by Susan Barrie
“Yes?” Alison queried, glancing at her expectantly.
Jessamy drew another deep breath.
“Oh, nothing,” she answered. “Except that I thought him—”
“Come in!” a deep, warm baritone voice called from within.
And Alison watched her stepdaughter enter.
Alison made her way back to her well-fitted kitchen in the south tower, and she decided to make a batch of cakes for tea. As she broke the eggs into a basin and creamed the fat she wondered, with a tiny frown between her brows, what it was that Jessamy had tried to say before that command to enter his room had come from the lordly occupant of it himself. There had been an expression on her face that was quite revealing ... Alison herself had no doubt that the nineteen-year-old had been struggling for a suitable word to adequately describe the man she was about to visit.
And she had been unable to think of a suitable word. Perhaps, given another second or so, she would have done so. Then she might well have said that, right from the beginning, she had thought Charles Leydon ‘wonderful.’ And wonderful was a very revealing word, especially when a girl like Jessamy used it.
But what puzzled Alison was why, from the first, Leydon had unbent to Jessamy. A basically hard man—whatever illness might have made of him, and would continue to make of him until he was completely fit again—was the last person she would have suspected capable of being affected by the timidity and the poignancy of Jessamy, with her enormous, doe-like eyes, and her generally ethereal appearance.
But he was. She herself had seen the look that had flashed into his eyes as soon as she introduced Jessamy. And his attitude to Jessamy had not changed since. It was the attitude of a man who went hunting with a falcon on his wrist and suddenly came upon a small, broken bird in his path ... and took it home to look after it.
When she had made her cakes, she set a tea-tray for Leydon, and waited for Jessamy to return to the kitchen before taking it in. But the electric clock on the wall informed her that it was half-past four, and still Jessamy was cosily closeted with the invalid. At a quarter to five Leydon’s bell rang.
When she entered his sitting-room she found Jessamy sitting, quite literally, at his feet, on a footstool, and Leydon—looking intensely interesting with his pallor and his sleek black hair and well-cut features—lying back in his chair and looking so relaxed that his expression was almost peaceful. There was a kind of languid contentment in his eyes, a strikingly gentle expression round his mouth, and even his square jaw had a softened look.
When Alison entered the room he looked up at her languidly, while Jessamy, a faintly guilty expression in her eyes, surveyed her stepmother apologetically. Apologetically and smugly.
“Oh, Alison.” Leydon spoke without anything in the nature of apology in his voice. “When you bring my tea will you put an extra cup on the tray for Jessamy? She and I have discovered that we like talking to one another, and we’ve an amazing amount in common. We both think animals should not be confined in zoos, and people who live in delightful rural areas such as this have an unfair advantage over the unfortunates who live in towns. Something, we’re agreed, should be done about them.”
“The people who live in towns or the people who live in rural areas?” Alison enquired, a little stiffly.
Leydon smiled up at her whimsically.
“Do you need to ask? Don’t you remember that the subject was raised between us on the first day I came here, while we were visiting the roof? You thought the town-dwellers should be encouraged to visit places like this and pay half a crown a time for the privilege of travelling all the way back to the towns ... I thought it would be better if they were encouraged to stay, and places like this were either pulled down or converted into flats for their needs. In that way we could all share the benefits of the countryside.”
“Except that the countryside would soon cease to be the countryside if everybody lived there,” Alison retorted with something like heat.
“True.” But he was still smiling lazily. “However, the boot can’t be on the same foot all the time, can it? Progress would cease to be progress if that was permitted indefinitely. Jessamy agrees with me.”
Alison swallowed something in her throat. She had the curious sensation that he was deliberately trying to provoke her ... attacking her on a subject that he knew to be a kind of fetish with her. Or was this simply his method of reminding her that he had plans for Leydon Hall? ... plans which he had not yet had an opportunity to discuss with her!
