Kissing Kin (5 page)

“I have crutches, but I’m terrified of them,” said Virginia, handing them out.

He took them and passed them straight on to Camilla, and stepped up to the door of the car.

“Just put your arms round my neck,” he said. “Don’t be afraid. I won’t drop you.”

Virginia trusted herself at once to his competent hold and was lifted out with the greatest of ease, the heavy white cast
dangling, while Camilla sprang to open the house door. Sosthène passed her, carrying Virginia, and she followed them, reflecting that he did not behave, or look, like an invalid
himself
. But as he set down his light burden on a bench in the entrance hall, Virginia said in some surprise, “You probably shouldn’t have done that—I keep forgetting—are you all right?’

“Perfectly,” said Sosthène, and an elderly maid appeared to take their wraps, and their bags went by in the hands of the chauffeur and up the stairs. “Tea will be waiting,” Sosthène went on in his gentle voice, his accent more a matter of
intonation
than of vowels and consonants, and then he turned severely on the noisy little dog which still cavorted hysterically about them, shrieking its disapproval of the arrivals. “
Mimi
,
en
voilà
assez!
Shut up!”

“That’s done it,” remarked Virginia as the barking ceased. “I keep telling you this dog doesn’t understand French.”

“It must learn,” said Sosthène calmly. “Elvire doesn’t speak English. Someone must come half-way.”

Elvire was Cousin Sally’s maid.

Virginia announced that she would like a cup of tea before she went up to her room or tried to cope with the children, and a voice from the drawing-room doorway behind them said, “My dear unfortunate one—how have you supported the journey? And where is Dabney’s grand-daughter?”

“Oh, Cousin Sally!” cried Camilla, and went towards her impulsively with both hands outstretched. “I’m Camilla. Everybody sent you their love.”

Sally took her hands in a firm clasp and looked at her with violet-blue eyes, unfaded beneath their thin shadowed lids with long, blackened lashes—Camilla thought she had never seen such beauty, a little worn but not ravaged by time, the
red-gold
hair piled into an intricate pompadour and high psyche knot like a crown, the fine skin, only a little loose, exquisitely made-up, the throat still white and firm. Her velvet tea-gown was skilfully cut and draped over a trim figure with a high bust. It was all true. All the legends about Cousin Sally were
true. She was eternal. Camilla’s ardent young spirit prostrated itself promptly before this ultimate embodiment of romance and mystery, and she adored Cousin Sally at sight.

“You must tell me about everybody at home,” Sally was saying, and she had really more of a French accent than Sosthène, though she spoke her mother tongue. “So many that I knew best are gone.”

Sosthène came towards them with Virginia in his arms again, headed for the drawing-room fireside where tea was waiting, and at sight of them Sally gave a small humorous cry.

“Heavens! What gallantry!” she remarked, more in
admiration
than malice. “I assure you in all these years, Virginia, he has never done as much for me!”

Virginia waved at her impudently over Sosthène’s shoulder and was deposited with the utmost care in a large chair at the side of the hearth. Camilla came forward diffidently stripping off her gloves.

“Her foot has to be kept up on another chair or something,” she said, and Sosthène drew up the needlepoint bench from the hearthrug and raised the cast tenderly to place it there. “And there ought to be something warm to put over it,” said Camilla.

“Dear me, it is going to be as much trouble as a baby!” said Sally. “Here, take this.” And she handed Camilla a soft knitted shawl from the end of the sofa.

As Camilla and Sosthène stooped together over Virginia’s cast on the hearth-bench, tucking in the shawl, their fingers brushed briefly. Hers were still cold from the drive, his were warm and firm. She glanced up in embarrassment, and his face, bent above the task, was serene and oblivious. How kind he was—how much trouble he took—no doubt he had got used to waiting on people, with Cousin Sally. Camilla, who had never been waited on in her life and had never cared to be, was suddenly envious of the women who were entitled to Sosthène’s solicitude, and who took it entirely for granted with a smile and a light word of thanks.

Sally was pouring out their tea, seated on the end of the sofa next the table. Virginia received her cup first, by divine right, and Sally asked Camilla what she wanted in hers.

“N-nothing, thanks,” said Camilla, hasty and confused, for sugar was short in England now. “Just tea.”

