by Sara Seale
“And what of those brave resolves of Saturday? Whatever your benefactor had in mind you would do your best to oblige him, you said. It’s hardly becoming in a beneficiary to have second thoughts after accepting so much.”
“You,” she exclaimed, rejoicing in a temporary return to normal, “are the last person to preach gratitude and duty. If it hadn’t been for you I wouldn’t have been summoned to the Presence now.”
“But that, surely was what you wanted,” he pointed out with infuriating logic, and she gave an angry little bounce which shot her handbag on to the floor, spilling out its contents.
“Will you please shut up, Robert Farmer, or better still, let me out here and I’ll take a bus,” she said, diving under his legs for an escaping lipstick.
“That would make you late for your appointment, which wouldn’t make a good impression—do stop fiddling about with my ankles, my dear child, you might cause an accident,” he said, sounding inappropriately restored to good humour, and she surfaced once more, rather pink in the face.
“I was not fiddling about with your ankles—I was retrieving my lipstick, and if you had an ounce of decent feeling you’d be giving me a little c-confidence instead of s-slapping me down!” she retorted, and he glanced down at her with a quizzical little lift of one eyebrow.
“Are you in need of confidence, then, Victoria Mary?” he enquired quite gently, and she blinked rather rapidly and looked hastily out of the window.
“Naturally,” she replied in slightly muffled tones. “It’s most important that Mr. Brown should like me and—and I’m already handicapped by having a c-cold in the head.”
“Poor Victoria! Never mind, you can have a good blow before we get there and powder your nose and I don’t suppose anyone will notice a slight pinkness round the edges,” he said.
After that they drove on in silence, but soon Victoria managed to ignore the slight sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach in renewing acquaintanceship with the exhilarating bustle of the London streets.
They were passing the Law Courts and she gazed upon them, remembering that last occasion when she had journeyed so expectantly on top of a bus to a meeting which had never taken place and had, instead, been packed off abroad to finish her education.
“Unpleasant memories?” asked Robert suddenly, as they waited in a traffic block, and because for the moment her thoughts were divorced from the immediate present she gave him that slow, lifting smile.
“Not all unpleasant,” she answered. “I was thinking of the times I came this way expecting to meet Mr. Brown only to be fobbed off with a stuffy lawyer. Twice they sent for me and twice I was disappointed, but third time lucky, they say, so this must be it” She sneezed twice and suddenly looked anxious. “You don’t think this is another let-down, do you, Robert? They wouldn’t have come out with all those queer hints and suggestions if Mr. Brown wasn’t going to turn up, would they?”
“Who knows what eccentric clients may think fit to do at the last minute?” he replied as the traffic moved on. “Anyway, we’ll soon be there, so have a good blow and powder your nose and prepare yourself for the worst.”
Robert parked the Bentley in an adjacent cul-de-sac behind the office premises and told Victoria to go on up while he locked the car. She hurried up the dark staircase with its familiar musty smell, hoping that he was tactfully giving her time to make herself known without his supervision. She could hear his leisurely steps on the bottom stair just as she reached the top and quickly slipped into the outer office, letting the door swing shut behind her.
Like the recurrence of a dream the same old clerk came forward to meet her, a little greyer, a little more bent, but as primly incurious as he had appeared three years ago.
“Please take a seat, Miss Hayes, Mr. Brown has not yet arrived,” he said, conveying a touch of reproof in that she herself was too early.
“Then he really is coming?” she said, aware that she had been half expecting excuses for unavoidable absence.
“Naturally,” the old man replied with a slight air of disapproval, then allowed himself a fleeting expression of surprise as Robert opened the door and came in.
“Good morning, Mr. Farmer. Your appointment was for eleven-fifty-five, if I am not mistaken. Would you care to come back later?” he said.
“I know I’m early, but I don’t mind waiting,” Robert replied, sitting down on a hard, uncomfortable chair and stretching out his long legs before him.
