The Flowering Thorn (3 page)

It was true. Away from Douglas, nothing was real. That afternoon a man had tried to kill himself for love of her, and it had been no more than an incident at a party. Nothing was real, not even death. And this had been so, moreover, as she now suddenly and strangely realised, for far longer in time than their brief acquaintance. Before ever they met, the truth had been there. She had glimpsed it, now and then, in a wakeful dawn, a solitary midnight. But always in the morning the waiting had begun again: the waiting that was her purpose and occupation, her present and her future.

‘So that's what I have been doing all these years,' thought Lesley. ‘Waiting.…'

There was now, however, nothing more to wait for. There was nothing to want, because nothing had substance.

“Substance!” said Lesley aloud.

And so with the spoken word an old phrase came to her—so old, indeed, that her wondering eyes had first deciphered it under the frontispiece of a child's reader:
Thus by grasping at a shadow, the foolish dog has lost the substance too.
A foolish dog indeed! Fat and curly, Lesley remembered, and of the same curious breed that produced Good Dog Tray. A rather humiliating comparison.

Suddenly, on a table at her side, the telephone was ringing. In an idiotic flutter—‘
Lesley, have you gone to bed yet? No, Douglas, why?—Then can
I
come and fetch you? I've just met some people who are going on to Claridges
—' She reached out and silenced it.

“Lesley darling—”

It was Bryan. He had evidently not thrown himself from the balcony.

“Yes, what is it?”

There was a slight pause, and Lesley hoped that he was not about to pull the trigger of a revolver in order to let her hear the shot.

“Listen, Lesley—”

“Well?”

“Would it be an awful nuisance if I came round and used your gramophone for an hour or two?”

“It would,” said Lesley. “It's a quarter past one, and I'm just going to bed.”

Again the pause, this time enlivened by a faint murmur of voices at the other end of the line. He seemed to be consulting somebody: when he spoke again it was in a tone of exquisite reason.

“But listen, darling, it really is rather important. I've a man here who's just come back from Bulgaria with some amazing records of folk-music, and I've broken my sound-box. They've never been heard in England before, and—”

“Well, I don't suppose anyone else will hear them before morning,” said Lesley tartly. She did not really wish him dead, but a slight resentment at his being still alive inevitably coloured her feelings.

“Darling, don't be so beastly! If you like we'll come and get your sound-box—Lesley! I say, don't ring off! Lesley—!”

But the receiver was already clicked down on his yammering: clicked down too on the sound of Lesley's voice. A rather odd sound, like an ejaculation.…

“Love!” said Lesley, contemptuously.

And in that instant, as though resentful Love had heard and come to wound her, there slipped into her mind, already bodied in words, a strange and dreadful notion. She thought,

‘Perhaps I am not a woman that men do love.'

She thought,

‘There are women like that. Attractive women.… And if that is so, and if … that is what I have been waiting for, what am I to do now?'

The intricate, daily patchwork was still there to work at, the innumerable dovetailing fragments still lay ready to hand: but it now seemed to her, and for the first time, that her work had no pattern.

“I want something new,” said Lesley aloud.

On the table at her side lay a tiny pocket-book, bound in black silk and stuffed a month ahead with every variety of familiar engagement. Automatically she picked it up and began fluttering the leaves. To-morrow—to-morrow promised the rather rare event of tea out at Cheam with her aunt Mrs. Bassington.

CHAPTER THREE

“It really
is
a problem,” said Lady Chrome, thoughtfully helping herself to a piece of chocolate cake.

“My dear, I dream about it at nights!” wailed Mrs. Bassington; and all three—Mrs. Bassington, Lady Chrome, and Lesley by the fireplace—turned with one accord to take a look at the problem himself, who was seated very comfortably on a wolverine rug and playing with a box of bricks. The game was a simple one, consisting merely in building the eight blocks into a tower and then knocking them down again; but the problem played it for all he was worth. He fell upon the tower, destroyed it, razed it to the ground: the blocks rolled far and wide, farther than the cake-stand: one would never have guessed, to look at him, what a problem he was.

