‘She’s here now. She’s upstairs,’ said Lindy. ‘She insisted on “getting straight”, as she calls it, before she comes down. She’s different from me. I believe in having fun first, and getting straight afterwards.’ She turned to Geoffrey. ‘Don’t you agree, Geoff? If you take care of the pleasures, the pains will take care of themselves!’
She keeps a notebook of things like that, and twists them into the conversation by main force, thought Rosamund spitefully; and knew in that second that she would have to keep her spite to herself, even after the evening was over. For Geoffrey was laughing appreciatively; and so Rosamund laughed too, determined to be amused if it killed her.
And after all, it didn’t kill her. On the contrary, her spirits rose, and her simulated gaiety became genuine as she helped Lindy to slice up salami and cucumbers and hard boiled eggs, and Geoffrey plied them both with tastes of the white wine which Lindy had asked him to open—with a pair of scissors instead of a corkscrew, which of course added to the fun.
‘It’ll all be finished before we ever start eating,’ she remarked with satisfaction, peering into her empty glass. ‘But never mind. We’ll put the empty bottle on the table surrounded by a wreath of poppies as a memento. Poor Eileen—missing it all. But she won’t mind. She never drinks anyway. Where has she got to, I wonder?’
‘Well, I suppose, if she’s unpacking, it’s bound to take a good while,’ said Rosamund, and was suddenly terrified lest the remark sounded prim. As if she was the sort of person who was on the side of people who unpacked before they started drinking white wine and scattering flowers around. ‘Should we help her, or something?’ she added—realised that this sounded primmer still, so laughed hastily, and looked round for something gay to do, quickly; like fixing a poppy behind her ear or tossing back the last of the wine.
But as it happened she didn’t need to do either, for at that moment a kind of irritable, tentative thumping interrupted them from the direction of the door. Lindy stared for a second, then clapped her hand to her mouth in mock horror.
‘There! Look what I’ve done! Locked out my own sister—Geoff, why didn’t you tell me that the door wouldn’t open if I put the record-player behind there?—I thought men were supposed to understand that sort of thing. Eileen!’—she raised her voice—‘Stop battering your way in like that—you’ll smash everything. Here’s a kind gentleman will clear a path for you——’
Geoffrey was already on his feet and over by the door, shifting impediments, upsetting candles, and eventually creating an aperture wide enough for the entry of a neat, slim girl with high-piled hair and wide, anxious eyes.
For a moment Rosamund was taken aback. She had somehow been led to imagine an older sister for Lindy. The broken marriage—the ‘getting straight’—the non-drinking—all had combined to give an impression of down-trodden middle age. But this girl was not only younger than Lindy, she was also—at first sight, at least—a good deal prettier, with her fair complexion and masses of soft, pale hair.
‘Come on, you silly girl!’ cried Lindy, as her sister picked her way with perhaps unnecessary caution through the medley of deceptively-lit objects that separated them. ‘Come and have a drink. You must be worn out. Exhausted. You look like a ghost already. Why do you do it?’
Oddly, even as her sister spoke, the girl did begin to look rather like a ghost, Rosamund thought. You could see now that her pretty, fair skin was a little too pale, her large eyes lacking in sparkle. She seemed out of place, too—a creature out of its element, drowning, unable to breathe properly in Lindy’s colourful, buoyant environment.
‘Have a drink,’ Lindy repeated, sloshing the remains of the wine into a tumbler and handing it to her sister.
Rosamund was surprised. Hadn’t Lindy just said that her sister didn’t drink? Had she forgotten? Or was she just hoping to tempt her, for this once?
‘No—no thanks, Lindy. You know I don’t.’ The girl pushed the tumbler away and glanced enquiringly at the visitors. ‘I suppose …?’
‘Yes, yes, I should have introduced you, I know,’ said Lindy impatiently. ‘But it seems so silly, when you all know exactly who each other are. I’ve told you all about them, you know I have, Eileen, and I’ve told them all about you. Well, nearly all, anyway. Oh, well…. Eileen—this is Rosamund Fielding. Rosamund—this is Eileen Forbes…. O.K.? I needn’t go through it with you, too, need I, Geoff?’
