“Can’t you leave Angie out of it?” Hilary suggested half-heartedly, and watching Buckland closely.
“Angie’s a friend of mine,” said Buckland coolly. “And I can tell you that she’s damned sick of the kind of life you’ve both been leading for the last two years.”
“She can’t be more damned sick of it than I am.”
“In that case, why not cut it out?”
“Cut what out?”
“Marriage. It’s a rotten show at the best of times, and absolute hell when you’re hard up.”
“You never spoke a truer word,” Hilary languidly agreed. “What do you suggest I should do about it?”
“Clear out.”
“Leaving Angie to square Madame?”
“No. Settling up with Madame before you go.”
“As how?”
Buckland plunged his hand into his trouser-pocket and pulled out a note-case.
“Fifty settles Madame. And one hundred for the car. Pounds, not francs.”
Hilary felt his eyes bulging in his head.
“Have you got that in English notes?”
“No. But it could be changed fast enough. Only the exchange is against us. And it depends, of course, if you’re thinking of going back to England or staying in France. Paris, for instance.”
“The car is worth more than a hundred, you know.”
“Oh,” said Buckland. “You can keep the car, all right.”
The two young men exchanged a long and peculiar look. Then Buckland counted out a pile of dirty notes and pushed them across the table.
Hilary’s long fingers, that turned back at the tips, closed upon them.
(2)
“Good-night, sir. Thanks for a marvellous day,” said Patrick shyly.
He knew that the success of his day in Monte Carlo had been owing to Captain Morgan and Olwen. He had been with them all the time, and they’d had lots of fun.
Patrick thought Captain Morgan a very witty and amusing man, in a quiet way. His jokes never made one feel uncomfortable, like the things that Buckland and the Moons and that crowd were always shrieking at one another. And his diving was simply terrific. Patrick had never seen anything like it.
He liked Olwen too, and she was extraordinarily pretty. Even Dulcie Courteney didn’t seem too bad, when she was with the Morgans.
This had definitely been the best day he’d had in France.
He said so to Olwen, walking upstairs beside her.
“Oh, good,” said Olwen. “I’ve enjoyed it, too, frightfully. I like a thing to end up well, don’t you, and we’re leaving the day after to-morrow.”
“What a shame! I hadn’t realised that. Are you going back to England?”
“We’re breaking the journey at Avignon, and Lyons, and Paris. And London as well, I expect. It’ll be nearly a week before we really get home — to Wales, I mean.”
“D’you like Wales?”
“Awfully. I say, d’you think you’d come and stay with us some time, Patrick? It isn’t frightfully exciting, I’m afraid, but there’s tennis, and riding, and sometimes we bathe in the river.”
“I’d love it. Thanks awfully.”
“Well, I’ll write or something, and suggest it.”
They looked at one another, smiling, and both faintly embarrassed.
“Where shall I write to?” asked Olwen at last.
“Oh, Sherborne, I expect. You see, I never quite know where I’m going to be, in the holidays.”
“No, of course not. Well, I hope you won’t have that Buckland again, wherever you are. I wish he hadn’t won all that money at the Casino, don’t you?”
“Frightfully,” said Patrick with fervour. “I bet he borrowed it off somebody, too — probably mother. She won too, you know. She was fearfully pleased.”
“Good,” said Olwen politely.
They leant over the balustrade at the top of the stairs, and looked down into the hall below, in no hurry to separate.
In Patrick’s slowly moving mind the idea was hovering, on the verge of conscious expression, that he would like to say something to Olwen. Tell her that he should miss her when she went away, or that her being there had made all the difference to him.
A door opened behind them.
“I thought I heard you. Have you had a nice day?” It was Olwen’s mother.
“It’s been lovely,” said Olwen, turning round quickly.
Mrs. Morgan was very nice and interested. She asked them both questions, and listened to the answers, and did not tell Olwen to hurry to bed.
