Cover Her Face (2 page)

    But it was over at last. Miss Liddell had gone back to St. Mary's, hinting that she felt happier if Miss Pollack were not left too long in sole charge. Mr. Hinks murmured about the last touches for tomorrow's sermon and faded like a thin ghost into the spring air. The Maxies and Dr. Epps sat happily enjoying the wood fire in the drawing-room and talking about music. It was not the subject which Catherine would have chosen. Even the television would have been preferable, but the only set at Martingale was in Martha's sitting-room. If there had to be talk Catherine hoped that it would be confined to medicine. Dr. Epps might naturally say, "Of course you're a nurse, Miss Bowers, how nice for Stephen to have someone who shares his interests." Then the three of them would chat away while Deborah sat for a change in ineffectual silence and was made to realize that men do get tired of pretty, useless women, however well dressed, and that what Stephen needed was someone who understood his job, someone who could talk to his friends in a sensible and knowledgeable way. It was a pleasant dream and, like most dreams, it bore no relation to reality.

    Catherine sat holding her hands to the thin flames of the wood fire and tried to look at ease while the others talked about a composer called, unaccountably, Peter Warlock, of whom she had never heard except in some vague and forgotten historical sense. Certainly Deborah claimed not to understand him but she managed, as usual, to make her ignorance amusing. Her efforts to draw Catherine into the conversation by inquiring about Mrs. Bowers was evidence to Catherine of condescension, not of good manners. It was a relief when the new maid came in with a message for Dr. Epps. One of his patients on an outlying farm had begun her labor. The doctor heaved himself reluctantly out of his chair, shook himself like a shaggy dog and made his apologies.

    Catherine tried for the last time.

    "Interesting case, Doctor?*' she asked brightly.

    "Lord no, Miss Bowers." Dr. Epps was looking around vaguely in search of his bag. "Got three already.

    Pleasant little woman, though, and she likes to have me there. God knows why!

    She could deliver herself without turning a hair. Well, good-bye, Eleanor, and thank you for an excellent dinner. I meant to go up to Simon before I left but 141 be in tomorrow if I may. You'll be needing a new prescription for the Sommeil I expect.

    I'll bring it with me." He nodded amiably to the company and shuffled out with Mrs. Maxie into the hall. Soon they could hear his car roaring away down the drive.

    He was an enthusiastic driver and loved small fast cars from which he could only extricate himself with difficulty, and in which he looked like a wicked old bear out on a spree.

    "Well," said Deborah, when the sound of the exhaust had died away, "that's that.

    Now what about going down to the stables to see Bocock about the horses. That is, if Catherine would like a walk." Catherine was very anxious for a walk but not with Deborah. Really, she thought, it was extraordinary how Deborah couldn't or wouldn't see that she and Stephen wanted to be alone together. But if Stephen didn't make it plain she could hardly do so. The sooner he was married and away from all his female relations the better it would be for him. "They suck his blood" thought Catherine, who had met that type in her excursions into modern fiction. Deborah, happily unconscious of these vampire tendencies, led the way through the open window and across the lawn.

    The stables which had once been Maxie stables and were now the property of Mr. Samuel Bocock were only two hundred yards from the house and the other side of the home meadow. Old Bocock was there, polishing harness by the light of a hurricane lamp and whistling through his teeth. He was a small brown man with a gnome-like face, slanting of eye and wide of mouth, whose pleasure at seeing Stephen was apparent. They all went to have a look at the three horses with which Bocock was attempting to establish his little business. "Really," thought Catherine, "it was ridiculous the fuss that Deborah made of them, nuzzling up to their faces with soft endearments as if they were human. Frustrated maternal instinct," she thought disagreeably. "Do her good to expend some of that energy on the children's ward. Not that she would be much use." She herself wished that they could go back to the house. The stable was scrupulously clean but there is no disguising the strong smell of horses after exercise and, for some reason, Catherine found it disturbing. At one time, Stephen's lean brown hand lay close to hers on the animal's neck. The urge to touch that hand, to stroke it, even to raise it to her lips was momentarily so strong that she had to close her eyes. And then, in the darkness, came other remembered pictures, shamefully pleasant, of that same hand half-circled around her breast, even browner against her whiteness, and moving slowly and lovingly, the harbinger of delight. She half-staggered out into the spring twilight and heard behind her the slow, hesitant speech of Bocock and the eager Maxie voices replying together. In that moment she knew again one of those devastating moments of panic which had descended upon her at intervals since she had loved Stephen. They came unheralded and all her common sense and will power were helpless against them. They were moments when everything seemed unreal and she could almost physically feel the sand shifting beneath her hopes. All her misery and uncertainty focused itself on Deborah. It was Deborah who was the enemy. Deborah who had been married, who had at least had her chance of happiness. Deborah who was pretty and selfish and useless. Listening to the voices behind her in the growing darkness Catherine felt sick with hate.

