No Fond Return of Love (7 page)

‘Paul Beltane brought back your bracelet and these roses for you,’ she said. ‘And when I took them up to your room I noticed that you hadn’t made your bed.’

‘Sorry, I thought your Miss What’s-it came today,’ said Laurel, her attention on the roses. ‘How sweet of him! I must thank him sometime.’

‘Miss Lord doesn’t make beds,’ said Dulcie rather stiffly. ‘At least, not our beds. So you must make your own. Yes, they’re lovely roses, aren’t they. Will you write him a little note or call in the shop, perhaps, on your way home tomorrow?’ Dulcie saw Laurel doing this as it might have been herself. She imagined Paul emerging from behind vases of tall exotic flowers, ot sitting patiently making a wreath or a cross.

‘Yes, I could do that,’ said Laurel, not revealing which alternative she had decided upon.

‘Are you making some nice friends at the secretarial college?’ Dulcie went on, feeling more like an aunt.

‘Yes, the girl I was with this evening has a lovely bed-sitting-room in Quince Square.’

‘Quince Square, did you say?’

‘Yes, near Holland Park – very convenient.’ Laurel saw again the dark trees – some of them really
were
quinces, Marian had said – and felt the nearness of London through them. She longed for the impersonality of the hall as one came into the house, the utter privacy of Marian’s room, with its concealed washbasin and the little electric cooker in a cupboard where she really cooked meals.

Quince Square, thought Dulcie. Some of those big houses had no doubt been turned into nests of bed-sitting-rooms where young girls dreamed or lonely women remembered, or perhaps dreamed too. Did Aylwin Forbes have a whole house, or just a flat? She must investigate.

‘I know somebody who lives in Quince Square,’ she began, but at that moment the telephone rang.

It was a woman’s voice, unfamiliar to Dulcie until she told her name.

‘This is Viola Dace.’

‘Oh, how nice!’ Dulcie’s instinctive reaction was one of pleasure, then she wondered why Viola should be telephoning her and hoped she wasn’t going to put off the supper invitation.

‘I wonder if I might ask a favour of you?’

‘Yes, of course.’ Help with a piece of research, or an index to be made at very short notice – these unlikely and rather dreary alternatives came into her mind. ‘What is it?’ she asked.

Viola lowered her voice. ‘I can’t go into details here and now, but I’ve had a row with the woman whose house I’m living in and I wondered if you could possibly put me up for a time – I’d pay, of course.’

‘Why, certainly … ‘ Dulcie was so overwhelmed that she could hardly think what to say.

‘You did say you had room,’ Viola went on, ‘and of course it would only be for a week or two, until I found somewhere else. I know it seems rather a lot to ask …’

‘Not at all – it would be nice to have you,’ said Dulcie. ‘When would you want to come?’

‘Well, perhaps we could discuss that when you come to supper.’

‘Yes – all right then. I’m looking forward to that very much.’

‘Oh, it won’t be anything, I can assure you,’ said Viola, and rang off.

Dulcie came away from the telephone with mixed feelings. She realized dimly that Viola was making use of her, yet it was flattering to feel that she had been chosen, even to be made use of. Though perhaps she had been approached only as a very last resort – ‘that big house, plenty of room, but in the suburbs… a woman I met at the conference in August – rather dreary but a good-natured soul…’

Going into the kitchen she saw Laurel and wondered for a moment who she was, for she had imagined Viola in Laurel’s room. Suddenly it had been Viola boiling the little saucepan of milk, heating up the tin of spaghetti, waking with the dawn chorus and making the quiet cup of tea. And all Laurel did was to leave her bed unmade – which Viola might also do – and have a photograph of a skiffle musician by her bed, where Viola might have Aylwin Forbes. But where
was
Viola to sleep?

‘That was a friend of mine,’ Dulcie explained. ‘She wants to come and stay here for a bit.’

‘Oh, but which room will she have?’

‘Well, there’s the spare room, or the little room over the porch, but that’s a bit small.’

‘And the spare room’s got the ironing board and the sewing machine in it, not to mention “Prosperity” and “Adversity”, and “The Last Watch of Hero”.’

‘Yes, it has,’ Dulcie admitted, for she had deposited these favourite pictures of her mother’s there, not liking to send them to a jumble sale so soon after her death, though the Scouts had called hopefully and, it must be admitted, most respectfully, with their little hand-cart less than a week after the funeral. She had given them only the shabbiest of her mother’s clothes, the best having gone to the Distressed Gentlewomen. ‘I don’t think Viola will mind the pictures,’ she went on. ‘After all, it’ll only be for a week or two.’