But there seemed nothing special to wait for, so Patrick said good-night to them both, and went away to his own room.
He wondered where his mother was. Perhaps not come in yet. She had not left Monte Carlo in the same car as the one that had brought him back with the Morgans. He tried not to think that she had probably come with Buckland.
It was too hot to go to bed, and too early. He felt absolutely wide-awake, and decided to go downstairs again.
It would be fun to go down to the sea, and bathe by moonlight. He thought, “I wish Olwen or somebody could come with me,” but a feeling of exhilaration, such as he had not had for a very long while, drove him on.
He changed quickly into his bathing-suit and snatched up a towel.
Then he ran downstairs.
It was cool, out there in the darkness, after the heat of the day in Monte Carlo.
Patrick ran easily, at a steady, loping pace, down the drive. He could hear sounds of music coming from the village square, and a revolving circle of lights told him that a merry-go-round was in action.
But on the foreshore everything was deserted and quiet, except for the tiny plash of the baby waves against the sand.
He swam about, lazily and happily, in shallow water, his thoughts drifting with the drifting of the tide.
School ... it wasn’t too bad, and next year he might get his colours. Football next term instead of cricket, thank the Lord. It was odd to think that next holidays would be the Christmas holidays, definitely winter, and these had been so definitely summer, with all the bathing and picnics and everything. Of course, being in the South of France made a difference. Next year, perhaps it would be Scotland again, and his father. The fishing was fun. It occurred to him that he’d like to know something about birds, like Captain Morgan. There were such lots of birds in Scotland. That little chap David would be interested. It was nice of Olwen to have suggested that he should go and stay with them, in Wales. He’d like to do that, definitely.
Patrick struck out, swam harder and more steadily, and wished that he could learn to do fancy-diving, as Captain Morgan did.
Then he turned and came back to the shore.
The jerky tunes of the merry-go-round were still audible as he walked slowly up the beach, his wet towel hanging over one shoulder.
An unusual sense of physical well-being possessed him. He was just tired enough to look forward to complete relaxation in bed, but not sufficiently tired to dislike the walk up the hill to the Hotel.
He was half-way there when he caught sight of a car, drawn up close to the bushes, with the head-lights turned off.
Patrick recognised the Buick on the instant.
He went straight up to her and saw that the car was empty. Uncertain, he stood still, peering into the thick tangle of green growth beyond.
He could see nothing, but some infallible sixth sense told him positively that there were human beings within a few yards of him.
Then a slight rustle came from the bushes, and a sound like a sigh. Patrick felt himself stiffen with an apprehension that he could not have defined. He clenched his fists, and they were slippery.
“Buck, you’re marvellous,” came in a woman’s whisper, thick and breathless.
Patrick recoiled. He did not want to hear any more. The short triumphant laugh that followed instantly was unmistakably Buckland’s. And then came his voice, scarcely lowered at all.
“I told you it’d be all
right, sweetest. We can clear out to-morrow, if we like. Just you and I.”
Clear out, with the money he’d won at Monte Carlo.... Patrick’s mind refused to take in any implications at all, excepting the obvious one that Buckland had finished with them. He was going.
It didn’t matter with whom. Some girl or other. The voice had been a young voice. Patrick had assimilated the certainty of that, without drawing any deductions from it, save one.
Suddenly shaking all over, but pervaded by an intense feeling of relief, he stepped quickly back and went on up the hill.
It might be beastly to have overheard, but after all, he hadn’t been listening on purpose, and he’d have been well within his rights in trying to find out what his mother’s car was doing on the hillside at that hour of the night, without a driver.
Damned cheek, Buckland’s having taken the Buick like that. All the same, Patrick wasn’t going to say a word about it to anybody. Buckland’s day was over. He meant to clear out, and the sooner he did it the better, ungrateful swine that he was.
Going straight upstairs as soon as he got in, Patrick knocked at his mother’s door. He felt a new confidence in himself.
