Hole and Corner (4 page)

“Is she grim?”

“I should think so—I've never seen her. It sounds odd, but you see it's like this. My mother married a man called Augustus Rigg when she was seventeen, and she had twins on her eighteenth birthday, and they called them John and Jane. And then Augustus took a toss in the hunting-field and died, and about a year later a French artist called Pierre Levaux came along and married my mother and took her away to France. She left the twins with the Rigg relations, and two years later she was a widow again with a French baby called Perrine, and she left it with Monsieur Levaux's mother and married my father and went out to New Zealand.”

“Then you've got two sisters and a brother?”

She shook her head.

“No—the John twin was killed in the war like my two real brothers. And Perrine's dead too, a long time ago, but Jane's alive. She wrote when old Aunt Emily died about eight months ago.”

“But you've never seen her?”

Shirley shook her head. Her eyes sparkled.

“It wasn't the sort of letter that makes you want to rush into the arms of the person who wrote it. She must be thirty years older than I am, and I thought she was most horribly afraid I'd want to come and settle on her. It was a sort of ‘Shoo, fly!' kind of letter, if you know what I mean. Of course I don't suppose the Riggs liked my mother going off and leaving them like that, but Jane wrote a lot about not having a spare room in her cottage, and what a dull place Emshot was for a young girl, and all that sort of thing.”

“Emshot?” said Anthony. “That's funny.”

“Why is it funny?”

“Because I'm week-ending at Emshot House. Shall I go and call on your sister Jane?”

“You can if you like. Oh, Anthony,
do
! And then you can tell me what she's like. Acacia Cottage, The Green, Emshot—that's her address. Be an angel pioneer and find out just how grim she is!”

“Perhaps she isn't grim at all.”

“Sure to be. I've always meant to go and see her some day, but whenever I've felt brave enough I haven't had the money, and whenever I've had the money I haven't felt nearly brave enough.”

“I think you ought to go and see her.”

“'M—” said Shirley. Her eyes sparkled again. “Do you know, Anthony, it's about forty-six years since my father and mother went out to New Zealand, and I wasn't born or thought of for another twenty-six years, and Jane's been going all that time and a good bit longer. You can't really bridge over a gap like that—can you?”

“It's a bit difficult. Is there no one on your father's side?”

“Only the aunt who brought me up. She was awfully old too. My father would be eighty if he was alive, and she was five years older. I'm not really in my right generation. I ought to have been a grand-daughter—I might have been one quite easily. Hugh was twenty-three when he was killed in 1914, and Ambrose was twenty-two. They were my brothers, but they ought to have been uncles or something like that really.” The colour ran up bright and clear into her cheeks, and she jumped down from the arm of the chair. “I'm talking the most frightful nonsense, but you led me on. Anthony, the oddest thing happened to me yesterday. I'd like to tell you about it.”

She knelt down by the hearth and began to put coal on the fire, a piece at a time, with an aggravating pair of brass tongs which could not be stretched to take a large piece and invariably dropped a small one.

He watched her, and said presently,

“What happened?”

“Well, I thought it was an odd thing. It was when I was coming away from here last night. I struck the rush hour, and there were a lot of people waiting for the bus at the end of the road. Everyone was pushing and jostling when it came up—you know how they do. And when I got near the bus I caught hold of the rail to pull myself up—and there was somebody else's handbag on my wrist.”

“Somebody else's handbag?”

“Yes—wasn't it frightful? I hadn't got my own bag with me, only a little purse in my pocket, and anyhow this was a complete and absolute stranger of a bag.”

“What did you do?”

“I had got on to the step, so I gripped the conductor by the arm, and I said, ‘Look here, this isn't my bag.' And he said, ‘I don't know nothing about that.' And I said, ‘Well, I don't either,' and I held it right up and called out, ‘Is this anyone's bag?—because it isn't mine.' And a woman with a red nose and a vinegar eye says yes, it was hers, and it had got a crocodile purse with seven and elevenpence half-penny in it, and a paper of peppermints, and a letter addressed to Mrs Heycock. And so it had. And she sat opposite me all the way in the bus eating peppermints and looking as if she thought I had stolen her bag.”

