‘But I really don’t need it,’ she protested.
‘No? Well, perhaps I do,’ he said carelessly, and Alison was pleasantly aware that the matter had been taken out of her hands. It was a very long while since anyone had bothered about her having proper meals.
At the next likely-looking place he drew the car to a standstill, and they went in to have breakfast.
There was nothing overbearing about his attitude-in fact, most of the time he gave the impression of the most casual supervision. But, just as on that first evening, Alison was conscious of quiet, deliberate care for her behind that half indifferent manner.
And she was glad that it should be so.
Afterwards they went on, Julian driving fast, but with a sureness that left Alison without a qualm.
Along the white, dusty roads they sped, past fields where the corn was slowly turning golden, where poppies danced in the wind and cornflowers nodded to marguerites. And over it all hung the thick, sweet scent of clover lying warm in the sunshine.
Across the fields the cloud shadows trooped, following each other in endless procession on and on to the west. And, watching them, Alison thought, ‘Whenever I smell clover, and whenever I watch sun and shadow together, I shall think of this day again and be happy.’
‘Do I drive too fast for you, Alison?’ he said at last. ‘You’re very quiet.’
She roused herself a little. ‘No. I like it. Ought I to be talking?’
‘No, my child.’ He gave that thoughtful smile, but without turning his head to look at her. ‘You’re a very restful little presence, sitting there beside me. I only wondered what you were thinking of that kept you so silent.’
‘Oh.’ Alison coloured slightly at the compliment. ‘I was just trying to impress it all very clearly on my mind,’ she explained slowly, ‘so that afterwards I can be happy all over again when I think about it.’
Julian laughed softly.
‘There isn’t anything very dramatic for you to remember, I’m afraid. Just a car drive. You’ll soon forget it.’
‘Oh, no. Such a very happy car drive,’ she said shyly. ‘And I think happiness is the most lasting thing in the world.’
He frowned thoughtfully. ‘I don’t think I agree with you there.’
But Alison nodded firmly.
‘It’s true. Just think how you take out a pleasant memory and look at it over and over again; and it’s always bright. But the tragic ones grow dim and lose their outlines. I used to think when I first lost Mother and Daddy that I should never forget the shock and misery, but I very seldom think of that part of it now. Instead, I remember odd, delightful things, like going with my mother to buy my first party frock when I was a little girl, or hearing Daddy say he was proud of me when I passed my first school exam, or seeing them both trying not to look too brazenly gratified when I won a ridiculous cup for rather indifferent swimming.’
Julian turned his head for a moment and gave her a quick, kindly smile.
‘You are a good little philosopher, Alison. But, all the same, I think temperament has a lot to do with your argument. I’m afraid what I remember are the hard, bitter things. The times when I’ve been wildly angry or-’
‘Hurt,’ finished Alison quietly as he hesitated.
‘I wonder why you said that?’ He spoke thoughtfully. ‘I’m not very easily hurt, you know. I’m really rather insensitive!’
‘Oh, no.’ It was Alison who smiled then. ‘You’re not in the least insensitive.’
‘But I don’t think you really know much about me, Alison,’ he said.
‘Yes, I do.’
‘What, for instance?’
She was amused to see that he found himself a not at all disagreeable topic of conversation.
‘Well-that, for one thing. You’re sensitive, very proud, rather on the look-out for slights, extremely determined, easily hurt, and unusually passionate.’
‘Good God!’ said Julian slowly. ‘And I’ve been thinking of you as a nice, unobservant little schoolgirl.’
‘Well, don’t,’ Alison advised him curtly.
‘What makes you think that I’m passionate?’ he asked with sudden stiffness, as though her final words had only just penetrated.
Alison thought unhappily of him with Rosalie in the library and was silent.
‘Anyway, I don’t think you quite know what you’re talking about,’ he told her sharply.
‘Oh, yes,’ said Alison.
