by Neels, Betty
‘A very pleasant family evening,’ observed Lucius, driving her back later. ‘I couldn’t bear it more often than Christmas and Easter and the odd birthday,’ he added as an afterthought. ‘I suppose one would call the older ones a bit old-fashioned, but then I’m inclined to be that myself about some things.’
‘What sort of things?’ They were already turning into the drive from the lane, and Katrina wished they could have gone on driving for ever.
‘Oh, marriage and children and wives and so on.’ He stopped the car and she said quickly: ‘Don’t get out, there’s Lovelace opening the door. Thank you for a lovely evening, Lucius.’
She had her hand on the door, but he leaned across and covered it with his own. ‘Since when have I dropped you off like a sack of coal?’ he asked, and got out, walking with her to the porch where Lovelace stood just inside the door. ‘Tomorrow morning?’ he bent and kissed her lightly. ‘Sleep well, Katie.’
She was up early, pale from a wakeful night, aware that she wasn’t looking her best in a morning which was not yet quite light. Lucius was already there when she reached the stables, saddling Gem. His good morning was cheerfully off hand, although the look he gave her was intent. They didn’t say much as they set off. For years now they had formed the habit of riding in the early morning together, even in the cold and semi-dark of winter, and they knew each other far too well to need to make conversation. They were more silent than usual this morning, although once they were back and had handed the horses over to the boy, just arrived from the village, Lucius took her arm as they walked up to the house and said casually: ‘In a couple of weeks’ time we’ll be in Greece. Looking forward to it?’
She was startled. ‘Heavens, as soon as that? You’ve quite made up your mind to go?’ She didn’t quite know why she asked him that; it was a silly question, but for a moment she wished wildly that she need not see him for a long time; perhaps she would get over him then.
His grey eyes were suddenly cool. ‘Cold feet?’ His voice was as cool as his eyes.
‘Certainly not! I—I’d forgotten how soon we were going. I’m looking forward to it.’ She could hear the note of defiance in her voice and hastily added brightly: ‘I’m really looking forward to it.’
And over breakfast she took care to talk about nothing else but their trip, not noticing Lucius’s thoughtful look which presently turned to amusement.
When they’d finished their meal he got up to go. ‘I’ll fetch you this evening,’ he told her in a voice which she had long ago recognised as not to be argued with. ‘Have fun with Mrs Lovell.’
Katrina spoke before she thought. ‘Mrs Lovell? Why should I... Oh, of course—lunch. I don’t think she quite approves of us going away together.’
‘Then you can spend a profitable time convincing her that everything will be strictly comme il faut.
He was laughing at her and she didn’t like it.
She had warned Mrs Beecham that she wouldn’t be home for lunch or dinner. ‘But I’ll be back for tea,’ she assured that lady. ‘I’ll have it in the sitting room, please, and lots of buttered toast.’
She changed and took Bouncer for a walk, then got into her car and drove away to her mythical lunch. Once out of the village she turned back towards the Banbury road, went through that town and on to Warmington, where she lunched in the bar of the Plough Inn. There were plenty of people there, mostly men having their pint before their dinner, and she felt conspicuous, but she stayed as long as she decently could, then got into the car again and drove back through country roads, through Wroxton and then out of her way to Chipping Norton and then slowly back to Tew. It was half past three as she stopped outside her own front door, and she left the car there. If Lucius happened to be at his drawing room window or out in the park, he would see it easily, proof that she had been away, although she told herself robustly that there was no reason at all why she shouldn’t do exactly what she liked with her days. All the same, going into the lamplit sitting room, she felt guilty. It had only been a small deception for the best of reasons, but she didn’t lie easily, especially to Lucius.
He came, as always, punctually, and she wasn’t quite ready. She had put on the patterned organza; there would be friends dropping in later hi the evening and several guests for dinner as well as the Massey family, and she wanted to look her best. She added his gifts too and tripped downstairs feeling for once rather less plain than usual.
