Nobody Asked Me

CHAPTER II

‘ROSALIE’’S fiancé!’ Alison could keep neither the astonishment nor the dismay from her face.

‘Certainly. Why not?’ The slight touch of evident displeasure brought her to her senses.

‘Oh, nothing-no reason at all,’ Alison said quickly, and turned away.

Rosalie’s fiancé! No wonder her cousin had looked so much annoyed. No wonder she had assumed that little possessive air towards him. And Aunt Lydia, too-her surprise and resentment were explained now.

The only thing that was not explained was the attitude of Julian Tyndrum himself. Why on earth should he deliberately have gone out of his way to irritate his fiancée? Or had he some sort of rigid social code which made him consider it essential that he should repair Rosalie’s omissions?

‘If so, he’s going to have his hands full,’ thought Alison bitterly. But, in any case, the whole problem had suddenly become too much for her tired mind to tackle just then.

A little apprehensively she went to say good night to her aunt and cousin.

‘Good night, Alison,’ Aunt Lydia said. Then, as she was turning away, ‘Oh, and, Alison dear, I know you’re only a schoolgirl yet’-Alison gritted her teeth-’but you will have to learn that it’s not quite good form to make yourself so conspicuous.’

‘I shouldn’t blame her too much, Mother,’ Rosalie said tolerantly. ‘If Julian sets out to turn a girl’s head he usually succeeds. You couldn’t expect Alison to be proof against it.’

Without a word Alison went out of the room. She couldn’t trust herself to speak in this rush of anger and dislike which came over her almost every time her cousin addressed her.

Very wearily she climbed the stairs. When she had been dancing and talking so happily with Julian Tyndrum, she had forgotten even to think about being tired. But now the reaction had set in. All the hours of strain and tension seemed to gather together in one heavy burden that pressed upon her.

‘Alison, is that you?’

For a moment she was tempted to ignore the cautious whisper from Audrey’s room. Then she went to the door.’

‘Yes. What is it?’

‘Come in a minute. I want to hear about the party.’

‘You ought to be asleep,’ Alison protested feebly, but she came in.

Audrey was sitting up in bed, and even the dim light did little to disguise the determined interest of her face.

‘I’ve been asleep,’ she said. ‘But I woke up with the noise of everybody going.’ Then almost immediately she added, ‘You look awfully pretty in that dress, though it’s not a bit like an evening dress. Did you enjoy yourself?’

‘Yes, thank you.’

It was true. She had enjoyed herself in the end, thanks to the kindness of one person. Strange to think that that one person was engaged to anyone so spiteful as Rosalie.

‘You must go to sleep again now,’ she said.

‘I’m very thirsty. Do you think I could have a drink?’ The resourceful Audrey knew all there was to know about prolonging conversations.

Alison remembered the old dodge, too, but she went over and poured out a glass of water for the little girl.

‘Here you are.’

‘Thank you.’ Audrey drank with convincing eagerness. ‘Was Julian there?’ she asked suddenly.

‘Yes.’

‘I like Julian.’ There was no mistaking Audrey’s approval. ‘Did you?’

‘He seemed very nice,’ Alison agreed carefully.

‘He is. Much too nice for Rosalie,’ said Rosalie’s young stepsister. But Alison refused to take up this challenge, and so she asked, between gradually lengthening sips, ‘Did you dance with him?’

‘Yes.’

‘How many times?’

‘Oh, several times,’ Alison said carelessly.

‘Several times?’ The pretence of thirst was abruptly abandoned. ‘I bet Rosalie was wild, wasn’t she?’

‘Don’t be silly, Audrey.’ Alison spoke severely. ‘I imagine Mr. Tyndrum was kind enough to feel some social responsibility as-a-as a sort of relation.’

‘I don’t imagine anything of the kind,’ retorted Audrey, reluctantly yielding up the empty glass to Alison’s firm hand. ‘They had an awful row this afternoon, and for once he got his own back on her, instead of the other way round.’

Alison was half-way across the room, the glass in her hand. She stopped suddenly and said in a funny, stifled little voice, ‘What are you talking about?’

‘It’s always happening,’ Audrey said, lying down and pulling the clothes over her. ‘Rosalie loves making rows because it makes her feel important. Then she flirts with someone else, and Julian’s silly enough to be miserable and jealous, so that in the end it’s he who does all the apologising. I’m jolly glad he turned the tables this time and made a fuss of another girl.’

For a second Alison felt unable to move. Then she slowly put down the glass as though it were very heavy.

‘Good night, Audrey. Go to sleep now.’ She went towards the door, hardly hearing the little girl’s sleepy ‘Good night’ in reply. Very quietly she closed the door behind her.

It was quite a short distance to her own room really, but somehow it seemed a long way to carry anything so heavy as her heart.

