Fantails

by Leonora Starr

  “Don’t tell me anything you’ll regret.”

  “I won’t. But this is something that you ought to know. I should have told you when I first came here.” Plunging one hand into a pocket he brought a crumpled bundle of newspaper cuttings, and gave them to her. “Any one of these will tell you the whole story more quickly than I can.”

  “What a horrible experience—poor Sherry!” said Alison when she had read one.

  “M’m. ... I came here to escape, to get away from everyone I knew, from the embarrassment of their sympathy and my mother’s exasperation at the gossip it would cause, and the humiliation of knowing that wherever I went, in London or at home, people would say to one another, ‘That’s the fellow who was thrown over at the last moment for a richer man by the girl who was going to marry him the next day.’ I drove off into the blue—thought I might go and stay with cousins I rather like, in Scotland. Saw the name Market Blyburgh on a signpost, thought of Andrew, and landed up here ... After lunch, I was alone in this room for a few minutes. I took up your Daily Echo, obviously unread, saw a lot of dope on the front page about my ‘broken romance’ and on the spur of the moment tore it into shreds. I wanted to leave all that behind me. That’s why you never saw it in the papers, as you don’t take the Sunday ones.”

  Pouring out his second cup of coffee, Alison said, “I guessed you’d had some disillusioning experience.”

  “Was I so warped? I am afraid I must have been abominable company!”

  “You were delightful company. But you were cynical and bitter. And you took such a poor view of humanity in general that it was obvious that some individual in particular had hurt you.”

  “Only my pride, though at the time I thought it was my heart! ... So I stayed on and never told you.”

  “My dear, why should you? It was no concern of ours!”

  “Not then, perhaps. But later—”

  “Surely you told Logie later?”

  “No. That’s what has made all this trouble.” Her expression made him add, “No need to tell me what you’re thinking. I know only too well what a fool I was. Time and again I was on the verge of telling her. But when it came to the point I couldn’t bring myself to take the risk.”

  “What risk?”

  “The risk that she would think—as she did think when she found out—that it was only ‘on the rebound,’ as they say, that I had asked her to marry me. A sort of gesture to the world in general, and Zara in particular, to save my face.”

  “She couldn’t have thought that!”

  “Unfortunately she did—and does. If only I had had the sense to take the risk and tell her when the right moment came along! Several times I was on the verge of it. Then I lost my nerve. I couldn’t stake security to gain it.”

  Alison thought: And so you took the greater risk of letting her find out for herself—and lost, poor boy! But all she said was, “Have some more coffee?” for she had learnt the grace of keeping silent when to speak would hurt.

  “No, thanks—though you were quite right. I feel entirely different for having filled the aching void!” He rose and began to wander restlessly about the room, taking up a book, laying it down, staring at a picture, turning the pages of a magazine. She longed to comfort him, to tell him this was no more than a passing storm, soon to be forgotten, even laughed at tenderly in years to come. Yet it was difficult to comment on what he had told her without seeming to criticise; nor did she wish to seem inquisitive concerning matters that concerned only Logie and himself. So she sat knitting quietly until he said abruptly, “It mightn’t be a bad idea to go along to the station and find out about trains. That would give us some idea of when she could get here.”

  “Yes, a good plan. But I rather think a train from Norwich is due round about half-past eleven. It’s nearly that time now. You might run into her. And it would be better, don’t you think, to meet here rather than on the road or in the station?”

  “You’re right, as usual—wise little Alison!” Sherry smiled at her affectionately. “If she isn’t here by twelve, I’ll go and make enquiries about later trains ... Look here, I’m sure you’re dying to be making a pudding! Don’t bother about me. You’ve been an angel, but you mustn’t let me be a nuisance!”

  Mary was at that moment uppermost in Alison, Martha temporarily routed by his need of her to share his waiting. An aching heart was, after all, a greater evil than an empty stomach, and more difficult to cure! They must have boiled eggs for lunch, and bread and honey by way of pudding. “Nonsense!” she said. “I’m glad of an excuse for being lazy!” And sat there knitting while the time dragged on, leading him on to talk about the wedding as though there were no doubt whatever that it would take place.

