The Strange Waif

by Violet Winspear

  His trilby hat was at a rakish angle over one dark eye, with spots of rain on the brim. Banker trotted at his heels, but when the dog spotted Lygia he gave a deep-throated bark and bounded across the room, almost knocking over a writing-table in his excitement.

  Heads jerked up, newspapers irritably rustled, and Lygia sent an apologetic smile round the room as she caught hold of Banker and dropped a kiss on his golden head. "Hullo, you beautiful darling!" she exclaimed.

  "To have four legs and an energetic tail!" Robert drawled, and a woman in a basket-chair nearby laughed appreciatively at him over her magazine. Then the same onlooker heard him say to the girl: "So you kept your word, you didn't run away?"

  "Some people do keep their word, you know."

  They walked across the hotel lobby to the swing-doors. Robert had already taken Lygia's suitcase from her and as they ran down the steps to the street, he said, "So you found this all right? Was everything intact?"

  She heard the amused note in his voice and she smiled a little herself. "Yes, quite intact. It was a great relief."

  "I'll bet it was!" His amusement had deepened to irony.

  She jumped the last step and turned to blink reproving eyelashes at him. "Not because I didn't like the idea of using your money," she said. "I've got some personal belongings in my suitcase which I couldn't ever replace if they were lost. Some photos and letters and a diary my mother used to keep. I—rather value them."

  He gazed down at her and quite suddenly, quite unexpectedly, his mouth was contrite. "I'm a hardened brute, aren't I, Lygia? And yet I do know that there are things without a price tag on them. I know, too, that one doesn't buy exoneration with a little conscience money, and yet that was exactly what I was trying to do when I offered you those six pounds."

  "I don't believe that!" she contradicted, warmed by his contrite air. "And I didn't refuse the money when you first offered it to me, because I thought it. It's just —well—" she shrugged her shoulders—"I like to be independent and I'd already taken such a lot from Avery."

  "But taking from Avery wasn't quite such a painful business as taking from me, was it, Lygia?"

  She met his eyes and they were laughing slightly.

  "P-perhaps not," she admitted. "But it was still a generous thought—"

  "It was nothing of the sort! My damned conscience was pricking me and I thought I'd lend you a little money and salve it. Have you got the six pounds on you?"

  "Yes—here they are." She drew the little wad of notes from her pocket and handed them to him.

  He took them, and without saying another word he marched along the street and swung in through the doors of a large, very expensive-looking sweet shop. Lygia stood with a hand on Banker's collar, watching the shop with a wondering frown. The meter of their taxi ticked away merrily and rain was hitting its shiny roof with increasing force. "Hadn't you better get in, miss?" the driver called out.

  "W-what?" She was still abstractedly watching the sweet shop.

  "You're getting wet, miss." The taxi driver shook his head, as if to say in the lugubrious fashion of his kind, "Some mothers do have 'em!"

  "Oh—yes. Yes, perhaps we had better get in." Lygia and Banker clambered into the taxi, but almost immediately she had put her head out into the rain again and she was watching for Robert to emerge from the sweet shop. She had the wildest premonition that he was going to walk out carrying the largest, grandest, most ridiculously expensive box of chocolates the shop had in stock—and she was right! When he reached the taxi and got in beside her, he first told the driver to take them to the railway station, then the big square box landed in her lap.

  "Robert—"

  "Is this a moment of dire circumstance?" He sat back against the leather of the taxi, watching her from under the rakish brim of his trilby—and his eyes were slightly rakish too.

  "It's a moment of sheer lunacy, I think," she retorted and she heard him laugh.

  "You're quite mad, you know," she informed him, and he only shrugged his shoulders and watched her with a quizzical expression.

  "Why did you buy them?" she asked.

  "So you'd have something to eat on the train." He pulled a mocking face at her.

  "It was because of what you said, wasn't it, about— about offering me the money to salve your conscience?"

  Again he shrugged his shoulders. He put down a hand and Banker lovingly nuzzled it, licking the long, thin fingers.