Jessamy, seeing Alison biting her lip, looked mildly uncomfortable. But, with that look in her great dark eyes, and obviously under the influence—very much under the influence, Alison would have said—of the man lounging gracefully in the deep armchair, she would have agreed with anything and everything he said, even if it was an outrageous suggestion he put forward to turn Leydon into a kind of outdoor zoo or an institution for old people.
To Alison there was something slightly indecent about the naked admiration in her eyes, and the humble appreciation she didn’t attempt to conceal because she was being noticed.
“Are you quite sure you wouldn’t rather have your tea alone?” Alison suggested, with a return of her stiffness ... and by this time it was slightly ramrod stiffness. “I mean, Jessamy is inclined to chatter, and you probably don’t feel up to it—”
“On the contrary,” the invalid assured her, his grey eyes confusing her because they were full of cool amusement, “I find her ‘chatter’ as good as a tonic. Taken three times a day she’d have me on my feet in no time! Don’t forget about the extra cup, will you?”
“No, of course not,” Alison replied, and then retreated from the room.
She felt as if the smooth sides of her throat were burning, and so were her cheeks. Although she had done so much for him Leydon had not yet asked her to have tea with him. He sometimes pressed her to sit down and reveal some of her household news to him, but even when she brought him a glass of sherry in the evenings he never said, “Will you have one with me?”
Funny, when he had once insisted that she drank some of his Napoleon brandy which she would rather have done without.
As she unhooked another cup from the dresser and placed it on the tray in its neat, flowered saucer she was slightly horrified because it occurred to her that what she was experiencing was a kind of jealous resentment because the nineteen-year-old Jessamy had beaten her to it, as it were. And as Jessamy was the one person she was most fond of in life this was distinctly peculiar.
When Jessamy emerged, about six o’clock, she made her way out to the kitchen and looked uneasily at her stepmother. But there was a brightness in her eyes that gave away the fact that she was not really apprehensive ... or her afternoon had provided her with the confidence that was new to her.
“What do you think?” she said, as Alison stuffed a chicken, and pretended to be too busy to pay much attention to her. “Mr. Leydon thinks I ought to take driving lessons. He doesn’t think my foot would be a real handicap, and in any case the controls are on the steering-wheel of most up-to-date cars. If I had a really up-to-date model I’d be able to drive it in no time, and I wouldn’t have to ask Marianne—or you—to take me into town with you when you go. I’d be really independent!”
Alison looked up at her with a blank expression.
“That’s interesting,” she remarked. “But how, and by what means, are you to obtain an up-to-date model of even a new bicycle? One of these days we may be able to afford a motor-scooter for you, but—”
Jessamy produced her trump card.
“Mr. Leydon—and he insists that I’m to call him Charles!—says he’ll buy me one.”
“What?”
Jessamy grinned at her. She moved awkwardly round the table and helped herself to a raisin that had just been stoned and washed ready for incorporation in a steamed pudding.
“He says he’ll buy me one. He says I can choose it myself, when I’ve had a few driving lessons. He’s going to arrange
for those, too.”
No!” Alison removed her hands from the flour and wiped them automatically on a tea-towel. “For one thing, I’d never have an easy moment if you were to take driving lessons, and for another, Mr. Leydon is no real connection of ours, and I certainly wouldn’t allow him to buy you anything so expensive as a car. I wouldn’t allow him to buy you anything at all—”
Jessamy filched another raisin, and her dark eyes sparkled like stars on a frosty night.
“As a matter of fact, he says I ought to have my hair done at the hairdressers sometimes, and wear clothes that are more in keeping with my age. I think he thought this twin set of yours a bit prim and Victorian—”
“A bit what?”
