“But is he nice?” persisted the patient John, plodding beside her along the Bayswater Road.
“Can you ask? No woman could ever resist a man like that.”
A pneumatic drill in the road made further conversation impossible for several minutes. John stole glances at Melissa and when the racket had died away behind them he asked why she was looking so sad.
“That,” she said coldly, “is not the sort of question I care to hear.”
“But you are looking sad.”
“So what? I don’t look sad in order to be asked what is the matter.”
“I want to understand you.”
“That’s quite easy. I’m a very simple, obvious person.”
“But if we are to live together …”
“Darling, you’ll find me uncommonly easy to live with. I hardly ever have moods. I don’t approve of them. I dote on equanimity. But, if a mood should overtake me, I expect that lapse to be pardoned and overlooked, like the hiccups. And if you want to understand it, think of the most obvious explanation.”
An obvious explanation for Melissa’s depression was already tormenting John. He could not quite allow himself to entertain it and stalked along beside her, keeping it at bay, until she suddenly began to laugh.
“No,” she said. “No, no, no! I was not in love with Remarkable Reilly myself, and I am not marrying you on the rebound.”
“Melissa!”
“How dare you think such a thing, after the description I gave of him?”
“I didn’t know … I thought … you said he’s irresistible. You said no woman could … then you really think he’s a stinker?” cried John, brightening up.
“I’ve only met him twice, but I think he’s bogus. He can climb the foothills of the Himalaya, and write about it as if he’d been up Everest. If he went up the Eiffel Tower I believe he’d write a book about it called Parisian Escapade, and there would be a waiting list for it at the libraries. No real adventurer has half so much façade. His talent is for blowing his own trumpet. We’ve all had adventures. I was machine-gunned myself, at the seaside, when I was a little girl. And you fought from Normandy to the Rhine. If our adventures had happened to Reilly, people would be paying fifteen shillings to read about them.”
Melissa’s eyes flashed during this tirade, which was music in John’s ears. But he felt obliged, in fairness, to point out that Reilly was talented as a writer.
“I suppose so,” she agreed crossly. “But if I breathe a word in his favour it appears to cause you pain.”
“Why … I could see you were very sad about something.”
“Use your loaf. Consider what else I’ve told you.”
He used his loaf, and by the time they reached Kensington Church Street he suggested that she had wanted Lucy to marry Hump.
“That’s better. Always look for the obvious, when you’re dealing with me. There is nothing subtle or mysterious about my nature. What else would a simple, natural girl like me want, when she has a brother and a friend?”
“Do they know each other?”
“No. They’ve never met. Hump has been in France and Africa ever since I knew Lucy. But they would have met sometime, and they’re born for each other. If Lucy wants adventures she couldn’t do better than go to Humptopia.”
“I see.”
But he did not see. Melissa might be disappointed at the collapse of a favourite scheme, but he had caught a glimpse of something deeper than disappointment in her face. She was profoundly miserable.
“Here is the tube station,” she said, “and I think you had better go home, because we might run into my mother at any moment, on her way back from a tea-party, and she might get ideas into her head if she knew how often I am meeting you.”
“Come with me and help me to buy my ticket.”
She laughed, and crossed the road with him and stood beside him while he bought a ticket for Lancaster Gate. They then waited for a lift to appear. It took some time to do so, after the manner of lifts at Notting Hill.
“You’re quite right,” she said, interpreting his silence. “The disappointment over Hump is only a side issue. Go on chasing the obvious.”
“You’re sad … on Lucy’s account?”
“Wretched.”
“Because … because you think Reilly’s a stinker? You think it’s a frightful mistake?”
The hum of the rising lift ceased and the gates opened. Melissa nodded and turned away without a word. He saw that she was crying.
All that he had learnt of her forbade him to attempt any consolation. He stepped into the lift and sank downwards, deeply moved by her tears, painfully content — sure, at last, that his beloved had a very warm heart.
2
MELISSA had by no means told John the whole story. She had not said a word about Jane Lucas.
