Ann said quickly, soothingly:
‘Of course not. It’s all right, darling.’ To Richard she said sharply: ‘What have you been saying to her?’
‘Making a perfectly common-sense suggestion.’
‘He hates me, and he’ll make you hate me.’
Sarah was sobbing wildly now. She was a hysterical child. Ann said quickly and soothingly:
‘No, no, Sarah, don’t be absurd.’
She made a sign to Richard and said: ‘We’ll talk about it some other time.’
‘No, we won’t.’ Richard stuck his chin out. ‘We’ll talk about it here and now. We’ve got to get matters straight.’
‘Oh, please.’ Ann moved forward, her hand to her head. She sat down on the sofa.
‘No good getting out of it by having a headache, Ann! The question is, do I come first with you or does Sarah?’
‘That’s not the question.’
‘I say it is! All this has got to be settled once for all. I can’t stand much more.’
The loud tones of Richard’s voice went through Ann’s head setting every twingeing nerve on fire in a flurry of pain. She had had a difficult committee meeting, had come home tired out, and now she felt that her life as at present lived was quite unendurable.
She said faintly: ‘I can’t talk to you now, Richard. I really can’t. I just can’t stand any more.’
‘I tell you it’s got to be settled. Either Sarah gets out of here, or I do.’
A faint quiver ran through Sarah’s body. She lifted her chin, staring at Richard.
‘My plan’s a perfectly sensible one,’ said Richard. ‘I’ve outlined it to Sarah. She didn’t seem to have much against it until you came in.’
‘I won’t go,’ said Sarah.
‘My good girl, you can come and see your mother whenever you want to, can’t you?’
Sarah turned passionately to Ann, flinging herself down beside her.
‘Mother, Mother, you won’t turn me out? You won’t, will you? You’re my mother.’
A flush rose in Ann’s face. She said with sudden firmness:
‘I shall not ask my only daughter to leave her home unless she wants to do so.’
Richard shouted: ‘She would want to – if it weren’t to spite me.’
‘That’s the sort of thing you would think!’ Sarah spat at him.
‘Hold your tongue,’ shouted Richard.
Ann raised her hands to her head.
‘I can’t bear this,’ she said, ‘I’m warning you both, I can’t bear it …’
Sarah cried appealingly:
‘Mother …’
Richard turned on Ann angrily:
‘It’s no use, Ann. You and your headaches! You’ve got to choose, damn it all.’
‘Mother!’ Sarah was really beside herself now. She clung to Ann like a frightened child. ‘Don’t let him turn you against me. Mother … don’t let him …’
Ann, her hands still clutching her head, said: ‘I can’t bear any more. You’d better go, Richard.’
‘What?’ He stared at her.
‘Please go. Forget me … It’s no use …’
Again anger enveloped him. He said grimly:
‘Do you realize what you’re saying?’
Ann said distractedly: ‘I must have peace … I can’t go on …’
Sarah whispered again: ‘Mother …’
‘Ann …’ Richard’s voice was full of incredulous pain.
Ann cried desperately: ‘It’s no use … it’s no use, Richard.’
Sarah turned on him furiously and childishly:
‘Go away,’ she said, ‘we don’t want you, do you hear? We don’t want you …’
There was a triumph in her face that would have been ugly if it had not been so childish.
He paid no attention to her. He was looking at Ann.
He said very quietly: ‘Do you mean this? I shan’t – come back.’
In an exhausted voice Ann said:
‘I know … It just – can’t be, Richard. Good-bye …’
He walked slowly out of the room.
Sarah cried: ‘Darling’ and buried her head on her mother’s lap.
Mechanically, Ann’s hand stroked her daughter’s head, but her eyes were on the door through which Richard had just gone out.
A moment later she heard the sound of the front door closing with a decisive bang.
She felt the same coldness she had felt that day at Victoria Station, together with a great desolation …
Richard was walking down the stairs now, out into the courtyard and away down the street …
Walking out of her life …
Book Two
Chapter One
1
Laura Whitstable looked affectionately through the windows of the Airways bus at the familiar streets of London. She had been away from London a long time, serving on a Royal Commission which had entailed an interesting and prolonged tour round the globe. The final sessions in the United States had been strenuous. Dame Laura had lectured and presided and lunched and dined, and had found difficulty in finding time to see her own personal friends.
