Cuckoo in the Night

by Pamela Kent

  Janine got out of the car without waiting for Stephen to open the door for her, and she saw her sister emerge from a cluster of shrubbery and come walking towards her across the lawn. Although she was waving a hand quite gaily she walked slowly, and beside her padded the biggest bull mastiff Janine had ever seen.

  “That’s Miranda,” Stephen said, standing quite still on the drive and watching his wife’s painful progress. “Chris likes to have her around because she says she feels safer with her.”

  “I’m not surprised,” Janine answered, a little curtly, and then walked forward quickly to meet her sister.

  The two years that had passed fell away as she and Chris came face to face. Chris with the wonderful titian hair and the remarkable jade-green eyes, who had been so much sought after as a model that she simply couldn’t fulfil all requirements, was greatly changed, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t as beautiful as ever. In a way, she was even more beautiful, for her complexion was as delicate as a magnolia petal, and her hair was very well taken care of, so that all its rich rippling lights were there amongst the swinging masses to be admired by all who saw them.

  She was wearing something simple and expensive … Janine was sure the day would never dawn when Chris did not appear in something simple and expensive. It appeared to be made of shantung silk, and was a pale honey colour, like the honey-coloured pansies in the border. There were some attractive ear-rings in her ears, and a heavy gold bracelet encircled her wrist. Her shoes were small, beautifully fashioned, and white, with heels that made dints in the lawn as she moved over it.

  One look into her eyes made it clear that she was suffering from some sort of strain, and the pallor of her cheeks bore it out. But she was elegance personified, and she also moved as gracefully as ever, though apparently was disinclined to hurry.

  “Hullo, darling,” she said, a little chokily, when Janine reached her, and then, to the latter’s horror, burst into tears and clutched at her. “I’m so glad you’ve come,” she gasped. “So glad!”

  Janine had never seen Chris anywhere near tears before—not since their childhood, anyway—and she felt appalled as her own strong young arms went round the bowed shoulders and she felt how thin they were, how sharply the bones protruded.

  Chris must have lost more weight in the last two years than any young woman had a right to lose, and in addition she looked haggard, wretchedly haggard for one who had always appeared as if she hadn’t a care in the world. If marriage to Stephen had brought about this change, then there was something wrong either with Stephen or deep in the recesses of her own innermost being.

  Stephen, looking as if the scene was intensely painful to him, crossed the lawn and patted his wife on the shoulder.

  “Well, if you’re really glad that Jan is here don’t cry over her,” he said, half humorously. “You’ll wash her away if you go on like that, and we don’t want her to get any wrong ideas, do we?”

  Chris, who was clinging to her sister as if she never wanted to let her go again—and this in itself was extraordinary, when she was the least emotional of beings normally—lifted her head and laughed breathlessly and shakily.

  “Sorry, Jan,” she apologised, dabbing her eyes with a wisp of handkerchief. “I’m a fool, I know, but you can’t have any real idea how much I’ve longed to see you …”

  She drew in her breath on a long, shuddering sigh as she surveyed her sister, and the very lightly lipsticked mouth curved with sudden wryness.

  “They used to say that you were a pale imitation of me,” she recalled, “but nowadays the boot is on the other foot. I’m a pale imitation of you!”

  And it was true. The two sisters were much of a height, and at one time their weight had been almost the same, but now by contrast with Chris Janine appeared to be almost voluptuously rounded, and her lightly tanned skin was as firm as a ripe peach. Her hair was rather darker than titian, and her eyes were grey instead of green … but there was a vitality about her that Chris lacked altogether now. Standing side by side, the one in a neat but inexpensive travelling suit, the other in a confection by a French designer, they provided the effective contrast for one another, and yet apart they could be mistaken for one another.

  Or two years ago that had been the case. Now no one would mistake the younger Scott sister for the elder, and vice versa.

  “Come inside,” Chris said, drawing Jan towards the house. The shadows of it seemed to engulf them as they entered it, for it was large and cool. The hall seemed vast and remote, the rooms smelled of a mixture of potpourri and beeswax, and had low ceilings and glistening floors.