This legendary siren had for years provided a topic for conversation in Campden Hill Square. Melissa had never seen her, but for a short time, long ago, Jane Lucas had been married to the brother of Lady Skinner, Mrs. Hallam’s closest friend. She had deserted him almost immediately, but her subsequent career had been followed in wrathful indignation by all the Skinner circle. As Melissa said, when discussing the matter with her married sister Cressida, they had been hearing of Jane Lucas, man and boy, ever since they could remember: how ugly she was, how wicked she was, how old she must be getting, and how slowly the mills of God seemed to be grinding, in her case.
Her existence had been sharply impressed upon Melissa because she had been the indirect cause of a forfeited pantomime. Mrs. Hallam and some other ladies, wishing to tell Lucas stories in the presence of the nine-year-old Melissa, had taken refuge in the French language. Et pourtant elle a du chien, somebody had said. Melissa had been struck by the phrase. She lost no time in applying it to the Vicar’s sister who bred Airedales; her father, overhearing, made a fine Hallam hullabaloo, and she was sent to bed instead of to Cinderella.
That Jane Lucas had been Patrick Reilly’s mistress was scarcely a surprising piece of news; she had, in her time, been everybody’s mistress. Mrs. Hallam disinterred and mourned over it as soon as the engagement was announced. She quite liked Lucy but she had never favoured the very close intimacy of the two girls and she was irritated that Lucy should marry first and marry so well. She could not repress certain little digs and passed on to Melissa all that she had gathered from Mrs. Knight, the wife of Patrick’s publisher, who belonged to the Skinner circle. Poor Reilly had been infatuated with the woman, though she was old enough to be his mother. She had very nearly driven him mad. All his friends had been in despair. And then she had run off with a jockey to Brazil, which was why he was marrying Lucy. Only a very green, simple girl would take a man after Lucas had finished with him. Poor Catherine Skinner’s brother had done the same, and had married a nice fresh girl, just like Lucy, on the rebound, six months before they had to put him away in an inebriates’ home.
Melissa heard all this without much dismay. Her mother was bound to take a sour view of Lucy’s marriage and something would certainly have been discovered to Reilly’s discredit. If there were any truth in the story, he would have had the sense to tell Lucy the facts. She refused to mourn over the probable shocks in store for her poor friend, and flippantly asserted that a past in Brazil could barely be rated as a past at all.
But she found it hard to retain her composure when she learned that the past had come back from Brazil, and had been seen, a week before the wedding, with Reilly in a night club. It was a fact. A certain Mrs. Otway had seen them there with her own eyes. The whole Skinner circle was agog with pleasurable indignation. Great fun for them all, Melissa had said, when her mother brought the story home to Campden Hill Square. But she had been obliged to run out of the room, immediately afterwards, in order to conceal her distress. She felt so miserable that she was driven to confide in Cressida, with whom she had not much in common save an alliance against the emotional onslaughts of their mother. She wanted Cressida to say that i
t was a great fuss about nothing. But Cressida put on matronly airs and looked grave.
“If she’s all we hear,” said Cressida, “and wants him back, she’ll get him back. I don’t think there’s anything to be done.”
“Mother evidently thinks I ought to warn Lucy; tell her she’d better refuse to marry him unless he promises never to see Lucas again. But how can I? Besides, don’t you think it might all be one of mother’s bogeys? Just think how often she’s managed to frighten one!”
Cressida agreed. In Campden Hill Square an earache was always a probable mastoid and a small overdraft was described as bankruptcy. She had only escaped from this precarious atmosphere very recently, but her placid young husband had already done a great deal for her nerves.
“I’ll ask Alan what he thinks,” she suggested.
Melissa demurred at this. She liked her fat brother-in-law well enough, though she shuddered when he referred to Cressida as Cress and to his unborn child as Little Buttinski. But she could not imagine that he would have anything useful to say about Lucy’s affairs, and he might say something very coarse.
Cressida, however, did consult him and insisted upon retailing his verdict to Melissa.