“It will have to be an orphanage, of course,” murmured Mrs. Bassington, “but I suppose even that involves
some
financial consideration. I mean one can hardly leave him outside Dr. Barnardo's.…”

She looked genuinely worried, poor woman: and indeed had every right to. Exactly a month earlier, and after reading a very moving article on the plight of the unmarried mother, she had engaged as companion a young Scotswoman with a four-year-old boy. (That Nora Craigie afterwards turned out to be a genuine widow, with her marriage lines in her trunk, is neither here nor there: it was the intention which counted, and which, in Mrs. Bassington's eyes, deserved a better reward.) The Scotswoman proved charming, capable, and as grateful as could be wished: unfortunately she also suffered from heart trouble. This disability she managed to conceal, however, until about fifteen minutes before dying of it; and it was the deception, the slyness of it, which Mrs. Bassington now professed herself unable to forgive. Or at any rate, it was something one could decently complain of, and what with all the trouble of the funeral and the worry of the future, she felt she must either complain or burst.

“When I'd treated her really like—like my own daughter!” cried Mrs. Bassington.

From the other side of the cake-stand Lesley heard her unmoved. She was feeling, for these two flabby and bleating old women, an almost homicidal dislike. The mood of the previous evening was still upon her; she wanted to hurt, to shock, to take her revenge.

“But are there
no
relatives at all?” marvelled Lady Chrome. “Not even a grandmother?”

“My dear!” Mrs. Bassington threw up her hands in despair. “We've advertised in things like ‘
John Bull.
' I even made them put ‘something to their advantage,' because after all there are the effects as well. And not a single debt—I will say that much for her. But both she and her husband I know were orphans, because she told me so herself, and in these cases it's always the grandparents who come forward.” She broke off, breathless with so much emotion. It was all even worse than she had thought.

“If only,” mused Lady Chrome hopelessly, “you could get someone to adopt him! After all, dear, he—he's quite a
nice
child.”

“Or why not advertise him too?” suggested Lesley. ‘
Boy, four years: healthy, ginger hair, no incumbrances: nominal to good home.
' It sounds rather attractive.”

And turning again in the direction of the rug, she suddenly saw that she had spoken no more than the truth. There really
was
something rather attractive about him, something to do, perhaps, with his complete imperviousness to all but the matter in hand. Far overhead, remote as the Fates, three irrelevant women babbled or were silent: they had no bearing on his game, so he took no notice of them. Bang! went his fist, crash! went the tower; and all was ready to start again. Once he sat down heavily on an unexpected brick: frequently on the bare parquet floor: but even as he rubbed, the other hand was always busy at rebuilding. With a growing fascination, Lesley watched.

“A place in Essex,” murmured Lady Chrome vaguely, “run in connection with some church or other.…”

Orphanages again! From all one heard, the food was now quite decent; but it would be rather wasteful if all that crowing, relishing energy, that bundle of clean and vigorous life, were simply to be forced, along with a hundred other inferior bundles, into the one most convenient mould! For comparing him with the other children (admittedly few) of her acquaintance, Lesley had little doubt that the Problem, as raw material, was of exceptional quality. His game, for example, was an equal mixture of joyful pugnacity and careful construction. At the constant bumps to his behind he displayed a natural concern, but no resentment. And it was probably an optical illusion, but he seemed to be growing as one looked at him.

‘Maternal pride—it really
is
understandable,' thought Lesley curiously. And yet, and yet—a child of that age was a woman's full-time job. He had to be washed, fed, exercised and instructed from about eight in the morning till about seven at night. After that, she supposed, one could go out to dinner in the usual way: but what about getting the hair waved? There was a place in Bond Street where they took charge of dogs, even Alsatians, but nothing was said about small boys.… And then there would be
his
hair to get cut, and a thousand other things as well. Yes, a full-time job if there ever was one, though probably not quite such a martyrdom as women were apt to make out: for was there really any reason why from seven o'clock onwards life should not go on precisely as before? Any full-time job, on such terms, would lose half its terrors: then why not this one in particular? Moreover, there was something—what was it?—something so extremely real about it. It was worth doing; and suddenly, idly, chiefly from a desire to upset someone, Lesley heard herself say,

“Don't bother about that advertisement, Aunt. I think I'll adopt him myself.”

