This Merry Bond

by Sara Seale

  Charles knew it at once, when he returned in June for a fleeting visit to find Michael still at Nye.

  “Still here?” he observed, and his quizzical smile embraced both Michael and Nicky. “What does my admirable son-in-law say to a ménage a trois?”

  “Why should he mind?” retorted Nicky quickly. “He’s so busy doing all the bailiff’s work for him, anyhow, that I think he’s pretty glad.”

  “The Shands were always an unimaginative crowd,” was all Charles said and let it go at that.

  Perhaps Simon was not as blind as they supposed, but he trusted Nicky in spite of his old opinion of the Bredons, and, perhaps with that absence of imagination with which Charles had credited the Shands, he didn’t seriously think that Nicky might fall in love with her cousin. But Michael was beginning to irritate him. His proprietary airs with regard to both Nye and Nicky, though natural enough under the circumstances, became difficult to endure with perpetual courtesy. Simon acknowledged that he was jealous, not of a man who might rob him of his wife, but of that charmed circle that held the Bredons from all newcomers. Their very arrogance spelled attraction, it was so unconscious, and Simon, in his endeavor to hide his own hurt at being shut out, withdrew more than ever into the courteous, rather cold shell of a man who lives a private existence within himself. There was a change in Nicky’s attitude too. He had expected Michael’s return to open the old question of Honeysett’s cottage but she never mentioned it. The work of demolition went on, and although she must have told her cousin, neither of them ever spoke of the matter in Simon’s hearing, and except for the affair of the oak at the lodge gates, they didn’t raise any outward objection to the methods he employed in running the estate.

  But over the oak there was nearly bad trouble. Simon had decreed that it must come down since it was rotting and the angle at which it leaned was a future danger to the lodge.

  “But you can’t cut that tree down!” Nicky exclaimed at once. “Charles the First once hid in it.”

  “That was quite another oak, darling, in a different part of the country,” Michael said, his eyes tilting in puckish appreciation of a row to come.

  “I’m sure he did,” said Nicky, beginning to look angry. “Anyway it was our lookout place when we were children and all kinds of exciting things happened there.”

  “Yes, you left your pants suspended on a branch on one occasion,” murmured Michael.

  “It was my favorite tree,” Nicky announced dramatically, “and if you cut it down, Simon, you’re taking something from me that can never be replaced.”

  “Well, I think that’s rather an exaggeration,” said Simon patiently. “You’ve said the same about a good many things I’ve had to do. It’s a doomed tree in any case, and the safety of the lodge and its occupants really must be considered before your romantic fancies.”

  Nicky flushed.

  “Everything you can’t understand yourself is a romantic fancy,” she cried quickly. “You haven’t an ounce of sentiment or imagination in you.”

  Michael looked from one to the other of them with amusement. It was the first time he had ever heard Nicky be childishly rude to her husband.

  “You know, Simon,” he said with his crooked smile, “tradition must seem to you a very meaningless survival, but the fact remains there are still a few fools who enjoy it.”

  “Tradition, when it has a proper foundation, is never meaningless,” Simon said shortly. He didn’t know which annoyed him most, Nicky’s heroics or Michael’s impertinences. “But that tree’s coming down, and that’s my last word on the subject.”

  He turned on his heel and left them, conscious that in a quarter of an hour Michael would have coaxed Nicky into a smile where he himself would have received black looks for the rest of the day.

  It made it no easier that the same afternoon they were all due at the Towers for tennis. Nicky was in no mood to stand her father-in-law’s blunt comments for long, and very soon the atmosphere was extremely uncomfortable. After one particularly uncompromising remark of old Shand’s, Simon saw Michael make a quick sign. For a moment Nicky stared at him, then she began to giggle, made some swift gesture with her fingers, and for the rest of the afternoon both of them gently and politely led the old man on to further crudities.

  The old nursery game of Common Enemy. What had Nicky once said to him? “When Michael and I were children we used to play a silly game called Common Enemy. When we met people we didn’t like we had a secret sign and then we baited them.” His father was Common Enemy. A little grimly, Simon wondered when they would start playing the game against himself.

  He stood in front of the house the next morning thinking about the utter failure of his marriage. He looked away to the serene parkland. Green, green, as far as the eye could see, with the rich lush mass of early summer. From being a thing of decaying beauty, Nye was now a carefully tended treasure. He knew that his labors had borne fruit, yet his satisfaction was empty. For what had he recreated all this splendor? To be an ever-growing barrier between himself and his heart’s desire. Perhaps if Nicky had loved him, the work of reconstruction might have been a fulfilment of them both, but as things were...

  He became aware of her standing at his elbow. Michael was just then crossing the lawn with, a couple of towels flung over his shoulder.

  “We’re going down to the South Water to bathe,” Nicky said, jauntily swinging ,a brief green swimming suit by its straps. “I suppose your father won’t have us up for trespass now we’re related.”

  “I shouldn’t think so,” Simon said, observing her gravely. “But I think it’s too cold for bathing in the river yet.”

  “Cold! We’ve bathed there in early May,” laughed Michael.

  “Well, don’t stay in too long, Nicky,” said Simon.