She didn’t put on the light at first, for the curtains were still drawn back, and the moon shone right into the room. She went slowly over to the window, and stood staring out at the cold black and silver of the moonlit square.

He had just used her to make Rosalie jealous.

Alison leant her forehead against the window, pressed it there until she could feel the stinging, icy glass through her thick fringe.

How easy it was to make a fool of yourself when you were lonely! You snatched at the faintest bit of kindness and read all sorts of things into it.

A dozen little memories came back to hurt her. He’d said it was easy to be kind to her. It had seemed such a sweet compliment at the time, and had made her so happy. Now she saw he had probably been thinking that anyone so silly as herself simplified his plan of campaign.

She winced sharply. He had actually used that word himself, and had smiled as he said it-while she had been silly enough to suppose it had been something on her own behalf.

And then she had assured him clumsily that he must not bother to come to the house because of her. No wonder he had looked astonished and chilly!

‘Oh, whatever sort of a fool must he think me?’ muttered Alison wretchedly as she turned away from the window, chilled and a little stiff: ‘Anyway’-she pressed her unsteady lips together angrily-’I don’t think much of him either. It was a beastly thing to do.’

And she kept up her anger against him all the while she was undressing.

She expected to lie awake, anxious and tormented with worry. But the moment her head was on the pillow she fell asleep-to dream of Julian Tyndrum.

There was a tremendous reception being held somewhere, and Aunt Lydia kept on saying, ‘You can’t possibly go. You’ve nothing decent to wear, and everybody would be ashamed of you.’

And then Julian was there, and he said in his careless, arrogant fashion, ‘Oh, yes, she can. I’ll put the cloak of my protection round her and then she can go.’ And, to Alison’s astonishment, the cloak was a real one-long and magnificent and lined with fur, like the cloak of a Victorian hero.

She snuggled into its wonderful folds, and the fur was so soft and enveloping that it warmed her right through to her very heart. And that was the end of the dream, because she forgot all about going to the reception in the happiness of wearing Julian’s cloak.

The next day, any doubts left on the subject of Alison’s exact position in the household began to be cleared up. She breakfasted with the twins, went out with the twins in the morning, lunched with the twins. Theoretically the after(d)noon was to be her own-to be spent, apparently, either in her own room or else somewhere vaguely described as ‘out’.

On this occasion, however, her aunt came into the schoolroom directly after lunch and said, ‘Alison, my dear, I wonder if you’d come and give me a hand with my correspondence. It’s piled up so much lately. And there arc one or two’ small items of shopping you can do for me. I expect you will be glad of something to do.’

Alison came quite willingly. Her aunt had not done a single thing to make her feel happy or at home since she came into the house. But, on the other hand, Uncle Theodore had maintained her for nearly three years, and he was Aunt Lydia ’s husband. She had an uncomfortable suspicion that duty rather than humanity had moved him to do so, but that didn’t lessen her anxiety to show her gratitude.

In addition-though this, of course, was not at all important-was the feeling at the back of her mind that she would rather be out of the way if Julian called. She didn’t want to see him. She felt passionately that she never wanted to see him again. It wasn’t only that she was so embarrassed as she remembered last evening. She felt angry, too, and quite unbearably hurt.

So she sat in her aunt’s little study and conscientiously wrote answers to invitations, notes about accounts, and a few-a very few-letters to accompany cheques for charity.

At four o’clock her aunt looked in and said, ‘You had better go out now, Alison, or you won’t be back in time for schoolroom tea at five. You can finish those to-morrow.’

Alison was not too simple to see that a good many to-morrows of this sort stretched in front of her. But she did what she was told, thankful to escape from the house.

It was a blowy day in early April, but strangely warm after the chill of yesterday, and insensibly Alison felt her spirits rise. It had been rather stupid of her really to keep on trying to analyse people’s actions and attribute this and that motive to them.

Julian might have had some faint idea of showing Rosalie she couldn’t have things all her own way, but, undoubtedly too, he had wanted to be kind to her. He’d shown it in a dozen different ways. She was rather guiltily surprised to find that her thoughts had come back to him, but perhaps it was only natural since he was the only one to show the slightest personal concern about her welfare since she had arrived.

After all, if Julian liked to offer her some degree of friendship she would be more than glad to have it. But, beyond that, her cousin’s fiancé really had nothing to do with her.

Her business was to see that she attended to her aunt’s commissions as carefully and dutifully as possible, and reached home in time for schoolroom tea, as Aunt Lydia had said.

It was odd, but not at all unpleasant, to be sauntering along the streets and in and out of shops, with no one’s wishes but her own to consult until five o’clock.

For the first time she felt she had really left schooldays definitely behind her. Even Aunt Lydia ’s little spiteful pretence couldn’t make her into a schoolgirl again. She was an individual, with a life of her own before her-no longer one of a class.