Well, it was over now. She was home again, with a suitcase filled with notes and statistics and relevant papers, and with the prospect of a good deal more strenuous work ahead of her preparing for publication.
She was a woman of great vitality and enormous physical toughness. The prospect of work was always more alluring to her than the prospect of leisure, but unlike many people, she did not pride herself on the fact, and would sometimes disarmingly admit that the preference might be regarded as a weakness rather than a virtue. For work, she would say, was one of the chief avenues by which one escapes from oneself. And to live with oneself, without subterfuge, and in humility and content, was to attain the only true harmony of life.
Laura Whitstable was a woman who concentrated on one thing at a time. She had never been given to writing long newsy letters to friends. When she was absent, she was absent – in thought as well as in body.
She did conscientiously send highly-coloured picture postcards to her domestic staff, who would have been affronted if she had not done so. But her friends and intimates were aware that the first they would hear of Laura was a deep gruff voice on the telephone announcing that she was back again.
It was good to be home, Laura thought, a little later, as she looked round her comfortable mannish sitting-room and listened with half an ear to Bassett’s melancholy unimpassioned catalogue of small domestic disasters that had occurred in her absence.
She dismissed Bassett with a final ‘Quite right to tell me’ and sank into the large, shabby leather-covered armchair. Letters and periodicals were heaped on a side table, but she did not bother about them. Everything urgent had been dealt with by her efficient secretary.
She lit a cigar and leant back in the chair, her eyes half closed.
This was the end of one period, the beginning of another …
She relaxed, letting the engine of her brain slow down and change over to the new rhythm. Her fellow commissioners – the problems that had arisen – speculations – points of view – American personalities – her American friends … gently, inexorably, they all receded, became shadowy …
London, the people she must see, the bigwigs whom she would bully, the Ministries to which she proposed to make herself a nuisance, the practical measures that she intended to take – the reports she must write … it all came clearly into her mind. The future campaign, the gruelling daily tasks …
But before that there was an interregnum, a settling in again. Personal relationships and pleasures. Her own personal friends to see – a revived interest in their troubles and joys. A revisiting of her favourite haunts – all the hundred and one pleasures of her intimate private life. Presents that she had brought home with her to be bestowed … Her rugged face softened and she smiled. Names floated into her mind. Charlotte – young David – Geraldine and her children – old Walter Emlyn – A
nn and Sarah – Professor Parkes …
What had happened to them all since she had been away?
She would go down to see Geraldine in Sussex – the day after tomorrow if that was convenient. She reached out for the telephone, got through, fixed a day and a time. Then she rang old Professor Parkes. Blind and almost stone deaf, he nevertheless seemed to be in the best of health and spirits and eager for a real furious controversy with his old friend Laura.
The next number she rang was that of Ann Prentice.
It was Edith who answered.
‘Well, this is a surprise, ma’am. A long time it’s been. Read a piece about you in the paper, I did, not above a month or two ago. No, I’m sorry, Mrs Prentice is out. Nearly always out in the evening she is, nowadays. Yes, Miss Sarah’s out, too. Yes, ma’am, I’ll tell Mrs Prentice you rang and that you’re back again.’
Restraining a desire to remark that it would have been harder for her to ring up if she hadn’t been back again, Laura Whitstable rang off, and proceeded to dial another number.
During the ensuing conversations and the making of arrangements to meet, Laura Whitstable relegated to the back of her mind some small point which she promised herself to examine later.
It was not until she was in bed that her analytical mind questioned why something that Edith had said had surprised her. It was a moment or two before it came back to her, but at last she pinned it down. Edith had said that Ann was out and that she nearly always was out in the evenings, nowadays.
Laura frowned because it seemed to her that Ann must have changed very much in her habits. Sarah, naturally, might be supposed to go racketing around every evening of her life. Girls did. But Ann was the quiet type – an occasional dinner engagement – a cinema now and then – or a play – but not a nightly routine.
