by Pamela Kent
He frowned at her as if she displeased him.
“I went to London to see a man who examined Valerie months ago,” he admitted, “to get his advice. He suggested that she went into his private nursing-home.”
“Oh, no!” Helen exclaimed.
“It’s very comfortable, and she’d be perfectly happy,” Roger said, his frown increasing.
“But this is her home, and she has a right to stay here. Mrs. Pearce doesn’t mind looking after her.”
Roger Trelawnce flung away his cigarette, cast it amongst the logs in the fireplace, and then he squared his shoulders and once more started pacing up and down the room. Suddenly he stopped and looked at Helen.
“How did you two get on when you talked together?” he asked.
“Oh, very well,” she answered. “In fact—” smiling a little at the recollection—“she said she liked me.”
“I’m not surprised.”
He walked to the door, calling to Nimo, who had been lying outside on the terrace and enjoying the sunshine. The dog joined him with a pleased air.
“I’ll see you later, at dinner, Helen,” he said, addressing her over his shoulder. “Mrs. Pearce tells me Colonel Wince telephoned, but I don’t want to see anyone tonight. By the way, have you had any visitors while I was away?” pausing without turning his head.
“Only Mr. Trelawnce,” she told him. “He came once and stayed to lunch.”
“Did he?” He wheeled and looked at her in astonishment. “And who invited him to stay to lunch?”
“I did!”
His eyebrows went up. He looked coldly displeased.
“Don’t do that again, will you?” he said, and went out of the room with the gigantic Nimo following close behind.
At dinner that night he had little to say—indeed, he appeared wrapped in thought and deepest concentration. Helen had the feeling that he was not entirely pleased with her, and remembering how pleased he had looked when he returned from London in the golden light of late afternoon, and saw her waiting for him on the terrace steps, she wondered what it was that she had done or said, since, that could so affect his attitude towards her, and fill her with the feeling that she had transgressed badly without having the least idea how, or in what manner, she had offended.
He did not take coffee with her in the drawing-room that night, excusing himself on the grounds that he had work to do in the library. She sat sipping her own coffee in splendid isolation for a while, and then went upstairs to her own sitting-room to write letters and listen to a concert on her portable radio.
But all the while she wondered what he was doing ... whether, after working for a while in the library, he decided to visit his wife in that silent wing where she seemed to pass the whole of her days.
If he didn’t visit her he ought to do so, she told herself almost fiercely ... for she was, after all, his wife. And although something must have happened in the past that had caused them to drift apart nothing could alter the fact that she was still his wife.
When she went to bed at last she kept repeating this over and over again to herself, as if it was important that she, too, should remember that Valerie Trelawnce was Roger Trelawnce’s wife.
In the morning he actually appeared at breakfast, and it was immediately obvious that he was in a much better humour. He said something about driving over to have a word with Colonel Wince during the morning, and seeing Tom Broad later in the day. Apparently Tom was trying to sell him a small motor-cruiser to replace one that had been badly holed a few weeks before, and he had agreed to inspect it at some time during the afternoon. If he knew anything about Tom it was not a bargain ... but it would be a sound job.
Tom was an expert on boats, and he had a lot of contacts he was not always willing to discuss with anyone else. He was a wily soul, was Tom, and, being a true Cornishman, he was basically as hard as nails.
As he gathered together his letters and his newspapers and pushed back his chair Helen reminded him, thoughtfully, that he was a Cornishman himself.
He smiled at her a trifle whimsically.
“And as you’ve probably already gathered, I’m as hard as nails, too.”
“I don’t think so.” She stood up and looked at him earnestly. “You’ve been very good to me, Mr. Trelawnce, and I can never repay you.”
“Don’t be so sure of that,” he returned, tapping his copy of The Times on the table. “And don’t,” frowning, “keep calling me Mr. Trelawnce. You make me feel as if I really am old enough to have fathered you myself. The name is Roger, as you must be well aware by this time.”
“Very well, Roger.” She drew a deep breath, for there was something she was determined to say. “About Mrs. Trelawnce ... Valerie!”
His face grew cold at once.
“Well, what about her?”
“I’ve been thinking ... Won’t you allow me to visit her sometimes? To—to try to become friends with her? It would be good for her to have a friend who is more or less her own age, and her own sex. It might even help her to get rid of any feelings of frustration, for it does seem to me that she’s rather cut off.”
He stood regarding her, still beating on the table with his pile of papers.
“I suppose it might.”
“I’m sure it would.”
“You do realise, of course, that she isn’t quite—as you are?”
She nodded her head.
“One has only to talk to her for a short while to gather that.”
“And yet you seemed to think it unreasonable that I should prefer to have her cared for by really competent people. In her own interests as much as the interests of anyone else.”
“In her own interests I’m certain it is better for her here.”
He arched his eyebrows, and then he turned away.
“I’ll think about it,” he promised, before he left the room. “I’ll give the matter a lot of thought.”
“I wish you would,” Helen said earnestly, and then she moved after him in the direction of the door. “Of course, if I’d had the least idea of the true situation-when I wrote to you from Paris...” She made a little gesture with her hands.
