Fantails (15 page)

Lying in the bath, she reflected that it was rather a pity people were coming to dinner this very first night. From Sherry she had gathered that his mother loved to entertain and to go out, and that the neighbourhood was a gay one, since most people knew a friendly farmer or kept a few cows of their own and a pig or two and poultry, so that to feed guests was no problem. She would enjoy having parties later on, when they were married; sharing with Sherry the pleasure of welcoming their friends to Crail, giving shy people a good time, making things “go”, talking it over together when they were alone again. Only this evening she would have liked to be alone with him and Vee (would she ever get used to calling her that, to being on those terms with a woman so much older than herself, finished and sophisticated as she herself could never hope to be?). She would have liked to see the house. Better, perhaps, to go over it in the daylight of to-morrow morning ... She wondered what the room was like that she and Sherry would share ...

When she was ready to go down she looked long and anxiously in the triple mirror, and was reassured by what she saw there. Last night she had washed her hair in rain water; it framed her face in a silken aureole of honey-coloured feathery curls. Her eyes were bright and excitement had set a faint colour glowing in her fair skin. The frock, too, was a great success, becoming to her slender figure, flattering to her colouring. She pirouetted about the room for the pleasure of seeing the skirt float out about her as she moved, then fall back gently into place.

She heard a car approaching along the drive, followed by a second, then voices below her window, and decided to give the guests time to be in the drawing-room before going down, rather than meet them in the hall. They must be on the early side. It was a pity; she had hoped to have a moment alone with Sherry before his mother came down.

After waiting for a few minutes she went down and entered the drawing-room quietly. Sherry was at the far end of the long room, busy with a cocktail-shaker. A middle-aged man, red-faced, clean-shaven, and a younger one with a loud hearty voice began to laugh as she came in, apparently at something he had said. Near the door, their backs towards her, two women sat together on the sofa, talking in lowered voices. One head was fair and shingled, the other had brown hair corrugated in the sharp ridges of an overdone iron wave; her dress, of hard electric blue, was crude and harsh against the sofa’s hyacinth brocade. Logie stood uncertainly by the door, suddenly shy, reluctant to interrupt Sherry’s conversation with the two men. The women, unaware of her presence behind them, went on ta
lkin
g.

“... on the rebound, obviously!” said the fair one.

“Oh, not a doubt of
that!
Rather humiliating for the girl.”

“A difficult position for both of them to carry off. But people’s memories are very short. The whole thing will have been forgotten in a week or two.”

“I should have liked to be a fly on the wall when Zara heard of it.”

“Who wouldn’t? She always did expect to have her cake and eat it.”

Logie supposed they were discussing some piece of local gossip. She came forward as Sherry turned, a glass in each hand, and saw her. “Ah, here you are! My dilatory parent is late, as usual.” Smiling at him, she did not see the startled and uncomfortable glances exchanged by the two gossipers on the sofa. Sherry gave her one of the glasses, and with a hand behind her elbow gently turned her to face them. “Lady Darringfield, Elizabeth, this is Logie Selkirk. I expect Vee has told you that in October she’s going to change her name to MacAirlie.”

In Lady Darringfield’s weatherbeaten face and the younger woman’s round, light-lashed blue eyes, Logie read friendly curiosity mingled with something else: something she could not define. Embarrassment? Confusion? Yet how could they find any cause for either emotion in meeting her?

“Indeed she did, and we saw it in
The Times
for ourselves as well, and very glad indeed we were to hear of it!” said Lady Darringfield heartily. “We’ll be the envy of the entire neighbourhood for being the first to meet you!” Taking Logie’s hand in both her own, she patted it. “Tom, come and meet Sherry’s bride-to-be. You too, Rodney!” Tom, the red-faced man, was apparently Sir Thomas Darringfield. He and Elizabeth and Rodney Sawdon, who were evidently brother and sister, since Elizabeth was “Miss,” joined in congratulations. The door opened for Mary to usher in a tall, thin, slightly stooping man whom she announced primly as “Sir Geoffrey Peverill.” He wore an eyeglass and looked, thought Logie, as though he would be more at home in riding clothes than in his dinner jacket. This was not surprising, as it turned out that he was master of the local hounds. More introductions followed. The cocktail-shaker was called into play again. Everybody seemed to be telling Logie simultaneously how glad they all had been to hear of the engagement and that they wished her and Sherry all the luck in the world.