  "It was still a generous impulse," she insisted. "And you must know that most impulses spring from a need to gratify the body or the conscience. When you stroke Banker, for instance, you do it because he's nice to touch. But it doesn't detract from Banker's pleasure in being touched by you, that you put your own pleasure first."

  "Meaning?" He lifted a black eyebrow at her.

  "Meaning that you don't have to feel silly and guilty about that money. Anyway, you've spent it now, and very extravagantly I might add." Then her mouth curved into a quick, almost gleeful smile. "But it's a beautiful box of chocolates—I've never seen one like it before!"

  He watched her hug the big box to her and he said, with a touch of formality: "Then my extravagance is rewarded."

  She looked over the box at him in a rather startled way when he said that; he had spoken in a fashion almost foreign and as she met his dark eyes, looking out from under the tilted brim of his trilby, she remembered that he was half Spanish.

  Half in shadow, like the matadors out in Spain! Avery had said that.

  Impulsively she put out a hand and pressed his arm. "Thank you for the chocolates!" she said.

  "Thank you for my lesson in humility," he returned.

  "Oh—but I haven't tried to teach you a lesson." She bit her lip as she watched him. "I—I have too many faults myself to presume to do that. I'm not a good mixer, for a start, that's why I didn't make many friends while I was with George Downham's touring company. It's rather awful not being able to 'mix in', as they call it. People think you're stuck up. I—I'm not, though. I just like walking about on my own. If you go out with other girls, they want to keep going in and out of dress shops and chemists—"

  He laughed at that and took in her unpainted mouth, the white beret perched carelessly on one side of her head, and the dark blue raincoat that had seen better days. "Aren't you keen on dress shops and—er— chemists?" he drawled.

  "Not very," she admitted, smiling slightly. "It's rather awful of me, isn't it? Perhaps I should have been a boy."

  "A boy?" He grinned, and quite unexpectedly he flicked a finger against her cheek; teasingly, but without mockery. "D'you think boys have all the fun, then?" he asked.

  "Yes, I do think that. And when you're a boy—well, it doesn't matter so much about being on your own." She gave a little shiver she couldn't control. "I—I'm a coward too, you see. I told you I had a lot of faults."

  He was quiet for a moment, then he said, in a voice that was suddenly grave: "Are you afraid of me, by any chance?"

  Her eyes came quickly to his dark face and he went on: "Don't be afraid of me, Lygia. I promised Gran I'd look after you and I don't break the promises I make to her. I wouldn't dare!" The gravity went from his face and he grinned. "She'd soon rap me over the knuckles."

  A minute or so later their taxi slid into the kerb outside the railway station, and Robert clipped a lead on to Banker's collar. "I'm afraid it's the guard's van for you, old man," he said. "Are you going to behave yourself?"

  Banker proceeded to look rather sulky and his tail hung down in a dejected fashion while Lygia held his lead and waited for Robert to buy their train tickets. Robert laughed as they walked along the platform to the guard's van, and Banker sulked with his nose to the ground. "Oh, pack it up!" Robert ordered. "You had to go in when we came down and Woodsy will have a nice juicy bone all ready for you when we get home. Bone, Banker! D'you hear me?" He ruffled the golden coat and said to Lygia: "I phoned Mrs. Woods, my housekeeper, before I called in at the Tanagra for you. She'll have a meal al
l ready for us when we get to Hampstead. That's where I live."

  After that they had to get Banker settled in the guard's van, then Robert marched off to the bookstall for papers and books, and in the end the train was well on its way before Lygia found she was nervously plunging into the question of her lodgings. Surely Robert didn't intend her to stay at his home? She couldn't possibly agree to that!

  There was a knowing twinkle in Robert's eyes as he put her fears to rest. His housekeeper's sister, a Mrs. Perry, would be able to put her up. She had a boarding-house at St. Mark's Rise, not far from where he lived.

  "It'll be convenient," he said. "I shall be able to run you to the theatre in my car and save you the trouble of messing about with buses."

  The train ploughed on between fields misty with fine rain and Lygia turned to her book. It was an exciting mystery and it did grip her attention for a while; but her restless night at the Tanagra Hotel was beginning to tell on her now and the print of her book grew suddenly blurred as her head fell sideways against the plush of her train seat, and the rocking motion of the train sent her fast off to sleep.