  Chris seemed to display a moment of pride when they entered the drawing-room, and she asked her sister whether she approved of her colour-scheme. But the greenish-greys and the satin-damask seemed to Janine a trifle oppressive. She expressed wholehearted approval of the magnificent grand piano that extended across a corner of the room, but she was not so sure she approved her sister’s choice of pictures.

  They were rather dark, and the frames were massive. There were even a couple of family portraits, one above the fireplace and the other on the opposite wall, and their watchful eyes gave rise to a sensation of furtiveness as one moved about the room.

  Stephen rang for tea, and a smart maid brought the tray. Chris, sinking into a low chair behind the tea-table, chattered as if she was being compelled as her bloodless hands strove to cope with the heavy silver teapot, the weight of which seemed to tax her strength.

  “I know how you love a cup of tea,” she said. “You were always the tea-drinker … I’m afraid I never stop drinking coffee.” She was lighting herself a cigarette and attaching it to a long ivory holder before ever she sipped at her own cup of tea. “I thought you’d rather have a rest before going upstairs to your room. By the way, did you have a good journey? You look so remarkably fresh I’m not going to ask whether you’re tired!”

  “Swiss air,” Stephen remarked, studying Janine with those same brooding eyes. “She has obviously thrived on it. Did you do any mountain climbing, Jan? Or aren’t you the type?”

  As he had once climbed a mountain with her during a Scottish holiday he should have known. But obviously he had forgotten … He seemed to be far too preoccupied to recall what had happened when his brow was less furrowed than it was now.

  “No, I didn’t do any climbing,” she answered.

  Chris merely toyed with a cup of tea … She had no appetite at all for the sandwiches and the little cakes and the biscuits. Miranda, the mastiff, curled up on the rug close to her chair, and when Stephen objected that the dog was altogether too massive a brute for a drawing-room she seemed to be thrown into such a state of agitation that it astounded Janine. This was quite unlike the Chris of the old days … the cool-eyed, provocative, smiling Chris who was inclined to treat other people’s weaknesses with scant respect.

  And yet now she laid a hand on the dog’s collar as if she was clutching at a lifeline.

  “Oh, but I like to have her with me!” she declared. “We always have tea together … And she sleeps in my room at night!” she added, looking almost defiantly at her sister.

  Stephen, whose lips had thinned a little, shrugged.

  “I was merely thinking of Jan,” he explained. “You may have grown accustomed to having an elephant in the room, but I’m sure Jan has not. And every time one steps over that creature it growls.”

  “That’s what I like about it,” Chris said, softly, stroking the animal’s well-cared-for coat.

  Janine, who had no fear whatsoever of outsize dogs, offered Miranda a titbit, but the mastiff merely laid its great head on its paws and regarded her broodingly. Chris said somewhat hurriedly that it would be best if she did not make too many advances until the animal had got her scent, and Stephen handed the visitor a cigarette and shrugged as he met her eyes.

  “You see,” he said, “my wife prefers a dog to me. Or, at any rate, she prefers it to studying my wishes!”

  Janine spoke up hurri
edly.

  “I expect that’s because she’s often alone,” she excused her sister. And then it suddenly struck her that it really would be most peculiar if Chris was left entirely alone at Sandals when her husband’s duties summoned him to London, and she asked how big and permanent the staff was.

  “Oh, we have a cook,” Chris told her, “and a couple of girls who come in daily. The cook lives in, and is not particularly friendly … in fact, she recently threatened to give notice. There is a man about the place, who looks after the garden, but he lives in a cottage about a couple of miles away.”

  Janine’s eyebrows arched. It didn’t seem to her an ideal set-up, and she was considerably surprised that Stephen didn’t, apparently, find any flaws in it. No wonder Chris, who had loved life so much, was becoming a bundle of nerves!

  “I’m so sorry you’ve had such a bad time,” she said, wondering whether it was wise to mention her sister’s health in her sister’s presence. But the startling alteration in her appearance was already worrying the younger sister so much that she felt it should be the one subject under discussion. “Are you feeling any better than when you last wrote to me?” she asked anxiously.

