Absent in the Spring

by Christie, writing as Mary Westmacott, Agatha

  He stopped. He leaned back in his chair. He passed his hand through his hair.

  Averil said, ‘You say all this to me. But how do I know –’ She broke off and began again, ‘How do I know –’

  ‘That it’s true? I can only say that it’s what I believe to be true and that it is what I know of my own knowledge. I’m speaking to you, Averil, as a man – as well as a father.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Averil. ‘I see …’

  Rodney said, and his voice was tired now and sounded muffled:

  ‘It’s up to you, Averil, to examine what I have told you, and to accept or reject it. I believe you have courage and clear-sightedness.’

  Averil went slowly towards the door. She stopped with her hand on the handle and looked back.

  Joan was startled by the sudden, bitter vindictiveness of her voice when she spoke.

  ‘Don’t imagine,’ she said, ‘that I shall ever be grateful to you, Father. I think – I think I hate you.’

  And she went out and closed the door behind her.

  Joan made a motion to go after her, but Rodney stopped her with a gesture.

  ‘Leave her alone,’ he said. ‘Leave her alone. Don’t you understand? We’ve won …’

  Chapter Eight

  And that, Joan reflected, had been the end of that.

  Averil had gone about, very silent, answering in monosyllables when she was spoken to, never spoke if she could help it. She had got thinner and paler.

  A month later she had expressed a wish to go to London and train in a secretarial school.

  Rodney had assented at once. Averil had left them with no pretence of distress over the parting.

  When she had come home on a visit three months later, she had been quite normal in manner and had seemed, from her account, to be having quite a gay life in London.

  Joan was relieved and expressed her relief to Rodney.

  ‘The whole thing has blown over completely. I never thought for a moment it was really serious – just one of those silly fancies girls get.’

  Rodney looked at her, smiled, and said, ‘Poor little Joan.’

  That phrase of his always annoyed her.

  ‘Well, you must admit it was worrying at the time.’

  ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘it was certainly worrying. But it wasn’t your worry, was it, Joan?’

  ‘What do you mean? Anything that affects the children upsets me far more than it upsets them.’

  ‘Does it?’ Rodney said. ‘I wonder …’

  It was true, Joan thought, that there was now a certain coldness between Averil and her father. They had always been such friends. Now there seemed little except formal politeness between them. On the other hand, Averil had been quite charming, in her cool, noncommittal way, to her mother.

  I expect, thought Joan, that she appreciates me better now that she doesn’t live at home.

  She herself certainly welcomed Averil’s visits. Averil’s cool, good sense seemed to ease things in the household.

  Barbara was now grown up and was proving difficult.

  Joan was increasingly distressed by her younger daughter’s choice of friends. She seemed to have no kind of discrimination. There were plenty of nice girls in Crayminster, but Barbara, out of sheer perversity, it seemed, would have none of them.

  ‘They’re so hideously dull, Mother.’

  ‘Nonsense, Barbara. I’m sure both Mary and Alison are charming girls, full of fun.’

  ‘They’re perfectly awful. They wear snoods.’

  Joan had stared, bewildered.

  ‘Really, Barbara – what do you mean? What can it matter?’

  ‘It does. It’s a kind of symbol.’

  ‘I think you’re talking nonsense, darling. There’s Pamela Grayling – her mother used to be a great friend of mine. Why not go about with her a bit more?’

  Oh, Mother, she’s hopelessly dreary, not amusing a bit.’

  ‘Well, I think they’re all very nice girls.’

  ‘Yes, nice and deadly. And what does it matter what you think?’

  ‘That’s very rude, Barbara.’

  ‘Well, what I mean is, you don’t have to go about with them. So it’s what I think matters. I like Betty Earle and Primrose Deane but you always stick your nose in the air when I bring them to tea.’

  ‘Well, frankly, darling, they are rather dreadful – Betty’s father runs those awful charabanc tours and simply hasn’t got an h.’

  ‘He’s got lots of money, though.’

  ‘Money isn’t everything, Barbara.’

  ‘The whole point is, Mother, can I choose my own friends, or can’t I?’

  ‘Of course you can, Barbara, but you must let yourself be guided by me. You are very young still.’

