Fantails (10 page)

“Oh, I do feel so happy!

I feel so happy, I
do!

And I’m going to tell you something That’ll make you happy
too
,”

she carolled.

The others pulled her to a standstill. “Logie, put us out of our suspense,
please
do!” Jane pleaded.

“I’ll give you each three guesses. No, I won’t—you’d never guess this in a hundred years!” She paused dramatically while the others stared at her expectantly. “Well, it’s this.
I’m going to marry Sherry!"

They fell upon her, hugging her, uttering disjointed exclamations.

“Logie! I’d never’ve guessed that in a
thousand
years!”

“Darling, I
couldn’t
be more pleased!”

“When did he ask you? Were you surprised or did you see it coming?”

“What simply
lovely
news! We’ll have to cable to Andrew—he’ll be thrilled!”

“Will you have me for a bridesmaid? Do you feel quite a different person? Will you have to go and live in Yorkshire?”

When the first tumult had died down they sat in a row on the window-seat, Logie in the middle, their arms entwined, all three talking at once in excited questioning and answer. So Sherry found them when he arrived a few minutes later. It flashed through Alison’s mind as he stood smiling
at them in the doorway that Sherry always looked at all hours of the day as though he had a few minutes earlier had a bath and shaved, clear skinned and bright of eye. She rose and went to him, giving him both her hands. “Sherry—it’s the loveliest news!”

He bent and kissed her lightly on the cheek. “I’m glad that you approve.”

Jane flung herself on him. “Logie drove me nearly mad—Alison was out and she insisted on keeping it a dead secret till we were both there. I guessed all sorts of things, but she wouldn’t say as much as yes or no.”

“Out upon her for a secretive baggage. I shall have to get her into better ways.” Over her head his eyes met Logie’s. “How about a celebration, madam? Shall we take the pair of them to drink our health over a meal at the Blue Boar at Aldeburgh? Or if that’s too far, they’re having chicken at the Painted Anchor. How about it, Alison? Have you got a meal half cooked or shall we all go out?”

“You’d far better go off on your own with Logie, though it’s sweet of you to ask us as well.”

“Oh,
Alison
!” Jane cried in disappointment.

“No, you must come. Of course you must! Logie and I have all the rest of our lives ahead of us together,” Sherry said. Logie turned her face aside, looking out into the garden so that none might see its ecstasy.

“You two go ahead, then, to the Painted Anchor. Jane and I will be with you in ten minutes,” Alison said. She and Jane went off to tidy. Logie stood motionless by the window, listening to their retreating voices “... You have the bathroom first, Janie—I must brush my suede shoes.” “All right—I shan’t be long.” A door closed. The only sounds were a bird singing in the garden and the pounding of her heart.

Sherry came up quietly behind her, slid one arm about her, turning her to face him. “Happy?”

She gave a little shaken laugh, holding the lapels of his coat, tilting her face to search his eyes. “Fantastically! ... Are you?”

“What do
you
think?” He dropped a kiss on the tip of her nose. “Come—we’d better order dinner or there will be only drumsticks left!”

But drumsticks were not to be their fate this evening. The landlady of the Painted Anchor, buxom Mrs. Tebbitts, had known Logie since she was a wide-eyed baby in a pram. Sensing that celebrations were afoot and guessing at their reason, she suggested to Sherry that he should give his little party drinks in the garden until the summer visitors who thronged the dining-room had finished dinner. “Then I can serve you with a little something special!” They went to sit in deck-chairs on the lawn behind the inn, where presently Alison and Jane joined them. Mrs. Tebbitts sent out three glasses of sherry, and one of orange juice for Jane. Some twenty minutes later they were summoned to their meal. The “little something special” turned out to be lobster mayonnaise, followed by roast duckling and green peas, and Peche Melba made with fresh peaches. It was a minor tragedy that Logie’s appetite should desert her now for the first time in her life. Incredulously she found that she could only make pretence of eating.

“Could you eat some of this?” she murmured to Jane, gazing despairingly at her generous helping of duckling. “I just don’t seem to be hungry.”

Jane obligingly speared the largest slice of duckling and a new potato and transferred them to her own plate. “You can’t waste duckling! If that’s what being in love does to you, I just hope I’ll never get engaged!”