    By the time they had returned to Martingale she had pulled herself together again and the black pall had lifted. She was restored to her normal condition of confidence and assurance. She went early to bed and, in the conviction of her present mood; she could almost believe that he might come to her. She told herself that it would be impossible in his father's house, an act of folly on his part, an intolerable abuse of hospitality on hers.

    But she waited in the darkness. After a while she heard footsteps on the stairs - his footsteps and Deborah's. Brother and sister were laughing softly together.

    They did not even pause as they passed her door.

    Upstairs in the low white-painted bedroom which had been his since childhood Stephen stretched himself on his bed.

    "I'm tired," he said.

    "Me too." Deborah yawned and sat down on the bed beside him. "It was rather a grim dinner-party. I wish Mummy wouldn't do it."

    "They're all such hypocrites."

    "They can't help it. They were brought up that way. Besides, I don't think that Eppy and Mr. Hinks have much wrong with them."

    "I suppose I made rather a fool of myself," said Stephen.

    "Well, you were rather vehement.

    Rather like Sir Galahad plunging to the defense of the wronged maiden, except that she was probably more sinning than sinned against."

    "You don't like her, do you?" asked Stephen.

    "My sweet, I haven't thought about it.

    She just works here. I know that sounds very reactionary to your enlightened notions but it isn't meant to be. It's just that I'm not interested in her one way or the other, nor she, I imagine, in me."

    "I'm sorry for her." There was a trace of truculence in Stephen's voice.

    "That was pretty obvious at dinner," said Deborah dryly.

    "It was their blasted complacency that got me down. And that Liddell woman.

    It's ridiculous to put a spinster in charge of a Home like St. Mary's."

    "I don't see why. She may be a little limited but she's kind and conscientious.

    Besides, I should have thought St. Mary's already suffered from a surfeit of sexual experience."

    "Oh, for heaven's sake don't be facetious, Deborah!"

    "Well, what do you expect me to be?

    We only see each other once a fortnight.

    It's a bit hard to be faced with one of Mummy's duty dinner-parties and have to watch Catherine and Miss Liddell sniggering together because they thought you'd lost your head over a pretty maid.

    That's the kind of vulgarity Liddell would particularly relish. The whole conversation will be over the village by tomorrow."

    "If they thought that they must be mad.

    I've hardly seen the girl. I don't think I've spoken to her yet. The idea is ridiculous!"

    "That's what I meant. For heaven's sake, darling, keep your crusading instincts under control while you're at home. I should have thought that you could have sublimated your social conscience at the hospital without bringing it home. It's uncomfortable to live with, especially for those of us who haven't got one."

    "I'm a bit on edge today," said Stephen.

    "I'm not sure I know what to do."

    It was typical of Deborah to know at once what he meant.

    "She is rather dreary, isn't she?

    Why don't you close the whole affair gracefully: I'm assuming that there is an affair to close."

    "You know damn well that there is -or was. But how?"

    "I've never found it particularly difficult.

    The art lies in making the other person believe that he has done the chucking.

    After a few weeks I practically believe it myself."

    "And if they won't play?"