“I will just ascertain whether Mr. Chappie is free,” the clerk said, and Robert gave Victoria a most undignified wink as the old man knocked on the door of one of the private rooms and vanished inside.
“You needn’t try to upset my dignity by making me giggle,” Victoria said, sitting down on another hard chair. “Anyway, he hasn’t arrived yet, so it looks as if you’ll have a long wait for your own appointment. Wouldn’t you like to take a walk and come back?”
“Not at all. I promised Kate to see you safely bestowed before attending to my own business. Besides, I’m not entirely devoid of curiosity concerning your Invisible Man,” Robert replied, and gave her another rather disconcerting wink. .
Before she had time to retort, the door opened and Mr. Chappie came bustling out, rubbing his hands together and exuding an air of roguish bonhomie which forcibly reminded Victoria of their first meeting.
“Well, well, well! So you have already introduced yourselves,” he said. “But of course I’m forgetting, Mr. Farmer, that you’re a cousin of Mrs. Allen’s, so you are hardly strangers to one another.”
“Mr. Farmer drove me up from Sussex as he already had an appointment with you, but I don’t mind waiting if you would care to see him first, as Mr. Brown hasn’t yet arrived,” Victoria said politely as she shook hands, hoping that Robert would take the hint and leave her to get over the first introductions alone.
For a moment Mr. Chappie looked surprised and a little put out as if he suspected an impertinence, then he caught Robert’s eye, went a little red in the face and cleared his throat with a series of explosive little pops.
“Well, well, well ...” he said again, ushering them towards his private room. “No need for hurry ... no need at all ... you must both of you wait in the greater comfort of my own office, so come along in. I have a very tolerable sherry decanted in honour of this occasion, so I trust you’ll join me in a little celebration.”
Victoria hung back, feeling slightly bewildered, but the two men were waiting for her to precede them and she could do no less than make the best of the situation. It seemed to her a little premature to start drinking before the principal participant had joined them, but Mr. Chappie was already handing round glasses and making coy little jokes which she thought ill became him, and Robert seemed to find nothing odd in the procedure.
“Well now, before we get to business, may I propose a toast to the—er—winding up of a project which I will confess caused me grave misgivings at the time. Mr. Farmer—Miss Hayes—I drink to the happy conclusion of this affair.”
He raised his glass on the last words, took a slow, appreciative swallow and nearly choked when Victoria suddenly stamped her foot at him and burst out:
“It’s all another hoax, after all! I don’t know why you’ve staged this ridiculous scene, Mr. Chappie, unless you’ve been put up to it by your learned friend who has, I’ve cause to know, a very odd sense of humour, but it wasn’t very kind, was it, to pretend when you knew all the time Mr. Brown wouldn’t be c-coming?”
Mr. Chappie’s jaw dropped visibly and he favoured Robert with an outraged glance before turning an offended eye on Victoria, remembering his impressions at that first meeting. He had been prepared to admit on this occasion that judging by appearance, the experiment had paid off, but it seemed that Graham Hayes’ daughter was no less likeable at twenty than she had been at fourteen.
“Well, upon my soul, young lady! A respectable firm of solicitors hardly lend themselves to the perpetrating of hoaxes!” he snapped. “It woul
d seem that it is I who should demand explanations, not you.”
Victoria had taken refuge in blowing her nose, thankful that her cold gave her an excuse for concealing a humiliating threat of tears. She heard Robert murmuring something she could not catch, followed by a dignified snort from Mr. Chappie, then the sound of a door opening and shutting. She turned slowly, thinking that Robert had gone, but he was still there, propped against Mr. Chappie’s imposing desk and regarding her with a cool and unconcerned eye.
“Would you care for the loan of my handkerchief?” he asked conversationally. “Your own doesn’t appear to be very adequate.”
“No, I wouldn’t,” she replied ungraciously. “Why are you still here?”
“To keep an appointment,” he replied with the indulgent air of an adult humouring a child.
“Your appointment was for a quarter to twelve and has nothing to do with mine, anyway,” she pointed out, wondering at the same time, what could be occupying Mr. Chappie’s attention.
