Absent in the Spring (14 page)

‘She will be all right. It's not as though she were so terribly fond of Rupert. All she thinks of is her own health and –'

‘Rodney interrupted her sharply, ‘I don't want sentiment from you, Averil. I want an admission of fact.'

‘I'm not sentimental.'

‘You are. You have no knowledge at all of Mrs. Cargill's thoughts and feelings. You are imagining them to suit yourself. All I want from you is the admission that she has
rights
.'

Averil flung her head back.

‘Very well. She has rights.'

‘Then you are now quite clear exactly what it is you are doing?'

‘Have you finished, Father?'

‘No, I have one more thing to say. You realize, don't you, that Cargill is doing very valuable and important work, that his methods in treating tuberculosis have met with such striking success that he is a very prominent figure in the medical world, and that, unfortunately, a man's private affairs can affect his public career. That means that Cargill's work, his usefulness to humanity, will be seriously affected, if not destroyed, by what you are both proposing to do.'

Averil said, ‘Are you trying to persuade me that it's my duty to give Rupert up so that he can continue to benefit humanity?'

There was a faint sneer in her voice.

‘No,' said Rodney. ‘I'm thinking of the poor devil himself …'

There was sudden vehement feeling in his voice.

‘You can take it from me, Averil, that a man who's not doing the work he wants to do – the work he was made to do – is only half a man. I tell you as surely as I'm standing here, that if you take Rupert Cargill away from his work and make it impossible for him to go on with that work, the day will come when you will have to stand by and see the man you love unhappy, unfulfilled – old before his time – tired and disheartened – only living with half his life. And if you think your love, or any woman's love, can make up to him for that, then I tell you plainly that you're a damned sentimental little fool.'

He stopped. He leaned back in his chair. He passed his hand through his hair.

Averil said, ‘You say all this to me. But how do I know –' She broke off and began again, ‘How do I know –'

‘That it's true? I can only say that it's what I believe to be true and that
it is what I know of my own knowledge
. I'm speaking to you, Averil, as a man – as well as a father.'

‘Yes,' said Averil. ‘I see …'

Rodney said, and his voice was tired now and sounded muffled:

‘It's up to you, Averil, to examine what I have told you, and to accept or reject it. I believe you have courage and clear-sightedness.'

Averil went slowly towards the door. She stopped with her hand on the handle and looked back.

Joan was startled by the sudden, bitter vindictiveness of her voice when she spoke.

‘Don't imagine,' she said, ‘that I shall ever be grateful to you, Father. I think – I think I hate you.'

And she went out and closed the door behind her.

Joan made a motion to go after her, but Rodney stopped her with a gesture.

‘Leave her alone,' he said. ‘Leave her alone. Don't you understand? We've won …'

And that, Joan reflected, had been the end of that.

Averil had gone about, very silent, answering in monosyllables when she was spoken to, never spoke if she could help it. She had got thinner and paler.

A month later she had expressed a wish to go to London and train in a secretarial school.

Rodney had assented at once. Averil had left them with no pretence of distress over the parting.

When she had come home on a visit three months later, she had been quite normal in manner and had seemed, from her account, to be having quite a gay life in London.

Joan was relieved and expressed her relief to Rodney.

‘The whole thing has blown over completely. I never thought for a moment it was really serious – just one of those silly fancies girls get.'

Rodney looked at her, smiled, and said, ‘Poor little Joan.'

That phrase of his always annoyed her.

‘Well, you must admit it
was
worrying at the time.'

‘Yes,' he said, ‘it was certainly worrying. But it wasn't your worry, was it, Joan?'

‘What do you mean? Anything that affects the children upsets me far more than it upsets them.'

‘Does it?' Rodney said. ‘I wonder …'

It was true, Joan thought, that there was now a certain coldness between Averil and her father. They had always been such friends. Now there seemed little except formal politeness between them. On the other hand, Averil had been quite charming, in her cool, noncommittal way, to her mother.

I expect, thought Joan, that she appreciates me better now that she doesn't live at home.