It was impossible not to feel rather elated at the thought, and, in between carefully carrying out her aunt’s various instructions, Alison allowed her thoughts to wander a little to the possible future.

Since Uncle Theodore had been willing to pay for the rest of her schooling, perhaps he would have no objection to allowing her some sort of training for a job. It was rather dreadful, of course, to have to think of spending more of his money already, but, on the other hand, it would cost less in the end to let her be trained for something that would make her independent.

‘Even something very modest,’ Alison thought humbly. ‘I wouldn’t mind what it was, so long as it meant I didn’t have to sponge on them any longer.’

She hoped guiltily that it was not very ungrateful of her, but already the thought of anything that would take her away from her aunt and Rosalie seemed very attractive.

As she came into the hall on her return, the beautiful old German wall-clock struck five. Only just in time. And she must find her aunt first and tell her she had managed to match that silk for her.

She glanced into the dining-room. It was empty.

She hesitated a moment. Perhaps Aunt Lydia was in the library, having tea served there. She went over and opened the door quietly, in case there were any people there and it would be best for her to beat an unobtrusive retreat.

Tea was not being served in the library. Nor was Aunt Lydia there. But two other people were-Julian and Rosalie. And they were much too much absorbed to notice anyone else.

Alison stood there for a moment, transfixed by the sight of her cousin caught close in Julian’s arms. Rosalie was laughing a little, and he was looking down at her with an angry tenderness that was like nothing Alison had ever seen. ‘

‘Why do you do these awful things?’ she heard him say with a sort of impatient pain in his voice. ‘You know you make me sick with misery.’

And then Rosalie slid her arm round his neck, and the next moment he was kissing her all over her face.

Alison closed the door silently and fled upstairs as though something frightening were behind her. She was short of breath when she reached her room, and was astonished to find she was trembling.

It was no business of hers. She had no right to have witnessed that scene. ‘I wish I hadn’t,’ she whispered agitatedly. ‘I wish I hadn’t.’

But that wasn’t the principal thought in her heart. ‘How could she have laughed when he looked like that?’ she kept on thinking. ‘How can she hurt him so, and enjoy it?’ And then, with a heat and bitterness that appalled her: ‘I hate her!’

This was not like the quick, angry flash of temper when Rosalie had said unkind things about herself. It was something far deeper and more complicated. Something Alison couldn’t in the least explain-even to herself.

A little dazedly she put up her handkerchief and wiped her forehead, where it had gone slightly damp under her fringe.

‘I’d better go and see what the twins are doing,’ she said aloud, but it was a few minutes before her own voice seemed to reach her consciousness.

She didn’t go downstairs again until dinner-time, and then only her uncle and aunt were there. Neither of them took very much notice of her.

Her aunt said, ‘Alison will have to have some decent clothes,’ as though Alison herself were not present. And her uncle replied absently, ‘Of course. Get her whatever she needs.’

Alison, feeling a little bit like a foundling, murmured, ‘Thank you.’ And that closed the subject.

It appeared that Uncle Theodore was going abroad the next day. Alison was sorry. She had an idea that in a domestic crisis Uncle Theodore would display an impartial justice that might be useful. But she gathered from the conversation that he spent a good deal of time travelling on business, so perhaps it was as well not to count much on his problematical support.

Towards the end of the meal he looked up and said, ‘Where is Rosalie?’ as though he had only just noticed her absence.

‘Out with Julian.’ Aunt Lydia ’s tone was laconic.

Her husband gave a short laugh. ‘Which is it to-day, a quarrelling or a making-up?’ And then, as Aunt Lydia took no notice of that, ‘I can’t imagine how a man with such a business head can be a complete fool about a bit of a girl like Rosalie.’

‘It’s often the way,’ said Aunt Lydia calmly.

‘Well, there won’t be so much scope for her playing fast and loose like this once they’re out in South America.’

Aunt Lydia again made no reply, and, after a moment, Alison forced herself to say:

‘Is Rosalie going to live in South America when she’s married?’

‘I suppose so.’ Her aunt shrugged. ‘Julian’s firm have very big interests out there, and he expects to take over full management at the end of the year. I can’t say I like the idea of Rosalie’s going, but she has never listened to anyone else’s advice in her life, and I suppose one can’t expect her to start now.’

‘Rosalie never consulted anyone’s wishes but her own about anything at all,’ observed Uncle Theodore.

And that, too, Aunt Lydia left unanswered.

As time went on, Alison found this was a very fair specimen of her day. Nearly always Rosalie was out in the evening, and quite often her aunt was too, but it was the rarest thing for them to take Alison with them.

Her uncle was away more often than not, and, even when he was in London, he frequently dined at his club, and his family saw practically nothing of him. The arrangement appeared to suit both him and Aunt Lydia admirably.

When the others Were all out Alison "had her evening meal on a tray in the schoolroom, and made what she could of her own company. It was a poor life for a girl of her age, and, when the holidays came to an end, and the twins departed to school once more, she became really frightened of the loneliness.

