Accompanied by His Wife

by Mary Burchell

  There was another of those pauses which suggested he had said all he had wound himself up to say.

  ‘And now what ought I to know about you?’

  ‘Oh, there’s not much to tell you about me. I have always worked in my father’s bank. That’s something you would know, of course. I more or less inherited his position there when he died, and—that’s all, I think.’ He shrugged. Evidently he found much more difficulty in talking about himself than about his parents.

  ‘Where did I meet you?’

  ‘Eh?’ He looked startled.

  ‘Where—or rather, how—did I, in the character of your wife, come to meet you?’

  ‘We met in Paris,’ he said reluctantly.

  ‘She isn’t French, is she?’

  ‘No. But she had lived in France for some little time.’

  ‘Plenty of French experience,’ murmured Patricia thoughtfully. ‘I seem fated to be taken for someone with French experience.’

  He was curt and quite uncommunicative about that, and she gathered that there was no more to be had from him on the subject of the other Patricia.

  Well, she would have to do what she could with this scanty information. It would be worth making the effort—if it did no more than save that dying woman from knowing that her son had made a hopeless mess of his life.

  The sun was well down in the west by the time they reached the outskirts of London. And as they crossed Westminster Bridge, eight o’clock was striking from Big Ben.

  Patricia had been almost completely silent during the last hour of their drive. Not that she was specially apprehensive. In fact, she was surprised to find how singularly little fear entered into her feelings about this escapade. But her companion had obviously been sunk in his own not very cheerful thoughts, and she had been glad of the opportunity to think quietly over the coming adventure, and to get the ‘feel’ of the situation, like an actress approaching a new role.

  ‘We’re almost there.’ He spoke at last, and Patricia thought his voice sounded weary, though controlled.

  ‘She lives here in Westminster, then?’

  ‘Yes. In a little Queen Anne house near Birdcage Walk. She always wanted that house and, after my father died, it happened to come into the market. There was no longer any reason why she shouldn’t have whatever she wanted. So the house became hers.’

  A few minutes later they drew up outside a small, indefinably elegant house in a quiet cul-de-sac, and he handed her out of the car.

  The knocker on the door was in the shape of a small brass hand, and Patricia noticed that he hesitated just a moment before he took hold of it. Then he gave a couple of quiet but decided raps.

  While they waited for the door to be opened, it seemed to Patricia as though the whole drama of the occasion suddenly began to gather round them. The unusual quiet of the street, the brightness of the odd-shaped windows, twinkling in the evening sun as though they shared some private joke of their own, the unexpectedly loud beating of her own heart—all seemed to emphasise the tense feeling of anticipation. It was like waiting for the curtain to go up on some drama, in which one suddenly found oneself an actor instead of a spectator.

  The door opened silently, and a quiet-voiced maid inquired whom they wanted to see.

  At Michael’s brief explanation that he was Mrs. Harnby’s son, just returned from abroad, an expression of genuine pleasure came over the girl’s face.

  ‘Oh, sir, I am glad!’ she exclaimed, as she stood aside for him and Patricia to enter.

  She looked as though she would willingly have given them news herself, but before anything else could be said, a door at the right of the hall opened, and out came a small grey-haired woman, with such a forbidding expression that Patricia felt her heart give an uncomfortable thump.

  However, one glance was enough to effect an amazing transformation.

  ‘Mr. Michael!’ Patricia saw the ugly little face crinkle up in a smile of purest joy and the newcomer precipitated herself upon Michael, clasped her arms round his neck, and kissed him with the utmost fervour.

  He kissed her in return, though he said:

  ‘Look here, Susan, I’m not returning from prep school this time, you know.’ And then—anxiously and as though he hardly dared to frame the question—‘How is she?’

  ‘Better, Mr. Michael. That’s the wonderful part of it! She seemed to take a turn right from the moment we sent that cable to you.’

  ‘Y—you mean—’ he actually stammered—‘you can’t mean that she is going to—’

  ‘You mustn’t say too much, Mr. Michael! It’s unlucky to say too much before it happens. But there’s real hope—quite a lot of hope. Even the doctor said there was, to-day.’