The others ate and talked and laughed, while Logie answered automatically, feeling remote, as though she watched them from behind a screen of glass. “I feel exactly like a fish in an aquarium!” she thought, and wondered why, not understanding that she was suffering from the reaction of the sudden shock of happiness when Sherry, as they drove home after watching motor-boats racing on Oulton Broad, had asked abruptly after a long silence, “Logie—how about marrying me? Care to risk it?”

It was Jane who, when they were having coffee in the garden, voiced the questions Alison longed yet did not care to ask. “Sherry, will you and Logie go to live in Yorkshire? When’re you going to be married?”

Sherry put down his empty coffee-cup. “Those are two matters Logie must decide. As soon as she’s pronounced the verdict, Jane, I’ll let you know!”

Alison rose. “I do think it was perfectly angelic of you two to ask me and Jane to share your first engaged meal with you, when you must be longing to make plans and talk things over! Come, Jane. Time we were heading for home.”

They paused a moment by the open door of Mrs. Tebbitts’ office to tell her how much they had enjoyed her fare. The landlady looked up from her desk to beam at them. “Glad you enjoyed it! I somehow had a sort of feeling that it might be something of a special occasion!”

“And you weren’t far wrong. It’s not our secret, or we’d tell you,” Alison said.

“But the second it’s not a secret I’ll come rushing down and let you know,” Jane promised.

Mrs. Tebbitts laughed. “Some secrets are as plain as the nose upon my face, and a lot plainer than this form I’m trying to fill up! But you can trust me not to say anything until you say the word! Good night, Miss Alison! Good night, Jane!”

“Good night, Mrs. Tebbitts.”

Out in the market-place they saw Hugh Brandon leaving Swan House, carrying a leather case. He got into his car and drove away. He did not see them as he passed.

“He’s frowning,” Jane remarked. “I suppose he’s rushing off to somebody who’s ill or maybe dying. It must be frightfully depressing, being a doctor.”

Hugh’s frown, however, was not due to worrying over a patient. He was remembering how Lucia had come to meet him and John on their return earlier in the evening, laden with minnows. “Oh, there you are! Who
was
that girl, Hugh! And the other with pigtails?”

“They live in the flat over the coach-house and stables.”

“The pigtailed one went rushing across the lawn as though the place belonged to her! All very well if they were friends of the Sinclairs, but they must be made to realise that things are different now.”

He had said shortly that he had no objection whatever to the family in the flat using the garden of Swan House as much as they had done before. “The elder girl only came that way to show us the best place for catching minnows, and the younger one was looking for her—wanted her in a hurry. I don’t suppose they’ll make a habit of it. And if they do, what does it matter?”

His sister-in-law had given a disagreeable laugh. “Minnows!
What
an excuse! My poor Hugh!”—Her voice inferring all she did not say: that Alison was a scheming minx, already setting her cap at Hugh, an eligible, unsuspecting widower, all unaware of woman’s guile, her gold-digging potentialities.

He said, “She said she would look in to see you—ask you to tea one day, or coffee in the morning. If she does, please don’t say anything about the garden.”

Lucia, leading John off to bed, had answered that of course she would not if he didn’t wish it. But he was uneasily aware that Lucia was capable of conveying a great many meanings without putting them into words. It was of this that he was thinking now, as he set out to visit an elderly patient whose condition was causing some anxiety ... remembering the Hamilton girl’s simple friendliness, her gentleness with John, her frank brown eyes. How could he prevent Lucia from implying something that might embarrass or hurt her?

Sherry asked Logie, “What shall we do? Go on the river or in the car?”

Logie considered it. “Let’s go in the car to Lonely House.”

He rose, and took her hands, and drew her to her feet, smiling down at her, muttering, “Too many windows here!”

Her hair blew back in shining tendrils as they left the little town behind. The feeling of isolation, of being a spectator, looking on at her own newfound happiness, left her. Bliss possessed her. This time yesterday she had been wondering secretly how soon the enchantment she was living in must end with Sherry’s going. Then, all her happiness had been tarnished by the knowledge that any day must end it with Sherry’s casual announcement that he was going away. And now, incredibly, he wasn’t going after all. Their lives were going on together ... unbelievable rapture!