  ‘That means I can’t. It’s pretty sickening the way I can’t do a single thing I want to do! This place is an absolute prison house.’

  And it was just then that Rodney had come in and had said, ‘What’s a prison house?’

  Barbara cried out, ‘Home is!’

  And instead of taking the matter seriously Rodney had simply laughed and had said teasingly, ‘Poor little Barbara – treated like a black slave.’

  ‘Well, I am.’

  ‘Quite right, too. I approve of slavery for daughters.’

  And Barbara had hugged him and said breathlessly, ‘Darling Dads, you are so – so – ridiculous. I never can be annoyed with you for long.’

  Joan had begun indignantly, ‘I should hope not –’

  But Rodney was laughing, and when Barbara had gone out of the room, he had said, ‘Don’t take things too seriously, Joan. Young fillies have to kick up their heels a bit.’

  ‘But these awful friends of hers –’

  ‘A momentary phase of liking the flamboyant. It will pass. Don’t worry, Joan.’

  Very easy, Joan had thought indignantly, to say ‘Don’t worry.’ What would happen to them all if she didn’t worry? Rodney was far too easy going, and he couldn’t possibly understand a mother’s feelings.

  Yet trying as Barbara’s choice of girl friends had been, it was as nothing to the anxiety occasioned by the men she seemed to like.

  George Harmon and that very objectionable young Wilmore – not only a member of the rival solicitor’s firm (a firm that undertook the more dubious legal business of the town) but a young man who drank too much, talked too loudly, and was too fond of the race track. It was with young Wilmore that Barbara had disappeared from the Town Hall on the night of the Christmas Charity Dance, and had reappeared five dances later, sending a guilty but defiant glance towards where her mother was sitting.

  They had been sitting out, it seemed, on the roof – a thing that only fast girls did, so Joan told Barbara, and it had distressed her very much.

  ‘Don’t be so Edwardian, Mother. It’s absurd.’

  ‘I’m not at all Edwardian. And let me tell you, Barbara, a lot of the old ideas about chaperonage are coming back into favour. Girls don’t go about with young men as they did ten years ago.’

  ‘Really, Mother, anyone would think I was going off week-ending with Tom Wilmore.’

  ‘Don’t talk like that, Barbara, I won’t have it. And I heard you were seen in the Dog and Duck with George Harmon.’

  ‘Oh, we were just doing a pub crawl.’

  ‘Well, you’re far too young to do anything of the kind. I don’t like the way girls drink spirits nowadays.’

  ‘I was only having beer. Actually we were playing darts.’

  ‘Well, I don’t like it, Barbara. And what’s more I won’t have it. I don’t like George Harmon or Tom Wilmore and I won’t have them in the house any more, do you understand?’

  ‘O.K., Mother, it’s your house.’

  ‘Anyway I don’t see what you like in them.’

  Barbara shrugged her shoulders. ‘Oh, I don’t know. They’re exciting.’

  ‘Well, I won’t have them asked to the house, do you hear?’

  After that Joan had been annoyed wh
en Rodney brought young Harmon home to Sunday supper one night. It was, she felt, so weak of Rodney. She herself put on her most glacial manner, and the young man seemed suitably abashed, in spite of the friendly way Rodney talked to him, and the pains he took to put him at his ease. George Harmon alternately talked too loud, or mumbled, boasted and then became apologetic.

  Later that night, Joan took Rodney to task with some sharpness.

  ‘Surely you must realize I’d told Barbara I wouldn’t have him here?’

  ‘I knew, Joan, but that’s a mistake. Barbara has very little judgment. She takes people at their own valuation. She doesn’t know the shoddy from the real. Seeing people against an alien background, she doesn’t know where she is. That’s why she needs to see people against her own background. She’s been thinking of young Harmon as a dangerous and dashing figure, not just a foolish and boastful young man who drinks too much and has never done a proper day’s work in his life.’

  ‘I could have told her that!’

  Rodney smiled.

  ‘Oh, Joan, dear, nothing that you and I say is going to impress the younger generation.’

  The truth of that was made plain to Joan when Averil came down on one of her brief visits.

  This time it was Tom Wilmore who was being entertained. Against Averil’s cool, critical distaste, Tom did not show to advantage.

