Kissing Kin (27 page)

Oliver was saying something to her. The eyes she lifted to his face were swimming helplessly with tears.

“Everybody feels like that to-night, for one reason or another,” he said gently. “Drink your wine.”

She obeyed him silently, and knew that he noticed how her hand shook.

“It’s worse for Virginia,” she got out as soon as she could. “It’s worse for her than for anybody here. Archie was—” She gulped and steadied again. “—was such a lamb.”

“Well, we had him,” said Oliver with a sigh. “They can’t really take him away from us. And I expect he was very tired.”

“Yes,” said Jenny. “Everybody’s tired enough to die, I think.” But her mind fumbled and refused the comfort his words might have brought. They can’t really take him away from us. No one you have loved, that is, can be entirely lost. But no one knew she had loved Raymond. Virginia had the support and sympathy of all her world in her grief. She could talk about Archie, she could always say, Do you remember how he used to … Do you remember when he said…. Do you remember the day we all … But there was no one for Jenny to talk to about Raymond except Calvert, and that wouldn’t be safe. Raymond was lost to her because there was no one to share his memory with, or her own grief. She had to bear it alone, locked up inside her, till she choked to death….

“My dear kid,” said Oliver’s quiet voice, “count ten, and take a deep breath. If you begin, it will set us all off, you know.”

Jenny answered him automatically, out of months and years of difficult self-control, since long before Raymond.

“I’m all right,” she said, and lifted her chin, and gave him a rather shaky smile. “And anyway,” she added defiantly with a glance across the table, “it’s not what you think.”

“Oh, that,” said Oliver easily, comprehending. “Nobody thinks about that any more. Take a week off. Phoebe and I had in mind something ridiculous like Cheltenham or Malvern—not for the waters, of course, just to rusticate. Come with us.”

“Thank you,” she said with real gratitude for his kindness
and no intention of accepting it. “We’ll see what Winifred says.”

“I can tell you that beforehand!” Oliver replied darkly.

In the drawing-room after dinner with the gramophone going and what Virginia had begun with a pathetic matronly air to call the Younger Ones dancing to it, Phoebe looked round to find Kendrick slipping into the place beside her on the sofa.

“
Well!
” she said, and raised her eyebrows at him. “You do seem to be enjoying yourself!”

“I never had so much fun in my life,” he said simply.

“Are you serious?” she asked with a lingering incredulity, and he grinned impudently back at her.

“One can’t be serious about Fabrice. But I’m going to marry her, if that’s what you mean.”

“You’re—!” Phoebe was speechless.

“Are you surprised?” asked Kendrick, pretending to be surprised that she was.

“But she—she’s—”

“I know she is!” he chortled. “Nobody ever was more so! Like one of those unbelievable little creatures in a French farce that you want to buy as a souvenir and take home in your pocket! I’ve always thought that if you could tame one of those bits of nonsense and have it round the house—” He lit a cigarette and threw the match into the fireplace with an expert, carefree flick. “Of course I shall probably have to lay her across my knee now and then, but nobody minds that.”

“How will Philadelphia react to her, do you think?”

“It won’t get the chance to do any reacting for some time to come. I shall be going back to Geneva next week—there’s still a lot to be done there. Geneva, I promise you, will be only too pleased!”

“So you really have got the courage to take it on,” she murmured.

“Sure I have! She only wants a good spanking, and I’m the man to attend to that!” He laughed, but his eyes were tender.
“She’s the most divinely
obvious
thing I ever saw. But once she learns who’s boss—I’ll be a lucky guy!”

“Well, if you think so—” Phoebe said uncertainly.

“Should I do it right and ask Aunt Sally first?” he inquired.

“Yes, I think you should,” she agreed, to see what would happen, and he rose at once and crossed the room to where Sally sat, and made her a little bow.

“Madame—I do myself the honour to demand your
granddaughter
’s hand in marriage.”

Sally was not taken by surprise. She rested upon him her deep violet gaze and nodded slowly.

“It will serve her right,” she said, and Kendrick laughed and kissed her hand with easy grace and went off to where Fabrice  was bickering prettily with Gerald in a corner, and asked her to dance.

She accepted with alacrity and a sidelong glance at Gerald, and Kendrick murmured against her hair as they danced away, “Congratulate me. I am going to be married.”