By farmland, woods, and open heath they reached the tumbled ruin they had named the Lonely House. Heading one day along by-roads and lanes unknown to either of them, they had come unexpectedly on its roofless walls. Behind, a cluster of ancient pines protected it. In front, bracken and gorse fell in a steep slope to a marsh bordering tidal waters where teal and mallard, widgeon and shelduck raised their families and redshanks rose with melancholy piping at the approach of an invader. Beyond that lay the sea. Those who lived here in bygone days had had a lovely panorama for their pleasure! South of the house lay the remains of a walled garden. Many of the bricks had been removed, doubtless to build cottages and farmhouses, but remnants of the old wall stood there still, and lichened, twisted apple-trees and roses rioting unpruned among the tangle of long grass and flowers, self-sown, descendants of those set there in Anne’s reign or even Elizabeth’s, survived the onslaught of the weeds. A stack of twisted chimneys, still standing, a curved Dutch gable, mullioned windows, gave evidence that the house had been of Tudor origin.

“I wonder why it’s been deserted?” Logie whispered, with an uncanny feeling that all about them thronged the ghosts of other days, watching the intruders on their privacy. “Perhaps some bride died tragically and her husband couldn’t bear that anyone should live where they had been so happy. Or there may have been a murder and it’s haunted.”

“More probably a fire or trouble with a well!” said Sherry practically, but Logie preferred her own more romantic theories as she pictured crinolines sweeping through the wide door, the bustle of serving-maids and men as a great coach and four came clattering to the door, the faces framed in monstrous powdered wigs, or the bunched curls of Jane Austen’s days, or old demure Victorian ringlets, that must have looked out from the windows.

Leaving the car, they followed a faint track to the garden, made most probably by country boys in search of apples. Among a tangle of rose-bushes was an ancient stone seat, grown with moss and lichen. Here they sat, breathing the bouquet of the roses’ second blooming, sweet old-fashioned cabbage roses and little clustered creamy ones; and that of herbs, lost in the weeds but fragrant still, and spicy currant-bushes putting up a gallant struggle for existence against the smothering grass. Sherry slid his arm behind her, with his other hand tilted her face to meet his lips. For Logie time stood still for an enchanted interlude...

The golden moment ended. Sherry lit a cigarette, thrust his hands deep in his pockets, leaned back and looked at her. “Now let’s get down to making plans. How soon will you marry me? Next week? Next month?”

“As soon as that?”

“Can’t be too soon as far as I’m concerned.”

“How about the beginning of October? Andrew’s coming home on leave then.”

“Two whole months?”

“It’s not very long to be engaged out of a lifetime!”

“We’ll cable Andrew, then, and ask if he’ll be my best man. You won’t want an enormous wedding, will you? Crowds of people neither of us know, and bridesmaids seething everywhere?”

She laughed. “Oh, goodness, no! And even if I did, we can’t afford it.”

“Good. I should loathe a huge tamasha. But it’s time you stopped saying you can’t afford things. As things go nowadays, I’m rather well off. We can afford most things you’re likely to set your heart on, including another house if you don’t care for Crail. And that reminds me—you’d better come and stay and see what you think of it. My mother’s in Italy, but she’ll be back there at the end of next week. We could go north a couple of days after she gets back.”

Logie was taken aback. “Your mother! I didn’t realise you had a mother.”

“It’s quite usual, you know!”

She laughed. “Yes, but you’ve never mentioned her. Somehow I thought you were an orphan or that she—that she—”

“That she had abandoned me as a small, helpless chee-ild and run off with a dashing cavalryman, and been divorced? Nothing like that! She and my father didn’t exactly see eye to eye, but they kept up appearances pretty well. She lives at Crail most of the time, though if we settle there she’ll be perfectly pleased to go elsewhere. She’s never believed in growing roots.”

“Roots!” Logie mused, “It seems so odd that you know all about
my
roots—the way I’ve lived, my home and everything—and I don’t know the first thing about yours. I don’t know any of your friends, except of course Andrew. You know all my relations; I’ve not seen a single one of yours. And I can’t begin to picture how you’ve lived!”

“What am I to tell you? I was born in Belgrave Square with a silver spoon inserted neatly in my mouth. Went to a prep school near Oxford, then to Eton. Just before I was due to go to Oxford the war started. I joined the Red Hussars. And here I am, approaching twenty-seven, sound of wind and limb, and at your service, madam! As for friends—most of mine are either dead or scattered to the four winds, except for old Danvers, the groom who taught me to ride. He’s getting on in years now. I hope he’ll end his days at Crail ... We’ll have to make new friends together.”