And after that they drove on some way in silence. But once she noticed that his colour rose, and she wondered with a little scared amusement which part of her speech he was remembering.
About noon they stopped at a converted farmhouse, where a homely-looking woman gave them lunch, and insisted on waiting on them personally.
She spoke of Alison to Julian as ‘your young lady’, which seemed to amuse him. But Alison couldn’t help thinking it would not have amused Rosalie.
Afterwards, they wandered among the pinewoods that stretched for miles away from the farmhouse. The sparkle had come back to Alison’s eyes and a faint, clear colour to her cheeks. She took off her hat, and the warm, light wind lifted little strands of her hair and stirred the thick fringe on her forehead.
‘What pretty hair you have, Alison,’ he said, pleasantly but quite impersonally.
‘Aunt Lydia says that my fringe is ridiculous,’ Alison remarked non-committally.
‘She’s quite wrong. It’s most attractive.’ She had an odd impression that he enjoyed contradicting something Aunt Lydia had said, and the next moment he added, ‘But then your aunt and I don’t agree on many things.’
‘You don’t like Aunt Lydia, do you?’ Alison said frankly.
‘Not in the least,’ he replied just as frankly.
‘Nor do I.’
And they both laughed.
‘Let’s sit down here.’ Julian cleared some cones from under a group of trees, and they sat down on a carpet of soft pine-needles.
Alison leaned her back against a tree, and he lay on the ground beside her, propped on his elbow.
‘Anyway, you won’t have to bother about Aunt Lydia when you’re married,’ she reminded him. ‘You and Rosalie are going to live in South America, aren’t you?’
He nodded. ‘In Buenos Aires.’
‘Are you glad? To be going back, I mean.’
‘In a way, yes. ‘He moved a little uneasily. ‘I don’t know quite how it will suit Rosalie.’
She wondered if he knew how worried his eyes looked when he said that.
‘Has she said anything about it?’
‘Yes. She’s not at all keen.’ He spoke with obvious reluctance.
Alison wondered dispassionately what on earth was inducing Rosalie to do anything on which she ‘was not at all keen’. She supposed Julian must have a very great deal of money. It never entered her head that any question of affection could be concerned.
‘Will you have to be there long? Couldn’t you perhaps just be engaged until you come back?’ she suggested.
‘No.’ He looked startled and annoyed. ‘It would mean two years at least. And, in any. case, it’s the kind of job where it is essential to be a married man. Socially it’s the most important position on the firm, and there is a great deal of entertaining to be done. An unmarried man couldn’t possibly do what was required. Besides,’ he added starkly, ‘I couldn’t bear to wait for Rosalie all that time.’
Alison stared down at her hands as they lay very still in her lap.
‘You’re terribly in love with her, aren’t you?’ she said simply.
He flushed a little.
‘Yes. Desperately,’ he said, and looked at her almost resentfully.
She was silent, thinking that ‘desperately’ was probably literally correct.
After a minute he spoke again. ‘I know. You’re wondering why, aren’t you? You can’t understand it because you don’t like her yourself?’
She still said nothing. There seemed nothing to say.
/> ‘It isn’t that I’m blind to anything like her-her unkindness to you.’ He spoke slowly and unhappily. Then he rolled over suddenly and dropped his head on his arms with a sort of angry despair. ‘It doesn’t seem to make any difference,’ he said in a muffled voice. ‘I’m just as crazy about her. I don’t expect you could understand.’
‘Yes, I think I do.’ And, just for the moment, Alison put out her hand and touched the tumbled dark head, but so very, very lightly that he couldn’t possibly have known.
He looked up presently and smiled.
‘I’m sorry. It’s ridiculous to tell you all this.’
‘No, it isn’t. One has to tell someone these things sometimes,’ Alison said gravely.
He sighed impatiently. Then he took her hand absently and began to play with her fingers. ‘It’s so easy to tell you, Alison. You keep so still and don’t make idiotic exclamations when one says impossible things.’