  Never in her life had Logie known such weariness as beset her in the last long hours of her journey home. The third-class carriage she had joined at Darlington had been crowded, so that she had not been able to get a corner seat. Two women had talked interminably in shrill, nasal voices, and in consequence she had scarcely slept. At Peterborough she had had to wait two hours for her connection; after that there had been two more changes. By the time the train carried her through the familiar country approaching Market Blyburgh she was mentally and physically exhausted, aching and stiff from head to foot. Her eyes smarted, her hands were grimy, her face felt parched, as though her skin would rustle if she touched it; she felt dirty and dishevelled and utterly forlorn.

  If she had had happy thoughts for company her weariness would have been a lighter burden, scarcely noticed. But with every moment that took her farther from Sherry her despair and misery increased. The wheels of the express from Darlington, hurrying through the night, cried to her spitefully, “Never again! Never again! Never again! Never again! Never-again never again ...” And after that the slower cross-country trains chanted mournfully “He’s gone for good—He’s gone for good—He’s gone for good” so clearly that it seemed to her that all her fellow passengers must hear it too.

  As time went on her anger lessened and her misery increased. She tortured herself with memories of past happiness shared with Sherry, never to be shared with him again, and with imagining all he must have shared with Zara. She still couldn’t understand why he had not told her of that broken engagement, since it was so much more than a mere passing episode. She had known, of course, and he had known that she had known, that naturally enough he had enjoyed many a light-hearted love affair, but an engagement broken the day before the wedding was different. Yet though she could see no possible explanation, she had been in the wrong when she refused to listen to him. Unreasonable and unfair. And now she’d never have another chance.

  How could she—oh, how could she have told Sherry she had been going to marry him for his money? How could she have told him she had never loved him? How could she have brought herself to say such frightful things, cruel and insulting and utterly unforgivable! If only she had bitten back those fatal words Sherry would almost certainly have followed her to Fantails, asked her again to listen to him. And she would have listened to him. She would have married him in any circumstances if he had wanted it, would have done all she could to make him happy and to create between them something worth having, praying that in their children he might find forgetfulness of that past love. Poor Sherry—he must have hoped for that himself. And now she had wrecked all chance of making up their quarrel by those impulsive fatal words. She writhed, remembering them: “I’ve never loved you! It was entirely because you’re rich, because there was so much you could give me, that I said I’d marry you!” She told herself she’d never know another minute’s happiness. All her life long she would have to pay for that one moment’s folly.

  She did not see the Suffolk punches, burnished and sleek, turning incurious heads to watch the passing train. She did not see the cottage gardens, nor the children waving by a gate. She did not see the willows leaning to look at their reflections in the river, nor the Elizabethan manor in its park, nor empty stubble fields already pat
terned by the plough in strips and stripes of brown. She did not see the Norman church, the rosy farmhouse with its apple-trees and grazing geese and full stackyard. All she saw was Sherry...

  Market Blyburgh at last! Stiffly she stumbled from the train. A girl she knew was standing by the bookstall; old Mrs. Trudgett, who loved to buttonhole one for hours, was near the ticket collector. Logie ducked her head and ran. The nearest way to Fantails was down Market Place and then along the High Street, but in the middle of the morning she was bound to meet numerous acquaintances and friends if she went that way. So, though it was longer, she went by Lamb’s Lane, through the churchyard and along a narrow back-street, meeting only a few loitering errand-boys, Broom the plumber, and a nursemaid wheeling a pram. So into the narrow lane, with limes for sentinels, through the door in the wall, and she was home.

  The hens scattered at her sudden entry. Miniver and her kittens were sunning themselves in the doorway of the coach-house. Everything looked just the same, except that the kittens, of course, had grown. The same. And yet her own world had changed out of recognition.

  She stumbled up the stairs. “Alison!” she called desperately.

