Accompanied by His Wife

by Mary Burchell

  As she turned away, Susan came out of Mrs. Harnby’s room. She smiled quite agreeably at Patricia and said: ‘Oh, Mrs. Harnby said she’d like to see you when you came in.’

  ‘Of course.’ Patricia went into the room with every appearance of pleasure. But, as a matter of fact, Mrs. Harnby could scarcely have chosen a more inopportune moment. Patricia had only just realised how late it really was. The choosing of the coat must have taken longer than she had thought, and there was scarcely more than reasonable time to reach Bond Street for her appointment with Phil.

  Mrs. Harnby was looking alert and smiling, though by daylight her air of delicacy was very noticeable indeed.

  ‘Hello, Patricia dear. Have you only just come in?’ She glanced at Patricia’s hat and coat.

  ‘Yes. I lunched with Michael, and then we idled about rather afterwards—looking at shops and so on.’

  ‘I see. Buying things for the new home?’

  ‘Oh—no. We’re not doing anything very definite about that yet, you know. We want to have a good look around.’

  ‘Of course. But—’ Mrs. Harnby eyed her with that cool, smiling air—’ you don’t have to feel that you must stay on here indefinitely, just because I’m ill, you know. It’s quite natural for you to want to set about finding your own place, and—I’ve told Michael—there isn’t any point in waiting just to see whether I’m going to die or not.’

  ‘Oh, please—!’

  Mrs. Harnby laughed.

  ‘Oh, does it shock you when I talk like that?’

  ‘Well, at least it makes me unhappy,’ Patricia said with truth.

  ‘Does it? You are a nice child, Patricia. Tell me something—Did you expect to like me?’

  ‘Yes,’ Patricia said, with hardly a moment’s hesitation. ‘From the first moment Michael described you, I thought I was going to like you.’

  ‘Funny.’ Mrs. Harnby wrinkled her smooth forehead thoughtfully. ‘Then I wonder why I thought I shouldn’t like you. Michael must have described you very badly or something. You don’t seem right, somehow, Patricia. You’re like another person.’

  Patricia felt her spine tingle uncomfortably.

  ‘Well, does it matter much?’ She contrived to laugh carelessly. ‘Since I take it that the surprise is pleasant rather than unpleasant.’

  ‘No, it doesn’t matter, of course. It’s just—queer. And—yes, of course, it’s a pleasant surprise. You’re just the kind of girl I really wanted Michael to marry. It makes me so happy and—well, somehow. You don’t know how much more energy and spirit I seem to have since I have seen you.’

  ‘I think you had plenty of spirit before,’ Patricia told her gently, resisting a desire to glance at her watch. ‘But I’m awfully glad if my coming made you happier and better.’

  ‘It did. I suppose that sounds rather fanciful to you,’ Mrs. Harnby said slowly. ‘But—though I wouldn’t have him know it for the world—I’m terribly wrapped up in Michael.’

  ‘Yes, I think I understood that.’

  ‘You see—I don’t know if Michael ever told you, but I was a dancer in my youth—’

  ‘Yes, of course he told me. A very famous dancer, weren’t you?’

  ‘We—ell—’ The deprecating smile hardly hid the fact that she was gratified her son had described her as such. ‘Quite well-known, shall we say? I was much fonder of my career than anything else. Then I made the mistake of marrying my husband. Then Michael came along. I tried not to let him take the place of all that I had lost, and more. But of course that was what really happened. I shouldn’t ever want him to know it. Nothing cramps a man so much as to know that his lightest action means happiness or unhappiness to someone else. And so, when I thought—as I did think—that he had married the wrong woman—’

  Patricia’s eyes had widened with something like real alarm.

  ‘It must have been terrible for you,’ she said softly.

  ‘Well, at least it made me feel, when I was very ill, that there was no special reason to bother about getting well.’

  ‘You mustn’t ever feel like that again,’ Patricia exclaimed passionately. ‘It’s very wrong. Michael needs—’

  ‘Oh, I shouldn’t feel like that again,’ Mrs. Harnby assured her tranquilly. ‘Not now I know he has married you.’