She herself certainly welcomed Averil's visits. Averil's cool, good sense seemed to ease things in the household.

Barbara was now grown up and was proving difficult.

Joan was increasingly distressed by her younger daughter's choice of friends. She seemed to have no kind of discrimination. There were plenty of nice girls in Crayminster, but Barbara, out of sheer perversity, it seemed, would have none of them.

‘They're so hideously
dull,
Mother.'

‘Nonsense, Barbara. I'm sure both Mary and Alison are charming girls, full of fun.'

‘They're perfectly awful. They wear
snoods
.'

Joan had stared, bewildered.

‘Really, Barbara – what do you mean? What can it matter?'

‘It does. It's a kind of symbol.'

‘I think you're talking nonsense, darling. There's Pamela Grayling – her mother used to be a great friend of mine. Why not go about with her a bit more?'

Oh, Mother, she's hopelessly dreary, not amusing a bit.'

‘Well, I think they're all very nice girls.'

‘Yes, nice and deadly. And what does it matter what
you
think?'

‘That's very rude, Barbara.'

‘Well, what I mean is, you don't have to go about with them. So it's what
I
think matters. I like Betty Earle and Primrose Deane but you always stick your nose in the air when I bring them to tea.'

‘Well, frankly, darling, they are rather dreadful – Betty's father runs those awful charabanc tours and simply hasn't got an
h
.'

‘He's got lots of money, though.'

‘Money isn't everything, Barbara.'

‘The whole point is, Mother, can I choose my own friends, or can't I?'

‘Of course you can, Barbara, but you must let yourself be guided by me. You are very young still.'

‘That means I can't. It's pretty sickening the way I can't do a single thing I want to do! This place is an absolute prison house.'

And it was just then that Rodney had come in and had said, ‘What's a prison house?'

Barbara cried out, ‘Home is!'

And instead of taking the matter seriously Rodney had simply laughed and had said teasingly, ‘Poor little Barbara – treated like a black slave.'

‘Well, I am.'

‘Quite right, too. I approve of slavery for daughters.'

And Barbara had hugged him and said breathlessly, ‘Darling Dads, you are so – so – ridiculous. I never can be annoyed with you for long.'

Joan had begun indignantly, ‘I should hope not –'

But Rodney was laughing, and when Barbara had gone out of the room, he had said, ‘Don't take things too seriously, Joan. Young fillies have to kick up their heels a bit.'

‘But these awful friends of hers –'

‘A momentary phase of liking the flamboyant. It will pass. Don't worry, Joan.'

Very easy, Joan had thought indignantly, to say ‘Don't worry.' What would happen to them all if she didn't worry? Rodney was far too easy going, and he couldn't possibly understand a mother's feelings.

Yet trying as Barbara's choice of girl friends had been, it was as nothing to the anxiety occasioned by the men she seemed to like.

George Harmon and that very objectionable young Wilmore – not only a member of the rival solicitor's firm (a firm that undertook the more dubious legal business of the town) but a young man who drank too much, talked too loudly, and was too fond of the race track. It was with young Wilmore that Barbara had disappeared from the Town Hall on the night of the Christmas Charity Dance, and had reappeared five dances later, sending a guilty but defiant glance towards where her mother was sitting.

They had been sitting out, it seemed, on the roof – a thing that only fast girls did, so Joan told Barbara, and it had distressed her very much.

‘Don't be so Edwardian, Mother. It's absurd.'

‘I'm not at all Edwardian. And let me tell you, Barbara, a lot of the old ideas about chaperonage are coming back into favour. Girls don't go about with young men as they did ten years ago.'

‘Really, Mother, anyone would think I was going off week-ending with Tom Wilmore.'

‘Don't talk like that, Barbara, I won't have it. And I heard you were seen in the Dog and Duck with George Harmon.'

‘Oh, we were just doing a pub crawl.'

‘Well, you're far too young to do anything of the kind. I don't like the way girls drink spirits nowadays.'

