Through the Wall

Chapter 6

I can’t think what Felix will say.”

Miss Remington cocked a small birdlike head and looked brightly sideways at her sister. She was a little creature with closely waved grey hair, bright blue eyes, and a complexion of which she was still very proud. If she assisted it a little, it was no one’s business but her own, and very discreetly done. It being breakfast time and a chilly morning, she wore an old tweed skirt and a faded lilac jumper and cardigan which she had knitted herself. One bar of an electric fire burned on a hearth which had been built for better things. In front of it, with that air of despising his surroundings which is peculiar to his race, sat the cat Mactavish. He had just completed a meticulous toilet. His orange coat recalled the best Dundee marmalade. He looked down at the electric fire which he despised and waited for Felix or Penny to come and bone a herring for him. He had a passion for herrings, but he did not consider that either of the two older ladies was to be trusted in the matter of bones. A saucer of fish prepared for him by Miss Cassy had already been rejected. He sat with his back to it and waited for Felix to come down.

Behind the tea-things Mrs. Alfred Brand was mountainous in one of those horrible garments to which stout women, unless very determined, find themselves condemned-black, with a pattern suggestive of mud spots and red ink. Florence Brand could be determined, but clothes did not interest her, and she had never had any taste. She bought what fitted her and wore it one year for best, two years for secondary occasions, and as long as it would hold together for housework and gardening. She had a large, smooth, pale face, brown hair with very little grey in it, and those rather prominent brown eyes which give the impression that the eyelids have had to be stretched to make them fit. All her movements were measured and deliberate. She opened a tin of powdered coffee, poured a measured teaspoon into two of the four Minton [1] cups on the tray in front of her, and added boiling water and a modicum of milk. The cups had a blue latticework pattern and were about eighty years old. Miss Remington took the one nearest to her, put in two tablets of saccharin, stirred them well, and repeated her remark.

“I can’t think what Felix will say.”

Florence Brand did not trouble to reply. She sipped her coffee, which she took unsweetened. Since Felix would be down at any moment, it seemed unnecessary to speculate as to what he would say. The two letters lay open in front of his plate at the table, one from Mr. Ashton, and one from Marian Brand. He would probably express himself violently, which would alter nothing. As she thought about what Martin had done to them, the insurmountable barrier set between the living and the dead filled her with resentment. Martin had got away behind it. They couldn’t reach him, and that was that. There was nothing to be gained by talking about it.

She took a slice of toast and spread it with home-made marmalade before she put her thought into words.

“It doesn’t do any good to talk about it. They will be coming here next week.”

Cassy Remington looked up from a tiny sip.

“Rather amusing, don’t you think? Perhaps we shall like them very much. Young people make a place lively. We shan’t be living together. They needn’t interfere with us.”

Mrs. Brand said heavily,

“Very simple, I suppose, Cassy. Mr. Ashton seems to think so, and so do you. We keep to this side of the house, lock the connecting doors, and settle down as neighbours. And all the furniture has been left to her. I have a few things of my own, but you have nothing. She can take the bed you sleep on and all the other things. She can take the carpet from the floor and leave you with the bare boards.”

Cassy darted one of those sideways glances.

“But she wouldn’t.”

“Probably not. What matters is that Martin should have left it in her power to do so. Then there is Eliza Cotton. Is she to continue to cook for us or for them? Mr. Ashton informs me that she is actually now in the service of Marian Brand. If she wishes to remain with us, she will have to give her notice.”

“She won’t like the old kitchen,” said Cassy brightly. “You see-she’ll stay with us. An electric stove is what she’s always said she didn’t hold with. She won’t go and leave all the things she’s accustomed to.”

“That remains to be seen.”

“And there’s Mactavish-she’d never leave Mactavish.”

Florence Brand allowed her eyes to rest for a moment upon his magnificent orange back.

“Like everything else, he now belongs to Marian.”

“He won’t stay on her side of the house if he doesn’t want to.”

“He’ll stay whichever side Eliza stays.”

“He won’t like not being the same side as Felix and Penny.”

Florence Brand said in a gloomy voice,

“Probably not. Thanks to Martin, there will be a great many things which none of us will like.”

Cassy Remington had the place by the fire. She turned in her chair and bent to stroke the orange head.

“Mactavish will do just what he chooses-he always does.”