“Hasn’t it?”
“Well, only in a nosey kind of way, but as Mr. Brown isn’t here, your curiosity will have to go unsatisfied, won’t it?”
“Who says he isn’t here? Not poor old Chappie dispensing bonhomie and his best sherry. You really did cut him to the quick with those most improper suggestions.”
She stared at him dumbly for a moment, only conscious that she might have jumped too hastily to conclusions and it would be just like Mr. Robert Farmer to have the last laugh.
“You mean he’s gone to fetch him?” she said, then. “He was here all the time, waiting in another room?”
“Here all the time, certainly, but not waiting in another room. Can’t you guess, Victoria Mary?” he replied, and, had she not known him so well, Victoria could have sworn he seemed suddenly anxious.
“What are you trying to tell me? That you’ve thought up another good practical joke for your entertainment?” she said, clinging to proved facts, but her voice was not as steady as she would have wished and her legs felt suddenly as if they were made of cotton-wool.
“No joke, I assure you,” he replied rather wryly. “Neither were those perishing roses a joke, since they really did come from Mr. Brown. Aren’t you ever going to forgive me for that?” he said, and for a moment the room seemed to spin round her and the rows of deed-boxes looked in imminent danger of falling on her head.
“I think I’d better sit down,” she said, groping wildly for the nearest chair. Robert said nothing but poured out some more sherry and placed her fingers firmly round the glass. She took a long swallow while the room slowly righted itself, then blinked up at him propped once more against the desk and regarding her with tender amusement.
“Are you disappointed?” he asked, and she took a deep breath.
“That Mr. Brown turns out to be only you? I suppose, knowing the peculiar way your mind works, I should have guessed there was something fishy going on,” she retorted, recapturing her self-possession with an aplomb that made him smile.
“Something fishy? Oh, surely not.”
“Yes—decidedly fishy if I’d stopped to think. Mr. Brown, always so adamant on the subject of jobs and possible admirers, showed a remarkable tolerance where you were concerned. In fact, though he set his face firmly against followers, he never took exception to you.”
“Well, naturally one tends to be broadminded where one’s own interests are concerned,” he replied, quite unabashed, and she looked at him wrathfully.
“Then the whole thing was engineered from the start—Kate offering me the only job I was allowed to accept, you coming down to find out how your experiment was working—no wonder I never had a chance to make a life of my own! I suppose Kate was in on the joke, even if she did play up to the extent of sacking me.”
“Kate knew nothing until yesterday when, in view of pending change, it seemed only right to put her in the picture. She was aware that I had retained an interest in Graham Hayes’ daughter and was glad to offer you a job on my recommendation, but it never crossed her mind that the invisible Mr. Brown and her by no means invisible cousin could be one and the same person.”
“Why did you do it? Make yourself responsible for a stranger you had only seen in the witness-box, I mean?” she asked curiously, and he ran a hand absently over his lean jaw as if unsure of the answer.
“I don’t really know,” he said then. “There was something about you that stuck in my mind and produced quite irrational feelings of remorse since my cross-examination was wholly justified ... there was no one to pick up the pieces and I had an impulse to play providence ... perhaps because I’d been let down myself and was in the mood for a little gratitude ... who knows on looking back what prompts one to certain actions? It may be that I was no less eccentric and careless of my money than Mr. Brown appeared to be ... it could, I suppose be judged the height of eccentricity to go to such lengths to provide oneself with a suitable marriage partner.”
She stared at him disbelievingly, not very sure if he wasn’t still enjoying a private joke at her expense, and he added with sudden gentleness: “Don’t look so incredulous ... that, to you, must seem an unromantic way of going about things, but as I’d fallen out of love with a rather resounding crash, it seemed quite sensible then to insure against the future.”
“I see. Wrapping the next possible contender in cotton wool until you were ready.”
His smile was a little wry and he momentarily hunched his shoulders as though he felt a draught from the open window.