  ‘I can’t—believe it.’

  The relief and happiness seemed to have taken all the strain and a good deal of the hardness from his face, and, looking at him, Patricia felt a warm thrill of sympathy.

  Poor boy! It was good to see his homecoming transformed like this. But she, as a stranger, might be permitted to take a more detached view of things. Very thrilling and delightful, of course, if Mrs. Harnby should recover after all, but awkward—quite appallingly awkward!

  In his utter relief at the news that his mother was better, Michael was in serious danger, Patricia could see, of making his first blunder. He had completely forgotten that he had an adored wife standing at his elbow.

  She managed to give his arm a slight pinch of reminder. Whereupon he looked so haughtily astonished that she feared he would endanger the whole situation. Firmly she took matters in hand herself, and, smiling at Susan, she said:

  ‘I’m so glad to meet you at last, Susan. I may call you that, mayn’t I?—Michael has told me so much about you. And yet you’re not really at all as I expected.’

  ‘You’re not as I expected either,’ retorted Susan so bluntly that Patricia found herself wondering anxiously if she fell very far short of standard. However, Susan added the next moment, ‘I thought you were one of these petite and pretty girls. Thank heaven you’re not. You look as though you might have some sense.’

  ‘Average intelligence,’ Patricia assured her, and was glad to see Susan’s expression relax into a smile of genuine amusement.

  ‘Can I see Mother at once?’ Michael was impatient, and Patricia saw that—schemes or no schemes—he was not up to doing much acting at the moment.

  ‘You go in alone first, darling,’ she said, bringing out the endearment with something of an effort. ‘I think that’s how she would like it herself. I know I should.’

  ‘Yes, I daresay you’re right.’ He looked at her at last as though she really were a person, and Patricia began to breathe more easily. ‘Thank you. You always understand everything,’ he said briefly, and Patricia found herself wondering if she might accept this as a personal compliment or whether it were simply his idea of what one might say to a devoted wife in the circumstances.

  ‘Perhaps the maid will show me my room while Susan takes you to your mother, Michael. And then you can come and fetch me when—when you think she would like to see me.’

  He nodded—with less sympathetic attention than he would have bestowed on the other Patricia, she could not help thinking. But one must hope that Susan was in a less than usually observant mood.

  Susan, however, was intent on household arrangements, which seemed to be completely in her hands.

  ‘I’ve put you and Mrs. Harnby in the front room,’ she explained to Michael. ‘It’s bigger than the back spare room, and more comfortable for two people.’

  ‘Is it?’ thought Patricia in some perturbation. And evidently Michael too was moved to sudden diplomacy by this proposal.

  ‘Patricia can have that. I’ll take the back one;’ he said, and this time he carried it off very well, with a casualness that she would hardly have expected.

  ‘You can’t do that, I’m afraid,’ Susan said. ‘Mrs. Tonmore has the back room. Oh, of course, you didn’t know she was here, did you?’

&nbs
p; ‘Isobel—here? Good God!’

  ‘I know. I don’t care much about her either.’ Susan was characteristically candid. ‘But there it is. She always considered herself devoted to your mother, and, after all, she is a niece.’

  ‘But I thought she was in Scotland.’

  ‘ “Was”,’ agreed Susan, ‘is the word. She came down here as soon as she heard your mother was so ill. She has been a certain amount of help with the night nursing,’ she added grudgingly.

  ‘And the mighty atom?’ Michael looked grimly prepared for the worst.

  ‘Yes, Miss Deborah’s here too.’

  ‘Good lord, what a situation!’ muttered Michael, and for a moment his eyes met Patricia’s in a glance of unhappy perplexity.

  Patricia would have given all of her two pounds four shillings and eleven pence halfpenny just then to have had five minutes’ quiet discussion alone with him. But Susan was already moving off ahead of him to lead the way to his mother’s room.

  Who was the problematical Isobel? Or rather, what special difference would her presence in the house make? Above all, had they really got to share a bedroom if they went on with this rather alarming farce?