What he chose to do at this moment was to give her a look of dignified reproof, lick a paw, and remove the undesired caress. But by this time she had turned back again, her air brightly expectant.

“Here comes Felix.”

There was a clatter of feet on the stair, the door was jerked open and Felix Brand came in. A haggard young man in an orange sweater with a good deal of untidy black hair brushed carelessly from his brow. Within five minutes of leaving his room it would be falling into his eyes and being pushed back with the thrust of long nervous fingers, only to fall again and cut the line of a perpetual frown.

Miss Cassy twittered.

“My dear Felix, I’m afraid you won’t be pleased. There’s a letter from Mr. Ashton, and one from Marian Brand. She’s coming down, and the sister too-what’s her name-Ina Felton. What a pity she’s married. Someone told me she was pretty-I can’t think who it could have been. You might have fallen in love with her, and then the whole thing would have been settled.”

She might have been talking in an empty room for all the notice anyone took.

Felix came up to the table, bent his dark frowning gaze upon the letters, and read them-Mr. Ashton’s first, and then the few lines which had cost Marian Brand a couple of sleepless nights and a good deal of distressed thought, all to no purpose at all, because, whatever she had written, it would have encountered the same implacable resentment.

Cassy Remington had stopped talking. She made little fidgeting movements with her hands. She and her sister both watched Felix, Florence Brand sitting quite still. They might not have been there for all the notice he took of them, until he suddenly looked up and said in a quiet, deadly voice,

“She can’t come next week. You must write and say so. Helen is coming.”

Cassy twisted her fingers.

“Oh, Felix-I don’t think we can. Mr. Ashton-it’s her house, you know. Everything belongs to her now. She could turn us right out. It isn’t as if we had our own furniture or anything-it’s all hers.”

He said, “I wasn’t speaking to you.” He met his mother’s stare. “You’d better wire and say the house is full.”

Florence Brand’s face did not change at all. It was heavy, without any look of youth, but there were no lines on the pale, smooth skin.

“Do you think that would be wise?”

“I don’t care whether it’s wise or not.”

Mrs. Brand appeared to consider this. When she spoke it was with great deliberation.

“Eliza Cotton will not want to leave her room. I understand that she is, legally, in Marian’s service. There can therefore be no objection to her remaining on that side of the house. That leaves us four bedrooms and the attic on this side.”

“Do you propose to put Helen in the attic?”

Her answer was as bland as oil.

“No. I hardly think that would be suitable. I thought perhaps Penny.”

His face darkened.

“Why?”

“Well, your room would hardly be suitable-too small and cold. But I could move Penny to the attic, and Miss Adrian could have her room. She would not, in any case, care to be on Marian’s side of the house. It would not be pleasant for her to feel that she was being forced upon a stranger-would it?”

Some sort of clash made itself apparent. Miss Cassy darted her birdlike glances at her sister’s face, which showed nothing, and at her nephew’s, which showed too much. There was a malicious sparkle in the bright blue eyes. She discerned the pressure of Florence ’s formidable will, the resistance with which Felix opposed it, the moment when the resistance broke down. She was even aware of why it broke. Did he really want Helen Adrian on the far side of the house? He was fond of Penny. He didn’t like her being sent up to the attic. Penny wouldn’t like it either. Not only Cassy’s eyes but all her thoughts sparkled as she considered how pleased Penny would be at being sent up to the attic to make room for Helen Adrian. And Felix-dear me, how positively murderous he was looking. Of course he didn’t like it either- not at first-not whilst he was thinking about Penny-not until he began to remember that he would have Helen Adrian just across the landing. Ah-he was beginning to think of it now!

She sipped her coffee and watched him over the rim of the Minton cup. He looked away, stared down at the letters, and said angrily,

“Have it your own way! It’s all damnable!” Without sitting down he made himself a cup of coffee, gulped it down without milk or sugar, put an apple in his pocket, and went out of the room, banging the door behind him.

He met Penny Halliday on the stairs and turned an accusing frown on her.

“You’re late.”

“About five minutes later than you, darling. Besides, I’ve been turning out the attic.”

“What for?”

“Well, Eliza will have to come over here, won’t she? And do you see her turning it out herself?”

“Did they tell you to do it?”

“Well, yes.”

“Which of them?”