When he knocked she did not call out Come in, but opened the door herself. He thought that she looked rather surprised when she saw him standing there.
She was wearing elaborate black chiffon pyjamas, which he knew meant that she was ready for bed, but she hadn’t yet done her face.
Patrick had sometimes sat by, and talked or listened to her during the long and complicated process of rubbing and greasing and patting and cleansing that took place nightly in front of the looking-glass.
“Hallo, sonny, where’ve you been?”
She hadn’t called him that for ages. It meant that she was in a happy, contented mood.
Everything was coming all right....
“I went and had a bathe, rather a good one.”
“God! after a day like that. Did you walk?”
“Yes, rather. I say, mater, can I come in while you do your hair and things?”
She hesitated for a moment.
“Well, not to-night, sonny. I’m all out, and so ought you to be. Had a good day?”
“Marvellous, thanks. You won, at the Casino, didn’t you?”
“Yes, quite a lot. It was absolutely Buck’s day, and he played for me. He did damn well out of it, on his own account, though.”
“I bet he did,” said Patrick scornfully.
“Go to bed now, old man. I shan’t come down in the morning, so don’t wait for me.”
“All right. Good-night, mater.”
She kissed him, and he went away to his own room.
So Buck was still the white-headed boy. Well, of course, that was to be expected. Nobody yet knew, except Patrick himself, about his proposed treachery.
But soon, perhaps the very next day, everybody would know.
Mother would be furious at first, of course, but she couldn’t really mind. Not about a low-down beast like that. And there was still a fortnight left of the holidays, and Buckland would be gone.
(3)
When Coral Romayne had heard the sound of Patrick’s door, opening and then shutting, she turned the key in her own lock and went to her looking-glass.
She didn’t look a day over thirty, in the subdued light cast on her reflection by the one shaded electric-light bulb that alone was burning.
Those black pyjamas were a success. The best she’d ever had. It was something about the cut — the line showed up her figure marvellously. And it was a figure worth showing, too. Chrissie Challoner, who was under thirty, hadn’t got a thing on her, for all her slimness, because nobody was going to look at anything so tiny. Besides, she hadn’t an ounce of sex-appeal. Brainy women never had.
Though youth ...
Coral turned her mind elsewhere. She could never bear to think about youth. It would never be hers any more, and none of her ingenious devices for defeating the hand of Time were of any real avail.
It was of no use to worry about it. Worry only made lines on one’s face. Look at Gushie, with a face like a ploughshare. Though of course, Gushie was years and years older than she was, and had probably had a pretty tough deal all her life. And not a single man had ever looked her way, unless it was the mysterious Wolverton-Gush, about whom nothing had ever been known, so that Coral sometimes wondered, derisively, if he had ever had any real existence at all, outside the imagination of Ruth Wolverton-Gush.
Coral herself had anyway had her share of lovers, from the moment she left school at eighteen, and became the talk of her father’s country parish.
It seemed absurd, and incredible, to recollect that her first affair had been with a curate. She couldn’t even remember his surname, but the poor youth had gone away, and she had cried her eyes out, and then embarked almost immediately on a flirtation with his successor. Looking back, she thought how extraordinary it was that she should have found such a number of men to make love to her, in that remote country district. But there had always been someone. She had never even gone into the country town without picking up somebody, either in the train, or at the café where one got cocoa — called hot chocolate — and cream buns.
Several men had wanted to marry her. She was technically “a good girl” and they knew it. Three times she had been engaged; and had broken the engagement off because she suddenly found that she liked somebody else better, or because she lost her temper with the man over some trifle.
Her parents had welcomed her engagement to Gordon Romayne, who was fifteen years older than she was — which they thought would be “steadying” — and a rich man, judged by the parsonage standards, with an independent income apart from his Army pay.
They had given her a wedding far out of proportion to anything they could afford, an extravagant trousseau, and seen her off to India with tears and blessings.
