That Man Simon (14 page)

very House and Garden,’ he said, ruffling the child’s hair.

‘Look, here’s a box of curtain materials for you.’

He gave her a shoe-box filled with off-cuts of dress fabrics. Then he went off to change his clothes.

Polly fell on the cuttings with delight and began spreading them out on the carpet, but Jenny sat staring after Simon. There could be no mistaking the coolness of his greeting. He was still very angry with her.

Before he came back, Mrs. Rose wheeled in a tea trolley.

‘You’ll have a cup, won’t you, Miss Shannon?’

‘Yes, thank you,’ Jenny said abstractedly. She could not apologize to Simon in front of Polly. She had to see him alone for a few minutes.

Polly was too young - and too absorbed in the doll’s house — to be aware of the constraint between her elders during tea. But, for Jenny, every moment was an ordeal.

Then Mrs. Rose came back and said, ‘It’s nearly time for your bath, Polly love. I’ll help you carry the doll’s house back to your room.’

As soon as they were alone, Jenny drew in her breath and said quickly, ‘Simon, I’m sorry I said what I did the day before yesterday. I - I behaved very badly.’

‘Forget it,’ he answered briefly.

‘No, I owe you an apology. You were quite right to correct Polly. I shouldn’t have interfered.’

He lit a cigarette, and got up from his chair. Moving to the window, he stood staring out across the terrace for some moments. Then he swung round to face her again.

‘Jenny, you’ve been very good to Polly, and I appreciate it,’ he said, frowning. ‘But I think it would be best if you didn’t see quite so much of her in future.’

She stared at him in amazement. For a minute, it did not make sense to her. Then, in a sickening flash of comprehension, she saw what he was really saying to her.

‘You mean you don’t want me here,’ she thought hollowly.

Simon bent to an ash-tray and jabbed out his cigarette.

‘Polly may not be staying with me for good. I don’t want her to become too attached to you, and to be hurt again.’

‘No ... I see. I - I quite understand.’ Jenny knew it could not be true. He would never send the child back to her aunt, and there was nowhere else for her to go. He had said it to spare her feelings. He knows, she thought, appalled.

He knows I’m in love with him. Oh, God, perhaps everyone knows.

‘I must go now. G-good night.’ Her voice shook uncontrollably. Blindly, in an agony of humiliation, she jumped up and rushed to the front door.

She heard Simon call to her to wait, and saw Polly standing in the passage to the bedrooms, but she did not stop. She had to get away.

LATE the following afternoon, Jenny caught a train to London. Her grandfather drove her to the station. ‘Have a good time. Take care of yourself. Give our love to Alison,’

he said, from the platform.

Jenny leaned out of the window and kissed him. ‘Good-bye, Grandpa. I’ll let you know when I’m coming home.’

The train began to move, and she drew back into the corridor, waving to him.

Whereas Jenny and Susan Ellis had been school-friends, her friendship with Alison Grant had been confined to the holidays. Alison had been educated at a boarding school, and would have been rather lonely during the holidays but for the fact that her parents’ farm was less than half a mile from the Rectory. Now she lived in London where she shared a flat with two other girls.

Jenny had put up at the flat before, but this time one of the other girls was on holiday in France, so Jenny could have a bed instead of sleeping on the sofa.

‘Jenny, what bliss to see you! I was so surprised when you rang last night. It’s not like you to do things on the spur of the moment. You usually plan months ahead.

Come in and take the weight off your pins. I’m only just home myself. It won’t take long to fix a meal. Carola is out tonight, so we can have a lovely long natter,’ said Alison -

all in one breath - when she opened the door of the flat.

She had always been an irrepressible chatterbox, and still was. But in her teens she had been plump, untidy and clumsy. Now she was fashionably slender, and when she bumped into something it was usually a personable young man.

After she had changed her black working dress for a pair of pink cotton pants and a peppermint-striped top, Alison whipped together a meal in the tiny kitchenette.

It was not until they were having coffee, that she said suddenly, ‘Have you had ’flu or something?’