‘It will be nice company for you,’ said Laurel rather patronizingly.

‘Nice company?’ echoed Dulcie dreamily. ‘Oh, yes it will.’

VIOLA had said ‘about half past seven’, but Dulcie, too early in her eagerness, found herself approaching Carew Gardens nearly a quarter of an hour before that time. She began to walk more slowly, looking over the railings into the ‘gardens’, which consisted of a long strip of dry-looking grass, bordered with flower-beds and paths, and shaded by top-heavy trees about to shed their leaves. A woman was walking along one of the paths with a dog on a lead. She wore a grey tweed coat and transparent pink nylon gloves, and carried two books from the public library in a contraption of rubber straps. What is the use of noticing such details? Dulcie asked herself. It isn’t as if I were a novelist or a private detective. Presumably such a faculty might be said to add to one’s enjoyment of life, but so often what ore observed was neither amusing nor interesting, but just upsetting.

There was hardly enough to occupy her for ten minutes in the road; perhaps she would have to arrive too early after all. Then she noticed that there was a telephone box ahead. She could spend the time making a telephone call, though to whom she could not think, even when she had shut herself into the box. An anonymous call of a scurrilous nature? Were calls of this kind made by people who had an odd ten minutes to fill in before arriving somewhere? Dulcie could think of nobody to telephone at this moment, when most people would be preparing or eating the evening meal, but she might do a little research in the directories. Why, for instance, had she not thought of looking up Aylwin Forbes’s mother-in-law? Williton was an unusual name: indeed, as she ran her finger down the columns, Dulcie saw that there were no more than half a dozen, and out of these it was not difficult to pick out ‘Williton, Mrs Grace, 37 Deodar Grove, S.W.13’ as being the right one. The discovery excited her, for the address was so near where she herself hved, and she left the box quickly, unable to fill in time any longer. A song was ringing in her head, something that began ‘Under the deodar tree’. She wondered if Viola knew.

‘I know I’m too early,’ she said breathlessly, as Viola came to the door, ‘but I thought I could probably help in some way.’ She saw herself preparing vegetables (though they might be frozen) scraping potatoes, grinding coffee beans, beating egg whites, opening a difficult tin, laying the table … ‘There must be something I can do.’

‘Yes, there might be,’ said Viola vaguely. ‘I’m afraid we still have another flight of stairs to climb.’

‘Oh, that’s all right,’ said Dulcie gallantly. ‘I always think it’s nice to be high up.’

Her first impression of the house, with its peeling paint and dingy stair carpet of a colour that could only be described as ‘fawn’, had not been particularly reassuring. The neighbourhood had obviously ‘gone down’ and she was surprised that Viola should be content to live in it.

The room was a little better than she had expected, because it was on a corner with two large windows and an impression of greenness from the paint of the woodwork and the glimpse of trees beyond. Inside, she was struck by two things: the room was indescribably untidy, and there was no sign whatever that any kind of meal was being prepared. It was difficult to imagine oneself eating among the confusion of books, clothes, papers and cosmetics that seemed to occupy every flat surface. On one wall hung a large ornate crucifix, of the kind that is put up for artistic effect rather than as a sign of devotion. Dulcie remembered Viola saying that she was an Anglo-Catholic, and now wondered if she were one of the non-practising kind, who had been driven to it by boredom with the more ordinary church services.

‘I’ve been sorting out a few things,’ said Viola. ‘I can’t bring all my junk to you, can I?’

‘Well, I have an attic,’ said Dulcie doubtfully.

‘But I feel I must make a clean break with the past,’ said Viola, taking up a fringed Spanish shawl and draping it untidily over one end of the divan bed.

The past? thought Dulcie, wondering about the Spanish shawl which did not seem to fit in with the kind of past that people had nowadays.

‘My father got it in Seville for my mother,’ Viola explained.

‘Oh, yes, in Holy Week,’ said Dulcie. ‘That’s a great thing about Seville, isn’t it – all those processions.’ Then, thinking of the pictures ‘Prosperity’ and ‘Adversity’, she went on, ‘Family things are rather difficult to dispose of. One never knows …’

Were they not to have a meal of any kind? she wondered. That cupboard over by the door – was it possible that it contained food? There was a gas-ring in the hearth, and a kettle, but no sign of any other kind of cooking utensils. Perhaps it was not surprising that Viola had said ‘It won’t be much,’ when it was apparently to be nothing.