  Afterwards Joan caught a snatch of conversation between the sisters.

  ‘You don’t like him, Averil?’

  And Averil, hunching disdainful shoulders had replied crisply, ‘I think he’s dreadful. Your taste in men, Barbara, is really too awful.’

  Thereafter, Wilmore had disappeared from the scene, and the fickle Barbara had murmured one day, ‘Tom Wilmore? Oh, but he’s dreadful.’ With complete and wide-eyed conviction.

  Joan set herself to have tennis parties and ask people to the house, but Barbara refused stoutly to co-operate.

  ‘Don’t fuss so, Mother. You’re always wanting to ask people. I hate having people, and you always will ask such terrible duds.’

  Offended, Joan said sharply that she washed her hands of Barbara’s amusement. ‘I’m sure I don’t know what you want!’

  ‘I just want to be let alone.’

  Barbara was really a most difficult child, Joan said sharply to Rodney. Rodney agreed, a little frown between his eyes.

  ‘If she would only just say what she wants,’ Joan continued.

  ‘She doesn’t know herself. She’s very young, Joan.’

  ‘That’s just why she needs to have things decided for her.’

  ‘No, my dear – she’s got to find her own feet. Just let her be – let her bring her friends here if she wants to, but don’t organize things. That’s what seems to antagonize the young.’

  So like a man, Joan thought with some exasperation. All for leaving things alone and being vague. Poor, dear Rodney, he always had been rather vague, now she came to think of it. It was she who had to be the practical one! And yet everyone said that he was such a shrewd lawyer.

  Joan remembered an evening when Rodney had read from the local paper an announcement of George Harmon’s marriage to Primrose Deane and had added with a teasing smile:

  ‘An old flame of yours, eh, Babs?’

  Barbara had laughed with considerable amusement.

  ‘I know. I was awfully keen on him. He really is pretty dreadful, isn’t he? I mean, he really is.’

  ‘I always thought him a most unprepossessing young man. I couldn’t imagine what you saw in him.’

  ‘No more can I now.’ Barbara at eighteen spoke detachedly of the follies of seventeen. ‘But really, you know, Dads, I did think I was in love with him. I thought Mother would try to part us, and then I was going to run away with him, and if you or Mother stopped us, then I made up my mind I should put my head in the gas oven and kill myself.’

  ‘Quite the Juliet touch!’

  With a shade of disapproval, Barbara said, ‘I meant it, Daddy. After all, if you can’t bear a thing, you just have to kill yourself.’

  And Joan, unable to bear keeping silent any longer, broke in sharply.

  ‘Don’t say such wicked things, Barbara. You don’t know what you’re talking about!’

  ‘I forgot you were there, Mother. Of course, you wouldn’t ever do a thing like that. You’d always be calm and sensible, whatever happened.’

  ‘I should hope so indeed.’

  Joan kept her temper with a little difficulty. She said to Rodney when Barbara had left the room:

  ‘You shouldn’t encourage the child in such nonsense.’

  ‘Oh, she might as well talk it out of her system.’

  ‘Of course, she’d never really do any of these dreadful things she talks about.’

  Rodney was silent and Joan looked at him in surprise.

  ‘Surely you don’t think –’

  ‘No, no, not really. Not when she’s older, when she’s got her balance. But Barbara is very unstable emotionally, Joan, we might as well face it.’

  ‘It’s all so ridiculous!’

  ‘Yes, to us – who have a sense of proportion. But not to her. She’s always in deadly earnest. She can’t see beyond the mood of the moment. She has no detachment and no humour. Sexually, she is precocious –’

  ‘Really, Rodney! You make things sound like – like one of those horrid cases in the police court.’

  ‘Horrid cases in the police court concern living human beings, remember.’

  ‘Yes, but nicely brought up girls like Barbara don’t –’

  ‘Don’t what, Joan?’

  ‘Must we talk like this?’

  Rodney sighed.

  ‘No. No, of course not. But I wish, yes, I really do wish that Barbara could meet some decent young fellow and fall properly in love with him.’

  And after that it had really seemed like an answer to prayer, when young William Wray had come home from Iraq to stay with his aunt, Lady Herriot.