Anthony laughed.

“If you're going to take to crime, I should pinch something better worth having than seven and elevenpence halfpenny and a paper of peppermints.”

“You forget the crocodile purse,” said Shirley over her shoulder. “If I get taken up for stealing something really worth having, will you defend me, and make a lovely speech, and get me off in the teeth of the evidence with the jury wringing out their pocket handkerchiefs and reporters sobbing on each other's shoulders?”

“You'll have to pay me a fee.”

She laughed too, and cocked an impudent eyebrow.

“Twopence halfpenny's about my limit.”

“What about a kiss on account?” said Anthony in a soft, lazy voice.

He was still leaning forward, and she had turned round from the fire and was half sitting, half kneeling on the hearth-rug no more than a yard away. Their eyes met, and a little disturbing spark leapt between them. Shirley, still laughing, had begun to shake her head, when without warning Anthony reached out, caught her by the shoulders, and pulled her hard up against the chair.

The laughter went out of her with the most extraordinary suddenness. One moment it was a game, and the next moment it wasn't. Anthony had kissed her before, once when they had been dancing, and twice on the doorstep when he had seen her home, and she hadn't minded a bit. They had been light, cheerful kisses that meant nothing at all. She had laughed, and he had laughed. But now the laughter was gone out of her. For a second there was a frightening emptiness.

Anthony was still laughing. His lips were very near.

And then into the emptiness there poured a boiling torrent of anger. She struck him hard across the mouth, and twisted free, and got to her feet, shaking with rage.

Anthony let go of her at once. Then he pushed back his chair and got up, and there they were with about the width of the hearth-rug between them.

Shirley's heart had begun to bang against her side. It wasn't fair of him to be so tall, and to keep his temper. She wanted to go on being furious, but she could feel the anger simply leaking away and leaving her quite horribly frightened. She wished he had shaken her, she wished he had kissed her by force, because then she would have stayed at boiling-point and not minded, and now she was beginning to mind horribly. If Anthony didn't say something in a minute—

From the drawing-room Mrs Huddleston's bell rang sharp and clear. Shirley had never been so glad to hear it in her life. She put up a shaking hand and smoothed her hair. Anthony walked to the door and opened it. Perhaps he would go away. She hoped with all her heart that he would go away. But then perhaps she wouldn't ever see him again. He would never want to see her again. She ought to feel glad about this. She didn't feel glad. She felt utterly desolate and miserable.

Mrs Huddleston's bell rang again, more sharply than before, and just as Shirley ran past him out of the room, Anthony said,

“I'm sorry.”

He said it with the cold politeness of the total stranger who has trodden on your foot or bumped into you in a crowd.

It was ten minutes before Mrs Huddleston was ready for her nephew. She didn't use lipstick, but she put on a little rouge. And the cushions had to be beaten up, the lights switched on, and the curtains drawn.

The room was in a rosy glow when Anthony was admitted. It smelled of scented pastilles, and eau-de-cologne, and the forced white lilac which stood in a tall iridescent jar on the piano. He reflected that there were far too many things in the room, and that he was one of them. Shirley perhaps was another. She had retreated to the window, and stood there until he had embraced his aunt and seated himself, when she took a chair behind him. As he talked, he could catch teasing glimpses of her in the Venetian mirror which hung above the piano. It reflected the white lilac, and it reflected Shirley, who was very nearly as pale. He had stopped feeling angry, but he was still feeling very much surprised, and under the surprise there was a hint of amusement and a hint of compunction. And were they dining together to-night. Or weren't they? He thought they were, but he didn't think Shirley thought so.