‘I was only having beer. Actually we were playing darts.'

‘Well, I don't like it, Barbara. And what's more I won't have it. I don't like George Harmon or Tom Wilmore and I won't have them in the house any more, do you understand?'

‘O.K., Mother, it's your house.'

‘Anyway I don't see what you like in them.'

Barbara shrugged her shoulders. ‘Oh, I don't know. They're exciting.'

‘Well, I won't have them asked to the house, do you hear?'

After that Joan had been annoyed when Rodney brought young Harmon home to Sunday supper one night. It was, she felt, so weak of Rodney. She herself put on her most glacial manner, and the young man seemed suitably abashed, in spite of the friendly way Rodney talked to him, and the pains he took to put him at his ease. George Harmon alternately talked too loud, or mumbled, boasted and then became apologetic.

Later that night, Joan took Rodney to task with some sharpness.

‘Surely you must realize I'd told Barbara I wouldn't have him here?'

‘I knew, Joan, but that's a mistake. Barbara has very little judgment. She takes people at their own valuation. She doesn't know the shoddy from the real. Seeing people against an alien background, she doesn't know where she is. That's why she needs to see people against her own background. She's been thinking of young Harmon as a dangerous and dashing figure, not just a foolish and boastful young man who drinks too much and has never done a proper day's work in his life.'

‘
I
could have told her that!'

Rodney smiled.

‘Oh, Joan, dear, nothing that you and I say is going to impress the younger generation.'

The truth of that was made plain to Joan when Averil came down on one of her brief visits.

This time it was Tom Wilmore who was being entertained. Against Averil's cool, critical distaste, Tom did not show to advantage.

Afterwards Joan caught a snatch of conversation between the sisters.

‘You don't like him, Averil?'

And Averil, hunching disdainful shoulders had replied crisply, ‘I think he's dreadful. Your taste in men, Barbara, is really too awful.'

Thereafter, Wilmore had disappeared from the scene, and the fickle Barbara had murmured one day, ‘Tom Wilmore? Oh, but he's dreadful.' With complete and wide-eyed conviction.

Joan set herself to have tennis parties and ask people to the house, but Barbara refused stoutly to co-operate.

‘Don't fuss so, Mother. You're always wanting to ask people. I hate having people, and you always will ask such terrible duds.'

Offended, Joan said sharply that she washed her hands of Barbara's amusement. ‘I'm sure I don't know
what
you want!'

‘I just want to be let alone.'

Barbara was really a most difficult child, Joan said sharply to Rodney. Rodney agreed, a little frown between his eyes.

‘If she would only just say what she wants,' Joan continued.

‘She doesn't know herself. She's very young, Joan.'

‘That's just why she needs to have things decided for her.'

‘No, my dear – she's got to find her own feet. Just let her be – let her bring her friends here if she wants to, but don't
organize
things. That's what seems to antagonize the young.'

So like a man, Joan thought with some exasperation. All for leaving things alone and being vague. Poor, dear Rodney, he always had been rather vague, now she came to think of it. It was she who had to be the practical one! And yet everyone said that he was such a shrewd lawyer.

Joan remembered an evening when Rodney had read from the local paper an announcement of George Harmon's marriage to Primrose Deane and had added with a teasing smile:

‘An old flame of yours, eh, Babs?'

Barbara had laughed with considerable amusement.

‘I know. I was awfully keen on him. He really is pretty dreadful, isn't he? I mean, he really
is
.'

‘I always thought him a most unprepossessing young man. I couldn't imagine what you saw in him.'

‘No more can I now.' Barbara at eighteen spoke detachedly of the follies of seventeen. ‘But really, you know, Dads, I did think I was in love with him. I thought Mother would try to part us, and then I was going to run away with him, and if you or Mother stopped us, then I made up my mind I should put my head in the gas oven and kill myself.'

‘Quite the Juliet touch!'

With a shade of disapproval, Barbara said, ‘I meant it, Daddy. After all, if you can't bear a thing, you just
have
to kill yourself.'