Tabitha in Moonlight

by Betty Neels

  Tabitha paused at the foot of the little stairs. ‘I don’t think I want you to,’ she said quietly. ‘I promise you it’s quite suitable and I shan’t disgrace you.’

  She went on up the stairs and Lilith followed her. ‘Come on, Tabitha,’ she wheedled, ‘it’s my birthday—I’m supposed to be happy all day, and I shan’t be if I can’t see your dress.’

  Tabitha sighed. ‘Very well, though I assure you it’s nothing to get excited about.’

  She took it out of the cupboard and laid it on the bed, and Lilith said instantly in a furious voice: ‘You can’t wear it—you can’t!’

  ‘Why not?’ Tabitha was too surprised to feel angry.

  ‘The colour will clash with mine. It’s blue—pale blue—that dress of yours will make it look faded.’ She stamped her foot. ‘You shan’t wear it! You’ve done it on purpose so that I shan’t look prettier than everyone else.’

  ‘Don’t be silly,’ said Tabitha bracingly. ‘Why should I do that? And how was I to know what colour you intended to wear—besides, we’re not going to stand together all the evening.’

  Lilith didn’t reply but ran out of the room; Tabitha could hear her voice, shrill with temper, raced downstairs, and braced herself for her stepmother’s inevitable intervention on her daughter’s behalf. Mrs Crawley swept in, the little smile Tabitha had learned to dread on her face. Her voice was pleasant and brisk.

  ‘What’s all this fuss about your dress, Tabitha?’ Her eyes studied it, lying on the bed. ‘My dear, even if it didn’t clash with Lilith’s, you couldn’t really wear it. I mean, it just isn’t you, is it? Were you persuaded by some super sales-woman into buying it? There’s that pretty grey and white striped dress you had last year—so suitable. I’m sure you wouldn’t want to spoil Lilith’s birthday party—it is her party; you know—besides, there’s someone she met at the Johnsons’ the other evening and she wants to look her best for him, and there’s no one you particularly want to impress, is there?’

  Tabitha had gone a little white, for she had a fine temper, but she had learned to control it during the last few difficult years. She said now very evenly: ‘No, no one. It makes no difference at all what I wear.’ And then because she was so angry, she added: ‘Would you rather I didn’t come?’

  Her stepmother looked genuinely shocked. ‘Not come? Of course you must come—what would everyone say?’

  Tabitha smiled; her stepmother saw it and frowned angrily as she turned to leave. ‘Dinner’s at eight,’ she said shortly. ‘You know everyone who’s coming. We’ll give Lilith her presents while we’re having drinks. Everyone else will come about nine or thereabouts.’

  After she had gone Tabitha sat down on the bed and cried. She cried for her new dress and for the birthday parties she hadn’t had for the last five years, and for the bedroom which had always been hers and wasn’t any longer, and because she was lonely. And underneath all these, only half realizing it, she cried for Mr van Beek.

  Presently she blew her nose, wiped her eyes and set about repairing the damage—something that she did so well that by half past seven she was dressed in the grey and white stripes, her face nicely made up and her hair piled in intricate little puffs on top of her head, showing off a surprisingly pretty neck. She had pinned a pink velvet bow in front of her coiffure, and after a final appraising look in her mirror she went downstairs, her head held defiantly high, to meet her stepmother and Lilith once more before greeting their dinner guests. Half of their number were friends of Lilith’s own age, but the remainder were older people, who had known her parents and herself from a baby, and as she was seated between the vicar, who had christened her, and the doctor who had attended her birth, she enjoyed her dinner. The doctor was long past retiring age, although he still worked on with a young assistant to do the more arduous work. Neither of them had seen her for some time and had a great many questions to ask her which she answered as lightheartedly as possible. Nevertheless, towards the end of the meal the doctor leaned a little nearer and said quietly:

  ‘Tabby, we’ve worried about you a little. When your father died did he leave provision for you? This may seem like an impertinence, but we have your well-being at heart, my dear.’