  She didn't wake out of that sleep until a couple of hours later, when Robert roused her with tea and sausage rolls.

  She yawned and stretched her arms and smiled up at him. "I was tired," she said. "How long have I been asleep?"

  "A good two hours. You look tired, but your eyes are much brighter now. Here, take your tea. D'you like sausage rolls? I dived out after them when we halted at Exeter; there was a mobile canteen affair on the platform."

  "I'm dying for something to drink!" She gulped the strong railway tea appreciatively, and he sat beside her, the sausage rolls on a paper bag between them.

  "We're not terribly far from London now, are we?" she queried. "I hope poor Banker's all right."

  "He's probably sound asleep and dreaming of that big bone Woodsy will have ready for him. She spoils him abominably." He held his long hands round his cup of tea and watched Lygia select a sausage roll. "Lygia—there's something I want to talk to you about," he said abruptly.

  She glanced up questioningly, brushing crumbs of flaky sausage roll from her lap.

  "I've thought about this a lot, Lygia, watching you as you slept—it's about going to see Fenton Laye. You don't have to go if you don't really want to, you know. You don't have to feel compelled, that's what I'm trying to say. I know it's the kind of chance a lot of girls would leap at, regardless of their personal feelings, but if the thought of working with me is actively repugnant to you, please tell me so."

  She blinked at the floor, unable to fathom his reason for suddenly talking like this. She had thought everything settled, the disturbing business of sorting over the whys and wherefores done with. If she had her doubts and fears she didn't want to start dredging them up again; they had sunk a little out of sight since she had actually boarded the train out of Devon and slept away some of the miles that left Chase behind her.

  "Why are you saying all this?" she asked.

  "Why?" Something almost angry flickered in his eyes. "Do you really want me to say why?"

  "Of course." She looked bewildered.

  "You mentioned Avery's name in your sleep—that's why. And I'm not quite a fool, nor am I rock all the way through. I shouldn't have interfered yesterday, should I? I should have left you alone, but I wasn't absolutely sure, then, of how things stood between you and Avery—and you seemed so right for the part of Storm. Dammit," he set his cup in its saucer with a clatter, "what do we do now?"

  "Go to London," she said quietly.

  "You want to go—still?"

  "Yes." She smiled fleetingly. "We're almost there. You can't turn the train back, or the clock, but your chin is looking very pugnacious and I'm sure you'd like to try."

  "We can go back." He spoke roughly. "You've only to say."

  On a note of defiance, for his anger could always unnerve her, she said: "I want to go and see Fenton Laye. You're the one who's vacillating—not me!"

  "Then we'll go!" He smiled crookedly at her as he put the cigarette between his lips. He put a match to the cigarette, and as he blew the pungent smoke into the compartment his shoulders relaxed back against the plush of the train seat, and he found Lygia's left hand and briefly pressed her fingers. It was a strangely tender gesture, and the feel of his fingers lingered upon hers long after they had been withdrawn. She didn't ask herself why he had made the gesture, she just accepted it.

  It was still raining when the train reached London.

  The pavements glistened outside Paddington Station. Buses squelched past and lights blurred to odd shapes behind the wet windows of shops. A premature twilight seemed to have dropped down over the city as rain rolled over the rooftops like fine smoke.

  "My God—London!" Robert exclaimed. His fingers snapped imperatively as he spotted a taxi, and he quickly bundled Lygia and Banker into its warm, dry interior. He gave the driver his address and the taxi swept out into the hurrying confusion of traffic.

  The taxi swished along, and trees had begun to drip their rain-wet leaves into the formal front gardens of large Hampstead villas. Then all at once the taxi swept round a bend, and through its blurred windows Lygia saw that they were pulling into the half-moon drive of a russet-brick house with a roof like a witch's hat… at least, that was Lygia's first, quick impression.

  Tall trees flanked the drive, limes and mulberries and some magnificent cypresses, their fronded branches pointing to the sky. The long windows were set in curved bays and the front door sheltered under a quaint 'umbrella' porch, supported upon slender pillars.