    " Then have died and worms have eaten them, but not for love.' "

    Stephen would have liked to have asked when and if Felix Hearne would be persuaded that he had done the chucking.

    He reflected that in this, as in other matters, Deborah had a ruthlessness that he lacked.

    "I suppose I'm a coward about these things," he said. "I never find it easy to shake people off, even party bores."

    "No," replied his sister. "That's your trouble. Too weak and too susceptible.

    You ought to get married. Mummy would like it really. Someone with money if you can find her. Not stinking, of course, just beautifully rich."

    "No doubt. But who?"

    "Who indeed."

    Suddenly Deborah seemed to lose interest in the subject. She swung herself up from the bed and went to lean against the window-ledge. Stephen watched her profile, so like his own yet so mysteriously different, outlined against the blackness of the night. The veins and arteries of the dying day were stretched across the horizon. From the garden below he could smell the whole rich infinitely sweet distillation of an English spring night.

    Lying there in the cool darkness he shut his eyes and gave himself up to the peace of Martingale. At moments like this he understood perfectly why his mother and Deborah schemed and planned to preserve his inheritance. He was the-first Maxie to study medicine. He had done what he wanted and the family had accepted it. He might have chosen something even less lucrative although it was difficult to imagine what. In time, if he survived the grind, the hazards, the rat race of competition, he might become a consultant.

    He might even become sufficiently successful to support Martingale himself. In the meantime they would struggle on as best they could, making little housekeeping economies that would never intrude on his own comfort, cutting down the donations to charity, doing more of the gardening to save old Purvis’s three shillings an hour, employing untrained girls to help Martha. None of it would inconvenience him very much, and it was all to ensure that he, Stephen Maxie, succeeded his father as Simon Maxie had succeeded his. If only he could have enjoyed Martingale for its beauty and its peace without being chained to it by this band of responsibility and guilt!

    There was the sound of slow careful footsteps on the stairs and then a knock on the door. It was Martha with the nightly hot drinks. Back in his childhood old Nannie had decided that a hot milk drink last thing at night would help to banish the terrifying and inexplicable nightmares from which, for a brief period, he and Deborah had suffered. The nightmares had yielded in time to the more tangible fears of adolescence, but the hot drinks had become a family habit. Martha, like her sister before her, was convinced that they were the only effective talisman against the real or imagined dangers of the night. Now she set down her small tray cautiously. There was the blue Wedgwood mug that Deborah used and the old George V coronation mug that Grandfather Maxie had bought for Stephen. "I've brought your Ovaltine too, Miss Deborah," Martha said. (‹I thought I should find you here." She spoke in a low voice as if they shared a conspiracy. Stephen wondered whether she guessed that they had been discussing Catherine. This was rather like the old comfortable Nannie bringing in the night drinks and ready to stay and talk. But yet not really the same. The devotion of Martha was more voluble, more self-conscious and less acceptable. It was a counterfeit of an emotion that had been as simple and necessary to him as the air he breathed. Remembering this he thought also that Martha needed her occasional sop.

    "That was a lovely dinner, Martha," he said.

    Deborah had turned from the window and was wrapping her thin, red-nailed hands around the steaming mug.

    "It's a pity the conversation wasn't worthy of the food. We had a lecture from Miss Liddell on the social consequences of illegitimacy. What do you think of Sally, Martha?"

    Stephen knew that it was an unwise question. It was unlike Deborah to ask it.

    "She seems quiet enough," Martha conceded, "but, of course, it is early days yet. Miss Liddell spoke very highly of her."

    "According to Miss Liddell," said Deborah, "Sally is a model of all the virtues except one, and even that was a slip on the part of nature who couldn't recognize a high-school girl in the dark."

    Stephen was shocked by the sudden bitterness in his sister's voice. ‹(I don't know that all this education is a good thing for a maid, Miss Deborah."

    Martha managed to convey that she had managed perfectly well without it. (‹I only hope that she knows how lucky she is.

    Madam has even lent her our cot, the one you both slept in."