My Heart Has Wings (12 page)

“With rue my heart is laden

For golden friends I had
...
”

Jan listened to the plaintive song, entranced. The voice held a heart-breaking pathos. It was a deep contralto, rounded and rich, pure as a bell.

Who could it be singing so sadly on this night of merry-making? Jan wondered, and saw Lady Scott-Manly enter the hall by the garden door. Hearing the singing she halted, a look of sudden pleasure on her plump homely face.

Jan moved across to where she stood, beginning a little hurriedly, “We have planted the last clues, Lady Scott-Manly. I told Erica I would find you and let you know.”

Lady Scott-Manly nodded and held up a warning finger. “That’s Helen singing,” she whispered.
“Using her beautiful voice for the first time in almost two years. We mustn’t let her discover we are listening; it might disturb her.”

Taking Jan’s arm she led her through the garden door out on to the terrace, shutting the door quietly behind her. “She is with Signor Mantini in the music room,” she said. “Her old singing master. We asked him here to meet her tonight—as a surprise for her. It was Erica’s idea. We are hoping great things will come of it
...
that she may even decide to take up her musical career once more. That’s what Mike has been urging her to do, but she was reluctant to make a start
.
Shrank from seeing Mantini
...
fearful of the pain of old associations her music was bound to bring.”

They stood for a moment in silence, looking at the a
ni
mated scene on the floodlit lawn.

“She has grieved so terribly for Jock, poor child,
”
Lady Scott-Manly said softly at last. “But she has grieved over-long, it seemed to us. She is young, her life is still before her. We have all been worried about her recently—especially Mike who loves her for her own sake as well as Jock’s! He will be so glad to hear that she has got over the morbid determination never to sing again.”

And it’s all Erica’s doing, Jan thought, stifling a pang of envy. But it was so wonderful to be
r
ich, popular, generous; to have the power as well as the will to wave an occasional magic wand for one
’
s friends. Did she realize how lucky she was? Jan wondered.

The rest of the evening seemed curiously empty and meaningless to
her; if the party had held any ill
us
ion
of enchantment, it had vanished—lost
in
a twilight beech wood perhaps, mislaid in a conversation that had had no time to finish. But illusions were as well mislaid! Half-heartedly Jan trough the treasure hunt, finding no splendid gilt this year, nor deserving to, for her search was desultory her thoughts on Mike and Erica. Occasionally she caught sight of them—invariably together; Erica pale but determinedly gay, helping to elucidate difficult clues, urging the timid on. Paleski and Anne-Marie did not appear again. Which was scarcely surprising!

When the hunt was over Mantini sang from the terrace, his pure tenor pouring its music into the hushed summer night. They were all Italian songs he had chosen. Helen, at the piano, accompanied
him
with musi
ci
anly confidence and an instinctive sympathy for his occasional erratic treatment of the score. Her small rapt face, caught in the floodlight, wore an egression Jan had never seen it wear before; an irradiated, exalted look, and yet touchingly vulnerable, as though hope, half incredulous, struggled through fear. Would she too be persuaded to sing? But it would have taken immense courage to follow the Maestro—and even while he bowed his acknowledgement to the thunder of applause the orchestra was assembling behind him for the last dances of the evening.

Jan watched Mike lead Erica out on the grassy lawn, and it was with a sense of relief that she became aware of Mrs. Daker beckoning to her. Earlier the Dakers had promised her a lift home, and Mrs. Daker announced now that Hugh was anxious to be off. “If it isn’t too soon for you?” she added.

“I’ll be glad to go!” Jan said, with a passionate fervour that caused Mrs. Daker to glance at her in mild surprise.

Mike went back to Merecombe early on Monday morning. Jan had no chance to speak to him before he left. Daker was working her hard, rushing through the morning mail before he too made for the West Country aerodrome. He dictated with an air of suppressed impatience. It was clear his whole interest was with the E.106a. In an expansive moment he told Jan the functional testing and engine running had been completed and the prototype was ready for taxi trials. Jan, who had not experienced the launching of a prototype since she joined the firm, went a shade paler.

“Does that mean the first flight?” she asked in a small voice.

“Good heavens, no!” Daker answered. “We shan’t be ready
for
that for some days, and even then it’s a question of waiting for suitable weather conditions. But if you’d like to see it when it does come off I’ll try to get you down to Merecombe.”

Jan gave a little gasp of pleasure. “Oh, I’d love that, Mr. Daker!”

“I’ll probably be glad of you to type the playback of the wire recorder,” he said, crushingly.