He could not see her face, and it was a moment before she said coolly, “To whom?”

“To
you’m!
” he crowed, and swung her in a wide pirouette and swept her back again closer than before. “I have just spoken to Granny, and received her blessing.
You
have nothing whatever to say about it.”

She chuckled, and her cheek touched his.

“How crrrrazy you are!” she said admiringly.

“That’s what
they
think!”

“Who?”

“Your family. ‘Why on earth do you want to marry
her?
’ is written all over them. But
we
know why, don’t we.”

“Do we?”

“Because it will be fun.” The words were warm against her ear. “Because you’re up against somebody your size, this time, that you can’t lead round by the nose, and life is going to be very exciting and full of surprises—for both of us.”

“Will you give me a diamond ring?” she whispered.

“Down to the knuckle!”

“And a pearl necklace?”

“Down to—”

“
Please!
” squealed Fabrice, and melted against him, weak with delight and surrender, and Virginia, who had always considered herself unshockable, looked at Phoebe, who made a resigned sort of face.

Sally, brooding beautifully on the sofa, murmured to Sosthène, “I could not have chosen better for her myself. She will learn a thing or two now!”

And Sosthène said, smiling, “Will he beat her?”

“Ah, no, there will be no need. She will worship him. It is in her to worship, on her knees. She needs the high hand. And she will be a good wife to him after a while, you will see.” The shadowed violet eyes travelled on among the dancers. “Daphne too—and that Carteret boy—so soon. She is very young—but as I remember, Virginia was young too, and never once looked back.”

“There is supposed to be another woman for him—widow of a brother officer, I believe,” remarked Sosthène, who knew everything by a sort of osmosis, but rarely made revelations.

“Are they promised?”

“Not yet, perhaps.”

“Then no harm is done,” said Sally. “After to-night it will be Daphne, for him. It is very flattering to a man when he has not seeked it—sought, do I mean?—and when she is so young. He is taken, you see? He is a little sorry—one is always sorry for the very young. He is kindness itself—he feels a little
unworthy
—he wants her never to be unhappy because of him. It is a good beginning, always. No man of any worth can be anything but humble when the woman, especially so young, is made so happy and so shining just to see him.”

“Then you do not subscribe,
mon
âme,
to the old rule that says man should always be allowed to pursue while woman flees?”

“Ah, bah!” said Sally, and flicked his sleeve with her fingers.
“
You,
that was born knowing, you ask me that! If she does not cling—if she does not demand—if she is just, oh, so happy to see him—it is irresistible.
You,
that have always known that!”

“Since my cradle.” He smiled into her eyes.

And Camilla, dancing by in Bracken’s arms, saw the smile and felt it like a cramp in her heart, and thought with
something
like exasperation, Why do I care so much? Why do I care
at
all?
It’s not being jealous, it’s nothing so simple as that. To be jealous you must have some hope of possessing
something
and dread to lose it. I have never possessed anything of Sosthène. But to see them like that together is always like having something snatched out of my hands again—something that was never there. Each time I have
less,
like taking
something
away from nothing. Mathematically, you can’t do it. I’ve no right to Sosthène, and he has no need of me. Or—has he? Confronted again by the blank high wall of mystery which surrounded Sosthène and Sally, her thoughts fell back from it again, confused and embarrassed. You didn’t think about that, whatever else you did. You didn’t allow yourself to speculate, or even to contemplate. You hid your eyes and covered your ears. What was between them was nobody’s business but their own.

But if this—this obsession for Sosthène, if you agreed to call it that, was just some sort of hallucination, like a schoolgirl crush, which came of unnatural war tensions and fatigue, in times when everybody was a little off centre anyway, oughtn’t it to begin to die down pretty soon? Oughtn’t she to be able by now to see it for what it was, and dismiss it, live through it, get free of it, and be herself again in a more rational, familiar world where Calvert was all she really cared about, and after him the music she was born with? It was humiliating to go on being enslaved by emotions she had hardly known existed, to a man who had never made the slightest return—well, yes, he was kind, he praised her music, his eyes lingered, his lips smiled—but surely one could not be in love with a man one
almost never saw alone, and who could not speak one word to acknowledge one’s devotion?

