Nine Lives (Timeless Classics Collection)

by Ursula Bloom

  When he came he knew immediately that something was wrong, for he saw Lesley sitting at a far table with that awful old man of hers. He waited till the music stopped and then went over to them. The music began again for an encore as he got there and he said, ‘Let’s dance.’

  ‘Lovely.’ She got up over-eagerly, and moved across the ballroom in his arms. ‘Thank God you’ve come, Richard.’

  ‘Something gone wrong?’

  ‘Every damned thing.’

  ‘I suppose your old man rumbled us? I thought he would. Never mind, forget it.’

  ‘But Richard, he doesn’t seem to like you, and it’s ghastly.’

  ‘I thought that might happen. Most men of his type loathe me, but I go down well with my own age. The older generation think I stink, but don’t worry. We’ll make him change all that.’

  ‘I do hope so.’

  ‘He means a lot to you, doesn’t he?’

  ‘Yes, but you mean a lot more.’

  ‘Darling! Sweet! You’re ecstasy.’

  They went on dancing and came back when the music stopped, and sat down beside her father. For the first time in her life she didn’t know what to say, but stared helplessly at him.

  ‘What a pity you don’t dance, Daddy,’ she said at last.

  ‘If I did it would be much more of a pity for the other people.’ He bore no grudge, he was much too afraid of losing his only child for that, and he turned to Richard. ‘Have a drink?’ he said.

  Richard was making over-bright conversation, realising that Lesley was ill-at-ease too. She was thankful when the band began again and automatically they rose to go on dancing.

  As they moved away she said, ‘I can’t bear it. Why did this uneasiness have to happen today? Today when we ought to be so happy?’

  ‘I think he’s got my number.’

  ‘Afterwards couldn’t we go down to the hut? It would be happier there, and I want to be alone with you, Richard. I want time to think. I ‒ I’m so desperately worried.’

  ‘Of course we’ll go down to the hut. I’ll be damned glad to be alone with you, too.’

  Privately he thought that Daniel was a horrid old man, and unutterably common. They danced now but so badly that they bickered about it, for neither of them could concentrate. The lovely feeling of floating through emotional space had left them, and they were just two silly people jigging to music, which in itself was a shock. They were accustomed to beautiful dancing, that to find they couldn’t do it any more, but were out of step with life, was provoking.

  All through the evening her father watched them. Miss Everington had gone off to bed, for the tooth which now had a dressing in it, was still giving her trouble. Lesley felt that if only Daniel had said something it would be so much easier, but he said nothing, just watching them with that inane smile, and trying to pretend that he was enjoying it all.

  They went over to him realising that the dreadful evening was done.

  ‘Richard and I are going with a party to bathe,’ said Lesley carelessly.

  ‘What, now? Why, it’s midnight.’

  ‘Yes, but everybody does that here! It’s fun.’ The tenseness of her feelings were in her tone, and she did hope that her father was unaware of it, but realised that he knew her only too well.

  ‘It’s with a party?’

  ‘Of course, Daddy.’

  ‘Oh well, I suppose you know what’s best. I’d hate it myself. Do you mind if I go to bed? I can’t see myself going down to join a bathing party at this time of night.’

  ‘Of course, Daddy.’

  His blank eyes looked at her; they were still good-looking eyes, even if they were bold. She had the feeling that they could pierce right through her, and she could not escape them. They asked her a question now, she saw it immediately, and knew that he would have thought of that. Instantly all the scandal she had heard from the servants at Holbeins, all the chatter came back to her. Did he know there was no party, and she was doing just what he would have done at her age, going alone with her love? Did he KNOW?

  ‘We shall be alright,’ she said, and walked out into the night, with Richard a trifle gauchely behind her.

  Out on the grass it was clear, and sweet, and deliciously cool after the hot ballroom. They took hands and ran down the path with the gorse bushes on either side, and the light of the Gunfleet beyond them.