But Jan didn’t feel in the least crushed. She had hated being deprived of the job of dealing with Mike’s flight records, and was delighted to be reinstated. Apparently S.M.’s awkward craze for having the play-back typed in his own office was at an end. It didn’t occur to her to wonder why. S.M., like the Deity, moved in a mysterious way.

When the dictation was finished, Daker said, “I’ve given you rather a lot of
stuff there, Miss Ferraby, but you needn’t try to get through it all today. As a matter of fact I’ve told Miss Scott-Manly she can ‘borrow’ you this afternoon; she has some notes she wants you to help her with. Perhaps you wouldn’t mind going over to her office after lunch?”

“Of course not,” Jan murmured, though the request was no more than a sop to courtesy—rather belated courtesy at that. Daker had already promised to loan her to Erica—as though she were some inanimate chattel! He was quite within his rights, of course, there wasn’t a great deal to do in the designing office while he was so much at Merecombe, and Helen would be along as usual during the afternoon and could be left to deal with telephone calls and so forth.

Erica’s office was a small room near her father’s suite in the main executive building; comfortably furnished as a study, with carpet, deep armchairs, shelves of books and a beautiful Sheraton writing desk. There was a bowl of sweet peas on the windowsill this July afternoon, and in a tooled leather frame on the mantelpiece, Jan noticed, a recent snap of Mike, windblown and laughing, stepping out of the cockpit of an Arrow.

Erica, seated at her desk, was wearing large horn-rimmed glasses which made her look very solemn and wise. She was rather pale, her lips compressed into a thin line. She greeted Jan a little self-consciously. They had not met since that awkward interlude in the maze. Jan felt acutely embarrassed as she sat down in the chair Erica indicated, her notebook ready on her knee.

Erica fiddled with the papers before her for an instant, assuming an air of deep concentration. “It was awfully good of Mr. Daker to spare you this afternoon,” she murmured. “I’ve got some lecture notes into a frightful tangle and it would help me no end if I could sort them out and
dictate
them to you.”

Jan opened her notebook and sat with her pencil
poised.

“I hope you didn’t mind coming over,” Erica said.

“Of course not,” Jan assured her.

Erica tapped her white teeth with a pencil end and stared into space. “I’m not much of a hand at dictating
...”
she began diffidently, and broke off suddenly, giving Jan a quick, nervous glance. But her tone was carefully
casual as she said, “By the way, Jan, I’m sorry for that ridiculous business in the maze on Saturday evening.” Her pale cheeks took on a faintly pink tinge and Jan out of sheer sympathy went a rich crimson.

“It
was
ridiculous, wasn’t it?” she agreed emphatically, taking her cue.

Erica laughed ... not very convincingly. “My dear, it was sheer farce! Rather low farce at that! But foolish and annoying as the whole thing was, I’m glad it happened as it did. I had no idea Paleski was so romantically misconstruing my interest in his attempt to start an air-charter company! It was just as well I found out what he was really like before I tried to involve my father in giving him a backing.”

So that was the line she was taking, Jan reflected, with admiration for her spirit.

“I thought he sounded absolutely ... foul,” she said indignantly.

Erica shrugged, dismissing Paleski to the limbo he deserved, and clearing her throat, began to dictate.

They were copious notes and their transcription kept Jan occupied in spare half-hours for the rest of the week. Erica has insisted there was no hurry about them and she was not to allow them to interfere with routine work. Which, as it happened, became a little more exacting. Helen quite suddenly left the firm—released with Sir Mark Scott-Manly’s blessing. A transformed Helen, glowing with new life. She was, she told Jan, going to the Salzburg Festival with her parents. “A whole fortnight of concerts and opera, after not hearing a note of music for more than eighteen months,” she said. “I don’t know how I’m going to bear so much delight! And when we come back I’m starting lessons with Mantini again. It’s all Erica’s doing, and Mike’s.” Tears of emotion filled Helen’s eyes. “They have been so wonderful to me over all this, Jan!” She broke off to wipe her eyes, with a wisp of handkerchief. “Forgive me for getting so worked up about it—but really they both have been
lambs!
I’m so glad everything is working out happily once more for them. Paleski is right out of the picture at last. Did you know?”

“
I rather gathered as much,” Jan murmured guardedly.