Camilla knew very little about love, for her reading had not been in that direction, and she had received few feminine confidences. In her ignorance she had tried at first to label her feeling for Sosthène infatuation, and waited for it to die for lack of nourishment. More than a year, now—and the
enchantment
still held her fast. What would Bracken think if he knew? Bracken had an answer to most things. But if she told Bracken this he would surely doubt her sanity. Even Calvert seemed puzzled and uncertain what to say, and they seldom referred to it in their most private talks. It lay there between them, the first shadow across their common path—her love for Sosthène.

Calvert’s case was simple enough. Calvert wanted Jenny, and Jenny was free but kept on saying No. They couldn’t quite see why. She was tired, of course, and probably couldn’t think quite straight. Nobody was thinking quite straight any more, it was the war, and then the end of the war, and a sort of keyed-up let-down. Calvert was trying everything they could think of—he offered to stay on in England, where she could go on with her work among the wounded—he offered to take her right out of England, to Williamsburg or the South of France, and make her forget the war—anything, anywhere, in the world. But Jenny went on saying No. Calvert had bad times when he thought it was because of his leg, which would never be right again. But they both knew better than that. Lots of Jenny’s friends were marrying men much worse off than Calvert. Jenny said No because she didn’t love him. To Camilla that was incomprehensible. Sometimes she was angry with Jenny, and sometimes she was sorry for her. And sometimes she couldn’t help wondering if Gerald was still at the bottom of it….

The music stopped abruptly, and Camilla looked about her, dazed by her own wandering thoughts. Kendrick and Fabrice were standing in front of Sally, looking radiant and
self-satisfied.
Sosthène was handing round glasses of champagne.
Fabrice and Kendrick seemed to have got engaged. Camilla’s eyes met Calvert’s across the room and saw that his face had gone quite white. She knew then that he too must have wondered if Gerald was not still at the bottom of Jenny’s No.

Farthingale was so full of reunited married house guests who had to be together, and assorted single ones who could not be expected to share a room, that Camilla and Jenny had
overflowed
contentedly enough on to the top floor, where each had what was once
a housemaid’s bedroom. With Virginia’s diminished war-time staff there was plenty of that kind of accommodation, and in Virginia’s house such quarters were far more comfortable than in most grander establishments, like the Hall. Next door to the two girls was the smiling,
competent
Melchett, whose name was Lucy, and who had slept in that same small room since before Virginia came to the house as a bride, and who to-night had put hot water-bottles in each of their narrow white beds and laid out their nighties on the turned-back covers and was now tactfully invisible behind her own door.

The girls climbed the last flight of stairs wearily, in silence, and kissed each other good night with affection in the passage, neither of them inclined for a bedtime chat. Camilla felt unaccountably exhausted and her light was soon out.

Jenny had forgotten to bring up anything to read, and the former inhabitant of her room had not gone in for literature. A yellowing copy of
The
Queen
, forgotten in one of the dresser drawers, presented little of interest, except a dismal reminder of the faraway days when people hunted and had new clothes and dined out in formal dress. Jenny dropped it on the floor beside the bed and lay and stared at the ceiling, which is never a wise thing to do at any time. From the other side of the partition against which her bed was set, came the gentle rhythm of Melchett’s virginal snores. On Camilla’s side all was at once reposeful silence.

Well, Christmas was over at last, and Virginia had got
through it splendidly, and the children had had a good time, and it looked as though they were rid of Fabrice, and Gerald was left holding the bag, which was probably just what he needed, and he would doubtless not take it too hard, and Adrian Carteret was rather gone on Daphne, as anyone could see, and nobody would object to that when the time came, it was very suitable. Lucky Daphne. Lucky Fabrice. Don’t grudge it them, somebody has a right to be happy now. Not for Camilla, though, and not for Jenny. Not for Calvert either, if he persisted in being in love with the empty husk which was Jenny Keane. It was a pity one couldn’t somehow see one’s way to oblige anybody so nice and so deserving as Calvert. No—oh, no,
it wasn’t to be thought of, first because one would feel such a hypocrite, second because it would keep Raymond always like a knife in one’s side, twisting, when the only thing to do was to try and let him go now, try not to remember and grieve and ache, try to close a door on
that part of oneself and be of some use without him. And thirdly—it was something she tried never to think of but never succeeded—thirdly, Raymond might still be heard from, even now.