Nightingale Wood (34 page)

‘You – er – you – I suppose you heard—?’

‘About your being engaged? Oh yes.’ She went very red, then white. Why bring that up? She began to feel miserable, and wished he would take her home. Everything was getting horrid. An enormous lump rushed into her throat.

‘Yes. Oh yes. Yes, we’re getting married in the spring.’

In another minute, he thought savagely, I’ll be saying I’m sure she’d like Phyl and we must all do a show together some time. Blast. I never ought to have started this. To hell with everything.

Sniff.

‘Violet darling, what’s the matter? Don’t cry. Here, have mine. There – is that better? What’s the matter, you funny little object?’

‘It’s
Viola
, not Violet. You always get it wrong,’ crying copiously on his shoulder, ‘and you always make me miserable and I think you’re a beast. I was quite all right until you started about getting married. And you don’t even know my name properly, either. It’s’ (a kind of wail) ‘an
insult
, that’s what it is.’

‘I’m sorry, darling. There, there,’ patting her cautiously the young women in his set did not need patting; or, if they did, they patted themselves. ‘Darling, do please stop. I’m awfully sorry.’

‘So I should hope.’

Viola blew her nose, speaking as haughtily as possible, but continued to recline on his shoulder. Her hair brushed his cheek and it felt pretty good. The fact is, she gets me where I live, he thought angrily, and I was a fool to bring her. I might have known what would happen. Now of course I can’t stop kissing her. But he was not trying very hard.

‘That better?’ he said at last.

In the pause, they did not hear the desolate whisper of the waves. She nodded.

‘Powder for the nose.’ He held her case while she powdered, then watched while she combed her curls. Her profile was dark and delicate against the silver path on the sea.

‘That’s grand,’ helpfully.

She said nothing.

Better get her back as quickly as I can. He started the car. I’ll never be with her alone like this again … I’ll see to that. But that’s what I said before. He fell back on thinking, hell.

‘Well,’ he observed at last as they sat in silence with the engine ticking over, ‘I’m afraid this evening hasn’t been exactly a riot. I’m sorry. (You’ll know that noise of mine by heart soon).’

‘Oh, I enjoyed the first part, it was
lovely
,’ earnestly, ‘and I’m sorry I was such an ass. It’s all right, really, I mean, I don’t mind as much as all that.’

‘Don’t you?’ dejectedly. ‘Oh. That’s grand. Well, shall we be getting along?’

They got along; and presently there were cars on the road again and bungalows; and the town was near.

‘Will you be married at Sible Pelden?’ inquired Viola in a martyred voice.

Not if I bloody well know it we won’t, with you in the congregation.

‘No. In Town.’

‘Oh.’

Pause.

‘You’re not cross, are you?’

‘Blast it, Viola,’ very crossly indeed, ‘shut up. Can’t you see what – oh hell. Here, have mine.’

Despite her second outburst, he managed to get back to the White Rock without any more talk. Talk was no use. He supposed that he wanted her so much that it was making him fond of her; it sometimes did, but a weekend soon put that right and he was his own master again. Only in this case there could be no weekend, and he dimly felt that it might be some time before he could risk passing long hours winding wool alone with Mrs Wither.

The car stopped outside the White Rock.

‘Here we are. Good night, Viola.’ He took her hand in a friendly clasp, with a friendly smile, and moved it up and down in a friendly waggle. ‘You go in and get some sleep, and you’ll feel quite different in the morning, I expect. So shall I. Moonlight and champagne, you know … wonderful what they’ll do …’ He ended in an indescribably dreary tone, ‘Well … on your way, sailor!’

‘I can’t go to bed now; it’s only nine o’clock,’ said Viola sulkily, getting out of the car.

‘Well … read or something. Goodbye.’

And this time it really is goodbye, he thought, smiling determinedly at the tall forlorn girl lingering on the moonlit steps, looking so sad. This has just about something’d up the whole something works, this has. If I’d gone on kissing her I should have asked her to come away with me and to hell with everything.

And that (thought Victor, driving much too fast along the London road in the moonlight), that’s not the frame of mind for a man who’s shortly going to be married.

Presently he thought, zooming through Colchester, I’ll bet she wouldn’t mind having kids.

