Miss Silver Comes To Stay

CHAPTER 4

Fancy Bell looked sideways under her long lashes and observed her companion’s gloom. With a faint sigh she turned to the much more agreeable spectacle of her own enchanting face and figure reflected in the looking-glass at the back of a milliner’s window. A bit daring that scarlet-hit or miss, as you might say-but to judge from the way in which practically every man they passed had looked and looked again, it was a hit all right. A lovely contrast they made, her and Carr. Very goodlooking he was-nobody could say anything different. And of course nothing like that dark, gloomy type for making a fair girl look even fairer than she was. And he was ever so nice really, only it would make things a lot easier if he would smile a bit and look as if he was enjoying her company. But of course you couldn’t have everything.

There was a hard core of common sense behind that very decorative façade. You couldn’t have everything, so you had to make up your mind just what you wanted most. Young men with plenty of money asked you to go away for weekends. Well, she wasn’t that sort of girl and she let them know it-no offence meant and none taken, but they didn’t generally try it on a second time. The show-girl business was all very well while it lasted, but it didn’t last for ever. The sensible person who was Frances expected Fancy to get her a chance of settling in life, and she knew just what she wanted-a lift in the world, but not such a big one that your in-laws were going to look down on you-enough money to have a nice little home and, say, three children-and someone to do all the rough work, because you don’t want to let yourself go, and she’d always kept her hands nice. Of course she’d have to do a good bit, especially after the babies came. She wouldn’t mind that. Frances had it all planned out. She was considering whether Carr Robertson would do for the lead in this private play of hers. He had a job and he had a little money of his own, and Fancy would find it quite easy to be in love with him, but Frances wasn’t going to let her do anything silly.

She put up a hand and pulled at his sleeve.

“Here’s the place Mrs. Welby said, where she has her hair done. I’ll be an hour, if you can put in the time. Sure you can?”

He said, “Oh, yes,” in an indifferent tone.

“All right. And then we’ll have tea. So long.”

He watched her go with a curious feeling of relief. There was going to be a whole hour in which nothing would be expected of him. He needn’t talk, make love, or abstain from making love. His feeling was very much like that with which one sometimes sees one’s guests depart. Their presence may have been welcome, their company enjoyed, but there is something about having your house to yourself again. Only when he did have it to himself there was always the possibility that the welcome solitude would be invaded by an unlaid ghost-Marjory’s step on the stair… her laughter, and her tears… her failing voice: “No-no-I’ll never tell you his name. I don’t want you to kill him. No, Carr-no!”

A real voice broke in upon his mood. He glanced up with the quick nervous frown so like Rietta’s and saw Mr. Holderness looking benevolent. One of his earliest recollections was the benevolence of Mr. Holderness accompanied by a half-crown tip. As far as Carr could see, he hadn’t changed a bit-dignified presence, florid complexion, kindly gaze, and rich rolling voice-general slight flavour of the eighteenth century from which his office with its Georgian panelling had never emerged. The firm had ranked as old-fashioned county solicitors then, and the tradition had been maintained ever since. He clapped Carr on the shoulder and enquired whether he was down for long.

“Rietta will be glad to have you. How is she? Not working too hard, I hope. Last time I saw her I thought she was looking as if she had been overdoing it, and she told me she couldn’t get any help in the garden.”

“No, she’s had to give up the vegetables. She hasn’t much help in the house either-only Mrs. Fallow for a couple of hours twice a week. I think she does do too much.”

“Take care of her, my boy, take care of her. Good people are scarce, and she won’t look after herself-women never will. Between ourselves, they’ve every virtue except common sense. But don’t say I said so. No witnesses, you know, and I shall deny it-I shall deny it!” He let out a fine reverberant laugh. “Well, well, I mustn’t stay gossiping. I’ve been in court all day, and I must get on to the office. By the way, I hear James Lessiter is back. Have you seen him at all?”

Carr’s lips twitched into a smile as quick and nervous as his frown.

“I’ve never seen him in my life. He was off the map before I fetched up in Melling.”

“Yes, yes-of course-so he was. And now he’s come back a rich man. Pleasant to come across a success story once in a way-very pleasant indeed. You haven’t seen him since he got back?”

“I don’t think anyone has. As a matter of fact I believe he only arrived last night. Mrs. Fallow has been up there helping the Mayhews.”

“Ah, yes-Mrs. Lessiter’s cook and butler-very worthy people. Mayhew calls in at the office every week for their wages. That is how I knew that James was expected. He’ll be ringing me up, I expect. It’s made a lot of work, his being out of the country when his mother died. Well, goodbye, my boy. I’m glad to have seen you.”