Audrey and Theo had both displayed quite unusual emotion at parting, and Alison realised how much she was going to miss them. She promised fervently to look after Audrey’s kitten and Theo’s tortoise, and to send weekly bulletins of their health. But, remembering the unfulfilled promises of her own schooldays, she didn’t expect much in the nature of replies to her letters. Nor did she receive them.

It was the departure of the twins which finally made her take her courage in her hands and tackle Aunt Lydia about her future.

‘Aunt Lydia, please don’t think I’m ungrateful or anything,’ she said one evening, trying to make it sound as casual and natural as possible, ‘but do you think that instead of sponging on you I could do something about finding a job?’

‘A job?’ Her aunt looked surprised. ‘What sort of a job?’

‘Well-secretarial or-or teaching or something.’

‘But you’re not qualified to do anything of the sort, Alison.’ Her aunt sounded faintly irritated at Alison’s stupidity.

‘Not exactly. But couldn’t I-I mean-do you think Uncle Theodore would let me have some sort of training? Nothing-nothing very expensive, of course.’

Up went Aunt Lydia ’s beautiful, clear-cut eyebrows.

‘I don’t think you realise, Alison, that your uncle has a great many calls on his money. You’ve already been quite a big expense to him, you know. And you seem to forget, my dear, that you’re not really any relation of his at all. In a way it’s all been charity.’

Alison went hot all over.

‘I do realise it, Aunt Lydia. That’s just it,’ she explained desperately. ‘I thought if I could have some sort of definite training I could be self-supporting and-and not dependent on charity any more.’

‘I don’t see how it’s to be done,’ her aunt said calmly. ‘It’s a very expensive year for us, with Rosalie’s wedding coming along in the autumn or winter.’

‘But if I got a job I shouldn’t be an expense at all,’ Alison pleaded. ‘I could live on my own and-and-’

‘My dear child, I don’t think it’s very gracious of you to talk as though we’ve grudged you a home.’ Aunt Lydia shamelessly reversed all her arguments. ‘Your uncle and I are perfectly willing to have you here, and I must say that you are not showing very much gratitude about it. I should have thought the only natural and kind thing to have done would have been to keep any little personal ambitions in check for the moment. If you’re really pining to do secretarial work, there are dozens of small jobs I should be only too thankful to have taken off my hands.’

It was at this point that Alison saw the complete futility of further argument.

A couple of days later, she managed to get up her courage once more to speak to her uncle. But, if possible, he was even more baffling, because he was kind about it.

‘Job?’ he said, looking even more surprised than her aunt had done. ‘Why ever should you have a job, my dear? You’re perfectly welcome to a home here until you get married. And, anyway, I don’t approve of women in business,’ he added unexpectedly.

‘Well, then, perhaps I could be a nurse or something,’ cried Alison in desperation. The thought of any decent independence was better than having to ask a grudging Aunt Lydia for the smallest trifle, and, in exchange, to be at her aunt’s beck and call in a way no paid secretary-companion would stand.

But her uncle laughed. ‘Nonsense, Alison. It’s a terribly hard life unless you’re specially suited to it, and you don’t look particularly strong to me. There are plenty of things for you to do enjoying yourself j or I dare say you can help your aunt in small ways if you want to.’

‘But that isn’t quite it,’ Alison explained patiently. ‘It isn’t as though I’m even really your niece, Uncle Theodore. It’s-it’s like taking charity.’

He gave her an odd look. ‘Nor is Rosalie really my daughter,’ he remarked drily. ‘Yet I notice she takes much more of my charity, as you call it, without a qualm. But you’re a good child.’ He patted her shoulder not unkindly. ‘I appreciate your nice independence. But, believe me, my dear, I can well afford to keep you, and I am happy to do so. I don’t know what allowance your aunt gives you, because it goes in with Rosalie’s and the twins’, but I don’t think it can be excessive.’

It was the first Alison had heard of any allowance at all. She was not, however, specially surprised to learn that Aunt Lydia was deliberately exploiting the arrival of the penniless niece in order to increase her own allowance-or perhaps Rosalie’s. Alison was beginning to understand Aunt Lydia very well.

But, aware now, as she was, of her uncle’s excellent intentions, she couldn’t possibly make trouble by disclosing the real situation. And she shrank from saying anything to suggest that she had ever even expected any allowance.

In theory, his generosity made everything simple. In practice, Aunt Lydia ’s meanness hedged her in on every side.

The problem was too much for Alison. It looked as though she were inexorably condemned to the status of unpaid secretary-companion, with the.duties of nursery-governess thrown in-a prospect to terrify any girl of twenty. But then perhaps poor relations must not expect anything else.

