Child Friday

by Sara Seale

  “Divorce...” It seemed to Emily extraordinary that she could ever consider such a thing. “Oh, no,” she said quite calmly, “I don’t agree with divorce—neither, I’m sure, would Dane.”

  “Well,” he said softly, “in your case I imagine an annulment would fill the bill. Even the church doesn’t frown upon that.”

  Emily pushed away her plate with her sweet untasted. She had known that Tim, like Vanessa, had guessed the true nature of her marriage, but it humiliated her bitterly to hear it put into words.

  “I don’t want to discuss these things with you, Tim,” she said. “Whatever people may imagine, the affair’s my private concern. Because, once I was—was fond of you—doesn’t give you any right to be part of my present life.”

  “But I should very much like to be part of it,” he said. “I might, indeed, become useful to fall back upon. Think that one over.”

  “I should like to go now,” Emily said. “I’ve some shopping I want to do before we pick up Dane.”

  As they rose to go she looked round the now familiar dining-room, reminded of the day she had lunched here with Dane and he had broken his rule of not feeding in public simply to give her pleasure. Outside the big windows, Plymouth Hoe was bright and clean in the sunshine, and beyond, the sea lay calmly blue, meeting the more fragile blue of the April sky.

  Emily experienced a sudden longing for Dane, and a sharp regret that she had left the isolation of Pennyleat to be faced with facts she had rather not contemplate. She took as long as she could over her shopping, wishing Tim need not accompany her, and was relieved when it was time to drive to the laboratory to fetch Dane.

  She watched him come out of the building with Bella and cross the street. The traffic was fairly heavy at this time of day and the bitch had to wait for his signals.

  “I’d better go and give him an arm,” Tim said, but Emily stopped him.

  “No,” she said. “He dislikes being helped. Bella will look after him.”

  “The traffic’s heavy.”

  “They’re both used to it. Dane knows exactly where to find the car.”

  Tim glanced at her curiously.

  “You’re very assured,” he said.

  “Yes,” she replied with calm and did not add that she had never got used to watching Dane cross a road in traffic.

  Once he was on the other side, she went to meet him.

  “Sit in the back with me,” she said, but he only replied that since he had Bella with him Emily would be better in front with Tim.

  He seemed disinclined for talk as Tim drove them home and, beyond asking if they had had a good lunch, appeared disinterested as to how they had spent their day. When they reached the house he told Emily to give Tim a drink and went off, himself, to his study.

  “I won’t stay,” said Tim with a grin, watching her disappointed face. “You’ve probably had enough of me for one day. Will I see you tomorrow?”

  “No, I don’t think so,” Emily replied absently, and he dropped a light kiss on the top of her smooth head.

  “Don’t get too fond of that husband of yours, will you? You might get hurt,” he said softly, and was gone.

  Emily carried the sherry decanter and glasses into the study. Dane was sitting at his desk smoking a pipe.

  “I thought I’d have my drink in here with you. Tim didn’t stay,” she said.

  She put the tray down on the desk at his elbow and watched him pour the sherry. His hand was shaking very slightly.

  “Don’t you feel well, Dane?” she asked him quickly.

  “A bit of a head, that’s all,” he replied. “I’m not used to long hours in the laboratory, yet. It’s a strain finding one’s way around.”

  “Do you have to go?”

  “Yes, for the final check-up on this book of mine. In any case they want me back.”

  “Permanently?”

  “Well, hardly, but for data that’s merely in the head I can still be useful.”

  “I see. Dane, do you feel tied?”

  His eyebrows rose.

  “What a curious question. Perhaps you'll explain.”

  But she could not ask him outright if he wished to be free of her, so said instead:

  “I mean tied to Pennyleat—to me. Don’t you ever want to go away?”

  “You know I don’t, but I suppose that means you do,” he said. “Well, Emily, I realize that I’ve, perhaps, asked rather a lot of you at your age. Why don’t you run up to London for a few days? Louisa would always put you up.”

