These Delights (5 page)

“I see,” said Hester quite gravely. “Well, drink your cocoa now, then I’ll show you where you are to sleep. What about luggage?
”

“One suitcase we brought with us, but the larger we left at the station in Plymouth, for we didn’t know, you see, if we would perhaps have to walk a long way,” said Vicky. “But it need be no trouble. We can fetch it tomorrow by the train.”

“Oh, I expect I can run you in in the morning,” Luke said. “We haven’t asked you yet, but how is your father?”

Their eyes became compassionate at once. Watching them Luke thought he had never before seen three such expressive faces.

“Oh, poor Papa,” said Vicky, much as she had said earlier: “Poor Bibi.
”
“It’s his lungs. Never would he take proper care and now he must go to the Hospice where the nuns will look after him and cure him. That is why he wrote to you and we are very, very grateful that we should be your guests. Lou doesn’t even remember England. He was only three when he left it.”

“Well, Vicky, we’re pleased to have you, and I think you’ll liven us up quite a lot, won’t they, Diana?” said Luke.

“Well, I don’t know that I really need livening,” Diana replied a little sharply. “I’ve plenty of drive and energy of my own.”

“And you are going to marry our cousin?” asked Vicky with eager interest. “We did not know that he was
fiancé
.”
The French term sounded formal and rather charming. “When do you marry? Soon?”

“We haven’t yet decided that,” said Luke.

“Oh, but you should not wait. Marthe, our
bonne
a
tout faire,
waited for seven years, like Jacob, and then her young
man
went off and married someone else—pouff!”

“We don’t discuss our private affairs in public, Vicky,” said Diana with an edge to her voice. “An English village, you know, is full of inquisitive meddlers.”

Vicky drew back.

“I’m
very sorry,” she said quietly. “I didn’t mean at all to be impertinent. I was only interested.”

Luke gave Diana a quick glance and said
gently
: “You’re tired, darling. Shall I take you home?”

“No, I’m not tired,” Diana said. “I’m never tired, but I, too, have had a long journey today.”

“Of course. Collect your things and we’ll be off.”

“We’ll all be off,” said Hester, getting to her feet. “Say good night, you three, and come along.”

Vicky and Pauline promptly flung their arms round Luke’s neck to kiss him good night, but they shook hands with Diana, then followed Hester out of the room.

Hester sighed as she preceded them up the stairs with a lighted candle. It was a pity, she thought, that Vicky had to be nineteen years old.

Lou had a room to himself, but Hester had put the two girls together. When she had said good night and left them, they assembled in the girls’ room to sort out the suitcase.

“Let’s find our night things, and all undress in here and sort out the rest tomorrow,” Vicky said, on her knees by the suitcase and flinging out garments right and left. “Pauline—Lou—here are yours. This’ll do me—it’s only torn a little.”

“You should
not
wear a mended nightdress our first night as guests,” said Pauline disapprovingly. “They will make the beds in the morning and say these
Jordan
s do not know what is proper.”

“I expect we’ll make our own beds, as we do at home,” Vicky replied, beginning to pull her frock over her head. “He’s nice, isn’t he?”

“Who—our Cousin Luke? Yes, but cold.” Pauline inspected her creased nightgown with distaste. She was very neat in her person.

“I don’t think he’s cold,
”
said Vicky, stripping rapidly. “He’s not at ease with his
fiancée
.”

“I do not think that I like that Diana person,” said Lou in his precise voice.

“She’s very proper,” said Pauline, “and she takes offence. But she is also very handsome.”

V
icky stood for a moment, her arms stretched above her head.

“I shall like it here,” she said, her eyes half-closed. “It’s a kind house, and there are books and books and books.”

They were all undressed now, and Pauline was already folding things up and putting them away. Bibi sat on Vicky’s bed, eating his bread and milk, and the May moon shone in through the thin curtains. Vicky went to the window and flung it wide. She leaned her bare arms on the sill and lifted her face to the sky.

“I wish Papa was here, and Marthe, and Louis,” she said softly. “It’s beautiful, this English night. Listen
...”