  ‘Richard, I couldn’t have stayed there another moment …’

  ‘Neither could I. Wasn’t it hell? It would have to be your father who would rumble it.’

  ‘We’ll forget all that. Anyway this is our night, our own enchantment,’ and she drenched the flood of resentment which rose within her in a turmoil of sentimental emotion.

  ‘Yes this is our moment.’

  They came to the low sea wall with the tide already half way up the beach, and the yellow stars reflected in pin points of light in the dark water.

  ‘You undress first, darling, whilst I smoke a cigarette,’ he said.

  ‘All right.’

  The hut smelt of sand and weed, for they had left it carelessly earlier in the day and had omitted to sweep it out. She hung up her evening dress on the hook, and now felt primitive, better, almost free! She opened the door to him. ‘I’ll wait on the balcony whilst you get ready, Richard.’

  ‘I shan’t be two ticks.’

  He was very quick and came out to her; they ran down across the sand to the water. They swam out into the yellow stream of moonlight, side by side, but just as they reached it, the moon went behind a cloud, and suddenly the brilliance had vanished, and it was merely water like the rest of the sea. Somehow tonight she got cold quicker than usually.

  ‘I’m going back, Richard, it’s too chilly.’ Perhaps she was restless, disturbed. She didn’t quite know what was the matter with her. Doubt, maybe!

  ‘I shan’t be long.’

  She went back to the hut, and dried herself, but the towels were still soaking from the morning’s bathe ‒ today they had been dreadfully careless about everything, what could they have been thinking of? she asked herself. She got into her clothes her teeth chattering, and she knew that she was perishing with the chilliness of it. She went outside whilst Richard dressed, but he must have guessed that something was wrong, for presently he came out, wearing only his trousers.

  ‘I say, you’re still cold! Come in, and I’ll get the coffee cooked. You poor child! Darling, don’t shiver.’ He drew her into his arms, and the contact with his body was pleasantly warming. In the duskiness the spirit light danced with a little blue-mauve flame that was very pretty, and made Lesley feel warmer even if she wasn’t really so.

  She sat on the locker whilst Richard pulled his shirt over his head, and she could see only the dim outline of him ‒ no more.

  ‘How I hate shirts,’ he said. ‘Who’ll know if I have one on?’

  ‘Nobody,’ she answered, and again her teeth chattered.

  ‘My poor sweet, what’s the matter? You’re ice!’

  He sat down beside her, drawing her body into his arms, whilst his hands began to rub her. She clung closely to him, unutterably thankful for the warmth of this contact. For the first time this evening it seemed that the two of them were at peace, for no one else was butting in on them. She knew that together they could face the whole world, and not worry about her father, because she loved Richard more. So much more. When it came to decision she must not think of her father, only of her love.

  ‘Oh Richard, I adore you.’

  ‘In love we are the strongest people in the whole world. You’re mine, and I’m yours.’

  ‘Don’t let’s go back to the hotel.’

  ‘No, we won’t,’ he promised her crazily. He was her hero in this hour. Richard was the man who mattered to her, and as she clung to him, she felt his body pressed to hers, and knew that nobody else, and nothing else, counted at all.

  The moon drifted in and out from behind the cloud, and at one moment the sea rippled gold with it, yet at another it wa
s dark, and still, and ominous. Much later, the yellow light grew jaundiced, and ugly, for the rosiness of the dawn had come round the corner of Pole Barn Lane, and was touching the horizon with all the sweet glory of the new day.

  Richard got up.

  ‘We must go back now,’ he said, ‘soon the whole beach will wake and day itself will be here. We must go back.’

  Limply, Lesley rose, aware that the dream had died, and now she was desperately tired. All the beauty had gone as quickly as it had been born. It had ebbed out of her, and a completely ordinary morning was disillusioning the glory of the night. It seemed dreadful that such a beautiful emotion could so completely have deceived her. She couldn’t bear the thought of the dream dying, and she dragged her tired body up the path to the green sward like a much older woman would have done. A milk cart was trundling along the esplanade, with the light growing sharper every moment.