Lying in bed Laura Whitstable thought about Ann Prentice for some time …
2
It was a fortnight later that Dame Laura rang the bell of Ann Prentice’s flat.
Edith opened the door, and her sour face changed ever so slightly, indicating that she was pleased.
She stood aside as Dame Laura entered.
‘Mrs Prentice is just dressing to go out,’ she said. ‘But I know she’ll want to see you.’
She ushered Dame Laura into the sitting-room and her footsteps stumped along the passage towards Ann’s bedroom.
Laura looked round the room in some surprise. It was completely transformed – she would hardly have known it for the same room, and just for a moment she toyed with the absurd idea that she had come to the wrong flat.
A few pieces of the original furniture remained, but across one corner was a big cocktail bar. The new décor was an up-to-date version of French Empire, with smartly striped satin curtains and a good deal of gilt and ormolu. The few pictures on the wall were modern. It looked less like a room in somebody’s home, than like a ‘set’ for a stage production.
Edith looked in to say:
‘Mrs Prentice will be with you in a moment, ma’am.’
‘This is a complete transformation scene,’ remarked Dame Laura, indicating her surroundings.
‘Cost a mint of money, it did,’ said Edith with disapproval. ‘And one or two very odd young men there’s been here seeing to it all. You wouldn’t believe.’
‘Oh yes, I would,’ said Dame Laura. ‘Well, they seem to have made a very good job of it.’
‘Gimcrack,’ said Edith with a sniff.
‘One must go with the times, Edith. I expect Miss Sarah likes it very much.’
‘Oh, it’s not Miss Sarah’s taste. Miss Sarah, she’s never one for change. Never was. Why, you remember her, ma’am, didn’t even like the sofa turned the other way! No, it’s Mrs Prentice that’s so mad about all this.’
Dame Laura raised her eyebrows slightly. It seemed to her again that Ann Prentice must have changed a good deal. But at that moment steps came hurrying down the passage, and Ann herself rushed in, her hands outstretched.
‘Laura darling, how wonderful. I’ve been longing to see you.’
She gave Laura a rapid and perfunctory kiss. The older woman studied her with surprise.
Yes, Ann Prentice had changed. Her hair, soft leaf-brown hair with a thread or two of grey, had been hennaed and cut in the latest and most extreme style. Her eyebrows had been plucked and her face was expensively made up. She was wearing a short cocktail dress adorned with a large and bizarre cluster of costume jewellery. Her movements were restless and artificial – and that, to Laura Whitstable, was the most significant change of all. For a gentle unhurried repose had been the chief characteristic of the Ann Prentice she had known two years ago.
Now she moved about the room, talking, fidgeting with small trifles and hardly waiting for an answer to what she said.
‘It’s such a long time – really ages – of course I’ve read about you occasionally in the paper. What was India like? They seem to have made a terrific fuss of you in the States? I suppose you had lovely food – beefsteaks – all that? When did you get back?’
‘A fortnight ago. I rang you up. You were out. I daresay Edith forgot to tell you.’
‘Poor old Edith. Her memory’s not what it was. No, I think she did tell me, and I did mean to ring up – only you know what things are.’ She gave a little laugh. ‘One lives in such a rush.’
‘You usen’t to live in a rush, Ann.’
‘Didn’t I?’ Ann was vague. ‘It seems impossible to avoid it. Have a drink, Laura. Gin and lime?’
‘No, thanks. I never drink cocktails.’
‘Of course. Brandy and soda is your tipple. Here you are.’ She poured out the drink and brought it over, and then returned to get a drink for herself.
‘How’s Sarah?’ asked Dame Laura.
Ann said vaguely:
‘Oh, very well and gay. I hardly ever see her. Where’s the gin? Edith! Edith!’
Edith came in.
‘Why isn’t there any gin?’
‘Hasn’t come,’ said Edith.
‘I told you we must always have a reserve bottle. It’s too sickening! You must see to it that we always have plenty of drink in the house.’
‘Enough comes in, goodness knows,’ said Edith. ‘A sight too much, to my way of thinking.’
