My Sister Celia

by Mary Burchell

  “Oh, no, no. Of course you didn’t.” Freda turned eagerly to the Vanners, anxious that they should not feel themselves in any way shut out of this scene. “I more than understand your attitude. How could you think otherwise than you did when the names simply didn’t tally?”

  “Thank you, my dear,” said Mr. Vanner. “I’m glad you realize that we had no wish to be unfair to you.”

  “Of course not,” agreed his wife. But her tone lacked the warmth and conviction of his. And Freda could not help being aware that, however generously Mr. Vanner might regard the situation, for Mrs. Vanner it was a very disagreeable pill to have to swallow.

  “Well, I think we’d better have a drink on this,” Mr. Vanner observed, filling in a small but awkward little pause. “It isn’t every day that we find a sister for Celia. Where’s Brian?”

  “In his study, I think. Shall I fetch him?” enquired Celia eagerly. And, at a nod from her father, she darted away.

  For a moment, Freda was embarrassed at being left alone with the older Vanners again. But then she saw that this provided her with a few minutes in which to say whatever she could to bridge the inevitable gap between them.

  “It’s—it’s very kind of you to accept me so—completely, now that you know I’m really Celia’s sister,” she began nervously. “But I do realize that one can’t be enthusiastic about a stranger, to order. Please don’t think I’m going to force myself on you in any way. I—”

  “Nothing you’ve said so far has given us that impression,” Mr. Vanner interrupted kindly. “The whole thing is a great surprise—even a shock—for us, of course—”

  “Yes, indeed,” murmured his wife, who—temporarily perhaps—seemed too nonplussed by events to do anything but relinquish the direction of the conversation to him.

  “But,” went on Mr. Vanner firmly, “as I said before, when I thought we were discussing the case in theory only, we should naturally feel that Celia’s sister was, to some extent, also our responsibility.”

  “Oh, Mr. Vanner,” exclaimed Freda aware of a sudden drop in the temperature around Mrs. Vanner, “you don’t have to feel that way at all! I’ve supported myself and—and looked after myself for ages.”

  “Indeed?” Mr. Vanner smiled slightly. “Then I hope you’ll find it a pleasant novelty to have others to take some share in that now.”

  Moved though she was by the genuine kindness of this, Freda also experienced a twinge of apprehension lest it might, in some way, constitute a threat to her independence. And, before she could find suitable words in which to acknowledge the kindness without committing herself, Celia came back into the room, followed by Brian Vanner.

  “Hello, sister,” he said, and touched Freda’s cheek lightly with his hand.

  “Really, Brian!” his mother protested. “There’s no need to—extend the relationship beyond its natural limits.”

  “It was a joke,” Brian replied carelessly. “Freda doesn’t mind. Do you, Freda?”

  “N-no. Of course not,” murmured Freda, who had, in fact, been a good deal touched by this form of address. “I don’t mind a bit.”

  But she guessed that Mrs. Vanner did.

  After that, coffee and some liqueurs were produced, and a very faintly spurious atmosphere of celebration was achieved. Freda was questioned, kindly but closely, by Mr. Vanner about her work and the way she lived, and he looked somewhat surprised when Celia interjected eagerly.

  “But she doesn’t only have a bed-sitting-room in Earl’s Court, do you, Freda? She owns a cottage in the country.”

  “A cottage in the country?” repeated Mr. Vanner in some surprise. “Where—and how?”

  So, a little more at ease now, Freda explained how she had come to own her little cottage in Crowmain.

  “And where does Laurence Clumber come in all this?” demanded Celia eagerly.

  “Laurence Clumber?” Mr. Vanner looked at Freda with some interest. “Do you know Laurence Clumber?”

  “Why, yes.” Freda turned to him in surprise. “Do you?”

  “I’ve met him. I wouldn’t describe myself as knowing him. But I know of him, of course. He’s one of the most brilliant chemists at the North Deeming Research Station. But I suppose you know that?”