  She crossed the road, going along into the hotel which looked particularly hideous in the cruel radiance of the morning. An hotel which needed sweeping, tidying. A place of dead ash, and the stale scent of tobacco. The main door was open, which she felt to be wrong, but when she got into the hall itself she knew the reason why.

  Her father was still sitting there.

  Lesley couldn’t talk now.

  She couldn’t do anything but go up to bed creeping in between the sheets just as she was. She fell asleep almost instantly, a dreamless dull sleep which was quite unrefreshing. Hours later, or what seemed to her to be hours later, she woke with the dreadful sense of foreboding pressing down on her.

  What had happened?

  Gradually the memories of the last evening fluttered into her mind, and passed across it as a film flickers over a screen. She and Richard had thrown dice with youth and Nature, and they had lost. Nature always has the winning number up her sleeve; she employs all her arts and wiles, and although these are notorious, youth always falls for the bait of moonlight and music, of gentle dusk and sweetness.

  Lesley recoiled from everything that had happened and felt that she must have gone mad. She couldn’t put together the pieces of the jigsaw puzzle, because now it seemed utterly fantastic, but a change had come about and she was poignantly aware of it. Yesterday she had been in love with Richard; she had wanted him so desperately that she could think of nothing else in the world, and the fact that others had told her that he was a cad, had been merely the spur that had goaded her on. But now she had crossed the rubicon which she had not believed would exist, and she had changed. She was no longer passionately in love, for passion had made her sick of the affair, and terror had replaced it.

  She panicked.

  It was already half past eleven and the chambermaid was fidgeting because she wanted to get into the room and put it straight before she went off duty. Lesley dressed not sure of what to do or what to say next, because the whole atmosphere of today seemed to be so impossible. The more she thought about it, the worse it became.

  She went downstairs and into the hall, thankful to see that her father was no longer sitting there, for childishly she had had some ridiculous presentiment that he would stay there for ever. She went into the garden, then round to the cafe to get some coffee. She admitted that the coffee made her feel better.

  But now what? she asked herself.

  It was another of those clear and brilliant mornings and no escaping the yellow sharpness of the sunshine. She went down to the beach, but not near the low wall. She was concerned as to where her father would be, for it was unusual for him to disappear like this, generally he stayed near her. She returned again, with that awful restlessness possessing her.

  Finally as she entered the hotel, she caught sight of Miss Everington who had come into the lounge to the table there, and was searching for a railway guide.

  ‘Where is everybody?’ asked Lesley.

  Miss Everington had obviously been crying. ‘I’ve been packing. I’m going away.’

  ‘Back to Holbeins? But I thought we were to stay on here for another fortnight?’

  ‘I’m not going back to Holbeins. Your father has dismissed me.’

  There was something pathetic about the puckered face with the quavering mouth, and the weary wrinkled eyes, tired with crying.

  ‘But that’s monstrous! I won’t allow it. I’ll see my father about it, and make him change his mind.’

  ‘He’s gone round to Second Avenue to see young Mr. North. He’s been away hours, and he said that I was to have gone by the time he got back.’

  Lesley put an arm round her old governess, suddenly stirred by immense anger and sympathy mingled. ‘You mustn’t listen to any of that. Go up to my bedroom, here is the key, and sit there and wait for me. I’ll fix this. Please don’t worry.’

  She patted Miss Everington’s back, then she went out of the hotel into the hot sunshine of the esplanade and down the front to Second Avenue. She was confident in her own powers, and that she should arrange this, but as she neared the house itself, her youth suddenly overwhelmed her again and she became frightened. She saw the big house with the rose garden spread before it, and she smelt the perfume of the roses rising in waves. Her father was coming down the paved walk, (thank goodness for that, anyway) but she knew almost instantly that he looked older, (a great deal older), and she knew by the way that he walked he was very angry. Well, two could be angry, she told herself, and she could be furious as well!

  ‘Daddy?’ she called.

