developments in her endless matchmaking on their behalf—matchmaking which so far had been unsuccessful.

  This afternoon she was full of hope that her niece Pamela, who had been staying with her for some time, might become engaged at any moment to the son of a neighbour who had fortunately been at home on leave from India during the greater part of Pamela’s visit. “He’s taking her this evening to the Country Club. I do think there’s nothing like a dance for bringing things to a head, don’t you? ... Once Pammy’s happily settled I must have some parties for Logie. I’ve sometimes felt just a bit piggy about her—about not asking her, I mean, when I’ve been getting up a little party for the girls. But you know how it is—almost impossible to collect a man in this benighted spot. And candidly, though Pamela and Sue and Sally are the greatest darlings, nobody could call them beauties. And Logie’s so attractive that I couldn’t risk having her put them in the shade. You do see how it is, don’t you?”

  Alison, laughing, said that she did.

  “He’s taking Pammy to a dance this evening. Oh, I told you that before ... Such a good thing that they’re more formal these days at the Country Club. Pammy’s legs are not her strong point, and though I’ve given her the nylons Maisie brought me from America, nothing can disguise thick ankles, can it? Long skirts really are the greatest boon!”

  Absently Alison agreed. Anxiety had suddenly gripped her. “Marjorie, do you mean that at the Country Club they all wear long frocks now for dancing?”

  “Yes. Such a good thing, don’t you think? I mean, we’ve all been so utility for years that it’s a positive tonic to do a little dressing up!”

  Then she felt guilty for having talked of dressing up to Alison, who practically never had a new frock and probably didn’t possess a single long one. Was that perhaps the reason why she had suddenly become rather quiet? It was unlike her to be envious of other people’s better fortune but one never knew ... Marjorie switched the subject from her own affairs to ask for news of Andrew.

  When she departed at quarter-past five to keep a five o’clock appointment with her husband at the Painted Anchor, Alison went down with her to the door opening on the lane. When she had closed the door she leaned against it for a few minutes, staring unseeing in front of her. Then automatically she fed the clamorous hens and brought down milk from the flat for Miniver. Her mind was centred again on Logie—Logie, who looked so charming in her frock of ice-blue crepe cut short and full—a frock such as last year would have been exactly right for wearing at the Country Club; Logie, who had no long frock in her wardrobe. She thought, to me or Marjorie it wouldn’t matter, but at Logie’s age it can be tragedy not to be dressed like other girls. It’s not even as though she were assured and poised. She’s had so little experience of that sort of thing—as little as most girls of seventeen. In any case she’d have felt diffident. And now in the wrong dress— oh dear!

  She catalogued in her mind the contents of Logie’s wardrobe and her own, but could find nothing helpful there. Then an idea came to her: not a very hopeful one, but none the less an idea. She went to her bedroom. All along the outer wall ran a low, deep cupboard built in the lower angle of the sloping roof. Here were stored away suitcases and cardboard boxes, winter blankets packed away in moth-balls, and the variety of objects hoarded in most homes in the optimistic hope, seldom fulfilled, that they may one day be of some unimaginable use. There were several doors. Kneeling before one of them and opening it, Alison dragged out an old-fashioned trunk that had belonged to the young Selkirks’ grandmother. Dust had gathered on it since the spring-cleaning and a cobweb clung to one corner. Alison wiped it over, then unfastened the stiff straps and lifted out the layers of newspaper and tissue-paper covering its contents. A scent of lavender drifted up to meet her.

  When Mary Selkirk died, Alison had packed away her clothes and personal belongings in this trunk and another. Most of her coats and dresses and all her underwear had been adapted long ago for Logie’s use or Jane’s. All that was left now in the half-empty trunk was a long evening coat of black velvet and a few evening dresses, most of them well worn and verging on shabbiness. Only one was new, bought in the spring shortly before Mary had fallen ill, and unworn. It was for this that Alison was looking now.

  She bit her lip and her eyes pricked as she took out a beaded tunic of rose georgette, remembering how it had suited Mary when she wore it of an evening with a long black skirt. She had not far to search; beneath the tunic lay the frock she wanted. Eagerly she took it to the middle of the room and shook it out, looked at it anxiously, then went out to the passage, where against the wall was hung the only full-length mirror in the flat. She held the frock against herself, and studied the effect. It was of pearl-grey crepe. The top was plain and closely-fitting; the skirt was cut with a deceptive cunning so as to hang straight and slim, yet float out gently when the wearer moved. Nothing to date, thought Alison, and felt more hopeful. Back in her room she tried it on. It fitted well. Yes, it would do; she and Logie were almost the same size. It must do! There was no alternative. What a blessing she had put no mothballs in the trunk, relying instead on bags of lavender and the printer’s ink on newspapers, so abhorred by moths.

  She took it to the living-room and set up the ironing-board. The slip beneath the frock, attached to it at waist and shoulders, was of heavy pure silk such as she had not seen for years. Mary had preferred to wear her clothes for years, buying the best she could afford, rather than to have a rapid succession of cheaper ones.

  As she was pressing the last panel in the skirt, she heard Logie’s voice call something cheerfully to Michie, and the gardener’s dour response. Then the gate clicked, light steps ran across the yard and up the stairs.

  “Hullo! What are you doing?”

  “Ironing a frock for you to wear this evening. Marjorie says they all wear long frocks now at the Country Club. Lucky I met her, wasn’t it? I was so worried till I remembered this frock of your mother’s. I’ve tried it on, and it’s all right on me, the least bit on the loose side, so on you it should be perfect.”

  “But—but grey! Oh, Alison—I’ll look like a ghost! Grey was a
ll right for Mummy, with her lovely colour and those copper lights in her hair. But I can’t wear it. It’ll make me so washed out and—and dim! You know it will!”

  Alison swallowed. What could she say? For it was true enough. Logie’s fair colouring would not be set off to the best advantage by the frock chosen for her mother’s glowing complexion and bronze hair. In it she would look insipid and inconspicuous. And Alison knew well enough that to look insipid and inconspicuous would sap the confidence and quench the gaiety in any girl.

  She answered carefully, trying to blend sincerity with tact, “It’s not what you’d have chosen if you were buying it yourself, of course. But it’s far kinder to you than some colours. Such a gentle, pearly grey.”

  “Who wants to look gentle? Oh, it’s too sickening! In my blue frock I’d have felt myself. In this I’ll feel as though I were a moth.”

  “Some people think moths are lovelier than butterflies.” Alison slipped the frock onto a hanger and held it out to Logie, who took it silently, biting her lip, and, still in silence, left the room.

  Alison, with a heavy heart, folded the ironing-board and was putting it away when Logie suddenly came back and flung her arms round her. “Alicey darling! I’m an ungrateful hag! How could I—when you’d taken all that trouble to get out the dress and iron it? And it was so clever of you to think of it—otherwise I couldn’t have gone. You’re a gem, and how we should exist without you I just don’t know.”

  Another hug and she was gone again. Alison laughed a little, blinking back the tears that trembled on her lashes.