‘That will do, Edith,’ cried Ann angrily. ‘Go round and get some.’
‘What, now?’
‘Yes, now.’
As Edith retreated, looking grim, Ann said angrily:
‘She forgets everything. She’s hopeless!’
‘Well, don’t work yourself up, my dear. Come and sit down and tell me all about yourself.’
‘There’s nothing much to tell,’ Ann laughed.
‘You’re going out? Am I keeping you?’
‘Oh no, no. My boy friend’s coming to fetch me.’
‘Colonel Grant?’ asked Dame Laura, smiling.
‘Poor old James? Oh no. I hardly ever see him nowadays.’
‘How’s that?’
‘These old men are really so terribly boring. James is a dear, I know – but those long rambling stories of his … I just feel I can’t stand it.’ Ann shrugged her shoulders. ‘Awful of me – but there it is!’
‘You haven’t told me about Sarah. Has she got a young man?’
‘Oh, lots of them. She’s very popular, thank goodness … I really couldn’t face having a daughter who was all wet.’
‘Not any particular young man, then?’
‘We-ell. It’s hard to say. Girls never tell their mothers anything, do they?’
‘What about young Gerald Lloyd – the one you were rather worried about?’
‘Oh, he went off to South America or somewhere. That’s all washed up, thank goodness. Fancy your remembering that!’
‘I remember things about Sarah. I’m very fond of her.’
‘Sweet of you, Laura. Sarah’s all right. Very selfish and tiresome in many ways – but I suppose that has to be at her age. She’ll be in presently and then
–’
The telephone rang, and Ann broke off to answer it.
‘Hullo? … Oh it’s you, darling … Why, of course, I’d love to … Yes, but I’ll have to look in my little book … Oh, bother, I don’t know where it is … Yes, I’m sure it’s all right … Thursday, then … the Petit Chat … Yes, wasn’t it? … Funny the way Johnnie passed out completely … Well, of course, we were all a bit tight … Yes, I do agree …’
She replaced the receiver, remarking to Laura with a note of satisfaction in her voice that belied the words:
‘That telephone! It goes all day long.’
‘It’s a habit they have,’ Laura Whitstable agreed dryly.
She added: ‘You seem to be leading a very gay life, Ann?’
‘One can’t vegetate, darling – oh, that sounds like Sarah.’
Outside in the hall they heard Sarah’s voice:
‘Who? Dame Laura? Oh, splendid!’
She flung open the sitting-room door and came in. Laura Whitstable was struck by her beauty. The awkward touch of coltishness had gone, she was now a remarkably attractive young woman, with a quite unusual loveliness of face and form.
She looked radiant with pleasure at the sight of her godmother and kissed her warmly.
‘Laura darling, how lovely. You do look wonderful in that hat. Almost Royal with a weeny touch of the militant Tyrolean.’
‘Impertinent child,’ said Laura, smiling at her.
‘No, but I mean it. You really are a Personage, aren’t you, pet?’
‘And you’re a very handsome young woman!’
‘Oh, that’s just my expensive make-up.’
The telephone rang and Sarah picked it up.
‘Hullo? Who’s speaking? Yes, she’s here. It’s for you, Mother – as usual.’
As Ann took the receiver from her, Sarah sat on the arm of Laura’s chair.
‘The telephone rings for Mother all day long,’ she said, laughing.
Ann said sharply:
‘Be quiet, Sarah, I can’t hear. Yes … well, I think so … but next week I’m terribly booked up … I’ll look in my little book.’ Turning, she said, ‘Sarah, find my book. It must be by my bed …’ Sarah went out of the room. Ann went on talking into the telephone. ‘Well, of course I know what you mean … yes, that sort of thing is an awful bind … Do you, darling? … Well, as far as I’m concerned I’ve had Edward … I … oh, here’s my book. Yes …’ She took it from Sarah, turning the pages … ‘No, I can’t manage Friday … Yes, I could go on afterwards … Very well then, we’ll meet at the Lumley Smiths’ … Oh yes, I do agree. She’s terribly wet.’
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