“Oh, David—”
“Yes?”
“Nothing. Except that you’re very nice about the situation. Most only sons with—well, with slightly possessive mothers either resent the fact and cut loose entirely, or else they succumb absolutely and become ciphers. You steer such a nice middle course with seeming ease.”
“It’s not quite as easy as it looks.” He still spoke with the same good-humoured candour. “But it’s well worth the effort. On the one hand, Mother remains very happy and satisfied most of the time, and, on the other, I usually have my own way over anything that matters very vitally to me. Like coming here again, for instance.”
“Had you a—a special reason for wanting to come back here?”
“Yes, I had.”
“I meant—apart from finishing Angela’s portrait.”
“Yes. I meant apart from that too.”
“I did a certain amount of guessing,” Jessica admitted, and found that her heart was beating uncomfortably fast. Not, to her surprise, with happiness but with a sort of uncomfortable agitation.
“That was clever of you, Jess,” he said. “I thought I’d managed to keep my feelings pretty well to myself.”
She was silent again, remembering that she had really done no guessing at all of her own. She had merely been told by an over-informative Angela. But one could not explain that.
And then he said quietly:
“What chance have I?”
Jessica felt her mounting dismay overwhelm her. If she had expected him to broach the subject at all, it had not been in this abrupt, over-simplified way. He was speaking as though Ford simply didn’t exist—as though the question of the twins’ future did not exist— as though she were perfectly free and might consider an offer from him, quite unaffected by the fact that she was wearing Ford’s ring on her finger. And, in that moment, Jessica thought less of David than she had ever thought before.
He had no right to say, “What chance have I?” as though that were the only issue. And, since he had insisted on saying it, there was only one—equally oversimplified—reply to make, and she made it:
“I’m sorry, David. Not much chance, I’m afraid.”
He took it quite well, she thought, considering that he had come all the way from London to ask that question and receive her answer. She saw his mouth tighten in an unfamiliar way. But he made no protests or pleas. He simply said, almost lightly:
“Well, I thought I’d try my luck, anyway.”
“Yes. Of course.”
More than anything else, she felt profoundly uncomfortable, and it was with extreme relief that she saw Linda coming across the lawn with the tea-tray.
It was amazing how useful trivialities could be in a moment of crisis. Virtually, David had proposed to her, implying that she might turn down Ford, and all his generous offers for the future, and she had refused him—all in the space of a few minutes. And now, here they were passing cups of tea, sending Linda back for a missing jam-spoon, chaffing her (or, at least, David was) about the amount she seemed to think they were able to eat, and generally behaving as though no vital matter had been put to the test and rejected.
Even so, Jessica could hardly hope that he would let the question go at that. When Linda finally returned to the house, they would surely revert to the subject— and even now she was turning her broad and uncompromising back on them.
Jessica braced herself for the coming discussion. And, as she did so, she heard the latch of the gate click and, glancing across the garden, she saw to her unspeakable relief that Mary was coming towards them.
“Oh, Mary dear! You’re just in the nick of time,” she cried with almost unnatural joy. “I mean—Linda’s just this minute brought out tea,” she added a trifle lamely.
“I pride myself on good timing,” Mary said. “David! How lovely to see you. When did you get here?”
And in all the questions and explanations necessary to bring Mary up to date in the history of the Forrest family, Jessica felt that the earlier topic of conversation had been safely shelved, at any rate for the time.
That was one of the nicest things about Mary. She could be relied on to carry the burden of any conversation, and to be the amusing centre of it. And Jessica noticed that David, too, seemed delighted with her presence, and to direct most of his remarks to her. Perhaps he was as relieved as she herself that the tension could be relaxed and an unconscious third person be used, in order to bring back a safe degree of impersonality to their relationship.
Presently the twins returned from school, hungry and full of local news. And, after that, there was certainly no opportunity for intimate discussion.
“Ford’s back,” Judy announced. “We saw him driving up from the station.”
“Did he stop?” With a perfectly steady hand, Jessica retied the hair-band which was slipping from Judy’s tousled head.
“Oh, yes. And he said to tell you he’d either be up or ring up this evening. It depended on how much work he found waiting for him when he got back to Oaklands.”
“Very well.”
Jessica thought suddenly that she didn’t want him just to ring up. She wanted to see him. Not because she had anything special to say. But—it was more than a week since she had seen him.
She could, of course, stroll over to Oaklands herself, once tea was over and the twins more or less settled down to their homework. But Angela would be there— and David. It might be difficult, and she certainly did not want to wound David’s feelings further by thrusting the spectacle of herself and Ford as an engaged couple before him.
However, she realised at that moment that Mary was, quite unconsciously, solving half the problem for her:
“Why don’t you come back and have dinner with us?” she was saying to David. “Daddy will be delighted. He approves of you. Or, rather, I should say he has a sort of wondering respect for you.”
“Has he?” David seemed both gratified and amused by this. “How’s that?”
“Well, you see, he belongs to the school of hard-headed business men who think that art is something in inverted commas, quite divorced from ordinary life. He simply can’t get over the fact that you actually make a lot of money out of it and talk common sense about business. It’s rather like finding that a performing seal has a taste for mathematics.”