“Victorian.” Jessamy continued to grin unrepentantly. “Oh, I know you’re not very old yourself, but you do rather go in for clothes that make you look staid, don’t you? I mean, only you would refuse to wear slacks although you live in the country, and why in the world do you always wear overalls? Not just a natty little pinafore, but a real all-enveloping overall! Don’t you know that overalls are a badge of servitude, and they help to create a servile attitude? You’d feel less eager to run around with a duster and a tin of polish in your hand if you took to wearing jeans and a sweater. In the winter, anyway. In the summer you could wear flowery bits of cotton ... sun-tops, and even shorts. They’d prevent people thinking you were a lady gardener when they caught you hoeing the borders.”
“Well!” Alison ceased operations altogether as she stood regarding her stepdaughter. Jessamy, afraid that she might have upset her, and having a warm affection for her, slipped an arm behind her shoulders and gave her a hug. As a result she acquired a dab of flour on the twin set.
“Don’t take any notice of what I say,” she pleaded. “But at the same time don’t look so outraged when I tell you about things like Charles wanting to buy me a car, and offering to make me a small allowance for personal expenditure if—if you’ll agree...?”
This time she sounded doubtful.
Alison picked up the chicken and carried it over to the oven.
“I’ll have a few words with Mr. Leydon when I take him his medicine,” she said, a trifle grimly. “He has to have it an hour before his evening meal is served.”
But Charles Leydon was not in any real mood to talk when Alison offered him his two capsules and glass of water to dispose of them before starting to lay the table for his evening meal.
She and her stepdaughters had what they described as supper in the evenings, but Leydon had to be humoured, and with him supper was something one took after the theatre, or some formal entertainment, and therefore it was dinner with three courses at least that had to be prepared for him, despite the fact that he had the same sort of lunch that they had in the middle of the day.
His round table was drawn up cosily close to the fire, and with one of Alison’s prized satin-damask cloths on it and some very highly polished silver and glass it looked most attractive. Flowers were never any problem on an estate where they were grown in masses for the markets of London, Birmingham and Manchester, and Alison always managed to get what she wanted out of the gardeners. When it was understood that they were to brighten the apartments of Sir Charles himself the best were cut and offered, and to-night Alison had spent some time creating a centrepiece of white and gold chrysanthemums for the table.
They were in a round bowl of crystal, and one or two of the blooms appeared to float on the water. Alison placed them carefully in the middle of the gleaming damask, and she folded Leydon’s napkin into the semblance of a water-lily and placed that beside his plate. Then she straightened her slim back and looked up at him.
For once she was not wearing her overall. She would not have accepted it that Jessamy’s words had weighed with her at all, but before making her way to Leydon’s sitting-room she had found time to slip upstairs to her room and had thrust her overall into the corner of a closet kept for housing soiled linen and unhooked a neat wool dress from her wardrobe. The dress was unspectacular and rather primly cut—as indeed most of her clothes were—but its slimness emphasised her own willowy shape, and the colour suited her.
Beyond that, she looked much as she usually did, with her hair twisted into a rather tight knot in the nape of her neck. Before running a comb through it and then screwing it up hastily she had allowed it, for a second or so, to flow about her face, and she had been secretly amazed by the transformation.
But that didn’t mean she was contemplating altering her hair-style. Just because Jessamy had made her feel like a piece of Victoriana she had no intention of going as far as that.
And Charles Leydon seemed hardly to be aware of her as he stared moodily into the fire. Alison was afraid Jessamy had tired him during the afternoon, and she said as much before she returned to the kitchen for his first course.
“You seem a little tired to-night,” she remarked. “I’m afraid Jessamy talked too much while she was with you this afternoon.”
He glanced up at her vaguely.
“Jessamy? Oh, no, I find her very refreshing.” Alison wished she had made a less clumsy and pointed opening. “She’s a charming child, and the only thing that upsets me about her is seeing her limp so painfully. I’ve made up my mind that something’s got to be done about that limp. In fact, I’ve been trying to recall the name of a fellow who’s extraordinarily good at that sort of thing ... a physiotherapist I suppose you’d call him.”