She laughed up at him in the candle-light, and he smiled down at her. ‘That’s all right,’ he said. ‘I’ll just guess. This must be—let me see—either your sister Eileen, or else your sister Eileen?’
‘Wrong both times! This is my sister Eileen!’ Lindy laughed, a high, excited sound. ‘But you’re on the right track, you know, Geoff, there are several of her. Only one of them is here in this room with us. One is still upstairs, grimly sorting things, and will go on doing so all night long. Another is—ah, that’s another story, isn’t it, Eileen?’
She threw a merry, challenging glance sideways to her sister; but the girl did not respond. It was like throwing something to bounce off a cushion, you’d know it wasn’t going to bounce, suddenly thought Rosamund. Just as Lindy must have known that Eileen was going to refuse the glass of wine and fail to respond to her banter. I think she’s rather unkind, Rosamund’s thoughts raced gleefully on, fastening with inexplicable zest onto this possible flaw in Lindy’s character; she likes showing up her sister as much less vivacious than herself.
‘Well, let’s eat, anyway,’ cried Lindy gaily, settling herself cross-legged in front of the improvised table—an upturned drawer covered with a red-and-white checked cloth. ‘Who’d like Eileen’s glass of wine? Who’d like to drink her health for her? Since she won’t drink it herself?’ She waved the glass perilously this way and that for a moment, then set it in the middle of the table. Carefully she arranged four candles round it, in a solemn square.
‘There. It can be for the prize. The prize for the cleverest, the wittiest, the best at finishing the potato salad——’
She was laughing. Everyone was laughing. It was only a joke, after all. Why should Rosamund fancy she saw cruelty in the clear golden liquid thus floodlit in front of them: cruelty flickering cold and sharp among the candle flames? Was it only a figment of a censorious imagination, or had the rejected drink been set up as a laughing-stock, deliberately to highlight Eileen’s lack of spirit, her wet-blanketing sobriety?
I mustn’t think such things! Rosamund scolded herself, quite shocked at the headlong injustice of her imaginings, for which there was really no foundation whatever. Lindy was only acting as a good hostess—trying to make the party go. You had to say silly things when people really hardly knew each other—Rosamund should be helping her—backing her up, not sitting here criticising. Anyway, now here was Geoffrey telling one of his funny stories, telling it very well, too; even Rosamund, who had heard it a dozen times before, found herself convulsed with laughter. The meal continued happily enough, everyone spearing up food haphazard with their forks. Eileen, too, seemed to be warming a little to the situation, smiling more and more often, and allowing herself to be drawn out a little by Geoffrey’s friendly questioning. She was just beginning, a little tentatively, to describe her job in the book department of a large store, when Lindy scrambled to a kneeling position, reached for the much-publicised tumbler of wine, and raised it high above her head.
‘It is my great pleasure,’ she declaimed. ‘To announce the winner of our all-star wit and brilliance competition. Our panel of distinguished judges have been debating the matter most earnestly for the last twenty-five minutes, and have come to the unanimous decision that this year’s title of Miss Twenty-two Woodchurch Avenue shall be awarded to Mrs Eileen Forbes….’ Once again the glass was deposited with ceremony in front of the unfortunate girl, who seemed visibly to flinch. Rosamund caught her breath: once more Eileen was to be shown up as a spoil-sport; and ridiculous as well, for no one could have failed to notice that in wit and brilliance sh
e had lagged far behind her sister.
Rosamund glanced sideways at Geoffrey to see if he, too, saw unkindness in Lindy’s gesture. But no. He was beaming kindly, unsuspiciously on both sisters, and he joined in warmly and good-humouredly when Lindy burst into frenetic clapping at the end of her speech.
Was it all meant kindly, just a bit of fun? Rosamund could not tell. For Eileen’s sake, she tried to lead the conversation back to the subject of the book department.
‘It must be very interesting, helping people to choose books,’ she began, addressing herself to the discomfited girl; but Lindy interrupted:
‘Yes, it suits Eileen down to the ground!’ she declared. ‘A good, steady, respectable job, with a pension at the end of it—she’s the Careers Mistress’ Dream, our Eileen! I’m not, I’m afraid, I’m more like her Nightmare! Security has never appealed to me, somehow, and as for the idea of a pension …!’