“He says he can’t see there’s anything you can do, except watch how things go. When they come back to London, after their honeymoon, you’ll be seeing a lot of them and if Lucas seems to be around you might drop a hint to Lucy. But he says, if you say anything now, it’ll only cause a fearful stink and you’ll quarrel with Lucy, and won’t be able to be a good friend to her, later, when she might need it.”
This was unexpectedly sensible and sensitive. Alan was a nice man in spite of his tap-room limericks. Melissa took it to heart and travelled down to Surrey, the day before the wedding, in a tolerably composed frame of mind. But she was in no way reconciled to the marriage, Jane Lucas or no Jane Lucas. Reilly might be a celebrity, and he might be making a great deal of money, but he was not good enough for Lucy. Her own John was worth a hundred of him. Her own future, as the wife of an obscure chemist at a research station in Lincolnshire, was far more secure than Lucy’s.
3
AS the train drew in at Gorling station she caught sight of Lucy rushing up and down the platform as though she expected her bridesmaid to fall out of the train and was preparing to catch her.
Half demented, mused Melissa, making a leisurely descent. A soldier, who had travelled in the same compartment, handed down her suitcase and hat-box. Melissa had never lifted a heavy suitcase in her life. Somebody was always at hand to do this for her. Composedly she stood upon the platform awaiting Lucy’s return charge. Up from the extreme rear of the train rushed the distracted Lucy, but when she caught sight of her friend she slowed down and adopted her undulating walk, hoping that all this unseemly galloping might not have been observed.
“Why?” enquired Melissa, “were you looking for me in the luggage van?”
“I couldn’t see you anywhere. You weren’t here when I was.”
“I should have been if you’d stayed here.”
“Oh, Melissa!”
“Yes?”
Lucy blinked and confessed she had forgotten what she meant to say.
“You seem to be agitated.”
“I’m fearfully agitated.”
“Why?”
“I can’t think why. I ought to be sending some telegrams and I can’t remember what they’re about.”
“My dear Lucy. Let me take you home and give you aspirin.”
“Wait till you see home,” cried Lucy, seizing the suitcase. “It’s a loony bin … full of packing-cases and relatives.”
“Don’t do that! We’ll get a porter.”
“There never are any porters at this station.”
“There will be if we wait. Are we in a hurry?”
“Well … actually I’m expecting a telephone call … at home.”
A sudden glow infused Lucy. This call was clearly the only important event of the day. Melissa threw a glance at a porter, who had emerged from the lamp-room, and led the way into the station yard where a taxi obligingly appeared.
“It’s odd how porters will always come to you,” commented Lucy.
“They are like children and dogs, they know,” said Melissa.
As they drove off Lucy remembered what she wanted to say.
“Oh, Melissa, I’m dreadfully sorry, but we’ve had to put you in Stephen’s room. My uncle and aunt have the spare room and my cousin the dressing-room. I wanted to put her in Stephen’s room, but he kicked up such a fuss … he doesn’t mind you having it, he likes you, but he won’t have Joan in it. He has a black hatred of her because she used to bully him when we were little.”
“I shan’t mind Stephen’s room.”
“But it’s revolting. He’s picked a great hole in the wall above the bed and plaster falls out on your face in the night. You can’t move it because it’s a divan fixture; Mother did it out of a magazine … a design for a schoolboy’s room.”
“But where is he going to sleep then?”
“In the garden. Unless it rains. But he could always use the marquee. He will not have his hair cut and he looks so awful. He’s an impossible child. I can’t think why mother had him home; I can’t think why the school let him come.”
“Never mind. Tell me about the wedding presents.”
“Oh, I don’t remember. Thousands. Mostly salad-servers. I had no idea getting married was so wearing. It’s all very well for Patrick to say a conventional wedding is amusing. He’ll only have to stand it for a couple of hours tomorrow.”
“I should have thought he’d hate even that.”