  The situation was undoubtedly getting out of hand, even though they had done no more than set foot in the house as yet, and a dozen anxious questions chased each other round and round in Patricia’s mind.

  Then she looked at Michael again, as he stood there—one foot on the bottom step of the stairs—ready to follow Susan, and yet waiting even now for some sort of decision from Patricia.

  She saw quite distinctly something curiously like fear—fear that she would let him down—come into his eyes. And at that she suddenly made up his mind. One thing and one thing only mattered. Any shock or upset might easily undo the precious inch of improvement in his mother’s health. And that was unthinkable.

  She gave him the slightest nod, and said:

  ‘Go and see her now, Michael. Never mind about Isobel. No doubt we can get on with her.’

  The look of relief almost hurt as, without a word, he turned away.

  The room into which the maid showed her would have enchanted her, in the ordinary way. Pastel-tinted walls, rugs on a polished, slightly uneven floor, hand-blocked linen in autumn shades of green and brown for the curtains and bedspreads, and furniture of that ‘nutty’ shade of walnut which distinguishes the real ‘Queen Anne.’

  A lovely room in which to rest or work or simply idly turn one’s thoughts over. But a disturbingly homely and intimate room to share with a strange man!

  Having found that there was nothing else which Patricia wanted at the moment, the maid withdrew, leaving her to her own complicated reflections.

  Suddenly the door behind her opened, and—expecting Michael—she swung round quickly.

  But it was not Michael.

  Standing half in and half out of the room, while she swung the door to and fro, stood a little girl in a nightdress. She was a very pretty little girl, with short fair curls and large, interested blue eyes which were taking in everything. She might have been four or five, but her air of precocious intelligence was rather disturbingly older than that.

  ‘Who are you?’ she asked Patricia, in a not very friendly tone.

  ‘I’m a visitor,’ Patricia told her, briskly. ‘And who are you?’

  ‘I’m Deborah, and I’m four and a half, and I’m being extremely naughty.’

  ‘Are you?’

  Patricia saw that this was expected to cause a sensation. When it failed, the little girl abandoned the door-swinging and came farther into the room.

  ‘I ought to be in bed,’ she said impressively. ‘I’ve been put to bed hours ago, and now I’ve got up,’

  ‘So I see.’ Patricia began unpacking her suitcase.

  The little girl watched this extraordinary display of indifference with a puzzled air. Then she began to follow Patricia backwards and forward across the room, as she moved between her suitcase and the wardrobe or chest-of-drawers.

  ‘Why don’t you talk to me about it?’ she burst out.

  Patricia smiled.

  ‘Why should I? It isn’t very interesting, is it?’

  (‘She has the kind of mother who pleads and argues with her,’ thought Patricia with conviction.)

  After another astonished silence, Deborah actually caught hold of Patricia’s skirt.

  ‘Aren’t you angry with me?’

  No,’ Patricia assured her cheerfully. ‘ Not at all.’

  ‘Well then, aren’t you—aren’t you worried!’

  ‘Oh no.’

  ‘But I might catch my death of cold.’

  ‘It isn’t at all likely on a warm evening like this,’ Patricia explained with baffling indifference.

  This really was too much for Deborah, who sat down on the floor and regarded Patricia with a frown.

  ‘I don’t like you,’ she said finally.

  ‘Don’t you? Well, I’m not sure that I like you either,’ Patricia told her absently.

  ‘Do you mean—because I’m naughty?’ Hope gleamed in the large blue eyes.

  ‘Oh no.’

  ‘But I am very naughty. It’s very naughty to get out of bed at this time of night, isn’t it?’

  Patricia glanced at her speculatively.

  ‘Oh, well, you’re only a baby,’ she said tolerantly. ‘If you were older, it would be naughty. But babies do these things.’

  ‘I’m not a baby!’ Deborah turned scarlet. ‘I’m four an ’a half.’

  ‘That’s not very old,’ Patricia said, smiling.

  ‘Yes, it is. It’s quite old. And I think you’re stoopid. And I’m going back to bed.’

  Whereupon Deborah rose from the floor, and trotted smartly from the room, closing the door firmly behind her.