It was inevitable, of course, that in the long periods of loneliness she should find her thoughts turning again and again to Julian. His extraordinary kindness to her on her first evening-whatever the motives-was the only really exciting thing that had happened to her. And sometimes she wondered if she had imagined half of that. He certainly seemed to have forgotten all about his half-promise ‘to see a good deal of her.’

And then one evening, towards the end of a hot, airless May, Alison was unexpectedly included in a theatre party -and Julian was there.

She saw him just before the play began, towering over the heads of the people near him. He saw her, too, and smiled slightly at her and bowed.

She was ridiculously, shamelessly conscious of him during the whole of the first act. He was sitting one row in front of her, a little to the side. By turning her head very slightly, she found, she could see his keen, absorbed face in the light from the stage. And after that the play seemed to lose a good deal of its interest for her.

In the first interval she sat there studying her programme with desperate concentration. Would he come and say a word to her? Just one word of greeting. Something different from her aunt’s pettiness or Rosalie’s spitefulness-or even her uncle’s formality.

Aunt Lydia and Rosalie had gone to speak to someone the other side of the theatre and she was quite alone. The seconds crept by. She counted them by the beating of her heart. Oh, it didn’t seem much to ask-just one word of greeting.

‘Well’-his deep, slightly amused voice sounded above her-’are you still following out the role of Victorian heroine and refusing to raise your eyes?’

She looked up then, and smiled as he took her hand.

‘I’m very glad to see you,’ she said simply.

‘Thank you, my child.’ He smiled too, then, very kindly. ‘And so am I glad to see you. Although’-he paused, and then said imperiously-’Look at me again.’

Alison’s startled eyes came back to his face.

‘I thought so.’ He frowned slightly. ‘You’re not looking as well as you should. What is it? Too many late nights?’

‘No!’ She spoke a little indignantly. When did he imagine she could have had late nights?

‘What then?’

But before she could frame any sort of reply her aunt came up, and then, a second later, Rosalie.

‘Hello, darling.’ Rosalie spoke perfectly casually, but she put her hand carelessly over Julian’s as it rested on the back of the seat.

Alison didn’t raise her eyes to his face again, but she watched those two hands. She saw his tighten and tighten under Rosalie’s light grasp, although all the time he was talking calmly to Aunt Lydia about the play. And then in one little, swift movement his hand turned and imprisoned Rosalie’s.

His. voice never altered at all, but when he took his hand away there were little white marks where his fingers had gripped Rosalie’s.

Alison heard her give the very faintest, satisfied laugh. And she thought again, ‘I hate her.’ Then she realised suddenly that she felt slightly sick.

When the curtain rose again she saw nothing of what was happening on the stage. She was dunking, ‘It’s awful to feel like this. It’s wicked, in a way, because he belongs to Rosalie, and it’s no business of mine how much she hurts him.’

But she went on hating Rosalie.

Afterwards they went on somewhere to supper, and; although the party was a big one, Alison had some faint hope that she might have a further word with Julian, and perhaps find out what he had meant by that casual reference to ‘late nights’.

But when they reached the restaurant Julian was naturally firmly annexed to Rosalie’s group, and there seemed little likelihood of Alison’s being permitted to join them.

Instead, she found herself marooned beside an elderly retired colonel whom she had heard someone describe rudely and audibly as ‘very Poona ’.

It seemed he was ‘somebody’s uncle’, but the nephew or niece in question appeared to have left him to make his own amusement. Alison felt sorry for him, particularly as he looked a bit lost and offended after the Poona remark.

She tried, a little timidly, to make conversation with him, but although he seemed grateful, it was rather hard going.

He said, ‘Most extraordinary,’ almost every time there was a burst of laughter at any of the cabaret jokes, and once or twice he asked Alison to explain things that were best left unexplained.

She struggled along bravely, however, knowing from bitter experience how blighting it was to be ignored and cold-shouldered by these people. She guessed that the colonel was sufficiently near the category of ‘rich relation’ to be given a duty invitation to a theatre party, but that to show him a little personal politeness and consideration was beyond the limits of trouble to which his hopeful heirs would go.

Alison by now had taken the full measure of the world to which her aunt and Rosalie belonged.

Once the colonel said, ‘You ought to be dancing with the young people, instead of sitting here talking to me.’

But Alison said hastily, ‘Oh, no, thank you. I’d rather talk, really.’ For, as neither her aunt nor her cousin ever took the trouble to introduce her to anybody at this sort of affair, she was usually humiliatingly free of partners.

Just possibly, of course, Julian would come over and ask her to dance, but, as it seemed to be one of the evenings when Rosalie was quite willing to be gracious to her fiancé, the probability was slight.

So instead Alison did her best to simulate a profound interest in the colonel’s reminiscences and his description of what this famous restaurant was like in the days when he was a subaltern home on leave in the twenties.