2

Almost before the words were out of her mouth, in a split second of perfect lucidity, Lesley Frewen had realised two things. The first was that she had not the least desire to adopt a child; the second, that the child had heard her.

Though without comprehending. Comprehension—of those two swift phrases—how could she even for an instant have imagined it possible? It was only that, like a dog at a familiar voice, he had suddenly raised his head and fixed her with a long expectant gaze.… And all at once there flickered through her brain something she had heard from Douglas Ford: that a dog takes his orders less from the actual words than from the compulsive thought behind them.

“But, my dear!” It was Lady Chrome who first found her tongue, leaning purple with emotion above her own stately bust. “But my dear, you must be
crazy!
”

“Rather foolish, dear child, and not really very amusing,” corroborated Aunt Alice.

Both these opinions coinciding exactly with her own, the only rational course was obviously to submit and pass the cake: and in the company of any two persons less purple and authoritative, Lesley would no doubt have done so. But the pop-eyed stupidity of Lady Chrome, the complacent imperviousness of Mrs. Bassington, had already produced their usual unfortunate effect; and raising her beautiful eyebrows, Lesley said provocatively,

“It would be such a new experience.…”

Lady Chrome released a long breath.

“But—but you don't even
like
children!'

“Not in the least,” agreed Lesley. “That's why it would be new.”

“In any case, the idea is impossible,” cut in Mrs. Bassington decisively.

Her niece, however, was not so easily to be intimidated.

“Why, Aunt Alice?”

“Because you're far too young, in the first place. You don't know what you're doing. People would say—would think—”

“But they do already, Aunt,” pointed out Lesley blandly. “When I went to Salzburg last year everyone thought I'd gone with Toby Ashton.”

“Lesley!”

“But unfortunately Toby is almost as dark as I am, so as long as he stays ginger it won't look quite so bad.”

From Lady Chrome's
bergère
came a sound like a suffocating Pekingese. Mrs. Bassington, with greater self-command, merely pursed her lips and continued to pour out tea. And all at once, from being slightly amused, Lesley was irritated beyond endurance. She said coldly,

“I'm perfectly serious, Aunt Alice.”

“Nonsense, my dear.”

With a considerable effort Lesley controlled her temper. The impertinence of old women! A tie of blood, however thin, and how complacently they advanced to the limits of rudeness! Her resolve hardening, she said,

“There's really no need for any more discussion. I quite understand your feelings, Aunt Alice, but unfortunately you don't understand mine. It probably comes of—”

For the first time Mrs. Bassington raised her voice.

“My dear, there's no need to tell
me
what it comes of. I know. It comes of letting you have your own money at eighteen. Eighteen!” She took a fierce little sip of tea: over the rim of her cup her eyes popped angrily. “I said at the time it was ridiculous, but no one listened to me, and now this is the result. You think you can behave exactly as you please. You think you can fly in the face of convention and get applauded for doing it. Well, I shan't waste any more breath trying to stop you. You're ruining your life, my dear, but as you are no doubt preparing to tell me, it's your own life to ruin.”

She broke off, breathless and slightly mottled. Lesley smiled.

“How well you know me, darling!”

“And don't call me darling,” added Mrs. Bassington in parentheses. “It's ridiculous, a meaningless trick and I won't have it. You go your own headstrong way and then try to placate me by foolish endearments. You won't think yourself, and you won't let others think for you. I know exactly what your income is, my dear: a bare five hundred and fifty, and you spend every penny of it. What's going to happen, may I ask, when the child goes to school?”

Lesley thought rapidly. Then:

“Uncle Graham, darling,” she said; and with a secret enjoyment watched her aunt's face. For old Graham Whittal was both wealthy and distinguished; and he had publicly referred to his sister-in-law as a pompous old busybody. “He's a governor or something of Christ's Hospital,” Lesley elaborated, “with two nominations. It's one of the best schools in the country.”