  He expressed no surprise at seeing her, but said, ‘I’ve been talking to Richard North.’

  ‘Whatever for?’

  ‘You know what happened last night, Lesley?’

  The girl had intended to lie about it. What-do-you-mean-about-what-happened-last-night? was what she had meant to say, but when it actually came to it, she couldn’t do it. ‘Well?’ she asked, her resolution ebbing.

  ‘I’ve seen Richard. I’ve interviewed Richard. Yesterday I admit I didn’t want you to marry him, I loathed the very idea, but today you must.’ He was quite abrupt. Terse. Very angry, she knew, as side by side they moved out of the gate, and strode down the avenue towards the sea.

  ‘I ‒ I don’t know now that I really want to marry him.’

  ‘All I can say, my girl, is that you should have thought of that before.’

  ‘But dash it all, surely you realise that I’m grown-up now, that we are living in modern times, and that everything has changed a lot.’

  ‘I realise that nature hasn’t changed. The consequences of this sort of thing are exactly what they always were! And what is more you may flatter yourself that they are not so important today, but they provoke just the same stigma that they always did. I’m taking no risk of a grandchild, Lesley, and you had better realise that.’

  She knew that she had flushed, for she herself had thought of this, and had dismissed it because the idea horrified her so completely. Fear overwhelmed her in a remorseless wave. But even then, at the same time, she knew that she did not want to marry Richard. What had happened in the hut last night had completely changed her feelings for him, and there was no other reason for it. She did not love him any more.

  She had no idea what had come over her, nor why she should now see Richard as he was. The charming if dangerous Adonis was dead, but she realised those qualities which would make him a difficult husband, and shirked them.

  ‘No, I don’t want to marry him,’ she said.

  ‘It’s no use, Lesley, you wanted to marry him yesterday.’

  ‘Yesterday is not today.’

  ‘You’d better do as you are told,’ he replied crisply, and it was the tone which brooked no argument. ‘Understand from now on I am managing this.’

  She had always known that he could be very stern with other people, but had cherished to herself the belief that he would never be like that with her, because he loved her too well. Now she was meeting him as the ruthless business man, which in truth he was. He had turned to stone, and she, so charged with doubts as to her own f
eelings, did not know how to face him. What shall I do? she thought piteously, then she changed her tune.

  ‘About Miss Everington? I told her that she was to stay.’

  ‘Then you had better pay her salary and her hotel bill.’

  ‘I will, if it comes to it.’

  ‘You won’t, because I shall stop your allowance.’

  She bridled at that. ‘You can’t behave like this to me. What have you been saying to Richard, at least I have the right to know?’

  ‘Richard did not deny what had happened, I’ll say that for him. Of course he hadn’t a leg to stand on, and in the end he agreed that of course the only thing was for you to marry him.’

  ‘And I won’t marry him.’ Only yesterday she had prayed that he would ask her, had panicked that he wouldn’t, and had almost swooned with sheer joy when he did; today the very idea made her indignant.

  ‘You’ll do what you are told.’

  She didn’t know her father in this mood. They walked back in a silence like a rime frost, and just as stinging. She had no room to slink into, nowhere to go and cry alone, because Miss Everington was up there and would undoubtedly be sitting doing some crying on her own behalf. In the hall of the hotel she approached her father again, but more gently.

  ‘Daddy, Miss Everington wasn’t in this; she knew nothing and she has always been very decent to me. Please do nothing in a hurry. Let her stay, anyhow for the rest of the week-end, she had been with me for many years and deserves that much.’

  There was something pathetically young about the way she said it, and he recognized the urgency. For a second his eyes changed. ‘She was responsible for you, you know.’

  ‘Yes, but she didn’t know a thing about it. It was so easy to deceive her, you know that. She’s been an awful old fool in many ways, but she is fond of me, and trusted me. Don’t punish her for that.’

  His eyes softened and he said, ‘All right, I’ll get her another room,’ then, ‘In a way I’m glad that you said that, it was my little duchess speaking.’