  The door was open. Alison was there, as she had always been when any of them needed her. In her exhaustion Logie did not wonder how it was that Alison showed no surprise at seeing her a day before she was expected, dishevelled and alone and wretched.

  “Oh, Alison—I’m so miserable! I’ve been such a fool!”

  Alison took her in her arms and hugged her. “Poor, poor darling!” Then she put her arm round her shoulders and led her unresisting to the living-room. The door was shut. Logie hung back a moment as Alison was going to open it. “I don’t—I can’t see Jane and John just yet...”

  “They’re out,” said Alison, opening the door, and pushing her gently through closed it behind her.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Perception dulled by her exhaustion, Logie was only vaguely aware that Alison had shut the door, and the tall figure standing between her and the window was for a moment no more than a dark silhouette against the light.

  Suddenly her senses flashed into tingling life—the shape was Sherry—Sherry! ... So heaven was, it seemed, incredibly, miraculously, giving her another chance.

  Sherry took two strides, putting himself between her and the door. Their eyes met in desperate question. Logie said shakily, “You needn’t bar the way—I shan’t try to escape again! Oh, Sherry—it wasn’t true, that nonsense about never having loved you! Oh, do say you knew it wasn’t true! I couldn’t bear you to have believed it for a single moment. I’ve been so ashamed—”

  “Of course I knew. I know you far too well to have believed it. It was all my fault. Darling, I’ve been in hell, thinking I’d lost you, and all through being afraid of losing you—”

  “You couldn’t lose me if you tried...”

  She pressed her cheek against his jacket, that was warm and rough and comforting. Even if he does crack my ribs, she thought, in breathless ecstasy, it’ll be worth it... Sherry said, alarmed and horrified, “Sweetest, there’s nothing to cry about! Everything’s going to be all right.”

  Logie gave a queer little sound between a sob and a laugh. “I’m enjoying it!”

  Presently he held her away from him. Logie ducked her head. “Don’t stare at me! I’m looking simply frightful—”

  “You are. Your nose is pink, your face is smeared with railway smuts and tears, and there are big black circles round your eyes. There’s a large black streak across your forehead and another on your chin. Your hair looks as though you had been bird’s-nesting in a thorn bush—rather a dirty thorn bush. And you’re the sweetest and most satisfying sight I ever want to see. Now listen. Later on we’ll clear the air once and for all. But at the moment we’re both much too tired to talk coherently. You go and have a bath. I’ll go and have a bath and shave. Then bring the others over there for lunch—poor Alison has been so busy ministering to my needs that she hasn’t had a chance to do anything about food. After lunch we’ll sleep. Then I’ll come back here and collect you and we’ll go off somewhere on our own, and I will tell you the whole stupid story. How’s that?”

  “Perfect! Except that there’s no need to tell me anything about it. I don’t mind any more.”

  “Not now. But you would some day, when we have another flare-up. Much better get it sorted out.”

  “But we’ll never have another flare-up! Sherry, I couldn’t bear it!”

  “Neither could I. But being made the way we are, we shall. Many a time. And at the time we’ll think we’re going to be miserable for evermore. And then we’ll make it up and know we’re going to be happy-ever-after.” One arm round her, he marched her to the door. “Alison! Will you finish up your Good Samaritan morning by cleaning up my fiancée for me, and producing her, yourself, and Jane and John for lunch an hour or so from now at the Painted Anchor?”

  Alison, who had been making Logie’s bed, said, “No! Thank you very much all the same, but two is company, five is none on some occasions. Logie will come. The rest of us would love to have lunch with you some other time, if you invite us a second time!”

  Sherry was firm. “Nonsense! Logie and I are so tired that if we’re left alone we’ll fall asleep with our heads in the soup and make a horrid scandal.”

  “Or even drown in it, like Captain Puffin in one of E. F. Benson’s books about Miss Mapp and Lucia,” Logie added, and Alison presently gave way.