He passed on. Carr watched him go, and felt his mood changed by the encounter. There had been a time before the world was shattered. Old Holderness belonged to that time, he might even be said to typify it. Life was secure, its circumstances stable. You had the friends you had grown up with, the friends you made at school and college. Term followed term throughout the year, with bright intervals of vacation. Half-crown tips mounted to ten shillings, to a pound. Henry Ainger had given him a fiver on his eighteenth birthday. Elizabeth Moore had given him an odd old picture of a ship. He had felt romantic about it from the first moment he saw it hanging in a dark corner of her uncle’s antique shop. Odd how a little paint and canvas can become a magic casement. He had seen himself sailing out into life on an enchanted tide-

On a sudden impulse he walked down the street, turned to the left, and stood looking in at Jonathan Moore’s shop window. There was a fine set of red and white ivory chessmen in Manchu and Chinese dress-war formalized into a game. He watched the pieces, admiring the exquisite precision of the carving, angry underneath. Then all at once he straightened up, pushed open the door, and went in. A bell tinkled, Elizabeth came to meet him. The anger dropped out of him and was gone.

She said, “Carr!” and they stood looking at one another.

It was only for a moment that he was able to look at her as if she were a stranger, because though it was nearly five years since they had met, he had known her all his life. But for just that one moment he did see her as if it was the first time-the tall light figure, the clear windblown look she had, brown hair ruffled back from the forehead, bright eager eyes, and a quick tremulous smile. He got the impression of something startled into joy, ready to take flight, to escape, to become unobtainable-the whole thing much too fleeting to pass into conscious thought. She spoke first, in the voice which he had always liked-a pretty, clear voice full of gravity and sweetness.

“Carr-how nice! It’s been such a long time, hasn’t it?”

He said, “A million years,” and then wondered why he had said it. Only it didn’t matter what you said to Elizabeth – it never had.

She put out a hand, but not to touch him. It was an old remembered gesture.

“As long as that? My poor dear! Come along through and let’s talk. Uncle Jonathan is out at a sale.”

He followed her into the little sitting-room behind the shop-shabby comfortable chairs, old-fashioned plush curtains, Jonathan Moore’s untidy desk. Elizabeth shut the door. They might have been back in the past before the deluge. She opened a cupboard, rummaged, and produced a bag of caramels.

“Do you still like them? I think you do. If you really like something you go on liking it, don’t you think?”

“I don’t know about that.”

“I do-I’m quite sure.” She laughed a little. “Whatever happens or doesn’t happen, I shall always have a passion for caramels. I’ve never stopped being thankful that I can eat them without putting on an ounce. Look here, there’s the bag between us, and we can both dip in like we used to.”

He laughed too, all the tension in him relaxed. To come back to Elizabeth was to slip into a place so accustomed, so comfortable, that you didn’t even have to think about it. An old coat, old shoes, an old friend-unromantic, undemanding, utterly restful.

She said, “Is it too early for tea? I’ll make some-” and saw him frown again.

“No. I’ve got Fancy with me-Frances Bell. We’re staying with Rietta. She’s gone in to Hardy’s to have her hair done, and she will want tea when she comes out.”

Elizabeth ’s very clear eyes dwelt on him consideringly.

“You wouldn’t like to bring her in here? I’ve got quite a new cake.”

He said, “Yes, I would.”

Elizabeth nodded.

“That’s lovely. Then we can just sit and talk. Tell me about her. Is she a friend of yours?”

“No.”

He didn’t know he was going to say it, but it was no sooner said than he thought, “My God-that’s true!” What sort of a mess had he got himself into, and how far in had he got? It was like walking in your sleep and waking up to find yourself with one foot over a killing drop.

“Tell me about her, Carr. What is she like?”

The tormented look was back again. He turned it on her.

“She’s like Marjory.”

“I only saw her once. She was very pretty.” It was said without rancour, yet they both remembered that one meeting, because it was after it that Elizabeth had said, “Are you in love with her, Carr?” They were here alone together in this very room, and when he looked away and couldn’t meet her eyes she had taken off her engagement ring and laid it down on the arm of the chair between them, and when he still had nothing to say she had gone out through the far door and up the old stair to her own room overhead. And he had let her go.

Five years ago, but it came back like yesterday. He said,

“Why did you let me go?”

“How could I keep you?”

“You didn’t try.”

“No-I didn’t try. I didn’t want to keep you if you wanted to go.”

He was silent, because he couldn’t say, “I didn’t want to go.” He had known Elizabeth all his life, and Marjory for three short weeks. At twenty-three it is the new, the unexpected, the unknown, which evokes romance. If the enchanted distance turns upon nearer view into a desert, you have only yourself to thank. Marjory hadn’t changed-he had always had to remind himself of that.