  ‘I—see,’ Patricia said rather flatly.

  That time when she glanced at her watch it was quite mechanical, but Mrs. Harnby said at once:

  ‘Am I keeping you, dear? Don’t stay here talking if you want to go anywhere.’

  ‘Oh, it’s—all right. I have a tea-time appointment, though. I expect I’d better go now.’ She stood up.

  ‘Yes, of course. With Michael?’

  The inquiry was not intended as more than a most casual one. There was nothing curious about it. But it was with the utmost difficulty that Patricia kept her colour down.

  ‘No—oh no. An old school-friend of mine.’

  She knew the lie was ridiculous and unnecessary, the moment it was out of her mouth. Why on earth couldn’t she just have left it at ‘an old friend,’ instead of overdoing things by implying that it was a woman friend?

  Even when she was out of the room—out of the house, in fact, she was still telling herself impatiently that she was hopeless at this business of deception.

  It was that vague feeling that Phil very definitely intended it to be a meeting free from husbands which had made her instinctively anxious to avoid the slightest question from Mrs. Harnby.

  Well, that must mean Phil was fonder of her than she had dared to imagine.

  Only, if so, he was technically guilty of trying to make up to another man’s wife and—

  Oh, well, it was all the most ridiculous and unfortunate muddle, anyway! And her taxi had stopped in Bond Street before Patricia had come to any real decision on the wisest line to take.

  Phil must have been sitting watching the door, because the moment she came in, he got up and came quickly towards her.

  ‘Phil, I’m most frightfully sorry. I really couldn’t help it.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter a bit, my dear, now you’ve come.’ He was taking her coat for her, with an air of affectionate solicitude, and, when they had sat down at the corner table he had secured, he looked at her as though he would have forgiven her very much more than unpunctuality.

  ‘I was just going to leave the house when I was told Michael’s mother wanted to see me and—’

  ‘Oh, I see.’ He laughed good-naturedly, and quite as though he understood. ‘And you couldn’t disobey the summons, but you couldn’t very well plead the other engagement.’

  ‘Oh, well, it wasn’t that exactly.’ She felt uneasily that they were establishing quite the wrong atmosphere from the very beginning. ‘You mustn’t think she’s interfering or curious or anything like that. She’s a darling, as a matter of fact.’

  ‘Yes, I know. Only one wants a few private affairs, even when one is married,’ he suggested amusedly. And then he ordered tea.

  Patricia wondered whether it would sound terribly overdone if she started to amplify the subject and tried to explain herself more clearly. But Phil didn’t seem to think there was anything more to explain. In fact, he ran on at once:

  ‘Of course I haven’t been able to think of anything else but this marriage of yours all the afternoon. When was it, Patricia?’

  ‘Oh—several months ago.’ She thought, as soon as she had said that, that she ought to have sounded a little more explicit and a little more enthusiastic.

  ‘And you’re very happy, eh?’ His smiling grey eyes met hers.

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘You’re very thoughtful, Patricia.’ He was smiling still. But then that was nothing to go by, because Phil could smile even when everything went wrong for him.

  ‘I was wondering just where to begin,’ she lied. ‘What you would most like to hear?’

  ‘You said you had been abroad a good deal?’

  ‘Yes. We went on a world tour for our h
oneymoon. We met in Paris, you know.’

  ‘In Paris?’ He seemed most unnecessarily interested in that, and added, ‘In—Paris, eh? Of course.’

  ‘Of course what?’

  ‘Nothing. I was just trying to remember something. It’s come back now.’

  ‘Something about Paris—or me?’ She felt uneasy. And somehow the odd way he glanced at her made her no more comfortable.

  ‘Never mind just now.’

  ‘Phil, don’t be so mysterious,’ she said. But he only smiled, and took the opportunity of their tea being brought to avoid answering her question.

  ‘It was about the end of last year, I take it?’

  ‘Um-hm. Just before Christmas.’

  ‘Before Christmas?’

  ‘Yes. Why not? Is there any special reason why it need have been after Christmas?’ She said that with unnecessary sharpness, she realised afterwards.