She smiled slightly. ‘But I like it when you tell me things about yourself-impossible or otherwise.’
‘You’re very comforting,’ he told her with a little smile.
And she thought, ‘I wish I could put my arms round you and hold you and comfort you properly.’
But she couldn’t, of course. So. she said nothing, and presently, when he spoke again, it was not about himself and Rosalie.
‘What are your uncle and aunt’s plans for your future, Alison?’
Alison shrugged.
‘Uncle doesn’t approve of girls working, and says he is only too happy to give me a home. Aunt Lydia quite approves of my working, so long as I do it for her and don’t expect any sort of payment. It’s rather a vicious circle.’
Julian looked disturbed.
‘Probably your aunt will take you about much more, and treat you more like a daughter, when Rosalie is married.’
‘I dare say.’
Alison thought how pointless all that would be-when Rosalie was married.
‘In which case you’re certain to get married.’ Julian was calmly following out the line of Alison’s future.
‘Perhaps nobody will ask me,’ she said lightly, because it hurt rather to have him say these things.
He laughed a little.
‘That’s the real Victorian Alison speaking,’ he said, and his tone was as light as hers. ‘I imagine half the girls of today do most of the asking themselves. But you’re much too attractive ever to have to resort to that.’
He spoke with sincerity, but so impersonally that Alison gritted her teeth.
‘In a minute he’ll tell me I shall make a marvellous wife for some lucky man,’ she thought grimly.
And’ so that he shouldn’t, she jumped to her feet and said, ‘Don’t you think it is time we were getting back?’
He agreed lazily, and they slowly made their way back to the farm.
The woman asked if they had had a nice walk, and, when they said they had, she added understandingly that the woods were ‘grand for sweethearting’.
‘I’m sure they are,’ Julian said gravely. But Alison said nothing-just went a little pale. She wished she could have blushed instead. It would have made her look silly, of course, but at least it would have kept things on a lighter plane.
As it was,’ Julian suddenly seemed to notice, and said, ‘Alison, you’re tired. I must have let you walk too far.’
‘No, I’m all right,’ she assured him But for a moment she savoured even this perfunctory concern with pleasure.
And perhaps it was not so perfunctory, really. For he saw to it that she made a good tea, and then afterwards he settled her comfortably in the car, with cushions behind her and a light rug over her knees.
She lay back quite silent, content in the memory that he found her ‘a very restful little presence’ like that. And as they slipped past the fields and orchards once more in the lengthening shadows of the evening, she felt at peace again -even though her one day was nearly over.
A few golden stars were just beginning to prick their way through the evening sky as the car drew up at her uncle’s house.
Julian helped her out and stood with her on the pavement for a moment to say good night.
‘Won’t you come in?’ Alison asked.
But he said no, he had a supper engagement and was already late.
‘It’s been so beautiful,’ she began, and then she suddenly found great difficulty in going on. ‘I wish I could tell you-’ She bit her lip. Then she added in a low voice, ‘You do understand, don’t you?’
‘My dear child’-he took her hand kindly-’you really mustn’t make so much of it. I too have to thank you for a delightful day.’
Alison looked up and smiled then, her composure quite restored.
‘I’m glad you enjoyed it too.’
He stood watching her as she ran up the steps. Then, as she turned, with her key in the door, he just raised his hand in farewell, and got into the car and drove away.
‘It’s over,’ thought Alison, and went into the house.
To her surprise, her aunt called to her from the dining-room.
‘Is that you, Alison?’
‘Yes, Aunt Lydia.’ Alison went reluctantly towards the room. Neither her aunt nor Rosalie had been expected back until the next day.
‘Where have you been, my dear?’ They both looked up with some curiosity as Alison came in.
And all at once Alison felt very much afraid of the real answer to that question. But it would be absurd, of course, to make any mystery about it. So she said, as naturally as possible, ‘I’ve been out driving with Julian.’
‘With whom?