“
It seems he had a wife in Paris all the time,” Helen went on. “Poor Erica! It must have been rather a rude awakening for her when she found out. A drastic ending to her little infatuation, for of course that’s all it ever was. She seems to have left it behind without a backward glance. She’s far too fine a person to let herself be hurt permanently by such an experience. Or,” Helen added softly, “to let Mike be hurt either. He has been very patient with her ... and I hope she’s making up to
him
for the worry she has given him. Thank goodness it was straightened out before his big flight; it will make all the difference to him. I shouldn’t be at all surprised if their engagement was announced very soon.”

CHAPTER
TEN

“A
silver charger
thundering across the blue arena of heaven,” Hart read aloud in what Jan called his “poetry voice”.

“Into the lists of chivalry rides a knight in ‘G’ suit armour.”

Lying on a heap of cushions in the stern of the family rowing boat, Jan looked up at the overcast sky A grey arena today. Mike wouldn't be making his big test flight in this weather, and anyway August Bank Holiday. He was probably at Sheldrake ..
.
with Erica.

“At the core of the thunder a human heart-beat,

Vulnerable, alone
...
fashioned to love
,
to
fear...”

Hart went on.

I
’
ve got to talk to him about the grocery account, Jan reflected unhappily. They were tied up to the banks of an island in a leafy backwater, away from the excursion steamers and holiday crowds.

“I
asked Mike what he thinks about when he is flying at supersonic speed,” Hart said. “If he is ever afraid? But he says it's not in the least the way the uninitiated imagine it, in fact it’s possible to go through the sound barrier, as it is called, without realizing you’ve done it. And anyway he is far too busy on an important test flight to bother about what he may be feeling or not
f
eel
in
g. So I didn’t get much romantic material out of
that
particular inquiry. But he did loosen up a bit about the exhilaration of flying at a great
height ...
the sky pure sapphire and very empty, the sun terrifically bright
...
”

“And Mike,” Jan put in crisply, “with his eyes glued to the instrument panel, watching the altimeter, the airspeed indicator and the Machmeter.
”

Hart laughed. “So I gathered. It’s all matter-of-fact. In a way that makes it all the more
heroic.”

Jan dipped her fingertips in the milky-warm water that lapped the boat’s sides. “It’s a matter-of-fact world,” she said soberly. “But not always heroic.” She didn’t want to be mean and repressive just when they were discussing the play, but her father would have to know about that grocery bill. “Lenny’s have refused to give us any more credit ” she said bluntly. “The manager made me pay on the nail for the groceries I bought on Saturday. I felt pretty small about it, even though he did try to soften the blow with a long polite speech about the rising costs of overheads forcing them to cut down on bookkeeping, and that they can’t afford to keep on presenting the same account over and over again. We haven’t paid them anything for more than six months
...” she
ended bleakly.

Hart groaned. “How much do we owe them?
”

“About thirty pounds.”

To Jan’s astonishment he took out his cheque book. “I’m sorry you’re having so much worry over unpaid bills these days, my poor Jan,” he said. “But I’m hoping to be able to pay off all the outstanding debts very soon, so try to be patient with me.”

It wasn’t
her
impatience, but the impatience of the tradespeople that mattered, Jan wanted to reminded him. But instead she said eagerly, “Does that mean you have had a definite offer from Duke for your play?”

“Not exactly,” Hart returned cautiously. “He
’
s very interested. Not that a production at The Water-Mill, pleasant as it would be, would exactly make our fortunes. Though it might be the beginning of better things. I’ve got to get back to regular journalism, Jan. A steady job with a steady income. It’s the only safe way to live.”

“If only you
could
get a newspaper appointment again!” Jan said fervently.

“
Maybe you think I don’t try!” Hart burst out with an undertone of bitterness. “I do. I never let up. But competition is fierce
...
there are so many younger men coming along. However,” he shrugged it away, “I pick up the odd job as I go along and I suppose I ought to be thankful to earn anything at all. Though sometimes,” he added after a pause, “I intensely dislike the kind of thing I find myself forced to do.”

She supposed he meant the endless search for small
items of sensational news, and even the more wearying attempts at writing popular magazine stories
...
which he hardly ever succeeded in selling. She took the cheque he had been making out, and saw that it was for ten pounds.

“Can you really afford this?” she asked. It was so long since his banking account had amounted to anything more than a token.

“It’s all right,”
Hart grinned, reading her thoughts.
“
It won
’
t bounce! And it may help to appease the manager at Lenny’s. I've had a couple of small windfalls lately, and there may be more to come
...
from the same source.”

“Journalism?” Jan asked.

“More or less,” Hart murmured, and with an air of dismissing the subject, picked up the typescript of his play.