  ‘No,’ he assured her. ‘No reason at all.’ But she noticed that he didn’t quite meet her eyes as he took his tea from her.

  ‘You don’t seem specially pleased, Phil, to find me happily married.’ She challenged .him boldly with that.

  ‘Pleased?’ He did meet her eyes then. ‘No. Did you expect me to be specially pleased at finding you married to anyone—happily or otherwise?’

  ‘I don’t know why you—’

  ‘Oh yes, you do, Patricia.’

  ‘Please, Phil. You mustn’t talk to me like that,’ she said in some agitation. And for a moment she really thought he ought not to.

  ‘You mean it’s rather late for me to be saying how I feel about you?’

  She was silent, in something between dismay and delight. And, taking the opportunity which her silence gave him, he went on:

  ‘Why did you run away from us all like that, Patricia? Surely you weren’t fond of this fellow then? You didn’t even know him, did you?’

  ‘Well, no. I—’ She would have to think of some story quickly, and a confused mixture of her own circumstances and those of the other Patricia seemed to present itself to her hand, ready-made, as it were. ‘You see, after Father died, I felt so terrible about—everything. I didn’t want to see any of the people I had known in such different circumstances. Particularly I didn’t want to be helped perhaps by people who had suffered through his failure.’

  He made an impatient little gesture and said unhappily:

  ‘And so you went off to Paris and married someone none of us had ever heard of. At least—none of us knew him. He’s one of the banking family, I presume?’

  Patricia nodded.

  ‘I—as a matter of fact, I wasn’t really quite justified in going to Paris. I spent the little bit of my own money which was left having a short holiday after—everything, before starting on the job of earning my own living.’

  ‘And when a rich banker asked you to marry him instead—’

  ‘Are you suggesting I married Michael for his money?’ Patricia inquired coldly.

  ‘I’m not suggesting anything, my dear. You couldn’t have known him long before you married him.’

  ‘Don’t you think you’re being rather—impertinent, Phil?’

  ‘I daresay.’ He grinned at her engagingly. ‘Don’t you think it’s rather the privilege of an old friend to be impertinent occasionally? I’m—puzzled by this marriage of yours, Patricia.’

  ‘There’s no need to be.’ She was unnecessarily emphatic about that, because she scented danger. ‘People do marry at short notice, you know. They even marry in Paris sometimes.’

  He laughed.

  ‘I daresay you’re right. And I daresay I’m just being impertinent, as you say, and—envious. Don’t let it spoil a valued friendship, Patricia, that’s all.’

  ‘I shouldn’t,’ she told him warmly.

  ‘When can I see you again?’ He had his elbows on the table now, and was smiling straight into her eyes, in that compelling way of his.

  ‘I’m not quite sure. You see—’

  ‘To-morrow afternoon?’

  ‘No, of course not!’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Well, for one thing, I’m already engaged,’ she told him drily.

  ‘To go out with him?’

  ‘No. If you must know, I’m taking a little girl to the Zoo.’

  ‘My God! Are there children in this outfit too?’

  ‘Only one. She’s my niece.’

  ‘The kind of niece who expects to go and gaze at monkeys in Regent’s Park, eh?’

  ‘No. I shall take her to Whipsnade.’

  ‘And when will you have time for me again?’

  ‘Phil, don’t know, I tell you. I’ll ring you. And, really, I must go now. I hadn’t realised it was so late.’

  ‘Very well.’ He yielded at once. But she knew somehow that he intended to see her again soon.

  CHAPTER V

  When Patricia let herself into the house, with the key which Susan had given her earlier in the day, the place seemed very quiet. She went straight upstairs to her bedroom, but, as she passed Mrs. Harnby’s room, Deborah came out, in company with Isobel, having evidently been in there to say a brief good-night.

  ‘Hello,’ she said at once to Patricia. ‘Did you have a nice tea with Phil?’

  Not all Patricia’s self-control could keep her from colouring.

  ‘Very nice, thank you,’ she said a little curtly, and went on to her own room without waiting to speak to Isobel.