  Perhaps some of the weariness was still written on his face, for she said in gentle tones: “All right. I won’t,” and, reaching up, she gave him a kiss, then swung off across the sunlit lawn. Simon saw her fling a careless arm around her cousin’s waist as she went.

  After their swim, they sat on the bank splashing their legs in the water and Nicky began to tell Michael how old John Shand had caught her bathing there and threatened her with prosecution.

  “Charming in-laws you’ve selected, I must say,” Michael laughed.

  “Mrs. Shand is a pet,” said Nicky affectionately. “I really believe she’s fond of me. I think she had an awfully hard time with old John when she was first married.”

  “Well, of course, the man’s an unspeakable bounder,” said Michael cheerfully. “Thinks of nothing but money and downing the ruling classes. What made you pick on the Shands?”

  She gave him a sidelong glance.

  “Just one of those things,” she said lightly. “I wouldn’t have picked the old man as father-in-law for choice.”

  “Oh, well, I suppose you’ve effectually stopped any more slices being taken off the Nye acres.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “That’s why you did it, isn’t it?”

  “No.” She said it quite violently, sending up a cascade of clear water as she kicked. “At least—” She paused. In the translucent shade of the willows everything seemed very green and still. “I think I thought that with Simon I would be safe,” she said slowly. “He was a sort of force I hadn’t met before: There was something about him that made me—I don’t know. I felt safe.”

  “Safe!” Michael’s voice rang scornfully across the water. “You, a Bredon, wanted to feel safe! Let me tell you this, Nick. You would never have married him if I’d been here.” He pulled her around suddenly to face him. His mocking eyes stared down into hers. “And are you going to let them shackle you down for ever in bourgeois security?” he demanded. “Are you never going to break away—you with the Bredon wanderlust in your blood?”

  She drew in her breath quickly.

  “I don’t know,” she said a little piteously. “I suppose it’s all wrong... Even so, I think I’m often mean t
o Simon. He can’t help his terrific sense of duty, and he’s done so much for Nye. He ought to have married some clinging little girl who adored him.”

  “If you’d let him alone he’d probably have married Stella,” said Michael shortly.

  “Stella?” Her eyes flew wide open. “Liza Coleman once said she was in love with him. But then ages ago, you and she—”

  “I was a boy,” Michael said. “She soon forgot me. But Simon— Anyway, she hates your guts.”

  “Stella hates me!” Nicky exclaimed incredulously. “Whatever for?”

  “For taking away her man, my poor little innocent. But she stuck pretty close to him the other night at Freddie’s party.”

  “He was rather odd man out in that crowd.”

  “Well, he seemed to like it all right,” said Michael with satisfaction. “I expect he thinks of her as a little woman—just his type. Hullo! What is it, my sweet?”

  Nicky’s face had contracted in a spasm of pain and she had gone rather white. She leaned against Michael and held both hands to her side.

  “I don’t know. I had a frightful pain,” she said a little weakly. “I feel rather sick too.”

  “Poor poppet. Stayed in too long, I expect.”

  “I don’t think so. I’ve had funny pains occasionally ever since Sunray fell on me.”

  Instantly he was all concern, and demanded details of every pain she had ever had. Presently she was able to walk slowly back to the house, but when Simon came in after tea, he found her lying on a sofa in the library with a hot-water bottle hugged to her stomach, and Mouse standing by with a forbidding face and a bottle of castor oil.

  He rounded on Michael.

  “I told you it was too early for river bathing,” he said angrily. “Of course you kept her in too long.”

  “I?” Michael spread his hands in amused protestation. “My dear Simon, don’t you know by this time that if Nicky wants to do a thing she’ll do it? Anyway, she says it isn’t anything to do with the cold water.”

  “Stuff and nonsense,” said Mouse from behind the sofa. “If it isn’t that, it’s unripe gooseberries, I know you both of old!”

  “Well, you’d better get to bed, Nicky, and I’ll get Lucy to come and have a look at you,” said Simon.

  “I wish everyone wouldn’t fuss so,” said Nicky plaintively. “I’ll be all right in the morning.”

  “I’ve been trying to get her to bed for the last hour,” Mouse said crossly. “But she’s stubborn as a mule—always was. Perhaps you can do something with her, sir.”

  Simon bent suddenly and lifted Nicky on to her feet.

  “Come on now. Be a good child,” he said. “Bed’s much the best place for you. Would you like me to carry you?”

  “Of course not. Don’t fuss,” she said, retrieving her hot-water bottle and clasping it to her bosom with a tragic air. “I’ll go to bed, but I won’t have a doctor. Mouse says I don’t need one, anyway.” But once she was in bed she felt lonely and depressed. Strangely enough, she didn’t want Michael’s charmingly turned phrases. She wanted Simon’s rather silent presence in the room.

  He came in a little later and she was reminded of that other time when he had come to see her and put her world right. She smiled a little ruefully. Would she only need Simon when she was ill or down, she wondered.

  “I think Nick should see a doctor,” Michael’s voice broke in aggressively. “She’s had these pains ever since she had that fall in the winter. There may be something radically wrong.”