Roger smiled drily.
“You wouldn’t have written to me at all! My dear Helen,” he assured her, with even greater dryness, “it isn’t necessary for you to put that into italics. I fully realise it without any underlining.”
CHAPTER NINE
THAT night, when Helen went down to dinner, a surprise awaited her. Valerie was sitting in the drawing-room, wearing a very smart if slightly dated dinner-dress, and turning over the pages of a magazine in very much the same manner as a patient in a doctor’s waiting-room, not fully concentrating but waiting for the door to open.
When it did open, and Helen stood there, she looked up with a flashing smile of delight in her eyes.
“You’re surprised?” she said. “Yes, I can see you are.” She flung the magazine across the room, permitting it to land in the middle of the carpet, in close proximity to a small inlaid table that had a bowl of flowers standing on it ... and the bowl was a very choice example of early Chinese pottery. Then she rose, stretched herself like a cat prepared to enjoy a saucer of cream, and walked up to Helen and started to examine her quite uninhibitedly from top to toe.
“You look nice,” she said. “But you looked nice the other day. I prefer this dress, though,” touching the navy-blue tie-silk. “It’s terribly chic. One can tell you’ve lived in Paris ... By the way, did you like Paris?”
Helen replied that she had become quite attached to it, although she had always had a longing for her homeland that had made it impossible to become as enthusiastic as some people were about the French capital; and with a queer feeling at the pit of her stomach that she recognized as uneasiness, because Valerie Trelawnce’s eyes were so disturbingly blue, and the zest and the alertness in them were in a sense alien, suffered the other to examine her necklace and her ear-rings.
“So Mr. Trelawnce decided it wou
ld be a good thing for you to come downstairs and join us,” she said a little awkwardly, wondering afterwards whether that was an entirely tactful thing to say to a wife who might quite naturally resent her presence in the house.
But Valerie merely looked careless and indifferent.
“Yes, he did. He thought I’d like to have dinner with you, and tomorrow if I feel up to it I can come downstairs for lunch.” She went round the room, touching the flowers and the ornaments as if she had to touch something, but plainly with little or no appreciation. “Roger’s made this room look nice, hasn’t he?”—‘nice’ apparently, being one of her favourite expressions. Her jewel-like eyes slanted sideways at the fireplace that was filled with flowers, and then across the room at another flower-piece. “Did you do those?” she asked. “Or did Pearcy?”
“I did,” Helen admitted.
Valerie’s lips curved in a Mona-Lisa-ish smile.
“You’re good at it, aren’t you?” she said. “I didn’t think Pearcy was as clever as all that. She’s just an ordinary kind of housekeeper, you know, and I don’t think she ever did the flowers in my day.”
“Your day?” Helen caught her up.
“When they let me do things like that,” with that slight, poised smile on her lips.
Roger came into the room, and she instantly seized hold of his arm and looked coaxingly up into his face.
“I’d like a drink, darling,” she said. “Just a teeny weeny drink. I hardly ever have one nowadays, as you know.”
“What would you like?” he asked, removing her hand from his sleeve with a small but deliberate motion, and crossing the room to the tray of drinks.
“Oh, anything,” she answered. “But I’d prefer gin ... or vodka!”
“You certainly won’t be permitted vodka,” he told her, and put a glass into her hand.
She gazed down into it, smiled ruefully, and then held the glass aloft and declared a toast.
“To you, Helen ... and to you, Roger! It’s fun being with you, and I’m sure I’m going to enjoy my dinner. By the way,” slightly wrinkling her nose, “what is it? I thought the smell was very appetising as I crossed the hall.”
“I’ve no idea,” Roger answered, “but as this is by way of being a celebration I’m sure Mrs. Pearce will have risen to it and you’ll get your favourite dishes.”
And Helen experienced a kind of pang, for she thought that type of conversation between a husband and wife pathetic.
They went in to dinner when the gong sounded, but although Trelawnce took his usual place at the head of the long dining-table Valerie simply sat beside Helen. She looked at the vacant spaces on each side of the table and her blue eyes gleamed.
“We’re short of men, aren’t we?” she remarked. “You should have invited someone, Roger. Doesn’t Helen find it dull when she dines in here alone with you?” and she looked down at the length of the table until she met his eyes. He answered her without any expression at all in his own eyes.
“I’m sure I don’t know,” he said. And then: “Do you, Helen?”
Helen felt confused, and for no reason that she could have honestly explained to anyone. She also felt that Valerie was watching her, her head a little on one side so that her golden hair that she had piled gracefully on the top caught the rays of light from the overhanging chandelier, her infinitely attractive mouth curving slightly upwards at the corners.
“Why, no, of course not,” Helen said hastily, and was glad that the soup course arrived at that moment, and that she could concentrate on carrying a spoonful of it up to her lips.
The meal proceeded much as usual, except that Valerie seemed determined to keep the ball of conversation rolling. She chattered continuously while Mrs. Pearce was in the room, and when she left the room she made good-humoured remarks about her and the various dishes that were served up to them. She seemed to think it diverting that Mrs. Pearce had produced a turkey from somewhere, and because it was served with all the usual trimmings reserved for Christmas. But her own appetite—or lack of it, rather—was sufficient explanation of the reason why she was so thin. She merely toyed with everything that was put in front of her, and was the first to sit back and nod her head as an indication that it could be taken away.