Jenny shook her head. ‘Why do you ask?’

'Because you ate my superb green salad as if you were swallowing caterpillars, you’ve hardly heard a word I’ve been saying, and you look like death warmed up,’ Alison told her frankly. ‘Furthermore, I began to smell a rat when we were on the phone last night. What’s up, duckie? Man trouble?’

Jenny gave her a startled look, and Alison grinned. ‘I recognize the symptoms. Both Pauline and Carola are what you might call chronic sufferers. Me, I take men as they come - or as they go.’ Her expression grew serious. ‘Tell me about it. Nothing is the end of the world, you know.’

Jenny told her everything. ‘So you see what an utter fool I made of myself?’ she ended wretchedly.

‘We all do, sooner or later,’ Alison said wryly. ‘My turn will come, I don’t doubt.’ She poured herself a second cup of coffee. ‘I must say I can’t quite fathom why this Simon of yours should about-face so suddenly. But one thing I do know. No man ever despised a girl for falling for him. Why should they? We don’t when it’s vice versa.’

‘Men are different,’ Jenny said wearily.

‘Oh, rubbish,’ Alison retorted. ‘About the only advantage of having four older brothers was that I learnt very early in life that men aren’t different from us at all. It’s pure fallacy. They’re different in some ways - but not emotionally. When it comes to being in love, they’re as cat-on-hot-bricks as we are. Take David, for example. He’d had girls galore before he met Nonie. There she was - a simple country girl. And there he was - a dashing Naval type with conquests from here to Hong Kong. But could he see she was dotty about him? He hadn’t a clue, poor lamb.

He was wildly in love for the first time in his life, and it knocked him right off balance.’

‘Did it really?’

Jenny had not met Alison’s eldest brother for several years, but she remembered him as an extremely good-looking man who had made her blush when he smiled at her. She had been in her last term at school then, and he in his late twenties. Looking back, she realized that he had been something like Simon. Not physically: but in his bearing and manner.

‘There couldn’t be some reason why he might have felt obliged to give you a brush-off, could there?’ Alison suggested thoughtfully. ‘For example, a wife in the background?’

Jenny shook her head. ‘No, I’m certain he’s a bachelor.’

‘You don’t think James might have warned him off?’ This was an idea which had not occurred to Jenny. Could James have done such a thing? The night he had found her in the garden and appealed to her grandparents to help him -

could he then have stormed round

to Flint House?

She shook her head again. ‘It’s no use, Alison. Simon simply isn’t interested in me. I don’t know why I ever thought he might be. It was absurd, really. I’m so ordinary, and he ...’

She sighed and pushed back her chair. ‘We’d better wash up.’

‘Jenny, why don’t you come up to London?’ Alison said presently. ‘To live, I mean. Carola is getting married in October. You could manage on the couch until her bed is free. And, if you couldn’t find a job in your own line, you could easily get one in a department store. I always thought you ought to get away from home for a while. Everyone should.’

Jenny did not reply for some moments. Then she said,

‘No, I can’t run away permanently, Alison. This is just a breathing space. I must go back in a day or two.’

‘Why must you? Your grandparents would miss you, I see that. But I’m sure they wouldn’t stand in your way.

They’re not a bit fuddy-duddy.’

‘No, it wouldn’t work, Alison. I couldn’t live in London.

I’d hate it. The stores are so stuffy, and I’d loathe the rush hour and having to go miles in a train to get to the country.

I’m just not a big city person.’

‘Well, I am. I wouldn’t go back to life in the wilds for anything. I don’t know how you stick it, sweetie. Anyway, think it over. If you should change your mind, we can always fit you in here somehow.’

Jenny stayed at the flat for three nights. On the second night, she and Alison went to the theatre together.

On her last night, Alison insisted on throwing a party.