  Joan had seen him first one day about a week after his arrival. He had been ushered into the drawing-room one afternoon when Barbara was out. Joan had looked up surprised from her writing table and had seen a tall, sturdily built young man with a jutting out chin, a very pink face, and a pair of steady blue eyes.

  Blushing still pinker, Bill Wray had mumbled to his collar that he was Lady Herriot’s nephew and that he had called – er – to return Miss Scudamore’s racket which she had – er – left behind the other day.

  Joan pulled her wits together and greeted him graciously.

  Barbara was so careless, she said. Left her things all over the place. Barbara was out at the moment, but probably she would be back before long. Mr Wray must stay and have some tea.

  Mr Wray was quite willing, it seemed, so Joan rang the bell for tea, and inquired after Mr Wray’s aunt.

  Lady Herriot’s health occupied about five minutes, and then conversation began to halt a little. Mr Wray was not very helpful. He remained very pink in the face and sat very bolt upright and had a vague look of suffering some internal agony. Luckily tea came and made a diversion.

  Joan was still prattling kindly, but with a slight sense of effort when Rodney, much to her relief, returned a little earlier than usual from the office. Rodney was very helpful. He talked of Iraq, drew the boy out with some simple questions, and presently some of Bill Wray’s agonized stiffness began to relax. Soon he was talking almost easily. Presently Rodney took him off to his study. It was nearly seven o’clock when Bill, still it seemed reluctantly, took his departure.

  ‘Nice lad,’ said Rodney.

  ‘Yes, quite. Rather shy.’

  ‘Decidedly.’ Rodney seemed amused. ‘But I don’t think he’s usually quite so diffident.’

  ‘What a frightfully long time he stayed!’

  ‘Over two hours.’

  ‘You must be terribly tired, Rodney.’

  ‘Oh no, I enjoyed it. He’s got a very good headpiece, that boy, and rather an unusual outlook on things. The
philosophic bent of mind. He’s got character as well as brains. Yes, I liked him.’

  ‘He must have liked you – to stay talking as long as he did.’

  Rodney’s look of amusement returned.

  ‘Oh, he wasn’t staying to talk to me. He was hoping for Barbara’s return. Come, Joan, don’t you know love when you see it? The poor fellow was stiff with embarrassment. That’s why he was as red as a beetroot. It must have taken a great effort for him to nerve himself to come here – and when he did, no glimpse of his lady. Yes, one of those cases of love at first sight.’

  Presently when Barbara came hurrying into the house, just in time for dinner, Joan said:

  ‘One of your young men has been here, Barbara, Lady Herriot’s nephew. He brought back your racket.’

  ‘Oh, Bill Wray? So he did find it? It seemed to have disappeared completely the other evening.’

  ‘He was here some time,’ said Joan.

  ‘Pity I missed him. I went to the pictures with the Crabbes. A frightfully stupid film. Did you get awfully bored with Bill?’

  ‘No,’ said Rodney. I liked him. We talked Near Eastern politics. You’d have been bored, I expect.’

  ‘I like to hear about queer parts of the world. I’d love to travel. I get so fed up always staying in Crayminster. At any rate, Bill is different.’

  ‘You can always train for a job,’ suggested Rodney.

  ‘Oh, a job!’ Barbara wrinkled up her nose. ‘You know, Dads, I’m an idle devil. I don’t like work.’

  ‘No more do most people, I suspect,’ said Rodney.

  Barbara rushed at him and hugged him.

  ‘You work much too hard. I’ve always thought so. It’s a shame!’

  Then, releasing her hold, she said, ‘I’ll give Bill a ring. He said something about going to the point to point over at Marsden …’

  Rodney stood looking after her as she walked away towards the telephone at the back of the hall. It was an odd look, questioning, uncertain.

  He had liked Bill Wray, yes, undoubtedly he had liked Bill from the first. Why, then, had he looked so worried, so harassed, when Barbara had burst in and announced that she and Bill were engaged and they meant to be married at once so that she could go back to Baghdad with him?

  Bill was young, well connected, with money of his own, and good prospects. Why then, did Rodney demur, and suggest a longer engagement? Why did he go about frowning, looking uncertain and perplexed?