It was a pity that Lucius’s casual greeting didn’t include some pleasant remark about her appearance. Other than wanting to know if she had enjoyed her day, he had little to say as he drove her over to Stockley House. It was left to Great-Uncle Tom to give her a hearty kiss and declare that she looked a picture and he wished he was twenty years younger. Indeed, several people remarked on her looks, and the more who did, the prettier she felt. By the end of the evening she was positively radiant.
There had been dancing after dinner, with cars driving up every few minutes, bringing more friends and acquaintances. Quite a few of them Katrina didn’t know—people from London, all of whom seemed to be on terms of the greatest friendliness with Lucius, especially several smart young women. She hated them on sight. Before she had discovered that she had fallen in love with Lucius, she would have looked at them with tolerance and curiosity but certainly no jealousy. Now she discovered that she was riddled with it, it added a pretty flush to her cheeks and a most becoming glitter to her beautiful eyes.
She danced without pause, slow-foxtrotting with Great-Uncle Tom, who danced with a complete disregard for the music, waltzing with little Tom and letting herself go with the younger members of the party. With Lucius she was all liveliness and chatter, so unlike herself that he first of all looked puzzled and then amused, presenting a bland face to her and answering her incoherent conversation with a silkiness that she didn’t notice, so busy was she in presenting a carefree air of enjoyment of the evening. She had given evasive answers to his casual questions about her lunch with Mrs Lovell, not actually fibbing, she assured herself silently, just evading the truth. Rather successfully, she decided as the evening progressed and the champagne she had been drinking went to her sensible head.
Lucius drove her home soon after midnight. ‘I’ll come in,’ he said easily. ‘Mrs Beecham’s sure to have left some of her excellent coffee in the sitting room.’ He added dryly: ‘You could do with some.’
‘Are you suggesting that I’ve had too much to drink?’ asked Katrina, aware of the beginnings of a headache.
‘Yes.’ He took the key from her and opened the door and followed her into the hall. ‘But I daresay you needed it.’ She paused on her way to the sitting room. ‘What do you mean?’
He was lounging against the wall table, looking at her. She didn’t much like the look. ‘Should we have our coffee?’ she asked.
He took no notice of that. He said very evenly: ‘What did you have at the Plough, Katie? Something in a basket or a ploughman’s lunch?’
She whisked round, her eyes wide. ‘However did you know?’ she demanded.
He smiled, not very nicely. ‘I phoned Mrs Lovell to ask her if she would like to come back with you and have tea—it seemed a friendly gesture...’ He began to walk towards her. ‘She was utterly bewildered, poor woman: terrified that she’d invited you for lunch and forgotten all about it. I rang Lovelace, who said that you’d left by car and wouldn’t be back until about four o’clock, so then I phoned Lady Ryder, Mrs Moffat...’ he shrugged his shoulders, ‘everyone who knows us. I tried the pubs next and struck lucky almost at once; you’d only just left.’
Katrina said in a choking voice: ‘Spying on me! You’ve no right...’
Lucius raised his eyebrows. ‘But indeed I have, my dear. Surely old friends have a right to be concerned when one of their number takes herself off?’ He put a hand under her chin, cupping it gently and forcing it up so that she had to look at him. ‘What’s happened?’ he asked gently now. ‘What could there possibly be that you
felt you couldn’t confide in me?’
Katrina had gone rather pale. ‘I thought we were seeing too much of each other,’ she stammered.
His eyes widened in mocking surprise. ‘My dear girl, we’ve been seeing each other almost daily for twenty-five years or more. Why the sudden volte-face?’
She would have given anything in the world to have told him. She said in a bright voice: ‘Silly of me, wasn’t it? Shall we have that coffee?’
He followed her into the sitting room, accepted a cup and sat down opposite her. ‘Riding tomorrow morning?’ he asked pleasantly, and because she couldn’t think of any reason why she shouldn’t, she said yes.
‘Everyone goes home tomorrow after lunch,’ he went on, ‘and I shall be in town for a few days. I’ve promised to look in on several people and I can put in some work during the days.’
All those smart young women. Katrina clamped her splendid teeth together and smiled at him. ‘You deserve some fun after these last few days,’ she said sweetly.
He put his cup down and got to his feet. ‘I dislike sarcasm in women,’ he observed bluntly ‘Their tongues are like kitchen knives, far too sharp.’
