by M. M. Kaye
‘I’d be delighted to.’
‘Then how about tomorrow?’
‘You can’t go looking at vines and vats tomorrow, Persis,’ said Toby Gates firmly. ‘We’re all going for a picnic to St Hilarion. Amanda’s coming too. You know you arranged the whole thing with George Norman only this morning.’
‘So we did. I’ll tell you what, Mr Barton—suppose you join the picnic? Then we can get together and fix a day for the vines. Tomorrow at two-thirty. You can give me a lift to Hilarion. Is that a date?’
‘I ought not to,’ said Glenn Barton with a rueful smile, ‘I’m rather busy just now, but—all right. I’d like to come. But I shan’t be able to give you a lift I’m afraid. I can’t get off as early as that. I could be at Hilarion about four o’clock if that’s all right?’
‘Sure. That’s okay by me. Be seeing you then.’
Glenn Barton smiled at her, turned away and then stopped suddenly, his face rigid, and Amanda, following the direction of his fixed gaze, saw that he was staring at his wife. It was obvious that he had not noticed her until then, and highly unlikely that he would in any case have expected to see her lunching openly at the Dome with Lumley Potter.
Anita Barton had turned in her chair so that she faced him directly. Her eyes were bright and defiant and her painted mouth was hard and ugly. The room was noisy with chatter and the chink of glasses and cutlery, but the four at Amanda’s table and the three at Claire’s were suddenly silent with the silence of embarrassment and curiosity.
There was a queer grey look about Glenn Barton’s thin, tanned face, and his mouth had shut hard. A muscle twitched at the corner of his jaw and his hands had clenched so tightly that the knuckles stood out bone white.
He stood there for perhaps a full minute, and then suddenly swung about and walked quickly and unsteadily from the room.
‘Well, what do you know!’ remarked Persis into the silence. ‘Did you see that guy’s face? If I had a dollar for every time I’ve written “he turned white under his tan” I’d buy the Koh-i-noor. But, so help me, I’ve never seen it happen until now. Fiction is certainly no improvement on nature.’
Steve said: ‘Tell me, Mrs Halliday, are all American women as ruthless as you are?’
‘Persis to you, Steve honey. And why ruthless? Why, I was charming to the poor guy.’
‘That’s what I meant,’ said Steve with a grin. ‘But what are you going to do with him when you’ve got him? Gaff him, or throw him back into the pool?’
‘Steve daaarling! All I want is to get to know him. Can’t you see what divine copy he is?’
‘I see all right. You’re a ruthless vamp and should be kept under lock and key. And don’t bat your eyelashes at me—I suffer from extreme susceptibility.’
‘But that’s just wonderful,’ said Persis warmly. ‘I can see that you and I have a lot in common. You can drive me to Hilarion.’
‘It’s a date,’ said Mr Howard.
Toby escorted Amanda back to Miss Moon’s after luncheon and she dismissed him at the gate. She was feeling unsettled and restless and on edge, and the feeling of enchantment that she had experienced on her arrival at the Villa Oleander had vanished. Miss Moon peered over the landing rail as she closed the front door behind her.
‘Ah, you’re back, dear. Glenn Barton was asking for you. I told him that I thought you were taking luncheon at the Dome.’
‘Yes I saw him, thank you, Miss Moon. He’s coming to see me this afternoon. I hope that’s all right? My uncle has been writing to fuss him about me.’
‘Quite all right, dear. I usually rest in the afternoon, so you will have the drawing-room to yourselves. I shall be down to tea about four o’clock. Ask Glenn to stay. He’ll let himself in. Euridice is out for an hour.’
She disappeared and Amanda heard her bedroom door shut. A clock in the hall struck three mellow notes, and almost before the echo had died away in the quiet house there was a sound of quick footsteps on the stone-flagged path and Glenn Barton was there, breathing a little quickly as though he had been hurrying.
‘I haven’t kept you waiting, have I?’ he asked anxiously.
‘About two seconds,’ said Amanda with a laugh. She led the way into the drawing-room and sat down in a straight-backed chair, carved and gilded and upholstered in faded green velvet. Glenn Barton stood looking down at her with a deep crease between his brows and did not speak.
Amanda said: ‘Do sit down. What is it? Has Uncle Oswin been devilling you about me?’