He found himself leaning forward, his hands between his knees, words coming at first jerkily and then with a rush.

“It wasn’t her fault, you know. I was damnable to live with-and the baby died-she hadn’t got anything. Money was tight. She’d been used to having a good time-lots of people to go about with. I couldn’t give her anything to make up for it. The flat was so cramped-she hated it. I was always away, and there wasn’t any money, and when I was there I was in a filthy temper. You can’t blame her.”

“What happened, Carr?”

“I was sent to Germany. I didn’t get demobbed till the end of that year. She never wrote much, and then she didn’t write at all. I got leave, and came home to find strangers in the flat. She’d let it. No one knew where she was. When I got home for good I tried to trace her. I took on the flat again, because I had to live somewhere and I’d got this job in a literary agency. A friend of mine started it-Jack Smithers. You remember, he was up at Oxford with me. He was crocked in the war, and got away with this business before the ugly rush.”

Elizabeth said, “Yes?”

He looked up at her for a moment.

“I had a sort of idea perhaps she would come back. Well, she did. It was a bitter cold January night. I got in just short of midnight, and there she was, huddled up on the divan. She must have been pretty well frozen, because she hadn’t any coat, only a thin suit. She’d got the eiderdown from the bedroom and put the electric fire on, and by the time I got in she was in a burning fever. I got a doctor, but she never had a chance. The swine she’d gone off with had left her penniless in France. She’d sold everything she had to get home. She told me that, but she wouldn’t tell me his name. She said she didn’t want me to kill him. After all he’d done to her-she talked when she was delirious, so I know-after all that she was mad about him still!”

Elizabeth ’s voice came into the silence.

“She might have been thinking about you.”

He laughed angrily.

“Then she wasn’t! She kept his photograph-that’s how I know, and that’s how I’ll find him some day. It was in the back of her compact under the bit of gauze that’s supposed to keep the powder in. I expect she thought nobody would find it there, but of course she didn’t know she was going to die.” His voice went harsh. “She wouldn’t have believed it if anyone had told her.”

Elizabeth said, “Poor Marjory!”

He nodded.

“I’ve kept that photograph-I’ll find him some time. It was just the head and shoulders cut out and the cardboard scraped down at the back to make it fit, so there’s no photographer’s name, but I’ll know him if I meet him.”

“People don’t go unpunished, Carr. Don’t try and play hangman. It’s not your line.”

“Isn’t it? I don’t know-”

There was a silence. Elizabeth let it gather round them. She was leaning back now, watching him between her dark lashes, her long thin hands resting quietly on the green stuff of her skirt. The cream sweater she wore with it came up high about her long throat. There was a small pearl in the lobe of either ear.

Presently Carr began to speak again.

“Fancy’s rather like her, you know. She’s been a mannequin. At the moment she’s a show-girl-out of a job. She’s worked very hard and she wants to get on. She hopes for a part in what she calls a regular play. I shouldn’t think there’s a chance in a million that she can act. She has to be rather careful about her vowels, because they pronounce them differently in Stepney where she grew up. I believe Mum and Dad still live there, and she wouldn’t dream of cutting loose, because she’s a nice girl and very fond of her family.”

“And just where do you come in?” said Elizabeth.

He looked up with a flash of rather bitter humour.

“She wants to get on, and she’s considering me as a stepping-stone.”

“Are you engaged?”

“I believe not.”

“Have you asked her to marry you?”

“I don’t know.”

“Carr, you must know!”

“Well, I don’t, and that’s a fact.”

She sat up suddenly, her eyes wide open, her hands clasped.

“You’ve been letting yourself drift and you don’t know where you’ve got to.”

“That’s about the size of it.”

“Carr, it’s suicidal! You don’t have to marry a girl you don’t care about.”

He said, “No.” And then, “It’s quite easy to drift that way when you don’t really care what happens. One gets lonely.”

Elizabeth said very quick and low, “It’s better to be lonely by yourself than to be lonely with somebody else.”

The pain in his eyes shocked her.

“Damnably true. I’ve tried it both ways, so I ought to know. But you see, that once-bitten-twice-shy business doesn’t work-you always think it’s going to be different next time.”

Elizabeth said with energy, “Carr, I could shake you! You’re talking nonsense and you know it. You did go honestly off the deep end about Marjory, but this time you don’t even pretend you care a snap of your fingers about this wretched girl.”

His old provoking smile flashed out.

“Darling, she isn’t a wretched girl. On the contrary, she’s a very nice girl, a perfectly good girl, and a devastatingly pretty one-platinum hair, sapphire eyes, lashes about half a yard long, and the traditional rose-leaf complexion. Wait till you see her!”