Geoffrey laughed at the horror she put into the word.
‘So what do you do, then?’ he enquired. ‘Do you always extract an assurance from prospective employers that the job is not pensionable, and that they will sack you without warning almost at once?’
‘More or less! How well you understand me, Geoff!’ Lindy seemed delighted. ‘Actually, I’m doing something even madder than that at the moment—I’m trying freelance fabric-printing. Terribly precarious, as you can imagine. It’s a good thing one of us is doing something sensible and steady, isn’t it?’
She shot an approving glance at Eileen, and try as she would, Rosamund could not be sure that she saw traces of scorn or pity in it. Was she misjudging Lindy after all?
She was filled by the same doubts all over again when, later on, Lindy unearthed a guitar from the clutter and sat by the open french window, gently plucking chords under the cloudy summer night. Her fingers wandered for a while, erratically, among her rich mental repertoire of assorted tunes, and finally settled for ‘Oh Careless Love’, which she began to sing softly as she played.
‘Come on, join in, folks!’ she urged, after the first verse; and first Geoffrey and then Rosamund did so. But not Eileen. Was she sulking, or disapproving, or was she just hopeless at singing? If she was, then Lindy would know it—once more Eileen was to appear at a disadvantage.
Lindy had a lovely voice. It rose into the summer darkness clear and true as a nightingale; or was it, rather, like a bird of prey?
CHAPTER IV
That evening was the beginning; and at that stage Rosamund wasn’t being a jealous wife at all. Nothing had happened, yet, to make her think of Lindy as a rival, and the empty, frustrated feelings that assailed her as they returned home, long after midnight, had nothing to do with jealousy. It was just that she felt done out of the after-party gossip that she and Geoffrey usually enjoyed as they went to bed, laughing about this or that person or incident, comparing notes about the pleasure or boredom they had derived from the evening.
But Rosamund learned tonight that comparing notes is only a pleasure if your notes have been pretty well identical with those of the other person. It wasn’t comparing at all, really; it was just a companionable gloating over sameness, and all the more enjoyable for that. What fun they could have been having tonight, for instance, talking over Lindy’s affectations—her flamboyance—her veiled spite towards her sister—if only Geoffrey had seen her behaviour in this light too. But his innocent delight in the whole evening’s entertainment was like a bright, blank wall—it offered no door, no chink, through which any sort of conversation could start. Or so it seemed to Rosamund. It wasn’t conversation to exchange remarks like: ‘Yes, wasn’t it marvellous?’ or ‘Yes, she must be a very vital sort of person’ or ‘Yes, it will be fun having people like that next door instead of the dreary old Sowerbys.’
It had been more fun, actually, having the Sowerbys, Rosamund thought rebelliously. The gloomy, disagreeable Sowerbys, with their eternal complaining and bickering, and their neat rows of moribund seedlings put in every spring by Mr Sowerby against the advice of Mrs Sowerby. Almost any evening it had been possible to start an amusing conversation with: ‘Do you know what the Sowerbys are rowing about now?’—and thus, amid laughter, to savour the success and happiness of their own marriage in contrast to this miserable pair.
As she lay wide awake that first night, staring through the window at the waning summer moon, Rosamund felt a terrible nostalgic longing for the Sowerbys. For Mr Sowerby’s boots, which he was for ever failing to wipe when he came in from the garden; for Mrs Sowerby’s relations, whom he was for ever failing to be polite to…. What fun it had all been! Like a long, catastrophic serial story, suddenly cut off in its prime to make way for one of those dreadful happy stories, where nobody has any proper troubles, and there is even a Pekinese with a red bow…. Rosamund could see the creature as the centre-piece of a full-page illustration, clutched in the arms of a vapid, jolly girl….
‘The sister was nice, too,’ came Geoffrey’s voice suddenly—she had thought he was asleep. ‘Much quieter, of course, than Lindy. More reserved. But nice.’
‘Yes, they’re both very nice,’ agreed Rosamund, like a parrot, and was glad that Geoffrey couldn’t see her face. I hate nice people, she was thinking crossly. I like nasty people. Interesting, disagreeable, nasty people that you can really talk about—laugh about. People, she might have added who make me feel superior; but this was no time of night to be embarking on such a disturbing train of thought; so Rosamund closed her eyes against the waning radiance of the night, and fell asleep.