CHAPTER XIX

Even Viola’s gentle nature felt some indignation after the events of Friday evening. In the midst of the crying fits that occupied much of Saturday and Sunday, she frequently told the pillow that Victor was a beast. That Beast he had now become, instead of He and Him. Of course, it was very kind of him to buy her all that champagne and take her in his car, but why need he start talking about his beastly engagement?

I was just getting over it, and he comes along and stirs it all up again. Now my heart darned well
is
broken and I
do
wish I was dead. I didn’t really wish it before because something marvellous might happen and I’d miss it, but now it has happened, and it was beastly and I
do
wish I was dead.

But hotels are not built to cry in. People come popping in and out, carrying clean linen and trying not to look at the desolate figure on the bed; and soon the desolate figure gets up.

Viola’s indignation helped her to sit in the Palm Lounge, reading with smarting eyelids, to go for walks by the sea that had suddenly become autumnal and sad, even to accept an invitation to take coffee with Mr Brodhurst on Sunday morning; Mrs Brodhurst had been suddenly recalled to London because her mother was ill. Mr Brodhurst seemed to admire Viola, and that was comforting. He told her that she ought to take up golf, she had the figure for it. Willowy, but rounded, said Mr Brodhurst. She could not help a miserable inward giggle, thinking how Shirley would brand Mr Brodhurst as a D. O. M. and One of The Wandering Hand Brigade.

But even with the help of indignation and Mr Brodhurst, she was very miserable and lonely, and pleased to see Tina back to lunch on Monday.

Tina did not look as a person should look who has been spending a wicked weekend with the invalid husband of an old school friend. She was a little absent in her manner, as Viola had seen her look when she was planning a new outfit or learning a new embroidery stitch, but she was cheerful and calm, noticed at once that something was wrong with her young sister-in-law, and affectionately inquired what. Viola began to cry, and told her all the unhappy little story.

Tina was kind as kind could be. She did not tell Viola to pull herself together and take up some interesting hobby, nor did she say too harsh things about Victor and make Viola want to stick up for him. She took the exciting, comforting point of view that Victor was really in love with Viola and trying not to be.

‘Why?’ demanded Viola.

‘Oh well, I imagine that he thinks you’re not suitable – no money, and all that sort of thing.’

‘Do you think he minds me having worked in the shop?’ reddening.

‘I shouldn’t be at all surprised. That’s the kind of thing people do mind,’ bitterly. ‘Not so much as they did, of course; nothing like; and intelligent people nowadays don’t even think about it. But in the country people mind, and rich people mind, especially people who haven’t been rich for very long, like the Springs. Old Spring only made his money in the War, you know.’

‘Did he? Oh yes … now I seem to remember Dad saying …’

‘Yes. Jam for the troops or something.’

‘Then do you think he’ll go on thinking I’m not suitable, and marry her?’ tears starting again.

‘I’m afraid so, Vi. You see, a man like Victor Spring is
sensible
about marriage, in a way most women simply can’t understand. He wants someone who can run a big house, and entertain smart flashy people, and do him credit. Now from what I’ve seen of that Barlow hag, she could do all that. She’s hardly what I’d call a human being at all, but she can do just the things he wants, and he’s known her for years (you heard what his cousin said) and – oh, it’s all most suitable.
You
couldn’t, you know. Run a big place, I mean.’

‘Yes I could if I had proper servants. Shirley says that’s all it is.’

‘You couldn’t manage them. You’re too soft.’

‘I’d let him and a housekeeper manage them.’

‘Yes, well, that’s an idea. It might work. But I’m afraid he won’t give you the chance, my poor dear. It’s terribly rough luck, and I think he’s behaved quite detestably, but I’m afraid you must just make up your mind to go on caring about him for a long, long time; unless, of course, someone else comes along.’

On this melancholy note the conversation ended, and as Tina had to go off again that very evening to see Elenor, they did not talk about Victor again that day. But though she had depressed Viola’s spirits by pointing out how unlikely it was that Victor should marry her, she had raised them by suggesting that he was in love with her. Viola had not dared to think that he might be; she had only hoped that perhaps he might like her, and she was much comforted by the notion that he was struggling with a passion for her. She imagined him looking gaunt and worn and Miss Barlow asking him what was the matter, and him starting and biting his lip until the blood came and muttering ‘Nothing,’ with a sigh that was almost a groan.