Glenn Barton sat down on the sofa and pushed his hands through his hair in the same boyish and despairing gesture that Amanda had seen him use on the previous day.
He said jerkily: ‘I haven’t heard from your uncle. That was just an excuse; I had to say something.’
He raised his eyes and looked at her wretchedly.
Glennister Barton must have been at least fifteen years Amanda’s senior, and his hair was already flecked with grey at the temples. But all at once Amanda felt as maternal as though she were twice his age and he was a small boy in trouble.
She said quickly and warmly: ‘What is it? What’s the matter?’
‘I had to tell you____’ his voice had a ragged edge to it—‘I had to. About Anita—my wife. You see I didn’t know that she would be here. I hoped that you wouldn’t find out. So I—well I said she was ill. It was a lie of course.’
‘Look, Glenn,’ said Amanda, unconsciously using his name, ‘it doesn’t matter. You were only covering up for her. You couldn’t have done anything else. I do understand, so don’t worry about it—please!’
Glenn dropped his head into his hands and said in a low, uneven voice: ‘It’s all such a mess. Such a ghastly mess! I didn’t believe that it could happen. But it did. I didn’t mind what other people said or thought, but this involves the good name of the firm, and you are a Derington. I wanted to hush it up, but I see now that it isn’t possible. I–I did what I could.’
‘Of course you did,’ comforted Amanda, distressed. ‘But it’s no good trying to cover up for your wife if she doesn’t care what people say.’
‘I don’t understand it,’ said Glenn tiredly. ‘I don’t know why she should behave like this. Perhaps it’s some sort of defence mechanism. She’s such a child really. A spoilt child who is trying to cover up its own naughtiness by accusing other people of worse things.’
‘You mean those stories about Miss Ford?’ said Amanda.
Glenn looked up, his face haggard. ‘So you’ve heard about that already!’
‘Miss Moon told me. But you don’t have to worry, Glenn. She says that no one believes it.’
‘How can she know?’ said Glenn bitterly. ‘There are people who will believe anything.’
He dropped his head on his hands again and after a moment spoke in an almost inaudible voice, as though he had forgotten about Amanda and was finding some relief in speaking his troubled thoughts aloud:
‘Anita doesn’t like Monica—she never has. Monica is efficient and she has brains, but she’s not very tactful. Anita is so gay, and so careless about money and housekeeping and things like that. She likes expensive clothes and parties and late nights, and admiration. She’s young; it’s only natural. And I suppose I was a bit dull—there was always so much work. Monica used to drop hints; very heavy ones I imagine—and it annoyed Anita. Then one day she lost her temper and they had a quarrel. A silly, rather childish quarrel____’
Glenn sighed and pushed his hands through his hair again: ‘Anita told me that either Monica went or she would. She wouldn’t see that I could not sack Monica—she was Mr Derington’s personal nominee for the post, and until she arrived things were in a bit of a mess in the office. Monica got the whole thing into shape and worked like a demon. I couldn’t replace her without damaging the firm’s interests. I told Anita that she need never see her or speak to her—I would have seen to that—but that I had to keep her. I had to. I can’t deal with all the stuff she copes with, as well as my own work;
it isn’t possible. But Anita wouldn’t see it. She just went on saying that if I didn’t sack Monica immediately she’d go. I–I didn’t think she could mean it. But she did. And now that she’s gone she’s too proud—and too young—to admit the truth, so she has spread it about that she was forced to leave me because I was having an affair with the woman. An affair! With Monica Ford of all people! Monica! Oh God, if it wasn’t so tragic it would be damnably funny!’
Amanda, looking at him with an aching pity beyond her years, was once again reminded of Julia. Julia whose jealous love of her husband had prompted her to accuse him of entirely imaginary affairs with any and every woman he paid the smallest attention to. Was Mrs Barton only another Julia? Did she really love her husband with the selfish, jealous love that Julia had had for Alastair? and had he, because of his work, neglected her and so driven her to much the same hysterical extremes of behaviour that Julia had indulged in? Could love really do such dreadful things to people? Drive them so mercilessly?
She said quickly: ‘Don’t, Glenn! I don’t want to sound catty, but anyone who has ever met Miss Ford will know that it’s all nonsense. No one would believe it.’