  Life was becoming so dreadfully complicated when the slightest word could put one in a most doubtful position.

  Patricia had already changed for dinner and was putting the last touches to her hair and make-up when Michael came into the room.

  She smiled at him in the mirror and said, ‘Hello.’ Here at any rate was someone with whom she need not pretend. At least—’

  The next moment she was wondering if, after all, it would be better not to mention the meeting with Phil. His inexplicable dislike and distrust of Phil made the whole subject awkward. And then, of course, it was rather difficult to explain just why one had so obviously played the part of the silly, indiscreet wife.

  Before she had quite made up her mind to speak, Michael himself introduced an entirely different subject.

  ‘I got your ring this afternoon, Patricia,’ he said. And then, because the wording of that must have struck as strongly on his ears as on hers, he altered it to—‘I mean, the ring we thought necessary, you know.’

  He took the ring out of its case, hesitated, and then—evidently deciding against the idea of putting it on her finger himself—he held it out to her.

  ‘Thank you, Michael.’ She took it, and then exclaimed, ‘But how lovely!’

  ‘Do you like it?’

  He came nearer then, and looked at it with some satisfaction as she slipped it on her finger.

  ‘Of course. It’s beautiful. But aren’t sapphires terribly expensive?’

  He laughed.

  ‘Sometimes. I’m glad you like it, though. It suits you.’ And he turned away before she could ask him just why he thought it suited her.

  Downstairs that evening Isobel noticed the ring at once and admired it.

  ‘Haven’t you seen it before?’

  Patricia was admirably casual about that. ‘It’s my engagement ring, you know. Oh—I wasn’t wearing it yesterday. I remember now.’

  ‘I notice you don’t wear your wedding ring,’ Isobel said curiously.

  ‘No. I didn’t have one.’

  ‘Didn’t have one?’ Isobel seemed mildly scandalised. ‘Oh, have you got any of those modern ideas about not wanting to wear a badge of servitude, or whatever it is modern people think marriage is?’

  ‘No,’ Patricia assured her, ‘I haven’t any ideas like that.’ She would have liked to add that she thought it self-conscious and silly to marry without a wedding ring, in the ordinary way, and that, if she had had any choice in the matter there would most certainly have been a ring. But in taking on the other Patricia’s identity there
was no choice but to take on her views and prejudices too.

  No more was said, because Isobel had suddenly thought of something much more interesting.

  ‘Deborah tells me you very kindly offered to take her but to-morrow afternoon. Is that right?’

  ‘Yes. May I? She very much wants to go to the Zoo, I understand. I should like to take her.’

  ‘But, Patricia, how noble of you. It’s always so hot there, and then the smells are just too, too terrible. You really don’t have to sacrifice yourself like that, you know. She would be just as happy if you took her to Richmond Park and showed her the deer, or something like that.’

  ‘I really don’t mind,’ smiled Patricia. ‘I shall take her to the open-air Zoo at Whipsnade. It’s really very lovely there.’

  That night when she went up to bed, Patricia found there was a much shorter interval between her own retiring, and Michael’s tap on the door.

  ‘Come in.’ She sat up and thumped her pillow into a more comfortable shape. And then, when she turned back again, she found that Michael was standing beside her bed, smiling slightly, and holding a tray with a cup and saucer on it.

  ‘Michael! What on earth is this?’

  ‘Your hot drink. To help you to sleep.’ And he went off to have his bath.

  She thought—‘He is a dear. I’ll tell him about going to see Phil this afternoon. It’s silly not to be frank about it, especially when we’re in such a doubtful and dangerous position.’

  But when he came back, his hair rather damp and tousled, whistling softly to himself, she was asleep.

  The next day Deborah could talk of nothing but the projected visit to the Zoo.

  Patricia was a good deal touched by her transports of joy when she suggested mildly that it might be fun to take sandwiches, instead of lunching formally on their outing.

  Evidently, from Isobel’s languid disgust at the prospect, Deborah was never allowed to do anything so informal and ‘primitive’, as her mother called it.