“Well, not quite so cold-blooded as that, and I was always prepared for my plans miscarrying, hence the cotton wool. You see, my child, as I once told you, even browbeating barristers have their pipe-dreams, and there was no more harm in my fantasies than in yours relating to Mr. Brown.”
She considered this gravely, then said with that sudden capitulation to reason which always surprised him;
“No, there wasn’t, was there? I don’t in any case, see anything odd in wanting to fashion someone to your specification should the opportunity arise. The only thing is one’s dreams don’t always work out as one expects. Look how I’ve been let down by Mr. Brown.”
“Very true, if all you expected was a substitute papa who would make no embarrassing demands, which brings us back to the point of this long-delayed meeting,” Robert said with a sudden alarming change of manner and, sitting down in the chair Mr. Chappie reserved for interviewing clients fixed her with a cool, forensic eye. “However mistaken you were in your private fantasies, the fact remains, Miss Hayes, that you made certain statements before witnesses which I now propose to hold you to.”
“What statements?”
“You know very well. In return for past considerations, you were willing to oblige Mr. Brown to the best of your ability.”
“Well, I didn’t know he was you, then,” Victoria protested indignantly, but she felt herself colouring as she remembered Robert’s outrageous suggestions and her own rash commitments.
“The fact of his identity makes no difference,” he replied with something of his courtroom manner, and she blinked but was not silenced.
“Yes, it does. You obtained that assurance under false pretences, so it cancels out!” she said with renewed confidence, and he grinned, suddenly shedding his legal mask.
“A good try, but it won’t hold water. The fact that your unknown patron happens to be me and not a gouty old gentleman with slightly improper intentions in no way alters the case. That you were prepared to meet the demands of a total stranger as a means of escape from me in no way releases you from obligation, so hadn’t we better end this farce once and for all? Old man Chappie will be back any minute to offer congratulations and draw up contracts.”
“Draw up c-contracts?”
“Figuratively speaking, of course, since I trust that will be the vicar’s privilege. Still and all, it might be as well to have everything down in writing in case you’re thinking of ratting on the agreement.”
‘There
hasn’t been an agreement!” she shouted at him, nearly in tears. “What are you trying to do to me, Robert? Get your own back because I turned you down? You know very well you have only yourself to thank for that. I could hardly be expected to take you seriously after your silly prank with the roses.”
His eyebrows went up in that familiar expression of fastidious enquiry.
“I thought I’d explained away that bone of contention,” he remarked. “Don’t you understand that I wasn’t ready then to confess to a dual personality, neither were you in a mood to take kindly to relinquishing those father-figure fantasies. I’m prepared to fill that role upon occasions, but not to the exclusion of the normal demands of the flesh. Did you really think I asked you to marry me as a kind of consolation prize?”
“It wouldn’t have been any c-consolation, so you needn’t f-flatter yourself,” she flung back at him, and quite suddenly found herself in tears.
He was round the desk and kneeling beside her chair before she even had time to turn away.
‘There, my poor bedevilled sweetheart ... stop fighting me ... it’s a losing battle, you know,” he murmured as he gathered her into his arms. “You try so hard to convince me you couldn’t care less, but you’re forgetting those revealing letters to Mr. Brown.”
“You did read my letters, then?”
“Every one. Such stiff, dutiful little effusions, Victoria Mary Hayes—until that last cri de coeur which certainly gave me encouragement.”
“Why did you never answer?”
“I don’t really know—unless it was a reluctance to shatter the paternal image which you seemed to set such store by. Now, will you please dry your eyes and attend to me seriously? I can’t offer better proof of sincerity than to propose once more on my bended knee, so please, dear, militant Victoria Mary, don’t send me away again with a flea in my ear.”
She began to smile at him, but tears and a cold in the head stifled responses and she snatched the handkerchief from his breast pocket and blew her nose with some violence.
“Do get up, Robert,” she said then, clutching at the remnants of her composure. “It doesn’t become you at all to kneel and be humble.”