It was not the liveliest way of spending an evening, but she was extremely touched when it was time to go and he said to her:

‘Good night. I hope I shall meet you again. You’re a very nice child, and the first young person I’ve met with any pretensions to manners since I came home.’

It comforted her a little for not having spoken again to Julian. And, in any case, as she told herself again when she got into bed that night, it was certainly not for her to expect any special notice from her cousin’s fiancé.

The summer crept on in ever increasing heat. Airless and aimless.

Uncle Theodore was on the Continent, and quite often Aunt Lydia and Rosalie went into the country for the week-end. Very occasionally they took Alison, but much more often she was left behind.

Sometimes she used to tell herself that she preferred it so. The big house might be incredibly empty and lonely when she was left there by herself, but Aunt Lydia had a way of making her feel still lonelier if she came to any of the smart house-parties.

Alison tried not to think too much about it because she was afraid of losing her sense of proportion where her aunt and Rosalie were concerned, but she felt pretty sure that the uppermost idea in Aunt Lydia ’s mind was that no one should be allowed to detract from Rosalie’s social success.

And once or twice Alison had shown distinct signs of achieving a certain little popularity of her own.

It was after this that the invitations, as interpreted by Aunt Lydia, showed an increasing tendency to include only herself and Rosalie.

There was no appeal, of course, any more than there had been over the question of getting a job. And so Alison had to resign herself as best she could to large slices of her own exclusive company.

One Saturday, when she was quite alone, the telephone bell rang.

Alison took off the receiver.

‘Hello.’ She sounded more listless than she knew.

‘Mr. Tyndrum speaking,’ came Julian’s voice from the other end of the wire. ‘Can you tell me if I left my cigarette-case at the house yesterday afternoon? I have an idea I put it down on a table in the library. It’s a gold one, with the initials "J.T." in one corner.’

‘I-I’ll go and see,’ Alison said.

‘Just a moment.’ His tone changed suddenly. ‘Who is that speaking?’

‘It’s Alison,’ she said, and then wondered the next moment if she ought to have said ‘Miss Earlston’.

He didn’t seem to think so, however, because he immediately repeated her name with some pleasure.

‘Alison! I thought you were away. Why aren’t you with your aunt and Rosalie in Sussex?’

‘I-wasn’t asked.’

‘Weren’t you?’ The sudden gentleness in his voice made Alison bite her lip.

‘I’ll go and see if your case is there, if you’ll just hold on a minute.’

‘All right.’

She went into the library thinking, ‘And I didn’t even know he was here yesterday. It must have been when I went to fetch Aunt Lydia ’s rings from the jeweller’s.’

The case was there. She picked it up and held it rather close against her as she went back to the phone.

‘Hello. Your case is all right, I have it here.’ She suddenly pressed it absurdly against her cheek.

‘That’s good. I shouldn’t like to lose it. May I call in for it this afternoon, Alison?’

‘Yes-of course.’

‘Will you give me tea if I come about half past four? Or do the Victorian proprieties forbid it?’ She knew he was smiling.

‘I’ll have tea here for you at half past four.’

‘Good!’

When he had rung off, she stood there for a moment with the receiver still in her hand. Was it wicked to feel so happy at the mere thought of having him all to herself for perhaps a whole hour?

Of course it was. But what could she do about it?

He arrived punctually at half past four, and came into the library, where she was sitting rather solemnly behind her aunt’s small tea-table.

‘Well, Alison, this is very pleasant.’ He dropped into a chair opposite, and smiled at her as though he meant that.

‘Yes,’ said Alison. ‘Here is your cigarette-case.’ She handed it to him.

‘Thank you.’ He took it. ‘Why, it’s quite warm. Have you been holding it in case it should run away?’

‘No.’ She smiled gravely.

‘What then?’

‘I was just-holding it,’ she said lamely.

Alison was intent on pouring out the tea, so she missed the puzzled little look he gave her as he slipped the case into his pocket.

‘What have you been doing with yourself since I saw you last?’ he wanted to know.

‘Nothing very much,’ replied Alison with perfect truth.

‘Nothing? I thought you had become quite a popular young person-made your own set and that sort of thing. I understood that was why you were so difficult to get hold of.’

‘Did you?’ Alison slowly bit a piece of bread and butter, and wondered with sudden frightened misery if he were laughing at her.

Or perhaps, as he was without Rosalie for the week-end, he didn’t mind making up to her.

That thought hurt even more.

She sought for a careless conversational opening, but none presented itself.

‘Alison.’ He put down his cup. ‘Are your duties as a hostess weighing very heavily upon you-or is it that I have offended you over something?’

‘No,’ she said, not very lucidly.

‘Which question are you answering?’ he asked, smiling a little.

‘Both,’ replied Alison desperately.

‘I see.’ He looked at her thoughtfully. ‘So that you are perfectly at your ease, both as a hostess and as a friend?’