In the little coppice behind Tom Bowden’s cottage a nightingale was singing. Lou and Pauline came to the window and they all three stood listening in silence for a long time, then Lou shivered.

“I’m cold,” he said. “I want to go to bed.”

“Yes, go to bed, my cabbage, you’re tired,” said Vicky without turning. “Pauline, do you remember the nightingales at Belizane the night the
fellaghas
attacked?”

“Yes,” said Pauline and was silent.

Lou was too young to remember, but she could hear again the singing of the nightingales in the still dusk and the rattle of tommy-guns and sounds of fighting. So long ago now, but one remembered.

“I’m cold,” said Lou again, and Vicky shut the window.

“Yes, go, Lou,” she said gently. “Take Bibi, he will warm you.”

They kissed each other goodnight, and when Lou had gone, Vicky sprang into bed.

“Aren’t you even going to brush your hair or
anything
?”
Pauline asked in scandalized tones.

“
Tomorrow will do,” murmured Vicky, suddenly drowsy, and immediately fell asleep.

Downstairs, the fire had sunk to dull embers and Hester was yawning in her chair. Luke had just returned from taking Diana home, and she thought he seemed a little silent.

“Well, what do you think of them?” she asked.

“
The children? Rather charming, don’t you think? They have a refreshing candor, but so had Linda as far as I remember.”

“Are they like her? I can’t remember her.”

“In a way—especially Vicky. Linda had those same slightly tilted green eyes, and she was fair. Lord! It makes me feel old to see her daughter nearly grown up. Linda can’t have been more than nineteen when Vicky was born.”

Hester started to tidy the room.

“Is Diana coming over tomorrow?” she asked.

“She didn’t say.”

Luke sounded suddenly abrupt and Hester sighed. It had clearly been a difficult drive back to the Manor.

Luke went to shut the window and leaned out for a moment, listening.

“A nightingale!” he said softly. “I never remember hearing one so far west.”

He closed the window and stood for a moment staring abstractedly at the lamp.

“I wonder if that boy really can play,” he said.

Hester was hunting for her glasses and her library book amongst the litter on her desk.

“I imagine he must be something rather exceptional if Louis Dalcroix has been teaching him for nothing,”
s
he said.

“A queer child,” mused Luke. “Not like a child at all in some ways. They are all three odd. I’m afraid Diana didn’t like them.”

Hester came into the circle of lamplight, and stood, hesitating. She wanted to say something, but words were sometimes misleading, and her thoughts at this juncture lacked co-ordination.

“Luke
—”
she said and paused.

He looked up enquiringly.

“
Yes?”

“Nothing. If you’re going into Plymouth tomorrow you might call in at Northmores for me about those seed catalogues.”

“Very well. Remind me in the morning.”

“Good night, my dear,” she said and turned down the lamp.

CHAPTER THREE

All
three
Jordan
s went to Plymouth with Luke to fetch the suitcase. Vicky sat beside him, and he had frequent glimpses of her eager little profile with its odd, irregular features as she gazed ahead, her hand slightly thrown back, her quick eyes missing nothing of interest on the road. Lou sat with Pauline in the back, clasping Bibi in his arms, and all three asked endless questions.

“We want to see Plymouth Hoe where Drake played bowls, and the spot where the Pilgrim Fathers sailed from, and the ships in the sound,” Vicky said, turning her face a moment from the road to look at him “Could we do that, do you think, Cousin Luke?”

“I should think so,” he replied indulgently.

“Oh, thank you! We learnt all about Drake and the Armada at school, and how the English prepared for Bonaparte and lighted bonfires all along the coast.” She clasped her hands round her bare knees and craned her neck out of the window. “Aren’t the roads narrow here and the hedges high? There isn’t room to pass anything else. What happens if you meet another car, Cousin Luke, or a wagon of hay, or even a travelling circus?”

“There are bays cut into the banks at intervals, if you’ll notice,” Luke explained. “One car has to back until it finds a bay to pull into. I don’t know about a travelling circus, though. It might be difficult to back a string of elephants.”