She refused the sweet course altogether, although the savoury aroused a flickering interest. And when they returned to the drawing-room for coffee she said bluntly that she didn’t want any, but she would like a brandy if she could have one.
And she looked almost appealingly at Roger Trelawnce.
“You can’t!” he answered curtly.
She sighed, and looked across the room at Helen.
“He’s hard, isn’t he?” she said matter-of-factly. “Sometimes it’s impossible to make any sort of an impression however hard I try, with the result that I’ve given up trying ... or very nearly!” slanting a blue-eyed look at the man beside her.
“Oh, I wouldn’t do that,” Helen said, smiling. She was feeling faintly uncomfortable because the coffee-tray had been set down near to her, and as mistress of the house it was Valerie’s right to preside on such an occasion. Although it was true she seemed to accept it as perfectly natural that Helen should do duty for her.
Perhaps, as Helen was beginning to realise, she was instinctively lazy. She curled up like a kitten in her deep armchair, and because her frock was extremely short she had the greatest difficulty in covering her silk-clad knees. But they were very pretty knees, just as her ankles were pretty, and her slim hands and feet. Altogether she was a very lovely young woman ... perhaps not as young as she seemed at first sight.
With those dark circles under her eyes, and those slight hollows in her cheeks, she could be in her late twenties, and possibly even in her early thirties. And there was still something highly desirable about her despite illness and nerves that, apparently, could not be depended on.
“Would you like to play cards, or do something like that?” Roger asked, obviously putting himself out to ensure that she was not neglected now that at last she had left her ivory tower upstairs. “Or would you like to watch television?”
She shook her head briskly.
“I’m tired of watching television. And I’d like to talk.”
“Very well.” He sat back in his chair, and for an instant he closed his eyes as his head rested against the cushions. “What would you like to talk about?”
“I’d like to talk to Helen.”
His thick eyelashes lifted, and he stared straight at Helen.
“Go on, then, Helen, talk to her,” he invited. “I suppose women do have a lot of things in common...? All women!”
“All women love discussing men,” Valerie declared, drawing on her third cigarette since dinner. Her blue eyes gleamed at the other girl, and she seemed to study her with interest between her own fantastically beautiful eyelashes. “Isn’t that so, Helen? Describe to me the kind of man you hope to meet one day and marry ... Or perhaps you’ve already met him? Are engaged to him!” She leaned forward excitedly, hugging herself. “Are you really engaged, Helen? Is he terribly good-looking, madly exciting, and are you—in love?”
Helen shook her head, feeling almost startled.
“No, no, there’s no one like that,” she denied.
“I don’t believe you!”
“I’m afraid you’ll have to, because it’s true.”
“I still don’t believe you.”
“Valerie!” Roger exclaimed sharply. “You must accept what Miss Dainton says, and don’t be rude to her. If she says she’s not engaged, then she isn’t engaged.”
Valerie’s fingers twined themselves in the heavy rope of pearls about her slender neck.
“You don’t think I believe her, do you?” she said scoffingly. “A girl who looks like her, and uses all that makeup ... masses of it, I saw it in her room. Skin creams and perfume and bath essence ... frightfully expensive bath essence! If she hasn’t already got a man she’s hoping to attract one. Why, she smelt like a garden o
f flowers when she came into the room tonight!”
“I think you’d better go to bed,” Roger said, rising to escort her upstairs.
But she ignored him.
“Do tell me how much you paid for that dress you’re wearing, Helen?” she said, smiling in a brittle, dangerous manner. “Did Roger buy it for you, by the way? And does he make you a very generous allowance now that you’ve become a kind of protégée of his?”
Roger stooped and practically lifted her out of her chair, turning her in the direction of the door.
“Bed,” he said, through tight, cold lips.
She started to whimper, apologising profusely to Helen.
“I’m sorry,” she said, turning her head over her' shoulder so that Helen could see the pathetic, lost look on her face, the bewilderment, the penitence. “I didn’t mean to say anything I shouldn’t have said, and if you’re going to pack me off so soon I’d like Helen to go upstairs with me. I don’t want Mrs. Pearce!” as his hand went out to press the bell. She screamed, “I won’t go with Mrs. Pearce!”
His eyes met Helen’s.
“Do you think you could go with her upstairs?” he suggested. “Mrs. Pearce will follow you up, but if we’re to avoid a scene it would be better if we humoured her.” There was a kind of deathly boredom in his dark eyes with the golden lights in them that affected Helen as nothing in life had ever affected her before. He had probably had to cope with so many scenes like this that he had reached a stage where his endurance was becoming very brittle, and despite the need for pity he seemed incapable just then of either voicing it, or feeling it. He was actually biting his lower lip rather hard as if to prevent himself saying or doing something he would afterwards regret.
“Of course I’ll go with her,” Helen answered, and with the most natural movement in the world she put her arm round the afflicted girl’s shoulders and led her to the door.