Lucy, anticipating, as she always did, some criticism of her lover, explained airily that it was just one of his poses. He liked to take people by surprise and his appearance in the rôle of a conventional bridegroom would astonish all his friends. His speech was to be a model of inarticulate ineptitude. He had been rehearsing it for a week.
Melissa thought this in vile taste and Lucy knew that she thought so, but was determined to brave it out, declaring that in some ways Patrick was a case of arrested development.
“Who,” asked Melissa, “is responsible for seeing that he has the ring?”
“Gerald Clay. The best man. They’re driving down from London tomorrow morning and they’re going to lunch at the White Hart and leave Patrick’s luggage there. Then, when I go to change, they’ll nip back and Patrick will change at the White Hart. It’s the only way, when our house is so full. Oh, Melissa! I am so sorry you’ve got to be a bridesmaid with Joan. Mother insisted. There’s nobody to give me away but Uncle Bob, and she said it would be a slight if we didn’t … but she will look such a lump. Oh, it’s all hell.”
The taxi turned into a suburban road and drew up at a house which Mrs. Hallam would have called very ordinary. Its name was Hill View and Dr. Gwendolen Carmichael’s name was displayed on a brass plate above the door-bell. Signs of the disorder prevalent inside were visible in the garden, which was littered with shavings and wisps of straw. Lucy explained that a good many wedding presents had been unpacked outside. She dived into the house, shouting for Stephen. When Melissa had paid the taxi and joined her, she was storming.
“I told Stephen … he promised me … he was to sit right by the telephone just in case my call came through while I was … Stephen! Where is that wretched boy? Steee-vun!”
Mrs. Carmichael came out of the kitchen, carrying an armful of long-stemmed roses. She was a short dark woman and there was no resemblance between her and Lucy. Everything about her suggested competency and common sense, from her neat cropped head to her neat black shoes. Her manner was ideal in a surgery, but in the home it was a little too detached.
“Stop yelling,” she said to Lucy. “I’ve been listening for the telephone. Nobody has rung. I sent Stephen out with a message. Well, Melissa! How nice to see you again! How are you?”
“If a bride mayn’t yell,” complained Lucy, “who may?”
Lucy ushered Melissa through a living-room, full of half-unpacked presents, to a french window which led out onto a small lawn at the back of the house. Most of this was already covered by a marquee, put up for the morrow’s festivities. Upon the remaining section Lucy’s uncle, aunt and cousin were sitting round a tea-table. Melissa had looked forward to meeting them, for Lucy’s accounts of them had stirred her curiosity, and a first glance told her that these accounts had not been exaggerated.
Robert Rawlings was a swarthy, bilious man who lived in the Midlands and had inherited a brickfield. He liked his women to be ignorant, inferior and dependent. In the masculine world he could not command much respect, for he managed his brickfield vilely. If he might not despise women there was no refuge for his starved vanity. He had opposed his sister Gwennie when she decided to become a doctor, prophesying that she would never get a husband. When she married her chartered accountant he deplored the money which had been wasted over her medical training. When the chartered accountant died, and she bought the practice at Gorling with her insurance money, he would almost have preferred to support her and her children himself to perceiving that she could manage perfectly well without him.
He had married a sly, ferrety-looking woman who came up to his standards in the matter of ignorance and inferiority. Their daughter had been taught nothing which might lead her to despise her father. Neither woman ever had sixpence to spend unless he was in a benevolent mood. But Joan, though occasionally sulky, really believed herself to be superior and fortunate because she lived at home and had nothing to do. She was a heavy girl and had inherited the Rawlings tendency to bile.
Social decency ordained that they should be present at Lucy’s wedding, for there had never been any kind of quarrel, although the two families had nothing in common. Birthday and Christmas presents had always been punctually and conscientiously exchanged, the cousins had been exhorted to play with one another, and Robert had sent Lucy a very handsome cheque as a wedding present. In his way he was fond of Gwennie. But the invasion was a sore trial to Lucy, who had been floundering for twenty-four hours in a morass of unspoken disapproval.
Lucy Carmichael Page 2