The amusement quickened. He smiled amiably at Mrs Huddleston, who was encouraged to expand an already diffuse narrative—“Quite a new treatment and very expensive, as all these things are. And I asked him most pressingly whether the waters have a very disagreeable taste, and he said he was afraid they had, only I mustn't mind that. And the baths aren't exactly mud-baths, but a sort of special stuff that they pack you in right up to the chin, and you do it for one hour the first day, and two the second, and three the third, and then you stop for three days, and when you start again you begin with two hours the first day, and three the second, and four the third, and then you stop again.…”

Mrs Huddleston, however, did not stop. She was still talking when the tea came in, and Shirley was still sitting on her stiff little chair by the window. She had tried to get away, but Mrs Huddleston wouldn't let her go. Now she had to pour out the tea, and when Anthony took his cup he looked at her with laughing eyes that asked a question. He had his back to Mrs Huddleston, so he could look as he pleased. His eyes said, “You're not going to go on being angry, are you?” But hers couldn't say anything at all. They had to be the eyes of a perfectly correct secretary who was only pouring out the tea because her employer was an interesting invalid, and she never stopped watching her and Anthony for a single second, so that it was quite impossible to frown at him or to look repressive.

Mrs Huddleston had a most excellent appetite. She could not, naturally, admit this, and ate merely to keep up her strength, and under pressure from her medical advisers. Having provided her with a good-sized piece of cake, Anthony wandered round the room, cup in hand, fetching up presently by the piano, where he was quite out of Mrs Huddleston's sight. Putting down his cup, he proceeded to make peace overtures to Shirley in pantomime. He stretched out his hands in an imploring gesture. He clutched his heart, smote his brow, and went down upon his knees.

Shirley ought, of course, to have looked away. Unfortunately, however, she hesitated, and was lost. She tried for a politely indifferent gaze, felt it slipping, and was torn by an awful inward desire to laugh. Anthony was a
devil
—he really was. If she laughed, she would lose her job. She jerked her cup to her lips just in time to hide them, and choked realistically over a sip which she had not swallowed.

Mrs Huddleston was annoyed, and showed her annoyance. She said, “Really, Miss Dale!” several times, and then asked for another slice of cake—“Just the merest shaving. Because Dr Monsell does so insist that I should eat. And I'm sure I always say to him that I have no appetite—no appetite whatever, but he
insists
. No, not you, Miss Dale—my nephew will cut it for me.… My dear Anthony, what
are
you doing? Nothing makes me so nervous as feeling that there is someone just behind me. If you have recovered yourself Miss Dale, I should be glad of another cup of tea.”

Shirley
had
recovered herself. She filled up Mrs Huddleston's cup, and saw Anthony make a final despairing gesture as he came forward to cut the cake. She was quite determined not to look at him, but out of the tail of her eye she could see him wringing his hands in most dangerous proximity to the sofa. If his aunt turned her head she would see him too. Even as the thought went through Shirley's mind, Mrs Huddleston did turn her head, but all she saw was a debonair nephew hastening in the direction of the cake-stand.

“Isn't that a new maid you've got—the one that brought in the tea?” he said.

Shirley choked down an unwilling giggle. Anthony was a devil, but he was quick.

Mrs Huddleston could talk for hours about her servants. She began to talk about them now. Yes, the maid was a new one. She had replaced Annie Mossop, who had behaved with a total lack of consideration in rushing off at a moment's notice because some relation was ill—“At least that is what she
said
, but the postman told Possett—my maid Possett—that he had seen Annie since she left me, and she was looking as pleased as could be and told him she had got a better place and a rise in wages, which is just what I should have expected, and I'm thankful to be rid of her and to have someone a little older and more responsible.”

“What's this one's name?” said Anthony idly.

“Bessie Wood—and she's over thirty and seems to know her work. She heard about Annie going off like that from one of the tradespeople and came and offered herself, and she had very good references, so I engaged her.”

Anthony felt that he had heard as much as he could bear about Bessie—a thin, plain person with cold eyes and tucked-in lips. He came and sat down by Mrs Huddleston and laid himself out to be charming. Next to conversation about her health and her servants, Mrs Huddleston loved anecdotes about the Royal Family, and the decadence of modern youth. Anthony obligingly produced three stories all equally apocryphal, and two that might possibly be true, after which, having finished her tea, she was ready to moralize.