  Tabitha gave him a warm smile. ‘Yes, I know, and thank you. Father didn’t leave me anything; you see, he hadn’t made a will since Mother died. He kept meaning to…I had some trinkets of Mother’s and some of the silver. There was an understanding that…’ She paused, not liking to say what was in her mind. ‘I believe my stepmother misunderstood,’ she finished lamely.

  ‘Quite so,’ said her companion, ‘but I suppose the house will revert to you eventually?’

  Tabitha shook her head. ‘No—I’ve been told that it’s to be Lilith’s.’

  The vicar, listening from the other side, looked astounded. ‘But she has no connection—Chidlake has been in your family for years—your father must have meant you to have it so that it would pass to your children.’

  ‘Well, I don’t see much chance of marrying,’ said Tabitha prosaically, ‘but I think that’s what he intended, because he used to say so when I was a little girl. Still, I have a good job, you know,’ she smiled reassuringly at their worried old faces. ‘Next time you’re out our way, you must come and see the ward.’

  The dinner party broke up shortly afterwards and everyone went to the drawing room to await the arrival of the other guests, who presently came in a never-ending stream, laughing and talking and handing a radiant Lilith her presents, and when the small band struck up, taking to the floor in the pleasantly full room. Tabitha danced in turn with the doctor, the vicar and several friends of her parents and once or twice with young men who were Lilith’s friends and strangers to the village. Their conversation was limited to asking her who she was and then expressing surprise at her answer. They danced badly, something which she did very well, so that when she saw a young man in a plum-coloured velvet suit and a pink frilled shirt making his way towards her she slipped away using the bulky frames of the doctor and his wife as a shield, and went outside on the balcony. It was a glorious night, with the last brightness of the sun still lingering over the distant headlands of Torbay. She wandered away from the drawing room, so that the music and noise was dimmed a little and leaned over the balustrade to sniff at the roses below. It was then that she became aware of Lilith’s voice, very gay and excited. She must have left the drawing room too, although she would of course have a partner. Tabitha straightened up; if she walked on quickly, Lilith wouldn’t see her. But it was too late, for several paces away, Lilith cried:

  ‘Tabitha? All alone? Have you run out of partners already?’ She gave a tinkle of laughter. ‘We should have got some older men for you.’

  Tabitha turned round. She began quietly: ‘That would have been a good…’ Her voice faltered into silence, for the man with Lilith was Mr van Beek.

  Her first reaction was one of deep regret that she wasn’t wearing the new dress, the second that his elegance, in contrast to his appearance when they had first met, was striking. She thanked heaven silently for the kindly moonlight and said in a voice from which she had carefully sponged all surprise: ‘Good evening, Mr van Beek.’

  Lilith looked surprised, frowned and then said incredulously: ‘You know each other?’

  Mr van Beek smiled charmingly at her. ‘Indeed we do.’ He turned the same smile on Tabitha, who didn’t smile back.

  ‘How very delightful to meet you here, Miss Crawley, and how providential, for one or two matters of importance have cropped up—perhaps if Lilith would forgive me, we might settle them now.’

  ‘Settle what?’ Lilith wanted to know.

  ‘Oh, some very dull matters concerning patients,’ he answered easily. ‘Nothing you would want to bother your pretty head about. Go back and dance with as many of your young men as you can in ten minutes, then you will have all the more time for me.’

  Lilith smiled, looking up at him through her long curling lashes.

&n
bsp; ‘All right, Marius, you shall have your ten minutes, though it all sounds very dull.’ She didn’t bother to look at Tabitha but danced off, the picture of prettiness, to disappear into the drawing room.

  Tabitha had stood quietly while they had been talking, and now that Lilith had gone she still made no move. It was Mr van Beek who spoke first. He said, to astonish her: ‘Tabitha in moonlight—how charming you look.’

  ‘There’s no need,’ began Tabitha firmly, ‘to flatter me just because you’ve discovered that I’m Lilith’s stepsister.’

  His brows lifted. ‘That seems a most peculiar reason for flattery, which, by the way, isn’t flattery. I did know that you were stepsisters. You do look charming—you’ve done your hair differently too.’

  He smiled at her so kindly that she burst out: ‘Moonlight’s kind. Wait until you see me indoors, I’m as plain as ever I was.’