‘With Mr. Tyndrum;’ Alison corrected herself nervously under her aunt’s amazed scrutiny.
‘Really, Alison?’ Aunt Lydia ’s manner was very cool and collected now. ‘How did that come about?’
‘It was quite by chance, Aunt Lydia.’ She wished it didn’t sound so absurdly like justifying herself. ‘He rang up yesterday because he had left his cigarette-case here. Then, when he found I was on my own and not doing anything today, he asked me if I’d like to go driving. I suppose he was just-just at a loose end.’
‘I suppose he was,’ said Rosalie, and that was her sole contribution to the conversation.
‘Well, you’d better have something to eat now,’ her aunt observed.
So Alison had a very uncomfortable and rather silent supper, and thought how different everything tasted from the other meals she had had that day.
She wanted to say rudely to Rosalie, ‘You needn’t go on looking like an offended sphinx. He spent a good deal of the time telling me how much he loved you.’
But she couldn’t do that, so instead she went to bed.
The next day, no reference whatever was made to Alison’s excursion, and it looked as though even her aunt and Rosalie had decided it was harmless.
Aunt Lydia kept her running about on innumerable errands during the morning and half the afternoon. But at last even she was satisfied, and Alison had a little time to herself.
She was guiltily conscious of owing Audrey a letter. The twins were due home from school the following week, and she supposed she ought to make sure that the child had the last of her weekly letters.
Fetching her writing-case and a fountain-pen, Alison went into the library. For a moment she stood quite still, looking round and reconstructing the scene when Julian had come to tea.
Only a couple of days ago. It didn’t seem possible. The significance of the last two days was worth all the long pointless weeks she had spent in this house while nothing was happening.
‘Alison!’
That was Aunt Lydia. An angry impatience took hold of Alison. She would not always be at her aunt’s beck and call. She wanted a little time to herself-just a little time to sit and think over the lovely hours of yesterday.
She slipped behind a heavy curtain. Curled up in the corner of the window-seat there, she would be fairly safe.
‘And even if she looks in here, I shan’t take
any notice,’ Alison thought rebelliously.
But she heard no more, so probably Aunt Lydia had decided she was out.
Alison opened her writing-case and dutifully began:
‘Dear Audrey,-You will hardly know Lucifer when you see him next week. He is growing into a splendid cat-’
She paused and looked dreamily away out of the window, trying idly to recall anything about Lucifer’s activities that week which seemed worthy of chronicle. In Audrey’s estimation he still ranked first among topics of interest.
This time yesterday they had just come back from their walk, and that absurd woman was saying how grand the woods were for sweethearting.
How surprised she would be if Julian took Rosalie there one day. She’d wonder which of them really was the sweetheart.
But he couldn’t take Rosalie there. He couldn’t.
How lovely the fields had looked as they drove homeward. She could see them now, slipping past in the mellow evening light, as they drove on-and on-and on-
Gradually her fair head drooped against the shutter. Her writing-case slipped from her knee on to the window-seat.
It was so quiet there. Only the sound of Alison’s own soft, even breathing.
She sank deeper and deeper through layers of sleep, lost entirely for a while to the world of problems and perplexities.
And then, from a long way off, something seemed to break the tranquillity, something which made her stir uneasily and catch her breath in a troubled little sigh.
She opened her eyes, to find the light had changed a good deal. She must have slept a long time, hidden here behind the curtain. The next moment she realised that she was no longer alone. There were two people in the library, beyond the sheltering curtain. Two people talking in angry voices.
‘But it’s utterly unreasonable of you, my dear-’
That was Julian’s voice, she realised with a start, And then Rosalie’s cut across it, cold and incisive.
‘It is not unreasonable. You raise heaven knows what sort of a row if I look at another man, and then, the first moment I’m out of the way, you hawk some cheap little piece round the country for the whole day.’
Alison pressed back against the shutter, sick with terror and dismay. There was no possible escape, and yet she couldn’t, couldn’t go on listening to this scene.
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