“Thanks a lot for the comparison,” David said. “I ought to be wounded to the depths of my sensitive soul. But as I’m not, I will accept your invitation with pleasure.”
“I wish you were a performing seal with a taste for mathematics,” Judy remarked. “Then you might help me with my geometry homework.”
“On the contrary, I should probably just clap my flippers in a superior way and balance an isosceles triangle on the tip of my nose,” retorted David promptly. At which Judy laughed so immoderately that she was able to take a more cheerful view of her evening’s tasks.
“I do like David,” she said when he and Mary had said goodbye and gone off to engender wondering respect in the bosom of Mr. Skelton. “Sometimes I like him so much that I almost wish you could marry him instead of Ford.”
“Well, I can’t,” Jessica stated with what Judy thought unnecessary snappiness.
“No, I know. If he’d just wait a few years until I grow up, I might marry him myself,” was Judy’s further suggestion.
“He won’t be able to wait,” observed Tom soberly. “Someone else’ll snap him up long before then.”
“Yes. I suppose so,” Judy agreed, and reluctantly and very slowly she began to take her homework books from her satchel.
Jessica got up.
“I think I’ll walk over to Oaklands and see Ford,” she said. “You’ll be all right, won’t you? I’ll be back in time for your supper.”
“Yes, we’ll be all right,” Tom assured her. But Judy took it upon herself to add:
“But Ford said he was either going to come over or ring up.’
“Yes, I know. But I think I’ll go over to see him, any
way.”
“Very well,” said the twins, in what Jessica suddenly identified as tactful unison. And, to her amusement and slight irritation, she saw them exchange a significant glance as she left them.
“Little idiots!” she thought affectionately, as she ran upstairs to change her frock. “They think I’m so much in love with Ford that I can’t keep away once he’s returned home. I didn’t know they had so much romantic imagination.”
And she laughed a good deal as she changed into the grey-and-green patterned frock which had just come home from the dressmaker. Then she stood in front of her mirror and examined her reflection with critical attention. Not only to see whether the dress suited her personally—of that she felt reasonably confident already —but to see whether it conferred on her that indescribable quality of chic which was, no doubt, the natural attribute of Angela’s friends. Of Paula Dryden, for instance.
Wide, rather anxious grey eyes stared back at her at first. But the reflection was, on the whole, a reassuring one. The beautiful wide sleeves, caught into tight wristbands, the cleverly cut skirt, which fitted so slenderly over her hips, but swirled into satisfying fullness at the hem—these gave what could only be described as an “air” to the dress. And, with a little toss of her head, with its red-gold crown of hair, Jessica decided that she was not such an insignificant successor to the glamorous Paula Dryden.
It was a warm evening, and she wore neither hat nor coat as she set out from the house, followed, as she was well aware, by the speculative gaze of her young brother and sister, who were only too glad to allow their attention to wander from their lesson books to the window.
She chose the longer, but pleasanter way, through a small wood, but most of the way she could keep the road in sight, because it was on a lower level, so that she would be able to see if Ford came along it by car from Oaklands.
No sound of a car broke the evening stillness, however, and as Jessica strolled along, she was free to follow her own train of thought.
Inevitably, this turned on her conversation with David that afternoon, and the feeling of which she was chiefly conscious was surprise at her own reactions.
Ever since Angela had first put it into her mind that David was in love with her and that she might have had him instead of Ford, Jessica had been wondering uneasily whether it were he that she really loved. Or, rather, whether she had been in the process of falling in love with him when everything had been so cruelly destroyed by her illness and Ford’s precipitate proposal.
Because she had seemed cut off from David’s love, and forced to take instead whatever Ford had left over from his infatuation for Paula Dryden, the unattainable had appeared sweeter than anything which she already had. And, though she had been anxious to do only what was right to the man who had been so generous to her, she had supposed it would have to be at the expense of much suppressed heartache.
And yet, when David had put things to the test— though certainly not in any way she had anticipated— her reply had been unhesitating. And it had not been accompanied by heartbreak and resignation. Only by distress and embarrassment on behalf of a very dear friend.
“Of course, I’ll always feel affectionate and a bit sentimental towards David,” Jessica thought, with self-frankness. “It’s impossible not to, because he’s so attractive and so dear. But if Ford is not the man in my life, nor is David.” And then—”But I hope he won’t be here very much. If things don’t go well with me and Ford—and how can they always?—I don’t want to have the tempting presence of ‘the other man’ who loves and understands. Even David’s tact and diplomacy wouldn’t be equal to carrying that situation off without danger. Oh, why can’t I have a straightforward engagement and marriage, like other girls, instead of involving myself in a sort of ready-made triangle?” thought Jessica with a sigh.
Then she remembered the earlier references to triangles that evening and giggled a little and decided there was no need to take too tragic a view of the future. Ford had told her not to worry. Ford had told her that she might take her time over everything to do with this marriage And Ford—was coming towards her through the trees at this moment, and she forgot her other reflections.