  “But I don’t want to go,” she protested, dismayed. “What would I do in London now?”

  “Have a good time.”

  “With Miss Pink?”

  “Oh, Louisa’s a gay old stick, you wouldn’t be dull. That young man of yours would be glad to run you around a bit I don’t doubt.”

  “Do you want me to go?” she asked, wondering if this was his way of being rid, for a time, of a companion he had never really wanted.

  “Not particularly,” he said. “But I thought I detected a certain note of nostalgia when you and young Lonnegan were discussing old times the other day. Hasn’t he a job of work, incidentally?”

  Emily thought there was a faintly critical note in his voice as he asked the question. It was true that Tim’s visit had lengthened now to a fortnight and he was talking of stopping over for Easter.

  “He’s with some publishing firm, I believe,” she said. “Tim always did seem able to take time off when he wanted.”

  “Very convenient for him. Well, Emily, if you want to break loose, you’d better do it now. Alice will be home in a week or so.”

  “But I don’t want—that is” She broke off helplessly, seeing his frown of impatience.

  “Very well,” he said. “You’ll have to be content with local diversions, then. Your young man will, doubtless, help you to pass the time while he‘s still here.”

  “I wish you wouldn’t allude to him as my young man,” Emily said a little crossly, and he leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes always a sign that the discussion had lost interest for him.

  “Mr. Timothy Lonnegan, then, who so painstakingly addresses me as ‘sir’.”

  “Does that make you feel old?” she laughed.

  “No,” he replied without opening his eyes. “It makes me feel a fool. He’s only seven or eight years younger than I am.”

  III

  Emily met Mrs. Mortimer again in the village and was once more bidden to partake of mid-morning coffee, but this time she was ready with an excuse, only to be made to feel uncomfortable when the old lady looked at her with a sceptical eye and observed:

  “You refused my invitation to tea, too. I had no idea your time was so well filled.”

  “I’m so sorry,” said Emily unhappily. “Perhaps another time?”

  “Oh yes, perhaps. That young friend of my niece’s is stopping over Easter. When he’s gone, you’ll doubtless have more time.”

  Emily did not care for the implication.

  “I don’t see a great deal of Tim Lonnegan,” she said. “As you say, he’s a friend of your niece’s.”

  “You’re first, though, I gather, what?” Mrs. Mortimer gave a rasping chuckle. “You should always remember village gossip, my dear. That Mrs. Meeker of yours was always a talker. How’s your husband?”

  “Well, but a little tired. He’s going quite a bit to the laboratory just now.”

  “I suppose it’s one way of getting himself off the premises. Good-morning to you. Next time perhaps you’ll give me the pleasure of a longer discussion,” said the old lady, and went into the post office.

  Emily walked home resolving there should be no next time if she could help it. Mrs. Mortimer was a thoroughly unpleasant old woman and Emily could understand why Dane had once described her as a vulgarian.

  She met Vanessa driving Tim’s car down the hill from Pennyleat and stopped when the girl slowed up.

  “Hullo!” Vanessa said. “You look disgruntled. Been h
aving words with the butcher over his tough meat?”

  “No, I met your aunt,” Emily replied without further explanation, but Vanessa was only amused.

  “Aunt Gertrude in one of her inquisitive moods can be very trying, can’t she?” she said. “Was she making cracks about Tim’s penchant for you?”

  Emily stood beside the car, the light wind blowing the hair back from her forehead.

  “Vanessa, you asked Tim down here deliberately, didn’t you?” she said suddenly.

  Vanessa’s eyebrows rose.

  “Well, one’s guests don’t as a rule arrive just by accident,” she drawled.

  “But you invited him on my account, not on your own.”

  “And if I did, darling, oughtn’t you to be grateful? You don’t get much from Dane, after all, do you?”

  “I get all I want from Dane.”

  “Do you? Then Tim must be a liar. So long, darling, I must go. Incidentally, I’ve just spent a very pleasant morning with your husband. He thinks you ought to go away. Did you know?”