It was Monday morning when she saw Lindy again; a still, golden, heat-wave morning, perfect for the washing, or for writing letters in the garden, or mending, or indeed for just lying there, staring up through green branches at the hot, still sky. And this last was exactly what Lindy was doing. As soon as she saw Rosamund across the fence, adjusting her clothes line, she called out: ‘Rosie! You can’t work on a day like this! Nobody could! It shouldn’t be allowed. Come over and have an iced coffee at once!’
Her voice was friendly, genuinely welcoming. She really does like me! thought Rosamund, in some surprise—she had somehow assumed that her secret feelings of hostility the other night must be mutual. So she set down her basket of washing, forgot her momentary annoyance at being called ‘Rosie’, and stepped over the low fence into the next garden.
The iced coffee was delicious, in long thin glasses, purplish dark, with great fluffy balls of cream bobbing tantalisingly to the surface as you stirred. I would never go to all this trouble just for the woman next door, thought Rosamund remorsefully; so to make amends for this, as well as for all her unkind thoughts of the last forty-eight hours, she exerted herself to be appreciative.
Besides, she was curious. She wanted to know all about these two sisters—their lives, their troubles, their past, their future. Almost instinctively, she set herself to be just as charming and friendly as is necessary to have another soul lay its secrets at your feet—and was astonished at how quickly and easily it worked. Could it be that Lindy was doing exactly the same thing?
‘Poor Eileen’s a funny girl, in some ways,’ explained Lindy, slowly stirring her coffee, now cloudy with dissolving cream. ‘She’s very pretty and charming and all that. And clever, too. Eileen’s much cleverer than I am really, you know. Always did better at school—that sort of thing. You’d think, wouldn’t you, that with all that she’d be all set for a really happy and successful life.’
‘And isn’t she?’ asked Rosamund, unashamedly inquisitive now that she had Lindy safely launched on her confidences.
‘No. It’s a funny thing, but whatever she embarks on, it somehow seems to—well—fizzle out. It’s as if she lacked the—what is it? The energy?—zest?—whatever it is that gets one’s life swinging along on its own momentum. Everything that happens to her, she seems to have to make it happen, laboriously. And then, to keep it going, she has to work at it all the time. Her marriage was like that, you know. It was dreadful to watch her toiling away at i
t!’
‘What happened, then?’ asked Rosamund comfortably, sure, now, that the story would go on whether she prompted or not. ‘I know you told me it broke up …?’
‘Yes. And he was a nice boy, too. It was a shame.’ Lindy stared into the dazzle of greens and golds in front of her, slowly twirling the glass in her fingers. ‘If I had a husband’—she suddenly went off at a tangent—‘If I had a husband, and had to go out to work as well, I’d do everything in my power to make him feel not guilty about it, wouldn’t you? For instance, I’d somehow manage to get home in time to have everything looking nice for him, and myself all ready to welcome him. Not fussing over the cooking and the housework, but relaxed—at leisure—the way a man likes to find his wife. As if she’d been doing nothing all day but making herself beautiful for him!’
‘Well—it’s a pretty tall order!’ Rosamund couldn’t help protesting. ‘I mean—with a full time job! Especially for a girl as young as your sister must have been when she got married.’
‘Oh, Eileen’s not as young as all that!’ Lindy assured her, rather sharply. ‘That childlike manner of hers is deceptive. She was old enough, anyway—or so I should have thought—to have realised what it was she was doing to her marriage. Evening after evening Basil would come in to find his wife scuttling madly about, making beds, peeling potatoes, cleaning grates—for all the world as if she was doing it on purpose to make him feel guilty. That’s the one fatal thing for any woman—to make a man feel guilty. It kills everything. But Eileen just couldn’t see it.’
‘She may have seen it all right,’ objected Rosamund, rather hotly. ‘But what on earth could she do? I mean—I’ve never had to work full time myself since I’ve been married, but I’m quite sure it must be terribly hard work. You’d just be compelled to do housework all the evening—and if your husband wouldn’t help, then he’d just have to feel guilty, I’d say—and serve him right! I think he should help, in a case like that.’
The Jealous One Page 3