The door flew open. Vee came swiftly in, exquisite and fragile in orchid chiffon frail as gossamer, with long wing sleeves falling to its hem and floating out behind her. Characteristically, she held out both her hands in laughing apology. Logie was to learn in time that Vee spent a great deal of time in unrepentant apologies for unpunctuality.

“My
dears!
Marjorie—Elizabeth! How
frightful
of me to be late! But I’m not going to attempt one single, solitary excuse. You know them all by heart, and I’ve been far too happy in my bath to spend a moment of it thinking up a new one ... Geoffrey, how splendidly that new mare of yours did in the jumping at Heckaby! Everyone I met to-day was talking of it! ... Ah, here is Mary, summoning us to dinner. Come along, Kathleen. You must all be starving! Logie, my dear, has Sherry done all the introducing? Good. I’m so bad at it. I can’t remember even my best friend’s names—once I even forgot my mother’s, too shattering! ... Now, let me see. Kathleen, will you sit here, between Sherry and Rodney?”

Excitement carried Logie through the long evening. It was not until nearly four hours later, when her bedroom door closed behind Vee with a final “Good night! Lovely to have you! We must have a long talk to-morrow,” that exhaustion took her in its clutches. Too tired to sleep, she saw with closed eyes the road rushing under the wheels of Sherry’s car until she felt herself grow giddy, and sought distraction in reliving all that had happened since her arrival at Crail.

She thought of Mary, brusque and kindly; of the dogs who had padded at Sherry’s heels all evening, lying beneath the sideboard during dinner. She sat once more through dinner, while Vee held the reins of conversation in her practised hands, keeping their seven faces turned towards her by the magnet of her gaiety and charm. She followed Vee, Lady Darringfield, and Elizabeth Rodney to the drawing-room. The two guests were interested in her plans and Sherry’s for the wedding and their future, but in a very short time the talk was focused round Vee’s flat in Curzon Street and the possibility that she might later buy or lease a house at Sunningdale or Ascot. “And I thought of going to South Africa for part of the winter. Such a bore having to stick to the sterling area—the Riviera would have been so much easier!” Again she met Sherry’s eyes, seeking her own when the door opened to admit the men. Again she felt the pressure of his hand on hers beneath the table as they played vingt-et-un for stakes that seemed to her frighteningly high, so that although she had been thankful not to lose she had felt ashamed of taking such large winnings in a game with friends.

She thought again of Vee. She liked her, and it was a great relief to find herself apparently approved by Sherry’s mother, who might have been unkindly critical of her son’s choice. But already she knew that she would never know Vee, would never be near her, and that this had nothing to do with the dividing years. Already she had realised that Vee’s appealing charm was superficial, part of the setting she had created for herself. Her praises of Sir Geoffrey’s mare, Elizabeth’s new frock, Lady Darringfield’s garden—“You
must
see it, Logie! It’s quite the loveliest garden in the East Riding! When may I bring her, Marjorie?”—did not come from genuine admiration of the mare, the frock, the garden, but from her determination that their respective owners should like her. She had lent Lady Darringfield a new novel, and given the Sawdons, who had no hothouse, a basket of peaches when they left. Yet Logie felt that she had done these things rather from a wish that they should think of her as sweet and generous rather than through any real concern for their pleasure. She had spared no pains to make this evening a success, in order that she might appear in the light of a considerate and gracious hostess.

She approved of Sherry’s labradors because Rajah had won a first at Cruft’s and both were field-trial winners; had they been poor specimens of their breed or mongrels, she would almost certainly have decreed that they must live outside in the kennels. Although she would most probably have failed to pick out Crail Count, Sherry’s bull, from half a dozen of his breed, she was delighted by his win at Perth, since it reflected credit on Crail and so on herself. Besides, it was the fashion these days to take an interest in agricultural matters.