“Aunt Cassy has been kind of hinting all round it for days, and yesterday Aunt Florence told me to get on with it.”

“For Eliza?”

A look of surprise came and went.

“I suppose so.”

He said in his most brutal voice,

“It isn’t for Eliza, it’s for you.”

Standing on the step above him, her eyes were almost level with his. They were brown eyes, round and clear. They matched her short brown curls, which she wore in an out-of-date bob. She stood there, small, and slight, and straight, with one hand resting on the banister. She leaned on it and said,

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“Helen’s coming on Monday. They’re giving her your room. You’re to have the attic.”

She had a round childish face and a soft red mouth. Her skin was berry-brown from the tang of the sea air. Sometimes she had a colour that was berry-bright too. She had none now. There was an effect of sternness as she said,

“Why is she coming?”

“Sea air.”

“Is her throat better?”

He made an angry gesture.

“I don’t know. She doesn’t know. She’s afraid to try it. They said two months. It’s that now. She’s coming here. If it’s all right, she’ll want to practise.” The sentence came out in jerks.

She put her hand on his arm.

“Darling, don’t worry-she’ll be better.”

She might have been touching a bit of wood.

“What makes you think so?”

When he said that his arm jerked. She took her hand away. He went on in an exasperated tone.

“What’s the good of saying that? You don’t know a thing about it. Nobody does, with voices. These lovely high ones- you never can tell. I don’t know what the specialist said to her. She’s frightened. And I’ll tell you what, she’s got something up her sleeve. There’s that man Mount, he follows her round like a shadow. He’s filthy with money. If she thought her voice was cracking up she’d take him. What else could she do? She won’t have saved a penny. Damn Uncle Martin!”

“Darling!”

He said in a tone of concentrated rage,

“And damn the girl! Why couldn’t she have been killed in that train smash? Talk about luck! She gets all the money and comes out from under a crashed train without so much as a scratch! What price seeing whether she’d drown if I push her over the cliff!”

Penny put out her hand, but this time she did not touch him. She said, “My poor lamb-” and all at once he put his head down on her shoulder, holding her so hard that it hurt. She stroked his hair, and said the sort of things she would have said to a child.

“Darling, don’t. Don’t mind so much. I’m here. It’ll be all right. I promise you it will. Only be good, darling, and don’t talk nonsense about murdering people, because you’d be very bad at it. Have you had any breakfast?”

He said, “Coffee-” in a choking voice.

“Silly!” She pulled his handkerchief out of his pocket and gave it to him. “Here you are. Now you’ll just come down and have some with me, because they’ll be on to me like a pack of wolves if I go in alone. You know, darling, I can just bear your being in love with Helen, but I can’t bear them twitting me about it, and they will if you don’t come and protect me.”

He scrubbed his eyes and stuffed the handkerchief into the pocket of his slacks.

“Penny-I’m a beast to you.”

“Yes, darling, you are rather, but you can study to improve. And I don’t mind a bit about the attic-I don’t, honestly. Only I think your mother is balmy to leave Eliza in the enemy’s camp, because she’ll go over. You see if she doesn’t.”

“She will anyhow. She hates us. Who wouldn’t?”

She reached up and kissed him on the point of the chin- a soft, careless kiss, childish and rather sweet.

“You won’t feel nearly so hateful when you’ve had some breakfast,” she said.

Neither of them had heard the breakfast-room door open. One of the things which Martin Brand had so greatly disliked was the entirely soundless manner in which both his sister-in-law and her sister moved about the house. One was fat and the other was thin, but it didn’t seem to make a pennorth of difference-you never heard them open a door. One moment you were comfortably alone, and the next there was Florence, or it might be Cassy, looming up out of the silence. And he would maintain to the entire British Medical Association that his hearing was one hundred per cent good.

Felix and Penny shared his views. Neither of them had heard a sound, yet on dropping back from that light kiss and giving Felix’s sleeve a small persuasive tug Penny was aware of Cassy Remington on the mat at the foot of the stairs, her head cocked, her blue eyes bright and sly. Felix had already seen her. He jerked his arm away and ran down the remaining steps as Cassy said,

“You haven’t had any breakfast. I was coming to find you. Eliza will be furious if no one eats her herrings.”

Penny came down sedately.

“Felix will eat two, and Mactavish and I will have one between us.”