  The fanlight over the cream-painted door was like a cobweb cut in half, its lights shimmering with coloured glass.

  Chase had been a perfect example of ancient, indestructible building, but the words which came to mind to describe this house, Lygia thought, were the words piquant and unconventional. It was as though Robert had decided long ago that he wished to bring the theatrical atmosphere home with him; to have it round him while he slept and ate, took his bath and dressed himself for work and play.

  Piquant and slightly unreal, set among its trees, with the rolling hills of Hampstead beyond it.

  "Well, Lygia, do you like my house?" Robert asked, as he turned a key in the lock and flung open the front door.

  "Yes," she said simply, and walked forward into the hall.

  CHAPTER TEN

  The hall of Robert's house literally took Lygia's breath away, and she stood there, gazing around her, showing a young, innocent delight in all she saw, and he smiled, almost with a shade of relief, as though he half thought of her as a child he hadn't quite known how to amuse.

  The floor of the hall was tiled with small black squares interspersed with white ones, some of which were decorated with painted flowers and others with tiny, meticulous coloured scenes from Greek mythology. It was a gay, extravagant floor, and Lygia saw now that it somehow prepared anyone coming into the house for the fact that the hall, a half-moon shape, had been turned into a library.

  The tiers of packed bookshelves rose almost to the ceiling, with various niches left in between for such things as decorative tanks of tropical fish, darting and lovely as dragonflies; some busts, surrealist in the main, of famous stage personalities; and several glass cases containing curios.

  The curios were entrancing trifles, almost museum pieces. There were Rockingham poodles and cats. A little tea-set decorated with Fable subjects. Tiny silver toys. And little dolls that had once been used to display Paris fashions in the eighteenth century.

  Afterwards they looked at seventeenth-century Castile glass. Some ruby and gold goblets which Robert said were Bohemian, and a delightful collection of German beakers, painted with pictures such as a ruined house with an owl in a tree; the god Pan playing his reed pipe by a river; and a young witch upon a broom-stick, with her black hair flowing back in the wind and her ragged red draperies falling away most immodestly from her shoulders.

  Lygia laugh
ed as she held the beaker in her hands. "Is this me?" she asked. "You called me a witch when you found me under the rowan tree on the moors, do you remember?"

  Robert examined the beaker over her shoulder. "H'm, I think there are certain familiar features," he drawled amusedly, and Lygia didn't dare to look at him as she returned the beaker to its case, arranging it so that the immodest little witch was no longer displaying the charms that are usually covered up.

  There was a white-painted, iron-balustraded staircase facing the front door, and Lygia was informed that this led up to the living-rooms and the bedrooms. The kitchen and its adjuncts were situated at the back of the house and they were reached by means of a little passage that led out from the hall. Banker had long since disappeared down this passage, in search of his bone no doubt, and now Robert strode across to the alcove and called out: "Oi, there, Woodsy! Where the devil are you? We want our dinner too, you know!"

  "Och, away with ye, impatient as a Dublin rent-collector ye are," grumbled an obviously Irish voice along the passage. A moment later a plump, silver-haired little woman came through the alcove, busily wiping her hands on her apron.

  Woodsy, Lygia thought. Irish as Maeve… and a sense of childish gladness moved through her and she gave Mrs. Woods a shy smile.

  "H'm—" The housekeeper stood there taking her in, the thin legs, the shabby raincoat and the flyaway beret, and each item provided Mrs. Woods with a definite shock. It certainly wasn't unusual for Robert Chase to walk into the house accompanied by a female companion, but never before had he walked in with anyone who wasn't redolent of Chanel perfume, lipsticked by Helena Rubinstein, and terrifyingly untouchable in exquisite jersey-wool, shimmering mink, and pearls.

  "Lygia, meet Mrs. Woods," Robert said. "She grumbles like the devil, but she cooks like an angel. I shouldn't keep her otherwise."

  "Look who's talkin' about the devil!" Mrs. Woods looked him up and down. " 'Tis mighty big competition he has in you, my lad."