‘I-I don’t think you’re a friend,’ Alison was horrified to hear herself stammer.

‘Don’t you?’ He was completely serious now. ‘What have I done to forfeit your friendship-or did I never have it?’

Dead silence.

‘I wish you would answer me, Alison. I’m really rather disturbed about this. Didn’t you look on me as a friend that first evening?’

‘I didn’t understand then,’ Alison got out at last in a very low voice.

‘What didn’t you understand?’

She was aware of faint surprise at the back of her mind for the extreme patience of anyone who was usually so arrogantly impatient.

‘I didn’t understand why you did it. I do now.’

There was silence again for a moment, and then he said with an odd little note in his voice, ‘Why do you suppose I did it?’

If she could have thought of any lie in the world, she would have told it then. But she couldn’t. She could only think of the literal truth. And she said it.

‘You’d quarrelled with Rosalie, and you wanted to make her jealous by paying attention to another girl.’

This time the silence was a long one-and Alison found herself wishing wildly that she could faint.

Then he spoke at last, gravely and quietly.

‘Alison, I do most earnestly beg your pardon, because I think there was a little of that feeing at the back of my mind. But do please believe that my chief thought was something quite different.’

She couldn’t quite have said why, but she felt most exquisite relief at the way he put it. Somehow, his owning to having felt like that was better than a million protestations that no such thought had entered his mind.

‘What-what was your chief thought, then?’ she asked rather timidly.

‘I was so terribly sorry that you had been made to feel lonely and humiliated and-No, don’t look like that,’ he said, as Alison winced angrily.

‘I don’t want to be pitied as a sort of oddity,’ muttered Alison. She knew that must sound terribly ungracious, but she couldn’t help it.

He smiled-that extraordinarily sweet smile which had so astonished her before.

‘That wasn’t in my mind at all,’ he told her. ‘What really moved me was the fact that I knew exactly how you were feeling, because very much the same thing happened to me when I first came to England.’

‘To you! But it couldn’t! You’re so-so much one of them,’ Alison stammered.

‘My dear child, do you really suppose these people consider I’m "one of them"?’ He laughed a little, but, from his heightened colour and the slight quiver of his nostrils, Alison guessed that he hadn’t really liked saying that.

‘I don’t understand,’ she said.

‘No? Hasn’t Rosalie ever said anything about me?’ He spoke abruptly.

Alison shook her head.

‘I’ve never heard her speak about you at all.’

He didn’t say anything to that, but Alison suddenly knew she had hurt him a little by that clumsy admission.

‘It doesn’t matter.’ He sighed impatiently. ‘Only-It’s just that there is nothing of the British public school and university about me, you know. I spent the first twenty years of my life hundreds of miles from anywhere, in the wilds of Argentina.’

‘Did you?’ Alison opened her eyes very wide.

He nodded.

‘My father was a cattle drover,’ he added calmly.;A farmer in a small way, too. And I suppose that for most of my youth I never thought of being anything else either.’

Alison stared unbelievingly at him. She tried, without any success, to imagine the cool, perfectly groomed Julian Tyndrum, attired in riding-breeches and an open-necked shirt, riding across miles of prairies in pursuit of wandering cattle-or whatever cattle drovers were expected to do. She decided she was extremely vague about their duties in any case-and looked up to find him watching her with some amusement.

‘Well?’ he said.

‘Nothing-I was only thinking-there’s nothing at all about you to suggest that sort of life.’

‘Oh, yes, there is, Alison.’ He laughed a little. ‘There’s my disposition, my whole outlook on life-and my hands.’ He held them out calmly for her inspection.

Alison looked at them. Her first thought was that they were not hands which would hold anything very lightly, and then-’But I should never mind being held by them.’

‘I think they’re very nice hands,’ she said gravely, and touched one of them lightly.

He gave that slight laugh again, but she knew he was extremely pleased.

‘Tell me why you didn’t become a cattle drover or whatever it was, too,’ she said.

‘Because, the year that I was twenty, one of the big oil-prospecting companies made their way into our district- and their richest find was on the tiny piece of land owned by my father. They tried to persuade him to sell out for a large sum, but he insisted on an interest in the company instead.

‘Actually, his gamble was a fortunate one. In the end he made a great deal more than the original price he had been offered. Besides that, he sent me off to Buenos Aires to put a little polish on me, and then used his influence to get me into the company.’

‘It must have been a terrible break from your old life.’ Alison was touched and flattered at his telling her so much about himself.

Julian smiled. ‘Yes. I didn’t like it much at first. Not when I had to start right at the bottom, with all the routine stuff. But I expect the discipline did no harm. Besides, I soon began to find my feet and to go ahead.’

‘Uncle Theodore once said you have a wonderful business sense,’ Alison remarked rather solemnly.

He shrugged.

‘Yes,’ he agreed, quite calmly. ‘I have a certain flair for big effects which carries me a good way; and at the same time I don’t easily lose my head.’