  Emily stood in the road watching the car disappear down the hill. She thrust her clenched hands deep in the pockets of her coat and the hot tears stung her eyes. What were they trying to do to her, Tim, Vanessa and her aunt, even Dane? But she knew. They wanted to rectify Dane’s mistake; a mistake in which she had acquiesced with such appallingly little thought to the future.

  Dane was finishing his pre-luncheon walk round the garden with Bella when she got back to the house.

  “Things are coming up fast,” he said as they met on the terrace. “We should have a fine Easter with luck.”

  Easter ... the most tender festival of the year, thought Emily with sudden pain. But what should Easter mean to Dane, shut away in his ivory tower of blindness? What had Christmas meant, even to the child who had shared it with him?

  “Are you upset?” he asked.

  “Yes ... no ... I met Mrs. Mortimer in the village. You’re quite right—she’s a horrid old woman. I also met Vanessa,” she said.

  He took the harness off Bella and let her run free.

  “And which of the two upset you most?” he enquired ironically.

  “Is it true you told Vanessa you wanted me to go away?”

  “I told her I thought you needed to get away, which is a little different.”

  “And she agreed, of course.”

  “Naturally. She thinks, as a matter of fact that it was not very fair of me to marry you, and I’m inclined to agree with her.”

  Emily put an urgent hand on his sleeve, halting his slow progress.

  “Don’t let her make you think that, Dane—don’t let her!” she cried. “She threw away what she could have had years ago. It isn’t fair that now—that now—”

  He paused to look down at her. There were lines of fatigue in his face and the scars on his eyes seemed more marked than usual.

  “Dear Emily, I think you’ve got a little tied up with all that loving and giving,” he said. “You are no longer the quiet little mouse who used to look with such astonishing acceptance upon life. Do I make too many demands on you?”

  “You make no demands at all,” she said in a low voice. “It might be easier if you did.”

  “It might be easier if you didn’t try to read meanings into things you don’t understand,” he said with a return to his impersonal manner. “Will you be so good as to give me your arm up these last steps, my dear? It must be nearly lunch time.”

  Alice was to return home a few days before Easter. This time Emily went herself into Plymouth to meet the train and was annoyed when Tim stopped the car at the bottom of the hill and begged for a lift.

  “I’m going to meet the little girl. There’ll be no time for lunch or shopping,” she said.

  "Then I’ll come for the ride,” he grinned.

  She had no good reason for refusing him and was, in the end, thankful for his company, for she had a puncture on the way in and Tim had to change the wheel.

  “See what you’d have got if you’d left me by the wayside,” he teased. “I bet you don’t know how to change a wheel.”

  Emily didn’t. It was not one of the things that Shorty had, as yet, got around to teaching her, but they were late as a result and found Alice sitting rather disconsolately on one of the station benches.

  Emily hugged her, got a controlled embrace in return, and introduced the child to Tim.

  “Another uncle?” she asked, not showing very much surprise, and Emily laughed.

  “If you like. But Mr. Lonnegan’s only here for a short time. He’s staying at Torcroft.”

  “The house that was empty for so long? Oh, I remember. Mrs. Mortimer came back, didn’t she?”

  The drive home was not very successful. Alice sat on the back seat looking offended because Tim, in front, made little effort to talk to her, and when they dropped him at the bottom of the hill, forgot to say goodbye.

  “Why did he have to come to meet me?” she asked, declining to move to the front seat beside Emily for the short run home.

  “He said he wanted the ride,” said Emily and tried to make up for the failure of the homecoming by asking questions about school and hinting at exciting preparations waiting at Pennyleat.

  But Alice would not thaw. She greeted Dane with the familiar polite composure she had shown before and regarded him with some surprise when he told her to stand in front of him so that he could see if she had grown.

  “Of course I’ve grown,” she said. “I’m three months older.”

  “Of course,” he agreed gravely. “I’d forgotten.”

  It would have been better if Emily had waited until later to introduce Alice to the new playroom but she had taken such delight in arranging the room that she was impatient to display its treasures.