“Oh, lovely!” shouted Pauline from the back. “I wish we could meet some.”

“I sincerely hope we won’t,” said Luke, amused. “Where did you go to school, Vicky?”

“When we were younger and lived in Algeria we went to a convent, but after we moved to Douai we used to go to a little school kept by two English ladies called Miss Crump and Miss Trumpington, so you see we learned English history and literature and everything properly,” she replied.

“Miss Tr
u
mpington was called the Last Trump,” said Pauline, “so of course we called Miss Crump the Last Crump.”

“
I
called her the Lost Crumpet,” observed Lou. “She looked like a muffin and was always losing her spectacles.” Luke experienced a holiday feeling. They were so carefree, so delighted with everything he showed them, and their conversations had such odd twists. Their la
ck
of reticence was bewildering after Hester’s reserve and Diana’s correctness, until he remembered they were children and had lived so much abroad. Even Vicky seemed to have no reserves, and he soon knew all about their father’s inability to stick to one serious job, the lack of money that was always making difficulties with tradesmen, Marthe’s iron and thrifty rule, and the elderly friend of their father’s who had wanted to marry Vicky.

“
To marry Vicky!” ex
cl
aimed Luke, quite startled.

Vicky’s eyes narrowed in the now
familiar
crinkle of amusement.

“You are surprised, Cousin Luke, that someone should wish to marry me?”

“Well, only because you seem such a child,” he said hastily.

“I’m nineteen,” she told him. “In France girls marry early—a good marriage is frequently arranged, you understand, even today. But this Hercule Dupont was a widower twice over, and fat, and although he was a good
parti
for the money, even Papa didn’t think it suitable.”

“I see,” said Luke, trying to look grave. “I gather you yourself did not consider the idea.”

“I considered it, yes,” Vicky said seriously. “It would have been unfair to Papa and Pauline and Lou not to have done so. But we all agreed it would not do.”

“Imagine marrying old Papa Dupont!”
giggled Pauline. “He has grown-up children, older than Vicky.”

They had left the Mayflower and driven through the Barbican and up a steep hill on to the Hoe.

“It’s not all like an ordinary
pl
a
ge
,”
ex
cl
aimed Vicky, gazing around her with eager eyes. “No little booths and shelters, and you could run from one end to the other in
five minutes. Oh, I like it. It’s so high and open and you can see all round.”

She rested the palms of her hands on one of the stone balustrades and looked out to Drake’s Island. The strong breeze blowing off the Sound whipped the hair back from her head like a pennant, and she lifted her face to it, gulping down the keen, salt air with a primitive pleasure which Luke had many times known himself.

“Where did Sir Francis Drake play bowls? Show me exactly,” she demanded, wheeling suddenly.

He took them to the bowling green, and showed them Drake’s statue and Smeaton’s Tower, which they promptly demanded to be taken up. Lou had some difficulty in negotiating the narrow little winding steps with the rabbit held before him like a shield, but they r
e
ached the top in safety and saw the city spread below them.

Vicky noted the preponderance of new buildings and the traces, still discernible, of the devastation of war, and remarked, “Isn’t it queer, Cousin Luke, that Plymouth should be besieged from the air when all Spain’s great Armada couldn’t touch her?”

“I’ve thought that, too,” said Luke. “But I must show you the beauty that has come out of desolation, too. There’s a church, St. Andrew’s church, in the centre of the city, of which only the walls stand, but they have made a garden of the nave and the aisles and have open-air services in the summer, and it’s somehow very moving.”

“Oh,” she said softly again, “the undefeated ... that is a lovely thought. Pauline, isn’t that something to remember, like the nightingales at Belizane? Doesn’t it excite you, Cousin Luke—all the great names of Plymouth? Drake, Grenville, Frobisher, Hawkins
...”

“Not forgetting Raleigh,” smiled Luke, and he glanced at her with quickened interest. Not for years had he had this sort of conversation with anyone.

“Raleigh was a foolish man,” remarked Lou loftily.
“
I
wouldn’t have spoilt my best cloak, throwing it in the mud for someone to walk on.”