‘No, I should think not.’ Alison spoke so earnestly that he looked amused again.

‘Anyway, I did very well in Buenos Aires for about five years. Then my father died, and of course I inherited his interest in the company. I was offered what amounted to a directorship at the London headquarters, and so for the first time in my life I came to England. And how I hated it!’

‘Oh-why?’ Alison was shocked and slightly put out.

‘Because I was not in the least "one of them", as you put it. I found myself a complete outsider in the social world to which my money and position admitted me. And-quite naturally, I suppose-I Was made to feel it.’

Alison made a little sound of sympathy. She touched his hand again in that small, friendly gesture, and this time his fingers closed round hers. There was no special significance in the clasp-nothing like the devastating time she had watched him grip Rosalie’s hand-but, all the same, it comforted and warmed her.

‘I can’t pretend I was anything but utterly impossible,’. Julian added thoughtfully. ‘I suppose any polish I had acquired-and it must have been little enough-was definitely un-English. In fact, I heard someone who disliked me describe me as "an objectionable mixture of dago and rough diamond".’

‘Whatever did you do?’ Alison asked curiously.

‘Knocked him down, of course. But he won really, because ever afterwards I went about with the perpetually nagging fear that there was something in what he had said.’

‘Well, there isn’t now.’ Alison spoke hotly. ‘Not a single trace of it.’

‘Thank you, Alison.’ Julian inclined his head with an amused expression. ‘As that is seven years ago, I venture to hope you are right. One should be able to learn most things in seven years. And yet’-she was astonished to see his face darken suddenly with a sort of angry melancholy-’there are times when Rosalie looks at me, and I wonder-’

Alison sat perfectly still, knowing that those last words had been scarcely meant for her, and that, for a moment, he had almost forgotten her existence.

Then he raised his head and seemed to see her again. He patted her hand and let it go.

‘So, you see, I knew just what you were feeling when you told me about being lonely and humiliated. And I couldn’t have turned my back on that.’

‘Did I really tell you-that?’ Alison asked with a slight smile.

‘No. But you cried at first-just a little, you know,’ he reminded her with odd gentleness. ‘And that told me a good deal. One doesn’t actually have to have shed tears to know what is behind them.’

‘Oh.’ Alison looked down, extremely moved.

‘Well, Alison?’

‘What?’ She looked up in that startled little way, to find his smile on her.

‘Am I forgiven?’

‘Why, of course.’ Alison smiled too.

‘Thank you,’ he said very gravely then.

There was a moment’s silence, and then he said, ‘I am sorry to have seen so little of you since that first evening, but you always seem to be out when I come. Then Rosalie explained to me how much in demand you were with your own set and-’

‘Rosalie told you that?’ Alison couldn’t keep her colour down.

‘Yes.’ He looked at her penetratingly and then said sharply, ‘Why not?’

‘Oh, nothing,’ Alison said, looking away from him.

After a long moment he said quietly, ‘I see.’ And Alison felt perfectly certain that he did.

But he made no other comment. He merely said, ‘Are you doing anything to-morrow, Alison?’

‘Oh, no.’ Alison’s surprise that he should suppose such a thing was more illuminating than she knew.

‘Then will you come for a drive with me? We could start early, and be right out in the country before the real heat of the day.’

Alison was silent, her hands locked together. The temptation to say ‘Yes’ was overwhelming, but some obscure instinct told her she was playing with particularly dangerous fire.

Julian looked faintly put out at her hesitation.

‘I thought I’d been forgiven,’ he reminded her teasingly, but she saw that he flushed slightly.

It was that flush which did it. Rosalie might hurt and humiliate him, thwart him and make him unsure of himself. It was beyond Alison to do the same for any reason, good or bad.

‘I’d love to come,’ she told him eagerly. ‘I’d simply love it.’

‘Very well.’ He smiled at her unexpected vehemence, and she could see he was wondering what had been behind her hesitation. ‘Is half-past eight too early for you?’

‘Oh, no. I’ll go to bed early,’ she told him.

‘All right. Go to bed early.’ He laughed kindly. And she had no idea that he carried away with him a picture that reminded him rather pathetically of a child on the day before a party.

When he had gone, Alison walked quietly up and down the library because she was too excited to sit still.

It was all wrong, of course, feeling like this because she was to spend a day with Rosalie’s fiancé. Only that afternoon she had reproached herself for her pleasure in the thought of an hour with him. Now she was brazenly rejoicing because she was to spend a whole day with him.

‘But I don’t care,’ she told herself passionately. ‘It’s only one day out of all his life. One day-and all the rest are Rosalie’s.’ And then, in a flash of unconvincing remorse, she thought, ‘Besides, perhaps it will rain.’

But she knew it wouldn’t rain-it couldn’t rain. Not on this one day out of all his life.