  Chris looked back at her with large, unfathomable dark green eyes.

  “Not much,” she answered.

  Her husband clapped her lightly on the shoulder.

  “The trouble with Chris is that she refuses to get out and about,” he said. “She doesn’t have to stay cooped up here, you know …” looking almost defensively at Janine. “There are quite a few people in the district with whom she could be friends, and one or two of them would be perfectly happy if she went and stayed with them when I have to be away. I’m not away as much as you might think,” his black brows wrinkling in a frown, “but there are occasions, I’ll admit, when it’s dull for Chris … and the obvious solution is a companion. I’ve suggested that she advertises for one.”

  “I don’t want a companion,” Chris said mutinously.

  Janine glanced out of the window at the brightness of the day—and, incidentally, it appeared to have passed its zenith, and a greyish mist like gossamer was entwining itself about the tops of the trees, and dimming the brightness of the flower borders. She had an idea that it might be quite a difficult matter to find a suitable companion to live with Chris who would have no objection whatsoever to the loneliness, and the obvious fact that they were several miles from a town.

  “I expect Jan would like to see her room,” Stephen said, walking over to the window and staring out of it. His voice sounded curt, and his shoulders were curiously rigid. “Don’t you think you’d better take her up and show it to her?”

  Chris did not answer, but she stood up and looked at Janine.

  “Would you like to go upstairs?” she asked.

  Janine nodded, smilingly.

  “I’m dying to see the rest of your house.”

  But she didn’t bargain for the fact that Miranda rose, also, and accompanied them from the room, padding along behind them unhurriedly but purposefully, as if this was all part of a routine.

  Chapter III

  JANINE expected some confidences when they finally reached her room, but Chris walked up to the wardrobe and opened the doors to reveal the amount of space, and then drew her sister’s attention to the roses on the dressing-table, which apparently she had picked herself. They were heavily scented Gloire de Dijon, and Chris explained that, sited as they were, it was the easiest thing in the world to grow roses.

  “I thought of entering for the local rose show, but I’m not sure I’ve got the energy. However, there’s still a little time left to make up my mind, and now that you’re here I might feel more like it.”

  Janine fingered the roses.

  “They’re beauties,” she conceded. “I suppose it’s the soil that is so good for them … or is it the moorland air?”

  Chris shrugged her painfully thin shoulders.

  “Both, probably. I’m not enough of a horticulturalist to be able to tell you.”

  Janine opened her dressing-case, which she herself had just set down on a table at the foot of the bed. Her heavy suitcase had been carried up by one of the girls who worked in the house.

  About to lift out her nylon dressing-gown and hang it on the door, she glanced deliberately round the room. It was, as she might have expected, exceptionally well furnished, with satiny drapes and a matching bed coverlet and expensive carpet, and a bathroom adjoining that she understood was to be her own. Chris had thoughtfully supplied a selection of new novels for her bedside table, and there was a deep and comfortable chair in which she could relax when she wished to be alone, and a writing-table at which she could write her letters.

  Chris said with strange earnestness:

  “I want you to be comfortable. This is a very comfortable house, really, and there’s no reason why you shouldn’t settle down here and be perfectly happy if you don’t mind the feeling of being cut off.”

  Janine turned and looked fully at her.

  “Do you mind the feeling of being cut off?” she asked.

  The expression on Chris’s face did not alter. It was almost as if she was striving to behave with complete naturalness.

  “We have two cars,” she said, hiding her restless fingers behind her back. “One belongs to me, and when Stephen isn’t here I drive it into the nearest town for shopping. You can take it into Exeter whenever you feel like it.”

  “And you’ll come too?”

  “Perhaps.”

  She avoided her sister’s eyes, glancing down instead at Miranda, who was sitting like a graven image at her side. Her small hand came to rest on the dog’s neck.

  “I’m afraid lately, since my health hasn’t been as good as it might be, I’ve got rather out of the habit of doing very much,” she confessed. “I seem to prefer staying at home.”