He crossed the room to where she was sitting, mouth slightly open, eyes wide, kissed her swiftly on the cheek and walked out. She listened to the front door closing after him. ‘He didn’t say goodnight,’ she said to Bouncer dozing in front of the fire. She was quite unable to stop the flood of tears that poured down her cheeks. What with too much champagne and even more emotion, she was in no state to prevent them.
The last thought hi her head before she slept was that nothing, just nothing, would make her ride with Lucius in the morning. She woke early and lay, longing to get up, listening to the early morning sounds hi the house and outside. It was cold and quiet outside. She heard Lucius’s great horse coming up the drive and then turning away to the stables, and presently she heard him trotting through the cobbled yard and out of the back drive. She thumped her pillows and rolled herself into a snug ball again. She wasn’t going to get up; she had said goodbye to the Massey family on the previous evening and Lucius wouldn’t dare come to breakfast.
In a little while Maudie came hi with her tea and a request from Mrs Beecham as to whether she should cook breakfast for Mr Lucius.
‘No, thank you, Maudie, he’s going up to London for a few days—he won’t have time. And could I have mine in half an hour? I’ve got some work to do and I want to get into the studio as quickly as possible.’
As Maudie reached the door: ‘And if anyone calls or telephones, tell them I’m not here or can’t come, or something, will you?’
She ate a hurried breakfast, with one ear tuned to Lucius’s footsteps. But he didn’t come, so she went straight to the studio and began work. It was a good thing she had already done the sketching, it was just a question of painting to be done, work she could do while most of her mind was engaged elsewhere. The morning wore on, and each time the door bell rang, and she heard its faint echo below her, and it rang often enough, she stopped painting, listening for Lucius’s deliberate tread on the stairs. Only he didn’t come. She had lunch presently, made a belated visit to the kitchen and then took Bouncer for a long walk. There were few lights shining from Stockley House as she came back through the kitchen gardens; it would be empty but for the servants. She turned away quickly and hurried back home to have her tea and then put the finishing touches to her work.
Normally she would have taken it up to London and handed it over to the publisher, but if she did there was just the chance that she might bump into Lucius and he would say something unpleasant about spying. Katrina ate her solitary dinner with a book propped up in front of her and went early to bed.
She had Mrs Moffat to lunch the next day, because she had promised flowers for the church and Mrs Moffat had been eager to come and fetch them herself. Katrina took her up to the greenhouses and stood by while Old John grudgingly parted with some chrysanthemums and a pot or two of cyclamens, and then bore her back to the sitting room to drink sherry and gossip gently until lunch was put on the table. It was a delicious meal, carefully chosen because Katrina knew that the Moffats lived simply and Mrs Moffat did her own cooking. One of Mrs Beecham’s celery soups, beef en croute and trifle to finish up with. Mrs Moffat, drinking the last of the claret and preparing to follow her hostess back to the sitting room for coffee, felt quite guilty, knowing that her husband would be sitting down to a pasty and the last of the Christmas pudding. She would have liked to have stayed, but there was the Mothers’ Union at three o’clock and she got up reluctantly and then brightened when Katrina offered, with a disarming diffidence, a bottle of claret to take to the Vicar. ‘To toast the New Year,’ she explained. ‘I expect you’ll be at home, won’t you? I’ve no idea what I’ll be doing; Lucius may not be back, but if he is I’ll be over at Stockley House.’
‘But if he isn’t, you’ll be on your own...’
‘I’ll go up to London,’ improvised Katrina rapidly.
When her guest had gone she allowed herself to wonder just what she would do if Lucius didn’t come back. No one in the village did much in the way of entertaining at the New Year; small family parties, perhaps, but no entertainment for anyone else. It was customary for Lucius to invite as many as would like to come to call in for a drink, and she and Virginia had always gone to Stockley for dinner on Old Year’s Night and stayed to see the New Year in, simply because their parents had done it while his parents were alive and no one had thought of changing the habit. But now Virginia wasn’t there and she had made Lu-cius angry. She got to her feet slowly, whistled to Bouncer and went for another walk.