  He came and leant on the balustrade beside her. ‘I’m sure your mother and father never told you that you were plain.’

  ‘Of course they didn’t.’

  ‘Then why do you think you are?’

  She looked at him in astonishment. ‘I grew up knowing it,’ she frowned. ‘At least, I guessed I would be.’ She fumbled for words. ‘I—I knew, that is, before I was told.’

  ‘And who told you?’

  Tabitha had a sudden vivid memory of standing before the mirror in the hall, doing something to her hair. It had been soon after her father had brought his second wife home, and already Tabitha had become aware that she wasn’t liked. Her stepmother had stopped and looked at her reflection over her shoulder and said, gently mocking: ‘Why do you fuss so, Tabitha, surely you know by now that there is nothing much you can do to improve matters? You’re a plain girl, my dear.’ Tabitha could still hear that light mocking voice.

  ‘Well, go on,’ prompted Mr van Beek gently, but she shook her head and then changed her mind to say uncertainly: ‘Well, she only told me something I guessed was true, only I didn’t want to admit it…!’

  ‘You should never guess,’ he stated firmly. ‘Now you’ve got an idée fixe about it, haven’t you? All you need is treatment.’

  She eyed him suspiciously. ‘Treatment? What sort of treatment?’

  ‘At some convenient time I will answer that, Tabitha. Now shall we go indoors and finish this dance?’

  Tabitha agreed, thinking that he was getting bored. The conversation had hardly been a sparkling one, and that had been her fault. The music had started some time earlier; he would only have to partner her once or twice round the drawing room. She was right, or almost so, for they had circled the floor exactly one and a half times when the band stopped playing and she muttered some excuse about speaking to an old friend, and went to sit by old Lady Tripp, who was indeed an old friend of her mother’s when she had been alive. Tabitha plunged into an awkward conversation; her companion was deaf and everything had to be said at least twice, so that the thread was quickly lost.

  In a minute or two she looked cautiously round the room and saw Mr van Beek dancing with Lilith. Even from the other end of the room, she could see that Lilith was sparkling, her lovely face alight with pleasure, which apparently Mr van Beek shared, for he was smiling down at her, and whatever it was he was saying made her laugh happily. Tabitha smiled herself, albeit with difficulty, while she listened with sympathy to Lady Tripp’s detailed description of her arthritis, at the same time wondering how and where Lilith had met Mr van Beek. Her stepmother had said that Lilith had met someone at the Johnsons’, and as far as she could see, he was the someone—and just the sort of man Lilith would marry. He was a good deal too old for her, of course, but did that really matter if he had a good position and money to give her all the luxuries she demanded of life? Lilith was undoubtedly the sort of girl a man would want for a wife, especially an older, successful man, and presumably Mr van Beek was successful. She wasn’t sure, but it seemed unlikely that he could afford to run a Bentley like his unless he had a very good practice or money of his own—Mr Raynard had said that he was at the height of his career. She was roused sharply from her thoughts by Lady Tripp, who wanted to know, in the kindest possible way, if she had a young man yet. She was attempting to answer this question when she was asked to dance, and although it was one of the very young men trailing attendance on Lilith, Tabitha welcomed him with rather more enthusiasm than she felt and followed him on to the dance floor to twist and whirl and weave with a gracefulness which Mr van Beek, who was talking to the vicar, watched with a lazy enjoyment which sadly enough she failed to observe.

  Despite the lateness of the hour when she had gone to bed, Tabitha was up early the next morning. She would go back to St Martin’s after tea—before, if she could manage to get away, but now the sun was shining and a walk would be delightful before breakfast. She dressed and went down to the kitchen and made herself some tea and stood drinking it at the open kitchen door, thinking about the dance. It had been, according to her stepmother, a great success, even the fact that Tabitha had already met Mr van Beek hadn’t spoiled Lilith’s triumph, for she had been extravagant in her praise of him and full of plans in which he largely figured.

  ‘He’s got a Bentley,’ she told Tabitha with glee. ‘I shall ask him to take me to Bournemouth or Torquay for the day.’