  “N-no,” said Freda in a somewhat chastened tone. “I didn’t know that.” And she tried to remember just how sceptical and disparaging she had looked when Laurence Clumber had owned casually to being “a chemist, in a modest, experimental sort of way.”

  “But what has he to do with your cottage?” Celia wanted to know.

  “He owns the estate on which my cottage was built.”

  “Then he’s your landlord?”

  “Oh, dear no, he isn’t!” replied Freda, with an emphasis which seemed to surprise them all. “I own the little bit of land on which my cottage is built. Absolutely,” she added, as though challenging all comers.

  “And does he want to buy you out?” enquired Brian with a smile.

  “Yes. How did you guess?”

  “From your expression. That ‘over-my-dead body’ look could only mean that someone had tried to chivvy you into selling.”

  “Oh, he wouldn’t chivvy her, Brian,” Celia declared. “He’s too nice for that, isn’t he, Freda?”

  “He was very anxious to buy,” Freda stated, with an air of doing strict justice and no more. “I was not willing to sell.”

  “Good for you! And you’re going to have me down there, aren’t you?” Celia pressed eagerly.

  “Yes of course.”

  “When, Freda? When are you next going there?”

  “On Saturday. But—”

  “Can I come then?”

  “No, dear.” Freda spoke quickly. “There’s no furniture in the place, and the decorators will be in. It’s not fit to be seen yet.”

  But she knew—with a distinctness that surprised and faintly chagrined her—that, apart from anything to do with the state of the cottage, she did not want a third person on that drive down with Laurence Clumber. Not even Celia.

  No doubt this was simply due to the fact that she and he were still on equivocal, slightly embarrassing terms, and the presence of a third person would only make things more awkward. But the reaction had been instantaneous, even before she could explain the reasons to herself.

  “Very well,” Celia agreed good-humouredly. “But don’t keep me waiting too long. I’m dying to see the place.”

  “There’ll be plenty of opportunities later on,” Freda promised her with a smile. “I shall be going down there most weekends.”

  “I hope,” Mr. Vanner said gravely, “that you will also be coming to us for some weekends, Freda. If this isn’t exactly to become your home”—Freda was aware that Mrs. Vanner moved impatiently— “it is, at least, your sister’s home.”

  “Thank you.” Freda made a graceful pretence of including both the Vanners in her acknowledgement. “I—I do appreciate your kindness very much, and I shall love to come sometimes. But I don’t want you to feel that my relationship to Celia constitutes any claim on you personally. It’s enough happiness just to know that I have a sister, and that I can visit her sometimes.”

  “Very nicely put,” said Mr. Vanner with a smile.

  “Very,” said Mrs. Vanner, without a smile. And then Freda glanced at the clock and said she must be going.

  No one demurred. For one thing, it was getting late. And for another, even Celia must have felt that emotions had been played on sufficiently for one evening. What they all needed now was a chance to review the position and grow used to the extraordinary change which had taken place.

  “I’ll take you home.” Brian got to his feet.

  “Oh, you don’t need to,” Freda assured him. “I got here quite easily on my own, and I can get back the same way.”

  “I’m sure you can.” Brian stood smiling down at her. “But my sister’s sister seems to have spent a good deal of her life looking after herself. I think it won’t hurt her to be looked after a lit
tle now.”

  The suggestion was so firmly, and yet so charmingly, made that Freda could only think how happy she was that this member of the Vanner family, at any rate, seemed very well pleased to add her to their circle.

  “I’ve got my car back. It was out of commission the other night,” he explained as, after a round of good nights, Freda and he left the house.

  “What a good thing!” Freda exclaimed fervently. “That it was out of commission, I mean.”

  “Why?” he asked. “I found it remarkably awkward for a day or two, I can tell you.”

  “I’m sorry about that.” She smiled. “But, if you’d had your car, the other evening, you and Celia wouldn’t have travelled by Tube, and I’d never have seen you. Or her.”

  “That’s true enough,” he agreed, as he handed her into his restored car. “It’s a sobering thought, isn’t it? That we might never have met—and never made the discovery about you and Celia.”