  Sherry departed. Sleepy but blissful, Logie dragged off her clothes and fell into the bath, leaving the door unlocked in case she fell asleep in it. Alison took away the clothes she had been wearing and put out fresh ones for her, then took her shoes to clean them in the kitchen.

  There was a good deal to be said, she mused, for having left first youth behind: a good deal to be said for having learned to curb impetuosity, bite back bitter words, possess one’s soul in patience or at least in silence. The course of young love had a wild sweet magic never to be found in the more sober happiness of later years; yet for her own part she would rather have the rich and tranquil harmony won by experience than youth’s ecstatic heights and dizzy rapture, accompanied by storms and turbulence and wild despair.

  Her thoughts were interrupted by a call of, “Are you there, Miss Hamilton?” from MacNeish. He said a trunk call for her from London had come through to Swan House, and would she come at once? “They’re waiting on the line.” Alison dropped Logie’s shoe and ran, accompanied by a mental picture of a midget figure dangling by one arm from a telephone wire. It must be Hugh, for no one else would ring her up at Swan House, and in any case she knew nobody who was likely to telephone to her from London. She hoped he wasn’t going to say that he had been delayed and after all would not be coming back to-day. Even if he were too busy seeing patients to spend any time with her, it would be good to know that he was near.

  Instead of the man’s voice she had expected, it was a woman who answered her “Alison Hamilton speaking?” in a voice she did not for a moment recognise.

  “I’ve rung up to congratulate you in having carried out your scheme to a successful conclusion. Hugh telephoned just now to tell me that you and he are going to be married.” It was Lucia!

  Taken aback, thinking it better to ignore the odd wording of her congratulations, Alison said, “How nice—how very kind of you!”

  “No doubt you’re delighted with yourself. No doubt you think you’ve done a very clever thing—insinuating yourself into Hugh’s good graces, supplanting me, the sister of his dead wife and John’s aunt, who ought by right to fill Melanie’s place as far as possible, take charge of that poor motherless child and run the house for them!”

  “Oh, please—’’

  “But let me tell you that the boot is on the other foot! Hugh wants an unpaid housekeeper, that’s all. Someone not too intelligent, who’ll keep the bills down and be governess to John and do the flowers and tell him several times a day how wonderful he is.”<
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  “Really, this is—”

  Lucia shrilled on as though Alison had not tried to speak. “For years, ever since Melanie left us, he’s been hunting round for somebody to take her place. I would have stayed on with them here, much as I dislike the country, for John’s sake. But Hugh has always hated me—always been jealous of my influence on Melanie, and when he saw John turning to me too, he turned me out.”

  “Lucia, saying all this to me can do no—”

  Still Lucia stormed on. “Naturally in London he needed someone of poise and social background, but no one suitable was fool enough to fall in with his little plan. Now he’s got this idea of settling in the country the second Mrs. Brandon can be almost anyone. Appearances don’t count in a country practice as they do in Harley Street. Common sense and experience of catering are the only essential qualifications now. Frumpishness and lack of intelligence needn’t be obstacles any longer. And as you made it only too clear that you would be willing—”

  Quietly Alison replaced the receiver. Swan House was very still. MacNeish had shut the door leading to the kitchen premises and there was no sound but the busy ticking of a clock on the mantelpiece and the measured “Tick-tock! Tick-tock!” of the grandfather in the hall. She buried her face in her hands, wishing desperately that ugly memories could be erased at will. Lucia’s words, rooted though they were in spite and malice and the will to hurt, had to some extent succeeded. They had hurt. They had hurt abominably ... After a few minutes she blinked back the tears that glittered on her lashes, blew her nose, tilted her chin, and prepared to face the world again. Nothing had been changed by Lucia’s tirade. She had already known that she could never have Hugh’s heart, since that was buried with Melanie. But even so, there was far more between them than his need of a housekeeper, a mother for John—there was! On the foundations of affection, mutual interests, understanding without need of words, together they would build something fine, something worth having, something that would endure and bring them lasting happiness—happiness worth fighting for, happiness that she would not let Lucia spoil.