Glenn lifted his head from his hands and looked at her.
‘No,’ he said with a wry smile. ‘I don’t suppose they would. But there are a good many people who have not met her, and it makes an unsavoury story. God knows I can’t spare her from the office just now, but for her own sake I’ve tried to make her go. I can’t let her name be spattered with mud by every gossip in the Island. It isn’t fair on her. I have got some sort of duty towards the woman—and to your uncle for that matter. But she won’t go. She says that if she went now it might look like an admission of guilt, and that anyway she will not be forced to leave by an entirely baseless scandal. I’ve done my best to persuade her, but it’s no use.’
‘She’s quite right,’ said Amanda warmly. ‘If you wouldn’t sack her because she had a row with your wife, I don’t see why she should lose her job now, just because your wife is telling everyone that she was your____’ She stopped abruptly and flushed.
‘Mistress,’ finished Glenn Barton wryly. ‘I suppose not. But she is the only one I worry about. The others can not only take care of themselves, but give as good as they get.’
‘What others?’ asked Amanda, puzzled.
‘Didn’t Miss Moon tell you that too?’ inquired Glenn Barton bitterly. ‘Monica is not the only one I am supposed to have carried on with. Anita has been very generous with her accusations. I am supposed to have made love to half a dozen women—Mrs Norman for one. In fact it seems that no woman is safe from me. You wouldn’t think it to look at me, would you?’
He laughed again. A short, harsh laugh that was entirely devoid of amusement.
‘Why don’t you strangle her!’ demanded Amanda indignantly.
‘Anita?’
‘Yes. It sounds to me as if it would be justifiable homicide!’
Glenn smiled a curious, twisted smile. ‘You don’t understand. You see she doesn’t really mean it. She’s just a spoilt kid who has found that the party isn’t as much fun as she thought it would be. She drinks a little too much, and that doesn’t help. She’s only hitting about her because she’s bored and disappointed—with me and marriage and Cyprus.’
‘She sounds to me,’ said Amanda candidly, ‘as if she needed a dozen with a good solid slipper. It’s a pity you didn’t try it.’
‘Perhaps,’ said Glenn wryly. ‘But it’s too late for that now. She wants me to divorce her.’
Amanda said: ‘Of course you’re going to?’
Glenn Barton got up suddenly and walked over to the open french windows that gave out onto a small covered verandah shadowed with jasmine and climbing roses. He stood with his back to Amanda and his hands in his pockets and spoke without turning his head.
‘I can’t!’
‘Why, Glenn? Do you mean because of your job? I know that Uncle Oswin is pretty rabid on the subject of divorce, but it’s not your fault.’
‘It isn’t the job,’ said Glenn Barton, still without turning. ‘I don’t care a damn about the job. It’s Anita. You see I–I love her so much.’
He swung round suddenly to face Amanda and said harshly, ‘I suppose you find that difficult to believe? It’s absurd, isn’t it, to go on loving someone who can do that to you, and to be unable to stop? I know it doesn’t make sense, but it’s true all the same. I want her back—on any terms. I don’t believe that she loves Lumley Potter. It’s only a silly escapade, and if I don’t divorce her she’ll get over it one day and–and come back to me.’
He looked appealingly at Amanda; his tired, desperate eyes pleading with her to agree with him; to reassure him. Amanda got up swiftly and went to him, gripping his arm:
‘Don’t look like that, Glenn! Please don’t. I’m sure it will all come right in the end. Oh, Glenn, I am so sorry! Isn’t there anything I could do? Perhaps if I saw her?—talked to her?’
A sudden light leapt into Glenn’s grey eyes and for a moment his whole face seemed to change and the lines in it to alter; the avid, incredulous look of a cornered animal who is suddenly presented with an avenue of escape. It faded as quickly as it had come and his eyes fell.
‘No. No, I couldn’t possibly ask you to. I shouldn’t have talked to you like this. I didn’t mean to—honestly I didn’t. I only thought that you should know something about it because—well because you’re a Derington, and because I’d lied to you. I apologize. It was unforgivable of me to go to pieces and bore you with my sordid private affairs. Will you forgive me and–and try and forget about it?’