  Alice walked round the room curiously, fingering the new cretonnes and examining the pictures with grave inscrutability. She did not touch the toys.

  “Well, do you like it?” asked Emily, already aware that her own excitement was a little absurd.

  “Yes, thank you,” said Alice politely. “But I liked the funny old pictures better. I never come here much anyway. It used to be a bedroom.”

  “Well now it’s yours—a playroom, sitting-room—anything you like to call it— but yours.”

  “I could always use the little dressing-room if I wanted to.”

  “I know. But wouldn’t you rather have something of your very own, with toys and books and games and the things children like?”

  “I’ve never played much with toys,” said Alice, and Emily picked up the lamb which had so much captivated her when she fought it.

  “But you’ll like this. Surely you must like this?” pleaded Emily, holding the lamb against her cheek.

  “It’s very pretty,” the child said, then seeing the disappointment in Emily’s eyes she added kindly: “You can keep it, Emily, if you like it so much.”

  Emily sighed and put the lamb back with the other toys. “Well, run along and get out of your school uniform,” she said. “Your clothes have all been cleaned and pressed and are hanging in the cupboard. Tea will be ready in half an hour.”

  She did not, as she wanted to, go to Alice’s bedroom to help her change, but instead went down to the library and Dane. He was reading one of his books of Braille and when she did not speak he looked up and said:

  “I warned you, Emily.”

  “That Alice’s playroom wouldn’t please her?”

  “Yes. It’s something unfamiliar, you see. She perhaps has a contempt for toys now she’s a schoolgirl.”

  “She didn’t even like the lamb. She said I could keep it myself if I liked it so much.”

  Dane’s mouth was tender.

  “My poor Emily,” he said softly. “I was rather afraid you were going to be disappointed.”

  “Perhaps it was my fault in a way,” Emily said. “We started off on the wrong foot. Tim Lonnegan begged a lift in. We had a puncture which delayed us and Alice was offended be
cause Tim didn’t pay much attention to her.”

  “Oh, I see.” Dane’s voice was appreciably cooler. “Well, children are jealous mortals, Emily. Alice had probably been looking forward to having you to herself. If you want to keep the affection you won last holidays, you’d better not let your young man monopolize you too much.”

  “He’s not my young man!” exclaimed Emily, exasperated, but this time he only raised his eyebrows and said with polite disbelief:

  “Isn’t he?”

  It seemed that these holidays Alice was determined to be awkward. There were moments, it was true, when she forgot to be old-fashioned and censorious, and would help Emily pick daffodils or demand the old songs at the piano and become a child again, with a child’s sudden demonstrativeness, but for the most part she was a guest in the house, resenting Tim when he called to see Emily, distrustful of Vanessa and coldly withdrawn from Dane.

  Emily began to think that the traditional dyed eggs on Easter morning would meet with as much failure as the neglected toys in the playroom, but Shorty lent encouragement to the plan of hiding the eggs about the orchard and making Alice look for them.

  “You go on and try it, see?” he said. “Don’t suppose the pore kid’s ever seen a colored egg in ’er life. And I’ll ’ide ’em in the orchard for you. If you both looks for ’em it’ll make more fun for ’er, see, and you’ll enjoy hunting ’em, I’ll be bound.”

  Dear Shorty, thought Emily gratefully, and remembered with surprise how much she had disliked him when she first came.

  Easter Sunday was one of those halcyon days that can come in April, soft and clear, with brilliant sunshine, and warm enough to be out of doors without a coat. Emily had filled the house with spring flowers, great bowls of daffodils and the first early lilac, and pussy willow scattering its pollen everywhere. Even Alice had delighted in picking and arranging. Emily drove the child to church as she had wanted to do on Christmas Day, and Vanessa and Tim came to luncheon because it was a special occasion and there seemed no one else to ask.

  The ritual of looking for the colored eggs in the orchard was more of a success than Emily had hoped for and Dane amazed everyone by finding the first egg in a notched out hollow of Emily’s apple tree.