“Ah, then you are a real tea-drinker like me,” said Sosthène, taking her cup from Sally’s hand. “Sit here, close to the fire—your hands are cold—”

She followed him to the opposite end of the long sofa, and when she had sat down he gave her the cup and handed round a covered silver dish of hot muffins, scantily buttered, and then returned to the middle of the sofa with his own tea, placing himself between Sally and Camilla but sitting well back so that they could go on talking across him.

“And your grandparents? Just think, Charlotte and I were born in the same year. Both dead, are they not?” Sally was saying almost cheerfully. “Charlotte and Dabney—how well I remember—he was still on crutches at their wedding—it was in Richmond, during the war—men I danced with that night were dead the next day in the trenches below the city, where Dabney had already lost his leg—”

“And at the church,” Camilla reminded her eagerly, for it was a story she had always loved to hear, “Grandmother Charlotte caught hold of the swing door, do you remember, so it wouldn’t knock him over, and everyone pretended not to notice—”

“Yes, yes, how it all comes back,” said Sally, with affection rather than sadness, but her violet eyes were weary. “What days those were—how young one was—how tragic one felt about it all—it was the worst war the world had ever seen—
every
war is the worst war, I find—yet Dabney and Charlotte lived long, happy lives in spite of it—that can be true, for those who survive—we must be sure that it will be true again. Sosthène, Camilla would like one of those cakes—”

He moved quickly, obediently, to hand the plate of cakes.
Camilla took one daintily, feeling like a child at a grown-up party. Her eyes went up to his face with the doubtful,
apologetic
look which was so often hers when Calvert was not there to lend her countenance. Sosthène’s gaze, lowered to the plate he held and her young, slim, ringless hand accepting the cake, seemed unaware.

“Me too,” said Virginia, reaching out to him and waggling greedy fingers, and he carried the cakes to her, saying, “A broken ankle does give one an appetite,” and exchanged a laughing glance with her, and the line in his cheek beside his long, well-modelled lips was a sort of exaggerated lengthwise dimple.

“It does, it does!” Virginia asserted without shame. “There is so little else to do but eat, meals become terribly important. You get so
bored,
because you can’t do anything!”

“A little dose of doing nothing will be good for you,” said Sosthène, and turned back towards the sofa, but paused to exclaim, “Ah! All is discovered!”

Following his gaze, Camilla saw that the drawing-room doorway was full of children, and heard Virginia saying
cheerfully
but with a distinct note of resignation, “Come in, darlings, I was only snatching a cup of tea before I sent for you. Come in and finish off the cakes, you might as well!”

She held out her arms and the well-mannered young avalanche descended upon her—five of them, apparently, the eldest a slim, leggy, dark-haired girl who obviously belonged to Virginia. Eventually they were sorted out and presented to their Cousin Camilla from Richmond—Daphne, fifteen, the image of her mother with the same delectable heart-shaped face and closed, mysterious smile; Irene, thirteen, with reddish hair like her Aunt Dinah’s; Nigel, who at eight looked exactly like Archie minus the eyeglass; Evadne, a three-year-old with
Virginia
’s brown eyes and Archie’s fair hair, who was going to be the beauty of the family; and a shy, sallow child, the cuckoo in the nest, Oliver’s daughter Hermoine.

They all curtsied politely except Nigel who bowed gravely
from the waist, and Camilla, overstrung and full of new
sensations
, wanted to cry. She was not accustomed to children, as she and Calvert had been the only ones at home, and she had no idea how to make friends with them, so she only smiled back and said Hullo, and as soon as the introductions were over Nigel asked if she had been torpedoed crossing the ocean. He seemed disappointed that her answer was negative and
informed
her rather accusingly that Cousin Phoebe had been torpedoed and nearly died.

“I was lucky,” said Camilla lamely.

“Do you write books?” pursued Nigel, whose standard for cousins was obviously high, and Camilla shook her head.

“She’s the one who sings,” Daphne came to her rescue. “Cousin Phoebe said so.”

“Oh, sing something now!” cried Irene. “Sing something from America!”

“No,” said Virginia, settling them all. “We’re both of us completely frazzled out and we’re not going to amuse anybody till after we’ve had dinner and a night’s sleep. Buzz off, now, the whole lot of you, and after I’m in bed you can all come and kiss me Good night if you like. We shall be here for weeks, so your time will come.”