  “That’s bad for you,” Janine said. She walked to the dressing-table, combed her hair and lightly powdered her face, and then wheeled round on her sister. “Why were you so particularly anxious for me to come home and stay with you?” she asked.

  Chris’s smooth pallor was actually banished by a rush of nervous colour.

  “I—I don’t think I really know now that you’re actually here,” she lied unconvincingly.

  Janine shook her head at her.

  “That’s nonsense. You must know … and I might as well tell you that Stephen has admitted to me he’s terribly anxious about you.” Afterwards, when she reflected on this statement, Janine could not remember whether Stephen had seemed terribly anxious. “He has a rather important job to do that can’t be very good for him, but I do realise you’re the one who seems to have landed yourself in a mess of pottage. I mean—” hastily, in case the other girl should get the wrong idea—“of the two of us you’re the one who always loved life, and I could be perfectly content if there was no one for miles around who was likely to give a party, or drop in for a drink. I know I was always a bit dull by comparison with you,” smiling, “but if anyone had asked me two years ago whether I could see you buried in a spot like this …”

  “You would have answered ‘No,’ unhesitatingly.” Chris’s pallid mouth smiled mirthlessly. “Oh, yes, I can understand how surprised you are. But then two years ago I did something that was scarcely likely to bring me very much in the way of reward, didn’t I? I took Stephen away from you, and you forgave me for it. I never could understand how you managed that!”

  Janine made a little gesture with her hand.

  “Don’t let’s talk about that now.”

  “But I want to talk about it!” Chris’s voice sounded feverish, and there were two hectic spots of feverish colour in her cheeks. “You were an angel, and I was a—well, a bitch, I suppose!” She made a wry face. “Do you remember what Aunt Kate said at the wedding? She had a row with Stephen’s Uncle Josh—I think they’d both of them had too much champagne, as a matter of fact!—and she accused him of being too like his nephew. She said Stephen had
behaved despicably to you, and she thought the whole family were tainted! She predicted the marriage wouldn’t last, and that one of us—either Stephen or I—would grow tired of the other before a couple of years were out!”

  Janine gazed at her in concern. Chris’s extraordinarily beautiful green eyes were bright with a strange form of excitement, and although she was still clutching at the mastiff’s collar she appeared to be doing so more from habit than anything else.

  “That’s rubbish!” she declared. “You know perfectly well that Stephen was never in love with me, and that he fell for you in a big way. Just as you fell for him! If I hadn’t been absolutely convinced of that at the time I don’t think I’d have let him go so easily.” She moved closer to her sister, persuading her to release the dog’s collar and to sit down. “Now tell me what it is that is really worrying you? You don’t honestly believe that Stephen isn’t devoted to you any more? After losing the baby he must be closer to you than ever.”

  But Chris shook her head in a vague way.

  “That doesn’t necessarily follow, you know.” Janine made a gesture of impatience.

  “Oh, don’t be absurd! You’re still very beautiful. You may be below par so far as your health’s concerned, but you don’t neglect yourself. That dress you’re wearing—” she gazed at it admiringly—“suits you perfectly. It’s a dream of an outfit! And you obviously go frequently to the hairdresser, and so forth. In other words, you’ve got as much now to offer Stephen as you ever had … possibly more, because you’ve settled down, and you seem to have become very house-proud. Fancy you,” with a genuine quirk of amusement at the corner of her mouth, “talking about growing roses!”

  But Chris declined to be comforted. She clasped her hands tightly together, and, rising from her chair, paced up and down over the carpet.

  “You don’t understand,” she said. “It’s not that I’m worried because Stephen mightn’t think as much of me as he once did. It’s not that I’m really worried about Stephen at all. It’s …” She passed a hand wearily across her brow, thrusting back the heavy titian hair. “Ever since we came to live here—and we’ve been here now about six months—things have changed. Stephen’s changed, I’ve changed.” She glanced around her rather wildly. “I’m a completely different person. I sleep badly, have nightmares …” her dark, shadowed eyes met Janine’s.