It was early on Old Year’s morning, while she was poking around in the shrubbery at the side of the house while Bouncer rooted happily beside her, that she heard the whisper of tyres coming up the front drive. Just for a moment she made as if to go and see who it was, but she had done that so many times during the last day or two, only to find that it was somebody other than Lucius, that she deliberately turned her back and began an inspection of a hama-melis; any day now it would bloom, and she loved the scent of its delicate lemon-tinted flowers.
Lucius came over the lawn, soundlessly, so that she wasn’t aware of him until he fetched up within a few feet of her. She looked over her shoulder, her face suddenly radiant. ‘Lucius—how absolutely marvellous!’ She remembered the last tune they had seen each other. ‘I hope you had a nice time in London,’ she said in a stiff little voice. It was a pity she was looking so scruffy in an old guernsey and corduroys and a pair of dreadful old boots she hadn’t bothered to lace up. He must have thought the same, because he said, ‘Hello there, what a nice change from the beautifully groomed young ladies I’ve been consorting with.’ He grinned at her. ‘And I did have a...’ he paused, ‘a nice time, thank you.’
They stared at each other for a long minute. ‘And you,’ he wanted to know, ‘have you had a nice time too, guzzling ale at various pubs?’
The colour flamed into her cheeks. ‘How beastly you are—you haven’t changed a bit since you were a horrid boy!’ Suddenly she felt laughter bubbling up inside her. ‘You’re impossible,’ she giggled, ‘but it’s so hard to quarrel with you. I suppose it’s because we’ve grown up together.’
‘That probably accounts for it, there could be other reasons.’ Lucius didn’t say what they might be. ‘Any chance of coffee?’
‘Yes, of course, and Mrs Beecham made one of her fruit cakes yesterday—the Parish Council came to tea, but there’s plenty left. You weren’t here,’ she added accusingly.
They were walking back to the house with Bouncer tearing ahead, showing off before the Dalmatian and the puppy.
‘Oh, but you were quite capable of dealing with any number of parochial meetings,’ Lucius observed easily. ‘I’ve got two tickets for Tosca next Saturday evening. We’ll dine somewhere first, shall we?’ He gave her a quick sideways glance. ‘Don’t try and think of an excuse, Katie, and don’t go
fancying I’ve asked you as a sop to your pride because I’ve been taking a handful of girls out. None of them, by the way, would stomach opera. Oh, I daresay they go, because it’s the thing to do, but they never allow their feelings to show, they might ruin their make-up.’
Katrina paused in the porch. ‘You do sound bitter. Was there someone in particular? You danced a lot with that gorgeous blonde creature in the patterned chiffon...’
She spoke lightly, rather proud of her cool friendliness. That she was positively awash with misery at the very idea of him falling for a girl—any girl—was quite beside the point.
They were in the hall, throwing off their gloves and in Katrina’s case, kicking off the deplorable boots. He turned to look at her, a half smile on his face. ‘There’s been someone particular for a very long time, Katie.’
She said impulsively: ‘Then why do we have to go to Greece and pretend we’re engaged? None of our friends would mind if they knew the truth—they’d laugh nicely and forget it. Besides, I don’t mind it if they do laugh. The—the girl might mind.’
‘Not she, she’s too sensible.’
They went into the sitting room and Lovelace brought the coffee and the remains of the cake. Lucius ate almost all of it.
‘Any news of the happy couple?’ he asked presently.
‘I had a card from—oh, dear, I can’t remember. Lovely weather, Virginia said, but she didn’t say when they were coming home.’
He nodded. ‘You’re coming this evening, as usual? There’ll be a few people in for drinks, but only us two for dinner.’
Katrina looked surprised. ‘Oh—you usually invite...’
His interruption was smooth. ‘I thought it would be nice if we were on our own this year.’ His eyes positively danced with amusement. ‘Besides, we have the details of our trip to settle.’
He went shortly afterwards and she strolled off to find Mrs Beecham and beg her to make another cake. She had just changed into a sweater and skirt when Lovelace came to tell her that Lady Ryder had called, and she hurried downstairs to greet the old lady.