For more than eight years, Coral — she had become Coral almost at once after her marriage — had enjoyed life wildly. Her husband tolerated everything, and was proud of the admiration accorded to her looks, her boundless vitality, and her dashing style of dress. He could afford to send her to the Hills during the hot weather, and to send her home once in eighteen months.
She had not been in love with Gordon, and soon tired of him completely, but was kept happy by a series of violent affairs, to which her husband obstinately closed his eyes. The crisis did not come until an infatuation arose between herself and a man in her husband’s regiment. Then a scandal flared up, and Gordon Romayne sent in his papers.
He did not reproach Coral, perhaps realising that it would be useless, but from being a complaisant husband he became a morose and disagreeable one, grumbling continually at her extravagance, and forcing her to live in Scotland, where she saw no one and was miserable. At last, when Coral had repeatedly threatened to run away, he agreed to a separation, and then proved unexpectedly generous in the matter of an allowance.
Coral had gone straight to London. Patrick was already at school, and although she went sometimes to see him and provided him lavishly with presents and pocket-money, she had no intention of allowing him to interfere with her life.
Unhampered, and with money, she had visualised for herself a continual succession of triumphs, of new clothes, and social successes. But the past ten years, insensibly, had coarsened her. Her dash had become vulgarity, India had impaired her looks, and the steps that she took to restore them were disastrous, whilst her habit of promiscuous flirtation had so cheapened her that she no longer attracted men of the social standing that had been hers as Gordon Romayne’s wife.
Naturally lacking in discrimination, Coral allowed herself to be exploited by men and women to whom dancing, drinking, love-making and the spending of other people’s money, were the principal occupations of life. She speedily surrendered to their standards, becoming more strident and noisier than themselves in an endeavour to focus upon herself the attention that was less and less often offered to her spo
ntaneously.
She had always been exceedingly susceptible, and most of her affairs had originated in a violent passing fancy for some man. Young Buckland was of the type that most attracted her, and she had seen, in his open flattery and ready response to her advances, an indication that she could still fascinate men who were neither elderly nor callow.
The idea intoxicated her, because it helped her to believe that she still retained some of the charm of youth.
The arrival of Angie Moon had disillusioned her; but only partly. Passionately anxious to blind herself to the truth, she still believed, as only a woman both stupid and sensual could have believed, that if she gave herself to Buckland, he would cease, at least temporarily, to find Angie attractive. Her temper and jealousy had several times betrayed her, but the day at Monte Carlo had been a success. Buckland had scarcely looked at Angie, and Coral felt sure that he realised exactly what motives had prompted her to give him the money for his successful gambling.
She was at once too reckless, and too well used to the minor forms of swindling, to resent seriously his shameless acceptance of her generosity.
The unexpected chance of their luck at the tables, the amount that she had been drinking, and the conviction that Buckland would certainly come to her room that night, had combined to rouse her to a high pitch of excitement.
She looked at herself in the glass, and added colour to her mouth, but for once she was not really giving her attention to the process. She was listening all the time for approaching footsteps. She heard them at last, and rushed to unfasten the door, checking herself sharply as she reached it and assuming an appearance of indifference.
“Buck! What are you doing here at this hour?” she whispered in mock surprise, at the same time holding the door wide open.
“Don’t you know? I’ve come to say thank-you for the luck you brought me at Monte Carlo this afternoon.”
Coral laughed softly and triumphantly.
“I shall have to send you away in about five seconds. It’s fearfully late.”
Buckland, grinning, stepped across the threshold.
(4)
Patrick, also, had heard footsteps come along the corridor, and then stop. The instinct that had been at work within him for weeks past woke from its brief slumber. As he had so often done before, he stood just within his room, the light turned off, and watched, through the barest crack of open door, Buckland, whom he hated, coming down the passage. He saw him stop, and knock softly, and he saw his mother’s door open and heard her voice whispering and laughing.
Collected Works of E M Delafield Page 405