  “I can’t bear the thought,” Freda said, quite seriously. “Not now that Celia has really been proved to be my sister. Your—your father was extremely kind about it all.”

  “He would be. Once he was convinced of the rightness of the situation. My mother will find it more difficult.”

  “I realize that. And I’ll try very hard not to impose on the position, or make her feel that she’s being rushed in any way. As a matter of fact,” Freda said diffidently, “You might try to keep your father from being over-generous to me. It will be easier for your mother—I think it will be easier for us all—if we go on for a while exactly as though I’m just a new friend that Celia has acquired.”

  “You’re probably right,” Brian agreed. “You seem to have a knack of being right, Freda.”

  “Oh, no!” She disclaimed such omniscience with some emphasis.

  “Well—so far as personal relationships are concerned, shall we say?”

  “Not even to that limited extent,” replied Freda, thinking of the scene over the cottage fence. “I don’t think I handled Mr. Clumber particularly well.”

  “Ah, yes—of course. Laurence Clumber,” repeated Brian in a thoughtful sort of tone. “Do you want any assistance in that direction?”

  “Assistance?” She looked surprised.

  “I mean—is he making himself unpleasant? Because, if so, let me know and I’ll tackle him for you.”

  “Oh, no! No, thank you very much,” Freda said hastily. “I think I can manage the situation. I couldn’t describe him as making himself unpleasant. In fact, he’s motoring me down to Crowmain on Saturday morning.”

  “But I thought you were at daggers drawn over this bit of property.”

  “We are,” Freda stated firmly.

  “And yet he’s giving you a friendly lift down to the scene of action. I don’t quite understand.”

  “Nor do I,” Freda said frankly. At which Brian laughed a good deal and glanced down at her curiously.

  “I think you’re a very clever girl,” he said, as he drew up the car outside her house.

  “I’m not, you know.” Freda smiled slightly. “Well, then—perhaps you’re just very nice,” he suggested. “That constitutes a force all its own, in most arguments.”

  “I’m sure you’re right in principle,” Freda agreed, as she got out of the car. “But I doubt if Mr. Clumber thinks I applied the principle in his case.”

  “No?” He stood smiling down at her for a moment in the lamplight. “But I still back you to hold on to that cottage.”

  “Why, of course!” Freda opened her eyes wide. “I never thought of anything else.” And she was pleased when Brian laughed again quite heartily and said, before he departed,

  “You’re a great acquisition to the family, Freda. We must see you again soon.”

  The next day was Friday, and during most of the day—when she was not strictly concerned with her office work—Freda found her thoughts swinging to and fro between the two rival interests of Celia and her cottage.

  That her relationship had been proved and accepted seemed to Freda the most wonderful and touching thing which had ever happened to her. Life would never be quite the same again, now that there was someone of her own in the world.

  But—to a lesser, but by no means inconsiderable degree—the cottage occupied her thoughts. For, just as Celia was, in some sense, a family, so the cottage was, in some sense, a home.

  Consequently, she awaited Laurence Clumber the following morning in a mood of something between trepidation and pleasurable excitement. And she was quite determined that, however charming and amusing he might choose to make himself, nothing he said or did was going to tempt her into more than a formal exchange of conventional remarks.

  As soon as she was settled beside him in the car, however, and they were threading their way out of London, curiosity got the better of her, and she said, “I didn’t realize, when we talked to each other a few evenings ago, that you’re really a very well-known chemist.”

  “Am I?” He smiled straight ahead and didn’t take his eyes off the road.

  “Well, Mr. Vanner—Celia’s adopted father—says so. He seemed quite surprised that I should know you.”

  “Why should he be?”

  “I mean—I think he was surprised that anyone so unimportant should know anyone so important,” explained Freda, without rancour.

  “Which of us is cast for which role in that sentence?” enquired her companion amusedly.

  “You know quite well!” she admonished him. “You are a pretty important person, aren’t you?”