  Simon didn’t mean to appear unsympathetic, but perhaps the sight of Michael sprawling over Nicky’s bed issuing demands in accusing tones irritated him to such an extent that he could scarcely be civil.

  “I think that’s my affair, Michael,” he said crisply. “Now would you mind getting out? I want to talk to Nicky.”

  “Is it true you’ve had pain for so long?” he asked her when they were alone. It hurt him to think she had confided in Michael when he himself was in ignorance.

  “Oh, very little. Only now and again, and never as bad as this,” she said.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  Her eyes fell before his direct gaze.

  “Oh, I don’t know. I didn’t think it was important. It wasn’t anything really.”

  “Well, you’ll see Lucy tomorrow to make sure.”

  “Oh, Simon—” She looked at him with frightened eyes. Illness was a thing that had never touched the Bredons. “You don’t think there could be anything really wrong?”

  “I don’t suppose so for a moment,” he said gently. “But it never hurts to find out, does it?”

  “I suppose not. Will you come and sit by me?”

  He obeyed, touched that she should want him. She snuggled up against him with a little sigh of relaxation.

  “Please stay with me,” she said, and fell asleep.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  “I don’t think you’ve anything to worry about,” Dick Lucy told Simon the next morning when he examined Nicky. “Let me know if she has a return of the pain. But she is thoroughly run down and much too thin. I’ll send her a tonic.”

  He was in a hurry. There was a great deal of sickness in the village and he was not disposed to take a serious view of Nicky’s attack.

  “All the Bredons live on their nerves,” he said. “Make her rest. Her father’s always dragged her about from one end of the earth to the other. It’s not surprising she should be feeling the effects now.” Stella was sitting in the car waiting for her father, and Simon said on impulse:

  “Why don’t you stop to lunch, Stella? It would cheer Nicky up to see you, and I’ll take you home afterwards.”

  The girl hesitated, but Lucy said briskly: “That’s an excellent idea. It’s dull for Stella doing my rounds, and I’ve got a heavy day in front of me.”

  The morning wasn’t a great success. Nicky didn’t want to see Stella. She had nothing to say to her and she watched the girl’s eyes following Simon’s every movement with an irritation that surprised her.

  “Lucy says you must rest,” Simon told her. “So I’m afraid tonight’s party is off.”

  “Oh!” exclaimed Stella, disappointment making her voice sound high and abrupt. “For all of us?”

  She and Michael had been going with Simon , and Nicky, to a dance in the district.

  “Well—” Simon began a little awkwardly.

  “There’s no reason why you three shouldn’t go,” Nicky said sharply. “I don’t much care anyway. The Levitts give lousy suppers.”

  But when dinnertime came, Michael appeared in a dinner jacket and announced that he wasn’t going.

  “But look here, Michael—” Simon began with exasperation. “You can’t cry off at the last minute.”

  “Why not?” asked Michael coolly. “In point of fact, it’ll be much better to have even numbers, and I think one of us should stay behind and keep Nicky company.”

  He said it with a faint air of malice, enjoying the annoyance that came into Simon’s face. Nicky said nothing, but lay back in her chair on the terrace, watching them both with an odd expression.

  Simon bit back the sharp retort that was on the tip of his tongue. If Michael was deliberately trying to put him in the wrong over the affair, he wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of seeing it. Stella had come up to the house for dinner, and in front of the girl he could scarcely argue the point.

  “I’m sorry, Stella,” he said briefly to the girl. “It looks as if you’ll have to put up with me for the evening.”

  “Stella won’t mind,” said Michael, with a grin, and indeed the girl’s small face had lit up with a pleasure she didn’t attempt to disguise.

  Nicky was very silent through dinner, and once or twice Simon glared at her enquiringly.

  “You’re tired,” he said as later he helped Stella into her coat. “Please don’t keep her up late, Michael.”

  He spoke curtly, and he had a last impression of Nicky standing under the great cande
labra in the hall as she bid him goodbye, Michael’s arm thrown carelessly about her shoulders. She was certainly thin, and her eyes looked tired and heavy-lidded. There was something in the attitude of the pair of them that vaguely disturbed him.

  “We won’t be late back,” he said abruptly as he followed Stella out to the waiting car.

  Michael and Nicky sat out on the terrace smoking cigarettes while they watched the shadows lengthening on the grass.

  To her own surprise, Nicky was thinking that it should have been Simon who should have offered to stay behind with her. Michael was always so much quicker over the little things. But Simon might have offered.

  She became aware that Michael was watching her with a faintly quizzical expression.

  “I’m a much more amusing companion,” he said softly and she laughed. Damn Michael! He was far too quick.

  “Why didn’t you go with them?” she asked.

  “Because I wanted to stay with you, my pigeon,” he retorted. “Besides, I would have been bored stiff.”

  “I don’t think Simon particularly wanted to take Stella alone.”

  “Jealous?”

  She moved impatiently.

  “Of course not. But I think she’s rather fond of him, after all.”

  “Perhaps she’s the woman you said he should have married.”

  “Michael, sometimes I hate you.”

  “You do nothing of the kind, my sweet. You’ve made a big mistake and you’re beginning to know it.”