“Will you be here for Christmas?” Nigel demanded.

“It looks that way. But I shall have the cast-off by then, I hope!”

“May we
see
the cast?” Nigel’s eyes gleamed with ghoulish interest.

“Later,” said Virginia, waving them out.

But Hermione had come to anchor near her chair.

“Will my father be here for Christmas?” she asked very quietly, and Virginia patted the small sallow hand which was laid on her sleeve.

“I think very likely,” she said.

“And—Phoebe too?”

“Yes, of course, if
he
comes. Now, get your cake and run along with the rest of them, there’s a dear.”

The other children were filing past the tea-table, each
receiving
a single cake from the plate Sally held out to them. Hermione joined them reluctantly, her face brooding and downcast. At the door they all turned and waved, and Virginia waved back, and when they had disappeared she leaned back with a sigh.

“I love them all passionately,” she said. “But right now there are too many of them. And somehow since Hermione came five seems so many more than four! I do hope she isn’t going to be tiresome about her father’s marrying again, it would be just like her, though we’ve handled it the best we know how. Her mother was insanely jealous, do you suppose we’re going through all
that
again?”

“Surely not at Hermione’s age,” Camilla said.

“It is a very short-sighted self-indulgence—jealousy—at any age,” said Sally. “Tell me again the name of the man your mother married, Camilla—Ames, was it not?”

“No, no, that’s the Princeton bunch!” cried Camilla, horrified. “We’re the Scotts!”

“Ah, yes, so you are,” Sally nodded gravely. “Richmond—of course—Scott. And you have a brother.”

“Calvert. We’re twins. That’s why I miss him so.”

“I had a brother,” said Sally dreamily.

“Honey, you’ve still got him!” Camilla reminded her. “Cousin Sedgwick is very much alive in Williamsburg!”

“I know.” For the first time Sally sighed, looking back. “I never thought not to see Sedgwick again.” And just as the silence fell—“Sosthène, the child would like more tea. Bring me her cup, at once.”

“No, really—I—it doesn’t matter—”

This time his eyes met Camilla’s as he stood above her—a look so deep and intimate and confidential that it was as though he spoke:
Let
her
pour
the
tea
for
you.
Let
her
recover
herself
that
way.
You
and
I
understand
this.
And once more Camilla’s cold fingers encountered his warm ones, as she surrendered the cup.

The jewelled white hand which held the teapot while the amber liquid flowed was not quite steady now.

“Nothing in your tea at all,” marvelled Sally, and made a little face. “That is the way the Chinese drink it.”

“And Sosthène,” said Camilla, greatly daring, driven by her need to use his name for the sake of retaining the sense of old acquaintance which that long, silent exchange of looks had wrought. And then, losing her nerve completely and relapsing into her habitual childish embarrassment—“I don’t th-think I have ever heard your other name.”

“You will not need it,” he smiled, returning her cup, and resumed his place on the sofa and took out a gold cigarette case which he offered to Sally and then lit both their cigarettes from one match and moved the ash tray nearer her hand on the corner of the table.

It did not occur to him to offer the young American a cigarette. And Camilla, who rather liked to smoke because it made her feel sophisticated and mature, hoped that Virginia would not call attention to the fact, and discovered that her patient was sitting with her head resting against the back of the chair and her eyes closed.

“Darling, are you all right?” cried Camilla, setting down her cup with a clink and darting to Virginia’s side, remorsefully aware that she had forgotten for a few minutes, actually
for
gotten
that she was in charge and was neglecting her duty. “Would you like some more tea? Or had you better have another one of those little pills?”

Virginia opened her eyes and said she thought she would like to go to bed if nobody minded. “And Sosthène is
not
to carry me upstairs,” she added firmly. “With you in front and him behind I can manage perfectly well on my crutches.”

The ascent was accomplished, not without a few minor alarms and some amusing comment from Sosthène, who walked behind with his hands holding Virginia’s waist. Sally’s maid Elvire, who understood massage, was waiting to put Virginia to bed, and Camilla followed Sosthène from the
room and paused just outside her own door, to which he had escorted her.