  Tabitha had said nothing, although she wondered if Mr van Beek was quite the man to enjoy either of these resorts during the summer months; she had an idea that his tastes might run to something quieter. In answer to Lilith’s close questioning about her acquaintance with him, she had been briskly off-hand. She had made no mention of Mr Bow, and Lilith, whose knowledge of hospital life was fragmental, imagined that as a surgeon he had merely to walk into the theatre, operate and go home again, and Tabitha saw no reason to enlighten her. She couldn’t stop Lilith getting Mr van Beek if she wanted him, but she certainly wasn’t going to help her; she was vague to the point of stupidity when Lilith demanded to know when he was likely to be free and which days of the week he could be expected to operate, and even more vague as to the length of time he would be likely to remain at the hospital.

  She finished her tea, dismissed her thoughts because they weren’t very happy ones, and prepared to enjoy her walk. She crossed the fields towards the sea as she had done the previous afternoon, and walked, in the coolness of the early morning, down to Lyme Regis and out along the Cobb. There were few people about, mostly exercising their dogs, and at the end of the Cobb, a handful of enthusiastic people getting ready to sail. Tabitha went and sat on the edge of the stone wall and watched them, carrying on a casual conversation the while. She was getting to her feet once more when Mr van Beek said from behind her: ‘Good morning—I imagined you would still be in bed.’

  Tabitha turned round slowly, not attempting to hide her pleasure at seeing him and at the same time resolutely recognizing his remark as a figure of speech and no more. She said cheerfully: ‘Hullo—not on a morning like this.’ Her eye fell on an elderly dog with a woolly coat standing beside him. ‘That’s Fred, isn’t it—unless you own his double.’

  He laughed. ‘The Johnsons’ dog, not mine. You know him, I see.’

  ‘For years. He must be twelve now—he used to come swimming with me.’

  He asked abruptly: ‘You were happy, weren’t you? Here in your lovely home, with all your friends. Has your family been here long?’

  ‘About a hundred and fifty years—the house was built during the Regency period.’

  ‘And what will happen to it now—is it to be yours, or will your stepmother…?’

  Tabitha turned away so that he wouldn’t be able to see her face. She spoke steadily. ‘My father didn’t leave—that is, he didn’t make a will. My stepmother owns it, naturally. I expect when Lilith marries she will live there.’

  He sounded surprised. ‘Lilith live there? I simply can’t imagine it. She likes London, I imagine—a flat in a modern block of skyscrapers and Harrods just around the corner.’ He spoke lightly, al
most jokingly, and she answered carefully.

  ‘Lilith is pretty and very popular—she has dozens of friends. Of course she likes a carefree life, but she’ll settle down in a year or so.’

  He didn’t answer. She stooped to pat Fred. ‘Well, I must be getting back.’ She edged away, but not fast enough, for he reached out and caught her bare arm.

  ‘I’ll run you back—I’ve got the car at the end of the Cobb. There’s no hurry.’

  She said ‘No,’ quickly, and then because he gave her such a strange look, went on: ‘It’s kind of you, but I like walking. I wouldn’t like to disturb my sister and stepmother, they’re still sleeping.’

  Mr van Beek gave her a long considering look. ‘I see that you have another idée fixe,’ he observed mildly, although he didn’t tell her what it was this time. ‘In which case, since you don’t care for me to drive you back, I will, if I may, walk with you.’

  Tabitha caught her breath. ‘No—yes, well it’s two miles across the fields and along the cliff path.’ She looked at him anxiously.

  His face bore no expression other than that of polite interest. ‘Yes? In that case I daresay Fred and I shall give up about halfway. We are neither of us as young as we were.’ If he heard Tabitha’s sigh of relief he gave no sign, and now that the danger of arriving at Chidlake with him and being seen by a furious Lilith was averted, Tabitha became quite cheerful.

  They started to walk back along the Cobb with Fred lumbering beside them. They were halfway along its length when Mr van Beek said:

  ‘You should wear your hair like that more often.’

  Tabitha slowed her pace to look at him. ‘Like this?’ she asked in an amazed voice. ‘Just hanging—I’ve tied it back anyhow.’