In the Balance
Page 26
“And what do you do?”
“I’m secretary to a convalescent home for soldiers, and I drive the billeting officer round—she’s a woman—and of course A.R.P.—and odd jobs for Aunt Theresa—”
Carey Desborough laughed.
“And what do you do in your spare time?”
“I don’t think I have any.” She laughed suddenly too. “Oh, that’s what you meant?” The dimples appeared again. “Well, there are always odd jobs—we’ve only got one maid. And sometimes I go to the pictures, and I have been known to dance, but not on a floor like this.”
“The simple life!” His eyes smiled at her.
“I’m a country cousin,” said Laura. Her voice was small and meek, but the grey-green eyes had a sparkle as they met his. Then the black lashes dropped. It was quite effective, but she hadn’t meant to do it. She just couldn’t look at him any longer. Something behind the smile hurt her at her heart. It was a soft heart and easily hurt.
To her horrified surprise she felt herself blushing. The colour burned in her cheeks.
Carey laughed. He said in a friendly, teasing tone,
“I haven’t seen a girl blush for years. How do you do it?”
Somehow that seemed to make it all right again. The sparkle returned. She said,
“I don’t—it does itself. Isn’t it horrid?”
“Not very.”
“Oh, but it is. It does it for nothing at all, and I never know when it’s going to let me down. I used to get horribly teased about it at school.”
They went on talking whilst the next dance came and went. She found she was telling him all sorts of things about Aunt Theresa, and the convalescent home, and their one and only bomb, and it was all quite easy and natural, and as if she had known him ever since she could remember.
“And how did you tear yourself away?”
Laura answered him quite seriously.
“Well, I hadn’t had a holiday since the war started—but it’s not a real holiday. I’m twenty-one, so I had to come up and see Mr. Metcalfe who is my lawyer and trustee. The holiday is just tacked on.”
“Then you ought to make the most of it. How long have you got?”
“I think about a week. It depends on Mr. Metcalfe.”
“When do you see him?”
“Tomorrow, at twelve.”
“Then suppose you lunch with me afterwards and we do a show?”
Laura blushed again, this time with pleasure.
“Oh, I should love to!”
CHAPTER 3
FROM THE REMAINDER of the evening two things stood out. They kept coming back into Laura’s mind whilst she was undressing and later when she had put out the light and lay there on Cousin Sophy’s spare-room bed, which was so much more comfortable than any of the beds at home. The darkness made a background against which her pictures of the evening came and went. All the pictures were lovely except those two at the end, and they would keep coming back. She tried to send them away, to remember only how lovely it had been, but the two pictures which troubled her just wouldn’t go. Tanis smiling at her and saying, “I haven’t really seen you at all. We must meet. Come and lunch with me tomorrow.” She could see herself standing there and colouring like a schoolgirl. “I’m afraid I can’t tomorrow.” What did she want to colour for?—and they were all looking at her. Then Carey Desborough said, “She’s lunching with me,” and that made it worse. But why—why? It was such an ordinary thing. Why was there that dreadful feeling of strain, as if she had made some terrible gaffe? Nothing could have been easier than Carey’s voice. Nothing could have been sweeter than Tanis’s smile. She had turned it on both of them, but especially on Carey. “Ah, but how nice of you! It’s her first visit to London—isn’t it, Laura—and we’ve got to give her as good a time as we can. But what about making a party of it—Alistair, and you, and me, and Laura?” Her glance went round the circle. “Robin and Petra too, if they’re not doing anything else.”
Robin and Petra— But it was Alistair and Petra who were “not officially engaged.” The picture kept on coming back— all of them standing there together in the lounge saying goodnight, and Tanis just blotting out an unofficial engagement with half a dozen effortless words and one of those brilliant smiles. Every time she looked back the smile seemed more brilliant, her own tongue-tied uncertainty more inept. Yet for the life of her she couldn’t think what she should have said. She hadn’t said anything—only stood there with the colour in her cheeks and a soft distressed look in her eyes. It was Carey Desborough who spoke. He laughed quite casually and said, “Oh, I don’t think so—not tomorrow. We’re doing a show, and we don’t want to be late.” The brilliant smile had turned on Alistair. His response was rapturous.