  “I don’t know,” he said candidly. “One never feels important, I imagine, unless one is rather an ass. If you mean is my name the kind which might appear in a newspaper quiz, along with the names of sportsmen, politicians, comedians and others, I suppose the answer is ‘yes’. That doesn’t prevent me from wondering sometimes if anything I do is of very much importance to anyone.”

  “Did things go wrong this week?’ enquired Freda, sympathetic in spite of herself.

  “They did rather.”

  “In what way?”

  “Oh, I just found that I’d been barking up the wrong tree for the last three weeks and all my work had been wasted.”

  Freda looked grave.

  “What did you do about it?” she asked, in a slightly hushed voice.

  “Started all over again, on another tack, of course,” he replied with a grin. “That’s what is meant by research.”

  She looked at him with slightly increased respect and said, “You must be very patient.”

  “I am. About anything I very much want.”

  “Oh,” said Freda, and thought a little uncomfortably about her cottage.

  “But now tell me what happened to you this week.” His tone became much lighter. “Have the family tangles straightened out?”

  “If you mean by that—have Celia and I proved up our relationship? Yes,” Freda said, with a brilliant smile. And, before she knew what she was doing, she was telling Laurence Clumber all about the scene at the Vanners’ house.

  “It must have been pretty dramatic,” he observed.

  “Oh, it was. I was in absolute despair when it seemed that we had been wrong, and yet I knew somehow she was my sister. And then, when the explanation tumbled out, all unawares as it were, I could have gone mad with joy.”

  “Yes, I understand. And did the Vanners—the older couple, I mean—go mad with joy too?”

  “No. That would have been expecting too much, you know,” Freda said. “They—he was very nice about it, and, although I think Mrs. Vanner will take some time to get used to the position, she hadn’t any objection to raise, once it was clear.”

  “I see. And what’s the general result? Will you be going to live there as another daughter or—”

  “No, of course not! I have a life and an identity of my own, you know,” Freda protested energetically. “I’m delighted to find that I’m Celia’s sister. But I’m also myself. And the Vanners, on their side, chose to adopt Celia,
years ago—but there’s no reason why they should have me wished on to them as a sort of inevitable appendage, just because I happen to exist.”

  He laughed at that.

  “I suppose that’s logical,” he agreed.

  “We shall see a good deal of each other, naturally,” Freda went on. “I shall go there at weekends and—”

  “You won’t be able to,” he put in.

  “How do you mean—I shan’t be able to?” She looked taken aback.

  “You’ll be at the cottage,” he reminded her. “Remember? It’s going to be your weekend home.”

  “It will be—very often,” Freda assured him, with dignity, “and Celia is planning to come down with me sometimes, which will be great fun. But when she isn’t visiting me at my home, I may well be visiting her at hers.”

  And, if Laurence Clumber didn’t look particularly crushed after this statement, he should have done.

  It was a beautiful drive down, through the blossoming countryside, and when they came within sight of Crowmain, just before noon, Freda was secretly quite sorry that the expedition was over. But it was not the moment to linger regretfully over any experience shared with Laurence Clumber. Now was the time to be businesslike, if courteous, and show that she was in no doubt of her own next move.

  “Would you kindly drop me at the offices of Jason & Merry, in the High Street?” she said. “Or will that be out of your way?”

  “It won’t be out of my way at all,” he assured her. “But can’t I drive you right to the cottage?”

  “No, thank you.” Somehow, the idea of herself and Laurence Clumber together in the vicinity of the cottage seemed to suggest some odd possibility of danger. “I have to call in and see Mr. Merry first. And then I shall probably be looking in on Mr. Token. After that, I’ll walk along to the—to my—cottage. It isn’t far.”

  “Very well. How and when do you propose to go back to town?”

  “By train and bus—and this evening,” Freda informed him categorically.

  “I could drive you over to Dalling,” he offered. “It would save you a roundabout bus journey.”

  “You really mustn’t trouble yourself. I—”

  “It wouldn’t be any trouble.”