‘I suppose we ought to be thinking about supper,’ Viola said unpromisingly. ‘I got some things when I was out, and there’s a tin of soup we could heat up.’

‘Oh, let me open it,’ said Dulcie eagerly.

Viola handed her a tin-opener and began to unpack a shopping basket which had been lying in a corner. Dulcie saw cartons of exotic salads, cold meats wrapped in greaseproof paper, and a bag of croissants. How extravagant, she thought warmly, feeling that it was typical of Viola.

When they were sitting down to eat, Dulcie said, ‘Did you know that Aylwin Forbes’s mother-in-law lives quite near me?’

‘Really?’ Viola seemed uninterested. ‘I didn’t know, but it seems so remote.’

‘Oh, it’s not far – Deodar Grove.’

‘I meant the connection – his wife’s mother. Not even a blood relation. There could be nothing of him in Deodar Grove.’ She pronounced the last words distastefully.

‘No, perhaps not. But you never know.’ Dulcie was a little damped. It had seemed exciting, finding the right name in the telephone directory; now perhaps it was nothing after all.

Hoping to start a conversation that Viola might find more interesting, she asked, ‘Did you have a quarrel with your landlady here? Is that why you want to leave?’

‘Yes, in a way. She said the daily woman found it impossible to clean my room because it was so untidy.’

Dulcie imagined the untidiness transferred to her own house, and tried not to look around her.

‘And I had friends here late at night – even a man, once.’

Was it Aylwin Forbes? Dulcie wondered, unable to see him in such surroundings. ‘A man,’ she repeated. ‘Yes, some landladies do seem to object to men; on principle, I suppose – leaning their brilliantined heads against the backs of chairs, knocking out their pipes on the furniture, clumping heavily up and down the stairs – it’s for things like that, isn’t it, rather than for fear of a woman’s reputation. Well, you can certainly have men to see you when you’re living in my house – as many as you like,’ she added in a jovial tone, thus somehow spoiling the whole picture of Viola as a
femme fatale
. ‘My niece is staying with me now, so we shall be quite a houseful of women. Like some dreadful novel,’ she said quickly, fearing that it really might be like that. ‘Shall I help you to wash up?’

‘No, thank you, I’ll do it when you’ve gone. We might have some coffee now.’

The coffee was very good, and they sat talking for some time.

‘It will be a relief to get away from here,’ Viola said. ‘I find it painful being so near him.’

Dulcie suddenly wished that she had brought her knitting. There was that look about Viola that presaged the outpouring of confidences. It would have added a cosiness to the occasion – hot coffee, purring gas-fire, women knitting and talking. Or, rather, one talking while the other knitted in a kind of wildness and despera-tion, yet with the satisfaction of seeing a sleeve grow. And now, when it came, there was really nothing to tell. Viola had seen no more of Aylwin Forbes than had Dulcie herself. It was the pain of his nearness that she wanted to enlarge upon – only four or five minutes’ brisk walk away in Quince Square, and yet so utterly remote.

‘Perhaps I could walk past the house on my way back,’ said Dulcie.

‘I’ll come with you to the bus stop,’ said Viola eagerly, getting up from her chair.

‘Yes, it’s nearly ten o’clock,’ said Dulcie, feeling that she was being pushed away rather early. ‘Perhaps I should be going.’

‘The buses may stop running,’ said Viola, ‘and you’ve a long journey.’

‘You knew, of course, that his brother is a clergyman?’ said Dulcie as they walked out of the house.

‘Yes, I did. A rather dreary vicar somewhere in North London,’ said Viola.

‘He doesn’t
sound
dreary – Neville Arthur Brandreth Forbes. I plan to take a look at him some time. It should be possible to go to a service at his church.’

‘Hush – this is Quince Square. He might be …’

‘You mean Aylwin might be taking the dog for a walk?’

‘I don’t think he has a dog.’

‘Well, not literally, perhaps. But going for some sort of evening stroll – smoking a last pipe or something like that.’

‘This is the house – this next one,’ said Viola, almost in a whisper.

It was solid and richly creamy, with new paint glistening in the lamplight. There was a brass dolphin knocker on the gleaming black door. A sound of braying laughter, somewhat out of keeping with the dignified appearance of the house, could be heard coming from the basement.