He covered her hands with one of his own, and despite the warmth of the hot Mediterranean day she could feel that it was cold and quivering.
‘Now you’re being silly,’ said Amanda with a light laugh. ‘You know very well that you don’t have to apologize for anything. I’m the one who should do that. Here you are, in the thick of a perfectly beastly crisis in your life, and on top of everything else Uncle Oswin orders you, practically at pistol point, to put me up and show me round. You must have wanted to murder me!’
Glenn’s cold fingers tightened convulsively on hers and he said quickly: ‘Don’t talk like that. You weren’t to know. If I’d had any guts I’d have written and explained the whole thing, but–but I couldn’t believe that she wouldn’t come back. I couldn’t think about anything else. My brain seemed to have stopped working, and if it hadn’t been for Monica Ford I’d probably be without a job by now as well as without a wife. You’ve helped me quite enough by letting me talk to you, and I can’t let you get involved any further in an affair like this. There’s a proverb about touching pitch, and I won’t have you touching it.’
‘What nonsense!’ said Amanda warmly. ‘You told me yourself that this involved the good name of the firm. Well, I am a Derington, so you can’t keep me out of it. If you’d like me to see your wife, I will.’
Glenn dropped his hand and turned away to stare once more at the sunlit garden beyond the shadowy verandah.
He said slowly: ‘I don’t know. I simply do not know. You see she refuses to see me, and I don’t think she even reads my letters. She says that until I agree to a divorce she has nothing to say to me. If I could only talk to her!—but perhaps she might talk to you.’
‘It’s worth trying anyway,’ said Amanda. ‘At the worst she can only show me the door, and after being brought up by Uncle Oswin I am practically immune to snubs!’
Glenn Barton turned quickly and took her hands in a brief hard grasp:
‘You’re a brick, Amanda. I can’t thank you enough. I know I shouldn’t let you do this, and probably no good will come of it, but I’ve reached the stage where I feel I’d try almost anything!’
‘Then that’s settled,’ said Amanda. ‘When would be the best time to see her? Now?’
‘A good bit later I should think. She’s sure to be out bathing or watching Lumley paint during most of the afternoon and even
ing. Lumley’s the snag, of course. He’ll be there.’
‘I’ll go down after supper tonight,’ decided Amanda, ‘and just walk in. And you’re right about Mr Potter. He’s going to be terribly in the way. Couldn’t we think up some method of getting rid of him, just for an hour?’
Glenn Barton frowned thoughtfully. ‘Yes,’ he said hesitantly. ‘I think it might be done. I could send him a message or something.’
‘That’s it!’ said Amanda with enthusiasm. ‘We’ll pretend that someone at the hotel wants to see his pictures with the idea of buying one. That’s sure to fetch him. I’ll get Toby to do it.’
Glenn Barton said uncertainly: ‘I think I’d better do it myself. I don’t quite feel like explaining this whole sordid set-up to anyone else.’
‘We don’t need to. But Mr Potter probably wouldn’t come for you, and I shall merely tell Toby Gates that I have a date with your wife and as I do not want Lumley Potter around, will he be an angel and decoy him away for an hour? I know he’ll do it if I ask him. How do I find the house?’
‘It’s on the harbour,’ said Glenn Barton; and gave directions in detail.
‘I’ll go down about half past nine,’ said Amanda, ‘and wait until I see Mr Potter leave, and then go straight up. And as Toby is far too rich for his own good, it won’t hurt him at all if he finds that he has to end up by buying a genuine Potter Masterpiece.’
The tense lines around Glenn Barton’s mouth relaxed and he laughed.
‘How nice to hear you laugh again,’ said an approving voice from the doorway. They had not heard Miss Moon’s approach and they turned, startled and looking a little guilty.
‘I see that dear Amanda has been cheering you up,’ said Miss Moon cosily. She was wearing today a linen skirt patterned in shades of cerise, with a blouse of cerise organdie copiously ornamented with narrow frills of lace. Her improbable hair was adorned with a gay bow of tulle in the same shade, while a scarf composed of several yards of the same material encircled her thin neck and floated behind her. The amethysts and opals of yesterday had been replaced by a set of garnets that did not tone well with the prevailing colour scheme, but the chains of silver filigree were the same and the scent of heliotrope accompanied her in an almost visible wave.