Logie was convinced that all Vee’s guests this evening had seen her as she had intended, and as she most probably saw herself: as a woman whose character and personality were as charming as her outstandingly delightful appearance. Probably it was her love for Sherry that had given her such a swift insight into his mother’s character?—Not that it was exactly an unpleasing character; on the whole, it was too negative for that. Not unkind, yet not kind; not mean, yet lacking genuine generosity; not unsympathetic, yet without sympathy. Logie believed there were only two positive attributes in her composition: self-love and charm so dazzling as to blind one, or very nearly blind one, to that self-love.

In regard to Sherry his mother’s reactions were probably on the same lines as her reactions to the dogs and the shorthorn bull. He was a fine specimen, who reflected credit on her as his parent. (How odd to think of her as Sherry’s mother—as anyone’s mother!) ... Logie could see, now, why he had said, “Trouble and failure don’t appeal to her. She likes success.”

Something in her new understanding of what Sherry’s boyhood must have been, the loneliness he must have known, had introduced a new element into her love for him. Until now it had been chiefly the magnetism of his assurance and vitality, his physical attraction that had drawn her. Now she felt a warm protective tenderness go out towards him as she told herself that in future she would give him all that he had lacked. Comfort in time of trouble, sympathy in failure, the knowledge that he was loved not for his possessions, his successes, or his achievements, but for himself.

CHAPTER NINE

When
Logie and Sherry had set out on their long journey, Jane helped Alison with the housework, then said she was going to return a book to Mary Dawson, the vicar’s daughter, a jolly, sturdy girl of her own age and her best friend at school.

Half an hour later she came flying in. “Alison! What
do
you think? You know I told you Mary’s godmother’s taking her to the Swan at Southwold for a week? Well the godmother’s niece was going too, and while I was at the Vicarage a telegram came to say that she’s got whooping-cough, so she can’t go, so the godmother—she’s staying at the Vicarage—asked me if I would go instead, to keep Mary company, so I said I’d come and ask you. So may I go?”

Alison looked up from rolling out the stale bread she had been crisping in the oven into breadcrumbs. She smiled at Jane’s flushed face and sparkling eyes. “Why not?”

Jane seized her round the waist and hugged her. “I
knew
you’d say that, only I didn’t quite dare to let myself know that I knew, if you know what I mean! I’ll go back right away and tell them.”

“When are you going?” Alison called after her.

“This afternoon—I thought you knew!”

“No, I hadn’t the least idea. Oh, Jane—and you’ve only got two clean cottons...” Jane looked anxious, “But I’ll wash the blue check and the spotted one and post them on to you.”

“Oh, Alicey—what
should
I do without you!”

Alison made a face at her. “Stand on your own feet and get along every bit as well as you do now, I expect. Half a minute—will you tell Bulford on your way back that I’ll only need a small loaf in the morning? Oh, and you’d better take your ration book to the food office and get an emergency card.”

While she was taking the ration book from her bag Jane said pensively, “Goodness—what a lot of exciting things are happening lately to this family! It’ll be your turn next. Or maybe Andrew’s.”

After a hurried lunch and an excited packing, Jane departed in the back of Mary’s godmother’s Morris Ten, surrounded by coats, suitcases, and tennis rackets, and waving joyfully. Alison waved back, smiling at the beaming face between the long brown pigtails. Then she went slowly back to the flat.

It was the first time in more than ten years that she had had no one to consider save herself; the first time she had been left alone for more than a few hours in Fantails. To many people the prospect of sleeping here alone would have been unpleasant, even frightening, but for Alison it held no terrors. Solitude was to her a luxury, since it came her way so rarely. She went and sat curled up on the wide window-seat, a cushion at her back, her hands for once lying idle in her lap, and wondered how she should spend the week ahead of her. She might lie late in the mornings and spend the days lazily, eating eggs and salads and fruit so as to cook as little as possible, sitting by the river with a book, dropping in on old friends—literally “old” since she knew so few of her own generation. The Vicar and his wife, Admiral and Mrs. Armory, Colonel and Mrs. Muir, the Savory sisters, poor lonely little Miss Mott—it was an age since she had seen any of them, save briefly in the street or a shop, and all of them were dears, if not particularly exciting! Or should she put the time to good account by turning out Jane’s bedroom, airing the contents of all Andrew’s drawers and cupboards and renewing their supply of moth-balls, washing the paintwork in the passage, polishing the furniture? Finally she decided to combine the two plans, spending her mornings energetically and her afternoons in idleness.