‘It will boost your morale, sweetie,’ she said firmly, when Jenny protested that she was not in a party mood and had nothing suitable to wear. ‘I’ll lend you a dress.’ So Jenny found herself wearing a dashing scarlet dress - which she would never have thought of buying for herself- and dancing with a charming young man from the French Embassy who did not seem to find her at all ‘ordinary’ and uninteresting.

‘Sure you won’t change your mind about staying?’

Alison asked, the next morning, when Jenny was packing her suitcase. ‘You made a big hit with Michel, you know, there’s no one to beat an attractive Frenchman for taking one’s mind of ... other things.’

But although Michel Rostand had helped to repair her shattered amour propre, Jenny knew that staying in London was not the answer to her problem. A score of attentive Frenchman could not make her forget Simon.

She reached home in the middle of the afternoon, but there was no one about as she passed Simon’s house. Her grandparents were delighted - and obviously a good deal relieved — to have her back. For although they had not said anything, she knew they had been perturbed by her sudden decision to go to London.

After tea, Mrs. Shannon said, ‘Oh, I nearly forgot, dear.

Fenella Waring rang up yesterday to ask you to a party tomorrow night. I explained you were away and weren’t sure when you would be back, so she left the invitation open.’

‘I’ll telephone her later,’ Jenny said.

She went upstairs to unpack her things, including the scarlet dress which Alison had insisted she should keep.

‘You take it. It looks wonderful with your hair, and I’ve gone off it now I’ve got my new one,’ she had said.

‘That would shake Fenella. Me in sophisticated scarlet,’

Jenny thought, as she hung it in her wardrobe.

But was she ready to face Simon again? He was sure to be there. He was probably the whole point of the party.

In the end, she decided to go. She was bound to see him again some time, and it might be easier at a party than anywhere else.

‘Have you seen anything of Polly while I’ve been away?’

she asked her grandmother, after she had rung up the Waring House. Fenella had been out, so she had spoken to Mrs. Waring.

‘No, she’s been in bed with a nasty cold, poor child.

Very off colour, Mrs. Rose told me this morning.’

Mrs. Shannon gave Jenny a sideways glance. ‘The Warings had dinner there the night before last. I saw Fenella and Mr. Gilchrist walking in the garden together.’

‘Oh, did you?’ Jenny said tonelessly. ‘I’m going to bed early, Granny. I was up late last night, and I want to look fresh for the party tomorrow.’

The following afternoon, she had her hair put up in a sophisticated style by one of the best hairdressers in the county town. Also she had a manicure, and chose a pale pearly lacquer to match a new lipstick. Then she bought a pair of sheer ivory tights, some scarlet sandals, and a silver ring set with a huge fake pearl.

‘Well, how do I look?’ she asked her grandparents, when she was ready to go.

‘Very nice, dear. Have a good time,’ said Mrs. Shannon.

But Jenny could see that they did not like her hair, or the scarlet dress, or the dramatic ring.

‘I will,’ she said brightly, with a great deal more confidence than she really felt.

It was a beautiful summer evening, and she had no need of a coat. As she turned out of the Rectory gate, a couple of lads cycled past. They swerved at the sight of her, then whistled.

Jenny repressed a grin. By tomorrow the whole village would know that the Rector’s granddaughter had been seen dressed up to the eyes, with as much paint on her face as the Waring girl.

Simon’s silver car was in the driveway as she passed his house, and a few minutes later she heard the engine start.

Knowing he would be certain to stop and offer her a lift, she drew several deep breaths to steady herself.

‘Oh, hello, Simon,’ she said pleasantly, when he stopped alongside her.

His glance took in every detail of her appearance. ‘I gather you’re going to the party. May I give you a lift?’

‘How sweet of you.’ When he came round to open the nearside door for her, she deliberately gave him the kind of provocative smile at which Fenella was so expert.

‘These shoes are not really designed for walking even short distances,’ she said, as he got behind the wheel again.

Simon looked at the delicate sandals, and Jenny crossed her legs. In sheer tights they looked quite as good as Fenella’s, and she hoped he noticed it.

‘No, I imagine not,’ he said briefly, and started the car.