But in spite of these solacing reveries, their last week at Stanton was most depressing, for the weather turned wretched, sending September out in floods of rain, and Adrian Lacey became so ill that not even Tina was allowed to go over and see him; and on the Friday before they went home she told Viola that she had had a telephone message from Elenor to say that poor Adrian had passed away peacefully in his sleep just after lunch. Tina would not go to the funeral; she felt too grieved. Elenor would sell the bungalow and go out to her married sister in Malta.

So that polished off the Laceys; and what with the funeral and the weather and her private grief, Viola was really pleased to see Saxon drive the car up to the White Rock on Saturday morning, and felt that it was pleasant to be going home. She was looking forward to seeing Polo again, of whom she was fond, and she would be twenty miles nearer Grassmere.

‘Good morning, Saxon.’

‘Morning, Mrs Theodore.’

Saxon looked so cheerful, brown and well that he might have been to the sea, too.

‘Did you have a nice holiday?’

‘Extra good, thank you, Mrs Theodore.’

‘Where did you go?’

‘Vi, be an angel and get my gloves, will you? I must have left them on the office table when I went in to pay the bill,’ interrupted Tina, and Viola hurried off to get the gloves, which were afterwards found in the car.

In less than an hour they were home.

Mr and Mrs Wither and Madge had returned the evening before, with health and spirits improved by the Lakeland air, and as Tina and Viola were still in the first flush of interest at being again surrounded by their own possessions, lunch was at first almost a cheerful meal, and even when Viola told everybody about poor Adrian Lacey’s death the interesting gloom cast by the recital lasted only for a few moments. Mrs Wither said that she seemed to remember having met Elenor one Prize Day at Tina’s old school, wasn’t she tall and dark with horn-rimmed glasses, and Tina said yes, and Mrs Wither said poor thing, how sad for her, have they any children, and Tina said no, and just as Mrs Wither was saying that perhaps it was a mercy, Mr Wither interrupted her to ask if she had remembered to order the coal, and the Laceys dropped out of the conversation.

Through the clear glass of the french windows that Annie had polished yesterday against the family’s return, Viola stared at the dismal garden. Coal … yellow leaves lying on the wet grass … withered dahlias. Winter was coming. The faint glow of excitement that she had felt at returning to The Eagles faded as lunch went on, in the dark heavily furnished dining-room with familiar uninteresting faces round the table. Everyone had some story to tell about their holiday, and told it, but heaven knows that such stories are never interesting – unless, of course, one is telling them oneself – and Viola, after saying ‘I say, good lord,’ once or twice, did not listen.

By tea-time, when she had unpacked and arranged her clothes, and fussed over Polo a bit, and learned from Fawcuss that ‘the house was still shut up over at Springs except for the head gardener (Mr Rawlings, that is), he says the family’s going to stay in Town over Christmas,’ she seemed to have been back at The Eagles for weeks; by dinner-time she might never have been away. The long quiet hours drifted into days, and the days into a week, two weeks. There was no excitement except an occasional meeting with Lady Dovewood in Chesterbourne, or tea with the Parshams, or, rarely, a visit to church with Mr and Mrs Wither on Sunday because Mrs Wither said that she really ought to go; also, she loved the little old church, where she had used to walk with her father sometimes on Sunday afternoons and where she had dreamed of being married to Victor Spring, and though it made her sad to go there, it also, in a queer way, made her happy. She bought a few winter clothes (Mr and Mrs Wither seemed to think that her clothes were brought by the ravens, like Elijah’s dinner, for they never asked her where she got the money to buy them), and once she went to Town to see Shirley, very fat and bored and crossly waiting for her baby.

It was a long, dull, sad time. Autumn had come, with mists wandering over the flat, river-threaded countryside that seemed to grow more silent as the winter drew near. There was no news of the Springs, except that they were having a gay time in London; and Viola, with no news, no hope and no one to talk to, now pined indeed.

Her unhappiness was deeper and more genuine than it had been in the summer, and perhaps in her confused way she knew this, for she no longer luxuriated in it, but attempted to occupy her mind and not to give way to grief.