  Patricia laughed a good deal when she had gone.

  ‘That, I presume, is what Michael called the Mighty Atom,’ she thought.

  She wondered then how long it would be before Michael came to summon her to the first and most difficult interview with her supposed mother-in-law. And, even as she speculated, there was a knock on the door.

  ‘Oh, come in.’

  She turned to the door quickly again. But this time too it was someone other than Michael. An extremely pretty, languid-looking young woman came into the room.

  ‘May I come in and introduce myself? You must be Patricia, I know. I’m your cousin Isobel.’

  ‘Oh, Isobel, of course!’

  Trying to imagine with what degree of effusiveness she would treat a cousin by marriage, Patricia came forward and took the pretty, slack hand which was held out to her.

  ‘Deborah said there was a lady here, and I knew it must be you,’ the cousin explained, as she sank a trifle wearily into a chair.

  ‘Oh yes. Deborah—paid me a visit just now.’

  ‘I gathered so. Naughty, naughty child! Getting out of bed like that when she knows how it worries me if she doesn’t get her full night’s rest. She’s the most headstrong child, Patricia. No one knows what I go through with that child, though of course I adore her. But really, sometimes I say to her, “Deborah, if you aren’t a better girl, Mummy will have to send you to boarding-school, because she just can’t manage you.” ’

  ‘How gratifying for Deborah,’ thought Patricia. But aloud she said, ‘She is an attractive child, though.’

  ‘Oh, she’s attractive enough. She has tremendous personality. But she knows it, of course.’ Isobel sighed, and Patricia resisted with difficulty the desire to ask whose fault that was. Instead, deciding that the subject of Deborah had received more than its fair share of attention, she changed the subject.

  ‘Tell me—is Michael’s mother really very much better?’

  ‘Oh yes.’ Isobel sounded almost enthusiastic for a moment. ‘It never does to feel too confident in these heart cases, of course. But no one could doubt the improvement. The last two days she has been like her old self—interested in everything, and making those rather—well
, those rather caustic comments that she does.’

  ‘D—does she?’

  ‘I think so. Oh, of course, you haven’t met her yet, have you?’

  ‘No,’ Patricia said with desperate truth. ‘No, I haven’t met her yet.’

  ‘I remember now. You went dashing off together on a world tour without even going to see Michael’s mother first. I always thought that was rather odd, to be perfectly candid. Why did you arrange things that way?’

  (‘Good heavens! Why did we?’ thought Patricia frantically.)

  ‘Yes, I—I know. I’ve often thought since that it was frightfully selfish of us—of me, I mean. But well—well, it was a case of just getting married in time to catch the boat for the particular tour we wanted. They—vary a lot, you know, and this was—it happened to be taking in all the places I’d wanted to see all my life.’

  ‘Well, I must go and see if Deborah is asleep.’ Isobel got up, all the cares of a parent settling on her again. ‘I’m so glad to know you, Patricia. To be quite honest, I think we were all a bit anxious when Michael married in such a hurry. I know Aunt Leni was, though she wouldn’t say so. That’s just like her. Frightfully independent and refusing to admit she’s worried when of course one worries over one’s only child. I don’t know what I shall do when Deborah gets to marrying age.’

  And, with this gloomy peep into the future, Isobel brought the conversation to a rather indeterminate close, and drifted from the room.

  ‘If Michael doesn’t come soon and tell me a few more things about myself and the family into which I’ve married, I’ll have to be struck deaf and dumb!’ Patricia thought distractedly. ‘Where is Deborah’s father, for one thing? Isobel doesn’t seem like a widow, exactly, and yet—’

  There was a man’s step in the corridor outside, and, running to the door in her eagerness, Patricia opened it to admit Michael—at last.

  ‘Patricia, she is better,’ he exclaimed, as he came into the room. ‘It’s only a very slight improvement, but at least the improvement is there. If we are very careful, surely—surely there is no reason why she shouldn’t—’

  ‘No reason at all,’ Patricia assured him soothingly. And as he sank into a chair, with a sigh that was half weariness and half relief, she found herself patting his shoulder reassuringly.