“Oh, yes,” Alison said, but she hardly knew whether to feel delighted for Jessamy’s sake because something might yet be done for her limp—and a good many efforts had already been made to free Jessamy of her affliction—or slightly dismayed because the girl seemed to exercise some peculiar fascination for Leydon, and apparently he was sober to-night because he had been dwelling upon her handicap.
Leydon lighted himself a cigarette, and then threw it into the fire.
“You would raise no objections, I imagine, if I arranged for Jessamy to see this man? As soon as I can remember his name.”
“Of course not,” Alison answered quietly, “so long as you permitted me to pay his fee, whatever it is, for seeing her.”
Leydon glanced up at her in some surprise. “His fee? Oh, it won’t just be a question of seeing her ... there’ll be the treatment. He isn’t English, and it might be quite expensive, but you mustn’t worry about that. I’ll pay it, whatever it is.”
“I wouldn’t allow you to do anything of the kind.” Alison spoke so emphatically that he frowned. “Jessamy’s father left a small sum of money to each of the girls, and whatever Jessamy has will be spent on her. If necessary I have money of my own which can be used for her. Certainly she doesn’t need a—a comparative stranger to foot her doctor’s bills.”
Charles Leydon lay back in his chair, and for once his expression baffled her. It became utterly inscrutable.
“I had no idea you were a young woman of means, Mrs. Fairlie,” he said softly, at last. “I’m happy to hear that your late husband provided for you so well.”
Alison flushed.
“It—it was an aunt who left me the little money I have,” she confessed. “And naturally,” she added, “what is mine is Jessamy’s.”
“Oh, naturally,” he agreed, in the same soft, almost silken tone.
Alison stared at him. She had the feeling that he had suddenly become a stranger again—hard, critical and alien ... and icily, icily cool. For some reason the change put her on her mettle, gave her courage to say something else that she knew had to be said.
“Oh, by the way, Mr. Leydon”—and since he had just called her Mrs. Fairlie she saw no reason why she shouldn’t call him Mr. Leydon, with a slight emphasis on the Mr.—“I hope you won’t mind my mentioning it, but Jessamy talked a lot of nonsense after she had tea with you, and as it worried me I would like to confirm that it was nonsense. She said something about driving lessons—”
“I certainly think she should have driving lessons.”
“And a car—a car that she could drive herself.”
“There are models on the market that she could handle with ease. I intend to go into the matter when I get back to London.”
“But the one thing we can’t afford to buy Jessamy is a—a car. Between us, Marianne, Lorne and I share a Mini; but—”
He settled himself comfortably in his chair—although she was still standing—and selected yet another cigarette. He tapped the end of it on a well-shaped thumb.
“When Jessamy gets her car I shall select it and pay for it myself,” he said.
She was aghast.
“But you can’t do that! For one thing, it wouldn’t be fair to the other two girls—”
‘‘I’m only interested in Jessamy,” he said coldly.
She stared at him.
“But—but—”
“Neither Lorne nor Marianne interest me in the slightest. Lorne is just a stolid schoolgirl, and Marianne has the type of obvious prettiness that repels rather than attracts. All that golden hair and those big blue eyes ... No, I don’t fall for them.”
In a small, distant voice she heard herself enquire:
“You’re not one of the gentlemen who prefer blondes?”
At that his whole expression altered, and he actually laughed as if she had said something very amusing.
“Well now, I wouldn’t go as far as that,” he answered. “I’ve known, in my time, some highly attractive blondes ... very, very fetching blondes.” His grey eyes wandered over her, and coolly took in the fact that she, too, was blonde ... almost silvery blonde, in fact. “But they have to have something more to them than just looks. And they have to dress very carefully”—this time it was the wool dress that he studied. “Blondes are glamorous creatures, and they need glamorous clothes—not dowdy or over-smart ones. Gentle, doe-eyed lovelies like Jessamy—and she is very, very lovely in a most unusual way—look good in almost anything. But I do think she might have a little more spent on her wardrobe and Marianne have less.”