And then the good-nights were really said. Looking back, Laura thought that Helen had hurried them a little. The party broke up, but it was Alistair who took Laura home. Laura’s second picture was of Petra putting her hand on Robin’s arm and saying with smiling lips, “Wouldn’t you like to take me home?” They were so close that she couldn’t help knowing that Petra’s fingers were not just resting lightly on the black coat sleeve but gripping the arm inside it. She moved so that she was standing between them and the others. She didn’t want anyone else to see what she had seen. Alistair took her home. He never stopped talking about Tanis.
Those were the pictures. They didn’t spoil the evening, because it was too lovely to be spoiled, but they did spoil her remembrance of it. When she wanted to think about all the friendliness and kindness, she would hear Tanis thanking Carey Desborough for being kind to a little country cousin. Because that’s what it amounted to. Laura’s cheeks flamed again, all alone in the dark. He was kind. She had felt the kindness when he was talking to her. But to hear him thanked for it publicly by Tanis—well, it got worse every time she thought about it. And then all of a sudden she began to laugh at herself, because wasn’t she being just the kind of silly fool that Tanis was hoping she’d be? And if she just didn’t take any notice, well, Tanis wouldn’t have scored after all. She had wanted to get Laura all hot and bothered, to show her up as a gauche, inexperienced young person from the country, to make Carey Desborough see her like that. Well, he hadn’t taken any notice, and if Laura didn’t take any notice either, the whole thing would have fallen rather flat. Petra was different—Tanis had scored there. But that was because for the time being Alistair was practically off his head, and there just wasn’t anything to be done about it. She felt dreadfully sorry about Petra. Poor Petra. She began to wonder what it would be like to love someone very much, and to see him turn away from you and go mad about Tanis Lyle.
The pictures began to be blurred. Her thoughts blurred too. She slipped through the blur into a dream. The dream was not blurred at all. It was as sharp, and clear, and vivid as the image seen on the screen of a camera—sharper, clearer, and more vivid than reality. She was in a place she had never seen before, but she knew that it was a ruined aisle of the old Priory church. There was green grass underneath and a bright blue sky above. There were fallen blocks of masonry amongst the grass, and a lovely springing arch against the sky. She was standing at the bottom of a flight of narrow, curving steps which went up to a door in what looked like a solid wall. The sun was shining, and a great level shaft ran slanting down to Laura’s feet. She was dressed in the black dress she had worn at the Luxe, and she was wearing her jade peach and her Chinese shawl. She could see all the colours in it, as bright and clear as the colours in a stained-glass window. A turquoise butterfly and a grasshopper just the colour of her jade, sprays of blackberries embroidered in peach and primrose, wine-colour and all the lovely Chinese blues. The sun shone, and a bird was singing. And then all of a sudden like a thunderclap it was dark—everything gone, colour, and sight, and sound. It was dreadfully cold. A hand came out of the dark and plucked her shawl away. Her feet were bare on the stone. She went groping up to the door in the wall, and it was locked against her. She beat on it and tried to cry o
ut, but her voice was choked in her throat. She woke up, beating against the headboard of the spare-room bed. It took her a minute or two to realize where she was. Even after she had switched on the light she felt as if part of her had been left behind in that dark ruined place. What a horrid dream.
She sat on the edge of the bed and looked with dismay at the twisted, dishevelled bedclothes. When she waked she had been kneeling up in bed beating on the walnut headboard. The eider-down was on the floor, the blanket slipping. No wonder she had been cold in that horrid dream.
She made the bed, drank some water—nasty stuff, London water—and then lay down again. She went to sleep almost at once, and slept without dreams until the morning.
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
copyright © 1942 by Patricia Wentworth
cover design by Jason Gabbert
978-1-4532-2542-4
This edition published in 2011 by Open Road Integrated Media
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