“Hallo!” She waved to him, and he quickened his pace.
“Hallo. Didn’t the twins tell you I’d come over to see you this evening?” He took both her hands and kissed her.
“Yes. But they also said you might only phone, and I thought I’d like to see you, anyway.”
“Did you?” He was smiling down at her. “What did you want to see me about?”
“Nothing—special. I just thought it was a long time since I’d seen you.”
“Oh, Jess, did you?” He laughed and put his arm round her. “Isn’t this a new dress?”
“Um-hm. Like it?”
“Very much. It suits you.”
“Ford, is it—is it smart?”
“Of course,” he said carelessly. “Everything you wear is always smart”
“Oh, it isn’t!” cried Jessica, gratified beyond expression. “Do you really think so?”
“Of course,” he said again. “It’s the way you wear your things. You have the smartest, trimmest figure I’ve ever seen, and you hold your head in the way only tall, queenly women usually hold themselves. It’s enchanting on a smallish girl. When you walk down the village street, you look like a pocket empress.”
“Oh, Ford, how sweet of you!” Jessica exclaimed and flung her arms round him.
At that, he laughed more than she had ever seen him laugh before, but he held her tightly against him.
“Is that the sort of sugar you like?” he said teasingly. “Just plain, unadulterated statement of flattering fact.”
“No, darling, really—”
“What did you call me?” he said, smiling down at her.
“It—it just slipped out. I do call people ‘darling’ sometimes,” Jessica explained, flushing slightly.
“Well, don’t you go calling anyone else ‘darling’ in future,” he told her, and gave her a quick, hard kiss. “You keep it for me “
“All right,” Jessica was surprised to hear herself say: “But, Ford, it wasn’t just gratified vanity that—that made me so pleased, you know.”
“Wasn’t it? Nevertheless, I like to think I detect a little healthy, human vanity in you,” he told her amusedly.
“Well, there is that too, of course,” she admitted. “But when you said such nice things, it made me feel that I should be able to hold my own as your wife, and —and I want to do that.”
“Against me, you mean?” He looked puzzled.
“Oh, no, I can do that all right,” Jessica asserted, at which he looked greatly amused again and not displeased. “No, against all your own set who—who are probably very different from me.”
“They aren’t so real, and, on the whole, are not so intelligent, if that’s what you mean,” Ford said judicially.
“But they probably have a—a worldly finish that would make me rather country-cousinish by comparison,” Jessica suggested anxiously.
He laughed.
“Don’t attach too much importance to that, Jess. Manner is of rather little importance, provided there is something worthwhile behind it. It’s only when there is nothing much to support the surface manner that the possessor has to pretend it has an exaggerated importance.
“Yes. I know that’s true, really,” Jessica agreed. And she secretly wondered how anyone so clear-sighted could have found all that he wanted in a woman in Paula Dryden. Unless, of course, Paula was quite unlike her friend, Angela, and much more human than her photograph had suggested.
“Come back to Oaklands with me now,” Ford said. “I have something I want to show you. Something I got for you while I was in Town.”
“For me? Do you mean a present?”
“Yes. A present.”
“Oh, Ford, how sweet of you. What is it?”
“You wait and see,” he told her. And, at his amused and indulgent ton
e, she suddenly recalled wishing that she could be as much at ease with him as the children— and it came over her that, this evening at least, she seemed to have achieved that happy state.
They took their time strolling back to Oaklands, and he kept his arm round her. He told her something of his business trip, and seemed amused and pleased that she was interested.
“Do you have to travel a good deal, Ford?”
“Oh, yes. Sometimes further afield than this country. Why? Do you want to come too?”
“I’d love it!” cried Jessica. “Do you—do you mean that I may?”
“Why, certainly, if you want to. Once the twins have got used to regarding Oaklands as their home, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t leave them in charge of some competent person like Mrs. Curtis.”
He seemed, Jessica thought, to have looked ahead a good deal, and to have visualised a fairly detailed picture of their life together.
“It would be wonderful,” she said slowly, and she meant it. For to travel with Ford would be to travel without anxieties or worries. He was the sort of man who ruthlessly smoothed out difficulties in any country and any language, thought Jessica amusedly.
When they reached the house, instead of going in by the front door, he took her round to the back and pushed open the big sliding door of the garage.
“Come and see for yourself,” he said with a smile. And Jessica, who had stood back a few paces, came forward then and looked in interestedly.
The big saloon car was standing there—which probably meant that Angela was at home, thought Jessica passingly—and beside it was Ford’s own racing car. But, in the very ample space remaining, there also stood another car which Jessica had not seen before. An elegant little wine-coloured coupe with shining metal-work, which seemed to beam with the pleased consciousness of being the very latest thing in small luxury cars.
“Ford, how lovely! It’s new, isn’t it?”
“Quite new.”
“Is it yours?” “No. Yours.”
“Ford! Mine? But I couldn’t—I mean—is this the present?”
“Um-hm. This is the present.” He seemed both amused and pleased at her joy and astonishment. “I’ll teach you to drive.”
The Brave In Heart Page 15
